From The Sea - Dive rgence

by SugarFeather

A young, dreamless girl closes her eyes in the Mediterranean Sea, and opens them in the middle of East Blue. (How do you go on, when everything you have ever known and loved is gone, and everything left to love should be a paper-thin lie?) [cross-posted on AO3]

26. Believers

So…

The finals killed me.

One Piece resurrected me.

Nothing else to say.

(Still took me less than three months this time.)

To Mardi: You do have a point. I tend to call filler anything that isn't following a canon event haha. Thanks for your comment!

Trigger Warning: racism (not sure this counts, but just in case...)

ALSO! Two reviewers from ao3 have been kind enough to make some fanart of Elynna, so I thank them again for spending some additional part of their time on this fic, and here are the links if any of you are interested!

From fenpi: https: slashslash imgur dot com /a/Ozvxv7C

From ekale: htpps: slashslash flamerra dot tumblr dot com slash post/672610170716700672/i-think-im-starting-to-love-you-guys-like-ive

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

TWENTY-FIVE

What is cruelty?

Is it when I see the fear in your eyes and the pain on your skin

(your skin that is red

with the ones I love)

and it makes me want to

smile?

Shame, then.

I rather like to smile.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

She sidesteps the thrust of a blade towards the left side of her face, and the back of her right hand connects with Zoro's wrist to block the oncoming strike from the right side.

Turning her hand, the touch turns into a grip as her nails dig into his forearm, and she places a foot on his chest to throw herself up in the air.

He barely leans back enough to avoid a kick in his chin, mouth ticking up with a faint wince as her nails scrape at his skin, and the katana in his free hand cuts through the air towards where she's now upside down above him.

But she catches that wrist too, and throws her weight to the side to throw him away from her.

Zoro rolls into a crouch, and springs forward, intent on not giving her a break.

Elynna feints to the side, runs up the wall to jump high in the air, twisting and turning in a flurry of ornate movements that hide the hand that flicks and catches a closed tessen.

She lands behind him, fan flipping open as it whistles softly through the space between them and towards his back-

They stop.

Elynna narrows her eyes up at her sparring partner, tessen clicking and straining against the katana he used to divert her blow away from him when he turned at the last moment.

"Did you just up the level?" She asks with a click of her tongue, the other katana held against her throat a feather light touch.

"Don't give me that look." He snaps back with a roll of his eyes. "Getting others to underestimate you only works if you can keep the fight short. Otherwise your enemy will stop going easy on you."

"You're still going easy on me."

"Obviously." He snorts with a glare that says don't twist the meaning of my words.

He presses the flat of his blade closer against her throat for emphasis, and she snickers.

"Your reaction time is getting better, though." He muses, feeling the jagged edges of the other tessen she took out as soon as she saw his muscles twitch to turn around, and that she's now holding poised against an interval of flesh between two ribs.

Not a fatal injury like the one he could inflict on her right now, but still.

"It better be." She grumbles, looking less enthused about the compliment and more annoyed at the fact that her training regimen is going to be upped again.

She steps out of his space, and they both grab their bottle of water, gulping down half it and dunking the other half on their face.

Zoro sits down, leaning back against the railing to catch his breath, and the next moment Elynna's head takes up residence on his shin just below his knee like it's a damn pillow.

The sun glares down at her, and she throws an arm over her eyes with a groan that sounds suspiciously like a curse.

If only to stop the seemingly endless string of swearing, Zoro bends the leg that isn't being hogged by his First Mate, providing her with some shadow.

A few minutes later, they're almost asleep when Usopp joins them with the crew's Den Den Mushi in his arms.

"Oi, Elynna! The Flower Lady is asking for you!"

Elynna lets out a silent yawn, and blindly throws an arm over her head towards the sniper's voice. Her hand hits Zoro's bent knee and stays there until she feels the weight of the snail in it, the muscles of her arms still shaking with tremors.

She can almost feel Usopp's pitying gaze.

Still keeping her eyes closed, she sets the snail somewhere near her ribs, and tugs the speaker up to her mouth.

"Mmmyeah?"

"Did you guys party all night again, Little Moon? You sound like you have tried alcohol." Akane laughs on the other end.

Elynna groans.

"Another pirate crew tried to steal our money by blasting a hole through our hull, and then a dozen of penguins from a nearby island dropped on our deck because they were too stubborn to admit that they couldn't fly like their flamingo neighbours. Or so Hebi said. Except penguins were sacred on that island and everyone there was convinced we kidnapped the penguins to smuggle them somewhere or sell them in some black market. I don't need alcohol to get a headache."

"... Maybe I should try travelling with pirates like you, one day. It sounds fun."

Elynna finally opens her eyes to stare flatly down at the snail's imitation of Akane's only slightly teasing smile.

"What part of what I said sounded fun?"

The older woman laughs again.

"Don't be so grumpy. I'm sure you'll laugh about it later!"

"I already can. I just prefer to complain about it instead."

Akane hums in amusement and shifts the conversation towards the new island she's settling in with her husband, as well as the all-female tavern she has started working in.

The seamless, easy chatter is almost enough to make Elynna fall asleep again, until she suddenly registers Akane's question a few minutes later.

"By the way, do you speak a dialect on your home island?"

She stiffens ever so slightly, and even if Zoro doesn't move or open his eyes, she can feel the weight of his attention lean against her.

She's definitely awake now.

"Dialect, you say?" She eventually speaks up.

"Yes!" The woman chirps. "Some islands have developed a few differences with the universal language over time, especially those who took longer to integrate the World Government system. You sometimes have a bit of an accent, so I was wondering."

Internally, Elynna curses herself. She was talking in English with Robin just before she received a call from Akane the last time, and switching language after using one for a relatively long time always left her pronunciation prone to slip-ups at first.

But it's fine.

She has an excuse.

It's going to be fi-

"It reminded me of someone I met some time ago, actually."

She draws in a breath so sharp she almost coughs, staring up ahead into the sky with wide eyes.

Then she notices that something is raining down on them.

It touches her cheek, and it's not wet.

"Akane-san? I'll call you back." She states, reaching over own body with her other hand to grip Zoro's thigh even as the first piece of a fucking galleon throws a shadow on them.

They both curse, and Elynna rolls off him and to her feet even as he lunges to a stand.

She slams the receiver into its holding place and runs towards the mast, exchanging a glance with Sanji to inform him of which side of the main sail she'll take care of.

He nods, and jumps ahead to start climbing up towards the other side.

Once she has secured the sail to avoid having the debris tear into it, she spends the next ten minutes holding on for dear life.

When the sea finally settles, she lets herself fall into the net of hands that Robin offers, and from there she flops to the ground in a boneless heap.

Nami's snigger still sounds slightly hysterical.

Elynna doesn't open her eyes, and barely lifts her hand high enough to flip the other girl off.

Sue her, she already had two hours of strength exercises and sparring in her when this clusterfuck started.

If she wants to stay down and look pathetic, she will.

"Usopp…" Chopper whimpers as he collapses on the deck. "The skeleton… There was a skeleton…"

"Hush, Chopper." Usopp whispers fervently from where he's lying next to the reindeer with his eyes closed. "Just close your eyes and breathe. Imagine a nice picture, and don't think about the skeleton."

"... Now you just made me think about it again!"

"Shhh."

Nami's sudden screech of horror makes them both jump to their feet with a yelp that is just as loud.

"The Log Pose! It's broken!"

"How do you mean?" Robin asks with a curious blink. "It doesn't seem to be."

"Look! It's pointing up!"

"... It's not broken, Miss Navigator."

"See? I told y- Wait, what?"

"It appears we've entered the magnetic field of a Sky Island."

"Sky Island? How does that even work?" Sanji frowns at the sky in confusion. "An island that floats? I don't see any."

"Can an island really float?!" Luffy asks, already looking excited enough to rocket himself up through the clouds to find out.

"Well, to be more specific, it's not just an island, since Sky Islands float on the sea just like here -although I don't know much more than you about them."

"... Are you telling me there's an entire sea floating up there?" Nami eventually speaks up with a nervous laugh.

"That's even more confusing." Sanji mumbles next to her.

Usopp and Luffy are nearly salivating at the idea.

"Yosh, let's go! Full steam ahead!"

"The ship can't go up, shithead."

"Exactly! Sky Islands don't even exist in the first place. The Log Pose is just broken, that's it!"

"No, Miss Navigator. If your Log Pose was broken, there would be some visible sign of it. In the Grand Line, the Log Pose is the only thing you can trust. No matter where it points to, there must be an island there. What you need to worry about right now is how to get there."

Just then they hear a call from Luffy and Usopp, who went to inspect a part of the wrecked ship that was still floating, and apparently found a coffin of all things, which Robin asks them to bring over.

Elynna eventually opens her eyes when she hears the sound of wood sliding against wood, turning on her side to watch the achaeologist inspect the skeleton inside, swiftly putting back together the pieces of its skull.

"So creepy…" Nami mumbles, nose wrinkling in disgust.

"A beautiful woman and a dead body look good together!"

Usopp throws a scandalised glance at the cook, and abruptly turns towards Elynna.

"You. You're forbidden from helping Sanji cook from now on. You clearly have a bad influence on him."

"I'll kick you." Sanji mutters.

Too late, Elynna mouths at the sniper, before looking back at Robin and the now reassembled skull she's gingerly inspecting.

"This hole isn't natural."

"Do you mean that he died because of a head injury?"

"Wasn't there some kind of medical procedure that involved drilling a hole in people's skulls a long time ago?"

Robin directs an approving smile towards Elynna.

"Yes, trepanation. Isn't that right, Doctor?"

"Uh, yes?" Chopper gulps, still trying (and failing) to hide behind the mast. "It was used to heal some head diseases. But it was a very long time ago."

Robin nods.

"This man must have died some two hundred years ago at around thirty years old. A disease, if I'm not wrong. His teeth are very well preserved thanks to a technique that originates from South Blue." She continues to explain idly even as she flips through a massive book. "Found it."

Elynna raises an impressed eyebrow as the older woman rattles off all the information recorded about the ship that almost flattened them barely twenty minutes before.

… Should she call her Sherlock Holmes?

"It was most likely sailing for exploration purposes, so there should be a Logbook that could tell us more about how they went up. The ship is sinking quickly, though…"

"Luffy, hang on!" Usopp's voice reaches them faintly from the sinking ship.

"Yeah, Sea King too, apparently." Elynna deadpans.

Once the rubber boy is dragged back to the Merry, he brandishes his finding with a wide, excited smile, and Nami's jaw goes slack before she can even start to scold him as she stares at the map in front of her.

Luffy, Chopper and Usopp, for their part, are already dancing away their excitement.

The pirate thief's answer is that they still don't know how to go there.

To which Luffy replies that she just has to come up with something since she's the navigator.

Obviously, telling him that some things are just impossible doesn't go over well, or rather it doesn't go over at all.

Eventually, the tangerine-haired girl decides that they're going to salvage the ship for more information.

"And how are we going to pull up a ship five times the size of ours?" Zoro inquires sceptically.

Nami shoots him a sly smile.

"If it won't come to us, we just have to go to it!"

She casts a glance towards Usopp, who blinks back blankly for a moment before his eyes light up in understanding.

"Leave it to the Great Usopp!"

In a matter of minutes, he drags out four makeshift diving suits and all the machinery needed to provide air to those who would go down.

Luffy is obviously one of them, and Zoro takes a suit for himsef in case there's a good katana to be found. Sanji follows suit, determined to find what Nami wants -and that the other two are likely to forget to even look for.

Elynna eyes the composition of the group so far, exchanges a glance with Nami, and grabs the last suit.

Members of the Monster Trio tend to lose whatever common sense they have whenever they're alone together.

Their navigator sends them off with a smile that says I don't care what kind of monster you meet, don't come back unless you have something helpful.

Except, well…

"There's nothing." Sanji concludes with a disappointed frown once they realise that whoever is using a machine to grip both sides of the sunken ship has also blown enough air into said ship for them to take off their suit.

"I found lots!" Luffy beams, emptying a large bag at their feet.

The cook's eyebrow twitches down at the rusted suit of armour that crowns the resulting pile of junk, delicate and utterly condescending.

"Nami-chan said to find information, dumbass." He growls.

Luffy pouts, and then promptly ignores him in favour of the octopus still sticking to Zoro's diving suit, which he very obviously considers to be their dinner.

"I saw you in an office. Found anything?" The swordsman asks as he turns towards Elynna.

She leans back against the barrel of her suit and crosses her arms with a shake of her head.

"Whether it's because of the time they spent there with no proper care or because of the water, none of the books I saw was legible. Have you gotten word from the others?"

Sanji's frown deepens.

"I've tried calling Robin-san and Nami-chan several times, but they haven't answered. Do you think something has happened to them?"

"That, or they're pretending that we're not here. Whoever is lifting this ship is definitely more experienced than us considering their equipment. They might not like the competition."

"Then we should go back right now!"

"Wouldn't it be better to stay here and attack when we're close to their ship?" Zoro counters.

Before they can start a fight over strategy or choose which one to go with, some kind of gorilla-like man -or man-like gorilla- crashes through the wall.

"Who dares come onto my turf!"

"Ah." Luffy blinks. "A monkey."

