Elsie awoke by degrees. Is it morning already? She wondered, keeping her eyes shut. After a few seconds of silence as she listened for her alarm clock, Elsie shifted a little, intending to go back to sleep. However, as soon as she moved, pain shot through her body like wildfire and she couldn't help but gasp and open her eyes.
After the pain died down a little to a dull ache, Elsie felt calm enough to examine her surroundings. Everything was blurred, since she wasn't wearing her glasses, and she fully expected to see the yellow ceiling of her room above her. However, a completely foreign ceiling met her imperfect gaze, and she frowned. Squinting at it, she tried to think what ceiling it could be, but she honestly could not seem to place the plain wooden planks at all.
Quite suddenly, a large black blur that looked like a rabid dust bunny to Elsie's overactive imagination appeared some distance above her, nearly at the height of the ceiling. In the middle of the rabid dust bunny blur was the vague shape of a pale grinning face, vague enough for Elsie to take some time in deciphering what it really was, but precise enough for Elsie to realize that the rabid dust bunny was actually an overlarge afro hairstyle.
Elsie squinted up at the strange-looking person, trying to discern more features, other than the very sunken eyes, the skeletally small nose- wait a minute...!
The person opened his mouth and spoke in a loud, boisterous voice.
"Yohohoho! Chopper-san, wake up! Your patient is awake! Incidentally," Suddenly the boisterous voice was replaced by a quiet, polite, and deadly serious tone. "Young lady, would you show me your panties, please?"
Elsie started to scream.
She didn't have a great go at it, unfortunately. The effort it took her simply to belt out one long, loud, wordless shriek was surprising: And really, for one with at the very least bruised but equally likely broken ribs (not to mention one who had never had a good scream in over ten years) it was impressive that Elsie managed to continue the noise for as long as she did- a solid fifteen seconds in all.
After she'd had a little time to think things over, Elsie had to admit that she was a little impressed with herself by being able to scream at all. Feeling adrenaline pumping through her, Elsie sat up, ignoring the pain, and scooted over as far away as she could from the skeleton man, her mind still going too fast to process what exactly was happening to her or where she was. All she could really think was a desperate wish that she had her glasses on, which was, of course, futile.
"Brook!" Scolded a much younger-sounding and significantly less creepy voice, after Elsie had run out of steam. "You scared her! All I asked you to do was help me keep an eye on her so I could get some rest, and now she's scared!"
"Is she? I must have spent too much time around screaming fans to be able to tell the difference, yohoho! Ahem, pardon me, young lady." The freakishly tall skeleton-man stood up straight, doffed his wide-brimmed hat, and bowed in polite apology. Elsie felt dizzy and sick, though the general pain did seem to be taking a back seat at the moment.
She took another deep, shaking, and terrified breath, with every intention of resuming her scream, when a very small person, about the size of a toddler, hopped up on a stool at her bedside and began to examine her. Only this person was covered in light brown fur, had antlers, and a blue nose below his innocent doey eyes.
So instead of screaming, even though she still felt that it would do her quite a bit of good, Elsie quieted down and asked a question, her voice a little hoarse.
"Are you... Tony Tony Chopper?"
Chopper looked up, his eyes suddenly shining. "You know who I am?! How?"
Dumbly, Elsie nodded. "I've seen your wanted poster." She added lamely, by way of explanation. It wasn't untrue: she did, after all have a facsimile of Chopper's, as well as all the other strawhats' wanted posters taped up on her closet door. "But... I'm dreaming. I... I can't be here, I was going to Martin's..." Feeling strangely lucid, Elsie stopped talking and pinched her arm as hard as she could. "Ow!" she yelped involuntarily, then looked around. Still seeing Chopper and Brook, both looking on with slightly concerned bemusement, she frowned, and pinched herself again, producing the same result. A third, fourth, and fifth attempt yielded no change, and finally, Elsie had to try and face whatever it was she had gotten herself into. "How am I here, though?"
"You fell from the sky yesterday afternoon." Brook explained matter-of-factly.
"Yeah, and you were all hurt, so I patched you up." Chopper added helpfully.
"But how am I here?" Elsie asked again, as though giving extra weight to the last word would help the two pirates understand her meaning. "I don't live here. I live in Ohio, not on the Grand Line!" Elsie was getting upset, and as she did so, her earlier adrenaline faded, and all she was left with was searing pain. Chopper noticed, as was his job, and quickly pulled out a syringe filled with clear liquid.
"Don't worry;" he assured her, noticing Elsie's apprehensive stare, "It's just a painkiller. We're not going to hurt you."
"Thank you." Elsie whispered, knowing that she should feel terrified. She did, to an extent, don't read this wrong, but now that she was fully awake, her brain had started to function properly again, and she remembered that there were a lot worse places she could have ended up. Impel Down, for example. Or, equally as bad, Sabaody Archipelago, where she was certain that, in her current state, she'd either already be dead or picked up and sold to a slave shop for easy money by some dissolute pirate or another. Equally as unappealing were the prospects of being fished out of the sea by such characters as Eustass Kid or Trafalgar Law: both of whom had quite the reputations for being ruthless bastards (Kid especially) who most likely would not take as kindly to finding a random, near-death girl who didn't belong in their world to begin with as the good-hearted Strawhats.
Still, though, Elsie had to remind herself that Monkey D. Luffy and his crew were still pirates as well, and despite the kindness she'd apparently been shown while unconscious, Elsie knew she would do well to tread carefully. She hadn't been reading Treasure Island for nothing.
"Brook, can you go tell Luffy and everyone that Gianni-san has woken up? And that we'll meet in the lounge to talk?"
"It's 6:30; I'm not sure if anyone but Sanji-san will be up at this hour." Brook commented, but did as he was asked and left the sick bay accordingly.
Elsie watched the tall, colorful blur shut the door behind him before she thought to ask a rather pressing question.
"Uhm, Chopper-san," she said, playing it safe and using the honorifics she'd picked up by obsessively watching Japanese anime, "Have you seen my glasses? I can't see very well without them."
"Your glasses? Uh... they got broken. Usopp's working on them. He's our sniper, but he's really good at fixing things, too!"
A bit nonplussed at the unneeded explanation of who Usopp was, at least until she remembered about Sogeking's bounty, Elsie nodded. "I'll have to thank him."
"Yeah. Now, where's that wheelchair- ah, here it is! I can wheel you to the lounge in this!" Chopper said happily as he pulled out a folding wheelchair that looked oddly familiar. The feeling of familiarity didn't go away when she got out of the infirmary bed, and with Chopper's help, sat down.
"This is dad's post-chemo chair," Elsie muttered to herself, feeling ill at ease at the memory.
"What was that?" Chopper asked politely, but Elsie shook her head, feeling the painkillers that the doctor had administered finally begin to take effect.
"Nothing." Frowning, Elsie tried one more time to pinch herself. "Ow," she winced.