A/N: Tension slowly rising. Please accept this, the next chapter of this story. *Bows deeply*
I don't own One Piece, though if it were a cake, this arc would be one of my favorite slices.
Exploding Star!
An explosive round, standard issue rather than Usopp's modified version, struck Arlong's face. Hardly enough to really hurt the bastard shark, merely capture his attention. Genzo, resigned to the fishman's abuse but unprepared for Usopp's attack, recoiled from the small blast.
For all that a vindictive little voice in Usopp's head chimed
'Just throw in a li~ttle Haki and put a hole in his head. No one will know.'
he resisted. Because, yes, Arlong and his crew would know about Haki. He and Jinbe had come from Fishman Island and were once equals. Anyone who (miraculously) made it that far on the Grand Line without at least an awareness of Haki didn't live too long. Shichibukai weren't offered their 'conditional freedom' from pursuit and arrest without the sort of strength to contend with Haki, either. Arlong wasn't worth the risk of Usopp's ability being outed. It only took one semi-knowledgeable witness for the Marines to make trouble, after all.
And, more importantly, the potential consequences of a showdown in Cocoyashi were too severe. Any collateral damage to the village, or, Kami forbid, loss of life would defeat the whole purpose of all Nami's efforts. Usopp would not be responsible, however indirectly, for bringing that about.
Thus, instead of appeasing his anger, Usopp appealed to his inner prankster and burgeoning 'troll' sense of humor. As doors up and down the street flew open in answer to the explosion and fishmen pointed out his figure on the roof, the sniper gave an exaggerated, lazy wave.
"Yo," he called. "Big, blue and scaly! That's a gnarly-looking nose," he said, and a shit-eating grin grew on his face. "Does it compensate for something?"
The collective reaction, while not loud, proved spectacular. Save for Arlong and his two officers, human and fishman alike were united, brought together by muted horror. Even Chew and the manta ray looked stunned, sending their captain nervous glances. Were Usopp a little more audacious, he would have held up his hands as though to frame the scene.
'I think I'll call it… Apoplectic Rage in a Sea of Internal Screams.'
Usopp's repressed snickering cut short as his foothold shuddered and the world tilted slightly. A livid Arlong had already moved to upend the house he stood on.
"Arlong-sama," one of the braver fishmen stammered, raising a hand toward his captain. "Please don't destroy another village- it ain't profitable."
"You dare," Arlong seethed, deaf to the protests of his crew. "To insult, and attack me, a FISHMAN!"
The sawtooth shark roared, and the whole building came off the ground, torn up from the foundations. Rather than cling for dear life while Arlong threw buildings around, Usopp bailed from the whole arrangement. Too furious to notice, the blue sawtooth shark smashed the uprooted house into another like a battering ram. Only rubble remained in the wake of his tantrum. Thankfully most, if not all, of the villagers were in the street, so the sniper didn't have to worry about casualties.
"Arlong-sama, there he is!"
"Get him! Bring me his hide for wallpaper and his skull as a wine goblet!"
Not particularly interested in listening to graphic descriptions of plans for his own mutilation, the sniper took off at a mad sprint. He headed out of the village, through a few small crop plots and into the woods, his second natural habitat after the ocean.
Chabo, face down and huddled in the tallest grass and thickest undergrowth he could find, cursed his luck. He'd taken a less traveled route toward home after he left Nojiko's house. She'd told him Arlong would still be in Cocoyashi, and he knew he'd be dead if the shark or his fishmen recognized him.
Not twenty minutes into his trek through the woods passed before he heard something crashing through the brush and branches, immediately followed by a shout of
"You're dead, human!"
Chabo froze and went pale, mouth agape in a frightened face-fault. It was like they'd been summoned simply by his new promise to live.
'How did they find me?!'
Thankfully, he managed to avoid screaming, and he broke off from the beaten path to hide. He clamped a hand over his mouth, scooting backward deeper into the thin cover he'd found. Fishmen ran past him, two or three pausing at a time to cast angry eyes about the woods. As quietly as he could manage, Chabo crawled away from the noise through the undergrowth.
