"Daddy! I want that one! It's a rubber boy! Rubber boy, rubber boy!"

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no-

Luffy sat in the corner of his cell with his straw hat hung over his eyes. He tried with all his might to get even the tiniest bit of sleep but the endless chatter in the background filled his ears with unwanted and incredibly irritating noise. His fellow slaves murmured amongst themselves as they messed with pebbles on the cold ground. The ear-bleeding sound some of the rocks produced as they scratched against the stone was enough to make the straw hat wearing boy want to commit a mass homicide the likes of which have never been seen. He lifted his hands up and his elbow knocked against the shoulder of a grimy old man sitting next to him who honestly needed to be put down before his body decomposed while he was still alive. Luffy recoiled from the human abomination as he pressed his palms against his ears to block out the sound. It honestly didn't help in the slightest. All he heard was:

"-fucking spits on the spot on the floor I just cleaned! I just wanna take his neck and-"

"-go home to my wife. I miss her-"

"-DICKBAG! THAT WAS MY LOAF OF BREAD, YOU-"

"-promised they'd come and get me-"

"-some goddamn booze! I haven't had a drink in-"

"-THIRTEEN YEARS! I HAD TO DEAL WITH THIS SHIT FOR THIRTEEN FUCKING-"

"-maggots in my bread, again!? Jesus, just kill me before-"

"-I swear, I'll beat the shit out of you, you water drinking bitch-"

Not to mention the excessive amounts of crying and atmospheric melancholy so prevalent it was physically palpable. Luffy let his gaze flicker toward the ceiling in vexation as the obnoxious screams of a child echoed off the damp walls.

"Havin' fun over there, kid?" one of the slaves cackled as he scratched an 'x' into the ground. The other man he was playing tic-tac-toe against groaned in disappointment as he tore off a small piece of his bread roll and handed it to the victor.

Luffy settled for flipping the guy off as he elbowed the dilapidated old man next to him away. "Fuck off," he grumbled as he shoved the body as far from him as possible. "And, for the love of all that is good with the universe, shut the hell up." The small teen's frustrations only grew as the group he'd just complained at laughed and increased their volume like the assholes they were.

"I know they're gonna come back for me. . ."

Luffy rolled his eyes as he adjusted his hat to sit crookedly on his head. "Holy shit," he breathed out with barely contained annoyance as his gaze shifted to the other corner a new guy had curled into. "You're still on about that? No one's coming to get you! Now, shut up and deal with it, shithead!"

"But they promised-"

"Motherfucker, you've been a broken record for the past three weeks," Luffy emphasized as he picked up a pebble and threw it at the pathetic man. "Just give it a fucking rest or I'll cut out your tongue to give you something real to cry about."

"Ooh, the runt's getting feisty~" one of the slaves teased as he reached out to take a sleeping slave's bowl of water.

"Go to hell, asswipe."

"Already here, kid!"

"Yet, surprisingly, you still haven't sucked Satan's dick," Luffy observed as he grabbed his bread and tore a piece off with his teeth. He hastily swallowed it as he reached out for the discarded rations from the old man he'd pushed away. "I try to fucking sleep and all you assholes do is scream like banshees. If you need something to do with your mouth, go kiss Charloss' ass." He swiftly cupped the bread he'd been reaching for and fell back into his corner with an extra bit of food.

The slave snorted as he picked out a dead spider from his stolen bowl of water and flicked it away. "Stick your hand in a furnace, Monkey," he halfheartedly threatened before he took needy gulps of salty water and cringed at the unsavory taste.

Luffy snorted as he lifted up his wrists to show heavy sea stone cuffs wrapped around them. They latched onto his bones painfully and refused to adjust to a more comfortable position as he shook them. "Good idea. Maybe the gas released from burning rubber will be toxic enough to kill everyone around me. Remind me to do that whenever I have cleaning duty," he commented as he glared at his bleeding wrists with an impressive amount of spite. "Stupid pieces of shit won't even loosen up," he hissed at his restraints with quiet aggression.

"Why not just go the full mile and kill yourself? Better than rotting away in this place like Ol' Man McGee, over there," a guy suggested as he pointed at the practically skeletonized grandpa wasting away life on the harsh floor. "I heard they actually closed all slaves out of the kitchen because some guy stabbed himself in the neck with a knife and bled everywhere."

Another slave immediately punched him in the arm with a visible rage. "Don't be goin' around and puttin' that in people's heads! I got the shit beaten out of me, the day after!"

"Jeez, I was just saying, I would do it if I had the chance!"

"Oh, zip it, ya lil' shit! I don't wanna get punished just because you decided to smash your head in with a glass vase!"

Luffy covered his eyes with his hand as he let out a suffering sigh. "I can already tell this is going to be a great day," he groaned sarcastically as he chewed on his bread roll.

"It's actually nighttime, brat."

"No one fucking asked you, you old geezer! Go back to playing your dumb tic-tac-toe bullshit!"

"I found out how to make the rubber boy cry! Cry more, rubber boy! Cry more!"

Stop, it hurts, I can't breathe, I'm dying, stop, it hurts, I can't breathe-

Luffy suppressed a yawn as he wiped the porcelain tiled floors with a sponge. He didn't really understand why the hell he was polishing an already spotless floor but he didn't question it. For all he knew, the World Nobles had laser precision eyesight that detected any form of dust in their mansion and they couldn't go on with their lives like normal human beings until they've had something annihilate it. Unfortunately, the thing they always picked to clean up the entire fucking floor by itself was Luffy. Why? He didn't know. Some of his cellmates reasoned that he was the smallest out of all of them and so his hands could fit through nooks and crannies. However, they completely dismissed the idea when they took into account that the floor was just a sprawling rectangle that required no snooping in small spaces or whatever they were on about. Maybe the nobles just wanted to taunt the very insignificance of his existence by assigning him the most mundane and energy draining tasks.

