"I do not steal, merely borrow."

Chapter 3

"Are you trying to rob this place?" It was an incredibly blunt way to ask such a question, but Kirei didn't really feel the urge to ask subtly at the moment.

If anything, the green haired man that Kirei had mentally pegged as the leader of the trio seemed to respect the gumption of asking it like that, as a wide grin broke out on his face.

"You're an idiot! I like that. Tell me, do you know who I am?" Kirei had never seen this man before in his life. He felt like he would remember the teeth at the very least. But, based on his tone of voice, he was somebody that Kirei should have recognized, if he ever bothered to learn about whatever area the man held primacy in. Right as he was about to state that, Tashigi spoke up from his left, apparently knowing the answer.

"You're Bartolomeo The Cannibal. The man who is rumored to be linked to the underworld of this town, and who has connections to every single mafia family in town." A quick snap of his fingers caused the shopkeep to flinch, as the man that Kirei now knew as Bartolomeo nodded.

"You got me pinned girly! But you did miss one little word there. Allegedly. Allegedly I did all those things. And if you are a marine like your little outfit says you are, then you know what a difference that makes. I'm just here as a representative of my neighborhood watch after all! Robbery implies that what I'm doing is illegal, and what I do? It's legitimate." Kirei wondered how long the man had spent filing his teeth into spikes to make his smile that menacing, or if he just had them like that his whole life. Did he actually eat people? Is that why he was called The Cannibal? Kirei was beginning to regret his isolation if this is the kind of thing that was happening just out of view.

Still, there was something he had to clarify. He turned slightly towards Tashigi, his ropes still at his side but burning with a desire to move, keeping the men in his vision. "What does he mean? What difference does it make?"

She tensed, the grip on the sword in her hands tightening until he could see the whites of her knuckles beneath the skin. "He's talking-" she spat at the words, hateful to the core, "-about how us Marines are limited in some capacity. We are supposed to assist local law enforcement, not completely supplant them. He's a criminal, but he's not a pirate. And we don't have evidence of his status. And so-" the man interrupted with a short clap, the rope at Kirei's side twitching slightly at the sound.

"-she can't do anything! No matter what she suspects, you need evidence if you want to do something against a law abiding citizen. Fly a jolly Rodger and a marine can do just about anything in pursuit. But us civilized people are not nearly so simple."

Kirei turned the issue over in his mind. The marines couldn't help, not without proof. Tashigi wanted to stop him, but couldn't. It rankled, slightly. He knew how strong Tashigi was. She's the one that forced him to grow. And the fact that she couldn't even attempt to do something…

It was like seeing someone robbed. Not of their property, but of their purpose. And so, without thinking, Kirei stepped forward.

The green haired man blinked in surprise, as the two goons on either side of him grimaced. "Hey hey hey, weren't you listening you gloomy brat? The marines can't do nothing. Or do you want to get her in trouble?"

Kirei shook his head, as his left hand clenched into a fist. "I heard you. Tashigi would get in trouble if she messed with you. So, she won't."

A squawk from behind him told the story that she wasn't happy with that. Kirei couldn't find himself worrying too much though, with the thumping of his heart in his chest. The man stopped at his explanation however, a smile breaking out. "Ah, I see how it is. You think you can take all three of us? You know, that makes sense. You're young, full of piss and vinegar. And if it's just you fighting, well, that's a town matter right? That's about what you are thinking. So go ahead. Take your swing. Give it your best shot, and whatever I do next will be self defense. Hell! Make it a good one and I might not kill ya for it!" It was the glint in Bartolomeo's eyes that sealed the whole speech however. It was the face of someone who thought he knew who Kirei was. That he would back down at this. That it would be something he could laugh about later. He was fully prepared in case he did try something, but he wasn't expecting it.

Kirei calmly put the knife down, placing it into his belt.

Bartolomeo chuckled at the dismissal of the weapon.

"You know, that might be the best choice you've made-"

The words were interrupted however, as the ropes at Kireis side came to life, forcing his power to make both ropes race towards the goons, wrapping around them suddenly and violently as they restricted themselves into thick binds.

