"Luffy, we have a problem!" Nami decided not to beat around the bush and spoke directly, fully aware that no other approach would help her now. "Not only is my Robin not getting better, she's getting worse and worse! If this keeps up, she could die!"
The hands furiously rubbing his head stopped dead.
"...I'm pretty sure I've already said more than once that nobody on this ship is allowed to die without my permission," the boy asked rhetorically, lifting his head and giving the girl a displeased look. "Does Robin think she's special or something? Or have you spoiled her that badly?"
This time Nami did not play along with the boy's joke—or whatever it was.
"Luffy, I'm serious. Her fever is too high."
"...Fine. But keep in mind, she's going to be seriously punished afterward," the displeased Luffy promised as he reluctantly rose to his feet. "Not only did she fail to clean the entire ship yesterday like I ordered, now she's trying to run away from us again. You can't forgive that kind of insolence!"
That was a viewpoint the girl was ready to support with both hands.
"I completely agree!" she nodded enthusiastically. "So we need to cure her as quickly as possible, and then I'll handle the punishment myself! Don't worry, she won't get off that easily! She'll remember it for the rest of her life!"
In response Luffy gave her a skeptical look before adding:
"I suppose that saying about staring into the abyss will never stop being relevant."
"Jealous?"
"Looking for trouble?"
"A little!" Nami playfully stuck out her tongue.
The girl realized that the 'storm' had finally passed and immediately relaxed.
"Come on. Help me wash all this blood off," Luffy said, heading for the bathroom. "Then we'll take a look at our shameless Robin."
"Why did you beat that thing to death with your bare hands in the first place?" Nami asked, obediently following him. "If you'd used a sword, you wouldn't have to wash yourself now."
Despite the fact that Luffy did not consider himself a swordsman, everyone in the family knew how skilled he was with a blade. He was only slightly behind Zoro, so slicing the oversized fish into pieces would have posed no difficulty at all.
"How many times do I have to explain this?" the boy grimaced in response. "Using a sword makes everything too easy. Where I'd spend several minutes fighting with my fists, with a sword I'd finish everything in one strike. That's exactly why I've never been interested in Logia fruits. What's the fun in becoming that strong? At that point I'd never find a decent opponent at all."
Nami's jaw dropped.
"You've never told me anything like that before!" she exclaimed with genuine indignation.
"Haven't I?" the boy raised an eyebrow. "Then I probably told someone else," he added carelessly as he opened the bathroom door.
"Hold on, I don't get this," Nami said, stepping inside after him, closing the door, and planting her hands on her hips. "You're constantly forcing all of us to train so we'll become stronger, but you don't want to become stronger yourself?"
Luffy hung his straw hat on a hook and pulled the blood-soaked shirt over his head before answering.
"I didn't say I don't want to be strong. I just became too strong far too early, and over time I lost interest in training. Do you have any idea how quickly constant training gets boring when you're already the strongest person around?" he asked as he began filling the bathtub. "And what's the point of training when you're already the strongest? At some point I got tired of increasing my strength for no reason, so I started looking for other ways to entertain myself. Crushing boredom is one of the main reasons 'Clear Sky' grew to its current size."
"..."
Nami had no idea what to say to such a confession, but it explained an incredible amount. Especially Luffy's obsessive idea of remaining in Zoro's shadow and pretending to be a weak, annoying, talkative idiot. Deliberately restricting his own strength in order to make whatever task he had set himself more difficult. Compared with open confrontation, in which he could instantly crush any force in East Blue, such an approach clearly took far more time and required considerably more effort. The reputation of the 'Pirate Slayers'? Zoro, Johnny, and Yosaku had spent years building it. But if Luffy himself had stepped into the foreground? A month? Two? Certainly no more than three! And even then only because of the distances between targets. With his strength, he could easily have earned an even more terrifying reputation. 'Clear Sky'? The organization now possessed enormous influence, power, and money, but in the beginning its members had been forced to fight for nearly every island. East Blue, despite its status as the 'weakest sea,' had long since been divided among various factions that had not been remotely happy about a new player appearing. Direct intervention from Luffy could have forced every dissenter to their knees very quickly, but instead he had preferred years of various schemes and manipulations. A strategy game in the most literal real-time imaginable.
