Cat Eyes

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, but I do own Draconian.

Draconian beat the bar with his hand as he erupted in laughter as he told some of the other people at the bar of one of his tales. "And then, I notice that the captain's trying to run away, heading towards his cabin on the ship, so you know what I do?"

One of the people nearest him, the only one actually able to talk, gestured for him to continue. "What, tell us?"

"Well, at first I kicked this one guy who came too close to me, sent him right over the railing! Anyways, I took my katana and just threw it over at the guy, flaming and all, and it landed right in front of him, the point sticking in the deck. Scared the living shit out of the guy!" Draconian erupted into another roaring laugh along with all the other guys near him.

Diana walked over to where Draconian was seated, bearing a tray full of drinks for the people near him. They took the drinks eagerly, only to be waved off by Draconian as his mother got near. "So," she asked, "having a good time."

Draconian took a drink from his water. "What can I say, it's good to be home."

A small smile appeared on Diana's lips. "Which raises a question, why are you home, exactly?"

"What, can't a son visit his mother when he wants?"

"Well you haven't visited once before, buster, and I'm sure that you've been past this part many times."

"Hey," draconian defended, "how was I supposed to know that my town was near on those times?"

"The same way that you knew this town was near, you have a map, and don't try to lie to me about your navigation skills, we both know that they're good, otherwise you wouldn't be able to sail around the sea."

Draconian held up his hands in defeat. "Alright, alright, you got me, but you can't blame me that much, I only come into a town if I need something, I'm not that much of a sight-seer."

Diana leaned forward expectantly. "Then why did you come in here?"

"My ship just got a little damaged and I needed some repairs, and when I looked at the map I saw my old town and thought it'd be a good last place to visit before..." just realizing that he might've said a little too much, Draconian shut up.

A suspicious look crossed over Diana's face. "Before what, Draconian?"

"Um, before I go out again for about maybe another year or so. So what's new around here?"

Diana wasn't fooled by the change of subject or the lie. "Draconian, before what?"

Draconian sighed and turned his eyes away from his mothers face. "Before going to the Grand Line."

Diana lifted one of her eyebrows. "Oh, that doesn't seem that big a deal, I mean I know it's dangerous, but I'm sure that I can't dissuade you from this, but you don't really seem like the kind of person who goes in search of treasure, or that you would try and find One Piece."

"I'm not going for the treasure."

"Well than what are you..." she stopped in mid sentence, dawning growing on her face. "You're going to look for him, aren't you?"

The dawning was soon replaced by exasperation as Draconian's head drooped down a little more. "Why are you so determined to find him?"

"Do you even need to ask that anymore, every time you do I answer the same way, because I hate what he's done to me and you."

Diana sighed. "Why do you hold that over him, I don't, and who knows why he left, good chance it was probably very important."

"I don't care," Draconian's voice rose slightly from his original tone. "That doesn't excuse him from leaving you in your time of need."

"Draconian, he didn't know that I was pregnant, I didn't even know." She reached out to touch his arm.

As she touched his arm Draconian flinched and almost jerked it away, but thought better of it and let her lay her soft hand there. "I don't care, he still left you."

"So did you."

Normally this would have put Draconian off for a few seconds, but right now wasn't normally for him. "I had a purpose to leave, to find him and beat him in a fight, and unlike him I've actually come back."

"Are you going to come back again? There's no way that you'll beat him in a fight, and how do you know that he won't kill you?"

"I know that I won't win."

"Then why are you even going?"

"To prove myself," Draconian's voice went down to his original tone. "To show him and other people that I'm just as good as him and that I did it all on my own, and even though I will lose I know I'll put up a hell of a fight."

"But how do you know that he won't kill you?"

"I'm surprise that you're the one asking, for one thing even though I do hate him I still respect him, from what I've heard he's actually a pretty honorable person, and I doubt that he'll kill his own son, I mean I wouldn't kill him if I was a better fighter. The worst that I have to fear is major injuries, and that's a definite in the fight, but I don't mind really, I'll take them."

