Chapter 7: Argument

"SHUT UP!" Jiru's angry voice finally interrupted the male conversation; echoing through the grey, dead glade.

"Ah, she speaks." Zoro quipped playfully at the Golden Thief. "For a few seconds there, I thought Oz had stomped on your tongue."

"I SAID SHUT UP, you idiot!" Jiru finally broke her self-imposed rigid air-padded sitting stance and threw herself onto Zoro's wounded form, crying angrily.

"You almost f-ing died back there, how can you be so…so…cheerful." The treasure hunter was once again shedding tears; but the tears were full of anger and concern.

"Relax. I did what I had to do. There was no way I was going to let that bastard Shichibukai take Luffy." Zoro winced as the short pirate clung to his torso. "Now would you please stop hugging me, it's embarrassing."

A resounding smack echoed through the clearing; making Brooke gasp in surprise. The black-haired, hazel-lagoon-eyed female had launched her palm against the swordsman's face, leaving behind a stunning red mark; palm-shaped.

"DON'T be like that! You moron…you idiot. What would Luffy think if his best friend died?" Jiru ranted at the stunned swordsman. "Why did you sacrifice yourself like that?"

"ME?" Zoro snapped out of his stunned fugue and shouted back at her. "What the hell, would you have had Sanji take my place? Like the Shit Cook could do anything better."

"His name is NOT Shit Cook. His name is Sanji; and I didn't want Sanji to die either. I was on the verge of kicking the Tyrant's ass myself!"

The two were head to head in their newly created argument; Zoro was on his feet, clutching his trio of katana while Jiru growled tearfully on her air pad, leveled with his eyes.

"Yea right; as you laid there on the ground, draped stupidly over Luffy's body with your stupid foot caught under a building sized boulder."

Brooke stood off to the side, looking on helplessly as his new nakama began arguing. A fleeting thought raced through the skeletal mind: how unfortunate that nakama would be reduced to arguing at a place of mourning. But on the next cerebral synapse, he thought how lucky he was to be part of a crew that felt comfortable to do such an outrageous thing.

"Ah, I'll…go on ahead to inform Luffy-san that you two will be back shortly." The black-suited skeleton's comment went unheard as insulting names flew back and forth. The elderly pirate knew this was a prime time to not interfere with personal issues of his new nakama. Backing up quietly, he bowed one last time to his dead nakama's grave site and left. He had no regrets in leaving his previous nakama behind, turning to become part of a new one.

Zoro, his eyes still sharp as ever, noted the skeletal departure from the corner of his vision as his Golden Thief continued to berate his intelligence. The swordsman decided to cut to the chase.

"Jiru!"

"What!"

"Shut up!"

"Make me, you idiot."

Zoro gritted his teeth together and stepped closer to her, wrapping his semi-bandaged arms around her shoulders.

"What the hell is wrong with you!" He asked. "You can't be this mad over something dumb I did. You know I don't die that easily."

The Golden Treasure Hunter, being startled out of her half-hearted ranting stiffened a few moments before leaning bone-lessly into Zoro's arms. Another wave of tears poured from her already wet eyes as she cried bitterly.

"It's gone, Zoro-chan, my baby is gone."

"Yea, I heard."

"I killed it!" She wailed. "I killed the baby, Zoro, I'm so sorry."

Zoro let her cry out her frustrations for a while, his body standing rigidly on the grey rocky ground. He let his other senses drift out to collect information. There was nothing much to feel moving around this god-forsaken plot of Thriller Bark but insects and air currents. Looking up the larger tombstone, Zoro noticed the detail of carving work put into the rock. Franky must have put little effort into it, but still produced high-quality grade work anyway. Moving his black eyes to the smaller of the tombstones, he sighed mentally and turned back to the weeping mess he held. She had been propped against his chest and had her arms curled up between them.

Zoro felt some love for the short, shy female, and didn't care for the Shit Cook or the others to know; but when they were alone like this, he felt warmth in his heart and, sometimes, his cock. He growled, agitated and exhaled another breath. When the Mugiwara's Treasure Hunter was like a crying priss of a female, it complete annoyed him.

"You can stop crying now and tell me what happened to you and the…baby." Dropping all pretense of being a macho bad-ass now, Zoro lowered his husky voice to ask his question.

Sniffling and forcing herself to cease her useless weeping, Jiru slowly pulled away from his wet shoulder and quickly looked the Santoryuu user in the eye before looking down to the ground – a sign of how uncomfortable she was with her thoughts and/or guilt.

"I…I think it was Ryuuma that did it."

"Did what?" Zoro further questioned.

"Killed the baby."

"How?"

"When Luffy, Robin, Franky and I entered the huge carnival room – after you had gone missing in the hallway – Franky pushed me back into the stone hallway to save me. There was an armored zombie with a sword; and it had dropped from the ceiling, trying to skewer me with the sword."

"At first I was mad at Franky, but when I saw the reason why he pushed me, I was totally grossed out. It was another zombie. I didn't interfere much, but cheered Franky on as he fought with the armored zombie. Franky won of course, but when I went to stand up and join them again, that damned mounted Zom-Pig sealed the end of the hallway off with a stone wall. I got separated from the rest."

Jiru paused, sitting back on her pad of formed air-energy to bring her hands to wrap around her arms. Looking up again at Zoro, she sighed and used her black sleeve again to clean her nose with an audible sniffle.

"I was pissed and kind of scared, because you had vanished in the hall minutes before. The hall was dark and creepy, I got freaked out. After I couldn't get the wall to move, I went after the pig; who had been sitting there laughing at me. The zom-pig ran really fast for something with a frame stuck on its body. I tried to follow it to make it open the wall, but got lost. I didn't know what to do next, so I wondered around, trying to find a way out. I ran into the zombie that had Brooke's shadow. I got grossed out since I touched it, and made the mistake of turning around to run away."

