Nexus: Heroes Will Rise

by tmb1112

Universal borders have been erased and beings from thousands of universes now live on the same world: Nexus. In the first Saga of Nexus, Awul was saved, but the mysteries of Nexus remain. Now our heroes sail across the sea to Aebrith to search for lost loved ones and save the world. MCs from DBZ, KH, Soul Eater, FT, Blue Exorcist, Bleach, 7DS, OP, Ben 10, SAO, HxH, and many more!

90. Nexus HWR 13-2 Promise

A/N Hey guys. Just want to say that updates might be taking a little longer for now on. I'm in Tokyo studying abroad for the semester starting in a week, and I haven't had all that much time for writing between orientations and the wild Japanese parties XD. Anyway, just wanted to let you know the reason. Good news is though, I already have the next chapter after this one finished so I'll be able to get that one out to you pretty soon. Without further delay: here's the chapter!

Disclaimer: okay maybe a little delay, but I'm just reminding everyone that I own none of the characters in this story. All credit to their original creators.

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Nexus HWR 13.2 Promise:

"You saw Zoro?" Gray asked.

"Yeah," Nami replied, nodding at the one-armed man in front of her.

Gray stood in the cockpit of the giant tank-truck that had all of the Straw Hats in it. Kirito was sitting in front of their group, behind a computer that he was typing into while looking up over it and through the glass windshield at the front of the ship. The truck was so large that it had an entire room just for driving, and yet that room was not a third of the length of the full third floor of the vehicle. The room curved up from the front towards the back and the windshield stopped halfway up the ceiling when it started to flatten out, turning to steel instead. There were some empty seats around Kirito with computers in front of them as well, but at their current speed they did not need to utilize their weapons systems, nor did they need anyone at the communications computer since they just left the Resistance Base under an hour earlier.

The black-haired Fairy Tail mage stood on one side of a circle that was mostly wrapped around him, making it look like a semicircle with Gray in the middle. Gray did not like the looks on the Straw Hats' faces, but he did not expect much different reactions from them after hearing what they said. "Did you, mention me?" Gray asked hopefully.

Luffy frowned, and he shook his head. Gray tssked and clenched his right fist at his side. "Damn it," Gray whispered.

"Zoro-san is looking for you, correct?" Robin asked the man.

"I think so," Gray replied to the woman on his right.

Luffy's frown lifted back into a straight line, and he looked more angry at himself now. I should have said Gray's name, then maybe Zoro would have, Luffy shook his head around, then he said, "Why is-" He stopped himself, and he frowned again. He wanted to ask why Zoro was looking for Gray so hard, but it made him upset thinking about what that answer might be. He spent over half of a year with Zoro on his crew, then some more time after they met back up two years later, but Gray- Gray had traveled with him for as long if not longer from what Luffy understood.

"Some other guy had Zoro's blades," Sanji said. Gray turned to the chef, and Sanji continued, "He told me that Zoro died. You know anything about that?"

The other Straw Hats and Kirito all waited for an answer. Gray glanced around at them, and then he sighed and said, "Yes. I knew. Zoro died only a few months after we got to Aebrith. He was the, shinigami friend I mentioned." The others went wide-eyed as they recalled what Gray talked about right after they left Dressrosa. "Sorry for not mentioning it sooner, but it would be hard to believe if you hadn't already seen him for yourselves."

"So Zoro's, wait wait wait," Luffy shook around his head in confusion. Back when Sanji mentioned Zoro dying, he thought it was similar to what must have happened to Juvia or Killua.

"I don't understand," Nami began hesitantly.

"Are you saying, Zoro, is still dead?" Franky asked. He was too freaked out by that to speak in a loud tone or yell 'Super' or anything.

Gray nodded his head slowly. He looked into Luffy's eyes, and he said to the shocked captain, "Zoro does not have his real physical body anymore. It's why Takeshi usually carries his swords for him, or at least two of them. Zabuza carries Zoro's cursed blade since Takeshi did not like Sandai Kitetsu's bloodlust." Gray faded off at the annoyed look growing on Luffy's face.

"Why didn't Zoro come with us?" Luffy asked. He clenched his fists at his sides, hating that he had to ask someone else this question. The idea that Gray would have the answer to why Zoro was acting that way made him feel even less connected to his nakama than before. "It doesn't make sense that Zoro wouldn't join us. After he helped us escape, he should have been right behind…" Luffy grit his teeth, and his crewmates looked at him in surprise. They did not know it, but the entire trip south after they had left Pyraxas, Luffy had been hoping that Zoro would come find them. It had been a week now though, and there was no sign of his old friend following him.

"It's because," Gray whispered. He stopped himself, then he continued, "It's the same reason, I think, that when I joined the Resistance, Zoro would not come with me. He was my closest friend on Nexus," Gray added, looking away as he did. He felt strange saying it to people who thought they were closer to Zoro than he was, and he did not like the looks they kept giving him. Then again, he knew he had never explained himself well enough to the pirates in order to avoid this same situation, so he blamed himself for getting in this mess in the first place. Gray rubbed his forehead with his right hand, then he looked forward with a darker look on his face. "The Zoro you know, he's still in there, somewhere. Zoro's not the same man you knew though before coming to this world, or even after for a short time."

"Dying wouldn't-" Luffy began.

"I'm not just talking about how he's a shinigami now," Gray added quickly. He frowned and clenched his teeth shut hard, and his eyes had to clench as well. Clenching his eyes while his face scrunched up made him look like he was in pain, but as the others wondered what had just hurt him, they realized as his eyes opened back up that it was not a physical injury. Gray's eyes could not hide the sadness that he tried to clench out of them a second ago so that he could continue. "Becoming the strongest is the most important thing to Zoro now," Gray said. "He is absorbed, obsessed might be a better word for it."

"Zoro's always wanted to become the strongest swordsman," Luffy argued.

"Not this badly," Gray whispered. "Those first few months, and even after he died, it was a different kind of goal than what it is now. He was training all that time, but he was also looking for you. He, still wanted to find you, to help you become the Pirate King." Luffy's eyes grew wide that Gray was saying all of this in the past tense. The other Straw Hats did not like what Gray was getting at either, and Kirito glanced behind him to the others, also wondering what had happened to the green-haired man he had seen once before. "Soon before I joined the Resistance though, something happened that changed him. Zoro is obsessed now by his goal, his need to become stronger, because he wasn't strong enough, when it mattered most."

---

FD + 145

Roronoa Zoro slid two of his swords down into the sheath at his waist. Then he reached up and grabbed the white hilt out of his mouth before sliding his third sword back into its sheath as well. All around the hillside a mile east from a small town, black bodies of creatures of Grimm with their bone structures on the outsides were dissolving into black dust and fading away. Zoro glanced right and saw Gray ease his head left as a ten foot tall minotaur tried punching him in the back. Good, Zoro thought at the movement, nodding his head with a small grin.

Gray saw the fist go by the side of his head and let out a deep breath. That was close, but I saw it coming. More like, I heard it, Gray spun with a grin, and he slashed the sword he created with his Ice-Make magic. He cut into the side of the monster almost twice his height, then he ducked another swing of the beast's massive claw. As he ducked, he stuck out his left hand and light shimmered along his fingers. He started swinging up while yelling, "Ice-Make: Dual Wield!" A second sword formed in his left hand and he slashed from the tall black minotaur's stomach all the way up to its shoulder. The beast stumbled back, and Gray pulled both swords out to his sides before sprinting forward. He slashed them across the front of his body and ended up on the other side of the monster, while Zoro watched with his green eyebrows lifted up.

That looks like, Zoro thought, and then he cracked a larger smile at the sight of an 'X' of blood splashing out of the minotaur's chest. It took a second after Gray had passed the monster's body, and Zoro chuckled at a move he recognized very well, as it was one of his own.

Onigiri, Gray thought, smirking to himself without turning back towards the pirate he had learned the technique from watching. Instead, he turned left and watched as another young man only a couple of years younger than him doing backflips away from a large enemy. The Vajra was scarier than the minotaur Gray just fought, and the electricity zapping off of the huge lion Aragami's face gave it an even more threatening appearance. Yamamoto Takeshi was panting as he flipped one more time harder off the palms of his hands so that he lifted into the air. As he rose into the air, he drew a sword out of a brown sheath at his side and slashed it down with his right hand, while holding a sword made of what looked like bamboo in his left. A flying slash came off of his actual steel sword and slammed into the monster chasing him, but the Aragami's hard flesh let it push straight through and keep charging him.

Takeshi was landing right in the path of the charging monster, and another man nearby who just finished off the last of his enemies looked over. The ninja wore a headband with a line slashed horizontally through the middle of its silver part, he had a white mask over the bottom of his face, and his sword was much larger than any of the others' ones. Zabuza slashed Kubikiribouchou down and let go so the sword imbedded in the ground next to him, then he made half a dozen hand signs in front of his face in only a few seconds. Takeshi hit the ground and he crossed his swords in front of him to protect from the Vajra. Before the monster hit though, a wave of water slammed into the side of the beast and knocked it off the ground. The wave crashed over the Vajra, then its rough water pushed and pulled the Aragami beneath the waves without letting it get out. The water started to boil after a few seconds of this, and three of the men around watched wide-eyed as the skin of the creature inside the water started to bubble as well.

The water turned red fast. It became impossible to see the creature inside the water, but those watching wondered whether it was because of all the blood in the way, or if the monster's body had already broken down. Either way, a few seconds later Zabuza's ninjutsu dropped into the ground and left nothing but wet grass in its place. That grass was more red than when their fight started though, almost as red as some of the plains of red grass they had traveled on before. Takeshi turned his head towards the ninja twenty yards from him and gave the older man a grin, "Thanks for the save."

"Hmph," Zabuza grumbled. He put his sword back on his back, and the man with spiky black hair turned and started walking away. "That was pathetic," he said, and Takeshi frowned at the man's cold words.

Gray watched as Zabuza walked off. At least he helped Takeshi. Still, he's so much colder than before. Seeing the person closest to you die really messes with a person. Gray thought back on the village they were attacked in over a month ago, nearing two months now, by the Espada Zommari Rureaux. Haku wasn't the only one he killed, Gray shifted his gaze to a man with green hair near him who was looking his way. Gray wiped the grim look on his face at the confused one Zoro was giving him. "Let's head into that town now," Zoro said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the nearby town that Zabuza was already walking towards.

"Alright," Takeshi agreed, putting his swords away at his side and walking towards them. He scratched the side of his head as he got up to Gray's side, the two of them walking fifteen feet behind Zoro. "Guess I kind of screwed up, again. Sorry about that."

Gray waved him off like he was worried about nothing. "We're a team," Gray said. "That big one was just stronger than most of the others."

"Heh, you got that right," Takeshi said, and he leaned forward stretching his back out. He let out an 'oof' as he cracked his back, seemingly from the exchange he had with the Vajra before Zabuza helped him out. "Still," he began again as he straightened back out. "I feel a little out of place around you guys. You're all so strong."

"You're pretty strong too," Gray said, and he chuckled afterwards. "But I know the feeling. Why do you think I've started using swords so much recently?"

Takeshi looked at him in surprise, then the younger man started laughing as he had not noticed. It was easier for Zabuza and Zoro to notice since they had been with Gray for more than twice as long, and Gray had already started using ice swords often in fights by the time Takeshi joined up with them. In the past month though, it had been every fight that Gray would put swords in his hands to start it off.

The group headed into town and caught up to Zabuza who stood in the center of a dirt path that cut between two lines of buildings. The path was not very clear, there was grass growing around it, and the buildings on either side were not much larger than the houses around the outskirts, but it was pretty clearly the main road of the town. "Anyone see an inn?" Takeshi asked, glancing around with a disappointed look on his face.

Zabuza turned left and walked towards a place with small swinging wooden doors in the entrance. It looked like a bar or tavern, and the ninja just pushed through the doors and inside the place some music was coming out of. The music cut off after Zabuza entered, but the three still outside heard it come back a few seconds later. "Maybe, there's a spare room above the bar?" Takeshi offered.

"Sure that's why he went in," Gray muttered in response.

"Over there," Zoro said. The two behind him looked forward to see Zoro pointing down the road where there was another wooden building that did not look much different that the rest of them. The building looked a little more traditional than most, and as the group walked towards it, Gray saw that the door on one side was made of paper. The roof was slanted on either side, unlike many of the flat roofs on the sides of the main street. This building was down the road from them but not on either side of the street, instead on the far side of a path that the main one ended on.

They reached the intersection of the main road with the connecting one, and Takeshi lifted his eyebrows with a look of recognition growing on his face. "This is a dojo," the teenage swordsman said.

Gray looked back and forth between the other two, and then he asked, "Why'd we come over here?"

"I'll challenge the guy who runs this place," Zoro said, cracking a grin as he did. "I'll make a bet that if I beat him, we get to spend the night in the dojo. If he wins, well," Zoro grinned some more and he flicked the white hilt on his side up so that the sun glinted off the small bit of steel he let show. "He won't win," Zoro finished.

Takeshi smiled and Gray chuckled a few times, and the two followed after Zoro as he headed for the paper door at the front of the dojo. The two of them reached the door and Zoro slid it to the side without pausing. It felt a little awkward to the other two that he did not at least knock first, and it felt more awkward considering there were over a dozen people kneeling around the thin walls of the room they entered into. The floors were padded and every person kneeling on the soft floor was wearing a white gi and had a training sword lain horizontally over their knees. Many of those people looked towards the doors as the three walked in, but the two in the center of the room did not look away from each other despite the entrance of the others.

Zoro held his tongue before calling out his challenge. He would have said something right away, but they had entered right in the middle of a match between some pretty good swordsmen. The shorter of the figures was wearing a kendo helmet called a Bougu with a white mask on the front covered in thin slits that allowed for the fighter to see and breath freely. The shorter swordsman was also the one on the defensive, as the only figure in the room who did not have on a white gi was slashing back and forth with the wooden sword in his hand. The man had a piece of wheat sticking out of his closed lips and a calm demeanor about him even as he blocked and swiped powerful blows with every movement of his sword. He had a pale complexion, long light-blond hair, and wore a white t-shirt and a pair of green baggy pants.

He's good, Zoro thought, while the man swiping at the younger figure darted his eyes over to him. The two of them made eye contact for a second, and the dojo's master lifted his right hand that he caught the wooden sword of the shorter figure in when the swordsman tried to catch him off guard. Even after he caught the blade though, the short fighter was not finished and let go with one hand, stomping forward and punching at the master swordsman's gut. The swordsman smacked his own wood sword in while pushing his student's blade to the side, slamming the shorter one's arm on the wrist and making a yelp of pain escape their lips. Zoro's gaze shifted from the swordsman who also brought his attention away to the shorter one he was fighting.