Tmp.
A choked cry nearly escaped him as a blue, sandaled foot stomped just a foot from his nose. Slowly, he looked up, all the while breathing as little as possible, though not through conscious effort. More accurately, he momentarily forgot to breathe. The long lipped fishman from Arlong Park towered over the prone Gosa child. His face and eyes were hidden from Chabo's view by his unusual mouth.
Chabo hoped that meant the fishman couldn't see him either.
"The rest of you keep heading East! I'll double back around in case he's being sneaky. Chu!" His voice lowered, tone dark. "Bring him in alive. Arlong-sama will want to handle the brat personally."
Chabo broke into a cold sweat. If he'd had any hope that they were looking for someone else, it had just died. He bit into his hand- his body remembered how to breathe, and it was loud. If that didn't give him away, his pulse pounding in his throat definitely would. The sound of footfalls faded somewhere behind him, yet the lipped fishman lingered.
Finally, his sandaled feet turned away and plodded off into the woods. Chabo waited until he couldn't hear their footsteps anymore, then lay prone another minute afterward.
He shot up to his feet and bolted without a real plan, only running away from any sound of angry fishmen.
"Human scum!"
Usopp paused in the middle of removing one of his pursuers from a window at the hateful exclamation. He'd made tracks for Gosa the second he invoked Arlong's wrath. The thought of getting caught and having his death elaborately staged by Nami again didn't appeal to him. He could have avoided the fishmen sent after him long enough to ditch them. When it came to keeping his crew's business quiet (if only temporarily) though, 'unconscious' beat out 'searching and frustrated.' It hadn't exactly been difficult to fight them either. They were only five in total.
Hence, Gosa village. Abandoned after Arlong left all the houses overturned and the road torn up by his pet sea monster, it made an ideal location for his purposes. Usopp didn't have to worry about anybody, human or fishman, passing through in the near future and muddling things. It also served as an identifiable pickup point for the marines once Luffy showed up and they took down Arlong's crew. As a concerned citizen (and an anxious young man who really didn't like leaving things to chance), he'd gone the extra mile and laid out four of his five pursuers in a pile. He even marked the spot with his brush and an Ink Star applied to the nearest house, aptly labeling it 'Garbage Collection Site'.
Crack!
Chew, who had yet to notice Usopp after finding his crew mates, apparently didn't appreciate the sniper's responsible nature. Or, given that the fishman officer just sank his fist into the painted wall, he didn't appreciate the layered humor of the label. Usopp had been making more of a comment on the marines, who only did their jobs after the Straw Hats came through.
"Brothers," Chew said, kneeling beside the beaten fishmen. "Who did this? Is that brat a bounty hunter? Chu!"
Usopp briefly entertained the idea of his crew getting paid for defeating false kings, insane tyrants and assassins. The Straw Hats had a history of edging on broke for most of their journey. Nami, whose tight-fisted budgeting of their funds typically kept them out of poverty, would fight in a snake pit…
She would throw the boys into a snake pit if it meant they could redeem their victories for cash. Alas, there was the trivial detail of being wanted by the marines and bounty hunters themselves.
"Nah," Usopp said, projecting his voice a bit to be heard from further down the street. He tossed the last of his former pursuers onto the ground to keep his hands free. "I'm no one that important. I'm just a pirate looking to retrieve our crew's navigator per Captain's orders."
Chew, who had been pushing off the dirt to charge the sniper, went still, his glower twisting into something incredulous.
"Navigator? Chu! You mean Nami?"
Usopp had no reason to confirm or deny his suspicions. He could've just bailed before Chew even appeared. The big-lipped fishman couldn't catch him if he didn't want to be caught. Maybe the sniper was in a weird mood. Maybe he intended to kill some time before Luffy arrived.
"Yeah, that's her."
Maybe he wanted to personally shatter the fishman officer's racist sense of superiority and make him choke on it.
And maybe Usopp felt a little vindictive after waiting ten years to help Nami.
