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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
- 4
- 5
- 6
Chapter Five: Nami
Even after missing a week of school, Nami wasn’t fazed. She’d gotten all of her makeup homework from Nojiko so that she could hand it all in the Monday she came back. The worst she’d missed was a test in geography that she’d have to make up during lunch. Easy.
“Oi! Nami!”
Nami smirked at the familiar greeting. Obviously not expecting her to come to school, Luffy had not met her at the train station. He was already in his desk but stood up when she entered the classroom and clamored toward her, knocking into several students on his way to her. She held up a hand to stop him when he got close since he would likely barrel into her if left unchecked.
“Good morning, Luffy,” Nami greeted, taking in his appearance. He still had a few band-aids here and there as well as some mending bruises showing on his face, but looked otherwise fine. As he’d bustled his way to her, she’d noticed he still had a slight limp, probably due to the deep punctures Kuro had inflicted on his leg.
A glance in Zoro’s direction, since he had elected to stay in his seat, showed that he was in much the same state, though his arm was still bound tight with bandages. Nami wondered if he was still attending the kendo club, even with his injuries. Knowing Zoro, probably.
“Where’s Ussop?” Nami asked after giving the cursory glance around the room and not seeing the boy.
“Still not here,” Luffy lamented, staring at the open seat with a frown. He turned his attention back to her. “You’re all colorful.”
Nami’s eyebrow twitched. Well, that was certainly an interesting, though true, way to describe herself. Unlike Luffy in the boy’s uniform, consisting of pants, shirt and blazer, Nami had exposed legs as well as exposed arms in her short skirt and short-sleeve top. Her two worst wounds, the blows she had taken from the two-by-four, were very much visible, and she was indeed colorful. Purple and blue mostly, red and brown in some places, and even a gross yellowish color in some places.
“Thanks for noticing,” she muttered, heading to her seat. Despite having a week to recover, she still limped a little too. Though the doctor at the Flevance Clinic had assured her that her leg and arm weren’t broken, the bones had been bruised with the force of the blows. It was going to take multiple weeks to recover; not just one. And it seemed like they were going to hurt like a mother fucker in the meantime.
“You look like hell,” Zoro commented as she sat down, giving her a cursory glance of her own. “You sure you should be here?”
Nami shrugged. “Maybe not. But it’s better than staying at home and being bitched at by my mother. I’m apparently grounded for life. She’s absolutely livid that I ditched school again to go participate in another gang fight. Oh, and she’s contemplating suing your grandfather, by the way.”
Luffy quirked his head to the side.“Gramps? Why?”
“Child endangerment,” Nami replied. “She probably won’t, though. Smoker’s trying to talk her out of it.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Zoro chuckled. “Smoker used to work under Garp. Doubt he’d let anyone sue his former superior if he had any say in it.”
Nami eyed Zoro carefully. “How do you know Smoker used to work for Garp?”
“I used to have my own problems with the law,” he admitted. “Saw Smoker a lot before he ‘retired.’ He worked under Garp back in those days.”
“And I thought I had problems,” Nami chuckled, intrigued. Did Smoker have files in his office on Zoro as well? That little jewel might have to be explored in the future. “You must have been only eight or nine. My mother started working for Smoker when he opened his practice. That was back when I was ten.”
Zoro didn’t reply. In fact, he looked like he’d rather talk about anything else, though that only intrigued her more. But as if to answer Zoro’s prayers, Luffy spoke up.
“You guys wanna go visit Ussop this afternoon?” he asked, diverting the subject for the moment. “My Gramps said they released his house so he’s at home now.”
Zoro shrugged indifferently, but Nami guessed he was probably near as eager to see Ussop as Luffy. Truth be told, Nami was eager herself, but she had something more pressing that had to be done first.
“I can’t,” Nami denied. Luffy looked crestfallen, but Zoro eyed her suspiciously. “Grounded, remember? Besides, I need to go to work today. I haven’t been in a week.”
“You have a job?” Luffy asked, amazed. Nami noted that he was too close; he was leaning over his chair onto her desk so that he was barely a foot from her.