The sound of the yelp also got Gray and Takeshi's attentions, as they were surprised to hear the pitch of it was high. A girl? Gray wondered.

"Who are you?" The master swordsman asked, while turning away from his student to show that their spar had ended for the moment. The girl fumed but turned as well to whoever her master was speaking to. She had been so focused on the match and she would not dare look away during it considering the gap that already existed between her and her master's levels.

"Mifune-sensei, would you like us to remove them?" One of the students near the door asked, standing up and reaching down for his training sword.

"Remove us?" Zoro questioned, while flicking one of his swords out of its sheath a little to show the sharp steel inside. "Would you like to draw that weapon of yours?" He questioned, darting his eyes over with a small smirk that had the student stumbling backwards and backing himself right into a wall. His fellow students who were inspired by their comrade's bravery dropped their jaws as he backed away with nothing but a mean look from the mysterious visitor. Zoro noticed Gray roll his eyes at him and Takeshi looking at him expectantly, and he decided to stop messing with that guy and turned back to the sensei. "Mifune was it?" Zoro began. The blond man nodded, a difficult to read expression on his blank face that did not show whether or not he was upset about Zoro threatening his student. Zoro stepped another foot into the room, without taking off his shoes which meant he was standing on the padded floor with his dirty shoes, this time something that made the dojo's master narrow his eyebrows. "I'm here to challenge you. If I win, my comrades and I get to stay at this dojo for the night."

"There's no way," a quiet voice whispered from Mifune's left side and a little behind him. "You couldn't beat Mifune-sensei in a million years." The short figure stepped forward, and Zoro stared back down at the younger fighter with a confused expression on his face. He did not know why the kid was speaking to him, but her high pitched voice sounded familiar even though Zoro could not place where he had heard it before. "After all," the girl said, while reaching up and grabbing either side of her Bougu. She started lifting it up and dark blue hair fell out from under the sides, falling just below her shoulders on the sides and right above her eyes on her bangs. "You couldn't even beat me once." Zoro's eyes both shot open huge and his jaw dropped. Gray and Takeshi looked in at their comrade in confusion, while the preteen girl just started laughing to herself at the expression on the man in the middle's face.

The shock had hit the girl's face first, but thanks to her training gear no one had seen everything that flashed over her face in the seconds after she saw his face. The shock, the confusion, the realization, the smile, and then the smug look before she started speaking that stayed on her face after she removed her helmet. Zoro was stuck on the shock though, while everyone else was still on confusion as they did not understand what was going on. Mifune seemed to understand it though, looking down at his pupil and then back at the challenger at his door. "You know this man," he stated.

"K-" Zoro started, but he stopped himself because there was no way what he was thinking could be right. Where am I? He thought. A thought passed through his mind that this could not be happening because the girl in front of him was dead, but this was no world he had ever seen before. Did I die, and this is the next world down? What's going on? Is this really… "Kuina?" Zoro asked.

Kuina? Gray thought, wondering if he had ever heard Zoro mention the name before. He could not recall it though, and just continued to watch with the others as the girl smirked some more and gave him a single nod in reply. "Look who's back from the dead," she said, still with that sly smirk on her face.

Gray and Takeshi's eyes popped open wide and they spun to Zoro. Takeshi looked back at her fast, and asked, "How did you know he's dead?"

Kuina's face filled with shock, and she snapped her attention back to Zoro's eyes to find out what they were talking about. Zoro was still just staring at her in shock though, not understanding the situation he was in at all. "I wasn't talking about him," she said in a low voice, making Gray and Takeshi, as well as everyone in the dojo other than her sensei go even more wide-eyed that she was talking about herself. "You let yourself die?" She asked, an annoyed tone in her voice as the question came out.

Zoro's shocked expression finally went away, replaced with disbelief at the sound of her tone. "What?" He snapped.

"Oh nothing," she said and rolled her eyes. She shook her head a little and chuckled like she should not have been surprised, and then said out loud in a sarcastic voice, "It's just, seeing that you're already an adult, I figured you would have been a little stronger than that."

Zoro dropped his bottom lip again, then he snapped back, "Let's see if you're still saying that, after I crush your master." Zoro looked back at Mifune but gone was the cocky challenging expression he had on his face when he entered the room.

Mifune took one look at the man raring to draw all three swords from the sheaths on his bellyband, and he put his own wooden sword back at his waist. "I deny your challenge. Stay wherever you like. This is not my dojo," he said simply, then turned and walked to a sliding paper door on the other side of the room and opened it up, walked out, and closed it behind him. As soon as Mifune was gone, all the students afraid of Zoro became a lot less confident that they were safe where they were, and many of them rushed after their master.

"What does he mean by that?" Takeshi wondered. "This isn't his dojo? It sure seemed like he was the teacher here."

"We built this dojo as a place to train," Kuina said while walking forward towards the three at the door, looking away from Zoro who went back to staring at her like he was looking at a ghost. She continued to Takeshi, "But when Mifune showed up, we saw how strong he was and asked him to teach us in the way of the sword. He's stronger than my father ever was," Kuina mentioned, looking towards Zoro and smirking again that she had a stronger teacher now.

"Your father?" Gray asked.

"He taught both of us," Kuina replied to Zoro's other dark-haired companion. "Anyway," she began, turning back to Zoro and looking straight up in his eyes while putting her hands on her hips. "How's it going? Been a while."

"Has it?" Zoro wondered, and by the tone of his voice he was actually too confused to know the answer. The last time he had seen Kuina was over a decade ago, but she did not look to have aged a day.

"Seeing that you're already an old man, I'd guess it has been, idiot," Kuina remarked, scoffing again at how slow he was.

Zoro opened his mouth, but he did not have a reply for her. Gray and Takeshi were just getting more and more astonished by what they were seeing every second. Neither of them had ever seen Zoro speechless before, especially not because of some little girl who seemed to be messing with him. "This is weird," Gray whispered, "even for this world."

The green haired man stopped gawking and closed his mouth, thought for a second, then grinned and mentioned, "What was that fight you just had? He was toying with you the entire-"

"Ehhh?" Kuina leaned back and lifted her eyebrows as Zoro spoke like he was better than her. She scoffed as he closed his mouth, and then she said, "Don't even think about getting the idea that I would want your help training. I'm perfectly fine becoming the strongest without a weakling's help."

"I'm not a weak-"

"Says the dead man," Kuina interrupted. "You'd still be alive if you were stronger than the guy who finished you." As she was saying it, she was wondering herself about what his friend had mentioned earlier. She wanted to ask about it, but at the same time she had momentum going right now and was loving it.

Gray could not stare in more shock at how unbelievable the conversation they were having was. Not only was Zoro flustered like Gray had never seen him before, but this was a girl barely in double digits taunting a powerful ghost pirate swordsman. This world is just, it's just too much.

---

Present

"She was Zoro's childhood friend," Gray explained to the Straw Hats in front of him who had asked who the girl Gray brought up at the dojo was. "Apparently she had died when they were still kids, but telling from the way they acted around each other, it felt like they had been really close. And when Zoro found out she was alive, it was like a switch had flipped inside him. He was, I don't know," Gray shook his head, and he smiled softly, nostalgically at the memory. "He was happier," Gray said.

"Zoro was best friends, with a girl?" Sanji asked, his face turning red and steam coming out of his nose at the idea.

Gray nodded his head, and then he started in a quiet voice, "I didn't realize at first just how much of Zoro's life had been sculpted by their friendship, but Kuina once brought up a promise they made in the past. She said that they had agreed that one of them would become the strongest, and she still wasn't giving up, even after Zoro showed just how much stronger he was than her now. She just taunted him, making fun of him for only being as strong as he was even though he got to grow up to be a man." Gray chuckled a little, but his laughs were dark, hollow. Sanji stopped fuming, and the others who were smiling at the idea of Zoro finding his long-lost friend lost those smiles at the look on Gray's face.

"She acted like his older sister, even though she was younger than him. Hell, she acted like all of our older sister, once she started traveling with us," Gray rubbed his right palm over his eyes and then lowered it and continued, "We only stayed at that town for a couple of nights before heading off again, two new members in our group. A little after that, Mystogan joined us after, after Edolas," Gray paused for a second, looking away like he was thinking about something else. He shook his head and refocused, "Our group was getting bigger all the time, and Zoro was the leader of it. Even though we never really decided it aloud, he was the strongest of us, so even though his sense of direction is terrible, he was leading us."

---

FD + 189

"Run away!"

"We have to get out of here!"

"Retreat!"

"You cowards!"

"Lord Azulon! Look out!"

"GENERAL!"

"Yeah! Take that!" Yamamoto Takeshi called out. He waved his sword around in the air above him while standing in the side door of a helicopter flying after the retreating Fire Nation army. A few of the more elite soldiers in the army who were helping their injured General get away spun around at Takeshi's taunt. The young man sweatdropped as he wondered if they did that because they heard him, and considering they punched their fists up at his helicopter, he guessed they did. "Don't pull away!" He called to the pilot who seemed about to pull the sticks away. Takeshi took a deep breath and held his sword straight up above the top of his head so that the tip of it was almost touching the spinning rotors above the chopper. "Shigure Soen Sixteenth Form: Falling Rain!" He slashed his sword down and blue slashes came off of the weapon in thin lines that cut straight through the fireballs flying up at him.

The slashes cut down into the ground all around the Fire Nation soldiers and hit a few of them, slashing straight through their heavy armor. The men stumbled backwards as their attacks were destroyed with ease, then they turned and shouted at the others to get Lord Azulon out of there faster.

A half mile south of Takeshi and on what used to be the grassy plain just east of a medium-sized city, and what was now almost completely on fire, Gray charged forward and jumped up in the air. He slammed his right fist into his open left palm, then slammed his arms out to the sides and yelled, "Ice Transformation: Frozen Dragon!" Large ice wings covered his arms and spread out to his sides, spikes of ice shot out of his back in a line down his spine, and a long ice tail extended off of him below the final spike on his back. Gray flapped his wings once and found it hard to stay up, but they stayed together and kept him in the air, and a big grin spread across the ice mage's face. It worked. He flapped a few times, then he dove down while the mouth of the Frozen Dragon form was still extending off the front of his face. A bright blue light formed in between the jaws of the icy dragon's face, and Gray yelled, "Get out of here!"

The beam of light blue that came out of Gray's mouth covered the fighters running away from him in ice. He flapped again and zipped around fireballs flying up at him, then he stopped short and avoided a yellow beam that would have hit him in the head. He snapped his Frozen Dragon's head towards the man with the rifle in the distance who just tried to shoot him, and Gray roared an actual roar to go along with the transformation he made it look like he underwent. I can see why Natsu enjoyed this so much, Gray thought, as he charged at the man who threw his gun to the side and started running along with most of the army with him.

A man a few hundred feet away lowered his katana as the few warriors left around him started running at the sound of Gray's draconic roar. Mifune had a piece of wheat in his mouth that did not fall out the entire fight, and he just grunted and turned away as his remaining enemies fled. The swordsman did not put his weapon away as he looked back at the place they were protecting. Your turn.

On the other side of the city, a much larger army was not fleeing from their enemies, even if the defenses of the city were more concentrated on that side. Only a few of the hired guns were to the east with the helicopters, tanks, and all those who had gathered as a militia for the city. On the west side, even though there were fewer men and women protecting the city, the quality of the warriors on that side was much higher. The five thousand strong army standing outside the city in large military formations, flying inside hovering jets and helicopters, and sitting inside trucks and tanks, were holding still as their two commanders floated a few hundred feet in front of their front lines.

"No really! I get what you're saying and all!" a short, blond-haired man standing on the front of a giant green boar's head called out. Meliodas stood on the left side of a man twice as tall as him who had green hair and wore a black kimono over his spiritual body. Zoro did not take his eyes off the enemies who were staring straight down into Meliodas' eyes as the short man yelled to them. "But the city's governor hired us to protect this city from you guys for at least the next week! If you want to come back after that, it's fine with me!" Meliodas cupped a hand to his mouth and said quieter to his friends, "That way, they'll have to pay us for another week of protection."

Zoro rolled his eyes at how lightly the man next to him was treating this situation. His right hand was twitching on the black katana hilt on his side, itching to pull it out and attack their enemies. Meliodas did not want to fight with him when they met this time, even though Zoro had been looking forward to it since the first time they met where he was defeated by the shorter man. They decided to team up for the upcoming battle after hearing that the Ren Empire had allied with the Fire Nation. Apparently the Rens had learned that the city was hiring outside help and wanted to ensure their victory despite it.

Kouen Ren did not look amused by Meliodas' shouts up to him. He flew in the air surrounded in his perfected Djinn Equip, which meant that his orange hair was long and waving behind him with the appearance of snakes. He held a white sword in his left hand that was surrounded in flames, he had no shirt on which showed a black tattoo on his stomach and scales like a snake's on his arms, and his pants were black and frayed at the bottom. "Your confidence to face my army in battle, just the six of you, is impressive," Kouen admitted to the men before him standing on the back of Mama Hawk. "However, if you do not stand aside…" Out from Kouen's sword emitted blue flames that started expelling around his entire body. His younger brother Koumei at his side lifted his arms at the same time and bright lights emitted off of his fingers, making stars form in midair in a strange constellation that looked like an octagon. That octagon turned black between all the stars, then the constellation shot off into the distance and engulfed a hill behind them inside of it. Koumei pointed his left hand up above Mama Hawk and waved it around, creating another constellation where the tip of a hill poked out of. Kouen finished after these threatening actions, and after all of his soldiers behind him rose up their weapons simultaneously, "We will push straight through you and take the-"

"Excuse me?!" An annoyed voice shouted up from the back of Mama Hawk.

Meliodas lifted his eyebrows in surprise and looked behind him, while Zoro got a bead of sweat on the side of his face and grumbled in annoyance, though he started smirking as he did not turn around. Kouen stopped talking with his mouth open as that high-pitched voice shouted at him, and he looked behind the six men at the front of the green boar's back where a small girl with dark blue hair was glaring straight up in his eyes. "Did you really just say 'six?' There are eight of us up here! Don't ignore Elaine and King, just because they're fairies!"

King's jaw dropped even further after the girl shouted that, as he thought it was obvious that Kouen only was not counting the girls on Mama Hawk's back. Zabuza chuckled darkly at the girl's shout, and Ban started cracking up while pointing at King, "Hahaha! They didn't think you were worth counting!"

