Asteria Nightmare
Part four of a fanfiction by Velkyn Karma
Note: Damn, guys. This fic is beating even Mindshattered in terms of reviews ratios which I didn't actually think was possible. Why the hell do you guys like me so much? I don't understand!
Disclaimer: I do not own, or pretend to own, One Piece or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs solely to Eiichiro Oda. The only thing that belongs to me here is the concept for the story.
"You know, if you believe the dreams,
the nightly visions, worlds entwined,
then you also fear your shadow
paranoia, part two...
All the good things in my life dwell in my mind
Took a wrong lane, every day, I hear myself say,
Sickening's this feeling
My life
My hopes
My dream's but a drop of fuel for a nightmare."
~My Dream's But a Drop of Fuel for a Nightmare, Sonata Arctica
Figuring out which direction to head in for the start of their explorations was difficult. Nami already knew, after studying the map of Asteria for hours, that she had virtually no idea of where anything was located on this island, other than what few landmarks she had already seen. It meant their exploration would be haphazard at best, and Nami knew just how dangerous it could be to start wandering without a direction or some form of a goal, especially with at least one vicious predator out there with unknown whereabouts.
Zoro was all in favor of heading back to where they had first seen the creature and crashing after it through the brush until they caught and killed it. Nami put down the idea immediately with a sharp right hook to his head. While the creature was so large it would be fairly easy to track through the swathe of dead leaves and broken branches it would inevitably leave, the idea was that they didn't want to run into it by accident. They needed to find a Nightmare on their own terms, with a plan in mind to disable or kill it, and that was only if they couldn't discover some form of cure in the writings left behind by the ancient human inhabitants. With their luck, following the Nightmare's trail would lead it straight back to its den or nest or whatever the hell it lived in, where a dozen others were probably waiting to feed. Nami would have none of it.
Thankfully, Robin was able to provide them with another suggestion. While exploring the fishing village yesterday, she had discovered a pair of roads at the far end of the village, leading into the heart of the island. One led north-west, while the other headed north-east, and while both were covered in dead foliage and looked to be in severe disrepair, they were still recognizable as what used to be major roadways. After some consideration, Nami, as their navigator, chose the north-western path. The one that led in a more easterly direction also seemed to head towards where they had seen the Nightmare last, and once again, Nami wasn't willing to meet up with that thing just yet.
They walked along the road for several hours, with each and every member of the team on full alert. The old path led into the red-gold woods after only twenty minutes, after passing overgrown, rocky patches of land that Robin said were probably once a few meager farming fields, enough to provide the village with a little grain to get by. The brilliant trees swallowed up the fields and the travelers quickly, and while Nami had thought them gorgeous yesterday she found them foreboding now. The branches and leaves were thick and solid, allowing only patches of bright sunlight to trickle down onto the road as they walked along it. The rest of the spaces beneath the trees were filled with cool shadows that were a little too dark for Nami's tastes. No one said it out loud, but the way the tension practically thickened in the air between them, she knew everyone was worried about the mid-day darkness. For all their talk of searching in the sunlight, their forethought had apparently turned out to be useless. The darkness cast by the trees would still provide more than enough cover for a Nightmare, should it choose to attack.
But though they remained on constant alert, though Zoro insisted on walking ahead of the rest of them and kept his hands on the hilt of one sword always, though Sanji-kun insisted on walking next to herself and Robin for their protection, and though Usopp flinched and spun around every time the wind rustled the trees, they encountered nothing during their walk on the road. Sanji-kun announced it was lunchtime many hours after they had started their journey, but nobody wanted to stop just yet on the road, even with their stomachs rumbling and their feet throbbing, and Sanji-kun didn't insist on them taking a break for a meal like he usually did (although he did offer with his usual enthusiasm to carry Nami or Robin if they were getting tired. They refused). All of them felt it clearly: with the trees pressing in all around the worn-down road, it felt far too exposed for a stopping point. They agreed unanimously to keep moving onward, and Sanji-kun merely passed around a few canteens of water to keep their spirits up.
