Chapter Text
Law put down the Den Den Mushi, turning to look up at the sunny sky as the light wind breathed through his hair. The Polar Tang was at present above water since the others wanted to have lunch on deck.
His hat lay neatly on a crate to the left of him, beside the Den Den Mushi. He didn't want to risk it falling off into the water as he leaned back against the rails.
He'd just been scolded at for the past thirty minutes. Admonished for not calling in to say he and the others were safe and well recently when he'd promised he would when he'd left. He almost went deaf at the beginning of the call from all the loud shouts.
Law closed his eyes, leaning even further back. The three boys would probably yell at him if they see him doing this. They were always worried he'd fall off one of these times and, as a Devil Fruit user, not be able to swim to safety. The old man would probably yell at him too if he was here.
Law sighed.
He missed him.
Law remembered arriving at Pleasure Town three years ago, when he was thirteen years old. The memory was fuzzy as Law was on the verge of collapsing, both emotionally and physically in pain, and tired from walking non-stop for three whole days to reach the town, especially since he spent the majority of that time crying. But he'd been determined to follow Cora-san's final instructions of heading to the nearest town.
Luckily, Vice-Admiral Tsuru had arrived when she did. Doflamingo was terrified of her. He'd been too focused on getting away from her to spend much time going around the neighboring areas looking for him.
By the time Law had arrived, he had been completely drained. Right after arriving, he'd met a woman but ran away when she'd tried to talk to him. The trauma of the way he was treated because of his Amber Lead Syndrome made him scared to interact with people, especially in such a weak state where he wouldn't be able to defend himself should things go south.
He's since then become acquainted with that woman, Willow, as she owns the hairdressing salon Shachi works at. He also now knows that she's a total sweetheart who was just trying to help the poor exhausted looking kid she'd seen while closing up shop.
He'd stayed out at a nearby cave but, despite now having the Ope Ope no Mi fruit, his sickness did not just suddenly disappear. The fruit needs the user to do treatment or surgery on the one needing treatment, whether that is oneself or someone else.
The disease was quickly getting worse and he knew that if he didn’t treat it soon, he'd die before sunrise. He'd had a hard time trying to understand and use the Ope Ope no Mi to cure himself but, after lots of work, he'd managed to activate his Room for the very first time.
Law had spent the next few hours searching his body for the Amber Lead and, using the medical knowledge he'd learned from his parents and medical school – he'd been considered a medical genius, youngest in Flevance to ever make it into medical science school, not to mention the top of his class, it also didn't really hurt that his father was the greatest doctor in the country who during his free time taught him the more intricate medical procedures and let him occasionally help with patients – he removed the lead from his body before passing out into a deep sleep.
Law woke up a couple days later and was relieved to see the white spots on his skin were no longer there. That relief disappears, or was pushed aside for that time being, when he realized he was no longer in the cave and was instead in a small bed in a tiny room.
An old man had entered the room at that exact moment, face brightening upon seeing him awake. Before Law had been able to say anything, he started rambling on about if he's fine and how he'd found him passed out in a cave on a hunting trip when he was taking shelter from the show and how he was practically blue from the cold and wouldn't wake up no matter what he tried before finishing off by saying he was probably hungry and running out the room to the kitchen, coming back a minute later with a tray of food.
Law had refused to eat the toast. How so many people could love bread was and always will be baffling to him. He'd ate the vegetables though.
Law was at first guarded and suspicious against the man who introduced himself as Wolf, however that slowly faded away as the kind old man – who was an inventor, though Law later finds out that none of his inventions work and instead have a habit of blowing up and so his main source of income is with his skill with a rifle, which had honestly surprised Law because he was really good with it and didn't look the type, in hunting as well as growing nice vegetables in his farm as he tries to make something that doesn't blow up – was very hospitable and enjoyable Law soon came to care for him.
Wolf allowed Law to stay with him, although he'd had to work for him in return. Law ended up having the risky and blowing up job of testing his inventions.
Law had spent the days after healing from frostbite doing his new job and trying to get used to his new body. Treating the Amber Lead Syndrome made his body different and, while it felt better, it was still different and felt strange.
As it was genetic disease that comes as a birth defect, he was born with it and had it ever since he was a baby. Everyone in Flevance did, for the past several generations. It just got worse as you aged and, depending on what generation you were born in, it would kill you at a certain age.
So he, along with everyone else in Flevance, had this pain and fatigue in their bodies ever since birth. It was normal for them since they'd always had it. So now that it was gone, Law felt strange. That painful pressure in his body that he'd always known was just suddenly gone overnight. It felt, and was, weird.
The disease also reduced his growth and so he'd been in the middle of a sudden growth spurt, though the years of having minimized growth still affected him now. Even now at sixteen he was still small for his age.
The Flevance people all came from the same ancestors and were on the tall side, practically all of them, both females and males, being over six feet tall. Flevance males had an average of just under six and a half feet. That was before the ore, Amber Lead, was discovered and used in many different types of goods, spreading its toxicness to the people of Flevance from how much it was being mined.