"Huh? What?!" King shouted, looking around and wondering if he was the only one who thought Kouen had counted him. He looked towards Mystogan who kept a stoic look on his face for a second, then turned away like he did not know what to say to the small fairy man sitting on a floating pillow. King spun to look up at Kouen and yelled, "Were you talking about me, or-"

Koumei dropped the hill through the constellation. Everyone on Mama Hawk's back snapped their heads up as the hill started falling towards them. King frowned as he was ignored, and he floated off of his pillow while it illuminated in a flash of white light. Koumei turned his head after dropping the hill and shouted back to his men to prepare to fire, then he saw thousands of his soldiers drop their jaws or gasp. He spun back and his own eyes bulged at the sight of two of the small fairy man's fingers lifted up, and a thousand small kunai-like spears floated above his head aimed in the direction of the Ren army. "Chastiefol Form Five: Increase." King said in a calm voice.

At the same time, Zoro slashed his sword up, smirking as he was finally able to draw it. His slash up in the air was swift, quick, and so powerful that the hill falling towards Mama Hawk split in half. The hill did not just split though, it split so violently that the two halves of it flew apart from each other, both landing safely hundreds of meters from Mama Hawk's sides. Koumei shouted at his men to fire, at the same time that King flicked his fingers forward. Beams and bullets and flames shot towards Mama Hawk, but every single one of those attacks was intercepted midway by King's increased Chastiefol.

Zabuza leapt forward off the head of the giant boar, and he started making hand signs as he dropped towards the ground. "Ninja Art:" he called out, sticking two fingers up in front of his white mask while lifting his other arm straight up in the air. His feet touched down on the ground, and he finished in a quieter voice, "Hidden Mist Jutsu." Around him formed a cloud of mist, and within three seconds, that mist had covered everything from the front of Mama Hawk's body to the back of the enemy's army. Kouen and Koumei were facing the enemies in front of them, but they started hearing the screams echoing through the mist at their backs.

"It seems the scouts were correct," Kouen said, a dark look forming on his face, but a grin also spreading across it. The fire around him grew hotter and brighter, and he shot down towards the powerful enemies with his sword pulled to the side. Koumei flew after his older brother and Emperor, and he waved his hands around creating more teleportation constellations in front of him and behind his enemies.

Zoro floated off of Mama Hawk's back, and he pulled his sword down to the side getting ready to charge right at Kouen. A high-pitched voice shouted behind him, "Don't screw this up! We got paid in advance!"

Kuina's shout made Zoro lose a shred of concentration, in which moment Kouen yelled, "Extreme Magic- Astor Inqerad!" A massive blue flaming dragon shot out of a golden eight-pointed start that appeared in front of Kouen's soaring body. The dragon was long and so bright that the sky around it was tinted bright blue.

Kuina's eyes shot open wide as the dragon appeared, and she realized that the enemy she had intentionally distracted Zoro from was much stronger than she had guessed. At the same time, another enemy came flying out of a portal behind her, and Mystogan ran past her left side while jumping up with a staff in hand, and Ban ran by on her right with his nunchucks at the ready. Kuina shook her head around as everyone else started fighting, and she put her hand down on the hilt at her side. What am I thinking? She thought and scoffed at herself while running forward on Mama Hawk's back. She ran over the head of the boar and leapt off while Meliodas watched her go by, arms still crossed over his chest as he wondered if he would have to do anything at all here. Kuina was chuckling as she leapt off of the boar's head, Like an attack like that would kill him, again, when she added "again" in her head, she started laughing harder.

Even though Kuina never felt the need to look back up towards the flaming dragon, Zoro was having a difficult time pushing back against the flaming beast with his Zanpakuto as it tried biting down on him. He finally slashed his sword forward through the front of the beast, only for Kouen to come flying through the middle of the snake-like dragon, his sword slashing across the front of his body at the man who just slashed his own weapon and was completely opened up. Zoro heard him coming with his Haki though, and his body was already leaning left as Kouen appeared in front of him, making Kouen's sword slash diagonally down the side of his body and miss by inches. As Kouen's blade missed, his body kept going down and his head turned to the man next to him leaning away, their faces only a foot away from each other at the closest pass. It was only for a moment, but it felt like so much longer as the two powerful men looked into each other's eyes.

Zoro flipped his hilt around. Kouen stopped his slash and curved his blade. The two swung towards each other- CLANK!

---

The Next Day

"Damn, it," Zoro gasped, on his hands and knees with blood all over his face. He reached his hand to the right, but a foot stepped down on his hilt before he could get his hand around it. He lifted his head up and looked at the short man next to him who was grinning and shaking his head.

"Give it up. You did better than last time at least," Meliodas said. He leaned down and reached his right hand out, and Zoro grimaced deeper as Meliodas no longer even had his shortsword drawn. A glance down showed the shinigami that most of his black hakama was shredded, an indicator that his spiritual energy was depleted.

Zoro ground his teeth a few times, then he lifted the hand he was reaching to his sword with and grabbed Meliodas' hand with it. I swore to never lose again, and here I am losing twice to the same guy in two months. Zoro ignored the annoyed anger and allowed Meliodas to lift him to his feet, though as soon as he was up he almost fell again. He fought to the point of exhaustion and then far beyond that, but he still had yet to best Meliodas in a fight.

"Let's get to the bar," Meliodas said. He would have offered to help anyone else that injured get there, but the man behind him would not want his assistance after that loss and he knew it. "I'll meet you in there, when you finally make it," the barkeep taunted at the end as Zoro was going to get there much slower than him because of that pride of his. Zoro ground his teeth in aggravation at the taunt, but there was nothing he could say after losing, and considering he did not want Meliodas to walk slower for him anyway.

Meliodas leapt up in the air and soared a thousand feet to Mama Hawk's back, which at the moment just looked like a normal green hill since she had dropped down into the ground for the day. The city they had saved the day before was just to their east, while to the west of them were the wreckages of several planes, helicopters, tanks, and trucks that the enemy army had left behind when they fled. Meliodas glanced that way as he leapt towards his bar, the Boar's Hat, which he landed right in front of the front door of. He looked back after landing there, and then opened up the door for the girl with dark blue hair who was a little taller than him, and frowning deeply after watching that fight from the outside of the bar.

Kuina stormed inside and Gray looked towards the door wondering what had her so upset. He saw Meliodas walk in next, barely a scratch on him, and Gray shook his head in disbelief as once again Meliodas' power astonished him. He figured he would hardly be able to witness the fight between the two of them so he just stayed inside with most of the others. Mifune and Mystogan were sitting and talking over at a table behind him to his right, but Gray was at the bar talking with Takeshi, King, and Ban when the owner of the bar entered.

"He lost again?" Takeshi asked in shock, then he smiled and looked towards Kuina who kept walking right through the bar to the stars heading up. "Guess that makes sense," he said in a soft tone. Ban and King looked to him wondering why that was, and Takeshi continued in a whisper, "Seeing the top is even higher than Zoro, it's gotta be frustrating."

"She and Zoro have this bet," Gray said, while taking another sip of the ale he held in his right hand. "One of them has to become the strongest swordsman, or swords-woman, I guess," he muttered at the end as he trailed off. "Zoro's already so strong, so seeing Meliodas sweep the floor with him has to be like a punch to the gut."

"Hmph, she'll get over it," Ban said, leaning back on his stool behind the counter and grinning as he thought about the girl who made fun of King so smoothly during the battle yesterday. Ban was smiling in a wide, toothy way, and he turned his head right as the door behind the bar opened up. A small girl with blonde hair floated out and over to his stool where she floated only a few inches from his side as she joined their conversation.

It was Gray and Takeshi's first time meeting Elaine, but they were surprised by how close she and Ban seemed to be since King introduced her as 'his sister Elaine.' Gray looked over at King to see what the other fairy thought about their closeness, but King did not seem to mind and was just smiling wide too. Makes sense he's happy. He found someone he loves on this world, Gray thought it, then tipped back his mug again.

"Hey Ban, I noticed you guys are missing that girl who was with you last time," Takeshi mentioned.

Elaine smiled and Takeshi turned to her as it seemed like she knew what he was talking about, which meant that the other girl was still around when Elaine joined the Sins. "She's fine," Elaine assured the teen in case he was worried about what happened to her. "Komugi's friend came to get her. She was very happy to see him."

"You should have seen this guy," Ban said while leaning over the counter, some red tint to his cheeks. "If you think your buddy and the Captain are strong, you shoulda seen the fight Komugi's friend had with the Cap'n, it was nuts! The guy actually beat the Cap'n too!"

As Ban exclaimed this, another man had just entered the bar and closed the door behind him. Zoro's one open eye widened, (his other was swollen shut). "That true?" he asked, turning to the table Meliodas sat at with Mifune and Mystogan.

Meliodas chuckled and scratched the back of his head. "'Fraid so," Meliodas replied. "First loss in a one-on-on since I got here, but I could barely touch this guy!"

"Hmm," Zoro hummed, and he walked over and sat next to Meliodas at the table. A few seconds later, Elaine had flown over next to him and placed a mug of ale down in front of him at the table with both of her small hands. "Thanks," Zoro mumbled, as he definitely needed that ale and was actually grateful the girl brought it to him without asking. Before he picked it up though, he turned to Meliodas and asked, "You catch the guy's name?"

"Yeah," Meliodas said in his usual carefree tone. "Komugi called him 'Supreme Leader' at first, but he told her to call him 'Meruem' after he arrived. Told the rest of us to call him 'King,' but I told him that would be confusing thanks to King over there." Meliodas chuckled in a lower tone, then added, "That actually got me in the fight with him. Think he probably would have killed me if we hadn't been looking after Komugi. He really did not like that I landed some hits on him."

Only "Some hits?" This guy sounds pretty strong. Meruem. I'll add him to the list. Meliodas, Meruem, Tien…

"Oi Zoro, you look like shit," Zabuza said as he walked into the room after coming downstairs. He had bandages wrapping his arms and legs, but he was finally up after sleeping almost the entire day since fighting an army of thousands head-on the day before. Most of the wreckage to the west of the hill was thanks to the rampage of the Demon of the Hidden Mist before he was finally taken down. Zoro looked over towards Zabuza and was going to retort something, but the other swordsman looked to Takeshi like he was waiting for him to do something.

"Oh yeah!" Takeshi exclaimed. He jumped off his stool and reached into his pocket for something. There was nothing in his left pocket so he checked the other side, then he pulled out a small capsule that he tossed in Zoro's direction. "Urahara-san did say you would recover your spiritual energy quicker while in this gigai."

Zoro lifted his right arm, as much as it pained him to do so, and caught the capsule with his fake body in it. Meliodas smiled more as Zoro caught the capsule though, and he asked, "How's the body been treating you? I know it's not the real thing, but-"

"It's damn near close," Zoro responded. "Thanks for introducing us," he mentioned off-handedly, while popping open the capsule next to his seat and making another Roronoa Zoro appear at his side. This Zoro had on a green bellyband though, black pants and a white long-sleeved shirt, unlike the rags of a black hakama that shinigami Zoro had on. Zoro pulled his gigai on top of himself and slid into it, making Mifune grimace and Mystogan look away, neither of them used to the strangeness of that yet. Zoro's body absorbed into his body, and his body no longer looked damaged at all. He continued out of his gigai's mouth, "Didn't think this meat suit Urahara made would actually work, but I can even fight in it almost as well as I could in my old body."

Zoro clenched his fists a few times in front of him as if working in the body he just entered. "Though Mouretsuna Akumu doesn't like it when I do. I can feel it hiss at me when I use my old swords. Speaking of which," he continued and looked towards the counter again.

"You want to hold them?" Takeshi asked, getting up again to bring Zoro over one of his swords.

"Might as well hold onto them while I can," Zoro said with a sigh, his eyes starting to droop as he mentioned it.

Meliodas chuckled as Zoro's head started dipping down slowly as if he were nodding off. Might be able to cover up those wounds, but they're still there Zoro. Slipping into that gigai doesn't get rid of your fatigue either.

"Zoro?" Takeshi asked, holding a sword he held for the man out for him. Zoro's eyes snapped back open as he realized that he had just closed them for much longer than a normal blink, and he nodded while grabbing Shuusui back from him.

The green-haired swordsman turned the other way for his other sword, but Zabuza was just frowning towards him. "I left it upstairs," he said. He looked into Zoro's eyes, and Zoro stared back for a few seconds, before shaking his head and half-waving a hand like it did not matter. It felt weird to the pirate that he did not mind not getting his second sword back, but it also would have felt weird to ask for it from the man who had actually been using it in battles recently. It's more his sword than it is my own at this point. I'm sure Kitetsu feels the same way. He uses the cursed blade in the way it always wanted me to use it anyway. It's still my weapon, but I'll have to be careful. If it gets too used to cutting everything it touches while in Zabuza's grasp, it'll try disobeying me, next time, I… With thoughts of cursed swords and future fights on his mind, Zoro's head dropped down and he dropped unconscious, one of his swords resting across his lap as he nodded off. He never once thought about the third sword he had owned since childhood. That sword was back with its true owner who was training with it a floor above him.

---

FD + 227

"It's so dark in here, can't you make that thing any brighter?" Kuina looked over her shoulder back at an older teenage girl who had a hand lifted up covered in red light. The older girl had long black wavy hair that was styled into twin-tails with black ribbons at the top to hold them together.

"Oh I'm sorry," Lin Tohsaka began. "Is my magic too dim for you to see? I'll fix that right away. Are you thirsty too? I think I have an extra canteen if you need some water, little girl," Lin smirked, and Kuina frowned deeply at the older girl, especially since Lin did not actually brighten the red light on her hand at all. Getting a little more serious, Lin added, "The light would already be brighter if I could make it so, but I'm not wasting a lot of magic power just so we have a better flashlight."

"That is more than enough," a man at the front of their group said back to her. He turned his head and looked back through the golden visor over his eyes. He wore a helmet of gold that matched the armor he was wearing, and the helmet spiked up on either side of his head to give him the appearance of a hawk. Hawkman, or Carter Hall, continued to the teenage girl, "It is smart to save your energy. You must not take Vandal Savage lightly."

