Author's note: Amazingly I finished this whole chapter in one day. But I guess that's probably because I've been working on it relentlessly all day... :P

Venom

Chapter 2: Precursor to a Storm

Thunder clapped and reverberated through the glistening street and collided with the tops of ashen stone buildings darkened to wet, earthen tones, and echoed off back into the dark sky, which assailed Loguetown with a fierce battering of blinding rain.

Zoro internally cursed to himself. Shit, that was just too close… That damned Luffy always manages to get us in trouble!

He as well as Sanji and Luffy were soaked to the bone as they darted down the street away from the city's center where Buggy the clown pirate had only minutes ago nearly cut off the eccentric captain's head atop the infamous execution platform. Deep puddles of fallen liquid silver dashed up to spray and sputter the rushing legs of the three pirates, and Luffy, leading the wild escape from their opponents, including his old enemy Alvida, as well as the Marines and the severe Captain Smoker, held a firm grip on his beloved straw hat against the lift of the swelling wind, clutching it vigilantly to his head.

Zoro's panting breath puffed out before him, quickly dissolving into the pouring rain. Once again reunited with his former capacity for Santoryu, he clutched his three swords protectively as he ran.

"Which way is the sea?" he worriedly shouted towards his captain, squinting through the blinding weather, his soaked trousers plastered against the skin of his legs.

Luffy, unlike the two crewmates trailing behind him, was having the time of his life. Between laughs, he replied in the most inappropriately carefree and cheerful manner, "I dunno! The rain makes it hard to tell where we're going!"

"There they are!" Battle cries of Marine men hurrying for the capture of the Strawhats, though muffled through the rain, resounded in the open street and to the targeted pirates before them.

Sanji and Zoro whipped their heads around to see the Marines catching up with them. The cook's golden hair, now matted under the heavy rain, swung up and clutched his flushed cheek at the movement of his head. The excited battle cries grew stronger as they neared the pirates.

"Damn, they're just like roaches!" Zoro remarked to the blonde between strained breaths, "You want to stop and fight them?" The three gold earrings in his left earlobe swung like violent pendulums, their hurried rhythm back and forth rendered to sporadic trembling by colliding with the bone of his jaw.

Sanji emitted a harsh breath, intending to scoff irritably at the swordsman, but to no avail due to his heavy breathing. The blue collar of his pinstriped shirt flapped with the wind. "There's no time for that!"

Suddenly he saw a thin figure up ahead with feet planted severely in the puddles of rain. Sanji's face, rosy from exertion, developed into an open-mouthed smile of awed admiration. It was a tall woman with shining hair of a deep cerulean hue.

"Oh wow!" he exclaimed as they neared the woman, "Who is that?"

Zoro looked up and, realizing whom it was, cringed. A rich blue coat with wet fur at the collar and cuffs adorned her feminine figure over a white shirt decorated with multiple wide and circular floral designs of a cherry tint, and it was stained dark with rain and clung to a modest bosom and lightly curved abdomen. Liquid rivulets trickled over the sides of her dark boots, and water dripped in a steady stream from the tips of her dark hair.

It was the female sergeant. Her head was lowered seriously, her face drawn and cast in shadow so that as the pirates approached her, Zoro couldn't see into her eyes. The Strawhats, with the exception of a carefree Luffy, slowed their pace involuntarily as the woman spoke in a dangerously low tone through the rain.

"I didn't know you were Zoro. And a pirate as well."

Wonderful. Now I have to deal with her, Zoro thought apprehensively to himself, slowing his pace further, as he recalled his second meeting with the Marine official.

The sergeant's hair shone brightly under the incandescence of the sword shop lights as she spoke to Zoro.

"Well, you're here, so I guess that means you ran away. What a shame; you really don't know how to accept love when it comes your way, do you?"

Zoro just gritted his teeth, his arms crossed protectively across his chest.

