Disclaimer: The Straw Hats belong to Oda-sensei. I am borrowing them without permission. I gain nothing but the joy of writing.
Diffraction
by Mako-clb
Chapter 2: Shallows
Taking a deep breath, Nami scooped all the money pouches into a box and carried it out on deck. As expected, everyone was waiting with varying degrees of patience for their spending allowance.
"Naaaaamiiiiii, hurry." Luffy was practically bouncing in his excitement. "You're taking too long."
"No, you're just impatient!" When Luffy began to literally whine, Nami forcefully ignored him. "Everyone remember to be back by sundown. If you want to stay out later, come back and check in first. And Usopp, you stay behind and guard Sunny."
"But I wanted to go with Chopper."
"Chopper and Franky are coming with me," Nami said as she handed the pouch with the pink ribbon to Chopper.
"I don't need a babysitter, Girlie."
"Look, I don't want to hang out with you either," Nami said, not looking at the cyborg as she handed Robin a pouch, "but I don't know what supplies you need or how much it will cost, so I'm going with you to figure out how much of an allowance to give you."
"Not SUPER!" Franky crossed his arms. "I'm no kid. I don't need an allowance."
"Oh, Franky has his own money." Luffy's eyes went wide and he ran to stand next to the cyborg. "I wanna go with Franky."
"Well, uh, not really." Franky looked down, rubbing the back of his neck. "Since I wasn't really expecting to go with you guys, I didn't have any money on me."
"It's okay. Nobody has any money. That's why we get an allowance," Usopp said as he took his beri from Nami. "Hey, there's hardly anything in here. I need to buy supplies to make ammo."
"Well, you'll just have to make do," Nami snapped. "Besides, you're staying on the ship. You can shop if someone comes back early."
"But look at Chopper's bag. You clearly gave him more."
"Most of that is for medical supplies. We're just lucky Iceburg-san stocked the ship for us before we left. But the way you idiots are always getting injured and since we don't know how long until we'll have a chance to shop again, we need to get what we can."
"Please forgive me for mentioning this, Nami-san, but–"
"Don't worry, Sanji-kun, I budgeted for Luffy's bottomless stomach," Nami said, handing Sanji a pouch clearly heavy with beri. "There's a little something in there for your personal expenses."
"Nami-swan is so kind."
Last on the list were Zoro and Luffy, who predictably complained at how little they received.
Nami growled before punching both of them. Then she turned to Chopper and Franky, who looked suitably cowed, and said, "Let's go."
-N-N-N-N-N-
Captain Blu Suet ground his teeth, causing his back tooth to ache. He unclenched his jaw and focused on the cause of his anger. Docked not far off was the pirate ship that had avoided his trap. Since eating the Sakka Sakka no Mi, nobody had ever seen through his illusions. They were perfect.
The plan was perfect—create the illusion of a huge storm ahead of a ship, with the only safe path leading right to the Diamond Pirates. Blu kept his own ship hidden behind a different illusion so the targets had no clue they were in danger until he fired on them. Blu's victims would be in a panic over their ship being attacked out of nowhere, and Blu would drop the illusion so his crew could board and plunder the other ship.
It had worked every time. Every single time. Even much stronger crews had been taken in. Sometimes a strong pirate crew would rally and fight back, but Blu would just use a few well-placed illusions to confuse them while he and his crew fled.
But no ship had ever sailed into the storm.
"Did you get a good look at the crew?" Blu asked as his sniper came down from the crow's nest.
"Good enough. They've got some crazy looking people on that ship, so they won't be hard to spot."
Blu turned around to face his crew.
"Make sure you memorize the descriptions of our targets. Find them. Follow them. I want to know who they are and how they saw through my illusion."
-N-N-N-N-N-
"None of this stuff is SUPER enough for my ship," Franky said. "She only deserves the best. Anything else and even with the Adam Wood, things will fall apart eventually."
Nami's jaw dropped. Franky was looking at the most expensive stuff in the hardware store, and he said it still wasn't good enough. Usopp had never spent even close to this much on nails or screws. I mean, they were just bits of metal, not even gems. She raised her fist to punch Franky in the arm since there was no way she could reach his head, but then she thought of the Merry. Maybe if they had bought the more expensive nails or top-grade planks of wood… Nami let her hand go slack.
"How much more than this do you think it would cost?" Nami fingered the beri in her bag. "And how much do we need?"
"No worries right now, Girlie. Iceberg and I made sure everything we need to make all the most common repairs are already on board and then some. We won't know what we'll need to restock on until I gotta make some repairs."
"How much?" Nami asked, thinking about the stash of beri she had in her cleavage.
