Chapter 5: Brothers?

Garp walked up behind them calmly all the while staring at the calm freckled face boy, "Luffy, Dori, this is Ace. He's older than you Luffy by 3 years. The both of you are going to be living here from now on."

Behind them she could here Dadan stand up in surprise and anger as Magra and Dogra exclaim in surprise, "Ehh! What! You can't just decide that!" Dadan screeched.

Luffy growled beside her, acting more like an offended dog than a ticked off human, staring up at the stone cold Ace, who glared right back. Dori was just glad that those cold-empty-eyes weren't being directed at her, she didn't want to face Ace… it would be like acing her inner most demon, and Dori wasn't positive that she could win.

Garp-Jiji bonked Luffy on the back of his head when he got close enough to hear the growls emanating from his throat, much to the surprise of the seven year old, "Be nice!" he barked.

"Has it already been decided!?" Dadan screamed frantically, she really didn't want to be in charge of Garp's grandchildren, after all what kind of monsters could they be to survive living with that man?

"Is it a problem?" Garp-Jiji turned his head away from Ace for the first time and glared furiously at the now extremely pale and complacent mountain bandits. Dori couldn't help but feel sorry for them.

"We'll take them!" they shouted stiffly in unison.

Garp looked happy as he called out, "Well that's all from me. I'll stop by when I have time." He was already turning away back to the mountain path leading to Fooshia Village.

"Umm, what about child support?" a nervous Magra questioned from behind her.

"Put it on my tab." Garp-Jiji told the man calmly not even taking the time to turn back and look at him.

"This is not a bar." Dadan mumbled.

"Huh?"

"You're always welcomed!" Dadan crowed out to Garp, reminiscent to the way Makino would always dismiss her faithful customers.

"Boss, we can't take care of two more kids!" Magra said concerned.

"Shut up! Let's just eat first! Fix it!" she snapped grouchily.

"Okay!"

Dori never turned her head away from the still furious Luffy, she looked up as Ace jumped off the massive kill that had served as his perch until then.

"Say 'sorry!'" he crowed as the boy walked right by the two of them, not bothering to acknowledge the pseudo siblings.

Dori crinkled her brow in worry; she didn't want Luffy to start a fight with the older boy. "Wait!" he screamed turning around brusquely while putting his straw hat roughly onto his head.

"Luffy?" she asked him concerned.

He smiled at her before he whipped the spit of his face with the back of his hand, "Come on nee-chan, let's follow him." He grabbed her hand as they entered the threshold of the bandits' house, Dori couldn't help but feel that Luffy's phrase was going to end up haunting her for a while.

They poked their heads in from behind the purple curtain-like door curiously at their new surroundings. Their new 'home' wasn't the most beautiful of places but it was fairly clean, the floor was made of hard wood and there was a large pot hanging down from the ceiling over a fire pit in the middle of the room, there were some scattered barrels and crates lining up against the walls but overall Dori felt as if it wasn't going to be an awful experience living in Mt. Corvo.

"Where did he go?" he asked absentmindedly as he confidently walked into the living area, all the while dragging the shorter girl behind him. Dori silently bristled at being dragged in by her little brother; it absolutely irked her that Luffy was taller by 2/3 inches than she was.

Silent as a ghost a man grabbed them from behind… a knife that curved upwards at the tip gleamed menacingly as it was brought up in front of her brother's neck. Dori felt her body become loose in the man's arms, her legs turned into jelly the moment that she had felt herself be brought against the back of an unknown male. "Who are you? Give me all your money or I'll kill the both of you." He whispered angrily as Luffy began to struggle in his grip.

"I don't have any! And neither does Dori!" Luffy said angrily, though there was a small tremor of fear in his voice.

"Then tell your parents to bring some money here!" another bandit growled from behind them.

"Jii-chan is our only-"

"That's fine. What's his name?" another faceless bandit asked.

"Garp-san." Dogra deadpanned as he lit up the once dark room.

"Ehh, these kids…" one of the bandit's exclaimed, as the three of them turned to Dogra for an explanation.

"They are going to live with us from now on." Dogra said blandly.

"WHAT!" bandits that Dori hadn't originally seen hidden leaped out form the shadows all screaming in surprise, "Why are they living here!?" "Why did you accept!?" "This isn't a daycare!" "Our boss has no guts!" the tandem of various voices attacked her ears.

