Hi! Thank you all for the answer I got on the first chapter. I'll keep this note short, explanations and proper thank yous are at the end of the chapter. Enjoy and please leave your feedback
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"Vernier" Wendy moved, faster than they probably expected, and suddenly she stood next to Ace. He looked from the battlefield to her once again, this time surprised, whereas the marine officer seemed more interested than troubled. "Everyone down there... they're fighting for him the way we would fight for one of our own," she spoke, and Charle nodded, still standing where Wendy had been before. "We can't ignore that, I can't... Anyone who's managed to conquer that many hearts and friends deserves to live." She said with so much conviction that even the marine seemed impressed.
"That's cute," he spoke, now approaching her, "but look at him, he doesn't feel the same way," he pointed at Ace.
"I shouldn't have been born," he muttered to himself, looking down, and Wendy saw tears falling, "I'm disgusting. Yet..."
"Yet they are all shouting at you not to give up," she told him with a gentle smile, just as a man who used something similar to fire magic attacked the mustache guy. Wendy's eyes widened when said man hit the old one, and Ace seemed to react to that as well.
"OLD MAN!"
"H-His wounds!" Charle covered her mouth, eyes wide in horror, and Wendy mirrored that reaction. "That guy can still move with all those wounds! That's unbelievable..."
"LUFFY!" Ace shouted again, and Wendy saw his brother, the elastic guy, approaching the stand. Just then, two marines arrived with swords, and were given the order to execute the pirate.
"STOP IT!"
The order bellowed by Luffy made Wendy cover her ears and cringe in pain, it was louder than anything she'd heard so far in the battlefield – almost as loud as a true dragon's roar – and as she covered her ears, she saw many marines falling down unconscious.
"The Emperor's will..." She heard someone speaking close to her. "That brat..."
"He did that?" She asked Ace, who seemed just as shocked.
"Shouldn't you be helping him?" Charle asked Wendy, who seemed more interested in watching the battle unfold.
The exceed could understand that. As far as battles were concerned, no matter how many they'd fought, nothing came close to that one. Every time it seemed like one side was finally gaining advantage upon the other, something crazy or unexpected happened to shift the tides. What was even more impressive was that, despite the fact that the mustache guy – Whitebeard, Wendy heard people calling him – was clearly the strongest among the pirates, and the leader of the charge, they were more focused on backing up Luffy.
Luffy himself moved through the battlefield, having people shielding and aiding him every time an enemy appeared in his path.
"Wendy!" Charle called again, but this time even she got distracted.
"He just cut the bricks and turned the entire thing into a path towards this place!" Wendy exclaimed, surprised, and Charle got herself distracted too.
"That idiot..." Wendy turned to Ace again.
"Why is your grandfather helping the people who want to execute you, Ace-san?" She asked, regaining focus.
"He's a marine. We're pirates."
"He's your family, though," Charle protested.
Wendy tried to imagine Grandeeney trying to hurt her, and it seemed like something so unrealistic that she couldn't even picture it. She couldn't grasp the concept of one's family trying to kill them. Not unless they were evil, and Ace's grandfather seemed to care about honor – if the stuff she heard him say were true, that is.
What was so honorable about ending a family member's life?
"It's not that simple," Ace spoke, and oddly enough, he didn't seem to bear a grudge against his grandfather's actions. He did seem worried about both grandfather and brother, though.
Luffy managed to take Garp down, while Ace and Wendy talked, and finally reached the platform.
"Ace!" Luffy spoke, relieved, ignoring both Wendy and the marine admiral there. Apparently, said man didn't seem to worry about Wendy either, since he made no move to get her – or maybe he just didn't feel like attacking someone looking so young and innocent unless he absolutely had to. He probably assumed she was just some kid. "Hang on, I've got the key..."
"Sengoku!" Someone shouted, and just then the marine admiral grew into a giant form. Wendy and Charle's eyes widened.