Chew's face contorted into an odd, scowling grin. He chortled.
"Arlong-sama will love this! A bunch of poor fools fell so hard for Nami's act that they came crawling here after her," Chew threw a derisive finger toward Usopp. "You don't have the slightest clue who she really is, do you? Chu!"
"A world-class cartographer, peerless navigator and a practiced hand at betrayal?" Usopp said. His lips twitched into a smirk at Chew's furrowed brow, the fishman clearly thrown off by the sniper's flat tone. "Maybe you should ask yourself if you know who she really is."
Chew shrugged, unbothered.
"Even if she were to double-cross us, it wouldn't matter," he said, mouth split into a cruel grin. "That woman knows better than anyone that we can make people disappear."
Usopp froze, hand hovering at his waist.
Chew, exploiting the hesitation, charged toward the sniper, fist cocked.
Twang!
He didn't get far.
"FUCK," he shouted, clutching his face. "My eye! Chu!"
Caltrop Choker!
In a rare fury, Usopp closed the distance between them and threw a handful of the hooked spines into the fishman's open mouth. Next second, his opponent started choking.
Even in severe pain, Chew still took a swing at the sniper, tears in his eyes and one side of his face swollen around his eye where a ball bearing had struck. Usopp ducked under the wild hook, one hand digging into his satchel.
Instant Hangover!
The marksman shattered a bottle of rum over Chew's head. The big-lipped fishman stumbled, finally hocking up the spines that had scratched his throat. He puckered his lips, preparing to fire a high-pressure water bullet.
Water G-
Usopp jumped back, his last shot already loaded.
Certain Kill: Flame Star!
On impact, the combusting projectile set the grog aflame.
"Gah!"
Desperate, Chew ran for the coast, blind to all else except the closest source of water. Usopp stood in his way, unsympathetic. On his shoulder he held a two hundred pound hammer like one that only weighed ten.
"Water!" Chew shouted, almost pleading.
"Don't."
Usopp tightened his grip.
"Ever."
He raised the hammer over his head.
"Threaten my nakama!"
He heaved the huge weapon, and struck.
Chabo hadn't planned on running to Gosa village- his feet had directed him more than his brain, scared as he'd been. Unconsciously, he moved toward the last place he had associated with safety, even if he didn't really feel too safe anywhere on the island the past few weeks.
Once he recognized his surroundings, Chabo managed to calm down a little, at least enough to think.
"Human scum!"
Only to almost immediately lose his recently regained cognitive abilities at the sound of the commanding voice he'd heard in the woods. He dove for a hiding spot, which really only consisted of putting himself behind one of the upturned houses. He peeked back down the ruined street.
He couldn't say for certain why he didn't book it- maybe he figured that, like in the forest, staying hidden and quiet would net him the same result of staying alive.
WHAM!
He did not expect to watch one of Arlong's officers get effortlessly picked apart.
The long nose pirate sent the big-lipped fishman, still burning, smashing into one of the houses, and straight through to the other side. Chabo ran back around his cover just in time to see the fishman crash bodily, headfirst, into a rice paddy, spinning ass over teakettle several times before he finally stopped. Smoke trailed into the air from the impact site.
He didn't get up.
Mutely, the Gosa child returned to the street. The tan pirate, still holding that huge hammer in his hand, huffed through his nose and turned toward the coast.
"You beat him…"
The stranger paused. Chabo was only marginally aware that he'd spoken loud enough to be heard, but he couldn't help expressing his awe. He noted, distantly, that there were also four fishmen piled together in the street. Had he beaten them, too?
"You actually beat him."
The pirate started walking again, turning toward the woods.
"Wait," Chabo called. The stranger didn't slow down or turn around. "Who- who are you?"
"Usopp." Came the short answer.
Usopp, the pirate, left. Chabo stared down the street where he'd vanished.
'A human won against a fishman.'
Against fishmen, who were said to be ten times as strong as a person.
"A human won against a fishman." He murmured.
