Chapter Text
Consciousness comes back to me like a bubble popping - or perhaps literally as a bubble popped, a blurry cloud of pink specks fluttering away from me to fuck knows where. The explosion jars me into a screaming freefall as salty air and blue blue blue expands endlessly around me. Flailing, trying to discern where up and down was, I scramble for some sense of stability, for direction-
SPLASH!
I’m shocked numb and limp as salt water engulfs me, stinging my eyes and nose as I foolishly gape, releasing precious air. I do yet another foolish thing and try to cling to common sense, to bridge what I was last doing to what is happening now because this is simply impossible!
I could hardly be blamed for such an idiot blunder, you see, as; 1) Normal, functional doors always led from one room to another. 2) I was, at the very least, an entire gods damned mile away from the nearest body of water, and 3) For fuck’s sake dude, I was going to the toilets!!
HOW DOES ONE GET FROM THE TOILETS OF THE CITY’S BIGGEST CONVENTION HALL TO THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING OCEAN WITHOUT REALIZING IT!?
JUST WHAT IN THE FRESH HELL IS GOING ON!?
Evidently not the toilets (although currently just as unpleasant as a public one), a drop dead gorgeous ocean spans endlessly around me, bobbing my splashing body in waves sitting squarely in the Baja Blast level of teals and blues. It was beautiful, endlessly impossible, and I was absolutely drowning in it.
Literally. I was drowning.
Well, kind of. The structure foam in my corny ass Cheeseburger backpack and Hot Dog duffel bag was actually keeping me somewhat afloat. Not for long, though, as those were also slowly becoming soaked and beginning to sink with me.
Not great, but a lot better than the regular backpacks I was thinking of using. Matching the proverbial drapes to the curtain of my cosplay is paying off in ways I couldn’t have possibly anticipated, but fuck if I wasn’t appreciating it right now!
Brighter side acknowledged, I tread water and try to calm the hell down. I’d read once that your buoyancy went up the fatter you were, so I was throwing prayers at the religion dart board that my own “extra layers” were doing their civic duty and keeping my ass alive just a bit longer, long enough for me to figure out what the fuck was going on and how to stop it from happening thank you very much.
But there was still no fucking land anywhere though..! These waves are starting to get a little bigger too! Fuck fuck fuck shit dick and piss- I need more time!! How the fuck do I get-!?
The literal slab of decorative metal hanging off my back flashed to the forefront of my mind. I could feel it, both in weight and presence.
("You seem like you’d better appreciate her more than I ever could... Do you want her?")
I hesitate for just a moment, shame and guilt curling nonsensically tight in my chest, before releasing the replica Master Sword I’d literally just been gifted into the terrifying abyss below me. She sinks like the metal trinket she was, swift and glinting - almost forlorn, in a way.
It’s bone-chilling, the deep blue darkness that swallows her. It’s also hard to look away from, a stomach-hollowing fear of what might lurk in it just out of sight reminding me of all those thalassophobia tiktoks I'd watched on the way to the convention. Yknow. Where there wasn't a vast ocean to be shitting my pants about!! The oddest desire to see a flicker of the silver, blue, and gold of her sheath is certainly not helping, either.
'come back' some irrational, almost dizzying little thought drifts through my mind, like a seductive hand along my jaw. I do not dive for her, though, primal fear and self-preservation far out-matching the weird stray thought. It's just so hard to look away..! I feel like if I blink or look away, then something's going to swim up and get my ass..!
I still do it eventually, though. I have to. Manually slowing my breathing and treading water carefully, I wrack my rattled brain for ideas and explanations, trying not to let regret and terror eat me alive.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry..!” I mutter nonsensically to myself. I really don’t have the time or means (let alone explanations) to be feeling so guilty right now - it’s just a fake sword from a sad-looking and equally creepy guy skulking behind Artist’s Alley..! I’m literally about to drown!!
It just doesn’t make sense, though! How could this have happened!? Why!?
Where the hell even am I!?
I float there for minutes that feel like hours, unsurely paddling in one direction before panicking and biting back the urge to scream because there’s just fucking nothing!! All around me there is just nothing nowhere - no land, no boats, no clouds, just the sun directly above me and endless fucking blue!!
I’m going to die out here.
I’m going to drown in a few hours, perhaps one or two if I’m more realistic. Abyss only knows what’s out here with me that might cut that time even shorter. I won’t get to say goodbye to Mom, Emi, and Mister Lieny, or even to all my other more distant half-siblings! I won’t get to hop on a discord call with my friends and fuck around playing games! I won’t get to pet and kiss the foreheads of my beloved Goober and Karanga.
I’m going to drown, impossibly and alone.
Spiraling into mental loops of lower and lower descent, I desperately try to keep my self from doing so physically. While I'm living up to my Multitasking Master title in also trying to figure out, well, fucking anything, really, I am miraculously (and, once again, impossibly!), scruffed like a particularly wet and pathetic cat.
