WELL THAT ONLY TOOK 2 YEARS.

/slam dunks self into the dumpster where i belong

Sloooowly trying to crawl back to both Tumblr and fanfics, though. Honestly I think the ridiculous amount of time between updates is kind of my entire selling point by now. IN MY DEFENSE uni is fun but it's also currently pressure cooking me ;v; However summer is just around the corner, so maybe the stars will align and I'll be hit with the drive to push out a new chapter or two in the span of the upcoming holiday weeks. (I mean, probably not, since I'm working full-time this summer, but hey - fingers crossed!)

28 REVIEWS THOUGH? You guys are amazing holy shit. I've been re-reading all the reviews multiple times, and it's all thanks to those wonderful wonderful wonderful words that I'm dragging my buttocks back here to try my best and give you guys an update. Thank you so much omfg T-T

IIIII also still haven't caught up with the OP manga, since I've been kind of swamped with homework and assignments, but maybe I'll have time to finish it soon! (Like when I'm 38 lmao…) - My point being; if I've somehow unintentionally gone against the original OP plot in this chapter and the Ghost of Canon Past comes to haunt me tonight, y'all know why.

Also, a few things I feel the need to address before we get to it:

- so here's a thing about me: i LOVE plotting. am i GOOD at plotting? no. do i know anything ABOUT plotting? also no. am i sure that i actually understand how plotting even WORKS? of course not. hence why this story is such a mess. it's mindless fun. mostly. but there's an overarching plot somewhere (though it might be hard to glimpse, especially during the first few chapters- apologies for the lack of plot in this one btw), and despite all appearances to the contrary, i do have some plan with an underlying theme to it. so stay with me here as i keep tossing mediocre content into the fanfiction void and praying for validation.

- also i tend to be vague when it comes to certain things because most of the story is still a WIP and i have a problem with changing the story a lot and people going "but i thought x happens and i thought x happened after y did this" and i'm sitting there like "yes but i'm an indecisive duck, i'm sorry" - so don't be afraid to ask over on tumblr if there's anything that confuses you (though i can't promise you'll like the answer, since there's a 95% chance it'll just be a shrug emoji)

- and wow i'm so pleasantly surprised by how many people seemed to like Camille? But i feel like i should warn you that her blood literally consists of liquid salt and bitterness, so don't be shocked if you find her insufferable by the end of this chapter.

- and a HUGE thank you to Klexenia for offering to beta this mess for me– I would've never dared to post it online elsewise! Please please PLEASE go check out her stories on ff and her art on tumblr— it's all beyond stunning and she truly deserves all the attention she can get! (Every time I see her opoc crew on my tumblr dash I wanna scream god BLESS)

AND THE LAST THING I WANNA DO is to quickly answer a couple of questions you guys left me:

1 - Did she eat a devil fruit at the beginning? - She did indeed! Though whether it actually does anything (besides transporting her to Gardenia) remains to be seen.

2 - Do the characters of OP speak English in this fic since the Gardenians speak some sort of archaic English? - Yep! I ended up picking English as the lingua franca since it makes things easier for me and I'm a lazybuuuum im sorryyyyyy orz (tho languages in general are gonna be a rather big part of the plot later on so keep that in mind)

BUT HEY - I'll shut up now. Hugs and kisses to all the people who are sticking around during this update drought! You guys are absolutely swell! I hope you enjoy this chapter! Take a shot every time Camille scowls and let me know how nicely the hospital treats you! (dont)

ONWARDS.

Tea with a Stranger

- CHAPTER ONE -

your friendly neighbourhood arsonist.

All in all, it was a rather lovely evening.

The sun was setting, leaving the sky in a soft dark-orange glow as the birds roosted in their cozy nests and a serene stillness settled over Gardenia.

Or, well, it would have been - had the air not been permeating with war cries and gleaming pitchforks as the Gardenians tried to violently murder Camille Cousteau in what could only be described as a new rendition of the Salem witch trials.

"This," Camille hissed, brandishing her wooden spatula like a weapon in an effort to keep the swarm of raging Gardenians at bay, all while balancing precariously on the edge of the island, "is all your bloody fault."

