One Piece: Strawhat Theater
"Our Mrs. Monkey"
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-based work of prose. One Piece is the property of Toei Animation, Funimation, and Eiichiro Oda. Please support the official release.
A guest chapter by UnknownAnon.
=Takes place soon after Zoro starts training Ace=
"Nami! I need your help!"
The navigator glanced up from where she and Acenath had been watering the new tangerine tree seeds she'd planted on the lawn deck recently. Taking care of her trees had sort of become a mother-daughter project and Nami had been so focused on watching her daughter Luffy's sudden should made her startle. Turning, whatever response Nami had was swiftly forgotten when she saw her husband running toward her while pulling… a large whiteboard behind him.
"Did he grab that from Frankie or Usopp's workshop?" Nami wondered.
"Hi Daddy!" Acenath waved at her father happily with one hand while she clutched a small orange watering can in the other. "Mommy and I are gardening!"
"That's great, Ace-chan! Actually, it's great that you're with your mom right now! This involves you too!" Luffy shot his daughter a big smile before turning on Nami with a serious expression. "We've forgotten something really important!"
"What is it?" Nami asked, getting a little worried by the severe expression on Luffy's face. "Is it something about Ace…?"
Nami had worried about how involved Luffy would be as a father initially when everyone first reunited and she was finally able to introduce her daughter to him, but the orange-haired woman was extremely gratified by how on-the-ball Luffy was when it came to parenting for the most part. He'd agreed to her suggestions on getting Franky and Usopp to partition off certain sections of the ship so Ace couldn't get into the more dangerous areas, didn't interrupt when she or Robin was giving her lesson (most of the time), and was very responsible with her whenever they were docked in port and she had to run errands away from her daughter.
So seeing him look so serious, and that it seemed whatever he wanted to talk about concerned Acenath, Nami braced herself for his next words.
"We need to decide what Ace-chan's job on the ship is!"
Nami almost fell over at the declaration.
"What're you shouting about?" Zoro drawled as he made his way up the stairs, wiping his face with a towel after finishing his workout on the deck. "Giving Ace a job? Are you forgetting that she's a two-year-old? She can't DO any job."
"But that's not fair to her!" Luffy insisted. "She's part of our crew, so she needs a job! I don't want her feeling left out!"
Nami opened her mouth to respond, but a loud bang of a door swinging open interrupted her.
"Luffy! Get back here with my whiteboard! I was using it!"
"Ah, so he took Usopp's." Nami mused as the sniper rushed out onto the deck.
"In a minute, I'm just borrowing it!" Luffy called as Usopp joined them. "Actually, you can help us figure out what Ace's job is!"
"Er, job?" Usopp questioned, coming up short. "I know we're pirates and all, but making a two-year-old girl get a job is a little… I mean, doesn't Nami already have her doing some chores around the ship?"
"She helps Sanji clean dishes after dinner and she helps me sort my maps." Nami confirmed.
"I help grow the oranges with Mama!" Acenath added happily.
"That's right, you do! And you're onto something there, Usopp!" Luffy grinned, writing something down on the whiteboard. "That's three jobs right there! What else is there?"
"Secretary? Dishwasher? Gardener?" Usopp mumbled, reading the words Luffy had written down on the whiteboard with a confused face.
Nami was still a little confused. "Luffy, I don't think Ace-"
"I think I see what our Captain is trying to do here," Robin said, suddenly joining them from where she'd been lounging with a book. "It's not that you want to give her a job, but more that you want to give Ace-chan an official position on the ship like the rest of us have."
"Yeah, that!" Luffy grinned at Robin before turning to Nami. "I was thinking about what Zoro was saying the other day when talking about being careful with Ace-chan and also making her stronger, and I remembered him talking about his first mate job and realized we never decided on what our daughter's position in the crew is! EVERYONE on my crew deserves to have a position for themselves, and that includes Ace-chan! We've all got titles already! I'm not gonna forget to include our own kid!"
Nami smiled when the intent behind Luffy's words became clear. It wasn't that he actually wanted to put their daughter to work, but wanted to give her title to mark her as a true member of their crew.
It was actually pretty cute.
"Well, if we're gonna assign our daughter a position, it's gotta be a good one!" Nami smiled.
