Chapter Text
It’s a warm morning aboard the Germa ship. A seagull squawks loudly as it makes it’s way across the docks, into the rising palatial window of the castle spreading itself above the deck. Through the winding halls it treads, across the salty breeze, into the waiting window of the breakfast room where it drops papers from across every sea onto the table, and then it turns tail, disappears where it came from.
Here, in this dining room, four caricatures of humanity find themselves sitting at the same table, taking in the same meal. They are all tall for their age, built in the model of their mother and father alike. They bend, brightly coloured hair, and they rise, in the same successive motions.
It’s the girl who steps forward first, plucks a paper with interest and then sets it along the cold white linen as he pours her own hot coffee into a cup, espresso settling into the swirling porcelain and giving off a gentle steam.
The same hot coffee scalds her tongue as she takes a sip, and she barely notices the pain. It wasn’t part of her programming, after all, to ache. Instead, she lets herself give into the sensation for a brief moment, not unlike poison, absorbing the caffeine into her veins as she looks upon the news coming from across the seas.
It’s not every day a Warlord finds himself the subject of an arrest, after all.
The paper spreads out in front of her and she stares at the picture of the bounties, the new pirates caught up with Crocodile. One stands out in particular, a detail so fine she blinks, wondering if she imagined it.
And then she looks again, and stops, staring at the swirling brow.
Several thoughts compose themselves at once. Each stacks neatly against the other, but the one that rises over them all is this —
If she’s seen it, surely he has too.
It’s not a great picture. The majority of the lens is taken up by his foot, clearly prepared to smash the camera down. What you can see of his face is mostly a wide scowl. He’d always had the largest mouth, capable of smiling so bright it seemed to overtake the entirety of his expression in a way that she’d once thought strange. And then there’s this scowl, not unlike his smile, all angles and all over his face such that you can almost miss the other details. There’s glasses askew on his nose, and it takes a keen eye to see the sliver of the edge of his eyes, to see the curvature of his brow, irritation clear at the surprise of a camera in his way. The unmistakable yellow of his hair. It’s the only clue visible, to match his name.
Mr. Prince.
It’s almost laughable, really. There’s a kind of irony in a pirate named Prince, with that particular hazy swirl of a brow, almost like a smudge in the picture. She thumbs over it, wondering if it’s real or if it’s just pretend.
Niji and Yonji are busy, digging into their bread, butter, the flaky taste of pastry and smoked meat wafting through the air. They haven’t looked up since they started eating. They never do read the papers, after all.
Thirteen years later, and he’s alive.
It stirs something inside her, something uncomfortable and hot. A pulsating feeling that spreads in her veins. Her heart even skips a beat.
Sensations she didn’t ask for — nor can she control. It's relief, she knows, distantly. Putting name to emotion takes more effort than it should, and she tries to catalogue it impassionately, to allow it space to exist, and also to let it free. After all, it’s an emotion unlike any she’s experienced before. Very rarely does she experience true feeling these days. Most of her emotions are carefully controlled, contained and held back. Sometimes, she thinks they’re almost all gone.
So like a moth to a flame, she basks in it, even as she takes another sip of her tea. Her fingers clench the cup, and then release. This time, she holds it daintily, delicately. She doesn’t hate it, for once, to sense this way. To let emotion override function.
But there’s danger to giving into a feeling.
Nobody wants to be defunct.
“So he’s alive after all,” Ichiji’s voices aloud, across the room from her.
The bliss of relief dissipates. Calm settles across her heart even as she can hear the rise of something else. Of another emotion, something that skitters in her veins. Biological reactions that she’s known, can identify. Can never quite put her heart into understanding nor enough to feel.
This one, though, it’s familiar. An emotion she’s lived with all her life, and if she’d been careless, it could have consumed her. It’s easy to let it go, to look out calmly across the dinner table. Like an itch to be ignored.
Worry. (Fear).
“Who’s alive?” asks Yonji, a scowl deep on his face. It etches into the corner of his eyes as his brows furrow, the swoop of the curl pressing deep against his forehead.
Niji’s already taken the abandoned paper, his fingers curling into the edges. A brief silence as Yonji looks over his shoulder.
And then laughter, endless, raucous laughter that fills the room. It sounds like hyenas braying at the scraps, scavengers waiting to pounce.
