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Something Worth Dying For	By : slj812000 Category: +M to R > One Piece Views: 10730 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
Chapter Ten: Luffy
In the shudoku named Baratie, Luffy had one of the best times of his life. Seriously, it made the top three. In the number one spot was that time when he was seven that he and Ace and Sabo all stole one of Gramps’ bottles of liquor and snuck out to the tree house and spent the night drinking. Yeah, he’d had a really bad headache the next day and threw up a lot, but at the time, it was awesome. It was the last time that the three of them had hung out like that.
The number two spot was held by Zoro. Luffy truly cherished every person he called his friend, but Zoro had been the first to do it. He firmly remembered the many times that Zoro rebuffed him, but the day Zoro had relented and become his first friend, Luffy held in high regard.
Number three, Luffy knew, belonged to this afternoon. All of them were together for the first time since the fight at Ussop’s house, and as an added bonus, none of them had to fight. Sanji was pretty fun too. And damn, could he cook!
It was inevitable that it would have to end. Nami pointed out the time as she put the money for her meal on the table. Luffy dug into his book bag in search of his wallet. He hoped he had enough berries on him. Luffy pulled open his wallet as Nami walked to the door of the kitchen. He had about two thousand berries with him and his bill was twenty-six hundred. He was going to have to borrow some money from Zoro or Ussop.
“We’re taking off, Sanji,” he heard Nami call into the kitchen. “It was nice meeting you.”
“Oi, I need a thousand berries,” Luffy told Ussop and Zoro. They both shot him a look of dismay.
“The hell makes you think I got money for you?” Zoro shot at him. “I got the same damn bill as you. That fruity waiter charged a damn arm and a leg for his fucking cooking.”
“I’ll pay it back tomorrow,” Luffy promised. Gramps may not give him any money if he asked, but usually Ace could be convinced to give him some now and then.
“Here,” Ussop said, shoving a thousand berries into his hand. Luffy grinned widely at him.
“Thanks!” Luffy grinned. He looked around the restaurant for the cashier. There was a cash register on a small counter that was next to the kitchen, but it was unmanned. Looking around further, Luffy spotted Sanji by the entrance to the restaurant with Nami at his side. The two were blocked where they stood, since two men were standing in the doorway. One was the scruffy dude from earlier. The one that had gotten thrown out. He raised his hand and pointed at Sanji.
“This is the one I told you about,” the scruffy guy said, looking up at the bigger man he carried. The big guy, who looked like he’d been on the receiving end of an ass whooping, limped further into the restaurant. Unceremoniously, he pushed Nami out of his way as he stepped up to Sanji.
“You,” the big guy said haggardly. “You will feed me. And the rest of my men as well.”
The big guy may have had the crap beaten out of him, but the look in his eyes was that of a man who was far from done fighting. Luffy dropped his money and bill back onto the table, already forgotten.
“What’s up, Luffy?” Ussop asked him. Luffy jutted his chin in the direction of the confrontation. Zoro’s attention was already there. Ussop turned in time to watch Sanji skirt around the two men and shove Nami out of the door, and then lock it behind her.
“I swear that woman is bad luck,” Zoro muttered, edging his way out of the booth slowly as to not draw attention. “Any time we go anywhere with her, we get into a fight.”
“A fight?” Ussop repeated, his hand unconsciously going up to his nose. “Here? With those guys?”
“If you don’t want to get caught up in it,” Zoro told him, “you better go hide in the kitchen.”
Ussop looked a little insulted at being told to hide, but he also looked like it didn’t sound like a bad idea.
“I suppose in the kitchen, there will at least be some weapons,” Ussop reasoned. “I’m not very good at fist fighting.”
“What’s all this?” called the old man from the kitchen. The man Sanji had told them was Zeff stepped into the main dining area and assessed the situation. “You’ve come back, eh? With more idle threats and demands?”
“I guarantee no threat made today is idle,” the big man retorted. “We will show you exactly why you will be paying for protection from this day forth.”
Zeff bristled. “You’ve got another thing coming if you think the likes of you can even possibly—”
The big man pulled a gun from his breast pocket and shot the old man Zeff in the chest in a draw that was too quick to be stopped. Zeff fell to the floor, his face a picture of confusion, as if he hadn’t realized he’d been shot yet. Before he hit the floor, Luffy was hopping tables and tossing chairs out of the way.
