Hey everybody,

first of all, I'm happy the last chapter made you guys react so much^^' I had a great time reading your thoughts, but oh well here we go again, things will slowly get serious again, welcome back where it all began, two years later: The Sabaody Archipelago!

Have fun^^


Chapter 57 - Arrival

-Zoro-

"Hey, you there! Hand over ya money or you're done!"

"Ain't looking like some rich guy, probably just some poor dude."

"But those swords could be something."

"Hey! Stop moving! You there! We are talking to you!"

"Hmm?" He looked up from the note in his hand as the barrel of a shotgun pushed into his field of vision. Six guys had surrounded him, all of them with their weapons on attack.

"Give us your money, tourist, if you value your life, and your swords. By the way, really looking stupid with three of them at once."

"Could've sworn I've seen this guy somewhere," muttered the guy, who blocked Zoro's direction with his weapon.

"Can any of you tell me how to get to Grove 13?"

"Joking, aren't we? We are on Grove 13, idiot. Now hand over those swords, will ya?"

"Oh, really? Thanks." He had not noticed that he had almost reached his destination, he could have sworn that he had been at the hotel district just a few steps ago.

"Hey! I said stop moving!"

"Say," whispered one to his left, "wasn't there this pirate who fought with three swords? From the East Blue or something? Maybe..."

"Stop talking bullshit! You mean this pirate hunter from this weird straw hat crew, but he's dead, for ages, just like the rest of them."

Two others also laughed, and the one with the gun closest pressed its barrel against Zoro's chest.

"Right? You're just one of those wannabe tourists, think you look cool showing off your pricey swords."

"Well, the guy looks neither cool nor rich," muttered one of the others.

"Oh, doesn't matter, fact is that our new friend here only has muscles for show, just like those swords, right?" Now the guy stuck his tongue out. "You don't know how to use one or the other and you have absolutely no idea how to fight, don't you?"

Zoro shrugged his shoulders before slowly looking up from the barrel blocking his note to the man behind the gun.

"You wanna find out?"

The stranger took a step back, now pale as death and trembling, as if he had seen a ghost.

"So... I uh..."

"I'm looking for the Bottakuri Bar, can you show me the direction?"

"Um... So... Um... that's… over there… that direction..."

"Thank you."

He went on. It would have been easier to spare himself the whole show, but at least he knew now which direction he had to take, and he had to promise Perona to behave discreetly.

"You have to behave! If you blow your cover, we might geht caught! Mihawk will go berserk if someone realizes who you are, or worse, sees you transforming. So…"

She had been such a bother. The whole journey she had asked him the most annoying questions, and neither had been intimidated by him nor shut up.

After they had arrived he had explained her that he had something important to take care of and that she should cover him. She had not stopped nagging, almost worse than the Shichibukai could, but in the end she had helped him to leave the hotel unnoticed in his true form.

"Come back when it's dark. I'll leave the window open and make sure no one sees you."

Her powers could be quite handy, even if her negative hollows were still annoying. With a quiet smile, he recalled the day she had accidentally caught Mihawk with one. No matter how superior the Shichibukai was to both of them, even he had not been able to resist the effect of negative thoughts.

"My life is a pure waste of time and my fighting style is barely above average. I'm not even worth Harakiri."

It had been really funny, at least as long as the effect had lasted. After that, Perona had feared for her life, and even Zoro had spent an annoyingly hard and long time calming the Shichibukai down. They both had sworn to never talk about it again, but that did not change the fact that it had happened, and even if Zoro did not want to use this knowledge against the other, he would never let the other forget what had happened.

His smile faded when he saw the bar, he had entered more than two years ago for the first and last time, back then accompanied by the Shichibukai.

Shaking his head, he buried such thoughts in the back of his mind and decided to leave the past behind and concentrate on the present. No matter what had been, in a few days he would finally see his friends again, finally search with them again for new adventures.

He just had to survive his meeting with Eizen and then hopefully it would be as carefree as it used to be.

At the door, Zoro stopped for a moment. No, he should stop hoping that it would be the same as back then. The others might be as carefree as ever, but he wasn't. Things had changed and he had as well.

He decisively opened the door.

"Oh, hello Zoro, you're early."

"What, aren't the others there yet?" He asked at Shakky's welcome with a grin and stepped in. "Typical."

