A/N: I have absolutely no excuse for this entire story, besides the fact that Zoro is just too much fun not to mess with some days. Really, the man is such a teddy bear. A scowling and very dangerous teddy bear if anyone threatens his crew, but still a teddy bear all the same.
Disclaimers: I do not own One Piece
Warnings: Language, as usual
Anyway, thanks for the reviews on this story so far! Sorry the chapters are so short!
Zoro rolled off the bench, scooped the little beast carefully into one hand and was on the other side of the circular room in less than a second.
"What the hell, you crazy metal monster!" he yelled as Franky turned the top half of his huge body to look at him in surprise. "You're gonna blow a hole in your own ship?"
Franky froze in the square opening, one arm still lifted and pointing to where Zoro was a moment before and his mouth slightly agape. "Eh?" he said. "You don't want me to get rid of it?" His gaze moved down to the Mastinia with a look of confusion.
Zoro seemed a little surprised for a moment as he glanced down and saw the baby Mastinia, sitting in his open hand and shaking like mad, and only just realizing he had grabbed the damn thing before leaping out of the way. "No," he answered after a moment. "Not like that." He turned his attention back to the cyborg with a frown. "Jeez Franky, what's with the cannon, anyway? It's a rodent, not a Sea King."
"Well, no one told me you had a pet squirrel," Franky said a little defensively as he lowered his cannon and shifted his wrist back into place. "I thought it was gonna bite you or something."
"It is not a pet!" Zoro snapped. "It's just up here for awhile so Luffy doesn't try to eat it. You know how he gets sometimes."
"Ah," Franky suddenly looked enlightened. "Got it. So what is that thing, then?"
"No idea," Zoro shrugged and stuffed the animal into his haramaki once again, letting its head and front legs dangle over the side. "A…mast-eater…or something. Ask Robin."
"It eats ships?" Franky's eyes widened in alarm. "And you brought it here? Not a super idea, Sword Bro! I can't let my precious Sunny get so much as a scratch-!"
"Does this thing look like it can eat a ship?" Zoro interrupted angrily, pointing at the fur ball's twitching pink nose. "Don't be dumb. It's a rodent, I just don't remember what the hell it's called, alright?"
"Oh." Franky fell silent for several seconds, studying the irritated swordsman and his new charge. "So, why do you have-"
"Just don't ask," Zoro shook his head. He tried to fold his arms, realized the movement would squish the rat, and stuck his hands into his pockets instead. "What did you come up here for, anyway?"
"That's right," Franky slapped one enormous hand against the wood beside him, making the Mastinia jump in alarm and Zoro roll his eyes at the both of them. "Cook Bro said it's time to eat, and asked me to come get you so he didn't have to send Robin or the bratty girl up the ladder."
And conveniently forgot to mention the rodent, I'm sure, Zoro thought with another frown. The cook was going to get a sword hilt right in his curly-browed eye as soon as Zoro reached the kitchen. "Yeah, whatever," he said out loud. "Let's go."
Most of dinner that evening consisted of Luffy and Usopp trying to play with the Mastinia, Chopper scolding them and telling them no, and Brook and Nami eyeing the small animal with watchful gazes. The bony musician because he was slightly afraid of anything that resembled a rat, and Nami because…well, it was a bit hard to tell, really.
It turned out that the Straw Hat navigator wasn't nearly as opposed to having the Mastinia on their ship as Zoro had thought she would be. Although she shot it calculating looks from the corner of her eye every once in awhile, about half-way through the meal the swordsman had witnessed her sliding a small scrap of dinner roll over to where it sat beside Zoro's elbow, a move so small it could have been passed off as accidental. Zoro knew better, though.
Nami might act stern sometimes but she had a heart as big as any of them, and after hearing that the Mastinia had been recently orphaned, her walls had broken even faster than Zoro's had. It was enough for Zoro to decipher the nearly constant glances as pertaining more to the animal's long term well-being, and less to it being a threat to their health. She was probably trying to calculate how much it would be eating during its stay, and what that would mean for their captain's own meals. Considering the size of the rodent, Zoro doubted the Sunny's food stock would suffer so much as a dent, even if the little pest stayed with them permanently.
Which would not be happening, he thought stubbornly.
As the dinner plates were being cleared away by Sanji, Franky had suggested making some kind of cage for the Mastinia, an idea that was quickly shot down by Chopper.
"It wouldn't be right to cage him," the doctor explained. "But maybe a small box of sand wouldn't be so bad to have around."
"A box of sand?" Zoro repeated, looking up from where he had been trying to get the baby animal to let go of his thumb without hurting it. The thing was clingy. "What would it need that for?"
"'He'," Chopper reminded the swordsman patiently. "And, well…he'll need to use the bathroom somewhere, right?"