"Alright, look - in my defense," began the freckled, fire-breathing monstrosity of a pirate who had just completely ruined her entire life, "I wasn't the one who dropped the flaming torch on his favorite flower."

Well, that was hardly fair. Technically accurate, sure, but not... okay, it felt unfair. Besides, they wouldn't have been in this situation at all if he hadn't set foot on the island in the first place.

You see, five days prior to that aforementioned Incident, Camille's life had still been quite normal- well, by her new standards, that is. She went about her days as per usual, pretty content while rumors about her were running rampant amongst the townsfolk - as is wont to happen when you're the only one above three inches on an entire island. The ghastly stories surrounding her existence had little effect on her daily life, besides giving her some new fairytale names to be labeled by whenever she actually opted to go outside.

Her current titles included (but were not limited to):

- The Crone (a true classic)

- Camille the Cantankerous (rather self-explanatory)

- Cruel Crusher of Life and also Hopes and Dreams (from that one time she accidentally stepped on a flower)

- Queen of Crumbs (due to the culinary revolution her sudden appearance brought upon the island)

- and, surprisingly, The Witch of the Woods (because the Gardenians were still enthralled by the idea that she was somehow a clairvoyant warlock who cursed people at will and ate children when no one was looking)

Fortunately, these bogus titles were enough to keep her out of most social interactions, which was pretty neat since Camillle's personal space bubble was roughly the size of 32 orca whales in a gradually widening spiral.

Not-so-fortunately, these bogus titles were also the reasons why a certain cowboy-esque pirate came knocking in the first place – and Camille, with her permanent sour mood and probably high blood pressure, welcomed his visit about as much as she would a surprise case of gonorrhea.

Now, one might be wondering; why in the world would Portgas D. Ace set foot in Gardenia in the first place?

...And quite honestly, there was no particular reason.

As it was, he could've very well decided to go straight from Drum Island to Alabasta without making a pit stop, but Marines had an annoying tendency to show up at the worst of times whenever he docked anywhere – with the exception of sky islands (maybe because Marines were too lame to figure out how to get up there in the first place, but he digressed). Besides, after leaving a message for Luffy to meet him in Nanohana in ten days, he had a fair amount of time to kill and would rather spend it peacefully.

So there he was, feet firmly planted on Gardenian soil, and unknowingly about to meet a girl who knew things she really shouldn't.

…But before that, he met a tiny man of wrinkled foreskin appearance whose attitude made Ace really worry about the Gardenians' local water source.

A man who was not only the apparent de-facto head of the village by virtue of his age, but also currently shaking his staff at the pirate and inspecting him like a baboon would inspect insects before eating them.

"A fairly large specimen," the man said, poking Ace in the knee, "Male perhaps, in seemingly good health, all limbs intact…"

"Uh..." Did he normally find people without limbs intact?

Ace blinked, trying to ignore how the other inhabitants seemed to either stop and stare, gasp, or elsewise declare their awe at the sight of him, or how the blanket-toga wearing mothers steered their children in a large arc around the ongoing scene – and decided that this sky island probably had miniscule contact with the outside world.

"Tell me, son of the gargantuan people, do you find joy in devouring children in the midst of night?"

Ace stared, wondering whether he'd have to add 'escaped from potentially cannibalistic plant man' to the plot when he retold this story to his fellow Whitebeard Pirates. "...Not really?"

The Elder squinted at him. "And do you fare as well as your female occultist counterpart in the act of crushing innocent organisms belonging to the holy vegetable kingdom?"

"...You know, when I asked if you'd seen a massive dark-haired man with missing teeth, I was hoping for less metaphor and more longitude and latitude."

"Your stature bears monumental resemblance to that of the Crone," accused the man, completely bulldozing over the last statement. Ace had yet to identify the look of predatory evaluation for what it was, but he sure as hell didn't like it.

"...I see," Ace said, not really seeing at all.

The man babbled on – something about witches and spells and general evil abound – but Ace had long since stopped listening and was far more fascinated by how the old man's wrinkled top lip looked like the crust of a really old beef patty.

"– and beyond Camille the Cantankerous' dark forest lies only downfall and ruin, mark my words!"

