That night, Nami finds herself woken up by the quiet thunk of a hatch being carefully shut, to a missing Treva. Nami has had them sharing the small indoor space of the Buggy Pirates' boat she stole as a place to sleep, since she still doesn't really trust Luffy and Zoro, and she feels somewhat responsible for Treva for the time being. Someone has to be, in her mind.
That feeling, too, is what compels Nami to open the little door and peer out after Treva, who hasn't wandered far. She's still just on the deck, sitting on her knees and illuminated by the dull, red glow of the future-gunk leaking slowly onto the pages of her book. It's pretty creepy, as it's been every other time, and Nami makes a face. Still, she can at least appreciate that Treva tried to avoid disturbing her rest.
More surprising than finding Treva, doing what she always does, is finding Zoro, not sleeping. Instead, he's sitting on his and Luffy's dinghy, arms crossed and back to the flimsy mast. Faintly, Nami can sort of make out Luffy in the darkness, out of commission with his limbs akimbo and half-sprawled on top of Zoro's legs.
Zoro raises an eyebrow at Nami when she notices him. Nami blinks at him some in turn, but not for long.
"We all have to be up early for the ambush tomorrow," Nami says, at regular volume. Treva, who's all but dead to the world when she's looking into the future, and Luffy, who's very nearly as heavy of a sleeper as Zoro, don't so much as stir. "Or… today, now, maybe. If you don't get any sleep, you're going to regret it in the morning."
The eyebrow lowers, and Zoro shrugs. Luffy does react to that, but only barely, shifting a bit. Zoro ignores it. "Meh."
Nami rolls her eyes, but maybe she's a hypocrite, because she doesn't go back to bed either. For a given definition of bed. Instead, she winds up staring Zoro down, neither of them quite trusting the other enough to look away.
The awkwardness gets to Nami first, which isn't surprising. Zoro, she's confident, doesn't have a socially conscious bone in his body. If only to break the silence, she looks vaguely between him and Luffy and says, "I guess you've known each other for a while."
"What, me and Luffy?" Zoro frowns, seemingly in honest confusion, which confuses Nami in kind. Zoro, too, looks to Luffy, who sleeps with his mouth lolling comically open even when he's not actively snoring, and then back up at Nami. He snorts. "Yeah, right. I met him the week before we ran into you."
That does throw Nami off, and she blinks at Zoro again. Carefully, she doesn't let her expression close off all the way, but Zoro's regard sharpens—just around the eyes—in a manner that tells her he noticed it anyway. Once more, they're staring each other down, but Nami huffs and concedes before hostility can breed in the night air. In an interpersonal arrangement as precarious as that of the so-called Strawhat Pirates, unchecked negative sentiment is like psyllids to the harvest.
"You have a lot in common," Nami allows, which is a nothing statement, and self-evident. Luffy and Zoro are both amazingly frustrating people, for one, and oddly perceptive for a pair of idiots. And annoyingly blank-faced, in their own ways; Zoro with his ever-present bad vibes, and Luffy with his… being Luffy. Nami isn't happy to have apparently gotten their entire dynamic wrong, but she'll just have to adapt, until they've taken care of Arlong for her and she never has to see them again.
She does, though, hope they do well for themselves on the Grand Line, if they live that long. There's no trust between them, whatever Luffy's hellbent to foster, but it's not like Nami's gotten the impression that they're horrible people.
Her nothing statement, for whatever reason, seems to strike a contemplative chord with Zoro, and he looks to Luffy again. Mullish, maybe. He uncrosses his arms to push Luffy's mess of bangs out of his face with one hand, as if a clearer view will make Luffy less of a black box of a person. Or, Nami could just be projecting.
"Yeah," Zoro concludes, finally, nodding. Nami doesn't get him at all, but she shrugs accord, aware that this is the longest conversation she and Zoro have had to date.
It's also, she's aware, an opportunity to see if she can't pry out of him a better understanding of what makes him tick. She'll be stuck with him and Luffy at least for the next month, so it's not an insignificant matter.
"It came up before, but you actually were asleep," she opens with, mildly. Zoro side-eyes her, perpetually—rightly—suspicious. "If push comes to shove, do you care if we have to resort to lethal force tomorrow?" Today. Whatever.
As soon as the words are out, Nami realizes she's being uncharacteristically delicate with her phrasing. Euphemistic. She valiantly resists the urge to scowl, but it's not like she's ever had anyone to conspire with, so she's not exactly surprised with her own squeamishness. It's fine, so long as she doesn't let it get to her when it counts. She never has before, so, again. Whatever.
Zoro, who's evidently much more prone to beat up rather than around any given bush, has no similar reservations. The look he levels at Nami is almost long-suffering, like somehow, between them, she's the stupid one. "I was a bounty hunter."
"That doesn't mean anything." Nami waves him off. "I've seen weirder than a bounty hunter that's never killed anyone, even just over the last month."
Zoro inclines his head to her, conceding the point. They're in the same boat on this front, apparently, metaphorically if not literally. "Either way, I'm not that much of a bleeding heart. If there's good reason and no other options, even I'm only human."
