Chapter Text
The thing is, Rebecca really needs a job.
The thought has been gnawing a hole in her head for months by now, her college tuition gnawing another in her family’s savings, a constant stream of refusals and we will let you know left dangling into nothing.
She’s got another sorry look to add to the collection just now; it weighs on her chest, makes her skin prickle like the sand finding its way under her clothes. She doesn’t know why she ended up sprawled on the beach with the salt water lapping at her heels in the middle of March but there she is.
It does feel somewhat calming though, somewhat like the knot in her stomach is getting slowly washed away, drowned by the riptide.
Then someone drops a ridiculously overpacked knapsack right beside her head.
“Hey!” Rebecca starts, kind of sputters because there’s sand in her mouth now, and in her eyes and what the hell, can’t a person just mope in peace––
“Ah, sorry about that!”
The owner of the disgraceful knapsack doesn’t quite sound like he’s sorry at all but he’s a kid (he looks her age, but older and younger at the same time, something restless tugging at his edges) and that knapsack must be really heavy, so Rebecca lets it be.
“It’s fine,” she says, a smile not as forced as she was expecting it to be sneaking up on her lips to mirror the grin the kid is flashing her.
“Isn’t it nice?” he asks, crouches down next to her with a huffing sound. “Lying down like this, I mean.”
He’s got a scar under his eye and a straw hat hanging down his back. He’s still smiling.
“Uh, yeah.” Rebecca wishes she could match him, really, but she still needs a job, the knot in her stomach is still there.
She grimaces. The kid notices.
“Are you okay?” And he sounds genuinely concerned, this complete stranger who just got her a faceful of sand is now concerned about her.
Rebecca could use a shoulder to cry on, truth be told.
“I just,” she starts, tries her best to prop herself back up because she’s about to vent out her problems to someone she's just met and she's going to be civil about it at least. “I really need a job, you know. The kind of really that makes you want to curl up and sleep for ages every time you think about it.”
“That’s great!”
Now the kid is positively beaming and Rebecca doesn’t even have the time to wonder whether or not should she feel offended before he grabs her by the hands, eyes pinning her down with the same sheer force she’s only ever seen in her father’s stare.
“Can you do, like, coffee stuff?” He asks, shouts even. “My family owns a coffee shop but we’re short on employees because Ace and I can’t make a decent coffee for shit, or that’s what Koala says at least. Can you make decent coffee?”
Rebecca blinks.
“I know how to make an espresso worth its name.”
The kid bolts straight back up and she finds herself following before she can even process what's going on.
.
Luffy (earlier he introduced himself with a handshake that felt more like someone had just tossed her in a washing machine, laughter bubbling up like soap) guides her to a part of the city she’s hardly ever been to, down streets narrow and paved with rocks glowing white, Rebecca’s oxfords clacking with each step.
When he stops it’s abrupt, energy suddenly dead in its tracks, head snapping up so fast Rebecca spends a terrified split second thinking he’s going to break his neck. Honestly, Luffy moves like he’s made of rubber.
“We’re here!” he announces, and Rebecca takes a moment to crane her neck too, take a good picture of what could become her actual work place.
It looks kind of quaint, soft with the particular brand of atmosphere some places come to radiate when the people who walk them do it with love in their tiptoes. There are flowers peppering the facade in a bunch of different colours, hanging from the painted windows above the coffee shop, swelling from the clay pots by the entrance.
There’s a wooden sign over the door, the word Baterilla carved in it in curly, slanted letters.
“My family lives up there.” Luffy’s voice snaps her back into reality, the smile curving around the way he says family almost overwhelming, his fingers wrapped around Rebecca’s wrist all of sudden as he steps inside.
There are two women behind the counter and when they both smile at her Rebecca realizes she’s been holding her breath. Like diving in the water from somewhere really high, waiting for the smack of waves and skin clashing.
She deflates a bit, red already burning on her cheeks.
“I’ve got us a new employee!” Luffy declares, parades his (their, he still hasn’t let go of Rebecca’s wrist) way across the shop.
The woman on the right tilts her head just slightly, a strand of hair falling loose from her bandana. “Luffy, she’s…”
Rebecca’s stomach drops.
