DATE: MARCH 25th, 2019 (25/5/19)

SPLASH!

That was what echoed as Brook's body landed in this water, which just...appeared out of nowhere.

He could have sworn that he had fallen asleep just a few minutes ago, peacefully drifting away in a warm bed after practicing the violin for the day. Then, out of nowhere, this skeleton with a giant afro comes by in a pitch-black void, talking to him as if he knows who he was. Something about "Doing it again," and "Find the Sunny!". It even had the same name as his! And yet, he had never seen the thing in his life!

Then again, he had never seen a live skeleton move and talk before, but that wasn't the point!

Now, he was just swimming in yet another pitch-black void, water surrounding him. He couldn't see anything beyond the water, nor himself; this hollow ocean seemed to go on endlessly. He was keeping himself afloat now, but he knew that, if he didn't find land or at least something floating soon, his strength would eventually give in, and he would soon sink into the bottom of this lifeless realm. And he still doesn't know how this all happened!

Did he mention he was barely a decent swimmer, too?

'How is this even happening…?' The young boy thought to himself. 'Better yet...why? I always listened to my family, practiced my music precisely and on time, helped anyone in need…' He just couldn't put his finger on it...he had lived a rather peaceful and kind youth, so he couldn't believe this was out of some sort of revenge. 'Then...why am I here?'

After about an hour of just cruising forward, looking for a slither of hope, he just...stopped. I mean, think about it; you fall asleep after a progressive, healthy day, you end up in a colourless realm filled half-full, and you have no clue as to how you can find a way back out.

Was this punishment for being born? Was this a prank from a magician? Was this purgatory? Considering how his stamina wore out ten minutes ago and was still overclocking from constant swimming and even more thinking, he couldn't be bothered to come up with an answer.

His body needed sleep. 'Ironic.' he thought. He slowly began to sink beneath the water, though he could barely tell. His skin started to wrinkle, his body slipping on the ice called consciousness, feeling...cold. Grasped by the hand of fate, a cold feeling enveloped him. No hope. No warmth. No...anything.

"..ook….et u…."

His ears pricked up a bit. Or at least what little of him was awake. He heard something. Something calling his name. It was small, quiet, but it was there.

Or was it?

Was it just him being tempted, hoping something could help him from this pathetic state he was in? Was it really just a farce?

"..ome o...roo..!...et u…"

He couldn't tell anymore. And odds are, he wouldn't be able to swim up in time. Hell, he couldn't even see anything.

"Brook! Come on, already!"

Brook shook a bit. Why was it so much clearer now? It sounded like a child almost...Like a young girl calling for help. But where would it be coming from? He was probably 20,000 leagues under by now.

"Come on, Brook! Don't die on me now! Not now…"

It sounded desperate. Did the voice know him? Did he know it? It didn't sound familiar. Most girls his age ran away from him. Then again, he did sometimes get too close for comfort (not that he'd ever admit that was his fault). But this? He honestly didn't know what to make of it?

No harm in checking, right?

With what little strength his small body had, he tried pulling himself up to the surface. Pulling on an invisible rope, climbing the middle of the wall to the clouds above, seeking the air like, believe it or not, he depended on it.

His eyes began to flutter, his throat croaking, his ears ringing. And not from the voice either. He was almost out of energy. Almost dead in his own sleep. And yet somehow, he couldn't bring himself to wake up.

Was this whole thing a nightmare tugging at his strings? Was the puppeteer messing with his emotions for their personal enjoyment? So many questions, not a single answered yet…

"Keep going, Brook! You're almost there!"

And then there was that voice. Despite the void surrounding him, that was the biggest mystery. Who the bloody hell was it?! He had no clue as to who it could be. Was this the puppeteer encouraging the struggle to go on? Or was it someone trying to help him out of it? By his very afro, he was done with questions. He just wanted out!

Which is why he was surprised he could breathe in again.

He sucked in all the air he could. He took it all in to the point where it almost hurt his lungs. If he were down there a second longer, he may very well have been done for, left to sink to the bottom. Or was there even a bottom?

After gaining enough air to think again, he shook the water out of his soaked afro and looked for land. He did move somewhere, right? 'I'll worry about the clothes later.' he concluded. Priorities.

He looked left, nothing. Just black and some ripples. He looked right. Nothing. Exactly the same as before. Just a seamless horizon stitched unto itself. He looked behind and saw a giant brig sloop with a lion afront it.

"HUH?!"

This caught him extremely off guard. Why was there a giant ship here now? Where was it before? He couldn't have been drowning for that long, right? Wait. What about the girl's voice from earlier? Was it on this ship? If so, then how could he hear it so clearly? The ship looked like the deck was stories high, and he was pretty far submerged.

