From The Sea - Dive rgence Chapter 16: Adrift, an one piece fanfic

This chapter… got ahead of me again.

The jokes got ahead of me again.

Nothing is my fault.

To the same guest as before: Elynna. Badass. Yes. Now I just have to be able to write the scenes well enough to translate the pure essence of badass-itude in my head. That particular mystery will be revealed bit by bit, but feel free to throw your theories at me haha.

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, so anything that you see in this fic and that you can recognise as belonging to One Piece is not mine. If I did own it, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction. Duh. Also, I don't own the picture.

Part One - Dive|rgence

FIFTEEN

Sometimes, when I felt

That everything was moving too fast,

And that I was heading

Nowhere

I would close my eyes,

and wonder

Would it really be so bad to let everything fade away for just a bit?

(I didn't mean for anything I can love to be there when I opened them)

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

When Elynna takes a look at the clock seventeen minutes and twenty-nine seconds later, she decides that her bout of self-pity has lasted long enough, and stuffs everything back inside, deep enough that she can't hear any of the voices she misses so much.

Then she closes the window (closes the door on all the memories that feel too soft for the person she has become -they would hate the violence lapping at the feet of that person), stands up, slaps herself hard enough to distract her mind from the stinging in her eyes and the burning in her chest, and walks out to help her crewmates.

Without the walls of her cabin to mute it, the noise is so loud that it feels like a physical blow that slams her back into the door.

The sea is roaring, the wind is howling, and the clouds are rolling with the harsh battering of sheets of prickling raindrops, crackling with the thunder that only gives enough light to paint everything in shades of nights instead of the afternoon it is.

It's violent and dark in a mad, chaotic way, like the sea and the sky are simultaneously trying to devour themselves and each other.

It's scary.

But it's beautiful, too, with so much strength, so much pride behind each crashing wave and each bolt of thunder that slices through the air that no one, no matter how powerful, can seem to tame it, to grasp it within their fists.

Her blood screeches in her ears, and she can't say whether it's fear or awe or envy.

(Because if she was that powerful,

no one

would mess with her and cause her so much pain.

But even though that proverb about how power comes with responsibility sounds like total bullshit for her after so much time reading about politicians

the one saying that power always comes with a price seems a lot more believable.

She can give a bit of sweat and a bit of innocence

but she doesn't know if she'll ever have enough grit in her to pay the kind of price it takes to have that much power.)

The thumping of her crewmates' feet against the deck and their invisible shouts in the dark make her blink back to the situation at hand, and she gets to her feet to find Nami and ask her how she can help.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

They spend at least a good half-an-hour running around to make sure that the Merry isn't damaged or brought away from its path before Elynna hears loud words chopped into something incomprehensible by the rain, and carefully makes her way to where Luffy and Nami are.

"-lease get down from there?"

Luffy, hanging upside down from the ship's figurehead, sticks his tongue out towards his navigator.

"No! It's my special seat, you can't have it!"

Nami growls, looking very much ready to climb her Captain's special seat, if only to annoy him –and bonk him on the head.

"She's just worried you're going to fall and die a dumb death! At least try to have a more secure grip when you do that, Sea King!" Elynna shouts over the tempest as she stops next to her roommate and glues herself to her side in an attempt to share a bit of warmth, because her teeth are starting to clink against each other like when she spends too much time in the sea.

(She loves the rain partly because the cold that comes with it in her country and sinks into her bones until it's a part of her helps to distract her from the cold that is already inside

-the cold that sometimes she can't fight anymore,

the cold that sometimes she doesn't want to fight anymore-

The cold of the rain, she's starting to discover, works just as well when the pain is still fresh,

when instead of a swamp waiting patiently for every part of her to drown within it,

–willingly-

it's bubbling and hot and scorching and barely kept at bay by the layers of cold lace sewn by the bruises the rain peppers across her skin.)

"Oh, ok!" The rubber boy grins as he extends his legs to wrap them several times around the neck of the smiling sheep.

Nami huffs with a dramatic roll of her eyes hidden by the lack of light, and after a few minutes of staring at the map in her hands and muttering to herself, asks Elynna to bring everyone to the kitchen.

"Guys, I think the entrance of the Grand Line is a mountain." She announces as soon as they're all sitting at the table, her voice a bit hoarse with the cold and how loud she had to speak to be heard over the raging elements.

Luffy, who was biting on the edge of the glass of hot cocoa Sanji prepared, stops giggling and staring at the weird shapes drawn by the steam of his breath to blink at his navigator.

Leaning against the counter, the somehow still elegant cook clamps his mouth shut just in time to avoid losing his cigarette as the tangerine-haired thief goes on to explain that according to the map, there's a waterway going up this side of the Red Line.

Usopp, whose head tilted so far during her explanation that Elynna was seriously starting to wonder whether it would fall, suddenly raises a hand to interrupt Nami.

"Wait a minute! Even if there is a waterway, how are we even supposed to take it?! There's no way a ship can climb a current!"

"But that's what the map says."

"Whatever Nami-san says can't be wrong!" Sanji inserts, and Elynna cocks her head as she watches him pensively, before turning to Zoro when the swordsman opens his mouth.

"You stole this map from Buggy. How much can you really trust what it says?"

"So we're gonna climb a mountain on a ship?! That's so coooooooool! Is it a magic mountain?!" Luffy babbles with a goofy grin, bouncing in his seat excitedly at the idea.

"How do you think we can climb it?" Elynna asks with a raised eyebrow towards their navigator.

"You think it's true?!" Usopp gapes. "I thought you liked things that make sense!"

(She stomps hard on the bitter smile struggling to conquer her lips,

and brutally strangles the mad, hysterical giggle that shakes so much in her throat it sounds like a sob

–feels like splinters of bones-

Humans kill each other because they're born under a different piece of dyed fabric

and every person in this room should not have a beating heart –should not have a heart at all, in fact- and yet has one.

Nothing

makes sense-)

"If we can't trust our navigator for that sort of thing, then we can't trust anyone. And it's not because things don't fit the logic we grew up with that they don't fit another form of logic."

She reaches out to where her Captain is sitting on her right, and with a pointed glance at Usopp stretches the rubber boy's cheek further than any human being should be able to.

"She has a point." Zoro smirks.

"The map being a fake is a possibility," Elynna resumes with a wave of her hand at the green-haired man, "but I don't think Buggy has the subtlety to pull off that kind of thing. Or act so well, considering how much value he seemed to attach to that map."

She catches the finger a grumpy Luffy is about to poke between her ribs and lets go of his cheek, turning back to her roommate.

Nami doesn't have the time to explain anything, however, because just then Usopp points out that they've suddenly come out of the storm while they were all talking, prompting everyone to run out and check that yes, they're suddenly drifting under a blue sky and plump, fluffy white clouds.

"Crap!" Nami hisses between her teeth as she grips the balcony.

"Is that the-"

She nods tersely at Elynna's question before yelling at the boys to start rowing back towards the storm.

"Uh? Why would you want to go back there?"

"Why would you want to row back there?"

Seeing that the pretty thief is about to launch into the long explanation of someone who loves and knows a lot about navigation, Elynna cuts her off.

"Because this is the Calm Belt, which means we have two problems: there's literally no wind to sail with, and this is a den for Sea Kings! So when your navigator tells you to row, you fucking row!"

Usopp is particularly quick to run to an oar, but even the three other reckless dumbasses with no sense of danger don't seem keen to see what a Sea King looks like from up-close.

Except they still end up doing just that, because at some point the boys realise that they don't feel any resistance when rowing.

Because the ship is on the muzzle of a Sea King.

A big Sea King.

Who eventually launches them back into the storm like a cannonball when he freaking sneezes.

They all sit there and stare vacantly into the space where the Sea King's eyes were a few seconds before.

"Ann?" Luffy eventually calls out dreamily.

From where she collapsed on the deck clutching at the main mast, Elynna whimpers out something that is too warbled to really sound like a 'yes', because she's busy trying to convince her heart that jumping out of her ribcage is a very, very bad idea.

Retrospectively, the animal they inadvertently got on was one of the cutest of the bunch, but right now she's mainly remembering how it was so huge compared to them that it didn't even notice them, could kill them without any intention –good or bad- because they're just too small and utterly inconsequential.

She always tries to avoid stepping on insects when she walks around or is trying to chase them out of her room, but at that moment she realises how she must look in their eyes, and feels a certain affinity with them that she never felt before.

"Since you gave me their name, you think I'll be able to throw a ship in the air one day?"

There's a silence, and then suddenly they're all laughing, the sound a bit choppy with the high edge of panic and helplessness they try to evacuate.

When they finally calm down, they collectively agree that there will always be at least one of them on the deck to make sure that they're not drifting back to the Calm Belt -or a similarly dangerous situation in the Grand Line.

Well, collectively, but without Usopp, who has yet to wake up from fainting at the sight of the pack of sea monsters.

By the time he opens bleary, glassy eyes, Nami has figured out how the Reverse Mountain works, and that they only have to worry about steering the ship properly.

"Even that is probably not going to be easy." Sanji warns them, instinctively reaching for a cigarette before he realises that he'll never be able to light it in this kind of weather. "I've heard some things from the old geezer, one of them being that half of the people who head for the Grand Line die before even reaching it. I don't know more than that, though."

"Uhhh, guys?"

They turn to look at Usopp.

"Is that the Red Line? Cause it's freaking huge!"

That's when they realise that the mass of darkness in front of them is a bit more red than the rest, and isn't actually the extension of the stormy clouds above their own heads, but a mountain.

A huge-ass one.

As in, a wall of dark red stone reaching above the clouds and seeming to dive just as deep beneath the sea.

A wall Elynna can see no end to on either side.

A wall so huge that it seems impossible even for the raging elements that sweep their ship this way and that way like a wisp of straw to even scratch at it.

But then she realises that the Red Line has probably been there for centuries. So it's more than likely that it has been considerably worn down by the sea already.

Her brain just can't compute the thought.

It doesn't seem possible for the wall to be any taller, longer or thicker than it already is -like if it was the case it would create its own gravitational field and eventually implode and collapse on itself.

"I thought it would be a lighter red." She blurts out.

"Uh?" Usopp says next to her, still gaping at the sight.

"Yeah, I mean now it looks like dried blood. But since Rain said that the current will crush us against the mountain if we fuck up with the steering, maybe it's just the blood of all those who died-"

She yelps as she's shoved to the side, and stumbles clumsily on the slippery deck for a moment before she latches onto Zoro's thick biceps, leaning all her weight on the man while she regains her balance, though he barely seems to notice.

