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Homecoming Hill	By : TreeStar Category: +M to R > One Piece Views: 2656 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
Homecoming Hill

10

The Rising of a Storm

After breakfast the next morning, Zoro announced that he had to run to town before they started their meandering evaluations again, so they got started a little late. But as much as Kuina was loath to be back at it, they all found themselves -including their three extras-

Were standing outside the next door in line.

The day was slow and very much like the last two had been. Zoro saw a raven-haired woman on the fourth floor whom he�d never seen before in one of the rooms. She smiled mysteriously as she watched them look over her room in approval, and Sanji spent time complimenting the gorgeous beauty that had no doubt owned this room last. There were many bookshelves full from top to bottom with various books that captured both Zoro�s and Sanji�s interests -- books on archaeology and world religion and history and languages and culture, and several regular just-for-fun novels as well. Zoro felt a little hesitant to just shoot across the room and start looking through the woman�s things, but when he looked at her in askance and gave her a bow (hoping that no one would notice him bowing at a random chair�), she laughed at him and nodded.

Nami went over to this woman to talk with her and bemoan their exploration while Usopp flopped onto her bed and relaxed for a bit. Zoro gathered that her name was Robin, and that she was obviously a scholar of some type, though her specific area was a little hard for him to narrow down based on what he had in front of him. He also noticed very well that Luffy actually stepped just into the doorway of her room, and when she greeted him with a smile and a �hello, Luffy,� he gave her a little bow and tried to offer her a timid smile.

Zoro was wondering if maybe it was the presence of another in the room now that made Luffy act so quiet. But he always spoke so highly of Nami when he spoke of her at all, and Usopp didn�t act like he had anything against the smaller boy. They�d both been very worried about him when they�d asked Zoro to protect him from himself and the Shifting (whatever that was�).

There was something in this set up that Zoro was missing. The fact was that Luffy didn�t act this way when he was alone with Zoro, put plain and simple. There had to be a reason for it.

When they finally finished their inspection that afternoon no one was more relieved than Kuina to hear it. Now she wouldn�t have to leave Syd locked up for so long.

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It was later on that Luffy entered his bedchamber to find a paper bag on his bed. He�d never seen it before, so he went over to look at it. It was full of hardback novels. New ones.

He poured out the contents onto the bed and just looked at them for a moment before picking one up to read the back cover. This wasn�t a sci-fi or a mystery at all. This had pirates and adventurers and a journey to a volcano to find an army that the heroes could enlist to help protect their home from the evil scourge of the seas that was heading for their shores. And there were a bunch of riddles and songs that would lead to the discovery of the mysterious sword that held great power, and it just went on and on!

Luffy was interested right away and looked back at the cover to see that it was the seventh in the series. He put the bag down to hunt for the first one. There had to be sixteen books in the bag! He found the first book and read the cover excitedly: Redwall by Brian Jacques.

Luffy looked at his bedchamber door, and back at the book in his hands. Maybe it was presumptuous, but after what he had said yesterday, would Zoro mind if he read just a little bit of it�?

He teetered for a few more seconds before crawling onto the bed and curling up on the pillow.

---------------------------

Zoro walked into his room to find Luffy curled up on the bed, completely immersed in one of the books from the bag he had laid there earlier.

He walked right up to the boy and watched him for a few moments, unnoticed. Luffy really was a cute kid. His toes curled and uncurled as he read an exciting scene, and Zoro hated to pull him out of it, but when he sat down on the bed, Luffy jerked to alertness and froze as if he�d been caught doing something terrible.

Zoro grinned at him. �What do you think? You like them?�

�Oh!� Luffy sat up and scrambled to put the book back. �I�m sorry, I didn�t mean to hurt anything, I just thought that maybe just for a minu-�

�Luffy, it�s fine. I wanted you to read them. Do you like them?�

Luffy slowly rested the book back in his lap. ��Aye. They�re really great.�

�They�re yours.�

��Mine?�

�Mm-hm,� Zoro nodded.

