One Piece Fan Fiction ❯ Cursed Island of the Devil Fruit Gods ❯ Shattered ( Chapter 5 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Zoro followed Shishou to her hut, with Anu the wolf following along. Shishou was a tall woman, as tall as Zoro himself in fact. She had dark hair tied back in a braid with a strand hanging down over her face, which was slightly pale. She wasn't built like Nami or Robin, she was rather small in bust, but that showed potential to be strong in her upper body without them distracting her. Zoro looked around the hut before he entered, and after. It was large; apparently she allowed Anu to sleep inside with her, as there was a large bed made for him. Zoro found two of his swords laying there on the floor of her hut. "Wado Ichimonji! Sandai Kitetsu!" He gasped, grabbing them up off the floor.
"Ah...I suspected they must be yours. They are good swords." Shishou smiled.
"I had one more. Did you find that one too?" Zoro asked her desperately.
"You weild three swords? How strange. Anu." she said to the wolf. Anu whimpered, and coughed up Yubashiri. "That one is no longer usable, I am afraid. I am curious as to how you use three of them." Shishou almost challenged Zoro to show her.
"I'd demonstrate if I had an opponent. Or if I had the time. I need to find my friends and get off this island." Zoro told her. "Thank you for returning these to me. I'll take care of myself from here on."
"I already told you that you are not going to get off this island. You should listen to someone who lives here rather than tell them they are wrong. That is quite rude. Speaking of rude, you have not even introduced yourself to me." she told him.
"Well I wasn't figuring on being here much longer so I didn't think it would matter. But my name is Roronoa Zoro. Will you kindly tell me, Miss Shishou, why I cannot leave the island?" he asked her.
"Knowing would do you no good. But it is a sad twist of fate...that a swordsman would come my way and be my only way of fulfilling my dream." she smiled bitterly.
"If you want to keep speaking in riddles you'd do better talking to my friends Nami and Robin." Zoro cleaned out his ears. "They're more the brains of the group. I'm the brawn." he smirked.
"I want you to show me what you can do. Maybe you're all mouth, that's what it sounds like to me." Shishou said slyly. "I think I could take you...if you're not scared to fight a woman."
"Never have been. EVER." Zoro growled. Kuina came back to his mind then, as did Tashigi.
He followed her outside, with Anu bounding after them. "You want to see how I weild three swords?" he smirked. He popped Wado Ichimonji's hilt into his mouth and drew the Sandai Kitetsu and the half-melted Yubashiri, the result of him fighting the Vice-Admirals and marines without knowing what they were capable of. "Santoryu style..." he introduced his techniques.
"Oh, my...so impressive, the strength to control so many swords at once. Reminds me of him." she smiled, although there was a sadness in her eyes as well. "I bet you can do quite a bit with your skill. Can you destroy this boulder?" she asked him, pointing to a boulder bigger than her hut half-buried in the sand.
Zoro took a stance that channeled his ki in the form of a dragon. "Dragon...Twister!" he lunged at the boulder, sliced into it, and withdrew. The ensuing energy explosion reduced it to dust and scattered it in a tornado. Zoro stood back up straight. "Have you seen anyone do that before?" he asked her. He was determined to get some answers out of her, but his patience was wearing thin. If she didn't start spilling the beans about why he couldn't fight his way off the island, he was going to have to force it out of her even though he didn't want to. Or to at least try to...he had no idea what she was capable of though he expected it wasn't much.
"Lots of times." she sighed, rolling her eyes. "I thought you might be special. Oh, cruel fate..." Shishou sat down on the sand and held her head in her hands. "Teasing me by sending me a lowly worm when I had been hoping and praying for a dragon..."
"HEY!" Zoro snarled. "I WILL NOT STAND FOR YOU TELLING ME I AM WEAK! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO TELL ME THAT?!"
"I am the one who should be asking you who the hell you are to talk to me in that way." Shishou looked up at him a bit irritated.
Zoro unbuttoned his shirt and whipped it off. "Do you see this?" he asked her angrily, showing her the scar he'd received from Mihawk.
"Oh, goodness...you survived such a horrible wound? You must have incredible willpower." Shishou raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't think anyone but him could do that to someone at your intermediate level."
"Stop that! I was given this by the greatest swordsman in all the world, Hawk-Eyes Mihawk! I challenged him-foolishly-and he permitted me to walk away and chase after him if I could. And I am getting off this island if I have to separate from my body and haunt him to death." Zoro declared.