Just under an hour after Sanji-kun's lunchtime announcement, the trees along the road seemed to pull back a little more, and more pools of sunlight were allowed to pass through the thick branches and their leaves to the ground. Usopp, with the strongest eyesight amongst them, pointed down the road and announced with the same excited tone usually reserved for spotting land after days at sea, "Look, look, up ahead! There's a village!"
"You're sure?" Nami asked. Usopp wrenched down one of the magnifying eyepieces on his headgear and adjusted it carefully before nodding vigorously, and Nami let out an enthusiastic whoop. "Yes! A new village already! And not a single meeting with that thing again, either."
"Don't say things like that!" Usopp scowled back at her, pushing the eyepiece back up onto his head. "You'll jinx us!" He looked back and forth at the trees anxiously, now trying to peer into their depths, as if expecting the Nightmare to be patiently waiting for them on either side.
"Perhaps," Robin agreed quietly. "I have often read in legends that mentioning deadly foes and beasts of lore is exactly the way to summon them." The rest of the team gave her horrified looks, and she added almost conversationally, "Then again, I have also read that it is equally possible to scare away their attention if one possesses the right abilities or charms. Swordsman-san scared the creature away last night. Perhaps it is still frightened of him and will not attack us."
"You think?" Usopp asked hopefully, and inched a few paces closer to their swordsman. "Keep it up then, Zoro! Just keep scowling and being scary and keeping them away, you're doing a great job!" Zoro merely grunted in reply and continued to scan the forest around them, although Nami severely doubted that he was trying to keep the Nightmare away, so much as trying to keep an eye out so it didn't get the jump on them.
They picked up the pace and made it to the village in record time, and nearly everyone breathed a sigh of relief as they stepped onto the first of the village streets. A few of the brilliant trees still grew here and there, and they had obviously crept closer to the outskirts of the little empty community without anybody to cut them back in the past centuries, but for the most part the village remained open to the sky. Early afternoon sunlight flooded the streets and the insides of the buildings through old rotted-out windows, and its warmth was comforting and relaxing on Nami's face. She could practically feel the vast majority of the tension in their small hunting team dissipate as they wandered the streets.
Robin was now in the lead as they searched for some sort of clue about Luffy's condition. The village was in such disrepair that Nami, Usopp, Sanji-kun and Zoro could make very little sense of the purposes for the buildings or the layouts of the streets, but to Robin it all seemed to be an open book, easy to decipher. Based on its location soundly in the middle of the forest, Robin estimated it had once been a hunting village, and after spotting a number of other broken-down roads leading into the place she guessed it was probably a stopover for people traveling across the island to trade or sell goods. It was definitely much larger than the fishing village, and had a sizable marketplace, or what Nami assumed was once a marketplace at any rate.
The others left the decoding and the searching to Robin (though Sanji-kun offered his assistance at least thirty times). Their archeologist would know what to look for better than any of them, after all. Nami and Usopp helped by pointing out things they thought might be useful, on the rare occasion that Robin didn't spot them, but the navigator also kept a passive eye out for Dreamshards as well. She hadn't thought about them much last night or that morning, after Luffy had been attacked and mysteriously made ill, but after Robin had mentioned this village was probably a mecca for trade it had made her think of all the wealth this place had probably accrued, and that reminded her of the gems.
Maybe it was a bit greedy of her to consider them at a time like this—Luffy was very sick, after all, and could be dying, and thinking of the jewels made her feel the tiniest bit guilty. But it was the reason they had come to Asteria in the first place after all, and Luffy would be extraordinarily disappointed with them if they didn't even have the adventure they'd set out for in the first place, or find the treasure they'd been hoping to come across. They were already out here searching for a cure for him anyway; there couldn't be any harm in picking up some old discarded gemstones worth a veritable fortune if they happened to be along the same path, right?
