Imprisoned
This is a story set right after Luffy's battle against Crocodile in Alabasta.
What would have happened if Tashigi hadn't told the Marines to leave the Straw Hat clan, and not take them into custody?
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in this story, because if I did, I wouldn't have to write a disclaimer, now would I?
No, if I owned One Piece, I would have made sure that 4Kids never got the rights to it… -clenches fist-
Have I forgotten something? I probably have… Oh yes!
Note: Since I've only read the Swedish translation of One Piece, there might be names that are different from the English translation or the Japanese original. This I am fully aware off, so it's not exactly necessary to point that out. Feel free to comment about that or let me know the English names if you feel that it is something you need to do, I just mean to point out that I know that some names might be different from what you are used to.
He sat with his back against the cold stonewall, his legs slightly bent and his arms folded around his knees. If it hadn't been for the way his eyes were glistening in the faint light from the lamps outside his cell, it would have been easy to assume that the green-haired man was sleeping. Leaning his chin against his crossed arms, he stared out through the bars to his prison cell like a tiger waiting for the right moment to strike down on its prey. His eyes were as clear and sharp as the eyes of a shark, and more than one Marine soldier could swear that those eyes were able to pierce though anything in their way.
No, Lolonoa Zoro wasn't sleeping. He stubbornly refused to let himself fall asleep, even though he knew that it would allow his body to heal itself much quicker. That would give him an advantage over the Marines when the opportunity came, but there was no time to let his guard down, the prisonguards could pass by at any time, and Zoro didn't want to miss the opportunity to escape if it fell into his hands. So he sat perfectly still, preserving his energy with his gaze fixed on a spot on the other side of the long corridor.
There were other prisoners in the cells around him, across the hall and on the second stage above his head. From what Zoro had seen or heard from them, they were pirates or criminals, all of them with a bounty of more than 50 million Belli. He still wasn't impressed. The prisoners around him were either just making a lot of noise or making no sound at all. Something Zoro had noticed during the short time he had spent inside the cell was that no matter how much a prisoner was talking about escaping, they never went through with it. Even the cockiest pirate soon grew more and more quiet as they started to accept that they wouldn't get out of there alive. The feeling of entrapment got to them all once they realized that there was no one on the outside trying to get them out. It got to them all – except for Zoro. He was already aware that there was no one on the outside who could get him out. He was the only one who could get himself out of the cell, and he had to get out of there to save his nakama.
Snorting lightly, Zoro shook his head and looked down at his feet. It was hard to think that he actually had started to believe in the word 'nakama'. Not that he would be caught using it openly like the way Luffy used it everyday, but still… Only a few months earlier, he would have found the whole idea about being a pirate and actually belonging to a clan ridiculous – how could he become the strongest in the world if he had to take orders from some low-life pirate, just because the low-life had the title 'Captain'?
But thanks to a wide-eyed moron with great dreams and expectations, he found himself growing stronger everyday, even as a pirate.
From the far end of the corridor, Zoro could hear the newer prisoners scream and curse in their desperate attempts to escape. The swordsman closed his eyes for a moment, letting his breath slow down as he tried to shut out the noise in the cellblock. He was wasting way too much energy by just suppressing the need to beat the noisy bastards senseless. No, he could take that out on Sanji when he finally got out of the prison. Zoro took a deep breath, the thought of being back on the Going Merry and having a normal, loud fight with the cook filling his mind for a moment as he let his body relax.
As he was completely relaxed, Zoro's thoughts were wandering freely. More than once, the thought of his friends in chains came to his mind and he mentally kicked himself every time it did. If he only had been stronger, then he would have been able to protect them from the Marines, and they wouldn't have been captured and locked up inside a huge block of concrete in the middle of nowhere. These thoughts made him lose his focus, and the noise in the cellblock once again pressed against his ears. Groaning, Zoro leaned his forehead against his still crossed arms, a dull headache throbbing behind his eyes. A sharper pain was residing in his chest, where numerous deep cuts were slowly drenching his clothes in blood and draining his strength while he was just sitting there.
The swordsman sighed, pushing the pain away as he leaned his back against the cold wall behind him. He wondered how long he could have been sitting in that cell, since time obviously passed a whole lot slower when he didn't get any sleep. Judging by the throbbing in his chest, it couldn't have gone more than two days since the battle in Albana.
Zoro turned his head to the right as the large iron doors at the end of the corridor were opened with a loud creaking sound. A spark of hope appeared inside him when the first marine soldier entered the cellblock. Maybe this was the opportunity he had been waiting for.
But as a crowd of five more Marines and a new prisoner with chains hanging from his wrists and ankles walked in through the doors, Zoro's hope of getting a chance to escape plummeted like a hammer in water. Instead, he leaned forward over his lightly bent knees and tried to ignore the pain that rushed out from his chest into the rest of his body as he looked at the new prisoner. The Marines escorted the prisoner through the corridor up to the cell across the hall from Zoro's cell.
The chained man was more than a head taller than the Marines surrounding him, and he was very skinny, which made his far too large red pants and white sleeveless shirt hang in folds over his lanky form. The clothes were faded and torn, and colorful patches had been sewn over the largest holes with thick thread. As the man walked into his cell and turned around for the marines to unlock his chains, Zoro could see his face for a short moment. His head had the shape of an almost perfect triangle; his hair was bright red and lay like a thick carpet on his flat scalp while the longer bangs were falling into a pair of baggy green eyes. The man's nose was crooked and looked like it had been broken more than once, just like his pointy chin.
