Chapter Text
“It’s quiet.” Dadan muttered, eyes barely open as she sipped a boiling hot cup of coffee.
She couldn’t remember the last time it was quiet in her home. The boys were all doing some kind of chores in their own corners, the only sound in the building soft muttered early morning conversations and the soft sizzle of eggs and bacon in the kitchen.
“Who fucked up!” Dadan barked, suspiciously looking around. Things weren’t supposed to be this quiet around the curly bandits hideout. They hadn't been for seven years.
She watched her boys nervously glance around, none of them quite sure what she meant, as far as they were concerned it seemed like a normal morning.
“Someone better fess up right now! I mean it, why the hells it so quiet this morning?!” She yelled, scratching the side of her head in confusion, starting to get frustrated. She was missing something, and it pissed her off.
“Boss, no one’s done anything. It’s just a normal morning.” Magra tried to say, hands held up in an appeasing gesture.
“The hell it is, it ain’t been this quiet in the morning in seven years, so what the hell have you shits done!”
At that, just about every face in the room stopped, turning up in confusion. Now that she mentioned it, something was up.
“Come to think of it, it has been pretty calm for the last week.” Dogra muttered, rubbing his chin. But what was it?
A beat passed, Dadan's head on a swivel trying to spot whatever guilty party was at play, before she paused.
It seemed whatever realization she came to, everyone else was slowly coming to as well, and a wave of panic was settling in.
“WHERES LUCY?!” The entire building screamed, nearly every activity put on pause as every able bodied member of the curly bandits scrambled to find their apparently missing ward.
“Dogra, take half the boys and check the forest, Magra take the rest and check the Grey Terminal and Goa. I’ll check their treehouse and Foosha.” Dadan ordered, throwing on her boots and charging out into the woods towards the treehouse.
How the hell has she been this stupid? Lucy had been acting weird for weeks, but she chalked that up to being upset Ace was about to leave. But in the week since Ace sailed out she’d barely seen hide nor hair of her outside of breakfast and her stumbling in for bed. She never missed breakfast though. Something was up.
Dadan spent the entire way to her wards old treehouse racking her brain for anything that could tell her what was happening. But she was coming up frighteningly blank. Lucy had been absent near every second of the day for weeks, but especially this last week. When she’d come back the night before, she’d gone around the room and said her good nights, before collapsing right into bed.
Part of Dadan knew that she had probably just snuck out to go down to Foosha, but something here felt off. She wasn’t sure what it was, but something was telling her that this was different.
Practically throwing herself up the crumbling old ladder up to the treehouse, she felt her heart throb looking around. Sabo’s old stuff was still neatly organized in what was once his corner, What was left of Ace’s was thrown around haphazardly, but he’d taken the rest.
But all of Lucy’s things were gone. She’d picked her side of the room clean, just like back home at the hideout. Dadan forced the welling tears of panic to stay down, throwing herself back down the ladder and charging off down the mountain, desperately hoping Lucy had just decided to move back into Makino’s.
~You're Invited~
Dogra was starting to get frustrated. He’s checked every clearing, every inlet and cave, every river bed, they’d swept the entire forest, but they had come up woefully empty handed.
He’d thought that maybe his unofficial niece was just off training herself silly again, trying to get her devils fruit in check.
But she wasn’t at the training ground she and Ace had put together.
Or any other area he’d found the two collapsed in since they were little.
By midday the team he’d sent the other way around the mountain finally met up with him at the trail back down to Foosha.
He was officially scared. He gestured to the rest of the boys to follow him down to Foosha. Part of him hoped that Magra or Dadan had better luck, but a bigger part of him knew that something big was happening.
~You're Invited~
Magra was getting desperate.
Over the last several hours, he and the boys had pieced together a very frightening picture. Tons of people had seen their wayward wild child, but the things they were saying she had been collecting painted a very bad picture.
Twenty different men all throughout the terminal and lower Goa had been approached by girl in a straw hat trading them gold and jewelry for supplies.
Food, tools and building materials, large reams of cloth and rope, survival tools like compass and maps.
