Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The days passed idly.

On the East side of the City, Zoro could take a job that paid his rent and utilities and live out the rest of his life like that. Crime was near non-existent, too. There was nothing to do here, despite having the most farmland and peaceful weather in the suburbs of Goa. For long stretches of land, you would only see houses dotting the horizon every once in a while.

Zoro hated it.

Another day and the sameness would kill him, surely. The hunger he had inside him ever since he first picked up a bamboo sword and swore to his pen pal that he would become the greatest...it kept growing and trying to escape outside of him. His hunger felt almost alive, writhing beneath his skin.

To stave off the boredom and the complacency, Zoro left home before this monster acted out and did something he would regret.

By the time he returned, he would be changed beyond recognition.

Zoro had a suspicion someone was following him.

When you’ve been on the road for a few years, you pick up a few things. You can sense the gaze of suspicion tracking your movement in a store. You can sense the presence of a shadow in your peripheral. You know when to drive past a gas station with a lack of traffic in both directions. You know, everyday skills.

Zoro knew sometimes his mind made things up to keep him on his toes. Having no one to have your back made a person hyper aware of their surroundings. Zoro wasn’t crazy.

For the past three towns, Zoro wasn’t so sure anymore.

The presence felt small, like a kid’s. At night, when he stood at the edges of the light of his motel, he could sense being watched. During the day, the presence disappeared except for when he ate. He didn’t know why, it just was.

Zoro’s determination to get rid of his tail was at its tipping point.

Before he could act on it though, he got thrown into jail. The reason for it was ridiculous, as was common in a small town in the smack dab of nowhere with not much to do for the local police.

“Jaywalking?” Zoro grumbled against the wall of the dirty cell that had been cleared of storage recently.

Jaywalking in a town that had all of two traffic lights? There wasn’t even paint on the ground to indicate where the crosswalk laid. Zoro had crossed the street from the restaurant to the grocery mart slash gas station that served as the town’s food supply. He was not going to waste time when there wasn’t any traffic to worry about.

Zoro spied a helmet-haired brat in a double-breasted coat peeking from behind the corner. He startled and fled when Zoro narrowed his eyes. There went his snitch.

He sighed as he laid on the threadbare cot. Three days of nothingness and no food. Wasn’t this inhumane treatment? The least they could do was give him water.

The officers wouldn’t let him out if he had no one to call. Like blue-coated rabbits to a lion, they trembled when he glared but refused to let him out of his cage. He had yelled and threatened to kick the bars down, yet none had answered or came to his aid.

For this reason, Zoro felt something akin to fear. All the insults from his childhood came rearing their ugly head, born from useless adults and pig-headed kids who couldn’t beat submissiveness into him. He would die in a cell due to the idleness of a village and Zoro’s inability to change.

It must have been the starvation and the dehydration that made him create a friend in his forced solitude.

As he dozed off, probably into a coma, a shadow in the corner of his eye moved.

At first, he dismissed it. When he got up too fast the past two days, spots would speckle his vision. He assumed this shadow was another side effect.

His thoughts changed when the shadow meowed.

His eyes flew open. Zoro met two spots of yellow in the darkest corner of his cell.

This was how he met Rubber-man.

Eventually Zoro had to return home.

Some concern must have awoken in his landlord after he was officially released, for one morning Mihawk set down his newspaper and said to him:

“The New World isn’t ready for you.”

Mind you, Zoro had grown up used to hearing he couldn’t do things yet. He was either too unambitious, too hot headed, or too simple for anything important. They were common complaints in his short stint with high school and incompetent educators.

Spite fueled him to prove them all wrong. He was strong, he was levelheaded, and he was energy-saving. Those traits were all he needed to live a peaceful life.

His landlord’s words rang in his head. Zoro had grown comfy with contradiction thrown at him from every direction. There was so much push he faltered when something actually gave.

“How do you know that’s where I’m headed?” Zoro asked. He had to raise his voice to allow Perona to listen in.

