Don't think me strange, but I cannot wait to get to 40 for no reason other than to have the chapter number end with a 0. .
"But, it's your fault, idiot-brow!"
"You were the one leading the way!"
"Well, you're the one who let me!"
Luffy, Vivi and Usopp exchanged grinning looks. They had been looking for their friends with the assistance of the Usopp pirates, Onion, Carrot and Pepper. It seemed like they were close as the less-than-quiet insults echoed in the hall.
"Guys, come on!" Luffy shouted, hands cupped around his mouth. "We're going to see Nami!"
"We're coming if this dumbbell doesn't get us lost between here and the next turn!" Sanji called back.
There was an exclaimation of pain followed by a snicker, then Zoro shouted, "I'll get there, but I make no promises about the dartboard!"
The Usopp pirates looked scared, but Luffy, Usopp and Vivi giggled. It was normal, better than it had been of late, that their friends were threatening each other and exchanging insults. It was, perhaps, a good sign.
"I hope that the doctor has arrived," Vivi mumbled thoughtfully as they waited for Sanji and Zoro.
"Well, I don't," Luffy huffed, crossing his arms and puffing out his cheeks. "I want to be there when the doctor gets there so I can tell if they're good or bad! I don't want Nami to be in the hands of a quack!"
Usopp laughed. "Where did you learn that term?"
"Mah... I'm not sure. I think I heard it from Shanks," Luffy said, tilting his head in thought. "But, it's the right word, isn't it? I don't want a duck pretending to be a doctor taking care of Nami."
Vivi and Usopp giggled while the vegetable trio just looked confused. "Luffy-san, that's not exactly what that means," Vivi said, gesturing delicately to a spot in the air. "But, I suppose I know what you're saying. I don't think the orphanage staff would be willing to change doctors if the doctor that shows up is bad, though."
"Why not?" Luffy asked with the kind of conviction no one ever expected him to have, especially at his age.
"Because doctors are expensive, and the orphanage is cheap," Usopp explained simply. "But, they wouldn't bring in anybody bad in the first place."
"That's probably right," Vivi conceded.
"My mom's probably getting worried," Carrot whispered loudly. Pepper and Onion nodded vigorously in agreement and chattered amongst themselves.
After a minute or two of indiscreet whispering, Usopp cleared his throat, interrupting them. "Now, then," he began, puffing out his chest and looking in the vague direction of his crew. "Things are slow for the time being. We can reconvene at a later date, my disciples, and share our knowledge. For now, you may go before your families grow suspicious."
"Yes, Captain Usopp!" the three of them shouted in unison and took off running towards the exit with questionable coordination.
Not a moment later, Sanji and Zoro came round the corner arguing quietly and elbowing each other at regular intervals. "Good, you're here. Hurry up, guys, c'mon!" Luffy ushered, waving his hand in a "come here" motion.
"We're coming, already, geez," Zoro grumbled.
"Do you think Nami-san will be awake when we get home?" Sanji asked, as they rejoined the group.
Vivi nodded. "I hope so. I think that would mean that she is getting better."
"Not if she needs more rest," Usopp said and suddenly Luffy was surprised and agreeing.
"That's right! If she needs sleep, she needs to sleep!" Luffy exclaimed, walking determinedly away. The others followed in mixed giggles and confusion, not exactly following Luffy's line of thought.
oOo
"Nami, we're home!" Luffy announced, dropping his backpack on the floor of the infirmary and skipping over to Nami's bedside. Several nurses shooshed him loudly as they moved around the stark white room tending to the half-dozen or so patients.
"Luffy, you need to be quiet. Even unconscious people get headaches," Usopp said, taking up a stool beside Luffy on Nami's right.
Vivi came into the room shaking her head. "Zoro-san and Sanji-kun are being held up in the lobby for arguing, again," she said, stepping up onto the side of an empty bed to give herself a boost onto the stool on Nami's left. "We ought to take our bags up to our rooms and try to calm them so they can come in, too."
"Alright..." Luffy pouted slightly, looking around. "Baa-chan!"* he called, addressing one of the nurses. "Is Nami's doctor here yet?"
The nurse scoffed loudly. "And I suppose I should tell you something like that? If the doctor were here, believe me, you'd know," she said, annoyed.
"Hmm. Alright, then, come on, Usopp," Luffy said, sliding off his chair and hurrying to scoop his bag up off the floor. "If we go fast, we won't miss anything down here. Vivi, you can stay with Nami, I'll get your bag."
"Oh, thank you." Vivi handed over her bag and Luffy and Usopp left her to converse with Nami's sleeping form.
Sanji and Zoro met them outside the infirmary, still bickering animatedly about something that Luffy and Usopp kept asking about with no results. Zoro seemed angry and more into the argument, but Sanji was irritated as well, to the point that he almost got off the stairs on the second floor with the rest of them. When he left for the third floor, Luffy made his inquiries.