"Ah, about 50 percent more, maybe."
Nami whimpered.
"Nami." Chopper hugged Nami's leg. "Don't be mad."
Nami patted the doctor's pink hat. "I'm not mad." And she meant it. She felt a lot of things right now, but she honestly wasn't angry.
"Okay, now that you know what stuff will cost, I'm taking off," Franky said.
"No, we've got to shop for medical supplies."
"You and the little bro can do that without me."
"Who's going to carry everything, huh?" Nami asked.
"You've got that bag there," Franky said, pointing to the leather satchel on Nami's shoulder.
"That's for my things," Nami said, putting her arm over the bag. "Besides, you can't expect a delicate girl like me to carry a bunch of heavy bags."
"Please, Franky," Chopper said, giving the cyborg the look that always worked on Zoro. "We're nakama now. Let's spend some time together."
Tears poured down Franky's face. "Oi, reindeer-bro, don't think that made me cry. These aren't tears."
Signing, Nami tried to push Franky towards the exit. "Let's go."
Franky decided reindeer-gorilla was right, he should get to know his new nakama better, so he let the girl push him outside.
Now she was a mystery. She was just a slip of a girl. Yeah, she had that weather staff, which was SUPER. Longnose said he made it for her, and she was pretty impressive with it back at Enies Lobby, but Franky was surprised she was part of this crazy crew. Then again, she certainly acted tough and he actually saw her hurt Straw Hat and Haramaki-guy.
"So what's your deal, Girlie?"
"Stop calling me that," Nami said, shaking a fist at him. "And what do you mean?"
Franky shrugged, then headed down a random street. "If we're going shopping, let's shop." He waited for the others to catch up. "How come you're always bossing everyone around? I thought Straw Hat was captain."
"I'm not bossy."
"You are." Franky looked to Chopper. "She's bossy, right?"
Chopper's eyes went wide. He looked from Nami to Franky and back to Nami in time to see her eye twitch. With a squeak, Chopper ran behind a bush.
Nami huffed. "It's not my fault I have to keep those idiots in line." She walked over to Chopper and gently pulled him back to the street. "If they would just use some common sense, especially Luffy and Zoro, I could relax a lot more."
"Straw Hat seems like a fun guy. Why'd he pick suck a bossy girl for his navigator?"
Nami growled, ready to show Franky who was boss, when Chopper said, "Nami is scary, but she's the best navigator ever. She sailed the Merry…" Chopper sniffled. "She sailed us up to the sky. And she knows a storm is coming before anybody else. Vivi said Nami was better than any navigator she ever saw, and Vivi's a princess."
"Chopper!"
The reindeer slapped his hoofs over his mouth and turned wide eyes to Nami. She took a quick look around and noticed a few people staring at them, so she grabbed Chopper by his antlers and snagged Franky's shirt and pulled them down another street.
Franky let her pull him along. He could have fought it, but now he was curious.
"Sorry, sorry," Chopper gasped out once they stopped a few blocks away.
"You need to be more careful," Nami said.
"What's with you two?" Franky lifted his sunglasses to look at them. "Is nobody allowed to know the girlie is a good navigator?"
"That's not…" Nami shook her head. "You know what, never mind."
"Can you really tell when a storm is coming?" Franky grinned. "That's SUPER!"
"She really, really can. She can feel them."
"Of course I can. I'm a navigator. Did you think I was pretending?"
"No. I mean, I believe you're a navigator. You've got the log pose and everything. But what does that have to do with feeling a storm? That's a devil fruit power, right?"
"What? No."
"Then how do you do it?" Franky asked. "I mean, do you have some psychic connection to the storm clouds or something? That would be SUPER kinky."
"Ewww. No. What is wrong with you?"
"Nami, over here," Chopper interrupted when he saw a store selling herbs.
Nami was right behind him, but she stopped when she noticed how close together the shelves were in the tiny store. "Go ahead, Chopper. Franky and I will wait out here."
Franky leaned back against the building, so close to the door, his arm blocked part of the entrance, but Nami just let it go.
"So how do you feel the weather?"
"The same way everybody else does. I feel the wind, the humidity, you know, normal stuff. It's like the way your skin prickles when the humidity rises or how you feel the shift in the air currents or the tingle in your teeth when the static charge in the air increases." Nami shrugged. "The only difference is that I'm a navigator, so I know how to interpret the feelings."
"I don't feel that stuff."
"Really?"
Nami looked at Franky like he was some kind of freak.
"I mean, the wind on my skin or something, sure," Franky shrugged, "but who the heck feels the static charge in the air?"
