Incomprehensible

by MrNoahall

500 souls lost forever, by a machine the whole world had built together. And in the end, the very thing that united the nations is what tore them apart. When the dust was settled and civilization rebuilt, it was meant to be a fresh start. Unfortunately, ghosts of the past have a tendency to come back and haunt those who created them.

3. Revelations

Incomprehensible

Chapter 3: Revelations

When I woke up, the first thing I thought was how much I wanted to just go back to sleep. My pillows were fluffy and my blankets soft. I was warm and wanted nothing more than to curl up and burrow deeper into the depths of my subconscious. I was moments away from doing just that when the voice of a nearby person made it far enough into my brain to warrant a response. Said response being for me to bolt upright as I remembered the memories of the previous... day? Night? My head swam and my vision went black as the sudden change of position dropped the blood pressure in my head.

"How long was I out?"

Rubbing my eyes with one hand, and using the other one to keep me from flopping back on the bed, I blearily began to look around the room. It seemed to be largely made of a light blue, almost white, stone brick. There was a fireplace at the foot of the bed, though the fire within had long died down to embers. A window to my left showed the snow-covered Hellscape I had escaped from earlier, confirming to me that my ordeal really had happened.

As I continued looking around, I found what I assumed to be the original source of the voice that had woken me. It was an old woman, looking to be maybe sixty-five, to seventy years old, though she wore the clothes of someone a third her age. A short purple jacket with orange flames on the wrists and midriff, with matching pants. She had round sunglasses sitting on the top of a head of platinum blonde hair. She was oddly familiar. Like I had seen her somewhere, but couldn't remember from where. I pushed the thought from my mind, she probably just looked like one of my friend's grandma's or something.

She said something to me that sounded like a jumble of syllables and vowels. Thinking I hadn't heard correctly, I yawned and shook my head, trying to escape the last vestiges of sleep and jump start my tired brain.

I looked at her and asked, "What'd you say? I'm still trying to wake up, wasn't paying attention."

While normally, waking up in some stranger's house would be cause for concern, the situation was somewhat unique. I had shown up at this woman's doorstep and passed out. The fact that I wasn't locked in a basement or missing my skin yet gave her some credibility points in my eyes. Though the fact I was wearing a plain white t-shirt and pajama pants instead of what I was wearing when I got here did bring up some questions.

"And where are my clothes?"

She looked at me wearily and took a swig of what looked like wine from the bottle I hadn't noticed her holding. Once she spoke again, and it still sounded the same as before, dread filled my gut. I placed my face in my hands, trying to not think about how probably screwed I was.

At home, I had tried to learn 3 key phrases in as many languages as possible. Said phrases being, "My name is Noah." "Where is the bathroom?" and "Sorry, I don't speak [insert language here] well." I had them down in Spanish, Japanese, French, and Portuguese, but those last two were only because I had a friend from France and another from Brazil when I was a kid. My Spanish was slightly more advanced thanks to required high school and college credits, but disuse had caused me to forget a large portion of the conjugation and grammar.

The point was moot, as what she had said sounded closest to something akin to... Asian. I couldn't tell if it had been Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or something else. Based on the fact that I was currently in a snow-covered castle, my newest guess for "Where In the World is Noah Sandiego?" was Tibet. According to my, admittedly shaky, knowledge of the region, Tibet had mountains, monasteries, and was a contested part of China. That at least checked off the snow-covered mountains and language boxes of my checklist.

I decided it wouldn't hurt to try all my options anyways, and ran through my laundry ways to say "My name is Noah." Spanish and Portuguese didn't get anything more than a blank stare, while French got a snort of laughter. I was fairly certain she was laughing at my attempts to communicate because she offered no response more than that. Japanese though, that got some recognition. There was confusion mixed in as well, but a reaction nonetheless. She said something back to me that once again had no meaning to me, so I went to phrase two of my list. Telling her I didn't speak Japanese got basically the reaction I was expecting. A groan of displeasure and another swig of wine. Well, at least I knew that whatever she was at least close to Japanese if not a perfect match. Like how Spanish in Spain wasn't the same Spanish in Mexico.

My attention was brought back to the woman when she stood up and started walking to the door. I made a move to get up and leave the bed to follow her when she all but appeared in front of me. How a woman of her age was able to move so fast boggled the mind. The fact that a scalpel had appeared in the hand not holding wine made abort my previous movement.