It was a good thing someone threw a ladder down port side because he needed answers. He started to swim over to it, albeit with difficulty due to how worn out his body was, and reached the rope ladder, staring him head-on. As he grasped it, he was going to climb it, but it started pulling itself. No, wait. That's not possible. Someone must be up there pulling him up from the top.

'Wait a minute,' Brook thought to himself. 'Is somebody else in my dream?' This left him uneasy. Is this person luring him into a trap, just to shank him in the back? Or did they truly mean to help him, and he was just overthinking things? Yeah, that was probably it. He was fine. Hell, he was just appreciative that they even came in the first place. Nobody would want to be a soggy corpse at the bottom of the ocean, right?

As he was about a metre or two away from the top when the pulling stopped. This shocked him for a bit, leaving him confused. Why not just pull him up to the railing? For now, he simply cast it aside and kept climbing. It was a miracle his glasses hadn't fallen off yet. Considering he took them off before he slept, that was a bit off…

After he climbed the rest of the way, he turned around to pull up the rest of the ladder (no point in leaving it dangling overboard) and turned around to thank whoever helped him.

Except nobody was there.

The ship itself looked gorgeous; a whole lawn, wide open spaces, two strong-looking masts, a MASSIVE Crow's Nest, as well as the rest of the ship in the back behind those doors and the veranda. But it wasn't the details that caught his attention. It was how nobody was there when he got up. He knew someone had to be up here; that ladder didn't just hoist itself onto the deck. Maybe they were pulling a prank on him to make him think there were ghosts, like that extremely tall skeleton from before. Or maybe they were just shy?

He couldn't be bothered to look, though. He was dreadfully exhausted from the whole ordeal. Sleeping, only to talk with a huge skeleton, fall into a sea of literally nothing, almost drown in his own sleep he can't escape, and end up on a giant ship with, supposedly, nobody on it. He strolled over to the grass below the mast, which strangely had a jolly roger on it. Again, he would panic, but he can't be bothered right now. He just needed sleep within his sleep.

"What is even going on…?" Brook said to himself before falling asleep once and for all.

"Hello?" A young boy called out. He had been wandering around for about two minutes now in this pitch-black place, with no signs of anything. All there was here was his single bed, and himself. What creeped him out at first, though, was that he was in his attire from earlier today rather than his pyjamas, being his signature purple glasses with yellow rims, a purple t-shirt with a treble on it, loose black pants with yellow stripes, and orange shoes.

"Helloooooo?" He called out again. "Is anybody here?" He didn't really expect to see anybody in this void, which seemed to have absolutely nothing at all as far as the eye could see. But hey, it's worth a try, right?

"Yohohoho...yohoho ho…"

His head snapped, looking around desperately. The voice had sent a chill down his spine, but it was...soothing. Did they even match each other? Was that a thing?

"Yohohoho...yohoho ho…"

It was...singing? Was it singing a song? He'd never heard of it before, but it did make him curious.

"Gather up all of the crew, it's time to ship out Binks' brew…"

Brook couldn't put his finger on it, but he felt like he had heard this song before. Probably from the bar just down the road; the men there enjoyed singing to a certain song, he recalled. Maybe this was it.

"Sea wind blows, to where, who knows? The waves will be our guide."

Whatever this song was, he liked it. It was a melody that entrailed pride, as well as kinship among those they sing it by. However, it seemed like the voice had a...solemn? Was that it? A solemn tone, as if reminiscing such times. Having done it before and cherishing such memories. Now that he thought about it, the singing was rather smooth, too.

He then proceeded to run into something in front of him, causing him to land on his butt.

"Ow…" he muttered to himself. After shaking off the impact, he stood up and check what he ran into, only to find a pair of green pants. Long, skinny pants. As he looked further up, he saw a brown leather belt, a black blazer with the phrase "Soul King" on it, written in a strange, almost dancing font, what seemed to be a white dress shirt underneath, accompanied by a red tie, black fingerless leather gloves, and a purple felt fedora with a white feather out the side, sitting atop a giant afro.

What he didn't expect was this tall man to be a freaking skeleton of all things holy.

"Yohohohohoho!" The damn thing laughed.

"AAAAAAAAAGGHHHH!" A scream of sheer fear was all Brook could let out, backing away as fast as his little hands could drag him.

But then it spoke again, walking at a similarly brisk pace. "Ah, young man," It spoke. "I'm so terribly sorry for being in your path of wondering like that. Please forgive my brashness." Looking at the skeleton, its outfit was as he saw before, but the bones around the neck (or really, spine), the head itself, and the fingers under the fingerless gloves. Yep, this was a skeleton alright. It had a pretty good sense of fashion, too.

