Author's Note: Guys, this one is going to be slow updating. I'm so sorry. I just had another baby like a week ago, and life has been really crazy besides that. Also, while I have certain crucial scenes in mind, I haven't fully connected this story in my brain as well as I had with the last two.

Thanks to everyone for the supportive, kind reactions to Ch. 1 going up. I was floored. Hopefully you will enjoy this story as much as the last two, despite its slow update schedule.

Ch. 2 – Politics, Papoose, and Potty Training

Zoro eyed Luffy, who watched Kuina down her sandwiches with a will, clearly jealous that she got an extra snack so soon after breakfast time. He knew better than to steal her food, but he was obviously tempted. Zoro wasn't taking any chances.

Now comfortably situated in an ornate booster seat that Franky had hastily fashioned for her (insisting that he would do better later with more time), Kuina stared back at the captain, big, brown eyes wide and innocent. It was hard to say if she understood what the grown-ups around the table discussed, but then, she had experienced it all firsthand anyway.

"We only know as much as we've seen in the papers," Nami started, drawing Zoro's attention to her.

"Then tell me what you know," he replied as calmly as he could manage.

Nami took a deep breath, before continuing. When she spoke, she looked both apologetic and relieved, as though saying it lifted a weight off of her shoulders – off of everyone's shoulders, really. "A bit over two months ago it made the front page," she said. "Ilium had been conquered under the direction of the High Admiral Sakasuki, and with the help of the Schichibuki."

So Mihawk was in on it too, Zoro thought, feeling betrayed. He knew he and Mihawk didn't owe one another any loyalty, but it tasted bitter all the same. He wondered if Helena and Mihawk had faced off. Despite her skill, she wouldn't have stood a chance. Zoro hadn't been able to train her enough before they'd parted ways, and it didn't sound like that idiot Calypso Blue would have had time to help her much either. But then, Calypso could have held his ground against Mihawk. Probably. Where had he been during all of this?

At mention of Akainu, Luffy's fists tightened where they rested on the table. He lost all interest in Kuina's food. "I was ready to turn back, Zoro," he said, voice tight with emotion. "We found out after we beat up Hordy at Fishman."

"There wasn't anything we could do by then," Usopp reminded the captain. "The paper already said the King of Ilium and their General had been captured and sent to Impel Down to await sentencing. The Queen was pronounced MIA, presumed dead."

"Pops is in prison, huh?" Zoro said.

Nami nodded. "Hector too."

"What about everyone else?"

"If any of our friends survived, they'll be scattered in slave camps throughout the Grand Line," Robin said, entering the room. She had slipped out so quietly, Zoro almost hadn't noticed her leave. "The Island of Ilium has been turned into a naval base, and I can guarantee that none of the initial inhabitants currently reside there."

"Oh my!" Brook exclaimed, "That sounds too horrible, even for the World Government."

"You do remember the human trafficking rings on Saobody, right?" Usopp pointed out with a raised brow. "I hadn't heard of slave camps before though. Are you sure about this, Robin?"

Robin didn't bother answering the question. "Ilium has been utterly wiped off the face of the island and her people scattered. Her history has been erased as well. I know they burned the palace, and the extensive library it contained to the ground. All of the annuls of Ilium have been lost, as has the Grove of Kings."

Naturally Robin would notice and mourn something like this, but it cut Zoro deeply as well. His son's grave had been in that grove. Zoro found himself contemplating turning back, waging war on Marie Jois directly for the horrors its leaders had caused. He might have formed a satisfactory, if not entirely feasible plan then and there, but Robin dropped a piece of parchment in front of him.

It showed a picture of a woman with blood trickling down the side of her face, her fair, cropped hair gleaming in the light of the city aflame behind her. A bejeweled sun gleamed on her furrowed brow, dangling from a gold and white laurel circlet over her blazing, russet eyes. Her swords cycloned around her, mouth wide open in an angry battle cry.

Helena the Heretic it said, Wanted: Dead or Alive.

Zoro grinned despite himself. Well, if Helena was going to have a wanted poster, at least she looked pretty hard core. Then he caught sight of her bounty.

"She went supernova right away, eh?" he asked, pointing at her 200,000,000 Beri bounty with a note of pride in his voice.

Normally he'd feel competitive toward her; after all, she was a swordsman and her bounty was higher than his. But this was his wife they were talking about. – Any boost to her ego was a boost to his own. Not to mention that the bounty made sense. On top of her considerable swordsmanship, she was the missing queen of a once powerful nation and heir to apocalyptic God Powers. It made sense that the World Government would be eager to find her.