He raises his eyebrow at Nami then, again, in question. Do you care?
He doesn't say anything, but Nami hears it loud and clear. She does scowl, then.
"I'm a thief who steals from pirates," she tells him, irritated. "I always have to be ready to defend myself." And, well. Sometimes, accidents happen. "In the first place, I only teamed up with you because I can't get rid of the pirate that's been terrorizing my home island on my own. That's not for lack of trying, and I don't care if he dies. When it comes to people like him or the Black Cat Pirates, I don't want to be hypocritical."
"Hypocritical," Zoro repeats, testing it out, making a face.
"What?" Nami asks, only mostly rhetorically. Seems her nerves are more fried than she'd expected; she hadn't started the conversation intending to bait him. "Too big of a word for you?"
Zoro scowls right back at her, properly. "I don't see the point in dressing it up."
This does give Nami pause. She frowns, and when she doesn't respond, Zoro rolls his eyes.
"Whether it's those cat pirates or your fish guy, you hate what they're doing enough that you're fine with whatever it takes to stop them, right?" he… says, more so than he asks. It isn't really a question, and he goes on before Nami could have answered. "You're just doing what you want to do, because you wanted to do it. So long as you're not getting random bystanders hurt or killed along the way, which would be stupid no matter who you are or what you want, I don't see the point in making it any more complicated than that." Zoro grimaces. "Your fish guy sounds like an asshole, anyway."
Nami stares at him.
"What?" Zoro demands, nearly flustered, for him.
Nami shakes her head. "I don't know if I agree with you, but… good to know you think about these things, I guess."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Goodnight, Zoro."
He yells something else at her, but Nami's already heading back into her stolen boat, shutting the door behind her. What a pair of weird, weird guys she's saddled herself with for the foreseeable—literally foreseeable, as the case may be—future.
Nami huffs.
X️XX ️ ️
Usopp, who'd been entirely too stressed out to sleep through the night, is up and through the front door before dawn. He'd checked, double checked, and triple checked his supply of tricks and he's as ready as he'll ever be for the day ahead, which is not at all.
He meets up with the Strawhats, all of whom look exponentially more prepared for the violence ahead than he feels, where they've docked their boats, on the opposite end of the island to where the Black Cat Pirates will make landfall.
Before anything, Usopp asks Treva to make sure the Usopp Pirates stir clear of the fighting, which is something he'd thought to do when he should have been getting some sleep. By the way she lights up, it was the right call; someone, after all, should be keeping an eye on those three, since they'd only be underfoot, and it might as well be Treva. It's a good way of distracting her from the fact that she, too, is in this way handily kept from getting underfoot, and from getting any ideas.
After Treva's gone scampering off, Usopp steels his resolve, and he, Luffy, Nami, and Zoro head out to the island's other shore to set up. Usopp takes the lead then, when it becomes clear that Luffy is waiting for him to, and the four of them get the pass up to the rest of the island ready with Usopp's boobytraps. Or, well. Usopp and Nami, who'd taken to Usopp's instructions like an underhanded fish to ill-intentioned water, get the pass ready, with Luffy and Zoro's mostly bumbling aid.
It's nearly sunrise, the four of them hard at work, when Kuro appears with his bag of sharp implements just on the edge of the patchy treeline that overlooks the pass. Usopp tries to ignore him, but Zoro looks up from where he's helping Luffy smear the oil.
"Was that him?" Zoro asks. "The butler guy."
"Uh," Usopp says, intelligently. "Yes."
Blessedly, Zoro doesn't seem to need any more than that, and Kuro doesn't come any closer. Usopp, Zoro, Luffy, and Nami are left to wrap up their preparations in relative peace, though Usopp can't help but keep darting fearful glances in Kuro's direction, and Luffy and Nami's moods both seem to have taken a turn for the worse with his arrival.
When they're done, Zoro takes up his post where the slope of the pass levels out with the rest of the island, hand on the highest-sheathed of his three swords. Usopp goes with Luffy and Nami to the top of the cliff to the right of the pass, and watches as Luffy levers Nami down to the beach below with his body horror-arms. Usopp raises up a hand to shield his eyes out of reflex more than anything, and watches, squinting, in turn as Nami hides herself among the rocks.
She's good. Usopp, even with a bird's eye view, can't see her anymore.
His hand drops back down to his side, and he chances a look sideways at Luffy. He seems… unhappy, which is understandable, but enough so that Usopp feels compelled to say something.
"Are you… good?" he hazards.
Luffy kind of huffs, or maybe exhales is a better word for it. "I don't like it," he admits.
"What?" Usopp doesn't quite startle, but he does begin to sweat. "Playing dirty?"
"No." He stares hard at the horizon. "I don't like working with that butler jerk."
"Oh." Usopp looks to the horizon too, awkward and fighting the urge to wring his hands. So that he's not tempted to look fearfully back at Kuro, in large part. "Yeah."
Luffy huffs again, with more finality to it, but also somehow more levity. It surprises Usopp, who's knocked somewhat out of his own head to blink owlishly at Luffy.
