One Piece 1. An unfortunate chain of events

**Disclaimer:** One Piece doesn't belong to me and I obtain no monetary benefit from the publication of this story.

Before you start reading, there are several things I'd like to point out about this story:

1- Despite the amount of OCs in here, there is only one main OC character, and only one Canon x OC pairing, so don't worry about me starting to play matchmaker with the commanders because that won't happen.

2- This happens around half a year after Shanks returns from East Blue missing an arm and his hat, that means almost ten years before the start of the series, so no Ace, and no Haruta either. There's no particular reason for this, but I think she's barely a couple of years older than Ace, so she wouldn't be part of the crew at this point in time.

3- Though I don't want to write a Mary Sue, I'm not going to try to do an anti-Mary Sue either. The chances of a character with absolutely no Mary Sue characteristics are very slim, as even canon characters have them, but I'll try to keep them to a reasonable level. Please warn me if you see things getting out of hand.

4- Keep in mind we don't know much about the Whitebeard Pirates, as of most of the commanders we barely know the name and rank, and even the ones we know a little more (like Whitebeard and Marco) are characters we've mostly seen in what most likely were the hardest moments of their lives, so a good part of the characters' personalities in this story are a mix of what little we know about them, some generally accepted theories in the fandom and my own speculations.

5- Though I'm no novice when it comes to writing, it's been a while since I wrote a het pairing (as you'll notice if you enter my profile), and I also have a somewhat different vision on romance. This means that if you're looking for a story full of romantic drama and trouble for the couple then this is not your story. There will be drama, of course, but most of it won't be of a romantic nature.

6- All my chapters have a similar length and I try to follow a regular update schedule of one chapter per week, updating always the same day, in this case, Wednesday. If one week there isn't an update, don't freak out or write demanding I update the story: if I don't publish, it doesn't mean I'm dropping the story or anything, I probably have a good reason for the delay and I'll explain it the next week. It's not a common occurrence, but some times my migraines have me out for days or I have a lot of things to do for class (I'll most likely warn you beforehand if this is the case.)

7- English is NOT my first language, and even doing my best efforts and having a beta there will most likely be some weird things or expressions here. Please, tell me if you see any.

8- I have nothing against criticism, in fact I would appreciate it, the only thing I have a problem with is rudeness. So, as long as you're polite, I'd be glad to read any kind of comment.

These notes are long, I know. I'll usually post any future notes at the end of each chapter, to explain any of the theories behind something I write.

Story beta-readed by **Dearshul **:D

And, with nothing else to say here, I hope you enjoy my story :)

* * *

**Chapter 1: An unfortunate chain of events**

Psychology class was boring.

Well, technically all classes were boring, she didn't even have any art or language classes to look forward to as she did in high school, but having no interesting class didn't mean she couldn't complain about how utterly bored she was.

There was only so much distraction doodling on the paper margins could provide.

Of course, she understood the usefulness of knowing about psychology for a lawyer, she'd been told about it enough times that she didn't even doubt about taking the class, and though it was an interesting subject to know about, she could think of a thousand more interesting and far less tedious classes to take. Like history, now that would be great to study.

Still, if she was honest, this was still one of her most interesting and thrilling courses. And that just about defined how sad her studies were.

She turned the page, thinking that a banana with sunglasses and a bikini would look great next to her notes on classical conditioning, when she felt a shiver run down her back. Before she could turn around in an instinctive and useless gesture to find the source, her head became foggy and everything went black.

* * *

Marco the Phoenix had been a pirate for many years, and he had spent the majority of that time in the New World. As a result, he was used to seeing the strangest of things. That's why he was one of the few who didn't freak out when a vortex opened and threw out a bunch of people and objects, including tables and chairs.

It also helped that he had a good theory about the vortex's origin.

The day had been an average one up to that point: assigning chores, crewmates fighting or lazing around, some paperwork... Then they were attacked. That wasn't out of the ordinary either, as at least once every few months there was an overconfident and somewhat outstanding rookie pirate crew that challenged them.

In this case they weren't an especially strong one, though the captain did have an interesting devil fruit power. According to the man's boasting, he could alter reality, and that claim was confirmed by his constant change of the battlefield to try to turn the battle in his favor. From his position on the deck of the Moby Dick, Marco could see the immense potential of such ability, and he could also tell the man hadn't explored properly its possibilities. He didn't stand a chance against Pops, and that was proven easily, as with a haki charged punch using his devil fruit power as well, the strongest man in the world sent the other pirate captain tumbling into the ocean.

Under normal circumstances someone would have gone and fished the man out before he could drown, but this proved to be not normal circumstances: the pirate had tried to protect himself using his power, and it was where both abilities collided that a ripple through the air started, resulting in the aforementioned vortex appearing out of nowhere. The sight of over fifty people falling from a couple of feet high, accompanied by tables, chairs, bags, writing utensils and some strange square and rectangular devices was enough to disconcert even the Whitebeard Pirates, long used to the happenings of the New World, and they momentarily forgot about the fight and their opponents, from whom none remained conscious by now.

"What the fuck?" Was the first comment after what seemed like an eternity of silence.

With that, everybody started moving again. First of all, Jozu and Vista, the commanders nearest to the newcomers, approached them, and instantly confirmed all the people who had appeared were unconscious. The nurses, who had also been watching from the deck, came down to land, or what passed for land and started ordering the men around, telling them to move all the objects to another part of the beach and instructing them to turn the people around.

The fall had been short, and so aside from a girl with a head wound that was the first to be treated, there were only some sprained limbs.

It was around the time they had them all managed as the nurses instructed that someone noticed a very important fact that had gone overlooked until that point.

"Hey, they're almost all chicks!"

And with that, madness spread. The men who had been standing to the side, simply watching their crewmates work and making some comments approached, surrounding the unconscious people, most of them women and some men in their thirties with the exception of an older woman of about fifty and a couple of women in their thirties, and started talking all at once.

"Think she'd be nice? I mean, she doesn't look shy."

"Wow, this one's got big boobs."

Marco sighed.

Now, don't get things wrong. The Whitebeard Pirates weren't more perverted than any other pirate crew, which wasn't saying much if you think about it, and no one planned to abuse anybody or would be allowed to even if they wanted, but in a pirate crew where women were outnumbered fifty to one, the appearance of about forty women was bound to raise some attention. Especially because most of the men in the crew had their sexual needs limited to when they landed in an island, as most of the women in the crew were in somewhat of a stable relationship with a crewmember, as could be expected when they had around two thousand men to choose from, or had sexual relationships with one or two different men. If Marco wasn't mistaken, the one who slept regularly with the most men was a nurse called Patty, who had those relationships with four different men right now.

That left a lot of sexually frustrated pirates. Marco included.

Seeing that the comments and wishful thinking would last for a while still, the first division commander finally jumped down from the deck and headed for his captain, who was currently sitting on a huge boulder to the side, watching his men.

"What should we do?" Marco asked once he got nearer, and leaned his back against the rock to watch his brothers, who now were being ushered away by annoyed nurses.

"Wait for them to wake up, I guess. Never had people appear on me before." Whitebeard said, and Marco could tell he found all this very amusing.

They didn't have to wait long, as almost the moment the huge man finished his sentence there came a yell from the middle of the patients.

"Oi, she's waking!" One of the men who had been employed to help yelled.

Everybody turned to look in that direction and watched with baited breath and full of curiosity as a slim, relatively tall girl, of maybe 5'7'', dressed in blue shorts, a short sleeved pink t-shirt and blue sandals regained consciousness. She blinked confusedly for a moment, took in the scruffy man leaning eagerly over her and screamed.

* * *

In hindsight, Marco thought, that the whole crew had burst out laughing at the girl's reaction hadn't been the best course of action, but it had been priceless. Right when she screamed, the pirate who caused it flinching at the shrill sound, she sat up, accidentally head-butting him on the nose before backing away from him as fast as she could while still sitting on the floor, until she collided against another of her companions. And of those companions, most were startled awake by her scream, and the few who didn't were soon woken up by someone else.

Right now, the calm beach where a battle had happened not even an hour ago was witness to a group of scared people huddled where they had been lying, looking around fearfully and confusedly at the hundreds of pirates surrounding them, be it standing, sitting on the sand or from the ships anchored nearby.

Right now, the silence on the beach was so dense Marco could hear people fidgeting uncomfortably.

Of course, he should have known who would break it.

"Hey, what's with those faces? We're not gonna eat you or anything." Thatch said in a not completely successful attempt at his usually cheerful voice.

It didn't exactly work as Thatch most likely had expected, as the people seemed as scared as before, but it had some effect.

"W-Who are you?" The oldest woman in the group asked.

Being pirates, they weren't known for their organization, even if they were one of the most structured pirate crews out at sea and so, at first several people answered at the same time, making it impossible to be understood what they said. Several attempts and glares later, it was finally only Izo who spoke, attracting the attention of their audience, who'd been looking around dazedly.

"We're the Whitebeard Pirates."

That was a statement they hadn't needed to do in years, at least not when there were so many of their most famous faces, captain included, present, and if the lack of recognition of said faces could be considered strange, the reaction to those words was even more disconcerting. Blank stares received Izo's words, followed by the members of the group looking at one another. Marco could even see, amongst the confusion, some faint smiles that seemed to be disbelieving, as strange as that was.

"Pirates?" A red-haired girl dressed in black asked.

People nodded in the crowd and voiced affirmations.

"How did we get to the beach?" A boy asked, and just like that, what must have been some sort of shock after the experience vanished, and all hell broke.

Had Marco not been a pirate used to ruckus and loud crowds he would have wondered how such a relatively small group of people could be so noisy, most of them asking questions at the same time and, in no time, yelling at each other. Some even seemed to forget their fear and stood up.

The pirate looked around, noticing his brothers were looking amusedly at the spectacle and, at some point and for no apparent reason, money started to change hands.

The argument, if it could be called that, continued, no intelligible words making it out of the circle. A group of pirates nearby were pointing to two girls, and Marco realized they were expecting for them to start to fight. Next to him, Whitebeard seemed about to start laughing.

Deciding he had had enough, and not at all in the mood to play babysitter, Marco moved away from the rock and walked nearer to the centre of the group, where he calmly inspired.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALL OF YOU!"

And just like that, silence was made again. The pirates obeyed out of fear of incite the rage of the first division commander and earning themselves some unsavory chores, and the strangers seemed to remember what situation they were in and shut up as well, moving closer together again despite having been on the verge of killing each other mere moments ago.

Now Pops did burst out laughing, but Marco ignored him and glared around.

"Good." He stopped his eyes on the newcomers. "Now, can you tell me how you got here?"

Again, several of them started talking at the same time and, even though Marco couldn't make out most of the words, he did get the impression that they didn't know.

Raising his hand was enough to silence them. Good, he didn't want to yell again.

This time, he pointed to a random person, a short blond girl who stood at the front.

"What were you doing before waking up here?"

She hesitated for a moment, and Marco got the impression she wanted to hide when all eyes turned to her, but answered:

"We were at class."

Marco looked at the mountain of desks and everything pilled on them.

"Guess that explains that."

When they turned around, he could see they hadn't noticed the objects before, as most of them seemed to want to go there but didn't dare to, the fear of being in a strange place surrounded by hundreds of pirates apparently stronger than their desire to sort their things.

"You'll go over them later. Now we're trying to discover how you got here." That earned their attention. "Did something strange happen at class?"

