While the situation on the water was being dealt with, Eldoraggo's fight with the green-haired swordsman had progressed up into the island's relative highlands, through the jungle and then into the grassy, jutting fields that overlook it. It's mostly flatland, which undeniably gives Eldoraggo the advantage.

The open space provides for no convenient hiding places, and plenty of options for someone with a good long-range option such as himself. The swordsman would ordinarily be a sitting duck, if not for his skill, which Eldoraggo is reluctantly made to acknowledge. The swordsman keeps himself up close to and within melee distance of Eldoraggo, doggedly parrying Eldoraggo's claws, ducking out of the way of Eldoraggo's Devil Fruit powered blasts of weaponized sound, and making his own wholehearted attempts to gut Eldoraggo like a fish.

It's only because Eldoraggo has been thus far unable to shake him that the pair of them had ended up meandering, with violence, as far out as they did. It's as annoying to Eldoraggo as it is impressive of the swordsman, and only makes Eldoraggo more determined to kill him painfully.

From the corner of his eye, Eldoraggo spots the long-nosed boy and the little girl sneaking up nearer from behind the sparse rocks that dot the grass. He thinks that he should kill them too, once he has the swordsman out of the way. For the audacity of believing they could escape his notice.

Finally, Eldoraggo is successful in delivering a painful kick squarely to the swordsman's stomach, throwing him back. Eldoraggo takes the opportunity to leap back himself, widening the gap between them farther.

Eldoraggo braces himself, rears, and roars. His roar tears the atmosphere apart, as it always does, and cleaves the earth as it races toward the swordsman, far too fast for a man off his balance to escape.

Eldoraddo never has the chance to realize that he's underestimated his opponent.

️ ️ ️XXX

Zoro! Usopp shrieks internally from behind the rock that he and Treva found for cover, peeking around it. He's briefly certain that Zoro is done for, and petrified at the prospect.

But in the split second between Eldoraggo firing off his attack and it coming into contact with Zoro, what Usopp sees of Zoro's face is simply irritated. He regains his footing at a skid, and even with it still relatively uncertain, Zoro brings up his swords to cut. Driven by a logic comprehensible only to himself and maybe Luffy, Zoro kicks directly into the beam of light.

And then Zoro, impossibly, slices the beam of light in twain.

It's too bright for Usopp to really see what happens next, but the dark figure of Zoro, a shadow against the glow, closes the distance back up to Eldoraggo in an instant. There's the sound of steel singing, then slashing, and then of something squelching and going thud.

Blessedly, it's before the spots in Usopp's vision clear that he's able to conclude, Oh. Oh, Zoro just cut a guy in half. Resolutely, Usopp refuses to look at the body, vaguely queasy.

He turns instead to Treva, to check on her. He hopes that Treva hadn't seen anything gruesome. She's making a scrunched up, nebulously disapproving face that Usopp doesn't recognize.

"Treva?" Usopp prompts, alarmed.

"Blood stinks," Treva informs him.

Usopp doesn't know why he expected her to be normal. She never has been before, after all. In its own way, it's a relief.

Getting over her gripes with the smell, Treva shakes her head and retrieves a whole lemon from one of her cavernous coat pockets. She raises it up to inspect, turning it this way and that, and when it doesn't reveal itself to be anything but a lemon, Treva nods and puts it away again. She then gets her book from her bag and leaks some future gunk onto it, which thereafter earns a second nod. She stuffs it once more into her bag, stands, and patters over to Zoro without a word of explanation for herself, perfectly happy again. Usopp hurries to follow Treva, put off.

"Zoro!" Treva greets, as pleased to see him as she ever is to see a member of Luffy's crew. More than usual, really, with Zoro. Treva is still ambiguously intimidated by his face.

Zoro acknowledges them both with an incline of his head to them. Usopp tries even harder to ignore the corpse just off to the side, because he's a real pirate now, and it's not like Zoro had had much of a choice.

Pretending valiantly that his knees aren't quaking, Usopp decides to focus instead on the absurdity of what Zoro had done. "How did you cut through his Devil Fruit power? That was crazy…!"

But Zoro only frowns at Usopp. "What are you talking about?"

Usopp frowns back at him. He gestures nebulously. "Eldoraggo's beam attack. You cut through it."

"Well," says Zoro. "Yeah." He'd already sheathed the sword he wields in his mouth and one of the others. He sheaths the last one. "I cut through air all the time."

Usopp knew before that Zoro was a lunatic, but he's still gobsmacked. Perhaps out of bile fascination, Usopp asks, "Then why didn't you just… get some distance from the start, and catch Eldoraggo off guard earlier?"

