Archive of Our Own ^beta

• 20 years old

It starts with a name.

Or, it should have, maybe.

In truth, it started with a fruit, a cursed thing, over a decade ago.

It culminates with a name.

It creeps in, sinister and silently coiled waiting to strike, and then it does.

She's twenty years old, and she just had triplets. Pregnancy isn't really something capable of taking a toll on her gargantuan-but-still-human body, and neither is the birth itself. It's when she's thinking of names, something changes.

"Oven," she mutters to the youngest infant, "Daifuku," at the middle one. And then; "Katakuri…?"

She knows a 'Katakuri'. A powerful man with muscle of steel and crazy mastery over Haki, the Mochi-Mochi Devil Fruit under his command, towering over most of his dozens of siblings at nearly seventeen feet tall—

Where is that coming from? Those memories that are not-hers?

Forty-eight during the Whole Cake Island Arc, the second Arc of the Yonko Saga—

What Yonko Saga? What Whole Cake Island Arc?

Looses, having fought the Strawhat Captain, after impairing the latter's ability to wreck the forced wedding of Strawhat Cook at the hands of said Cook's estranged family—

What the fuck are all those.

Just. What the fuck.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Calm down, Linlin.

Oh right, her name is Charlotte Linlin, the Yonko—

She looks at the tiny infants sleeping next to her. Oven. Daifuku. Katakuri.

She looks at two-years-old Perospero. She looks at a one-year-old Compote.

"Mama, okay?" Perospero asks, tiny and bright, and she smiles.

"Yes, sweetling, Mama is okay. I just have a bit of a headache, okay? Let mama sleep, now."

Perospero nods. He's such an adorable child, not at all the crazy Minister of Candy in during the—

Linlin digs the heels of her palms into her eyes, and forces herself to sleep off the migraine building behind her ears. Nothing to worry about, she's probably just hallucinating.

Some three hours later, she opens her eyes to the wails of her youngest, and finally, realization hits her with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. Or maybe the nap was necessary for the jumbled memories to snap back in place. Who knows?

What is important is the fact that now, with a sudden clarity, she knows exactly who and where and when she is. That's more than people whose last memory is death and then suddenly twenty years of not-their life get, she supposes.

"Fuck," she says msotly to herself, if only to figure out if it's not some lucid dream before her brain shuts down for ever. She pinches her cheek, and it hurts. Everything else seems real enough, too.

Which means there's only one conclusion she can come to; "I've reincarnated as Charlotte fucking Linlin. Wonderful."

And she doesn't even believe in reincarnation. Is this some cosmic joke?

Then, she looks to the side, at the hungry infants, and remembers just who the father is.

"Oh my god, I fucked Kaido. I am never taking dares from Newgate ever again, no matter how drunk I am. By the Locket, I hate this crew."

• 21 years old

The Rocks Crew was compiled almost exclusively of menaces. The captain was a menace, Kaido was a menace, John was a menace, and that's not even mentioning all the other 'lesser members' of the crew. Shiki would be a menace, but she didn't quite see him around yet. They were also, almost all of them, very notoriously, ah, backstabby. Honestly, Newgate seemed like the only sane person around, and therefore Linlin found herself just gravitating towards him, tagging him as the only other person with relative sanity and intelligence.

Kaido was a fucking brat, by the way. The only reason she slept with him was because they all got really drunk on Kaido's birthday and Newgate dared her to, like the punk he tended to be after too much booze. All three of them were so wasted, so it's no surprise Linlin accepted, or that Kaido was receptive to her advances. Quite happily, too.

Thank fuck she's the only one who remembers anything.

They still noticed Linlin's apparent change in personality, though. It wasn't much, of course, because she actually liked her personality now, but her goals?

No.

Because, honestly, fuck that original goal. It would end in misery for many, and Linlin just couldn't be bothered if she were being honest. That kind of thing took dedication she doubted herself capable of. And the children. By the Locket, the children.

Eighty five. The Original Big Mom had eighty-fucking-five children.

There were at least three reasons she could think from the top of her head against that undertaking; one, she hated children to begin with, two, however cruel that sounded, she didn't care for most of them enough to have them, and three; if she were to have those children after all, she'd rather be an actually good parent. Parenting almost a hundred children just didn't seem plausible, even less so with her career choice.

The first step in her renewed plan is skipping quadruplets, even if the snakeneck man trying to woo her in a bar is very charming. Instead, she gets drunk with Newgate and doesn't let him rile her up this time. Predictably, it ends in a brawl. She punches him through several walls, so she's pretty proud of herself, but he could have not smashed that table over her head. So rude.

Somewhere into her second year as Linlin was also the first time she went berserk.

It was common knowledge that Linlin ate more food than most, despite keeping her figure slim with gruelling training. Because of this, some idiots thought that it would be a good idea for a prank to slap a sea stone cuff on her wrist and throw her in a cave to see how long she would last, and Linlin was too busy berating herself for not being vigilant enough in a crew infamous for its infighting to listen to whatever they were yapping about. All she knew was that they were older than her, longer on this crew, and they were morons.

Under the combination of stress, embarrassment over the situation, anger, and the creeping hunger, she lasted maybe two hours. Not like she was particularly keeping herself in check.

Losing control was an ugly thing, her senses went haywire for a second, and then everything going blank. She doesn't remember what happened after that, but the next time she came to her senses, a rather beat-up Newgate was pinning her to the floor and she could taste blood on her tongue.

It stays between them, and Newgate proves himself a good… Friend? Friend. He helps her get rid of what is left of the two morons with a relatively straight face, even if it's very obvious what happened to them, and doesn't really bring that particular matter up again.

"I used to do that a lot, you know, when I was younger," she tells Newgate as she washes the blood off her mouth. "I got better, but it still happens."

He pats her shoulder, and Linlin sighs. Original Big Mom didn't even have a clue of her rampages, and she wondered just how much willful ignorance something like that took. That, or the original Linlin was an idiot of Luffy's caliber in some areas. It wasn't even that difficult to fill in the blanks, especially with all the evidence already there.

Next time she lost it would be a shitshow, Linlin was sure.

• 22 years old

Katakuri is two years old and someone—Linlin is suspecting Perospero—gave him donuts.

And now the boy will eat nothing else, and Linlin is growing progressively more stressed about having the boy consume all the necessary nutrients for a growing toddler and not live exclusively off of sugar.

On the other hand, Shiki joins the Rocks after some battle. It's the usual song and dance; the captain kicks his ass and he's promptly deemed worthy to join the crew and given no choice on the matter whatsoever. He still leers at Linlin, and says that a woman being on a 'tough' crew is a joke.

"Wanna hear a joke?" two-year-old Katakuri asks him very seriously. "Your life is a good one."

Linlin laughs, Newgate laughs, rven Kaido chuckles. Shiki doesn't.

Linlin punches him, and it ends in a rough brawl and Shiki's newfound respect for Linlin, even though he never admits that. But she sees how he looks at her after she slams his head into an Adam Wood mast of his old ship hard enough to crack the mast.

Katakuri gets a whole box of donuts afterwards, even if she knows she shouldn't, and his face lights up like it's Christmas.

Later that year the Rocks are stationed on some island and Linlin is hit on by a rotund man with five horn-like growths on his head. She turns him down politely but very firmly and promptly provokes Newgate into a brawl. Somehow, it ends in an everyone-vs-everyone for the full crew, the rotund man forgotten and the quintuples losing their chance to exist.

(She'd rather fuck Kaido again instead of that vaguely man-shaped creature, and she wouldn't touch Kaido with a ten-foot-pole unless she meant to punch him.)

• 23 years old

She has Cracker and Custard in late February, two tiny children after two years of rest. It surprises her—she remembers Cracker being from a set of triplets, not twins, but it's impossible to make that sort of mistake with her Observation Haki. She checked. From the very beginning, she only sensed two presences.

She only had twins, despite her original counterpart having triplets. It's… Interesting. She can't help but wonder what exactly made the difference. Maybe her skipping the previous two batches?

She offers a quick goodbye to Angel's non-existence, and then she can no longer wonder about it because Katakuri rips his mouth open. How that happens, Linlin isn't sure, but what she's sure of is that it's not just because of his overeating. His wounds don't look like ripped flesh, they looked like they had been done with a knife. A jagged one for sure, but she knows how skin ripped apart with pure force looks like, and this isn't it.

Then some new little bitch in the crew asks her how her ugly kid is doing, and Linlin knows.

He doesn't live to see the sunset, and nobody says anything when Linlin returns to the ship alone and with blood on her hands. Even Shiki shuts up seeing the gleam in her eyes.

The message is clear. The children are off limits, and woe to the idiot who disregards the warning.

Katakuri recovers, because of course he does, her precious, resilient, bright boy, but his journey is only now beginning and Linlin resents that she can't be there for him as much as she would like to, but she's not strong enough to leave Rocks yet, not without fear of retaliation. Being in the crew is dangerous, leaving it even more so, but the high-stress environment forces her to get stronger; and fast. She's one of the very few women on the crew, and that poses its own unique threat, and Linlin is strong enough to take down almost anyone who crosses her way for many reasons, and only few related to ambition.

The situation with Katakuri also proves that it's simply safer to hide her children away elsewhere, away from the crew. Her warning is one thing, but there are people stupid enough to risk certain death if it meant hurting children and Linlin absolutely won't have that.

So she threatens some people and soon enough her children are stashed safely on a small island away from the crew, somewhere only Linlin knows.

It hurts, of course, but it will be seven more years until the crew falls under Garp and Roger and is disbanded. They'll manage that long. She will, too.

For now, she focuses on becoming stronger still, because as strong as she is now, she's not yet the monster she can become and her current power isn't enough.

• 24 years old

Linlin may very well never be able to get over the fact just how weird young Newgate looks. He's still shorter than he should be, even if he's an adult, not as bulky, and—he looks so not like himself without his weird banana moustache. But the weirdest thing, in Linlin's humble opinion, is his hair.

She always forgets that Newgate is, in fact, blonde, and it always surprises her. He's The Whitebeard, for crying out loud! Couldn't his hair have been white? Why don't his moustache and hair match in color? Even when he still had a full head of blonde hair his mustache was white anyway, so it can't even be explained with age!

But she will never be ashamed to admit that she loves playing with his hair. He suffered through it with a laugh and minimal resistance, but Linlin could tell that he liked to just sit back and let her brush it to her heart's content without fear of her stabbing him in the back. There was also the bonus of a really damn good braid at the end of it.

It was an odd thing, their friendship. She doubted anything like that had ever occurred in canon.

Shiki, the snot-nosed fool with maybe months on the Rocks, likes to tease them about being a couple. Neither paid his playground jabs any mind, content to just bask in one another's relative sanity and general 'not-a-shit-person'-ness, and Shiki sputters when they don't jump away from one another and don't start spewing denials. His little brain is incapable of wrapping itself around the idea of a platonic friendship between a man and a woman, and it shows.

She likes to be mean to Shiki, he's so easy to piss off.

Linlin meets some drunkard in the bar who hits on her, and leaves in disgust.

Later, she realizes that he did look like one of Original's assorted spawn. Oh well. Not a big loss.

(Linlin would like to accost Kaido with a brush one day, if only to make his hair less of a mess than it is now. But she won't, because he's annoying.)

• 25 years old

Newgate is rather leery of going all out against a pregnant woman, but Linlin assures him it's fine, really, he has nothing to worry about. Her body can take the type of beating Newgate is known to dish out, and she has been coating her womb in Armament Haki as a way of training.

(It doesn't occur to her that using armament Haki on just one selected organ is considered very rare and difficult to do. She just thought of it and did it, as it seemed like a good idea and did its job. Newgate doesn't figure out how special it is either when she tells him. It's just another creative application, that's all.

Or maybe it's just the time they live in demanding them to be stronger and more creative than most in order to survive.)

She tells Newgate about how she uses her armament Haki, and he considers it. Next time some new twerp tries to backstab him, their sword manages to go through the skin—but not the Haki-reinforced muscle. He seems to take it as a sign that Linlin's way of doing things is, in fact, a good way, and their training returns to normal, since he's no longer afraid of accidentally hurting her children.

Brûlée and Broye are born shortly after one of their spars, and Linlin will forever treasure the face of an alarmed, panicking Newgate. She laughs at him because she's mean like that and he actually gets offended because he thought it was his fault.

When they return, Shiki is convinced that the twins are Newgate's for some reason Linlin doesn't want to wrap her head around. He has a sort-of an epiphany 'a-ha' moment, as if Linlin and Newgate going to train in the morning and returning in the evening with two infants somehow meant that Newgate was miraculously their father.

He isn't, and Linlin isn't sure how to approach Shiki's brand of idiocy. Upside is, everyone else thinks he's stupid for that as well.

