Warm Memories and Brotherly Bonds

Chapter 25: Enter the Devil's Child: Nico Robin

The night was pressing in on all around them as they knelt in the grass, trying to catch their breath, and resister what just happened to them all.

"This... is... ridiculous!" Usopp gasped, speaking for them, so out of breath that he was panting, unable to speak in full sentences.

"Tell... me about it," Nami said, looking around, feeling a strong sense of frustration as Chopper examined Zoro's wound.

"I'm going to kill that thing," Zoro threatened as he kept his hand over the bleeding hole in his gut. After the Crocodile slime appeared, they began a fierce fight with it. The whole time, it was trying to get to the two graves behind them, clearly looking ready to destroy them. Nothing they did any damage to it however.

None of their attacks hardly fazed the thing. For less than ten minutes, they fought with the Crocodile slime, avoiding his hook while their attacks were like poking him with a stick. Once, he was finally able to get around them all, and raised his hook, ready to strike Ace's grave... but thankfully he didn't so much as scratch it...

"What were you thinking?!" Chopper demanded as he dabbed at the wound with a salve to stop the bleeding.

"Relax," Zoro said, his eye closed as he lay back and let Chopper tend to him. "The wound isn't that deep. He really was just a fake... he didn't even go halfway through."

"It's still bad!" Chopper snapped, as he reached into his bag and pulled out some bandages. "What were you thinking standing in front of that thing like that?!"

"If I didn't do it, then he would've destroyed it," Zoro said firmly, jerking his thumb over at the grave markers with a sense of relief. "Good," he said, "Not a scratch."

"Don't you dare take this off until that heals!" Chopper warned him angrily as he began to bandage him up. He guess that he should've known that he would do this. He was both amazed and horrified to see that when that fake Crocodile attacked, Zoro intercepted it with his own body, and getting the hook stabbed right into him.

It was just after that did the slime fall apart once again like it did with Arlong. Sanji, Franky, and Brook went racing after it when it fled, and now the rest of them were waiting to see if they were able to find it. The others escaped the battle pretty much unscathed aside from some minor bruising.

Robin, Nami, and Usopp were watching as Zoro just let Chopper tell him off as he opened his eye stared up at the sky. Maybe it was stupid, but the truth was, he never would've been able to look Luffy in the eye again if he had let this thing destroy his brother's final resting place. Besides, he had far worse injuries than a minor hole in his gut... nothing that he wouldn't recover from.

While he was hoping that the three who went after that thing had been able to find a way to kill it, a part of him was hoping that they weren't... so that he could get payback for this later. So when they came back, that part of him was a little happy to hear that it had escaped once again.

"What the hell are we gonna do about that thing?!" Usopp cried out, pointing a shaking finger in the direction that the thing had took off in. "What's the good of fighting this thing if we can't even touch it?!"

"I don't know," Robin answered softly and they all looked to her as Zoro cautiously sat up. "But this thing was much more realistic than it had been with Arlong. Since it spent so much time hiding in the memories with Crocodile, I guess that it had enough memories to be able to stick to that form much easier than before."

"But it didn't have any sand powers though," Chopper pointed out, slapping Zoro's hand when he tried to take the bandage off. "It only attacked us with that stupid hook!"