"No." Zoro told him as he easily lifted the ice chest off of me. His three swords were already tied to his waist. "Get the suitcases, Rebekah." The words were terse, but he said it with a smile. It wasn't that he was annoyed; it was that he was already encompassed by the thrill of a challenge.
"Coming!" I called, but the suitcases were almost as heavy as the ice chest. My packing skills could put a dock master to shame. I had to lift out the one on wheels first and pop the handle up before I could sling the one with the supplies over my shoulder. Then I closed the trunk and locked the convertible.
"Why did you bring so much?" Sanji asked me when I finally reached the door.
"She never goes anywhere without being prepared," Eric told him.
"And I never share," I finished, tossing my keys to Zoro. No one would get them from him unless it was over his dead body. Nami had a giant box of food on wheels, and it barely fit through the double doors.
"Sugoi…" I whispered.
"Nami-chan is super strong," Luffy offered as an explanation, his mouth watering. I noticed for the first time that Nami had tompas tucked into her belt. Luffy, Sanji, and Eric didn't have any weapons, but I felt naked without one right next to me. I carried quite a few useful objects in the bag at my waist, but the heavy weight of a sword or tompa was something else. Zoro must have sensed my fear, because he shifted the icechest up to his right shoulder and moved so that his left was a little in front of me. Any move to make his right hand open would be obvious, but it didn't matter, he could use both as well as his mouth to fight. I could swear before a court that his toes were all lethal weapons.
The hall ended abruptly at another set of double doors. The butler let us in, and Nami, who was at my other side, went first through the doors. The lobby was gigantic, with stairs at both ends of a wide and comfortable space leading up to an open library. There were couches around a fireplace under the stairs, and tables and benches scattered evenly around the rest of the room. The room was not very well lit with the curtains closed, since all the furniture was a dark mahogany and the floor was a dark patterned carpet. I counted ten other teams at first glance, but there were only two who caught my eye. There was a man in a cowboy hat leaning against the wall on the right of the fireplace cleaning a revolver. His partner, also in a cowboy hat, was sitting alone in a dark red love seat next to him. They were both tall and dark-haired, with the same acute awareness in Zoro and Sanji. Sitting at a table in a corner under a window were two women who were probably sisters, but even their stunning beauty was overwhelmed by the albeit stereotypical pairing of a muscle man with his sleeves torn off and a pixie of a woman. The muscle man had dark shaggy hair and sideburns, with a solid but not quite western face. The woman had big eyes and bright blond hair, more like a doll than a killing machine. But she was. I tried not to over-react to the aura exuding from her perfect smile and tiny hands.
Eric, who was less skilled at hiding his emotions, needed a cool hand on his elbow to relax. If I could have reached higher it probably would have been better, but a glare from Zoro ended the unspoken tension. She could take him, but it'd be a very long and bloody fight. Nami left the food in the entrance and took my hand, dragging me to a large couch and shoving a few people off. We were right in front of the fire, and Luffy, Sanji, and Eric all fit alongside us, with Luffy in the middle to protect us from Sanji. I turned to look at Zoro, but he wasn't moving from his position behind me. I patted the armrest and he conceded. I leaned on his hip while the butler came around to the front of the group.
The conversation was quite dull at first, about no breaking the furniture and how we would be locked in. No one was really paying attention until the man brought up space-time holes in closets. "I should have brought an aleitheometer," I complained, biting my thumbnail.
"Like we were supposed to know that the fabric of space and time was a factor," the cowboy replied with a chuckle. He had a rich voice, a singer's voice with a hint of velvet and fine whiskey.
"I always find I need it the most when I don't have it," I smiled at him as I spoke.
"Ain't that the case for everything," he tipped his hat at me.
"If you'll let me continue," the butler interrupted, "we'll get down to the first challenge." Everyone became a little tenser, but the mood had been lightened considerably by the cowboy's quip. "Obviously, there are quite a few of you present. It has come to the attention of our sponsor that not all of you understand the extremity of the coming hunt." He paused to let it sink in. "So the first task before you will be to prove yourself. You will all take the closet off the library to one of those rips in space-time. This particular rip is rather useful as an arena."
"You mean this is going to be a tournament?" the younger of the sisters asked. "I thought that we were going to be using our brain, not our muscles."
"You're perfectly right my dear," the butler said. I noticed that none of us seemed to know his name. "And you will be using it quite a bit. But there's as much strategy in winning a fight as there is muscle." He gestured at me and I blinked rapidly in surprise. "I have no doubt this young lady could defeat Master Aro quite easily despite their immense difference in size."
"I'm afraid I don't agree," I said with a chuckle.
"I do," Zoro said seriously, and I blushed. The pair of cowboys and a few others laughed quietly. I was turning into the one who set everyone else at ease, at the cost of a small portion of my own.
