Gecko Moria x OC "Rest Of My Life"
Chapter 9 "Somebody To You"
“Captain!” Collin sprang to his feet when she entered the room. “Where have you been?” She smiled at her first mate “I just had the best sleep of my life”, she laughed a little. “I really needed that. Anyway, did you eat already?” Collin nodded. “We’ve had some breakfast the zombies brought us.” Maya raised her brows and lowered her voice. “Did everyone eat, or did Egami make a fuss again and prepared something himself.” “Egami was awfully quiet today, so everyone took some of the food we got offered”, Collin whispered back. She looked over to her three problematic members, still sitting away from the others. “Follow me, please. I want you with me when we have that discussion.” Her first mate nodded.
They went over to Abe, Yachi and Egami sitting in their corner. “I wanted to talk to you, may I?” she gestured towards a box right next to them. “Sure, captain” Yachi mumbled. She took a seat and offered Collin to sit right next to her. “How are your wounds doing, Abe?”, she asked to relieve the tension first. “I’m doing alright. It’s just a scratch.” - “Good, but if you need any painkillers or want fresh bandages you can just send for Dr. Hogback.” - “Sure”, he grumbled.
“Okay, now the difficult part. I know that you’re unhappy with the overall situation. It sucks that we’ve lost our ship and our supplies and it sucks that we are stuck here on this vessel, but please do me a favor.” She took a deep breath. “Please, keep quiet about your disdain for this situation. I was notified that there were some remarks or statements, or rather… insults that should have never been said out loud within these walls. The master of this house is not pleased with how you handle this situation. I managed to talk him down from throwing you into the dungeons or worse. I wasn’t told what exactly was said, but I’m sure you know what you said. I just wanted to give you a heads up. I can’t protect you, at all, if you don’t work with me here, at least a little bit.” Maya saw their eyes widen and them stealing guilty glances at each other. “I know how you think about me. I’m not stupid, nor am I blind. I can accept that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but please don’t ever openly disrespect me, again. Especially regarding my judgment of the situation here on the Thriller Bark. I have to report back to Fleet Admiral Sengoku at the end of our little trip here and I would like for you all to get a fair chance. It’s your choice how that report will look like.” The three men stayed silent for a moment, then Yachi whispered “So the wall really had eyes!” Maya looked at him “Yes.” Then she got up “I’m going to get me some food. I’ll be seeing you later. Oh, before I leave. You do realize that there are more than enough rooms upstairs? You don’t have to sleep on the cold, hard floor. If you’re still not comfortable staying in a room by yourself you could even share.”
When Maya left the room she met Himera in the hallway. “Captain! Do you want to hear about my nightly adventures and if IT worked?”, the woman wiggled her eyebrows at her captain. “NOPE!” Maya speed walked past her sniper specialist.
It didn’t take Maya long to find a zombie to request some food. She smiled at him sweetly and he was instantly smitten and swore he’d bring her the best he could find. In the meantime she looked around and found a balcony. It was raining outside, but she didn’t mind getting a little wet. The green haired woman stepped out into the open and looked down at the island. She wondered how the warlord had pulled that off. She could see the forest, the graveyard and some type of garden from up here. Maybe she would get to explore the area in the three weeks she was here. “See anything you like?” Moria’s voice from behind her pulled her out of her thoughts. When she turned around to face him the smile was already present on her face. “Yes, I like the view. We’re so high off the ground, imagine if there was no fog. We could see so far into the distance!” A childlike joy was swinging in her voice. “How did you pull that off? Turning a whole island into a ship?” - “Like I’d tell you” the tall man replied. “Yea, fair enough”, she sighed. “You think this view is good? You could also climb up the stairs to the tower and have an even better view. “ - “Oh really? I should do that some time. I figure I’ll have enough time on hand, considering we’ll be staying here for three weeks. Have you eaten yet?” Moria shook his head “Great! Then we can eat together.” Maya came back inside, her neon green hair was now sticking to her forehead and face from the rain.
It was almost the exact same set-up the zombies brought in. The same table and chair for her to sit in, the same barrel with beer and food carts. Only the contents were different and this time they brought less, which was perfectly fine since Maya still couldn’t nearly eat everything that was offered to her. “Beer again?” she giggled “I can’t start drinking at noon!” The zombies gladly brought out some water for her. “May I ask where you get your food from? Do you buy it or do you have some livestock on the island?” - “I get my supplies from you guys. But I like that idea. I could have my zombies raise livestock behind the mansion.” Maya couldn’t tell what it was, but somehow she enjoyed their little talks. “Do you happen to have any books on your ship? - “Sure” Moria shrugged “a whole library.” Maya’s eyes went big “May I see?”
