Sorry it took so long, I've been very busy with midterms...but, now that they're over, WHA LA! A new chapter! Thank you to XxStrawberryKittyxX and kittycat5261 for the reviews! Enjoy:

Chapter 3: Shanks' Offer

The day passed quickly with lots of partying and drinking aboard the Red-Haired Pirates ship, the Red Force. Naomi didn't have a very high tolerance for alcohol so she didn't drink as much as the other men, but she did treat herself to a couple drinks. And was eventually coaxed into playing a few songs on her piccolo for everyone when they found out she could play the instrument.

By nightfall, the island they had left from was well out of site and the five main crewmembers sat in the large dinning hall with Naomi telling her all kinds of stories about their adventures.

"And then, one of the bandits points a gun at my head and says 'If you come any closer, I'll blow your head off coward'," Shanks said in a deep voice to imitate the bandit. As he said it he laughed, put his fingers in the shape of a gun and placed the point against his head, "So then I point to the gun and say 'Risk your life on it… This isn't a child's game'."

The rest of the men burst out laughing at this and Naomi chuckled at their enthusiasm, but she didn't really understand what Shanks meant or what the men were laughing about.

"What is a gun?" Naomi asked, "Is that some sort of weapon?"

"You don't know what a gun is?" Yassop asked, surprised.

"No, we don't have them in our world. Or, if we do, we must call them by a different name," she answered.

"Well here is one kind of gun," Ben Beckman said and held up his rifle, "It's called a rifle, but I don't usually use it for shooting."

"These are my pistols," Yassop said and held up two of them, "They're another kind of gun."

Naomi took one from Yassop and examined it with her hands. The metal felt cool against her bare hand and the wood was very smooth. She cautiously stuck her finger into the hole in the barrel pulled out a finger with gray soot on it, "So what does it do?" she looked up and asked.

"Well, it shoots stuff," Rockstar pointed out.

"There are small, lead balls called bullets that you put in it and then you can fire them out of the gun at a high speed so that it can penetrate the body," Ben explained.

"Kind of like the way you fire those arrows from the bow you were carrying," Lucky started, "But, instead the gun does the shooting for you, you just have to aim it."

"Interesting," Naomi exclaimed, "I've never seen any technology like it! May I try to shoot it?"

"Well sure," Yassop said, "but lets do it outside on the deck."

Shanks went out first, and then everyone else followed.

"Here is something for you to shoot," Shanks said and placed an empty sake bottle on the railing of the ship. Yassop brought Naomi to the other side of the deck and everyone else kept their distance from the bottle. A couple of the other crewmen also gathered around to see how talented a she-elf could be with a piece of technology she had never heard of before.

"Hold it like this," Yassop said, held the gun in front of him and aimed it at the bottle, "this trigger here fires the gun when you pull it so you just aim…and…"

Naomi studied him carefully, taking in and noticing every little movement he made and thing he did. Yassop closed one eye and fired at the empty bottle. The loud bang of the gun startled Naomi, but soon her awe overcame her surprise. The bottle hadn't moved at all.

"Did you miss it Yassop?" one of the lesser men yelled.

"No, he didn't, look there!"

Everyone did. Right in the middle of the bottle was a perfectly round hole the size of the bullet that went in one side and out the other. Shanks smiled in approval.

"Now you try," Yassop couldn't hide his satisfied smile as he handed the pistol to the she-elf.

Naomi mimicked the way he had held it. The gun felt strange to her, but she tried to remember everything he had done. She closed one eye and lined up the end of the barrel with the sake bottle. She started to pull the trigger towards herself with a finger. But just before the gun fired, she opened both eyes just as she had noticed Yassop had done.

The bottle didn't move when she shot either. But it wasn't because the bullet had gone right though the bottle.

"Well, you got pretty close to it, even if you didn't hit it," Yassop tried to reassure her, "Try one more time."

Naomi did, but didn't hit it that time either.

"If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't hit anything either when I first learned to fire a gun," Lucky said.