She glares at Usopp, who looks away while whistling a merry tune that sounds suspiciously like you were asking for it.

Sanji kicks the sharpshooter all the way into the kitchen before she has the time to retaliate, so she lets it go with a huff.

While the cook joins Usopp to move the rudder in the directions Luffy yells at them from his favourite seat based on Nami's estimations, Elynna and Zoro stand to the side in case their help is needed.

Everything goes peachy.

That is, until Sanji and Usopp try moving the rudder to the right and it fucking breaks.

Despite the tempest still going on around them, everything suddenly seems strangely silent as their eyes bounce between the now useless piece of wood and the watergate the Merry is going to promptly crash into is they don't do someth-

Luffy jumps off the ship and inflates himself to serve as a buffer.

Throat too raw to yell over the sound of rushing water and rumbling skies, Elynna motions at Zoro to grab Luffy's ankle so that he won't fall once the pressure keeping him in the air will let off.

But when it does, the momentum still sends the rubber boy flying with the air being suddenly expelled from his body, his leg extending to accommodate the movement, and the swordsman curses loudly as it makes him slip on the wet deck until he hits the railing.

With a few choice words of her own, Elynna follows him and curls both arms around his waist while placing a foot against the railing to secure his position while he pulls their Captain back onto the Merry.

He pulls a bit too hard, though, and they end up falling into a pile of three people and their confused limbs, the hysterical and tangled screams of their crew mates telling them that they're still alive and officially entering Grand Line.

Eventually, the three of them manage to identify whose hand belongs to whom and disentangle themselves, Luffy immediately jumping to his feet to run back to his special seat while Zoro sits up and Elynna just stays lying there, letting the rain batter her face and soothe the dry burning of her eyes, washing away the sound of her breaking self and the scent of her grief.

"Elynna, look at this!"

Laughter is skimming across Usopp's gleeful scream, bouncing in her ears with sparkles of awe like an exploding star, and almost unconsciously she finds herself sitting up and opening her eyes.

The world is so loud (a greeting) that she can't hear her mind think or her heart bleed, and she doesn't mind that at all.

She stumbles to her feet as the Merry keeps going up up up.

The air is so pure and cold (untouched) it burns through her, and she can't smell anything except the wind that is still whipping and clawing at her with numbing fingers like a long winter.

Now that they're above the clouds and the storms, the red of the rocky walls running on both sides of them is lighter, the ridges carved by eternal water making it look like sculpted coral.

The water below them is so blue it might as well be a ribbon of sky fallen from above their heads.

(and the roof of the world feels so close she can almost touch it)

The ship is weightless for a moment as they reach the fountain at the top of the mountain, and it's only when a frozen drop of sea almost bounces in her eye that Elynna realises her eyes are opened so wide in an attempt to capture everything she's seeing that they hurt.

(as if there's too much beauty around for her body to handle)

In that moment, she understands better why some people spend their whole lives chasing the thrill and the beauty around the world, trying vainly to chain the sights and the feelings inside of them even though their memory can never do them justice.

In that moment, she remembers something she forgets most of the time, buried under all the anxieties about the present and the resignation about the future, buried under the crass and the tears that seem to always, always be there every time she dares to stop hiding in herself and look around.

The world can be beautiful.

(When humans aren't in it, that cynical, hopeless part of her sneers balefully.

It's a big part of her.)

Abruptly tearing her away from her trance, Nami slings an arm over her shoulders, soon joined by an ecstatic Usopp, who jumps down from the main mast he climbed for a better view and throws his own arm around her waist while hugging Sanji to his other side.

And even though the parody of a dance they're doing makes her seriously consider jumping off the ship to spare herself the embarrassment, even though she's too exhausted to laugh (because the stitches holding her pieces are a bit too loose to risk that much movement), she finds herself chuckling and stumbling along with them obligingly, mumbling a what the fuck, guys that is too fond and rippling with too much amusement to really be annoyed.

(They are as fresh as the sight around them, and burning with as much colour and vitality and life.

Their energy and laughter is whipped around by the playful wind until it curls around her ears and the waves of her hair,

and she cradles them carefully to fold it all around the broken part of her heart whose shards are still poking at her skin and her lungs.)

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

They're hurtling down the mountain and trying to maintain their balance when Elynna first hears the sound.

It sounds like someone begging, hopeless that their wish will ever be heard but still putting everything they can give and then some more into their cry, because the only other alternative is going mad.

She stops smiling.

"Did you guys hear something?" Zoro yells from where he's standing next to Luffy at the bow.

"It's probably the wind!" Nami answers just as loudly. "The rock formations are pretty weird around here!"

Elynna still turns to Usopp, who has the best eyesight (and goggles) in their group.

(It may be just the wind

it may be just her being unable to control herself properly for more than five minutes

But her hands can't stop shaking-)

"Wait, Zoro is right!" Usopp shouts as he adjusts his goggles. "There's something in front of us!"

"It looks like a mountain!" Sanji calls out from the crow's nest.

"What? There shouldn't be anyth-"

"No, it's not a mountain!" The sharpshooter cuts Nami off, and suddenly his voice is several octaves higher than it was before. "It's a whale!"

While her cre mates start screaming all over each other about whether or not fighting the whale will do any good, Elynna just stands there, her jaw slack at the sigh of what amounts to two entirely black and windowless Empire State Buildings on top of each other.

When you're standing at the door and looking up at the top.

Except it has teeth and it moves.

Yeah, no.

Her brain just can't do this.

She barely feels her knees hitting the deck, unable to tear her eyes away from the mass of dark, smooth skin in front of her, vaguely aware that Zoro passes her by to try and move the broken rudder and stir the ship to the side.

Her brain is blank, unable to come up with anything that might save them from dying at the hands (fins?) of something so huge it doesn't even need to be aware of their existence to kill them.

The ship doesn't change its course, and she thinks that at least she'll die in a way that is probably original enough to be in the Guiness Book.

(and not too painful, she hopes, because she wasn't really lying when she said it was a dream of hers)

The booming sound of the cannon stops the ship abruptly, and kick starts her brain back into activity.

She blinks several times, sounds and sights and smells rushing back to her like a basketball in the face, and finds Nami in the same position as her, tears leaking from her eyes due to the shock and grasping at her chest just in case her heart tries to jump out of it.

The navigator yelps when the Merry's broken figurehead flips over her head and lands near her feet.

Her face screws up like a child about to wail, and she moans something about going home, even as Zoro keeps yelling at Usopp and Sanji to row as fast as they can and get them away from the whale while it's busy realising it just got hit point-blank with a cannonball –or not realising anything.

Suddenly Elynna wants to cry too.

Until she looks up to see Luffy coming from downstairs with an arm already wheeling through the air.

He walks past her, and before she can consciously acknowledge her train of thought she's jumping on his shoulders, squeezing his arms into immobility in the bend of her knees and adding her weight to her momentum to send the both of them to the ground.

"Ack! What are you doing, Ann?!" He protests, voice muffled by the deck but still loud enough to attract the others' attention.

"What are you doing?" She hisses back, voice hoarse and almost a growl with all the yelling and crying she did in the last hour. "This whale is even bigger than the Sea Kings! What do you think you can do?!"

"But it broke my special sea-"

"I don't care!" She crosses his flailing arm in his back and presses down until he stops fidgeting. "You might not feel much if its tail slaps you in the face, but it would seriously injure anyone else, including us! That whale probably didn't even know we were there, let alone that it broke your seat. You want to lose your ship and your crew at the entrance of the Grand Line for a broken seat that can be fixed?!"

There's a moment of silence, and then she feels wiry muscles uncoil against her thighs, until the rubber boy slumps into the slightly damp wood beneath him.

"No. Sorry."

She releases her hold on him and gets up with a sigh so heavy it feels like she's falling face-first into the deck rather than standing up.

Tremors are still running like threads of electricity under her skin, and suddenly she's tired, tired everywhere, from the surface to the depths of her that she usually never feels but that now seem to be weighing on her like additional limbs, making her mind blurry and dull and her body clumsy and unbalanced.

"… I know you asked me to worry about everything for you, but that doesn't mean you have to always act without thinking." She whispers eventually, sluggish hand aiming to ruffle his hair and eventually poking him in the forehead instead, because even that seems to take more energy from her than what she has right now.

Luffy pouts, and the silence of their crewmates loosens its hold on the air around them.

And then the whale opens its mouth to start crying again.

Except they didn't row far enough, so they start drifting into said mouth.

Nami and Usopp latch onto each other and yell something that sounds like awsdfadkjvbf.

Luffy falls off the ship, so Zoro starts yelling too until he sees his Captain stretch himself to one of the whale's teeth and then up on its head.

Elynna stumbles, too heavy and tired to do much else, and nods tiredly in thanks at Sanji when he wraps an arm around her waist before she can actually fall, and then grabs a rope to keep them both standing.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

When she opens her eyes, she blinks.

And stares.

Because she may have been more asleep than awake in the past few minutes, but she's pretty sure that she didn't completely lose any notion of time.

So they should still be inside the whale's stomach.

So… either the entire scientific community of her world is seriously wrong about whale biology, or this is another one of this world's fucking weird oddities.

She blinks again for a longer moment, and rubs at her temples while slipping out of Sanji's frozen grasp on her.

… Would it be okay to go back to sleep and let them deal with whatever this is?

She sighs, knowing that the answer is no. She's pretty sure that's not what a First Mate is supposed to do.

Especially when the Captain isn't here.

Eventually, Sanji takes his cigarette out of his mouth, absently taps it to make the ashes fall, and puts it into his mouth again to take a long drag before he turns to Zoro.

"What do you make of this?"

"What do I make of this?" Zoro repeats, still staring at the scene in front of them.

"Yeah. What's your explanation for all of… this." He makes a vague gesture of his hand in an attempt to encompass what even those from this world apparently can't explain.

"Why are you asking me?"

"True, it's not like you often use the brain you probably have hidden under all these muscles."

"You-"

"Maybe we're dreaming?" Usopp whispers, not looking particularly aware of the fight he just stopped right before it started.

"Well, how are we all having the same dream then?" Nami questions, apparently so shocked that she somehow calmed down, like she can't freak out more than she just did.

"Maybe we're all on drugs." Elynna shrugs.

"That leads to the same question. And we don't even have drugs."

"Maybe we're all dead, and it's the afterlif- Goddamnit, Hawk, stop pushing me-"

"Stop making this kind of jokes then!"