And then Katakuri finds and eats a devil fruit and Linlin has her hands full with both her youngest and him figuring out the Mochi Mochi powers on top of everything else.

• 26 years old

Finally, she manages to make a functioning Incarnation with her Soul Soul Fruit. It takes longer than she thinks it should have, but that's mainly because she's not at all satisfied with the subpar quality amorphous blobs with arms the Original was using. No, Linlin's Incarnations are much more human-shaped, and stronger, and she likes that. She can't keep them up for long, and they are glass cannons—sort of like Shadow Clones from Naruto, though she can't make nearly as many—but they serve a purpose. Surprising an opponent with a creature that goes down in one hit but can down them just as fast is always a nasty ace to have.

She can also make Homies, of course.

She would leave them with the children, but being a member of Rocks Pirates requires a lot of effort, and she uses them to fight—and she cannot make more than just the original three at the moment. That might be connected to the fact that she's pretty sure she pumps much more power into them than the original did; the things can actually hold their own against weaker crewmembers.

She makes a lot of basic weak Homies, though. Especially since a lot of people on the crew find them freaky and disturbing—and the homies she can make are freaky as all hell. Horror movies from her previous world have a delightful collection of terrors to pick from, and some men on the crew can shriek really high when faced with a Xenomorph pouncing at them from the shadows.

Linlin takes an unholy amount of glee in making her crewmates miserable because she genuinely hates most of them. They're a bunch of assholes, and it's some twenty years before the golden age of pirates.

This is the era of true pirates. A disgusting dog-eat-dog world where true camaraderie is rare.

Gol D. Roger couldn't find that thrice-damned island soon enough.

She loses control again, for the first time in four years. It's a record-setter, and Linlin can't quite remember just why she lost it. Newgate is there, though, and he beats the sense back into her. There are bruises and cracked ribs, but Linlin is grateful.

• 27 years old

"They're what?" Linlin asks, and Newgate chuckles, scratching his neck.

"Betting on the state of our relationship," he repeats. "It was John's idea, and Shiki jumped the bandwagon the second it was available."

"Huh."

"Yeah."

"What are they betting, exactly?"

"Well, Shiki for one is convinced that we've been together for years and are just good at hiding it. John, on the other hand, thinks it's mutual pining."

"Wow," Linlin snorts. "Can't they just accept that male-female friendship is a thing without romance involved and move on? For crying out loud-"

She keeps ranting, to Newgate's booming laughter.

(The betting pool would eventually become nigh-legendary, partly because it stays unresolved for years upon years, and becomes something the oldest generation mentions as a funny anecdote.

Forty years after it starts, unexpectedly and much more abruptly than it began, it ends—with Rayleigh winning with a sound conclusion, and Garp entirely on accident.)

• 28 years old

Rocks was getting more and more agitated, and Linlin was getting more and more unhappy with him. He was a shit captain, really, cared nothing for his crew. It was only ever him, himself, and he. He wanted to be the King of the Fucking World.

(Bold claim for someone who never even set foot on Lodestar, let alone on Laugh Tale, and only knew to threaten people to obey him, and even then, everyone and their dog was plotting against him.)

Linlin could never get quite drunk enough to deal with him these days. But that was fine. If she was remembering the timeline right, he would fall to Garp and Roger in two years, and subsequently, lose his life. She's stayed so long, might as well suffer through the remaining time. She owed Rocks that much, she supposed, for constantly putting her in danger and thus forcing her to become an absolute monster.

She meets a man in a bar, as is a common theme in her life, and maybe it's stress but she forgets birth control until it's too late. It results in Moscato and Mash, whom she wasn't planning on having, but she's not necessarily mad about it. And again, from an original set of triplets only two are born, and once again the third never even begins existing.

Linlin's working theory is that her lifestyle, diet, and child-having patterns are much different from the original's, so her guess is that this, and perhaps other factors, simply affect her fertility rate. She has no idea how credible that guess is, but it's all she can come up with.

(Sometime during her excursions to see her kids, a group of pirates picks a fight with her. She defeats them all, of course, raids their ship—and there, she finds a devil fruit, a small thing, blue and with waves. She pockets it, of course, because those things are valuable, and promptly forgets it exists.)

• 29 years old

Newgate, for all the time he spends with Linlin, starts suspecting something. She's been getting antsy in the past few years, more and more stressed and coiled, more and more brutal during their training sessions. She would drag him off for days on end and then they would return with their muscles screaming and power growing. Before, he just wrote it off as her wanting to get stronger, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed as if Linlin was working on a deadline; a very strict one at that. And the closer they got to that deadline, the more on edge she became.

Newgate is her friend, Linlin says so. So, eventually, he asks her about it.

"I don't think this crew has much longer," she confesses, because it doesn't, and she knows it, and next year Rocks D. Xebec will die and The Rocks will disband. "The Marines are having kittens over us, Rocks is getting crazier and crazier ideas - I'm afraid, you know? This will inevitably end in a shitstorm, it has to, and I have no clue if I'm ready for it."

Newgate puts his hand on her shoulder, his presence steady and reassuring. Linlin allows herself to lean into it and pretend that everything is okay. That she's not a girl in a body not-hers, in a crazy world that's not supposed to exist, in a crew filled with murderers only looking to stab her in the back, flying under a captain that might very well be actually fucking clinically insane rather than just greedy and arrogantat this point.

"It'll be fine," Newgate tells her. "You are strong, Linlin. You might not see it, but you're strong."

"I know I'm strong!" she argues. "But that means nothing if I'm not strong enough!"

Newgate looks at her for a while, and then shakes his head with a small smile. "You are. You'll see that soon enough, when whatever fallout that has to happen happens. Trust me."

He hugs her, then. It's actually the first time he did, the first time anyone, outside of her children, had done so. It brings a steady sort of comfort and Linlin allows herself to hope that maybe, just maybe, the upcoming fallout and the mess that's God Valley Incident won't be that bad.

• 30 years old

The God Valley Incident was That Bad.

It started innocuously enough; with a raid, on a vessel carrying slaves, which Linlin appreciated. She had to kill two separate low-ranking goons who tried to 'have fun' with the 'cargo' and then had to punch John through several trees when he disagreed with her letting the 'cargo' go free, but it was actually pretty nice.

Linlin had a reputation, after all; slavery was Bad, and she usually maimed those who disagreed.

Then it turned out it was a cargo ship of some World Nobles docked nearby, and Rocks, in his actual insanity, decided to go after them. This was his first idea in literal years that Linlin was wholeheartedly on-board with—because if there was a group of people that deserved death in this world, it was the World Nobles. So Linlin went with it, because fuck those bubbled bastards.

All was well; until a literal Marine Armada showed up, headed by Garp, and then a moderately-sized pirate ship bobbed on the horizon that wasn't Oro Jackson, but before Linlin knew, she was intercepting Roger to prevent him from decapitating Kaido.

What followed was, predictably, a shitstorm of epic proportions that nobody could really expect or prepare for.

And by shitstorm, Linlin meant just that; because how else do you call a fight that literally evaporated a whole island?

This was the answer as to why God Valley Island has never appeared on maps onwards from the incident—there was no island left to appear. Newgate went on a rampage with the Tremor-Tremor fruit, then Linlin pulled out Zeus and Prometheus bringing a literal firestorm raining down, and that was enough to level a big patch of terrain.

There was a God Valley Island, and then there wasn't.

Kaido gets hurt somewhere in the middle—he's hurt badly, badly enough to freak Linlin out. Like, half-of-his-stomach-is-missing-and-he's-bleeding-out type of badly. He's supposed to become a Yonko! One of the strongest people in existence in an era that's not to come for a long while! He's surprised when she's the one who gets him out of there, but he doesn't even try to stop his tears as Linlin orders her homies to evaporate anyone in pursuit, because it really looks like it's the end for him. And maybe, just maybe, Linlin is actually really, genuinely sad for this, because maybe, deep down, she's actually fond of this idiot who's grown to be something akin to an annoying younger brother to her.

Then, in a fit of desperation, Linlin shoves the devil fruit she found a few years back into his mouth, and suddenly, she's face-to-face with a blue dragon instead of just Kaido.

Ah, she thinks. That makes exactly zero sense to me but I'll take it.

(It's not for a long while until she remembers that this was, in fact, something that was meant to happen, that had originally happened. For once, this is the predestined path Linlin was almost happy to follow.)

Xebec died sometime during the fight, not even his monstrous strength capable of saving him against Garp and Roger, both in their prime, tag-teaming on him. A lot of people died, actually; maybe twenty of them were left in the end at all, several marines from an entire armada, and a few of Rocks pirates.

But Xebec was dead, and Rocks Pirates were officially done for. They were free. Linlin was free.

And as they stood against Garp and Roger, with the mangled corpse of their captain between them, Linlin just turned on her heel, grabbed Newgate in one hand and still-dragonfied Kaido in the other, and fucked right off, and neither man said anything as she dragged them away from the fight, both as tired and done as Linlin.

Garp doesn't bother going after them, and neither does Roger.

When Linlin gets home after the Rocks ordeal, still beat up and bruised after clashing and standing her ground with literal legends, it's to find Brûlée with a gaping gash across her face, traumatized Katakuri, and Cracker and Custard absolutely ready to commit murder.

Linlin sees red. Cracker is more than happy to point out every single one of the bastards to her, and the only thing that keeps her from painting the streets with their blood is their age. Linlin may be a cold-blooded murderer with a rather long history of carnage, but she has standards.

Katakuri decides he wants to wear a scarf around his mouth, then.

"Brûlée got hurt because of me," he tells her, and Linlin just can't help but hug the boy. Such a good child. She doesn't comment when he grabs the fistfuls of her coat and wails into her shoulder. She just kneels there, holding him close.

"It's your choice," she tells him later. "Wear the scarf if you feel it's the right thing to do. Or don't, and show the world that their opinions don't matter."

He chooses to wear the scarf anyway, but it's more because Brûlée tells him he looks cool in it, and he doesn't use it to hide his face. And where Linlin hesitates to go after the people who hurt her daughter, Katakuri, ten years old and full of fury, has no such qualms; he vanishes the next day for about an hour, Cracker and Custard in tow, and when they turn back up, they're wearing different clothes and there's blood under their nails.

It takes a weight off Katakuri's shoulders, and visibly so; he walks straighter, and his smile is bright again.

Linlin has Mont-d'Or eventually, a little parting gift from Shiki; he got wasted when they went bar-hopping before the fight, drunk enough to hit on Linlin, and Linlin was drunk enough to not mind. She doubts he remembers a thing about it; it only really came back to her when the blip of Mont-d'Or's soul registered with her devil fruit.

Newgate has a good laugh about it, because the irony is not lost on him; it was always Shiki, after all, who was so convinced that Linlin and Newgate were in a relationship.

• 31 years old

There's nothing much else to do, so Linlin resumes working with Streussen. He's the one who recommended Rocks to her, who has been aiding her pirating career ever since she was six, and Caramel's mysterious disappearance—

Fuck that. He's been helping her out ever since the day he saw her eat Mother Caramel.

There.

But now Rocks Crew is in the past, gone and never to return, and Linlin is ready to kickstart her own pirating career, as a Captain. She tells Newgate as much, and he laughs and claps her on the back. He's off to create Whitebeard Pirates now, and she's off to create Big Mom's Crew. It saddens her that she won't be able to see him that often anymore.

She throws her Den Den Mushi number at him, with a promise that they will occasionally meet up again to drink and spar, and leaves with Streussen.

Kaido sulks about, if only to angrily tell Linlin that he didn't need her help and he was fine on his own.

("With half your gut missing and bleeding out on the ground?" Linlin asks him, raising an eyebrow. He splitters, his face goes red, and he storms off.)

But it's a good thing. No more Rocks means she can play by her own rules.; spend time with her kids properly, maybe get more soon. She's supposed to have Smoothie in about two years, isn't she? Good. She likes Smoothie.

• 32 years old

There are a lot of people who want to join her, Linlin realizes pretty quickly into her foray in Captainship. Rocks was infamous, and so was his crew, but they were also undeniably powerful, and many want to use her and her infamy to kickstart their own pirate careers if nothing else. Even after just a year people flock to all former Rocks, because they mean a lot of things; wealth, power, immediate infamy and notoriety on which they can easily boost themselves up.

And Linlin, while ostentatiously wilder than Newgate—still not Whitebeard—is also a mother, and that, in the eyes of potential recruits makes her somewhat more mellow and less murderous than the likes of Kaido and Shiki.

Maybe it does. While Linlin doesn't mind violence and murder, she usually doesn't purposefully seek it out, but she's much more daring in her exploits than Newgate. A perfect Captain in the eyes of many.

Then one of the recruits makes fun of Katakuri's face and Linlin kicks him so hard he hits the water's surface only when he finally reaches the horizon. It sends a clear message; kids are here to stay, and you better not cause them trouble.

