Chapter 21

Zoro's perspective of a crazy night! A missing page from the logbook of villagers?

After Zoro and Ari part ways at the fork between the east and west wing, Zoro attempts to find his room. He turns at the end of the hall, thinking that this has to be his room, but instead finds himself back in the palace gym. I ended up here again?! He thinks to himself. He'd landed in the gym once before whilst trying to find his room. I'm in here so much, might as well be my room. Zoro shrugs to himself and picks up the weights and the statue of the Empress as he had before and begins his workout. After he finishes that, he cools down with some laps in the pool, dries off, and gets dressed.

As he leaves the gym, he notices a door directly across from it. The door has the number one embossed with gold on it. Number one… they got that right. He smirks.

He enters his room and strips back down, falling asleep with ease as soon as his face hits the pillow.

XXX

Zoro stretches out luxuriously and yawns as he wakes up. It's still fairly early, so the sun hasn't reached the eastern horizon yet. He gets out of bed, pulls on his green coat and straps on his swords as he steps out of his room. He tours the halls, looking for the kitchen, when he passes by some maids that are chit-chatting.

"That pink-haired lady has been staying here a long time," a bodyguard-built girl says.

"It's hard having another person to clean up after. Especially since the Empress already has the entirety of the Straw Hats staying here too!" Marin whines.

"Her floor is always a mess, isn't it?" Tori laughs to herself.

The other maids look over at Tori strangely and Marin speaks up again, "I'd hardly consider one small receipt on her floor a 'mess'."

Tori looks utterly dumbfounded as she stutters, "Y-yeah, I mean that's still messy." Her cheeks turn pink.

"I did see that she left a t-shirt and some shorts on her floor one day," another maid says.

"But anyway, did you hear that she's in the hospital wing?" Marin adds.

"Oh no, I didn't hear that," Tori frets. "And what are you doing issuing out gossip anyway? You should get to work!" She shakes her head. "All of you, come on now! Back to work, back to work!" Tori shoos the group of maids until they all break away to go back to their work.

"Something happened to Ari?" Zoro wonders to himself. He shrugs. "Anyway, I better go get some food before Luffy eats it all." Zoro goes down some stairs and comes across a set of double doors. Looks like I'm here. First try too. He smirks, satisfied with his improving directional skills, but instead of seeing a wooden table and stone floors, he's greeted with trees and a stone walk leading out of the palace down to the village. He frowns. Damn, how'd I end up here?!

He hears someone coming from around the corner of the palace, and Zoro puts a hand to the hilt of one of his swords, ready to draw. The person in question happens to be Sanji returning with a compost bin that had been freshly emptied. Zoro lets his hand come to rest at his side, though his irritation remains. "Get lost going to the kitchen again?" Sanji smirks.

"No," Zoro spits. "I'm off to train. See ya." Zoro passes the cook without another word. He walks through the village and takes the time to appreciate the quiet. This stillness is a quality that he's rarely seen, especially since he joined up with Luffy many years ago. He finally comes to where the village and the forest meet, and heads on into the trees. He practices a few general forms, does some 'light' muscle exercises and trains until the sun peeks up from the east. He then goes on his way back to the palace, when he stumbles across Marguerite and Ari's cottage once again. He involuntarily shivers at the memory of having to hide from the women of the village. I can't believe I posed as a plant. A plant for Christ's sake. He moves quickly, trying to get away from the cottage as soon as possible, when he suddenly arrives at the very doorstep he's avoiding. Give me a break. He turns around to attempt leaving the cottage once more, when the door opens.

A sleepy Marguerite greets him from the other side, "Zoro," she says with surprise, "how can I help you?"

"I, uh…" Zoro says nervously, unsure of how to say 'I just kinda ended up here without cognizantly doing so' without sounding crazy. He looks past her shoulder and notices a bag of pomegranates on the kitchen floor. He continues speaking whilst following his current train of thought, "I came by to pick up those. For Ari, I mean. I mean to give to-"

"Oh, is that all?" Marguerite stretches out and yawns. "Alright then," she says as she turns and walks into the kitchen. She hefts the load of pomegranates up, and hands it over to Zoro. "Here ya go! Be sure to tell Ari I said hi." She smiles once more.

"Uh, yeah, I'll do that."

Marguerite closes the door and Zoro heads down the walk back to the main path, carrying the load of pomegranates all the while.

He arrives back at the palace, and to his luck, lands in the kitchen. However, his luck ends there; the kitchen is bustling with maids, Sanji, and of course the Straw Hat captain swiping whatever food he can.

Zoro sighs irritably and makes his way towards the fridge. A rubber arm stretches past his face over to the counter, where Sanji is currently chopping some apples. Luffy manages to grab one of the slices, but at the cost of getting nicked with the knife's blade. "Ouch, Sanji! What'd ya do that for?!"

"Luffy, keep your hands off! I'm in the middle of cutting here!" Sanji aims the blade at Luffy.

"But, Sanjiii, I can't wait for breakfast. I want food now!"

"Well, too bad, you'll have to wait. It'll be done in a half hour."