But she didn't see a hint of the valuable Dreamshards anywhere, or any other form of treasure, either. Whatever the reason was for the people disappearing from this island, one thing was definitely certain: they'd packed up everything of value and beat it out of there as quick as they could. The thought was a little disconcerting. What on earth could possibly make people disappear so completely? She had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach that it had something to do with the Nightmares, and that bad feeling only increased with Robin announced with quiet confusion some time later that there wasn't a hint of a body in the village, either.
"No bones, no fossilized remains, no clothing," the archeologist said, a puzzled look on her face. "It is most unusual. The fishing village we first found was much the same way. Even the small burial ground there had been dug up ages ago, and nothing at all remained." Which was definitely creepy as hell, and not something Nami particularly wanted to dwell on.
At last, however, Robin seemed to find what she was looking for. She led the way with unerring sureness to a large building at one end of the village, as close as it could get to what Nami was sure was the center of the island without actually leaving the village's confines. Robin explained that, based on what was left of the architecture, the building was probably a chapel or temple similar to the one she had found back in the first village.
"The Nightmares were mentioned in the first chapel as well," she said calmly. "From what I have observed so far, the religious and cultural beliefs on this island revolved strongly around the concept of dreams. If we are to find any information at all about these creatures, it will be in here."
The building was quite large, enough to accommodate at least half of the families that had probably lived in the village long ago. Despite its size it was surprisingly simple on the inside, and possessed only three rooms: a large main chamber, probably a gathering hall for the villagers, and two smaller rooms at the back, which Robin said were likely for the storage of religious or cultural items or lodgings for whoever cared for the building.
They explored the back rooms briefly, but the wooden furniture inside had long since rotted away and nothing else of interest remained in them, so they returned to the main hall. Here, Sanji-kun set out a quick late lunch with the supplies from their packs. They sat around perched carefully on pieces of broken-down stonework and old rubble that Robin deemed acceptable as seats, munching carefully in the relative safety of the temple. Zoro wolfed down his meal in six bites and moved back to the temple's only entrance and exit, sitting down squarely in the middle of it on a piece of rock he dragged over himself; he could still overhear the conversations of the rest of the crew, but no Nightmare would be getting through to them without getting past him first.
Robin finished her meal quickly as well before heading with brisk determination and obvious interest to the raised platform at one end of the gathering hall. There was a stone table on it, weathered looking and cracked in some places, but still sturdy overall. The table, as well as the wall behind it, were covered in strange figures and shapes that Nami could make heads nor tails of, but Robin's eyes flew over them with remarkable speed as she traced the carved shapes carefully with her fingers.
Ten minutes passed, fifteen, twenty, and Usopp finally asked while fidgeting uncomfortably, "Well, what does it say? Is there a cure?"
"Don't interrupt Robin-chan when she's busy!" Sanji-kun snarled at him with his usual love-sick venom, but there was a trace of anxiety in his voice too that usually wasn't present. So Sanji-kun was worried, too.
Usopp opened his mouth to argue back defensively, and Sanji-kun stomped on the ground in irritation before raising a leg for a spectacular kick. But before either could make a further sound Robin raised her arm and said softly, "If you would please calm down and be silent, it would be much appreciated. It is difficult to concentrate like this." Usopp's mouth closed with a stunned snap, and Sanji-kun lowered his leg slowly and carefully with a blink of surprise. Nami was shocked, too. Robin was always able to concentrate on her books throughout the loudest fights and arguments of Zoro's and Sanji-kun's, or through Luffy's, Usopp's and Chopper's wild antics on the decks of the Sunny, or through the enthusiastic screeching of Brook's violin when he played something exotic and not at all welcome. If she actually had to request silence, then whatever was on that wall was probably both challenging and relevant. Nami suppressed a pang of excitement and fear forcibly and set back to wait.