A lot of people leave at that, claiming they didn't sign up for daycare. There are a lot of others, however, for whom Linlin's notoriety and power is worth dealing with kids from time to time.

Besides, they're bright kids who love to learn. And, as one of the crooks learns when he makes a jab at Linlin within Katakuri's earshot and gets his arm almost chewed off for it, very vicious.

They don't manage to save the arm in the end, because Katakuri's teeth do a number on his nerves and tendons, and Linlin, predictably, is far more concerned with Katakuri's health after ingesting the blood of a person whose medical record might not even exist.

• 33 years old

It scares people, just how fast after their 'fall from grace' former Rocks Pirates get up. Shiki already has three ships under his name, John is growing more notorious by the day with just how boundless his greed is, and Newgate is slowly but surely scouting people and shaping up a crew that will stay a major world power for several decades.

Oh, and growing his banana moustache. He's finally starting to look like himself, though it looks really weird as of yet.

Linlin notices that, contrary to the loose mane he sported in canon, he is more often than not seen wearing his hair in a braid. It's a very small, inconsequential thing, but she's actually kind-of happy that she influenced him in such a way.

Other than that, she meets a rather charming man from the Longleg Tribe and lets herself be wooed for the night. Smoothie, Citron and Cinnamon are born later that year.

(Later, Linlin would learn that the man calling himself Edward Weevil was also born this year and, having known for a fact that Newgate did not sleep with anyone remotely like Miss Bakkin around that time, she would just laugh.

Hard to sleep with a woman in his current state; he's only recently formed a safe space for himself to freely explore his bisexuality, and that's exactly what he's been doing. Good for him to let it out; Linlin herself slept with women sometimes, too.

Though it did piss Linlin off, that Rocks was a crew safer for a woman with children than a man interested in other men. It was because of their captain, of course. Good riddance, that.)

• 34 years old

Linlin was constantly reminded of how huge she was compared to other humans and their human-sized world, but nothing drove the point home quite like the fact that Perospero recently decided that his new favourite mode of transportation was her hat. Well, it was Ares, shaped like a hat most of the time and always on hand, but it was a testament to the garment's size that Perospero, a rather tall teenager, could comfortably sit in the flaps of her hat for prolonged periods of time, usually with a book or two and an assortment of snacks to boot.

(She refused to call the hat Napoleon. Her other two homies were Zeus and Prometheus, why on earth would she be breaking that scheme?)

Honestly, Linlin sometimes forgot he was there, but Perospero was quick to remind her if she swerved too fast.

When they arrive at Langberry Atoll, Linlin carrying her oldest right there in her Homie-hat gives some of the guards of the shit ruler of the place a rather nasty surprise. Perospero is only sixteen, but he already has his devil fruit, and he's a force to be reckoned with. Currently, he might even be the strongest among her children; Katakuri is still figuring out the Mochi-Mochi Fruit and Haki, Cracker doesn't even have his fruit yet, and Smoothie is barely entering toddlerhood.

In the end, they get rid of the corrupt king ruling the entire Coleher Archipelago, and the formerly-oppressed people decide that electing Linlin as their queen is apparently a good idea. Longberry Island is promptly renamed Whole Cake Island, and the Archipelago is now Totto Land, and it's Perospero's and Compote's idea and, honestly, Linlin can do little more than accept it.

She hates the paperwork, and her two oldest get a stink eye for a good while after that and it makes them snicker like the brats they are, but un-fucking the mess Totto Land is instead of sailing the high seas also allows her to spend a lot more time with her youngest, most vulnerable children, so Linlin figures it's not all that bad.

• 35 years old

Yonko aren't quite a thing just yet, but the people are well aware that some pirates, their crews and captains, are completely out of their league even in New World Standards. It says something about Xebec post-mortem legacy that all of those big fish were in his crew at one point or another. The old captain might have been insane, but he left one hell of a legacy.

Linlin couldn't help but wonder—Shanks becomes a Yonko only about four years after he meets Luffy, give or take twenty years from now, or such. Who is the Yonko before him? IS there a Yonko before him, or is it just her, Newgate, and Kaido?

It will all be revealed, eventually. It's only a matter of years until she knows.

She has Melise eventually, and may the details of Linlin ever getting together with a moose mink be forgotten. The horns (and the hooves!) are just a fancy mutation that tends to happen in the family, and they can't prove shit.

It's a rather secretive affair, but Linlin grew in the five years since Rocks fell, and she has people who didn't wear her Jolly Roger but still answer to her. Their main job was reporting to her anything and everything interesting.

And a Celestial Dragon relinquishing his title was, indeed, interesting.

Linlin entertained the idea, briefly—reaching out to them, to Homing, to the Donquixote brothers. Changing their paths maybe, see where it took her. But then she decided against it. For Law to become the person she needed him to become to aid Luffy and bring about the collapse of the World Government, she first needed Doflamingo and Rocinante to suffer to become who they had to become.

(Letting Rocinate die later was up for debate, and debate was mostly about who she should send to retrieve the man to ensure his and Law's relatively safe passage to Swallow Island.

She couldn't care less about Homing, and Doflamingo was someone else's problem, but she still remembers crying during reading the flashbacks and, well—she's Charlotte-fucking-Linlin, if she wants to save Donquixote Rocinate, then she will save Donquixote Rocinate.

But not now. That was still years and years away.)

• 36 years old

She kept track of the Donquixotes out of nothing more than morbid curiosity. As Eloise—and boy, has this name remained unmentioned for long, and only now she would be actually outliving her past incarnation as Linlin—she loved Rocinante, and loved to hate Doflamingo. Homing, on the other hand, proved to be exactly what she thought he was.

A happy-go-lucky, naïve moron with no knowledge of the outside world, their opinions on Celestial Dragons, and general lack of basic life skills.

(Said social skills came down to something like 'hello there fellow humans, I, too, am human, let us get along'. It was as hilarious as it was tragic, and Linlin was a bad enough person to actually laugh at it.

His definition of 'tiny cottage' was a three-story mansion with like twenty-odd bedrooms, a private heated pool, and at least five walk-in closets, for crying out loud!)

On the other hand, it would appear that there were more winged races than what the Skypeia would lead people to believe. Linlin learns it by the way of a man with wings of a bat whose way of securing himself a place to live in Totto Land—more and more known as one of the few safe havens of the New World—is to woo Linlin for it. Amused, she complies.

(Dacquoise is the first of her children to actually have a father on hand to spend time with. Linlin doesn't even remember the man's name most of the time, but Dacquoise visits him often, learning to be… well, whatever bat-hybrid-creature he is. Linlin is almost tempted to call them vampires, seeing as they prefer their meat raw and do enjoy drinking blood.)

• 37 years old

Sometimes, some years are full of excitement and new things. Sometimes, time just flies and Linlin doesn't even notice.

Sometimes, nothing happens at all and Linlin is left going stir-crazy in her office, so she grabs the nearest ship, a few of her oldest kids, and goes off to do some good old-fashioned pillaging in lieu of family bonding time, leaving screaming Streussen in charge and some of the youngest children who make sure he do a good job or else.

All things considered, it's a good run; they sink at three separate Marine units. Two of those attacked them, but the third Linlin glimpsed having a very interesting cargo and pursued on purpose even though it very obviously tried to avoid them.

It didn't. Not when Linlin was very invested in hunting it down.

When they finally clashed, the captain had the gall to try to use one of the slaves they had on board as a meat shield. His death wasn't pretty; Linlin made sure of it personally.

(Murder could be excused; slavery was a sin punishable by death, and she was proud to live by this creed.

Live free, or die.)

They spend at least two weeks getting people who had homes to return to, back there, but most of those they saved had nowhere to return to; either ruins, or they were born to already-enslaved parents. But a fair few heard stories of Totto Land, and soon came to a decision to settle there.

One of them, a half-piranha fishman with pinkish-red hair, took to sighing at Linlin a whole lot.

Perospero, very much not amused by the mooning, just sent him to Linlin's bedroom.

Galette and Poire were born later that year, the only sign of their mixed heritage showing in the way of Poire's two rows of fully-developed sharp teeth.

Their father still occasionally mooned over Linlin, but he became a leader of the village the others settled, so he had much less time to do that, much to Perospero's relief.

Sometimes Linlin wondered if her oldest was allergic to romance in general, since he seemed wholly uninterested in anyone ever.

• 38 years old

Living in the same part of the Grandline—barring the fact that it was the most ridiculous place to live in to begin with, what with crazy climate changes and geography that makes no sense—meant that Linlin and Newgate could still meet up fairly often. The Marines all collectively took a breath whenever that happened, which was once a year at the very least, but it usually ended up with a rather brutal sparring match which Marines seemed to chalk up to turf wars between some of the strongest players in the New World.

Ignorant fucks who knew nothing but it served the purpose it needed to serve.

Newgate was Whitebeard at long last, with a fledgling crew filled with many people she recognized, but so tiny, and with Kozuki Oden, a bright but wild kid who joined Newgate literally a week before he met up with Linlin, who would eventually sail with Roger's not-fledging crew—and with his signature banana moustache that Linlin couldn't comprehend the logistics of, even seeing it in person.

She's learned not to ask. She slept better that way.

(Marco was so tiny.)

But they meet up like they do, level a mountain or two on a desolate island, and talk for a good half a day. It's a nice vacation, really, and keeps them both on their toes.

("Don't you dare," Newgate says, a warning lacing his voice.

Linlin smiles.

"Don't."

"Oh don't be such a sourpuss—"

"I'm warning you, Linlin-!"

"—Whitey-chan.")

Later, Linlin hears about Chinjao's predicament; mainly because his crew end up coming to her to borrow some money, despite the fact that last she heard of them, they were bragging of their riches. But that's what they get, she supposes, for just stockpiling their treasure where they can only get in a very specific way, now unobtainable to them.

Linlin barks out a mean-spirited laugh at the idiots who sneered at her just a few months ago and picks up another application from a merchant guild wishing to open up a chain of stores on the Archipelago.

Totto Trading Company may be a fledgling yet, but the seasoned sharks know competition when they see it, and they know that pissing off a Yonko is not worth it. But Linlin knows one thing for sure; money not used is money worthless.

She tells Chinjao's goons as much and throws them out.

• 39 years old

Cracker has had his fruit for a few years at this point, and he was every bit the angry brat picking fights with anyone and everyone. Linlin knew that, one day, it would come back and bite him in the ass.

She kind-of forgot he was supposed to have a huge scar on his face up until the point he actually took an injury that would become said scar. He was just a year shy of seventeen—the age at which Linlin allowed her children to officially do whatever they wanted, be it leave, join the crew, or take over administration in Totto Land, or whatever else they came up with—and he took some words from some un-allied pirate crew docking at Totto Land a bit too seriously.

He went after them alone, and by the time Custard realized something was wrong and mobilized some of their older siblings, it was already too late. Sure, Cracker won the fight, but he never tolerated pain well, and the one radiating from his wound sent him into shock.

It was a miracle the doctors saved his eye, actually.

It was also the first time Cracker has shown any remorse for his brash actions, but that was likely because Katakuri and Custard were scolding him both at once, while Linlin just loomed behind them in silent disappointment.

It ends with a family-wide sleepover. Linlin and Custard stay with Cracker because they're worried; others just invite themselves in.

Prim and Praline are eventually born after that accident; they're both mermaids, but neither of them are actually the same species as their father or eachother and Linlin is, once more, left wondering what the fuck even is this world.

• 40 years old

"Mama, I'm leaving," Custard tells her one day. She's all of seventeen, barely grown out of all the baby fat in Linlin's eyes, but so bright. Barely an adult, but in Custard's eyes determination shines like steel.

"Oh?" Linlin asks.

"Yes. I'm an adult now, and with everyone so strong, I-" Custard clutches the sword by her side. Ah. So that's what it's about. "I want to become strong, too. Strong enough to fight on their level, Mama."

"I understand," Linlin says, and kneels down to embrace her daughter. "Go. Follow your dreams. And when you're an amazing swordsman, come back home, so I can tell everybody just how amazing my daughter is. Okay?"

Custard sniffles, but wipes her eyes. Her smile, while rather wobbly, is bright and genuine.

"I'll make you proud!"

"Oh, silly child," Linlin chuckles. "I'm always proud of you, of all of you. Go make yourself proud."

Custard nods, and does just that.

(Linlin feels the shift when Gol D. Roger enters Grandline, finally setting out to seek Laugh Tale. She just wakes up one day, filled with a sort of giddy anticipation, and she knows that this is it. It's time. This is history in the making, and Linlin will live through it all.

In her vault, a Road Poneglyph waits, shining crimson, for a King to uncover its meaning.)