"Do you want to have a drink? You've certainly had a tiring journey." The bartender already filled a beer mug and since the annoying Shichibukai was not there to scold him about the bad influence of alcohol on healing bones, there was no reason for him to refuse.

"That would be great," he replied with a wry grin and closed the door behind him, dropping the duffle bag to the ground.

A soft whistling made him look up. On the sofa next to the bar, the Black King folded his rustling newspaper and pulled his glasses down slightly as he inspected Zoro and finally rose.

"Well, someone has changed. If I didn't know the picture of your wanted poster, I would have never recognized you," Rayleigh welcomed him now.

Zoro just nodded as a greeting and stopped so that the old man could regard him. By now he was used to this observing, after all, Mihawk had always looked at him that way.

"What are you talking about? The similarity between him and Mihawk's concubine is more than obvious. I'm rather surprised that no one has figured it out yet, especially your gaze says it all," Shakuyak laughed now, offering Zoro the beer mug.

"Concubine?" He replied, settling down at the bar. "No thanks. I have no interest in anything like this."

She giggled softly and winked at him. "My sister told me otherwise."

Zoro rolled his eye and picked up the beer while the former pirate sat down next to him.

"Kanan reads too much between the lines," he murmured, emptying his drink at once.

"The scar fits you," the bartender remarked, before lighting a cigarette, "I dig men with scars."

"I would never have noticed," Rayleigh laughed softly. But then he became more serious and turned to Zoro. "Well, you're early and without his Lordship? He did not accompany you? I'm curious, is there a special reason?"

The old man was smart, as Zoro had already noticed during their first meeting two years ago. He seemed to be able to talk with Mihawk on an equal footing and the Shichibukai allowed that only to few, on the other hand he was, of course, the former vice captain of the Pirate King, if Mihawk did not even have respect for him, for whom then?

"I have an important appointment here tomorrow, so I arrived early," he replied truthfully.

"Oh, of course, that makes sense," the old man muttered with big eyes while Shakky also offered him a beer mug, refilled Zoro's, and then escaped into the backspace. "But why are you visiting us today? It's quite unexpected."

"It is?" Zoro smiled into his drink. "I thought you were expecting me."

The Dark King only grinned but did not respond.

For a moment, they both enjoyed their beer in silence, while Zoro could almost hear the conversation his crew must have had in these rooms two years ago like the ghosts of the past.

"You developed well," the old man broke the consensual silence, "Mihawk really took training with you seriously. I must say I am surprised, hadn't thought of him as a good teacher, he's always so condescending."

Laughing quietly, Zoro agreed with him: "That's true, but yeah, he taught me a lot."

"But not everything, right?" They briefly looked at each other. "At first glance, it doesn't seem to me like you've crossed your limits. Your aura is very different from Mihawk's."

"That's true," he muttered, turning back to his glass, "unlike him, I don't plan on losing control."

"Oh, really." Once again, the other whistled quietly. "So, you decided to take the rough road. I'm impressed, you would be the first demon I know who would survive this path."

"And what about Luffy?" Zoro asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"Oh please, he might be a beast like you, but he's a D. not a demon, but you know that," the former pirate said with a soft smile.

Zoro replied only with a shrug of his shoulders.

"As Shakuyak said last time, it takes one monster to recognize another."

The old man laughed again.

"No, no, she said it takes a monster to kill another, and if I remember correctly, she meant you and Mihawk at the time. The parable wasn't about me at all." Rayleigh also took a deep sip. "How come Mihawk doesn't accompany you? Last time I had the feeling that he was very reluctant to let you out of his view."

With each minute Zoro became more grateful that the Shichibukai had not come with him. If his behavior was apparently so obvious, then it would certainly have led to annoying complications if he had come across Zoro's crew.

"He thought it would be more inconspicuous. The presence of a Shichibukai could make the Marines wary, especially as he assumes that our departure will not go unnoticed."

"Mhm," Rayleigh quietly agreed, "the pain of parting. I can understand that well."

"What the hell...?!" He stared at the old man.

"Sorry, aren't the two of you a couple? I mean, I wouldn't have thought just from the newspaper, but Shakky said that you..."

"No!" Zoro coolly interrupted him, wondering how outsiders viewed his relationship with the Shichibukai, if almost everybody he knew came to the same conclusions. "He's my teacher and an annoying bastard. We're not a couple!"

For a second, the old man looked at him over his glasses.