One of the side effects of that was stunted growth. Now that he no longer had the lead in his body his growth was no longer forcefully stunted. With his knowledge of the human body and how his growth has been so far as well as studying the past growth genetics of his ancestors, he'd calculated that he'll be on his way to normal, the height he would have been had Amber Lead never existed, in his late teens and finally stop on his final height in his early twenties. So he'll be a little on the short side until then.
Anyways, Law had had a happy life living with only with Wolf for almost a month.
Wolf, who lived separately from the rest of the town on a hill in the forest, went to town every week to sell his vegetables and hunting catches or trade them for something else, and attempt, but never succeed unless someone took pity on him, in selling his inventions. On one of these trips, a month after he'd started working for Wolf, Law went on a walk in the surrounding forest, going further then he usually did.
Right before he was about to head back, he'd stumbled upon two boys beating up a polar bear mink. The two boys spot him and try to fight him but Law activates Room around him in retaliation. He gets two rocks in the air and uses Shambles to switch them with the two bullies and they fell to the ground, knocked out.
The polar mink was initially nervous about going near him, not having had good experiences with humans, but he eventually did and thanked him for saving him, saying he hadn't had much success in befriending humans and had approached the two boys in hopes of being able to befriend them because of their more similar age compared to other humans he'd met.
He gave Law his name, age, where he was from, and his reason for being so far away from there. Bepo, nine, Zou in the New World, and that he was searching for his older brother, Zepo, who had disappeared. However, he'd ended up in the North Blue after going on the wrong boat. Bepo dreams of being a navigator, though he doesn't wish to draw it like most navigators.
Bepo ended up coming to Wolf's house with him and, just like Law, Wolf allowed Bepo to stay as long as he works. Bepo ended up rooming with Law in their small bedroom as there were only two rooms in the house and the other belonged to Wolf.
Bepo later asked why Law essentially took him in. Law didn't have a specific answer but he realized that although the genecide of Flevance caused him to lose hope in people, people like Cora-san and Wolf made him regain some back as well as try help others just like they helped him.
Though another thing to note is that Law's favorite animal is polar bear, and though he would have saved him regardless of what type of mink he was, this definitely played a role in his anger and the decision to bring Bepo back to Wolf's house.
A month later, an explosion had occurred in the forest which Law and Bepo headed to. They'd found the two bullies severely injured, unconscious and on the verge of death, with the older one's arm ripped off. They were being attacked by a giant boar, which Law Room and Shambles away.
Law and Bepo brought the two to Wolf, who was working in his farm, and stop the bleeding. However, they both had lost too much blood. They needed transfusions with blood type X and Wolf had offered his own regardless of the risk, which was the same blood type.
Law, who during these couple months had been learning to use the Ope Ope no Mi better, worked to reattach the arm, which he completed several meticulous hours later, right before passing out.
He'd woken up over a day later to find that Wolf was fine and that the two boys have recovered. The older one could still use his formly severed arm perfectly and the two profoundly thanked Law.
Over the course of the next week Law, Wolf, and Bepo, who tried to avoid them with a passion, found out more about the two. The older one who had severed his arm was Penguin, age fifteen, and the younger one was Shachi, age fourteen.
They'd grown up together since their parents were close friends with each other. Their parents were the others' godparents. Said parents had been killed six months ago in a terrible tsunami, leaving them orphaned and on the streets at fourteen and thirteen.
Authorities soon arrived after news of the tsunami ransacked island reached them and they'd looked at any possible relatives any underage survivors had. Shachi had an aunt and uncle he'd never met but had heard about. Penguin didn't have any relatives and so was going to be sent to an overcrowded orphanage. Shachi insisted he come with him and, after lots of persuading from the newly turned teen, the authorities eventually agreed.
They were sent to live with them but soon found out the only reason they had agreed to take them in was because they'd wanted some free slaves. They also made them do some illegal activities so they could gain from it if they succeeded but not get arrested if they didn't. Penguin and Shachi ran away a few months after.
They lived in the forest in a run-down shack they built themsleves and survived by stealing and getting things from the forest. They'd been gathering fruit when they ran into the giant boar. One of the boars' horns punctured Shachi in the stomach. Penguin tired to throw a bomb they had stolen beforehand but with his panicking at his childhood friend bleeding out on the forest floor, he accidentally made it explode before it was thrown far enough away, making him fly backwards into a tree, injuring him and causing him to lose an arm. That had been when Law and Bepo arrived.
Shachi had admitted he didn't know what the point of living was, Penguin nodding along, reminding Law of his view of life just months before.
He offered for Shachi and Penguin to live with them, which looking back on he didn’t really have the right to offer. It was Wolf's house. Luckily, Wolf allowed it.
In the following two months, Law, Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin lived with Wolf and they all grew close. Shachi and Penguin moved into the already cramped room of Bepo and Law, making it even more restricted but they managed.
Their reason for treating Bepo like that was because of the terrible headspace they entered for recently losing their parents and live with an abusive couple. Not an excuse but a reason. Luckily, they'd apologized soon after and the three have since then become close.
Law was comfortable living with Wolf and the others and realized just how much of a tool he'd been treated by the so-called family dynamic of the Donquixote Pirates when faced with a real family dynamic.
