What's up? Here's the fourth chapter of Sun Kissed, I hope you enjoy :)

~From porcelain to ivory to steel~

Nami knew exactly where she was going. There was no time to waste and the job she had been given was perfect for her. She had grown up on a tangerine farm and therefore she knew where trees bearing fruit thrived the best. Her job was to find lemon looking fruit. It was basically a pink lemon, but it had a fancy name which Nami couldn't remember, but that wasn't important. She had the drawing of it and she had been told what it was, so she knew where to find it. She knew the kind of soil she was looking for. It had to rich in bacteria and water, so it had to be on the island's northern side where Nami had determined the soil would be the richest. She also knew that trees bearing fruit needed plenty of sunlight, so it couldn't be located in an area where the trees stood too close to each other like they had done in the part of the jungle, which they had first explored.

Nami had been walking for almost four hours when she finally reached her destination. It wasn't too far from the Sunny and with some luck, she could be back by sunset. Nami smiled when she reached a place where the trees thinned out, but her smile faded as soon as she heard some unfamiliar voices. Nami was quick to hide and climbed the nearest tree, where the leaves would cover her perfectly. It wasn't until Nami had been hidden in the tree for a good five minutes that she could start making out what the voices were saying and as she had nothing better to do, she just listened.

"I don't understand why the captain is making us do this?" One guy said and there was a sound of a fist meeting the trunk of a tree. Nami was glad that he hadn't hit the tree she had been hiding in, because she would surely have yelled out in surprise.

"It can't be helped. We are the newest members, it's only fair if we do the boring work," another man said, "when someone else joins, they'll have this job."

"'Only fair'? We're looking for food! Shouldn't this job be given to the kitchen boys?!" This time the guy slammed his fist into the tree Nami was hiding in, but she was prepared and put a hand to her mouth to prevent any sound from escaping.

"Let's take a break," the calmer one of the two suggested, "We'll make camp here and set a base. We can hunt wild game if you want to do other things that picking herbs and gathering fruits."

"Fine," the angry one said and Nami heard as they started unpacking their things. She was feeling brave today so she peeked out of the leaves and took a look at the people who had decided to set camp right under the tree she was hiding in.

One of them was big, like really big. He wasn't super tall, maybe around Franky's height, he was just a mountain of muscles. One of his arms were probably bigger than Nami and she shuddered when she thought about how easy it would be for him to crush her like a grape. In addition to being way bigger than Nami liked, he also carried a giant axe on his back. She really didn't want to get on this guy's bad side.

There was one who was significantly smaller, but that was just in comparison to the big guy. He reminded Nami a bit of a shaggy version of Sanji. He had a tender and lean build, but he was no doubt strong. He had brown hair a little longer than Sanji, but tied in a ponytail with only a few bangs falling on his face. He wore long, loose trousers and a white shirt which had definitely seen better days, and by his belt he had two guns attached, as well as a small dagger. Somehow Nami felt that he was the deadlier of the two.

There was also a third person. This guy was younger that the first two, and looked significantly weaker. He had short black hair and he wore a simple grey shirt with matching shorts. He had a small pocket knife at his belt, but otherwise no weapons. Nami guessed that he was some sort of cabin boy, who had just been dragged along to carry their things and make their camp.

Nami would have had no problem creating a diversion which would look quite natural, thanks to her clima tact, but the problem lay in the fruit she was supposed to bring back. Right opposite Nami, where the three guys had set up their camp, was the tree she was looking for. Nami knew that now that they were setting camp, they wouldn't leave and she couldn't really stay hidden in the tree until they eventually decided to leave, which according to the conversation could be days from now. They had equipment and gear for a camp, and they had said that they would make a base, which meant they were planning on staying in this exact spot until they had the food they needed. So Nami needed to find some way to get the fruit without getting into a fight she couldn't hope to win.

҉

Nami was getting pretty sore from sitting on the same branch for hours on end. She was waiting for the perfect moment where they would leave camp to go hunting, but they had been arguing for so long about how to do this and that, and what was the smartest thing to do that they had never gotten anywhere. Nami desperately needed to get to the tree before nightfall, because she did not want to walk through the forest in the dark. There was no telling what could happen if she couldn't see, and as long as there were enemies around she couldn't light a torch as it would give away her position. She had about one hour before night arrived, and the walk back would be around four hours, so even if she somehow got the fruit now she was still doomed to three hours of darkness. Though at that point she would be safely away from these guys and she might dare to make some light, but these were all speculations for later, for now, she needed to get to the fruit.

Finally, the guys had stopped arguing and to Nami's luck and good fortune the one who was left behind to guard the camp was the scrawny looking kid, who probably had zero fighting experience. She waited ten minutes until she initiated her attack, since she didn't want any noise to lure the other guys back to camp. She was smart enough to know that she was a dead girl, if she had to fight all three of them.

