Chapter 122: Straw Hats stuck in Memories by tmb1112 (One Piece)
Summary: A little girl with the power of the Memory-Memory Fruit traps the Straw Hat crew and decides to make them witness each other's most painful memories. Why? Well, she's a twisted little girl. Has memories from all members of the crew.
Link: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11134973/1/Straw-Hats-stuck-in-Memories
Word count:73k(COMPLETE)
Chapters:8
Chapter 1
"What are you doing?!" Usopp screamed as he started to fall through the ground. The entire Straw Hat crew realized that the dirt beneath them was getting blacker and losing its solid substance.
"I ate the Memory-Memory fruit," the little girl standing in front of them snickered. Zoro tried to jump out of the blackness, but there was nowhere to spring off of, he was sinking fast and there was no time as the black mush seemed to turn into nothing and they fell through the ground.
"Ahhh!" the pirates screamed as they fell.
"You just had to piss her off Nami!" Usopp complained as he fell down next to the screaming woman with orange hair.
"How was I supposed to know that twerp ate a Devil Fruit?" the woman responded angrily.
"We're in the New World," Robin said, falling straight up as if it didn't bother her at all, "you should expect these things before you pick fights with children," the woman with black hair giggled as Nami's face turned red from embarrassment.
"Ooh," Chopper said as his head hit the ground, or whatever substance he was now on top of. "Wait, that didn't hurt, why didn't that hurt?" they had fallen a good distance and the others were confused as well.
"Hey, let us out of here!" Luffy shouted at the sky and extended his arm up, but it just went high into the blackness and disappeared. He stopped throwing it up and his arm came flying back before snapping to normal.
"Hehehehe," the little girl's voice started coming in from all sides of them. "Lalala, I bet you want to know all about my Memory-memory fruit," she giggled.
"No, not really," Usopp, Zoro, and Franky all said while waving their arms in front of their faces.
"Yohohoho, I would like to know, cutie-chan," Brook stated up at the black sky above them. "Oh and after, may I see your panties?" Nami kicked him in the side of the skull so hard after he asked and the skeleton slammed into the weird floor that didn't hurt him like he thought it would.
"Well," she continued, obviously annoyed by the responses. The girl's voice suddenly got very dark and she spoke in an evil tone as she laughed, "I take the memories that hurt you the most, and I make you watch them. I bet you all have some of those," everyone in the dark space froze up and the girl watching smiled insanely, receiving a better reaction than she could've hoped for.
"ACE!"
"BELLEMERE!"
"MOM!"
The voices started screaming from all around them, each of the members recognizing their own voice or the voice of someone next to them. Luffy and Nami froze up almost immediately after the noises started.
All the sounds stopped at the same time and everyone stopped spinning around to look in front of them where the blackness was forming into something else. There was a cliff covered in green grass, looking over the water. A little inland there was a forest, but there were two boys right outside of the trees that made everyone gasp.
"Is that..." Sanji started, the cigarette dropping from his mouth.
"Stronger and stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger and stronger, and even stronger!"
The crew members were staring at the little boy with the straw hat who was sobbing with his head down in the grass. He was shouting 'stronger' over and over again and they didn't know why, but a few of them weren't looking at their captain when he was obviously a lot younger. Some of them were staring at the slightly older boy with freckles on his face who was standing next to him.
"Ace?" Chopper whispered.
"This is seriously messed up," Zoro said and turned his gaze to the sky, looking for a way to escape from this place, but they were trapped and he saw no way out.
"That way I can protect anything and everybody. I don't want to lose to anyone."
The little boy in the memory took a short pause and everyone turned to their present-day captain who was walking forwards towards the older boy in the image. Luffy was extending his arm out, reaching towards Ace and his usual cheerful expression was gone as his lips were quivering.
"Luffy, he's not," Nami started to take a step towards him but Robin held out an arm and halted her. The girl looked at the older woman who shook her head, her hair covering her eyes.
"Please, Ace, don't die!"
As the words left the little boy's mouth, the crew stopped their movements and stared at the scen in front of them in shock. They couldn't believe something like that had happened, and yet Luffy just took another step towards the image of his angry brother.
"Baka! Worry about yourself!" The boy punched Luffy on the top of the head, "I'm much stronger than you! Listen Luffy..."
