Chapter 1: Enter! Namizou…?
"What is it?"
Rustling.
"I don't know… doesn't look like anything I've seen before."
"Oooooh… can we eat it?"
She twitches. Please don't.
"Eh? It doesn't look all that good, Luffy - it's all burnt and stuff."
Funny story actually - if not a tad bit embarrassing - but cut her some slack. It's not like she asked to be spit out from the hazardous sea and onto some remote island, forced to fend for herself for the first time.
Building a fire was a lot harder than it looked, especially when the only semblance of a survival guide she had to go by was her vast (and useless for this kind of situation) knowledge of how to plant, grow, and harvest mikans.
Peel a dozen mikans? Give her 20 seconds.
Bake a mikan pie? She's your gal.
Squeeze a delicious mikan juice, no pulp, complete with added mikan zest? Done, done, and gracefully done.
But to create and control a vicious fire that apparently had a mind of its own? She could almost cry for her long-gone orange tresses, eaten up by that greedy inferno. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the orange blazes went ahead and alerted the whole forest's creatures, who Nami quickly found out were not your average-sized forest dwellers and were very, very hungry.
Growing up poor and sheltered in a small town, absent of vicious animals with sharp teeth and a craving for human meat (with the exception of one particular shark and his own gang of scumbags), Nami's environment didn't call for extreme survival skills. So one could imagine how fearful she had been as she was chased by animals ten times her size, with a speed much faster than her short little human legs could pump out, and with jaws big enough to crush her in one bite.
Still, she didn't expect three other little monsters who looked deceivingly like humans to come flying out of nowhere, mouths open in high-pitched battle cries and wielding metal weapons that looked strangely like drainage pipes.
Quite frankly, at the end of the earth-cracking tussle, she felt more sorry for the beasts.
"Well, at least we have some dinner for tonight. We should save the second one for breakfast tomorrow."
Nami risks cracking an eye to slyly examine her barbarian saviors. Her position under the spiky tinder and dirt allows her to make out three pairs of feet - two with reasonably close-toed shoes and one (she notes that he has a definitively smaller pair of feet) with flimsy sandals. She strains her eye to move more up but can only make it up to their mouths.
The one with the sandals and the one with the boots are grinning, but the one in the middle with a regular shoe has his mouth turned down.
She's not exactly sure why she's still playing possum but goes on to regret it as the one with a frown - she decides to dub him Grumpy - literally spits out his annoyance in an unholy form of white gooiness. "Peh!"
Her one eye widens in horror, watching in slow motion as the loogie flies out of his mouth to land- no no no nononono!
"That old hag should be grateful that we even bring-"
"K-Kyaaaahhhh!"
Shivers wrack up and down her body and she swears left and right as she tries to convince herself that he did not just- oh and it's so slimy and smelly and-
Ack! Ugh!
"AHHHHH! It's alive!" one of them shouts in alarm.
She rises out of her grave with a ferocity she didn't even know she possessed as she all but tackles the one in the middle, his dark eyes wide in shock. She wipes the sticky, gooey saliva from her cheek (see how you like it!) and slathers it over the disgusting little-
"ZOMBIIIIEE!"
She turns to the other two, eyes flashing, growling, "I am not-"
"Get off of Ace!"
And then something hard whacks her head and Nami's gazing up at a blue sky, orange spots that look weirdly like mikans fluttering around with little white wings. How kawaii.
"Oi, Luffy! Why'd you do that?"
"EH? I saved you from the zombie! Why are you angry?!"
"I could've handled it myself!"
"Ace, Luffy. Look. I think… I think it's a person."
"..."
"..."
"Look what you did, you idiot!"
"Waaahh?! I didn't know it was a person!"
"Sabo! Is he alive?"
Through the nice haze of white, Nami can see a boy with blonde hair and a top hat with big goggles peer cautiously down at her. He comes uncomfortably close to her face and she tenses slightly, the fat flying fruit starting to fade.
