Everyone, my mother is in the hospital with a large ulcer. Please pray for her at this time. Thank You.
Whitebeard stared at the tiny frame on the bed. The girl was barely the same age as Ace, and yet she had far too many scars that spoke of a hard life. There was a sort of fragility about her that said one good hit would cause her to shatter in a way that she might never recover from. Underlying that was a sense of battle-forged steel and resolve.
The girl was barely seventeen, eighteen at the most. She had long dark red hair that could easily be mistaken for black in poor lighting. Pale skin that said she either didn't spend a lot of time under the sun...unlikely considering she had been on the ship for over a month and someone would have noticed a girl her age skulking about the hallways...or she was from an island that didn't tan easily. She wore an outfit that was predominantly red, with a black pants and shirt underneath. The red was almost like a cloak of sorts, and was kept buckled in a way that she could hide half her face if she ducked down slightly. There were thick boots that were well made and currently sitting on the other side of the bed. There was a slight indentation on her nose that said she wore glasses frequently.
One might wonder what the strongest pirate in the world would want with a teenage girl.
The answer was simple.
She had stowed away on his ship for several months now, but when she had seen one of his sons in danger she hadn't hesitated to take the blow for him. Despite the fact it caused her great injury in the process, she still managed to kill the Marine who almost critically wounded Thatch.
They had managed to stabilize her, and as she had proven herself no friend of the Marines, had treated most of her injuries. Some were simply too old to be fixed.
The girl had been in a medically induced coma for over a week. Whiskey could tell simply by the injuries alone the girl was a difficult patient and would likely try to slip out of the infirmary the first chance she had if she were awake. Considering the extent of damage done to her in the last year, it was safer to keep her out cold while she recovered. Besides, the stitches alone would have kept her bed-ridden for a week.
Marco looked at the girl with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.
She was the reason they had spent an entire month trying...and failing... to find the stowaway. She had some weird devil fruit power that allowed her to teleport instantly from one area of the ship to the next, and even more baffling was able to hide from their Observation Haki in a way that made it impossible to find her at all.
They had just about given up finding her when the Marines showed up and she revealed herself.
"Is she awake yet?" asked Ace.
He was one of the youngest crew members, and after seeing even a fraction of the scars before he had been chased out he was very curious to talk to the girl. Besides, she protected Thatch despite them trying to hunt her down all over the ship without a second thought. That was enough to put her in his good books.
All three of them noticed the girl stir, but she kept feigning sleep.
"You might as well open your eyes. We know you're awake," said Marco dryly.
She had green eyes. An image half-way stirred in Whitebeard's memory of another woman with such green eyes. One with a fiery disposition that had laid Roger flat when he said something to anger her. He couldn't rightly remember everything as it had been decades since then, but he never forgot that shade of green.
It took them a few moments to realize she was squinting before Marco handed her the glasses on the table. It only served to bring her eyes into much greater focus and highlighted the green.
There was such a haunted look in them that Marco and Ace had a pretty good idea of what Whitebeard would do with her, depending on why she stowed away on the ship.
"Who are you and why did you sneak onto my ship?" asked Whitebeard. There was a rumble in his voice, but the tone held a rather soothing quality to it.
She gave him a long look and it felt as if she were judging his very soul. For a long moment nothing happened, but he could feel he was under some sort of test.
The moment passed and something in him relaxed.
"My name is Caly and I'm looking for my grandfather," she said after a moment.
"Your grandfather?" said Ace incredulous.
"My mother's journal indicated there was a high chance the man she knew as her father might not have been the one who shares his blood with her. I've been trying to track down different leads for months since I found that out."
Marco had a headache.
"You do know the punishment for stowing on a pirate ship, right? Especially for women?" he asked.
Not that it would happen to her, but he wanted to know if the girl had any idea how stupid she had been, sneaking on to their ship.
The girl's eyes went sharp and there was a sense of impending violence.
"Try your best, pirate. You'll find I'm not so easily broken," she glared.
Ace felt a strange shiver down his spine. There was an unshakeable resolve in her eyes that said heaven and hell would fall before she would allow something like torture to break her. This was someone who had nothing to lose and the entire world to gain...if she would just reach out for it.
Dead silence... and then Whitebeard laughed. There was very little mirth in it.
"I like your attitude. How would you like to become one of my daughters?"
"...What?" said Caly absolutely baffled.
Marco sighed.
"Pops has a habit of finding 'strays' and making them his sons and daughters. The fact you managed to keep hidden for so long, only to appear when one of his sons was in danger of a nasty blow is enough proof that you might have what it takes to survive the New World as one of the Whitebeard pirates," explained Marco patiently. "Besides, you're not the only abused child we've taken in."
Marco very deliberately did not look in Ace's direction.
"Why me? I'm just a nobody."
Ace snorted at that.
"Nobody, right. Do you have any idea the amount of chaos you caused because we couldn't capture you? Every time we went on a hunt to find the stowaway you managed to evade us so well that we had to wonder what sort of Devil Fruit you had eaten."
"What's a Devil Fruit?" asked Caly, causing all three to stare at her.
"You're joking, right?" asked Marco.
She shook her head.
"I honestly have no idea what a Devil Fruit is," she replied.
Ace stared at her in disbelief.
"Devil Fruit! You know those horrible tasting fruits that grant amazing powers, but at the cost of being able to swim? What sort of rock have you been living under?!"
Caly gave him a flat look.
"My aunt abhorred anything that wasn't considered 'normal' and 'mundane'. She would have thrown a complete fit if anything remotely interesting came into the house, much less if I had inquired about it. She's the sort of fool who would full-heartedly believe in the Marine's lie of 'Absolute Justice' purely because their laws would give her power over others that she doesn't deserve and because pirates represent freedom she would never be able to stand," stated Caly with a tone that said volumes of the sort of person her aunt was.
