Chapter 4

So so so so so sorry for the delay! I had an exam to study for and I couldn't bring myself to write while doing so. I promise the next chapter won't take nearly as long to finish.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 50 FOLLOWS.

Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece.

"Run." A burned hand is pressed against her back, urging her to move move move.

"But Mama-san is still inside the compound!" she protests to no avail, the person pushing her—a sister—having already picked her up and continued running, clutching onto a small satchel filled with everything that she could grab.

Everything (and everyone) is burning.

The sound of glass shattering behind her sends the sister diving, Nao still held protectively in her arms. She doesn't understand—unable to even begin comprehending how her formerly tranquil(albeit bitter) life had gone so wrong.

Her efforts at preventing the Ohara incident had essentially failed, the only difference being the news that Jaguar D. Saul's body had gone unrecovered—the island having burned down too quickly for marines to confirm his death. Other than that, all the things from the original storyline had gone accordingly—as in, Nico Robin was still a fugitive, and the world was still made up of pieces of shit.

But that isn't why she's running.

The small, homely dango shop in which Nao had confronted Rosinante in hadn't been so small and homely after all. With word of Robin's bounty spreading—and money being offered for even the slightest pieces of new information given to the world government—a person who heard Nao utter the word 'Ohara' had tipped them off, instantly sending a fleet of marines(also known as a fucking death sentence) towards their island.

The citizens in the main village were swiftly evacuated as marines made their move, leaving those deemed dispensable(as in all the whores who didn't have a family, or even a real name) to fall victim to their chaos. Without rhyme or reason, they had stormed the brothel, shoving and pushing and shooting the girls in their way, disregarding their cries for mercy.

Immediately Nao had been rushed out of harm's way, and now here she was, face down in dirt(yet again) and bleeding profusely.

"Nao, go without me. The harbor is just a little distance away," the sister commands, choking on smoke, unable to get herself back onto her feet.

But Nao doesn't move, too transfixed on something that had fallen onto the ground.

It's a small, metallic pocket mirror, probably one that had fallen out of a civilian's pocket while they had been evacuating, but it isn't the intricate design(or how much she could sell the useless decorative object for) that entrances her. It's what she, for the first time ever, sees inside the object.

Herself.

For years she had avoided glancing in mirrors—too afraid to see the proof that the girl she once was was dead for reasons unbeknownst to her—but now all her efforts at dodging her reflection had gone to shit(along with the rest of her life).

Because she sees it—sees something that should be dead deaddeAD. Except she doesn't. She does, but she doesn't, because it isn't her that she notices in the reflection, but someone else—someone else, but also her. Gone is the doe-eyed brunette that she once was in a past life, and in her place is a daintier girl with skin too porcelain and eyes too sharp and hair too black to be hers. Pure dread consumes her very being because the girl she was is gone (gonEGONE everyone she loves—her sistersister sISTER) and no amount of struggling could ever bring that girl back. The hopelessness is so harrowing—so ghastly—that once more she is unwillingly sent spiraling down into the screams of agony that she had only let loose once before. Obscenities in a language that was never meant to exist in this world slip out of her mouth as she screeches for every bit of sanity left in her to recollect itself.

Hands—ones too big to be that of the sister—clamp around her mouth, rendering her mute as tremors shake her body.

She is out cold before she catch a glimpse of her silencer.

She comes to in a place so serene that she doubts whether or not she's really conscious. (The gentle rocking of the sea that she had only felt once long ago brings back faint glimmers of memories, the ghosts of a precious person's—brother? nephew? friend's?—laughter ringing in her ear.)

Shaking her head, she pushes irrelevant images away. Reminiscing was useless now anyways.

"H-Hello?" she calls out hoarsely, alarmed at how raw her throat feels.

The person who replies to her is neither the sister nor the person who had efficiently shut her up(because, as far as she could remember, the hand that had been glued over her mouth had not been an startling shade of pink). Instead, it was a very small, but very familiar fishman that answered her tentative call.

"H-Hi," Hatchan stutters back. (Fuck. It's just one deterrent after the next, isn't it? What the fuck was the point of having a plan if every corner she turned just resulted in a new clusterfuck of chaos?)

Her face doesn't betray how dismayed she really is.

"Where am I?" She decides to go for the most direct approach, recalling that this particular character was rather dense.

"On a boat," he states the obvious.

Before she can open her mouth and make a (regrettable) comment about how painfully clear that fact already was, another person enters the conversation.

"We're currently heading towards reverse mountain," the newcomer helpfully explains, fondly placing a hand atop Hatchan's head as he does so.