“Yes, I do,” Nami answered, pinching his cheek rather hard. He winced and pulled back. “I work as a messenger at an office downtown.”
“A messenger?” Luffy repeated. “What’s that?”
Nami had to think about that for a second. How did she explain what she did without making them curious for more information?
“My boss gives me a message,” Nami explained. “I take it where it needs to go and deliver it.”
“Sounds boring,” Luffy complained, turning around in his seat. “It’ll be much more fun going to visit Ussop.”
“Knock yourself out,” Nami returned. Miss Nico entered the room and began taking roll call. Nami sighed as she returned to the routine of school. The year was almost a third over; soon they’d have a brief summer break before resuming the school year. Nami couldn’t care less.
The summer break was going to be torturous. Since she was grounded for life, she was doomed to spend the entire time at Smoker’s office being an errand girl, except for the few days she was supposed to be working for her ‘employer.’
Nami’s mood darkened. She had to go see him today. There was no getting around it. He probably already had some of the details from Nezumi, but would be expecting to hear a full explanation from Nami. She was going to have a difficult time explaining Garp’s involvement.
After school, Nami waited until she saw Zoro and Luffy walk off towards Ussop’s house before beginning her own trek downtown. She didn’t even get four blocks before she saw some Fish escorting her. She glared at them and threw up her middle finger.
On the sixteenth floor of her employer’s building, Nami stood before the large desk of her employer and waited for him to acknowledge her. It took a long time. The longer Nami waited, the more tense she became.
“Well,” her employer finally spoke up. “It seems you were involved in an altercation with the Black Cat gang.”
Nami nodded stiffly. She wasn’t going to supply any answers until she was directly asked. She’d learned that tactic when she was a child when being interrogated by Bell-mère. There was no point in volunteering information that may incriminate her later.
“Your message, it appears, fell on deaf ears,” he deduced. “But rather than come to me to settle this skirmish, you went to, of all people, Garp. Head of the Special Crimes unit for the police.”
Nami grimaced. This was not how she was hoping the conversation would go, but still kept her mouth shut.
“So now, I must deliver my revenge through alternate routes,” he sighed in annoyance. “It will be costly. And do you know who will pick up that cost, my dear?”
Nami flinched at the endearment. “Me.”
“You’re damn right you will,” he growled, stepping around the desk and walking to her. She didn’t back away; it would have only fueled his anger. He stopped in front of her and grabbed her chin, raising it to she had to look into his eyes. “Give me one good reason not to skin you where you stand and sell your organs on the black market this minute.”
Nami swallowed and played the only card she had.
“Nezumi was taking pay from the Black Cat gang,” she replied, hoping it would be enough. “I went to ‘report’ the incident and as soon as it happened, but when I did, they dropped it like a bad habit.”
Her employer dropped her chin and began to slowly pace in front of her. She knew he was mulling over what she said. Hopefully it would be enough to preoccupy him—
She was backhanded hard. She stumbled, but remained standing, wincing and facing him again, knowing she wasn’t through yet. What she’d received couldn’t be called a punishment, but merely a show of annoyance.
“And so you took the incident to the Special Police,” he accused, still pacing. “Just what were you thinking in that stupid little head of yours?”
This was it. It was the excuse she’d come up with over the course of the week. If this didn’t satisfy him, her remains would likely be found in a ditch tomorrow morning.
“The Black Cat gang didn’t have any significant money,” Nami explained in a shaky voice. “Taking them down and using the assets here would have been a waste of time and money. So I thought I could manipulate the police into taking them down for us…”
She trailed off at the look he gave to her. Nope. Her explanation wasn’t good enough. Fuck.
“Manipulate the police,” he repeated, incredulous. “You? Manipulate Garp?”
The silence hung heavy in the room. She knew there were other Fish in the room, but they were simply watching the show. Not one of them would interrupt now, lest they wanted to die too.
Nami was suddenly grabbed by the throat and dragged to the desk by her employer. She hadn’t considered being choked to death; it wasn’t exactly a typical yakuza way of killing. Honestly, she expected a bullet to the brain.
