Chapter 31:

Ch Ch Ch. Each time Bran took a step on the coarse sand he could hear the scraping of his boots on the desert floor. The boy walked straight ahead with nothing but sand for miles around him. There were sand dunes rising and falling on his sides, along with scattered green shrubbery that came with the sand.

He didn't recognize where he was. Bran looked ahead of him and believed he saw the top of a building over a hill of sand in front of him. As he started walking towards the hill, he began to hear them. Quietly at first, but slowly their voices rose and he started to run up the hill.

Running up the hill full of loose, coarse sand was hard, and the teen lost his footing when he was halfway up. He stumbled and dropped down to one knee, then reached up and clutched at more of the sand to pull himself up. When he lifted up his head however, the hill looked so much steeper than before.

"You can do it Bran," a voice said to his right. The curly haired teen snapped his head to the right and saw his older half brother there. Jon was dressed in a white cloak made of furs. He had two pickaxes in his hands and he slammed one down into the sand above him.

Bran felt his own hands clenching something and he looked up the rising sand to see pickaxes in them as well. "Come on Bran," Jon called to him. The younger boy looked to his right again, but Jon was already a few dozen feet up the steep sand wall.

"Wait!" The teen called to his older brother. He tried to stand up, but the sand wall was too steep now and he started to slip.

"Use the picks," Jon's voice called down. Bran slammed his picks into the wall and snapped his head up, but where the sand wall ended, he could only see his brother standing on top of it now, barely peeking his head over. Once they looked at each other, Jon moved away from the edge and Bran could only hear his voice. "You need to come up here. You need to see this."

Bran started hearing them again. They were louder than when he first started climbing. He wanted to cover his ears, but he needed to keep his hands on the handles of the picks. The boy ground his teeth together and pulled out the pick he had lodged in the wall with his right hand. He slammed it up above him, then removed the one in his left hand and used it to help pull himself up as well. On instinct he kicked his feet into the wall, and the spikes on the front of his shoes stuck in the sand.

"Almost there," he heard his brother call down. He looked up but there was no sight of Jon anywhere.

Bran pushed his body and climbed up the rest of the flat sand wall. He looked back below him at one point but couldn't see the ground it was so far away now. When he looked back up, the top of the wall was the next step up. He reached up and grabbed the ledge, pulling himself up and over.

When he got over the wall, he panted on his knees. He looked up, and then to either side of this long sand wall, but his older brother wasn't in sight. "Jon?" He called out. Bran pulled himself up to his feet and cupped his mouth, about to call his brother's name again, but then the voices started once more. He didn't know when they faded, but now they burst out louder than he'd ever heard them, and he could cover his ears this time.

Covering his ears didn't drown out the noise though. He squirmed and fell back to his knees, eyes clenched shut as he tried to keep them out.

"Ahhhhh!"

"Help us!"

"Urgh..."

"Ack!"

"PLEASE!"

"Listen to them Bran," Jon's voice spoke on his left and Bran snapped his head that way. He stared wide-eyed as his older brother stood on his left side, completely covered in flames.

"Jon!" Bran yelled, pulling his hands down despite the continuing screams from in front of him.

Jon turned to him, while his body was completely covered in fire. Though he was on fire, he was not burning. He stared at Bran through the flames on his face and said, "Listen, and look," before turning back to face in front of where Bran was kneeling.

Bran finally looked ahead of him, to the other side of the hill he climbed. There was a city on the other side of the hill, down a cliff with a desert separating them. There was a light covering of brush in the sandy area, and moving through the sand between all of the bushes were hundreds, thousands of snakes.

The teen boy looked closely at one of the snakes as it slithered up the hill, trying to escape the city down below. As it was almost at his feet, it looked as if someone had grabbed it around the middle as it was crushed. "AHH!" A young female's voice called out, shocking Bran a little to hear the woman's voice coming from a screaming snake. The snake ripped in half after it was crushed, and then Bran watched as hundreds others followed suit, and the brush hiding them all burst aflame.

The city in the background started crumbling, buildings falling, turning darker colors as they disintegrated. The boy got up to his feet and stumbled back, terrified as he watched the elevation of the city far in front of him start rising up. He was on top of a hill, but the crumbling city's elevation rose above his hill. He started looking up to follow the city as it rose, following the buildings as the fell apart, and flames rose up from beneath them.

