Disclaimer: One Piece is Odacchi's, and Odacchi's alone. I'm just borrowing.


Thursday Morning

When the first light of the dawn sneaked in from the gap between the curtains, she was lying on her bed. Lying, not sleeping, because last night had been one of those nights that she just couldn't sleep after.

Slowly she got out of bed, thoughts recurring in her head. How many lies must she utter today? How many principles must she bend today? How many trust must she betray today? Those are the questions she's been asking herself every morning for the last two years. But she knew that answers are irrelevant now. Back then, she had made the promise.

Are you prepared for that consequence?

She got up and walked towards her private bathroom. It's a privilege given to not just every resident of the island, an island where men and women conspire while secretly wait for a chance to seize others' positions and privileges. She had earned it. She had to earn it if she wanted to achieve what she had set out to achieve. Inside the byzantine anthill that is the Baroque Works, information is not passed around except in the inner circle: the Number agents. Even then, she felt that for many things she was still in the dark.

She turned on the bathroom light, washed her face in the basin and for a minute just stood there, examining the sad face of a girl in the mirror. In a few minutes, that face should transform into a woman's, sneering and taunting men unfortunate enough to step into her and her minions' trap. Men like those she had encountered last night.

No matter how many people you will betray...

A knock on her bedroom door.

"Good morning, Miss Wednesday. Are you awake yet?"

A voice too familiar.

"Yes, I am, Mister Nine. I'll be right out!"

"Better be hasty, baby!"

It felt strange, how that man sometimes made her want to laugh at his unique way of speaking, his bizarre fashion sense and his generally merry disposition. But then she would remember what she had done with that man, and felt sick to the bones.

They were the perfect partners. She blew their minds off and he blew their heads up.

No matter how many lives will be wasted...

Why, why should she even care? Those people were pirates. Pirates that plunder people like her people. Pirates just like that rotten Crocodile pretended not to be.

But the smell of their blood made her dizzy. It had made her dizzy the first time and it still did last night. Then the name of her special attack came to her mind. Such a poetic justice, she thought, as the reflection in the mirror started to blur.

You have to live...

She bit her lips and wiped her suspended tears. When the choice was between her and them, the answer was obvious. Back then, she had made a promise to live. To live and bring peace back to the land and people she so dearly loved.

...even though you would suffer.

Even though she would suffer.

"Miss Wednesday, can you come out soon, baby? Orders from Boss just came in. We're supposed to get a whale or something," her partner's voice was heard again.

She pulled her hair up in a high ponytail and straightened her jacket.

"Okay, okay, I'm ready," she answered.

On her way out, she noticed a calendar on the table. It said that today was Thursday, but she knew that it must have lied.

It couldn't be Thursday yet, because she was still Wednesday.


Endnotes:

1) Phew, finished! This one shot is actually the first fanfic that ever passed 'idea' stage to me. Unbeta-ed, and English is not my first language, so feel free to point out anything that I missed. Con-crit will be loved.
2) Words in italic, in case you don't know already, are said to Vivi by Igaram in one of the flashbacks. In fact, the dialogue is what brought me the idea for this fic. I took the translation from scanlations.
3) Miss Wednesday's special attack is Dizzy Dance.
4) The title "Thursday Morning" is meant to be two things. First is of course the literal meaning, where the story takes place on a Thursday morning. Second is that "Thursday" signifies the day when Vivi can remove her disguise and quit living as Miss Wednesday and "morning" signifies the beginning of something. The order they received in the end marks the beginning of events that will lead her to Luffy and his crew, hence that day is truly "Thursday morning" to her (I hope I'm not overanalyzing myself ;).