Instead, she watched in confusion as her employer pulled out a calculator and began typing numbers into it. It took over a minute to do, and during that minute, Nami felt herself get more and more light-headed. If he was planning on suffocating her while he did some paper work, well then he was accomplishing his goal.
As sudden as she was grabbed, she was let go. She fell to her knees and sucked in a deep breath of air. Then it was non-stop coughing.
“You are damned lucky.”
Still light headed and coughing, Nami raised her head to look up at her employer. He was sneering down at her, but his look no longer promised death. Had she somehow dodged the bullet?
“You’re right; it would have been more costly to take care of the job ourselves than to let Garp do it and pay Kuro back later,” he told her. “Between that and how much I’m going to charge Nezumi for taking bribes from those shitty bastards, I might actually come out ahead. But the cost of paying Kuro back is still coming out of your hide.”
Shakily, Nami pulled herself to her feet. Okay. She wasn’t going to die today. But what was the price going to be?
Instead of telling her, he sat down in the chair at the desk. Nami backed away warily, wanting to put the desk between them again as a buffer. It may be useless in the long run, but it would make her feel better.
“I understand that you originally took your problems to that prosecution attorney,” he commented, watching her as she went back to stand in front of his desk. “Smoker, am I right?”
Nami nodded. Fuck. Somehow his sources were nearly as good as Crocodile’s. This wasn’t going to be good, she knew. But she’d had no other choice.
“I want all the information he has on us expunged,” he told her. “You will do this. I don’t care if you have to break into his office at night and light it on fire or if you use some other means. That piece of shit is the only lawyer in the city that can’t be bought, and I don’t want him having anything of use on us. Understood?”
Nami nodded again. It wasn’t so bad. She could do it. She’d do it slowly over the course of summer break, since she was doomed to be stuck there through her never-ending grounding.
“I want it done by the end of the week,” her employer stipulated, crushing her plans.
Fuck. Just fuck. How was she going to do it? Nami had to seriously consider doing a break in overnight during the week. Not to mention, a break out of her own house.
“Am I understood?” he asked, his voice full of menace. Nami nodded vigorously.
“Good. Now get out of my sight,” he growled. “And make sure the next time I see you, you have something very nice to give me. I will not tolerate you showing up empty handed again.”
She nodded a fourth time and quickly retreated. There were sniggers and whispers as she left, but she didn’t even stop to glare at the offenders. She knew she’d gotten of very easily and didn’t want to anger her employer any further than she already had.
When she was on the elevator, she took her compact mirror out of her bag and surveyed the damage. Her eyes were watery but okay, she supposed. No one would notice. Her neck was red but not too bad either. It was unfortunately the bloody nose that would draw attention. She wiped uselessly at the slow stream. It was even worse since some of it had dribbled onto her uniform.
She’d have to come up with an explanation for it. The sheer amount of lies she’d been having to tell lately was starting to take a toll on her. Nami wracked her brain in attempt to come up with a plausible excuse as she walked home.
“I was mugged on the way to work,” was the excuse she gave Nojiko when she got home. Nojiko thankfully didn’t have anything to retort. East Blue was such a crime-ridden city that such assaults were not uncommon. Nami was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. Screw homework. It was when she got to her room that she noticed the difference.
“Nojiko, where’s Kaya?” Nami called down the stairs, noting that the blonde’s futon was missing. Since the beginning of her stay at their house, Kaya had been staying in her room and since she wasn’t allowed to go home, wearing her clothes as well. Now, Nami’s room was as empty as before.
“She went to work with Bell-mère this morning,” Nojiko answered back. “Something about having the court decide what to do with her now.”
Nami sighed, wondering again about Kaya’s supposed third cousin outside of One Piece. It still didn’t sit well with her. But she couldn’t do anything about it now. Whatever the court had decided, Nami would have to wait until Bell-mère got home to find out about the girl’s fate.
“Damn,” she muttered, pulling out her homework. Sleep would have to wait in light of her curiosity. When Bell-mère did arrive home a few hours later, she didn’t have a promising look on her face.