Luffy and Sanji continue bickering while Zoro continues on his way to put the pomegranates in the fridge. Zoro just starts emptying out some of the pomegranates into the bottom drawer since all of them won't fit in the other one, when Sanji cuts in, "Oh, good, finally made use of yourself. Would ya hand me some of those pomegra-"

"No," Zoro replies, "these aren't for you."

Sanji raises a curly brow at his response. "So who are they for?"

Zoro tenses. "None of your damn business. Don't touch them." Zoro unties his bandanna and rips a sliver of it off to act as a string. He ties one end of the string onto the bag handle and tapes the other end on a quickly scrawled note. There. That should do it. He grins to himself. He's on his way out the door, when Sanji opens the fridge and chuckles. Zoro freezes in place, wondering if it's the note that his crewmate is amused with.

"How sweet, mosshead here has a crush."

Zoro's face ignites a bright red. In an attempt to cover his embarrassment, he keeps walking and says, "Yeah, yeah whatever."

As Zoro leaves out the door, he overhears Luffy ask, "Hey, Sanji, what's a crush? Zoro's gonna crush somebody?"

"No, you moron!"

As Zoro saunters along, with no particular destination in mind, his mind wanders back and thinks about what that stupid love cook said. He hurriedly shakes his head. No. He's wrong. There's no way that- Zoro's train of thought is interrupted when he realizes where he's ended up: the medical wing, right by Ari's door. He initially peeks inside, but then sees that she's awake. He sighs with relief, but then catches himself. Ari looks over at her door, and out of fear of being seen, he hurriedly moves past her door and down the hall. He continues his train of thought, There's no way that he's right.

He continues moving down the hall, up the stairs and, luckily enough, into the kitchen. Sanji and Luffy are nowhere to be found, though there are still some maids continuing their work. He stalks past them, opens the fridge, tears the note off the bag and quickly throws it in the trash. See? No crush. Nothing. He nods to himself.

XXX

The rest of the day drags on. Zoro's thoughts, try as he might, had a way of trailing back to a certain someone, that certain someone being Ari. He shakes his head for the millionth time today. I have to focus on finding the Fluttering Swordswoman. With that in mind, he tours the hallways of the upstairs until he happens upon Robin's room. He knocks a couple times and waits. No answer. He knocks again, but instead of Robin's door opening, the one next to it does: Ari's. Her door opens so fast, that a huge gust of wind blows past, causing her sweet scent to travel to Zoro's nose. He can't help but look over at the source of it and stare at the sight of her, seemingly fresh out of the bath. His eyes drink in the length of her body, starting from her face and going down to her toes. The only thing blocking his gaze from staring at all of her skin is a plush white towel that covers her entire torso. He notes that it barely goes past her butt. To his surprise, he almost turns his head to see up the towel a bit further. But before he can study her anymore, Ari retreats back inside her room, slamming the door shut behind her.

"Zoro, I must admit I don't believe I've ever seen you blush before."

He starts at the sudden voice, but then realizes that it's Robin. "So do you have any more information about the Fluttering Swordswoman?"

Robin cocks her head curiously at him, but replies nonetheless, "I do. Come in."

Zoro closes the door behind him as Robin retrieves a book from her desk.

"I was going to share my findings with you as soon as I found them, but I thought that you may want an explanation for what I did find," she explains.

"What do ya have?" He gestures at the book in her hands.

"This is that logbook of the island that I told you about before. There were two villagers that came to the island around the same time that the Fluttering Swordswoman died, right?"

He nods.

"I was reading in this further to see if it ever mentions the names of the villagers that came here and this is what I found." She opens the book, and shows it to Zoro.

"Almost the whole page is ripped out."

Robin nods. "I've read the entire logbook. This part right here," Robin gestures to the missing page, "is the only place where the new villagers' names would have been."

"So we need to find that page."

Robin sighs. "Someone ripped that page out. Someone who didn't want anyone to know those names. They likely disposed of it after ripping it out. Sadly, I don't think we'll be able to find it."

Zoro clenches his fist and furrows his brow.

"However, if we're able to determine who ripped the page out, we may be able to find out those two names. After all, it may very well have been one of those new villagers who ripped it out."

"So how do we do that?"

"We need to find out who has access to the logbook. I'm guessing the Empress herself has access along with the Elder. And possibly anyone else who is in the palace often."

"Since the Elder wrote it, I seriously doubt she tore it out."

"Good point. The same is probably safe to say for the Empress too."

"You don't think…" Zoro ponders, "that the Fluttering Swordswoman could have done it, do you?"

Robin puts a finger to her mouth. "That is a possibility. A strong one, I'd say."

"So who else is in the palace a lot?"

There's a pause.

Wait… someone who is in the palace a lot… someone who is around every turn… wherever I look they're always there… Maids. "Maids."

Robin looks over at him.

"Maids," he repeats, "they're everywhere in the palace. They clean everything. They would have access."

Robin's eyes light up. "The maids have access."

He nods.

"The only problem is that there are so many maids. It could have been any of them. And we can't just ask each of them if they did, because even if they did tear it out, it's not likely that they'd admit to it. It's too bad that the page is likely disposed of by now."

"Well, lucky for us if that page is still around," he grins, "I know where to look for it."