"I'm being perfectly serious."

"That's even worse!"

"Uh, guys?"

The navigator's trembling voice makes them turn away from each other, only to come face to face with a giant squid.

Fear prompts Usopp and Nami to throw themselves into each other's arms again with similarly high-pitched screams that even Elynna's in-built translator spell can't decipher -though by now she's comfortable enough with the language that it only treads into her brain from time to time.

Her own fear stabs her feet into the floorboards, while its fists grasp her heart within her chest to squeeze it and shake it.

Both Zoro and Sanji place themselves at the bow of the ship to attack the disturbingly big animal, but before any of the slicing or kicking can be done, three harpoons pierce through the purplish skin of the creature and promptly end its life on the spot.

"I don't know about you guys, but I would kill to have five minutes without wondering if I'm going to die from a heart attack." Elynna grumbles as they watch the dead squid being dragged into the otherwise quite nice cottage that they wish is the residence of a human being at the very least.

"Me too." Usopp concurs with a raise of his still trembling hand.

"Me three." Nami follows, both arms still locked tight around his neck.

"Well we sure are more likely to get those five minutes now that this shithead of a Captain isn't here."

"Uh. That's a bad fucking omen for the future."

Behind Elynna the sharpshooter and the pirate thief let out a moan of despair, and Zoro snorts at her remark.

"Especially since Fang had the brilliant idea to buy a cursed katana this morning." She goes on, and suddenly the amusement on the swordsman's face sours into an annoyed scowl.

"Ha. I knew it was your fault, you shitty swordsman."

"Uh? I'll show you who's shitty, you-"

At that moment the squid killer steps out of his house, cutting the fight short again as they all fall silent for about five seconds.

"… Is that a flower?"

"Don't be stupid, he's obviously human." Nami scowls as she smacks Usopp's arm. "Right, Lynna?"

"Well, it's like 98% human and 2% flower, I guess?"

"Did he kill the squid just to have food, or was it to save us?" Zoro frowns with a glance at Elynna that says shut up and do your job.

She's about to open her mouth and tell him that he can just ask the man, and then lets it fall shut when she sees how aggressively the stranger is staring at them.

Everything might still feel too stale and numb for her to taste the heavy, acidic distaste she has for her own shyness when it comes to talking to strangers (especially those who don't look like they want to talk), but that doesn't mean that she suddenly feels like chatting with anyone who locks eyes with her for more than two seconds.

(She thinks that producing the sheer quantity of sounds that requires will probably rob her of the energy she needs to breathe and think.

The trade-off doesn't seem appealing.)

But Zoro would probably stare at her until she caves in and asks herself, since apparently being the First Mate also means being the spokesperson of the crew when the Captain isn't around.

So she keeps her mouth shut and watches as the man walks slowly, still staring at them like he's trying to curse them all into becoming some kind of insect.

Then he sits down in his sun chair, and opens his newspaper.

"At least say something!" Sanji barks, obviously upset that he was psyching himself up for nothing.

Her lips twitch, and she crosses her arms and decides to keep her mouth shut just a little longer, because this is fucking hilarious.

The man lowers his newspaper at the cook's shout and stares at them again, still silent.

"Y-You're looking for a fight?! Because you're gonna have one! And I'll have you know that we have a cannon!" Usopp calls out, fortunately far enough that his shaking knees probably can't be seen.

The man keeps staring.

"Don't, or someone might end up dead." He eventually says flippantly, still trying to dig a hole through them with just his eyes.

"Oh yeah?" Sanji grits out. "And who might that be?"

"Me, of course."

Elynna carefully bites down on her lips and covers them with one hand to keep the laughter that is starting to bubble up beneath the dull, heavy flatness of her exhaustion.

"Hey, old man. Mind telling us who you are and what this place is?" Zoro asks, taking Sanji's place while the cook is busy trying not to burst a vein.

The man stares.

Again.

"Isn't it common courtesy to introduce yourself before asking others to do the same?"

"Ah, yeah. My bad."

And just when the swordsman opens his mouth to give his name, the older man cuts him off to give his own, as well as a string of details that none of them actually need -or want- to know.

"You guys won't mind if I slice him up, will you?"

That's when Elynna bursts out laughing, earning her a glare from the swordsman.

"Stop laughing, damnit!"

"You boys should learn a bit from that girl." The man who called himself Crocus comments from his sun chair. "Your blood pressure will become problematic if you can't even appreciate a good running gag."

Still laughing so hard that she's gasping for breath, Elynna slaps Zoro in the shoulder.

"Nah, please don't." She heaves. "Your reactions are what makes it funny, really."

She starts laughing even harder until she has to crouch down, hand sliding down Zoro's arm until she's grasping at his wrist to keep herself somewhat upright.

The swordsman growls, and looks away, studiously ignoring her mirth and already plotting how he can take his revenge after they all get out of this whale's stomach that doesn't look like one.

Usopp throws an unimpressed glance at the mess of sniggers in front of him, before looking back at the lighthouse keeper.

"Um, my name is Usopp." He introduces himself just to be sure. "Are we really in the whale's stomach?"

"What do you think this looks like? The stomach of a mouse?"

"It doesn't look like a stomach at all." The sharpshooter grumbles under his breath.

"That's not the problem here!" Nami frowns at him. "We have to get out of here quick, because whether it's a mouse or a whale's stomach, it still means we're floating on stomach acid right now, and the Merry won't be able to take it for much longer!"

"If you're looking for an exit, it's right over there." The old man-flower informs them with a finger pointed towards the gates of steel none of them saw up till then.

"Oh, thanks mister." Elynna says politely as she gets to her feet.

"Why aren't you reacting more?! There's a door in a whale's body, and its stomach was painted on to look like a sky! A. Goddamn. Sky!"

"It's my hobby." The lighthouse keeper mentions without looking up from his newspaper.

"Why are you reacting this much?" The First Mate returns with a raised eyebrow at the sharpshooter. "This is the Grand Line. We're going to see stuff like that every day, or maybe even weirder."

"You didn't look so calm before."

"Well, what we saw before could've gotten us killed."

"Uh. Fair enough."

"Let's just get out of here." Zoro huffs with a roll of his eyes.

Obviously, that's where things go wrong again as the whale's digestive juice starts behaving like the sea during a storm.

They all stumble and roll around as the ship almost capsizes, cursing left and right as they knock into each other and various parts of the ship.

"Hey! What's going on here! Give us an explanation!" Usopp shouts at the old man, who sighs.

"This whale has started bashing his head against the Red Line again."

Elynna remembers the lines of scarred tissue crisscrossing the skin of the whale's forehead like a constant cry, almost louder than its bellowing.

She remembers how the hand she bit down on in Giuren kept aching and wailing at her for at least two weeks, remembers the gouges she dug into her arms while she fell apart silently in her cabin before she hid them under her sleeves when she went out again just two hours ago.

She clamps her mouth shut, and severs the swear words still inside her throat with her teeth, getting up to help Sanji and Zoro row the ship towards the exit, since there's no wind.

It takes only a few minutes for whatever energy her bout of laughter weaved through the structure of her body to fray into nothing, at which point a chorus of screams alerts them all to the apparition of Luffy and two other weirdos, who all fall from a small door next to the one they're trying to reach.

"Ah, guys! Help me out!"

"Help yourself out, you idiot!" She stops rowing to yell back. "You can stretch!"

"Oh, right!"

She just has the time to think ohfuck when she sees his hand grip the railing next to her before the rest of his body slams into her and they both crash into the deck.

She coughs out the air that got stuck in her throat after the shock expelled it from her lungs like a bullet, and wraps her arms around her Captain firmly, fingers absently roaming to check that there's no wound on his body.

"We got worried, you idiot."

"Shishishi! I'm glad you guys are alright too!" He giggles into her neck, and if she wasn't this tired she would squeal at the tickling sensation.

When they both sit up, the acidic sea the Merry is floating on has become still again, and Sanji is dripping digestive juice all over the floor and smiling a stupidly enamoured grin at the female weirdo he brought back –along with the male one.

Elynna blinks, eyes narrowing as she realises that she knows the girl.

She's pretty sure her sister showed her a blue-haired girl when she was passing by the family's TV –and then proceeded to explain a lot more than she thought she would ever need.

So she remembers that the girl is supposed to be the Princess of a country which has not seen rain in a long, long time. She looks nothing like a girl who lived her whole life in a hot desert, but considering that they're currently inside a whale's stomach, it's not too hard to shrug off that particular detail.

And while the ins and outs of who exactly caused the problem and why are blurry, her attention was good enough at the time for her to remember a handful of other faces and names.

Besides, she's read enough newspapers to be pretty sure that the country in question is Alabasta, especially since one of the faces and names in question appears almost systematically when any article talks about that particular Kingdom.

She allows herself another sigh, because she just knows that this is going to be the biggest mess they have stepped into yet –and that the following ones will be at least on the same scale.

The risk-your-life-to-win-this-or-an-entire-population-will-drop-dead scale.

(Is there still time for her to quit?

No.

Because now she loves them too much,

and she's too scared to leave them.

She knows that.

But she wishes being by the main character's side didn't imply having to save everyone she comes across.

She can't break her heart in enough pieces to give one to every living being in the world, can't extend more than respect and politeness

and if she could care she thinks she'd be more likely to throw herself out of the first window that is high enough to spare herself the sorrow it would bring

than to try and carry others' lives on her shoulders, when sometimes they aren't even solid enough to carry the weight of the choices she makes for herself without shaking.)

"So. Who are you guys really?" Nami asks, arms crossed and foot tapping against the deck as she stares down the two strangers.

They hardly pay her any attention, choosing to point their weapons towards the inner walls of the whale's stomach.

Their first shots are stopped by the lighthouse keeper who jumps in the way, and somehow comes out of the resulting cloud of smoke with only minor burns.

It makes Elynna more suspicious than anything else, because she's pretty sure that even in this world not everyone can come out relatively unscathed from an encounter with a cannonball, especially without a Devil Fruit.

Which means that the guy is hardly a run-of-the-mill lighthouse keeper -not that she cares as long as he's not an enemy.

Before the duo can fire another round –and start laughing in that ridiculously posh way of theirs, Luffy knocks out the both of them, leading the old man to invite them to bring the two 'rogues' to his own ship-island.

But then he starts talking, and Elynna lets herself flop backwards on her back, throwing an arm over her face, because the story he tells about Laboon resonates a bit too painfully in her memories, tearing off the band-aid she slapped over her amputated heart all at once –too fast for her to brace herself for it.

