DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ONE PIECE

For those of you who are new, this is a SEQUEL TO ANOTHER STORY by the name of Her Twisted Tale. You should probably read that before this so you're not hella confused.

For those returning to me, did you miss me? I'm sorry for taking so long. Things are hectic and I've been trying to figure this fic out from the title to the plot. IT'S BEEN CRAZY!

So, please enjoy chapter one. Totally not sure when I'll update again, but hopefully it'll be soon~!

Chapter One

"To the well-organized mind, death is but the next adventure."

They were the words that I heard many years ago from a man in a cemetery on an island on the Grand Line, and they were the words that gave me the most hope all this time, for reasons that I was unable to put into words. It had been so long since I had been announced dead to the world that I began to truly see myself as a dead woman, despite the fact that I was actually alive and as well as I could get. Two years in that place, and you would begin to lose hope as well, no matter how strong or stable you were.

And then that day came. That day that involved a raid on the building that had been my hell house for the past two years. A group of pirates came in, brandishing weapons and demanding riches and any food or water they had available. I can remember looking up through the bars of the cell, raising my eyebrows in surprise and trying to look around the corner in the general direction that the voices were coming from. Of course, I couldn't see anything, so I waited, tilting my head back and to the side, watching desperately for some movement of someone coming around the corner.

It didn't take long for that to happen. After a moment, a figure stepped into my field of vision, carrying a very large sword that seemed impossibly heavy for someone so tiny to wield. I watched with sudden apprehension as this person strutted across the span of the cells bars, lifting this large sword and cutting down the guard who was in the middle of aiming a gun at the person. I watched with a startlingly sick satisfaction as the guard fell heavily with a cry of agony, dying as he hit the floor, his blood splattering up at the impact.

Without thinking of what would happen if I did, I brought my hands in front of me and clapped. The chains around my wrists jangled with every clap, loud in the eerily silent corridor, my claps ringing out just as loud. The person froze and turned their gaze to me, stopping in their tracks and cocking their head to the side. I wished I could have seen the face of the person, in hopes that maybe I would recognize them from a Wanted poster of some sort, but the horrible lighting provided by sparse torches only allowed me to see their silhouette.

"Who are you?" The voice called out. In that moment, I realized two things about this person. One was that they were most definitely male, which was accentuated when they turned to fully face me and I saw the broadness of his shoulders. Second, the dim lighting worked both ways, meaning he couldn't see me either. "What are you doing here?" The man demanded almost immediately after his first question hardly giving me time to answer.

I waited a moment to make sure he wouldn't fire off another question, then gave him a deadpanned expression. "What does it look like I'm doing here?"

The twitch of his shoulders and they straightening of his back were subtle, but noticeable. "Alright, you're a prisoner. So who the hell are you then?"

"Isn't it polite to introduce yourself first when talking to a lady?"

Sure, I wasn't exactly in an ideal position to be having a casual conversation while still chained up in the cell and he obviously had no problem killing people, but if being sarcastic and witty was the only was the only way to retain some normalcy, then I would do it. It hadn't stopped me for the majority of my time here, so why stop now?

This man stepped forward, and I got a surge of fear and excitement, but before his face could enter the light provided by one of the torches, a loud yell came from the left. We both looked to the source, though from his position, he could see whoever it was much better than I could. I looked back to his face just in time to see a flash of white that was his teeth before he lunged out of sight beyond the cell bars.

Horrible sound of flesh being cut and pained screams filled the corridor, so loud and sudden that I jerked and almost brought my hands to cover my ears. Bodies violently slamming onto the floor in such quick succession that I couldn't count them all. By the time the silence came once again, I knew for sure that there were fourteen bodies that thumped to the concrete. All in the span of thirty seconds.

Maybe messing with this guy wasn't the greatest idea at the moment.

He came back into sight as soon as this thought crossed my mind. I was distracted by the droplets of blood that dripped from his sword into the pool of light from the lantern, mesmerized, before looking back to his face. The whiteness of his teeth were visible as he grinned, stepping forward slowly into the light while speaking.

