Disclaimer: See disclaimer from Chapter 1.

~ Witch on the Waves ~

Chapter 2: Learning

"Nami? Take me with you."

Nami blinked. Then she asked, "Why?"

"I'm tired of staying at home! Do you know how frustrating it was to see you go off and save the village while I had to stay here and try to keep the villagers from provoking Arlong? Bellemere taught us both navigation! I want to go on adventures too!"

"Okay. You can come."

"Yaaaay!"

"BUT! You'll be training with me."

"Training?"

"Yes. Getting stronger. You may not be able to learn magic, but I've found out that there are a lot of super-powered people in this world. Remember the stories Genzo told us about Devil Fruits? Those are real. And besides Devil fruits, there are superpowers that anyone can learn and train to use. There are even perfectly ordinary normal people without superpowers who are strong enough to beat people with them. I plan to learn everything. Well, I don't know about Devil Fruits, they come with some dangerous weaknesses, but there's something called Haki that's even more powerful than Devil Fruits. So if you want to go on adventures with me, you're going to be training in all the same things."

At this point, Nojiko had a broad grin on her face and her eyes were shining. "When can we start?"

"As soon as we get under way."

"Yes!"

"Oh, and one more thing. Remember when we were five, and Bellemere talked to us about dreams?"

Nojiko smiled wistfully. "Yeah, you said… oh. OH! You still want to draw a map of the world."

Nami nodded. "I'm actually thinking I should make it an atlas, because the world is just too big to show proper navigational details on a single map, no matter how big you make it. And there's the issue of accuracy when projecting a sphere onto a flat piece of paper, as you know."

"Okay," agreed Nojiko. "I'll help you however I can. You know I have no talent for drawing, but I can take measurements for your navigational details. And pictures, you have to add pictures to your atlas!"

"Sis? It'll be great to have you with me." And Nami grabbed Nojiko in a great big hug.

"Hey Nami?" asked Nojiko while they were still hugging.

"Yes?"

"You said in your previous life you were a boy. Does that mean you like girls now?"

"I don't know. Quite possibly."

"Nami? Is this getting a bit awkward?"

"Eww, Nojiko!" said Nami, ending the hug and giving Nojiko a push. "Even if I do like girls, you're my sister. Bellemere potty trained us together!"

~ Witch on the Waves ~

It took another two hours before they were under way. Nami had originally not planned on taking any guns with her except for the shrunken double-Gatling overkill contraption, but Nojiko asked, "why not?" so they each brought a rifle and a pistol with them. Then Nojiko said, "What about the tangerine trees?" and they looked at each other and decided, "Genzo," so they tracked him down and asked him to keep the orchard watered.

They also decided to leave a Den-Den Mushi with Genzo with instructions to call in case there was an emergency, in particular a pirate attack. They said that if they were nearby they wanted to be able to come and help; of course, Genzo didn't know that Nami could teleport.

Another strange difference Nami had noticed between this world and her old one was that there were no tides around here, despite the existence of a moon. In Harry Potter's world, the tides dictated that sailing ships usually departed when the tide was going out, especially if they were docked or anchored in a river. In this one? No tides, so you just left whenever you wanted.

So they set sail on the single-masted open boat that Nami had received from Arlong so she could go on her mapping and stealing missions. It was seaworthy for the East Blue, though it was barely acceptable in good weather on the other oceans, and would have capsized within the first hour on the Grand Line. But in the East Blue, which was truly the calmest of oceans both by wind and by wave, you could sail from one end to the other in a boat like this, provided you had food and water. So long as you avoided the occasional Sea King, of course.

Nojiko and Nami started by checking the newspaper for the most recent pirate attacks, then used their combined navigational skills to conjecture where the pirates would go next, and how far they would be.

Nami would then use a scrying spell to peek around at the most likely locations for the pirates, and if she found them, would scry closer to find out what pirates were on the lookout and which direction they were watching. Nojiko would orient their boat in the right direction and prepare to lash their boat to the pirates' ship, and then Nami would place a Disillusionment Charm on the boat, a full set of stealth charms on them both, and then slowly teleport them into a position near the ship where they could sneak aboard without anyone seeing them.

And so began the legend of the East Blue's Pirate Burglars. Pirates would be sailing along, keeping a lookout for their next victim, be it village or merchant ship, when all of a sudden they would hear a pair of female voices giggling. They would whirl about, frantically searching for the source, leaning over the gunwales and looking everywhere from the crow's nest, but they would never see anything. And when they checked, all their treasure would be missing, sometimes along with some of their best food supplies, some of the captain's rare treasures such as rare maps and books, weapons, and on one occasion, a Devil Fruit.