Again, they looked at one another before the same blond girl spoke timidly.

"I-I think I fainted. I felt a shiver, then dizzy and then… nothing…"

"Me too." The girl next to her said.

And everybody else nodded or said they had felt the same.

Hearing that confirmed to Marco that it was most likely what happened during the fight that brought them here. He turned around to look at his captain.

"What should we do?"

Several gasps and exclamations made it apparent none of the strangers had actually noticed Whitebeard before, and Marco had to smirk at their reactions. Out of the corner of his eye he saw them move closer together and look around more carefully.

The captain didn't take long to answer, he probably had already decided before the question.

"This seems to be our fault, right? We get them home."

Nodding, and deciding not to point out that technically it was his father's fault, Marco turned to the even more frightened people again.

"Where were you before appearing here?"

He saw what seemed to be relief, even hope in some cases, reflected on the eyes of many of them. The blond girl, who had by now become the group's spokesperson, answered:

"W-We were… at Louisiana State University."

Marco thought back to the maps stored in what most referred to jokingly as his office, many of them drawn by his own hand, and tried to find the location in them. He discarded any island in the New World almost immediately, and Paradise went right after. Maybe a city in one of the four blues? That could explain some things.

Looking around, Marco noticed that no one in the crew seemed to recognize the place's name, some asking their brothers if they did, and decided what to do next.

Centering again in the blond girl, he asked:

"Mind coming with me and pointing it on a map?"

Now she seemed even more scared and looked at her companions. They seemed divided between being as afraid as her or plainly confused, probably depending on how much they cared about her.

"You can come with some friends if you feel better." Marco suggested, trying to seem as non-threatening and reassuring as possible.

She looked far more relieved now and in no time Marco found himself accompanying a group of six people, the older woman who now he assumed was the teacher included, to the navigation room.

* * *

It had been a long time since Edward Newgate had been caught completely by surprise in the treacherous and unpredictable Grand Line, but having a bunch of people falling out from a vortex qualified as unexpected.

He didn't actively participate in what followed, instead letting his crew handle it. As expected, Marco took control before things became out of hand, and in no time he had all the information necessary to decide he would help. Thanks to his haki he could tell from the start that none of these people meant the slightest of threats, and it was for the same reason he knew their confusion and fear were genuine. They had been immensely shocked to see him, a bit too much if he was honest. He might have been one of the tallest humans alive, but the reactions had still been out of proportion.

He saw Marco come back from the Moby Dick with the small group, and noticed the shock in their faces was similar to when they first appeared. Even Marco seemed shocked, and that wasn't an easy fact to accomplish.

The women, for it were all women who went, no brave man to "protect" them, headed back to their companions, and the first division commander came straight to him.

The captain didn't have time to ask anything before Marco spoke.

"They're from another world."

Whitebeard blinked.

"What do you mean?"

Marco showed him a strange, very crudely drawn map with several huge bodies of land.

"I showed them some maps and they didn't recognize any of them, then I asked one of them to draw a map and she did this. All of them agreed this is the approximate shape of the world."

"Well, damn, that complicates things"

"By 'another world' you mean _another world_?" Thatch, who was nearby, asked, and as the attention of most pirates was on them, most of them heard and the others learned it through their nakama.

Seeing that the group of strangers became altered, Whitebeard guessed they had received the news as well.

"Now what?" Vista asked.

The captain didn't need to think for long, thinking obvious the next course of action.

"We open that hole again. Now, where's that idiot excuse of a captain?"

Everybody looked around, as if expecting to see said man lying around amongst his still unconscious and heavily wounded, if not dead, crew.

"Didn't he fall into the sea like an hour ago?" Thatch asked.

Silence fell over the beach.

"Fuck."

**To be continued**

* * *

Some short final notes:

- I love Marco's 'yoi', I really do, but I couldn't get it to fit the dialogues, so I had to delete it. I'm still trying to see if Oda follows any sort of rule with it or simply puts it randomly (the second seems more likely.)

- About the class' origin: I chose a random place for them to come from, I have a friend checking I don't write anything excessively absurd, but this won't play a relevant role in the story.

Remember that reviews are lovely and greatly appreciated :)


	2. Add bad luck to the mix

I have a couple of monstrously busy days ahead and I'm not sure if I'll be able to post Wednesday or tomorrow, so I've decided to update now that I have some free time between classes.

I'm really happy to see the good reception the first chapter had, I was worried when I published it :)

I forgot to say something very important in the first chapter's AN. I'm an idiot. Well, here we go: I have decided I don't want any character that knows about the One Piece world, but as the series is well known it would be strange if none of the fifty people knew it, so they come from a sad alternate universe of our world where One Piece doesn't exist.

* * *

**Chapter 2: Add bad luck to the mix**

Thatch regretted opening his mouth almost immediately. Now everybody was staring at him as if it was _his _fault that all of them had been too distracted by the strange people-spitting hole that appeared to realize someone had to get the other captain out of the water or he would die.

Well, saying everybody stared at him was a bit of an exaggeration: the crew stared at him, the newcomers seemed too confused to understand anything that was going on, though Thatch doubted they would understand much of it either way, as just by looking at them he got the feeling none of them had ever experienced any of the strange situations characteristic for the Grand Line.

"Oh, come on, we still have the fruit, right? We only have to find it."

And, just like that, almost half of the pirates standing on the sand dashed off to the ship, as if they were in a race to see who found the reappeared devil fruit before. Some of them, instead of heading for the Moby Dick, went to the smaller ships they had with them just in case the fruit appeared there. Thatch noticed that most people disappeared from the deck as well.

Shrugging, he sat down on a vacated rock.

"Someone's bound to find it."

"What about them?" Vista asked, signaling with a gesture of his head to the still huddled strangers who apparently came from a whole different word.

"I think the nurses should talk to them." Izo suggested, and everybody in hearing range turned to stare at him, confused as to why he said that.

No one protested when the cross-dresser snorted and looked at them as if they were idiots. He did that sometimes, and usually it meant they were missing some delicate point.

"Have you _looked _at them? They're terrified, I'm surprised no one has fainted. Talking to a group of women will be far easier for them than talking to any of us." And with that he gestured around, showing with his hands that he meant the whole group of pirates.

Thatch had to admit Izo was right: most of them were, at the very least, intimidating, and would do no good to those people's nerves. He almost chuckled at the thought of huge, serious Jozu trying to get that group to relax.

Everybody agreed with Izo, and Thatch took it upon himself to go tell the head nurse about the plan.

They needed the group to calm, as they would probably stay there for several hours still before everything was ready to send them home. Thatch could only imagine the fight that would break over the fruit if whoever found it didn't want to eat it.

This afternoon promised to be long.

* * *

Sarah had been the Moby Dick's head nurse for several years now, and she was proud of her ability to deal with many different types of patients. There were the tough men refusing to admit a wound hurt, the extremely tough men they had to hunt down just to treat their wounds, the ones who tried to appeal to a nurse's sympathy to get laid, the ones who tried to prolong their stay at the infirmary to avoid chores… But never, in all her years as a pirate nurse, had she dealt with scared patients. And now she had fifty of them, all looking lost, disconcerted and frail, in serious need of reassurance that they weren't about to be killed nor had they gone mad.

She didn't want to promise them they would go back home, as she didn't share Thatch's enthusiasm in their ability to recreate that strange event, so instead she instructed the girls to tell them they would do as much as they could to help.

The crew had a total of fifteen nurses, and she had separated them to go to the people who looked worse first.

Right now Sarah was with a short brown haired girl, maybe five foot tall, who was trying to convince her this was all just a strange dream, that she had fallen asleep during the boring class and would wake up to find the teacher glaring at her. Sarah was trying to convince her that this was no dream and, at the same time, trying not to trigger the same reaction than the previous girl had. That girl had been in shock, not really registering what was happening around her, and once Sarah managed to snap her out of it she had started yelling at her, as if it was the nurse's fault she was there, and began crying while she yelled, finally quieting down and snapping to Sarah to leave her alone when the woman tried to comfort her.

That girl now was sitting on the sand, curled in a ball and sobbing quietly.

* * *

It had been a while, maybe an hour, since the search for the devil fruit started, and for now they had only received reports of where it wasn't.

Marco sat on one of the rocks to the side of the group, far enough so he wouldn't disturb them but at a distance where he could observe them.

The nurses still hadn't been able to talk to all of them, spending a long time with each person and not obtaining very good results in most of the cases. The reaction Marco had seen the most, once a person seemed to finally understand what was going on, were tears. They burst out crying and the nurse with them hugged them, if the person allowed it, and comforted them until they were calmer, most of the times still sobbing, and then let them go to a quiet spot, probably to sort their thoughts a little. It didn't seem to matter the age or gender of the person, Marco could count with the fingers of one hand the people who hadn't cried after talking to one of them, and he still had fingers left.

Most of the people were sitting on the floor now, some still crying and some having sobered up a bit, most of them back in small groups of who probably were their friends; a boy and a girl that had to be a couple were hugging each other and muttering soft words; there was a girl still openly crying that the nurse with her had left with another girl who now hugged her, crying softly as well.

Marco had noticed, too, that the nurses were discreetly moving the people they talked to away from the ones still left, no doubt to keep a head count, and his eyes moved to that group. They were the ones who had been more calm or, perhaps would be better to say less distressed, but they still looked bad.

A tall, skinny girl with platinum blonde hair sat on a boulder, a lost and somewhat defeated look in her eyes, that looked decidedly dull; a lanky boy with cropped dark hair dressed in loose clothes shivered noticeably and bit the inside of one of his cheeks, no doubt trying to hold back tears if the moisture in his eyes was anything to go by; there was red-haired a girl dressed in black clothes and wearing tall and black wedge-heeled boots that looked decidedly uncomfortable, Marco remembered she had spoken before, who tried to look indifferent to the world around her, but the insecurity reflecting in her eyes gave her away; and the last one was a brown-haired average height girl, at least for what seemed to be the norm in that group where almost all of the girls were at least a head shorter than him, wearing a green dress and, Marco noticed, one of the few who wore heels, though hers were thicker than the ones most nurses had on, stood to the side staring at no particular place, probably lost in thought.

Marco was pulled from his contemplation when he saw Namur, who had been searching the Moby Dick with other members of the crew, approach.

The fishman looked very serious, and Marco knew he wouldn't like the news.

"There's no devil fruit anywhere where we had fruits stored. It's not in our ships."

Marco resisted the urge to sigh and instead looked to the ocean, more exactly to the scattered wood floating on it that had been their opponents' ship.

"You think it appeared there?"

"Maybe. I'll take a look just in case, but perhaps we're lucky and some of them," Namur pointed to the group, "has fruit."

Deciding it was most definitely worth a shot, Marco stood up and headed for the group, looking for a nurse that wasn't with someone.

He caught Patty before she could reach the group of still unattended people and stopped them by the arm.

"Could you ask them if anybody has fruit in their things?"

She blinked, then understood they hadn't had any luck and nodded, heading back to the bigger group of people.

Marco really hoped someone had a disgustingly tasting devil fruit in their bag.

* * *

Evelyne Rockbell had always considered herself a rather rational and calm person, especially for someone of her age and generation. Still, that hadn't been enough to prevent her being completely dumbfounded when this ordeal started.

She hadn't truly realized she was sitting in the middle of a beach until everybody around her, most of whom apparently had snapped out of it before she did, started yelling at each other, and then the tall blond guy with the weird hairstyle had yelled at them and took control of the situation much like a teacher would of a class of kindergarteners.

