Beta-reader: N/A

Part: Two

Word Count: 3,460

Type: Three-shot – Incomplete

Disclaimer: If you've heard of it before, then it's obviously not mine.

Started: December 18, 2016

Completed: February 8, 2016

Note: The summary of Peace like Bubbles was written with more ideas in mind than what was posted in the one-shot. So since I received so much wonderful feedback on it, I'm doing a sequel. (Obviously since this is getting posted.) Or rather, I suppose I'm turning it into a three-shot—since I can't seem to keep my creations at their intended one-shot-ness. And honestly, depending on how I feel about it, it might also get like an actual sequel or an afterwards sort of thing. We'll see. Additionally, to those that I promised it would be up on the 7th, I'm super sorry. I knew the holidays were going to be a whirlwind for me and my decompression time took on the form of horror movies that ended in me procrastinating my butt off (and then I started back to school wherein my decision to take not one but two language classes on top of a normal course load bit me in the ass). Whoops. In my defense, this sucker ended up being much longer than I originally planned (probably because my style is more introspection/exposition rather than action/dialogue). And, yes, there will be a part three. I got to a certain point and didn't think it would flow well if I tried to mash the ending that I had planned for this monstrosity onto it. So yeah. Again, sorry for being literally a month late—hopefully the promise of more will make up for it.
And yes, yes, I did do research on pianos—baby grands specifically, so bear with me and hopefully I did not confuse anyone as to the size/dimensions/heft of a small baby grand. For those of you who are curious, it's 3½ft tall, 5ft by 6ft (roughly) and five hundred some pounds.
Also, I feel like the style/pacing/atmosphere is different from the first part. Probably because I wrote the majority of it listening to 'Bottom of the River' by Delta Rae. Hopefully that is either my imagination or not too jarring. Enjoy.

The festival, as fate would have it, was when everything when wrong. It would be the very event that Sakura would later point to as another huge turning point in her life. The first when she had officially become a genin for the Hidden Leaf Village, the next when her world was ripped apart and her home turned into a crater in the ground. And the final one would be when she had been forced to do something terribly unjust in the name of justice.

At each turn she had become something else. At each turn her world views and personal identity had shifted.

Sakura liked to believe each one was for the better.

This shift however, was one she knew was less about her changing and more about a need for change. Her perceptions unaltered, no great personal injustice wrought—but a shift all the same. After all, for someone who had been many things but stayed clear of piracy, joining a pirate crew was undeniable a turning point.

And the festival had definitely been a bust of epic proportions. Starting with the damn piano. Which was not really a fair thing to blame considering, but arguably fairer than blaming Shanks for the Red-Haired Pirates' role in the whole mess, in Sakura's opinion.

The piano, which she had managed to tune not long after Shanks left her shop—after the redhead had managed to persuade her to agree to play for him and him alone before he left the Archipelago. She hardly saw the harm in agreeing to such an earnest request, and the man was infectious besides. When she thought about it, he reminded her a bit of Naruto, happy and easily excited. And that grin. It usually made whatever pain or exasperation she had to put up with worth it.

As long as the Rookie did not get her into more trouble then she knew how to get out of, she figured she could deal with the parallels.

In the meanwhile, have properly tuned her chosen instrument for the festival, she settled in to get some practicing done. And, nearly the rest of the day later, she found herself frowning something fierce when the piece absolutely refused to come together the way the sheet music indicated that it should. But then again playing with all fingers moving and spread out for the majority of the piece—which was several minutes long itself—was probably something she would have to give her fingers time adjust to. And repetition. Lots and lots of repetition.

For despite being one her favorite instruments and the first she'd learned to play, she had comparably precious little practice on the giant percussion. She certainly did not have the experience level to be playing something the likes of which she intended to for the festival. But when had she ever stayed in comfort zone for anything? Not since she was genin, wet behind the ears and with powerhouses for teammates to catch up to.