The group walking through the cave consisted of seven people. Hawkman was accompanied by Hawkgirl, or Kendra Saunders, his soul mate for the past several thousand years throughout all of their many reincarnations. Along with Lin and Kuina, three others were in the group heading through the cave, all of them with swords at their sides. Zoro walked in his spiritual body, his Mouretsuna Akumu at his side and his right hand resting on the hilt. Mifune walked on his left, two yellow straps going over the front of his chest that held two large rectangular sheaths on his back, each one full of dozens of swords. And on Mifune's other side walked a blonde woman whose hair was tied back in a ponytail and who wore a suit of knight's armor including a blue steel dress that widened out around her feet.

Saber froze and snapped her head to the right where she stared at a rock wall with narrowing eyes. "What?" Zoro asked the woman, his hand clenching tighter on his hilt even though he had yet to feel anything with his Haki or sense any nearby Reiatsu. The inside of the cave was tinted red and they could see either of the walls on their sides, but the direction ahead of them and where they came from got dark after a couple dozen feet away from Lin's light. Lin moved her hand to the right to shine more on the wall Saber looked at, but none of them saw anything wrong with it.

"I sense," Saber whispered. She shook her head a little, then she drew her sword Excalibur from its scabbard Avalon in a single movement. She held it in both hands and spun her head left to look back the direction they were previously heading, then looked more left and at the opposite wall she spun to originally. "Dark forces are coming from many directions."

"Could this Savage not be the only one seeking out the Staff?" Lin wondered.

"More likely," Kendra began. Hawkgirl looked back while lifting up her mace and grabbing its shaft tightly with both hands. "The forces Saber's feeling are working for Savage."

"Or under his control," Hawkman added, a dark look spreading on his face as he recalled a time Vandal Savage once brainwashed him. "Let's move quickly," he said, shaking away the dark look and getting a more determined one on it. He looked back at the people following behind him and Hawkgirl, and he said, "If Savage gets his hands on the Staff of Horus, all hope for us is lost. He will kill the two of us, then he will begin his reign on this world."

"Well then let's stop standing around here!" Lin called out, and she started jogging forward. "Missouri said the Staff is somewhere in this cave system. I want to find it before he does!"

"Still don't know why we listened to her," Kuina muttered while jogging forward after the girl who held the light their group was using, which meant it was a bad idea to let her get too far away. "All that psychic mumbo-jumbo sounded pretty far-fetched to me. Even for this world," she added, to remind everyone that she was not just being close-minded considering the world they were on.

"Just 'cause you haven't seen one doesn't mean they're not real," Zoro said and rolled his eyes as he jogged forward too. "I've seen-"

"I'm sure you have," Kuina said, only half-sarcastically though she made the tone sound more than it was. "But until I see the staff myself, I'm not buying it."

"And the things I'm sensing?" Saber asked the girl who just jogged up to her side as she said that. "What do you think they are?"

"It could be a million things other than this Vandal Savage. And if it is him, then that's probably just 'cause he can track the hawk-people he's trying to kill. Right?" Kuina asked, looking towards Kendra who was jogging ahead of her only a few feet.

"Yes, he has tracked us through the millennia," Hawkgirl said. "However we have only seen him the once on Nexus, and he was more interested in acquiring power then than in killing us, or seducing me." Kuina lifted her eyebrows at that last part, and the others besides Hawkman looked in in surprise as well as she had yet to mention that before.

Hawkman had an angry look on his face after his soul mate mentioned that, and he said in a stern voice, "Savage will never get his hands on you, my love." He looked at Hawkgirl as he said it, then to Lin who was the farthest up with them and was looking at them in confusion. "Savage has been jealous of our love for thousands of years. He will never rest until Chay-Ara is either his, or dead."

"Unless we take him down first," Hawkgirl added, an optimistic tone in her voice to show she was not planning on either of those options happening this time around.

The group agreed with Hawkgirl, but as they continued to jog, the entire cave system they were in started to rumble. The shaking started off mild, but it grew more intense after a few seconds and caused pebbles and even some larger rocks to start falling off the ceiling. Lin looked around with wide eyes, then shouted, "Run!"

"What's going on?!" Kuina yelled as the cave around them shook madly.

"I'd guess we're not the first ones here," Mifune said in a low voice as he sprinted ahead, one sword of the dozens in his sheaths drawn in his right hand.

Zoro felt something right as Mifune said it, and his eyes narrowed in while a broad smirk spread over his face. "I can sense him," Zoro said, an evil glint in his eyes.

Lin turned to the man to see why he sounded so excited, and then she stumbled away as Zoro vanished from next to her. "Wh-Where did he-"

"He ran ahead," Kuina yelled at the mage who thought Zoro had teleported. She pulled out her Wado Ichimonji and started sprinting even faster than she already was. "I'm not letting him hog all the action this time!" She yelled. A few large rocks started falling off the ceiling in front of her and Saber shouted up at the girl who just ran ahead of her to dodge. Kuina saw the rocks though out the top of her vision, and the girl did not stop sprinting. Kuina ran a little to the right though and sprinted up the side of the wall so she passed the falling rocks without having to slow down.

The others had to pause for a few seconds though waiting for the cave to stop its suddenly more violent shaking. Kuina ran down the tunnel and was getting less and less light every second as Lin fell farther behind her. I'm not letting him finish this! I was the one who said I'd help Hawkgirl, that idiot can't do it on his own, again! Kuina spotted a dim light up ahead of her, and her frustrated look got more intense as she heard shouting coming from that direction.

Kuina sprinted down the last bit of the tunnel and right out through the opening into a room full of dim blue light. Her eyes bulged wide for a second at the sight of the chamber she just entered. This, was here the whole time? There's no way someone, made this place. Kuina looked around the room in front of her that dropped off from the ledge she ran out on into a giant black abyss that fell what looked like forever. In the center of the black pit of nothing was a tall stone pillar twenty meters in diameter, only thirty meters in front of the ledge she was on but also a dozen meters above her. It was level enough though that she was able to see the massive golden warrior who looked more like a statue than a man, holding a long staff in his right hand that he kept jabbing down at the pillar's surface below him. The golden statue-man had no left hand- it looked like it was cut off cleanly at his wrist, he had a long straight beard over his chiseled chin, and he was extremely muscular as could be seen since he wore nothing except for a cloth around his golden waist and a gladiator helmet over his head.

As the giant man's spear slammed into the pillar, the whole cave system around them shook and Kuina had to steady herself to avoid stumbling forward and off into the abyss. She stared up at the golden man's face, but her gaze snapped down as when the man's spear hit, something else lifted up like it jumped over where the spear slammed down. The human-looking man who leapt up pulled a fist back, and he slammed it forward towards the statue guy's chest. The golden man brought back his spear hand quick though and punched it against the smaller man's fist with his spear still in his grasp. The two of their fists pushing against each other made the cave system around them tremble even more.

"You are a powerful challenger!" The golden giant called out while leaning his head forward towards the man he was in the middle of punching. "What is your name?"

"Vandal Savage," the light-skinned man with a dark goatee said, right before pushing off of the golden fist and flipping back through the air. He landed down right at the edge of the pillar, and then he turned his head to the side and looked over with a smirk on his face and a malicious glint in his eyes. His gaze met with Kuina's and the girl felt herself shiver at the look, but it was not her that he was looking towards in that bloodthirsty way. Some others were coming running out of the tunnel behind Kuina, and Vandal Savage whispered in a husky tone, "Chay-Ara."

Hawkgirl froze as she locked eyes with Savage, then she clenched her mace tighter and her wings snapped out to the side. Hawkman's did the same at that moment and they shot into the air, but another man already flying above them lowered down and got in their ways before they could charge at Savage. "Hold on," Zoro said while the two tried to fly by him. Vandal Savage looked to Zoro and lost his smile, then he turned around again and looked back towards the giant golden man who took a step towards him and shook the cave once more. "Don't interrupt them," Zoro said.

"Savage is a monster," Hawkgirl began.

Zoro frowned deeper and darted a glare at the woman next to him who sealed her lips instantly at the look. If anyone is going to take him on, I got here first so that makes it my fight. I would have been fighting him already, if these two weren't dueling it out.

"Well Vandal Savage," the golden man called down. He slammed the butt of his spear down on the floor in front of him and proclaimed, "I am Horror the Ancient. I am the guardian of many powerful treasures, including my own left hand."

"Your left hand?" Savage questioned, a hint of interest in his voice.

"This is stupid, we should just," Carter began, but Zoro did not even dart him a glare this time. The shinigami at Hawkman's side just frowned deeper and the winged man next to him shut up at the expression on Zoro's face.

Horror the Ancient continued, "The Left Hand of Horror. Once, long ago, I was a very fearful man. So I channeled all of my fears into my left hand, and I cut it off so that I would become forever brave." Everyone in the cave gawked at the giant golden figure, wondering how he came to that logical decision. Zoro just grunted, Kuina wondered how that worked, but Savage nodded at Horror to continue. "The Left Hand of Horror, otherwise known as Horror's Hand, is capable of making anyone's worst nightmares come true. The illusions it can cast are more powerful than any spear."

Vandal Savage smirked and hummed to himself at the sound of that. After a second though, he shrugged and said, "That does sound intriguing, but I am here for a much greater prize. One of those treasures you protect, is the Staff of Horus."

"You'll never get your hands on that weapon!" Hawkgirl shouted down.

"Why are we just standing here?" Lin muttered at the people around her on the ledge outside of the middle pillar. She lifted her hand and it started to glow brighter red as she pointed it at the pillar beneath where the two men were fighting. "If I just destroy that pillar, then they'll fall into that abyss and never-"

"Don't even think about it," Kuina said without looking back at the older woman behind her.

Lin looked down at the back of the shorter girl's head. "Excuse me? Why not?"

"He might be our enemy, but if you interrupt a duel between warriors like that," Kuina turned her head partially sideways and glared back at Lin. The girl smirked and the steel of her sword glistened as she finished in a chilling tone, "Then you'll be my enemy."

Lin's jaw dropped as she saw the girl was being completely serious. Lin lowered her hand and nodded at the girl who started creeping her out, then she turned to Saber to see if she thought that was as weird as she did. Saber was just staring up at the top of the pillar with an intense and close eye, but as Lin watched her, she noticed her blonde friend's eyes darting all around the walls above the pillar. "What?" Lin whispered. "Do you still feel-"

"Everywhere," Saber whispered back. She lifted up her long steel sword that she grabbed in both hands and started glowing blue. "They're everywhere," Saber repeated, "just past the walls."

Mifune's eyes darted around and he was starting to have a bad feeling about this place. Lin re-rose her hand that glowed as bright as when she threatened to destroy the pillar, and even Kuina took her eyes off the pillar where Savage and Horror faced off to check out what Saber was saying. Zoro kept watching the two men in front of him, but he could hear them in all directions of him. They're waiting, Zoro thought, and his eyes focused in on Savage's back. Is he commanding them?

Vandal Savage stared up into Horror's large glowing white eyes, and the man questioned, "You say if I defeat you I will have my choice from your collection. However, I do not see this collection you speak of."

"Everything I protect is below," Horror said. He lifted up his left arm that ended at his wrist and the flat end where his hand was cut off started glowing. Out from the abyss behind him floated up an object surrounded in yellow light: a golden staff with a hawk at the top of it that had glowing blue eyes. "This is the item you seek. Defeat me, and it is yours." Horror lifted back up his spear and stomped one foot forward, getting into a fighting stance with his spear lifted over his head with the point aimed down at Savage. "Then again, you will not defeat me."

Vandal Savage wore a black jacket that matched his black pants and boots. He had long black hair that became wavy at the bottoms just past his shoulders. The bearded immortal held his arms out to the sides, making the sides of the front of his jacket move out as well as they were not buttoned together. He reached his open right hand back into his jacket and to his side where he grabbed something. Horror the Ancient planned on striking right away, but he was armed, he only felt it honorable to allow his opponent to draw a weapon of his own.

As Savage pulled his weapon of choice out of his jacket though, everyone watching opened their eyes wide. Zoro narrowed them again the fastest, but his look of interest for the fight was gone. That tablet, Zoro thought, his hand moving down to the black hilt of his Zanpakuto.

He was not the only one who recognized it, though the two on his sides became confused at the expressions from their comrades. "What is that?" Hawkman asked the green haired shinigami next to him.

Zoro grunted, then responded as Vandal Savage lifted the golden plaque in front of him. "It's what we were looking for when we met you guys. It's what the guys are out looking for right now."

"What are those four idiots doing?" Kuina snapped at the same time Zoro was explaining this to the two next to him. "Didn't Gray say he got a clue as to where it would be?"

"Well, looks like we found the tablet, and the staff," Lin said, though she did not sound very happy about it. "Vandal Savage already has his hands on one, and if he beats that Horror guy-"

"Even if he does, we do not let him take the staff," Saber said firmly. She looked around at the walls again, then continued, "Now I think I know what all these presences I am feeling are. He has already used the tablet!"

While Horror questioned Vandal Savage what kind of weapon that was, Zoro continued to the winged people next to him, "We heard the tablet can bring the inanimate to life. Stuffed beasts, statues, even… dead bodies."

"Oh, it can do so much more than that," Vandal Savage said. Zoro was not speaking particularly loud, but he was not whispering either. Savage turned and looked Zoro in the eyes, then he looked over at Saber who kept staring around the walls of the chamber that were faintly lit by blue light that seemed to be coming from nowhere at all. "You see, the Tablet of Ahkmenrah has another purpose. Reviving the dead, bringing inanimate objects to life, they are both wonderful powers." Savage turned and looked up into Horror's eyes while the giant stared at the object, wondering if he should add it to his collection.

Everyone else in the cave, including Zoro and his friends who already knew about the tablet, looked confused or nervous as those were the only powers they knew the artifact had. Savage smirked and finished while pressing in on the buttons on the tablet in a specific pattern. There were three columns of three square buttons each on the plaque, and as Savage pressed these buttons he called out, "But the tablet's true power resides in its ability to open a gateway." He finished pressing the buttons and held up the tablet that started flashing bright gold light.

"I am really not liking this," Lin said, taking a step back from the ledge as the entire cave started to shake. Her eyes popped open huge as a red light started to glow from the abyss around the pillar in the middle of the chamber, and her face covered in sweat at the heat that started rising from the pit.

"The tablet of Ahkmenrah is a portable gateway to the Underworld! And with it in my possession…" the walls of the cave on all sides of the central stone pillar ripped open. Around the ceiling and on level with the platform holes blasted through and bug-like demons flew into the chamber and swarmed Horror who spun around in shock at all these monsters that he did not see coming. Savage pulled the tablet back down with his right hand and pressed it against his chest while finishing, "All those that are released via the tablet," he turned his head and looked up towards his nemeses, and finished, "are under my control."

