Sol Invictus
Chapter Thirteen: Calculations, Calculations
"Twenty-five hundred, plus five thousand, plus thirty-one hundred," Patty listed as he tapped away at the large, clunky device in his hands.
"Ten thousand six hundred," the new chore girl chimed from where she was mopping nearby. He ignored the little sea urchin. It was enough that he was - barely - tolerating her presence, no need to interact with the damn girl.
But according to the faded block numbers of the screen... "Ten thousand, six hundred beli," he repeated, jotting it down on the page.
Patty narrowed his eyes at the page. It was a fluke. It must have been a lucky guess. The girl had proved herself to be a certified idiot, no way she'd calculated that in her head, and faster than the calculator at that.
Grabbing another bill, he read, "Nineteen hundred times three, plus fifty-five fifty, plus fourteen hundred." His fingers had barely pressed the number '9' when the girl spoke up.
"Twenty five thousand six hundred and fifty."
His head shot up. Was she using a calculator too? But no, the sea urchin was barely even paying attention to him, instead struggling with a foot stuck in the mop bucket and fixing the spilled soap water with puffed cheeks and a petulant scowl.
Patty checked the device in his hand, and indeed, "Twenty five thousand, six hundred and fifty beli."
What the -
Once more, he decided, watching the urchin hawkishly.
"Three thousand eight hundred forty, plus two thousand ninety-five, plus five thousand seven hundred fifty," he said, eyes trained on the girl so studiously that he barely even looked down at the bill.
"Eleven thousand six hundred eighty-five," she responded absently-mindedly, and she really wasn't even paying attention to her surroundings. It was more like an automatic reaction than any conscious mental calculation.
Patty glanced down at the calculator and pressed in the numbers - 11 685, it said.
Well then.
"Oi chore girl," he snapped, flapping a sheath of papers at her. The girl glanced up from her struggles, her knee still lifted in the air. The bucket fell off her foot with a wet fwrop and clattered onto the deck, luckily still upright.
"What d'you want now, Popeye-bastard," she whined back, with an outstretched tongue. He actually had no clue what that meant, but the damn brat had taken to calling him the name, and it was safe to assume from her tone that it was an insult.
"Shut up and c'mhere you little sea urchin," he shot back, almost tempted to stick his tongue out as well. He scowled and mentally smacked himself for even considering falling to her level. He was a full grown man and she was a little brat, barely even old enough to drink. (And she hadn't beaten him yesterday, of course not, she'd just... taken him by surprise was all.)
She che'd but padded her way over to him nonetheless, mop abandoned haphazardly onto the floor.
"Kid, you're gonna take care of the till," he told her, and he explained exactly what she was supposed to do. It was simple, really; calculate and write down the bill totals the moment she got them, set them on the little black trays, bring the bill over when the customer called her, wait for them to hand over the money, bring back the change and receipt, and take away the tip, if there was any. And always, always smile.
Each bill was labeled with the table number, he made sure to tell her, so there was no excuse for mixing up the bills. If any of the money went missing, she sure as hell could be sure Zeff would saw her leg off as recompense.
Patty returned to the kitchen with a worried scowl when the girl insisted she could do it, Popeye-bastard, of course she could. Trusting the brat with the money made him anxious, but what could he do when he had to return to his cooking? The bills had hard evidence to record what had been lost, but the tips... Well, a few lost beli here and there was a sacrifice that had to be made for perfectly baked mackerel and unburnt oyster sauce.
"Hey, can we get the bill over here?" a customer called, raising an arm high. Luffy grabbed the little black tray for table 9 and bounced over to the group, her new black skirt and attached apron fluttering in the breeze generated by her sheer enthusiasm.
"Here you go," she told them cheerfully, giving the collection of businessmen a wide wide grin and dropping the tray on the table. To her disapproval, there was still a fair amount of food on the plates; she pouted and stared enviously at the leftover salad. Man, she was hungry just from looking at it. "You aren't gonna eat all that?"
The man sitting nearest Luffy playfully waved a stick of celery in the air and chuckled when her eyes trailed after it. He offered it to her. "Do you want it?"
"Do I?" Luffy exclaimed, as she eagerly stretched her neck forward and chomped at it without warning.
The vegetable disappeared so quickly that the entire table was left gaping in shock. They stared at the empty space where the celery used to be.
Ever so eloquently, one of the men said, "Uh."
Another customer experimentally speared a piece of chicken on a fork and hesitantly extended his arm towards her. A blink later, and it disappeared as well.
"What the - "
This process was repeated with two strips of bacon, a cabbage wrap, three spring rolls, and the entire contents of a salad bowl as other customers slowly but surely began to notice and join in on the newest Baratie attraction. The dishes being offered gradually grew from a single piece of lettuce to a whole lobster and a full pot of stew as people tried to puzzle out how quickly Luffy could eat, how she was doing this in the first place, and how, exactly, a skinny little girl of her size was packing away so much food without so much as a fuller stomach. Bets were placed. Arguments ensued. Laughter bubbled.