And wait they did, for another half hour, as Robin studied the broken stone in silence. And it really was silence, Nami noted, after the first ten minutes; pure silence, something almost foreign to her ever since she joined the Straw Hat crew. There was no noise at all. Inside the temple, the faint breeze that they'd felt for most of the day was blocked by the stone and couldn't be heard, and there was no chirping of birds, chattering of squirrels or chipmunks, or buzzing of insects. It was like the island was completely deserted, other than the beautiful red-gold forest, the terrifying Nightmare, and the crew of the Straw-Hat pirates. The silence abated somewhat when Robin summoned a few extra hands to draw a notebook, quill and inkwell out of her pack, and for a while the rustle of canvas and the scritch-scratch of quill on parchment was a comfort to keep the emptiness of the island at bay.
It was a good thing Luffy wasn't here, Nami thought with a sigh, after another fifteen minutes of anxious waiting passed, and the team sat around in varying states of boredom and anxiety. Their captain would be chomping at the bit to go find some sort of meat, monster, or new friend by now; he never had been good at waiting. But thinking of Luffy reminded her of why they were here again, and the condition of their captain, with his too-pale skin and the lifelessness in his body. Then Nami wished he suddenly was here, because it would mean all their problems were gone.
It was a very sobering thought.
At last Robin stepped back with a sigh and a quick shake of her head before returning to the rest of the team. Sanji-kun looked up at her with adoration as she returned and carefully stubbed out his sixth cigarette since they'd found the place, placing the butt with the rest of their swept-up trash so as not to abuse the ruins; they all knew how much Robin loathed that. Nami and Usopp watched her curiously, waiting, and even Zoro turned around at his chosen post long enough to raise an eyebrow, as though asking, well?
Robin sat down carefully in their small circle on a piece of rubble, and launched into her explanations without further waiting. "The scripts here are in poor repair, just as they were in the fishing village," she began. "Many of the characters have been partially or even completely obliterated. In addition, what does remain uses a curious dialect, which took more time than anticipated to translate. But I believe there is enough left here to work with."
"So what'd you find out?" Usopp asked, repeating his earlier question. "Is there a cure?"
"The recordings here say nothing at all about a cure," Robin said, and her usually calm expression betrayed the tiniest hint of frustration, only evident to those that knew her well. It was perfectly visible to every single one of them, which made them all uncomfortable. And what she had said...
"There's no cure at all?" Usopp yelped, looking anxious. "Is Luffy really gonna die of some Nightmare disease?"
Robin shook her head sharply. "I said these recordings say nothing about a cure," she said, with the delicate emphasis of someone accustomed to word games. "The information here neither supports nor denies the possibility of a solution to a Nightmare's attack. It barely mentions a victim of such an attack at all."
"So what does it say?" Zoro said grumpily from the door.
"Stories," Robin answered slowly, "Most of a similar vein to what Nami shared with us back on Adamantina, but there are a few minor differences. Or perhaps not so minor." She consulted the notebook, where she had scribbled a number of observations and translations in her neat, precise hand. "They seem almost like religious stories, or folklore of old, designed to teach. One mentions 'living nightmares,' creatures that reside in the world of dreams, but are able to pass between worlds in the dead of night. According to the writings on the altar, these living nightmares 'feed their heart-mind'—presumably meaning that they feed themselves; the characters are rendered unusually, making the translation awkward—they feed themselves on dreams, and revel in despair and fear. Another says that nightmares stand in direct opposition to dreams and so dislike them, which is why they consume them. Yet another story claims that if a man died suddenly in his sleep, or became so ill healers could not find a remedy, that the man's fears and sins made him weak in the world of dreams and he was taken by nightmares."
"These nightmares sound like demons or evil spirits," Usopp said timidly. "This place can't be haunted too, can it?"
Robin frowned. "Based on the dates, these stories are ancient, older than even the Void Century. It is more likely that the people simply succumbed to illnesses they did not know how to treat, but historically speaking it wasn't uncommon for people to develop religious reasons for the terrible things that happened to them. Since dreams are so intrinsic in their beliefs, placing the blame on evil things such as nightmares would be a logical conclusion."
