Time Zone: After the 2 years. However, the two years were right after Kuma sent them away because Ace wasn't brought to Impel Down yet.

CHAPTER ONE

Sometimes Sengoku found it hard to believe that the slightly-wizened man standing in front of him was, indeed, a Marine Hero. The notion that Monkey D. Garp had only captured Roger because he wanted the pirate's food suddenly seemed plausible. Or maybe Roger stole his crackers. Possibly both.

"YOU'RE DOING WHAT?!" he roared, slamming his hands on the table. None of the Marines in the surrounding offices paid attention, by now used to the men's antics.

"Bwahaha!" the Vice Admiral laughed at the Fleet Admiral's show of ferocity. "Yup! I am," he agreed cheerily.

"We're about to go to war!" Sengoku protested in despair, gritting his teeth as he paced back and forth. "We need you! How else are we supposed to face Whitebeard! We're running out of Marines with all the ruckus with the Supernovas, and now you…" He quieted slightly, calming down. He had to be more professional then to yell at Garp, no matter how infuriating he was. "You're kidding me."

Garp remained buoyant. "Nope! Bye bye!" And with that, the Marine Hero walked straight through the wall of Sengoku's office, leaving dust and broken wood in his wake.

Sengoku's eye twitched, before he sat back down, his eyebrows furrowing. "Now what will we do? Maybe we could send out Himeji…?" At least it was only a temporary leave of absence.

The first time that Sengoku had gotten a report from Himeji, he was… displeased, to say the least. She had covered the thing with doodles, and the basic summary was that 'this kitty-mustache ossan was being a meanie so I beat him up.' A whole town was almost destroyed. He was considering firing her, and he would've, too, had she not been such a great fighter, and Garp's friend on top of it. Who knew how they knew each other; if he didn't know better, he would've thought Garp was her grandfather, but his granddaughter was Monkey D. Luffy, and Garp couldn't keep a secret. He was bragging about his grandchild for weeks when she was born.

Anyway, they couldn't risk Himeji going to the enemy.

Of course, at that point, she was only seven, which shows what Garp's crazy training regimen could do—Ace and Sabo were proof of that. However, the mindset of that child was much (much much much) less refined than her pink-haired friend Coby, who happened to be more feminine than Himeji was. Even if he hadn't had pink hair.

As the years progressed, the doodles all but disappeared, but Himeji often told her subordinates that she didn't need to tell "Senny" about it "just that moment," and so the reports often came late. (Her current record was four months.)

However, with Garp… busy… they may need the eighteen-year-old, he mused. Maybe as a backup? He'd have to test her first. He clicked on a Den-Den Mushi, dialing the number of his subordinate reflexively.

"Purapura," the snail said, before Sengoku's assistant picked up, "Sengoku-ue?"

Sengoku put his hand on his forehead, suddenly exhausted. "First, get someone to fix the wall in my office."

The snail sighed in sympathy, and said rhetorically, "Garp-ue again, huh?"

"Mm-hm. Send for the Admirals. We have a job for one Rear Admiral Himeji."

The snail's eyes widened. "You're letting her out? After all these years?"

"We'll see if she's capable enough. If she is, she'll be promoted and will help in the war. If not…" Sengoku paused grimly, closing his eyes, "she'll die."

•••

Thatch opened his eyes and sat up from where he lay on a white cot. He surveyed the room, attempting to figure out where he was. The walls were scarce; instead there were evenly spaced windows. The minuscule space left was a strong peach color. Several other beds were lined up in a row, a nightstand next to each one.

He looked down at himself, having enough of staring at the room. He had some pink lines on his wrist and upper arms. Rope burns. He was wearing his usual cook outfit, but his necktie was slightly loosened and his arm was pushed up so a small bleeding wound was visible. Several bandages constricted his breathing.

As he watched, a woman entered. She had long pink hair that went to a bit past her waist. She was clad in a dark purplish-red shirt and pants, with the collar and sleeves being white with teal buttons clasping her wrists. On her hands were dark purple gloves, contrasting with her hair. Her lips were covered in dark lipstick, standing out as she held a cigarette between her teeth. Her eyes were slightly narrowed as she watched him.

Normally he wouldn't mind a woman such as herself to be scrutinizing him, but she seemed annoyed with him and slightly disgusted. She tugged at her gloves slightly, pulling them farther up her wrists. She pulled a strand of her hair behind her ear, still stoically observing him. She approached him, her features schooled as she appeared emotionless.

He tried to speak, but his throat hurt too much. He cleared his throat slightly and coughed. He then noticed a glass of water on the table next to him and picked it up, gulping it down. As he did so, the woman spoke.

