Wasuremono: The Things We Leave Behind

Chapter 9: Hyakutoryu

"You want me to teach you what?"

"I want to learn how to use a sword. You're the only one here who knows."

"Why the sudden interest?" Zoro asked, a bit curtly. Robin had just woken him in the middle of a perfectly good nap, after all - judging by the light of the setting sun peeking out over the Merry's guardrails, barely an hour had passed. Assuming that was west, and not east... "Is being able to snap someone's neck from a hundred meters away not good enough?"

"In the Grand Line... with what we've got ahead of us ... deciding you're 'good enough' is a good way to end up dead. Besides, not everyone is vulnerable to my bare hands. The time might come when I need some other skill." Robin looked at him. "I thought that since you were right here..."

"...I could show you how to kill someone who's not 'vulnerable to your bare hands'. Someone who can't be hurt by physical blows, who can't be twisted or snapped out of shape, but who's as susceptible as anyone else to bladed weapons? And

it doesn't occur to you that I might find it somewhat suspicious?"

"No!" Robin said, blinking in surprise. "I mean, obviously I don't mean that. Not him. There are monstrous powers ahead - Aokiji, and --"

"Right, because my sword was such a help against Aokiji." He grinned at her. "Must be second nature by now - working out a way to kill your boss, so you'll have it when you need it..."

Her face stayed cast in the same calm, emotionless mask she almost always wore, but her eyes flashed angrily. "You've made

it perfectly clear you don't trust me. I suppose I should have known better than to ask you. Go back to sleep, I'll work it out on my own."

"On your own?"

"I have books - textbooks on technique."

"You're not going to learn much of use trying to pick it all up from a book."

"I'm well aware of that, but that's the option that's left to me."

"You're really serious about this."

"Yes, I am. I'd like to make myself stronger - I believe you can understand that. But I can understand why you wouldn't want to offer me the help." She turned to leave.

"It's not that I wouldn't like to trust you." he said. She paused, her hand on the doorknob.

"And for what it's worth," Zoro continued, his eyes fixed on the clouds. "I think you're probably loyal to us. Luffy thinks so, and he usually has excellent instincts. But,"

"Here's the thing about really good instincts. When they work, they work. Luffy's jumped to a lot of conclusions in the time I've known him. Most of the time, they turn out to be right. But he's not an oracle. He's been wrong before. At Whisky Peak... just before we met you, in fact ... he came close to killing me because he jumped to a conclusion that was totally wrong. I'd like to be able to welcome you into the crew with open arms the way the others have. Believe me, I'd love to do that. But my first loyalty has to be to Luffy, and it's my responsibility to harbor the suspicion that he doesn't - just in case this is another of those rare occasions. So don't take it too hard."

Robin nodded slowly, without turning back to look at him, and walked into the cabin. Zoro tried to fall back asleep, but it was difficult for some reason. Finally he realized why - he had to go to the bathroom.

He had to pass by the storage room on the way. Robin was in there, holding a wooden practice sword in one hand and a book in the other. To his trained eye, the sloppy form of her grip was instantly obvious, and grating.

"You're holding that completely wrong." he said, coming into the room. "Look, your grip should be more like this..."

"Did you change your mind about teaching me?" Robin asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

"I'm not going to teach you, it's just irritating to see you holding it like that. You should have your fingers here, and your thumbs here."

"Got it." She waved it around experimentally.

"WATCH WHAT YOU'RE DOING WITH THAT! If that was a real sword, you'd have taken your ear off." He grabbed the book and tossed it away. "If that's the way that book told you to do it, you're better off using it for toilet paper. You weren't even in a proper stance."

"I just started! What do you expect?"

"Look, I'm not going to stay here all day giving you pointers, but I'm at least going to show you how to get in the right stance. Because if I have to watch you do it like that, I'll be embarrassed for you. See how I'm standing? You get more leverage when--"

"ROBIN-CHAAN!" Sanji poked his head in the room. "I'm doing the seven-fifteen snack patrol. Do you have any orders?"

"No thank you, not right now, cook-san."

"Let me know if you need anything!" With that, he was off, presumeably to hunt down Nami.

"It's disgusting the way that idiot lets himself be manipulated." Zoro growled. "Now where were we? Right, you need to stand like this. Put your wrist down a little more."

"Is this right?"

"You're holding it too tightly now. You should have a firm grip, not a deathgrip. Here, I'll wield a sword too and you try a few swings at me, so you can see what the difference is - "

XXXXXX

"Hyakutoryu?" Paul snorted derisively. "Hundred-swords style? As long as you're being completely ridiculous, why not bump it up to ten thousand and defeat me with mantoryu?"