Zoro's frown grows more confused, which Usopp feels is really very unfair. If either of them has a right to confusion, it's very much Usopp.

"I was trying to cut him down," Zoro tries to explain. "Even if I did get some distance, I still would've had to close it, anyway. There was no point."

Usopp realizes that he should've expected strategy from Zoro about as much as he should've expected good sense from Treva, and resolves instead to appreciate that Zoro's instincts had gotten him victory instead of simply killed. Before Usopp can lose any more braincells to the conversation, he resolves also to end it.

"We should probably go see how the others are doing," Usopp says, blatantly changing the subject.

Fortunately, Zoro and Treva are all too content with this, and they head off. Usopp is, if nothing else, profoundly glad to remove himself from the presence of the bisected human carcass.

️ ️XXX ️

Yuta had fought Golass on a flat ridge of rock overlooking the beach, and Usopp, Zoro, and Treva find him at the same time that Luffy and Nami do, approaching from opposite directions.

Yuta still has his wooden sword in hand, but Golass's extremely real, extremely made-of-metal sword is buried in the stone of the ground, sticking up. Golass is beside it and before Yuta, on his elbows and knees, trembling and looking apoplectic.

"Did…" Usopp starts. Stops. Starts again, pointing at the scene. "Did Yuta actually win?"

Nami, also pointing, appears to be asking Luffy the same thing, but not loud enough for Usopp to hear. Golass shouts then, a furious, wordless exclamation, and everyone except Treva startles.

"What am I doing?" Golass demands of himself. He strikes the earth with his fist. "Trying to kill a kid, just because I was paid to? Dammit…!"

Usopp glances uncertainly from Golass to everyone else. Zoro's expression is somewhere in the intersection of a frown and a cringe, as if in second hand embarrassment, while Treva is ignoring Golass and Yuta completely in favor of staring daggers at Luffy, her face scrunched up like an unhappy sockpuppet; on the other side, Luffy is watching Golass like he might go over there to poke at him, and Nami, carrying a massive sack of stolen treasure, is already edging surreptitiously away from it all.

Yuta, for his part, seems only at a loss, blinking at Golass. He stations his free hand loosely at his hip, and with his sword hand, he sort of taps his sword on his own shoulder, thinking. He doesn't scan as a kid who's ever still for very long.

"I don't really get it," Yuta admits. The tapping ceases. "But if you hate it that much, you should just stop."

This surprises Golass enough that his attention snaps up to marvel at Yuta, flabbergasted. "What?"

"You hate it, right?" Yuta's wooden sword returns to his side. He shrugs. "So, just stop."

Golass keeps goggling at Yuta like he's nuts, which isn't fair. Yuta is ten years old, and he might still grow out of it, unlike Luffy.

As for Luffy, his crewmates who aren't the other ten-year-old all immediately turn to him. He turns back to them all in askance, one after the other, and then points to himself, like, Who, me?

The three of them all glare at him.

Yeah, you!

Before Nami can smack Luffy upside the head for his lack of self-awareness, Golass bursts into exasperated, exhausted laughter. He topples onto his side, then rolls over onto his back, his arms out on either side of him.

"Yeah, kid," he wheezes, eventually. His eyes are on the sky, endless and blue above. "Yeah. Maybe I should."

Yuta, emboldened by this, hops over to crouch down next to Golass's head, enthused. "Hey! Hey, so, that means you're out of a job, right?"

Golass sobers up somewhat. He regards Yuta with some suspicion. "Most likely. So?"

"So!" Yuta pronounces, even further encouraged. He bounces back to his feet and waves his sword around for emphasis. "You should join my crew! You'll be our first member tall enough to reach the top shelves at my house!"

Golass devolves into more helpless, progressively hysterical laughter, which Yuta only takes as assent. Yuta, thrilled, takes it upon himself to regale to Golass what his other friends, Reika, Ryuji, and Tobio, are like.

Usopp, Zoro, and Nami all look directly to Luffy again, and Luffy continues not to make the very obvious connection that they all did. Treva, heedless of all of this, patters over to Luffy, still with that sour, insolubly distressed face.

She procures a fistful of bandaids from her bag, which she holds out to Luffy. For the first time, it registers to Usopp that Luffy actually is rather beat up, though it doesn't seem to bother him much. That must have been what Treva was put off by.

"Thanks, Treva!" Luffy says, accepting the bandaids. "D'you wanna be the doctor, then?"

Treva bristles. "What? No! Chopper is the doctor!"

This distracts both Yuta and Golass, who look over.

"Chopper?" Golass repeats, skeptical.

