Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece

Rayleigh (unsurprisingly) turns out to be right about the whole not needing to try to wake her up thing.

One jolt renders her wide awake. A second lands her on the floor at the foot of the bed, groaning as she nurses her bruised, aching body. From outside the cabin, she can hear the sounds of a storm terrorizing the boat, waves making the damned thing more than just a little unstable.

Her head is spinning as she shoves herself off of the ground, only for the floor to seemingly slip from beneath her feet. An obscenity in a foreign language rolls off her tongue as her knees hit the wood panels.

Despite her apparent dizziness, her mind no longer feels as hazy as it had been when she had first come to, and she glances around with a newfound sense of clarity. She didn't know if it was the work of a God or the work of the Devil, but somehow she had ended up sailing towards the Grand Line with Rayleigh. Her plan is shattered to pieces at this point, no doubt, but she could improvise.

She has to improvise.

At this resolve, she makes a second attempt at getting back onto her feet, this time succeeding at the endeavor. Now for getting out of the cabin.

Stumbling, she finds her way towards the door, a little scared of what she'd find when she'd opened it. Based on the sounds coming from the violent sea, and the loud raging of the tides, she knew it certainly wasn't going to be any good. (But fuck it, not like there's anywhere else she could go from there.)

Her breath hitching as she turns the nob, she walks outside just in time to see the pink octopus man jump off the side of the boat.

She barely knows him(and she is nowhere near as awake as she needed to be for this), but damn it, she has no intentions of watching some kid who couldn't have been older than ten essentially commit suicide, and so she runs, screaming out another string of curse words as she does so. Heavy rain batters her face as she launches herself towards the kid, arms outstretched because she had to have been able to grab onto at least one of his appendages. (For fuck's sake, the kid had six on his upper body alone!)

Ultimately, she fails, hindered by someone grabbing onto her own limbs.

"Let me go! He's gonna die!" she protests, trying to squirm out of his grasp.

"Kid, you're the one that's gonna die if you keep acting so recklessly," Rayleigh retorts. "Did you forget that Hatchi is a fishman, and can swim perfectly fine in rough waters? He's going ahead of us to tell Crocus to get ready to preform some of his medical magic."

She stops struggling to blush. "Oh."

He laughs in disbelief. "Go back inside the cabin, you'll be thrown off the boat if you stay out here."

She scrunches her nose up at the command, but nonetheless complies. She'd rather not end up going overboard on the ride up Reverse Mountain. As she steps back inside and shuts the door, another harsh lurch sends her flying, slamming her body against the opposite wall. She slides to the floor, her entire right side throbbing as she clutches onto the bedpost for dear life.

Despite the loudness of the storm, Rayleigh's disgruntled shouts make their way through the door, making her more alarmed than she even thought possible. She's stuck there though, unable to get up without being hurled back onto the floor by the boat's sporadic swaying.

She squeezes her eyes shut, and (for what seems like the millionth fucking time) prays to every divine being that's ever been known to exist. God, Kami, Shinigami—hell, she'd even pray to fucking Eros (because the god of love surely had to appreciate the fact that she really, really loved living) if it meant surviving the hellish ordeal.

An eternity passes before the violent storm subsides. After waiting for half an hour to go by without anyone coming in to get her, she reluctantly crawls out of the room, blinking owlishly at the carnage when she finally reaches the outside world. The majority of the boat is in shambles, (She's absolutely positive that the boat had had a mast the last time she saw it) but the sea was calm—soothing. The boat—or rather, the boat's remains—sways gently, but she has no time to relish its relaxing effect.

On the outside, she seems unperturbed.

On the inside, she is screaming, because how the fuck is she gonna get off the boat?

"Rayleigh-san?" she calls out, anxiety creeping up body.

Theories swirl around in her mind as she gets no response. Did he pass out from blood loss? Exhaustion? Had he been tossed into the waters on their way down Reverse Mountain? A panic attack looms over her, but before it can begin, a pink hand grabs onto the edge of the boat.

Hatchan hoists himself onto the boat, shaking his body to get rid of the excess water. (Inappropriately placed laughter threatens to bubble up as she compares his actions to that of a wet dog.) She stares at the boy she almost idiotically died for with amusement dancing in her eyes, no longer quite as terrified as she was a few moments before.

"Rayleigh-san went inside with Crocus-san, and took your nee-san too."

"I see." Her mouth is grimly set in a thin line before she gathers the courage to ask him. "Er, Hatchan-san, how do I get off of the boat?"

He gives her a look that makes her feel like she's the anomaly between the two of them(which is indeed true, but he didn't know it). "Can't you just jump off it?"

She falters. "No."

"Wow, humans really are weak. Do you want me to take you inside?" He sounds so naive that she brushes off the insult.

"Yes, please."

She isn't sure what she had expected—maybe for him to somehow lift the boat high enough for her to step off of it with ease—but she can't help but screech as he grabs her and throws her onto his back before taking a monster of a jump.

Four seconds. It takes four agonizing, excruciating seconds for them to land on the cove, and she is screaming her lungs out for every bit of it.

He throws her off of him, giving her an annoyed look before reaching up to caress his ears. "What was that for?" He frowns.

She sputters, and before she can put together a comprehensible sentence about everything wrong with what he just did, a new person joins the fray.

"You the kid that cauterized Rayleigh's gunshot wound?" an older man asks, crossing his arms as he stepped out of the lighthouse.

She takes a brief moment to study him, taking in his appearance. He looks almost exactly the same as he did in the original storyline, the only real difference being the fact that his hair hadn't been completely whitened yet. There's something off about the way that he carries himself—like he's pissed at something—but she brushes it off as anger towards something Rayleigh did.

All it takes is a slight nod of affirmation for her to find out that she is wholly correct.

