"There'll be rivers of blood again," Nami said unhappily, keeping her right arm around Robin's waist while propping her chin on her left hand. "Why are you guys always drawn to fighting? We could just travel and enjoy ourselves. We don't have to kill everyone we meet."
"You say that like I have something against ordinary travel or actually want to take part in these bloody massacres!" Usopp protested.
"Weren't you the one who wanted to become a brave warrior of the sea?" Zoro asked in confusion.
"A warrior! A warrior, not a butcher! And I'd prefer it if the enemies in my first real battle weren't numbered in the thousands! And weren't people long accustomed to the waters of the Grand Line! And definitely weren't led by one of the Warlords!"
"That's kind of a lot of 'ands,'" Yosaku muttered.
"Sorry, bro, but it looks like you really did mix up which family you were joining, or else you didn't understand who you'd decided to get involved with," Johnny 'sympathized.' "In our family, you're either a butcher who buries enemies by the dozens, hundreds, and thousands at a time, or you've got size-six tits and can get out of it."
"Mine aren't size six!" Nami objected.
"Reaaally?" The boy clearly did not believe her. "Then what size are they?"
"Five."
To reinforce her words, the girl straightened in her seat and deliberately displayed the aforementioned part of her body to everyone present, creating a pause in the conversation all by itself. They saw her every day, and Nami herself had never been shy about sunbathing naked or using communal baths with the guys, but as had already been mentioned more than once, there were some things it was almost impossible to get used to.
"..."
"If anyone's interested, Robin's a size four," Nami shared some insider information once the guys recovered and wiped away their drool.
Every one of them immediately shifted his gaze away from Nami. Unlike the shameless redheaded navigator, Robin found that kind of attention... not exactly unpleasant, but it did not produce any particularly positive emotions either. The woman shifted involuntarily in her seat, carefully suppressing the urge to cover herself with her hands. She was already wearing a black T-shirt that concealed everything perfectly well. Unlike Nami, whose chest was covered by nothing more than a strip of white cloth a palm's width across, emphasizing her assets more than hiding them.
"I read somewhere that breasts that big start sagging by twenty-five," Johnny said, apparently unwilling to let Nami have the last word. "So by forty, yours will be hanging like two dried pears all the way down to your—"
Most likely, he wanted not only to get the final word but also to drive the magnificent vision still floating before his eyes out of his mind. Unfortunately for him, he had severely underestimated the 'power of breasts.' He did not even finish the sentence before Sanji's heel smashed squarely into his face. The enraged blond held absolutely nothing back and kicked Johnny with a full spinning strike. The blow hit him like a train. His head smashed through the entrance door, tearing it from its hinges, and he flew outside, where his face immediately made acquaintance with the Going Merry's mainmast.
"Don't you ever say such heresy—"
Sanji had barely begun his furious speech when Luffy's foot slammed into the back of his head and sent him flying after Johnny.
"Stop breaking the ship, idiot! Who's supposed to repair it?! We don't even have a proper shipwright!"
"My breasts won't sag," Nami declared smugly, ignoring the squabble among her 'boys' as usual. "With the power of my fruit, that's simply impossible."
Johnny's dragon hearing deserved credit. The girl was speaking in her normal voice while sitting in the kitchen, yet he still heard her while lying outside near the mainmast—and once again failed to keep quiet.
"But Robin's definitely will!" he shouted back, and immediately regretted it. "NO! NO!! SANJI!!! SANJI!!! STOP! I WAS JOKING! STOP, I'M TALKING TO YOU!! I CAN'T EVEN SWI—"
With a loud SPLASH, his screams abruptly cut off. Before they ended completely, he still managed an indistinct "halp me," followed only by a barely audible "glub-glub-glub," after which everything finally went quiet.
"Robin-chwaaaan!" Sanji practically teleported to the black-haired woman, appearing beside her on one knee in the blink of an eye and taking her hand. "Don't listen to that idiot, he doesn't know anything! Your breasts are perfect in every way! And they'll stay that way forever! The important thing is choosing the right underwear! And I'd be delighted to help you with that!" Despite his words, the slightly perverted expression on his face gave him away completely. "I'm ready to defend your magnificent breasts for the rest of my life!"
"Usopp, come with me. Help me pull our eternally curious idiot out of the water," Yosaku said with a heavy sigh as he rose from his seat. "Unlike me, he can actually drown."
"Luffy, how big is the chance Crocodile himself will show up at our party?" Zoro asked, completely ignoring the chaos around him.
As always, the boy was far more interested in fighting than in breasts. Although, more accurately, Zoro was not interested in the breasts currently present. The absent breasts, on the other hand, because their owner was off training, interested him quite a lot, though when it came to relationships the swordsman was such an idiot that he probably did not understand the real reason for his interest. Tashigi was even worse. A girl who had dreamed all her life of becoming a boy had now become fascinated with another boy who was technically her enemy. Two idiots made for each other? Something along those lines.
"If I were him, I wouldn't take that risk," Luffy replied, once again settling into his throne-chair and not forgetting to kick Sanji so he would leave Robin alone and return to his actual duties.
While Luffy had been washing Crocodile's brain out through the Den Den Mushi, he had barely managed to eat any breakfast, so now he started making up for lost time at high speed.
"So you're saying we shouldn't expect him to show up?" Zoro asked, visibly disappointed.
