Thirty Demons

By Mr Khan

I am entirely uncertain about this whole venture, given that the whole "thirty themes challenge" thing seems to be rather formalized and localized at LiveJournal, but I lack a LiveJournal account, and I really didn't want to undertake a "challenge" of any sort, I just saw them as a good opportunity to be given prompts and told to write (and so avoid the prime difficulty of coming up with basic ideas for fics, merely left with the difficulty of plot). So I eschewed any of the theme sets, instead randomly grabbing 30 of the 120 themes developed at the 30_onepiece community so far. My claim of choice? Who else but Zoro and Robin. Some will be Zoro x Robin (14 of them actually), some just Zoro(8), some just Robin(8). Enjoy!

Baseball

Rating: K+ (for double entendres)

Zoro was the batter. It was his job to see past deception, to get inside the pitcher's head and comprehend all their tricks. He had to know when the pitcher was seriously trying to defeat him

"You're dead, swordsman!"

Or when the pitcher was trying to trick him into defeating himself.

"She looks exactly like her! I'm not going to fight someone like that!"

He had to know when to bunt, rare though that was,

"Why didn't you fight those guys? You heard what they were saying about you!"

And know when the pitcher would betray him entirely and attempt to hurt him.

"You may have fooled the rest of them, but I still don't trust you."

He had a great batting average, but sometimes he encountered those infuriating pitchers that he just couldn't read.

Robin was the pitcher. It was her job to deceive, to get inside the batter's head and leave them lost and confused. She had to know which batters she could crush under her own power,

"Diez Fluer: Clutch!"

Or which batters she could deceive to their own doom

"But if you destroy the island, you'll destroy the one thing you've been searching for."

She had to know which batters would try to bunt
"I haven't heard you say it yet! Say you want to live!"

And know when it was best to break all the rules of the game and disable the batter directly.

"I have the antidote."

She had a surprisingly low ERA, but sometimes she encountered those inscrutable batters that could read her like a book.

In their careers, these two baseball stars: offensive and defensive, found in each other their most inscrutable foe. By her nature, Robin would never be a batter, and Zoro would not be a pitcher. Robin would never hit a home run off of him, and neither would she give up an easy hit, even if she might have truly wanted Zoro to score a home run. It was up to Zoro to get that home run, to see into her mind in a way that no other could, to read the next pitch perfectly. Normally Zoro wouldn't even bother with such a deceitful pitcher, but since he had to, it was inevitable that he would one day score: Zoro was not the kind of batter who gave up. He was just waiting for the right inning.