Echo

"Fox," Nami asked as the miniature submarine with Luffy, Robin and Brook in it started to head towards the surface, "How do you get to Fishman Island?"

"Me personally or people generally?" Fox asked idly, fiddling with the collar of the haori she was wearing this morning; "Because I personally would just take Swift Hunter."

"People generally," Nami clarified, irritated but trying not to show it.

"People generally take their ship to Sabaody, get it coated then gamble their lives on the skill of the mechanic who did the coating," Fox told her. "A coated ship sinks under the right circumstances, the coating itself inflating into a bubble that protects both the vessel and the people on it from the pressure of the deep sea. However you need to be very careful in picking the mechanic doing the coating as if that person makes even the smallest mistake the bubble pops and everyone on board dies. Well, everyone except me, but lying at the bottom of the sea on my own until I get rescued does not appeal."

"So how do we get to Sabaody?" the navigator asked as the shark-shaped submarine reached the water's surface and the hatch opened.

"It's no use; we can't even see the bottom of the sea," Luffy said. "I know there's got to be a Fishman Island since Fox is from there, but where is it?"

"Yohoho, that's the first time I've ridden in a submarine," Brook commented.

Then the sea monster that had been hassling the submarine surfaced as well. Luffy punched it, making it spit up a mermaid –which landed on an ecstatic Sanji– and a very strange starfish. Nami would have been more amazed by the girl with the fishy tail had she not spent several months sailing with Fox, who could occasionally be coaxed into telling stories about her finned family. The mermaid thanked them for saving her from being digested by the Sea Bunny, mentioning in passing that this was about the twentieth time she had been eaten, and introduced herself as Keimi, and offered them Takoyaki. Nami made a point of ignoring Sanji's ridiculous outburst, being more interested in Fox' reaction to the ditzy green-haired girl who had landed on board.

Fox was just watching quietly, her arms folded. She hadn't hurried back into the cabin for her sunglasses and her black cowboy hat was hanging down her back. She didn't have a scarf around her neck either, meaning she was barely disguised at all. She didn't seem too worried about being recognised though and had a faint, fond smile on her face. Then the starfish introduced itself and the navigator was distracted from her study.

After Keimi's call to her friend resulted in the unfortunate mermaid's discovery that said friend had been taken prisoner by slavers, Fox decided to intervene just as Luffy –whose one-track mind was rather hard to distract– asked about the takoyaki they'd been offered. She hadn't known it was her captain's favourite food.

"We'd be glad to help you, Keimi-chan," the white-haired woman said firmly, placing a hand on the worried girl's shoulder. "Nobody deserves to be enslaved."

Keimi looked up at Fox in gratitude, then face-vaulted. "Fox-chin! I'm so sorry I didn't recognise you earlier! You'll help me? But you must be so busy I couldn't possibly-"

Fox placed a hand over the girl's mouth. "You're babbling. Calm down; I'm not that busy and helping a fishman is no trouble at all. Besides, I'm sure you know our family policy on slavers, Keimi-chan?"

Keimi brightened. "Oh, thank-you!" she hugged Fox tightly around the waist.

"Who's this Hacchin anyway?" Luffy asked.

"He runs the takoyaki shop where I work! We make the tastiest takoyaki in the world!" Keimi told him, releasing Fox. Luffy's eyes bugged out.

"We have to save him!" the rubberman roared. "We're rescuing the takoyaki if we die in the process!"

"Yeah!" Franky, Usopp, Brook and Sanji roared back enthusiastically.

"I'll call us up a guide then," Fox said as Nami sat next to the little mermaid so as to coax more information out of the rather naïve girl. Leaning over the railing Fox cast around for a decent-sized fish, one that would both know the way to Grove 44 and not be frightened of the area's very large flying fish. Having found a suitable target Fox called out to it, pitching her voice in a way only mermaids and mermen could. Well, merfolk and her uncle Jinbe, but he had merfolk heritage and it could emerge in odd ways even several generations down the line.