"Of course!" Luffy smiled back, extending his arms and scooping up his daughter. "We're gonna find out what your position on the ship is!"
"YAY!" Acenath threw her hands up excitedly.
"So we've got three possible positions…" Luffy murmured, turning back to the whiteboard while Acenath clambered up to sit on his shoulders. "Lesee, the one's already taken are… Zoro's first mate, Nami's the navigator, Usopp is the sniper and lookout, Sanji's the cook, Chopper's the doctor, Robin's the archeologist-"
"We're probably the only pirate crew that has 'archeologist' as a position," Zoro commented.
"But I do so much more than that. Mine is a flexible position." Robin gave the swordsman a coy smile. "I'd fit into an 'agent' or 'spy' position. Plenty of crews have those types, don't they?"
"Plus she deciphers the poneglyphs so she's a translator too." Usopp pointed out.
"And I also put her in charge of teaching Ace-chan." Nami added. "So add 'teacher' to her list of positions."
"That is actually a shared position. After all, Zoro has been doing a wonderful job training Ace-chan as well." Robin smiled, nodding her head toward the toy sword that was strapped to the little girl's waist. "And you've been giving her gifts."
"It isn't a gift. It's something to help her get used to carrying something around at all times. If she decides to pick up the sword for real, it'll help to remember the feeling now. It barely weighs anything."
"Such a diligent teacher." Robin chuckled. "Perhaps we can have a teacher's conference tonight and compare notes…?"
"Tch."
"So Robin's got lots of jobs," Luffy went on, having written down every mentioned position and had drawn lines to crudely drawn faces of the crew and their associated positions. "Frankie's the shipwright, Brooke's our musician, the helmsman position is reserved for Jinbe when he joins… what else is left?"
"Wouldn't her position be cabin boy? Er, girl?" Usopp suggested, blinking when Luffy rounded on him with a glare.
"Usopp, c'mon! We gotta give Ace-chan a better position than that! Everyone knows that the cabin boy-girl position on a crew is the worst one!"
"Y'know, Coby was a cabin boy when we met him." Zoro pointed out. "You never made a comment about that."
"Well yeah, but my daughter is WAY cooler than Coby was back then. She doesn't need to start out as a cabin girl."
Meanwhile, at a SWORD outpost…
"AChOoo!"
"What's with you?" Helmeppo asked from across the table as Coby reached for a box of tissues. "You catchin' a cold?"
"Ahaha, let's hope not, otherwise we'd never get all this paperwork done." Coby chuckled, gesturing to the table in front of them which was covered with logbooks and reports. "I'll bet Luffy and Zoro don't have to deal with this sort of thing…"
"No matter how much we rise in the ranks, I don't think we'll ever escape from filling out paperwork." Helmeppo sighed as he stamped a form.
Probably the biggest temptation when it came to deserting the navy and becoming a pirate for real was the prospect of never having to fill out any more paperwork ever again.
"At least we're not tackling it alone." Coby grinned, turning his head to address their third. "Though as much as we appreciate it, you really didn't have to stay behind and help us out with this."
"I-It's fine." Hibari replied, turning away slightly so that the captain couldn't see her red cheeks. "It's not like I had anything else to do."
"Didn't Commander Grus invite you out with the rest of them when they dumped all this work on us?" Helpmeppo asked.
"Well, yeah, but, um, it wasn't really my scene. Don't get the wrong idea, I just felt a little bad that the captain just had you to help so I thought I'd lend a hand too." Hibari explained. "D-Don't read into it, it's just my way of giving a little back for everything Captain Coby has done for me-US."
"Well, maybe we can find something else to do later. With you helping out, we'll get this done much faster than we thought, so maybe we'll have some free time." Coby smiled. "Though I'm sorry this couch is so small. You can sit at the desk if you like."
"I-I'm fine here!" Hibari insisted from where she sat hip to hip with the pink-haired captain. "This makes talking to each other easier!"
"It's just the couch Helmeppo is sitting at is a bit bigger so maybe-"
"But this couch is more comfortable!" Hibari proclaimed loudly before picking up a document. "So, um, this form! Could you double-check it please…?"
"Huh? Oh, sure!"
Suddenly the door to the office slammed open.
