Chapter 9: Ten days after arriving in Little Garden

"It is so… bright! And garish! And… bulky! And so… so… what is zhe word…"

"Ridiculous?"

"Extravagant!"

Sanji's eyes widened in surprise. He stared at Baby, fawning over the Frankystein, her eyes sparkling, her foot popped up, and her hands on her cheeks. It was love at first sight, and Sanji had to admit she looked really cute like that. She always looked cute, but this was especially cute.

"I had not seen it completed! Monsieur Franky certainly outdid himself! What a beautiful specimen of American engineering~!" she sang.

It was morning, the sun just barely peeking over the walls of the outpost. Baby wanted an early start on the manhunt and Sanji was the only one who both wanted to help her and was willing to get up that early. It was just the two of them standing in Sanji's driveway, and in a way he was pretty happy with that. He wasn't exactly hoping for a romantic incursion out there while investigating a shooting, but the fact that it was just the two of them meant it was all the more likely it would occur.

Baby was glad for any company at all, but she was exceptionally glad that Sanji was the one coming with her. He was a potent combination of dependable, smart, and bilingual, which meant Baby could speak her first language. Plus, she thought, if there was some kind of situation, it was good to know she could rely on him to pull some kind of heroics. And there was the fact that ever since he came back from that jewelry store, he was putting a little bit more effort into his appearance, and Baby appreciated something nice to look at.

Because I know not all of you speak French, I'm going to translate their dialogue for you.

Baby circled the Jeep and tried the door handles. Of course they didn't open and she stepped back, tilting her head. "How… How do you get in?"

"Ah, you have to go through the back," Sanji said. He demonstrated by climbing up over the backseat, avoiding the spikes jutting out. He turned around and extended a hand to help her up.

"Oh my, what a gentleman~" she said, putting one hand to her chest and taking his with the other. He felt his face heat up and he couldn't tell if she was actually swooning or if she was just playing. It was a little bit of both.

Their graceful display was immediately ruined as the two of them then had to awkwardly climb over the center console to sit in the front and passenger seats. Sanji sat behind the wheel, and Baby adjusted herself, looking back over her shoulder to judge the rest of the Jeep.

"Not very convenient, is it?" she said once she was buckled up.

Sanji shrugged. "Well, Franky's theory is that if we're on the run and we all climb into the thing, it doesn't matter that it takes some time to get situated, because there's no way a zombie could climb up like that."

Baby nodded, her lips pulled into a thin smile. "That's what he says, hm? I think he welded the doors shut first, and then realized he'd need to justify how difficult he made things~" she said with a giggle.

There was still a patrol duo out, even at this time in the morning. Today it was Luffy and Nami, walking the interior of the walls and staying clear of the balcony. Because of Luffy's sprained ankle, he wasn't making the loop around the outpost as much as Nami, and spent a lot of the time complaining about his injury in a folding lawn chair in front of the gate's button.

However, he wasn't complaining when Sanji and Baby drove up, because Nami was curled up in his lap with a jacket draped over the both of them like a makeshift blanket. His eyes were closed, but really he could have just been resting. Sanji leaned out the window and called out to him, "Hey, Luffy! Open up for us?"

The way he jolted up indicated that, no, he had indeed passed out. He shook his head and regained his bearings, and glanced over at the car. "Whawazat…?"

"The gate, buddy. Can you open up?" Sanji asked again.

He blinked a few times and it dawned on him what Sanji meant. "Oh, okay!" He shook Nami as gently as he could.

She gasped loudly and stammered, sitting upright, blinking rapidly, and looking around in a daze. "Whuh- I wasn't- I wasn't asleep!" she said. "Just sitting down for a sec!" She climbed out of her seat/Luffy's lap and stretched her back. It took her a second to notice the Frankystein in front of her. "I-I wasn't- I didn't fall asleep on guard duty! Just resting!"

She stumbled around the chair and slapped her hand on the opener. She waved them past with a barely contained yawn. "Be safe out there!" She rolled her shoulders to straighten herself out. "Don't stay out too long!"

When they were clear of the gate, Nami shut it and turned around to look at Luffy. He wasn't saying anything, just staring at her with his dumb blank expression. She still felt like she was being judged. "I wasn't asleep. I was comfortable, but I was not asleep."

"Are you comin' back here?"

She crossed her arms. "N-no, we should make another sweep. Come on." She walked over to help him stand up and as she walked with him around the wall, she again insisted, "I didn't fall asleep! You fell asleep!"

He didn't say anything.

Sanji and Baby arrived back at the shooter's house without incident, although both of them were sort of anticipating something happening. It was exactly as Baby had left it yesterday, the door still idly swinging open. They climbed out of the Frankystein and walked into the house, peeking around every corner to make sure there was no one waiting for them. Baby led Sanji up to the second floor, to the room the shot came from.

