Fanfic / Ocean Stars Falling

A crossover spinoff of Catch Your Breath, featuring Kei and the rest of the jinchuriki (and the Tailed Beasts inside of them) being shoved into the One Piece world with no idea how they got there.

Summary:

Once again, Kei's infamous (bad) luck spurs a brand new adventure. Only this time, there's no foreknowledge, a giant grumpy turtle monster not where he's supposed to be, and an ocean full of possibilities and danger in the same breath. She just knows she has to find some way to get home to Konoha.

And what is all this business about pirates, anyway?

Can be found on FanFiction.Net here, and on Archive of Our Own here.

Ocean Stars Falling contains examples of:

• Achilles' Heel: The jinchuriki all depend on their namesake seals to maintain the connection with their partners. If the seals break, they die. Kei brought down a berserk Utakata by deliberately targeting this weak point with the Five Elements Seal, knocking him out instantly. Earlier, part of the reason Akainu nearly killed him was because the same seal was badly burned in the fight.
• Acid Attack: One of the higher-tier abilities of Saiken and his host, Utakata, is to control the pH levels of slime they project from either their skin or the surface of a chakra cloak. It can also be used as a Breath Weapon, at least by Saiken. Most notably, this effect isn't countered by Akainu's Magma Man Logia abilities, hurting him just as much as any other target.
• After-Action Healing Drama: Used with Utakata when he first appears, because he's been badly burned by Akainu and will die without help. While Kei works on his damaged seal, Ace and Yugito attempt first aid. While Utakata's baseline regeneration does work, it's not healing him fast enough to make a difference on its own.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: After the death of Admiral Akainu, when Utakata and Kei both fall silent and try to process the fight.
• All of the Other Reindeer: A key component of jinchuriki histories, with the exception of Naruto. Because of this, stripping the issue of village allegiances ends up helping them bond as equals who understand each other's pain while in their strange new setting. Even Yugito and Kei, who hated each other at the start of their travels, eventually end up agreeing that actually fighting each other to the death would cause them nothing but misery because of their new friendship.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The wanted posters work like this, listing various crimes in decreasing level of importance. Killer B's rap sheet ends in "cattle raiding," for which the reader gets no context. Even the other characters are baffled.
• Bash Brothers: Common among the Whitebeard Pirates. Later, the story specifically pits Thatch and Marco against Admiral Kizaru.
• Beast of Battle: Because the Tailed Beasts are all able to freely interact with the world, they tend to act as this if their comparatively squishy human partners get into fights. Due to their size and strength, their most common opponents are Sea Kings and other megafauna of the Grand Line. If there are no giant monsters to fight, they inflict heavy casualties on even organized armies without much effort.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Saiken stands out as the biggest goofball of the Tailed Beasts. This does not make him any less dangerous than his number of tails implies, but it does mean he plays around with Bubbly Coral like a little kid that can displace more than a Marine battleship.
• Big Brother Instinct: A common trait of the Whitebeard Pirates. Attack one of them, and you attack all of them. This extends to Kei soon after their first meeting, which baffles her as much as she finds it charming.
  • It does go a bit wrong-headed once, when Kei unintentionally fakes her death while traveling the seas in disguise. Tracked by the boat she was given by the Whitebeards, Ace attacks the disguised Kei in a misguided attempt to get revenge on whoever "killed" her.
  • Kei feels this way toward Naruto, having long since sacrificed her childhood to keep him and Kushina safe from Konoha's enemies. She also develops this same kind of protectiveness toward Ace, culminating in breaking into Impel Down to save him. This leads to her eventually accepting her status as an honorary Whitebeard Pirate, which they've been trying to get her to do for months.
• Big Damn Heroes: The single grandest entrance award goes to Han and Kokuo when they appear to join the battle against the three Marine Admirals.
• Broken Ace: Serves as a point of commonality between Ace and the jinchuriki he meets.
  • Ace, per canon, is one of the Whitebeard Pirate division commanders, but the Driving Question of his life is if he deserved to be born. He secretly thinks he's a monster and a burden.
