A/N: This chapter has been censored to comply with this website's regulations. The uncensored version can be read on AO3.
-o-0-o-
Nami was tired.
No, scratch that.
Nami was bloody exhausted, and it was all she could do not to nod off atop her desk. Considering the pile of new books Arlong had dumped into her lap, along with the cold order to not leave her room until she'd charted all of them, now waiting in the corner for her; a nap really wasn't an option right now.
But her eyes were so heavy. The cartography room was so stuffy and still, that the weight of the air felt like a heavy blanket around her shoulders. The words on the page before her were swimming, the letters blurring together, shifting their position around and around and around until she was dizzy trying to follow them.
Just… Just one minute would be fine, right? One minute to rest her eyes, that's all. Surely even Arlong would understand that, right? She can't work if she can't see, so… so surely just one minute would be…
She's shaken awake some time later, and she springs to her feet in a panic, apologies already spilling from her lips- When she realizes she's still alone in her room. Books have spilled from the shelves, several stacks of maps have tipped over to cover the floor, and it takes a moment for her to realize that she'd been shaken awake by something that had caused the entire building to shudder.
"ARLONG!"
Well, Nami thinks, running to the window and forcing it open to stick her head out. I suppose that answers the question of how Cocoyashi suddenly became an earthquake zone.
The front gates leading into Arlong Park from the village were straight up gone. There's a man dressed in red walking up the path to Arlong park, a woman and two others trailing after him at a distance.
"I've got a bone to pick with you!" The man continues, his straw hat keeping Nami from being able to read his expression, but somehow… She feels like she recognizes these people.
"Oh?" Arlong's dismissive sneer is audible from his voice alone, and Nami doesn't need to be able to see him to know that he's probably standing up so as to better loom over these trespassers. "Do tell. What bone could such an inferior species as yourself have to pick with someone like-"
The growing snickers of Arlong's crew are cut off along with his grating voice as the shark is sent flying, only coming to a stop after crashing through one of the exterior walls.
Nami tightens her grip on the windowsill. She realizes, now, why these people look familiar.
That woman was the one she had tried to steal from back at the Angel. She doesn't have her knives drawn, but her hair and glasses are recognizable. As is that straw hat.
Something hysterical is bubbling up in her throat. It's just her sort of luck for it to turn out that she had tried to steal from the crew of the man that had saved her not ten minutes later.
Why was he here, though? She'd left empty handed, it wasn't as if Arlong had anything of his-
"YOU!" Arlong roars. "How dare a human lay hands on-"
"Shut up."
Arlong's mouth visibly clicks shut, the sharkman's eyes bulging at having obeyed the man's order. If Nami didn't know better, she'd think that was fear visibly growing amongst the pirates.
"Where's Bellemere's daughter?" The man asks, voice just as cold as before, but the anger in it beginning to temper into something razor sharp.
Nami's breath catches.
"She had two." The man continues, coming back into her sight as he walks calmly towards where Arlong is pulling himself free from the rubble. "The older one, Nojiko, she's at her house. That makes sense. But she says that Nami is here."
Arlong sneers, and flicks his gaze up and around, coming to a stop when he spots her.
"Look up."
The man obeys, turning around and craning his head back with a hand on his hat, and Nami feels that caught breath twist into the beginning of a sob as his face visibly softens. She understands now, why he'd looked at her with such grief and hope when she'd run into him before. If he had thought she had died with her mother-
She doesn't have a chance to shout a warning before Arlong's lunging, sword in hand towards her mother's friend-
The blade stops dead, caught effortlessly, with a single gloved finger.
"Sorry, Nami." His attention's still on her. He'd blocked it without even looking away. "I think we're going to have to deal with this first."
"Okay." She finds herself saying, like they were just agreeing to have coffee after work instead of-
Arlong springs away, eyes wild, and every pirate draws their weapons. "Comrades! Together! Let's show these humans our superiority!"
The entire crew cheers, but Nami can't help but think that Arlong doesn't seem as cocky as usual. Like he doesn't quite believe the bull he's spouting as much as he normally does.
The man readjusts his hat as he turns away from her, and she barely catches the quiet order he speaks to the three that came with him.
"Let's go."
It would be… Generous to call what follows a fight. It would be like calling the token resistance the other villages had put up before being destroyed or subjugated a rebellion.
There's so much happening all at once that it's hard to follow what's happening, but Nami's fairly certain there's at least one devil fruit involved; Nothing else could explain the flurry of lotus petals she often sees right before another dozen fishmen fall to the ground below, necks broken as easily as a chicken's.