(The lines she clawed into her arms earlier sting harder,

until they sound like the screams of all those she left behind.

In that moment, she finds herself hoping that her family at least stopped loving her after all this time she spent unable to reach through the silent disconnection she felt.

It'd be better for them

just like it would've been better if she was good enough to make the Straw-Hat Pirates tolerate her at most.

That would make her feel like less of a back-stabbing parasite every time she thinks about home and they're not in the picture

would make her think less of the pain they will maybe feel if one day she leaves them.

She tried

but eventually, the nicknames that were supposed to make them less real started to taste like the hot cocoa with honey her parents used to make for her and her sister when they were sick.

Because she wasn't hard-working enough to keep pushing them away

wasn't resilient enough to keep ignoring the emptiness that teased and threatened its way along the edge of her nerves when their warmth was just there

wasn't strong enough to keep herself together and function and find a way home all on her own.)

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

When she finally lets the armour of her arm fall away and looks at the world again, the real sky is back, the two whale hunters have been thrown out of the ship, most of her crewmates are sitting at Crocus' table near where the Merry is docked-

And her Captain looks like he's about to break their fucking mast.

"Sea King."

He turns around, arms still wrapped around the mast.

"Uh?"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna fight Laboon."

Slowly, she raises an eyebrow.

"And how is our main mast going to help you do that?"

"His skin is super thick, so I'm just gonna hammer it in."

She closes her eyes and sighs for a moment.

Goddamnit, she's too tired for this.

"You're not entirely wrong, but there's just one little problem… You do know that we need this mast to sail, right?"

He blinks, and shrugs.

"We can repair it."

"Yes, but first of all none of us know how to do that correctly, and even if we do repair it, it will never be the same as something unbroken."

"Uhhh… Is it a bad thing?" He asks with a tilt of his head in confusion.

She thinks about how Nami cried in her arms, and how she screamed and laughed just as loudly as the others when they were rushing down the Reverse Mountain.

"... Not necessarily. But for a ship, yes. The less damage it takes, the longer it will last."

He stares at her for a moment, then at the mast between his arms, and eventually uncoils them, before dropping down in front of her with his legs crossed.

"How am I gonna do it, then?" He whines with furrowed eyebrows as he scratches his head in thought.

She points at the already broken figurehead on the other side of the ship's deck.

He leans back to follow her gaze, and then looks back at her with a bright smile, flopping forwards to lie down over her own body for a hug that is a bit too long and a bit too sticky with sweat in the kind of heat they're in, but she hugs him back all the same.

(perhaps just a bit too hard and a bit too long,

because she needs a bit more time than him to beat back the tears peeking through her eyelashes)

"Thanks, Ann!"

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

By the time the others realise what's going on, their Captain is already shouting as he runs up the length of the humongous whale.

"What's that idiot up to now?" Usopp grumbles as he squints against the brightness of the sun.

"Maybe he just likes to climb things?" Sanji suggests off-handedly in a tone that lets everyone know that he doesn't really care for the reason, because it can only be a stupid one.

"I swear, you take your eyes off him for one second, and…" Zoro cuts himself off and stares as Luffy stabs the splintered end of the sheep's head at the top of Laboon's head, suddenly realising something. "Hey, is that-"

"Yeah, I think it's our ship's-"

"Yep, that's our figurehead alright." Usopp confirms, standing next to the table where the two other boys are still sitting.

The whale's howl is almost rivaled by their combined screams, which only gain in volume when the pained cry ripples through the sea and threatens to capsize the Merry.

"What the hell is he doing?!"

"Kaya, I'm sorry!" Usopp wails to the sky like his girlfriend-but-not-girlfriend is already in paradise.

"Oi, weren't you with him on the ship a moment ago?" Zoro turns to Elynna, who jumped from the ship and joined them when Luffy left, just in case the sea got a bit… agitated.

"Yup."

"You could've stopped him, damn it!" He barks, joined by Nami and Usopp.

She stares at them, unimpressed.

"I mean, I know I'm great and all, but I'm not a god, you know. I can't stop Sea King when he's decided something, just do some damage control. And for your information, he was going to use the main mast instead of the figurehead."

This time, the long-nosed boy wails in happiness as he abruptly hugs her.

"You're the best, Elynna!"

"I know."

"Don't push it." Nami huffs.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

She hopes that one day someone will give her the same thing Luffy just gave Laboon.

She also hopes that if it happens, it won't happen exactly like this.

Being stabbed with something with a splintered piece of wood doesn't sound all that fun, even if it's supposed to be some kind of love language.

Besides, her mind is already pierced full of holes by the memories of the small and big mistakes she made throughout her life.

It's enough.

(Or, at the very least, she hopes that the throat-clogging pain and blazing embarassment they bring her long after they happened is enough to make up for them.)

Her lips twitch at the thought as she looks up at her Captain climbing Laboon with enough paint to give the Eiffel Tower a new paint job.

She cranes her neck backwards a bit more-

And staggers, the world spinning so fast her vision turns black for a moment.

It feels like she's standing on a sphere floating in the air.

(As if she's about to fall.)

"Lynna?"

She blinks repeatedly until the black melts away like snowflakes on heated skin, and turns towards Nami, who is frowning at her worriedly.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just tired."

"Oh." The navigator frowns harder in a way Elynna can't quite decipher. "You couldn't get enough rest in the cabin?"

"I was too worried something might happen." She lies with a shrug as she looks back towards Laboon, lips not quite able to form the smirk she's aiming for. "Or maybe it's just that you weren't there?"

Laughter reaches her ears.

"So now you can't sleep alone in your bed? Sorry, babe, I didn't know you loved me that much."

"Well, technically it's our be-"

"Shut up and go take a nap, Miss First Mate. You look dead on your feet."

She feels dead on her feet, so she doesn't protest more than that.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

She falls asleep very easily.

Then she dreams about her own burial in another life where her body is tan and soulless, dreams about her Captain being beheaded under a blue sky and a smiling sun.

She wakes up cold and alone and drowning in her tears and the sweat of her own terror, and decides that sleep is vastly overrated.

So instead she sets out to try and do something productive (because she decided in Cocoyashi to stop freaking out all the fucking time, and she'd like to think that even she can last a bit longer before giving up), and takes out the fans she bought in Loguetown to try and get used to them.

Dancing means acquiring some level of dexterity with her non-dominant hand, which has been improved since she started to learn how to fight, but there's still a vast difference between what she can do with her right and her left hand.

Despite the burn on her palm from Buggy's sword, the exercise is repetitive and doesn't ask for much energy, which allows her to at least rest a little, until she suddenly remembers something and jumps out of the bed to open the door.

"Rain!" She calls out towards her crewmates, who are all lazing around on the deck, taking in the sun and commenting on the horrendous rendition of their Jolly Roger that Luffy is painting over Laboon's scarred forehead.

"Yeah?"

"Where did you put what I asked you to buy in Loguetown?"

"Oh, I put the bag under the bed to protect it a bit during the storm!"

"Thanks! Can someone tell Sea King to come down for a minute?"

"Don't say it like it's easy to make him listen." Usopp grumbles from where he's trying to fasten the figurehead to the ship again.

"It is if you bribe him!" She yells back as she turns around.

She goes to retrieve Nami's purchase and walks back out.

"Elynna… Why is there a snail in your hand."

"It's a Den Den Mushi." Zoro corrects. "I've seen some in Marine bases when I went to collect bounties."

"Uh." The sharpshooter reaches out with a curious purse of his lips as Elynna obligingly hands it over, Luffy and Sanji gathering around him to take a closer look. "I'd heard about them, but no one had one in my village. Except Kaya. Never saw hers, though."

"Why did you ask Nami to buy one, anyway?" Zoro asks as he leans back on his hands to gaze curiously at Elynna.

Who rolls her eyes.

"So that you guys can call your family, obviously. You do have their number, yes?"

Sanji nods, having memorised the Baratie's number a long time ago, and Nami beams as she jumps to her feet to run into her room, smacking a kiss against her roommate's cheek on the way there.

Luffy eventually remembers the piece of paper Makino gave him and that he slipped inside the red band of his straw-hat, while Zoro scratches his head and rummages through his pockets until he somehow finds the leather bracelet around the hilt of Kuina's katana where the number of the only Den Den Mushi near his dojo was sewn by the boy he used to spar with after her death.

"Have you already talked to your family?" Luffy asks Elynna with a pout as Usopp and Nami start bickering about who gets to contact their village first. "I wanted to meet them!"

She blinks at him, hoping that he can't see the tears she's trying to hold back.

"What are you talking about? I can't call them."

Sudden silence greets her remark, and she frowns, squirming under the sudden attention that seems to be trying to pry her mouth open to grab her secrets out of it.

"What do you mean you can't call them?" Zoro frowns, and she takes a step back in an attempt to avoid the bitter emotion that is tugging the corner of his lips downwards.

"I told you, our communication system works with phones, not Den Den Mushi. And I don't have the infrastructure to use mine for communication right now." She shrugs, jolting the pressure of the mad dog of muzzled, fuming pain eating away at her lungs, looking at anything but her crewmates and shortening her breath (until even she can't hear herself breathe) to try and suffocate the beast inside her chest. "But I've been sending them letters every time we make a stop so that they don't worry too much. It's fine."

(It's not! Her own voice howls, foaming at the mouth with diluted blood and tears, old and fresh alike.

So what? She hisses back, coiling the vicious, unforgiving talons of her sluggish and tired but still unyielding control around her own pain. It's not like crying will do anything to solve the situation.

The suffocating voice whimpers about how it will make her feel better.

She scoffs.

She's not interested in temporary, illusory relief.

In happiness or not, she'll allow herself to cry –maybe- once she knows for sure that she will or will not be able to hear and smell her home somewhere other than in her own damn head.

In the meantime, she's only interested in counting how many wounds are tearing her heart apart at the seams in order to know how far she can push her control

and how hard it can clamp its jaws around these wounds to compress them into silence.)

She looks back at her crewmates, still frowning at her like they suddenly all became telepaths.

She smiles, less because she feels like it and more to push the flesh of her face upwards and crush a few rebellious tears into nothing, and then points a finger at Sanji.

"Here, Hermes. You can go first. Hawk, come with me for a minute."

The sharpshooter, who was handling the Den Den Mushi to the cook with a copious amount of grumbling about where is democracy and 'women aren't fit to give orders' my ass, looks up at her with both eyebrows raised.

"Uh? Why?"

