Hearing his friend's question, Yosaku instantly fell silent, while Tashigi stared intently at his body. It was difficult to fully describe the sight of fire retreating rapidly beneath the pressure of the young man's regeneration. It looked horrifying and disgusting, yet simultaneously amazing and strangely mesmerizing. During the previous months she had witnessed the process dozens of times, but since the last occasion Yosaku's regenerative ability had increased again. Everything now happened even faster, making the entire process still more impressive. And spectacular. The only disadvantage was that once his recovery finished, the young man remained completely naked, and Tashigi did not possess Nami's level of shamelessness. She therefore carefully looked away, waiting for Johnny to finish talking and open a passage through the wall of fire for her. Unfortunately, the wait clearly threatened to become long, because Johnny could talk for ages.
"I don't understand something. Weren't you the one fighting Mr. Three?" Johnny asked the gloomy, silent Yosaku. "Then why are you running around the entire island shouting his name? Did he manage to escape from you? If so, I don't see any reason to go insane. You'll kill him some other time!"
"..."
"What's wrong with you?"
"..."
"Don't tell me you lost to him?!!"
It was hardly surprising that when two people had known one another for a couple of decades, many things could be understood without words.
"..."
"Seriously?!!" Johnny's eyes bulged. "You actually managed to lose?! How the hell did you manage to lose?! And he escaped from you too?! Seriously?!!"
"..."
"Oh, mother of..." Johnny groaned and dragged a palm down his face. "Well, now we're definitely finished. Luffy and Zoro won't get off our backs until we... I'd say until we die, but with you that phrase, as always, just doesn't work."
"..."
"God, you're such a loser," Johnny sighed miserably. "All that showing off, and for nothing."
"..."
"And you dragged all of us into it too!"
"..."
"Just imagine how long we're going to suffer because of you now."
"..."
"And don't even think about saying anything about me anymore! After you fucked up this badly, none of my flaws are worth mentioning. Seriously, I never expected this from you! And you call yourself immortal! What a disgrace."
Compassion? Sympathy? Tact? Not a chance. Not among family members. But charging full speed and kicking someone in the balls, metaphorically speaking, several times in succession? Easy. Absolutely. And naturally, Johnny had no intention of mentioning that he had 'fucked up' every bit as badly as his friend, perhaps even worse. Yosaku had paid only with his pride and reputation among the family. Johnny had nearly kicked the bucket altogether. Pride and reputation could be restored. Coming back from the dead was considerably more difficult, to put it mildly.
"Could you stop talking already and open a passage for us?" Tashigi asked irritably.
The girl's patience had broken.
"Uh... right away!"
Watching Johnny obediently begin manipulating the flames, Yosaku gave the clearly irritated Tashigi an assessing look. The humiliating encounter with his friend had sobered him considerably, so he immediately noticed the girl's atypical behavior. He could not remember her ever speaking in that tone or reacting that way. She had threatened, despised, resisted, and hated, but such obvious irritation and impatience? It reminded him of Nami. Strongly. Yosaku could not shake the feeling that Nami herself had just snapped at his friend. If not for his dark thoughts about his own defeat, he would definitely have found the comparison amusing. Right now, his mood was far too foul.
Soon, thanks to Johnny's manipulation, a broad passage full of scorched trees opened in the solid wall of fire.
Pulling a bloodstained jacket from the nearest corpse and tying it around his hips, gloomy Yosaku followed Tashigi. After crossing the burning strip, the trio headed directly toward the Going Merry. Naturally, they could not avoid passing the clearing where the unlucky Baroque Works forces had caught up with Usopp. Johnny and Yosaku were deeply impressed by what they saw. At the same time, the strangeness surrounding Usopp became even more incomprehensible to them. Yet when they returned to the ship, they were surprised to discover the long-nosed young man racing around the deck with the 'teleportation mask' in his hands. Before they could ask him anything, he rushed over and, practically choking on his own saliva with excitement, began telling his story: how he had fought bravely for a long time against several thousand opponents at once, how he had never despaired to the very end, how he had not disgraced the Straw Hat Pirates. Unfortunately, the battle had been unfair from the beginning, so when his opponents were finally about to crush him through sheer numbers, he remembered the mask Luffy had given him.