• 41 years old

Somewhere deep down in her mind Linlin expected the world to somehow follow canon in a way that would make Capone Pez her first grandchild in some thirty years from now; a stupid idea, in hindsight, when his mother herself wasn't even born yet.

And then Oven returned from his excursion into Paradise part of the Grandline with an infant in his arms, his brothers trailing behind him with varied degrees of amusement showing, and that preconceived notion takes a nose dive right out of the window.

Daifuku can't help but snicker at his mother's entirely confused expression, and Katakuri elbows him, but amusement is rolling off him as well even if he doesn't really show it.

"Alright," Linlin sets the pen down and moves to rub at her forehead. "Explain."

Daifuku snickers again and, judging by the muffled grunt, gets elbowed for it, again.

Oven coughs. "About a year ago, I met a woman in Paradise. We spent some time together, and, ah- It later turned out that she was from Kuja Tribe, from Amazon Lily, and she had a son."

"And thus, she gave you the kid and left?" Linlin asks, and her son nods.

"She seemed very unconcerned with the child's fate overall," he tells Linlin. "What else could I do? This is obviously my child, and we don't practice giving up those in this family."

Linlin could see where he was coming from. The infant—maybe three months old, if that—looked exactly the way Oven had at that age, and there was a certain familiarity to the soul of Linlin's descendants that she could sense with her Devil Fruit.

The brat was definitely her grandson, little doubt about it.

"His name is Pecan, by the way," Oven adds, after a brief moment of silence. "Katakuri's idea."

Linlin can feel the migraine starting somewhere above her ears.

"Go," she says. "You've got baby shopping to do. I'll figure out baby-proofing your flat."

"Thank you, Mama."

Daifuku snickers.

"Daifuku has volunteered to help you."

"Wh- Mama!"

Linlin sighs when they leave. That's one more thing to add to The Talk she gives her kids; to either take complete precautions with Amazons, or to keep tabs on them later. If that Kuja woman had a daughter, Linlin likely wouldn't have learned of the child's existence until much later, if ever at all, and, well… Call her possessive, but she liked to keep a head count of her family. And a Charlotte child raised by outsiders was not something she was about to allow, Amazon traditions be damned.

That being said, she hoped her sons would stay away from Amazons. Getting a child back from them, if a daughter ever happened, would be a pain and a half.

(The news of Shiki getting his ass handed to him by Roger and his crew was merely a bit of silver lining with the following chaos that was Oven's venture into parenthood and skyrocketing levels of stress.)

• 42 years old

Gol D. Roger is nothing like what she expected him to be, but somehow, he's also everything she expected he'd be, and more.

He's a complete and utter moron. Wild, free, bright, with that type of charisma that just made people like him regardless, as soon as they allowed themselves to actually get to know the man. He feared nothing and never shirked his responsibilities.

Truly, interacting with this idiot, and watching him interact with others, Linlin could only think of one name, a wide, unbothered smile and bold proclamations of a young boy who wouldn't even be born for nearly a decade yet.

Monkey D. Luffy. Older, definitely stronger, and more jaded, but Luffy nonetheless.

Roger was just like that. Bright, wild, and undeterred.

But there's a surprise in Roger's crew, too—Rouge, a young woman from South Blue, was sailing with him. They were planning to retire in Baterilla, Roger and her, once they found One Piece. Rouge was young, lethal with knives, and fully aware that Roger's illness will kill him in a few years, but she was also a girl in love. Linlin got a distinct feeling that Rouge knew exactly how long Roger had left, and was determined to make the most of that time, and Linlin couldn't help but admire that.

If anything, Rouge is the most trigger-happy pirate on Oro Jackson, with the biggest taste for blood, and isn't that just a cherry on top. Roger might be a bright, wild idiot, but compared to Rouge, he's very docile; harmless, almost. She seeks out blood, he tries to avoid bloodshed.

Linlin indulges Roger, houses his crew, lets him read the Poneglyph and feeds that black hole of a man, and then they part, much more amicably than they originally should have. He promises to say hello to Newgate for her when they run into each other.

Linlin likes to think of him as a friend. He'll be dead in two years and they both know it, and Linlin respects him all the more for it, because this man is doing whatever he wants during the end of his life, and the mark he will leave on the world is not one Linlin can hope to match.

She meets Pound sometime during the ordeal and thinks, oh why not. She knows for sure that he won't be a bad father, and he delivers. Linlin makes it clear that there will be no marriage, nor any long-term relationships, but Pound seems to care about relationships about as much as she, much more invested in doting over the newborn Chiffon and Lola. Sometimes, Linlin wonders if he only really wanted a shot at fatherhood without all the romance nonsense.

What catches her off-guard is the fact that she's not the only person in the family who has decided to multiply this year. Compote requested a temporary leave a year before from her post, and then returned, months later, with a set of twins completely her own. She was envious of Oven, she later explained. She always enjoyed living in a big family, and her younger brother procreating reminded her that she could expand it a bit herself, and thus Macaron and Meringue came into existence. And Compote took more after her mother than just appearance, as she didn't remember, or even care, who the father was.

Linlin wasn't quite sure how to feel about the fact that she gained two children and two grandchildren in the span of a few months but with several adult children, she supposed it was something she should have expected to happen. Especially since she was much more lax than the original and made sure to make her children feel safe to go and do whatever they wanted.

• 43 years old

They did it. The crazy bastard and his crazy crew did it.

Linlin knew they would, of course, but knowing it and living through it are two entirely different things. There's this sort of shift in the air that she feels, one that's been brewing ever since Roger entered the Grandline. She knows that a new era is afoot, and it did disappoint her a little that Roger didn't feel like toppling the government, but she supposed a brand new era was fine, too.

She'll just wait for Luffy to uproot the order of the world. It's only, what? Twenty-five years until he gets there? Maybe.

What Linlin didn't expect was for Roger to invite her for a last drink in Wano alongside Newgate but, intrigued, she accepted. Apparently her being nice during Roger's stay in Totto Land and just sharing the Road Poneglyph made a good impression, because unlike the original Linlin, she didn't quite care for One Piece. She had enough on her plate as it was.

They drank a lot. And Linlin learned a lot, and what she learned she would probably take to her grave, but she would be damned if she didn't aid any and all inheritors of the Will of D who weren't Teach from that point onwards, because that was some world-breaking wild shit.

A little bit later, when they part, Linlin drags Roger off to the side for a moment.

"Your son will be an amazing person," she tells him, and he stills. "You can go die now, Roger. I'll divert the Marine's attention away from the South as much as I can."

His eyes are suspiciously shiny when he utters a 'thank you'.

It's the last time Linlin sees him. She hardly knew him personally, really, but he was something of a friend; the type of person who wasn't difficult to like, and seeing him go made her sad.

• 44 years old

Linlin almost goes to Lougetown. Almost. Instead, she tracks down Newgate with a cargo full of really strong alcohol and they get absolutely wasted together as their friend/rival/whatever else Roger was ends his journey with a bang, still on his own terms rather than succumbing to his illness, or even the Marines, leaving the world with one last middle finger aimed at the World Government as a whole.

What a legend.

"What if I told you that I know a possible way in which future events may play out?" she asks Newgate as they're lounging on a beach away from their respective kids, a keg of whiskey between them, and he looks at her for a long moment, and then at the setting sun.

"I'd say that the world is full of mysteries," is the answer he gives after consideration.

"Hmmm. That may be so," she muses. "But, you know—"

"Yes?"

"When you decide to sacrifice your life for Roger's kid, some over twenty years from now, do me a fucking favour and call for backup, okay? Because you will die otherwise and then I'll be really sad."

"…okay."

"Thanks."

(Twenty-two years later Newgate will look at the ruins of Marineford, remember this conversation, and think, huh.)

(Shiki rages, and rages, and rages, and it gets him nowhere but straight to Impel Down.)

• 45 years old

The world collectively flinches when Charlotte Linlin, an infamous Yonko and captain of the notorious Big Mom Pirates, comes forward and blatantly claims to have slept with Gol D. Roger.

But to the Marines, it seems plausible. Much more plausible than Roger loving some girl from South Blue, and Linlin is just as infamous for her monstrous power as she is for her taste in men—especially strong men—and going after whomever caught her fancy at the moment. And Roger was, indeed, a strong man; one who stayed in Totto Land for the Road Poneglyph, and, on top of that, ships with Big Mom's Jolly Roger were conveniently spotted around Baterilla in the past two years, and she herself was suspiciously absent from Totto Land or, indeed, the New World, when they were there.

(The world conveniently forgets that there was a woman from South Blue in Roger's crew, because being blind is comfortable. Or that Linlin, for her size, has frighteningly many ways to go about completely unseen and unnoticed.)

The Marines swallow the shiny bait she dangles in front of them hook, line, and sinker, Baterilla Island and South Blue blissfully forgotten, filed away as Linlin's vacation spot that Roger stumbled upon, or they both agreed upon, people's imaginations running wild about their supposed romance.

When they finally realize that, while they cannot verify if Linlin actually had a whirlwind romance with Roger as she claimed, but definitely no child was born from that union, it's much too late for them to seek scion of the Pirate King where they could actually have found it previously.

Portgas D. Rouge is a lovely woman, just as stab-happy as Linlin remembers but significantly more mellow, and she sends Linlin a thank-you card all the way from Dawn Island on East Blue about half a year after the statement, alive and a mother, a picture of a month-year-old Ace attached. Linlin smiles at a job well done, and, on an impulse, writes back. Rouge made a good first impression when Roger's Crew stayed in Totto Land, after all.

And just like that a friendship unthinkable to the world blooms between a woman who's supposed to be a monster and a woman who's supposed to be dead.

(There's no telling how many children Linlin's statement has saved from Marine-issued mass-infanticide, but the numbers likely reach thousands. And while Marines are none the wiser, the South knows exactly what she did, and they never forget, as they raise their new generation to know exactly to whom they owe the fact that they're still alive.

Later, much, much later, the pirate crew of Eustass Kidd comes knocking, among them faces Linlin doesn't recognize, and Kidd himself a little less jaded.

Portgas D. Ace is some two years older and it changes exactly nothing in his journey forward. Having a loving mother to raise him, however, does.)

• 46 years old

The Massacre of Ohara is a mess, as if Linlin needed any more reasons to hate the Marines. Buster Call is a fucking madness, and Government abusing its power just because few crazy old men want to keep the truth six feet under, and she's still sane enough herself to know insanity for what it is when she sees it.

Therefore, it's not really a surprise when she dispatches submarines to Ohara to pick out any and all survivors and just bring them over to Totto Land. With Big Mom pirates dressed as Marines, 'rounding up whoever's left', the Marines suspect nothing.

Linlin laughs and laughs at their self-assured righteousness and complete lack of suspicion, as if a bunch of pirates dressing up as them and pretending to be them isn't something that could happen.

(Well, perhaps it can, but Marines would expect pirates to pillage under their guise, not go about saving people, so Linlin supposes it's fair. It sure does make her job easier.)

Returning to what was left of Ohara and extracting their Poneglyph from the ruins afew months later is a child's play, and Linlin would much rather gather as many of those as she could. She was interested in their contents, and one of those days in the future she'd have either Nico Robin or Pudding read them.

(Nico Robin almost screams when a tall witch-like woman crawls out of a mirror in a small dingy inn room she rented to catch a breath. The woman deposits a bag full of money in the girl's lap without so much as a word and crawls back in the mirror, leaving a very confused girl behind.)

Shiki, literally too angry to stay locked up in Impel Down, proceeds to break out, further affirming Linlin's belief that he's just too angry to function, no matter his usual easy-going, jovial attitude. There are some serious anger issues boiling under that.

Linlin has Raisin, eventually, and the Marines do a double-take after her proclamation from a few years back, but Linlin is rather unbothered by the fact. It's not like they can do much at this point—she's sure she could reliably take down an Admiral or two at this point in her life all by herself, and they seem to realize it too, because nobody goes to investigate if Raisin is actually, by some weird coincidence, Roger's son.

He isn't, but Linlin is perfectly fine giving the Marines a massive freak-out.

• 47 years old

Custard comes back home for a moment, and when she bursts into Linlin's office, the older woman can only stare for a moment. Not because she hasn't seen much of her daughter in the past seven years sans the relatively regular letters and calls, but because Linlin somehow failed to connect the dots between the guy that Custard expressed she took a shine to due to shared interests and similar power level and young, twenty-two year old Dracule Mihawk that Custard has actually dragged before her mother. In hindsight, the description of 'yellow eyes, kinda emotionally constipated but good with swords' was rather on the nose.

Linlin wasn't even sure why she was surprised to see the man carry a small child in his arms; with his yellow eyes and pale lilac hair.

"This is Éclair, our kid," Custard declares proudly as Mihawk, mortified, tries to look everywhere but his girlfriend's mother. He was, after all, just unceremoniously dragged before said girlfriend's mother to be introduced only now, after he already has a child with Custard. Linlin kind-of understands his plight. She is a rather scary person outside of Totto Land.

