Finally the last chapter. It's meant to be kind of abrupt, not trying to confuse anyone. Sequel idea is still up in the air at this point. Feedback appreciated!

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece

Warnings: Brief Language.


We walked together through the forest of the island's trees and back toward the beach. It was nearly lunchtime by now, and I knew this because the captain made it a point to remind Sanji every few seconds of the fact that he hadn't eaten in over two hours.

"Do I look like I have any food on me?" Sanji snapped after the fifth time this happened. "You'll just have to wait until we get back to the ship, alright?"

Luffy gave him a wide-eyed look, complete with a pitiful whimper, and I had to try very hard not to laugh at him. I did laugh when Zoro offered to give him one of the purple mushrooms and received a well-deserved clobbering from Nami.

"Don't touch those, you morons!" she shouted. "I would just bet they're poisonous."

"That's what I said," I told her. "For all the good it did, apparently."

Nami looked at me with pleading brown eyes as we reached the shoreline and spotted Robin and Chopper, standing on the other side of the narrow beach beside the rowboat and flanking a big pile of oddly shaped fruits. "Are you sure you don't just want to stay with us?" she asked. "I could use someone on my side some days, as Robin doesn't seem to care one way or the other."

"Yeah," I shrugged. "I'll think about it-"

"You will?" Luffy was nose-to-nose with me before I could finish my sentence. He had to tilt his chin down a little to look me in the eye, making the brim of his straw hat fall forward onto my head. "Are you serious? You're gonna stay?"

I had been thinking about it on the way into the forest with the swordsman, after coming to the conclusion that he wasn't quite as horrible as I had thought at first. I realized that Luffy had been right; if I couldn't remember who I was or where I was from, there didn't seem to be a lot of point trying so hard to search for a place that may or may not exist. Maybe I really was supposed to be in this world, after all.

Putting my hands on the captain's shoulders I pushed him back to a more comfortable distance. "I said I would think about it, Luffy," I reminded him. "I'm not going to stop looking, but for now staying with you seems to be fairly beneficial to my survival. Besides, you've kind of grown on me. Either that or I've already forgotten what normal people are actually like."

Luffy gave me the widest grin I had seen him wear yet, and bounded down to where the others had gathered around Robin's food source.

I moved to follow him, and froze at the edge of the tree line.

"Did you guys here that?" Luffy crowed. "The mermaid says she's gonna stay!" He turned back to me. "Hey," he called. "Come down here! Let's eat!"

I looked at his happy expression and the one mirrored by the doctor, at Nami and Robin's smiles and Sanji and Zoro's smirks. "I can't," I answered, frowning in confusion. "I can't move." And I couldn't. My feet seemed stuck to the earth, and I began to feel apprehensive as a tingling sensation started in the center of my chest.

Luffy's grin faded a bit. "What? Why not?"

"Renna? Are you okay?" Chopper was starting to look a little worried now.

"You're not gonna fall over again, are you?" Zoro asked. Despite his sarcastic words his brow was drawn down in concern.

The tingling began spreading, and I knew instinctively an without a doubt that I had seconds left with them. I opened my mouth to speak, to say goodbye, or to thank them, but I just couldn't. Distantly, I found myself wishing Ussop had come along. It was a shame I wouldn't be able to see him one last time. A serene sense of peace washed over me as the odd sensation reached my feet. I smiled.

"Sorry," I said, and fell backward as Luffy and Zoro began sprinting up the beach toward me.


I remember only vague images of what happened next.

I was on my living room floor, with two men in white uniform shirts looking down at me. They were saying something, but I couldn't understand them. Over the shoulder of one of the men I could see my roommate, her hand over her mouth and wispy blonde hair stuck to her cheeks. She was crying.

A sharp, lancing pain shot through my chest and I gasped for breath as something made of soft plastic was placed over my nose and mouth. My vision faded, and everything was in darkness again.


The light was intense. Why the hell was it so bright?

The smell was bad, too. A cross between floor polish and medicine. This was definitely not the ship's sick bay.

I took a deep breath and my chest gave a painful ache, as if I had been coughing harshly. I groaned in annoyance.

"You're awake?"

I opened my eyes at the sound of my roommate's voice and blinked through the sudden light. "Anna?" I asked. Turning my head I saw her sitting on a chair beside me. She appeared to be slightly more composed now. A quick look around told me we were in a hospital room. A woman in scrubs was on the other side of the room at a counter, her back to us.

Anna forced a small smile. "At least your not calling me Nami anymore," she sat back in the chair. "Must've been a pretty wild dream. You were thrashing around for awhile there."

A dream? Is that what it was? I frowned. "What happened? Why am I…?"

Anna pushed her hair behind one ear, grey eyes very serious. "I found you on the floor this morning," she explained. "You wouldn't wake up, so I called an ambulance." She dropped her gaze to the side of the bed. "They said your heart actually stopped, at one point."

"No wonder I feel like shit," I complained. I raised my arm to push my hair away from my neck, and discovered I was hooked to an IV. "Dammit."

"I called your parents," Anna continued. "They're coming down with your sisters. It's a pretty long drive, but they'll be here in an hour or so."

I wasn't really listening to her anymore. Staring up at the ceiling, I began to wonder if everything that had happened had in fact been nothing more than a dream created by my subconscious in a last-ditch effort to keep my brain functioning. I found the possibility surprisingly disappointing.

