Kai ghosted through the dirt paths of Cocoyasi Village, his footsteps making absolutely no sound.
It didn't take Observation Haki to feel the suffocating, heavy atmosphere choking the island. The villagers walked with their heads down, eyes hollow, casting terrified glances toward the towering, garish structure of Arlong Park in the distance.
Kai ignored the Fish-Man patrols entirely. Slipping past them was easier than breathing. He made a quick, silent sweep of the village until he found the house surrounded by a vibrant tangerine orchard.
He slipped inside. Empty.
He hadn't really expected her to be brewing tea and waiting for him, but it was worth a check. Leaving the quiet house, Kai hiked up a small, heavily forested hill just a few hundred yards away. It offered a perfect, unobstructed bird's-eye view of the tangerine orchard and the small cottage.
He found a comfortable patch of grass, dropped his stolen katana, and sat down.
"Not home, huh?" Kai muttered to himself, plucking a blade of grass and chewing on the end. "Must be out grinding for cash."
He ran the timeline through his head. Nami was around sixteen or seventeen right now. Ever since she was ten, she had been chained to the Arlong Pirates, forced to draft sea charts for the monsters who murdered her adoptive mother. She was currently out on the open sea, living up to her moniker as the 'Cat Burglar,' desperately scraping together the 100 million Berries she needed to buy back her village and her freedom.
Kai leaned back against a tree trunk.
There was nothing to do but wait. He wasn't leaving this island without her.
Truthfully, when he first broke out of Impel Down, Kai had fully intended to ride solo. Being a lone wolf sounded great on paper. Ultimate freedom. No crew to babysit, no one to hold him back, no annoying internal drama. Just him, his sword, and the open sea.
But reality had violently beaten that romantic notion out of him the second he tried to navigate the East Blue on his own.
He was a modern man from Earth. Before waking up in a watery hellhole, the closest he had ever gotten to sailing was riding a commercial ferry. He didn't know port from starboard, let alone how to read a maritime current or chart a course.
If getting from point A to point B in the 'Weakest Sea' was this miserable, the Grand Line would chew him up and spit him out in a day. The Grand Line didn't care how hard you could swing a sword. If you didn't have a top-tier navigator to guide you through sudden cyclones, magnetic anomalies, and the Calm Belt, your ship was going straight to the bottom of the ocean.
So, the plan changed. His planned route to visit Koushirou for sword training, drop by Loguetown for the history, had officially expanded to include Cocoyasi Village.
He needed a navigator, and Nami was arguably the best in the world.
Would recruiting her completely derail the timeline? Probably. He was straight-up stealing the future Pirate King's most vital crew member.
But honestly? Kai couldn't care less.
Luffy had the thickest plot armor in existence. If the rubber kid couldn't find Nami, he'd stumble backward into some other freakishly talented navigator. And if he didn't? If Luffy just sailed out into a storm and drowned because he was an idiot?
That wasn't Kai's problem. He wasn't Monkey D. Luffy's dad. Hell, even Monkey D. Dragon treated the kid like a stray dog, tossing him into a jungle and letting him fend for himself. Why should Kai bend over backward to preserve the timeline for someone else's sake?
As he sat on the hill, Kai's Observation Haki flared slightly.
He felt them. The faint, trembling presences hiding in the thick brush about a mile out.
Marine scouts. Garp's hounds had tracked him here. Kai didn't bat an eye. He was a walking 350-million-Berry bounty. Of course the World Government and every bounty hunter in the quadrant were going to be monitoring his every breath. It would be insulting if they weren't.
As long as they kept their distance and didn't interrupt him, they could watch all they wanted.
For the next two days, Kai didn't leave the hill.
He didn't sleep. He barely ate. He just trained.
With his [100x Training Multiplier] constantly running in the background, those forty-eight hours on the hill translated to over two hundred days of grueling, unbroken practice. He ran through the foundational forms Koushirou had drilled into him, over and over and over again.
Down in the brush, the Marine scouts watched through their high-powered spyglasses, completely terrified.
They saw a man swinging a simple katana. But with every passing hour, the air around him seemed to grow heavier. By the second day, every casual swing of his blade generated a localized vacuum, snapping the branches of the surrounding trees without the blade ever physically touching them.
Kai was solidifying his base. The chaotic, mismatched styles he had stolen from Level 6 were now entirely his own. He was forging a unified system, building an incredibly deep well of power that he could draw from effortlessly.
On the third night, the waiting finally paid off.
A small, single-masted boat slipped quietly into the hidden cove behind the tangerine orchard.
From his vantage point, Kai watched a slender silhouette hop over the side of the boat, wading through the shallows. It was Nami.
