Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Yara spent the first years of her second life in a state of complete despair and cried far more often than she liked to remember.

Dying from a sleeping pill overdose during her fifth year of medical school had already been ridiculous enough on its own. Waking up afterward in the body of a child somewhere in the middle of filthy, stinking slums only elevated the situation from tragic to outright nightmarish. Becoming an orphan on top of that. One without the slightest chance at proper food, decent shelter, or even basic safety, felt less in the way of a beginning and more as the opening chapter of a very slow apocalypse.

To her credit, Yara figured out the orphan part fairly quickly. It was difficult to miss, considering nobody nearby seemed particularly interested in feeding her, checking whether she was alive, or at the very least throwing a blanket over her shivering body.

So yes. Things were bad. Extremely bad.

What unsettled her most was the fact that she genuinely had no idea what exactly she had done to deserve reincarnation in the first place.

Belief had never come easily to Yara. She trusted almost nothing, including herself. Which made the whole thing feel frankly laughable

The religions of her previous world had offered an entire collection of explanations regarding death and rebirth, but none of them survived contact with reality. If reincarnation truly existed, then where exactly was the grand wheel of samsara, and why had it decided to dump her into a glorified drainage ditch? Some beliefs claimed the soul moved endlessly from one life to another, but Yara was fairly certain people were not supposed to retain all their memories, emotional damage, and corroded pieces of past experiences along the way.

And yet there she was, carrying the entirety of her previous life around inside her skull like unwanted luggage.

If this place was hell, then it was a strangely disappointing version of it. The air smelled of saltwater, mildew, sewage, sweat, and cheap tobacco rather than sulfur, and there was a suspicious lack of boiling cauldrons. Although, in fairness, Yaara could confidently say this was definitely not heaven either.

After all, she came to the conclusion that death was neither an ending nor a beginning. It was simply some kind of irritating mistake — a flaw in reality itself, perhaps biological in nature, perhaps something closer to a quantum malfunction.

The fact that she remembered the sensation of dying in vivid detail did absolutely nothing to improve her mental state, turning her existence into one long, exhausting episode of déjà vu. More than once she found herself wondering whether consciousness was merely an anomaly that occasionally refused to disappear when it should have. Humanity had invented countless theories about the origin of the universe, after all. Statistically speaking, at least one of them had to be accidentally correct.

Especially because the world surrounding her already seemed fundamentally wrong.

At first, Yara tried to classify everything around her according to the technological logic she remembered from her previous life, but the longer she observed this world, the less coherent it became. The entire civilization resembled some absurd construction assembled from incompatible historical periods. Primitive sailing ships shared harbors with bizarre machinery that functioned without recognizable engines, while animal-drawn carts rattled across streets beside fully operational crane systems powered by mechanisms she could neither identify nor explain.

The lack of telephones, internet, and even stable electricity in residential districts strongly suggested something close to the nineteenth century, yet newspapers were printed with suspiciously advanced typography and casually referenced inventions that sounded indistinguishable from science fiction. Progress here did not advance in a straight line. It stumbled violently from one extreme to another, skipping entire stages of development while obsessively refining others.

The world itself felt as though a Frankenstein creation stitched together from scraps of completely different centuries.

In the end, the only thing that prevented Yara from losing her mind entirely was biology.

Somewhere in an old textbook from her previous life, she had once read a simple truth: under harsh conditions, an organism only has three options — adapt, migrate, or die.

Dying for a second time was prevented by a stubborn mixture of pride and fear. Leaving the island without money was impossible. Which left adaptation as the only remaining choice.

And Yara intended to adapt.

She started with the body she had inherited, which felt alien in every conceivable way — unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and far too noticeable for someone trying desperately to survive unnoticed. A tangled mass of bright red hair combined with mismatched eyes, one brown and the other a piercing shade of blue, attracted attention far too easily. Yara had no idea whether it was simple heterochromia or evidence of something stranger, but she understood one thing perfectly well.

In slums like these, unusual beauty rarely remained harmless for long. Sooner or later, it became either merchandise or a corpse.

Beauty itself was not the problem. Human beings were.

Yara was willing to bet every last coin in existence that, regardless of the world, the situation surrounding vulnerable girls remained depressingly universal. There was no magical place where they were guaranteed safety, and the same truth applied to women, the weak, and anyone unfortunate enough to become convenient prey for someone stronger.

Some patterns transcended worlds a little too easily.

So, in order to survive, she hacked her hair short, leaving her bangs long enough to cover her blue eye, smeared soot across her face, and deliberately trained herself to slouch in ways that made her appear smaller, filthier, weaker, and altogether less memorable. Fortunately, or maybe, unfortunately — vanity had never occupied a particularly important place in her priorities. Clothing scavenged from garbage heaps bothered her far less than starvation ever did.

Using false names stolen from old television shows, books, and cartoons she still vaguely remembered from her previous life, Yara gradually erased the image of a strange, pretty child and replaced it with something far safer. A hostile-looking homeless boy nobody bothered to look at twice.

And as is the case with most stray children in the district, she eventually drifted into a local gang of street kids, where she learned how to steal food, avoid beatings, and, more importantly than anything else, understand the language of the world that refused to let her die properly.

It took far less time than Yara had expected.

At first, she learned to understand people almost entirely through external cues — facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, posture, the way someone’s mouth tightened before shouting or softened before offering food. Surprisingly, that part came easily to her. Whenever an adult tried speaking to her directly, Yaara’s first instinct was usually to run regardless of their intentions. It did not matter whether they wanted to help, scold her, or drag her somewhere “safe.” She had no desire to be taken in, adopted, pitied, or folded into someone else’s family.

She had already had a family once.

Losing them had been painful enough the first time around. She doubted she could survive becoming attached to people like that again.

Of course, there were also situations where running was not an option. Usually when someone caught her stealing food. If the situation did not seem immediately dangerous, Yara simply lowered her head, nodded a few times, and pretended to feel guilty enough to avoid getting hit too badly. Social interaction itself did not particularly interest her; she had never been especially talkative even in her previous life. Still, understanding people remained an essential part of survival, so eventually she stopped resisting the necessity of it.

Reading, however, proved far more difficult.

At the start, newspapers were little more than incomprehensible sheets covered in strange symbols, and Yaara relied mostly on illustrations and scattered visual details to piece together fragments of meaning. Even then, those newspapers became the first real evidence that this world differed drastically from the one she remembered. Names, locations, technologies, political structures — everything felt vaguely distorted, as though reality itself had been assembled incorrectly.

Eventually, the other street kids noticed her struggling. Somewhere between petty theft, scavenging through trash heaps, and dividing stale leftovers between themselves, they unexpectedly decided to teach her how to read.

The local writing system initially looked completely insane to her — a chaotic collection of crooked, drunken-looking symbols bearing no resemblance whatsoever to either Cyrillic or Latin script. Progress came painfully slowly. She stumbled through syllables, mixed up characters constantly, and spent weeks sounding out words one agonizing letter at a time.

But sooner or later, something clicked.

After that, every discarded newspaper she managed to dig out of the garbage became a genuine treasure.

Because now she could finally understand what the world around her was saying. It was through those torn scraps of newspaper that Yara began noticing something far worse than simple inconsistencies or unfamiliar details.

Not differences.

The recognition that made her lose her mind.

Island names that had never existed on any map from her previous world somehow sounded disturbingly familiar. The names of certain people and titles carried the same exaggerated grandeur as characters from old adventure stories. References to the “Marines,” the “World Government,” and pirates with bounties worth millions appeared so frequently that, at first, Yara dismissed them as some bizarre mixture of folk tales, translation issues, and her own lack of understanding.

It could not possibly be what she thought it was.

That simply should not have existed. Not in reality. Not anywhere.

Yet for all that, the more words she learned to piece together into coherent sentences, the clearer the horrifying picture became.

This was not an alternate version of history. It was not some parallel universe born from quantum explosion or cosmic coincidence. The world surrounding her had once existed as fiction — a setting imagined by someone else and filled with impossible creatures, monsters masquerading as humans, and people so powerful they bordered on the divine. Entire nations, wars, and histories had once been nothing more than concepts arranged around an author’s plotline.

And now she was inside it.

Yara herself had become trapped within a “story” she only dimly remembered in fragments.

Well.

Fuck her life.

Chapter Text

When Yara turned fifteen, she finally, fully understood that she was living on the Grand Line.

And she had been absurdly, insultingly lucky to end up only in its first half. On some nameless, fog-choked island that, at the time, had seemed like a small mercy. Or at least something that could be mistaken for one.

If it could even be called that.

As the days passed, her perception of past, future, and present twisted together into something difficult to separate, yet she found herself remembering them with greater clarity.

In theory, they should have meant something important. A safeguard. A hint. A margin of control.

In reality, they did nothing of the sort.

No amount of foreknowledge mattered when you were just another expendable variable in a world that did not negotiate with with probabilities. “Knowledge” did not become power simply because you wanted it to. There was no one willing to validate it, no authority to confirm it, no safety net underneath it. Only uncertainty layered upon uncertainty.

That realization unsettled her more than she cared to admit. So she started compensating the only way she knew how — observation. Careful, obsessive, constant analysis of everything around her, as if the world might eventually reveal a pattern if she stared at it long enough.

The most consistent pattern she found was unsettling in its simplicity. People on the Grand Line were wrong. Not metaphorically — physically, fundamentally wrong compared to the inhabitants of the Four Blues. Stronger, harder to kill, their bodies carrying a kind of resilience that bordered on distortion. As for the second half of the Grand Line..she tried not to think too much about the inhabitants of the New World, that way lay unnecessary anxiety and a permanently ruined appetite.

Still, exceptions existed. They always did.

Monkey D. Luffy and the absurd lineage attached to him came to mind most often — living proof that whatever rules governed this world had a sense of humor she did not appreciate. But Yara had long since categorized him as an anomaly rather than a baseline. A statistical outlier so extreme it looped back into irrelevance. The kind of existence that occurred once in a century, like Gol D. Roger before him.

Fascinating, yes. Useful for predictions? Certainly not.

Oddly enough, that very unpredictability only deepened her curiosity.

She began slipping into libraries whenever she could, trading caution for stolen minutes among dusty shelves, sometimes deceiving adults with practiced ease just to gain access. Medicine remained her primary focus, the closest thing to stability she had ever known, but she expanded her reading into geography, marine biology, and anything related to the strange ecology of this world. Sea kings, island classification systems, the unpredictable currents of the Grand Line… even wanted posters occasionally offered glimpses of familiar names that made her pause longer than she liked.

The more she read, the more unbearable ignorance became. Curiosity stopped being a choice and turned into a pressure building behind her ribs. Eventually, the only logical conclusion was that she needed to see it herself.

Still, she resisted that conclusion for a long time. Convinced herself it was influence, coincidence, misplaced fascination — anything but intent. People went to sea because they were fools, dreamers, or already dead in everything but name. She was none of those things.

Until one morning when even that fragile restraint finally cracked.

She woke up with the simple, corrosive clarity that she had nothing. No safety, no future, no guarantee that staying still would change anything. And if she truly had nothing, then there was nothing left to lose.

Fear is a response to threats against one’s well-being. But when well-being has already fallen to zero, fear loses its purpose as a warning signal.

So she went to sea.

The boat she took belonged to a distracted fisherman at the pier. Small, worn, barely worth stealing, which made it perfect.

Even though she felt a pang of guilt toward the unlucky fisherman, she told herself it was a need. Besides, she wasn’t doing it for freedom, romance, or any of the romanticized nonsense people attached to the ocean.

She simply wanted information. Proof and a better understanding of the world before it decided to end her. That was all.

She knew the Grand Line’s dangers intimately, or at least believed she did. Unstable weather systems that shifted without warning, colossal sea creatures that treated ships as meals, and magnetic fields that turned navigation into a constant gamble. She accounted for all of it as best she could. Prepared, adapted, compensated. For a time, it even worked. Enough to sustain the illusion that she was in control.

It stayed that way until she reached her second “random” island.

Only then did she begin to understand her mistake.

She had not misjudged the sea.

She had misjudged the people who lived on it. They were greedy, unjust, and disturbingly inventive in their cruelty.

She had docked near the shore of a small village that, at first glance, looked almost peaceful. Quiet coastline, modest houses, fishing nets drying near the water — the sort of place that seemed safe enough to approach for fresh water and a short rest.

Yara did not even manage to properly step onto land before something slammed into the back of her head hard enough to send the world sideways. After that came disconnected flashes. Rough hands. Blurred voices. The taste of blood in her mouth. The sickening sensation of being dragged somewhere against her wishes.

Now, sitting in the suffocating stench of a ship’s cargo hold, staring at wrists rubbed raw and bloody beneath iron restraints, with another collar locked tight around her neck, she no longer had any doubts about what had happened.

Slavers. Of course it had to be slavers. Operating freely along these waters like it was just another line of work.

Greedy, vicious bastards with empty pockets and less humanity than starving scavengers. Men prepared to sell another person piece by piece if it earning them enough coin.

Truly terrifying and equally disgusting.

She really would have preferred dying from that blow to the head over waking up here.

It did not take long before Yara found herself sitting inside a cage, grimly reflecting on the fact that if she had truly been born under some kind of star, then it was undoubtedly the star of fucking misfortune.

They had brought her straight to Sabaody.

Out of every lawless corner of the world infected by slavery, she had somehow ended up in the one place where human trafficking was not merely tolerated but flourished openly beneath the protection of the World Government itself, carefully nurtured by the whims of the Celestial Dragons.

The moment she saw the colossal mangrove trees stretching endlessly into the sky and the shimmering soap bubbles drifting through the air as if smothered in disturbingly ornate decorations, the final pieces clicked into place inside her head.

The only marginally reassuring detail (if that was even the right word for it) was that the slobbering bastard screaming at his subordinates nearby was not the same auction house owner from canon. At least, she didn’t think he was. She could no longer remember the man’s name clearly enough to be certain.

Not that it mattered much. Different owner, same nightmare.

Judging by the chaos surrounding the underground hall, the auction had not started yet, though it clearly would soon. Guards barked orders while workers scrubbed cages, polished chains, and dragged prisoners from one holding area to another with the same detached efficiency people used when preparing livestock for sale. Leaning against the damp wall of her cell, Yara silently catalogued everything around her, searching for anything remotely useful.

The only conclusion she reached was Incurably unpleasant. The merchandise here was expensive.

Business, apparently, was thriving.

Among the prisoners who were clearly considered “high-value,” two children huddled together near the corner of the cage beside hers — both painfully pretty in the artificial, delicate way wealthy degenerates seemed to adore. The rest of the selection consisted mostly of scarred, hostile-looking brutes with the kind of physiques that suggested violence had shaped most of their lives. Former pirates, probably. Criminals too stubborn or unlucky to avoid capture. Judging by the murderous looks some of them threw toward the guards, Yara would not have been surprised if a few Devil Fruit users had ended up among them as well. Their prices would skyrocket the moment bidding began.

But the true jackpot waited farther inside the chamber.

Beyond several reinforced barriers stood enormous water tanks where mermaids drifted in exhausted silence while fish-men sat nearby beneath heavy restraints, their expressions dark with restrained fury. Several of them. For Sabaody, that was equivalent to discovering a gold mine.

Yara was fairly certain the people of Fish-Man Island understood the dangers of the surface world better than anyone else alive. Apparently, understanding those dangers did not make escaping them any easier.

And as if the entire scene wasn’t grotesque enough already, she also noticed several heavily guarded metal chests being carried carefully into a secured storage room. The hushed, reverent whispers between overseers made the contents obvious enough. Devil Fruits.

Actual Devil Fruits.

The kind of objects people slaughtered entire crews over.

And now they would most likely end up fed to spoiled aristocrats too weak and useless to survive this world without inherited privilege protecting them. What a waste.

Yara stared at the entire miserable spectacle while something hot and helpless twisted violently in her chest. Her disguise as a boy had predictably gone to hell the moment the slavers decided to hose the dirt off her body like they were cleaning mud from stolen property. Now her red hair and mismatched eyes stood out vividly beneath the dim underground lighting, practically guaranteeing her a premium place among the “specialty” lots for wealthy collectors with depraved tastes.

Fuck.

If this keeps up, she’ll end up getting sold for sure. Maybe if she—

A quiet rustling sound interrupted the thought.

Something small suddenly grabbed the leg of her pants with trembling fingers.

Blinking in confusion, Yara lowered her gaze and found herself staring at one of the children she had noticed earlier. A tiny blond boy with enormous blue eyes and the exhausted, hollow appearance of someone who had spent too long hungry. Four years old, maybe five at most, though severe malnutrition made it difficult to tell.

Tilting her head slightly, she silently asked what he wanted, expecting at least a whisper or some desperate attempt at communication. But the child said nothing.

When her eyes drifted toward his shaking shoulders and the pale fingers clutching desperately at the fabric of her clothes, understanding arrived immediately. He wasn’t merely frightened. He was terrified. Completely terrified. And panicked enough to latch onto the nearest person who did not resemble a towering murderer waiting to snap his neck.

Fortunately for both of them, the overseers finally finished their inspection. After another round of counting prisoners and slamming heavy iron doors shut, the guards disappeared upstairs, leaving the underground cells in relative silence.

The moment their footsteps faded, Yara exhaled quietly and crouched down in front of the child.

“You don’t have to worry,” she murmured, forcing as much calm into her voice as possible. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Which was, objectively speaking, complete bullshit. Nothing about this was okay.

Once free, they were now reduced to commodities.

They were Intended for sale to those who decided that ‘special blood’ granted authority and gave them the right to rule.

It's funny, but somehow, birth ended up being the only qualification that mattered. Wrong place, wrong time—no merit required. Others got names, wealth, power… and what did they actually do for it?

Nothing worth mentioning. They simply existed long enough to be labeled ‘important.’ That was their only achievement.

Yeah, perhaps, it used to be interesting, watching it through a screen, reading about it, thinking about it. But under current circumstances, it simply felt laughable when it was happening right in front of you and with you.

The human race is totally fucked up.

Still, the absence of screaming guards and cracking whips seemed enough for the boy’s fear to finally overflow. His lips trembled violently before silent tears began spilling down his face, quickly streaking through the grime on his cheeks.

Yara grimaced under her breath. Then, awkwardly reaching forward, she wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of her shirt.

The gesture lacked anything resembling gentleness. She had never been particularly soft even in her previous life, and rough fabric made for terrible comfort besides. But eventually the crying stopped.

The boy only sniffled after that.

Yara decided, with the practicality of someone who had once sat through too many medical lectures, that the quickest way to interrupt a child’s emotional spiral was to redirect it with a stronger, unexpected stimulus. it was simple. Overwhelm the current reaction so it could not sustain itself. Whether that actually worked on a child his age was another matter entirely.

At least, it was worth a try.

She shifted a little closer, forcing her expression into something softer than her usual blank neutrality. “Hey,” she said quietly, “want to see something interesting?”

The boy sniffled again, blinking at her through damp lashes, then gave a hesitant nod.

Yara reached up and brushed her overgrown, perpetually unruly bangs away from her face, revealing herself fully for the first time in his line of sight.

For a second, he froze.

His eyes flicked between hers, confused at first, then widening with unmistakable fascination as he registered the mismatch — one eye a deep, ordinary brown, the other a striking, unnatural blue. Heterochromia, or something close enough to it that most people didn’t bother distinguishing.

Yara wasn’t certain how typical this was in a world like this, with its unusual islands and people, but it had worked.

The reaction was immediate and almost utterly sincere, though he continued to look uncertain. His mouth fell open slightly, as if he couldn’t quite decide whether he was allowed to stare.

A small, breathy laugh slipped out of Yara before she tucked her hair back into place again.

“Looks weird, doesn’t it?” she asked with a weak, crooked smile.

The boy nodded, completely entranced now, tears apparently forgotten as if they had never existed in the first place.

Well, one problem temporarily solved.

Yara stood up, giving the boy’s soft hair a brief, almost absent-minded pat before straightening fully. Her attention snapped back to the place they were in.

Her eyes moved across the cell like a system running calculations: bars, joints, lock mechanisms, guard positions, angles of visibility. Every detail was weighed, discarded, reconsidered.

No easy exit. Not without Haki, not without abilities, not without something beyond raw human limitations. Which meant the situation, in purely practical terms, was shit.

So the only option left was controlled chaos and the use of one’s own brain.

If she could not break out herself, she would need the room to break for her — cracks in structure, distractions, noise, panic. And the most efficient source of that kind of collapse… were the people already overflowing with violence.

The former pirates.

Their section radiated hostility so dense it almost felt physical, like pressure in the air. These were not men who accepted cages quietly. They breathed resentment, lived on anger, survived on the promise of retaliation. If given even the smallest opening, they would tear the place apart without hesitation.

Not bad.

If she could just get their cages open, they would become a living storm — drawing guards away, flooding the area with chaos, turning order into something unrecognizable. Since none of the high-ranking rich idiots had shown up yet, nothing would have stood in their way, and the Marines wouldn’t have intervened in time, as it would have been a low-priority issue for them. They would indeed have the upper hand.