Long, wavy greyed hair; a distinctive scar running from his brow to his cheek. The fright she felt during her previous run ins with other influential characters paled in comparison to the complete horror that had currently washed over her. He is far more intimating in person—exuding an aura that paralyzed her without even trying to.

But that's just the man he is—Silvers Rayleigh.

"O-Oh," she unintentionally stutters, recoiling as far back as she can into a bed that suddenly feels a lot more like a constraint. She is almost too terrified to inquire further, but her confusion bests her fear. "Why?"

He offers a smile radiating with warmth, and her stomach sinks. She's seen that expression before—in a past life. (A woman—aunt? mother? sister?—crouched down, beaming at a small child while explaining that their brother had gone somewhere unreachable.)

"Your onee-san was very insistent on protecting you from any falling debris. She's—" Rayleigh pauses when his coddling tone is received by a blank stare.

"She's dead?" Her question is concise and to the point, paired with an unnervingly desensitized expression. Sure, there's some sort of sadness dwelling in her mind, but something doesn't allow her to grieve. The situation—from rebirth to now—is still incomprehensible to her. What differentiates her 'sisters' from other cannon fodder? What makes them more real than other characters in the world? She might've looked deeper into how she really felt, had she had the time back then, but the clearing of Rayleigh's throat drew her out of the frighteningly cold thoughts, and back into the surreal situation.

The babying voice is gone now. "No. She hasn't passed, but she isn't looking all that good either. We're both lucky that Hachi here has good hearing." He pauses to grin at the fishman, playfully patting his head. "This kid just dragged me out of my own mess a couple days ago."

Nao doesn't know what to say. (What the fuck could she say? 'Oh, yeah, I already know about that, because you see, powerful guy who could probably kill me with a glance, I'm a dimension-transcending, fucked up reincarnation, who has an alarmingly bad habit of stumbling upon people that I should probably stay far away from, for both their sake and mine.' Nao's clueless, but she isn't that clueless.) She settles for another weak 'Oh.'

The room falls into a prolonged silence as neither of its occupants really know what to say next.

"Nao, right?" He clears his throat again. (If she were in the mood to be a sarcastic little shit, she might've teasingly offered a cough drop, but seeing as she was nowhere near as suicidal as one would need to be to try the Roger Pirate's first mate's patience, she refrains.)

"Yes." Her voice is uncharacteristically quiet, the pain in her throat being too unbearable to raise it any higher. (Maybe she's the one who really needs the cough drop.)

"I've got your bag, but I'm not sure if everything's there. It's probably better than nothing." He looks at Hachan again. "Hachi, can you fetch me her bag?"

Hatchan perks at this, eager to leave.

When the door closes, the mood shifts once more, along with the look on Rayleigh's face. In place of the fond smile he had been giving the fishman is a much more amused one—like that of someone who knows something that others don't.

"So you're the brat who has every marine in the vicinity scrambling towards a brothel." It sounds like less of a question and more of stated fact.

"Unfortunately," she drawls, momentarily forgetting whose presence she's in. (She really needed to learn how to shut up.)

He doesn't seem put off by her strange attitude though. (Then again—considering all the weird shit that occupies the Grand Line—she doesn't think a smart-mouthed kid would surprise her too much either, if she were Rayleigh.) Instead, her remark is met with a guffaw.

"You've got that right. You damn near got me killed." More laughter ensues—something pretty odd when its over his own near-death experience. (What the fuck was up with strong people being content with their own demise?)

"Sorry." The apology is said out of reflex. Growing up in a brothel(as god awful as it sounds) did teach her a thing or two about being well mannered. Then she does a double take. How the hell did he find out that she was the one who accidentally got a siege called on a (normally) tranquil port town? "How'd you know that?"

"Don't worry about it, kid. I don't think anything could kill me after the years I spent half-dying with that man anyways." His own jab triggers another chuckle before he addresses her question. "About you bringing a mini apocalypse on Yorokobi Island?"

She reluctantly nods. (It was true, but she didn't want to actually admit it.)

"I found out that Garp was asking Mama-san for a favor. Figured it had something to do with my captain's unfinished business, so I went to check it out. Don't know how it happened, but I ended up in a bar and heard marines talking about some brothel brat mentioning Ohara."

His explanation makes a lot more sense than she originally thought it would.

"Why are we heading towards reverse mountain?"

"Your onee-san has some pretty bad burns, and I'm fairly banged up myself. Fighting was a bit difficult while carrying the two of you, or maybe I've just gotten old, who knows?" He wryly shakes his head at his own quip. "I don't know the first thing about medicine, but I've got a friend at Twin Cape who does, so this is probably our best bet. Yorokobi Island's only a day's voyage away from reverse mountain, and you've nearly been out for that long, so we'll be there in another hour or two."