"Wait, wait!" Johnny interrupted Usopp's unending stream of excited words. "You're saying the moment you put on this mask"—he pointed at the object in the long-nosed young man's hands—"you immediately found yourself near the Going Merry? Did I understand correctly?"
"Yes!" Usopp replied with shining eyes. "Incredible, right?! Luffy didn't lie to me! This mask really is amazing!"
"..."
"..."
"..."
Johnny, Yosaku, and Tashigi beside them silently stared at the young man. None doubted that Usopp had told them not one word of truth while vividly describing his 'long battle against thousands of opponents'. And equally, none doubted he had lied in any way when describing the 'teleportation mask'. Once again the question arose: what had Luffy managed to do to Usopp? Yet the moment Luffy himself returned to the ship with Nami, every one of those questions quickly fell into the background. Because the instant Nami stepped aboard, she saw Vivi, Robin, and Tashigi's condition.
"...What the fuck?"
Unlike Luffy, who was practically covered in various bags, clothes, and jewelry until he resembled an enormous walking bundle, Nami returned lightly burdened. More accurately, she had hung almost all her finds on the young man and kept only the 'small stuff' for herself. Several new rings, a beautiful necklace, an even more beautiful tiara in her hair, and a matching pair of earrings. Give her appropriate clothing and she could have passed without difficulty for a magnificent queen. On the other hand, she was already the 'Queen' and equally magnificent, so everything was relative.
"...I'm asking again. What the fuck happened here?"
Sanji, Usopp, Johnny, and Yosaku, being real men, instantly 'flowed' toward the kitchen while practically flattening themselves against the floor, leaving Luffy to deal with all consequences personally. None of them had the slightest doubt about their captain's degree of guilt, so nobody intended to defend him or take the 'fire' themselves. Not that they would have defended him regardless of whether he was guilty, but that was beside the point. Luffy himself, meanwhile, failed to appreciate the seriousness of the moment and, as usual, only began making the situation worse.
"Worried about Karoo?" he asked sympathetically. "Don't stress so much. That duck'll be fi—okay, okay, okay! I was joking, I was joking! Put the knife away, Nami! I said put the knife away! There's no reason to resort to violence immediately. Everything can always be solved peacefully!"
Naturally, the girl did not care in the slightest about Karoo, who was still lying unconscious after Zoro's blow. She cared very much, however, about Tashigi, Robin, and Vivi. One glance at each girl was enough for Nami to assess their condition. Tashigi looked best of all. Gloomy and stained with blood, she sat beside the mainmast and mechanically polished her katana despite the blade already shining perfectly. Heavy thoughts clearly tormented the girl, but at least she looked completely sane and physically healthy. Unlike Robin and Vivi. Robin was washing the deck nearby. Despite her clean, neat clothing, she moved like a reanimated corpse, while her pale face soaked in sweat made her look like one too.
Yet once again the Princess of Alabasta had suffered most. Covered from head to toe in dried blood, Vivi sat directly on the deck with her back against the rail and her legs stretched forward. Arms hanging limply, head tilted toward one shoulder, eyes wide open with pupils expanded to their limit and staring blindly into emptiness, mouth slightly parted. Right now Vivi looked more like a broken doll than a living person. Frankly, she looked frightening enough to raise questions about the integrity of her sanity. No normal, mentally sound person could have eyes like that. Apparently, by the time she met the Straw Hat Pirates, she had used up every bit of luck she possessed. Though again, the same could be said about anyone unlucky enough to attract the insane family's attention.
"Seriously, Nami, let's not get nervous and make the situation worse," Luffy suggested with a strained smile to the girl looming over him, while simultaneously being, as usual, the primary culprit behind the rapid worsening of said situation. "Why don't we calmly discuss everything like normal civilized people instead?"
While Nami held him by the collar of his shirt, the young man held her right wrist, preventing her from driving a knife into his head. An enormous knife that had appeared from nowhere in the girl's hand at some unknown point. The trick had been performed in the finest tradition of Luffy's spontaneously appearing ice creams.