After all, even disposable material can sometimes be useful.

The thought should have felt heavier. It didn’t. By her own logic, she was being a complete hypocrite. Then again…maybe it was supposed to.

Some distant, rational part of her registered that this was exactly the kind of thinking that should have bothered her — using people as bait, as distraction, as expendable variables.

But whatever remained of her old moral reflexes had clearly stopped functioning somewhere between survival and necessity.

Convenience tended to win arguments like that. And she was going to survive. End of discussion

A faint echo of footsteps cut through her thoughts.

Not many. Two, maybe three people at most, moving at a steady, unhurried pace down the corridor. Not a full escort rotation, too light for that, which meant either additional prisoners or something else entirely.

Yara clicked her tongue softly, annoyance flashing across her expression. Predictably, they were still bringing more. As if the place wasn’t already overflowing with “inventory.” Avaricious assholes never knew when to stop.

The heavy door groaned open.

A guard shoved someone inside.

The new prisoner did not stumble. Did not resist. In fact, he moved with an almost lazy composure, as though he had been invited somewhere mildly inconvenient rather than dragged into a slave holding cell.

That alone was wrong enough to be unsettling.

Behind him, the guard jabbed his back with a baton, clearly annoyed at the lack of reaction. “Move it, old bastard!” the overseer barked.

The prisoner let out a quiet, breathy chuckle — not bitter, but amused. “Oh, now,” he said mildly, voice low and unhurried. One that could easily lull someone to sleep. “There’s no need to be rude to an old man.”

Yara’s gaze locked onto him through the iron bars. He came off as just another weirdo in a long line of them. But something about him kept nagging at the back of her mind.

And then she froze, blinking. Once. Twice. A third time, slower each time, as if her brain refused to accept what her eyes were confirming.

Silver hair, neatly kept. A trimmed beard. Round glasses catching the dim light. That expression — calm, faintly entertained, disturbingly self-assured, belonging without question to someone no one could control.

It was familiar. Too familiar.

He definitely looked a bit younger than the image burned into her memory, but there was no room for doubt. Not even a fraction of one.

Silvers Rayleigh.

It was fucking Silvers Rayleigh.

Right hand of the Pirate King. The “Dark King” himself. The man who, according to every ridiculous scrap of canon she remembered, had a habit of getting himself sold into slavery whenever he ran out of money for booze and gambling.

Back when she had read that, it had felt like a joke. A narrative quirk. Something written for effect.

Now it was sitting in front of her in a cage.

Yara exhaled slowly through her nose, one eye twitching in disbelief.

“…Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

Chapter Text

Only a few minutes remained before the auction began, and by that point every plan Yara had desperately tried to assemble had collapsed into something useless and incoherent. No brilliant escape route had appeared, no miracle opportunity, no conveniently weakened lock or inattentive guard. Most of the time she had simply remained curled in the furthest corner of the cage with her knees pulled close, shoulders tense beneath a pressure so sharp and constant it almost rang inside her skull. Every sound in the underground chamber — chains dragging across stone, muffled voices, bursts of cruel laughter from the guards upstairs — seemed to scrape directly against her nerves.

She avoided everyone around her whenever possible, rarely lifting her gaze for longer than necessary. The reason for that sat only several feet away from her, looking far too indifferent for a man about to have his life decided within hours.

Silvers Rayleigh.

Of all people, it had to be him.

Former first mate of the Pirate King. One of the most monstrously important figures tied to the entire storyline she had spent years trying to avoid.

What a surprise. A real one at that, through and through.

Yara wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of that. She did not want to become involved in legendary pirates, destiny, inherited wills, ancient conspiracies, dramatic rescues, or whatever other bullshit the universe seemed determined to shove into her path. She wanted anonymity, stability, and preferably a life expectancy longer than twenty-five.

Unfortunately, fate apparently considered that request hilarious.

Even relying on that possibility felt humiliating.

The realization sat inside her like acid. Fifteen years of caution, paranoia, calculated avoidance, disguises, and relentless attempts to remain invisible, and the moment an actual canon character appeared in front of her, she froze completely. All those years of survival instincts had twisted into something pathetic and ugly. Instead of helping her act, they had cornered her mentally until panic hollowed her out from the inside.

It disgusted her.

What kind of person surrendered control over their own freedom this easily? What kind of coward sat quietly in a slave cage, waiting for someone stronger to decide whether they lived or died?

Yara honestly believed people like that did not deserve freedom in the first place.

The sound of heavy iron hinges suddenly tore through the underground chamber, making her shoulders jerk involuntarily. The same scarred guard who had brought Rayleigh downstairs earlier stepped into the room again, his dark hair damp with sweat and irritation already carved across his expression. Yara lowered her head slightly without making it obvious and watched him through the narrow space between her arms.

The overseer crossed the room toward a large wooden crate shoved beside the far wall and began digging through its contents with loud, impatient movements. Metal clattered heavily against metal. Shackles. Spare restraints, judging by the sound.

An unpleasant chill crept through Yara’s stomach.

Seriously? Was the mountain of chained prisoners surrounding them somehow still not enough for these pieces of trash?

Trying to force her thoughts elsewhere, she glanced toward Rayleigh again. The old pirate remained seated against the wall in complete comfort, one knee lazily raised while he drank from a battered flask as though he were relaxing after a pleasant evening stroll instead of sitting in an underground slave pen beneath Sabaody.

Probably alcohol.

No, definitely alcohol.

Yara resisted the urge to rub her temples. If she remembered correctly, canon Rayleigh drank almost constantly, which honestly explained a concerning amount about his personality. Then again, most pirates in this world treated heavy drinking less like a bad habit and more like a sacred cultural tradition. She was fairly certain even seventeen-year-old Luffy had probably stolen alcohol at some point despite technically being a minor. Laws in One Piece only seemed to matter when they benefited corrupt people.

As though sensing her attention, Rayleigh slowly turned his head toward her.

And smiled.

Not smugly, without a hint of arrogance or ridicule. Warmly. As if he were a grandfather or found her charming.

As if she were a wild dog.

Yara’s entire body stiffened. Her eyes widened, her brows lifting in realization that he had caught her staring, then she immediately snapped her gaze away toward the opposite wall so quickly it almost hurt her neck.

Damn it. Observation Haki.

She had completely forgotten that people capable of using it could sense emotions, intent, awareness — sometimes so accurately it bordered on mind-reading. To someone like Rayleigh, her anxiety probably stood out like fireworks in darkness.

Before she could spiral any further into embarrassment, the clanging near the crate abruptly stopped.

The guard turned around and started walking directly toward their cage, carrying a pair of thick iron restraints in one hand.

Yara frowned automatically.

Why?

Everyone here was already restrained. Pirates, criminals, fish-men — every single prisoner wore chains around their wrists and ankles. Even Rayleigh himself had been shackled despite how obviously pointless that was. Let alone the mermaids and herself.

Then her gaze shifted downward.

And her stomach dropped.

The little blond boy had fallen asleep sometime during the last hour, exhaustion finally overpowering terror. His face remained half-hidden against Yara’s shoulder, small fingers loosely tangled in the fabric of her sleeve.

And unlike everyone else around them, he was completely unrestrained.

No cuffs. No chains. Nothing.

Probably because he was so young the slavers had not considered him dangerous enough to bother. Or maybe they simply hadn’t wanted to waste iron on a starving child during transport.

But if they were bringing shackles now—

They were preparing him for the auction stage.

The overseer approached the bars and reached his filthy hand directly toward the sleeping child, clearly intending to slap restraints onto him before hauling him upstairs like livestock.

Something inside Yara finally burned through.

Not courage exactly. Not heroism either. It felt more like a fuse snapping after enduring too much pressure for too long. The part of her that had always insisted on staying out of sight finally just gave up.

Before she fully understood what she was doing, she was already standing.

The abrupt movement caused the exhausted boy to tip sideways with a sleepy noise once her shoulder disappeared beneath him, but Yara barely noticed. She stepped forward until her thin body completely blocked the guard’s reach, planting herself between him and the child without hesitation. Though it didn’t seem to help much.

“He doesn’t need those,” she said, her voice low and frighteningly steady despite the way her heart hammered against her ribs.

God, if anyone from her old life, or her family could see this, they were probably laughing their asses off. Wasn’t this exactly the kind of scene straight out of some overdramatic action movie?

For a brief heartbeat the guard looked genuinely stunned that a slave had dared speak back to him at all. Then his expression twisted into immediate cruelty. His hand moved toward the whip hanging at his belt.

Yes, forget it… she’s as good as dead.

“What did you just say?” he snarled. “Move aside, you little red-haired bitch.”

Wow. Okay, but that was crossing the line. Rude. Very rude. Shit or not, her hair was beautiful. Their boss probably doesn’t treat them much better either and hits them over the head as well.

That would explain a lot.

Something strange settled inside Yara at that moment. The fear remained. Cold, vicious, clawing beneath her skin, but it no longer controlled her. Maybe being cornered had finally exhausted her ability to panic. Maybe she was simply too angry to stay afraid anymore.

Anyway, one thing became obvious.

She was not going to let them drag that child away without resistance.

Even if it was reckless. Even if it ruined everything. Even if it got her kill–

…No, alright, that last one was definitely too much. Rayleigh absolutely needed to interfere. Preferably soon, please.

But until then, she wasn’t done yet.

Yara slowly straightened to her full height and forced a smirk across her face. It looked unconvincing even to her own eyes, but quard didn't seem bright enough to notice.

“Sorry,” she replied, her tone edged with brittle sarcasm, “but you might want to say that again a little slower. Judging by this place, basic manners aren’t the only thing you morons failed to learn.”

The guard’s arm snapped forward with brutal force, and the whip tore through the air with a venomous hiss. Yara didn’t even register the moment he drew it; there was only the sudden, instinctive awareness of movement and the body reacting a fraction too late to fully process it.

The strike landed exactly where she had been standing an instant earlier.

By sheer instinct alone, she managed to twist aside at the last possible moment. The leather lash carved through the space beside her face and cracked into the stone floor with a sound like a gunshot, missing the boy by mere centimeters as he flinched into a tighter, terrified curl.

For a brief second, Yara just stared. Breathing hard. Processing how close that had been.

The man did not care. Not even slightly. That was impossible to miss now. Whatever illusion she had entertained about “merchandise handling” or maintaining condition for auction value had clearly been irrelevant the moment she opened her mouth.

The guard stood there, glaring at her with open, almost delighted aggression, as though her resistance had finally given him permission to stop pretending this was anything other than violence.

For a time, the cage fell into a brittle silence broken only by the faint metallic jingle of chains shifting as prisoners instinctively tensed.

Yara pushed her damp hair out of her face and exhaled once through her nose.

“Well,” she said flatly, tilting her head just enough to meet his gaze, “you’ve got a truly impressive face. Shame it looks like it got beaten in a contest and lost.”

It wasn’t strategic It was just the first insult her brain produced to destabilize him. And, annoyingly enough, it was also accurate. Seriously, with that appearance, he had no business commenting on anyone else’s looks.

The guard’s expression twitched as if he had read her thoughts.

That was all the warning she got.

She moved immediately.

The moment his attention sharpened into rage, Yara lunged backward toward the boy, hooking her arms under his and hauling him up despite the protest of his half-asleep body. He was still disoriented, head lolling slightly as consciousness struggled to catch up with reality. His eyes widened in slow, frightened recognition as noise and motion finally dragged him fully awake.

“Sorry,” she muttered under her breath, more to herself than him, as she adjusted her grip. “This is going to suck.”

The guard roared and unleashed a flurry of whip strikes.

The leather lash became a blurred, serpentine streak cutting through the air, each movement calculated to force her into corners, to limit space, to break rhythm. Yara reacted on instinct alone, her body moving before thought fully formed, weaving between arcs of pain with a desperate, uneven precision.

Her small stature helped, there was less of her to hit, fewer predictable angles, less mass to track. But the shackles changed everything. Every step sent shockwaves through her wrists and ankles, iron biting into skin, chains dragging and clanking with every movement. Each dodge cost more energy than it should have, each breath felt like it was being scraped out of her lungs.

She was still holding the boy. That was the worst part.

His weight shifted constantly as she moved, forcing her balance to adjust mid-motion, turning simple evasion into a constant calculation of collision and collapse. Her muscles were already burning, her vision sharpening into that narrow, exhausted focus that came right before everything either broke or succeeded.

Then the guard stepped forward again. Too close. Blocking everything.

“Got you, you little rat,” he spat. “Nowhere left to run.”

The next swing came too fast to fully read.

There was no angle left. No space to slip through. The cage was a dead end.

So Yara made a decision that had absolutely no right to work.

With a sharp inhale, she threw the boy upward. Not gently, not safely, just enough force to clear the guard’s reach.

At the same instant, she dropped her body low and shot forward beneath the arc of his stance, slipping through the narrow gap between his legs as the whip cut uselessly through empty air above her.

It worked.

Barely.

She slid across the floor on her knees, skin burning where stone scraped against flesh, but managed to twist at the last second and catch the boy as he fell. He landed hard against her chest, stunned into silence for a fraction of a second, wide-eyed.

Around them, the entire cage had gone quiet.

Even Rayleigh was watching, faintly amused, as though evaluating something mildly entertaining rather than a potential execution.

It triggered a sense of deja vu in her. Hadn’t he done the same at Ace’s execution, or Roger’s? Anyway.

Yara ignored it all. Completely. Her lungs dragged in air like broken machinery as she forced herself upright, arms tightening around the child to keep him steady. Her heart was hammering so hard it felt like it might rupture her ribs, but her voice, somehow, came out steady enough to pass for functional.

Perhaps, those sleeping pills had a really strong sedative effect. So strong that in this second life her feelings were just kind of muted.

Well. That wasn't bad at all.

“Right,” she rasped, forcing a uneven smile that didn’t quite hide how close she was to collapsing. “Quick question.”

The boy blinked at her, still dazed.

“What’s your name?”

“L-Luka…” he managed, voice trembling. Then, as if remembering something very important in the middle of all this chaos, he lifted his tiny hands. One hand showed all five fingers. The other, just one. “And I’m six,” he added, on the verge of tears again.

Yara stared at him for while.

Then, despite the chains, the blood, the whip still snapping behind them—something almost close to disbelief softened the edge of her expression.

“…Yeah,” she muttered under her breath. “That tracks.”

She was clearly overestimating her own strength. Everything began to blur. As if the world had suddenly been submerged beneath thick, viscous water that filled her ears and swallowed sound whole. The air turned strange and distant, pressure building behind her eyes while the edges of reality softened and dissolved.

Yara tried to blink, but it came out stiff and uncomfortably hard to do.

Her thoughts felt sluggish, delayed, as though they were being dragged through something oppressive. The situation was still there, she knew it was still there, but it no longer arrived properly in her senses. Even the guard’s furious movements, his twisted face, the violent intent behind his posture, all of it became muted, almost dreamlike. His mouth was moving, clearly shouting something, but the words never reached her.

Strangely enough, that was good.

Then the atmosphere inside the cage changed.

Not physically. Not in any way she could immediately explain. And yet the effect was undeniable.

The space itself seemed to compress.

The air grew dense, weighty, as if it had transformed into molten metal or pressurized gold. Something vast and invisible pressed down on the entire chamber at once, not targeting flesh or bone, but existence itself. A wave rolled through the underground room.

It didn’t strike like force. intangible, but violently real in its impact.

It dominated.

A presence, immense and suffocating, expanded through every corner of the cell, forcing the oxygen from her lungs without ever touching her directly. The hairs on her arms and neck lifted sharply, reacting to something primal and ancient in the brain that had no language for what it was experiencing.

Royalty.

No. Far worse than that.

Conqueror’s Haki.

Around her, the effect became visible in its aftermath. Prisoners collapsed one after another, bodies hitting the stone floor with dull, uncontrolled heaviness. Some fell mid-motion, others simply slumped where they sat, consciousness ripped away in an instant. Even hardened criminals, people who had clearly survived violence, imprisonment, and worse could not resist it.

The guard with the scar froze completely, whip still raised in the air.

His eyes rolled back. And then he dropped like a lifeless sack of meat right in front of her.

It was ridiculous enough to be funny.

If Yara could, she really would have laughed. But her grip on reality loosened further, the edges of her vision darkening as her body finally surrendered to the overwhelming pressure flooding the room.

The last coherent thought she managed to hold onto was not fear. She was hungry. And then she fell into darkness.

When Yara finally opened her eyes again, the first thing that assaulted her senses was the suffocating stench of cigarette smoke, stale alcohol, and old wood soaked through with decades of spilled liquor. The second was the violent, splitting ache at the back of her skull, as though someone inside her head was methodically beating against bone with a hammer. Honestly, considering recent events, that probably was not far from reality.

She was lying on a stiff leather couch worn smooth with age and abuse.

The underground slave chamber was gone. The cages, the chains, the stink of fear and rusted iron had vanished completely. In their place lingered dim yellow light, low murmuring voices somewhere farther inside the establishment, and the heavy warmth of an enclosed room that had seen too many sleepless nights and too many drunk conversations.

More importantly, she was free.

The shackles had been removed from her wrists and neck, leaving behind angry red marks and bruised skin that still throbbed unpleasantly whenever she moved. The absence of iron should have felt relieving. Instead, it only filled her with suspicion.

Because Rayleigh was still here.

And so was Luka.

“I’m leaving,” Yara announced immediately, her voice rough from exhaustion as she pushed herself upright far too quickly for someone who had only just regained consciousness.

She was already preparing to stand and walk out without direction, destination, or plan. Anywhere would be preferable to remaining near a pirate with enough importance to ruin her life simply by existing nearby.

Unfortunately, the moment she shifted, Luka let out another miserable little sob.

At this point she was becoming disturbingly accustomed to the sound.

The child sat cross-legged on the floor beside the couch, rubbing tears and mucus across dirty cheeks with complete disregard for hygiene while clutching the hem of her shirt with tiny desperate hands. His face looked swollen from crying, pale beneath the grime, and his lower lip trembled so violently it almost looked painful.

“Don’t go!” he blurted out between hiccuping breaths. “I wanna stay with you! Please, I wanna go with you!”

Yara closed her eyes briefly and forced herself not to collapse backward onto the couch again. Apparently leaving would need to wait another five minutes. Or ten. Or until the child stopped treating her like the last surviving adult in the apocalypse.

Suppressing a wave of nausea, she leaned down and carefully tried prying his fingers from her shirt.

“Listen to me,” she muttered quietly through clenched teeth, keeping her voice low enough that only Luka could hear. “You cannot come with me. Seriously. You would not survive very long around me, and honestly, neither would I. But you can stay with him, alright?” She tilted her head slightly toward Rayleigh without looking directly at him. “He’s strong. Very strong. You’ll be safer here.”

“You’ll both be staying with us.”

The voice came from deeper inside the room, smooth and calm. Rayleigh sat nearby with one leg casually crossed over the other while polishing his glasses against the edge of his cloak, completely absorbed in reading a newspaper as though none of this had anything to do with him.

Yara turned her head toward him very slowly.

If sheer homicidal resentment were physically lethal, the former first mate of the Pirate King would have dropped dead on the spot with a perfectly clean hole through his skull.

“Go to hell, old man,” she said flatly, not even attempting politeness. “Actually, no. Go there twice.”

Because what the hell was wrong with him?

This powerful monster of a man had spent the whole damn thing lounging around in the corner of a slave cage, drinking alcohol and watching events unfold with the relaxed interest of someone attending street theatre. He had calmly observed while she nearly got beaten bloody trying to protect a child, and now, after everything was over, he suddenly wanted to act like some responsible guardian figure?

Is he stupid?

Yara glanced around the room again, trying to figure out where exactly they had been taken. It certainly did not resemble any respectable shelter for rescued children. Wooden tables crowded the room beneath dim amber lights, cigarette smoke lingered beneath the ceiling in hazy layers, and the walls themselves seemed permanently infused with cheap tobacco and liquor fumes.

It was a bar.

A very ordinary, slightly shabby drinking establishment filled with the atmosphere of exhausted sailors and bad financial decisions.

What kind of fucking adult rescued traumatized children from slavery and immediately brought them to a tavern?

Her thoughts stalled abruptly when her gaze drifted toward the bar counter itself.

A woman stood there, leaning one elbow lazily against the polished wood while a long cigarette smoldered elegantly between slender fingers. Smoke curled upward around her face in pale ribbons. She had short blue-black hair framing sharp, refined features, and eyes so perceptive and quietly amused that they almost felt predatory.

But it was her mouth that completely derailed Yara’s train of thought.

Those lips were unfair. Objectively unfair. The kind of lips Yara would have admired in her previous life, in this one, and probably in any unfortunate future reincarnation the universe might still force upon her. The woman was devastatingly beautiful in an effortless, dangerous way, like a dark harbor goddess.

Noticing the openly stunned stare fixed on her, the bartender gave a soft, knowing smile and exhaled another slow stream of smoke toward the ceiling.

It was mesmerizing.

Of course, the moment did not last.

Pain exploded through Yara’s skull so violently that she nearly doubled over. Her vision blurred with bursts of red and white, sharp pressure hammering behind her temples hard enough to make her stomach twist. She squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed her head with both hands, trying unsuccessfully to stop the room from spinning.

