Chapter 3

Wow! Again, thank you guys so much for the reviews and wonderful feedback. I literally cannot tell you guys how happy I am right now. This chapter is a tad bit longer. Enjoy!

The real story, however, truly begins when Nao is three.

Despite the terror that had gripped the brothel's sisters like an iron fist after Roger's challenge to the world, another year passes without incident. Sure, there had been an increase in newcomers to the island—most of them pirates—but no one bothered to bring trouble to mere whores. (Because how much of a shithead does a person have to be to kick people who are already down?) The majority of the island's visitors simply wanted to dock and restock on supplies before entering the Grand Line.

Perhaps it was Fate's way of accepting Nao's challenge—giving her time to vaguely plan out her moves—or maybe it was pure luck.

Yet, as per usual, tides change, newcomers enter, and normalcy fluctuates, bringing with them the ugliness that is, more often than not, intertwined with living.

But there was no way Nao could've known that her actions were going to fuck her over even more, especially after a year of tranquility, and so, on a gloomy day in March, she tiptoes out of the compound, walking right past her sleeping babysitter without incident. (Apparently, whores had a bad case of narcolepsy too.)

The boredom that she had efficiently fought off with the creation of her sloppily put together collection of notes ended when she finished the novel-length garbage six months ago, giving herself quite the issue as she had no idea where the fuck she could go from there. Most—if not all—of her plans had having more mobility than a toddler as a prerequisite, and no amount of divine fuck ups could get her around that hurdle. There was little she could do but wait her toddler years out, preoccupying her time with unintentional mischief, i.e.; her new sneaking out routine.

The initial walk is placid enough. Almost no notice is given to her—the district having grown used to seeing the whore house's residential toddler. The only stares she receives are from outsiders, and even those are momentary, as none speak up in fear of displaying foreigner's ignorance. Nao almost laughs at the shitty, non-acting bystander display of 'When in Rome.'

It's the walk back that screws her over.

She is no more than fifty yards away from the brothel's entrance when a hand grabs ahold of her shoulder, jerking her around to face the owner of the aforementioned hand.

"Hey, kid, are you lost?" The stranger—a middle aged man with an alarmingly fake smile plastered on his face—grabbing her shoulder crouches down to even out their eye levels, using a faux honeyed tone that might have charmed her had she not been a sour twenty-something year old's shitty reincarnation.

"No, I'm heading home," Nao answers curtly. She tries to pull her arm away, only to have her attempts be met with the tightening of his grip.

"Don't be hasty. We have a few treats in our ship at the harbor. Would you like to get some and bring them back for your onee-sans?" His words are spoken softly, a striking contrast to the indiscernible glint in his eyes.

"No thank you. Please let go of my arm," she insists, making another effort at escaping his hold. Her heart feels as if its about to burst out of her chest as the man's face morphs from one of gentleness to one of greed.

She's seen that expression before. (Rapacity had appeared more often than she'd have liked to admit during her time interning at a local hospital. Too many struggling—and shitty—adults seemed perfectly content with having their parents die off for a wretched inheritance.)

"Come on, kid, let's go." He violently tugs at her wrist this time, ditching his helpful stranger act.

She opens her mouth to yelp at the sudden display of cruelty, but her cry is cut short by the man's hand clamped over it. He forces her head down while dragging her away from the frustratingly close brothel, obscuring her face from the few who might have recognized her. (Her usual pattern of staying inside the stupid whore house and out of the district's inhabitants' line of sight is really starting to bite her in the ass right now. Who the fuck is gonna save her if she ends up stuck as a slave in another sea?)

A bad concoction of panic and adrenaline courses through her veins as she considers the viable choices that would, at the very least, probably keep her alive. Probably. There was option A: let herself be shipped to god knows where and have her entire revenge plot be fucked over, or, alternatively, option B: fight while simultaneously praying to every merciful divine being out there that the man was someone too egoistical to bring a weapon with him during his child snatching adventures

She doesn't need much time to reach a conclusion there.

In a rush of stupidity or desperation(or both, she can't really tell the difference between the two anymore), she bites, using the only strong muscle in her body(because toddlers, unfortunately, don't tend to have gorging biceps) to sink her teeth into the man's flesh, successfully drawing out a pained yowl from the man. Coppery blood fills her mouth until she is almost choking on the thick liquid, but she doesn't concede as she embeds her bloodstained, not-so-pearly whites further into his hand. Her jaw momentarily loosens as she opens it up to prepare for another bite, drawing out a satisfactory crunch as she mauls his hand—overcome by some sort of ravenous need to fight because, so help her God, she was never going to let herself get fucked over again without a struggle.

But, as quickly as it had began, Nao's vicious attack is countered with an equally vicious response from the man as the shock of the assault wears off. Out of pure spite for her, the man jerks her off of the ground to increase the probability of damage done to her body as he flings her back onto the gravelly road. Upon impact, she involuntarily lets out something between a grunt and a shout, unable to brace herself for the landing. Sickening cracks resound from her crumpled figure as it hits the ground, drawing the attention of those around them, but not a single person steps in to end the brutal beat down.