The newcomer rubs the back of his neck with a bashful blush.

"Really? You think so?"

"Yeah. You look more like a monkey than a real monkey!"

"What does that even mean?" Zoro mutters under his breath.

The conversation veers off towards monkeys and East Blue after that, so Elynna drifts closer to the window of her room.

The guy doesn't seem to be too much of a threat, but depending on how many people came with him, the others might still be in trouble, so she'd rather go back as fast as possib-

She blinks.

"Guys?"

"Yes, Elynna-chan?"

"I think we've just been eaten."

A beat of silence.

"Seriously," Zoro huffs, "how many times is this gonna happen?"

Luffy's laughter is abruptly interrupted when the gorilla notices the bag full of all the stuff the straw-hatted boy found on the ship.

"How dare you deceive me?!"

Elynna watches his enormous fist smash down a barrel to pieces.

"Alright boys, let's book it."

Sanji takes the lead to guide them to the upper deck, Luffy following him with his bag of treasures and still laughing his ass off while Elynna stays behind to pull Zoro away whenever his feet lead him anywhere but in the right direction.

As it turns out, they're luckier than the last time, because the mouth of whatever ate them up is still open, and apparently planning to stay like that.

The gorilla's roar reaches their ears again, along with the sound of wood breaking.

"Why are we even running? We could just slice him up."

"No way, Zoro! He's funny!" Luffy rebukes with a grin.

A fist breaks through the door.

They run, jump on a ridiculously big, dull tooth, and dive towards the sea.

As they fall, Elynna angles herself so she can catch up to Luffy and wrap an arm around his waist, before she throws his bag to Zoro.

By the time she hoists Luffy's limp body over the railing, Sanji is already scrambling to explain what happened to Nami, who seems a lot more interested in what might be in the bag Zoro just dumped on the deck.

Elynna personally is more interested in knowing who turned off the fucking light in the fucking sky.

"Maybe we should get away from here first." She calls out as she wrenches water out of her clothes while Chopper takes care of Luffy, knowing how the navigator will react once she realises -again- that her definition of 'treasure' differs a lot from their Captain's. "Things might turn ugly with the monkey guy-"

She falls silent.

Everyone in the vicinity does, in fact, including Luffy.

She would be impressed if she wasn't busy staring up slack-jawed at the gigantic angels of shadows standing in the clouds.

They row even faster from those than they rowed away from Laboon and the Sea Kings of the Calm Belt.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"So I've been wondering." Usopp starts once they're reasonably sure they're not being followed by monkey-humans or mega-Giants and have taken the table on the deck for an early lunch. "Why do people call you a raccoon instead of a reindeer, Chopper?"

Said reindeer looks up, cheeks stuffed like a hamster and eyes watery with tears from the heat of the mini soufflé he put whole into his mouth without blowing on it to avoid Luffy's grabby hand.

He gulps down his food, sticking his tongue out to cool it with the ambient air, before frowning.

"I don't know, but it happens very often."

"Aw, don't worry about it, Chopper." Nami coos as she pats him on the shoulder. "They're probably just blind."

"Or stupid." Zoro adds.

"Same thing." Nami dismisses.

"Maybe they've never seen a reindeer before." Usopp speculates, adopting his 'Believe it or not I'm thinking about Deep Stuff' pose. "Not everyone can be a daring explorer who has seen everything the world has to offer like myself."

"Yes, yes. You're exceptional." Nami drawls as she tugs a piece of meat off its skewer.

"I'm glad that you acknowledge it. You have a good eye, young la-"

"Maybe it's a conspiracy to erase the existence of reindeers. You should contact other reindeers, Hebi. I'm sure you can remind the world of the difference between raccoons and reindeers if enough people get stabbed by antlers."

Chopper gapes at Elynna, whose attention doesn't leave the book propped against her thighs.

"But... That sounds painful!"

"Well yeah, that's kinda the point, sweetheart." She drawls blandly, pausing in her reading to turn and lean her side against the back of her chair and putting her feet back on the seat of it. "The shape of the wound would also be quite recognisable, and-"

She stops there as her eyes drift up and she realises that half of her crew is staring at her with various levels of disgust.

The tessen she was waving lazily next to her face to ward off the heat freezes in the air, and she cocks an eyebrow.

"What?"

"What are you tripping on?" Zoro asks, bluntly expressing Nami and Usopp's feelings.

"Nothing."

"Figured."

"Are you insulting me?"

"Can't you tell?"

The corner of her mouth ticks up even as Usopp whips out his notebook, opening it to a specific page where he adds a vertical line to the column titled Green Dumbass.

"Well, I'm never quite sure when it comes to you. Sometimes I get... lost while trying to follow your logic."

Zoro's eyes narrow.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She lifts her chin with a sneer barely light enough to be playful.

"Can't you tell?"

Usopp adds another vertical line in the 'Young Padawan' column.

The next moment Zoro's katana is slicing the air towards where she's sitting next to him and screeching against the steel guard of the war fan Elynna just flipped closed.

Usopp tumbles out of his chair on her other side with a yelp.

"Keep your dumb swords off my table, cactus head!"

"Exactly!" Nami huffs with successive kicks in the shins of the swordsman (she also gives him Lynna's share, since he's the only one she can reach) even as she cradles a shaking Chopper in her arms. "If you want to throttle each other, do it far enough that the blood won't waste my meal!"

Sanji evidently only hears the praise for his food considering how he's swooning, and next to him Robin's smile has tilted one millimetre to the right and taken on a 'Miss First Mate's book is actually mine. One nick and I will respectfully break your wrist, Mister Swordsman' shade.

Crouched next to Usopp, who knocked himself out on the barbell Zoro left lying there, Luffy laughs.

Zoro slides his katana back in its sheath with a click of his tongue.

"Who would even be stupid enough to want to erase the existence of reindeers of all things?" He grumbles.

"The Marines, obviously." Elynna answers without missing a beat. "Probably saw a reindeer once and misunderstood his actions as threatening."

Robin hides her smile in her cup of tea just in time.

On the floor, Luffy looks on with interest as Usopp, who just woke up, valiantly tries to hold in his laughter because oh crap, my head, I think I'm about to die. This is it for me, Luffy. I leave you in charge of fulfilling my dream to destroy every barbell in the world-

Nami watches them both suspiciously, and then stares insistently at Elynna, who gazes back blankly in her version of an innocent face.

It says yes, something happened and I was involved in it, but no, I'm not going to tell you about it because I don't feel like explaining everything.

Also it's fun watching you get angry.

Nami glares harder, and when it's met with no response decides that she'll hog Chopper during any cuddling session where he's present in the foreseeable future.

Eventually, they reach the island of Jaya, and are greeted by a voice screaming bloody murder.

Literally.

"Looks like a fun town." Zoro smirks as he jumps down after Luffy.

"Of course they'd say that." Nami laments, but she follows them anyway.

She can't trust them one bit to find any information on their own, but she can use them to threaten it out of other people.

They have to be useful somehow.

"Alright boys, no fighting, you hear me? We can't afford your intimidation factor losing its effect."

"It won't."

"Stop being so confident."

"Now you're just tempting them." Elynna comments as she falls into step next to her.

"You're coming too, Ann?!"

"Nah, I think I'll go over there." She says with a jab of her finger to her right.

Nami follows her line of sight before giving her a nod.

"Have fun!" Luffy yells with an enthusiastic wave.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Okay, I think this is the first time the Marines blame us for something we didn't do and the result is actually in line with our ideology." The Commander by interim of the G Army declares gruffly.

Well, by interim, but considering how long Ivankov has been stuck in Impel Down, everyone just calls him Commander by now.

Also because Commander by interim is a fucking mouthful.

Murmurs of laughter follow his remark from those of his colleagues who were able to make it to the monthly meeting between high-ranking members of the Revolutionary Army.

On the table they gathered around, a newspaper is displayed among other documents, opened at the page of the article recounting the official version of what happened on the island of Zephrim: members of the Evil Revolutionary Army consorted with criminals and poor, blackmailed Marines to oppress inhabitants and extort money from them (to finance their equally evil activities against the World Government), but thanks to a courageous Marine and a brave journalist, everyone who's not a bad guy was saved, although the Revolutionaries managed to escape by the skin of their teeth, yadda yadda yadda.

As usual, the official version clashes with the actual reality on so many points that it's a good thing the name of the island was mentioned in the article, otherwise the members in charge of newspapers monitoring might have thought it was another case entirely.

Chief among those points are the facts that the Revolutionary Army wasn't involved at all, that the corrupted Marines didn't need any blackmail to consort with the criminals, that the inhabitants ended up being protected by pirates, and that the Marine and journalist were both helped by a woman who fits the description of someone they've had their eyes on since that whole mess in Alabasta.

"Maybe we should contact her about joining us…"

"Why the fuck would we want to do that? She used to be a Marine and turned on them despite all the brainwashing she probably got even before enlisting. We can't trust her." The ageing Commander of the North Army bites out, ignoring the mumbling attempt of his deputy Karasu to reconsider before lashing out.

"She's not the only one who used to be a Marine. So were a few of our members right now. You should know by now that some recruits sometimes turn to us when they realise that the reality of the World Government doesn't really match the version in the propaganda that pushed them to enlist. Besides, I thought you would like this one more. She has already proven by her actions that she's both capable and aligned with our ideal."

"Has she?" Someone else interrupts.

"What? I mean, it's true that the official report doesn't mention her, but we did get some witnesses on Zephrim who confirmed they saw a woman who looks like Ryan Alice, and that journalist-"

"That's not what I mean. She's certainly capable, and I do not deny her involvement in this case, or in Alabasta and Cocoyashi."

"... Then?"

"Are we sure that her ideal is in line with ours? So far, she has spent just enough time in the locations where she acted to root out the main problem in the most expeditive way she could find, and left right after without seeming to care about putting the people and the institutions back together. We have monitored the situations where she intervened, and things are going well in all three cases as of now because good people stepped up, but we have no proof to say for sure whether she left that to luck, or if she took steps to contact these people and ensure that another mess wouldn't appear as soon as she left."

There's a long silence as everyone processes his argument.

"Well… I guess that's true."

"That doesn't mean we can't reach out to her to recruit her. She's rather young, from what I heard. This might just be a miscalculation on her part. We all have our flaws, so not recruiting her because she might be hasty would be a mistake. We're better off training that flaw out of her and turning her into even more of an asset, in my opinion."

"There's also the possibility that she's still working for the Marines." Another voice points out.

"... The Marines?" The Commander of the North Army scoffs. "The lass has already put them in a tight enough spot by exhibiting their failures left and right that they came up with cover stories that sound like bullshit to anyone not completely brainwashed in order to avoid it being spread too widely. Twice. Thrice in East Blue with Cocoyashi. Some people on Zephrim and Alabasta are even trying to contact us. How would that even work? Don't let the invitation we gave you go to your head, boy. If you have nothing good to say, keep your mouth shut."

"Oi, Charles, that's a bit-"

"You have to look at her direct targets." The younger man goes on as if he hasn't just been shut down, pensively stirring his coffee with a movement so practiced the tiny spoon doesn't clink against the cup even once.

"What?"

"Who has she directly kicked off the curb? A member of the Shichibukai, and corrupted Marines. Considering this, it's perfectly possible that she's working with the few Marines who are actually doing the job they're supposed to do -even if they're too blind to look beyond our label as 'evil' and work with us. She does seem to still be in contact with Garp The Fist, at least."

"I guess…" The Commander of the G Army frowns. "But still, the way she goes about it can really blow up in their faces if that's the case."

The young man smiles.

"Or, she's bait."

"For who?"

"For us."

"Us?"

He hums in confirmation.

"She does things that make it look like she might be on our side, we contact her, and she expresses her interest in joining us. Then they have a spy right in our ranks whose MO is already known to include disguising herself as a Marine, which will make it easier for her to make her reports. And they also get rid of some of the stains on their reputation by offing corrupted soldiers in the process."

"... Kid, that's fucking twisted."

"Not as twisted as some of the stuff the World Government has already done, but yeah. Still fucked up." The Commander of the North Army adds gruffly. "What made you even think they might be doing that?"

The officer with the lowest grade in the room smiles again, almost hidden behind the gloved hand that cradles his jaw.

"It's what I would have done in their place."

"... Yeah, fuck that." Charles eventually says. "We're not recruiting her. One of him is enough. I don't want to risk adding another twisted brat to our ranks, because she'd definitely have to be twisted for her superiors to call on her for that kind of job, even without counting all the stuff she did that might actually come from her own brain."

The deputy of the Commander by interim pretends to faint, and reaches his goal of lightening the tension in the room when laughter circles the table again and a few people rush to jokingly 'save' him.

In the slightly rowdy commotion that follows, a gloved hand reaches for a cup of coffee to pour its content into another cup.

Koala eyes her friend as he steals the coffee of a Commander, lips thin and unimpressed.

"You're evil. Commander Charles is a coffee addict, you know."

His smile widens with just a tad of mischievousness.

"I thought we agreed that a certain amount of evil was necessary in order to reach our goal?"

"Are we talking about the same goal?"

"I need to be at my best if we want to reach it, so yes, of course."

"Of course." Koala repeats dryly, before her gaze drifts to the wanted poster again.

The woman is young, from what they heard.