  • Yugito is a dangerous, talented jonin of Kumogakure, but she grew up without friends and treated as a Human Weapon. She comes across as an aggressive Ice Queen, but actually bonds very quickly with others when given a chance. She's the one who tells Ace, perhaps too bluntly, what it means to be a jinchuriki.
  • Utakata puts up a front of composure and power that none of the others buy, but is actually Sour Outside, Sad Inside due to suffering betrayal after betrayal.
  • Kei is one of the better-adjusted jinchuriki, due to being "lucky" enough to have support from high places. Anyone who knew her during her younger years can attest that this was not always the case. It is not coincidental that she's also the only jinchuriki who regularly sees a therapist.
• Call to Adventure: A Consequence Combo variation, which starts with the black band on a jinchuriki's wrist that prevents them from accessing any of their partner's chakra. If they find more jinchuriki, they can slowly remove the Power Limiter in stages. If they don't, a strange, booming voice makes it impossible for them to sleep until they get moving and take up the quest anyway.
• Crossover: With One Piece.
• Cats Hate Water: Yugito's tailed beast is Matatabi, a giant cat who's made out of fire so she has double the reason to avoid getting wet. This proves to be a huge problem in the largely oceanic world of One Piece as this basically left Yugito stranded on a tiny island for months on end.
• Culture Clash: Between the oft-reserved shinobi and the much more expressive pirates they encounter. Among other issues, the jinchuriki are far more willing to resort to mass destruction than Ace feels comfortable with. This is primarily due to the infamous Buster Call order, reserved for use on the World Government's greatest enemies. On a lighter note, Kei initially can't understand why locals tend to yell so much in unison, or why they use snails as long-distance communication devices. She also has to do research on Devil Fruits to stop being surprised by their strange properties.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Several.
  • Kei, as a master of Water Release ninjutsu, has an advantage over Devil Fruit users when she wields her powers effectively. This is first demonstrated in an exhibition match against Ace to prove she can hold her own in the Grand Line. The same goes for Utakata once he joins Team Jinchuriki's attack force.
  • Like in canon, Ace and Luffy versus the Baroque Works Billions isn't even a contest. Kei joins in, making it that much more lopsided.
  • The rematch with the Blackbeard Pirates turns into this. The newly-minted Warlord and his crew prove no match for three adult jinchuriki converging on the same target.
  • In general, pitting the Impel Down invasion crew against its defenses leaves the latter coming up short. Gaara's sand powers make a mockery of the Level One hazards, Yugito takes on all of the Jailer Beasts at once, and so on.
  • A villainous one: The first fight between Utakata and Admiral Akainu ended with all the Crimson Carnation Pirates dead and Utakata almost lethally burned. Utakata only survives due to the quick intervention of the Blackbeard-hunting crew.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • The Blackbeard Pirates, including Teach. He's crushed underwater by Isobu, and his Devil Fruit reincarnates in the New World.
  • Warden Magellan and most of the Impel Down staff and prisoners, including people like Crocodile who were explicitly not released. There are fewer people left alive than are confirmed dead.
  • Admiral Akainu is beaten mostly to death by a berserk Yugito and finished off by Utakata.
• Disability Immunity: Seeing as Brook is a skeleton, he doesn't even notice the cold of Impel Down's Freezing Hell.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Noted and exploited.
  • For shinobi, the five basic nature transformations have this relationship with each other. Kei has a slight advantage over Yugito during their brief fight, though the deciding factor was more their relative chakra levels. As jonin, they both have backup techniques that use wind and lightning respectively, to get around this exact problem.
  • Aokiji's Hie Hie no Mi puts him at an advantage over Kei and Utakata's primary elemental ninjutsu, because actually controlling ice is not a part of the five basic nature transformations. If the water around them is solid, neither Kei nor Utakata can attack with it, nullifying most of their ability to exploit the classic Devil Fruit weakness to seawater.
    • On the other hand, enough fire can melt Aokiji's ice into momentarily-useless water. As a result, Ace and Yugito face him in a two-on-one fight.
  • Akainu, meanwhile, can mostly nullify his weakness to seawater by running so hot that any near him instantly evaporates. As a bonus, the mass of his lava also smothers normal fire.