On a brighter note I finally remembered my name. How had I ever forgotten it?

"Hey," Anna caught my attention. She was frowning. "What happened to your arm?"

I looked down in confusion to where she was pointing, and saw a long, thin scar running down the inside of my forearm. "Don't know," I answered numbly, but my heart jumped at the sight of it. Not a dream, I thought, it couldn't have been. I put one hand over the scar and smiled. "Must've bumped it on something awhile ago," I said.

Anna studied me for a moment longer, then shrugged. "Anyway," she started. "They're going to keep you over night, just for observation. We'll go home tomorrow."

"That soon?" I raised my eyebrow at her.

"Yeah," she nodded. "Apparently the doctors can't find anything wrong with you. Nothing at all. You're completely healthy, apart from the fact that you almost died." She frowned again, turning her head away. "You're a mystery."

"Better than a mermaid, I guess," I mumbled.

Anna gave me a funny look. "What?"

"Nothing." I settled back on the pillow, still smiling. "Never mind."


After assuring my frantic family that I was alright and letting my hysterical sisters spend the next few days in our apartment, Anna and I did our best to continue on like nothing had happened, mostly because I insisted that we do just that.

When I was announced healthy enough to do so, I began exercising more than I ever had before. I walked to the local gym and back, taking the long way home on some occasions. It was strange, I thought, that before the 'incident' I had been living in my own little shell. Only my family and Anna had ever really made me comfortable. Now I made an effort to become more social, to put myself out there just a little more every day. That lasted an entire week. I took up bicycling, skating, baking, and anything else I could think of that might keep me occupied.

In the back of my mind I knew it was because I was lonely, despite the presence of Anna's everlasting energy. I missed them. All of them. In the span of a few days they had wound their way into my secure inner place and set up permanent residence.

Anna had pointed this out one day while we sat in a café near our apartment, watching the snow come down outside in large, fluttering flakes.

"You know," she had said, clutching her cup to warm her hands. "You're kind of different."

"You just figured that out?" I joked. I had a feeling I knew what she meant, but refused to admit it.

"No, I mean different than you were before," Anna had tipped her head to the side. "You've been acting funny, too."

"I'm fine," I had told her. "I've just decided to try new things, that's all."

"That's what I'm talking about. Since when do you exercise, anyway? You hate exercise." She had frowned at me thoughtfully. "And you've been a lot more calm lately, too."

"Is that so bad?" I had shrugged. "Besides, I was kind of a sissy, don't you think? I'm just trying to be a little stronger. Inside and out."

"I guess so," she had answered, obviously unconvinced with my reasoning.

She had kept quiet after that, but once in awhile I would catch her studying me out of the corner of her eye, always with a bemused expression.

A few months later I sat in my living room again, looking over Anna's collection of One Piece disks. I turned them over in my hands for a long time, tracing the animated faces of the people who had saved my life in more ways than one. I didn't remember them being animated. To me they had looked as real as anyone else, and it was confusing to think about it for too long.

I hadn't watched any of the disks since waking up in the hospital bed and made a split second decision to hold my own little marathon. It took several days and was nearly unbearable sometimes, but I had to know. In my mind the boy with the straw hat and his crew were more real, more alive, than anyone I had ever met.

Of course I never said any of this out loud. It was best to keep these things to myself, in case someone tried to commit me. I wasn't sure that I wouldn't deserve it, either.


It had been close to a year since those days on the Merry and I was just starting to let it go at that point, content to file it away as a kind of warped and involuntary vacation of sorts.

Announcing I was going for a walk to clear my head and waving to Anna, I left our apartment and headed down the street to a nearby park. It was nice out for being late fall, and I had opted for wearing a dark green sweater instead of my usual jacket. Anna hated that jacket, saying no one in their right mind would wear something with a big ugly panda head patch on the back of it. I was never offended by the comments, not being in my right mind to begin with.

I walked along the outside of the park in a kind of trance, watching a dark-haired boy in a red shirt playing with his friends near the trees.

I felt nothing. No warning whatsoever.

In a blinding flash of light I found myself on my back, eyes squeezed shut to block out the sudden brightness. I could feel grass underneath my fingers, sticking uncomfortably to the back of my sweater. I must have been dizzy, I realized, because the ground seemed to be rocking.

The light faded as quickly as it arrived and I released the breath I had been holding and opened my eyes cautiously.

This was not the park. The park did not have trees with trunks that massive. Or smooth… That was not a tree.

The fact was made even more blatantly obvious by the huge sails and ropes hanging high above the 'tree'. Another confusing bit of information was that while I was more than certain it had been late afternoon when I left for my walk, it was now completely dark. Tiny twinkling stars were visible just beyond the sails.

"Did you just…fall out of the mast?"

Now why did that voice sound so irritatingly familiar?

I tilted my head all the way back as a surly face appeared upside down above me. I momentarily forgot how to breath.

It was a man wearing something that looked like a long green robe that was open in the front, revealing a long line from shoulder to hip. His face, although scarred now and a little older looking, was instantly recognizable. He gazed down at me with one visible eye in obvious surprise. "What now?" he said. "Did you die again?"

I stared back at him for a long time before my voice decided to cooperate.

"Zoro?"


FIN