Wait. Did it just apologise? And why was he leaning over in forgiveness?

Brook immediately sat himself up. "O-o-oh n-no," Brook stuttered, still a little jittery from the whole experience. "I-it was m-my fault f-fo-for not p-paying a-a-attention t-to begin with…" He bowed his own head in apology. "Sorry a-about that…"

The skeleton then looked up in awe at him, before...laughing. "Yohohohohohoho!" This confused Brook far more than he already was. What was so funny about him apologising for running into him? He was paying attention, after all. "It's just as I remember when I was a young lad. Oh, how nostalgic." Hold on. This thing had an age?

Now Brook was curious. "Wait," he said, getting the skeleton man's attention. "How old are you, exactly? Who even are you?"

The skeleton suddenly had a much more hostile aura around him, glaring at Brook. It terrified him to the core.

"You have a lot of nerve asking that, young man," he muttered, head lowered down to Brook's level. "My heart sinks at such a brash request." Brook was now convinced he had asked the wrong thing, and that now he was going to die.

'Dammit.'

"Except I don't have a heart!" The skeleton suddenly exclaimed, rather jollily at that, before laughing. "Skull Joke!"

Brook himself felt frustrated that this whole thing was just a ruse, but he couldn't help but laugh at the joke himself. Why was it even funny? He didn't know, but he liked it. Might have to do that himself in the actual afterlife.

"Ah, but to answer your question;" The skeleton then announced. "My name is Brook, though many know me as the Soul King!" he then started laughing a bit to himself; he never thought he'd get to say that to anybody ever again. It was almost refreshing.

The young lad, though, was really confused. Why did he have the same name as him? And in his own dream, no less?

Young Brook was a little tense now. "Do I…" he almost whispered to the skeleton Brook. "...know you?"

The latter simply stood there. "I'm not sure how to answer someone else knowing me." He responded. "Although, I do know you rather well, if I do say so myself."

This put the afro-child on edge. "Huh?!" He exclaimed in shock. "H-how do you know me?!"

Skeleton-Brook simply tipped his hat. "I can't say; it would reveal too much,' he said, almost sadly. Soon after, though, his head shot back up. 'Although, I can say this, so listen carefully:" He then cleared his throat (or whatever the spine was there to do) before speaking again.

"When you land, find the 'Sunny'. You'll be safe there."

This left child-Brook...unbelievably confused. 'The 'Sunny'? What even was that?! A ship made of the Sun to burn me alive?! And…' he looked worried now. "Pardon me, Mr. Brook, " he asked the sack of bones. "What do you mean by 'when I land?'"

The skeleton looked unmoved, almost like he expected the question. "Oh, you'll find out soon enough." He then turned around, starting to walk away. After walking for about five or six seconds, he stopped again. "One more thing; it may take a while before anything actually happens with anybody else; you'll be alone for some time, and for that I apologise." He sighed to himself. "By the time you finally meet them, you'll almost be my age," He chuckled. "But who knows? You may see someone before then. Maybe even here…and then you'll be able to do it all again..." He then kept walking, leaving child-Brook to his own thoughts.

Said child still also had one more thing to ask. "Wait!" He cried out. "How old are you?" He didn't know about what the corpse meant by 'them', nor 'doing it again', but this was the more important of the two.

Suddenly, a light started to surround the area, slowly turning from a pitch-black to a pale white. Brook himself had started to glow and was now having a panic attack.

The skeleton turned behind to look at the glowing child he himself was beginning to vanish. "I'm 91," he answered before disintegrating into pure light.

The young child gasped. 'WHAT?!' He couldn't process how old the skeleton man truly was. And, if what it said was true, he would have to really wait that long?! AND FOR WHAT?!

Soon enough, though, the light enveloped Brook, too, before the whole void was as white as snow.

Alright, I have an idea. Everyone and their dog has read or tried to make a Time Travel Fanfic, right? Where either a single person, sometimes two or three, or a whole group/organisation go back in time to either better themselves or the world around them?

What if we did something different? What if we tried a different take on the "Try Again" formula?

It'll make sense as time goes on, but I just wanted to try this. I have a really thick case of writer's block right now. I have most of the chapters planned for when the actual journey starts, but am struggling to find a beginning. Though, to be fair, is what happens whenever I try to write basically any story; Great plot idea planned out, no way to build it up without smoking my brain.

Rant over. Follow, Review, yadda yadda yadda. Now I just gotta build off of this. Shouldn't be too hard...

...god, help me...