"Robin-chan, you're positively brilliant," Sanji-kun offered with a sigh. "It's simply amazing how you can discover so much with so little!"
"But it didn't tell us anything but stories," Zoro said with a scowl. "Wasn't there anything useful?"
"Truth is often grounded in stories, Swordsman-san," Robin said quietly. "Though I do agree with you that these particular stories are inconclusive and possess more vague, suggestive mythos than they do fact. But that is just the altar. The wall behind it," she said, gesturing to the cracked stone of the back wall of the temple, "had more recordings that were not merely religious history."
The others perked up in interest, and Robin obligingly continued her explanation. "The wall seems to have been used as a recording for important religious events. The ascension of new priests, important predictions given by dream-oracles, and other such moments are all recorded here, across the full wall." She gestured with one hand in a sweep, then pointed to a specific spot on the wall, and continued, "But there...in that spot, the recorder mentions increased visits from the outside world—off of the island, presumably—and adds that only a decade after their arrival, an alarming increase in those 'taken by nightmares' began, and their dream-oracles started seeing more of the creatures." She frowned, and then said so softly it was almost impossible to hear, "This sudden change seems to have occurred directly in the middle of the Void Century."
As one, Nami's, Zoro's, Sanji-kun's, and Usopp's heads snapped up in surprise. "That's what you're looking for, isn't it, Robin-chan?" Sanji-kun asked, looking hopeful for her.
"Not precisely this," she said slowly. "The incident here seems too isolated to provide clues to the True History, and as far as I know there is no poneglyph here. But it certainly hints at a wide range of disturbances that occurred during that missing century. Something happened here during that time that should not have." Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"You said the people were 'taken by nightmares,' " Nami said slowly. "Does that still mean that they died of illness, or in their sleep, or whatever? Or did this nightmare sickness start appearing then? Did those...those things start appearing then too, to drag people off?"
Robin shook her head, and again, her frustration, though barely hinted at, still seemed plain as day to all of them. "I cannot say," the archaeologist said slowly. "The writings went on to describe the situation in more detail, I believe, but they were completely worn away or outright destroyed." She pointed at a huge gash in the wall, where the stone face seemed to have been almost completely scooped out, obliterating any trace of information.
Zoro swore under his breath, and Usopp clapped his head in his hands in frustration. "So we know where these things came from, maybe," the sniper groaned, "but it still doesn't tell us anything about how to beat them, or make Luffy get better!"
"No," Sanji-kun agreed grimly, "It doesn't. Oh—not that your work means anything less, Robin-chan!" He waved his hands placatingly, as though to reassure her that he meant no insult, even though Robin did not look particularly affronted at the agreement. "It's just that we're not really any closer to figuring out what happened. Maybe this thing ate Luffy's dream, whatever that means, although I don't see how. He was awake when he got attacked. And it's not like Luffy'd die if he lost one lousy dream, you can barely get him to go to sleep at night as it is sometimes when he's really excited."
The cook shook his head in exasperation, and Nami had to nod in agreement. Luffy was very much like an obstinate little kid sometimes, one that refused to go to bed when it was his bedtime no matter how exhausted he looked, or became too excited at the prospect of an upcoming adventure to work through his boatloads of energy and pass out. Luffy always enjoyed his waking hours more, and everyone knew it. While he could occasionally be caught sound asleep while fishing, or sprawled out on the deck for a rare snooze, Nami couldn't see how stealing one little dream would affect him that much. Not to the point of being so pale, and empty, and lifeless...no. That couldn't be it.