"Scheisse!"

I flopped backward in surprise back onto the bed. She glared at me, daring me to move, before poking me in the chest with a bony finger and pointing at the bed. Apparently, I wasn't allowed to leave the bed for some reason. Whatever the case, I nodded my understanding, hoping she would get the message. She gave me one last hard look, before turning around and walking away.

As soon as she had closed the door I was up and out of that bed looking for my things.

"_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_"

Doctorine had been watching over the boy while Chopper took some time to rest. He had spent roughly an hour working on him and making sure nothing was in any more serious danger before starting the task of slowly bringing the boy's temperature back to normal. The kid had gotten lucky, no permanent nerve damage or even lost digits. Though his legs would probably never have hair again if his frozen pants killed the follicles like she suspected. Her apprentice had worked diligently and efficiently, covering the kid's forearms in towels soaked in warm water and switching them out when they cooled off. Only once the boy had turned back to his normal skin tone, and then pink from the hot towels, did the Doctorine finally tell her protégé that his job was done and to get some rest. She would make sure nothing happened to the sleeping kid.

She still found it hard to fathom that another poneglyph speaker besides the "Devil Child" Nico Robin could exist. And the fact that the World Government didn't seem to know about him made it all the more astounding. And while he had the face of someone eighteen to twenty years old, she had enough experience to know he was about twenty-six or twenty-seven, depending on if he'd had his birthday this year. She wondered where he could have been hiding, or how he could have even survived as long as he did without learning or knowing how to speak the common language. What made it even stranger was his ease at being around her, as if he had no reason to distrust someone he had just met. He was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, one that would likely never get any answers if they didn't find a way to communicate.

Now though, was not the time for that. Now she was on her way to Chopper's room to alert him that the boy had woken up. She didn't need him walking in the medical ward thinking the boy was still asleep and having them both freak out. Rejection from the boy he had saved would only worsen the reindeer's already poor self-esteem. And as for the boy, if he got scared by Chopper there was a chance he would try to run before being properly discharged. No one left the care of Dr. Kureha until she damn well said they could. She would not have him injuring himself further.

Pushing the door to Chopper's room open, she called out to him.

"Hey, Chopper. The idiot kid's awake, and he can't talk like..."

Doctorine trailed off as she realized the only living being in the room was herself. It seemed that Chopper had wandered off somewhere. The Doctorine sighed. She had a feeling she knew where he was, though how she hadn't run into him on the way to his room was a mystery. Just one more to add to her growing list. Deciding to simply let things play out, she headed to the kitchen to find a new bottle of wine. If he wanted to be rejected by another human, that would be a lesson he had to learn the hard way.

"_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_"

The moment that scary grandma left the room, the hunt for my stuff was on. Looking around I saw bookshelves all along the walls, and a door at the far end. A circular table with a couple chairs was off to my right and a desk on the far wall opposite the bed. The arched entrance to a side room was direct to the right of the desk. Then I looked at the fireplace and saw the crumpled ball of green fabric. Feeling pretty confident that those were my pants, I went to pick them up. Only to end up holding the back pockets. My pants had been cut vertically in two!

Grabbing for the other half, I searched through the pockets. I found my phone and charger thankfully, but my wallet was gone! Then I noticed the hole in the left pocket. Dread filled me, as thoughts of my wallet buried under ten feet of snow filled my mind. Then the thought occurred to me that I hadn't had a hole in that pocket when I got here. It had to have happened when the lady cut my pants in half! Mildly proud of my deduction skills, I began searching for my other possessions once more. I checked the desk, opening the drawers and shuffling the papers around, but that proved fruitless.

With nothing left but the side room, I headed in to look. What I found both confused and slightly scared me. There was an eclectic assortment of things, almost like a shed. I found some normal doctoring supplies like scalpels, bandages, forceps and the like. A couple wardrobes sat off to the right wall. Then there was some weirder stuff. A couple gladiuses, a wooden mallet, an honest to god boot knife with knuckle covering grips, and even a freaking circular saw blade. Then I saw the table with the straps at each end and really began to wonder if the earlier assumptions of my safety had been made prematurely.