Shishou leapt up using only her legs. "You know him?!" she gasped.
"You know him?!" Zoro gasped.
"He used to live here-with me! I trained him. He washed up here, just like you, ages ago...or so it seems. Being immortal does ruin one's sense of time." she said.
"I battled him months ago, and I am to do so again soon." Zoro growled. "And you were the one who trained him?" he asked her, ignoring her comment on immortality; perhaps she was just full of herself if she had indeed trained the greatest.
"Yes. He had a passion for swords. I spent a year training him. He grew so strong so fast...his body and mind grew in strength and skill as did my heart when I was with him. I was in love. But his heart only grew weaker by the day as he became selfish and determined to use the skills I taught him to leave me. He did not love me. And he escaped. Oh, the island was punished terribly for his misdeed. That is why you cannot escape." she told him. "I won't allow it...not again...being immortal only means my pain will last forever." she sighed.
"You are immortal?" Zoro asked critically. "What do you mean by that?!"
"It is part of this island's curse. Those who are chosen by the gods cannot die until their mission has been fulfilled. I was one of the chosen. But I choose not to fulfill my mission. Only my dream." she answered.
"Are these gods the reason I can't leave?" he asked her. He was beginning to wonder if the dark omen of the storm that had shipwrecked him was the result of a divine being's anger. But first things first, he wanted to make sure she was willing to keep talking and answering his questions. "And that mission is? That dream is...?" Zoro was going to get to the bottom of this one way or another.
"The gods are indeed the reason, and they are so much more as well. My mission I cannot speak of. But my dream...is that someone will punish Mihawk for betraying me. I thought perhaps when you said you were a swordsman that you would be able to. But I see now that it is impossible. You will never leave this island." she sighed.
"Your dream is the same as mine!" Zoro growled, leaping forward until he was face to face with her. "If you trained him like you say, train me! What does he know that I do not?"
"Many things. But his lessons were incomplete. I think...he might have been afraid. But his strength is bound to have grown by now. Particularly if he had obtained a weapon befitting his strength." Shishou reponded.
"He has obtained that weapon, the finest in the world, the Black Blade." Zoro answered her.
"Oh, no...his soul truly is darkened. I wonder...is that my fault?" Shishou bit her lip. "He must be truly terrifying...I wonder if even I would be able to stop him now..." she shook her head. "I am sorry, I cannot condemn you like that by giving you that training. At this rate you will never catch up to him, or if you do, you will be swallowed by darkness like him. No matter where you run, no matter where you try to escape to, you will be horrified of it and live only to crush others in the hopes that you will escape it." she warned him.
"But I am not afraid. I was not afraid when he was in a position to kill me, twice. Train me. Show me what he was too afraid to face. I will overcome the darkness, the fear." Zoro requested.
Shishou considered this for a moment. "The nature of fear is quite different for you and him, I can see. You'll have to face different demons than he. If he was braver than you, he was lucky to have escaped. If you are too fearful you'll die before any darkness can overtake you." she warned him.
"I wouldn't ask if I was afraid of dying." Zoro said sternly. "I gave up on life a long time ago when I decided that I had to be the greatest. I can't accept second best. I have to be number one. Even if it kills me." he declared.
"There are worse things than dying." Shishou cautioned him.

She led him to the edge of the beach near the water as they began the training. Shishou faced Zoro unarmed. "Choose your weapon." She told him. "I suggest your broken Yubashiri. My lesson here is to teach you that it is not the sword that determines a swordsman's strength, but the swordsman." she explained.
"Fine with me. It may be broken but I've cut through steel with it." he smirked. "Now what?"
"Come." she motioned for him to attack.
"You are unarmed." he shook his head.
"You are this close to failing this lesson." she growled, holding her finger and thumb up, an eighth of an inch apart. "Unarmed? Compared to you, I think not. Now, come." she ordered him.
"As you wish." Zoro closed his eyes. "Lion's Song..." he chanted, preparing to use his strongest single-sword technique on her.
Shishou bent down, ignoring him and picking up a small finger-sized twig. Standing back up with Zoro at her face, she poked Yubashiri with the twig. Zoro bounced back as though shot with a cannonball and Yubashiri shattered like glass. Zoro flew back and made a long trail in the sand before he stopped moving. Momentarily paralyzed, he lay there, the breath knocked out of him, and he watched Shishou's shadow hovering over him as she walked over to him. "H-how..." he coughed out a mouthful of sand once his breath returned.