As the conger eel poked its head out of the water Keimi squealed in shock; Fox ignored her, instead asking the immense but rather pleasant fish if in could lead then to Grove 44 of the Saboady Archipelago. It agreed after a suitable pause for thought, then slid itself under the Sunny and carried the entire ship off in a westerly direction.

"You can talk to fish?" Nami asked, utterly delighted by the revelation. "I completely forgot you could do that!"

"All mermaids can talk to fish," Keimi revealed. "I can't get the bigger ones to listen to me though." The green-haired girl shot a glance at Fox. "Red Line Conger Eels are the largest in the world! They even eat whole ships sometimes!"

"Not on purpose," Fox defended their guide. "They only eat fish and other marine life. They're more likely to absent-mindedly gobble down merfolk and fishmen than eat ships."

Keimi paled slightly.

"A little more tact perhaps Fox?" Sanji pleaded.

Zoro scrambled out of the crow's nest as the ship jerked and started moving with purpose. He was making pretty good progress at keeping himself out of his lover's conscious mind, but the odd eddies of emotion and subconscious assessment of her surroundings were much harder to avoid, as he relied on his own instincts too much to risk blocking them out. As it was he was gradually getting used to being in two minds about things and learning what to heed and what to ignore. It might be like how recovering from amnesia might feel: all those instincts he wasn't sure what to do with as they didn't fit in with what his thought his body could do. Time was helping him filter out what was his –he knew for example that the occasional urge to throw knives in certain people's general direction so they stopped bleating had nothing to do with him at all– but it was slow going. A lot of the ways she responded he was interested in keeping track of, such as her automatic cataloguing of what in her vicinity could be used as a weapon –he hadn't known there were so many ways to kill people with spoons– and her skill in assessing opponents. Zoro was good, but nowhere near that good. Every time she looked at any living thing she spontaneously catalogued their stance, build, manner and a whole host of other tiny details that added up to a workable profile of their combat ability. Her subconscious then went on to detail ways of subduing or outright killing whatever she was looking at depending on how she wanted to appear to potential observers. Zoro had worked hard at locking that last bit out: he fought completely differently to Fox and confusion was fatal. If he tried to do something she would do, even for a split second, he would send himself off-balance and possibly get killed.

"Setting off are we?" he asked as he landed on deck. "Someone finally asked Fox how to get to Fishman Island?"

"Something like that," Luffy admitted cheerfully. "Check it out Zoro! It's Keimi the mermaid! A real mermaid with a tail! Isn't it cool!"

"Hello there!" the young-looking girl with untidy green hair and a multicoloured tail said, waving at him from next to the captain.

"First time for everything," the swordsman noted absently before glancing around for Fox' precise location and ambling over to lean on the railing next to her. Looking down he saw that the Sunny was actually being carried by a massive eel.

"Friend of yours?" he asked his lover lightly.

"Just a passing stranger willing to offer assistance," Fox demurred, glancing over at him and taking in the sweat and the towel hanging around his neck. "You look yummy," she added a little superfluously; he could feel her increase in interest echoing down the connection. However whatever might have eventuated died abruptly as the odd starfish started talking about the gang who had kidnapped Keimi's friend to sell and how there were many more such gangs in the archipelago.

Zoro wrapped an arm around her waist as her emotions roiled unpleasantly, probably reliving her own experience with such people. He also noticed an odd coincidence in Keimi's friend's name:

"You say he's an octopus and he's called Hachi," the swordsman said aloud, guiding Fox over to the small table and serving them both drinks. "Kinda reminds me of an idiot fishman we ran into once…" Back in Arlong Park.

"Yeah," Sanji agreed from where he was perched on the banisters leading to the upper deck. "If it's him I wouldn't want to save him. Not that it could be, really…"

I'm so sick I can barely write. It's making me grumpy as I have the whole Saboady arc and a little beyond all lined up in my mind but can't sit in front of the computer to type without my head hurting. Bleah.