Nami was about to open her locker when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Sanji leaning against the wall several metres away.
"...Sanji-kun?"
He looked up and his jaw dropped open in surprise to see her smiling a little at him.
"N-Nami-san? Err-- are you-- er-- uhm-- okay?"
Sanji fidgeted a little as he asked this nervously, and Nami put a little more effort into her smile.
"Much better now."
There was a pause before Nami asked,
"Are you free right now?"
"Oh! Me? Er-- b-but of course!"
He stammered. Nami's smile grew warmer.
"Would you mind baking orange-flavoured cookies for me?"
The sweetness in her tone immediately brought Sanji's mind back to their previous lives.
Nami-san, what would you like for me to do for you now?
I'd like orange-flavoured cookies!
It made him feel over-joyed to realise Nami was actually asking him to do something for her. She was! And he hadn't done a thing to offer any help, either!
"Would I mind?! Why Nami-san it's an honour to do anything for you!!"
He cried, and swooping her bag out of hands began to stride towards the other end of the floor.
"Sanji-kun!! Wait!! My bag--"
"It's all right, Nami-san! I'll hold it for you, it's what a man does for a woman!"
"No, that's not what I--"
"It's fine, I can handle the bag!"
Sanji chortled, and jumped up and down as he called out,
"Come on Nami-san! Let's go and bake cooki--"
"SANJI-KUN!! I need to put that bag in my locker!! Come back first!!"
Sanji was a lot more quieter on the way to the dormitory, and Nami could have sworn she'd seen him blush when he'd slunk over and returned the bag to her.
"Usopp-san, are you sure you forgive me? I didn't mean--"
"Kaya, I'm telling you, it's fine!"
Usopp said with a laugh,
"I'm just amazed you got out of the house even with Merii hiring bodyguards for you."
"I told them I had to go buy some... lady stuff."
Kaya admitted, blushing,
"Thank goodness the bodyguards aren't lie detectors. You were right, Usopp-san - I am a terrible liar, I could feel my face turn bright red as I spoke!"
"As long as they didn't notice."
Usopp said with a smile before he drinking more soda. Kaya tipped the chocolate chips Usopp had given her into the whipped cream on her ice-cream and stirred as she spoke.
"I'm sorry I haven't been very truthful to you lately. Klahadol hasn't been going through a good time, and I suppose it's rubbing off on me..."
The engineer's brows knitted as he repeated,
"Klahadol? It sounds awfully familiar..."
"Klahadol Krow, manager of Feline Incorporates in the Electronics business? I think you would know him, Usopp-san."
He snapped his fingers.
"Oh, Krow! Yeah, I know him. That's... oh, yeah. The guy who saw me a couple of days ago in front of your home..."
"...Please don't think badly of him if he says anything to you,"
Kaya said hesitantly,
"He's a very nice man, but he jumps very easily into conclusions... and... I don't know, he's been very stressed lately, so maybe the strain's getting to him because he seems so distant these days..."
Usopp snorted, to Kaya's surprise.
"I don't have a good feeling about the man. I really don't like the way he acts."
"What do you know about Krow?"
Kaya asked, trying to keep the bite out of her voice. She was shocked; Usopp hardly knew the man, yet he was being so judgemental. Was he depending on the media? She had hoped he wasn't one of those types...
"...Nothing, I guess. Sorry, Kaya - I know you're close to the man... It's just that I feel like I've met him somewhere before, but I don't know..."
Kaya blinked in surprise, and a sort of warmth spread through her. He looked so apologetic.
"It's okay." She said, trying not to sound apologetic herself, "Krow can be insufferable at times--"
Usopp let out a hearty laugh that made Kaya laugh too at her choice of vocabulary before she added,
"--but he's a very nice man once you get to know him."
"I'm sure he is."
Usopp said, and although Kaya caught the dryness in his tone she couldn't stop smiling.