"Hello, Thatch-yōgisha of the Whitebeard pirates," she said dully, managing to seem snotty and annoyed at the same time. He stiffened slightly. What did she want with him? She obviously knew who he was. Of course, many people did, not to be egotistical, so that didn't narrow it down much. "Hina is glad to see you are awake." He realized who she must be: Captain Hina of the Marines.

"What am I doing here?" he asked, acting calm despite the situation. He recalled where he was before he arrived: he was supposed to be finding the obtrusive bastard Teach. The nerve of him; trying to capture Ace and bring him to the Marines. But, it seemed, in the process of locating Teach, he had been captured himself.

Great job, Thatch, he thought sarcastically. Avenging his brother, and finally getting caught—something that hadn't happened since he had joined Whitebeard. Well, he mentally sighed, it was bound to happen sometime. He had no doubt Whitebeard and his brothers would save him—that is, if it was a public execution. If not… he didn't know, but it didn't sound good for any of them, especially with Magellan there.

"Hina range includes Alabasta. You should avoid Hina next time. Rear Admiral Himeji will take you to Impel Down soon." He knew she would watch his reaction, so he made sure to make his expression devoid of the tell-tale signs of fear that many would have when faced with the notion that they were being brought to the prison.

He clenched his fists by his legs, before relaxing them as he picked up on something. "If you're going to bring me there, why am I alone in the room?" he questioned, slightly puzzled. He looked around, craning his neck lightly to make sure his accusations were correct, before scooting so that the pillow was pushing up on the wall and his back was relaxing against it.

"There is Den-Den Mushi surveillance, and the walls are coated with Seastone. A thin layer, however, but you still won't be able to cut it, especially since you are chained and unarmed. There's also guards outside the door, so don't try to escape. No talking to them." He noticed that she didn't answer his question, and narrowed his eyes slightly.

She obviously had no doubt that he would attempt to escape either way, and that the Marines outside would be no chance, so she added, "You're also alone here at Enies Lobby, other than the Marines, until the Rear Admiral comes to pick you up." That peaked his interest. "I would bring you there myself, however I have to do my monthly rounds."

He didn't know why she was telling him this, but he wasn't complaining, if only to figure out how to escape and what was going on. Of course, normally he wouldn't take a Marine's word for it; she was likely to lie, since he was a pirate and all, but he could see for himself out the window. He was about to ask about the Rear Admiral—was that really normal protocol? He didn't think so—but she left, shutting the door quietly. He waited until her feet padded away before he lay against the pillow, staring at the ceiling.

•••

It was her first official day out. It was her seventeenth birthday, and so Rear Admiral Monkey D. Luffy was out on the ocean again. Of course, she was never referred to as such. In fact, her jii-chan always attempted to keep her identity secret. She never knew why. Instead, she was called "Himeji." Gramps sure was strange.

As such, she had never been let out of the base, save for "minor assassinations"—Crocodile, Enel, and a few other guys. Each time, a ruckus was formed, but since she was so good at it, she was kept in the Marines.

Of course, when she first started out, she was only a Cabin Boy—er, girl. Then, when she became an assassin, she was a Captain. The irony of her also being a captain of a pirate ship didn't escape her.

As she succeeded in defeating the bosses of each operation, she moved up in ranks, and the government blamed everything on Mugiwara, a pirate, as "he" always seemed to be at the same area.

It was a wonder that they hadn't figured out who Mugiwara was yet. She didn't hide it particularly well, like her father would've, but not as bad as her grandfather, had he tried to do the same. It just wasn't in his nature. However, she had a feeling that Aokiji might be suspicious.

She didn't remember her past at all, only having a connection to the Strawhat proudly displayed on her ship, the Thousand Sunny. She didn't have any real connection to the hat—or at least that she remembered—so she left it there when she went to the Marines, but left it to be the insignia of her crew.

No one, save for her crew, herself, and her kinda-sorta-friend-but-not-really Edward Newgate knew how her pirate crew formed. Anyway, at one point she became fed up with captivity and ran away. She then formed a crew of potential Marines, and set them off to sea after she was captured and put back into the Marine base that she usually took command of. The Marines obviously knew that she disappeared after that, however they knew naught where, and kept the fact within the base.

She had never approved of the so-called 'Absolute Justice' that the Akainu and most of the Marines used, so she set them to destroy both pirates and Marines alike—but only the corrupt ones, of course. Like Smoker. Or Jonathan. Or Gramps.

That was the nice thing about being a pirate crew. They could defeat and let escape whoever they liked. Obviously, Marines couldn't fight Marines—unless they were an Inspector General, and they weren't—so they were officially a pirate crew. The Mugiwara Pirate crew, as they were called, had a combined bounty of 1,392,000,000 beli. Most of it was the oh-so-mysterious captain of the Thousand Sunny—her alibi, if you will. Two alibis, Himeji and Mugiwara… she had felt like a runaway.

