A Light Touch (Eustass X Reader)

Chapter 19: The Crisis

Emma and Hip nearly squeezed the life out of you, one after the other, as you entered back into the house.

"You came back!" Emma cries, squishing you against her chest.

"You would not have looked good in pink." Hip says, hugging you and Emma at the same time.

"I don't think they have uniforms like that, Hip." Killer says, pulling the two ladies off you. "Let her breathe you two." He looks down at you for a moment before a smile crosses his face. "Welcome back (Y/N). Did he pull you clean out of the limo himself, or did he show restraint?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if he had just tossed the limo." Wire adds flatly.

"Eh?" You looked up at Killer questioningly before turning to Kid. "Were you watching the whole time?"

"Don't listen to them, Mouse." Kid says, ruffling your hair enough it pushes your head down and turns your gaze away from his face. "Let's get her up to speed."

"Does that include telling her about the plans to raid Doflamingo's castle?" Heat asks with a crooked smile.

Kid's fist clenched so fast you could hear the metal crashing into itself. He growls, but it stops when you start laughing.

"Pfft- hahaha, I don't know why, but when you called it a castle I could only picture 'Sorry Kid, but your Mouse is in another castle'. Like that one old video game." You look up to see Eustass frowning, but despite his efforts to look angry his ears were red. "Sorry, sorry." Another errant laugh escapes you and you cover your face. "What am I being brought up to speed on?" You say, desperately trying to distract yourself before you collapse into giggle fits.

"We've found a way to find Decken." House says, coming over and hugging you as well. "We've had a way to find him, but the sporadic attacks only told us his location was changing. So we couldn't nail him down."

"Without Doflamingo harassing him, we can pin him down easier." Killer says.

You frown. "That asshole!" You growl. You were getting legitimately angry. "That fluffy pink bastard said not finding Decken was proof that Kid wasn't doing enough to protect me, and it was HIS FAULT YOU COULDN'T FIND HIM!"

You reached out as though you meant to strangle the air. "That cocky bastard!"

"... I think that's the first time I've seen you get angry." Kid says, his brows raised in amusement. "It's kind of adorable."

"I'm not adorable, I'm mad!" You insist, stomping your foot.

"Give 'er a break, cap'n," Emma says, trying not to laugh.

"Yeah, it's as fierce as a mascot can get!" Hip adds and the entire crew breaks into laughter. You're pretty sure you can even hear Killer breaking from behind the hands over his mouth.

"You're all terrible." You grumble, not that anyone can hear you over all the laughing. After a moment you manage to smile as well and the whole room comes back under control.

By the end of the day, you had been brought up to speed with what had happened without you yesterday.

It had been determined before now that the direction the items from Decken traveled was as direct an arc as possible. The items would change course if you moved, but as long as you walked toward them, they wouldn't shift, they'd just arch downward faster.

If they hit something between their starting point and destination, they would cease to move. 'Something' being things more dense than air and water and less dense than wood, concrete, and metal. At least that was what they'd been able to sort out so far.