The entire second story was already filled with smoke. Sanji coughed, holding his arm over his face and blinked back stinging tears. Fire flickered to his left, slowly eating away the corridor.
"I'm gonna kill you, you fucking brat!" Kuro yelled. The stairs began to creak and Sanji scrambled for the nearest room.
Shutting the door behind him, Sanji pulled as many objects as he could to bar the entrance. Chairs, a chest of drawers, boxes upon boxes. He turned to the room and startled, hitting his back against the drawers.
The bloodied man appeared outside of the window.
"Shit," Sanji cursed. "Please, not now."
The spectre moved, disappeared from view. With a jangle, the door handle began to shake.
"I know you're in there, you little shit!" Kuro's voice came muffled through the door.
Panting, Sanji ran to the window and tried to open it. It was locked.
"Shit, shit, shit," Sanji paced the room, trying to find something to break the glass with. Punching it was out of the question.
He gasped the when the door splintered. Five blades stuck out through the wood, before pulling out and stabbing through again, creating a bigger hole.
Sanji turned back to the window. He considered punching through, when a sharp pain pierced through his head, causing him to double over on the floor and grip his head. A metallic jingle resounded.
Something whispered in his ear.
Look behind you.
"Wh-what?" Sanji glanced over his shoulder. The bloodied man crouched before him. With a scream, Sanji staggered backwards and hit the desk. Something rolled off the top and hit him on the head before clattering to the floor.
It was a long, black case. Heavy. Sanji looked up. The spectre was gone.
The door cracked. Kuro squeezed his face through the gap, laughing.
"You've got nowhere to run now!"
Sanji got up, clutching the case. Whatever was in it was hard. He turned to the window and shattered the glass with the case. A cold wind blew into the room, followed by smoke and Sanji saw fire flicker over the edge of the roof bellow.
The door cracked again. Sanji didn't look back. He crawled out of the window, the case still clutched in his hand. Glass crunched under his shoe, and he ripped the edges of his clothes and cut his cheek on the broken glass.
A gust threatened to blow him from the rooftop. Coughing on the bitter smoke, Sanji stayed low and crawled across the slate tiles of the roof. He clutched the case to his chest and resisted the urge to look down.
Voices yelled across the garden below.
"Oh my god, Sanji!"
He glanced down to see Nami and Luffy, both covered in soot, waving at him from the ground.
"Go! Get out of here!" He yelled back.
"We're not leaving you!" Luffy yelled back.
Bang!
Nami screamed, as she and Luffy got down on the ground.
"Hold it right there!" cried Jango. Sanji peered down to see the man holding a gun in his uninjured hand and pointing it at his friends.
Shit.
He was about to leapt down the whole two-stories, when Luffy took a chance and got up, rock in hand, aiming straight for Jango's head. It missed but hit the gun from his hand.
"Son of a-!" Jango yelled, now nursing two broken hands.
"Run!" Sanji yelled again. "Go now!"
They hesitated, but when Jango moved towards them, they disappeared out of the garden.
The air became hot all of a sudden, and Sanji turned to see the fire had spread onto the roof.
"Shit!"
He crawled forward, then slipped on something wet and nearly tumbled from the rooftop. When he lifted his hand, it was covered in blood. Sanji squinted in the darkness. Crimson footprints stained the slate tiles of the roof, leading straight ahead and around the corner. Sanji swallowed. He had nowhere else to go.
Hastening his pace, Sanji turned the corner and saw a small set of rungs he could use to get up to the next level. The footprints ended there. He climbed up, the air getting cooler and the wind getting stronger.
The third tier was a lot smaller. Not much space, and nowhere else left to run. What was he supposed to do now?
Knocking resounded from under the tiles. Sanji yelped as five claws burst through the ceiling and scratched away the tiles. He scrambled backwards, right to edge of the roof. There was only one way down, and as he peered over the edge, the ground stretched further away from him.
"You fucker," said Kuro. Sanji turned back and watched him crawl out of the hole he'd made and onto the roof, hair frazzled, missing his glasses and skin covered in soot. "I'm gonna kill you."
"How could you torture someone like that?" Sanji yelled, trying to buy time again and figure another way out of this. "For a whole year! You forced Zoro to miss out a whole year of his life!"
"I did it for the dojo. For the family."
"That money belongs to Zoro!" Sanji backed up away from Kuro, but he was leaning the edge of the roof now. "You don't have any right taking it away from him!"
Kuro grinned, but his eyes were wide, gleaming like the fire that raged on below them.
