A blizzard swirled around in her vision. Snow cradled her sides. Unrelenting wind lashed at her face.

Where exactly was she?

She sat up, and a bout of dizziness immediately overcame her. Placing her head in her sweaty palms, she resisted the urge to vomit, willing the bile to stay down.

"Oi, girl!" A harsh, wizened voice rang out through the sound of the blowing snow. "What the hell are you doing here, eh!?"

Muscles tensed. Instincts flared. She whipped around, using the very air around her to help her tired body stand and face whoever had appeared, battle stance at the ready.

"Oh?" The old woman who she was now staring her down looked amused. "What's this now?"

The girl's breathing was heavy, and it took effort to even make the action happen. "Who are you!?" She finally yelled after a few tense moments.

"You want to know the secret of my youth!?" The old woman answered.

The girl stood to her full height, completely thrown off. And then the full extent of her weariness hit her, and her knees failed. She managed out a weak "That's not... what..." before blackness hit.

OoOoOoOoO

Dr. Kureha scowled as the girl before her collapsed into the snow. "Well, that was pretty rude." She shook her head in disapproval. "Damn kids these days." Eyes traveled to the young companion at the doctor's side. "Chopper, go check on her."

A nod of approval, and the reindeer was off, bounding through the snow with long legs made for traveling through the stuff. Shrinking down to size, he put a hoof on her forehead.

Feverish.

"She's running a fever, Doctorine!" He called out to his mentor.

Kureha sighed in response. "Alright, bring her in!"

Chopper morphed to his large, human-reindeer hybrid form, and scooped the girl up in his arms, his mind trying to diagnose her. Flu, maybe? Was there one going around down there? Her breathing was shallow, and she was covered in sweat. They needed to get her back into the castle, quickly.

"Good thing we found her when we did." He commented to Doctorine as he ran up to her. "She's sweating so much, she would've frozen to death."

They walked in silence through the castle entrance and up the stone stairs, into a room where Doctorine and him could treat the girl. Placing her into a cot, Chopper noted her muscled form and compared it to that of his mentor's. Doctorine was a human female who's facial features showed that of her true age- 139- but who's body was that of a young woman's. This girl, however, boasted a moderately toned body, unlike that of any human women he'd seen in the villages. "I guess she could be one of the lumbermen." He thought absentmindedly. Then again, her clothes looked kinda strange. They didn't look like any clothes he had ever seen before, even if they were for a winter island like theirs.

"Let's see what we got here." Doctorine's voice snapped him out of his musing, and he stepped back just enough to let her work but still give him a view. "You were right about the fever." She felt her forehead. "Looks like a bad flu and exhaustion, get me-" She stopped. Chopper could hear a quiet mumbling, coming from the patient.

"R... Raava..."

Doctorine huffed, unconcerned with her patient's mumbling. "Get me a cold washcloth and some of the flu meds."

"Right." Chopper replied and padded over to the adjacent room. He had just dipped the washcloth in a bucket of water when he heard a chair crash.

"Better make that some sedatives!"

OoOoOoOoO

Kureha had dealt with violent patients before, but one who displayed such violent tendencies while still passed out was rather unusual. Still, nothing she hadn't seen before. She elbowed the patient in the chin, pinning her left arm down with one hand, the other prodding the right arm for a suitable vein.

The 139-year old's protégé soon ran in, syringe in hoof, and injected the struggling teen with sedatives. Both doctor and student the held the patient down until her thrashing stopped and she was still.

"This isn't a flu, is it, Doctorine?"

"Nah." Kureha answered her young student. "I think I know what it is, though..." The doctor walked into the other room, Chopper at her heels. "Haven't seen it in awhile, though. Pretty rare." She reached up to a high shelf and grabbed a small bottle coated in dust.

"What's she got, Doctorine?" Asked Chopper, ever curious.

"Well," She began. "You can get sick from a lot of things, Chopper. Viruses, parasites, bacteria, and..." Kureha paused as she poured a syrup-like substance from the bottle onto a spoon and shoved it into her patient's mouth. "Evil spirits."

"Evil..." Chopper gulped, his voice somewhat shaky with slight fear. "Spirits?"

"Ghosts, demons, the like." She explained while easing the syrup down the passed out teen's throat. "They infect the soul of a sick individual and feed off their energy, killing them." She gently lay her patient back down onto the cot and covered her with a blanket. "The medicine I give her contains a mix of spices and herbs said to ward them off. Buncha superstitious shit, but hell, it works." Kureha smiled down at her protege, who was staring at her with attentive eyes. "C'mon, I'll show you how to mix it."

OoOoOoOoO

"Doctorine, I've detected an antibody reaction."

"Oh, is that so? Then tell me, what's the cause?"

"Kestia."

"Alright, I'll leave the treatment to you."