Without any regard for the gun that was being relocated to point at him, Luffy slammed into the body of the big man with all the force he could muster. The big man didn’t fall, but he lost the grip on his gun and it fell to the floor and skidded away. The big man used his now free hand to grab Luffy by the back of the uniform and toss him into a nearby booth.
It hurt. It hurt a lot. Luffy wheezed as he tried to regain his breath, pulling himself back to standing amongst the pile of broken furniture. Zoro had taken up his space in front of the big man while Ussop was dragging Zeff from the dining room towards the kitchen.
Sanji was occupied as well, taking on the scruffy-looking man. His fight distracted Luffy for a moment. Sanji was really good. His fighting focused less on his fists and more on his feet. The sight of Sanji spinning around on his hands as he dealt vicious blows at the scruffy man was pretty neat.
Zoro was sent into a nearby table and Luffy remembered what he was supposed to be doing. He picked up a broken piece of wood from the furniture and headed back for the big man. He meant to clock the man in the head with the wood, but the big man was pretty damn fast for being that huge. He swung at Luffy, and though he missed, he also blocked Luffy’s swing. Plus, he was drawing another gun.
Just how many guns did the asshole have?
The answer for the moment was at least two, because the second one fired at Luffy, and he felt a stinging on his cheek. Well, shit. That was a little too close for comfort. The second gun had to go, so Luffy swung the broken wood sideways, catching the big man’s shooting hand. The gun flew out of his hand, but the wood splintered into pieces at impact.
And Luffy was weaponless again. But the big man, he probably wasn’t. And there were too many places to hide guns and stuff on him, so Luffy’s next plan was to strip the man naked so he couldn’t hide shit on him. The big man swung a fist in his direction and Luffy grabbed firm hold of the fabric of his jacket and pulled.
The fabric ripped at the seam of the shoulder and both of them lurched backwards a few steps. Well, that wasn’t what Luffy had intended, but with one bare arm exposed now, Luffy’s plan was sort of working. Plus, Zoro was back on his feet and had climbed on the behemoth of a man’s back and was attempting a choke hold.
Distracted by Zoro, the big man didn’t really have the chance to stop Luffy from grabbing the man’s pants and yanking them down. The big man tried to take a step and tripped on his pants that were shucked to his ankles. He went down sideways, hitting the floor hard. Unfortunately, that also dislodged Zoro, and apparently it wasn’t a fun ride.
“What the hell, Luffy?” Zoro groused, getting back up. But Luffy didn’t bother answering. He grabbed the hem of the man’s shirt and pulled up, yanking it off as hard as he could. Several guns and knives went skittering in different directions. Finally, the big man was left in nothing but his boxers and a very soiled undershirt.
“Now it’s a fair fight,” Luffy declared proudly, slamming his fist into his hand. Zoro snorted in dismay.
“A fair fight, you say?” the big man commented as he got up, kicking away his mostly dislodged pants. “You call two against one a fair fight?”
Luffy considered that for a moment. “Zoro, go sit down.”
“What?!” Zoro snapped. “The fuck I will! You go sit down!”
Nah, that didn’t sound fun. Luffy made a sour face until his eyes fell upon a lone figure sitting in one of the undisturbed booths near the entrance. When did he get here?
“Go fight him,” Luffy suggested, pointing to the man. Zoro’s eyes followed Luffy’s indication and for a moment, it looked like Zoro was going to argue again. But without any reason, Zoro straightened where he stood and stared at the man in the corner.
While the two of them were distracted, the big man had inched towards one of his discarded weapons. Luffy jumped at the sound of a gun going off again. He looked around frantically at himself, looking for bullet wounds that he couldn’t feel. He found none and gave Zoro a cursory glance, but he seemed fine too, except that he was still staring at the man in the corner.
“Fuck!” cried the big man, and Luffy turned his attention back to him to find that there was a dicing knife lodged deep into his forearm. The gun dropped from his grasp and Luffy glanced at the kitchen to see Ussop hiding behind the door with three other knives in his hand. Luffy grinned.
