A great yawn cracked across Nami's face, inviting a few haphazard snowflakes into entering the next stage of reincarnation as they perished in the heat of her exhalation. She could but hope that the late cold-snap didn't kill off all the germinating fruit blossoms and straggling blooms; she and Shachi had enjoyed adding an impromptu flower shower to one of their early morning runs (now a regularly scheduled and dreaded occasion) not too long ago and any late frost would kill off the last few unpopped buds.
A few lunges in the warm glow of a wrought-iron streetlamp (why was she up this early, streetlamps had no business being alight at such a distasteful hour) brought enough warmth to her freezing fingers that she could unlock her phone to check her pick-up instructions.
She was outside her apartment building, check.
Before dawn, a check and a curse.
Waiting for—she squinted at the glare of her phone – 'a car you will recognise immediately, don't worry, it's unmistakeable', check.
It was all Shachi's fault she was up at the crack of dawn, again, and this time without the doubtful benefit of improved cardiovascular health. Indeed, she foresaw a future of dissolution and delinquency with her new friends, and a fledgling hope to possibly be able to rival the worst tales Luffy and Zoro had ever managed to generate on their trips and travels.
Although nothing could beat the pair's accidental admission to a VIP party held for the Danish crown prince, due to wandering off and opening the wrong door by mistake.
(The canapés had, apparently, been all right, but the champagne a bit on the fizzy side according to Luffy.)
Nothing new about their wayward swordsman in the group chat, she noted absentmindedly as she slipped her phone back into her pocket. He had made a brief resurgence on Thursday before disappearing once more, but this time with his phone securely clipped to his jeans and a powerbank glued to his shoe.
Usopp did not believe in making things easy for people who displeased him by disappearing for a week and a half and reappearing with nary a grunt and no explanation.
A lump of snow slid of a nearby roof, its heavy slap against the pavement dragging her attention back to the present.
The crew of the Sunny was safely tucked in bed at home, snoozing away.
Right now, she was counting on Shachi and Penguin to make the weekend memorable.
And not because she'd lost fingers to frostbite before they even started, thank you very much.
She was already starting to compose an ode to her lost digits when a low rumbling cut through the silent dawn air, growling closer with each breath she took. The sound jumped between the ornate buildings lining the street, each balustrade amplifying the sound and the morning mist lingering in the air diffusing the direction; the animalistic sound came from everywhere and nowhere at once, filling the world with an unholy screeching and scrawing.
Suddenly, the noise was accompanied by the force of a thousand burning suns hitting Nami's corneas as the blinding light of too-bright headlamps swerved around the corner, accompanied by the scream of tortured metal and studded tires slipping on cobblestones. An automatic jump back from the street made Nami almost trip over her weekend bag and only the precipitously placed streetlamp saved her from falling over.
Blinking away the after-images, which took twice as long due to the eye-watering shade of yellow suddenly assaulting her eyes, Nami could but stare at the car now neatly parked half in front of her and half up the pavement, coming daringly close to kissing the lamp pole she was hugging.
She could only admit to one irrefutable fact.
Shachi had been right.
The car was unmistakeable.
What really sealed the deal was a happy Penguin waving at her to jump in from the passenger seat up front.
"Welcome aboard the Polar Tang! Boarding is through the back door; we will depart whenever the last passenger has placed her luggage in the luggage compartment. Remember, no liquids, e-scooters, bad jokes or explosives allowed aboard." Penguin gave a jaunty salute. "Ready for an adventure?"
A wide grin spread out in the space vacated by her earlier yawn and Nami hoisted her small weekend bag onto her shoulder.
"You managed to not run me over, so I'm pumped already! Allons-y!"
"Great! We just need to pick up a few friends first."
Nami eyed the car with a questioning eyebrow raised.
With Shachi behind the wheel and Penguin up front, it looked like it would fit maybe one (1) tiny granny after Nami folded herself into the back seat.
She shrugged.
Not her car, not her friends, not her problem.
"Looking forward to how you're going to pull that off," she said, stuffing her bag into the already overflowing boot.
"Wait and see," Shachi said with a wink and a grin as he turned the wheel and ferried them off into the dawning day.
She waited, and she saw.
And what she saw...
