Archive of Our Own

Surprising anyone who has known Luffy and Zoro for more than five minutes, Nami is the first Straw Hat to get arrested.

"I can't believe this!" she grumbles from behind the bars of her cell. The cell itself is filled with half a dozen wicked criminals, all of them looking like they would shank someone for a pack of cigarettes. All of them are also cowering as far away from Nami as they can in the cramped space, even if it means sitting on the grimy floor. Uniformly, they flinch when her voice raises to new heights. "I haven't even done anything wrong!"

"You're a pirate," Zoro points out, quite reasonably.

"Well, they don't know that!"

"And a thief."

"They don't know about that either!"

"But you've done something wrong."

"I didn't call you here to be reasonable, Zoro!"

"Oh, yeah," Zoro says, as if the thought just occurred to him. "Why did you call me here?"

Nami smiles. It's so sweet it could kill someone with diabetes. The whole cell huddles against the nearest corner. "I need you to post my bail."

Zoro's reaction is immediate and not at all surprising. "What the hell, Nami?! No!"

Nami flares up. "What, you're just going to leave me here?! Look at this place, Zoro!" With a sweeping gesture, she encompasses the entire filthy cell filled with terrified occupants. "I need my creature comforts."

"Should've thought of that before landing yourself in jail."

"Not my fault," Nami insists and places her hands on her hips. "The bail, you muscle-headed idiot."

"I'm not posting your bail."

"Zoro," Nami says, as sweet as sugar. "Do you know how much you owe me? Consider this as working off your debt."

"Shit," Zoro says and flags down the nearest officer. "The witch's bail?"

Poor guy doesn't even need Nami to be pointed out. He glances at her immediately, pales, and then looks down at some papers in his hand, reading them studiously. "Uh…" the guy says. "A lot."

"What's a lot?"

The guy reads out the number. Zoro gapes. Nami screeches in outrage. "No way in hell are we giving you that much money!"

"We?" Zoro asks, offended. "That's my money!"

Nami waves him off. "All of your money is my money anyway. I own your ass. And we're not giving the law-enforcement so much of our hard-earned gold."

"We literally stole all of it."

The officer suddenly looks much more alarmed, shooting terrified glances between Zoro and Nami.

Nami grits her teeth. "I almost got killed. I almost got killed three times. Hard-earned."

"Fine, have it your way," Zoro finally relents, drawing Wado Ichimonji from its scabbard. "I don't have that much on me anyway."

With one slash of his sword, the bars of the cell are pulverized and Nami wastes no time in bolting for the exit, Zoro at her heels.

"Oi, witch," Zoro says, as the sound of hot pursuit starts from behind them. "You didn't even tell me why you got thrown in jail."

Nami huffs. "Okay, maybe I did steal something! But they have no proof."

"Halt, thief!" comes a voice from their pursuers. "Return the crown jewels!"

Nami laughs.

…

Luffy, after being unceremoniously thrown into the cell, looks around, notices the only other occupant, and grins. "Usopp!"

Usopp waves sheepishly. "Hey, Luffy."

Luffy bounds up to him like an excited puppy, ignoring the iron shackles at his wrists and ankles clattering with every movement. "Oh, were you arrested too?!" He sounds like they've met at a particularly interesting vacation spot.

"Sure," Usopp says, demonstratively lifting his own hands, wrists encased in iron. "But I let them take me. Great captain Usopp would never be caught unawares!"

"Me too!" Luffy throws himself down on the bench beside Usopp.

"Of course, no captain of mine would–" Usopp abruptly stops himself, seemingly only now registering Luffy's words. "Wait, you let them arrest you?!"

Luffy nods so hard his head bunces against the wall. "Mhm."

Usopp can't quite make sense of it all. He knows Luffy would have never been thrown into prison on this backwater island if he didn't allow it, but he doesn't know why. Luffy's not generally one for prisons. Or restraints. Or anything that would stop him from rampaging around at his whim. "Why?"

"Nami said not to make trouble until her shopping trip is over," Luffy huffs.

"And you listened?"

"Nooo," Luffy says, and he's pouting now. "But Sanji said there would be no meat for dinner if Nami gets angry at me."