Everyone stared at Ace with wide-eyes, not believing their eyes. Some Devil Fruit powers were ridiculous, but this one was almost unbelievable.
"I WILL NEVER DIE!" The proclamation echoed around the walls over and over again and the crew stared at Ace.
"Did he really say that?" Usopp whispered. He knew Luffy was having it tough when he heard the news two years before, but now he understood just how much it must have torn their captain apart inside.
The image in front of them started to swirl around and twist as it scattered around. "No, Ace!" Luffy extended his arm towards a wisp of memory as it swirled away from him, but his fingers went right through the strand, it dissolving as soon as it was touched.
"I bet you want to punch him Franky," the shipwright looked up to his left and saw a huge fishman speaking. A few others looks over at that but it was already tearing apart as another image was forming beneath it, this time everyone recognized who the person was.
The cyborg tried looking back for his old teacher, but the fishman who taught him everything was nowhere to be found. Instead he looked back down at the long-nosed kid who was running up a path surrounded by grassy fields. "Look it's me," Usopp said with a proud smile.
His grin faded as he saw the tears streaming down his young face, "Pirates are coming! Pirates are coming!" the boy with the yellow bandanna on his head ran up to a building on top of a hill and threw open the door. The boy was smiling even though he had tears in his eyes which confused the crew for a few seconds longer until the memory now showed the inside of the house.
"Usopp, you mustn't shout," a man in white scrubs tried to tell the boy who pushed past him and ran up to the bed.
"Is that your..." Nami started to ask the man standing next to her and Usopp nodded, a frown on his face as he stared at the picture in front of him.
"Dad's come to take us away!" kid Usopp said to the woman lying on the bed. Telling by her long nose, the crew knew who she was and Chopper could instantly tell she was dying. The small reindeer looked over at his friend who forced himself to look on the bright side of the situation.
"Hey, at least I get to see my mom again right?" he said in a broken up laugh. "Right Luffy, it was great seeing them again huh?" the captain was staring at Usopp's memory and realized what he was saying.
"Oh yeah, I guess you're right," Luffy responded and smiled thinking back on the memory of his older brother. "Wait, you're dad!" the man in the straw hat shouted in surprise, "Yasopp's there?! Does that mean Shanks is here too?!"
"No," Usopp said with a sigh, "that was a lie."
They all looked back ahead of them where Usopp was crying next to the woman lying in bed.
Stop talking nonsense, Usopp," the woman with the long pointy nose scolded the boy.
"It's not," the kid in the image, who looked like he couldn't have been older than eight or nine years old, had to stop talking because he couldn't breathe for a second. "When mom recovers, he'll take us all out to sea."
"You're father won't be coming back."
"Is that true?" Sanji said furiously, "He left his wife and son here and didn't come back?!"
"It is," Usopp sighed while staring at his mother, trying to look at her as long as he could before she would disappear from his sight again, "and I resented him for a long time because of that. I decided that when I became a pirate, if I ever married and had children, I wouldn't leave them like he did." Everyone was speechless at his statement.
"Usopp-san, I am truly impressed." Brook said while looking back at the child. He could see how hard young Usopp was trying to bring up his dying mother's spirits and it made his heart twitch, although he doesn't have a heart because he's a skeleton.
"But I thought you said you really wanted to meet your father?" Nami asked.
"I do," Usopp replied with a smile, "don't get me wrong, I've forgiven him. Just at the time, and for a while after, it really upset me that he wasn't there. When we meet up with Shanks's crew, he's the one I'm going to fight." Usopp balled a fist and held it in front of him, "And I'm going to show him just how strong I've become."
"...I'm still proud to have been married to your father."
"That's sweet," Robin said looking at the woman. "She must have really loved him."
Usopp nodded while watching his younger self try to lie again to his mom. "There's this legendary medicine that can cure all diseases."
"Don't be stupid, you dream too much."
"At least your lying skill has gotten a little better from back then," Franky said to the sniper but Usopp didn't look at him, the frown was back on his face and a single tear was dripping out of his eye. The cyborg suddenly felt like the atmosphere had changed and he was the only one who hadn't received the memo; he backed away and just watched the scene in silence.
