6/10/13

If you haven't checked, I changed a lot of important stuff in the previous chapter. I also recently added that Tashigi took Sanji's handcuffs off. It was getting complicated.

-enjoy.

"I'm going to kick some shitty manners into you!"

"Just try it, you goddamned bitch!"

Tashigi had a headache. It pounded from behind her eyes and then circled around to the back of her head, shifted behind her eyes again; and the pirates' screaming and the clashes of metal on hissing steel did not help. A scarred face splashed up for an instant, drew in a deep breath, and then ducked out of view again before sending out a barrage of long air strikes clothed in water. Black-leg streaked like a red meteor across the sky, touched down, and began running on the surface of the water, his footprints alternating between an elegant splash and a slick burst of steam.

She took off her glasses and stashed them in her pocket. What was she doing, anyways, treading water so far away from the fight? She ought to be there, where Black-leg was, and silencing them both for underestimating her; she ought to be doing something. Her fingers were frigid and fumbling as they raked salt water away from her eyes. Why wasn't she doing anything?

"You haven't got class at all! You piss me off!"

"And you haven't got a spine!"

"That does it - Poêle à Frire: Spectre. Frying pan: Spectrum."

"Oh yeah!? Otora Nami. Great Tiger Wave."

Flame rained down from the skies, and then a giant beast borne of water bared its fangs just above the sea - then there was an explosion, and hot steam whipped across the ocean surface. Tashigi dropped into the water before it could burn her face.

But even here, the fight continued. Roronoah was sinking down, Black-leg circling around him with impossible speed. It was obvious that the latter had the advantage of mobility; with Kitetsu in one hand and its sheathe in his other, Roronoah mainly stayed still, whereas the high-jumping Black-leg Style fully utilized both sea and sky. But the swordsman didn't seem bothered by it. He simply stuck the sword sheathe into his sash, drew Shusui, and carried on blocking every kick that came his way.

Sound was warped in the sea. Black-leg's insults came out blubbered, clashes of metal were short clicks all a moment too late, the heat from the fire was felt in uneven waves rather than heard as steam. Underwater, the night's darkness was deep. All she could see of Roronoah's movements were brief glints of steel. She tried to swim closer, but the waves from their fight kept pushing her back.

Then, with a garbled roar, Black-leg's entire body burst into flame. Tashigi squeaked, and clamped a hand over her mouth to keep water out. Not a devil fruit user? Really? What had these people been doing, while Tashigi had been training and fighting and fooling herself into believing she had gotten strong enough to face them? Was it even possible to catch up to them?

Tashigi could see Roronoah clearly now by the hard yellow light. His stance shifted; as Black-leg wound up for an explosive kick, he sheathed both swords and prepared for an offensive move. His left hand reached for the pale binding of Wado Ichimonji.

And paused.

He raised his one eye - slowly, deliberately, he looked at her. His gaze trapped her like Monet's fangs. His lips curved up slowly.

He reached for Shigure instead.

Tashigi didn't know how she could move so fast. One moment she was floating in the sea, debating whether she should stay and watch the fight or come up for air. And the next, ice was coursing through her veins, and everything had turned to fire. Because Tashigi forgot - forgot where she was, forgot that she was turning into a man, forgot that she was letting someone she hated fight for her honor, because there was only one thing in the world that mattered and it was that Roronoah Zoro was going to draw her sword; and she would not stand for that, would not, because Shigure was hers, hers, and because she was a swordswoman and because she carried all the pride and burdens that came along with such an occupation, she would rather die than see her nemesis use it, he, with her sword, she would not allow it!

With two powerful strokes she thrust her nose half a centimeter away from Roronoah's. The two pirates jerked back in surprise, their attacks suppressed before they could be released. She wrenched Shigure out of Roronoah's sash and screamed into his face, so that a curtain of bubbles scuttled around his green hair: "This is my sword, Shigure is mine, don't touch my sword, don't you dare!"

She ran out of breath and seawater flooded into her throat. A hand grabbed her by the front of her shirt, dragging them both up and out of the sea. She coughed and gasped.

A splash three feet to her right. Black-leg's voice yammered, "You shitty marimo, stop manhandling the gentleman! What did you do!?"

"Nothing."

Tashigi's breathing steadied, as her thundering heartbeat and the pounding in her head gradually receded. She looked up at Roronoah. He returned her gaze, eyebrow raised, lips quirked up in the hint of a smile. He relaxed his hold on her and swam back a little bit to give her room to breathe, regarding her closely.