Their age, at most.

"... Do you really think she might be a spy?"

"I only have hypotheses. I don't think anyone is right or wrong to believe any of the opinions that have been expressed so far, because we lack too much information. We need to know Ryan Alice before making any kind of decision about her."

"My coffee! Who is the little shit who took my coffee?!" The Commander of the North Army yells suddenly as he spots his clearly very empty cup.

"Are you trying to antagonise the higher-ups?!" Koala hisses under her breath. "You need their approval to become a high-ranked officer, you know!"

"And I will get it. Besides, if this is enough to upset them to the point of letting a prank cloud their judgement, they're not fit to sit at this table."

"... You're impossible."

"So I've heard."

"You might want to run."

"That's not necessary. I made sure to leave a fresh stain of coffee right in front of Lindbergh's seat."

Koala watches as Commander Charles rushes to fight the cat mink, yelling something about how the Commander of the South Army has been in his way since that morning when he closed the elevator's doors right in front of his face.

Lindbergh looks both confused and gleeful about the upcoming fight.

Koala glances to the side to find not one speck of surprise.

Of course he somehow knows that Commander Charles was already annoyed with Commander Lindbergh.

"... As I said, evil."

Sabo hums amusedly.

The brewing fight is interrupted by the arrival of Dragon, whose raised eyebrow is almost like a magic spell that brings everyone back to their seat.

His dark eyes flit over the table, and stop on the wanted poster that was just being debated over.

He points a finger at it.

"You can take that off the topics to be addressed for the future. I know who that woman is, and she is already affiliated to a group. She won't be a problem for us."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Marina emerges from the bathroom, still rubbing a towel over her hair to get them at least slightly dry.

A glance towards her bed tells her that her partner of the day hasn't moved yet, still lounging on her stomach and idly flipping through the recipe book Marina has been reading for inspiration during the last few days, legs tangled in the bed sheets that barely cover her waist properly.

Not that Marina hasn't already seen everything, anyway.

But it leaves her with a perfect view of the teeth mark bitten into the skin of the girl's right shoulder.

She winces.

"What is it?" A low-pitched voice asks, prompting her to look higher into half-lidded, blue-almost-black eyes.

(And here she thought the girl was just very good at playing the 'hot-as-fuck bedroom eyes' card.

Apparently, it's natural.

Still handy in the bedroom as far as she's concerned, though.

Or wherever Riza -or whatever her name is, because it's not like she gave her real name either- ends up fucking someone, she guesses.

... Like the living room they got started in.

Ugh.

Definitely more cleaning than she wants to do during her day off.)

"Sorry about that," she eventually says with a nod towards the superficial wound. "I didn't mean to do it."

Riza turns on her side to face her, hair sliding like a whisper against the bed sheets as she follows her gaze, as if she can't tell what Marina is talking about.

She waves a dismissive hand through the air.

"Eh, it's fine. I don't mind."

Marina huffs as she walks to the coiffeuse next to her window to throw her towel on the back of the chair in front of it, bending down to look in the mirror so she can better fix her hair.

"It's probably for the best that this is just a one time thing. I really don't like rough sex." She pauses, meeting Riza's eyes in the mirror. "Also, you're too slow."

Riza blinks back at her, not seeming disturbed in the least.

If anything, she looks vaguely amused.

"And you go too fast. Seriously, the one thing where I take my time, and people still find a way to bitch about i-"

Marina sends her a withering glare through the mirror, turns around to pick up the clean towel at the foot of the bed, and throws it in the girl's face.

"My house, my rules. Don't get cheeky with me."

A long, exaggerated sigh answers her from beneath the towel before the other girl finally takes it off her face and rolls out of bed to slip into the bathroom.

Marina rolls her eyes, and heads towards her kitchen.

Though in her opinion it's too damn small to be called a kitchen, and she had to threaten the smarmy coward of an owner with the mafia connections that she doesn't have so she could actually have gas (and hot water, thank you oh so damn much), but...

Well, it does the job.

By the time Riza joins her, barely dried hair braided clumsily and dripping down the back of the oversized white shirt she turned into a kind-of-dress with a belt, there's two glasses of iced tea on the table.

She blinks down at it, and murmurs a word of thanks as she slides into the chair opposite to the one Marina is sitting in, before reaching for the sugar bowl and pouring enough of it in her glass to forego sleep for at least two days.

Marina can feel the amusement tugging at the corner of her lips, because she really didn't peg the girl for the type to have that big of a sweet tooth, but she's too focused on the way Riza moves to really smile.

Because it's a bit too close to the mercenaries and pirates she sometimes waits on in her restaurant, how precise her movements are and how she looks around the room.

Marina might not have anything more than a few notions of self-defence, but when you live on an island like Jaya you pick up a few things, including which people to stay away from.

It's just that in this case, Riza doesn't quite move like other 'red flags', as Marina likes to call them.

It's a bit, well-

Too beautiful?

Or something.

"Are you a criminal?" She blurts out.

Riza's glass stops just shy of her lips, and her eyes meet Marina's.

"Depends."

"On how I define a criminal?" She asks with a wry twist of her lips.

Typical.

"On which answer turns you on the most." Riza corrects, finally tipping the liquid into her mouth but still staring at her.

Marina is very tempted to throw the content of her own glass into the other girl's face, but it would be a waste, so she opts for kicking her in the shin instead.

Riza snickers.

"What did you come to Jaya for, anyway? It's not exactly a tourist spot."

It's a very unsubtle attempt at redirecting the conversation, but Riza seemingly accepts it, sipping quietly on her drink for a long moment as she stares pensively down at the table.

"We were just following our Log Pose." She eventually says with a shrug, watching what's left of her iced tea slosh around in her glass. "It started pointing towards the sky at some point, so we decided to go to the closest island to solve the problem."

Marina is nodding before her guest is even finished.

"Yeah, we get some people like that from time to time, though I think that most of those it happens to usually go to another island."

"Any clue as to what we can do, then?"

Marina waves a dismissive hand through the air.

"Eh, just wait here until your Log Pose is set again. It's just a malfunction because of some freaky magnetic phenomenon. Unless you're like that old man who lives on the other end of the island and thinks that Sky Islands exist. But I wouldn't bank on what that dude is saying to be true, considering who he is."

A raised eyebrow prompts her to explain further.

"He's from the Montblanc family."

"Never heard of it."

"You're not from North Blue, are you?"

"Nope."

"Then it's normal. I didn't know about them either until a friend told me about it. It's a pretty well-known children's book over there. Something about an explorer who found a city of gold on an island, and when his King told him to bring him back there they never found the city again. Apparently the guy kept going on about how the city was real, so he ended up being executed as a liar." She finishes with a roll of her eyes.

Riza scoffs under her breath.

"Some children's book. And then people wonder why teenagers are violent."

Marina snorts.

Riza's empty glass clinks against the table.

"Anyway, thanks for the info. I better get back to the imbecile I call my boss. I haven't seen him for two hours, it's at least twice as much time as he needs to do something stupid."

"Did you need to insult him twice?"

"It's to emphasise the extent of his stupidity. Should I wash that?" Riza asks distractedly as she raises her glass in the air.

"Nah, it's fine, but thanks for asking."

"Sure thing."

"And come to my restaurant instead of a bar next time you drop by. You'll look less weird ordering a nonalcoholic drink, and I'll get some money."

The girl scoffs as she gets up, her long shirt sliding down her thighs in a way that almost completely hides the hem of the shorts she wears under it, although the fabric of them is dark enough to be visible under the white cotton.

"Yeah, and I'll be sure to come alone so you don't end up broke and on the streets."

"How generous."

"I know."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

She's walking down one of the main streets and trying to decide whether or not to go back to the ship directly when the sound of glass breaking and laughter booming catches her attention.

She turns just in time to see blood drip from Luffy's black hair before the hand holding his head roughly jerks him back inside a bar that looks as seedy as the rest of the town.

There's a moment where her mind goes blank and her world is reduced to the small, red puddle that she can barely see from the other side of the street.

(But that she swears she can smell-)

Then someone roughly shoves her out of their way, and before her brain starts working again she's pushing the door and stepping inside the building.

There's a bit of a crowd, and most customers are drinking and laughing enough for twice as many people.

Laughing at the two boys who are bleeding all over the floor they're lying on, and the girl who is crouched over them.

This should not be happening.

Not because her crewmates should be safe from harm and humiliation simply due to the fact that she loves them.

It would be stupid to expect anything like that, especially in the case of Zoro and Luffy, given the dream they're reaching for -not to mention their personality.

No.

This isn't right because-

The people in this room are weak.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Simply, she's quite sure that she can beat almost everyone here whether they're drunk or not, though maybe not all at once.

Considering the power gap between her and her two crewmates, they should have no problem beating everyone to a pulp and taking down the building while they're at it.

So why the fuck aren't they?

Her eyes meet Zoro's, and he glances at Luffy in answer.

Luffy isn't looking at her, and she couldn't hear him speak from where she is anyway, but she surmises that this (whatever it is) has something to do with his Luffy-esque values.

She usually doesn't have a problem with those, but in that moment, as the insults and humiliation ricocheting around the room cloy the inside of her throat, thick and red and choking like the blood Luffy spits over the floorboards, she kind of-

(hates them.)

Except this is how they decided to deal with the problem.

She won't disrespect that.

So instead of gutting the most dangerous man in the room where he stands (leering down at Rain as if she's a piece of meat he's not sure is up to his quality standards) like she wants to, she only inserts herself between him and her teammates, and keeps her hands lax against her thighs.

"Lynna!" Nami hisses up at her in English as soon as she notices her. "These idiots didn't do anything-"

She almost smiles at the realisation that the navigator thinks so little of the people around her that she's mostly blaming the whole thing on Luffy and Zoro instead.

But then the man in front of her opens his mouth, tongue lolling out of a sneer that crawls all over her skin.

"Oi, is that Neerleg I hear? You one of them, girlie?" He presses on, grin widening down at Elynna as he visibly concludes that Nami switched to another language to accommodate the newcomer's preferences.

He doesn't even try to be subtle about the way he raises his voice, and his words echo in the whispers that run through the room.

"A Neerleg? For real? Can't believe some of them still have the guts to get out of their shithole."

"I totally can. They wanna see the modern world, you know?"

"I don't give a damn. They should know by now that we don't want to see their kind, and those shitty Marines could at least try to do a decent job at keeping them where they belong."

"No wonder those guys are too weak to even fight back. It's a given if they were worthless enough to take one of these dogs with them."

It takes her a moment to understand what is happening.

She somewhat guessed that those who spoke another language than the universal one weren't exactly welcome in this world.

But even if she knew that, what is happening now is too foreign for her to have made the connection before it punched her in the face.

(Because where she comes from, it just wouldn't happen.

Being ridiculed for her gender? Sure.

For not meeting beauty standards? Maybe.

For any number of idiosyncrasies that someone considers offending somehow? Perhaps.

But for her ethnicity?

The possibility is squashed under so many privileges

-that shouldn't be privileges-

that it's almost laughable.)

The words are so foreign, directed at her like this, that they just slide off her skin to evaporate in the air.

So unlike what she has ever experienced and known about where she stands in society that they mean nothing to her.

But the tone...

(The laughter that mocks something that she can't help,

the sneers that look down on her and bear down on her with their weight until she's lower and lesser,

the eyes that strip her of anything worthy until they can feast on everything that isn't and that can be stomped on, until she's reduced to that and only that-)

The tone reaches her.

In this closed room made smoky with cigarette breath and alcoholic fumes, it feels like the only thing she can hear or breathe.

It stabs, and then it worms its way between muscles and blood like an itch that she won't be able to scratch unless she tears herself down layer by layer.

And now that her crewmates are behind her back and she can't see their injuries anymore, anger is no longer there to keep her together.

(Instead there's shame, scraping and slicing and needling.

Making her cheeks burn.

Making her eyes hot.

Making her head swim.

Rooted there like her only option is to sit still and take it, even as embarrassment squirms tight and burning under her skin and tears keep lining her eyes no matter how many times she blinks.

She tries to swallow them back down, but her mouth stays dry and her throat tight.)

She can take a few insults.

But she can't stay calm like her crewmates, or even spit out the words in her head like Nami.

Too much misplaced pride, or maybe not enough confidence.

Apparently, the only things that haven't changed since she came to this world are the things she hates the most in herself.

Figures.

She almost wants to laugh, and the resulting shake of her shoulders jolts her enough to take in a sharp breath that drowns out the renewed laughter of those who think they're seeing her cry in earnest.

Hands clasped behind her back, she claws viciously at her wrist with one hand and into her palm with the other, until the threat of her tears recede and the hotness in her cheeks subsides at least a tiny bit.

She can't do much better than that, but she's been underestimated before.

This will just be a more humiliating version of that.

The back of a hand knocks into her jaw, hard enough to nudge her head up and to the side from where she's looking down at the floor, to make her feel the sting of skin against skin, but light enough to convey condescension rather than aggression.

"Oi. I'm talking to you."

"Yes, sir." She answers in a murmur made hoarse by the hurried way she swallowed down the tightness in her throat, cutting off Nami's sharp intake of breath behind her that would be sure to be followed by a loud and insulting rant.