She wants to scream at the godawful show of 'not my child, not my business', but her outrage at the inaction is just a little hard to display with a grown man's foot digging into her back. After what feels like another eternity, the pressure on her spine eases, and for a fleeting moment she thinks that maybe—just maybe—the man has taken pity on her, but as quickly as they had arisen, her hopes, along with what feels like most of her organs, are crushed as the fucking mongrel kicks her already aching body, sending her flying another yard.

She lands face down, dirt and pebbles mixing with the vile blood(was it hers or his?) in her mouth. She is barely given the time to lift the top half of her body off of the ground before his shoes enter her peripheral vision. Mustering every bit of the foolish pride that had accumulated in her over the course of two lifetimes, she forces her head up to meet his glare, gracing herself with the sight of his hand moving to strike her down. She automatically flinches, tightly squeezing her eyes shut and bracing for a hit that never comes.

What?

The hushed whispers of the steadily growing crowd turn to unabashed comments as they catch sight whatever the hell stopped the man's hand. Too curious to remain blind to the world(she really needed to learn how to curb that curiosity of hers), Nao tentatively opens her eyes, only to see a man standing so close that he is almost on top of her. What shocks her, though, is not the sudden appearance of her savior, but rather the words written across the jacket draped over his shoulders.

'Justice'.

A marine.

But not just any marine. (Fate must really get a kick out of messing her life up in a million different ways) There's no mistaking it—not even after her years spent in the solitary confinement of Oblivion. The greyed hair and the all too wide grin couldn't belong to anyone else but him.

Vice Admiral Garp. (For fuck's sake, when she had said she didn't want her plans to meet a premature end, she hadn't meant for them to meet a premature start, either.)

"Has Mama-san taken to letting her brats run around?" He turns towards her, his (fucking huge) hand still holding back the attacker.

She mutely shakes her head, petrified for reasons unknown to her. She had known her situation was real, but now it seemed a little too real for her tastes. (For a brief moment, she considers going back to the brothel and following her mother's footsteps in being a whore, because fuck this.)

"Rosinante, take the brat back to her brothel and wait for me there. This will only take a minute."

Rosinante?

The appearance of blond hair in her field of vision seals it. If she wasn't already beforehand, she is so much more fucked now.

"Hey, kid, can you walk? I'm gonna bring you back home while Garp-san deals with the scum," the man coaxes her to take his outstretched hand, mistaking her tremors as a result of the events that had transpired. In reality, she's quivering because she is certain that the universe will implode the second she touches someone who isn't just cannon fodder.

Fortunately, it doesn't. (The walk home is so unnervingly normal that she is certain that she's about to die—again.)

Behind her, she can hear the piece of shit assailant insisting on his innocence. It's so ridiculous that she almost laughs. (And she would've—if her entire body hadn't felt like it just got shoved through a meat grinder.) How does someone try to play off kicking a three year old's ass?

"What a moron..." Rosinante mutters, voicing her thoughts aloud.

She nods in agreement, though he's too distracted with a piercing screech from the sisters to see the concurring motion. Was the compound always that close?

For a moment, standing there in the courtyard of the compound, she is utterly bewildered. Why the hell was everyone looking at her like she just came straight out of the grudge movie? Then, as the taste of blood reregisters in her brain, accompanied by the ever-so-lovely gritty texture of dirt, she recalls why. She looks like the epitome of shit, and, to their credit, she probably would've screamed if she saw herself too.

"Nao?! What the hell happened?!" a sister exclaims, shoving Rosinante aside and cupping her cheek.

Nao winces as the touch agitates a scrape she hadn't even realized she had gotten. Before she can speak and explain the situation, Rosinante, while looking rather peeved at the working girls, beats her to it. (Silly her, how could she have forgotten that most people don't assume that three year olds have the mental capacity to spew well put together sentences out of their ass.)

"She—Nao, was it?—was trying to get away from some man—a human trafficker, probably. Garp-san stepped in and is taking care of it right now. Do you know where we can find Mama-san? We were supposed to be headed to the Marine HQ, but Garp-san insisted on making an appearance here," he says the last part with a hint of annoyance.

Call it a sudden premonition, but something tells her that this isn't the first time Garp acted on his whims.

"And what does Garp-san want with an old woman like me?" Mama-san's voice rings throughout the courtyard, drawing everyone's attention towards her figure slowly hobbling out the main building's door.

"Mama-san? An old woman? You don't look a day over forty!" Garp's exuberant voice enters the fray, bring everyone's head turning back towards the entrance. It's comical, really—the way everyone is moving in unison in correspondence with their two voices.

"Stop the flattery, what do you want?" Mama-san replies flatly, clearly used to the man's antics.

"I need a favor."

"No." Her response comes so fast, it's almost like it was preplanned.

"You haven't even heard my request yet."