At the same time, Kirei raised his fist back, flying forward with his hips turned into the motion.

It was a good punch. Not his strongest one, perhaps, but it was a good one. And he felt the pain radiate down his arm as it struck the air in front of the gangster. Bloodshot eyes opening wider as they stared into the tiredness of his own. "You cocky little- You actually surprised me, you know? A devil fruit ability, and you got my two guards. Too bad for you… You're not the only one in this town with one. Barrier-Barrier fruit! Expand!"

And suddenly, with nary a warning, the air that Kirei had hit instead of the man's face reflected the light. A barrier ability? That was the only thought that could leave him as he found himself being shoved backwards towards the wall. He was going to be squished! Quickly repurposing the line that extended towards one of the goons, he had it reel him in-

The other rope was still caught on the barrier, his knife lashing up, cutting it in one stroke, the tension going slack as he breathed out harshly. With only one move, Bartolomeo nearly took him out in one stroke. That settled it. This guy was dangerous.

"Good reflexes kid! Very nice. I can't recall the amount of people that have been caught by that-" A quick wink at Tashigi as he continued, "-because I have never done it before! Can't recall what never happened. But as for you… ropes huh? You think a power like that can match up to my barriers! You'd be wrong. Dead wrong." Kirei felt a headache coming on. This guy liked to talk. An area that Kirei was not proficient in, as Tashigi had taken the morning to remind him.

"I don't care." It was an admission that took him by surprise. The words arose from the back of his throat unbidden, as the two ropes at his side began to snake out around the store, as another three from his back began to feel around for my points to hitch to. He didn't like talking, but with his ability, the more time he could prepare, the better he could perform. Tashigi could instantly make a decision, and commit to it. Not him. He needed places to tie his ropes to if he wanted to move quickly. To hit harder. He needed to catch his opponents off guard if he wanted a chance to bind them.

It was a moment when he wished that he was more like Captain Smoker-

No. Dismiss the thought. He was here now, at this moment. Against this opponent. Unravel the knot. Pick it apart, until it is solved. Finish the thought. Kirei spoke again. "I don't care if my power can match up to you. That's not why I punched you. I'm not entirely sure of the reason myself. But I know it wasn't because I felt like I needed to prove myself." With that, the ropes that found purchase near the gangster went taut, pulling Kirei forward.

"Hah! You've got moxie, I'll give you that, but what part about the word barrier did you not understand? I'll crush you into paste!" Kirei understood well. In his mind's eye, he saw Tashigi this morning. Her sword ready to cut him down for such a suicidal straight forward attack like this.

So, he got better.

"Slipknot!"

With a thought the first rope lost all tension as the slip knot came loose, shifting his momentum from a straight line to a sudden circular path, swinging him around the barrier at terrific speed.

The look of surprise on Bartolomeo's face was oddly satisfying as his foot crashed into it, as the pair went crashing out the front door into the early morning street. Few people were around to see them, and yet there were some, screams of panic cutting the air as some began to run, and some began to come closer to cheer on what they thought was some brawl they could make bets on.

Kirei wished they wouldn't watch. But, he couldn't stop them, as focused his concentration on making sure that the ropes connected in the shop came loose and returned to him. Because, the man that he hit at such a high speed that his foot hurt, directly in his face was getting back up.

With that damn smile still on his face, and a black eye to show for Kirei's troubles.

"Tch. I hate fighting people like you, you know that? Where's that manly attitude where you try to break my barrier with raw force? I love it when people do that! No, you're the type that tries to figure things out, understand why something works. It's a cowardly way to live!" Kirei shook his head, as he tuned out the man's voice. Despite the man's criticism, that was all Kirei knew how to do. Judgments such as bravery or cowardly didn't matter. Kirei would do what was needed. And he would do what he liked to do. He just wasn't sure which category this fell under yet.

Out in the street, Kirei's options expanded dramatically. His spars with Tashigi were in the open training area outside the marine base, with very little terrain to take advantage of. And playing keep away from Tashigi had rapidly lost its ability to work as her ability to cut her ropes grew. But, with any luck Bartolemeo was not nearly as good as she was.