"So this is where you guys were! I see Grus stuck you stuck you with the paperwork again!"
"Rear Admiral Kujaku!" Coby exclaimed as the woman sauntered into the room.
"You didn't go out with the rest of them?" Helmeppo asked, surprised that the woman was still at the base.
"Rude pricks didn't even think about inviting me. Just left me behind! So I was looking for company… and found the three of you!" Kujaku smiled. "How about we ditch this place and go out for a bite? My treat!"
"Ah, that's really generous of you admiral, but we really need to finish this paperwork," Coby replied, smiling apologetically. "If we don't get it done now, someone will have to get it done later."
"Plus Grus will raise a stink if he comes back and we haven't gotten the job done," Helmeppo mumbled.
"You're all so disciplined. I should reward you for setting a good example." Kujaku grinned. "Guess I'll help you all out, THEN we can all go out together."
"R-Really?!" Hibari gasped, beaming happily at the rear admiral. "Thank you!"
"Of course! Let me just take a seat…" Kujaku sauntered over and sat down…
…Right in the small open space on Coby's other side.
"There we go."
"Um… Rear Admiral, this is a little cramped…" Hibari protested, suddenly sounding much less enthused.
"But this couch is comfier." Kujaku grinned, pressing herself against Coby. "You're not bothered, right captain?"
"It's a bit of a tight squeeze, but I'm not gonna tell you where to sit," Coby replied with a smile. "Though I could move over to Helmeppo's couch to make more space if-"
"No, no, you're fine where you are." Kujaku smiled. "I'm not bothered. Hibari, you could move if you want."
"…I'm fine here."
"If you say so~"
Helmeppo watched all this, and Coby's obliviousness to the dynamics at play, and let out a sigh.
"Is it because I'm not a captain?" Helmeppo wondered to himself. "Luffy's a captain and got married to that absolute babe in his crew and now Coby's… man, some guy's have all the luck."
He wondered if there was anyone else in the world who understood a little of his envy.
"Achooo!" Sanji sneezed as he stepped out onto the deck. "Huh, little chilly out here today. HEY EVERYONE, FOOD'S UP!"
His announcement would have normally been followed up by Luffy launching himself into the dining room, with the new addition of Acenath hot on his heels if she wasn't already being carried under the captain's arm, but that didn't happen.
Instead, Sanji blinked when he noticed that everyone was crowded together on the lawn deck around one of Usopp's whiteboards. Curious, he made his way over to the group.
"Hey, what're you all doing over here?" Sanji asked.
"We're deciding what Ace-chan's job on the ship is!" Franky informed him.
"A job?" Sanji boggled, "But she's only two-"
"Position." Robin amended. "Like how you're the cook, Nami's the navigator, Luffy's the captain… we're all trying to decide what her official title should be."
"Is that so…"
"And I was saying that Ace-chan would be a perfect assistant engineer!" Franky boasted. "She can help me make inventions and even test them for safety!"
Franky's face was promptly smashed in by Nami's Climatact.
"And I told YOU I'm not letting my daughter be your test dummy," Nami growled. "I don't want her getting hurt and then having to… replace an arm or leg with a mechanical limb or something."
"Would my new arm fire rockets?" Acenath asked.
"Your new arm would BE the rocket!" Franky answered, earning another thwack over the head from the girl's mother.
"Then I can be an engine person!"
"No you can't," Nami said, taking her pouting daughter off of Luffy's shoulders and setting her on the ground. "Your title will be one where you can keep all your limbs intact."
"But mama! I wanna fire rockets!"
"Maybe when you're older."
"Aw...!"
"What about a firework specialist?" Usopp suggested with a hand raised in the air. "I've been working on some new rounds with more pop and I can teach her a little about that stuff. Plus remember that festival we caught on that island during our last stop? Ace-chan really loved the fireworks show!"
"Guys, can we maybe come up with a position for my daughter that doesn't involve stuff potentially blowing up?" Nami growled.
"It'd be safe! I wouldn't let her handle anything really volatile and…" Usopp trailed off and shrank back a bit when Nami's glare sharpened. "U-Um, Chopper! Why not have Ace-chan help you out? She can be a nurse!"