"How do you even know that you're that good, that you'll even be able to go with him for over a minute without losing?"

Draconian finally raised his head and looked into his mother's eyes. "I know because I've been training my whole life, and I've just been gone for a year filled with fights against strong pirates, many in which you wouldn't believe was true even if I told you."

Draconian's back leaned against the mast as he sat down and started eating a loaf of bread. As he stared out at the sea before him he couldn't help but comment on the dryness of the bread, he would probably have to go into one of the town's and restock on food.

It had been about four months since he'd last set foot in his town. Through the months he had fought a good number of pirate ships, well, attacked would be a better word as he usually just jumped off of his ship when he got near enough and started battling the other pirates. He would hold a brief conversation with the crew first, of course, to judge whether they deserve to get their asses handed to them or not. And yes, he did beat the crap out of any ship he attacked, a lot of people would seem skeptic at first, but he easily proved them wrong. Of course he would set into a town once in a while for stores and supplies, a couple times he went in so that he could get his flag painted and the front of the ship carved.

But, other than that, mostly he just spent the days lounging around and enjoying the weather or practicing. To others who saw his ship, which other than pirates was very few, it looked like his ship was just floating through the sea, but they were dead wrong. Each morning Draconian judged where he was and set the ship in the direction he felt like going that day after looking over his map, getting up occasionally throughout the day to change course if he needed to.

At that moment Draconian stood back up and walked over to the little trap door leading to his cabin and stores below deck. He walked down the steps and made a turn towards his room, where at that moment he kept his map. Once he stepped in he lit his candles for a little better illumination by just making a flick of his hand, sending very small fireballs over to each candle and lighting the wicks.

For about half an hour he stayed down there, looking at his map and judging the best town to go to and which direction he should turn the ship while at the same time finishing his loaf of bread. Once done he headed back up to the top of the deck so that he could make a few adjustments to the sails and other stuff.

He was just about to go change the main sail when he noticed something interesting out at sea. Way out at sea there was another ship, bigger than Draconian's, and it looked like it was heading straight towards his own. It was a little bigger than a speck, he could just make out the outline, which explained why he didn't see it before, since it wasn't even in sight before. He could only guess that it'd seen him, since he could see it, but you never really knew with these things. After a few seconds he decided to wait until the ship got close and see what it wanted, if it was just a regular ship with friendly people he'd let it pass, but if it was pirates or navy that wanted to engage in a little fight, well, he'd only be too happy to oblige.

For a long time he waited for the ship to get closer, all the while noticing some interesting features on it as it got bigger. The first thing that he noticed was that it didn't even have a figurehead on it, which wasn't really an odd thing, unless you counted the fact that it also didn't have the giant post on the front that the figurehead was attached to. The second thing he noticed was the flag, it was obviously a pirate flag, it had a skull on it, except this skull was cat shaped, and had cat eyes in the little eye holes. He soon noticed all the crew members on board, some rushing about for some reason or other, but most of them standing still watching his ship with weapons drawn. They were definitely an odd crew, most of them had fake cat ears on their heads.

But in the front, standing in almost the same way as Draconian, was one of the oddest looking people that he had seen, his skin was a pasty white, and his hair was black and squiggly, it seemed to fall limp down his face. You couldn't see his eyes, as they were covered in big, star shaped sunglasses. Right now his head was bent slightly forward as his right hand was holding the tip of his hat.

Now, Draconian wasn't one to judge on looks, but he could only guess and think that this had to be the captain, seeing as he was also up front of the ship, but he could be wrong, he had been before.

When they finally got close Draconian shouted out. "Are you the captain of this vessel?"

"No, young sir, I am not." See, told you he could be wrong.

"Is there anything specific that you want with me and my ship, mister...?"

"Call me Jango, first mate to captain Kuro of the Black Cat pirates."

Draconian's eyebrow raised in surprise. "You mean of the former captain Kuro."

A small chuckle escaped from Jango's mouth. "No, I mean from the real captain Kuro on this ship."

Draconian blinked. "I thought he was executed."

