-1Sorry for the large gap of nothingness for how many months but I completely forgot about this story until just awhile ago. Anyway things like life and school are in the way so its no surprise for the lateness. So the boy that this story is based on completely broke my heart but that news is no use to you but that's over and done with. On the bright side, I'll keep going with this story even though that part of life has ended.
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Cai walked through the narrow corridors of the underground dungeon making the candles she passed flicker with the wind of her movements. Her face was downcast as the garments of her white dress flowed behind her in a eerie manner. She hummed a soft tune to herself as she made her way closer to her prisoner's cell, a devilish smile forming on her lips.
X
A loud cry rang through the small cell as Luffy woke up with the sharp pain from his back making him quickly roll onto his side. His eyes quickly scanned his surrounding only to see the same darkness that he was first welcomed with when he got to this hell hole. Luffy reached out to feel around for the wall and dragged his limp body to prop himself up with the soft jingle of chains echoing through the room. Carefully positioning himself off of his back, the boy tried to tend to his multiple injuries. It was bad enough that he already had unhealed wounds but now he had fresh ones to deal with and no friendly reindeer to heal them all. On the bright side, he was finally alone and had the time to take into account his condition and the predicament he had somehow found himself in.
"Eh?…all my old cuts opened up and are all sticky from dry blood," commented the boy as he began to take off the soiled bandages of his head, thigh and arms, "…these aren't my clothes….and why the hell am I in my boxers?!"
He sighed it off and lifted up his shirt to unwrap the bandages around his torso : bad idea. He forgot that they led around to his back and during the beating he had received, the whip had cut through the bandages and embedded pieces of them in the welts and stuck onto the dried blood on his skin. He bared his teeth as he forced himself to rip them off as quickly as possible from around his back. Breathing out in relief, he threw the successfully removed bandages into a pile. It hurt everywhere. He knew his ribs were broken from how hard it was for him to breath without any pain and he remembered his broken hand too but from head to toe he was covered in some injury that he knew would get infected if he stayed here.
' It doesn't matter as long as my nakama will come for me…Where are they? What's taking them so long?' he asked himself thinking about the whereabouts of his crew before he drifted back to sleep.
X
The large wooden door to his cell opened up as the candle above him lit lighting the whole room with its small flame. His three captors walked in but the boy did not stir despite the their entrance.
"I want his arms restrained for this visit" said Cai causing Doll and Gaije to approach the sleeping captain.
They roughly picked him off of the floor and unlocked the shackles on his wrist waking him up in the process. Hope evaded the boy as the two pulled him closer to the wall and locked his writs above his head from the chains dangling above him. Luffy shivered when Cai bent down to eye level with him, holding his head in place with her thumb and index finger squeezing his chin.
"Good morning sleepy head," Cai whispered through her fiendish smile, "looks like you had a good night." She ran her hand down his body and felt that his shirt was soaking up a lot of blood on his chest area. The woman stood up eyeing the pile of soiled bandages by Luffy and ordered Gaije to rip the shirt off. With out a word the man took out a dagger from a holster on his belt and made one swift slice straight down the middle of Luffy's shirt. Gaije stepped forward and ripped the rest of the cloth off of the bounded boy revealing the severe injuries from both their hands and from his previous battle. Doll giggled at the sight of both his body and, of course, the multiple wounds that pleased her vicious tastes.
"Oh no! It looks like your injuries are opening up again! Let me take a look at those." said Cai sarcastically.
Luffy sat half-naked in front of his captors wallowing in embarrassment and pain with his arms bound above him leaving him vulnerable. The immense blood loss was blurring his sight and clouding his mind while Cai once again bent down in front of him. She faced him forcing Luffy to focus on her empty sockets while she traced her finger over his gash making the boy flinch slightly from the contact. Her finger rested at the center of the gash while his unfazed gaze bore into her.
"I don't care what you do to me," Luffy said in a harsh voice, "my nakama will come for me."
Suddenly, Cai dug her nails into the wound ripping it wide open again. Twisting her nails to imbed her fingers farther into him she watched his face contort in anguish. Blood gushed out of the slash down his abdominal while he gritted his teeth trying to hold back his screams.
"You shouldn't have removed all those bandages," Cai said pulling her drenched hand out of the boy's body as she continued same process for the injuries on his arms and even his legs, "I'm not here to take care of you." The blood dripped from his arms onto his head - each droplet sliding down the strands of his bangs down his face- while the other wounds gushed out the crimson liquid in a steady stream down to the floor. His arms were released causing him to slump forward into the puddle of his own blood.
