Usopp squints out onto the waves, one hand on the Merry's railing and the other shielding his eyes from the sun. Next to him is Treva, cross-legged on the floor and leaking future gunk diligently onto her book, and next to her is Nami, eyeballing the water much in the same way as Usopp. Luffy and Zoro are farther off, on the forecastle, doing who-knows-what. Probably napping, in Zoro's case. That's always a decent bet with him.

"I think I see it," Usopp says, of the little dot growing bigger in the distance.

"Kind of," Nami agrees. She would make a good sniper if she wanted to, Usopp thinks. She has a good eye, even if she keeps it mostly trained on the weather, and her cartographer's hands are as steady as any gunman's he can imagine. Granted, it's not like Usopp's had the misfortune of running into too many gunmen so far.

Treva snaps out of her future-seeing funk, closes her book, and sticks it in her duffle bag, which she slings across her shoulders. She gets to her feet, tugging at the strap with one hand. "It'll be another minute or two, give or take a quarter-minute, 'til it makes sense for Luffy to board their boat."

"Let me know when I should go!" Luffy shouts from the forecastle.

"Okay!" Treva calls back. After a moment's consideration, she adds, "And be careful of their boat cabin!"

"Okay!" Luffy repeats back to her.

Usopp and Nami exchange a look.

"Treva," Nami starts. "Are you going to tell us why you want to raid that boat specifically now?" She squints at the growing, now more or less boat-shaped dot again. "It's just a dinghy."

Treva clambers half-on top of the railing, to also look at the distant little boat. "They're part of a pirate crew that's a little bit bigger, that we're also gonna fight, 'cause they suck. Those guys were gonna try to steal from the Merry, but we're gonna steal from their boss instead."

"Pirates?!" Usopp squawks, at the same time as Nami demands, "They were going to rob us?!"

They turn to each other again, Nami indignant and Usopp sheepish.

"Usopp, you're on a pirate crew," Nami reminds him.

"Right, right…" Usopp scratches the back of his head, embarrassed. Truth be told, considering how their encounter with the Black Cat Pirates had gone, Usopp still doesn't feel like he's had a chance to fully wrap his head around the fact that he's a real, big-boy pirate now. Still, he perks up. "Exactly right! And our captain has a Devil Fruit!"

Treva spares him a bug-like, horribly yellow glance. "So does theirs."

Usopp and Nami both blanch. Treva doesn't seem to notice, instead hopping down from the rail to turn to the forecastle and address Luffy again.

"Luffy!"

"Yeah, Treva?!"

"They're close enough now!"

"Okay!" Luffy says one more time for good measure, and launches himself at the other pirates' boat. Completely forgetting Treva's warning about the cabin, he crushes it entirely as a collateral to his landing, which is about as far as Usopp can make out from this distance. By Usopp's reckoning, some kind of comedy routine then proceeds to take place, at the end of which Luffy slingshots back onto the Going Merry with a half-dead boy of about Treva's age under one arm.

"Is this what you meant about their boat cabin?" Luffy asks Treva, presenting the boy to her by the scruff of his shirt collar, ignoring both Usopp and Nami's very visible, very mounting confusion.

"Yeah." Treva nods, unfazed. "We should get out of here now, though. We don't really need to run into the rest of their crew 'til later."

"Treva…" Usopp tries, uncertainly, pointing to the boy. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

Treva puffs up, aggrieved. "I'm not! His grandpa runs an oden place. If we get lunch there, we can give him back!"

"Oh." Usopp looks from Treva, to the boy, to Treva again, and then to Nami. Nami shrugs, so the ball is in Usopp's court, he supposes. To Treva, he concludes, "Well, I guess that's fine."

"Is the oden good?" Luffy asks, because of course that's his top priority. Treva brightens and makes to answer him, when the boy, still held aloft by the scruff of his little cape, jolts to disgruntled life.