Hawkman felt like Savage was looking straight into his eyes when he mentioned "control," and it infuriated him. He dove down while raising up his mace, and Chay-Ara followed right down after him.

"What are you doing?!" Lin shouted towards the middle of the chamber. The entire cave was trembling around them worse than it had during Savage and Horror's initial fight. There were demons flying in through holes all over the chamber's walls that were making the room look even more unstable. And worst of all, the black pit around the pillar had turned red like Savage's claim to be connected to the Underworld was no mere bluff. "We have to go!" She shouted towards Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

"Damn it," Kuina snapped. For once, she agreed with Lin and felt like getting out of there was the smartest move, if just to leave the cave and get in a more stable area before fighting the enemies. She would not turn her back though. The youngest girl in their group sprinted forward and leapt from the ledge, right in between Saber and Mifune who had their swords drawn but were hesitating over what to do. Saber reached out a hand as Kuina flew by her, but Mifune did not even look surprised, lifting the corners of his lips a bit before leaping after his student.

Saber looked over her shoulder and motioned for the middle of the room, then she leapt after the others. "Really?" Lin asked while a bead of sweat dripped down her face. "Ah!" She stumbled forwards as the ceiling in the tunnel just behind her collapsed down a few tons of rocks. She looked back and saw barely any way back through there, and she gulped before shaking her head like this was inevitable. Lin marched back to the ledge and looked around the ceiling at all the holes the demons had busted through, some of which had moonlight pouring into them like their tunnels connected to the outside. Looks like that's our new way out, Lin thought while bending her knees down far. She gulped at the sight of the glowing red light coming from the pit, and she planted her hands down on her knees and enchanted her legs, just to make sure.

Lin shot up into the air with a powerful magical jump, then she pointed her right hand down and grabbed her wrist with her other hand to steady her shot. Red beams of light fired from her right palm and slammed into a pair of flying demons coming up towards her, then Rin fell through the smoke cloud and landed in a forward roll. She popped up and spun on one knee to point at a bulky twelve foot tall demon marching her way with an axe in its hand. Lin fired a red burst of magic into its chest that made it stumble backwards, then the top half of the monster lifted up while its legs fell forward. Saber did not stop running after slicing the taller demon in half, running straight to the ledge where a snake-like demon was spitting acid at Horror's legs and making the giant scream in pain. Horror was too busy swiping at the bug demons flying around his face to focus on his legs, and there were too many demons in the air around his body for him to see what was causing that burning sensation anyway.

One of the two snake heads of the demon bent down and curved up and around Saber's slashing arm before tightening. The other snake head curved around Saber's back while she punched her free gauntlet into the first one's face, and the one around her back opened its mouth to sink its fangs into her. A katana flew through the snake's head and then changed directions and pierced the other head as well before hitting the floor and pinning them to it. Saber ripped the necks of the two-headed snake demon off of her body, then turned and looked back the yellow caution tape running from the katana slammed in the ground next to her back to the long-haired man who threw it. Mifune was not looking her direction though, but instead zipping back and forth and using each of the swords stuck in the ground around him to cut apart the demons. He had so many of them that any time he let go of a blade there were another two in his hands by the time a demon tried to get the upper hand on him.

Kuina raced by her teacher's side and slashed the Wado Ichimonji up at a demon dive-bombing him. She cut deep into the beast's stomach as it tried pulling up to escape her, then as it screamed and flew up, something heavy dropped on its back and the demon with the head of a fly turned its head back and stared in terror at the dark-blue-haired girl holding her katana up with both hands above its head. She brought the katana down and pierced through the demon's head and out the bottom, then she ripped forward out the front of its face so that she could leap towards another flying demon swerving around Horror's side to try and get at his neck. She missed landing on the demon's back, so she swung her sword after the beast and her sword nicked its wings. Even though the weapon only nicked the beast though, the slash that came off of her blade cut the wings fully off and Kuina smirked as she kept dropping from the air. The girl hit the ground at Horror's feet and spun her head towards the man holding the Tablet of Ahkmenrah. Agh! Too late! She thought in frustration, then had to roll to the left to dodge three demons swooping down at her.

Zoro stood fifteen feet in front of Vandal Savage with his black katana drawn and a dark look in his eyes. "You're pathetic," Zoro said as the bearded man opened his mouth to say something. "Calling for help during a fight like that."

"I could not defeat Horror without assistance, however I do not see things as you do, shinigami." Vandal Savage smirked and narrowed his eyes at the green-haired man. "What is 'fair' in battle? Honor only holds men back from greatness."

Hawkman wanted to yell at Savage that he had no "honor," but it seemed like Savage would not care about that from his last sentence. "Greatness?" Carter questioned, finding a different word in Savage's statements to work off of. He floated on Savage's right, while Kendra flapped her wings on his left. "When have you ever been great? You stood at the sides of monsters and dictators for thousands of years, but you never held onto that power."

"I managed to kill you quite a few times though," Savage said without turning, and he chuckled as Hawkman's furious look intensified. He did not look away from Zoro as he said it, and he continued like he had not broken off conversation with the shinigami in the first place, "Your honor would prevent you from fighting me at a disadvantage. I have known many men like you. Many a time, they are stronger than I," he admitted. "But the ones who are, always face me alone. I on the other hand, have no qualms about bringing in some, assistance."

As Savage said it, cracks formed all over the ceiling of the cave right above them. The red light in the pit around the pillar grew brighter, and then the entire cave roof broke apart. "Everyone take cover!" Lin shouted, while running towards Mifune and Saber who stood back to back while swiping every demon that came at them. Lin called out a spell as she dove towards the two of them, as the demons diving their way were hit by rocks and crushed into the pillar or dropped into the pit. Right before the rocks would have hit Mifune and Saber, who were ready to start cutting them apart if they did, a bright red forcefield surrounded the three of them and protected them from all falling debris.

"What is that?" Saber wondered, unable to place what she was feeling outside of the cave. It did not feel like the other demons at all, but she saw Savage's confident look right before the roof broke and knew that it could not be good.

Hawkman and Hawkgirl flew around dodging rubble as it fell towards them, swinging their maces at any pieces too large to dodge to break them apart. They were hit by a few rocks and knocked aside, but unlike most of the weaker demons in the air they were not defeated for good. Dozens of demons were crushed by the thousands of pounds of rocks falling in the cave, and more kept collapsing every second. The pillar was getting unstable as all these rocks slammed down, and Horror stumbled backwards and wobbled on the ledge of his pillar as it shook beneath him. The walls of the cave on the outside of the pillar started to crack too, and chunks fell off and down into the pit below.

Vandal Savage looked up with a grin, but Zoro did not take his eyes off the man who was easing back and forth to avoid any debris. "I don't know what kind of 'assistance' you were hoping for," Zoro began, and Savage's eyes started to widen while a shocked look spread on his face. "But I'm doubting they're it."

"Whoa! You guys are here too?" Takeshi called down from the edge of the ceiling. Then he hopped forward and dropped down like the two who had shattered the roof. Gray and Zabuza were already dropping with two swords in their hands each: Zabuza had his wide and longer one and Zoro's cursed blade, and Gray had a pair of ice broadswords in his grips. Gray was also surrounded in his Ice Make: Gladiator armor that covered most of his body other than his joints and included a helmet over his head with a darker visor over his eyes.

Mystogan floated down after the three falling with gravity, and five staves floating down with him suddenly shot down fast to hit the floor at the same time that Zabuza and Gray's feet did. The cave filled with a bright light for all the demons still flying around, blinding them while five huge purple magic circles each as wide as the pillar itself appeared above Mystogan's head. He held one arm up at the circles and pointed the other down at the pillar below, and then a beam of purple dropped down and engulfed everything below. The pillar spread out to be as wide as the middle circle above him which was wider than the pillar and actually filled up the entire pit and some of the walls around it.

Everything inside the pillar was tinted dark purple, and Zoro marched forward inside this dark purple towards his enemy who took a step back towards the ledge behind him. Hawkgirl and Hawkman were gawking around them as Gray, Zabuza, Takeshi, and the others who were already there, started cutting apart the strongest demons who had been able to survive the cave dropping on top of them. "That giant one outside was much stronger than any of these," Gray said while cutting his two swords to the side and ripping straight through a purple demon trying to bite him. Something slashed across his back and broke off one of the ice spikes sticking out of his armor, only for Gray to grin as the spike re-formed and then shot out and impaled the black demon through its chest.

To Vandal Savage, it looked like the strongest demons he had summoned from the other side were moving in slow motion inside the purple hue. He glared at Zoro, then darted his eyes up and to the side where the Staff of Horus was floating. "Get me the staff!" Savage shouted, while spinning back towards Zoro and pulling out a pair of knives from his jacket.

The demons flying around and fighting their opponents turned. Kendra snapped her head over to the staff with wide eyes, then she shot forward and swung her mace to the right into a black flying demon that thought it could out-fly her. It realized it was not faster and turned sideways to let her mace pass over it, then it changed directions and tackled her backwards. "Chay-Ara!" Hawkman called down as she fell.

"The staff!" Hawkgirl yelled back up to him. She pushed the demon off her and slammed it with her mace so hard that it crashed into the side of the pillar they had been falling past. A crack already on the pillar widened, and Hawkgirl lifted her gaze from the thick part of the crack in front of her to the top of the pillar where it widened much more. Other cracks broke off of the really wide one and branched across the whole side of the pillar she was flapping her wings on. This isn't good, she thought, and she flew up fast while Hawkman shot towards the Staff of Horus to stop the demons that were getting close to it. "Everyone! The pillar is collapsing. We need to get out of here now!"

Kuina stumbled backwards as the floor beneath her feet cracked, then she lifted her blade and had to put a hand behind the steel to push back on the five blades of the orange demon in front of her that had six muscular arms. The final arm that did not swipe down curved around as the beast laughed in a deep voice. She was unable to move her sword and risk the other five blades cutting down into her, and she was still off-balanced near the edge of the pillar from the last tremor. I'm gonna get cut! Right before the sixth sword was going to cut into her side, a huge golden spear slammed into the demon and kept going through tens of meters of the pillar. The pillar split in half from the stab from Horror, and Kuina and the others near her looked up in shock at the golden giant who looked pretty terrible at the moment.

"Thank you, brave warriors, for coming to my aid," Horror let go of his spear imbedded far into the pillar, but the spear started wobbling like it was not in there very tight, or like the crack it was in was widening more and could not hold it. He lowered his good hand and scooped up Kuina who did not realize what was happening quick enough. His grasp was loose and gentle though, and he swept his hand across the top of the pillar and grabbed other fighters who were staggering or wobbling on their feet. The pillar and the cave around it was collapsing completely, falling into the pit that was no longer glowing red as there was too much debris in the way to see anything that far down. "Now leave," Horror said, while reaching up for the broken roof above. The floor beneath his feet cracked and the level on his left side dipped down a few meters, but Horror stretched his better arm farther up so that they could still reach the edge of the not-broken roof if they jumped.

"What about you?" Takeshi asked. He was a little late to the party, but this guy seemed nice and his tone made it sound like this was goodbye.

"I was tasked with protecting this place and guarding the treasures housed within it. I must stay." Horror bent his elbow a little then pushed up hard and made the fighters on top of his palm lift up off of it and arc to the edge of the roof.

Kuina hit the edge then scrambled back on her hands and knees and looked down towards the collapsing room below. The roof they were on was unstable as well, and she heard Saber call out for everyone to move away from the ledge, but she would not move yet.

Inside the cave chamber, while Horror was picking up the fighters and raising them to the roof, Hawkgirl shot towards the demon bringing the Staff of Horus to Savage. The purple beam that had filled the room was gone now, and the man who had called it down was facing off against five flying demons high above the top of the hole in the cave roof. Kendra saw Hawkman trying to make his way back to the staff, but he was blocked by several enemies who did not seem to care that the cave around them was breaking apart. She got hit by a rock while she looked towards her soul mate, and even as blood started pouring down the left side of her head, she pushed forward and let out a screech as she pulled her mace back far. The demon had almost reached Vandal Savage so it let its guard down, then both Savage and the demon looked towards Hawkgirl in shock as she crashed straight down into it so hard that the two smashed down into the collapsing pillar below.

"Rrrgh, the staff will be mine!" Vandal Savage threw another knife that he slid out of his sleeve at Zoro and started running. The shinigami turned his katana and the knife slid back the blade, then Zoro whipped his Zanpakuto around and sent the dagger flying off of the tip of Mouretsuna Akumu. The blade cut across the front of Savage's coat and made the man stop short where he was running. Zoro's eyes were narrowed and his teeth clenched hard as he glanced over towards the giant man who had just said to his comrades that he would not be leaving this place, even as it collapsed. The giant was honorable, it had waited for Savage to pull out the Tablet for a reason that Zoro understood and respected, and now it was going to be buried in this cave because of Savage's disgraceful fighting.

Zoro's black katana started glowing, but glowing a black light almost impossible to see in the dark cave. Zoro did not notice it either, but he did feel the surge of strength that matched his bloodlust towards the man in front of him. Savage turned towards Zoro as the knives inside his coat fell to the floor- the knife Zoro flicked back at him having cut through what held them on his body. He snarled and yelled, "The Staff will never obey you! It only obeys my commands-"

"I am the guardian of the Staff of Horus!" Horror yelled out from behind Zoro. The part of the pillar he was standing on had fallen much farther down now, and as his head passed the level that the other two were on, he grinned Savage's way and shouted, "And you are not the staff's new master." Horror's head dropped below the level that Savage could see, but then someone stood up behind Zoro on a more lifted section of ground between him and a falling Horror, the one Horror was really looking at as he fell. Hawkgirl stood up with the Staff of Horus in her hands, and she turned her head to glare at Savage who stared at her in shock for holding the staff so calmly without its energy field taking a toll on her.

"I will protect the Staff of Horus from the likes of you, Savage," Hawkgirl said. Her eyes shifted away for a second, then she flapped her wings and shot up in the air where Hawkman was calling down at her. As soon as she lifted off, the ground beneath where her feet had been cracked in five different ways and the pillar started to crumble completely.