The city was aflame, the buildings were destroyed, and as the city rose even higher, the side of the rising hill in front of Bran started to make an image. The hill was made of sand, but the sand started getting darker, becoming orange. In the center of the orange was a much darker red, in the shape of a sun. Then, a single spear shot through the bottom of the sun and pointed up at the top of the hill. The hill could no longer be considered a hill though, as it had risen well over four times the size of the hill Bran was on himself.

This mountain rose up higher and eventually the edge of it reached the top of the hill Bran was on, incorporating his hill into its side. The boy standing on the hill looked to his left, but Jon was no longer there. The ground beneath his feet was getting slanted, and when he looked up all he saw was the side of the mountain. He couldn't see the city rising up on top of it anymore, but he could see the sigil in the middle, and then out of nowhere a lion charged through the sand and chomped down on the sun with a spear through it. In one bite, it was gone, and then the lion vanished too.

Bran couldn't stand anymore on the slanted hill and he started falling. He reached towards the wall, but when he looked at his hands, his pickaxes were missing. His hands grasped as sand but slipped right through. "Ahhhhh-" he started screaming as he free fell through the air, just like when he was thrown from the tower in Winterfell years before. As he fell, he looked up in the air and saw the mountain stop rising, and then where the lion vanished from, two giant red eyes opened up and glared back down at him. Then he hit the ground.

"AHHHHHHHHH!" Bran snapped up and screamed at the top of his lungs. His eyes snapped open wide and as he finished his scream he choked on his own breath. The boy felt sweat all over his body, coming out of every pore and he was shaking like mad.

"Bran!"

"Bran!"

A dozen voices called out his name as he sat there, shaking with sweat covering his face. He felt like screaming again as he stared straight in front of him, but he couldn't make out a word. The boy looked down at his legs, seeing them covered by a blanket. He tried moving them but they didn't work, because as it had been for over six years, he was a cripple.

He looked back up and his mind registered who those people at the edge of his bed were staring over at him. He looked to his right where he heard someone shout as soon as he opened his eyes and saw a girl not inches away from him, already up on his bed. Arya was staring back at him, with her hands holding his shoulder. "Are you alright?" She asked, and Bran could see the worried look strewn over her face.

He turned to his left and saw Jon standing there with a relieved look on his face as he leaned back against the wall. Nami was closer, kneeling on the left side of his bed with her hands held together in front of her, and now that he looked at her hands, he saw they were clasped over his left hand. "I'm fine," he whispered to the orange haired woman, then looked to his right, "really." After he assured Arya, she quickly let go of his shoulder and got off his bed which she had just jumped on a few seconds before he awoke.

Usopp had run around the entire ship shouting for everyone to get to their room when he saw Bran freaking out early in the morning. The entire crew was inside the boys' room at the moment, and Bran whispered hoarsely, "Who's steering the ship?"

Everyone gawked at this boy who seconds before looked to be having a seizure. His whole body was seizing up and down with sweat coating his face, and foam filling his mouth. Chopper leaned forward and Bran almost jumped in shock at the sight of the furry man who was behind his bed when he woke up so he hadn't seen him yet. The reindeer doctor in a pink hat sighed in relief as he saw some of the color had come back to Bran's face. Then, it was time for Chopper to lose color on his face as he remembered Bran's question. "Ah, I was!"

"Don't worry Chopper-bro," Franky called over from where he was standing closest to the door. "Watch over Bran, Super Me will take the wheel of the Sunny!" The cyborg posed with his hands over his head and his metal forearms together, then turned and walked out of the boys' room.

"Wow," Luffy said with a smile as he looked at Bran from the front right of Bran's bed. "What kind of dream were you having?" Bran looked over at the pirate in a straw hat who continued, "Must've been a pretty crazy one."

Usopp turned to Luffy angrily and bonked him on the head with a fist. The pirate captain dropped to the floor and Usopp shouted down, "It was obviously a nightmare Baka!"

The pirate with a bump on his head jumped back up and looked over to Bran who regained the scared look in his eye. Robin was looking at the boy with piqued interest, and finally the woman with black hair down to her shoulder blades asked, "Did you have a vision?"

A few of the others looked at Robin confusedly, but the boy slowly nodded. "In your sleep?" Sanji questioned. He saw the kid looking straight at him, but not looking at him at all.

"I have something called, the Sight," Bran explained to the others who hadn't heard him talk about it much, or who he never explained it to in the first place. "I can see things that have happened in the distant past, or things that are happening right now in places very far away." The others looked impressed and amazed by his power, but got even more so as he continued, "And even the future."