Luffy was perplexed. �Why?�

Zoro shrugged. �Why not? If you want I can call it a thank you for letting me share your room, and letting us tromp all over your home. I really appreciate it. I read these books when I was younger, and they came to mind yesterday when I was talking with you about stories. I thought you might like them, so I took a chance.� He hoped he hadn�t been to forward with Luffy. The kid looked like he was at a loss for what to do.

�Is it okay?� Zoro asked, hoping he hadn�t scared the boy off. Luffy was so volatile it was hard to be sure what was okay with him.

In answer, Luffy smiled shyly and laid back down again to look at the new book that was his. ��Thank you.� It had been so long since he�d gotten a new thing just for him. He felt a feeling well up inside of him that he hadn�t felt in a very long time; that feeling of self-worth. That there was something in him that someone other than his family might like enough to earn him gestures of kindness without the ulterior motive of maintaining overdependence on his power. That was another thing power did: it gained you false friends. So was this act as selfless as it seemed? But Zoro had never asked him to do anything for him, except perhaps keep him company. Zoro wasn�t trying to buy him.

Zoro�

Zoro patted his knee. �I�ve gotta go down to dinner. You have fun reading.�

With that, he left.

Luffy watched the door that Zoro had left through for a few minutes. Zoro was really great. Luffy wanted so badly to be his friend, and to have him as a friend, as well. Things would be so much more bearable with Zoro in his life� but the last thing he wanted was for Zoro to become trapped and suffer� But still the need for his own companionship fought with his desire for Zoro�s well-being. Despite the repercussions that could result, Luffy wanted. He really wanted.

�I�m so selfish�� He slowly found his place again and continued to read to escape the troubling thoughts and selfish desires.

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That night when Zoro slept, a lonely feeling entered his dreams. He was alone in a dark place where it was cold and empty, and his voice echoed back at him for no one else to hear. There was a light in the distance, but it was too far away to touch and feel, and the warmth it gave was small. All he could do was watch it float forever out of reach. He heard crying and quiet pleas for salvation, but he couldn�t place the voice. Still, he knew that the feeling as a whole was a distantly familiar one.

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Sanji was having a weird morning. He hadn�t slept well because he kept hearing voices in his head (never a good sign, but it was probably a dream), and when he�d walked down to the kitchen that morning, someone had made eggs, but he was pretty sure that no one else was up in the house yet. Zoro was the only one who would have been able to manage scrambled eggs, but sunny-side up, still hot and yolks unbroken? The Incredible Hulk would have had an easier time.

That wasn�t the only thing wrong with the picture. There was a distinct scent of woman�s perfume in the kitchen, and Kuina was too young for that.

All this led the blonde to the conclusion that someone else was in the house with them� and they liked eggs.

Or not. His cousins were playing some kind of a joke on him, and he didn�t appreciate it one bit.

When Kuina dragged her feet through the door with Zoro yawning flamboyantly behind her, Sanji confronted them both to get matching blank stares. Because he didn�t want them to get the impression that they had gotten to him in any way, he pretended to let it go after that, and they ate breakfast in peace because Zoro was distracted and Kuina was still groggy.

--------------------------

After breakfast Sanji headed down the hill to call his father with an assessment of how things were going, and just to talk to him. Much like Zoro, Sanji was truly his father�s son, and he missed Zeff.

While he was out, Zoro challenged Kuina to a chess game in a sitting room full of plushie chairs in the front of the house. The room was in neither wing, Luffy had said before that what wasn�t in a wing was generally unoccupied and rarely visited, so Zoro felt fairly certain that he wouldn�t be put in danger by staying there for a little while. As thrilling as the mystery was, everyone needed a break from Fantasia now and then. Besides, he needed a warm-up game or two.

Kuina accepted, and she and Sydian followed Zoro into the sitting room where the board had been previously set up; probably years ago. They both pulled up chairs and Kuina took the first move.

It was over before it really began. Twenty two moves left the loser baffling over the board for several minutes before deciding that his sister had obviously been practicing.

Deciding he�d had enough chess for the moment, Zoro agreed when Kuina asked if he wanted to come out front and play catch with Sydian.

