Chapter Seven – Somewhere in an East Blue District Apartment

The most terrifying people in the world were the ones in suits. They were faceless men and similar men; there were too many to count, to remember, to register. It didn't matter; all she had to do was say what they needed to hear, what she needed them to hear. If she misspoke one word, she would suffer, no, they would both suffer. She inhales deeply and when she exhales, she consciously sits up a little straighter, makes her gaze a little cooler and lifts her face a little higher; and in those little movements, it seems like everything will be all right.

(Why is the office so, so cold?)

A silver pen dances across a pad, a signature potentially repairs her life or destroys it and the ink bleeds into the white paper permanently but still it does not reassure her. The relief should be overwhelming, but only anxiety remains to plague her mind with thoughts she refused to acknowledge before.

How can I do this? How will I be able to do this? What will happen if I can't do this?

Opposite her, the man says something she can't hear and she replies something she doesn't remember, but it's right. She knows because the man smiles. He does not threaten her. He extends a hand, meeting her halfway across the pristine polished desk in an offer that both makes her ecstatic and absolutely petrified and nauseous.

Only her sister's face spurs her forward beyond the shadows of reasonable doubt. She shakes his hand with her hastily-wiped-dry one and the deal is sealed, for a part of forever.

It feels almost normal now. Nami wakes up and does not hit her head. She does not move to slide off the wrong side of the bed or hit her limbs against the wall in the process. She does not even blink at that green wall and think about how she would have hated its original colour. At the end of the first week, it feels… normal.

For how long this will last is anyone's guess before they uproot themselves… again.

Nami rolls lazily to the side of the bed, lies with her limbs splayed out in awkward, twisted positions half-over the edge of her mattress and allows a few, peaceful moments to pass, to summon some sort of strength to sustain another strenuous day. Then she gets up.

"I woke up almost every day on time and didn't tear my uniform at all. I didn't die at Pirate Academy. I can even sort of make it across the greenhouse if I crawl along the last couple of metres. Zoro and I are back on 'giving nods of acknowledgement', I've been doing OK at work, I mixed my ramen seasonings and confused Luffy and I was really satisfied until I realised I made my ramen taste like crap." She finishes dressing and pulls her hair into a high ponytail as she grins at the photo frame, mimicking the trademark grin of the woman within, standing proudly on her desk, "Are you proud of me?"

Neither grin changes and the younger girl's grows wider in response, "Thought so." She pulls once on her ponytail to tighten it and sobers up as she turns, "I'm leaving now. I love you."

Nojiko is stirring her coffee when Nami emerges and enters the kitchen, going straight for the fridge. The latter also raises an eyebrow at several open packets of instant coffee littering the kitchen bench-top.

"I may have a problem," Nojiko replies, tapping off her spoon and hurriedly sweeping all of them into the bin. She downs a quarter of the cup and looks with sudden distaste at the rest, "I didn't sleep well. Want some?"

At Nami's shake of the head, she shrugs and gulps down the rest, slamming the mug down on the bench with a slight wince, "Sorry. I…" she pushes hair off her forehead and leaves her fingers dug in the strands for a second before dropping them.

Nami asks, "What's wrong?" at the same time Nojiko says, "I don't know what's wrong with me, it must be one of those days.

"I'm going to work." She turns sharply and snatches up the keys with a metallic jingle, "I'm taking the car for the day, OK?"

"Sure," Nami shrugs, "I'm not going anywhere." She turns away from the frighteningly bare fridge and glimpses her sister curse as she hops around to put on her shoes and shove the door open at the same time, "Now I'm kinda concerned you're going to crash the car though."

"Ha. See you." Nojiko stamps down triumphantly with her shoe and wrangles the door open. Outside, the cheery sunlight seems blinding compared to the dim kitchen.

"Bye?" Nami replies and the closing door is her only answer. Quickly, she crosses the small main room of the apartment and yanks open the curtains, allowing light to filter inside. She waits until she sees Nojiko's car come into view and disappear before she allows herself a small reprieve and rubs her eyes. How long did she stay up last night? It was definitely already morning when she went to sleep… But whenever the daily statements arrived in the mail, Nami committed herself to meticulously comb over every small detail, transaction and deposit as soon as possible. She had to make sure every figure was accurate, and so far, every one was. She would plan the family budget and put aside some cash for rent and food… and Arlong. She would calculate the approximate paycheques for the coming couple of weeks and make sure her budget supported that and generally set each amount of cash for each necessity. Nojiko could be perfectly adept at managing their money; it just turned out Nami was exceptional and so adopted the role of bookkeeper since she was thirteen and started organising her allowance and Nojiko's pay from her part-time jobs. It had never been any different since. Although at first she had been reluctant, Nojiko eventually placed complete trust in Nami's ability with numbers and organisation and stopped checking up on the subject altogether.

