Tashigi found the explanation difficult to accept. From the first days of her stay aboard the Going Merry, she had always considered Usopp the most normal member of the family. He got scared, lied constantly, possessed no monstrous strength, made stupid jokes, smiled a lot, laughed a lot, and constantly complained about something. In other words, Usopp looked like the most ordinary and human member of the family. Everyone else, in Tashigi's eyes, looked far more like monsters and demons awkwardly wrapped in human skin. Even Nami, despite all her kindness, strongly resembled a genuine succubus summoned into this world to seduce, charm, and lead people from the righteous path. Robin was excellent proof of that. And was it even normal to be that beautiful? Tashigi herself had never doubted her orientation, and by now there could be no doubt at all, but she had still caught herself looking more than once.
"I can't believe I thought he was an ordinary person," the girl finally admitted with a heavy sigh. "I never noticed anything suspicious about him, and..."
Stopping abruptly, Tashigi began working her brain furiously, trying to catch a thought that had flashed past.
"What's wrong?" Zoro asked with interest.
"There was something... hmm... right, I remember!" Her face suddenly lit up. "Luffy-san talked about Usopp back in Loguetown! He said... he said... I don't remember the exact words anymore, but the point was that Usopp is normal only until he's backed into a corner!"
"Here he wasn't so much backed into a corner as surrounded, but that clearly didn't change the essence of the matter," the swordsman commented with faint mockery.
Too much time had passed since that conversation in Loguetown, so it was hardly surprising that Tashigi had forgotten almost all the details. Her own kidnapping and the news of her captain's death had successfully buried every other memory of that fateful day. Even 'Clear Sky' and 'Octopus' remained only vaguely in her memory... 'Clear Sky'? There it was!
"You're younger than me!" the girl blurted completely out of context, shocked yet again by unexpected information.
She had finally understood what memory had been scratching at the depths of her mind when she wondered about Zoro's age—it had been that very conversation in Loguetown. His age had been mentioned then.
"What?" the swordsman raised an eyebrow.
"How old are you?" Tashigi practically drilled into the young man's face with her stare.
Zoro clearly did not understand what this was about, but answered calmly anyway.
"Nineteen."
"Nineteen?!" The girl's eyes instantly widened. "Seriously?! Only nineteen?!"
The familiar picture of the world underwent another major revision.
"Why would I lie?"
"How old are the others?"
The young man still saw no point in what was happening. Why such strange interest? And why now? Yet he saw no reason to refuse an answer either, so he replied just as calmly.
"Luffy and Usopp are seventeen. Nami is eighteen. Sanji is nineteen, like me. Ryu and Yosaku... honestly, I'm not completely sure, but I think they're both twenty," he finished somewhat uncertainly, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
Zoro could not immediately remember whether the two men had ever mentioned their ages in front of him.
"Mother of God... all of you are younger than me..."
Tashigi felt her head begin to spin. She had never been able to give exact ages for the family members because their appearances differed too greatly from their behavior, but she certainly had not expected this. Every one of them was younger than her? With strength like that? And Luffy was only seventeen?! A seventeen-year-old Monster?! What would happen in the future?!! Forget the threat the family represented now—how strong would they become in ten years?! Forget ten. In five years! Would there even be anyone in the world capable of stopping them?! Only now did Tashigi begin to understand the true scale of the coming catastrophe. Or was it already unfolding?
"Younger than you?" Zoro asked, becoming interested despite himself. "How old are you, then?"
"Twenty-one," she answered automatically, raising her gaze toward the swordsman.
"And I thought you were seventeen or eighteen... so you're older than me?" Strange notes slipped into the swordsman's voice.
Could their meeting truly be called an ordinary coincidence? Tashigi not only looked like a perfect copy of Kuina, Zoro's childhood friend who had died long ago, but differed from her in almost nothing else either. Her drive, her thinking, and now, as it turned out, even her age. If a meeting like that could not be called fate, then fate simply did not exist.
"Older by two years."
"By a whole two years," the young man corrected her. "Depending on how you live, two years is a very long time. Judge for yourself how much your life has changed in only half a year. And how much stronger you've become since then."
At that moment, a peculiar atmosphere formed between Tashigi and Zoro as they looked at one another, one difficult to describe immediately in words. Age seemed like a trivial detail only at first glance. In reality, it strongly affected how people related to one another. Psychology in its purest form.
"I still can't believe I'm older than you."
