I hope you all are enjoying this possibly misguided adventure back into fanfiction (yes, I know you're out there, you brave souls). I am hardly the type to hold chapters ransom for reviews (the reason I am writing this is not for recognition), but I would appreciate it if you dropped me a line every now and again to let me know how I'm doing.
Be ready for longer chapters! As I've said before, I am following the original storyline, however, things may or may not change dramatically with the addition of a new character. Her own troubles are far from over with her escape, and those will, of course, affect their journey. I hope I have injected enough new content and shuffled things around and recombined anime and manga enough to keep this interesting.
Warnings: Spoilers for Chapter 8 - 10 of the manga and episodes 4 & 5 of the anime. Really, though, if you're here, you shouldn't need spoiler warnings for this early material. On another note, keep in mind, I will be primarily sticking to the manga storyline and anime references are never going to come from that ridiculous 4Kids dub!
The following morning dawned bright and fresh, the sun painting the sky a myriad of shades from deepest orange to the most brilliant white-gold. Towering white clouds dotted the horizon, and, rather than threatening a storm, were driven gaily across the heavens by an easy breeze. Moire sighed in relief at the reappearance of the wind and thoroughly enjoyed the sound of the canvas sail rippling. They were being blown almost due west and should, with any luck, soon arrive on land.
Before too long, Moire's shipmates began to stir. Luffy let out an enormous yawn, throwing his head back and stretching his arms well beyond the sides of the boat. The green-haired swordsman was only a little more dignified. When they both realized it was morning, they looked around in alarm. Zoro thought Moire had fallen asleep on watch and was thoroughly ready to thrash her, while Luffy was nearing a panic thinking she had fallen overboard or otherwise disappeared. After all, he hadn't convinced her to join their crew just yet. Both were surprised to find her still very much awake and present, sitting calmly at the prow and gazing back at them with shuttered eyes and a passive expression.
"Did you really stay awake all night?" Luffy asked, the first to find his voice. Moire simply nodded in response. The captain sighed inwardly. He had found the woman to be uncommunicative at best and downright threatening at worst. She rarely spoke unless it was to make a point, and there were few enough of those to be made in their current situation. With a similarly grumpy swordsman as his other shipmate, Luffy was becoming rather starved for conversation.
Zoro huffed. "At least I don't have to beat you senseless for falling asleep on watch and putting us all in danger."
Moire's low voice met his verbal jab with an invitation and a threat all at once: "I would like to see you try." It wasn't the most mature response, but quite appropriate. In her judgment, though she could tell that he was quite strong, the swordsman would be at a disadvantage in such close quarters.
Zoro glared in return, thumbing the hilt of one of his swords. She was absolutely infuriating with her silence and lofty attitude. He was just itching to bring her down a peg.
Completely oblivious to the tension between the other two, Luffy hung over the side of the boat, his arms dangling toward the water. He groaned. "I'm so hungry!"
Moire's expression became slightly irritated. "If you hadn't eaten all of my food, there would be some left for today." With that, she drew the sword at her back. Zoro tensed, preparing for a fight, but when she didn't make another move except to remove a whetstone from one of the pockets of her pack, he settled back once more. Within moments, she became absorbed in the task of honing the blade into perfect condition. She had just taken it from the outpost's armory; her personal weapons had all been under lock and key after their arrival. While Humber had trusted her to be armed on a ship - she really had no skill in sailing to speak of, beyond the very basics that had allowed her to steal the little catboat - he had thoroughly denied her the privilege of being armed on land.
The single, long katana wasn't really her preferred weapon to begin with, and this one was quite average in almost every way. It was military issued, so the balance being reasonable was necessary, but there was no feel to the blade. No emotion had gone into its making, and while it was serviceable, it was hardly the finely tuned piece of art she was used to wielding. Nevertheless, it was now hers, and it needed to be in the best condition possible before she found herself in battle.
Meanwhile, Luffy's whining had continued, accompanied by grumbles from his empty stomach. He hadn't moved from his position draped over the side, and Moire was certain he would wind up with a headache if he persisted in staring into the glimmering sea.
"When the hell are we going to reach land, anyway?" Zoro asked, directing the question at all and sundry.
Within a day or so, Moire responded mentally. Either way, the answering of the query was pointless; it would do nothing to fill their empty bellies or speed them on to their destination. It had been drilled into her mind for many years to never speak unless her words contained useful, pertinent information.
"Who knows? We're just sailing on the wind and the waves, going where they take us. We might not ever even reach the land. Ah, I guess we will someday," Luffy rambled.
