Disclaimer: See disclaimer from Chapter 15.


~ Witch on the Waves ~


Chapter 16

"Luffy," said Nami, finding him on his usual perch on the Going Merry's figurehead, "Now that we're on our way to Alabasta, I've got some questions about your Devil Fruit power. Might even give you ideas for new attacks."

"Okay, go ahead and ask." Luffy normally had zero interest in academic subjects, but fighting techniques were different.

"This first came up in your fight with Buggy. When he chopped his body up into pieces, do you remember that his clothing was chopped up too? And that when he reassembled his body the clothes were fixed just like his body?"

"Uh-huh."

"And you remember in your fight with Smoker, he turned his whole body including his clothes into smoke and back?"

Luffy nodded.

"When you use Gum-Gum Balloon, have you ever noticed that your clothes don't rip, and they stretch with you? They turn into rubber along with your body."

Luffy thought for a moment, then did a "Gum-Gum Balloon!"

Nami pulled on the hem of his vest, stretching it. "See? Rubber."

Luffy deflated. "Huh. But when I'm normal-sized my clothes aren't all stretchy."

"Yup," Nami confirmed it by tugging on his vest, which was definitely cloth now. "Except when you're getting shot with bullets. When that happens your clothes don't rip and get holes in them, do they?"

"Nope."

"So it's subconscious, you're turning your clothes rubbery by instinct. See if you can get that to happen on purpose."

"Okay… but how does that help me in a fight?"

"Well… maybe your clothes aren't the only thing you can turn into rubber. What if you could turn a weapon into rubber? And better yet, what if you can control that weapon like you can control your arm while it's stretched out and rubbery?"

"But couldn't I just use my arm instead?"

"Hmm… I think I need to do a demonstration. Hang on a sec." She reached a hand over her shoulder into her backpack's main pocket and summoned two things into her hand.

"This is an ordinary steel knife. Nothing terribly special, just steel. And this is a rubber eraser. Now normally, the knife cuts the eraser easily."

Nami used the knife to slice into the eraser and carve it into a sharp wedge.

"Now, you take the knife and hold it out like this."

Nami handed the knife to Luffy, who held it out. Then she grabbed the eraser, turned it black with Haki, and swiftly swung it, cutting the knife's blade in half.

"See? Sharpened and strengthened with enough Armament Haki, rubber can cut through steel."

"Oh. That's really cool!" declared Luffy.

"Start with your clothes, I have a feeling that should be easiest. Just try and think of them as part of yourself, like you do in a fight, and activate your rubber power. When you're done, start with a weapon you're familiar with, like a pipe, and do the same thing, make an extension of your body. And don't neglect your Haki training either or your weapons won't be as useful."

"Okay! Thanks Nami!" Luffy went off, grabbing his vest with his hand and trying to stretch it.

Zoro, who was watching, whistled. "I need to get back to training my Armament."

"Your swords are magical, Zoro. They should be able to cut steel without Haki enhancement. With Haki you should be able to cut seastone."

"Seastone is harder than steel?"

"Seastone is actually slightly magical," answered Nami. "That's part of how it counters Devil Fruit powers. If you're strong enough, you might be able to damage your swords trying to cut seastone without Haki. Depends on the sword. So I'd advise you to wait until you can cut through steel like butter before you try seastone. You need to be able to enhance the sharpness of your blade as well as the strength."

She demonstrated by taking the cut-off half of the blade she had just destroyed, and using it to cut through part of the remaining knife with very little pressure from her fingers.

"Strength is easy, you just dump power in. Sharpness requires focus."

"Sounds like a goal. You got time for a spar?"

Nami grinned. "Sure do." She stood up from the railing she was leaning against and backflipped off the deck onto the ocean's surface, drawing her sword as she went. Zoro followed, and the fight was on.


~ Witch on the Waves ~


"Hey Robin," whispered Nami, right into Robin's ear while she was leaning against the railing on the foredeck trying to awaken Observation Haki by closing her eyes and attempting to locate everyone on board the ship.

Robin jumped. "Nami?!"

Nami became visible and grinned. "I want to try something that might help people learn Observation Haki."

"Okaaaay, what do you want to try?"

Knowing that Robin wanted the full theoretical explanation, Nami gave it. "Observation Haki works because your spiritual aura intermingles with other peoples' auras, and you feel theirs by concentrating and focusing on your will to find other people, right?"