Though, looking around, she realized the guy wasn't as tall as she originally thought. Oh, he had at least a head on her, no doubt of that, but this place was full of people whose height surpassed by much what was considered humanly possible, and it was seeing these people what made her discard the absurd idea of having been kidnapped by a bunch of lunatics or something like that.

Not that her other ideas weren't absurd. Or what apparently was the truth, by the matter.

She hadn't believed to be dreaming, as several people around her affirmed, because, somehow, this didn't feel like a dream. She couldn't exactly explain the strange feeling she always got while dreaming, like having slight fog wrapped around her awareness but not quite that, all she could explain was that she didn't have that feeling now.

Still, she hadn't started to truly react to her surroundings until the group who had gone with the blond man came back, dumbstruck, and the blonde girl, Evelyne believed her name to be Christy or something like that, said that they were in another world.

Another. World.

Chaos broke at that statement.

Then a group of what looked like a porn movie version of nurses came and started to try and calm them. That no guy made any perverted comment proved how shocked they all were.

The pirates, as all that people had introduced themselves, seemed to be doing something, but she couldn't even imagine what it was and her mind was in no condition to pay attention to their comings and goings in an attempt to figure it out, so she didn't bother trying.

Instead, she looked around herself, and a completely stupid and uncalled for thought came to her mind: after reading all that fanfiction where a girl from the real world fell into Middle Earth, she should consider herself fortunate for the circumstances. Looking at these people's attires, and the fact that many of them carried guns even if the guns themselves worried and scared her, she guessed this world was a far cry more advanced than Tolkien's creation. With a bit of luck, there might even be toilets or an equivalent of them.

The nurse that spoke to her seemed relieved when Evelyne didn't yell at her as many of her classmates had done. The woman asked her if she was hurt, apparently there were some bruises and sprained wrists and ankles, disconcerted her by asking if she had carried any fruit on herself or her things, suggested she sat down and, being as Evelyne was the last person she had to talk to, told her now they would go in small groups to retrieve their things.

At that Evelyne looked around and paid closer attention to the desks and chairs piled nearby, as she had been to stunned before to really give them any mind, and there were bags and some loose objects on them, mostly notebooks and pens and the odd computer or phone. All of a sudden she felt the need to find her bag and everything she had carried that day, hoping her phone would work and allow her to ask for help. That hope disappeared as soon as it came: there was most likely no signal, and even if there was, she very much doubted it worked inter-dimensionally or whatever it was that separated her from home. Still, she felt the need to at least try.

Once all the nurses were finished, one of them, who seemed to be in charge of the group, announced the news to them, and the women had to practically stop a riot when all the students tried to get to their things at once. They calmed soon enough when some of the pirates came. No one seemed to want to mess with the at least twelve foot giant and his friends, all of them obviously in shape and almost all taller than the tallest of students, Evelyne noticed.

She was in the third group to go to the pile of objects, and found quite easily her black backpack, that luckily had been closed at class. The notebook where she had been doodling was a little harder to find, and there was no trace of the pen she had been using. She guessed it wasn't easy to find a pen amongst all that sand, not that she believed anyone had even known it existed.

Right now Evelyne was kneeling on the sand, her bag open before her while she meticulously took out and catalogued its contents, just as everybody around her was doing, most of them grouped with friends to compare what they had.

As she had thought, her phone had no signal, and no internet access either, she noted, and she placed it inside her bag again.

Her possessions, she noticed sadly, were practically useless. She had her ipod, her notebook full of doodles, a couple of pens she always had loose in one of the smaller pockets, her wallet full of useless cards and some also useless money, an empty pack of gum she wondered why she hadn't thrown away, a pack of tissues and a couple of pads she always carried just in case. For not having, she didn't even have the small bottle of water she usually carried, having left it in the dorm that morning because she was too lazy to refill it.

Looking around, she noticed most of her classmates carried books with them, half the class had computers that were now as useless as phones and, generally, almost everybody had more things than she did.

There were several people desperately trying to make their phones work, and others who looked as resigned as Evelyne herself felt.

She saw a girl burst into tears as her phone failed to make a call again; a guy who broke his when he threw it against a rock in frustration and then started cursing when he realized what he had done; another boy, for some reason, had pulled off the phone's cover and was fiddling with what was inside, perhaps hoping to make it work.

* * *

"There's no trace of the fruit." Marco announced to his captain and fellow commanders when it started to get dark.

Silence passed between them.

"What now?" Vista asked.

"We keep searching tomorrow." Whitebeard said, and looked at the group of people still sorting through their things. "But for now they need somewhere to sleep, and food."

"I think we'll have enough free beds between all the ships."

The Whitebeard Pirates right now possessed five ships, the Moby Dick and four slightly smaller and similar ships to it, all of them currently anchored near that beach. Each of the smaller ships gave residence to three divisions, and four stayed in the Moby Dick with the captain. All of them had some free rooms, ready to accept any new addition to their crew.

"I'll go see how many beds we have in each ship, I think it'd be best if we didn't separate them in too many groups." Izo said, looking at the group, that now seemed generally calmer than before, and walked away.

**To be continued**

* * *

Final notes:

- About breast sizes: I suppose I don't need to point out the obvious differences between OP women's breasts and real world women'. I did an estimate, seeing as Nami's and Robin's are big even for OP standards, and decided the average size, while in real life is around a B cup, would be an E cup in OP.

- I know there are many physical descriptions in here, I don't really like using them, but they are the best way, and almost the only one believable, for a character to describe others when he doesn't know anything about them.

Not much more for now, in the next chapter the plot will start moving.

Remember to leave a review, they make the author happy :)


	3. Arrangements

We're back to normal updates :)

Thank you for all the reviews, follows and favorites ^-^

* * *

**Chapter 3: Arrangements**

Evelyne thought she could jump in pure bliss right now. Most of her classmates were still apprehensive after having been divided in five smaller groups to stay one in each ship, she being in the group of twelve girls that went to the bigger one, but she didn't care much about that particular fact, as being five or fifty wouldn't make a difference if these people were to really hurt them. Which she really doubted right now. They had followed the three nurses that lived on that ship into an unoccupied cabin with twelve beds in it, a perfectly, _electrically_, illuminated room. Then, two of the women had left for a short while and came back carrying several bags and piles of fabric.

It was almost war when the head nurse, because now Evelyne was convinced the woman who looked around her fourties and gave all the orders was the head nurse, told them they were lending them some clothes so they would have something to change into. Evelyne almost laughed out loud when she heard a girl complain that the clothes would be loose on her, as all the nurses seemed to have a very generous bust. Now, Evelyne wasn't nearly as well endowed as them, or one of her classmates for that matter, but she did have bigger than usual breasts, and the idea of not having trouble for the clothes to fit her thrilled her.

Now every girl had a change of clothes and had been told where the girls' bathroom was, and that they could use anything in there as long as they didn't break it or make a mess of the place. When one of the girls asked, confused, why there was a girls' bathroom in a pirate ship, one of the nurses had answered that, pirate or not, no woman would want to share a bathroom with two hundred men.

With the announcement that they would be back in half an hour to take them to dinner, the nurses left.

Evelyne sat on one of the corner beds and placed the clothes in the top drawer of the nightstand next to it and dropped her bag on top of it, stretching on the bed and listening to the other girls.

There was movement as they settled each in one bed, but no real conversations started. No one seemed in the mood for it.

* * *

Marco took advantage of the unusual calm during dinner to observe the newcomers. Usually Thatch would eat in the Moby Dick, as did many other of their nakama who slept in other ships, but today he had decided to be a responsible commander and stay on his own ship to watch over the group assigned to it, complaining all the while that it was the group of boys and not one of the girls' ones.

Personally, Marco didn't think it would make any difference. The girls staying at the Moby Dick were all sitting at the end of a table, silent and barely eating, most of them simply picking distractedly on their food. Not that Marco could blame them, as he couldn't even imagine what they were going through right now, but it was still a very depressing sight to witness, and it made all the usually boisterous pirates act in a much more controlled and quiet way than usual.

There was still conversation, but laughter was heard much less than any other night, and no fight, even a mock one, had broken over anything.

It was a strange atmosphere and, though he was grateful for the respite from Thatch's nonsense, Marco wanted it to go back to normal.

* * *

Marco walked across the Moby Dick's deck, too many things running through his head to allow him to sleep, and stopped in his tracks when he realized there was someone else there. Finding someone on deck at night wasn't strange, but it was usually a group of men drinking, playing on something or both things, or the ones on guard duty, though those were up in the crow's nest. What was strange was to find someone lying on one of the hammocks on deck, alone and staring at the sky.

Even more if that person was a girl and, Marco realized, one of the newcomers at that. He had noticed her before, too, she was one of the girls who had been last to talk to the nurses, the one with the green dress and heels. Said heels were now on the floor beside the hammock.

"What are you doing here?"

The girl jumped in place and sat up, and Marco was sure that, had she been standing or sitting on a chair, she would have fallen to the floor.

"N-Nothing." She said, taking a hand to her chest. Her voice trembled slightly and her eyes were open like saucers. She looked like a scared fish.

Sighing, Marco walked closer and sat on one of the hammocks next to her, her eyes following his every movement. He guessed he would be less intimidating sitting down than towering over her.

"Can't sleep?"

She nodded and then hesitated a moment, turning her head to look to one side, before saying:

"The air's kinda depressing at the cabin, almost all the girls are crying. I wanted to get out."

"And you don't?" Marco asked, remembering she hadn't been crying even back at the beach.

"No, not yet. I think… Well, I think I haven't processed this yet. My brain seems to know what's going on, but my heart… I guess I'll cry later."

They stayed silent for several minutes, her looking up at the stars, still sitting up, and Marco looking at her, wondering at how there was no way for her appearance to tell that she was from a different world, as the only differences he had noticed could only be seen with the group as a whole, but were still too slight to think anything was off if he hadn't seen them fall out of the vortex.

The most notable difference was in height: not only their average height was shorter than anywhere he could think of, but the tallest boy in the group was barely as tall as Marco himself, while in this world one would expect to see at least five people of over eight feet in a group that size.

Another difference, one several members of the crew had noticed, once the shock had passed, and had been disappointed about, was that the women's breasts were considerably smaller than average on almost all of them, some barely even noticeable. Marco had noticed two exceptions so far, as all other girls had small breasts in relation to their constitution: the first exception was the girl that, while unconscious, had caught the attention of some of his crewmates, her breasts of a size that was considered big here; and the other exception was the girl sitting in front of him, whose size was pretty much average.

"Can I ask you something?" The girl asked, pulling him out of his contemplation.

"Sure."

"You guys said you're pirates, but you've been very nice to us." She started, then stopped for a moment, bit her lower lip nervously and continued. "Back home there aren't many pirates left, but they would've probably left us to die or worse. Are all pirates around here like you?"

"No, most pirate crews would have killed or sold you or who knows what." Marco said, leaving the more gruesome options out though the girl looked surprised when he said 'sold'. "We're somewhat an exception, though there are other crews that would've helped you too."

"Wait, _sold_?" She asked when he had finished, surprised still. "As in _slavery-kind-of-sold?"_

Marco nodded.

"Officially, slavery was abolished years ago, but there is a place where the government turns a blind eye on it."

"Great." She muttered. "I might've preferred Middle Earth after all."

