Why do I do these things?

Kaku didn’t even know why he was at the party. Stupid Jyabura and his stupid new girlfriend and her stupid need to throw stupid parties and invite everyone on Grand Line Avenue…he stood forlornly to one side of the doorway, trying to look invisible.

“You can’t stand there for the rest of the night, you know,” Kalifa said, coming up next to him and giving him a sidelong glance that said ‘you’re the one who accepted the invitation, anyway’.

“Why not?” Kaku said meekly. The room was huge, crowded, booming with the bass beat of music with undoubtedly raunchy lyrics…all in all, it was the opposite of what Kaku would have considered a pleasant atmosphere. Especially considering that it was too dark to recognize anyone—he was only marginally certain that Kalifa was standing next to him, and was mainly going by voice—and that the air was close and smelled of liquor and sweat. He hooked a finger into his turtleneck and tugged, trying to let some air circulate against his skin. Maybe the constricted feeling was due to the situation itself, rather than the air. He sighed. “I didn’t want to come here.”

“Then it’s your own fault you did,” Kalifa replied, utterly without sympathy. “Look, even Lucci is here. Granted, he’s over by the bar pretending everyone else doesn’t exist…”

Kaku brightened slightly. “There’s a bar?”

“Back of the room. Look, try to have a good time, will you? When was the last time you had a night off?”

“I like my job,” Kaku said weakly. “Tell that to Blueno, anyway. He practically lives at the precinct.”

“And yet, he’s here anyway.” Dim, smoky light glinted off Kalifa’s glasses; she was probably rolling her eyes at him. “I suppose you’d rather be at home doing sudoku, or something boring.” Kaku shrugged. Kalifa sighed deeply. “You spend too much time with Lucci.”

“Well, he is my roommate. I’ll try to have fun, okay?”

“Good. Just…take comfort in the fact that the boss isn’t invited, try to meet new people…at least a few of them can’t be imbeciles.” She pushed her glasses up and smoothed her skirt. “I’m going to go see if the pink-haired hottie in the pantsuit smoking by the wall is here with anyone. Have fun.”

She swayed off in that direction, leaving Kaku alone by the door. Somewhere across the room, Kaku thought he made out the rotund shape of Fukurou, chatting animatedly with a group of gossip hounds, and further back Kumadori (judging by the hair) was hanging out near the wall with his girlfriend. They both looked awkward; this was not the sort of party cut out for a librarian and one of the district’s more straight-laced officers. Kaku briefly considered hanging out with them for the remainder of the evening, but that would undoubtedly only attract attention to himself. He headed for the bar instead, navigating as carefully as possible through the press of anonymous bodies.

There was no one around that Kaku recognized, bar a few past small-time criminals that wouldn’t be pleased to note his presence anyway. He almost pulled the bill of his cap down before remembering that Kalifa had forced him to leave it at home; instead, he sighed, hunched his shoulders, and leaned against the bar in a misguided attempt at nonchalance. “Take your order?” said a voice behind him. Kaku turned; a tan woman with her blue hair bound in a floral-print bandana was leaning over the counter.

“Uh…” Kaku scratched the side of his nose. “Just…something strong. I’m going to be here for awhile.”

The woman turned away, and a moment later she plunked a glass of something on the bar top, smirking. “You don’t seem like much of a party boy.”

Kaku picked up the glass, looked at it, sighed, and knocked it back. “The hostess is shacking up with one of my coworkers. Can I get another one of these?”

Time passed, and Kaku managed to avoid eye contact with anyone less than savory. He also managed to get himself quite spectacularly drunk, to the point that he found himself wondering first what time it was and then why the wall clock was listing slightly to the left. The music was less abhorrent in this state, though, as was the entire situation in general, so Kaku decided he felt pretty good about being utterly intoxicated. Besides, tomorrow was a Saturday. Probably.

