The bar is crowded with sweating bodies and cigar smoke. It's foul and dark with sailors who haven't had time to shave or bathe in weeks. It's also cheerful and bright, with a musician stamping out a quick tune in the corner and leftover streamers hanging from the rafters.
"~Drink and the devil had done for the rest!~" Shut up!
She crosses her legs and drags the edge of her dress down her thigh. She tries to sit regal, but how can you when you work in her line of business? Good money through, hmm yes, with tonight's cash she will splurge it all on some soothing cigarettes and lovely cheap wine.
"~Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!~" For Christ's sake.
She should be looking out for customers trying to catch her eye, but there's this wiry, black, loud…thing! It's sitting in the stool next to her, spinning around and around like a child and singing along so loud her ears are ringing.
She spins to look at this person properly and starts— because it is not a thing, it's a pretty lady who is tapping her red bow tie shoes against the bench wall and giggling like a lunatic.
Her hand clenches her warm drink, because, please don't let it be, this woman who is so dark yet looks so much like sunshine, please lord, that elusive sunshine that a women of the underground can never seem to find. Don't let her be here, in a lawless back alley bar and acting so innocent and childlike.
The Sun stops shining when a man starts to drunkenly flirt with her. It's a clumsy sight, but he is strong and wide this man, and his attempt to smoothly slide up closer to her ends up with him just falling on her shoulder. She nearly dies because her head is screaming about sexual harassments and rapes and life scars and never the same agains and panic attacks when on that street at nights. She jumps and starts to move— but halfway through she stops.
The Sun has shifted and bended into a dark, quiet, deadly monster. Insanely curly hair shadows eyes and the man stakes a step back in surprise. She speaks in butchered Japanese,
"What the fucks are you trying on?" She looks so capable, but she can't be, those thin limbs and girl weakened muscles, she just can't be capable of defending herself— yet for a time there, you were truly scared.
That the Sun was going to burn you to death.
…
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
…
I stuck in a breath and dive down to the bottom of the river canal. Scooping and shovelling sand into my cracked bucket, gripping it tight, kicking off from the white dusted bottom, I rise. It's a remarkable source of income, collecting sand from the bottom of my island's rivers, piling it up in my country boat and selling it off to the business people.
"Wha, look at how white it is!" They say.
"So fine and soft!"
This time when I resurface and start to pour the wet sand into the bottom of my boat, there is a girl calling out from the bank.
"Helping you!"
"What?"
"Helping you?" She peels off her shoes and coat and dives into the salty river. The foreign girl strokes over like he had accidentally mistaken her for a human instead of the ocean creature she was. The liquid black seal comes up and hangs off the side of the rocking canoe.
"Helping you?" Her thick, short hair drips rivers off its ends.
"Well…sure, knock yourself out." I grab her the spare bucket, for when the usual one breaks under the strain of the sand. She mimics me, swimming along side me and mirroring my moves, but after three trips down the girl can't work anymore. It is a grueling exercise and I have to hold her head above the water when she starts to drown.
She hangs of the side of the boat and sucks in the air while I continue on to my plodding rhythm, but she never stops smiling and swiveling her eyes around taking everything in. Dive, scoop, rise, empty, dive, scoop, rise and empty. She is strange, I get a lot of the town's kids coming with me for the workout, but she does not leave once the muscle burns and cramps start, she stays and takes it slow, one dive per four of mine.
She seems to be getting some sick thrill out of being on the edge of her body's limits.
…
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
...
There is this disgusting black woman touching all the trinkets in her shop, jamming her curious digits against the glass figures and lucky charms. I take up my broom and chase her out, but instead of shouting or snarling like others of her kind, she just skips out of my reach and laughs at the chase.
"You crazy lady! Catch me can't you, suck it suck!"
When the little animal is gone she toddles back, her obese body heaving with the effort of the send-off. When she squeezes back behind the dusty register and returns to her caramel slice, there is a sense of foreboding in the air. The bell tinkles and she looks up— there is a cheeky-like-a-shark smile as the dark phantom is back. She realizes too late with horror that she has just started a game.
Her chubby whale fingers slip around the transponder snail and she calls the marines. She leaves the message, "harassing customer". While she waits for help to arrive she takes up shouting at the crooked black from her set, the girl pays her no attention and pretends to look generally interested, reading books and comparing prices. She's not ready to chase her away because it would be so pleasing when the marine walks in and has the blot of rudeness barricaded in.
And when the officer does arrive, her heart flies. It's Garp, not even a year of full service and already famous and respected, she feels her heart melt "my hero Garp-sama!" she cries to him from her creaking seat.
They both ignore her, instead regarding each other up and down. Then she gives him that cheeky like a shark smile –"there you go Garp-sama, you see the wickedness in those disgusting black eyes!"- she thinks victoriously.
Instead of doing anything remotely marine-hero like, the man responds with his own cheeky like a monkey smile and she dreads.
Because, is this chemistry she is smelling?
It that attracting she sees?
Garp walks up and starts, oh dear god flirting, not realizing she is the harassing customer, she is the reason he was called over, she needs to be removed and is filthy and, and, and he's walking away with her chatting about "lovely places you should see while you're in town miss very beautiful lady miss". Maybe this is his cunning plan, to lure her out into an ambush that is waiting outside or…or… just… Garp is not cunning, he is irrational and dumb and thick.
