Like You Needed Me

ZoNami Week – Day 06: Tiger & Cat / Orange & Green

Rating: K+ (fluff-a-palooza)

Summary: The day Zoro and Nami unexpectedly became the parents of a furry baby.

Word Count: 3,796 words

PLEASE NOTE: There are some Japanese culture notes pointed out throughout the story! Please read the explanations at the bottom in order to fully understand their significance. Also, I listened to "The One" by the Backstreet Boys on repeat when I wrote this…yes, Zoro has boyband potential. (Hm, maybe that should be a theme next time?)

"Zoro, look." Nami made sure her voice was soft when she beckoned to the man at her side. They were close enough under the shop awning for him to hear her, regardless of the rain pouring down upon the town that they had been shopping in. Ignoring the simple conversation they had been entertaining for the past few minutes or so, the navigator tried to guide the swordsman's attention towards the furry creature across the street who had caught her eye.

Cautiously sneaking beneath the overgrown brush of bushes that ran between two different delicatessens was an orange-and-black cat, clearly put out by the stormy weather.

Oblivious as ever, Zoro wasn't sure what she saw through the smaller crowd of people who still wandered the streets, the townsfolks having brought umbrellas and hooded jackets with them in preparation for the spring weather. All they had done was taken cover just before the raindrops hit the ground. "What?" was the effortless reply he gave her.

Rolling her eyes, Nami grabbed his wrist rather unceremoniously and tossed his entire arm in the direction of the uneasy cat as it tried to hide from the momentum of the rain. "There! That poor cat looks so upset to be outside."

Before Zoro could give a proper reply to her observation, the distressed feline suddenly turned its head to look at the couple of pirates observing it from across the way, and it was then they discovered a particularly familiar feature that it shared with the green-haired first mate.

The tiger-like cat's left eye was scratched out by a single scar, just like Zoro's.

"We have to help it now." Nami stated, sounding exasperated due to the apparent need to explain that to her nakama.

Zoro appeared lazily stunned by her decision. "No, we don't. It lives on this island, Nami; it's probably running home to its owner."
"Or it could be a stray." By the end of her words, the poor woman sounded so very disappointed by the assumption she had made.

"Even if it is, that's not our problem—" A solid thwack was delivered to his thick skull.

Unfazed, Zoro simply sighed and took his beating graciously in order to avoid a larger confrontation. "It doesn't have to be a problem for us to help out!" Pointed out an irritated Nami.
"Meow!"

The abusive pair turned to look over at the obvious source of the noise, and were more than surprised to find that the cat had somehow understood that they were discussing its wellbeing and began to make its way over to them. Now, they were equally surprised as they watched it trot over to them with a great deal of energy in its supposed downtrodden state. Together they greeted the sodden kitten by bending down to address it at a much more comfortable level. Their responsiveness only encouraged the cat to race towards them – darting between the stragglers still on the road – and acknowledge their kindness with a nuzzle to each of their knees.
"Hello there," Nami snickered once her light shock had dissipated, so very impressed by the enthusiasm it directed towards them. "You were very excited to come over here, weren't you?" She kindly offered her hand to the cat so that it could judge her worthiness in petting it, and thankfully, it gave her a few sniffs before nudging her palm onto its head.

"I'll say." Zoro nodded in agreement. His wrists resting loosely over his knees, his hands were hanging at just the right height for the cat to make the decision as to whether or not it would allow him the same privilege.

However, it clearly expected Nami to dry it off with her pants, her touch. "Mm, you hate all this water, don't you? Just like him." For a lone, purposeful second, she tossed her hand towards her friend in order to signify that he was indeed the only 'him' she was referring to.

He glared at her in response.

"So what do we do with it now? Find its owner, or—"

"We should get our new friend something to eat," Decided the navigator, looking up from her new furry friend in order to choose which restaurant across the way would earn her business. "Probably something fishy."