"That's how you and Nojiko described it."

"But what if you practiced with someone else whose spiritual aura is easy to feel? What if it was so obvious that you could feel it without even focusing?"

"Are you talking about somehow making your own aura more powerful?"

"I'm talking about using mild Conqueror's Haki to make my aura so obvious you can't ignore it. Can you feel my location when I do this?" She pulsed out her aura with a will of domination, producing a small burst of Conqueror's.

Robin's eyes went wider, then with an effort she closed her eyes. "Yes, yes I can. You know it's really hard to close my eyes when you're doing that."

"Hmm… okay, I'm gonna move and do it again weaker." Nami changed her position silently, then pulsed out her Conqueror's Haki again.

Robin instantly pointed in the right direction.

"Good, so that works. Let's try something a bit different." She moved again, then pushed her aura out powerfully without making it Conqueror's Haki, and kept it going this time.

Robin focused for a moment, then pointed at Nami. "What are you doing differently?"

"I'm pushing out my aura without the will of dominance that makes it into Conqueror's Haki, and I'm keeping it going instead of just using a pulse. Now I'm gonna start moving around, keep pointing at me." Nami silenced herself completely with a spell and applied the full range of stealth spells except the Notice-Me-Not, going invisible, hiding scent, and stopping the effect of her body against the wind. Then she started moving randomly around Robin.

Robin stood still and kept her finger pointed at Nami, occasionally changing between hands as Nami moved to her other side. Nami slowly weakened the aura she was putting out, forcing Robin to increase her focus.

"Very good. Keep focusing."

They kept going for another fifteen minutes until Nami's aura was all the way down to normal.

"Now," said Nami, stopping in place and speaking steadily so as not to break Robin's concentration, "broaden your focus and see if you can feel my more than just my aura. Can you feel anyone else within the range you've been feeling me?"

Robin dropped the arm that was pointing at Nami and focused for a minute.

"I think… yes, I feel two more people. There and there," she said, pointing at them.

"Brilliant. Looks like you've awakened Observation Haki!"

"Wow!" Robin opened her eyes and saw Nojiko and Zoro standing on the other side of the foredeck, having felt Nami's aura changing and come to find what she was doing. She immediately lost her focus, but now she knew how to do it again. "Thanks, Nami!"

"You're welcome. The next step is obviously to practice doing it again, holding your concentration, and expanding your range."

"A new way of helping people awaken Observation, sis?" inquired Nojiko.

"Yup!" Nami smiled. "You start with mild Conqueror's Haki, which nobody can avoid feeling, really, and then you tone it down by removing the domination element from Conqueror's, which is really just a stronger normal aura. You already know how to do that, we just thought it was useless until now. And then you just tone down the aura slowly while the person you're training keeps their focus on you."

"That makes so much sense when I think about it," said Nami.

"We're going to have to keep it a secret though, like the method of training Conqueror's in the first place. And wow, putting out that aura for so long is tiring. Even Armament: Hardening doesn't dump spiritual energy like constantly blasting out your aura does, because Hardening is all about retaining your energy and compacting it. Nojiko, you want to try training the others? It's already mid-afternoon and I won't recover my reserves for a few hours."

"You think you can awaken everyone's Observation Haki all at once?" asked Robin.

"I'm hopeful," replied Nami. "We'll have to see, it might be that you're predisposed to Observation Haki like Zoro here, and others will take longer to learn."

"Nice work, Nami," said Zoro. "This is going to make the crew a lot stronger. Now I just have to awaken Armament or I'll lose my edge over the love cook."


~ Witch on the Waves ~


Luffy, Sanji, and Usopp managed to unlock Observation Haki immediately when Nojiko tried the new method on them. Chopper, who had only just gotten the explanation on Haki, didn't, but he was able to at least point to Nojiko's location when she used light Conqueror's Haki, proving that it was possible. Vivi was a mixed case; she lost Nojiko's location halfway through while her aura was weakening, and poor Carue was knocked out by the first blast of Conqueror's Haki.

Still, three out of six was very good progress. And now Vivi at least had a better idea of what to focus on and how.


~ Witch on the Waves ~


"So how's it going, Doctor Chopper?" Nami approached Chopper where he was reading a medical book in his small Brain Point form.

"Idiot! It doesn't make me happy at all to hear you call me 'Doctor'!"

"Aww, so cute!" Nami glomped him.

"Stop grabbing me!"