"You keeping this one?" she asks her daughter with a raised eyebrow.

"We're engaged, actually!" Custard chirps happily, and Linlin pinches the bridge of her nose.

Of course, just put her before a set fact. It was the course of action her children tended to default to more and more.

"Well then. You have a lot of planning to do. You can leave your spawn with Cracker, keep him out of trouble for a while."

Custard laughs and saunters out of the office.

Mihawk is rather flabbergasted at the turn of events, but suffers through most of everything stoically. Linlin can read him as an open book only because she's good at Observation Haki and he's not quite there yet. Linlin can't say she has anything against him—won't, really. When Custard mentioned him in letters, she only had good things to say. And when he looked at her, or their daughter, his eyes took on this sort of soft hue that effectively killed all of Linlin's counter-arguments.

That, and she saw their spar first-hand. Custard and Mihawk may have been engaged, but they pulled no punches when fighting, constantly pushing one another to be better. Mihawk wasn't the Greatest Swordsman just yet, but he still had some twenty years before he had to be, and Custard was the best swordfighter the Charlotte family produced, period.

Linlin's only meaningful relationship with a man who wasn't a member of her family was based around a very similar concept; strong enough to spar with her on even footing, respectful enough to not pull any punches, and comfortable enough to get wasted together in a bar without a care in the world.

Cracker, predictably, was very happy to have his twin back, even if it was just for a short while. Also, the brat wasn't at all surprised to see Éclair; likely he knew of her existence already, and deliberately didn't inform his mother. Also it was much easier for him to leave Totto Land for longer periods of time, sometimes only to visit with Custard, so it made sense he was the first person to know.

Then, he took one look at his niece, at last in person, and fell in love on the spot, months-old Éclair instantly elevated to the status of his absolute favourite sibling-spawn. And, truly, who would've thought that Cracker; half-insane, very aggressive, unpredictable, and just plain wild; would make such a responsible and doting uncle? He was a great babysitter, at least. Linlin has never seen him that responsible before. But it did what it was meant to do; kept him in place instead of running about getting in fights.

Custard and Mihawk get married surrounded by the Charlotte Family and few others. Mihawk doesn't have any living relatives, and the fact that he's so easily accepted seems to surprise him, but he really isn't the oddest thing to happen in the family. If anything, the general opinion is that he's a respectable young man, if a tad standoffish.

He's Linlin's first in-law, actually, what with Pecan's mother being a Kuja who didn't want a son and the father of Macaron and Meringue long ago forgotten by Compote. It's a reminder for Linlin that she's almost fifty and a lot of her children are adults already. Many have important functions in Totto Land, many fly with the crew if needed. Many, though they live in Totto Land and she sees them daily, have all their own lives that they're busy living.

She's old. Her body is far from frail, her bones never once creaked, but she's old. There's nothing that helps her realize that more than her daughter's wedding.

Custard and Mihawk leave a week after their wedding, Mihawk officially a part of the Charlotte Family, but publicly they both go by Dracule, and so does Éclair. The World Government, for all their reach, didn't manage to connect Custard to Linlin yet, and everyone would rather it stayed so for as long as it could.

• 48 years old

Linlin hasn't paid much attention to Kaido for the past eighteen years since the Rocks split, not really. They met a few times, true, and every single one Linlin took great joy in making him very uncomfortable and considering bolting on her, but otherwise, he did his thing and she did her thing.

And then he went and took over Wano with the help of some guy Linlin thinks might've been named Orochi, and nobody was particularly happy with him. Linlin might've met Kozuki Oden twice in her whole life, but the man left a rather good impression regardless. Newgate, however—Newgate sailed with Oden, before he sailed with Marco and most of his current crew, and always had a good thing or a dozen to say about his former division commander.

What a way to get himself on Newgate's shitlist, truly. Linlin could only congratulate Kaido on this crazy manoeuvre for the sheer gall it took to pull such a thing off. Even she was leery of getting on Newgate's bad side, and she could reliably take him in a fight.

It just further proved to her that Kaido was an angry brat with the self-preservation of an eleven-year-old who met god and wasn't impressed.

What worked in Kaido's favour was that Newgate was busy extending his patronage over Fish-Man Island in the face of most recent slave hunts. It was probably the only thing that saved Kaido, actually.

(If Newgate asked, Linlin would have stormed Wano alongside him. Newgate knew this, Kaido knew this. The only thing that saved Kaido's skin was that Newgate didn't want to further weaken Wano itself, and that, by the time they learned of the situation, it was already too late to really do anything substantial other than a hostile takeover which would make Wano a prime target for the World Government.)

And then, by the very end of the year, the Marines finally deign to coin the term 'Yonko' and so, Linlin, additionally to being a Captain and a Queen, becomes one of the Emperors of the Sea, alongside Newgate, Kaido, and Shiki.

Finally.

Her bounty is measly three and a half billion now, a little less than a billion shy of what she should have in twenty years. Newgate's is four billion, and Kaido's skyrocketed after Wano to almost match him.

She doesn't care how much Shiki is worth, except that it's less than her.

• 49 years old

Let it be said and let it be known, Linlin has always known that Cracker isn't the smartest of her children. He's wild, and loyal, and lovable, but sometimes, he's such an absolute moron it could be called genius.

Whitebeard Crew is mostly normal-sized humans, much unlike Big Mom Pirates who come in as many shapes and forms as humanly (and inhumanly) possible, and this garners attention. Someone is eventually bound to ask a stupid question.

And someone is bound to answer it.

"How tall even is your mother?" Izo asks nobody in particular. Cracker looks at the samurai, then at Linlin, and then at Marco, and considers.

"About three and a half Marco's tall, why?" Cracker says, eventually, and everybody on board of the Queen Mama Chanter just freezes. Cracker looks around, confused, and suddenly, everybody is roaring with laughter, and Marco, his face red and blue flames dancing behind his ears, is flailing indignantly.

As far as inside jokes go, measuring the height of things in Marco's has become the most prevalent one between two crews, much to the mortification of the Zoan user.

(There are whispers of an alliance between Whitebeard Pirates and Big Mom Pirates, fearful and hushed. Everybody knows that the two crews are on exceptionally good terms with one another, unlike the other Yonko. Linlin and Newgate laugh and drink; they won't fight one another, but they don't think of an alliance. It could cause too big of a storm for them to bother dealing with.)

Later, Cracker gets presented with a cardboard cutout of Marco by some of his very amused older siblings. He chases Oven with a rolling pin for a good hour before he gets it out of his system, and shoves the cutout into a storage room where no one will ever see it.

• 50 years old

Dragon stares uncomprehendingly at the envelope in his hands. He studies and cross-examines it, and the bills that came with it, questions the person who received the envelope from a talking sun, and it's crazy, but it's neither a joke nor some ploy.

There's a good half a billion beli in the envelope. In cash, that isn't counterfeit. He's checked. Cash that they need rather desperately right now, and Dragon just—can't believe it.

'A little spare change I managed to throw together quickly,' the attached note reads, 'for you and your boyband to kick off easier, and the worthy goal of knocking down those useless pigs off the high chair they never deserved.

Signed; A friend.'

So, yes. Dragon is confused. This helps—this really, truly helps. But who on earth would even know what they were beginning to do? Was it a spy or a coincidence? It must have been a spy. But whoever it was was friendly to his cause.

Somewhere, far across the sea, Charlotte Linlin cackles when her little Revolutionary mole gives her a secretly snapped picture of a flabbergasted Dragon, worth more than any favour she could potentially call in for the donation.

• 51 years old

Linlin enjoys some good carnage every once in a while, she really does, but when the Rob Lucci mess happens, she can't help but look at it and think, 'someone should lock up that kid'.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how one breeds fanatic psychopaths who claim that the Celestial Dragons are gods on earth and not pathetic vermin to be exterminated yesterday.

She has not, and will not, forgive him what happened on the Levely seventeen years from now. Call Linlin petty, but the kid really is insane, and should be contained, not endorsed. That, or he should get help, but she has no idea if undoing his conditioning is even possible at this point.

The fall of the World Government can't come soon enough, really. But it's closer than it is farther—it shouldn't take more than twenty years for the now-two-year-old Luffy to go and become the Pirate King and wreak havoc all around. And if Linlin is planning on calling dibs on Rob Lucci, well—

He is a despicable, dangerous brat with little to no prospect of redemption. Yes, she's biased, bite her.

And then she goes on a short vacation with some of her kids, they run afoul of Beast Pirates and King almost kills Mont-d'Or and Linlin just loses it. She comes to fairly quickly only to see the Beast Pirates run with tails between their legs as she grips black feathers in her hand.

It took her years to relapse, but it's good; the berserk state used to be a weekly occurrence once, not 'once in a blue moon' one. It's progress.

• 52 years old

Whatever happened to the three-eyed tribe, Linlin isn't sure, but when Daifuku's ship fishes out a few stragglers from the sea, Linlin concludes with certainty that it was nothing good. But they're in desperate need of a home, so Daifuku brings them before Linlin, because she's just as known for taking in strays and letting them live in Totto Land as she's known for her power and amount of children, and she locates them somewhere on Cacao Island.

All is well.

One of the three-eyed people, a man who looks pretty much exactly like male version of Pudding, starts to woo Linlin and she decides that he's charming enough.

(And she wants Pudding to complete her collection anyway.)

Pudding is born in late June. For the three-eyed tribe, this serves as an assurance that they do have a safe place in Totto Land; for Linlin, she finally had all the children she planned on having. Pudding is one of her few children with a father she can cart them off to for a moment if the paperwork builds too much, and that's a plus, too.

Later, several years down the line, Pudding also becomes one of four of her children with half-siblings on their father's side.

(Sometimes Linlin considers just taking Yamato, because Kaido is far from a model father.)

And then the Flevance Incident occurs, and people call it an incurable disease that you can apparently contract, and therefore exterminate the whole city, and-

If any of her troops were anywhere near the city when it fell, Linlin would have reacted. Right now, she was left cursing her lack of foresight—she knew the city would fall! She should have paid closer attention! So much death due to mass hysteria and the government, when all the illness was, was a build-up of a toxic metal. Potentially curable—if Totto Land's Pharma had actual people to study and develop a treatment for.

"It's not your fault, mama," Perospero tells her, and she sighs, tired and weary. It may not be her fault, but it sure as fuck feels as if it is.

"I know," she tells her eldest. "Doesn't make me feel any better, Pero."

"Mama-"

"The Government knew, years in advance," she tells him, and his eyes harden. "They knew and said nothing. If I went in and told them the lead is poisonous, I'd be laughed right out of the door."

"Oh. Is this why you hate the Government so much?"

"Oh, Perospero, sweetling, my life would be so easy if I had only one reason to hate them for."

And if Linlin starts keeping much closer eye at the Ope Ope no Mi, Donquixote Pirates and North Blue in general—

Well. She won't be caught unawares again.

• 53 years old

If there was some sort of karmic justice in the world, then Fisher Tiger's Rebellion must have been it. It rocks the world, the shit he stirred up at Mary Geoise, and Linlin couldn't help but root for him.

But he freed the slaves with reckless abandon, just to free them, not quite knowing what to do with them after. And, true—for many, most actually, death was a better alternative to a life of slavery on the mercy of those despicable vermin called World Nobles.

There was little surprise that a pirate ship loitered by the Red Line, it's crew watching the flame on top of the wall utterly mesmerized. And if they periodically sent boats out that returned with escaped slaves, well-

Linlin sat comfortably on the figurehead, swirling a glass of wine and looking up at the flames as if enjoying a particularly good theatre play.

Linlin was one of those women who just enjoyed seeing the world burn sometimes. The fact that it was Mary Geoise burning made it all the better.

• 54 years old

It takes her longer than she cares to admit to realize that she doesn't age right. Oh, she does age, true—but slowly. Too slow for a regular human. She's pushing mid-fifties now, and yet her body is still fresh in a way a senior should not be. Her bones don't ache, her back doesn't act up, not once in her later years. Her skin doesn't sag, wrinkles don't quite want to come in. Her hair is still a lush, vibrant pink; though those she chalks up to good skin- and haircare.

She looks thirty, maybe thirty-five. Nowhere near fifty-four.

"Oh, Mama, Mama," Smoothie sighs, like she always does when Linlin brings up things Smoothie thinks her mother should know. "It's most likely the Soul Soul Fruit. You take the lifespan of the idiots who try to fight you, right? How much additional life do you have right now?"

Linlin checks. It's twice her natural remaining lifespan, and it's seeping into her bones.

"Oh," she says, and Smoothie snorts.

"Oh, Mama, Mama," the girl says again, and Linlin bristles.

"I didn't think, okay? I panicked a bit!"

Smoothie laughs.