It didn't happen often, but Nami was occasionally impressed.
She had been impressed when Usopp managed to cultivate his first walking pea plant.
Chopper's acceptance into the medical programme at seventeen had left her astonished (and utterly delighted), as had Sanji's recreation of one of those chocolate sculpture videos shared in their group chat with nothing more to his aid than a wok, a pair of kitchen knives, his old lighter and half a metric ton of chocolate.
Some days, Luffy impressed her by simply surviving.
Right now, however, she was truly impressed by the Tetris-skills of her current companions.
They stopped here, they moved there, and a few manoeuvres later she found herself squeezed between Shachi and Penguin, the driver's seat given over to a slender guy introduced as Hakugan who was driving like he was born for the Autobahn, and the passenger seat occupied by a tall woman, dressed in a long white winter coat with a bright orange smiley face on its back.
Their last, and final, passenger had been picked up form a misty train station, shadowed by the golden crests of the dawn-brushed mountains. The pretty brunette with wild curls bouncing around her heart-shaped face was now stretching out a welcoming hand over the jostling headrest. "Freut mich! I'm Ikkaku."
"Lovely to meet you," Nami said, hanging onto her hand for dear life as Hakugan took a particularly daring curve. "How do you all know each other?"
"I'm a more recent addition, although these guys," Ikkaku pointed at Shachi and Penguin, now seated on either side of Nami with wide grins stretched across their faces, "know each other from way back."
"...you're old university mates?" Nami hazarded a guess, extraolating from Shachi and Penguin's background and frequent tales of literature review-driven woe and laboratory-induced anguish.
Ikkaku shook her head with a laugh. "I'm not one for formal education, unlike those two dorks with you—" she continued, ignoring the indignant noises coming from both sides of a curious Nami, " –but they are a treat. Can't have a better pair in your corner."
Nami liked Ikkaku. "You'll all have to come visit me and we'll see if my housemates are up to the test." Ikkaku laughed out loud at her theatrical wink.
"You're from Sweden, right?" Ikkaku asked. "Might be worth a visit one day."
"I am, but I study abroad," Nami said. "And no, not just in Munich," she added as Shachi opened his mouth to interject, "this is just my exchange term from my studies. Which are not in Sweden." She shook her head at Shachi's sad face and turned back to Ikkaku who had followed the interaction with an amused glint in her eye. "And you, are you from around where?"
"I live and work in Berlin but decided to tag along; skiing is fun and the trips these people—" Ikkaku gestured to the boys flanking Nami "—get up to are worth it."
"Isn't it quite a trip from Berlin to down here?"
"Eh, not too bad. It's just four hours with the train."
Nami whistled. Four hours would take her… not far back home in Sweden, but across most of continental Europe.
Depending on your starting point, of course.
"You must have left in the middle of the night!" she said with bafflement-seasoned wonder, quickly re-calculating their schedule. "And isn't the train quite expensive?"
"Es gehts . Cheaper than owning a car. And I can work on the train." Ikkaku wiggled her fingers at Nami. "Type-type-typing away."
"What do you work with?" Nami asked, interested in spite of herself. Ikkaku's combination of easy-going charm and general sense of calm made her feel comfortable, although Hakugan's sudden accelerations and tight curves did do their best to increase her blood pressure to some very alarming levels.
She knew Shachi and Penguin's research work focused on nanomaterials or AI in medicine or some such, while Hakugan had been introduced as a 'gentleman of leisure and occasional getaway driving', whatever that meant.
Ikkaku on the other hand gave off almost influencer-like vibes with her wild curls held back by a colourful bandana and freckled button nose perpetually scrunched up by a happy smile.
"Just an ordinary IT-mole. Coding and interface design and stuff," she said, smiling so wide her warm brown eyes crinkled.
"Don't listen to her," Penguin cut in with a snort. "Ikkaku's the best damn hacker I've seen."
"Way to let a lady keep her secrets," Ikkaku huffed, arms folding and grin turning into a pout.
"You're a hacker?"
"She hacked the German Bundestag," Shachi cackled from Nami's other side, face smushed against the window.
"They were going to make some bad decisions."
"You interfered in the democratic decision-making process."
"Bad. Decisions."