The door burst open, and the dark stairwell was suddenly flooded with grey light. As Zoro stepped onto the landing, he noted the lack of ceiling and the way it opened out to the greying skies. He looked down to see artificial grass, and looked around to see a tall fence of blue metal surrounding the pitch. They were on the astroturf - Zoro had never been to it before, and walked along the plastic shoots interestedly.
"It's drizzling,"
He said as he felt cold droplets fleck his skin. Tashigi was not listening; she had entered some storage room. Zoro started to follow but stopped, startled, when something suddenly flew out from the stroage room at him. Three things, to be precise. He honestly had had no idea what they were or how to react, but his soul must have known because reflex followed. With a single handed swipe, Zoro had all three bokken handles in his hand before he tossed one of the bokkens to his other hand with a flick of his wrist.
Tashigi re-emerged with a bokken in her hands, her eyes flitting over his tight grip on each handle before looking at him. He looked somewhat confused for a split second, but the moment he saw the flare in her eyes, Zoro realised what she wanted.
He promptly dropped the bokkens with a clatter of hard wood onto the artificial grass, looking at Tashigi as though she were dangerous.
"No way."
Zoro said flatly. Her determined expression did not falter one bit; instead, her eyes seemed to gleam with some sort of energy.
"You're not a coward, are you?"
Scowling, Zoro started to walk towards the other end of the pitch. Tashigi intercepted him easily, thrusting her bokken before his chest and forcing him to stop.
"I remember, Zoro. How you fought with me with me once, but after I spoke of my beliefs, you refused to even look me in the eye."
"I didn't want to fight you then for a good reason, and I don't want to fight you now for the same reasons."
The rain started to fall harder as a ghost of a sad smile flickered past Tashigi's lips.
"You mean because I look like your dead friend? Is that it?"
"Yes. Do you have a problem with that?"
Zoro growled, glowering as he stepped away from her weapon. Her eyes widened a little in surprise before they narrowed.
"I do, Roronoa. I always did. I can't help the way I look, nor can I even fathom who that girl was. But this... this isn't about her. It's between you and me, isn't it?"
"Tashigi, don't you even remember what you wanted to fight me for?"
Zoro demanded, taking effort not to sound panicked at how serious she looked and sounded,
"You wanted my Wadou, and you wanted to get me because you were a marine and I was a pirate."
Tashigi's eyes flickered as a strange smile spread on her lips. It looked almost excited.
"Exactly. This world, there is no Wadou. You aren't a pirate, and I'm not a marine. You have no reason to run away. I have no reason to chase you. For once we can face each other and fight without any burdens at all. You didn't fight me with the Wadou, and you didn't finish me off because you were a pirate, and you were running from a marine. At least, that's what you said, right? But now it's different."
She pointed her bokken to the ones on the ground near Zoro's feet.
"I can see your potential for the first time, now. Fight me with your true style, Roronoa Zoro. Let me see if I am a worthy opponent to your strength."
"I don't--"
He was interrupted as she swung her bokken at him suddenly, the tip just grazing the zip on his blazer. Tashigi moved forward, her glasses slipping down the tip of her nose as she slashed diagonally towards his chest, only to have it intercepted with a dull thud with another bokken. She felt almost relieved when she saw he had two of the bokkens in his hands, but it fell as she saw the third bokken still on the ground.
"What? Scared of germs?"
Tashigi snapped, her eyes darting from the bokken amidst the artificial grass to his teeth. The rain began to fall in thicker sheets as Zoro threw her bokken off and stepped back.
"If you want a fair match, you're going to have to accept two things."
His voice was as grim as his expression, the tone lacing it defeated.
"One is that I don't use a sword in my teeth unless it's the Wadou. I won't even try to explain why, so don't ask."
Her eyes flashed angrily as she opened her mouth, but he cut any words she might have said with a death-glare as he snapped,
"Don't argue, either. The other thing is, I don't want to have to look at you. So..."
