Okay, it's been forever and I'm really sorry about it. I'm not entirely sure what happened, because I've been around all this time, but I can tell you I put this story off for a few months due to a handful of reasons and when I came back to it I needed to reread it, and I cringed at my old writing. I knew I had to fix things somewhat to continue, but I kept putting it off and… yes, it's been a long time. Now the story has been revised somewhat (and it was worse than I expected, ugh) and I assure you I'm going to finish it. I have the whole plot thought out, I just need to… write it.

Also, this part is a new addition, not something that was in the original planning for the story. I needed something to get the hang of the characters back, and this happened. It was going to be a single chapter, but it kind of grew as I wrote and… yes, it'll be two chapters (and the fault lies entirely with the New Year's Marco from this year in One Piece Treasure Cruise. I had to do something with him after seeing the images).

Again, I'm really sorry about the wait. If anyone is still out there, here's chapter 36.

Chapter 36: A break from routine

Evelyne rolled blearily into a sitting position, waved her feet over the floor in the dark to find her sandals, and put them on. She stood up, grabbed Marco's shirt from the back of the chair, slipped it on, and buttoned it as best as she could while half-asleep. It wasn't as if she was going to run into many people at who-knew-what-dark-time in the night on her way to the bathroom two doors down the hallway.

She took two steps forward and heard the crunch of shoe falling on paper.

There wasn't paper on the floor, she thought.

Sighing, Evelyne bent down and moved her hands around the floor. There were a good number of papers strewn on the space before the door. She piled them quickly and haphazardly, pushed them to the side and out of the way, and finally left for the bathroom.

Marco woke up to find Evelyne wrapped around him and wearing his shirt from yesterday. It looked too large on her, practically hiding her hands and reaching down to her thighs. Marco turned on his side, pulled her close, and was ready to go back to sleep when he caught sight of dozens of papers pushed to one side of the door and a few of them scattered before it.

He shook his head in amusement. He really should have expected that.

Marco moved, carefully unwrapping Evelyne's arms from around him and settling her back on the bed before standing up. He walked to the papers, picked up the ones farther away from the pile, and then sat down before said pile to see what his siblings had brought this time.

"What's that?" Evelyne asked from the bed in a sleepy voice. Marco turned his head to find her lying on her side looking at him through barely-open eyes.

"This is our crew's very mature way to ask for a vacation," Marco said, gesturing at the papers.

"A vacation? Where?"

He shrugged.

"I still have to find out."

Marco turned to the papers and started sifting through them. He put aside all the sheets with neatly lined rows of names and signatures, until he finally found the trademark letter accompanying them. The contents were the same as always. They had a good amount of treasure, it had been a while, vacations were good for the crew's mood… Marco chuckled.

"Oh, here," he said, reaching the bottom of the letter. "They want to go to hot springs."

"Hot springs? Aren't we too many for that?"

Marco turned around on the floor, the letter held loosely in one hand.

"Not really. There are a few islands around in which the main features are hot springs. Last time we went to one, we booked a few hotels on the island."

"Mmhhh. Sounds nice. I've never been to hot springs before."

That morning, Marco walked into the mess hall with a stack of papers of his own and stuck them in smaller stacks (stapled, because he wasn't an asshole like other people) to one of the announcement boards.

"All right," he spoke to the room at large, which had fallen silent as people noticed what he was doing, "you know the rules. If you want a special room," he pointed over his shoulder at the stacks labeled 'single', 'double', 'triple', 'larger-human', and all other options they had encountered before, "you write your names and reasoning on the right stack. There's no guarantee, but we'll see what we can do. Everybody else gets whatever the standard room is in a hotel. I'll collect the papers tomorrow morning after breakfast."

It went unsaid that these rooms would be assigned on a basis of the best reasons first, of course.

That said, Marco got out of the way and let the crew swarm the announcement board. He sat next to Jozu.

"Can you help me to ring up the hotels?" Marco asked.

Evelyne caught Maggie the next day after breakfast, before Maggie could leave the mess hall.

"I can't talk now, I got laundry shift in fifteen minutes," Maggie said without stopping.

Evelyne fell into step with her.

"No, you don't," Evelyne told her. Maggie glanced askance at her. "You're in the group organizing the holidays now. Go tell whoever's in charge of your shift and get back here."

"You put me in the holiday group?" Maggie asked in surprise.

Evelyne shrugged.

"It was Thatch's idea. He said you handled things well while working on Halloween."

The group working on the organization of the vacation was comprised of a total of fifteen people. Marco had divided most of them in pairs, given one of the stacks that had been on the announcement board to each pair, and told them to organize the requests based on their priority. Marco himself was going through the list of prices he had been given as he checked their budget.

The group was scattered throughout the mess hall, with papers taking up large portions of the occupied tables.

Next to Evelyne, Maggie snorted.

"'I need privacy when I hook up with a cute girl'," Maggie read out loud. "What sort of reason is that to ask for a double room?"

Evelyne shrugged.

"Optimism?" she offered, and Maggie snorted again. "So, this one to the bottom?" Evelyne asked.

"Yeah. This guy can kick his roommates out if he gets lucky, like the rest of us." Maggie stopped, then glanced sideways at Evelyne and smirked. "You asked for a double, too?"

