Here's first of the two fics I wrote for the amazing @zorofanzine!! Leftover sales open on May 10th so check it out! You don't want to miss out on all the top-notch Zoro content <3
The street killer and ronin named Zorojuro has disappeared! After he was apprehended and sentenced to seppuku, he has murdered the Flower Capital’s Magistrate and with him, every single policeman at the station at the time!
A most dangerous criminal! More dangerous than Kamazo the Manslayer! More wicked than Ushimitsu Kozo! And he has disappeared without a trace!
Everyone! Please be wary walking the streets—if you see him, do not engage and alert the authorities!
Watch out for a man with only one eye and three katanas at his waist! He is responsible for the deaths of more than thirty people!
You heard it here first, folks!
Read all about Zorojuro’s crimes right here! Right on this broadsheet, read in detail about the destruction he had caused! The list of victims! His description!
Esteemed people of the Capital!
Come and get your own; you can’t miss this news! So hear! Zorojuro the Magistrate Killer has disappeared! Refer to the wanted signs—aaaaand! This flyer! You can grab yours right here!
In the streets of the Flower Capital, a crowd has gathered. Listening eagerly to the news announcement, asking for the flyers and broadsheets and wanted posters. Talking all over each other, hoping for the newsboy to notice them and hand them the papers with information carefully written on them.
And among these people, stood a lonesome travelling monk with a tengai covering his head. A komuso was a rare sight in the capital but not rare enough to garner any attention—and that seemed to be exactly what the monk clad in a black and white yukata and brown haori with a flower pattern wanted. He stood amidst the crowd silently, a black nodachi with a white cross pattern resting against his shoulder, listening. His tattooed hand shook slightly as he clutched at the flyer with Zorojuro’s likeness on it.
His head turned slightly when the newsboy started shouting again.
Aaaand! Another big news! Big news!
A ghost of a samurai has been appearing all across the Land of Wano! Flower Capital, Ringo, Kibi, Kuri, Udon, and Hakumai—all regions of the country report sightings of this mysterious spectre!
Is he a samurai who was murdered in a war hundreds of years ago? Or a victim of the vile Zorojuro? Is he in cahoots with the gashadokuro who’s been reported to haunt a remote graveyard in the snowy Ringo?
Only one thing is for sure; no one is safe!
We have asked the citizens who’ve met him and they all say the same thing: he is intimidating with a scary face, has green hair, and a scar across one of his eyes. He seems solid, like a real, living human… Except! This samurai’s ghost appears out of nowhere without warning and disappears the exact same way! There one moment, gone the next—only to appear at the other side of the country later the very same day!
We have also approached a few inhabitants of the Flower Capital for opinions and one of their answers stood out among the rest! This man, a toad oil vendor by the name of Usohachi, did not seem scared of the monster in the least! Instead, he had offered us a wild theory: maybe, the ghost is simply hopelessly lost! Wandering out of his grave in search of sake and losing his way so quickly and thoroughly that he is now doomed to wander the regions of our beautiful country with no means to return!
A daring theory that makes you almost pity this wile ghost!
Where lies the truth? And where will this samurai appear next?!
Find the list of all his appearances right here! We have it all, including all the statements we’ve taken!
You don’t want to miss a word of it! So come and take your broadsheet and read all about it!
Now, who wants one?! We have enough to go around!
The monk took a step forward, wordlessly taking one of the flyers before he slowly walked away from the crowds. He followed the main road for a while but then he stepped to the side, disappearing in the shadows of one of the countless narrow, dark alleys.
It was only a long while later, after taking several turns and finding himself in the most secluded place in the entire Flower Capital, that the monk finally stopped—and took off his tengai, revealing the face of a man who had no place in the isolated Land of Wano. A pirate from overseas, a member of the Worst Generation who was dreaded across the entire world.
And this very same man glared at the two flyers in his hands—at Zorojuro the Magistrate Killer and the ghost of the green-haired samurai—and his face twisted in anger. A vein pulsing on his forehead, Trafalgar Law gently leaned his nodachi against the wall next to him before he took a deep breath and gingerly, carefully placed the papers on top of each other, aligning them perfectly—
And ripped them both in half in one smooth movement.
He repeated the process again and again and again until the flyers were barely more than specks of dust.
“I’m going to kill this fucking idiot.”