The boy had to tell someone- he couldn't keep what he'd seen a secret even if he wanted to. For the second time that day, he ran, his heart pounding for a decidedly different reason.
In the deepest recesses of Impel Down, the absence of information was just another form of starvation for prisoners. Another method the Marines used to tell them that they were forgotten. Those who were relegated to those depths were too hardy, too accustomed to surviving to wither away, yet tolls were inevitably taken on their minds. With no sense of time passing, no knowledge of events outside, and only the prescribed minimum requirement of food and water, Magellan's prisoners did not live. Only survived.
For the first several months of his detainment, Usopp strained his ears for any scrap of news about his nakama. New inmates sometimes whispered about scars and three swords, or smoke and fierce kicks. Occasionally the marines who staffed the prison would bring in one of their superiors with scraps of a paper, taunting the desperate sniper.
And yet, of fiery orange tresses and weather witches, not even a murmur came his way.
"Robin," he said, a whisper that came out nearer a whine. They'd been in Impel Down almost a year, as close as he could figure. Nami was their strategist, the one who came up with the plans. She literally directed them, in seeing Luffy's whims fulfilled and on the seas. "Where is she?"
Usopp's cell mate, the one nakama he knew he had left, regarded him sadly. The sniper's throat tightened- he saw an apology in her brown eyes. Not for Nami's fate, but that she could only confirm what Usopp feared. With Zoro and Sanji, he at least knew that they'd been recognized as Straw Hats even in death.
Nami…
"They erased her."
Nami didn't even get that.
Usopp stormed parallel to the coast, heedless of his surroundings and anything in his path. Having recognized his state as somewhat unstable, he forced his feet toward Zoro's 'voice'.
All the while a deep-seated anger shouted at him to rampage through Arlong Park. Chew's commentary had roused the sniper's more reckless side, and he wanted to hurt those who made his nakama suffer.
'Stick to the plan.' His rational voice counseled like a mantra, though much quieter than it had been.
It took considerable effort to stay his course.
'Luffy will get here soon,' he argued. 'Just a bit longer and he'll be calling the shots.'
Much as he hated essentially surrendering to indecisiveness, that particular strain of reasoning quelled the tempest in his mind. Usopp resented himself for pushing the burden of choice onto his Captain, even if ultimately the result would be the same.
'This is for Nami.'
He held onto that reminder. His temper cooled a bit, his feet no longer pounding abuse into the dirt. He'd gone over Nami's situation countless times since his second round began. Regardless of his own selfish desire for cathartic retribution, Usopp knew that Luffy had done things right the first time.
Focusing back on Zoro's 'voice', he couldn't help drawing a connection.
In at least one sense, Arlong was Nami's Mihawk.
An opponent in a deeply personal battle.
'They followed me. They actually followed me here.'
Such were Nami's first thoughts when, upon returning from a visit to Belle-mére's grave, she heard that a 'long-nose brat' had attacked Arlong in Cocoyashi. For just a split second, she didn't know what to make of the realization that Usopp had been sincere.
Her second, third and fourth thoughts were identical- a single word, repeated with various levels of alarm and frustration.
'Shit!'
Needless to say, the incident left Arlong angry. And people had died before for simply irritating him.
She lingered outside the circle of fishmen attempting to ease their captain's volatile temper, lest the mansion's architecture suffer for it. Her mind raced to formulate a plan to remove the idiots (well-intentioned idiots, though idiots nonetheless) from the island before her efforts were spoiled. All the while, she maintained a neutral poker face.
"Something on your mind?" Kuroobi asked, the question none-too-subtly laced with suspicion and accusation. "Something that maybe you haven't told us?"
Nami bit back a curse. Apparently something had betrayed her nerves.
"I've got nothing to hide," she said briskly. "Although yes, I was thinking. You should try it some time, particularly since it seems there's a strain of contagious stupidity going around."
The ray fishman glared.
"Yes," he said. "So it would seem. Speaking of, I noticed that our prisoner is no longer in holding." He loomed over her. "Of course you'll say you didn't know anything about that either, won't you?"
