Full Summary:
The Strawhat Crew, composed of Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Sanji, and Usopp, after a hasty escape from Loguetown, are finally ready to enter the Grand Line! In the storm of their escape from the island, however, another storm is building within a certain swordsman who, via an old connection from his past, is soon led to believe that he doesn't quite know the whole truth about the death of his only true childhood friend.
Rating Description: Rated M (Mature) for mature teens 16 and older. Contains strong but non-excplicit adult themes, strong violence, and strong coarse language.
Other notes: Just in case you were wondering, I do not plan on including any lemons, slashes, or pairings. This is Nakamaship only. :]
Venom
Chapter 1: An Old Friend
"You'll never have to worry about money problems again when you're working for the Marines! There will always be a job here for you."
A cheerful, almost childish smile flashed at him, and locks of deep blue hair bounced at the movement of her head, the stark white of the hallway fluorescence casting a rich gleam upon her crown.
Instinctively at the memory, Zoro clenched the stern muscles of his jaw and gripped a strong, wide hand around the woven white cloth handle of the single katana at his waist—Kuina's katana.
That was just too weird. She looked just like her…
His dark boots scuffed up loose dust from stones ground smooth by unrelenting travel; his brisk strides kicked up sheer billows of the dust to a generously tanned and dominant brow furrowed in engrossing thought as he moved uneasily through the streets of Loguetown. A collage of pallid stones pressed smooth and densely into the hardened soil passed swiftly beneath his feet as he tossed careless and fleeting glances among the various workshops, stores, and assorted buildings that lined the road. The street, abundant with bustling people, twisted away from the Marine base from which he had just fled.
…Not to mention she's a swordsman, of all things. What a crazy world.
At least an hour of wandering had passed him. A thin film of dust had coated itself onto his black trousers when Zoro decided to sit down and relax. Comfortably far enough away from the Marine base, he climbed to the top of a flight of cement stairs while gliding a muscular palm up an ornate iron railing. Turning around, sucking in a healthy breath of air and stretching up muscular arms with interlocked fingers, Zoro lowered himself and slumped lazily against the iron railing with a sigh and rested a hand on his knee. A splintered red door hung on rusted hinges on his right, and travelers, merchants, customers, and civilians bustled below on the street to his left. Their voices mixed and intertwined as they floated up into the air towards a gray sky beginning to thicken with clouds. Savory aromas of pastries and freshly baked bread danced about his nostrils along with a raw tang of rain. Relaxing, Zoro closed his eyes and felt the coolness of the concrete perforate his lower half.
I'll have to find a sword shop before I leave. I'd feel a lot better with three swords again.
The exceptionally vivid as well as relatively new memory of his brief fight with the hawk-eyed warlord of the sea began to flood his mind with flashes of images, of his own splattering blood and a demonically gleaming black sword. For a moment the smell of rain seemed to transform into the iron scent of scarlet body fluid and of cold steel. A quick yet stern shake of his head dissolved the unpleasant images. In their place, to his annoyance, developed the unnervingly familiar face of the female sergeant for whom he should still be rightfully scrubbing floors. He remembered how fragile her feminine body had looked—how delicate… though not nearly as delicate as the angelic ivory smoothness of young Kuina's skin. Gratefully he let his mind float to his only childhood friend, his best friend, and allowed it to remain there, though he did not often do so quite this freely.
"If you lose, you have to become a member of this dojo."
The small voice was like the ring of a sweet golden bell in his imagination. The corners of his stern mouth involuntarily curled upwards slightly in remembrance.
"You lose!"
Zoro's body was plastered to the slick wooden floor of the dojo. He couldn't make any move at all except comply with the greedy push and pull of his diaphragm as he lay on the floor, breathless, beaten, in front of this girl.
A winding breeze, like a cooling afterthought, caressed Zoro's cheek and then slipped through the wide-open spaces in the chipped iron railing.
A girl.
Damn it.