Kirei just had to keep his distance from the gangster, leave traps where he could, and eventually one would get past his defense and bind the man.

Plan in motion, Kirei turned away from the man, throwing out a hand as a rope shot towards a rooftop, hauling him towards it and away from the criminal. Turning back towards the street where his foe was-

-stepping on the very air less than a foot from him-

"I told you! Running away is a chickenshit way to live! Let me show you how a real man fights!" And then, a fist races towards Kirei's face. A guard was hastily raised, as the ropes around his arms coiled to pad them as much as they could.

Kirei saw stars for a second time that day, as he went flying towards the streets below, the ropes on his back acting as a fender between his body and the stones. He felt like a skipping stone as he made impact, bouncing along the ground a few times as he slid across the stones, his body sore and raw, his arms trembling from the hit.

His body wavered as he stood back up, his eyes trying desperately to focus on the laughing man standing on the rooftop. "You see what happens? If you have nothing to fight for, you're always going to crash and burn at the last moment. A real man stands his ground. A real man fights for what matters to him!"

Kirei's eyes burned with tears and pain, as he focused on the gambit he barely got into place. The rope coiled around the man's ankle, placed just as the hit landed. The rope goes over a post of wood jutting horizontally out in front of a shop. It could take the weight.

And then every single rope on him found purchase to keep him in place, as the rope around Bartolomeo tightened, the leverage of the post causing him to swing through the air with surprise and shock written on him as Kirei tightened the line for everything he was worth as Bartolomeo cleared the post with a hard thunk, thrown into the air as Kirei raised his hands, bringing them down hard as he completed the adhoc attack.

"Pulley-Piledriver!"

The Cannibal hit the ground with a crash, a savage payback for the fall Kirei took. The realization hit Kirei though, as the man got up yet again, a little worse for wear. Kirei was using his ability to do all this. To tank hits, to hit harder. To move. That was what Captain Smoker said made a power versatile.

The gangster hadn't used his ability to tank that hit. He would have just slammed into his barrier. He hadn't used his barrier to punch Kirei either. The man was just that dangerous. If Kirei was a person who cared about things like fairness, he would have thought it was outrageous. But Kirei was used to not caring about how he stood among others. He had no control over it, and thus he didn't think it was something to care about.

"You are pretty good." A compliment was what left Kirei's mouth. He must have been more out of it then he thought, the sweat running down his back from even the short length of the fight that had happened so far.

"Thanks! You know, I bet if I back you into a corner a couple more times, we can get a real fire going in ya. But… I don't think I want to give you the time for that. And-" With a gesture that Kirei barely caught, the man crossed his fingers as another barrier appeared, dropping down on the rope and cutting through it, Kirei losing his ability to manipulate the length already attached to him where the line was cut. "-I think it's about time I make sure you don't get to do any more tricks!" He had doubted that the gambit of keeping him talking and letting the rope continue to bind him was going to work, but he still thought-

A faint ripping sound filled the air as Bartolomeo ripped the ropes tied around his leg in twain. Kirei was now seething slightly. He would have to get a stronger rope if someone could just rip them like that. But that didn't matter. His anger didn't matter. The reason didn't matter. What mattered was what he saw just then. He had a hunch. The secret to how the man's power worked.

Kirei shook off the pain, and began to run forward. Bartolomeo rushed forward to meet him. Ropes extended forward, lashing out as best they could. Used like this, with only his power manipulating them, they could not do much damage.

But Bartolomeo didn't know that. Another cross of his fingers, and a barrier appeared to stop the ropes from connecting. And at the same time, Kirei dived to the right, a punch thrown at the man's side, another rope shooting out towards a lamp post to a large clearing ahead, as Kirei barely ducked a return punch as Bartolomeo struggled with the sudden melee occurring at the same time as he maintained the barrier against the ropes. Bartolomeo couldn't form more than one barrier at a time. Earlier, he could have used his barrier to attack, but had to resort to a punch, since he was using it to walk on the air to pursue him. When he was defending from one direction, he was vulnerable from another, even if he did see it coming.