"What's Middle Earth?"

"It's a fictional world that's considered a classic amongst fictional worlds, and many people write stories about people appearing there from our world, mostly girls. Though it doesn't have electricity nor hot water in most places, or pads and tampons, or nice clothes, the society kinda discriminates women..." She trailed off. "I think I'll risk the slavers."

Marco had to chuckle at the seriousness with which the girl said it, as if she had actually the option to choose in which world to fall.

Visibly more relaxed, this time when they stopped talking she leaned back again until she was stretched on the hammock. Deciding to stay outside a bit longer, Marco imitated her and laid back as well, looking at the dark night sky littered in shining stars and an almost full moon.

"It's an amazing sight..." The girl breathed.

"The stars?"

"Yeah. It's so different to the sky back home. I guess, seeing this is like a confirmation that I'm really in a different world. It's overwhelming."

They stayed in silence for a bit longer, and then she sat up again, stretching her arms over her head.

"I should probably go to bed. Hope they're asleep already."

She bent over and looked almost blindly for her shoes, grabbing one by one of its straps and making the other fall to the side when she lifted it.

Marco sat up as well and watched her put the first shoe on, then went to grab the other, hitting it accidentally and sending it rolling a small distance across the floor. He smiled, amused.

"Shit." She moved to kneel on the floor and finally finding her shoe, which she put on.

"Mind me asking a question?"

She turned to look at him, her hands still tying the heeled sandal in place.

"Yeah?"

"What's your name?"

She smiled slightly, the first non-hysterical smile he had seen on any of them.

"I'm Evelyne. You?"

"Marco."

She stood up.

"Well, Marco, nice to meet you. Goodnight!"

"'Night."

She waved slightly and headed for the nearest door into the ship.

* * *

Marco sat at the breakfast table the next morning with a pen and notebook, trying to decide the search parties so it wouldn't be like the day before, where the pirates who wanted to had simply gone searching and most chores had been unattended, something that couldn't happen in ships where there lived so much people, as it was too easy for things to turn into a mess.

He had got Thatch, Vista and Curiel to help, each choosing people from different divisions trying for it to affect the less all the other chores in the ship. Marco had had to fish the shift schedules for the month from his pile of paperwork for that and it hadn't been easy to find.

He lifted his head from the paper to grab another piece of toast just in time to see the group of girls walk into the mess hall, the mood as gloomy as last night and faces down. He noticed Evelyne walked in the group's rear, separated a couple of steps from the rest of the girls, and, once she had her food, sat down at one end of the table. He guessed that, just like last night, she was trying to get away from the depressing mood. She didn't lift her head from her plate even when a girl sat next to her.

"Man, it's depressing to look at them." Thatch said, who had also stopped working when he noticed where Marco's attention had gone. "I hope we find that fruit soon, this place's too calm."

And it was right, the moment the girls had entered, the pirates had quieted considerably and many of them were looking at the small group.

* * *

Evelyne leaned on her elbows on the ship's railing, not sure what to do with herself here. They had been told they could go anywhere with the exception of what must be other cabins and a couple of other rooms, she guessed the ones where the crew kept important stuff, but she didn't really know what to do. Around her were pirates cleaning, others moving things, and many others simply talking or having fun. She noticed none of them made any attempt to talk to any of the girls, not that she could blame them. Right now they were a completely depressive group, the other eleven having gone back to the room, and she couldn't blame anybody for not wanting to interact with them.

She didn't, either, if she was truthful.

She didn't want to start crying or despair over the situation, not when there were still chances left to go back. And there were, one of the other girls had asked a nurse the night before and the woman had confessed the crew was looking for a way to get them home, but she had tried to warn them gently not to get their hopes too high. That's why they had been crying last night, and why she had left: she didn't want to start crying while there was a chance to go home, as she knew that, once she started, she wouldn't be able to stop. She didn't want to acknowledge the possibility of the world as she knew it crumbling around herself, and that was why she barely gave a passing thought to the possibility of not going back. They were here, after all, that meant there was a way.

Meeting Marco last night had helped to distract her of those thoughts, instead thinking about what the man had told her about this world. It hadn't been much, they had barely talked, but it had been enough to make her overactive imagination wonder about what sort of place she was in instead of how she had come here.

Evelyne had seen him that morning when they went for breakfast, but he seemed to be busy with what looked suspiciously like paperwork, though she didn't really understand what sort of paperwork there could be on a pirate ship, and hadn't approached him. The fact that there were three intimidating guys with him had also helped, though the one in white didn't look all that imposing compared to the other two, even if he did look taller and broader than Marco, who was quite lean in comparison to most of the other pirates.

She also recognized him as the one who took charge of the situation when they first appeared on the beach, which meant he had to be an important figure in the crew, and now that she had had a relatively good night of sleep, because five hours was more than what any of the other girls had managed to get, and some time to think, she had some questions she wanted answers for.

Like what were they looking for in the water.

She had been observing the beach and its surroundings for what seemed like hours but was probably much less and she had noticed they were searching for something, and most of their efforts concentrated near an area where there was a lot of wood floating, a wide one as the waves were separating the wood. She also noticed the man dressed in white that had been with Marco earlier was at the beach, and after talking to any of the searchers he most of the times went behind some rocks, stayed there for a short period of time and came back to talk to someone again.

Evelyne thought she saw movement behind the rocks aside from the man, but she couldn't see them well and wasn't sure of it.

She decided she would try to ask about it too, she wouldn't lose anything.

**To be continued**

* * *

I'm trying not to make them adapt fast, especially in the first chapters, so the time will pass slowly at first.

There will be several references to 'The Lord of the Rings' fanfictions in here, as they are something Evelyne has read often and can't help but make some comparisons.

Tell me what you think so far :)


	4. Unfruitful search

I'm glad to see there's no Mary Sue alarm for now :D Here's one more chapter. Sorry about the lame joke, I couldn't resist u_u

* * *

**Chapter 4: Unfruitful search**

Evelyne was outside again, watching the stars from the same spot as the night before, so lost in her thoughts she didn't hear the steps approaching her.

"Getting away from the depressing mood again?"

She turned her head and saw Marco walking to her.

"Yeah, things haven't improved since last night."

The man stretched on the hammock next to hers like the previous night.

"Hey, Marco," she spoke after a while, "can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"What are you guys looking for?"

She heard him move.

"What do you mean?"

"You were looking for something today. In the water."

"Oh, that. We're trying to find a Devil Fruit."

"A what?" She asked, turning on her side to look at him. Marco lay on his back on the hammock, his open shirt pooling at his sides and letting his whole chest uncovered under the faint light. He turned his head to look at her.

"You don't know what they are?"

Evelyne shook her head.

"Never heard of them."

"They're fruits, you could call them cursed, that give the person who eats them some power, like control over fire or wind."

She stayed silent, waiting for him to say he was joking, but after a minute of silence she spoke.

"Are you serious?"

He nodded.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"But, come on, that's like the most stupid thing you could've come up with." She insisted.

As an answer, Marco lifted one hand and it was engulfed in blue flames that appeared out of nowhere.

Evelyne shrieked, jumped to a sitting position and almost fell over the side of the hammock.

Marco started to laugh and the fire vanished.

"W-What the-?!" She stammered, unable to finish the sentence.

Still chuckling at her reaction, Marco summoned a smaller flame, this time covering only his index finger.

"I ate a Devil Fruit."

"U-Uh, I see…" Evelyne muttered, her eyes fixed on the dancing blue flame that now danced over Marco's finger. "A-And you think… one of those things can open like… a space door or something like that?"

The flame disappeared, but Evelyne kept staring at Marco's hands.

"Something like that." The man said. "We were fighting other pirates right before you appeared, and we think their captain's power clashed with our captain's and that created the vortex that brought you here."

Evelyne finally looked back at his face. She hadn't noticed, too shocked first and then too enthralled by the flames, but the man had sat up as well and now they were facing one another.

"Can't you just get the other captain to help? You won, right?"

Marco grimaced.

"He's dead."

"Ah."

Marco blinked and stared at her for a moment.

"That's all? 'Ah'?"

"What?"

"No horrified expression? No backing away?"

She shrugged.

"Why would I? You guys are pirates, it's not like I expected you to not have killed anybody or anything like that."

"You're strange."

"Really? How so?"

The man shrugged.

"That blonde girl said you are students. I was expecting all of you to be horrified at the thought of killing someone."

Evelyne leaned back on her hands.

"Not really. I wouldn't like to see someone dying, that sounds gross, but the idea doesn't bother me. It's not like I knew the guy or anything. So what's with the fruit now?" She asked, going back to the original topic.

"Once a Devil Fruit user dies, the fruit regenerates nearby. We're trying to find it. Someone in the crew will eat it, there's many people who'd kill to have one of them."

"Mmhh… Who's your captain, by the way? Sorry, I wasn't paying much attention yesterday."

A small smile formed on Marco's lips.

"I'm sure you saw him. He's the tall man who was sitting to the side at the beach."

Evelyne remembered seeing that man not long after snapping out of her shock. He was the tallest one and had been the one who scared her the most, even though he didn't look inclined to come near them.

"Oh, right. There's a lot of really tall people here, do you guys have giants or something in this world?"

"There aren't giants in your world?" Marco asked, a curious expression on his face.

She shook her head, not half as surprised by the tacit admission about the existence of giants than the fruits. After all, she already knew what those were.

"No, they're a fictional race."

"Weird… We have giants here, but no one in the crew is one."

Evelyne could feel her eyes almost bulge out at that.

"Really? Then? Why are they so tall?"

He shrugged.

"I couldn't tell you. It's normal here, there's a lot of tall people."

"That's so strange…" She drifted into silence and was about to lean back when she remembered the other question she had wanted to ask. "Oh, yeah, is there anybody else at the beach? I saw this guy in white going after a rock where there seemed to be more people."

"You saw them? Pops didn't want to scare you, so he decided to keep them there. They're the other crew. Thatch, the guy in white, was just asking them about the fruits in their ship. They're not exactly friendly."

"You'll leave them here?"

"Probably not. This is a deserted island, I guess we'll drop them at an inhabited one nearby."

"Pops is your captain?"

"Yes, that's what we call him. He's known as Whitebeard, though his real name's Edward Newgate, and he's the world's greatest pirate." Marco said with a smile that spoke of his fondness of the man.

This time she laid back down on the hammock and Marco did the same on his own. They stayed silent for several minutes, Evelyne staring up at the sky and going over what the man had just told her about this world.

Devil Fruits. That was probably the most difficult concept to digest, even more than the existence of giants or extremely tall humans. The idea of eating a fruit that could give you a power, and apparently even really strange one if her being there because of two of them was anything to go by, was a fascinating, yet terrifying, concept. She didn't want to imagine such things at the hands of a lot of people in her world, and if people here were anything like back home she feared to think what sort of hells or monsters could actually exist here.

Marco talked to her again before her mind could elaborate on how those places or people might be, saving her of having some thoughts she would rather not have.

"How was your first day on board?"

Evelyne didn't have to think about her answer.

"Boring-"

"Oh? Why's that?"

"I had nothing to do. I didn't bring a book in my bag or anything, and there's just so much entertainment you can get from watching others."

"You like reading?"

"Yes."

Again, she heard Marco move and the slow thud of the soles of hi shoes against the floor.

"Come."

She looked up at him.

"Where?"

"You want something to pass the time, right?"