Magra refused to put to voice what he had already realized, but he knew that he wasn’t going to find her here. He rounded up the boys and went sprinting off towards Foosha.
~You're Invited~
Well into the afternoon, Dadan finally broke through the tree line to catch sight of Foosha village. Not for the first time she cursed herself for not keeping as fit as she should have, before huffing in a few deep breaths and sprinting towards Party bar.
As she ran through town, she caught the sight of a group of her boys approaching from the west side of town, Magra at the head of them. Glancing behind herself, she spotted the rest charging down the trail into town. She gulped down some negative thoughts as she picked up the pace a little bit.
“Makino!” She screamed, throwing herself through the saloon doors of her favorite bar. The young green haired woman tidying up the dining area turned towards her, taking note of her sweaty disheveled state.
“Dadan, you’re never down here this early, what’s wrong?” Makino tried to ask gently, quickly hustling to the bar and pouring a mug of water for her exhausted looking friend.
“Have you seen Lucy?” Dadan asked, ignoring Makinos question. She looked around the bar, but she couldn’t see any sign of her.
“Not since Ace left. Why, she wasn’t at home?” Makino asked, suddenly frightened.
“No! The boys and I can’t find her anywhere.”
Makino couldn’t help the way her heart clenched. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever heard Dadan sound so scared. She charged through the dining room, grabbing Dadan by the hand and charging out into town, leading her to the mayors house.
“Makino!” She heard two separate voices shout, catching sight of both Dogra and Magra running up behind them, the entire Curly bandits gang keeping pace behind them.
Dadan didn’t need them to confirm their findings. The fact Lucy wasn’t with them was enough.
“Oy Woop Slap! Where the fucks my kid!” Dadan screamed the moment she caught sight of the elderly mayor. That caught everyone’s attention. It was a rare day that Dadan actually acknowledged just how much she actually cared for her Wards.
“Hmmph, saw that little troublemaker moving through town early this morning. She was dragging something towards the docks I think.” The mayor grumbled, not quite able to hide his disdain for the pirate obsessed young girl.
Nothing else needed to be said, Makino and Dadan lead the charge down to the docks, most of the town following in the wake of the rest of the gang.
As they finally made it to the docks, Dadan finally lost her tenuous control of her tears, desperately hoping for something to turn up here. But she couldn’t see anything. The docks were empty.
Her boys spread out to check every post and hitch, looking for anything they could find, but Dadan couldn’t take her eyes off the horizon.
“Boss! I found something!” She heard Dogra scream from down on the last dock. She met him halfway to find him waving a letter over his head.
She snatched it from his hand, immediately seeing the envelope addressed to ‘Dadan, Makino, and Ji Chan.’ She had it open in an instant.
“Sorry I left without saying goodbye. Don’t worry I’m not gonna be a pirate yet, I’m just going to find my Fiancé. I’ll be back to have our wedding and set out for real soon!”
She turned the letter over in her hand, but that’s all it said.
“The hell does she mean her fiancé?” Dadan asked, looking towards Makino for any kind of explanation.
Makino said nothing, just stared off at the horizon, desperate to catch maybe catch a glimpse of her favorite little customer on the horizon.
But it was useless.
Lucy was long gone.
~You're Invited~
Eight years earlier.
Party’s bar was loud, a crowd of pirates enjoying themselves to the fullest. The locals of Foosha village had long since realized there was no danger, so the braver of the villagers had even trickled in to join the party.
Pirates were crowded around every table, lining the entire bar, enjoying life, and booze, to the fullest. One table was piled high with half the food in the pantry, with one of the largest men anyone in town had ever seen chowing down with a perpetual smile on his face.
At the bar, the barmaid Makino was bustling around, distractedly filling every cup that got even half empty.
Sat near dead center of the bar, two people curiously watched the nervous movements of the bartender. The older of the two, a man with brilliant red hair, a well cared for straw hat on his head, and three scars down the side of his face, hummed in thought. Makino had seemed fine when he and his boys first arrived, but slowly as the night progressed she seemed to get more and more worried.