Electric blue eyes somehow pinned down his larynx to prevent protest and burned into his skull so that he could not take his own eyes away from her. He had never seen such intensity someone's eyes before. Such… tenacity. None of the other dojo members could even compare. She was in complete control of him. And that made him very uncomfortable.
The wooden steps at the side of the dojo soon began to welcome him, as his small feet treaded upon their worn surfaces hundreds of times every day. Battle upon battle upon battle, no matter how many sleepless nights he spent vigorously training, far outdoing the other boys, the graceful steps and superior swipes of Kuina's skillful training weapons rendered Zoro breathless and beaten every single time, sprawled and laid out flat in the hot grass of late spring. The heat of summer radiating off the dojo's deep teal shingles dissolved the clouds of the island and painted his body with a rich tan over many weeks.
She defeated him two thousand times. Two thousand. How fascinating was her impenetrable confidence—she radiated confidence. And with good reason.
"Match over!"
Sensei tried to spare Zoro further humiliation.
"Come now, Kuina."
She ignored her father, and pointed her training weapon at Zoro who lay on the floor.
"It's ten years too early for an amateur like you to use the two-sword style."
The words crackled like lightning inside him.
"What did you say?"
Kuina almost sneered with pride as she cocked her chin up defiantly.
"What? We can fight another match if you want!"
Challenge accepted, he thought as he stood, his face and nose stinging and angry red from Kuina's finishing blow. Boldly he defied her proclamation.
"I will defeat you!" He clenched his small fists in defiance.
Kuina simply scoffed.
"That day will never come."
Zoro trained relentlessly, for months upon months. Winter passed in a flurry of numbing cold, but he didn't really notice. Through shed sweat and tears he managed to even defeat the adults in the dojo. Boys his age didn't even bother to challenge him anymore. Every once in a while, he would pit himself against a young man named Kane, with whom he was quite equally matched, as he found out.
Kane was a skillful swordsman, a tall and lean man with dark olive skin and ash blonde hair that was always smoothed back except a few stray pieces, and just brushed his broad shoulders. A smooth, plum-toned diagonal scar adorned his left cheek, expanding from the side of his angular nose to a tapered thread at his prominent jawbone, and his eyes were a cold tone similar to the steel he carried at his side. His moves in battle were strikingly swift and perfectly timed, his strong arms flashing like the glint of the sunlight on his weapon as he fought in the dojo against other adults as well as Sensei. A low, gaunt brow hung above his deep-set eyes, casting dark shadows on his severe face with the exception of the raised shine of his scar, which always seemed to catch the light.
The man had heard of Zoro's remarkable talent and fierce determination as well as skill, but was still surprised by the extent of these qualities while actually fighting him. Though he had been caught off guard by Zoro's intensity, he never imagined the child would defeat him on the first try because of this. As a result, his pride had been injured in a rather raw fashion, and Zoro never saw him much in the dojo again. Every once in a while though, while the other boys were engaging in various matches, a slight creak from the side steps would alert Zoro to the man's presence, as he sometimes came in for a few minutes to watch the children's matches. Zoro eyed him boldly, and shot fierce glances at him to get his attention, but Kane had always ignored him.
Zoro didn't mind others coming in to watch, but this man made him uneasy; even though he had defeated him in a match and thus rendered him to not be a threat, the coldness of Kane's gaze could make him shudder, especially when he saw it directed at Kuina—yes, he often looked at Kuina, and not necessarily with a look of admiration or respect, though to the naked eye, that would appear to be so. But Zoro examined Kane more closely than the others—something about him just made him feel… perturbed. Perhaps it was a look of admiration from those steel eyes, but that admiration, to Zoro at least, seemed to be a wide, suspicious blanket to mask a gaze of contempt that he saw perforating through the man's exterior. It was one thing for Zoro to be frustrated with Kuina's superiority, but Kane had never fought against Kuina, or at least, he had heard no word of any such match between the two. Perhaps even something more was hidden in Kane's glances, but Zoro couldn't really put his finger on it. Whatever it was, for whatever reason, it made his stomach turn.
