A/N: Sorry, that took a while. Life still hits like a steamroller. Back to our regularly scheduled steamrolling.
Their nocturnal approach brought them closer than Luffy would have liked to a pirate ship. Their hoisted colors brought up the image of their captain. She remembered he was a clown creature with devil fruit powers like herself, and that he was more involved with her shared past/future than she'd like to admit. His name, though, was a morphing mass in her mind despite all of the small crew's efforts to prevent this eventuality.
Perhaps it was some great test about her perception of mankind. More than likely, however, her subconscious didn't care a whit about the damned pirate and didn't bother with what her conscious mind thought about it. In what was essentially an act of intentional defiance in a mind that was regularly bent obscenely out of shape with impossible duplicity of self, her brain decided thenames of her foes were classified information. Luffy was not granted the necessary clearance to access it.
Unaware of the strange mental machinations of his captain, Zoro narrowed his eyes at the vessel and clearly put words to what she couldn't.
"Buggy the Clown. Poor idiots don't know what they're in for."
He motioned for them to moor away from the main docks. They chose a small inlet next to a couple of poorly-kept shacks built into a cliffside nestled into the side of a grassy hill.
Theirs was not the only boat here, either, but small unmarked rowboats did not carry the same threat as an armed man-of-war.
Their footsteps were uncharacteristically quiet when they padded onto the slippery rocks that would lead them up to shelter. The path from the shore was steep and somewhat difficult to traverse, but not impassible. The shacks they led to had to be built above the level of the tides, so it was a given that they would be hard to get to compared to the dwellings on the sheltered side of the island (which the pirates likely controlled).
When the two reached the first dwelling, they saw flecks of lamplight through ratty translucent curtains. Luffy gave Zoro a quick glance and rapped her knuckles on the warped front door. She heard the sounds of gasping and panicked murmurs. Furniture shifted and when the handle finally turned, the two pirates laid eyes on the business end of a pitchfork rather than a human face.
"You aren't with Buggy's crew, are you?" came a man's shaking voice. "-because we won't go down with a fight! We won't let you take what little we have left!"
Luffy put her bare hands out in front of her, expression stuck in passive interest. Zoro kept a relaxed hand over the hilt of the katana with which Luffy suspected was his romantic interest, but otherwise betrayed no sign of agitation.
"Nope." she announced loudly after an uncomfortably drawn-out moment. "Hey, Zoro. Bucky's that clown guy, right?"
"It's Buggy, and yes." He confirmed, his tone apathetic.
"Cool. I'm going to kick his ass."
There were sounds of shock and alarm from inside the shack. Perhaps the residents therein were mulling over how to deal with their new guests. Even if they weren't pirates, Luffy had a sense of how insane they sounded. Even Zoro looked mildly uncomfortable after her last admission.
Luck was on her side, though, as the pitchfork acting as a substitute for a human head withdrew into the abode and was soon replaced by the face of its wielder.
It belonged to an unshaven man on the verge of middle age.
"You said Zoro? Is that…?"
Luffy yanked her first mate into view. He allowed this to happen but still managed to emulate an irritated hermit crab through his posture.
"Yep! He's the famous bounty hunter who hunts pirates!" she practically sang, her eyes shining with fanatical zeal. The man at the door immediately relaxed. This was likely due to the similarities of the young swordsman with his rumored description rather than Luffy's endorsement, but it was a help nonetheless.
It wasn't long before the two were standing in front of a group of displaced townspeople before a damp, empty hearth. This was one of several of their temporary homes, and while the fifteen people that had taken to the shack were far from the most influential in terms of governance, Luffy basked in the social interaction whilst the townies spoke at length of their troubles. As there were many, this took several hours, during which the duo of a pirate crew partook in a scant bounty of crab meat and some form of mystery meat that Luffy suspected was rat.
She had to squash her desire to eat the meals of everyone else present, feeling her mouth water even after devouring the peasant's share she was graciously given. Perhaps she could have done a better job, because she felt a sudden, stealthy pull on her unattended right arm at one point. Her swordsman had pinned it down in a gesture that someone may have misconstrued as romantic if they didn't feel its crushing force.
She gathered that it had started to stretch towards someone else's meal and nodded her thanks.
Zoro didn't let go immediately, which Luffy thought was a bit odd. It wasn't a graceful hold, to be sure. His hand was like a vise pinned down by cinderblocks. Ah. Her arm was still distorted until everything was realigned. He was hiding her power from the others. Well, that only accounted for the first ten seconds, after that, the young pirate just shook her head and decided it was best not to think about it.