"The future?" Zoro muttered under his breath. He believed the future was uncertain, so this seemed a little far fetched for his tastes.

"Yes," Bran stated. He thought about his dream again and winced noticeably to the pirates in the room with him.

Arya looked at her younger brother who looked to be in pain and asked, "So, which was this one?"

Bran thought about his dream closer, now that he wasn't so afraid of it. When he thought about it, he realized it wasn't as cryptic as some of the dreams he'd had. Could be happening right now, or… He snapped his head back up and looked around at his friends and family around him. "We should change course." He stated.

"What?!" Arya exclaimed at her younger brother. The black haired girl stated, "We're on course for Casterly Rock. The Lannisters home-"

"The Lannisters are in King's Landing," Bran argued with his sister.

"It's still their home," Arya replied, a dark look in her eyes. "And we can take it from them."

Bran saw how angry his sister looked and he turned away from her to look over at Luffy instead. "We need to head to Dorne."

Gendry looked across the bed Bran was lying on over at Jon on the other side. The two bastards stared at each other for a moment, then Ser Gendry looked down over Arya's head and at her younger brother, "Why would we go there?"

"The Martells are no friends of the Starks or Baraetheons," Jon agreed from the other side of Bran's bed. "But they aren't our enemies either-"

"It's exactly that reason why we have to go," Bran argued.

"Why?" Arya asked the boy angrily. She was so worried about him a minute ago, and now here he was saying they shouldn't attack the Lannisters, an idea she came up with. Casterly Rock is the closest thing south of the Iron Islands worth taking, and it is full of gold free for the pirates taking. Everyone thought it was a good idea at the time, but now here he was telling her they should abandon that plan and go straight on around it, and then around the Reach as well, to go straight to Dorne. "Why would we go there?"

Zoro stared at the short girl, with an even shorter temper, who had an angry expression on her face at the moment. He'd been watching her closely ever since the incident with Victarion Greyjoy the other day.

Bran looked at his sister, then around the room at the people who all wanted an explanation behind his wanting to go to Dorne. "If we don't go to Dorne now, there may not be a Dorne to go to."

"What?" Jon asked with wide-eyes.

"The Lannisters have set their sights on it," Bran continued, looking back at his sister. He saw her soften her gaze, if only a little, and then turned to look at Luffy. "The Dornish could be our friends if we try, but, if what I saw..." He faded out. "If what I saw isn't happening right now, if we still have time before the lion consumes them," he thought about the sun with the spear in it, House Martell's sigil, getting eaten by the Lannister's. "Then we need to stop it from happening," he finished, looking straight at the pirate captain's eyes. "Please Luffy, I can still hear them screaming."

The boy's pleading voice had a few of the crew members nodding their heads, thinking about the innocent people these supposedly evil Lannisters were going to kill. "Hmm," Luffy mumbled, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "The Lannisters," he thought about the ship of people they attacked coming to Westeros from Braavos. He remembered how angry Arya was at just one of their knights.

The girl didn't look all that thrilled by what Bran said though. She was standing there at his bedside with an unreadable angry look on her face. How many Lannisters are in Casterly Rock? How many in Lannisport? So many I could kill-

"Alright," Luffy said with a clap of his hands. Everyone looked over at the pirate in a straw hat as he stood up fully with a smile on his face. "I want to beat up these Lannister guys, so if they're in this Dorne place, let's go there!"

"What about Casterly Rock?!" Arya exclaimed. "There are Lannisters there too, and they're closer! Only another day's ride," the girl called out.

"Arya!" Bran shouted at his sister to his right. "Everyone in Dorne is relying on us."

"The Lannisters can't just wipe out a whole kingdom in a night," Arya argued back even louder than her brother. "And if we attack them at their home, they'll send back their troops!" She looked over at Luffy, "I thought you wanted to take their gold."

"Yeah," Luffy replied, still smiling, "it'll still be there when we come back."

Arya looked flustered, "But, King's Landing is on the other side of Westeros. If we go down to Dorne just to come back this way-"

"Arya," Zoro stated in a harsh voice, instantly changing the mood of the room. "The Captain has made his decision." The green haired swordsman looked over at the young girl with a harsh gaze. He was surprised to see her match his gaze, but only for a few seconds before softening her expression and looking down at the floor.