“Miss Makino? Are you okay?” The younger of the pair, a little girl with red and white hair, split perfectly down the middle, asked the nice barmaid.
She’d thought Makino was just scared of them at first, but that clearly wasn’t the case, at times Makino was able to laugh, and even joke along with the others.
“What? Oh! Yes, just worried about my niece.” Makino answered, pushing a pleasant smile onto her face she didn’t really mean. She glanced back at the doors once again, before looking back to the two in front of her.
“Your niece?” The two of them asked, the little one curious, and a little bit excited to hear about another kid. The older still waiting to hear what might be wrong.
“Yes, she stays with me when her grandfather is away, but he left yesterday night and I still haven’t seen her.” Makino muttered, passively filling the drinks of several of the men at the bar.
“You need someone to go look for her? I can send one of the boys out lookin.” The red haired man asked, not wanting to see such a kind woman be so worried or upset.
“Oh no, that’s not nece- LUCY!” Makino tried to say, before suddenly cutting herself off, running towards the entrance.
Nearly every head turned towards the front, seeing a little girl standing there with twigs and branches sticking out of her wild mane of black hair. Her clothes were torn and most of her visible skin was covered in scratches and bloody scrapes.
“Lucy what happened?” Makino snatched up the girl, quickly pulling her to the bar. She started wiping the blood and picking the twigs and leaves out of her hair.
“Grandpa threw me into a ravine. It took me all day to climb out. And I got attacked by dingoes, I pulled their teeth out.” The girl, Lucy everyone figured, said, holding up a fistful of sharp teeth.
“Okay well, I’m going to have to clean these wounds okay. This is just a little bit of medicine.” Makino said, pulling out a large brown bottle and a wash cloth.
“Is it going to hurt?” Lucy asked, while the other girl winced, recognizing the liquid Makino had procured.
“Just a little bit.” Makino told her, already preparing for what was coming.
“Okay.” Lucy stated simply, watching the washcloth approach her dry wound. Makino firmly pressed the cloth to her cut up leg, waiting for the reaction.
Slowly her face split open before “AAAAAGGGHHGHGHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Everyone in the bar winced hearing the scream.
“The hornets of hades hath descended upon me!” She shrieked, though a few of the men noted she wasn’t moving or shaking, just screaming.
“Okay, it’s just a little disinfectant. You’ve felt it before it’s okay.” Makino assured her, wiping away at the wounds covering the bottom half of her legs.
Lucy looked like she was about to say something else.
‘Snrk’ she was cut off however, by a snort and a giggling coming from next to her. She glanced at the girl next to her, watching her trying to hide her laugh, before a huge grin split her face.
“Finally! Someone who gets my jokes!” She cheered, shooting to her feet on the bar, fists held high in triumph. She looked like she was about to continue, but before that.
“Monkey D Lucina!” Makino shouted, hands held firmly on her waist, glaring at the little girl now looking sheepishly at her.
Several of the men in the crowd perked up at the name, glancing at each other with slight smirks. The red haired man smirked, chuckling.
“Are you telling me that every time you’ve thrown a fit while I cleaned your wounds it’s just been a joke? I give you cookies to calm you down!” She shouts, furious at the girl who conveniently no longer seems bothered by her cuts and scrapes.
“Erm.” Lucy muttered, looking for an excuse. “Speaking of?” She says, petering off in a questioning tone, her eyes glancing at the cookie jar.
“No!” Makino shouts, pointing towards the stairs.
“Go to your room!” She demands, watching as Lucy trudges off, glancing forlornly at the other little girl.
The red haired pirate chuckles with a shake of his head, amused by the antics. He glanced at the child next to him, who was still laughing at the girl who’d just left.
“Sorry about that Captain Shanks, she can be a bit much.” Makino sighed, visibly relaxing into a calmer demeanor.
“Nothing to be sorry about, she always like that?” The red haired pirate, Shanks, told her good naturedly, face crinkled in a relaxed smile.
Glancing to his side, he smirked seeing his young companion still stifling her chuckles. “Found a new friend here, eh Uta?” He teased her, rolling his eyes when the girl sputtered, trying to hide her amusement at the stupid joke.
