Edge

Zoro liked the sword he had been given by the zombie samurai Ryouma: Shusui was a beautiful black blade and, like Wado Ichimonji, one of the twenty-one Great Grade Swords. However it had a temper that made it challenging to wield, much as Sandai Kitetsu's sheer bloodthirstiness needed a skilful hand to keep it in check. It was also considerably heavier than Yubashiri had been, though nowhere near as weighty as Zanchou was. Fox' Supreme Grade Sword was almost too heavy to be comfortably wielded as part of Zoro's Santoryuu, making certain moves feel clumsy and off-balance. It was better suited to her style, its strength and weight adding to her speed to land truly devastating hits.

Zanchou was unlike any sword he had ever held before or since. It did not have Wado Ichimonji's smooth willingness, Kitetsu's thirst or even Shusui's temper; instead it was calm, cold and implacable. Zanchou did not care what it cut, so long as all that stood against it was laid low. Zoro would never have dared to test it as he had Kitetsu; the Kairoseki blade would have bitten his arm off and mocked him for his foolishness. It was a Sword, and so it Cut. The wielder was as much at risk as the opponent unless they respected the blade. Zoro had to wonder how many greedy fools had lusted after Zanchou, only to fall when they underestimated its sheer power and were crushed by it. Like the tide it was named for, Zanchou just did not care. It was what it was and it would not submit to any swordsman; the wielder had to learn to work around it. Zoro himself had nearly lost a limb several times before he got enough of a feel for the katana that Fox let him practice by himself; in comparison Shusui was just a trifle hot-headed.

Zoro recognised it would take him a while to get used to Shusui and properly master the blade, but for now he would just have to cope. As the fight against the immense zombie giant Oars dragged on and on, the swordsman hoped Luffy would win back their shadows soon. He did not want them all to die here and leave Fox alone; he would not do that to her.

As the sun began to rise Fox felt a shiver down her spine. Her crew were still alive, even the walking skeleton she had found herself keeping an eye on, but for all the wanton destruction she had watched from her perch in the Thousand Sunny's crow's nest and the destruction of the gigantic zombie, Moriah was still undefeated. Absently petting Beastie who was curled up in her lap, the assassin stayed put. She had to trust. Even as she felt Moriah pull all his power into himself, de-animating every last zombie, she had to trust. The captain had left the Thousand Sunny in her care and she would not abandon her duty for anything less than death.

As Moriah fell there was a terrible instant in which Nami, Robin, Luffy and Zoro seemed to fade away, but they flickered back into life at once, battered and tired but undefeated. Fox sagged in relief; staying up all night and stressing about her nakama –here and elsewhere– was exhausting. Whoever had said that battle was the difficult part had never been left behind to fret.

They all seemed to be alright, but Kuma was still on Thriller Bark and Fox had no idea why. He had definitely been watching the fight and witnessed Moriah's defeat, so whatever he intended to do would come soon.

She hoped they all survived it, Luffy in particular: she was feeding him enough energy for his remarkable body to hold itself together until he recovered enough strength to wake up again and eat, but the connection was tenuous.

Then the Shichibukai attacked and Zoro stepped forward to battle him.

The shockwave shook the gigantic ship and the surrounding water; Fox was blasted across the crow's nest and into a wall, quickly summoning up the Colour of Armament to prevent one of Zoro's falling weights from caving her head in. As the Thousand Sunny rocked beneath her on the sudden waves she scrambled down the rigging, briefly detoured to dump Calla and Beastie on her bed and leapt off the ship onto Thriller Bark. Her crew needed her; Luffy would forgive it.

As she dashed across the unstable ground and scrambled over fallen stone she could feel Zoro's pain and resolve; he would not let his captain be taken away if he could help it. It was one of the things she loved about him, that unflinching resolve. He was going to die, she could feel that certainty in him, but Luffy would not.

Fox ran faster as she heard her lover scream. Bartholomew Kuma might be a cyborg and a Shichibukai, but nobody killed her loved ones and got away with it; her father certainly hadn't so why would anybody else?

As she closed on his location Fox felt searing, grinding agony wrenching Zoro's body, tearing his consciousness apart and dragging him further and further towards death. Forgoing secrecy altogether she let herself be pulled to his location by the tether binding their life-forces together, materialising just in front of him in time to see the remains of Kuma's Devil Fruit Power vanish into his body alongside all of Luffy's pain and fatigue. Sensing Zoro's soul waver, no longer held to his flesh by the life-force that was supposed to cradle it there, Fox abandoned all reason and dived into his torn and dying body after it.

Nobody takes my loved ones away from me!

