Chapter 2
Rouge was the greatest test to patience she had ever had. As a former military officer and member of the nobility, Lily had been used to a certain level of respect and wasn't quite used to any sort of backtalk and insubordination from anyone outside her family. It helped that Rouge was a child and that her mind had begun to gradually shift to seeing her charge as something of a sister figure but it had taken a lot longer for the young girl to wrap her head around her new guardian and there were many... explosive moments that had left nearly everyone in the town passed out from a wave of power from the pinkette.
They found their footing nearly a year later and it had taken a close call from a pirate crew trying to make landfall only for Lily to take to the sky on Tanwen and setting the ship aflame because of the sheer malevolence of the presence some members exuded. She'd taken a few as captives and used legilimency on them (quite liberally too) before she disposed of her captives. By the time she had returned to the village proper, Rouge had been there wringing her hands and eyes red. When the girl had hugged her and cried her relief it had hit Lily exactly what she was working to protect now. And that had been a new beginning for them.
Monkey D. Dragon was a quiet child who rarely cried. The toddler, born in Fuusha Village during the tail end of his father's vacation, had come into the world with a steady comforting presence in his mind. It was distant and hazy (unknowingly due to his soul mate being in a different world) but it had been enough to calm him.
While he had inherited much of his Father's features, the child's features were sharper reminiscent of his Uncle, the Mayor of Fuusha. The boy's monstrous strength and appetite aside, he lacked his Father's boisterous nature and destructive predilection. The toddler disdained loud noises and more often than not his father's attempts at entertaining him had ended with said little boy giving his father an unamused stare which was all the more impressive given that said child was only three and a half and had been doing so practically since his birth.
Dragon did, however, love to be held by his father. The safety and love exuded by the man had never failed to soothe him. His mother was calm and soft-spoken, longer to rile up, and was his secure base in the mornings while his father was away but she was by no means a pushover. She was a Woop-Slap who had married into the Monkey D. Clan and that meant that when called for, she could hold her own in a fight to protect her child, lead when necessary, and could utterly cow her husband with a glare and quite a few threats of withheld food.
Dragon rarely spoke and preferred to use the least amount of words possible (usually just one or two). But as he gazed around his father's two best friends, Rear Admiral Sengoku and Commodore Tsuru, both of whom were teasing his father over the stark differences between father and son, he heard a woman's voice whispering to him and he remembered the vision of red hair and blue eyes as she spoke to a group of men, he remembered her words (I don’t care what they call me, if that’s what it takes, I will be a rebel and I will lead the greatest revolution this world has ever seen).
'Rebel'. Dragon tried the word a few times. A smart child capable of saying words beyond his age, he practiced it quietly a few more times as the woman's voice echoed in his mind, satisfied with his progress, he toddled to his father and lifted his arms up. His father stopped mid-sentence as he looked down at him and gave him a smile before lifting him up onto his knee.
"Hoho... wanted to sit with your papa?" His father asked cooing. "Did you want to know more about being a marine?"
Dragon didn't answer but instead glanced at his father's friends with a frown before grabbing his father's face and repeated the woman's words as seriously as he could. "I be rebel."
His father's eyes snapped wide in alarm before Tsuru and Sengoku began to laugh. "I guess your son wants to pay you back for all the trouble you cause us, Garp. You'll have your hands full with this one." Sengoku said.
"What? No, Dragon! You'll be a good boy for Papa, right?" Garp asked in alarm.
"No."
"Your first sentence and it had to be that." Garp moaned. "You're mother's going to blame me for this."
"Yes."
"Why you little brat!" Came his father's indignant reply. "Hmph. You'll straighten out when you become a marine."
Dragon crinkled his nose but said nothing more as he leaned his head on his father's shoulder and yawned. The first seeds of rebellion had been planted into the mind of the boy that would later become known as the Revolutionary Dragon.
When Rouge was fourteen, a fishing boat landed on the shores of Baterilla. Onboard was a blonde-haired man and a woman with hair the same shade of red as Lily's. The woman had warm brown eyes and a kind face as well as a seemingly young face. Three and a half years with her surrogate older sister had taught her, well, her whole village, that the woman was more than she seemed at first glance and definitely older than she looked.
Her sister had risen to become the Mayor for the sheer fact that no one was up to the task of running the village. Lily had been a military officer and a landed noble, she knew how to set up efficient watches, train a small garrison, how to set up field rotations, and most importantly, all of the nasty paperwork that went with making sure that the village actually kept running. She had also completely overhauled the education system of Baterilla after she’d taken one look at the course materials and promptly set it on fire. The government approved coursework was, as she’d put it, complete and utter shite.