Just to be safe, she does her best to lay whatever trace of an accent she can muster into her words, praying that they won't drag Nami into this.

"Heh. Shoulda known. Y' look freaky just like one."

Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment.

"Yes, sir."

Another backhanded nudge of his hand, closer to a slap this time.

"I know they're probably just as ignorant as you, but haven't your parents ever taught you to look people in the eyes when they grace you with conversation, girlie?"

Fuck no. I'm gonna puke.

Or kill someone.

And by someone I mean you.

"I wouldn't dare, sir. It would be disrespectful."

Bellamy, if she understood his name correctly when she entered the pub, scoffs, and then throws his head back to laugh.

Which is apparently the cue for everyone else in the damn building to do the same.

She lets them laugh, and imagines how Bellamy's gaping mouth would slacken if she was to flip a tessen into her hand and slice his throat open.

It would make for a much nicer smile, in her opinion.

Interestingly, it helps to keep her cheeks almost cool and her eyes dry even if her muscles bunch up and her shoulders round inwards.

(It's a bit like talking back to her parents in her head while sticking with yes's and sorry's when they're scolding her and she doesn't feel like she deserves it, but a lot more violent.

And she feels a lot less guilty about it.)

A loud noise behind her prompts her to throw a look over her shoulder.

She sees the bodies of the pirates who were pinning Zoro and Luffy down under their boots fly as both of them surge to their feet, hands clenched tight and features pulled into snarls.

They've barely straightened up when a tall man with pale hair and a fur coat kicks a table towards them.

The heavy piece of wooden furniture bowls Luffy over and flattens him to the ground, and all the empty and full glass tankards on it go flying straight into Zoro.

"Sorry, my foot slipped!" The man leers, loud and anything but sorry.

Elynna blinks, considers what might happen if her hand 'slips' and sends a kukri flying to slice off the offending foot that the man is putting back down on the grimy, sticky floor, and stays put.

Luffy's snarl slices further into his cheeks, frown so hard it sends shadows over his eyes.

And then those eyes meet Elynna's.

She looks back at him, and hopes that he can look past the slight redness under her eyes and the tension in her shoulders and neck.

It's fine.

She sees his jaw tighten for a moment, and then he relaxes on the ground even as Zoro follows suit, letting two other men pin him down again.

Then fingers pinch at her chin and wrench her head back forward, too fast and too rough.

She winces, and looks up into Bellamy's pleased eyes.

"So, girlie. What's your job in that crew of idiotic weaklings?"

She blinks, not quite sure which answer he's looking for.

He snickers, and answers the question for her.

"Then again, I doubt that something like you can be useful for anything other than whoring yourself out, huh?"

"You're right, sir." She murmurs with lowered eyes, ducking her head in an attempt to hide the way her features twitch in accordance with her thoughts.

If I were to fuck any of them, she thinks, it would be for pleasure, not for utility, dumbass.

But even if fucking you was useful in some way, I would have to be really desperate to do it.

"Heh. At least you get it."

She pauses, considers her next move for a moment, and then bows.

"Allow us to get out of your territory, sir. I wouldn't want to impose."

Renewed laughter.

Jeers.

A large hand shoves her head downwards, and she lets it bring her to her knees.

The rough, dirty, scraped wood of the floor gnaws at the skin of her knees, and her palms sting with the shock when she slaps them against the floorboards to avoid greeting them with her face.

More laughter.

A call of her name at her back.

"You forgot the most important word, whore."

She blinks away the hot, wet rush of embarrassment that accompanies the new avalanche of slurs that tumbles into her ears, swallows the shudder that trembles up her throat, and decides then and there that she draws the limit here.

If that piece of shit dares to put his foot anywhere near her face, Luffy and his morals can go to hell.

She'll follow him there if she has to, but she'll do it over this asshole's dead fucking body.

"Please allow us to get out of your territory, sir. I wouldn't want to impose." She repeats docilely.

She thinks back on that book she discussed with Robin about all the fun ways one can die, and applies one of them to the owner of each bout of guffawing mockery that grates her ears.

"At least one of you has got some sense. Scram. We gotta clean the air around here before the stench sinks in."

She uncurls from her position and turns around, eyes flickering from Nami's stormy eyes and red ears to Luffy's slack features and soaked hair.

The navigator nods tightly, and hurries over to their Captain.

Elynna walks up to Zoro, who has already shrugged off the hold kept on him.

Her eyes flit over the extent of his injuries, but there doesn't seem to be anything too serious.

Or, well, nothing too serious for him.

He confirms her diagnosis with a nod, and they follow Nami and the Luffy she's dragging behind.

"Fucking dump." She mutters under her breath as soon as she walks out.

At least the territory matches the owner, she guesses.

Zoro's shoulders shake with a silent scoff next to her.

"Heh. The cherry pies are definitely the best around here."

"You." Nami mutters through teeth still gritted together with frustration and a healthy dose of pent up violence, and she abruptly lets go of Luffy's collar, sending his head smacking against the dusty road. "You're from earlier."

A bout of laughter answers her, and Elynna's brain crashes into something so shocked and still that she forgets how to breathe for a moment.

Because she knows that weird laugh.

(Knows it like the colourful shapes she watched flit across the screen only once, but that she didn't entirely forget, because it wasn't so long ago

-even if she felt like it belonged to another life, another her-

and strong emotions tend to strike the memory more brightly

Knows it like the shadows of nightmares still clinging to the back of her heart and her eyelids when she wakes up some days, throat raw and head heavy like she has already failed and cried over it

Knows it like the anxiety that grips her stomach and twists every time Ignis takes more than two cycles of ringing to pick up her call, leaving her to wonder if this is it, if he's lost, if she has lost-)

She steps to the side, but she already knows what she's going to find.

Marshall D. Teach 'Blackbeard' is sitting there, in the middle of the road, one hand clenched around a bottle of wine.

She breathes in, silent in a way that is loud and painful, because everything in her body is too tight to move and accommodate the intake of air.

(Fire, airy and dancing and free.

Fire, liquid and melting and blood red hot.

The hole and the tears and the last smile that she never wants to see.

Death.

A scream.

And laughter-)

She breathes out, thin and fraying, until it rushes out because she's trying too hard to control it.

"Why are you still angry? Sister..." Blackbeard smiles, laughter sipping through the space of his missing teeth. "That fight just now. Your crew has won it."

"... What?" Nami mutters, eyes narrowed as if she thinks he's making fun of her and looking just about ready to show him how much it makes her want to rearrange his face.

It makes Elynna's hand itch to pull all three of them away and get the fuck out of here before the other pirate can become any more interested in them.

Any kind of attention from this man can only mean Problems, and not even Luffy and Zoro can beat him as they are now.

Or if they can, the chances are low enough that she won't risk it.

It's only when Zoro shifts next to her, the heat of his presence pressing against her awareness along the length of her right arm, that she realises her fingers are twitching.

She grits her teeth, and forces herself to settle into something still even if not relaxed.

It's the best she can do right now.

Blackbeard's grin widens, and he straightens up to spread both arms in the air at his side, as if daring anyone bothered by all the space he's taking to try and make him give even an inch.

"The end of the era for pirates who dream, he said? Hah! Bullshit! A man's dream will never die! Am I right?!"

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

The man laughs again, and Nami looks on, bewildered.

His words alone make her think that he seems to look at pirate life like her own Captain does.

But everything else about him makes her skin prickle like a gust of cold air has brushed against it in a whisper of danger, and-

And he has the same smile Arlong had when he told her that he would set her free as long as she brought him the money he asked for.

Luffy shifts at her feet, sitting up and righting the position of his hat on his hair, and her eyes flit around, trying to gauge whether her instinct is right based on her teammates' reactions.

Her idiot of a Captain is staring at the man with something as close to seriousness as his face can manage, and that's enough of a clue.

A glance over her shoulder tells her that Zoro looks calm like he almost always does, but she knows that the slight frown in his forehead and the tightness in his jaw mean that he's on guard. Much more than usual.

Elynna's default expression of casual but attentive distance has turned stony, and she's so tense she doesn't even seem to breathe, but Nami isn't quite sure if it's because of the man in front of them or because she's still considering marching back into the bar and starting a bloodbath.

Luffy eventually looks away from the man and turns on his heel, and Nami follows with a last glance over her shoulder.

The man's grin is still there, and with a shudder she hurries forward, slowing down once she reaches her First Mate's side.

"So." She grumbles under her breath. "Why didn't Luffy fight back?"

She's not stupid, she knows that Zoro and Elynna only followed along with what Luffy wanted. Ultimately, he's their Captain, no matter how much he doesn't act like it.

But if she asks him, he either won't answer, which will make her want to strangle him, or will answer her with some cryptic bullshit, which will also make her want to strangle him.

She doesn't get how Elynna seems to understand him despite how different they are, but at least her First Mate will give her a straight answer.

"... Probably because they were insulting him for having a dream. There was no point arguing with them since the way they think is so different. And Bellamy wasn't even looking for an actual fight. He was just there to humiliate us, and it's the kind of thing that Sea King has just zero interest in. Besides, they were all so convinced of their superiority that it wasn't even worth proving them wrong. Or something like that, I guess."

Nami looks back forward with a twist of her lips.

It's not like the way those assholes mistook indulgence and blatant lack of care for humiliation wasn't funny, but still...

"Well," Elynna murmurs idly, "I still wish he had just left the bar entirely or beaten them up. They aren't worth arguing with, but they aren't worth getting hurt over either."

Nami presses her lips together with a hum of agreement.

She glances down and to the side, watching as Elynna wipes the back of her hand against her mouth, the white of it stained with a streak of blood from the cut she bit in her lower lip back inside the pub.

The First Mate studies her own hand distantly, as if it's someone else's.

"Are you... okay?" Nami ventures with a frown.

Her best friend doesn't look at her, hissing out a sigh from behind clenched teeth instead.

"I will be when we're off this damn island."

Nami cocks a brow.

Not just the town, but the island?

Her eyes flicker between Elynna's twitching fingers and the tension that almost looks like a snarl around her jaw, that draws her taller and tighter where she's usually loose and graceful and a bit tired.

Elynna is... agitated.

To some extent, she's always stressed, of course.

It's just the kind of person she is.

The kind of person who enters every situation trying to brace themselves and plan for the worst outcome.

When someone like that lives as a pirate, they're bound to have trouble being fully relaxed, no matter how much her best friend tries to make it look as if she is.

But this is the kind of agitation that Elynna used to show when they were about to get into a fight in East Blue, when danger still seemed too fresh and new, when evading and fighting back were barely familiar to her mind, let alone her body.

Apart from that trekk in the desert of Alabasta, Nami hasn't seen her display that kind of agitation in weeks, and that last instance happened when they were heading for a literal civil war and a fight against a member of the Shichibukai.

This island is just a hotspot for small-time thugs.

So what is making her so worked up?

Unless...

"Is it that guy? He seemed a bit weird, but I don't think we'll cross path with him agai-"

"Not him." Zoro cuts her off from where he's walking ahead of them with Luffy. "Them."

Nami looks back again even if the other man is long gone by now, trying to remember where his teammates could have been hiding.

"... They're the ones Ignis is after." Elynna says lowly, eyes flitting around like she's not quite sure they haven't been followed.

It takes Nami a moment to remember who Ignis is supposed to be, and when she does she curses under her breath.

If that guy is the one a pirate as strong as Fire Fist Ace is looking for to execute him, then he's definitely bad news, and in more ways than one.

Strong, ruthless, and probably more than a little crazy.

So Elynna isn't agitated, she's worried.

Worried in a way that almost seems... off.

But the thought slips her mind when they reach the Merry as Usopp and Chopper proceed to annoy the hell out of her by asking all the wrong questions.

She's in the process of trying not to laugh at the way the small reindeer keeps shifting forms every time he so much as thinks that she's glaring in his general direction when Robin joins them.

"You guys seem to be having fun. Any luck finding information in tow-"

"Shhhh!" Usopp interrupts her in a hiss. "Don't talk about it. She's in a bad mood."

Nami huffs.

Usopp gulps.

Chopper tries to shift away, keep her in his line of vision and slap a bandaid on Luffy's cheek all at the same time.

Robin smiles.

Sanji appears on one knee at her feet with a lovesick smile and a piece of cake on a plate.

"Why's she the one getting angry when she didn't get hit?" Chopper whispers, but it's about as discreet as when Luffy does it.

"Dunno." Luffy shrugs.

"Don't ask." Zoro scoffs at the same time.

Elynna smacks his shoulder in a silent order to keep still while she cleans the scraps on his face.

Nami feels her eye twitch in synchronisation with her fist, but before she can bark at them that she's angry for all the things that happened to the four of them and that these two idiots aren't getting angry for, Robin thrusts a piece of paper into her hands on her way to their cabin.

Nami squints down at the map of what appears to be Jaya.

"What's this for?"

"I went to buy some clothes and ask around." Robin smiles. "Do you see the spot on the other side of the island?"

Nami hums.

"This is where a man called Montblanc lives. Apparently, he was exiled from Mock Town because he was a 'dreamer'."

Nami's eye twitches again.

Robin smiles.

"It might be interesting to speak with him."

"Especially since he keeps saying that the Sky Island the Log Pose recorded exists." Elynna adds nonchalantly.