Tashigi blinked at the moonlit ocean, and the dripping sword in her hands, securely in its sheathe. She realized, quite suddenly, that she felt a thousand times better now.

She shook herself. "What were you going to do with my sword!?" she snapped at Roronoah.

"Nothing."

"Don't give me that! You were going to use it against your own crew member - have you any idea what a disgrace to me that would have been!?"

"I wouldn't have done anything with it." He shrugged with one shoulder, looking at some random point in the sky. "Just wanted to see how you'd react."

"Why, you're such a bitch!" Black-leg screeched. "I was fighting you seriously, you know!? And here you were toying with the lovely Tashigi!"

"I was serious."

"Then what was that about, huh!?"

"A man has his reasons."

"You're not a man now!"

"Ack - well a woman has her reasons, too!"

"Both of you shut your mouths!" Tashigi snapped. "Why did you do that to my sword!? What did you want from me!?"

Roronoah sighed and assumed a long-suffering expression. "Nothing much. Just making sure that you're still the same person."

"What - what does that have to do with anything!? You don't even know me!"

"I know you enough. We've both swordsmen, aren't we? Even if I'm a woman and you're a man now."

"Augh." Tashigi pinched the bridge of her - his? - nose. "Yes. Yes, I am a man now. But Shigure is still mine, whatever gender I am, and I will never allow you to touch it again. The moment we find dry land, I swear I will repay you in full for this humiliation!"

And he - she? - just threw her head back and laughed. "Challenge accepted."

"Whoa, what just happened!?" barked Black-leg. "Did you just challenge a gentleman to a duel!?"

"What about it?"

"You are such a shitty marimo bitch!"

"What!?"

Tashigi tuned out their (strictly verbal, thankfully) attacks and tried to think. The adrenaline was draining away from her - his - body, and the pressing matters of their situation came back to him.

He took a deep breath and looked down at himself. He pressed a hand against his chest miserably. The black T-shirt he had worn was wrinkled there now, and his pants were a little too tight, especially around that extremely disconcerting thing between his...in short, his clothes were an uncomfortable reminder that this was not his female body.

He put his glasses on and let himself breathe. It was something he would have to face - this new self. Strangely, his arms and legs, his lungs, his heart, all functioned perfectly fine, to the point that if he just ignored his clothes everything seemed to be normal. But nothing was normal about this situation - in fact, normal had made an about face and struck off in an entirely wrong direction. His body was the one thing he had always had, the one thing he could entirely control; and now it was no longer his.

It infuriated him. It whined in his brain like Black-leg's sugary flirtations, made the headache threaten to return. It made him restless.

So why wasn't he fighting against his fate? Was it simply because it was inevitable? But then again, when had the Strawhats ever cared about what was inevitable or not? They simply fought for what they believed in; and they won. He adjusted his glasses. "Still the same person" - what did she mean? Was she implying that it didn't matter if he stayed as a man or not? Was he really so alien to himself just because of his gender? Really, in the end, did it even make a difference?

"I hope you drop all your dishes and break them!"

"I hope you drop your biggest weight straight on your feet!"

"I hope you slip and land face first in one of Usopp's experiments!"

"I hope you get stuck in Usopp's Pop Greens and - !"

Tashigi reached out, grabbed both their heads, and shoved them underwater. He counted to five slowly.

"Have you cooled down now?" he sighed when he let them up again, dripping with seawater (and some blood from Black-leg's nose). "We need to get moving. It seems we won't find the Sea God again until light - in the meantime we need to find somewhere dry and warm and solid to spend the night. At the very least we can subdue an Island Walker and use it to rest. In the morning at first light, we continue searching for the Sea God."

"Of course, love! And may I ask if is there anything we can eat around here? Sea kings? Seaweed? Marimo?"

"I'm not edible!"

"Oh, you responded to 'marimo'! Good marimo!"

"There probably isn't," Tashigi said. "The records have never mentioned any animals living in the Sea God's Domain, besides the Island Walkers and the Sea God himself."

Black-leg fell silent. A wide blue eye stared at him for a second before she turned away and cleared her throat.

"Thousand Sunny is sounding really good right now, huh?" Roronoah said with a teasing grin.

"Shut up," the cook replied.

"In fact...I think I see it right now."

Tashigi stared. Black-leg had a similar reaction.

"...Don't fuck with me," she croaked.

"Right there."

They turned, blonde hair cascading across Black-leg's face. And sure enough, out of the darkness the Strawhats' ship emerged, deck lights shining warm orange and gold. Tashigi could just make out a familiar silhouette against the lion-headed front.