It made it very easy to open another account, and another, and for Nami to earn money through her other talent. Not that she had a chance to use it during the move and settling in. But soon…

I have to, Nami leans over the kitchen bench with bank statements spread out before her and a separate piece of paper covered in sums and numbers. Most of the lines were crossed out.

I have to make up the difference. There's no other way. Arlong… A week had already passed, just like that. Her new deadline is approaching fast and she has been missing in action for a few days at work, significantly reducing her pay.

Nami presses the end of the pen against her lip, trying to will a solution to form out of her haphazardly written sums, but there is nothing that comes in existence. The numbers make her head spin and she lays her head tiredly on top of her arms, resigning herself to another late night.

She would have to use her talent to drag them over the line once more.

The first step is to check the second account in her possession. The one apart from the joint account and her separate one, and whose paperwork couldn't be sent to her, directly. It would look too suspicious. As if explaining two accounts' worth of bank statements were not stressful enough, either. The third account is Nami's nest egg and hers alone. Nojiko would never find out.

Chu Kisu. 42 Tiger Drive. Apartment 4B.

The details from the piece of paper courtesy of Arlong and burned courtesy of Cigarette Ash's lighter are seared in Nami's brain. She repeats them mentally as she leaves home, walks the street, boards the subway and departs at F District. When she emerges into the urban streets, her instinct takes over and she files the information away into her mind, hoping she repeated it enough to remember.

Immediately, thoughts she had been keeping out throughout the journey of crowded subway stations and subway cars flood into her mind. F District. Pirates everywhere. Why is the place deserted? Am I about to be caught in crossfire? Pirates, Pirates, Pirates. Thugs. Horror movies. Why didn't you steal a gun last time? Could damn well use it now! Keep moving, don't stop, don't make eye contact, don't challenge anyone and don't look up.

She thinks of how Luffy walks through that crowd: never caring, never bothered, never taken off guard and never being thrown off course or pushed back by the crowd's motion. He moves through the crowd effortlessly, unconsciously, without a care in the damn world as the current parts for him. How it must feel to be able to do that.

When Nami does look up, she keeps walking. Carefully scanning the areas above the shady characters that had begun wandering the streets, she tries to make out any sort of sign or hint to her location. The breeze is cold; she should have brought a jacket and the leering gazes do little to soothe her relief of finally escaping what had appeared to be a ghost town. Immediately, she wants to be alone again, away from the attention and gazes of everyone else, even though when she was alone, there was nothing she wanted more than to return to the safe crowds of people.

Most of the wanderers watch her, warily, knowing a foreign, new girl like her can only be here for the equally foreign, new gang on the streets. Nami had not been in the area so long as to learn of the gang hierarchy here, but she estimated Arlong would slot easily into the status of one who was not to be fucked around with. With each street cleared and no attempts on her life, the thesis only grew stronger.

At last, she reaches Apartment 4B on Tiger Drive, rented under the name of Chu Kisu. Arlong agreed to rent out a failsafe apartment in each new place they moved to. It made for good scapegoating on fake identities, alibis and other things to scrape the members from easy convictions. It was Nami's idea and Arlong had conditions, of course, though the initiative held benefits for him, in that Nami's daily quota of payment money to the Pirate was increased to fund most of the rent. The apartment sat unused and unchecked in each new spot, until it was needed, for the time the Arlong Pirates and the sisters stayed there and abandoned when both parties inevitably moved.

Arlong thought he had the only key. Luckily, Nami didn't need a key.

When she jimmies the lock, Nami finds herself in the cheapest shithole of an apartment she would ever stumble across. In what appears to be a former drug den and possible meth lab with no effort whatsoever to hide the fact, she wonders how the proprietor could ever expect someone to actually pay money to use, or even bother to advertise, it. She suspects a strict 'don't-ask-don't-tell' policy in this district and is secretly grateful for the fact.

By comparison, the white and pristine envelopes dumped on the haggard couch almost illuminate the dark space. Nami walks over, perches precariously on the old cushion and proceeds to peruse through another set of bank statements, another of several secrets she had yet to mention to another person. Extracting the folded paper of sums and a pen, she sets about calculating just how much money she has to endure another late night for.

