Sorry for the long time! So far I have been going to therapy and I recently went and took my vacations to visit Mazatlan. In resume, I've been kinda busy, but now I'm back and with a new chapter! So sorry that its kinda short but I prommy that I'm working already on the next one. We will have the especial presence of Brogy and he'll get to meet Sakura. I wanna remind everyone that Kureha doesn't know that Sakura is well versed in the identification and use of medical and poisonous plants. The woman took her as an student becuase she liked her spitfire and determination. She'll get the surprise of her life.

Anyway! Enjoy this chapter! As always, go check my AO3 page too so u can get a nice view of the fanart made by Anka_Partizanka.

Reaching the Calm Belt had taken about 4 days of travel.

Once already traversing the nest of sea kings, Sakura had been forced to avoid attracting too much attention to her and Unagi-chan with the smell of her stocked food so taking it out was out of the question, forcing her to rely on jerky and a few dried fruits for another amount of 4 days until the Grand Line was close in the horizon.

Add another 2 days of travel through the aggressive choppy waters of the nicknamed 'Pirate's Graveyard' and you'll have an amount of 10 days in total for her to find another person in this entire world who seemed to have been cut from the same damned cloth as Garp when it came to their madness.

Again… What were the odds?

It had been easier to believe that her grandfather was one of a kind crazy bastard, but Dr. Kureha was putting that very belief to test now.

The older woman, after stating her outrageous question out of the blue, invited herself to Sakura's little boat by jumping from hers, using the railing as a jumping bar after both ships got close enough to each other to land perfectly in her deck without even spilling a single drop from her bottle. Had Sakura not been too irritated at the intrusion of the lady, the pinkette would have been definitely amazed at such display of acrobatics from someone that looked a bit too ancient.

"Well? Aren't you even a tiny bit curious, pinky?"

Yeah, no.

Without hesitation (and in an incredible display of speed), the teen was instantly in front of the old woman, leg already elevated to throw a devastating kick to the side.

But the smile of Kureha stretched and her eyes gained a dangerous glint.

The older female quickly used her bottle to block the hit, letting it break so the alcohol and shards could serve as an excellent distraction to mask her next move. She went low, feeling yet the air that was formed by the force of that kick, and sweeped her leg through the floorboards to knock the leg of the girl and manage to break her balance.

The bewildered look Kureha got from the kid on the floor was enough to soothe the annoyance she felt for the unwelcoming reaction of the little girl and her broken bottle of plum sake.

"The hell kinda welcome is that, brat?!" she grumbled loudly, hands on her hips and her smile not faltering at all.

They stayed in that stalemate for a long moment, neither both making a move to break it until the rippling vibrations of a growl resonated through the little fishing boat and the waters around them. A clear signal of warning until the ship was elevated a bit farther from the sea and the head of Unagi-chan was shown to the world. Sakura wasn't able to see him at that moment, but she can imagine the big guy having the equivalent of a mean scowl at the sound of their fighting.

"Calm down, Unagi-chan! I'm okay!" she reassured, finally getting up and shaking off the shards of the sake bottle although the smell and wetness still clung to her.

"Ohh, so the sea king is a pet? That's interesting!"

"Whatever!" said Sakura in a clear imitation of what the old lady said earlier and annoyed as hell at the unwanted guest. "Get out of my boat! I'm on my way to explore the Grand Line, old lady!"

A throbbing vein over the woman's forehead was all the warning the teen got before feeling all the air leave her lungs with the punch she received at her gut, and while the pain hurt like a bitch… the voice of her past teacher resonated along with the scream of this new person.

"Who are you calling an old lady?!"

'It's that all you got, brat?!' yelled the blonde Godaime, a feral smile over her lips at the sight of her new pupil. She could only see greatness in her future.

Sakura thought that her days of getting her ass hauled around by old lunatics had been left behind.

"Hold still, brat! This ointment may smell hideous but that's what you get for insulting a young soul like me!"

Well, she had been proved horribly wrong, and for as much as the pinkette wanted to stay angry at the woman (who now knew her name was Dr. Kureha), the truth was that she couldn't stay that mad at her for long. A small ache of nostalgia rearing its head each time Kureha acted in a way that reminded Sakura a little too much to her shishou, lessening the streak of annoyance at the intrusion from her relatively calm day.

Now thought… They had a little problem to address.

"There we go! Now… back to business!" The older woman sat loudly on one of Sakura's chairs, a new bottle of sake in her hand and little regard for the pinkette's space. "Thanks to your rude little welcome, my ship got lost in the stupid choppy tide… so now you'll have to give me a lift to my island"

The fucking logic of this lady! SHE was the one that decided to board her boat without securing her own ship!

"Do I even have a say in the matter?" grumbled the teen under her breath. Still sore from both her abdomen and head at the beating she took. Healing would have been easy but she couldn't risk showing her abilities to anyone. It was one of the only promises to Garp she honestly wanted to keep.

Her only answer was a boisterous laugh from the woman, followed by her taking a deep chug of the sake (taken from Sakura's personal stash, damn it!).

"Alright! Look, you…! " the pointed look the pinkette receives serves as a reminder of her injuries, so she decides to be at least a bit more civil and flexible here. "Miss! I am on my way to explore the world and become the best doctor and adventurer out there! I have no time to give free rides to stowaways! You got it?!"

The old lady didn't seem offended by her words, if anything, she hummed with amusement while twirling the contents of the bottle she still held.

"The best doctor, huh?" there's a bit of contemplation in that lost gaze, followed immediately by another loud cackle from the old hag. "That's even better, brat!"