Kuina was oblivious. She was too engrossed in the matches going on in front of her as she sat in the dojo with all the young boys, her thin legs crossed and her graceful hands placed upon her thighs, her eyes like ice as she drank in the forms of the fighting boys, identifying all of their mistakes and weaknesses.
Zoro would fight her again. And win.
The 2001st fight—with real swords. He wasn't messing around.
The clang of their steel rang out and spun against the dark, sturdy trees in a continuous melodic rhythm. Zoro scraped his two blades threateningly and deliberately across the edge of Kuina's sword so that it emitted a metallic shriek into the night air. She held her ground, her small arms tense. Her petite face was drawn, a serious frown decorated her tiny mouth, and her deadly eyes burned into his.
He lost.
Again.
He burned with frustration, and threatening tears stung his eyes as he sat up in the cool night grass, chest heaving. The night was a vivid blue, and the moon cast a luminous glow upon Kuina's thin but strong shoulders, and glinted a ghostly white incandescence upon the sword held at her side. Her back was to him, and her loose white shirt fluttered in the night breeze.
And she, his only true goal, began to speak—about how he would, without a doubt, ultimately defeat and surpass her as they grew older. And why? Because of the undeniable differences in their bodies as the matured—because she was a girl.
Where had all that contemptuous confidence gone? The determination for her dream? It all had seemed to slip away into the bright luminosity of the moon. Zoro was astonished. This wasn't the Kuina he knew.
Because she was a girl.
That's why?
"My father told me that as a girl, I cannot become a good swordsman. And I know that—it's just… frustrating. I'm the one who should be crying out of frustration, not you."
No.
"You're lucky to be a boy, Zoro. If only… If only I had been born a man…"
Zoro cried out in protest, his voice wavering, his objection undulating through the moonlight over Kuina's shoulder.
"Don't you dare whine like that after you beat me!"
Kuina took a step to turn and look at him; fresh, angry tears cut rivulets down her flushed cheeks, and they glistened in the moonlight.
"That's not fair! You're my goal, Kuina!"
"Zoro—"
"Boy this, girl that! Are you going to say that kind of nonsense when I do beat you someday? You're acting like none of it is about skill! You're insulting all my hard training! Do you know how that makes me feel? So don't say that stuff!"
Kuina turned to face Zoro, her small hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, and she bit her lip, her chin quivering. She lowered her head and said nothing.
Zoro strode over to her side deliberately, his feet sifting through the lush grass. He lowered his voice:
"Promise me, Kuina…"
She released her fists and relaxed her trembling mouth, raising her eyes gradually from her feet to meet Zoro's intense gaze.
"Someday, Kuina, one of us will become the world's greatest swordsman!" was the gallant proclamation.
Kuina blinked, tears drying up on her cheeks.
"We'll compete to see who gets there."
Zoro boldly held up an open hand to her for acceptance.
More tears welled at the corners of her eyes, and she opened her small mouth to speak, but instead turned her head slightly away and towards the ground, and a small smile expanded upon her lips.
"You dummy…"
She joined his warm palm with her own graceful hand. As if in divine approval, a wind swept through the trees, rustling their cerulean leaves, and passed the two children, fluttering their worn clothing and tossing their hair. Crickets tentatively began to sing again. And the children declared in unison:
"It's a promise."
Zoro heard quiet, small steps rustle the grass upon which he was vigorously training. He stopped and looked up, and sweat trickled down the back of his neck. It was the boys from the dojo.
Immediately he was taken aback by the grave, almost ill looks on their faces. Zoro was hesitant to ask.
"What do you guys want?"
None of the three said a word. They just wore the same severe faces.
"Guys?"
A sparrow, like a declaratory trumpet, sang a song of forewarning.
Finally the boy on the right spoke, his lips barely moving:
"There was an… accident."
And another:
"…Kuina."
Zoro was assailed with a twinge of panic that caused his heart to skip a beat and his stomach to twist.
"She—she's dead."
The wind sifted the summer leaves languidly with its gentle poise.
"She was looking for a sharpening stone in the storehouse… and she fell down the stairs."