She had just given him a new benchmark to strive for. He would surpass her in time, he had no doubt.

"She did, though this isn't her first bounty," Robin replied. "It started at 100,000,000, but doubled about two weeks ago. They changed her name to 'Heretic' then too. Before that, her poster called her, 'The Sun Queen.'"

"Why, what happened two weeks ago?" Zoro asked. Heretic wasn't a new nickname for Helena within her own kingdom; why had the world government decided to adopt it later in lieu of her more regal epithet?

Robin leveled her calm gaze on his. "Because two weeks ago she murdered a Celestial Dragon on the Red Line."

Zoro's jaw went slack. That was a gutsy if not suicidal move, and it explained the excessive bounty. So Helena had beaten him to Marie Jois, but she hadn't gone after Akainu. Why? – not that he hadn't wanted to cut down a few of those dastards himself, but the World Nobles seemed like an odd target; not worth the trouble.

"When this wanted poster came out," Robin said tapping Helena's picture with a long, white finger, "I noticed another one I hadn't seen before."

She dropped another poster onto the table: that of a child. A child with wild, green curls.

Zoro's amusement over Helena's bounty evaporated.

"But that's…that's your kid!" Usopp exclaimed, gazing between the poster and its living counterpart, who was still busy eating her sandwiches. "She's already got a bounty? She's, what, two?"

Trust Robin to notice the wanted poster of a child. The others may have overlooked it in the big stack that the World Government regularly sent out, but not her.

That explained how Robin knew her name. The poster listed her as, "Princess Kuina du Prometheus." – Technically it should have had her as "du Helena" or "du Zoro," but it wasn't incorrect to list her by her ancestral name either. They probably didn't want to tie her to two people with considerably higher bounties and frighten off rooky bounty hunters. She was, after all, only a child. Easy pickings.

She had a bounty of 35,000,000 beris. That was higher than Luffy's first bounty had been, but considering what Kuina could be used for, Zoro was surprised it wasn't higher. At least the twisted lowlifes who'd had the poster made had the decency to list her as, "Wanted: Alive."

Speaking of what Kuina could be used for: "Where were the Gods in all this?" Zoro demanded. "What about the God Powers? I thought they were the reason Ilium has been independent for so long!"

Surely the gods with whom Helena had quarreled would not abandon the kingdom out of spite for its queen?

Then he remembered the broken sword. Peleus had been forged by the gods, and now no longer functioned as it should. Was it a sign that the gods had finally had enough of Helena and her defiance?

"The papers don't say anything about how Ilium was conquered," Robin replied. "However, if you'll look at this cover page, you'll notice…"

She dropped a newspaper in front of him, resting her finger on a wideshot of the country Zoro had come to love for the sake of the woman who ruled it. Mycenae, the small town in front of the capitol, lay completely in ashes, not a stone left on top of another. Parts of the enormous, sea prism walls in front of the city had collapsed, showing Ilium ablaze behind it. Orange and red glowed all the way up the mountainside, hiding the palace from view.

But Robin wasn't pointing at the city. She pointed at the backlit bay in front of it, where an entire cliff face had completely collapsed into the sea.

"The Sea Prism mines," Zoro observed.

"They didn't care about preserving Ilium's goods anymore. They just wanted it destroyed," Robin told him. "That's my theory anyway. And if they didn't care about the sea prism, my guess is they didn't care to obtain access to the God Powers either. I'm not sure what they did to bypass them, but whatever it was, I'm guessing it was something drastic. It's easier to destroy something when you don't care to preserve any part of it."

Zoro nodded pensively. So much of it was speculative. Naturally Helena would be able to tell them all more, but in her present condition they'd have to be content to wait.

At this point in the conversation, Kuina had finished her sandwiches. At least, Zoro hoped she had. With Luffy watching her eat, one could never tell after all, but the sandwiches were gone. In any case, the girl stood up on top of her booster seat, punched a fist into the air and pronounced loudly:

"Need to check potty!"

Zoro blinked at her, along with the rest of the crew. An unexpected grin crossed his face:

"So you're all potty trained now, eh kid?"

"Yup! I wear big girl panties! See?" She grabbed the skirt of her bedraggled dress and was about to lift it high when Zoro scooped her up.

"I believe you!" he exclaimed, shooting a glare toward Brook. The skeleton's eye-sockets widened in innocent surprise.

"I did not ask to see her panties," he pointed out, then leaned over to Nami, "However, Miss Nami, I wouldn't mind seeing…"

He didn't finished the sentence. Nami had pegged him in the head.

