The explosion sent a good handful of the men out of the way to the front entrance, big enough to get the ground moving. Zoro, weaving his way through the flying debris shifted his eyes towards the buildings side. That had been Sanji and Ace's signal, and for those on the other end of the building. Zoro landed on his feet, slicing a piece of debris out of the way of the archeologist, who was already preoccupied. He could only hope the plan had started successful.
He stood up straighter and turned on his heel, looking past Franky, who was busy handling the dumb fucks who decided to get up and continue to fight, and to Robin. Her hands were up and holding her ear, were several communications were being transferred from the rest of the crew. At least one or two people in the teams had one; Zoro politely sliced his in half at the very idea of wearing it.
"Team B is having some complications." She informed, withdrawing her arm and looking towards the inferno of a front door they'd created.
There was no doubt that the All Blue's henchmen would be on their way, even if Nami and Usopp's team being slightly delayed did not help in the slightest.
Zoro scowled. Explosive troubles? Was that even possible with Usopp on that side- Nevermind; it wasn't important. He turned around again, slicing through bullets aimed his way, then slicing the air with a powerful force that knocked the enemies away, for now. The Marimo had more things he wanted to confirm.
"Where's the shit cook and Ace?" was his only question.
Robin stared at Zoro a moment and swallowed thickly. "Last I heard they split up and were inside."
Zoro's eyebrow twitched. Fucking cook! What was he thinking! He waited until just the right moment to split and go on his own. It burned Zoro's determination. They needed to clear through this side now, so he could go in and make sure that fucking cook hadn't already gotten himself-
A chain of explosions shook the ground again, much to everyone's surprise.
"Robin!" Nami's voice crackled loudly over the headset receiver. "That other one wasn't us!"
Franky finished punching out a guy along his men, the Franky family, and looked up over his sunglasses at the smoke rising half way.
"Came from inside!" he yelled over.
Inside? Sanji and Ace's team weren't supposed to have explosives! He went to go but a delicate hand sprouted from the ground and kept him in a hold, Robin still discussing on her headset.
"No Zoro. Your position is here. We will continue to ease our way inside. Captain's orders." She gestured to the headset.
Zoro growled. He hadn't even heard his captain but was already getting orders. Fine, he'd stay here, but he wasn't wasting any more fucking time. He kicked Robin's hand away and dove into the flames and after the men in black suits rushing to meet him.
0
"Usopp! What are you waiting for? That was the signal!" Nami whined, hitting him on his shoulder.
Usopp was breaking out in nervous sweat, letting it beat down his forehead as he watched through his scope. Their job was pretty simple and mirrored the same of the first team, Franky's. However, something didn't seem right to the sharpshooter. He was trying to find the perfect spot where to launch his grenade, but something was going on.
Though Nami and the members of Franky family with them didn't seem to exactly see it the way he did.
"Nami." Usopp said low and determinedly. "Something doesn't look right here."
Nami, whose face was wrinkled in annoyance, raised her eye brow. What was that supposed to mean? He'd never been here before or done anything like this so how could he possibly know if it was how it should be?
"What do you mean?" She said, taking the scope that Usopp willingly offered her.
The sharpshooter turned on his feet and watched as she looked and cleared his throat. "Look in the windows. Robin said that there wouldn't be as many people here because it was unlikely this was the real main hideout. But why are there so many guards?"
Nami's face slightly paled. The explosion on the other side had already gone off and yet, something definitely wasn't right.
"They.. They haven't even left their posts!?"
Usopp's mouth went dry and he nodded. "Nami.. do you think that maybe... the All Blue's leader-"
They were interrupted with the commotion of a foreign blast that was not their own. Usopp flung himself forward, covering over Nami.
"The hell was that!?" The ginger screeched though, pushing him off and getting up for a look.
"Oh shit. This is bad. No one is even supposed to be there! I have to tell Robin."
Nami tossed the scope down, lifting her finger to the headset a listening as it buzzed, giving her permission to speak.
Usopp on the other hand wasn't waiting around anymore. If those guards weren't going to move to chase after intruders, then he'd aim where they'd get them to move forcefully. He pulled back the specially made grenade with his kuro kabuto, aimed and fired.
Nami, still standing by him, dropped her jaw and gave him a solid kick with her heel, immediately starting her rant of going before she said so, totally oblivious to the side of the large manor crumbling. Usopp just stared up at her though and nervously laughed.
"I got it at least!"
