Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.

Chapter 33– Arrivals.

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"How dare she get in my way…! I wanna kill her too…!" The room goes quiet, and even the long nose guy goes uncharacteristically quiet as he looks at the kid in worry. I myself feel my anger rise since I know those words are directed at Nami, but I control myself and squash it knowing that he is just an ignorant, angry kid who has lost everything. He doesn't know what he is saying.

Nojiko herself is blank, her face resting on the palm of her hand, her elbow on the table. She has a slight frown on her face, and she just stares at the boy. I worry for a moment because I know what a fierce woman she is. And she can be so sweet as well, which makes the contrast all the more significant. The man himself decides to take a sip of his drink to calm himself as the boy continues to shake in anger.

"Then go ahead and die." "PFFT!" The man ends up spitting the drink back out at those words, and in such a weird way, too, that I can't help but pay more attention to it. He has his head straight up, facing the ceiling and spraying the drink like a fountain, splashing it back onto his own face. And then, I pay attention to the situation again. The boy himself can't believe what he just heard, most likely expecting sympathy and pity and instead being told to go die.

"As long as you know you're going to end up dead, then feel free to fight!" Nojiko says, closing her eyes as if she is turning away from the boy's problem. She is probably coming off as quite callous, but she is actually going for the shock factor. Trying to shock the kid out of his anger by giving such an unexpected and cruel response and get him to give up on his futile revenge. "Some excellent revenge that is!" What a wonderful woman she is.

"But let me just say this one thing! Thanks to me-" She starts, all of us paying attention to her. She owns the room. She points to herself. "-and that witch lady at Arlong Park interfering, you have narrowly escaped death twice!" The boy can't say anything, his lips tightly held together as he stares at Nojiko in shock.

"Get out of my house once you're done with that tea," Nojiko says, standing up, her chair scraping against the wood floor as she does so. She turns around and walks away, intending to leave the room, no longer wanting to be here. "I hate naive little brats like you!" The boy seems to lose something there, and his face morphs into something that I can't quite make out, but I can tell he is hurt. The other guy sees it and can't help himself as he quickly stands to his feet.

"Hey!" He moves forward, and seeing him advance on Nojiko, I quickly get up and move to intercept. I don't think he's the violent type, and I don't think he is going to raise his hands, but you can never be too careful and bad things happen in accidents as well as on purpose. "He's just a little kid! Isn't that going a bit too far!?" He shouts just as I get to him. Nojiko isn't the type of girl to just shut up, so she responds in kind.

"So what if he's just a kid!? Anybody who wants to die a god's death can go ahead and die for all I care!" Nojiko turns around to scream back, just as I put a hand in front of the man and prevent him from moving forward. However, he doesn't seem to notice since the words Nojiko just said seemed to incense him, his eyes going blank and his face furious. "It's not like they have any desire to live on anyways!" Nojiko finishes, and the man grits his teeth.

"What!?" He shouts, trying to jump forward, but he can't. I am holding him back with my hand on his chest, and he is actually relatively weak since I am feeling barely any pressure. He is weak, but he is righteous. Of course, there's no point in having one without the other since righteousness without power doesn't affect anything. The boy himself is crying now, and his hands are clenching the table tightly.

"I know... of a certain child who chose to live a painful life far worse than death..." Nojiko begins, the mood now changing. She is looking down, her face serious. The man stops trying to get past me and seems to calm down, realising that he doesn't know what is really happening on the island and should probably shut up. "Because she looks forward to a better future..!" At this point, she stops, and we all wait. I know she is talking about Nami, and I guess all the stress has built up to the point it was unleashed on these unlucky two. I am just glad it isn't me.

"That's why I absolutely loathe brats like him, who only think about rushing to their deaths!" Nojiko scrams back at the long nose, her head coming up to reveal the furious visage on her face. I let my arm drop as I watch on calmly. I had only ever seen Nojiko so angry a couple of times, and I had never done the things that I did to force her to that point again. However, her fury dims as she hears the boy, and her expression falters. "Uuu..." The boy starts to fully cry, tears rushing out of his eyes and slobber leaving the edges of his mouth.