"No!" he declares, and begins to struggle furiously for his freedom. Luffy, obligingly, lets him go, and he falls face-first onto the deck. The boy quickly scrambles to his feet, glaring all around at the lot of them. "I mean! The oden is good, but I'm not going back!"

Luffy frowns. "If there's good food, why wouldn't you want to go back?"

"Oden is a lot better than frozen meals," Treva… agrees? Her tone and expression are commiserative, but the statement still rings to Usopp as nonsense. "Just on principle."

"Obviously," the boy huffs. He crosses his arms. "But that's not the point! I'm the great pirate Tobio, and I'm on a journey to find the treasure island!" He punctuates this pronunciation by throwing out his arm and wiggling a bit so that his makeshift cape swishes behind him. Then, he deflates. "But I was caught by Eldoraggo and forced to work…" Suddenly, he shakes his head rapidly. Clenching his fist, Tobio amends, "No, that's not it! I just pretended to be captured to find the gold island!"

"Uh-huh." Nami looks down on him, palpably unimpressed. He squirms. Nami turns to Treva. "That's that old story, isn't it, about the really rich pirate from… two generations ago, I think. Right?"

Tobio points at Treva, in accusation as much as in indignation. "Why're you asking her? She's younger than me!"

"I'm older than you!" Treva barks back, offended. "By four months and six days, you jerk!"

"How can you know that?! I don't know you!"

"Because I can see—"

"Things!" Usopp interrupts, putting himself hurriedly between the two kids. "Treva is our crew's fortune teller, you know! With a little crystal ball and a deck of cards and everything! She's very effective!"

Treva and Tobio both stare up at him blankly.

"That's stupid," Tobio says, at the time as Treva tries to say, "Usopp, I'm the strate—"

"Treva," Nami cuts in, and Treva stands immediately at attention. Nami gestures with her hand for Treva to go on.

"Oh! Yes." Treva nods, up and down, up and down, like a buoy in an unstable current. "That's right. Woonan started out in this region, 'cause he's from one of the Oyster Islands due east, and his home base is just a little bit closer than that."

Nami considers this. "Is the treasure real this time?"

"It's still the friends we made along the way, but Eldoraggo's ship has lots of real gold on it."

Nami nods back to Treva, satisfied with her answer. "I can live with that."

"I can't!" Tobio objects. He points at Treva again. "Why do you know so much?!"

"She saw it in her crystal ball," Usopp very earnestly lies.

Tobio seems to accept this, because he continues, still yelling at Treva. "If you know where Woonan is, then tell me!"

Treva looks down on him the way Nami did before, except she has to look slightly up to do it. "I don't wanna have to tell it twice, so we're going to the oden place first."

With that, Treva runs off, pattering her way into the sterncastle. Tobio yelps and takes off after her, still shouting for her to explain herself.

Nami facepalms. "I guess I better go after them," she mutters, because Treva isn't strong enough to make use of the Merry's steering pole, and she has every ground not to trust the new kid as far as she can throw him.

"I should go too," Usopp realizes. He perks up, pleased. "It's almost time for the Usopp Show! Though, well, I guess I'll have to cut it a bit short today, if we're going out for lunch."

Luffy grins. "Right, you still have to call Kaya today!"

Nami, meanwhile, rolls her eyes and puts her hands on her hips, put-upon. "Why don't you just call it that in the first place? She's the only one who ever tunes in."

"That's not true," Usopp argues, but not all that passionately. "The kids are with her at least half the time, and really, it's just because she has the only transponder snail in the village… If they could, I bet the whole town would tune in!" Usopp puffs out his chest, holds his head high, and crosses his arms, picking up steam. "No! The whole East Blue!"

Nami remains unmoved. "Uh-huh."

"And besides," Usopp goes on, less grandly. "Treva's really determined to start a radio show. Even if it doesn't go anywhere, and even if I don't really get what she wants out of it, I don't see a reason not to humor her."

"Sure, but…" Nami wrinkles her nose in distaste. "The Usopp Show? Really?"

