Chapter 45

Chapter Text

"I mean, it's not like my life was bad, per se," Geordina said earnestly, sighting along the pistol Captain Marshall had dug up from the armory for her to practice with and taking aim at the bottle serving as her target, "A nice upbringing, good parents, I even learned to read and write as I worked in my parents shop - barring the whole engagement mess I had a very pleasant life!"

A pleasant life for a pleasant girl, a voice in her mind murmured, a girl who was pretty and quiet and who always did as she was told.

"What was that about anyway? That guy was a jerk." Atreya huffed.

Geordina hummed in agreement, adjusting her stance. "Unfortunately, in addition to being a pig of a man, pardon my language, Pifle Sedgburn was also the wealthiest man on the island, the son of the mayor and distantly related to the Royal Family of Goa on his mother's side. So when he took an interest in a shopgirl like me, my parents had no choice but to accept his suit."

Unwillingly, but there was no denying the benefits it would have brought to her family even if the thought of that man touching her made her skin crawl.

"That's stupid," Ashley said bluntly, looking distinctly unimpressed with the so-called logic.

"Oh, I agree, but I had no choice except to go along with it." Geordina sighed.

"I would have just gutted him and been done with it," a female voice came from the Transponder Snail perched on a barrel, the woman who introduced herself as Vertara having called minutes after Captain Marshall left.

('Man-Eater Vertara?' A voice in the back of her mind whispered, delightfully scandalized.)

A chorus of agreement sounded in the background, audible through the speaker. From what Geordina could tell, the voices all belonged to Captain Marshall's first crew in the Grand Line.

"Sadly, by then the announcement had been made, so if anything untoward had happened to him I would have been the first suspect and subsequently executed," Geordina explained.

"Is that why you were so happy to be kidnapped?" Topaz piped up, jumping up to hang half over the railing. "From what Atreya tells me, he looked like a pig along with acting like one,"

"Indeed," Geordina's finger tightened on the trigger.

Bang!

The bottle shattered.

Geordina smiled as her new crewmates cheered, both those present and those on the other side of the call.

Atreya and Vertara were getting along marvelously, Topaz was gleefully chatting about Fishman Island to someone named Zarazan, and Ashley seemed interested in Wilde's stories.

Sitting on one of the barrels on deck, Geordina looked at her reflection in a small handmirror pensively. It was freeing, the realization that 'this is not who I am', along with the knowledge that she could do something about it.

Step by step, she removed the pins in her hair, letting her light brown hair fall in waves around her head and shoulders, wiping away the makeup highlighting her light violet eyes and accentuating her full lips. Calmly, she stripped off her dress, leaving her in only her bright red, white frilled corset and the brown trousers she always wore under her skirts, propriety be damned.

Good girls didn't curse, good girls didn't show their skin, good girls were always polite and refined, good girls didn't fire pistols...her mother had told her that often enough over the years, and she had done her best to abide by them and be the perfect lady.

Too bad that now that perfect girl was gone.

Geordina wasn't sorry to see her go.

What warmed her from the inside out was the fact that none of her new crewmates even blinked at her new look, Ashley being the only one who even seemed to notice, and they just nodded in approval.

An idea occurred to her, and she stepped forward to - politely - interrupt the current conversation, "excuse me, do you know where I can find a second one of these?" She held up her pistol.

Atreya grinned.

"So does your ship have a name yet?" Olivia asked.

Atreya frowned, saying hesitantly, "I don't think so? I know Captain was thinking about names though! He said that naming a ship couldn't be rushed, that it had to really fit."

"It's true!" Cino piped up, "None of us were there when Coddi got her name, but I can't imagine her without it!"

"Wait, Coddi? As in the Coddiwomple?! She was Captain's first ship?!" Atreya squealed, her eyes sparkling as she bounced in excitement, "the famous ghost ship herself?! I'd look for newspapers just to see if there was a new sighting!"

The conversation desolved into Atreya gushing over Coddi and asking about how she was built and "is she as awesome as she looks?!"

"More."

The call ended right as Marshall returned, dripping wet and smelling like a brewery, with an expression that could only be described as exasperated fondness as he walked passed his gaping crewmembers into his quarters.

When he came out an hour later, freshly dressed and in a much better mood, he saw the four members of his crew exchanging uncertain glances before Topaz, brave fish that she is, asks, "is everything okay, Captain?"

