A/N:The story is starting to get a little darker here, mentions of torture and character death; if this offends anyone, than you best not read any more. It is starting to detail how the crew members died. Also I am sorry that this chapter is so short. Thank you for the reviews so far, Normal disclaimer applies, Eiichiro Oda owns the wonderful characters. I just want to give to give them a twist.
He was hot; the blankets were tangled up around him. It felt as if he were floating, not sure where he was, he tried to look around and saw nothing. Wondering if his eyes were open, he poked them and flinched as his finger made contact with the sides of his eye. The air caressed his heated skin and felt good to him.
With this thought in mind, he slowly realized that he could hear voices. They were indistinguishable to begin with; he could only make out a few words here and there, nothing important. It was the voices that had him a little shocked, they were familiar, and he wracked his brain to figure out who they were, to no avail.
"Luffy…" the voice said near his ear, it was a soothing voice, one that he was intimately familiar with, yet he couldn't place who it was.
"Wha…" his own voice seemed to penetrate the fog that was encompassing him.
"Luffy…" the voice seemed to be more urgent.
"What?" he was starting to see, only faintly at first.
"Luffy… help me…"This voice was different than the other, it sounded childlike and vulnerable.
"Who are you?" he looked around and saw a deer wearing the pink hat that Chopper had been wearing earlier.
"Help… me…" the voice was coming from the deer.
"Chopper?"
"Hel…" the voice faded as well as the image.
Once more Luffy was plunging into the fog of nothingness.
Panic engulfed him, and a whimper escaped from his mouth. He tried to reach for something, anything. All his hands encountered was air.
He felt alone, he didn't like this feeling, it didn't frighten him, it just made him feel miserable.
"Idiot…" this voice … to Luffy it was on the tip of his tongue, in fact he stuck his finger in his mouth and tried to swipe at his tongue to get the name off of it. "Do whatever…"
An image was forming before him, it was a little burry, yet he recognized the blond that was standing in front of him, a cigarette dangling in his mouth. "San…ji?" his voice seemed to echo back at him.
"Watch…" the blond demanded from him, indicating the view that was starting to form.
"No… I don't want to." He tried to look away.
This time the person in front of him morphed right before him, "Luffy…" it was now Zoro, "Just watch."
"Why?" he looked at what Zoro was pointing at, wishing he could refuse, yet unable or unwilling to look away.
The sky slowly turned blue and Luffy could even see the few clouds that dotted the landscape. People were milling about, in various forms of entertainment. Luffy saw himself, shocked he watched as he was listening to a story about something he couldn't quite hear from someone that looked a lot like Usopp. Sitting next to him, looking at Usopp with a dreamy expression was a small reindeer, he had a blue nose and the pink hat perched on his antlers that Luffy had seen earlier. In his heart he knew this was Chopper. A deep sadness tried to engulf him as he watched the three of them laughing and joking about something.
He wanted this moment to never end, yet as the three of them were laughing about something Zoro jumped down from where he had been perched, watching both his captain and the horizon. He was motioning towards the horizon behind them and he saw a massive ship with the Marines logo on the sail approaching.
"Don't look away." The phantom Zoro softly said in his ear, sending shivers down his spine and making his heart beat just a little faster. He could even feel the hot breath on the nape of his neck as his first mate spoke to him.
He was slightly confused as he realized that he had thought of Zoro as his first mate. Even as he thought that though, the memory was slipping his mind and fading like dust in the wind. All he could think about was the scene that was slowly unfolding before his eyes.
Within moments the other ship was upon them, hooking the two vessels together. It seemed that thousands of men were battling, slowly overcoming the few men and women that were friends of his. When a man touched the smaller ship, Luffy felt the despair hit him as it seemed to turn into molten lava. He could feel the heat radiating all around him, it felt as if he would spontaneously combust also. Recalling haunting images of a man's fist going through someone that he loved, the man's fist was lava. In his rational mind he knew that was near impossible, yet that thought stuck with him.
All his muscles seemed to ache as he tried to get to his different crewmembers. Now that he was observing it all, he realized that nothing he could have done would have saved them. He watched as Usopp, Nami, Chopper, Robin, Brook, Franky, Sanji, and finally Zoro were all overcome; some of them being chained with sea stone handcuffs, the others with heavy chains. All of them were unconscious as Luffy watched them being dragged onto the larger ship only to disappear into the hold. Down on the burning ship, he saw himself; it was odd looking down on the scene. He felt as if it was all an illusion, even when he was chained down with the sea stone handcuffs he thought that it was far from over.
They hauled his body onto the other ship as the lava fire engulfed the smaller ship, making it seem like a Valkyrie funeral pyre. The ship didn't sink right away, it swayed as all the fire consumed it; attesting to the excellent wood that the ship had been built with. Tears welled up in his eyes as the ship slowly lost the battle as the sun was sinking over the horizon, in stark contrast to the sunset.
Once more the fog seemed to engulf him. This time he didn't fight it as it slowly dissipated to reveal Brook, the skeleton man was singing, even though his bones were being torn off. Luffy could feel the tears well up behind his eyes, he knew he couldn't do anything about what was happening, yet it didn't stop him from wanting to do something.
Once more he watched as his skeleton friend died before both his past and present eyes. Screaming in agony as he felt the life that had been so close to him fade.
"Luffy…" it was the voice of Brook, "…stop it…"
Looking around him, all he could see was the fog, yet the voice had been clear as day.
