The long-nosed guy meant Tashigi's eyes—or, more precisely, her hazy gaze. The girl looked like she was 'high'. Which was not actually that far from the truth.
From a scientific point of view, every emotion a person experienced was simply a collection of chemical processes taking place inside the body. In other words, people constantly looked at the world while under the influence of various drugs.
And it just so happened that under the brand name 'Love', the human body produced the most devastating drugs of all. Naturally, those drugs had their own grading scale, beginning with 'Light', continuing through 'Medium', 'High', and 'Ultra High', and ending with the 'Ultimate Version'.
As for Tashigi specifically, she had skipped the 'Light' version entirely and jumped straight into heavy doses of 'Medium'. Nowhere near the end yet, but several 'nodes' responsible for mental activity had already suffered what could only be called critical damage.
"I feel sorry for her," soft-hearted Nami sighed. "She's busy training from morning until night, but over the last couple of months I've still managed to get to know her pretty well. Tashigi is a good girl and an excellent Marine. Honest and fair. Under Smoker's wing, she had a wonderful future ahead of her."
Nami delivered the final words with such a tone and expression that an outsider could easily have thought she was talking about someone already dead. Nami was not exaggerating at all when she said she had gotten to know Tashigi fairly well. In the beginning, she had been the one dragging the unconscious girl into the bath to wash away the sweat from training and massage her hardened muscles. By now Tashigi had become considerably stronger and could always wash herself at the end of the day, but the existence of only one bathroom imposed certain limitations.
The girls almost always bathed together. The bathroom was too cramped for even three of the guys, but four girls could fit there quite comfortably. Most importantly, whenever Nami wanted conversation, she got conversation. No exceptions. And it was difficult to escape from a bath before you had actually washed yourself. As a result, the red-haired devil had plenty of time to thoroughly 'feel around with her hands' inside Tashigi's soul.
And not only her soul. Robin was not the only one forced to endure Nami's love of 'hugs'. Although, to be fair, Robin received the largest share of that love by far.
"From a certain point of view, Tashigi's future may actually be even more outstanding now than it was before," Yosaku said quietly, staring after the girl and Zoro like everyone else. "She's already begun manifesting Observation Haki, and as we all know, being able to use Haki is a mandatory requirement for Vice Admirals."
"What difference does it make?" Nami shrugged slightly. "Even if she becomes a full Admiral someday, the moment her connection to our family comes out, her career will be over. And she could've done so much good."
"If she doesn't do anything stupid and proves herself, why couldn't she stay a Marine even if someone learns about her connection to our family?" Luffy objected more than asked. "She wouldn't be the first and she won't be the last. These days, spit in any direction and you'll hit either an active pirate or a retired one. Besides, a lot depends on who's serving as Fleet Admiral. The current Fleet Admiral, for example, is perfectly capable of turning a blind eye to her connection with our family."
Luffy's words did not convince anyone very much, but nobody argued either. They had long since understood that their captain had some sort of unusual personal relationship with the Marines. Only Robin gave the guy a careful look.
Luffy had spoken far too confidently about the current Fleet Admiral possibly forgiving such a connection, and information like that was not printed in newspapers. The woman was intelligent enough to draw certain conclusions. And paranoid enough for some of those conclusions to start worrying her.
"I still feel sorry for her," Nami pouted a little while later. "If not because of her connection to our family, then because of her connection specifically to Zoro. He'll ruin the girl and then run away like the worst coward. We've seen this before. Such a good girl could have found someone better than that worthless, unfaithful womanizer."
Almost a tautology. Womanizers were not faithful by nature, but when had any Straw Hat cared about something as pathetic as logic? Especially Nami, who still had not completely forgiven the swordsman for his brief relationship with her sister. Unfair, but true.
And of all people, Zoro was extraordinarily difficult to call a womanizer. The overwhelming majority of women did not earn so much as a single glance from him, and with the few who did, he never took the initiative first. That had been the case with Nojiko. And it had become the case with Tashigi.
The difference was that what happened with the first woman had surprised everyone, including Nojiko and Zoro themselves, while with Tashigi the situation had been obvious to practically everyone from the very beginning. After Whisky Peak, there had been no other realistic possibilities left at all. Or, more accurately, the chances of events developing differently had approached infinitely close to zero.
And the reason was perfectly understandable. The moment Tashigi began training with Vivi, within the very first hour she learned who Vivi was, why she needed training, how she had ended up aboard the ship, and so on and so forth. Those explanations could not possibly avoid mentioning Whisky Peak and what its 'residents' had been doing there.