Usopp nods in realization. Meat. That would do it. "Anyway, why did you get arrested?"

Luffy brightens immediately. "Usopp, it was awesome. They have a huge food market in town, and there's so much meat!" Usopp can kind of see where Luffy is going with this. "And I was hungry, so I ate the meat, but then everyone was angry and asking for money, and I didn't have any. They got even angrier and said I was a criminal – and I'm a pirate, so of course I'm a criminal – and then I was taken here."

Usopp sweatdrops. "You dined and dashed."

"Yeah, just like when Ace and me were little! I even remembered to say thank you."

"You… thanked them."

Luffy frowns disapprovingly. "Ace and Makino say it's polite."

Usopp has no idea who Makino is, but he's not really inclined to argue with Luffy over something like this.

"Sure, it's polite. I bet they were very happy to be thanked after you robbed them," Usopp says. Luffy, not really noticing the heavy sarcasm, just nods happily.

"They were yelling pretty funnily."

Usopp pities those poor, poor people. Luffy is an acquired taste.

They sit in silence for a few seconds. Or a relative silence, at least; Luffy is humming under his breath as he observes their tiny cell with unabashed interest, while Usopp's shackles keep clinking steadily with the nervous movements of his hands.

"So," Usopp says, leadingly, "aren't you going to break us out of here?"

"Huh? Why? Nami's probably still shopping."

"Ugh… I kind of really need to be out of this cell? Like, right now?"

Luffy stares at him, his face scrunched up in his version of suspicion. "Are you going to eat the meat without me, Usopp?"

Usopp's shackles clatter as his hands start shaking even more. "Iamgoingtobeexecutedsoon!"

"Eeeh?!"

"The people here are crazy!" Usopp wails. "I told them a few stories about the awesome adventures of Captain Usopp – and they were very good stories, remind me to tell you later – and now they're going to chop my head off!"

"They can't chop your head off – you're mine!" Luffy declares, as if it is a hard fact of the universe.

"Oh," Usopp says, touched by Luffy's immediate defense. Even if it was expressed in his weird Luffy way. "But I… well… ugh… I really did tell a lot of stories and they might have, somehow, some way, been convinced that I'm a king – Sniper King. They don't really like kings here, Luffy, they take their heads off!"

Luffy squints at him. "You don't look anything like Sniper King."

Usopp grabs his shoulders and shakes him violently. "Luffy, I think I'm getting down with I-will-die-if-I-get-executed disease! Get us out now!" Then, a thought occurring to him, Usopp grins. "I bet the market is still open! I bet they have lots and lots of meat!"

"Meat!" Luffy grins and stands up. With barely a flex of his arms, the shackles around his wrists shatter into pieces. "Come on, Usopp, they're mean and they were going to kill you! I bet Nami won't even be angry at me."

…

"Puru puru puru! Puru puru puru! Puru puru puru!"

"Not it!" Usopp is the fastest to react.

"Not it!" Nami, Sanji and Franky echo simultaneously. Zoro snores. All the conscious crewmembers eye each other cautiously, coming to a standstill.

Nami opens her mouth first. "Sanji-kun?" she says with a sly grin. "Could you get the snail?"

"Anything for you, Nami-swan!" With that, Sanji dances his way into the galley.

"That's cheating!" Usopp hisses as soon as Sanji is out of earshot.

Nami grins, catlike and satisfied. "Pirate."

"The witch's got a point," Zoro chimes in, barely opening one eye to give them a look before returning to his nap.

Franky nods. "That was a super use of your resources, Nami-sis."

"Thanks, Franky. I'm just naturally talented that way."

"A natural leech, you mean," Usopp mumbles under his breath.

"Say that a bit louder, Usopp! If you dare.”

The potential fight is stopped by Sanji's return. He's chewing on his cigarette furiously, looking vaguely shellshocked. The rest of the crew stops their bickering to stare at him, even Zoro deigning to open his eyes to grace Sanji with a glare.

"Oi, Sanji, you look weird," Usopp says. "What happened?"

Sanji clears his throat. "Chopper got arrested."

