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They finally reach Alabasta, but due to an intercepted communication between Sanji (pretending to be Mr. 3) and Crocodile, the Marines are already there, and due to Luffy being Luffy, they spend a lot of time in Alabasta running from said Marines, before they’re assisted by Fire Fist Ace of the Whitebeard Pirates, who turns out to be Luffy’s brother. After stocking up on supplies in the port town Nanohana, though, they head out for the oasis of Yuba, where the rebel army is supposed to be stationed. They briefly meet a weird ballerina with clone powers, who they find out is actually Mr. 2, and Zoro comes up with a surprisingly brilliant plan for the Straw Hats to be able to identify themselves to each other if the need arises.

Various desert shenanigans and poignant conversations happen, before they discover that the rebel army has actually moved to Katorea, back near where they began in Nanohana, whoops. But Luffy does his Luffy thing and convinces them to go after Crocodile instead of wasting more time, and after getting chased by the Marines (again) they manage to storm Crocodile’s casino in Rainbase. However, Crocodile was prepared with a trap for them, and they all landed in a seastone cage, including Captain Smoker, a Marine who’s been chasing them since Loguetown. Villain speeches ensue, etc, Crocodile kidnaps Vivi and gives her a Sophie’s choice about whether to save her friends vs. save her country because he’s an asshole, but Sanji and Chopper (who’d been previously separated from the rest) manage to break them free. Luffy orders Zoro to save Smoker when the casino floods in the process, as Devil Fruit users cannot swim, and when Smoker learns of this fact, he decides to let the Straw Hats go for now rather than resume chasing them.

Having escaped from the casino, the crew heads for Alubarna Palace, where the rebel and royal armies will clash, and when intercepted by Crocodile, Luffy stays behind to fight while the others escape. The remaining Straw Hats create a diversion to distract the Baroque Works members ordered to eliminate them upon arrival, and Zoro is matched against Mr. 1, a “blade man” made of steel--something Zoro cannot yet cut. At the end of a fierce battle, during which Zoro is pushed to nearly the brink of death from his injuries, he suddenly becomes aware of “the rhythm of all things” and gains the ability to more precisely manage his swordsmanship (e.g. slashes through a fern without cutting it), which allows him to finally cut steel and defeat Mr. 1, after which he collapses to the ground from blood loss.

PERSONALITY: Our first introduction to Roronoa Zoro (through Coby, an unwilling pirate chore boy with dreams of becoming a Marine) is as the notorious pirate hunter--a cold-blooded, ruthless murderer. A demon in human form.

And then immediately after, that image of him is shattered as a little girl sneaks into the enclosure where Zoro is being held captive by the Navy to bring him food, and we learn that the entire reason for Zoro’s imprisonment is because she angered a Navy captain’s son, and he is taking the punishment in her and her mother’s place.

The real Zoro is both like and entirely unlike the rumors about him circulating all around the East Blue. He is incredibly skilled and powerful, and woe betide those who might threaten his life. What the rumors don’t talk about, though, is how he’s hopelessly lacking in any sense of direction, how he considers food, alcohol, and sleep a viable substitute for medical care, how he’s competitive enough that he’ll agree to play tag, something he considers childish, at the mere suggestion that he’s afraid of losing.

A far cry from the inhuman monster that many in the East Blue imagine him to be, Roronoa Zoro is just a swordsman with a simple dream: to become the best in the entire world, for his name to become so famous that it reaches the heavens themselves, in fulfillment of a promise he made to his late childhood friend Kuina. We learn that the entire reason Zoro became a bounty hunter in the first place was as a means of survival, to support himself after he got lost at sea trying to find and challenge Dracule Mihawk to fulfill his and Kuina’s dream, and couldn’t find his way back home, rather than any particular greed or desire to commit violence with impunity. He might be aggressive, ill-tempered, and quick to threaten violence (or murder) when angered, but he’s actually not as bloodthirsty as he’s made out to be, even fighting with the blunt side of his blade against weaker enemies and innocents, so as to avoid seriously injuring them.

Beyond that, Zoro, like the rest of the Straw Hats, seems to operate on his own personal code of honor. He prefers not to attack people from behind, considering scars on the back a swordsman’s greatest shame, and he doesn’t use his skills to plunder or ravage towns, nor to force people to give him things or do his bidding, like many of the other pirate crews in the series.

He also holds an incredible loyalty toward his crew and particularly his captain, Luffy. Early in the show, he’s seen lifting a steel cage Luffy was trapped in so as to escape from the Buggy Pirates together, despite the effort of it widening his stab wound further and further, and later gets slashed in the chest by the Meowban brothers after taking Usopp’s “Lead Star” attack so the brothers wouldn’t slaughter Usopp and Nami in retaliation for getting hit. He defers to Luffy’s authority on most matters, and obeys his orders without question, ready to storm the Fishman stronghold to retrieve Nami even while suffering a fever from the severe wounds he sustained in his earlier fight with Mihawk.