"Well, for one thing, there aren't a thousand swords here." Robin said, gingerly digging through the pile of blades. She picked out a few of the less battered ones, tossing most of the rest aside into the tall grass. When she'd made a pile of ten, she turned back to Paul. "But maybe you're right - I think I'll start with fewer. Just these ten here."

"Just ten? Someone's eyes are bigger than her muscles, eh?" Paul grinned, opening up a fresh wound on his neck. "Tell you what, if a skinny thing like you can even lift ten swords at once, I'll let you take the first ten blows. Your chance to draw first blood, hmm?"

Too late, it's already gone to you, from yourself, Robin thought, but she nodded. "Agreed. Diece fleur." She popped eight extra arms from her sides and took a sword in each of her now-ten hands. "Ten swords style, Attack Number 1 Working Title!" she called out, wishing she hadn't put off thinking up a name as she brought the blades down in one shimmering downpour of steel. Oh, that one would do. "Steel Downpour!" she hastily amended.

The deadly "drops" of the sudden storm didn't get a chance to soak their intended target though - they skidded instead off of Paul's hasty block.

Robin frowned. "What happened to giving me the first ten blows if I could pick up the swords?"

Paul snorted. "Obviously I didn't realize you could actually do it." Without warning, he swung the massive sword in his left hand towards her with the force of a battering ram. She only just managed to deflect the mighty blow, but three of the her own swords were ripped away and flung into the woods.

She didn't get another opening - Paul may have been ham-handed and lacking in agility, but he more than made up for it with his incredible power, and she soon found her arms aching from the force of his swords slamming into her hastily thrown-up defenses. There were openings, but it was taking all her strength just to stay alive - and even when she did manage a thrust with one of her hands, Paul easily deflected it with his sharp metal 'tusks', which were doing something besides injure him for once.

The pain in her wrists grew unbearable, and one by one, she lost her remaining armaments as Paul gleefully sent them flying. Finally, she stood before him unarmed. The hulking swordsman pressed one of his swords to her cheek. "Well, you're certainly a strange little trick pony, but your skills were even poorer than I expected. I suppose you think this proves me wrong, Roronoa. 'Look, more swords aren't always better'! Was that the reason for this pathetic display? This doesn't prove much, though. In the hands of someone as unskilled as this one here, a sword isn't really a sword - but nothing but a stick."

Robin looked at Zoro apologetically. "Sorry. I should have known I couldn't beat him using ten swords."

Zoro waved his hand dismissively. "I wouldn't have expected you to anyway. You did just start training after all. Stop showboating and just finish him off."

"Haven't you been paying attention, Roronoa?" Pauled slapped the flat of his blade lightly against Robin's cheek. "Just who's going to finish off who, do you think? --- hmm?"

The large man froze at the sounds rising from the grass - soft and slithering, as though the clearing had suddenly become infested with snakes. He squinted in the failing light, unable to accept at first what he saw when he looked around him. It seemed at though the grass itself had become animated, growing taller and taking on the glint of metal. He realize what he was seeing, then. Arms - disembodied arms, dozens of them, rising from the ground, each holding aloft one of the swords his opponent had thrown away earlier, bringing the field to dangerous life.

"Cien fleur hyakutoryu." Robin said. "Blades of Grass!" As though a sudden gust of wind had torn across the field, the hundred swords moved as in one wave. A few drops of blood splattered onto Robin's forehead as the master of four-swords style was cut down.

XXXXXX

"Your grip is wrong again." Honestly, after more than a dozen sessions how could she still be forgetting the right way to do something as elementary as that? Maybe the rest of her hands were off somewhere doing something else again. Zoro moved around behind her and encircled her with his arms, putting a hand on each of hers. "This finger should be here, and this finger -"

"WHAT'S THIS ABOMINATION?" Sanji's angry shout blasted across the room. "What are you doing to Robin-chan?"

"Not that it's any of your business," Zoro said. "but I'm just showing her the right way to do something -"

All the color drained out of Sanji's face and hair. "WHAT? How dare you presume to touch her! Besides, I'm sure that although she's totally pure and innocent, if she DID do anything of, of that nature, she'd be automatically perfect at it the first time!"

"'Of that nature'?" Zoro looked at him incredulously. "I don't know what you're talking about." He shoved Sanji out onto the deck. "Take your babbling somewhere else!"

"How can you try to play dumb?" Sanji retorted angrily. "Not that that shouldn't come naturally to you. I walked in on you groping her!"

"Idiot, if you'd listen for even five seconds, I could tell you that - "

And so the eternal argument, the perpetual butting of heads between the alpha rams of the Going Merry raged on.

End of Chapter Nine! It seems as though all of Swiss' underlings have either been defeated or chased off. But what of Swiss herself? The pulchritudinous perforated pirate makes her move, next time!