"So did a lot of people, and a lot of people still do think that. Now, on to business." Jango looked back over his shoulder, picking out a crew member. "You, go get captain Kuro, tell him we met up with the ship and are ready to scavenge parts."

The small tsssiiing of metal could be heard as Draconian slipped the swords out of their sheaths. "Over my dead body."

Jango chuckled again. "That's the idea of it, you little..." Jango's face froze as he raised his head to finally look into Draconian's face, and taking a look at his eyes. He jumped back from his position on the ship with a small shout. "Those eyes..."

"Jango, what is it that you're doing now you buffoon?" The crowd of crew members parted as the man who had spoken walked to the front.

For a pirate he was dressed in an odd way in Draconian's estimation. He wore a black suit with gold buttons going up both sides of the unbuttoned suit and on the cuffs, there was also three golden colored, sideways ovals near the bottom of each side of the suit, right in line with the buttons. Underneath that was a white dress shirt with a very loose tie on it, it looked kind of hastily put on. His pants were also pure black to match the top part. He was wearing very odd shoes, to Draconian they looked more like big, thick grey socks in the shape of shoes, if anything they were probably pulled over shoes, and they had thick black stripes on them. His hair, too, was black and slicked back. On his face he wore glasses, which at that moment he was pushing up in a very odd way, by pressing the bottom of his palm against them and pushing up, his palm was flat out in front of him and his fingers were bent up. All in all, he kind of looked like a butler.

"I ask you again, Jango, what is it that you're doing?"

Jango looked around nervously. "Ah, captain, we found a ship that we can take parts from to help repair our own."

"I know that, you fool, I mean what's got you all in a huff." To Draconian, it looked like this man, Kuro, was annoyed a lot of the time.

"Sir, it's the person on the ship, his eyes..."

"What about them?"

Jango pointed. "Just look at him."

With a sigh, Kuro went over the edge and looked at Draconian, his eyes widening as he looked at his face. "What is your name, boy?"

"Mihawk," Draconian stated. "Draconian Mihawk, and as you can guess I'm the son of Hawkeye."

"Hmm, he may prove to be an dangerous foe," he muttered to himself. "Jango, hypnotize him, please, and this time don't mess it up by hypnotizing yourself, too."

"Yes captain." Jango headed up to the front of the ship to face Draconian and pulled out a pendulum in the shape of a ring of gold colored metal. He started to slowly swing it back and forth in front of Draconian's line of sight. "Look at the pendulum, now when I say Jango, you'll fall asleep. One, Two..."

"Jango." Draconian blurted out before he could finish, suddenly making Jango fall asleep and slump onto the ground, luckily for Draconian he wasn't even looking at the ring, just in case the hypnotism actually would have worked.

Draconian swung his head over to look at the captain. "I have no time for this, so if you want to hurry this up."

"Hmm." Kuro studied Draconian, scanning his body and the two swords he held, then landing back on his eyes. Finally he put his hand back so as to signal everyone to stop. "I'll take care of him myself. For once I want to actually succeed in something without you pathetic lot screwing it up."

With that he gestured for one of the crew members to come over to him. As he walked over to Kuro he brought with him a bag. Kuro quickly snatched the bag from him and took out the oddest thing that Draconian had seen. It was a glove, but on each of the fingers was connected what looked like a very thin katana, each one about as wide as each finger, and all of them roughly three feet long, they looked like very long claws.

Draconian raised both of his swords from his sides, obviously a challenging gesture. "Bring it on."

That's when the blades ignited on fire.

Instantly Kuro's eyes widened in slight shock at the surprise, but almost instantly after his eyes narrowed in what could be either annoyance, hate, or a mixture of both.

"Another person with cursed fruit powers." He muttered to himself so that Draconian couldn't hear, then raising his voice again. "Let's see if you can put those powers to use, boy."

Kuro jumped onto the rail of the ship, his feet moving in an odd pattern as soon as he did. After only a second, his body suddenly disappeared.