    • Utakata, who's fought him before and is married to one of the only non-Iwagakure wielders of the Lava Release bloodline, simply increases the amount of water until it beats the evaporation rate anyway. When this takes too long, Utakata shifts gears so he doesn't have to meet the magma head-on and instead targets Akainu's need to breathe.
  • Kizaru, meanwhile, is specifically attacked by Thatch because his new Yami Yami no Mi powers bend and absorb light.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite the many terrible acts on their rap sheets both before and after their arrival in the Blues, some of the jinchuriki do draw lines in the sand.
  • Utakata, while not particularly nice, only targets World Government forces because Admiral Akainu killed the Crimson Carnation Pirates.
  • Kei thinks the World Government's hunt for the child of the Pirate King is unforgivable.
• Fantastic Nuke: The signature attack of the Tailed Beasts as a whole, the Tailed Beast Bomb. It's used by several Tailed Beasts at once in order to utterly destroy Impel Down.
• Fish out of Water: All of the shinobi are this, having woken up scattered across the Blues with no knowledge of the setting they've landed in. Most of them also have no knowledge of sailing in a very nautical world, and they often end up breaking important parts of the world without knowing consequences.
  • Even Kei, who at least knows what series she's stuck in and that there are tropes in play, doesn't actually have much to go on. She only ever watched a very tiny fraction of the worst English dub.
• For Want Of A Nail: Several points.
  • Ace isn't alone when fighting Blackbeard, so his allies know exactly what happened to him immediately afterward. Kei even calls the Whitebeard Pirates to keep them in the loop, coincidentally alerting the Red Hair Pirates through Kushina at the same time.
  • Team Jinchuriki hunts down and kill Blackbeard's entire crew in their first rescue attempt, preventing the mass breakout of Impel Down prisoners, particularly the Level Six detainees, because the Blackbeard Pirates are dead by then.
  • Isobu told Shukaku what happened to Ace, which means he basically told Gaara, resulting in the Straw Hat Pirates ditching Sabaody before they can be scattered by Kuma. With Chomei's help, they head directly for Impel Down to rescue Ace themselves.
  • The Tailed Beasts are so angry about Ace's treatment that they destroy it with multiple Tailed Beast Bombs, obliterating the structure and killing all those who remain inside it.
  • A pro-World Government version of this drama ends up making front-page news across the sea, resulting in Sabo regaining his memories upon seeing a newspaper proclaiming Ace's death.
  • Teach's death frees up the Yami Yami no Mi, which reincarnates in time for Marco to find it and deliver it to Thatch.
  • Finally, the above events throw a massive wrench into the World Government's plan to bait Whitebeard into a trap to finally bring down an Emperor, since they now have no leverage and two of their three strongholds have been ruined by pirates.
• Friend to All Children: Han, who turns out to be a gentle (if intimidating) guardian to Moda while her parents are gone. Similarly, Yugito and Utakata turn out to have a soft spot for Naruto once they realize he's a jinchuriki like they are. Kei, a notorious adherent of the Big Sister Instinct, comes to trust Utakata and Yugito more once Naruto helps defrost them.
• Gentle Giant: Despite being intimidating, Han has no greater ambitions than to continue babysitting Moda and living a life free from war. His partner, Kokuo, is also the most reclusive and shy of the Tailed Beasts.
  • All of the Tailed Beasts can act like this around people they like, but Yang Kurama is a very obvious exception.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: A part of the premise. Each jinchuriki begins their quest with no access to their Tailed Beast-derived powers, symbolized by a numbered black band (1-9, with only their number of tails visible by default) around their right wrist. If they encounter another jinchuriki and make contact with their right hands, they unlock the corresponding numbered seal and gain some of their power back. Naruto and Kushina, each being only one of the two Kuramas' hosts, only unlock half of the ninth seal.
• The Heart: Ace is this, at least to the initial traveling group composed of him, Kei, and Yugito. While Kei and Yugito don't get along because their villages have been perennial rivals and they've both fought in at least one war, the two of them commiserate through their exasperation over Ace's goofy tendencies and impulsiveness. Additionally, he's the first non-jinchuriki human in the setting to unconditionally accept Tailed Beasts as people, which endears him to them. While he's gone, Kei and Yugito nearly fall to bitter infighting.
