Title: In Which Roronoa Zoro is the Grand Master of the Universe
Universe: One Piece
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Character/Pairing/s: Zoro and everyone mostly?
Warnings/Spoilers: crack, OOC, weirdness.
Word Count: 1,750
Summary: Zoro can shape the world.
Dedication: kotszok's late birthday fic! Um, gimme your addy and I will send you something better. LOL
A/N: I don't know either. BIRTHDAY FAIL. I still love you despite how crappy I write for you Kaja. One down, three to go? WHY WERE YOU ALL BORN IN JANUARY.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Zoro has always believed that a person's resolve has the power to change the universe.
It just has to be strong enough first. The basic premise behind his theory is that you have to make your will stronger than the rest of the world.
Whenever he trains, whenever he meditates, that's what he tells himself.
He has the power to change the universe.
So when his opponent's blast sends him spiraling backwards in surprise and he ends up slamming hard into a thorny bush-tree-thing of some sort (that smells bad), he tells himself that it doesn't hurt.
It doesn't hurt.
He manages to climb back up to his feet because he makes his body believe what his mind is telling it to believe.
Because his will is strong. He's trained it to be.
It's fine, he thinks. No injuries. He doesn't need all that blood. It's just extra anyway. Maybe the plant is thirsty. It better drink up while it can.
He pulls a branch full of thorns out of his leg, another vine full of them from out of his back. His blood soaks on the leaves, drips down to the plant's very roots. He hopes it's having one hell of a drink.
"You ready to surrender, pirate?" his opponent whoops from across the field, the wet stench of BO in the air as he stands at the ready, enormous and humid.
Zoro takes a defensive position, now that he knows what that crazy marine can do. Exploding sweat. Almost as disgusting as that guy with the exploding boogers. Almost, but not quite.
Grand Line has some crazy Devil's Fruits in it.
Blood drips down from the gash on the swordsman's head, into his left eye. He tells it to stop.
Just stop.
He can see just fine.
He doesn't need that eye to beat this guy anyway, because he can change the universe.
He flexes the muscles in his calves and dodges the next swipe of exploding perspiration by a hair. The entire top section of that bad-smelling plant behind him gets taken out in the aftermath, and as it does, the swordsman flips over the guy, holds his breath (because it smells), and tells himself that the next attack is all he needs if he can cut through his opponent and knock him out before his sweat gets on Zoro's blades and the bastard makes his katana explode.
He needs to be quick, clean. He tells himself he will be. This is how you change the world; this is how you bend it to your will.
He grits his teeth, pivots his body, and cuts an X into the air with all his strength, mid-flip.
And it's successful; he feels it when his swords make contact, when one of them slams into the back of the marine's skull and the other slices into the tendons in his legs, making a soft, deceptively gentle fwip sound when they cut through.
Zoro knows the guy is out cold before he hits the floor.
Because that is what he intended, and his will is stronger than the universe.
Zoro lands on his feet while the giant marine slams face-first into the dirt behind him, at the base of that stinky, thorny tree-bush plant.
He calmly sheathes his swords.
"Amaaaaazing!"the others all cheer (except for Sanji, who scoffs and says, "It wasn't that great," instead). The rest of the crew lounges around behind sea stone bars waiting to be let out.
"Excellent work, Zoro-kun," Usopp tells him in a big voice, "but next time leave a few of them for me, ne. I'll fight them off with my bare hands, hahaha!"
Zoro grunts noncommittally and goes over to the Marine's unconscious body; he picks up the keys and moves to free the others.
His legs may or may not feel a little funny every time he moves them, but he tells himself that it doesn't matter; he clearly just needs to train them harder.
He tosses the aho-chef the keys and blinks in surprise when he suddenly falls to his knees right after.
"OH GOD ZORO IS HURT," Usopp screams, and all that bravado of his is gone just like that. "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE ON THIS MARINE INFESTED ISLAND."
"I'm fine," Zoro grunts, though suddenly it's hard to talk too. He tells his body to get over itself. Thinks, everything is fine. There isn't even any pain.
Or much of anything, suddenly. He's weirdly numb.
When he doubles over and his forehead ends up slamming into the dirt a few seconds later, he can see it behind him, when that stinky tree-bush thing starts coiling around the unconscious marine, slowly dragging that big, wet body of his into its depths.
"Nnngh," he grunts, and wonders what the hell is going on.
"Poisoned!" Chopper shouts when he figures it all out a few minutes later, after the injuries on Zoro's body from where the thorns pierced him start to turn black and smell as bad as the plant. "Zoro's been poisoned! That plant is trying to digest him!"