"That makes sense…Here." Holding out an open palm, Zoro looked to Nami and made it well known that he expected her to take him up on his wordless offer.
After a few curious blinks, she finally decided to ask him, "What?"

Frowning, the first mate replied, "I'll go get it." At first, Nami did not understand his sudden desire to shop – considering the substantial pile of shopping bags that sat on either side of them, all carried around by him and his ungodly strength – and yet he was willing to order lunch for the cuddly kitty. Regardless of his reason though, sending him on the errand meant handing him her beris…

"It's okay, I can go—"

"Just let me do it!" Zoro shouted, returning the favour from earlier when she yelled at him over something that did not require such a dramatic response. His seriousness was diminished greatly by the cat who decided to sniff his hand by standing on its back legs and clamping its front paws around his thigh.

Nami did her best not to smile, for fear that he might ruin the image that she knew she would never bear witness to ever again. "It's fine, Zoro. Just don't move or our new friend might leave—"

"Give me one thousand beris* and I'll be right back." He tried desperately to affirm his command while the cat licked the tips of his fingers, but the swordsman shot her his most ineffective stare as he endured the affectionate gesture.

She would need to mark this location on her map of the island, so that she would never forget such a precious moment.

Nami admitted defeat graciously and tugged her stash of cash out from her cleavage; the tube top that led into decorative strands of fringe was both fashionable and practical. She slipped him the necessary amount of money then motioned towards the shop she surmised would best suit their needs with a tilt of her head, "That one should have raw tuna, given that it's a sushi restaurant. Order as much as you can for that many beris."

"All right." Zoro confirmed that he understood the instructions before slowly beginning to rise. The cat at his feet cried at him for disturbing its attempt to secure his attention; he looked quite flummoxed by the complaint, considering he was only leaving to get the little one something to eat.

"Here, Torako, come here." Beckoning the cat with the softness of her voice, the navigator was hoping to direct its attention towards her."
"Torako"? Repeated her rightfully perplexed nakama.

Nami answered, "The print in the fur – it's like a tiger, right? And since it's kinda small, it's probably just a baby. So, I am calling it Torako**."

In the strangest moments, Zoro showcased his proficiency in dealing with the hotheaded woman; he made a face that implied his dislike for the name, yet he smartly chose not to say a word. Instead, he grunted at her explanation before taking off towards the sushi restaurant that she had pointed out to him.

Nami watched as the rain fell upon him like a sheet of raindrops the instant he exited the protection of the awning they stood under, more than likely soaking him through his robe. It wasn't as if the swordsman was a cruel or apathetic man; he could show his care for others in the strangest ways, most likely because he refrained from speaking them aloud and chose to gesture them instead. She was quite impressed that he was not only willing to purchase something by going into yet another store – after the long day he had had of being her pack mule – but that his insistence on being the one to do it meant that he was protecting her from the rain.

Her fringed tube top and strapped heels would survive the weather, thanks to his random act of kindness.

A whining noise emanating next to her sandals drew her attention away from the departing swordsman, and she gave herself completely to the hyper kitten asking for her attention. Nami moved to sit down next to Torako and tucked her legs off to the side. It allowed for the little one to try its chances at climbing into her lap, until the sharpness of its claws startled the unsuspecting navigator as they dug through her black jeans.

"Ah, hey! You're hurting me, you know." Scolding the little one, she snuck her hands beneath its arms and lifted it so that they were face to face. It was obvious that Torako did not like being raised so high off of the ground, which would only compel the nervous cat to keep its claws extended. It was with great care that Nami placed the riled fur ball onto her thigh and immediately tried to calm it down. Once she reintroduced the concept of stroking down its furry back, she soothed the little one quickly enough and felt it slowly calm down.

Until those busy paws – claws retracted, for the most part – found the fringe of her shirt and wished to play.

Nami caught Torako's one-eyed, green-tinted stare when the first swatting motion took place, and she did her best to frown through a laugh. "You're a lot happier now than you were a few moments ago, aren't you?" An instant, innocent-sounding meow was her almost instantaneous answer and she was nearly overcome with the urge to pick up her furry friend and carry it back to the Sunny, where she could keep it safe and well fed forever.