“The New World is where every hopeful with a goal ends up eventually,” Mihawk answered, sipping his glass of wine. As he spoke, his sharp eyes trailed the contents of the day’s newspaper. From where Zoro could see, the words “RIOTS AND DEATH OF FIRE—” headlined the front page, the rest of it cut off by the bend of the newspaper. “Unfortunately, the powers that rule this area of the world do not take to change as easily as the tide. Your generation represents the future they can’t control.”

Zoro groaned and leaned back in his dining room chair. This had the tellings of another one of Mihawk’s impromptu bouts of whimsical wisdom.

“You have seen the signs already.” Mihawk stated.

Zoro didn’t have as much words as his landlord, but he knew this much: the world wasn’t on his side.

He crossed his arms and set his jaw. “So?” he said.

Mihawk put his wine glass and newspaper aside. He sat back and gazed at his tenant in contemplation.

“Keep that mindset and you can go anywhere, Roronoa,” he declared, wagging his finger.

The occurrence was the last he saw of his landlord’s mentor-like sensibilities. From then on, it was Zoro and the farmers who minded the fields surrounding Mihawk’s property. Zoro wondered why, when Mihawk refused to let Zoro into the mansion.

“Your body is strong. It’s high time you put your other strengths to use,” Mihawk explained.

“You want me out of here so I don’t have to hear you and your guests get stupid drunk at night.” Zoro nodded. “I got ya.”

Mihawk didn’t refute his claim, which was all the answer Zoro needed. Zoro did sleep heavier when his body was exhausted.

He could use the sun. His other housemates complained he hogged the flatscreen too often. Said he was getting all “NEET” by cooping up inside all the time for his international tournaments.

Well, that was alright. He also had a friend he wanted to see more of.

“Rubber-man!” Zoro called out to the fields of the farmer he was helping out today.

He waited a few moments before a dark shadow parted the corn stalks and pranced toward him. He was relieved since Rubber-man tended to wander off alone for days at a time.

“Hey,” Zoro greeted. He got down and scratched under the black cat’s chin. “What’s the agenda for today, big guy?”

Zoro liked to call the slim cat “big guy” for managing to intimidate a grown human man into submission. Admittedly, the guy was more wimpy than grown, but it was the thought that counted.

Rubber-man rubbed his ear on Zoro’s leg and climbed him like a tree. If the cat wasn’t as agile as a monkey, Zoro would have had a tough time keeping him on his shoulder like a creepy pelt.

After six hours of tending to the fields, Zoro collapsed on his behind with his head in his gloved hands.

“There’s nothing wrong. It’s just the same old same old,” Zoro said after his feline companion chirped inquisitively beside him.

Rubber-man tilted his head. The cat couldn’t understand the way humans drove themselves into the ground every day, or why Zoro would subject himself to this work if it made him this tired. The most he had seen the cat do when on his assigned “Rubber-Man Days” was bite ferociously at a piece of loose string from a pole. The cat had gone after it for ten minutes.

Zoro watched the cat dismiss him and curl in the sun, right on top of the crate he needed to haul over to the back of the truck he had been working on for the last hour. It looked like Rubber-man decided for the both of them that the day was over. A break was well deserved.

He and the cat yawned. Another day of pleasant weather.

Zoro squinted at the lazy swirl of clouds in the sky. If he stared too long, the time would pass him by. With time brought new thoughts he would idle on and consider. It was a habit he tried not to get into too often.

Somehow, sometime into his tenure to the farmers of this land, Zoro had outgrown this place.

Mihawk’s prediction had been right. Whoever he had been the moment he returned to Kuraigana was long gone.

No, not gone. Bettered. Fortified. Improved.

Ready to take on the New World.

Zoro offered the back of his hand to Rubber-man. The cat sniffed the offered hand and ducked under it to get the awesome skritches. He chirped in contentment. Zoro smiled.

“How about we go on an adventure?”