The rain poured viciously, and dark clouds rumbled in the sky. Propelling feet of the funeral procession splattered the fallen rain.
"Humans… are fragile."
The light tenor of the speaker's voice was drowned out by the cruel sputtering alto of the rain.
Zoro just stared at his feet. Rarely did he look up except to take in the harsh, wavering shine of the black casket.
Only once did he look away, at that was to watch a quick crackle of lightning impel the waving trees in the distance.
However, in front of the trees stood a certain tall young man with steel still at his side, the crown of his ashen hair and the hollowed curves around his dark eyes cast in shadow by a black umbrella. A deep, rose-colored scar stood out boldly from the darkness. The man gazed with drawn features at the harsh black box that held the body of Zoro's best friend, and for just a split second, Zoro thought he saw the right corner of his mouth glide upwards ever so slightly, slickly as oil.
Zoro blinked, centered his gaze upon his target, and looked at him severely in a double take. Just as briefly as he thought it had been there, it was gone.
Was he imagining it?
Unable to take his eyes away from the man, Zoro watched as Kane shifted the umbrella to his left hand, while his right languidly smoothed the front of his shirt, gliding his dark, lazy palm from his chest to his stomach and then down his thigh to his side.
Suddenly he saw the man turn his head, too quickly, in an attempt to meet the child's gaze.
Zoro's heart skipped a beat and his stomach flipped, but with a great deal of effort he managed to resist the urge to look Kane in the eye, and instead dropped his eyes to the man's shoes. Their thick leather was sprinkled with glittering drops of water.
Kane's look did not budge.
Please look away.
Seemingly deliberately, Zoro saw the man shift his weight onto one leg, and in that single movement, that pulled the child's head up to meet Kane's eyes.
Zoro involuntarily held his breath as Kane brought him into a deadlock. Cold steel burned into him and tied his gut into a knot.
And the man smiled down at him through the falling rain.
"Humans… are fragile."
Sensei wore a blank face, his legs crossed as he was seated upon the newly polished floor of the dojo. His graceful hands—like those of Kuina—rested upon his knees.
The clang and screeching of metal upon metal sliced through the static in the air.
Zoro took in exasperated gasps of air whenever he could; even the timing of his breathing was strained as Kuina crashed upon him with her slashes of steel.
Two swords against one, and all he could do was block.
He felt his body quickly weakening.
Please, no…
Kuina knew, and she smiled demonically.
A long, dark and diagonal scar thrust itself outwards from her pale cheeks, and her eyes were black, not even reflecting the glint in her lethal steel.
Suddenly he was thrown onto his back, onto the stone angular stairs of the storehouse, knocking the wind out of his lungs in one blow, and he looked up to see a resemblance of Kuina stand atop the flight, and, in one split second, force her blade vertically down into his exposed throat.
With a gasp Zoro was startled awake, instinctively raising his hands up to protect himself, his eyes snapping open to take in a fountain of splattering blood—wait, no, it was—paint upon wood.
"Oh—!" a voice rang out loudly, returning Zoro to reality.
A door had crushed him into the iron railing behind him.
A middle-aged, heavy woman with dramatic lipstick and a stern face quickly stepped out from behind the splintered door. She wore an apron crusted with flour and her hands were dusted with the white wheat product. Beads of sweat decorated her wrinkled brow.
"My goodness, you scared me out of my wits!" She removed a plump hand from her heart.
Shit, I was dreaming.
Hastily Zoro stood up, his backside numb.
"Uh—I'm really sorry, ma'am, I was just taking a break, sitting on your stairs, and I guess… I guess I ended up falling asleep. I didn't mean to scare you." He scratched his scalp awkwardly and felt his cheeks warm, avoiding her eyes.
The woman let out a relieved sigh. "It's no problem, but I come in and out of here pretty often, so if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you rested somewhere else."
"Right, sure." Zoro straightened the sword at his side and left the woman, swiftly descending the stairs into the bustling crowd of the street once again.
