Disclaimer: One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda. Many of the characters in this story are property of me. Do not use this story or its characters without my permission. Thank you.


The ship was sailing smooth on the dangerous seas with the crew working hard to keep up with the great creature's demands. Bard D. Samekawa, captain of the Buster Pirates, stood on the bowsprit of his glorious flagship, the Imperial Dragon, with its gigantic sail stretched between two massive masts extending up from even below the main deck like gigantic trees, owning the wind. The side sails, stretched out with the blowing breeze and netted together between three long and slender masts extending out from the side, gave the ship its true draconic image, imitating small wings of billowing black as the humongous Galleon tore through the waves that shook ships half as big and heavy. Bard grinned and let the salty air hit his teeth and breeze through his golden hair.

"Heehee!" Bard laughed. "Arr! Today's a great day for piracy!! What say ye, men!?" Bard spun on his heel to the upper deck, to Rez on the wheel and the pirates around him who hauled thick cords of rope and barrels of stuff around, and waited for them to turn to him.

"ARR!!" they shouted, except for Rez.

"Uhhh...." Rez droned. Bard hopped from the bowsprit to the wheel and stood next to Rez with a beaming smile. Rez didn't flinch. He took a quick look at his new log pose and made sure his course was constant with the straight needle that aimed to a continuous oceanic horizon.

"Come on, Rez!" Bard said. "Can't you act a little more....happy?"

"I don't trust this thing" Rez said. "Who's not to say that Ramone and his crew didn't screw with this thing before handing it over to us? And why would they want to stay the extra length of time it takes for another pose to set if they were so eager to leave that they started a war? It doesn't make sense."

"Yes it does" Bard said. Rez turned up to him skeptically.

"How?" Rez demanded.

"Ramone's the kind of guy" Bard said "that appreciates the value and the process of training. He's just been 'resurrected', so to speak, and needs to get ready to hit the sea before he goes for it again. In a way, I think, he's sort of scared that he won't be able to sail anymore. At the same time, however, he feels an obligation to let me get ahead of him now that we're bound to be on the same route, and since he wants me dead he felt obligated to give me a head start."

"Well, yeah" Rez said, calmly giving in to Bard's apparent logic. "I guess guys like that still exist on the sea, don't they? Honorable monsters and such...." Rez looked again at the pose and adjusted the ship with a calm turn of the wheel against the strong sea current. The floor in front of the wheel suddenly bulged and warped straight up into the shape of a man as Zan climbed his way onto the deck and stood before them both. Bard gave him a wave and grin. Rez looked disgusted.

I'll never get used to that, will I? He wondered.

"Captain" Zan began, "I need to call a crew meeting ASAP. Please get as many people on the deck as you can. Rez, you stay here."

"Alrighty!" Bard said. He hopped from the floor to the railing and then landed with a thud at the sails in the center of the deck. He took in a long, powerful breath and the men around him quickly dropped what they held and braced their ears for his call. "CREW MEETIIIING! ALL HANDS TO THE DECK!!!STAT!!!"

"Captain!" a crewman shouted. "'STAT' is a medical term! Not a pirate term."

"Ah, my bad" Bard said. He drew in another breath to repeat but his mouth was covered by several men's hands in an attempt to save their ears.

"We'll spread the word, captain" one said.

"Save your voice" another pleaded "and spare our ears!"

"Hehehehe!" Bard chuckled. In a short time the crew was gathered on the deck. Rez stayed on the wheel to man his station while Zan took a pirate down below to stand-by on the whip staff in case Rez's steering needed some additional force steering. Bard stood before his gathered crew, a good many men, over fifty now, with the addition of the group of cute, gauze-wrapped nurses standing by at the side of the crowd.

"What news hath ye, good sir Bard?" a black-dressed former guard of Okumaiwa's Paladin guard asked.

"What's up?" Marco asked for his behalf of the crew. Bard just shrugged.

Oh, what the hell....!? the crew thought in exasperation. Zan phased his way up from the lower deck, nonchalant as he always was, smoking a cigarette with a calm, smug grin on his face. He let out a wisp of smoke and finished off the cigarette before snuffing it out in the palm of his hand.

"I called this meeting" Zan said "under my position as Helmsman."

"Screw you!" Rez shouted. He was leaning over the railing with a face ablaze with rage. "Who's at the helm now if you're the Helmsman, smart-ass!?"