"And you can have your stupid money back, I don't want it," she continued, pulling his left hand open to slide in the bills he had left for her back at the Marine base. "Besides, look," she remarked happily, pulling rose-toned frames out of her pocket and positioning them upon her face, "I already got some new glasses."

The plum-nosed shop owner had directed him angrily towards the barrels of assorted blades. Irritated, Zoro began looking through them.

"You must lose a lot of swords if you think you have to carry three of them around," the woman commented, approaching him from behind, her steps resounding on the wooden floor, "unless, of course, you're like that famous pirate hunter."

Zoro grinned to himself. "Pirate hunter, yeah," he said in a soft voice with a light touch of sarcasm.

"He's quite the legend," she continued in an awed voice, "His name is Roronoa."

Zoro's grin widened knowingly.

"Oh, yeah, him."

"Yeah, he's known all around the East Blue for his amazing sword skills," and then she tinged her vocal tone with scorn, "but he's not a good person. A swordsman who is just a bounty hunter is no honorable swordsman at all. Everything's backwards. It's really too bad for real swordsmen," she said, looking up to the ceiling thoughtfully. "Pirates and bounty hunters as sword masters? It just doesn't make any… sense."

Zoro's smile dissolved and he began to detach himself from her words and brought himself onto one knee, leaning over the far barrel, searching now rather aimlessly through the collection of steel. He kept his eyes low.

"They have most of the world's legendary swords, too."

He stood and stepped closer to the far barrel, involuntarily turning his back completely to her as he leaned over the container.

The woman closed her eyes and brought her own green-sheathed sword to brush against her cheek almost affectionately. "It's a real tragedy," she repeated sadly.

Zoro grinned slightly at the resonance of her final words and released the smallest chuckle, attempting to match her sentiment with little success.

"Uh, I don't know; it's a kind of thing you have to look at on a case-by-case basis, I guess," he responded, partially to gently refute the woman's unknowingly harsh comments, but also, to his mild surprise, to fully convince himself that her words were false—but he couldn't seem to completely succeed. "You never know what people are capable of," he finished, trying to sound distinct, but instead radiated a slight sense of insecurity.

"This is my Shigure!" she declared, thrusting forth her blade to demand the man's attention, "I'm going to work as hard as I can to perfect my skills and then one day I'll take back all of the legendary swords because the filthy hands that hold them now have no right to wield them!" She lowered her blade. "Yes," she maintained forcefully, "The twelve top Saijo Owazamonos! The twenty-one Owazamonos! As well as the Ryowazamonos! I'll find them all!" she finished resolutely, bringing her beloved Shigure in towards the center of her chest in finality.

Zoro turned to face her at last. "And this one? My sword?" He gripped Kuina's blade with his right hand and pushed the hand guard away with a fluid movement of his thumb to reveal the glint of the steel underneath. "The Wado Ichimonji?"

Her gallant justice dissolved at his threatening stance. "Oh, I'm not trying to get the swords back for my sake. I just don't want criminals to have them."

"You lied." The woman's head rose, a livid glare upon her features. "You're just another liar!"

The three pirates stopped completely, the puddles and streams at their feet rippling with continued momentum. Sanji turned around to Zoro with a suspicious glower.

"Aw, great! What the hell did you do to that girl?"

Zoro was getting a bit fed up with all of this. Drawing his mouth into a forceful line and stepping forward powerfully, he brought his hand up to his Captain's shoulder and pushed Luffy out of his way.

"You never asked me what my name was, did you?" he inquired strongly, and stopped ten feet in front of the woman, planting his feet seriously into a puddle of liquid silver. "So I never lied, did I?"

The sergeant took a step forward threateningly and clenched her fists. "You know there's no way I'm going to allow someone like you to leave town with such a legendary sword! Give it to me! The Wado Ichimonji! Right now!"

Luffy just watched the situation with his characteristic blank look in the face of growing adversity.

Zoro held Kuina's blade austerely and pulled its sheath, streaming with rainwater, upwards from his side to expose it to the angry woman. With a devious, crooked smile, he challenged her:

"Come and get it." He released a humorous scoff of air from his lungs as he expectantly awaited the sergeant's reaction.