"I'm marking, alright," Ace mumbled absentmindedly, scanning the tree lines. The old man appeared to be asserting his dominance via a stare down, but Ace deflected the potential dick-waving competition by appearing not to notice.

"– and never hand her even a tiny drop of your blood – she will lord it over you for the rest of eternity!"

"Right. Thanks for the advice," he answered, mentally ready to somersault into the nearest bush and flee from the rapidly intensifying conversation if the need arose.

The Elder took a deep breath and stared at him sagely. "The Gardenian soil is quite acidic."

"That's….good?"

"Dead things decay rather quickly."

"Yeah, okay, I'm gonna go now."

And go he did – straight towards the specific island the old miniature grandpa had warned him about, because Ace was nothing if not adventurous and if he had ten days to spare, then he'd rather spend them in the company of a supposed witch than a tiny old man that made no sense.

"DO NOT BE CORRUPTED BY THE GLAMOUR OF THE MODERN AGE!" the man screamed after him as he went, just as nonsensical as the first time he'd opened his mouth.

The garden itself was beautifully tended, filled with freshly cut grass and budding spring flowers. A calming earthy scent swept through the air, mingling with the smell of sweet shrubs and roses. There was a stepping-stone path in the shade of a flowering maple tree, leading up to a small wooden house, almost entirely integrated into the forestry.

Ace knocked on the door.

And waited.

….and then knocked again.

He was two steps away from opening the door himself when it finally swung open with a piercing creak, revealing a— uh.

Well.

To be frank, he wasn't quite sure what he had expected the so-called witch to look like. Older, definitely. A bit more intimidating, maybe. Slightly scary, even.

As it was, she simply looked like how a cartoonist would anthropomorphize the deadly sin Sloth in one of those strange Marine newspaper cartoons.

She was shorter than him, and wearing an oversized bright green hoodie that covered the majority of her bony frame. Her hair was a disastrous brown battlefield of wild knots, and there might have been a hedgehog stuck in there somewhere squeaking for help– he really couldn't tell. There was a simple wooden spatula in her right hand and her expression made her look like a tiny nugget of molten rage. Honestly, the only magical talent she could possibly possess was the glaring capacity to single handedly revert the world back to an ice age.

She was frowning at his knees, as if expecting his face to be down there somewhere, before blinking thrice and following his legs up, up, up until she got to his face.

And then the frown morphed, slowly falling until she was staring straight at him in nothing short of abject horror.

"Yo." He said, raising one hand in greeting.

"Glurfk," she choked eloquently.

An aimless tumbleweed rolled by in the background.

…Her face was turning a rather alarming shade of purple.

Then her frontal cortex suddenly seemed to be back online, her brain finally managed to launch the escape program, and she promptly slammed the door straight in his face.

Ace blinked.

That...could probably have gone better.

Shit shit shit shit shit—

She couldn't believe it. Or rather, she could believe it, and that was the bloody problem.

There was a freaking anime character on her doorstep.

"Shit, shit, shit–" Camille clutched her spatula tightly, a pronounced note of hysteria leaking into her voice, "shiiiiiiitshitshitshit–"

"Uh, hey–" Ace said, his face suddenly right behind her, hanging upside down outside of her window.

"–SHIT," Camille yelped and flung her spatula in his general direction.

He caught it with ease.

"You," she breathed, and he wasn't sure if it was an observation or a curse.

"Me," he agreed instead, jumping inside through the window.

Camille eyeballed the waning amount of vacant space separating them. Oh god, this was bad. This was really bad. In fact, this was Number One on her list of Do Not Want, because it stood in complete opposition to her immediate life goal, which was Staying Alive.

(Yes, Camille Cousteau had very simple desires –

unfortunately, in this universe 'simple' clearly didn't equate to 'possible'.)

"Here." Ace held out the spatula he caught (a spatula she had creatively christened Walter roughly two months prior) with a grin so white it almost offset the balance of facial color-schemes.

Camille stared at his hand like it carried a disease.

…Maybe he'd ignore her if she put a paper bag over her head and labeled it 'not Camille'.

"...Hello?"

