It's moments like these when he feels as if someone up there really hates him.

Zoro has a completely neutral look on his face, and Luffy is taking it seriously.

For once, they shouldn't be.

A rage swells up in him, floods his vision, spreads to all limbs like an almost-physical force that makes him clench his fists, shake.

All that he has suffered – the thick agony of emptiness eating away at the walls of his stomach on a blazing summer island, trapped on a rock. The dull pang when his fingers lose their grip on slippery wet walls, and he is left with a sore back when he fails to scale the looming barrier between him and the women's bath house. The ache in his ribs after a long fight with the Marimo; an ache that reminds him that he's not that bad after all.

All that… and then this.

He can't take it. He shouldn't have to. He won't.

The polished surface of his shoes gleam up to him, and in a far-off distance that is about an arm's length away, Nami-swan calls out his name.

No!

He kicks Duval. Again.