Chapter the Third- The Silence of the Answer-

His stomach has always amazed anyone who could bear watching him eat. Perhaps it was genetic, his brother suffered from the same problem. He was never full; no matter how much he ate he was always hungry again soon after.

And he has the uncanny ability to throw up on an empty stomach, he notes.
There is nothing left I just want it back why did this happen to me

He stumbles. His vision is giving out, and the whine of blood becomes a deafening drone in his ears. I just want my nakama back where is the One Piece why did this happen to me
His body seizes control from his brain without much of a struggle. Flesh creates flesh as his arms reach upwards in the cavern of caverns.
Arms creating flesh are like meat. meatmeatmeatmeat why did this happen to me
His fingers find a ledge cut into the rock. He looks straight up, half-consciously following his arms until he finds the ledge, a small hole making its way straight up through the ceiling of the Pirate King's treasury, one hundred feet up.
If there was no gravity I could go up it because Nami said I would float and meat meat meat meat why did this happen to me
His arms whine, begging to return to their owner. He is not sure if he should let them, for they acted on their own accord and arms that act without the brain interfering are not very nice. After some meditation on the subject, he decides that he likes meat and that he'll let his arms back.

His arms, however, are bastards who do not want to quietly return home. Instead, they pull his body up into the upside-down cave, rocketing him upwards through a tunnel that could only be man-made or devil-made; whichever one came first.
Or maybe Pirate-King-made I like meat why did this happen to me
His knotted hair catches on the side of the tunnel. Memories of a snowy country and a sick navigator are forced out of his head and tumble, shattering like memories do onto the gold a hundred feet below. He waves to them, unaware that he needs at least one hand to keep him from falling a hundred feet to anyone else's death.
Death
Death is near
I can join them
My nakama
I like meat
Why did this happen to me

He finally remembers that his hands need to keep him suspended, but his arms decide instead to let him fall as they shoot up into the tunnel, searching for the top of it and perhaps a way out of the God-forsaken treasury.

They find a ledge and ask politely for permission to rocket his body onto whatever waits at the top of the Devil-made tunnel at the top of a treasury at the edge of the world. He requests that his arms submit to him again, and they stubbornly agree for the time being.

Gomu
Gomu
No
Rocket

He shoots up, spinning in the vortex of wind around him. The tunnel is long but his speed is good and gravity can go screw itself. He finally reaches the end of the tunnel as his head slams into hard rock and he hears the sound of bells ringing. He laughs and falls to a platform below.

He is high up in the cave. The treasury was a hundred feet high and the tunnel at its ceiling was fifty feet long, so he is therefore a million feet up. That is pretty far, and Shanks once told him that if you went a million feet up you would hit your head on the sun. Peering up cautiously, Luffy convinces himself that the bedrock above his head will prevent his head from hitting the sun.
But
If the roof is rock
Then what is the light?

More treasure? No, treasure glints and stings your eyes. This light is soft and throws silver shadows on the walls of brown-toned bedrock, an unearthly glow.

He trips on a rock and falls to his feet, skidding foreword, tasting the sweet earth. His head bangs into something that is not stone. He groans, rubbing his head and faces a trunk.
A trunk?
A trunk of wood.
That's odd. Why would a tree grow in a cave?
There is a long pause as he slowly looks upwards into the branches of the tree, a cry building in his chest.


The tree.
The tree.
It is old; its bark is gnarled and creased like the face of an old woman. Old but comforting, as he rubs his face against it to numb the shock and fear of finding himself in the shade of the Devil's Tree.

Thirteen fruit sit in its branches at various stages of development. He knows this without counting; he had been told and retold that only thirteen grew at a time. The Devil's lucky number. He doesn't know what fruits they were; he had only seen one in his entire life, though he can guess that one of the less ripe ones was in fact his greatest asset and greatest curse, the Gomu Gomu no mi.

It is so real. Everything. The treasure and the cave and the hunger, he cannot wake up from this nightmare.

A fruit, ripe to the point unto which its branch could not support it, snaps off with a crack and falls onto his head. That is the last he feels of it; the Devil has taken it elsewhere for another victim to be cursed from his mighty seas.

He is starving and he is cursed. He makes up his mind without thinking much about the matter; reaching up into the branches with long arms for a fruit, any fruit, he doesn't care.

Let's search
For our dreams

And a-something something something

He finds one, trying to push the memories of its bitterness and disgusting texture. He cannot afford to think of that as he conjures of the taste of meat and hopes it overpowers the taste of cursed fruit.

Over the teeth
And past the gums
Look out, tummy
Here it…

Luffy/

Another voice in his head. Sighing, he discards the uneaten fruit and begins to follow it with a lack of anything better to do, without realizing he is walking straight into the strange and unearthly source of light.

Time fades away, but not from tiredness or hurt or hunger. Time fades away because, suddenly and without reason, time is irrelevant. Soon enough, hunger and pain are irrelevant as well and he walks with his grimy head tilted upwards. Further and further into the light until darkness is extraneous and all that exists is his tiny body and a wash of silver dye. And time passes for a long time.


His body and a wash of silver dye. Time goes on without him, but he is content to stay in the warm, murky air or whatever he is breathing. It has a strange chromatic taste, like the taste of black and white but not anything else. Out of the corner of his eye he observes a murky outline. A silver object in the silver light, what a silly thing. Unless, of course, the silver object is giving off the light which is currently suffocating him.

That is correct/

What a strange figment of the imagination. Objects cannot hear the thoughts of people.
Unless…

One step and one more step and then a run and a leap and oh my freaking God it can't be.

Welcome home, Luffy/

One Piece.


kanthia writes-
kanthia is so very sorry for this chapter. when she originally started writing Rafteru, she had lost her computer and all her writing and art to a virus, and her boyfriend contacted pneumonia for a second time and was hospitalized. what kanthia is trying to say is that she somehow got over all of that but now finds herself having to write angst without being sad or angsty herself.

durr.

you may notice that kanthia's writing style seems almost childish in this chapter. that's because this fic is told from inside Luffy's head, ne?