Men whispered that the Burglars were a pair of mermaids who vanished beneath the waves the moment they finished stealing the treasure. That they were ghosts, come to take revenge for those they had killed. That it was a water sprite, fascinated with the way gold shone in the moonlight. That it was black magic (which almost no one believed, especially here in the East Blue). And most popular of all, that it was someone with a Devil Fruit.

It got to the point where Don Krieg, the pirate admiral of the East Blue with 50 ships under his command, distributed his treasure evenly among his 50 ships, and had two men set to guard each safe constantly, around the clock. He loudly proclaimed that, as the strongest pirate in the East Blue, that no monstrous Devil Fruit user would dare steal from him, and that he would kill him when he found him. (Of course it had to be a "him" despite the evidence of female voices; after all Don Krieg had a superiority complex and a lot of preconceived notions, so he was a misogynist, among other things.)

Meanwhile, Nami and Nojiko trained. If they weren't eating, sleeping, drawing maps, or adjusting the sail or the rudder, they were doing calisthenics, lifting weights, or working on their speed, stamina, and reflexes. They each took up a weighted wooden sword for training, and eventually they purchased real ones and searched out dojos to learn some swordsmanship. They practiced their aim with their guns (though Nami only once pulled out her Gatling overkill contraption, then decided it was a bit much for the East Blue). Nami kept up her training with her collapsible staff, but Nojiko decided that having a sword was enough and would prefer to focus on only one hand-to-hand weapon.

Whenever they "knocked over" a pirate ship for treasure, Nami would sneak up invisibly on the captain and use a weak compulsion charm to make him or her open their eyes, and use Legilimency to peek through their memories for information on anything super-powered or out of the ordinary. And once in a while, when they were back in Cocoyashi Village, Nami would teleport off to a Marine base in one of the four Blues, track down an officer, and do the same thing. It was a bit of an ethical breach when she broke into the mind of a Marine, especially when they weren't corrupt, but Nami had long since learned that the World Government as a whole was not exactly… well… good, especially at the top.

~ Witch on the Waves ~

Rumor being what it is, word of Don Krieg's braggings eventually got around to Nami and Nojiko's ears about a year after they had started their stealing spree, and they took it as a challenge.

"How do you think we should do this, Nojiko?"

"Hmm… well, we should do it at night. You know how your Disillusionment charm leaves a visible dent in the water where the boat lies? We can keep the lookout from seeing it by positioning the boat just right, but it won't work with this many ships."

"True. And if we're going to steal that Wootz steel armor Krieg is so proud of, we'd better do it while he's sleeping. I don't want to have to undress the guy."

Nojiko snickered. "Are you sure? You did say that you like both guys and girls… it could be fun."

"Pervert. That's of course assuming he doesn't actually sleep in the armor."

"Oh, gross. Imagine the smell!"

"Here's hoping he doesn't."

"Anyway," said Nojiko, "I think we're going to need to knock people out in order to get away with this without raising the alarm. And you said you want to avoid using a lot of magic in case someone in the area has Observation Haki, so… knockout gas?"

"Could work. Hmm… we could buy some knockout gas and I could magically expand the inside of the canister and duplicate the gas many times over under some wards. The conjured gas would last for a couple of days, and it'd be cheap and untraceable."

"They'd know after waking up that we used knockout gas."

"Not a problem. We've left physical traces before, scratches from lockpicks and open doors, it's not like anyone who's seen that evidence would really believe we're ghosts or sprites," Nami pointed out.

"And maybe tranquilizer darts in case some of the lookouts don't get a full whiff of the gas."

So one night, the two fifteen-year-olds navigated their invisible boat to windward of the Krieg's fleet, and released an absolutely massive amount of scentless knockout gas from a canister the size of a watermelon. The gentle breeze carried it towards the ships, and slowly, the Krieg Pirates fell asleep.

Five of the lookouts had not fallen asleep, and as Nojiko and Nami rushed their boat as fast as they could row towards the fleet, one of them raised the alarm, having looked down at the deck of a neighboring ship and seen everyone asleep. Two of them immediately climbed down the rigging to check on their fellows, and fell asleep almost before they hit the deck. The other three more or less kept shouting, unable to do anything else, until the two girls leapt aboard, invisible and holding their breaths, and used blowguns to hit the remaining lookouts with darts. The two girls immediately put their gas masks back on, and set about their work.