Zoro looked thoroughly indignant, perhaps even a little angry. "Don't you think it's stupid that someone trying to be King of the Pirates doesn't have any navigational skills?"
"Not really. I've always just drifted around." Clearly, Luffy was thoroughly unimpressed with his first mate's ire. "What about you? Aren't you some famous bounty hunter who's sailed the seas?" Moire almost snorted. Luffy: 1, Zoro: 0.
The latter didn't seem to catch the implied insult, latching on instead to the label applied to him. "I don't have a single recollection of calling myself a bounty hunter." He threw his head back, staring past the sail and into the sky. "I went to sea to search for a single man, but then I couldn't get back to my village. I had no choice but to start hunting pirates for a living."
"Oh, so you're lost?"
That got Zoro's attention. "Shut up!" he shouted. "You're the one who's lost!"
Moire couldn't take it any longer. She had to state what should have been obvious. "Without knowing how to navigate in the slightest, you can never expect to reach the Grand Line, much less conquer it."
The swordsman turned his aggravation on her. "Like you're one to talk! You haven't been much help so far!"
One corner of her mouth tilted up. It was a strange feeling, the urge to reveal that little smirk, after keeping her face expressionless in front of her superiors. "While I do not know with any precision where we will make landfall, we will reach the eastern coast of the Organ Islands within the next twenty-four hours." Her report was direct, almost staccato, like a soldier providing information to a superior officer.
Both Luffy and Zoro stared at her, their jaws dropping, before Zoro began sputtering. He shouted, "That would have been good to know before now!"
Moire just blinked in confusion. "Why? That information would have done nothing useful for you. It cannot be used to ascertain our exact position or to reach our destination more quickly, or even to ease our hunger. I saw no reason to mention it."
"You must have never heard of the light at the end of the tunnel." Zoro sat back and crossed his arms, newly assessing the odd young woman sitting at the prow. One moment, she was almost normal, albeit very closed off, and then the next, she seemed as though she had been extremely sheltered and simultaneously seen far too much. He couldn't pin her down, and it frustrated him.
Moire simply shook her head and returned to sharpening the sword in her hand. It had been a very long time since she had been taken from her home, and in those years she had not been viewed as a human being. She was a tool, a weapon, and treated as such. Thus, she forgot how to be human. Zoro's statement reminded her that sometimes others needed to be given hope. Though their situation was far from dire, maybe they had needed to know their plight would soon be over.
Not looking up from her task, Moire murmured, "I'm sorry."
Zoro was the only one who heard, and his head snapped back to her again. He didn't know how to respond, but was saved from having to do so by Luffy suddenly perking up. A shadow passed briefly over the trio as a large bird came between them and the sun.
"Hey look, a bird," Zoro pointed out lamely. Moire remained wholly uninterested, but Luffy broke out into a grin.
"I know! Let's eat it!"
"And how do you plan to eat it? We can't even catch it!" Once again, Zoro was seriously beginning to doubt his choice to follow Luffy to sea.
"I'll go get it, watch!" Without any warning or explanation, Luffy's arms stretched upward and his hands grasped either yard arm. "Gum-Gum…" He leaned back, imitating a slingshot, before flinging himself into the air towards the bird. "Rocket!"
That gave even Moire pause as she watched the erstwhile boat-bound captain soaring into the sky after his prey.
Zoro shaded his eyes against the glare of the sun to watch. "Makes sense, I guess…Huh?!"
The two remaining shipmates were completely taken aback when, at the apex of Luffy's flight, the boy had turned rapidly from hunter to future meal. The bird, much larger than originally thought, snapped his head in its beak without so much as turning a feather, as though it regularly had rubbery pirate captains hurtling into the sky at it.
"Help!" Luffy howled as the bird began flying west at a far greater rate than their boat's current pace.
Zoro leapt into action, and, reading his intentions, Moire furled the sail just in time to keep it from being damaged. She had to brace herself on the mast to keep from being flung to the bow at the sudden lurch of Zoro rowing absolutely as fast as he could in pursuit of the avian kidnapper. Her dark hair in its new ponytail whipped in the wind, the charms and beads in her braids tinkling frantically, and for a moment, she couldn't ever remember feeling so alive. All the while, the swordsman was shouting at the top of his lungs at his captain.
It wasn't long before Moire was brought out of the thrill of the chase by the thin sound of voices - certainly not hers and they did not belong to her captain, either - through the ruckus Zoro was raising. They were calling for help. She squinted into the wind and saw a small craft, barely a dinghy, dead ahead. A moment later, Zoro also took notice, directing his shouting at them, at least momentarily.
"I don't have time to stop! You're just going to have to get on yourselves!"