Brats, the lot of them! And then they wonder why Katakuri was her favourite. He's not mean to her!

• 55 years old

Linlin realizes that she might be going overboard, but being unprepared is what tends to kill people, never being too careful. And so, she sends Cracker and Katakuri both straight to Minion Island in North Blue, to interfere with Donquixote Doflamingo. Their rehearsed excuse for being there is that they've been tracking the Ope Ope no Mi, and Linlin wants it. Their actual goal? Ensure that Trafalgar Law eats the damn thing and Donquixote Rocinante survives, and that they're both safely delivered to Swallow Island and left to their own devices.

Pecan somehow manages to sneak onboard with his uncles when nobody's looking.

And if she has some of the best medics from Totto Land go on a slightly forced vacation to Minion with her sons, that's just simple common sense.

They inevitably come into conflict with Donquixote Pirates. Pecan loses his eye. Katakuri loses his shit. And Doflamingo's Birdcage can, indeed, be ripped apart with bare, haki-coated hands. At least when you're a very pissed-off Katakuri.

He leaves Doflamingo whimpering in a crater barely alive, Katakuri's haki-hardened hands covered in the Warlord's blood and his head full of worry for his nephew.

(Later, hours maybe days, Donquixote Rocinante can be seen sitting on a medical cot, hooked up to a quantity of equipment and at least two separate IV drips, reeling and trying to make sense of the mess that was Minion Island. He knows one thing; hadn't Big Mom's ship, suspiciously manned with top-tier medical staff and two of the strongest people she had shown up, he'd be dead, and Law quite possibly would be too.

As it were, the boy was listening to one of the doctors go on a tirade about heavy metal poisoning and toxicity, throwing in a curse aimed at the World Government every two or three sentences. Most importantly, by the end of it, Law was able to start removing the Amber Lead build-up with his fruit ability, thanks to the information.

Rocinante only looked up as a man with a scar on his face and long purple ponytail—Charlotte Cracker, bounty over eight hundred million, his memory supplied—strode into the infirmary as if he owned the place. Judging by the name and design of the ship—The Cookie Castle—the statement might have very well been true.

"Oh, you're actually alive. Good, I heard it was a bit hit and miss. Mama will be happy."

Rocinante stiffens. "And what does, exactly, Big Mom want with us?" he asks carefully. Cracker looks at him for a moment, and then laughs. And then gets promptly slapped upside the head by the man entering behind him. Tall and vibrating with power. Charlotte Katakuri, bounty at almost one billion, highly wanted, highly dangerous. Katakuri and Cracker had enough power between them to actually take down an Admiral, or so the wild gossip went.

Gods knew that Doffy went down fast and hard, alive only because they weren't allowed to kill him.

Katakuri sure as hell looked like he wanted to, after Doffy ripped his nephew's eye out; that much Rocinante remembered happened before he passed out.

"Stop freaking them out," Katakuri chastises, and turns to Rocinante. "I am no expert at what Mama thinks, or why she does things, but she always has a reason. Despite its potential, we don't actually have an interest in the Ope Ope fruit, or you, or the kid."

"Then… Why? And what now?"

"I told you, I don't know why Mama does certain things. She just does. All we were to do here was to ensure your survival, and drop you off at Swallow Island. Which we'll do as soon as you're stable."

"And then?"

"We're going back to Totto Land. What you are going to do, I couldn't care less."

Rocinante huffs, and considers. The Yonko do whatever the Yonko want, after all, and there's never any telling what they will do next, especially Big Mom. She's an oddity Marines continuously attempted to crack, and never succeeded.

But maybe, just maybe, everything will be alright.

He puts a hand on Law's head and allows himself to hope.)

• 56 years old

This year's correspondence with Rouge is by far the most entertaining and engrossing. Reading the other woman's often long, increasingly ranting in nature letters is quickly becoming Linlin's favorite past-time. Exchanging letters through a subspecies of News Coo is fast and easy, and Linlin isn't sure how isn't it popular. It's by far the easiest method of contact with places where Den Den Network doesn't quite reach.

Rouge retells a true epoch in parts as they happen, and an originally tragic story becomes exceptionally amusing, when it's not just three boys, but also their irate, stab-happy mother hounding pirates and nobles alike.

(It's also worth mentioning that said irate mother has a higher body count than all their opponents combined. Rouge reads so absolutely indignant at those small fries Linlin laughs out loudly at it quite a bit.)

It starts with Shanks and his flailing, because apparently Rayleigh and Crocus were the only ones who actually knew about Roger's and Rouge's relationship. Then Luffy—and Garp had enough brainpower to give him to Rouge from the start, at least—snatches and eats the Gomu Gomu fruit, to everyone's horror and Rouge's exasperation, and there's good half a page of the younger woman's essay on why and how is Shanks a fucking moron and she prefers Buggy.

Then, Porchemy kidnaps Luffy, and there's a side-note from presumably Sabo, a short notice that he had no idea a human can bleed so much, and that he learned so much about human anatomy from simply looking at what's inside. The rest was Rouge's rant on bandits pretending to be pirates.

Then, Outlook happens.

Or, more accurately, Rouge happens to Outlook. Grey Terminal still gets burned down, but Rouge and Dadan—the designated babysitter, because there must be Dadan in ASL Origin Story—make quick work of Bluejam, especially since, much to their horror, Sabo gets targeted and attacked by the pirate. Rouge writes about a scar on the side of his face and a rather nasty concussion that she strongarms a conveniently-there Dragon to help her treat.

Because Dragon also makes an appearance in Rouge's letters, but unlike grabbing an amnesiac Sabo, he gets subjected to two whole days with his very own spawn, Luffy, to keep him off Sabo as the older boy recovers. He's a changed man by the end of it, Linlin is sure.

Outlook actually escapes the initial altercation, running back to Goa swearing vengeance. But Rouge is the type of woman who needs to be offended only once for it to get ugly. So she leaves the boys with a roasting crocodile to celebrate their win and keep them occupied, grabs her knives, and slinks into the night. She doesn't put details of Outlooks death in the letter, there's no need to.

Linlin has seen plenty of Blackjack Rouge's handiwork over her years to know the carnage.

A little thing that snowballed so big. A simple rumour that Linlin spread, and then suddenly Rouge is alive, Ace is two years older and short on daddy issues, Sabo is not an amnesiac and Outlook is out of his life (out of anyone's life, really), and Luffy… Luffy is still becoming the Pirate King and Linlin better believe it, because she's a Yonko and he's gonna defeat her one day.

Or something like that. She's not sure she deciphered his chicken scratch properly, but he's trying.

She smiles in her office, reading the newest instalment in the story of the ASL family.

(On a whim, because the best things happen on a whim, she pens another letter, and addresses it to Swallow Island.

A tentative reply comes two weeks later, and she smiles reading it.)

Somewhere along the way, Linlin suffers the first berserker trance in good five years. Some things get destroyed, but all her children work together to subjugate her, and the losses are minimal. Even crazed, Linllin subconsciously avoids hurting her children and they use that to bring her back to her senses. But the attacks have come with lesser frequency, first weeks, then months, then years, and she's reasonably certain that, if she manages well, the next slip won't occur for a long time.

(But it inevitably will. Marines will make a mistake, try to execute a boy—and Linlin will say, no, you don't do that. And she will fight. And she will get hurt. And then, that repressed, normally-controlled part of her will rear its ugly head one last time.)

• 57 years old

Fisher Tiger's days come and go, Jinbei becomes a Schichibukai, Arlong throws a hissy fit.

And if Linlinn writes in one of her letters to Rouge to reach out to Bell-mere and keep an eye on Cocoyashi, that's between the two of them. And if she also directs her to maybe visit Banchina on Gecko Island while she's at it and attaches a box full of medicine for it—well. What Linlin does, Linlin will do, and her children long since stopped questioning her line of thought.

They have since accepted that Linlin usually played the long game, and effects were rarely readily available. Sometimes, they took years to show.

Perospero doesn't even bother to question when she has him organize a small ship to East Blue of all places, to follow the tracks of an obscure cruise ship where the crew eventually finds and saves an old man and a child, survivors from the cruiser starving on a rock. There are some odd looks when she just gives the old man two hundred million beli, but there's food involved—a restaurant to be opened—so they figure it's normal.

(Years and years from now they will look back at it, at the King of Pirates and his crew, happier, stronger, more stable than they maybe should be, remember all the little errands Linlin kept sending them on, and think, huh.)

• 58 years old

Linlin isn't sure whether it's Arlong really being a pathetic excuse of a fishman, or a testament to Rouge's training, but he gets beaten to a pulp by three children (aged nine, twelve, and fourteen, respectively). How it goes down is more a tragicomedy than real life—Arlong needs a navigator, so he decides to simply kidnap Nami. Like one does, because human children are apparently up for grabs, yeah?

Well, Ace, Sabo and Luffy take offense to that, and by the end of the day there's one beaten-up fishman on the square, his shocked crew, and Nami enthusiastically promising Luffy to be his navigator whenever he finally decides to set off.

(No sooner than you're seventeen, Rouge reminds him gently.

But only if Ace promises to set out later than seventeen, because he's the oldest and Luffy doesn't want to be without his biggest brother too long.)

Linlin sends them sweets and moves to read Rocinante's tirade on how Law met and adopted a polar bear mink and two ragamuffins and they're a pirate crew now, apparently, and the crazy doctor-inventor is crazy, and he also kind-of hates Cracker, because last time Linlin's fifth son visited, he used a creative threat, and Law heard it and now was threatening everyone mildly irritating to steal their kneecaps.

Which he actually could do, with his fruit powers. Which he did, when Arthur Bacca arrived and decided to be a bitch about some treasure or other. Which proved to be an incredibly effective technique for the pain it caused.

Linlin wisely didn't mention the fact that Cracker knowing this insult was her fault in the first place. But it got Law a submarine, and when he finally named his pirate crew, still in Rocinante's honour, Rocinante cried.

(Dressrosa still happens. Linlin could just send an armada there. Hell, she could go alone. The idea is, she could prevent it and deal with Doflamingo.

Rocinante tells her not to.

She sees why; with his power and ambition and the hold he has over Dressrosa, he would simply sink the island and kill everyone there before Linlin even got there. There needed to be a cool-off period if anyone wanted to do anything without dooming the island, and for now, the situation of the people in it was okay enough to not warrant an immediate action.

Doflamingo's god complex and insanity were a really big problem that nobody quite had an idea on how to get around.

In the corner, Law sharpens Kikoku and plots, because Rocinante is nice, too nice, too kind and he still loves his brother, and he wants Doflamingo's head.)

Then a patrol cruiser finds a miserable crew of minks, what's left of Nox Pirates that's not Pedro and Zepo, and Linlin has her hands full making sure they have a place to stay. They're quite a rowdy bunch and kick up a fuss; Melise catches wind of it, comes out of her cottage in the middle of the woods in her full fairytale witch glory and yells at them until they settle the fuck down.

• 59 years old

Linlin looks at Newgate, and at all those machines he's beginning to be hooked up to, and thinks; what if?

"What are you plotting?" Newgate asks the second the considering look crosses her eyes, because he knows her so well, and Linlin sighs.

"You're old," she tells him. "And you're only getting older. Your body is starting to fail."

"I'm sixty-five, of course I'm old. There's no cure for age, and not everybody can hold up as well as you do."

Linlin stands up. "That's exactly the point, 'Gates. I'm not 'holding up this well' because of good genetics and a healthy lifestyle."

"What?"

"My Devil Fruit, 'Gates!" she says, as the idea forms in her head. "My Devil Fruit—I absorb the life force of other people. That's what's keeping me young, and if so, then maybe-"

"Linlin-"

"Look, I'm not saying it'll work, but if I can absorb people's vitality, then why shouldn't I be able to share it?" she asks, all but leaning over him, eyes sparkling. "I never actually tried doing that, and I have a lot, since I don't spawn Homies like crazy. Let me try, if only to see if I can? Please?"

Newgate can only nod, really, faced with those eyes combined with this childish enthusiasm. It's crazy, really, to hope that it'll actually work, that his joints will stop creaking, blood pressure will go down, his spine stops trying to cave in on itself.

So he lets her, and lets himself hope.

But when she actually materializes a sphere of dense, tangible, lilac-and-lime smoke and pushes it into the back of his neck, the relief that seeps into his bones is almost instantaneous. He breathes deeper, allowing his muscles to relax a little. The rattle in his lungs subsides.

Linlin feeds more energy in. How much, Newgate isn't sure. But he does feel it—while he doesn't particularly feel younger, his body feels much less like it's about to fail him any minute.

When he stands up, it's without the vertigo; without the moment he needs to collect his beatings. His knees don't try to cave under him. His hands don't shake as much, his head feels clear, and he can feel the pressure in his veins going away.