"Ne, Zoro, what did you do this time?"
"Me?! Why me? He started it!" Zoro protested, shoving his hands in his pockets roughly. "It's his damn fault."
Luffy looked at Zoro with a blank but serious look. "That may be. But, I have a feeling that you'll be the one to go too far. Don't start a big fight, Zoro, just let it go."
Zoro and Usopp's jaws dropped. "Where did that come from?" Usopp asked.
"What do you mean? I just talked," Luffy said, returning to normal after his rather insightful advice. "I was only saying what I thought."
Still recovering from the shock of Luffy's insanely smart little blurb, Zoro struggled to find what he meant to say. "Well, uh... I mean, he's the reason that I'm mad and the reason that he's mad. It's his fault that we're fighting, I'm only trying to resolve it."
"Well, what are you fighting about?"
"Tch. Everything stupid under the sun. He's too curious, but he won't give me any answers himself."
"You're good at not actually answering," Usopp observed, then leaning over and whispering something to Luffy that made his eyes widen.
"Whaaat?" Luffy said, glancing over his shoulder at Zoro. "Won't give you answers about what?"
Zoro grit his teeth, considering. They would probably side with Sanji unless he swung it just right. And, he couldn't not answer, not for much longer. "About his past. He's been asking me about mine," Zoro said, practically a grumble. "I told him I don't remember anything and he still persists."
"Is that the truth?" Luffy asked, giving Zoro another oddly serious look.
"I think he's lying," Usopp told Luffy, as if he expected Zoro couldn't hear him.
Zoro glared at Usopp briefly before looking to Luffy. "It's as far as I'm willing to tell," he said, raising his chin slightly. He did not and would never consider that a lie. His past was his own, and he cherished what little he had. It wasn't for them to know.
"You know, Zoro," Luffy said, a thoughtful note in his innocent tone. "It doesn't sound fair." And that was all he said.
oOo
Sanji rejoined the group on the second floor landing and didn't so much as greet Zoro, opting instead to feign obliviousness to his very existence. "One of the kitchen hands came to get me on my way down," Sanji said, watching the stairs. "He said the doctor will be here any minute and we've got to make dinner in good time to have her."
"What? The doctor is staying for dinner?" Usopp asked.
"Yeah. I asked why, but a kitchen hand wouldn't know. But, I do know that the doctor makes the staff nervous."
"Why? Is he a duck-man?" Luffy asked seriously as they reached the bottom of the stairs and exited into the lobby.
Sanji laughed. "What? No. She's a witch, the way I understand it," he corrected, raising his eyebrows.
"There's no such thing," Zoro said, crossing his arms and frowning as Luffy led the way into the infirmary. Some nurses watched their group sternly and Zoro just watched them right back. "They're just overreacting, being too superstitious."
"A real witch?" Usopp asked loudly, seemingly not having heard Zoro at all. "That's too scary! Witches hurt people, not heal them!"
"Hush!"
Usopp flinched and lowered his voice. "We've got to get Nami out of here before the witch arrives!"
"You heard Zoro," Luffy said merrily as he climbed onto the only real chair beside Nami's bed. "There's no such thing as witches. You can't know until you see them, anyway. You gotta see if she has a big, beaky nose and warts!"
"I don't know what to make of that sentence," Sanji mumbled, taking a seat at the foot of Nami's bed. "Have we missed anything, Vivi-chan?"
Vivi looked up from adjusting the cloth on Nami's forehead. "Oh, no. She hasn't stirred since I've been sitting here. What were you four talking about?"
"The witch who's coming in," Usopp answered, shivering once.
"No, the doctor that's coming in," Zoro corrected.
"Oh?" Vivi raised her eyebrows at them. "A, uh... A witch doctor? I don't understand."
Sanji groaned, throwing his head back. "No, a normal doctor. I only heard from one of the kitchen hands that she's a bit harsh, that's all."
At that very moment the heavy door burst open and knocked a dent into the wall with its knob. The nurses stopped and looked up, and both conscious and unconscious patients, with the exception of Nami, stirred and looked up at the doorway, startled. A woman with the face of an old lady and the body of a much younger woman walked into the room with all the confidence in the world, swinging her hips as she went. "Do you want to know the secret to my youthfulness?" she asked no one in particular, grinning a witchy grin.
The nurses took a second to recover from that courteous introduction, but when they did, one stepped forth. "Excuse me, ma'am, but you can't be here if you're going to cause such a ruckus," the nurse said, her stern voice wavering slightly under the sunglass stare of the witch-like woman.
The witch threw her head back and laughed, her shoulders bouncing and raising her already belly-baring shirt to an indecent length. "Well, well, aren't you a brave one? I guess now you're gonna tell there ain't someone here who needs my help? Hee, you'd have quite the cancellation fee if you called me down here for nothing."
"D-Doctorine!" A small figure hid behind the witch's leg, clutching fistfuls of her purple pants. The group gathered around and on Nami's bed watched with curiosity and interest as a little child mumbled something to the back of the witch's leg.