"Oh, is that so?" He asked with a slightly raised voice and pursed lips. "My mistake, sorry. As I said, the newspaper articles are appearently misleading, and it's not as if it's not conspicuous if you're running around here as you and have an appointment as Lady Loreen tomorrow, right? That's why I thought... well, it just sounded to me like an excuse... but as I said, I hardly know you and do not know anything about your... just... the newspaper articles... and Shakky."

Helplessly, Rayleigh shrugged his shoulders as he started to mumble and eventually drowned his words in his beer.

Zoro didn't believe him a single word, but he wondered if at least some of this rubbish might be true.

"I'm not here because of Mihawk," he grumbled, emptying his mug.

"Of course not," Rayleigh sighed, and Zoro could have sworn that the former pirate sounded disappointed. "So Zoro? How can I help you?"

Grateful that they had finally changed the subject, Zoro turned to the old man.

"You know where the Sunny is, don't you? You wanted to coat it if I recall correctly. I'd like to put my stuff there. If our departure is as tumultuous as I think, I don't want to have to worry about that anymore. It's also annoying to drag the stuff around with me all the time."

He nodded over to the bag.

"Sure, I can take you there," the elder agreed, and suddenly there was nothing left of the stammering old man when he coolly inspected Zoro, "but that's not the real reason you came, right?"

"No," he confirmed, following the drop of water from his empty mug with his finger, "you said back then that you met others like me, is that true?"

The other hesitated for a moment.

"You mean people who died but then came back into life in another body?"

Zoro nodded and looked at the other resolutely.

"I want you to tell me everything you know about them."

"What?" Doubtful, Rayleigh furrowed his forehead. "Why me? Ain't this some secret community that wants to prevent outsiders from even knowing anything about it? So why do you think I might have interesting information?"

"Because you have, right?"

Then the other leaned back and looked at him with a half grin. Then he laughed.

"You're really different than I expected, especially after what your friends told me. But who knows, maybe that's just Mihawk's influence, isn't it?"

Zoro decided to ignore this comment.

"It's true that I know a lot about the reborns, more than I probably should, and more than I doubt is good for me," the other continued, staring at his pitcher. "In your place I would probably also try to exhaust all possibilities to get more information. It's not like people like you are given a manual explaining everything, and some of what I've heard contradicts other inforamtion. So yes, I'm ready to tell you everything I know, but I don't promise it's much, nor that it's correct."

"I can live with that," Zoro grumbled, his arms crossed. "How did you learn about us? Did you have one in your crew?"

"Oh no, but..." The other looked at him briefly. "Do you know that some people who have had a near-death experience are able to see your shadows?"

"What?" He straightened up while Rayleigh nodded.

"Yes, don't ask me why and how some people can do it and some don't. One of our crewmembers could. She has seen all the shadows of people who have died before and then come back to life. We all thought for a long time that she had a devil power – she really didn't like to swim, I tell you – but no, it was her gift and she had set herself the task of helping everyone she met."

"When you say she was able to see everybody's shadow, you mean..."

"Yes, not only of the reborns."

Zoro stared at the other. Did he know about... her, the being from his dream, who had explained to him why he was allowed to live on and had left him the choice, the soul guard.

"Asbru could see shadows of all those who once stepped behind the veil of death," Rayleigh continued, "so of the reborns like you, who decided to keep their memories and tie them to a new body, but also from all the others who almost died, but then returned to life with their memories."

"And this Asbrus told you all of this?" Zoro muttered thoughtfully. This could explain how Eizen had come to his ability, perhaps he could also see the shadows because of such a gift. After all, he didn't have a shadow himself, at least as far as Zoro could see.

Rayleigh shrugged his shoulders.

"Few people who nearly died have a gift like Asbrus, and rarely has it been as noticeable as hers was. But people like you are almost even rarer. On all our journeys, we have met maybe five, maybe six. Asbru thought she might have hit a total of twenty, but hardly any like you. Few have, in the end, returned to their old bodies and their old lives. Most have started a new life."

Zoro thought of Jade, who had already helped him out twice, and Banri, the man who had actually explained to Zoro what had happened to him; both had started a new life and only their closest confidants knew who they really were.

Zoro had never understood their motives. Why would he have returned to life if he had not planned to live his life? No matter his body, he wanted to fulfill his dream, protect his friends, accompany Luffy on his way to become pirate king. But at his choice, he would always prefer this body here, well aware that this could present new problems for him.

"You really know quite a lot," Zoro muttered.