The girl leaned against the cold stone wall, looking over at the small reindeer work. She'd only woken up that morning, almost completely recovered, except for that fact that she had no memory of who she was or how she got to the top of a sheer mountain in the middle of a blizzard.

"Hey, Chopper." She spoke up, bored.

No response.

"Hey. Chopper!" The girl crossed her arms, slightly annoyed at having been ignored yet again by the reindeer; She'd hardly gotten a word out of him. He barely even spoke to Dr. Kureha when they all went down to the village earlier.

As Chopper began to grind medicine ingredients together, the girl walked over to him and looked over his shoulder, curiosity taking over her boredom. He stopped grinding and looked up at her, fear and slight annoyance marring his features. "Go away, please." With that, the reindeer walked over to his newest patient, a young orange-haired girl they'd again found outside the castle. With her was a scrawny, black-haired boy with a straw hat and a hell of a case of frostbite, and and a blonde man with a broken spine.

"Who's there?" This, and a loud crash, caused the amnesiac girl to dash over to the source of the sound. The orange-haired girl had woken up and was now sitting in bed, staring at Chopper, who had apparently jumped back in fright and right into some nearby shelves. The reindeer scrambled right into the other room and grabbed the empty doorframe, as if he were hiding behind an imaginary wall.

"Umm..." The girl spoke up again. "I think you're supposed to do it the other way."

Chopper's eyes grew even wider and he corrected himself, correctly peering from behind the wall this time.

"A little too late for that now... And I can still see like, half your face. Just what are you?"

"S-Shut up! Y-you damned human! By the way, how's your fever?" Chopper's tone quieted down for his last sentence, compared to the fearful screaming of the ones before it.

"It talked!" The girl gaped in amazement, while the reindeer shrieked in fear and somehow crashed into even more equipment in the other room.

The teenage girl laughed. "C'mon, Chopper, she's hardly in any condition to hurt you." She turned to the sick young woman and her smile grew wider. "He did that for me, too."

"Keep it down in there, Chopper!" Kureha's voiced yelled from yet another room. The old woman walked in, bottle of sake in hand, and laughed. "Look's like your fever's gone down quite a bit, missy." She noted, poking the other woman's forehead. "You happy, pappy?"

"And you two are...?"

"38.3 Celsius... Not bad..." Kureha pushed up her sunglasses. "I'm Dr. Kureha, but you can just call me 'Doctorine.' This girl here doesn't have a name, but I just call her 'Bear', on account of all the fur she wears."

"Doctor? Then this is-"

"You want to know the secret of my youth?"

"No, I never asked-"

"This is the castle on top of the mountain."

"We found you outside awhile ago, with two other guys. They're asleep in the other room." Bear explained as a look of relief washed over the other girl's face. "The hat guy said you three were friends. Looks like he climbed his whole way up the mountain-" She chuckled, amused. "But that's impossible."

"Here, look." The doctor lifted up the patient's shirt slightly, forgetting the concept of personal space. "This here's the cause of your fever." On the girl's torso was an enormous bug bite, just above her naval. "You were bitten by a Kestia, a poisonous tick that lives in the tropics. The bacteria living in that tick changes hosts when the tick sucks on the blood of another animal.

"There's tropics around here?" Bear interrupted, confused. "But, we have to be in a tundra! And what's a tick?"

"Its rude to interrupt, Bear." Kureha scolded, kicking at the teen, who jumped back, easily avoiding the doctor's leg. "As I was saying, once inside, the bacteria causes great pains for its new host for 5 days. Fevers of 40 degrees or more and inflammation of various body parts occurs, including the myocardium, artery, and even the brain!" The old woman held up a finger to quiet Bear, who was about to interrupt with yet another question. "Judging by the bite mark, it looks like today was your third day since infection. It must've been quite painful, but the pain would've naturally subsided after 5 days of infection even if we left your body as it was. Because in just 2 more days, you'd be resting in peace in the afterworld."

Bear snorted. "Gee, make her feel right at home, why don't you!"

Kureha frowned and aimed another kick at the teen. "You're pretty damn rude missy, y'know? Anyways, the disease from the bacteria is also known as '5 days disease'. From what I've heard, Kestia should have went extinct over a hundred years ago, so you're real lucky that I happened to have the antibiotic for it. Just what the hell have you been doing, missy? Running around half-naked on a prehistoric island?" The doctor laughed. "I'm just teasing wi-"

But the orange-haired girl made a small noise, as if she had just connected two and two together.

"Wait." Bear started, an eyebrow arched. "Have you been to some prehistoric island? And you decided to go, 'Hey, I don't need a shirt or anything while I'm here!'" She shook her head. "How far away is the ocean from this place, anyways? It's gotta be miles away!"

The sick girl looked at the teen as if she were crazy, before being slapped back down into bed by Kureha.