A moment of absolute silence envelops the ship.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard that right," Usopp waves his arms jerkily, drawing all attention. "I thought you just said that Chopper got arrested."

"Yeah," Sanji nods, still looking kind of numb with shock. "He just called about the bail."

"The bail?" Nami shrieks. "We're not posting anyone's bail!"

"But it's Chopper," Franky points out, which is a very reasonable and convincing argument. Everyone else nods, and even Nami looks torn.

"Wait, wait!" Usopp interrupts. "Why would Chopper get arrested? What did he do? Are you sure you heard him right, Sanji-kun?"

"I couldn't make something like this up even if I wanted to. Not everyone's you, you shitty excuse of a liar."

"We should just go break Chopper out." Seeing their appalled looks, Zoro shrugs. "What? We won't have to post his bail and we can ask him why he got arrested."

It takes them a moment to process Zoro's words and then, as one, all of them scramble off the ship and in the general direction of the town.

Two hours, one explosion and several detours to collect Luffy and Robin later, the whole crew is once again resting on the deck of the Sunny, angry shouts trailing after them as the ship sails away from the island.

"I'm so sorry!" Chopper wails and throws himself at Zoro's face, smothering him with his fur.

"Shishishi! This was fun! Shishishi! We should do this again!"

"No!" Nami shrieks. She is relatively unharmed, but her dress is torn and her eyebrows twitch in anger every time she sees the rip. "No, we should not." Turning to Chopper, she softens her voice just a tad. "Why did we even have to do this, Chopper? You got arrested?"

"I'm sorry!" Chopper repeats as Zoro barely manages to wrest him away from his face and starts breathing heavily. Chopper, in return, shifts to clinging to Zoro's neck. Zoro's face rapidly becomes blue as his airflow is cut off again. "I didn't mean to! This is the first time I got arrested and it was scary!"

"But what did you do?" Sanji asks, twirling around with a tray of drinks and a sweet that he hands to Chopper. Chopper immediately calms down and removes his hands from Zoro's neck in favor of stuffing his mouth full.

"Murder, probably!" Zoro shouts, finally able to breathe.

"Oh, no, I would never," Chopper assures him with wide, guileless eyes. "I was buying drugs."

Everyone stops whatever they were doing and stares.

"You were buying drugs, Chopper?" Robin asks, looking torn between confusion and interest.

"Mhm," Chopper nods, cheeks bulging as he chews on his sweet. "I do that a lot, but this was the first time I got caught."

"Uh, Chopper?" Usopp starts tentatively. "Why are you… why are you buying drugs? Do you need help? Because we can help you, you know, if…"

"Oh, no," Chopper denies emphatically and then stops, thoughtful. "Well, maybe Nami or Sanji could, but the rest of you don't know enough about medications to help."

It's like a giant weight falls from all of their shoulders. Nami lets out a big sigh and collapses against the mast. "So it's for medicine."

"Yes, I need to buy a lot of my medicines on black market, especially after Enies Lobby. Most people don't really want to sell to pirates." Then, as if finally noticing the strange atmosphere on the deck, Chopper frowns. "What did you think it was for?"

The deck clears out in record time. Zoro, the only one left in Chopper's vicinity by virtue of still holding him, looks terrified. "Ummm…"

…

"Run, run, run!"

Franky reacts instinctively to a warning from his crewmate, turns tail, and runs. Zoro reaches him only a few seconds later with what seems like the whole army at his heels.

"Zoro-bro!" Franky grins. "Whatcha doin' running around like this?"

"I almost got arrested!" Zoro spits out. Looking back, he notes that the soldiers seem to have multiplied and focuses on running ahead.

Franky grabs Zoro's wrist and tugs him towards the docks. "Wrong way."

"That's because the streets keep moving! Took me forever to find my way here."

"Dude," Franky says, and nothing else. He does not remove his hand from Zoro's wrist.

"I don't need you to hold my hand! I can get there myself."

"Don't wanna risk it with this army running around. It would take us ages to find you again, Zoro-bro, and Luffy's not gonna be happy with the delay. You know he's been getting stir-crazy." The mention of Luffy seems to calm Zoro down and he makes no move to protest Franky leading him by hand back to Sunny. "What did you do anyway?"