That would have been easier if his hand wasn't so uncomfortable against her skin. It felt superheated and electrified. Still, as there was no pain she eventually managed to forget it was there. As a result, she was caught off guard by the shock of cold that replaced it when he let go.
Once the meal was over, Luffy took to grinning wildly and telling great (and increasingly tall) tales of her swordsman's prowess. It had started inocuously enough; the primary stories were common rumors and often true. The others, however….
If he were uncomfortable, Zoro knew better than to broadcast it.
"-and that's when he ate the still-beating heart of the shark to gain its power!"
That had escalated quickly. Did sharks even have hearts in the conventional sense? He wasn't a marine biologist.
There was a collective gasp of amazement and, yes, horror, that followed that statement. Perhaps the young woman had gone too far in her weaving of tales. She lacked a bard's sense of dramatic pacing and replaced it with the same blunt force that she somehow shoved into every aspect of her persona.
As if sensing telepathic literary criticism, Luffy's warm brown eyes met his and she quickly changed the subject.
"So you can imagine how much I want to kick an equal amount of ass as his pirate captain." she chuckled. "So I just need to know where to find Captain Bukey, right?"
"Buggy." Zoro corrected her calmly, betraying nothing of his annoyance with her already having forgotten the mark's name.
"Buggy, right, so I can (like I said before) kick his ass."
There was a silence that had blanketed the room and then seeped into every crevasse like beach sand that could never be removed. Luffy had, after all, announced her alleged piracy and captainship over a vicious manhunter very casually. The words had seemed so ridiculous that they had to belong to a fool rather than a montebank.
Zoro suspected she had counted on this. Fools gathered more goodwill than scoundrels, and the people of East Blue had long-since thought it insane to trust those who promised them deliverance. The marines may have tried to keep the peace, but every village lived one pirate invasion away from destruction. It was often solidarity alone that saved them.
It took a long time before anyone said anything, and when the words came, they wafted out of a child's mouth.
"They took the old bar, lady. You know, the building on the tallest terrace."
She did know, but Luffy still treated this information as if it were new and profound. She stroked her chin in thought… unconvincingly. Her first mate knew exactly what would happen in the next few seconds, and he did not approve.
"Okay. Let's go!"
Zoro bit his tongue and followed her to the door, watching a slow deterioration that had started towards the end of dinner that apparently only he was privy to. Everyone else in the room was too busy with their shocked gaping.
Luffy swayed a little when she fiddled with the handle, but she could handle worse than this and continue fighting the cruelest of opponents. Or, at least, she will have.
They were back on the slick path sloping upwards in less than a minute. Zoro was her faithful shadow as she forced quiet enthusiasm. It wasn't until they reached the top of the hill that overlooked a couple of acres of forest, the bonfires of Buggy's crew illuminating the sky, that he finally said anything.
"You've barely slept, Luffy."
This wasn't entirely true. Much of the current fatigue that had finally caught up to her stemmed from the second use of her multiplicity combined with a lack of a proper meal. This was confidential information, however, and Zoro was no high-ranking espionage agent.
Luffy scratched the back of her head, nudging her hat upwards with the arm motion. "You noticed, huh?"
"I'm no doctor, but I can tell when an opponent is in no shape to fight." he responded, raising the hand he had used to more-or-less crush her earlier. "And you're just a walking gift basket for the enemy right now."
"Zoro… did you just use a metaphor?" Luffy asked her friend, interrupting any buildup of dramatic tension.
"…,"
He responded by regarding her impassively. She took advantage of his silence and pressed on a couple more steps, surveying the incline that would bring them to the dark old-growth forest below. There wasn't much of a footpath, really. If she didn't want to use her rubber powers to expedite the process, it could take a long time to get down safely.
Her vision blurred.
"Captain," she heard her first-mate's voice intone with a warning note. She let her unfocused gaze wander back to him.
"We just have to get into the forest tonight, Zoro. I'm not an idiot." Luffy assured him, before letting out a juvenile, whining yawn. "I wanna sleep in a tree."
"Hm." her companion replied, his hum atonal and apathetic about the idea. "Didn't want to sleep with the others?"
"Nope. I don't know them and they're all packed up like sardines; stranger-sardines in a can." she yawned. "I'd rather… y' know, the trees."