"What..." We all turn to look at the boy, watching his sobs of helplessness. He clenches his eyes shut, his hands now on his knees as he looks down. "What am I supposed to do then...?" Long-nose has a bead of sweat travel down the side of his face as he looks at the boy and his lip wavers. He doesn't know what to say. Hell, neither do I. Nojiko's face settles and becomes unbothered as she looks at the boy apathetically. "It's so... frustrating...!" He says, and I can understand that. When Arlong came, I was already inspired by Garp, but this boy is still just a boy.

"What about your mom...?" Nojiko asks after a moment, turning her body all the way around to look at him straight on. "She's still alive." He says after a moment, managing to get it out through all the tears and blubber. At his words, Nojiko's face lightens up, and a smile appears a gentle and sweet one.

"Then she must be worried." The boy looks up at that as if not having thought of that before. I bet he completely forgot that he still had his mother, so consumed by his need to get at least some kind of revenge. A realisation comes onto his face, and he realises he isn't alone. "So why don't you go home to your mom?" Nojiko says, and that seals the deal. Things are pretty simple after that.

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The kid hops up and says thank you before leaving the house. Nojiko and the long-nose walk outside to see him off, Nojiko watching him go with a smile and the man watching him leave with a satisfied grin, his arms crossed. And then they come back in, and Nojiko walks past me to take a seat at the table. The long nose, however, freezes at the sight of me and freaks out.

"GAHH! A Fishman! Blue-haired demon lady! Quickly run! I will hold him off!" He jumped back, his legs quivering and looking like they would go at any moment. Still, he reaches behind him and pulls out a slingshot and brings it forward, and at the same time, he puts a pellet or something in it and draws it back, aiming it at me. While I doubt a slingshot would do anything to me, the fluidness of his movements and how quickly he drew back the sling leads me to believe he has had a lot of practice. Now, maybe if he used a gun, he would stand a chance.

"Who the hell are you calling a demon! Big nose!" Nojiko pops back up, slamming her karate hand on the back of his head. His head goes down, and his slingshot falls to the ground, the pellet bouncing on the floor and then rolling to a stop at my feet. I worry for a moment that the guy will realise he lost his weapon and piss himself, but he seems to have completely changed tangents.

"Damn woman! What the hell was that! Shut up, and let me rescue you! I am a captain you know! I lead an army of five thousand men, so show me some respect!" He snaps his head to the right, glaring at Nojiko and shouting at her. His tongue flailing out of his mouth and his teeth sharp as he karate chops his hand in the air, demanding respect for his army. An army, I don't think, is at all real.

"Respect? Rescue me? He's not even a Fishman, and he has been here the entire time! You are more Fishman than him with that long nose!" Nojiko shout back, and I have to agree, the guy looks way too much like a Fishman. If you looked purely just at his face, without seeing his clearly human body, then yeah, a bit fishy. The guy is lucky that I know he's an idiot. Otherwise, I would have treated him a bit seriously and smacked him around.

"Eh? Oh, so you are not a Fishman. Then why didn't you just say so?" He is suddenly smiling and laughing embarrassedly, a blush on his cheeks while he scratches the back of his head. Shit, why is he acting like a schoolgirl or something. Creepy. "Haha, my bad. You're just so big. I didn't get a look at your face before I assumed you were a monster." Well, that is just nice, isn't it? Though I am about seven and a half feet tall at twenty years of age, and the tallest human I have ever seen is Garp, and everybody else has been normal. So I can understand why he might think I was a monster.

"Don't worry about it." I end up saying, unable to think of anything else. Yeah, the guy was going to attack me, however futile his method of attack was, but it was because he thought I was bad. And once again, he intended to help Nojiko. The guy is definitely an idiot, but he is a brave wimpy idiot and kind of funny. I like him. "Why don't we all take a seat and drink our tea?" I say, gesturing to the table, and the guy nods excitedly.

He gets to his seat, and picks up his cup of tea and lifts it with both hands, taking a sip with his eyes closed and then places it back down with a content smile on his face. I take it he likes the tea. Nojiko smiles bemusedly behind me, and when I look at her, she laughs. We both take our seats again and drink our tea as well. And then, the long nose, whose name I still don't know, relaxes on his chair with his hands behind his back and his legs crossed on the chair and speaks to Nojiko.

