Roronoa Zoro was not a complicated man.

There were many things he didn't understand and he would usually be the first person to admit that. His brain divided the world into two neat groups: things that had a simple explanation and things that didn't, and therefore weren't worthy of further examination. However, as he stared at the darkness ahead, trying in vain to figure out what he had just been fighting and where it could have possibly gone to, he couldn't help but feel bewildered and very confused at the same time. Normally, he would have solved this dilemma by chasing after the creature but Nami's frightened gasp had caught his attention. As he turned around, ready to face a, hopefully, less confusing foe, he found himself staring at the little girl's marble hand.

He blinked, allowing his eyes to adjust to the faint light. He looked closer, then blinked again.

"Is that…?"

His question got cut short by another scream and a quick patter of feet.

A short, wiry woman with braided black hair materialized from the darkness, ran towards the group and practically tore the little girl from Nami's arms. Her face, delighted and relieved for a few seconds quickly turned to a mask of pure horror as she noticed the cold stone hand the girl was still clutching. The woman choked back a sob, then picked up the child and turned towards Luffy and the others.

"Is he gone?" Her voice was thick with tears but steady. "Is he coming back?"

A dozen doors slowly creaked open in the night. It seemed like the entire village was holding its breath, waiting for the answer. Zoro wasn't sure what to tell them so he let Luffy's enthusiastic voice settle their doubts for him.

"Don't worry, it's definitely gone!"

That seemed to be the magic word. People poured onto the square as if some invisible force had been holding them back all this time. They gathered around the black-haired woman who was kneeling on the cobblestones whispering comforting words to the child in her arms, almost oblivious to the excited voices filling the quiet night air.

"Did you see that?"

"I know! They actually hurt it! They made it scream and everything!"

"I didn't think it could feel pain."

"Maybe that'll keep it away for a while."

The excited chatter grew louder and louder. Zoro could see some of the people hovering curiously over the little girl and the woman. The cook was of course the first person to step in from of them and scream at the villagers to give the girl and her mother some air while standing too close to them himself. Zoro could have chuckled at his overblown protectiveness but his eyes drifted towards the white statues, now much more visible in the faint glow of the villager's torches. Their unseeing eyes now presented themselves in a much different light. Now, they looked almost menacing.

He couldn't take the uncertainty any more.

"What was that?"

Again, it was Luffy who voiced his question for him. The chatter died down as if led by an invisible conductor. Suddenly, everyone was way too busy inspecting the ground to answer until the crowd parted like an unruly, shuffling sea and a tall bearded man stepped through. He knelt in front of the black-haired woman and whispered something in her ear. The pain and fear in her eyes seemed to instantly vanish as she picked up her child, bowed deeply to Nami and Luffy and ran away.

The newcomer rose from the cobblestones to look Luffy straight in the eye.

"Come with me and I'll tell you." He looked at the rest of the crew who had though it appropriate to gather behind Zoro just in case. "All of you."

Their unexpected host's house turned out to be the biggest one in the village. The crew walked inside, somewhat reticently as the eyes of the crowd never left them until a giant oak door slammed behind their backs. Zoro noticed that the lamps in the ample living room were all lit and had been for quite some time. In fact, the whole house was illuminated, like someone had just lost something precious in the middle of the night and would not go to bed until he had inspected every crack and crevice of the house. The black-haired woman was sitting on the steps of a large staircase, tracing her fingers over her daughter's wrist in quiet disbelief. As she noticed them, she quickly stood up, bowed profusely and slipped away.

"Why is she so afraid of us?" Luffy asked the bearded man, who just looked at him with sad eyes.

"I don't think it's you she's so afraid of."

"Damn straight!" Usopp shook his head, his voice finally acquiring that boastful ring they were so used to. "If it weren't for us, her little girl would be in big trouble right now! She should be thanking us instead of running away!"

"Even though all you did was hang in the background." The cook lit up a cigarette absentmindedly as his gaze traveled over the lit lamps like Zoro's had only a moment ago. "Were you expecting this to hap…?

"Shut up! I was just waiting for the perfect moment to leap into action! If I had hit it with my best shot, it would have gone down like that beast with seven heads and eleven tongues I defeated when I was only fiv…!"

Nami's fist collided with his head and sent him flying back towards the oak door. Her face contorted in pure annoyance for a second but as she addressed their host, her voice sounded grave again.

"You said you would tell us what just happened."

Their host nodded and walked towards a giant table in a silent invitation to the rest of the crew to follow him.

"You still haven't told us your name, either."

"It's Solomon Winter. I've been the mayor of Stillwater Island for almost thirty years now."

"Huh?" Luffy's eyes widened. "They let you be in charge for that long?"

Solomon chuckled slightly.

"Nobody else seems to want the job."

"That little girl…" Chopper spoke up for the first time since they abandoned the square. "What happened to her? Is she going to be okay?"

