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rainsometimesI have received no brilliant ideas for a great rewrite and so have decided to go ahead and post the thing. Who knows but I'll may be revising it at some later point.
Continues from Chapter 4
SPOILER WARNING! As mentioned in the summary, this chapter contains some spoilers for early Thriller Bark. If you’ve read at least about half of the arc, it’s safe to proceed. (Sorry I can’t be more specific.)
ROMANISATION WARNING: Zoro's surname pops up a few times here, but in the Swedish manga translation version 'Lolonoa'. I haven't been able to reconcile myself to the American version of Zoro's surname, though I know it's the official one endorsed by Oda. 'Roronoa' just looks so growly to me.And it's based on historical pirate Francois L'Ollonais, so I don't think the 'L' version is horribly wrong. Sorry! It won't be mentioned much, I promise.
Chapter 5: Carry Each Other
-In which explanations are offered from a dubious source; fight scenes occur; and there comes to be a marked lack of stability in things
“En garde,” said the grinning old woman.
Zoro glanced down at the knitting-needle-turned-spear pushing against his breastbone, swatted it away with the still-sheathed Wadou in its scabbard, jumped up towards the old woman, drew the blade while in the air, put the scabbard back in his belt as he descended, striking at her neck – knowing he’d have the strength to stop the strike in the last possible instant if she were to prove too slow. But the old woman let her other knitting needle grow longer as well and used it to parry the blow. In the background the birds were gasping, and soon started to cheer him on.
The old woman had disentangled the bulk of her super-long knitting from her two needles seemingly without any trouble. Only a few strands of yarn were still loosely hanging from them, and didn’t seem to hinder her movements any. On the contrary, she seemed well able to use the threads as an additional weapon, sending them towards his arms and legs, trying to tangle him up. As for Zoro, he’d already drawn Sandai Kitetsu and was attacking and defending with both swords.
Her style was rather odd, probably because her weapons were odd. The knitting-needles stayed mostly the lengths of lances or fighting-staffs, but sometimes shrank back to the size and length of longswords – and sometimes right down to their original knitting-needle size. (Once she let one of them grow about three meters long and used it as a vaulting pole to jump right over him, taking him by surprise when he had braced for an attack.) It wasn’t the kind of weapon that you’d usually see combined with two-handed techniques. Maybe that was why she combined the twirls, thrusts and sweeps suitable for such long reaches with more sword-like jabs, feints and slashes. Those latter moves looked rather ineffective and uneconomical to him, especially as the knitting-needles were sharp only at their points and a foot or so below the points, unlike swords but like spears and lances. But he had to admit that he could feel it when their sides hit him. The Dream Dream woman had strength enough to give her weapons impact worthy of heavy clubs.
“Two-Sword Style... HAWK WAVE!” he shouted, sending out a strong gust of air towards her intended to knock her over, then kept running at her to come in close for a follow-up.
She didn’t manage to evade the blow and tumbled backwards from it, flapping her arms and then falling on her back. But she quickly rolled on the ground and leapt up again, already counter-attacking before he got the chance to strike her.
“STOCKINETTE STITCH!” shouted the old woman, and suddenly the two giant knitting-needles were thrust towards him at considerable speed, going up and down from one side to the other in a zig-zagging fashion that seemed intended to pin him down and actually reminded him of knitting movements. The move seemed rather energy-consuming, but she was fast and strong enough to make it work, to some extent. At the same time, a mass of threads tried to curl around his feet and legs to make him trip and fall. It took him some effort to knock the needles out of the way in a double slash from below; then he quickly leapt up to avoid the entangling yarn and to counter-attack.
It wasn’t really a fight. Not yet.
It was more of a testing, a sounding-out, or maybe even a greeting of sorts. Or quite possible the old bat was only trying to delay him for her own mysterious reasons. But if so, there was nothing he could do about that: she’d started it, and he could hardly back down from a challenge.
For his part, he was holding back by a lot, since he had no interest in actually killing her or even make her fall unconscious. He wanted answers, and he was quite convinced that she had at least some of them. If he could disarm her and knock her around a bit, maybe cause a few harmless surface wounds, she might become more co-operative.
She was pretty obviously also holding back on him, didn’t seem to be after his head (or not yet, in any case). Unless she was simply a lot better at defence than attack, for her needle-strokes when she came at him seemed just a mite slower than when she moved to dodge or block his attacks. Her strength was also more in evidence when she held him back than when she attacked.
By and large the old woman’s strength and speed were considerable enough and nothing to sneeze at, but they weren’t surprising him either. He’d pretty much counted on something in that range when he’d first looked her over. But her nimbleness and agility in the air were somewhat more unexpected from someone her age and size.
Suddenly she wasn’t there in front of him anymore. The birds cried out in surprise. He spun around, but she wasn’t behind him either – wasn’t anywhere on the piazza anymore. He blinked, circling warily, remembering what he’d heard about the Door Door Fruit’s powers and wondering if this might be something similar. Then he heard a faint popping sound in the air and saw his opponent sitting about fifty meters away, perched on top of the bronze statue by the fountain. Her weapons had shrunk down to their original size.
“Ah! She’s back!” cried the birds unnecessarily.
“Trying to run away, granny?” he said neutrally, cocking his head to one side and giving her a ‘think-I-give-a-shit-what-you-do?’ look.
The old woman grinned at him again, her eyes mostly hidden under her unruly bird’s nest of grey hair. “Sorry to mislead you, young man,” she croaked. “I was having a little fun just now – but I’m not really a fighter.”
He frowned, crossing his arms. “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? I mean, I’ve seen better, but you weren’t that bad, you know.”
She guffawed, seemingly not insulted by this. “I daresay not. Nah, you see, my real body is old and rheumatic and was never that strong even back when I was young. I’ve always gotten by on my wits more than anything else…until I ate that devil fruit awhile back.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s only my devil fruit abilities that allow me to counter your moves,” she explained, jumping down from the statue as easily as a ballerina, her two knitting needles held daintily between thumbs and forefingers. “All I have to do is to dream myself fast and strong and inventive enough to fight evenly against fighters of your calibre – and eventually defeat them. Of course, it helps if they’ve been dreaming here for awhile, like you, so that I’ve become familiar with the corners of their mind.”
There was a squawk of outrage from the fountain: Zoro turned his head and saw L-bird flying towards the statue. “What! That’s cheating!” the bird protested. “You’re nothing but a stupid cheater, weird granny!” he yelled as he swooped right over her, sticking his tongue out angrily.
“Cheater!” N-bird agreed, jumping up and down where she sat on the fountain’s edge.
“Hey, wait a minute, granny,” said U-bird intently, flapping his wings next to N-bird. “Does this mean that I only have to imagine I’m, say, a fierce and powerful eagle, and I’ll become one?”
The old woman shook her head. “No, little bird,” she said mildly, “you can’t, since you’ve only flown out of this young pirate’s head. And for some reason he prefers to imagine you and your companions as small and defenceless creatures.”
“Damn, that sucks,” muttered U-bird.
“But – but what about Mr. Swordsman, then?” asked N-bird urgently. “In that case, he can just imagine he’s stronger than you and it will be true, can’t he? I mean, it is his dream after all.”
“I really don’t think that’s decided yet,” said Zoro, putting his hands in his pockets and looking away from the old woman. He felt vaguely disgusted over her revelation. As he did so, he noticed the large block of stone from before, much closer to him now.
U-bird nodded emphatically. “See? He’s not convinced. Me neither.”
“So what?” said L-bird, who was practising hanging upside down from the outstretched hand of the statue but whose claws kept giving way, making him fall down repeatedly. “I mean, the important thing is to have fun, right?” Fortunately there was a part of the old woman’s enormous knitting lying right below him on the ground, so he landed softly each time.
“Heh heh heh…” laughed the old woman smugly, grinning in the orange bird’s direction. “Well, if he thinks he can be more imaginative than me, he’s welcome to try. But let’s take it easy for now.” She held up a smaller knitting with a teacup-like pattern, pulled one of the strings, and then suddenly held an actual steaming teacup in her hand. Slowly sipping, she ignored the impressed gasps and “Did you see that?” exclamations from all the birds, even N-bird. “After all,” the old woman continued, turning toward Zoro again, “you’ll be here for a good while yet, young pirate. There’ll be more time for fights later.”
N-bird shook her head, looking agitated again. “You’re wrong, you old fraud,” she said. “He’s not going to stay here for long. He’s going to go back to his crew.”
“Yeah!” shouted U-bird.
“Yeah, he is!” yelled L-bird as well, from where he lay head down on the ground. “We already decided!”
“I don’t intend to stay long,” Zoro agreed, crossing his arms. “Anyway, I was wondering something else. This stone here – ” He pointed at the large stone in front of him: he’d passed it several times during the fighting and couldn’t help but wonder a bit about its inscriptions, which he couldn’t read.
The old woman, having finished her tea, waved her hand once and then the cup had vanished back into the teacup pattern of the smaller knitting. “The stone?” she said easily, picking up her big knitting again. “What about it, shadowless one?”
“Huh?” And suddenly he felt dizzy and distant again, just like the moment before, when he’d drawn an intact Yubashiri. He made his face and voice colder. “What did you just call me, old woman?”
The old bat bent down to pick up a ball of yellow yarn that had just rolled up to her feet by itself. She knitted its thread into the big knitting. “Shadowless is what I said,” she said matter-of-factly. “Oh, maybe you didn’t know that yet? That’s part of why you’re here, actually. Those whose shadows have been stolen by the Shadow Master wind up in a deep sleep that lasts for three days. No-one can wake them up before then. That kind of sleep is most fertile for strong, thick, unusually stable dreams – my favourite kind, in fact. It’s easy then to draw the dream and its dreamer into a dreamscape like this one, which is handy for me to use as a base. People think it’s a dreamless sleep, but it ain’t. It’s just very hard for them to remember the dream afterwards.”