"He's like Master..." Charle spoke, just as someone broke the key to Ace's handcuffs.
"Damn it!" Luffy cursed, biting his thumb and preparing to fight.
"Kid!" Ace called her. "Get out of here!"
"If I break the handcuffs," she spoke, hurrying to his side, "can you fight?"
"What?! Don't be stupid! Just leave!"
"Sir, the girl is talking to Ace! Should we attack her?"
"Damn! She's a kid!"
"But sir..."
"I can make a candle key!" A man suddenly approached them, making a candle wall to shield them from Luffy's and Sengoku's fight. He opened his hand and indeed, a key appeared. "I can't touch the kairoseki though."
Wendy grabbed it and opened the handcuffs, just as the platform collapsed, sending them all down towards the ground.
"Charle!" Wendy called, just as Charle opened her wings and grabbed her. "Ace-san! Luffy-san!"
Ace and Luffy, however, landed unharmed, the first turning himself into flames, and the second being apparently really made of something elastic, making him invulnerable to falls.
Wendy landed next to them.
"ACE!" Luffy's smile at the sight of his brother standing made Wendy smile, too, even though she didn't do anything to help in the end. Around them, echoes of his brother's name were heard, from cheerful pirates.
"That's amazing, isn't it, Charle?" Wendy asked, watching the brothers fight in sync against the marines.
"They're just as noisy and messy as Fairy Tail," Charle commented, understanding why Wendy felt the urge to help them. "You didn't do anything, though."
"I didn't have to," she shrugged, just as Aokiji attacked Ace, who melted the ice.
"Kid! Get into that ship!" Ace landed next to her and pointed at a ship that looked like it smiled. Wendy fought the sickness that hit her just by the thought of getting onto that. "You'll be safe there!"
"They're all looking down on you," Charle scolded her. "You're just standing and watching!"
"There's a lot to watch though!"
"LISTEN WELL, THIS IS MY FINAL 'CAPTAIN'S' ORDERS-" they turned to see Whitebeard shouting, and Wendy saw Ace, along with almost all pirates, complaining about the final word. She had a glimpse of memory of when Master disbanded the guild and felt sorry for them. "EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU! STAY ALIVE AT ALL COSTS..."
"Do they really think they can get away?" Wendy turned around at that voice. She recognized it: the magma guy.
As they moved, to follow Whitebeard's orders, and as Ace said a final goodbye to him, the magma guy landed next to them, and did the one thing that would make Ace stay and fight.
He called them cowards, a failure.
"Ace-san..." Wendy called, worried. "You're too wounded..."
"Ace's vivre card..."
"NO!" Someone shouted, just as a magma fist aimed at Luffy. Charle flew, getting him out of the way in time, but Ace, not expecting that, had put himself as a shield.
The fist came right through his chest.
"ACE!"
"Tenryuu no Hokko" Wendy finally moved, and the air blast sent Akainu away, taken by surprise. She moved, as fast as Luffy did, towards Ace's fallen body.
"Get Luffy-san out of here, Charle!" Wendy shouted, watching as Luffy collapsed, his eyes, his expression, broken at the sight of his brother.
He's not dead yet!
Charle nodded and flew away with him. She found a group of men shielding her from marine attacks, and flew towards them.
"Give Luffy-kun to me!" A blue, fish-looking man asked, and she nodded, landing him there. "Go get that kid! She needs to live, too!"
"She's helping Ace," Charle told him, before returning to Wendy, who fought marines away.
"What's up with that little girl?!" One officer complained, just as a blast of air hit him, sending him and a group of others away. "She's stronger than she looks! She can control the air!"
"Wendy!" Charle arrived, turning into her human form, hitting a few officers as well.
"Kid!" One of Whitebeard's pirates came to her aid. "Get out of here!"
"Not yet!" She turned to Ace's body.
As she knelt besides it, taking advantage of the coverage Whitebeard's pirates unintentionally gave her, she focused on the huge wound in his stomach.