After all, did it not make sense for the woman known as the Cat Burglar to have a pet cat of her own?

Mumbling to herself, she watched Torako fiddle with her shirt while wondering aloud, "Where is your owner? Or, where is your mother? One of them has to be on this island somewhere… They'd want to know about that eye of yours…. I know I was surprised the first time I saw it—"

"They didn't have tuna," that deep voice of his sent shivers along her bare skin the moment she heard it, making her feel bashful as she was forced from her thoughts, "so I got cod instead."

"Ah, that's fine." Nami confirmed as she looked up at the swordsman upon his return. He was drenched from head to toe; Zoro would either run straight for a warm bath as soon as they got home to the Sunny, or he would genuinely believe that a rain shower was enough to substitute actual bathing and avoid the mere thought of cleanliness for a week. She'd have to avoid the Crow's Nest until next week, according to that strange bathing schedule of his—

"Um…"

"What?" Zoro asked in response to her obvious sound of confusion. Perhaps he had a suitable reason as to why there was a wadded up ball of green cloth on top of his carryout box. If anything, it looked like a heavily mistreated teru teru bozu*** doll, yet that did not explain the peculiar color nor his possession of it.

All Torako cared about was the fishy smell coming from the container in Zoro's hands.

Unable to simply ignore it, Nami slowly asked, "Why do you have…some weird cloth with you? Were they out of napkins?"

"No, the restaurant owners blames the bad weather on this thing. The owner's kids were screwing around in the kitchen and they ended up dying this teru teru bozu…green."
"And evil, apparently," Nami theorized their real intention for disposing of the superstitious craft. "That will just wash out with some warm water, too; they could have simmered it in a regular pot of water – maybe it would have stopped the rain."

"Hey, you bought scissors at that craft store, right?" Zoro blatantly talked over her creative tips for curing the doll of its malady, and with the strangest question too. They had indeed stopped in at a stationary store to stock up on her ink, pens, rulers, and she had purchased a new pair of scissors at the request of Usopp. What the swordsman could need them for, she had not a clue.

"Uh, yeah. I did. Which bag has my new raincoat, by the way?"

"The second bag on my side, the black one with the silver words on it." Answered the first mate as he headed directly towards the paper bag that held the scissors he was looking for. Torako cried quite loudly while waiting for the scrumptious-smelling feast that Zoro carried, and those claw-bearing paws tried to scale her thighs in an attempt to persuade him to share the cod immediately. Nami hissed softly but did not respond until she had located her coat and retrieved a men's sized t-shirt too.

"Try this on. I don't have anything you dry you off with, but you should at least change into some dry clothes." She instructed, trying to put on her white-and-emerald raincoat while handing him the simple orange-red tee.

With a shrug of his shoulder did he try to rebuff her kindness, locating the scissors at that very moment. "There's no point in changing." Was his uncaring response as he dropped down into a crossed-legged seat and held up the teru teru bozu against the cutting blades in his hands. Nami carried not for his arts and crafts as she frowned at his decision. She decided to hold onto the t-shirt for a moment when he wasn't cutting something up for some odd reason or another. Putting it down next to her, Nami returned her attention to Torako and the desperate need it had to eat.

Reaching into Zoro's lap, she snatched up the takeout container and teasingly revealed the cod at a slow pace to the kitten. Torako nearly pounced on her hand, if it wouldn't have delayed her revelation of the yummy treat inside. Snickering, Nami decided to feed it one piece at a time and slipped a small slice of sashimi off of the rice bed beneath it. "Here you go," she sang, offering the thinly sliced cod to the hyperactivity cat in her lap, "I hope you like this kind."

"The owner said that tuna is actually bad for cats." Zoro piped up at her side.

Nami glanced over at him between Torako's tiny bites. "You asked the owner about what to feed a cat?" The thought was amusing, to say the least.