Tashigi watched, her jaw dropped open as he pulled his blue bandanna off, held it by opposite corners and tightly binded the material around his eyes. He resumed his stance with his bokkens in either hand, looking as though the blindfold didn't bother him in the least.
"Let's start this now, shall we?"
"Wh-wha-- WAIT!!"
Tashigi managed to yell, spluttering,
"This is ridiculous!! How is this a fair match to you?!"
"You mean you call the last fight we had a fair match? When the rain was pouring and you didn't have your glasses on?"
"Those are reading glasses!!!"
Tashigi yelled, but Zoro snorted.
"Whatever, same thing."
"They are not!!!"
"Do you want a match or not?!"
Zoro snapped irritably,
"I'm not doing it if I have to look at your face!!"
Tashigi grit her teeth, but knew she didn't really have a choice. Hoping Zoro couldn't see, Tashigi slid her glasses off and into her pocket. The rain was falling so hard it blotted her vision with a constant sheen of droplets that distorted everything, and remembered that this was the same reason she had taken them off back at Logue Town.
"Fine!"
She exclaimed angrily, and with a hard thwack their bokkens met in mid-air as he swung up to intercept her blow to the neck.
It seemed so similar, yet things couldn't feel so different. She couldn't see his eyes now, but she still caught the white flash of his teeth; every so often he would grin whenever she made a sharp save to block his attacks.
He knew where she was and where her attacks were coming from with amazing accuracy, and it occurred to Tashigi it might be easier for him this way; people relied too much on vision sometimes, and that was when they made fatal mistakes. Obviously, Zoro knew that.
Their bokkens did not make the resonating clang of blades, either - it made dull thuds and thwacks. It sounded drawn back and muffled, and Tashigi longed for the wood to morph into metal, for the feel of a tightly wrapped handle beneath her fingers and not the spongey layer pasted to the wooden handle...
And, Tashigi just noticed something else as he swung his bokkens to meet hers with a hard clack - the impact wasn't hard enough and she pressed forward, sliding her bokken off his with a sharp increase in pressure and gained advantage as she nearly caught his side off-guard. However, he just barely managed to counter the sword with a fast swing - and he let out an annoyed growl. Tashigi could feel some strange sense of frustration that seemed to be mounting in Zoro.
He couldn't believe how much his body had deteriorated in comparison to his old body. The amounts of strength he was channelling into his slashes weren't working nearly as well as he hoped; his muscles complained as loudly as they had done the night he'd performed the Hawk Wave. During the Hawk Wave Zoro had not required this much use of muscle. Now he realised he must have blown his muscles apart or something, and was probably still recovering because they suddenly hurt like hell from the over-exertion.
Zoro stubbornly ignored the will to succumb to the lactic-acid build up, and instead worked them harder as Tashigi started a flurry of attacks aimed for a centre point in his stomach. As he deflected all her attacks and heard her give an identical grunt of frustration identical to his own, Zoro wondered if he should start settling for less amounts of strength in each attack -- and the split second he spent thinking Tashigi landed a blow on his left hand. The wood smashed his knuckles into the handle with a painful-sounding crack.
Damn, it hurt. Zoro's fingers loosened, his knuckles momentarily paralysed from pain, but Tashigi was far more quicker than his recovery; the next thing Zoro knew, the bokken was hit and the handle slid out of his grip, the other bokken clattering along with it. Feeling the rain finally soak through to his skin as she brought her bokken slashing down aside him, he backed up, and found to his amusement that he was backed up against a wall. Her wooden weapon struck the wall beside his ear with a final-sounding clack.
Lightning flashed a blinding white through the bandanna as Zoro felt rain drip off his bangs. Thunder rolled in the distance as the rain pounded onto the astroturf, and Zoro suddenly found himself grinning.
"Well, what do you know? You won."
Zoro said with an almost cheerful tilt. Not that he was surprised; he was finally beginning to make up the oxygen debt and was breathing harder than usual. He was just making a mental note to himself to start working out, when he was startled to hear Tashigi sniffle.