0
Sanji literally had to hold onto a passing door frame for a moment, taking a deep breath. Holy fuck when had this mission turned into a war zone. First the initial explosions to the sides and then one inside and just shit! He wasn't sure exactly where he should be going anymore. He glanced back the way he'd come slightly huffing.
Hopefully Ace as able to handle his fight, though it wouldn't surprise him if that most recent explosion had been on his part. Damn guy was such a pyro-head. Either way, Sanji turned back and scowled forward. He was thankful for all the distractions though, considering he hadn't come face to face with another agent in some time. He'd avoided a few though.
His gut wouldn't settle down. Something about being inside the base of the people who had ruined his life and marked him for dead, wasn't making him feel any better. Still he continued on, even if he was a little slow. To escape the last explosion that had already ripped up some of his super spy outfit and gear, he had to flee, totally reminding himself of his new limitations.
One thing Sanji really wished hadn't ended up jacked in the near confrontation was the headset. No matter how many times he stopped to try and speak to the ladies or even Luffy occasionally on the line, it was futile. He could only hear them roughly through the sound of static, but his transmissions never went through. Really, he had somehow found himself on his own again.
However his surroundings were beginning to change. The whole place looked like a freaking hotel, filled with guest and conference rooms, large open sitting areas, hell he was sure he'd seen a heated pool or something, then again he could have just been going mad. Still, it didn't change the way things seemed to get more homely as he traveled.
The plain wall colors changed into something more warmly and there were pictures and articles scattered along the wall. The hallway began to narrow as well, leading to a single wooden door. Sanji stared at it a moment, his chest rising and falling. His goal was to find information and he might have just found the jackpot. Who else would have such an isolated office unless it was a high official.
His hand hesitated over the door knob, contemplating. He was about to see a room of a person he hated so much and who hated him in return. Still, there was no time to waste, the faster he got the information they needed about his new whereabouts, the quicker they could either retreat or completely torch the place. Sanji swung the door open and met with the dim light.
He searched the side of the wall for a switch and turned it on. It wasn't what he was expecting. The room was huge, several windows aligning the back wall. He strolled in, glancing around in awareness, ready for any unsuspecting enemy to attack. No one would though, he was alone and only able to hear the echo of his shoes on the tile. The rest of the walls were mostly bottom to top book shelves and files. Where ever there weren't books, there were more photos, though these really began to make him worry.
Sanji understood that the All Blue organization had some freak fascination with him, that much was certain the way they had followed him his whole life, but what was really going on here? It was like more than that, it was obsession. On the walls were pictures of his parents and the rest of their squad, he assumed.
He approached it silently, placing the cigarette he was holding into his mouth to reach out and lightly brush the tips of his finger against the frame. His parents. He had almost forgotten what they really looked like, having been taken from him at such a young age. He brought his hand back down, shifting it into a fist. Though that was their choice wasn't it, getting themselves in this shitty organization and leaving him behind to deal with the shit.
Each picture seemed to be different squads or graduations of this evil organization, or so Sanji figured after finding Zeff and Bon in at least one. Except, he couldn't help but notice the faint trail of a red X over their faces. The brand of a traitor perhaps? Another large bang outside, which caused the windows to shake, took Sanji out of his moment on a messed up memory lane. He moved toward the main and only other thing in the room.
It was a single desk and chair, a file lying over the top. The blonde halted at the other side of the desk, resting his weight against it as he leaned over and turned the file over, reading the top. They were plans and outlines of buildings... Profiles of potential assassin victims. Sanji was already feeling sick again.
"We've made our way in... Heading from the west wing... Engaging in further combat." Franky's voice struggled through Sanji's headset.
Sanji didn't seem particularly interested in it though nor listening, as he found some profiles that needed more of his attention..
"We're still outside... Lost contact with Luffy...Bon... Sanji-kun!" Nami-swan explained.
"Last we saw.. Luffy and Bon through side window... No word on Sanji." Robin replied to her.
Sanji shook his head annoyed, removing his head set and tossing it over to the side, not even paying it mind as it skid across the floor. He circled the desk next and sat down in the worn down chair, his eyes still glued to the files. His heart racing like crazy he began to pull them out with some extra tidbits and lay them flat on the service from the others.
First there were pictures. But not just any pictures, pictures of him. Now he really felt stalked. They weren't all reason though either. He could see one was from the day he and Zeff opened the baratie, another middle school photo, or one was hanging out with the guys. He really had been monitored all this time! Speaking of the guys though, other than his obvious profile sheet which labeled more information about himself then even he knew, there were a handful of others.
