Robin felt… tired. Not in such a way that indicated she needed to sleep. No, tired in a way that made her bones feel heavy and her blue eyes sting and her head hurt. Almost as if she were contracting a cold.
To her increasing curiosity and concern, she found the rest of the crew was similarly fatigued when she exited the library that afternoon. Chopper drooped over the railing and watched the sea. Nami only managed a heavy pat on her captain's shoulder when he wrapped like a rubber snake around her to check her log pose, when normally he'd be thrown overboard by now. And Sanji didn't shout about respecting the navigator's personal space – he only raised a curly eyebrow and flexed his foot.
Usopp and Jimbei were both sprawled out on the deck – they were either asleep or dead. Brook was also lying down… so for purposes of tallying, he would count as both asleep and dead.
The Thousand Sunny was close enough now to get a good look at the island they approached - it was surrounded by a thick white fog, so bright with the afternoon sunlight reflecting through it that Robin had to squint the closer they came. The fog itself appeared to be settling in the coastal waters and spilling from the center of the island, where a volcano took residence. A very big, very active volcano, from the looks of it.
Robin's curiosity grew. So did her headache.
The rest of the crew hadn't figured out yet what ailed them. Per the yawn-filled conversations she eavesdropped on now, they linked their symptoms to recovery from overexcitement, boredom, or hangovers.
Robin considered all these theories clinically, for the sake of considering all possible options, and dismissed all three; overexcitement and boredom seldom plagued the archaeologist like it did some of her more exuberant crew members. And as for a hangover… she could hold her liquor, thank you very much.
The cloud of white began to sweep over the ship's deck – Chopper and Brook (not asleep, still dead) screamed, and Luffy wondered aloud if it would taste good. Robin, alternatively, wondered if the fog was slowly poisoning them and would eventually kill them all.
It was an interesting theory, she acknowledged with a small smile. Her expression caused a few crew members to shiver.
She descended the stairs to join them; Her investigation required more information, which she would only find once they'd anchored and she could explore. She searched the gathered crewmates for the most optimal sidekicks.
Franky had previously volunteered to stay with the ship, so he was scratched from her list first – he still had repairs to do on the crow's nest, which right now was covered in a spare mast to prevent any more broken glass from falling out and onto the deck. Chopper was the next to go – the reindeer was undeniably intelligent but didn't fare well in the heat.
With a sweep of her intelligent eyes, Robin assessed the remaining options – Luffy, who tended to destroy things in his excitement, Nami and Sanji, who were in charge of island purchases, Jimbei, who would likely offer to carry their bags, and Zoro, noticeably absent and still faking illness for whatever reason – all scratched off the list.
With a firm nod, she decided that Usopp and Brook would accompany her on her dangerous expedition. One was tactical in tough situations, and the other was conveniently already dead.
For reasons unknown to the two, a chill ran down their spines.
"Sanji-kun, here is your budget for food," Nami broke through Robin's thoughts with her authoritative tone – the one she always took in money talks.
The navigator hefted a small, but full, coin purse into Sanji's awaiting hands. It was a noticeably smaller purse than she gave on the last island, but Robin could guess this was part of her scheme to continue to punish their captain for almost losing her life's work. Less budget meant less meat, after all.
Robin's smile grew; she loved when their navigator was on a ruthless streak.
Jimbei, under Nami's instruction, fitted the ship in an alcove about a mile away from the edges of town. Usopp, Sanji, and Brook wrangled the sails and anchored, and before long the crew was stepping onto dry land.
Luffy had, of course, already flung himself onto the island a few minutes prior in a rubber human self-catapult. He felt strange – his adventure battle cry had been lackluster today. He wiggled his fingers in front of his face and then wiggled his toes in his sandals. They still worked fine, but they felt sluggish.
He needed food. That must be it. But he'd been told very explicitly that he wasn't allowed to wander off without another crewmate – Nami enacted a buddy system after the crew lost him for four days on the last island. So, while he needed food, he more immediately needed a… buddy.
It was at that moment that a head of mossy hair poked around the corner of the mezzanine deck, back from vacation and wondering miserably why everything was so blindingly bright. Luffy spotted his friend from the shore and grinned.
Zoro would be up for a food stop… if the restaurant also served alcohol.
Zoro watched with a sigh as his captain set himself up between two trees, latched his hands onto the trunks, and pulled himself back with a gleeful laugh. He didn't even attempt to move out of the way – he was still waking up, and if he did move the captain would probably break something else on the ship.
Luffy launched his body forward, letting go of the trees and snapping his arms back to normal size while he flew through the sky. Seconds later he hit the swordsman square in the chest with his straw-covered head.
Oblivious to the pained groan from the crumpled heap on the deck, Luffy started. "Zoro. Food."
The swordsman's groan morphed into something closer to a growl.
"I'm not hungry, idiot. We just had lunch."
This reasoning was foreign to Luffy – scheduled meals had little impact on his constant desire to eat more. He furrowed his brow and tried again. "Drinks, then. And I'll eat."
If the Straw Hats captain knew anything – which was, unbeknownst to him, something many people speculated – it was that his green-haired friend enjoyed any activity involving alcohol. Predictably, the suggestion seemed to catch the swordsman's attention. Zoro sat up, and then stood up, and sighed.