"Cure".
Wendy didn't know it at the time, but a series of events kept her, or her actions, from being seen by anyone. Assuming Ace was dead, the Marines moved to end the war, and enemies came from the sea. As the war unfolded, that young, overlooked girl, managed to heal the very reason the war started. Once he wasn't in immediate danger, she had Charle fly him away, covering him in a piece of cloth she found on the battlefield, probably belonging to someone who's body met an unknown fate.
She moved, too, only to realize that, as she spent time healing him, the war changed, a lot.
"Whitebeard-san!" Seeing the old man, now with half his head missing, she covered her mouth. Marines fell everywhere, pirates, too, and Akainu moved to hit her...
When a male's shout made him stop. A kid, not much older than Wendy herself, shouted.
For them to stop.
Akainu changed his target to the kid, and Wendy moved as well, ready to attack the admiral.
When sword blocked his attack, and Wendy stopped.
"G-Gildarts?" She frowned, seeing the man whose sword stopped Akainu.
No. Not Gildarts. He didn't smell like Gildarts, no matter how similar he looked.
"Red Haired Shanks!"
"I've come to end this war."
Wendy's eyes widened, as she watched, all around her, people stopping. How powerful could he be, if he could even stop the war with words?
He grabbed Luffy's strawhat, and Wendy watched as he threw it to a flying clown-looking man, ordering him to take it to Luffy.
So he's alive, she thought, relieved, thinking about moving to heal him, too. Where had Charle gone to?
Shanks, in the meantime, did, indeed, end the war, getting marines to retreat, and even the new enemies, whose leader's name seemed to be Blackbeard, retreated as well.
"Whitebeard, Ace, you'll leave the mourning of these two to us."
He's not dead, though, she thought, looking around for Charle, having trouble catching her scent with all the blood and sweat and death masking it.
"This war is finished."
It didn't take long for everyone to clear the battlefield, leaving only Shanks' crew and ship left, along with Whitebeard's body.
"Sir! Fire Fist's body is gone!" One of the crew members shouted, and everyone turned to him, surprised.
"E-Excuse me..." Wendy called, feeling suddenly shy and a little scared. They turned to her, only then noticing her presence.
Do I really look so weak and harmless?
"A kid?" One of them frowned. "Hey, girl, why are you here?"
"Ace-san isn't dead," she told them, and now even Shanks seemed interested. "He's alive."
"We watched him die. Don't say nonsense, girl..."
"Wendy!" Charle finally appeared in the sky, still carrying Ace. "I couldn't find a safe place, so I flew out of here and stayed above an ocean that people wouldn't sail towards. There are crazy sea monsters there!" She told Wendy while landing. Wendy uncovered Ace's body, and they all watched, in awe.
"His wound..." One of the crew members spoke, approaching the body. "It's gone!"
"He's still wounded inside," she told them, "the major burns are gone, so it's not lethal, but I couldn't do much more without being noticed," she explained, kneeling before him and placing her hands above the unconscious man. "I wish Luffy-san could have seen it, though," she murmured, before resuming healing him.
"Is she..." Shanks raised an eyebrow. "Hey, girl, what's your name?"
"Wendy, nice to meet you," she looked up with a gentle smile, while still working on healing him. After the year of training, her skills improved, and she got enough magic to heal him for longer, too.
"Wendy, how do you know him?"
"I don't," her answer seemed to intrigue the man, who raised his hand when one of his crew mates seemed about to speak. "I fell here in the middle of the war and saw everyone fighting to save him, so I wanted to help."
"That's reckless," someone said. "He could be evil, or he could hurt you... Most pirates would."
"I doubt that someone evil would have so many people willing to die for him, though," she commented, stopping the healing process and looking up. "I need to wait to see how his body will respond to the sudden healing before I finish, but he's not in danger anymore, so you can take him if you want..."