“Kaya’s been remanded to the care of her third cousin,” Bell-mère explained, seeing the question in her daughter’s face, also accepting Nami’s explanation for new injuries without suspicion. “She’s probably at her home packing right now. She’ll be leaving in a few days.”
It was like the icing on the cake for Nami’s bad day. Her meddling was going to cost Ussop the love of his teenage years. She didn’t want to face him and tell him the bad news.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced. “I’m exhausted.”
“You should eat dinner,” Bell-mère admonished.
“Not hungry,” Nami muttered, trudging up to her room.
“Before you go hide in your room,” Bell-mère stopped her, “I wanted to ask how work went for you. You never called them to explain the situation and I was wondering—”
“I’m not fired,” Nami replied. “But I got suspended from work for the week. So yeah, I got in trouble.”
“Well, this may help, then,” her mother offered. “Smoker wanted to know if you would be interested in doing a little office work the days of the week you didn’t work at your other job. It turns out having you file his paperwork for him those days we held you home from school helped out a lot.”
Somehow, on this incredibly shitty day, she still had some sort of luck. It was an opportunity that Nami knew she couldn’t pass up.
“I’ll come by tomorrow after school,” Nami told her, and finally shut herself into her room, planning to sleep the rest of the day away.
.o0o.
Luffy met her at the train station on Tuesday morning with the usual gusto. Nami barely managed to say hello. She was in a foul mood again. Sleep had eluded her despite her exhaustion, and the fact that she had to deal with his over exuberance was trying to say the least. Finally, tired of his loudness, she elbowed him in the gut, hard.
“What was that for?” he whined, still in step with her.
“You’re being too loud,” she told him. “I’m walking right next to you. You don’t have to shout in my ear.”
Luffy pouted and rubbed his stomach as they made their way to class. Zoro was of course there already and to Nami’s disappointment, so was Ussop. She’d hoped to avoid that conversation for a few more days. Apparently not, she realized as she made her way to her seat.
“Another fight?” Zoro asked as she sat down, eyeing her now black eye and new bruises on her neck. Apparently, her makeup job was not up to par today.
“Mugged on my way to work,” she muttered, watching Ussop get up from his seat and walk their way.
“You? Got mugged?” Zoro snorted in disbelief.
Irritated, Nami snapped at him. “Yes! I did. For some reason, I’m not as able to defend myself as usual. Now why could that be? Maybe because I’m still not fully recovered from my last gang fight?”
Zoro rolled his eyes, but didn’t pick on her anymore.
“Good morning, Ussop,” Nami greeted the boy standing at her desk, though she was still glaring at Zoro.
“Morning,” he returned. Nami looked up at him to see how he was. Not bad, all things considered. His nose was still in a splint and he had his fair share of bruises too, but all in all, he looked rather well. “Wish you coulda come over yesterday. My mom has been hounding me to get you guys to come over so she could thank you.”
“I’ve told you twice not to thank me,” Nami replied, feeling guilt at his injuries. “I got you into that mess.”
“You also helped get me out,” Ussop countered. “And helped Kaya.”
Nami sighed. Well, she may as well get it over with.
“Don’t thank me for that, either,” she muttered. “Kaya’s leaving.”
“I know,” Ussop said. Nami looked up at him. “She called me yesterday.”
Well that was a relief. She hadn’t wanted to be the bearer of bad news. And now that she looked at him, Nami noticed that he didn’t seem all that upset.
“It sucks that she’s leaving,” Ussop relented, putting his hands in his pockets and looking away. “But it’s not like I won’t ever talk to her again. I mean, she’s just a phone call away. And we can video chat over the internet…”
He was putting up a brave face, she realized. Nami didn’t want to demean him by bringing attention to it.
“Well, give your mom my regards,” Nami said, “but I’m grounded for life. I don’t think I’ll be coming over any time soon. Besides, I picked up another part time job. I have to work every afternoon now.”
“Another?” Luffy repeated, looking crestfallen. Nami guessed he’d hoped to rope her into one of his afternoon antics again, despite her declaration of grounding. “Why do you need two?”
“Because I want two,” Nami returned, pinching his cheek again so he’d stop leaning over her desk. Honestly, did he not know what personal space was?