"If this all goes to hell anyway, I'm gonna punch him," Luffy declares, petulant.
Somehow, Usopp gets the feeling that Luffy is being very generous here, and that he just might punch Kuro no matter how well their scheme goes. Somehow, all Usopp can do is laugh.
️ ️ ️XXX
Night gives way to early morning, the sun sluggishly dragging its not insignificant weight up over the line of the horizon, and it's with first light that the Black Cat Pirates beach their ship. Kuro, as per the plan, is stood at the top of the pass's slope, while Usopp, Luffy, and Zoro hide behind the nearest trees. Usopp does his best not to shred his nails by gnawing them too thoroughly, but he's, justifiably, scared out of his mind.
He tries not to think about it. Kuro's men, at least, seem just as scared and unhappy as Usopp is once they spot their own boss, but that's a cold comfort.
Kuro adjusts his glasses with the heel of his palm. "There has been," he starts, voice somehow even colder than Usopp's ever heard it, "A change of plans."
There's a collective intake of breath among the Black Cat Pirates. Behind the pack, Jango slips his hand into his coat, ready to retrieve his chakram on short notice.
"I will no longer be needing your assistance," Kuro goes on. With a sneer, he commands, "Leave."
The Black Cat Pirates all freeze. With a sick, sinking feeling, Usopp realizes that Kuro is counting on the lot of them assuming that he's already killed Kaya on his own, and wishes vaguely that he'd thought to try to talk Kuro into splattering himself lightly with ketchup. Just to really sell it.
Whatever the case, the Black Cat Pirates stare collectively up at Kuro like goldfish. Behind the tree next to Usopp's, Luffy squints unhappily out at the whole thing, and Usopp hopes fervently that the Black Cat Pirates see sense and escape before Luffy's demonstrably limited patience runs out. If it were Usopp in their shoes, Usopp is confident, he would have been halfway to another island by now.
But Usopp, lamentably, is in his own shoes, trying not to chew his nails off with stress. And the Black Cat Pirates, apparently, are morons.
"You're the one who called us here!" protests a Black Cat Pirate with green hair, short shorts, and a crop top, pointing accusingly up the slope at Kuro.
"That's right!" agrees some other guy, with a half-mask and a purple cape. "We've been sinking ships and raiding towns this whole time! Richer towns than this dump!"
Hey! Usopp thinks, offended on his little village's behalf. His brain catches up with him soon enough, however, and offense is traded for alarm. Way in the back, Nami darts behind the crowd and onto the Black Cat Pirates' ship, but she may well be the only one whose part in their scheme goes to plan.
Other Black Cat Pirates join in on the first two's sentiment, first tentatively and then as a coalescing mob, with shouts of, "Yeah!" and, "He's gone soft!" and, "We can take him!" and such. The pair who got the ball rolling, emboldened, charge Kuro, at the same time as Jango pulls out his chakram.
In quick succession or possibly all at once, a few things happen.
Kuro slices through the other two pirates like salami, unbothered by the doctored terrain.
Luffy, as promised, jumps into the fray and punches Kuro square in the face.
The rest of the invaders jolt into disordered action, inadvertently knocking into Jango.
Jango's chakram goes flying into the ocean.
Usopp halfway squawks, halfway just yells, and scrambles over to try to get past the booby traps he'd been so proud of, to get at the sea and the chakram lost within it. Jango does much the same, though he doesn't have to worry about the traps, and so he simply sprints directly into the water, through which he wades and rummages desperately around. Zoro, in contrast, follows Luffy's lead and runs right over the oil they'd smeared to get at the Black Cat Pirates, slips, and goes sailing the whole way of the slope to crash into the Black Cat Pirates' ship's prow. The Black Cat Pirates immediately swarm him, and immediately find out why that was a terrible idea, contrary to all appearances.
In the confusion, between Zoro and the fight Luffy's started with Kuro, no one pays Usopp much mind. That's not usually how he likes it, but quite frankly, he'll take whatever win he can now. Usopp clambers up onto the rough cliff-face on one side of the path and uses it to shimmy expertly down to the shore. Once there, Usopp also sprints directly into the ocean, where he wades over to Jango to flail with him for the lost chakram.
"I can't believe you let it go!" Usopp wails, mostly into the shallow waves. "We were counting on that chakram!"
"What do you expect?" Jango snaps, likewise preoccupied. "Most of my fighting style is about throwing them, I can't help it!"
Usopp pauses. Still leaning into the water, he side-eyes Jango.
"Wait," he says. "Them?"
"Oh." Jango pauses as well, considering Usopp. He straightens and reaches into his coat, pulling out a second chakram. "I actually carry four of these."
Usopp feels so much like facepalming that he doesn't even bother. He stares at Jango, and then both of them stare at the mayhem inland.
"I don't suppose," Jango hazards, "That we'll be able to get them to all look in the same direction now, will we?"
"Not without tying them up," Usopp concurs.
Jango glares ahead, which with his sunglasses, looks primarily like he's grimacing. "At least your friends are winning."
This is going to be a long day, Usopp thinks, wishing that he'd gotten more sleep.