123 new friend

Looking at Kuina, I could see Nami on her side. Seeing the manga and the real person in the flesh was completely different. It have something more than its 2D counterpart, the emotions, from her gaze, I could see the hidden emotions behind the faked exterior.

She was hurting, and it was clear to me. Living under Arlong rein from the past years was nothing like described. It wasn't the kid-friendly manga anymore, but real life, were man kill, ****, burn and plunder just for the pleasure of it.

Arlong? Being the racist he is must-have make them miserable, crushing them under his boot to vent his ill mind of the enslavement of his kind by the Tenryuubito. This circle of hatred all started by the greed of pigs thinking themselves the centre of the world, all the death, pain, tears, just for their sick pleasure, leaving the result in front of my eyes.

While some would have to think Nami despicable in the manga, for her greed of gold, it all rooted from her will of freedom. Her mind twisted that money will solve anything in this world. She was nothing like the Nami that I learn to know and love, she was a complex individual driven by her will from freedom.

Being so near her goal, only for it to be crushed by Arlong treason will leave more profound scars that showed in the manga, and I can't let it happen, it could shatter her.

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When Alex didn't respond further at Kuina, she was about to ask him something, only to be stoped by the gaze he was giving her. No, not her, but the girl at her side. She had never seen a gaze like that in someone else eyes.

The amount of raws emotions she sees flickering in them was staggering and was starting to make her unease. She couldn't understand their origin nor what they were transmitting, but she knows that it wasn't something superficial nor for her to interrupt.

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While Kuina couldn't understand them, Nami could. How could she not after seeing the same emotion in her sister gaze when Arlong had killed their mother in front of them.

'He knows!'

She doesn't understand how, but she somewhat knows that he understands her, the pain, the sacrifice, the hatred, the hope... But there was also something else, something she had refused to believe, yet know would happen.

While she was frozen, lost in those eyes, she didn't react when he rises, nor when he approached. She didn't fight back when he took her in is embrace, spreading a warmness she never thought she would feel against one day, the warmness of family. The very same feeling of comfort, of security Bellmere, would give them when they were scared and lost. That someone will take all her worries away.

Before her logical side could tell her that it was all false, a lie of her mind, his word strike into the deepest part of her mind, killing the traitorous thoughts before they surface.

"Everything will be alright, I will take care of him. He won't threaten you anymore."

It has been nothing more than whispered words, but for her, they might have been shaking the world. Unable to hold back any longer, her tears break free, her screams muffled into his chest as sobs were wrecking her body.

All the accumulated anger, fear, hatred was drained away into the embrace of someone she just encounters but feels to have known all her life.

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Nami needs near a complete hour to purge any negative thought she had accumulated from the past years. During all this time, she hadn't leave Alex arms a second, founding his warm embrace the most secure place she had since Bellmere death.

Finally, she raises her head, looking at Alex with her deep brown eyes. He immediately sees the difference, the weight she was born on her shoulder has nearly vanished, her previous fake smile had diminished but feel way more sincere, a true smile.

He has always found it strange that stranger could connect that easily, before. But after the past years, it wasn't the case anymore. He knows deep inside, that it was only a matter of time before she was his. They share a too deep connection for her to walk away from him, and he won't let her.

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Closing her eyes for a moment to enjoy his presence, Nami was still a little confused as to how she could be like this in front of a stranger, but she feels deep inside that they were mean to be, and she was strangely ok with that.

Alex was handsome but more important than anything else know and share a past similar to her. While she wanted to completely abandon herself to him, she couldn't, not yet, not until they take care of Arlong.

She knows that he promises her to take care of him, but she needs to be sure that he knows who was her tyrant, that he wouldn't be like Bellemere, protect her, only to leave her behind, alone.

Opening her eyes, she looks deeply at him before speaking.

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"I know you say you will take care of him, but you need to know who is it." She takes the oh-so-much hatred bounty poster from her pocket." Arlong isn't human, he is a monster. He had sunken hundred of ships nearing my island land, all to keep his hold on us. Marines won't even help as he had the nearest colonel in his pocket. He..."