Then, because twilight was quickly approaching and she wanted to get more done before her dusk audience appeared—and she could not help but idly wonder if Shanks would be among them since she had technically invited him—and there was far too much to be done. Thankfully her quant little shop remained presentable and all of the show pieces required little polishing to make them shine. After closing the curtains to large storefront windows and leaving a sign on the door that she would reopen shortly, she set to the task of moving the relatively piano back down to the first floor. An easy task considering that her baby grand was not remiss in either size nor weight, and it took little maneuvering to not bang it up getting it down the sizable stairwell.

Once it was on the lower level, she drew the curtains back once more and took down the sign before heading for the backroom where she worked on new pieces, the door between the store and the room left wide open so she could easily call to any customers who happened by. And given how little time was between then and twilight, she was sure that someone would happen by to hear her playing—someone always did. But she figured she could finish up the base for two of the instruments she had to make. If she worked quickly, she could probably even mostly finish the two commissions that were scheduled to be picked up the morning of the festival.

Really, she only had a handful of works to finish in a hurry and one was already done, and the others were simple requests. A full day was more than she would need. But the quicker she got them out of the way, the more time she had to devote to other projects. The spring cleaning would take up the morning, she figured, the errands were for the early afternoon. Two violins tonight, a koto after the errands and then the final one—a harp. There would be the need for breaks in between, and customers to account for, so she could probably start rearranging and prepping the shop for festival sales. She had the necessary amount of works to put on display ready. And the furniture to help back it look good. Well, no, she still had to change the carpeting and get a new bookcase for the instruction manuals, both easy fixes if she remembered to get to them in a timely manner, but otherwise it was good to go.

So what did that leave, she wondered as she soaked the carved sandalwood piece that would become the side of the first violin. The day-to-day, a given. An invitation to a lunch with the new Admiral Aokiji, one she had no intention of rejecting on grounds of having befriended him even before she joined the marines nearly a decade previously.

Building bridges. It was a skill she had learned from Naruto; one she maintained as form of remembrance and tribute.

Smiling at the memory of the blond-haired, blue-eyed brat who remained one of her favorite people, she continued to mold and shape the wood. Some of her earliest works had bits of chakra in them due to having learned how to woodwork with her wood release abilities, but now she did them completely without chakra. Somedays she went without using chakra at all and those always felt somewhere between accomplishments and estrangements.

After all, her chakra was hers. It was like spurning a tool because of the hands it had once been held in. And at the same time, it proved that it was a way of life she could live without. A remnant of another life and nearly another world entirely. Almost literally given that the Five Great Shinobi Nations were located on an island in the New World, not too far from Reverse Mountain. Her lips twitched at the sense of comingling nostalgia and homesickness.

She missed her home. But she would never return to Hi no Kuni's shores as long as they remained under Danzo's regime.

The sound of her wind chimes jingling in the breeze brought her out of her musings enough for her full attention to return to her surroundings. She almost refocused on the half-made string instrument given the source of the moving chimes, the continuous breeze that picked back up, before she realized that dusk was on the horizon and she had a visitor.

Sakura was a little disappointed at the absence of the redhead but smiled all the same as she reentered the storefront. Her guest was a new face, square and serious with shoulder-length, greying sable hair and garbed in simple attire—but for the yellow sash and the long flintlock rifle holstered in it. She remembered Shanks wearing a similar simple getup with a red silken looking sash. She would have wondered if that was common among pirates—and unless she was losing her touch, this guy was a pirate—or if it was a crew thing, like she saw every now and again.

Ultimately, the identity of the guy did not matter to her so long as he was not here to cause trouble.

He gave a small nod in acknowledgement of her greeting and turned to browse about the shop. Considering she had forgotten to put up her usual sign to denote that she was playing and not actually taking customers, she would hardly be able to turn him away if he was indeed there as a customer. Somehow, she doubted that though, and made for the recently tuned, pastel pink baby grand.

Rather than her normal haunting musical style, she decided to try her hand at a piece more like those she would be playing for the festival. It moved at a faster pace and had fewer notes per measure, but was still easily categorically similar. While she never turned to look at his reception of the piece, she did feel his eyes land on her a few times, and assumed that the piece was liked enough for him to stay and continue to browse even when she started in on another piece.