Now the kid in the flashback was crying all over his mother's bed, snot coming out of his mouth as tears poured down his face. "So what if I'm stupid, I like to dream! Cuz I'm the son of a pirate!"
"Do become a brave man like your father."
Everyone watched and lowered their bottom jaws a little as they saw the woman in the image slowly start closing her eyes. "Mom," Usopp whispered, watching the woman he loved so much die a second time. He couldn't keep the tears from spilling but he kept it silent as the water started coming out of his eyes and dropping to the ground.
The man felt an arm across his back and a hand put itself on his right shoulder. "That was a tough one to watch," the pirate looked to see his captain standing next to him with an arm across his back. "But you are brave just for watching it," some of the others were surprised at how serious Luffy was and how he was saying just the right thing to stop Usopp from crying any further.
"I'm sure she would be proud of the man you've become," Robin said and the long-nosed pirate smiled and nodded.
The memory in front of them started to twist and they looked around as the whole house they were in started to fall apart. Huge chunks of the walls were drifting apart from each other, leaving huge black gaps before even the walls started to thin out into wisps and disappear.
"AHHHH!" the crew looked up, hearing Zoro's voice coming from the sky, but only saw a small blurry image of him. Something was tearing apart his body, ripping him over and over, shooting blood everywhere. It didn't look too long ago, and the man's clothes were soaked in blood.
"Zoro!" Luffy and Chopper shouted while looking up at the fragment before it slipped away like the other memories around it. "When was that?" Luffy asked the green-haired swordsman.
"Does it matter?" Zoro asked, trying to avoid the subject.
"Look," Book pointed to their left and it seemed like one of the small wisps floating around them was getting bigger and bigger. It suddenly flooded the room and the crew realized they were standing on top of the waves, but they weren't falling through the water.
"This is weird," Usopp said as he looked around. The all heard a loud toot coming in one direction and they looked down the water to see a city most of them recognized except for Brook. "Water 7!" the sniper shouted.
"Look it's Puffing Tom," Nami pointed at the sea train and Franky's eyes went wide.
The cyborg turned away from the train and looked down, realizing they were right next to the tracks. He finished turning and he couldn't breathe, "It's, me," he muttered out and the crew turned to see a teenager standing in the middle of the tracks.
"Oooh, look it's the frog that does the front crawl!" Luffy pointed at the toad on the small boat next to Franky.
The cyborg looked to only be about eighteen in the memory, but there was something else weird. "Wait a second," Chopper looked closer at the body of the boy in front of him. Franky's orange shirt was unbuttoned and he wasn't wearing pants as usual, so the doctor had a good look at his body, "You're not a robot here," he said and the rest of the crew looked closer and realized the reindeer was right.
"Don't worry," Franky said in a low voice that the crew hadn't heard in a long time, "I will be soon."
"What are you..." Usopp's eyes went wide as he looked slowly back over at the sea train that was approaching fast, tooting its horn a few times to make the boy move.
"Stay there, Yokosuna," the teenager in the flashback spoke to the frog on the boat.
"Don't tell me," Sanji said while looking over at the robot, "you stood in front of the train?" He almost laughed and would have if it wasn't for the grim face Franky was making. On both the memory version of him, and the man standing next to them, he had guilt written all over his face.
"Why would you..." Nami couldn't finish her sentence as the boy began screaming and drawing the huge bazooka on his back. The train seemed to have sped up as it raced towards the sixteen or seventeen year old
"Stop Puffing Tom. Where are you taking your creator?!"
The boy shot once and watched it hit the nose of the train, doing no damage at all. As he shot more rounds at the oncoming vehicle, Robin turned to him, "The creator of the Puffing Tom, was Tom on board that train?" The man nodded and she continued, "I see, this is when he was on the way to Eneis Lobby."
Usopp remembered when the CP9 agents talked about how Tom was captured in front of Franky. They took his teacher and sent him to Impel Down, the man felt bad for his cyborg friend. The teenager seemed to have run out of bullets and he threw his weapon to the side as the train got closer.
"I won't let you pass." The train was almost at him now and a few of the weaker spirited crew members looked away. "Give Tom-San back! Stop, Sea-TRAIN!" Franky screamed and the train rammed straight into him at full speed.