“Time to be done,” Luffy proclaimed, running forward and jumping with his feet pointed at the distracted big man’s head. He landed a solid hit, and the big man fell to the floor. Luffy slid into a table as he landed, but it wasn’t near as bad as being tossed into the booth. He got up and walked over to the big man to see if he was still up and at him. A bloody, unconscious face was what Luffy saw. Just for good measure, though, Luffy kicked all of the discarded weapons back towards the kitchen.
“Is it over?” Ussop asked, still hiding behind the kitchen door. Luffy looked over to where Sanji was and saw that the scruffy man was face down on the floor, being sat on by Sanji as he smoked a cigarette. And Zoro, for whatever reason, was still just standing there, staring at that guy in the corner. Luffy joined him, elbowing him in the ribs.
“You gonna fight him or what?” Luffy asked. Zoro finally looked away from the man, giving an incredulous look.
“Fight him?” Zoro repeated, laughing nervously. Luffy’s eyebrows lowered at Zoro’s odd behavior, but he didn’t have long to wonder because the man in the corner finally got up and came towards them.
“Today is a rare day,” the man stated as he ambled their way. Luffy wasn’t sure what to make of the man, but Sanji seemed to take him as a threat as he got up from the scruffy man’s back and walked over to join him and Zoro. The man didn’t seem like he was gearing up to fight them, but rather to discuss something boring like the weather. “Not often am I rendered useless.”
Luffy quirked his head to the side. What was this dude talking about?
“Though it was entertaining to watch,” the man went on. “I’ve never considered stripping my opponent as way to dehabilitate him.”
“Ara?” Luffy responded. “What do you do?”
“Usually, slice them in half,” the man answered. “Or decapitate them. Any sort of dismemberment usually works.”
Luffy had no idea what ‘dehabilitate’ or ‘dismemberment’ or ‘decapitate’ meant, but they sounded cool. He was about to ask for a demonstration when Zoro finally spoke.
“You’re Dracule Mihawk, aren’t you?” Zoro asked, though he looked positive to know the answer already.
“Why, yes,” the man confirmed. “Tell me, have we met before?”
“I’ve seen you before,” Zoro clarified. “At a funeral.”
The man narrowed his eyes at Zoro and Luffy got the feeling that this guy, Dracule Mihawk, was not a nice man to know, despite his indifferent demeanor.
“A funeral,” Mihawk repeated. “I haven’t been to a funeral in…”
“Seven years,” Zoro guessed. The man smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. It gave Luffy chills.
“Ah, I see,” Mihawk said. “I remember now. You’re the boy. The one she went to save. You’re the reason she’s dead.”
Luffy had no idea what they were talking about. When he looked at Zoro, he had drained of all color and looked like he was going to lose his dinner on all of their shoes.
Without warning, Mihawk reached over his shoulder and pulled a very sharp looking sword from its sheath. Luffy barely managed a step backwards before Mihawk swung his large blade. A loud clang sounded followed by a sickening thud. Luffy didn’t have any idea what happened, but luckily, Ussop gave them a verbal instant replay.
“Whoa!” he cried, still hiding behind the kitchen door. “He just used his sword to block that knife and sent right back at that big guy.”
Luffy looked over at the big man on the floor to see that there was no longer a cutlery knife embedded in his forearm, but rather now, his forehead. When he turned to face Mihawk in wonder, the said man was standing over the scruffy man with his sword raised. In a swift motion, the blade came down and the scruffy man’s head was no longer attached to his neck.
“What the hell!” Sanji cried. “He was done for! He’d lost consciousness, but more than that, he’d lost his will to fight!”
“He was a mark,” Mihawk stated, using a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the blood from his sword. “I was told to eliminate him and his boss.”
Sanji looked ready to say more but Zoro put a hand on his arm and gave him a look that Luffy didn’t see. Whatever the look was, it was enough to stop Sanji’s protests.
“I was also told to dispose of any witnesses,” Mihawk added, idly eyeing them.
“We didn’t witness anything!” Ussop yelled from the kitchen. “We were in the kitchen the whole time! When we came out of the kitchen, the fight was over! We didn’t see anything!”