She was also aware of two more entering the shop, and she glanced up briefly to greet them with a welcoming smile before returning her attention to the piece. She did not miss the fact that they both also wore sashes. Must be a crew thing then since the two were also undoubtedly pirates.

While it was hardly uncommon to have pirates as customers, to have four from the same newly arrived crew—captain included—within hours of each other was some sort of record. Or at least remarkable. Strangely, it made her smile. Her marine training taking a backseat to her original shinobi training. As a kunoichi, taking the time to learn and observe from those not like her—especially those who were good at what they did—was generally encouraged. And it was yet another old practice that she had not kicked, but only because it had served her well.

And when she finished with the full fall of night, she got three pairs of farewells that included her given name. The one she had asked Shanks to call her by that afternoon. Still smiling, she returned the farewell, emphasizing their affiliation with the Red Hairs. It earned her three variations of smiles in turn.

They left her with the feeling that she had passed some sort of test, though she could not imagine what. And rather than stay to ponder it, she reminded herself that she had violins to finish and other instruments to begin.

Much to his own disappointment, Shanks did not manage to return to the little music shop with the pretty musician until the festival. Between Old Man Ray and his crew, he had his hands full—especially in the department of not getting arrested. He and a few members of his crew had come all too close to crossing the World Nobles barely a full day into their stay at Sabaody Archipelago.

If it had not been for Rayleigh and the innocent bystanders, Shanks would have gotten himself into far more trouble than his crew was currently equipped to handle. Not that he would have been the least bit sorry, or his crew the least bit put out. Instead of making a terrible situation worse—after all, there were fights not worth picking, and then there were battles that required forethought before being staged—the red-haired pirate promised himself that one day, their tyranny would end.

The three days passed almost in a blur with how quickly they proceeded after his visit to the pink-haired shopkeeper and the subsequent visit of a few members of his crew throughout their stay. All of them agreeable, including his cautious first mate, to the former vice admiral joining them so long as she was loyal and trustworthy. And most had judged her thus, given her warm and easygoing reception of each of them no matter when they visited or who they entered the modest shop with. He was glad for not having the worry about mutiny in the case of asking her to join—though he still had yet to actually invite her aboard his ship, and she certainly had not agreed.

He was still counting it as progress.

After all, with the ship coated, next stop was Fishman Island, territory of the Whitebeard Pirates, and then the rest of the New World. As an original member of the Roger Pirates, Shanks was in no hurry to make either a name for himself or to conquer any part of the New World. His crew, favorable lot that they were, seemed perfectly content to simply explore the rough seas of the second half of the Grand Line. To experience the wonders, to adventure though the islands, facing challenges and having fun.

And partying. There would be lots of partying if Shanks had his way.

Without delusions of grandeur and no need for conquest that freed him and his crew up to simply enjoy life on the high seas, doing what they set sail for in the first place and making the most of each day. He knew others would see it as a lack of ambition, had already been taunted with such fallacies, but Shanks had what he wanted. And much the way Whitebeard already had his treasure well in hand, Shanks had everything he wanted.

Except for a musician, of course. But that, it seemed, would smooth itself out.

The festival had been a prime opportunity to ask her to join his crew, as far as he was concerned. She had promised a private performance—though, admittedly not the kind that had been on his mind since he first laid eyes on her—at the festival before she had to play officially for the whole of the Archipelago. Haruno Sakura was nothing like the average vice admiral—or former vice admiral—he had been running into for over a dozen years.

Open minded and easygoing, Sakura seemed to prize individuality and fairness over the marine creed of absolute justice. Her world, like many of the pirates who had some experience under their belts, was far from black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. He got the sense she looked at necessity and situations rather than absolutes and the bland ideology powering the marine versus pirate feud. Rare was the marine he ever ran into with a soul.

It made him curious as to why she had settled in the Archipelago, ground zero of the tenryuubito and next door neighbors with Marie Josie and Marineford Headquarters.

Even in the fallout of the festival, the answer did not become clear.