Eventually, a woman in a bright blue strapless dress swung herself onto the stool beside him and said, without looking up from the contents of her handbag, “Have you got any money on you? I just spent the last of my cash on a drinking contest because Mr. Undefeatable got it into his mossy head that he can hold more liquor than me and now I need something to get the taste of all that vodka out of my mouth. Ugh, I hope lover boy over there’ll have enough to cover my cab fare home after he’s done promising those gold diggers discounts at All Blue—and have you seen little miss governor’s daughter? Because last I checked some dork in an ascot was trying to chat her up, and I think she found his random costume crown charming or something, so I’m a little worried we’ll have to drag her home to daddy again…anyway, money, you have any?”

Kaku, who had done his best to follow this meandering stream of incomprehensible declarations, looked at the woman next to him and blinked slowly. She paused, looked up, and squinted at him through the gloom. “Oh!” she said, wide-eyed, yet apparently not embarrassed. “I thought you were a friend of mine. Never mind.”

She had red hair. Red hair and big, brown eyes, and she was looking at him with a little quirk to her porcelain lips… “I’ll buy you a drink anyway,” he heard himself say. She smiled, wide and dazzling, and laughed as if he’d said something absolutely hilarious.

“Thanks,” she said sweetly, and flipped a strand of that silky red hair out of her face.

Several minutes later, her drink was finished, but she was still there, leaning against the bar with her legs crossed, looking out at the room and chatting to him idly about a friend Kaku hadn’t caught the name of. “You look…really familiar,” he told her during a lull in the conversation, and she glanced at him as if surprised. “I mean, it’s pretty dark in here and all, but…I could swear I’ve seen you before…”

She tilted her head. “Well…I have a lot of friends around here. You hang out uptown at all, in the Alabasta District? Or maybe Water 7…”

I’ve made some arrests there, Kaku thought. “Uh…yeah, I’ve been there a few times.”

She smiled. “You must have seen me there, then. You look kind of familiar yourself.”

“Aside from looking like your friend?” Kaku asked.

“Right, aside from that.” She grinned. “Wanna dance?”

Kaku did not like to dance, but there was a very pretty girl asking him to, so he figured he may as well chance it. “Sure,” he said, and she slid off her stool and sauntered toward the dance floor, beckoning to him with one finger. Kaku followed.

The music was relatively slow now, and the girl—Kaku made a mental note to ask her name when the noise died down—wasted no time in wrapping one arm around the back of his neck and the other around his waist, smiling up at him in a manner more self-assured than he thought he could probably muster himself at the moment. Kaku, who knew not the first thing about dancing, put his arms around her awkwardly, and she giggled. “You don’t dance much, do you?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said, and then realized that was probably an unwise statement, but she just giggled more and moved to the music, so he shut up and tried his best to follow suit.

Kaku turned out to be worse at dancing while drunk than he was sober, which wasn’t surprising, but it turned out that the redheaded girl didn’t mind, so that was okay. Problems arose, however, when the effects of the girl’s drinking contest caught up with her and it turned out that she wasn’t spectacular at dancing while drunk, either.

“You,” she drawled, eyes half-lidded as she looked up at him, “are pretty hot, you know.”

“I am?” said Kaku, and the girl laughed.

“Yeah!” she replied, and without waiting for a response, she snaked one hand up to the back of his neck, pulled him down to her level, and kissed him.

That was all well and good for the two seconds before Kaku lost his balance.

There was a muffled shriek and a pained yelp as the two of them landed on the floor near the wall, drawing the eyes of several startled dancers nearby. Kaku dragged himself into a vague sitting position and looked up at them. “Um, we’re okay,” he said meekly, and after a second or two, everyone looked away. “…Sorry,” he said to the girl, but she was sitting against the wall with her hand over her mouth, snickering.

“S’okay,” she said, and snickered some more. She straightened her hair a little and looked at him. “I like you,” she said decisively.

“That’s a little surprising,” was all Kaku could think to say, and he tried to stand up but the girl laughed and dragged at his arm.

“Here,” she said slyly, and scooted around the leg of the nearby snack table. Baffled, Kaku pulled the tablecloth back to see what on earth she was doing, but she reached out, grabbed him by the shirtfront and, with a surprising amount of strength, yanked him under the table.