"Who is at the helm?" Zan asked. Rez straightened up and ran back to the wheel, catching it just in time to regain control from the chaotic swelling currents of the sea. "Anyway" Zan said, turning back to the crew, "we have a problem. It seems, somehow, an oversight has occurred. No one is to blame and there is no fault to dispense. Just like last time it is an unavoidable incident."

"Last time?" a pirate asked.

"What're you saying?" Marco asked. "We've only been a crew for so long, there's not a lot a 'last time' can entail."

"Correct" Zan said. "In saying that, once again, it seems a stowaway has crept on board." The crew let out a united, exasperated groaning. A mixture of disappointment in their gathered ranks and their inability to spot what seemed to be an obvious problem from the beginning had insulted their honor as powerful men on the open sea.

"Not again!" Marco groaned. "Every damn time we port something like this just has to happen, doesn't it!?"

"I blame Bard!" another pirate called. "This never happened when Maxwell was out captain!"

"EH!?" Bard exclaimed. "Me? Wait, what-How is this a huge problem!?"

"We've got a stowaway, Bard!" Marco said. "I shouldn't have to explain why that's bad!"

"But Zan was a stowaway" Bard argued "and now he's a part of the crew! And besides, he's an assassin but no one died when he came aboard!"

"Indeed" Zan said. "However, I have reason to believe that yet another assassin has made his way on board with the intent to kill someone, most likely either me or Rez." The spirits of the crew sank from an aggravated exasperation to disbelief and depressing rage. Their faces all sank with the depressing energy, their jaws open and their lips bulbous and pursed and their eyes shadowed by their heavy, jutting brows.

"Same as it ever was...." someone mumbled. The Paladin guards just went with the spirit around them and looked mightily disappointed as well. The nurses......were expressionless, so far as anyone could tell.

"At least one thing hasn't happened again" Bard said hopefully. "Remember how Zan tried to kidnap Araly?" Zan's face went blank. A piercing scream came from the captain's room. The crew glared up at Bard who had frozen his face in fear with Tekkai.

If anyone wants to hit me they'll have to hit past my iron defense!!! Bard thought, prepared for a battle...


As the meeting started Araly sat in the captain's room within her free-hanging webbing of hammocks and nets to ward off her sea-sickness. She read, the only thing she had to do while on the ship. The ship came with its own personal gathering of adventurous novels and historical texts written by Marines and Pirates alike, voicing their many adventures, the secrets to their success and at very odd times the mention of hidden treasures that lay dormant on the Grand Line. She read and read, trying to do what she could as a researcher, a studious young lady with all the free time she could stand to have on the sea, waiting for the next chance she had to be on solid earthen ground again.

But the more she read the more depressed she became until not even the true-life accounts of a long-since passed former Vice-Admiral K. could keep her spirits up. She sat back and laid down in her swinging hammock, letting the cloth close her sides and wrap her in an open sort of pod shape, a private cocoon. She pulled at her faux covers and glared at the floor.

"This sucks" she said. "I wish I could just stand straight on a ship, but I guess that's too much to ask! Why am I so unfortunate? Bard gets to run around all day, doing exciting things and giving orders and being important and worth something...all I can do is lay here while everything else happens above me and I can't even help. I can't do anything....just sew and hem....Why am I here? I know I don't have a bounty. I can just turn myself in to the Marines, tell them I was held hostage by pirates and go home. Sure, I'll still have to be on a ship to get there, but then I'll never have to set foot on a moving floor for the rest of my life...."

Araly curled herself up and frowned to the wall. She was still and static for a while. The door to the room opened up and shut. Soft foot falls were in the room. Araly rose her head slightly but didn't bother to turn full around and acknowledge whoever had come in. Her spirits were too far shot to care anymore.

"Who's there?" she asked. The feet stopped but the entrant stayed silent. Their presence lingered with a seemingly urgent feeling, as if they wanted to force Araly out of her downed mood simply by proxy. Araly sighed. "What happened out there? I don't here anyone shouting or any hollering. Is it so boring that someone has the free time to check on me?" The figure remained silent. Araly sighed again. "Oh, are you one of those new nurses we got? You probably can't do anything for it, but I have some bad sea sickness. It gets to the point where I can't even lay down in a moving ship without feeling incredibly sick, and if I try to move around I get nauseous and have to throw up almost immediately. Did Bard tell you about it?" Still no answer.