Mihawk raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Yeah,” Zoro agreed, taking hold of Luffy’s arm too and using it to tow him to the kitchen. “We didn’t see anything.”
“Smart boys,” Mihawk praised, turning his ear towards the open door. Hadn’t that door been closed before? Luffy thought he remembered Sanji closing and locking it before the fight started. “Ah, ‘tis time for me to leave. I hear the cavalry on its way, late as usual.”
It was then that Luffy heard the faint sounds of sirens. He watched Mihawk stride through the entrance of the restaurant and disappear into the night before Zoro finally managed to drag him into the kitchen. Sanji went immediately to Zeff’s side. The old man was somehow still alive, wrapped up in bloody dish towels, probably thanks to Ussop.
“Swear it, right now,” Zoro spoke up. “We don’t tell anyone what happened here today.”
Luffy gave Zoro a confused look.
“I swear,” Ussop declared immediately. “I don’t want that man visiting me in my room while I sleep.”
“Who was that guy?” Sanji asked, giving Zoro a serious look.
“Nobody,” Zoro claimed. “There was nobody here that we saw. That’s all there is to it.”
Sanji yanked the spent cigarette out of his mouth before stabbing it out fiercely on the floor.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he grumbled. “I swear.”
“Luffy, you too,” Zoro ordered, turning to him. But Luffy was still confused.
“I can’t tell anyone?” he asked, disappointed. It was such a cool story. “Not even Nami?”
“I don’t care if that yankee woman knows,” Zoro dismissed. “She was probably standing outside the whole time watching. But no one else. No one. Not even your brother.”
It was kind of disappointing. But Zoro seemed very serious on the matter, and after a year of knowing Zoro, Luffy knew when he was serious about something, there was a good reason for it.
“I swear,” Luffy said with a shrug. Zoro huffed a sigh of relief.
“Holy hell.”
All of them looked towards the door to the dining area where someone had spoken. They heard steps coming quickly towards them before the visage of a tall man smoking a cigar stepped into the kitchen.
“Smoker!” Ussop cried in relief.
The man named Smoker gave Ussop a surprised look, Zoro an irritated one and Luffy one of recognition before stepping towards Sanji and Zeff. He kneeled down onto the ground and felt for the old man’s pulse. Immediately, he pulled a cell phone from his jacket and called an ambulance.
“The fuck happened here?” he asked after he’d hung up, looking at each of them in turn again. As per their promise, no one said a word. Not surprisingly, their silence pissed off Smoker. “I said, what the fuck happened here?”
Zoro sighed. “We were getting ready to leave when two guys came in and shot the owner. We ducked into the kitchen to stay out of the brawl. Some shit went down out there, but we didn’t see it.”
Smoker took a deep drag off of the cigar in his mouth.
“You didn’t see it?” Smoker repeated, skeptically. Everyone remained silent.
“Smoker!” called a shrill voice. Luffy thought he saw Smoker flinch. More footsteps were heard and then a woman appeared. She had dark red hair buzzed into a mohawk but tamed back by a ponytail. She looked around the room in a panicked recognition before walking to the nearest one of them, which happened to be Zoro, and grabbing him by the shirt.
“Where is she?” the woman demanded.
“Belle, calm down,” Smoker cautioned.
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down!” the woman denied. She shook Zoro for good measure. “Where is she?”
“Who?” Zoro asked, perplexed.
“My daughter!” the woman snapped. “Where’s Nami?”
They all shared blank looks.
“She wasn’t outside?” Ussop asked. The woman turned her attention to him, dropping her grip on Zoro’s shirt.
“There’s no one outside!” the woman yelled. Ussop flinched.
“I pushed her outside,” Sanji spoke up. “Before that bastard shot my old man.”
The woman looked at them all in turn, taking in their expressions. Her look went from frantic and furious to terrified and desperate.
“Where is she?” she demanded again, but this time, it sounded more like a sob.
“We’ll find her, Belle,” Smoker promised. “We’ll start by interrogating the neighborhood. Someone had to see something.”
Smoker shot a dark look at all of them before leading the woman out. Silence descended on their group for a few moments.
