At the same time, while Luffy tried to escape the dangerous subject, Zoro was wearing his usual frown.
"Hmm..."
The green-haired young man had climbed out of his deck chair and now stood near one side of the Going Merry with his arms folded, appearing from the outside to be staring fixedly at the jungle ahead. In reality, he was 'watching' the battle with Baroque Works much more closely, while simultaneously considering a future training plan and how best to carry out one of Luffy's orders. The order was technically optional, but Zoro himself saw obvious value in fulfilling it. Unfortunately, until this moment he had seen no opportunity whatsoever to do so. The radical changes in the situation on the island, however, had opened rather promising possibilities. All that remained was to make proper use of them.
"Zoro-san!" Vivi exclaimed in surprise when she came onto the deck and found the green-haired swordsman standing rather than sleeping in his chair. "Did something bother you?" she added after approaching with Karoo and seeing his furrowed brows.
It was hardly a great accomplishment, but over the time that had passed, the princess had learned to read the young man's moods rather well. That was why Vivi understood that something unpleasant or troublesome had happened on the island. Otherwise Zoro would have been frowning in a completely different way and, most importantly, he would still have been asleep.
"Bring Usopp back," the young man ordered instead of answering.
"What?" Vivi blinked in confusion.
"Quack?" Karoo echoed beside her, equally puzzled.
"Usopp's lying over there." Zoro tilted his chin in the appropriate direction. "Bring him onto the ship," he added, already turning and heading back toward his deck chair.
"QUACK!" Karoo immediately protested, flapping his wings. "QUACK! QUACK!" The huge yellow duck was categorical, clearly unwilling to let Vivi set foot on the island.
The swordsman had never been one for ceremony over minor matters, so one solid blow later, the panicking duck was instantly sent to dreamland.
"Ah... um... all right..."
After a brief hesitation and otherwise showing no reaction to Zoro's actions, Vivi was already preparing to jump toward the island when the young man's voice stopped her.
"Don't forget that the people on this island are responsible for all the suffering in your country, so show no mercy," he reminded her. "Today isn't the day for compassion."
Vivi was immediately impressed. Not even so much by Zoro's words themselves as by the sheer number of them spoken in such a short span of time. Normally he spoke that much only during training; the rest of the time he either slept or simply remained silent. At the same time, the words themselves, if not complete nonsense, came rather close. Saving Alabasta required eliminating Crocodile, so the massacre currently taking place on the island had almost nothing to do with Vivi or her country and almost everything to do with the Hats themselves. Yet understanding that required both possessing all the relevant information and having time to think. Vivi had only a small part of the former and had been given none of the latter. Add to that her age—only fifteen full years—her inexperience, and the identity of the person speaking, and Zoro's advice made an immeasurably greater impression on her than it should have.
"Don't worry, Zoro-san," Vivi replied, arranging her face into the most serious expression possible. "Nami-onee-sama and Luffy-onii-sama have taught me a lot about mercy and how to treat enemies during the time we've spent together."
Luffy would not have been Luffy if he had allowed Nami to outdo him so easily, which was how he had become 'onii-sama'. Zoro, already lying back down in his deck chair, involuntarily looked up at the girl after those words. Serious expression, tense posture—she was clearly trying to show how grown-up she already was and how well she understood everything. Yet in the young man's cynical eyes, Vivi strongly resembled an adorable puppy preparing to throw itself into a 'desperate battle' against a stuffed bear of comparable size and, at minimum, viciously chew off its button eyes. Her appearance contributed greatly to the association: white sneakers, short denim shorts, a white top, and a white cap over her blue hair gathered into a ponytail at the back of her head. On Nami, those clothes—her clothes!—looked breathtakingly sexy. On Vivi, they made her look young and fresh instead. A little tomboy. The clothes were clearly the wrong size for her as well, making her look even younger.
"If Luffy and Nami have already talked to you about mercy, then tell me: who has the right to spare their enemies?" Zoro asked, looking away and closing his eyes.
It was obvious to the swordsman that Nami and Luffy had already seriously begun working on the girl—as had every other family member, each to their own degree—but for now the process of changing her was only about halfway complete. And today, under 'favorable' circumstances, might allow her to cross most of the remaining distance at once. Otherwise Luffy would not have burdened Zoro with the orders he had given him.
"...Only the strong."
"Correct. And don't you dare forget it. Mercy is the privilege of the strong. If someone weak begins sparing their enemies, they'll die quickly. Tell me, are you strong?"
It was advice and a question that almost every member of the family had heard at one point or another.
"...No."
Vivi's voice made it obvious how uncomfortable she felt answering such a question.
"Then what are you?"
As always, Zoro had no intention of showing mercy despite all his own strength.
"I'm weak."
On the other hand, however strange and incredible it might look from the outside, one could not deny that the young man had turned out to be an astonishingly good teacher.
"And what does that mean?" Zoro continued applying pressure without any thought of easing up.
An extraordinarily strict teacher, absolutely merciless, and remarkably competent.
"...I don't have the right to spare my enemies," Vivi said, lowering her head involuntarily.
Although those teaching qualities had once appeared only intermittently, training Tashigi had finally drawn them fully to the surface.
"I hope those aren't empty words and that you genuinely understand your position."
One might say Zoro had developed a mental switch that now turned his inner sensei on and off. Right now, it was clearly set to 'on'. Otherwise he would never have said so much, Luffy's order or not. Amusingly, Zoro himself had yet to notice his newly acquired habit of lecturing people.