"You'll see. And don't worry. You'll have all the time you want to call Kaya-san after." She teases mercilessly as she turns away from the group.

"I-I was going to talk with the Usopp Pirates! Not- Not Kaya!"

"Sure, sure."

"At least try to sound more convinced, or the Great Captain Usopp will kick your ass!"

"Don't talk too much about kicking my ass to Kaya-san, or she'll end up thinking that you like my ass more than hers. And that you have a weird kink."

A loud noise follows, and she turns around, looking down with a frown.

"What are you doing lying on the ground?"

"He tripped over your sense of shame." Zoro explains helpfully, making Nami snicker.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

She closes the door of the girls' cabin after Usopp, and motions for him to sit down on the chair while she does the same on the bed.

When he looks back at her, she's holding out two knives towards him.

Big knives.

Warily, he takes his chair three steps backwards before he sits down again, still staring suspiciously at the strangely curved blades like they're going to jump at him.

She rolls her eyes.

"Don't look at me like that, I don't get off on cutting people up. As far as I know."

"That's not reassuring at all."

She smirks, and in the darkness of the room she manages to pass it off as dark amusement instead of bitter loss.

"Too bad."

She explains to him what she plans to do with the knives and her fans as well as what she needs from him to do it, and by the end of her monologue he's nodding absently, staring at the weapons lying on the bed with so much focus it feels like he's reading them.

"I should be able to make the accessories in a few days, though I'll need to take all these to make measurements. And I'll need measurements from you, too."

She nods at that.

He mumbles to himself some more, before turning to her.

"It sounds great and all, but are you sure you can do it? I thought your aim sucked." He remarks, the question in his voice clear.

"Yup. It's going to take time." She nods, before looking back at him. "Unless you can give me some tips."

The dark-haired boy blinks, suddenly realising that she brought him here to ask him for much more than he thought.

She's trusting him to make her stronger and teach her to be better the same way she's trusting Zoro and Luffy, who are much stronger than him in all the ways that matter as a pirate.

It feels like she suddenly pulled him up from a support role as a tinkerer to a main role along with the more combat-oriented members of their crew.

It feels like being singled out of a crowd to be praised, like being seen.

She's saying that no one can best him when it comes to manual work, but that he's also the best of their crew when it comes to long-distance fighting.

Not Luffy.

Not Zoro.

Not Sanji.

Him.

He beams, and straightens up, nose pointed towards the ceiling.

"You have a good eye, young lady! The Great Captain Usopp shall help you! But," he continues with a finger pointed at her, "don't expect me to go easy on you and spare you from any part of The Hellish Training you will need to go through in order to achieve your dream!"

"Yes, yes." She drawls, looking absolutely unfazed. "And don't expect me to stop teasing you out of fear for your retribution. I didn't do it for Fang, I won't do it for you."

"And that, young lady, is because our fellow is severely lacking in imagination." He smirks deviously as he leans closer, finger poking between her collarbones.

"I'll be sure to tell him that, sensei." She smirks, and his eyes narrow abruptly.

"Don't you dare."

Her smile widens, and his shoulders drop when he realises that he's given her more blackmail material.

Again.

When they exit the cabin, Nami's voice vaguely reaches their ears from where she's talking with someone from Cocoyashi in the kitchen.

Usopp takes one glance at his First Mate, and promptly flees the scene, because he wants nothing to do with the girl when she's smiling like that.

It's positively evil, and looks a bit too much like the smile of a shark when it greets its dinner.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

Gen nods to himself in satisfaction as he listens to Nami's excited rendition of how her and that crazy crew of hers just entered the Grand Line.

Clearly, that straw-hatted boy is keeping the promise he made to him.

(Which is good, because he doesn't think he would manage to stay alive long enough to hunt the boy down.

Not that the knowledge would keep him from trying if the smile in Nami's voice was ever taken away.)

"Why are you smiling like that, Gen-san?"

"Oh, I'm just glad that you were able to call this soon. I wasn't expecting to hear from you for at least a few months still."

"Yup! I'll have to thank Lynna for that again."

"Thank me for what?" A new, deeper voice asks, and Gen watches as the Den Den Mushi's smile widens in response to Nami's own reaction.

"For the Den Den Mushi!"

"Well, what wouldn't I do for my girlfriend, right?"

The snail's eyes widen curiously for a moment, before sparkling with barely contained laughter, and a shadow of mischievousness definitely glitters along its smile for a moment.

But Gen doesn't see it, because his brain is too busy trying to compute the memory of the cute little brat who stole books and used her mother's seduction techniques before she could really understand what they meant with the idea of a girlfriend, and everything that entails.

...

Nope.

It's no good.

It just doesn't make sense.

"I'm pretty sure there's a lot of things you wouldn't do for me."

"All good relationships have boundaries, you know."

"Clearly," Nami replies dryly, "you don't have a lot of physical ones-"

His brain sends a SOS signal that says that if he doesn't reboot it now it's going to fry to death.

So he opens his mouth.

"What do you mean 'girlfriend'?!"

Okay, he opens his mouth while shutting his brain, apparently.

Is this what getting old means?

He can almost hear Bellemere cackling from wherever she is.

"… Does it have another meaning I don't know about?"

He ignores the answer for the sake of his pride, and jumps to the second question.

"Why do you already have a girlfriend?!"

"I know that sometimes people get together for money or something, but I assure you, Gen-san, in our case it's because we're totally in love. Pink hearts, candlelit dinners and all that sparkly shit included."

"Come on, Gen-san! I'm not a child anymore!" Nami manages to add in between breathless giggles.

He knows that.

In fact, she hasn't been a child for much longer than her appearance suggests.

(But in his heart she'll always be his youngest daughter.)

"You, lass! If you make Nami cry, I'll hunt you down to the end of the world if I have to, am I clear?!"

"… I have some questions."

"You're supposed to say 'crystal clear, Sir', Lynna."

"I still have questions."

"Fine, go ahead." He grunts.

"Is it okay if she cries because she's laughing too much?"

"Yes."

"And is it okay if she cries because she just really, really likes what we're doing in bed-"

He slams the receiver down in a pretty absurd attempt to cut the girl off before she can finish her sentence, and stares at the ceiling, rather sure that he doesn't want to know what expression the Den Den Mushi is copying right about now.

Then he looks back down with a frown when he realises that the room is silent, and curses loudly, because he broke the goddamn receiver.

"Gen-san?" Nojiko calls out from behind the door where she said she'd wait for him after talking with her sister.

"Oi, Gen! When can we talk to Nami-chan? You can't hog her all to yourself, old man!"

He gulps and, very calmly, walks out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

"I need a drink. And a new receiver."

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

"... So is that a yes?"

Nami shrugs absently, and stares at the now sleeping snail for a moment, taken aback by how abruptly the line went dead.

But when she feels Elynna's body shake with silent laughter from behind her, her own lips start twitching uncontrollably, until she's laughing so hard she'd fall forward if not for the loose embrace of the dark-haired girl.

"I think you just made his brain combust."

"Hey, don't blame this all on me. You were more than willing to play along."

"You started it."

"Technically, you started the whole fake dating thing."

Nami snorts, and then starts snickering all over again as an image abruptly pops into her mind.

"Imagine Zoro's face if you did the same thing…"

She throws her head back in laughter.

And then she stops, blinking when she notices Elynna staring down at her pensively, cheek propped on one hand and elbow resting on the back of her chair.

Oh.

"Oh, you evil, evil girl." She says slowly, reaching up to cup the First Mate's face, feeling her own cheeks twitch with the echo of the cackles that resonate loudly in her mind. "I love you."

Elynna grins down at her with faint amusement sprinkled over her blank face, looking quite pleased that she doesn't need to explain herself further.

(Nami wishes she can read her just as well when it comes to the moments where Lynna's gaze is so silent it might as well be on the other side of the world

focused on something that she can neither see nor hear

something that feels like it's going to whisk their First Mate away any second

something she fears none of them can fight.)

"We're not doing it with Sanji, though." She goes on with a warning finger between their faces. "He'd either become brain dead or misunderstand it completely."

"He already called the Baratie anyway. And I'm not doing it with Usopp either."

"Hell no." Nami approves with a wince. "The potential drama could probably be used to write a teenage romance book."

"Or even a series of books."

"The horror."

They snort simultaneously and high five each other, an anticipatory smirk sticking to their lips like bold lipstick.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

"-and his shark teeth looked really cool, so I managed to get one set, but he told me my jaw is too weak to use it… Maybe I should've given it to Zoro, since he can hold a katana… Yosh! The next time I see a shark, I'll steal his teeth and give them to Zoro!"

Makino giggles, wiping yet another plate dry with her rag and listening attentively as Luffy babbles on about his friends and everything he's been up to since he left.

(Though she'd rather he didn't speak in so much detail about the fights

They make her shudder with the cold ghosts of the nights she spent worrying instead of sleeping, shivering in her bed with no way to know if either of the brothers are doing good, sleeping well and staying healthy-)

It feels like the entire village has gathered in her bar to hear Luffy's voice, and her smile widens as she imagines Dadan's face when she will go pay her and her group a visit to pass on the news.

She's grateful for all the friends Luffy made, even though she knows neither their faces nor their voices.

(She doesn't need to.

Luffy sounds just as happy and excited as when he used to roam around and cause trouble everywhere with his brothers, and that's all she needs to know, really.)

Now she just hopes someone will be there to drag Ace to a Den Den Mushi and remind him that she also gave him the only number of the village.

Unless he has already lost it.

That... wouldn't surprise her.

Or he's been hesitating to call during the last three years.

That wouldn't surprise her either, and sadness melts into the fond amusement of her smile as she pictures the boy who is both too young and too old staring at a Den Den Mushi with the grumpy shyness of someone whose trust in his own strength is steady, as steady as the trust he has in his ability to do everything on his own so that he won't ever need anyone's help.

(–so much steadier than the trust in his relationship to the world and those he loves)

"Sea King, you know you still have paint all over yourself, right?"

The barmaid interrupts her mindless wiping, everyone else in the room perking up at the unfamiliar female voice that suddenly comes out of the receiver, slightly less clear than Luffy's due to the distance.

"It's fine, I haven't finished yet!"

"Who is that, Luffy?" Makino asks curiously at the insistence of her customers.

Well, she thinks that's what they want her to ask. They're all doing a different sign, and half of them are well on their way to be drunk, so it's hard to know.

"Oh, hi. I'm Elynna, his girlfriend."