Arya felt a hand on her shoulder and looked back a little to see Gendry standing there with a reassuring smile on his face. She nodded at him and the two of them walked off to leave the boys' room. She looked back over at Bran once more with a concerned look in her eyes before turning around and leaving for good.

Bran watched his sister leave and then sighed and fell back on his pillow. Chopped untransformed from his Heavy Point and landed next to Bran's head in his normal tiny form. The furry creature started examining Bran closer while the others all decided to leave.

Nami stayed by the boy's side longer, holding his hand with a worried look on her face. Sure, she was no more than four, five years older than the boy, but being with him and Arya in the time they'd known each other made her feel... like a mother. The two didn't have a mother of their own, having lost her to this cruel world just like her, and she didn't want them to grow up like she did. Seeing Bran suffer like he was when he was asleep, all while wondering whether he would wake up at all, gave her the deepest put of dread in her stomach that she could only imagine a mother must feel when their child is in danger.

Usopp looked back when he reached the doorway and saw Nami still kneeling there with the boy's hand held tightly in her own. "Let us go Usopp-kun," Robin suggested to the long nosed man. She was right behind him and he nodded at her, before the two of them left the room.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Nami whispered to the boy on the bed while Chopper checked his heart rate and blood pressure.

The reindeer who ate the Human Human Fruit could see how distressed Nami was as well but Chopper didn't mention anything about it. Bran turned his head on his pillow so he was looking at the orange haired woman by his side. She cut his unruly hair, she washed and re-bandaged his stubby leg that was cut off in the battle for Ironman's Bay, she listened to him when he told her about Meera and what happened to him North of the Wall. She was the one person on this ship he trusted as much as his own family.

The little reindeer tending to him was finished up, but Chopper still wanted to stay with the boy to make sure he didn't go back into a seizure. I've never seen one so forceful. He seems like it's happened before, or at least not like this surprises him. If it were any worse though... The human-reindeer didn't want to think too hard about it, but he wouldn't have to as Bran got him and Nami thinking about something else entirely.

"The Martells are the Lords of Dorne, and they live in Sunspear." Bran started, the two pirates next to him looking at the boy as he spoke. He stared straight ahead as he recreated his dream in his mind. "Dorne is in the far south, and in my dream I was there, walking through the sand."

"You were walking?" Nami asked. "We're you inside an animal?"

"No," Bran replied with a small shake of his head. "This time I was actually walking around. But," he paused and winced as he remembered the screams again. "Snakes," he whispered, "I imagine the snakes in my dream are the Dornish people. They had voices of people as they screamed," he whispered hoarsely, "Men," his voice grew quieter still as the pirates looked at him. "Women," he turned his head away from Nami and to the other side of the room where there were hammocks for the other men. "Children," he whispered, knowing exactly which screams he heard that were from the mouths of babes.

"We won't let it happen," Nami assured the boy as he looked the other way.

"What if it already has?" Bran questioned, not really asking Nami as much as he was just asking the question out loud to put it out there. "This power, is stupid. I hate it."

"Don't say that," Nami told him.

"It's true though," he spun back and looked at her. "I hate knowing what's happening, or what happened, or what will happen, and having no way to stop it."

"Well you don't have to worry about that anymore!" Chopper exclaimed in a cheerful voice, making the boy look down to his legs where the small furry creature was sitting. "Because with Luffy here, now you can do something!"

Nami smiled at Chopper's words and then turned back to Bran, "He's right. You aren't helpless anymore Bran."

The boy looked from the reindeer back to the orange haired navigator, and a small smile broke into his face. "Thank you," he said while looking into Nami's eyes. "Both of you," he added, turning towards Chopper too. His spirits were raised, so he grinned and continued, "You are very smart Doctor Chopper."

The small two foot tall reindeer standing on two hooves smiled with blushes on his face and started dancing. "Saying I'm smart won't make me happy you idiot," he giggled with glee and leapt off the now-laughing boy's bed. The happy reindeer offered, "Come on, let's go get breakfast."

Chopper turned into his Walking Point and transformed into a taller reindeer with furrier skin and a more deer-like body. In fact, as Nami looked at him she said in an impressed voice, "Wow Chopper, you've been getting big in this form." The reindeer now on all four hooves stomped about giddily at Nami's praise and she walked over and pet his furry coat.

"Here Bran," Nami told the boy, and then helped him over on top of Chopper's back. The boy grabbed onto Chopper's fur tight and the doctor trotted out the door to go head to the kitchen.