Silently, more out of habit than anything, the two of them hopped from ship to ship, methodically searching and robbing them thoroughly. They were ever so happy to find that the Don (it was a title) didn't wear his armor when he slept, and had in fact had it cleaned and polished when he took it off. Everything vanished into a pair of bags with undetectable expansion charms: armor, gold, cash, jewelry, watches, chronometers, sextants, maps, expensive wine and booze, and fancy food obviously meant for Krieg's own table. Strangely, despite his loud talk about planning to go to the Grand Line, he didn't have any Log Poses.

Then they jumped back to their boat, set sail, and slipped away through the night, not even leaving laughter behind this time, as their targets weren't awake to hear it.

"Oh yeah!" shouted Nami, after they teleported back to near Conomi Islands.

"Hahahaha! I think we made off with more tonight than ever before!" laughed Nojiko.

"Let's count it. I mean, I don't know what we're going to do with some of this stuff, especially the armor, but it'll be hilarious to see Krieg's face when he learns it's missing."

"When do you think he'll wake? I'm pretty sure he got a full dose of the gas, but he's a bit bigger than the average man, so…"

"I'll start up the scrying spell and we can keep an eye on him while we count our," Nami snickered, "profits."

All told, they stole around 230 million Beri worth of treasure that night, over four times as much as they had ever made in a single job before. Which, considering the sheer size of the Krieg Pirates' fleet (50 ships!) was actually surprisingly little. Apparently feeding that many men was expensive, and being part of a fleet was not nearly as profitable per ship as being a lone pirate vessel.

Krieg was one of the first to wake, being both larger and stronger, even without his armor, than most of his men. When he saw all his men passed out on the decks, and realized his armor was missing, his safe was empty, and that he had been hit by the Pirate Burglars, he was utterly stupefied. It took a full ten minutes before his stupefaction turned to fury.

Nojiko and Nami positively howled with laughter at seeing his face through the scrying spell.

The next year was bad for Don Krieg. Having lost all the fleet's money despite his bragging and his best countermeasures, he also lost the faith of many of the captains under him, and within a week, a full fifteen of his ships had slipped away and deserted him in the night, either alone or in groups. Between this, his loss of his armor, and the loss of his funds, he had to delay his plans to enter the Grand Line for two and a half years.

~ Witch on the Waves ~

Nami decided it was time for something different one day when they were back in Cocoyashi Village.

"So Nojiko, I'm thinking that we need to change things up in order to keep getting stronger."

"You're right, sis. We've been learning how to fight for a year and a half, and we've robbed blind pretty much all the big name pirates in the East Blue, but other than spars in the various sword fighting dojos we've visited, we haven't gotten much actual fighting experience."

"Well there was that time we drove off that ugly bandits-turned-pirates crew from attacking a town, but…" Nami shrugged.

"...we more or less sat on a cliff and sniped their legs out from under them until they broke and ran back to their ship."

"Yeah. Which was good for staying anonymous, but it wasn't really a fight."

"And there was that other time when a bunch of rookies tried attacking the village where we were eating ice cream…"

"…buuut," finished Nami, "when you reached over your shoulder to draw your sword their captain drooled at your bouncing boobs and passed out with a nosebleed."

"I still maintain that he was cute."

"He was a pirate and an idiot, you pervert."

"So maybe," said Nojiko, brushing off the friendly insult and coming to the same conclusion as Nami, "we should stop using stealth? And start fighting the pirates straightforwardly?"

"Yeah. You know we'll start getting a reputation?"

"Might as well start turning in bounties while we're at it."

"Only if they're genuinely bad people. The Marines only have one standard punishment for pirates, and I don't want to sentence someone to life in prison if they haven't even killed anyone, y'know what I mean?"

"Yeah," agreed Nojiko, grimacing. "Let's set the bar at killing innocent people or taking hostages. After all, technically we're thieves too, even if we only go after pirates."

"Sounds good. We're going to need to find a way to get on their ships without getting shot at with their cannons, and without letting them see my magic. We're still not strong enough to do the Rankyaku or flying slashes with our swords. In fact, we should probably not use any magic at all, just in case."

"Really? None at all?" Stare.

"Okay," Nami broke, "maybe a little. Where no one will notice. A couple of enchanted items, expanded bags and such."