The two other men are a blur. The one in blue is fighting with a staff, she thinks, or perhaps it's a metal pipe of some description. The other, wearing a leather jacket over a bright shirt, has a spear that comes apart into a knife and staff when needed. At some point he either puts it away or loses it, for the next time she sees him he's just cracking heads with his bare hands; a dark sort of satisfaction visible in his expression.
They're outnumbered a hundred to one, and it's not making a lick of difference. Straw Hat and Arlong have gone crashing into the lower floors of the building, and she can occasionally feel the floor beneath her shudder as another wall goes down as collateral.
The next wave of reinforcements has Hachi with them, and Nami watches with wide eyes as the octopus charges towards the woman with a scream of rage. Apparently he's come to the same conclusion Nami has- That she's the devil fruit user, and the one with the highest body count by far. The men aren't going for killing blows like she has been, after all, though they don't seem to particularly care if their opponent ever gets back up again either.
The woman faces him down with that same unflappable calm she'd held back in the bar, bringing her hands up to her chests as if in preparation for something- That must be how she uses her abilities, Nami realizes-
Only to be stopped by the man in blue, as he steps up beside her with his arm raised, as if to block Hachi from her sight.
"This one's mine."
The woman smiles beautifically, and allows her hands to drop back down to her sides as the man walks past her. "Of course, Sabo-sama."
The man, Sabo apparently, faces Hachi's enraged charge and six swords with nothing but his pipe and an uncaring air, and brings it to a halt. Hachi is clearly shocked speechless by this, but Nami only leans forward in anticipation.
Even knowing these men's strength, she still finds herself staring in amazement as Sabo proceeds to shatter the fishman's swords in three devastating strikes, and then his resolve with a mere five words.
"Fisher Tiger would be ashamed."
Nami doesn't recognize that name, but Hachi clearly does. The octopus falls to his knees, the metal shards of his once-weapons scattered about the ground around him like the hundreds of lotus petals dusting the concrete. Sabo looks down at the octopus with cold disappointment and pity both, before turning away as Hachi buckles further. Nami had never seen one of Arlong's men defeated so easily before, and not even from the physical blows he'd been dealt! Somehow Sabo had managed to win without shedding a drop of Hachi's blood through nothing but the obvious heartbreak that he had so easily reawakened.
It's not just Hachi, either, she's realizing. Several of Arlong's captains had staggered back at those words, and were now staring down at the floor beneath their feet, shoulders creeping up to their ears as some shameful memory hit home.
"Get out of here."
Straw Hat's back, apparently finished with Arlong.
He steps into sight, and the fishmen back away almost as one. There's some new tears in his clothes that she can see, but no visible wounds at all. Either Straw Hat has some sort of healing ability, or he'd managed to defeat their Captain without taking a single scratch.
"Go. Fix things." There's a hint of an order in Straw Hat's voice as he jabs a finger sharply out towards the ocean. "If I see any of you back here again, I'll kill you. But if you take your wounded and go, we'll let you leave. So get out of here."
They barely even hesitate.
Nami watches with wide eyes from the window of her prison as her tormentors limp, dragging their fallen brethren with them, into the ocean, and then out of sight.
Is it... over?
She wheels around from her window, yanking open the door to the cartography room, and taking the stairs two at a time down to the bottom floor.
She nearly trips over Arlong's corpse.
The shark is… Very dead, to say the least. Fishman superiority or no, there was no coming back from... that.
From the concerned "Nami?" she can hear from outside, she thinks Straw Hat would have rather her not see this. Still, there's something… wonderfully final about seeing Arlong like this for herself. To be able to know, beyond even a shadow of a doubt, that he was well and truly dead and never coming back... That's something words alone could never achieve, and is absolutely worth the nausea she's feeling right now. Worth it, perhaps a dozen times over.
"Nami?"
From inside, now. Straw Hat's looking for her.
"Here." She calls, her voice cracking and making it come out far weaker than she'd intended. It's enough for him to find her, though.
His expression when he sees her standing over Arlong's corpse tells her that she'd guessed correctly. He really would have rather her not see this, and clearly feels guilty about leaving it where she could find it.
She's not sure he'll really understand, but-
"He's dead." She swallows, blinking back tears and finds that she's somehow grinning and laughing and crying all at once. "Arlong's really dead."
It's hard to see through her tears, but she thinks Straw Hat's smiling at her as he carefully takes her hand to guide her out into the clean outside air.
"Yeah. He is."