While the three of them headed to breakfast where most of the crew already was, up in the Crow's Nest, Arya was pacing back and forth. "It's not fair," she muttered under her breath. "I spent all that time coming up with a plan, a good plan, but Bran has a bad dream and now we're all listening to him."

She turned the other way and walked over to the weight rack. When she picked up an eighty pound weight though, she snarled and spun, throwing the weight across the room with a furious expression on her face. Her eyes widened as a man standing behind her lifted up his right hand and caught the eighty pound weight, though it did make him slide back on his feet about a meter.

Zoro lowered his right hand and dropped the weight he caught. "Watch where you're throwing that," he stated.

"Sorry," the girl muttered in response, before turning back around and staring down at the weight rack. She grinned as she noticed the weight she took off was an eighty pound one but she just threw it like it was a stick. "I'm getting stronger," she said in a confident tone, "soon I'll be stronger than you," she turned with a grin towards the green haired man.

He wasn't grinning back at her though. "What?" She asked him, then thought back to the glare he was giving her back near Bran's bed. Thinking about that made her annoyed and she turned back to the weights, staring down at all of them with no real interest at the moment.

"Let's spar," Zoro suggested, out of nowhere.

Arya turned back to her teacher and saw the man drawing a sword with a white hilt out of its sheath. "That's your favorite sword isn't it?" The girl asked interestedly.

"It is," Zoro replied. He'd never really asked himself the question before, but if someone told him he had to get rid of two swords, there was no question the Wado Ichimonji would be the blade that remained in his possession afterwards. "This blade means a lot," he continued, lifting up the white hilt and then grabbing it with both hands so the blade was pointed up in front of him.

"So does mine," Arya stated, pulling out her long thin blade from her side. Vengeance glistened, freshly sharpened, freshly cleaned.

"You take good care of your blade," Zoro stated, trying to give the girl a small compliment,

"Are we going to spar, or just stand here all day?" The girl asked. Zoro grinned at her, but then lost his grin as she took a step and the floor beneath her right foot splintered a little. She pushed off that foot and charged forward with an animalistic look in her eye.

The green haired swordsman swung his blade while Arya was still ten feet away. The girl leapt up before his blade was even halfway through being swung, and the flying slash that came out of his sword went right beneath her. It crashed into the middle of the weight rack and the smaller weights on top fell off and rolled around. The wall hit by the attack was not as damaged, having been upgraded by Franky to keep up with Zoro, and now Arya's, intense training.

Zoro lifted his head towards the girl who lifted over his sword slash. She didn't have a grin on her face anymore either, instead she looked deadly serious. When she came down towards Zoro, she slammed Vengeance down with the full power she could muster in her skinny girlish arms.

Down on the grassy deck below, Usopp stood at the side of the ship with a bow in hand. He'd just fired one of his fishing arrows at a fish jumping out of the water. Now he was pulling it back with the string he had attached to the mast with his free hand. He heard noises coming from above and chuckled hearing the grunts from Arya, but then went wide-eyed hearing grunts coming from a man as well.

Usopp stared up at the crow's nest where he heard clashes of steel on steel. The blades rang out when they clanked into each other, and as he stared up he could hear more of them. His eyes grew foggy as he could hear more than just the fight going on up there, but an entire battle. Not just the two blades up there, and the grunting of the man and girl wielding them, but he could imagine hundreds of clanking swords. He could hear grunting soldiers, and the raging winds of a storm, and the pelting of the rain, and the screams...

"Oi,"

Usopp nearly jumped out of his skin at the simple word said behind him. He turned around fast and Sanji looked at him with wide eyes seeing what he looked like. Wasn't hard for the chef to figure out what he was thinking about, but he got distracted by the sounds of Arya and Zoro grunting up above as well.

While Sanji looked up, Usopp walked away a little, only so he was on a different part of the grass deck. Thinking about that battle, it reminded him of dropping Nami, or when the wight held him down and bit off his fingers. Stronger, he thought, then dropped down to his hands and feet and started doing push ups right there on the grass.

Sanji glanced over with a little amusement and a little more respect as Usopp worked out, not looking like he was doing it to impress anyone. Then, the chef looked back up at the crow's nest he swore shook the next time he heard two blades slam together. The wind was visible as it rushed out around the crow's nest, Don't you dare hurt her shitty swordsman, he thought.

Another man was thinking along similar lines as he leaned on the railing outside the dining room. He could hear the others back inside behind him, but he was finished and now stared up where he knew she was. Gendry stared up at the crow's nest with amazed eyes, always knowing Arya was strong, but never thinking she'd become this powerful.