"SHUT UP! All of you!" Dadan screamed, getting the attention of all of the bandits complaining in the room as she placed a giant platter of stocked up meat roughly on the floor. "It's time to eat!" she announced loudly, spit flying out of her mouth as she gestured wildly to the towering plate of food that was taller than she was.

The bandit that had been holding the two siblings hostage dropped them to the ground roughly as they rushed to the meat ravenously, pushing each other out of the way and fighting to get a piece of the tender cut of meat being served for dinner.

"Give it to me fool!" "It's my meat!" they all fought as they squabbled over the dish like a bunch of starving puppies.

Luffy exclaimed happily beside her, already standing up, "Ohhh! I want some meat!" he exclaimed excitedly as stars formed in his eyes, but before he could run up to get some of his favorite meal a bandit ran up behind him and used him as a spring board to reach the plate faster.

Every time he would try to get up another bandit would trample over his tiny body in a hurry to duke it out with their fellow bandits over a cut of meat, 'Barbarians.' Dari thought darkly as she covered her head with her arms, trying not to get stepped on by the selfish bandits.

"You already ate!" "I want more!" Two bandits fought, literally biting into the same cut of meat and trying to tug it in opposite directions as if they were animals. Dori crawled quietly underneath the two bandits and grabbed two pieces of meat and hiding it in her overalls before clearing out of the war zone and moving to sit by Dadan, she could see Luffy being held back by one of the bandits as others quickly cleared the plate of food in front of his eyes. Even the dog was able to quickly snatch a cut of the meat before Luffy was even able to reach the plate.

Luffy sat morosely beside her as he stared blandly at his bowl of rice, before he swallowed the entire thing in one gulp. "Another! Can I have some more, pops!?" he asked raising his bowl to Dadan as she took a huge bite out of her meat.

Dori choked on her water while staring at Luffy in disbelief, sure Dadan didn't have the prettiest mug in the entire world but she had some pretty large… breast, how Luffy couldn't tell Dadan was a woman was beyond her.

"I'm a woman!" she screamed at the little boy in righteous fury. "Do you even know where you are riht now!?"

"No."

"Then I'll tell you." She said as her face took an ominous shade, "The both of you are in the den of the Dadan family; we are the mountain bandits that rule Mt. Corvo."

"Mountain bandits? I hate mountain bandits!" he exclaimed still holding out his arm waiting for more food, Luffy was probably thinking about their run-in with those mountain bandits that caused Shanks to louse his arm. She had to agree with Luffy on that one, she hated mountain bandits as well.

Dadan stabbed her steak knife into the ground in front of Luffy, "Shut up you little shit! We're annoyed by having a kid like you! If you don't want to stay here, that's fine! Go ahead and die like a dog somewhere!" she screamed in his face, Dori could see a blood vessel in Dadan's forehead bulging as the woman's frustration only increased by Luffy's uncaring expression. Dori hid a grin. Luffy was very good at unintentionally pissing someone off, besides he seemed to have a natural talent for it.

"Easy, easy, boss." Magra stated calmly from behind Dadan while raising his hands up in the universal 'I surrender' form.

"I wanna eat more.." Luffy whined sadly while chewing on his chopsticks. He looked enviously at Ace, who was sitting at her other side, while he stuffed his face with a platter of meat in front of him. "I wanna have that meat too…" he drooled.

Dadan teasingly brought forward her meat to Luffy's face, but before he could take a bite out of it she snatched it away and took a huge bite out of it. "These are all from a bison that Ace brought. He gave us a cut of the take so everyone could eat. The mountain bandit's world is rough sailing. The both of you are gonna have to work pretty hard tomorrow!" She stared at the two siblings as she began to explain, "Cleaning, laundry, polishing shoes and weapons, burglary, robbery, fraud and murder!" she listed before she brought her face close to theirs, "Remember, you can't tell Garp what we make you do." She told them seriously, Dori was starting to get pissed off. "One bowl of rice and one cup of water per day! That's all I can guarantee you!"

Luffy's hat shadowed his face as Dadan continued talking, "You two gotta get everything else by yourselves and grow up on your own."

"Okay." Luffy said relaxed, Dori nodded in agreement as she finished off the small bowl of rice that Dadan had served her.

"'Okay?' Why don't you cry or something!?" she exclaimed angrily that her plan to scare the two siblings failed.