Evelyne sat up.

"Yeah. A sec." She grabbed her shoes and put them back hurriedly, thinking that she should stop taking them off, and stood up. "Ready."

Marco led her inside the ship, through some corridors she hadn't been to before, and finally to a closed door that didn't stand out in any way from the others. He opened it and turned the lights on, revealing a decent-sized cabin that definitely had more space in it than what a person got in a twelve-people room, with an undone bed, a desk topped with books and papers with a matching chair, a closet and what at that moment seemed to be the most beautiful sight in the world: a bookcase filled to its fullest capacity.

"Books!" Evelyne exclaimed and, forgetting all about basic manners, headed straight for it.

There were many books, though with the exception of some obvious titles like 'navigation' she couldn't tell what most were about.

"See anything you like?" Marco asked, stopping next to her.

"Are you kidding? This is great!" She exclaimed. Then, a little unsure, asked: "Are you really gonna lend me a book?"

"Yeah, just give it back when you're done."

"Thanks!" She turned back to the books and started inspecting them more closely. "You don't happen to have something like a guide of the world for kids, right?"

"No." Marco answered, amusement plain in his voice. "Though…"

Evelyne straightened when Marco started to look for something in the shelves. He took out a thick tome titled 'Brag Men' and offered it to her. She accepted the book.

"That is a compilation of stories and tales told by adventurers who entered the Grand Line. Most people consider them to be lies, that's the reason for the title, for how bizarre they are. I've been to most of those islands, and can tell you that book isn't wrong about them, and," here Marco smiled softly," I think you're more open to bizarre stories than many people."

She couldn't help grinning despite the reminder about her situation.

"It'd be difficult not to be. Just a question: what's the Grand Line?"

"Oh, right."

He went to the desk and took a rolled up parchment he unrolled to show at her. It was a strange map.

"This is a map of this world. Four oceans divided by a fifth one and a continent circling the whole globe. The Grand Line is this fifth ocean," he pointed to the lines crossing horizontally the map and under the name of 'Grand Line', "and we're over here." Now his finger moved to the middle part of the map that, still under that same name, was also labeled 'New World'.

He rolled the map back up again and placed it on top of a pile of books.

"And what's the big deal about this ocean?"

"It's a strange and unpredictable place. The other four ones follow stable rules concerning their weather, islands and general workings of the world, but they don't apply here. Each island on the Grand Line has it's own weather, independently of the islands near it, and virtually anything can happen here, from a cyclone to form in a matter of seconds with no warning to an island on the bottom of the sea. People outside the Grand Line find all this hard to believe and most bet it as lies."

Evelyne was amazed at that, and found herself clutching the book closer to her chest. She also had trouble to accept almost everything of what Marco had told her, and she would have brushed it off as lies and nonsense if she hadn't been transported to another world not even forty eight hours ago by that same nonsense.

Silence stretched and she smiled embarrassedly.

"I should go to bed."

"I'll walk you there." Marco offered.

"Oh, no, no need for that." She assured hurriedly.

He didn't lift an eyebrow, but the effect his gaze caused in her was the same as if he had.

"Are you saying you can get back to the room without getting lost?"

Evelyne had the distinct feeling of blushing, even more embarrassed than before.

"I doubt it." She admitted.

"Come on." He said, gesturing to the door.

* * *

"We've already mapped the area and there's no fruit." Thatch said the next morning at breakfast, as they were once more putting together a list of people to work on the search. "If we don't find anything today, we won't later."

"I know." Marco said, having already considered that possibility yesterday when he was told there had been no results.

Again, there was a decreasing on volume that signaled the entrance of the group of girls currently residing in the ship. The lack of results in the search was no secret amongst the crew, and most of the members were divided between feeling pity for them and not wanting to be caught talking about it by them. As it was currently the most common topic of conversation, that meant most people shut up when they saw one of them or of the other groups, that yesterday afternoon discovered they could come to the Moby Dick through the planks connecting the ships and the whole group had spent the remaining hours until dinner together.

Marco saw they looked even more depressing than yesterday. There was no doubt that, as time passed, their hopes to go back home fell, and the fact that they hadn't really been told anything about the topic didn't really help either.

"We'll keep the search today. I'll talk to Pops later if we don't find anything." Marco said.

"I feel sorry for them." Thatch said, and Marco nodded in agreement. He did, too.

Last of the group, as seemed to be her custom by now, entered Evelyne, and Marco smiled slightly when he noticed her face was stuck in a certain book that seemed to be read halfway through already. He wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't slept at all.

"Is that a copy of 'Brag Men'?" Thatch asked, genuinely put out by the image of one of the girls from another world reading such a book.

"Looks that way." Marco said, amused at his friend's reaction.

Thatch turned his head to look at him,

"Is that _your_ copy of 'Brag Men'?" He asked accusingly,

"Yes."

Thatch leaned closer and wiggled both eyebrows suggestively.

"Right. Is there anything you haven't told me?"

"Many things. Now get back to work."

"Oh, come on." Thatch complained. "You never tell me anything."

"The last thing I need is having you spread ridiculous rumors." Ignoring Thatch's mockingly hurt expression, he pointed a finger to the papers on the table. "Work."

* * *

"What do we do now, Pops?" Marco asked that night, sitting on a crate in the captain's cabin that had contained bottles of sake until a couple of days ago.

"There's just one option, right?" The captain asked, then took a long dreg of his current bottle. "We find them somewhere to live. There's got to be an island in our territories that's good for them."

Marco took a moment to gather his thoughts and express a concern he had had for the past days.

"I don't think it'll be that easy."

"What do you mean? Once they pass the shock and depression of not being able to go home it shouldn't be that hard."

Marco shook his head.

"It will. I've been talking to this girl these past days, and I don't think their world is as similar to ours as we thought by seeing them." Whitebeard gestured for him to continue. "For a start, there are no Devil Fruits in their world, and she didn't believe me until I showed her mine. Giants are a fictional race there, and when I told her some very general things about the Grand Line she seemed hard pressed to believe me. And I'm sure there are other things."

"You have a suggestion, right?"

Marco would have smiled at how well his father knew him if the topic of conversation wasn't so serious.

"I think they should stay on ship for a while and learn how this world works. It's not like we're dropping them at some boring island in the four blues, they won't survive the New World if they don't know anything about it."

Whitebeard took a long drink from his sake and mulled over his son's words before responding.

"I guess it won't make much of a difference having them on board."

**To be continued**

* * *

Some final notes:

- For those who don't remember, 'Brag Men' is an actual book from One Piece: it's the book where Nami reads about Little Garden, we saw it again amongst the books the archaeologists from Ohara saved and Oda said in a SBS that it would have been lost if they hadn't thrown it into the lake.

- I know some people expected the fruit to appear, but, let's face it: with the confusion of the moment and how strange the Grand Line is, it isn't so weird that it was lost, especially because there passed several hours before anybody thought to look in the water.

And that's it for this week. A review before you leave? :)


	5. A life to think about

**Chapter 5: A life to think about**

Disconcert, incredulity, shock, fear, anger, sadness, despair… those were some of the most prominent emotions Marco saw reflected in the faces of the people from another world that night.

Disconcert when they all had been called to the deck of the Moby Dick that morning right after breakfast.

Incredulity when Marco had started to explain the circumstances that had brought them to this world in the first place.

Shock, soon followed by fear, when Jozu proved the existence of Devil Fruits by turning half of his body into diamond.

More shock and fear, mixed with anger, despair and sadness when the news that they hadn't been able to find the other fruit, and consequently couldn't send them back home, were revealed.

A boy, immediately supported by several classmates, had accused them of lying, or not trying hard enough to find the fruit. Had it been any other situation, Marco would have knocked them out or kicked them off the ship for what they said, but he had been expecting that reaction and, in truth, could understand it. He saw the same sentiment reflected in many of his brothers' expressions.

The most common reaction, though, had been tears. Tears of sadness, of despair and of loss, showing the feelings he knew had been present from the start, stronger now that the hope to go back had just vanished from them.

It was then, amongst the complaints, the accusations, sobs and wails, that Whitebeard spoke to the group for the first time. He didn't need to yell to get their attention, he simply had to start speaking for them to become silent and pay attention. Many of the group's members still looked terrified of people passing seven feet of height.

"We can't get you home, all we can do is find you somewhere to live here. I understand this world is very different to yours, and it scares you, and that's why I'm going to offer you the chance to stay here and learn how this world is before finding a place to live. It's your choice to accept it or not, you can leave whenever you want, but know we won't force any of you to stay against your will."

He stopped talking to let them process what he had just say before continuing.

"If you stay, you'll have to help on ship like any crewmember, and the crew will help you understand anything you don't. We'll reach the next inhabited island in about five days, you should take that time to think."

At those words he left to go to his usual seat, the members of the crew who had gathered dispersing to go back to their usual activities. The nurses, the ones in the crew who had got the most confidence from the group in the last days, went to try and calm them like the first day, which this time seemed to be a slightly easier task, while the group themselves were now openly crying, some raging, and some both things at the same time.

There were people hugging themselves, people hugging another person, people who had left the place and people who had collapsed to the floor. His eyes scanned the crew and he found Evelyne, who had been at the back of the group near a wall, was in that last group, and now was curled on herself, sitting on the floor, arms hugging her knees, head buried on them and shoulders shaking slightly. The book had fallen, closed, next to her feet.

He walked up to her and knelt on the floor at her side, placing a hand on her shoulder but unsure of what else to do.

She lifted her head from her knees, face streaked in tears and snot, and gave him a small, wavering and sad smile.

"See? Now I'm crying."

Before Marco could answer, she moved to a kneeling position and, clutching his open shirt with both hands, continued crying against his chest.

Surprised at that change, and not used at all to comfort sobbing people, he did the only thing he could think of and passed his arms around her back and let her cry.

* * *

"Hey, that's not fair, why's the commander hugging a girl?"

Thatch perked up at that comment, the perfect opportunity to bring back the Moby Dick's usually cheerful atmosphere.

Turning to the man who made the comment, he placed a hand on his shoulder, put on a serious expression, and said solemnly:

"That, my dear Johnny, is 'cause they're friends."

Not only Johnny, but everybody in hearing range turned to look at him at those words.

"What?!"

"Yeah, see that book?" Thatch pointed to the book sitting next to Marco's knee. "That's Marco's, he lent it to her a couple of days ago."

And, just like that, people started talking and theories forming.

Thatch smiled, satisfied with himself. Marco would kill him for this, but it would be worth it if it meant putting an end to depressing meals.

He had practice running, after all.

* * *

It took a while for Evelyne to calm after hearing the bad news. She would be lying if she said she hadn't been expecting them to some extent, as the implications of not finding something in the water for two days weren't lost to her, but she still had clung to the hope that the Devil Fruit appeared somewhere, and now that hope was useless.

It was ironic, she thought bitterly, that she was crying so much, feeling so desperate, at the thought of not seeing her parents again, when they had almost never seen eye to eye and had been at each other's throats more often than not. But now, the knowledge that she would never see them again, that she would never again talk to them, even argue with them, made her want to curl into a ball and tune the world out. It wasn't lost to her that, mere three years ago, she had wanted not to see them again.

When she finally composed herself a bit she realized she had been clinging to Marco, _crying all over him_, and most likely making him really uncomfortable.

She let go of his shirt and moved back, his arms falling from around her back.

"Sorry, I got you all wet."

"Don't worry."