Nami pouted, but put him back on his seat. "I wanted to ask something about your Devil Fruit powers. I heard from Nojiko that you invented something called a Rumble Ball which lets you use more than just the three forms that normal Zoan users have."

"Uh-huh," Chopper nodded.

"How do Rumble Balls work, anyway? What are the effects that allow you more control over your form?"

"My theory is that it temporarily distorts the wavelength of the energy of my Devil Fruit, which gives me new powers that wouldn't normally be possible. I don't have any way to prove it though."

"Wavelength? Devil Fruits are magical, magic doesn't have a wavelength."

"Magic? There's no such thing as magic," stated Chopper with the surety of a scientist.

"Of course there's such a thing as magic. I can prove it!"

"Okay. Prove it," said Chopper skeptically.

"First off, I'm a witch and I can do magic! Now, watch this." Nami gave herself a pair of antlers just like Chopper's.

"Aaah! Did you eat the Reindeer-Reindeer Fruit?"

"Nope! If I ate a Zoan Devil Fruit, how would I be able to do this?" Nami vanished the antlers and levitated Chopper's book into the air.

"Wires!" Chopper checked for wires holding the book up.

"Nope, no wires. But I can see you're not satisfied yet. How about this!" Nami conjured a glowing orb of light.

"Sleight of hand using a glowing device and the same levitation technique as with the book? I know, you could have eaten a levitation Devil Fruit and also used sleight of hand to stick those antlers on your head!"

"Hmm… how about this?" Nami turned Chopper purple.

"Huh? What did you do?"

Nami conjured a mirror.

"Aaah! You turned me purple!"

"I sure did. Now how is that possible?"

"Turn me back! I don't like being purple!"

"Oh, alright." Nami hit him with a Finite and turned him back.

"Did you slip me some kind of drug that's making me hallucinate?"

Nami laughed. "That's a typical reaction. But you're a doctor, surely you would know what it feels like to be hallucinating because of a drug."

Chopper looked around. The sky and the sea were still in the right places, up was up and down was down. He opened his book and it was still the same sensible medical book as before.

"No," said Chopper, "when I was experimenting with the formula for the Rumble Ball I accidentally took something that made me hallucinate. That isn't what this is."

"Good. Now watch this." Nami used a scrying spell to spy on Kureha and showed it to Chopper. She added the listening component she had managed to weave into her scrying spell. Kureha was humming a song and washing the dishes.

Chopper gasped. "She only hums that song when she thinks no one is listening!"

"And how would I know that?"

"I don't know."

"If we look around a little bit…" Nami adjusted the scrying spell, "…you can see the time on the clock on her wall is right now. So this isn't a recording of some sort. Conclusion: I must be spying on her with my magic."

"It might still be possible with the right Devil Fruit powers." But Chopper looked doubtful.

"True, but it's known that no one can eat more than one Devil Fruit and survive. I've shown too many and varied abilities for them all to be Devil Fruit powers. And I can still swim. Do you need a demonstration of that?"

"No… I think I'm starting to believe you. Do you have any other demonstrations?"

"Lots! There's my backpack, it's bigger on the inside. Watch!" She took off her knapsack and pulled her out her rolled-up rug.

"And then there's this, my flying carpet!" She unrolled it and hopped on. "Wanna go for a ride?"

Chopper was on in an instant. As they took off, he shouted, "You should have showed me this at the beginning!"


~ Witch on the Waves ~


After the ride was over and Chopper finally got over his excitement at flying, Nami brought them back to the subject of Chopper's Devil Fruit and his Rumble Ball.

"So how did you come up with the Rumble Ball?"

"Um, well, one of Doctor Kureha's medicine cabinets fell on me one day, and when I got out of the mess I was in a different form. I experimented with the chemicals that had been in there and eventually came up with the formula for the Rumble Ball."

"You mentioned hallucination. It doesn't, by any chance, contain any LSD, does it?"

Chopper stared at her. "How did you know that? It contains just a trace, and a couple of other chemicals to counteract the hallucination effects."

Nami rolled her eyes. "Figures that an old hippie like Kureha would have acid lying around. Listen, Chopper, I assume you know better than I do about the negative effects of LSD, right?"

"Of course, that's one of the reasons why I can't control my transformations if I take more than one of them within six hours."

"May I see one of those Rumble Balls?"

Chopper pulled out a golden-yellow ball and held it up. Nami stared at it for a bit, then cast some detection spells.