“A pirate?!” Niji says, gasping for air as his fist bangs the table, “ Pathetic. What a fit for a loser like him! ”
“Maybe we should go pay him a visit!” Yonji poses it as a statement, but it’s a question, even after all this time. He won’t take a step without Ichiji and Father’s approval, and won't take the risk.
Sometimes, Reiju thinks that’s an emotion within him too. Or maybe it’s common sense. How does anyone exist as a creature in this family of hollow husks? Does it matter? Whatever she had felt in the moment fades away and she looks out at her brothers, cold and observant, uncaring of how it might be that things are intended to progress.
What’s done is done.
“Maybe we should,” says Niji, grinning as he cracks his knuckles, “It’s been a long time since we clobbered that idiot, and if he’s a pirate they’ll thank us for doing it.”
Is he happy? Is he sad? Did he live a good life, these last thirteen years? Does he still smile?
She hates that the picture doesn’t show that smile, that beaming grin that once lit up this home. It’s been a long time since anyone smiled like that. She hates that part of her that always wondered if she’d done the right thing, bending those bars open, breaking him free.
“If they’re in Alabasta, then they’re probably headed next to —
“If you want to waste time chasing after him, you’ll need Father to approve,” she says at last, taking another sip of her coffee.
For once, she’s wondering if she should have had tea instead. She’d heard once people could tell the future by reading those leaves, the dregs that remain at the bottom of the cup. A lady in the South Blue had offered to show her her fate. All she had seen in them is the leftover of potential.
What remains is husk.
The boys go quiet around her, and Yonji and Niji both look clearly put out. It’s strange, for boys so emotionless that they can look so disappointed. In another family, in another life, maybe someone might believe they missed Sanji, that they wanted to see their brother after so many years. She’s never understood how they put so much effort into their emotions, into a display that doesn’t fit them in the slightest.
Ichiji rises first.
She doesn’t know what he’s thinking — he doesn’t put the same effort into a display, after all. She wonders if father has seen the paper.
Whatever the case, it’s probably not good. Whatever the case, it doesn’t involve her anyways.
What’s done is done.
“A delegation from the North Blue?”
“It seems so, Princess Vivi,” replies Igaram, looking troubled. “And after that mess with Crocodile, we’ve barely had time to rebuild properly. To have foreign visitors in the capital, so soon after that.”
“Who’s coming?” she asks, smiling easily as she continues to write her letter to Kohza. The trade route between Yuba and Aluburna is starting to get a bit more stable. Slowly, surely, her country is coming together.
Here is how you find the Princess of Alabasta. She’s moved her writing desk across the room, to the window that looks closest to the horizon. These days, her eyes drift more and more to the open blue sky, further then, to the place where sky meets sea, and she remembers fondly the way the waves rocked her to sleep once.
It’s been difficult for her since returning. She hadn’t realised how different she’d become in all her time away. Nor had she realised that keeping a country wasn’t the same as caring for it.
In this new stage of her life, the process of rebuilding seems like it means more than ever. She finds herself here often, at this desk, writing letters and missives, signing off on important national documents, and more.
More often than not, it’s the wish that the Straw Hats, when they return, are there to see Alabasta in all its glory. After everything they gave her, she wants to show them how well she cares for it.
So despite Igaram’s worry, his frantic muttering, she’s only half-listening as she’s reviewing Kohza’s reports on the security within the travel routes, and the suggestion for expanding road work around Aluburna.
“It’s a bad omen for that family to be sailing out here.”
Vivi’s pen stops, startled as she turns to see her father in the doorway. He stands there, a long moment. His eyes are on the window, staring out into the sea.
A shadow crosses over his face, an all too familiar darkness. She hasn’t seen that in so long — and it strikes something in her heart.
They were supposed to be past their troubles. And this time, Luffy and Nami and Sanji and Zoro and Chopper and Usopp are well away, further out from where they started. She doesn’t think they’ll make it back in time, to help.
This time, she has to manage this crisis entirely on her own.
“What family?”
“Yeah, I was born in the North Blue, didn’t I mention that?”
The bugs in the forest are huge.