Nami had decided to go with a surprise attack rather than a seduction attempt, as this guy was probably more scared of failing and getting punished, than he was attracted to her. So she prepared for her attack by making her famed thunder clouds and attacked with a strong Thunder Tempo which would knock out most people. As soon as the attack had successfully hit its target, Nami jumped down from the tree and made her way to the pink lemons, not once looking back at her opponent. A big mistake.

Nami felt a searing pain in her left foot and fell to the ground in pain. Somehow the boy had stayed unaffected by the attack and had only fallen down due to shock. From his place on the ground he had stabbed Nami in the foot with his little pocket knife and he now towered above her. Nami would have been horrified if the boy had shown some kind of confidence, but after having stabbed her he just looked more scared than her and muttered a weak I'm sorry. Nami took the chance to look at the damage. She was bleeding alright, but it wasn't much worse than what Miss Doublefinger had done to her back in Alabasta, and she was much tougher now than she had been back there, so she got back up on her feet, and prepared herself for the fight to come.

The boy was clutching the small knife like a lifeline and the only thing that worried Nami about this situation was that he had taken no damage from the lightning which was her strongest attack. She would just have to figure it out as she went along... or perhaps she could avoid fighting all together. The boy didn't seem up for it, so Nami could always try to sway him.

"Why don't we make a deal?" Nami said smoothly trying to sound intimidating, but flirtatious at the same time, "I just grab the fruit on that tree behind you and then I leave without defeating you. You won't have to tell your two friends anything and no one gets hurt, sounds good right?" She tried to smile to the boy, but apparently her little seduction attempt didn't work.

"No! They'll find out! I have to defeat you or die trying!" The boys legs were shaking more than Nami had ever seen Usopp shake, so she honestly wasn't too scared of fighting him. She just couldn't let her guard down again. She got in her fighting position and waited until the boy came to her.

He charged at her, knife first, and she blocked him with the clima tact and swiped him off his feet. He landed on a surface of moss and flowers, making his landing soft, but she immediately tried to hit him in the head, in the hopes of knocking him out, but he quickly rolled away and tried to stab her left thigh as he got back up on his feet. She quickly blew him away with a burst of cold air ejected by a wind dial, but he managed to leave a small cut on her leg. It wasn't deep, so only a few drops of blood spilled, but Nami got annoyed because despite his cowardice, he still put up a decent fight... but only a decent fight.

Nami had a plan and she was already going through the first step without the boy noticing. She was steadily increasing the temperature around the boy which would no doubt make him sweat, and that was important. After the two had been gashing out after each other for some time, Nami decided that it was time. She made the temperature drop rapidly around him which, using the sweat on his skin, would make his body very cold much faster than his body could adjust to it. That would lower his reaction speed and his punches would get weaker for about a minutes time. A minute, however, was more than what Nami needed to take him out. Since lightning probably didn't work she decided to go for his head again, but this time her swing of the clima tact would be faster thanks to the wind dial which would boost the speed. This would have been perfect, but for some reason the boy's reaction time hadn't slowed down at all and he managed to dodge an attack which Nami was sure would have landed, which meant that she lost her balance and fell to the ground.

"How?!" Nami screamed in frustration, "Why don't my attacks work on you?!" She didn't exactly expect a reply, but the boy answered anyway.

"L-lightning and heat based attacks don't work on me... unless it's really really hot..." The boy stammered and apologized again. Seriously what was wrong with this guy?

"And why is that?" Nami asked, hoping that he was stupid enough to provide with more answers... he was.

"I-it's my d-devil fruit... M-my body is made of porcelain..." He answered and Nami just looked at him for a while... porcelain.. had she heard that right? Porcelain was fragile right, shouldn't that make a person weak? But the more she thought about it the more it made sense. Like rubber, porcelain wasn't affected by lightning, which was how he'd endured the first attack. Porcelain also didn't get affected by low heat levels, which meant that the boy probably wouldn't start sweating unless he was in the mouth of an erupting volcano. He also hadn't taken any direct hits from any of Nami's attempts to hit him in the head and the one time she had succeeded in making him fall, he had fallen onto the soft surface, where he wouldn't get hurt. It all made sense, and it also meant that she had to change tactics. If her weather based techniques wouldn't work, she would have to do it the old fashioned way. It had been some time since she had used a staff... as a staff, but years of stealing from pirates by herself weren't forgotten and she could still fight with her body.

She decided that if she could just hit him in the head, or maybe even in one of his legs, she would win, question was just how. The boy was fast and if she was too close for too long, he would stab her. The little pocket knife might seem useless, but the smaller the weapon, the harder it was to block, and if she was stabbed enough times, she would bleed out very fast.