Her attention is stuck on the first half of his response. "You're injured?"

He lifts his cloak and shirt, revealing blood-soaked bandages underneath. "I guess you could say that," he jokes.

Hatchi chooses this moment to reenter the cabin, eyes widened as he catches sight of Rayleigh's wound.

"Eh?! You're still bleeding? We just changed the bandages!" Hatchi exclaims, running to drop the bag onto the bed before hurrying back to Rayleigh to examine the wound. "I'll go get more bandages!" He declares.

Before either Nao or Rayleigh could tell Hatchan that there was no dire need for more bandages, he's already out the door.

"You just changed them?" Nao asks, blinking at soaked bandages with an indiscernible look on her face.

"Yeah, but it probably isn't too bad. Crocus is used to fixing me up anyways." The paleness of his skin contradicts his nonchalant attitude.

Nao ignores his dismissal of the injury. Even without her medical training, the excessive loss of blood was as clear as day. She doesn't particularly want to further expose herself by helping him, but she's pretty sure she'd rather do that than have to deal with a bled-out corpse on the boat. "Do you have a lighter?"

"Aren't you a bit too young to be a smoker?" He raises an eyebrow at the demand, but complies anyways, pulling one out of his pocket and tossing it to her.

It lands on her lap while she's reaching for her bag, throwing her hand in there and rummaging for something. A few seconds tick by before her concentrated expression lightens up as she grabs ahold of the cold, smooth object.

It's the pocket mirror that sent her into a fit of wails the first time around.

"Unwrap the bandages. We have to cauterize it before you bleed out." Before he can protest to a child tending to his wounds, Nao is already off her bed and walking towards him. In a matter of seconds the lighter is lit and held near the metallic covering of the mirror, and Rayleigh finds himself on the receiving end of an expectant stare.

"Are you sure you're certified to do this?" He snorts at the ridiculousness of it all, but adheres to her order anyways, most likely presuming that a child with a lighter couldn't do much anyways.

His underestimation is countered by a searing pain near his lower abdomen, right where one of the stray bullets had pierced him as he had tried escaping.

"What the hell are you—" he cuts his own outcry short when he sees the wound closing up. "Oh."

She rolls her eyes. "Crocus-san is going to have to reopen that to get the bullet out, but it should suffice for now. The excessive bleeding is probably 'cause the bullet grazed your common iliac artery, but this will have to do until we reach Twin Cove."

"Are you sure you're a kid?" Rayleigh asks, another eyebrow raised as Nao tosses the lighter back at him. "Or did you just eat that damned Hobi Hobi no Mi?"

"Isn't trying to stop the bleeding common sense?" she answers his question with one of her own, heading back towards the bed. Guilt gnaws at her for not checking up on the sister too, but if burns were the extent of her injuries, there was really nothing that she could do.

"Probably." He chooses not to press further and laughs again, and suddenly Nao is wondering why the hell she was ever scared of the irresponsible man in the first place. His stupidly overpowering presence did little to hide how non-intimidating his personality really was.

Comforted by this, a part of her wants to succumb to her body's insistent need for more sleep after the various rushes of adrenaline it had received(running away from the second-coming of hell and waking up in a boat with more characters who could kill her with a glance tended to give quite the rush to the average person), but there was still one thing that bothered her.

"Do you know if the people at the brothel are okay?" She asks, despite already knowing what the answer probably is. Last she saw of the other sisters, they were being tossed around like rag dolls, courtesy of the marines.

"Isn't that obvious?" She feels herself visibly deflating before his entire reply is even said. "Of course they are."

"I—wait, what?" She whips her head up to look at him in shock.

"It's the Mama-san's brothel. Don't you know? It's hard to name a single person out on the seas who she doesn't have dirt on. Whichever marine barged in their first is gonna get quite the lecture from their higher ups." A bemused smirk settles on his lips.

"Oh thank god," she mumbles, eyelids feeling a lot heavier than they were a few moments ago. "Can you wake me up when we're near reverse mountain?"

"I don't think you'll need me to wake you up once we get there." His face dons a mischievous grin, but Nao is already out like a light.

The door quietly closes as he walks off to find the fretting fishman.

Woooo! Were any of you guys expecting that? Hint: Looking at the One Piece timeline help a lot with guessing what Nao's next move is. She's with freakin' Rayleigh though! Even I'm excited to write this bit, and I'm the writer.

Next chapter will be out in 5-6 days, maybe less if I have crazy levels of motivation. Sorry this one is so short.

As always, please leave a review if you have the time! Have a wonderful day. :)