I decided it would probably be prudent to hide some of the weirder things just to be on the safe side. I stuffed the saw blade behind one of the wardrobes, wrapped the gladiuses in a spare blanket and put the bundle back in the drawer it had been found in. I decided to nick the boot knife for myself. While no expert in knife fighting, or even a novice really, a knife still had more than enough utility oriented purposes to warrant keeping it. And besides, the blade on my Leatherman had been getting dull anyway, so win-win. Turning back around to the entrance, it was at that moment I noticed my visitor. Or, more importantly, recognized my visitor.

Doing what I default towards when in a situation I'm not sure how to react to, I made a snarky comment.

"Never thought I'd say this, but I really hoped that scary grandma lady drugged me while I was unconscious."

Standing in front of me, trying to hide behind the entrance the wrong way, was the one and only Tony Tony Chopper. He had the burgundy top hat, the shorts, the braced antler, and even the blue freaking nose! And if none of that was proof enough, he was even in his hybrid form that looked like a furry child.

We stood there for a while, just staring at each other. I had a look of mild dread, and he had one of mixed fear and curiosity. Deciding to see if it really was the drugs, I grabbed at a nearby roll of bandages and underhand tossed them towards the reindeer. The whole time they were in flight, I mentally chanted.

'Don't be real, don't be real, don'tbereal, Don'tBeReal, Please Don't BE REAL!'

The way he caught the roll, seemingly by instinct, was enough to confirm my fears. I collapsed onto the floor and began having a complete and total mind melting existential crisis.

'How is he here? How am I here?! Where even is here?! What the actual HELL is going on?! He's supposed to be a fictional character in an entirely separate world from my own!'

And with that thought, a few puzzle pieces clicked into place. I remembered where I had seen that woman before. She was Doctor Kureha, mentor and maternal figure to Chopper. And they lived in a castle, on a winter island, on a mountain, in the Grand Freaking Line. A castle where the once king Wapol would come back and attempt to retake his throne, only to be thwarted by the very reindeer I had thrown a roll of bandages at and the future King of the Pirates, Monkey D. Luffy. And to top it all off, they were all supposed to be fictional characters and places that existed only in the minds of avid fans, and the world's creator Oda himself.

I don't know when the tears had formed in my eyes, but when I tried to look at Chopper again, everything had gone blurry. My mind was quickly falling into a death spiral, and I needed something to keep me grounded in reality, even if it was the very thing, no, person, who started it in the first place.

Whimpering, I reached out towards him, desperate for help, any kind of help. He seemed frozen in place, likely out of fear of my reaction. I didn't know what else to do, my whole world was falling apart around me and I was all alone. I did the only thing I could think of. I said one of the few words I remembered from those few lessons I had received.

"please..."

"_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_"

It was such a simple word, but one that seemed to do the trick. Chopper stiffened slightly when the young man addressed him, but then the understanding crossed his face. He battled with himself, fighting his own fear of humans, and his own desire to help people. How was he supposed to help someone so clearly afraid of him? Yet at the same time, would someone so afraid ask for his help? These thoughts plagued his mind until a memory bubbled up to the surface of his mind.

A younger version of himself, waved the flag of the late Quack Doctor Hiriluk, calling out for Kureha to take him as an apprentice and teach him to become a doctor. He remembered calling out that he would become the doctor that could cure anything because he believed that there was nothing in the world that could not be cured.

Coming back to the present, Chopper looked at the suffering young man and knew that his decision had been made. He would never be able to be the doctor that could cure anything if he didn't help this man. Resolve coming over him, he began to reach out to the young man.

"_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_"

Darkness was clawing at the corner of my vision as I hyperventilated violently. My thoughts were becoming more and more jumbled as I tried to rationalize what was going on. The hand I had outstretched to Chopper had fallen on the floor when he had not taken it and was wrapped around myself, trying to give me some minimal form of comfort. The darkness was closing in around me, and I faintly realized I had started to sob. It was all too much, too unbelievable. Yet the proof existed in the literal room I was lying in.

When I thought the darkness would consume me and was getting ready to give in, I felt warmth grasp one of my hands. Two small furry arms, with hoof-like hands, began prying it away from my torso. I heard the source of the hands whisper things to me, of what I didn't know. But the tone was soft and comforting, letting me know that I wasn't alone. I began to push myself up into a kneeling position, still sobbing uncontrollably.

I don't think he was prepared for when I leaped at him and wrapped him in a hug. I felt him stiffen and momentarily try to pull away in shock, but eventually, he nervously raised his arms to mirror my embrace. We stayed like that for several minutes as I simply let all the stress of the last day wash out of me. I felt him shake every so often too. Later I would realize that he had probably also used me at that moment to release some baggage. I had probably been the first person besides either of his mentors to ever give him kindness instead of violence.

