Tashigi stared at her door intently as she spoke, suspicion lacing every word.
"What about Zoro?"
"I-I don't know," Came Jenna's scared voice desperately, "He said something-- about looking for you, and then these m-men came and-- Tashigi, open up, I can't tell this to a door!"
Tashigi hesitated. This sounded awfully like something Jenna might do-- trick her into thinking that Zoro might be in danger, then do something to her to humiliate her the moment she opened the door.
"Who's the man with you?" She called out cautiously. There was a muffled curse in a deep growl before Jenna said,
"My brother, Kent."
"What's he doing with you?"
"He's my brother! It's not illegal to be with him!"
Tashigi frowned, and prepared to just sit and wait until Jenna gave up and left. However, she began to think. Because if she thought about it, Jenna might be serious. It was only one chance in a million Jenna might actually come to find her of all people, but it might happen. She did say Zoro had been looking for her, and Zoro did miss out on a meeting with her the previous evening. But she didn't know if she could trust Jenna.
"Tashigi!!" Jenna's voice cried out.
Biting her lip, Tashigi reached under her bed to pull out her bokken. Slipping the wooden sword out of its cloth covering, she held it in one hand, and walked right up to the door.
"How am I supposed to trust you?" Tashigi asked quietly.
"Oh, Tashigi, how am I supposed to know?" This time Jenna's voice was more impatient, more like herself. "All I know is that Zoro wanted to see you, these men came and took him away-- and I have no one else to turn to about it! He was closest to you, wasn't he?"
"He has a room-mate," Tashigi countered.
"Sandy White's not in his dorm. No one is. Tashigi, stop being such a petty brat and open the door! This isn't about me or you, it's about Zoro!!"
Setting her hand on the door handle, Tashigi held her bokken tightly in her other fist before turning the knob. Then she jumped back as the door sprung open, a large man with chest-muscles on the verge of bursting his tight vest charging in - his arms outstretched towards her. Eyes widening, Tashigi managed to move around him and thwacked him from the side, over his beefy neck.
He fell with a dull crash, books and empty card boxes falling astray as Tashigi turned her glare to Jenna at the doorway. The girl was smirking as she flipped her hair behind her shoulder.
"You're not as stupid as I thought you were." Jenna mused. Tashigi's eyes narrowed as she turned her bokken to Jenna.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Embarrassing me isn't enough now, is it? Now you have to hire men to try and kill me or something?" Tashigi's breathing was ragged, torn from disbelief. Jenna's eyes narrowed too, but not from suspicion or confusion. She looked triumphant, a distinctively cat-like smile curling her lips.
"No, Tashigi. I didn't lie. This isn't about me or you. This is about Zoro."
Tashigi's eyes clouded in further confusion. "What are you talking about?!" She demanded in a snarl, her grip on her bokken handle so tight now her knuckles were white.
"Zoro will come where you are, right?" Jenna asked idly.
"What are you talking about? Jenna, what the hell are you playing at--" Tashigi spun around, her eyes widening because she'd realised the movement behind her far too late. The man grabbed her arms and pulled them behind her in one swift, strong movement that had her bokken clattering onto the floor. Tashigi winced as a sharp pain shot through her shoulder blades, but swung her leg around to kick the man in the gut.
She stumbled forwards as the man let go abruptly, coughing hazardly from the pain in his stomach, but his piggy eyes were now ablaze with anger.
"Stupid bitch...!" He growled menacingly, and attempted to make a grab for her which missed as she dodged to the right. Before Tashigi could even make a grab for the fallen bokken, however, Jenna had her held from behind, twisting her arms back painfully.
As Tashigi jerked her head back, trying but failing to twist out of Jenna's claw-like grip, the man grabbed her hair with one massive hand. Immediately, white-hot prickles and stings seared through her scalp and Tashigi let out a scream that was stifled as he banged her skull against the wall. He pulled her back, saw she was still concious, and then slammed her head against the corner of her desk. This time, as he pulled back, a trickle of blood ran down her temple, but she was apparently in a deep faint.