"... Is a fisherman, coming from the Grand Line, but isn't the only one to do so. He had fled here because he was a weakling there. Here in east blue, he is only a large fish in a small pond. If SMoker wasn't such a bastard, wanting to keep the grand line route safe, he could have crushed him long ago." Cut her Alex

"How?! he is..." Start her to scream, her fear of the man still present.

"Nami," say him harshly, shutting her." You need to know that east blue is the weakest of the eight seas. Devil fruits aren't a legend and Smoker had eaten one of the strongest kind, Logia. Those fruits allow one-self to turn into element themself. As long as they aren't taken by surprise, it impossible to hit them by normal mean. Smoker had eaten the Moku-Moku no Mi, turning himself into smoke. No matter how much Arlong would have tried to strike him, all would have pass through him, that why he hid on the island. He knows that some can take him down here. As for me, I can reshape my surrounding according to my will. If need to be, I could bury him in the ground, before skewering him to death. He isn't invincible."

From her look, he knows she wanted to trust him, but was still held by the trauma of the past eight years.

"How about that," she perks at his word, taking her out of her thoughts and doubt."Baggy is also a Devil fruit user. He can separate his body into parts, and fly for a small extent. We will take him down, if after that you still don't think that I can take Arlong down in a face to face, I could always snipe him down. I will show you it later, alright?"

Calmed down, she nods. If he could take Baggy, a man with a 15,000,000B bounty easily, Arlong shouldn't be too much of a fight.

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"How are we doing this?" Ask Kuina, who had to stay quiet all along. After hearing why the orangette was wanting her that much in her team, she had mellow down. It was also another example for her that pirates were scums and cowards terrorising weaker peoples.

"Baggy is an easy man to anger, any allusion to his nose will make him see red. He is also proud of his fruit. He doesn't know that we know about it and will use it to scare us. I will capture any part of his body he will throw at us."

They plan made, the three made their way to the inn/bar.

"Here. I was thinking to go to Grand line to gather the rest of the money first, but I won't need it anymore, right?" Say Nami, taking the map out and giving it to Alex, with a bright smile.

"Hum."

To Nami surprise, the map just vanishes while he was holding it in his hand.

"How?!"

"I told you that I was able to modify my surrounding, right?" She nods, waiting for him to continue."I also have a storage of sort, where I could put everything I want it, that not alive, that it."

It didn't take long for Nami to understand what type of use one could make with those.

'He can become the greatest thief of all time!'

As she was lost in her disillusionment, they arrive at the inn.

"Ready?" Ask him looking at the two girls on his side.

They nod, Kuina taking out her blade and Nami her three-part staff. Breathing in, Alex shout.

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"Show yourself, your big, red-nosed freak, your buddy Rudolf is searching for you, they need a beacon for sailing in the dark and your bulb is perfect for it!"

The response wasn't long to came.

"Whose flashy bastard called me Rudolf the great rubber nose! I'll show you a big red ball!"

"The man had a few screws loose." Deadpan Nami.

At the top of the building, a cannon was pointed at them. Before they could shoot, Alex takes out his rifle and snipe down three of the six manning it. While they were only sixty or so meters far, Nami could see the head pop like busted ballon under the power of the bullet.

She never has seen a weapon that small inflict such damage.

'Even Arlong wouldn't be completely immune to that.' She knows that the man skin was extremely durable, having tried to shoot him before, she knows conventional weapon won't leave more than barely broken skin, but she couldn't help but imagine what type of damage Alex rifle would deal with him. It would be at the very least as if a normal man was shot down by a bullet, it would only need a good shoot and the monster could be taken down. (Remember that the rifle runs on ammo made from aircraft, not your average bullet, so the damage isn't the same.)

As the forth was shot down, they finally position the canon and fire, unwilling to tempts the devil, they immediately take cover, far from the canon.

Seeing the specially crafted cannonball of Baggy, Alex jump at it, with a slight twist of his hip, he changes from being in the ball trajectory to its side. The moment the ball was in front of it, he catches it delicately in his hand, storing it.

This was the first time he attempts something like this, unknowing if the inertia would still be kept, he had separate a part of his storage for it uniquely, but he was happy that the moment any corps enter the storage, they lost all their previous energy. This was because it was another dimension, was Alex to fix the rule. Having negated them, the cannonball was now floating in the middle of space.