No, she is left with her caramel tart, dusty register and some echoing guilt of being the one to introduce the instantaneous match.
…
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
…
This night is rather slow, probably because it's a Wednesday. This bartender runs his rags over his bench even through its not really dirty; it's just habit by now. His eye sight is so poor that if his own mother was ordering a drink, he wouldn't have been able to tell.
So it's no wonder that he doesn't so much as start when the small village's up and coming success story walks in. He pours the pair's orders dutifully and goes back to polishing anything he can get his hands on. But this old man can hear, mind you, and he does love eavesdropping on his patrons.
"That was funny, how those people jumped!"
"Bwahahaha, but bursting through walls is a much cooler thing to do!"
"Just right! Just right! But your's excuse could have been better; donuts are not that good."
"But… I could smell them…and they were cinnamon….and there were rice crackers as well…and tea!" The girl's laughter tinkled as the man tried to formulate himself a half decent excuse.
"At least you could have fixed it! You just eat everything and walked away!"
"What's the point miss beautiful lady miss? I had to show you the historic village fight club before it got dark! They would forgive me anyway!"
"Hmmm, modest you have to be, will you?"
"What? You talking in past tense or future to me?"
"Hey, the Japanese is not my first language; it's not even my second so give break to me." There was a pause in the conversation then, and ice cubes tinkled against the glass and he could feel the energy of the conversation die away in the steady silence.
"How do you remember so many words?"
"Language is natural; it's natural when, um, you use the languages a lot."
"You use the others often?"
"Not anymore, I'm starting to lose the knowledge slowly. It's angry for me."
"I think you mean frustrating."
"Yes, there is a lot to learn about this language still, you know." The man must have pulled a face because the lady companion huffed and tittered under her breath. "I don't think you would do any better than me, you're so away in the mind, so off in fairy land!"
"Hey, no I'm not! I've just been working so much lately, we've been getting a lot of reports coming through about increasing activity with the pirates. A lot of extra hours are being squeezed in these days." He went out of his way to justify himself, the bartender wonder if perhaps this lady's opinion matter quite a lot more than let on by this roughly spoken man.
"Well next time you fall asleep while talking to me I shall kick you in the testicles." Then she proceeded to laugh at the man's fake gasp of shock.
"Oh, catchy song!" And so the girl started to tap away, completely out of beat with the song playing over the radio.
Had the pair been on the edge of a fight or had they just been stringing each other along? He had a feeling it was going to be a long roller-coaster courtship with these two.
"What is yours address so I can mail-coo-coo? My crew is sailing out in the sunrise and your funny."
"Just send it to the marines and write in big letters "to Garp the Great"!" Ah, the man was Garp. What a surprise, he is usually so much louder than he is being right now. Poor girl— doesn't understand what sort of man she's starting a relationship with.
"Alright and I tell you in the letters the place you should send your reply to, because I move around a lot and it, um, changes as I move."
"Ah, yes, yes, and I will include a box of those biscuits you like. The triangle ones."
"Not a good idea marine man, you could introduce different bacteria across the kingdom lines."
"What?! How far do you travel? I thought you were just local freight transporters."
"That was just job number one, we do many different things, um, freelance sailors like."
"You're not…pirates…are you?"
"Haha, no, no, to be pirate you have to look for treasure and have big amazing fights that blast towns apart. You know, um, us crew left our village to serve on pirates ships but eventually gathered together and became not pirates, just sailors, you know?"
"So…you used to be a pirate?"
"No, I was only hired to navigate them, you see I was raise on the grand line an—"
"The Grandline, really? What's it like, I heard they only crossed the halfway section but they haven't been able to go any further for years! What's it like? Why are you all the way out in the four blues? What's it like? Do you—"
"One at an hour Garp! I was on an island on the other side of halfway, the sailors were bigheaded from surviving the first part but no one of them could sail the next half!"
"Really?"
"Yes, now let me tell you something…these sailors cannot tell— they had not learned— about the weather and the currents and the monsters." Wow, the girl was really spinning a story.
"They are all very stupid and so pay for us, who live there, to navigate them. But most navigators run away after a few months because the crews are just too stupid, most of us to ditch join up together like my crew is."
"What crew where you sailing with? Do the marines do the same?"
"I didn't actually leave, they got caught by the marines but because I wasn't a criminal they let me go. The marines do try to hire us New World people but you've got to become an actual marine— you know? So, most of us join up together and just like how the sailors came to see the New World, we decided to sail and see these strange four blues. Where we are going in the morning is Karate Island, you heard of it? It's a legendary island where people can master thousands of different types of fighting styles!"
"Yeah, I've heard of it, but that's a far. When do you think we'll meet again if you're just freelancing across the ocean like this?"
"Donna knows; might be a long time, probably will be long time. You got to be important marine when I meet you again, kay?"
"Yeah, yeah, that's an easy deal; I was already aiming for that anyway. It's just that I only just met you…"
"Hey? Instant friends remain friends, its law or something!"
"Well then, I'll hold you to it!"
"Kay!"
"Right!"
…
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise?
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
…