The first Island they visited in the Grand Line was currently experiencing a slight crisis. There had been poachers in the area, killing off large game animals and some of the local children were missing. While two of the children had been found fairly quickly, there was still a boy who was unaccounted for. Mihar, Aggie, Ace and Rina had agreed to help the locals with the search for the boy, with Mihar and Rina rigging up flare guns for all of the pirates to carry on them. If they located the child but needed back up they were to send up the flare.

Whomever was close to the flare location, local with confidence in their own skills, or Spade Pirate would respond. During this discussion as the flare guns were passed around to the four Spade Pirates assisting with the search, the other members of the crew all noticed a bit of tension between Ace and Rina. While she could've cut the tension with a heated blade, she paid it no mind at the moment. Right now, finding this missing child was the priority and she'd be lying if she tried to claim she wasn't taking a child missing personal.

Within her group were the boy's aunt, and three volunteers, including a teenager. While she wasn't thrilled about a teenager searching with them, she hardly had room to talk as she knew she resembled a teenage girl herself. It was roughly an hour into her searching with them that a familiar sensation came over her. She flicked the air in front of the four villagers, sending them flying back before a hollow's arm barreled through where the humans had been standing a mere second ago. Rina jumped straight up, effectively dodging the hollow's attack but now had a new concern. Maybe the kid wasn't kidnapped by humans, but had become this monster's food. The thought of that was enough to boil her blood.

She landed on her feet a fair bit away from where she had been standing. 'This is bad! If I use the flare gun, and someone other than Ace responds—I'd have a lot of explaining to do and there's no real guarantee that they'd keep that secret to themself! If I engage it here in front of these villagers, they'll think I've lost my mind, fighting the air. Or worse, they could end up this things next meal,' she quickly realized.

However she caught sight of the teen's face and recognized the expression. He could see something there.

Trying to gain his attention she called out, "Hey, you okay?"

"What is that thing? It's huge," the teenager demanded. Rina followed his gaze. She quickly replied, "it's a long story—wait—you can see it? I mean, clearly? Can you see it clearly?"

He shook his head from side to side and answered, "Just the outline—It's bigger than anything I've ever seen. Where'd it come from? It isn't native to this place!"

Rina quickly moved in front of the teenager, her blade drawn and deflected another swipe from the hollow while thinking to herself, 'actually kid—they're native everywhere. You just haven't been able to see them before. That alone tells me all I need to know—and I'm sorry you experienced that.'

He looked to her and said, "Hey, that flare gun you were given—use it!"

"It wouldn't be good enough," Rina objected.

The teenager was now up on his knees as he asked, "Why not?! This thing's huge there's no way you can beat it on your own!"

'Joke's on you kid. I'm the only one here who can beat it,' Rina thought to himself. The Aunt slowly came to and spotted the creature trying to attack the teen villager with Rina using her sword to block it. She looked to the other adult that was closest to her, a man with greying hair and grabbed him under his arms, dragging him back away from the path of the creature. The teenager followed suit doing the same with the younger man who had been with them and began retreating back into the village.

Rina's eyes narrowed at the hollow in front of her, which had a lion's head and claws as well as a lion's tail, but had the torso of a seal. It was certainly one of the stranger looking hollows she'd seen in her career. She extended her pointer finger at the hollow and called out, "byakurai."

Ace and the other Spade pirates ran over to help the villagers as they returned out of the forest, a woman in the center of the group fawning over a small child. As soon as he was within shouting range he yelled out, "where's Rina?"

"She's back in there. I don't know what it was. Some kind of weird animal, It was heavily camoflagued," the woman replied, to the rest she seemed to be rambling, but Ace had an idea of what was going on.

He called to the crew to stay in the villagers as he charged ahead from where the woman and teenager had emerged.

The day that they'd entered the Grand Line, he had confronted her about the oddities he'd noticed about her and a lot of things began to click. Of course she didn't know about Berries being currency. Where she was from the currency was Kan, in another world she'd gone to it was called Ryo, in yet another place it was called Jewels. In a living world adjacent to her home world it was called various things depending on which country you were in!

No wonder she'd thought he'd been talking about fruit that day. Then there was her knowing a lot about medicinal herbs and remedies, claiming to not know much about surgery yet if any of the crew had any kind of ailment or injury, she could heal it but the crew member had no recall of how she had healed it. She had revealed to him that she put them to sleep so they wouldn't see her using a basic healing technique from her world.

He felt like his legs were moving on their own now. He could see something coming into view that looked like it belonged in a horror book. At first he thought it was a giant lion, like the large wild cats he used to hunt as a kid, until he saw the creature's torso and its face was completely white. As it stood on its hind quarters, he saw a massive hole through the upper torso and realized what it was.

'It's a hollow! I might not even be able to help,' he inwardly screamed in anguish. Rina was fighting this thing and all he could do was watch. He wasn't sure his flames could touch this massive crime against nature.

The lion swiped at Rina again, its claws out she swung her blade and sliced through the massive paw. She then seemed to be bouncing around a fair bit. Then he saw her moving in for an attack, the hollow seemed to catch on as well and swung at her, managing to scratch her left arm. Ace's hands began to glow green; he held his open palms out towards the hollow causing the green orbs to float near it then they exploded when they were close to the hollow.

The attack caused the hollow to turn its attention onto him, which Rina took advange of slicing the hollow through its head, splitting the mask in half. She landed and knelt on the ground. Ace quickly went over to her, moving to take his shirt off.

As soon as Rina caught sight of this, she exclaimed, "What the hell?!"

"What? We've gotta get pressure on that wound," he reasoned as he went to use his shirt to compress the injury. She moved her arm away and stated, "I appreciate the gesture. But it isn't necessary."

Her hand began to glow green, and he looked on as the bleeding slowed, then stopped. She used the hem of her own button up shirt to wipe the blood off her arm showing there was nothing left but a very light scar. She grinned and stated, "that's the field medic training I have."

"Whoa," he remarked in astonishment. He slipped his shirt back on and looked to her before he began apologizing, then recognized she'd done the same. The they exchanged glances then erupted into laughter.