Vandal Savage snarled and then let out a roar of anger. His eyes darted for an exit, but they stopped on the man in front of him who was not fleeing like the rest of his friends. Zoro started walking forward when Savage made eye contact with him, and the man took a step back which made the ground beneath where he stepped crumble. He stepped back forward, but that direction was no better with the shinigami walking towards him. "Listen, I could make-"

"I hear you're an immortal," Zoro said, and a smirk spread across his face that unnerved Savage. "Let's put that name to a test." Zoro shot forward and slashed across the front of the man's body. The guy looked like a human, but Zoro had heard differently. Yet as Zoro's sword cut through flesh, the man sure bled like he was human. Zoro spun and slashed again as he heard Savage spinning towards him with a fist punching forward, and suddenly that fist was rising up into the air, only to be hit by a large chunk of wall that was falling in at them from the side of the chamber. All the walls of the chamber were falling in towards the pillar that was crumbling outwards. Zoro leapt from where he stood to another falling rock, and Savage dove a different direction right before a huge rock would have smashed down on him. He landed on a different platform and slid across it, then he screamed as the giant chunk of pillar above flattened against the one he had slid onto.

"Guess he wasn't," Zoro said. He looked back up after saying it, and he no longer saw a sky above. All that was above him was more falling rubble getting closer to his rock that started bumping on other stuff that had already fallen. Zoro glanced down once more and gazed back and forth, but he spotted no gold giant in sight and frowned.

"Where is he?" Gray wondered, scratching the back of his head in his black hair now that his ice helmet had vanished.

"Sure is taking a long, time…" Kuina faded off as the rest of the cave they were staring at from outside collapsed. They stood in front of a giant dead demon's stomach that had been ripped open, watching as an entire cave system started imploding. The rock walls and ceilings and even the ground around the cave started caving inwards. It looked like a giant sinkhole was forming under the cave and sucking everything around it down. "What the?" Kuina muttered, while taking steps back as the grass in front of her started getting pulled forward.

White light started shining through the cracks of falling walls, and then it all flashed out at once. Everything stopped moving. The group who leaned back at the light started walking forward and looking around with interest. The strange cave formation that had been in the middle of the grassy field was gone, sucked into the planet where there was now a wide funnel-like hole in the ground. The funnel had dragged grass in from the outsides of the cave system, so the ground inside the funnel all the way to the center was grassy, no rocks to show that there had been a cave there. "This is, really, really weird," Lin whispered, sweat all over her face as she tried to make sense of it.

"Where's Zoro?" Hawkman asked, landing down next to the others with Mystogan and Hawkgirl who had been floating just above the cave-in with him. "I never saw him get out of there."

Kendra took a nervous step forward with the golden Staff of Horus held in her right hand. "I should have grabbed him. He looked like he wanted to fight Savage still, so I just, left him there-"

"That was the right call," Gray assured the woman on his right. Kuina darted a look over to Gray, lifting her eyebrows in surprise. Even she was starting to get a little nervous, but Gray was just standing there waiting for something. Kuina scoffed at herself and put her sword back in her sheath, shaking her head at how stupid that bit of worry she felt was.

Saber glanced around, then she turned to Zabuza on her left and asked, "What makes you so confident he's okay? Whatever just happened here, it's nothing like I've ever seen."

"Me either," Zabuza said. He looked around the funnel, confused and somewhat intrigued by it. The ninja with a white mask over the bottom of his face and a rogue Hidden Mist headband around his forehead added without turning Saber's way, "But you really think he'd let himself get killed by that?"

"Probably not," Lin said, though she did not sound as sure as the others. She tried making light of her doubt though and added, "Unless he can't remember which way is up and gets lost in there." She smiled as she said it and was about to start laughing afterwards, but no one else laughed along and her jaw dropped as what she just said echoed in her head. Hawkgirl and Hawkman looked around in confusion and then their jaws dropped too at how worried all of them looked all of a sudden.

"Ice Make: Excavator!" Gray shouted while leaping forward. He punched his right fist into his left hand, and a huge construction vehicle made of ice appeared below him that he fell into the control seat of.

"Well that's, a useful power," Lin muttered with a sweatdrop rolling down the side of her face, staring at the hundred foot tall machine of ice that just formed out of thin air.

As the front of the excavator dipped down to dig out some of the ground in the center of the funnel, a hole ripped through it first and a green-haired man in a black hakama flew up through it. Zoro flew up and then stopped so he was standing right in front of the seat Gray was on. Gray let out a breath of relief, then when he opened his eyes he saw Zoro frowning at him. "What? Thought you might have gotten lost," Gray said, and Zoro lost his look to instead get a sweatdrop on the side of his face and scrunch his forehead in annoyance at the accusation. "Did you?" Gray wondered.

"No," Zoro snapped. He was annoyed at first that Gray thought he needed help being dug out of there, but he could not tell if he was annoyed more that Gray did have faith in his abilities, just not in his sense of direction. Zoro lifted up his right hand that was at his side and held something up in front of him, and while Gray and the others gawked, Zoro said, "One of us had to remember why we came." He tossed the golden Tablet of Ahkmenrah forward and Gray held out his hands to catch it. The giant ice construction vehicle vanished beneath Gray and he dropped down to the slant of the funnel as Zoro lowered next to him.

"Alright," Gray said in an accomplished tone. He showed off the tablet to the others who walked over, and he said, "Let's go get our reward."

"We sure worked hard enough for it," Lin agreed in an exhausted tone.

Hawkgirl and Hawkman were looking towards the center of the funnel of grass leading to a hole that seemed very ominous to them. Saber saw where they were looking, and she asked them, "What about you? What do you plan to do now?"

Hawkman turned towards Saber first and said, "Savage will be back." Zoro frowned and looked at the man skeptically, then over at the hole where he was sure he watched Savage die.

"We must get the Staff of Horus somewhere safe and prepare for his return," Hawkgirl added.

"Why don't you guys stick with us?" Takeshi asked. The others looked towards him, and the people dressed as Hawks gave him wondering looks to see if he was serious. "I mean, you're both pretty strong fighters, and there's no place safer to keep that staff than with strong friends, right?"

"Sounds good to me," Gray admitted. "What do you think, Zoro?" He asked while turning to the man next to him. Zoro still had not torn his eyes off the hole back into that funnel in the ground though, and Gray turned more to the green-haired shinigami while the others started talking about how they were fine with the two joining their group for real. "What is it?" Gray asked, and Zoro hummed like he heard him but did not have a response yet. Gray looked towards the hole and figured he knew what Zoro was thinking of. "From up here it looked pretty crazy, and I mean, look at this." Gray gazed around at the strange funnel of earth where the cave used to be. "What happened in there?"

When Hawkman mentioned Savage coming back, Zoro considered going in to find Savage's body to show that the man was really dead. There was a major flaw in that idea though. That light, it messed with the insides. The falling rocks, the empty space, it was all just solid. How far did he fall, before that happened? Is he still falling, and it's only the top that sealed up like this? He had seen the golden tablet on one of the falling rocks when he was about to head up, but he frowned as he looked at it in Gray's hands. If I didn't get far enough up with the Tablet before that light, would I have been able to get back up here? What made that light? Is that why Horror was fine with falling? Protecting his collection… is he still doing that? What just happened here? Zoro cracked his neck to either side and then turned to Gray and shrugged to respond to the man's question, as he really did not know what happened at all. "Doesn't really matter," Zoro said. "We got the staff, we got the tablet, the rest isn't important."

"Huh," Gray muttered while Zoro turned back to the main group. Hawkgirl and Hawkman had agreed with the others, and they turned to Zoro to see if he was okay with it too since he seemed like he was the leader of the group. He shrugged like it was fine with him, and then he started telling them about the tablet since they never really explained their reason for going after it to the two they wound up helping on their mission. Gray watched for a second, then he shrugged his own shoulders. Whatever just happened with the cave system, whatever that white light was, it had nothing to do with them. Guess, it's really not important, Gray thought, and he looked back down at the tablet in his hand. "Hey, should we really be giving this to a buyer we barely know?" Gray asked as he re-entered the conversation. "A gateway into the underworld seems like a really powerful object that I don't see being used in good ways…"

---

Present

"And like that we had eleven," Gray said. "It was the biggest our group ever got before I left. We never, recovered to that size, after-" Gray stopped himself and rubbed the right side of his forehead. He sighed and then clenched his teeth hard with his eyes closed. "We kept on like that for a while. The closest I've seen to what we were like, was you pirates." The Straw Hats listening to Gray looked surprised as he mentioned that, and he smiled softly as his eyes opened back up again. "The way you live and run your ship, Luffy," Gray began, and he started chuckling as it made sense to him comparing the two who had been pirates together. "It's kind of how Zoro had us doing things. It was, really nice. Even though most of us were not finding the people we cared for, we were free. We lived freely, taking jobs we thought would be fun, or helping out people just for the sake of doing it."

"What happened to change that?" Nami asked. She could see Gray was smiling in nostalgia, like that was all about to change. "What made Zoro-" she wanted to finish, but at the same time she could already guess. "'…He wasn't strong enough, when it mattered most.' What did you mean by that?" Nami asked.

Gray winced and found it hard to explain. He wanted to, it's what he had decided on when he started telling all this to the Straw Hats, but now that it came down to it, the words got stuck in his mouth. Kirito glanced back over his shoulder and frowned at how broken up Gray was getting just recalling this event. He turned back forward to the computer he was sitting behind, narrowing his gaze at it and wondering how a guy like that could have ever tried to kill him.

"It had to, do with Kuina, right?" Usopp asked.

"We took too long," Gray whispered in response. "We weren't even there," he added, looking into Usopp's eyes. Usopp saw so much regret in Gray's eyes as he brought it up, but Gray continued despite what he was feeling. "Our mission took us far out of the town, but we had argued on what mission to take. Half of us went one way, the other half took a different mission. Kuina's mission- she was the one who argued the most with Zoro about it, finished up before ours did, or maybe they just got back to town quicker. By the time we got there though," screams rang out in Gray's head and his eyes narrowed, a dark look and a snarl spreading across his face that made even Luffy stare wide-eyed at him. "They had already set the place ablaze."

"Who were they?" Sanji asked while leaning forward with huge eyes.

"A Legion of Hell," Gray whispered. "We didn't even know those existed until then. Tens of thousands of demons, led by powerful officers who were strong, and intelligent, and cruel beyond reason." Nami and Usopp's faces were blue. Franky had sweat all over his steel face, and Sanji gulped at the image of what Gray just described. "It was before everyone on Aebrith knew about Satan, before everyone knew that there were giant Hell gates scattered across Nexus. We had fought demons, Hollows, and other monsters like them before, but not on a scale like this. It wasn't something I thought we could fight. All I thought we could do, was run…"

---

FD + 249

It was supposed to be night, but the sky in the direction Gray was running was red instead of black. He, Takeshi, Mystogan, Saber, and Lin ran down the slope of the mountain to the west of the town in flames. None of them could speak. They were running the wrong direction after all, so all they wanted to yell was 'run away,' but they were all doing the opposite of that. Zoro had flown ahead of them so they had to get in there and back him up. Even with his shinigami powers, none of them were confident that he was safe in there, in the literal Hell they were running into.

It was impossible to see many of the buildings; they were so covered in demons that the walls looked to be shifting around. Flames rose from every roof but the demons moved around inside the inferno like it did not bother them. Although the sky above the town was red from the mountainside they came over, as they got lower down it became harder and harder to see that smoky red sky as demons filled the air above them. They were circling like vultures over the destroyed town, but as the group of five ran closer the demons seemed more like birds of prey considering screams were still echoing out through the large town.

"What is this?" Lin asked in horror as she stopped at the edge of the town, looking right towards some black dogs with two heads each. They were fighting over something in their mouths which had four lips that curled back to reveal razor-sharp teeth in rows going far back into them. One of them tore back harder from the other and made the thing they were fighting over lift up into the air. Lin's eyes followed the object up, and she made out the shape of a human leg, but a very small leg. Lin gagged and tried looking away, but before she could, the demon dogs turned towards her and started barking. Only a second after the barks left their mouths, twenty plus demons came charging around the corner of the house the dogs were just past and turning to change directions towards her.

The demons came in all different shapes and sizes, but Lin only stepped backwards when they stopped running. If they were monsters that wanted to kill or devour her, she could understand that, but why were they all smiling their horrifying grins at her?! Some of them started laughing, others hissed at the terrified look on her face. An eight foot tall muscular figure who looked very humanoid stepped forward with a smaller smile on his face than the others. He was wearing a black shirt and shorts, and he tilted his head while looking down towards Lin with softer eyes despite the red glow of the irises in the middles of them. "What's wrong, girl?" He questioned in a soothing, calming voice. When he spoke though, his mouth had to open and reveal the giant, sharp, dripping-with-blood teeth filling his jaw. "Are you lost?" He rose his arms and walls of fire lifted behind Lin and on both sides of her.

"AHHH!" Lin screamed in terror. The demons around the red one had started sprinting forward and she had never been more afraid. She lifted her shaky hands while screaming and tried firing her magic, but she was too frantic and panicked to think straight and gather her energy. Why did I come down here?! She thought while tears splashed out of her clenched-shut eyes. Daddy!

"Focus Lin!" a female voice shouted in front of her. Lin's eyes snapped open and she saw the blonde knight in front of her with her sword slashed out to the side. After Lin's eyes opened, the slash Saber made finally ripped all of the demons right in front of them in half and made the top halves of their bodies rise up. The red demon behind them lifted his black eyebrows to match his long black hair, then he put two of his fingers with long sharp nails in his mouth, and he whistled loudly.

The two demonic dogs behind him were joined by others jumping out of flaming windows of nearby houses, leaping over the roofs of those buildings or just sprinting down the roads. The pack of them growled and stepped towards Saber and Lin while baring their thousands of sharp teeth. "Two beautiful women chose the wrong time to come to this town," a high-pitched man's voice said from behind Lin and Saber. Lin spun around to see four black demons with large muscles all marching towards her behind a slim, six-foot tall blue-scaled man with a long tail and just as long a tongue sticking out of his mouth. The look in his eyes was sadistic, and the blood all over his hands made Lin tremble in fear. "I remember a long time ago, when I was still a man, I would have killed to take beauties like you by force. Ha, hahaha, HAHA! I think I did a few times!" His body bulked up and wings ripped from his back so forcefully that black blood splashed out of him, but he just moaned with the pain of it.

"Saber, I'm afraid," Lin said. She did not care how it sounded. She did not care that she was letting her enemies know. Tohsaka Lin trembled in fear while she lifted up her arms, wishing she had worn something other than her usual skirt and leggings today, wishing she had never come back to this town at all.