After they’ve both finished eating Moria took her to the library although he would have rather gone back to his bedroom to rest some more. “Wow!” The library had a ceiling even higher than Moria was tall and every shelf was stuffed with countless books. Some of them were too big for her to pick up, those were clearly for the warlord himself, but most of them were standard size. “May I?” “Sure, go wild, I don’t care.” He shrugged and sat down leaning at the wall next to the door with his arms behind his head. Maya could probably spend the rest of her life in this room and would not have enough time to read every book. She walked around amazed by all the antiquarian books she spotted. When she looked back at the tall warlord she noticed that his eyes were closed. A purple book with golden borders spiked her interest. At closer inspection she noticed it was an older book that talked about the various devil fruit types. She took it out of the shelf and sat down on the floor with crossed legs and started reading.
She was so drawn into her book that she initially didn’t notice the small figure sneaking past Gecko Moria into the room. “What cha readin?” Maya jumped when suddenly her sniper expert stood next to her. “My goodness, Himera, don’t scare me like that. What are you doing here?” - “I was just adventuring through the castle and then I saw you in here. I thought I’d say Hi real quick. You think there are some smutty books in here as well?” Himera wondered curiously. “I doubt it” Maya stated dryly. She then got up and noticed that the warlord’s eyes had opened again and were watching them. Himera followed her gaze and suddenly a smirk spread across her face.
“Warlord Gecko Moria! I almost didn’t see you over there!” The woman made her way up to him. Then she looked him up and down and Moria raised a brow at her. Maya had seen that look on Himera’s face before and she knew it would be bad. “You look like you’re sporting a fat cock.” - “HIMERA! NO!” Maya ran over. “What? I always wanted to try out a warlord. Although I have to admit that the height difference could be difficult to overcome… but I’m willing to try anything”, she wiggled her eyebrows at the tall warlord, who only stared at her disconcerted. “NO! Stop it!” Maya stood between Himera and Moria now. “Himera, no. This is grounds for a formal, written warning and disciplinary actions against you! You don’t really want that!” - “Depends on how good he is”, the sniper smirked, “Tell me, warlord, are you worth it?” Maya threw her hands up in the air with a frantic look on her face. Suddenly Moria erupted into high pitched laughter. Maya just hoped the ground would swallow her whole because this was more than just embarrassing, this was getting dangerous. “Please. It’s serious, I will write you up for this if you don’t back down now” Maya said quietly to her sniper specialist. Himera looked at her, then back to the tall warlord and back to her captain. “Ohhh! Captain! You should have told me!” - “Should have told you what?” The moment those words left Maya’s lips she knew she shouldn’t have asked. “That you have already laid your eyes on the warlord. I’m a girls girl, I won’t touch another woman's man. Too bad for me, guess I’ll have to find someone else. Our little meet-up was nice, nevertheless. See you around!” Himera left the room quickly, leaving behind her captain, who was speechless and could only stare after her with wide eyes and a scream-laughing warlord who had tears already forming at the corners of his eyes. Maya felt her face getting hotter and hotter by the second, Moria behind her still almost choking from laughter wasn’t making it any better. “I’m so sorry” she breathed out weakly. At least one of them was having fun, she thought. “You got really red all of a sudden, are you embarrassed?” he mocked her, still giggling like an idiot. “Wha-well of course I am! Who-who wouldn’t feel second hand embarrassment from this?!”, she stammered outraged. “I… I need to go. I feel the sudden urge to throw myself off the nice balcony” she stated, resulting in Moria laughing harder again. “At least you’re getting some entertainment out of this”, the green haired woman sighed. His laugh followed her out of the room and into the hallway and it took an embarrassing long walk for her to not be able to hear it anymore. Only as she reached the storage room where her crew was hunkered down she noticed the weight in her hand. She had accidentally kidnapped the book from the library. Oh well, she wasn’t going to get back there to put it back now.
“C-captain? Whhhatss ha-happened? You-u d-don’t look ssssoo good” a drunk Wynn slurred at her, resulting in her whole crew looking at her. Maya’s face got redder again “Nothing, I’m just feeling very hot right now. I’ll need some of this.” She went over to Wynn and took the mug full of beer out of his hand and downed it in one go, earning her an approving look from her musician. “I l-l-like m-me ssssome girl who c-can d-dri…” he didn’t get to finish that sentence since he suddenly keeled over and stayed down.