She bit her lip trying to hold back new tears and lifter her head to look at him.

"Now what?"

"You should think things over." Marco said softly, probably trying not to upset her again.

"Yeah…" She looked down and saw the discarded book. Lifting it up, she asked: "Could you lend me another book? I'm almost done with this one." She showed him the bookmarker separating the barely fifty pages she had left to read.

"Sure." He stood up and offered her a hand she accepted to stand up herself.

They went in silence to Marco's cabin, the ship bustling with activity around them, and once inside Evelyne gladly accepted the box of tissues he offered her. She wiped at her face, blew her nose and approached the bookcase, looking for a title that got her attention.

"Do you want to stay here?" She turned, confused, at Marco's question. "To read, I mean. I'm just going to work," he gestured to the pile of papers covering his desk, "and the deck isn't exactly calm now."

"And the room will be worse than before." She finished the thought process. "You don't mind?"

"Wouldn't have offered if I did." He shrugged.

She smiled softly.

"Thank you."

Deciding that, in that case, she would wait to finish her current book to start a new one, she moved to the bed, the only other place to sit besides the chair, and sat on it. She left the book on the mattress and bent down to take her shoes off.

For his part, Marco sat down to face his pirate paperwork, which she still wondered about.

* * *

If she thought the mood had been depressing before in the girls' room, that was because she hadn't seen it now. She had gone to pick a change of clothes, thinking she could use a shower before lunch, and was greeted with the most depressing sight so far: three girls curled under the covers, she wasn't sure who was who as she hadn't paid much attention to who slept in which bed, two of them asleep and the third still crying; another girl knelt on the floor and looked morosely at her phone's screen, Evelyne didn't know her name, as she hadn't learnt many of her classmates names in the few weeks since the school year started, but she remembered seeing her several times amongst a group of other people; and a fifth girl sat on her bed and stared out of the room's window with empty eyes. Evelyne knew who this girl was, her name was Jenny and they had shared several classes last year, she always had the class' best grades and stood out for being one of the few girls who didn't wear any make-up, her blond hair pulled in a practical pony tail most of the time and, though she read a lot and spent much time studying, she had some friends and, even if not outgoing, was a far more sociable person than Evelyne herself.

Evelyne hurried to her bed, one of the two farthest from the window, and opened the upper drawer, where she kept the spare clothes the nurses had lent her, and took one of the outfits, black shorts and a white shirt that left her shoulders uncovered and closed the drawer again. She opened the lower one and put the new book she had borrowed from Marco, a small compilation of general history of this world, on top of her school bag.

Closing that drawer as well, she turned around and left the room, heading for the women's bathroom.

* * *

Marco didn't pay much attention to the stares of his crewmates when he entered the mess hall that night. He easily ignored Thatch, who was practically giggling, when he approached the table with his plate already full of food in hand. That was until he saw them whispering, pointing to the front of the room and then looking at him. Curious and annoyed in equal parts, he followed their pointing fingers with his eyes and his eyebrow twitched when he saw Evelyne, dressed in shorts and a white shirt and her back to the room, waiting for one of the cooks' assistants for the month to fill her plate.

He turned to glare at Thatch.

"What have you done?"

Marco had to give it to Thatch: he had the affronted look perfected. But that same look had stopped working years ago.

"Nothing."

"Really?" He lifted an eyebrow and looked pointedly around the room.

"Ohhhh." Thatch had the cheek to look surprised. "I didn't need to do much. You hugged the chick in front of half the crew and _then_ took her somewhere, they would've started talking anyway."

And Thatch gave him his most disarming smile, the one that said he was right, both of you knew it, and you could do nothing to contradict him.

Marco glared at him one last time and turned to look forward again, just in time to see Evelyne head for the table where the people from her world, around thirty people this time, sat. He caught the looks of disappointment in several of his brothers' faces. What, were they expecting her to sit with him?

* * *

Evelyne had decided to change what seemed to be her new routine of spending every waking moment reading and instead explore around the ship a bit. They had been told they could go almost anywhere the first day, and though no one had really taken up the offer it still stood.

She was trying to keep her mind busy, to not think about the implications of what they had been told this morning and instead concentrated on exactly _what_ they had been told.

The captain, Whitebeard, had offered to help them adapt to this world and, though she was fairly sure she would accept his offer, she wanted to know exactly where she would be staying.

That's where her exploring came in.

She had spent lunch looking around the mess hall, trying to memorize the place and get a feel of the people in it. People who, by the way, looked far more cheerful than the previous days. There had been a lot of laughter, loud conversations and what seemed to be several mock fights breaking out, fights that had made most of her companions feel uncomfortable or more scared. She had, at the two first ones, jumped in place and felt afraid, but then she had realized no one got really hurt in them and decided that, as long as she wasn't dragged into one, she was fine with them.

There were a lot of bad table and general manners as well, especially a huge and fat man with long dark hair that had made a very accurate impression of a vacuum with a ridiculous amount of food. Evelyne had decided not to look in his general direction while eating, just in case.

Later she had started walking around the corridors inside of the ship, finding what seemed to be the pirates' cabins, most of them for groups of around then people, which confirmed her theory of Marco having authority on the ship; she found several bathrooms as well, most of them in a worse state than the women's ones; and storage rooms. All in all boring and not foreboding at all, but at the same time reassuring her that there was no creepy torture chamber hidden anywhere. And she didn't care how stupid that notion sounded, she had read some weird things about this world that Marco had assured her were true.

And now she had a problem.

She was lost. She was complete and utterly lost.

_Great. Just great._

She knew she was below deck, two or maybe three levels, but she had forgot the turns she had taken at some point and had spent the last twenty minutes trying to locate the stairs to no avail.

"What're you doing here?" A male voice asked. Not as rough as she would have expected a pirate's to be.

"Walking around aimlessly with a lost expression for fun, obviously."

Evelyne felt like slapping herself the moment the words left her mouth. She tended to be a little sarcastic when nervous, annoyed or mad, and thanks to her situation she was a little of each. It wasn't much of a problem when she snapped to her parents or friends, but she usually held herself back around strangers.

_Especially scary, from another world pirates._

She turned around apprehensively and almost sighed visibly in relief when she saw her unfortunate target wasn't a ridiculously tall, muscular and stern out-of-a-horror-movie guy, but someone not much taller than her, leaning more to lanky, and young. Younger than her, actually, as the boy in question, because she was unable to call him a man with all those spots on his face, couldn't be older than eighteen. He had tanned skin with slightly reddened cheeks, brown hair and green eyes.

"Sorry." She apologized immediately, smiling sheepishly. "I'm just lost."

He grinned, not looking bothered at all by her previous comment.

"Normal. I got lost all the time when I first arrived. This place's huge."

They looked at each other, not knowing what to say, and both grinned embarrassedly at the same time.

"Are there any stairs around?"

"Yeah." He pointed in the direction at her back. "Just take two turns to the left and then one up. Go all the way up and you'll reach the deck."

Evelyne stared in that direction.

"I'm an idiot, right?"

The boy laughed.

"Nah, happens all the time with newbies."

"Well, thanks." She said, turning to follow his indications.

"Wait." He called to her. She stopped and turned around. "You're from that other world, right?" He seemed really embarrassed to ask this, confirming to Evelyne that he must still be in those awkward years where you didn't know what to do with yourself that she luckily had passed a couple of years ago.

"Yes, why?"

"Are… are you guys staying?"

She shrugged.

"I don't know. We're not exactly a solid group, so I guess each'll decide on their own."

"Oh." He trailed off. "Well, I'd better go. Gotta keep working." For the first time Evelyne noticed the mop he held in one hand.

"Okay, have fun."

He gave her what seemed to be his habitual awkward grin.

"Doubt it, but thanks."

This time Evelyne walked away and followed the indications, making a small winning gesture with her fists when, after the right turn, she actually found the stairs.

**To be continued**

* * *

Just one explanation this time: the boy that appears at the end won't be competence or anything for Marco, he simply reacts that way because he's an awkward teen talking to a girl, but he's not 'fallen in love at first sight' or anything like that. I'm saying this because I've read several stories where an OC is created specifically to add tension between the female OC and the canon character, and I wanted to make it clear from the start that it's not the case here.


	6. An eventful breakfast

My laptop died. I still have my room's computer, so updates won't really be affected, but now I can't write at class or anything, my life lost its meaning T^T

* * *

**Chapter 6: An eventful breakfast**

Evelyne turned around again in what as of today was officially her bed, unable to sleep despite the silence of two hours after midnight, when the last girl crying for the situation had fallen asleep and the last phone on to watch over pictures was turned off.

She sat suddenly up on the bed, a panicked expression on her face, and scrambled for the handle of the lower drawer in the nightstand, pulling out her bag in a hurry and almost tearing the zipper so fast she opened it. She took out the phone, finding it easily as she didn't have many things in there, and froze when the screen didn't react when she pressed the button to unblock it. She pressed it again but nothing happened.

"Nononononononononono…" She muttered frantically under her breath, pressing on it again and again and obtaining no different reaction.

She barely had the presence of mind to remember she had been annoyed by crying and desperate roommates these past days, and didn't want to become one of them, so she stood up, barefoot, and hurried to leave the room, dressed in the soft blue pajama shorts and t-shirt one of the nurses, Mira, had lent her, her phone still clutched in her hand.

She hadn't even noticed the bag falling onto the mattress with a soft 'plop' when she stood up.

* * *

That day during breakfast an anomaly happened. As always, the group of girls from the other world entered, and there were already several of the other groups eating there. Today, though, Marco noticed, instead of heading all the girls together to get their food, they went straight to their companions, and started talking to them. Some head shaking later, they all looked around, and several eyes stopped on him.

Now Marco was curious.

More words were exchanged and two girls, a relatively tall platinum blonde and a short brunette, started to walk towards him.

"That's new." Thatch commented, sitting next to him as usual. "You made more girlfriends?"

Marco kicked him under the table.

"Shut up. I've never talked to them before."

Thatch was about to answer, but the girls were almost there and he shut up instead, looking extremely amused and no doubt coming up with some humiliating teasing.

"E-Excuse me." The blonde girl stammered, and she was talking to Marco.

Ignoring Thatch's raised eyebrows, he answered:

"Yes?"

"Are you Evelyne's friend? Have you seen her?"

Now Marco was confused, and Thatch's teasing expression disappeared.

He looked at the group, but she wasn't there. Maybe she had been reading late at night and was asleep?

"Isn't she sleeping?"

The girl shook her head and this time it was the other who spoke.

"She wasn't at the room when we woke up. Her bag was open on the bed and her shoes are there. No one's seen her."

Thatch gave him a worried look and Marco stood up.

"I'll go look for her."

He had spent enough time with her yesterday that now he could pinpoint her presence quite easily using Haki, even in such a big place. He only needed to be closer to her to know she was there than in a less crowded place.

* * *

As he thought, it wasn't hard to find Evelyne. She was at a corner on deck, hidden behind some boxes, sitting on the floor with her knew drawn to her chest, her arms draped over them and her head buried in them. She held a strange black device in one hand and, as the other girl had said, she was barefoot.

Marco stayed silent long enough to know she wasn't crying.

"You missed breakfast."

Her shoulders shook, signaling she was startled, but she didn't lift her head.

"I'm not hungry."

Marco walked closer and sat next to her.

"What happened?"

"I'm the biggest idiot in all the fucking worlds there are or might be, that's what happened." She snapped, and at the end of the tirade she lifted her head.