"I don't know. Nothing like this has ever happened before."

"She ran away, didn't she?" Sanji blew out the smoke of his cigarette very slowly and Zoro could see his blue eyes darting around, gliding over the open doors of every cupboard and chest in the room. "You noticed she was missing, turned the place upside down and then realized she had gone outside."

Solomon shook his head and ran his fingers over his grey beard.

"That's Kara, the youngest daughter of one of my maids. She has a tendency to sleepwalk. We try to keep an eye on her but tonight…" He walked towards a big window, turning his back to the Straw Hats. The lights of the village were slowly dying down again but some of them remained lit, like unblinking eyes spying on them. "Let's just say, we had a lot on our minds."

Zoro's eyes narrowed.

"You were expecting it, weren't you? What was that? When I stabbed it, it felt cold as death." In fact, the goosebumps had not ceased and even here, in a warm environment he was still shivering a bit. "And what's the deal with that face? It looked like something from hell itself."

"You're probably right."

"WHAT?"

Luffy's astonished exclamation was now echoed by the whole crew. Solomon exhaled deeply as if preparing himself for a particularly unpleasant ordeal. Then, in the deafening silence that fell, he began to talk.

"As you can see, Stillwater Island is not particularly big or in a strategic location. We live simple lives, we value hard work and we keep to ourselves. It's hard to find a person here who doesn't know everyone by name. We're like a big, messy, somewhat dysfunctional family."

Zoro grinned to himself. He knew the feeling all too well.

"But every now and then, we get one of those kids, someone who's smarter than everyone else, who feels restless on this island and longs to see bigger and better places. Aron Fellman was exactly like that. The kid had a fire in his eyes that Stillwater could not contain, so when he decided to join the marines, we all cheered him on. I don't know what happened to him after he got on that ship and frankly, I'm not sure I want to know. The only thing I'm sure of is that when he came back, almost fifteen years later, he wasn't the same person."

"Fifteen years is a long time." Robin spoke, her voice soft. "Especially if he left you when he was still young."

Solomon shrugged.

"Maybe…I was surprised he had decided to come back at all. Most of the people who leave, rarely return to Stillwater. We receive the occasional letter or gift but mostly, no one ever bothers to come back. But Aron did. What's more, he came back with a project."

Zoro could hear a slight bitterness in Solomon's voice as he uttered that last word.

"During his time with the marines he had managed to accumulate a small fortune. He could have stayed on the mainland, live comfortably and never have a care in the world but he decided to return to us and give back to the community that raised him. He took charge of the local orphanage, became their medic and started using his contacts to place those kids with good families on the mainland. Most of us treated him like a godsend. We're a remote island, our resources are limited and these kids would be better off with families that could give them a future. That is, until one of them came back."

Solomon's voice shook a little.

"A ten year old kid who Aron had arranged to be adopted by a rich family on the mainland managed to escape and find his way back to Stillwater. He had stolen a boat but a storm had caught up with him when he was nearing his destination. He was almost dead when he washed up ashore but as he got better, the story he told froze us all to the core. He had been sent to some laboratory, deep in the sector controlled by the marines. They kept him in a cell, caged like an animal. They experimented on him with everything imaginable. His whole body was covered in needle marks, burns, you name it. Took us almost a month to get the whole story out of him, he was so traumatized he could barely talk about it. When we tried to track down the other kids Aron had sent away, our worst fears were confirmed. Most of them had never reached their adopted families, if these ever existed in the first place. We turned heaven and earth upside down, trying to get them back but our efforts were either obstructed or… we were too late to save them."

In the silence that fell, Zoro could feel his fingers slowly curling around Kitetsu.

"Aron was arrested of the spot. I remember people were expecting him to deny it, or plot some desperate ruse but he never did. He admitted that the kids he sent away were used as test subjects for new weapons that the marines were planning to use against pirates. Most of us still couldn't believe that he would betray us like that... but you should have seen his eyes when he confessed. There was something there... something no longer human."

"So you executed him." Robin's voice was grave. A shadow crossed her usually calm and collected face. "It's a common punishment for traitors if memory serves me right."

"You might call it an execution, yes." Solomon's eyes were looking through the window again, at something beyond the ocean's dark horizon. "When people finally realized that Aron was behind all this, they were beside themselves with rage. The whole island was ready to tear him to pieces even before the trial had started. And then... somebody dug up a law."

He spat the last word as it was poison.

"The laws we abide by were written almost three hundred years ago. One of them was devised specifically for cases of treason. There's an islet near Stillwater, barely eighty meter across. It's completely barren and stands too tall even for fishing. Traitors were supposed to be marooned there... and left to die."