He opens his mouth to speak and Nami makes a vague observation of how one of his teeth is missing. "I think so. His eyes are kind of glazed over."
The blond's own eyes scan her full body before looking back at his two companions. "These burns look pretty bad, though."
Oh, doesn't she know it. The strength from before seems like a distant memory now as the tumultuous day's events finally catch up to her. She's exhausted.
"Not our problem," Grumpy huffs out. "Besides, he attacked me. I don't think we should have 'im anywhere near us."
"But-"
A new face comes into Nami's view. His face is round, mouth set in a pout, and there's a small scar under one of his big innocent eyes. A straw hat sits a bit largely on top of his dark head of hair.
"But Ace! We can't leave him here all alone to die!" His tone carries a feeling in there that Nami can't quite pinpoint, but it sounds… 'desperate' wasn't really the right word. More like, knowing.
… Yeah, her head must've been whacked pretty hard.
She hears Grumpy sigh. Then, finally, he comes to join the look-at-this-burnt-freak group. He doesn't wear a hat like the others, but under his glare, Nami finds that he bears a slight resemblance to the youngest looking one.
"Pathetic," he concludes after examining her condition. Nami feels a tick sprout on her temple.
This guy sure was asking for it. She's never met such a rude person in her eight-year-young life, and she hadn't even said two words to him yet! Granted, she had tackled him to the ground, but that was only after he provoked her by spitting on her face.
"Alright," Grumpy suddenly sighs, relenting. "Let's bring him in."
Then he turns to Scar. "Think you can take 'im, Luff?"
The boy grins eagerly. "Yeah! I'm strong!"
And suddenly Nami's being lifted up and slung over the small boy's back not unlike a sack of potatoes. She grunts softly, and he looks back at her with big - surprisingly worried - eyes.
"Ah, gomen," he whispers, shifting her into another position.
Nami's almost positive that his intentions are good but the next position he shifts her into is even worse. Her body is forcibly bent around his neck as he holds her arms and legs in front of him - she feels like one of those lambs they carry off to get slaughtered. He makes sure she is set on his shoulders before speeding off after the other two.
"Sure you're strong," she hears Grumpy musing ahead, his voice condescending. "Which is why Sabo and I are taking the heaviest loads!"
It's an obvious taunt and the boy all but jumps for the hook, gets tangled in its line and sinks immediately.
"What?! That's no fair! Let's switch, Sabo!"
"It's better if you take the guy, Luffy. You have to take responsibility for the people you hit." True, but obviously just an excuse.
"Ace! Switch!"
Grumpy laughs, a shocking sound to her ears. "Maybe when you're not so weak. Don't want you tumbling down the mountain again."
No, we do not want that, Nami agrees.
"Oi!" the boy under her steams, stamping his feet and as a result, jostling her already anguished body. "That only happened once!"
"Hai, hai," Grumpy placates. Then, "If once means three times!"
He laughs again, and Goggles is chuckling too and Nami only feels increasingly annoyed.
Then out of nowhere, the agitated boy slips on what Nami observes from her tortured spot as absolutely nothing and plows into the other two. There's a split second when they're all in midair, eyes wide, and Scar lets out a small "oops."
"Oops" doesn't even cover the half of it. Nami decides to rename him as Idiot.
As she tumbles singed head over burning heel, she hears their shouts of panic quickly transform into squeals of laughter and she can't imagine what could possibly be so hilarious.
Then, with what she can gather as she spins round and round in dirt, she realizes that the three monsters are actually racing - a life-threatening fall had suddenly turned into a game of who could hit bottom first.
Yup, she thinks blankly as the ground rushes forth, I'm going to die.
This has been sitting in my docs for 4 years now! It's an idea that popped up after watching the ASL arc when I was on my OP binge oh so long ago. I figured I might as well post it now to see what sort of reception it gets - maybe then I can get motivation to write my other works T.T.
Tell me what you guys think! Every thought is appreciated.
- forgottensongs