“What—” he began, but that was all he got out before she shoved him against the floor, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Kaku attempted to mentally assess the situation for several long seconds before he decided that thinking was overrated and useless when one was lying on the floor under an attractive woman whose tongue was in one’s mouth, and promptly gave up.


Lucci was not enjoying himself. That he made a point never to enjoy himself in the first place had nothing to do with this; it was just that the music was obnoxious, the room was horribly crowded, and irritating, brainless women kept trying to get him to buy them drinks. He would rather drink alone, or at the very least with someone who could string a sentence together that had more than five syllables. Plus, he was hungry, all there was to eat were things like pretzels, and Lucci didn’t even like pretzels.

But if it was pretzels or nothing…

He decided to stand next to the table as if he had nothing better to do. Maybe people would leave him alone, more or less.

However, when he reached for the bowl of pretzels that he didn’t actually want, something slammed into the leg of the table, causing it to scoot an inch to the right. Lucci paused. Then, slowly, he pulled the tablecloth up and leaned over to look.

Some things, even Rob Lucci was not mentally prepared to witness.

Because there was Kaku, his colleague and roommate, lying on the floor under the table with an armful of attractive redhead. They were making out under a table. And he had one hand under the edge of her skirt. Lucci took a deep breath.

“Kaku—”

The girl lying on him yelped in shock and tried to turn and look at Lucci, which resulted in her face colliding with his nose. There was a brief scuffle, and eventually Kaku was sitting up halfway and squinting at Lucci through the semidarkness.

“…Lucci?”

“Kaku, what are you doing?”

Kaku opened his mouth, closed it, and swallowed. “Um…hang on, let me…”

There was another moment of awkward readjustment during which Kaku climbed out from under the table, helping the girl with him, which was about the point Lucci realized who she was. Oh, well, that was just fantastic.

She seemed to recognize him too, if her wide eyes were any indication. “I know you! You’re that bastard cop whose ass Luffy kicked when you tried to send Robin to prison last year!”

Kaku whipped around to stare at her, so fast he almost fell over again. “You?”

Nami the Cat Burglar stared at Kaku, gawping. “You!”

“Oh god,” Kaku moaned, dropping his face into his hands. “I knew this party was a bad idea…”

Nami made a theatrical gagging noise. “Gross, now I have your filthy cop germs in my mouth!”

“Well, my mouth is full of criminal spit! Imagine how I feel!”

“Ugh!” Nami spat, made one last horrified face at both of them, and stomped away.

Kaku looked distraught, staring at Lucci as though the world was going to end. “I…”

“You’re drunk.”

“Very drunk,” Kaku nodded.

“The lighting is bad.”

“Terrible!”

“You have a poor memory for faces.”

“Forget my own mother sometimes,” he agreed fervently.

“We’re going to forget this ever happened,” Lucci finished icily.

“Oh, maybe you will,” Kaku said miserably, and rubbed his tongue with his sleeve.

Lucci turned around. “We’re going home now.”

“Good idea,” said Kaku, meekly.

Moments later, they stood outside on the corner, waiting for a cab. “Erm,” said Kaku. “You’re not going to tell Fukurou, are you?”

“Since when has anyone ever had to tell him things?” Lucci pointed out. Kaku winced.


Back inside, Nami tugged on the sleeve of Robin’s dress. “Hey, uh…do you have gum?”

Robin opened her purse obligingly. “I have a mint.” She handed one to Nami, who tossed it into her mouth and stood there looking miserable for several seconds. “Your lipstick, Mapmaker-san. It’s smudged.”

“Um,” Nami said around her mint, looking guilty. “Thanks.”

She fished around in her bag, and Robin wordlessly handed over a tissue for her to blot off the remains of her lipstick.

“Thank you,” Nami said quietly, fixed her makeup, smiled unconvincingly, and hurried over toward the rest of their group. “Oh, Sanji-kun! Want to dance?”

Robin tucked her package of tissues back into her bag, lifted her drink to her lips, and smiled slyly.