"Still think that I am unarmed? Now what have we learned?" Shishou asked him, riding on Anu's back over to Zoro.
"You...didn't need a sword to defeat me." he spat. "Your strength..."
"Strength nothing. How close were you to striking before I hit you?" she asked him.
Without answering, Zoro instead uttered, "Speed..." as he started catching on.
"Where did I hit your sword?" she asked him.
"In the...dead center." he started to smile. Maybe he wasn't supposed to be able to defeat her in a match...maybe he was simply supposed to learn these things from it. It was only the first lesson, after all.
She clapped her hands. "Exactly. Speed, strength, skill. None can outdo the others. They must all be evenly balanced for one to attain the title of the world's greatest sword master. If you were to face Mihawk now you'd lose just slightly less easily than the last time you challenged him. I destroyed your Yubashiri because you no longer need it. You're going to forge a new sword with your heart and soul. And you are either going to fight off your demons with it, or be impaled on a sword of your own inexperience and cowardice." Shishou smiled. "That will be lesson two. Now get up."
"I can't move." he grunted.
"Oh, Roronoa...Do you want to fail? You should have said so, I wouldn't have bothered wasting my time." Shishou frowned.
"Damn it..." Zoro wriggled loose of the sand. It hurt like hell but he managed to sit up; he tasted blood in his mouth but washed it out with a handful of seawater and spat it back out.
"Follow. There is a special place where lesson two will take place." she instructed him. "Oh, and bring the hilt of Yubashiri, you'll be needing it. And you won't get your other two swords back until I say so." she teased, taking away Wado Ichimonji and Sandai Kitetsu and letting Anu use them for chewtoys.
"You're having fun with this. I would think you'd be taking your dream more seriously." Zoro sneered. "And tell that damn mutt to stop ruining the sheaths."
"Maybe because I think you're a joke, Roronoa." she rolled her eyes at him. She turned to the wolf as it tried to bite through the swords and sheaths, to no avail. "Anu, be careful, if he dies I want those swords to look nice so I can hang them on the wall of the hut." she giggled. "Now are you going to prove me wrong about you being a lost cause or not?" she turned back to Zoro.
"Beyond anything you've ever dreamed." Zoro began to run after them to the next training ground. Shishou rode Anu inside a dark cave at the far end of the beach. "And call me Zoro." he growled.
"I will when you've earned the right to be called a man." she winked.

"Are you afraid of the dark, Roronoa?" Shishou asked him.
"No one is afraid of the dark. It is the fear of the unknown. And I may not know you very well but I know you enough that you wouldn't attack me in here." He answered.
"Oh, I like that answer." she giggled. "Lay down, Anu. This might take longer than I thought."
"Stop that!" Zoro growled.
"Stop getting so angry, you're slowing down your own progress." Shishou scolded him.
Zoro calmed down. Damn it. Why'd she have to be so strict? They were helping each other, why couldn't she be a little more supportive like his first swordsmanship sensei?
"I'm going to use my Devil Fruit power on you." Shishou informed him.
"You? You have a Devil Fruit power?" Zoro asked.
"Yes. That is why I cannot leave myself. If I try, I will sink like a rock if I swim. If I use a boat the gods will send their storms to sink me and I will drown. Mihawk was an outsider so he made it out of here safely, but only because of what I taught him and because he didn't bear the curse. If you have any hope to get out of here and find him, you'll need to complete your training. And right now I'm not getting my hopes up." she explained.
"What is your power?" Zoro wondered.
"You will see. Good-bye, Roronoa. Anu, come. I think if this very slow man is going to learn anything, he's going to have to go it alone, without me holding his hand the whole way. Stay here, Roronoa. But don't worry...you won't be 'alone'." Shishou chuckled.

Zoro could hear a boulder being pushed over the entrance. "As if I can't just break out of here!" he shouted, ready to go after Shishou and tell her to go shove her sword lessons up her ass. But a voice from the cave froze Zoro in his tracks.
"Zoro...?"
Zoro's heart nearly stopped. His eyes began to adjust to the dark slightly. Reaching out into the darkness, he gulped. "Kuina...?"