"Sort of. We're getting it. Marco said that doing the job gives you right to choose a room."

"Really? So I could get a single if I wanted to?" Maggie asked.

"You don't want a single," Evelyne pointed out.

"Nah, you're right. That'd be boring."

"What about the standard rooms?" Evelyne asked that night. "Do we have to divide people into them as well?" Her mind went to the fact that the crew had around a thousand members, and it would be a pain if they had to all of divide them.

"No," Marco replied, much to Evelyne's relief. "Once we know which hotels we'll be booking, we'll just put lists up with the rooms. Some are for four people, other six, eight, and even a few have ten people rooms. It's on first come, first served basis, so you'll probably be better off staying away from the mess hall for a few hours that day."

Evelyne had a mental image of one of those big brawls in cartoons with the dust balls around the fighters and everything. She nodded.

Evelyne woke up to her ovaries hurting, though thankfully for the sheets, her clothes, and her sense of embarrassment, they were just warning her that her period was about to come but she hadn't started bleeding yet.

She put on a pad and crawled back into bed, thankful for the spring weather when she pressed herself against Marco under the sheets.

Marco patted her sympathetically on the head.

"Do you want to go for breakfast and painkillers?"

Evelyne nodded. She was damn grateful of not being on cleaning duty today. And, trying to be an optimist, she reminded herself that this way her period would be over for the holidays.

"ENEMIES! WE'VE GOT ENEMIES!" that elated yell cut through Evelyne's efforts to organize the remaining requests on the fourth day of planning. Everybody in the mess hall except for Evelyne and Maggie pretty much cheered, and most of them dropped what they were doing and ran out of the room.

"Okay, that was enthusiastic even for them," Maggie deadpanned, then turned to Evelyne. "Any idea of what's going on?"

Evelyne shrugged.

"They're just happy about the extra money for the holidays," Marco replied from behind them.

Evelyne and Maggie turned, and Evelyne was glad to see that Maggie didn't tense up or flinch at Marco's proximity.

"Extra money?" Maggie asked in interest.

"Anything we find today will be spent on the trip."

"Okay then," Maggie started, standing up, "I won't get in the way of the money, I'll just go hide." She patted Evelyne on the shoulder, glanced meaningfully at Marco, and left.

It was only then that Evelyne realized a very important detail.

"We're fighting," she said with grim realization.

"We are," Marco confirmed, offering her a hand up. "I'll stay with you, you'll be fine."

Evelyne accepted the hand Marco had offered.

"Who's taking care of assholes if you're babysitting me?" she asked as they left the mess hall, remembering the first fight she had witnessed.

She still hadn't let go of Marco's hand.

"I asked Jozu to lead the battle before he left."

It was habitual in the crew to have someone shadow a new crewmember during that crewmember's first few battles, especially if that person was just learning to fight. The crew always kept an eye on one another, that was true, but this was more focused. It had been years, however, since Marco had been the one to do this, but he didn't let his attention waver away from Evelyne at any moment.

She wasn't doing bad for someone who had only started training not long ago. She lacked strength, and the most she had accomplished as far as attacks were concerned was to knock an enemy out, but her reflexes had improved considerably. She liked to occasionally complain about her training, but growing used to dodging Marco's attacks —even if he moved slower than usual during those training sessions— meant that she was more than ready to avoiding the average pirates' attempts on her.

Evelyne jumped back to dodge a swipe at her, ducked low, and… Marco grimaced. That guy wasn't getting up anytime soon.

Marco kicked overboard a man who had tried to sneak up on him.

"I hope you don't try to target my balls during training," he told Evelyne.

"Don't worry, I like yours too much for that," she replied.

Every new bag or chest of treasure that made it to the deck was greeted by boisterous cheers and applause. By the looks of it, there was a considerable amount of treasure on the enemy ship, and the mood in the crew was getting lighter and lighter as people started to plan what to do with the extra money.

Evelyne stepped away from the crowd when she saw Maggie waving at her. Maggie was alone, the rest of Evelyne's former classmates were nowhere to be seen now that the battle was over.

"How are you doing?" Maggie asked as soon as they were together, and Evelyne didn't need to ask to know what she was talking about.

"I'm… okay, I think."

"You think?" Maggie asked, skepticism obvious in her voice.

Evelyne shrugged.

"It's just… I was scared, kind of scared as fuck, but I didn't freeze or anything, and I had people covering my back when I messed up, so…" she shrugged again. The truth was that, while scared, she hadn't been as terrified as she had feared she would be during the battle. She was exhausted, though, and she wanted to curl up in bed for a week or two, but she was alive and uninjured.

"And that's it? You just came back from a fucking battle," Maggie said, gesturing at the enemy ship that crewmembers still were jumping in and out of.

Evelyne turned around to look at the ship, too. This crew hadn't tried anything funny, so they would let them go once they had taken all of their treasure.

"I didn't kill anyone, if that's what you're asking. I don't think I could." And it was true. There had been one instance, when Evelyne had kicked a guy against a cannon and the guy had hit his head on it and passed out, that she had thought she had killed him. Marco had snapped her out of the shock by placing a hand on her shoulder, and he had assured her that the man was still alive.

Evelyne wasn't sure she could handle killing someone, no matter how many pointy or dangerous weapons they waved at her. Not yet.

To be continued