“Nobody took my shadow!” protested Zoro. “Look, I still have one!” He pointed at the grey spot on the ground where he stood. The old woman turned her head and peered where he pointed, craning her neck to see it better.
“Oho,” she said. “Well, that’s just because you think there should be one. This isn’t your real body, little fool.” She knitted for a few breaths, then said abruptly, “Actually, that shadow is a lie, pure and simple. Well, that’s no good; we can’t have that. I’ll do you a favour and take it away from here as well.” She snapped her fingers in his direction, and suddenly Zoro’s shadow vanished from the ground.
“H-hey…” he said, going pale, then angry. “What do you think you’re…” But then he stopped, taking his hand away from Sandai Kitetsu’s hilt.
“…Moria?” he wondered, as recent events finally started to swim up into the forefront of his mind, demanding to be recalled.
“Of course. Gecko Moria is the man who ate the Shadow Shadow Fruit.”
“Well...” said Zoro slowly, “if what you’re saying is true, then I really don’t have time to lounge around here for three days.” He drew the demon sword and gave her a hard look. “Show me the way out, old woman.”
The Dream Dream woman threw a thick net of knitting over him. “Out of my hands, sonny,” he heard her blithe voice say, moving away from him. “You’ll find it yourself when three days have passed. That’s just the way it works. It’s convenient for me, but it’s not my fault. Don’t blame me.”
“Khh!…” He cut and tore his way out of the net, then looked around, confused. No sign of the old bat. “Hey, where did she go?” he asked the black birds, who were both quite close by.
They shook their heads, looking equally puzzled. “I dunno – she just vanished!” said U-bird. “Again!”
“Prob’ly running away from you,” said L-bird.
“Watch it,” said U-bird anxiously. “She might attack you with some kind of nightmare if she gets mad. I wonder why she didn’t before.”
“Hey, Mr. Swordsman,” N-bird called over from where she was. He turned his head and saw her sitting on top of the large block of stone. The orange bird was bending her head and looking at the inscriptions on the stone from upside-down. “Could these things be poneglyphs?”
“Hm?” Zoro started and walked over there to give the big stone another look. But all he could say about the inscriptions was still that they weren’t any kind of letters he knew.
In that moment, the old Dream Dream woman suddenly reappeared out of thin air, just five meters from him.
“Feeling calmer, do you?” she said to him, her tone casual but her body language a bit wary. “Oh, you’re studying that? That old monolith is rather interesting, in fact. And it seems to be an object of special importance and pride to this town.”
“What bloody town?” growled Zoro. “There’s no-one around. Anyway, do you know what it says? And are those poneglyphs?”
The old woman raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you seriously asking me if I can read poneglyphs?” she said in an amused tone of voice. “You want to set the World Government on me? No, I’m nowhere that well-read or talented. But these aren’t poneglyphs. These are a type of runes that are much less ancient and exclusive, and not that hard to learn. Most historians and archaeologists would know them.”
“Oh,” said Zoro dispassionately, though he was growing increasingly irritated with the old bat’s patronising tone. “And you?”
She spread her hands modestly and gave a gap-toothed smile. “Well, let’s see. I believe I can make out the gist of it, if I’m lucky.” She took a few short, almost dainty steps toward the dark stone. “Hm-mm, hm-mm... Oh. Sorry, pirate. Seems to be nothing about treasure here, if that’s what you’re after.”
Zoro grunted something, and then noticed that several threads of yarn had wrapped themselves around his swords. It wasn’t a huge tangle yet, but it could make trouble later if he didn’t take care of it now (he bet it was something the old woman had done on purpose). He started to untangle the threads carefully. The threads looked and felt just like ordinary yarn, black and white and red.
“Up there, if I’m reading this right,” the old woman continued while Zoro worked, “I think there’s something about the legendary sea of All Blue…possibly a hint of where to look for it…”
Zoro whipped round and stared at the stone. “What?!”
“Don’t shout, dearie,” she murmured. “Only if I’m getting this right, mind you. And then – hm! – there’s something that seems to refer to the so-called Lost History. Oooh, that’s dangerous political stuff, that is. And down here there’s some stuff about a medicine that can cure everything, but that’s probably just rubbish…”
“That does it!” he shouted. “I’m taking that!” He ran over to the stone, grabbed it with both hands and tried to lift it out of the ground. Damn, but it was heavier than it looked. A good part of it seemed to be underground.
“Swords-guy!” cried N-bird, flying down from the top of the monolith and beating her wings frantically. “I mean, Mr. Swordsman!” she amended her mode of address. “Don’t do it! She’s lying, I’m sure of it! She’s just trying to find some way to manipulate you!”
“Maybe so, but I’m willing to take that risk!” he shouted back. “And why would ‘Mr. Swordsman’ be better than ‘Swords-guy’, anyway? My name is Lolonoa Zoro! You learned that a long time ago!”
“That wasn’t me!”
“I know, but it’s close enough!” And come to think of it, how the hell could she have ‘flown out of his head’ without even knowing his name? These guys were going to confuse him for ever.
“You should try to imagine a way out of this instead!” insisted N-bird. Then he heard U-bird gasp and L-bird squawk “Hey!” in outrage, just as he felt something cold and sharp press into his back through his shirt.
“Drop that, Lolonoa,” said the old woman in a flat tone, speaking from right behind him. “I never said you could take it.”
“Like hell I will!” he barked back over his shoulder.
The old woman looked angry for the first time. “You’re welcome to study the stone, if you wish,” she hissed, “but you’re not allowed to bring it with you! Its place is here. Do you hear me, pirate?”
L-bird shouted: “ Don’t attack him with his back turned, you cheater!” He dived down at the old woman.
“Why you...” She swatted at him with the other knitting needle, the one that wasn’t pressed to Zoro’s back. “Get away from me, you nasty little thing!”
“Stay out of this!” Zoro told the little black bird. “I’ll handle her.” He drew Wadou and turned to face the Dream Dream woman. At the very same time, the clock struck three times, high above them in the tall narrow tower overlooking the square. “I’m taking that stone, old lady,” he repeated in a low voice.
Now it was a fight.
*
Sparks and flashes of violet and blue and grey and gold passed in rapid motion all over the great piazza The change in pace was obvious: even the birds looking on could probably perceive it right from the start, when the old woman launched a spinning two-arm spear-needle attack she called “Purl Stitch” about twice as fast as her former attacks. From the force of it, too, he was guessing that killing him seemed to have moved from ‘something to be definitely avoided’ to ‘acceptable outcome if necessary’ in her mind. But he had no reason to hold back anymore either. He sensed that she had probably been as forthcoming as she’d ever be, with her dropping those little revelations, whether true or not. In any case, Zoro had no more interest in anything she might tell him.
It still didn’t feel anything like a dream; in fact the burning sun, the sound of his pulse in his ears, the sweat and drive of battle made it all seem more real for every minute. The things that had been hot and quiet and fuzzy and vague in this town, with its lazy desert winds stirring up what-ifs, maybes and if-onlys, had now all been replaced by hot, sharp outlines and clean straight angles; by steel and sunlight and the flashes of his opponent movement’s. Nothing but this strike and this dodge and this parry. The way it ought to be.
The only not-quite-real part was the lingering feeling of flatness about the old woman herself, but now that she was fighting seriously that too was less apparent. Right now she was telling him – between grunts and gasps and the shouting of attack names – that he ought to understand he could never win against her, because no matter how strong or fast he was she could always imagine herself better; and if he thought it was safe for him to be reckless because he now knew he was in a dream, well then he was sadly mistaken. While skilfully dodging a Two-Cut Flash of his and then going on to perform something she called a “Reverse Stockinette”, she pointed out that it wasn’t as if he’d wake up from getting ‘killed’ in here, as if he’d ever count on something like that.
No, she warned while he first dodged and then parried the Reverse Stockinette, his real body may be safe outside this dream but that didn’t mean she couldn’t shatter his mind if she had to. (She vanished right before another Hawk Wave could reach her, re-appearing close behind him. He sensed her in time to evade the first knitting needle, but the second one grazed his side as he vaulted in the air to charge her from above.) The old woman jumped backwards with a grunt, then shouted, “That was not my intention, Lolonoa.” A tone of plea and cajoling mixed with chill steely anger in her voice. “I’d prefer your mind to be whole. But I’m not letting you take that stone.”
“Man, you’re a bad mind-reader!” Zoro shouted back at her. “Hearing that only makes me want to take it even more!”
“Oh, that’s how it sounds, is it? Very well, then! CIRCULAR KNITTING!”
She brought something rope-like out from inside her coat and smacked both ends of the rope onto one end of each knitting needle. They stuck there, so that suddenly she didn’t have two knitting-needles but one, soft and bending in the middle where the ropey thing connected them.
Then the old woman started to twirl the new flexible extra-long needle very fast into the air, spinning it faster and faster and tossing all the nearby threads of yarn onto it, where they hung on impossibly. With a wordless “HYAH!” cry, she sent the weapon spinning furiously in his direction . He was going to whack it away, but at the last instant the needle dodged his strokes and in the next second it had surrounded him. It kept spinning around him, faster and faster, knitting its trailing threads at ridiculous speed at the same time. Trying to build up a wall of yarn around him, a wall that was closing in on him; trying to catch him and bury him in thread. Meanwhile he could hardly see the old woman herself anymore behind all that spinning and knitting – only glimpses here and there of a dark stocky figure circling him in the opposite direction, running on the ground.