Whoever it was, they weren't there to talk or move or do anything but offer their ceaseless presence. Araly tilted her head up and turned, just enough so her mouth could be seen but not her eyes which her curly blue bangs covered. "Have you found a good purpose on the ship yet?" she asked. "Have plenty of the men been stopping by for nursing yet? I guess everyone's in pretty good shape since Kurateka took care of all of us, but it's not odd at all once we're out here for someone to hurt themselves. I wouldn't hold it above Bard to have already started a fight and hurt one of the crew members. I guess being busy with something you love is better than having all the time in the world and nothing to do with it....that's where I am right now. I've got nothing to do, since I can't actually walk out on the deck, but read these books and hope there's something worth reading in them, like treasures or lost islands or sunken ships of ancient warlords and stuff.....that'd catch Bard's attention for sure...."

The figure had no intention to respond. It was clad all in bloody red with a draping cape covering its front and a golden demon-faced mask hiding its true form. A hood pulled up and into the rear of the mask, latching away the rest of its head from view. One of the Crimson Killers with their hands hidden behind their long, thick scarlet robes. They stood, perfectly still, breathing slightly through the holes of the mask they wore, and patiently waited.

"I wish I had a better stomach" Araly said, still venting out all her personal frustrations onto the stranger she didn't even know she didn't know yet. "That way I could help the crew out on the ship instead of sit in here and read books. Who ever heard of a crew where someone important did nothing all day but read books!?"

"At least you are learned" the stranger said. Araly didn't recognize the voice and turned over immediately. She saw only red as the cape was thrown around her and her mouth was held by a soft and tender hand. "Not perceptive, mind you, but learned." Araly bit the hand and forced herself to the floor in a panicked crawl. The stranger threw the cape down on her again and stabbed into the floor beside her head with a short, straight stab of a thick-tipped weapon. Araly saw it and reacted. She screamed fearfully. A moment later she was picked up, a weapon sharply held to her neck, and forced out of the door, yet again, as a hostage. Zan was already standing in the captor's way with a slight, smug grin

"Hi" Zan said, increasing his grin to a toothy, sneering smile. "How ya doin?" He kicked between Araly's leg and caught the villain's leg with a stab. They fled with a side step and threw Araly into Zan. Zan spun with her and placed her carefully on the floor before he went running off after them. Then he looked into their hand and saw their weapon fully revealed.

Is that an arrow? Zan wondered. He stopped himself and phased down into the wood. Through the floor he swam after his prey, emerging as they hit the staircase with the rest of the crew in full flight. Zan jumped up onto the railing and ran after the fleeing assassin. Rez caught the stranger next with a sudden choking clothesline. Once caught Rez stepped forward and swung his arm, throwing the stranger into the railing of the upper deck with a shriek of pain. Rez flexed his arm with a cocky grin and Zan apprehended the criminal with a blade to their neck.

"Don't move, princess" he said. The stranger turned their head to him and looked through the dark holes with red eyes.

"How did you know?" Gretta asked. "It was obvious, wasn't it?" Zan said. Gretta, having never been pursued with such a murderous drive at her heels, and never having been choke-slammed with a man's arm before, fainted. In her darkness she felt the stirring of her ruggedly scrapped armor and cloth and the movement of her body somewhere else....


"Wake her up somehow" someone said. They sounded gruff and demanding, somewhat angry at some passive stream of events. "I'm tired of waiting for this little runt to open her eyes anymore! Just dump some water on her and wake her up!"

"Can't" another, wiser, more calm-sounding man said. "Captain's orders. This is the princess from that island, so we need to figure out what we're going to do with her before we do anything to her."

"She's not even tied tight enough" the man said. Gretta stirred to their conversation and beheld, thankfully, that her mask was still attached, as was her hood from behind. She very quietly struggled her hands and found that they were tied. She couldn't see it, but ropes were run across her body in twenty rows of bands, all tied together and weighed down with cannonballs slung into the loops to keep her firmly stayed on her sitting prison of a mess hall chair. The weight was all focused on keeping her from moving, rather than pressing her down with an unbearable, crushing pressure.

"She's tied tight enough" the second man said. "She can move around all she wants, she's going nowhere until the captain shows up."

