"Zoro, wait! Not so fast!"

The swordsman rolled his eyes and could just barely hold back a groan as he yet again slowed down his pace just enough for the navigator to catch up with him. When she came up next to him, he looked at her, catching the limp she was trying to hide. Nodding in her direction, he tried his best to keep his voice from sounding irritated.

"You okay?" he asked. He had carried the orange-haired girl on his back through the city of Albana only to see her storm up to Usopp when she spotted him, smacking him over the head while yelling something about the weapons he had made for her – and she had done that without so much as a limp on her wounded leg.

The navigator's hazel eyes met his and she shrugged.

"I'm fine," was the only reply he received.

Zoro's headache wasn't as bad as it had been before they had gone down into the cellar; the soft light from the torch they had taken from the wall by the stairs was the perfect light - bright enough to illuminate the corridor in front of them but not bright enough to blind them. The crackling sound from the fire slowly consuming the oil-drenched wood was soothing, and it was the only sound that didn't make any echo between the stone walls as they walked onwards.

His body was already recovering from the battle with Mr.1, but it was also craving sleep. Now, when he was no longer locked inside an oversized hamster cage, staying awake for almost two days didn't really seem like such a smart idea anymore. But what had been done couldn't be changed, he just had to adjust and do what he could to preserve what was left of his energies. But if they met a patrol down here, he'd be the one to fight, and that would be a great way of draining energy out of his body, especially if he received more injuries. Nami wouldn't be of much help if she didn't have a weapon, and Zoro doubted that the Marines would have left her weapons with her. Wait a minute. What was that?

In the corner of his eye, he saw something lying in a pile of mossy rocks. Crouching down as low as the wounds on his chest allowed, he reached out his hand and picked it up. He looked at the smooth, but slightly rustedmetal bar in his hand. It looked like the bo staff Nami had used before Usopp had made those new weapons for her, only maybe a little bit shorter and heavier.

"What's that?" the navigator asked, looking over Zoro's shoulder.

"Here," Zoro said, tossing the metal bar to her as he stood up.

Nami reached out her hands as the long thin item came flying towards her, almost dropping it to the floor when she felt the cold and heavy metal in her hands. Frowning in the fading light, she looked after Zoro, who had continued down the dark corridor with the torch in his hand.

"What am I supposed to do with this thing?" she called out after him, holding up the metal bar in the air.

"Use it as a weapon. I've seen you use that staff of yours," Zoro replied without turning around, his voice echoing between the moist stone walls. "If you can walk, that means that you can fight," he stated as Nami hurried after him, her left foot aching every time she had to put her weight on her wounded leg.

"What kind of reasoning is that?" she asked, giving the swordsman a smack over his green-haired head as she caught up with him. "I can hardly walk as it is."

The swordsman gave her a measuring glance and shook his head, deciding not to comment any further. Nami wasn't the type of person who argued just for the hell of it. There was a moment of silence where the only sound that was heard was the echo of their footsteps against the mossy stone floor. Then Nami spoke up.

"How long have we been down here?"

"Not long enough," Zoro replied, shrugging tensely. Nami didn't know if it was the cold, tired tone in his voice that made her stop talking, or if it was the way he clenched his fist around the burning piece of wood so that his knuckles whitened and the veins bulged out against his rough skin. She couldn't see much of his face from where she walked next to him with her hands and arms pressed against her body, her fingers gripping tightly around the metal bar, but there was an uneasy air about him that she definitely wouldn't have associated with the green-head if she hadn't felt it just that moment.

Zoro felt restless as the corridor turned to the right and then seemed to continue forever into the darkness caused by the lack of windows. It felt like the shadows just outside the reach of the light from the torch in his hand were hiding something, taunting him in his search, maybe even telling him that his search was for naught because the ones they were searching for were already gone…

No! He shook his head to rid it of the cackling voices caused by his own restless mind, feeling the throbbing in his temples growing thicker. What was he thinking? Somewhere down in the black cellar, the Marines had Luffy and Chopper trapped inside one of those damn cages, and he would find them. Hopefully, they hadn't been separated. Not with the bad state Luffy had been in.