Chapter Text

In the midst of stealing back her stolen convertible, Nami finds something familiar in this random town. She could recognize the straw hat and the red ribbon anywhere.

“Isn’t that?!” Nami screeches to a stop and backs up to where the cat in question has continued strutting casually down the sidewalk.

As soon as she parks on the wrong side of the road, Nami kicks open the passenger’s side door. “OI! How did you get all the way over here? The house is 32.6 km southeast!” she calls after the black cat.

The black cat pauses and chirps at Nami in surprise, trotting up to the car. That should be her line, dammit!

“Ugh.” Nami could hear the commotion of duped idiots getting closer. With a glare, she ushers the cat in. “Let’s go! I can give you a ride back home faster.” Nami could have sworn she saw the cat in her alley this morning, stealing scraps from the takoyaki stand owner who resembles one of the guys from the problematic frat house on campus.

It was a matter to think on later. Nami had to get the hell out of dodge fast before those criminals find her.

A tomato red, beat-up Prius zooms past and stops a block away. Three heads pop out of the open windows and throw profanities and fists at her. The most she can make out is “That’s Boss’ car!”

That’s her cue to leave the scene. If there’s one thing she can boast about, it’s not getting caught.

Nami changes gears and hits the gas. With one hand on the wheel, Nami manages to get in a quick pet while turning the car around and crossing lanes in the opposite direction. She ignores the indignant honking and braking behind her.

There was nothing like the feeling of wind blowing through your hair and a cat napping in the passenger seat during a high speed car chase.

If Nami had focused more on her surroundings, she would have heard a fourth voice calling out not for her, but for the cat beside her. Even then, she wouldn’t have realized it was the same cat. After all, she didn’t know any felines named “Rubber-man”.

xXx

She had named him “Arty” while scoping out the museum she planned as her next hit. 

The idea came as a whim one day as she looked out from within a storefront, waiting for the cashier to finish running up her mountain of purchases. After haggling to her satisfaction, Nami had time to let her gaze wander.

Usually her eye honed in on shiny, expensive things, yet this particular day she sought something fresh.

Nami had been away from home for three months. She had sent no calls or even a text to her sister Nojiko, who was probably, quietly, stark-raving pissed as all heck.

Her sister, who had taken a stick-and-poke tattoo on a dare with a poker face, was not to be trifled with. She was one of the few people Nami could love without worry of being left behind. It went without saying that Nami was apprehensive about returning and facing her wrath.

God, she still missed the comfort of home despite doing this for years. Her van was starting to smell and there was only so many times she could take showers in crappy motels without finding at least four hidden cameras.

Maybe her yearning to be in her own bed and being surrounded by her orange-scented yard made her notice the painting on the wall across from the shop. It was random decorations put up to fill empty space, meaning it wasn’t meant to be noticed.

Of the three paintings, one had a chromatic theme of orange. The painting hung from the middle row, stretched on a square canvas to accentuate the volume of the slightly off-center fruit painted in several shades and tints of the same color. The only thing that broke the symmetry was the green of a Berry tacked onto the leafless stem of the orange.

It took only a split second for Nami to fancy a life of pursuing priceless paintings. The same night after hours, the painting found itself wrapped tightly in cloth, tucked under the floor of her van.

Fast forward to the local donation-sponsored museum. This was going to be her second museum heist. Nami wasn’t stupid to think she could hit up a high security public museum sponsored by the city and government so soon. As much as she liked the thought of being called the “most beautiful phantom thief”, Nami valued her head by not biting off more than she can chew. It would be nice to gain a reputation with a resume, rather than getting caught and earning herself a title of pretty, petty thief.

When one partakes in her profession, there are three S’s to remember: sophistication, specialization, and most importantly shine.

She rather liked cats, especially when used in the same sentence as “burglars”. There weren’t any cat burglars in this museum (besides herself) but Nami had an interest in the cat exhibit being put on show for the next month.