When we finally released the embrace, I looked at him and, pushing away the thoughts that threatened a relapse, said the last phrase I had in my arsenal.

"Thank You."

I then proceeded to hug him again. He stiffened again at first but didn't try to pull away. When I let him go, I stood up and walked over to the bed. Chopper had oddly decided to keep holding my hand, likely as an affirmation that this had just occurred. I knew now that I wasn't in any immediate danger while in the care of Chopper and Kureha, and crawled back under the covers. I looked back a Chopper, told him "thank you" one more time, and began drifting off to sleep. Who knew having a complete mental breakdown could be so exhausting?

"_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_"

When the Doctorine had heard the initial cry of panic coming from the kid's room, she simply grimaced ruefully at knowing that Chopper had once more been rejected by someone he'd only been trying to help. When the cries hadn't subsided after several minutes and had turned to sobbing, that was when she began wondering what was going on. Walking back into the medical ward she followed the sound of crying. She had not been ready for the sight that was before her. She was so shocked, the bottle of wine in her hand fell and hit the floor with a bang. While it didn't break, the noise was able to be audible over the sound of sobbing. Yet neither seemed to have even heard it. Standing before her was the sight of both the boy and her protégé in an embrace, loudly sobbing. And while she wanted to tell the kid off for being out of bed, she knew that this was a different kind of healing that they both needed. Healing not of the body, but of the heart and soul. With a witch-like grin, she decided to let it slide just this once, picked up the wine and left the medical ward once more. She'd check back a little later, once the two of them had a chance to calm down.

"_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_"

When I awoke from my nap, I was ready to begin processing my situation. I wasn't at all ready to accept it, but understanding it was at least a possibility. I decided to start at the beginning and go from there. So question one, how had I gotten here? The answer, I used the Quantum Gate with the intent to go to Scotland and instead ended up on top of a mountain in what was supposed to be a fictional world. Question two, why might that have happened? While I would probably never know the exact reason, but I could make some educated guesses. My physics minor was finally going to be of some use to me. Crazy as I might have sounded to any observers, I began talking my way through it. When dealing with complex situations like this, I found that speaking out loud helped to arrange my thoughts in a cohesive fashion. It forced me to slow down my runaway mind.

"Ok Noah, let's recap. What do you know about the Quantum Gates? You know they work by entangling your body with atoms and firing those atoms at near light speed, dragging you along with it. During the testing phase, scientists found that the larger the mass, the more of a delay in the object's landing as time slowed down around it. That makes sense, we already somewhat knew that with relativity and all that jazz."

I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands, not liking where this train of thought was going.

"And it was known that the lab mice had a delay time of about four seconds. Relativity is exponential, so my weight proportional to that of the mice, a difference of about my entire body weight considering mice weigh less than a pound, meant that I had a hundred and forty-five pounds of extra mass. And therefore, a hundred and forty-five pounds worth of exponential time dilation. Right, so convert that to metric units to make math easier, and it comes out to, oh, around sixty-seventy kilograms. Let's average to sixty-five to make it easy. Ok, so I have my mass, now for the hard part. Change in relative time equals the change in my time divided by the square root of one minus the mass and velocity squared. My personal change in time was, about ten seconds I'd say. And one minus sixty-five times the speed of light equals… something I can't math in my head. God, I wish I had a calculator. "

I flopped backward onto the bed again, rubbing my forehead to alleviate a headache I knew was going to come soon. Since the math was getting far too complex to do in my head, I'd have to simply go by what I knew of the original timeline. I didn't want to keep thinking this out but did it anyway.

"Considering I have no way of knowing when the World Government formed in relation to when I left and what I know about the current timeline, if it's even close to my source material, then I've arrived no more than a year before Luffy's going to get here. And, Considering there was no World Government when I left, it can be reasonably assumed that I've traveled at a minimum of eight hundred and change years into the future. Not exactly the most accurate of conclusions, but considering I'm working with nothing but conjecture and educated guesses, it's the best I got. Well, it's official. I am fifty shade of screwed right now."