Nami wants to scream — she is screaming but it’s not loud enough. They can’t hear her across the island. Nobody will know that this is what did her in. And they should hear her. They should hear every loud, horrified scream because it’s not safe here, especially not here. Despite every danger she’s seen, this forest is particularly terrible. And for the first time, she’s entirely at the mercy of nature, as spiders are crawling after her and Usopp won’t even kill them.
Beside her, Sanji’s in a similar state, grabbing her hand as they run. His fingers are warm around hers, and she squeezes back, shutting her own eyes to the terror as her feet pick up the pace.
Centipedes and moths and spiders. With long legs and creepy eyes and furry skin crawling all over them and she screams louder as Sanji shouts beside her.
“Kill them, Usopp!”
“They’re just bugs, you guys,” says the sniper, looking at her with a shrug. Sanji looks equally as appalled, and it’s two versus one as Usopp continues to pet that awful spider.
And then a dart from the forest lands, perfectly tipped into the spider and Usopp screams too, a loud scream as he falls over and the spider slides off his arm to the ground, dead.
Sanji’s fear vanishes, drops in an instant as he turns into the woods, a leg raised to protect them and Nami’s ever so grateful he’s here, as he shouts, “Get behind me, Nami-swan!”
She’s more than ready to do that, to cower behind Sanji except —
“Usopp!” she screams, landing beside him to check for injury. Her hands pet his arm, looking for the wound and instead find themselves only really feeling clammy skin, sweat from the leftover heat of the morning, a few stray arm hairs.
His face is pallid, but the dart never sank through the spider, it didn’t touch him. It’s almost as though the force to throw the dart used was calculated to not sink into Usopp’s skin, despite the blood and guts from the spider coating his arm. She wipes them off, the putrid stench of it making her almost gag as she brushes them onto Usopp’s shirt, absently considering that he might have to burn it, or she’ll otherwise have to get him something new.
“I’m — I’m — I’m alive,” Usopp says, sitting up and grabbing his pachinko slingshot, preparing to defend them in his own way even as his hands shake. Hers aren’t steady either, and she wonders for a brief second if those horrible Bellamy Pirates followed them into the forest. Anger pulses in her veins, prepared to attack and defend all over again. If they think the rules apply now — they’re wrong.
She’s reaching for her own weapons, fingers tingling absently as they look out into the darkness of the forest.
Sanji’s standing in front of them, looking fierce and determined as always. He’s wearing that ever so scary look he gets before an attack. The one where his face turns dark, and he turns from the goofy chef to the monster warrior she knows lays under that sunshine surface of his.
He stands tall in the night, with his back straight and eyes burning. If it’s Sanji, the Bellamy Pirates are as good as dead.
They’re alone, waiting for an attack, her eyes trained to look every which way.
Hearts racing in their chest, her breath caught in her throat for an attacker that never comes.
Usopp drops his guard first, turns to the dead spider and yanks the weapon out of its corpse as Nami’s shoulders drop too. She can’t see or hear anyone for miles.
“What a weird dart,” Usopp says, turning back to show Nami.
She doesn’t have time to examine it, because from the left an avalanche arrives. Lady bugs, the size of dinner plates and Sanji’s kicking them out of the way. They’ll have to look into it later as she starts screaming again, her batons stretching out to clobber the first lady bug that comes near her and sending it flying out of her way.
“Did you get one?” asks Usopp, as the group comes together in the centre of the trees, staring upwards into the forest, looking all around. He’s terrified, and he and Nami had run blindly into the trees, away from a swarm of lady bugs the size of dinner plates. Sanji had been a minute behind them, hot on their heels while keeping his eyes peeled every which way for bugs or darts or both.
As if this forest wasn’t scary enough.
The bugs weren’t too bad. They were still manageable. A bit like finding a really cool beetle, honestly. It’s the darts that are doing Usopp in right now.
He’s so scared, his legs are still shaking. It’s definitely can’t-go-near-scary-pinks-darts disease. The only cure is to find someone very strong — like Luffy or Sanji or Zoro — and hide behind them.
Meanwhile, above them, the bird tweets on.
Joh! Joh! Joh!
Mocking, and it only enhances his fear as she twists backwards to stare at the bird that was trying to escape their pursuit. All because of one, stupid bird, they’d almost died.