They whipped past the little boat and suddenly had three more passengers. Facing aft to keep the wind out of her eyes, Moire took a moment to study the frazzled trio slumped near the stern. Dripping water, they looked thoroughly miserable and utterly relieved that someone had actually come along in this deserted part of the sea. One was heavy-set with dark skin and a square jaw sporting a goatee. Another had bright orange hair styled in the shape of an anvil, thick lips and squinted eyes. The last wore an odd cap with tails on either side of his head, a skull-and-cross-bones on the front with a bright red clown nose and makeup around the eyes. His face was all sharp angles, and despite his bedraggled state, there was something cruel about his eyes. Moire immediately didn't feel particularly comfortable, and her hand strayed to the hilt of her sword.
Their panting and huffing abruptly ended when all three shouted at the top of their lungs at Zoro: "Were you trying to run us over?"
The swordsman, still facing away from them, just chuckled under his breath. "Your climbing skills aren't that bad," he replied to their complaining. He didn't see the three begin to draw steel.
"Hey, stop the boat!" Orange-Hair called.
"This is the pirate Buggy - " Square-Jaw's sentence was cut off abruptly when a booted foot connected soundly with his rather large face. Moire blocked a swipe from Beanie-Guy's shortsword with her own just before Orange-Hair was intercepted by Zoro. The little boat rocked, and the sound of blows being traded rang across the ocean. It was only a matter of seconds before all went quiet.
The three were solidly beaten, sporting various bruises, lumps, bumps, and bloody noses all around, and forcibly planted on the bench to row. Their demeanor had changed entirely and they seemed happy to help the two who were quite obviously much too strong for them to handle. Sweat beaded their brows every time Moire's hand twitched to the hilt of her sword or Zoro's eyes crossed theirs just so.
"We didn't know you were the pirate hunter, Zoro! We're so sorry!" Square-Jaw called.
"We don't know who you are, miss, but we never meant to cross you!" Beanie-Guy added.
Zoro just glared harder at them. "Thanks to you three idiots, I lost sight of my friend. So just keep rowing."
The sea slowly slipped past the boat, and Moire almost missed the powerful wind as they had torn across the ocean before. She had to admit, she hadn't felt so exhilarated, so human, in years. Her sharp eyes strayed from the horizon, to the trio rowing, to the swordsman. He was an odd one: on the surface, all sharp, hard contours and absolutely no filter, while underneath there was a warmth. She could see it in his concern for Luffy, and wondered for a moment what it felt like. It had been a long time since she and her brother had been separated, and even longer since they were taken. Her childhood memories often seemed like a distant dream, and any inkling of emotion or sensation would disappear like smoke when she tried to grasp it. Since she had met Luffy and Zoro two days before, she had almost remembered those things, but it was all still too far distant, a faint buzzing in her ears or movement in the corner of her eye that was gone when she turned to find it. So far away had she gone that she nearly missed Zoro asking the three who their captain, this Buggy, was.
"You've never heard of Buggy the Clown?" Beanie exclaimed. His face darkened and he looked even more nervous than before. "He's the ruthless captain of our pirate ship. And he's eaten one of the Devil Fruits. He is one truly terrifying man."
A Devil Fruit, aye? You don't find too many of those in the East Blue. That must be why he's so "terrifying." The locals aren't used to dealing with his kind.
"He'll kill us all for letting a girl steal our boat and our treasure and getting captured by Pirate-Hunter Zoro and his girlfriend!"
Moire blinked. What? When she glanced at Zoro, there was a tinge of red across his cheeks and up his ears and he refused to meet her eyes. Instead, he directed his attention to the apparent leader of the trio, the one wearing the beanie.
"She's not my girlfriend, you idiot!" he shouted and knocked aforementioned idiot in the head with the hilt of one of his swords. He fell back, his eyes glazed and a bit of spit trailing from his mouth.
Leaning over to get a better look at the poor pirate, Moire muttered, "I think you may have knocked him unconscious."
Zoro humphed, crossing his arms over his chest. He still refused to look at her, obviously embarrassed. "He deserved it."
Moire rolled her eyes. They were adults, weren't they? Well, I might be as emotionally stunted as they come, and clearly Zoro has focused more on his training and pirate hunting than any sort of social life, so perhaps we're both in a similar situation when it comes to such matters. Hm? She noticed that the boat had almost stopped moving.
"Hey you two, keep rowing," she growled.
"Yes ma'am!" they cried in unison and set to with renewed vigor. What followed was a period of only mildly awkward silence stretched over the course of what Moire judged to be several miles. She settled herself near the prow of the boat, eyes raking the horizon for any sign of land. The terrible trio insisted that they were heading toward the nearest island, but with her bearings so thrown off by the storm, she couldn't be certain.