He looked at the goldfish hanging half over the railing and answered easily, "fine, just had a bit of an incident in a bar."

The younger Dadan might look different, but her personality was exactly the same, he mused. Really, breaking that keg over his head was completely unnecessary - all he'd been doing was checking on his nephew!

On that note, three year-old Ace is adorable.

("My nephew is adorable." He informed Vertara later that night.

Seeing Ace for the first time since he was born, it had hit him how soft and small and cute his nephew was, already three times the size he was when Marshall first held him and sporting the same freckles as his mother. So absorbed was he in drinking in the sight of the sleeping infant, he didn't notice Dadan sneaking up behind him until the keg was smashed over his head, he told Vertara, who could barely breathe for laughing so hard as he relayed the series of events.

It wasn't like the blow had hurt; by this point it was instinct using haki on his hair but still, rude.)

As much as he'd like to, hanging around Dawn Island for the foreseeable future just wasn't feasible, and so it was with reluctance that he hauled up the anchor and turned the ship away.

Setting off with no particular heading, was it any surprise that in the midst of training the newest members of his crew in how to care for and steer a ship that they found themselves hopelessly lost?

(He blamed the gremlin.)

Staring at the rather scuffed and battered kangaroo-girl, chicken-person and giant goldfish, Marshall deadpanned, "so...you got mugged..."

All three immediately puffed up to defend themselves.

"...by a rabbit."

They swiftly deflated.

Dina giggled, the woman the only one not bruised in some way, and informed him, "it had a Devil Fruit, actually. The Human-Human Fruit, Model: Woman, I believe."

"That doesn't make it better."

(The gremlin declared the rabbit her archenemy, and somewhere in the New World a certain exiled noble sneezed.

(He taught the rabbit Shave because a little competition was good for the soul.))

Marshall fully blamed the next series of events on the gremlin and Topaz, her unlikely partner in crime.

The island of Sivenia was a masterpiece of architecture, most of which dealt with waterways, and of course the gremlin decided to crash the party being held in the mayor's fancy manor. Topaz was curious about human parties and volunteered to help, while Marshall followed out of morbid curiosity.

The gremlin and fish snuck in through an underground waterway, while he decided to go the easy route and walk in through the front door...which was where he saw the rabbit, who had snuck in via the coatroom.

Plump body, soft, fluffy gray fur, a twitching pink nose, small black eyes and stiff ears...yep, that was a rabbit. Then the gremlin showed up and the rabbit shifted, turning into a buxom, curvaceous woman with gray hair and dark eyes to hurl insults at the gremlin.

Normally he'd just sit back and enjoy the show, but he couldn't help noticing that-

"That is a male rabbit." He observed.

The argument abruptly stopped, and suddenly there was a beaming face right in front of him as the gremlin yelped.

"What?!"

"Really?" The rabbit breathed, eyes shining, "you can tell?!"

"Uh...yeah. Kinda obvious." He said blankly.

The rabbit squealed, jumping and making a spirited attempt to suffocate him with her cleavage.

"Sorry about that," the rabbit, Kyle, apologized once things calmed down, wrinkling her - at the moment - nose, "it's been kind of a long-standing issue."

"I can tell," Marshall snorted, amused.

In the background, Dina, Topaz and Ashley consoled the stunned gremlin.

The rabbit joined the crew, much to no one's surprise.

Marshall was just glad to have another male, if only part-time, onboard.

When Marshall saw a Devil Fruit, an unmistakably familiar Devil Fruit, resembling a durian crossed with the essence of evil and colored a menacing purple, he immediately turned around and ran like hell.

He had them off the island within the hour because fuck that.

(If he'd thought that was the end if it he would soon find that he was sadly mistaken. That first encounter would not be the last.)

Right, he'd been putting it off long enough, Marshall decided.

It was time to name the ship.

Bucket of paint at his side and current crew of troublemakers off causing chaos, he was free to mull over his options in peace. Effulgent was a good name, though it might be a little on the nose to name such a dark ship something like 'shining brightly'. Dolorifuge...that was an option, but not necessarily true; it wasn't solely the ship that helped him out of those dark days following Rouge's death.

Nepenthe was one possibility, though he wasn't sure he liked the connotations. Perspicacious sounded good but didn't exactly click...

Making his decision, he stood up from his seat on the beach and grabbed the can of dark blue paint.

And when his crew returned, it was to see the ship's new name proudly displayed on her hull.

The Metanoia.