"She said we couldn't use the name she had in mind for copyright reasons." Usopp shrugs. "I'm not really sure what that's about either."

Luffy's brows knit together. "But we're already pirates."

The three of them stand together in a moment of silence, contemplating what, if anything, this says about their crew. Soon enough, the peace is broken by a loud, wooden thud from within the sterncastle. Going off of his possession of basic pattern recognition, Usopp would guess that the sound was Treva, ineffectually tackling the Merry's steering pole again.

Nami winces. "That's my cue."

X️XX ️ ️

"So…" Tobio begins, glancing at Treva sideways in a manner that he hopes isn't too obvious. "Are you really a pirate?"

The two of them are sitting at the Strawhats' dining table's outward-facing bench, their backs to the table itself, watching the older girl that's apparently called Nami steer the ship. Treva, whose happy, contented little smile had been starting to creep Tobio out, preens smugly.

"Of course I'm a pirate!" she tells him. "Our crew has a captain, a swordsman, a navigator, a sniper, and a ship, and soon, we're gonna get our cook. And I'm the strate—"

There's a distant, piercing sound of someone… shouting, maybe, or a canon going off, and water sloshing around horribly. The ship rocks just a bit more violently on the waves. Tobio freezes.

"Treva?" Nami demands, slightly strangled, over her shoulder. "What was that?"

"That was just Eldoraggo," Treva says. "He has the Shout-Shout Fruit, so he does daily vocal practice on the open ocean for combat use, but Luffy's still gonna beat him up. It won't be an issue."

"Right," Nami returns, still a bit strained. Tobio, as someone who had spent the past few hours getting pushed around by just Eldoraggo's minions, rounds indignantly on Treva.

"There's no way your captain can win," he accuses. "He didn't even look that impressive!"

Treva bristles and porcupines, her whole face scrunching up to glare at Tobio. "You don't know anything. Luffy's definitely gonna win."

Tobio points at Treva, which he feels like he's been doing a lot of, and turns to Nami instead. "Tell her!"

Nami spares a bland glance his way. "Luffy is probably going to win."

Tobio intends to object further, but he's interrupted by the sterncastle's door opening, and a green-haired man carrying three extremely real swords walking in. The man yawns hugely and sleepily scratches the back of his head.

"What's all the noise about?" he asks.

Tobio jumps on this opportunity without hesitation. "You!" The man blinks at Tobio slowly. Tobio is still pointing at Treva. "Tell her she's wrong! Your captain couldn't win against Eldoraggo!"

The green-haired man's expression shutters off, instantly and completely, and his eyes seem to sharpen. With a confidence that unsettles Tobio to his bones, he says, "Luffy would win."

His tone brooks no argument, so Tobio gulps and lets it go. Not because he's scared, of course! There's just no use trying to talk sense into crazy people. Right. Exactly.

To the best of his ability, he tries to ignore the smug, childishly sly… it isn't really a smirk, because Treva's pudgy baby-face isn't built for smirking, but it's something along those lines and Treva aims it squarely at him. Deliberately, Tobio doesn't look at her as he fumes.

The green-haired guy makes his way over to the table, where he sits across from Tobio and Treva.

"Who's the new kid, anyway?" he wonders.

"He's Tobio," Treva says. "We're going to his grandpa's oden place for lunch, and then we're gonna go to Woonan's island to beat up this other pirate crew full of dumb jerks who suck." She beams at Nami. "And we're gonna steal their stuff!"

Nami does smile at that. "We sure are."

Treva preens. Tobio contemplates tackling her, but before he can make up his mind, she startles and hops to her feet. "I forgot, I need to call Gramma."

With that, Treva runs off and out of the room.

"Wait!" Tobio squawks, and rushes to follow her at a sprint.

As much as Treva's been jumping up and down on his nerves, the green-haired man has far too intimidating of a face for Tobio to want to stick around.

