Chapter Text
Smoker holds back a sigh as he escorts the Chore Girl around the outside of the restaurant to find the weird kid who had tried to attack Dracule goddamn Mihawk in public because this is his life now. The weird kid who thinks holding a sword between his teeth is a viable strategy. The weird kid who somehow turned his charge into a sobbing mess without even looking at her and who consequently left him to deal with a crying young girl which is just… not in any way part of his skillset. He’s, to quote his bunkmates from officer training, “eight foot and change with shoulders like a particularly well bred ox” and probably as far from approachable to children as is physically possible. (Garp is even bigger and buffer than him and claims to be great with kids, and there are rumors around HQ that his size is the least of the man’s problems with them; Smoker, having met Garp, believes those rumors implicitly (they’re rumors only in that nobody wants to acknowledge that someone might have actually left Garp alone with children for any amount of time)).
Maybe that’s something he’ll have to look into. If he wants to be a Marine officer, it’s probably not the best look if kids get scared just from seeing him walk down the street. It certainly didn’t earn him any more points with the restaurant staff when the girl he’d tied to her chair started sobbing into his smoke. Then the Chore Girl suddenly tried to drag him off to find that other kid and they ended up leaving just when the waiter came out with their entrees so he’s pretty sure that they have him banned from the restaurant by now because that’s just the way this day is going.
(Also his left arm feels sticky with tears and snot now which is not something he knew about how his devil fruit works and quite frankly never wanted to know.)
The one bright spot in all of this is that Mihawk and his contact stayed inside the restaurant, which means that the Chore Girl is finally a safe distance away from him and hopefully thoroughly distracted from her plans of Suicide By Shishibukai.
Chore Girl seems to spot her target because she takes off ahead of him, a determined expression on her face as she runs towards the deck at the back of the restaurant, slipping on a wet patch of deck, stumbling sideways to step right onto the upside-down bucket set aside to dry out and do a form-perfect flip over the railing.
Smoker blinks, staring blankly at the now empty part of deck very much missing any Chore Girls, before his brain finally catches up with the sheer ridiculousness of the last five seconds and the color drains from his face.
He dashes over to the railing, trying to find any sign of the Chore Girl down in the sea because he’s a devil fruit user and he can’t jump after her but she isn’t and surely even someone her age would know how to swim before they let her on a ship, right? Because no matter what he thinks of her she’s his responsibility and he can’t have a subordinate die like this, not after keeping her alive in a room with Mihawk and he hasn’t even had a battle on this assignment yet, he isn’t prepared to-
“Is this yours?”
He freezes, halfway across the railing, and turns his head towards the gruff voice only to find Chore Girl floating a few steps away from him, eyes rolled up and foaming at the mouth but alive (probably alive, hopefully alive). His hands shoot out on thick ropes of smoke to wrap around her and pull her over to him, quickly checking her pulse and her breathing before he finally relaxes, holding her close as he focuses his attention on the one who caught her.
A single disembodied hand floats where Chore Girl had been, backing away to where Buggy The Clown steps out from a doorway to catch it with his stump. “I’d tell you to be more careful with your charge, but quite frankly if there is a kid her age who doesn’t manage to get into trouble no matter what you do, I haven’t found them yet.”
Smoker takes a step back, moving the Chore Girl behind him with his smoke while keeping an eye on the clown’s various limbs. “What were you doing with my subordinate?”
The clown rolls his eyes. “What, I can’t have just decided to save her because I’m a pirate? Believe it or not, there’s a pretty big morality gap between flying the Jolly Roger and watching kids drown for fun.”
Smoker doesn’t lower his guard, fists turned to smoke. “Excuse me for not taking ethics lessons from one of the highest bounties in the East Blue.”
The clown snorts. “The government is willing to shell out, what, ten million for me? Twelve? One of the highest bounties in the East Blue is still just peanuts anywhere else. I’ve seen mountain bandits and mob bosses in this region who are worth more than half of that.”