The festival was scheduled to truly get underway closer to midafternoon, giving the people of the giant mangrove and all tourists currently docked there the chance to prep and attend. Sakura herself would not be playing until nightfall, though Rayleigh had mentioned that Sakura did not perform her usual haunting pieces during these festivals. Rather she played energetic pieces threaded with life and levity.

A musician with life and heart in her music would be a perfect for his crew. A necessity even given the role such a character would play.

He might not be looking for Raftel, but he knew exactly what he wanted out of the Grand Line at this stage and what preparations would be necessary for the hardships ahead. And Sakura with her heart and intelligence and ability to carry a host of tunes, would be serve as sort of glue for the crew. A balm. His crew was well made and full of competent pirates capable of working together in any set up or even left alone to their own devices. But he hardly saw the harm in bringing in someone who would help grow those ties and bring unity and comfort to the ship as needed through her music.

They had agreed on sometime around midday so they both would have the chance to ready for the day, and he would have enough time to prepare to sail after the crew had their fill of the festival. And as many of the preparations were already well underway, and would be set by the time late evening rolled around, he saw no harm in moseying on over to the shop a little before noon.

When he reached Groove 18, it was to find a closed sign hung on the door of the little shop, but he could see the pink-haired woman bustling about inside and had no qualms about knocking on the window pane to gain her attention. She turned a split second before he got the chance to knock, a smile stretching her lips as he did so. She was still juggling three cases when she opened the door for him, as she had hurried over and apparently forgotten to set them down in her haste.

He laughed as he slipped past the threshold and stole one of the cases, a violin case if he had to guess, from her as he passed by. Her own laugh chasing him further into the cozy place. "Thank you, Shanks. Time got away from me and realized I forgot to get all of the instruments into cases before the start of the festival."

The redhead shrugged, unbothered by helping the deceptively petite woman. "No problem, at least you got all of them made on time, right?"

She heaved an exasperated sigh that told him without words that even that was more of a 'just barely' before she nodded. "Yep. Seems like I bite off more than I can chew every year about this time. It's like the energy of the festival allows me to fool myself into thinking I can accomplish more than I actually can." She punctuated her comment with a helpless shake of her head another, smaller, shrug of her shoulders.

"Nah, I'd wager everyone is guilty of getting caught up in doing what they love every once in a while." He knew he certainly did when it came to pirating and sailing the high seas. And booze—his crew had run out of booze more times than he cared to count when they had first started out.

Sakura shot him a smile, mirth twinkling in her green eyes as she accepted his reassurance for what it was. Carefree and easy going. "I suppose that's true, too." With a quirk of her lips she seemed to consider something as she looked at him. Whatever it was, it ended with her jerking her head towards the pink piano. "Now, I do believe a promised you a solo. Is it safe to assume you're here to collect?"

Surprise flickered briefly, before he decided to simply go with it. It would give him the chance to ask her to join his crew after all. As he followed after her to the bench, pristine white rather than matching pink, he could not help but inquire, "Do you only play piano?" It would be tough to get even a small baby grand on the ship let alone find somewhere to put it. Not to mention possible water damage.

Her eyes flicked to his before she returned to scanning the sheet music she had left there. "No, it's my favorite," Her hands—long fingered and delicate looking—settled on the white keys, pressing one to test the sound of the note. "But I also play violin, a little bit of guitar and theharp. I haven't had the opportunity to learn much else, though." Again she glanced at him, as she started in on the opening measure of the song.

Shanks took that as his queue to simply enjoy the sweet melody she had chosen. It was easygoing and carefree—lacking in haunting undertones or bouncy overtures.

By the second time she played the chorus, he had stood and begun to meander around the shop. Content to listen and observe in time to the quiet tune. And when it drew to a close he looked back at her with a teasing smile, "It's too bad you're the one playing, otherwise I'd ask you to dance."

She returned the gesture with a measured look over her shoulder and sound in the back of her throat that bordered on contemplative. "Would you, then?" At his nodded, her own bobbed decisively, "Then I will hold you to that. After all, I am not the only musician playing at the festival tonight."

Right then he decided he would save his offer for the festival and simply enjoy this time listening to her music and sharing companionship.