Marco said nothing...quite a few of the scars on her back were far too old to have come from anything short of a rough childhood. Clearly her aunt tried to force her to fit into a mold that didn't suit the girl at all.
Ace growled with frustration, before he lit his arm on fire. Caly was distinctly unimpressed.
"So you're an Elemental," she deadpanned with a sniff. "Exactly how is that supposed to impress me?"
Ace stared at her, before he glared.
"I bet you can do better?" he growled.
Only to gape in shock when with a flick of her wrist, her right arm was engulfed in blue flames.
"WHAT THE HELL?!" shouted Ace in shock. It almost looked like Marco's flames, except these felt vastly different.
Caly smirked at him.
"Care to try again, hotshot?" she said with dark amusement.
Marco snorted as well.
"Grahahahaha. She's got you there!" laughed Whitebeard, patting Ace on the back strongly. Ace stumbled slightly, but blushed in embarrassment.
Caly watched with interest when Marco used his Devil Fruit, but was left rather disappointed.
"A phoenix? Really? That's the best you can do? I mean you are a rather impressive specimen, but I've honestly seen better."
Ace stared at her in disbelief.
"How can you look at him and said 'you've seen better'?" he asked baffled.
Marco looked very confused on that front as well.
Caly on the other hand rolled her eyes.
"Because I've seen a phoenix before. They're rare, but once you get over the self-roasting chicken part with uplifting songs and healing tears, they aren't that impressive."
Ace stared at her...before he started guffawing.
"Self-roasting chicken!" he said, laughing his ass off.
He had never met anyone who could call Marco that to his face and actually mean it. And on their first meeting too!
"And what about the fact I turned into an animal?" growled Marco annoyed.
Caly snorted.
"Where I come from, that's a common trick so long as you have the knack for it. My godfather could turn into a dog and my father could turn into a stag. One of my previous teachers could turn into a tabby cat. It's extremely rare for someone to turn into a mythical animal, but not unheard of. It just takes a lot of power," she replied. "Even I can do it, but at the moment my energy levels are too low."
"Really?" said Ace with open interest. "What can you turn into?"
"That... is a secret!" said Caly impishly. Ace pouted.
Whitebeard watched the two interact with interest and amusement. The girl would be a good fit to his children, and he knew they would help her heal.
More importantly he could already see the sparks of interest between her and Ace. Whitebeard knew that Ace found it extremely hard to trust others... it took them over a year before he would even consider letting them in.
However this girl managed to capture his interest in a single conversation. Her honest confusion over Devil Fruits and the fact there was a very high chance she had no idea who Gol D. Roger even was meant that Ace might finally have found a girl his own age that he could trust.
It wasn't like he had a problem with his sons and daughters falling in love with each other. Some of them had even moved on to create new families of their own, but were still Whitebeard pirates at heart.
A few days later...
Caly had to admit, being able to wander around the rest of the crew without having to hide her face was unusual. The thing that struck her the most was how quickly they accepted her as one of their own.
Thatch, upon learning she knew how to cook...and that she was the one who protected him that time, promptly began to stuff Caly with as much food as she would eat.
Unlike Molly Weasley, however, Thatch actually listened to her requests and took into account what Whiskey and the other nurses had told him about her sensitive stomach.
Caly had trouble processing rich or heavy foods. Thanks to the fact her aunt refused to feed her properly and not really having a say in the menu when she did get to eat properly, her digestive system had taken a bit of a hit. She often had trouble stomaching the heavy meals that Molly Weasley favored cooking, and the elves didn't really expand on their recipe list since the last reform. Which meant a lot of rich, heavy foods and sugar-heavy drinks considering eating healthy hadn't really taken off until the last decade or two, and Dumbledore always had a bit of a sweet tooth.
Since most wizards didn't really work out until after they graduated, no one saw the problem.
Caly rather enjoyed working in the kitchens... Thatch was nothing like Molly Weasley or her 'aunt'. He made things fun.
He found observing the little stowaway quite interesting. It wasn't just her ability to retain information...the girl was a like a sponge being dropped into a sea of information... and her work ethic was second to none.
Her interactions with Ace was both amusing and adorable. Already there were bets going on between the crew on how long it took the two of them to realize they were attracted to each other.
Ace's attempts to annoy Caly were amusing, but the unflappable way she countered him and forced him to cool his jets were hilarious. Especially since no one could figure out where the hell she kept finding the water to dump on him, when there wasn't a single bucket in sight! Caly wasn't impressed with anything Ace threw at her, and Ace just kept coming back for more.
The entire show was awkward and hilarious as hell for everyone except the two teenagers, who had yet to get a clue. Especially since Ace had yet to cotton on to the fact he was flirting with her, or the fact that Caly had yet to realize the same thing.
Though in her case, Marco had to wonder if she was genuinely oblivious to it, or if anyone had actually bothered to show an interest in her as a woman before.
Most telling was her reaction to Jinbei's visit.
She had taken one look at the Fishman, and had dismissed his appearance entirely before striking up a conversation with him. She genuinely didn't care that he didn't look human in the least, which he seemed to appreciate.
Marco had been with Pops for years, so he remembered quite a few things.
The girl had openly admitted she was looking for her grandfather, and the more he observed her the more he started to notice something.
It was almost like there was a shadow behind her back, particularly when she first met Jinbei. It was shadowy and indistinct...but it was massive.
The shadow was far too much like the one that hung around Ace. The shadow of Roger, watching over his son even in death.