Kuro laughed as he released the Brother's from his grasp, "I've become more humble since I've been on this Island for three years. I'll give you five minutes. If you don't finish them off in five minutes, I'll kill you all."
The whole pirate crew looked at their old Captain in shock. Jango laughed warily, "Five minutes… We'll mange in those five minutes…" He looked at Zoro, "Him. It's him. If we can take him out, we can climb the slope."
Dagger gasped and wined, "What about me! You guy are all idiots." She crossed her arms. The two brothers began their charge at Zoro.
Zoro grip onto his sword and stood ready to defend himself. He eyed Dagger. She had the remaining dagger in her hand. Knowing she would help him, he relaxed a little bit.
"ZORO!" Nami shouted. Zoro turned around and shouted in shock, "WHY YOU! Don't go kicking my katana!"
"Where's my thank you?" Nami smirked as she clutched her shoulder.
Zoro smirked too. He jumped up and grabbed them, "Thank you." With all three of his katanas, he turned to the Brothers. "TIGER…" He stood ready in his attack.
"What's the deal, you got two more swords. It makes no difference!" The Brothers charged at him.
"You guys don't get it." Zoro attacked. "…HUNTING PREY!" The two Brothers were sent flying back with slash marks across their chest. They landed at Jango's feet. Dagger smiled and clapped. Zoro continued explaining, "Using three sword and three sword techniques are totally different things from one sword techniques."
"Don't worry," Zoro turned to Kuro and pointed his sword, "In five minutes, there won't be anybody left. I'll take care of them all."
Kuro's replied as he pushed up his glasses, "Three minutes left."
From behind Zoro, Buchi was still alive. He grabbed onto Jango's leg and said, "Captain… Please hypnotize me. Please… Captain."
"He's still alive," Kuro commented, "You were too soft on him."
Zoro looked back, "It was his fat that saved him." His eyes widened at the sight before him. The white katana dropped from his mouth. Buchi's muscles bulged and his eyes were blank. He roared out like a berserker.
"Hypnosis again, eh? He's going to be more of a pain now." Zoro kicked his white katana up and grabbed it with his mouth, "He tore the ground apart in his original state. What is he able to do after powering up?"
Nami watched in shock and knew the only way to win was to wake up Luffy. Taking the chance, she ran back toward the figure head avoiding all the pirates. Jango took out his ring and started swinging it. "Meddlesome woman…" He threw the ring at her, "DIE!"
Dagger ran next to Zoro and they both cried out, "NAMI! WATCH OUT!"
Nami reached Luffy. When she turned around, she saw the ring coming but she didn't see where she stepped. "DUCK!" Both Dagger and Zoro shouted. Nami didn't duck, but was pulled down.
Luffy shouted as he held her foot, "NAMI! How dare you step on my face!" As he talked, the ring flew into his mouth. Everyone gasped and then fell in to silence.
Dagger let out a sigh in relief. Zoro stuck his sword in the sand and held his white katana over his shoulder, "Was it just bad timing or a mere coincidence?"
"How should I know?" Dagger scoffed.
"It was a rhetorical question."
"Lu… Luffy?" Nami asked softly then cried out in happiness. "LUFFY!" He broke the ring with his jaw and touched the edge of his lip.
"That hurts… THAT HURTS!" He shouted making all the ground shake. "Nami! That hurt you bastard!"
"That wasn't me!" Nami shouted back in the same tone, "That wasn't… ugh…" She clutched onto her shoulder as blood seeped through her shirt.
Luffy said concerned, "Nami, your shoulder's hurt?"
"It's nothing. I'm fine. Anyways, I've done all I can. I'll leave the rest up to you. This battle… we can't lose to them!" Luffy nodded with a smile. "For the sake of my treasures!" Nami added.
Luffy sighed, "I should've known." He grabbed his straw hat from the ground.
"Go for it. For the sake of my treasures."
"Yeah! That is your style."
"One minute to go." Kuro said. The pirates cried in fright and horror.
"This is impossible! There's not way we can finish them off in one minute if Sham and Buchi can't!" They all screamed and moved out of the way for Luffy to pass.
"Buchi," Jango commaned, "There's no time to play around. I want you to take out the girl. She'll be easier that the swordsman. I'll take care of this weird kid and we can both deal with the swordsman afterward." Buchi only growled.
"EH? The evil caretaker is here too?" Luffy looked up the slope as Kuro got ready to attack but then he turned around to attack someone else.
Usopp was there and he pushed Kaya out of the way from Kuro's blades. He shouted, "KAYA!"
Dagger quickly turned to see. Kuro was standing, staring down at the two. She sat on the slope and watched along with Zoro and Luffy at the scene unraveling before them.