"I'm fine because Jii-chan threw me into a jungle once and there was water to drink and frogs, snakes and mushrooms to eat in the forest!" he explained happily. "Plus I'll be a pirate someday so…I must be strong like that!" he said determinedly. Dori smiled at his enthusiasm as the mountain bandits behind her rushed to the fainted Dadan who had lost consciousness after Luffy's declaration.

"Dadan-san." Dori said patiently, all of the bandits looked at her curiously, this was the first time she spoke since Garp-Jiji had left them to the bandits 'tender' care, "I don't care what you say… but if you try to force my little brother to do something he doesn't want to I'll snitch to Jiji and tell him you let the bandits violate us, k?" she asked mock cheerfully as she stood up to follow Luffy who had chased Ace outside of the bandits' hut. Dadan seemed to lose consciousness once more as the bandits began to scream in denial at the words the five-year-old-looking nine year old told them as she calmly turned away.

"Where are you two going?" Dadan screamed from behind her. "Did he just say 'pirate?' Were we just threatened by tiny little chibi? They aren't listening…" she said in shock.

"Hey! Wait for us!" Luffy screamed as he ran behind Ace, Dori sighed. She knew where this was headed, she quickly began to run behind Luffy as Ace finally stopped up ahead of them, "My name's Luffy and this is Dori! I'm not mad about you spitting on me anymore!" he cheered while waving his arms around like loon almost hitting Dori in the face much to her ire.

"It's nothing worth getting mad over! Let's become friends!" he shouted happily, not noticing Ace's expression begin to darken. "Are you going somewhere!?"

A giant crack filled the air as Ace began to furiously kick the tree that was beside him until it fell over and began to roll down the hill towards them.

Nervous sweat began to poor down her face as she raced to the foliage on the side of the path to get out of the way of the dangerous rolling tree, unfortunately she forgot that her little brother was an idiot and had left behind in the middle of the path. He screamed in fear and began to try and out race the speeding tree to the bottom of the hill.

"Luffy!" she screamed, fearing for his safety as she began to run after him.

She and Luffy had almost died several times now, and Dori couldn't help but feel her resolve to catch up to Ace begin wither, but one look at Luffy's hopeful face would always clear her doubts. She couldn't let Luffy go out on his own; someone had to keep him out of trouble, even if it was starting to become more of a physical problem for her than anything. "Unn, Lu. Tomorrow we'll catch him for sure…" she told him with false bravado.

They had finally found their way back to the mountain bandit's home after Ace had knocked her little brother down the ravine, of course Dori had flung herself after him seeing as there was a river canal at the bottom of the ravine and Luffy would have drowned if she hadn't been there to save him (it made her wonder how the hell he survived falling into the ravine in the manga since his devil fruit powers prevented him from swimming). After she had dragged their tired bodies to the bank of the river they had been chased by wolves at the valley until they had been able to climb their way back up, she had been really thankful that she had been carrying those two cuts of bison meat on her when Ace had tried to kill her brother, for the second time in one day, since it had proved to be an excellent distraction against the hungry pack.

Dadan had thrown the two exhausted children into Ace's bedroom after scolding them and informing them that they would be put to 'work' in the morning. Luffy had cuddled up into her side like he usually did when he needed to be comforted and reassure himself that he wasn't alone. Thankfully he had fallen asleep right after he'd been reassured by his sister allowing Dori to be able to fall into the deepest sleep she'd been able to experience in an entire week.

Luffy and Dori chased desperately after ace for two entire months, in rain or shine. And every time they went after Ace, the ten year old boy would nearly kill the siblings while trying to lose the two kids on his chosen trail, but it always ended the same way: they'd lose sight of Ace, he would then attempt double homicide, Mogra and Dogra-on Dadan's orders-save them and bring them back to the hut.

There was one incident in particular that still gave Dori nightmares….

It had been raining lightly, but it was still hard enough that visualtity wasn't clear. She held onto Luffy's hand with a death grip, not wanting to lose sight of him like they'd lost sight of Ace a couple of seconds ago.

"Damn! We lost him again Dori! He run's so fast!" he whined looking around for the freckled face boy.

They both turned their heads to the bushes at the same time when the sounds of branches breaking under pressure alerted them that someone was hiding there, Dori began to have a sinking feeling in her stomach, the sound of those footsteps were too heavy to have come from the nearly ghost steps that Ace was known for.

"Ace!? Is that you!?" he asked happily before the two siblings paled in fear. Dori saw her life flash before her eyes as she took in the huge-ginormous-tiger creeping out from behind the foliage after a lightning bolt illuminated the dark forest. It growled menacingly and Luffy dropped onto the ground in fear, not that she was handling the situation much better since she was paralyzed with fear.