He looks at Linlin. She's looking at him expectantly, her eyes fixed at his face.

He says nothing, he just starts laughing.

They go bar-hopping, like they used to in their youth. They get in a fight, level a mountain, grief a Marine base, and Newgate almost can't believe what's going on.

(Marco stumbles when he sees the results of the medical scan a few days later, and Newgate laughs. Linlin has always been that one crazy, unpredictable constant in his life, capable of doing the most ridiculous things as if they were the obvious solutions.

She didn't give him youth, obviously, because time cannot be unwound. She gave him health, and that was worth more.)

• 60 years old

There, in Charlotte Family Archives, lies a very thick ledger. It's spine is crinkled in so many places it's gone soft (and someone tried to strengthen it with a leather strip(, almost every page is dog-eared, there are at least three separate bookmarks in it, and colorful stickers peeking from between the pages mark sections of interest. The book is aptly titled, in young Custard's chicken-scrawl, 'The Life and Dumbassery of Charlotte Cracker'. It's a book of accounts, and also of bets, made, resolved and paid off, because six-year-old Custard found it paramount to note all the dumb shit her twin got up to.

And then the book stuck, much to Cracker's chagrin.

Cracker is the family's wildcard, always has been, and it became somewhat of a tradition to bet on whatever dumb shit he would do next. The bets, of course, weren't made consecutively—usually after Katakuri's (or anyone else's, but mostly Katakuri's) 'exasperated elder brother' sense went tingling the book would be retrieved, the next series of bets would be made and recorded, and the siblings would wait with baited breath for Cracker's next show of dumbassery. Katakuri usually won the bets, and so did Custard, simply because they knew Cracker the best, and the record book held, among other things, popularizing measuring height in Marco's and teaching Law to threaten people to steal their kneecaps.

Not these exact things; they were more akin to 'he will do something really dumb during the Whitebeards meeting' and 'he will absolutely be a bad influence on Law', with people betting on exactly what, and winning based on whose answer was the closest.

It was more fun to bet consecutively more ridiculous scenarios than to figure out who won, of course.

(Sometimes Cracker wished some of his siblings just wrote a book or something, instead of pouring their crazy fantasies into the bet-book. Wrestling a sea dragon for cupcakes? Seriously, Mont'd-Or?!)

The book itself was a good thirty years old, as well, and it held much more things, bigger and smaller alike. Its contents had the tendency to spill and fall out, and many of the earlier pages were removed entirely and relocated to a safer, stabler environment in a wooden box, while the cover was filled with fresh new pages and sticky cards. Younger Charlottes grew up on these stories, ridiculous as they were.

This time was no different. When the Hearts Pirates docked on the Totto Land's shores, Katakuri only needed one look at Cracker, one glance at how he interacted with Rocinante and Law, and he just knew.

Before anyone knew, they were already betting on Cracker's love life; Daifuku vanished for seemingly a split second and was right back with the ledger in hand, cracked it open on one of the scarce few blank pages, stole a pen form Perospero, and started noting everything down.

"There will be a lot of panic," Katakuri says. "And he'll have to bribe the kid first. But he's pretty in-tune with his feelings, so I doubt he'll moon for very long before actually making a move. Bet you the courtship will be funny, though."

"He has to realize he's in love first," Perospero says, very amused, and snatches his pen back. "He's in tune with his emotions only if he's aware of them."

"Not the brightest crayon, our Cracker," Mont-d'Or agrees.

"You'll be surprised," Katakuri chuckles. "Give him more credit."

He was right, of course. Cracker's unconscious courtship and following realization was messy and rather explosive and entirely too amusing to his siblings in Cracker's humble opinion, but the whole ordeal ended up with Rocinante agreeing to be his boyfriend and all was well.

(And without getting stabbed by Law!

Though Melise decided to take credit for that. It was the coffee she grew and blended by hand that saved her idiot brother from the wrath of his not-stepson, after all.)

And if Sengoku was still Roci's designated number to call whenever he had an existential crisis of any sort, well. Linlin was amused by his rants, at least what her spies relied on.

Heart Pirates docked at Totto Land sometimes—it was not time for Law to make a name for himself just yet, and the candy kingdom provided both safety, medical knowledge, and Rocinante's boyfriend. Eventually someone, at some point (probably Penguin, or at least Law blamed him) called Linlin 'Auntie' and after that, it just stuck.

(Her spy network—a robust thing, after all that time—whispers to her about the things happening all over the world. About Warlords, about the world. About the shit going down on Drum.

And Linlin would love nothing more than to go and rescue Chopper, to butt in and depose Wapol, but as she ages and as she rules, she realizes that the power she wields can be a shackle, too. One not even she can ignore. Because a Yonko going out to Paradise to claim some random island? She could potentially do that, but between other Yonko and the various power struggles of the New World, it really isn't advisable.

And as much as she'd love Gecko Moria gone and Brook reunited with Laboon—going to war with a Warlord would mean going to war with the World Government.

And Linlin couldn't afford to put all those who depended on her in that kind of situation. It wasn't even comparable to rescuing an old man and a kid, or with telling her friend to grab some medicine and visit this and that island.

She feeds the report to Prometheus, and seethes as it burns.

She can't fix the world. She can't save everyone. She's accepted that. World is not something that can be fixed, in all honesty.

It still feels like a personal failing sometimes.)

• 61 years old

Loki decides that seeing Lola once is enough to fall in love with her and makes him viable to ask for her hand in marriage. She turns him down.

Then Loki gets the bright idea of asking Linlin to make Lola marry him.

He gets laughed straight out of the office.

Linlin doesn't care for giants, unlike her original counterpart. She does, however, care about her numerous spawn, and she's not likely to tell them to do things they don't want to do, or stop them from doing what they want, unless it's absolutely necessary for the good of the family and the archipelago.

Marrying Loki? Unnecessary. She's not so incompetent as to not be able to secure power and trade routes without arranged marriages, please. She's a pirate, not some useless aristocrat.

So she tells Loki just that in no uncertain terms: "They're my children, not property. If you can't convince her to marry you by your own merit, then you're either not good enough, or not meant to be. Don't come crying to me, I have about as much control over my children's love lives as I have over the shit other Yonko do."

And when Lola decides to leave to make her own pirate career and to search for love, it's with Linlin's blessing and Pound's entirely too many tears.

"Do grow up," Linlin scoffs, when the man doesn't stop crying. "They're adults, they can do whatever they want."

"I know! But- But Lolaaaaaa! My baby giiirl!"

"Oh shut up Papa! She promised she'll call!" Chiffon bemoans, probably wishing she went with her twin after all. Linlin just goes to visit Newgate and go bar-hopping later to avoid the mess that is Pound, and if she feeds the other Yonko more lifespan while they're at it, then that's on her.

(Newgate, fed with her soul power, grows his hair back out; it's almost as strong and lush as it used to be, once. Linlin very much indulges in braiding it.

In a weird way it makes her feel like a dumb twenty-something still figuring things out, on a crew full of menaces, back when world was so much more dangerous. It's nice.)

• 62 years old

Sengoku was this close to jumping out of the window in vain hopes of ending himself, and it was only in small part because of Garp gushing about his cute little grandsons.

Firstly, not even two years ago, Rocinante decided that Sengoku would be the best target for calling to flail and panic over his attraction to Charlotte Cracker—which only grew worse and now the two were dating. Not to mention that Rocinante was now an actual full-fledged pirate. One good thing out of this mess was that Sengoku, too, could gush right back at Garp about a grandson. That, however, didn't change either that Rocinante and Law were pirates, or that Rocinante was dating one of Big Mom's own sons.

Then, there was peace for a year—and then, Red-Hair Shanks subjugated Shiki and usurped his title as a Yonko. That in of itself would not have been that bad, just a simple power shift and those happen constantly on the high seas, but, of course, Charlotte Fucking Linlin throws her two beli in.

How on the sea she managed to lure Kaido out of Wano, nobody knows, but it ends up with all four Yonko meeting up on Sabaody and all of Marines in high gear and higher panic—but nobody is actually dumb enough to try and interrupt Shanks' inauguration party.

Except Akainu, because of course he's the type of person to throw himself at four drunk Yonko.

Sengoku supposes he should be happy his admiral did not end up killing himself with that stunt, but he doubts it made him any smarter.

(Linlin sure as hell acted likeshe had a personal grudge against Akainu, though, and the only thing that saved the Admiral was that Newgate got into a fight with Kaido, forcing Linlin to step in and break them up, which Kizaru used to get Akainu the fuck out of the dodge.

Thank the Locket Kizaru could actually think fast when it really mattered.)

Not to mention that Kaido takes over yet another island that would make a nice military base for Marines in New World, Whitebeard's crew grows so much he adds in yet another division (on top of him being in suspiciously good health recently) and Big Mom—

The less is said about that particular headache, the better.

And when a Celestial Dragon crosses paths with all four drunk Yonko on Sabaody—

Well. Necessary sacrifices are called that because of their nature, after all, and Sengoku just follows Yonko's example and drinks himself into unconsciousness.

Gorosei orders a Buster Call on the Emperors after he's consumed enough alcohol to knock himself out cold. It goes about as well as anyone can imagine.

Have they ever had such a critical fail with a Buster Call? Sengoku is pretty damn sure they haven't.

("Shanks, what the fuck did you do with the last Road Poneglyph?"

"I hid it."

"Now you're just making trouble for that kid you gave your hat to!"

"Wha- How do you know about Luffy?!"

"I'm friends with Rouge, brat. Don't go making trouble for her kids or you'll be dealing with us both!"

"Ah. Fair. Okay."

He does look a bit cowed, but that's probably at the mention of Rouge more than Linlin. Linlin doesn't even feel bad about it; Rouge can be terrifying if need be.)

• 63 years old

Rouge finally lets Ace go. He's nineteen, now, two years older than he would have been because Rouge needn't have prolonged her pregnancy too much, and he wants an adventure. Luffy is finally old enough to let him go, even if his mother doesn't quite want to let him fly out of the nest quite yet, but he does. Sabo departs, too, finally seventeen and intent on joining the Revolutionaries ever since that fateful meeting with Dragon.

Sabo is a lot like Rouge, Linlin has been told. Calculative, thinking, plotting, with violent tendencies against threats to those he holds dear. Ace is like a mixture of Rouge and Roger, a perfect balance, Roger's brand of dumbass crazy tempered by Rouge's ability to logic.

Luffy, however—Luffy is fourteen, will set sail in three years, and when Rouge looks at him, she can only really see a young version of the man she loved so much. Loves still. Luffy is not hers by blood, but he is in every other way, and she's proud of all of her boys, but Luffy will be the one to rock the world. He's the Revolutionary Dragon's son who behaves like Pirate King Roger. There's no other way.

(The sea calls me, louder than ever now, Rouge writes to her with nostalgia and longing. In three years, there will be nothing left on Dawn Island to hold me there. Will you find me then, friend?

Of course, Linlin writes back.)

Then, Pedro and Zepo infiltrate Totto Land. Or, they attempt to—is it really infiltration when Linlin is aware of their every move and is allowing them to maintain a sense of sneakiness like she would humour her children when they attempt to hide birthday preparations from her? She and Brulee sit down and look at what the hell they're up to and it's a good laugh at least.

They're only brought before her after they run into Pekoms, and he beats them up, because he's a citizen of Totto Land now and it's his job to deal with threats to it. And when he does, Linlin makes sure she's looking properly menacing.

"Now, now, what do we have here? A pair of thieves," she purred menacingly from behind her desk once they arrived, and that alone is enough to make both Pedro and Zepo shiver. "Now, how should I punish you for breaking in here, I wonder? Hmm… Remove a century of lifespan, maybe?"

Pedro tries to say something, and Pekoms is honestly freaking out, because Linlin can pull off the bloodthirsty, crazed bitch if she needs to for her entertainment, and-

This is exactly the moment Bepo chooses to burst into her office, followed by Shachi.

"Hey, Auntie Lin, Law's been looking for that one book and we've been wondering about it… Maybe… We could find it in the treasury—Are we interrupting something? Oh, wait- Is that big brother Zepo?!"

"What- Is that you Bepo?! What're you doing here?!" Zepo all but yells, and Linlin just hides her face in her hands with a sound that would make a kettle boiling water jealous.

"And just when I managed to be downright menacing, I had them where I wanted them—And then you come in, and I can't even be mad because you're cute, why do youuu dooo this to mee-hee-hee," she whines, rubbing her forehead. "Fine, whatever, I wasn't going to kill them, I just wanted to scare them, breaking into a person's home is very rude after all."

"So you won't actually kill us?" Pedro asks, shaken, and Linlin shrugs.

"I guess not. But- Look, maybe just give up the Poneglyphs, especially Road ones? You got Marines on you for that, after all," Linlin sighs. "If I were any less of a decent person, you'd be dead. And Shanks has the last of those, and he's waiting for a very particular individual to come and get it. You won't be able to."