Everyone thought he was going to be hit and the memory was going to end, but it seemed to slow down as the train wasn't able to plow through Franky so easily. Zoro was amazed that the boy was powerful enough to even wrap his hands around the front rail of the train as it hit him.
The man looked at his former self, showing the same look of regret that the young man had on his face. Young Franky dragged his feet into the tracks, trying hard not to let the train go any farther.
"You held it for a long time," Chopper commented as he looked back.
"No," Franky stated but no one looked away from the scene to look at the man speaking. "All of this happened in about a second," they watched as Franky lost his grip and the train smashed into him, his face distorting as cracking sounds were heard all over, blood rushing out of him and the memory started to deteriorate as he was thrown from the spot, high up in the air.
The crew looked up to watch him come back down, but the blue sky started getting ripped apart and the water beneath them started turning into the black ground again. "Quickly, let's get out of here," Nami suggested and looked around for a way out.
"Where even is here?" Zoro asked in an annoyed voice. They looked around some more but couldn't see anything except wisps of memories that had whispers coming from them.
"Look," the skeleton musician pointed at a memory and it started to form. "Ah, I knew it, that's the next one," the little wisp got larger and larger and the sounds coming from it got louder.
"Looks like we got wiped out."
Brook looked to his right and saw a man he thought he'd never see again. Blood was all over the man, and a blade covered in purple liquid lay next to him.
"Who are these people?" Chopper asked looking around.
"My crew," Brook whispered in response and everyone turned to the talking skeleton. "This is right after we were defeated, for the last time."
"Their weapons were poisoned."
The man next to that one spoke, "Looks like we're all gonna die."
Many of the men on the deck that they were on were already lifeless and dead, but a large number of them were breathing in staggered breaths, trying to hang on as long as they could.
"As pirates, we're always prepared to die... but, to think not one person would survive," a man lying on his back on the brink of death managed to speak between raspy breaths.
"This looks painful," Robin stated sadly.
"The poison didn't hurt as much as knowing I had let my entire crew die." Brook said, tears starting to pour out of his empty eye sockets. "My captain entrusted the crew to me, and I failed him too."
"Laboon."
"Laboon!"
A few of the men rose at the sound of that name and tried to live just a little longer. The whole crew knew about Brook's crews' promise to the huge whale, but they had no idea how dedicated each member was. Men on the brink of death were dragging themselves up so that they wouldn't fail to return to Laboon, so that the whale wouldn't think they abandoned him.
"Brook, about that Revive-Revive Fruit."
"Who knows, I've never died before but, I have an idea."
The Straw Hats recognized that voice and turned around to see a man in his thirties with a large afro on his head.
"Brook?" Luffy asked, looking at the man with a confused look and then back at the skeleton. "But, you're not dead."
"I believe Franky said it best when he said, 'I will be soon.'" Everyone looked away from the talking skeleton and back to the deck of the ship they were standing on.
"We're gonna die anyways, so let's have some fun," the living version of Brook pulled himself up on his knees and reached into his shirt pocket. "Do you guys wanna sing? If the Revive-Revive Fruit will really bring me back to life. I'll deliver it to him without fail."
"That's the tone dial," Sanji said remembering when the skeleton pulled the object from his skull. "Wait a second, that song we heard during the party, you made that now... then, here?" He confused himself but the skeleton understood and nodded his head.
The crew around Brook seemed to like the idea and everyone who could move started getting up. Some members helped lift their hurt nakama who couldn't move but still wanted to sing and soon many of the crew were smiling and getting ready.
Captain Brook continued, "The song that Laboon, the captain, and all of us loved. Waiting for us at the cape, never knowing when we will return, our nakama, Laboon!"
"Great idea!"
"Yeah... you guys... make sure not to fall until we're done!"
"Let him hear it."
"Let's give Laboon the Rumbar Pirates' once in a lifetime show."
The Straw Hat crew members watched as four other of Brook's nakama pulled out string instruments just like the captain. Everyone else was just standing around their friends' dead bodies and smiling, ready to sing.
The Brook in the memory looked at the others and they nodded at him. He tapped his foot four times before sitting at and playing on the piano that was on the deck. Right before he hit the first note, he pushed one end of the tone dial and it started to record.
