Chapter Text
“Luz! Hold on kiddo!” Eda yelled as she was holding tightly to her apprentices hand.
Luz could feel her grip starting to slip as she tried to hold tight onto Eda, the wind attempting to separate them seeming to get stronger with each passing moment. “I’m trying! Eda please don’t let go!” She yelled desperately trying to reach her other hand back, but wasn’t able to because of the winds.
Things had gone wrong fairly quickly for the small group of rebels that had been attempting to stop Belos’s ‘Day of Unity’ and whatever his plans had been for the portal. They had been able to break through to the portal itself, ready to destroy or simply steal the reassembled door to the human world. When they had attacked though, the fire glyphs set on the machine didn’t exactly break it, but somehow had forced it to start up.
The next thing they knew, it had broken into a vortex that began trying to draw in those close to it. Which unfortunately for Luz, was herself and Eda.
Said witch had been able to use her staff and a Plant Glyph to hold herself to the ground, but Luz had no such luck as it started pulling on her far too soon for her to brace herself. Eda had just barely had the time to catch her and try to pull her back.
“I’m not going too! Just hold o- LUZ!” Eda yelled as she felt her grip finally give way, Luz being drawn towards the portal itself, screaming and trying to seemingly swim her way back towards Eda.
“Eda!” Was the last Luz could yell out just as she was pulled through and the portal closing shut right after, leaving only the re-damaged door and busted machine that held it.
No sign of the Boiling Isles singular human witch.
-
Luz found herself groaning as she tried to pick herself up. Her surroundings felt different, a soft rocking feeling, a warm sun beating down on her, and the smell of salt in the air. She slowly pulled herself up on her hands and knees as she tried to look around.
Only to shut her eyes quickly from the bright light of the sun invading her vision. After a moment she slowly reopened them and looked on shocked.
It looked like she was in the middle of the ocean, in a small dingy of a boat. Was she back in the human world? If so, why was she in the ocean and not by the shack that the portal normally leads to?
She didn’t have much time to process things just as a dark shadow rose up behind her and she looked back slowly, only to scream as the massive form of some kind of sea monster tried to crash down on her, maw gaping wide to swallow her whole.
Just as it came down, she screamed and felt a rush of wind.
First one like she was falling and then a new one holding her up.
“You know,” started the voice of a slightly older male as he approached. “If you’re going to have nightmares, it’s best not to take a nap on the figure head, Noceda.” He said with a slight amusement in his voice.
Luz’s eyes shot open as she looked towards the voice, finding herself just off the side of the ship, a small vortex of winds holding her up directly over the ocean. “Right… Sorry, thanks for the save Jaune.” She chuckled weakly as she was brought back onto ship.
The man before her was a tall blond man with blue eyes, who’s chest and part of his face was currently wrapped in bandages, covering fresh wounds from a previous engagement with a rather powerful foe. He was wearing an open black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, along with a pair of blue long pants held up by a red sash around his waist. Over his shoulders was a long blue captain’s coat with golden trimmings and tucked into his belt was a sheathed longsword with black and gold accents on the hilt and the pommel in the shape of a snarling wolf head.
He was one, Jaune “Blood Wind” Arc, captain of the Arc Pirates, to which Luz currently belonged, and with a firm bounty of 500 million berries. As well as the wielder of the Paramecia Vortex Vortex Devil fruit, that gave him the power to control wind currents at a simple thought.
“Any time.” he waved off her thanks. “So, same nightmare?” He asked with some concern as he leaned against the bulkhead of the ship.
Luz sighed as she sat on the deck and nodded. She was far from the young 14 year old girl that Jaune and his budding crew had found and saved in the waters of the North Blue just 4 years ago. Now a young adult of 18, she stood much taller than she had before, both literally and figuratively. While not as tall as her captain, she was close, only about a head shorter then himself, her hair had grown out to be just past her shoulders but still kept the slightly gravity defying effect it had always had. Sticking up in ways that normally shouldn’t be possible, but around the world of Great Blue, it was hardly the weirdest. She had traded out her blue and white hoodie for a green jacket over a blue and white striped shirt underneath, tucked into a pair of dark blue shorts and her normal black leggings still coming out underneath.
Much like her captain, she had made a name for herself on these seas, becoming known as “Wild Witch” Noceda. Thanks in part to what she’d picked up from Eda, but also eating a rather powerful paramecia devil fruit of her own, known as the Mage Mage fruit. It’s abilities let her continue to use her glyphs from the Boiling Isles, but without the need for paper or the Titan’s influence to do so.
That power along with her own wit and cunning, had earned her an ample bounty of 300 million of her own.
She sighed at the question and nodded. “Yeah, I know it’s been a long time since that day, but I can’t help thinking and even dreaming about it… How do you guys cope?” She asked, looking up, only to stop as she felt Jaune’s hand placed on the top of her head in a comforting manner.
“Bout the same as you honestly,” He said with a small smile. “We keep moving forward and hope we can find our way back home someday. That’s the best we can do right now.”
Luz nodded as she leaned against the ship’s walls, pulling her knees up to comfort herself a bit more.
If there was one thing she was thankful for about this crew, was that it’s main group was made up of people all in similar situations to herself. Each one was from some other world or strange universe that was nothing like this one. Some more simple like the human world from her home, some far stranger than even Great Blue could hope to be.
It gave them all something to bond over, even with how different most of them were and how little they each wanted to take orders, they all had that one aspect in common. Weirdly enough, it was all they needed to keep together as they searched for ways back.
She looked up to Jaune with a slight bit of a smirk on her face. “So, should you really be up and about right now? Your fight with Sakasuki wasn’t that long ago and I don’t think that Bella would be happy to know you’re moving around with those wounds.”
Jaune chuckled and shrugged. “I probably shouldn’t, but what the doc don’t know won’t hurt he-”
“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU ARC!?” Came the loud voice of the ship’s doctor, one Bella Swan came yelling and crashing out of the ship's sick bay.
“Me, it can hurt me…” Jaune finished, a sense of dread washing over him as he quickly ran to get away as Luz laughed at him being chased by the young brown haired woman in a doctor’s coat.
“Get back here and get back in bed, damn it! Your burns haven’t healed yet!” Bella yelled as she ran by with new bandages in hand, intent on tying the man to the medical bed this time.
Luz grinned watching them running around the ship, barreling over a few of the grunts trying to do their day to day upkeep. “Well, I guess I can’t be mad with the new weird family I ended up with.” She said as she stood and started looking out to the, momentarily calm, waters of the New World. “I’ll still find my way home… I want to see everyone again.” She said softly as she held up a hand, creating a light glyph with a simple motion and conjuring a small mote of light. With a light tap, she sent it floating away from the ship and turned to go help with things around her new home.