"Whoa, what's wrong? You that happy to win?"
Zoro asked, lifting a hand to remove the bandanna around his eyes. Tears were streaming past Tashigi's cheeks as she lowered her bokken, her brown eyes not facing him but downcast.
"That was no defeat, Roronoa, and you know it. That was not a fair match."
"I agree. You don't have your glasses on. In essence, we were both blind during the match. I thought some of your attacks were a little too far to the left..."
Zoro trailed off into silence as Tashigi pressed a hand into her eyes, threatening to push her eyeballs into the confines of her skull from the pressure.
"You weren't doing your best at all. You couldn't see. You weren't using your true style. And you pulled all your muscles."
"You can tell, huh?"
Zoro said, and Tashigi gave a short, sharp exhalement of breath before she whispered,
"And in the end, I had to take advantage of a moment you were distracted. I had to find a fault in you, not some brilliance in me."
She let out another sniffle as she brought both hands to her face, and Zoro caught a glimpse of silvery tracks past her throat that was not rain.
"Do you think it really is because I am a woman, Zoro?"
Tashigi whispered,
"Was I right in thinking you didn't finish me off last time because-- I was a girl?"
Her voice cracked as she choked out,
"Or am I just weak?"
Zoro leaned against the wall and immediately felt a torrent of rain pour down his back from the layer of water pouring down the wall. He ignored it as he brought his eyes to the girl standing before him, her shoulders hunched and her face in her hands as her shoulders convulsed from her sobs.
"...Most women don't train themselves to fight."
Zoro said,
"I have an unwritten rule in me that allows me to try to not hurt women like that. But the rule also means I will treat women with strength with the same way I will treat any worthy opponent."
"...So I am just weak, am't I?"
Zoro scowled.
"Are you listening to me? Sure, to say you lost to me because you are a woman is a blatant excuse. It's a cowardly reason to evade the truth. You think you have a weaker mind than you do, Tashigi."
She did not say anything, and Zoro paused before he picked up on a different strand.
"I didn't fight you with the Wadou and I didn't perform a finishing blow at the end for the same reason, Tashigi. You'll never know my full potential - my body is ill-adapted in this world, and in the other, we just don't work out."
"...Why is that, Zoro? Is it because you're a pirate, and you've got to run from me?"
"No. It's the reason you feel is petty and stupid. But hear me now, Tashigi, because I am never telling you this again. I've told you already that you look like her. Well, here's a better way to put it: you look too much like her."
His teeth grinded together as he continued,
"In that world, my entire life uptil the day I died was built upon my sworn promise with her. We had a promise that depended on our futures, but then she died. Do you get it yet? She died, Tashigi - fate took her before she could do anything about it. That's why her will to accomplish it became my everything - I fought for her. But then you-- you look just like her, you share her ideas, and what's worst is that you're a friggin' swordsman!!"
Zoro didn't even notice his volume rising.
"I can't fight you properly because you-- you're an insult to my word and the meaning in her death."
"But that's not my fault!"
Tashigi blurted out angrily from behind her fingers, but Zoro cut in yelling,
"I don't care!! I know it's not your fault - that you can't help looking like her, that you can't help saying the same things, whatever - but it matters to me. I can't face you, no matter what! This doesn't work, you understand?! It's not happening here - it's not our place to at the moment!"
Tashigi pulled her hands from her face, her eyes inquiring as she searched his face.
"What do you mean, it's not our place?"
"Because... we're different. We're not exactly what we were before. There's something empty in us, and that emptiness causes deep flaws. And things are missing here. I have no Wadou. You have no confidence. We can't do anything here because it's not the same, and this emptiness created is because we can't do anything about what we couldn't accomplish before. We can never fight properly in this world, Tashigi."
He looked back at her drenched frame, her soaking locks of hair stuck to her skin and the confusion in her chocolate eyes. And he found he just had to say something to reassure the helplessness they were both feeling.