They all listened to the intro to Brook's favorite song, the one he played whenever he was happy, or sad. This version seemed like a mix of emotions, as it was missing a lot of instruments and seemed to be lacking in spirit. That was immediately made up for when the entire living crew started singing.
"Yohohoho, yoho hohooo, yohohoho, yoho ho hooo. Yohohoho, yoho hohooo, yohohoho, yoho ho hooo. Going to deliver Bink's sake. Following the sea breeze..."
The song continued and the people stuck watching the memories started to smile as all the crew members around them were swaying and laughing. They were enjoying the moment, although the living-dead musician with them did not share in the sentiment and only stiffened his tears as to lighten the mood for the others.
"This is amazing," Robin smiled and watched a few of the members who had their arms under another man's armpits to hold him up since his legs were slashed up badly. "All of this for a nakama left at the cape long before."
The song continued and Usopp, Chopper, Franky, and Luffy joined in, singing with the pirates on all sides of them. Their whole crew made it through the first verse before Brook started a mini piano solo where the other members stopped singing and then the second verse started.
"Look," Zoro said in a quiet voice and Sanji and Nami who were standing next to him looked over as a man fell backwards. His mouth was still open and he was trying to sing, but the words just weren't coming out. The three of them stopped smiling and laughing along with the others and just joined in with Brook's silence.
"Yohohoho, yoho hoho!" Luffy and Chopper swayed one way while the other two crew members who were singing swayed the other. Robin suddenly saw two men in the back drop to their knees and continue to sing before falling forwards on their faces, their mouths moving on the floor for a few more seconds before stopping.
Usopp broke off from Franky who had stopped singing and he continued to shout with Luffy and their doctor. The reason the shipwright had stopped singing was because he noticed the volume of the singing had gone down and he looked around. About a third of the members who had gotten up to sing originally had fallen down dead and his smile disappeared, feeling it was the wrong place for singing as he watched two more men drop.
Chopper was between Luffy and Usopp as they held him up and all three were swinging their legs forwards in front of another group of three pirates. The men were covered in blood, smiling and singing one moment. The next moment they all collapsed and the three singers stopped and stared at the men on the floor who weren't moving an inch, but were smiling wide.
"They, d-died?" Usopp said and turned around to see the rest of their crew already stopped smiling and was looking over towards the few with instruments.
The man playing the violin behind brook suddenly collapsed without warning. He dropped his bow in front of him, but fell on top of his instrument and it cracked underneath him.
"What's wrong... we're just a quartet," without turning around, past Brook realized that there were only four members of his crew remaining. The man in green wearing glasses dropped his viola and collapsed, his face hitting the deck and his glasses falling off. "Trio," right as the word came out of Brook's mouth, the third to last man, wearing all pink and playing the cello, dropped to the ground dead.
"Were you the last one?" Nami asked quietly as flashback Brook said they were down to a duet.
"Yes Nami-san," he replied and looked at his face, covered in skin and blood, pieces of himself he could never have back. The last man fell to the ground and left Brook playing the piano alone on his ship. At that moment, the piano playing seemed to get darker as he just kept playing lower chords, tears streaming down both his and his future version's face.
"Solo."
Luffy stared at his nakama whose crew had died all around him and he couldn't think of anything worse.
The man tried to keep playing the piano but he only used his right hand, using the other to cover his crying eyes. "Why, leaving just the accompaniment?"
They could barely even tell what song was playing anymore as Brook's hand started to miss keys, and then he fell backwards off of the bench. Nami gasped, "You just, you just... died."
The ship covered in dead bodies started to rip apart, the corpses on it becoming nothing more than wisps as there was nothing holding together the memory any longer. Brook was dead, and he couldn't remember anything after that for a while.
"That was, discomforting," Sanji lit himself another cigarette and put it in his mouth to calm his nerves. The chef took a large puff and looked over at the talking skeleton who was trying to hold back his tears.
Brook was only happy for a second that he was able to see his old crew members. For the rest of the time, he was hoping the trap they were in would end and they would be able to leave that place.
"Mommy!" A few of the crew members heard this cry and looked off into the distance where some wisps were coming together. They could see a very small girl with black hair getting held back by others as she reached out.
There was a woman with white hair getting on a boat and she said, "Goodbye Robin."