"Heeheehee, of course! The patient always comes first; don't talk nonsense, child!" the witch laughed, doing a quick once-over of the room without moving a step. She turned her head to Nami's bed and lifted her sunglasses from her eyes, another big grin spreading across her face, this time crinkling her eyes in a somewhat sinister way. "There's my patient," she said.
"Wait, you're Doctor Kureha?" one of the nurses asked.
"Of course I am! Who the hell'd you think I was?" Kureha snapped, walking over to Nami's bed in her own time with the small child following close behind.
Sanji remained seated at the foot of the bed while Vivi and Usopp moved away deliberately to be further from the witchy doctor. Luffy and Zoro stayed where they were, sitting and standing respectively on the right side of Nami's bed.
Luffy raised his chin at the doctor. "You're gonna take care of Nami?" he asked.
"You can thank me later, kid. Now, get out," Doctor Kureha said, jerking her thumb towards the door. "I don't need a crowd of brats keeping me from my patient."
Sanji and Zoro looked to Luffy, whose dark eyes were focused solely on Doctor Kureha. After a minute, Luffy slid harmlessly off his chair and bowed at the waist. "She's in your hands." A moment later, Zoro and Sanji followed suit. From where they were, with two beds between themselves and Kureha, Usopp and Vivi did the same.
Slowly, the five of them left the nearly silent room with a small, sparkly eyed child watching them go from behind Kureha's legs.
oOo
"Do you think they'll come and get us when she's finished?" Vivi asked, combing through her ponytail with her fingers.
"I don't think so. But, if they do, I hope it's one of the nurses, not the scary witch doctor," Usopp said with a shiver.
From the corner of the room, Zoro shook his head. He'd already tried to correct them on the matter of witch doctors versus witchy doctors, but they weren't getting it. He was too annoyed to explain it all over again.
"If nobody comes to get us in five minutes, I'm going down there!" Luffy announced, nodding resolutely.
"Luffy, it's only been a few minutes. It takes longer than that to heal someone," Usopp informed, though he'd done nothing but doubt the lady doctor.
"Maybe we could ask Sanji-kun in a while? He's bound to know, since he knew that the doctor was going to come here earlier," Vivi suggested tentatively. "He should be done with dinner soon enough, right?"
"That's a great idea!" Luffy exclaimed, perking up. "Can we go ask him now?"
"Idiot. He's probably still busy," Zoro chided, looking sternly at Luffy.
An odd look flashed across Luffy's face as he looked back at Zoro. "Then, you can go in half an hour or so, right, Zoro?"
"Why me?" Zoro asked, getting a slight feeling that he'd already asked that.
"You need to talk to him anyway, so why not you?" Luffy countered, raising his eyebrows in the most perfect display of stupid and smart at the same time.
Zoro just scoffed and closed his eyes, deciding to either sleep or pretend to so he didn't have to talk to them about Sanji anymore. It was freaking annoying normally, but it was especially irritating when he hadn't done anything yet. No, not "yet," I haven't done anything and I won't.
Barely starting to nod off, Zoro heard a creak out in the hall that roused him. The floorboards in the hall outside the door didn't creak unless someone stood on them for a while; Zoro had learned that a while ago. The others didn't seem to notice, but he did.
"Whoever's standing out there, either state your business or go away," Zoro said, cracking an eye and looking towards the half-open door.
"Someone's out there? How do you know that, Zoro-san?"
"That's creeeepy! I thought you were asleep, Zoro!"
Luffy hopped into Zoro's view and pushed the door open the rest of the way slowly. "I didn't hear anyone, so how- oh! Hi, there!"
The child that was with Kureha in the infirmary was standing behind the door with one leg sticking right out in the open, staring with its big brown eyes at Luffy. The kid was wearing a tall pink hat with a white x on the front, their light brown hair sticking out everywhere. As far as Zoro could tell from the face, the hat, the purple shorts and the brown tank top, the child could be a boy or a girl. He really couldn't tell.
"What are you doing out here? Did you want to come in?" Luffy asked cheerily, gesturing widely to his room.
The child flinched and gulped like Luffy had threatened their very existence. "N-no!" the child squeaked. "Excuse me!" With that, the slight child grabbed the rim of their hat and ran off down the hall.
Vivi, Usopp and Luffy laughed and Zoro snorted. That was a very strange kid, in his mind, but he had a feeling Luffy was going to end up reeling him in.
"I'm gonna go make him my friend," Luffy decided, adjusting his hat and starting after the little child. "I'll be back in time for dinner!"
* Baa-chan - Like the female version of Ossan? I don't know. It's just "old lady," "granny," or some such. It's not very polite. xD
Finally we have another character coming in! I don't suppose anyone really needs to GUESS who it is, but I'm not going to say, just in case. Anyway, he's goin' to be fuuuuuun~!