"All I said was that I was buying it for a cat I had outside and she told me that tuna can be too fatty for animals, so she gave me this instead." His explanation sounded believable, but some part of Nami's heart secretly hoped that he had taken the initiative to ask about the safety of Torako's diet instead.

"But Torako is a tiger cub." She teased openly, wearing her signature Cheshire grin.

Zoro gave her a pointed look that warned her to knock it off immediately.

Feeling merciful on such a rainy day, Nami let her desire to bother the grumpy swordsman wash away while offering the aforementioned feline another piece of cod. The small cat in her lap was quite brave to take such big bites, and it forced her to draw the fish away from that tiny chomping mouth to prevent Torako from choking. For some reason, she found it so bewitching to watch the kitten eat its meal – it seemed to warm her more than her raincoat did.

Softer than she expected her voice to sound, the enchanted redhead leaned in and cooed, "I guess you like it. You owe Zoro a big thank you for getting you the right kind of fish then, don't you? Do you think the two of us can share the rice you're not going to eat then?" Knowing she did not need to await for an actual reply, Nami – noticing there weren't any chopsticks with the takeout box – picked up the first ball of rice between her fingers and fed herself.

"I don't need anything," As soon as the swordsman decreed his lack of a need for something to eat, Nami gathered up another clump of rice and held it directly in front of his face. The shock caused his head to recoil and a growl to rumble in his throat, "Nami!"

"C'mon, open up. Ahhh!" She supplied him with a visual aid to show him how to accept her generosity. The sight before her was a strange one: Roronoa Zoro, soaked to the bone by the rain, taking scissors to a green-dyed superstitious doll, refusing to eat. Did he think she had poisoned the food in the time it took to feed herself then him!? Refusing to back down, she stubbornly made it her goal to refuse to move the rice-bearing hand in front of his face while continuing to offer slices of cod to Torako with the other. They must have looked so silly to anyone who was passing them by.

Like a ridiculous little family, Nami figured.

As if sensing her categorization of the wayward trio stuck under the shop awning during a spring shower, Zoro begrudgingly leaned in and ate her offered rice, the tips of her fingers nearly kissed by his lips as he devoured his snack. She was evidently pleased to see his proper display of obedience and intended to give him another bite, however, he held up something to divert her attention.

A mutilated, green-coloured teru teru bozu.

"I don't think cutting it up is going to stop the rain." Nami deadpanned.

Ignoring her umpteenth attempt to rile him, the talented swordsman pondered, "It looks like it'll fit, right?"

Curiously, she asked, "Fit? What is it?"

Zoro held up the green cloth that had been somewhat modified by the scissors in his hands, and realized what he had created the moment he disclosed, "A raincoat."

The belief that he checked with the sushi owner about a proper feline diet was now inconsequential in comparison to the fact that he had fashioned clothing for the unaware kitten. There was a large opening where the face would have been drawn on the doll if the weather had turned out to be better, and the length of the cloth had been trimmed so that Torako wouldn't trip as he moved about. Who knew how long it would last given the fact that they had no clue as to how old the hungry kitten was, but it would surely be helpful on such a rainy day like today.

"It needs holes for the ears." She mentioned in a gentle voice.

Zoro stopped himself from gawking, visibly surprised that he had forgotten such an obvious fact. "Ah, right." He agreed easily as he took to bunching up two spots on the top of what was quite clearly the hood and made room for two ears to peek through. When he had officially concluded his modifications, the first mate presented it to the navigator in the hopes that she could put it on the snacking cat.

"No, you can do it," Nami instructed him as she moved the boxed lunch away from the baffled feline. "Try this on, Torako. Then you can go back to your yummy fish."

Torako was not at all amused.

Zoro did not pay attention to the obvious disappointment in those big round eyes and moved in with the raincoat. Torako tried to sniff the material before it was forced over those orange-and-black ears. Four small paws stomped about on Nami's leg while everything was being adjusted, but once Zoro had pulled back his hands, the world stilled.