"Hey," suggested Nojiko, "Why don't we anchor the boat just outside of cannon range, and swim in to attack the ship? We should be able to take a lot of crews by surprise, and even if we don't, we can duck underwater if they start shooting at us. We're both good enough to dodge that much, and we just swim underwater when we get closer. Since we're both able to use Kami-e, we should be fine if they're shooting at us when we jump out of the water."

"We'll have to wear something that we can fight in while it's wet."

"We'll be the Bikini Bounty Hunters!" said Nojiko, striking a pose.

"No. Just no. I want to be scary, not sexy."

"Well too bad, 'cuz you're already both. Remember that thirteen-year-old twerp who…"

"Don't remind me!" Nami cut her off. After a moment of thought, she smirked. "Hang on, I've got an idea. You know how we're not strong or fast enough to learn Geppo yet, right?"

"Right. And even if we did, we'd want to avoid using it because the Marines have this weird idea that they own the Rokushiki."

Nami nodded. "All of them except Kami-e are pretty obvious when you use them, though Rankyaku is fine to use since it's the same concept as a flying sword slash, just with your foot instead of a sword. But what if we were using something similar to Geppo on the surface of the water, which is a lot thicker and heavier than air?"

"You mean, like, run on water?"

"Exactly. More of a stomp than a natural run, and it'll produce a big splash and it might sting a bit at first, but if Geppo works, then in principle this should work and be much easier."

"Hey…" said Nojiko, obviously thinking out loud, "if this works, we'll build up a reputation for running on water… and then we can use that as an excuse for jumping to running on air. It's not that big a jump in concept, and we can always say we got the idea for running on water first, instead of the other way around."

"I like the way you think, sis. We'll have to use it in front of the Marines when we're dropping off bounties sometimes. But first," Nami said, getting up from her chair, "we have to learn it."

And she led the way down to the beach.

"So," started Nojiko, "basically just kicking off really hard. You think we should try it with one foot first, or two?"

"May as well start with a run. Water is pretty heavy, and I'm not sure how the wave we kick up will affect the next step we take, so we might not be able to stay in place."

"Okay. Ready?" Nojiko grinned.

"Set," Nami grinned back.

"Go!" And they both shot off from the beach, stepping down hard on the nearly still water as they hit it.

It worked. They bounced a little too high at first, but soon got the hang of running in a straight line on water.

Then Nami shouted, "Oh shit! How do we turn?!"

SPLASH! And they both took a dunk into the waves.

~ Witch on the Waves ~

Nami and Nojiko eventually learned to run on water well enough that they could turn, walk, or even hop in place if need be, though the walking looked weird, and anything slower than running resulted in getting soaked by the splashes. Still, it was a very good start, and the two of them began going after the smaller pirate bounties. May as well start safe, after all.

Fortunately for them, no one recognized them as the infamous thief or thieves known by the un-creative name of "the Pirate Burglars". They had changed their M. O. completely, now attacking in the open with sword and pistol, dashing over the water while dodging any shots, destroying ships' riggings and rudders, and wounding or knocking out every pirate aboard ship before leaving with any bounties aboard ship. They took any treasure with them (sometimes it was even their second time robbing the same pirates), and this time they also literally emptied the pockets of everyone aboard. But most bounty hunters took the money from their captures, so this was expected. And usually, a Marine ship would show up a day or two later, the pirates would surrender upon threat of being sunken, and that was that.

Nojiko and Nami managed to avoid killing most pirates, always going for disabling wounds and knockouts, though a few still died from cross-fire, dodged bullets, and in the chaos of battle. They always patched up the worst of wounds after the fight was over, sometimes with discreet blood-clotting spells from Nami.

They were careful to time their attacks so that there was a feasible period between them for travel time (using their expert navigational skills), not wanting anyone to put two and two together and conclude that they could move faster than a sailboat could travel. So they had a considerable amount of free time which they used for exploring in disguise or returning back to Cocoyashi Village.

~ Witch on the Waves ~

One day, Nami decided it was time to analyze that Devil Fruit they had stolen from a pirate a few months back. So, setting up a full set of temporary concealing wards on a small, uninhabited island that was part of the Conomi Island group, she drew up a ritual circle as Nojiko watched, holding a camera.

"So what I want to do is basically analyze the magic in this thing. All of the information we've learned so far tells me that Devil Fruits are some form of magic. They also feel inherently magical to me, and fortunately they don't feel like any kind of dark or light magic; there's no emotion infused in this magic.