A rough material was forced over his head and around his neck. His dazed mind tried to comprehend what the thing could be as he felt it tighten around him. Luffy looked up to see Gaije holding a rope and was now proceeding to pull him along the floor. The rough material chafed his skin along with the sea-stone collar he already had on while he gasped for breathe from the ever constricting noose. Luffy grasped the rope around his neck trying to loosen it while Gaije pressed on behind the two girls. His clouded mind could not hear anything but only his eyes seemed to work, for he saw the girls move their mouths but didn't hear a single word. His body left a crimson trail while he was dragged on the ground, yet he was still wide awake, deprived of the luxury of unconsciousness and cursed to feel every part of his body cry out.
Gaije looked back at the young boy he was currently dragging on the floor. His small frame was shivering slightly as small clumps of dirt and tiny pebbles from the musty floor imbedded themselves into his large wounds. He eyed the collar around the boy's neck and the weak hand next to it trying to pull on the rope while his broken hand dragged on the floor. The boy looked up at him with desperate eyes still gasping for breath. Luffy could have sworn he saw compassion in the older man's eyes as he paused for one second to let him catch one breath without the knowledge of the girls. Just as suddenly as he stopped, Gaije continued on again turning quickly away from the thankful look on Luffy's face.
X
Nami stomped through the halls of the lower deck towards her room grumbling about what she had previously learned from Robin's book.
"Fallen Angels and Devil Fruit Users…What the hell! Stupid names, stupid girl taking Luffy, stupid Luffy for letting himself be taken away…" She rambled on and repeated herself over and over again while passing door after door until she came to a halt.
Before she realized it she had found her way to the infirmary outside instead of the girl's quarters and was now staring at the door reaching for the handle. She slowly pushed the door open and looked to the bed where her captain had lay that one morning. The sheets had brown blotches scattered everywhere from dried blood, since no one bothered to clean the room, in which Nami identified as the places where each of Luffy's limbs once laid. She slowly walked to the bed running her hands over the sheets before something caught her eye poking out from under the bed. She bent down and pulled out Luffy's straw-hat: the trade mark of one of the most wanted pirates alive, the only memento of his childhood that the crew understood, the most valuable treasure in his possession, and the item in which she looked to for comfort. Nami sat down with the hat in her lap turning it every so often examining the worn material. She remembered every time she had to mend it and the battles that went along with the damages. She remembered seeing his puppy eyes again as he waited for her to finish fixing it. She remembered his excited expression once she handed it back to him and her own feeling of happiness when she watched him run off.
"Why am I feeling this way?" she whispered to herself as she closed her eyes, "I'm getting so worked up over that idiot but I can't be…I mean he's just a friend." She placed the hat on her head and held on to the brim for awhile. "But when he was in here why was I so scared to see him hurt? And why did it feel like my heart was ripped out when he was in that bitch's arms and his eyes…" She noticed that she had tightened her grip on the hat, on the brink of tearing it apart, and quickly let go placing her balled up fists firmly in her lap. "Can I really be in love with him?"
The door opened slowly to reveal Robin standing in the doorway slightly smirking. 'Why is she always around when I'm doing something stupid' thought Nami, 'Can't I get any privacy?!'
"I'm sorry Navigator-san but I couldn't help notice hear a few things when I came here to clean this room."
"I bet, it just so happened that you wanted to clean the room the same day I came here - What a coincidence!" Multiple hands popped out from the sides of the bed that pulled the sheets off and folded them neatly before handing them to the older woman who then sat on the edge of the bed. With a flick of her wrist the arms disappeared as she looked over to Nami.
"There's no need for rude sarcasm I am not ridiculing you for your little problem. I'm just here to give you someone to talk to since I am the only other girl on this ship."
"What are you talking about, girl talk?" Nami asked in disbelief, "Don't you think we're a little too mature for that stuff?"
Robin stood up and made her way to the door. "If you don't want to talk about it it's up to you, Navigator-san; yet I just thought you would want to get it off your chest."
"Wait…you're right. It would be nice to get some of this our of my mind and out in the open." A long silence fell upon the next minute before the orange-haired girl looked up to the older woman before her for a second then back down to the floor. "I don't know why I care for him so much, why I'm feeling the way I feel when I think of him."