"Good job, Luke. Now let's get back." Jenna said with a satisfied smile.
As they exited the dorm, Tashigi was over Luke's shoulder and Jenna was rushing out with him, a sickeningly worried look smothered on her features. She was so occupied she ended up bumping shoulders against Yuina walking by.
"Tashigi!" Yuina called out in surprise, spying her raven-black head over the man's shoulder. "Jenna, what's up with Tashigi?!"
The man stopped walking as Jenna scowled. "She had a concussion. And don't talk to me as though you know me. You don't deserve to, remember?" Her eyes lingered on the bluish tint on Yuina's cheek, flickering down to the swollen lump at her shoulder. Yuina shrunk back involuntarily, her fingers lifting to tenderly press against her shoulder.
"What were you doing in our dorm?" Yuina asked uneasily. Jenna responded by abruptly slapping her across the bruised cheek, sending Yuina reeling as Jenna snarled angrily,
"Our dorm? Have you gone mad, Yuina?"
And with that, she turned to continue on with the man, her copper streaks bouncing at the base of her neck as she ran on. Yuina held her cheek as it smarted painfully, tears welling in her eyes as she tried to work her jaw as she called out after Jenna uselessly, "WAIT!!"
Sighing, Yuina turned to the dorm and entered Tashigi's dorm door with the card key she had just acquired. She stopped short as she saw the boxes, papers and textbooks all over the floor. She walked towards her bed, confused, when something below caught her eye. Her eyes widened as she saw black strands of hair littering the part of the floor beneath her feet. Her eyes automatically flitted across the room, and immediately hooked onto the desk. On the desk was a glistening streak of blood.
Surely not even Jenna would go this far...? She thought, and hoping it was dried glossy paint or smudged nail polish, Yuina ran a finger across the streak, and felt the bottom of her stomach drop out as she felt a warmth in the liquid that shouldn't have been, and watched the streak wipe away with her finger.
"What do you mean you're a natural lure?" Buggy asked with a frown, "For surely, you are beautiful, but..."
Alvida smiled, combing her fingers through her orange tresses as she said softly,
"Buggy, it's not just my natural, inner beauty alone, although that would be enough to bring to me a few thousand, if I were so willing to. It's the body I'm using."
Buggy raised an eyebrow.
"You mean... they'll come finding us without us having to do anything?"
"That's precisely what I mean." She purred. Her eyes and nails traced the round edge of the baseball bat she cradled in her hands, and Buggy's crew watched, licking their lips nervously.
"So... what would we do?"
"We wait." Alvida said simply as her eyes narrowed, her lips curling further. "You won't need to lift a finger when I look just like one of them."
"What do you mean, Kale and Nami are missing?!!" Zoro exclaimed in disbelief. Sanji shook his head in his hands.
"I don't know. I woke up and Nami-san was missing, and then when I leave Kale alone he goes missing."
"You're useless, you know that?" Zoro growled. Before the model could retort, however, the Silver Angel between them spoke.
"How do you know Kale was kidnapped, and that he didn't go shopping or something?"
"Some men were there... They put him in a van of some sort." Sanji said, glaring at Zoro, but refrained from responding to him. The green-head raised his brows in surprise, but Rendel let out a worried sound that attracted both students to look at her. She looked up at Sanji, looking on the verge of panic.
"Who did?" Rendel asked urgently, "Who took Kale?"
"I don't know!" Sanji said, his voice helpless, "How am I supposed to know?"
"Whoever took Kale took Nami as well," Rendel muttered, her small hands pulling her hair back into a tight ponytail, "We'll just have to go searching in the direction the van went. Do you remember where they were headed?"
The blonde nodded, still looking troubled. Zoro frowned.
"Are you kidding me? That's way too vague. We'd get lost trying to find them."