Maya decided she would try to read more of the book, even though she didn’t know if she could concentrate at all, anymore.
Over the next few hours she read a few pages and then Norris awoke and she sat with him until he drifted back to sleep. She talked with Adrian and Nogi and at some point Takafuyu made an appearance and she remembered she hadn’t seen him for quite a while. Apparently he liked his new room and the bed so much that he didn’t want to spend any time sitting around the cold storage room anymore. Maya couldn’t blame him. Then a small zombie came by and asked if anyone wanted dinner. When the zombies came back with the food, one of them tapped Maya on the shoulder. “Miss Marine Captain? Master Moria would like to see you.”
Maya was torn between being happy to have a reason to leave the storage unit and seeing him again and dreading the latter since she didn’t know how she would be able to look him in the face ever again. Obviously she followed his request.
The hall was already set for her, including the food, but the first words out of his mouth were mocking her again “Did you get enough time to recover?” - “Has anyone ever told you that you're having way too much fun mocking me?” He grinned at her. “Seriously, she was out of line and her words were highly inappropriate!” Maya started getting agitated again. “There was no harm done, you should let her have fun”, the tall warlord countered. “Don’t tell me you would have-, NO wait! I don’t want to know. So you’re telling me you would let Absalom… do the deed with whomever he wanted?” - “Sure, I see no reason why he shouldn’t”, Moria shrugged. “I admire your indifference,” Maya replied blankly. Once again the warlord didn’t hold back on the food that was served to her. The woman felt like a royal but she would have refused the food if she didn’t know her crew was getting the same treatment.
“How are you keeping yourself entertained on the ship?” Maya blew on her hot soup to make it cool down faster. “Sleeping.” - “That’s it?” Maya looked a bit disappointed. “What else would I do?” - I don’t know? Maybe read a book? You’re having a whole-ass library and I doubt you’ve read everything. Or play zombie chess with Absalom? I don’t know, get creative.” - “Zombie chess?” Moria looked at her quizzically. “I just imagined that as an example. I don’t think there’s an official zombie chess, you get the gist.” Maya deflected.
Moria grinned at her “That doesn’t sound too bad, I’ll let my minions arrange something.” The Marine instantly felt bad for the poor zombies she had just doomed to be chess pieces.
Why was it that every time she ate something here, she couldn’t really stop herself? Maya felt completely stuffed again. “Want to go for a walk?”, she asked the warlord. “Do I look like I’d like to go for a walk right now?” he spat back. “Yes, yes you do”, she countered and hopped to her feet, beaming at him. For a short moment Moria wondered when she had gotten so comfortable with him. With an exasperated sigh he got up and followed her out of the room. Their quick stroll through the mansion was very short, though. They hadn’t even gotten near the exit when they heard some groaning coming from a hallway adjacent to the one they were currently in. Maya looked up at the warlord with a concerned look on her face.
They rounded the corner and when Maya saw where the sounds were coming from she almost screamed. “Captain! Surprised to see you here!”, her half naked, sweaty sniper greeted her. Himera was currently riding a flustered Absalom who tried his hardest to cover them up somehow, completely forgetting his very own devil fruit powers, but Himera had no shame. “And the big guy’s with you, wanna watch the show?”, she winked at Moria. Maya put her hand up to her mouth, suddenly feeling nauseous. Moria started to laugh. “Could you at least stop moving?” Maya yelled. “Don’t be such a killjoy”, Himera purred. Maya turned around and left the way they came, mumbling. “I don’t know her. Who is that even? No one I know for sure. I’m not going to put myself through the hassle of filling out paperwork for this, nu-uh!” Moria roared with laughter, but followed shortly behind her. “Look at me, I’m a changed person. I let her be.” Maya said a little louder, without looking back. “Yes, very proud of you” Moria sneered, his words dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve had enough for today. I’m going to rinse my eyes out with vinegar and then I’ll try to sleep. Goodnight!... Goodness, I hope I don’t get nightmares from this…” She waved at him and then went down the hallway towards the storage units, where she would roll up on a crate and spend the night with her crew.
Moria was exhausted when he entered his bedroom. He was used to way more sleep. The warlord knew that the following weeks would be hell, since he probably wouldn’t be able to sleep in as much. His eyes grazed the orange pillow, still lying far from his pile. While he was happy that he finally had his bedroom back to himself, he couldn’t bring himself to get the little orange square back over to his bed… yet…