"You sound just like my brother," said Kuro. He raised a hand, claws glinting in the moonlight. "And now, you'll die. Just like he did."
A jangling of metal. Sanji's jaw fell open as the bloodied man appeared behind Kuro, void eyes starring at the back of his head.
"Look behind you," whispered Sanji.
Kuro paused, brows knotting in confusion.
The wood groaned underneath them. Then the roof collapsed, swallowing Kuro into the fiery building. Sanji clung to edge of the tiles, gripping the black case tight, as he heard Kuro's scream fade into the inferno below.
Was he dead?
With a grunt, Sanji pushed himself up and crawled to the edge of the hole in the roof. The room below them was still partly intact, but surrounded by flames. Sanji squinted through the smoke.
Kuro lay sprawled on the wooden floor. For a moment, he didn't move. Then his limbs twitched, and he pushed himself up from the floor. He looked dazed, then he froze, his jaw dropping and his wide-eyes staring at something through the fire.
Sanji followed his glance. His heart stopped and every muscle in his body froze at what he saw. Through the flickering flames, the bloodied man emerged. This time, the crimson coating around him was ablaze, fire licking from his shoulder and out of his wounds that still gushed blood. Sanji could smell the sharp stench from where he was.
"Z-zoro?" Kuro's voice shook, he backed up across the floor. He could see him? "No, it can't be… You're dead. I killed you!"
The bloodied man moved. Step after agonizing step.
"S-stop!" Kuro pleaded. "Stay away!"
He backed up, scrambling to get away form Zoro, and into the fire behind him. His clothes ignited. Kuro screamed. In a fit of panic he writhed away from the flames, and ran deeper into the inferno of the burning dojo. Zoro's spectre followed him, disappearing under the smoke.
Sanji stared into the burning room below him, the crackling fire filling the silence. With a sigh, he slumped back on the roof, and stared at the dark sky above him.
Was it finally over?
Something crumbled, and Sanji looked up to see that the roof was still falling apart. The whole dojo was falling apart. He had to get out of there.
Carefully, Sanji got to his feet and peered over the edge of the roof. How exactly was he planning to get down?
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, and turned around.
Zoro stood before him. His dark eyes stared at Sanji, as his wounds squelched and gushed out blood. Sanji shuddered and took a step back, nearly loosing his balance and going over the edge. He glanced over the roof. That was a long way down.
Zoro's hand lashed out and grabbed the case Sanji was clutching.
"W-wait! Zoro, no!"
Without warning, the spectre hauled Sanji into the air and dropped him off the side of the roof. Sanji screamed. The ground spun faster towards him, until he landed face first onto the ground with a wet thud.
Sanji's eyes opened a crack. He couldn't feel his body. His vision was partly obstructed by grass and twigs, but as his eyes blurred into focus, Sanji saw a pair of red feet. His glance moved upwards. The bloodied man loomed over him, staring down with his void-like eyes piercing through his soul.
I don't care anymore, thought Sanji. I've done my job. You can kill me now if you wan to.
The spectre blurred until he disappeared from view. Sanji felt something hard in his hand and tightened his grip on it. It grounded him to reality. Several people called his name in the distance. Everything inside and outside of him ached, and he could still feel the heat of the fire nearby. Despite all of that, his body chose now to be a good time for sleep, and he passed out with the feeling of the cold grass pressed against his cheek and the solid object gripped in his hand.
He came to again, lying on his back in the back of an ambulance. Sanji tried to glance around, but only winced and groaned as his muscles ached and his bones creaked.
"Ah! You're awake."
Sanji turned his head to see Nami sat opposite him, with a fleece blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was covered in soot, bruises and scratches and her hair jutted out at odd angles, but she was still a sure sight for sore eyes.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
Sanji had the words in his head but all he could get out was a groan. She giggled.
"You're lucky you only got away with a broken arm after falling three stories from the roof."
He glanced down at his right arm to find it bandaged tight and put in a sling.
"Luffy was the one that spotted you," added Nami.
Sanji cleared his throat before he spoke. "Where is he?"
"He's fine, don't worry. Sleeping off all the excitement in the other ambulance. He's not hurt."
Sanji sighed in relief and slouched back down in the ambulance bed. Through the back of the open doors, they could see the dojo, still burning and crumbling away in the fire.
"What are you doing here?" asked Sanji. "How did you find us?"
"While you were in Shank's gym, I was texting Luffy," she replied. "He told me everything, of course, the little bugger can't lie to save his life. So I was on my way to meet you there, when I saw you two get dragged into the back of a van. I followed them on my scooter."
