"One Piece, Two Piece, Red Piece, Blue Piece"

"One Piece, Two Piece, Red Piece, Blue Piece"

A Fan-Fiction by neomage

(DISCLAIMER: The title of this series of vignettes was inspired by the Dr. Seuss book title, "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish." I hold no claim to ownership of that book title.

One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda and Shonen Jump.)

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Vignette 01

It was another normal day on board the Thousand Sunny. Zoro and Sanji were busily trading insults. Robin was on the deck calmly reading one of her many books. Usopp was telling lie after lie about his supposed seafaring exploits to the ever-attentive and ever-gullible Chopper. Franky was chugging down cola like it was water, and Luffy was somewhere else on the ship doing only who knows what.

Inside the library, Nami was carefully drawing up the latest map, while doing her utmost best to drown out the boisterous noises from the crew outside with some humming of her own. Carefully, she drew a series of straight lines to help her map out the geographical location of the Sea King nests they'd passed just yesterday. That was not an experience she wanted to relive, particularly since these Sea Kings had seemingly been strategizing with each other to bring the Thousand Sunny underwater. Nami had never figured that Sea Kings could be capable of intelligent thought. As she drew up the map, she made a mental note not to forget that kind of information ever again.

The sounds of the crew's activity outside the library door thudded dully on Nami's brain, and she sighed and put the pen down. Out of the entire crew, she figured, only she and Robin were the closest to being normal or sane. Well, barring the fact that Robin was a Devil Fruit user, but that was beside the point. Franky probably qualified as sane and normal…then Nami remembered that he constantly paraded around the ship in briefs and used cola as a power source for his weird cyborg body, and she immediately crossed him off the "normal and sane" list. Chopper was as normal as a blue-nosed reindeer who happened to be the ship's doctor and who could change his form to match any situation could get. Usopp was definitely nowhere near sane, what with the outrageous fibs he was always telling everyone about himself. And she didn't even want to get started on Zoro or Sanji—but at least she knew how to manipulate those two to get whatever she wanted; Zoro with the debt he owed her, Sanji with his ever-annoying declarations of love that Nami knew were motivated only by the brain that resided below his belt.

Then there was Luffy…

At the mere thought of her idiot captain, Nami's migraine multiplied a hundredfold. So far, she hadn't heard his voice out of the whole bunch outside, and as far as she could tell that would be for any number of reasons. Maybe he was trying to raid the fridge again, in which case it should be Sanji's problem and not hers. Only Nami knew that it would immediately become her problem if Sanji should go to the kitchen, find Luffy trying to break the fridge's padlock, and start a noisy quarrel that would only serve to intensify the headache she was currently feeling. Maybe Luffy was sleeping somewhere on the ship—but if he was sleeping somewhere he shouldn't be, one of the others might yell at him, and again that would hurt her head a lot more.

But just the fact that she wasn't hearing his voice outside at all caused Nami to rub her hands against her temple in irritation. At least if she knew where he was (and that was usually possible by listening out for his boisterous, childish screams), Nami could be somewhat prepared for whatever antic Luffy might come up with. But he was so unpredictable sometimes, she couldn't help but wonder why he was the captain of the ship. Then she remembered their pirate flag bore a skull wearing a straw hat, and Luffy was the only one on board who ever wore a straw hat, and he was the one who'd gathered them all together from Day One. Nami squeezed her eyes shut as the migraine stabbed at her skull.

Shaking her head, determined not to let the crew's insanity and Luffy's randomness get to her, Nami picked up the pen again and dipped its tip into the open ink bottle at the head of her desk…

…and suddenly, out of nowhere, the library door swung open with a bang, and Luffy's head came from the doorway right up to Nami's desk, his neck stretching thanks to the power of his Gomu Gomu fruit. "HI, NAMI!" he yelled out, right in her face.

Caught off-guard by Luffy's sudden unorthodox entrance, Nami shrieked and yanked her upper body backward in her seat. Unfortunately, in doing so, she yanked the pen out of the ink bottle quite forcibly—and this caused the bottle to tip over, spilling some of the ink onto a corner of the map she'd been working on.

Both of them froze. Their eyes widened as the ink stain slowly spread across the map. Then Nami's hair overshadowed her eyes; she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. Luffy blinked at this development. "Uh, heh-heh-heh…sorry?"

Very, very slowly, Nami stood up, her fists tightly balled at her sides. She lifted her head, and now her eyes were visible—and there was a hunger for blood in them. "Luffy…why did you think it was so necessary to do that?" she asked in a voice that promised a whole century's worth of pain if she didn't get a rational answer from him.

Luffy chuckled a little. "Heh…well, I, uh…I just wanted to tell you something important, that's all."

"And what could be that important?" Nami grated.

Luffy grinned a little, though considering the look on Nami's face his grin was small. He stretched one hand from the doorway into the room, put that hand on top of his head—

—and in one swift movement, he lifted his trademark straw hat from his head and placed it on Nami's. "I just wanted to say…I think my hat looks really good on you." And then he stretched his head and hand back to the rest of his body at the doorway, gave a bigger grin, and then hurried off, shutting the door with a bang.

Nami just stood there, eyes wide with utter astonishment. Slowly, without her even realizing it for a moment, she reached a hand up to touch the straw hat. This hat, she knew, was the same straw hat that Luffy had mentioned he was safekeeping for Shanks, the famous pirate; the same straw hat that he'd fight to protect from being lost or damaged; the same straw hat he'd entrust to one or another of his nakama if he felt a situation was going to get ugly; the same straw hat he considered his greatest treasure. And there had been a few times when he'd entrusted the hat to her care while he dealt with an enemy, she remembered that much.

But Luffy had never before done such a thing as he'd just done.

A light blush crept over Nami's face as she touched the hat. All of a sudden, the migraine she'd been suffering and the huge ink stain that now ruined her newly-drawn map didn't seem quite so big after all.

She kept the hat on for the rest of the day.

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neomage: I got the idea for this late last night at around 3:30 in the morning, when I should've been sleeping but was unable to do so. I was inspired to write this little piece after recalling how Luffy entrusted his hat to Nami before he wnet to fight Arlong, and again when he was going to fight Eneru during the Skypiea arc. And you have to admit, the straw hat DOES look good on Nami.

More random drabbles to come!