"We all rushed down here even after seeing what awaited us," Saber said in a calm but stern voice. She turned back to the red demon and then pressed her back up against Lin's, making Lin go wide-eyed as Saber was leaving her back to her to protect. "Recall that conviction and fight with me now." Saber's longsword that she used to slice apart the first demons surrounded in blue light and brightened to a point that the steel inside the light became impossible to see. The red demon's smirk at the women he was about to send his pack of hell-dogs at vanished, and he ordered in a scarier, more intense voice for them to attack. Hundreds of terrifying growls and barks sounded behind Lin, but she did not feel afraid of them with Saber at her back. Saber moved her hands down to the right side of her chest with her long blue sword pointed straight up above her, she bent her knees and took a deep breath, and she yelled out, "RAAAA!"

Lin clenched her teeth down hard, then she swung both of her arms up in front of her and turned into a battle stance. Her hands started glowing red and she yelled out, matching Saber's scream with her own, "RAAAA!"

Farther into the town, Takeshi and Gray stopped with their heads up. "Mystogan!" Takeshi called out as he saw three giant demons in the sky swoop down and knock the blue-haired man around between them.

"He'll be fine," Gray yelled at Takeshi, and the younger man turned to Gray. Gray was looking up nervously towards Mystogan despite what he shouted, but he snapped his gaze back down and yelled, "We have to find the others! If they've been fighting this- whatever this is, for a while, they'd be tired and need our help!"

Takeshi glanced back up towards Mystogan, but he saw the three demons that attacked their friend falling out of the air. Even though he could not see Mystogan anymore, the sight of those demons falling without controlling themselves made him more confident like Gray was in the mage's abilities.

"This way," Takeshi said and pointed to their left. Gray looked the direction he pointed, then turned back forward and nodded as he understood why Takeshi wanted them to turn. A wave of demons pushed down a street a corner away from them so thick that the monsters looked more like a solid river taller than the houses at their sides that they were smashing straight through. They cut left down a path with less demons on it, but the street had a lot more human corpses. Some demons were still eating, others were setting fire to the buildings around them, all of them were laughing.

The two young men charged down the street and cut apart or froze every demon that turned their way. "Oh my God," Takeshi said with a gasp as they hit the next corner. Gray turned to see what he saw that made him say that, and he stared down the street to their right where there were three crosses in the middle of the road. They recognized the two on the crosses on the sides as the innkeeper and his wife whose establishment they had been staying in. They were crucified and their heads were limp, but the figure in the center did not even have a head to go limp anymore. She had been decapitated before she was crucified, which meant the demons just put her like that for no reason. She had broken golden armor around her body, and her wings were nailed to the boards of the cross right through her arms by metal spikes.

"Is that," Gray began in a quiet voice, taking a step forward to see for himself. He walked closer and his bulging eyes started to tear up as there was no mistaking who the figure was. They knew it was a woman from her exposed breasts covered in blood, and the armor told them who they were looking at. "Kendra," Gray whispered, then he felt his foot kick something when he took another step. His eyes had been glued onto the woman on the cross so he did not look where he was stepping. Gray looked down and saw a head rolling away from his foot, and as it rolled around so that the face pointed towards him for a second, he got a good look at Hawkman's head, only his eye sockets were empty.

Takeshi gagged and hunched over, then Gray leapt over his back and slammed a fist into the demon that leapt down through the fire on the roof to their right. It had tried to take their shock to its advantage, and it would have worked on Takeshi, but Gray heard it coming with his Observational Haki at the last second. His fist dented in so far into the demon's face, while Gray snarled and then let out a scream as he extended his arm forward and threw the demon into the flaming building which exploded on the impact. Flames burst out from the exploding house and fell all around the two men. Takeshi stood up fully and then stared around at everything around him with such a horrified, disgusted look. "What is, this place?" Takeshi whispered. Gray turned to the man just a little younger than him, and Yamamoto Takeshi looked back into his eyes before asking, "Why?"

"There's no time for that," Gray yelled at him over the sounds of people's screams and demon's cackles. The flames surrounding them were burning higher every second, so Gray did not have time to humor Takeshi's question. He did not need to ask what Takeshi was questioning him about though, because he had the same question only he kept it in his head instead of saying it aloud. All he thought of was "why," but there was so much he meant with that one word that he doubted anyone could ever explain the reasons to him.

"We have to find the others!" Gray yelled, grabbing Takeshi by the shoulders and shaking him a few times. "Are you still with me?" Gray yelled at the teen barely able to speak.

Takeshi's far-off look came back to earth and he nodded his head in a more focused way at Gray. The two started running off again, using all their strength and powers against every demon they came across. The innkeeper and his wife had been crucified just outside where they were staying, but they did not see anyone other than Hawkman and Hawkgirl nearby. Neither voiced the possibility that nothing remained of their bodies, instead shouting that they had to check elsewhere.

They ran through the town fighting with all their strength. The demons were strong though, some of them at least, and Gray received a deep gash on his left arm while Takeshi was hit in the back with a surprise fireball. The younger man had to roll around on the floor to put out the flames, but he was now running shirtless like Gray who had taken his off before they even got into the town.

The two were getting tired, but they showed no outward signs of it as their adrenaline was pumping faster than ever. They ran around another flaming corner and then froze at the sight before them. Their eyes filled with sheer terror as they spotted Zabuza pinned down on the floor by a thousand pound fat demon that looked like a massive sumo-wrestler only his skin was a puke-green color. Him being held down was not the horrifying part though, it was the female human-looking demons over Zabuza's face who had slit their wrists and were letting their black blood pour into his mouth while it was forcibly held open by others. There were strange cloaked figures who had red eyes glowing from inside the hoods of the cloaks around Zabuza, chanting in a strange language while the man convulsed under the fat demon.

"What the, fuck?" Gray said, his voice getting higher pitched towards the end as he half-gasped half-laughed. A smile twisted on his face as the flames all around danced, and then the man convulsing on the ground let out an unearthly scream that made Gray take a step back. It sounded more like a roar than anything, and it did not sound human, and the demons all started chanting louder or laughing madly.

"Zabuza!" Takeshi yelled and started running forward. Gray looked at the younger man's back with wide eyes, and then as the demons all turned towards him Gray finally realized what he was doing. He clenched his hands into fists so hard that he drew blood from his palms, bringing himself back to reality and screaming at himself aloud to help his friend. He knew he had lost it for a second there, but seeing Takeshi charging in on his own reminded him that this was all actually happening.

Gray and Takeshi had a hard time killing the big one, and the ones in cloaks all vanished during the short fight, but they managed to kill them all in only a minute. Then they ran over to Zabuza who kept seizing on the ground, his whole body arching, black blood spilling out of his mouth. A girl's scream echoed out from around the corner, and Gray spun that way with a determined expression on his face. He had decided he would not let himself lose it again, and he turned back to Takeshi and said in his most serious voice that he could manage without it cracking, "Stay with Zabuza. I'm going to check it out."

Takeshi nodded his head and then dropped to his knees on Zabuza's side. He shook the man around trying to get him to calm down, but only with one hand as he had the other held tightly around Shuusui to ensure that he could protect them while Gray was gone.

Gray ran down the street and had to jump up as the wall of the flaming house on his right started collapsing towards him. As he lifted over it, the whole falling wall blasted apart outwards beneath him. Gray stared down in horror as a monster emerged from the house, rising up so that it was bigger than the building itself as it charged out of the flames. It looked like it had smashed through the back of the house too, and it kept sprinting across the road beneath Gray and through the next house too. Gray and Takeshi were each relieved that the beast did not try fighting them, because its size and speed were daunting to the warriors who had not seen any of its kind around the town so far.

The ice mage landed on the other side of where the demon just sprinted through, then he cut to the right early as the intersection ahead of him was full of monstrous beings. He leapt up for a roof at his side and froze the top of it, putting out the flames and freezing the demons hiding inside them. He leapt from that rooftop over five others to land on the connecting street where there were so many demons he had a hard time finding a safe landing spot. All over the road full of demons were demon corpses, as well as discarded swords stuck in the monsters, stuck in the floor and walls of nearby buildings too. The yellow tape that connected the swords was trampled into the ground or blowing around in the wind, and Gray stared to his left in horror at the top half of a man stuck inside a twelve foot tall monster's mouth. His legs were being fought over by some demonic dogs behind him, but the monster chewing on the man's top half had started from the waist up, revealing Mifune's face to Gray for a few moments before it slurped up and swallowed the swordsman.

Mifune was so strong, Gray thought while taking a step back. He turned and ran. The ground beneath his feet turned into ice behind him, giving any demons that tried to give chase a hard time. As he started running though, Gray felt something else with his Haki that made his heart start racing. I recognize them, Gray thought, and he spun towards one of the buildings back on that road. He looked towards it and saw a hole in the roof of it, and a monster's corpse blocking up the doorway.

Gray ran back the way he came and started throwing ice spikes at the demons who had slipped chasing him. His ice spikes hit them and immediately exploded into a crystal that spiked out in twenty different directions. The crystals impaled every demon Gray threw them at, but when he threw it at the large one that had been eating Mifune, the demon shot to its left in a quick movement that made Gray's ice spike miss and keep flying off. The monster charged forward and its feet smashed right through the ice beneath it to leave footprints in the ground. It got bigger as it charged at Gray, its eyes burning a bright purple color and long black hair waving off of his arms and legs. It had six eyes and five arms, and it brought all of its fists back as Gray slammed his fist and hand together in front of his body.

The two clashed, and all the other nearby demons converged at the same time. A minute later, Gray stood alone in the center of the road. He was covered head to toe in blood, and he turned towards the building next to him while panting deep, ragged breaths. Gray started walking towards the house. He had a grim, afraid look on his face as he reached the door and pulled the demon leaning against it back. He tossed the corpse behind him, wincing as it hurt his cut-up arm to do. He was covered in wounds, but when he looked through the open doorway a whole new pain filled him. Right in the middle of the room he saw Zoro on his knees. In front of the kneeling man was Kuina lying flat on her back. He had one of her hands held in his own above her flat, unmoving body. His head was bowed forward pressed against the hand he was holding so tightly, and all Gray heard him say, was, "…I promise." Then, Zoro's eyes shot open and Gray swore he saw a tear fall from his left eye as he let go of Kuina's hand. The hand dropped from his grasp without any resistance, and her arm made a thud on the floor at her side.

Gray recalled that he had felt two presences with his Haki a minute ago, and his heart fell as he only felt one now. Kuina, he thought. Then, his eyes grew wider as that single presence he felt in the room in front of him started to feel less and less like a human, or shinigami. His heart rate skyrocketed and his body covered in sweat. The room in front of him descended into a pitch black darkness in a single moment. Gray stumbled back out the door, but the entire world around him was dark, silent. And then the world flashed red, and the screams started.

---

Present

"When I found Zoro, in the room we found Kuina…" Gray faded off and the others all assumed what that meant. Gray could barely talk, too choked up over the memory. He opened his mouth, but he flinched and his attempted words just came out as a gasp. He closed his mouth, and they could see him thinking about it because of the wetness of his eyes. He clenched them shut, then opened them again and whispered, "She was just a kid, but they, the things they…" Gray could not finish the sentence. He took a deep breath to calm himself down and then shivered as he thought about what happened next. "That's when we learned, about Zoro's true power."

"What do you mean?" Sanji asked. He needed anything to distract him from the thought of Kuina's death, as that made him want to roar in fury right now. "What power?" He asked. Gray clenched his teeth hard and as afraid as he looked while recalling the demons and the events of that day, he looked more hesitant as he thought about what happened after that.

"It was the first time Zoro released his Zanpakuto," Gray started. "He didn't know how to use it, so the rest of us got sucked into his power. We saw his bloodlust. We, felt, his rage, and his fury, his hatred... and his sadness. The demons didn't stand a chance. They had killed many of our strong friends, but Zoro cut them apart like they were nothing. We always knew Zoro was stronger than the rest of us, but each one of us realized then: Zoro is in a whole other league."

The Straw Hats stared at Gray in shock. They were silent, none could come up with anything to say about what he just said. Gray whispered when no one else continued, "I'd put him closer to Timmy or Goku's strength, than to my own."

"That strong?" Nami gasped out.

"When he's really mad," Gray offered, and he looked away while adding, "and he often is."

"So," Luffy began quietly. Gray turned to the rubberman who was looking at the ground, and Luffy lifted his gaze to Gray with a semi-confused look, mostly just sad though. He knew the pain Zoro felt that day very well, but he still had to ask, "That's, why he doesn't want to come back, anymore?" The others looked at Luffy, then back to Gray as they awaited his answer. The pirate captain's question was soft, and understanding, but Luffy sounded like he also wanted to know, "why?"

"It's just," Gray whispered. He understood why Luffy wanted to know. He felt bad for the pirate, and for the rest of his crew. "Zoro, he's, he changed on that day. We weren't relaxed after that. We weren't, just enjoying life anymore. Always getting stronger, always pushing limits, always moving, searching. Zoro, wants the destruction of Nexus." The others stared at him with widening eyes, and Gray continued, "The others don't like the world either, some hate it like he does. They're looking for reasons for why it came to be and how to make things right." Gray looked away, and he thought, That's why I had to leave them.

"Why would Zoro possibly do that?" Nami snapped in confusion, bringing Gray's attention back to those in front of him.

"That, doesn't sound right," Usopp murmured in agreement with her.

Gray hummed to himself, then he whispered, "Truthfully, I never really knew. I still, just don't know."

---

FD +249

Zoro lifted up Kuina but the girl moaned so loudly when he did that he froze in place. He was on his knees at her side, and the walls around him were painted in red. Most of it was from the demons he had found when he entered the room, but a lot of it was Kuina's. Her legs were flattened, twisted, pulled different directions and looking like they were barely attached to her mashed-up waist. Her stomach had a bloody hole in it larger than two of Zoro's fists, and the man holding her was looking up and down all these injuries with panicked eyes. I need to get her, get her somewhere where- who can help?!

Kuina coughed a few times, then she opened back up her eyes and saw Zoro sitting there staring at her with such worried and panicked eyes. At her look though, he calmed down his panicked gaze and started, "You're a mess."

"Took you, long," Kuina could not finish the snide remark, losing the smile that was growing on her face as she started coughing. She saw the blood splash out of her mouth, and she felt her insides aching in pain. The girl tried her hardest to sit up, but her lower body was not moving at all, and her upper body barely was. Her snarky comeback to what Zoro said never finished, and she lifted her eyes up before gasping out in realization.

"Damn it! Damn it, damn it damn it damn it damn it," Kuina clenched her eyes shut and shook her head but she couldn't keep the tears from flowing. "I'm so, frustrated," she seethed, before coughing up more blood and gasping for air.