Of course he could cut through the yarn easily enough, but it wouldn’t do much good unless he timed his attack so it would hit the old woman too. Otherwise she’d get a very good chance to stab or spear him under cover of masses of cut-up thread. So before he struck, he needed to calculate exactly where she would be.
“Two Sword Style…” he began – there was another glimpse of her grey head, leaping upwards – TWO-CUT CLIMBING THE TOWER!”
His double slash as he leapt upwards cut right through the circular tube of knitting from bottom to top and also cut through the rope tying the needles together: now there were two of them again. And it hit the old woman as well – but he felt very annoyed with himself when he realised his calculation had been off by just a tiny amount, because the attack didn’t hit her full-force in the chest as he’d intended. It might be because of her very fast reaction time, but that was no excuse since he thought he’d taken that in account as well. In any case, she smashed noisily into the ground but was up on her feet very quickly after that. She seemed winded and was groaning but he could see no blood on her. Tough old biddy.
But, he thought as he parried her next furious onslaught of Stockinette Stitch, while she was certainly tough enough and didn’t hold back anymore, she was also angrier and more tense, and despite her confident words he could see traces of fear come and go on her face. She wasn’t completely sure she would win this, he realised.
She jumped into the air and vaulted backwards, putting more distance between them. He prepared to close in, but before he could, she was crying “ELONGATED STITCH!” and threw one of her knitting-needle-spears straight towards his heart at breath-taking speed. He whacked it away with Wadou easily enough but failed to see the second knitting needle until it was too late. She’d let it shrink to the size of a dagger and thrown it in a spinning, dipping fashion that was harder to predict. It managed to slip through his defences and cut him on his upper left arm.
He cursed at his carelessness, noticing he was bleeding from several small wounds now, bruised from the blunt sides of the knitting-needles, and overall pretty winded. It was high time he ended this.
“Two Sword Style... 72-POUND CANNON!” he cried, using his best two-sword distance attack. The multitude of air slashes converged with accumulated force on his opponent’s body before she had the chance to react. She cried out in pain and fell over, rolling as she hit the ground.
There was a wide tear on her coat by the shoulder, and under it a large wound had opened up. Blood ran onto the cobbles where she lay. Her left hand opened and closed in a fist in an impotent gesture.
“You seem to have misunderstood this,” he told her, voice slightly raspy.
“I – I’m bleeding,” she mumbled, sounding confused and incredulous.
“See, it doesn’t matter how strong or fancy your imagination is,” he continued. “You may know for sure you can always be stronger than me, and maybe it’s your knowing it that makes sure it will happen, too. But the difference is, I know I will win.”
Behind him he could hear the birds go wild.
“M-MAN!” U-bird sounded quite overcome with admiration. “What a great line! THAT WAS SUCH A COOL THING TO SAY, SWORDS-GUY!!”
“YEH-EAH! YOU TELL HER, MR. SWORDSMAN!” yelled N-bird.
“AW-AWESOME!” screamed L-bird. “ALL RIGHT!! I want this guy to be part of my gang!!”
Zoro groaned; he would've slapped a hand to his forehead if could have spared the energy. But fatigue was coming over him now, and he leaned forward, holding his knees to steady himself while breathing heavily.
“Huh?!” said U-bird, sounding perplexed. “You have a gang? Since when?”
Tired. She might not be down for good yet. He shouldn’t give her the chance to get back up... What was it he’d been fighting for, again?
“Well, sure! You two are part of my gang, right?”
Oh, right. That stone. Okay. So, grab the stone and get the hell out of here. Time was running out.
“Says who? If anything, it’s you two who are part of MY gang!”
He started to walk back to the centre of the square.
“Oh yeah?!”
“Yeah!!”
Of course, he still didn’t know where the exit was, but he’d get there eventually. He usually did.
“Oh, grow up, boys. In any case, L-bird, he can’t be! He’s human! Plus, he’s our creator! In a way.”
Time was running out.
‘If I can only defeat you after it’s too late, I’ll still lose!’ Someone had said that once, or something like it. Wait, wasn’t it him?
“I don’t care about that! He’s funny and cool and a great guy except for when he’s being a jerk!”
“But what about getting him back to his crew?” asked U-bird, but at that point Zoro managed to zone them out. The old woman was getting back to her feet with a small smile on her lips.
“Bleeding,” she said once more. “You’re tough, little pirate. Well, that’s fixed soon enough.” She grabbed a strand of thread from somewhere and twirled it around one finger, then clenched her finger around the new ball of yarn. When she opened her hand the thread had disappeared, and so had the wound on her shoulder. All hints of fatigue were gone from her body, too.
“Why you –! Lousy cheater!” and “Stupid cheater!” squawked the black birds in outrage.
But N-bird cried out despairingly, “HEY! MR. SWOOORDSMAAN!! Why don’t you do the same thing yourself? Just pretend you’re not wounded and tired, and you won’t be!”
She did have a point, he supposed. Maybe he was a bit of a chump for not even trying something like that. But it would be the same thing as trying to imagine Yubashiri unbroken. In a real, hard fight, you got your cuts and your lumps and fought on despite them. You didn’t heal up instantaneously. He had neither the will nor the talent for that kind of pretence.
Besides, all the cuts were minor ones so far.
*
They leapt towards one another simultaneously, swords meeting lance-like needles, and were both thrown back by the force of the impact.
“You really should just go back, young pirate,” the old woman told him. Her voice was relaxed again, though she moved with blinding speed across the piazza – much, much faster than he’d have guessed she could when she first started fighting. She still didn’t evade all his assaults – and he still managed to block or dodge most of hers, but it was becoming harder by the minute – but either her endurance had increased or her healing ability had speeded up, because attacks that had knocked her over before now only made her grunt and sway on her feet briefly.
“This yarn of mine,” she went on calmly while doing a back-flip in the air, “is the very stuff of dreams and stories. You may be able to cut it up, but you can’t make it stop moving, stop trying to weave or knit itself around the world.” And that was true enough, as he’d already found: more and more of the great square was now occupied by puddles and nests of pieces of thread that moved and coiled like snakes nests, trying to trip him up or entangle him when he passed right by them, when they didn’t simply launch themselves at him on the old woman’s bidding.
“You don’t have the power to make the stories stop moving, little pirate,” said the old woman, still smiling, and now there was a glitter of triumph in her eyes: she was sure of victory now, as she hadn’t been before. “Fine phrases and confidence won’t be enough for you to win this.” A sideways slash at his mid-section somehow slipped through his defences, knocking him back and letting the sharp part at the edge of her weapon cut into his stomach, before he managed to knock the needle away and leap at her.
She countered him without much trouble. “Give it up and go back to the Lower City, little pirate,” she urged him gently. “I’ll dream up a more suitable opponent for you on the Twilight Street. Maybe I’d even make you fight yourself, how about that?”
“Sounds kinda boring,” he grunted back, summoning his reserves to parry her thrusts. “No surprises.”
He had no idea how much time had passed anymore, no real sense of his condition (which very much felt like his actual body’s condition, damnit). The sounds from the bird audience in the background were distant and fractured, he couldn’t make them out. But his blood was singing loudly in his ears and he knew he was getting close to hearing the breath of all things. If his opponent were to make herself vanish now, he would be able to sense her presence long before she could touch him.
But maybe she had already guessed that, because when she did disappear next time, it was only to reappear seconds later only about five meters further away, with no real advantage to her in the move. And then she did the same thing again. She was just teasing him now.
“Still…” her voice dropped just a bit, “…there is a way for you to defeat me, young pirate.” But then you have to be able to cut through everything.”
A huge cloud of knitted yarn leapt at him from one direction, as she attacked from the other. He improvised by setting off a Hawk Wave towards the hostile knitting rather than her, leaping high to avoid her strike instead. It worked surprisingly well: almost all the attack yarn was flung far away across the piazza.
“Not just the strands of dream and story,” the old woman went on calmly, “which you might think of as nothing but lies and deception. But also the threads of connectedness, of relationships – the loose yarn of ephemeral relationships with strangers, but also the tight net between true companions. Threads of trust and faith, of dependence; threads of destiny, even…Yes, you will have to be the blade that cuts through everything, Lolonoa Zoro. And then you will truly be the greatest swordsman there ever was. But you will also be completely alone.”
“You’re wrong,” he hissed. “You’re lying. My teacher taught me differently. The sword that can cut through everything... is also the sword that can cut nothing.” He launched another Two-Cut Climbing the Tower at her which she only partially managed to block. She groaned from the impact, falling back. “It all depends on the will of its wielder. You don’t have to cut what you don’t want to cut. The strong sword protects... as well as destroys.”
The old woman laughed as she straightened up and ran towards him again. “Your little dojo-sensei, right? He would say that; wouldn’t want to believe otherwise. He would prefer to think in a way that justifies his teaching men to cut up other men for a living. Oh, I grant you that he still gets more and has come further along the road than the great multitude of anyone who’s ever picked up a sword. But there is such a long, long stretch of road that he knows nothing about. I daresay there are stretches of that road that even Shanks Redhair, Whitebeard and, yes, even Dracule Mihawk know little about. But you... you, young pirate, may get there one day. Or die trying. And if you do – if you will truly know one day how to cut through all of it, how would you be able to justify to yourself not using that strength? Not testing it? If you do abstain from it, will you be sure it’s because you’ve made a choice to put protection ahead of destruction? And not because you simply didn’t have what it took?”