  • Naruto sort of takes up this role while Ace is absent, because his hyperactivity and earnestness are endearing to the other jinchuriki.
• Heroic BSoD: Ace briefly falls into this while imprisoned in Impel Down, trapped with only his realization that losing to Blackbeard will lead to disaster. He climbs out of it when Jinbe arrives and he has someone to talk to.
  • Kei falls into Heroic Safe Mode instead when she thinks their team's lack of coordination got Ace killed at Banaro Island. Even while reeling, she pushes through to continue the mission.
• Human Weapon: The trope itself is name-dropped in regard to jinchuriki. While Kei and Yugito both note that the former got off easier than most, because she had friends in high places by the time she was outed, most jinchuriki do not. Han even says Iwagakure is "hell" and has no interest in going back to that life.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Blackbeard still eats the Yami Yami no Mi after stealing it from Thatch.
  • Ace still loses his duel with Teach despite backup, and is sent to Impel Down.
  • Many Impel Down prisoners escape as a result of the break-in and form pirate crews.
  • Luffy still unintentionally charms Hancock into falling in love with him.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Common when people realize that Yugito has a cat motif. Kei dishes out enough during one of their early conversations that Yugito storms off in a huff. She later does something similar to Utakata with Literalist Snarking, with the same results.
• Large Ham: Common among pirates, most prominently Thatch. Among the shinobi and Tailed Beasts, the king of this trope is Shukaku.
• Never Found the Body: Kei brings this up in her narration regarding Ace in two different contexts. She intially believes Ace died in the fight with the Blackbeard Pirates because Teach's power was dangerous enough to half-level the island, and some lethal attacks don't leave a recognizable corpse. She almost immediately learns otherwise. In the second case, she dislikes the World Government's decision to report Ace's death because there was obviously no body.
• Never Gets Drunk: A side effect of the blanket poison immunity the jinchuriki get. While this does allow them to win drinking contests, it makes the pirates uncomfortable.
  • Marco is also immune to alcohol, but it's linked to his Devil Fruit.
• New Life in Another World Bonus: The jinchuriki all get a stronger regeneration ability and poison immunity. Compared to what they initially lose (read: all of their Tailed Beast powers), it's almost a complete downgrade. The Tailed Beasts, on the other hand, are able to freely interact with the world, which removes all of the drawbacks to their part of their Sealed in a Person-Shaped Can situation. They also seem to be much larger than normal.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Upon seeing Ace get tagged by Admiral Akainu's magma, Yugito loses control and transforms into a V2 hybrid form before tearing Akainu to shreds. By the time Utakata finally deals the final blow, Kei suspects Akainu is already dead.
• No-Sell: All of the jinchuriki are immune to poison even without being able to use their upper-tier powers, including mostly-innocuous substances such as alcohol. None of them are entirely sure why.
  • This minor quirky trait proves Magellan's downfall while the group is fighting its way through Impel Down. After getting four (and a half, thanks to Naruto) levels of the black band unlocked, Utakata faces off against the head warden and kills him in single combat.
  • Several people also ignore Boa Hancock's ability to turn anyone attracted to her into a stone statue. Luffy canonically has the knack, while Yugito and Kei are immune to being attracted to Hancock specifically because she's an enemy combatant, Jinbei covers his eyes, and Utakata is married to Mei.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Utakata takes on the entire remaining garrison of Impel Down's Blazing Hell and singlehandedly kills Magellan. And this was him making sure the rest of the rescue team can keep going.
  • Whatever Killer B and Kushina did to land themselves spots on Shanks's crew.
  • One can only imagine the look on Vander Decken IX's face when he was confronted with the Sun Pirates, the Neptune Army, and multiple Tailed Beasts. Suffice to say he's not a threat anymore.
• Power Limiter: The mysterious black band works like this. It keeps jinchuriki from using their Tailed Beast-derived powers, but can be progressively unlocked via finding other jinchuriki scattered across the world.
• Red Baron: A part of the setting in the form of pirate bounty posters. Due to Kei and Yugito acting mostly in the shadows, even when traveling with Ace, the first jinchuriki to earn bounty posters with nicknames are Kushina and Gaara. Killer B gets his around the same time, but doesn't have a fancy title. Naruto, Roshi, and Han don't get bounties at all.