“My apologies if the reward for your government-sponsored demise offends your sensibilities. You still haven’t given me reason to believe that you don’t have some ulterior motives for saving my subordinate. If you’re hoping to blackmail me or have me indebted to you, I don’t bargain with criminals.”
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” The clown snorts again, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall. “If you have to know, I have my own brats running underfoot and nearly getting themselves killed. I wasn’t going to let another brat bite it if I can help it.”
Smoker pauses, eyes roaming over the literal clown with a bright red nose and two-day stubble.
“WHATEVER YOU’RE THINKING, STOP IT!”
“I’m trying my hardest.” He pushes the floating head back out of his personal space. “Why would you tell me this?”
“Well, I’m not about to give you any details to track them down with.” The head floats back to reconnect with the rest of its body, the pirate rolling his shoulders. “That said, I’m reasonably sure that you’re a decent enough person to not go hunting a bunch of kids just for the crime of association.”
“And how do you figure that?” Smoker crosses his arms, glaring at him. “I think I’d remember if I’d met someone like you before, and I’ve barely even been in this Blue for a month.”
The clown smirks back at him. “Simple. You’re a Logia from outside this Blue. If they thought they could get you to toe their line, they’d have tossed a Captain rank and your own ship at you and sent you right out on the Grand Line. But instead you’re out here in the East Blue of all places just barely scratching the officer ranks. Just about the only thing that could get the World Government to toss away a resource like that is if you have one of those pesky cases of morals.”
Smoker twitches slightly and grits his teeth. It’s not like he could have not noticed how his first assignment compares to everyone else in his graduating class of devil fruit users. Nobody else was sent to the East Blue, since the ‘weakest sea’ hardly requires more than enough common stock troops to cover it and the occasional, locally sourced above-average brawler to serve as officers leading the various branches and outposts. As far as he’d found there aren’t any other devil fruit users across the various East Blue branches at all, aside from himself and some kind of benign Rat Zoan patrolling the area in the North around Conomi Islands.
Still, he’s not about to let himself get lectured on the organization he pledged his life to by someone flying the flag of their sworn enemy. “Are you telling me that you of all people question the ethics of the Marines?”
“Believe what you want. All I’m saying is that even the Buddha gets orders from someone, and those orders rarely involve protecting civilian lives.” The pirate just shrugs, turning to walk away like he has no care in the world, especially not turning his back to a Marine officer who, under-ranked or not, does have Logia powers and the training to use them. “Just something for you to think about until the next time our paths cross.” He raises a hand in a lazy wave right before he turns around the corner and disappears back into the restaurant.
Smoker watches him go, glaring at the empty air for a moment before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a cigar. He doesn’t light it, just in case the restaurant staff hasn’t blacklisted him for life yet and are looking for another excuse to do so, but he’s grinding his teeth around it hard enough to squeeze his dose of nicotine out of the tobacco anyway.
The Chore Girl groans softly against his side and he flinches a little before forcing himself to untense and lifting her up in front of him. She’s still out of it, but she still doesn’t have any visible injuries so she likely won’t stay that way for long. Glancing back at the empty deck where the green-haired hellion kid isn’t anymore, he decides to get out of dodge while he still has any remaining dignity and a technically unharmed Chore Girl to deliver back to his ship.
He wonders if he’ll be required to write a mission report for this outing. He hopes not, because paperwork aside, he has no interest in being dragged back into whatever kind of shenanigans Dracule Mihawk is getting into with a moderately successful clown and only slightly more successful pirate. He’s certainly not in any rush to meet either of them again anytime soon.
A few months or a year at most, and Marineford is surely going to pull him back to the Grand Line where he can ignore Mihawk and Mihawk can magnanimously not-murder him like he does with every (most) other Marine. At least then he can put the clown and his weird philosophizing out of his mind for good. One thing the pirate was right about was that bounties in the East Blue are laughable even compared to the other Blues. Once he gets back to the Grand Line, he’s hardly going to have to deal with anyone from this sea ever again.