She looked at Whitebeard and sighed.
"Sorry I couldn't help him," she added, and Shanks followed her gaze.
"How can you heal people? What Devil Fruit is that?"
"Yasopp, I think we can question her later," Shanks spoke, eyes falling back on Wendy. "This girl managed to save the life of the reason this war started without any of the marines realizing it," he added, and right then, he looked even more like Gildarts to her. He looked dangerous, but honorable, and nice at the same time. "Carry Fire Fist to the Red Force, it's time we set sail, before anyone sees he survived!"
They quickly moved to obey the captain's orders, while Shanks turned to Wendy.
"What about you, girl?"
She shrugged.
"I need to find my friends. They fell around the world, too," she said, practical.
"We can take you to the nearest island" he offered, "it'll be troublesome for you to stay here."
Nodding, Wendy followed them onto the ship, falling to her knees the minute she boarded it.
"Whoa? Are you injured?" One of the crew members approached her.
"She's got extreme motion sickness, but she's fine," Charle assured them.
As the ship sailed away, the crew's doctor moved to check on Ace, stating, to everyone's awe, that he was, indeed, in no danger. His injuries were minor, and he would even probably wake up soon.
Wendy didn't know then, but what she did would get her one of the most powerful allies in the four seas.
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"Do you know where we're going?"
"Aye!"
"Don't 'AYE' me! We've been flying above the ocean for a while now!"
"I am following the fish!"
"Happy!" Lucy sighed, looking down at the water, and wondering how crazy her situation was. After finishing moving up the prison, and dodging a few weird creatures here and there, she managed to leave. The prison warden had been gravely injured in an earlier breakout and most guards didn't even try to catch her – their morale seemed extremely low.
She found Happy in the third floor, about to get eaten by a prisoner, and they flew away from the prison together.
Impel Down, someone called it.
They'd been flying since then, without a destination in mind and with no idea of where they were.
"Can't you summon that compass to give us a direction?" Happy asked her.
"None of my spirits can fly!" She protested, and looked down. They couldn't swim, either. The water was filled with crazy sea monsters.
"Ah! Lucy! Look! An island!"
"What?" Lucy's eyes lit up and, indeed, she saw an island. "Let's land there, Happy!" relief flooded her veins at the thought of landing on firm ground. She had been worried that Happy would run out of magic and they'd fall in the sea full of monsters.
Without Aquarius to fight in the water, she thought, sadly.
"This place is scary," Happy complained, landing on her shoulder. She suppressed a shiver as she took in the place. It seemed deserted, there were a few ruins around, and not a single human soul.
They walked with caution, her hands steady on both her keys and whip, ready to defend herself if needed. She looked around for any sign of life, wishing she had a dragon slayer there with her: they could follow scents and sounds.
"Look!" Happy whispered, pointing to her side, "there's a castle! And I think there's someone walking in our direction."
She turned and focused, and, indeed, saw the shadow of a person approaching, but it was too far for her to see its features. Judging by the people in Impel Down, she didn't feel to eager to meet someone in such a creepy island.
"Should we run?" Happy inquired, sounding scared. "Natsu isn't here…"
"What is that supposed to mean?" She asked the exceed, offended. "I can fight too!"
"Aye aye."
"Don't 'aye' me!"
"Aye!"
Muttering a series of curses towards the blue cat, she moved towards the moving person, and soon she could distinct his features – for it was a he. He had green hair, wore a waistband and carried…
"Three swords?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "Why so many?"
"Who are you?" He asked, looking at her, and she tensed. He pointed one sword at her. "If you're here to fight…"
"She's not-" out of the blue, a man came from behind a gravestone, carrying two swords on his back, and looking extremely shady and dangerous. Lucy fought the urge to walk away.
I'm a Fairy Tail mage! I don't run!
"Hawkeye," the green haired man growled. "What are you doing here?"
