It was sometime in the early morning hours while everything was quiet and calm, that one of Shanks men finally spotted the Merry- and then a good distance away spotted the Navy ship. Calling out in alarm due to the proximity of the marine vessel, all hands were called onto deck to arm themselves for the possibility of an attack while Shanks quietly weaved his way through his men until he found and was standing next to Ace whom had practically been bouncing off of the walls for nigh half a day now.

How Whitebeard managed to ever put up with someone so annoying was beyond Shank's ability to figure out. But he knew one thing, after almost half a day of being in Ace's presence, he'd been tempted to kill the boy far too many times to even bother counting.

Thus making Whitebeard, in his mind, damned near close to a fucking saint.

"The tail end of that Navy ship has been ripped all to pieces." Ace said, sounding more than a little bit awed by the sight. And yeah, Shanks would admit, even to himself- it was a fairly fascinating sight to behold.

He let out a soft chuckle before responding automatically, "Looks like your brother didn't like them being here. Tis his handy work."

"If he was going to fuck up the ship- why not do it right and sink it?" Ace asked curiously.

"Simple, it's just not how he operates," Shanks said as he turned and began to bark out orders to his some of crew to stay on the ship, and watch out for trouble while some of the other men went aboard the Navy vessel and roughed up a few people until he and Ace returned. Once he finished barking out his orders, he watched everyone scamper off before turning back to Ace and merely saying, "If Luffy had really wanted the lads dead- they would be. There would be little that any of them could do to stop him once he took out their weapons."

Which was true. But he wasn't sure if Ace really understood.

Luffy tended to be a deep well when it came to motives and what drove him to do specific things. Shanks knew that well enough since the lad was a lot like him.

And by a 'lot' he meant- a lot.

Shanks himself, when it came to what drove him as well as the motives behind his many, many unspeakable and unfathomable actions- tended to be much like an ocean. You could look at it, even dive into it in an effort to reach the bottom- but you would never reach the bottom without drowning or at least getting eaten by some sea beast lurking in the darkest depths.

It sucked, but it was the chance that you took.

Whereas with Luffy, if you fell down the 'well' in his mind, you would either become so irrevocably lost and worn down that you would either drown or go mad. Shanks, when he usually met up with Luffy to catch up and such- tended to not delve terribly deep into the lads affairs unless he was invited to do so.

That boy's mind was a terrible thing to get wrapped up in.

"Come, we'll let part of the crew board the Navy ship and then we'll go get in closer to the Merry and board it." Shanks said as he turned and started to head back towards his cabin when he heard Ace ask,

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"I'm going to go pack me a bag. Chances are that you'll need to grab your own as well since we'll likely be on the Merry for a while." Shanks replied as he started walking again and brushed past his first mate and told the man that he was in charge of the ship and crew until further notice, and snickered when he heard the man practically shouted at him as he walked off.

"Are you insane! How could you put me in charge of this lot of savages! Our ship will burn down and sink within a day! Oi! Captain come back here!"

(*******************************************************************************************************************************************)

After the morning's earlier bit of excitement, Luffy didn't bother trying to go back to sleep again. He couldn't even if he had tried too anyways. Instead to kill time, he had grabbed a few items from Nami and Robin's rooms and had Robin show him how to use them and then applied that knowledge towards giving his captain a much needed manicure and then painted her nails a nice opalescant mint green color with tints of purple and pink in it.

Several times in fact.

And then once he grew bored with that, he found a nice book and settled back down in his usual spot so that he could read to her for a little bit. Though he doubted that she found the adventures of pirates terribly stimulating. However he wasn't the type of person who kept books of poetry among his usual reading material.

Robin was the type- but he didn't dare wake her up again since she had a tendency to attempt to rip his head off if she didn't get enough sleep. And the last time he'd sent anyone near her room to wake her for a 'non-emergency' said person hadn't been able to move after she had turned them into a human pretzel.

So- lesson learned there, Luffy thought to himself with a small shrug of his shoulders as he slowly shut the book and set it aside. He'd reached the point in the story were the pirates were going marauding and would be raping and murdering innocent people.

He usually read those parts to use as a guidelines of what not to do as a pirate- but since he'd been reading the story aloud- and he wasn't a hundred percent sure whether or not Kay was in the kind of sleep that was dreamless, he'd opted to simply skip it or not read it at all.

He was about to look for something else to do when he felt rather than heard the two people boarding the Merry and merely sighed, thinking that it was probably a good thing that everyone was asleep again. Being asleep meant that they were out of the way and he didn't have to worry about them getting hurt if he had to defend them and the ship.

Getting up out of his seat, Luffy moved to the door and slowly opened it and stepped out to greet the ship's visitors.