"My name is Forrester Alvin, the First Mate of the Raze Pirates. I am the man who will make my captain the greatest pirate to ever." As he stepped into the light, I caught a better look at his face. Honestly, he was quite handsome, and didn't have the face of a killer that I was expecting. His hair was a chestnut color, a little lighter than my own hair color, and his eyes were a piercing green. His features as well were quite soft, looking more like a lover than a fighter. However, the blood splattered against his cheeks, forehead, and neck were giving him the feel of a hardened criminal.

And then he looked awestruck.

See, as he stepped forward, he grabbed the torch and shone the light into the cell, allowing my face to also be revealed to him. I simply stared at him while he sputtered and pointed, clutching his free hand to his head and looking around, asking if anyone else was seeing this. I was honestly confused as to why he was acting this way, and then it struck me. I was supposed to be dead, and I clearly wasn't. I'm sure that's enough to make anyone freak out.

"You're Panther D. Mara! Mara The Devil!" I nodded slowly while he yelled, eyes bugging out his head and hand gripping his hair. I waited, shifting to rest my back against the wall better and more comfortably. It took all of three minutes for him to calm down enough to clear his throat and speak properly. "It's a shock that you're not dead."

I nodded again, pursing my lips. "Yeah, I was pretty surprised too."

He gnawed on his lip and looked away from me, towards the left, where he had fought off whoever had been coming up earlier. I watched with a sense of doom as he sighed. "I'll be back."

The urge to say something witty was strong, but I only nodded, though he didn't see as he was already leaving, taking the only source of light with him and leaving me in near darkness. I sighed and tilted my head back once again, staring up at the ceiling, barely able to make out the cracks in the concrete. My hands brushed against the the floor, feeling the small pebbles and cracks that I had become familiar with.

Ten minutes passed in relative silence. The sounds of fighting upstairs died down slowly, and I wondered if perhaps this Alvin guy wouldn't come back and I would be alone to my own devices, unable to get out of here and die since everyone else seemed to be getting killed. A part of me wished that he would have just killed me while he was down here, saving me from the suffering of starvation and loneliness. I was kind of pissed that he didn't.

Approaching footsteps brought my eyes to the left of the cell bars, watching the growing light that could have only been coming from a torch. I swallowed thickly. What if this was the guards and they had killed Alvin and whoever he came with? I mean, I was mad at him, but I would rather it be him coming back than the guards and people who worked here.

Three people stepped into my line of sight and I sagged my shoulders in relief, a movement that didn't get passed Alvin as he grinned and leaned closer to the bars.

"You missed me already? I'll take that as a compliment!"

If I hadn't been so transfixed on the woman beside him, I would have rolled my eyes. She was smaller than him, only reaching his shoulder-probably the same height as me. Though it wasn't her height that drew my undivided attention to her. It was, instead, the sheer power and authority that seemed to ooze out of her naturally. She commanded attention, and I don't think she did it on purpose. She seemed aged beyond her years, her aura showing that she'd seen too much of the world already while he physical appearance hinted that she couldn't have been much older than myself. Scars littered her face from hairline to cleavage, more than likely disappearing under the blouse she wore.

Her eyes held mine for the longest of moments, azure meeting brown in a moment of tension. Her eyes were narrowed in suspicion and something else that I couldn't identify. I watched calmly, keeping my face neutral so as not to make things any worse for myself. I had been prisoner for these assholes for too long, and I didn't want to be prisoner to a group of pirates next.

The tension drained away and she leaned back, giving a sharp laugh and flipping her short hair out of her eyes, the pixie cut looking quite endearing on the woman.

"I have to tell you, when Al here came and said that the Panther D. Mara was down here, I didn't believe him." I looked from her to Alvin, who rolled his eyes at the woman's antics and smiled, making him look younger. "Then coming down here and seeing you! Oh it's almost too much!" She laughed some more, bringing her hands up and wiping at the tears in her eyes, revealing the hook that was her left hand. It had to be the only cliche pirate thing that I had seen in a long time, and I almost wanted to laugh alongside her.

Alvin sighed heavily and brought his hand down on the woman's shoulder. He opened his mouth to speak, but as he did, a small figure jumped onto his back. I tensed up and worried that this was an enemy and that he would be killed, but when he lifted the torch and yelled at the figure, I was proven wrong.