A general murmur of distress.
"I'm fine," Zoro insists, and wills himself to his feet.
He makes it too, just as Chopper screams at him not to move. The little reindeer carefully pulls a thorn out of Zoro's side—Zoro tells himself it doesn't hurt when he does—and examines it.
"Can you fix it?" Nami asks, sounding worried while the world starts to artistically blur in Zoro's vision. "Is there an antidote?"
He tells it to stop. Just stop. I'm fine.
"I don't know," Chopper frets, and hurries back to the ship and back to his supplies and his science and all that technical stuff to try and figure it out. "Keep him still!"
"Marine," Zoro mutters noncommittally, when he sees the plant trying to eat his former opponent's head in the background.
"Oh god!" Usopp wails at the sight. Sanji curses and hurries off to drag the marine's body out of harm's way without getting too close himself. At least his defense is good.
Zoro suddenly feels cold.
No I don't, he tells himself, because this is a tropical island, and only the sick and the weak feel cold on them.
A few minutes later, Sanji comes back empty handed and shaking his head. "He's already dead," he reports. "Poison got him."
He looks at Zoro with a furrowed brow.
"Not dead," Zoro bites out, and fights the shivers. "I'll be fine. Just need to walk it off. Not that weak."
Simple as that.
He takes a step towards the ship.
It feels like his foot weighs ten thousand pounds. Which is great. He's always wanted to try a ten thousand pound weight.
Everyone screams at him to stay still.
Except for Luffy, who just laughs and says he looks like a statue trying to move. Zoro is glad someone around here doesn't think he's so weak that he'd let something as lame as poison kill him.
He wills it away. No pain. Doesn't hurt.
He makes it back onto the Sunny by his own power.
When he decides to take a nap on the deck it's by choice, not because it's freezing.
He tells himself he's definitely not going to die.
He knows that his will is stronger than the universe.
Zoro wakes up a few hours later and proves himself right by being perfectly alive.
"Doctor-san," Robin reports calmly from where she is sitting at Zoro's bedside, reading, "worked very hard on an antidote. It's a shame about Marine-san, though."
Zoro grunts.
She smiles at him. "But I suppose poison effects different people differently, ne. Good work on surviving long enough."
He doesn't respond.
She shuts her book and stands up, looking him over one last time. "How do you feel?"
"Fine," he grunts, and tells himself it will stop being so difficult to move his legs soon. Any moment now.
"Do you need anything?" she asks.
He eyes her and wonders why she sounds so damned amused. "Nope, don't need nothing," he replies, and smiles triumphantly to himself when he successfully wiggles his big toe.
Now do the other one, he tells his left foot. It's an order.
Robin chuckles mysteriously to herself and leaves the room.
A few minutes later the door slams open again, and this time it's the aho-chef who is standing there, holding a tray full of good-smelling breakfast and looking all frowny and stupid. "Oi, dumbass. You shouldn't be moving," he says, when he sees Zoro doing toe-touches in bed.
Zoro ignores him.
Instead, he concentrates very hard on making the breakfast sandwich come closer.
A moment later his efforts are rewarded and the universe is once again, bent to his will.
The breakfast sandwich comes flying at his head.
He grins—ignoring the velocity— and easily catches it.
"You're an idiot," Sanji mutters after a beat, watching Zoro smile to himself as he eats. The cook looks strangely tired for some reason.
Zoro thinks he'd probably have better endurance if he trained harder and smoked less.
Heck, with the right amount of effort, the aho-chef could probably make himself poison proof too, just like Zoro is.
It's just a matter of strengthening his resolve. Building up his will.
Becoming undefeatable.
Zoro absently munches on his breakfast sandwich while Sanji continues to stand there looking frowny and stupid. Eventually, it pisses Zoro off a little, and he asks Sanji what the hell he's looking at.
"A moron," Sanji replies, and when he sees Zoro reaching for the coffee with a deep look of concentration on his face, grudgingly brings the mug closer.
Zoro takes the coffee and decides to ignore the blond, since he clearly doesn't understand how the world works.
As it stands, the aho-chef can call Zoro all the names he wants, but the fact of the matter is Zoro knows that he is strong enough to change the world. To shape it to his will.
Proof lies in the fact that he can beat marines with exploding sweat and can become impervious to poison from man-eating monster bushes. Proof lies in the fact that if he wants a goddamned breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee, he is going to get his goddamned breakfast sandwich and his cup of coffee, end of story.
He finishes his food while Sanji looks on; completely unaware of anything that the swordsman is thinking.
This is how the strong shape the universe.
END