Before Nami could come to a solution to her problem the boy attacked again, but this time his left hand transformed into a sharp edge, and he closed in on her from two sides. Nami was fast to react and dodged the knife coming from the right, while she pushed his other hand aside with her clima tact. She then planted a kick on his chest and although there hadn't been much force behind it, the pain on his face was clear, which meant that he was weak to direct attacks on his body. While the boy was still reeling from the pain, Nami attacked again and this time she had more success. He hadn't been fast enough to dodge the attack, so he tried to block it with his arm. When her clima tact collided with his arm there was a shattering sort of noise and he fell back in pain. Now to deal the finishing blow. Nami got ready to swing her clima tact fiercely down to his legs, so that he wouldn't be able to move around, but just before she could do so, a bullet was shot right by her feet and she quickly retreated.

Much out of luck, Nami now found herself face to face with that shaggy looking dude and his face told her that she was in for a world of pain.

"What do we have here?" He teased and looked her up and down. If she wasn't trying to protect herself, she would have covered her body up as much as possible, but she kept her stance, ready to defend herself, "Aren't you a beautiful one?" He licked his lips and she shivered.

"Beautiful enough for you to let me go?" She pleaded with very little confidence, and he just smiled at her.

"Let you go? After you've attacked my little cabin boy? He might not be the strongest, but he is a fellow crew mate, and the captain would be sad to hear that we let the person who did this awful thing to him escape. So girl, you can either surrender now, and I won't hurt you... too much, or we can do this the hard way. Your choice."

Nami gulped, the big guy was nowhere to be seen and the boy probably wouldn't fight now that back-up had arrived, so she calculated her chances and slowly let her clima tact do its work, while she distracted him.

"If I surrender," she stalled, "what exactly would you do to me?"

"Well, we'd give you to our captain, tell her what you have done and then.. well, the captain has been missing a girl's company for some time now, so I'll let you imagine the rest."

Nami trembled. She hoped she could get safely away from here, she just needed to grab the fruit and then run, run as fast as she could. She just needed to make sure that he couldn't follow her, for at least a little while, and since the boy was down, she now had her greatest asset at her disposal again; the weather. The clouds were slowly forming and without a warning there was a great downpour which took the guy by surprise.

"What the hell?!" He exclaimed and looked up towards the sky. Luckily for Nami the forest was just thick enough for her clouds to look as if they covered the entire forest, when in reality they only covered the small area where they stood. This meant that he had no idea that this was her doing and apparently the boy decided not to tell him, so she played along.

"What's with this rain?" She screamed, "My weapon won't work now!" She played the perfect part of a girl in distress, and by the mention of weapons, the guy looked to his guns. This had been her motive, wetting the gunpowder, so he no longer had any long ranged weapons. There was no telling how much her thunder tempo would affect him, so she'd rather play it safe and take as many assets away from him as possible.

While the guy was examining his weapons, she quickly prepared her thunder clouds and attacked before he could do anything to stop her. This time she made sure to keep an eye on him as she made her way to the tree and picked the pink lemon. She carefully placed it in her bag and got ready to leave when they guy started to stir. She decided to give him a good bang in the head before turning around to escape.

"What's all this noise?" a deep voice called and Nami cursed her luck. First the boy with the devil fruit power, then the guy with the guns and now this one, the big one. What were the chances?

Nami slowly took a few steps back and now found herself cornered. She had her back to a tree, and if she ran in the direction she was standing in right now, she would both get lost because the sun was setting and she would also probably get caught as the trees in this direction thinned out and there was nowhere to hide. The pain in her foot slowly began to make itself noticed again, so if she before doubted whether or not she could outrun them, now she was sure she couldn't. She needed the cover of the trees to get away safely. At least now she had the fruit, so she only had to worry about escaping alive.

She let her clima tact get to work again and prepared for yet another thunder tempo, but this time, a warning was shouted from the boy.

"Be careful! She can create lightning!" Nami shot the boy a look of death and resumed her attack, but since she had been forced to attack earlier than planned, the range was smaller than she wanted and the guy dodged it. By now, Nami had almost taken out all of the water from the air and without water, she couldn't create static, so this would be the end of her thunder attacks. There was plenty of water on the ground tough, so Nami cooled the area down and before the big guy could react the ground around him was slippery and a perfect opportunity for Nami to escape in. She dashed past him and as he tried to follow her, he slipped and fell right beside the guy who had been taken down by her lightning.

Nami ran as fast as she could, but she hadn't even been running for thirty seconds when a giant axe came flying her way and took down a tree right beside her. She stopped, looked back and found herself face to face with her two pursuers. The big guy and the dude with the ponytail.

"It seems like we underestimated you, girl," the ponytail guy said and he was no longer smiling, which made Nami even more scared, "Before we would have taken you alive, but now..."

