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We followed Johnny's directions for two days before the moving restaurant finally came into view. "What a huge fish!" Luffy and Usopp were in awe at the sight of the restaurant, which was shaped like a large fish, complete with a face and all.
"The place certainly has a unique aesthetic," I said.
"Uh, guys, it's the Marines," Usopp pointed out, as a ship pulled up alongside us.
"Where did they come from?" Luffy asked.
"Don't know, don't care. Just hope they don't attack us," I stated calmly.
A man with pink hair and a pair of knuckle-dusters came out of the cabin and looked at us. "I am Marine Lieutenant 'Iron Fist' Fullbody. Who's the captain of this ship?"
"We are," Luffy and I said, stepping forward. Luffy told the man that we had just made our flag a few days ago.
Fullbody then got into an argument with Johnny and Yosaku, calling them small-time and assuming we had captured them. The two attempted to fight the man over the insult but got their asses handed to them by the Marine. Fullbody said he was letting us off because he only came this way to eat at the restaurant, not to fight pirates.
"Oh, how generous of you," I sarcastically remarked.
"What'd you just say, punk? Keep your mouth shut." Fullbody went back inside but not without telling his men to sink our ship, saying he wouldn't let someone who insulted him get away unscathed.
Whatever.
"Luffy, make sure that thing doesn't hit us, alright?" I said, walking back towards the main part of the deck. When I heard the splintering of wood, I assumed Luffy had sunk the Marines. Once I got there, I found Nami on the ground looking at the wanted poster Johnny and Yosaku had brought with them. She was holding one and she looked upset. The poster was for a pirate by the name of Arlong.
What the hell does she want with a guy like that?
"Something wrong, Nami?" I asked, concerned.
"Huh, oh, it's nothing," she said, putting the poster down.
"YOU DUMBASS!" I heard everyone on the upper deck yell.
"What did that idiot do this time?" I ran up to the front of the ship to find Luffy on the ground and smoke coming from a hole in the roof of the restaurant.
Moron.
"I... I have no words, Luffy," I said.
"Sorry," Luffy said, shrugging his shoulders.
"That's all you have to say for yourself?!" I yelled as I punched him in the head. "How are we supposed to convince a cook to come with us when you just bombed the place he works?!"
"I guess I should go apologize," Luffy said, getting off the ground.
"A lot of good that'll do," Zoro said.
"Just go do something, Luffy," I said, walking away again. "Don't screw up."
Luffy catapulted himself over to the restaurant to deliver an apology. The rest of us sat around for a while waiting for Luffy to come back. Yosaku was helping Johnny repair the damage he had done to the ship a few days ago. The rest of us were just chatting.
"You don't think they'll make him work for like a month to pay off the damage, do you?" Zoro asked.
"They better not. I don't want to wait that long to start heading for the Grand Line," I answered. Nami still looked a little distant, but I decided not to press her. If it was personal, she'd tell us when she was ready.
"Let's go get something to eat while we wait," Usopp suggested. "No point in just sitting around."
"Alright, seems like a good idea. I'm hungry." I stood up and started to make my way over to the restaurant with the others close by. We went around the outside of the restaurant to the front door. There was a lot of noise coming from inside the building.
I was just hoping it wasn't from Luffy. We opened the door to an interesting sight. The Marine from earlier was on the ground, bloody and beaten. Luffy was being kicked by a man with a peg leg, and another man was being thrown through a table.
"What the hell!" all four of us yelled at the same time.
What the hell did you do, Luffy?
"Just ignore it. Act like you've never seen that idiot before in your life," I said, straining to keep my composure.
The four of us made our way to a table to eat. We ordered our meals and sat and talked. There was a man with blonde hair walking around the dining room, flirting with the women and mostly blowing off the men.
What a perv, creeping on all these girls.
I noticed Luffy had come out of the dining room and was making his way over to our table. We joked with Luffy about how he had to work for a year to pay off the damage to the restaurant.
"You won't mind if I go solo for a while, do you?" I asked.
"I can't believe you would say that, and I can't believe you would eat all this food without me," Luffy said, getting upset.