She repeated, pointing to the forest whilst her posture deflated.
"Twist my arm, why don't you?" he asked, a smirk evident in his tone.
He picked her up like a bag of limp potatoes that happened to fall into a human shape and lugged her down the hill over his shoulders. Despite the constant feeling of urgency that fueled much of Luffy's actions where her nakama were concerned, the sensation of being carried by someone she adored was a welcome creature comfort. She rubbed her face into the topography of her swordman's back before settling it into the space between his neck and shoulders.
She couldn't stay awake for long, the intimacy subconsciously evoking memories of latching onto Ace and all the security the action signified.
Luffy awoke on the roots of a tree rather than their branches, but was satisfied that she still managed to sleep in a tree in the loosest sense of the idea. Technically, Zoro had obeyed her orders.
She felt the warmth of his body behind her and couldn't help but notice the heavy snores. It was just before dawn; as good a time to still be sleeping as any, but she could hear footsteps through the brush and quiet human voices.
They certainly weren't concerned with Luffy and Zoro's presence. With her limited sense of direction, it took a moment for Luffy to even realize that the group on the other side of her tree were all heading in the same direction. She could tell they were a family, judging by the changes in small voices and the concern about making too much noise.
Were they more displaced townspeople, scavenging during the time they believed Buga's crew wouldn't find them? Probably…
But where did they come from, exactly?
She had forgotten about the little problem that came from no longer having light pollution to follow from over a hill. Neither she nor Zoro could easily make it back to town without aid, right?
Wrong. She shook her head with a whispered laugh. As always, there was the easy way.
She rolled away from Zoro abruptly. He predictably slept through this.
She wound up her arms and then thrust them at a high branch of their arboreal shelter, slingshotting the entirety of her body into the air.
She flew above the canopy and narrowed her eyes to find her quarry in the distance. Already basking in her success, she grabbed at the top of the next tree, if only to get a better sense of how far her little band of two had to go to reach their destination.
She… got a little ahead of herself. It was fun to slingshot oneself from tree-to-tree, and by the time she remembered she had to go back and get Zoro, she realized she had no way of knowing where she'd left him.
Oh, well. He was a capable man. He would find her eventually…
She shielded her eyes from the now rising sun during a long bound and tried to figure out a way to send Zoro the message to wake up and follow so he could at least get a head start on this process.
The means hit her with an immediate bang when she had, at last, managed to make it to town. In a frenzy of excitement, her last leap propelled her to dizzying heights in the air above the settlement.
She had the ability to scan the entire town from this position, and was taking her time in the hunt of an orange head when the cannonball hit her on the side of her waist.
The other her had been lucky to have had a feathery bird decoy to absorb the majority of the hit. The Buffoon Ball, or whatever it was called, packed a super-heated concussive punch and more shrapnel than she'd remembered. It was like being punched by an engorged, titanic Ace in a mood combined with being chewed on by hungry, oversized wolves.
She felt herself expand without permission as her body did its best to protect itself. The miracle of her anatomy meant she kept all of her limbs when she inevitably fell into a roof (into being the correct operative term here).
She laid in someone's attic bedroom, bleeding and burnt, appreciating the sunlight for two minutes or so before she got to work ripping things that didn't belong out of her hips and left underarm. Whoever owned the home she'd been blasted into probably wouldn't appreciate how she then proceeded to cannibalize their gaudy pink sheets to make bandages or the fact she raided the closet for a similarly red vest to replace the one that had just been torn to shreds.
To be fair, she was a pirate, and what was left of her former top could fit in a single pocket if it was really wadded in there.
She felt her hat and winced when she found a tear on the brim. That made her both incredibly sad and angry, but only Buggerty should really have to suffer for that.
On the bright side, there was no way that Zoro hadn't heard the clarion call of the clown pirate's cannons.
He didn't. Zoro immediately snapped awake at the sound of a distant explosion, grabbing his swords and reaching for his sleeping captain… only to realize she was gone. He felt a headache coming on and began sweeping the area, calling for Luffy as loudly as he cared to. Only a couple of broken branches that weren't there the night before gave him any indication as to what had happened, but this was still insufficient to lead him to his quarry.
Where the hell had he bedded down? The whole forest looked the damned same. He ultimately picked a random direction and began charging in a dead sprint. Whatever that had explosion had entailed, he had the gut feeling that Luffy was directly involved, and he'd be damned if he missed out on one iota of the action.