No, it would be false to say she was interested in the cat exhibit. Nami’s real focus was what they were putting away while the cat exhibit was showcased.

What Nami wanted was a painted fox mask, carved out of the red amber of an ancient tree, used by the miko of a famous shrine several centuries ago. She knew this from asking a reliable source for a favor to check if the red amber was real, as it was the rarest form of amber.

Once she got confirmation through a throw-away email address on the dark web, Nami made plans.

Now Nami sat in her disguise, waiting for the ticket admission clerk to take her break. It was a pleasant day, perfect for sun warming and subtly watching the museum entrance from across the street. The cameras angled at the entrance had a blind spot at the back of the clerk’s desk. All she needed to do was scale over the ticket counter and dig around from below.

Inevitably, her plans were ruined the moment a security guard showed up halfway through the day.

He was rather old and looked like he had settled down after decades of radical fun judging by his funky pointy shades and spiky gray hair. He had attentive eyes, though, and that was all that mattered for his job.

This step of the plan got three times harder. She would have to get creative.

As she flipped through various scenarios to distract the security guard, the man in question straightened from his relaxed posture. Nami gripped her iced tea and tensed.

From behind her sunglasses, Nami watched the guard stroll toward the automatic doors. He seemed intent on stopping somebody or something. He checked his watch twice, rolling on the balls of his feet in wait.

Nami ordered a chai latte. The guard was probably waiting for a lover, or for a guest who frequented the museum. Nami enjoyed breaking hearts, but seeing others’ romance was hard to watch. That kind of love seemed unreasonable and pointless.

The waiter came and began pouring steamed milk into her tea cup as something finally happened.

The automatic doors slid open. The guard, who had begun relaxing, fixed himself upright and trotted toward the door. He bent down low and made a shooing motion at nothing.

Well, almost nothing. A black thing the size of a rat scampered away from the guard’s white glove. A doll-sized straw hat broke the black, and Nami recognized the thing as a cat.

Five minutes later, the cat snuck back to the entrance. The clerk had already gone on her break, and the guard had his single hand full keeping the cat out of the museum without physically touching the cat. The cat always swerved away from the guard’s hand before the guard could grab it, and the cat tended to try to go around the guard as if the man was another patron of the museum on their way out.

The cat clearly knew it was in the wrong but tried to enter anyway. It was intelligent and determined. It must have spotted the advertisement for the cat exhibit and wanted to see if there were prospective cats inside.

An idea struck her. Nami could use this situation to her advantage.

This cat would become an unknowing accomplice to her heist.

xXx

Nami never did get that fox mask.

The reason was the stupid friendly cat!

Through all her attempts to push him away, he kept coming back to her whenever she tried to sneak her way in.

The guard recognized her face after several failed attempts at sneaking behind the desk. His name was Z and he was too zany and upbeat for a security guard in a mild museum. The young blue-haired clerk certainly thought so, tutting at him and urging him to retire. There was another stand-in guard, too, actually a part-time curator for the next door horticultural conservatory. How Nami knew about them was by accident, when Arty wound himself around her legs after she tried to persuade the security guard to go on his break.

They recognized her as the lady who came by the museum to secretly play with the black cat. Nami didn’t mind whatever rumors they made up about her, as long as they didn’t suspect her true intentions.

It was still frustrating, though! The cat exhibit was almost over and she was nowhere close to getting the fox mask. The clerk and part-time guard even told her about the new exhibit coming up. Something about dinosaur eggs? They seemed oddly excited about it.

Nami made amends to her plan. Arty was the one to give her the courage to do it.

Everyday, on the clock, Arty would return to the museum and try to get in. Every attempt would get rebuffed without fail. He never gave up, determined to get in the same way everybody else did. Someone had to slip up eventually.

Nami figured she could take a page out of the cat’s book. The difference was, Nami could actually enter the museum as long as she bought a ticket. She wasn’t a cat sneaking in without permission.