Luka panicked.

Seeing his newly adopted protector suddenly pale and clutch her skull like a dying victorian orphan apparently triggered another emotional trauma. He practically launched himself at her knees, smearing tears across her pants while looking moments away from total hysteria.

“You’re okay, right?” he cried. “You’re dying?!”

Yara pressed her lips into a thin line.

Interesting. Whenever he cried, he looked completely dramatic. Whenever he accused her of dying, he somehow sounded weirdly calm about it. Children truly were terrifying little creatures.

With visible effort, she lifted one hand and gently patted his messy blond hair a few times. “You’re hallucinating,” she informed him with complete confidence. “You probably hit your head while sleeping. Calm down.”

“But you really should stay here. Otherwise, you’re going to run into serious trouble,” Rayleigh said, his tone turning calmer, more persuasive, though that infuriatingly easy smile never left his face. “The World Government goes absolutely feral whenever ‘property’ slips through the hands of slave traders. For them it’s a matter of control. Marines, brokers, bounty hunters—it doesn’t matter who they send. Once someone escapes the auction houses, they keep digging until they find them, because—”

He never got to finish. Yara swiftly slapped both hands over Luka’s ears, pressing them shut so tightly the boy squeaked in surprise. Then she leaned forward across the table and hissed at Rayleigh like an alley cat seconds away from tearing somebody’s throat open.

“What is wrong with you?” she snapped. “Don’t say shit like that in front of a kid.”

For the first time since waking up, genuine anger flashed nakedly across her face instead of the usual guarded sarcasm and hostility. It burned hot.

Shakky, still lounging against the bar with effortless elegance, let out a low, melodic laugh. Smoke curled lazily from the cigarette between her fingers as she rested her cheek against her palm, clearly entertained. “Well,” she drawled, eyes glinting with amusement, “she got you there, Ray. Telling horror stories to a child who just escaped a slave auction is a pretty terrible idea.”

Rayleigh sighed through his nose and rubbed a hand through his silver hair, looking vaguely sheepish in the way only old men with absolutely no shame could manage. Judging by the expression on his face, he was very used to women scolding him. Being chewed out by a furious teenage girl, however, seemed to genuinely amuse him.

Meanwhile Luka sat frozen between them, still blotchy from crying, blinking back and forth from Shakky to Rayleigh before finally tilting his head up toward Yara.

She was still covering his ears.

Suddenly the boy smiled with a real small smile.

Yara noticed and frowned harder instead. Her brows knitted together as she stared at him with deep suspicion.

Yeah, no. The kid definitely hit his head too hard earlier.

What was that expression supposed to mean?

After making absolutely certain Rayleigh wasn’t about to continue talking, she slowly removed her hands from Luka’s ears and leaned back again, slipping with visible relief into her usual detached, irritable demeanor.

“You don’t have to stay with us,” Rayleigh continued carefully after noticing the dangerous look that had appeared in her eyes the moment he mentioned staying. He even lifted both hands in surrender. “We could simply take him” he nodded toward Luka “somewhere safe. And we could personally bring you to a very secure island.”

Yara narrowed her eyes. That sounded far too easy and whenever things sounded easy in this world, somebody usually ended up dead, enslaved, or mysteriously exploding by the end of the week. “What island?” she asked flatly.

“Ever heard of Amazon Lily?” Rayleigh replied casually.

Her shoulders sagged as though somebody had physically removed the bones from them.

Right. Amazon Lily.

The island of women.

An isolated fortress hidden beyond the reach of most of the world, ruled by warriors strong enough to terrify entire fleets. A place locked away from outsiders so completely it practically existed outside civilization itself.

Objectively speaking, it was a solid plan. Probably even a good one and that was exactly the problem.

Beware anyone who tries to cut you off from information.

Yara didn’t even remember where she’d first heard that line anymore, but it slammed into her head. Lock herself away on an isolated island with no newspapers, no news routes, no understanding of what was happening in the outside world? Cut herself off from the flow of events completely and trust strangers to decide what she was allowed to know?

Absolutely fucking not.

Yara shook her head at once, firm and uncompromising. She didn’t trust to him. Not enough. “If you keep saying ridiculous crap like that,” she said “this conversation is going nowhere.”

Rayleigh blinked, genuinely confused. “But there’s nothing wrong with Amazon Lily,” he muttered, scratching the side of his head as though she were an unreasonable child refusing vegetables. “It’s peaceful, the weather’s nice, men aren’t even allowed there—”

He truly did not understand why she reacted like he’d suggested burying her alive. Shakky, however, understood.

She let out another soft laugh before stepping behind Rayleigh and smacking him across the shoulder hard enough to make him nearly choke. “Amazon Lily is probably not the best choice for a girl like her, Ray,” she said smoothly, amusement curling through every syllable. “She’d feel a little too… confined there.”

Then she looked directly at Yara.

Their eyes met across the dim bar and Shakky winked. Not even teasingly through. More like the two of them had silently arrived at the same conclusion several minutes ago and were now watching Rayleigh struggle to catch up.

Yara almost snorted. The corner of her mouth twitched upward ever so slightly, and for the first time since waking up in the bar, she returned Shakky’s smile. “…You know,” she muttered, sounding deeply inconvenienced by her own willingness to compromise, “I’m not actually against staying here.”

Luka immediately brightened beside her. Rayleigh’s expression relaxed comically fast. Then Yara raised a finger before either of them could say a word. “But,” she continued flatly, “how about we don’t all live together?”

That brought the room to a halt again.

Yara knew he fully intended to shelter them temporarily before eventually placing them somewhere else. But considering the current situation… there was no harm in exploiting the arrangement a little.

Besides, those two had excellent connections in the underworld, while she had neither a place to stay nor anything close to what could be called a home.

Well..in the end, kindness was kindness, and favors were favors. They existed to be used, didn’t they? She didn’t think anything bad would happen if she was a bit bold.

Rayleigh blinked once behind his glasses. “Hm?”

“I feel like I’m being reasonable here,” Yara went on, leaning back against the couch. “You’re an infamous former pirate with enough enemies to start a small war, your drinking habits are horrifying, and somehow you still manage to attract trouble like a cursed lighthouse.” She pointed toward herself. “I, meanwhile, would very much like to survive past sixteen.”

Shakky let out an openly delighted laugh at that, smoke nearly escaping through her nose.

Rayleigh placed a hand dramatically over his chest, looking personally wounded. “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“No.” If she were being truthful, the fact that he sounded offended at all was insulting. This man voluntarily sold himself into slavery for gambling money. Repeatedly. She felt like her concerns were more than justified. “And,” she added, narrowing her eyes, “I know how these things go. First it’s ‘stay here for a while,’ then suddenly I’m emotionally attached, dragged into somebody’s life choices, and three months later there’s a Marine siege outside the building.”

Luka looked up at her with complete confusion.

Elderly man, unfortunately, looked like he was trying not to laugh. “That specific?” he asked.

Yara pointed at him again. “The fact that you asked that in exactly that tone tells me I’m right.”

She had a strong suspicion Shakky and Rayleigh used to deal with the same nonsense from Roger.

Shakky outright snickered this time, covering her mouth with the back of her hand while Rayleigh sighed the long-suffering sigh of a man who had absolutely caused Marine sieges before. So yeah, she was correct.

“I’m just saying,” Yara continued, now fully committed to the argument, “separate housing sounds healthy. Boundaries are important. Distance is important. Me not becoming collateral damage in whatever madness follows you around is extremely important.” Then she paused, glanced toward Luka, and reluctantly added, “…The kid can visit, though.”

Luka’s entire face lit up, it was almost blinding.

She looked away.

That won’t cause any problems… right?

Chapter Text

Settling into her new life went suspiciously well.

Frankly, far too well for Yara’s liking.

Shakky had arranged an entire basement apartment for her only a few streets away from the bar, tucked deep within the shadier parts of the archipelago where nobody asked unnecessary questions and people minded their own damn business out of pure survival instinct. Technically, Yara would’ve preferred somewhere farther from Grove Thirteen and its permanent atmosphere of crime, smuggling, and casual human suffering. In practice, though, the “respectable” districts of Sabaody were infinitely worse. Those polished tourist groves crawled with Marines, government agents, rich idiots, and occasionally Celestial Dragons looking for entertainment. One unlucky encounter there could ruin a life faster than any pirate ever could.

Down here, nobody cared.

And more crucially, nobody looked too closely.

Shakky, abusing her influence as an information broker with the terrifying ease erased whatever traces of Yara still existed in local records. Papers vanished. Questions disappeared. The slave auction incident dissolved into rumor and background noise before the Marines could bother connecting details together.

In truth, misuse of power was an incredible thing when it benefited you for once.

The real issue was that the two of them were being unexpectedly generous about the whole arrangement.

Dangerously generous.

Somehow Yara had managed to genuinely charm the former empress of Amazon Lily, god knew how, and Rayleigh, for reasons incomprehensible to mortal minds, seemed equally fond of her constant presence. As if that wasn’t enough, Luka had attached himself to her with the intensity of a barnacle welded onto a ship hull.

The kid practically lived in her basement now.

Not that Yara minded.

Well. Not much. The more time she spent around him, however, the stranger he became.

Luka was clever in ways children his age absolutely should not be. Not “gifted.” Not “bright.” Something much odder than that. Day after day, tiny details kept piling up until Yara became increasingly certain that before the slave traders got their hands on him, the boy had been raised somewhere deeply abnormal.

Very deeply abnormal.

“Luka, are you seriously planning to spend the entire evening rotting down here with me?” Yara asked one afternoon without looking up from the collection of antiseptic bottles spread across the table. “Shakky adores you. You could stay upstairs at the bar where it’s warm.”

Luka simply shook his head.

He sat perched atop an overturned crate, staring at her with that eerie, unblinking focus of his.

Yara finally glanced over, tilting her head slightly in silent confusion.

The boy immediately mirrored the movement.

She frowned and tilted her head the opposite direction.

Luka copied that too without hesitation.

“…Stop doing that,” she said flatly.

Obediently, he straightened up again.

The staring, unfortunately, continued.

Huge blue eyes. Completely motionless expression and tiny hands folded in his lap like a doll waiting for instructions.

A little unsettling, honestly. But she had to admit, she was beginning to see why he’d been the first one put up for auction. Or, in fairness, they intended to, but they didn’t get the chance.

Yara sighed internally.

Anyway. The poor kid obviously had socialization issues.

Another conversation a few days later only made things worse.

They had been sorting through old medical textbooks together when Yara casually asked, “Do you remember the island you lived on before all this?”

Luka promptly gave a nod.

That bothered her. Yara, despite possessing memories from an entirely different life, still had no idea what her original island in this world had even been called. Meanwhile this brat apparently remembered everything.

“And what was it called?”

The boy stiffened at once. “My teachers said I shouldn’t tell people.”

Yara lowered the bandages she’d been organizing.

“Why?”

A tiny shrug. “They just taught me that.”

He said it casually. Though, just like with children, teaching them not to reveal information to strangers was seen as completely normal. At least, more or less.

Yara vaguely remembered being taught something similar herself as a child.

Then, after a short pause, Luka lowly muttered, “But I don’t care anymore. It was Guanhao Island.”

The name meant nothing to her.

It somewhat reminiscent of something Chinese from her old world, but Grand Line geography was already insane enough without trying to memorize every hidden island scattered across the ocean. Judging by the sudden gloom that crossed Luka’s face — a rare expression for him. Yara decided not to push further.

Even so, the uneasy felling stuck around.

“What did you even do there all day?” she asked another time. “You know. Before you got kidnapped. Hobbies? Games? Anything normal?”

Luka thoughtfully began counting on his fingers. “I like you, Rayleigh, Shakky and the juice they give me upstairs.”

Yara rubbed her temples. “That’s not what I asked.”

He blinked.

“I mean activities,” she clarified patiently. “Things you enjoy doing.”

“…I don’t understand.”

“What did you spend your days doing before you met me?”

“Oh.” Luka nodded. “I memorized things. Trained. Worked.”

Yara paused.

Worked?

He was six when human traffickers took him.

If he had been working, then for whom, when no one even tried to look for him? Was it one of his parents, or did ‘work’ simply mean theft in companies, like she had seen before?

“...So, who’s the lucky one who’s earned your help?”

Immediately, Luka shook his head. “That’s a secret.”

Yara stared at him for several long seconds before flicking him playfully in the forehead. “You’re such a weirdo.”

“That’s not true,” he replied with firm conviction, squeezing his eyes closed

Hm…sometimes he is kind of sweet.

“Luka, have you ever had friends?”

His eyes shifted slowly from side to side.

Then, as usual, he began counting under his breath, lifting a single finger as though preparing to deliver the same list he had offered before.

Yara let out a resigned  smile and caught his wrist before the next word could come, lowering his raised finger back down.

“Alright, alright,” she interrupted. “You don’t have to continue. I get it.”

Luka blinked a few times, staring at where she was holding his hand, then looked up at her face. After a moment, his expression changed, and when he noticed the faint tiredness in her eyes, he smiled.

“Shakky… said we are friends.”

Yara’s brows rose a fraction, then she gave an absent hum.

That’s new. “Shakky says a lot of things.”

She had always figured the former pirate empress had a soft spot for children with tragic backgrounds. But who could’ve guessed they’d end up included in that category?

Luka tilted his head again, thinking. “But then she called us partners in crime,” he added matter-of-factly. “I don’t really like that term.”

The smile on Yara’s face faded a little.

“Partners in crime,” she repeated under her breath, as if testing the weight of the phrase.

That was… an interesting way to describe what was essentially sheltering a runaway child and committing various small-scale acts of organized chaos.

Maybe she should go have a serious conversation with Shakky about terminology.

…Or maybe not.

She exhaled slowly, letting it go.

Definitely not.

“I like your blue eye, Yara,” Luca suddenly said, not once looking away from her face.

Yara froze for a moment and glanced at the boy with mild surprise. In all the time they had spent together, he had never said anything like that. In fact, the list of things Luca genuinely liked in this world was disturbingly short and compliments indeed didn’t belong on it.

“Why are you saying that all of a sudden?” she asked, brushing her overgrown bangs away from her forehead with a familiar motion, revealing that very eye.

Luca shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. He lowered his gaze to his worn-out boots and muffed, almost reluctantly. “Well… it looks like mine.”

Yara let out a short laugh despite herself and returned to what she had been doing. “You’re quite confident in yourself if you think that counts as a compliment for me.”

“It’s not because of that,” he protested.

“Oh, really?” Yara drawled, glancing at him from the side.

His shoulders sagged slightly. “It… makes us look like family.”

Yara hesitated. What’s he talking about? She slowly turned her head and studied him properly this time. They met each other’s eyes. And indeed, they were rather alike, though the similarities ended there.

Family ties and kinship.

Yeah, she hadn’t thought of it in those terms at all. Her memory of her own siblings was hazy at best, but even so, she could say with certainty that none of them had ever looked like her. Neither in appearance nor in temperament.

Luca’s mood collapsed. The lightness in his face drained away in an instant, and he stared down at the floor. Yara realized her bluntness had landed harder than intended.

With a quiet sigh, she stepped forward and carefully tapped his chin with the tip of her finger, tilting his face up so he had no choice but to look at her. Luca’s blue eyes widened in surprise, a flicker of unease flashing through them.

“Family members don’t have to look alike,” she said evenly, withdrawing her hand. She didn’t necessarily believe that made them a family, or anything close to it. But people weren’t bound only by blood. Sometimes family was simply whoever ended up standing beside you long enough.

Whitebeard’s pirates, Roger’s crew, and the Straw Hats—they were, in a sense, all families of their own. Yara didn’t believe Luka should restrict himself to that kind of bond, or latch onto her.

She was too far from anything of the sort.

So if he wanted to hold on to something like that, then… she didn’t know what to say.

Perhaps Rayleigh and Shakky could help him with it.

Luca went still, caught unprepared. For a few seconds he seemed to process her words, then his brows knit together in frustration.

“That’s not true,” he grumbled. “Everyone says otherwise. Don’t you read those books about lineage and blood ties?”

Yara only shrugged and turned back toward her desk.

“Books leave out a lot of things,” she replied. “And they’re all different anyway. If you look long enough, you can always find another answer.”

That clearly didn’t convince him in the slightest. Luca turned away without warning and walked off without another word.

Yara watched him go for a moment longer than necessary. What was that even about?

Over time, Yara discovered the most disturbing thing about Luka wasn’t his strange upbringing.

It was his memory.

At first it appeared in harmless ways. He somehow remembered exactly which bitter herbal mixtures Yara preferred after only seeing her drink them once. He memorized the tea Shakky brewed for herself without anyone ever explaining it aloud. Tiny habits, facial expressions, unconscious gestures. He absorbed all of it effortlessly.

Then the pattern escalated.

If Luka skimmed through one of Yara’s medical books even briefly, the information stayed lodged in his brain permanently. He could suddenly recite medicine dosages in the middle of unrelated conversations or quote entire passages from navigation manuals he’d only overheard once in passing.

And reading? That part was alarming.

For a child his age, Luka read with impossible fluency. No stumbling. No childish pauses while sounding out unfamiliar words. He devoured text faster than some grown adults Yara had met during medical school.

And she knew what she was talking about, her colleagues in the reading trade were no amateurs either. That’s why Luka’s level of knowledge was so disturbing, even if he’d been properly educated.

Not that it mattered. What kind of education are we talking about? He was six, for fuck’s sake.

It wasn’t normal. Not even close and as usual, she appeared to be the only one who noticed.

Chapter Text

Over the course of several months, everything finally settled into something resembling a routine. The damp, empty basement she had once been shoved into was almost unrecognizable now. Yara had rebuilt the place entirely around herself. It remained gloomy, cluttered, and permanently steeped in moisture, but she genuinely could not bring herself to care. For the first time since arriving in this world, she had a space that belonged solely to her.

Anyone else walking into the basement would probably assume a serial killer lived there. But it suited just fine.

At some point, she herself had changed too.

Yara finally cut her hair decently, hacking away the overgrown lengths and the heavy bangs she had hidden behind for years. She no longer felt the same unceasing animal fear at the idea of someone noticing her appearance too closely. The hair remained somewhat messy and uneven, but now it sat around her jawline instead of falling halfway down her back, and she found the reduced weight liberating.

Eventually, she came to the conclusion that she had gone too long without anything she could call her own.

And the desire for something greater began to take root within her. One that would belong only to her.

The reasoning behind it was hard to miss. Her paranoia still demanded the same thing it always had.

Avoid unnecessary attention. Avoid dependency. Avoid vulnerability.

At the same time, she desperately missed medicine. Not merely reading about it or studying theory, but actually practicing it. She loved it in a way few other things in any incarnation had ever managed to hold her attention. More importantly, she wanted money. The kind that did not come from the mercy of an aging pirate and his exceptionally skilled wife.

And the easiest route toward that future led straight into the underworld.

It hadn’t taken her long to figure it out. Daily exposure to Shakky’s business dealings, combined with the nature of Grove Thirteen itself, made the answer plain enough. The lawless districts of Sabaody were a goldmine for anyone willing to operate outside official systems.

Bounty hunters, smugglers, traffickers, escaped convicts, pirates — every one of them got stabbed, shot, poisoned, beaten half to death, or infected with something horrifying sooner or later. Yet none of them could simply stroll into a government hospital under Marine supervision without risking arrest or execution.

Especially not now.

Recently, the Archipelago had become infested with Marines. Patrols appeared more frequently each week, tensions kept rising, and rumors spread through the bars about increasingly violent crackdowns. In an environment like that, a discreet underground doctor with competent hands and enough common sense to keep her mouth shut became invaluable frighteningly fast.

Yara did not need to be a genius to realize how profitable such work could become.

The problem was Rayleigh. More specifically, Rayleigh absolutely refused to help her establish any part of it.

Hypocritical old bastard.

“It’ll be fine,” Yara said evenly, folding her arms across her chest. “I can handle work like this perfectly well. It’s not as though I’m planning to sail into the New World.”

Rayleigh, perched lazily on the corner of the heavy wooden table, looked profoundly unimpressed. He tapped two idle fingers against the surface without even bothering to glance properly in her direction. “And have I not already said,” he replied with tired patience, “that I have no interest in dealing with what comes afterward when angry clients start showing up at your door carrying sabers?”

Yara rolled her eyes so hard it bordered on theatrical. A long, restrained sigh followed immediately after. She understood perfectly well how selfish her persistence probably looked from the outside. The problem was that she genuinely did not care.

Anyone in her position would react the same way after months of being spoken to with the same maddening mixture of concern and condescension. Not to mention, they treated her like a brat, despite the fact she was mentally older.

“I’m not asking you to take responsibility for anything,” she shot back, shaking her head. “You don’t have to do a damn thing. Forget I even brought it up.”

Shakky, standing near the window with a cigarette balanced between her fingers, merely smiled to herself.

She had remained silent since the argument began, which Yara recognized as deliberate neutrality. But the absence of support spoke loudly enough on its own. Shakky might not openly side with Rayleigh, yet she clearly agreed with him more than she disagreed.