“You need someone to walk you so you don’t get mugged?” Zoro asked, smirking. Nami gave him a dark look. She was not in the mood to put up with being teased.
“Sure,” she cooed in retaliation. “You can walk me right in and up to Smoker’s desk. I’m doing office work for him. I’m sure you two have tons to talk about, being old friends and all.”
Zoro’s demeanor changed abruptly and soon she was on the receiving end of a dark look herself.
Miss Nico chose that time to walk in and begin attendance. Ussop went back to his seat while Luffy turned around in his. Nami sighed and pulled out her homework. She was starting to loathe school, but seeing as it was her so-called freedom from grounding, she dealt with it.
Lunch was…well, it was a spectacle. That was the best word Nami had to describe it. Though Luffy and Zoro still went to the canteen to buy their lunches, they returned to the classroom to eat for a change. Ussop, with no Kaya to sit with, had turned Luffy’s desk around to sit with her as she ate her bento. That wasn’t so bad, but when the other two joined them, it became a fiasco.
Luffy was an overzealous eater to say the least. Though it looked like he had bought enough food for all four of them, he ate it all in minutes and even began absconding food from the three of them. Zoro, apparently used to this action, was well versed in deflecting Luffy’s snatching hands with chopsticks. Nami was a quick learner though, and after having only a few bites of her bento stolen, managed to deflect most of his grabby hands thereafter. Ussop was the one who suffered the most; at least half of his lunch was picked off by Luffy.
It was weird, to say the least. Nami had never had friends like this before. Technically, she’d never had any friends before. People who sat with her and talked to her, followed her around and worried about her wellbeing. In her previous school, she’d always been alone. She’d perfected the ‘untouchable’ aura, and though she was pleasant to her classmates, she had never allowed them to get close. Not like this.
The afternoon was a bore. Zoro fell asleep in class again, and Nami, feeling an odd endearment towards him, poked him with her pencil to wake him up. He gave her a dirty look, but she reached over to his desk and flipped the pages in his book so he was on the right page. Just in time, too. Miss Nico asked him a question. He glanced down at his book and studied the question. Somehow, he came up with the right answer. He threw her a look of thanks and she smiled and winked in return.
Maybe having friends wasn’t so bad.
After school, Nami made her way to the train station and was dismayed to see that she was being followed. She narrowed her eyes at the three boys trailing after her. She stopped them before they could get on.
“No,” she stated, holding her hands out to stop them. “You’re not following me to work. I can get there just fine on my own.”
“Like yesterday?” Zoro shot back. “Your face and neck say otherwise.”
Nope. Never mind. Friends were a nuisance. These three idiots were going to get it, Nami swore. Actually, Zoro mostly. The turd. She had even gone out of her way to help him in class! She was going to make his life miserable. She walked over to them, turned them each around one by one and pushed them away.
“Go. I don’t want you guys following me,” she ordered, heading towards the ticket kiosk. They of course turned to follow her again but she held up her hand and waved it at them. They were all stunned to see their wallets in her hand. “I’ll give them back tomorrow.”
Nami passed through the ticket kiosk and boarded the train, watching as the boys stood dumbfounded outside of the platform. She got off at the station near Smoker’s office and began her walk to her new ‘work.’
It wasn’t dangerous, per se, what her employer had asked her to do. It was simply removing incriminating evidence. Nami doubted there would be much, or Smoker would have gone to Garp and had her employer arrested by now. It was just that if she was caught, she’d have a lot of explaining to do.
She was lucky enough when she got there to be told she was going to be reorganizing the filing room. It was a blessing. She was in the exact place she needed to be to destroy files. The only thing was, how did she destroy the files? Smoker would probably notice if she started shredding things.
“I want these files moved to the back,” Smoker told her, pointing to a stack on the floor along with a section of files on the wall of the filing room. “These are low priority. The ones in the back now I want separated by case. Tomorrow I’ll go through them and tell you where I want them. Start with this.”