In the response Zoro desired from her, the woman lowered her head and growled with clenched teeth, bent her knees while leaning forward, and drew her sword up and out from its green-tinged sheath, a crackle of lightning glinting blue in its steel. Swiping upwards, she emitted a battle cry and lunged forward.

Their swords clashed together crossways, each holding their own with eyes burning into the other. The woman inhaled a sharp breath before forcing a sidewise and downward cut to push away the Wado Ichimonji, whose wielder leapt backwards gracefully, kicking up a splash of dark rainwater and swinging his arm around before bringing his blade vertically down onto the woman's horizontal steel. His face radiated resolve as he furrowed his brow. Thinking, a devious grin spread upon the swordsman's lips.

Okay then…

Experimentally he applied a greater amount of force to his weapon, leaning in to his opponent harshly.

The woman grunted at she was forced to match Zoro's level of exertion. She tightened her jaw and bared her teeth as the rain poured.

Sanji curled his lean hands into fists, offended by his crewmate's brutality. "What a jerk! You can't fight a girl!"

"I can handle myself!" was the sergeant's resounding outcry, rancid with offense. Sanji was taken aback somewhat.

"This is a fight between the two of us! I don't need help, so back off!" she insisted ferociously, not just to the blonde cook, but to anyone else who dared to interfere.

The heavy rain plastered Zoro's shirt onto the prominent muscles of his back, revealing generously tanned skin beneath the translucent white cloth. He called to Sanji in a low tone over his shoulder.

"You heard her. Get out of here."

Sanji grimaced worriedly, but Luffy smiled widely. "Let's go!" his cheerful, gravelly voice rang out to the cook. Clutching his hat, he left Sanji's side and hurried past the battling individuals.

Sanji followed reluctantly. Turning as he trailed behind his eccentric captain, he called a warning back to the swordsman: "Hey, Zoro, if you hurt her, I'm gonna kick your ass!" He continued down the stone street to follow Luffy.

Both swordsmen held their stances, weapons crossed against each other as the trickling streams of rain intertwined on the small point at which their steel joined. The sergeant's open jacket flapped in the vicious wind, revealing a plum-toned lining above slender hips. Her bulky gloves of gray suede folded and crinkled tensely above the tight grip she held upon the handle of her katana.

Behind them, Zoro heard the cries of the Marines that had been relentlessly following him.

"Tashigi's got one!"

So that's her name.

Tashigi struggled to hold her own, but Zoro no longer wore a cunning smile in response to her strain. Removing his left hand atop his other upon his sword's handle, he reached down to his right hip to draw his brand new Yubashiri from its black lacquer sheath. Tashigi's eyes widened as the swordsman pulled the blade crisply out and clashed it diagonally against her Shigure to join his other Wazamono.

He wasn't going to play around anymore. With a whipping slash he brought the Yubashiri down for Tashigi to block, a precursor to his next move in which he used his Ichimonji. The sergeant leapt out of the way as the man's steel bit into the ground where she had been standing.

Zoro began to overpower the woman as he threw forth momentous slashes with both blades over and over again, against which the Marine could only defend. Out of the corner of his eye, Zoro noted the stone, gritty building close behind Tashigi, stopped for one moment, listening to her panting breath, and then in one fluid yet powerful movement, brought both his blades down one final time, throwing the woman viciously against the stone wall. She emitted a stunned cry at the blow of the hard stone against her curved back, and Zoro used that split second of surprise to slice his right arm upwards gracefully, locking the hand guard of Tashigi's Shigure with the angular guard of his own Yubashiri, pulling swiftly, and slipping the handle of her katana out of her grasp, sending it soaring through the rain.

Tashigi saw the glint of Yubashiri's steel in Zoro's cold eye, and slumped, paralyzed against the wall. He raised the prized Wado Ichimonji high into the pelting rain, and the female sergeant inhaled sharply in a terrified gasp as Zoro propelled his weapon toward her face, just missing her left cheek and biting into the wall behind her.