"I agree," Robin said. "Based on what was uncovered here alone, we have little information to use to save Luffy." She tapped her notebook with one finger, and added, "However, it does give us our next destination. The recordings mention that the outsiders frequented the city at the center of the island, as well as a much larger town east of our current location. The city, Oneirosa, contains the Temple of Dreams that the fishing village chapel also mentioned, and was reportedly a huge draw for the visitors. The village, Remia, sounds like it was the outsiders' chosen base of operations, because the dream-oracles frequented the location often." She looked up. "Either location could provide further information about these Nightmares, as well as a potential clue on how to defeat them, and heal our captain."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Zoro drawled from the doorway. He stood with a soft clack of sheathes. "We've had a chance to rest and eat, and we know where we're going. So let's go already." And, tightening one hand around the sheathe of the white sword, he strode out of the temple into the village.
"Zoro, wait," Usopp yelped, as he snatched up his pack and bag of ammunition. "That's the wrong way, you're going west, not east, come back!" And the sniper darted out the door after their wayward swordsman.
Nami and Robin bent to retrieve their packs and clean up the small mess made from their frugal meal. Sanji-kun wouldn't hear of it and insisted on cleaning up himself, packing up the trash until it could be properly disposed of back on the Sunny. Nami and Robin let him get on with it, and in a few moments the ruined temple was just as they had first found it. Robin nodded in satisfaction as they headed for the temple door, but before they could leave completely she turned one last time, gazed back at the glyph-encrusted wall, and frowned.
"What is it, Robin-chan?" Sanji-kun asked, looking back in confusion. "Is something wrong? Did you hear one of those Nightmares?" He looked around carefully, as did Nami, but neither of them spotted anything.
Robin shook her head. "Not at all, Cook-san," she said slowly. "I apologize for worrying you. There is just something else on my mind regarding the translation, is all..."
Nami exchanged confused looks with Sanji-kun, and they asked almost simultaneously, "What do you mean?"
Robin hesitated, and Nami could almost swear she was debating with herself in her own head, wondering whether or not she ought to elaborate. After a moment, however, she retrieved her notebook from her backpack again, sprouted extra arms to hold it and the inkwell, and held her quill hovering over the parchment.
"You must never tell anyone about what I am about to show you," she said quietly, but her voice was firm, leaving no room for debate. "Understanding the script linked to the poneglyphs is dangerous, as you already know. Even knowing one character of thousands would be grounds for the military to try and obliterate you. Do not ever give them that opportunity, you understand?"
"Robin-chan," Sanji-kun trilled delightedly, "It's wonderful to know you trust us so much to share this with us!" He looked enthusiastic, but at Robin's stern look he seemed to deflate, and said more seriously, "No, I mean it...it's good to know you know you can share such important things with us. And I promise I won't tell anybody, Robin-chan."
"Me too," Nami said, puzzled and a little frightened by Robin's serious warning, but curious all the same. "It'll be our secret."
"Very well," Robin said, and brought her quill to the top half of the blank page in her notebook. Her hand sketched quickly and with confidence, and within moments one of the strange glyphs had appeared in ink on the parchment, all squiggly lines and square edges that made no sense to Nami. "This is the glyph for 'dream,'" Robin explained carefully, tapping the page carefully with an extra digit. "It means visions seen at night, although sometimes it is interchangeable with illusions or day-visions as well."
"Okay," Nami said, after studying the sketch for a minute, leaning close enough to see it over Robin's current multitude of elbows. Sanji-kun was standing on the piece of rubble Zoro had been using as a seat earlier, in order to look over Robin's shoulder.
"But this," Robin continued, sketching on the bottom half of the page now, "is the glyph that keeps appearing in all these recordings...both here, and back in the fishing village." And just as quickly, a new glyph had been scribbled quickly but precisely below the first.
For a moment, Nami didn't notice much of a difference. The had the same squiggly lines and the same square edges in all approximately the same places, and Nami really couldn't see what was confusing Robin so badly. Then, after a few more moments of comparing the two, Nami started seeing the differences. They were subtle, almost nonexistent to the untrained eye, though they obviously stood out clear as day to Robin. A thicker squiggly line there than the first. A line tapering off into nonexistence earlier than in the first image. A slashing line that seemed to break through a few others, connecting lines where they did not connect before.