The only indication of the swordsman's anger upon hearing this was the tightening of his grip on her shoulders. He had attempted to give the female a crash course in swordsmanship during their brief, recuperating time after Luffy had defeated the Shichibukai Crocodile in the Alabasta country.

Back then, the Mugiwaras had been hard-pressed in battle; dodging not only the forces of Baroque Works, but angered rebels clashing with the Alabastian royal arms – in the desert, sandy environment. When Jiru had asked Zoro of his one on one battle with Mr. 1, the right-hand man of Sir Crocodile, he felt a need to instruct her in ways to defend against a sword.

Roronoa was pleased when she showed how she took the lessons to heart and held her own against overwhelming, sharp sword-wielding marines on the Enies Lobby Bridge of Justice; adventures later. Albeit, she did had a Devil-Fruit advantage, using condensed air as shields to cover her blind spots; but the treasure hunter had used some of the physical tricks to keep herself from being sliced.

To make a stupid mistake and forget how to properly guard against a sword-wielder was something that left Zoro angry. She had paid a terribly price; the loss of their unborn child.

"The jerk moved so fast and used his… that Shuusui… to get a cheap gut shot in with the hilt. I swear I felt my stomach tear, Zoro." Her voice brought Zoro back to reality as he barely caught her words.

"When I woke up next, I knew something was wrong, because my stomach was on fire. I prayed to god that nothing had happened, but I knew that the zombie had injured me inside. I tried to fool myself into thinking that it was something else, but forgot about it when Brooke fought Ryuuma."

Zoro sighed once more as he sensed the two shadow-rescued pirates, Idiot and Lazy, enter the clearing. The treasure hunter wasn't aware of the two pirates, but Zoro was. He shifted his grip on the female to make it less personal, so the pair wouldn't see something they weren't meant to.

"When Kuma finished talking to you, he came back, and I thought the jerk was coming for Luffy again. But he was talking to me. He told me that my baby was dying, and me with it. I panicked, not knowing whether to doubt his word or not. I didn't want to die, so I let Kuma expel the injury in me and the dying fetus."

Jiru had managed to continue her story without crying too much, but as she thought more about the horrible event, her eyes leaked tears once more.

"I'm…I was going to use the child's life force to make you live, Zoro. I wanted to be free of the thing at the same time."

"How were you going to use the thing's life force?" Not very knowledgeable on the workings of her Aura-Aura Power, Zoro looked down at the tiredly weeping girl.

"I don't know! I just didn't want you to die! Luffy would have been so sad." The Golden Thief answered bitterly. She shoved herself away from Zoro and growled. "I didn't want you to die; I didn't want to die either, so I let Kuma remove the kid. I'm relieved…and sad…it's gone. I don't know how I would have told Luffy if I left the poor thing in me."

Zoro stepped back and glared at the two eaves-droppers, motioning them to leave. Thankfully, the pair did, both of them still awe-shocked at the pirate-group that saved them.

"Don't you think Luffy would have cared that you were pregnant?" Zoro's voice rose a notch in volume. "Did you think he would hate a kid from rape?"

"What?"

"Even if you hadn't been raped, and had consented sex with that bastard, Kaku, Luffy would sell his dream to make you feel safe and happy." The green-haired first mate narrowed his vision onto the girl. She sat on her barely visible, mirage-like Aura-pad, looking confused and vulnerable. "Did you even think, at LEAST once, that Luffy might NOT hate you for being a wanton woman."

"Zoro, I'm not a-"

"SHUT UP!" He shouted at her. Now the swordsman was slightly upset – his words weren't coming out right. He didn't know how to explain his anger. Roronoa placed his hand instinctively on his trio of swords hilts sticking out of the wide green harikama that adored his waist and paced back and forth in front of her. "Luffy doesn't care about that, and if you think for one bloody second that you are going to do something stupid like using your kid's life-aura – or your own – to save me or Sanji or any of the others, think again. Luffy loves you."

"What?"

"He may not show it, but the fool has loved you from the beginning, after first meeting you in Cocoyashi Village." Zoro growled as he confessed this knowledge. "The idiot didn't know how to show his feelings, so he just asked you to join his crew."

"Zoro, Luffy's always been like that."

"I know." The Santoryuu wielder now was frustrated even more. Jiru was right. His captain always shown the same level of love and affection for any new nakama he decided to choose. But Zoro knew; he knew from watching Luffy's little habits that the extra-worldly treasure hunter stood out more in Luffy's book. Zoro wouldn't be a very good first-mate if he did not know the moods of his captain. The idiot captain had always been friendlier, sillier and more caring towards the girl. It was a problem that bothered him. Zoro had fallen for the less-than five-foot tall girl too.

"Zoro, are…are you ok?" her voice once again snapped the first mate out of a thinking daze.

"What? Yea." His level of frustration sunk as her wet-lipped smile cut to the core of his heart. Yes, it was true that Luffy loved her; and Zoro did too. Only, his love wasn't pure, it was built on something that he felt for another person early in his life: Kuina. He shook his head, not wanting to fall into a daze of recollection.

"Let's go back; the others should be ready to cast off." He growled.

"Oh, ok…" she murmured. "I still am mad at you, you jerk. I won't forgive you if you nearly die again."

There is was again, her flippant attitude about pretending to care for his sake. She was most likely to be concerned for Luffy's peace of mind. She most likely cared for her captain too – the question was…just how much did she care?

"Chibi-brat, just be quiet and follow me back to the ship." Zoro growled before stalking off away from the grave site. Jiru sighed, bowed one last time to the two grave stones and floated after Zoro.