Interlude: Tashigi vs Zoro

Rain came down hard enough to erase the far ends of Loguetown's streets. Gutters overflowed, boots splashed through ankle-deep water, and every roof poured a fresh curtain across the road. Zoro ran with Luffy and Sanji at his heels, his three swords knocking against his hip beneath the green haramaki he had kept wrapped around his waist.

"Which direction is the sea?"

Luffy squinted through the downpour as if that might help. "I can't tell where we're going because of this heavy rain!"

"There they are!" a Marine shouted behind them.

The three pirates rounded the next corner and found another Marine waiting in the middle of the flooded intersection. Tashigi stood with her boots planted, her glasses spotted with rain, one hand gripping Shigure's hilt. The open Marine coat she ordinarily wore over her fundoshi had grown heavy and sodden in the downpour, so she had stripped it off and left it under the nearest awning. She was perfectly comfortable fighting in nothing but her white fundoshi and boots. Rain streamed over her large bare breasts, gathered on nipples stiffened by the cold, and ran down the narrow strip of cloth between her exposed ass cheeks.

This was how a true practitioner of the Unencumbered Blade met an enemy.

The storm offered one small mercy. It kept the cloth soaked and washed her thighs clean quickly enough that nobody could see Tsujo's absurdly vast load was still leaking from her pussy. Every fresh trickle felt obscenely warm against her rain-chilled skin, a mortifying distraction her drenched fundoshi advertised to no one.

Sanji stopped so abruptly that Luffy nearly ran into him. His cigarette slipped from his lips and vanished with a hiss into the flooded street. His visible eye swelled into a throbbing heart as he took in Tashigi's pretty, stern face, the rain coursing over her bare breasts, and the white fundoshi that did almost nothing to diminish the fact that she was naked. He clasped both hands beneath his chin and leaned toward her so far that Luffy had to catch the back of his jacket.

"Who's that lovely, ravishing naked lady?!" Sanji cried. "An angel! A beautiful, soaking-wet swordswoman has descended before me!"

Tashigi barely noticed. All her attention settled on the green-haired swordsman. "I didn't realize you were Roronoa Zoro, and a pirate to boot. You lied to me."

Sanji's heart-eye vanished in an explosion of jealous fury. He rounded on Zoro with jagged teeth, and the rain seemed to hiss against the heat coming off his face. "What did you do to her, you moss-headed bastard? You met a ravishing woman like this and kept her secret from me?"

"Nothing." Zoro met Tashigi's glare without concern. Rain ran over his bare shoulders and down the thick muscles of his chest. He had also abandoned most of his clothing, although the ordinary white briefs beneath his haramaki made a poor substitute for proper swordsman's dress. "You didn't ask my name. That's all. I didn't lie to you."

"A rogue like you can't be allowed to own renowned swords." Tashigi's gaze dropped briefly to his waist. His briefs were soaked nearly transparent and clung to the shape between his legs, but their indecency was not what offended her. They looked like the most half-assed fundoshi she had ever seen, as though he were mocking the Unencumbered Blade while carrying three Famous Blades at his hip. "Especially when you show so little respect for the discipline attached to them."

Zoro glanced down at his briefs, mildly annoyed rather than embarrassed. "Weren't you wearing a bunch of clothes when we met, lady?"

The memory snagged strangely in both of them. For one uncomfortable instant, Tashigi could see herself exactly as she had been that morning, buttoned and covered from throat to ankle, while Zoro's slight frown suggested the recollection felt just as wrong to him. Then the perfectly reasonable explanation settled back into place. It had been laundry day, and Captain Smoker had taken her fundoshi. Naturally, she had been forced to wear all those clothes instead.

"That was different," she said.

Zoro shrugged. He plainly did not care enough to argue about it. "If you say so."

Nor did Tashigi care to waste another moment defending herself. His underwear was only further evidence of his unworthiness, not the reason she had stopped him. She drew Shigure and leveled its point at him. "I'll collect your swords, beginning with the legendary Wado Ichimonji."

Zoro's hand settled on its hilt as he grinned coolly. "Try it."

Tashigi lunged. Her boots drove water out in two great fans as Shigure swept toward his ribs, the turn of her hips carrying through her naked torso and into the cut. Her breasts swung with the sudden acceleration, completely unconfined and completely irrelevant to the precision of her stroke. Zoro drew Wado Ichimonji quickly enough to catch her blade.

Steel cracked against steel. They stopped close enough to feel one another's breath, their swords crossed between their faces. Tashigi bore down with both hands, eyes fierce behind her wet lenses. Zoro met her pressure one-handed, studying her with a small, confident smile that made her push harder.

They broke apart together, pivoted in the rain, and swung again. Shigure and Wado Ichimonji met at the center of the street with another ringing impact. This time Zoro's smile sharpened.

"I see."

Sanji snapped out of his lovestruck curl and raised one leg, ready to launch himself between them. "You bastard! How dare you swing a sword at such a beautiful lady? Get away from her before I kick your skull through that wall!"

Tashigi kept her blade locked against Zoro's and turned her head just enough to answer. "Please don't interfere. This is a fight between Roronoa and me. There's no need to involve yourselves."

Sanji's raised foot settled slowly back into the water. The heart returned to his visible eye as Tashigi addressed him, then cracked when the meaning of her words caught up. "You want a private fight with him?"