"At first I thought it was simply a mistake," Robin explained, as Nami and Sanji-kun gasped in surprise when they noticed the changes. "There were a few other cases in the writings of a difference in dialect, just slightly. They'd be the equivalent of spelling mistakes today, or different spellings for the same words across islands." She shook her head and tapped the second character again. "But this is different. The way the rest of the text refers to this character, I am convinced it is not a simple misspelling, and yet I have never seen this one before."
"So what does that mean?" Nami asked.
"I am not sure," Robin admitted with another slight shake of her head. "The character seems almost elevated. It still reads as 'dream,' I am sure, because it is juxtaposed so often against the word 'nightmare,' but...perhaps a dream, in this culture, means something else entirely." She frowned. "Whatever the case, I am sure it is related to whatever happened to Luffy."
Nami felt a little ill at that announcement, and Sanji-kun was frowning as he stepped off the chunk of rock and lit himself a new cigarette. Robin snapped her now-dry notebook shut and replaced it, the quill, and the inkwell once again into her backpack with her many hands, but she, too, was frowning.
They heard a call over in the distance, and spotted Usopp coming towards them, one hand hooked into the top of Zoro's haramaki as he dragged the swordsman back with an exasperated look on his face. "Sorry," the sniper called. "Zoro moves fast. He was already at the other side of the village when I caught him." Zoro scowled, but said nothing.
"Don't worry, Robin," Nami said encouragingly. "We've got a new village to head to, right? Maybe we'll find out more about...that...when we get there." The others reached them now, and as one they headed east, searching for the road that would lead them to the next village, Remia, and with any luck, answers as well.
"I hope so, Navigator-san," Robin said grimly, as she hoisted her pack more firmly on her shoulders. "I have a feeling we are all in much more danger than we initially thought, after reading that text."
If the island could unnerve even Robin, then Nami knew it was no good. They found the new road and set off down it grimly, alert and aware, plunging back into the sun-blocking forest within minutes. The navigator shuddered as she tried to banish the feeling that she was being watched by hundreds of shiny black eyes from the cool, dark shadows of the red-gold forest.
She wasn't very successful.
It was barely half an hour after Nami's exploration team left, when Luffy opened his eyes for the first time since last night's attack.
Chopper was with him at the time, rereading one of his medical books on poison by the sunlight streaming through one of the porthole windows, but at the soft sigh he looked up just in time to see Luffy's eyes snap open. It startled Chopper enough that he actually fell off his chair in surprise and crashed to the wood planking of the floor before he thought to check on Luffy's current state.
When he did finally recover, it was with enthusiasm. For a moment he was ready to bolt for the door, rip it open, and call excitedly to Franky (working on ship repairs) and Brook (enthusiastically helping in any way he could) that their captain was awake again and back to normal. He managed to stop himself long enough to calm down and give Luffy a quick examination first.
It was almost immediately apparent that Luffy wasn't better. If anything, it was more obvious than ever that he was getting worse.
In the sun streaming through the window, Luffy's skin looked paler than ever, and now possessed a grayish hue that hadn't been there before last night. Chopper had folded the blankets down to Luffy's waist since their captain didn't really need the warmth, and his exposed arms and face looked positively ghastly, like they belonged to a rubbery corpse. It was strange, because although he looked terrible, he wasn't exhibiting any other signs of physical or even mental distress. His breathing was still smooth and even, without a hitch, and there was no flush of fever or minute shivers from cold.
Their captain's eyes were still open, staring blankly at the ceiling. But his gaze was dull, noticed nothing around him, and the usual enthusiastic sparkle at the thought of adventure or meat or half a dozen other things was absent. There were vague shadows under his eyes, as though he hadn't been sleeping, even though it was the only thing he'd been doing since they brought him back from that Nightmare attack.