X️XX ️ ️

When Treva and Tobio come scampering out onto the Merry's forecastle deck with one of Treva's snails, since Usopp is already on another snail talking to Kaya in the storage room, Luffy's been sitting cross-legged in his favorite spot on top of the Merry's ram's head for a while.

Even with his back to them, Luffy hears Treva physically pause. To stare blankly at Luffy's head, presumably, going off of prior experience. Then, he hears Tobio barrel into her as a function of the short notice of her stop, the brief argument that ensues, the uneasy truce reached, and how Treva wanders off once more to find somewhere good on the floor to sit. After a moment's indecision, Tobio sits also, around wherever Treva's settled on.

Luffy only minds them with half an ear, just to be sure he's not going to be unexpectedly tackled into the ocean again. He's more interested in watching the water, anyway, looking out for that oden place.

Still, he's been incidentally present for enough of Treva's daily calls to her granny that he's picked some things up, inadvertently. Like how Treva's half of the conversation is delivered with a bulldozer-blitheness that he recognizes from some of his own talks with the old mayor back home in Foosha, in which everything Woop Slap said had gone in through one ear and out the other. Or like how Treva hasn't named or spoken descriptively of any locations or people.

Treva is kind of a weird kid, but so was Luffy, so he doesn't feel like he can judge her granny. Treva definitely seems to love her, and it wouldn't be odd for a normal guardian to be overly worried about a child who ate a Devil Fruit like Treva's so young. Hell, Woop Slap, Makino, Dadan, and even Shanks were all plenty worried about Luffy growing up, though that was more his own fault than the Gum-Gum Fruit's.

But, well.

It's kind of curious, even if it doesn't really matter. It makes Luffy wonder, is all.

Eventually, Treva hangs up, with the usual "I love you, Gramma!" thrown unceremoniously over the line. Some shuffling from behind Luffy indicates that Treva's started the process of gathering up the transponder snail to be taken back down to the storage room with the others, but she's interrupted by Tobio.

"How come you're a pirate if you've got a grandma at home?" he asks, dubious. "And you're making me go back to my grandpa!"

Treva is largely predictable, so Luffy can surmise that she's bristled right up. "That's different. Where you live, you've got other people to hang out with and lots to do, and all you have to do is help your grandpa out with the oden shop sometimes. But I'm from the middle of nowhere!" Treva huffs and, probably, tries and fails to cross her arms around the snail. Audibly, she rocks back and forth on her heels. "And anyway, Gramma doesn't understand. She's always going on and on about how much people suck and how I'm only gonna run into trouble 'cause I can see the future, but I don't wanna just be hanging around in the library reading and watching other people do cool things anymore. I wanna do cool things."

Tobio, however, is unmoved. "I wanna do cool things too! I don't wanna help make any more stinkin' oden!"

Luffy considers tuning the two of them out, but then he sees something coming up on the horizon that makes him straighten up, bring a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun, and squint into the distance.

"Hey," he cuts in. "Is that it?"

Treva puts the snail back down to hang out on the deck and patters over to the Merry's railing next to the figurehead, which she clambers half on top of, as she is wont to do. Tobio follows her, but only looks out between the pickets.

"It is!" Treva brightly confirms, at the same time as Tobio exclaims, "That's my grandpa's shop!"

"It's cool, isn't it?" Treva goes on, beaming up at Luffy. She drops down from the rail to gesture widely for emphasis, arms out and waving all over the place. "Like the Baratie, where we're going next! Or like some of the floating stalls they have in Water 7. Boat-shops are cool!"

"They're not," Tobio mutters, but Treva doesn't notice, and Luffy doesn't care.

They're approaching the oden boat fast, and Luffy can already smell broth and fishcakes on the wind. He sticks his nose up and out to sniff at the air.

"Smells good!" he declares. And really, at this stage, that's kind of all he needs.

X️XX ️ ️

Note: Surprise! I'm a completionist. We're doing the first movie and parts of the Set Sail Pirate Crew! game.