Draconian blinked in surprise and started to move his body in what he hoped would be a good defense against this odd maneuver, only to stop as he felt cold steel pressed against his throat. His eyes stared down to see one of the claws pressed against his throat, one pressed under his chin, and the others raised off to the side.

"If you want to live," Kuro's voice whispered in his ear, "I would suggest that you hand over your ship."

"If you want to live," Draconian's voice shot back with a fair amount of humor in it, "I would suggest that you take your claws off of me."

This elicited a chuckle from Kuro, until he felt a slight warmth against his midsection. With cautious eyes he looked down the same way that Draconian had earlier, to see the point of Draconian's flaming katana merely centimeters away from his ribs. With a small growl his body disappeared again, only to reappear leaning against the rail of the ship, pushing his glasses up with his palm the same way he had done before so that the claws didn't cut his face. "Nicely played."

With that, Kuro ran forward with a speed faster that of any other person Draconian had seen. But needless to say, it wasn't a speed he couldn't handle.

Once close, Kuro slashed out with his right hand, only to hit empty air as Draconian dodged back, spinning his body to the right and going into a crouch as he did so. His right foot extended low and covered itself on fire as it tried to sweep Kuro off his feet, failing as Kuro easily jumped over it and thrust his hand down, the points of his "claws" going straight towards Draconian's crouched form.

A ringing was heard as Draconian, continuing his spin, swept his scimitar and knocked all of the claws to the side. He then brought his katana in from a backwards spin and slashed at the still airborne Kuro, who was able to use the momentum from Draconian's counter of his thrust to spin out of the way in the air, just barely dodging the flaming sword, and coming back with another slash of his own.

Draconian stopped spinning and jumped back from Kuro's spinning slash, having to immediately put his swords up again in defense as Kuro automatically appeared in front of him as a result of his speed. Draconian crossed the blades and pushed down as Kuro's claws came in with an uppercut. Due to how far out Draconian's swords went when they were crossed, he was able to block all five of Kuro's claws, and at the same time putting them both on even ground, neither one having any advantages at this point.

Draconian pressed his katana down farther so that the point stuck in the deck, he then pushed off from the ground with his feet on fire and, using the leverage of the stuck katana, swung his legs towards Kuro's face. Kuro bent his body backward, as f he was trying to go under a limbo stick, so that Draconian's feet went sailing over head. He then brought his hand out from under Draconian's swords and slashed up, missing as more fire burst from the end of Draconian's foot and making his body go faster.

Draconian tugged his katana back up as he landed back on the ground to face Kuro once more. He swept his scimitar to the left, blocking Kuro's incoming slash, at the same time slashing left with his katana towards Kuro's shoulder, missing as Kuro bent his body forward. This combination of moves had both of Draconian's swords out to the left, leaving an opening for Kuro, who pressed his fingers together so that the claws were tight together and thrust towards Draconian's exposed chest.

Luckily for Draconian, though, he was able to use the momentum from his original attacks to spin around. This did not allow him to dodge, however, but allowed him to bring his scimitar in front of him as he shouted out.

"Dragon Whirlwind!"

The flaming scimitar spun at an incredible speed, the flames on it making it look like a shield. The claws were sent off to the side, and Draconian launched himself forward so that the spinning scimitar would hopefully slice and dice Kuro beyond recognition.

As Draconian launched himself forward the spinning scimitar didn't really allow him much of a view of Kuro, so it came as a big surprise to him when he didn't feel anything against the sword as he hit the spot where Kuro should have been. He stopped the sword to peer at his surroundings, only to see Kuro nowhere in sight. In a kind of controlled panic, Draconian quickly looked around, even above him, only to see that Kuro was nowhere around, which could only mean that he had disappeared once more with that odd move of his. And that fact could only draw one word from Draconian's mouth.

"Shit."

A burning pain appeared in his side the instant that Kuro appeared right beside him, his hand up above his shoulder indicating that he had just done the slash that had put the five cut marks in Draconian's side he knew he didn't even need to look to know was there. The fingers on Kuro's hand pressed together once again as he thrust them towards the back of Draconian's exposed neck.