Annoying. Both of them were annoying.

“I’m not planning to perform complicated surgeries from the start,” Yara continued, trying to drag the conversation back. “I’m not going to stitch shredded arteries together on a dirty floor with kitchen utensils.”

That, at least, seemed to catch Shakky’s interest.

“Oh?” she murmured smoothly, bit of the smile slipped from her face. “Then what exactly are all these preparations for, dear? People on Grand Line rarely arrive with convenient little scratches.”

Oh, please. If Shakky weren’t… well, Shakky, Yara would have laughed outright. She was already aware of what came with dealing with pirates, especially on Sabaody of all places. “At first?” Yara replied. “I’ll reset broken bones for drunken idiots who don’t know how to keep their distance during bar fights. Treat burns. Remove shallow bullets. Clean and bandage torn flesh. Basic things. I’m not stupid enough to attempt procedures my hands, or the equipment down here, can’t realistically handle.”

Rayleigh finally lifted his gaze toward her through the thin round lenses of his glasses.

The expression underneath made it immediately obvious that her explanation had done absolutely nothing to reassure him. “You’re asking for far too much,” he said flatly. “Opening an operation like that in Grove Thirteen isn’t harmless improvisation. If you make a mistake, the consequences won’t land on you alone. People here don’t separate failure from association. And when your stubborn little head inevitably ends up in trouble, it’ll still be this bar cleaning up the aftermath.”

Yara frowned immediately. Since when had these two appointed themselves her guardians? She tended to avoid them more often than not, so this kind of protectiveness toward her was out of place. Or was it that he cared more about their well-being?

She glanced at Shakky, then again at Rayleigh.

Ah...that kinda made sense. It would have brought problems for both him and the woman he loved.

From his perspective, she must have seemed like a damn idiot who didn’t know what she was doing.

Hm, to his credit, he wasn’t that far off the mark.

“I can at least try,” she said, holding Rayleigh’s gaze directly. “Just give me some time. If it fails, then fine. I’ll drop it and this whole conversation disappears forever.”

Of course, it was a shameless, barefaced lie. Yara would sooner learn to swim with a Devil Fruit in her stomach or eat a second one out of spite than permanently abandon medicine. But he did not need to know that.

Rayleigh did not respond for a while. He stared at her for several long seconds.

Yara didn’t react at all. She had survived far worse than old men with judging eyes. Luka, for instance, could just stare someone down for ages, not even blinking.

Behind Rayleigh, Shakky watched the exchange with open, amused curiosity, as if she were enjoying a performance she had already predicted the ending to.

At last, Rayleigh exhaled a slow, resigned breath. Seems like he’s finally given up and had enough.

Could it be that she—

“That’s still a no.”

Well, shit.

So the following days gradually turned into a strange, ritualistic pattern of Yara attempting. Deliberately, to annoy Rayleigh into submission.

If persistence alone could bend him, she would have succeeded within forty-eight hours.

Unfortunately, she had severely underestimated him.

Rayleigh possessed a kind of patience that felt less human and shaped by decades spent sailing with the King of Pirates himself. Compared to that, Yara’s stubbornness was just noise.

“Let me at least try on minor smugglers—”

“No.”

“I’ll do it anyway, and I don’t need your permission.”

“I’ll lock you in the basement if you try.”

“And I’ll make you my first patient and cut you in half.”

“…What?”

“What.”

“Shakky said there were a lot of injured people after a major fight in Zone Sixteen yesterday.”

“I’m happy for them. Your answer is still no.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“My instruments are gathering dust. You’re wasting rare talent. Isn’t the old generation supposed to appreciate promising youth?”

“Stainless steel scalpels don’t rust. I checked. And I do appreciate promising youth. That’s exactly why my answer is still no.”

“If I leave this basement, I promise I won’t cause trouble.”

“That’s what people say right before causing trouble.”

“I’m not people.”

“That’s what people also say.”

“I can sign a waiver stating I don’t hold anyone responsible for my death. You only need to do one thing.”

“Bounty hunters can’t read. Your document won’t help them.”

“Oh come on, you’re just a spiteful old man with too much free time in retirement.”

“Correct. And while I have too much free time, I’ll keep saying no.”

“Then you should sleep more soundly.”

“Yes. I suggest you do the same.”

Completely useless, and equally humiliating. The score was all his.

Yara stared at the ceiling afterward, utterly convinced he was doing it on purpose at this point.

Yes, he probably was.

No sane person had that much patience.

A quiet creak sounded somewhere behind her, followed by the familiar rhythm of light footsteps descending the staircase. Yara did not even bother lifting her head from the floor. The hesitant little cadence was recognizable enough that there was no point checking.

Only one person walked like that.

Luka stepped carefully into the basement, crossed the room, and stopped directly above her. His pale hair spilled forward, completely blocking her view of the ceiling.

“You really shouldn’t lie on the floor, Yara,” he informed her with all the grave seriousness of an elderly doctor lecturing a reckless patient. His small arms folded neatly across his chest. “The stone is cold. You’ll get sick.”

“Oh no,” she said with mock solemnity, covering her eyes with the back of one hand.

“Then why aren’t you in the little room?” he continued. “Shakky made it specifically for you. There’s a bed.”

Yara grimaced. Of course she remembered the existence of her perfectly legitimate sleeping space behind the separate door. The problem was that the room felt too enclosed most of the time—small, warm, dimly lit, with low ceilings and stale air that made the back of her throat tighten unpleasantly.

Spending too long in there triggered the kind of creeping claustrophobia she preferred not to acknowledge aloud.

“I prefer lying here more,” she grumbled, lowering her arm. “The floor’s cold. Helps me think.”

Only then did she properly focus on the object Luka held in both hands.

It was a large wooden chest reinforced with dark iron bands, old enough that the metal had dulled almost black with age. Something about it tugged at her memory immediately. The shape, the craftsmanship, even the heavy corners looked strangely familiar, though she could not place where she had seen it before.

“What’s that?” she asked, pushing herself upright onto her elbows.

“I took it from the things Rayleigh brought back from the auction house while he was helping people,” Luka replied calmly, as though this explained absolutely everything.

There’s pause.

Rayleigh did occasionally indulge in inconvenient bursts of hidden morality after his little “captivity incidents.” Whenever possible, he secretly helped escaped civilians and fish-men leave Sabaody before traffickers could recapture them. That part sounded believable enough.

But stealing random treasure chests from auction houses? That did not sound like him. “Luka…” Yara narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Can I see it?”

The boy nodded immediately and held it out toward her. “I wasn’t very interested in it.”

“Then why did you take it?”

“It’s a gift.”

Yara nearly laughed.

‘A gift,’ he says. So, in other words, Luka had casually stolen the thing right out from under Rayleigh’s nose while the old pirate was busy saving people. Shakky would be proud. The two of them evidently spent far too much time together, and it was beginning to corrupt the child in increasingly creative ways.

She sat up appropriately, folding her legs beneath herself as she accepted the chest. Remarkably, it weighed less than its appearance suggested. There was no enormous lock attached to it either—only a thick iron latch hammered into place.

Yara hooked her fingers beneath the metal clasp and tugged.

Nothing.

She pressed harder, tried twisting it sideways, then braced the box against her knee and pulled again with more force, but the mechanism refused to budge, as though it had rusted shut decades ago.

“It won’t open,” she muttered irritably, jamming a fingernail beneath the latch. “Feels wholly stuck.”

“I can help,” Luka offered right away, extending both hands toward the chest.

Yara shrugged with complete indifference. Realistically, there was no way he could make the situation difficult and add fuel to the fire. So why not? “Sure. Go ahead.”

Luka accepted the chest carefully.

Then, without warning, he lifted it straight above his head.

Yara blinked.

A split second later, the child exhaled sharply and hurled the entire thing directly into the stone floor with daunting force.

BANG.

The deafening crack of splintering wood and snapping metal exploded through the basement like a gunshot. Yara physically jolted in place, nearly scrambling backward from sheer surprise as her heart slammed down into her stomach.

For a time, she simply stared.

The lock had indeed opened.

Along with approximately half the chest and yes, there was something inside.

What remained of it, however, looked far less like “something” and far more like a failed experiment in culinary.

From beneath the shattered lid seeped a thick, viscous, nauseatingly sweet-smelling sludge that spread across the stone floor with unsettling patience, staining pale wood and dust alike. The air shifted almost immediately, heavy with an unnatural sweetness that clung to the throat and turned the stomach in the same breath.

Yara didn’t fully turn her body at first. She just shifted her eyes from the expanding puddle to the boy standing beside her, then slowly extended a finger and pointed at the mess as if she needed to confirm reality out loud.

“Let this be the first and last time you open parcels like that,” she said flatly. “Understood?”

Luka watched the ruined chest, his expression flickering for the first time that evening into something resembling genuine confusion. He mused something indistinct under his breath, then added. “I’ll try not to do it again.”

“Yeah, next time you’re getting a crowbar,” Yara replied, sounding not remotely convinced.

She sighed, running a hand through her hair before kneeling down. Carefully, she began clearing away splintered wood and twisted metal, avoiding the strange substance as though it might bite back. Then she lifted what remained of the box’s lower half. Everything in her expression simply stopped. Inside lay a crushed, unrecognisable mass. Even mangled beyond recognition, it was impossible to mistake the vivid crimson hue of the flesh, the unnatural gloss, and the distinct spiral patterns etched into its surface like a cruel signature of nature itself.

A Devil Fruit.

More precisely, what was left of one after an unfortunate catastrophic encounter with Luka’s idea of “opening things.”

Yara froze, a piece of wood still suspended in her fingers. The sound in her ears dulled into a distant ringing.

At least a hundred million berries. Minimum.

Oh, come on.

Rayleigh silently watched the two of them, his gaze moving from Luka to Yara and back again. With their unnaturally stiff postures and that forced, controlled calm, it didn’t take him long to understand the obvious conclusion.

They had, once again, gotten themselves tangled in something deeply inconvenient.

“Do I even want to know what happened here?” he asked at last, sounding more tired than surprised as he removed his glasses.

Probably not, Yara thought. He really wouldn’t like it.

Not that it mattered. Judging by the time, the mess, and the fact they had physically dragged this situation into his bar in the middle of the night, explanation was unavoidable.

Luka, completely unbothered, tilted his head toward the plastic medical container in Yara’s hands, where the dark red, viscous remains of something valuable had begun to settle like a soup.

“I broke it,” he said simply.

Yara shot him a sidelong look. “‘Broke it’?” she repeated, unamused.

Because in her memory, “breaking it” involved lifting a sealed chest over his head and smashing it into stone with enough force to end arguments, and possibly structural integrity.

Yet Luka stood there as if he had merely dropped a glass.

He slipped past the frozen Rayleigh with carefree ease and walked further inside the bar without breaking stride, as though none of this had any bearing on his existence.

Rayleigh let out a long, resigned sigh and stepped aside. “Come in, then,” he said, opening the door wider.

Inside, Shakky, as always, was perched lazily behind the counter. At the sight of their entrance, she offered a small, knowing smile and a casual wave.

Yara gave a short nod in return, silently hoping they hadn’t interrupted anything important. From Shakky’s expression, they hadn’t.

Rayleigh took a seat at the bar, folding his arms on the counter. Shakky, understanding the shift in mood without a word being spoken, slipped into the back room to fetch drinks.

“So,” Rayleigh said, fixing Yara with a steady look. “Where did you even get a Devil Fruit?”

Yara blinked once.

Her expression flickered in confusion, then disbelief, then the gradual realization that they were, in fact, not on the same page at all.

“What do you mean, ‘where’?” she asked. “I thought you already noticed Luka stole it from you.”

Rayleigh actually seemed taken aback.

He turned his head slightly, as if replaying recent events in his mind. Luka, meanwhile, had already settled onto a stool at the far end of the counter, sitting perfectly still and waiting with bright, expectant eyes for his promised juice from Shakky.

A long pause stretched between them.

Rayleigh stared at the boy for another moment, then quietly decided that, for his own sanity, he would simply not engage with that particular revelation. “…Let’s set the youth’s talents aside for now,” he said with a dry cough, steering the conversation back on track. “Has either of you eaten it? Or even tried it?”

Yara visibly recoiled, lifting the container as though it might bite. “How would anyone even eat that?” she said, disgust curling in her voice. “It looks like something that died twice.”

Rayleigh leaned in just enough to inspect the contents. “Apparently, that does seem to be the case,” he exhaled with a faint smile. “But selling it is off the table regardless. Its market value is completely gone. I doubt anyone would pay a single berry for this… porridge.”

The corners of Yara’s mouth twitched upward despite herself.

Right. Even at a discount for structural damage, nobody in their right mind would touch that thing. “So what now?” she asked, nodding toward the container. “Do we just throw it away?”

“Why throw it away?” Rayleigh rested his cheek against his hand, studying the ruined fruit with languid curiosity. “As long as none of you eat it, there’s no issue. It can just sit there.”

Yara didn’t answer. He wasn’t wrong.

But something small and stray had already begun to move inside her thoughts—an itch of curiosity she couldn’t quite suppress.

If she stripped away the pure disgust, the idea itself wasn’t meaningless.

A Devil Fruit was, in essence, one of the fastest routes to power in this world. A shortcut carved straight through years of brutal training, blood, and luck. Every rookie pirate dreamed of stumbling across one. Every ambitious Marine officer would have killed for it.

It was a social elevator in a world that rarely offered stairs.

Of course, the risks were just as irrational as the reward.

Yara remembered Enies Lobby—CP9 receiving their abilities from Spandam with no prior knowledge. Kaku and Kalifa hadn’t known what they were eating until it was already inside them. The World Government’s records were a mess of inconsistencies at best, shards and distorted sketches at worst.

Most fruits were half-identified myths, their true abilities buried under speculation and incomplete reports.

A gamble, always a gamble.

One bite could grant power beyond ordinary human limits—or something entirely useless, or even humiliating.

But still…

One bite could also mean strength. Real strength. The kind that didn’t rely on hiding, running, or constantly calculating escape routes just to survive another day.

The kind that could actually protect her.

Yara slowly lifted her gaze from the container to Rayleigh. Her expression remained calm, but there was a faint, dangerous brightness gathering in her eyes.

Rayleigh noticed immediately.

“…Hey,” she said evenly. “What if I do eat it?”

His shoulders tensed at once. Of course they did.

He was clearly enjoying this far less now. “You were just saying you didn’t want it,” he reminded her, frowning. “Risking your life for a mystery like that is foolish.”

Yara shrugged, almost casual. “If I try it… there won’t be anything wrong with that, right?”

“You’ll never be able to swim again,” Rayleigh cut in without hesitation. “The moment that power takes hold, the sea becomes your personal curse.”

For most people, that sentence alone would have been enough to end the conversation.

In this world, where the ocean swallowed nearly everything, losing the ability to swim wasn’t just a limitation—it was a death sentence waiting for timing.

But it was already too late.

The thought of sudden strength, of control, of influence over the fragile bodies of others had already begun to cloud Yara’s judgment, curling quietly around her decision like smoke that refused to dissipate.

Without allowing herself enough time to reconsider, Yara reached for the container.

Rayleigh immediately straightened in his seat.

“Yara—”

Too late.

She popped open the lid, pinched off the smallest fragment she could find between two fingers, and swallowed it whole before anyone could physically stop her.

For exactly one second, nothing happened.

Then the taste arrived.

It was indescribably awful.

Not merely bitter or rotten, but fundamentally offensive to the concept of food itself. The flavor hit her tongue like concentrated poison mixed with spoiled medicine, mold, rust, seawater, ash, and something ancient that should never have been consumed by living organisms under any circumstances.

Yara’s entire body locked up.

Her face drained of color so fast it was almost impressive.

A violent shudder ripped through her shoulders as she slapped both hands over her mouth, eyes widening with genuine horror.

“Oh, that’s vile,” she croaked through her fingers.

The aftertaste only became worse.

It spread. Multiplied. Crawled up the back of her throat like a living curse determined to personally ruin every remaining meal she would ever experience.

For one deeply humiliating instant, Yara thought she was about to vomit directly onto Rayleigh’s lap.

She lurched sideways off the stool instead, nearly folding in half as she coughed violently into her sleeve.

Luka stared at her with enormous fascinated eyes.

Shakky, meanwhile, looked one second away from laughing herself unconscious.

Rayleigh rubbed a hand down his face with the exhausted expression. “…Well,” he muttered. “At least now you understand why the flavor was never exactly the selling point.”

Yara slowly raised a trembling hand. “Shut up,” she said weakly. She was in no mood for that right now.

Her insides knotted again. “…No, I'm sorry. Why does it taste like that?”

“People have been asking that for decades,” Shakky replied, setting a glass of water in front of her. “No one’s found an answer yet.”

She dropped her forehead against the counter with a hollow groan.

Alright. In hindsight, perhaps she should have spent more than three seconds considering a decision capable of permanently altering her body.

Chapter Text

When Yara turned sixteen, Shakky and Rayleigh decided to train her in Haki and Devil Fruit control.

And as for the fruit—it ended up being more useful than anyone had expected

She had, admittedly, gotten incredibly lucky. It fit her medical inclinations so precisely that it almost felt engineered for her field. In essence, it aligned with healing and restoration in a way that made her prior medical knowledge feel like an advantage finally worth something in this world.

But as always, reality had a way of correcting her optimism.

It quickly became clear that her academic background from her previous life wasn’t actually required to activate or operate the fruit’s ability. The power functioned on a purely mystical principle—instinctive rather than learned.

When Shakky first explained this to her, after digging up what little fragmented information she could through her networks, Yara hadn’t been particularly disappointed. Not entirely, anyway.

She had simply felt… mildly cheated.

It was, after all, slightly frustrating to discover she would not become overpowered or near-unstoppable.

The name itself, however, was pretty funny—it reminded her of cashews.

As for understanding her ability, that turned out to be a bit harder. It took several accidental and thoroughly unpleasant field “experiments” on her own body during her medical practice before she fully realized what her ability actually did.

The essence of the Kesshi-Kesshi no Mi was not healing in the conventional sense, nor regeneration. Instead, it allowed its user to manipulate a threshold state—the boundary between life and death.

When a living organism crossed a critical limit, teetering on the edge where survival became improbable, Yara could “rewind” the biological condition of the body, forcing it back into a previously stable, healthy state.

Yara concluded that It was something like localized temporal reversal applied exclusively to living tissue.

However, the mechanism came with brutal constraints. It only functioned on organisms that had already reached near-fatal conditions. Minor wounds, fractures, and superficial injuries were completely unaffected. To heal someone, they first had to be brought to the brink of death.

At first, it felt impractical. Even dangerous. Each use drained a significant portion of her stamina and left a lingering sense of physical fatigue that made her question whether the ability was a blessing or a curse.

For weeks, she had complained about it regularly.

Then she began to understand what it truly meant and once she did, the fruit stopped feeling like a limitation.

In the end, she managed to convince Rayleigh—and, to her little surprise, Shakky as well—to let her officially begin working as an underground physician.

Her main argument had been simple.

With a Devil Fruit like hers, it was physically impossible for her to permanently lose a patient on the operating table. Anyone brought to the edge could, in theory, be pulled back from it entirely.

Though she was sure Shakky had played a much bigger role in that decision than she had. It still worked to her advantage anyway; Rayleigh had whined about it as usual before eventually surrendering, which meant she won.

Until that fool of a man told her she would be expected to train.

It was the very reason why, at this moment, she found herself on Amazon Lily together with Shakky.

Yara walked slowly along the narrow stone path, casting cautious glances to either side. The sheer abundance of local flora was striking. Around them, enormous, unfamiliar plants twisted and bloomed in dense layers, many of which she could not identify despite her extensive botanical knowledge of the Grand Line.

Then again, it made sense. This hidden fragment of land, sealed within the Calm Belt for centuries, had remained completely isolated from the outside world. There was no reason its ecosystem should resemble anything she knew.

A cloyingly sweet scent drifted into her senses. It reminded her faintly of her Devil Fruit—too sweet, too rich, and just a little unsettling. Most of these vivid blossoms were likely poisonous. She frowned slightly and adjusted the bag slung over her shoulder.

“Shakky, are you sure we’re allowed to be here?” she asked quietly, quickening her pace.

The woman walking ahead of her gave a short, unbothered laugh without turning around. “More than sure. You don’t need to worry.”

Yara pressed her lips together skeptically. Whether that was true or simply something Shakky believed was another matter. If memory served her correctly, the current Empress of Amazon Lily was Boa Hancock—a woman infamous for her overwhelming pride, icy temperament, and an almost pathological disdain for anything that moved… at least before she met Luffy.

Of course, that hostility had its roots in trauma, but knowing that didn’t necessarily make her any less dangerous.

She would remain kind only to her own people.

But if canon could be trusted, Hancock still held deep respect and even something like familial affection for Shakky, who had once helped her and her sisters after their escape from Mary Geoise. Maybe, things would not be as bad..

Shakky’s sweet, velvet voice cut through her thoughts. “Yara, are you not too warm?”