Sanji shook his head. "You shouldn't have come. You nearly got killed."
"So did you two!" she exclaimed. "You never texted me after the séance. Why didn't you tell me what you were doing?"
He didn't answer. If he didn't like other people belittling him, he knew Nami hated it even more. She rolled her eyes, seeming to understand anyway, but decided not to press on it further.
"I gave the Dictaphone to the police," she said, changing the topic of conversation. "I also said we'd give witness accounts. They caught them all, you know. Even Kuro. They already wheeled him away and took him to the hospital."
Sanji frowned. "The hospital?"
Nami nodded. "They found him passed out in the training room. Pretty bad burns. It's a miracle he's still alive. Well, he probably won't think so when he finds out they're putting him in prison."
Sanji nodded as he remembered watching the man run deeper in to the fire to get away from Zoro. A silence fell between them then, as they watched the dojo burn to the ground outside the ambulance.
"The hand-mark's gone by the way," she said, pulling down a bit of her t-shirt to show Sanji.
Sure enough, her skin was back to being beautifully supple and unblemished. Sanji recalled the strange circumstance that lead to the start of the fire.
"You… you saw it, right?" said Sanji. "When that big guy touched your shoulder…"
Nami nodded. "His hand caught fire. I felt it too. Like a hot zap, and then the pain was gone. Creepy!"
She shuddered, but a smile still pulled on her face. "It kind of got me thinking… What if the spectre gave me that mark as a sort of… protection? I, um, sorry. Maybe I'm just being stupid."
Sanji shook his head. "I'm the one that can see spectres. I don't think anything's stupid anymore."
He didn't bother telling her how he thought Zoro basically helped him evade Kuro and get down from the roof. He still wasn't sure that throwing him off was the only solution.
"I never told you about my sister, did I?" asked Nami.
Sanji blinked at the sudden change of topic. "Nojiko? You've spoken about her before."
"Did I ever tell you how she died?"
Sanji's stomach tightened. He shook his head. Nami wrapped the fleece blanket tighter around her shoulders, casting her glance at the fire outside.
"She was like you, you know," she began to explain. "She could see things too. But… I think it was too much for her. She couldn't handle it. Me and mum tried so hard to be supportive. I told her everyday that I believed her, that she wasn't crazy, and that I loved her no matter what. But in the end, she just couldn't take it anymore…"
"It hurt," Nami continued. "I felt guilty for a long time after that. Like, I could've done something more for her. Maybe if I tried a little harder, or was there for her more, she wouldn't have wanted to end it herself…"
Sanji listened with a heavy heart. It all made sense now. This was why Nami always believed him without question, and why she was always eager to understand and to help him. When he realized that Nami wasn't going to say anymore, Sanji reached out and placed a hand on hers.
"Thank you," he said. "You've helped a lot."
Nami beamed at him. After that, they watched the fire in silence as it began to die down.
"By the way, what was in that case?" asked Nami.
Sanji frowned. "Case?"
Nami pointed to a long, black case propped up in the corner of the ambulance. "That one. You were holding onto it like a lifeline when we found you. The medics had a hard time trying to pry it from your hands while they took you in."
She got up and reached for the case, passing it over to Sanji.
"I don't know," he answered, searching for the zip in the dim light of the ambulance. "I kind of just used it to smash my way out of a window. Didn't really let go of it after that."
Sanji unzipped the top of the case and gasped. His eyes widened. Three sword hilts peeked out of the bag, one white, one red and one black.
"His swords," said Nami, breathing in awe.
She reached over and zipped it back up. "Better keep it hidden. If the police find out its weapons, they might confiscate it."
Sanji nodded, propping the sword case up at the end of his bed. He wondered if he came across it by coincidence, or if Zoro actually had something to do with it.
"Well, getting these will make up for the fact we basically burnt the guy's house down…" said Sanji, casting a glance at the non-existent dojo.
Nami laughed nervously. "Yeah… Woops... Do you think it worked then? Do you think Zoro'll wake up now?"
Sanji shrugged. "I don't know. He may wake up, or he may not. We have avenged his spirit after all. He might just decide that it's time to move on."
"I guess we'll find out once they take us to the hospital."
Sanji hummed in agreement, before settling back down in thebed. He could find out now, see if his nightmares were still plagued by the spectre. With a deep breath, Sanji's eyes folded shut and he descended into sleep quicker that he could ever remember doing.