Zoro blinked, then blinked again. "Am I dead?"

It seemed a reasonable question; his last memory was absorbing all of Luffy's pain and fatigue from the bubble Kuma had made it into, but now he was standing in a wilderness of torn earth, blasted treestumps and broken stone without a mark on him. His field of vision was also considerably wider than it should have been.

Lifting a hand to his head, Zoro discovered he also had far more limbs at his disposal that normal: two more pairs of arms. He also had two more faces sticking out of the sides of his head, meaning he now had the physical form of the Asura spirit projection he had used when he defeated Kaku of the CP9. Which seemed to fit in with the theory of his being dead. He didn't feel dead though and this certainly didn't look like heaven or hell. More like limbo.

Zoro got to his feet and noticed that he seemed to be mostly naked: his body from the waist down was covered in thick, smooth black hide that was lightly furred and made him look even more demonic. It also somehow concealed his groin; at least he hoped it did as otherwise his dangly bits had gone missing. He paused to consider that frightening possibility before discarding it: they didn't feel missing. They were just on the inside of his new body rather than the outside. His feet were more of an issue: he had claws on them. Tightly curved claws, thick and blunt like a dog's, being designed to enhance grip rather than aid in combat. The only item of actual clothing he had on was his harimaki, which had his three swords attached to it.

Whether he was dead or not, there was nothing interesting going on right here so he might as well go elsewhere. All he had to do was pick a direction.

It took a few false starts for Zoro to get used to walking around and translating what he saw in his much broader visual field into proper movements, but after picking a direction he walked in a mostly-straight line. He had picked this direction because of the faint tug he felt that way, like someone had caught a fishhook in his solar plexus and was trying to reel him in. Whatever was that way, be it friend or foe, he would deal with it when he got there.

As he walked the desolate landscape around him changed. Fissures gradually closed, broken trees melted away to reveal young saplings, the earth beneath his feet levelled out and a faint fuzz of new grass sprouted under his toes. Rocks standing here and there on the great plain seemed to soften, as though weathering in fast-forward and above his head he heard the faint cry of a bird. The grass around him grew higher, brushing first his ankles, then his calves and eventually his knees. Trees grew and reached towards the sky, placed only here and there in the wide expanse of green that seemed to go on forever.

Zoro found himself seeking out the wildlife of this strange place. The bird high above had been a crow, but something about its silhouette had been wrong. There had been a leopard in a tree a while back as well and he was sure he'd seen a bull, a pair of gorillas and what had looked like a phoenix. As he splashed through a shallow creek he saw a large crab and a tiger drinking at a pool just downstream, apparently oblivious of each-other.

Something about this wilderness was starting to niggle in the swordsman's mind; he knew this place. It was familiar, right down to his bones. This, this place was home. Speeding up to a trot and barely raising an eyebrow at the dragon and hawk soaring overhead on the updrafts, Zoro made a beeline for the source of the now rather strong tugging feeling. Whatever that was it was not supposed to be here. He passed a rhino, a wolf and a bear, then a lion. He was getting closer.

He stopped at the edge of an impossibly deep crater that, unlike the rest of the landscape, had not been miraculously resorted: the walls were sheer and raw, showing bare clay at the top and torn rock lower down. It was not just one hole, Zoro noticed, but a larger pit with five smaller pits arrayed around the opposite side like a massive paw print.

A paw print. Bartholomew Kuma. How? More to the point, why, where and what the hell?

As he watched the main crater gradually filled with water all the way up to the top, spilling over into the smaller craters and causing new streams to trail across the plains away from it. Zoro frowned down at the newly-created lake; this was new. It wasn't that it shouldn't be here –he kinda liked it actually– but it wasn't familiar. The tugging feeling in his chest was centred on something down in the bottom of that bottomless pit. Or rather, something that had been down in that bottomless pit that was coming up to the surface. Zoro took several steps back and readied himself for an attack; never mind that it didn't feel hostile, this was his place!

When it surfaced however Zoro's hands fell away from his blades in wonder.

It was Fox. No, it wasn't just Fox: it was Dracule 'Phantom Fox' Lisska, the Angel of Death and Daughter of the Sea. Her hair was a pale, luminous gold with white streaks and from the hips down she had the body of a sea snake: green scales and wavy lines identified it as being a Yuda, a massive serpent that was so fierce and poisonous it was outright avoided by Sea Kings. Unlike him she only had one pair of arms, but she did have two pairs of wings, broad and narrow like a sea bird and feathered with steel.

Then her eyes met his and everything went white.

I'm so mean, leaving you with a cliffhanger...