Ah, right. Yara looked down at herself, assessing her outfit. A simple red tank top and short, practical shorts. Over them, she wore a light olive jacket. The fabric was thin enough that she had not considered it a burden.

Though… her gaze drifted toward the toxic green stems of nearby plants. Maybe the jacket was beginning to feel too similar to the dangerous vegetation around them. She grimaced. Such a bad association.

“I’m fine,” she grumbled. “But I think I’ll take it off anyway.”

Not that anything here should be able to bite her, and perhaps Shakky was simply trying to ensure she didn’t look too out of place compared to the island’s warriors and their… particular sense of fashion.

Shakky suddenly stopped.

She peered around her and froze.

The path opened onto a wide elevated plateau, revealing a vast and majestic palace complex. Yara paused, quietly taking in the monumental architecture. Even more beautiful than when they had first arrived on the island. Massive structures with curved roofs, carved pillars, and vibrant facades stood in harmony, evoking the image of an ancient Chinese palace.

It was far from the first time this world had triggered such cultural associations in her mind. Still, she had to admit Kuja Palace was breathtaking.

Yara turned her head toward her companion. It made her wonder what Shakky was feeling. The older woman stood motionless, gazing at the stone carvings of serpents etched into the walls.

For once, her usual relaxed demeanor had cracked. There was something nostalgic in her expression, something soft and distant, as if she were looking at a place that no longer belonged to her.

A faint, melancholic smile touched her lips.

She must have truly missed this place, Yara thought, considering Amazon Lily had once been her home before she left for an entirely different life.

It seems as if the sea is supposed to divide not just the world, but also its inhabitants.

Feeling Yara’s gaze, Shakky straightened again. Her expression shifted back into its familiar calm. Then she gently placed a hand on Yara’s head. “Well then, dear,” she said. “We should go and find my sister.”

Yara blinked, nearly tripping over her own feet. “Your sister?”

Weren't they here for..

Shakky nodded with ease as she stepped forward toward the main gate. “Yes. We’re here to visit Gloriosa.”

Oh. Wait–

Yara was sitting on her knees in the middle of the main hall, and she was not enjoying the situation in the slightest.

To her relief, Boa Hancock herself was nowhere in sight. Sadly, that only meant she was currently being whacked on the temple by the very sister Shakky had mentioned.

“Shakuyaku!” a small old woman with a large exotic flower woven into her silver hair screeched angrily. “Why did you bring a stranger here?”

Honestly, Yara was asking herself the exact same question. What the hell were they even doing here?

“And stop being so careless,” Gloriosa grumbled irritably, shooting Shakky a sharp look.

Shakky only let out a pleased little laugh, eyes half-lidded and amused, completely unconcerned with the fact that Yara was in the middle of possibly getting her skull cracked open.

No, seriously, how did that old lady hit that hard?

“That’s exactly why you love me,” Shakky replied with a smile. “If I remember correctly, that’s also why you made me your first mate back then.”

The old woman let out a heavy sigh. Apparently, that was true, and she had no real comeback.

It's kind of cute, Yara thought, but must be tiring being the older sister.

Then, as though sensing Yara’s thoughts, she turned her attention back to her.

Lowering her walking stick, she leaned in close. Far too close. Yara instinctively held her breath. Okay, now she was scared. Her mind racing through possibilities that ranged from immediate execution to being turned into decorative stone for some ancient hallway.

Gloriosa studied her face in silence for one minute. Then she shifted her gaze toward Shakky, then back to Yara again, as if confirming something only she could see. Satisfied, she finally straightened up. “What’s your name?” she asked curtly.

It might be wise to answer, for her own sake. “Yara.”

Gloriosa gave a single short nod and said nothing else. Turning on her heel, she tapped her cane against the floor and began walking toward the exit. At the doorway, she paused just long enough to gesture with her head for Yara to follow.

Unsure whether this was obedience or a death sentence in disguise, Yara glanced back at Shakky. The older woman simply nodded reassuringly, silently telling her everything was under control.

Well..if she doesn’t mind, it should be fine, right?

Forget everything she had said before. Everything about this place was absolutely horrific.

The moment they crossed beyond the magnificent city walls, Yara was unceremoniously dumped straight into the wilderness without so much as a proper explanation.

For fuck’s sake, when Shakky mentioned “training,” Yara had not imagined this was what she meant. Wasn’t this kind of survival nightmare supposed to be Garp’s personal brand of insanity? Throwing a sixteen-year-old girl into a living hell full of predators and simply hoping for the best felt excessive even by pirate standards. Rayleigh would never have done something like this.

…Alright, that was a lie. He absolutely would. In fact, she distinctly remembered him doing almost the exact same thing to Luffy years later. But either way.

Rusukaina, the island neighboring Amazon Lily, was beautiful in the same cruel way a venomous flower was beautiful. Lush, vibrant, overwhelmingly green—and utterly infested with colossal predators, poisonous insects, and monstrous creatures that looked like relics from some prehistoric Jurassic period.

When they had first arrived, Yara had not been particularly worried. Shakky’s presence alone had felt reassuring enough to dull her anxiety. But now, stranded completely alone in the suffocating depths of the jungle, she was experiencing genuine, unfiltered terror.

The only thing those two terrifying women had bothered to tell her before disappearing into the fog was that she somehow needed to awaken her Haki.

And yes, logically speaking, the idea made sense. Yara knew perfectly well that Haki often emerged during moments of extreme fear, blinding rage, or desperate instinctive survival. Knowing that in theory, however, was very different from crouching beneath tangled roots while something enormous prowled nearby, trying to figure out how exactly one was supposed to ignite a mystical force inside their own body.

As a result, most of her “training” consisted of sprinting for her life on pure adrenaline while gigantic tigers the size of small buildings, rabid hyperactive apes, and countless other horrifying beasts chased her through the jungle with murderous determination.

Every single creature on that island seemed equally invested in killing her, eating her, trampling her into the dirt, or—

Honestly, she did not even want to know what some of those monsters had planned.

At some point, Yara came to the deeply unfortunate conclusion that pre-timeskip Luffy must have been some kind of terrifying little gremlin himself if he had managed to befriend beasts like these.

By the final days of the ordeal, her body simply stopped cooperating. The accumulated weariness, stress, and endless adrenaline overload finally caught up with her. Her knees buckled without warning, darkness flooded her vision, and she collapsed face-first into the grass, losing consciousness completely.

At least… she thought she had.

The stress had been so overwhelming that her memories dissolved into scattered pieces after that point.

Naturally, someone eventually dragged her back out of the jungle. She was hauled back to the Kuja settlement half-dead, barely conscious, filthy, bruised, and covered in cuts from head to toe.

Unfortunately for her, goddess apparently despised her personally.

At that exact moment, Hancock and her Gorgon sisters had just returned to Amazon Lily from one of their voyages.

And Yara, in her current state, looked like absolute shit in front of the Pirate Empress.

“Shakky,” Hancock said in an imperious tone, not even bothering to look at Yara as she pointed toward her with one finger. “Who is this girl? And why does she look like that?”

Disgust was written plainly across her face, which was fair enough. Yara looked atrocious.

Towering behind Hancock stood her two sisters. Unlike the Pirate Empress, they seemed more curious than repulsed, but considering every single woman in the hall was absurdly tall, Yara, standing there soaked, filthy, and wrapped in her ruined jacket, felt an overwhelming urge to disappear into the floorboards.

Someone just kill her already.

“This is Yara,” Shakky answered calmly, paying Hancock’s arrogance no mind whatsoever. “It’s good to see all of you again. It’s been a long time.”

Hancock merely gave a small nod. Sandersonia and Marigold greeted her in turn before all three sisters shifted their attention back toward Yara again.

Realizing that remaining silent any longer would probably count as unforgivably rude and that antagonizing the ruler of Amazon Lily was an excellent way to die young, Yara decided to at least attempt salvaging the suffocating atmosphere.

She stepped forward and gave a slightly awkward bow, trying very hard not to collapse from exhaustion halfway through it. “Hello, I’m Yara. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Why, in the name of all four damn seas, did she introduce herself again?

Suddenly, the tall woman with long green hair—Sandersonia, if Yara remembered correctly—leaned closer with open curiosity, stretching her neck in a strangely serpentine motion.

“Ah! Look, sister,” she said in surprise while studying Yara’s face. “Her eyes are different colors.”

Yara blinked tiredly as she looked up at her. Was it normal for the women of the Kuja tribe to look people straight in the eyes like that?

Marigold, whose thick red hair closely resembled Yara’s own, stepped nearer as well and nodded in agreement. “They really are.”

Hancock, meanwhile, looked profoundly unimpressed by their enthusiasm. She rolled her eyes with dramatic irritation and turned an accusing stare toward Gloriosa, who had been standing quietly off to the side the entire time.

Anyone could tell that that the Empress had accumulated a long list of complaints regarding the presence of a foreigner on Kuja territory.

Fortunately, before Hancock could begin voicing any of them, Shakky smoothly stepped in and redirected the conversation. “We’ve only just returned from the neighboring island,” she said pleasantly, her smile never wavering. “And we’ll already be departing back to Sabaody.”

Sandersonia looked surprised. “So soon? You should’ve stayed a little longer.”

Marigold nodded beside her. “Yeah, we don’t get to meet like this very often.”

That seemed to ease Hancock somewhat. The tension in her shoulders visibly loosened, though she still looked distinctly out of place.

Shakky simply shook her head. “It’d be impolite to overstay when you weren’t even prepared for us showing up.” she said with warmth in her voice. “But maybe next time.”

Yara shot her an immediate look of profound resentment.

Departing? They had barely arrived, and she had only just survived being hunted through the jungle by oversized nightmare beasts. What exactly was Shakky talking about?

Shakky merely smiled even wider in response, informing her that the discussion was over.

Fine.

Honestly, Yara was completely willing to leave. They should absolutely continue this conversation somewhere safer. Preferably inside a bar. Or better yet, perhaps they should collectively forget these “training exercises” had ever happened at all.

At this point, she genuinely did not care anymore so long as she could escape this deranged island full of giant snakes and terrifying women.

To her own astonishment, she realized she would gladly tolerate Rayleigh’s lectures and even Luka’s increasingly questionable behavior if it meant being literally anywhere else right now.

In the end, after a hurried and somewhat awkward farewell to the visibly dissatisfied Hancock and a quick wave toward her sisters, they finally descended toward the harbor and began preparing to sail back to Sabaody.

Yeah, Yara had never been happier.

It turned out that Yara had actually managed to awaken her Haki after all. Apparently, the primal terror of Rusukaina’s wonders had served as the perfect trigger, even if she could barely remember it now.

Which was rather strange, given that she clearly remembered the volcanoes there, along with all kinds of things humanity was probably better off not knowing existed.

Creepy indeed, right? Even Shakky had once mentioned that the island could cycle through as many as forty-eight seasons in a year and host over five hundred species of animals, so she and Gloriosa kept a close eye on her and made sure she didn’t wander too far.

And from that point onward, her training shifted into something far more structured. In the following days, she trained alongside Rayleigh. The old man, unlike his wife, had an unreasonable amount of free time on his hands, and Shakky herself had stated quite firmly that Yara was still nowhere near ready to fight any of the Kuja warriors.

It had been an insulting assessment of her pride, but Yara chose not to argue. Charging headfirst against trained warriors armed with snakes did not sound like a particularly survivable decision anyway.

Rayleigh started from the very basics, focusing first on Observation Haki—something Yara quickly discovered came to her more naturally than expected. She strongly suspected it was due to her habitual paranoia and constant overthinking. Still, if it made her stronger, she wasn’t going to complain.

She could already perceive her surroundings with surprising clarity. The world unfolded into a layered, three-dimensional space in her mind, each detail forming part of a broader mental map. And yet, something was still wrong.

Sometimes, whenever she pushed too deeply into that state, a sharp, splitting pain would strike the back of her skull. Her head would pound as if overloaded, a direct result of her inability to focus on a single target. Instead of narrowing her attention, she tried to process everything at once—calculating every movement, every sound, every shift within a hundred-meter radius. It was overwhelming, and it was slowing her progress considerably.

“Specificity, Yara. For the tenth time, choose one target,” Rayleigh said wearily, arms crossed as he watched her sit blindfolded in the middle of the clearing. “Think of one thing. Otherwise, we’re never moving on to the next stage.”

“I am doing that!” Yara snapped, exhausted, throwing her arms out in frustration.

The old man gave her a blank look.

Even with her eyes covered, she could feel his judgment. “Don’t look at me like that,” she hissed, wiping sweat from her forehead.

Rayleigh let out a long, suffering sigh. He stepped closer and tapped a single finger against her forehead, silencing her instantly. “You don’t need to worry or fear making a mistake,” he said calmly. “Stop frantically scanning everything around you like you’re waiting for an attack. Instead, picture the outcome you actually want to see.”

He withdrew his hand and slipped it back into his coat pocket. “Maybe your meticulous nature is what makes your perception unique. But clinging to everything at once removes any advantage you might have when it actually matters, when you need to act here and now.”

Yara stared at him through the blindfold, genuinely surprised despite herself. Something about his words clicked into place deep inside her mind.

Of course, she had no intention of letting him know that.

Instead, she smirked and stuck her tongue out at him. “Maybe your senile brain finally gave out. That sounded like fucking nonsense.”

Rayleigh didn’t even react. He simply bent down, picked up a small stone from the ground, and with a casual flick of his fingers, sent it flying straight at her forehead.

THWACK.

“Ow!” Yara recoiled, rubbing the now-red spot.

Asshole. What an asshole.

“If you’ve still got the energy to argue with me,” Rayleigh said evenly, rolling another pebble across his palm, “then we can keep going.”

Yara forced a strained grin through clenched teeth. “That’s what I was doing.”

She trained her Devil Fruit far less often — it was never meant for combat.

At most, what she and Rayleigh could do in that direction was deliberately exhaust her body with intense physical strain to improve her overall endurance, thereby increasing her stamina. The more strength she had, the longer she could sustain the “rewind.”

Everything else — practice, technique, and personal limits — was entirely her responsibility.

That responsibility mostly translated into deciding who, exactly, she was willing to accept as patients. As Yara had expected from the start, she had no reputation whatsoever on Sabaody in the beginning, so her underground practice had to start small.

Her first clients were predictable — foolish, short-sighted men, mostly low-level pirates and dockside troublemakers who picked fights where there was absolutely no need to. They were rarely polite, stumbling into her basement demanding she fix their broken noses after yet another bar brawl, which she obligingly did.

The second, far more reasonable portion of her practice consisted of those injured survivors from the auction house — the ones Rayleigh occasionally brought or carried to her when the cases were too severe and ordinary first aid simply wasn’t enough.

looking back, she probably shouldn’t have been quite so ruthless with the first category. Yes, she treated them. Doctor’s duty, pity, money—call it what you want. But the way she went about it often crossed far beyond conventional humanitarian care. In order to activate the ability of the Kesshi-Kesshi no Mi, injuries had to reach a near-fatal threshold, so Yara, without much hesitation, would sometimes bring difficult patients to the edge of death right there on the operating table before initiating the rewind of flesh.

It was very bad for her karma and even worse for her public image. Those unorthodox methods did not go unnoticed. The surviving, but deeply traumatized men she treated began spreading stories, and soon enough, unsettling rumors started circling the Archipelago about the basement doctor and her methods.

Yara, however, didn’t think it mattered all that much. After all, this was the age of pirates, Sabaody was drowning in lawlessness, and she was an underground physician.

What difference could a little dark reputation make, really? A few whispered stories, some frightened gossip behind her back? Empty talk, actually. 

At the time, she didn’t know that it would come to mean a great deal, and cause her a few problems down the line.

Chapter Text

The year 1516 had arrived. Yara was nineteen now, while Luffy, somewhere far away on his tiny island in the East Blue, had just turned eleven. That could only mean one thing — the story was getting closer and closer, breathing down her neck with inevitable steps.

Only six years remained before the events of the original timeline would begin tearing the world apart.

Lately, Yara had been growing increasingly uneasy. Anxiety gathered inside her like static electricity under the skin. Just two years ago, persistent rumors had begun spreading across the seas about the rapidly expanding influence of the Revolutionary Army led by a man named Monkey D. Dragon. Maybe to ordinary civilians of the Grand Line it sounded like distant noise. Another political storm too far away to matter, but not to her.

How could she possibly ignore it when she knew exactly where everything was headed? Even now, Dragon’s name had already begun appearing in classified reports and nervous discussions during the Reverie in Mary Geoise. And by 1522, he would officially become the world's most wanted criminal, as well as the father of the future Pirate King.

Maybe it sounded unhinged that she kept mentally counting the years on her fingers like a maniac, desperately trying to reconstruct the timeline from memory, but her restless caution at least had a foundation.

Somehow, that wasn’t even the real problem. Because alongside that creeping existential dread came another piece of news that had shaken the seas not long ago.

A new Emperor had officially risen to power — the youngest among the current rulers of the New World.

Red‐Haired Shanks.

Which was apparently something she had still managed to overlook. Or, if she were being completely honest with herself, something she had deliberately wanted to overlook. Every single time the name of that monstrously dangerous man appeared across the front pages of the morning newspapers, Yara resorted to avoidance. She would turn the page before finishing the article, pretending that the absurd bounties, territorial expansions, and bloodstained victories of the Red Hair Pirates had absolutely nothing to do with her.

But the world itself was becoming increasingly unstable. The pressure in the air kept rising. A storm was gathering over the entire planet, and Yara hated every hour of it.

She had a bad feeling about the future. A very bad one.

The tension probably felt even unbearable because, while the world spiraled toward chaos, her own influence had also begun spreading across the Grand Line in ways she neither intended nor controlled. She couldn’t claim that her name had reached the New World beyond the Red Line, but somehow the entirety of Paradise already seemed disturbingly familiar with her existence.

And frankly, Yara had no idea how that had happened.

Most of the time, she barely left the suffocating confines of her underground clinic. Occasionally she traveled when Shakky provided useful information or when the basement became unbearable from the constant smell of blood, but even then she kept those trips heavily restricted.

She kept away from conflicts, refused to involve herself in pirate disputes, and remained just as cynical, cold, and unpleasant toward her patients as ever. She traveled alone as an inconspicuous wandering doctor, hiding both her face and abilities whenever possible.

But despite every attempt at secrecy, the cracks in her anonymity had widened anyway.

Somehow, people had given her a title.

A name she absolutely despised.

They called her the “Angel of Mercy.”

The epithet was as ludicrous as it was embarrassing, and deeply revolting that Yara physically cringed every time she overheard it whispered inside taverns and ports.

Ah, she hated grandiose titles like that. In One Piece, names like those either came from the World Government’s nauseating propaganda machine, or they became the second name of someone dangerous enough that the Marines dreamed of seeing their severed head on a wanted poster.

A rather sad and underwhelming assortment, if she were to be asked.

Thankfully, no bounty had been placed on her head and out of every sinister title imaginable, she ended up with Angel of what? Mercy, seriously?

She wasn’t kind. Never had been.

Yara strongly suspected the nickname carried two separate meanings, but she had no love for either of them.

She lay face-down on the bar counter, sprawled across an unfolded newspaper with absolutely no trace of a good mood left in her body.

To hell with this world.

On the other side of the counter, Shakky lazily took a drag from her ever-present cigarette and exhaled a thick, bluish cloud straight into Yara’s direction. The familiar sharp smell hit her immediately, and Yara reluctantly lifted her head, staring at the woman with a flat expression. “What was that for?” she asked with a frown, weakly waving the smoke away.

At this point, Yara had long since lost count of how many times she had asked Shakky to stop smoking so much indoors, or tried — unsuccessfully — to convince Rayleigh to ease up on his chronic drinking. But the two of them seemed to be in some kind of conspiracy, fully committed to developing lung disease together and dragging her along as collateral damage through constant secondhand smoke.

Shakky leaned her cheek into her hand, smiling innocently in that catlike way of hers. “You’ve been gloomy for far too long, that heavy aura of yours is practically drifting around the room. Is that newspaper really that fascinating?”

Yara sighed. Maybe she really had gone a bit too far this time. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

Shakky reached out with a slow, gentle motion and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Yara’s ear with her fingertips. “For such a charming young lady, you really shouldn’t waste precious time making such pretty little faces like that,” she said softly.

Curious, she’s actually flattering more than she normally does today. Yara gave her a skeptical look and leaned back slightly. “Was that a compliment or an insult?”

“A compliment, of course,” Shakky replied easily, bringing the cigarette back to her lips. “I do rather love your appearance. You know… lately you’ve been reminding me more and more of my younger days.”

Yeah. That was definitely not what Yara expected to hear from her. Only yesterday, it seemed, it had been Rayleigh’s turn.

She lowered her gaze and absentmindedly twirled the ends of her hair between her fingers. Reminding her of her younger self? That didn’t make much sense. They were nothing alike.

At best, maybe in some vague coincidence of length or waviness. But unlike Shakky’s perfectly maintained dark hair, Yara’s was unruly, always refusing to behave no matter how much she tried. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Yara said honestly, shaking her head. “We’re completely different.”