"What's he doing, anyway?" the first asked impatiently. "At least Zan could make some decisions around here and get here on time. He doesn't even have to go down the stairs! He can just drop straight through the floor and show up-boom!-like that!"

"Would he show up with a 'boom'?" the second said.

"......" the first silently glared, a spiteful glance that Gretta could feel even under the blind shadow of her mask. "Damn you....shut up, ass" the first growled. Finally a door opened and the two moved out. Many footfalls came into the room and some weapons clattered softly against themselves. One person's feet sounded heavier than any other's and Gretta knew who would be the first to see her face as she felt the steady, strong grip take the sides of her mask and pull back her hood.

"Now!" Bard exclaimed. "We shall see who this mysterious intruder is!" Bard removed Gretta's mask and threw it into the waiting hands of a pirate who caught it. The pirates reeled away in disbelief when they saw her face. Bard let out a loud, airy gasp. "It's......the Baker!!!" he shouted. The crew ignored his rampant idiocy and just looked at Gretta. Rez stepped up and shoved Bard with a quick push at his neck.

"What!?" Rez shouted. Bard, confused, leaned away from him. "The Baker!? Who!? WHO!?!?!? Who the hell is THE BAKER!!!" Rez kicked Bard and pushed him away again.

"Calm down, Rez" Zan said, standing behind Gretta.

"NO!" Rez shouted. "I'm not letting this crap slide!"

"Just let it go" a pirate said. "I mean...it's Bard." Bard took a second look and gave out another exclaimed gasp at Gretta.

"Ah! It's the princess!" he shouted. Rez degraded his speech to animistic growling and fuming and reached for his guns. Men crowded him and held his arms away from his hips where his gunblades were holstered and carried him away.

"GAAAHHH!!!" Rez shouted as he was taken from the room. "Even I knew who the hell it was!!! What's wrong with him!!???" His voice faded off as he was forced away to the new infirmary deck to be sedated from his rage. Bard, meanwhile, undid as much of Gretta's binds as he could with simple pulls and jerks of the ropes.

"Mr. Demon" Gretta said, obviously speaking to Zan behind her, "you aren't going to send me back, are you?" Zan circled around to her front and stayed two steps away from her. "I cannot go back. I revile that horrid place. All my life I wanted to be at sea, so that I may see the world that I'd been denied." Zan nodded understandingly. Bard finally undid the final knot of rope and pushed her up with a hand to her back. Bard smiled down at her and stepped equally away. "I don't know what help I could be, but I would very much like to stay on this ship. I simply cannot return to that cursed land. I refuse."

"That's good" Bard said. "We're so far away I don't think we could get back if we wanted to."

"True" Zan said. "Once you're out at sea with a destination, that's where you're going. The Grand Line is a straightforward mess of blood, battle and unsightly terrors that give it the most gruesome reputation in the world."

"Way to brighten our spirits, man" a pirate said in dejection. The rest stifled their laughs. Bard gave a high chuckle as well.

"In fact" Zan began, "there's an entirely different reason why we bothered to keep you here in the first place." Gretta's eyes lit up at him. She was enchanted by him and drew near him, prompting him to walk with his back to the wall and phase through the hull, brightening Gretta's eyes even more as she searched the room for him. Zan landed from the ceiling behind her and spun her around. "We can always use crew members. We need this ship filled at some point."

"Yup!" Bard said. "So, will you join my crew, Bard's Buster Pirates?" Gretta looked between Bard and Zan and the crew members gathered with a sincere confusion. Her heart beat loudly within her armored chest and she forced herself between the men and through the crowd to run out of the room in a flight of frenzied thought. "Did I ask wrong?" Bard asked. Zan smirked.

"She's just afraid" Zan said. "I'll keep after her and ask for you."

"Yes, good!" Bard said. "Go and do that! We need her on the crew! To fight!"

"What if she can't fight?" a man asked. Bard turned to him with a flat, expressionless face, stared him down until he flinched back and then turned forward again with a fist clenched up and a sparkle in his eyes.

"Yeah!" Bard said with a grin. "Her fighting will be a great addition to the crew!"

Is that your only condition!? The pirates thought together.