More and more food was ordered, and those who left the restaurant did so with bigger and bigger incredulous grins, while leaving fuller and fuller tips. When the ferry bus that would ship home a number of customers back to their islands finally arrived, it was with reluctance that they parted from the curiosity of this cute little phenomenon, leaving in their wake a sizable pile of cash laying on various tables.
Nami watched with shrewd eyes as Luffy happily rung up bills and was fed delicious foods for the entertainment of wide eyed customers. Baratie was, without a doubt, profiting off of the younger girl. Perhaps even enough to...
In her head, the navigator calculated the average rate of tips earned by the waiters of Baratie from what she'd observed yesterday, and juxtaposed that to the steadily growing pile of coins and bills stacking on the counter of the register. The little basket that had been set for tips was overflowing, and the little captain had had to pile them onto one of the serving trays instead.
Nami's eyes easily identified each of the different currency values and her internal calculator came to a total value of around 105,850 beli.
On top of the base profit of 10,000 beli an hour that any normal waiter would have earned the restaurant - how long had Luffy been working? She had been at it for a while, perhaps three hours, and her enthusiasm had yet to falter - was an extra 76,000 beli, not counting the profit to be earned within the next several hours or the increased quantity of dishes sold. That was a little more than enough to settle the supposed debt Luffy owed to Baratie, as well as the bill from yesterday that actually hadn't been paid yet. That large brute of a chef had refused to allow the noirette to return to the Merry and get the money, citing that pirates could not be trusted (and of course Luffy had been quite affronted at that, though Nami privately agreed that this assessment would have been true for nearly any other pirate). The issue of lost waiters still wouldn't be solved, but she would at least be saved from separating with several ten thousand beli.
Well. It wouldn't be her money, but she really didn't mind doing Luffy a favour.
So when the Owner finally exited the kitchen, Nami caught the older woman's eye, tilted her head invitingly, and smiled, the glint of gold dancing in her eyes.
Luffy turned when a large hand grabbed her wrist. Brisk and authoritative, like the steady, thumping cadence of a stamp against thick stacks of paper, a voice asked, "How much for a night?"
The noirette cocked her head with her brow scrunched in confusion. "What?"
Her captor was a clean shaven man with auburn hair coiffed and slicked back, a squared jaw and an arrogantly curved smile. Even under his tailored suit, the shifting of his muscles was apparent - this was a guy who was used to power, to authority.
He gave an annoyed sigh, gray eyes narrowed at her. "I said, how much for a night."
"Are you stupid?" she asked sincerely, still confused. "You can't eat the night."
Her arm began to reveal its rubbery composition as it was squeezed harshly. "What did you just say to me?" the man snapped, suddenly enraged even though she hadn't been trying to make him angry.
The play of light along the edge of the restaurant revealed Zoro rising to his feet with both teeth and sword bared in a growl and then both Usopp and Nami scrambling to hold him back, even as they shot deadly looks at the asshole in front of her. Faint whispers of '... can handle herself...' and '...don't, you'll just...' and 'I fucking know, but…' tickled her ears, audible only because it was her nakama, and she could pick out their voices from a crowd of thousands and thousands.
But Luffy scowled at the guy too. She didn't like him, not one bit.
"Let go."
Grey eyes tapered to slits as the man hissed, "Don't you know who I am?"
"Who cares," Luffy shot back, starting to get angry as well. "Let go, you bastard!"
"How dare you - "
Another hand fell around the man's wrist in a vice hold. "The lady said to let go."
"Who are you?" the brunet spat, glaring up at cold blue eyes.
"Hands. Off."
For every moment longer that the man refused to do as he told, Sanji's grip on the other's wrist tightened, until tan turned white under his fingers, until skin visibly bowed inward and bones ground against each other.
With a furious cuss the man let go of Luffy's arm.
"Get out," Sanji said, his voice eerily calm.
The brunet rose to his feet with a sneer. "I'll have you know that you've lost yourself a very valuable customer."
"Do you need an escort?"
With a final harrumph, the man left, his mouth puckered like he'd eaten something sour. From the side, she saw Zoro become calm again, a strangely assessing look dawning in his eyes.
"I could've taken him," Luffy pouted, dissatisfied at having been 'saved'.
Sanji's eyes softened and he grinned at her. "Of course, madam. But then we'd have another broken table, wouldn't we?"
Her eyes brightened in realization. If she'd punched the guy like she'd been planning, she would've broken his chair, and the wall behind him, leading to Zeff trying to keep her here for longer. So actually, Sanji had done her a favour.
She grinned wide at him. "You're right! Thanks!"