"You're going to be alright, stop acting like-" Zoro was shouting at the girl he was holding. He had his hands held so gently under the top of her back and the back of her head like he was afraid to move her, and his twitching eyes were focused on the giant hole in her stomach.

Kuina's sob cut Zoro off, because he had never seen her act like that before. Even in her most pathetic moments, she never would have let him see this. "Damn it," she yelled after letting out the sob. "Stop looking at, damn damn damn," Kuina's voice got higher-pitched and was cracking as she shouted. "Why do I have to die like this? Why'd I have to come back, just to, ahh! It's not- ack, it's- it's not fair!" Blood came out the corners of her mouth and she lifted an arm as hard as she could, wiping the blood away and then wiping her eyes back and forth, covering them in her own blood.

"If you're moving around like that, you're going to be fine," Zoro growled down at her. "So stop acting like a kid-"

"But I am a kid," Kuina said, opening her teary eyes and looking up into Zoro's so sadly. "I never got to grow up, again," she looked up and then around at the room around her. She snapped her gaze back to Zoro when she saw him opening his mouth out her peripheral vision. "Shut up, just shut up shut up SHUT UP-ACK-" she spat out blood and it got all over Zoro's chest, then she grabbed him by his bloody hakama and yelled, "I died before- You died before! You know what I mean then, when I say I know I'm dying. I can fucking feel it," she pushed her hand back out to move away from him, but she could only lean her head back a little because of the way he was holding her. Zoro's eyes had bulged at what she shouted at him though, because she was right, and he did know that feeling of dying.

"This sucks," Kuina whispered in a hoarse voice, more blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. Zoro thought she would wipe it away, but her arms were not moving from her sides this time. Grabbing him then pushing him away seemed to be the last of her strength, and he started shaking his head as he thought of other reasons for it. He tried to think of something he could do, but he was no doctor. They did not have a doctor in their group, and even if they did, Zoro did not know who was still alive out there. Even if someone could close up her stomach though, he had found them with hands inside of her, reaching through that wound in her stomach. He had no idea what they messed up inside of her, how bad the internal injuries and damage to her organs was. "I can't, take this, I can't," Kuina whispered. "But even though, I say that," she bit down on her bottom lip and wanted to scream but knew she would only get a second of it out before spitting blood up everywhere. "There's nothing I can do, to- ah ah hah," she rose her right arm with as much power as she could muster and just covered her eyes with it to at least try and hide her sobs. "This- is so- frustrating!"

Zoro's hands started to shake on Kuina's back. He could not come up with anything to say. He could not think of anything to do. As helpless as she felt, he felt it just as badly and for one of the only times in his life, Zoro felt his eyes start to get wet. Why? He thought as he stared at the girl crying in his arms. Why is this, what could have, how could I have… why? Zoro clenched his teeth so angrily. He could feel Kuina's heartbeat through her back. He could feel it slowing down. "Why?" He whispered aloud, and Kuina's half-closed eyes opened a little more, then much wider as a drop fell down on her face. "Why are you, doing this, again?" Zoro bit down after he said it, hating that he just said those words aloud yet unable to hold them back. He stared down into Kuina's shocked eyes with ones that were so angry, but ones that had tears dropping out of them, "You were supposed, to catch up to me. I wanted, to fight you one day," he whispered it and held his hands tighter on her back and the back of her head. "Again," he added so softly.

As Kuina stared at the man above him, the sight of the adult, the shinigami, it faded away. In her mind she saw the boy a year younger than her trying so hard to catch her, and getting so frustrated every time when he failed. "It's not fair for you?" Zoro asked. "You died, so selfishly, one day after we made our promise." He closed his eyes as he said it because he could not look into Kuina's eyes anymore. "You don't get to do that again. So you have to live. What's the point of the promise, if I don't have you to compete with?"

Zoro's eyes popped open wide as he felt a soft hand on his cheek. He stared down in shock that he just said all that aloud, and even more at the sad look of the girl below him who started frowning deeper each second. The hand on his cheek moved away a little, then tapped in as if smacking him, as weakly as she could move at the moment. "You don't, get to, do that," Kuina whispered at him, using the same words he just used against him. "You don't get to, make this, about you," her hand smacked in on him again, then it squeezed his cheek and she looked so desperately up into his eyes. "You have to fulfill it. Take my sword, like you did, last time," she begged, her eyes looking over to where the sword lay discarded next to a wall nearby. "I, failed," she whispered as she looked at the weapon she had been unable to protect herself with. "I failed, I failed, ah ah I ah, I failed ahh."

Zoro reached his left hand up and put it over Kuina's smaller one on his face. What am I doing? He thought, hardening his expression as he put his hand over hers. "You didn't fail," Zoro said sternly down at her.

"I did though," Kuina gasped at him. "I made, so many promises to myself. I told myself, I would live a full life this time. I swore, I would become the best swordswoman ever, then the best swordsman in general once I beat you! I, I wanted to fight you someday too," she said it and for a second Zoro's eyes opened wide.

Then, he felt the hand against his face get lighter as if she could no longer hold it there. "Wait," Zoro yelled at the girl whose eyes were closing. "Don't you- not yet!" Zoro pressed her hand tighter against his face, as he lowered her back to the floor. He drew his Zanpakuto with his freed hand and rose it in front of him. "If I stab you with this, I could, you could," Zoro stopped himself because he had no idea what he was talking about. He did not understand how Ashido Kanou gave him his shinigami powers. When he stabbed things with his Zanpakuto, usually they just died.

"Just stop," Kuina whispered at him. "Let me go," she gasped out. He felt her presence vanishing. Every way he knew how to sense a person told him that the one he could feel in front of him was dying. She looked so frustrated though, so sad, so angry at the world.

Zoro's expression matched hers, and he pressed her hand tighter against his face. Then, Zoro pulled her hand off of his face and held it above her body where she was lying on her back. Kuina's eyes opened up a small amount while she lay there still, and she saw Zoro bring his Zanpakuto up and cut himself on the hand he had been holding hers with. Then, he cut her hand, and she felt a small pinch on her palm. He clasped his bloody palm against hers while continuing to bare his teeth in his sad, angry, frustrated way. "This world," Zoro said, while leaning down over her to make sure the girl would hear him. "I'm going to find whoever is responsible for bringing you back here, on this cursed world. I never believed in Gods, but I know they're real now. Those evil fucking bastards," Zoro's hand shook while he clenched Kuina's tighter with it, because he saw her eyes closing. She was unable to respond to what he was telling her, and it made him even more frustrated to the point that he slammed his head forward into their hands and clenched his eyes shut. "You hear me? Whoever brought you here, just to die like this, they won't get away with it! I promise! I'm going to destroy the ones who brought you here! I, promise," Zoro's eyes snapped open as the presence vanished. His left hand opened up and her right arm fell limp to her side. He stared in shock down at her face, her eyes almost shut but partially open and not focused on anything. Her mouth was twisted into a hateful frown, and she had streaks of tears all over her face including fresh ones falling to the sides of her eyes that had just fell while his eyes were closed. It did not matter what he said to her at the end, he could not change what she was feeling when she took her last breath. She died with that look on her face, and over Zoro's grief, the rage that had been simmering and then boiling over inside him, exploded all at once, and his Zanpakuto bathed the world in darkness.

---

A/N ;( Thanks for reading. I'm going to put a list below of the characters featured in this chapter. Alright, so, I guess I hope you enjoyed the chapter, or maybe I hope it kicked you in the gut. Someone must have been cutting onions while I was writing it at least. Another Zoro flashback chapter out of nowhere! Bam! I had an idea for this chapter for a while, and realized that it worked best right after Gray met up with the Straw Hats to tell Luffy about it. Doubt anyone thought they'd be seeing Kuina this chapter, though once you did see her, you had to know things were not going to end well. Anyway, I'll put the list below.

Soul Eater: Mifune

One Piece: Zoro, Kuina, Luffy, Usopp, Nami, Sanji, Franky, Robin

Bleach: Zommari Rureaux, Urahara, Ashido Kanou, Zanpakuto

Supernatural: Missouri (the psychic)

Naruto: Zabuza

Magi: Kouen, Koumei

Avatar TLA: Azulon

Seven Deadly Sins: Meliodas, King, Elaine, Ban, Mama Hawk

Fairy Tail: Natsu, Juvia, Gray, Mystogan, Edolas

Hunter x Hunter: Meruem, Komugi, Killua

DC Arrowverse: Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Vandal Savage, Staff of Horus

Night at the Museum: Tablet of Ahkmenrah

Fate Stay/Night: Tohsaka Lin, Saber

SAO: Kirito

DBZ: Goku, Tien

Fairly Oddparents: Timmy

Hitman Reborn: Yamamoto Takeshi

Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy: Horror (Remembered the movie Horror's Hand and got the idea for that section of the chapter).

-Always a lot of characters in the Zoro chapters. Hope I got them all, if you see someone you didn't recognize you can ask in the comments if I left it out above. Alright, time for review responses:

TheHeroOfDark71F chapter 89 . Mar 15

Wooo! Cool Chapter, yet i hope in next chapter we get to see Donald and Goofy this time! Oh, and well...
All of the sudden, i was murdered by a strange being with a crescent moon on her forehead, not realizing the multiuniversal's barriers have been grew weak so much that any Video Game character can come and kill me.
"Hehe...Good night, Trovian. Now, let's see if i can take over every single world in my possession."
"Darknik, is your Dreadnaught fully upgraded yet?"
A silent chuckle fills the silence in the darkness shrouded moon, as machinery noises starts to fill the silence.
"Yes, i've upgraded it to the point that it's easily powerful, it can wipe out not only Trovians, but to the whole multiverse full of worlds to rule ours. Since i have discovered this near-infinite of worlds thanks to the dark, yet heart-stealing beings called the Heartless, we have more things to rule over and to potentially rule this whole reality if our plans went as expected..."
Darknik paused before he starts up his Dreadnaught MK9. He continued with a twisted grin.
"As expected as the starts blinking out. Hundreds...to Billions."
(Sorry, i got into a bit of story telling on my review, besides, we're nearing the end of this story, right? Also, sorry if i am absent for a really long time. Things like playing Trove has inspiring me to do that little bit.)

Thanks! Like the idea of fanfiction off my fanfiction, even if I don't play Trove or get what you were talking about XD. Glad to see you back, but no we are not near the end. We're only 1/3 of the way into the Aebrith Saga, still a long ways to go. Thanks for the review!

asdf chapter 87 . Mar 14

Let's just hope that Buu isn't pissed off enough into becoming Super Buu, that's basically Armageddon.

Holy Shit Cartman?!

If the whole South Park Crew is here, where is the new kid?!

Darth Marsh or Stan Marshwalker? The Dark Side and the Light for control.

You've shown Katakuri so does that mean we'll see the Vinsmokes?

Poor Temari

Thanks for the very, very many reviews XD We'll see what Buu's role will be, but seeing as he's with Luthor you can be sure he'll come into the mix, along with the Caped Baldy. Cartman?! Possibly ;), (have been dropping a few hints around). The new kid from the games I don't know if he'll appear since I never played, but it's a possibility. Stan's got such a struggle going on trying to pick his side, love the second name. Too bad for Temari, I almost forgot about Shikamaru kicking the bucket all the way back in the first couple of chapters. I have shown Katakuri, but I have also shown the Vinsmokes. Yonji (married to Azula), Judge (watching Colosseum matches with his kids), Niji went with an army to Pyraxas to take control (and failed considering Eileen took it). They're all over the place, though I'll admit they haven't had huge roles... so far. Thanks again for reviewing!

Limit-Breaking chapter 89 . Mar 16

Man you love killing off alot of characters, what did anakin ever do to you, what did bardock and those pokemon back in nexus did to you. How did they hurt you and make you so cruel. Either way great chapter though im curious, will jojo bizarre adventure characters become main characters that can join in on this story with all of the main characters we read about in this story. Like joining luffy ship to help the resistance. Besides that i look forward to the next chapter.

If you thought I was cruel before... Oof. Surprised you still remember those Pokemon that died in Metropolis. They had it coming though, (they were dicks) XD Glad you liked the last chapter! I don't know whether or not Jojo will ever show up, since I only saw a few episodes of it a long time ago. I might start watching at some point, in which case they'd definitely pop up, but as of now probably not. Thanks for the review!

cyber chapter 88 . Mar 15

another cool chapter sorry I didn't post anything I just wonted to see everyone else review, first in the land of the gods, I'm glad to see my favorite characters, and now LEX LUTHOR with saitama and majon buu, and now where back to the wizard king, I'm not going to saying anything but I hink I know who the wizard king his, I guesse will see next time

another great chapter and I'm glad to see stan marsh here, sorry I didn't post anything I just wonted to see other review, and I think know who the wizard king not going to say anything I could be wrong, another thing i read the god city chapter and I saw my favorite characters, now sora and goku are of to fight the wizard king, and I see qui-gon jinn, and I see a flashback with zodd in it and bardock offering peace by killing there leaders, now with this chapter this I how stan got to the group, and last I see los santos I'm wonder where trevor phillips and his gang maybe doing something crazy.

im guesting everyone knows that dbs has ended, hey at least there is a movie coming

Thanks also for the very many reviews! Luthor and Saitama and Buu are the power squad the world needed XD. Wonder if you've got the Wizard King right? Have tried to make it pretty clear. Qui-Gon shows up! Zodd and Bardock! Lots happening, maybe the GTA V characters will show up too now that I threw Los Santos in. We'll see... Looking forward to the DBS movie though, hope it's a good one. Loved the final fight against Jiren so I'm hyped for it. Thanks again!

kg833998 chapter 89 . Mar 19

Great chapter as usual cant wait for the next one. have you considered adding kill la kill to these cuz I kind of want to see what'll happen when mako meets someone like nastu or god forbid luffy two people who are not very smart but love to eat

I'm just going to say a few shows animes or cartoons that I think would work well with the story Generator Rex, jojo Bizarre Adventure( even though I barely seen this anime) yu gi oh arc v, evangelion, static shock, little witch academia, danny phantom medaka box, and elfin lied

Thanks, glad you liked it! I do plan on adding Kill la Kill... though I won't say when/where/who. Haven't seen a few of those, but Static Shock I have which is where I got Ebon Evans (the shadow guy) from who I put in the Underlords the same time Bart and Takao were joining. I added a diclonius from Elfen Lied too back at the League of Assassins' headquarters, and I just watched Evangelion not long ago and added some of their characters into a chapter in the future. Anyway, thanks for the reviews, and thanks to everyone who read, faved, followed, and reviewed this story! Well, 'till next time!