"Yup, there's nothing magical about this. It's not actually interacting with your Devil Fruit's magic. What it's probably doing, Chopper, is affecting your mind. Magic is a psychically-controlled energy, if the magic belongs to you it will obey your intent and will. The magic powering Devil Fruits actually comes from some external source, so it doesn't fully belong to you, but the enchantment is designed to follow your will within the limits of that Devil Fruit's concept. I suspect that if you meditate, you will be able to connect with the Devil Fruit's power and gain greater control over it that way."

"You're saying that I don't need my Rumble Balls to access my other transformations?"

"More than just that, I'm saying that by learning how to do it without your Rumble Balls, you should be able to get rid of the weaknesses: the three-minute limit and the loss of control of your form if you take too many."

"Wow. So how do I meditate? I've read a bit on meditation, I know there are different types."

Nami grinned. "Well… there's actually a technique I can use as a witch to change my form into that of a single animal, which even allows for the use of partial transformations like your Zoan Devil Fruit. I haven't learned it yet, but I know the exercises, and I suspect those same ones will work for you. What do you say we learn at the same time?"

Harry Potter had been an Animagus. Nami had not been able to use the transformation; whether this was because her human body was different or if she had a different Animagus form, she didn't know, but she was certain she would be able to learn it again from the start.

"Sounds good. What kind of animal can you turn into?"

"I don't know, it could be anything!"


~ Witch on the Waves ~


Two days after the Straw Hats started off on the last leg of the journey to Alabasta, Nami got a call on her Den-Den Mushi.

"Hello?"

"Nami."

"Hi Crocus-sensei."

"Remember that pirate crew you asked me to look out for?" He sounded grumpier than normal.

"Yes, have you seen them?"

"They just sailed through Reverse Mountain."

"Are they still there?"

"No, I was inside Laboon when they came through, I just saw the tail end of their ship as they sailed away."

"I'll have to catch them at the first island then. Thanks Crocus-sensei."

"No problem. You take care, those guys are nasty." He ended the call.

It was time to put a stop to the Kid Pirates.


~ Witch on the Waves ~


"Hey everyone!" shouted Nami. "I gotta go! Independent pirate mission!"

"Where are you going?" asked Nojiko.

"Taking out a real nasty pirate crew that's been killing civilians by the hundreds all over the South Blue."

Nojiko thought for a moment. "The Kid Pirates?! You're taking out the Kid Pirates?"

Nami nodded. "Yup."

"What's special about the Kid Pirates?" asked Robin.

"They're a real nasty bunch of guys, led by Eustass Kid, who has a Devil Fruit that allows him to control magnetism and his first mate 'Massacre Soldier' Killer, who is just that. There have been instances where they wiped out entire towns, man, woman and child."

Every one of the crew ground their teeth in anger.

"Can we come?" asked Luffy.

Nami shook her head. "Sorry, independent pirate job. I'm basically sinking their ship, fighting whoever's left, and fishing them out of the wreckage. So not everyone would be useful in that kind of fight, and you can't really leave half your crew behind to follow another pirate captain, can you?"

Luffy shook his head.

"Be patient, you'll get to fight Crocodile. He should be much tougher than Eustass Kid. And sorry Nojiko, much as I'd like to bring you along the Merry needs a navigator."

"I know," said Nojiko.

"Alright, bye everyone! I'll be back in a few hours, not sure how long. Definitely by morning."

Nami brushed her hair back, fixed her tricorne hat on her head with a sticking charm, and pulled out her flying carpet. Jumping on it, she went invisible and then teleported above the first of Paradise's seven starting islands.


~ Witch on the Waves ~


Nami would spend a couple of hours checking the horizons around each of the seven islands periodically. She took the time in between to check on the Log Poses along those paths, some of which were on their second islands and some on their third. One was even on its fourth island, and one had reset and was ready to move. She didn't leave to map it yet, not knowing how long it would take to fly the distance to the next island.

Finally, after teleporting in high above one of the starting islands that the Straw Hats had not visited, she saw the Kid Pirates' ship about ten kilometers out, approaching the island. It was time.

First things first, of course. Their heavily customized ship would take about twenty minutes to reach the shore, so Nami had time. She stowed all of her metal weapons and gear inside her knapsack, closed it, and sealed off the pocket dimension inside to prevent Kid from detecting that metal or using it with his magnetic fields. She wasn't sure if detection was part of his abilities, but there was nothing wrong with caution. Then she went into full stealth mode, snuck aboard and with a suitable array of temporary aversion wards, stole their money and gold out from under their noses.