Black-leg shot up into the air faster than the seawater could follow. "Robiiiiiiiiiiin! Nwamiiiiiiiiiiii!" she swooned.

"Wait, what!?" Tashigi panicked. "Why are the Strawhats here!? This can't be possible - ships can't get here unless they have the Sea God's permission!"

"Hey, it's Sanji!" a voice rang out, clear despite the distance. "Is Zoro with them!?"

"Yeah, it's Sanji and Zoro!" a higher voice chattered quickly. "And that marine, too, remember the one I was talking about!? That's her!"

"Where's the whale?" a sharp female voice demanded.

"I don't see it anywhere!"

"We were looking for you guys!" the first voice yelled again. "Just hold on one sec!"

Tashigi saw the silhouette kind of bend over a little.

"...What is he doing?" he asked. When Roronoah made no response, he glanced back.

Her scarred face was gradually morphing into something like dread. He blinked rapidly. Roronoah? Afraid of something?

"What is-" he began.

"GOMU GOMU NO..."

Roronoah twitched. Black-leg froze and gaped. Tashigi seriously began to fear for his life.

"...LASSO!"

Something whipped out from the deck of the Sunny and wrapped around all three of them. They were thrown together, Tashigi in the middle, squeezed from both sides by elbows and snarls and female body parts, and Tashigi felt extremely uncomfortable for a moment - but there was no time to be embarrassed, because then they were being pulled toward the Sunny, rapidly accelerating over the surface of the sea.

"GYAAAHHHHHH!" all three of them screamed.

They landed head first in the grassy deck. Tashigi scrambled to disentangle himself amidst much jostling and cursing, as cheerful laughs sailed through the air around them. The captain of the Strawhat Pirates rolled on the ground barely three feet away from him, laughing and clapping with his sandals.

"Luffy, goddamn you!" Roronoah shrieked from the grass.

Tashigi gasped, "Strawhat Luffy!"

"Ow! Who's this!?" a hulking figure trumpeted. Tashigi got to his knees and found himself at eye level to a striking pair of red speedos.

"Cyborg Franky," he choked.

"Looks like the G-5 sis decided to tag along!" the shipwright proclaimed gleefully.

Tashigi looked around and saw the majority of the crew already assembled around him on the deck. Something like a cross between a raccoon and a teddy bear peaked around the shipwright's hairy, partially metallic leg. "Who?" Tony Tony Chopper asked in a little voice.

"The marine who was always with Smoker," the long-nosed sniper, better known as Sogeking, said. "Or - wait, no...huh?"

Bony fingers strummed a G major chord placidly. "Ah, hello miss. Now, everyone, please relax and enjoy the music of my soul..." Soul King Brook parted his skeletal teeth and made to take a deep breath (somehow he managed to do that without lungs).

"May I see your pant-"

A flaming boot smashed into his jaw and sent him flying high into the sky, bits of bone shimmering after him.

"Don't you dare, you shitty pervert!" Black-leg screamed in an enraged falsetto.

There was a collective gasp from the crew. In the ensuing silence, Black-leg planted both feet back onto the ground - her face was struggling between shock and sheer horror.

"Whoa, Sanji-bro? Voice sounding a little funky there?" the shipwright finally said.

Immediately, her face and posture did a complete about face. She spun happily in his direction and crooned, "Franky! Wow, did you always look this super as a pervert?"

Cyborg Franky's nose fell off. Literally. It took him a while to realize it had happened and to reattach it - and by that time Black-leg had spun off to her next target.

"S-sanji, are you okay?" the sniper stammered.

"Usopp! What a man you've become since I last saw you! Sweep me up in your bronze arms and let's sail toward the stars and the sunrise!"

The sniper opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Then Black-leg began to prance toward the kitchen, crooning, "Just one second so I can make the gentlemen a drink for this fine night - I hope you had a satisfactory dinner? Sincere apologies for neglecting to serve you," and the sniper spun around stiffly and screamed.

"Sanji's turned into a girl!" he shrieked.

The little doctor screamed in kind, at the same time as the musician fell back down with a cry suspiciously like "Yohoho!" He landed headfirst in a large potted plant. The plant proceeded to swallow him whole.

"Gyaahhhhh Brook!" the doctor screamed. "The plant is eating Brook!"

"Sanji's turned into a girl!"

For some reason the two thundered toward Roronoah, of all people, and screamed, "Zoro! Brook's in trouble!" "Sanji's a girl!"

"Hah!?" Roronoah snarled, arms crossed over her chest. When she moved, everything underneath moved too. Visibly.