Damn, that scared the hell out of me. Zoro let out a hint of a chuckle at himself, minor embarrassment pulling up on the corner of his mouth.
He sighed as he neared the base of the stairs where a steady stream of people hummed by. Now to find that sword shop… but I wonder where the execution platform is, too… no doubt that's where Luffy ran off to. Crazy bastard.
Just as he entered the river of people, someone utterly crashed against his side, nearly knocking him over. Instinctively his hand flexed for his sword.
"Damnit, watch—!" he cursed, but stopped mid-sentence when he saw the darkly clothed man in sunglasses who had spun around to face him.
Zoro opened his mouth, perhaps to say something, but no words came out as he furrowed his brow and looked more closely at the man, who turned his face up into the light.
Oh, hell no.
A smooth, diagonal scar on his left cheek ran from the side of his nose to the angular bone of his jaw, but now the scar was sunken and carved into his flesh and had faded to white. Ashen blonde hair, now a bit shorter, just grazed the nape of his neck and swung in towards his dark olive-toned face, framing black sunglasses beneath a deep russet-brimmed hat.
I must be dreaming again because if I'm not, this is seriously fucked up.
It was no mistake. It was Kane.
The look on Zoro's face must have been ridiculous, because Kane threw back his broad shoulders and burst into hearty tenor laughter at the sight of his reaction.
Quickly Zoro tried desperately to suppress his utter shock, and pulled his mouth into a rigid frown. Tensely gripping the handle of his katana, he shifted his weight onto one leg and waited impatiently for the man to cease.
"So, you did recognize me!" Kane declared between chuckling.
Zoro wasn't amused.
"I figured that was obvious."
"Oh, my," his laughter died down. "Well, it sure has been a long time, hasn't it, Roronoa, old friend?"
Zoro resisted the urge to sneer.
"Yes it has, but I wouldn't go so far as to call as 'old friends.'"
Kane emitted another quiet chuckle and proceeded to lower his head to remove his sunglasses.
"Very well," he responded with a sly smile, removing his dark shades and bringing his eyes up to meet Zoro's gaze. They were just like before—cold and icy and cruel as steel, and they pierced into Zoro with a perturbing intensity. Zoro pictured Kane's unsettling smile at Kuina's funeral and internally compared the two; they were exactly the same. What a creep.
Zoro swallowed tensely as Kane folded his sunglasses with one elegant hand and slipped them into the pocket of his long leather coat.
"My, I haven't seen you since you were a kid! You sure have grown up," he remarked, eyes drifting knowingly to the sword gripped tightly in Zoro's right hand. "But where are your three swords, pirate hunter?" He almost seemed to spit upon the two words as his eyes glinted back up to meet Zoro's nervous gaze.
"I broke them."
"Ah," he responded calculatingly, "still don't know the full extent of your own strength?"
Zoro smirked. "Guess not."
The man mirrored Zoro's expression.
"And just for the record, I never once called myself a pirate hunter. I don't hunt bounty anymore."
"Mm." Kane pursed his lips slightly in acknowledgement, then proceeded to open the left side of his coat, revealing two swords hanging at his hip, one sheathed in an ornate black and silver, and the other in a deep blue. Zoro raised an eyebrow.
"I must mention that I'm quite skilled with the two-sword style now, years later. You could say we're rather similar people."
Zoro scoffed this time, his voice dripping in sarcasm. "Yeah? I'm pretty sure there's still a pretty big difference between you and me when it comes down to it."
Kane smirked again in remembrance. "Is that a challenge, sir?" His cold eyes gleamed dangerously.
Resisting the urge to take him up on that offer, Zoro closed his eyes for a moment and smoothed his features. "No thanks. I'm rather busy at the moment."
"Oh? You didn't look so busy sleeping up there on the stairs."
Zoro's face darkened with growing suspicion. What in the hell...?
Kane laughed a bit too vigorously at Zoro's reaction and then emitted a happy sigh.