Ignoring the pain for a second and focusing at the issue at hand, Draconian dropped down to avoid the attack. As soon as he hit the deck he let go of his swords for a second and pressed down with his hands, bringing his feet into the air.

"Dragon Hurricane!"

His feet caught once more on fire and went out to the side as he spun his body in the air, picking up his swords in the process. Mostly the kicks were easily dodged, except for the first few spins in which he got the wrist with the glove on smacked, sending the claws to the side and having him grit his teeth from the sting of heat.

Draconian landed with his body low and flaming swords out. Kuro had backed up a good distance so that he could get away from the spinning body and prepare his next attack. Both of them stared a6t the other, their bodies perfectly still as they waited for the other to make a move. It was then that Draconian inspected his wound, not by looking down at it but by lowering his hand to feel so as not to give Kuro the advantage of surprise.

Like he had expected each of the claws had made a mark, and with a closer inspection he could actually see the blood on each claw. Luckily they didn't seem to go especially deep, so they wouldn't be that much of a nuisance. He remembered his foot hitting Kuro just a few seconds ago, and the comparison to the two blows each person had paid the other. Normally, a person would think it pathetic, but he just thought of it as something that might get in the way of winning. To him, it's not how the fight goes that determines the winner, it's how it ends that matters.

Before Draconian could fully complete the inspection of his wounds, Kuro's feet started to move again in that odd pattern and he soon disappeared, causing Draconian to stand up and ready his swords, Kuro may have been able to get him once with that, but this time he was ready.

"Dragon Tornado!"

He raised his swords to his sides as his body started to spin, the fire winding around his body as upward as his speed climbed ever higher. After a couple of seconds a small ringing could be heard as Kuro's claws collided with Draconian's spinning swords.

The speed of the spinning slowed quickly as Draconian dug in his heels. This didn't completely stop the spin, though, as Kuro soon found out when Draconian's left foot came up with the spin and went soaring for his head, but missing as Kuro easily ducked and brought his claw back to attack the open right leg.

Instead of continuing the spin like expected, the foot that Draconian had raised to kick at Kuro shot a blast of fire out, which automatically halted the spin. Draconian then proceeded to raise the foot higher above his head.

"Dragon Meteor!"

The foot came crashing down, missing Kuro by mere centimeters and slamming into the deck, creating a huge dent as splinters went flying everywhere, but not flying fast enough to puncture the skin.

Draconian thrust his katana forward at Kuro, who easily just jumped up and landed right on the blade, claws drawn back to attack. This had to be something he'd done before, Draconian thought, as no one in their right mind would jump on a flaming sword unless it was a force of habit that they jumped on regular swords. Draconian didn't even try to block the attack since as soon as Kuro jumped on the sword he jumped off with a small shout directed to his scorching feet.

Seeing an opening, Draconian jumped forward, slashing both of his swords down. Unluckily for him Kuro was able to get his claws up in time to block the blow, or so he thought. Draconian then continued by twisting his swords a little and bending them so that their backs were now pressed against that of the claws. This, plus a little boost of fire, resulted in his own body moving so that it was now behind and slightly above Kuro, his swords blades right above Kuro's shoulders.

He then swung both of his feet in midair to slam into the back of Kuro, and since Kuro was trapped between the two swords and caught off guard there was no way he could dodge... well, except one way.

Kuro's body suddenly disappeared again in another one of his blurs of speed, drawing a laugh from Draconian as he landed. "Kuro, Kuro, you are just way too predictable."

Draconian bent his body forward, feeling the wind against his neck as Kuro's claws obviously just tried to slash him.

"Dragon Kick!"

Almost as soon as he had bent his body, Draconian's now fire covered foot thrust itself up, connecting right below Kuro's jaw. And with a look behind Draconian could see the kick had launched Kuro into the air, not really high, about the height of two-thirds up the main mast.

Draconian jumped up in the air, blasting fire from his feet so that he could attain the same height that Kuro had. Once up he crossed his swords across his chest so that the scimitar was out to his right and the katana to his left, the fire on them grew bigger and stretched out to even farther than they were back.