And that dodge was the moment Kirei needed, the meager pain from the first punch just a distraction as his left arm wrapped around the man's midsection, as the rope attached to the lamp post shrunk, dragging them both towards it, his right arm hurting violently from the dragging motion even as Bartolomeo was dragged along the cobblestones the entire way.

As they entered the clearing, a blow from Bartolomeo finally broke the grapple as Kirei held his head in his hands, a scream leaving his mouth from the pain, as the man did his best to get up as well, despite the number of ropes crossing him.

"Did you bring us here because you wanted me to kill you with style? Because I have to say, I've always wanted to see this thing in action. Tell you what, give me a moment to break out of your little ropes and we can do a little reenactment of history!" Kirei didn't understand the non sequitur, but as he finally regained his bearings, he saw where exactly he had dragged them when he was looking for the clearing. He couldn't even say that he planned this.

The place of the Pirate King's execution. The only place in town he visited. He should have recognized where he was. Faintly, in the background he could hear Tashigi crying out for him. She likely was trying to find out where they were, the battle moving too quickly as they had sent themselves flying across the streets with their blows.

The execution stand. There was a chance. There was a glimmer of a chance. He just had to take it. Kirei didn't think he could stand on his own any more, but a rope dragged him up quickly towards the platform, his mind racing as he forced the ropes around Bartolomeo to tie him up as best as he could. He would only get one chance at this.

"This is it. I'm going to put my everything into this. Whatever happens next, I will give it my all."

"You say shit like that, and yet here you are trying to tie me up! Don't you know you can't keep a guy like me contained? I'm gonna rip out of it with pure strength!" That was true. The man was too strong for his ropes to effectively bind him for long.

But Kirei didn't need him to be contained perfectly. He just had to stop him from doing one thing. All of his ropes extended towards the ground around Bartolomeo, placing him in the center of an additional eight ropes. Kirei felt their ends coil around his body and his arms. A kick from him at the beginning of the fight had given the man a black eye. And that kick was powered by the tightening of a single rope.

This was going to be as many as he could manage.

"I don't need to contain you. I just need to stop you from crossing your fingers or your arms. That's how you form your barriers!" He had observed it throughout the fight, and he was certain that was how the man activated his ability. And so, that's what his ropes focused on. Binding his arms and his fingers, to stop him from being able to do the one action he needed to protect himself from this attack.

"Hey hey hey, let's talk this out, I know we all said some things- well really it was more me, but I-"

Kirei turned the talking out. There was nothing but the ropes. The knot was about to come undone. A step from the platform, where a king died so long ago. The wind rushed through his hair, as he felt the strain from his power and his body from forcing so many ropes to tighten at once.

A foot raised, coming down heel first towards the man below him.

"HULL! AXE!"

The pain he had felt before was nothing compared to what he felt running through his leg from that attack. His body wasn't trained to take that kind of force, and it made its protest known violently as he coughed up blood onto the stone.

And the man known as The Cannibal was in a small crater formed in the stone from the kick, the smile finally gone from his face, his struggles to break the ropes finally having left him.

"...heh. That was… quite the hit. Guess you brought me here to kill me huh? Takes guts. I wouldn't blame ya. That's what men like me do. We do what we do. And when someone does it to us, we get nobody but ourselves to blame." Kirei breathed out slowly at the admission. Throughout their whole fight, the man had been nothing but honest. And it was what was the equivalent of a deathbed confession that Kirei felt he understood the man better. He was painfully aware of the knife on his belt. He could end this.

Instead, he collapsed to his knee, falling beside the man as they both stared up at the platform. He couldn't see the gangster's face, but he liked to imagine that it was that shocked expression he had managed to tease out of him a few times during their fight.

"You don't deserve to die. Not to me." That was the simple truth of the matter. He didn't even truly know the reasons why he entered this fight. Was the man a bad one? Yes. Did that mean that Kirei had the right to kill him?

No. He didn't know if justice was real. The marines talked about it a lot, Tashigi dreamed of it. But the closest he could imagine was this. The admission that taking a life was something that no one person could decide on their own. He wondered where the ideal had come from. Or if it had been something he had always carried.