Nami blinks, and raises a brow in her direction.

"Didn't you get information about the layout of the bank Luffy and Usopp wanted to rob from the guy who worked there a few weeks ago?"

She's asking, but she already knows.

It's hard to forget how shamelessly the owner of said bank was blackmailing the mayor to block any measure aiming to reduce his power in exchange for the funding said mayor had needed during his electoral campaign to become a mayor in the first place.

Or how Luffy and Usopp insisted on taking the most ridiculous costumes to hide their identity because the man who was pushing for more restricting policies -and paying the price for it- owned a costume shop.

It's not everyday that a bank is robbed by a pink, sparkling unicorn and a pharaoh cowboy.

(As in, literally, a boy in a cow-patterned full body suit and wearing a pharaoh costume over that.)

Elynna shrugs.

"What can I say, mixing business and pleasure works out pretty well, contrary to popular belief."

Then she gestures for Luffy to follow her so she can wash his hair, since he has clearly already forgotten about it.

The door closes behind them and Zoro, and Usopp turns to her.

"What does that even mean?"

Now it's her turn to give him a curious look, lips already twitching in anticipation.

"... You mean you don't know?"

Usopp chucks a rubber bullet at her.

Oh, this is going to be good.

"Know what?"

"That Lynna got the info from the guy she had sex with."

Usopp spits out the water he was gulping down.

"Well, I think it was a girl today."

Usopp chokes on the remaining water in his mouth.

Nami cackles.

Usopp glares, and reaches for another bottle, but neither does much in the face of his raging blush.

"I did not need to know that."

"Hey, you're the one who asked." She retorts with a shrug. "Plus she's done that a few times already, so I really thought you knew."

"Well next time I ask a stupid question, don't answer." He grumbles.

She nods, smiles, and swears internally to never miss an occasion to do just the opposite, because this is just too much fun.

She catches Chopper's vaguely worried eyes, and her smile softens.

"Don't worry, she's careful. She gives me a timeframe for how much time she'll be gone at most, and she at least tells me which place she goes to to find someone. The one time I went to a bar with her to get a drink, she spent a few minutes talking to the guy to ask the most important questions -and it's not like she goes to the shadiest places possible either." She shrugs, and reaches out to run a finger over the fur between Chopper's eyes that is riddled with concern. "It's not like there's zero risk of something happening, but she plays it safe."

"That's good." The reindeer mumbles softly with a nod, although he still looks like he's going to kidnap their First Mate so he can do additional check-ups on her.

Suddenly, Usopp snorts, eyes focused on the crack running along the Merry's main mast that he's trying to repair.

"What?"

"I thought she would have gone to you."

Nami wrinkles her nose.

"I don't do casual sex. I tried once, and it wasn't my thing."

Usopp shoots her a glance that says he didn't need to know that either.

"Could've fooled me." He mutters.

"... Kissing doesn't count."

"Uh huh."

"And we don't do it that often."

"Sure."

She narrows her eyes at him.

"So have you asked Kaya out yet?"

"Of cour- What?!"

His furious blush takes on an interesting purple tint as his hammer falls straight on his foot, and he yelps, hopping on the spot as he contorts himself to try and blow air on the abused appendage -which is still covered by his shoe.

Nami smiles smugly, watching Chopper run after him with the pile of medical tools he was packing up.

There.

This is how things should be.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Why did you stop me?"

Elynna pauses, and then resumes lathering shampoo in Luffy's hair, nails scraping across his skull just the way he likes as she nudges him into bowing forward a bit more so his head is actually in the shower stall and not dripping shampoo all over the floor.

Maybe the girls' bathroom -or more like its bathtub- would've been better.

"Why did you suddenly want to fight?"

"They insulted you." Luffy mutters, and she doesn't need to see his face to picture the hard frowning lines in his usually open, smiling face, or the darkened brown of his eyes.

"They insulted you, too."

"No."

She raises an eyebrow, and hears a squeak as Zoro closes the tap of the washbasin on her left.

"No?"

"They insulted my dream, but they insulted you."

She snorts, and rakes his hair back gently so the strands won't drip shampoo into his eyes.

"So? Your dream is part of who you are."

He huffs.

She sighs.

"They didn't hurt me." He eventually says with an extra layer of stubbornness in his tone.

She blinks.

For a moment she considers saying that they didn't hurt her either, but it wouldn't be quite true.

Their words didn't hurt her. She has enough self-esteem to not suddenly think herself entirely worthless just because a bunch of idiots say so.

It might take a bit of time for her to forget those words, because unpleasant things tend to stick, but shrugging them off is easy.

When it comes to the sheer amount of disregard and condescension that was thrown at her, however...

Well.

It might be a bit more difficult.

Her self-esteem isn't that high.

So yeah, her and Nami might not be as immune to mental and physical hurt as him or Zoro.

But-

She places her hands on his shoulders.

"For me, it wasn't about whether or not you were hurting. If you were angry at the way they degraded me, what do you think it felt like to me, to see them try to humilitate you and hurt you? The fact that it didn't work doesn't make it alright, Sea King, because they still disrespected you enough to try. I let them do this because you let them do it to yourself first. Because you're the Captain, so when you decide to solve a problem in a certain way, I will follow. Otherwise, my knee would have been in his face, not on the floor. Do you understand that?"

In the periphery of her vision, Zoro bends down over the sink to rinse his hair one more time, his amused scoff barely audible under the sound of running water.

"... I think so." Luffy mutters somewhat sullenly.

She hums, and presses her thumbs into the muscles of his shoulders in a pseudo-massage that makes him sag forward.

"I'm not saying that the way you dealt with it was wrong, but just consider what it means for the rest of us."

"Okay. But you don't have to always follow me."

"Okay."

Then she turns the shower head on just above his head without warning, and snickers when he yelps in surprise.

He jumps at her as soon as she's done rinsing his hair before she can even think of grabbing his towel, and proceeds to thoroughly drench her shirt along with the skin of her cleavage.

"Oi."

She looks up from where she's pressing a corner of Luffy's towel to her throat to wipe some of the water off while he hogs the rest of the fabric for his hair, and meets the grey of Zoro's eyes with a raised eyebrow.

Leaning back against the counter, he crosses his arms across his naked chest, and considers her for a moment.

"None of what they said was true."

It's simple and firm like stone, because Zoro works with this kind of truth rather than with hypotheses like she does.

The strongest wins.

The body bends to the mind.

There's nothing a sword can't cut if the swordsman is good enough.

Her lips twitch into a half-smile.

"Yeah, Ann! You're a thousand times better than them anyway!"

"No."

Luffy scowls at her as if he can go back in time and close her mouth to not hear her reply just with the force of his determination.

"What?!"

"I'm infinitely better than them."

His brow scrunches as he tries to compute that answer, and Zoro snorts.

Then she tilts her head pensively, and-

"I wish one part was true, though."

It takes Zoro a moment to understand which part she's referring to, and when he does he grabs her by the collar and drags her out of the bathroom.

"What did you do this time?" Nami calls out to her with laughter in her voice.

"Hey, he's the one who's doing the whore-shaming."

"... I don't want to know." Usopp mutters.

"I mean-"

"Not one. More. Word."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Stepping into the girls' cabin, Elynna closes the curtains to ward off the heat of the early afternoon, and flops backwards on the bed, closing her eyes to better feel the rocking motion of the waves under the boat as they sail around the island towards their destination.

"Fuck." She mutters to the otherwise empty room.

Seriously, what the hell is Blackbeard doing on Jaya of all islands?

Last time she checked, he was all the way in the second part of the Grand Line.

No wonder Ignis hasn't found any new clues in the last five days.

Is this just a trick to confuse his former superior because he knows that Ace is tracking him down?

Or is there another reason behind his coming here specifically?

She rubs at the stress lines she can feel carving themselves into her forehead, and sighs.

There's no point in dwelling on that for now.

She has bigger things to think about, including deciding whether or not she should tell Ace.

Does she tell him, and potentially hasten a series of events she's not ready for yet?

This world seems to follow what little she knows of the story she heard in another life, but she doesn't know whether Blackbeard being here was part of that story or not. What if it wasn't and she changes things for the worst by bringing Ace here? What if he dies fighting Blackbeard because of some random factor, and she's ten thousand feet into the sky and unable to do anything about it?

But then, if she doesn't tell him and he finds out that Blackbeard came here while she was in the area, finds out that she hid it from him, will she lose his trust?

She will.

Because he won't give up on this.

She would be getting in his way, in the way of what he sees as revenge and penance for his dead nakama whose murder he feels responsible for.

Telling him to be careful is one thing.

Lying to him, even by omission, and hindering him from fulfilling his goal in the process is another thing entirely.

What if she loses more than his trust?

Is she selfless enough to make someone she loves hate her so she can keep him safe just a bit longer?

What if he stops keeping her updated on his progress and it ends up fucking up her emergency plan that she's more and more convinced she will have to fall back on, because there's simply not enough time?

She grinds her teeth together.

Goddamnit, loving people who can't live quietly is such a pain.

And why didn't anyone-

She stops.

"Fuck me, I am so stupid-" she hisses as she scrambles off the bed.

She marches to the desk, taking out paper and pen with one hand while hastily dialling a number on the Den Den Mushi with the other.

She doesn't have to do this entirely alone as long as she just skips over the why.

If this problem is going to make her sick with anxiety over whether she made the right decision or not, she might as well turn it into an opportunity while she's at it.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Hello?"

"Hey, Marco-san. How is everyone doing?"

Marco snorts, the politeness almost strange compared to what he's used to in his crew -and what he knows can come out of the girl's mouth.

"Are you about to ask me for a favour?"

"... Actually, yes."

Haruta snickers from where they're sitting at the table of the lounging room reserved for the Division Commanders, shuffling cards for their next game against Izou.

"And more precisely?"

"I'd like you to call Ig- I mean, Ace, in a few hours and tell him to get his ass to Jaya as fast as possible. I'll give you the exact address later. There's something important he'll have to pick up there."

By now all the other Commanders present have stopped doing whatever they were doing, and Marco crosses his arms over his chest as he carefully considers the distracted sideway shift of the snail's eyes as well as the rummaging sounds echoing from the other end of the call.

"Any reasons why you can't call him yourself?"

"Hmm?" She answers absently. "Oh, I made him promise last week that he would try to take a nap every day around now. If I call him and I wake him up because he's actually trying to make good on that promise, all my hard work towards getting him to actually sleep will be for nothing. Also, we're trying to find the way to go to a Sky Island right now, so I don't know if I'll be available to call him this afternoon."

Marco sighs, reaching up to rub the back of his neck as he tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling.

The girl has only called them a handful of times to give them some news about Ace and to ask Marco a few questions about what she should pay the most attention to as far as his health is concerned, but it's enough for him to feel quite certain that as much as she thinks that what his fellow Commander is doing is utterly stupid, she also understands that he won't back down, and that helping him is the best thing she can do to take care of him.

If the package she's talking about is really that important, he thinks that she would call Ace right now, whether he's sleeping or not.

He looks at the way Vista's hands have stilled in the middle of tending to his sword, at Haruta's bright, eager eyes and Jozu's smile.

She's giving them an opportunity.

A chance to hear Ace's voice again with a good enough excuse that he won't be too angry at them.

He sighs.

"I can do that."

"Cool. By the way, is Izou-san here?"

"I am." The Commander of the Sixteenth Division answers.

"Oh, hi. So do you know where the picture for your most recent warning poster was taken?"

The marksman frowns suspiciously at the question.

"... Why?"

"So I can track down whoever took the picture and give them money for showing off your face so well." The Straw Hats' First Mate answers in a tone that clearly says that the answer should be obvious.

"... They're working for the Marines." Izou says slowly.

"It's a very beautiful face."

Vista snorts, and by now Haruta has burrowed their head in their arms, which doesn't quite hide the shaking of their shoulders.

"I think you can hang up now, Marco."

"Okay, fine, I'll shut up. Just wait a bit, there's something else I need to ask."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Elynna steps onto the deck after feeling every wooden line of the Merry tremble along a series of sound waves.

"What the hell just happened?"

"We met Masira's brother." Usopp grumbles as he hammers away at a plank of wood to cover the cracks running along the one under it.

She pauses, and slowly takes in the sight of the entire ship.

Cracks.

Scars.

Weariness.

Wood and steel everywhere, trying to keep the ship together.

She remembers swimming under the ship two weeks before, and coming back up to tell Usopp about the slight traces of damage along the hull.

There's not much time left.

She can't be sure that they're still following what little she knows of the timeline inked over pages back home, but if they are…

"You might find more clues about him in Water Seven, though. It was one of his favourite places, and at his age I don't think his taste has changed much since then."

Her fingers flex around nothing, fearful and hungry.

She forcefully tears herself away from that possibility, and turns towards her Captain instead.

"Sea King, stop tearing the ship apart by trying to help, that's just sad. Leave the job to Hawk and come with me, I need your help with something."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

As soon as she hears the screams of admiration from Luffy, Chopper and Usopp, Elynna carefully files all her notes and drafts into one of Nami's empty binders and joins the others.

She comes out on the deck to find herself looking at a weird… castle?

Or more like the facade of one.

Once she walks within hearing range of her crewmates, she finds Chopper digging into the ground with his antlers.