“What the hell... do you know?” he panted, breath growing more ragged. “Said it yourself... hahh... you’re no swordswoman. Hell, you’re... not even a fighter.”
She backed away, pausing for breath – a good sign, though he was breathing a good deal heavier than her – but then came at him again with growing speed. “Hahh... I’ve seen into the minds of a great many swords-user,” she grunted. “And I’ve got a mind of my own to use, and imagination. I know about minds... I know about minds and will and ambition, young pirate.” Somehow he believed her when she said that, even if she was half made up or more. She went on, panting heavily yet not slowing her movements, not slacking off in strength, slowly pressing him back, “Hahh... you carry a demon sword, Lolonoa... and already you have become a wielder of destruction to a rather fearful degree. Don’t tell me you can’t feel the urge in you to go farther, to follow that blood-red thread to its very end? ...And if you reject that urge and push it down, are you sure it isn’t for the wrong reasons? Because of fear?”
“Damnit!” he screamed, sheathing Sandai Kitetsu. “I don’t have TIME for this philosophical claptrap! And you’re still wrong!” He sheathed Wadou too, then quickly grabbed both spear-like knitting needles, pushed them together and wrenched them from the old woman’s grip with such force that she toppled forward from it.
He leapt at her and punched her hard in the face.
She flew about fifty meters, sending up a big cloud of dust as she landed heavily on the pavement. Then she lay there quite still.
*
“YES! How’s that for inventiveness, you old hag!” he heard N-bird yell after a few endless, breathless seconds when nothing stirred in that large empty space.
“He – HE WON!” declared U-bird after a few more seconds had passed without any signs of life from the old woman.
“Of course he did!” shouted L-bird happily. “Toldja! Great fighting, Swords-Guy!”
But Zoro wasn’t paying them much attention. He was already sprinting towards the block of stone, not letting himself get time to get distracted again. He reached it, grabbed hold of its sides, took a deep breath, and heaved. Slowly the stone started to move upwards under the pressure. The ground moaned softly, then more loudly beneath him.
“Don’t!” The old woman’s voice was barely more than a whisper, weak and broken. “Don’t take it, you fool!” she gasped.
He ignored her. More and more of the monolith came out of the ground.
“No... you don’t understand…it is the lynchpin...” her voice was slowly growing in strength, tense with urgent pleading. “That stone is what keeps everything here together!” She gasped heavily for breath again, still lying flat on the ground. “Besides the knitting, that is... and that’s mostly torn up! If... hahh…if you remove it, you’re going to make the whole blessed place fall down!”
“Who gives a shit?” said Zoro, pulling the stone up further – nearly there… “It’s just made-up, after all.”
“It’s my home, you ignorant lunk of meat!” croaked the old woman.
“LIAR!” shrieked N-bird, while L-bird gave a stricken wail at her choice of words, no doubt remembering how hungry he was.
Then the old woman cried out in anguish as the whole monolith finally left the ground. At the same time, a crack opened in the ground right by Zoro’s feet, quickly growing larger. He backed away fast enough, but it was already spreading rapidly all across the centre of the piazza.
“See what you’re doing? And this is just the start of it!” screamed the Dream Dream woman, shakily getting to her feet. “Well, be welcome to it then, you thieving pirate! Enjoy your earth-quake, and I hope you’ll get stuck in the rubble for days!” Trembling with anger and perhaps fear, she gathered her cloak around herself and took a very unsteady step away from them.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” shouted N-bird.
“It’s not like he’s the only shadowless dreamer around here!” she yelled back, snapping her fingers and summoning a few strands of yarn to fly into her hand. “I’ll just go play with one of the others instead!”
“BLEAH! You LOST, old hag! Admit it!” cried L-bird.
“Yeah! Loser!!” U-bird joined in.
But the old woman didn’t even bother shouting a final repartee above her shoulder. She spun the yarn around her, faster and faster, and then disappeared into thin air without a sound.
Meanwhile, the crack had kept spreading, causing other cracks to appear as well, running along it, at cross-angles, and soon all kinds of directions. The first and still largest crack ran right up to where the bronze statue stood. Then, impossibly, the crack split the statue in half and swallowed one half into the ground, leaving the other still standing.
Cracks had now zig-zagged their way all over the huge piazza, even reaching the iron railings of the Marine building, tearing into them and twisting them into weird, contorted shapes. The ground made an awful grinding, rumbling noise from the intolerable pressures inflicted upon it; but whenever threads of yarn fell into the cracks a particularly awful, high-pitched wailing sound was added as well. Then one crack ran up to the fountain in the very centre of the square, ploughing right through it in mere seconds. Water spouted out all over, fairly drenching Zoro, and then he remembered the other fountain he’d seen down in the Lower City.
Speaking of the Lower City, the cracks had reached the stone steps now, and then there was a deafening DOONN sound of falling great stones tumbling down a hundred metres or possibly more. Zoro was already dry again, and now he realised that his fatigue was pretty much gone too, that he felt no more ache and didn’t even seem to be bleeding. Maybe he’d learned the trick after all without meaning to or maybe – more likely – it was because of everything breaking up, breaking down. But he had no idea if it was a good or bad thing, if it meant he was getting closer or not to reality.
Some of the yarn was gathering around him, maybe vengefully, maybe just frightened of falling through the cracks in the ground, but in either case slowing him down. Pieces of glass started to fly through the air (from the palaces? The Marine HQ? he didn’t know and didn’t care), and then far too many bells were striking at the same time. When he looked up there were large cracks running up through the whole length of the clock-tower. The bells and the clock-face were soon going to fall down and shatter on the cobblestones, he understood, never to tell the right time again.
In the centre of all the destruction, with a monolith twice his size on his back, Zoro was walking – running – walking, then stopping and turning to look around, because where the hell were the birds?
Then he heard L-bird scream at him from above and he realised the three of them were sitting atop the monolith itself, and probably had for some time now.
“Hey, don’t stop like that! What do you think you’re doing?” squawked L-bird, then dived down towards him, picking him on the head with surprising force. “C’mon, stupid Swords-guy! You’ve gotta get out of here!” He clawed at Zoro’s face and shoulders, then pulled at the collar of Zoro’s shirt with his claws, furiously flapping as if trying to lift him up.
“He’s right, just go, Mr. Swordsman!” N-bird was flapping her wings right in front of him, too, sounding quite anxious.
“But what about you guys?” asked Zoro. It felt like the monolith was getting bigger and heavier for every moment, weighing him down. He was sweating again.
“We’ll be fine, we can fly!” shouted L-bird. “And we’re small, too! Now go!” He picked at him again.
“Ouch,” mumbled Zoro. “But I’ve got to…bring this with me…” He shook the monolith a bit.
“It’s not real, Mr. Swordsman!” cried N-bird. “And even if it were, you won’t be able to bring anything through!”
“But... I can’t decipher it on my own!” he protested. “I don’t know those letters! Robin’s got to read it! ...Goddamnit, why does this thing keep getting bigger?”
“Hey, Swords-guy…there are cracks all over the houses now, too!” yelled U-bird, spinning around frantically in the air trying to catch as much as possible of what was happening through the rain of gravel, dirt and mortar. “Gaah! It’s all breaking up! Even that stone you’re carrying has cracks in it!” He too picked at Zoro. Oddly enough it felt more like punches than stings when the birds picked at him. Weird things. “Just RUN, you idiot!” U-bird went on. “You’ll get buried here!”
“…Just gimme a minute…” he mumbled, sweating again, gasping for breath. The ground was still shaking and rumbling, the houses were crumbling, the bells of the clock still striking madly. All around him threads of yarn tried to keep him in place, keep him asleep, stopping him from going home.
“Ah? What was that?” He looked around, then turned to U-bird. “Did you say something?”
“Huh? No, why– ”
“Thought I heard... something about a swordsman coming... It sounded like you…” He stilled, his eyes widening. Oh.
“Not here after all…” he whispered.
“What?” said the birds in unison.
“...The one I’m to fight... not here after all... but outside…”
And he turned towards a point, a light he could see now, shining in his head, and he needed no-one to tell him where to turn in order to get there. With both arms he carried the stone on his back, and he knew he was an idiot for trying to hold onto it when it was bound to vanish within seconds, but he just couldn’t help himself.
“Stupid bloody moron,” he mumbled, meaning himself, and smiled a tiny bit before he set his jaw firmly, grasping with his teeth the heavy yarn moving around him, biting through or jerking away the threads so he could move forward.
He climbed upwards or what he thought of as upwards, finding a path where there had only been air before. The houses and the streets and the sun and the walls all turned flat and fell away…
…it was starting to feel colder…
…and then he finally emerged on a chair in the half-lit galley of the Sunny, groggy and shadowless.
Damn, but he could use a drop of booze right now.
FIN
AUTHOR’S NOTES: And there’s the end of it. We now return Lolonoa Zoro to his regularly scheduled canon adventures, starting with page 19 of manga chapter 458, which is where this story leaves off. What he heard there in the end was of course Usopp’s memorable phrase “A beautiful swordswoman with a lot of meat just came in”, tailored to simultaneously wake up the shadowless Luffy, Zoro and Sanji. (And the punch-like effects of the picking birds came from the manga too (page 18, same chapter).
The attack names for Zoro’s opponent were all picked up from this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting.
I’d like to thank all the readers who have stuck with me so far, with extra thanks to everyone who have given me feedback on previous chapters. Of course I would be quite happy to receive comments for this final chapter, too. Including critical ones – I tend to correct and revise my fics over time, and even if I don’t, thoughtful criticism can always be useful with regards to future writings.