“Thanks,” Sanji told them.
“Don’t mention it,” Ussop replied. “I’ve been in your shoes before. A couple weeks ago in fact. Glad I could pay it forward.”
“Like you did anything but cower behind a door,” Zoro snorted, before relenting to another thought. “You’re not bad at tossing knives, though.”
“Like you’re one to talk,” Sanji quipped back. “You spent half the time staring at that creepy guy.”
Zoro gave Sanji a dark look. “Look here, dart brow—”
“You wanna go, snot hair?” Sanji interrupted, standing and moving towards Zoro. Luffy stepped in between them, throwing an arm around each of their shoulders.
“Shi, shi, shi,” he laughed. “Sanji fits right in, doesn’t he?’
“Eh?” Zoro and Sanji responded in unison, both confused. Luffy looked at Ussop, grinning widely.
“We have another new nakama,” he proudly stated. Zoro groaned in dismay, while Sanji snorted.
“Nakama, huh?” he contemplated. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Plus, having Nami-swan at my side—”
“Nami-swan?” Zoro repeated in disgust. “The hell is wrong with you, man?”
“Shut your fucking face, moss-head!”
.o0o.
Gramps was not a happy man. Not at all. Luffy could tell. He had griped for at least an hour after the fight at the Baratie, questioning him over and over, trying to get details out of Luffy and the others, but remained unsuccessful.
Gramps had taken him and Zoro and Ussop home after Sanji and his old man were carted off to the hospital, but left again as soon as he’d dropped off his last charge. Gramps had been informed by that guy Smoker that Nami was apparently missing and was going back to the restaurant to interrogate any witnesses. He probably wouldn’t be back ‘til morning.
Luffy figured he’d go bug his brother some, but when he got to his brother’s room, it was empty. Luffy was disappointed, but not surprised. His brother had been hanging around some girl from school a lot and was probably with her. With nothing else to do, and as usual, with the refrigerator devoid of all food, Luffy had no better option than to go to bed.
The morning wasn’t any better, though. His brother woke him up really early (Luffy hated getting up early and complained the whole time) and he made him some breakfast, which was good (the breakfast part), but Luffy was onto his second day of exams. It was gonna suck. There were only two exams today; history and biology. Both pretty boring.
His brother dragged him to school early too, which was weird. Normally, he didn’t care for school any more than Luffy did. But when he got onto school grounds and immediately called out to the girl he’d been hanging out with after school, Luffy realized why he’d been in such a hurry.
Luffy shrugged as he watched his brother take off. It didn’t matter. He knew Zoro was already here, so he went in search of him. He found him by the music room, on the wrong floor for their class. Together, they made their way to their classroom.
“Your Gramps find that yankee girl?” Zoro asked.
Luffy shrugged. “Dunno.”
“What a pain,” Zoro muttered with a sigh. Luffy knew this was Zoro-speak for his concern for Nami. He’d said the same thing the night before when Sanji had left for the hospital with his old man, worried about Zeff’s well-being.
In the classroom, Ussop waited. He questioned them about Nami too, disappointed by the lack of news. Though there was little chance of it, all three of them waited somewhat eagerly to see if Nami showed up for exams. She didn’t.
Exams were so boring. Luffy wondered at how Zoro managed to stay awake for them, they were that boring. The only good part was that they got out of school kind of early. It was just past lunch when the three of them left the classroom and headed out of the school.
“Can I come over to your house?” Ussop asked Luffy as they made their way to the school entrance. Luffy nodded gleefully. Everything was less boring with friends around. Zoro decided to tag along too, apparently, since he followed them to Luffy’s house as well.
Two steps in the door, Gramps called out to him.
“Come into the kitchen, Luffy.”
Forgetting to take his shoes off, Luffy headed straight for the kitchen. His Gramps was seated at the table surrounded by piles of paper. Luffy saw on some of the papers his own name, as well as Ussop’s and Zoro’s.
“That girl Nami,” Gramps began, regaining his attention. “Do you know where she might go if she didn’t go home?”
Luffy didn’t. Not really. The only places he’d seen her go was Ussop’s house and to that guy Smoker’s office. He told Gramps so.