The woman did not breathe as the clang of her Shigure against the ground fifteen feet away rang out and echoed between the buildings of the street.

Tentatively Tashigi took in a few small gasps, finally able to take her eyes off those of the swordsman and glance at her horrified reflection in Zoro's steel. And Zoro smiled smugly at her, almost demonically as their eyes met, watching her pupils contracting inside deep brown irises. The look of frightened prey, Zoro thought, the observation in which his chest began to swell with pride as he reveled in his victory.

Lightning flashed, followed immediately by a nearly deafening clap of thunder.

"I hate to disappoint, but you will never get this sword from me."

Taking a second to drink in the finality of the triumphant moment, Zoro then swiftly pulled his Wado Ichimonji out from the wall, and, stepping away from his helpless, defeated opponent, and twirled the handle about his skillful fingers before sheathing both Kuina's blade and his Yubashiri at his hip.

The sergeant's Marines had been watching in awe, standing about awkwardly, unsure of what to do.

"I can't believe… Tashigi lost."

"I've never seen her lose before."

Zoro met the woman's eyes again forcefully.

"Now, I think it's time for me to go," his voice resounded with an icy conclusiveness. Turning on his heel, he began to walk away.

Tashigi's voice rang out between gasping breaths:

"Why didn't you kill me?" she demanded grievously.

Zoro stopped.

"I know! It's 'cause I'm a girl!"

Zoro halted his breath. Back turned, he raised his head up into the rain. The memory came flooding back.

"You're lucky Zoro… being born as a man."

"It's pathetic that you can't fight me because I'm a woman! It's embarrassing!"

Zoro's mouth tensed into a line, and he gritted his teeth.

"You may be physically stronger, but you don't have any guts at all!"

The muscles of the swordsman's arms flexed angrily above his clenched fists. He bore his teeth in a furious grimace, trying desperately to retain his composure.

"This sword isn't just for decoration! I don't think you even know what it means to carry a sword!"

Unwillingly, the green-haired man lost control and emitted an exasperated and furious groan as he whipped around to face the sergeant.

"Would you shut up for one second?"

Tashigi ceased her impertinent rant, as well as her wounded frown, which transformed into a look of utter surprise.

"Look," Zoro shouted fiercely, pointing a finger at her, losing all control as his emotions took over and hastened his speech, "You've got the same face of this girl I knew who died a long time ago and before I knew it, you were talking just like her! What I want you to do is stop acting like some dead person you don't even know! And try to be yourself!" His chin was raised as he looked down at Tashigi, trying subconsciously to distance his eyes from her.

After a moment of letting the words of the man's outburst sink in, Tashigi stormed up to Zoro threateningly, causing him to lean back slightly in defense.

"Well, excuse the hell out of me!" she retorted, offended, while Zoro, realizing the stance of his body language, adjusted himself to lean forward into her in an attempt to intimidate her again, and he glowered furiously as she continued. "It's not my fault I sound like your dead girlfriend! I had no idea it was so rude and thoughtless of me to be myself, you jerk! You ever think before you talk?"

Intimidation outright failed this time, as her last comments caught him completely off guard. That was exactly something that Kuina would say.

"What'd you—say?" was all he could manage, his face twisted in horror. He took a step back from her, raising his other arm outwards and turning his wide palm in towards himself as a buffer of subconscious protection.

Fuck! This is insane!

Luffy clutched his hat to his head against the upward wind, smiling broadly with excitement.

"I see the ship!" the captain exclaimed to his cook. "The harbor is up ahead!"

Sanji looked up in response to take in the view of a foggy harbor, in which the Going Merry was being tossed about by the churning waves of the storm. But that's not what arrested his attention; ahead in the street, a figure stood threateningly between the two Strawhats and the harbor, blocking their path.

"Oh great! Now what?"

