A green-haired man blinked open his eyes, and had to close them immediately afterward to the searing brightness of the sun. He groaned as he felt a bone-deep ache throb throughout his body. Everything felt like lead, and his blood felt like ice in his veins, pumping a freezing-cold, poisonous feeling throughout. He tried to move his arms, and stopped when pain lanced through his muscles, eliciting a gasp to push past his mouth.

He felt sand as he curled his fingers into a fist and as his back shifted against the ground, and heard the sound of water splashing onto the beach of fine-grain earth. He didn't know how, but he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he lay on an oceanic coastline.

Where am I?

Confusion started to settle in once he stopped thinking about the pain. He… He couldn't…

Who am I?

He really didn't like the sensation of not remembering. He did not forget things. He struggled to come up with something, when…

Water.

The man gasped again, this time in pleasured relief, when a wave came up and washed against his tanned legs. The pain vanished on contact wherever the seawater touched. Frantic need promptly replaced his confused anger.

I have to get to the water!

Ignoring the excruciating effort involved in the act, the man flipped over so that he lay on his stomach and lifted himself onto his hands and knees. Then he started to crawl backwards, towards the receding surf. Some primal instinct drove him, telling him that the ocean was integral to his being. He pushed his right foot backwards, then his left, moving inch by inch towards his salvation. Water rushed past him, past his knees, past his elbows, past his hands, and he slumped his whole body into the temporary pool that had provided itself to him.

Bliss. The water rushed around his ears, swirled around his hair. And the pain was swiftly retreating from his beleaguered form. He sighed, bubbles forming from his mouth and floating to the water's surface, and closed his eyes. The water felt like an old friend. He noted that the surf seemed to take an abnormally long amount of time to recede, but when it finally did…

He opened his eyes, and nothing less than hellacious anger burned in their depths.

He remembered.

That son of a bitch.

He knew his own name. Roronoa Zoro, future greatest swordsman in the world. But...

The man flipped over, and settled on glaring at the clouds.

Morgan. He… HE…! HE KILLED ME!

He remembered the terror that he felt when the firing squad aimed their guns at him, and recalled the screams of the strange pink-haired boy as he was shot. His dying thoughts of how he had failed; broken his promise.

Kuina…

He couldn't feel his tears dripping down his face; his whole head was underwater. The waves were getting louder. He felt the caressing touch of the water.

Fear gripped him.

How can I be alive?

He had felt the sting of those bullets… Too many stings to live. His survival made no sense. Besides, he had felt the encroaching numbness of death, and how the strength needed to breathe fled his lungs. The last thing he remembered before everything went dark was that freaky kid in the straw hat dropping in from the sky and going completely ballistic on the Marine forces.

Zoro choked.

He had my swords. He'd gotten my swords for me.

If he had been faster...

But I'm alive... somehow. Where am I?

He sat up, his hips and legs still underwater, bracing himself against his elbows, and discovered several remarkable things at once as he glanced around.

One: He was still on Shells Town Island. The looming Marine base attested to that.

Two: He wasn't wearing his clothes; he was wearing a strange blue gi with a pattern of waves.

Three: The water surrounding him was behaving extremely strangely.

He stared, transfixed, as a tendril of water stretched up towards his face. Frozen, he felt it trail across his cheek.

I'm dreaming. There is absolutely no other explanation.

Twisting his head around, he saw that the water surrounding him was at a bizarrely high level. He jerked as something tickled the edge of his mind…

Happiness. Longing. Sadness.

Emotions which he knew weren't his own coursed through him. It was coming from the… water?

Forget it. I'm not dreaming. I'm hopped up on coral spice.

He stood up, and the water moved with him. Well… some of it. The rest of the water flowed back into a more physically possible position, moving along with the rest of the coastline. Zoro jerked as he realized that a tendril of water floated up to greet him, flowing around him in an almost playful manner. Heart thumping in his chest, staring at the impossible phenomenon, he tentatively raised his right hand and waved.

The tendril of water formed itself into a mockery of a hand and waved back.

Zoro shuddered at the weirdness of it all, but then blinked, and turned around so that he was facing Shells Town and the dark shadow of the two Marine towers.

Anger rose within him at the sight. The water swirled at his feet, and the tendril that surrounded him seemed agitated, twitching and twisting. He ignored the strangeness for a moment and focused on what was important.

I'm tearing that fucking place down.

His dark thoughts were interrupted by a scream. He spun so that he was looking up the coastline, and spotted a little girl standing about ten meters away.

That girl… he thought with some surprise, She tried to feed me while I was a prisoner.

He almost felt like laughing at the bugged-out look on her face, and would have, if he wasn't feeling just as weirded out.

"Z… Zoro? Mr. Zoro?"

He nodded, slowly.

"How…?"

He looked down at himself, once again taken aback at the strange attire he was wearing, and looked back up at the girl, who had tears in her eyes by now.

"I… I don't know." A thought occurred to him, and he voiced his question before he fully processed it in his mind, "How long have I been… gone?" He didn't have it in him to say dead. He honestly couldn't take it.

The little girl let out a sob. Zoro held his breath when he realized that the girl was happy to see him.

"A… A day. They shot you yesterday… Are you a ghost, mister?"

That question spurred something within his mind, and he gasped as information bombarded him.

"Are you a ghost, Samurai-san?"

A smirk.

"No, sprite. I am the ocean."

"WHO ARE YOU CALLIN' A SPRITE? I AM THE GREAT PROPHET OF THE SUN, ISSUN!... Wait, what?"

The smirk turned into a far more wistful smile, "Ah, so you know my sister, then. I wish I could have seen her while I had the chance…"

The memory – what else could it be? – ended abruptly, leaving Zoro feeling very disoriented. He brought up his right hand to gently palm his head, rubbing his eyes to deter the headache that was building there.

"Mister! Are you alright?"

He waved his other hand dismissively, his mind preoccupied with the vision he just saw.

"I'm fine…"

The ocean? The sun? What does that mean? And what the HELL was that bug-looking guy?

"We need your help, Mister Zoro!"

That shook him out of his thoughts, and he looked intently at the girl whose eyes were begging him to do something.

"What?"

"It's bad Captain Morgan! He's going to execute Luffy at sunset!

Zoro raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Who?"

"The boy in the straw hat! They're going to kill him! He tried so hard to save us, and now they're just going to kill him! You've gotta stop them, mister!" She was crying, again, "Morgan said that he would kill him in the middle of town, so that no one would think of betraying him again! Please! Please help!"

His mind was blank. The water around him stilled eerily, turning into a glass state of calm. He looked at the sky. The sun was sinking fast…

He would have to run, then.

Turning back to the girl, Zoro spoke in a deadly calm, "Don't worry. I'll save the kid."