I knew what the implications of my situation were. Everyone I had ever known was long dead, the average person living here would have been considered a professional athlete from when I was from, and to top it all off, I was sitting right in the path of where I knew a mad king would return to claim his throne. A king who could, and would, literally eat me for lunch if I pissed him off or got in his way. I began to giggle. Softly at first, and then rising in tempo to hysterically. I wasn't sure what else to do. All my tears for the week had been shed hours earlier, and this situation was simply too absurd to not react to. Feeling myself on the verge of another breakdown, I smacked myself across the face.

"Get ahold of yourself! Now is not the time for another existential crisis. Look at the facts. You are alive, you have a decent guess of where/when you are and what got you here, and you're in the care of the two best doctors on quite possibly the entire planet. With the exception of Law, because his Devil Fruit isn't even fair."

That made me pause for a moment. Would devil fruits even exist? I couldn't see how considering they should violate the laws of nature, the existence of a certain talking reindeer gave evidence towards the affirmative. I shook my head again to focus and get back to my original train of thought.

The situation could have been worse. I could have ended up swimming in the ocean, or some deserted island without a hope of rescue, or in the middle of a Marine base. Thinking about the Marines brought me up cold. They were a problem I hadn't even begun to address yet. And while I couldn't think of much reason for me personally to fear them at the moment, my gut told me that I should probably stay away from them anyways.

"Not the time Noah, they are a concern for later."

It was time to fall back on one of my hard-learned lessons from college. There's no point if stressing about things outside of your control. I pushed thoughts of homicidal governing bodies out of my mind so I could think about more immediate concerns. Specifically, my growling stomach. I didn't know how long it had been since my last meal, but considering I had fallen asleep twice and walked over a mile in the snow, it had to have been pretty close to twenty-four hours.

Getting up and out of the bed, I walked over to the door at the far end of the room. I didn't even bother with looking out the door when the blast of cold hit me and I slammed it back closed.

"Right... half the castle might as well be outside because of the front door being left open. Why did no one ever think to move the bird's nest from the top of the door?"

Turning around, I then noticed what I hadn't earlier. On the round table by the bed was a surgical tray with my headphones and, more importantly, my wallet. I quickly snatched up my missing belongings and put them in their rightful places; the headphones around my neck and the wallet in my left pocket. Feeling whole once again from finally having all my stuff back, I headed to the door at the opposite end of the room. Just as I reached for the doorknob though, it was opened directly into my face.

"_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_"

The Doctorine had felt the impact when she opened the door. She looked down and saw the kid sitting on the floor and clutching his nose. She knew he wouldn't understand her, but reprimanded him anyways.

"This is why I told you to stay in bed! Now you've gone and hurt yourself even more and I have to spend more time treating you!"

The fact that Chopper had been the one treating him the whole time wasn't important. She pointed to the bed.

"Get back in there and rest, your body is still repairing the damage done to it from your excursion through the snow."

She watched him roll his eyes, clearly getting the message at what she wanted him to do, and stand back up again. She heard his stomach growl, and he crossed his arms over him, hugging his gut. He mimed eating something, clearly trying to say he was hungry. The Doctorine just began pushing him back towards his bed before responding.

"Yeah yeah, I get it, you're hungry. It makes sense considering how much you've exerted yourself over the last day. Which wouldn't have happened had you done what I said and stayed in bed!"

The last word was punctuated by her pushing the kid rather forcefully onto the bed. He retaliated by throwing the pillow into her face. Her eye twitched momentarily before she was in his face again, scalpel in hand, grinning evilly.

"I would highly suggest you don't do that again you brat."

He tried to put up a facade of defiance, but she could see the nervousness behind it. Message sufficiently sent, she pulled away and threw the pillow back at his face. It made a satisfying *fwumpf* sound on impact. She turned around and headed for the door. His little display at least signified that he was recovering well enough, slower than she would normally have expected, but that was easily attributed to lack of proper sustenance. She'd have Chopper bring him some food soon enough, but for now, he had to sit and learn his lesson to not disobey Doctor's Orders.

"_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_"

AN: Well, I finally got this one done. And sooner than I expected too. My plan had been to finish this and get it posted on the weekend, but then I ended up pulling out my laptop to work on it last night. One thing led to another and suddenly it was two in the morning and I had roughly three thousand words written. I figured I'd finish off the chapter today after my Political Science test, and then I'd suddenly written almost another two thousand words. Fun times. But anyway, enough of my rambling, it's time I remind the readers to Follow, Review, and to always say "please" and "thank you." Manners go a long way to getting what you want.