Or maybe she should just change her name, get plastic surgery, and move to a remote island in the tropics and spend the rest of her days in isolation – because clearly fate had a sick sense of humor and kept deciding that Camille, mistress of gutlessness, needed yet another problem in her life.

"You in there?"

Quite frankly, Camille was not 'in there' at all– her mind had enough trouble as it was trying to comprehend that Portgas D. Ace was no longer a cartoon on a page, but very much a living creature with a four-chambered heart, opposable thumbs, and a face so full of freckles they looked like dandelion seeds caught in a stray breeze.

"Urk," she choked out instead, trying to retreat further into the wall behind her – but unless osmosis was an option, she was pretty darn stuck.

He arched an eyebrow. "Are you always this articulate?"

Maybe if she kept ignoring him he'd go away.

(He didn't.)

Instead, Ace put the spatula on the table and let his eyes roam the room with a low whistle, before walking around. He apparently had no issue ignoring the girl in the corner, who seemed to be mouthing nonsense to herself and shifting her wide-eyed gaze between him and the door in some obscure form of deep-seated horror.

And then, after briefly studying the bunches of tied coriander on her shelf, he sat down in her chair– and proceeded to immediately fall asleep.

On her kitchen table.

Camille sank to the floor, set her face down in her hands, and groaned.

And that, dear friends, was Camille's first meeting with Firefist Ace.

(After a moment of quiet contemplation, she tried getting him out of her house, but he was fast asleep and heavier than he looked, so instead she settled for going to the town square and praying that he'd be gone by the time she got back.)

The second time Camille met Ace, she was squatting behind a bush; alone, sweating, and kind of resembling a terrified tortoise as she did her damnedest to hide from the freckled pirate currently blocking the only path to her house.

Primarily because she did not want yet another run-in with Ace, and also because she didn't anticipate he would find her hiding behind said bush.

…Which, on later reflection, was an obvious oversight – seeing as he found her exactly four seconds after her desperate dive into the greenery.

"Uh," he said, pointedly.

"Uh," she repeated, practically feeling her face go three-to-four complexions whiter than it's usual toilet-ivory shade.

"…What are you doing?"

God, Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Mary Magdalena, that fancy lion from Narnia, anybody-

"Oh, you know," she croaked, "Just…hanging out."

"In a bush."

"Bladder problems," she said, deciding to risk her remaining social grace by letting her brain produce an urgent yet somewhat humanly acceptable excuse for this predicament, "Can't hold it in for more than ten minutes."

An undignified silence followed, in which Ace stared at her with an odd mixture of terror and fascination, and Camille tried to subtly sink into the soil.

...Which didn't quite work, what with her being decidedly human and everything. So instead, Camille exhaled, put herself through numerous calming meditative techniques, and steeled herself to not scream– and then began the worlds most conspicuous crabwalk towards the beckoning house.

Ace watched her go, looking rather amused by the entire ordeal.

Ace eventually realized that Camille Cousteau only had two moods in her tiny emotional arsenal; absolute panic and horribly cranky. The more he met her, the less she eyeballed him like he was a potential source of huge trauma, and the more she began behaving like a grunting octogenarian with an expression that promised pain for anyone who attempted conversation. She was probably the most cynical person he'd ever met. But he didn't really mind her. She was vitriolic and grumpy and set in her ways, but not evil - maybe a little malicious, but if his hair looked liked that, he'd probably be angry, too.

On Camille's side of things, she was getting more and more annoyed by the world at large. By most average standards she was only a shut-in who preferred hedgehogs over the company of the entire human race– yet the abnormality that was her new life just kept sneaking up and kangaroo kicking her in the gut. Clearly, it wasn't enough that her life was now filled with devil fruits, time travel, and the overall suspension of reality. No, of course they had to throw a bloody pirate into the mix.

And, okay, look— why Ace, of all people? You know what, she could've dealt with Nami, or Smoker, or hell, quite a few of the characters. But Ace?

Ace was the opposite of her in every single way. Ace did what he wanted regardless of it being against the fundamental laws of reality or not. Ace was the type to lick metal poles in the dead of winter and put a phone in the microwave without any type of provocation. By nature, he was the type that confidently kept things out in the open for everyone to see – his opinions, his facial expressions, his chest.