Nami was screwed, there was no time nor enough water to make another lightning attack, and she couldn't run away, so she had to defend herself and figure something else out. The guy drew his dagger and with scary precision he aimed for her neck. Nami barely blocked it, but fell backwards as a result of her fast block. He then went for her torso, she blocked him again, and he looked annoyed, not at her, but the clima tact.

"Enough with this!" He yelled and yanked the clima tact from her hands and threw it away. He was now on top of her, her hands were being pinned down by his free hand and the dagger loomed over her.

"Time to say goodbye!" He swung the dagger towards her and she closed her eyes. There was the sound of a blade cutting through flesh and bone, but Nami felt no pain and opened her eyes. As she looked up she cried tears of relief. The guy had dropped his dagger beside her, as he had been stabbed in the shoulder by a tender sword. When the blade withdrew, the guy released his grip on her and she kicked him away and ran to her saviour.

"Brook!" She cheered and hugged the skeleton.

"Yohoho~ I'm glad you're okay, mademoiselle~" He sang and Nami half-expected him to ask about her panties, but he never did and instead gave her the clima tact, "The fight isn't over yet, Nami-san. We still need to take down that guy." Brook pointed his sword in the direction of the big guy and Nami took a stance beside him. She felt much safer and much more confident now that she wasn't alone anymore, and they prepared for battle.

The guy had at some point retrieved his axe and as he stood taller than Brook and bigger than the two of the combined, Nami took a better look at him. He wasn't really wearing anything, just a torn pair of shorts and some harnesses, which kept his axe on his back when he didn't use it. He had a few scars, but none as prominent as the ones Zoro had. Most of them were on his chest and upper arms, but it seemed like he had some all over his body. Nami gripped her clima tact tighter. It was almost completely dark now and finding their way back would probably take them much more than four hours, but at least there was two of them.

The big guy charged with a battle cry and swung his axe down between them. They each jumped to their own direction and they now had the opportunity to attack from two sides. Nami charged the end of her clima tact with electricity and leapt forward as Brook did the same and jumped to cut the guy from above. Just when they were within range, the guy swung his axe out. First in Nami's direction, which she narrowly dodged by thrusting her clima tact into the ground, thus stopping her momentum and ducked into safety. When the axe came for Brook, the guy was just a second too late and received a cut from elbow to shoulder. Brook then landed in front of Nami and helped her to her feet. They didn't have time for conversation as the guy swung his axe again and they got separated once more. Apparently the guy had decided to go after Nami first and threw the axe after her. She dodged, but the axe took down yet another tree, which then fell in her direction. She escaped with a slight bruise, but her dodging had brought her closer to the big guy and this time it was his clenched fist, which was coming her way. She dodged again as Brook jumped forwards and cut him across his torso.

"What a crazy endurance," she heard Brook say and turned to look at him and their opponent. He had now taken two direct attacks from Brook, but he acted like he couldn't even feel it. Nami's eyes widened. Her stamina was running low. This was her third fight, and they had all occurred within the last hour, she could feel her energy fading from fatigue and blood loss, yet she dared not leave Brook to fight this guy on his own. There was no telling what Brook had been doing since she had seen him that morning, so he couldn't trust that he was completely fine either. They had to beat this guy together and they had to do it fast, because she didn't know how much longer she would last.

The guy readied himself for another punch and they both got out of the way before he could even get close. The guy then decided to pull a tree out from the ground and threw it at them. Nami first screamed, but then dodged out of the way. She then hid behind a tree and heard as Brook got another attack in. Nami then raised the temperature around the guy. If he wouldn't go down after being cut open, maybe he would if he dehydrated. She sent heat ball after heat ball and hoped that it would have some sort of effect. After a while it seemed that his movements slowed down and Nami leapt from her hiding spot and tried to hit him with another thunder charged clash. She succeeded and he took a few steps back. Brook then slashed him again and this time he fell to his knees. The two of them did a high five as it seemed that they had won, but they were too quick to celebrate as the guy got back up on his feet and now looked angrier than ever.

Nami and Brook resumed their battle stances once again, and Nami was ready to tear her head off in frustration. Wouldn't this ever end? The guy took a step closer to them and Nami clutched at her clima tact. And they all stopped moving. The place had gone from being almost completely silent to being loud enough for all of them to cover their ears. Nami couldn't even tell what the sounds were, just that they were loud. It didn't last long and as soon as the sounds died down, the guy went on the attack and Nami wasn't prepared as his fist loomed over her. She screamed, Brook ran to protect her, but he never got the chance, as the guy got tackled to the ground and they heard the howling of a wolf.

To Guest1: Thank you so much for your lovely review, and I am glad that my story gave you a different insight on the characters. It is important for me to make the characters as much alike their cannon selves as possible, even though it is quite hard at times. I hope you will like the many crew interactions to come, and thank you again for being so supportive :)

If you enjoyed reading this chapter then please fave, follow for more and leave a review with your thoughs. All the support is much appreciated :D