From the corner of his eye, Usopp can see Nami staring at her hand, flexing it absently, but her fingers aren’t fully curling inwards. He stops, stares at her, staring at the bird, and then back at the dart he’s still got held in his own palm, tight in his fist.
He can’t un-clench his fist.
Oh fuck.
“As long as I can see it,” Robin says, eyes raising up to the branch. Two hands stick out from the bird, and it falls onto the ground with a thump beside Usopp, who blinks in surprise.
“We caught it!”
And for now, he can almost forget about the way his hand is stuck, as he flails in sweet relief at the thought of leaving the forest.
“Wait, someone attacked you in the forest?” Luffy says, sounding furious. His finger is up his nose, as he swings his head wildly around, looking for their so called attacker.
Zoro’s hand goes to his sword. There’s a steadiness inside him, prepared for battle even as they walk back towards the Gorilla Pirates base. His mind is racing ahead, wondering if it’s the work of that Lamb guy. His sword sings, the Kitetsu thriving at his seething rage. An attack on the crew takes it too far.
They’ll punish the guy this time. They’ll show him just how deadly this crew really can be.
“Yeah,” says the cook, unsurprisingly serious as he stares over at Usopp, still holding the dart in a tight, uncurling fist. Chopper walks beside him, hands in cloth, petting at his fingers and trying to diagnose what happened while Nami stands on his other side, showing her own palm, tingling as she said.
Zoro’s pissed.
Especially when Chopper says, out loud, “It looks like it could be a poison!”
Poison, after all, is the weapon of cowards. It’s for backstabbers, and betrayers, and people who won’t fight a person directly. It’s for people who don’t deserve to be hit with a sword, but he’ll take them on anyway. No poison can stop them.
Robin comes over Chopper’s shoulder, analysing the weapon itself. As creepy as she is, she’s useful to have around. Zoro finds himself relenting in suspicion. The thought had crossed his mind, that it had been her, after all, who’d made the choice to finally attack them. But the bell sheep man was still out there, the pirate who’d dared to insult Luffy, and they’d all stood back and taken it.
And right now, Robin proves more reliable, as she says, “It’s probably a paralytic, something mild, like a sedative. I’d assume the spider died more from being speared than from poison. Quick and painful.”
She smiles at that, like it’s pleasant to discuss the death of weak creatures. Zoro still doesn’t trust her much, either, but at least she’s strong. Strong is good enough if they’re going to protect this crew from further attack.
She pulls up a glove, and with gentle hands, and Chopper’s hoof, Robin’s fingers curl over the weapon and she slowly tugs it free from Usopp’s very stuck hand.
Exposed, they can all gather around, stepping closer together with their bird still tied up. Robin holds it up in the air, giving Zoro a chance to stare at the invasive weapon.
It’s a smooth, clean pink metal with a fine tipped edge. The blade is clearly made of gold, but it’s definitely sharp. It looks like it’s meant to cut into the skin, and with enough force, it’d penetrate deep into the layers of flesh, to lead that dangerous poison tipped edge straight into the bloodstream. It looks barely used, even as the top edge of the dart curls backwards. There’s a tidy little inscription sunk into the edge of the dart.
“It’s got poison on the tip,” she offers, staring at the tidy little blade. “If it had cut through the spider, our sniper’s arm might be further paralyzed. I’m guessing it has more effect when it’s inside the blood.”
It’s a mystery, as the forest goes quiet.
The air shifts, and Zoro turns his eye and for a brief second he sees it. Recognition flashes from the cooks’ eyes, his spine straightens with a kind of haunted, chilling look that Zoro’s never seen before.
Sanji steps closer to the dart, eyes staring at the foreign inscription on the blade, and he’s looking at the dart as he asks Robin, “Can I see that —
And then a branch rustles above them.
Zoro tilts himself first, angling to look above and his blades are out, two swords sharp and ready, and he’s almost regretting being so slow.
“Twenty million berries,” says a voice, and the whole crew has now turned, and they’re able to see the lady perched on a tree branch, holding a wanted poster. “For Mr. Prince.”
The first thing to notice about her is the entirely pink attire. She’s wearing a goddamn skirt, for crying out loud, and a ridiculous pink cape and think pink, steel boots and she’s twirling a pink curl like some kind of fairy in the air. She’s sitting there, on the branch, dangling a poster that looks suspiciously like a bounty poster in her hands. And she’s smiling, but it looks weird.