"Raa!" Arya grunt-yelled as she spun and swung her sword in an arc at Zoro. He blocked it, but she parried right away and slid her blade across the floor and then up to get under the older swordsman's block.

He didn't block or dodge her blade, but instead went in for the attack at that moment when he blade wasn't protecting her. She was unguarded, and for a faster opponent, he closed the short gap quickly and pushed his blade up in front of her neck. Her blade stopped a foot away from anything important, and Zoro stated calmly, "Don't drop your guard to make a risky attack."

"I know," the girl growled in annoyance.

"If you knew, then why did you do it?" He asked her in a mocking tone. She needed to get better fast, considering she'd chosen the world as her enemy. He wanted to help her as best he could, but she made it difficult sometimes with her personality.

"I did it, because," she faded and Zoro felt a small prick on his right side. "Because I knew you would stop when you got this close."

The man looked down and saw that her right hand had Vengeance clutched a full foot below his privates, but her left hand. Her left hand had a blade pressed up against his right side. It was a clever trick, he had to give her that, but nonetheless, "In a real fight," he started, "a man would not have stopped when he got the blade to your throat."

"Then it's a good thing this wasn't a real fight," she said back with a snide smirk. The girl looked to her right as Zoro backed away from her. She stared at the wall, and imagined the shore they were passing in their ship. "This is taking too long."

"'Too long?'" Zoro asked, raising his eyebrows. "Thought you've been waiting years for your revenge. Another detour shouldn't be too much of a pain for you."

"No one is in Dorne," the girl snapped, glaring back at Zoro. "Cersei, Illyn Payne, The Mountain, The Red Woman, none of them."

"You didn't think anyone would be on that first ship we attacked together either," Zoro stated. Arya looked back at him and Zoro continued, "So shut up about it. You might find someone you're looking for where we're going, and you might not. It doesn't matter if you're still weak."

"I'm not weak," the girl said in a defiant voice. She tried to make her most serious face, but Zoro still laughed mockingly anyway.

He stopped laughing and stared at her with a smile, "I can still beat you easily with one hand, and one sword."

"I've cut you before," Arya snarled at him.

"Sure," Zoro replied, "but never when I was serious," he could see her getting angrier, and he grinned more and continued, "Hell, I wasn't even near being serious any time I've fought you. Ten percent, no, five. At most..."

"Shut up!" Arya yelled at him, but he just kept on going.

"You are weak. You can't change that. Maybe if you were a boy you would have gotten better by now-"

"Enough!" She roared, lifting up her sword again and charging at Zoro with the intent to kill in her eyes. He could see it, but he just chuckled tauntingly as he smacked her sword out of her hands with one swing of his. Apparently she was expecting that though and Zoro's ruse faltered for a second as he actually had to draw another sword quickly and block a knife that came flying at his face when his Wado Ichimonji was still in the downwards swing from hitting away Arya's sword.

The girl who threw her knife and lost her sword jumped towards the man who knocked both her weapons away. His hands were both occupied with his swords, and she jumped between his weapons to tackle him, but he headbutted and slammed his forehead into hers. The man winced upon their heads colliding, but it hurt her more than it hurt him, knocking her back where she rolled across the floor.

Arya squirmed and rolled around on the floor for a few seconds, then she stopped and slowly got back up to her feet. She stood straight up and Zoro could see blood pouring down her face a lot, but the wound where his headbutt broke skin was no longer there. Instead, a gash of pure black was formed on her forehead. Her eyebrows were pointed down at the middle and the glare she was giving Zoro was like no other. "There we go," the teacher said with a grin. He'd only seen this glare once, right before she started her rampage the other day that resulted in over half a dozen deaths in this very crow's nest.

Arya's feet were seeping black and her hands had dark tendrils seeping from her fingertips. She glared at Zoro hatefully, but she could see the shift in his demeanor. The girl looked down at her hands and saw the darkness seeping out of them, making her eyes go wide with panic.

"Don't fight it," Zoro stated, making the girl look back his way.

Her eyes widened even more, "You, you wanted me to-"

"Yes," Zoro said. "You asked me to make you stronger, and though I wish you hadn't, you ate a Devil Fruit." Arya looked at her hands, her feet, then she reached up to her forehead and felt where he wound was. The man with green hair continued speaking to her, "I don't know what kind of Devil Fruit this is, because you can still feel pain. I thought it was a Logia, but it's not like any I've heard of before. As I said, we're going to train it."