  • "Red Sand" Gaara, as a member of the Straw Hat Pirates after the Alabasta arc.
  • "Cobalt Lioness" Yugito, leader of the nonexistant Cobalt Lioness Pirates.
  • "Tidal Blade" Kei, because she made a special request to be assigned that name.
  • "Carnation Prince" Utakata, specifically to evoke his time with the Crimson Carnations and their captain, Scarletti Rosema.
  • "Silkworm" Fu, as a member of the Straw Hat Pirates after the Skypeia arc.
  • "Red-Hot Habanero" Kushina, as a member of the Red Hair Pirates. Interestingly, this actually outs her as a jinchuriki, because it was a secret In-Universe until then.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated:
  • Kei is believed dead for a while, to the point of the Whitebeard Pirates holding a wake for her.
  • Ace namedrops this trope after being rescued from Impel Down and spotting a newspaper declaring his death. He even mockingly suggests sending the Marines a postcard.
• Revenge:
  • Ace wants to kill Blackbeard because the latter betrayed the Whitebeard Pirates by (almost) killing Thatch over a Devil Fruit.
  • Utakata's goal is to kill Admiral Akainu in retribution for his annihilation of the Crimson Carnation Pirates, who were a Paradise treasure-hunting crew that took Utakata and Saiken in as friends. In pursuit of this goal, Utakata allies with Kei and Yugito under the unspoken promise of an alliance when he finally tracks down his target. He doesn't actually tell anyone about the Crimson Carnations until after they've already attacked World Government assets as a team.
  • Kei muses that she doesn't have the knack for avenging wrongs done to her after observing the two of them, but proves over the course of the story that she's willing to go to extremes for rescuing people.
  • Subverted by Blackbeard, who doesn't hold grudges and doesn't understand why someone might resent him for his actions. He even offers Kei a position in his crew.
  • The Tailed Beasts don't value human lives to start with and understand vengeance extremely well. They have no problem with inflicting massive misery on strangers in retribution, and that's why Impel Down doesn't exist anymore.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Canonically, Luffy solo-rushes Impel Down and picks up allies inside in his attempt to break Ace out of the facility, and fails in the end. In this story, several other factors combine to result in him bringing along all of the Straw Hat Pirates and Team Jinchuriki, which helps him get to the bottom of Level Six in time to free Ace.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Played With with regard to the jinchuriki here, because the Tailed Beasts are actually able to wander freely in this world, despite their seals remaining intact. It's one of the earliest discoveries in the story.
• Ship Tease: Between Ace and Yugito, for the most part. Yugito does most of the flirting as she gets more comfortable around people. Kei decides to tease Ace about it as soon as she notices.
• Spanner in the Works: The jinchuriki as a whole are this, due to a combination of stealth, ignorance of consequences, and Wrong Context Magic. That said, their plans also get wrecked repeatedly. Mostly by each other.
  • Utakata unexpectedly wakes up during the first fight with the Blackbeard Pirates, launching directly into a berserk state that keeps Kei too busy to help either of her teammates.
  • Yugito's massively boosted regeneration rate allows her to survive being impaled, but she's summoned away from the island by Matatabi to safely recover at Water 7. This puts her well out of range to actually reenter the fight on Banaro Island.
  • When trying infiltrate Impel Down to retrieve Ace, Utakata, Yugito, Naruto, and Kei planned for most of the enemy's abilities. They did not plan for Isobu telling Shukaku about Ace's capture, which snowballed into the Straw Hats abandoning Sabaody before Kuma could scatter them. As soon as the Straw Hats arrive via Chomei's airlift, the plan flies out the window because the Straw Hats are the antithesis of stealth when they're on a Roaring Rampage of Rescue.
  • Everyone makes a hash of Jinbe's plan to treat with the Kuja Pirates, but it works out in the end.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Thatch, because of Kei's timely intervention.
  • Ace also never goes to Marineford, instead being rescued from Impel Down's Level Six.
• Stealth Expert: Due to a combination of genuine stealth training and genjutsu usage, most of the shinobi are this compared to the people they meet. Kei points out that this is very much not the case back home, because jinchuriki are supposed to be living weapons deployed to kill armies. When they have to infiltrate a Marine base, Yugito is outright offended at Ace's idea of a disguise.