"... What are you looking for, Hebi?" She asks as she crouches down on the edge of the hole he's already dug.

"Nami says the man who lives here has a treasure!"

She hums.

"Well, if he does, asking him will go a lot faster than just digging around and hoping to find the stuff before the year is over. You can stop."

"Oh, okay."

She looks up, and blinks at the tattered book Nami is holding.

"Is that the story of that lying guy?"

Nami frowns at her.

"What? You're from North Blue, too?"

"Too?"

Both the navigator and Usopp point at Sanji, who smiles.

"I was raised in East Blue, but I was born in North Blue."

Elynna tilts her head to the side, quietly inspecting every inch of his smile and comparing it to her memories of all the others he's shown her so far.

Her eyes narrow.

Fucking shōnen rules.

"No," she says absently. "I'm not from there. I just heard about it from the girl I was with."

Usopp chokes, turns red, and decidedly turns his gaze towards the sky.

Nami rolls her eyes, and resumes her story-telling.

"-and the pathetic liar died… Without becoming a true warrior of the seas." She finishes mournfully a few minutes later.

"Stop looking at me! And don't make up stuff that isn't even in the book!" Usopp barks.

Their laughter fades away as Luffy's scream reaches them, and they turn around to see him fall into the sea as a man jumps onto the shore, immediately sliding into a fighting stance.

"Who the hell are you people?!" He barks, prompting Sanji to immediately place himself between the man and the rest of the crew.

"Usopp, go save Luffy."

Elynna leans back to spy around Sanji's back and stares at the man.

Then her eyes meet Chopper's.

She cocks her head on the side.

He frowns.

She raises an eyebrow.

He shakes his head adamantly, and his blue nose twitches.

"You punks have a lot of guts to enter a man's house without permission. This area is my territory!"

With a sigh, she turns around, dumps her binder in Nami's hands, and sidesteps Sanji to march up to the man, planting herself just in front of his fists, cocking her hip to the side and crossing her arms to make her stance as non-aggressive as possible.

It seems to work, because the man scowls at her, but otherwise doesn't move, guard up but still.

"You're all after the gold, righ-"

"So are you saying that it's fine to enter a woman's house without permission?"

The man blinks, looking utterly confused.

"Wha-"

"Or that a woman can't own a house?"

"That's-"

"Don't think too carefully about your answer, both options make me want to punch you in the face."

"It's not what I-"

She smiles.

"Oh, good. We might as well all sit down to talk, then."

"Who are-"

"Look, we already skipped the formalities when we entered your house to say hello -and when you threw our Captain in the water, so we might as well just go there to sit down and talk-"

"I'm not inviting any of you damn brats into my home!" The man yells to stop her from interrupting him again.

He coughs.

She stares at him, smiles again, and without moving the rest of her body at all, swipes one of his feet from under him.

His face morphs into one of shock, and he takes a sharp breath in out of surprise.

And then he's falling to the side.

Elynna grabs the wrist of the arm that is still close to her to avoid getting hit, and punches him in the face on the way down, catching him before he touches the ground to drap his arm around her shoulders instead.

"Done." She deadpans once she turns around with a thumbs up thrown at Chopper.

The reindeer gapes in outrage.

"I said no damage!"

"Well, technically you didn't say it-"

"It still counts!"

"-and I did try to ask him nicely, but he wasn't very compliant."

"That's no reason to hit a patient!" The doctor of the crew yells over his shoulder even as he shifts into his tiniest form and walks briskly into the man's house with his nurse and his knocked-out patient in tow.

Their crewmates exchange a bewildered glance, and follow them towards the house.

"Hey, I didn't make any doctor oath, so it's not like I broke any law."

"It should be common sense!"

"Sorry, I dropped that one for the tough love approach a few minutes ago. Shame."

Chopper screams.

Nami's lips twitch.

Sanji's shoulders shake.

Usopp barely covers his laughter with a cough.

Luffy doesn't try to cover it at all.

Zoro takes a look at the four of them, and shuts the door in their face in a silent order to get themselves under control before they show up in front of Chopper again.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Once Sanji gets started on dinner and everyone else leaves the house to talk about the Sky Island, Elynna takes hold of her binder again, and plops herself down on the floor next to where Robin is attentively reading through Noland's Logbook.

She feels eyes drift towards her, but doesn't react one way or another as she opens the binder to dump her stack of notes on the side where Robin isn't, both to not bother her and so that she can't read it, before bending her knees to find a position at least somewhat comfortable to write.

The weight of Robin's gaze drifts away.

Vaguely, she registers that the others come back into the house and start throwing some kind of party to celebrate… something, but she doesn't look up until she's done.

By that time, she has to read the time based on the position of the moon rather than that of the sun when she cranes her neck back with a cracking sound.

She purses her lips, hoping that she can still make it, and gets to her feet.

"Ann! You're done?"

"Yup," she confirms as she crouches to gather everything into her arms. "I'm going back to Mock Town, okay?"

"Okay!" Luffy hollers, and then hiccups, prompting a tipsy Chopper to burst into giggles.

"What?! No, that's not okay! The Knock-Up Stream will be there tomorrow at noon!" Nami protests. "What are you even going to do there?!"

"Kill Bellamy." She answers without blinking.

"Oh, well that's fine then- No, wait, that's not fine at all!"

"Bye."

"Lynna! Come back here!"

"It's fine, Nami, she's not going to do that!" Luffy's laughter bounces in her ears as she hoists herself up on the deck of the Merry to drop off anything that she doesn't need, before setting off at a light jog towards Mock Town.

She arrives there with sweat lining her brow, and knocks at the door of the only house she knows in this town.

Zara (or whatever her actual name is) opens the door after a few seconds, blond eyebrows raised questioningly and burgundy eyes curious.

"Was it that good?"

"... Do we have a different definition of one-night stand?" She pauses. "One-day stand? Whatever."

"Hey, you're the one standing at my door in the middle of the night."

"I have a favour to ask of you."

"I hope I'll get paid. We don't know each other that much."

Elynna smiles impishly.

"Of course. How do you want to get paid?"

Zara punches her in the arm, but leaves the door open for her to step in as she drifts towards the kitchen.

When she follows her there, Zara is already sitting at the table and sliding a glass of water towards the chair opposite to hers, the freckles peppered over the skin of her arm barely visible under the moonlight that pours in from the open window.

"So. What's this about?"

Elynna takes a sip of water, and slides the thick enveloppe under her arm across the table.

"... This feels shady."

She snorts.

"I have to leave tomorrow morning, but a friend of mine will be coming in a few days, and he'll need to pick this up."

Zara stares at her, and proceeds to open the letter and take out the first sheet of paper.

She blinks.

"It's coded."

Elynna grins.

"It's coded."

Zara stares a bit longer, and then closes the enveloppe again.

"Good. I wouldn't have been able to help my curiosity, so the less I know, the better."

"Sorry that you won't have anything to sell to make some more money."

"... I only do that to idiots who think that a barman only listens to their bullshit to be nice."

"So you definitely would have done it if it wasn't coded."

"I don't do it when the information is too dangerous either."

"This isn't dangerous."

A scoff.

"Not dangerous my ass."

"Your ass is pretty nice, but what does that have to do with the conversation?"

Zara pins her with a look that says Really?

Elynna's grin widens.

A sigh.

"Fine. I'll do it. But I want-"

Elynna slaps a wad of banknotes on the table.

"I wasn't actually going to ask for that much."

"Add it to the emergency stash of your restaurant for when I come again with my friends."

"... You're joking, right?"

"Guess."

"I can't, your face is still the same. But if you break even one of my tables, I'll drown you in the soup my grandma keeps making and that none of my customers eat."

"Creative."

"I try."

"I can take back some of the money, if you want."

"... Give it here, you bitch."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Bellamy! Where are you?!"

Elynna's hand freezes inches away from her glass.

Then she grabs it with a sigh, and knocks back the rest of her drink.

"Annnnd that's my cue to leave."

Zara blinks at the window through which Luffy's voice reached them, and then at her.

"Is that your boss doing something stupid?"

"I don't know about stupid, but definitely entertaining this time around."

With that Elynna stands up, and stops to give the other girl a last smile.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. I'm getting paid, after all." Zara grins with a wave of the enveloppe in her hand. "Be careful out there, I guess. I don't even know why people would want to spend so much time on the Grand Line of all places."

"Don't ask me, I don't know either." Elynna laughs with a wave of her hand over her shoulder.

She steps outside, and heads towards the place where she's most likely to find what she's looking for. It doesn't take her long to reach it, the bar she found her crewmates in just that morning being only two streets away.

In fact, the door of the building is still swinging close when she comes close enough to see it.

"-got something to say to me?"

Luffy's answer falls rather than drifts down from where he's standing on a nearby roof, clear and solid.

"Yeah. Give back the diamond-head mister's gold."

She scrunches her nose.

Thank fuck he didn't give her a nickname like that.

She doesn't even want to think about what he would come up with.

From the corner of her eyes she sees Bellamy jump towards where her Captain is.

She notes the way his legs transform into springs, but doesn't bother to listen any further.

There's not a lot of things that can make Luffy change his mind about how he wants to deal with someone like Bellamy, and at this point she doesn't need to stay any longer to know what the outcome will be.

Although she'll stay anyway, if only for the satisfaction it's going to bring her.

But then moonlight attracts her gaze to the jug of water left on one of the tables outside the bar, and Bellamy's minions come out of the building.

She tilts her head in pensive consideration for a few moments, and then pushes herself off the wall she was leaning on to take a step forward.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Sarquiss takes a swig of his beer as he wanders out of the bar and lets himself fall into a random chair, putting his tankard on the table in front of him.

His subordinates file out to settle around him with the other drunkards they were drinking with, and the loud cheers calling for the straw-hatted brat's blood pump through his blood until he's smiling to relieve the edge in his teeth.

No matter what anyone says, nothing beats watching idiots being put in their pla-

Thump.

He glances down.

There's a foot on the table in front of him.

He wants to follow the leg it connects to to see the face of the idiotic fool he can feel standing next to him and give them a piece of his mind, preferably via his blade-

But instead his eyes stay glued on this foot, even as it leans backwards and tilts the edge of the table towards him.

His tankard crashes off the table, and his lukewarm beer splashes all over his abdomen and pants.

The cheers sound distant, now, as the people around him fall silent.

He opens his mouth, but it's so distorted and torn apart between fury and humiliation that he can't get any word out.

"Oh, sorry." A voice drawls. "My foot slipped."

Finally, he looks up, and he feels his face twist even further when his eyes land on the Neerleg bitch they met that morning.

Except that when they met her, she had the decency to keep her eyes down.

Now she's looking down on him instead, gaze passive and blank.

"What the f-"

Her hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes, surprisingly firm for a woman of her stature.

"Here, let me help you."

He's so confused that it's enough to keep him stuck in his chair when she raises the jug of water in her other hand.

The water dumped over his head is cold, and he jerks backwards, chair scraping against the floor.

Her hand releases his shoulder, falling down his arm so lightly he can barely feel her nails through his drenched fur coat.

He slaps the appendage away, and reaches for the giant blade in his back.

"You're dead, you little slut! I'll-"

A hand snatches his wrist and slams it down on the arm of his chair to keep it pinned there, and this time the girl's hold is tight enough to be on the painful edge of firm.

She steps fully around the chair to face him without paying any attention to his sputtering protests, and rams him backward into the back of his seat with a push of her other hand into his shoulder, effectively caging him in.

Then she places a knee between his thighs on the edge of the chair, and leans forward, pressing into his personal face.

(like walls closing in on him-)

And instead of pushing her off like he knows he can, because she has nothing on him-

He shifts backwards even further until it feels like he's fusing with the wood of his chair, and something burns sharply like acid in his stomach, right on the edge of the pit at the bottom of which he felt fear, that one time in his life when he stood in front of one of the Seven Warlords to swear allegiance and realised that there are people whose power he can't even begin to comprehend.

(but he strives to forget that moment,

and if he can't comprehend it, then it just means that they're in another league

that he can still sit on a throne at the top of his league)

The hand pressed against his shoulder shifts towards his neck until her elbow is digging into the muscle just beneath the bone of his shoulder like a warning to keep still, and she grips his hair to tug his head back until his throat is bare against the chill of the night.

(It feels like a mocking smile.)

She draws herself up and leans in even further, until the heat of her is so close to his skin she's almost pressed up against his beer-stained skin.

And she's still looking down on him, inspecting the face offered up to her eyes nonchalantly while he still gapes up at her.

His mind is blank with something too warm to be fear, something closer to embarassment.

"Well, I did my best to clean you up, but I think you'll have to do most of the job yourself when it comes to all the shit you're still full of." She hums while critically looking down his gaping mouth, as if she can see everything inside of him and it leaves her unimpressed.

As if he's a piece of garbage on her path, and she's only willing to pay attention to him long enough to kick him to the side of the road.

She smiles, toneless and empty.

"Trash will be trash unless they don't want to be, after all."

He struggles, half-formed insults falling out of his lips, but gravity and her position make it impossible for him to make her budge, and when he casts his eyes around him frantically, he only finds hesitant faces and gazes fleeing his.