Nami shook her head. "It's probably because you're a cyborg. It's like Luffy being made of rubber. You don't feel stuff the way us normal people do."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not normal, Girlie." Franky scratched his head. "Wait, is that how you knew that storm today wasn't a storm?"
"That one was strange," Nami said, her tone growing serious. "At first glance it really did look like a big storm, but I didn't feel a storm. And it looked strange."
Franky tilted up his sunglasses to show Nami had his full attention.
"The cloud formations and the way they moved didn't match the waves below it. It was like it was two different storms. Does that kind of thing happen on the Grand Line a lot?"
"I've never heard of it before, but I pretty much grew up around Water 7. There's lots of crazy stuff out there besides Aqua Laguna."
Nami bit her lip. That was just something else she would have to be alert for. She wouldn't let the Sunny get caught in an unexpected storm or get diverted from their course by a fake storm. Luffy trusted her.
"What's taking the reindeer-gorilla so long?"
"He hasn't been in there that long." Nami looked at the signs hanging outside the shops, deciding where they should go after Chopper was done. Her eyes lit up as she saw a store selling maps. "Wait here for Chopper, and then meet me there."
"Oi, don't boss me around," Franky said, but Nami ignored him as she headed across the street. "Not SUPER!"
-N-N-N-N-N-
Luffy dumped out his entire bag of beri on the counter and smiled up at the barkeep.
"Is this a joke?" the bespectacled man asked, glancing between the small pile of money and the very large pile of plates next to Luffy and the empty mugs next to Zoro.
Zoro dumped his own, equally small sum of beri onto the pile and knew it wasn't enough.
"Damn it. I told you not to go crazy."
"But I was huuuuungy."
"I don't care how hungry you were," the barkeep said. "You ate it, so you gotta pay. And if you can't, you'll be working off your debt until you do."
"Noooo. I don't wanna work," Luffy whined.
"Have no fear, Captain. I think this will cover it," Robin said as she slid some beri across the bar toward Zoro.
The old man counted out the coins once, then twice before nodding. "This just covers your tab."
Luffy let out a big sigh of relief. "Thanks, Robin."
"My pleasure." Robin stood, smoothing out her dress. "The sandwich was surprisingly good."
"C'mon, Zoro, let's explore."
Zoro yawned. "I'm heading back to the Sunny."
"Ah, Zoro, that's no fun," Luffy said, grabbing the swordsman's arm and pulling him towards the exit.
Robin smiled fondly at the two men. "Don't be so hasty. I thought we could explore the forest just outside town. I'm told there may be some old ruins there, as well as some rather strange creatures."
"Strange how?" Zoro twisted in Luffy's grasp. He was only half listening to Robin's response as he scanned the bar. His eyes landed on a heavyset man with brown hair and a skinny kid sitting together who seemed to be taking far too much interest in his nakama.
"Yes. Apparently they are rumored to be quite fierce."
"Let's go!" Luffy shouted, flinging his arm through the open door and grabbing something in the distance.
Before Zoro knew what was happening, he was yanked off his feet and flying down the street.
"Luffy!"
-N-N-N-N-N-
As Blu's crew returned to the ship, he became more and more frustrated. Most of them hadn't found any members of the other crew at all. His navigator, Asral, was pretty sure he found the blond guy in the black suit, but after following him for awhile he didn't learn anything except they spend a hell of a lot of money on food for such a small crew.
"Captain."
The voice of his first mate was a welcome sound. Fram rarely let him down. But as Blu turned to watch the man and one of their newbies board, he didn't like the look on Fram's face.
"What is it?"
"Trouble," Fram said. He waived the newbie on. "I'm pretty sure that ship belongs to the Straw Hat Pirates. I saw their three biggest bounties with my own eyes. I heard the names, and they match the wanted posters."
Blu's eyes went wide. His crew had never gone up against anyone as wanted or, to judge by their bounties, as dangerous as the Straw Hats. Then again, they were only after information. He needed to know how they saw through his illusion so it wouldn't happen again.
"Maybe we should just let this go," Fram said. "It could have been a fluke. Or maybe they're just crazy. If the stories we've heard are true, they probably sailed into a storm on purpose."
Blu walked toward the galley, considering Fram's suggestion as the last of his crew came aboard. He let his first mate deal with the reports, which he guessed were mostly useless. Just as he was about to head in for a snack, he heard someone call for him. He turned to see Vict waving frantically.
"Captain, you gotta hear this," his cook shouted. "You won't believe how they got past us."
to be continued
Author's Note: This chapter was done early, so I decided to post it, but don't expect the next chapter right away. I've got several stories I'm working on, and which one gets my attention depends 50% on inspiration and 50% on reviews. I'm just more motivated to write stories that I know people are reading.