"Nothing!" Zoro protests. "This is not my fault."

The fact that he has to duck to avoid a bullet to the skull from their pursuers kind of speaks against him. "Stop them! Stop the green-haired swordsman! We shall not let the murder be unavenged!"

Franky aims a speaking look Zoro's way.

"It wasn't me," Zoro says. "It was Robin!"

"Robin?!" Franky steers them into an alleyway in an attempt to lose the soldiers, but they catch on quickly and veer after them. At least the alley is small enough that they have to thin their numbers to fit in.

"She killed a guy and then framed me!" Zoro bursts out, indignant.

"Nah," Franky says, filled with assurance. "Nico Robin would not pull the same trick twice. She's not that kind of a woman." Would have been both boring and unoriginal, and Nico Robin was none of those.

Zoro grumbles. "Well, I still got stuck getting arrested for her kill."

"Should be a suuuper story."

"She killed a guy in that old cemetery and then got lost. When the soldiers came, I was the only one there with the body."

Franky gets the feeling Robin was not the one who got lost, but he doesn't comment. "Doesn't seem like Nico Robin. What'd guy do?"

"Been digging up the graves."

"Not very super of him." And enough to make Robin really mad. She did say she was very interested in the funerary practices of this island. Apparently, weird, hinky shit was happening here some four hundred years ago. "And they blamed you?"

"His neck was broken!" Zoro snarls. "What did they think I did, whack him with Wado's sheath?"

"To be fair, bro, you do have a look of a deranged murderer," Franky says, sympathetically.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?!"

"Nah," Franky shrugs. "But this is." With that, they finally break through the final layer of buildings and reach port, Sunny bobbing happily on the waves in front of them.

Nami smiles in greeting when she sees them running. Then she notices the mob at their heels. She throws her hands in the air. "Not again!"

…

Brook wakes up in a cell.

“Yohohoho!” he says, looking around, even though he does not have eyes. “How surprising!”

He doesn’t remember doing anything illegal recently. Well, more illegal than usual. Piracy is a bit unkindly regarded by the law. Perhaps someone noticed him while he slept and decided to collect his bounty? Falling asleep on a park bench might have not been Brook’s wisest decision.

“Well, nothing for it,” Brook decides and rises to his feet. “I shall simply have to ask.”

He wanders to the bars of the cell and flags down the nearest police officer. The man does a double-take when he sees Brook, but rallies admirably and approaches, only to stop a good distance from the cell.

“Yohohoho! Good officer, sorry for the bother, but might I ask why I was arrested?”

The police officer gulps, flinching visibly at Brook’s laugher, but still looks down at his clipboard and checks the information. “Ugh… nothing serious, sir. Just littering. You’ll be out in no time.”

“Littering?” Offended, Brook draws himself up to his full height, which is, indeed, considerable. The police officer takes a step back. “Young man, I assure you, I have utmost respect for the environment. I do not litter.” Leaning closer, Brook tries to peer at the clipboard. “Are you quite sure that you read it correctly? Perhaps you meant voyeurism? Or murder?” Brook does not remember killing anyone on this island, but those things do follow a man. Or a skeleton. Especially a skeleton actually – being one does make a person easy to identify.

The police officer inches even further away. “No, no, I’m pretty sure. Says right here. Littering.”

“Why I never,” Brook sighs, disappointed. “How? There must have been some mistake.”

“Oh, well, you did leave a pile of bones lying around, sir.”

There is a moment of silence. “I am a pile of bones, young man.”

“And you were left lying around. In the park. That’s littering, sir.”

Yes, Brook concludes. Falling asleep on a park bench was definitely not the wisest decision.

…

“Oh, come on!” Zoro snaps when Jimbei is thrown into the cell.

Jimbei would have been offended if he had not noticed that the entire crew is crammed in there. Perhaps he had been their only hope of escape, though none of them seem all that concerned by their predicament. More likely, Zoro’s irritation is simply the result of the newly cramped nature of the cell. Jimbei and Franky do take up a good part of it.