But she'd survived all these months together with herbivore sky islanders– and one grinning bringer of fiery death was not going to break her track record.

So on the fourth day after his arrival, Camille found Ace laying spread-eagle in the middle of her garden and soaking in the sunlight. She stopped in the middle of her doorway to frown, commandeering a teacup in her hands and guarding it religiously.

"Oh. It's just you," she said, although the way she said it, it could have been 'Oh. It's just the bubonic plague.'

"Yep." Ace made a grand gesture of yawning and stretching and lifting the orange hat away from his eyes. "Just me."

"Do you really have nowhere else to go, or are you just trying to be as obnoxious as possible?"

Ace, who clearly had selective hearing, didn't bother answering and just gave her a wide smile. A smile, which, in her opinion, looked like it deserved metaphors that had to do with illumination and sunlight. And superlatives. She really didn't like it.

Avoiding the pirate was quickly proving to be an uphill struggle– whenever he wasn't off overthrowing the world order (or whatever he did in his spare time), he'd either suddenly cartwheel into her field of vision and stay there for hours on end, or just walk around Gardenia, disconcerting the general populace with an impressive display of unrealistic aerial acrobatics. And honestly, Camille felt more than ready to just give up on doing anything beyond breathing.

So she placed her free hand on her hip, made a sound that was the unholy offspring of a growl and a prayer to the heavens, and started glaring at the clouds overhead.

Ace blinked. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for the universe to finish heaping its drama and misery upon me." Her scowl deepened. "At this point, I'd just like to get everything in one go so I can deal with it and move on with my life."

(Sometimes she imagined a titan-sized Eiichiro Oda behind the clouds, cackling like a madman and shaking up the snow globe that was her life just to watch her flounder around.)

Ace arched an eyebrow as Camille scrunched her eyes closed and counted to ten.

Then she counted to twenty for good measure.

But he was still there when she opened her eyes, and knowing a lost cause when she saw one, she scrubbed her hand through her hair and grimaced when her fingers snagged on a particularly nasty knot.

And then she proceeded to open her mouth and say something that even shocked herself.

She wasn't sure what possessed her to say it – because she was absolutely appalled at even the thought of spending a second in Ace's presence, let alone hours – and the fact that he could definitely strangle a militant with only a flower stalk was beyond bloody terrifying – yet she went ahead and said it anyway.

(Maybe it was because she desperately craved human interaction, but there was no way she'd ever admit to something that ridiculous.)

"Do you like tea?"

The only thing separating them inside her tiny house was a snoozing hedgehog and a battered tray containing a wide variety of homemade biscuits. The pirate wasted no time in making himself comfortable while holding a hot cup of chrysanthemum tea and watching the slowly blooming flowers float up to the surface.

"Sooooo," he started casually, "...You're human."

"Well spotted," Camille deadpanned, refreshing one of the sachet of dried herbs that kept the house sweet-smelling, before lumbering back to the table with a new kettle of tea.

"You from North Blue, then?" At her odd look, he continued, "Going by your accent. Never heard one quite that thick, though – no offense."

The tea stopped pouring for an instant, her face blank as the comment registered; she appeared to decide she didn't want to go into details and continued to pour the tea. "Yeah. North Blue."

(It wasn't that she didn't want to tell, actually it was quite tempting to just blubber out a "uh, no, I slipped through the cogs of cosmos reckoning and wasn't important enough to be noticed", but there were so many ways that story could derail into the topic of "also, I'm kind of a clairvoyant alien" and she had no idea how to even approach that.)

So instead, she evaded or deflected the rest of his questions until a strangely companionable silence fell over them, only occasionally broken by Ace trying to keep a new conversation alive until it was too deep into 'awkward' territory to salvage.

It kind of became a daily thing.

After the first time, Ace kind of just started inviting himself over whenever he was done upsetting the status quo for the day. He'd either come quietly, delicately stepping across her garden like a soldier in a mine field, or suddenly, doing a sick wheelie through her kitchen window without any form of warning (and consequently having to dodge every single cooking utensil known to mankind as Camille really didn't like surprises).