Syd stole the Frisbee from Kuina before the step-siblings had even made it past the tree line separating the black, dead, front yard from the front circle, and came running up to Zoro with it. Zoro made the first throw, and they were off. Sydian, being a purebred terrier, was inherently good at games like Frisbee, and made many spectacular jumps and catches. Indeed, it was a challenge to throw the Frisbee so that he couldn�t catch it. Eventually the two made a game of tossing the Frisbee to each other in a game of Keep Away from Syd that the dog was a natural at.

The yard, as far as Zoro could see, was primarily empty. He threw the Frisbee back to Kuina and glanced at the drivepath before doing a double-take. There was a man standing down by the front gate, and a few other Dwellers looked to be patrolling the fence at the edge of the property. Zoro wondered why. Were they standing guard? Because they certainly weren�t interfering with he and his sister.

�Zoro!�

Zoro heard his sister�s cry a moment before he was clocked over the skull with the Frisbee. He belatedly caught it and tossed it back to his laughing sister who was trying to ask him if he was alright, but was coming up short of convincing.

As time passed, those patrolling along the fence began to take interest in watching the game, and Zoro even heard some laughing as they clustered into groups to lounge around and point, oblivious to the fact that they had an audience as well. This kept the game from getting boring to Zoro, but after a while he noticed who wasn�t there and glanced down towards the gate. Was the man down there who was standing so vigilantly over the gate the same presence that he had felt when he had first arrived at the Hill and pushed said gate open for their car to pass through?

Said vigilante must have felt Zoro�s eyes on him, for he turned to pierce Zoro with golden eyes so fierce that he felt his blood run cold for and instant. Yep. That was the same presence, alright. He felt like a creature that a predator had just chosen for its next meal. The man was not large, but tall and slender. He wore a richly decorated robe and Zoro�s first guess upon beholding him was that he was a Baron or a Duke of some sort. He had a very regal stance with long dark hair, sallow skin and a slightly pointed nose, but those gold eyes stood out from the rest of him like a hawk�s gaze.

The man made no move to leave his position at the gate, but Zoro felt his eyes on him and it made him tense. Nervous to a point where Kuina started to ask if he was really alright after all, and Zoro had to try harder to act normally.

That was about the time that another man -a redhead who had been watching Zoro�s predicament with great humor- evidently decided to come to his rescue. Zoro was watching the Frisbee and couldn�t get more than a glimpse at what was happening at the bottom of the Hill, but he could hear the other man�s voice as he jovially approached the unapproachable hawk-eyed man and try to socialize with him.

The hawk-eyed man looked a little unsure of what to do with this happy man that was hanging around him and ignoring his glares, but eventually the second man made him relax a bit and Zoro felt the intense eyes leave him.

There are loonies everywhere, Zoro thought about the red-haired man, and he appreciated it very much.

Eventually the sky began to change color. It became darker as afternoon settled. Clouds rolled in. The air smelled thicker. A storm was brewing off the coast twenty miles away. It was going to be a big one, and it was only a matter of time before it arrived.

As they went inside, Zoro hoped that maybe when he came outside later, he would get to talk to that man. He was the type of person that Zoro was inexplicably drawn to.

Unfortunately, finding the man again might prove hard to do, because the only things Zoro knew about him was that his hair was red (well, as red as any Dweller�s could be), and that he would remember his voice.

-------------------------

Sanji hung up the phone. His father had given him this huge list of chores to do, the primary of which was to figure out how to get a phone up on the Hill, or at the very least start discussing with the City Hall the possibility of having a signal tower erected in order to receive cell phone service. If they weren�t willing to open up to the idea naturally (for surely if they were there would be a tower already erected) the word �donation� usually gained a voice where regular speech failed. After all, money didn�t talk; it screamed.

Sanji had given his current assessment of Homecoming Hill as accurately as possible regarding the physical status of the land and manor. The walls stood upright, floors were firm, moving appendages such as doors and drawers moved smoothly and soundlessly, time had preserved Everlasting Manor itself, and most of the furniture they had found was in amazing shape. The wiring needed quite a bit of work, but the plumbing was outstanding and the East Wing and center boilers had both worked when they had been turned on. On the outside, the backyard was vivid and full of life, the soil was tillable, and the front yard was an empty canvas on which they could paint any landscape with any colors they so desired. He and Zoro had recovered wine and liquor recipes in an office desk in the East Wing the day before, which boded well for the reestablishment of the Hill�s former glory.