Zoro started toward the door only to have a sudden realization: he had never taken a kid to the bathroom before. How exactly did this work?

"Gotta go peeeeee!" the toddler squealed.

"Uh…" Zoro shot a glance back at the crew. None of them looked like they were exactly nanny material. "Any of you guys done this before?"

For some reason his gaze settled on Usopp, as had the eyes of Nami and Luffy. The sharp shooter returned their look with a bemused one of his own.

"Guys, why would you think I know anything about potty training?"

"Well, your original crew was a bunch of kids," Nami pointed out. Luffy nodded sagely at this.

"They were all older kids," he insisted. "All my pirates were potty trained by the time they joined my crew, thank you very much. Anyway, since when was it the captain's responsibility to take crew mates to the bathroom? By that logic, Luffy should take her."

Luffy's brow furrowed in pensive thought. After a moment he nodded, and got to his feet. "I'll teach her to aim real good."

"Girl's don't need to aim!" Nami informed him in horror.

Zoro quickly laid down the law at this: "Luffy is not taking her to the bathroom," he said, turning toward the door again with his teeth gritted. "I'll figure it out."

Nami sighed, standing, but Robin took Kuina from Zoro's arms before the navigator could speak. "Allow me," she said in her calm, collected way.

"You've worked with kids before?" Zoro asked somewhat incredulously.

"No," Robin said with a small chuckle, "But I'm sure it won't be too difficult. Come on, little Princess."

She returned a minute later. Far too soon to have made it to the bathroom and back. "All taken care of," she reported with a smile.

"How'd you make it to the toilet so fast?" Zoro asked.

"Toilet?" Robin replied, bemused. "She said she wanted to go over the side."

"AND YOU LET HER?" Zoro demanded. "What did you do, hold her out over the railing with your powers?"

"Did I do something wrong?" Robin asked in genuine confusion, placing the giggling toddler on the ground. Robin turned to Nami, "I believe it would be of interest to you that a lone rain cloud has materialized aft. It appears to be following us, Navigator-San."

"That's…not normal," Nami observed unnecessarily, standing with her brow furrowed in curiosity.

A deafening thunderclap rattled the sturdy ship, jolting the crew to their feet. Kuina hadn't toddled her way over to her father yet, and fell down on her rump in surprise, letting out a loud wail as she held her ears. "Too Loud!" she sobbed.

Grumbling about the unpredictability of New World weather, Nami jumped to her feet and dashed out the door a moment later, the crew hot on her heels.

Luffy rushed outside with his mates, excitedly searching for the mystery storm cloud and finding none. Calm ocean and clear skies reigned on all sides. It was probably a good thing too. In their alarm at hearing a storm come on so fast, they'd forgotten to secure Zoro's kid. She had followed them out onto the main deck.

In her rush not to be left behind, she'd run head on into Luffy and bounced onto her backside. The captain turned to see what had hit him, caught sight of her scrambling on chubby legs to get upright, and grinned.

"You ok, Little Zoro?" he asked, picking her up.

"Want Papa," she said defiantly.

Something about her attachment to Zoro made Luffy like her all the more, widening his grin. Before he could hand her over, the cracking sound reverberated through the ship again, knocking the crew off of their feet once more.

This time they could all see what had caused it. An angry, black storm cloud had just burst from under the ocean beside the Sunny, sending lightning every which way.

"What the…?" Sanji started, only to stop short as the lightning danced across the deck, starting small fires. Luffy shielded Kuina with his rubber body while everyone else dove for cover.

The cloud darted around the ship, diving into the ocean again.

"Wormy," Kuina said, pointing at it. "He mean."

"Wormy?" Zoro asked.

Robin's eyes grew wide. "Wait, you don't mean a Stormwyrm, do you?"

"A what?" Usopp demanded, grunting with the strain of heavy lifting. Franky had enlisted the sniper's help in strapping a salt water tank onto the Cyborg.

Before Robin could answer, or Franky could convert the cannons on his shoulders into fire-extinguishers, the cloud resurfaced on the port side, thunder rumbling through it, awaiting release. This time Luffy didn't wait for it to shower his ship with electricity. Still clutching Kuina, he threw a gum gum pistol right into the center of the storm cloud.

Something screeched inside when he made contact, and a moment later the storm cloud dissipated, revealing what appeared to be a giant, black eel at its center. On both sides of its smooth, wet body, the beast had fanned webbing that looked like it could serve as fins underwater, but currently pumped like wings, keeping it airborne. Luffy vaguely wondered if it was good eating, but mostly wondered if it would be fun to ride on.