"Uh? What are you saying, Ann-"

"Aw, he already has a nickname! It's so cute!" Foosha's very own best pastry chef gushes, looking a second away from deciding that it's time to create a wedding cake.

"Luffy, you little rascal! Didn't think you'd grow up so fast!" A group of men who came to drink after a long week of work laugh boisterously while loudly clanking their mugs of beer together.

"Kids these days, they rush things way too much. And people wonder why we have so many divorces. When I was young-"

"People were getting arranged marriages they couldn't get out of without being kicked out of their own home and inheritance. We know, Gramps."

"That was more than a century ago, my boy."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying."

Makino giggles, somewhat galvanised by the sudden rush in the atmosphere, and leans down to speak a bit louder in the receiver, just to be sure she's heard over the sudden cacophony and the Mayor's grumbling.

"Luffy! Did you at least get her flowers to express your love?!"

She's not sure she covered that lesson in her crash course about manners, but oh well.

"What? Why should I give Ann flowers for that? She already knows I love her. I wouldn't have asked her to join my crew otherwise."

"Please don't get me flowers. I wouldn't know what to do with them." The girl answers bluntly.

"Why are they talking about flowers?"

"It's supposed to be romantic."

"Stop making that kind of joke, Ann. It makes them annoying." Luffy complains loudly, the snail frowning with a pout on Makino's counter in a way that earns a collective 'awww' from the room.

"That's often a synonym of romantic, if you ask me. But fine, let's just break up. I knew you'd end up being married with your dream anyway. Hey, Rain!"

"Yeah?" Another female, more distant voice answers.

"Bring out the booze, we're having a post-breakup girl's day!"

"I'll be the only one drinking the booze, Lynna! Just ask for ice cream!"

"Shut up, I just wanted to say this once in my life!"

Makino laughs with a shake of her head as she watches some of her customers blink in confusion, the sudden change in the conversation almost giving them whiplash.

She should've known that boy would only take people as crazy and adorable as him in his crew.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

With his perpetual half-smile, Kōshirō sips on a cup of tea as he listens to one of his strongest students to date.

It consists mostly of grumbling about how idiotic and/or annoying his travelling companions are, but it is much better than the sparse message he received from a Marine base of all things about a month after Zoro left.

The boy was never very talkative, but the shortness of his first interaction with him after his departure worried him, even more so given that Norihito, who spent the most time with Zoro even after he started training to take up the dojo once Kōshirō himself will retire, looked quite concerned as well.

(It was a shortness that smelled like hunger.

Zoro has always been hungry, probably always will be

But at that moment it was the hunger of someone with nothing to clamp his teeth around, with nothing to tame the twisting emptiness within himself even slightly

So Kōshirō worried, because the boy has always been a bit too feral for the way of the sword as it has been passed down since the beginning, even after all the control of steel that he melted over the boy's mind and body like an armour and a second skin all in one.

Then again, he sometimes finds himself thinking that maybe Zoro will one day stray from The Way,

and that, maybe, it won't be entirely a bad thing.

After all, his ability to think in unorthodox ways if the rules tell him no was what allowed him to understand his own daughter in a way that he himself never could.)

"You met him, then."

His former student grunts in assent, clearly unwilling to say more on the topic.

That, and the fact that he's still alive, tells Kōshirō everything he needs to know.

He didn't take the boy in and let him create his own brand of swordsmanship all alone for nothing, after all.

Though he didn't expect the strongest swordsman in the world to agree with his assessment of Zoro's potential.

It is quite the pleasant feeling.

What sounds like a knock resonates from the receiver, and Zoro mumbles an excuse before raising his voice to invite the other person in.

"Hey, Hawk wants a bit of help for the figurehead. He's not sure he hammered the nails in deep enough."

"Sure. I was about to finish anyway-"

"Why don't you introduce us, Zoro?" Kōshirō asks calmly, the corners of his mouth quirked up in amusement at the slouch of the snail's lips.

Those friends of his can't be that strange, after a-

"Hello, sir. Nice to meet you. I'm Zoro's girlfriend."

His brain screeches to a stop.

Then rewinds the sentence.

But even after the seventh reiteration, it still makes so little sense that it might as well be in an entirely different language.

He blinks slowly down at the Den Den Mushi, who is silently gaping at something behind its own back with a face that wouldn't look too out of place on someone who is being strangled –preferably by their own outrage.

"… I beg your pardon?"

"Ah, damn. I thought I would have more of a reaction."

"What the fuck, Elynna-"

"You know what? You react enough for two people anyway, so I guess it's all fin-"

"I'm going to-"

"Bye, mister! It was nice meeting you!" The voice hollers, already fading away.

"Lynn! Come back here!" Zoro shouts, a loud noise telling Kōshirō that he probably made his chair fall when he jumped out of it to run after the young woman.

The dojo master blinks down at the snail again, trying to understand what the hell just happened.

Then the face of the snail changes into a smile trembling with liquid laughter, and a distinctly feminine voice greets him.

"Sorry mister! Zoro will call back later, when he, uh, will be done trying to kill our First Mate. See ya!"

And then the woman hangs up.

He keeps staring at the snail anyway.

It's only when he slides the door of his dojo open that he realises she said 'First Mate', and his former student said nothing about having joined a group of pirates.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

The rest of the crew members, who by now know exactly what the girls are doing in the kitchen where Zoro was talking with his mentor, watch as the door suddenly bursts open and Elynna runs out of it like the devil is on her tail.

Which isn't completely inaccurate considering that Zoro has unsheathed two of his katanas and looks more than pissed off enough to use them.

Roaring in laughter, Usopp and Luffy still somehow manage to hold back Sanji, because there's just no freaking way they're letting him intervene.

Usopp already regrets that they don't have a Den Den Mushi that can record the scene.

"I'm going to cut off your tongue!" The swordsman growls as he swipes and jabs at the girl.

But the corners of his mouth are twitching with something close to a smirk now that the moment of surprise is gone, and they've all seen him fight enough to know that he's still going easy on the dancer so that she can spin and bend her way out of his attacks even through her laughter-induced breathlessness.

"Sorry sweetheart, you're just so sexy when you're angry, I couldn't help mys-"

"Yeah? Well I can't help but think you'll look much better once I run you through!"

A series of backward flips brings her far enough to catch her breath, but instead she swoons exaggeratedly, almost disturbingly considering how her flat expression can't seem to follow the mood.

"I just knew you liked it rough, Sugar Bear. We're fated for each other!"

"And stop it with the fucking pet names, damnit!"

She somehow manages to do a cartwheel around his katana as it whistles through the air, making Luffy clap loudly, stretched arms stills wrapped around a struggling and swearing Sanji while Usopp gapes, because it's been a long time since he watched the two go at it, and he can almost see the blood and the sweat in Elynna's smooth dodging.

Suddenly he's pretty sure that somehow she'll manage to do what she wants with those knives of hers, and he wants to smirk as he imagines the faces the others are going to make when they see her in action, because he's the only one who knows, and he'll be the one to make her even more of a badass than Zoro already did with Luffy's help.

Elynna bounds away again with a burst of loud, breathless laughter, and clasps her hands under her chin while widening her eyes in a way that would look innocent if they all didn't already know that their First Mate is a lot of things, but innocent is certainly not one of them.

(It's not just about the jokes.

It's about how she bled and made others bleed by their side, just as much as they did

it's about how she's one of the quickest among them to assume the worst of people and the world they live in.

It's about the way she smiled when they asked her about her bloodied mouth after defeating the Arlong Pirates and she said 'it's not mine', and they realised that no matter the fact that she lived a happier life than any of them before joining the crew,

she might just become the most vicious and brutal of them along with Zoro

perhaps even more than him, because Zoro –Zoro who has already killed- believes in honour.

Elynna doesn't seem to think much of honour.)

"Whatever do you mean, pudding?"

Nami's renewed fit of giggles forces her to slide down the kitchen's door frame, stomach aching and cheeks wet and hurting.

Her laughter is just calming down when Zoro stops being nice, and Elynna shouts something that ends with 'snookums', which dumps the navigator (along with Luffy and Usopp, and even Sanji who is starting to seriously enjoy seeing Zoro's enraged face) right back into breathless chortles, so hard that she almost smacks her head against the deck.

Eventually though, Zoro manages to trip the girl and she ends up lying on her back with the tip of a sword grazing the underside of her chin.

"How do you like being the bottom?" Nami calls out to her roommate between greedy gasps for air.

"There's a very nice view." The other girl replies like she can't feel Zoro's katana prick her skin, staring blankly up at the swordsman who smirks right back, teeth glinting savagely and sweat-soaked skin like bronze under the sun.

Elynna thinks that she doesn't mind dying if this is the last thing she sees, thank you very much.

But she still has a few things to do.

(it includes leeching as much warmth as she can from everyone on this ship until they realise how much of a parasite she is,

and finding out if she can get enough time with those who left the ghost of a hole in her chest to at least say thank you and I love you

-everything she never said before-)

So she smiles a contrite smile (even though she's pretty sure her throat is still bubbling with enough laughter to make up for the few years she spent with nearly no smile to speak of as a child), smiles at the man who is pointing a katana at her (but it doesn't really matter, because he has enough of her heart in his hand to crush her more surely than his favoured weapon ever can).

"I'm, uh, really sorry, Fang. Please don't kill me… daddy?"

Usopp tries to snort and choke at the same time, which his body doesn't really agree with, and he almost faints.

Sanji does faint.

Luffy guffaws, because he thinks his First Mate's jokes are weird most of the time, but the others' reactions are just hilarious.

Nami is now apparently unable to stay upright and is lying on her side, unsure whether she'll be able to look Zoro in the eyes again for the remainder of the wee- no, the month.

Zoro's smile looks more like he's clenching his teeth hard enough to break them in an attempt to rein in his temper.

"Lynn. Shut your goddamn mouth." He grits through the nervous twitch of his jaw.

Somehow, his First Mate knows exactly how far she can push, and she mimics locking her mouth close and throwing the key away, smiling up at him in a way that could almost be angelic if not for the constant stream of filth he's sure is running through her mind.

"What's with the sudden nickname anyway?" Usopp asks curiously.

Because seriously, if that's the kind of circumstances that make the swordsman decide to use a nickname, then he's as much of a weirdo as the one who brought about said circumstances.

"It's like with dogs. The shorter it is, the more strength you can put behind it when you're pissed off." Zoro huffs as he sits next to where Elynna is still lying down.

She blinks up at him, and slaps a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking and face scrunched up with silent laughter.

