At the very same time, Luffy came upstairs and delighted the other boys with the latest news.
"Guys, congratulations! Turns out we're all members of the same harem!"
The aforementioned 'guys'—except Zoro, who was training Vivi and Tashigi—were hanging over the sides of the Going Merry in a single gang, balanced on their stomachs as they stared toward the approaching island. After several weeks at sea, none of them would have refused a chance to properly stretch their legs. Except Usopp. Though in his case it would be more accurate to say that he did not want to stretch his legs on this particular island. Fighting thousands of hostile bounty hunters was not on the long-nosed young man's list of favorite activities. Not yet.
"We're all in the same harem?" Johnny repeated without turning around to look at the approaching Luffy. "Isn't she afraid she'll have to answer for saying something like that?"
"I wouldn't mind joining Nami-swaaaan's personal harem at all!" Sanji giggled lecherously, instantly withdrawing into the depraved world of his own fantasies.
"If she starts with me, she'll end with me too," Yosaku shared his opinion. "Our chicken, as usual, has no idea what she's clucking about."
Not one of the boys had the slightest doubt whose harem Luffy meant, so they did not hold back in their comments. Except Usopp, who merely blushed in silence. Being a virgin, he reacted rather emotionally to any subject involving sex. The biggest problem for him was that the longer the Going Merry remained out on the open sea, the more often those subjects began coming up. Sometimes the young man had no idea where to hide from embarrassment when the discussions became especially explicit. There were some revelations he would have preferred never to hear in his entire life. On the bright side, he had three sisters in misery at once! Vivi, Tashigi, and Robin completely shared his suffering. Especially Vivi. A princess was still a princess, after all.
"...Where are Nami and Robin?" Johnny suddenly realized, going so far as to tear himself away from the rail and look around.
Luffy jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the captain's cabin, then added:
"Our girls are deepening their relationship."
From the satisfied grin on his face, it was easy to tell that he fully understood just how suggestive his words sounded. Johnny frowned involuntarily, muttered a couple of unflattering remarks about his captain under his breath, and returned to hanging over the ship's side. The overly curious young man had only just more or less come to terms with Nami and Luffy's undefined relationship when Robin appeared and made everything considerably more complicated. Curiosity was literally eating him alive from the inside. He was the kind of person who absolutely needed to know the truth or he could not sleep properly. Johnny was 'suffering'. And he knew perfectly well that no one intended to ease his 'suffering'.
"Seriously, though, hasn't Nami gotten a little too carried away?" Yosaku asked, lifting himself off his stomach and leaning on the rail with his hands. "When Ryu first told us Nami was batting for the other team, I naturally thought he was a complete idiot, but now I'm starting to wonder myself."
"You finally get it, huh?!" Johnny instantly perked up in delight. "And I told you from the very beginning! Ha-ha! Wait! What do you mean, you naturally thought I was a complete idiot?!" His joy vanished faster than it had appeared.
Yosaku considered a question like that beneath the dignity of an answer.
"Nami plays for our family, and that's the most important thing!" Luffy said, hanging over the rail beside everyone else.
"No, seriously, I don't even know which one of them starts turning pink faster," Yosaku continued stubbornly. "Nami, who's practically glued to Robin, or Robin herself. Yesterday she spent an entire hour pretending she was reading a book instead of staring at Nami's tits or ass while Nami sunbathed naked."
Vivi, incidentally, had nearly suffered a heart attack at the sight. For a proper princess, such an outrageous trampling of basic decency had simply been too much. And that was after two years among bounty hunters who were not particularly well-mannered! Without that experience, the poor girl probably really would have needed resuscitation.
"Yeah, and every time she realized what she was doing, she tried to pretend she hadn't been staring at all," Johnny added.
"But Robin-chwaaaan looked so adorable when she did it!" Sanji contributed, unexpectedly returning to reality.
The boys knew exactly what they were talking about. Yosaku, Johnny, and Sanji, just like Robin, had all occasionally found themselves staring in Nami's direction, so the behavior of the black-haired woman lying on the neighboring deck chair had not escaped them. Though in reality it was Nami who had moved her chair beside Robin's rather than the other way around. No matter how ambiguous the signals she sent might be, the red-haired little devil definitely knew what she was doing.
Robin's Luffification continued gathering momentum, and like Law before her, Robin was intelligent enough to notice the changes taking place within herself. Perhaps that was one of the reasons she had begun avoiding Nami? It was difficult to argue that among all the family members, the beautiful navigator had made the largest contribution specifically where Robin was concerned. Considering results like those, perhaps it was time to rename Luffification to Hattification or Straw-Hat Conversion. Unlike the days when the Straw Hat family was only beginning to form, by now absolutely every member took part in brainwashing other people. One could state with full confidence that the efficiency of that brainwashing had increased many times over!
"Shouldn't we be focusing on a more important subject right now?!" Usopp finally blurted out with excessive emotion, unable to endure all the hints and revelations any longer.
The others silently exchanged glances, then stared questioningly at the long-nosed young man, genuinely unable to understand what important subject he could possibly mean.
"I'm talking about the hunters waiting for us!" Usopp explained, barely resisting the urge to smash his head against the rail. "Are they here or not? Are they waiting for us or not? Is Crocodile with them, or did he stay in Alabasta? And what are we going to do depending on which situation we find? Isn't that the most important thing right now? We can talk about tits later!" Despite his confident voice and reproachful tone, the young man managed to blush almost to the tips of his hair.