Then they'd somehow end up at the familiar table with a kettle of tea and two cups between them, and Ace would keep asking her bothersome questions like:

"So do Gardenians eat anything besides vegetables?"

"Souls of the innocent, probably."

...

"Why do you have an endless supply of tea at all times?"

"I hoard it. Like Smaug."

"...Who?"

...

"Think I can get 'Cam' to catch on?"

"No. Absolutely do not."

"Worth a shot."

…

"Why does the Elder always look morally offended by your presence?"

"We're not on the best of terms."

"How come?"

"I kool-aided through his holy altar and he tried to kill me. Thrice."

"...Ah."

...and so on.

Sometimes a brief conversation followed, mostly monosyllabic on her end– but usually he'd just down cookies like it was going out of style as Camille watched him eat with the expression of someone watching a car accident in progress. On a good day she might grumble on consistent intervals about how he kept putting the spoon into the sugar jar right after stirring his tea and leaving annoying clumps of tea sugar– but usually she just kept quiet until he'd nod his head at her, jump out the window and onto her rooftop and running off into the distance, free to go terrorize the night. Because apparently all pirates were show-offs and it was hardly feasible to simply WALK off.

Anyway. That wasn't the point.

The point was: even though Portgas D. Ace was a ridiculously powerful fantasy character who could probably wring her neck several times and tie her spine into a knot with his little finger alone, she still managed to keep some semblance of calm– because in a few more days he'd leave for good and then she'd never have to see him again.

(She was, of course, very wrong.)

"Wow, you really are starved for entertainment."

Ace blinked at her droll comment. He was sitting on one of the lower branches and dangling his ankles in the water, watching her dunk her black shorts into the river and scrub them with grit from between the rocks– which, granted, wasn't the most interesting thing to look at.

He shrugged. "It's not as though there's somehow a more pressing matter for me to attend to somewhere."

She paused her scrubbing to give him a flat look. As per usual, when he wasn't busy being a menace to society, Ace was alright with skipping his usual routine and imposing on Camille until she kicked him out of her house. As it was, they were already outside, so she'd just have to deal with his company and watch how his multitude of freckles seemed to be gathering new recruits on the edges of his face.

This had been going on for, what, six days now? After spending all these months in Gardenia, Camille could no longer conceptualize time and had a very shaky grasp on its passing– but she was about fifty percent sure it had been six days. Maybe. Probably.

"You'd think pirates have better things to do than to bother random civilians, " she said with a snort, giving him a mid-level stern glare (Ace had already made a mental chart, categorizing the severity of Camille glares).

He sighed. "Everyone's a critic."

She didn't expect anything else– she'd asked that question at least a dozen times, and had yet to receive an adequate answer.

"You know, there are better ways to go about washing your clothes in a river." He leaned back, propping his hands behind him on the branch. "You want a tip?"

Bluntly. "No."

As expected, the pirate went on regardless, providing running commentary on her washing style and beaming more cancerous UV rays until she just started tuning him out.

And then Camille, true to her untimely colors, went ahead and slipped on a particularly slimy underwater stone and slammed face-first into the water with windmilling hands. When she rose from the water like a specter returned from the grave and tried to wade her way back to the shore like a prehistoric caveman, Ace was already cracking up so hard he almost fell off the branch himself.

She was in the process of very delicately trying to remove her wet shoes and opened her mouth to release a verbal shitstorm on him– but then she thought the better of it and instead quickly pulled one of her sneakers off and, with the accuracy born out of a life-long training, flung it straight at Ace's face.

He caught it in time because he was genetically coded to be annoying (of course, what else did she expect?), but at least his laughter calmed down somewhat after she weighed her other shoe threateningly.

Instead, Ace waved at her with the first shoe still in hand. "Missed."

"Pity," Camille mumbled too quietly to be heard, but the pirate must have read her lips because he snickered anyway.

"Oh, cram it," she said bluntly, trying her best to twist the water out of her hair.

"Catch!" Was the only warning she got has he threw the shoe back in her direction– and really, it was going like…zero miles per hour, if even, but Camille had the balance of a one-legged chair, so when she fumbled to catch the flying sneaker, gravity decided to kick in at the worst moment possible.