Shakky let out a short, genuine laugh, mirth flickering in her eyes. “You’re such a fool,” she said. “I meant you look a lot like Gloriosa in her prime years.”

Yara blinked. Gloriosa?

For a moment, she stopped to think about it. She didn’t really remember what Gloriosa had looked like in her youth. But… now that she thought about it.

Maybe, yet it didn’t quite fit.

The color palette was all wrong. Young Gloriosa in canon definitely had much lighter hair. Something closer to a soft pinkish tone — not the intense red Yara had. At least, that’s how she remembered it.

Though truthfully, Oda had always been inconsistent enough with color choices in official artbooks that it was hard to be certain. Yara shrugged. “Still not the same.”

Shakky showed no sign of offense whatsoever. She smiled again, exhaling another stream of smoke. “Perhaps,” she said lightly. “Or maybe I like the thought that we resemble each other more.”

So that was about her, after all. What a liar she was. “You’re really a snake, did you know that?”

Shakky laughed freely. “Oh, I do.”

“Please, help us! He’s losing blood!” the man blurted out, breathless, nearly ripping the flimsy basement door off its hinges.

Judging by his battered appearance and the tattoos running across his arms, he was definitely a pirate, though Yara had never seen him before. Alas for her, she recognized the man slung over his shoulders immediately. Even through the grime, soot, and heavy streaks of blood, the familiar makeup, reminiscent of traditional geisha style and the violet-black hair styled in an elaborate knot left no room for doubt.

It was Izo, commander of the Whitebeard Pirates’ 16th Division.

For the sweet mother of fuck. “What you sow, you reap,” as the saying went, right? Of all the pirates in the world, the ones standing at her doorstep were exactly the kind she never wanted to deal with.

Out of all possible outcomes, this had to be one of the worst.

Encountering the upper ranks of the strongest pirate fleet in the world ranked comfortably in her personal top three nightmares. Fate indeed was a cruel joke.

“I’m sorry, but I was just about to lock up,” Yara said evenly, her tone perfectly blank as she lied through her teeth.

In reality, it was still early in the day, and she had just come back from a break at the bar. But she had absolutely no intention of explaining that.

She pulled on the door, trying to shove the wooden frame shut.

The man slammed a heavy boot against it with a dull thud, stopping it from closing.

Okay. Of course it was going to go this way.

Then he raised his pistol and aimed it straight at her face.

Yeah, it was going that way too.

Yara froze. Her brow furrowed, and after a moment, she stretched her lips into a smile so pleasant it felt wrong to look at. “You know, buddy,” she said flatly, “this is not how you ask for help.”

“I don’t care,” the pirate snapped. His hand trembled slightly on the trigger, anger and desperation bleeding into one another. “I’ll pay you whatever you want. Gold, berries, anything. Just save him!”

Hm, that’s certainly a first. Who would’ve thought someone would try to threaten her with money?

Yara’s eyes narrowed further, but the gun no longer impressed her. What unsettled her more was the fact that he might actually use it.

Something wasn’t adding up.

Why the fuck was a commander of Whitebeard’s crew dying on Sabaody?

That alone pushed the situation far past anything remotely normal. On the Moby Dick, Izo had access to one of the best medical divisions in the entire Grand Line, not to mention Marco himself. A man like him shouldn’t be bleeding out in some back-alley basement.

She leaned forward slightly, ignoring the weapon pointed at her, and examined the wounded man more closely.

Unconscious. Definitely in critical condition. His once elegant kimono was now torn and soaked through with blood. It gave the impression they’d been caught in an ambush, or right in the middle of a shootout. Badly timed and poorly escaped.

Though, to be fair, he still looked just as handsome as ever.

If Izo was here alone, then this wasn’t a fleet operation. A private mission, maybe. Something went wrong, and now there was no backup left to call.

That explained how they had ended up in a place like this, but it didn’t explain why he was here at all.

Izo was not supposed to die on Sabaody. He was supposed to reach Wano and meet his end on his own terms, in the madness of war.

The encounter with Kiku, the reunion with Oden’s retainers, and their trust in the Straw Hats...

Yes, that was how it was meant to be, so the question was simple.

Was he going to die here instead? If he did, her timeline would fracture in ways she could not afford to think about and even so…nothing so far had strayed from the course.

It shouldn’t be possible for things to change this suddenly.

She wanted to ask what the hell had happened. Who had managed to do this to a Whitebeard commander, but she held her tongue. Getting her head blown off right now would be inconvenient.

Eventually, her survival rule remained the same as always.

Never get involved in things that are none of your business. The less you know, the longer you live, eat, sleep, and breathe. Simple.

Yara let out a long, defeated sigh and released the door, stepping back into the dim interior of her basement.

Well, if he destined to survive, then he would.

She jerked her thumb toward the clean operating table behind her. “Bring him in. But understand this, damaging my equipment and pointing a gun at me will cost you a lot. And I mean a lot.”

The pirate exhaled in relief, a flicker of gratitude crossing his exhausted face.

Yara smiled darkly. Oh no, you dipshit. She wasn’t that merciful. “I didn’t say you get to watch,” she added.

The man stiffened, instinctively reaching for his weapon again, but she cut him off with a glance.

People really were idiots sometimes.

Crossing her arms, she told him plainly that these were the conditions. If he wanted to risk killing her while putting his captain’s life on the line, he was free to try.

He looked at Izo, gritted his teeth clearly hesitating… and finally dragged the unconscious commander inside.

As soon as he was out, Yara calmly closed the door and bolted it shut.

Then she turned to her cabinets and began preparing her surgical tools.

Great. Judging by the depth of those wounds, this was going to take a while.

From the wound in his abdomen, a dark fluid seeped out—an unmistakable sign of severe intestinal damage. With every exhale, a wet, bubbling rasp escaped his chest.

Yara frowned without meaning to and pressed her fingers briefly to his forehead. Temperature hovered around 35.0–35.5°C. Not catastrophic yet, but close. Blood clotting was already worsening.

Still, the odds were there. She was fortunate. These people had absurdly dense bones and thick muscle tissue, but once a bullet got through, it didn’t just pierce.

It tore everything inside into a bloddy mess.

Perhaps, it was hanging somewhere between good and bad. It would have been far easier if she could use her Devil Fruit, but doing so here would raise questions, and questions would inevitably attract the moron waiting outside the door.

So she had to do this the old-fashioned way.

Yara exhaled through her nose and secured Izou’s limbs to the operating table with leather straps. If he went into shock and jerked even slightly, he could destroy this whole place, and her fingers along with it. Thanks, but no thanks. She had no intention of letting that happen.

First, the breathing.

She grabbed a thick trocar with a removable tube and, without hesitation, drove it between his ribs. Well, here goes nothing.

Izou flinched sharply, but didn’t thrash. A strained hiss escaped him as trapped air was released, followed by a burst of dark blood. His lung partially re-expanded. The worst of the rattling breaths began to ease. Decent.

Keeping the tube steady with one hand, she reached in with long forceps in the other. The bullet fragments were still inside, deformed and lodged deep. Along with pieces of shattered bone.

They had to come out—otherwise they’d tear into the pulmonary vessels.

She worked quickly, extracting what she could, then began closing the ruptured lung tissue with rough, tight sutures. Her fingers slipped in the blood; she wiped them against her apron without thinking.

Sweat dripped into her eyes. Disgusting.

The second bullet had gone in just above the iliac crest, tearing through the mesentery and shredding loops of the small intestine.

Yara didn’t waste time. She extended the abdominal incision into a full emergency access opening, quickly exposing the damage. Blood loss was heavy, contamination worse. She secured the edges with mechanical retractors, locking the field open despite the strain in her shoulders.

She identified multiple perforations and devitalized tissue almost immediately. The bullet had done exactly what she expected—fragmented on impact and turned the inside into a mess of secondary damage.

“Cool, it did,” she muttered under her breath.

There was no time for precision repairs on every tear. She ligated what vessels she could, resected the most damaged section of bowel, and worked quickly to reconnect the healthy ends with tight, functional suturing. Not elegant, but it would pass.

The patient started to react as anesthesia wore thin, a low, strained sound escaping him despite the restraints.

Yara’s jaw tightened. “Don’t start now” she tutted, and reached for another dose–then stopped herself.

It had been too risky. His heart could have given out, even if that was unlikely nowadays, she refused to take chances.

Ah, this shit isn’t worth her nerves half the time.

Yara sighed slowly and pushed on.

Irrigation came next—repeated flushing of the abdominal cavity until the contamination cleared enough to work. The improvised setup wasn’t ideal, but it was all she had. She tilted the table, drained the fluid, and repeated the process until the field was at least readable again.

Then came the closure.

Layer by layer, she rebuilt what she could, placing a drain at the lower edge to prevent internal buildup. The final sutures were slower now—fatigue creeping into her hands, shoulders stiff, concentration narrowing down to a single thread at a time.

Later, she planned to make it someone else’s problem.

By the time she finished, the room felt quieter in a way that had nothing to do with sound.

She leaned back, rolling her neck until it clicked, staring at the barely stable body on the table. “…I’m raising my prices,” she said hoarsely to no one in particular.

A pause.

No. She wouldn’t just raise them. She had to set figures that would even give Whitebeard’s crew a hard time.

It’d be best if those bastards never came back here, and even better if they forgot the way here altogether.

The loud, insistent knocking at the door interrupted Yara’s thoughts before she could properly settle on just how much she intended to charge them.

With tiredness, she pushed herself off the floor and crossed the room, peeling the bloodstained medical gloves from her hands along the way. Her shoulders ached horribly after hours bent over the operating table, and there was dried blood smeared across the sleeve of her coat.

Reaching the entrance, she slid the bolt aside and pulled the heavy door open. “All right, I’m finished. You can take him ba—”

The rest of the sentence died in her throat.

The man standing on the other side of the doorway was not the same nervous subordinate pirate from earlier.

Instead, a tall blond man stood there with an almost lazy posture, his half-lidded blue eyes carrying the kind of relaxed calm. His loose purple shirt hung partly open, exposing the distinct cross-shaped tattoo spread across his chest.

“Oh, looks like I arrived at just the right time, yoi,” he said pleasantly.

Yara stared at him for a full second. Then another.

A cold sensation crawled straight down her spine.

Yeah, no shit. Marco the Phoenix.

Whitebeard’s first division commander was standing directly in front of her basement door.

Before her brain could fully process the situation, Yara found herself doing exactly what she shouldn't have.

BAM!

She slammed the door directly in his face.

Outside, Marco froze mid-step, blinking slowly at the wooden barrier that had abruptly appeared inches from his nose.

For several seconds he simply stood there in silence, visibly trying to process what had just happened, before finally turning his head toward the unfortunate pirate standing nearby. “...Did I say something strange?” he asked while scratching the back of his head.

The subordinate looked equally lost and could only shrug helplessly. “I… I don’t think so, Commander.”

Marco sighed softly before reaching for the handle again, intending to simply open the door himself, but the moment he pulled, it refused to budge.

Inside the basement, Yara was gripping the bolt with both hands like a lunatic, bracing one foot against the floorboards as though her physical strength could somehow stop Marco if he genuinely decided to enter.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

More importantly, how had she failed to notice him approaching with Haki?

The realization made her stomach twist unpleasantly. She had relaxed after surgery. She had let her guard down for a single moment. Goddamn it, why did this happen?

“Hey, could you open the door for us, please, yoi?” Marco’s calm voice came from the other side. “We’re only here to pick up our brother.”

Brother? She was sure he didn’t have a brother, so what was he even talk—

Damn it, Izou!

She had completely forgotten about him.

Yara squeezed her eyes shut for a minute, then tried to steady her breathing. What exactly was she even trying to accomplish here? If Marco truly wanted to enter, he could probably rip the entire wall off the building without effort.

Realizing how ridiculous her behavior looked, she instantly let go of the bolt.

At the exact same moment, Marco happened to lean his weight lightly against the door while pulling it open. With all resistance suddenly disappearing, he stumbled forward unexpectedly and nearly walked straight into the basement.

But he caught himself quickly enough, before he could comment on the bizarre reception, Yara immediately pointed toward the unconscious figure lying on the operating table. “Take him and leave.”

Marco looked toward Izou first, his attention drifted back right away. His gaze lingered on her face for a moment, catching on her mismatched eyes, before slowly traveling downward in open observation.

A frown formed on Yara’s face under his scrutiny.

His eyes moved across the white lace decorating the collar of her black blouse beneath the partially unbuttoned medical coat, then lower toward the fitted black clothing underneath.

The outfit itself was practical and neat, severe enough to resemble something Nico Robin might have worn during Enies Lobby, although the subtle lace details softened it just enough to make it look pretty charming.

Besides, it was shorts, not a dress.

Hardly anything vulgar or unusual, which only made the prolonged stare all the more uncomfortable. “What are you looking at?” she asked, crossing her arms.

Marco blinked as though snapping back to reality. Then he smiled awkwardly and raised both hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. I just didn’t expect the underground doctor everyone talks about to be such a young woman.”

Yara bit her tongue to stop herself from saying something harsh, irritation flashing across her face. “That’s an incredibly rude thing to say.”

Marco chuckled to himself. “Yeah, i guess you’re probably right, yoi.” he admitted easily. “Honestly though, compared to the stories people tell about you around Sabaody, you’re a lot prettier than I expected.”

As far as she remembered, pirates like him weren’t spoken of kindly either. She narrowed her eyes. The rumors around the archipelago painted her as some faceless monster who tortured people be. Compared to that image, literally any normal human being would probably seem attractive.

He was obviously flattering her.

Turning away from him, she walked back toward the operating table and shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat. “If this is your attempt to charm me into discounting the surgery, it’s not working,” she replied dryly.

Marco smiled at once, entirely unbothered, and stuck out the tip of his tongue in a teasing gesture that didn’t quite match his reputation. “Looks like you caught me.”

Yara snorted. Things like this happened far too often—persistent men and pirates who genuinely believed their charm worked on everyone were far from rare.

Still… she glanced at Marco from the corner of her eye.

He was better looking than most of the desperate fools who usually tried to flirt their way into her attention. If she ignored Izou entirely, then yes, Marco easily ranked higher than average. Not that it changed anything.

Without another word, she grabbed a scrap of paper and quickly wrote down a number in bold, decisive strokes. She could have simply said the price out loud, but after his little display of casual confidence, she decided he deserved a little teasing in return. Yara stepped forward and silently held the paper out to him.

Marco took it with bare curiosity, then his eyes widened slightly as he read the amount. He scanned the digits again, clearly surprised by the sheer audacity of the fee. “…Wow,” he let out a low whistle. “You’re expensive.”

Yara only smiled sweetly, spreading her hands in a faint shrug. That pretender had clearly heard just how outrageous her prices were. “I am not a charity, and I do not bargain.”

Marco tilted his head. “Didn’t you just tell me to take my brother and leave, yoi?”

Let’s just pretend that embarrassment and moment of weakness never happened. “No, I have no memory of that.”

He let out a frustrated sigh, not looking even remotely opposed to it. “Well, nothing to be done about it then.”

Good. Serves him right.

Marco turned slightly toward the subordinate still lingering near the doorway and nodded toward the exit. “You heard her. Go fetch the payment.”

The man faltered, visibly flustered. It looked like he had overheard more than he should have. He opened his mouth to protest, but Marco’s expression changed. “She saved our brother’s life. Do you have a problem with that?”

The subordinate swallowed hard, shook his head quickly, and rushed out of the basement without another word.

Oh, please, wasn’t that the same moron who said he’d pay her anything if she saved his precious commander?

Marco, noticing her annoyance, seemed to decide the atmosphere needed to be brighter.

He stepped forward again, casually shortening the distance between them.

Yara immediately stiffened. Too close. Why is everyone always so close?

Then, sparing a quick look at the unconscious Izou on the operating table, he spoke again.There was a subtle trace of sincere relief in his tone, mixed with curiosity. “You did the entire operation by yourself?”

Yara pressed her lips together and chose not to answer. Hadn’t she already said more than enough? She was not used to talking with clients in the first place, and this man..

This man in particular.

He kept throwing her off balance with his casual familiarity. She did not need that.

Marco, however, did not seem to care about her silence. He took another step forward.

Yara immediately stepped back. Her shoulders hit the cold wall before she even fully realized she was retreating.

Marco blinked, briefly confused, then stepped again as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Yara moved back without delay.

He appeared to enjoy that, and advanced once more.

She retreated again.

Somehow, it became a game of cat and mouse. The more Yara retreated, the more Marco closed the distance. Honestly, it seemed like he was just messing with her.

Finally, her heel hit the corner. Fucking dead end.

She froze. Marco stopped as well, his face difficult to interpret. If anything, he looked like he was trying not to laugh.

Yara looked at him almost with hatred. What on earth was he trying to do?

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Yara could hear her own pulse in her ears, which was deeply irritating and unsettling. To make it worse, she had no idea where she was supposed to head now.

Before anything could escalate further, the door slammed open behind them. “Commander! I brought the money!” a voice shouted from outside.

Marco straightened at once, all that slow pressure vanishing like it had never existed. He turned away from her as if nothing unusual had happened at all. Moron.

The subordinate rushed in, tossed a heavy bag forward, and Marco caught it effortlessly mid-air. Without even checking it, he tossed it toward Yara.

She barely managed to catch it. “Be careful!” she snapped.

Marco waved a hand lazily. “Yeah, yeah.”

He walked over to the operating table, lifted Izou onto his shoulder with casual ease, and headed toward the exit as if carrying a wounded commander weighed no more than a sack of grain.

Yara would have sworn Izou was in pain, or that his stitches were nearly splitting.

At the doorway, he paused, not turning around. “Nice meeting you,” he said.

Then he left.

The door closed. Silence settled over the basement.

Yara stood there for a time, the weight of the payment bag still in her hands.

“…What the fuck was that just now?”

Chapter Text

“I’m such a fool…” Yara groaned for what was probably the hundredth time that evening, pressing her forehead against the cool wooden surface of the bar counter. This was starting to become a worrying habit.

Inside Shakky’s tavern, the atmosphere was as familiar and lived-in as ever. At one of the tables near the back, Rayleigh and Luka were hunched over a card game, both of them breathing with exaggerated concentration as though the fate of the world depended on it, while the owner of the bar herself lounged lazily on a tall stool, absentmindedly flipping through a freshly printed magazine.

“Yara, you really ought to stop whining so much,” Luka said without even looking up from the fan of cards in his hands. A second later he slapped one triumphantly onto the table in front of the old pirate.

Rayleigh nodded in agreement and scratched thoughtfully at his gray beard before glancing toward the miserable girl sprawled over the counter. “He’s right,” he said with a grin. “What’s all this about anyway? I don’t think we’ve seen you this depressed since we finally allowed you to open that underground clinic of yours and your Devil Fruit turned out to be useful.”

Yara grimaced in disgust and lifted her face from the counter. The way they talked about her made it sound as though she were some eternally sulking crybaby. “They underpaid me,” she hissed irritably, throwing her hands into the air. “It’s always these damn pirates.”

More specifically, that damn Marco. She had been so unsettled and thrown off balance by his ridiculous behavior that she had completely overlooked one very important detail. That bastard never actually told the idiot he sent for the money the exact amount they owed her.

Yara clenched her fists furiously as the humiliation replayed itself in her head. Maybe she should have just said the number out loud instead of handing him that stupid piece of paper. Or maybe he had done it deliberately from the very beginning.

In truth, the second option sounded far more believable. He hadn’t even bothered counting the money in the bag before tossing it at her.

“They owed me a hundred and twenty million beli,” she growled bitterly. “One hundred and twenty. That’s practically the price of an entire Devil Fruit on the black market. That feathered bastard didn’t even pay me half of it.”

His pops should be ashamed of him. She crossed her arms tightly. Apparently, alongside being a liar and a pretender, Marco was also a professional scam artist and swindler.

Shakky let out a soft laugh before walking up behind her. She gently ran a hand over Yara’s messy hair in a calm, soothing gesture. “Now, now, don’t work yourself up so much,” she murmured. “You could always just track them down and beat every last beli out of them.”

Luka looked immediately fascinated by the idea. His eyes lit up at once. With a victorious grin, he threw the rest of his cards onto the table, catching poor Rayleigh completely off guard, before springing up in his chair and raising his hand high into the air. “I can help you with that!”

Yara slowly turned her head from Shakky toward the overexcited ten-year-old. For several long seconds she simply stared at his eager face before answering in a flat, thoughtful tone. “You definitely should not do that, Luka.”

The boy blinked, and his raised hand slowly lowered. “Why?”

Well, probably because you’re ten years old, tiny, and trying to pick a fight with Whitebeard’s right-hand man.

Instead of saying that aloud, Yara merely snorted.“Because you’re about the size of three apples stacked together,” she replied dryly. “You shouldn’t be getting into fights at all. I already told you, only complete idiots do that.”

Technically, that wasn’t true. Shakky did it. Yara herself did it constantly. But that really wasn’t the point.

After hearing her answer, Luka perceptibly deflated. He slumped back in his chair and started gloomily gathering the scattered cards off the table while muttering something bitter under his breath about how unfair adults were.