"You think you can teach me how to use it?" The girl questioned, snapping her eyes up to the muscular swordsman before her.

Zoro shrugged his shoulders, "You see me trying don't you? First you have to be able to summon it on your own." He was thinking about this for a while and it did seem like when she was either in a pinch, or really angry that she released her power. Getting her furious worked when putting the sword to her throat didn't, so he was happy about that, but he wanted her to be able to do it on her own. "Think about how you were feeling just then," the man told her while she looked into his eyes. "When you were rolling on the ground, in pain from my headbutt, think about that feeling."

Arya stared at Zoro for a few more seconds, trying to decide how she felt about all this. The girl finally closed her eyes, accepting she was just annoyed in general and going with his plan. She thought about the sudden pain, the annoyance of her tactic failing, the rage that made her lungs in the first place, the envy towards her brother and anger at everyone who agreed with him this morning, her hate for the Red Woman who took Gendry away from her for years...

Zoro watched as the small wisps of darkness seeping from Arya's fingers started getting more and more powerful as she stood there. Soon, half the room was full of darkness and it wasn't just on the floor. It seeped up around her in swirling pillars that near touched the ceiling. Whatever Devil Fruit this is, the swordsman thought, it's more powerful than I imagined. And it has a strong owner. He looked at the girl whose fruit it was. He liked her. She was a good kid.

But then again...

Hate drives people to do crazy things. The road she's on has lots of wrong turns, which I'll have to watch out for, for her. He watched the girl, the fragile girl, the strong girl, as darkness filled the room and his heart.

sc

"What's going on?" Jon asked as he walked up next to the other bastard on the deck. Gendry turned to Arya's older half-brother and shrugged, before looking over to the girl he was in love with. She looked just as confused as the rest of them and he figured they had to just wait and see what Franky had in store for all of them.

With Jon's arrival, most of the crew were now on the grass deck of the Thousand Sunny, looking towards the bow where a large red curtain had been set up. Luffy was sitting excitedly up front, bouncing up and down with anticipation as Franky put his hand out of the split of the curtain, and then his steel hand made a big thumbs up. "Woo! It's starting!" Luffy shouted, then turned around and held up a finger in front of his mouth, "Shhh."

Nami glared at the idiotic pirate captain and mumbled, "You're the only one being loud." She looked around the grass and was a little surprised to see Usopp missing from the group gathered around. She figured he would have been bouncing like Luffy in wait for whatever cool thing Franky was about to show them. As she looked around, she noticed Bran was missing as well, and his direwolf. She got distracted as Franky started yelling to get everyone's undivided attention towards the curtain. Off the port side of the ship, the land they were following south was at least a few miles away from them, but the last two days had been amazing weather on the seas. The Reach was the stretch of land between the Lannister's homeland and Dorne, so they had to sail past it before reaching their destination. In that time though, Franky had been working hard, and a few of them were looking forward to seeing what the shipwright had behind curtain number one.

"ARE YOU READY?!" the cyborg shouted from the other side. He earned a grunt from Zoro, as well as cheers from Luffy, Chopper, and even Arya who seemed in a better mood than she had been for the last few days. Arya was just happy about her mid-day training with Zoro, where it only took her about ten seconds to call upon her power. Even though she still wasn't sure how to use it, she was happy to be getting at least some control over it, while also keeping her emotions in check. She cheered with the others as Franky yelled again, and this time Sanji and Gendry cheered along with them.

"Okay then!" The cyborg called out, then the curtains pushed aside and the robot walked out in front of them. He held his arms up diagonally above his head and yelled, "Super!" And then he just posed there like he always did, in only his underwear and an open button down shirt.

... The pirates looked at each other and then looked back at the cyborg who was grinning despite their blank looks. As he was posing there, his eyes started to glow, bright red. Some of the people watching ooed and ahhed at the sight, but then got even louder as his eyes started spinning and stretched out of his head like little binoculars. Even at the end of the binoculars, the little parts of glass at the end were still glowing red. "Zoom, and thermal, and…"

"And…" most everyone leaned in to see what else.

The cyborg smirked and shouted, "STROBE!" His binocular-eyes pulled back in to normal, then lit up bright white, then flashed blue, then red, then orange. He started dancing and the others laughed at his totally "practical" new invention.