As Zoro made a mental note of the new prisoner's appearance, he leaned his chin against his folded arms again and tried to keep himself from falling asleep. The new addition to the cellblock wasn't anything to be concerned about. The lanky man would either start to be noisy or keep his mouth shut, and if Zoro was lucky, it would be the latter.
The memory of his battle against Mr.1 in Albana came back to him, and he could still remember the sound of his own heartbeats in his ears from when he realized the new level of strength within him. If only he could keep that feeling fresh in his memory until he got out from the cage, then he could practice until he could cut through steel without being on the verge of dying in battle. He had already tried to work out inside the cell, but he had soon realized that doing sit-ups wasn't making the deep slashes across his chest heal any quicker. Doing handstand-push-ups was also something he soon had realized was a bad idea, since all that happened was that more energy was drained from his body at a faster pace. So he had decided to ignore the growing feeling of being on the brink of insanity because he didn't have the possibility to work out and get stronger, and sat down against the wall to preserve his strength.
If he only could get his swords… He grit his teeth by the thought of his lost swords and felt his shoulders tensing as he could guess who probably already had laid her fingers on his treasure. That damn copycat of a Marine was not going to add his precious swords to her collection, not as long as Zoro was still alive. But to get to the swords, he had to get out of the damn cell first. He was getting more and more restless now that he had started to think of his swords. It had been bad enough to stay calm when the thought of his nakama kept popping up in his mind, but to know that Quena's katana wasn't there with him was making it so much harder to stay calm and collected.
The urge to walk up to the bars of the cell and simply rip the door off its hinges was getting harder and harder to keep at bay. Zoro was well aware that if he tried that and actually managed to get out, there were still six Marines armed with guns out there in the corridor, and after ripping a steel door off its hinges, not even Zoro would have enough strength left in his body to fight off six Marines – at least not unarmed. The swordsman smirked at the very thought of getting out from that oversized hamster cage only to be shot to death by six Marines. Not a very suiting end for someone who was going to be the best swordsman in the world.
"Hey, you there!"
The metallic sound of metal against metal, followed by an annoyed voice calling for his attention snapped Zoro out of his thoughts. Outside the bars of his cell stood one of the Marines who had escorted the new prisoner to his cell. The soldier was tapping the barrel of his gun against the bars of Zoro's cell, looking at the swordsman with an impatient expression on his face. As Zoro looked around, he noticed that there was no trace of the other five Marines in the corridor. He turned back to the soldier in front of him and smirked again.
"Are you talking to me?" he asked, making his voice sound as threatening as possible.
As he had hoped, the Marine suddenly looked more nervous than before. The young soldier reminded Zoro a lot of Usopp, from the nervous attitude to the mask created to hide said nervousness. The resemblance increased when Zoro caught a glimpse of a slingshot tucked in the back pocket of the Marine's pants. After seeing Usopp working on improving his favorite weapon so many times aboard the Going Merry (and making so much noise that it was impossible to get some decent sleep anywhere on the boat while he was at it) Zoro was absolutely certain that the slingshot in the Marine's pocket belonged to the marksman. It couldn't be any other slingshot.
"What are you smiling about?" the Marine asked him, apparently struggling to keep his voice steady.
Zoro's face cracked up in a demon-like grin and he slowly got up from the floor, his eyes locked on the soldier outside the bars of his prison.
"I was just imagining what your face would look like if I did this…"
In the blink of an eye, he pushed his body towards its limits and moved up to the bars of his cell, standing right in front of the Marine as he looked down at the nervous young man. One of Zoro's arms shot out between the metal bars, grabbing the soldier by the throat with one hand. The Marine was so startled by the swordsman's swift movements that he dropped his gun onto the floor and stared up at Zoro with wide eyes, almost as if he didn't know what to do in a situation like that - he had probably thought that Zoro had been weak and maybe even dying with all the injuries and open wounds on his body.
The demon-like grin on Zoro's face didn't fade as he looked at the terrified soldier in front of him. Instead, he lifted the Marine by the throat until the man's feet no longer had any contact with the floor. The marine stared directly into his eyes, his face pale and glazed with sweat.
"Not exactly the look I imagined, but pretty close." Zoro said, his eyes narrowing.
The noise in the cellblock had risen quite a bit as the other prisoners noticed what was going on. Two pirates from across the hall were urging the swordsman to kill the Marine while others were begging to be released. Zoro ignored the many voices calling for his attention and reached out his free hand to take the slingshot from the Marine's back pocket. Holding it up in front of the young man's face, he narrowed his eyes even more.
"I think this belongs to our marksman. Oh, and what have we here?"
Tucking the slingshot in the back of his haramaki, Zoro reached out for the bunch of keys that was attached to the Marine's belt. Once he held the keys in his hand, he let go of the soldier's throat and moved his hand to the back of the man's head. With one swift movement, he slammed the young man's head against the metal bars of the cell and watched the soldier sink down onto the floor as the noise in the hall rose to a new limit. Reaching out his hand through the bars of the cell to put the key in the lock, the creaking sound of the large iron doors opening was heard over the noise in the cellblock. Turning his head towards the doors, Zoro let his grin turn into a light smirk.
Now things were getting interesting.