Sanji's eye trailed across them all. It was the crew, Luffy, Nami, Usopp, Zoro, Robin, Franky and even Brook, though he hadn't even been in town to be a part of this. That better not fucking mean they were sending people his way through or so help him... Well never mind, Sanji wasn't exactly in a position to do much about it.
"Sanji... can you respond... Sanji?"
Sanji was too busy in his looking at the profiles that he didn't even here the soft thump of feet moving close. They stopped just in front of his headset on the floor and the stranger bent down, picking up the headset and inspecting it. By that time the broken sentences had moved on to about Luffy and how he'd gone off the plan and found the cafeteria. It wasn't until in the stranger's hands, that they bent the headset backward until it snapped that Sanji's head perked up.
He jerked to the side, readily seeing who decided to sneak up on him. It was an image he'd never forget.
"You..."
Sanji quickly got up from his seat, stumbling slightly and holding onto the desk for support, glowering ahead. It was like looking in a fucking trick mirror. How was this even possible? How was he even supposed to react? He was staring at a shitty ghost!
"You're dead." He accused.
The man standing across from him dropped the smashed electronic device, a frown on his older and tired face. His resemblance to the cook remarkable, except for maybe the fact his eyebrows neither curled and his hair, though somewhat as long as Sanji's was a chocolate brown. He chuckled lightly at Sanji's reaction, slipping his hands back into the pockets of his long coat.
"You really have grown up quite a bit now that I get a good look at you." He pondered in a hushed voice, his blue eyes piercing forward.
Sanji leaned harder against the desk with his hip. If his legs weren't always threatening to crumble under him already, they definitely were at this point. This person was probably one of the most important people of his past, someone he had mourned over forever inside that white prison cell. Had he gone mad for real this time?
"I would think so, you died a while ago." He gritted his teeth in response.
Never in a million years had he ever expected to talk so casually again with this man, except perhaps those moments he felt religious and believed in a heaven. Even so, he wasn't sure that a man like Abel Black, even as his father, could get into a place like that. Not after his history as an assassin before, or at least as Sanji had thought, he himself had been assassinated.
"You've... been alive this whole time? Working for them?" Sanji couldn't help but choke out a bit.
For gods sake it was his dad! The guy who had always been painted bad to him but that he knew simply as the one who sat him on his knee and read to him about the All Blue. What was going on here? He was alive this whole time? How? And if he was why... why was he following Sanji? Was he trying to find him and bring him home or something, in the most fucked way possible?
Abel nodded slightly, his glare never softening. "This whole time."
Sanji clenched his teeth. The bastard! He'd abandoned him?
"And mom?"
Abel didn't answer thought, his eyes finally shifting downward as if he might have some unspoken regret, though it didn't appear much. He could hear the somewhat hope, mixed in with far too much betrayal in the cook's voice.
"No, she did die."
Sanji was so furious and confused. If his mother had died like he'd been told but his father spared, why on earth had he kept working for them? Was he a coward? They killed his wife goddammit!
"Then why... Why did you leave me..." He paused, not sure how to say this next part. "Dad?"
Adult Sanji didn't care. He'd come to terms with his abandonment years ago, and under Zeff's guidance found new purpose. However there was a part of Sanji, the inner child version of him who remembered his frequent cries in solitude that demanded it be discussed.
Abel fiddled with something inside his pocket a moment, shifting the weight on his feet, his chin downwards so that he could still stare at the tile. It would seem something like a memory or answer was coming back to him now and he lightly smiled.
"You know you look more like her, your mother now."
Sanji's face softened. He really didn't want to hear how he looked like his deceased parent, but was more confused about how his question had been totally ignored. He took a step forward bravely, which didn't go unnoticed by his father who lightly twitched, staring wide eyed back up at him.
"Standing there scared and confused, not understanding the words I was telling her. Asking why over and over again with that gentle face and those curly eyebrows... God I hated her face."
Author's note: Hey guys Im so sorry its taken me forever to update this but I finally finished it and now I'll be uploading the last few chapters for you. I want to apologize in advance though because it did take me a bit to get back into the feel of things and the climax isnt going to be as fighting/thriller related as anticipated. Either way Im really happy with it and I hope that you enjoy it, expect an update soon~ oh also these arent really beta'd I apologize orz Oh and the chapters are shorter, you aren't crazy.