Just before she teleported out, she paused, sensing a burst of malicious intent through her Observation Haki. Making her way up to the deck, she looked around.

Were they actually preparing to fire their cannons on the town without even talking to them first?

Yes, yes they were.

"Okay, well that just pisses me off," she said, and teleported out to 200 meters in front of the ship.


~ Witch on the Waves ~


"It wasn't that big of a ship," said the middle-aged, slightly chubby brown-haired fisher-woman, telling the story to a few listeners on the wharf a few hours later, "but it was nasty-looking. I was fishing from that wall up there when I saw it, and I pulled out the spyglass I always carry, because you know, sometimes you want to see things on the horizon. The ship was all painted in black. Giant dinosaur-skull figurehead. Rib bones sticking up all around the ship. A knife through the skull of their Jolly Roger. Someone was lacking a sense of subtlety when they decorated that damned thing.

"And I could see them unlimbering their cannons, gettin' ready to fire on us. I was just about to reel up my lines and make a run for it when I saw her."

"Her?" asked one of her listeners.

The fisher-woman telling the story nodded. "Her. She was a thin slip of a girl. She appeared out of nowhere, just standing on the water in front of the ship, as casual as you please. Was wearing a striped blue-and-white T-shirt and dark green capris. I could only just make out that she had orange hair cut short, because she was wearing a black tricorne hat on her head. She was also wearing a small brown leather backpack, a sword on her back, and a pistol on her hip.

"She stared down that oncoming ship for a moment, and just as the pirates noticed she was there, she pulled out that sword of hers and swung it, all in one motion.

"And that's when the sky split in two. Y'all saw it, you know what I'm talking about. The clouds were cut in half and gods help me, I swear I saw the stars for a moment. All because that girl swung her sword.

"I lost my grip on my spyglass for a second, but when I looked back at the ship it was split clean in half from stem to stern. Even the masts were split in half vertically! It just sort of slowly fell in half.

"Then the girl somehow turned black from head to toe, I dunno how. It was all in an instant, like I blinked and she was coated in shiny black from head to toe, and then she vanished and she was in the middle of the pirates, attacking.

"Those pirates never stood a chance. I saw one of 'em use some sort of Devil Fruit powers to make a shield and send all sorts of stuff flying at the girl, but she just battered through it and smashed him away. The fight went on for like two minutes, I think, most of it faster than I could see.

"Then it was over and the girl went back to her normal coloring. And she goes and ropes up a whole bunch of pirates together, picks them up like so many bales of hay, and vanishes. She came back for two more batches, and then she was gone. Only thing left are the bits of the ship that are still floating, and you've seen those."

"You have no idea who she was?" asked an older man who had been poking around the harbor since the incident.

"Nope. I didn't even see her face properly."


~ Witch on the Waves ~


Nami was honestly quite angry at these guys. So when she channeled Armament Haki into her sword, there was somehow a good deal of that anger and a certain will to vanquish them included in that Haki. When she later analyzed the memory with her Occlumency, she would realize that she had actually used a mix of Conqueror's Haki and Armament Haki.

The effects were impressive. Her flying slash, composed of a thin, powerful blade of air charged with Haki and aimed precisely to cut only the ship and the water close to it, rent the air all the way up to the sky. Because no matter how much a swords-person tries to cut only their target, the air itself will always be cut as well.

Eustass Kid was a good fighter, very good. His instincts allowed him to dodge her first strike, leaving Nami to rampage through his men, leaving many of them bleeding and broken on the disintegrating ship before she came back at him, by which time he had pulled up some of his reserves of scrap metal and set it floating around him as a hybrid attack/defense maneuver.

Nami just battered through it, covered in Armament Haki.

Kid hadn't unlocked his Haki, so he stood no chance against her, but he managed to delay her second attack at him with an overwhelming amount of flying scrap metal, enough for him to jump out of the way. He was confused when he was unable to affect her sword or gun, but didn't let that stop him – people had attacked him with seastone weapons before.

He tried making his signature scrap metal monster and sending it at her. She dodged effortlessly, using it to hide her approach on Killer, then attacked cut off the first mate's arms at the elbow, above the armbands that held his two scythe-like blades. Yanking her pistol, she fired two shots at a couple of men, targets of opportunity really, kicked Killer in the jaw, then dashed behind Kid and slashed at his back.