Once again, Rayleigh shrugged his shoulders.

"But that's about it. I mean, I certainly don't have to tell you what happened after your death. You probably already know all this, or why you have this body."

Zoro nodded. He recalled very well the dream in which he had faced the soul guard in the afterlife, who had given him the choice between three gates. He had hoped that Rayleigh might have known something, but he did not expect such accurate information.

"Say," he said, "you don't happen to know what a traveler is?"

He could feel the eyes of the other, who said nothing for a long moment.

"Why are you asking this in connection with the reborns?" The old man sounded suspicious, and when Zoro turned to him, he could see the Dark King frowning.

"That's what the soul guard called me."

For a fraction of a second, Rayleigh's facial features slipped, but then he got as serious as before.

"I understand," he muttered, "that explains a lot of things, of course."

"And what does it explain?" He questioned displeased.

"It explains why you follow Luffy. Now I understand."

"What? What does this have to do with Luffy?"

Quietly laughing, the old man bowed his head.

"Pretty much everything if you ask me. What a coincidence, when the others spoke of you, I was already surprised, a Roronoa, probably the last of his kind and then in the crew of a D." Again, Rayleigh laughed before putting a hand on his chin and nodding thoughtfully. "It really seems to be fate, doesn't it? You will hardly have decided to follow him on a whim, right? Oh, I'd love to know what your motives were."

"What does this have to do with the travelers? I don't really believe in fate and I don't really care..."

"Wait, wait, wait," Rayleigh interrupted him, "you want to tell me you don't know what a traveler is? This was not a trick question? You really don't know?"

For a moment, they both looked at each other in roughly the same way.

"What?" Zoro asked, who no longer understood a word.

Rayleigh, on the other hand, leaned forward and looked at him curiously.

"Oh," he whispered softly, "you don't remember. I understand, you're a traveler with no memory."

"What?"

Loudly, Rayleigh clapped his hands and jumped up.

"That's so exciting. Then it was really fate. Oh, Roger would hit the ceiling with excitement."

"Rayleigh!" He growled, and also stood up. "What are you talking about?"

The old man put a hand on his shoulder and suddenly looked at him seriously.

"It's good that you've come early, Zoro. I will tell you what you need to know but be sure that ignorance can be a blessing."

"I want the truth."

Rayleigh nodded and sat down again, taking a deep breath.

"Am I right to assume that you don't want to know the things your captain didn't want to know?"

Zoro simply nodded and shrugged his shoulders at the same time. He didn't want the old man to spoil him the adventures that were waiting for him, but he needed to know what had happened to him, after all, Eizen seemed to know.

"Good, then the pared-down version," the other side while Zoro sat down again. "Okay, how to start? Well, travelers are very, very old creatures, who supposedly live far longer than our time calculation can measure, and aimlessly wander around the world – maybe they do have an aim, I don't know – and do for what they exist. What exactly that is, no idea, they are only mentioned a few times in half a sentence."

Zoro listened attentively to the other, recalling the words the strange creature had told him.

The older the soul, the stronger its power. Yours, for example, is still one of the original souls, an extremely rare example.

"It is said that travelers carry the burden of the world on their shoulders, and that is why they are called guardians of the world. However, world could also mean king in this context, and then travelers would be the king's guardians, which fits much better with the rest of the story, according to which this king could hear their thoughts at any time, no matter how far apart they were, even if the king did not even know who they were, had never met them. Over time, fewer and fewer knew what travelers were, and the people who could hear these old voices didn't know who they were coming from, so they were called the voices of all things."

Zoro remained silent.

"There aren't many of them anymore, maybe there have never been many of them, who knows. I didn't know that they could die like humans, but maybe they're just human beings; we know very little about them, but..." Now the former pirate looked at him directly. "... you are the first one I have heard who does not know what he is and cannot remember his previous lives. What a coincidence that you have decided to return to life."

For a second, they were both very quiet, then Rayleigh laughed.

"I'm sorry, that's certainly quite a lot for you to process."

Sighing, Zoro scratched his head and then huffed silently.

"To be honest, I don't really care. I thought it would help me with one of my problems if I knew what it meant to be a traveler, but I don't care about all this esoteric nonsense."

"What?"

Rayleigh looked at him with big eyes, but Zoro shrugged his shoulders again.

"Yeah, doesn't really matter how old my soul is or whatever. I thought you had a trick for me on how to keep this body longer or something useful, not such ancient nurse tales."