"Captain-san has an interesting way of attracting people to him but in a different way for each person." said the archeologist as she closed her eyes, "When I first rescued him from Crocodile's sand trap in the desert it was because I knew he was special in some way and that I NEEDED him to be alive." Nami looked up at the sound of the stressed word. "Luffy-san cares for everyone he comes in contact with, even his enemies, and because of that he was the first person to ever show me compassion since I was a child even though I was on Crocodile's side." Nami found it strange that Robin actually referred to their captain by his first name rather than his title like the rest of them. Then again, she would sometimes call Luffy by his name but only him which separated him from the rest of the crew in how they saw themselves in Robin's eyes. "I now feel a special bond with him and it has only grown stronger since the Water 7 incident." The older woman looked down at the other with a thoughtful smile still present on her lips. "Tell me Navigator-san, what did you feel when you first met Luffy-san?"
X
Nami jumped off the ship into one of the smaller lifeboats with a sack of loot over her shoulders. She had just successfully raided most of the treasure off of a pirate ship that belonged to the pirate, Alvida, and was making her getaway. The marines had just arrived and there were the sounds cannons shooting in the distance with explosions and splashes from missed shots filling the air around her. Just then, another small boat fell from above and created a huge splash next to her. She shielded her eyes from the droplets of saltwater flying through the air with her arm.
"Geez, who the hell?"
In the boat was another teenager with a younger boy with light purple hair and blue glasses. She peeked over her arm as the droplets died down around her and saw the raven-haired boy with a straw-hat held down on his head by his hand still braced for the impact with a huge grin plastered on his face. Her eyes widened when she looked in his eyes and he looked back into hers. For an instance, the smile he had on faded as she looked at her but reappeared in the next second when he turned again to the younger boy to prepare to sail away. She had an odd feeling inside of her as she watched him but dismissed the thought as she turned back to her bag of loot assuring herself that she will probably never see that boy again.
X
The intense light blinded his sensitive eyes due to the drastic change from the dark chambers he had spent the last 2 days, give or take. The rope around his neck was removed and he quickly took a huge breath of air. The renewed flow of oxygen cleared his senses as he once again gained his hearing and renewed his blurred vision. Luffy looked around the room he was in to see that it was a pure white with glass cabinets filled with various bottles and counters littered with tubes, powers, needles, and multiple vials of liquids. It almost seemed like a small sterile medical room. The ceiling was brightly lit by several white lights that bared down on him like multiple eyes showing with no remorse to his battered state. He turned away and looked over to the three people above him and saw Cai point her finger towards the back corner of the room behind him.
As Luffy surveyed the room from the floor he was roughly picked up and brought over to a lone metal chair screwed to the floor in the corner of the room. The chair had a long steel plate attached to the backrest with wrist clamps connected to the back of the plate and a contraption fixed to each of the front two legs of the chair. The moment he was placed in the chair Luffy's half-lidded eyes were jolted wide open from the freezing sensation or the cold metal coming in contact with his bare skin. Gaije bent down and forced Luffy's legs into the odd contraptions while Doll walked over to his side . When the man tightened the apparatus they began to constrict his lower leg and ankle with the metal loops, effectively restraining any movement in the boy's legs. Doll seized his arms and raised them up so that his elbows were bent on either side of his head and his wrists were firmly fastened by the clamps just above him behind the plate causing him to sit up straight against the chair.
"That's fine, now leave the room I want some time alone with him."
Gaije stood up and walked out of the room with Doll following close behind after she gave Luffy a quick wink and malicious smile. When the door closed behind the two Luffy's eyes darted over to where Cai was presently standing in the center of the room with her arms crossed and her absent eyes directed in his direction. Her white dress and pale skin blended in with the walls around her as if her body was part of the room. Only her black hair and eyes stood out in great contrast to her surroundings. She had no readable expression on her face that Luffy could read but he obviously knew that she wasn't going to give him a doctor's check-up.
"What the hell are you gonna do to me?" Luffy spat as he glared at the other.
The girl simply walked over to the cabinets and pulled out a medical mask and placed it on the table then took something else off the table before she made her way to the boy. "You have a lot of guts to yell at the one inflicting all these injuries on you when your whole body is open right now for abuse," Cai stated as she ran her finger down his cheek is a fashion of boredom. "All you Devil-fruit users are all the same, so prideful in themselves… but with pride comes ignorance."