Dagger already knew what he was going to say. He had told her yesterday all about it. But she didn't know why. Why did he call her 'Princess?' What does it mean? Dagger watched the three of them batter back and forth for almost ten minutes. The quarrelling ended when Luffy winded up and threw a punch at Kuro sending him down. Then from the forest, the three children came out with pots and pans. They started hitting Kuro on the face.
"STOP!" Usopp shouted. The children did.
"Yeah! I think he had enough!" One of them shouted in victory.
From down the slope, Jango hissed, "They totally pissed Captain Kuro off now…"
Slowly Kuro stood back up. Using his palm, he pushed his glasses back up. As he did, the lens fell out. He looked down at the children. They screamed as their face went white. But Kuro didn't do anything to them, he walked passed them to Usopp. Kaya gasped when Kuro kicked Usopp sending him down the slope.
"Not bad…" Kuro commented, "That was a pretty good punch you threw at me. YOU! You possess the power of the Devil's Fruit like the Princess here, don't you?"
Zoro looked down at Dagger, "Princess?" Dagger refused to look up at him and continued to stare at Kuro.
"Yeah, Gumo Gumo Fruit. I'm rubber man!"
Jango looked at Luffy, "So, he's rubber man… He's arms stretching so long isn't my imagination." Then he looked up at Dagger. He stared at her for a moment and laughed out loud to Kuro, "I remember her! She's—"
"Did I say you can speak?" Kuro cut him off, "Silence! I will take care of this kid and you take care of Lady Kaya. She will write a will as planned and then kill her. And those three ants over too, they're an eyesore!"
"Understood," Jango started walking up the slope, but Zoro was there.
He held out his sword, "Stop. I won't let you pass me."
"Buchi!" Jango called.
Zoro stopped and turned his attention to Buchi. "That again?"
He jumped and called out. "CAT KILL, STOMP!"
Zoro was pushed out of the way by Dagger. However, she didn't have enough time to dodge the stomp. The whole slope and cliff side shook. The ground was cracked and the crack when up the cliff face and all around. Zoro slipped on the rocks trying to find his balance. Usopp grabbed on to a large rock to keep himself from slipping. All the pirates screamed in fear at the rock slide over their heads.
"DAGGER!" Zoro cried out. The whole area was filled with dust. He held out his sword as he scanned the area. Slowly the dust cleared to reveal only Buchi standing in a crater and there was a piece of orange cloth in his claws. Dagger was no where in sight. Zoro didn't stop Jango from passing him because he was scouting the area for Dagger.
He felt a gust of wind at his side and saw his white Katana was gone. The sheath lay in front of him, but the blade was gone. When he looked up, he saw Dagger with it with a dagger in her right hand and the katana in her left. The orange shirt she received from Kaya was torn at the torso. In a blink of an eye, she was gone. The dust around where she stood lifted and whirled in a little tornado.
They could barely see her, but they felt her presence and those with keen eyesight saw the wind currents move. They also felt it change. Buchi wasn't one of those people. He growled out and stomped his foot once again. The terrain changed, but Dagger didn't appear. Everyone else tried to find their balance again.
First went Buchi's claws on his gloves, they were cut off. Next, his cape and pant were shredded. Lastly, he was slashed. The slashes appeared one after another within milliseconds of each other.
Zoro saw the sheath from his katana disappear from in front of him as Dagger appeared. She threw the sword in the air and held out the sheath. As the katana entered the scabbard, Buchi's slashes blew and blood spattered everywhere. Most of it fell on Dagger. Buchi fell in the pool of blood beneath him.
Dagger slowly looked up and at Buchi and then herself. She was covered in blood. With her right hand, she touched her face and chest. Her whole hand was stained with blood. "W-w-w-what… is this…?" She whispered before she fainted.
Zoro caught her before she fell to the ground and moved up the slope. Luffy turned to him from his position on the large rock he silenced the Black Cat pirates with when they were laughing at Usopp.
They both looked at Kuro when he laughed, "She's no stranger to blood. She must've softened up from being with you weaklings."
Zoro laid her on the grass away from the slope. "She'll be safe here until she wakes up." He said to himself. He looked down at her. Buchi's blood was all over her body and covered her face, but not on her left hand, it was holding his katana. Zoro turned away leaving the katana with her and jumped down to Usopp.
"Luffy," Zoro picked Usopp up, "I'll take Usopp and go after the hypnotist. Any problems?"
"Nope!" Luffy shouted back with angry in his voice, "Get going! I'll take care of things here."
Miles away, in a little shop, the owner looked over his merchandise. A smile grew on his face as he examined a nicely, no an exceptionally made dagger. It had engravings on it like an oriental style. It was punched out to make air holes in the dagger. This dagger was thicker than any normal blade and the hilt of it was different also. The merchant knew nothing but that it belonged to a sadistic pirate.
He took it from his wife who promised this sadistic pirate she would return this dagger. But the greedy mercahnt took and hid it and now he is going to pay the price.