"Mommy!" The small memory twisted and ripped apart, joining the groups of other small bits and pieces of other memories that weren't taking shape around them.
Only Franky, Nami, and Zoro had seen the memory, but as they looked over at their version of Nico Robin, they saw the woman's hair was shadowing her eyes and she looked away from the three of them. "Did she see it?" Franky whispered.
"Baka," Zoro retorted, "she didn't need to see it, it was her memory."
"I think that one is gonna," Chopper started and then his eyes went wide as the blackness around them turned into a field in the dead of night. There were clouds in the night sky, and the wind was blowing across the grass, waving each strand.
The atmosphere around them felt intense and Brook finally shook away the thoughts of his own crew to point and say, "Zoro-san, it's you."
"Huh?" the man said uninterested. He turned around before his eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped. "K-Kuina," he whispered and the skeleton saw that he wasn't looking at himself, but at the girl across the field from him.
"Wait," Usopp looked closer at the two swords, "Those things are real! Are you going to kill her?"
"Ha!" Zoro scoffed at the man, "I didn't have a chance."
Now the crew was really intrigued as they stared at the girl standing near Zoro. The man was grinning as he realized where this was and was excited to see the fight once more.
"How old are you?" Chopper asked as he looked at the children.
"I'm probably around seven or nine, she was two years older than me," the swordsman responded and Chopper sweatdropped as the man had skipped over eight.
Zoro had two swords in his hands while the girl with jet black hair only had one. "That's your sword isn't it?" Luffy asked innocently and then the rest of the crew realized the girl was holding the sword with the white hilt that Zoro always had with him.
Both children were silent, and all of a sudden they charged at each other. Adult Zoro ignored his captain's question and grinned as he watched his younger self manage so slice off some of Kuina's hair in a slash that she barely dodged.
"Damn you!" Sanji jumped towards Zoro and tried to kick him but the man unsheathed one of his swords and blocked the kick. "Trying to hit a girl," the blonde chef growled and Zoro growled right back, pushing extra hard and knocking Sanji off of him.
"Be quiet," he said, "it doesn't matter that she's a girl." The words were out of his mouth before he noticed what he was saying and he shot his gaze back at the flashback as the two of them kept fighting.
The battle seemed evenly matched and went on for a while until Zoro was panting heavily and the girl was still standing strong. She chuckled at the hunched over boy holding two swords and spoke, "Two swords must be heavy. It seems like you still lack a bit of stamina."
"Shut up!"
Sanji was about to yell at Zoro for using such a harsh tone with a young girl, but the girl surprised him by using Zoro's anger to her advantage and attacking in that moment. She completely had him off guard and knocked both of his swords up in the air before spinning her own around her head.
For a second it looked like she was going to slam it through kid Zoro's face, but the blade embedded itself in the grass inches from his head and she whispered with a smile, "This is my two thousand and first win."
"TWO THOUSAND!" The Straw Hat crew shouted in shock.
Luffy turned to his swordsman laughing, "She beat you two thousand times?!"
"Actually, two thousand and one," Robin corrected the captain and smirked at the green haired swordsman. The man just grumbled and looked back at his former self with shame as the boy began grabbing his face and holding back tears.
"Damn. Shit. I can't accept this..."
"Whoa!" Franky shouted, "Quite a mouth on you back then."
"Shut up," he growled at the cyborg.
"Don't tell me, you're crying because you lost?" Nami asked incredulously.
"He's crying 'cuz he lost to a girl," Usopp corrected and the man turned his head towards the sniper who turned and ran twenty feet away before looking back at the memory.
"Sore loser at heart," Sanji sighed and shrugged his shoulders, "there's nothing worse..." he was interrupted by the girl in the flashback and looked up to watch.
"I'm the one who wants to cry because I can't accept it."
Most of the crew and past Zoro all seemed surprised by this statement, but the girl continued, shocking them even more.
"Girls, when we grow up we become weaker than men. I'll probably be overtaken by you soon. You always said you'd become the best swordsman in the world. My father told me that, it's not possible for a woman. I know, I already know this, but I can't accept it! Zoro, it must be nice to be a man. I also want to become the world's greatest swordsman. My chest is starting to grow out..."