"Hell yeah, kid. Hell yeah." Kirei didn't know when he himself had started to smile, but it stayed on his face as the police arrived, a frantic Tashigi coming to his side as the light started to fade from his eyes, the adrenaline keeping him awake finally slipping away with the fight's conclusion.

Kirei liked fighting. It was a good thing to realize, as the world closed in around him, and he saw nothing but faces and screams.

Kirei wasn't used to waking up in a hospital. Not for a long time. When he was younger, the orphanage took him to a doctor for his nightmares, but they could never figure out the cause. And eventually, he stopped complaining about them. It was easier to live with them than bother people trying to find a solution to that knot. It was better to wake up in a familiar place than the smell of antiseptic and the feel of unfamiliar sheets.

Still, that was what greeted him as he stared at the frowning face of Tashigi. He honestly wasn't sure what to say. So, the first thing that came to mind was what he said.

"Sorry."

If anything, the apology only made the frown on her face intensify. "You're… sorry. You start a fight you know I couldn't help you with. For reasons you clarified beforehand. And then you get your butt handed to you by a mafia boss before collapsing in the center of town next to him, as I had no idea where you are after I called the police to try to save you from your own stupidity! And then, after I stay at your side and made sure you were going to live, I had to go to Smoker to beg him for help to pay your damn bail money, since may I remind you, you had no right to fight that awful man! Only to find out, that said awful man decided to pay your own fine for wrecking the square and not press any charges for you attacking him! And the only thing you have to say is sorry!?" Kirei was momentarily confused by the last part of her tirade. He was expecting to wake up in handcuffs. To find out that the man who called himself a Cannibal had some sense of honor and decided to reciprocate the favor of not killing him by not pressing charges was something he didn't expect.

Well, it was either that, or he wanted to take revenge on his own at a later date. Either way was probably within his scope of thought. Still, just like the fight, he had to take care of the issue in front of him first. "I'm sorry for worrying you."

It was an admission of guilt for what he actually cared about, after all. None of the rest of those things mattered. He made a decision, and so he stuck through it. He wasn't one to make decisions. He normally went with the flow. But, when he made one, he made sure to follow it. Otherwise, he would be nothing but regrets.

A faint red tint colored her face as she shook a fist at him. "That isn't an apology at all you jerk! You don't feel any regret for what you did? Why did you even think it was a good idea in the first place?"

Kirei shrugged, the motion sending pain through his body. "I do what I like and what I need to do. I think that was a like to do situation. So, I don't regret it. As for the reason, I have no idea. But I liked the outcome. So I can't fault it."

The silence that followed was finally broken as she held her head in her hands. "I can't believe this. I thought you were the cautious type. Laying all those traps, not committing to join the marines. I thought you were just scared for your life! I wanted to show you that you didn't have to be so afraid, that you could actually do something on your own. And instead I find out that… you're just a person who is reckless quietly!"

"No one said still waters had to be deep." A sigh left her at that, leaning back in her chair.

"You can say that again. I don't like what you did, you know that right? We have rules for a reason. That's what separates us from the bad guys. We do what's right, even when it's not easy." Kirei doesn't see what the problem was. Everything worked out in the end. Maybe it was reckless, but those were the results he saw. And as for doing what was right… he didn't care about that. He kept saying it. But maybe it was only in his head.

"Thank you, then. For caring. I will apologize to Smoker as well when I get the chance." She nearly slugged him in the arm, before pausing as she realized that the motion would probably be bad for his health.

"Of course I care! You don't have to mention it for something silly like this. And as for Smoker… he's probably as reckless as you are somedays. But, I think he would appreciate it. The Captain doesn't look like it, since he always has to act so tough, but he cares a lot about the people under him. And I think in some ways, he views you as being a subordinate of sorts."

Huh. Kirei almost wished he didn't dislike the man now. Hearing such a glowing review painted him in a good light. But…

"I still don't want to join the marines. If I did, I wouldn't have been able to punch that guy."

The groan that she let out in the hospital caused a smile on his face. Captain Smoker was right. She did make him laugh.