The party continued, now bolstered by the bartender finally calmed into a much better mood. When she wasn’t worried and payed them actual attention, Makino actually played off the rowdy pirates much better than they expected.
Around 30 minutes later, Uta was sitting alone, humming a small tune to herself while she played with a fork left on the bar. Glancing up though, she locked eyes with a pair of black ones, hanging upside down through a hole in the ceiling.
The other girl from earlier, Lucy, was staring at her, before she held her finger up to her lips in a silent shushing gesture. Uta smiled, giving a very tiny nod, before going back to what she was doing before, watching Lucy out of the corner of her eye.
Lucy grinned, before popping her head back up through the hole in her floor. Quickly after, she dropped her body back through, hanging next to the cupboards, silently moving to climb across the shelves.
Uta glanced around, Makino was over by Ben and Roo, laughing at some story they were telling, and shanks was chugging down another barrel of sake. No one else seemed to be paying the bar any attention.
She looked back at Lucy, seeing her slowly pull a glass jar filled with cookies from the cupboard, before silently closing it. Uta was almost impressed, as Lucy slowly made her way back up to her hole it looked like she was going to completely get away with it.
“LUCY!” Or not.
Lucy, perched on the top shelf with a hand stretched towards her hole, stopped in her tracks. Her head slowly rotated around to look wide eyed at Makino, who was glaring at her.
“The jig is up!” She shouted, launching off the wall, cookie jar safely tucked into her side, before sprinting past Makino towards the saloon style doors. She jumped, smacking them both open so hard the doors smacked against the outside wall.
“Lucy! Get back here!” Makino called after her, charging right out the door.
The pirates in the bar all watched the doorway stunned for a few seconds. As the doors swung closed though, a wave of surprise spread through the bar.
Instead of running off, Lucy had grabbed onto the saloon door, bringing her safely back inside as they swung closed.
“Shishishishi.” She laughed, pulling the lid from the jar to grab a cookie.
“She should remember I can do that in a few minutes.” She said through a mouthful, crumbs spraying out.
That was the last straw though, the entire bar erupting in an uproar of laughter. The pirates all couldn’t believe that the little girl had somehow outplayed Makino.
Lucy walked through the crowd, a pleased little grin on her face. When she got to the bar, she stopped and turned to Uta, smiling up at her.
“Thanks for keeping quiet. Here, for your help.” She said, grinning at Uta while she held the cookie jar out towards her.
Uta beamed, grabbing a cookie.
“Are you a pirate?” Lucy asked her, glancing around at the others in the bar, a look of wonder on her face, before turning back to Uta.
Uta developed a smug, confidant look as she finished her treat “That's right, I'm the musician for the Red Hair pirates!” She proclaimed proudly, gesturing to Shanks at the other end of the bar.
Lucy’s eyes literally sparkled in awe, gazing up at the other girl in wonder. She was about to ask more questions, but she suddenly stopped cold. Feeling a dark presence behind her.
Before she could even think of turning around, she was snatched up and held in an iron grip by a now furious Makino.
Uta watched in awe, she hadn’t even seen the kind bartender come back in, before she was just suddenly there. She smiled nervously as Makino slowly dragged a now whimpering Lucy back upstairs.
Uta didn’t see her again that night, but she went to sleep later with a smile on her face.
~You're Invited~
A few months later
“Utaaaaaaaaa!” Lucy yelled, chasing after her friend, who was uncontrollably laughing.
They’d been playing a game, racing to see who could climb a tree faster, but Uta tricked her, got her to grab a weak branch, then watched as she plummeted back to the ground.
Lucy wasn’t really all that mad, gramps hit way harder than a simple fall from a tree, but it was good to see Uta so happy. Every time the purple eyed girl glanced back with that huge smile on her face Lucy felt herself smile so hard it felt like her entire body was doing it.
As they sprinted through town, eventually losing the guise of a halfhearted chase, the quiet village folks had to move out of their way in exasperated fondness. They knew from experience that if they didn’t move one of the girls would trample them.
Eventually they came to a stop at the docks, laughing their way through some made up game involving the posts.