The shadowy figure in the fog began to develop into a clear image as the two pirates approached it with slowing strides: a large, heavily muscular man stood before them; A stiff white coat framed in dark green fur partially enclosed a thick white torso, garnished with rippling muscles above belted blue jeans tucked into tough, wide boots laced all the way up the man's shins. A proud, stony chest stood out below a jutting chin adorned in thick stubble, and two cigars were clenched between the man's teeth as his white breath snaked out before him. A dark, gruff voice reverberated through the clearing fog as the powerful man looked down contemptuously at the Strawhat captain between his cigars.

"I already told you that you wouldn't be leaving this island without going through me first."

Sanji looked to his captain inquiringly, his brow creased.

Luffy gazed at the Marine captain vacantly as the words sunk in. Then he smiled goofily in realization, emitting a short laugh.

"Oh yeah! I forgot!"

The blonde at his side tensed.

"Sanji, you go on ahead."

The rhythmic snapping of Marine gunfire echoed off the swelling waves of the harbor. Nami clutched her stuffed shopping bags desperately, and Usopp retained a death-grip upon the huge, clumsy body of Sanji's prized blue tuna. Cannon fire whizzed by and splashed powerfully into the sea at the two crewmates took one final leap from the rock cliff onto the Going Merry. Frantically attempting to regain their footing, enormous waves toppled themselves against the flank of their ship, and Nami collapsed forward onto the slippery wooden deck as the storm tossed the ship like a toy.

She turned her torso frenetically towards the sharpshooter behind her, who had also fallen.

"If we stay here even a minute longer, the Going Merry will be done for!" she called to him through the deafening rain, and she scrambled to her feet.

"What about the rest of them?"

"We'll pick them up later!"

As if on cue, a smooth voice called out to Nami and Usopp from the shore:

"Naaammiii!"

Quickly turning her head to look, her soaked red hair gripping the white skin of her throat, she placed her hands upon the smooth iron of the ship's edge.

"Huh—Sanji!"

"Sanji!"

"Wait up, I'm baaaack!" the cook sang, parallel to the ship, hurrying to catch up with the Going Merry, whose speed was dramatically increasing in the current of the violent storm.

"Where are the others?" Nami shouted, cupping her elegant hands around her mouth.

"Agh—who cares, we'll just get them later!"

Nami was assailed with a sense of panic when she noticed Marines gaining ground just behind the blonde cook, cutlasses drawn and pointed dangerously at his lean back.

"Behind you!"

"Look out!"

Glancing behind his shoulder quickly, the cook leaped forward, placing his white hands to the ground and rising into a handstand, and shot a backwards kick into the jaw of a uniformed man. Sanji assaulted the Marines with various brutal kicks beneath the rain, and his opponents fell away one by one. But, like the rhythm of the swelling waves, the persistent men continuously regained their stances despite their injuries.

"Damn it! This is endless!"

Usopp turned to Nami frantically. "We have to get closer!"

Nami didn't look at him, but worriedly gazed upon the battle below as the Going Merry slipped further and further ahead. "But there's no way we can take the ship back against this current!" she protested desperately.

Usoopp cursed and then proceeded to impel himself over the edge of the ship with a grunt.

"Usopp!"

"Bastaaaards!" the sharpshooter cried, splashing into the sea. Upon resurfacing, he fired multiple rounds with his slingshot that met the backs of the men that were closing in on his friend. Upon collision, the men cried out in surprise and pain and collapsed to their knees once again.

Taking advantage of the diversion, Sanji flipped himself over, propelled himself with one hand upon the rocky ground, and delivered a ferocious spinning kick to the bodies of the Marines, knocking the wind from their lungs, rendering them essentially defeated.

"Sanji! Usopp!" Nami cried, failing to arrest the attention of her crewmates.

"I am going to enter the Grand Line. I will become kind of the pirates!"

The eyes of the Marine captain darkened.

"I'm getting bored. Enough talk," he rasped, and upon outstretching his arms, a curly white smoke sprouted from his limbs, swiftly surrounding the pirate captain's lanky body.

