Across the Ocean (Zoro x OC)

12 - Leaked out!

'Kill him!!!' Mr 8's order rang loud and clear through the night. The bounty hunters present had already drawn their weapons and wouldn't be told twice to let Zoro's head roll... But where was he?

'He's disappeared?'

'Where did he go?'

He stood right between them! But they only realised this a few seconds later when the swordsman, grinning broadly and with his arms folded in front of his chest, asked them to finally get going. Of course, this was a deliberate provocation that the people would respond to. They opened fire with their muskets even before they had really focussed on Zoro as a target. A (more than) bad move: They only hit themselves, because Luffy's right hand had once again taken flight.

Unbelievable!

'Come on, hurry up!' shouted Mr 8 angrily. 'It's just one swordsman and-' But he swallowed his own words as he felt the coldness of Zoro's Wado-Ichimonji's steel blade on his left cheek, which had pierced through his curly hair.

'Are you sure you just want to add one tombstone today?' the swordsman murmured, standing at the other's back.

'There he is!'

'Shoot!'

'Stop you fools!' shouted Mr 8 desperately as he heard his men calling out like startled chickens, apparently having learnt nothing from the first round of self-immolation. 'Are you going to shoot me, too? I said stop!' And wherever he had got the instrument from, he blew hard into the saxophone, which was glinting in the moonlight. Triggering an immense wave of sound, his subordinates' eardrums bursted and he sent them to the ground. Or was that a firearm after all?

Zoro certainly hadn't stopped to find an answer to this question. Safety first, so he had dodged and hidden behind the wall of a house. He could still hear his opponents talking, but a yodelling 'Yeeehaa!' above him made the swordsman flinch. Tilting his head back, he spotted another guy aiming the musket muzzle at him. 'Found him!' The firearm discharged with a bang, and Zoro pushed himself hard backwards into the building he had been standing in front of. 

This was bad news for the gunman whose sights he had fallen out of, but all the better for all the others who had set their sights on the green-haired man and wanted to pounce on him like a pack of hungry wolves.

Zoro saved himself by leaping behind a table as the next hail of bullets threatened to hit him, and he pulled the piece of furniture up by its leg to let it act as a shield. Now he was cornered and there was only one way out... 'Well... first the Yubashiri then,' he muttered, pulling the first of the two new katana out of its scabbard. For testing its sharpness, he smashed the table with a vertical slash. Rushing forward through the gap, he broadsided the opponents in a spinning action. 'Really easy to guide,' Zoro remarked approvingly and with ease in his voice as he looked again at the gleaming blade, while the guys went down.

It would be a lie to say that Zoro didn't enjoy the challenge of taking on a hundred opponents at once. Maybe he was counting down from that number in his head like a countdown, but he still had to stay on his guard and not get cocky! 

Revenge followed literally on his heels as he sprinted outside and up the outer staircase of a building. Once at the top, he had to cling to the banister with both hands and drop backwards with his upper body because he was greeted by a bazooka. 'That was close!' Zoro exhaled tensely and pulled himself back up by the railing.

'You won't get any further!' someone shouted from near the ground, but the real danger was not coming from there or head-on, but from the roof of a building thirty metres away, to Zoro's back. Miss Monday — who turned out to be a very strong woman — had picked up a heavy barrel and threw it at him, with the aim to smash it against his head.