At that moment, Rayleigh seemed to perk up considerably. A strange glint flashed through his eyes, as though the old pirate had suddenly realized something very important. He leaned slightly forward over the table. “And just which ‘feathered’ bastard are we talking about here?” he asked casually.

For some reason, Yara faltered. She blinked in confusion and glanced between the old man and Shakky. “Uh… what exactly are you talking about?”

Rayleigh caught her gaze, and his expression turned unusually serious for someone who had been losing cards to a ten-year-old seconds earlier.

What was this supposed to be, some kind of detective interrogation?

“There was some news recently,” he said slowly, “about a large shootout involving the Whitebeard Pirates near Fish-Man Island.”

That immediately caught Yara’s attention. She visibly straightened, momentarily forgetting everything else.

So that’s what it was.

That explained Izou’s condition. The rookies flooding the seas lately really had started causing far more troubles because of all the recent tensions spreading through the world. She had already opened her mouth, ready to bombard Rayleigh with questions about the incident, when the old pirate quickly interrupted her with another question. “So you actually met Whitebeard’s brat, then?”

Yara honestly had no idea what he was talking about anymore. Why had Rayleigh suddenly become so suspicious and tense? Was it really because the first division commander of an Emperor had briefly appeared on Sabaody? That felt oddly hypocritical coming from a former member of Roger’s crew. “Well… yeah?” she answered cautiously, leaning back a little. “Something like that. He came to pick up one of his crew members.”

Standing nearby, Shakky seemed to piece several things together at once. A sly grin spread across her lips, and she gave a quiet whistle. “My, my, dear,” she teased playfully, “I never would’ve guessed you liked older men. And with such… specific taste, too.”

What?

Older men? What did her taste in men have to do with anything right now? Weren’t they talking about—

Rayleigh suddenly pushed himself up from the table with startling decisiveness.

Oh.

So that was what Shakky meant.

In the blink of an eye, he was already beside Yara. Without the slightest ceremony, he grabbed her firmly by the elbow and started dragging her toward the back exit leading into the courtyard. “Come with me,” he said flatly, having completely lost his usual laid-back demeanor. “We need to have a very serious conversation.”

Fuck.

Yara mentally screamed in despair while unsuccessfully trying to yank her arm free from his grip. She twisted around desperately, searching for some kind of rescue, but Shakky merely waved cheerfully at her with an infuriatingly delighted smile stretched across her face.

Devil woman.

She was an actual devil.

Her long, tedious conversation with Rayleigh had accomplished absolutely nothing worthwhile.

Honestly, Yara never could have imagined that she, a grown woman with enough blood and disasters behind her to fill several lifetimes, would once again find herself being lectured like a reckless little girl about the dangers of New World pirates, the stupidity of associating with them, and the horrifying consequences that inevitably followed anyone foolish enough to get involved.

Thankfully, for the sake of her rapidly deteriorating nervous system, Rayleigh at least had the mercy not to continue the absurd topic Shakky had started. He never once brought up romance, attraction, or anything equally humiliating involving Marco. For that alone, Yara was genuinely grateful. Had the old pirate decided to entertain that particular discussion, she was fairly certain she would have thrown herself directly into the sea out of shame.

Still, after enduring that entire exhausting nightmare involving the Whitebeard Pirates — may all of them collectively burst into flames — and surviving Rayleigh’s suffocating warnings afterward, she had finally managed to escape Sabaody for a while and travel to the North Blue instead.

Smuggling herself across the Red Line through Shakky’s underworld connections was admittedly convenient, familiar, and incredibly effective, but every now and then Yara desperately needed distance from the Grand Line itself. She needed different air. Different streets. Different faces. Preferably faces belonging to people who had never heard the words “Angel of Mercy” whispered in a taverns.

Although, admittedly, traveling outside the Grand Line tended to attract an irritating amount of attention in its own right. Then again, she doubted anything could truly worsen the reputation she already possessed. Once people started attaching dramatic titles to your existence, things had usually gone too far to salvage anyway.

A pity indeed.

Besides, she had legitimate reasons for making the trip. Her stockpile of specialized medical compounds and rare chemical reagents had been running dangerously low lately. Fortunately, she didn’t need massive quantities. In everyday practice, she relied on the Kesshi-Kesshi no Mi far more often than conventional treatment methods. Most of the violent idiots who stumbled bleeding into her underground clinic didn’t deserve the effort of meticulous surgery in the first place.

As far as Yara was concerned, if she treated those bastards too gently, they would only continue returning with fresh stab wounds and shattered ribs every other week. Fear, pain, and astronomical medical bills were excellent preventative medicine.

Still, even she required certain basics. Proper anesthetics. Disinfectants. Stabilizing solutions. Pain suppressants. Things that, unlike Devil Fruits and illegal surgical tools, could thankfully still be purchased in an ordinary legal pharmacy without much trouble.

After leaving her rented little boat secured at the harbor, Yara made her way through the city’s crowded торговые streets without incident. The North Blue felt different from Sabaody in subtle but noticeable ways. The air lacked that constant salty humidity clinging to the archipelago, and the atmosphere felt ca more grounded./p>

Eventually she reached the central pharmacy near the market district and stepped inside.

The familiar medicinal scent immediately wrapped around her senses — dried herbs, crushed roots, sharp alcohol, old paper packaging, medicinal oils. It was strangely comforting, and brought back memories of her past life.

Maybe she still missed it.

Yara quietly exhaled through her nose and wandered deeper between the shelves, absentmindedly adjusting the strap of her bag against her shoulder. Glass cabinets stretched along the walls, packed with meticulously labeled bottles, powders, tinctures, and extracts organized in perfect rows. The sight alone eased some invisible tension sitting inside her chest.

Slowly, without rushing, she scanned the labels behind the glass display until her eyes finally caught the exact extract she had been searching for. “There you are,” she murmured under her breath with visible relief.

A small dark jar sat near the back of the shelf, almost hidden between several larger bottles. Perfect.

Exactly what she needed.

Yara stepped closer to the counter and turned toward the pharmacist. “Excuse me,” she began politely, already raising a hand toward the display case, “could you please give me that medi—”

“Excuse me, I’d like that medicine.”

The unfamiliar male voice overlapped hers at the exact same moment.

Deep, calm, and far too close.

The words drifted directly beside her ear in a maddeningly relaxed tone that immediately sent goosebumps crawling up her spine.

Yara froze mid-sentence, blinking once in disbelief before slowly turning her head toward the stranger standing beside her.

The man who had just interrupted her so casually turned toward her at the exact same moment.

Her mismatched eyes met another pair — cold, sharp, unsettlingly perceptive gray eyes.

For a long pause, her gaze froze. It drifted across his face, and something inside her stomach dropped violently. The air in the pharmacy suddenly felt far too thin.

Well, fuck.

The slightly tanned skin. The perpetually scowling expression. And, far more importantly, that stupidly recognizable spotted fur hat sitting on his head like some kind of curse from the heavens specifically designed to ruin her day.

It was Trafalgar Law.

The future Surgeon of Death.

Yara blinked in stunned disbelief, trying to process the situation fast enough for her brain to catch up with reality. Of all people. Seriously? Him? Here? She felt like he wasn’t supposed to be in this sea of all blues right now.

Meanwhile, while she stood frozen in temporary shock, Law calmly turned back toward the counter as though absolutely nothing unusual had happened. Without the slightest concern, he lazily lifted one long finger and pointed directly toward the precious bottle sitting behind the glass display.“I asked for it first,” he said flatly.

The sheer audacity in his tone instantly snapped Yara out of her stupor.

What did he just say?

Her head whipped toward him so fast it almost hurt, anger flaring alive inside her chest with terrifying speed. No. Absolutely not. First Marco on Sabaody, and now this arrogant little medical gremlin had decided to cross her path in the middle of some random North Blue town?

Maybe those psychos were working together to make her life a living hell.

“Yeah, but I need that medicine too,” Yara cut in sharply, stepping closer and fixing him with an openly hostile stare.

The young pharmacist behind the counter looked increasingly distressed as her eyes darted nervously between the two extremely suspicious-looking customers standing in front of her.

She forced out a weak, awkward smile before speaking in a careful, apologetic voice.“I-I’m very sorry… but lately that extract has become extremely difficult to obtain. Shipments have been delayed. The next batch probably won’t arrive for another few weeks.”

Oh, come on. Don’t tell her..

“Wait,” Yara interrupted slowly, a dreadful feeling already forming in her chest. “You mean that bottle is the last one?”

The pharmacist gave her a guilty nod.

Fuck this shit.

Without wasting another second arguing, Law reached easily into his pocket and pulled out a handful of beli. The coins clattered loudly across the wooden counter as he dropped them down with lazy indifference. With his other hand, he grabbed the medicine and turned away. “Keep the change,” he said.

And then he simply started walking toward the exit.

Yara stood motionless for exactly one heartbeat.

Her eyes flicked toward the spinning coins still rattling softly against the countertop, then toward the now-empty shelf where her salvation had been sitting moments earlier.

Was he serious?

Her jaw tightened. That loser didn’t even bother to look back. Damn it.

She was definitely going to regret this. But the idea of wasting hours searching through unfamiliar pharmacies — and staying in the North Blue longer than necessary — annoyed her even more.

Before common sense could interfere, Yara lunged forward.

In only a few quick strides she caught up to Trafalgar near the entrance and grabbed the back of his hoodie without warning, yanking him sharply backward. “Sorry,” she snapped furiously at his back, “but I was the one who asked for it first!”

Caught completely off guard by both the sudden force and the unbelievable audacity of the gesture, Law nearly lost his balance. He spun around immediately, gray eyes widening in genuine confusion. For a moment, his expression looked almost alarmed, as though his brain could not process what kind of lunatic had just attacked him.

After a little time, however, he recovered.

And then his eyes narrowed dangerously. “Take your hands off me,” he hissed irritably.

“Oh, I will,” Yara replied without the slightest trace of guilt, still firmly clutching the fabric of his hoodie, “just as soon as you hand over what’s rightfully mine.”

Law sighed and rolled his eyes, as if this was exactly what he didn’t need today. “I already paid for it,” he said coldly. “It’s mine.”

Yara mirrored the gesture, rolling her own eyes. This brat was younger than her. If he wanted to intimidate her, he would need to try much harder than glaring dramatically. “Listen,” she said through clenched teeth, “I can buy it off you right now. I’ll pay full price. More than full price, even.”

She truly did not want to waste valuable time wandering around an unfamiliar city searching for another supplier. Sadly, Trafalgar Law — who at this stage of his life was still very much an insufferably stubborn asshole — clearly had no intention of cooperating.

He merely gave a dismissive, arrogant scoff that communicated his answer perfectly well.

No deal.

Yeah, there was no way Corra raised him like this.

Realizing that civilized negotiation with this person was fundamentally impossible, Yara decided to rely on a far more reliable method instead.

She suddenly let out a long, theatrical sigh. Her shoulders relaxed. Her fingers loosened around his hoodie as she stepped back, looking thoroughly defeated. “Fine, fine,” she said with exaggerated resignation, putting on the most disappointed expression she could manage. “Perhaps I overreacted. There’s really nothing anyone can do about a terrible market shortage.”

Then she calmly walked past him toward the exit as though she had genuinely given up.

For one brief second, Law lowered his guard.

That strange woman had apparently decided to leave him alone after all.

Unlucky for him, that exact moment of carelessness was all Yara needed.

As she passed beside him, her fingers slipped smoothly and invisibly into the pocket of his hoodie with the effortless precision of a practiced thief.

It seemed her time as a former port rat had its perks after all.

Another second later, the small dark bottle was already resting securely in her palm.

And who would’ve thought it would be this easy?

Yara exited the pharmacy without breaking stride, turned quickly around the nearest corner, and only then allowed herself a deeply satisfied grin as she slipped the stolen medicine neatly inside her coat.

Taking it from him had been about as easy as stealing candy from a child.

Now, all she could do was sincerely hope that Law had not remembered her at all.

****

As she walked toward the pier, Yara found herself arriving at the verdict that such an outcome was more than plausible.

She had been wearing a bulky travel cloak with a deep hood that concealed her distinctive red hair and softened the sharpness of her facial features.

In a crowded port or a dim shop like that, she likely would not have stood out in any meaningful way. And really, what reason would a future great pirate of the New World possibly have to remember a random incident in some backwater pharmacy? He must already have a head full of far more important matters—plans unfolding, alliances forming, enemies being marked, and the relentless building of his reputation across the seas.

If anything, at this very moment he was probably out there earning that name, captaining the Heart Pirates and carving his path to the Grand Line. Men like him did not waste mental space on petty grievances. He was not the type to hold a grudge over a single, unfortunate vial of medicine.

…Right?

Meanwhile, aboard the Polar Tang, the Heart Pirates’ submarine, Trafalgar Law was already on his third meticulous search of his hoodie pockets, his fingers meeting nothing but empty fabric.

Just gone.

A sharp click of his tongue cut through the cabin as he finally gave up on politeness and called for Shachi and Penguin.

Within a minute, both of them pushed their way inside.

“What’s wrong, Captain?” Penguin asked, adjusting the brim of his cap as he stepped in.

Law did not look up from the scattered contents of his desk. “Did either of you see the medicine I brought back from the island?”he asked flatly, holding up his fingers to indicate the approximate size and shape. “Small vial. Dark glass.”

Penguin scratched the back of his head, visibly confused. And when did Law even manage to buy the medicine? “No, I didn’t see anything like that.”

Both men turned in unison toward Shachi.

He shook his head just as vigorously, confirming he was equally clueless.“Nope, I didn’t even notice you carrying it, honestly.”

Law’s frown deepened. The situation was starting to grate on his nerves in a very real way. He was certain he hadn’t taken it out of his pocket.

Muttering something under his breath, Trafalgar crossed to the medical cabinet, then moved on to the desk drawers, continuing to curse under his breath as he tore through each compartment, trying to figure out where the hell the extract could have possibly disappeared to.

Penguin watched the increasingly chaotic search with a measured eye before adding, “It wasn’t in the cabin at all. We checked the instruments earlier. Captain... when exactly did you buy it?”

“An hour ago,” Law said through his teeth, tossing a scalpel down onto the table with a sharp clatter. “When we stopped in town to restock supplies.”

Standing just behind Penguin, Shachi leaned forward with sudden brightness, as if he’d solved a particularly simple puzzle. “Well, that makes it easy! Maybe you just left it at the counter?”

Law slowly turned his head. The look he gave him was nothing short of glacial. Temperature in the room seemed to drop with him.

“I did not leave it anywhere,” he said with dangerously even voice, “because there was a strange woman in that pharmacy who caused a scene, and—”

He paused.

Then his brows lifted.

Shit.

Law’s hand rose, pressing lightly against his mouth as his gaze drifted, no longer fully present in the room.

Memory, once dismissed as trivial, resurfaced with unwelcome precision.

The rapid tug on his hood. Her loud protests, then that sudden, almost theatrical apology that followed. The way she slipped past him with unnerving ease, brushing his shoulder as though the entire exchange had never truly mattered.

At the time, it had felt merely… annoying.

So she had actually outplayed him.

Damn it, he hadn’t realized he could be that reckless.

Once a former thief and pirate, he was being handled like a some naive tourist.

Law’s eyes narrowed, whatever idle displeasure had lingered in his expression vanished without a trace, leaving behind only a distant, unreadable stare behind.

Penguin hesitated. He really didn’t like the direction this was taking. “…Law? There was a strange woman and…?”

Shachi, completely oblivious to the growing pressure in the room, decided this was the perfect moment to joke.

He nudged Penguin lightly and laughed. “Captain, calling women strange just because they don’t want to talk to you is really not a good look.”

Law instantly cut him off without a word.

One single glance making it painfully obvious that his tolerance for such behavior was nonexistent.

Thankfully, It was enough to make Shachi stop mid-sentence and snap his mouth shut. He immediately raised both hands in surrender, silently asking for mercy. “Alright, alright, Cap… just a joke. Relax.”

Penguin couldn’t help it; a short snort slipped out before he managed to cover his mouth, shoulders trembling with suppressed laughter.

Bad.

Law turned away from them and fixed his gaze on the darkened glass of the porthole. “I did not call her strange because she refused to speak,” he said at last. “I called her strange because of her eyes.”

Well.. that sounded almost defensive. Penguin frowned slightly. Even for Law, that was unnecessarily specific. “Her eyes?”

Law slowly exhaled, as if replaying the memory left a sour taste. “They were different colors,” he said after a beat, though there was a faint hesitation in his tone. “At least… I think they were.”

“Oooh,” Shachi drawled, whistling softly. He still seemed somewhat out of it, judging by how entertaining he found the situation. “Captain’s got taste. You always notice that sort of thing when you’re getting robbed?”

In Penguin’s highly professional opinion, Shachi could probably benefit from having his mouth taped shut at times like this.

It was a shame there was no tape nearby; they were probably as good as fucked now.

Law gradually turned back toward them. The change in atmosphere could be both seen and felt. The air itself seemed to stiffen, as though the room had forgotten how to breathe.

A little smile touched his lips. Not the kind born from amusement or genuine happiness. No, this one was worse.

It was the same smile he wore while cutting Marines apart.

“It seems,” he said calmly, “that the two of you have far too much free time.” With a soft metallic sound, Kikoku slid partially from its sheath. Not fully drawn, but enough for the faint edge of steel to catch the dim light and remind everyone exactly what kind of man stood in the center of the room. “Perhaps I should help you deal with that surplus of free time,” Law suggested in a voice flat as a scalpel laid on bone.

Yeah.. Shachi you asshole.

Chapter Text

“No discounts,” Yara said flatly, folding her arms across her chest. Lately, it felt as though she was forced to repeat those exact words more and more often.

Standing across from her was one of those particularly aggravating clients who seemed incapable of learning from experience. She had treated him before. More than once, sadly.

Still, he looked terrible.

Ordinarily, that might have earned a sliver of sympathy.

In his case, it did not.

The pirate let out a low, irritated growl, swaying slightly where he stood as the fever continued to sap what little strength he had left. Sweat glistened along his brow, and the skin around the wound had already taken on the sickly grey-green hue that usually preceded a particularly unpleasant death.

Nevertheless, the look he fixed on Yara remained as arrogant and demanding as ever. “I come to you every single damn time,” he snapped, his voice rough with exhaustion and frustration. “Surely it won’t kill you to lower the price once for a regular customer.”

The man belonged to a category of people Yara knew all too well.

Violent, entitled parasites who mistook kindness for weakness and generosity for obligation. If she lowered her price once, he would treat it as precedent. The next time, he would demand more. The time after that, even more still.

She merely arched an eyebrow before spreading her arms in an exaggerated gesture that encompassed the entire underground clinic. “That is the policy of this establishment,” she replied with thinly veiled mockery. “Besides, I don’t recall your repeated visits doing anything to reduce the likelihood of Marines storming through that door one day and dragging me off in chains.”

The statement was not even remotely exaggerated.

She possessed no legal protection whatsoever, and the continued existence of her little operation depended almost entirely on the reputations of two people who happened to be far more terrifying than any government official likely to come looking for her.

Every now and then she treated Marines, certainly, but most of them were deserters, smugglers, or officers trying to hide injuries they couldn't explain to their superiors, which meant they were of little use to her.

And considering that neither Shakky nor Rayleigh had ever behaved as though she owed them some endless debt of gratitude, the pirate’s entitled attitude only made him seem even more ridiculous.

For a moment the man stared at her in silence before a nasty grin slowly spread across his face. “Oh, Is that so?” he asked. “Then maybe I just won't come back here anymore.”

He spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor, narrowly missing her boots. A single drop landed only a few inches away. Disgusting.

Without another word, he spun on his heel and strode toward the exit. Finally.

Yara watched him leave with growing relief. The conversation had been exhausting, the man had been insufferable, and the prospect of never seeing him again sounded less like a threat and more like a gift.

Good riddance and don’t you ever come back.

She turned toward her worktable, already planning how she would disinfect the floor afterward when a sudden spike of alarm tore through her Observation Haki with such violence that every muscle in her body instantly locked up.

Shit, the warning came only a fraction of a second too late. Yara's eyes widened. Before she could properly react, a large hand closed around her throat and wrenched her off the ground with enough force to send a shockwave of pain through her entire body.

Her feet left the floor, and a strangled gasp escaped her lips as her fingers instinctively clawed at the pirate’s wrist. Panic surged through her chest. 

She tried to summon her Haki.

Nothing happened.

Her mind was a mess. Desperation tightened around her thoughts as surely as the fingers crushing her windpipe.

No matter how much stronger she got, fear still interfered with her control. Her Haki had always been unreliable. Sometimes it responded, sometimes it didn't and refused to cooperate at all. The more frightened she became, the worse it got.

Unfortunately, this appeared to be one of those moments.

The pirate seemed to notice the growing panic in her eyes and rewarded it with a deeply unpleasant smile. “You know,” he drawled, visibly enjoying himself, “you’re a lot prettier when you keep your mouth shut.”

The words had barely left his mouth before he hurled her across the room.

