Warnings: Blood, psychological horror/disturbing imagery

Disclaimer: Eiichiro Oda owns One Piece. I own my words, the plot, my ideas, and my OC Rose.

Danger Approaches

"I found you."

Luffy opened his eyes in horror. That voice – it was him. He turned around, eyes wide with shock. Those sickening gold eyes was a mere inch from his face.

Luffy yelped and fell back, stumbling over his own feet and onto his butt. He looked up again, but then gasped. He was gone.

"Did you really think that you could escape from me? I'm not stupid, you know. It's very easy – once you find that flaming vampire, you'll be right there."

Luffy's expression went from terrified to scared to enraged as he listened to the man.

"Leave Ace alone!"

The large man blinked before a malicious smirk came over his lips. He tossed his head back and let out a horrendous laugh. Luffy felt the very space he was in contort. He looked down at his hands, choking on a gasp when he saw they were twisting in unbelievable ways. His whole vision was twisting, as though he was being sucked into a swirling vortex. And with each tighter coil of his limbs, there was an accompanying frightening cackle.

Suddenly white flooded his vision and he was back to normal – for a split moment only. He had blinked, relieved, but when his eyes opened again he yelped. He was covered in red, some of it dried and itchy on his skin, but most of it was wet and dripping, gooey and sticking to his skin like a slug. And the stench of it let him now exactly what it was.

But why was he covered in red blood when his own blood was blue?

The sound of a drip echoed, and he saw red move in ripples from the white ground under him behind his hands. He kneeled down and reached his hand out to touch it and felt it slosh like water underneath his sticky palms. He stuck his hand in a little, and felt nothing else strange. When he brought his hand up, it was covered in a solid white, as though he had plastered the whole appendage.

Red rippled again, and it was only then he realized it didn't originate from him. It had come from behind him. Cautiously, he turned, eyes wide as he gulped in anticipation.

Luffy collapsed onto his butt as he stared.

It was Ace, but it wasn't his Ace. This Ace wore strange clothing, clothes he had never seen before. He looked beaten and broken, yet at the same time strangely satisfied as his red eyes glowed with pride as they roved over the dead body at his feet.

Luffy was not surprised by that, exactly. Ace was a vampire, his family was probably 90% vampires. What shocked him was the state that Ace was in. He was no stranger to bloodlust, but the pure animalistic glint in Ace's pupil-blown red irises was unfamiliar. He looked crazed, a twisted grin on his lips covered in reddened flesh not his own and the blood of the body under him. The man's head had been ripped clean off his body and had rolled a little ways away from it. Luffy could tell it was a vampire when he saw the glint of sharp white teeth over the curve of his cheek.

The scene was all the more startling because neither was moving, as though they were stuck in time. Yet it was accompanied by a deranged laugh, one that Luffy wanted to soothe away because Ace should never laugh like that, as though he had lost all hope in the world.

The scenery flickered a few times briefly, showing Luffy carnage and destruction among flames. It quickly returned to the white background, but Ace's eyes were darker, less human, and it made Luffy want to cry because Ace was upset, more than upset, and he wanted to destroy whatever made Ace mad, no, just destroy, destroy, des-

"No!" Luffy screamed, clutching his head in his hands as he curled his body into a ball. He heard a resounding 'tsk' and then there were several shadows of the same figure surrounding him in a circle.

"What? You don't like seeing what your big brother Ace really is? A monster?"

Luffy's head shot up, eyes glowering at as many of the silhouettes as he could. "Don't say stuff about my brother!"

A grin missing several teeth showed up on each "face". "What are you going to do to stop me? I can say anything I want about that selfish, blood lusting-"

Blue blood swirled out around, hitting all of the silhouettes and making them dissolve into black smoke. "Get out of my head, you smelly poop!" The child yelled, the spiral spiking out in all directions to try and hit the ghost if it was still there. Instead of the sound of pain, all Luffy got was another laugh.

Luffy's own shadow suddenly bubbled and exploded around him in a flurry of shapes, escaping the white below as though it was trying to capture the boy. Luffy yelped and his blue blood came in, attacking the shadows mercilessly as Luffy jumped out of it's grasp.

He didn't land on ground.

The white surface gave out beneath him and he crashed through it, splashing and rippling. Instead of meeting water, he began to fall, as if he was falling through the sky. Splatters of white hit his body, taking away all of it's color. Luffy tried to wipe it off but it was futile. Rubbing at it only caused it to spread thicker over his skin.

There was the sound of a boom and he looked down, eyes widening. There were clouds of gray smoke and hot orange flames beneath him, exploding upwards violently. He felt the gusts of it and he screamed as he fell into it, covering his face.

But nothing burned when he hit it.

His eyes opened, met with nothing but black. He was floating in the space, not falling, just still, but he didn't know what would happen if he moved. Still, he didn't care for that – he wanted out. He took a step forward and scenes began to flash before him. They were images of all his family, dying and turning, and killing, with deranged eyes and-

"Stop bringing my family into this!" Luffy yelled, head whipping around, searching for the man inside his head. He tried to block out the sounds of screaming, because hearing his family in pain hurt him. He couldn't help them here. He wanted to help them, but he had to get out.

"You really would accept them, even though they're monsters."

"You're more of a monster than them, gross beard!"

Luffy choked as he felt something grab at his neck, but he saw nothing. He tried to bring his hand up to grasp in front of him, but gasped when he realized the right appendage was gone.

"What, you thought that white shit was paint?"

The boy growled and brought up his incomplete left hand (where was his pinky finger?) and clawed at the air in front of him, somehow grasping an invisible appendage. He dug his nails into it and clawed hard. Nothing seemed to happen. Frustrated, he brought his hand up shakily and bit into it hard. Blue blood burst forth, attacking the invisible limb and painting the whole body it was attatched to a startling shade of blue. The man growled and stepped back, eyes glowering at the boy.

Luffy growled as he took a step back. He hated running, but this ghost was stronger than him…

He still wouldn't run.

Luffy screamed as he covered what was remaining of his body with the blood, filling in the holes with the rest of it. He created claws and launched himself at the ghost, slashing this way and that as the ghost dodged.

A kick from the side pulled a yelp from his throat as he was thrown several yards away. He opened his eyes after groaning and saw the man above him, about to bring his foot down on his face. Luffy gasped and quickly rolled out of the way, getting onto all fours and launching himself at the man with a leap.

The man screamed as Luffy clawed at his face. He stepped around in circles and thrashed, trying to throw the child off to no avail.

Suddenly everything disappeared. Luffy couldn't see himself anymore, but he felt a little safer now.

"This is not over," A voice, raspy and enraged, echoed inside his head, but just as the light of day overtook the depths of the dream, it erased all vestiges of the voice from the mind.

Luffy had to assume that the ghost had some control because he woke up atop of the lookout tower, standing on its very tip. Rose was standing farther down, a sword of blood in her hands and a cautious look on her face. Luffy thought that someone else was behind him. He was pretty sure it was Marco. Only his hair could make that shadow.

He realized that it was raining, which it had not been doing when he was awake. It had been sunny when he was awake.

"Luffy?" Rose asked, hands in front of her in a defensive position. The boy directed his gaze at her and stretched his lips into a wide, yet tired, grin.

"I'm home!"

AN: I'm alive. Hi…Sorry for such a long wait for an update on this story, I really didn't mean for this long of a wait, but some stuff happened in life and…yeah… I'll be replying to comments by PM for the last chapter. If you wish to contact me or see how the next chapter is coming along, you can find me at skrisas . tumblr . com (remove the spaces)

Thank you so much for reading this chapter, I truly appreciate it! :D