"Whoa—!"

A brief battle had begun in the streets of Loguetown as waves of rain showered the ground.

Having being dropped by the grip of the Marine's mysterious smoke, Luffy lay facedown upon the ground, water streaming past his lips and nostrils.

"Had enough, eh?"

Luffy emitted a pained groan.

In response, Smoker crouched at the pirate's side and gripped the Luffy's head fiercely and shoved it into the ground.

"You're not worth thirty million berries!" he spat.

Suddenly, the sky bore a green snaking hue, which rapidly expanded and tore its way through the city streets, ripping various pieces of rubble from buildings as well as citizens, pirates, and Marines from their stances. The thick gust thrashed about the entire island for a long, dreadful moment before dissolving into the sky from which it had come.

What in the hell was that?

Zoro reached up to grip a piece of rubble that had been thrown by the vicious wind. Groaning, he rose to his feet and looked around him. The Marines, like he, had fallen, and their bodies lay strewn about the streets.

Where did Tashigi go?

Failing to discern any female figure amongst the thick debris, he decided to take this opportunity to escape.

"Hey!"

Zoro, running alongside his captain, looked up as his ears picked up the navigator's sharp call. The Going Merry was being tossed violently just off the rocky coast, seawater froth from the churning waters gliding up the flanks of the ship and bubbling into the wood of the hull.

Zoro shivered in the rain, and saw Sanji and Usopp within hearing distance on the cliffs; numerous Marines lay sprawled like sleeping dogs at their feet.

"Damn!"

"We gotta go!"

Luffy, upon hearing this, flashed his trademark smile, and immediately developed a quick solution to the crew's predicament within his mind.

"Alright then!" Laughing, he looked around the harbor for a moment, animated as a young child with enthrallment, and then decided upon a sturdy iron railing for his plan. Stretching his rubber arms far into the distance to grip the railing, Zoro, Sanji, and Usopp simultaneously turned their heads reluctantly to see for themselves the essence of Luffy's genius plan. Of course, they wished they hadn't:

"Gum-gum—!" Luffy had heaved his body far into the distance and shot past his own hands upon the iron, and was slowing to airlessness.

Oh shit.

Zoro's eyes widened in realization; he was the closest his captain, so he would naturally receive the strongest blow. Dreading the hit with which he was so familiar, Zoro turned to run, pumping his arms up and down desperately to gain momentum, but it was too late.

Luffy's elasticity now propelled him towards crewmates; with one hand he clutched his beloved straw hat, and with his other arm stretched himself outwards to grasp the bodies of his friends, against which he collided rather violently.

Within seconds, the reunited crew whizzed through the rain towards the Going Merry, which had turned out to sea. The dashing rain relentlessly stung Zoro's face like needles as they sailed through the stormy sky in the arms of their captain.

Finally colliding with the aft mast, a red and yellow striped sheet that absorbed the shock quite successfully, the bodies of the men rained down heavily upon the deck.

Nami rushed over to greet the entangled forms of her friends.

"You're here!"

She smiled cheerfully, her hair sopping wet and her deep cerulean shirt blackened by the rain.

"I'm sure he brought the wind with him," the Marine captain remarked mostly to himself as he watched Luffy send his wretched pirates as well as himself flying back to their ship. Smoker's soldiers stood quietly behind him, also watching the pirates escape, with awed looks upon their tanned faces.

"I knew it was him—from the day Gold Roger was executed, he appeared like a brilliant flash of lightning. Then he disappeared. …It's him." Smoker's soldiers turned their glances to the back of their captain's head, confused.

He recalled the recent memory of viewing Luffy lying upon the execution platform, his neck immobilized beneath the clown pirate's boot with a sword held against his neck. And yet, he had heard the pirate proclaim more fiercely than ever:

"Now listen! I'm the man who'll be kind of the pirates!"

And he had smiled.

The captain bit down resolutely on his cigars.

"Set sail. We're going after him."

"Sir?"