"You should've let the idiot bleed out." Crocus rolls his eyes. "You wouldn't believe how many times I had to patch the irresponsible moron up. I just came outside to help you off the boat before I started on his surgery, but I guess you figured it out yourself. Is there anything you need before I go?"

She ponders over it for a moment. "Is the sister okay?"

"The girl Rayleigh dragged in with him? She'll be fine. I just finished bandaging her up, and I gave her a little sedative so she could sleep." He makes a move to go back inside, but stops. "You two, come inside with me."

"No thanks. I'm gonna go on a swim," Hatchi declines, jumping off of the ledge and nearly giving Nao another heart attack.

She warily looks at the boat, knowing that there was no way for her to get back on it, and decides to take him up on his offer. "Okay."

She awkwardly walks towards him, limbs still shaking from both of the ludicrously terrifying experiences she had gone through. He waits for her to get to him, holding the lighthouse door open for her to walk inside. It's a modestly sized place—a little bare, but livable, though it didn't seem like he spent much time in there anyways. (Then again, if she were him, she'd think it'd be cooler to live in a whale's stomach too.)

"Where are they?"

He makes an upwards gesture. "Second floor."

Nao nods, making her way to the spiral staircase. Involuntarily, she gulps, eyeing how tall the steps seemed to be compared to her small stature. Noticing her hesitation, Crocus sighs and picks her up by the collar of her shirt, invoking a cry of outrage.

"I can get upstairs by myself!"

"Yeah, and both Rayleigh and your sister would've died of old age by the time you got up there."

She shuts up, scowling at the sharp-tongued man. "I'm not saying thank you."

"Never asked you to."

"Crocus, stop harassing the children," Rayleigh's voice reverberates throughout the second floor.

"Rayleigh, stop harassing me. I thought I got rid of you four years ago," Crocus retorts, opening the door to the aforementioned man's room and tossing Nao back down onto the ground.

She lands with a squeak, blushing as both men paused in their bickering to look at her.

"Aren't you a doctor? Shouldn't you be refraining from injuring kids?" Rayleigh chastises.

"Yes, I am a doctor, but you make me wish that I wasn't. Then I could accidentally let you bleed out." Crocus responds, not missing a beat.

Their arguing comes in a steady rhythm, making their long-running friendship all the more apparent. If her behind wasn't hurting so much from Crocus' manhandling, she might've cracked a smile at the reluctantly endearing bond they had. Instead, she keeps the stern frown on her face, continuing to radiate annoyance towards the doctor. If she had had the right instruments, she probably could've fixed up Rayleigh on her own.

Probably.

"So, when are you gonna put me under and get this bullet out of me?" Rayleigh asks in a tone that's far too calm to belong to a man who just nearly sailed for an entire day with a gaping wound. (Nao is convinced that all pirates are secretly suicidal.)

"Right now. Hold this to your face and breath in." Crocus tosses a rag at the injured man while he issues the command.

"Really?" Rayleigh raises an eyebrow at the stained thing.

Crocus sighs. "Yes. This isn't a hospital. I don't have any way to properly administer the anesthetic."

Nao scrunches her nose up in disapproval as Rayleigh raised the drenched cloth to his face. Now she's certain she could've provided a better medical service than this ragtag, impromptu surgery. At least she wouldn't just chloroform the guy and call it a job well done.

"Hey kid, can you stay and hand me the tools while I work on this impulsive moron?"

She perks up at this, eager to sit in on her first surgery in a long while. "Sure." She scurries over to where he stood, taking a stance next his seated figure.

He motions towards the tray of tools that she prayed were sanitary before starting. "Can you hand me the bottle of alcohol?" he requests, not bothering to look her way as he put gloves on his hands.

She falters when she sees that the bottle of alcohol is literally vodka. (But really, what else had she expected?) Begrudgingly, she hands it over, and he nods in approval.

"Scalpel."

She recognizes the tone he uses—the steady drawl of a seasoned surgeon doing 'just another' one his usual procedures—and relaxes. She can, at the very least, trust the guy to not accidentally kill her savior. Impulsively, she grabs the tool and hands it over with no hesitation, and when Crocus sees the instrument enter his range of vision so soon, he raises his eyebrow.

"You've done this before?" His voice betrays his curiosity. Apparently he hadn't expected for her to be so well versed in identifying medical utensils.

"You could say that," she confirms, albeit rather cryptically.

"Hm," he hums in approval.

Two hours pass by in that fashion, the two of them working quietly with the silence only being broken by a periodic demand for a different implement. At last, he asks for the needle, and begins suturing the wound. Yawning, she backs up to stretch out her body. Her spine gives out a series of cracks—the noise resounding throughout the room—and she winces slightly at the sound. She's not used to standing still for such a long period of time anymore.

"If you plan on heading out with Rayleigh, tell Shakky to give him a good beating for me," Crocus comments tiredly, wiping blood off his hands as he exits the room.

When she's sure that he's gone, she grabs the scalpel again, mesmerized as she twirls it in her hand. She misses the feel of these tools—the way her hands once used them so naturally as she had assisted in surgeries. Once, in what seemed like an eternity ago, they had called her a prodigy—a true genius in the operating room. Now she was just a dead whore's daughter who happened to know quite a bit about medicine.

"Kids shouldn't play with sharp objects." Rayleigh's slurred speech startles Nao, causing her to drop the instrument to the floor with a loud clang. "Then again, you're not a kid, are you?"

Her heart stops.

"What do you mean, Rayleigh-san?"

Dun dun dun! Nao's finally getting confronted, and by Rayleigh nonetheless! Ar you guys enjoying the story so far? I'm so excited to write out their confrontation next chapter. I promise it will be longer than this one.

Please review if you have the time! Reading your guys' feedback is honestly what keeps me going.

Have a wonderful day!