Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece
"Nao-chan, how old are you?" Rayleigh's eyebrow raises everso slightly.
"Three," she chimes in response.
Her faux enthusiasm is betrayed by her refusal to make eye contact with the man. The brief bout of confidence is long gone, and in its place is pure terror at how her impulsive request had turned out.
The two of them sit inside the ship—in the very same room Nao had woken up in only a few days before. There's a certain irony in how her current terror mirrors the fear she felt as she woke up the first time around (and if she wasn't about to shit herself, she'd have commented once more on Fate's unrelenting sense of humor. This world sure was a sucker for parallels.)
"You know, you could always go back to the—"
"I want to go to sea," Nao manages to spit out despite every bone in her body telling her to take this god-given opportunity to escape.
She isn't lying, per se, she simply is obscuring the full truth. She did, absolutely, want to go to sea, but not because of an innate need to travel the world, or a newly developed ambition to become something like the Pirate King. Her unwavering resolve to accompany Rayleigh on his voyages comes from something much less pure than the wills that had pushed people like Roger to venture out; it comes from her want—no, need to shake the world for the life it had given her.
And Rayleigh can sense every bit of genuineness in her proclamation.
"That's the spirit," he laughs. "Now, if we want to make it out to sea, Crocus better hurry and cut the rope. Your sister is going to be quite surprised if she wakes to find you gone."
As if on cue, the boat shakes to signify that they had been cut loose, and at the same time, a shrill voice calls from the lighthouse. "Nao-chan!"
Nao winces at the familiar voice. "Rayleigh-san, we should hurry."
"The boat has already started moving since the rope was cut," he reassures her. "Are you sure you don't want to say goodbye to your nee-san? The ocean isn't always so kind as to let everyone return home."
Nao has always been aware that eventually her time at the brothel would come to end, and she has always assumed that she would not falter in her resolve when that day came.
Yet somehow, for reasons unbeknownst to her, tears threaten to fall from her eyes. (Why was she crying cryingcrYing CryIng?)
Nao rushes past Rayleigh, moving so quickly that she never gets to see the knowing smile that had settled onto his face. Her legs seem to have a mind of their own as she runs to the edge of the ship, leaning over the railing to look back at the lighthouse. "Nee-san!"
The woman Nao had called out to widens her eyes.
"Nee-san! I'm sorry, but I can't come back! I have to go and see what this world can offer! There's people in this world I wanna meet! I'm sorry! I swear I'll get those marines back for destroying Mama-san's home!" Nao wails between teary hiccups.
If she were to be honest, she doesn't quite get it herself, either. There's no doubt that she was grateful for the brothel's kindness in raising her, but nothing that had happened in those commonplace years should have been enough to draw out such raw emotion from a girl who'd only ever viewed the surrounding people as characters.
Yet, somehow, as the boat draws further away from the now-crying sister, Nao cannot help but remember the time that very same sister had oh-so carefully braided her hair. That time the girls had fawned over her first customized kimono. That time Mama-san had screamed at her so passionately and lovingly for wandering out of the whore house. That time her sister (brothers?) had shed tears over her. (That time she was accidentally injured by her doting brothers while her motherMotherFatherPaRents were away. Hadn't she cried this hard back then, too? Wait, what?)
Before she can pay too much attention to the overlap in memory, the sister responds.
"Don't you dare die before you make this world your bitch, Nao! We always knew you'd leave us one day! You're always one step ahead of us, even when you were just an infant! You're too smart to grow up to be like one of us, so it's okay to leave." The sister—Aiko-san—pauses, as if she were debating whether or not to continue. "But even so, people like us—whores—we're selfish! We hate saying goodbye, so please come back one day! You can always come home to us! We'll wait for as long as we have to, because you're our little sister!"
Nao turns away, having no response that could be worthy of giving to the kind sister. (How could she put up a loving farce when she barely saw her caretakers as real people?)
"You can always reply once you return. It's true what I said, the sea can be cruel, but it can also be kind. It's too vast to ever stay stagnant," Rayleigh reassures her, his large hand falling upon her shaking shoulders.
Nao nods, going along with his misinterpretation of her trembling figure.
"Where to now?" Nao breathes shakily, resolving to momentarily push her concerns over her lack of real remorse to the back burner.
Before Rayleigh can answer, a booming crash draws the attention of both Rayleigh and Nao. Without a word to him, Nao moves toward the deck, curious at what oddity had entered her immediate life now. (As committed as Nao was to screw the world over, the world was as equally committed to screw Nao over.)
"Rayleigh! Rayleigh! We're in big trouble!" Hachi shakes off the water he had carried up with him from his landing. "I was swimming along with the ship, and there's real bad damage to it! We're gonna end up sinking!"
Nao pales at the new threat to their lives, whereas Rayleigh guffaws. "What are you all worried for, Hachi? You're a fishman, you can swim."
"Yeah, but you guys can't survive without a boat!" Hachi warns.
"I don't mean to be insolent, but didn't Hachi just save you from drowning? Aren't we a bit—I don't know—fucked?" Nao's voice threatens to reach a hysterical level (because this world just can't fuckin give her a goddamn break) while Rayleigh's laugh continues to echo in the almost-vacant sea surrounding them.
Almost.
"As I was saying, Nao—and Hachi too, now that you're here—we're going right there." Rayleigh points his finger off into the distance, singling out a ship not even a mile off.
A marine ship.
Nao chokes. "What?"
Rayleigh ignores her. "Hachi, help me change the course of the ship, will you? Our boat's small enough to go undetected. Once we're a bit closer, would you mind going off and hiding Nao for a bit?" he requests, the confident smile not at all weakening.
Nao, on the other hand, barely suppresses the urge to puke. "I've boarded a ship with a damn maniac," she mutters under her breath, though deep down inside she's certain that Rayleigh has some sort of plan.
"If you want to keep up your charade, it'd be wise to not appear vulgar. Children don't tend to curse often, or as fluently as you do, Nao," the maniac in question comments helpfully, causing Nao to stumble over from shock. (So he hadn't forgotten the conversation they had had while he was still under an anesthetic.)
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Even to her own ears, Nao's denial sounds weak.
"Don't worry, I won't pry."
The conversation goes no further as both Hachi and Rayleigh jump into action, the boat having made it uncomfortably close to the ship. In the blink of an eye, Rayleigh tears the sails, leaving the ship to the mercy of mother nature.
Before she can even begin to understand what he was doing, Hachi grabs ahold of Nao without warning and dives over the railing of the ship. A purple hand covers her mouth as Nao instinctively moves to scream, and only when they resurface above the water does she understand either man's rash actions.
"Help! Help!" Rayleigh yells, the horror in his voice sounding unnervingly realistic.
Realization dawns upon Nao as she observes the marines' piqued attention towards the ship. Someone—a mid ranked official, probably—calls for all of them to aid the seemingly stranded ship. One by one, the marines move to head onto it, following Rayleigh's voice under the deck.
"The ship! It's gonna sink!" Rayleigh raises his voice to exemplify the panic that he's pretending to be feeling.
Hearing this, the marines rush their movements, connecting ropes to the ship as quickly as possible in a noble attempt at rescuing the seemingly helpless man. Nao almost feels sorry for how futile their valiant actions were going to turn out to be. It is, she'll admit, refreshing though—to see marines doing heroic things rather than the corrupt actions of the ones usually depicted in the manga.
"Nao, stay focused if you don't wanna go to sleep," Hachi advises.
For another second, she is confused at the strange order, but the confusion is swiftly overtaken by a dreading sense of pure fright as something washes over what feels like the entire sea. Her eyelids struggle to remain open as she's exposed to her first ever experience with Conqueror's Haki. (For the first time in her life, she's thanking every god out there for aligning her with Rayleigh instead of against him.)
"Okay, Hachi, I'm done! Let's get the rest of the marines on the main boat off of it." Rayleigh displays not even the slightest sign of fatigue.
This time Nao braces herself for the stomach-wrenching jump that Hachi apparently was so fond of. Regardless, she still feels as if she is about to collapse, though she's unsure if it's due to the sudden movement or the overwhelming Conqueror's Haki that she'd just been subjected to.
"Sorry about that, Nao. I'm a little rusty with my control, and a little of that probably hit you," Rayleigh apologizes sincerely, though Nao cannot get over his choice of wording to acknowledge it.
"A little?" Externally, Nao only seems slightly shaken. Internally, Nao is a screaming wreck.
"Anyways," he says this in a sing-song voice, clearly amused at Nao's reactions to all that he's done. "I'm glad we didn't have to hunt too far for a marine ship. How convenient!"
Nao would've surely doubted his sanity by now if she hadn't been privy to the wiseness in his character that would come decades from this current moment. "Can you tell me again why you just had to target the navy for another ship instead of repairing our own?" Nao asks exasperatedly. She's already over the grandeur of his reputation.
"For someone so informed as you, I'd have thought you would've figured it out by now," he teases as he effortlessly drags three marines off of their former ship and onto the dingy boat that had miraculously made it over reverse mountain.
Nao looks at him without a trace of amusement in her expression.
"Fine, fine. Don't look so glum marines have truly amazing technology, Nao. How else would we make it over the calm belt?"
"The calm belt? But why?" Nao's brows furrow in confusion. What the hell did they struggle over reverse mountain for then?
"Why? To go to Ohara, of course."
What?
"What?"
Another update so y'all know I'm back to stay! Haha. I hope you guys enjoyed! Stuff's moving pretty fast right now but things with smooth over soon. I really do mean it when I say I'm back to stay and will update regularly!
Please review! I was so overjoyed reading your reviews last time.
What do you guys think they'll do in Ohara? (:
Have a great night!