"From what I've seen, he's not stupid and he's paranoid. If I were in his place, I'd send about ninety percent of all my forces to deal with us, while I stayed behind in Alabasta as a precaution and backup plan. I'd also use every remaining person to watch every meter of the coastline."
"Too bad. I thought my time had finally come."
"You're getting upset for nothing!" Luffy reassured the swordsman while accepting a plate of toast from Sanji. "According to Little Billion and Robin, Alabasta is almost entirely desert, and Crocodile has a sand Logia. I could be wrong, of course, but it seems to me he'd be much stronger in that environment than in some prehistoric jungle."
Zoro took a sip of tea from his fifth mug in the past hour.
"..."
"Don't worry. No matter what happens, our turn will come eventually."
Taking a spoon, the swordsman added a little more sugar to his tea.
"..."
"At least try to take Crocodile down!" Luffy grinned.
Another sip proved to Zoro that the sugar level was finally just right.
"..."
"We can't know for sure. He is a Warlord, after all," Luffy said with a slight shrug. "I don't think there's any point taking complete weaklings into that group. It might even be worth showing a reasonable amount of caution."
The swordsman shifted his gaze toward the scenery beyond the window.
"..."
"Think about it. If all the Warlords are at least somewhere on the same section of the scale, Crocodile might wipe the floor with you."
Lowering his gaze back to the table, Zoro took another sip from his mug.
"..."
"I don't believe it myself, but who knows?" Luffy sighed, then shoved the last piece of toast into his mouth and washed it down with the rest of his tea. "God forbid he stretches your eye over your ass or something. You'll make me look like a complete idiot and an arrogant brat. Then everything will turn out exactly like the Female Leather Handbag said."
"...I won't lose."
"That's the right attitude. Otherwise, what kind of first mate to the Pirate King would you be?" Luffy rose from the table.
Whistling something vaguely reminiscent of a victory march, the boy walked outside. At that exact moment, a drenched Usopp climbed onto the deck with the equally drenched and unconscious body of Johnny slung over his shoulder.
"I don't think he's breathing!" Usopp said anxiously, dumping the boy's body onto the deck and addressing Yosaku, who was calmly picking his nose.
"Sure he's not breathing?" Yosaku asked in an indifferent voice without moving from his spot or interrupting what he was doing.
Usopp dropped to one knee beside Johnny's body and pressed a palm near his face. When he could not feel even the faintest hint of breathing, he tried to find a pulse.
"He really isn't breathing!" the long-nosed boy finally exclaimed. "And I don't think he has a pulse either!"
"Try giving him artificial respiration," Yosaku suggested while intently examining the contents of his nose on the tip of his index finger.
"What? I'm not kissing him!" Usopp instantly sprang to his feet and even backed several steps away from Johnny's sprawled body just to be safe.
"I didn't say anything about kissing," Yosaku replied. Having disposed of what he had pulled from his nose, the boy tilted his head upward and started digging in one ear with his pinky. "I said artificial respiration. Or don't you want to earn a few extra karma points? I think saving a human life will definitely count for something after you die. Whether it counts as a positive, considering exactly whose life you'd be saving, is another question, but it'll definitely count."
That argument failed to impress Usopp, so he had no intention of stopping his objections and immediately produced a counterargument of his own.
"I already pulled him out of the water, so now it's your turn to save him!"
"I organized his rescue," Yosaku said indifferently, finally done with his ear and looking at Usopp. "Only thanks to my sensitive leadership were you able to react in time, make the right decision, and pull him out of the water. See how much I had to do? Now it's your turn."
"I'm not kissing him!"
"Artificial respiration," Yosaku corrected the long-nosed boy again. "Give him artificial respiration."
"As they say, you find out who your real friends are in trouble," Luffy commented while leaning his stomach against the railing and watching their argument.
"Oh, Luffy!" Usopp brightened. "You kiss him!"
"No thanks, I'm more into girls. But you can give him artificial respiration. I promise your Half-Zombie—"
"Her name is Kaya!"
"—will never find out!" Luffy solemnly swore.
"FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!!" Nami finally snapped, still cuddling Robin beside her. The girl did not possess a dragon's hearing, but that fact never stopped her from hearing better than Johnny at certain moments and predicting trouble more accurately than people with advanced Observation Haki. "RESUSCITATE RYU-CHAN RIGHT NOW BEFORE HE FINALLY DIES ON YOU!!!" The force of the shout nearly blew Luffy away from where he was leaning against the railing directly across from the kitchen door.
"Nami, if you're that worried ab—" Yosaku began, only to be cut off instantly.
"I SAID NOW!!!"
The boy made a displeased face in response but finally moved. Naturally, no one expected actual artificial respiration from Yosaku. Instead of emergency resuscitation performed according to every proper rule, he walked up to Johnny and kicked his friend in the stomach with all his strength. The kick was so powerful that Johnny first folded almost literally in half and instantly vomited up a large portion of the water he had swallowed, then flew across the deck to meet the opposite side of the ship.
"Cough, cough, cough!" After dropping back onto the deck, the successfully resuscitated Johnny began hacking violently. "Thought... cough... thought that was it... cough... But I figured it out... cough... I figured it out... cough... I finally figured everything out!"
"What did you figure out?" Usopp asked with interest. "Did you see the light at the end of the tunnel?"
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