The two figures walked into his shop. One was a tall man about six feet and he wore a long tan cape that covered his entire body and a dark red muffler. He had short white hair and duel color eyes, one red and the other blue. There was a tattoo on his face below his left eye.
The other was smaller about five feet one. She was dressed as a Ninja with a black short skirt and a low cut black top that exposed a tattoo on her breast. The top was short sleeved and she had gauntlets that went up to her biceps. She wore knee high tights with sandals. Her wavy long hair was purple.
The owner greeted them with a smile until he saw their tattoos.
"Malik, do you see what I see?" The ninja asked her companion. She walked up to the frozen merchant and plucked the dagger from his hand before turning back to her companion. "She was here."
Malik nodded and spoke threw his muffler, "Where is she now, Sakuya? Ask him."
Sakuya turned to merchant, "So, where is she now?"
"I don't know where she is! But take the dagger and please don't hurt me or my family!" He begged, "That's the only thing I have of hers. She only gave me one dagger."
"I knew that, you imbecile. She only needs this," Sakuya waved the dagger, "to kill scores of people at a time. Now, tell me something you do know." She looked down at him with her fierce violet eyes.
"Her name is Dagger." The merchant blubbered, "She's with a kid that wears a straw hat and Zoro, the pirate hunter. They sailed away a week or so ago."
The two looked down upon him and left taking the dagger with them. The merchant sighed and stood up. But the last image he saw was a blinding white light and everything around began crashing down. As his life drifted away, he could hear a woman's laugher.
Dagger woke up with a blistering headache. She sat up and groaned as she clutched her head. She noticed she had Zoro's white katana and she was covered in dried blood. A wave of nausea hit her again, but this time she was more tolerant of the blood. Over hearing voices, she crawled over to the edge from where she laid.
"I don't like them. They're plain wrong. Companions and friends aren't meant to be treated that way." It was Luffy. He was lying on the slope with Nami next to him. Dagger opened her mouth to shout but stopped when Nami said, "What about what Kuro said about Dagger?"
"I don't care. She's our companion and I promised I'll help her regain her memory."
"What if she does and what will you do?"
Luffy yawned, "I'll deal with it when the time comes. I want meat."
"Why I ought too…" Nami grabbed Luffy's straw hat and shoved it on his face.
"Dagger, what are you doing?" Dagger screamed in fright and fell over the cliff. She went head first toward the ground, but she held out her hands to stop herself from hitting the ground. Gusts of air came forth from her palms and created cushion for her as she lightly landed.
"What do you think you're doing?" Dagger shouted up at Zoro, "Coming behind me like that! Are you trying to kill me?"
Zoro looked down the cliff wall, "Just asking you an innocence question." He jumped down. "It's not that high. Give me back my katana too."
Dagger handed him it. Zoro pulled it out of its scabbard to check it over as Dagger scoffed. "Nothing happened to it."
"You were kill—"
Luffy interrupted him, "I'M HUNGRY! MEAT!" Zoro looked over to see a sign from Nami to keep silent. He raised his eyebrow, but Nami shook her head and mouthed 'later'.
Usopp came running down the slope. "Hey!" Everyone looked at him from their positions on the ground. "Thanks you guys. Without you guys, I wouldn't have been able to protect this village."
Zoro smirked, "What are you babbling about? If you didn't risk your own life for this, I wouldn't have done anything at all."
"You're so selfish!" Dagger glared at him.
"Same here," Luffy added agreeing with Zoro. Dagger looked at him and sighed, "I guess I wouldn't have helped either…"
"All that doesn't matter now," Nami smiled and hugged her treasure bag, "I got my treasure back." Usopp laughed and said something to himself. Luffy looked up at him with a blank stare.
Zoro turned to Dagger with a look of disgust, "You need a shower."
"Tell me something I don't know. I guess I have to go into town or something…" She stood up and walked up the slope.
"Wait!" Usopp stopped her, "You can't! The townspeople don't know about the pirates. If you go there, they will get worried and frighten."
"What are you suggesting?"
Usopp led Dagger the long way to Kaya's mansion. They entered from secret passage in the back. He left Dagger there to get Kaya. The two returned in a few minutes.
"What happened to you?" Kaya stared in shock. "Are you hurt? Oh my."
Dagger scratched her head, "No, but sorry about your shirt. That pirate swiped at me and caught it before I could dodge."
Kaya led Dagger toward the mansion, "Don't worry about the shirt. You can't wear these ruined clothes any more. They can't be washed too. I'll give you some of mine, don't worry, Dagger."
Kaya led Dagger up to her bathroom. "You can take a shower here. You can use the soap, shampoo, and conditioner, I don't mind. The towels are right here and I'll leave you clothes outside the door on a stool."