She wasn't crying, but she definitely had been, if her puffed and reddened eyes were anything to go by. And, seeing the dark shadows under them, he could tell she hadn't slept.

"That's a bit hard, don't you think?"

"No." She growled, angry for a moment before slumping back against the ship's wall. "It's not, I'm a real idiot."

"Why?"

She shrugged minutely and kept silent, but Marco didn't press her, knowing she would eventually answer, and she did.

Lifting the hand that held the black device, she showed it to him. It had a screen, a button under it, a word on top of the screen that was probably the brand and some other buttons on the sides.

"This is a phone. I guess… it's kind of like those Den Den Mushi I read about yesterday in the sense that you can call from one to another, but it can also do more things, like sending text messages, taking pictures or recording videos. I think some snails could do that too, right?" Marco nodded and she continued. "Well, even if they work with electricity, it's different here than back home and even if I had the charger it wouldn't work, so I can't get it to work once the battery runs out. And it did, I left it turned on and the battery ran out without me even remembering about it, about all the pictures of my family and friends that I have there and now can't see because I'm an idiot who left the damn battery run out inside of a stupid bag instead of saving it like I should have."

Her hand dropped back to her knees and she stared morosely at her phone.

"I'm an idiot." She repeated for good measure.

They stayed like that for some minutes before Marco asked:

"Could there be a way to make it work with this world's electricity?"

"Maybe, I don't know. I'm useless with technology."

Sighing, Marco stood up.

"Either way, you can't hide here forever and wallow in self-pity."

"Why not? Sounds like a great plan to me." She said almost childishly, and Marco could see she was far calmer than before.

A growl was heard.

Evelyne blushed.

Marco smiled.

"That's one reason." He offered her a hand. "Come on, breakfast isn't over yet." She accepted it and stood up with his help, and Marco noticed once again her feet. "Though we should probably get your shoes first."

"We?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"After this, I'm going to make sure you eat something. It's my responsibility, after all."

"Your responsibility?" She asked as they started to walk.

"Of course, I can't let anyone on this ship die or be badly cared for, Pops would have my head."

"Mmmhh… So you're an important guy here. What's your job, exactly? With all those maps and that."

They entered through one of the doors, heading for the girls' area of the quarters.

"I'm the first division commander, head navigator and first mate."

She whistled and smiled softly.

"So, basically, you're the guy with most authority after the captain."

They stopped in front of the door to her room.

"Put your shoes on and come out." He said.

"Right, I'm kinda hungry now."

Her stomach agreed with her right before she entered.

* * *

Evelyne felt overwhelmed and extremely uncomfortable. All the people in the room, who apparently were everybody from back home, turned around when she entered, stared at her for a moment, and then several of them rushed to her, many asking questions at the same time.

She wasn't particularly close to any of them, classes having started not even a month before this whole mess happened, and she was barely acquainted with some and certainly friends with none of her classmates, much less the teacher who stood to the side, but this whole experience had formed a strange sense of camaraderie and deep bond between the group, making them worry for any of them as they would for a friend even though most of them barely knew half the class, and Evelyne wasn't the first one to have a breakdown, nor would she be the last.

Evelyne sometimes felt sorry that the bond seemed to have missed her brain when it formed.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." She assured, hands lifted before her chest in an attempt to assuage them and stop the barrage of questions.

It worked to some degree, as now at least she could understand them.

"What happened?"

"Are you OK?"

"You should lie down."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"It's fine, really. I just came for my shoes," she pointed to her empty bed, the only one where nobody was sitting, "and then I'll go eat something. I'm starving."

She moved away as non-rudely as she could from the girls who had approached her enough to place hands on her shoulders or arms, making her feel extremely uncomfortable at the unwanted physical contact with people she had no confidence with, and honestly didn't even know the names of in this case, and moved to the bed.

She reached it easily, people stepping back to let her pass, put the phone inside her bag, closed it, placed it again in its drawer and sat down on the bed and started to put on her shoes.

She hadn't noticed the tense silence until a girl awkwardly broke it.

"So… what happened?"

She looked up from her left food.

"Not much. I ran out of battery, realized I couldn't see my pictures anymore and freaked out."

There were some exchange of glances and a girl offered:

"I could lend you my charger."

"Would it work with this world's sockets?"

More glances.

"I'll try." Said another girl, this time one of her roommates named, if Evelyne wasn't mistaken, Clara, going to her bed and taking her phone charger out. She headed for a wall where there was a short line of sockets and went to connect it, but stopped. "It's not the same shape."

"And I guess the voltage won't be the same either." A boy commented, looking at the wall.

"Damn!" Exclaimed another. "Then we'll lose our pics too when we run out of battery."

That elicited worried, sad and somewhat desperate comments to come out of the others.

"Maybe not." Said the first boy to speak before things could get out of hand.

All eyes turned to him.

"We could try to adapt it." At the disbelieving stares he received, he explained: "It's been done before, with countries that don't follow the same system as most, and it's not like we have anything better to do."

Some approving and hopeful mutters followed that comment. Evelyne didn't know the guy, either, but she had to admit it was a good idea. She took a swift glance up from her right shoe to identify him: short, chubby but not too fat, dark hair, somewhat rosy skin… She guessed she could recognize him if she ever needed to.

"This ship's got to have electricians, right? We could try to get them to help." Suggested a girl, and from there on more suggestions started to come from other people.

As much as she would love it if they could actually do it, Evelyne hadn't lied when she told Marco she was useless with technology. And right now she was hungry and he was waiting for her outside, so she took advantage of the distraction and quietly slipped out of the room.

* * *

Marco smiled, amused, at Evelyne's desperate way of eating her late breakfast, them being almost the only ones in the mess hall. She had tried to control herself at first and eat politely, but Marco had reminded her that this was a pirate ship and she threw her manners over board, eating as fast as she could instead.

He saw the white blur right before Thatch stopped before the table and dropped down in front of her. Marco resisted the urge to sigh, he knew this was coming.

"Hey." The fourth division commander greeted happily.

Evelyne, who apparently hadn't heard him arrive, was startled and choked on a bite of toast, started coughing and Marco had to pat her on the back. Thatch, the bastard, burst out laughing.

"Sorry, sorry." He apologized once he got himself under control. Evelyne, whose coughing was almost gone by now, glared at him with bleary eyes. "Better?"

She glared harder.

"No thanks to you."

He chuckled.

"Right, sorry about that." Thatch apologized, not sorry in the least and, judging by Evelyne's glare, they all knew. "I just wanted to say 'hi'."

"Why?" She demanded, giving him a mistrustful look.

From the nights out to avoid her companions to her preferring reading books to talk to them during the day, Marco had got the impression Evelyne wasn't much of a people's person. Seeing her glare at Thatch made his theory sound more likely.

Thatch, of course, didn't care about her evident hostility.

"What, 'why'? 'Cause you're Marco's friend, obviously!" He exclaimed cheerfully, as if it was a rare occurrence worth celebrating. He also ignored Marco's glare.

Evelyne blinked.

"And what's with that?"

"Are you serious? The guy's always so buried in work it's a miracle we even see his pineapple head around."

Evelyne snorted at the damned fruit mention that, incidentally, earned Thatch a not-so-gentle kick to the shin.

"Don't be ridiculous. I only work four hours a day, five at much."

"And that's not a lot?" Thatch asked, feigning a pained expression at the thought.

"That way I don't have to spend three days awake to get things done at the end of every month." Marco retorted.

"Hey, I'll have you know-" Whatever Thatch wanted him to know was interrupted by a sudden burst of laughter.

They both turned to see Evelyne doubled over herself on the bench, holding her stomach and laughing her lungs out. They stared at her.

"S-sorry… pfff-" she snorted between laughs, "but y-you're so… pffft… r-riddic-culous…"

"Oh, thank you." Said Thatch indignantly, crossing his arms over his chest. The pose lasted a total of one second before he joined her in laughter, immediately followed by Marco.

Maybe the scene wasn't that fun to laugh as they did, but laughter was something that had been in shortage these past days for the Whitebeard Pirates, and especially Evelyne had needed it. Her face changed just by laughing, and though the shadows were still there, they didn't look as deep as they had.

Once they calmed down, Evelyne resumed eating, at a more sedate pace than before.

"So," Thatch spoke, "do you have plans today?"

"Not really. Why?" She asked right before eating a slice of bacon.

"I was thinking I could give you a tour of the Moby Dick while Marco over here works. Have you seen it already?"

They both became curious when she blushed at that innocent question and muttered something unintelligible.

"What?" Marco asked.

"I got lost." She repeated a little louder, and blushed harder.

Thatch chuckled, and chuckled again when she glared at him once more.

"Just like all the newbies." Marco said with an amused smile. This time Evelyne glared at him.

"It's decided then!" Thatch exclaimed. "When you're done I'll give you a tour of the ship!"

**To be continued**

* * *

As you see, things are finally progressing now :)

EDIT:

I'm an idiot and forgot to put the notes when I updated, Oh, well, here we go:

- About Marco's position: Marco being Whitebeard's first mate is one of the few things almost the whole fandom seems to agree to, and I do as well. I said he's a navigator because, as a child, we saw him drawing a map, surrounded by other maps and books. Oda doesn't do anything without a reason, so Marco HAS to be a navigator, and I put he's the head navigator because it would be stupid to assume such a huge crew would only have one navigator.


	7. Grievances of an interdimensional travel

I'm an idiot, I forgot to write the AN for the previous chapter. Well, it's up now.

You're lucky I had several of this story's chapters written ahead, or there would have been no update this week u_u

* * *

**Chapter 7: Grievances of an interdimensional ****traveler**

The vast blue ocean could be seen in every direction, appearing in all its glory as far as the sight reached, the waves moving softly over its crystalline surface and the ship's path being the only disturbance that could be seen.

The crow's nest on one of the four masts was the last stop in Thatch's tour of the Moby Dick, a really curious name for a ship which's shape reminded of a whale, even if apparently there was no novel titled that way.

It had been an interesting morning. Not only had Evelyne received some useful tips to avoid getting lost or to find her way back if she did become lost, but she had come to know Thatch a little, and decided she quite liked him.

"Impressive, isn't it?" The man asked, leaning against the railing while he, too, gazed out at the horizon.

"Yeah, it's... I don't think I have the words to describe it."

Thatch chuckled.

"That happens with the sea. It's like its call: we wish to answer it but we can't really explain why."

"Is that why you're a pirate? The sea called to you?"

"The sea, the freedom it gives, the adventure..." Thatch trailed off, and Evelyne didn't speak again. They stayed like that, both leaning on the wooden railing while watching the sea.

* * *

Evelyne had decided she would take her daily shower before lunch from now on, as the bathroom wasn't nearly as full as it was at morning or night and she didn't have to wait for someone else to finish. Three showers might be enough for the six or seven women that slept at the Moby Dick, but the added twelve girls complicated things considerably.

She opened the cabin's door and stepped in the threshold when she heard sobs. A look around showed her there was a blond girl with pigtails curled into herself, crying.

Evelyne didn't consider herself a heartless person or anything, but her mouth had the habit of sprouting words before her brain processed them, and that was how the most insensitive question she could have asked left her lips.

"Weren't we past crying all day?" She wanted to bang her head against the wall as soon as she spoke.

The girl heard her, and spoke without moving.

"Shut up, you can't understand."

"Why not?"

