Confidence Is The Key

"Phew! I thought we never were going to get rid of 'em!" breathed the navigator as she dragged herself aboard the Thousand Sunny once again.

"Yeah, you tell me!" panted the sniper and purposely fell down to lay and rest as soon as he reached the lawn, "There were no end to 'em!"

Nami sat down beside him, in her hand she firmly held the Clima Tact as if at any time, more enemies were suddenly going to show up.

The captain walked past the two exhausted crew-members, his arms behind his head, "Eeea-sy! Eeea-sy!" he snickered, "Sanji! I want food! Meat, I want meat!" He walked over to sit at the bench attached to the mast.

The cook sat down beside him and put a cigarette in his mouth, but ignored his captain's request completely, "Those bastard marines, they just never give up, do they?"

"Of course they don't, they're the marines," lectured the swordsman and took out his swords from his haramaki before he seated himself at the lawn as well, "idiot."

The cook stopped in his attempt to lit the tobacco, "What was that?!"

Zoro adjusted the swords to lean against one shoulder with one arm wrapped around them, "I said: 'they're the marines', they never give up. Or did you mean the 'idiot' part?"

"Why you!" Sanji hastily lightened the cigarette but before he could go and intentionally kick the marimo's ass, the navigator interfered with his plans.

"Sanji-kun, can't you go start with dinner now?" She pouted, "I'm both tired and hungry."

The cook immediately stopped his way over to the swordsman, formed heart-shaped eyes and turned to instead rush against the kitchen, "HAI, NAMI-SWAAAAN! Your wish is my law!"

The archaeologist walked over to take Sanji's seat beside Luffy. She gave out a small chuckle, "Well, there sure were plenty of them today."

"Yeah, no argument there," stated the shipwright and walked towards his workshop, "I'm gonna check if there were any damage done to Sunny-bro."

"Though, I was a bit disappointed," said Zoro, took one of his swords out and started to inspect it out of boredom, "there were hundreds of them but no one particularly strong. I almost feel sorry for having to harm them when they're that useless."

"Hey, what are you saying!" argued Nami, "We should be glad that they were only this weak." She trailed off, "though for me they weren't really weak..."

"I agree (on both parts...)," mumbled the sniper, "we should just be happy that we're all alive and well."

"You say that just because you were scared," said Zoro and smirked, "It's just boring when there's no challenge, is all."

"You know, you really piss me off sometimes!" muttered the navigator, "Stop talking like that, you make me feel worthless!"

Everyone was a bit taken aback by the lingering anger in her voice, not to mention the sniper who'd put hands over his head for some sort of protection. It took a while for him to realize that he actually was agreeing with her.

Therefore he crawled to take a seat beside her, still keeping some distance, though. He started to nod exaggeratedly and pointed an accusing finger at the swordsman, "Yeah! You make us feel bad!"

"Is everybody alright? No one injured?" wondered Chopper, not reading the atmosphere at all. He started to check upon each and every one of the crew, just to be on the safe side.

The swordsman looked unimpressed and stared at the two up-againsters before him. The sniper started to look uncertain of whether he really was on the right side of the argument, took down his finger and instead put the same hand behind his neck and rubbed it excursively.

Zoro stared at them for a few seconds more and even Nami started to wonder if she had said something that wasn't going to be very popular. The swordsman sheeted his sword again and took the lot of them to lay down on the ground beside him. He crossed his arms and at last opened his mouth to merely utter, "So?"

"Wh-What!" yelled Nami and Usopp in sync and grimaced.

"Soo, you should show more consideration!" stated the navigator.

"What for? I can't really help that I'm strong. It's for the sake of my dream!" The sentence contained both smugness and seriousness, it was hard to know for sure what was intended.

"But you don't need to rub it under our noses!" stated Usopp bravely. Though, he felt like he really was out on thin ice now.

The navigator sighed out of slight frustration, "Of course you can help that you're strong! You've trained yourself that strong, haven't you?!"

"Geez, woman, are you even listening to yourself?" Zoro hissed, "Stop complaining! I don't care how it's done, but if you want to be stronger then grow stronger! Train, eat a devil fruit, whatever! Your lack of confidence in how useful you are when fighting is something you need to deal with yourselves. You can't take it out on me."

The navigator looked stunned for a moment. Then she bent her head down, feeling almost ashamed, "Ehm, well..."

The sniper only looked down at the ground, silent as ever.

The swordsman's tone eased up a bit, "In fact, you don't even have to be stronger. You already know that we'd consider you as nakama no matter how strong or weak you are."

Nami and Usopp shined up. Both of them being quite stunned, they looked at Zoro and awaited more to escape his mouth.

The green-haired nakama continued, "Besides, I don't even know what you're complaining about. Nami, you are pretty strong with that weapon of yours already." He glanced at the Clima Tact in her hands, "You could probably take out more people all at once than I could."

The navigator inspected the long blue stick for a moment.

"And Usopp, being in the front-line isn't always the most effective way of fighting. It's not important to protect one's reputation of bravery, protecting your nakama is way enough."

Usopp's mouth widened in realization.

The swordsman only smirked and let his words of wisdom sink in for a while. He jestingly thought that what a smart-ass he had sounded like.

"Aw, you guys!" The shipwright was back, standing and sobbing at the lawn. He had a toolbox in his right hand and covered his eyes with his left arm, "That was beautiful! I'm not crying! Idiot! Why would I cry!?"

Luffy sat and clapped his shoes together, wearing a big grin on his face. Beside him Robin smiled softly about the situation.

Zoro snorted, "Well, now I think it's time for a nice little na-"

He was cut off when his shirt roughly was taken off from behind by the little reindeer, "Oi, what're you doing, Chopper...? Ouch!"

"Zoro, you have a big wound here on your back!" stated the jumpy doctor, "I need to clean this up at once!"

"Oh, I have? I thought there was an itch back there..." He snickered.

The navigator and sniper grimaced hard before the first rose to walk over and punch the swordsman hard over the head, "That confident talk and you can't even keep yourself out of harms way! Idiot!"

"Ye-yeah!" Usopp filled in, "Idiot!"

Zoro, having one of his wise-ass moments. Pretty rare, I know, so maybe it was a bit OOC? Tell me what you think about it :)

*EDIT* Fixed up some minor misspellings and the situation when Usopp crawls to sit beside Nami a little.
*EDIT2* Just fixed some minor things and changed the ending a bit.