"Stop laughing, dummy." Usopp groans. "He just compared you to a dog."

"Well it's funny!" Luffy counters loudly, still giggling goofily beside him.

Elynna points a finger towards him and then gives a thumbs up to express her agreement, and Zoro huffs, bonking her on the head with his now sheathed katana while Sanji is still out -and thus unable to annoy him about how he's supposed to treat women like glass.

(If she was glass, she would've broken even before he first pointed his sword at her

would've broken when Morgan's idiotic son pointed a gun at her head

Even if she asked to be saved,

even if the instinctual fear widened her too dark eyes,

the darkness remained still and clear.

He chose Luffy as his Captain because of his eyes as much as he chose her as his First Mate because of hers.

Her eyes may have wavered where Luffy's did not

but it just makes him trust her with the few but important things he can't trust Luffy with.)

Elynna rubs at her skull with a pout, but shrugs off the action easily.

She kind of deserves this one, no matter how funny it was.

"Wait!" Nami suddenly stops Luffy and Usopp's laughter with a raised hand, still lying on the cooling floorboards of the deck. "Wait wait wait. If I'm a cat and Lynna is a dog, what are you guys?"

"You two can't be a dog and a cat." Usopp counters with all the self-assurance in the world. "You get along way too well for that."

"We're the exception that proves the rule. So?"

"Luffy is an idiot."

"That's not an animal, Zoro." Usopp reminds the swordsman with a worried glance.

Did he get so pissed off that he burst a vessel and became dumb(er than he already was but he's not going to say it out loud because unlike his student he has an instinct of self-preservation)?

"He's still one."

"Agreed."

"Hey!"

"A marmoset."

Elynna points her finger at Nami in silent approval, and Usopp bangs the hammer he was using for the repairs on the deck, improvising himself judge in the process.

"Zoro?" He then asks.

"Wolf!" Luffy shouts gleefully.

"Sabertooth tiger!" Nami counters.

"Bear! Because he's either sleeping or grumpy!" The Captain beams, absolutely careless of the irritated twitch of Zoro's hand towards his katana.

"Okay, I'll give you this one." Nami grins, echoed by the sharpshooter's hammer. "Usopp?"

"It's already established that I am a hawk." The boy in question states with another bang of his tool, because there's no way he lets them have enough time to think of a ridiculous animal when he already has a cool one to use.

With his luck, he would be dubbed a headless chicken or something.

Not. Cool.

"Oh, fine. Sanji?"

"Uh. A… Peacock?"

"What? Why a peacock?" Luffy asks in confusion.

"Because he has a much better sense of fashion than you guys." Nami points out, drawing a shrug of indifference from her four other crewmates.

"A fish." Usopp offers.

"... Because he makes it his job to slice them open?"

"Because he gapes like one."

"Uh?" Sanji blinks as he sits up, not sure whether this is somehow a compliment or if he'd be justified in kicking the long-nosed boy into next week, since he didn't hear the entire conversation.

"I vote for the fish." Zoro smirks with a raised hand.

The voting battle that ensues is tough, but eventually Usopp rules in favour of the fish.

"I call dishonesty." Nami announces solemnly.

"Corruption." Sanji follows.

"Favouritism!"

"The Great Captain Usopp's ideas are always the best." The accused sniffs. "You shouldn't have tried to win against him in the first place. It can only end in tragedy for you."

"Yosh! Let's solve it with a fight!"

"What?! Why are you even bringing that in- Hey!"

"Well, on that note," Elynna says blandly as she gets to her feet once her crewmates are done punching each other in the face (or trying to) and go back to lying on the deck and letting the evening breeze cool them down, "I'll go do the laundry."

"I did ours already." Usopp croaks from under Luffy.

"Thanks, Hawk. And Hermes?"

"Yes, Elynna-san?" The cook responds with too much enthusiasm for someone who was in a scuffle twenty seconds before.

"Come find me once you're up."

She turns around, and the remains of her smile slip off her lips like water off a smooth pebble, the genuine amusement not consistent enough to withhold the weight of her worn-out mind and the salted pain of her heart washed-out by tears.

Fake it till you make it works, but she can only make it for so long.

Still, this should keep her crewmates from worrying too much for now.

It's not worth their energy, and they would be just as helpless as she is.

(It's not a nice feeling.

But giving up is so much easier when the task seems impossible and one is reduced to helplessness.

It's the best justification for failure, after all.)

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

Doing the laundry without a washing machine is hard.

But she's a bit of a clean freak, and she actually likes doing it to some extent. It's the kind of task that becomes automatic yet still requires a bit of attention, fogging her brain with a kind of silent trance that keeps her from thinking and overthinking.

(As much as she likes to reflect and analyse and discuss things with herself, it's nice to turn off her thoughts, sometimes.

Especially when her feelings are too fresh and her body clenched too tight around them for her to be able to look at and act on them with any semblance of objectivity.)

"Elynna-san?"

She looks up, and absently motions for Sanji to sit down on the other side of the basin she's started washing her and Nami's jean clothes into.

She frowns at the smudges of dirt on one of her pants for a moment, before she speaks up.

"Where did you learn to treat women like you do?"

She doesn't look at him, but his silence sounds taken aback by the sudden question.

"Well… The old geezer is the one who taught me about chivalry." He eventually answers slowly.

"I see… Is that all?" She continues distractedly.

The question is nonchalant, but when a heavier silence greets her in response, she looks up at the cook curiously.

He's staring at her, lips pinched together, every line of his body drawn up with tension and secrets, the blue of his eyes suddenly dark and cloudy with memories.

She sighs, realising that she may have inadvertently hit a nerve.

"You don't have to tell me. It wasn't an order. But if Zeff-san taught you, it explains a few things."

"It… does?" He mumbles, lighting a cigarette with a slightly trembling hand and still looking confused as to the purpose of the conversation.

"Uh huh. So now I'm going to explain to you my point of view. And Rain's, since we talked about it."

He nods hesitantly, and she dries her hands on a piece of rag before looking back at him.

"We appreciate your sense of chivalry. Really. Considering how many people –men and women- still believe that every woman's happiness comes from fulfilling men's desires and other associated ideas, it's… very nice to see someone who respects women instead. Especially because your chivalry clearly doesn't come from the belief that women are weak, what's with all the compliments you give us even when we're punching someone in the face. And since both Rain and I aren't as strong as you, Fang, or Sea King, it's also reassuring to know that you'll be there if we need you."

Sanji flushes at the praise and suddenly looks down, not quite able to meet her gaze.

It's a quieter, pleased kind of blush that she thinks suits him much better than the furious red that paints his face in his more… amorous moments.

"But it's also very frustrating for us."

He blinks at that, and frowns, seeming to be genuinely confused.

"Did I do anything to upset you? I'm really sor-"

She raises a hand to stop him.

"Don't apologise for now. I haven't explained yet, and you might not agree with our point of view. There are a number of things that bother us, but I'll just list the main points and leave you to think about them for a bit. First of all, while we appreciate your help, you've sometimes defended us, whether our person or our… let's say honour, before we actually asked you to. We've chosen this life and the dangers it implies just as much as any of you guys. So when you come to save us before we can even try to get by on our own… Well, it feels like you're invalidating our choice in a way. Like you don't trust us to handle ourselves, and like you're not letting us get stronger by ourselves."

"No, I-"

"I know -we both do- that this isn't your reasoning." She cuts him off. "It's exactly why I'm taking the time to explain to you how we feel about it, so just listen for now. We're probably not the only ones to feel that way. That girl we saw when we were running out of Loguetown and who fought with Fang? She was the one who was looking for a fight, and you basically told him to go easy on her. It's already hard enough to be respected as a swordswoman. How do you think she felt, especially since she doesn't know about your motives? The second thing is about flirting. I know you'd never force yourself on a woman, Hermes. But I've seen some of the girls you were flirting with, and they looked frankly uncomfortable. You have to understand that even when we never experience it, we grow up hearing about women being assaulted in various ways and with various degrees of violence all the time, and in a lot of instances it's still considered normal to some extent. So when a stranger, especially a male one, runs up to us in the street and starts to talk to us, even if he's being nice and not talking about anything remotely sexual, it's very easy to feel threatened, and to think that they're just trying to make us lower our guard when they actually have an ulterior motive. Whether the woman in question knows how to handle herself or not, it doesn't make it any less scary to deal with. I'm not asking you to stop flirting with women or anything –it would be very hypocritical of me, but just… We both think that it would be better if you paid more attention to the way women react to it."

"I-"

He closes his mouth, opens it, and then closes it again, still staring at her.

"You don't have to say anything right now. I dumped a lot of things on you." She waves him off with a half-smile. "Just take some time to think about it, and feel free to ask either me or Rain if you have further questions or want to discuss it. We just wanted to tell you because it's not like you can read our mind or anything."

He stares at her for another long moment, before nodding slowly.

When he still doesn't move, she reaches through the air between them to pat his cheek, and eventually he rises to his feet, a good chunk of his cigarette falling to ashes at his feet as he walks away, seemingly on autopilot.

She watches him go for a moment, and goes back to work, hoping that she didn't fuck up too much.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

It's Nami's scream that startles her from the half-wakefulness of her mindless work.

She washes and dries her hands, before making her way to where the navigator is sitting at Crocus' table with just about everyone else apart from Zoro.

"What do you mean you had no idea?! Isn't that, like, really really bad? Are we going to be okay?!" Usopp yells at the navigator, his expression a strange mix of furious and scared out of his wits.

"What's bad about this fish? It's delicious!" Luffy replies around the mouthful of elephant tuna he's munching on.

"What's this about?" Elynna asks, pretty sure the taste of the fish isn't the problem.

"It seems your navigator had no idea about the differences between the Grand Line and other seas in terms of sailing conditions." Crocus explains, before turning back to the other girl. "If you want to know where you're going on the Grand Line, you'll need a Log Pose."

"A Log Pose? I've never heard of it…" Nami frowns.

"It's a compass that records magnetic fields."

"Uh? So it's a weird-looking compass?" The rubber boy mumbles through an umpteenth piece of fish.

"Well… I suppose it is rather oddly shaped as well."

"Like this?"

"Precisely." The doctor confirms with a nod at the spherical compass Luffy almost shoves in his face.

Before he can go on to explain how to use it, Nami stops him, and promptly turns around to deck her Captain in the face, sending the younger boy flying.

"Why did you hit me?!"

"I felt like it."

"Oh."

"Anyway! Why do you even have this Log Pose?!"