"You heard her," Zoro said. "Go on ahead."

Luffy did not need to be asked twice. "Let's go!" He caught Sanji by the back of his jacket and hauled him past the two swordsmen. Sanji's shoes plowed twin furrows through the water as he reached desperately toward Tashigi with both arms.

"No! We can't leave a beautiful naked woman alone with that brute! My lady, forget the mosshead! I'll carry you to safety and personally warm every inch of your magnificent body!" Sanji twisted around as Luffy dragged him farther away and pointed furiously at Zoro. "Listen to me, Mosshead! If you put one scratch on her perfect body, I'll break every bone in yours!"

More boots splashed around the corner behind them. "Sergeant Major Tashigi!"

Tashigi did not answer the approaching Marines. She and Zoro still stood clenched over their joined swords, Shigure trembling against Wado Ichimonji as each tested the other's strength. She glared through the rain. He looked intent now, but the trace of a smirk remained at the corner of his mouth.

Then his free hand seized Yubashiri.

The second blade flashed from its sheath and swept toward her side. Tashigi tore Shigure free and jumped back just before Yubashiri crossed the space where her ribs had been. Zoro followed at once, Wado cutting high while Yubashiri came low. She caught one strike, twisted away from the other, and answered with a thrust that passed within an inch of his rain-slick chest.

For several seconds, the intersection filled with the continuous clash of steel. Tashigi attacked from every opening she could create, sinking low enough for the wet strip of her fundoshi to pull tight between her ass cheeks. Her bare breasts bounced and swung with each violent change of direction, but neither swordsman spared them a thought. The Unencumbered Blade existed so that nothing could bind the body in combat. Zoro might have made a mockery of its proper dress, but he understood its purpose perfectly.

He also understood her reach, timing, and footwork far too quickly.

Tashigi cut at his shoulder. Wado turned Shigure aside. She reversed toward his hip, only for Yubashiri to meet her halfway. A residual soreness deep in her hips protested when she lengthened her stance, an unwelcome reminder of the enormous pirate who had used her body earlier that morning, but she forced her legs wider and drove forward anyway.

Zoro crossed his swords around Shigure and stepped into her guard. Tashigi pulled free, recovered, and attacked again. He deflected the cut and continued advancing. His strength forced her backward one sliding step at a time until her bare shoulder blades struck the rain-slick wall of a building.

She tried to turn off it. Zoro crowded her before she could move, catching Shigure high between Wado and Yubashiri. A brutal twist of his wrists tore the sword from her hands. Shigure spun away and clattered across the flooded stones.

Yubashiri streaked past her face.

The point punched into the wall beside her head with enough force to crack the stone. Zoro's fist stopped beside her ear, his blade buried several inches into the building. The thrust brought the rest of him with it, leaving Tashigi trapped between the wall and his body. His broad, rain-slick pecs pressed directly into her naked breasts, crushing their large, soft weight flat against his harder chest. Her tits spread around his muscles, one pushed slightly upward and the other squeezed outward beneath his arm. Their breathing made her stiff nipples drag against his skin.

For one suspended moment, they were close enough that Tashigi could feel his heartbeat through their mashed chests. Zoro's eyes remained on her empty sword hand until Shigure stopped moving. Only then did he look into her face. The contact of bare flesh had not distracted him for an instant.

"You're not taking my swords," he said.

Zoro pulled Yubashiri from the wall and stepped back. Cold rain flooded into the space between them, running over the breasts his body had left warm. He sheathed both blades and turned away.

"Why didn't you kill me?" Tashigi shouted at his back. "Is it because I'm a woman?"

Zoro stopped without turning. Tashigi pushed herself away from the wall and snatched Shigure from the flooded street, her humiliation boiling hotter with every second he refused to answer.

"You won, and then you walked away as though finishing our fight would be beneath you. Do you understand how humiliating that is? Men are born physically stronger, so you decided a woman could never be an opponent worth taking seriously." She tightened both hands around Shigure's sheath. "Do you have any idea how many times I've wished I had been born a boy? Of course you don't. I don't carry a sword for fun!"

Zoro whirled around. Whatever restraint had held him silent broke all at once. "Will you shut up? I can't stand you!"

Tashigi recoiled, more offended than frightened. "What did you say?"

"Everything about you gets on my nerves! Your face looks exactly like my closest friend's. She died when we were kids. Your voice is like hers. You glare at me the way she did." His angry gesture took in Tashigi from her wet glasses to the large breasts hanging bare over her smooth stomach. "Even your big tits look exactly like I always imagined hers would if she'd lived long enough to grow a pair! Now you're standing there saying the same thing she used to say. Stop imitating her, you damn copycat woman!"

For several seconds, Tashigi could only stare at him. Then her face flared red with fury. "I have never met your friend! This is my face, these are my tits, and those are my words! How could my tits be copying tits she never even had?"

"I don't know!" Zoro shouted. "That's why you piss me off!"

Zoro turned and started running before Tashigi could form a reply.

"Come back here!" She shoved Shigure into its sheath and charged after him. "This fight isn't settled! I will take those swords from you!"

Zoro raised one hand without looking back and disappeared through the rain, his three Famous Blades bouncing above the most disgraceful excuse for a fundoshi Tashigi had ever seen.