Kid, having intentionally left the space behind his back open as the only spot close to him with breathing room from his scrap metal monster, dodged forward instantly, making his massed metal part before him fluidly and sending it at his foe. He was almost too late, however, and took a shallow slash to his back.

"Who are you?!" screamed Kid.

"Me?" asked Nami, teeth and eyes shining white under the point of her hat, even as the rest of her gleamed black. "I'm the end of the line."

A blast of Conqueror's Haki knocked out the rest of the men still conscious, leaving only Nami and Kid still standing.

She stared at him for a moment, looked at the monster composed of flying pieces of scrap metal winding around him and estimated its strength, then swung her sword, sending another flying slash at him. It cleaved through the metal he used as a defense and left a long, deep diagonal gash across his torso. He coughed up blood and fell on his back.

That was the end of the fight. She had used purely Haki and weapons; magic was a trump card she would save for really dangerous people.

As the pieces of the ship continued to break up in the waves, unable to stay together through the violence and missing critical beams to hold it together, Nami gathered the Kid Pirates, mostly still alive but with a few dead, tied them together in three batches, and teleported them to an open space in front of the biggest Marine base in the South Blue. She left them under invisibility, Notice-Me-Not and aversion wards for the moment, not wanting the Marines to find them until she was done, then she grabbed Eustass Kid himself and teleported to her small ritual island in the East Blue.

Bandaging him up quickly with a couple of blood-clotting charms to stop him from bleeding out, Nami placed the unconscious pirate captain in the center of a prepared ritual circle. Then she took a large basket of various fruits out of her backpack, released it, and set it aside.

It was time to try something she'd theorized was possible since she had analyzed Robin's Devil Fruit.

Nami ran the diagnostic ritual to analyze the enchantment of his Devil Fruit. Using the diagram to take careful aim at the connection between his heart and the rest of the enchantment, she used a spell she had developed for this specific purpose to interfere with the connection.

She ended the ritual while still holding the spell.

She kept holding the spell.

"Come on, I know that people can be revived for a little while after their heart stops beating, but how long does it really take?"

She held the spell for another twenty minutes before she gave up and decided to just cut the thread of magic connecting to the heart. This she considered riskier because it was a more obvious interference with the magic, which might be able to detect that.

Then again, it was apparently equivalent to simply destroying the subjects heart. Because the Devil Fruit enchantment unraveled before her magical senses, sent out a pulse of seeking magic, and slowly transferred itself to one of the fruits in her basket, transforming the fruit weirdly in doing so.

Nami held her breath as she checked on Kid.

He was still alive, unconscious but with heart beating and breathing slowly. A quick spell showed he had brain activity.

"Yes!" She jumped in victory. "A spell to steal peoples' active Devil Fruits! Sweet!"

She labeled and stored her newly-acquired Devil Fruit, packed up her stuff, and swept the remains of the magical circle clean.

There was just one more thing to do.

Nami pulled out a pair of seastone handcuffs and, with her Haki-sharpened sword, sliced off the portion meant to encircle one of the wrists. Now she had a single, locking seastone handcuff, which she locked around one of Kid's wrists. Then she vanished the key, and for good measure she pulled out a coil of soldering wire and melted part of it with a small flame spell, pouring the soft molten metal right into the keyhole. She had planned this out properly: with luck the Marines would never even try to remove the handcuff and no one, even Kid himself, would notice the real reason for the loss of Kid's Devil Fruit powers for a long time. If ever.

She grabbed Kid, hogtied him properly, and teleported him to the Marine base right where she'd left the rest of his men. Then she unraveled the magic hiding the pirates, keeping only herself invisible, and vanished.

A very surprised Marine Seaman would discover them moments later.


~ Witch on the Waves ~


"Hey guys, I'm back!"

Usopp was the first to see her when she jumped on the side of the afterdeck. "Nami? What's got you smiling like that?"

"Oh, nothing. Just…" and she held up her new Devil Fruit.

"So you've got a weird-looking fruit." said Usopp. "What's special about it?"

Robin showed up and gasped. "Is that a Devil Fruit?"

"Yup!" Nami confirmed.

Nojiko looked at it closely. Like every Devil Fruit, it looked weird. It appeared to have originally been a banana, and now it was more of a horseshoe shape, colored red with blocky silver ends. It had swirly designs all over it.