Torako may not have been amused, but Nami had nearly fallen in love with her furry friend.

"You can't keep it." Reading her mind, the swordsman sounded firm as he antagonized her with the truth. She had every intention to whirl around and bite his head off for ruining her moment of basking in her adoration of Torako…until she noticed the expression on his otherwise expressionless face: it seemed as though, instead of telling her, he was more so reminding himself that the cat was not theirs to own. He had never made something before, if she recalled, not even a single meal before they had recruited Sanji; if not for his own survival, Zoro was more of the type to destroy than to create, and yet he had tried his hand at designing a raincoat for Torako out of a very odd teru teru bozu doll…

Quickly, Nami looked up at the sky and measured the weather through her natural gift for doing so. It genuinely seemed as though the Cumulonimbus clouds overhead were not finished watering the island, meaning they would all be stranded together for a bit longer. The joy that her realization gave made the navigator feel giddy, silly, and almost cuddly as she carefully moved closer to Zoro's wet body. He didn't comment on her sudden proximity, most likely appreciating some form of warmth after the shower that nature had provided him with. She slipped herself into his side and forced his arm to prop itself around her form, completely intentional in her desire to keep the three of them – her suddenly makeshift family – warm.

"You should try feeding the cod to Torako," Nami suggested, looking up at the swordsman with a kinder smile than she had shown him before. While the kitten tried to stomp on the extra fabric of its raincoat, she raised the container up to Zoro and pushed back the lid. Nodding, he followed her previous example, peeled back the thin layer of fish from the sushi rice, and presented to Torako, the only difference being that he let it lay in his palm.

As the excitable kitten stood on the edge of Zoro's fingertips, Nami could not ignore the comforting warmth that ran over her. It was so strange to think that she was caring for the tiger cub-kitten, much less with the swordsman; the entire situation of hiding out from the rain had been oddly rewarding in a way she could never have anticipated. The cozy air about the three of them was inexplicable to her, and yet it was something that had been much more precious to her than any of the clothes she bought today.

Once again, sensing her inner workings, the happy cat peeked up at the two of them and replied to her private thoughts with a powerful, almost wild-like cry, "Meow!"

Author's Notes:

*An easy way to convert yen to US/Canadian money is to take the end decimal of the yen – so that would be 1000.00 – and move it up two places. So, simply put, you can casually convert 1000 yen into $10. That's how I did it when I traveled, and it helps to understand the prices of One Piece products too, since beris follow this same style of denominations and value.

** 'Tora' is the Japanese word for tiger and 'ko' is added to female names to mean that they are the 'child' of whichever kanji they are attached to (i.e. 愛子 means Aiko, 'love' + 'child'). Not only that, but the term 'toranoko' literally means 'tiger cub' or 'treasure', since tigers are said to treasure their young ones. I figured Nami would enjoy that name, and I don't know how creative she is with naming things, so it seemed like a safe bet! You cannot tell if a cat is male or female unless you lift its tail and examine certain aspects so that is why no gender is specified for Torako, even though the name is essentially feminine.

***Teru teru bozu are those handmade dolls you see sometimes in anime, or on the Shonen Jump cover from June 10th, 2013, where the crew have one made in each of their images. The joke here is, they are supposed to bring about good weather, but since it's clearly raining, Zoro was given the doll for free…so he modified it and made it into a cute little raincoat for Torako! The green dye is blamed for the bad weather, since they are meant to be white.

Well! This was a really weird date, no? Papa Zoro is so caring for his furry baby! When I went to Hama Rikyuu Garden in Tokyo, a beautiful cat came up to me and my friend and led us to a water spout, knowing exactly where to take us so we could get it some water. Cats are quite intelligent, and so I imagine that Torako knew it could trust Zoro and Nami to help get it something yummy to eat~ Hope it was cutesy enough and not too long, and I hope to see you again tomorrow!