She probably looked pretty comical in that moment, flailing her arms desperately in hopes that the air particles around her would suddenly condense into some miraculous life-support.

...Which didn't help at all, so back into the water she went, toppling over yet again with a spectacular splash.

That shit-eating grin of his was still in place when she came up gasping for air and hurtled herself melodramatically back onto the riverbank.

"You…" She stuttered and the face he gave her almost managed to look innocent. "You…"

"Shining example of masculinity?" He offered, and her frown was back with a vengeance.

"I was going to say asshole," she said stiffly and he chuckled.

"Sorry."

Her scowl turned even darker. "You don't look very sorry."

"Sometimes people smirk in self-satisfaction when they're feeling very sad."

"My fist and your pretty face will have words, Portgas. Words of pain."

"I really can't feel inclined to be offended by someone who needs my help standing up."

"Don't touch me."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"I seriously hope you drown."

(He didn't really care to point out the fact that he had never actually told her his name – just figured she might've seen his wanted poster somewhere, or that maybe there was some truth to the witch rumor after all.)

(Disaster didn't strike until the seventh day rolled around.)

A well-known fact: The Gardenians loved flowers.

A not-so well-known fact: The Elder had a favorite.

It was huge; a fresh-blooming oriental lily with a deep blush near the stamen, surrounded by leaves so big one could count the veins if you wanted. The Elder had placed it smack-dab in the middle of his own garden, where bypassers could only sneak a look over the fence and enjoy its beauty from afar.

Unless you were Firefist Ace, in which case you'd just leap over the fence and trudge straight over to it to get a better look, only to be interrupted by a horrified Camille on her way home from the village center.

"What the hell," Camille hissed, "are you doing?"

Ace turned around slowly, locking eyes with her scandalized face. "Uh...Exploring?"

"Exploring?" What was he, Dora's long-lost twin brother? "Get out of the Elder's garden!"

"Unfortunately you have absolutely no say in this," Ace said cheerfully. "Your attitude has been vetoed since you're a fun-hating nerd."

Camille spluttered. "Excuse me? I know this might be hard for you to grasp, but some of us have an image to maintain!"

"The image of a shunned meat-eating spellcaster?"

"...You're a jerk and you can't cook," she informed him stiffly. It wasn't her finest moment.

Now, normally Camille would've left him to his own devices, but this was Gardenia, and she was currently the unlucky person dubbed their residential witch. Which meant that if anything out of the ordinary happened, she'd immediately be blamed for it.

And quite frankly, she already had more than enough on her tiny plate.

So as the afternoon started bleeding into evening, Camille was still staring in some mix of fascination and mute terror as Ace proceeded to grab a branch, light it on freaking fire, and holding it like a makeshift torch.

"...You know, I always knew reality was falling apart, but this just kind of confirms it for me," she mumbled, trying hard not to think about the strictly enforced no-fire policy of the island.

Ace blinked, decided it was probably just another one of her weird comments that really made no sense, and bent down to illuminate the big flower in the soft firelight to get a look at the details.

Camille stayed quiet for a few more seconds, still struggling to make room for the concept of magic in a world that was continually surprising her.

"So–" he started loud enough to alert the entirety of literally every person in their vicinity.

"Shh!" Camille hushed at him, casting furtive looks around the empty garden.

"Right, down-low," he said with all the delicacy of a trombone. "Got it."

Just as he finished the last sentence, he did an overdramatic perimeter sweep, and began waltzing around and hugging walls like a bad imitation of James Bond, occasionally rolling across the ground and being the polar opposite of stealthy.

Camille, fully aware that he was doing it just to be a little shit, glared accordingly.

...and oh god, that torch was getting awfully close to the Elder's favorite flower.

"Give that here before you burn this entire garden to the ground!" She flung one leg over the fence, failed to hoist herself over the edge, and elegantly face-planted into the ground with a muffled "oof!", before scrambling to her feet and stomping over to Ace like a dark cloud armed with the hair of Medusa's less fortunate sister.

"...Alright, sure," Ace conceded easily with a shrug, and handed her the torch.

- and here, disaster struck.

Or, well, to be more precise: the branch was heavier than it looked, and Camille's hands were sweaty and gross from the miniature panic attack the previous scene had caused her.