Nami sighed heavily and nodded. It was a lot of busy work, really, but she would at least have a reason for looking at the files if someone happened upon her. She went to the back and started pulling files out of the shelving and bringing them up to the front. Done with that, she started toting files back and putting them on the shelves in alphabetical order. Lastly, she went back to the front of the room and began organizing the paperwork by case. It didn’t take her long to become distracted.
In one of Smoker’s old files were the details regarding a minor named Roronoa Zoro. It dated back ten years. Hell, he’d been getting into trouble since he was six? And she thought she was bad. It was a lengthy file and Nami didn’t really have time to read through it, but she happened to see the title ‘The Blender Incident’ on one of the pages and couldn’t stop herself. She giggled throughout the report. She’d have to come back to this file when she had more time.
She tried to focus on her work, but an hour later, she was distracted again. She found a file on the Don Krieg mafia. They ‘owned’ a part of the city, ironically the part of the city where Smoker’s office was, and had held it for several years. She glanced through the file quickly before discreetly sticking it into her book bag. She returned to sorting cases and was retrieved by Bell-mère at six o’clock to go home to dinner.
.o0o.
“Where’s my wallet?”
It was the first day that Zoro met her at the train station in the morning. Nami smirked at him as he stood sullenly beside Luffy and Ussop, recalling what she’d read the day before.
“I said I’d give it to you this morning,” Nami relayed after a snicker. “I didn’t say what time this morning.”
Zoro’s sullen look turned livid. She sighed in exasperation and dug in her bag to pull out the boys’ wallets.
“Don’t follow me around like lost puppies or I’ll take something more important than your wallet,” she warned them, handing them over. But since they were all heading to the same school, they had to follow her anyway.
School was its usual boring self. The only note of interest seemed to be that all three boys stayed in the classroom with her at lunch again. They were all quips and humor, poking fun at one another and just generally being friendly. To Nami, it was odd. But not a bad thing. She wondered how long it would last.
The school semester was ending in a couple weeks. Would her friends last through the summer?
.o0o.
After spending the rest week and weekend re-filing everything in Smoker’s office, it seemed, Nami had accomplished her task. She’d been wrong; Smoker had an abundance of evidence on her employer that she’d had to sneak out bit by bit each day. It was a relief to be done, to say the least, and to top it off, Smoker no longer needed her for the moment. Just in time to study for exams. But Nami had another task to fulfill before she could concentrate on her tests.
Triple checking that she wasn’t followed, since despite her warnings, the boys tended to try to follow her around every day, Nami made her way downtown towards her employer’s office. She hadn’t been there since last Monday and hoped a week was enough time for him to calm down. She also hoped the file that she carried in her bag would be well received.
On the sixteenth floor, Nami stepped out of the elevator into the open office area. It went dead silent again upon her arrival. Her employer looked at her with mild interest.
“And so she returns,” he narrated. “To report of a successfully accomplished task, I hope.”
“The files are destroyed,” Nami assured him, approaching his desk. “And while I was there, I saw this. I hope it makes up for the trouble I’ve caused you.”
Nami placed the file on the desk and backed away. He raised an eyebrow at her before picking up the file and reading through it. By the smile that grew on his face, Nami guessed the information was going to prove useful.
“Get the Trio up here,” her employer told one of the men lounging near his desk. “It seems we have an opportunity to grow our empire.”
The dead silence gave way to murmurs and whispers. The Trio was her employer’s favorite (and most brutal) enforcer team and sometimes his personal body guards. To call for them was a cause for gossip. Nami watched, albeit apprehensively, as her employer came around his desk and stood before her. He put his hand under her chin and raised it.
“I knew you would be worth the investment,” he praised, putting his other hand on her shoulder. “I’m promoting you. You are no longer a messenger.”
Oh no. Not a promotion! This was bad! Very bad!
“You’re going to make me more money than ever,” he predicted, taking his hand from her chin to gently pat her head. “I saw the potential for you the day you were brought to me. Now, you’re going to pay off in spades.”
Nami felt her insides ice up and dread fill her. She knew what he was promoting her to. It was the one position she had hoped to never have.
“You, my dear, are going to become a Mermaid,” he told her, sealing her fate.
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Something Worth Dying For