"You're all chummy with that blond guy while I... I won't s-see my Alec... a-again..." And she burst into tears again.

Feeling like an insensitive bitch for her earlier comment, Evelyne backed away and closed the door, deciding she would shower later.

* * *

"Guess that makes sense." Thatch commented that day at lunch, looking at the numbers scrawled on the paper Marco was working on while eating.

It wasn't habitual for him to take work to meals, but he had done so during most of them since Evelyne's group appeared, as there were many things that needed to be sorted out as soon as possible and most of them fell under his responsibilities.

"Hey, look." Thatch spoke again, and Marco lifted his head to see Evelyne slowly approaching with a plate and a glass in hand.

"Can I sit here?" She asked, somewhat sheepishly.

"Sure."

She sat down opposite to them and took her fork and knife, that had been balancing precariously over her food.

"Something happened?" Thatch asked, curious, and threw a look to the table where the rest of the group sat together.

Evelyne hesitated before answering.

"It's just… awkward, I guess. There's this girl who realized she won't see her boyfriend again and got even more depressed, she told the others and now everybody with a boyfriend or a girlfriend is even sadder than before. And..." She trailed off and looked over her shoulder at the table, a slightly embarrassed look on her face.

"And?" Thatch prodded her, more seriously than he would have with another topic. Depression wasn't a laughing matter, after all.

Evelyne bit her lower lip.

"I spoke without thinking and acted like an ass when I saw her crying earlier."

She seemed so worried about it that Marco decided to calm her a little.

"Well, that happens. Thatch here has the habit of sticking his foot in his mouth half the times he speaks." He ignored Thatch's indignant protest. "Just apologize to her and it'll be fine."

"Thanks, I will." She said, smiling softly.

"But, Evelyne, there's something I'm curious about." Thatch leaned over the table as he spoke, grinning, and Marco knew he was going to ask something he probably shouldn't. "You said she's sad 'cause of her boyfriend. What about you?"

"What about me?" She looked genuinely puzzled.

"You don't have a boyfriend you miss?"

Evelyne blushed to the roots of her hair and stammered.

"M-Me? A b-boyfriend?! No!"

Thatch threw Marco a grin that Evelyne, too busy staring at her food, missed. Marco gave him a warning look he ignored.

"Really? That's a pity. But aren't you overreacting?" Evelyne's blush intensified just as Thatch's grin grew wider. "Don't tell me you've never had a boyfriend." He said teasingly.

She managed to lift her head and glare at the fourth division commander, but any effect the glare might have had was ruined by the deep blush adorning her face.

"S-Shut up."

Thatch laughed and Evelyne ducked her head again, centering her attention on her food and ignoring any further comment Thatch made.

The man grinned at Marco again and winked, the only reason he wasn't kicked under the table being that Marco was too busy thinking over this new information.

He didn't need Thatch's unsubtle hints to know he was attracted to Evelyne, after all he _had_ checked her out that first night and knew he was being too friendly with her to be only interested in knowing about her world. But this new information didn't really make things easier for him. Of course, that she wouldn't be mourning any boyfriend were good news to him, but the fact that it was almost confirmed she was a virgin, and judging by how she had reacted and what she had said might not even have had her first kiss, could be a problem.

Despite being a pirate and whatever might be associated with them, Marco wasn't completely oblivious to how women thought. He remembered, when he was a teenager, how many girls clung to their virginity, wanting their first time to be special and almost impossibly romantic.

This time Marco did kick Thatch under the table when the other man threw him an amused, 'I-know-what-you're-thinking', grin.

* * *

Evelyne left the mess hall as soon as she saw the pigtailed girl, she really needed to start learning their names, leave her seat, and followed her until they were both outside.

"Hey." She called, and the girl stopped and turned around. "I'm sorry about before. I wasn't thinking when I spoke."

The other girl shrugged.

"Don't worry. I wasn't too nice either."

An awkward silence followed. The other girl grinned sheepishly and Evelyne mimicked her.

"We're doing this science project with some of the ships' electricians, wanna join us?" The girl asked.

Evelyne shook her head.

"I'm terrible with technology, I'd blow up whatever you're doing."

The girl's sheepish grin turned amused.

"Then you better stay here. See you later."

"Later."

The girl turned, probably to go to wherever the project was being done, and Evelyne decided to go back to the mess hall and ask Marco if she could join him this afternoon. She felt like reading a little more about this world.

* * *

Marco was going over September's last two weeks schedule once again, making sure that not two people of the other world would be placed in the same chore and shift and this way prevent they would form a closed group between themselves. Usually he simply divided the people according to the chore they would be doing for the month, and the manager of each of them divided them in the different shifts, but he had decided it would be best to supervise this himself, to make sure all of the members of the group interacted to some degree with the crew. It would be a great accomplishment if they, for example, stopped sitting all together during meals and mingled with the rest, that would mean they were making some progress to adapt to this world.

A chuckle behind him caught his attention and Marco turned to look at Evelyne.

"What's so funny?" He asked, glancing at the title of the book: 'Technological advances in the last century', it didn't sound like a particularly amusing reading.

"This world." She said and, at Marco's raised eyebrow, elaborated. "Not the world itself, though I've read some funny things about it too, but how much it is like my own, at least if you don't count the Devil Fruits, races, ridiculously strong people… but still." She turned the book around and pointed to an image of one of the first trains. "There are some differences, of course, but technology and daily things are very similar."

"That's good for you, but I still don't see what's funny about a train." Marco said, turning completely on his chair.

"It's just," She smiled amusedly, "I used to read all these stories about girls falling into other worlds, I think I told you about them." Marco nodded, remembering her comment about a 'Middle Earth'. "Well, in most of the stories I read, the girls were really annoyed or desperate because there was no electricity, no running hot water, no heaters, barely any hygienic commodities, medicine sucked and-" She cut herself, her amusement replaced by an horrified expression. "Oh, fuck, no."

Marco leaned forward, slightly worried at her reaction.

"What's the problem?"

"Marco, _please_, tell me… oh damn, please, please, please... tell me there _is_ a sweet called chocolate in this world."

Marco blinked, confused by what she had said.

"Yes, there is."

Evelyne let out a deep sigh of relief and smiled.

"Thank God."

Marco blinked once more and then asked:

"You reacted like that just by thinking there was no chocolate here?"

"_Just_? Chocolate is very important!" She proclaimed, completely serious.

Marco laughed at the absurdity of the conversation.

"But… If there's chocolate, how come I haven't seen it in any of the desserts?" She asked, now looking just curious.

Marco shrugged.

"We're almost out of it, apparently. Happens sometimes, and it's better not to bring out any food if there isn't enough for the entire crew: everybody decides they want it and there's always a fight over it." Not to mention it was a good thing to have at hand when the crew's women, all at the same time, got their periods, but Marco wasn't going to say that out loud.

Evelyne nodded seriously, as if she really could understand someone starting a fight over chocolate.

* * *

When Evelyne entered the cabin that night, all the girls were sitting together on three beds, talking excitedly.

"Hey, you all look cheerful." She commented, walking closer and sitting at the end of one of the beds. "What's happened?"

The girls turned to look at her.

"You don't know?" One asked.

"Know what?"

"We're going shopping!" Exclaimed another girl who, Evelyne realized, was the same girl who had been looking at her phone's pictures yesterday. She looked much better, and Evelyne noticed she had dimples when she smiled.

"Shopping? But our money is useless here."

"They're giving us some money!" Dimples said again. "Sarah told us before."

Sarah was the head nurse, if Evelyne wasn't mistaken.

"Yeah." Pigtails nodded. "Apparently they think it's better we have our own clothes if we're staying. "She also said we'll get something like a pay once we start doing chores and that."

Evelyne smiled.

"That's good."

She wasn't a great fan of shopping, though she liked it sometimes, but the idea of finally having some clothes of her own besides the ones she had arrived with sounded great.

"They're giving us fifty thousand belis, though we don't know how much that is." Another girl said, this one was blonde and had a piercing on her lower lip. Piercing, then.

Evelyne really wished people would use the others' names in conversations more, it was annoying to come up with all these nicknames, and it would be very rude to ask them for their names, so she didn't.

"It's some money, but not too much." She said, and got curious looks in response.

"And how do you know that?" Piercing asked.

"I read something about belis and asked Marco about them and-"

"Marco?" Another girl interrupted. Evelyne didn't have the time to look at her and come up with a nickname before the second one spoke.

"Is that your blond friend?"

"Yeah."

Some of the girls leaned closer to her, and Evelyne had to hold the impulse to back away.

"You're really close to this guy." Dimples observed. "Anything you want to share?"

Evelyne felt her cheeks heat up.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you two having fun?" Another girl asked, and the grins that appeared in the others' faces told Evelyne the heat in her face was also noticeable for others.

"N-No! What are you thinking?!"

The girl shrugged and Dimples answered.

"He's not your average handsome, but he's, I dunno, kinda attractive."

"And hot." Another supplied. "Have you seen those abs?"

"As if I couldn't, the guy walks around with his shirt open." Piercing answered. "Not that I'm complaining."

Evelyne cleared her throat.

"Can we please go back to talking about money?"

"Right." Another said.

"But you like him." Dimples said, and several of the girls laughed.

"Of course she does, look how she's blushing." Added Piercing.

"Shut. Up." Evelyne demanded, glaring at them.

"So, about the money…" Another girl started, as if they hadn't just completely embarrassed Evelyne.

She cleared her throat again and answered.

"As I was saying, I asked Marco about how much some things cost, and I got an idea of how much a beli is worth. Which isn't much, by the way, I'd say something around a cent."

* * *

"Why'd you want my help?" Thatch asked, counting bills and placing them in the amounts Marco had instructed him to.

"It's faster this way." Marco answered, separating the coins in small piles.

"Really? Nothing more?"

Seeing Thatch's grin, Marco knew he wouldn't like the answer, but he decided to take the bait anyway.

"Nothing like what?"

"I dunno, maybe some friendly advice to get a cute, virgin girl into your bed." Marco glared at him, but it had no effect. "But I guess the infamous Marco the Phoenix doesn't need help with that."

"Thatch, just a warning, I'm really close to using haki in my next kick."

Thatch lifted his hands in mock surrender.

"I was just trying to help, really."

"If you want to help, keep counting money."

"Right away." The man agreed, going back to the belis in front of him. "By the way, isn't fifty thousand belis a little too much? It's half of what we get in a month's pay for chores."

"Pops said to use the other ship's money to supply them."

"The other ship's? Then it isn't much, right? How much is fifty thousand for each person, two millions and a half?"

"There was more, but we're using it to get some furniture, that room needs closets, for example. And Sarah told me they will need to buy more girls' things for the bathrooms and all that."

"Still, those guys were broke."

Marco smiled.

"I'm not denying that."

"What will you do with them? They're still in that storage room, right?"

Marco took a while to answer that, remembering the conversations he had had with the crew's eleven survivors these past days.

"None of them was conscious when the group appeared, so they don't know about them. That's good, it would be a problem if they did, and I've decided to just drop them off in the next island, once we leave of course."

"I bet they hate us." Thatch commented, not worried at all.

"And that's so new…"

They both laughed. It was a common occurrence for the crews they defeated, be there any deaths or not, to swear vengeance on them or something like that, and they were too used to it by now to care.

**To be continued**

* * *

And here starts my awkward approach at romance :D


End file.

One Piece, Drama, Romance