“Jimbei!” Luffy laughs, delighted, and throws himself at the helmsman as fast as his shackles would allow. Clambering onto Jimbei’s shoulders, he aims a bright smile at his whole crew. “Now everyone’s here! This is so fun!”

Nami hits him on the head. “Idiot! This is terrible!” Turning her teary eyes onto Jimbei, she says, “Jimbei-chan! How are we going to escape now that all of us are captured? There is no hope anymore.”

Zoro snorts. “Shouldn’t have slept with the mayor’s daughter if you didn’t wanna end up in jail, witch.”

Nami reddens. “Oh, shut up! At least I got in here for something I actually did. You were collateral damage.”

“I was not collateral damage!” Zoro says, looking gravely offended.

“You got thrown into jail because of Sanji! You literally did nothing!” Nami pauses. “Besides the usual.”

“Nami-swan!” Sanji twirls around. Someone had, stupidly, only shackled his wrists and left his feet completely free. “I assure you; the gorilla deserves to be here. He destroyed such a nice noodle stand, and he should be punished for eternity.”

“Yeah, but nobody saw him doing that,” Usopp points out. “They only saw you trying to kill a man in broad daylight.”

“He deserved it.”

“Yow,” Franky says, entirely naked, except for several disembodied hands strategically covering certain parts of his anatomy. Robin sits beside him, blank-faced and covered in blood. Somehow, she’s gotten rid of her shackles and does not seem to be bothered by her surroundings in the slightest. “It’s great to see everyone together, but we should think about breaking out of here. Sunny is all alone, and who knows what will happen.”

“I concur,” Brook says, and returns his shackles back to his wrists politely. They keep slipping off, too big for his bones. “Though I should think it will not be such a hard job. Our jailors do not seem all that prepared to hold us here.”

“They’re idiots,” Nami snorts and fishes out a key out of here cleavage. “It’s embarrassing that they caught all of us.”   

“You had the key the whole time?!” Usopp screeches.

Nami frowns. “No, I got it when they led Jimbei in. Come on, we’re escaping.” Inserting the key into the lock, Nami starts fiddling with the cell door. “By the way, Jimbei-chan, what did you do to get here?”

“Ah,” Jimbei says, a bit embarrassed. This did not use to happen while he sailed with the Sun Pirates. The Warlord status and, later, Big Mom’s backing were useful that way. “Piracy. They recognized me from my wanted poster.”

Everyone stops. The whole crew turns to stare at Jimbei, incredulous. “Piracy?”

“Yes.”

“Are you lying?” Usopp asks, suspicious. “Nobody ever gets arrested for piracy.”

Now it’s Jimbei’s turn to be confused. “Then why are you all here?”

“Because of this dickbag,” says Zoro, pointing at Sanji.

“Because of this idiot,” says Sanji at the same time, pointing at Zoro.

“A building fell over and people said it’s my fault,” Luffy laughs, ignoring Zoro and Sanji starting a full-blown fight in the background. Nami’s key is suddenly useless as the whole cell door topples under their combined attacks.

“It was, I was in that building, it was totally you fault,” says Nami. “That’s how the mayor found me! Everything is your fault, you idiot.”

“Yohohoho!” Brook laughs. “I am so jealous. I have once again been arrested for such an embarrassing reason. I have only just found out that busking is illegal here.”

“Hey, Brook, why were you busking? You’re a literal rock star.”

Brook fixes an eyeless stare at Usopp. “We all have our hobbies, Usopp-san. And what brings you here?”

Usopp points an accusing finger at Chopper, who tries to hide behind Robin, head-first. “I told you not to come with me! Those drug dealers are scary!”

Robin and Franky do not explain themselves. Considering the fact that Franky is completely naked and Robin splattered with fresh blood – none of it hers – an explanation is not needed.

“Wahaha!” Jimbei bursts out laughing. “That’s much more interesting than my story. I shall try harder next time.”

“No!” Nami shouts. “There will be no next time!”

“Nami,” Usopp says, resigned. “There is always a next time.”

Luffy laughs. “Isn’t it the best?!”

Jimbei nods, because yes, it is. It really is the best.