"Sounds like a swordsman's name," observes Yuta, with interest.

"I thought you said he was the mascot," Luffy puts in, to Treva, his eyebrows knitting together.

Hands balling to fists at her sides, Treva stomps her foot, frustrated. "He's the mascot and the doctor, so I can't be either of those things! It's like I keep telling you, I'm the strate—"

"I'd let you be the doctor," Yuta enterprisingly informs Treva, who has no qualifications.

"Hey!" yelps Luffy, alarmed. "You can't poach my crewmates!"

Treva shrieks with fury. The situation mostly deteriorates from there into so much nonsense.

️ ️XXX ️

Nami and Usopp are the ones who manage, at length, to get things back under control, when Nami smacks Luffy upside the head and Usopp distracts Yuta by asking after the positions on his crew he's already filled.

After Golass has retrieved and sheathed his sword, he looks around at the assortment of strange children and teens, considering. It's ultimately Zoro that he addresses, with some apprehension.

"Eldoraggo is dead, I take it?" Golass asks.

"Yeah," says Zoro. He grimaces, and awkwardly, he tacks on, "Sorry for your loss."

Golass snorts, humorless. "No, don't be. I wasn't traveling with him long, and it's no excuse, but it was only because…" He trails off. Scowls. Concludes, "It doesn't matter now. It was just the only work I could take on at the time. From what I knew of him, you've done the East Blue's small coastal villages a favor."

Luffy's eyes go wide, and then his eyebrows pinch together. "You're not even on Eldoraggo's crew?"

Golass squints back at Luffy. "What?"

"Were you on his crew, or was he just paying you?" Luffy questions, seeking clarity.

Golass keeps squinting at him. "What's the difference?"

Luffy opens his mouth, indignant, but Nami slaps her hand over his mouth and holds him back.

"Luffy has some very special ideas about how pirates work," she informs Golass. Luffy tries to voice something very spirited in concord, but it comes out mostly as a muffled series of mmmf mrrh mmhh type sounds.

Golass shakes his head, plainly failing to understand them, but letting it go. He prompts, "What about the rest of Eldoraggo's men?"

Usopp, who had been minding Yuta off to the side, and Treva, who had been content to stand around and stare up at everyone from next to Luffy, both perk up at this.

"They're on their way here," Treva says. "We should go to Woonan's cave."

Usopp blanches. "What if the Eldoraggo Pirates follow us?!"

Treva blinks at him with her big, yellow eyes. "The simplest thing would be to kill them all."

Nami doesn't necessarily disagree with that, if the nature of the Eldoraggo Pirates is as Golass had reported, but remembering Skullface's host gives her pause. Uncomfortable, she glances to Luffy, who glances back. It's kind of a stupid sight, what with him restrained as he is, so Nami huffs and releases him.

Golass shakes his head again. Without Nami having to work out how she would go about suggesting a different course of action, if that's even something she wants to do, he offers, "You all go ahead, and I'll hold them off. Eldoraggo hired me because they're all cowards, and weak. They'll run rather than fight me."

"Let's meet back up on the beach," Yuta proposes. He brightens. "I want to see the cave!"

With their plan, such as it is, outlined, the Strawhats and Yuta split up from Golass. As the bigger party walks off, farther up onto the island's main hill, Yuta turns to Treva.

"Did you ever get to use that lemon?" he queries, nonsensically.

It earns him one of Treva's smuggest smiles yet. She crosses her arms and puffs out her chest, pleased with herself. "I brought it with me as insurance, but in the end, I didn't need it! But it was still good to have. I'm gonna put it back in the fridge later."

At least they're having fun, Nami thinks.

She wonders if she was ever that difficult to keep up with, when she was a kid.

Probably not.

X️XX ️ ️

Treva leads the way, since she already knows where whatever Woonan left behind, his cave, and Ganzo and Tobio all are. The Strawhats and Yuta soon reach the highest point on the island, where there's a small, brick house with a thatched roof.

Ganzo and Tobio are outside of the house, both sitting on one of the many large rocks that populate this barren part of the island. Tobio is determinedly glaring at the ground, his eyes red-rimmed, and Ganzo, who seems exhausted, has his hand on Tobio's head, comforting. Ganzo's big pot of oden is still strapped on top of his own head.

Ganzo looks up at the rest of the group's approach, but Tobio only scowls. Yuta, curious, runs up to them.

"Did you find Woonan?" Yuta asks.

That does earn him Tobio's focus. Indignant, his hands balling into fists, Tobio snaps at Yuta, "What's it to you?"