“It’ll be fine,” he cuts in, the same steel conviction he showed at the beach back in his eyes, and the woman bites down on her lower lip.
“Paula―” she tries to ask her coworker for help, but Luffy has already started dragging Rebecca down some stairs. Uh.
All Rebecca can hear before she nearly tumbles over is just mumbling, something along the lines of it’ll be alright, Makino, it’ll be alright 'cause it’s him, then she hits her head against a doorframe.
“Oops,” Luffy offers, just as apologetic as he was earlier for the knapsack, “the door here is pretty tiny I guess.”
“You guess,” Rebecca deadpans, irritation simmering down a wee bit as he finally lets go of her.
What she sees once she steps into what she supposes to be the basement is enough to make her regret that speck of human contact, of grounding, of anything telling her that what she’s living right now is not a dream.
There’s a pool. And a counter and tables and chairs and people except some of them are not people, they’re…
“Yo!” Luffy’s voice makes them all turn their attention to them and now Rebecca could really use something to hold on because there’s a girl by the counter, a girl with cat ears that look disturbingly real, cat ears that have just moved, gone flat over her head. She's got a tail too.
“Christ, Luffy,” she hisses, actually hisses, and Rebecca is trying her best to put it in any possible other way but that’s what the cat girl is doing, hissing. “Again?”
“Well," mumbles the guy next to her, a hand scratching one of the small horns on his forehead, "Franky and Law were a good thing. Mostly."
God, Rebecca really wants to believe this is all a dream.
“They’re humans!” And now the cat girl looks like she’s ready to lunge at someone, anyone, tail grown around three sizes bigger. “We can’t just trust whoever he brings in!”
The guy (or whatever he is, it’s not like Rebecca’s got any intention of prying right now) looks like he’s about to snap back but stops with his mouth agape when the woman behind the counter clears her throat; everyone else in the room does the same.
“Rouge.”
Everyone but Luffy.
"Look, she was looking for a job and she said she can make actual espresso! Not that weird watery thing Sabo makes.”
“At least Sabo can brew coffee without blowing things up,” a seemingly, blessedly human girl standing behind the counter with Rouge retorts, not quite harsh but not benevolent either.
“Now, now.” Rouge’s voice sounds husky, swift and deadly like smoke in a fire, like she could wipe the world clean with a twist of her fingers. She’s got golden bracelets around her arms and freckles all over her skin. “Would you mind making me some coffee, little girl?”
Rebecca doesn't dwell on giving it a second thought.
.
Rouge gives her a name tag and a handmade ecru coloured apron with Baterilla embroidered on it. Koala (who is indeed as human as she seems, thank God) gives her a nickname that goes viral in the span of a few hours.
And Rebecca is grateful, really, but it all feels like it’s a bit too much to process, like she was dumped on a rollercoaster with no warning whatsoever, no time to place the whole of her life and personal beliefs back together.
She’s working, and that’s good.
She’s working in a coffee shop that’s actually a hangout for every sort of magical creature she can think of and that’s… peculiar, at the least.
“You’ll be fine,” Koala tells her on her third day at Baterilla, her third day on pins and needles. “Everyone likes you already, Becca.”
Rebecca would like to ask her to define likes you, but the way Koala’s eyes go warm and reassuring and honest as she calls her Becca like they’re long-time friends is probably already enough of an explanation.
They both stay quiet for a while, the chatter of their clients filling up the space like a flock of birds rising from the ground, and suddenly it’s as if the rollercoaster ride has come to its end in a clinking of brakes, the horizon back where it should be.
Rebecca blinks the light out of her eyes.
“Thank you,” she says, giggles along Koala’s laughter for the first time.
.
Tashigi is pretty sure every single muscle in her body hurts.
She’s been running around all day, chasing after something, and it’s been months already but she still has no idea what in the world is she actually chasing after.
Her werewolf sense of smell and reflexes have never been more useless, though the certain something smells differently each time she’s been able to run into it and that’s already a hint, a possibility of the unknown culprit actually being a group of unknown culprits.
Tashigi dreads it.