She, of course, felt unnaturally proud of this fact. Must be her genes.

As previously noted, no one knew who Mugiwara was—again, save for the crew, herself, and Edward. Her crew called her sometimes on a Den-Den Mushi to fight the big guns and she used her Devil Fruit to get there, but otherwise they mostly just stuck with each other, so he appeared to disappear for months at a time from the Sunny.

She and Edward were something similar to friends; not drinking buddies, but not enemies either. More like casual acquaintances, she mused. They knew each other well—or, at least, they pretended they did. Each had their own mysteries, but they were fine with that. They only met in secret, as it would be suspicious for a Marine with a status such as hers to meet with the proud Yonkō. Not even their respective crews knew, though she knew she couldn't keep it a secret from hers much longer, especially with the war coming up.

Of course, her grandfather didn't have that problem when he wanted to talk to pirates. Lucky bastard. They couldn't just fire the Hero of the Marines; they needed his strength. Plus, he had been in the Marines far longer than she had. Or maybe they were just used to the crazed antics of her grandfather. Probably the second.

Though, she was glad he was there; he was one of the the Marines who actually prevented corruption.

Anyway, she and Edward had a meeting in about a week, (in which, she would tell him about Sengoku's plans for a war) so she was planning on bringing the pirate that she was picking up at Enies Lobby with her. Hopefully he wouldn't cause a fuss about meeting the Yonkō.

…She really didn't think that through. Too late now; she was too busy remaining to do actual… thinking. She shuddered at the thought. She was only this deep when she was bored. Or sometimes she was especially dense when this happened. It varied.

Luffy was able to talk to Edward about things like that, since they often chatted about pirates, the Marines, the news of the world, even of Devil Fruits, ghosting on their own for obvious reasons but considering in depth others.

She knew about his troubles, and he knew hers. Even her… situation. Even if he didn't know everything. Like her family. But they could read each other well, so he grasped the calamity fairly well. Almost as well as Zoro and the rest of her crew. It was nice.

The Marines didn't know that she could change her appearance—they didn't really know about her Devil Fruit at all, thanks to her using her fists—so she found it amusing to use her Devil Fruit to appear as a boy, including when she met with Edward. She even kept the scar she used to have—after she got it the first time, she had used her Fruit to make it disappear. Apparently, when she was little, she always referred to herself as a guy, even acting and dressing like one. A tomboy at its best.

Luffy didn't really mind being a pirate, even though she hated most pirates; most of them had no real ambition and only wanted to plunder towns and kill innocent civilians. But she liked and respected some of them; Edward, Akagami, Rayleigh, and a few others.

That's why she did it. That's why she declared war on the world. Because of her nakama.

•••

Sengoku looked down at the newest printed bounty. He had short black hair and wore a strawhat, a red vest and black cuffed shorts. The Strawhat that he was named from covered his eyes as it was tilted over his face, but did nothing to hide the wide smirk he held. Mugiwara was both his official name and epithet as they didn't know who he really was. His bounty had recently increased to 500,000,000 beli.

He was something of a mystery in the Marine world, as much as he hated to admit it. There were a few that claimed to be him, like that man, Demalo Black. But after it was found out that the fakers either didn't look anything like them or had the wrong ship, they were all proven wrong.

He pushed the bounty aside, staring instead at the rubber man's crew-mates.

They were all fiercely loyal to each other, they knew that much. Their bonds were as close (if not closer) than Akagami's and Newgate's. They even challenged the World Government at Enies Lobby when "Devil Child" Nico Robin was captured. Franky, their shipwright, was "gained" in the process. A win for the pirates. Loss for both the Marines and the Government. In other words, more paperwork.

The power to survive a Buster Call… who was this monster? That was the question many asked, but it wasn't answered by the pirates, other than a good kick to the head. Or being knocked out by a violin. Or being covered in plants. Or… Well, nobody could say the Mugiwara pirates weren't versatile, that was for sure.

That was part of the reason Mugiwara's bounty was so high, that and that he did so many unspeakable things. Everything he and his crew did was told to the world and maximized. Hopefully some other strong pirates would declare war because of their high status and would knock each other out.

That's why his crew's total bounty was so high—1,392,000,000 beli was nothing to laugh at. His crew's were still large; even the tanuki had 7,000,000.

All of the Supernovas wrecked havoc in Sabaody, but especially Mugiwara. Punching a Tenryūbito was rash and horrid—a major crime that the government would never forgive. Though Sengoku didn't approve of the Tenryūbitos' practices, it was still a horrible thing for the boy—man?—to do. The only pleasure he found in it was that the Mugiwaras couldn't do anything worse, after everything that they had previously done. Of course, knowing them, they would find a way to do just that. He probably jinxed it.