Edit: A possible epilogue
Continues from Chapter 4
SPOILER WARNING! As mentioned in the summary, this chapter contains some spoilers for early Thriller Bark. If you’ve read at least about half of the arc, it’s safe to proceed. (Sorry I can’t be more specific.)
ROMANISATION WARNING: Zoro's surname pops up a few times here, but in the Swedish manga translation version 'Lolonoa'. I haven't been able to reconcile myself to the American version of Zoro's surname, though I know it's the official one endorsed by Oda. 'Roronoa' just looks so growly to me.And it's based on historical pirate Francois L'Ollonais, so I don't think the 'L' version is horribly wrong. Sorry! It won't be mentioned much, I promise.
Chapter 5: Carry Each Other
-In which explanations are offered from a dubious source; fight scenes occur; and there comes to be a marked lack of stability in things
“En garde,” said the grinning old woman.
Zoro glanced down at the knitting-needle-turned-spear pushing against his breastbone, swatted it away with the still-sheathed Wadou in its scabbard, jumped up towards the old woman, drew the blade while in the air, put the scabbard back in his belt as he descended, striking at her neck – knowing he’d have the strength to stop the strike in the last possible instant if she were to prove too slow. But the old woman let her other knitting needle grow longer as well and used it to parry the blow. In the background the birds were gasping, and soon started to cheer him on.
The old woman had disentangled the bulk of her super-long knitting from her two needles seemingly without any trouble. Only a few strands of yarn were still loosely hanging from them, and didn’t seem to hinder her movements any. On the contrary, she seemed well able to use the threads as an additional weapon, sending them towards his arms and legs, trying to tangle him up. As for Zoro, he’d already drawn Sandai Kitetsu and was attacking and defending with both swords.
Her style was rather odd, probably because her weapons were odd. The knitting-needles stayed mostly the lengths of lances or fighting-staffs, but sometimes shrank back to the size and length of longswords – and sometimes right down to their original knitting-needle size. (Once she let one of them grow about three meters long and used it as a vaulting pole to jump right over him, taking him by surprise when he had braced for an attack.) It wasn’t the kind of weapon that you’d usually see combined with two-handed techniques. Maybe that was why she combined the twirls, thrusts and sweeps suitable for such long reaches with more sword-like jabs, feints and slashes. Those latter moves looked rather ineffective and uneconomical to him, especially as the knitting-needles were sharp only at their points and a foot or so below the points, unlike swords but like spears and lances. But he had to admit that he could feel it when their sides hit him. The Dream Dream woman had strength enough to give her weapons impact worthy of heavy clubs.
“Two-Sword Style... HAWK WAVE!” he shouted, sending out a strong gust of air towards her intended to knock her over, then kept running at her to come in close for a follow-up.
She didn’t manage to evade the blow and tumbled backwards from it, flapping her arms and then falling on her back. But she quickly rolled on the ground and leapt up again, already counter-attacking before he got the chance to strike her.
“STOCKINETTE STITCH!” shouted the old woman, and suddenly the two giant knitting-needles were thrust towards him at considerable speed, going up and down from one side to the other in a zig-zagging fashion that seemed intended to pin him down and actually reminded him of knitting movements. The move seemed rather energy-consuming, but she was fast and strong enough to make it work, to some extent. At the same time, a mass of threads tried to curl around his feet and legs to make him trip and fall. It took him some effort to knock the needles out of the way in a double slash from below; then he quickly leapt up to avoid the entangling yarn and to counter-attack.
It wasn’t really a fight. Not yet.
It was more of a testing, a sounding-out, or maybe even a greeting of sorts. Or quite possible the old bat was only trying to delay him for her own mysterious reasons. But if so, there was nothing he could do about that: she’d started it, and he could hardly back down from a challenge.
For his part, he was holding back by a lot, since he had no interest in actually killing her or even make her fall unconscious. He wanted answers, and he was quite convinced that she had at least some of them. If he could disarm her and knock her around a bit, maybe cause a few harmless surface wounds, she might become more co-operative.
She was pretty obviously also holding back on him, didn’t seem to be after his head (or not yet, in any case). Unless she was simply a lot better at defence than attack, for her needle-strokes when she came at him seemed just a mite slower than when she moved to dodge or block his attacks. Her strength was also more in evidence when she held him back than when she attacked.
By and large the old woman’s strength and speed were considerable enough and nothing to sneeze at, but they weren’t surprising him either. He’d pretty much counted on something in that range when he’d first looked her over. But her nimbleness and agility in the air were somewhat more unexpected from someone her age and size.
Suddenly she wasn’t there in front of him anymore. The birds cried out in surprise. He spun around, but she wasn’t behind him either – wasn’t anywhere on the piazza anymore. He blinked, circling warily, remembering what he’d heard about the Door Door Fruit’s powers and wondering if this might be something similar. Then he heard a faint popping sound in the air and saw his opponent sitting about fifty meters away, perched on top of the bronze statue by the fountain. Her weapons had shrunk down to their original size.
“Ah! She’s back!” cried the birds unnecessarily.
“Trying to run away, granny?” he said neutrally, cocking his head to one side and giving her a ‘think-I-give-a-shit-what-you-do?’ look.
The old woman grinned at him again, her eyes mostly hidden under her unruly bird’s nest of grey hair. “Sorry to mislead you, young man,” she croaked. “I was having a little fun just now – but I’m not really a fighter.”
He frowned, crossing his arms. “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? I mean, I’ve seen better, but you weren’t that bad, you know.”
She guffawed, seemingly not insulted by this. “I daresay not. Nah, you see, my real body is old and rheumatic and was never that strong even back when I was young. I’ve always gotten by on my wits more than anything else…until I ate that devil fruit awhile back.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s only my devil fruit abilities that allow me to counter your moves,” she explained, jumping down from the statue as easily as a ballerina, her two knitting needles held daintily between thumbs and forefingers. “All I have to do is to dream myself fast and strong and inventive enough to fight evenly against fighters of your calibre – and eventually defeat them. Of course, it helps if they’ve been dreaming here for awhile, like you, so that I’ve become familiar with the corners of their mind.”
There was a squawk of outrage from the fountain: Zoro turned his head and saw L-bird flying towards the statue. “What! That’s cheating!” the bird protested. “You’re nothing but a stupid cheater, weird granny!” he yelled as he swooped right over her, sticking his tongue out angrily.
“Cheater!” N-bird agreed, jumping up and down where she sat on the fountain’s edge.
“Hey, wait a minute, granny,” said U-bird intently, flapping his wings next to N-bird. “Does this mean that I only have to imagine I’m, say, a fierce and powerful eagle, and I’ll become one?”
The old woman shook her head. “No, little bird,” she said mildly, “you can’t, since you’ve only flown out of this young pirate’s head. And for some reason he prefers to imagine you and your companions as small and defenceless creatures.”
“Damn, that sucks,” muttered U-bird.
“But – but what about Mr. Swordsman, then?” asked N-bird urgently. “In that case, he can just imagine he’s stronger than you and it will be true, can’t he? I mean, it is his dream after all.”
“I really don’t think that’s decided yet,” said Zoro, putting his hands in his pockets and looking away from the old woman. He felt vaguely disgusted over her revelation. As he did so, he noticed the large block of stone from before, much closer to him now.
U-bird nodded emphatically. “See? He’s not convinced. Me neither.”
“So what?” said L-bird, who was practising hanging upside down from the outstretched hand of the statue but whose claws kept giving way, making him fall down repeatedly. “I mean, the important thing is to have fun, right?” Fortunately there was a part of the old woman’s enormous knitting lying right below him on the ground, so he landed softly each time.
“Heh heh heh…” laughed the old woman smugly, grinning in the orange bird’s direction. “Well, if he thinks he can be more imaginative than me, he’s welcome to try. But let’s take it easy for now.” She held up a smaller knitting with a teacup-like pattern, pulled one of the strings, and then suddenly held an actual steaming teacup in her hand. Slowly sipping, she ignored the impressed gasps and “Did you see that?” exclamations from all the birds, even N-bird. “After all,” the old woman continued, turning toward Zoro again, “you’ll be here for a good while yet, young pirate. There’ll be more time for fights later.”
N-bird shook her head, looking agitated again. “You’re wrong, you old fraud,” she said. “He’s not going to stay here for long. He’s going to go back to his crew.”
“Yeah!” shouted U-bird.
“Yeah, he is!” yelled L-bird as well, from where he lay head down on the ground. “We already decided!”
“I don’t intend to stay long,” Zoro agreed, crossing his arms. “Anyway, I was wondering something else. This stone here – ” He pointed at the large stone in front of him: he’d passed it several times during the fighting and couldn’t help but wonder a bit about its inscriptions, which he couldn’t read.
The old woman, having finished her tea, waved her hand once and then the cup had vanished back into the teacup pattern of the smaller knitting. “The stone?” she said easily, picking up her big knitting again. “What about it, shadowless one?”
“Huh?” And suddenly he felt dizzy and distant again, just like the moment before, when he’d drawn an intact Yubashiri. He made his face and voice colder. “What did you just call me, old woman?”
The old bat bent down to pick up a ball of yellow yarn that had just rolled up to her feet by itself. She knitted its thread into the big knitting. “Shadowless is what I said,” she said matter-of-factly. “Oh, maybe you didn’t know that yet? That’s part of why you’re here, actually. Those whose shadows have been stolen by the Shadow Master wind up in a deep sleep that lasts for three days. No-one can wake them up before then. That kind of sleep is most fertile for strong, thick, unusually stable dreams – my favourite kind, in fact. It’s easy then to draw the dream and its dreamer into a dreamscape like this one, which is handy for me to use as a base. People think it’s a dreamless sleep, but it ain’t. It’s just very hard for them to remember the dream afterwards.”