During this time period, the four spent their days helping out Wolf with his inventions, getting to know more about each other, and Law started teaching them how to use weapons correctly. That routine was broken when Wolf tells them one day to come with him into town to find work.
The four of them were afraid of going to town for different reasons. Bepo was scared of how people would treat him as a polar bear because of past experience in racial discrimination. Penguin and Shachi had done crimes there because of Shachi's uncle and aunt making them and after running away they sometimes stole things like food and clothes and they're scared they'll get in trouble. Law still remembered how people had treated him like a monster when they found out he had Amber Lead Syndrome. He might have treated it but he was still nervous. However, Law also knew they couldn’t avoid other people forever and tried to convince them all to go as their unofficial leader. He succeeded as they reluctantly agreed.
They were in for a pleasant surprise when the townspeople ended up being incredibly friendly and treated them very well. Pleasure Town had been attacked by pirates two decades before and ever since then the citizens had made a point to follow a code of treating others with as much respect as possible.
Wolf had talked with a local officer, Rudd, to give them formal permission to work in the town. Rudd agreed and they were asked to sign a paper for it. Since they were underage, Wolf had to also sign as their legal guardian. Law remembered being happy at seeing all their signatures in the same place. It had made Law feel as if he were part of a family again.
The boys find work quickly. They all did some small jobs here and there but had official jobs as well. Law worked as a medical assistant at the local clinic, which needed more hands as it only had one doctor and a nurse, Bassel and Omei. Bepo worked at a construction company where he can use his strength as a polar bear mink. Penguin worked as a waiter and Shachi, who had wanted to be a hairdresser as a child, got to work at a salon. Wolf had also bought them bikes so they could ride to work.
Shachi's aunt and uncle had soon heard Penguin and Shachi were back in town and tried to drag them home, yelling about how ungrateful they were and how they were in so much trouble. Law had been about to attack them when Wolf had stepped in and beat them up. The police arrived minutes later and Wolf had told them what happened. The couple got arrested soon afterwards.
They had gotten settled into their new routine quite quickly, with Bepo finding out his passion for martial arts and began learning it, when one day, when the boys were riding home from work, they found a heavily injured Wolf, who had crashed when testing his new flying machine. Law recalled how his heart had stopped when he saw him bloody and unconscious on the floor. After he'd snapped out of it, Law immediately started treating him with the help of the others and they performed surgery.
Night passed with the four anxiously keeping watch and, when Wolf finally woke up, they were overjoyed and cried in relief as they hugged him. The local doctor had soon came in after hearing about what happened and was amazed by the treatment, praising Law's skills. The four boys then set up a schedule to take turns to watch over Wolf until he healed.
Days later, when it was Law's turn to stay up to look after Wolf, Wolf asked Law if he had the Ope Ope no Mi. Law remembered freezing as Wolf continued, revealing that he'd traveled the world as a young man and read literature about all the Devil Fruits, including his, and that his Devil Fruit had the ability to give someone eternal life in exchange for the user's own life, to Law's immense shock.
Wolf warned Law to never reveal his powers to others, and Law agreed, having realized the reason Doflamingo was so obsessed with this Devil Fruit and how he now likely intends to find and use him to become immortal. Wolf and Law spent the rest of the night talking about some of Wolf's younger adventure days.
That was how Law had spent the first several months after arriving to Pleasure Town.
"Captain!" A voice called, pulling Law out from his thoughts of the past. It was followed by three sets of fast approaching footsteps as Bepo, Penguin, and Shachi skidded to a halt in front of him. The three had insisted they call him captain ever since they set off. He'd given up on getting them to call him Law like they always have and has since then accepted it.
"Can we go to Cibus Island?" Bepo asked, not even giving himself time to catch his breath.
"Cibus Island?" Law shifted, turning to face them better.
"Yeah, it's only a little off course and we could stack up on supplies as well." Law raised an eyebrow. Shachi wasn't usually one to pay attention to supplies. He was still getting used to the fact no supplies meant dying out in the middle of the sea, not go out shopping at the market a few miles away. "Besides, I heard the food there is excellent."
Law deadpanned. Of course that was the reason. Shachi continued regardless. "Like, travel hundreds of miles just to have a taste type of excellent. And we're only about twenty miles away. It would take less then an hour. Please, Captain?"
"Shachi's right, Captain! The food there is known all over. They say they have some of the freshest ingredients because of the rich soil and clean surrounding sea. I've always wanted to try the food there..." Bepo drooled, hearts in his eyes.
"Yeah, and I know we have a schedule but it's not as if we really have anywhere we need to be right this instant. Pretty please, Captain?"
Faced with the combined begging of an eighteen year old, a seventeen year old, and a twelve year old he cares deeply about, Law sighed.
"I guess we don't have anywhere we need to be right now." He mumbled, looking up to announce. "Fine, I guess we can spare a couple of days at Cibus."
"Yayyyyy!"
"You're the best, Captain!"
"I can't wait to try all that food!"
Law's usually sharp eyes softened as he looked at the three celebrate and talk about all the things they want to eat. He liked seeing them happy.
Not to mention, he was kind of excited to try the infamous food of Cibus Island as well.