"Oh, nurses are super important!" Luffy said, excitedly writing that job down on the whiteboard. "What do you think, Nami?"
"Getting involved in medicine…" Nami murmured, finding appeal in the suggestion. "I wouldn't mind that… it'd definitely be useful for her to know…"
"Er, I don't think I'd be able to take on Ace-chan as a nurse-in-training…" Chopper protested.
"Why not?"
"Well, I'm not really confident in my ability to teach. Plus Doctorina had me jump through a lot of hoops before she let me call myself a doctor. And uh… I don't think I could get a lot done if Ace-chan was my nurse."
The rest of the Strawhat crew stared down at the small reindeer… currently being squeezed around the neck by the small raven haired girl hugging him to her side. It made for a cute image, but it wouldn't do to have the ship's doctor unavailable because he was being used as a teddy bear by his potential assistant.
"She could help me in the kitchen." Sanji put forth. "She can be a junior chef!"
"You want to put LUFFY'S daughter in close proximity with food?" Zoro deadpanned.
Sanji glared at Zoro for a moment before he let out a sigh. "Yeah, okay… that maybe won't work."
"Hmm…" Luffy narrowed his eyes at the whiteboard where all the job titles and positions they'd thought of had been written down. Most all of them had been crossed out by now, either for being too dangerous, too mundane, or would reacquire a lot of training to even be applicable. "Y'know, a lot of these positions I'm noticing are kinda just offshoots of positions we already have. Like junior chef or assistant engineer… I want Ace-chan to have something of her own."
"Honestly, a lot of the important positions on a ship are already filled." Nami said, stepping up beside her husband. "It actually might be harder to find a position for Ace than we thought."
"But Nami…! She needs one!"
"But she is correct in saying most of the positions are already taken." Robin commented, holding a hand to her chin thoughtfully as she stared at the board. "We may have to get a little unorthodox with our thinking."
"This crew is already plenty unorthodox already." Zoro grumbled.
"The gardener, artist, actress, storyteller and pet caretaker seem to be the only jobs we came up with that are somewhat standalone." Brooke noted. "Though the only 'pets' we really own are the fishes in the aquarium, and those get eaten. And with Ace's appetite, that would lead to a very bare-bones job! YOHOHO~!"
"Look captain, she can be the ship's apprentice." Zoro interjected. "That term applies best to her anyway since her mom and that dusky woman are teaching her letters and numbers, you and I are gonna train her to be stronger physically, and the rest'll pitch in here and there for anything else."
"DON'T JUST TACK US ON AT THE END, MOSSHEAD!"
"BITE ME, SHITTY COOK!"
"…What about you, Ace-chan?" Luffy asked, crouching down to look his daughter in the eye. "Is there anything you think you wanna be?"
"A pirate!"
"Shishishi, you're one already! You got a wanted poster and everything!" Luffy grinned, ruffling the girl's hair. "But is there anything you can thing of that you want to be on the ship? Like how I'm the captain and your mom's our navigator. Or how Sanji's the cook and Chopper-Kitty's the doctor."
"JUST CHOPPER! AND I'M A REINDEER, YOU KNOW THAT! DON'T ENCOURAGE HER!" Chopper protested with a shouting wheeze as Acenath still had her arm wrapped tightly around his neck.
"Can you think of any title you wanna be called so when people ask what you do, you can answer?"
"Hm…" Acenath's brow furrowed as she thought hard about it. Slowly, she shook her head. "Sorry daddy, I can't think of anything…"
"Aw, that's okay sweetie." Luffy smiled, picking her up again and making Acenath drop Chopper who scrabbled away. "The rest of us will just have to think harder. I want your position on our ship to be special!"
"…Heh, shame Vivi isn't here." Nami chuckled, moving close and kissing the top of her daughter's head. "Maybe she'd be able to come up with something."
"…That's it."
"Eh?"
"THAT'S IT!" Luffy cheered, wrapping Nami up in a hug with his free arm and planted a kiss on his wife before releasing her with a pop. "Nami, you're the smartest wife in the world!"
"Luffy, what are you on about now?!"
"Vivi!"
"What about her?"
"You mentioning her made me realize the perfect position for Ace-chan!" Luffy grinned, taking an eraser and wiping the board clean before writing a new word down in large, bold letters across it.