"Yes, I remember when you used the two-sword style against Kuina," he began, and Zoro's stomach began to twist again just like it used to when he was a child, and Kane continued, "back when I used to watch the kids' matches in the dojo."
He flashed a knowing look at Zoro, but Zoro's features remained stone as he waited for the dark man to continue.
"You were quite the prodigy. But so was that girl you envied so much; you never defeated her once, did you?"
Zoro just stood silently in the street, his gaze developing into a glare as the man emitted a small laugh.
"If I remember correctly, you didn't. She laid you out flat every single time," Kane continued deliberately, his face turning blank, "Sure is a shame, huh? She was destined for greatness despite what her father said. Though she as well as the rest of us wholly valued Sensei's judgment, I don't think she would have let that stop her."
Zoro was becoming very uncomfortable, but resisted the urge to look away.
"I'm sure he didn't mean to trample all over her aspirations like that; as a father, I'm quite certain he had only the best intentions. He's a good man, that Koshiro. It really is a shame—the accident hit him very hard." Kane's tone became blunt, almost purposeful: "But I suppose wherever you go, bad things happen to good people."
Glancing keenly at Zoro, Kane stopped for a deliberately considerable moment to take in his listener's reaction. The muscles of Zoro's jaw clenched with anxiety; Kane's last statement didn't really sound like the well-known cliché; used by this man, it sounded more like… something else. The silence between the two had become agonizing for Zoro, but not for Kane; no, Kane seemed to be reveling in it. Finally the strange man broke the silence:
"Yes, Sensei had a very rough time for a long time, I heard, though you weren't really around very much to see it; you were already completely obsessed with your training and such… and I left the island soon after the accident. I imagine you took the news the hardest, hm? I mean, she was your best friend, right?"
Zoro remained silent for a long moment, and then answered with more uneasiness than he had wished to portray, "Yeah."
"Well good for you; you didn't let that stop you at all, did you?"
Silence.
Of course not.
Kane was the one to take his eyes away from Zoro to look down to his side at the sheer billows of dust swirling up from the scuffling feet of the people around them. "Really is a shame," he repeated more softly, still grinning.
Another awkward moment of silence passed, and Zoro waited expectantly for the man to continue with this unnerving disrespectful speech. But he did not speak again, and Zoro was desperate for something to break the silence once again as he glanced fleetingly about the street. He cleared his throat.
"Well then… I should probably be going," Zoro said finally in a strained pitch, "I have a few things to do, and then I'm leaving the island."
Kane looked up with a small devilish smile. 'You know, I was serious about that challenge."
Zoro swallowed. "I can't. I won't be back."
The graceful man shifted his weight and placed a hand on his hip leisurely.
"Oh, surely that's not true." A devious glint shone in his eye.
Zoro scowled.
The man broke out into a cheerful laughter once more.
"Alright then, I'll let you go," he replied, "Farewell for now."
Kane stepped to the base of the bakery home to the woman Zoro had disturbed just a few minutes earlier, pulled out his dark sunglasses from his pocket while unfolding them with one hand, pushed them onto his angular face, and with a quick motion, pulled down the russet brim of his hat. He smiled peculiarly at the young man whom he considered to be an 'old friend', turned on his heel, and headed up the street.
Zoro let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding and relaxed his grip on the white cloth of Kuina's blade.
Holy shit.
The smooth voice addressed him once more as it became drowned in with the flurry of voices intertwining about the street: "Oh, and I forgot to mention, if you're looking for a sword shop, there's one right there on your left!"
Surprised, Zoro threw a glance to his left, and there it was, a sword shop that hadn't been there before. Looking back right, he watched Kane's lean body grow smaller as the man's graceful strides took him into the distance.
Thank God.
With a sigh, Zoro turned and headed for the sword shop, pressing his mouth into a tense line.
This has been one fucked up day. I just can't wait to get out of here.
Author's Note: So there you have it, the first chapter of my first fanfic ever! :D Don't underestimate me though; I'm a very strong writer. I've just never actually bothered to try and publish anything. Reviews would be graciously appreciated; I want as much feedback at possible! :]