Having seen the books from her homeworld, Rouge had to admit that the educational texts prescribed by the World Government were ridiculous not to mention completely outdated, the latest edition had come out a hundred and fifty years ago! So she’d gathered a handful of men and women and taught them the basics of, well, everything and set up a proper school. Rouge had wondered, more often than not, if this was the sort of quality education the nobles and rich merchant or marine children received.
Then there were the rumors. Lily had caught the attention and imagination of the people of South Blue as tales of a red-haired woman on dragon back who would appear to deal vengeance to slavers and vicious pirates reigning heavenly justice upon them as she freed the captives began to spread. Which was probably why the woman had come to their tiny village.
The boat moored itself, ropes flying about and tying itself onto the pier. This woman was magic, Rouge knew instinctively. The dragon’s roar rang throughout the small island and she could see Tanwen’s shadow approaching them. Lily would be riding on the dragon’s back, having recently returned from whatever scouting mission she’s undertaken in the last two days.
Really, it was interesting how the newscoo had yet to even report on the rumors, she’d expected that Lily would at least be turned into another Sora, Warrior of the Seas. But apparently not, the World Government probably didn’t want to add fuel to the fire, didn’t want to admit that there was a female vigilante doing their job for them.
She watched as Lily dropped from Tanwen's back and walked over to the couple with a grin on her face before Rouge turned away and returned to her chores. The couple didn't seem to be dangerous. Which meant she would probably have just enough time to hide the vials of memory containing the musicals that albeit catchy had absolutely no place in a revolution.
Lily grinned as she approached this unknown Owen's relation. Despite the woman's youthful looks, she knew that her fellow redhead was at least a century older than she was. She had an inkling as to who the woman standing in front of her was, there weren’t that many Owens women who were older than she was. The Owens clan tended to come down to a pair of daughters and an anomaly of a son added in the mix every few generations or so. Additionally, there was only one unaccounted for Owens woman who had left before her mother was even born to seek out her soulmate.
“Gillian Owens, I presume?” Lily asked and watched as the woman gave a devilish grin. And oh, she knows who this woman is, knows her story of how she tried to pursue love with a mortal non-magical man who had been abusive towards her. That story had been told to them as a tale of caution, of how resurrections and misuse of magic could lead to devastating consequences.
The woman nodded from where she stood. “And you would be?”
“Lily Luna Weasley Potter.” She said by way of introduction.
“I had a cousin named Lily who looked quite like you and had a soulmate named James Potter.”
“My grandparents.”
“Oh!” The woman squealed as she threw her arms around Lily. “How delightful! My little niece. How are your grandparents?”
Lily grimaced. “Dead, they were murdered when my mother was a year old.”
“How dreadful!” The woman said, face changing into horror. “Did they catch the person that did it?”
“It was Voldemort or Tom Riddle Jr. I presume you’ve heard of him?”
Gillian nodded. “Yes, he was making as big of a wave around the MACUSA as Grindelwald did. Horrid man with a backward philosophy. He wanted blood purity and a society of purely magicals but he executed entire pureblood lines.”
“Well, he was a half-blood with a muggle father. He posed as a pureblood and eliminated anyone who might have known of his lineage.”
“Hmm, so a hypocrite then. Pity he didn’t turn his wand on himself.”
At that, Lily agreed. Even to this day, magical society still hadn’t recovered from the multiple wars between purists and equalists or the so-called dark vs light factions. The Black Family had survived through matrilineal lines and others through bastard offshoots and muggleborn descendants of squibs.
Meeting Gillian Owens was fortuitous because it led her to another relative long thought dead. The person she had fled her world with nearly two centuries ago. Alphard Black now known as the pirate Silvers Rayleigh. Getting named as the godmother for her yet unconceived child was flattering and slightly terrifying because there were so many ways she could screw it up with her planned revolution but… on the other hand, she could always just foist the kid with Rouge when it was necessary.
Now then, to summon Great Uncle Alphard. She grinned wickedly as she flipped the page of her spellbook open and landed on a ritual. Persistently dropping into his dreams and pestering him until he finally agreed to come visit was one way to do it. Sure he’d be a bit crabby but, eh, well, you win some you lose some. But maybe she should hold of on that. Hmmm… maybe just a patronus would work. (And of course she’d unintentionally played wingman to the would be Pirate King and her little sister but that was a problem for another two or three years).