"You'd get lost no matter what." Sanji muttered, and Zoro shot him a death-glare. Rendel quickly cut in,
"It's okay. Kale lets loose Angel Vibes. Just point me the right direction and I can sense him."
"Angel Vibes?" Zoro repeated.
"Yeah," Rendel said, nodding, "And it's very strong today. Lots of Angels are here, because Valandi Kriquelleif released a pack of demons just the last Earth evening."
"Now who's Valandi--?"
"Don't tell me," Rendel interrupted irritatedly, "that Kale told you that banished Angel's name is Valkrief."
Zoro and Sanji blinked and nodded in unison, causing Rendel to sigh deeply.
"Nevermind that. Look, demons can take possession of humans. They haven't reached this dimension yet, but when they do... the Angels here are going to try and fend them off, but if you encounter one... just-- just becareful. If you don't, they-- they could suck out your soul."
Zoro and Sanji exchanged mildly surprised expressions as Rendel shook her head sharply, as though to clear it.
"Right. What I think is that if we find Kale, I think we'd also find Nami." She looked at them pointedly, and Zoro glanced at the model.
Sanji's jaw set as he remembered Nami's milky complexion and tired eyes. The sad smile that she had given him the last second he'd seen her awake flickered before his eyes as her voice echoed softly, Thanks for the cookies and your time, Sanji-kun. You... you know I appreciate it. He grit his teeth, starting towards the carpark saying determinedly,
"Let's go."
He opened his eyes groggily, finding his sight blurred heavily and strangely fractured. Kale felt... well, he couldn't put it better any other way. He felt crap.
"Hey, I think he's awake," said a voice suddenly. A man's voice? It's not the weirdo who hit me, though... He managed to sit up, his wrists tugging at the ropes binding it in a futile manner. The lenses of his glasses fell in many cracked shards to the floor, clearing the fractured sensation but now blurring the eyesight further.
However, Kale could still make out a wooden floor and dark walls with many planks hammered into it. Thin beams of light shone through cracks in the planks, highlighting three tall figures before the Messenger Angel.
"What's going on?" He asked, his speech slightly slurred as he squinted at the men.
"Nothing, small boy," Said a man with blond hair, "We just need you to be still and quiet,chuu."
"That's right," Another man said. For a split second, Kale thought he was ridiculously tall-- but then realised the man was on a unicycle. He could see the man brandishing a long sheath in his hands.
"Now, go back to sleep, alright?" The third figure's face suddenly zoomed closer, and Kale got an eyeful of heart-shaped sunglasses and unruly blond hair. The boy quickly leaned away from the man, saying in disbelief,
"The hypnotist?"
"H-how'd you know?!" The man gasped in shock, then glared at him. He swung his arm up suddenly, and Kale winced, preparing himself for they hypnotist's strike. It didn't come, however, and instead his eyes were met with gloved fingers clutching a dangling pendant with a small disc on it. It began to swing side to side rhythmetically.
"You will go to sleeeeeep," The man said slowly, dragging his voice out dramatically, "When I saaay Jaaaaaaaango. Ready? 1, 2, 3-- JAAAANGO!!"
Kale blinked.
Nothing was happening to him. I guess it would only happen to Luffy, since angels are pretty much immune to this sort of human trick, Kale mused. However, something was happening to Jango. He seemed to be trying to keep his balance as he rested on his haunches, teetering dangerously backwards and forwards-- then fell with a dull crash to the floor.
"Jango!!" The other two men exclaimed in shock. They face-faulted as Jango let out a sound snore. Kale smirked, and the blonde with his strangely puckered lips noticed.
"Boy, I would not smile if I were you, chuu."
"Yeah," The unicycle guy said, running a hand over his half-shaved head and raising an eyebrow, "you're our 'hostage'. Your friends are going to come find you, and we'll need to use you as a last resort if things don't work out. If you don't do anything rash, we won't hurt you."