It doesn’t reach her eyes.
Luffy moves first, his hand stretching out to catch the woman but she’s faster.
She’s on the ground beside them, the dart from Robin’s hand now in her fist as she says, “Funny name choice, Sanji .”
It’s then that Zoro gets a clear look at her face, at the jut of her chin and the swirl of her brow, to the pink locks that frame her face and the smile, bland and uninterested as she holds the poster aloft in the air. She looks so identical to him that Zoro’s sword hesitates, flinches in the air.
They all turn to the cook, his wide eyes and a shocked expression slapped onto his face, and it’s clearly something personal. Zoro doesn’t get that, either. The cook isn’t someone who scares easily, but then again, it’s a woman. He’s always weak against them.
His sword moves fast, all three with readiness to attack.
She has one leg raised, pressing at the apex of his attack, stopping it in place. It’s so like the cook and so alien at once, a greater pressure forcing him back than anything the cook could produce. She’s looking down on him, somehow, with a smile so alien he doesn’t know how to read it.
Zoro already hates her.
“I just wanted to deliver a message to Sanji,” the woman says, even as Nami raises her baton, as Luffy tilts his head to look at her.
Their captain, for whatever reason, has lost all spark of danger. It’s like they’re back in the bar again, and Luffy has no intention to take the slander and be humiliated by it. Instead, he’s holding fast, steady.
Zoro yields, following Luffy’s instincts, despite every part of him that feels the woman is dangerous.
Chopper puts a hand on Sanji’s leg, leaning into him. Usopp has his slingshot raised, and hands sprout from the girl’s waist, grip around the girl’s body, wrapping her in place. She’s outnumbered, under attack, and looks alarmingly at ease.
“Are you also Sanji?” Luffy asks at last, confused, as he swings his head between the cook and the girl.
Zoro’s teeth feel on edge, his anger developing as the girl looks at them all. Robin’s hold breaks on her, and he hears the witch drop to the ground, to her knees. In front of Sanji, of all people, who seems to wake up, take a step forward except it’s not to attack.
He’s staring out into the distance as his pink haired clone stands beside him now. Unable to react normally even when one of his precious women comes under fire.
“What fun friends you have,” the girl says, smiling serenely at them, as though she wasn’t just attacked.
“Who are you?” asks Nami, stepping between her and Sanji, Chopper at her side, as Luffy and Zoro turn, staring at the girl and waiting.
She’s too strong for someone so unassuming, someone who looks at the group with little interest. Sanji’s blue eyes stretch out from under her face, watery and still, like a lake that’s never once been bothered. Her gaze focuses solely behind Nami’s back, to Sanji who raises his head to face her. His expression is still mysteriously blank.
“She’s probably not a threat,” the shitty curly-brow says, at last. Despite all evidence otherwise, he’s making excuses. Zoro’s teeth grind further, but he holds back. Chopper, meanwhile, has reached for Robin who’s looking at the woman in front of them with bright, interested eyes.
Sanji tries for a smile, but it’s forced. He steps between Nami and Chopper, an eerie blank smile, almost like a mirror to his pink-haired twin, offered in her direction. The resemblance is uncanny.
Both of them wear mirroring, odd expressions that fail to reach their eyes.
“Are you, Reiju?”
There’s so many questions, layers of them on their tongue but nobody says anything in the space between them. It swells and grows as the girl blinks, and then leans back onto the balls of her feet, smiling all the while.
“No, I’m not,” the girl says, after a beat, a pause that takes too long. There’s no joy in this moment — it’s nothing like when Ace arrived on the scene and everyone was delighted. This, somehow, feels more ominous than anything else.
That is if she’s meant to be anything like Ace.
The cook had said he was an orphan, an only child. That he’d been raised at the Baratie, and nothing else. Nobody had ever asked where Sanji had lived before. They’d all assumed it didn’t matter. Everyone had a shitty story.
Nothing could have prepared them for her.
Zoro hates her even more, already.
“Well,” Sanji says, facing the girl as he digs into his pockets. Retrieves a cigarette and lighter. “What’s your message?”