"Particular individual?" Zepo asks, confused.

"A boy Shanks gave his hat to. Hat that previously belonged to Rogers. Do you know what that means?"

Something flashes in Pedro's eyes. "The next Pirate King has already been crowned, hasn't he?"

"While he's a child incapable of setting sail quite yet, it won't be long before the world is subjected to him. And trust me when I say—it will bend to him, or he will break it."

"Oh."

"Yeah," she says, and then turns to Bepo, who relocated himself to Zepo's side, and both brothers are now wailing on her carpet. "Bepo! Get your brother and his friend to the infirmary, they're bleeding all over my carpet!"

"Aye!"

"Shachi, tell me exactly what book Law needs and I'll see if I have it in the Treasury."

"Of course! It's some obscure ancient text, so-"

"Yeah, yeah, just give me the specs. And someone get me more coffee, for crying out loud!"

• 64 years old

Linlin is the type of person who does the most random things on a whim if she's bored. And this year nothing really happens, so she is bored.

And this is how Boa Hancock ends up with a very unexpected gaggle of visitors on Amazon Lily.

Hancock's first instinct is to attempt Mero Mero Mellow at Linlin. Handing in a Yonko would truly boost her status among the Schichibukai, after all.

"Adorable, really," Linlin chuckles once Hancock is done and shocked that her ability did not work at all, no distractions required. "But you're thirty years too young, brat, trying to use your sex-appeal on someone like me."

Linlin and her daughters are a bit of a shock therapy to the very isolationist Kuja, and a great novelty—especially Pudding, Prim, and Praline with their obviously non-human lineage. They get their minds blown with the casual use of Devil Fruit, the size of Linlin's family, and just generally interact with the outside world for once. Then Hancock does her 'looking so down on you I'm looking up' thing, and it amuses some of Linlin's daughters entirely too much. To the point they start doing it sometimes.

They tell Linlin that sometimes women leave Amazon Lily, and either return pregnant, but only have daughters, or just come back with daughters in the first place.

"I know," Linlin says. "My grandson, Pecan, was born from a Kuja woman. His mother just left him with his father after he was born and we haven't heard from her since."

It's a big revelation, apparently, and Linlin spends a good half a day teaching the Kuja most basic human biology, DNA, and reproduction patterns. All in all, it's a fun week.

• 65 years old

There's a sort of anticipation in Linlin's bones, seeping in with morning light when she wakes one day, and it just stays.

Only a year left before Luffy is seventeen and a fledgling pirate picking people up in the weakest of the Blues, where nobody takes him seriously, nobody realizes that this child they sneer at will rock the world even more than Yonko, even more than Roger.

It makes her feel old. She's sixty-five now, an age she never really thought she'll manage to live to. An age Eloise Campbell certainly did not manage to reach, and—she hasn't thought of that name in a long time. About a lonely woman in a big world, whose family was full of pathetic excuses of people, whose place in the great machine of society was so insignificant and easily replaced.

But Eloise Campbell is dead, and Charlotte Linlin is not. She's not Eloise, not anymore, hasn't been for forty-five years. She's Linlin, with Eloise's memories, and she adapted accordingly. She well and truly became Linlin, or, well, a version of Linlin at least.

It's fine. She never thought much about it, but it's fine to be neither. It's fine to be something new, something in-between. It feels freeing.

It's time for the world to get crazy again; it's been thirty-five years since the God Valley Incident, and twenty-one years ago since Roger died. It's about damn time something big happened again, however the World Government wouldn't hope and wish and pray to the contrary.

In a way, it starts with Mihawk cleaving through Don Krieg's pathetic little armada. With Cavendish rising to fame as this year's Super Rookie, only to be overshadowed by eleven extraordinary individuals the very next year.

Law comes to her, face set, having absorbed all the medical knowledge Totto Land had to offer.

"I'm going now," he says, and for a moment there's something in his eyes that looks suspiciously like he's expecting her to try and stop him. She doesn't. It's the last thing she'd do.

In a way, it also reminds her of Custard and Lola. Of everyone else who left and came back. It gives her this warm, fuzzy feeling in her chest that this kid who shouldn't have anything to do with her holds her in high enough regard to want her to see him off.

"You may not be officially allied with Big Mom Pirates, brat, but if something happens—anything at all, just call for me, and I'll be there. You understand?" she says, and he nods, face stern. "Good. Now go. I want to see your face all over the papers in a year's time, you get me?"

"Yes," he smiles. As in; actually smiles, not smirks. "Thanks, Auntie. I'll be around. Have to get rid of a certain flamingo, and all."

"Tell that upstart that Big Mom sends her regards."

"I will."

Linlin stands on the dock until the submarine reaches the horizon, the same way she has seen off all other members of her family. (And Law is family now, and not at all because his adopted father is in every way but official Linlin's son-in-law—no, it's because Law would spend evenings by her side ranting and raving about medical theories as she did her paperwork, a little angry boy who shared her taste for bitter, strong coffee, and whose sense of humor, if it surfaced, was wicked and sharp and deliciously dark, and whose brain was so brilliant not even she could keep up despite her years of experience.)

She's proud, though. Of Law, of Lola, of Custard, of everyone in-between who left and returned or is still sailing. She can't wait to see how they will react to the upcoming waves, the waves they will make themselves. She can't wait to see the world change.

It's high time it did, too.

She's lived through several major world-changing events before, and things have gotten a little stale.

"How will you tackle the world, Monkey D. Luffy?" she asks quietly, to nobody in particular, ocean her only confidant. "It's your turn very soon, after all."

Because this Luffy is not the Luffy Eloise watched animated go about his adventures. This Luffy is different; with both brothers and a mother and a crew that's even more united than it was before.

And yet, he has the same dream, the same goal; maybe the same path.

Either way, the next several years will be very interesting and Linlin can't wait.

It's been twenty-two years since a king sailed these waters and shook the world to its very core.

It's high time something interesting happened again.

• 66 years old

"East Blue, Mama?" Cracker asks, as Linlin is checking and re-checking everything on The Glazed Baroness. She just nods at him, folding the list and putting it into the pouch on her hip.

"We're picking someone up," she tells him, clapping her hands. "An old friend of mine, finally done with all the responsibilities that tied her down in one place for the past two decades."

The Glazed Baroness is significantly smaller than Queen Mama Chanter, and much less eye-catching. It will serve them well, in East Blue, where the weirdest thing the people have seen is a fishman, and Devil Fruits are a myth. And, despite being a Galleon, the Baroness doesn't take much to operate, therefore Linlin is effectively setting out on a vacation trip with only her children. The Homies will take care of maintaining it.

"All set, Mama!" Smoothie calls from the Crow's Nest. "We're ready to sail in an hour!"

"Do you think we'll run into Custard?" Cracker muses aloud. "That Shichibukai mess is kinda putting a damper on our family time. And I'd like to spend more time with Éclair, too."

"Don't worry," Linlin placates. "If we don't run into her, we might as well pay her a visit."

"I suppose it's too much to ask to run into Heart Pirates this soon after they departed, huh."

He misses Rocinante, of course, calls can only go so far. But he'll manage until they see eachother again. He knew what he was getting himself into anyway, when he agreed to a semi-long-distance relationship so that Rocinante would be able to sail with Heart Pirates and Cracker remained on Totto Land in his post.

He may be in love but he knows his boundaries and respects his boyfriend.

Linlin pats him on the head and turns to her three oldest who came to see them off. Perospero, Compote and Katakuri didn't quite fancy leaving Totto Land, and decided to stay behind to run the place in Linlin's potentially prolonged absence. They're strong enough that she doesn't worry much about leaving it all in their hands—they have proved themselves capable time and time again whenever she left to pester Newgate, or on raids to replenish her life-force reserves.

"Anything happens, especially with Kaido, you call me, yes? I should be able to get back within a day if I push Zeus hard enough in an emergency," she reminds them, as she always does, sixty-six and still fretting mother over her middle-aged children, all of whom are capable adults.

"We know, Mama," Katakuri says, scarf down on this rare occasion and a small smile on his scarred lips. "We'll manage."

"I'm still a bit worried, since I'm taking Cracker and Smoothie with me, and we'll be potentially gone for months."

"I know, Mama. Don't worry about us, as I said, we'll manage. And say hello to Custard for us."

"And when will she drag that boytoy of hers fully into the family anyway?" Compote grumbles. "Brat had to go after a Shichibukai position of all things, after marrying in-"

"Oh I don't know, Mihawk is an adorable son-in-law," Linlin chuckles. "But don't worry, things are bound to change, and soon."

Katakuri looks at her with a glint in his eyes, and she smiles. He dreams sometimes, she knows, of the things that may or may not happen in the future. She's not sure if it's his observation Haki, or something entirely else, but out of all of her children, Katakuri understands her the most.

"We're going through Paradise and ino East Blue. Once we're past Calm Belt, set sail straight for Dawn Island! I want to be there by the end of the month!"

"Aye, Captain!"

It's good to sail properly again. She didn't even realise just how much she missed the voyage and the open sea until she set out again.

We're all the children of the sea. Even if we carry the power of the Devils.

• Bonus: 49 years old

Portgas D. Rouge smiles gently as she kisses her youngest's forehead.

"Do you have everything?" she asks one more time—one final time. Luffy smiles at her, bright and unbothered, and nods. He's excited, so very, very excited, the same way Ace and Sabo were when they left, but somehow more. Brighter. The same way Roger used to be, and it both hurts and fills her with joy. Luffy is not Roger's son, but he is Rouge's, and that is enough.

Ace is with Whitebeard now, the safest place he could be, outside of the Charlotte Family, in the event that his father's identity comes to light. Sabo is with Luffy's own father, climbing through the Revolutionary ranks at an alarming pace. And now, Luffy's setting out too, her third and final child, and soon, so will Rouge.

And Luffy is going to become the Pirate King. She knows it, deep in her bones, because she knew Roger, knew him very well, and this spark that Roger had, that Ace didn't quite inherit—Luffy has it. It burns so bright, so brilliant.

And he will shake the world.

"Remember to call," Rouge reminds the boy, "especially after you get your first bounty, you hear? And call your brothers, too."

"Of course, mom!" Luffy laughs, so impossibly bright. "You're leaving soon too, aren't you?"

"Yes," Rouge confirms, gently running her fingers through his hair. "Linlin called to tell me they've entered East Blue. It won't be much longer until they get here—I'll be gone in less than a week. So off you go, brat, and have your own adventure while I have mine, understood?"

"Understood!" Luffy laughs. "And when I'm strong, I'll go to New World and visit you!"

"Of course," Rouge laughs, embracing her son, and he melts into her arms. "Linlin has one of the Road Poneglyphs anyway, once you actually go and try to reach Laugh Tale. Now go, before I change my mind and keep you home after all!"

Luffy laughs and dances outside of her reach, and Rouge sighs. She loves all the boys, but Luffy is the youngest—the baby of the family—and now he's setting out, seventeen and ready to shake the world, and she can't help but feel nostalgic. Rouge herself will be leaving her home, the safe haven that sheltered her for twenty-two years, very soon.

She looks forward, as Luffy's little boat becomes smaller and smaller on the horizon, and tries not to cry. Is it joy? Worry? Pride? Exasperation? Maybe all of those. But she knows he'll do fine. All three of her boys will do fine. They're strong, and so bright.

Rouge, in the meantime, will have her own adventure. It's been over twenty years since she sailed the high seas, and as much as she loved her idyllic family life, she was a pirate before she became a mother, and she misses it—the thrill, the freedom. And she's more than ready to return to the sea, because it's calling her home and for the first time in years, she has no reason not to answer.

(A Galleon, absolutely humongous by the standards of East Blue and relatively tiny by the New World's, where it came from, arrives at Goa five days after Luffy's departure, easily mistaken for some royal vessel. It doesn't dock, just floats barely beyond the shallows.

Rouge visits the Mountain Bandits, gazes upon what remains of Gray Terminal even years later, has some tearful goodbyes down in Foosha. Then, a boat dispatched from the Galleon arrives, a tall man with purple hair and scarred face it's only occupant.

"Hello," Rouge says. She knows him from the letters Linlin sent, enough to put a name to that face. "You must be Cracker."

"Nice to finally meet ya', Miss Portgas," Cracker bows respectfully, but the wicked smile never really leaves his face. "Or do you prefer Missus Gol?"

"Aunt Rouge will do," she says with a smile, and it somehow makes perfect sense even if she's only six years older than him.

"Sure thing, auntie. Let's go, Mama is waiting."

Rouge leaves Dawn Island, and doesn't look back. The island has served its purpose well, but overstayed its welcome in Rouge's life.

The sea is calling for its daughter back, and this time she answers.)