Kale chewed his lower lip in thought as Chuu tried to kick Jango awake.
How was he supposed to get out of this one?
"Wait!!"
Zoro, Sanji and Rendel spun around in surprise to see Yuina clutching a stitch in her side, and holding onto Zoro's arm.
"Yuina?" Zoro said in surprise. The girl nodded, breathing heavily.
"They-- they took her," She gasped, her eyes desperately pleading with his, "W-weird people, Jenna-- took Tashigi."
Zoro felt as though his insides had dropped out. The next second, they had popped back in again, only with a whole new sense of urgency.
"You're not joking, are you? This isn't a hoax is it?" He quickly asked suspiciously. Yuina shook her head sharply, her eyes filling with tears.
"I ran after them. They-- they--"
"Who's 'they'?!"
"J-Jenna. Some men," Yuina said, wincing as she spoke, and Zoro noticed a dark bruise on her left cheek starting to swell, a graze starting to bleed below her right knee, "Knocked her unconcious and took her someplace. Ran after I found out. Men there, though. Powerful men. Stopping-- me--"
Yuina choked on her last word before breaking into a barrage of coughs.
Without waiting for a reply, Zoro grit his teeth and bolted down the steps.
"Wait, cabbage-head!!" Sanji yelled after him, but Zoro was long gone by then. The model shook his head, then let out a yelp as Rendel jerked his arm towards the back-staircase with sudden strength. Yuina clutched her side tightly, trying to catch her breath. Hurry, Zoro, she thought, then blinked before looking after Sanji. Was that Yuko...?
Meanwhile, Zoro was jumping down whole flights, trains of thought whizzing through his head.
Damn it. How does that girl get into such dumb scrapes? 'Oh, look at me, I'm so weak because I'm a woman, blah blah blah'. Geez, it's not her female side, it's just her. Nami doesn't get into such crappy situations herself, she usually tries to get out of them if Luffy gets her into one. But nooo, Tashigi's gotta be Miss Righteous and try to solve the situation herself. As though she really knows how to! How dumb can you get? I just hope she hasn't banged herself up too much...
The green-head managed to make it out to the grassy grounds without getting lost despite being lost in his thoughts, and ran as hard as he could towards the entrance. What he was holding kept banging into his side from his vigorous running, but he didn't care. He legged it to the gate, and his eyes flitted left to right. His eyes caught a flash of copper just disappear around the corner of the newspaper stand.
J-Jenna. Some men.
"STOP!!" Zoro shouted, and ran as hard as he could towards the newspaper stand, people quickly jumping out of his course. As he hurtled round the corner, he saw Jenna crossing the street to meet up with several other men. And Zoro was able to recognise, like he'd been able to before amidst a throng of students, Tashigi's dark head and arms hanging limply over a boulder-resembling man's shoulders.
Zoro ran across the street, ignoring the fact it was a red standing man glowing on the traffic light, and without thinking twice somersaulted over the roof of a skidding car and entered the park Jenna had run into.
Then he realised he'd landed right into the middle of a circle of roaring motorcyles, and all the riders were sliding off and kicking stands out so the motorcycles wouldn't fall over.
"Are you sure this is Zoro Roronoah?" Asked one of the male riders nervously, eyeing Zoro's rather slack posture. A girl rider next to him snorted, spitting her gum out onto the pavement before rolling her eyes.
"Three silver rings in his ears. Blue bandanna. Green hair. It's him," Said the girl with a smile, a gold tooth shining from her set of gleaming teeth.
"What do you want?" Zoro asked, his eyes narrowing. His hands tightened around the cloth in his hands.
"You beat up our crew pretty badly before, you know," Another rider said behind him, and the rider's eyes narrowed to slits as he growled, "Joshan still can't even sit up."