"Dammit, Minnie! Get off of me, will ya?" He shook around and bucked his shoulders, trying to get to small girl to let go of him, but failed. She held tight and laughed, sounding childlike in nature. I came to the conclusion that she was a very young girl, hardly a woman. Her large eyes were rounded with childhood and her hair bounced around her shoulders in black tresses, looking like ink as she was swung back and forth by the man she jumped on. "Can't you see we're doing business?"

She laughed even harder, dodging his fist with ease and blowing a raspberry in his face, spit flying over his cheeks and nose. He stopped moving altogether and brought his hand up to slowly wipe the spit away, the dark aura coming from him being ignored as the small girl turned her dark eyes to me.

"You are so cool! I remember seeing you in the paper a few years ago after the war!" I gave an awkward smile, unsure of how to respond to her. The small girl, Minnie, turned to the other woman, who was now serious and analyzing me. "Captain, we should bring her with us! We have to get her out of here!"

Their Captain put a finger to her chin and turned her head to the side, glancing at me from head to toe. I wasn't getting my hopes up. These people were pirates. I was a pirate. It was more likely that they would want to fight and kill me than to help me. They would probably turn me in to the Marines in hopes of getting in their good graces, if this Captain woman wanted to be a Shichibukai.

That tension returned for only a brief moment before the woman grinned and leaned her head closer to the bars. "We will help you, Devil." My own eyes widened in shock while hers squinted from the force of her grin. "It will be for a price, however. Alvin, get her out. Minnie, come along."

The Captain woman grabbed the back of the small girl's shirt and dragged her from the swordsman, giving her orders as they walked away that were muffled by the walls. I looked back to Alvin and felt my heart flutter with relief when he opened the door with the keys he obtained from the body of the guard. He approached quickly and knelt down on one knee, pressing the key into the lock of the chains and slipping them from my wrists first.

"I still can't believe it's you." I watched the top of his head while he unchained my waist. "I mean, it did seem weird that you would die from something as stupid as that after surviving the War and taking down Akainu, but the paper made it pretty convincing." He moved to my ankles, looking up and smiling. "It's pretty cool that you're alive though."

My lips stretched into a smile and I nodded. "Yeah, I think so too."

He stood and reached his hand out for me to take, which I gladly did, being hoisted to my feet with little effort and lead from the cell to see what the corridor looked like now. It pretty much looked how I expected. There were numerous dead bodies lying about, in the way to the point where we had to carefully step over them and avoid slipping on the blood, all the while my arm being held to ensure that I wouldn't fall over. He seemed to notice that I wasn't all too steady on my feet at the moment.

Going up the stairs was a challenged in itself. Alvin offered several times to just carry me, but the little bit of pride that I had caused me to assure him that I could do it. My legs were just asleep and lacking blood from being in a seated position for so long. I just needed a moment to get right again.

On the top floor, Alvin lead me to the exit, stopping to look at the fallen bodies around the room. He zoned in on specific people, anger in his eyes and his arm tightening painfully on my arm. I ignored that and focused on the pendant resting on his neck of a Jolly Roger that I assumed was the insignia for the crew he was on. I looked back to the bodies and spotted the same Jolly Roger on them in various forms. Some had tattoos. Some had pendants. Some wore clothes with it sewn on the front.

It was all too obvious that they were his crewmates, and they were dead now.

"Ya know," I began as he started for the door again, bringing his eyes to look down at me questioningly. "Someone once told me that, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next adventure."

Alvin chuckled at that and helped me up the ramp to their ship, a large vessel that seemed almost as big as the Moby Dick. "That's some solid wisdom you got there, Devil. Who would have thought that you were badass and wise?"

[A/N]: Did ya like? By the way, that quote in the beginning and the one that Mara repeats at the end is definitely a quote from J.K. Rowling, so I do not take credit for that. Please lemme know what you think of this first chapter and how excited you are for more! I'm working hard, but I'll be starting school soon, so I don't know when I'll be able to pump more out. As long as you all don't abandon me and this fic, I won't abandon you!

Love you all and see you soon~!

XoXoXoXoXo