“Nobody took my shadow!” protested Zoro. “Look, I still have one!” He pointed at the grey spot on the ground where he stood. The old woman turned her head and peered where he pointed, craning her neck to see it better.
“Oho,” she said. “Well, that’s just because you think there should be one. This isn’t your real body, little fool.” She knitted for a few breaths, then said abruptly, “Actually, that shadow is a lie, pure and simple. Well, that’s no good; we can’t have that. I’ll do you a favour and take it away from here as well.” She snapped her fingers in his direction, and suddenly Zoro’s shadow vanished from the ground.
“H-hey…” he said, going pale, then angry. “What do you think you’re…” But then he stopped, taking his hand away from Sandai Kitetsu’s hilt.
“…Moria?” he wondered, as recent events finally started to swim up into the forefront of his mind, demanding to be recalled.
“Of course. Gecko Moria is the man who ate the Shadow Shadow Fruit.”
“Well...” said Zoro slowly, “if what you’re saying is true, then I really don’t have time to lounge around here for three days.” He drew the demon sword and gave her a hard look. “Show me the way out, old woman.”
The Dream Dream woman threw a thick net of knitting over him. “Out of my hands, sonny,” he heard her blithe voice say, moving away from him. “You’ll find it yourself when three days have passed. That’s just the way it works. It’s convenient for me, but it’s not my fault. Don’t blame me.”
“Khh!…” He cut and tore his way out of the net, then looked around, confused. No sign of the old bat. “Hey, where did she go?” he asked the black birds, who were both quite close by.
They shook their heads, looking equally puzzled. “I dunno – she just vanished!” said U-bird. “Again!”
“Prob’ly running away from you,” said L-bird.
“Watch it,” said U-bird anxiously. “She might attack you with some kind of nightmare if she gets mad. I wonder why she didn’t before.”
“Hey, Mr. Swordsman,” N-bird called over from where she was. He turned his head and saw her sitting on top of the large block of stone. The orange bird was bending her head and looking at the inscriptions on the stone from upside-down. “Could these things be poneglyphs?”
“Hm?” Zoro started and walked over there to give the big stone another look. But all he could say about the inscriptions was still that they weren’t any kind of letters he knew.
In that moment, the old Dream Dream woman suddenly reappeared out of thin air, just five meters from him.
“Feeling calmer, do you?” she said to him, her tone casual but her body language a bit wary. “Oh, you’re studying that? That old monolith is rather interesting, in fact. And it seems to be an object of special importance and pride to this town.”
“What bloody town?” growled Zoro. “There’s no-one around. Anyway, do you know what it says? And are those poneglyphs?”
The old woman raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you seriously asking me if I can read poneglyphs?” she said in an amused tone of voice. “You want to set the World Government on me? No, I’m nowhere that well-read or talented. But these aren’t poneglyphs. These are a type of runes that are much less ancient and exclusive, and not that hard to learn. Most historians and archaeologists would know them.”
“Oh,” said Zoro dispassionately, though he was growing increasingly irritated with the old bat’s patronising tone. “And you?”
She spread her hands modestly and gave a gap-toothed smile. “Well, let’s see. I believe I can make out the gist of it, if I’m lucky.” She took a few short, almost dainty steps toward the dark stone. “Hm-mm, hm-mm... Oh. Sorry, pirate. Seems to be nothing about treasure here, if that’s what you’re after.”
Zoro grunted something, and then noticed that several threads of yarn had wrapped themselves around his swords. It wasn’t a huge tangle yet, but it could make trouble later if he didn’t take care of it now (he bet it was something the old woman had done on purpose). He started to untangle the threads carefully. The threads looked and felt just like ordinary yarn, black and white and red.
“Up there, if I’m reading this right,” the old woman continued while Zoro worked, “I think there’s something about the legendary sea of All Blue…possibly a hint of where to look for it…”
Zoro whipped round and stared at the stone. “What?!”
“Don’t shout, dearie,” she murmured. “Only if I’m getting this right, mind you. And then – hm! – there’s something that seems to refer to the so-called Lost History. Oooh, that’s dangerous political stuff, that is. And down here there’s some stuff about a medicine that can cure everything, but that’s probably just rubbish…”
“That does it!” he shouted. “I’m taking that!” He ran over to the stone, grabbed it with both hands and tried to lift it out of the ground. Damn, but it was heavier than it looked. A good part of it seemed to be underground.
“Swords-guy!” cried N-bird, flying down from the top of the monolith and beating her wings frantically. “I mean, Mr. Swordsman!” she amended her mode of address. “Don’t do it! She’s lying, I’m sure of it! She’s just trying to find some way to manipulate you!”
“Maybe so, but I’m willing to take that risk!” he shouted back. “And why would ‘Mr. Swordsman’ be better than ‘Swords-guy’, anyway? My name is Lolonoa Zoro! You learned that a long time ago!”
“That wasn’t me!”
“I know, but it’s close enough!” And come to think of it, how the hell could she have ‘flown out of his head’ without even knowing his name? These guys were going to confuse him for ever.
“You should try to imagine a way out of this instead!” insisted N-bird. Then he heard U-bird gasp and L-bird squawk “Hey!” in outrage, just as he felt something cold and sharp press into his back through his shirt.
“Drop that, Lolonoa,” said the old woman in a flat tone, speaking from right behind him. “I never said you could take it.”
“Like hell I will!” he barked back over his shoulder.
The old woman looked angry for the first time. “You’re welcome to study the stone, if you wish,” she hissed, “but you’re not allowed to bring it with you! Its place is here. Do you hear me, pirate?”
L-bird shouted: “ Don’t attack him with his back turned, you cheater!” He dived down at the old woman.
“Why you...” She swatted at him with the other knitting needle, the one that wasn’t pressed to Zoro’s back. “Get away from me, you nasty little thing!”
“Stay out of this!” Zoro told the little black bird. “I’ll handle her.” He drew Wadou and turned to face the Dream Dream woman. At the very same time, the clock struck three times, high above them in the tall narrow tower overlooking the square. “I’m taking that stone, old lady,” he repeated in a low voice.
Now it was a fight.
*
Sparks and flashes of violet and blue and grey and gold passed in rapid motion all over the great piazza The change in pace was obvious: even the birds looking on could probably perceive it right from the start, when the old woman launched a spinning two-arm spear-needle attack she called “Purl Stitch” about twice as fast as her former attacks. From the force of it, too, he was guessing that killing him seemed to have moved from ‘something to be definitely avoided’ to ‘acceptable outcome if necessary’ in her mind. But he had no reason to hold back anymore either. He sensed that she had probably been as forthcoming as she’d ever be, with her dropping those little revelations, whether true or not. In any case, Zoro had no more interest in anything she might tell him.
It still didn’t feel anything like a dream; in fact the burning sun, the sound of his pulse in his ears, the sweat and drive of battle made it all seem more real for every minute. The things that had been hot and quiet and fuzzy and vague in this town, with its lazy desert winds stirring up what-ifs, maybes and if-onlys, had now all been replaced by hot, sharp outlines and clean straight angles; by steel and sunlight and the flashes of his opponent movement’s. Nothing but this strike and this dodge and this parry. The way it ought to be.
The only not-quite-real part was the lingering feeling of flatness about the old woman herself, but now that she was fighting seriously that too was less apparent. Right now she was telling him – between grunts and gasps and the shouting of attack names – that he ought to understand he could never win against her, because no matter how strong or fast he was she could always imagine herself better; and if he thought it was safe for him to be reckless because he now knew he was in a dream, well then he was sadly mistaken. While skilfully dodging a Two-Cut Flash of his and then going on to perform something she called a “Reverse Stockinette”, she pointed out that it wasn’t as if he’d wake up from getting ‘killed’ in here, as if he’d ever count on something like that.
No, she warned while he first dodged and then parried the Reverse Stockinette, his real body may be safe outside this dream but that didn’t mean she couldn’t shatter his mind if she had to. (She vanished right before another Hawk Wave could reach her, re-appearing close behind him. He sensed her in time to evade the first knitting needle, but the second one grazed his side as he vaulted in the air to charge her from above.) The old woman jumped backwards with a grunt, then shouted, “That was not my intention, Lolonoa.” A tone of plea and cajoling mixed with chill steely anger in her voice. “I’d prefer your mind to be whole. But I’m not letting you take that stone.”
“Man, you’re a bad mind-reader!” Zoro shouted back at her. “Hearing that only makes me want to take it even more!”
“Oh, that’s how it sounds, is it? Very well, then! CIRCULAR KNITTING!”
She brought something rope-like out from inside her coat and smacked both ends of the rope onto one end of each knitting needle. They stuck there, so that suddenly she didn’t have two knitting-needles but one, soft and bending in the middle where the ropey thing connected them.
Then the old woman started to twirl the new flexible extra-long needle very fast into the air, spinning it faster and faster and tossing all the nearby threads of yarn onto it, where they hung on impossibly. With a wordless “HYAH!” cry, she sent the weapon spinning furiously in his direction . He was going to whack it away, but at the last instant the needle dodged his strokes and in the next second it had surrounded him. It kept spinning around him, faster and faster, knitting its trailing threads at ridiculous speed at the same time. Trying to build up a wall of yarn around him, a wall that was closing in on him; trying to catch him and bury him in thread. Meanwhile he could hardly see the old woman herself anymore behind all that spinning and knitting – only glimpses here and there of a dark stocky figure circling him in the opposite direction, running on the ground.