A strange lightness appeared in the girl's stomach, as though hundreds of butterflies had suddenly moved in. She developed an irrational feeling that she had abruptly surpassed the young man beside her in some way, as though she had acquired a certain power over him. In turn, that subtle shift in Tashigi's perception did not escape Zoro. The spark of superiority that had appeared in her, combined with the revelation of her age, unexpectedly made her even more desirable in his eyes. And that desire showed clearly in his gaze, which in turn did not escape Tashigi herself. As a result, the peculiar atmosphere quickly began changing into something far simpler and easier to understand. Unfortunately, the moment was inappropriate. At another time and in another place, everything might have ended very differently. Here, however, another tiger ruined everything. Apparently the dead bodies were not enough for it, and it decided to attack food that was still alive. The result was instantaneous death from a punch reinforced with Armament Haki. The poor tiger looked as though it had been hit by a train.
"You really are all abnormal," Tashigi said from the bottom of her heart.
Zoro smiled faintly as he lowered his hand. Her sincere words amused him, but they also reminded him involuntarily of Luffy's thoughts on normality and abnormality. And what those concepts meant for his student.
"Tell me, do you consider yourself normal?" the swordsman asked.
"Of course!" came the immediate answer, full of undisguised indignation. "I'm an ordinary person, unlike all of you!"
Zoro's smile only widened at that answer.
"Ordinary, you say? Somehow I strongly doubt your subordinates will consider you an ordinary person when you return to the Marines."
"What do you mean?!"
"No point explaining. You'll understand later."
"I think I've already heard that today..."
Crooking a finger at the confused Tashigi, Zoro moved sideways along the edge of the clearing, intending to bypass most of the corpses and the creatures feasting on them. Their conversation, however, had clearly kept them in one place longer than was wise. They had not only attracted various predators such as tigers and panthers, but also waited long enough for a pair of tyrannosaurs to appear. This time even Zoro had to reach for his sword. Once. After which the island had two fewer tyrannosaurs and the forest contained a long clearing that Zoro and Tashigi then used to continue their journey.
"You still haven't answered why Nami's presence is so important to your family," the girl returned to the original subject once all obstacles in their path had been eliminated and she had recovered from yet another vivid demonstration of the young man's monstrous strength.
It looked as though some giant had chopped the earth with an enormous axe, leaving a clearing hundreds of meters long. And Zoro had used only one sword to produce that result. Tashigi herself, despite her greatly increased power, could not have demonstrated anything similar even if she exhausted herself completely. And what if he had struck with all three?
"Now that you know Usopp's true nature, doesn't the answer suggest itself?" the swordsman asked rhetorically. "Nami isn't only our navigator. She's also the moral compass of our family."
"Moral compass?" Tashigi repeated doubtfully. "For that to matter, Nami herself would have to make decisions and give orders. Otherwise what's the point? I don't remember anyone listening to her all that much, especially you or Luffy-san!"
"I wouldn't say we obey Nami. It's more that we look back at her," Zoro explained. "You have to understand that a person's views are shaped by their life experience and surroundings. And I've already told you that for the last several years, practically all our family did was kill people in one way or another. That left its mark. Now it's easier for us to kill someone than try to negotiate. Nami is the only one among us who almost always tries to negotiate first and makes the rest of us do the same. She still hasn't forgotten how to empathize with other people. Genuinely empathize," he added immediately, "not for amusement or personal interest the way Luffy constantly does. Most importantly, Nami is capable of opposing Luffy's indifference. Our family is the most important thing in the world to him, while everyone else he doesn't know means nothing. And that's still the good version, when they simply mean nothing. Often he treats other people like toys. If some of them break, he won't even blink. He'll just find new ones. In turn, Luffy is one of the most important people in our lives, and he possesses incredible willpower and charisma, so his views on life influence ours. If it weren't for Nami, we'd probably have sunk into a gang of complete bastards long ago. Or, more likely, turned entirely into soulless killing machines."
Tashigi did not immediately realize that Zoro had finished his small speech—or perhaps full-fledged lecture. When she did, she involuntarily swallowed, moistening a throat that had gone dry somewhere along the way. She had not expected anything like that answer when she asked her question.
"I never would've thought Nami was that important to all of you," the girl admitted after some time. "I thought you took her along simply because she was a good navigator."
"She isn't a good navigator. She's the living incarnation of the God of Navigation!" Zoro objected with heat utterly uncharacteristic of him.
For a man suffering from a terminal stage of topographical idiocy, Nami genuinely was a literal God of Navigation. Jokes aside, however, the girl was a navigator touched by the gods, while her ability to 'read' weather openly bordered on mysticism. Even the Grand Line, with all its meteorological insanity, unpredictable currents, and inexplicable phenomena, had failed to disorient her for long. By now she easily held whatever course the family needed, avoiding every abnormal problem as though she possessed precognition. Without Nami, the men would unquestionably have sunk back in East Blue, and their attempt to conquer the Grand Line would have turned into an endless chain of shipwrecks.
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