Luffy whimpered, his hand still tightly holding on to hers. "I- I feel weak at the knees…" he stuttered out, his eyes not straying from the monstrous beast.

'Snap out of it Dori!' she inwardly berated herself, 'Luffy needs you, hell you need yourself!'

Dori gently pulled Luffy's limp body up to hers, being careful not to make any sudden movements. She heard the ground shift behind her, and Dori froze when the ginormous tiger roared angrily at the giant intruding bear challenging him. Dori took a deap breath in, deciding this would be the best chance she had at escaping with Luffy. She broke out into a sprint, at first she was dragging her little brother's numb form before he too began to run beside her frantically to get away from the two clashing titans. Unfortunately the siblings weren't paying much attention to the direction they were running and tripped on a log.

Panting the two siblings rolled onto their backs, eagle spread onto the wet ground, their racing hearts beginning to slow down, the tropical rain was finally stopping and the sun began to peak in between the leaves. The water droplets sparkled as the warm rays of light washed over them and a beautiful rainbow could be seen forming above the trees.

"Jejeje…"

Luffy looked at his sister's outbreak in confusion, "I- I can't believe we're still a-alive!" Dori stuttered out between hysterical giggles.

Luffy began laughing with her before they finally were able to sit up once more.

An entire month passed after the siblings encounter with the 'king of Mt. Corvo' before they had actually caught up to Ace.

Dori looked down at her muddy red rain boots, shielding her face from the sun. She loved her red bandana, she really did, but it didn't help shield her head from the harsh glares of the sun like Luffy's straw hat did. Her white undershirt stuck to her sweaty skin and her blue jean overalls shuffled with each step she took. Luffy panted beside her, he was wearing a black skull an' crossbones tank top, red jean shorts, that had the same white ruffles his pants in the future would have, and his plain brown flip flops. His hat shielded his face from the sun's rays, but she could make out the small scar under his left eye.

Leaning heavily on a walking stick, Dori practically dragged herself up the rest of the hill, the jungle was finally clearing. She looked at Luffy excited; they both broke out into grins as they discarded their walking sticks and raced up to the top.

"Wow…" Dori whispered in awe, looking at the wondrous sight of the massive junkyard, smoke-or was that mist-blanketed the piles upon piles of junk that covered the entire area.

"What is this place?" Luffy asked out loud, not really expecting and answer as he looked around. "Nee-chan, do you think that Ace is down there?"

"Hmm, probably Lu. Let's go find him!" she chirped extending her hand to her excited brother, after all it would take ages to find the younger boy if he got lost. He grabbed her hand as they made their way through the junk, jumping and sliding on top of objects while they continued their self-appointed quest to find the older boy.

Preview:

They were all sprawled on top of each other in Ace's bedroom. It was hard to tell which limb belonged to whom as they had all cuddled up on top of Dori in their sleep, apparently Dori's Lullaby's were pretty affective in putting them all to sleep.

"Hey Dori can you pass me the soap-" Sabo began asking before he choked on his spit, his face reddening as his flailing limbs caught the attention of the other two boys, Ace looked at her in shock while Luffy was confused as to what the big commotion was about. "You're a girl!" Sabo finally choked out.

Dori tilted her head in false innocence and confusion, after all the boy's really should have realized by now. "I know, I was born this way." She informed them slowly as if talking to a pair of idiots, "Even Luffy could have told you that! Right Lu?"

"Unn, Nee-chan and I took baths together all the time in Fooshia Village… Hey Ace, Sabo why are you're faces so red?" Luffy asked innocently. 'Sometimes' Dori thought, 'I really love that boy.'

Author's Note:

Hey guys! I hope you're all enjoying Thanksgiving! I know I am!

So I had to split this chapter in three…. Yea…. It took me forever! Anyway if any of you have seen bio or read my new story "Across the Sea we Found It" and "The Spare" (it's an OHSHC and Naruto fanfic respectively… no I'm not using this fic as a way to advertise my other one… alright, alright… maybe a little bit), you would know that I've decided that it's easier for me to update monthly since I'm busy with reality breathing down my neck…

Anyway I hope you've enjoyed this chapter… and I'll see you next month!

3,339 words

FAV/FOLLOW/REVIEW

Mara-Chan (o l l o)