So the still-burning torch slipped from her hands like an eel through water, and landed straight on the innocent flower below. The flower immediately went up in a plume of bright yellow flames, experiencing cremation in standard procedure and leaving only smoking remains.

The silence that followed could have rivalled oblivion.

Ace stared at the burnt flower remains and then back at her, his face an almost comical mask of incredulity. "...Did you just…?"

"...Oh my god," Camille whispered. "Oh dear sweet Jesus."

True to her shitty luck, the door to the Elder's house slammed open- and so the witch hunt began.

Our two not-so-lucky accomplices were balancing at the very end of the island.

Or– Camille was, at least. Ace was taking it all rather well, actually.

Once the Elder realized his beloved plant had been burnt to a crisp, he'd pretty much arranged an army of furious Gardenians and ordered them to swarm Camille en masse. And while Camille had never been athletic (she barely managed to walk up a flight of stairs without passing out from exhaustion, let's be honest here), the sight of thirty mini-soldiers yodeling with incalculable rage made even her bolt through the forest at a pace that would have left her old gym teacher wiping a proud tear.

But now they were at the edge of the island with the two parties staring at each other– one looking fierce with their pitchforks and hammers and staffs, and Camille looking somewhat unfortunate with her...well, her nothing.

And then there was Ace, who was to her left and staring calmly at the scene with his arms folded behind his head, like he was listening to wind chimes and water and softly chanting monks instead of standing three meters away from a rapidly escalating murder attempt.

She caught him whistling in her peripheral vision and wished him pain. Endless pain.

The Gardenians were closing in, and if she tried to make a run for it, she would be in stabbing range. They would definitely not hesitate to turn her into a Camille-kabob, and she really didn't want that on her epitaph. So she tried to school her expression into something that said 'I fight coyotes with my bare hands' and waving her spatula in tantalizing aerial patterns to ward them off.

It wasn't working.

"Portgas," she bit out in the mildest tone she could muster. "A little help would be greatly appreciated."

"Help?" He gave her a faux-innocent look, and she tried really hard not to strangle him.

"Yes, help. Any scenario where the garden gnomes don't try to stab me to death is just fine," she hissed under her breath. The Elder looked at Camille in a way that suggested she shouldn't get her hopes up.

"Your mother smells of elderberries!" yelled one particularity enthusiastic kid armed with a wooden fork.

Ace still seemed rather busy examining the lines of his palm. "What's the magical word?"

At his side, Camille gave an anguished gargle. "What?!"

"The magical word."

"You're kidding me!"

"I'm just saying, the rest of your possibly short life hinges on this moment."

(In retrospect, Camille was pretty sure Ace wouldn't have let anyone die at the hands of a Gardenian– but at the time, the chances of her long-term survival were getting awfully close to zero, and she didn't care to think about logic.)

"Can you help or not?!"

"...So anyway, ignoring your inevitable and bloody fate..."

"Spare me the platitudes, you impertinent pests!" spluttered the Elder with so much spit flying towards Camille's face that if he had been a pastor she would've been baptized on the spot.

"PORTGAS I SWEAR TO GOD."

"Alright, fine. Guess that's the best I'm gonna get," he relented, straightened his hat, and closed the space between them..

Quite honestly, she wasn't sure what she expected him to do.

Maybe perform a splendid fireshow to take their attention away as she fled, or maybe some impressive and overly cliché speech about unbeatable love and friendship that would leave them all sobbing, or maybe just an actual fight.

She did not, however, expect him to place a hand on her collarbone and promptly shove her off the edge of the island.

'This,' she thought numbly as she clutched Thistle like a lifeline and free-fell towards what could only be certain death, 'is definitely not good.'

A/N: LET OPERATION NAKAMA COMMENCE

Our little grumpy bridge troll might be trying to avoid the plot, but trust me when I say that their two paths will inevitably converge, and Camille will shit an entire brick.

Okay I WAS NEVER HERE, SHH, CRAMMING LIKE FUQ BEFORE UNIVERSITY BREAKS UP, WAS WORKING THIS WHOLE TIME.

THIS WHOLE TIME.