"Well, I'm an independent man; I can do whatever I want." I saw Luffy being the disgusting weirdo he is and put his boogers into my water. "Yeah, the food is delicious," I raised my glass. "So good, you should have it yourself." I shoved the water down Luffy's throat. "I can't believe you would do something so disgusting in a public place, you ass. You're such a twerp!"
He was choking on the water, and our friends were laughing. The other customers were repulsed. The blonde waiter with a weird eyebrow came over and started to hit on Nami, saying that something here was preventing him from being a pirate and following her to the ends of the earth or something like that.
Did Luffy ask this guy to be our cook?
He kept on rambling until a man I assumed was his boss told him he should go with us and be a pirate. The two got into a fight when our waiter, who I now knew was called Sanji, said he wasn't leaving.
They knocked over our table, but luckily, we were able to save the food from hitting the floor. While those two were having a screaming match in the middle of the restaurant, I went to talk to Luffy.
"Is that blonde guy our cook?"
"You bet! He's perfect; his food is amazing!" Luffy kept singing the man's praises.
The head chef walked away, leaving Sanji to pick himself up off the floor. "See? He gave you permission. Now you can be a pirate!" Luffy told the man, not giving him any choice.
"I told you I won't be a pirate!" The blonde man yelled back.
Then, as if he hadn't just had an argument with Luffy, he went back to hitting on Nami, offering her free food and paying for her portion of the bill. "You guys still have to pay, though," he addressed us.
Usopp got into an argument with the man over the fact that he was favoring Nami and not us. "It's not worth it, Usopp. Just let it go," I told him, but he kept arguing about not eating mushrooms or something.
After we finished eating and paying for our meal, the others went back to the ship, but I stayed to talk to Luffy. "Listen," I told my short friend. "We can't afford to wait a year for you to work off your debt, so you've got a week. If you don't get out of this mess by then, I'll drag you out on my own."
"Fine, one week. I understand," Luffy said, getting serious.
A New Threat
Two days had passed, and Luffy was still stuck working in the restaurant. I was beginning to lose patience, but I had given him a week and I would wait that long. "Uh, Steve," I heard Usopp yell.
"What." A shadow was suddenly cast over our ship.
"Look at the size of that thing!" I looked behind us to see a giant galleon. "This is bad, we need to go!"
"Not without Luffy. Let's go over there and see what he's doing. Maybe the cooks know what's up."
"There's no reason to panic," Zoro said. "Look, that ship's barely floating. It's a wreck."
I looked over and saw that the giant ship was covered in broken boards and busted up metal. "Regardless, we should go check up on Luffy. Nami, you watch the ship with Johnny and Yosaku," I said as I dragged Usopp into the restaurant with Zoro not far behind.
When we entered the restaurant from the back, we had quite a sight. All the customers were gone, and the cooks were out cold on the floor.
Luffy was staring down a man in a fur coat. "I'm the one who will be king of the pirates. I won't stand down now."
"Well said, Luffy, but you forgot the plural again," I said.
"Are you planning to fight?" Usopp asked, shaking.
"You need a hand?" Zoro asked.
"I'm fine, you guys just relax," Luffy told us.
"Is that your crew? Just three guys?" The man Luffy was arguing with laughed.
Luffy told the man he had two more, Nami and the chef. The cook of course said he wasn't part of the crew, but I knew he wasn't going to get out of Luffy's grasp. The man I heard one of the cooks refer to as Krieg said that we were crazy to go to the Grand Line with just six people.
"My fleet of fifty ships was destroyed in just a week. Don't screw with me. Going to the Grand Line with six people. HA!" Krieg said. He grabbed a bag and told the cooks they had one hour to leave if they didn't want to die.
The other cooks began to berate Sanji for something, but their boss shut them up. All the cooks decided to stay and fight to protect the restaurant. The man Krieg had thrown into the wall called them all crazy.
Luffy walked over to me. "He's pretty cool, huh."
"Yeah, I guess he'll be an interesting addition," I responded.