"Yeah," Shanks agreed, "you just need to practice more."

Naomi thanked them for their kindness, but then she just smiled and patted the quiver of arrows on her back, "I don't need a gun as long as I have these."

"You think you can hit that bottle, from all the way over there, with a bow and arrow?!" Rockstar exclaimed with a laugh.

Naomi nodded.

"I'd like to see that," Shanks smirked, and Naomi gave him a cool look as she took her bow off her shoulder and drew an arrow.

All the men quieted down and gathered closer as she put the arrow on the bow and pulled back her arm. She squinted at her target for a moment, the opened her eyes wider and released her hold on the arrow, sending it flying with a 'whiz'.

The men stayed quiet for a moment in awe, but then jumped up and started cheering. Some even whistled at the sight. The arrow was sticking out of the hole Yassop had made in the sake bottle.

"Not bad!" Yassop said with a grin on his face. Shanks was also smiling at her, in fact the whole crew was.

"Thanks," Naomi said, "I ought to be. I've been practicing with a bow for a thousand years now."

"Well now that you know what a gun is," Shanks said and started to walk back towards the dinning hall, "why don't we go back inside and finish the story?"

Everyone followed him in and sat in the same spots they were before.

"Now where was I?" Shanks asked.

"I believe you were just saying how you pointed at the bandit's gun and said 'Risk your life on it… This isn't a child's game'," Naomi pointed out.

"Yes! Then Lucky shot him in the head and Ben beat up all of the other bandit's except for Higuma. He was the leader of the bandits and he had a bounty of only 8,000,000… but I guess at the time that was a big bounty for someone from East Blue.

"He was very surprised when he saw all of his men wiped out, so he escaped by using a smoke bomb. And he took Luffy with him."

"I going to guess that is something that produces smoke so that the user can get away without being seen," Naomi said.

"Yep, that's pretty much what it is," Rockstar told her.

"So anyway, at first I didn't know what to do," Shanks continued.

Lucky leaned over and whispered to Naomi, "He went crazy worrying." And she smiled.

"We found him eventually, he had escaped to the sea in a small boat. Since Luffy had eaten one of the devil fruits I told you about, he couldn't swim and the bandit was going to drown him.

"I swam out as fast as I could, a sea monster called the Lord of the Coast ate the bandit and was just about eat Luffy. I pulled him out of the way just in time for him but not for me, and that's how I lost my arm," he finished and subconsciously held his shoulder.

"So what happened next?" Naomi asked curiously, "Did you finally let Luffy come with you and join your crew?"

"No," Shanks laughed, "If I did, you would have met him by now. He was the kind of kid that always made his presence know."

"We left the next day, after staying on that island for almost a year," Ben Beckman said, "And as we were getting ready to leave Luffy announced that he didn't want to join our crew anymore."

"Really?"

"Yes, in fact he announced that he was going to find the treasure, One Piece, and become the next Pirate King. That he was going to gather a crew that could surpass us!" Shanks exclaimed, the huge grin on his face told Naomi that this was a very happy memory for him and his crew.

"As a token to remember me by and be sure that we would see each other again, I gave him a straw hat that was very special to me. I told him to come return it to me someday when he is a great pirate."

"Did he?" Naomi wanted to know; she was sitting on the very edge of her chair with curiosity now, dieing to find out what had happened to this young boy.

"No, I haven't seen him since the day we left the island about ten years ago," Shanks sighed and leaned back in his chair with his hand behind his head, "But he sure has become a hot shot."

"We first saw that he had started his life as a pirate last year when a… friend of ours… brought his wanted poster to our attention," Lucky explained, "His first bounty was 30,000,000 and we've been watching it rise ever since."

"I read in the paper that he declared war on the World Government when he destroyed Enies Lobby to save a crew member and his bounty went up to 300,000,000 not too long ago," Rockstar bragged.

"It's going to be exciting when you meet up with him again then," Naomi concluded.

Shanks, Ben Beckman, Lucky Roux and Yassop murmured in agreement and an awkward silence followed.