It is around the corner of one dilapidated building, on the way back to the subway, that Nami intuitively senses something is not right. With a sharp turn on her heel, she twists herself around, expecting someone's outstretched hand, with her breath trapped in her throat.

The street in front of her is deserted. She had purposefully chosen to leave the building in a more unorthodox way and circle back around through back alleys and narrow strips between imposing structures. The last thing she needs is someone knowing of her private (drug den) hideout and deciding to break in. Unfortunately, that means avoiding crowded areas for secluded, potentially dangerous routes.

There's no one, Nami has to twist slowly, paranoid of any sudden movements or noises. Then, convincing herself not to lose her nerve, she calmly continues walking until she reaches the subway station once more and leaves.

There was someone behind me.

Nami cannot push the thought out of her mind the entire long trip through several stops back to East Blue. She stands with her hand lightly curled around a handle dangling from the car's roof and gazes out the window at the city's skyline speeding past. It is better than looking around at the other passengers, who, as far as she can see, are all businessmen and women and the occasional family with boisterous young children; but perhaps the presence followed her through the streets and even onto the subway. There is no way to know for sure.

She's scared. She finds comfort in logic.

There's no way I'm about to be attacked on the subway. No way. Right?

A slight tremble rocks the subway and Nami automatically clenches her hand around the handle only to discover she'd already been subconsciously doing so long before, and consciously loosens her grip.

Relax. It'll be fine. It's OK.

She counts the number of times the doors hiss open and close again, the number of messages warning passengers to 'mind the gap' and counts the number of stops left to go, keeping her eyes firmly trained now on the subway map with the blinking circles to indicate the stops. Only a few more… then she could power-walk the hell out of there and back home… after the grocery shopping.

"So you haven't dropped off the face of the Earth. I'm glad," says Ain as her slender form moves to occupy the space beside her, her arm outstretched to grasp the next handle, "Are you all right?" She doesn't move forward to catch Nami though when she jerks back.

"Stop doing that!" Nami yelps, "Geez!" She breathes to settle her heart and feels the other passengers looking at her weirdly, "What are you doing here?"

Ain cocks her head, "I investigated a potential lead but it was a dead-end so I'm returning to the station. Also, smoking in the subway is an unspoken taboo and I had to investigate with Cigarette Ash."

"Do you just always ditch your co-workers?"

"Mostly. We don't exactly get along as a general rule. Besides, we can all take care of ourselves." Ain turns to face her fully, "What are you doing here? A little far from home for one who recently moved here, correct?"

"Touché. I didn't mean to criticise, or ask about anything that doesn't concern me." Nami pauses, "I was in F District."

"Where you were attacked.

"Why?"

The blinking red dot winks at Nami from the panels above. Her stop is nearing. She could get off soon.

"Who knows," she replies, so quietly that she doubts the officer at her side could even hear her over the rumble of the subway ricocheting outside against the tunnels and inside the small car. In the temporary dimness, Nami tightens her grip on the handle and closes her eyes, plunging her sight into complete blackness. She feels a strange compulsion to say something more, that somehow she left something unsaid, similar to her arguments with Nojiko, but she fights it. Ain does not reply.

When Nami opens her eyes, the bright station is there and she leaves without any resistance.

Goddamn Ain-chan.

On a dense street in East Blue District, a police officer barely escapes storming through the crowd, two cigarettes dangling from his hand.

On the same street, a girl with bright orange hair stands outside a large boutique. Her elbow is cradled against her palm and her fingers form a pedestal for her chin to rest upon while in thought. Her eyes examine an outfit displayed on one of the mannequins inside – blue jeans with gold hoops on the side and a green-striped bikini top partly covered with an open long-sleeved shirt: 'Pirate Chic – the new trend for summer!' as one placard claims. It is a new boutique, the girl discerns, one that may have recently been erected within the former building and with an added second floor. It is quick to jump onto new trends compared to other, older boutiques with an established, consistent style.

The girl moves on, her eyes quickly scanning over the outfit, the windows, the door, the layout of the boutique and more as befitting a seasoned thief; with a pleasant smile on her otherwise impassive face.

Neither figure take any notice of the other and they each go about their normal day.

There are so few opportunities I get to drive the car, Nami thinks that night as she rolls the vehicle out onto the road, headlights off for the moment, and, once she gets far enough away as not to alert Nojiko, tentatively pulls her door shut. The resounding 'thump' echoes in the night and Nami hunches low in her seat for a moment, paranoid of seeing the apartment curtains being drawn back and Nojiko's face catch her in the act. But there is nothing and Nami lets out a held breath as she drives into town.