"At what port will we make landfall?" she asked over her shoulder.
Square-Jaw nearly knocked out his carrot-topped crewmate to be the first to answer.
"Orange Town, Miss!" She merely hummed in response, not looking back.
Good. Perhaps I wasn't so far off, after all. The town is a reasonably busy port for this part of the East Blue. I can barter passage south from there, with any luck.
"Isn't that where you said you were going to begin with?" Zoro commented from the rear.
"Yes, it is."
"You don't seem too happy to find out that we'll actually be landing there. Aren't you relieved that you'll still see your family soon?"
Apparently this one doesn't drop suspicions so easily. Aloud, Moire said, "I am, but pardon me if I don't jump for joy in a little dinghy with four strange men accompanying me."
The speck on the horizon that she had spotted a few minutes past was becoming steadily larger. It was at that moment that Zoro also saw it and took it for what it was: their destination. He hoped that stupid, big bird had its nest there and not on some other random rock.
When the five pulled into port, they docked beside a massive, ridiculous galleon. It was painted a lurid shade of purple, adorned with insane decorations in carnival colors. A pirate flag with a Jolly Roger that matched Beanie-Guy's hat flew atop its tallest mast. The docks, strangely enough, were completely silent. Where they should have been abuzz with activity, there was not a soul to be seen on the cobbled roads. The town rose up behind the docks: two- to three-storey white-washed homes, framed in dark wood, lined the streets, their red tile roofs glistening in the sun. But even further into town, Moire could detect no signs of life. Something wasn't right. Orange Town was supposed to be a thriving trade village, growing rapidly, not a seeming ghost town.
"Where is everyone?" It was Zoro who asked the question pressing on her mind before she could give it voice.
"Well, you see, sir," Square-Jaw replied almost sheepishly, "we've kind of taken over this town."
That doesn't bode well for me finding passage out of here. Not unless I can take down this idiot pirate captain. Doesn't he know that if you stifle trade to a town that it will no longer be prosperous enough to bother plundering? Better to strike an accord with the townsfolk, protection for valuables.
It only took a moment for Moire to become accustomed to dry land beneath her feet, and Zoro was similarly quick in adapting. When he straightened from disembarking, he immediately requested to be taken to the trio's captain, Buggy the Clown, in hopes of finding Luffy. The three agreed, but before Zoro followed them into the streets, he turned to Moire.
"Go do what you came here to do. I know it's not to see family. Just know that if you cross me or Luffy, you'll know what it's like to fight me," he rumbled, giving her a dark stare.
She met his gaze levelly, a knife appearing in her hand. "I don't take well to threats," she replied, watching his shoulders tense. "Warnings, though, I will bear in mind." An unspoken agreement passed between them: you stay out of my way, and I will stay out of yours. She slung her jacket, removed in the heat of the afternoon, over her uninjured shoulder and set off in the opposite direction of the three, disappearing around a corner.
Zoro watched her go, his curiosity nagging in the back of his mind, before turning to his guides who had been utterly confused by the exchange. "What are you waiting for? Let's go."
When the four were well on their way, Moire slipped back around her corner and followed, keeping to the edges of the street, making use of the shadows of awnings and any cover she could find in the empty town. If she wanted out of the East Blue, she had to get passage to at least near the Grand Line. To do that, trade and transport had to be reestablished in Orange Town. Otherwise, she could be stranded on land for quite some time.
She trailed the four unnoticed to near the center of town, where they stopped in front of a two-storey tavern. The roof was different from the others; where the rest of the buildings had slanted roofs, this one had what appeared to be a massive "widow's walk" patio. A sign above the door proclaimed it The Drinker's Pub - what an original name, Moire thought - and the sounds of raucous amusement could be heard coming from within and above.
Suddenly, cannon fire echoed from the roof of the pub and the buildings against which Moire leaned began to fall like dominoes for blocks. She scrambled out of the way as rubble began to fall towards her, her quick reflexes the only thing saving her from being crushed as building upon building toppled. Whatever was shot from the cannon left a trail of destruction at least a mile long before exploding with a massive roar that left her ears ringing. For a moment, her vision of the present faded, and she was eleven again, on her home island, with smoke and death smearing the dawn. She froze, her chest constricting.
And just like that, the moment passed, and she was left gulping for air, her stomach heaving. She remembered the pain of her home being destroyed, torn away, lives ended like the people who'd lived them were nothing but meaningless toys in some grander game. With the memory came rage. It was no longer simply practical to end Buggy's reign of terror.
This was personal.