"You think you can just sort of screw around with our crew and get away with it?" Another girl sneered. Zoro's eyes were unreadable as he said,
"So you think you can screw with me and get away with it?" The crew stared at him. What was it...? Somehting felt distinctly... odd about him now.
"Wh-why not?" Said the girl from before, trying to hide the nervousness she felt. Zoro tugged sharply at the strings on the cloth.
Are you going to go without anything? Aren't you a swordsman?
Yeah-- Rendel, is it?-- but I don't have anything but butter knives. I'm not that skilled with butter knives...
Har har. Let's go to the Astroturf, we'll find something for you. There's a Kendo storage room there, you know...
What?
........
There, here're two good ones. Take these with you.
But they're not mine.
I know, but I'm sure she wouldn't mind you borrowing it...
Zoro held out two of Tashigi's bokkens from her stash in the storage room, the grooves from her engraved name feeling strangely good beneath Zoro's skin. He could hear the rush of excited blood pound through his veins as he held the bokkens tightly, the cloth covers falling to the floor.
"Get out of my way, or regret it." Zoro said lowly. The motorcyclers snorted before pulling out thick, steel pipes. They started to advance towards Zoro with wide grins smothered on their faces.
"You're going to regret this," Zoro warned, but seeing they had no intention of complying to his very good advice, he drew his bokkens back.
Three Tiger Huntings and four Demon Cuts later Zoro was running onwards through the park determinedly, leaving a group of groaning and broken bodies in his wake. Security officers ran after him, shouting, and several had rounded the motorcyclers, speaking to local police stations through walkie talkies as they eyed the pained group with raised eyebrows.
The girl with the gleaming teeth, however, was behind a park-bench on the other side of the hedges lining the park, coughing out blood and a golden tooth onto the park ground. The man sitting on the bench ignored her. Feeling her jaw, she quickly snatched up the cell-phone attached around her waist. The screen was slightly cracked, but still seemed to be in working order as she dialed and waited.
"Kent," She breathed, "this is one of the Black Cat gang. We failed to stop Zoro Roronoah. He's on his way."
The man sitting on the bench whipped around to stare at the girl incredulously, and the girl dropped her cell-phone and tried to scramble away. However, he held a firm grip on the back of her leather jacket.
"Wait! Zoro Roronoah, you say?"
"Y-yes, he just beat the crap out of my crew, o-okay? You can take me to the station, p-please let go," She squeaked, his grip catching her jacket arms to painfully twist up her fractured wrists, and he let her go so she landed on all fours gratefully.
He leapt over the hedges, and stared at the pile of broken bodies.
Zoro Roronoah?! That's one of the guys from my visions! Where--?!
"Where's the man who did this?!" He yelled, and the security officers immediately recognised the young police officer.
"He went that way, Smoker!" One of them quickly informed him, and Smoker jerked his head towards the direction given. It was towards the park's third exit.
"He's wearing a blue bandanna!!" The same security officer said helpfully, and Smoker strained his eyes to find a blue-bandanna clad head amongst the park visitors, weaving his way in and out towards the other end of the park.
"Oh no you don't!!" Smoker growled, and took off at a run.
He woke up, his eyes sleepy and dim, but something seemed a little different. He kicked up his skateboard an hour later, and this time definitely felt something strange.
"Something's weird," He mumbled, his brows furrowing.
A/N: O.o; Gomen nasai for the delay. My exams... ARE FINALLY OVER!!! XDDD I can finally sing and rejoice! Whoopee! XD Thanks for wishing me luck, guys. It probably worked... er, although I might have screwed it up a bit, uhm... Oh well... now I can just pretend results don't happen until August...
Er, enough about THAT. I've managed to churn out this chapter, but I had to edit it quite a bit. I am going to go absolutely nuts, though... writing this is a LOT harder then I'd anticipated. There's just so much to deal with, and I didn't realise that... T_T But what I've started, I must try my best to finish. Back to proper(?) updating schedule! Yes! XD