For every move to get behind the counter, Nami hadn’t considered just walking in as a patron. It required purchasing a ticket to see the actual exhibit. She wasn’t the type to view art if it wasn’t in her possession so she had subconsciously dismissed the idea.

Now that she was inside, Nami saw what drew people in.

The exhibit revealed photos of cats in motion. A majority of them were unflattering stills of cats yawning and falling clumsily from their jumps. The artist note at the beginning said something about how graceful photos of cats were ordinary. He wanted to show the world the ugly side of cats 99 percent of the time.

On that she could agree. Arty was the most ungraceful cat she had ever seen. Even when he tried to convince her to pet him, he ended up flopping half against her leg mid-rub. He once jumped from a wall ledge to the next wall and fell short the scant few centimeters onto his feet. Even the way he slept was extremely tomboyish, with his tongue out and his eyes half open on hot days.

If Nami didn’t have an opinion on cats before, she definitely had one now. Cats were certified idiots.

Nami gazed at a photo of a cat mid-lick at its genitals. It’s not like she particularly hated cats. They were pests that killed the local bird population. They also significantly lowered the rat infestations on barns and orchards, so that was a plus.

Nami even had a cat briefly when she was a kid. She should have a positive opinion on them, right?

xXx

Her name was Bella. Like a creative 9 year old, she named the beautiful chocolate cat after her mom. When her mom left to receive PTSD therapy overseas and had to keep a barely adult Nojiko and an adolescent Nami behind for a bunch of bullshit legal reasons (A.K.A they were orphans), Nami needed something to fill the void her foster mom’s absence left.

Nojiko tried to be what Belle-mere was, Nami knew she did.

Her sister was the same as her, struggling to cope with their foster mom’s absence in a world that gave little to no support for orphans. Their neighbors tried their best, but the local gang kept them from giving the girls the best they could provide. They weren’t the richest people so they could only give so much, and they knew it couldn’t last.

Nojiko skipped college and took over the orchard full-time. She got on an overnight job doing something. All Nami knew was that Nojiko had extra cash somewhere when the sales were low for the month. They were barely living above poverty trying to keep out of the eyes of the local gangs. Even their mom’s veteran’s stipend she sent monthly was barely enough to cover for them.

Nojiko working gave Nami plenty of time to herself. Now that she looked back on it, she can trace where her isolation issues stemmed from. It wasn’t Nojiko or Belle-mere’s fault for their neglect but it still affected her even a decade later. 

Nami can count the number of friends she has on one hand. She always pushed them away before they got too close. They’ll get to see how frugal she is, how she doesn’t have a permanent address, and how she refuses to eat at a restaurant with less than high prices if the tab is on someone else. 

So no, Nami doesn’t hate cats. She’s actually a bit envious of them.

Bella came into their life, swept away from the previous night’s heavy rain into their clogged gutters. Nojiko had mistaken her as a patch of mud until Nami saw the steady rise of the kitten’s chest. The sides under the kitten’s ears had been scraped off, bleeding onto the matted orange and red leaves.

For weeks they nursed the kitten until its skin healed over. The potato-sized mound of fluff tripled to an eggplant-sized furry hunger machine with bald spots under its ears. The kitten grew into a hyperactive young adult cat.

From then on, it was Nami and Bella. Nami became Bella’s third favorite playmate, behind moths and grass. At night, Bella would sleep on Nami’s thigh and chew at her hair when they were both tired from the day.

Nami had adored her more than any jewels or piles of money. Nojiko called them twin spitfires for the feisty way they played with the other kids.

For four months, Nami had assumed Bella was hers even without a collar. They fed her and kept her warm, even providing snuggles when the cat allowed it.

It became clear that Bella didn’t need her when the next monsoon hit their town and destroyed the power for two days.

In all the chaos, with the orchard trees falling from extreme winds and heavy rain flooding the fields, Nami had lost sight of Bella. She only had the cat for a short while and Nami could say she had never loved anything else unconditionally like she had for the young cat.