Luffy wiped his forehead with the back of his arm as he reached out to drop his sponge in his bucket of soapy water but he didn't make it before one of the guards walked up behind him. A metal foot smacked the side of the bucket and sent it skidding across the floor. Soap water pooled across the once dry tiles and soaked his clothes. Luffy sighed exasperatedly before he sent the guard a greatly unamused glare. He let his sponge fall out of his grip and it hit the ground with an unceremonious plop.

"Clean it up," the guard said plainly as he gestured toward the mess.

"No."

"Are you disobeying an order?"

Luffy squinted at the guy in a questioning and aggravated silent message before he picked up his sponge. His fingers tightened around the cleaning tool as he vindictively grimaced at it. "Fuck you," he growled at the guard as he lifted the sponge up to gift that jackass a present. "Your fucking mess. You clean it."

"Come here, rubber boy! I wanna have fun!"

He is my owner, he gives me shelter, he gives me food, I can't survive without his care, I can't survive-

The wind was knocked out of Luffy's lungs as he hit the ground with a dull thud. He let out of a muffled groan into the stone as others around him snickered. "I fuckin' hate all of you," he said querulously. He picked himself off the floor with a wince as his shoulder blades moved under a slash on his back. The moment one of his elbows gave out and he had to brace himself with his forearm, laughter erupted from many of the slaves. "I hope all of you die in here," he gritted out as he managed to sit against the wall instead of crawling on all fours like a mutt.

"If your hopes are that simple, it won't be a problem, runt!" a slave quipped, causing another bout of laughter.

"Oh, fuck off!" the straw-hatted boy spat as he glared at the older man. "You're in your forties and you need a fucking shave, you decrepit piece of shit."

"At least, I don't have slashes on my back because I constantly can't follow orders," the man retorted with a smirk. "Kid, you have enough of those for every slave in this shithole!"

"It's not that I can't follow orders, you asshole! I'm not degenerate, unlike you!" Luffy growled sharply as he shifted so he leaned on his side instead of his back. "I just don't want listen to stickasses!"

For some odd reason, almost everyone in the cell found his outburst hilarious and roared like a group of idiots. Another slave pointed at him as he held his nonexistence stomach. "Oh shit, puberty hit this kid hard. He's going through that edgy, rebellious phase!" he squawked.

Luffy clenched his fist before he reached out for an empty bowl and hurled it at the slave, hitting him square in the head. The slave cried out in pain as he held his forehead, crimson liquid seeping through the cracks between his fingers. "Say another word and I'll punch you in the dick so hard you'll never have kids," he warned with unhinged malice. The slave tried to wipe the blood out of his head wound with his hands but it kept leaking out until someone helped him press a piece of cloth against his skull.

"You're an asshole, brat," the guy accused as he applied pressure against his injury.

"Oh, sweet hypocrisy," was Luffy's indignant reply. "I'm going to sleep. If any of you so much as touch me, I'll gouge your eyes out with a rusty spoon."

"Ugh, I wish Ol' Man McGee were still here! He brightened up every situation!" some other guy complained as he flopped over.

Luffy scoffed at the thought of the eldest slave. "You mean that old bastard made of mealworms and foreskin who was decaying from the inside out?" That old man took up too much space with his presence and drained resources like a whirlpool. The small teen ended up just stealing most of that guy's rations while he slept like the dead. It's not like the sack of shit was going to need it, being at the end of the line and all. If he hadn't been put out of his misery any later, Luffy would've killed him, instead. All everyone did was harass him, anyway.

The slave's face lit up at the description. "Yeah, him! I think he really liked my singing!"

"Your singing sounds like a seagull choking on a fish bone and all it can do for the rest of the day is let out dry heaves instead of incessant screeching," Luffy slandered with a nettled glint in his eye as said slave gasped melodramatically.

"You wound me!" he whined as he tugged at the clothes over his chest. "Right here!" A string of chuckles echoed in the cell.

Luffy stuck his tongue out in disgust as he turned away from the others. "Why can't this be quiet like the other cells? Why am I roped in with you shitheads?" he muttered in displeasure.

"Bah, the other cells are boring. All they do is cry and stuff this place up with angst," one of the men insulted as he took a bite out of his piece of bread. "This cell is better than those shits!"

"Yeah, so much better," Luffy sneered as his gaze shifted downward. "If I ever get out of here, the first thing I'm gonna do is murder all of you without remorse," he stated offhandedly.

He heard a couple of puffs and snorts to near him as pebbles scratched the floor. "Careful, kid. Continue with that talk and you'll start to sound like Broken Record over there in the corner!"

"Yeah? Well, unlike Broken Record rocking in the corner like a five-year-old having a fucking tantrum, I'm not a delusional nutcase," Luffy seethed as he tilted his hat over his eyes. "I'm going the fuck to sleep. Have a terrible ass night. And I fucking know it's night, this time!" He forced his muscles to relax as he slouched against the wall and closed his eyes for the first time in days. His cellmates still jeered on as usual but he honestly couldn't give less of a flying fuck. He was already begrudgingly used to it, after being exposed to this dump for six years of his miserable life. With his brows furrowed and blood dripping from his back, he let sleep engulf him in a vengeful wave.

"I don't need rubber boy! I can buy a better one!"

Don't let me go, I don't know what to do, I'm not good enough, I can't breathe-

"Bye-bye, rubber boy!"

Review, if it isn't too much trouble?