“They’re looking for you,” the girl says, and that's a threat as much as it is a warning. “To confirm if you’re alive. The poster was pretty suspicious, after all.”
Sanji’s breath catches, and then he inhales smoke. His eyes look upwards, to the night sky. And then he looks back at her, cool and calm and collected like he hadn’t just froze.
Zoro hates him too.
“Yeah? Are you going to tell them where I am?” he asks.
Zoro wonders if he’s the only one that hears it as a plea. He scowls deeper, eyes fixed on the pink-haired demon, wearing Sanji’s face, as she folds her hands behind her back and tilts her chin to study the man.
Her brows curve wrong. It’s the only relief he feels at this moment, to realise she’s not an identical copy of the cook.
He doesn’t know who they are , but it sounds like they’re not welcome around here. She turns on her heel, gives the group one last glance. “I heard you’re going to an island in the sky. Good luck with that.”
It’s not an answer. Zoro’s hands tighten on the hilt of his blade, furious.
“Tell whoever’s looking for us we’re right here,” says Luffy, tilting his hat back, the smile back on his face. “And don’t throw darts at us next time. Bye, big sister!”
The girl pauses, smiles back at Luffy as Sanji’s hands shake. The cigarette on his lip trembles.
“No promises, but here.”
And she holds out a pink vial, tossing it easily into the air. Of all the people to catch it, it’s Chopper, who fumbles as it lands in his hands, but grips it tight, curious and pleased at once.
“The antidote,” she tells him easily, “For the poison. Headstart, right?”
And just like that, she looks back at Sanji, one last time.
Ominous bitch, Zoro thinks, and he’s staring at the Cook who’s watching her, with those identical blue eyes. The two of them just staring, like they’re studying ghosts.
Zoro’s looking at Sanji, and then he looks at her and he wonders if he’s just imaging the expression of hunger on her face.
And then she’s gone, faster than any of them can see. He knows she’s run off but there’s no way to see how fast she moves. Zoro feels more outclassed than anything, beaten at his own game.
The cook’s looking at the dirt on the ground where she stood, and nobody says anything.
Luffy leaves to find the Bellamy pirate guy. The attack on the Gorilla Pirates feels like a last straw in this night, a final crack. Chopper is treating Robin for her injury. Poison, she had explained, that somehow penetrated from exterior false limbs to her arms. Most probably just a numbing agent. It’s strange, what just transpired.
What’s stranger, Usopp thinks, is that Sanji won’t look at any of them, just the sea.
All he offered was one apology, checked with Chopper that Robin would be alright, and then he just walked away.
It’s a terrible way to start the next half of their journey.
Usopp feels useless, weaker than ever as he tries to find the words to approach the cook with.
He lists his options:
- So you have a weird evil clone sister? She seems evil! What’s that about?
- So you have people hunting you down? It doesn’t change anything!
- So you have a sister? I have a hundred sisters at every port, and they’re all different levels of crazy too!
- So you have a sister! It doesn’t matter, not to me. Not to us. Are you okay?
He approaches, but he’s too late.
Zoro gets there first, stands behind the blonde, who’s seated in the dirt, sand coating along his legs, across his thighs. He’s looking to the horizon and his arms are crossed, shoulders thrown back. He looks like a mountain, sturdy, strong beside Sanji who looks like a reed in the wind, ready to be knocked right over, ready to face plant into the dirt below and never get up.
Usopp feels even more scared. He should approach, but instead he’s ducking behind a rock, watching, listening.
“Who’s looking for you, dart brow?” Zoro says, diving straight to the heart of the matter, sounding furious.
“Some assholes,” Sanji says, shrugging his shoulders back and scowling into the sea. “It doesn’t matter.”
Zoro buys it even less than Usopp, as he retorts, “Says the guy who won’t tell us what that was about.”
“It’s —
Sanji’s tongue catches. His throat squeezes around the word and he stops himself, silent. A hand curls through his hair, tight, almost pulling at the strands, like he wants to force them from his head. Zoro probably doesn’t know what to make of that and neither does Usopp. Sanji’s never tongue-tied. He’s usually pretty good with his words. He feels a hand on his shoulder, and then Nami sweeps by.