It is significantly harder to rob a place in a city, but easier, too. A city never sleeps, but it cannot look everywhere at once either. On the strip of boutiques and coffee shops without any bars or clubs in sight, it is quiet and dark. Nami kills the engine a few shops down from the target boutique outside a modest café without the funds to buy CCTV, effectively placing herself in the blind spot of several security cameras outside other establishments. From there, it is a matter of circling around the backs of buildings, avoiding the sneaky cameras that were installed around other entrances to the store and finding a vulnerable spot to attack.

The opportunity presents itself in the form of an unsupervised back door.

There.

The door is jimmied and Nami slips through without the alarms blaring. It is a new door, she suspects, built for easier passage to ship new stocks into the storeroom within instead of through the front entrance and a necessity that a popular new boutique would require, unlike whatever establishment preceded it. The downside being that no security measures have been installed around the door yet, but a delay that proves invaluable to a thief.

The darkness of the boutique does little to deter the thief. She walks with confidence, with a calm surety in her movements and without fear or hesitance. When she rolls out the cash register tray, the thief calmly gathers the notes, dropping the holders back down in place quietly. Then she slides the tray back into place and moves out from the counter with her loot. Checking for any discreet security measures despite knowing she'd find none, the thief glides across the marble tiles…

… And stops when she sees the same outfit she had been observing that afternoon reflected in a mirror above a rack of accessories.

That is a damn good outfit, the thief laments and, against her better judgement, compels the girl to quickly detour from her plan.

Just this once.

The next day, Monkey D. Luffy, fellow classmate and Pirate gang leader, would show up at her door ("How did you even know where I live?" "I—" "Actually don't answer, I don't even want to know" "*trademark grin*") and tell her about his brother's killer hangover, Makino's subsequent exasperation and joy in aforementioned hangover as she got to blend more experimental 'hangover cures' and aforementioned brother wanting to kill himself as a result but having neither the strength nor heart to say so aloud. Then, after all that, "So I came here."

"Why here?"

"'Cause you listen to my stories and say funny stuff." His expression turned conspiratorial next, "Plus, Grandpa's looking for me and he doesn't know where you live unlike my other crew."

"Shouldn't you be spending some quality time with your grandfather?" Nami says. But she does move from the doorframe and gestures for him to come inside which he does gleefully. She wonders if she should offer him something to eat or drink. How long has it been… since I've had someone...

"Nah," Luffy says as he bounds inside, "Grandpa normally only looks for us if he's bored or needs something. Ace is hung over though so he has to look for me."

Nami, having decided Luffy seems interchangeably thirsty and hungry, if not both, goes into the kitchen and searches for a couple of cups to make coffee and wonders if she remembered to buy the cookies last grocery trip, "And what exactly does your grandfather need from you?" Do we seriously only have two cups? Ah, here's one… Now, cookies…

"Help him find a thief."

Nami stops cold internally. Externally, she never hesitates as she retrieves the food and pours the coffee, "A thief?" She has to look down to check herself and exhale in silent relief when she sees herself wearing dark jeans and a slogan crop top instead of the outfit she stole. When she looks out of the door at Luffy sitting cross-legged on one of the chairs around the table in his jean shorts and hoodie (with the straw hat still atop his head), he frowns in thought, seemingly trying to remember something.

"Yeah. Last night, some shop got robbed but Grandpa says he has better things to worry about so he needs me. Hey, is that food? Thanks, Nami!"

For a while neither speaks until a whole cookie packet later when Nami decides Luffy looks content enough to ask, "Are you going to help him?" The only cookie she took sits half eaten on the table in front of her while Luffy devours a packet of chips she had to dig out afterwards.

"With the thief?" Luffy lifts the bag and shakes the crumbs out into his mouth and shrugs, chewing, "It's kinda boring, especially by myself. Gramps doesn't really like my crew and he never lets me take them along…" Suddenly, the boy perks up, "Hey, do you wanna come along and help?"

Nami almost spits out her coffee, "What?"

"Yeah!" Luffy's whole face lights up, "If you're not doing anything let's go and catch a thief. Then we can go to Sanji's after and you can meet my crew over lunch!"

The boy's eyes glimmer with a familiar excitement and a challenge lay in the confident, charismatic gaze, so much like how Nami's own bluffed ones look, "Deal?"