Robin lowered her head, hiding her expression from their host. Zoro could feel a murmur sweep over the room as Chopper, Usopp and Nami exchanged terrified glances. From the corner of his eye, Zoro could see their captain's gaze fixed on the slowly greying horizon, oblivious to the reactions of his crew. His unreadable expression almost puzzled him but the thought quickly abandoned his mind as his eyes settled on the ship's cook.

Sanji had gone completely livid. His blue eyes wide and unblinking were staring at their host like he had just turned into some unholy abomination. It took Zoro a couple of seconds to realize that what he was looking at was not horror or even fear but white hot fury.

"This thing appeared the following year, on the day we abandoned him on that blasted rock. People started seeing a person in doctor's clothes that looked like Aron. We didn't want to believe it at first until…" Solomon waved his arm towards the statues barely visible in dawn's pale light. "…until we had to believe. I don't know how to explain it but Aron Fellman has come back from hell itself as a worse monster than when he was alive. He comes back every year and roams the streets with that cry that turns your brain inside out. Anyone who touches him turns to stone and he won't stop until he has turned at least one person. The only one to escape that fate so far is little Kara. And even she…"

The man paused and shook his head.

"Even she may not be entirely safe." Zoro finished for him still not taking his eyes off Sanji. Something twisted in his gut as he noticed that the cook was trying very, very hard not to kick their host across the room. The sight almost didn't seem right. He was used to seeing him angry, even furious. Hell, sometimes he had seen him so enraged that the very air around him seemed to spontaneously combust. But this time, he was staring at completely new territory.

This could get very ugly very soon.

"How long has this been going on?" he heard himself asking.

"Almost thirty years."

"And all these statues we've seen are…?"

"Former residents, yes." Solomon sighed as he turned away from the window. "We keep them on the streets as a reminder to fight back, no matter how many friends and loved ones Aron takes away from us. Frankly, I'm not sure if we can do that. But maybe you can."

"Huh?" Luffy looked at him surprised. "What do you mean?"

Solomon's face twisted. Zoro could see that the man was not used to asking favors, much less begging for help. But the desperate plea was written all over his face even before the words left his lips.

"In almost thirty years, we have tried everything. We exorcised his spirit, he came back. We tried fighting him, our defenders turned to stone. You're the only ones who have managed to fight him off, you even saved little Kara! If there's anyone who can help us, it's you!"

"Have you tried talking to him?"

Sanji sounded dangerously calm. Only a slight tremor in his voice gave away the blinding fury Zoro could see bubbling over in his eyes.

"What is there to talk about with a shadow of a person?" Maybe Solomon had noticed something as well because he was talking to Luffy now. "Aron Fellman has tormented Stillwater long enough. Whatever we've done to deserve this curse…"

"You have explained what you've done quite clearly."

This time, the words could have cut steel. Zoro had had enough. Whatever the cook's problem was, he had crossed a line in his book. He stepped towards him, gritting his teeth.

"What are you talking about, shitty cook? Were you asleep for the last ten minutes or something? The guy was a mons…"

"Keep talking, moss-head and I'll raise your voice a couple of octaves." Sanji's pale face twitched as the mask of impassivity slipped off revealing the true anger underneath. "I don't give a shit what you think! These people…"

"Deserve to live free of their past." Solomon looked at Sanji, his eyes as hard and cold as the eyes of the statues. "Believe me, I wish I had stopped them. Back then, I wasn't the mayor but I was still in a position of power. You have to understand, I knew some of the kids in that orphanage. My children had them over for birthday parties, they were like our own! When I learned of what happened to them, I forgot myself. I let my personal feelings get in the way of justice and let my people damn themselves for the rest of their lives. They do not deserve to be punished any further for a law no one ever intended to enforce."

"Then you should have taken it off the books!" Sanji stepped towards Solomon and this time Zoro was sure that he was going to kick him through the wall. He instinctively moved forward and positioned himself between the cook and their host.

"There hasn't been a day I didn't regret that decision."

"That's not true. You just regret the consequences."

The swordsman felt his blood boil. The fingers of his right hand were gathering into a strong fist at an alarming speed.

"Are you deaf or just retarded? Those were children! Do you have any sense of…?"

"That's enough!" Nami's glare paralyzed Sanji on the spot, his next words frozen on his lips. "The last thing we need right now is you guys starting another fight!"

"What?" Zoro turned to her, fuming. "I'm not the one who's acting like a jerk…"

But Nami wasn't listening to him anymore. Her eyes were directed towards their captain who had stayed silent through the whole conversation. Luffy's expression was stern; his dark eyes rested on Solomon's face for a second, went to Sanji and Zoro and then back to their host. Whatever thoughts were turning in his head didn't make it to the surface but when he spoke, his voice carried the gravity of a made-up mind.

"You can count on us."

Zoro released a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Across the room, he could see the cook's shoulders slump slightly, his expression hidden under a mess of blond hair. Their host sighed imperceptibly and smiled for the first time since they met him.

"Thank you. Stillwater will not forget your help."