Progression
Fox was just getting dressed after her bath when she felt her captain's health take a sudden dip. He'd been steadily draining her for hours, enough to kill her had she not eaten a Logia Devil Fruit that essentially gave her unlimited vital energy. Fox could get tired, but it was a tiredness of the mind needing to rest and from pushing the body into damaging itself rather than a lack of resources to go on. If necessary she could fight for days on end, something she had proved to herself on a small and highly hostile New World island once. Poison couldn't kill her as she outlasted its effects; sickness could not fell her as her body outmatched it at every turn. Injury only put her out of commission for the time it took for the damage to repair itself and no matter the strength and skill of her enemies they could not match her stamina. Drawing deeply from her Devil Fruit Fox had once killed a Sea King with her bare hands without even using haki; she wasn't exactly immortal but she came close.
Having Luffy as a captain would make anybody worry, so Fox made sure he never ran out of energy. So long as her captain had the will to carry on, he would not lack the strength to do so. It wasn't much, but considering he was currently raiding Impel Down he needed all the help she could give him.
Carefully adjusting her body so that her Logia powers ran more strongly through her but taking care that her baby was not affected, Fox scrounged a large meal from the kitchen and retreated to Shanks' cabin again. Where Luffy was it was some stupidly early hour of the morning, but if her senses had the right of it he'd just been poisoned. Fox did not like healing poison damage; it was a long and tedious business. First the poison had to burn itself out in tearing the victim's body apart, then the body had to be assisted in putting itself back together. Luffy was far stronger than he looked even without her surreptitious assistance, but without further outside help it would take most of a week to recover from this. Crawling into bed, Fox carefully twisted her Ability again so that it burned hotly in the core of her being, simmering under her skin just out of sight. This way Luffy could take all he needed while she slept without her little moth being at risk. Closing her eyes and automatically feeling for the connection to Zoro, Fox dropped off.
She woke abruptly to sudden, blinding pain that doubled her up and knocked her out of bed.
"Lisska?" Fox leant into the warm, scarred hand stroking her face and breathed harshly through her nose, trying not to throw up.
"It's not me," she gasped, shutting down the part of the connection tying her to Luffy that enabled her to feel him and widening her captain's access to her reserves. It felt like he needed it. She'd experienced this kind of pain before, back when she'd still been a slave and her owner had been experimenting with her healing ability. She'd been less resistant to poisons when she was younger and puberty hadn't helped.
"Who was it then?" Fox kept her eyes closed and gripped Shanks' shoulder, letting him left her to her feet.
"My captain is in trouble again," she murmured as she was dragged back into bed. "I hope he gets himself out of it in time; bad enough that Ace needs rescuing without Luffy getting himself in a fix as well."
"You felt Luffy's pain?" Fox nodded absently, half her attention going towards reassuring Zoro that she was okay. He'd been woken too.
"I'm lending him energy; he won't die of it," she added to Shanks, remembering that her crazy captain had a special place in Red-Hair's heart as well. Her bedmate's arm tightened around her waist.
"Go back to sleep Lisska; you need to conserve your strength." Fox agreed, so she let her mind wander back into the darkness.
Shanks was worried. Lisska had woken briefly, early in the morning, but hadn't stirred since. Now it was evening again and she was still dead to the world. Her Devil Fruit meant sleeping the day away wasn't as serious as it might be; it wouldn't hurt her or the baby to get a bit more rest. But Shanks suspected the real reason his best friend's daughter was still asleep was to do with the pain that had woken her before she plunged deeper into unconsciousness.
The Redheaded Yonko had seen Lisska do truly incredible things with her Ability and even more incredible things without it –he hadn't known you could use haki like that– but it was the apparently little things that she could do that really humbled him. According to Lisska Luffy was in Impel Down trying to rescue Ace, well over a day's sailing away, yet his little eyas was not only keeping an eye on her captain's condition but doing her best to keep him alive. Shanks had laughed in delight when he'd got the letter from Lisska saying she'd joined Luffy's crew and felt no small amount of relief: Luffy was enough like his own captain had been to take good care of her and Lisska would take care of the rubberman in return. Her loyalty was the stuff of legends really; the things she did for friends and family boggled the mind.
Shanks hoped Luffy did manage to get himself out of trouble before they reached Marineford: Lisska's idea of what constituted a rescue tended towards the extreme. She was a bit like her father that way with her 'no such thing as overkill' attitude. Not that Shanks disagreed exactly, but violence wasn't always the answer. The redhead sighed, remembering the incident involving the young lady from Wano, a small pirate fleet new to the New World and an attempted ransom; attempted because none of the pirates had lived long enough to deliver the demand. Lisska had made several allies that day and earned herself a title that commanded fear and respect –mostly fear– all over Wano: they called her the Pale Kunoichi. Wano was very male-dominated, but they respected the kind of strength Lisska had, for all that it was not something discussed in public. She was the kind of person who worked undercover for a powerful lord, enforcing his will from the shadows. Samurai did the day-to-day stuff, kept order and were the public face of the daimyo; ninja lurked in the dark, spied on their master's enemies and quietly dealt with those who sought a more covert path to power.
Shanks had to admit that Lisska was more of a kunoichi than she was a pirate. It made him wonder what kind of adventures Luffy would have with an assassin as part of his crew; the mere presence of a genuine professional killer tended to make a person's enemies very, very nervous and among pirates, nervous was frequently synonymous with proactive.
Time rolls on and Luffy's prison raid progresses, with far-reaching effects.