"Luffy?" Chopper asked tentatively. The captain didn't respond. He didn't even seem to hear his name being called. Frowning, the reindeer felt Luffy's forehead, checked his pulse, and looked at the four minute puncture wounds again. And when that still yielded no results at all, the little doctor frantically resorted to checking his ears, his reflexes, his blood pressure, and peeling back his eyelids to look closely at his eyes. No matter what he did, Luffy did not react; he was about as responsive as a corpse. It was a little frightening, to see Luffy so unaware. It was like he was cut off from all five senses, existing in a state of nothing.
He wasn't noticing his nakama. That wasn't normal.
He didn't demand his hat back, even though it was sitting right next to him on the desk, where Usopp had placed it last night. He didn't even look at it. That wasn't normal, either.
Panicking slightly now, Chopper drew another vial of blood from their captain for further study. Perhaps this was a new symptom for the mysterious nightmare illness, the poison that the strange spider-creature had to have injected Luffy with. Perhaps it was manifesting more clearly, now, and a blood sample would reveal the venom, and some way to treat it.
Chopper was afraid, but the change also offered him a new glimmer of hope, and he went to work with a will. The blood was placed with his test kit on the opposite side of the desk in moments, and the reindeer moved quickly to bandage the little spot of blood on Luffy's arm before returning to his tests.
When the gauze hit Luffy's pale, rubbery skin, the captain sighed softly and said, so low it was almost a whisper, "Can't...find...it..."
Chopper jumped again, and the gauze slipped. He chastised himself for making such an amateur mistake, especially around Luffy—their captain always talked in his sleep, after all, and he was well used to it by now. The fact that he hadn't expected it when Luffy was in such a creepy state was no excuse for messing up. Gritting his teeth, he went back to bandaging Luffy's arm where he'd drawn the blood, and asked carefully, "Can't find what, Luffy?"
Luffy didn't appear to hear the question. He hadn't moved at all, and was still staring straight up at the ceiling. Chopper waved a hoof over Luffy's face, cutting across his field of vision, and clicked his hooves together in an approximation of a snap. No response. Luffy's eyes didn't even track his movements.
"Must've been a fluke," Chopper said with a sigh. Well, he'd find out what was wrong once he studied that blood again. He hopped down from the cot Luffy lay on and moved over to his desk to start preparing the blood tests.
Then Luffy started again.
"Can't...find...it...gone. Can't...find...it...lost. Can't...find it. Gone. Can't find it...lost...Can't find it..." Over and over, in the same soft, barely audible whisper, without once blinking or breaking his staring gaze from the ceiling.
Chopper shivered. The whispering tone was so cold and emotionless; it was nothing at all like how Luffy was supposed to sound. The whispering chant continued nonstop, and Chopper clamped his hooves over his sensitive ears, starting to whimper quietly.
"Luffy, please stop it. Please. I don't like that, okay?"
"Can't find it...gone...can't find it...lost...stolen." The last word was a rasp, and as if grinding from one track to another, Luffy's whispering voice took up a new chant, faster and more insistent but no more emotional than his first. "Stolen, stolen, stolen, stolenstolenstolenstolen—"
"Luffy, stop it!" Chopper said more insistently. "You're scaring me!"
The chant cut off abruptly, and Luffy quieted, though he still remained staring blankly at the ceiling. Nothing apart from his lips had moved during the entire strange ranting. Hesitantly, Chopper lifted his hooves from his ears and flicked them upward, listening, but Luffy remained quiet and did not start speaking again.
Chopper shivered and climbed up onto his desk chair, glancing once more over at their still captain. Whatever was wrong with him, it was definitely getting worse. He had to find a cure for it. He had to. Because there was no way any of them could ever live with Luffy like this again...and he had to find some way to fix it.
He pulled his hat down firmly on his head in grim determination and set to work.
The village name 'Remia' comes from REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. Oneirosa's name stems from oneirology, the study of dreams.
I think you guys know the drill by now for if you decide to leave a review.
~VelkynKarma