Zan found Gretta leaning against the railing of the main deck, watching the sea roll by far below and far away in the dim, clouded light of the storm-skied Grand Line. He silently climbed up from the floor and moved behind her to look over her held-down white hair.

"How'd you get this armor?" he asked. Gretta glanced over her shoulder and turned back to stare out to sea.

"When Bard was pulling me out of the castle ruins" she explained "we found a hollow, saved area of the main foyer where many men with strange red clothing and golden masks lie dead. I wanted him to stop and rest, for he exerted himself so much that I felt he deserved a break, and I took the armor and cape of the most whole-clad being I could find to save for later. In truth, I shamefully admit, I had begun to orchestrate my coming to this ship since that moment....I am sorry that I have caused you all so much trouble, but I am truly willing to learn and willing to work to find my place here. Even if I cannot fight, I wish to stay on this ship, with this crew, and see the world for all it is worth...." Gretta, having said her piece, fell silent and waited for Zan to respond. She heard something click and felt a feint heat at her side. Zan had lit a cigarette and was smoking it beside her. The wind picked up and blew the solid edges of his hair while fluffing hers out in its rolling, white strands.

"We're a pretty active crew" Zan said. "We won't shove you off or maroon you if you don't throw your weight here and there, but we don't ask everyone to kill themselves for the crew. If you don't want to fight, you won't have to fight. If you can't carry ropes, you won't carry ropes. If you want to get stronger, you'll get stronger. Even if you don't want to be stronger, staying here will undoubtedly make you stronger. No matter where we go on this ocean we're going to end up fighting, training or doing something incredibly stupid and unnecessary thanks to our captain's orders and tendency to get involved in all the wrong places....still, if you want to see the world, this is the best place to be, because that's exactly what we're doing."

Gretta smiled. She moved her soft, fluffy head into Zan's hard, defined arm. Zan froze up and let smoke billow neutrally into the strengthened wind. His cigarette blew from his mouth and Gretta was thrown into him.

"Oh, damn" Zan said as the wind knocked him off of his balance. He pressed his feet down into the floor and phased his legs with the wood to keep himself and Gretta up. "Storm!"

"A storm?" Gretta repeated. "From where? It wasn't very windy just a moment earlier."

"That's how it goes" Zan said. The crew moved out onto the deck just as the rain started.

"AH, it gets worse!" a pirate shouted. Bard sprinted across the deck, a blur of blond followed by shadowy black, leaped from the deck to the helm and braced the jerking wheel.

"No!" Bard shouted. "It's just getting GOOD!!!" The storm kicked up from nowhere and blasts of lightning and thunder shook the spines of the crew as they moved with rushing speed across the deck, stomping against the wind to raise the sails and yard the line. Zan phased through the floor and left Gretta by herself to stand up with her white hair clouding around her delicate, white face and red eyes. She watched the crew move in singularity, with a connection of their minds, all going where they needed to be, doing what they needed to do, not a second of hesitance or remiss of thought, and she smiled. She not only smiled but widened her eyes and felt the surge of great, magnificent energy shake her body and tense her fists.

Yes she thought. Yes! I will do it! I must!

"Hey, girl!" a man shouted. He tossed to Gretta a thick coil of rope. "Tie that down!" Gretta was hit by the rope and stumbled back into the railing. She hurt her lower back but still grinned brightly. She was guided by the panicked pointing of passing pirates where the rope had to be tied. She nearly lost it to he wind but caught it after a short chase and wound it around a metal hook protruding from the deck. She wound it around and around until it wound itself off the end of the hook, then she tried to tie it. The rain and wind slowed down to a halt finally and the crew all collapsed in the light, bright sky, flat on the deck, while Gretta finally finished her sloppy knot. She breathed hard and fell to the deck.

I can do this she said, feeling her hands burn and her lungs ache. I can...I can.... and then she fainted again with a grin on her face. Zan rose up from the floor and looked at her exhausted face. He sighed and stepped up onto his legs, shaking his head with a grin and a down-cast glance.

"You'll get stronger" he said. "Just you wait, girl. You'll be surprised at yourself..." Gretta slept calmly, peacefully, like she was still a princess in her bed, but the hard wood of the deck gave her more exhilarating pleasure to sleep upon than her comfy, soft bed from her past. She was in the present, sleeping on a soaked ship deck after working a fraction of what the hardened men of the sea had done in a fraction of the time, and she was happy.