Yara crashed into the row of wooden cabinets lining the wall hard enough to send a burst of pain through her shoulder before collapsing onto the floor in a tangled heap. In those few seconds, she could do nothing except cough violently and struggle to drag air back into her burning lungs while the room swam unpleasantly around her.

Apparently satisfied with himself, the pirate dusted off his coat and headed for the door.

“Good luck, you worthless bitch,” he called over his shoulder.

Yara managed to force herself onto one elbow and lifted her head just enough to look at him. Her throat felt raw, every breath hurt, and she suspected there would be bruises around her neck by morning, but she still found enough strength to smile.

“I’ll make sure to wish you the same thing,” she rasped, “when you come crawling back here next time.”

The pirate answered with nothing more than a dismissive snort before stepping outside and slamming the door behind him.

The clinic fell silent.

For several moments Yara simply remained where she was, waiting for the dizziness to subside. Eventually she forced herself upright, crossed the room on unsteady legs, and slid the heavy bolt into place. The moment she heard the familiar metallic click of the lock settling home, whatever adrenaline had been keeping her moving finally abandoned her.

A violent tremor ran through her hands.

Then another.

Before long her entire body was shaking so badly that she could barely remain standing.

She leaned back against the door and slowly slid down to the floor, burying her face in her hands as the delayed terror finally caught up with her.

Years had passed since she first arrived in this world.

She had survived criminals, pirates, bounty hunters, and enough life-threatening situations that death should have claimed her by now.

She had seen injuries that would make ordinary people faint, treated patients who should have died long before reaching her operating table, and built a reputation frightening enough that most people thought twice before crossing her.

Yet none of that changed the simple truth she hated most.

No matter how much time slipped away, no matter how far she went, some part of her remained exactly the same.

She did not want to die.

Yara wanted to live.

Yara pushed open the door and stepped into Shakky’s bar, only to be greeted by an unfamiliar silence that seemed to ring through the room.

The place was completely empty.

No Rayleigh. No Shakky behind the counter. Not even Luka, whom she had fully expected to find somewhere nearby considering that he was usually either with her or lingering around the bar.

Frowning slightly, she let the door swing shut behind her and glanced around the room, trying to determine where everyone had disappeared to.

She never got the chance.

The moment she took another step forward, somebody suddenly leaned in from behind and blew directly into her ear.

A prickling sensation raced down her spine.

For one horrifying beat her heart practically stopped before dropping straight into her stomach.

Damn it, her Observation Haki had apparently decided to abandon her again.

Yara nearly jumped out of her skin. A startled yelp almost escaped her throat before she managed to swallow it, and she immediately clapped a hand over the offended ear while spinning around, fully prepared to punch whoever had decided this was an acceptable joke.

Instead, she found herself staring directly at Shakky.

The older woman merely covered her mouth and laughed softly at Yara’s reaction. “Oh, honestly,” she purred, strolling past her as though nothing unusual had happened. “There’s no need to look so frightened. I’m not going to eat you.”

Yara exhaled heavily and pressed a hand against her chest in a futile attempt to calm her pulse. “You scared me.”

Shakky settled onto her usual stool behind the counter before resting her cheek against her palm and regarding Yara with exaggerated offense. “Have I become so old that my mere presence inspires terror now?”

Yara stared at her for a while. Was she serious? Because if anything, Shakky looked infuriatingly good for her age.

Not just good. Stunning. “As always,” Yara admitted with a reluctant sigh, “you look beautiful as always.”

The compliment seemed genuine enough to satisfy her, a quiet laugh escaped Shakky as Yara approached the counter and dropped onto the stool beside her.

“You flatter me.”

The amusement lingered for only a moment. As Shakky’s gaze drifted downward, her expression gradually changed. Her smile disappeared.

Yara knew what had caught her attention. The bruising itself was relatively minor, but the faint outline of fingers around her throat remained impossible to miss.

Shakky said nothing. She didn't need to, the look alone asked more than enough questions.

Yara averted her stare and focused very intently on the polished surface of the counter. Talking about what had happened was the last thing she wanted. “It’s nothing,” she muttered. “Really, just a little inconvenience.”

Shakky looked unconvinced. “Is it?”

The quiet emphasis behind those two words made Yara wince. Rolling her eyes, she forced a smile onto her face. “Isn’t acting overprotective supposed to be Rayleigh’s job? I thought you were on my side.”

A soft hum escaped Shakky as she reached for a cigarette. “I think you like hurting my feelings,” she said.

The statement was delivered so calmly that Yara almost believed her. Almost.

A moment later the lighter clicked, before Yara could react, a thick cloud of smoke was deliberately blown straight into her face.

She broke into a fit of coughing. “Hey!” God, she can’t stand secondhand smoke. “Didn't we agree you were going to stop doing that?” she asked, only to be interrupted by another fit of coughing.

Shakky closed her eyes and smiled serenely. “You're being punished for being foolish.”

Yara stared at her. She wondered whether Shakky was sincerity upset by how often she rejected concern whenever anyone showed it to her.

No, probably not.

That didn't sound like Shakky. She had always seemed far too practical and composed to become sentimental over something like that.

Looking down again, Yara rubbed the back of her neck. “I could've beaten the hell out of him if I wanted to, actually, ” she muttered. “It wasn't a big deal.”

Shakky leaned forward against the counter until Yara was forced to meet her eyes. “But you didn't.”

Yara looked away again. The corners of the room suddenly became extraordinarily interesting. “So?”

“So why didn't you?”

Yara let out an irritated breath. This persistence was beginning to border on obsession. “My haki is still unstable.”

For the first time, surprise crossed Shakky’s face. “Still?” she asked, curiosity creeping into her voice.

“Still.”

Yara finally turned back toward her and nodded. “I know I awakened it unusually early compared to most people, but it hasn't exactly improved since then. Some days it works perfectly. Other days it decides to disappear the moment I actually need it.”

Shakky slowly leaned back, mercifully restoring a comfortable amount of personal space. “Has Ray said anything about it?”

Yara's face twisted into a look of profound dissatisfaction. “Well, that's actually why I came here. I wanted to talk to him about it properly.”

She paused. “Where is he, anyway?”

“He went with Luka to the auction house again.”

The answer soured her mood.

Her eyebrows drew together. Again? Why was Luka going there so often? In the original timeline there wasn't supposed to be any Luka running around Sabaody in the first place. She wasn’t one hundred percent certain, of course, but no other option seemed to make much sense.

Every unnecessary interaction increased the possibility of unforeseen consequences, and while she trusted Rayleigh more than almost anyone else in the world, that didn't stop her imagination from supplying increasingly terrible possibilities.

“Don't you think Luka goes there a little too often?” she asked suspiciously.

Shakky took another slow drag from her cigarette. “I think that's a fair observation, dear.”

The answer only made Yara narrower her eyes.

There was something in Shakky’s expression. A tiny hint of amusement. The unmistakable look of someone who knew far more than she was willing to explain. Why did everything around these people have to be so absurdly complicated?

Feeling suddenly exhausted, Yara buried her face in her hands.

The gesture earned a chuckle from Shakky. “You worry too much.”

That, of course, was true. The problem was that Shakky had absolutely no idea why. Knowledge was a burden nobody else around her shared.

Knowing what the future contained made every decision heavier than it should have been.

From behind her hands, a miserable groan escaped. “Sometimes,” she admitted quietly, “I really want to leave this place.”

Shakky rested her cheek against her hand once more and regarded her with unusual warmth. “You know,” she said gently, “you could always go to sea.”

Yara slowly lowered her hands and stared at her.

What a ridiculous suggestion. As though becoming a pirate would somehow solve all her problems.

Yet, perhaps, somewhere deep inside the most carefully guarded corner of her cynical heart, a small voice reluctantly admitted that the idea had always tempted her.

Like everyone who found themselves in this vast world, she had dreamed of freedom.

Real freedom. The kind that stretched endlessly beyond the horizon.

The kind carried by the sea.

Even if it went completely against her nature, time spent here had started to wear at her, little by little pulling her into it.

Not quite what her work was meant to do to her, and yet here she was. The sea had a way of stealthily getting into people, dragging them in before they even noticed they were already knee-deep in it.

Or maybe Shakky was attempting to brainwash her again.

With former Empresses, one could never be fully certain. “Either way,” Yara said, pushing herself off the stool, “I need to find Rayleigh and Luka.”

She headed toward the door, her hand closed around the handle. Then she stopped.

Leaving like this suddenly felt wrong, as if she were an ungrateful coward. Whatever their flaws, however infuriating they could be, Rayleigh and Shakky had given her something she had never expected to find in this world.

A place where she belonged.

A home.

Slowly she turned around. The evening light filtering through the windows painted the bar in warm shades of gold, casting a gentle glow across Shakky’s silhouette.

“I…”

What she really wanted was to thank her, not merely for today's conversation, for everything.

For protection. For caring despite how often Yara pushed people away.

But in the end she only cleared her throat awkwardly. “I'll be back later.”

“..With the others,” she said, a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

For a moment Shakky looked amazed.

Then her expression softened into a smile so fond and sincere that it reached her eyes. “I'll be waiting, Yara.”

Yara nodded once.

Without trusting herself to say anything else, she stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind her.

As she walked away, the lingering uncertainty in her chest gradually dissolved into the humid evening air of Sabaody, leaving behind something reassuring.

When Yara finally reached the auction house, she arrived a moment too late, because chaos had already fully taken root in and around the building.

What she saw did not resemble a riot so much as a collapse of order itself. The enslaved exhibits that had once been neatly arranged for display were gone from their cages and platforms, perhaps not all of them, but enough that the entire structure of the auction had been shattered.

Some had clearly been moved, some scattered, and some simply vanished into the confusion, while the crowd of “noble” guests poured out through the doors in uncontrolled waves, furious and disoriented, their dignity reduced to nothing more than raised voices.

And yet, despite all of that noise and movement, Yara could not see either Luka or Rayleigh anywhere.

Not a single familiar figure surfaced in the shifting mass of bodies.

She sighed absently, congratulated herself for at least having the sense to wear a deep travel cloak. If she had come in her usual medical coat, she would likely have been detained within seconds, if not outright accused of involvement.

Instead, she kept to the shadows near the outer edge of the building, blending into the ambiguous category of “suspicious attendee,” which, in this particular place, seemed to apply to nearly everyone.

“Excuse me, but you will need to come with us for identity verification,” a flat voice said behind her.

Wonderful. So much for invisibility.

Yara lowered her head slightly, pulling the edge of her hood further down until it nearly shadowed her eyes. “On what grounds?” she asked.

“You are not listed among the official guests,” the Marine officer replied, narrowing his eyes as he stepped closer.

A quiet, disdainful breath slipped out of her before she could stop it.

“I hardly think the absence of a name on your paperwork constitutes sufficient grounds to escort me anywhere,” she said, folding her arms across her chest beneath the cloak, her voice noticeably annoyed. Apparently, the Marines are dumb as fuck when it comes to noble affairs.

The Marine’s hand shifted toward his rifle in a slow, warning motion.

Idiot, she thought. A very confident kind of idiot. Her fingers slid almost imperceptibly beneath the cloak. Yara was just about ready to punch him in the face.—

But a sharp whistle of air cut through the space above them.

Something, or rather someone, dropped from the roof with brutal speed and perfect aim.

BAM.

Yara’s head snapped upward in reflex, her eyes widening as a flash of bright blond hair and blue eyes tore through her field of vision. 

Luka.

The boy landed cleanly on both feet, perfectly balanced. He straightened, brushed dust from his shorts with casual nonchalance, and smiled.

Standing in front of Yara, he tilted his head, entirely unconcerned.

“Oh, Yara!” he called out brightly. “What are you doing here?”

Yara did not respond. She simply stared at him, mouth slightly parted in disbelief, before she lowered her eyes. The Marine officer lay sprawled on the ground at Luka’s feet, utterly motionless. A heavy bootprint sat squarely across his face, and whatever pride he had carried as a soldier appeared to have expired along with his consciousness.

Nearby Marines froze in collective shock, their expressions suspended between disbelief and delayed comprehension.

Before they could process it, before hands could even begin to reach for weapons, Yara moved.

She seized Luka’s wrist in a firm grip and pulled him backward, already pivoting on her heel as she broke into a sprint in the opposite direction.

“Hey! Stop them!” someone finally shouted, the command cracking belatedly into the air.

Behind them, the street erupted into motion.

“After them!”

“Block the exits!”

“Catch the boy first!”

Footsteps thundered across the stone as pursuit formed in disorganized waves, voices overlapping into a single rising roar of urgency.

Yara ran harder, weaving through debris and scattered crates, her jaw clenched tight as she forced her breathing into control. At the same time, she turned her head just enough to glare at Luka, expecting at least a trace of shame, hesitation, or even mild awareness of consequence.

Instead, she found only enthusiasm.

Luka was grinning. Wide, light, and unbothered, as if it had all been nothing more than a bit of mischief rather than stirred up trouble across the archipelago. 

“That was kind of fun, wasn't it?” he shouted over the wind, his voice carrying an almost proud excitement.

Yara considered several very uncharitable responses. Instead, she faced forward again, eyes scanning the twisting architecture for an exit route.

Yeah, she really should have cursed the day Luka started picking up more and more of Shakky’s habits.

Who would have thought he would turn into this?

“Why are you taking that brat with you?” Yara burst into the bar, still breathing like a stray dog after the chaotic sprint away from the Marines, her voice laced with frustration as she pointed an accusing finger straight at Luka, who was also trying to catch his breath.

Rayleigh, already seated comfortably at the counter as if nothing in the world had happened, lazily swirled a glass of whiskey between his fingers and raised a brow. “Well, I’ve actually been doing that for quite some time,” the old man replied without the slightest hint of concern, taking a small, unhurried sip.

Yara shot him a look of incredulity, then redirected it to Luka. 

The boy had already wandered past her and settled onto a nearby stool, completely unbothered, as though he hadn’t just been leaping across Marine heads moments earlier. That casual indifference irritated her far more than any of the uproar outside ever could.

“One day something is going to happen to him,” she said, turning her head toward Shakky in search of at least some form of support.

But Shakky only continued calmly wiping a glass, as if the conversation had nothing to do with her at all.

Realizing she wasn’t getting any support from the adults, Yara let out a breath, then turned back toward Luka. She stepped forward and, without ceremony, grabbed him by the collar, lifting him slightly off the stool.

“Come with me,” she said. “We need to have a very serious talk.”

Luka didn’t even try to resist. He simply tilted his head to look at her. “Yara, stop acting weird,” he said, wiping sweat from his face. “I’m tired.”

She hesitated and stopped. Between the two of them, he was the weird one, not Yara. Her fingers were still clenched tightly around his collar, and she stared down at him with open hostility, her gaze unyielding.

Luka blinked back at her in return, confused, his expression as clean and uncomplicated as ever.

And that was exactly the problem.

Since when did this infuriating child even matter to her?

He wasn’t under her care.

He wasn’t her responsibility. He wasn’t her brother, or anything remotely close to that.

He was just… someone who happened to be there. 

If no one else cared, then why did she worry about him so much?

Yara had already told herself she wouldn’t form close bonds again, and yet somehow, it seemed to have already happened.

Her grip loosened slowly. Indeed, what had gotten into her that morning?

Yara released his collar and took a step back, carefully resetting her expression into something neutral. “You’re right,” she said flatly. “Do whatever you want.”

Without another word, she turned toward the exit, already intent on leaving, because she desperately needed solitude, silence, and time to untangle the increasingly unstable mess in her own head.

But Shakky’s quiet, perceptive voice stopped her just before she could step outside. “Yara, wait a moment.”

Yara paused reluctantly and looked over her shoulder.

What now?

Shakky smiled gently and held out a small, neatly folded sealed note. “If you’re already going out for a walk,” she said with ease, “could you deliver this message for me?”

She narrowed her eyes slightly, studying the paper.

Knowing Shakky, it could mean absolutely anything, and never anything simple.

Still, such requests were not unusual. “Fine,” Yara sighed at last, taking the note and slipping it into her coat pocket.

Maybe, she did need to get away from this place for a while.

Yara had barely managed to reach the designated island where she was supposed to deliver that damned message. Getting off Sabaody unnoticed after the chaos she and Luca had left behind at the auction house had been, in all honesty, a task bordering on impossible, though she suspected most of the difficulty had been on her end rather than his. Still, with enough patience and a fair amount of practiced concealment (supposedly), she had eventually slipped away onto her boat and put the archipelago behind her.

The destination itself was a small but lively island not far from Sabaody, one that clearly tolerated all sorts of questionable clientele, judging by the assortment of rough-looking figures in the harbor.

Yara did not linger. She made her way to the contact point Shakky had indicated, a modest postal office tucked between warehouses and dockside stalls, unremarkable enough to be ignored by anyone who did not already know what it was.

Inside, she was greeted by a young woman behind the counter.

“How may I help you, miss?” the clerk asked politely, offering a smile.

Yara mirrored the expression with something equally mild and placed the sealed letter on the counter. “This needs to be sent,” she said.

The woman nodded as if she understood exactly what was expected of her, took the envelope, and set it aside. Without further explanation, Yara followed her, a small bag of beli in hand, which landed on the wood with a dull thud. Once the payment was made and everything delivered, there was nothing else left to do.

When she turned to leave and didn't manage more than two steps.

Her shoulder collided with something solid, and the impact forced her a half-step backward. It was not painful, but it was enough to break her balance for a moment. But Yara steadied herself, instinctively raising a hand to her nose as she exhaled through it.

“I apologi—”

The person she had run into leaned slightly forward, just enough for the edge of her hood to shift and reveal her face. Their eyes met.

For fuck's sake.

“Oh,” the man drawled, voice light and far too amused. “What a coincidence.”

Marco.

Yara grabbed the edge of her hood and tugged it down, concealing as much of her face as she could. “You must be mistaken,” she said a little too quickly,  forcing her voice down into a rougher, unfamiliar pitch.

Marco let out a laugh, not buying a single word of it. “You're about thirty seconds too late for that,” he said, unable to keep the teasing out of his voice. “I already heard your real voice when you were about to apologize.”

Yara bit the inside of her cheek in irritation. Naturally, this jerk had noticed something that trivial, and naturally, for reasons known only to himself, he remembered her voice.

But knowing that did not make her feel any better.

“You’re an idiot,” she muttered, looking away out of spite, as if the conversation had already stopped mattering to her.

“Excuse me?”

Yara didn't answer at first. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her gaze drifting over the street as she quietly measured the distance to the nearest exit and the fastest way to disappear.

Living near Rayleigh hadn’t done much for her manners, but it had done wonders for her survival instincts and, thankfully, made her very good at running away.

“Oh, did you hear something?” she said innocently, stepping back just enough to increase the distance between them. “It must have been the wind.” Yara tapped her fist into her palm, as if she weren’t shamelessly lying at all. “Anyway, it was a pleasure, truly, but I should probably go.”

She gave him a small wave in farewell and turned on her heel to leave.

“Bye.”

But before she could even take a step, a firm hand landed on her shoulder, stopping her completely and clearly signaling that this wasn’t over.

Shit. Fuck. Goddammit.

It wasn’t quite fear, or so she tried to believe, but the hold on her shoulder was tight, uncomfortable, and entirely too confident as if he had no intention of letting her go that easily. Her body reacted before she did. Every muscle tensed, bracing for something unpleasant, while her mind briefly ran through a list of outcomes she didn’t particularly like.

Yara didn’t turn around right away. Nope, she was fucking scared. Instead, she closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, preparing herself for whatever came next.

And then… she felt something unexpectedly gentle.

A fingertip touched her neck, featherlight and careful, right over the faint marks still remaining beneath her skin.

Her eyes flew open.

Marco was close, too close. Close enough that everything beyond him blurred for a moment, the world narrowing to the quiet focus in his face. His eyes were no longer on her face, it had moved lower, studying her neck.

Yara frowned, confusion breaking through her embarrassment. He’s not a creep, right? “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she asked, her voice sharp.

Marco stayed silent. His fingertip, barely touching her skin, pressed down without warning, just enough to make Yara almost hiss in protest.

If Marco weren’t Marco, she probably would’ve torn his arm off.

A heartbeat later, soft blue flames bloomed around him. Yara’s breath hitched and she panicked at the sight of it, but before she could strike him, or do something she would definitely regret, she felt it wasn’t fire at all.

There was no heat and no pain. Only an odd warmth remained, gentle and steady, easing into the bruised skin like sunlight.

This was nothing like her Devil Fruit, she thought. Yara could never heal herself or anyone in a way that felt this gentle, or this kind.

Once the warmth disappeared, Marco pulled his hand away and straightened, returning to his usual easy posture as though nothing out of the ordinary had taken place.

“Think of it as my repayment,” he said, with wink. “For fooling you the other time.”

Ah right, her money. Yara stood there for a moment longer, one hand resting lightly against her own neck as if checking for any sign of pain. Yeah, as expected, it was all fine. Her face didn't change and remained unreadable. Then she gave him a small, imperceptible nod, turned away without another comment, and walked out onto the street.

She felt like she wasn’t well.