"Maybe... maybe one day, if we return to that world and we meet again there - perhaps something may happen, and something may change. But it isn't happening in this world, because it isn't our place here. Because you aren't the marine you were, and because I'm no longer a pirate."
There was a stunned silence at the other end as she realised that the reasons she had thought were valid for them to fight were the same reasons they couldn't.
"...Then why were you attracted to me?"
She whispered, then realised how it sounded and stuttered,
"I-I mean, why did you feel inclined to talk to me in the first place?"
"...I guess we have a different goal here."
He replied. Tashigi frowned as she asked,
"But what goal could we possibly have in this world?"
"How about to restore your faith in yourself?"
Tashigi's head snapped up, her eyes wide. Seeing her surprise, Zoro elaborated a little.
"I knew it from the start, but it became definite from your attacks... it felt like you weren't sure if they were all going to hit. And if they did, you would hit with new vigor, and then fall back again if I countered and gained an advantage."
Zoro raised an eyebrow at her.
"If you're going to do anything against that wacko gang of girls, you're going to have to do something about your confidence."
Tashigi was quiet for a moment before she spoke again.
"Does there always have to be a motive, Zoro?"
"What?"
"I mean... do you think there always is a motive when someone approaches someone else? It seems to me no one has approached me for anything other than a reason."
That same sad smile flickered past her lips once more.
"Are you implying that you think I have a motive?"
Zoro asked, just the hint of warning edging his voice.
"Well, you approached me because I was familiar, and now your 'goal' sounds like a moti--"
Zoro cut in,
"That's not true! I didn't mean it like that when I said the goal thing, okay?! That's something else entirely different from a motive! And I didn't talk to you at first because I thought you were familiar. I mean we sort of did a lot at the dinner dance night, and -- and, it's just that you're just really comfortable to be with, and I-- I like... being with..."
He trailed off as Tashigi's face flushed despite the cold. Zoro seemed to suddenly realise what he had nearly said, because he quickly averted his eyes from hers and said hastily,
"Look, there's something about our world I'd like to talk about with you."
"Uhm... I am sort of curious about the return to the other world. What do you mean by that?"
"...That's not something I want to talk about in the rain on the astroturf."
The green-head turned and started to walk away from the astroturf but stopped as Tashigi yelped,
"Wait! You're supposed to put back the bokkens--"
He turned, grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the storage room as he muttered,
"Get a grip, it's pouring now - our priority is to get out of the rain, not be neat and tidy."
"We were standing in the rain for ages so we're sopping anyway-- let go!!--"
"That's right, let's go!"
"Wh-wh-what?!! I said let go, not let's go, are you deaf--?!"
Tashigi's splutters carried all the way down the stairs, the topic turning to the colour of Zoro's hair as the bokkens lay forgotten and soaked on the astroturf, looking sadly rather forlorn.
A/N: Urgh. Cruddy chapter. =-=;; Forgive me... I edited it a lot, and there are still so many mistakes. But I got my first FAQ up! ^_^; So forgive me, please. Nami is thinking a lot of other things while she's talking to Sanji in this chapter, by the way, so don't be fooled. :P You're all the sweetest, people..... ^_^* Thanks for sticking with me all this time. I know super long stories tend to drag on and ON and ON.... and that the writing just gets boring, and the plot gets weird and predictable and all that... so I sincerely feel really really happy and excited that people are still reading and giving me a chance. *huggles* XD You're all zee best. So, as always, thanks for all your kind words and for bearing with my crappy writing uptil now. *bows*
The sad sad sad sad sad sad sad etc. FAQ/SJAQ link can't be shown on fanfiction.net uploads, so you have to be even sadder and get to it by closing all the spaces. Wheeee. =-=;;
h t t p : / / w w w . a n g e l f i r e . c o m / a n i m e 3 / r u f i a n g e l / f a q . h t m l
Next Update Date: ...Thursday/Friday sound okay? ^_^;