"So, it's for pooping," Luffy nodded, having finally understood something Chopper had been trying to tell him about the Mastinia for the last hour.
Chopper sighed in defeat but gave an affirmative head tilt toward the captain anyway. "Yes, Luffy." He turned to look at Zoro for approval. "Well?"
"Eh," said Zoro. He hadn't given it much thought, to be completely honest. "Whatever you think, I guess." Really, he was still in blatant denial that he had been saddled with the mini monster to begin with. Planning for its care wasn't anywhere near the top of his priorities list.
"That settles it, then," Chopper smiled and turned to Franky. "A shallow, topless box to fill with some sand from the beach. And maybe another box for him to sleep in, if you have time. I'd bet I have some spare rags we could put inside it as well, to make it more comfortable for him."
"No problem, Doc," Franky grinned. "Coming right up." He left the kitchen, presumably headed for his work room on the lower deck.
"Hey Chopper," Zoro started. "Since you're so good with animals, why don't you just take care of it?"
No sooner had he finished his sentence than the baby Mastinia hopped onto the back of his hand where it rested on the newly-cleaned table, giving a small squeal of protest.
"That's why," Chopper grinned as nearly everyone else at the table snickered at Zoro's look of barely-disguised irritation.
"Besides, you're quite good with him, Swordsman," Robin assured him from across the table. She wasn't laughing but her small smirk of amusement told Zoro that she was just as entertained by his discomfort as the rest of them.
"Great," Zoro muttered to no one in particular. He shot another frown at the rodent as it stretched itself out across his hand possessively. "This is just not my day."
And so the evening ended with Zoro placing the little monster in its make-shift bed and climbing into his hanging bunk beside it.
The other men were already sprawled across their own bunks (or in Brook's case, on the floor; he would inevitably end up there, anyway) and barely spared a glance toward Zoro or the furry animal, as exhausted as they all were from their daily shenanigans.
Zoro took a deep breath, glad the nightmare of a day was finally over and wondering if he could still manage to push the Mastinia off onto the doctor somehow, when a light scrabbling noise pulled him from his almost-sleep state. A moment later he frowned as the baby in question pulled itself over the edge of the bunk and scurried up the swordsman's side before settling on his chest and closing its dark eyes contentedly.
"Not a chance," Zoro told it. "Never gonna happen." He plucked the intruder from his shirt and hauled himself back to the floor to set it in the box, then climbed into bed once more.
The thing was back even faster this time, curling itself disturbingly close to Zoro's face and giving a quiet whine in his ear.
"I don't care," Zoro growled at it in warning. "Sleep in your own damn bed."
"There's something wrong with you, shitty swordsman," Sanji mumbled tiredly. "The one thing on the planet willing to cuddle with you and you're still pushing it away."
"Shut up, love cook," Zoro bit back as he pulled the animal away from his neck and sat up.
"I'll cuddle with you, Zoro," Chopper offered from the other set of bunks.
"I wasn't asking!" Zoro snapped, sounding a bit more harsh than he had meant to. He sighed and continued with a tone of forced calm, "Just go to sleep, Chopper."
Chopper grumbled quietly, already drifting off, and Zoro swung himself off the bunk to set the Mastinia back inside its little box.
"Stay," he ordered.
The baby whined pathetically as Zoro turned away and he had to actually try to ignore it's pleading cries, which was more than a little unsettling for him. He was still frowning when he lay down again and eventually closed his eyes.
This time the tiny creature obeyed the swordsman's demands and Zoro was able to finally drift to sleep, free of the fear of being smothered during the night by a ridiculously bushy tail.
Zoro awoke at dawn the next morning to the cook's annoying voice calling for everyone to come to breakfast. He ignored the summons and instead decided to roll over and stuff his face underneath the soft feather pillow.
It had been decided the previous night that a select number of the crew would go ashore to see if they could find out what the Mastinia would eat apart from bread, as surprisingly Robin's books hadn't yielded much information besides their location, and to find out if there was another colony of them somewhere on the island. As such the morning meal was being served much earlier than usual, a fact that Zoro was most definitely not happy about.
After another obnoxiously loud call, followed by a string of specific and detailed threats (directed mostly at the swordsman), Zoro finally rolled himself off the bunk to land lightly on his feet. As he stretched his stiff muscles he looked down to see an empty box sitting on the floor next to the wall. Zoro stared at it in confusion, running a hand through his hair and yawning. An empty box? Where did that come from?
It came back to him slowly at first; that the box wasn't actually supposed to be empty, and that the thing he had placed inside it the night before was currently nowhere in the vicinity, as far as he could tell.
Zoro was fully alert in less than a second after that realization and it only took another second for him to work out what had probably happened.
"Luffy!"