Adoration

"So, why are we here again?" Ace asked, helping Fox into a modified version of her 'goddess' outfit that was suitably accommodating of her pregnant figure.

Fox sighed. "Mystoria is somewhere I don't mind Law knowing I spend time, the Marines will all think my father has taken me deeper into the New World so they won't look for me and I promised Asura I'd stop by here before Moth was born so he could see who I intend to leave our child with when we eventually rejoin Luffy. Besides, I do need to tell them I'm pregnant, considering they consider me their goddess and I am officially their patron."

"What?" Ace hadn't known that.

"You didn't know?"

"I thought Mystoria fell under Shanks' protection."

Fox winced. "It does. But after they deified me and he found out he decided it would be funny to hand them over to me to 'manage' for him. I've slaughtered more than a few pirates who tried to loot and pillage here and the Temple Guard are sufficiently well-trained to send anyone short of a Yonko's ship packing. Spitfire has a breeding ground near here too, so pirates who get ideas often find themselves looking a Sea King in the face. Besides," she grinned, "after I got the hand of the shapeshifting thing I 'blessed' a few more of the locals. They may not be capable of an intermediate form like Zoans, but the ability to swim more than makes up for it." She shrugged. "Besides, this close to the Red Line most pirates are more interested in restocking than making trouble; we're way to close to G-5 and the new Headquarters for a successful pirate stronghold."

"Do the Marines know you're the local deity?"

Fox snorted. "Of course not. They don't exactly care what cult the locals subscribe to so long as they don't make trouble. They don't know about the shapeshifting either, or we'd have mad scientists breathing down our necks."

"Okay, I understand why you insisted on your doctor's appointment being here," Ace conceded, "and why you're dressing up. But why do I have to dress up?"

Fox gave him a look. "I'm going to introduce you and Asura as my lovers, Kajin. To these people, that makes you my consorts and means I consider you my equals. Ergo, you will also be deified in short order. That means dressing the part. You can either wear what I picked out or go in your normal clothes and have them stolen and replaced."

"What!" Ace wasn't about to let anyone steal his precious hat!

"That's what happened to me," his lover informed him with an amused smile.

"Fine, fine," the flame Logia grumbled. "Wait, deified?"

"You're my lover, Kajin. You will be welcomed, given a fancy title, new clothes and expected to show off to demonstrate to all my devoted warriors that you are worthy of my attentions," Fox said dryly. "Then I'll have to introduce Asura –which will be challenging– and then put up with whatever they decide to do in celebration of my gravid state. Then I will be expected to tell stories, listen to petitions, offer healing and assistance and generally behave in a suitable manner. You will probably get roped into hunting, any and all fire-related activities and sparring. Then you will have to be appreciative of the statue they make of you, the theology they create regarding our relationship and the general awe. You will also be pestered for stories on how we met, which will be twisted, distorted and added to the aforementioned theology."

"That sound completely appalling," Ace said flatly, absently petting Calla, the giant baby snake who was convinced his lover was her mother. Yes, he had liked being infamous but there was a limit!

"I did mention I didn't like being considered a goddess, didn't I?" Fox drawled. "This is why. I do love the locals though, so I put up with it for them and repeatedly mention that I don't consider myself all that divine in the grand scale of things. Powerful yes; all-powerful not a chance." She shook her head. "They'll probably invent some claptrap about you and Asura being gods of destruction and death to balance me out as a goddess of life or some such."

That did sound really likely to the Logia considering his Devil Fruit Ability and Asura's own Spirit Projection.

Trafalgar Law had been amused to receive a letter from his only long-term patient informing him that her father had grounded her after a run-in with some Marines who objected to her taste in men, and did not mind that it meant the inconvenience of travelling to the New World island of Mystoria to perform her next monthly check-up. This would, in fact, be her last monthly check-up: for the next two months he'd be seeing her every two weeks, then every week for the last month. Fox had informed him well over a week in advance and provided a very good chart of the area of the Grand Line on either side of the Red Line, centred around Marineford. He already had a New World Log Pose, so that wasn't a problem either. His plan to facilitate his rise to the top of the heap was progressing well enough that a short break wouldn't do any harm and a rest on a friendly island to restock and plan his next few moves in greater detail could only be beneficial. His crew would also enjoy some time on dry land after the past months filled with little other than battle, repairs, restocking and sailing hither and thither after various other pirates.

Entering in an alliance with the Sea Network had proved its worth many times over already: he was provided with information on whatever he cared to ask for –so long as he paid for it– and it was always extremely accurate, which made hunting down the pirates he was looking for relatively easy and ensured he never entered a battle blind to his enemies' abilities and mindset. Law had always firmly believed that knowledge was power and his alliance with Silvers Pearl only drove the point home further. However he had also been surprised by the shrewd mermaid –not least that she'd dug up the details of his past with Donflamingo– who paid him a personal visit one dark night to inform him that if he did that to her his crew would never find his corpse. She'd been so chillingly affable as she held his head just above the surface of the sea, his body paralysed, unresponsive and totally at her mercy, that Law had known true terror for the first time in years and placed her right at the top of his list of people not to cross, ever. Unlike his former captain, Pearl truly did not care about image, prestige or money: all she cared about were her people and if Law ever betrayed her she would see to it he never got the chance to use what he had learnt against those in her care.

Wondering to himself why Fox had picked that specific island to lie low on, the Surgeon of Death walked out of his operating theatre to make sure his navigator was sailing directly for Fishman Island. They wouldn't be stopping there, but it was close enough to the deep channel carved under the Red Line to make a good landmark.

Shortly after actually arriving on Mystoria Law knew exactly why Fox was here and was having a hard time concealing his amusement.

"So, a goddess? How's that working out for you?" he asked, grinning rather more widely than usual as he escorted her on board his submarine.

"Drop it," his patient growled, managing her layered garment and heavy jewellery with the ease of long practice. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"You achieved apotheosis by accident?" Law found that even funnier. "What did you do?"

"Ended a famine, healed some people," Fox grumbled, lifting her skirts so she could step over the rail onto the submarine's deck. "They all know what Devil Fruit is but for some reason I'm a goddess rather than just a Fruit User with a nifty trick."

Law chuckled. "Will your future visits be here?"

Fox frowned. "I'm not sure. I'd rather persuade my father that it is safer for me to visit you than for you to visit wherever he ends up hiding me, but he may insist on my travelling to a specific location and meeting you there. He's become rather paranoid about my safety of late." She sighed. "It's not like I didn't kill most of the people who came after me, either!"

"How?" Law asked, opening the door to the theatre.

Fox grinned. "I made their heads explode."

Ah. So the threat to paint the walls with the brains of his crew should they crowd her had been a very literal one. "Most, not all?"

She glanced at him sideways. "I wished to preserve my cover, Doctor Law; I'm sure you understand."

Law smirked. Fox was a powerful, underhanded killer with a ruthless streak a mile wide and a truly peculiar sense of honour. It was what part of what made her so interesting. She was also brilliant, inventive, generally truthful if rarely genuinely honest, entertaining and completely uninterested in power. He fully intended to enter an alliance with her later, possibly through her captain, so as to have her unique skills on his side when certain of his plans reached fruition.

Ace finds out that being boyfriend to a 'goddess' comes with strings attached. Also more of Law, who finds out about Fox' apparent divinity and thinks it's a hoot.