Nami affected both surprise and offense. She turned her head to find Hachi.
"Hachi," she said, mildly exasperated. "Where exactly did you place the Gosa brat?"
"Nyu? Oh, in the storage room," he replied. He hesitated a moment, then continued. "I figured it was just as good as the holding cell. Plus, Arlong-sama had that errand in Cocoyashi, so I thought we should keep the hold free for other prisoners."
He smiled, if a bit wanly for whatever reason.
Internally, Nami laughed. She didn't even need to frame the question or direct the conversation to serve her purpose. She almost felt bad for using him to deflect blame. Outwardly, she sighed.
"Is that the same room you keep your swords in?" She asked, voice flat as paper.
Hachi nodded, looking a little confused by the question. Beside her, Kuroobi pinched the bridge of his nose and scowled.
"Hachi…" He growled.
Understanding flitted across the octopus fishman's face a second later. He sputtered, all six of his hands flailing. The accusation dealt with, Nami made her way to the gate.
"And now where are you going?" Kuroobi asked, persistent as ever.
Nami clicked her tongue.
"Being around Arlong right now is a health hazard," she said, giving only a non-answer. "If I see either of today's morons, I'll handle it for you."
Ignoring the way Kuroobi narrowed his eyes, Nami left. She had no intention of doing anything about the Gosa kid.
Usopp, though- she knew he was clever enough to evade capture if he wanted. And among Luffy's band, she considered him the most sane. If she could just find him alone, she might be able to convince him to leave things be. He didn't really deserve her 'traitorous bitch' persona. Not that any of them did, though Usopp might at least be reasonable, and definitely less pigheaded than Zoro or Luffy. She could give him just enough of the truth to understand her reasons for working with Arlong, and he could get the others off the island.
Then again, sane or not, Usopp had chosen to follow Luffy.
Nami groaned.
Zoro cast a lazy eye around the tangerine grove. Usopp had found him shortly after the swordsman got fed up waiting on the ship. Which had been only a few minutes after the doctor finished with him.
("You're looking better."
"Yeah, I guess. What's with the hammer?"
"Errands got interrupted. Anyway, we better make a quick stop by the Merry."
"I agreed to the doctor, and he looked me over. Now we"
"I'm just gonna check on Johnny. It won't even take a minute, I promise, then we'll start looking.")
Grudgingly, Zoro had gone along. However reluctant he may have been to heed Usopp's request again, the swordsman had to admit the marksman made good on his word.
He left the ship within thirty seconds of stepping on board.
("Usopp-aniki!"
"Hey Johnny. You brought those three up on deck?"
"Ah, I, um, I wanted to make it easier to throw them overboard if they came to."
"Fair enough."
"Usopp-aniki, what's with the ham"
THWAM!
"Okay, you can toss 'em."
"E-eh?!"
"Well if they weren't concussed before, they definitely are now. They won't drown, so just throw them overboard and take it easy for a bit. Later.")
Zoro glanced at his crew mate. He briefly wondered where the hell he kept a two hundred pound hammer.
"What makes you think we'll find anything here?" Zoro asked, a bit agitated they hadn't gone straight for Arlong Park.
"Just a hunch, something I remember Nami saying," Usopp answered. Before Zoro could press further, the sniper raised his voice and waved a hand over his head. "Excuse me!"
Zoro looked past the marksman. A young woman with blue hair and tattoos snaking up her right arm from her collarbone stood outside a small house at the grove's end.
"Can I help you?" She asked evenly. Zoro found himself mildly impressed. The Going Merry, pirate flag and all, would be visible from her porch. She kept remarkably calm, considering she had to know that both of them had just come from there.
"I hope so," Usopp said amiably. "We're looking for a woman."
"Well, you found one."
Zoro raised an eyebrow at the woman's snarky comment.
Usopp chuckled.
"I guess I should specify," he said. "She's got orange hair, short like yours. Her name's Nami."
Zoro, well-practiced at reading subtle cues in a fight, noticed how the woman's posture changed, turning slightly guarded. Half-lidded eyes widened a fraction, and her feet shifted to face them fully.