“I see,” Gramps murmured, shuffling through some papers.
“She’s also got a job downtown,” Zoro added. Luffy had forgotten about his two friends, who had taken their shoes off at the door and had just joined him in the kitchen. “Said she was a messenger or something.”
Gramps stopped shuffling papers and eyed them all critically. “Downtown?”
Luffy recalled that. “Yeah. She said she worked at an office downtown.”
“She didn’t happen to take you to where she worked, did she?” Gramps asked. Luffy shook his head in denial. “I thought as much. You’re sure she said downtown?”
“Yep,” Luffy agreed.
Gramps stood up from the table and collected all the papers. “I’m headed back to work. Don’t let your friends stay too late; you have one more day of exams. And if any one of you hears from that girl, you are to call me immediately. Am I understood?”
They all nodded and Gramps left. The three of them wasted their afternoon by watching television and playing video games until his brother returned and kicked the other two out around dinner time. It was another boring night because his brother spent the entire time on his phone with that girl, so Luffy had only the television to entertain him.
The final day of exams wasn’t too terrible since one of the exams was for gym and they got to play dodge ball during that. Again, they got out after school early and rather than have his brother kick the guys out before dinner, Luffy elected to go over to Ussop’s house. Ussop put a delay on that though; he wanted to go to the hospital and check on Sanji’s old man.
The three of them went across town to the hospital and made their way to the old man’s room. Sanji was there, of course, and practically pounced on them for news. His face fell when he heard that no one had seen Nami for two days.
The good news was that the old man was on the mend. Though Zeff had been shot in the chest at point blank range, the bullet had missed the heart and lungs and managed to only shatter two ribs. That was still pretty bad, but the old man was doing pretty well. He was sitting up and able to speak, criticizing them for sticking around an old man like him instead of running for their damn lives.
It was a pleasant stay until the nurse came in and told them that visiting hours were over. Sanji was allowed to stay, but the rest of them had to go. They exchanged numbers, though, so they could let each other know if anything was heard about Nami.
They had dinner at Ussop’s house, and his mom was pretty upset to hear about Nami’s continued absence. Luffy liked Ussop’s mom. She always smiled and was happy to see them and never complained about the amount of food Luffy ate. He kinda wished she was his mom too.
Gramps called around nine o’clock to tell him to get his ass home and that tomorrow they were going to do a block by block search for Nami. Luffy relayed the message to Ussop and Zoro, and Ussop sent a text to Sanji.
So the next morning, bright and early again, on the first day of summer vacation, Luffy met up with the guys to look for Nami. Gramps assigned them each a bunch of blocks of the city and told them to get to it.
“Can’t I go along with Zoro?” Luffy complained as Gramps handed him a paper with his set of blocks printed on it. “He gets lost at school sometimes. Tuesday, he got lost on the way to the classroom from the kendo club.”
“Hey!” Zoro complained, punching Luffy in the shoulder.
“You just want someone to talk to,” Gramps dismissed, talking over Luffy as he ignored Zoro’s punch and listed off another occasion last week where Zoro had gotten lost on the way to gym. “We can cover more ground if you search on your own.”
Luffy pouted. Yeah, he did want someone to talk to. But Zoro really did get lost. It wasn’t like Zoro was going to get any searching done without him anyway. But in the end, Gramps wasn’t convinced and Luffy was sent off on his own.
It. Was. Boring.
Though Luffy stopped for food six times, he was bored out of his mind. Nami wasn’t anywhere. He wished she had a cell phone so he could just call her. He missed hanging out with her. Fun stuff always happened when she was around. He bet that if she was around, he could have convinced her to walk around with him.
Wait, he was looking for her. If she was walking around with him, he wouldn’t be searching for her, so why would they be walking around? He was getting confused.
He scratched his head as a flashy looking limo drove by in front of him. Out of boredom, his eyes lazily chased the limo until it came to stop in front of a clothing store. Some dude with a seriously ugly mug came out of the store and got into the limo along with a couple other guys and—
Holy shit! Nami!
Luffy stared in wonder as she got in the limo too and it started to make its way down the street. Shaking himself out of his stunned immobility, Luffy ran down the street after the limo. He had to catch up with it!