"We'll enter the Grand Line," he clarified irritably.

A Marine stepped up quickly to protest.

"But, Captain, you can't abandon your post on this island! What would Command say?"

Smoker turned his head to look down on the soldier, stray pieces of his pale hair dripping rain upon his face.

"Tell them I don't care about orders," he snapped harshly, returning his defiant gaze to the sea.

Another voice rang out through the rain:

"I'm coming too!"

"Sargeant major Tashigi!"

The woman stepped up to her captain's side, gripping her reclaimed Shigure. "I will find Roronoa Zoro! I will get revenge!" she declared, gazing up at the misty horizon.

Simultaneously at Loguetown's coast, another pirate ship escaped from the harbor, crowded with rather ridiculously and eccentrically clothed members, as well as a beautiful, slender woman adorned in a wide-brimmed hat and dark, corkscrewing locks of hair, a severe spike-ridden club at her side. They too locked their gazes upon the Strawhat crew.

"Look! A light!"

The spinning beam atop the guidepost just barely broke through the heavy rain to reach the eyes of the sharpshooter.

"It's a guidepost," explained the navigator. "Somewhere over there is the entrance to the Grand Line."

Usopp clutched the thick pillar of wood upholding the Going Merry's central mast. "Do we have to go in this freaking hurricane?"

Zoro, now recovered from his most recent flight on the Rubber Captain Express, nodded, grinning blissfully.

All of the Strawhat pirates returned his smile.

Luffy, gripping his hat, turned to beam at his dearly loved crew.

The navigator set her eyes upon the ridiculously gleeful features of her captain, threw back her slender shoulders and released a hearty laugh.

The handsome blonde cook was the first to speak through the pleasant silence:

"Okay then! I think we should say something to mark the occasion."

The eyes of the sharpshooter lit up in cheerful agreement. "Right!"

The captain nodded eagerly."Yeah!"

"Let's do it!" chimed in Nami's voice.

Sanji raised a graceful leg and placed his foot upon the circular metal border framing a raised platform in the center of the Merry that was perfect for this symbolic movement.

"I'm going to the Grand Line to find the All Blue."

Luffy joined Sanji's foot with his own, sandaled and wet.

"I'm gonna be kind of the pirates!"

Zoro's heart swelled in satisfaction as his spirits lifted in celebration. He placed his boot upon the metal surface.

"The world's best swordsman," he declared, a full and crooked smile widening across his stern features.

Nami joined in with a slender foot enclosed in a stylish heeled shoe with a small laugh, and her voice resounded like a sweet bell. "I'm going so I can draw a map of the whole world!"

Usopp was last, and a bit uncertain of what to say. "I guess I'm going…" he began, then made up his mind: "to be a brave warrior of the sea!"

The Strawhats all looked down on the five-petal design their feet created… a rather accidental collection of very different people. A wildly diverse assortment of friends, coincidentally brought together in one small place in order to travel the seas together.

Luffy emitted a pleasant and approving giggle as these people came together. "And now, to the Grand Line!'

And together, the members of the Strawhat crew raised their feet into the violent sky.

As if in divine acknowledgement, a streak of lightning slashed down through the dark heavens onto the frothing surface of a churning ocean, and a deafening crash of thunder rustled the bones of the crew and echoed through the skeleton of the ship.

And as Zoro replaced his boot upon the soaked wooden floor of the Going Merry, a startling crackling noise from within his drenched green haramaki jostled him from his abnormally gleeful sentiment.

While the Strawhats took their positions aboard the ship to help the navigator maneuver the Merry through the cruel storm, Zoro, now alone at the base of the central mast, reached into his haramaki and tentatively pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper that had been kept mostly dry by his clothing. He unfolded the paper, cautious not to rip the areas that had soaked up the rain.

The swordsman furrowed his brow with a profound suspicion.

It was a letter.

Author's Note: Please please, pretty please, if you're enjoying my writing so far, would you just write me a small comment in a review? I'd just like to know your thoughts. Thankies! :P