"What led you here?" She asked.
"Well," Usopp said slowly. "She was friendly with us, at least while I've been aboard. We only really know a couple things about her though- she loves money and tangerines."
Zoro blinked. Nami's love for money was no secret. He couldn't remember the bit about tangerines, though. Maybe she just hadn't shared that with him. He glanced around at the grove again. Usopp's thinking made more sense, knowing that.
"She was friendly?"
The woman's faintly defensive posture faded, and an odd smile broke out on her face.
"Our local witch woman told you that much?"
"Witch woman?" Zoro asked.
"Oh, don't you know? She"
"If you don't know where she is, that's fine," Usopp said, cutting her off. "If you see her, let her know that Usopp and Zoro came looking for her, please."
With that, the sniper turned and made to leave. After a second, Zoro shrugged and followed.
"Zoro?" He heard her ask. "As in Pirate Hunter Zoro?"
"Never agreed to that title." He said without looking back. On their way out, he caught a glimpse of a kid in a cap sprinting perpendicular to them, cutting through the trees. He didn't notice either Straw Hat in his mad dash.
"Nojiko-san!" He yelled. "Nojiko-san, you won't believe what I just saw!"
Zoro didn't hear the rest.
Kuroobi took stock as he walked into Nami's room. Maps were stacked in piles nearly as tall as him, and dozens of others were hanging from lines of string, clipped and out to dry. He paid them no mind, save that he took care around them. The woman could draw them again, but Arlong would be livid were they damaged.
In any case, he hadn't come for them.
He'd been suspicious of Nami ever since the girl first got her mark as one of theirs. He hadn't thought much of it initially- humans were greedy, corrupt creatures, and even a girl who'd seen her mother killed, even a girl Arlong took exception to, could be bought.
No, Kuroobi's suspicion came from her actions. Immediately after betraying her own village, the place where she'd been raised, she had turned around and made a deal with Arlong to buy it back from him. And Kuroobi could not fathom why.
Why work so hard to claim something that she'd turned her back on? It didn't align with the love for money that Arlong had exploited to win her over.
The ray fishman scowled, placing one of the woman's cartography books back into place. With another glance around, he closed in on her desk. Careful with the contents spread out, he paged through the drafts and sketches that littered its surface.
Finding nothing, he huffed and slammed the pages down in mild irritation.
Clunk.
He heard something rattle in response. Eyes narrowed, he tapped the desk again. Same result. Kneeling down, he placed his hand along its underside and inspected it by touch. His fingers caught on something, and he pulled, revealing a small compartment.
Finally assured he'd found something, he reached in and pulled out a single paper. He recognized the island immediately. A small X marked one particular location.
At last, he understood.
"Holy shit."
Nojiko couldn't express her reaction any other way. She'd listened, indulgently, she thought, to Chabo's account of avoiding fishmen and witnessing the impossible- one of Arlong's officers actually losing. She had weighed the likely exaggeration, if not outright lie, against the stress the kid had already been through and chose not to admonish him.
She'd only come to Gosa afterward to make sure the brat didn't get involved in anything else. She had never suspected she'd actually find four fishmen piled together, one further up the broken road exactly as Chabo described.
Even then, nothing could have prepared her adequately for how she found Chew, whose rank matched Nami's for his strength next to her talent. The big-lipped fishman lay splayed out on the ground, skin dark with burns, head bleeding and his face swollen almost beyond recognition.
Nojiko stared, dazed. Her toes and her fingertips tingled with something she barely recognized, something she still didn't dare to embrace, despite the evidence in front of her.
And yet…
"Am I dreaming?"
Across the island, edging the outskirts of Cocoyashi, Nami's thoughts came to a halt at the distant sound of something massive impacting the shoreline, accompanied by a rapidly fading yell of exhilaration.
As her neighbors ran to investigate, Nami bit her lip and frowned. She may not have heard the voice clearly enough to identify it, though only one person could possibly make an entrance like that.
"Luffy."