"Alright," he continued, turning around so his back was to the people behind him. They noticed he didn't pull the curtains aside, but instead walked in front of them before, so when he looked back with a glint in his eyes they were all interested. "Who's ready for the next bit?"

"There's more?!" Luffy shouted with starry eyes, already amazed by Franky's eye-adjustments.

"Ohh yeah," Franky replied with a grin. "Chopper-bro helped me out with a lot of this, so give him a round of applause first," Franky began. Everyone turned towards the reindeer and congratulated him, which made the small furry creature start dancing with a bright blush on his face, calling them all idiots for their compliments. "I give you, the new and improved… Usopp!" Usopp stepped out in front of the curtain, again, looking exactly the same as they last saw him.

"What about him is, 'new and improved?'" Sanji asked skeptically. Usopp looked at Franky and the both grinned. Then, the long nosed man lifted up his left hand that had a glove on it, and he pulled the glove off. Everyone smiled seeing where for over a month there had been no fingers, two new fingers were. He curled them in a couple times to show the others they weren't just prosthetics, and that he had nerve control over them. Yeah, there was a light skin covering over the steel to make them look normal, so it looked like he really had two new fingers, but he knew what was beneath the skin, he could feel the difference from his real fingers. Still, he was grateful to the cyborg and Chopper who helped him out so much as they needed a test subject for their bigger project.

"And finally-" Usopp called out.

"The moment you've all been waiting for-" Franky continued, him and Usopp each grabbing one half of the curtain. Everyone, even Zoro and Robin, leaned in this time as they got ready for the big reveal.

A lot of them had noticed Bran's absence from the group now, so they figured they knew what would be on the other side of the curtain. "TADA!" Usopp and Franky exclaimed, pulling aside the curtains and shocking everyone there. The crew assumed that just like Franky and Usopp, the boy would look similar, but with a prosthetic leg. A few of them were even hoping he might be able to walk again,but no one was expecting this.

"The Walkatron 4000!" Franky shouted, "Walker, for short."

The buzzing of the machine starting up made Luffy's eyes turn into stars and drool start coming out of his mouth. Gendry just dropped his jaw and took a step back as the legs unbent, the large red steel legs, bringing the Walker up to its full height. Each leg was four feet tall, and there was a small bowl at the top of the legs connecting them, with a chair in the middle, and Bran sitting on that chair. He had his hands around grips that he was pulling back and forth to get himself up. The boy smiled wide, amazed at the good job Franky did with this robot. He was thankful to Chopper as well, as everyone's initial assumptions were not wrong. He did have a new right leg inside the metal leg of the suit of armor. He couldn't control his leg like Usopp could moved around his fingers, but he felt better having a leg there than nothing at all.

The Walkatron 4000 stood up and Bran was now as tall, taller even, than any of the men on the crew, only with giant steel legs disproportionate to his body. He looked over out at Arya and grinned, "Hey little sister," he started, "who's taller now?"

Arya was smiling at her little brother, happy for him for getting this chance. The second he called her 'little sister' though, her expression changed and she frowned at him. He expected her to frown anyway and chuckled at her angry face. He expected her to scold him though, or yell at him, or chase him around in his new armor machine. Instead, her angry face turned into a nervous one, and she turned and walked away. He pushed one of the joysticks forward to move after her, but the next second the entire crew were up in front of him telling him how cool the legs were and how they wish they got a Walker of their own. He couldn't move through the crowd, but he could see over most of them, and watched as Arya walked back inside without another word.

A/N Hope everyone enjoyed the latest chapter! The crew sets sail for Dorne and Zoro tries to help Arya learn how to use her Devil Fruit power. Thanks for reading, and leave a review telling me what you think or any questions you may have! 'Till next time!

raw666

I wonder if Arya will from now on be known as the Black Wolf for it seems to suit her in more ways then one.

Haha I could imagine her having a Wanter Poster with that nickname!

gamelover41592

0-0 wow

XD

Reikson

Aeron's the priest you mention; Euron's the lunatic who promises to cause a shitload of trouble.

Whoops, guess I misread the wiki when I was writing the chapter. I'll head back to fix that, so thanks for the review. And I'm hoping for some Euron action tonight! Everybody better get ready! Because Winter is coming and the Lannisters are sending their regards as Danaerys breaks the wheel and Tyrion hopefully keeps his head on his short body for one more season. Tonight starts Season 6, and I don't know about you, but I AM SO PUMPED! XD See ya soon!