Kuma and Kizaru had been sent to Sabaody after the spectacle—though why both were needed was a mystery to him; however, the Tenryūbito had ordered as such, and they had the power to summon the two men.

Sengoku had a feeling that the robotic man knew who the captain was, but didn't comment on the peculiar Shichibukai. The memory seemed to be lost when he was converted into a machine, though they couldn't be sure, but the bear-man sent the boy and his crew flying away; that was the important thing, after all.

The Mugiwara crew went missing—and still was, at the moment—giving Sengoku time to finalize his plans, as he didn't have to worry about the pirate captain's unorthodox movements. Speaking of people going missing, Rear Admiral Himeji had refused to answer any calls or summons for approximately two years previous to the pirate's disappearance, coming back a few months before now. She had a similar habit to the boy and his crew—they both always found the one loophole and/or fault in any well-crafted plans set out for them.

That was part of why both sides were so dangerous: their unconventional reactions. He could only shudder, thinking about the horrible things that would happen if the two met.

Good thing Himeji was on their side.

•••

"White Chase" Smoker calmly sat on the deck of his ship, staring at the bounty in his hand. He was one of the few who had ever seen Mugiwara's face. He looked at it harder. Something about it seemed familiar… but as he tried to reach for the memory of where he had seen the man's face, or his bubbly personality, it just drifted farther and farther away, as it always did.

He had tried several times to describe the man's face to his peers, as someone who knew the pirate best out of the marines, but found himself losing the memory, as if he had been told to describe Tashigi—it just wouldn't come. All he remembered were those ferocious black eyes, shining with determination, and the small curved scar underneath his left eye.

When he mentioned this to his friend, Himeji, she just shook her head and smiled secretively.

In fact, at this moment, he was using the Vivre card she gave him oh-so-long-ago to find her—his excuse to Sengoku, of course, being the inevitable war that was coming closer. Sengoku and the Vice Admirals had had a meeting about the war. Himeji's meeting, according to the Fleet Admiral, being separate from the rest as she was still "in hiding," so he wasn't able to see her at the meeting. He missed her dearly; despite their large difference in age, they had trained together in what was her childhood and the beginning of his adult life.

His work Den-Den Mushi rang. He answered it, leaning back into the deck chair, eyes fixated on the sea, before turning back as the call went through. The eyes on the snail were unfocused, and the tentacles drooped slightly. A scar appeared to the left of its left eye. He grimaced, recognizing the familiar marking that only belong to one man. He sighed, saying, "Hello," into the receiver.

The eyes focused slightly as the man gave a slight snort to clear his nose. There were several thumps and shouts on the other side of the line, and the eyes shifted to the left, before turning back to him. The snail smiled hugely. "Smoker-kun!" his fellow Vice Admiral said boisterously, before muttering, "That's right… I knew I was calling somebody." There was a slight pause, before he continued with, "How are you doing, huh?"

"Well," he said, stalling. The old man was very overprotective of his granddaughter, and Smoker had been refused when he had asked to see her before. "Garp-sama, I was wondering—"

"Anyway," Garp interrupted, ignoring Smoker's sentence, "I have a favor to ask…" He paused, burping, before shoving what appeared to be a donut into his mouth. Smoker thought he could hear several guns being fired in the background and rapid screeching of high-pitched voices, but Garp appeared to be calm. He looked around to make sure it wasn't from his side, before calming. "Will you come with me to talk with Lu—er, Himeji-chan?"

Smoker gaped at the Transponder Snail. After weeks of pleading to see her again before he gave up—a few months ago, at least—Garp was requesting him to go? Well, he wasn't missing his chance. "Of course!" he said loudly, before blushing slightly. Too enthusiastic. But apparently Garp was too inattentive to notice, to his relief, and let him continue with, "Uh, yeah, yeah. 'Course I'll come." He smiled nervously at the Transponder Snail.

"Great, great," the snail said, beaming at him. He could now unmistakably hear a cannon being fired. "I thought, since you and Jonathan are her best friends… and then with the war coming up…" he trailed off. "Oh! I forgot. Never mind. The ship's gonna sink soon, so bye!" You'd think he'd care more, Smoker thought. The older man probably thought it was "good training" to make the rest of the workers on his ship swim to the next island or two, crazy old man that he was.

Garp paused again. "Just follow my Vivre Card while I follow Himeji-chan's, but first my boat's gonna need to be replaced." Because Garp wasn't defending it, Smoker wanted to say, but there was no way he could say that to the marine hero, no matter how strange he was. The snail shut off, and Smoker was left to stare at it as the snail slept.

Standing up, he gave a small sigh, though his heart rang in his ears in his anticipation. Heading to the main deck, he shouted, "turn left! We've got a new route!" Staring down at the Vivre Card, he smiled. He was looking forward to the reunion.