"Now go." Closing his eyes, the swordsman pointed in the direction he had already indicated. "Go before a couple of... whatever... hrr... hrr... hrr... get to Usopp..."
His arm dropped and, without finishing the sentence, Zoro fell asleep, instantly destroying all the seriousness of the moment. No matter how many times Vivi witnessed this strange trait of his, she could never get used to it. Hardly surprising. Zoro's ability to sleep—if one could even call it that—was every bit as impressive as his topographical idiocy. Both abilities were practically mythical in scale, perhaps without even needing the word 'practically'.
Shaking her head—whether in amazement or confusion, Vivi herself could not quite say—the girl gave a small hop and landed lightly on the ship's rail as though she weighed almost nothing. Though why 'as though'? Then she made another easy jump and, contrary to the laws of physics just as before, sailed effortlessly forward and upward, crossing the ten-meter gap between the Going Merry and the shore without difficulty. During the two months that had passed, the girl had learned to control her unexpectedly acquired Kilo Kilo no Mi, the Kilo-Kilo Fruit, to perfection. And by perfect control, perfect was exactly what was meant. No exaggeration. The reason was that along with the Fruit's power, Vivi had received... quite a lot of other things, if one was being honest. A great deal.
Much to her profound regret.
As she walked in the direction Zoro had indicated, the girl was once again assaulted by heavy thoughts. Ever since Whisky Peak, she had found almost no escape from them. The moment Vivi was left alone, they began pressing down on her with unbearable weight. She found relief in numerous lengthy training sessions and in being around everyone else. As long as she was busy, moving, or talking, she managed to avoid the uninvited and unwanted thoughts. Vivi had more than once privately thanked every god imaginable that the Going Merry was a small caravel rather than an enormous battleship. She did not even want to imagine what would have happened to her if she had been forced to sleep alone during the previous months rather than with Robin or her newly acquired onee-sama. Night, as everyone knew, was the most favorable time for fears and dark thoughts of every variety. Thanks to the events at Whisky Peak, Vivi had no shortage of either.
Death was a strange thing, one toward which no single attitude could exist. Every person perceived it differently. Some saw death as an inescapable curse; others saw it as salvation and release from every problem. Some hated it, some revered it, some were indifferent, and some could not wait for it to arrive so they could find eternal peace. Yet one of the most important factors affecting a person's attitude toward death was undeniably age. Fifteen full years was not an age at which anyone should be waiting for or wishing for death. And fifteen was certainly not an age at which anyone needed the experience of crossing beyond the boundary from which people rarely returned. Frankly, nobody needed such an experience at all, though many failed to understand that. There were things whose knowledge and understanding simply were not meant for the human mind. That did not mean people were incapable of grasping them; only that the price paid would not be worth the knowledge or understanding gained. The phrase 'ignorance is bliss' had not appeared for no reason, and it did not apply only to Luffy.
"Usopp-san."
"Well, hello there!"
"What a beauty!"
Vivi and the 'couple of whatever-hrr-hrr-hrr' Zoro had mentioned reached the sleeping long-nosed young man almost simultaneously. The pair turned out to be two bearded men of blatantly criminal appearance wearing Baroque Works insignia. Then again, who else but the organization's mercenaries could one expect to encounter here? Vivi and the two men emerging from the jungle froze the instant they saw one another, while between them Usopp continued breathing softly with a smile in his sleep.
"Hey... isn't that the princess?" one of the men asked the other after a brief pause.
"Young, blue hair, great tits? That's definitely her!"
"Ha-ha-ha! You were staring at her tits too when they showed us the picture?!"
Vivi really did have an excellent chest; nature had not cheated her there, and the white top from Nami's collection only emphasized exactly what nature had given her. In principle, nature had not cheated her in any department, not only that one. It was simply that beside the considerably older and more developed Nami and Robin, Vivi looked less 'gifted' than she actually was. Though it was not a very useful comparison. With age, she could quite possibly catch up to or surpass Robin in beauty. Compared with Nami, however, practically the entire female half of humanity would lose, with perhaps two or three exceptions. With the bar set that absurdly high, Vivi's defeat could hardly be treated as meaningful evidence of anything.
"As if there was anyone who didn't stare when they shoved her picture in our faces!" the second man replied without the slightest embarrassment at his partner's accusation. "And that's not what you should be thinking about right now! Think about our orders instead." He grinned in anticipation. "Remember what the commander said? If possible, we're supposed to bring the princess to him safe and unharmed, but what's she going to lose if we have a little fun with her first? Agree?"
"You know, I like the way you think!" The first man's face took on an anticipatory grin identical to the second's.
It was such a painfully predictable development that Luffy would have killed them for the cliché alone. Where was the imagination?! Both men, never taking their greasy eyes off Vivi, began slowly closing in on the calmly standing girl from both sides. After two months in the company of the utterly shameless Hats, comments and insinuations this mediocre could no longer affect her. After Sanji, who nearly licked every girl on the ship with his eyes every day—given permission, he would have simply licked them—and Johnny and Yosaku, who sometimes seemed capable of causing an early pregnancy merely by sitting nearby, the lecherous stares of the two approaching agents looked almost innocent. There was no need even to mention various indecent proposals, even when delivered as jokes. To all of that one also had to add two years of experience inside Baroque Works. Gentlemen were criminally rare in that organization, though expecting otherwise from a criminal organization would have been foolish. As a result, Vivi completely ignored everything the approaching men said.
"I won't let you harm Usopp-san," the girl said calmly.
"Don't worry, Princess. Unlike you, we have no interest in that guy," the first replied.
"But you interest us very, very much!" the second enthusiastically added.
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