"Made by democratically elected leaders."
"They still didn't know what they were talking about," Ikkaku said with her nose in the air. "They were obviously bought by the coal lobby and what they don't know about green energy transitions—"
"Because you know so much more?" Shachi cut her off with a scoff.
"Potat-o , potat-oh ."
"No, Baumen und Blumen, keine Kartoffel."
"Du bist ein Kartoffelsalat."
"WATCH IT!" Penguin suddenly screamed as Hakugan had to swerve to the right due to a black Audi screaming past them, kicking up a shower of gravel from the side of the road.
"Sorry," Ikkaku said as their collective heartrates had eased down from the danger zone. "Germans are really bad drivers."
Shachi, as far as Nami could tell behind those ridiculous sunglasses he refused to take off even at this time of day, levelled her a look. "You are German."
"And thus I have the expertise to judge them."
"You still are one of 'them'." Shachi punctuated his sentence with air quotes.
"And you come from Ireland, but do I remind you about that every single day?"
"No, yet I am delighted when you do."
"You are delighted when you see cake, as well."
"Who wouldn't be?"
"A monster," Ikkaku said with a solemn shake of her head.
"Hey!"
"Penguin, we love you, but you have your flaws," said Shachi.
"As do you, but do we keep a list of those?"
"Yes. Yes, you do. It's in the group chat, pinned to the top, organised by group member, flaw and countermeasure to said flaw." Shachi flashed his phone to the raucous laughter of Hakugan and Ikkaku.
Nami felt a warm feeling slowly engulf her, squished as she was between Shachi and Penguin's frames, their bulk enhanced by their winter jackets. The landscape was speeding past towards the snow-capped mountains and maybe, just maybe, this weekend would turn out all right.
And to those thoughts she slowly slipped into sleep, dreaming of yellow cars hurtling along windy mountain roads.
Shachi barely managed to wake Nami in time to drop off their stuff and so her bleary first impression of their lodgings for the weekend were filled with heavy wooden furniture, winding corridors and too much pine panelling for this lifetime.
But the mountain air was crisp in her lungs and the sun's rays made the fresh snow fields sparkle all around her, the snow-laden trees glimmering cones and the mountains draped in distant twinkles.
And they were finally, finally on the slopes.
Well, most of them were on the slopes, safely on piste.
Shachi and Penguin were currently off piste, where only the brave venture by choice and the stupid go by mistake.
Their mistake had been trying to show off their skills a bit too eagerly after a flutter of Nami's eyelashes had blown past them accompanied by a completely rhetorical and innocent question of 'which one of them actually was the better skiier'.
"You are surprisingly bad for a couple of guys who swore they were born on skis," Nami sighed, leaning against her poles as she watched Shachi try to fight his way out of the deep drift he had managed to get himself stuck in.
"Hey!" Ikkaku interjected, a scandalised look upon her pretty face as she valiantly tried to keep from laughing out loud. "They are not that bad!"
Nami levelled her a patented Look™. "Shachi just managed to get Penguin's skis crossed. How, we will forever wonder, and why, we will never find out."
"I like you," said Ikkaku, giving Nami a wide grin. She turned to the struggling snow-covered duo below, giving them an approving nod. "Well done in recruiting her, boys."
"And I like you," Nami answered with a fist bump, their thick mittens softening the impact. "And I especially like you after the mysterious mishap with the ski pass earlier."
"What ski pass mishap?" Penguin managed to ask, taking a break in his efforts to climb back up to the piste. He had snow in his hood and his black and white helmet was askew, ski goggles pushed up on top of it to frame his beautifully flushed face.
"For some reason, the gate didn't react to our un-activated passes and just let us through," Nami said, lifting a finger to her bottom lip in wonder with her eyes wide open in mock surprise.
Hakugan merely shook his head at Shachi's third attempt at re-attaching his ski. On the fourth attempt, Shachi simply fell over once more and Hakugan returned to his phone, lazily scrolling something or other, pausing to quickly type down a comment every now and then.
"I can't help it if there's a bug in their system," Ikkaku said, upping Nami's wonder with a shrug and a smirk.