Slowly he calmed down and the fog once more started to show images, these ones were somewhat blurry, he couldn't quite make out what they were. He did notice blue hair though and shooting star tattoos on someone's arms.
"…Super!" he faintly heard. The voice was strong, yet he could tell it was hiding a pain more intense then imaginable.
"Franky…" as he spoke, the image formed and it was Franky. He was strapped down on a table with all sorts of gadgets hooked up to him.
Luffy looked more closely and realized that he could see that the man was slowly being tortured. Not in any normal humane way, he was slowly having his skin peeled off and having molten metal pour down on top of it. Who was cruel enough to do this? Luffy wondered as he searched the room for anyone that looked familiar to him, to no avail.
His cyborg friend smiled as the skin was peeled off of his face, his clear blue eyes locked onto Luffy's and then they slowly closed from the pain. A single tear slid down from Luffy's eyes; absently the young boy licked it off his upper lip as the scene began to unfold in front of him. Someone had grabbed two coiled cables and hooked them to the man, one on each hand. A sickening smell emerged from the man, to Luffy it smelled a little like burning flesh, like the time he had tried to cook and had ended up burning the food. He knew what it was as Franky convulsed, his eyes opening once more.
As the electricity coursed through the cyborg's body, the small amount of flesh that was still attached to him looked like it was being seared alive, the cooled off metal that had been poured on him conducting the current to every part of the man. He wanted to look away, he felt as if he would be sick, yet something within the dying man's eyes kept him looking. A rage built up within him directed towards the ones that were causing his friends to suffer so much.
"It needed to be done…" a voice calmly said next to him.
"Why did they torture them?" Luffy wanted to know. "Why?"
"To make an example of them."
"Example to who?" Luffy looked around for the other person with him, only to see no one there. The fog was starting to envelop him once more.
He felt exhausted; all he wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep. Yet he knew that he was already asleep, and that he could not escape this fog or the images that were slowly surrounding him.
He wasn't sure what was happening as he watched another scene slowly emerge from the fog; it looked like an animal was chained up to a platform. As the image started to clear, he realized that it was Chopper.
He wasn't even prepared as an axe was swung severing the head off of the deer. Luckily he realized that at least Chopper didn't suffer like Brook or Franky.
Chaos was supreme on the floor that night; Paulie was just about to go for his coffee break when the screaming started. It was almost animalistic in its nature, sending chills down his spine. It echoed down the halls waking everyone up that had been asleep.
Iceberg came running down the hall, followed closely by Franky. The two of them had just been getting ready to leave for the night.
"Is it him?" Franky asked as they rushed past a still startled Paulie.
All the other man did was nod his head as they threw the door open to reveal a struggling teen that was in the throes of some unseen terror.
They both reached for the teen that fought savagely to not be touched.
"Luffy," it was Iceberg who was talking, "wake up. You need to wake up." He grabbed the teen and pulled him into his arms. The teen continued trying to fight against the larger man, punching and shoving as the two brothers tried to calm the youth.
The screaming slowly faded, to be replaced by a wailing that seemed to come from the boy's very soul.
"He's not going to wake up." Franky stated. "Why not throw him in the shower?"
"I shouldn't have given him that pill."
Down the hall doors were slowly opening and heads were poking out to glance in the direction of the noise.
"Get him into solitary now." Iceberg handed the restless youth that had caused a dark ring to form on his eye, to his brother. "And stay with him. Don't let him hurt himself."
"So he can hurt me huh?" Franky dryly commented as he took the boy.
"He won't do you much damage." Iceberg said as he guided them down the hall to where the solitary room was, he unlocked it while Luffy was thrashing against Franky trying in his nightmare mind to get free of him, "The most important thing right now is to get him in here so that the others can get back to sleep, and to keep him safe."
Franky hated this room, it was padded so the sound would not get out, it just had a drain in the corner for relieving oneself of bodily functions, the entire floor was padded too, to prevent anyone using any type of means for self-harm. "Can't we just leave him here?"
"And when he wakes up, he will freak out." Iceberg handed a cell phone to his brother, "it is better this way, just call me when he starts to wake up and then we will do another evaluation on him."
Franky was tempted to say that he should be the one to stay instead, after all it had been Iceberg that had given the troubled teen the sleeping pill, he only nodded his head though. He knew that Iceberg would have plenty to do trying to calm all the other patients down after this outburst.
His heart was calming down, he could once more feel as if he was floating and not being weighed down by something that he couldn't name.
Calmness settled in around him and as if in the distance he could hear voices, he was not concentrating on them though so it was just white sound. Up ahead was a figure, someone was standing there watching him. The more he tried to focus on it, the more his vision blurred.
Jumping up, he woke up as a loud voice commanded him to remember.
Looking around confused, he saw Franky leaning against a wall, his arms were crossed, and he looked like he was inches from death by lack of sleep. When he went to speak, he realized that his throat was more than a little irritated, and his mouth was bone dry.
Franky held up his hand and indicated that Luffy should keep quiet, "With all the screaming you did, you should let your voice have a chance to heal first." When Luffy looked around, trying to place where he was, Franky added; "I brought you in here last night to let the others get some sleep. Let me call Iceberg and we can get out of here."
Looking around, Luffy noticed they were in a padded room. Everything seemed to glow with the whiteness amidst the harsh fluorescent lights; it even hurt his eyes a little.
It was then that he noticed that his leg was stretched at an odd angle, it looked like it was jelly, it didn't hurt though and eyes going wide, he glanced over at Franky and saw that he too had noticed. The phone dropping out of his hands to land softly on the padded floor between the two of them.