The others exchanged glances again, only this time instead of confusion there were nasty little smirks on their faces. One reason everyone raised the subject of sex so often and shared various spicy details from their own or someone else's intimate life was precisely Usopp's amusing reaction. And Vivi's equally amusing reaction. From the very beginning, the Straw Hat family had developed a habit of sparing no one in many situations, including members of their own family.
"What's there to discuss?" Yosaku answered carelessly with a grin. "If they're there, obviously we wipe them all out, and if they're not, we just chill. Have ourselves a little picnic with tasty food."
"Yeah. It's a prehistoric island, after all. It'll be fun to eat a dinosaur," Johnny added.
"Then first thing on the menu is dinosaur barbecue!" Sanji declared.
"Exactly!" Luffy nodded. "Someday you'll go back home, and then you can tell everyone how you once ate a dinosaur on one of the Grand Line's islands. Ryu's right. Isn't that cool?" he asked Usopp.
"...No one would believe me."
The long-nosed young man had a point too. He could hardly believe it himself. Directly ahead lay a prehistoric island beyond any doubt, dinosaurs definitely lived there, and their family was definitely going to eat one of them. Even so, the sentence 'I ate a dinosaur!' sounded unbelievably ridiculous even inside his own head.
"Speaking of barbecue, Usopp is actually right about one thing," Johnny said, turning toward Luffy. "Are there hunters on the island or not? What are we preparing for? A barbecue picnic or a bloody battle?"
"Almost eight thousand people," Luffy answered honestly without playing games. "But Crocodile isn't among them."
After that answer, Usopp somehow immediately realized that he would rather return to the subject of sex if it meant avoiding the upcoming landing. The color began rapidly draining from his face.
"Eight thousand?" Yosaku frowned. "We're going to get sick of killing everyone again!" he complained with a grimace.
At those words, every trace of blood disappeared from Usopp's face in a single instant, and he began looking somewhat ghostly.
"What about the giants?" Johnny asked Luffy. "There are supposed to be giants here too, right? Or did I misunderstand something?"
"They're here, but I think they're already half-dead."
"They took down the giants?!" all the other boys exclaimed together.
The world in front of Usopp's eyes began rapidly darkening.
"Personal strength matters, sure, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to use your brain," Luffy answered somewhat vaguely. "At any rate, I doubt anyone from Baroque Works could handle a giant in a direct fight, let alone two at once. Maybe Crocodile, but since he isn't here, either he already left or the guys used some kind of trick. Poison, for example. I'd definitely use poison myself!"
The world in front of the long-nosed young man's eyes stopped just short of going completely black.
"So there's nobody strong on the island?" Sanji asked with a hint of disappointment.
The upcoming battle could quite reasonably be considered his official debut as a member of the family, so the young man would not have minded crossing paths with someone strong and earning a large amount of reputation right away. Sanji would never admit it to anyone, but he was terribly jealous of Johnny and Yosaku because of their wanted posters. He wanted a bounty of his own too! In his mind, if a pirate did not have a bounty on his head, then he could hardly call himself a real pirate. Defeating a powerful opponent, meanwhile, was the universal shortcut to obtaining that treasured poster. And equally importantly, the bounty usually started out higher than the one belonging to the person you defeated! A complete 'win', as they said.
"Don't expect some epic battle between a woodpecker and an oak tree," Luffy replied. "There are a couple of guys with interesting energy, but overall nobody especially strong. Just enough to have some fun and forget about afterward. You should have figured that out yourselves, really. If there were anyone genuinely strong on the island, Zoro would be hanging over the rail somewhere near us right now and drooling all over it instead of feeling up his beloved's ass."
For a couple of seconds everyone froze, then straightened to full height in unison and stared toward the stern of the Going Merry. But aside from an exhausted Vivi sitting near the rail and Karoo clucking anxiously over her, nobody else was visible. Judging by the sounds, Zoro and Tashigi were still training, but the galley superstructure blocked them from view.
"Were you lying?" Johnny asked.
"No. Why would I?" Luffy replied, the only one who had not stopped hanging over the rail on his stomach. "A couple days ago Zoro gave Tashigi a speech about how a true swordsman is dangerous even without a sword, so now he's shamelessly letting his hands wander under the excuse of training. I'll admit, I seriously underestimated him. Didn't think he was capable of that at all. Another person's soul really is dark territory."
"Seriously?" Yosaku refused to believe it. "Are you definitely talking about our Zoro-aniki?"
He was not the only one surprised. Sanji and Johnny looked equally stunned. If not for the incident with Nojiko, Zoro could reasonably have been classified, if not as a eunuch, then at least among people who had taken a vow of celibacy. The boys found it difficult to imagine Zoro not only taking the initiative, but doing it in such a shameless fashion. It was much easier to believe Luffy was simply lying to them. If only not for his voice. Every one of the boys understood that right now Luffy was not lying. He usually behaved this way when the real truth was even better than his own 'truth'. Like this time.
"...Maybe there's something I don't know or understand, but can you really let your hands wander for several days without getting caught?" Johnny asked after thinking for a moment, becoming even more puzzled. "I mean, once or twice could still be passed off as an accident, maybe even three or four times if you're especially eloquent and convincing, but not ten or twenty!"
"What's so hard to understand?" Yosaku rolled his eyes. "You saw how she looks at him! If it weren't for Smoker, she'd already be scrubbing his back in the bath every evening."
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