Reckless to the point of absurdity, Zoro seems to show absolutely no fear of death, and functions almost entirely by the sheer force of his willpower and ambition, powering through injuries others say would leave an average person bedridden for months and making insane gambles like throwing himself in the pool of Arlong Park while tied up on the assumption that Nami wouldn’t let him drown or tossing the Kitetsu III sword into the air and sticking his arm out on its way down to see if his luck was stronger than the sword’s supposed curse.

It’s this sense of ambition that seems to drive the bulk of his actions, initially joining Luffy’s crew when he’d originally refused in order to avoid death and see his promise to Kuina through and spending much of his time aboard the Going Merry training or sleeping rather than socializing with his crewmates. However, even as he’d once claimed that as a pirate for Luffy, he’d still only strive to fulfill his own ambition, his loyalty to the crew is shown to supercede that time and time again, and in a much later arc, he’s even willing to throw it away and trade his own life for Luffy’s, saying that his ambition means nothing if he can’t protect his own captain.

POWER:

Zoro has no canon powers at his current point. His exceptional strength and stamina is essentially considered peak human condition in-universe and becoming aware of the “rhythm of all things” is implied to be simply a level of skill as a swordsman (analogous to an attainment of sort of zen-like enlightenment) rather than anything supernatural, the result of many years of intense physical training and practice.

In MoM, he will have the following powers:

Sword Affinity

Zoro will be able to summon his prized sword, the Wado Ichimonji at will. For instance, if it’s knocked out of his hand in a fight, he can bring it back to him by focusing on it. If it is damaged or lost (i.e. out of his range of immediate vision), he can summon it instead by calling its name. Even if the sword is shattered, the pieces will return themselves to him.

He can also bring other bladed weapons to him by concentrating on them, but only within his line of sight, and once they are broken, he loses power over them. He also cannot summon other people’s weapons out of their grasp or do anything beyond bring the weapons within his reach; for instance, he can’t send multiple swords in multiple directions telekinetically or anything more complex than effectively being a magnet that only attracts bladed weapons.

Targeted Danger Sense

The ability to know when Monkey D. Luffy is in trouble of some kind. Zoro will feel a certain sense of unease when his captain has found himself entangled in something or other unfortunate, with the magnitude of the discomfort approximately proportional to the amount of danger Luffy is in. Being chased by an angry shopkeeper for eating all their wares? Barely a prickle. Meanwhile, any risk of say, Luffy submerging in water and drowning due to his Devil Fruit user status would be experienced as like a sharp, intense pain.

As a side effect of this power, Zoro will be able to instinctively make his way to Luffy no matter where he is when it activates, regardless of his terrible sense of direction.

<big>〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉</big>
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[The feed begins with the sight of...part of a face? There’s clearly some kind of green hair, tan skin, an eye, and...blood?]

--Like this?

[Yeah, uh, definitely blood. In fact, as whoever the owner of the voice was speaking to adjusts the camera angle for him, there’s...quite a lot more of it that becomes visible. His entire shirt front is soaked in it, but the poor waiter/bartender next to him seems a lot more distraught by this than he is. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that more was still clearly dripping through the tears in it, one could almost be forgiven for not immediately assuming the blood was his.]

So I just--talk into it and people hear me? [A tiny, wordless nod comes from the other man.]

Huh. Kinda like a Den Den Mushi, but with a picture….guess I will hang onto it then. Thanks for the info.

[And while he’s at it...he takes a moment to address the weird mirror box before he heads on out, since he’s got nothing else to trade for food (or drink).]

Oi! I’m missing a couple things:

[Things, people, the entire kingdom he was just in. Same diff.]

A rubber idiot wearing a straw hat, a shitty cook with a curly eyebrow, a long-nosed sniper--[He counts off on his fingers, as if reciting a list of groceries, rather than, you know, his crew, but much as he might be acting tough, there’s a definite undercurrent of concern there]

A reindeer-person, a blue-haired girl and her pet duck, comes up about this high [he raises a hand to about waist height], and a red-haired girl, our navigator. If you’ve acquired any sudden debts lately, it’s probably her.

If someone’s seen them or can tell me how to get back to Alabasta Kingdom from here, I’ll owe you one.

[He huffs, then, rests one hand on the hilt of one of his swords.]

--And if any of you morons is actually listening to this, you better tell me you’re alive, or I’ll kick your ass when I find you!

[That draws a small yelp from the bartender, and Zoro turns back to him, suddenly reminded of his presence]

Oi, how do I stop talking at the weird box…?

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

<a href="http://etcelsior.dreamwidth.org/41209.html?thread=29367289#cmt29367289">test</a> <a href="http://etcelsior.dreamwidth.org/42534.html?thread=29585958#cmt29585958">drives</a>
FINAL NOTES: Zoro will arrive with all three of his swords, including the Yubashiri and Kitetsu III.

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