"The two weirdos from earlier dropped it when they left."

Nami blinks curiously, but turns around and motions for Crocus to resume his explanation.

He does, telling her about how they will have to wait on each island for the next magnetic field to be recorded by the Log Pose, and how they will have to choose one of the seven routes before leaving, though eventually all of them lead to the last island, Raftel.

At that name, Usopp's excitement rises to meet at least that of Sanji whenever the All Blue comes up in the conversation, since apparently one of the most popular theories about the location of the One Piece is that Gold Roger left it there.

"It's a possibility." Crocus says simply with a shrug. "No one managed to get there alive after Roger and his crew to confirm it, after all."

Luffy grins suddenly, the fish's bones breaking under the sudden increase of pressure of his teeth.

"Don't sweat it, guys! We'll just see when we get there!"

Too busy observing the strange, amused smile that surfaces on Crocus' face at her Captain's words, Elynna only looks back at her crewmates when Sanji calls Luffy a shithead for eating everything, and promptly kicks him in the face.

Somehow, the flying rubber boy manages to break the Log Pose on Nami's wrist without otherwise touching his navigator.

Who promptly sends both boys say hello to the fishes.

Elynna sighs, and bends down to take off her shoes.

On her way to the edge of the cliff, she places one hand on the shoulder of a still enraged Nami until the redhead sits back down.

"There." She pats the navigator's thin shoulder, voice mild like lazy waves slumping onto the sand. "Try not to send Sea King in the sea next time. It's probably not a great experience for him."

Nami blinks, and rakes a hand through her short hair with a loud huff in an attempt to evacuate her frustration.

"You're right."

Elynna squeezes the shoulder she's still holding on, and then goes to retrieve their Captain.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

Left alone with Usopp and Crocus, Nami stares some more at the broken shards of glass still stuck to the Log Pose's bracelet on her wrist, and slumps in her seat until her forehead hits the table.

"These stupid boys! How are we supposed to survive, now?!" She whines loudly.

And how is Lynna still so calm when she normally is the one who obsessively checks at least twice that everyone has what they need and knows where the others are going before they part ways on an island?!

"Wait." Usopp suddenly says, and when she looks up he's half-lying over the table to inspect what is left of the compass. "If that's a Log Pose, then we have one."

"... We do?" Nami blinks, too taken aback to feel reassured.

He nods decisively.

"Yep. When I ran into Sanji in Loguetown, he asked for my help to carry that giant fish. By the way, I have to get the money he owes me for that service, that stingy, ungrateful little-"

"You're getting sidetracked, Usopp." Nami grins as she drums her fingers against the wood with a mix of amusement and impatience.

"Sorry. Anyway, he told me to keep the fish for a moment, because Elynna had asked him to go look for something, preferably in the seedier parts of the town, so since this fish is pretty rare, he didn't want to have to deal with more thugs than necessary."

He throws a dirty look towards the empty plates on the table with a grumpy pout that says not that we got to taste it anyway, before he sighs and keeps talking.

"I asked to see what he bought when he came back, and I'm pretty sure it was a Log Pose. You'll have to ask Sanji or Elynna about where they put it, though."

Nami nods furiously as she straightens up, and with a giddy smile drags the sharpshooter into a hug that is probably uncomfortable for him considering that he's still bent over the table.

She compensates for that with a loud, smacking kiss to his cheek.

"Thanks for telling me, Usopp!"

"Uh, well, you're welcome?" The curly-haired boy smiles with an embarrassed but pleased blush, scratching his cheek in an attempt to regain his composure.

She beams even wider, and swings her legs above the bench she's sitting on when she hears the sound of her crewmates collapsing on the edge of the cliff.

"Lynna!"

"Uh?"

She barely gives the First Mate the time to get up before she throws her arms around her, almost knocking the both of them back down the rocky shore and into the water.

The shorter girl stumbles, arms flailing in the air for a moment before her well-trained sense of balance takes over, and she curls them around Nami's waist while sliding one foot back to keep them both standing.

"I love you!" Nami giggles, and gives her the same treatment she did Usopp before she steps back a bit.

Her smile dims for just a moment, and she unconsciously tightens her grip around Elynna's upper arms.

(Because Lynna doesn't blush like Usopp.

Instead she blinks owlishly at her,

and for just a second she looks vulnerable and awed and thirsty

-heartbreaking-

looks like the young, young girl Nami somehow always forget she is rather than the old, too old child whispering in the blue darkness of her eyes

and Nami thinks that no one who flirts as much and speaks of their family as fondly as her best friend should look so surprised to hear those words, even when they're thrown at her out of nowhere.

So she decides that she's going to wipe that look off her face

no matter how long it takes

just like this girl always held on to her as long as she needed her to.)

"… What brought this on?" Elynna asks faintly, face flat like she's not quite sure what expression she's supposed to make.

"It's for the Log Pose!" Nami beams down at her after apologizing to Luffy for kicking him into the sea, which her Captain waves off easily since Sanji and his First Mate were there to take him up quickly.

"Oh." The dancer stops wrenching water out of her shirt to glance up at her for a moment, before reaching up to brush back the loose curls of ocean-coloured hair stuck to her chubby cheeks into a messy bun against her neck, shrugging nonchalantly like she didn't just save their lives. "You're welcome, I guess."

"How did you know about them?"

"Hm? Uh, I went to a library on one island and took a look at a book that listed some of the weirdest facts and animals of the world. It was written by some kind of explorer, I think, who probably had a lot of money, because he managed to get himself a Marine escort to explore a part of the Grand Line. Anyway, he talked a lot about the weird changes of climate there, and about the importance of the Log Pose. So since basically everyone who goes there from East Blue passes through Loguetown, I asked Sanji to see if he could find one."

"In the shady part of town?" Nami grins with a raised eyebrow.

Elynna shrugs again as she follows her back to the table.

"Well, most of those who need a Log Pose are the pirates trying to enter the Grand Line. I figured that if he looked in the main street, he would probably end up in a shop monitored by the Marines or something."

"Uh, that makes sens-"

A couple of loud gasps cut into their conversation, and they all turn around to find the two whale hunters climbing up the cliff -and looking slightly charred.

Immediately Sanji is there to offer his hand to the woman, leaving the man to gape at them.

"Hey, wait up!" He yells, before gulping when he finds himself being stared down by the entire crew –minus Zoro who somehow slept through the whole thing- and the lighthouse keeper. "I… have a request."

Nami raises a brow at that, and when they finish explaining that they need a ride to go back to their town, she exchanges a dubious glance with Elynna.

These guys may look like idiotic weirdos, but they were still willing to kill a man and a whale to complete their mission. Adding to that the fact that they straight up told them they are part of an organisation shady enough to ask for absolute secrecy from its members –which means they probably weren't even supposed to say they were part of it in the first place- and the duo is basically a bomb of troubles just waiting to explode in their face.

The navigator smiles at them, sweet and sorry and a bit stupid.

"Well, we'd be glad to help you, but we broke our Log Pose, you see… Are you sure you still want a ride?"

"That's our Log Pose!"

"How dare you try to take advantage of our helplessness when you're in just as much trouble as us?!"

Nami blinks innocently at their furious faces, and switches to the smile of a businesswoman who's just about to rip off her customer big time.

"Oh, but luckily we managed to get our hands on another one…"

"We appeal to your generosity, milady!"

She snickers at their prostrated figures, high-fiving Elynna with a self-satisfied smirk.

The First Mate gives a half-smile of amusement, turning to the others.

"What do you guys think?"

"I don't trust them one bit." Usopp says bluntly as he crosses his arms against his chest. "They're just going to bring us problems. We should let them deal with their own crap and go on our way."

"The lad is quite right." Crocus nods.

"Don't be so rude!" Sanji mutters around his cigarette in protest. "We can't leave a woman stranded alone in the Grand Line! We should at least help her."

Usopp grumbles something that sounds strangely like well at least we know what you're thinking with, which earns him a proud pat on the shoulder from Elynna.

He promptly decides to reflect on himself as soon as he can, because he's clearly taking the wrong path in life.

"I agree with Usopp, personally." Nami goes on.

"We swear we will return the favour!" The duo pleads in unison.

Elynna ignores them, and turns to Luffy, who blinks at her.

She shrugs in response.

"I don't mind either way, but just don't expect them to return kindness with kindness. As far as I'm concerned, their word is worth nothing."

The Captain takes only a second to think before he nods.

"Sure. You guys can come if you want."

His crewmates exchange a glance, before shrugging and rising to their feet to prepare the ship.

At least this time he didn't decide without listening to their opinion.

"You sure about this, kid?" Crocus asks slowly with a furrowed brow. "This is the only place where you can pick the direction you want to go. You don't have to choose Whiskey Peak for these two ruffians."

But Luffy waves off his concern.

"It's fine. If we don't like this route, we'll just have to sail around once and then choose a different one."

"Don't say it like it's easy!" Usopp barks as he stops in the middle of climbing the rope ladder to nudge Luffy's face with his foot.

"I mean, he's not wrong. If he wants to be the undisputed King of Pirates, we'll probably have to sail through all of the seven routes. And the other seas." Elynna comments nonchalantly from where she's leaning against the railing.

"You're right, Ann! Let's do that, it's gonna be fun!" Luffy beams, looking absolutely unbothered by the shoe squishing his cheek against the rest of his face.

"Are you kidding me?!"

"Oh yeah, it sure is gonna be fun. Since we're at least seven times more likely to die young, and preferably painfully."

"Don't encourage him." Nami huffs while nudging the other girl in the leg with her heel as she hoists a lamenting Usopp who looks like he wants to faint on the Merry.

"It's not fun at all!" The sharpshooter cries out, falling into the navigator's arms as he opens the waterworks.

"Well, no, but it's better to laugh about it."

"Lynna, shut up. There, there, Usopp. We can always jump off the ship and live a new life on an island with fake identities."

"What the hell?" Zoro mutters as he finally wakes up from his nap.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

Crocus stares at the horizon long after the strange group has disappeared and melted into the reddening light of the setting sun.

He hasn't seen newbies that are this interesting in a long time.

He kind of wants to root for them, but at the same time they look like they might kill each other before even reaching the first island.

He can almost hear his former Captain and friend laugh boisterously next to him.

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

Writing POVs from those outside of the crew is pretty fun. Especially when said crew is already doing something stupid and/or crazy.

As always, thank you for reading, and double thank you in advance to anyone who leaves a comment to tell me what they thought/liked/disliked.

Stay safe!