Luffy watched as Lieutenant Full-of-himself ate his meal without so much as a snide barb. He was bombastic, he was arrogant, he was an annoying showman and he had a face that kind-of made her want to deck him, but he had not yet insulted Baratie, nor had he complained about the service - though maybe that was because his server was not Sanji. In any case, this was not what she knew to expect from the man today. What a difference it had made, for Luffy and her nakama to have arrived here a day earlier.
"Lieutenant! It's an emergency!"
Or perhaps not so different after all, she thought, watching as a marine soldier was shot in the back, as Patty gave Gin a rough beating, as Sanji quietly slunk off to the kitchen with a single goal in mind.
The pirate captain stepped outside with a jug of water and a cup in her hands. Trying to sneak a customer's plate away had resulted in being chased off, and she herself couldn't cook anything that wasn't roasting raw meat over a fire - even if nothing exploded or broke or fell, she couldn't concentrate on the culinary process long enough to actually make anything. (Meat, however, was different in that it could just be hung over a fire pit and taken off when the smell was yummy enough that she automatically gravitated to it.)
That was okay though, since Sanji would be coming soon. But the guy kind of looked like a dried out squid - so in the meanwhile she'd keep him from shriveling up in the sun. Like a squid. Dried squid. Seasoned dried squid. Mmm...
Luffy wiped drool from the side of her mouth and dropped onto the deck beside the bloodied, desperate-faced Gin. She glanced at him, at the cup, and then at the pitcher, before discarding the cup and just handing over the entire pitcher, which he scrambled to take. The pirate began to gulp down the liquid with abandon; without an audience with whom to keep face, he was long past caring for appearances or pride.
"So, mister," Luffy began when Gin finally set the empty pitcher down. "What's your story?"
He turned to her with gaunt, tired eyes. "My name is Gin, and I work for the Krieg pirates."
Gin spoke as if this brief introduction should have meant more than it really did; had she been a normal East Blue citizen, perhaps it would have. But for Luffy, the Krieg Pirates signified only the coming of larger things, the addition of a beloved new nakama and a vicious yellow-eyed storm who would leave as suddenly as he came.
"I'm a pirate too," she told him cheerily. "My crew and I came here looking for someone to cook for us."
"I... see." Gin paused for a moment, as if chewing over her words. "And did you find yourself a good chef?"
"Better." Out of the corner of her eyes, she spotted Sanji stepping out from behind the door with a bowl of fried rice in hand. When he spotted them, Sanji's steps stuttered, shock momentarily blowing his pupils wide before it faded away. "We found him."
She grinned at the blonde, feeling impossibly fond of this kind, kind almost-man as he crouched down in front of the bedraggled pirate beside her.
"Here," Sanji said, sliding forward the bowl of rice. "Have this."
Hope dawned bright on the creases of Gin's face, and he snatched the food up, cradling it to himself as if afraid Sanji would change his mind. Quickly, Gin turned away and began to shuttle the rice into his mouth.
"I don't want to be ashamed, but - this is the most delicious rice I have had in my whole life." A few salty tears dripped into the rapidly disappearing food, the rest finding a path down Gin's cheeks. "I should not be ashamed... I don't want to be ashamed, but - " A sob shook heavy, exhausted shoulders. "I didn't think I would survive!"
"It's really delicious, isn't it?" A smile grew on Sanji's lips like the blooming of a chrysanthemum, all raw and soft and uneven and the faintest undercurrent of something vulnerable ran deep in his breath - and it was so beautiful that he almost hurt to look at -
But then he caught her staring at him and the emotion receded away again, leaving behind a grin just as big but filled with something subtler, not as torn-open.
"Miss what are you doing here?" he asked, but she ignored him, because this was more important, far, far more important.
"Sanji," and he looked vaguely surprised that she knew his name, and of course, they actually hadn't introduced themselves, hadn't even shared names yet, had they? If she was anyone else, perhaps that would matter, but to her, such a trivial thing wasn't half enough to make her reconsider. "Join my crew."
He gave her a wry smile. "This again? I'm sorry my lady, but I really can't."
Luffy scowled. "I refuse your refusal."
"What?" Sanji raised a brow. "I do have a reason, you know."
"I know," she told him plainly. "It has to do with the 'baa-san right? She wants you to go, but you want to stay and help her."
He nodded hesitantly at her unexpected insight. "Well... if you understand, then - "
"I still want you to join me - "
Sanji twitched. "Miss, you..."
"- because you know, that 'baa-san really cares about you."
"What?" the blond asked, blindsided by her sudden non sequitur.
"She wants you to go because she wants you to be free, not because she doesn't want you around. Even I can see that she hates to see you trapped."