The doctor leaped into her lap anyways, but the sniper stopped in his tracks. He screamed again.

"Oh God, Zoro's a girl too! The world is ending!"

"Hey!" she growled.

Behind them, the plant chewed the musician for two seconds, and then spat him out back onto the grass.

"Ah...I seem to have dislocated my jaw," he said weakly. "But other than that it appears that I'm unharmed."

"Brook, my dear!" Black-leg exclaimed from around the frame of the kitchen door. "I'm so sorry about kicking you! Are you alright!? I didn't mean to kick you I swear, it's just old habits kicking in, you know, and this gender-swap thing hasn't quite settled in yet, I am so sorry, if you want me to repay you with my body I will do so gladly!"

"Y-...yohoho?"

"Sanji and Zoro are girls!" the sniper yelled. "Oh, and sorry about the Pop Green. Usually it eats the meat and spits out the bones, but, you know..."

"Ah, I see. I'm unharmed because I'm just bones, right? Yohoho, Skull Joke!"

The shipwright, apparently recovered, hopped to the center of the ship and struck a star-spangled pose. "Whatever!" he laughed. "You gals look super as ever, anyways! Zoro-sis! Sanji-sis!"

"Zoro," the doctor said, snuggled comfortably in Roronoah's lap, "do you need bandages around your chest? Yours are big enough to hurt your back, especially if their center of weight keeps shifting. I'll try not to make them too tight to move freely in."

"Oh. Sure. Thanks."

Strawhat just laughed, clutching his stomach and rolling on the deck, the whole way through.

Tashigi swallowed.

"You guys are such idiots," an exasperated voice snapped. Sharp high-heeled shoes clicked on the wooden steps, and then Cat Burglar Nami rounded the corner, hands on hips and wavy orange hair tumbling shamelessly over her bikini. "Robin and I just explained to you guys!"

The moment she stepped into the scene, all the other pirates stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to her. Tashigi wondered at the way they seemed to listen to her more than to their own captain - but perhaps this was simply because she was the navigator.

"That great white whale was the Sea God," she tried to explain. "And since it took Sanji and Zoro, they're obviously going to be cursed now. So is the marine, from the looks of it." Her clear, honey-brown eyes turned to Tashigi sharply. "You're Tashigi from the G-5, aren't you?"

"Ah - yes, I am," Tashigi responded.

"Whoa, glasses girl is a guy," the sniper said in awe.

"Do tell us if you experience any physical abnormalities, Sanji, Zoro, Captain Tashigi," Nico Robin said in a cool feminine voice. She stood at a further distance than the navigator, but her eyes were watching closer. She tucked one strand of long black hair behind her ear and smiled gently, resting her elbow on a pale, graceful hand. "Besides the obvious, of course. This is an unfamiliar circumstance after all."

"Of course, of course, Robin," the cook said. Another collective gasp, and the younger male crew members huddled together and held a quick, whispered discussion along the lines of "Not perverted at all!"

Roronoah rolled her eye.

Strawhat had finally stopped laughing. Tashigi took a shaky breath and got to his feet.

"S-strawhat Luffy," he began tentatively, then cleared his throat. "How did you get here?" he asked, louder.

The pirate looked up, wide eyes half-covered by the brim of his hat. "Hmm?"

"We had been stranded in the Sea God's Domain - and only those escorted by the Sea God himself can enter or exit the Domain. Did he bring you here?"

"Domain? What's that?"

"It's the ocean that the Sea God lives in, Luffy. We talked about this already," the navigator sighed. She looked at her captain's innocent expression, pressed her palm to her forehead, and said, "A mystery ocean."

"Oh! I get it! Okay!"

Nico Robin tapped her chin with a delicate finger. "I don't believe we encountered the Sea God on our way here. Now this is curious - you say you were stranded in the Domain?"

"Dumped us in the middle of the ocean," Roronoah confirmed gruffly.

The woman nodded, and seemed to think for a moment. Then her eyes blinked brighter under the warm ship lights. "Ah, I see. We could not have entered the Domain - we would have seen the Sea God somehow, correct? Therefore you must have been abandoned outside of the Domain. You say you were left in the middle of the ocean, but it appears this ocean was outside the Domain, not inside as you had originally assumed. The Sea God has already escorted you out."

Tashigi felt his jaw hang loose for a moment.

"...Wait, so you're saying he already let us go!?" Roronoah barked.

"So we're free!"

In other words, there was no need to find the Sea God in order to survive anymore. All that was left was the matter of the Curse.

