Paint

Characters: Shachi, Law, Penguin, Bepo. Rating: K. Warnings: None.

Shachi picked at his new boiler suit, admiring the way it was tailored to actually fit him at long last, after years of self-tailoring attempts that never quite rested on his shoulders properly. The greatest point of pride was, of course, the yellow depiction of their jolly roger emblazoned over his heart, and if he craned his neck, he could see some of its large counterpart on his back.

Beside him, Penguin was similarly fascinated with his new attire, running his fingers over the flawless stitches comprising the emblem with a smile on his face. Bepo, too, was delighted with his, a vibrant orange because the pale shades would blend in with his fur too much, or so he'd argued. Law had shrugged and let him do as he pleased.

The captain himself had found himself a gaudy yellow hoodie, which he'd insisted the tailor add the emblem to as well. Their jolly roger grinned at them from where it was plastered all over his front. Now that Doflamingo was gone from North Blue, safely entrenched in the Grand Line and clearly uninterested in returning to his roots, the time for hiding was over. Shachi found it amusing how blatant Law was willing to be as soon as he had the chance, not that he didn't understand it. Hiding who he was for the past six years had no doubt been exhausting, and while they had no intention of gaining bounties quite so early in their lives, bounties weren't dependant on their appearance. As long as their criminal acts couldn't be traced to them, they'd be just fine.

His line of sight drifted over to their faithful submarine, still the same nondescript grey she had been when they'd acquired her three years earlier, and his smile slipped into a thoughtful frown.

"Something wrong?" Law asked him immediately. Shachi hadn't realised he'd been watching him and jumped.

"N-no," he stuttered, caught by surprise. Law looked utterly unconvinced. "I was just thinking, if we're all getting new clothes now we're not in hiding, doesn't the Tang look a little left out?"

Law turned to eye the submarine instead, resting a curled finger on his lower lip thoughtfully. Shachi followed his gaze to look at the Polar Tang once again, the only clue she was a pirate vessel the small black flag hanging limply from the mast in the still air.

"You're right," he said after a few moments, his mouth curling back into the smirk Shachi knew all too well. Law had an idea. Part of him almost regretted speaking up, wondering what sort of makeover he'd condemned the poor ship to, but looking at her forlorn grey again, he couldn't quite bring himself too. Like them, the Polar Tang no longer needed to hide, so why should they keep her that overcast colour?

"Get her into a dry dock," Law ordered, turning to walk back into the town. "Bepo, you're with me." Shachi shared a look with Penguin, who shrugged. Well, it was a peaceful enough port town. No-one had called the Marines on them yet, and as long as they kept their head down and paid their way legally, no-one should.

Bartering with the dockyard for the use of a dry dock for long enough to first paint the Tang, then keep her until she was dry enough to return to the sea, was a painful chunk of their savings, but it would be worth it in the long run. They'd need to tread the dubious side of the law in a few islands' time to stock their funds up again, but that was a concern for the future.

Law and Bepo joined them an hour after they got her settled, the poor Mink carrying more barrels of paint than Shachi thought possible for one person. Law himself was carrying a large black fabric, and some smaller pots. They'd also enlisted the help of what Shachi presumed was the merchant himself to bring the rest of the paint, and some weird contraption that was probably supposed to help them apply it.

"That's a ship you don't see every day," the merchant said appreciatively. Law merely waved him away with some extra coins. Payment, or a bribe of silence. Shachi didn't care enough to ask which. Even if he had, he was quickly distracted when he saw the paint.

Bright yellow. Well, it matched Law's new gaudy hoodie, he supposed. The younger teen was definitely taking the fact that they weren't in hiding any more as a challenge to see how obnoxiously obvious they could be instead. It was a clear overcompensation, but Shachi wasn't going to call him out on it. Besides, yellow was a happy colour. It matched the grin on their jolly roger just fine.

"Let's get started," Law declared, picking up the weird contraption and pointing it at the Polar Tang. It had already been loaded with the first batch of paint, as the first swathes of yellow cut through the grey. "We'll leave the area below the sailing waterline grey, so we can leave sooner." It made sense, and Shachi dove for one of the other nozzles to join in the redecorating.

It was a total mess. Somehow the Tang herself looked neat even as her colour changed, but the same could not be said for the four teenagers wielding the paint. It didn't show up that well on Law's hoodie, being a matching colour, but he'd removed his hat after the first spray had caught it, a mistake on Penguin's behalf that had been revenged by an accidental spray of his own hat. Shachi had jumped the gun and preemptively removed his own before he too gained a yellow hat.

The result was that all four of them now looked like they'd had bad dye jobs, with the yellow paint sticking to and completely overpowering their original hair colours. Their uniforms had suffered a similar fate, and Shachi could only see out of one lens of his shades. The other had been entirely blotted out by paint flicked his way by Penguin in retaliation after he'd dumped the remains of an almost-empty pot over his head.

Bepo hadn't escaped the carnage either, although he'd made a good attempt by working on the other side of the Polar Tang to his human nakama (Law could pretend to be as serious as he wanted, he was still flinging just as much paint around as the other two with that self-satisfied smirk on his face). As a result, he was only half-yellow, rather than mostly.

The Polar Tang was a fair-sized vessel, and with two coats required before they were satisfied she was completely transformed it took the better part of a week for the four of them to finish the base colour. Shachi and Penguin had been eyeing the black and red paint suspiciously during refills, wondering what it was for, but they'd never been used.

"You'll see," was Law's cryptic answer when they asked, and they huffed before returning to their work.

Finally, while they were waiting for the Tang to dry enough to paint over again, Law brought out the huge black fabric he'd bought alongside the paint. Unfurling it, he revealed that it was a sail, the exact size and style of their current white one. The mystery of the red paint was partially solved when he mimicked their flag, painting on a large version of their jolly roger.

It transpired that he'd had a similar plan for the sides of the Polar Tang, and no-one had any complaints as he finally deemed the paint dry enough to overlay it with the black outline and red fill for their jolly roger, similar barring colour to the designs on their new boiler suits, which were definitely in need of a deep clean by the time they were finally done.

"Much better," Law admired, two weeks after they'd started their project. They'd just lowered her back into the water, and as she bobbed on the slight waves, the flag flying boldly in the slight breeze present, Shachi couldn't help but agree.

The Polar Tang looked much happier now; their proud fifth nakama.

Can't leave the Polar Tang out of the makeover now, can we? Also all that ridiculously bright yellow has to be overcompensation for having to be invisible for so many years (White Lead Poisoning, then Doflamingo). Although I also have another theory about the yellow, which I'll be bringing in later when I get the chance.

The DEATH letters only appeared after Law got his tattoos and epithet.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari