Time-skip!
Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece.
A lanky girl sits haphazardly on a bar stool, one bent leg propped up on a barrel beside her, the other one drawn close to her chest to provide space for her to lazily droop her head.
She is no more than eleven, yet exudes a level of blatant confidence more fit for a king. She shows no regard for the establishment she's in—a dingy bar shelved in some small corner of Sabaody Archipelago. Two chunks of loosely braided hair frame her delicate features, while the rest of it cascades down her back, reaching her waist. Though her appearance suggests that she is harmless, unnervingly sharp eyes look up through wispy bangs to examine her associates. The bartender simply shakes his head at her usual display of too brave or too foolish courage.
Beside her is a man befitting of that very same brazen nerve. He is a legend of a pirate—once coined as the Dark King, though now he's assumed the role of a ship coater, nothing more and nothing less. Yet still, his very being in and of itself demanded respect, but he too sat as if he had not a single care in the world.
The bartender doesn't bother to pay extra attention to the unintentionally flashy pair—he's grown used to their antics. The two often used his bar as a place for… negotiations, and after a few years shy or a decade or so, he had grown desensitized to their presences. He does, however, do a doubletake at the person they had dragged along with them.
"You and your captain…" their guest grumbled, his head hanging low so as to hide the exasperated expression on his face. "The two of you are gonna ask me for favors until the day I die, aren't you? The nerve of you—dragging me to this place and not even bothering to buy me a drink!"
Garp is clearly complaining, yet the ghost of a grin exposes him for how he really feels.
"If I buy you a drink, are you gonna take Nao with you back to Foosha village? She's going to obtain quite the reputation if she continues to make such a ruckus here," Rayleigh adds in the last part as a small jab to his pupil.
Nao huffs, pretending to be upset with her teacher's request. In reality, she is overwhelmed with excitement.
Finally.
Finally.
Rayleigh was finally going to allow her to escape his watchful eye—one she had been under for a little less than a full decade. The years, though she would never let him hear this, had passed by quickly, and before she knew it, she was deemed old enough and well trained enough to travel on her own—sort of. It took awhile (seriously, like five fuckin' years) but she had eventually convinced him to pass her on to the only marine he had ever trusted.
"Why is it that you and Roger always come to me for your ridiculous requests? You do recall that I am a marine, right? If anything, I should get you finally put on an execution stand for the messy era that your little group began!" Garp threatens, though the two around him know he's only putting up a farce for the ex-pirate. It was a well known secret among pirates; if enough time was spent with the gruff vice admiral, he'd soon grow a soft spot for whoever that individual was, even if they were a pirate.
"I'd hate to get technical here, but if we weren't constituents in your life, you'd probably be out of a job. Who would feed the navy's ego if it weren't for pirates?" Rayleigh teases, speaking to what should've been an enemy as if he were a dear comrade. "Besides, don't you remember her face? She's the kid who got an entire fleet sent into Mama-san's house."
Garp turns to Nao, squinting, before his face lights up in recognition. "You!"
She looks up at him quizzically, and cocks her head to the side. "Yes, me."
Rayleigh practically cackles at the odd reunion that neither of the two parties ever wanted. "Since we're all already acquainted, why don't you do us this one favor! It'll make up for that blunder all those years ago."
"B-Blunder?!" Garp sputters at the accusation. "That brat's the one who started talking about Ohara in the middle of some random shop! Because of her, I lost my new errand boy for a month when Rosinante decided to take the blame for her screw up. Do you know how much paperwork I had to do by myself?!"
His argument would've been solid if it weren't for the fact that he, too, was speaking of Ohara in the middle of a random shop. It didn't matter too much, though—he seemed more upset at the fact that Rosinante couldn't file his papers for him than anything.
"I can't really answer that. Pirates don't really do paperwork," Rayleigh scratches the back of his head sheepishly. "But if it's all the same to you, Nao can do the paperwork for you now!"
Garps eyes glitter in a way Nao never thought was possible. "She can do paperwork, huh?"
Rayleigh nods, a mischievous grin adorning his face. "She can do paperwork."
"... I guess having an extra hand on the voyage back to Foosha won't be too horrible to have." Garp pauses, doing a doubletake. "Wait, how do you know about Foosha village?!"
"We've been acquainted for, what, four decades now? I think I know you well enough to guess that you'd take Ace in as your own." Rayleigh gives his company a saddened smile—one that Nao had come to realize meant that he was reminiscing over his times with Roger. "That's probably why my captain asked you to watch over his kid, and not some old drunk like me."
"I mean, you did alright with raising me," Nao comments.
Rayleigh raises his eyebrows in surprise. "What's this? You're finally going to admit that I'm a phenomenal guardian?"
Garp can't help but reply in place of Nao, ever so eager to bag on his former enemy's first mate. "Weren't you just going on about how you're nothing but a washed up drunk?"
"Aren't we around the same age, Garp?"
"Aren't I doing you a huge favor, Rayleigh?"
The man perks up. "So you are gonna take this kid off my hands? Great! We already loaded her stuff onto your ship when you arrived, so don't worry about that." Rayleigh smiles slyly, knowing he's being ridiculously disrespectful to Garp.
If anyone else were to pull such a ballsy move, the world very well may have imploded, but since it's Rayleigh, Garp lets it slide with an obviously fake laugh. "How convenient! That's very generous of you. Now you can spend the time you would've spent packing on filing papers for me instead! Since you clearly know where the ship is docked, go ahead of me, will ya? I have some catching up to do with Rayleigh over here."
Nao simply nods, knowing that any form of protest was futile with the stubborn man. Once the move of consent is made, she is practically kicked out of the damn bar. Reluctantly, and as agonizingly slow as she can do it, she finds her way to the navy's vessel, and just as hesitantly, she climbs on.
The deck is barren of any sign of life, and an uncalled for chill hits her. She supposes she shouldn't be too surprised; after spending so much time at sea, the marines flocked to land when they were given the opportunity to. She just wishes that at least one person had been there to greet her—it'd be quite awkward to have them all return to a foreign girl rummaging through confidential papers in their vice admiral's office.
But there's no helping it; she'd much rather wind up in a strange confrontation with some of Garp's subordinates than venture back into the bar and get involved in whatever nonsense the two monsters were cooking up.
Within two seconds of entering the office, she realizes that she didn't, in fact, choose the lesser of two evils.
Sitting casually in Garp's chair is a man far too familiar to her. Kuzan—another monstrously powerful guy. His legs are casually crossed, and he leans back at a leisurely angle. He doesn't pay her any mind—he doesn't even view her as a threat—and continues to read the day's newspaper, not once glancing her way. He isn't even trying to seem intimidating, yet his mere existence is enough to make Nao's knees feel as if they're about to buckle beneath her. Behind him, though, is an even worse presence—a ghost of the past.
Donquixote Rosinante is on his hands and knees, panickedly searching through one of the (surprisingly) many filing cabinets in the rather tiny cabin. He doesn't move to acknowledge her presence—doesn't even bother to adjust the messy mop of hair on his head that often blocked his peripheral vision. He is fully enthralled in his menial task.
A tick mark appears on Nao's head. She understands a slight lack of alarm from the two men—she is just a child after all—but this complete dismissal bruises her ego a little too much, and her time with Rayleigh did not teach her how to be docile.
"Hello?" she snaps before the intelligent part of her brain can put a filter on her mouth.
The two men's reactions drastically differ.
Whereas Kuzan's eyes barely flicker up at her before back down to the newspaper, Rosinante jumps in surprise, slamming his head against the pulled out drawers and muttering curses as he turned to see what in the world had startled him so much.
If he recognizes her, he doesn't show it. He cocks his head to the side and returns the abrupt greeting. "Hello? Are you lost?"
Nao looks at Rosinante, then at Kuzan. She figures it'd be easier to go along with it and have Garp explain later.
"Er, you could say that? Vice admiral Garp wants me to do his paperwork for him."
Their expressions remain unchanging until she mentions Garp's paperwork. Once the word registers in their head, their faces morph to give her pitiful looks, and Nao finds herself baffled at the absurdity of it all. What's more strange, though, is that they don't doubt her claim in the slightest.
"Garp's taken to putting children to work now, eh?" Kuzan's question comes off as more of a statement of the obvious than anything.
Rosinante gravely nods his head as he seems to look past Nao, shivering once he begins to recount the memory. "Garp has no mercy when it comes to his written workload. I remember when I left his company for a month 'cause of Sengoku's orders, and, once I came back, I was stuck filing his papers from dawn to dusk for half a year."
"Half a year? That's harsh, even for him. When he and I were in the same fleet, the greenies would say that doing Garp's paperwork was the final thing you had to do to join the marines. What did you do to deserve that?" Kuzan asks, his interest finally piqued by the extremity of Garp's punishment.
Rosinante's complexion turns rosy. "Do you remember the incident the marines had with Mama-san?"
Nao's perks up—it'd be easier to get her reveal over with now rather than later—and responds in place of Kuzan. "I remember that."
Both men look at her curiously.
"That's some memory you have there, kid," Kuzan comments. He pauses to do some calculations in his head. "You couldn't have been more than three when it happened."
"Well, yeah, I was three when it happened, but I was also there when it happened, which kind of helps with the whole remembering thing." Nao's cheeky reply leaves them both wholly confused, and rightfully so. Sabaody was ridiculously far from Mama-san's small island in the North Blue.
Nao can practically see the exact moment of realization for Rosinante. A devious smile dances on her lips as an expression of horrified shock crosses his face.
"Kid from the dango shop?" he asks.
"Kid from the dango shop," she confirms, and his jaw nearly hits the floor.
Kuzan stares at them both suspiciously. "What are you two going on about? How does the incident with Mama-san relate to your punishment?"
Now Nao looks just as horrified as Rosinante did. She had said too much in front of the wrong man, and while Rosinante and Garp may have let it slide when she revealed her knowledge of Ohara the first time around, she doubted Kuzan would be quite as forgiving as his comrades.
However, before her guise can be exposed without her even leaving the island, the other man involved in the Mama-san scandal bursts through the door.
"Kuzan? Why on earth are you on my boat? And why aren't all my papers filed, Rosi?"
Garp stands at the entrance to his office in complete and utter confusion. He almost looks just as he did when Nao had seen him no more than an hour before, save for the bruise that was forming underneath his right eye. There's no time for the new injury to be addressed, though, as Kuzan drops his air of casualness.
"Headquarters wants us to head for Mariejois."
Now no one looks quite as nonchalant as they had seemed only moments before.
Even Garp seems surprised. "The Holy Land? Why?"
There's a sinking feeling in Nao's chest. As far as she knew, only one major incident occurred in Mariejois prior to the beginning of the main storyline—an incident she had wanted no part of.
Kuzan confirms it for her.
"There's been a slave rebellion."
Nao's time with Rayleigh has come to an end! :( But Rosinante has finally re-entered the scene! Did you guys like the chapter? Quite a few years have passed, so how do you think Nao has grown?
She's headed for Mariejois, too! Her first battle's coming close. :D
It'd mean the world to me if you could leave a review! We're so close to 50!
Have a great day. ~