"Alright! Sanji! I'm hungry! Meat!"

"Of course! Would you like sea king fillet? Or perhaps something more on the saucy side? Anything for you love!"

"Not just yet, Luffy," the navigator snapped. The cook scowled at her, then realized what she was doing and looked half tempted to plunge herself back into the sea and drown.

"It's fine Sanji," she said quickly. "More importantly, do you and Zoro want to change back? We can look for the whale once the sun comes up and visibility improves, but in the meantime we'd need to drop anchor so we don't drift too far from the Domain."

The captain frowned. "So something bad happened to Zoro and Sanji, after all?"

The cook shifted on her feet uncomfortably. "Well, not exactly bad, but..."

Roronoah remained expressionless.

The pirate captain rose. He was not quite as tall as Tashigi - in fact, he was shorter than most members of his crew. But when he crossed his arms over the proud scar on his chest and looked on in that open, simple way of his, he projected a broad, magnifying personality that brought him eye to eye with everyone.

"So the whale was what made you different, right?" he asked.

"Pretty much, yeah," his cook answered.

"Should we get him to turn you back?"

Tashigi felt his heart skip a beat.

The cook stared blankly at her captain for a second, then planted both feet casually on the ground, cleared her throat, and thrust her hands into her pockets. "I guess we should," she said slowly. "But..."

The navigator raised an eyebrow. "But?"

"Well, it's just...do you think we'll all have to change back at the same time?"

The archaeologist nodded faintly. "That is a legitimate point," she said. "It's highly likely that, if negotiations with the Sea God fail and we use force, the Curse will be lifted from all those affected by it. It would be wise to be prepared."

"But that's-!" Tashigi began before he could stop himself. He clamped a hand over his mouth and bit off the rest of the sentence; but it was too late.

The doctor gasped and looked at Tashigi, as did the cook. The rest, he only felt the corners of their eyes measuring his reaction curiously. And then there was Strawhat himself, of course. The pirate captain met his eyes straight on.

"Do you have a problem with changing back?" he asked.

Tashigi fiddled with his gloves. "I...I'm not sure," he admitted. It was not in him to lie to these people. "I need time to...to think."

He felt the tension growing in the air, the ship's deck, the muscles in the back of Roronoah's neck. The captain's eyes didn't leave his.

"Zoro. Sanji."

They turned to their captain.

"Are you okay?" he asked in a quiet voice.

"Sure, Luffy, my love," the cook said immediately. She cursed. "I mean, whatever, shitty idiot...shitty adorable idiot."

"Oh God did Sanji just call Luffy adorable?" the sniper hissed.

Roronoah chuckled a little bit before answering. "We're fine, Luffy."

"Oh God did Zoro just chuckle at us!?"

"Get used to it already, you idiot," the navigator grumbled under her breath.

Strawhat grinned.

"Alright!" he cheered. "We'll talk about this in the morning! But look, we're all together now, and the glasses girl is here too! Let's have a party!"

Tashigi let out a breath he hadn't even known he'd been holding. The Strawhats. She should have known.

"Sanji! I'm hungry!"

"Coming right up, my lovelies!"

"Sanji, mind if come with you into the kitchen?"

"Hm? Oh, sure. But don't expect any free food, bitch."

"What - why you! Calling me a bitch now that you're one too all of a sudden!"

The other Strawhats threw themselves into motion to prepare for the midnight party. Tashigi was left standing awkwardly in the middle of the deck, Roronoah promising the doctor to stop by the infirmary later.

"...Why are we having a party?" he asked her when the little Zoan had left.

She straightened, shrugged. "'S how we roll." The captain called her name, so she stalked off in his direction - but not before tossing over his shoulder, "You've got till morning to decide."

He didn't need to ask what she was talking about. He looked on at the gathering festivities, and he argued silently with himself, tried to wrestle out the tangled web of his thoughts into something like a straight line, as in front of him the most dangerous pirate captain of the New World laughed and wrapped his arms around his swordsmaster and said, "Guys, you gotta tell me about that whale! He was soooooo cool! Did you talk to him!? Tell me everything!"

Words of the Sheep: I updated.

(smirks.)

(runs away.)

Really, really sorry for the delay. TashigiFan don't be sad! I luv you! Look, here, you can have the next chapter! And pretty soon SUMMER BREAK WILL BEGIN which means all the crap I've had to deal with for like three months are OVER and I can now focus on completing this story before devoting myself to From This Shore and my original novel. YESSSSS.

If I don't post again within three days, yell at me, kay?