A gap in the wall of people circling them has formed around where a man has slid down the wall of the bar, still shaking on the floor with what is probably a mix of fear and drunkenness, a kukri embedded deep in the wall somewhere above him and a line of red on the side of his neck.

That's when Sarquiss realises that he will never get help from his subordinates, unless he already has the upper hand and no real need for assistance.

Which means that his only chance is-

"That old man and these stupid monkeys are as foolish as you are!"

He smirks.

(The twist of his gut makes it feel breathless like a last, vain attempt

but he's learned long ago that his Captain's strength is worth much more than his gut.)

"You think you can do what you want because your Captain is here with you? Don't you even have enough sense to remember the beating he got this morning?! Get real! Bellamy will off him in one hit, and after that he'll come for you, and I'll be sure to show you why you shouldn't have messed with me!"

The girl stares at him for a long, silent moment.

And then she smiles again.

Small, indulgent.

As if to say how pitiful.

Her fingers tighten into his hair, and slowly wrench his head to the side until he has a full view of the plaza where his boss is about to publicly execute her weakling of a Captain.

It's not painful, but that doesn't make his eyes burn any less.

Breathing wafts across the side of his neck and his ear, close and warm and amused.

"You know, maybe you're right. Maybe dreams are dreams because they don't come true, and maybe people should stop hoping for their dreams to come true." She hums, voice brushing against his cheek with the chilly breeze of the night as she watches on herself. "But people won't follow the advice you give if you don't follow it yourself. So…"

"The age of stupid dreams is over! People like you are the shame of pirates!"

Sarquiss stops blinking, trembling for the moment when he'll breathe again without feeling like his heart is going to beat out of his ears and walls are squeezing him, cornering him on all sides and leaving no space for freedom.

But the girl's presence doesn't falter against the edge of his.

"You should stop dreaming about having any kind of chance at being better than anyone on my crew."

His eyes finally find Bellamy as he flies towards the straw-hatted brat.

"Farewell, Straw-Ha-"

The boy moves so fast that Sarquiss doesn't even know what happens.

But the next moment wood breaks, dust flies, and when it settles-

His Captain is sprawled all over the floor, and he's not moving.

Silence.

The girl leans away, grip slack around his bones.

He's free, but he stays slumped there in his seat like a puppet without strings, mind blank and reeling.

"... Ha." The breath of laughter that was so eager to leave his mouth a few seconds before falls out of his gaping mouth, remnants of the snickers that were ghosted out by shock. "Quit fooling around… Hey, Bellamy!"

The brat's stony frown turns in his direction, and slants down to shadow his eyes further.

"Ann?"

The girl straightens up entirely, and something in his chest breathes easier for it.

"Hey, Sea King. This looked fun, so I thought I would join. You say you're here for gold?"

Even if Sarquiss wanted to focus on the bastard's answer, he wouldn't be able to.

Especially when the girl finally takes her knee off his seat, only to slam her foot into his stomach, sending him crashing backwards along with his chair.

Bruises scream across the skin of his back under the thick fur of his coat.

And as his subordinates scatter away from the area with their tails between their legs and not a look behind them, he remains there.

Staring at his Captain who never lost before now, sprawled on the ground just like him.

He only snaps back to awareness when he sees them walk away from the bar, the girl with her knife in one hand and the boy with the sack of gold on his back.

The sack of gold that doesn't belong to that pathetic geezer anymore.

He sees them walk away hand in hand, and he scrambles to his feet, because this can't end like this, it has never ended like this-

"Stop right there! As if we would lose to dream-chasing idiots like you! Where the fuck do you think you're going?!"

They stop.

Suddenly, he can't find his voice.

The boy turns back around and holds out a bloody fist, the only proof that he was in a fight with Sarquiss' Captain at all.

"Where?"

Next to him the girl doesn't even bother to actually turn around.

She just throws one last glance at him like a charity gift, black and bottomless against the light of the moon.

He stumbles back and falls on his ass for the second time that day.

And then the brat points one finger up.

"The sky."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Why did you do that?" Luffy asks as they run along the coast towards the ship.

"Why did you?" She quips.

"Because they took the gold the old man has been fighting for."

She didn't do it for that, and they both know it.

If she saw the former pirate's and the monkeys' sorry state like Luffy did, she would feel disgusted at how far Bellamy and his goons went, would help take care of any injuries.

But she wouldn't run all the way back to Mocktown and pummel someone for them.

Use what happened as a pretext to start a fight? Probably.

But she wouldn't be fighting for their sake.

They both know that, and because even Zoro might step in for them, she glances to the side, just to make sure that he's not too angry at her for that.

Luffy suddenly jerks closer to her when he jumps above a protruding root, and almost knocks her to the ground.

He watches her stumble for a few steps before she rights herself up, and when she whips around to give him an irritated glare he throws back an equally irritated frown that says I know you're thinking about dumb things and if you don't stop I will keep hitting you.

He can't flick her forehead as usual when they're running like this, so he makes do with what he has.

She huffs, and looks forward again.

"Because petty revenge is one of my hobbies." She eventually answers. "Guess that too much pride and stepping on people's faces is something I have in common with those guys."

Now it's Luffy's turn to huff, and he considers falling behind so he can kick her.

"You're not like them." He repeats firmly.

His First Mate snorts.

"Obviously. I thought we already established that I'm better. But it doesn't mean that we can't have things in common."

Well, there's also the fact that she realised that being underestimated was nice and all, but being feared could be just as useful.

And in movies or books, the villains that get to her the most are the ones who ruin someone's life little by little, piece by piece, who wear mind and body and money and relationships down until there's only frayed threads left to snap, and who don't even look cruel while doing it.

They make her feel sick, perhaps in part because she admires their abilities.

So she figured she might as well try out the role.

Now she just has to make sure that she doesn't go too far and doesn't enjoy it too much.

But she thinks that if she only plays this kind of game with people like Big Knife Sarquiss, she can live with herself.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"A meeting between Red Hair and Whitebeard? We ought to keep an eye on them… This could be dangerous."

"I doubt it. Red Hair will not try to change the balance of the world." Another of the Five Elders counters, dismissing his colleague's worry with a wave of his hand.

"Let's just observe for now, then." A third one decides as the one sitting next to him shifts to the next order of business.

"We need to nominate a new member for the Shichibukai as soon as possible."

"I agree. Waiting any longer will only increase the chance of the balance being upset."

"Of course. We have summoned the other Shichibukai for that purpose, but it's unclear how many of them will show up. They are still pirates, after all." The Marine kneeling in front of the highest political figures of the world explains hastily.

The third Elder huffs at that.

"Damn that Crocodile, causing this kind of trouble…" He leans forwards to pick up the wanted poster on the table in front of him, and frowns down at it. "Monkey D. Luffy… The one who beat him can't be allowed to run around freely either."

"Don't forget about that ex-Marine." The fourth one adds, the tip of his sheathed katana tapping against the other poster on the table. "This Ryan Alice has the skills and resources to ensure that Crocodile did not get back up. We need to ascertain whether she will work to maintain the balance or destroy it, and act accordingly."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Even after the messenger from the so-called 'Blackbeard Pirates' is gone, Mihawk keeps staring pensively at the window through which he appeared.

A plan to propel them from no-name pirates to a crew worthy of having their Captain nominated as a member of the Shichibukai?

Whatever they are contemplating, it's likely to change the rules of the game should they succeed.

Making note to himself to look further into those newbies, he turns back to the table they are all sitting around, eyes falling on the two wanted posters that convinced him to come here.

Monkey D. Luffy, and Roronoa Zoro.

He doesn't know the details of what went down in Alabasta, but he was able to guess most of it.

What he did guess leaves him more than pleased, because the Roronoa Zoro he met in East Blue would not have been able to take on someone like Daz Bonez, or whatever his name was in Crocodile's organisation.

He's getting stronger.

Nowhere near the level that will make Mihawk accept to face him again, of course, but…

He will get there.

The corners of his mouth twitch upward at the thought, and then freeze there when his gaze lands on the third poster laid on the table.

It is distinctly separated from the other two, indicating that while the person is being pursued by the Marines for their involvement in the Crocodile, they are not involved with the Straw-Hat Pirates.

Except that makes no sense, because there's no way he would forget the woman whose features fit perfectly the vague description of the poster.

Then he reads the name attached to the description, as well as the short paragraph that explains the main actions that led to the creation of a wanted poster.

His lips quirk up again, higher and larger.

The sound surges up from somewhere between his lungs and his stomach, low and silky like the dark red of one of his favourite wines, and everyone in the room stares at him as they register his sudden bout of laughter.

"... Can I know what makes you laugh?" Sengoku eventually asks gruffly. "Coming from a pirate, it's probably something that will be a problem for everyone else."

"Nothing in particular." Mihawk eventually indulges him. "I shouldn't be so astonished by your stupidity."

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

A wave rises on the right side of the Merry, huge and dark with the reflection of the night-inducing cloud above their heads, before it falls and slaps against the deck, drenching Elynna from head to toe along with Nami and Usopp, who were clinging to her and pleading for her to somehow convince Luffy to go back.

"Even if I could do that, which I can't, by the way," she clarifies after spitting out a mouthful of salty water, "I don't think the whirlpool is really going to cooperate, at this point. But you can still cling to Sea King instead. If something happens, he can be your meat shield or follow you to the grave. At least you'll get your revenge."

That convinces them to let her go, leaving her free to head towards her room with a nod towards Chopper before she closes the door.

She was unconscious the last time she went to high altitudes, so she's not quite sure what consequences there might be for her body or whether Chopper's medicine will work at all, especially since they're most likely going to rise very high and very, very fast.

They figured she would be better off staying inside, so she flops down on the bed, which like almost all of the furniture has been fixed in place by the monkey brothers, and closes her eyes to wait.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"And you three! It's the first time I see you being this useless against one guy! What's your deal?!"

"Shut it." Zoro grumbles through the heaviness of both his breathing and his annoyance.

"Yeah." Luffy whines, tongue hanging out of his mouth in exertion. "My body won't move like I want!"

Nami frowns at that.

"What do you mean?"

"That's because there's less oxygen here. Even you three will need a bit of time to adjust, and any kind of effort will take a lot out of you until your body is used to the altitude."

Nami frowns harder when she notices the stethoscope around Chopper's neck, eyes roaming around the deck to spot her crewmates.

"Where's Elynna-chan?" Sanji asks suddenly just as she opens her mouth.

"Inside."

"She alright?"

The reindeer gives Zoro a muted nod.

"She will be. Not everyone adapts the same to a change in altitude. She's just part of those who have more difficulty. As long as she has enough rest, she'll be fine."

"Judging from what I just heard, you are all citizens of the Blue Seas." The old man who just saved them comments, bringing the conversation back on track.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

"Are we there?" Elynna mumbles when she eventually feels well enough to stand up and step out on the deck.

She still leans against the doorframe, not feeling quite stable on her feet.

The loss of balance is without a doubt the thing she hates the most about being sick, along with the fog that takes up residence in her brain.

It takes away the only things she can actually offer.

It makes her worthless.

She tells herself that everyone is useless when they're sick, and shuts out the white noise in her head that she can't always distract herself from and that whispers that she's never amounted to much anyway.

(If not amounting to much means that she won't become great, she's fine with it.

She doesn't see the point in being great enough -in working hard enough to be that great- to be remembered by people she doesn't know and doesn't care about.

Not amounting to much -existing, working, loving, hurting- is hard work, too.

She won't let anyone ask her for more.)

"Oh, Lynna!" Nami smiles as she straightens up once the South Bird stops attacking her and flies off angrily. "How are you doing?"

Elynna blinks at the swimsuit top the navigator is wearing.

"A lot better since just now."

Robin chuckles softly behind her hand.

Nami grins, opening her arms wide with an exaggerated bat of her eyelashes that somehow still manages to look sexy on her.

"Want a hug too?"

"Totally. Hebi's medicine is clearly overrated."

Zoro gives their antics a long-suffering glance.

"Anything I should know?" Elynna asks him over Nami's shoulder.

"We landed a first time before getting here and got attacked by a guy with a mask who could run over the clouds."

"They lost. Badly." Nami informs her mercilessly.

Zoro glares, and Elynna feels lips draw another grin against the skin of her neck.

"A man named Gan Fall saved us and gave us a whistle so we can call on his help again." Robin goes on, lips slightly pursed. "He didn't give us much information on this place otherwise, though."

The swordsman shrugs, not seeming particularly worried about that.

"How did we get here, then? Another Knock-Up Stream?"

"An old lady." Zoro says instead, making her blink in surprise. "She asked for money in a currency we don't have to let us go up, took our pictures, and told us we could still go without paying."

"Great." She dryly concludes.

Already deep in shit before they even dock.

That's gotta be a new record.

There's just no way that letting them break the rules after taking their pictures isn't going to end up with them being classified as some kind of outlaws.

"What do we know about the sky so far?" She inquires as she tries to breathe in slow and deep to quiet the dizziness that makes her vision blur. "Apart from the fact that the oxygen supply fucking sucks."

Nami is the one to answer this time as she steps back slowly enough to give Elynna the time to find support by leaning back against the wall.

"We should probably operate on the principle that there's no sea floor for now. And there seems to be at least two types of clouds: the ones we can float on, and others that are more compact and can hold a given shape."