"This is my castle," he reminded the man. "The girl is no enemy. She's lost."
Lucy frowned.
"How do you know that?" She asked, suspicious.
"There is no ship on this island, and you don't have a bounty. You're not a pirate, or at least not a significant one. That means you're lost."
"How did she get here without a ship?"
"The cat can fly," he answered, surprising them all. "It's the second one I see."
"Second one?" Happy asked, surprising the green haired man. "So you've seen Charle?"
"If that's the white one's name, yes. There's a boat by the water west of here. Take it and leave."
"How rude," Lucy complained. "Where did you see Charle? Was she alone?"
He was already walking away, towards the castle.
"Hey!" She shouted, annoyed. "Wait!"
"Whoa, don't do that!" Green haired man stopped her when she moved to follow Hawkeye. "He'll kill you."
"I can fight if I have to!" She assured the guy, rushing past him towards Hawkeye, who stopped before entering the castle. "Where did you see Charle?"
"Did you hurt her?" That came from a surprisingly brave Happy.
Lucy sighed, seeing that he didn't show any intention of answering the question. Instead, she grabbed one key, wondering if she could use it…
"Open, gate of the twins, Gemini!"
The young twins appeared in front of her, surprising the green haired guy and getting no reaction from Hawkeye.
She did, however, get a reaction from him when they turned into her.
"We can't turn into him," they told her, in her voice. "He has… his energy, it's weird, it's strong."
It sounded like her voice echoed when she spoke.
"Interesting," Hawkeye spoke, "you show more promise than I assumed."
"Thank you, Gemini," sighing, Lucy closed their gate. "Did you hurt Charle?" She asked, now that the man decided to talk.
"I did not approach the white cat, nor the girl with her. They sided with the pirates in the war, though."
"Girl?" She repeated. "Wendy is with her then," she smiled, relieved to know that at least one person was ok.
"Sided with pirates?" That came from the green haired man. "What war?"
"It is being called the Battle of Marineford, or the Paramount War" Hawkeye answered. "Here," he reached into his cape and threw them a newspaper. After that, he walked inside. "You two are welcome to spend the night."
"We have to find Wendy and Charle!" Happy immediately told Lucy, who nodded.
"No way-" the green haired guy cursed, reading the paper. Lucy stood next to him to read it, too. It had a story about a war, two great pirates dying, and many other things she thought would make for a interesting novel.
She'd never think that could be real, though.
"Happy," she spoke, nervous, "I don't think we're in Earthland anymore."
They jumped when a pair of swords cut the newspaper into shreds.
"Hey! Watch it!" She yelled, "What's your problem?"
"I have to get that boat!" He spoke, running east, "I have to leave!"
"Didn't he say the boat was west of here?" Lucy protested, watching him run fast. "Hey! You're going the wrong way!"
He stopped and returned, now stopping before her.
"You." He spoke. "Guide me."
"We're sharing the boat then," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. He seemed about to protest, "or Happy and I can fly there and go alone."
He muttered something about women and annoying and navigator, but she couldn't hear everything. He did nod, so she didn't care about the rest.
"I'm Lucy, by the way," she introduced herself, walking west with him next to her.
"Zoro."
Soon, they were setting sail on a small boat, neither of them having a clue of where to go.
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Author's note: So, I realize Wendy's part was minor, and no, I don't plan on making her useless - she's actually my favorite FT character. But I felt like showing her full power in the middle of a major war would ruin things in the long run - Wendy's got the appearance of a fourteen year old, and in a world where people look tough and scary, that makes her a wild card, because anyone would think little of her. It would be a bit of a waste to use it up so soon.
This is the last chapter that follows a manga chapter - from here on now, as much as I'll try to stay true to the past story, everything will be different in order to fit the fiction storyline. (For one, Ace'll be alive, so there's that).
Finally, thank you, zombooka, for the lovely review and feedback. Hope you keep on reading and enjoy what's coming up :)