"Gin, you said you've been to the Grand Line, right? What's it like?" Luffy asked. The man named Gin began to mumble about his time on the Grand Line. Then he said it, that one man destroyed the entire fleet.
I heard the Grand Line is a scary place, but one man destroying a whole fleet like it's nothing… There's only one person that can do something like that single-handedly. Everyone else in the room was taken aback by Gin's account of his time on the Grand Line. I was staying as calm as I could.
"It was him, wasn't it? The 'Hawk-Eyed Man'?" I asked. "You said he had piercing yellow eyes and was able to destroy a whole fleet. That sounds like him."
"Zoro, that's the guy you're looking for, right?" I heard Luffy ask. Zoro replied with a quick yes.
"I just don't get it. Why did he destroy their fleet?" Usopp asked.
"Did you guys piss him off?" Sanji added.
Gin didn't know; he said he just attacked.
"You probably woke him up from one of his naps, idiots," I told the man why his fleet had been destroyed. "You pissed him off." Complete destruction over something so trivial; that's just like him.
"DON'T BULLSHIT ME!" Gin yelled. "To destroy a fleet over something so petty."
The head chef defended me, saying I was just providing an example. "But there is one thing I don't get, kid," the man turned to me. "How do you know so much about this man?"
"Yeah, I'm curious as well," Zoro said.
"I guess I can't hide it anymore. The reason I know so much about that man is because 'Hawkeye' Dracule Mihawk is my uncle." Most of the room gasped at the revelation.
"That's why I want you to stay away from him, Zoro. He will kill you," I turned my face away. "It doesn't matter if you're a friend of Rose and me or not. If you challenge him, he'll kill you without caring about it."
I didn't want to look at Zoro; I could feel his anger from here. Luffy broke the silence. "I didn't even know that."
Just shut up, you idiot.
I was embarrassed. I could feel everyone looking at me, staring into my soul. Then Zoro finally spoke.
"Why?" I finally mustered up the courage to look at him.
"WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU TELL ME!" he screamed.
"I…"
"ANSWER ME!"
I didn't know how to answer him. "Sorry, I should have told you, but I was worried that you wouldn't take it too well if you found out I was related to the man you wanted to kill."
"Sorry. That's all you have to say?" I could feel his fury. "What do you want me to say? 'Sure, Zoro, what a great goal to become the greatest swordsman, just make sure you kill my uncle to get there'?"
"No! But it would have been a good idea to tell me that before I joined you. You knew my goal when you asked me to be a pirate. You could have said no."
"I'm sorry, alright, but I won't apologize for being related to the man. I won't stand by if you try to kill him," I said. "Family is all you've got in this world, and for some of us, it can be in extremely short supply, which is why you have to treasure the ones you've got."
The two of us were having a personal argument in front of a large crowd of people. "I think you should go, Steve," Luffy told me.
"Whatever. I'm going back to the ship." As I walked out, my eyes met Zoro's. I kept walking until I was outside, staring at the sea.
What the hell are we even fighting about? The fate of a man I've only met a few times? Why should I care if Zoro kills him? Why do I care if Zoro gets hurt fighting him? Why does he care that I didn't tell him? He would have come with us regardless; he still would have wanted to fight Mihawk. Is he angry over the fact I didn't tell him? No, that's not it at all.
Realization hit me. "He's angry over the promise."
He said that if he died, Luffy or I would have to take up his ambition. He's upset because he doesn't want me to have to fight someone important to me.
Bastard.
I got to the place the ship was supposed to be docked, but it was gone.
Where the hell is the Merry?
I saw two bodies floating in the water. "Johnny, Yosaku!" I pulled the two men out of the water. "You two get up! Where the hell is my ship?"
Johnny answered first. "She took it."
"What?"
Yosaku finished. "Nami! She took the Going Merry. She stole your ship."
No way!
"Dammit! I have to find Luffy!" I ran back around the restaurant, and when I got to the front, I saw it happen. The entire galleon was suddenly cut in two.
NO!
In the distance, I could see them. The flames of his ship. The coffin floating on the sea.
He's here. Uncle Hawkeye.