"Fine. Just let me get a shirt, first." Zoro didn't want to get turned away from whatever bar they ended up at for being underdressed. With that, he disappeared back into the ship, heading for his locker in the men's quarters.
Nami had also ventured into the ship to change – she needed to wear a fresh outfit in celebration of a new island. Clothes flew around the walk-in closet like a tornado until she finally settled on a set.
The navigator slipped into a sapphire blue strapless dress that floated to mid-thigh and a pair of silver heels that wound up in intricate lacing to her knees. A pair of silver drop earrings and a jeweled clip to pull some of her hair back finished off the look – with a testing swish of the skirt in the mirror, she was ready to depart for her shopping trip.
Her forehead throbbed when she opened the door to the bright fog of the island shoreline – maybe she'd find something local to help with her headache, while she was out. Whatever wine she'd had last night was really messing with her today. Unusual, for such a seasoned drinker.
Nami heard the door to the men's quarters swing open; Looking down over the railing, she saw the green-haired swordsman emerging in, to her relief, a shirt. A new shirt – it was a button-down, no less. She wondered what had inspired him to dress up.
"Oi, Zoro! Hurry up or all the beer will be gone. And I'm hungry."
The navigator shouldn't have been surprised he was dressing up for drinks. Or, even more heinous, disappointed.
Zoro turned his gaze up to see her and she fought the instinct to blush at having been caught staring. She glared instead, leaning on the railing. The swordsman raised a single eyebrow and ran a dark eye down the length of her before his expression shuttered.
Nami wasn't sure what to make of that reaction to her outfit choice. In a moment of unbridled panic, she wondered if gold accessories would've worked better with the dress – Zoro wore gold earrings, maybe he hated silver.
Seconds later when she came to, she was tempted to throw herself overboard into the rocky shoreline. A just death as recompense for her pathetic thoughts.
To his credit, Zoro was reacting in the only way he knew wouldn't get him thrown through a wall again, after having just finished his fake-recovery-vacation nap. More specifically, Roronoa Zoro was trying not to react to the fact that he could see up the navigator's nonexistent skirt from this angle.
This was, in his opinion, a life-or-death scenario where only acting oblivious would keep him alive. He considered briefly closing his eyes, but while the easiest route, that might agitate the she-beast above him. So he instead decided to just ignore the flutter of blue fabric, and the fact that her panties were – no, he wouldn't finish that thought.
Black, his inner voice screamed. His hand twitched.
With remarkable restraint, Zoro forced his eye to do a sweep of the deck for his considerably less controllable crewmates: the shitty cook and the skeleton. Thankfully, he found both of them waiting already onshore – Brook was being pulled away with phantom hands towards the forest with Robin and Usopp, and the idiot blonde was waiting with Chopper and Jimbei to go shopping.
Swirly-brow was going to be shopping with Nami. Zoro's hand twitched again.
Focusing intently on the shitty cook's annoying, heart-filled, bloody nosed face helped Zoro settle his expression back into a neutral glare. Satisfied, he made his way down to the lower deck to depart.
Nami asked him something on his way down, but Zoro ignored her. Instead, he stared so hard at Sanji that the cook flipped him off as he disembarked the ship.
Zoro had alcohol waiting for him in town. Sweet, sweet alcohol. He was going to need a lot of it to get the word black to stop echoing in the empty cavern of his skull.
With a punch towards the shitty cook's stomach and a swift dodge of a patent leather shoe aiming for his head, he finally felt a more natural scowl settle onto his face. He and the remaining crew members – Robin, Brook, and Usopp had since completely disappeared – followed Luffy into town.
The closer they got to the town, the less blinding the white cloud-cover became. Shithead, Jimbei, Chopper, and Nami split off to search for a market district the moment they reached a main road. Luffy, in turn, wrapped his rubbery fingers around the swordsman's forearm and dragged him into the nearest pub he could find. Zoro didn't complain.
Black. With lace. For a moment, Zoro's expression became tortured.
"Hey, lady. Do you sell meat?" The rotted wooden door swung shut behind the two, locking them in with the stench of stale beer and fried food. The smell hit Zoro so hard it snapped him out of his daze. This was a good thing.
The woman behind the counter was old, with skin that looked like leather and hair that was matted and grey. Her frown was a bit more pronounced than the swordsman expected from neutral parties – Luffy hadn't even said anything rude yet.
Oblivious, Luffy dropped onto a stool and snatched a menu from behind the counter. Zoro watched the barmaid for a reaction – they hadn't seen any marines on the walk, but the woman's expression was off. She must recognize them.
Any thoughts he had of his crewmate's underwear were shoved back by a mounting sense of dread.
The swordsman slid onto his own seat and watched her leathery mouth pull into a deeper frown. She didn't offer him a menu, so he swept his eyes over the space looking for a second exit. Two – one through the kitchens, one by the restrooms in the back. Now he just needed to make sure Luffy didn't do anything particularly aggravating.
"Lady, I want all the meat you have in your kitchen. Shishishi." The captain asked like it was a normal, reasonable request. The few other pub occupants went silent and a vein in Zoro's temple throbbed. He positioned a hand near his swords.
The woman's voice was hoarse, yet firm when she finally spoke.
"You shouldn't be here, Straw Hats. You're going to die on this island."