The emotional pendulum instantly swung in the opposite direction and delivered a monstrous, irreparable blow to the mind and psyche of the young woman in love. Like two bullets through the heart and four through the head. No chance of survival.
"And she still thinks Zoro killed her captain," Usopp added.
Aside from soft-hearted Nami, the long-nosed guy remained the only person in the family still capable of sincerely feeling sorry for Tashigi. Whatever awaited her in the future, the fact remained that her fate had been broken and her brain thoroughly washed. That would stay with her for the rest of her life.
"I can imagine what'll happen to her when she finds out her beloved Smoker is alive and perfectly healthy," Johnny voiced everyone's shared thought.
Everyone understood that at that exact moment the old Tashigi-the-Marine would disappear for good, and her place would be taken by the current Tashigi-the-faithful-follower-of-the-Straw-Hats.
"Looks like you're done with the cards, right?" Luffy asked after a while. "Then Yosaku can get back to his training."
The mentioned guy immediately made an unhappy face.
"My recovery time hasn't changed for the last few days," he said, once again trying to escape a topic he hated. "Maybe that's enough already?"
"What difference does it make to you?" Luffy objected. "You're all sitting around with nothing to do anyway. Maybe we'll get another breakthrough. Johnny, go help him, and don't forget the stopwatch."
With a sour expression, Yosaku rose from his seat and walked over to the ship's rail. Johnny stood after him, took the stopwatch Luffy held out, picked up the bloodstained sword from the deck, approached his friend, and with one powerful, endlessly practiced strike removed Yosaku's head from his shoulders.
Yosaku's severed head, the same sour expression still frozen on its face, flew toward the surface of the sea along with an enormous fountain of blood erupting from the stump of his neck.
His headless body collapsed onto the deck in a shapeless pile of bones, thoroughly coating the ship's railing with blood in the process. Johnny indifferently pressed the button on the stopwatch. Yosaku's 'training' had begun back on Whisky Peak.
As practice had demonstrated, on the day the family met Robin, Luffy had not been mistaken when he thought the guy had returned to life suspiciously quickly after his death. Several different methods of killing him quickly established the fact that Yosaku's regeneration had become faster. And every new death only increased his recovery speed. Something like this had happened before.
When Yosaku first ate his Devil Fruit, healing ordinary wounds could take him several hours, while recovering from fatal injuries took even longer. But once he had completely healed, the next time he suffered exactly the same damage, recovery happened noticeably faster than the first time.
That was one reason nobody had ever hesitated to inflict various physical injuries on the guy or kill him whenever a convenient opportunity appeared. Not as important a reason as fun, admittedly. But still a reason.
However, the acceleration of Yosaku's regeneration did not continue forever. At a certain point, his recovery time would freeze at one particular mark and stop changing. No matter how many times he healed the same wounds afterward, the healing speed remained identical.
The first time this happened, everyone assumed Yosaku's ability had reached its limit. The family believed that right up until, literally one month later, the guy began recovering faster again. The same situation repeated several times. And after the latest incident on Whisky Peak, Yosaku's regeneration speed had reached an incredible level without the slightest exaggeration.
After a direct gunshot through the forehead, with his brains artistically splattering the surrounding area through the ruined back of his skull, Yosaku could completely restore himself in two minutes.
Earlier, his regeneration had occurred almost imperceptibly. Now it happened with astonishing speed, visibly before everyone's eyes. This was especially true of nonfatal wounds. Those healed in mere seconds.
Yosaku had paid for such enormous progress in his ability with tons of pain and hundreds of different deaths. Lately he had spent more time dead than alive. And yet, despite every effort, his ability had once again reached another plateau.
"See?" Yosaku, once again fully 'headed', showed Luffy the stopwatch he had taken away from Johnny. "No change! What's the point of continuing?"
"But what if?" Luffy pouted.
Unlike Nami, however, it did not look remotely cute when he did it.
"Are you telling me you STILL aren't tired of killing me?!!" Yosaku immediately identified the real reason. "How much is enough?!!"
"Yosaku, watching your deaths and suffering is like looking at the night sky. It's so mesmerizing that it can never become boring!"
In response, Luffy received a middle finger directly in his face. Turning away from the guy lying on the lounger, Yosaku muttered a diverse collection of insults under his breath and managed exactly five steps. Then a gunshot sounded. He immediately dropped dead. Luffy returned the revolver to its holster, stuck his tongue out at the guy he had just killed, and went back to reading his newspaper.
Johnny, laying out solitaire at the table, did not even blink. Usopp, bored, went to help Sanji prepare lunch. Nami and Karoo fussed over the exhausted Vivi. Zoro was 'destroying' Tashigi. And Robin, taking advantage of the moment, went down into the captain's cabin for a new book. A very, very (!) careless decision on her part.