It was a boy's bedroom, everything in it covered in a fine layer of dust. The objects strewn around the room, books, video games, clothes, had all been untouched for years. The bedspread was the only thing that had been moved. The bed was underneath the window the shot came from, which meant the shooter pretty much only came here to spy on the outpost and do little else.

They gave the rest of the house a quick runthrough and determined there was no way anyone was still here. They stood in the family room on the first floor and Sanji threw his hands up. "House is empty."

"He must've run through the backyard…" Baby said. They both glanced at the doorwall leading to the backyard, and it became pretty clear Baby was right. The glass door had been left open, but the screen door was closed. Apparently, in his haste, the shooter saved time by plowing through the screen instead of opening it. They regarded the cartoon hole and stepped through it, giving a quick look around the backyard. It was predictably devoid of people.

There were chain fences on either side of the house, separating it from the neighbors. There was also a tall wooden privacy fence along the back, which Sanji made a note of. "Alright, so we know we have a guy willing to run through a screen rather than open it. So I'm betting he's also the kind of guy to just run straight in the opposite direction of trouble… So he probably…" he took a running leap and scaled the fence, peering over into the other backyard. "Hopped the fence! Aw…"

"What do you see?" Baby called out.

"Uhh… Nnnnothing." Sanji responded.

Baby similarly hopped up onto the fence next to him and scanned the area herself. "Tch!" she tutted. She lowered herself a little, and then pulled herself up completely, allowing her to balance on the top of the fence. She stood up straight, held her arms up, and leapt off, performing a perfect front flip and landing on her feet. "I was almost hoping we'd find him clutching a broken leg or something…"

Sanji stared in awe for a second, and followed after her. All he did was swing his leg over and drop down onto the grass. Both of them wandered around the backyard idly, looking for any sign of the shooter. "So, that was… impressive, by the way," he said to her.

She smiled at hm. "Seven years in gymnastics! I ought to be good with all the money my family sank into it. Oh!" Something caught her attention and she pointed it out. "The gate's open! He must've come through here after all!"

There was a chain link gate separating the front and backyard, swinging open. Like someone had rushed through in a hurry. Baby skipped over to investigate, hugging the house's wall as she passed through the gate. She peered around the corner, looking out into the front yard and the street, and beckoned Sanji over.

When he jogged over to her, she playfully bumped him with her hip. "You were right! Take a look."

Out in the middle of the road was a freshly killed zombie, cooking in the sunlight. They approached it cautiously, since corpses had a habit of only pretending to be dead sometimes. It had a knife wound in its head, though, and the blood leaking out was still damp. Unless it was some kind of absurd level of coincidence, their shooter had run through here. There was also a single bloody footprint on the pavement. It wasn't a complete, perfect one, but there was enough there to point them towards the house across the street.

"And Nami thought we wouldn't find anything! Oh, I cannot wait to rub this in her face~" Baby sang. "After I rub the heel of my shoe all over this man's face, of course."

Sanji looked away from her and thought he was just saying his next thought in his head, but some signals got crossed and what came out of his mouth was "I wouldn't say being stepped on by you is that bad a thing…" and he only realized his own body's betrayal when it was too late. He froze in abject horror, praying only that Baby didn't hear him say it in English. He was afraid to turn and face her, instead choosing to stare straight ahead at the house that would be their next destination.

He didn't see Baby slowly circling around him until she entered his field of vision. Her eyes were wide, but not out of terror. Because the smile stretching from ear to ear clearly meant she was more pleasantly surprised by Sanji's comment than offended. "Would you care to repeat that?" she asked politely. She looked borderline manic.

Sanji tried to force a word out. Any word. Anything at all. But all he could muster was a ragged squeak. Baby stepped forward, closing the gap between them and leaning inches away from his face. "Because if that's what you want, I wouldn't mind arranging something… I do have some exceptionally nice pairs of heels… And a few outfits that would suit them. If you want. I'm open to suggestions."

She let him stew for a while, savoring his expression as he struggled between being terrified and being aroused. She didn't move, didn't blink as his face got hotter and redder, and right before he reached his breaking point, she playfully shoved him away. "I'm teasing you!" she squealed, bursting into laughter. "I've never seen a man blush so hard! You're a tomato!" She was howling with laughter, a little higher and louder than one would expect…

Sanji finally managed to force himself to laugh, but it was uneasy and a little fearful. It dawned on him that Baby might be a little unhinged. Not in the cute "oh my family is insane around the holidays!" way, but in the way where he wouldn't be surprised if she had served time in jail.