Luffy couldn’t catch up to it. No matter how fast he ran, the limo always evaded him. He almost lost sight of it a couple times, but he managed to find it again as it was detained for stop lights.
He didn’t know how many blocks he ran. He didn’t think to count them. But his lungs and legs were killing him and yet the damn limo just kept going. Luffy tried to think of a good way to follow the limo that didn’t require running anymore. He spotted a bread truck as it pulled up behind the limo and tried to grab onto the back of that to tag along.
The bread truck thing didn’t pan out. By the time Luffy reached it, the limo turned onto a different street. Exhausted, Luffy knew he was losing speed and the limo got farther and farther away from him. He was going to lose sight of it!
The limo turned into the underground parking of a tall, glass building ahead of him. Luffy, only able to jog now, made his way to the building but was dismayed to see that the entrance to the parking garage was closed. Disappointed, Luffy made his way around to the front of the building. He saw an entrance and went to it, opening the glass doors to the air conditioned building.
There was a big desk in the middle of the room, and two guys sitting behind it, staring at him. Still huffing a bit from his run and sweating through his tee-shirt, Luffy made his way to the desk.
“I wanna see Nami,” he told the men. They looked at each other briefly before looking back at him.
“No one here by that name,” one of them said. Luffy frowned. Of course there was. He’d watched the limo with her in it come into this building. These guys were either lying, or didn’t know who he was talking about.
“She’s a girl,” Luffy described, on the off chance they didn’t know her. “She’s skinny like me and she has orange hair. And brown eyes?”
Luffy didn’t remember if he was right about her eyes. He only recalled that they were usually narrowed at him, making it hard to determine their color. The two men looked at him.
“What are you looking for this ‘Nami’ for?” one asked.
Luffy made a face. “To hang out.”
Both guys laughed. “Hang out? That’s the first time I’ve heard it called that.”
Luffy started to get annoyed. These two stupid guys weren’t doing anything. They were just laughing with those shitty grins like he had just told some dirty joke.
“Well, normally we don’t allow someone as young as you in,” said one of the guys when he was done laughing. “But somehow, I think the boss is gonna want to meet you. Come with me.”
He got up from the desk and led Luffy to an elevator. The two of them ascended to the sixteenth floor of the building and Luffy was pushed out of the elevator into a room full of grumpy looking men.
“What’s all this?”
Luffy spotted the ugly dude from earlier sitting at a huge desk. The guy behind Luffy shoved him towards the desk.
“This kid came in looking for a girl called Nami,” the guy said. “Even described her for me.”
The ugly looked intrigued. “Oh? Did he now?”
“Yeah, said he wants to—to hang out,” the guy explained, though he was laughing through his explanation. The ugly stood from his desk and came towards them.
“Hang out,” the ugly repeated. Luffy nodded, shrugging. What was with these guys? Did they not know what hanging out was? The ugly snorted. “Sure. You can hang out all you want. If…”
Luffy’s eyebrows raised in anticipation. About damn time!
“If you’ve got money.”
Luffy’s face fell. His hand automatically went to his back pocket, where his empty wallet was. He’d spent all his money today on food. Still, maybe he could get Gramps to give him more.
“How much does it cost?” Luffy asked, wondering a little at why he had to pay to see his friend. He got to see her at school for free. Granted, school was over now, but still. Seeing Nami should be free. Unless… “Oh, are you her employer?”
The ugly smirked and chuckled. “Employer? Yes, yes I am. Her time belongs to me, and it is very costly. So if you want to hang out with her, you’re going to have to put up decent money for it.”
“How much?” Luffy asked again.
“Bring me two hundred thousand,” the ugly posed with a shitty grin on his face, “and you can hang out all night.”
That sounded amazing! A wide grin spread across Luffy’s face and he turned to head back to the elevator.
“What’s the matter kid?” asked the ugly. “I thought you wanted to hang out with one of my girls?”
“I’ll be back in awhile,” Luffy assured him, slapping the button to call the elevator before the guy who’d come up with him had the chance. “I’m gonna go get some money.”
Luffy got onto the elevator, and the last thing he heard was the ugly laughing, telling him to do just that.
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Something Worth Dying For