Of course he could cut through the yarn easily enough, but it wouldn’t do much good unless he timed his attack so it would hit the old woman too. Otherwise she’d get a very good chance to stab or spear him under cover of masses of cut-up thread. So before he struck, he needed to calculate exactly where she would be.
“Two Sword Style…” he began – there was another glimpse of her grey head, leaping upwards – TWO-CUT CLIMBING THE TOWER!”
His double slash as he leapt upwards cut right through the circular tube of knitting from bottom to top and also cut through the rope tying the needles together: now there were two of them again. And it hit the old woman as well – but he felt very annoyed with himself when he realised his calculation had been off by just a tiny amount, because the attack didn’t hit her full-force in the chest as he’d intended. It might be because of her very fast reaction time, but that was no excuse since he thought he’d taken that in account as well. In any case, she smashed noisily into the ground but was up on her feet very quickly after that. She seemed winded and was groaning but he could see no blood on her. Tough old biddy.
But, he thought as he parried her next furious onslaught of Stockinette Stitch, while she was certainly tough enough and didn’t hold back anymore, she was also angrier and more tense, and despite her confident words he could see traces of fear come and go on her face. She wasn’t completely sure she would win this, he realised.
She jumped into the air and vaulted backwards, putting more distance between them. He prepared to close in, but before he could, she was crying “ELONGATED STITCH!” and threw one of her knitting-needle-spears straight towards his heart at breath-taking speed. He whacked it away with Wadou easily enough but failed to see the second knitting needle until it was too late. She’d let it shrink to the size of a dagger and thrown it in a spinning, dipping fashion that was harder to predict. It managed to slip through his defences and cut him on his upper left arm.
He cursed at his carelessness, noticing he was bleeding from several small wounds now, bruised from the blunt sides of the knitting-needles, and overall pretty winded. It was high time he ended this.
“Two Sword Style... 72-POUND CANNON!” he cried, using his best two-sword distance attack. The multitude of air slashes converged with accumulated force on his opponent’s body before she had the chance to react. She cried out in pain and fell over, rolling as she hit the ground.
There was a wide tear on her coat by the shoulder, and under it a large wound had opened up. Blood ran onto the cobbles where she lay. Her left hand opened and closed in a fist in an impotent gesture.
“You seem to have misunderstood this,” he told her, voice slightly raspy.
“I – I’m bleeding,” she mumbled, sounding confused and incredulous.
“See, it doesn’t matter how strong or fancy your imagination is,” he continued. “You may know for sure you can always be stronger than me, and maybe it’s your knowing it that makes sure it will happen, too. But the difference is, I know I will win.”
Behind him he could hear the birds go wild.
“M-MAN!” U-bird sounded quite overcome with admiration. “What a great line! THAT WAS SUCH A COOL THING TO SAY, SWORDS-GUY!!”
“YEH-EAH! YOU TELL HER, MR. SWORDSMAN!” yelled N-bird.
“AW-AWESOME!” screamed L-bird. “ALL RIGHT!! I want this guy to be part of my gang!!”
Zoro groaned; he would've slapped a hand to his forehead if could have spared the energy. But fatigue was coming over him now, and he leaned forward, holding his knees to steady himself while breathing heavily.
“Huh?!” said U-bird, sounding perplexed. “You have a gang? Since when?”
Tired. She might not be down for good yet. He shouldn’t give her the chance to get back up... What was it he’d been fighting for, again?
“Well, sure! You two are part of my gang, right?”
Oh, right. That stone. Okay. So, grab the stone and get the hell out of here. Time was running out.
“Says who? If anything, it’s you two who are part of MY gang!”
He started to walk back to the centre of the square.
“Oh yeah?!”
“Yeah!!”
Of course, he still didn’t know where the exit was, but he’d get there eventually. He usually did.
“Oh, grow up, boys. In any case, L-bird, he can’t be! He’s human! Plus, he’s our creator! In a way.”
Time was running out.
‘If I can only defeat you after it’s too late, I’ll still lose!’ Someone had said that once, or something like it. Wait, wasn’t it him?
“I don’t care about that! He’s funny and cool and a great guy except for when he’s being a jerk!”
“But what about getting him back to his crew?” asked U-bird, but at that point Zoro managed to zone them out. The old woman was getting back to her feet with a small smile on her lips.
“Bleeding,” she said once more. “You’re tough, little pirate. Well, that’s fixed soon enough.” She grabbed a strand of thread from somewhere and twirled it around one finger, then clenched her finger around the new ball of yarn. When she opened her hand the thread had disappeared, and so had the wound on her shoulder. All hints of fatigue were gone from her body, too.
“Why you –! Lousy cheater!” and “Stupid cheater!” squawked the black birds in outrage.
But N-bird cried out despairingly, “HEY! MR. SWOOORDSMAAN!! Why don’t you do the same thing yourself? Just pretend you’re not wounded and tired, and you won’t be!”
She did have a point, he supposed. Maybe he was a bit of a chump for not even trying something like that. But it would be the same thing as trying to imagine Yubashiri unbroken. In a real, hard fight, you got your cuts and your lumps and fought on despite them. You didn’t heal up instantaneously. He had neither the will nor the talent for that kind of pretence.
Besides, all the cuts were minor ones so far.
*
They leapt towards one another simultaneously, swords meeting lance-like needles, and were both thrown back by the force of the impact.
“You really should just go back, young pirate,” the old woman told him. Her voice was relaxed again, though she moved with blinding speed across the piazza – much, much faster than he’d have guessed she could when she first started fighting. She still didn’t evade all his assaults – and he still managed to block or dodge most of hers, but it was becoming harder by the minute – but either her endurance had increased or her healing ability had speeded up, because attacks that had knocked her over before now only made her grunt and sway on her feet briefly.
“This yarn of mine,” she went on calmly while doing a back-flip in the air, “is the very stuff of dreams and stories. You may be able to cut it up, but you can’t make it stop moving, stop trying to weave or knit itself around the world.” And that was true enough, as he’d already found: more and more of the great square was now occupied by puddles and nests of pieces of thread that moved and coiled like snakes nests, trying to trip him up or entangle him when he passed right by them, when they didn’t simply launch themselves at him on the old woman’s bidding.
“You don’t have the power to make the stories stop moving, little pirate,” said the old woman, still smiling, and now there was a glitter of triumph in her eyes: she was sure of victory now, as she hadn’t been before. “Fine phrases and confidence won’t be enough for you to win this.” A sideways slash at his mid-section somehow slipped through his defences, knocking him back and letting the sharp part at the edge of her weapon cut into his stomach, before he managed to knock the needle away and leap at her.
She countered him without much trouble. “Give it up and go back to the Lower City, little pirate,” she urged him gently. “I’ll dream up a more suitable opponent for you on the Twilight Street. Maybe I’d even make you fight yourself, how about that?”
“Sounds kinda boring,” he grunted back, summoning his reserves to parry her thrusts. “No surprises.”
He had no idea how much time had passed anymore, no real sense of his condition (which very much felt like his actual body’s condition, damnit). The sounds from the bird audience in the background were distant and fractured, he couldn’t make them out. But his blood was singing loudly in his ears and he knew he was getting close to hearing the breath of all things. If his opponent were to make herself vanish now, he would be able to sense her presence long before she could touch him.
But maybe she had already guessed that, because when she did disappear next time, it was only to reappear seconds later only about five meters further away, with no real advantage to her in the move. And then she did the same thing again. She was just teasing him now.
“Still…” her voice dropped just a bit, “…there is a way for you to defeat me, young pirate.” But then you have to be able to cut through everything.”
A huge cloud of knitted yarn leapt at him from one direction, as she attacked from the other. He improvised by setting off a Hawk Wave towards the hostile knitting rather than her, leaping high to avoid her strike instead. It worked surprisingly well: almost all the attack yarn was flung far away across the piazza.
“Not just the strands of dream and story,” the old woman went on calmly, “which you might think of as nothing but lies and deception. But also the threads of connectedness, of relationships – the loose yarn of ephemeral relationships with strangers, but also the tight net between true companions. Threads of trust and faith, of dependence; threads of destiny, even…Yes, you will have to be the blade that cuts through everything, Lolonoa Zoro. And then you will truly be the greatest swordsman there ever was. But you will also be completely alone.”
“You’re wrong,” he hissed. “You’re lying. My teacher taught me differently. The sword that can cut through everything... is also the sword that can cut nothing.” He launched another Two-Cut Climbing the Tower at her which she only partially managed to block. She groaned from the impact, falling back. “It all depends on the will of its wielder. You don’t have to cut what you don’t want to cut. The strong sword protects... as well as destroys.”
The old woman laughed as she straightened up and ran towards him again. “Your little dojo-sensei, right? He would say that; wouldn’t want to believe otherwise. He would prefer to think in a way that justifies his teaching men to cut up other men for a living. Oh, I grant you that he still gets more and has come further along the road than the great multitude of anyone who’s ever picked up a sword. But there is such a long, long stretch of road that he knows nothing about. I daresay there are stretches of that road that even Shanks Redhair, Whitebeard and, yes, even Dracule Mihawk know little about. But you... you, young pirate, may get there one day. Or die trying. And if you do – if you will truly know one day how to cut through all of it, how would you be able to justify to yourself not using that strength? Not testing it? If you do abstain from it, will you be sure it’s because you’ve made a choice to put protection ahead of destruction? And not because you simply didn’t have what it took?”