She was still laughing at him as they approached the house the footprint marked for them. Not even quiet tittering as she tried to calm herself down. This was bordering on cackling as she looked over at him. He wondered what she was thinking about, but was too afraid to ask.

He didn't manage to pull her out of her laughing fits until they were in the driveway. They were going to head straight for the backyard, but Sanji noticed the front door was ajar and pointed it out.

It snapped her out of her busy thoughts of high heels and cigarettes, and she looked over at the front porch. They couldn't see it from the street, but closer like this, it was easy to see the door was cracked open just a bit.

They approached with caution. Unlike the first house and the backyards, there was a much more real chance their target was here, and they didn't want to run the risk of scaring him into attacking them. Or worse, scaring him into running off and making them chase him. At the front porch, Sanji pushed the front door open slowly and they stepped inside as silently as they could manage.

The house's layout was such that the dining room was visible from the entrance, down a short hallway. On the left was a staircase leading upstairs, and along that wall was a door to the basement. The doorwall to the backyard was also visible in the dining room, and that was wide open. Still, no guarantee that he wasn't still here.

Baby gave the front door behind them a gentle push to ease it back to its original position. Unfortunately, the draft from the open doorwall caught it and it slammed shut. They both groaned at the noise it made. "Well, he knows we're here now…" Baby huffed.

There was a muffled clattering, like something falling over, coming from the basement. Baby and Sanji glanced at each other, and then at the door in the hallway. They paced their way to the door and Sanji cracked it open to peer inside. It was dark, the morning sun just barely shining through the windows. Even in the low light, they could see the basement was hardly finished, in contrast to the rest of the well-furnished house. The stairs weren't carpeted and the duo had to step carefully, as each step groaned underneath their weight.

Baby took the lead, as she was the only one who brought a flashlight. She had it in one hand, and a knife in the other, held out in front of her like every action hero in every action movie where they're looking for the bad guy in a dark warehouse or something. She slowly swept the beam across the basement. The walls and floor were concrete, with mismatched rugs placed around instead of a real carpet. No frills, no decorations, just boxes on roller shelves set against the walls.

If you were to look at the basement from an aerial view, you would see that the staircase was almost in the center of the basement, just shifted slightly toward one wall. If you were to walk down the stairs, you'd only have a few steps before you ran straight into a wall. If you were smart, you would turn before hitting the wall and see that the basement opened up far more behind the staircase.

Still in the staircase's landing, Baby sang out "Come out, come out, wherever you are…" which is a phrase that has never worked ever. When, predictably, no one revealed themselves, they realized they would have to investigate. Baby went left, circling slowly around the staircase. Sanji went right, to look closer at the rolling shelves. There was just enough space between them and the wall that a person could hide behind one, so he went one by one, squinting in the low light.

Baby didn't find much along the back wall. There was a washer and dryer, and a washtub against the wall. A few more shelves and stacks of boxes, but nothing else noteworthy. She briefly considered, then dismissed the idea that someone could potentially hide in the dryer. It was a top loader, after all… She turned around and the light passed by a door leading to a storage closet underneath the staircase.

Now that was promising. Far more likely someone could hide in there than anywhere else. She skulked toward the door, tucking her flashlight away in her maid apron, but keeping her knife out. She silently gripped the doorknob and turned it slowly. The door swung open as soon as she did so, sending her stumbling backwards. She barely had time to yelp out before the shambling mass that was previously leaning against the door fell forward, trying to drag her down. The knife slipped from her hand and she fell backwards, trying and failing to catch herself with her hands. She hit the ground hard and quickly had to bring her hands up to shield herself, catching the zombie in the neck to keep it away from her delicious flesh. She held it back with both hands, but it was mostly dead weight against her, lurching closer and snapping its rotting teeth mindlessly.

"SANJI!" she shrieked out. He was already rushing towards her, having heard her fall over. She used all her strength to shove the creature off of her and rolled out of the way, just in time for Sanji to bring his foot back and punt the zombie in the skull. Its head tore free from its neck and it sailed through the air, splattering against the washer like the most vile field goal in history.

Baby lifted her head up to make sure the thing was dead for real, and when she confirmed it was, she collapsed back down with a sigh of relief. "Oh, that was too close… Thank you, Sanji…" She felt something strange in her right hand and flexed it curiously. It was warm and sticky, and when she curled her fingers, it sent waves of pain through her arm. She forced herself to sit up and lifted her hand to her face. It was bright red with blood, pouring from the side of her hand, past her wrist, and running to her forearm. There was a split in her skin, a gash that started on the back of her hand underneath her pinkie, and extended to the edge of her palm.

Sanji whirled around when he heard her gasp in fear. He saw her sitting up, staring at her hand, and knelt in front of her, "What!? What is it!?"

She held out her hand for him to see. "I-It's a bite! That… That bastard got me!"