Spinning, he presented the board to the crew with a large grin.
"Ace's position in the crew is 'Princess'!"
Everyone just stared for several moments in silence.
Zoro was the first to recover.
"DUMBASS, 'PRINCESS' ISN'T A POSITION ON A SHIP!" The swordsman bellowed.
"Is so!" Luffy returned. "That's what Vivi is and what she was when she sailed with us! That's her position, so Ace-chan can fill that role on our crew now! It's even listed on her bounty poster, so it fits perfectly!"
"Vivi wasn't a member of our crew for real." Zoro argued. "She was just someone we were escorting and protecting to-"
"Bastard! You can't suddenly invalidate Vivi-chan's status as a member of our crew!" Sanji shouted.
"Yeah! She was with us for so long. Even if she's not here now, that doesn't make her any less of a crew member! She's our friend!" Nami agreed, glaring at Zoro.
"Jerk!" Usopp spoke up.
"Heartless!" Chopper cried.
"Very insensitive." Robin commented.
"Not manly!" Frankie shouted.
"Despicable!" Brooke accused.
"YOU TWO NEVER EVEN MET HER!" Zoro screamed at Franky and Brooke.
"She WAS part of our crew, officially, she just had to go and be the princess of a country instead of staying as the princess of our ship!" Luffy cut in as he held Acenath up in front of the swordsman's face. "Now Ace-chan can fill that spot! She already does most of what Vivi did anyway!"
"How's that?" Zoro demanded.
"She's fun to be around, she helps around the ship, she does chores and helps out when she's asked, she fights along with us-"
"She only piggybacked into battle with you because of that pack Franky made, she's not actually-"
"And we'd all protect her with our lives when it came down to it, wouldn't we?"
That caused Zoro to sputter as everyone turned their gazes toward him.
"W-What are you all looking at me like that for? Of course I'd do everything I could to protect her! You bastards would all do the same!" Zoro snarled as he felt his face heat up. "She's just a kid! Of course we need to keep her safe."
"Yeah, she's not a stronger fighter now. Neither was Vivi. But just because they needed to be protected by the rest of us doesn't make them any less of a member of this crew." Luffy said seriously.
"Luffy…" Nami whispered.
"Plus, I'm gonna be the King of the Pirates. Nami's gonna be my Queen." Luffy grinned, making the navigator blush. "So Ace-chan is pretty much a princess already anyway! So that's her position, end of story!"
"Princess!" Acenath cheered as she hugged Luffy.
"That's right! You're the princess of the Strawhat Pirate Crew!" Luffy laughed, before sniffing the air. "Huh, that smells really good…"
"Right, that's what I originally came out to tell you all." Sanji said. "I finished getting lunch ready, so we-"
"DADDY, FOOD!"
"HOLD ON TIGHT, ACE-CHAN!"
Acenath scrambled up and gripped tightly around her father's neck as Luffy shot his arms toward the kitchen. A second later, the duo shot away as Luffy sprang off to the dining room. A loud crash followed shortly afterward.
"LUFFY! ACE! THAT SOUND HAD BETTER NOT BE SOMETHING BREAKING! IF IT WAS, NEITHER OF YOU ARE GETTING ANY SWEETS AFTER LUNCH!" Nami roared as she took off toward the dining room.
"AND YOU BETTER NOT HAVE MESSED UP MY KITCHEN!" Sanji shouted after her.
"Ah, we better hurry or those two will eat everything!" Usopp panicked.
"I don't wanna miss lunch!" Chopper cried.
"Strawhat and his daughter eat too much!" Franky laughed.
"Maybe there will just be leftovers by the time we make it." Brooke quipped.
Everyone scrambled towards the eating area… while Zoro and Robin followed at a more sedate pace behind them.
"Every daughter is their father's princess." Robin chuckled, earning an eye roll from Zoro.
"Doesn't matter how many boxes she somehow checked off, I still don't think you can consider it an actual position."
"Think of it as a placeholder for now then." Robin replied with a smile. "After all, Luffy wasn't wrong. Not just him and our navigator, any of us would go out of our way to please that girl. Calling her a princess isn't at all inaccurate."
Zoro scoffed… but knew he couldn't deny it.