When the disaster was over, Nojiko had assured her Bella would find a place to shelter. Cats were survivors and tenacious to live another day. Bella wouldn’t be beat by a mere monsoon.

To this day, it’s still a mystery where Bella had gone.

xXx

With the cat exhibit put away and the dinosaur eggs transitioning to be showcased, Nami wondered if the black cat belonged to anyone. The straw hat looked one step away from tearing into pieces last time she saw Arty. The red tattered ribbon could use a fresh replacement, too.

“Oooh, mikan-chan! Here to wait for lil’ Straw Hat with me?” Z strode over to her, chuckling at Nami’s affronted expression. 

The employees familiar with Arty called him that moniker, too. She didn’t want to be like them. The trio gave off similar vibes like the frat boys that leered at her whenever she walked between classes. They had motives she couldn’t trust.

“I’m just curious about where the kitty goes every day,” Nami said as her museum patron persona, all sweet and a bit ditzy.

“Whenever I shoo him off for the day, he always walks in the same direction.” Z pointed toward the restaurant district. “He does his weekly patrols around the area. This museum is another marker on his path, I reckon.”

Nami hummed and adjusted her sunglasses. Interesting to note the cat had a routine. Made tracking him easier.

Instead of following the cat like a stalker, she had a camera collar to attach to his neck as Arty went about his day. Despite her failure with the museum heist, Nami still had other heists lined up. One misfire couldn’t stop the rest of the rounds from going off.

“I appreciate the tip! I’ll go get a drink while I wait,” Nami thanked Z and left.

A little while later with a fresh drink of milk tea in hand, Nami caught Arty on his way out of the museum.

“Be careful. This camera is top of the line. I even paid extra for one day shipping so this better not break!” Nami warned the cat as she cinched the collar around his neck.

Arty scratched at the collar like a dog. He chirped as if reassuring nothing would happen, rubbing his head against her knee like that could convince her.

Nami didn’t trust his happy expression. The cat was bound to get into trouble regardless of her warning.

“Okay, go! Be off, you goof.” Nami waved her hands and watched him saunter away with her fists on her hips. 

The black cat headed toward the busy restaurants as expected. Arty looked back once, releasing a quick meow in goodbye. Nami rolled her eyes and smiled as he disappeared around the corner.

xXx

Maybe the museum employees aren’t technically wrong about her. Nami isn’t a cat person, yet she finds herself slowly becoming an “Arty” person. She can love him without being afraid.

In comparison, people are easy to give up on. Cats are true to themselves and don’t care how the rest of the world is. People can love cats all they want and the cats in return won’t refuse the affection.

The footage from the collar reveals a variety of people who doted on the black cat as Arty made his way through the day. One feeds him premium raw fish on a platter in a dirty alley. Another lets him sleep on the piano in their bar late at night. A beautiful woman allows Arty to curl up beside her in a dark dusty basement. One kid even gave Arty a flea bath.

For the first time in a long while, Nami wants to steal something intangible. She wants to know these people’s stories. Seeing them interact with Arty makes her curious about how they met him, and how Arty met them in turn.

Maybe she had invaded their privacy. It was obvious some people noticed the camera around Arty’s neck but had left it alone. After all, none of them knew who Arty belonged to. They probably assumed the collar was a deterrent from Arty’s “owner” to keep the cat out of the pound. Nami had seen the spark of curiosity and acceptance in their eyes. It wasn’t in their nature to change anything about the black cat. His brief visits into their lives was enough for them.

Nami thought so too, once upon a time. This was before she met Arty, though. If a cat could be loved by strangers for being a goof, and even feel happy to see her, then she feels she is capable of being loved. Friends aren’t necessary to be happy, but they sure seem to make life interesting. Boredom was a slow-acting killer.

This is going to be the biggest heist of her life. The only thing Nami needs to do is figure out how to take the first step to approaching these strangers, who shared one thing in common: their love for a straw hat-wearing black cat.