"Why are you just standing there?" Luffy asked from inside the tub. "Get in!" He slapped the water, sending up clouds of spray.
"...I was just confirming a truth I've known for a long time," Nami sighed.
Indeed, despite all the unexpectedly illuminated corners in the darkness of the boy's soul, she had learned nothing fundamentally new. He had mentioned some of it before, merely without much detail. Rather, as she had said, all of this simply served as excellent confirmation of a fact she had already known for a long time. Luffy was a monster who posed a danger to the entire world. Truly, nothing new.
"What are you thinking about now? Are you getting in or not?" The boy slapped the water again.
By then the bathtub was already more than half full.
"...Honestly? I'm thinking about two things at once."
Pulling off her T-shirt and shorts and remaining completely naked, Nami grabbed the hanging washcloth with one hand and a bar of scented soap from the shelf with the other. She had no intention of getting into the bathtub with Luffy—the water had already turned red from blood.
"And what two things would those be?" the boy asked.
"The first thought is the usual one," she said, switching the water over to the showerhead and lathering the washcloth. "You should never have been born into this world."
"That really is the usual one," the boy nodded. "So what's the second?"
"I'm thinking that if you eventually manage to get yourself killed, I'll probably be burned at the stake," the soapy washcloth scrubbed hard across Luffy's back.
"What nonsense... I'm not going to die! Which means nobody's going to burn you either, so what's the point of thinking about it? And why a stake, anyway? Of all people, you definitely don't look like a witch."
Nami did not answer. Instead, she focused on washing the blood off him. Only later, much later, when she and the boy were lounging together in the freshly refilled bathtub, did she decide to raise another important subject.
"Luffy, our family needs a doctor," the girl said, turning her head slightly to look from the corner of her eye at the boy sitting behind her.
"It's quite possible we'll find one soon," came the carefree reply.
Nami quickly understood what Luffy was getting at.
"Because of Robin?"
"Think about it yourself. Which member of our family can actually get seriously sick?"
The girl obediently thought about it. Indeed, who? Yosaku was immortal, Ryu had a dragon's immune system, Luffy and Zoro were monsters, Sanji was a growing little monster, and Usopp was... no one really knew what Usopp was. That left only Nami herself as the weakest link, but only when compared with the rest of the family. Which meant that of everyone currently aboard the ship, Robin, Vivi, and Tashigi were the easiest ones to imagine falling ill. Yet of those three girls, only Robin was being considered as a future full-fledged member of the family, and she was precisely the one who had gotten sick. A more than noticeable 'marker.'
"Fate?"
Nami did not bother voicing the obvious answer to Luffy's previous question—she was not Johnny—and went straight to the next one.
"I think we'll know in a few days."
That answer noticeably calmed the girl. If this truly was fate, then surely nothing could happen to Robin; otherwise how were they supposed to meet the doctor? Even so, when they climbed out of the bath and got dressed, Nami still made Luffy examine the girl. By that point the rest of the family had realized that the 'dark times' were over and followed along as a group.
"The fever is too high for an ordinary illness," Luffy concluded after holding his hand against Robin's sweat-soaked forehead. Then, without the slightest ceremony, he threw aside the blanket covering her.
She had nothing on beneath it, causing Usopp and Tashigi to turn bright red at once, while Johnny, Yosaku, and Sanji evaluated the newly revealed view with the practiced eye of experts. The guys were entirely satisfied with what they saw.
"N-no!"
Despite her condition, Robin was not unconscious, so she could hardly ignore finding herself naked beneath so many stares. Naturally, Luffy completely ignored her attempts to cover herself. She had never been a match for him even before, and in her current state she would not have been able to defeat a small child. Moving the girl's hands aside, he first placed his palm over her heart. After holding it there for several minutes, he lightly massaged her stomach, but his expression made it clear that he had not gotten the result he wanted. Frowning, the boy slid his hands beneath Robin and rolled her from her back onto her stomach.
"What is that?!" Nami reacted instantly.
There was no need to look closely to see the pinkish-blue blotch beneath the girl's right buttock, simultaneously like and unlike a bruise. The spot was slightly firm to the touch, and in its center was a mark like one left by a large needle. Everything became obvious at once—something had bitten Robin on the ass, and that was where the illness had come from. Rolling the girl back onto her back and covering her with the blanket, Luffy asked Sanji to make tea for everyone.