"I just told you one of the greatest mysteries about the world, and you..."

"And you could have really saved both of us that time." Disappointed, Zoro stood up and scratched his neck. "Well, what happened, happened. Okay, let's go to Sunny so that the day is not completely wasted."

For another second, the other looked at him shaking his head, then he laughed out loud and rose as well.

"Well, come on." Still shaking his head, Rayleigh walked to the door. "You are just as incorrigible as Luffy. He didn't want to know about these things either, because they bored him, even though they are so important to your destiny."

Huffing, Zoro grabbed his duffle bag and followed the other.

"Tze, I don't believe in fate, Rayleigh, and all this crap of destiny and so on is pretty much the same to me. I'm here because my decisions have taken me here and nothing else."

The former pirate muttered something under his breath and together they went to Thousand Sunny.

"I'm waiting for you here," Rayleigh remarked as Zoro went onboard.

A strange melancholy filled him when he finally walked over the Sunny again after such a long time. The last time he had been here, he had stopped the cook from attacking Mihawk and then cried in front of the entire crew. If he thought about it like that, there might be one or two more reasons why it was wiser not to reveal that he was Lady Loreen so soon.

"Hey Zoro, let's go collect stones for a campfire!"

For a moment he thought he heard Luffy, almost saw him pulling him across the small meadow.

"What for? Let me sleep, Luffy."

"But it's an uninhabited island, Zoro! We have to make a campfire! Usopp is already collecting wood, but we are still missing stones."

"Don't you need more wood than...? Okay, for all I care, we're going to collect stones."

Almost wistfully he remembered that day, when Luffy had made an unbelievable effort to lure him from the ship as inconspicuously as possible, so that the others had time for their preparations.

They had just left Thriller Bark a few days ago, and his bruised body had been constantly complaining as he had stumbled across the island behind Luffy and collected stones – just as his body was now complaining about his cracked bones, what a déja vu – while he had actually only wanted to sleep.

Slowly, he opened the door to the boy's bedroom. It was still as terribly smelly as he was used to, and he could already hear the cook in the background nagging that they should open some windows.

He walked in carefully, things were still lying around wildly, as if the others had just gone ashore, as if this room had not been deserted for two years.

His eyes fell on the first two bunks, the upper one was Luffy's, as messy as ever – was that a glass of jerky under his pillow? – below it was his bunk. Zoro couldn't remember how he had left it behind, probably as messy as his captain, but now the blanket was neatly folded, as if someone had really taken their time with it.

He turned his gaze away and walked over to the lockers. Each of them had his own, but since Zoro had never needed as much space for his few clothes, he had finally given in to the cook's annoying whining and begging and had given him the upper half of his. Presumably the cook had taken his over completely after Zoro's death.

"Oh."

As might be expected, the chef's casual clothes took the entire top half of the locker, and immediately Zoro noted the smell of coffee and cigarettes in his nose, as if the blond was standing in front of him.

But the bottom half was filled with Zoro's clothes, but they hardly looked like his. They all had been neatly ironed and folded, something he would never do. He wasn't as messy as Luffy or Usopp, but that didn't mean he would iron his stuff like a housewife.

At second glance, even the remaining pair of boots looked as if someone had taken the trouble to clean them. As if someone had expected him to come back today and quickly cleaned up everything last night.

"Damn curly brow," he murmured, simply stuffing his duffle bag onto the folded pile of trousers.

He had thought that the past two years had gone by quickly, but the last ten days, until he would finally see his friends again, felt like an unbelievably long time.

He really missed them, even the damn cook.

A few minutes later, he walked back to Shakky's bar alongside Rayleigh.

"You're very quiet," the old man said.

"Oh, just shut..." Zoro looked up and looked at his counterpart, then shook his head and grinned slightly. "You don't know me, Rayleigh, I'm always quiet."

For a second, he had forgotten who was walking next to him and who wasn't.

"Oh, really? Last time I had a very different impression. You talked a lot."

Zoro did not respond, and the former pirate did not ask further. They said goodbye at the bar and Zoro promised Shakuyak to come back before leaving.

He was actually looking forward to returning to his old life soon, but a dull feeling in the stomach area weakened his joy and the upcoming appointment dampened his mood one way or another.

But it was only one last time, if he was lucky, Zoro would only have to play Lady Loreen once more, tomorrow, and that day came faster than expected.