"Dragon Wings!"

He brought both of the swords slashing in, carving a red horizontal line across Kuro's chest as it hit, probably a little deeper than a regular cut, and at the same time hitting him with a blast of fire that sent him falling back down to the ground angled so that he would land on his ship.

Draconian landed a few seconds after Kuro had come crashing down on the other ship. He then walked towards the front to stare at Kuro's moaning form, supported by a few crew members. He raised the swords from his sides the same way that he had beckoned Kuro in the beginning of the fight. "Anyone else want to try and take my ship?"

No one moved from where they were situated on the ship, causing Draconian to chuckle as he turned around and headed towards the sails to change course for the town he had decided to go to earlier.

Draconian looked over the railings and deck of his ship. They had just finished repairing the minor damage on it and it looked just as solid as it was before, even more. A lot of people thought it silly to actually come into town just for something as small as this, but to Draconian, you could never be too careful when heading into the Grand Line.

I told you the lengths would be varying, to tell you the truth, I have no idea how long the next chapter will be, the fight should be a good length but the stuff before and after the memory ought to actually be pretty short. Sorry if I didn't do justice to Kuro's fighting skills, it's been a while since I've seen that section of the show. Oh, and also, I'm sorry if some of you might be annoyed that I called his weapons claws, I know that they're swords, claws just seems the only word for me to use. So, did you miss me during the break? I was on a vacation, sorry if I forgot to tell you, I wasn't sure if I did or not, and when I got back I seemed a little more busy somehow. Oh, don't worry, I'm going to be working on Ch. 4 next, so there won't be any other writing bothering me. Now, on to the reviews.

Tesser: Thanks for all the criticism, I'm responding to them individually so as not to get confused.

1. Yeah, I could have used a better word, I'll try to do better next time.

2. Well, I'll do respect first. You don't have to actually like a guy to respect them, I think Draconian mostly respects his sword skills, but there are other things too. Now, the proud thing, um, there are two ways this could be explained. One is that he is proud of being the son of the best swordsman, you know, the title, but hates the actual person, the other is that deep down he's proud, hopefully you understand that.

3. Actually, I would like to thank you for that, this criticism is proof that good reviews can help writers, it has actually given me a good idea for something that Hawkeye says to Draconian when I write the chapter in which they fight, you'll see what I mean in Ch. 5.

4. I'm going to respond to this in two ways, one is when you criticized about the punctuation. You were kind of right, I could have probably done that better, the way you did. Now, as to your confusion on this, I'm sorry. Draconian is also kind of confused on the issue of his father with what he'd heard about him in his mother's time and what he might be now.

That's it, thanks for reviewing me again, oh, and to your mention of the Chop-Chop- fruit, I'm pretty sure I said in Ch. 1 that he got one, and when he was fighting Alvida his foot did ignite in flames, so it's kind of obvious he got it.

karusho: Well, thanks for the rating, but personally I think that I'm a 9/10, and here's a few pointers, don't just rate for spelling and how the characters related, you should also rate due to how well sentences were actually written, compare it to other books, and I don't mean fanfiction I mean regular books. Now, in the whole light I actually think I deserve around a 7.5/10. Thanks for reviewing.

Iwin Ulose: Dude, of course I'm going to have Draconian/Zoro fight, it's going to be one of my last fights, right before my Draconian/Luffy fight, which is going to be an awesome fight, I can tell you. Oh, and thanks for understanding about the hits, and for putting me on your favorites list.

Hutchy: Thanks for reviewing, you're the only person from the original three people who reviewed Ch. 1 that stuck around for Ch. 2. Hopefully this fight didn't drag on as much as the last one, it shouldn't have been worse, right?

Resident-Evil-playa: Thanks for noticing the descriptions, come to think of it not a lot of people mention those, and not a lot of other people really describe things as much in my opinion. And thanks for liking the weapons, personally those are my two favorite kinds of swords, actually.

Well, that's all I have, I guess I'll be talking to you in hopefully a few more days, depending on the time I get for writing. Read and Review!