"It's obvious from the way the great Zoro protects you," the pixie said, "that he considers you worthy of his attention." There were whispers from the younger people, but I closed my eyes and leaned back.
"His greatness has nothing to do with my strength but with his. I'd like it if you kept the past in the past. We don't know each other well enough that you can say you know me." The woman gave me goose bumps and I wanted nothing to do with her.
"Well, we'll soon find out," the butler said slowly, "just how strong the young lady is. If you'll all follow me, I'll lead you to your next stop. Please take everything as you may not return to this room for quite some time. Miss Nami, if you'll step back through the hall doors you will find yourself and your box arriving ahead of us." Nami stood up and hopped over the couch.
"See you later, Rebekah," she called as she walked away. Everyone moved about with languid ease. A tournament would be straight forward, so there was no present need for a constant wariness. Only Zoro, Sanji, and the cowboys remained tense. I myself was somewhere in the middle as I picked up our bags. Zoro picked the ice chest back up with ease. I had hoped we'd have a refrigerator, but there was a secret to the heaviness of the big blue box that nobody knew. It was a sort of scientific magic which kept the temperature within from warming. It was a little beyond Zoro, and I barely grasped it, but the whole thing had been designed by a reclusive super genius who I just happened to befriend while training with Zoro on an island in South Blue. That was just after his team had gone their ways for a while, to train and deal with personal errands. Zoro and I had not gone there together, but we'd ended up staying in the small three room hut of the same master. The master had gone, leaving me a note that perfectly described his flighty trip, and Zoro was disappointed to see me and not the master. I wasn't as strong as him, but I knew the first day that he didn't care about stuff like that unless the situation called for it. He was quite friendly when people weren't trying to kill him. But very stoic, always stoic.
The closet was pretty wide, and looked like a closet. We went in the closet in small groups and every time the door closed and reopened, there was no one there. It seemed like we were going in order of arrivial. The woman who I first saw Nami talking to went before us with her partner, a tall man who waved slightly as the door closed. Luffy, Zoro, and I easily fit with the ice chest and luggage, and we shoved them behind them before the door closed. Zoro had had the same idea as me. In the darkness he put a hand on a sword hilt and I reached down to my waist, clasping a dagger. The darkness turned purple, then blue, then a million shades of green.
"A rainforest," I said dumbly. The three of us stood still for a long time, absorbing the regular and irregular sounds of the gigantic ecosystem around us.
"Behind you!" I whirled as I dropped the bag, but Zoro was faster. He locked swords with a heavyset man and in the next second I had ducked below his arm, kicking the man in the groin with my knee. Before I could plant the dagger in his gut, I was tossed away at lightning speed. His partner was a plain woman, who despite her speed didn't seem too strong. I ran back at her while the heavyset man rammed his sword down on Zoro again. "Now!" I shouted to Luffy, tossing my dagger. She easily dodged it, but Luffy took my cue in a way neither of us had expected. His arm stretched back and then forward, blasting her away with pure strength. By the time I reacted, the heavyset man was on the ground as well. The two were battered and bloody, but the three of us weren't even breaking a sweat.
"That was cool," I told Luffy, leaning against the ice chest. "I guess you ate the fruit, then."
"You didn't?" he asked quizzically. "Why not?"
"I like to swim too much," I replied, and yawned.
"You okay?" Zoro cleaned his sword off on the grass.
"Yeah." I shrugged. "I'm just going to need a second." I closed my eyes and relaxed. My senses spiraled out, and I searched the area more deeply. It sometimes felt as if I was everywhere at once, but also nowhere at all. I couldn't react to an attack as quickly because my mind was focused on another area. Zoro was my only protection most of the time, but now, with Luffy, I felt more at ease throwing myself as far as possible.
"There's a field to the east," I told Zoro. "And only one pair between us and it. I think it's the cowboy and his partner. But they're just taking it easy. Sanji's to the west a quarter of a mile, and they've already taken care of another pair like ours. Everyone else seems to have hurried straight there."
"Where's Nami?" Luffy asked as I opened my eyes.
"She's already there. Should we wait for Sanji and Eric?" I stood up and stretched. "Ah, I feel better now."
"Let's go now." Zoro picked up the ice chest and I stooped down for my dagger. Luffy took the other bag before I could reach it.
"You're pretty good."
"You too." I grinned and he grinned back, that wide easy grin from before. I jumped up into a tree. "I can see them! Want to try to beat them?"
"Yeah!" Luffy looked like a kid more than usual.
"I'll walk." Zoro started to walk off as I cupped my hands over my mouth and shouted at Eric and Sanji.
"Wanna race?" I could sense Sanji's grin, a little maniacal. "Run, Luffy, run!"