As the sun set, finally, their hyperactive fun came to an end. They sat together at the end of the last dock, watching the sun dip below the calm waters of the bay.
Well, Uta was watching the sun. Lucy was watching her. But that was normal, the adults in town had gotten used to the sight of Lucy near constantly staring at the other girl.
“Hey Uta.” She started a few moments later, the last lights of the sun having finally faded.
“Hmm?” She responded, glancing at Lucy. She knew from experience that this was either going to be some stupid joke or some offer to play a stupid game. No matter what though it would put a smile on her face.
“Marry me.” Lucy said simply. In the 6 months they’d known each other, Uta had never seen her look so serious. She was still smiling, but it was softer, and her eyes held no joke or laughter.
A beat passed.
Two.
Uta couldn’t tell what was more surprising here. That the question had even been asked, or that she wasn’t surprised or confused.
She knew it was serious. Lucy was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a liar, nor was she capable of joking about something really serious. She really wanted to Marry her.
“Okay.” It was easy. The surprising thing was just how easy it was to answer. But she wanted to.
So that was it.
Lucy’s smile was brighter than the sun on the hottest summer day, and Uta felt herself mirroring it. Lucy had a rare ability Uta was jealous of, everything she did she did with her whole self. If she was happy you could tell just by looking at her hands, having the whole picture just made it all the more clear.
Lucy wrapped her up in the tightest hug of her life, nuzzling their cheeks together and squeezing for all she was worth. And Uta loved every second of it.
If they were older there might have been more questions. Thoughts of planning and locations and guests and life. But for the two six year old's it was as simple as a question and an answer.
When they got up to return to Party’s bar a little while later their hands were still clasped tightly together. ( Lucy had tried to make it work staying wrapped around Uta, but it was too hard to walk)
Returning to the bar, Lucy threw open the saloon doors and shouted “Hey Shanks! I’m marrying your daughter!”
The red haired pirates were treated to the rare sight of their captain spitting out booze.
~You're Invited~
“Why can’t I come with you?” Lucy whined, her arms tightly wrapped around Utas waist, being dragged down the dock.
Shanks rolled his eyes good naturedly, calmly grabbing Lucy and prying the two apart. His grin turned smug when Uta shot him a betrayed look. She could put up a brave front, but she didn’t want Lucy to let go any more than she did, and they both knew it.
“Because you’re not old enough to be a pirate.” Shanks said simply, for what felt like the 100th time.
“But Uta-“
“Uta was raised on my ship and knows it and the crew like the back of her hand.” He cut her off.
He tuned out the blubbering and teary goodbye after that, checking with Ben to make sure everything was ready to set off. A few moments later when Uta had finally boarded, gang plank pulled and stowed away, he turned his attention back to the still upset girl on the docks.
“We’ll be back in a few weeks!” He called, signaling the crew to pull the anchor and unfurl the sails.
Uta stayed on the aft deck of the ship, watching the island disappear beyond the horizon, and then just staring in that direction until the sun had long set and her eyes were too heavy to keep open.
~You're Invited~
When the red haired pirates returned a month later, Uta wasn’t with them.
Lucy refused to move from the dock, staring over the horizon, for a week.
When Shanks left the island for good, passing his precious straw hat to her, she made a promise. She would be the Pirate Queen one day, but she wouldn’t set out until she had her wife by her side again.
~You're Invited~
Present day
Sun sitting high in the sky. Peaceful waters gently tossing a small, single cabin sloop. Pleasant breeze, the kind all sailors associated with home.
And a skyline dominated by red cliff face.
In Lucy’s mind, there was no better day to set out than this. She checked her notes one final time, rereading the tips her grandpa had given her on how to get to the Grand Line one final time, before beaming.
As her ship slowly eased its way towards the up flowing river of Reverse Mountain, she smiled, grip firm on her little ships steering wheel.
She had just short of three years to find Uta before she could be a pirate.
In her mind, that was plenty of time.
She whooped with joy as her ship rocketed up the side of a mountain, carrying her beyond the waters of her home in the east blue, into the unknown.