"I'm asking again. What did you do to them?"
"...Showed them real life?"
"..."
With a heavy sigh, Nami released the young man's collar and lowered the hand holding the knife, then looked at Tashigi, Robin, and Vivi one after another once more. She would have been lying badly if she claimed she had not expected something like this. Of course she had. Not exactly what had happened, but definitely something similar. For all Luffy's quirks, even he could not avoid a certain degree of predictability, and Nami knew him better than anyone except Zoro. That was why she had never doubted that the moment a convenient opportunity appeared, he would instantly 'finish' all her girls. Today the opportunity had appeared, so he had 'finished' them. Frankly, Nami was not especially angry. Trying to stab him through the head was more a reminder not to 'go too far'. The girl knew with complete certainty that if she stopped reining in 'her boys', they would very quickly begin losing all sense of limits. The consequences would be catastrophic.
After making one final attempt to stab the knife into Luffy's head—and predictably failing—Nami dragged Tashigi and Vivi toward the bathroom. Tashigi quickly returned to reality and walked on her own. Vivi genuinely had to be dragged. Fortunately, somewhere around the middle of washing her clean, the princess came back to herself. Unfortunately, that ended in a prolonged hysterical breakdown, liters of tears, and another 'shutdown'. Nami was not particularly upset, wisely deciding that such a reaction was far better than no reaction at all. Moreover, Vivi's hysteria helped Tashigi fully return to herself, so the princess was washed with four hands before being put to sleep in the captain's cabin. But the problems did not end there.
"What happened now?!" Nami exclaimed involuntarily when she saw the men crowded around Robin lying on the floor. "What did you do to her?!"
"Why us immediately?" Johnny objected. "She fell on her own!"
Pushing the men aside, Nami crouched beside an unusually gloomy Luffy.
"What is it?" she asked immediately.
"She has a high fever," he replied, placing a palm on Robin's forehead. "And she's shaking badly."
"She got sick? That suddenly? That usually happens when the body has already been through severe stress."
The girl made no attempt to hide the accusation in her voice.
"Quite possible," Luffy admitted, then picked Robin up in his arms and rose. "For now we'll put her to bed and give her something for the fever. Tomorrow we'll see."
"You mean it could be something serious?" Nami asked anxiously.
"Don't worry. Nobody on this ship has the right to die without my permission, and Robin is no exception."
It sounded like a joke. And perhaps it was not.
"Anyone going to eat?" Sanji asked once the sofa where Robin usually slept had been unfolded and the woman had been given medicine, undressed, and put to bed.
"I wouldn't say no," Usopp said, rubbing his stomach. "Honestly, I'm starving like I haven't eaten in a week."
The others could not say they were especially hungry, but they did not want to do anything else either, and it was still too early to sleep. So while Sanji began preparing dinner as usual, the remaining family members, including Tashigi, sat around the table and silently sipped cold tea. Almost everyone had something to think about, and many of those thoughts were far from cheerful. Robin sleeping nearby did not encourage conversation either. Little Garden had proved to be a true island of surprises. Nobody present, Luffy included, had expected the day to bring so many unexpected events. At least Luffy definitely had not imagined Johnny might nearly die to a couple of small fry, or Sanji fail so long and so humiliatingly to win. Yosaku's case had gone almost exactly as expected. The only surprise there was how quickly and conveniently everything had come together.
"Enjoy your meal," Sanji said, placing plates of various dishes before everyone.
It was worth repeating: the young man was unquestionably a cook blessed by the gods. Whatever his mood, if it influenced his skill at all, the effect was so insignificant that it never showed in the food he prepared. Around halfway through the meal, however, Johnny unexpectedly put his spoon aside and looked around.
"What's wrong?" Yosaku asked him.
"...Is it just me, or is something missing?" Johnny asked in return.
At that question, everyone else involuntarily put their spoons down too. They did not have to look around for long. Soon every gaze focused on the empty place beside Tashigi at the table. At that moment Johnny took up his familiar role as 'Captain Obvious' and voiced the question that suggested itself naturally.
"...Where's Zoro-aniki?"
========== End of Chapter 7 ==========
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