Luffy's face screwed up into confusion as Cai spoke. "Huh? What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about what you all inflict on other people who are not like you: fear of pain and pain itself." She pulled out a long knife out from behind her back and waved it in front of his face. "Humans have a natural tendency to fear pain except for a select few such as your kind and especially you who runs into battle without a second thought. You are ignorant of pain because of what your powers grant you."
Luffy cocked his head to the side unable to sense the serious mood that surrounded him as usual. "What are you talking about I do that stuff for my nakama not for the fun of it."
"You can say what you want but I know that deep down all of you are the same," she said as she placed the tip of the knife just above his collar bone, "but now that you are basically human with that pretty collar around your neck you can feel every bit of this." With that she slowly pushed the knife into his body all the way until it hit the back of the chair. Luffy clenched his teeth behind his firmly shut lips once again not showing any signs of what she wanted him to feel and simply stared at her. She pulled out the knife just as slow as she put it in and let the blood pour from the wound. "Just as I thought, you still have so much fire and pride inside, that was to be expected."
She walked back over to the counter and began to feel through the contents on the table. "Well, it seems that physical torture doesn't hurt you that much seeing that no matter what we do you seem unfazed," Cai stated with her back still to him, "Yet, it's only been a couple of days so I'm sure that I will get you to break in no time." She took a test tube filled with a clear liquid and sealed with cork out from a test tube rack filled with the same liquid and began to put on the mask she had previously taken out. With her other hand she took an empty syringe and punctured the cork with the needle until the tip touched the liquid inside and proceeded to withdraw the liquid until the syringe was full. "Like I said before, I like that fire inside not only because it makes it that much more appealing see you break but because it's so attractive to my taste."
Luffy's eyes widened at the remark while Cai walked towards him with the syringe in her left hand while the other took off the mask and let it hang around her neck. She bent over him so that her face was half a foot away from his while her right hand brushed over his chest ignoring the gashes that her fingers went over and traced the lines of his tense muscles as the boy watched her hand move. She went down as far as his waist, to his relief, only to place her hand under his chin so that she could push his head up to reveal his eyes wide with shock. Her thumb brushed over his slightly parted lips before she softly placed her lips over his. Her hand moved to wrap behind his head grabbing a fistful of his hair forcing him deeper into the kiss until she broke away with a cruel smile.
"It's too bad I hate you."
She suddenly pulled his hair so that his head tilted to the right exposing his neck. Soon he felt the needle penetrating his skin and the sensation of the liquid flowing into his body just above the sea stone collar until she let go of his hair and took a step backwards.
"What was that?!"
"Hey, I thought you were cute so I just wanted to have a little fun that's all," giggled Cai through the mask she had put on again, "Besides it was a great distraction, right?"
"Not that! What did you put inside of me…."
He looked down at the floor feeling some sort of stinging in the back of his head that soon intensified and spread down his spine causing his back to arch out like there were a thousand needles penetrating his spine. He began to twist his body as he tried to break away from the restraints that bound his limbs and once again caused multiple wounds to bleed out adding to his anguish. Soon his eyelids felt like they were burning and his eyes were going to tear open and quickly shut them while his head fell forward. His heavy breathing was all that could be heard as he shook his head side to side until he was unable to fight the pain that embraced his body any longer. Luffy screamed as loud as he could and as long as he could to the ceiling until all his breath was let out and his head lolled forward when he finally fell unconscious again.
Cai smiled at the sound of his scream as she stepped forward to the limp body in front of her. She surveyed the boy by running her hands over his body to feel for areas of the sticky liquid. She felt the streams of blood running down his arms apparently from his nails digging into his palms, the blood from his old wounds… and the blood on his cheeks. She smiled to herself as she lifted his head. There was a small trail of blood falling from the boy's mouth down his chin and neck. His eyes were closed and relaxed but from between his eyelids there came a steady flow of blood that streamed down his face and dripped into his lap.
"Oh that? I just gave you a taste of what I had to grow up with everyday."
--
Throughout the school year I learned a few random writing techniques that I used in some areas and I'm pretty proud of that. Anyway, so whatever Cai gave Luffy will be further explained in the next chapter but just to tell you most of it's background came from a disease called Acute Hemorrhagic Conjunctivitis (AHS) but I'm not going to use all it's symptoms and I'm going to add some of my own symptoms. There might be a little LuffyxOC in the upcoming chapters but it's obviously going to be one-sided. Ok so sometimes I fail to make Cai sound blind and I'm trying to catch those mistakes but sometimes they slip out so don't give me shit about that please. I'll try to update sooner.