Next to her Smoker grunts out a puff of cigar smoke, his own way of telling her to set work aside for once; it’s almost comical coming from him.
She complies anyway, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth when Baterilla appears in front of them.
It’s a tradition by now, it’s been so since she was a staggering pup with nothing but bared fangs, Smoker and Rouge both strong enough not to care in the slightest. It’s a tradition and she holds it dear, knows Smoker does the same despite all the grumbling and growling he pulls up.
He’s still the one who starts walking there first every time.
“Here come the big bad wolves,” Paula sing-songs through a smirk, her personal way of saying hello. “There’s a newcomer down there so try not to scare her off, will ya.”
Tashigi raises an eyebrow, nearly misses the first stairstep. “Uh?”
The epitome of eloquence, she chides herself mentally, grateful for Paula’s lack of reaction. Then again, it’s not new of the people at Baterilla to cut each other as much slack as needed when the situation calls for it.
Meaning Tashigi might or not look way more of a walking trainwreck than previously thought.
“Duly noted,” Smoker mumbles beside her, half-hearted in a way that makes it clear just how much he’d rather not scare the life out of whoever this newcomer might be.
She spots her as soon as he opens the door: tall, hair a vibrant pink against the poor lighting of the basement, definitely human. Positively freaked out at the moment.
It dawns upon her now that she and Smoker are both still wearing their uniforms, police uniforms, and that what goes on in the basement of Baterilla is not exactly the most legal of things.
“The usual,” she announces, dips her head at Koala. The newcomer’s shoulders relax considerably.
Things fall back into routine after that, her palms warm against the cup of chai latte the newcomer (Rebecca reads the name tag, Becca says everyone in the room) handed her with much steadier hands than Tashigi would’ve given her credit for. Smoker already has half a dozen children dangling from his limbs, nestled by his feet.
They ask for stories like newborn birds ask for food.
Then there’s something fuzzy brushing against her arm and, well, that’s part of the whole routine thing too in a way.
“Hi, burglar.”
Perched on the stool next to hers Nami purrs her personal version of a sociable laugh. “Hello, officer. Rough time at work today?”
Tashigi knows this is both her way of getting information from the other side and to genuinely ask if she’s alright; she’s never had it in her to point out the contradiction.
She shrugs.
"Chased that weird thing around again," she offers. "Fell down a tree. Everything hurts."
When the snickering doesn't come Tashigi turns around, catches a glimpse of pursed white lips before Nami snatches her chai latte and downs what's left of it in one go.
"Hey!" she yelps, doesn't miss the way Nami's tail twitches. "That was mine."
Nami doesn't look at her when she speaks.
"Was, indeed."
.
She smells her before she hears her, tangerine and a faint trace of milk coffee tickling her nose; her footsteps are impossible to hear anyway when she puts some effort into it.
"Thought this house reeked too much of dog for your taste," Tashigi tells to the general direction of the smell. A few seconds later Nami peeks out from the tree in front of her.
"It does and I'm dying," she retorts, no real bite in it. "Smoker makes it like a hundreds times worse, I swear—"
"Smoker-san is a very clean werewolf," Tashigi cuts in, kneejerk reaction, ties that run deep. "And he's family."
"Right, that."
Now Nami's kind of stalling, visibly so, like a cat who climbed too high and doesn't know how to land back on its feet. It makes Tashigi's stomach churn just slightly.
When she talks, she's still not looking at her for the second time that day.
"You shouldn't focus too much on those thefts."
The way she says it makes Tashigi square up, instincts yelling inside of her, skin tingling. She pushes the wolf back down though, wills it silent because she knows she ought to listen.
"They're petty stuff you said, right?" And Nami is finally looking at her again, pupils wide in the dim light of the lampposts nearby. "Must be some bored tanuki, nothing worth you breaking your back chasing after."
"I... choose not to take that as in insult."
Tashigi knows she's said the right thing the moment Nami's ears snap back up, laughter buzzing low in her throat.
"Well then, sleep well, officer." And with that she's off, the smell of tangerines and milk coffee trailing behind her like breadcrumbs.
Tashigi decides she likes herself better as a wolf than a crow.