Zoro could very well remember a few moments from when they had been brought to the base. He could remember stumbling because the chains binding his ankles together had been to short, and he could remember looking around, a strange feeling creeping up on him as he saw the rest of his clan in the hands of the Marines. The image of the crewmembers in chains, all of them almost drenched in (their own?) blood and their eyes hazed with exhaustion was etched forever into his memory. It was almost like it hadn't been his friends walking there, but some badly made duplicates or really bad actors.

Nami with the open, bleeding wounds in her right shoulder and her left leg, her orange hair hanging lifelessly into her eyes as her head dropped forwards in a gesture of fatigue and maybe even a broken spirit.

Usopp had been walkingwith his arms hanging down in front of him, his tanned skin stained with a reddish-brown color and covered in cuts and bruises. His long nose was broken and bent in three places, while the light swelling in his forehead indicated a skull fracture. He had appeared to have lost all his own free will, letting the Marines mock him as he stumbled without protesting.

Chopper had been the one who had had the least amount of damage done to him. His brown fur had been singed badly in places and he had some cuts and bruises that showed between the patches of unharmed fur. His antlers – especially the one with the metal ring around the base – had received some damage and were chipped in places without bleeding. He seemed to be fine, if it hadn't been for the troubled look on his face as he walked into the Marine base surrounded by Marines carrying some kind of long swords or lances made from that special kind of metal that was so effective on people with powers of the Devil's fruits. The little reindeer had fought the tears all the way through the base, at least while Zoro had been able to see him before they had been separated.

And Luffy… Seeing the Captain's face - which was usually brimming with a sometimes annoying childish curiosity and a wide, genuine smile aimed at everyone around him,but at that moment, his face wastwisted in a pained grimace as his body fought to drive whatever it was that the bloody Crocodile had poisoned him with out of his system - had in a way been more painful than being defeated by Mihawk could ever have been. The unconscious Captain had been carried by two Marines, while four others, armed again with those special weapons, walked on both sides of him, apparently well aware of what had happened in Alabasta.

Then there had been Sanji, who seemed determined not to go down without a fight. He broke free from the two Marines who were holding his by the arms, seemed to realize that the chain binding his ankles together was too short for him to throw effective kicks and dropped to the floor, his hands supporting his weight as he swung his legs in a perfect circle over the floor, throwing the two marines to the floor as his legs collided with their ankles. Then he pushed himself to his feet, only to receive a blow to the back of his head with the butt of a rifle delivered by one of the marines who had been standing by the walls, watching the pirates get escorted to their cells. And if that hadn't been enough, the bastard of a Marine rammed his knee into the cook's ribs as he slumped forward, a bit dazed from the hard blow to the head. Zoro had caught the expression in the cook's visible eye as his head was thrown back by the collision between his ribs and the marine's knee, and the want – no, the fanatic desire – to get rid of the chains and show the uniformed piece of crap some real ass-kicking had made Zoro's skin crawl. It was the same fanatic desire he felt bubbling inside him.

With the image of his friends in chains before his eyes, finding enough strength to break the chains that bound his wrists had been easy. At that time, the plan had been something like, 'Beat up the Marines, save your friends, and don't get killed.' The plan definitely hadn't involved getting the hilt of a large Seastone sword slammed into the back of his head. Zoro would never be able to forgive himself for letting his guard down like that. Sensing the Marine coming up from behind should have been easy even in the midst of a battle.

There was a noise echoing through the corridor that made Zoro stop walking. It was the sounds of a fight; war cries, a gun being fired and the muffled sound of punches. The swordsman dropped the torch on the floor and heard it hiss and crackle where it lay on the moist floor.

"What are you doing?" Nami hissed at him as he put his foot down over the flame, crushing even the last embers into the floor. The light disappeared and the darkness threw itself over them, wrapping them both in soft velvet that dulled their senses for a moment.

"I can't see a thing!" Nami continued, her voice echoing between the walls.

"If there are Marines down here, they can't see us either," Zoro replied, allowing his senses to get used to the darkness. Deprived of his sense of vision, his other senses would grow more accurate. "Let's get going." He started walking; now feeling a bit thankful for the echo of his footsteps in the corridor. It worked like sonar (even if Zoro didn't know what it was called, he was pleased to find that it worked) and allowed him to hear where the walls were located. He could also hear that Nami wasn't following him, and he stopped in his tracks, waiting for her.