She looked exhausted. Her clothes were damp with sea spray, and she carried a surprisingly heavy-looking burlap sack slung over her shoulder. She moved with the practiced stealth of a seasoned thief, her eyes darting around the shadows, constantly checking for Fish-Man patrols.
She slipped through the wooden gate of the orchard, her posture relaxing just a fraction once she was surrounded by the familiar scent of the citrus trees.
She knelt at the base of a particularly large, healthy tangerine tree. Digging her hands into the soft earth, she moved the dirt aside to reveal a hidden wooden lockbox. She opened it, dumped the heavy contents of her burlap sack inside, the dull clinking of gold Berries echoing softly in the quiet night and locked it back up.
She carefully pushed the dirt back over the box, smoothing it out and scattering a few dead leaves over the top to completely mask the disturbed earth. It was a flawless cover-up.
Clap, clap. Nami dusted the dirt off her hands, letting out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire village.
She stood up, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead, and turned toward her front porch, desperate for a tall glass of cold water and a bed.
She took one step, and froze.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
A man was sitting on her front steps. He was casually leaning against the wooden railing, a long katana resting across his knees, and he was looking directly at her.
He hadn't made a single sound. She hadn't heard him breathe, hadn't heard him move. It was like he had simply materialized out of the shadows.
"Who the hell are you?!" Nami snapped, her voice low but laced with ice.
Her hand immediately dropped to her side, her fingers grazing the wooden staff strapped to her thigh. Her mind raced. Had he seen her bury the treasure? That money was her village's lifeblood. It was her freedom. If this stranger tried to take it, she would kill him.
She forced her face into a mask of arrogant confidence. She was an executive of the Arlong Pirates, damn it. She knew how to throw her weight around.
"You picked the wrong house to snoop around, buddy," Nami threatened, narrowing her eyes. "You know who runs this island? The Arlong Pirates. You want to mess with me, you mess with them."
She expected the guy to flinch. In the East Blue, dropping Arlong's name was usually enough to make grown men wet their pants and run for the hills.
But the man sitting on her porch didn't even blink. He just smiled.
"My name is Kai," he said, his voice calm, smooth, and entirely unbothered. "Sorry for dropping by uninvited. But I've got a business proposition I'd like to discuss with you."
Nami opened her mouth to tell him exactly where he could shove his proposition.
But the words died in her throat.
Wait.
Her eyes locked onto his face. The sharp jawline. The casual, confident posture. The dark, piercing eyes.
She had just spent the last few weeks sailing from port to port, robbing low-level pirates blind. And at every single port, the local taverns and docks were absolutely plastered with a brand new, terrifying wanted poster.
"Kai..." Nami whispered, the blood instantly draining from her face.
Her confident facade shattered into a million pieces. Her knees suddenly felt like jelly.
The Impel Down Escapee! Bounty 350,000,000 Berries!
Panic, cold and suffocating, gripped her lungs.
Nami was a survivor. She had spent the last eight years living under the thumb of a monster. She had developed a thick skin and a psychological resilience that most fully-grown Marines lacked. She could lie, cheat, and steal with a smile on her face, completely masking her true emotions.
But right now? She was utterly terrified.
Arlong the massive, terrifying Fish-Man who ruled her life, the monster who snapped necks like twigs and extorted entire islands only had a bounty of twenty million Berries.
Twenty million!
The man sitting casually on her front porch was worth almost eighteen times that amount. Arlong wasn't even a rounding error compared to this guy!
If Arlong was a local tyrant, the man in front of her was a walking apocalypse. And she had just tried to threaten him with Arlong's name.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Nami screamed at herself internally.
Why was a Grand Line nightmare sitting on her porch?! Did he want her money? Did he want to take over the island? Was he going to kill her just for looking at him funny?
Nami dug her fingernails into her palms, the sharp pain grounding her. She took a slow, trembling breath, forcing her survival instincts into overdrive. Panic meant death. She needed to be useful. She needed to figure out what he wanted.
She swallowed hard, carefully studying Kai. He wasn't drawing his sword. He wasn't giving off an ounce of killing intent. He was just... waiting.
Slowly, she managed to wrangle her racing heart under control. The color returned to her cheeks, though her eyes remained wide and cautious.
"A business proposition?" Nami asked, her voice remarkably steady despite the sheer terror radiating through her nervous system. She crossed her arms defensively. "What kind of business does a three-hundred-and-fifty-million Berry runaway have with a local thief?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Support the Flying Lizard 🦎 https://patreon.com/FlyingLizard (Pure donation / Tip Jar, All chapters remain free for everyone) The support will go a long way 🥺.