"Especially not if you put it there," Penguin grumbled, having untangled his skis and managed to crawl his way up the dyke. "Why couldn't you get us all in for free as well?"
"Because you have a grown-up job and can pay your own way now," Ikkaku said with a pleasant smile as pleasant as those million-year old grins found in the depths of the ocean and near busy beaches. "Nami is a poor student and thus deserves help. And they would have become suspicious if we all just so happened to get in for free."
"And I thank thee," Nami said sombrely, bowing to Ikkaku who acknowledged it with a regal inclination of her head.
"How come you're so good at skiing, anyway?" Shachi asked Nami, leaning against his poles as he tried to catch his breath once safely up from the perilous snowdrifts. "I didn't know you came from the mountains."
Nami gave a happy little grin as she adjusted her glasses, now that everyone was ready to go once more. "I used to do some seasonal work at a Swedish ski resort when I was growing up. My sister worked there and managed to get me a job as well when I whined one too many times about my lack of disposable income. The Swedish mountains aren't very large or high, but wide enough to teach you the basics."
"Why did you quit?" asked Ikkaku, readjusting her boots.
Nami shrugged, trying to keep her hands warm in the biting cold as Hakugan started putting his phone away – a multi-stage process with all the layers he was wearing. "I had to focus on my studies, and I was in a motorcycle accident the previous summer. Broke my arm in three places and it didn't heal enough before the season started."
"Captain Lawyer would have a field day with that," Shachi tutted, shaking his head in disapproval. "Endangering yourself like that, what would your boyfriend say?"
"You know what he thinks of being called a lawyer," Penguin sighed, emptying his mitten from the half-melted snow that had accumulated during his tumble down the dyke.
"Yes, and that's why I'm doing it while he's not here," said Shachi. "But we're not talking about him, but about Nami's boyfriend."
"Let me know when you find one for me," Nami laughed. "You know I'm single. But maybe someone called 'captain Lawyer' could be something," she continued with a wink. "I could have a thing for someone who works long hours so I don't need to see them too much, and pulls in the money to match. Good looks are a bonus, not a requirement."
"If he meets two-thirds of your criteria, is that enough?" Shachi asked, the serious set of his eyebrows betrayed by the smile tugging at his mouth. "He's objectively speaking good-looking—" he thumped a suddenly cough-struck Hakugan on the back, "—and he works ridiculous hours, so you'd never see him. Unfortunately, academia doesn't pay that well, so I can't promise you too many fancy dinners."
Nami pouted. "If I wanted an academic, I'd try to get our new professor to divorce his wife. That's as close to academia I'm willing to go in my relationships."
"Captain's not married, so there's one obstacle less," Penguin said with a grin. "Although, he's also not a full professor yet. You sure you don't want to settle for potential future professor instead of trying to wreck the happy marriage of one who already managed to achieve that coveted tenure chair and the accompanying job security?"
"Eh, he's not tenured yet, but we'll get there," she waved his artless graces away with a flick of her mitten.
Penguin tilted his head, regarding her with a newfound interest as he tightened his helmet. "Hypothetically, if we'd give your number to Captain, would you be interested?
"That's not why I gave you my number!" Nami pressed a hand to her heart in mock concern. "It was only for ski-related purposes and cute cat videos! But if he really is the kind of catch you're making him out to be…" she trailed off, her wiggling eyebrows fuelling their laughter.
"Now we will get him to visit, just so we can set the two of you up," Shachi laughed. "He won't be able to resist the promise of a date with such a lovely lady."
Ikkaku merely sighed. "You guys are way too invested for anyone's benefit or well-being, just so you know."
"We are not!" Penguin protested, trying to regain his balance while simultaneously losing his pole, leaning over precariously.
"We simply take an interest in our acquaintances and their general health and happiness," Shachi continued.
"Present company included," the pair concluded in unison, flute-like voices spiralling into the air in beautiful harmony.
"Acquaintance," Ikkaku scoffed. "If that's what you're calling him, when he–"
Unfortunately, the rest of her sentence was cut short by a sudden wail from Penguin as his skis decided to go in two separate directions while his poles stayed firmly rooted, the diverging forces resulting in him tumbling over and quickly turning into a human-sized snowball, merrily rolling down the mountain.
And so the chase began.