"Do you think I was born yesterday? The last favor you asked of Sengoku is now a tale parents tell their children to warn them about reading the fine print."

"Mama-san." His voice loses all humor. (Nao can't tell if it's his intimidating aura that's making her nauseous, or her having just gotten back from being kicked around like a beanbag.)

Finally, Mama-san relents. "Ten minutes. Then you're gone. I don't want any of my customers being scared away by you marines."

The jubilant tone makes its unwanted return. "Great!" He turns to address the blond. "Rosinante, keep watching the kid, alright?"

"What? Garp-san! Why can't she just stay he—" While in the process of chasing after his haphazard boss, his protest is cut short by a less-than-graceful fall. Before he can make a recovery and continue after the man, the screen door is slammed shut, ending all chance of any refusal of the order.

The sisters glance at each other before nodding, collectively labeling the man as a non-threat to their little sister. One by one they walk off—either back to their rooms or onto the streets to find more customers.

"There's a dango shop across the street," one adds helpfully, daintily stepping over Rosinante's body and opening the screen door to get inside, only to close it in his face again.

"But what about her appearance? They're gonna think that I'm the one who was kicking her around!" he argues weakly, knowing that nothing he could say was gonna take Nao out of his hands.

"If they can handle watching it happen without doing anything, they can handle seeing her face after it happened too," another one huffs, this time walking out of the compound grounds.

Eventually, all that's left in the courtyard is a brooding Rosinante and an aching Nao.

"Well," he sighs, avoiding looking at Nao's swelling scrapes, "dango it is."

In no more than five minutes, they find themselves seated in a small, homely shop—one completely out of place for a red light district. (This world was fucking weird. 'Let me go buy a few whores and other ungodly things before sipping green tea.' Who the hell does that?)

"This dango is good." She froze the moment the words left her lips. Trying to make conversation had been an automatic response to the awkward air around them, and was probably good in all other situations, save for the ones where she's actually trying to act like a fucking kid for once.

Rosinante chokes on the scalding hot tea. (Though she can't tell if it's from the shock of hearing a three year old speak articulately or just his clumsiness acting up again.) "You can talk?"

"I never said I couldn't."

This conversation was sounding eerily similar to one he'd have later on, though she wouldn't tell him that.

"W-What? Why didn't you just speak up twenty minutes ago when your sisters were asking for the details on what happened?"

She blinks. "Because you cut me off."

"I... I see."

They lapse into silence again, though this one is considerably less strained. (On Rosinante's side, at least.)

Nao, on the other hand, was freaking the fuck out. Half of her wanted to jumpstart her plan just for the hell of it. The other (sensible)half was telling her to slow her roll. Again, it's not hard to guess which one her impulsive, shitty mind chose.

"Are you a good guy, or a marine?" she asks bluntly.

He's clearly taken aback. "Nao, marines are the good guys."

She shakes her head in a childlike manner, her dirt-filled hair following the movement, before offering her rebuttal. "Then what about what's gonna happen in Ohara?"

He freezes, changing his relaxed stance to a defensive one. "How do you—"

"Geisha gossip is very interesting," she lies, cutting him off. "That's why the rest of your fleet isn't with you and Garp, right? They're all watching... Olvia-san, and you're all going to go hurt the other scholars."

Her breath hitches as he snaps his fingers. (Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Maybe acting early wasn't that great of an idea.)

"Silent." All sound from the outside is gone.

Instead of killing her right on the spot, he starts to address her calmly. "Nao, they have very dangerous abilities that could hurt a lot of people." (She had to give him a few brownie points for not slitting her throat right then and there.)

But (because she fucking loves taking her safety and life for granted) she doesn't take the opportunity to shut the fuck up, and opens her mouth to speak again.

"But they haven't. They've been around for who knows how long and they haven't. Admirals have the ability to kill a bunch of people too, but they haven't, and you would execute them if they did, but you haven't, because they haven't, so why would you kill the scholars in Ohara if they haven't done anything yet?" she says it all in one breath, breathing heavily by the end of it.

Rosinante flinches at her casual mention of executions. "I'm not the one who gives the orders."

"But you're gonna kill your comrade." Fuck. She didn't mean to reveal that much.

"What? What do you mean?" he asks, taken aback at such an outlandish claim.

She shakes her head, tightly clenching her jaw shut to indicate that not another word was going to leave her mouth(because even she had some faint sense of self preservation).

"Rosinante, Garp-san and I are finished speaking. He said he'll be waiting for you on the ship." Mama-san's entrance into the room breaks his concentration, reinstating sound into the small dango shop before he could interrogate Nao further.

"Ah, I'll... go then. Bye, Nao-chan." He adds an endearing suffix to her name to lighten the mood before making his way out—not before tripping of course.

Nao can't believe it.

She really just exposed herself to a fucking klutz.

Third chapter down! Next chapter will probably mark the last appearance of any of the brothel OCs. Please leave a review if you have the time! I love hearing what you guys think of each chapter. Have a wonderful day! Next chapter will be up in 5-7 days.