"I can't say how much I appreciate this. Thank you so much." Dagger bowed. Kaya smiled and left Dagger in the bathroom.
The first thing Dagger did was turned on the hot water. She took off her ruined clothes and stepped in the spray of hot water. With the soap, she scrubbed her body clean of the blood. She watched as the red water flowed down the drain and shook her head from getting nauseated. She used the shampoo and conditioner for her hair. As she did, the water turned a light green as if her hair was dyed.
Dagger remembered what Kuro had said. "What did you do to your hair…why did you color it green…black hair suited you better." She got out of the shower fresh and clean and stood in the sunlight to examine her hair. It was a dark green. With a sigh of relief, she wrapped a towel around herself before going to the door to get her clothes.
She opened the door slightly to see if anyone was there. Suddenly, the door was pulled opened wider. "Are you done yet? Luffy sent me to get you. What's ta-a-a-a—" Zoro stopped in mind sentence as he noticed Dagger stood in front of him in nothing but a towel.
"YOU! YOU JACKASS!" Dagger waved her hand sending a gust of air at Zoro. It sent him flying down the hallway. She looked down to see a stack of clothes. Grabbing it, she slammed the door. "Perverted bastard." Dagger spat. Her face was bright red.
Within a few minute after the incident, there was a knock on the bathroom door. "Does the clothes fit you?" Kaya asked through the door. The door swung opened to show Dagger fully dressed in green short sleeved shirt with dark green designs on it and denim shorts. She had no shoes on. "Oh," Kaya looked down at Dagger's feet. The bruise from the kick was there. "All I have are sandals and one pair of shoes."
"It's okay," Dagger smiled, "Sandals are fine. I have a feeling I'll get another set of clothes soon." She looked passed Kaya to see Zoro leaning against the window. He wouldn't look at her.
"Let's go to the restaurant. I have a surprise for everyone." Kaya said happily. Dagger followed Kaya as Zoro followed her.
The three of them went into town and to the restaurant. Since Kaya couldn't resist telling Zoro and Dagger about the new ship that she's giving them, they already knew when they reached the restaurant. So they waited outside for Luffy and Nami.
The silence between them grew irritating. Zoro was the one the broke the silence, "I'm sorry." He averted his eyes, "I didn't know."
Dagger stared at Zoro with her arms crossed and thought for a moment. "Alright, I accept you apology. I just don't want to hold a grudge against you. Besides, it's not like you did it on purpose and you didn't see me naked." She laughed at Zoro when his face turned red.
Kaya led all four of them to the south slope where the Going Merry awaited them.
"A caravel!" Nami shouted in glee.
"It this really for us?" Luffy asked. Meri and Kaya nodded. "AWESOME!"
"Although it's some what old fashioned, I was the one that designed it. The ship's frame and its triple mast are all part of a stern-centered control system. I call it the Going Merry! Let me brief you how to operate it…" Meri began, "First how to turn it on and adjust the power…"
"Ah!" Nami interrupted him, "No, no! You only need to tell me how to operate the ship!"
"Sure is a nice ship. The figure head of the ship is so cool!" Luffy looked at the sheep at the front of the ship.
"I've prepared everything that's needed to set sail aboard the ship." Kaya smiled.
"Thank you, that's really thankful of you!"
"It's 'really thoughtful', idiot!" Zoro said as Dagger said, "It's 'really thoughtful', Luffy" at the same time. They looked at each other. Dagger smiled but Zoro turned away.
"Usopp!" Kaya gasped. Everyone turned to see a large green ball rolling down the slope.
"What's he up to?" Luffy scratched his head.
"Anyways, let's just stop him. He's heading straight for the ship." Zoro said. The two stood side by side and extended their leg in front of them to stop Usopp from crashing into the boat.
"T-thanks…" Usopp said with their foot in his face.
Dagger and Nami jumped on the ship and explored. Once they finished, they went to the stern and leaned over the rail to see Usopp and Kaya.
"You guys take care!" Usopp shouted, "I'll see you again someday!"
"Why?" Luffy shouted back.
Usopp sighed, "You're really slow, aren't you? I'll be a pirate just like you, so we might meet on the sea one day."
Zoro pointed to the ship, "What are you talking about? Hurry up and get on."
"We're already comrades." Luffy said.
Usopp looked up at Luffy and the crew. They all smiled down at him. He shouted at he jumped up, "I'm the captain!"
"Don't be stupid! I'm the captain!" Luffy barked back.
Everyone laughed as the Going Merry set sail leaving the small island.
Ah, done with Usopp and Kuro. I don't know if I should add Gaimon and the island.
And, oh my. Who's Malik and Sakuya? (Disclaimer: I own the characters in this story known as Dagger, Malik, and Sakuya.) Oh well, until next time.
Thanks for reviewing! Shadw, Magusanubis, Loki's Beloved, and i-dun-did-it.