"So," Naomi broke the quiet, "Where are we headed to now?"

"Back to our island," Rockstar answered bluntly.

"You see, the world government has completely blockaded the way to the end of the Grand Line, so we've been…'hanging' out on a deserted island," Ben Beckman explained, "We're coming back from a little 'meeting' we had with Whitebeard and returning to the island. But the World Government is on the move because a lot of things are happening right now, so it might be our time to fight through the blockade soon."

"Oh. Okay."

"If you'd like, you are welcome to stay with us permanently," Shanks announced and the others turned to him in surprise, "You can travel with us all the way to Raftel, the last island in the Grand Line."

Naomi raised her eyebrows in surprise at his proposition and pondered it for a moment, "It is very late now…," she started slowly, "but I will sleep on your offer and give you my answer in the morning. If that's okay."

"Sure," Shanks said with a smirk, "But you should know that I don't offer this kind of position to just anyone anytime."

"I'll keep that in mind," Naomi nodded.

"Yassop."

"Yes Captain?"

"Will you show Naomi to the unused bedroom near the stern, she can sleep there if she wants," Shanks looked to Naomi for an answer.

"That would be great," she answered and stood up to head for the door, "Fúmë mai."

The pirate men looked at her confusedly.

"Sorry, I might do that sometimes without realizing," Naomi explained, "It means 'sleep well' in my native tongue."

"And what language is that?" Lucky asked.

Naomi looked surprised at him and said matter-of-factly, "Elvish."

Yassop brought her out of the dinning hall, across the deck and behind the stern to a door that lead to a small staircase. At the bottom of the stairs was another door. She opened it and inside was a small, but comfortable looking bedroom. It held a bed, a small closet, and a desk with a chair and lamp.

"Is it okay?"

"Oh, yes," Naomi laughed, "On some of my adventures I end up sleeping in trees, this is perfect."

"So are you going to do it?" Yassop inquired.

"Do what?"

"Join the crew," he explained, "Become one of the Red-Haired Pirates."

"I'm not sure," replied Naomi, "I wouldn't be able to stay forever. That is the one bump in the path of dimension traveling. We can visit other worlds and for long periods of time, but we cannot live there. It would destroy us. A person's body is built to live in their own world and that world alone. If I didn't return to my home world every once in a while, then my body would be torn apart, start to decompose."

"Wow. Have you ever seen that happen to someone?"

"No, but the stories of it have been passed down through the generations of my family. I would not risk staying in one dimension for too long. My sister, Manveri, once stayed in a single dimension without returning home for almost one hundred years. She got terribly sick and was only just barely able to make a portal to bring herself home and be restored to health."

"Well, you wouldn't have to stay for a hundred years. We'll probably be dead by then, I'm already middle aged."

"I'm still not sure, I will have to sleep on it. My dreams will tell me what my heart truly wants to do."

Yassop thought this comment was strange, but he tried not to show it and just nodded to the female elf.

"Then I'll see you in the morning," he said, "umm… fuyme mi?"

Naomi laughed at his attempt to speak her language and shook her head, "Fúmë mai."

He offered a chuckle and walked back up the stairs. Naomi watched him to the top and then shut the door to her makeshift room. There was a hook on the wall next to the desk and she hung her bow, quiver and jacket on it.

Naomi then took the ribbon out of her hair and laid it on the desk next to the bed along with her belt of weapons. The blankets on the bed might have once been brown, but time had faded them to a light tan color. She slipped under the sheets and the dusty smell of the old blankets helped soothe her into the light sleep that she was accustomed to whenever she was anywhere but home.

She let all the thoughts of the Red Force, the Red-Haired Pirates, the Grand Line, the World Government, Raftel and this new dimension flow through her mind so that when she awoke, she would know what to do about Shanks' offer.

I thought the lenght on this one was pretty decent, but if you want longer or if you have any other suggestions please review! And dont forget you can check out Naomi's profile and picture on my Profile page! I'll get the next chapter up as soon as i can!