He had hit it right on its snoot, if its crinkled visage was any indication. It didn't look happy. A moment later it dove back under the waves.

"Lot of wormies follow," Kuina said. "Momma fight lots and lots."

Robin nodded. "Stormwyrms usually hunt in packs," she informed everyone calmly. "Be on your guard."

"I had hoped they were a New World legend," Nami spluttered, paler than usual. "As if the weather here isn't unpredictable enough without throwing creatures who can control it into the mix."

The stormwyrm popped up on the starboard side this time, again swathed in cloud. No wait, this could be a new one. There were two of them now. No, three. No, six. No…a dozen? The more that popped up from out of the water, the harder it was to count them as their clouds converged, surrounding the Sunny in her own personal thunderstorm.

"This is how they take down their prey." Robin had to shout to be heard over the sudden, rushing wind, and earsplitting thunderclaps. "They target and sink ships, then consume all on board."

"Too loud," Kuina complained again, throwing her hands over her ears.

"Luffy, get her back inside!" Zoro commanded, throwing a slash into the storm. He struck one of the creatures, who let out a loud screech as it and its cloud split in two. The stormwyrm clouds around it quickly filled its place.

"But then she'll miss the fun," Luffy defended, tossing the child haplessly onto his back. "Gomu gomu no PAPOOSE!"

His stretchy arms cocooned around himself and the toddler, strapping her tightly to him in a protective layer of rubber. Her hands, which had been clasped over her ears, remained free, and she used them to clap in excitement when Luffy launched himself and his delighted rider into the air.

"LUFFY!" Zoro cried after him in alarm, but the captain had other things to attend to. Here amid rainclouds and 'wormies' as Kuina called them, he could sense multiple enemies turn their attention toward him. Lightning crackled on all sides, but if his fight with Eneru had taught him anything, it was that he had nothing to fear from this particular element.

Though he'd wrapped his arms around Kuina, he still had enough stretch room to throw a gum-gum gatling into the storm. He took down more than half of them before descending back to the deck of the ship, where Zoro waited to berate him further.

"Luffy…!" he started.

"Again, again!" Kuina cried at the same time. "Wormies go bye bye!"

Others of the crew had launched attacks at the same time Luffy had, clearing out the remaining Stormwyrms. Before their respective clouds could dissipate, twice as many took their place.

"Where are they all coming from?" Nami demanded, redirecting a lightning bolt into a small cluster of enemies. It didn't seem to affect them much, much to her dismay.

"Once they pick a target they won't stop until they've exhausted their clan," Robin replied. "Her Majesty must have passed right through a nest."

"And how big are these 'clans' exactly?" Usopp asked, launching a pop star into the mist. Huge, toothy plants munched on a few of the winged eels.

"As small as a few dozen…" Robin said, her arms crossed over her body.

A few well-placed slashes took out another couple of stormwyrms. "Oh, well, that's manageable…" Brook started as he landed in a crouch.

"…or as large as several thousand," Robin finished. She used clutch to knock three more beasts from the sky.

"SEVERAL THOUSAND?" Usopp and Brook squealed.

"Ow! It's no problem for the Sunny," Franky called from the helm. "Everybody hang on! It's time for…"

Luffy let out a whoop of excitement, binding himself and Kuina to the mast just in time.

"...Coup de BURST!"

At the cyborg's cry, a hot beam of light shot out of the back of the Sunny, launching them into the barrier of storm clouds. Black, slippery eels smacked into the ship as they went, no match for the pirate ship as it rocketed skyward.

Over a kilometer away, they plummeted downward, the mighty Adam wood of their vessel hardly flinching as they crashed into the ocean. Free at last of the eels, the Straw Hats lowered their weapons, and Luffy let his giggling charge slide off his back and onto the deck.

"I yike you, Yuffy," she said, hugging his leg.

Luffy grinned at her. "I like you too, Little Zoro. You wanna join my crew?"

Kuina's eyes grew wide. She released Luffy to clap her hands, dancing in place in excitement. "Yes! Yes!" she cried. But then she stopped suddenly, expression serious. "Mama join too?"

"That's up to her," Zoro replied when Luffy looked up at him for an answer. "But if Kuina wants to join the crew, and you're ok with it, Luffy, I don't see why she shouldn't."

"Really?" Nami asked, "You're ok with your daughter becoming a pirate?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Zoro asked. "She's an outlaw anyway. I do have one condition though, Captain…"

Luffy pouted. He had a feeling he wasn't going to like this condition. Zoro's hand slamming his face into the deck only confirmed it:

"You're not allowed to be reckless with her, idiot!"