"Huh?!"

"Don't go around giving those kind of dumb answers, girl" she chastised, still with a sardonic smile dancing on her wrinkled face. "I've decided! You're becoming my student. I already like that spitfire attitude you have."

Sakura must be having some sort of stroke because all those words that Dr. Kureha said just didn't make sense at all.

'Oh god… she is just like Garp for real!' the teen thought in alarm once realizing that the older woman was deadass serious with her proposition.

The seconds ticked, unsure if she should actually answer since the white-haired lady seemed already set on her decision, stretching the silence between them to the point of being ridiculous.

And so, Sakura only managed to utter one single word once the shock easily transformed into one single thing after the phases of anger, denial and negotiation flew out of the room.

"O-okay"

Acceptance.

Eventually, the trip had worn on every single one of Sakura's nerves.

Kureha wasn't exactly the most amicable roommate to be around in this damned world, but she had been quite civil as long as she had a bottle of sake or rum on her hand; although that never stopped her from complaining at the lack of plum sake from within her personal stash that she kept rummaging through.

Whatever, she was cool. She had already gone past the boiling point.

If she had managed to put up with a hungry, injured and whiny Luffy on a very humid summer day, then she damn well can take anything.

By the time they arrive through their first island after a whole week, the pinkette doesn't know if she wants to throw herself out of her fishing boat or kick Kureha out. Maybe a mix of both.

"Alright, brat! Listen here!" announces the older woman with a new batch of clothes that she took (once again) from Sakura's drawers. "This island is known as Little Garden! A death trap by all the extension of the word and the place where we will start your first lesson as my apprentice"

"But why are we here? I thought you wanted me to take you back to your island?" It was an honest inquiry because, for as much as the pinkette was excited to learn more (ignoring the very odd way that things had played out), she had imagined that the woman had patients back home that needed treatment or, at the very least, that the hag would explain why she was this far from her home island.

"Not important, pinky!" she yelled, proceeding to throw a piece of paper towards Sakura that she barely caught thanks to the wind. "I took the effort to give you a list of plants that are native to this island that you will bring to me"

"That's it?" the pinkette raised an eyebrow in skepticism at the simple task. Was this truly the first part of her training? She has done her fair share of plant collecting in her childhood around Goa Kingdom, so this seemed pointless.

Then again, this was an island in the Grand Line. Flora and fauna can be vastly different by that simple factor so, as much as Sakura wanted to pretend to be cool about the task, she felt incredibly giddy now that she gave it more consideration.

"Okay, I got this" then she stopped on her tracks, eyes narrowing at a sudden realization. "And what are you supposed to be doing while I'm gone?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Kureha then proceeded to kick a crate with ease and arranged it so she could sit comfortably at the deck while nursing a bottle of sake, completely unbothered by the glare of the teenager. "Someone gotta keep an eye on the only boat that can take us out from this death trap"

Ah. Makes sense.

The green-eyed girl huffed in annoyance, but conceded this one time just for the sake of having some peace of mind.

Later on, once she was deep within the dense jungle that made up Little Garden, Sakura realized why Dr. Kureha called this little search a training. The island was full of life, both dangerous and massive, ready to snatch her as the next meal by both animals and vegetation anywhere she went. So far, the pinkette had managed to fight off a saber-tooth that could easily be double the size of her own boat while only having collected the first two plants of the list.

'This isn't only to force me to identify plants by vague descriptions, but also to fight for my life while doing so!'

Some of the herbs she was tasked to get were incredibly rare and could only be found in ancient botanica, mostly pointed by the dangerous poisonous properties they possess or by the fact the plants were supposed to be extinct. This island was trapped in a prehistoric era where humans were the everyday prey and had it not been for Garp's unforgiving training, she would have died a long while ago.

Not like Sakura will ever tell him that out loud. Bad enough that the maniac always went overboard on his 'grandpa' role.

So far, some of these herbs could be used mostly to treat possible infections or as painkillers if processed correctly with just some of its parts. For example, the strychnos she had collected fully from its roots could be used as muscle relaxant or stimulate brain activity. Some others could help for possible heart problems or even coagulate the blood for any possible emergency regarding clots and so on.

Dang, now Sakura was actually feeling giddy at the idea of this supposed training from Dr. Kureha. She even had a light skip on her walk once the green-eyed teen saw that there were only two plants missing from the list and it had been… What? Just one day at Little Garden?

She could bet that the white-haired woman had assumed this plant collecting task of hers would take longer in normal circumstances, but Sakura was anything but a stubborn ball of determination and short-fuse to be stopped by a crazy old lady that had decided to self-appoint herself as her new mentor.

Wild how things developed to this point.

With those thoughts in mind, Sakura went and put each plant that she had collected in an improvised bag that the pinkette crafted by twisting and braiding together some huge ass leaves from a palm tree, scooping some soil inside of it since she was determined to harvest these plants to the best of her capacities. Who knows when she would be able to find such useful ingredients for either nasty poisons or medicine.

After that, the teen secured her arms around the bag and carried it as if it was a particularly chunky cat while using tree walking. The floor was still too dangerous to sleep over it even if she secured a few traps on her surroundings.

Here's hoping that not many animals could reach the branch she had chosen to take rest, or else she'll have little to no sleep and that would equal to a very cranky Sakura.

None of her brothers ever liked cranky Sakura.

Minutes ticked, the island full of sounds and life eventually lulled the young girl to a nice sleep. Her only company being the starry sky.

Thank you for reading!