“What the hell... do you know?” he panted, breath growing more ragged. “Said it yourself... hahh... you’re no swordswoman. Hell, you’re... not even a fighter.”
She backed away, pausing for breath – a good sign, though he was breathing a good deal heavier than her – but then came at him again with growing speed. “Hahh... I’ve seen into the minds of a great many swords-user,” she grunted. “And I’ve got a mind of my own to use, and imagination. I know about minds... I know about minds and will and ambition, young pirate.” Somehow he believed her when she said that, even if she was half made up or more. She went on, panting heavily yet not slowing her movements, not slacking off in strength, slowly pressing him back, “Hahh... you carry a demon sword, Lolonoa... and already you have become a wielder of destruction to a rather fearful degree. Don’t tell me you can’t feel the urge in you to go farther, to follow that blood-red thread to its very end? ...And if you reject that urge and push it down, are you sure it isn’t for the wrong reasons? Because of fear?”
“Damnit!” he screamed, sheathing Sandai Kitetsu. “I don’t have TIME for this philosophical claptrap! And you’re still wrong!” He sheathed Wadou too, then quickly grabbed both spear-like knitting needles, pushed them together and wrenched them from the old woman’s grip with such force that she toppled forward from it.
He leapt at her and punched her hard in the face.
She flew about fifty meters, sending up a big cloud of dust as she landed heavily on the pavement. Then she lay there quite still.
*
“YES! How’s that for inventiveness, you old hag!” he heard N-bird yell after a few endless, breathless seconds when nothing stirred in that large empty space.
“He – HE WON!” declared U-bird after a few more seconds had passed without any signs of life from the old woman.
“Of course he did!” shouted L-bird happily. “Toldja! Great fighting, Swords-Guy!”
But Zoro wasn’t paying them much attention. He was already sprinting towards the block of stone, not letting himself get time to get distracted again. He reached it, grabbed hold of its sides, took a deep breath, and heaved. Slowly the stone started to move upwards under the pressure. The ground moaned softly, then more loudly beneath him.
“Don’t!” The old woman’s voice was barely more than a whisper, weak and broken. “Don’t take it, you fool!” she gasped.
He ignored her. More and more of the monolith came out of the ground.
“No... you don’t understand…it is the lynchpin...” her voice was slowly growing in strength, tense with urgent pleading. “That stone is what keeps everything here together!” She gasped heavily for breath again, still lying flat on the ground. “Besides the knitting, that is... and that’s mostly torn up! If... hahh…if you remove it, you’re going to make the whole blessed place fall down!”
“Who gives a shit?” said Zoro, pulling the stone up further – nearly there… “It’s just made-up, after all.”
“It’s my home, you ignorant lunk of meat!” croaked the old woman.
“LIAR!” shrieked N-bird, while L-bird gave a stricken wail at her choice of words, no doubt remembering how hungry he was.
Then the old woman cried out in anguish as the whole monolith finally left the ground. At the same time, a crack opened in the ground right by Zoro’s feet, quickly growing larger. He backed away fast enough, but it was already spreading rapidly all across the centre of the piazza.
“See what you’re doing? And this is just the start of it!” screamed the Dream Dream woman, shakily getting to her feet. “Well, be welcome to it then, you thieving pirate! Enjoy your earth-quake, and I hope you’ll get stuck in the rubble for days!” Trembling with anger and perhaps fear, she gathered her cloak around herself and took a very unsteady step away from them.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” shouted N-bird.
“It’s not like he’s the only shadowless dreamer around here!” she yelled back, snapping her fingers and summoning a few strands of yarn to fly into her hand. “I’ll just go play with one of the others instead!”
“BLEAH! You LOST, old hag! Admit it!” cried L-bird.
“Yeah! Loser!!” U-bird joined in.
But the old woman didn’t even bother shouting a final repartee above her shoulder. She spun the yarn around her, faster and faster, and then disappeared into thin air without a sound.
Meanwhile, the crack had kept spreading, causing other cracks to appear as well, running along it, at cross-angles, and soon all kinds of directions. The first and still largest crack ran right up to where the bronze statue stood. Then, impossibly, the crack split the statue in half and swallowed one half into the ground, leaving the other still standing.
Cracks had now zig-zagged their way all over the huge piazza, even reaching the iron railings of the Marine building, tearing into them and twisting them into weird, contorted shapes. The ground made an awful grinding, rumbling noise from the intolerable pressures inflicted upon it; but whenever threads of yarn fell into the cracks a particularly awful, high-pitched wailing sound was added as well. Then one crack ran up to the fountain in the very centre of the square, ploughing right through it in mere seconds. Water spouted out all over, fairly drenching Zoro, and then he remembered the other fountain he’d seen down in the Lower City.
Speaking of the Lower City, the cracks had reached the stone steps now, and then there was a deafening DOONN sound of falling great stones tumbling down a hundred metres or possibly more. Zoro was already dry again, and now he realised that his fatigue was pretty much gone too, that he felt no more ache and didn’t even seem to be bleeding. Maybe he’d learned the trick after all without meaning to or maybe – more likely – it was because of everything breaking up, breaking down. But he had no idea if it was a good or bad thing, if it meant he was getting closer or not to reality.
Some of the yarn was gathering around him, maybe vengefully, maybe just frightened of falling through the cracks in the ground, but in either case slowing him down. Pieces of glass started to fly through the air (from the palaces? The Marine HQ? he didn’t know and didn’t care), and then far too many bells were striking at the same time. When he looked up there were large cracks running up through the whole length of the clock-tower. The bells and the clock-face were soon going to fall down and shatter on the cobblestones, he understood, never to tell the right time again.
In the centre of all the destruction, with a monolith twice his size on his back, Zoro was walking – running – walking, then stopping and turning to look around, because where the hell were the birds?
Then he heard L-bird scream at him from above and he realised the three of them were sitting atop the monolith itself, and probably had for some time now.
“Hey, don’t stop like that! What do you think you’re doing?” squawked L-bird, then dived down towards him, picking him on the head with surprising force. “C’mon, stupid Swords-guy! You’ve gotta get out of here!” He clawed at Zoro’s face and shoulders, then pulled at the collar of Zoro’s shirt with his claws, furiously flapping as if trying to lift him up.
“He’s right, just go, Mr. Swordsman!” N-bird was flapping her wings right in front of him, too, sounding quite anxious.
“But what about you guys?” asked Zoro. It felt like the monolith was getting bigger and heavier for every moment, weighing him down. He was sweating again.
“We’ll be fine, we can fly!” shouted L-bird. “And we’re small, too! Now go!” He picked at him again.
“Ouch,” mumbled Zoro. “But I’ve got to…bring this with me…” He shook the monolith a bit.
“It’s not real, Mr. Swordsman!” cried N-bird. “And even if it were, you won’t be able to bring anything through!”
“But... I can’t decipher it on my own!” he protested. “I don’t know those letters! Robin’s got to read it! ...Goddamnit, why does this thing keep getting bigger?”
“Hey, Swords-guy…there are cracks all over the houses now, too!” yelled U-bird, spinning around frantically in the air trying to catch as much as possible of what was happening through the rain of gravel, dirt and mortar. “Gaah! It’s all breaking up! Even that stone you’re carrying has cracks in it!” He too picked at Zoro. Oddly enough it felt more like punches than stings when the birds picked at him. Weird things. “Just RUN, you idiot!” U-bird went on. “You’ll get buried here!”
“…Just gimme a minute…” he mumbled, sweating again, gasping for breath. The ground was still shaking and rumbling, the houses were crumbling, the bells of the clock still striking madly. All around him threads of yarn tried to keep him in place, keep him asleep, stopping him from going home.
“Ah? What was that?” He looked around, then turned to U-bird. “Did you say something?”
“Huh? No, why– ”
“Thought I heard... something about a swordsman coming... It sounded like you…” He stilled, his eyes widening. Oh.
“Not here after all…” he whispered.
“What?” said the birds in unison.
“...The one I’m to fight... not here after all... but outside…”
And he turned towards a point, a light he could see now, shining in his head, and he needed no-one to tell him where to turn in order to get there. With both arms he carried the stone on his back, and he knew he was an idiot for trying to hold onto it when it was bound to vanish within seconds, but he just couldn’t help himself.
“Stupid bloody moron,” he mumbled, meaning himself, and smiled a tiny bit before he set his jaw firmly, grasping with his teeth the heavy yarn moving around him, biting through or jerking away the threads so he could move forward.
He climbed upwards or what he thought of as upwards, finding a path where there had only been air before. The houses and the streets and the sun and the walls all turned flat and fell away…
…it was starting to feel colder…
…and then he finally emerged on a chair in the half-lit galley of the Sunny, groggy and shadowless.
Damn, but he could use a drop of booze right now.
FIN
AUTHOR’S NOTES: And there’s the end of it. We now return Lolonoa Zoro to his regularly scheduled canon adventures, starting with page 19 of manga chapter 458, which is where this story leaves off. What he heard there in the end was of course Usopp’s memorable phrase “A beautiful swordswoman with a lot of meat just came in”, tailored to simultaneously wake up the shadowless Luffy, Zoro and Sanji. (And the punch-like effects of the picking birds came from the manga too (page 18, same chapter).
The attack names for Zoro’s opponent were all picked up from this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting.
I’d like to thank all the readers who have stuck with me so far, with extra thanks to everyone who have given me feedback on previous chapters. Of course I would be quite happy to receive comments for this final chapter, too. Including critical ones – I tend to correct and revise my fics over time, and even if I don’t, thoughtful criticism can always be useful with regards to future writings.
Edit: A possible epilogue