The girl said this out of nowhere and reached up, grabbing one of her developing breasts. Past Zoro started to blush in the awkward situation and Sanji was fuming, wondering why he didn't have any girls like that in his childhood.
"That's such a horrible thing for a father to say to his daughter," Nami muttered.
"If I, if I was born a boy..."
"After beating me, how can you say such weak words?! That's despicable! You've been my goal this whole time!"
The girl moved her arm from in front of her face to look at the angry boy yelling at her. This time Sanji said nothing as Zoro yelled at her and just watched with interest, occasionally looking over to see what their Zoro was doing, but he just seemed to be intently watching himself. Her eyes were filled with water and were glistening in the moonlight, but kid Zoro wasn't going to accept this.
"Is that what you're going to say when I beat you one day?! As if it wasn't because of my skills. It makes me, who's been training hard, look like a fool. Don't say things like that!"
He seemed to succeed at stopping the girl from crying and he closed the distance between the two of them.
"Promise me! One day either you or I will become the greatest swordsman in the world! We will compete to see who does it!"
The girl looked down at Zoro's outstretched hand for a few seconds before smirking, "Baka, saying that even though you're weak." She grabbed his hand and at the same time they shouted, "It's a promise!"
Around them, the field started to break apart and everyone looked around confused.
Usopp finally said what they were thinking, "Wait, that's your painful memory?" he asked the swordsman who turned and smirked.
"Did you expect anything else from a monster like him?" Nami sighed and looked around, trying to formulate a way to get out of there.
As everyone else started looking around for other memories or ways out, Robin looked over at Zoro who had waited until the eyes were all off of him to look back at the wisps floating away from his memory. She noticed a look in his eye and didn't want to pry, but she felt that memory held more weight than any of them understood.
"Look, it's Zoro again," Chopper pointed behind the swordsman and he turned to see a young version of himself. This time he was angered that the girl who had them trapped here was making the others see his memories.
The memory didn't surround them, but it was big enough that they could look through the haze and see that it was raining around the boy as he walked. They could hear voices on either side of the boy as he walked straight ahead, surrounded by taller figures. He was walking directly behind a coffin and they seemed to be in a funeral proceeding towards the graveyard. Two men next to him were talking in hushed voices.
"She missed her footing on the stairs in the storage room."
"Storage room?"
"It seems that she went in there to find her katana's whetstone."
"Why look for such a thing?"
"Who knows."
"She was just a kid."
The crew members who hadn't already guessed realized who the two men were talking about and gasped. Zoro didn't look a day older than in the memory they had just seen, but Kuina was dead, her dreams crushed.
So that's why, Robin understood now why the previous memory meant so much to him as the funeral march continued. That promise, he's the only one who can keep it now.
Franky looked at the young boy walking as the memory started to tear and he couldn't tell whether or not he was shedding any tears. No, those are definitely rain drops, the cyborg was amazed that Zoro could hold it all in like that.
Small memories started exploding out from the wisps of the funeral march in front of them. One had Zoro beating a pole with his two swords as hard as he could before that memory vanished. Another had the kid attacking a fellow student, an adult, ruthlessly until the man fell, unable to continue. The look in his eyes was of raw fury and pain.
"What is this?" Zoro growled up at the sky. He started shouting, "You hear me?! Stop just showing me!" There was no response from the girl who had them trapped in their own memories.
A new wisp dragged out from the coffin that was in the larger memory originally. This wisp seemed bigger than the others and the crew saw Zoro holding up a boulder by a rope with his teeth. Some of the members needed to rub their eyes as they could have sworn they saw Kuina sitting behind him.
The boy in the memory seemed to have imagined her there, because he spun around, dropping the rock into the stream he was standing over. When the girl vanished, the young version of Zoro looked up at the sky and screamed as loud as he could. Everyone was surprised as he had been holding up until that moment when they all understood just how much pain he was in.
Finally that wisp broke apart and all the other wisps were torn up too.
"Well," the swordsman said in a low voice, not looking at any of the crew members. With everyone else, someone had something to say about their memories, but with someone like Zoro, they just couldn't think of anything to say. "Good," he said and turned to pretend to look for a new memory.
Kuina, I have not forgotten. The man's fists clenched, I will be the best.
Link: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11134973/1/Straw-Hats-stuck-in-Memories
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