"Is that the Magnet-Magnet Fruit? Kid's Devil Fruit?" asked Nojiko.

"Yup," Nami.

Nojiko looked confused. Why was Nami so happy if…? Fortunately she didn't have to ask, because Luffy did.

"Did you kill him?"

Nami smirked. "Nope."

"Don't you have to kill someone in order for their Devil Fruit to go back into circulation?" asked Sanji.

"Normally, yes, but I, of course, am the greatest thief in the world, so I managed to steal his Devil Fruit without killing him."

There was a lot of gaping.

"In fact, since I locked a seastone handcuff on his wrist and destroyed the key before turning him over to the Marines, it's possible no one will ever notice that his powers are gone."

Nojiko summed it up pretty well. "Damn, Nami, that's a new one. What's next, are you gonna steal Sengoku's seagull?"

"No, I was thinking of something on a much bigger scale. Do you want Sengoku's seagull? Because that would be easy."

"Okay," said Nojiko. "I'm just gonna ignore that comment about 'something on a much bigger scale'. Because that just sounds scary. No, I don't want Sengoku's seagull."

"It would be pretty funny if you replaced it with a chicken, though," suggested Usopp.

Nami laughed. "Note to self: get ahold of a stuffed chicken. Anyway, Robin, Luffy, I get the sense that the two of you are pretty satisfied with your Devil Fruit powers, but in case I'm wrong, the offer is there. I can remove your Devil Fruit and you can either learn to swim or eat a different one if you so choose. Chopper, I really wouldn't recommend it."

Luffy immediately said, "No. I'm keeping mine."

Robin thought for a moment and also said, "No thanks, Nami. I like what I can do, and I don't think I've even fully explored what my Devil Fruit is capable of. And with Haki around, 'trading up' to a more powerful Devil Fruit doesn't necessarily mean you're going to win against the more dangerous enemies we have."

"Have you determined that it's safe to eat a Devil Fruit, then?" asked Nojiko. "You used to be quite concerned about the source of power and all that."

Nami considered it for a moment. "I think so, but I'm not 100% certain. Devil Fruits seem to be connected only to the body and mind, I haven't seen any soul magic involved. If I can remove the Devil Fruit and leave someone alive with no repercussions, it should be safe. And my investigations have shown that the source of power is neutral as far as I can tell. I still want to track down the actual source of that magical power though.

"The other implication of this," said Nami, holding up the Magnet-Magnet Fruit, "is that if you run into someone who you can absolutely say does not deserve to have their Devil Fruit powers, I can remove it. Make sure it's someone who really deserves the death penalty or life imprisonment, because I get the sense that taking someone's Devil Fruit powers is like taking a part of themselves, a lot like me and my magic. Right?" She looked at Luffy and Robin.

Luffy and Robin nodded.

"What about Crocodile?" asked Vivi.

"Ah, yes, the obvious question," said Nami. "I'm not sure about Crocodile. He's a criminal to be sure, he's power-hungry and he's plotting against the Alabasta throne, but do you think he's pure, irredeemable evil? Would you execute him or lock him up and throw away the key?"

Vivi paused for a moment. "I want to say yes," she said slowly, "but a large part of that is simply because he's my enemy."

Nami turned to Robin. "Do you know if Crocodile committed any mass murders, torture, rape, killed children without regret?"

"There have been a number of murders to help his plot along, mostly through Mr. 1. Crocodile has killed some of his agents who he felt betrayed him. But not on the level of sheer malice you're describing."

"Then I'll leave his Devil Fruit alone. Vivi, if you and your father get the opportunity and decide he should be executed for treason against Alabasta, that's your right and responsibility. But taking Fruit powers is my decision, and since I'm not a lawful authority I'll stick to using it on only the worst people. Eustass Kid was definitely on that level. When I attacked, he was getting ready to fire his cannons on a town he didn't know anything about, just because he considered it 'fun'."

Vivi nodded. "Thanks for putting it in perspective Nami. I'm not sure what we'll do to him now. I don't think we can afford to be lenient on him, because he is a threat to Alabasta, but I can see that he could be a lot worse than he is."

"It will probably be out of your hands once the World Government hears about it, especially if they hear that he was after one of the Ancient Weapons," said Nami. "Alright, back to training! I haven't gotten my physical exercise in today yet. Who wants a spar?"