Zoro is standing there, frozen in space and staring at Sanji like he’s an alien, even as the cook keeps looking at the sea. It’s Nami who settles down beside him, in the sand. It's Nami who reaches first, her fingers threading into Sanji's, and holding the same punishing hand in her own, soft and tight at once.
“Nojiko can be pretty intense sometimes too,” Nami offers, at first, and it sounds rehearsed, in the way Usopp was rehearsing just now. Sanji turns to her but there isn’t any fanfare with it. No hearts in his eyes, no twirling smile.
“She was beautiful,” Sanji says, and it rings, a sincerity that fills the space. Something soft.
That does it. Usopp tumbles out from behind the rock and comes to sit at Sanji’s other side. This is not the time to hide — he’s a brave warrior of the sea. He can be brave for Sanji’s sake, after all.
“I probably have a hundred sisters, probably,” Usopp babbles, and both Nami and Sanji swivel their heads to stare at him, but Usopp carries on, “And half of them are probably crazy dart throwing poisoners too. You’ll fight them off for me, right?”
Sanji blinks. Nami beams.
“Of course,” Nami says, just as Sanji says, “I don’t hit women.”
“Che, stupid love cook,” says Zoro, but even his jab sounds soft. Which is weird, because in Usopp’s experiences, jabs usually aren’t particularly soft.
“You took on Arlong and freed me,” Nami says, sharp. “Whatever’s looking for you, we’ll take it on.”
The cook’s shoulders suddenly drop. Usopp doesn’t know what Sanji’s thinking even as Zoro suddenly sits down beside him.
Behind them, they hear the footsteps of Robin and Chopper approaching the four of them, seated in a row as the sand shifts around them, crawling in between their toes. The four of them, stationed on a watch for crazy sisters.
Chopper asks, “What are you guys doing?”
“It’s not a hundred, probably,” Sanji says, and it seems hard for him to say, “Just three assholes and their King. They probably aren’t trying that hard.”
“Okay,” says Nami, as Chopper comes to a silent flourish of understanding, and then leaps on Sanji’s back. Grips him tight around the neck. “Luffy will obliterate them, don’t worry!”
In the background, Usopp sees Nico Robin watching them with a strange look, intent eyes focused so sharply on them even as she doesn’t step closer to the huddle they’ve made.
If Usopp was a braver man, he might even have called those eyes yearning.
It’s been a day of pirates for the Germa Princess, and she takes her private ship and swivels it sharply into the ocean. Sanji’s grown so tall, as tall as the rest of them.
She’d assumed he would stay small, and soft, for the rest of his life. Without any enhancements, it seemed impossible for that boy to become anything. And yet he looked impossibly large, standing there, laughing with his crew. She’d watched him for ages, unable to look away from him after all these years.
Does she have any right to look at him now?
The ship rocks, and she can see her five soldiers manning the boats. They’re under her explicit orders, but they’ll be dead by nightfall. She’ll blame pirates for it, but no word can get back to her father of what transpired and she already doesn’t trust them.
The denden mushi on her ship rings, and she goes to answer.
“Apparently, if it was him, he helped take down a Warlord, if the rumours are to be believed. The people here really don’t want to talk about the Straw-Hat Pirates, but I’ve managed to make some headway.”
Ichiji sounds bored as he reiterates the story, bland and displeased. It’s a story he wouldn’t speak of if it didn’t interest him, however, and Reiju stills, considering the statement in those words. All the implications of it.
“Crocodile? I didn’t know he was so weak,” Reiju remarks, fascinated by those words.
She’d always assumed the World Government was interested in partnering with the strongest pirates on the seas. It does explain the abnormally high bounties for the Pirate Hunter and Strawhat, if they’re already that strong. Her research into the crew suggested they’d only just started to come together, though the origins for Sanji’s appearance are still hazy.
It’s not easy to track someone by a vague moniker, after all.
“The Princess here is particularly tight-lipped. She wouldn’t elaborate any further when pressed, and refers to them exclusively as Straw Hats. She says she didn’t know their names or why they had any interest in Crocodile, either.”
Unsurprising again, Reiju thinks, as she states out the window of her own ship. They seemed odd, but easy to like. Warm people for an equally warm boy. She wonders idly if the Princess had known that about them, or if she had seen their warmth and read it as a flame. If she’d been terrified she might someday burn down because of it.