• Summon Magic: Works differently in this world, by overwriting any other contracts with a two-way link between jinchuriki and their Tailed Beast partner. Kei and Isobu discover that each of them can summon the other while on their first island. It takes the other jinchuriki longer to figure it out, because none of them have a separate summon contract like Kei does with Tsuruya.
• Theme Naming: The various transponder snails Naruto cares for have names like Komushi, Aomushi, and Kuromushi. Coincidentally, Komushi is by far the largest snail.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Common among the jinchuriki who end up traveling with friendly pirates.
  • Kei initially refuses to bond with the Whitebeard Pirates despite their friendliness, prioritizing her mission of finding the other jinchuriki instead. This changes when she saves Thatch from Teach's attempted murder and reveals herself as a Badass Bystander. By the time she travels with Ace to hunt for Teach, she's basically already the Whitebeard Pirates' newest ally.
  • Yugito starts out as bit of an Arrogant Kung-Fu Girl covering for severe insecurities, but becomes friendlier and more relaxed as she spends time with Ace and Kei and fights alongside them. She eventually gets to the point of being willing to participate in pranks and flirt with people.
  • Utakata initially was well on his way toward this, bonding with the Crimson Carnation Pirates when they accepted both him and Saiken without a problem. And then Akainu killed them all, resulting in Utakata traveling with Kei, Yugito, and Naruto instead while pursuing Revenge. It takes spending time with Naruto and the Straw Hat Pirates for him to thaw again.
• Trial Balloon Question: After much agonizing, Ace asks Kei what she'd do if she met the Pirate King's son. By this point, he's already aware of her status as a Human Weapon, has escaped prison in a massive team effort, and bonded with most of the Tailed Beasts. Small wonder Kei's answer is that she'd greet him just like anyone else once she worked out the truth.
• Unstoppable Rage: Tailed Beast chakra can cause this in jinchuriki, well above their usual Blood Knight tendencies. When in this mode, the jinchuriki will not stop attacking at maximum power until they keel over. It also happens to cause tunnel vision, which makes them more likely to be taken out by other opponents that weren't the initial target.
  • Utakata gets this twice. While injured and mainlining Saiken's chakra, he wakes up inside Isobu's stomach and has to be subdued by Kei shutting down his seal. She even notes that if not for his impaired judgment and their relative number of Power Limiter levels, she'd have lost badly.
    • He also gets too caught up in his Revenge against Akainu, which gets him frozen by Aokiji.
  • Yugito also has a moment of this when Akainu manages to hit Ace with a lava attack. She tears her opponent apart.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Ace refuses to let Kei or Yugito disregard the civilian presence on Banaro Island, because the suggested method of dealing with Teach (a Tailed Beast Bomb) is as undiscriminating as a Buster Call. Adjusting complicates their plans just enough to result in an initial loss to the Blackbeard Pirates and Ace's subsequent capture, but the citizens of the island basically owe Ace their lives.
• The World Is Just Awesome: Kei has this reaction to Fishman Island, because it's an amazing underwater city.
• Wrong Context Magic: Chakra works like this. It's extremely similar to haki in some ways, such as allowing the shinobi to bypass Logia element-based defenses. However, it allows them to produce effects otherwise only possible with Devil Fruits. Word of God is that shinobi who eat a Devil Fruit will explode, suggesting there's some link between the two.
  • Killing Intent as used by Tailed Beasts feels like conquerer's haki to those who recognize it, though it feels "wrong" for some reason.
  • Kei is convinced for about half the story that chakra could be inherently dangerous to people without it. It's not, and the symptoms she saw turn out to be the first signs of decompression syndrome or altitude sickness, depending on the specific circumstances.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Despite the efforts of Kei and Yugito, Ace still gets captured by Blackbeard and sent to Impel Down.
• You Remind Me of X: Sabo notices something odd about Naruto (besides the strange powers and his companion Yang Kurama), although he can't put his finger on it. It drives him to distraction until he's almost glad that Naruto hares off away from Baltigo and disappears for a while. He feels guilty about it. After his memories return he realizes that Naruto's wide grin reminded him of his brothers.

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