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Chapter 5 - Current: Awakening
"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." – Lao Tzu
Serenity's eyes burst open as she remembered the intense pain she felt upon her back but as she sat up in a soft bed, she blinked around in confusion. The hell? She felt the room sway softly, telling signs that she was on a boat, before leaning back into the covers just to think. "This is different," she muttered as she felt the thin but comfortable blanket for a few moments, just enjoying the scent slightly. Her eyes almost closed when she heard the door burst open.
"I thought you were awake," she heard the jovial voice of Kizaru before he sat on the bed next to her still sluggish form. "You recovered unusually fast…"
"It's part of the thing with my fruit. It's why I was forced to eat it in the first place," she informed glumly as she looked at her hands. She allowed feathers to dance across her body before retracting them into her body. "I can heal myself slightly faster and others to a small extent but it does come at a steep price."
"Forced to eat a fruit?" This the logia was unable to understand. "How? Some fruit that allows such mobility and power should be thought of as a blessing."
"Borsalino-kun, you aren't understanding. I never wanted to eat it. Never." She touched her head gingerly and winced as she sat up. "I wanted to be a help to you. All the ability in the world means nothing if you're in water or cuffed and therefore, I knew that the minute I was forced to eat this fruit, that my usefulness was now limited."
"Sere-chan, I don't care about uses you think you have to me. You know that. You're my woman, damn it just as I'm your man." He reached out for her face, almost wincing when he saw the raw emotion in her eyes. "You're rather intense right now. I think the last time I saw you so riled up was when…"
"You got back from that training mission with Sakazuki, both of you smoking like chimneys and me finding out that the smell of the smoke makes me sneeze?" Serenity recalled with a tense smile as she took a quick sniff of the air around them. "There still is a slight smell of cigarettes but at least it's not that bad. It still reminds me of you. This whole room."
"Well of course. You're in my cabin after all. Where else would I have the woman I love?" he spoke as if it was the simplest thing in the world. "Things aren't that different."
"I suppose some things were never meant to change," she murmured quietly as she reached out to touch his chest. His heart fluttered slightly under her touch as if in anticipation. Even his eyes lit up behind his tinted sunglasses. "I never want to lose you again. And I won't have to." Her right hand glowed as she removed her hand from Borsalino's chest to put it above her own. In fact, exactly above her heart. "You are what grounds me, Borsalino-kun and with your permission, I'd like to never be unaware of where you are."
"I thought of you as the thing that brings me down to earth," the light logia responded in confusion. "And I'd like you to be able to find me at anytime you need to but how? If not by Observation Haki…"
"This," Serenity murmured as she felt the itching sensation that signified when she was shifting partially with the use of her devil fruit. Her skin seemed to become fluffy slightly with feathery down. A bright beam of light seemed to pour from her chest as she focused her energy and eventually, it solidified into a feather. It was ink black and seemed almost like a writing quill. "It feels weird but I don't know how to describe it. I've only done this to one other person before."
"Done what?" Borsalino asked but he felt the tip of the feather touch his chest and shred part of his shirt as it touched his skin. The soft parts of the feather, the vane, fell apart from the hollow shaft and twirled around the point. "Serenity-chan?!"
"Please Borsalino-kun, have faith in me," she said as she focused carefully. "This is most difficult when I'm not using all of my devil fruit power."
"Why don't you…?" he began but it felt a slight stabbing sensation as the quill poked his skin slightly and the scattered remains of feather rearranged themselves onto his skin before pressing into it, like a tattoo. The shaft shattered suddenly but the markings were left behind. It looked like miniature feathers that were grouped together to form a number.
"Angel within Me: Tracking Quill," she intoned calmly, causing the markings to seemingly burn bright before darkening once again onto the logia's skin. She felt sweat bead her forehead as she observed them before touching his skin carefully. Borsalino's chest was reddened slightly due to the feather being imprinted onto his skin as the sensation was similar to that of getting a tattoo. He gasped at the sensation of her touching the mark. It felt almost like a spark between the two. "Borsalino-kun?" she said quietly as she was worried about how strong his reaction was.
"Sere-chan… The fuck was that?" he said as he touched the mark gingerly, frowning slightly when it felt like to him as if he was just touching his skin normally. Serenity shivered slightly however as he rubbed at the skin, causing him to raise an eyebrow. "It felt weird when you did whatever the hell that was but now, I feel like normal."
"I've forged a connection between us that I can use to track you down. It utilizes one of my feathers that I imbue with my own energy," Serenity explained as she touched the spot on her chest above her heart. Tugging down her top slightly, Borsalino's eyes widened as he saw the same symbol made onto his chest on her own. "As you've figured out, you're the second person I had done this with but I put a great deal more energy into this one as I want the connection stronger and more stable."
"Who else did you put this on?" Borsalino asked cautiously, not sure if he really wanted to know. "You said you made this connection the stronger one but you still have a connection to someone apparently."
"How else to kill Marco the Phoenix than to track him down and take him out myself?" Serenity replied calmly as she buttoned up her top to cover the markings on her chest. "The mark I gave him is on my left ankle." She lifted her leg up and sure enough, there was a feather like bunch resembling the number one. "No one else is allowed to extinguish that pirate but me."
"From how you told me about this, this tracking technique meant something special to you but you tested it on a pirate?" Borsalino asked skeptically as he found a new shirt to replace his ripped one. "To think you'd tolerate being in the presence of a pirate…"
"I was captured by his crew," Serenity hissed in distaste as her eyes darkened dangerously. Borsalino was used to her mood changing for the worse whenever piracy was mentioned but even this was a lot different than before. The change was so swift and consuming it almost frightened him. "Marco was the closest thing I had to a friend or a confidant the whole time I was in captivity. That is why when we face each other, I will fight him with everything I have and give as swift and painless as a death as possible. I owe him that."
You worry me even more than you did back then, Sere-chan.