Ganzo pats Tobio's head in light warning, to remind him not to lash out mindlessly. Tobio's face crumples up and he looks away again, chastised. Ganzo, as a peace offering, musses his hair, and Tobio really looks like he will cry.

Yuta's eyebrows disappear behind his bangs and hat. The Strawhats catch up with him, their dispositions ranging from Luffy, curious also; to Nami and Zoro, bemused; to Usopp, worried. And then, of course, to Treva, who doesn't seem to care very much. Unlike the others, she makes no move to stop, and only keeps walking in the direction of the little house and its door.

This makes Ganzo blink at her back, but then he somewhere between snorts and huffs, not disapproving. He jabs his free thumb at her and the house over his shoulder.

"Why don't you go see for yourself?" Ganzo prompts them all. "That's why you're all here."

Luffy brightens up at this. After a beat more to digest what Ganzo had said, Yuta does too.

"Yeah!" Luffy agrees, and hurries off after Treva. The door is jammed, and she's struggling mightily to try to force it open, so she hasn't actually made it all that farther ahead.

Yuta nods and follows Luffy. Zoro shrugs and Nami rolls her eyes, but they do the same, Nami after depositing her bag for safekeeping with Ganzo. It wouldn't have fit through the door. Usopp is the only one who hangs back, just long enough to ask after Tobio and Ganzo's wellbeing. Yuta glances back to see what's holding Usopp up, so Zoro and Nami overtake him.

In response to Usopp, Ganzo shakes his head. "We're fine, kid. It's not anything really horrible in there, just…" He grimaces. Sighs. "I'm at peace with it. You ought to be old enough to understand, and those two—" At that, he nods to Yuta and Treva. "—Too young for it to bother them."

"Ah," says Usopp, discomforted. But he recovers, mostly. "I see."

He basically runs away back to the rest of them, which is kind of impressive, in its own way. He's escaping a somewhat unsettling situation, sure, but only to be trapezing directly into what's bound to be an even more unsettling situation, with whatever is inside the house.

Usopp and Yuta get over to the door, where Luffy, Nami, and Zoro have congregated. Treva is still fighting with the door, failing to have it pushed or pulled. Luffy and Zoro appear ready to just let her keep at it, so it's Nami who finally has to shoo Treva from the handle.

Treva lets it go, steps away, and slumps. Nami plants her hands on her hips and gives Zoro and Luffy both dirty looks.

"Does either of you want to be useful?" Nami demands of them.

"Not especially," Zoro tells her.

"Sometimes," Luffy reasons.

Nami shakes her fist at them, and Yuta thinks that she's not bluffing. Luffy laughs and easily opens the door. Treva deflates even more thoroughly.

Inside, the little house is entirely empty, and seems to have been abandoned for quite a while. Opposite the door, though, on the other wall, is a fireplace, whose hearth has been pushed aside to reveal a set of stairs descending down into the earth. By Ganzo, presumably.

They all go over to the top of the stairs. Usopp peers down into the darkness.

"They go pretty far down," he observes, unenthused.

"A basement, huh?" muses Nami, mulling it over. She considers Treva. "Is Woonan down there?"

"Yeah," Treva says.

Nami's mouth presses into a thin line, like there's something else she's turning over in her mind. Before she can decide whether or not she'll voice whatever it is to Treva, Luffy and Treva are already marching down the stairs, and Nami lets it go for now with another eyeroll.

They all go, though Usopp strikes Yuta as doing so only reluctantly. It really is a long way down, though Nami is able to produce a lantern for them from who knows where.

When they make it to the bottom, they come across a second door, this one much sturdier than the one to the house. Everyone pauses at it.

"It's here," says Nami, with some trepidation. She had led the way with that lantern, so her back is to everyone, and Yuta can't see her face.

Usopp is still the most unnerved, but Luffy and Zoro are frowning too, now. The only ones who Yuta could call disaffected are him, who is still chiefly curious, and Treva, who is watching her crewmates rather than the door. If anything, she's perfectly happy, just getting to be involved.

Maybe Ganzo was right, and they are too young to really get it. Yuta doesn't suppose that it could be his problem, then, however, whatever it is.

Nami reaches for the door's handle. "I'm opening it."

And so she does.

All of them stare, and Yuta thinks, Oh!

Because that's what Tobio had been so upset about. Woonan, after all, has been his hero for ages.

And Woonan is nothing more now than a skeleton in a pirate captain's coat and hat.

️ ️ ️XXX

Note: Tragically, school is starting back up again, so my update schedule might really get unreliable for a while. I'll do my best to stay consistent, but if I don't manage it, let's be as generous as possible and say that I went out very respectably, with sword in hand.