"Get going? Going where?" Nami asked. "I couldn't see my own hand if I held it in front of my face, how am I going to know where to go? Where are you?"

Zoro turned around in the direction he heard Nami's voice, his hand moving towards the swords on his right hip. Gently tapping a finger against the wooden scabbard of one of the swords, he hoped that her hearing was good enough to judge from where the sound was coming.

"Over here." he said quietly, to avoid his voice causing too much of an echo. He could hear the navigator's insecure footsteps through the darkness and could barely resist telling her to hurry up.

Nami clenched her teeth as she followed the gentle tapping sound. Of all the stupid things… Walking around in complete darkness in an unfamiliar place and the only one who had a chance to navigate through the corridor was the guy who had climbed the clock tower in Albana when he was told to go north.

Barely holding back a scream of pain as her left foot hit something solid and rough that was lying on the floor, the navigator stumbled forward and crashed into something that she first thought was a warm, breathing wall. When she had the chance to steady herself, her thoughts gathered themselves and she realized that she had crashed into Zoro as she fell. She was just about to ask if they were going to start walking or just stand there and wait to get caught when she could hear the racket at the far end of the corridor rise to a new level. More guns were fired and now she could clearly hear voices which could only mean that they were close.

"Let's go." Zoro said shortly.

Nami reached out her hand and managed to grab hold of Zoro's arm before he started walking again, this time with a quick stride that was hard to keep up with. Wondering what could be the cause of the noise, Nami tried her best to avoid tripping over any more rocks as she almost ran to keep up with the swordsman.

Suddenly, a new sound was added to the echoing noise. A scream that was all too familiar even though it was heavily distorted when it echoed between the walls.

"Gomu Gomu Pistol!"

"Luffy!" Nami gasped, feeling her grip around the swordsman's arm slip as they both set off running even if every muscle in her legs protested against it.

A little further back in the dark, slippery corridor, in the light of a burning half rotted torch, the two other crewmembers were running to catch up with Nami and Zoro. As the familiar scream reached them, they both stopped and listened without breathing. Even if the echo had distorted the voice to the extent that the words had been lost in the ringing sound of the scream, both the cook and the marksman recognized it.

Sanji frowned as he felt a hand grab his upper arm and glanced over his shoulder at the seemingly paralyzed sniper, who was standing behind him to the right. He nodded towards the compact darkness ahead of them without moving away from the long-nosed man's grasp.

"I guess we have to go this way," he muttered, holding out the torch in front of him. "We better hurry."

He was pleased to notice that the sniper didn't object, but followed him silently as they started running again. The flame of the torch flickered in his hand, and ash was flying into his hair and his eyes, but he hardly noticed it. His head was pounding as he ran, something that only made his annoyance over random things grow stronger. A cigarette, a cigarette, my kingdom for a cigarette, he thought bitterly, his lips curled in something that could have passed as a smile if they had been outside in the fresh air and the sunlight.

Somewhere in front of them he could hear running steps, but he couldn't see anyone in the darkness. When they passed the extinguished torch Zoro had left behind, neither Sanji nor Usopp paid any attention to it.


Eeh… another chapter that just wanted to keep going and going… I had to cut it here because it just wouldn't stop… Next chapter will probably take a long time to write since it's going to be Luffy's POV… He's so difficult to write. Oh well. I think we're getting closer to the end now…I will be sad when it is finished.

Oh, I finallygot volume 24 of the One Piece manga yesterday and I realized a really big mistake I've made. Zoro didn't have the 60 million bounty when the war was over, he got it at the same time Luffy's bounty was increased to 100 million Belli, which is after they left Alabasta... So the 'Zoro has the high bouny on his head' excuse I made for separating him from the rest of the crew doesn't really fit in the timeline... I need to fix that. Yes.

Moni – Thank you for your kind words and for pointing out the very obvious mistake with Sanji being severely OOC. Of course he kicks, not punches, I must have been thinking of something else when I wrote it, checked and double checked it. It has been fixed, and may it never rise again.

Mavado – Another Swede? I didn't know!

Kute Anime Kitty – Well, I'm glad that you like it.