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While Alex was silently landing, all present look at him with wide eyes, being able to vanish a cannonball in flight wasn't something you see every day. Particular individual clothes into a long red captain coat and the red and white striped shirt wasn't happy at all that he didn't see his great explosion.

"You bastard, I will blow you up for making a clown out of me!"

"You don't need me for that, you're ridiculous enough with that giant buzzer you call a nose."

The calm response of Alex sees Baggy' veins pop on his head, before shooting his hand.

"Bara-bara..."

Before he could finish screaming his attack like any self-respecting chunni, he feels and an immense amount of weight on it. Looking down, an enormous block of rock had appeared out of nowhere, and from the feeling, his hand was entombed in it.

"You bastard, you also have a devil..."

Once again, before he could finish, he was interrupted by Alex and Kuina. Both having taken support from the slab of stone, had jumped at the man, propelled by Alex, she sliced the man neck, forcing him to separate his head urgently from the rest of his body. Turning it tot the girl now rampaging in his men rank, he couldn't help himself to taunt her.

"Gyahahahaha, you're foul, I immune to cut!"

"You should look behind you." Say Kuina, sheathing her katana after cutting down a good part of the men, the other already flighting away.

"Hah? What do ... you ..." Turning as he spoke, he had barely the time to see the shadow looming above him before his sight was plunged into darkness, and feel something closely entrap his head. The lack of oxygen wasn't long to came and he starts to suffocate.

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After having propelled Kuina, Alex had wait for a second before launching himself at the now floating and turned head of Baggy. The instant he was above it, he transmutes a wooden prison around the head. Taking it under his arm, he kicks the twitching body down.

Once on the ground, he entraps it into a transmuted barrel, before freeing the trapped hand, and throwing it in. Before Baggy lost conscious, he frees his head into the barrel too.

Groggy from the lack of oxygen, he unconsciously recalls all his body part to him, making him whole again.

Seeing that the body of the clown was a single piece, he transmutes a lid around his neck and pour seawater into the barrel.

His addled mind hadn't the time to understand what was happening before his body was supported by his head, resting on the lid.

Reducing and manipulating the barrel to force Baggy into a seated position, his legs against his chest, he finishes by gagging the clown and render his unconscious before creating a case to hid the man head.

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Nami and the rest of the still alive crew of Baggy couldn't trust their eyes, a pirate with a 15,000,000B captured that easily, half his crew decimated, all by two peoples. While Nami was elated, her dream becoming clearer, the other pirates were horrified, without a word, all break apart into different direction trying to attain the port the faster possible and quit the island on stolen boats.

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After cleaning the inn/bar from any trace of BAggy's crew passage, Alex and Kuina, now followed by Nami, rejoin they boat, leaving the passed out Baggy into Alex cabin. Nami breaks apart for a moment, returning with her hidden boat not far.

As they would be now travelling together, Alex transmutes her boat into a replica of his own, making Kuina go with Nami as he will transform the leftover cabin into a holding cell from Baggy.

The Baggy' crate secured on a stone platform with transmuted with stone links on the four corner, he decides to inform Buddle and the villager that their town was safe to return.

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Founding the camp wasn't hard as they had established it on a hill overlooking the town not too far from it. The villagers posted on the road leading to the camp were at first warry of him.

"I came here to speak with a man named Buddle, I encounter in earlier, this morning."

Seeing them becoming more warry after speaking of their mayor name, he tried to defuse the situation.

"Why not one of you go, I will stay here and don't move."

The two looks at each other, before on bolt into the makeshift camp, returning not long after with a running Buddle, hope clearly on his face.

Seeing the man, Alex grins at him, before saying.

"All done, old man, other than the damages done by the pirates before, the town is clean. Around half of his men have fled on your people boat, though, so I would still keep an eye on the coast for a time if I were you."

Buddle burst into tears at this, few boats weren't a high price to pay to get rid of Baggy and his stooges.

"Thank you, young man, I can't express how grateful I am to you and your friend to have get rid us of that man."

"Don't worry, If you want, I may be able to repair some damage they had done."

"Thank you!" Sniff him, tears still running on his face.

Two hours and exastic town villagers later, Alex had repaired and created new houses from the one destroyed, he leaves them some boats to spread the news that their island was once again free and restart commerce.