"Just go back to sleep for now." The doctor said. "You haven't fully recovered yet."

"Thanks for your help, but I'm fine as long as my fever's going down." The sick girl argued. "My body can heal on its own, right?"

"Only if you let it." Bear explained, confused as to why the girl would want to leave the safety of the castle for the blizzard outside. "Your body needs to focus itself on regaining your energy and fighting off the disease, not running around and getting yourself into more trouble."

Dr. Kureha laughed. "Just let my medicine do all the work, missy. With my treatment, you'll fully recover in just 3 more days!"

The orange-haired girl shot up. "3 whole days!? No, I have somewhere I need to be right n-"

There was a flash of metal, and Kureha was suddenly there, holding a scalpel to her patient's throat. "There's only two cases in which I let my patients leave my sight." She laughed again, her high pitched chuckle ever present. "When they've healed... Or when they've died! You're not going anywhere, missy."

"What-"

It was then that Chopper crashed back into the room, screaming for help, the two other patients hot on his tail.

"Stop right there, you piece of meat!"

"Hold your horses, Luffy. I'll make sure to season it up first. If we're going to eat it, we might as well eat it right, you know?"

Bear's eyebrow twitched, and she casually walked right up to the three, before kicking the blond one straight in the mouth. "There, how's that taste!?" She picked the man up by his arm and sat him down on a nearby stool. "What are you doing up, anyways? You cracked your spine and broke 6 of your ribs, you shouldn't be able to stand!"

"Quit it, you humans!" Chopper screeched, still trying to escape the other man's grasp. "I hate humans like you!"

"Luffy, I told you not to eat him yet!" The blonde slipped off the stool Bear had sat him on and back to Chopper, again trying to trap him.

"I said stop!" Chopper had enough. He morphed into a larger, almost sasquatch-like version of himself and slammed his assaulters to the ground. "I'm not your food!" He then ran out of the room and away, tears streaming from his eyes.

The one named Luffy grunted and pushed himself up from the stone floor. "Oi, Sanji, after him!" The two made a move to stand up and rush after the reindeer again, when Bear stepped between them and the door.

"Knock it off." She commanded in a strong voice, staring the shorter boy down. He seemed to comply, tilting his head slightly to the side, while the blond stared at her with an unreadable expression in his eyes. Suddenly, he kneeled on one knee in front of her and bowed his head.

"Of course, my lady." He made his voice deeper than what it normally was, as if he was trying to sound that way specifically for her. "I must say, your's is a beauty I haven't quite seen before. I sense grace within in you, but also the ferocity of a warrior. You must be..." He paused and took her hand in his, for dramatic effect. "A Goddess of War."

Bear was taken aback. "Ummm..." She struggled for a response to... Whatever just happened to her. "Th- Thanks? I think?" This guy was weird. "C'mon, let's see your spine."

The man, Sanji, looked as if he was about to protest, but Bear gripped his hand and pulled him up to his feet. "Woah." His voice lost the deep notes it previously had, and now was one of suprise. "You're stronger than you look."

"Uh, yeah, I guess..." Bear walked him over to the stool she had previously sat him on.

"Oi, Bear!" Kureha spoke from her spot by the sick girl. "Who's the doctor here, eh?"

"Relax, I'm just helping them." She countered back in annoyance. "Wait here, please." She directed at Sanji, and walked off into the other room. She soon came back with a large stone pot in her arms. Placing it beside the blond man, she began removing his bandages.

"Let's see how you're doing." She began looking his torso over, inspecting his wounds.

The other man's loud, piercing, high-pitched voice broke through the air. "So, lady, you're name's Bear, huh!? That's a weird name! Are you secretly a bear!?"

"No, of course not!" Bear snapped. "That's... Not actually my name. Probably. I have amnesia."

"Wow, really!? How'd you get that!?"

The teen frowned, annoyed. "How should I know? I don't remember anything." She turned to Sanji, finished with her inspection. "You could still use some work. Now just relax, okay?"

Bear stared down at the pot of water beside her and widened her stance ever so slightly. She reached down and plucked some water out, as if it were a solid she could hold. It was as if she could control it with her movements, the water following her hands to Sanji's spine, faintly glowing. The glow flowed up and down his back, Bear's hands directing and controlling it.

"Woah~!" Luffy gaped from his seat, absorbed by the sight. "How are you doing that!?"

The teen directed the water back into the pot and frowned. "I don't know. I just-" She sadly shrugged. "It just feels right. Like, something's telling me 'this is what you do' whenever I use it." Looking down, she sprouted a small flame in her palm. "I can control water, earth, fire, and air."

The raven-haired boy was estatic, practically jumping out of his seat with amazement. "Wow, that's so cool!" He looked Bear right in the eyes, his own full of excitement and wonder. "Hey, lady! Join my pirate crew!"