Abnormal

Characters: Heart Pirates, Law. Rating: K+. Warnings: None

They'd all known, back when they'd joined the crew, that their captain was not normal. Whether it be small quirks, like his avoidance of the colour white, or big things like his abilities (cutting someone with no resulting blood was odd no matter how you looked at it), Trafalgar Law defied all definitions of the word 'normal', often going so far as to raise a middle finger at it as he wandered with some deliberation far away from the straight and narrow.

Of course, he was a pirate, so some eccentricity was expected. They all had that; that spark in them that made them seek out a life on the wrong side of the law, abandoning a simple, safe, life for one wrought with strife at every turn. It was what made a pirate a pirate. His open taunting of the Marines was more blatant than perhaps some pirates, but it wasn't outside the realms of usual piracy.

But Law took it one step further. The Marines, the World Government… those were their natural enemies. Other pirate crews, not so much. Rivals, certainly. Potential opponents? More likely than not. Natural enemies? Not by the usual unspoken laws of piracy. Law, though, had a way of needling even the most mellow captains (and wasn't that a relative scale) into a full-blown ire. Effortlessly, he'd break through all their defences with a single verbal jab, winding them into an uncontrolled frenzy with the same smirk fixed on his face the entire time. Anger led to mistakes, and Law never showed any signs of biting off more than he could chew, even if sometimes his gait back to the Tang wasn't so steady, or his skin was stained with splashes of his own blood.

His clear antagonistic nature towards Marines and pirates alike was the reason the Heart Pirates all but shut down the moment he declared they were heading to Marineford.

They'd been watching the battle, like everyone else in the vicinity. The clash of the Whitebeard Pirates and the Marines was legendary – and totally out of their league. A Supernova crew they might be, but compared to the Yonkou they were but snowflakes before an avalanche. Most had assumed that, alongside the other Supernova crews, they'd observe from a safe distance, watching one era crash to its end and another rise to take its place. Certainly, they had no reason to get involved.

They'd obeyed, though, because what else could they do in the face of their captain's determination? Bepo had been the first to snap out of it, hurrying to the control room to set the course while Penguin and Shachi picked themselves up to follow him. Like a re-oiled machine just starting up again, the rest of them slowly fell to their positions as the Tang submerged and headed towards what felt like certain death.

It almost had been certain death, saved first by the cry of a Marine – of all things! – and then by the cock of Benn Beckman's gun against Kizaru's head. In the end, their new recruit saved them, pushing the Tang to its limits to escape first the ice, and then the lasers that looked to puncture the metal protecting them from the pressure of the deep sea. It would only have taken a single scratch from one laser to breach their hull, a fact those of the crew not involved in the surgeries were all too aware of as they watched the never-ending light show outside the port holes.

They'd infiltrated Marineford, of all places, to save a rival captain. Nor was it just any captain, but another Supernova, with a higher bounty than Law's and the recklessness to punch out a tenryubito. That was concerning enough in its own right, but then Law dropped the final bombshell on them.

It had been a whim.

Trafalgar Law did not do whims. Trafalgar Law did strategies wrapped up in plots and schemes with a final dose of contingency plans at least as detailed as the original, if not more so.

What was it, they wondered on Amazon Lily as they shot glances over to their captain, still clutching that straw hat, about Monkey D. Luffy that had their paranoid captain throwing caution to the wind to save him?

More importantly, what did that mean for them?

It was almost a relief, two weeks later, when Law vetoed any suggestions of advancing into the New World, citing that it was better to let the other crews destroy each other rather than get involved themselves. Their captain was back, schemes, plots and tactics in place as if they'd never left.

The damage Monkey D. Luffy had inflicted upon their poor infirmary was an unwelcome reminder otherwise.

If even Law himself can't give a solid reason why he saved Luffy, what hope does anyone else have of justifying it? Certainly not the poor crew that got dragged into the middle of a warzone way over their heads...

Thanks for reading!
Tsari