"I'm going to treat this as an enchanted item, because that's my best guess as to what it is. It's a bit weird because according to our information, the enchantment exists beyond the fruit or the person who eats it: when someone dies, the nearest compatible fruit turns into the same Devil Fruit.

"That's assuming the enchantment actually transfers to the fruit, and it isn't just some kind of tracking magic that some powerful godlike being notices when a fruit user dies, and then re-creates the fruit from scratch. It seems unlikely to me though, because if that were the case it probably wouldn't be the nearest fruit that transforms into a Devil Fruit, but just a random one somewhere in the world.

"This ritual circle is designed to analyze enchanted objects and basically give me a diagram and a lot of runes so I can break down the enchantment into its magical components."

Nami finished drawing runes in the sand and pulled out a flask filled with a thick, viscous liquid. It was more or less just a thick liquid made with standard kitchen ingredients and some of Nami's blood to make it magically conductive.

She carefully poured some of the liquid into each of the runes, filling them. Then she filled the circular trench on the outside, and stepped back, leaving the Devil Fruit in the center of the circle.

"Alright, despite its complexity this is known as a basic ritual, because it doesn't require any sacrifices. It's more or less a one-time-use runic array, all I have to do is channel a stupid amount of magic into the circle. So please stay away from the circle itself, sis, because if it's broken the wrong way, it could explode with enough power to vaporize us both. Here's hoping I have enough magic."

"Okay," squeaked Nojiko.

"Don't worry, if I can't channel enough magic it should fail safely, it's just that this is usually meant to be done with three people." Nami grinned, kneeled beside the circle, and placed her hands palm down on the edge, and breathed deeply.

Then she started glowing.

Then the ritual circle started glowing, all of the runes fading into incandescence at the same time.

Then flickers of magical light started playing across the surface of the Devil Fruit in the center.

And finally, a glowing sphere of white light lifted out of the Devil Fruit and expanded, rising into the air above it: the diagram of the enchantment.

"Damn," said Nami, "it's fully three-dimensional. Quick, Nojiko, take some pictures. Try and get twelve, evenly spaced from around the circle. Take every other one from a lower angle so I can see the insides of the sphere."

Nojiko followed the instructions immediately with the camera she was holding. When she was finished, Nami took her hands off the circle, and wiped some sweat off her brow as the glowing faded away.

"Wow, I did not expect that," said Nami. "Most enchantments back in my old world were two-dimensional, runic arrays written on the surface of a stone or an object. They'd have several sides, and they could sometimes have multiple layers, I know of one warder who layered slabs of stone on top of one another and made links between them, but even that was considered extremely difficult and crazy, and it wasn't truly three-dimensional, just a bunch of two-dimensional arrays linked in various places. The Goblins had a different way of doing things, imbuing an entire object with a set of purposes, like sharpness and the taking of strength for a weapon, but those enchantments didn't have the capacity for complexity that a runic enchantment does.

"This Devil Fruit is truly three-dimensional. It's got rune words bending every which way and interconnecting with each other like nuts. It's going to take me years of work to analyze.

"I'm going to need to examine more Devil Fruits. If I repeat that with different fruits, I should be able to isolate the differences and figure out what parts I should analyze to find useful information like what kind of fruit we're actually holding."

"That makes sense," said Nojiko. "I'm not sure I would ever want to eat a Devil Fruit, but if I did decide to I would definitely want to choose what I get. And right now, it's just… a mystery fruit."

~ Witch on the Waves ~

Six months after Nami and Nojiko had started openly hunting down bounties, Nami decided to follow up a potential lead on learning Haki.

"There's this guy, I've seen him in the minds of the few pirates that have been into the Grand Line and more than a few Marines who were trained there. He lives just inside the entrance to the Grand Line, on the coast of the Red Line near the exit of Reverse Mountain, and he goes by the name of Crocus. He's a bit weird but seems like a nice guy, he's really old, and apparently he's also really strong. I bet he's at least heard more about Haki than anyone in the East Blue, if he isn't capable of using it himself.

"I'm thinking, we take our boat through Reverse Mountain, find this Crocus, and see if he knows Haki, and if he does, ask if he's willing to train us. We can teleport back when we're done, I don't think it would be wise to go anywhere in the Grand Line without a proper ship."

"Well," said Nojiko, "you said Haki is pretty much the ultimate superpower, it trumps Devil Fruits and the Rokushiki and can help counter pretty much anything out there. So what are you waiting for, let's go!"