“Then it’s likely she wasn’t involved,” Reiju replies, cool, factual.
It’s better to rely on logic. On the hard facts. She knows better than to balance on her emotions, to thread that unfortunate line. If she gives into a feeling, she might get caught on it. Speared, in ways that could lead her down a path to the end of her life.
She keeps the thought of warmth to herself, her own secret flame.
Ichiji doesn’t bother responding. Niji would scoff, Yonji would whine. Ichiji is always the one who reacts so little, it makes it difficult to know what’s on his mind. Some days she wonders if he’s more mask than man.
“Yonji and Niji are being directed to Alinam Island. Rebellion rumours are stirring and they want to stop the revolutionaries before things get out of hand, so it’s just us left to look into this matter. Father claims he has no use for a boy pirate, but he wants to make sure we can bury this situation before it causes problems. Make sure he never tries to claim our name for any of his exploits, at the least. The Nefertaris don't seem interested in pursuing this as a threat to the Germa, at least.
Keep scouting the islands after Alabasta, see if you can confirm what name he’s using, or if he goes by Mr Prince exclusively.”
He never was interested in the details when it came to Sanji, Reiju thinks, but Ichiji hangs up before she can reply, his report complete and orders assigned. She sighs, and lets the silence swarm back into space.
The only sound echoing around her is the sea, rocking her boat gently along the waves as she sits there, hearing the sound of her own heartbeat.
It’s been, she thinks, a very long day.
The boat creaks, her small ship taking to the sea with ease. It winds and weaves through the waters. Outside, the rain rages on, and she stares into the lightning with vague distrust. So focused she is on the seas, she misses the signs until she hears it — a loud bang.
The princess stirs. Immediately she’s out the door, brushing past onto the deck where her soldiers, the handful relegated to maintaining the mechanics of the ship, are all peering over the side of the dock. They’ve probably banged into a particularly large fish, or some sort of creature. Reiju steps past them, and the Germa step aside, programmed to follow her movements.
Over the side of the ship is neither a beast, nor a rock. Instead, her blue eyes go wide, and she’s staring down the seas at a man, and his dinghy, and the wide hand on her ship, restraining it from truly hitting him.
He leans against her ship like the feat of strength is nothing, and grins up at her. The soldiers ignore him, while they go to work repairing the side of her boat that looks singed. Until she declares him a threat, they know only to respond in this particular manner. Their programming, after all, is limited in such ways that they never have to deal with the complexities of the thoughts running through her own mind right now.
It’s rare too, that Reiju Vinsmoke is ever caught off guard.
And she has no idea how to respond at all, when the man in front of her tilts his hat upwards, fixes her with a goofy grin, and raises his hand to say, “Sorry about that! Didn’t see you there! Fell asleep at the wheel.”
Reiju continues to stare at the man, only mildly disbelieving.
She doubts the Second Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates is so sloppy as to fall asleep at the wheel of his own ship, on the Grand-Line, of all places. She cannot, however, imagine what business he has with her ship besides interest in robbing it. For a man to attack such a small passenger vehicle is cowardly. And of everything she’s heard of the Whitebeard Pirates, cowardly isn’t a qualifier to join them.
The thoughts that she finds herself sorting through end here, in the easiest one.
He’ll make a useful scapegoat for the next part of her journey.
At the very least, he’ll give her a reason to not tell Judge about her little visit to Jaya, and if things catch fire, well, it’s simply not her fault that she was unfortunate enough to run into him, right?
She tries not to investigate the thought that lingers, wondering why she has to go to such lengths in the first place. It simply feels right. And that's too dangerous to examine either. It's dangerous to give into feelings.
“It’s dangerous to travel alone. Why don’t you come aboard and we’ll give you a lift to your destination,” Reiju says, smiling sweetly. She turns to one of the soldiers, and says, “Drop the ladder.”
Already, she’s staging the accident.
The pirate beams at her, looking so pleased at the suddenness of her offer.
“Thanks, lady! Can you get me to Mocktown, on Jaya?”
Reiju continues to smile, even as she turns to one of the soldiers and nods once. They’ll redirect the ship with no trouble to head back to where they came from.
The pirate climbs onto the deck, and holds one large hand aloft at her, as he says, “My name’s Ace!”