"Isn't that really bad?" Yosaku asked.
"What do you mean?" Johnny did not understand.
"Some insect bit Robin on a prehistoric island," Nami explained. "Which means either a cure for this disease has existed for ages, or the insect carrying it died out several million years ago and nobody has ever heard of the disease."
"Hey, isn't that really bad?!" Johnny's eyes widened.
"What do you think I've been saying, idiot?" Yosaku sighed.
"You're the idiot! I just didn't understand!"
"That's exactly why I called you an idiot."
"Boys, shut up."
"..."
"So what are we going to do?" Sanji asked the most pressing question as he placed a tray of cups in the middle of the table. "Look for a doctor?"
"First, we're throwing every Eternal Pose we have overboard," Luffy said.
Considering that a Log Pose took more than a year to set on Little Garden and the Going Merry had spent less than a day there, throwing all their Eternal Poses overboard would leave the family without any means of navigation whatsoever. They would have to sail blind.
"I'll do it right now!" Nami immediately jumped to her feet.
"...Maybe we could just put them in a box somewhere?" Tashigi suggested the more sensible option.
The girl clearly was not ready to entrust herself to luck.
"That's just a half-measure!" Luffy disagreed. "If we're going to do this, we're doing it properly, with no way to back out."
Less than five minutes later, every Eternal Pose Nami had previously guarded so carefully really was overboard. Tashigi and Usopp, however, were the only ones who began worrying about the prospect of continuing the journey blind. Everyone else remained completely indifferent. They could not run out of fresh water, they had plenty of spare parts for the desalination system, and they were constantly catching food anyway. What was there to worry about? Sooner or later they would sail somewhere. Besides, if you intended to place yourself in fate's hands, traveling with no ability to determine your location was the surest method. That way you would definitely arrive only where fate led you.
"Are you sure nothing will happen to Robin while we're looking for a doctor?" Usopp asked.
"You're all seriously underestimating her," Luffy shook his head. "With a fate like hers, I don't think she'd die even if we threw her overboard right now."
"...We're not going to test that, though," Nami clarified just in case.
"Then there's one last question," Johnny announced, glancing warily toward Luffy as he drank his tea.
"You'd better keep your mouth shut!" Yosaku immediately cut him off.
"We're going to have to talk about it anyway!" Johnny insisted. "What's the point of staying quiet?"
Absolutely everyone knew exactly what he meant. Grimacing as though someone had shoved fresh shit under his nose, Luffy set his mug aside and gave Johnny a dark look.
"What?" Johnny asked. "We can't just forget about him, can we?"
"...And what exactly do you want us to do?" Luffy asked just as darkly as he looked. "I wouldn't be surprised if that idiot ends up on Raftel in a couple of days. What's the point in searching for him? We'll wait for news, and if we're lucky, by the time it reaches us and we react to it, he'll still be in the same place. Otherwise I have absolutely no idea how we're supposed to find him."
This time he was not exaggerating in the slightest.
"...Is it really that bad?" Tashigi asked uncertainly.
She was the only one who did not understand the scale of the 'catastrophe.' How could anyone find a man who never knew where he was, constantly moved from place to place, and had absolutely no ability to orient himself either on land or at sea? Knowing where Zoro had been and where he intended to go was useless if he was incapable of reaching his destination. That was the explanation Tashigi received.
"But he navigated the island just fine!" the girl objected. "On Little Garden, he personally led me to two different places!"
"Exactly!" Nami replied grimly. "You're incredibly lucky you're still alive! Having Zoro as a guide is a waking nightmare! And Luffy really ought to stop stepping on the same rake over and over again! I refuse to believe Zoro volunteered to be her guide himself... this was your idea, wasn't it?"
Luffy grimaced again. This was one of those cases where no excuse could possibly help. An excuse might work the first time, the second time, perhaps even the fifth time. But when the same situation happened regularly, excuses became useless.
"Let's not talk about that idiot anymore," Luffy said, jumping away from a subject painful for him. "Because of him, I completely forgot to try throwing Yosaku into the volcano crater. How long am I supposed to wait now before another good opportunity comes along?"
There was only one thing Yosaku could say to that.
"It's a good thing Zoro-aniki is a topographical cretin."