No, she had certainly not forgotten to leave a pair of eyes and ears near Nami, the most 'dangerous' member of the insane Straw Hat family from Robin's perspective. But she had definitely underestimated the red-haired woman's enthusiasm. Robin had barely managed to return the book she had finished to its shelf when she was forced to rush back toward the exit.
Too late. The hatch into the cabin swung open before she had even reached the middle of the ladder.
"How convenient everything worked out!" Nami immediately began descending, and joyful little devils could easily be seen dancing in the girl's brown eyes. "I was just about to talk to you."
Nami slowly climbed down the ladder while Robin began retreating in alarm, clearly failing to appreciate how pointless the action was. Where could she possibly go, not merely from a ship in the middle of the ocean, but from a cabin with only one exit? The small hatch between the captain's cabin and the men's quarters did not count. It had been sealed shut securely long ago anyway.
Worse, without taking her eyes off Robin, Nami closed the hatch behind herself, reached one hand around her back, and deliberately slid the bolt into place.
"Now nobody will interrupt us, and we'll be able to discuss everything properly!"
Despite her words, Nami's voice, tone, and gaze promised absolutely anything except conversation. Nami leisurely stepped down from the ladder and moved just as slowly toward the still-retreating Robin. Eventually, the black-haired woman's back met the wall between a bedside table on her left and a bookcase on her right.
Robin's heart hammered wildly, and she stared at Nami as though the thing approaching her were not an astonishingly beautiful woman but a starving tiger. Bad comparison. Robin would personally have preferred the starving tiger. Or any other member of the family. And yes, that included Luffy. The others could cause her plenty of problems, but every one of those problems simply faded beside the 'threat' radiating from Nami.
Robin had never encountered anything like this in her entire life. Eventually, her nerves simply gave out, and she crossed her arms before herself.
"Cien Fleur! Hundred Flowers!"
Countless arms sprouted from the floor, ceiling, and bookcase. Notably, not a single one appeared on Nami's body. Robin's primary combat method was to grow her 'flower' arms directly on an opponent and, for example, break their neck or spine.
The ability granted by Nami's Devil Fruit instantly put an end to that particular 'trick', just as it defeated every attempt by the other arms to stop her. No matter how hard they tried, none of the grown arms could grab the woman. Whenever their fingers attempted to close around Nami, they simply slid off her. The same applied even to her clothes.
Despite all Robin's efforts, Nami's chest soon pressed against her own, while the red-haired woman's nose stopped only a tiny distance from hers. At the same time, a smile appeared on the lips of the Most Beautiful Navigator in the World—a smile so dangerous and promising so many things at once that words could not possibly describe it.
"So, you had a very interesting reaction to our angry Zoro today," Nami said, staring directly into the eyes of the openly frightened Robin.
It should be noted that not only was her nose almost touching the black-haired woman's, but her lips were barely short of brushing Robin's as well.
"I think you and I should have a very thorough discussion about that," she suggested.
Contrary to her own words, Nami's arms wrapped around Robin's narrow waist, making the remaining distance between them disappear completely and turning an atmosphere already poorly suited for conversation into one even less suited for it.
"Staying quiet? Then I'll start asking questions now."
For every remaining day before Little Garden, nobody stopped wondering what exactly Nami could possibly have done to make Robin seriously try to hide from her behind Luffy and Zoro. The guys themselves, naturally, kept silent. Luffy did so meaningfully, which only fueled everyone's interest further. Zoro did so indifferently, which confused them considerably.
The other guys had good reason to doubt that even the impenetrable swordsman could have remained indifferent if even a fraction of what they had imagined between Nami and Robin had actually happened.
However things truly stood, only a few days later Little Garden appeared on the horizon. Johnny, Yosaku, Sanji, and Usopp—yes, him too—had to wipe away the drool and put the mystery aside. Something less exciting but considerably easier to understand awaited them ahead. Besides, it was a genuine debut for Sanji and Usopp.
The latter, predictably enough, did not share everyone else's enthusiasm. And his premonitions did not betray him.
"I... I... I th-th-think I'll... I'll g-go... g-go get Zoro!"
Several hours after arriving on the island, a stammering Usopp fled at impressive speed from a spacious clearing where nearly the entire force of Baroque Works had gathered. Behind him, the guy left a dead Yosaku, a pale Johnny, and an incapacitated Sanji. Somehow, everything had gone off the rails almost immediately. Their debut, as the saying went, had not gone well. And the furious roar of several thousand people charging after the long-nosed guy in unison only confirmed that conclusion.