"You're actually a pretty good person, even though you do have a tattoo." Oh man, I love that tattoo. Like, I pay a heavy amount of attention to it when we get some alone time. A thing of beauty, dark blue, which starts on her arm as a big swirling pattern and goes up to stretch across the top of her chest, making a little love heart right in the middle of it. I know she got it because Nami had to get the Arlong Pirates tattoo, and so she did it to support her sister, but I would like to think that the heart was especially for me.

"Well, isn't that prejudiced of you!? Though I can't say I know much about you..." It is kind of prejudiced, but I can understand where he is coming from. This isn't like my last world, where everybody and their aunt went and got tattoos around the corner. Here, with piracy abundant, tattoos were mainly worn by pirates and criminals. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who wasn't dubious with a tattoo, though it does happen sometimes. So I can see why he stereotyped her like that because of the tattoo.

"Ah, that's right, my name is Captain Ussop." He completely skips over the prejudice part and introduces himself as a captain, meaning he has a crew with him. Though the guy is an idiot, he has guts, so it is possible that he has a crew behind him. But definitely, not a five thousand-man army because that would have made headlines and as far as I am concerned, the biggest army in these waters was Don Kriegs, and according to rumours, he just left for the Grand Line. "I came here looking for Nami, but..." My eyebrow raises at that. So this is someone Nami swindled? He doesn't seem like a bad guy. Nojiko smiles and then opens her mouth.

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"What!?" Captain Ussop shoots to his feet, his hands slamming on the table as his eyes bulge out of his head and his jaw drops. Literally, to the point, his chin almost touches the table. His arms have made a rectangle shape with the table, coming up straight and then bending at a right angle at the elbow to his shoulders. "NAMI'S A MEMBER OF THE ARLONG PIRATES!?" He screams. Yeah, Nojiko just straight-up told him that with a smile on her face. I am confused why since this guy has come looking for Nami, which can't mean anything good. I trust her, though, so I'll wait to see what she is trying to do.

"Yup, she's pretty infamous around these parts." Nojiko has her elbow and the table and her face resting in her palm as she talks with him, one hand still cupped around her cup of tea. "Even that kid talked about her earlier, remember? She's the witch woman he talked about." Ussop is still frozen in that same position as he listens to her. I think she is trying to use the pirates and witch woman talk to scare him away, probably so he will leave without a fuss and so that Nami doesn't find out about it. She doesn't need more things on her mind.

"More surprising would be the fact that this is the house she grew up in!" That takes me by surprise. Before, I thought she was just trying to scare him off. He does seem a bit cowardly, even if a bit brave at times, so he could probably skedaddle at the whole crew of Fishmen. But that doesn't mean he has to know about us. "That witch and I are foster sisters." Or that. I really have no idea why she is saying it, but as his jaw drops even further, actually hitting the table, and his eyes pop out his head, Nojikos's bigger smile makes me think that she is getting some kind of satisfaction out of his over-the-top reactions.

"This is... Nami's home!?" Well, yes, it is. Even if she has hardly spent a week here put together this entire year. She is away so much, and sometimes she has to stay at Arlong Park. But still, this is her home.

"That's right... She and I are orphans. We were adopted and raised in this house." Nojiko follows it up with, and I decide to take a step back and not say anything at all. She is clearly going somewhere with this, and I have no clue where. But she's an intelligent girl. I'll let her work her magic.

"The one who raised us has long been dead now, but..." Bellemere. A day doesn't go by when I don't think of her, and that is because her grave is right outside, and I see it every day. I didn't know the woman much, having only met her a few times. But she was tough, I knew that, and from the way the girls described her, she was very kind too. "The three of us used to live here happily in Cocoyashi Village." She says, and finally, Captain Ussop speaks.

"This village...? Then why did she join the Arlong Pirates, who now rule over this very same village?" He questions, not at all understanding what could drive her to do it. And he wouldn't because we aren't going to tell him. What really interests me is that he is still in the same position, with his mouth wide open and his eyes bulging. "Did she betray her own hometown!?" No, she never did, and she never will.

"Well, something like that." Nojiko doesn't admit or deny anything, but she clearly makes out that he is right. Better in the long run so we can get rid of him. "A real witch, right?" Yes, indeed. Not in the sense Captain Ussop is thinking, but she can be a witch. A money-grubbing witch that will try and get the most out of you.

"So? What's your business with the witch, Captain Ussop?"