Then she cheerfully announces that she's going to 'check if there's any other type of cloud', and jumps off the ship to run towards the others.

"... That guy we saw in town tried to attack us just before the Knock-Up Stream appeared." Zoro informs Elynna in the silence that follows. "Said he wanted to take Luffy's head -and the hundred million of his new bounty."

She freezes, staring at him unseeingly as she processes his words.

Is that why he was in Jaya?

Did he come there for Sea King specifically?

No.

Since his intentions are clearly aggressive, he would have gone in for the kill when they first met him if that was the case. He was, in fact, pretty friendly during their first encounter.

So what changed?

She snaps her fingers, eyes darting all over the place without really taking anything in.

The fight against Bellamy.

Word probably spread all over the island about Luffy's bounty.

But the real question is: did Blackbeard come after her Captain because of the amount of money written on his wanted poster, or because of the name associated with it?

If it's the latter, then it's likely that Blackbeard wants Luffy as some kind of hostage against Ace. She doubts that the only person she really cares about outside her crew has never bragged about his little brother before in front of the Whitebeard Pirates, or that Teach is unaware that his former Commander is hunting him down.

She wouldn't be surprised if the man who waited until Whitebeard was already half-dead to confront him in another world resorted to that kind of plan.

If it's the former… then Blackbeard is currently looking to take the head of any pirate with a big enough bounty, and finding out his actual objective would be-

The sound of a blade beind drawn out of a sheath jerks her back to reality, eyes focusing instantly on Zoro, who lets his katana fall back into place with a satisfied nod.

"... You're sure he didn't follow us up the stream?" She eventually speaks up.

"Positive. His raft broke into pieces."

She nods.

"I guess I can let it go for now, then. Can't do anything about this until we come back down."

The swordsman raises a brow, and although he's not quite sure he follows the thought process that led her to the conclusion that she has to do something about that guy, he files him under the 'enemy' category in his mind.

"What are you planning? You want to kill him?"

She snorts as she takes a few, tentative steps forward and comes to lean against the railing next to him.

"Oh, I certainly want to, trust me. But doing it is another matter entirely. Even if the hypotheses I told Ignis about regarding that guy's powers turn out to be exaggerated, he's still way above my league -and that of everyone here, before you ask. It doesn't necessarily mean we can't do it, but given our current level, we'd need to either have a very, very good plan, or to use up all the luck of our fucking lives. Preferably both. So no. Going with that option involves more risk than I'm ready to take."

She stares at the heaven-worthy beach where her other crewmates are running around laughing and screaming, and clicks her tongue.

"I'm a babysitter to a bunch of kids."

Zoro snorts.

"You're part of the bunch, by the way." She informs him.

"The hell?! I never do that shit-"

"No, but you do stupid stuff all the same. Anyway, you're my saviour, Robin-san."

"I'm honoured to be of help to you, Miss First Mate." The historian laughs softly as she watches the rest of the crew fool around.

They're interrupted by Luffy's voice as it reaches them from the beach.

"Ahhhhh! This place is filled with the scent of adventure, this is great!"

"It's funny." Robin suddenly says pensively, but the small smile playing on her lips looks more like tears being held back than laughter. "I've never thought of coming ashore as an adventure before."

She smiles at them again, and then jumps over the railing without any further comment.

Elynna watches the archaeologist's back as she joins the others, pensively nibbling on her lower lip as she braces her forearms against the railing.

It takes her a moment to feel the weight of Zoro's stare, and she turns her head to meet it with her own.

The steely grey of his eyes flickers to the older woman and back to her.

A warning.

She rolls her eyes.

"Shut up." She grumbles. "I can pity the sad backstory that she's definitely hiding and still intervene if she tries something against the crew."

"She's strong."

"Duh. I didn't say I would kick her ass, I said I would intervene. Gives me a lot more possibilities. Like tipping the Marines off about where she is if she becomes too much of a liability."

Which she won't need to do unless Robin hates her enough to not stick with the Straw Hats.

Or unless the black and white images drawn by a man worlds away turns out to reflect only possibilities and not fate.

One branch of a tree instead of a river.

The second is entirely possible.

(In fact, she's banking on it, because she's been allowed to exist even though she shouldn't

and it would mean that she might actually be able to fulfill the closest thing to a dream she has allowed herself to have in a very long time.)

The first seems pretty far-fetched as of now.

Besides, she doubts she can outdo her crewmates' sheer charisma, even if she wanted to.

She would know. Even when she told herself that she would be better off not getting too involved with the idiots, she already had one foot in the grave and couldn't quite convince herself that she would actually be able to change that.

She's not that dense or ignorant about the difference between head and heart.

Hip leaning against the railing and arms crossed over his chest, the swordsman grunts out a vague agreement.

She smirks.

"Don't worry, you'll always be first in my heart-"

Zoro throws her overboard.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Ace is drifting on the sea of the New World and trying not to transform the ocean around him into salty steam as a way of exhausting some of his frustration when his Den Den Mushi rings.

Without bothering to sit up or take his arm off his eyes, he blindly reaches for it and brings the receiver to his mouth.

"Tell me you found something in the news, or-"

"You still never say hello, do you, Ace?"

His mouth clicks shut.

Definitely not Elynna's voice.

Definitely a voice he knows.

He sits up so fast he almost falls off his Striker, and then lurches to the side with a curse to catch his bag.

Namur's gravelly laughter dominates the sounds of the other Commanders at his sudden bout of clumsiness.

… He's experiencing a curious sense of déjà vu.

"It's Elynna, isn't it?" He groans.

"Yep." Haruta confirms gleefully.

"I'm going to throw her overboard the next time I see her."

"Izou would probably help you." Marco comments, the amused smile in his voice as obvious as ever despite the fact that they haven't talked in weeks.

"What did she do again?" He asks, less because he wants to know and more to avoid addressing the undercurrent of silence between him and them that has nothing and everything to do with the physical distance that is also there.

(What should he say?

Sorry?

He is, somewhat,

-more for the consequences of his actions than for what he did in the first place-

but he doesn't believe that saying it actually does anything when it matters.

And sorry means regret.

He swore that he wouldn't regret anything.

He sure as hell won't regret burning Teach to a crisp.)

"She's trying to find the Marine who took his last picture to reward him for showing off his face so well." Vista explains with a chuckle.

Palm, meet Forehead.

"You can say that again."

"I shouldn't have entrusted Luffy to her."

"Your brother doesn't strike me as the type to be influenced very easily." Namur says in an attempt to be reassuring.

"... She already gave him the Talk."

"Everyone should get the Talk." The doctor of the group cuts in, perfectly serious.

"Yeah, well he got it. From Elynna."

There's a moment of silence, and then Haruta cackles.

"Yeah," they confirm, "you really shouldn't have entrusted him to her."

"She wants you to go to Jaya." Marco eventually says, rattling off a series of directions towards a more precise location.

"Jaya?" He frowns even as he starts correcting the direction the Striker is sailing towards. "That's… far."

Another silence, this time anything but amused.

"That's where she saw him."

The flames around his feet roar, and the Striker blast through the distance separating him from his next destination in response.

"She saw him? That fucker saw Luffy?!"

"Apparently even your brother could tell he was bad news, because he left pretty fast, and they're going on a Sky Island next, so he should be relatively safe. But yeah. They saw each other."

Haruta laughs again, and it's strange to be close enough that he can hear their clothes shift against wood as they slouch in their seat, even though he can't see any of his fellow Commanders at all.

"That Elynna girl called it a bad case of being an accidental attention whore. Man, I love her."

And just like that, before he knows it, he's laughing again, even as the flames lick and curl around his feet, rising higher and brighter and hotter at his feet.

"Well," Marco speaks up with another smile. "We'll leave you to it. Wouldn't want you to be distracted and hit another rock-"

"That happened one time!" He hisses through a blush.

"-and we have to see off the envoy from Red Hair before he tries to challenge Pops to a fight to save his honour or something equally stupid. Deuce, Jozu and the others say hello, by the way. They were sent out after lunch."

Ace gulps, and forces his mouth open, urgency twisting in his stomach and pushing him forward before he can hear the click of an ending call.

"... Say hello from me, too."

A pause, in which he can hear a lot of smiles on the other end.

"Don't be a stranger, Ace!"

Click.

…

Maybe he should call them again.

(Talking with Elynna is fun, but-

it's not the same.)

…

Maybe he should thank Elynna, too.

Well.

Still going to throw her overboard the next time he sees her.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Elynna breaks through the water of the clouds like through silky foam, and lazily proceeds to half-swim half-drag herself to the shore, where she flops on her back, still halfway in the sea, and closes her eyes.

Sanji stops by a few minutes after to give her a large, explosively colourful flower with a boyish smile.

She sticks it in her hair, and tugs him down gently to press a thanks and a kiss to his cheek.

Once he's run off towards Nami with a similar flower, she steals a look at where Robin is walking along the shore, hand occasionally drifting towards her own flower like she still can't believe it's there.

(can't believe someone has gifted her something, maybe-)

Elynna smiles and closes her eyes again, stretching against the soft sand and sinking into a half-awake trance where the sounds of her crewmates' happiness are the only things tying her to the world.

The spell breaks with the arrival of a new voice that makes her eyes blink open.

She rolls on her stomach and watches Conis and her father speak with her crewmates, fingers tapping against the white sand until a large, tanned hand blocks her vision.

She takes it absently, letting it guide her to her feet before she releases it to slowly walk towards the others.

"Why do you think they're suspicious?" Zoro's deep voice asks her, his arm brushing against her shoulder as they walk.

She hums, head tilting towards him.

"Not suspicious per se. It's more that I find it weird when people are this welcoming to strangers -beyond normal politeness, I mean. Especially strangers whose ship wears a pirate flag."

"... They're not like you." He says, even though he's exactly the same when it comes to this.

"I know. And they seem nice. That's why I said they're not suspicious for now."

They arrive just in time to see Nami control a waver on her first try and Luffy display his jealousy in all its immature glory.

"This is really extraordinary!" Conis says with a wide, awed smile. "I've never seen anyone use a waver so well and so quickly before! Your friend is a genius!"

Sanji nods with a proud smile.

"Our Nami-chan is the best."

Elynna's lips twitch.

"Rain!"

"Yeah?" The navigator calls back loudly.

"Marry me!"

"... What are you doing?" Usopp grunts with narrowed eyes.

"Securing my bragging rights. Being the wife of a genius is the best. You get all the advantages of being one without the drawbacks."

"Sure!" Nami laughs.

Elynna smiles smugly, and then pauses as she realises something.

"Actually, don't! The ceremony is too much of a pain!"

"Too late! And you're paying for my dress!"

"... How many years of debt does that make?"

"Fifty." Usopp answers without any hesitation.

Zoro scoffs.

"With that witch? At least a hundred."

She turns her back on the new fight that particular comment sparks between Zoro and Sanji, and drags Luffy off after Conis and Pagaya towards their home before he can tell their navigator to sink another time.

Just in case, she takes the time to commit the various rooms they're walked through to memory along with any possible exit, before plopping herself down on a squishy cloud sofa just in time to catch Chopper when he jumps to join her.

She lets herself fall to the side, and listens intently as Conis explains the basics of how dials work, Robin sometimes handing her and Chopper a bit of food once Pagaya and Sanji bring out the lunch.

"Huh?" Sanji mumbles at some point when he goes on the balcony to smoke a cigarette. "Where did Nami-chan go? I don't see her."

"She probably went a little further, it's fine!" Luffy waves him off around the meat he scrapes off a bone.

Elynna takes one look at Pagaya and Conis' suddenly worried frowns, and groans, sinking even further in the sofa as they explain that they coincidentally live very near the one place on the whole goddamn island where one is not supposed to go.

"It's- It's fine." Sanji says nervously with a wave of his hand towards Luffy, Usopp and Zoro. "Nami-chan isn't an idiot like those three here, so she won't go there."

"Hermes, darling."

"Yes, Elynna-chan?"

"When you add Rain, an uncharted territory, and the fact that the citizens here are prohibited from going there, what do you get?"

There's a pause, and then Zoro clicks his tongue in annoyance.

"A shit ton of problems."

She points at him.

"Full points and then some. Want a kiss?"

"Die."

In the face of their nonchalant attitude, Conis obviously feels the need to give them at least three different reasons why they really cannot go to that particular place.

Each word that comes out of her mouth makes Luffy's grin stretch wider and brighter at the idea.

"So there's a place we are forbidden to go to, right? Shishishi."

His crewmates exchange a resigned glance.

Usopp's eyes turn pleading as they fall on Elynna, who shakes her head.

Sorry Hawk, that's out of my realm of competence.

They're already in trouble anyway. Might as well go all out.

---

〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭

---

Nami and Usopp are heading towards some kind of sibling relationship where they basically give each other hell, and you know what, why the fuck not.

Now write me a well-argued essay telling me who you think was wearing the unicorn costume and who was the pharaoh cowboy. (See how I'm still haunted by my finals?)

Oh, and don't believe anything of what the old me said about not having much to say about the Skypiea Arc.

That old me has been taken to a back alley and throttled.

This is Me 3.0.

And Me 3.0 is telling you that "You better fucking believe that I have Things to say."

…

(I think I've just created unnecessary expectations for myself.)