Zeff was audibly pleased with the condition as he heard it, and expressed his pride in all three of them for pulling together so well on a chance like this. Sanji had been pleased to hear the praise, for his personality was one that always desired to please, but it was a guilty pleasure this time.

Sanji had mentioned nothing of the graveyard in the garden. He had mentioned nothing of the ominous and even foreboding feeling he received when he entered certain rooms coupled with the bizarre temperature changes. The creepy feeling that he was being watched, that he wasn�t alone. The feeling he had yet to share with even Zoro, whom he was sure would believe and understand him.

Zoro was a very accepting and even gullible person. His father was a direct descendant of some Native American bloodline, and he had been raised hearing bedtime stories told in the oral tradition and with the celebration of a couple holidays that Sanji couldn�t understand. Sanji�s mother had run away after he was born. He had never known her, and since he had been born of a surrogate mother --for his own had been unable to carry a child to term-- he didn�t even have the womb in common with her. Zeff was German, and very proud of it. He didn�t swing with the beliefs and imaginings of Zoro�s father - though they had been close friends - and Sanji had grown up missing the upbringing that Zoro had received. The open-mindedness toward all things supernatural that Zoro had inside was not something that Sanji had been taught to keep. Sanji was a practical person; a realistic person.

As a result Sanji was never willing to consider a possibility of something so phenomenal that it could not be explained by science without him having witnessed enough such evidence, himself. Because Sanji was very good at explaining things away, he had never had a problem before, but this place was throwing him a curveball. Zoro�s behaviour was easily enough dismissed, as were the sudden temperature fluxes, but Sydian�s behaviour? It had gone beyond the excitability of new smells. And the eggs coupled with the scent in the kitchen? He highly doubted that anyone had broken in to cook eggs.

While Sanji could explain the physical condition of Homecoming Hill, the metaphysical condition and its psychological effect was beyond his capabilities to render into words, and it made him distinctly uncomfortable. There was activity occurring in that house that was incompatible with the traditional alpha beta chi delta epsilon way of thinking; that constant line upon which everything had an order and fit into it perfectly. The letters were all there, but they were scrambled to form a mesh that didn�t flow, instead arranging and rearranging themselves continuously like waves crashing on rocks wherein creatures scrambled to hide until the tide went out and the letters flowed properly again. Sanji felt like one such creature around whom the tide was starting to rise.

Man, when they opened this place it would be a huge success! The tourists were going to love it!

Exiting the little-used bus station, Sanji looked at the sky. Those clouds hadn�t been there before. It was as if they had come from nowhere. He saw a pair of young women rushing to get indoors, and turned on the charm.

�Excuse me, fine ladies, but do you know anything of a storm front coming in?�

The older of the two, a blonde of about sixteen with freckles and her hair in braids, offered a slightly surprised look. �You haven�t heard?�

Sisters, Sanji decided, and younger looking up close. He shook his head, slightly disappointed. �Afraid not.�

�The clouds are supposed to stay in all week. There will be heavy rainfall on and off, but it doesn�t take much to flood this area. I haven�t seen you around before. Are you staying at Charlie�s?�

�Oh, no. I just moved into the Manor up on top of the hill over there,� he pointed, �and I don�t really know anything about the area yet. I�ve only been here a few days.�

The girls looked afraid of him all of a sudden. Sanji wondered what he had said.

�Homecoming Hill?� the one that looked to be about fourteen asked as they both backed up slowly.

Sanji almost sighed. Not this again. What was with these people? It wasn�t like he was carrying a disease. �Yeah,� he answered. �Do you know how the hills here hold up in rainfall?�

The older one grabbed her sister�s hand. �Um� th-there can be mudslides, but not usually. Um� it was nice talking to you, but we have to go now. You know� because the rain�s coming.� That said, she turned and ran up the street, the smaller girl in tow.

Sanji watched them dart off and frowned. Won�t this be a fun place to live?

He turned and headed back to the car, happy he had elected to drive the four miles to the bus station instead of walk as a chill set in.

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Homecoming Hill