'I swear, I stop paying attention for one minute and my idiot captain goes get lost,' Zoro mentally grumbled as he wondered dark halls. 'Why is the Sea-Witch never around when you need her?'

The sound of voices tickled the swordsman's ears, causing him to turned a corner and peeked around the ajar door into a room where three men were conversing. Zoro took in the figures with something resembling passive interest. One was wearing a beak mask, one was dressed like an actual man-bird, and the last had a dismember hand clamped over his face.

To many, this trio would have seemed incredibly strange but the swordsman had seen far, far weirder in the past few years so this barely phased him.

"Now then, about what we discussed on the phone the other day. Were you for real?" The bird-man asked, thumbing his way through a stack of bills. "That, depending on the conditions, you'll side with us?"

"That's a rather self-serving way of putting it," the blue-haired man replied, voice raspy and muffled behind the hand fixed to his face as he thumped one foot up on the coffee table in front of him. "You're the ones who want to latch onto the League's name. But we also happen to be looking for ways to expand our influence so our motives happen to align."

"Put your foot down," Beaky growled. "You're dirtying the table up."

"I believe that should be 'could you please put your foot down?' Young Boss," was the smug reply he got in response. "If anything, you should be bowing your head in respect... after all, you were the one who lost the girl to an amateur hero no less, Why, the head of Shie Hassaikai must be very disappointed in you."

The anger radiating off of the masked man would have been palpable even without Observation Haki. "This coming from the man whose organization couldn't handle a bunch of school children? Hardly a ringing endorsement of your capabilities."

Birdy cut in to defuse the tension. "That isn't important now. We need to focus on getting Eri back before the heroes can use her against us."

"They probably took her to the U.A. High School for safe-keeping," Facey grunted.

Mask gave a stiff nod, "Which means either breaking into the school get her back or waiting until she leaves."

"How can you be sure she'll do that?"

"Little kids like to wander and explore; she'll be no exception," he grunted. "But we as will need to deal with the new hero on the scenes; I looked through our information and we have nothing on this kid in the straw hat."

That got Zoro's attention. 'Straw hat? What in the hell has Luffy been up to?'

"He's strong and fast and stretchy," Handy grunted, "Nothing that can't be handled."

That settled it. Zoro pushed the door open, "Hey, I'm looking for the guy in the Straw Hat. Where did you see him?"

Rudely, all he got was a trio of dumbfounded looks... well, sort of, Handy just turned towards him.

"What, you're not going to answer?" he grunted, crossing his arms. "Fine, I'll just go find himself."

And with that, he turned on his heel and walked off down through the halls. 'Luffy just had to go and get himself lost in the land full of the most unhelpful people imaginable, didn't he?'

"Hey!"

Zoro turned to see all of the men had followed after him, "Huh? What do you want?"

"What are you doing here?" Beaky demanded. "How did you get in? Who do you work for?"

'Work for? Weirdos,' he thought. "I'm just trying to find my captain... and I just used the side door, it wasn't even locked. Well, the lock was pathetic anyway. Why?"

.

.

.

"You really should have someone watching out for that," Handy offered Beaky, who just glared before turning back to Zoro.

"Well, impressive as it is that you've managed to infiltrate our headquarters, I'm afraid you can't be allowed to tell anyone about it," the threat was obvious as Beaky stalked forward, eyes dark and angry.

Zoro cocked an eyebrow and reached for his blades.

"WHAT... the HELL... was THAT?" Mimic asked, pushing his way out from under the rubble, rubbing the top of his costume head. "That guy was a monster! I've never seen anything like that! I thought only All Might was that strong!"

Overhaul, ignoring the shooting pain in his ribs and left leg, disassembled the rumble crushing him and sat up. "He could have killed us, he must have some sort of ulterior motive for leaving us alive."

There was an audible crumbling sound as Shigaraki disintegrate the think chunk of wall pinning him to the floor.

"Well," he wheezed, "that is hardly a ringing endorsement of your capabilities as an organization, is it? That some sort of monster just waltzed into your headquarters defeated you both like that."

"He took you out too," Overhaul retorted. "And let's handle one problem at a time, starting with the girl."

"Uh, kid? You can't sleep up there?"

Luffy peered down from the tree branch he perched himself on for a nap at the confused man with a blue hat. "Why not?"

"Errr... you're not supposed to loiter in the park," Hat-Guy replied. "It's against the law."

'Laws, yuck,' Luffy wrinkled his nose. "Loitering, what's that?"

He got another confused look but the man just sighed, "Look, kid, do you want me to call your parents? Come on, what is your mother's phone number?"

"Nah, I'm good," Luffy shook his head. "Besides, I don't have a mother -Ace and Sabo said Gramps grew me in a cabbage patch."

"Right... So should I call-"

"Hey, Luffy, I finally found you!"

A broad smile split across the future pirate king's face as his oldest strolled up.

"Zoro, where have you been?" Luffy cheered, hopping down from the tree and cocking his head to the side as he took the gray powder that covered the swordsman from head-to-toe. "And what have you been up to?"

"Looking for you, got into a fight with some weirdo in a stupid mask."

"Really? Me too!"

"Excuse me, Sir, but... are those real swords?" Hat-Guy asked, pointing at Zoro's waist.

"Yeah."

.

.

.

"I don't get paid enough to deal with this," he sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Just please don't stab anyone."

Then he just walked away as Luffy and Zoro watched. "Weird guy," Zoro shrugged, turning to his captain. "So why did you fight the man with the mask?"

"Saw him trying to hurt a kid and a little girl; the fight wasn't fair so I stepped in."

Simple and straightforward, just like Luffy.

"Yeah, he was talking with two other guys about kidnapping a little girl," Zoro noted. "I think they called her... Eri?"

Luffy's face fell into a frown and he turned, walking away.

"Where are you going?"

"Well, I've got to help my new friends; it wouldn't be fair to make them fight Mask-Guy by themselves."

Simple and straightforward, just like Luffy.

5