Sanji's face did a strange thing as he was visibly caught by his need to be chivalrous and his own temper. "Miss, with all respect, you don't - you don't know anything. To Owner Zeff, I know I'm just..." His teeth ground together and he turned away in embarrassment from Gin, who was trying his best not to listen in, and the ever earnest Luffy. "Anyway, I can't leave until I've repaid her in full."
"You're not a burden, Sanji," Luffy said, because maybe it was intuition or maybe it was foreknowledge or maybe he was just easy to read, but it was too obvious what her cook had teetered on the edge of confessing. "You're Zeff's hope. You're everything she sees for the future. You're her legacy." Of everything that Zeff knew, everything that she was, both back when she had everything at her fingertips and in this present of just wanting to feed the hungry - because a human was more than just the skills that made them or the roles they filled, they were ideals, they were hopes and dreams and wishes upon stars, and all those little parts of Zeff had been bequeathed onto Sanji to carry in the interstices of his own soul; for him not to see that was a tragedy all on its own.
He watched her with eyes that were at once hard and soft; they shone suspiciously bright in the sunlight. "Even if that were true," if, even if, and he truly believed she would tell him such a terrible, cruel lie, just because to believe would mean disappointment of the worst kind when Zeff proved otherwise, "That still changes nothing."
In other words, another stubborn refusal. But if bullheadedness was a game he wanted to play, then, well, two could play at that. And he would lose.
The two matched eyes with an almost violent intensity, the solid unyielding mountain and the persistent drumming of the rain. Except wind and rain wore a mountain down - in this battle, who was the rain, and who was the mountain? So even as Gin interrupted them to inquire on her goals and extol the horrors of the Grand Line, even as she professed the destination of her dreams, the pirate captain never once took her eyes off Sanji's.
Because Luffy was the reigning champion of stubborn, and she refused to leave this place until her cook was by her side.
The noirette meandered between tables with a bill in hand and some sort of confection melting on her tongue. She quite admittedly wasn't sure why all these strangers were crowding her with yummy food and expectant looks, but as long as there was something going in her belly, she wasn't one to mind. But it was weird - they kept gasping whenever she snatched the food up like she would with her brothers and talked amongst themselves like they thought she would eventually say, 'nope, I'm full' and reject the food. Her! Reject food! It was like they'd never seen a rubber human, or something. Or even just someone with an appreciation for eating. She was sure it was perfectly normal; a lot of people were the same way, like Ace and Sabo and Gramps and Shanks.
"... after we heard what happened to Gosa Village. That Arlong is running wild again - we can't even dock there anymore."
This strain of conversation broke Luffy straight out of her reminiscence and made her stop in place.
"It's because the Conomi Islands are unclaimed, you know. When it comes to government owned lands, it's really a lottery that determines whether the head marine is a shithead or not."
"The system is flawed," another man bit out. "It's why I became a pirate in the first place, innit? Putting a whole island under the jurisdiction of one person, 'course the power's gonna go to their head. 'Head marine' my ass. More like 'head tyrant'. Really, the only hope those poor saps over there have is to scrounge up enough money to formally purchase the land - then the government'd be contract bound to get ridda the little rat and send someone proper to drive out any trash who decide to freeload. But even if they knew about these sorts of things, I doubt that'd ever happen, what with the whole head tax thing the fish has going."
"Captain," the first man said, looking awed. "Since when did you know so much about laws? I didn't even know about anything like that, and I've been looking!"
The man grunted and guzzled back another saucer of sake. "Used to be a marine captain back in the day, didn't I? 'Fore I realized how shit it all was."
As the rest of the table gushed over how cool their captain was, Luffy continued on her original path, mind roiling.
The next two days blurred together in a flurry of delicious food, the chiming of coins, and the noisy buzz that permeated most restaurants, punctuated only by her occasional attempts to recruit Sanji and her sniping banters with Patty. And, as ever, the sight of her nakama waiting ever-patiently for her release. Zeff had only come around to speak to her a few times, once to tell her that she didn't have to pay off her monetary debt, and once to inquire on her progress with convincing Sanji to leave.
It wasn't a bad way to live, by any means, but she was getting increasingly antsy at the lack of adventure, of motion and movement and the rocking of her own ship on the waves of the wide open sea; she dearly missed that feeling of going somewhere, doing something, of being whomever she wanted and doing whatever she wished.
So maybe it was wrong of her, but Luffy couldn't help but to grin gleefully when she finally heard the cry,
"That's Don Krieg's pirate ship!"
AN
And so the stage is set.
Also Sanji is a stubborn little shit, though not as much as Luffy-bbyyy
How do you guys feel about the random math skill I threw in there? I literally don't even know how that happened, it wrote itself like that please forgive
Also, all of you give a huge thanks to lilyoftheval5 for helping me figure out how I want this next arc to go. If it wasn't for her, you'd have had to wait even longer, and it's already been a month. So go shower her with love. ^^