With a startled yell and a bit of lethargic flailing, I’m hoisted backwards over the lip of a very small boat, tumbling ass over kettle in the world's worst backwards seal-slide. I sag in relief, legs hanging above my head as I sigh out a miserable groan. The fear and adrenaline of… Whatever the fuck just happened has my heart rabbiting almost painfully in my chest, thumping away in my ears like the base in a club I really wish I was at instead.
Considering that I hate alcohol, weirdly intimate social interactions, and overly loud and crowded places - this was saying something! And would make more sense!! It would be far more believable to get lost in a convention and end up at a random party or club rather than, y’know, the gods damned ocean!!
No sense in freaking out just yet, though. The freaking out can hold its fucking horses, high and dry over the water while I figure out what the fuck just happened and how to get back home. Or anywhere familiar, really. Let’s just… Calm down. Think.
“Ugh, fuck… “ Careful of my knee, I gingerly roll all the way forwards, my shaky hands gripping the edges of the boat as I right and stand myself up on wobbly legs. Dammit, I dropped my cane when I fell! There’s no way it survived a dip into the drink, that shit’s just as gone as that sweet ass replica Master Sword…
“... I think you just saved my life..!” I tell the blurry blob of mostly primary colors. Pulling my glasses off to clean them and swipe the water and loose hair off my face. “Thank you - sweet fuckin' Abyss, thank you so much..!”
“Shishishishi! S’no biggie!” The… teenager (that seems about right..?) says, his laugh a strange, almost hissing thing. His voice rasps a little, not quite mature just yet, but sounding like he still uses it loudly and frequently. “Where’d you even come from anyways? There’s no boats or land around in sight!”
“That would be somethin' I’d like to know, too…” I say wearily, slipping my glasses back on. They’re still wet, since I’m also still soaked, but now they’re also smudged, dammit! I take them back off with a huff and try squinting at him instead. I’ve got a change of clothes in my backpack, something’s bound to be a little more… dry… than…
I stop short with my hand half-way into my backpack, because apparently I don’t need to squint.
Both because he’s leaning really close towards me, openly curious, but also because my vision is somehow better without my glasses. Like, way better, which is… What the fuck??
With my skin prickling uncomfortably, I lean back and away from the equally confused young man, glancing at the barrels sitting behind him. They are perfectly visible. I could even take in the texture of the wood grain.
First: How? And Secondly; might I repeat and emphasize: WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?
Let’s… Also put that away for later? As well as my glasses. Because, y’know, I suddenly don’t need them! For some reason! Because fuck me and fuck reason I guess!
I plunge the floundering hysterical feeling that bubbles up my gut into the quickly growing “for later” box in my mind.
Blinking up at the young man, I take him in more critically. He’s boyishly pretty, and vaguely familiar… Short, dark tousled hair and tan skin, a big ass grin and a (probably) innocent curiosity shining in his wide, dark eyes despite the straw hat shading them. On his cheek, right on the edge of the hat’s shadow, is what’s probably a scar.
This collection of details for a face... Where have I-? No, no, now's not the time. I shouldn't trust my eyes right now...
“Eh? You don’t know either? Is it because you’re stupid or just ‘cause you forgot?” He asks, backing off a little but not losing that focused curiosity in the least. I quickly take in his red vest (or sleeveless shirt?), jorts, and sandals as he continues. That suspicious something, that suspicious wrongness, settles more snuggly in my gut. Getting called stupid doesn’t even register to me, what with how caught up in mounting dread and confusion I am.
“Your bags look real funny, too!” He comments with that raspy little giggle again, poking the burger and hot dog where they’d slipped off in my dumpy little roll. “They’re making me kinda hungry, though…” He adds, tongue peeking out from between his teeth as a dreamy look comes over his face. Still feeling immensely off-footed, I merely blink at him with wide eyes, frown flattened with incredulity as thoughts of an "elaborate bit" slowly devour themselves whole.
The way he speaks and moves… That laugh…
Really familiar… Impossible, though. Nonsensical. Just a series of crazy coincidences that are only technically, theoretically possible..! If you're loony enough to believe in some deeply haunting multiverse theory! Besides, there’s bound to be one fucker out there that looks and maybe kind of acts like a character from a prominent media.
It happens all the time! Fiction finds some modicum of basis in reality, after all! It’s not like dark hair, darker eyes, and vaguely Southeastern Asian 3rd world fashion is anything even remotely uncommon! I have grandparents, aunties, and uncles in the Philippines that dressed just like Luffy!
What’s actually crazy is that I of all people just so happened hit every astronomical percentile chance to meet someone who looks and maybe acts like a cartoon character... While somehow magically transporting to an ocean, no less..!
Pushing down a closed mouth scream and any ludicrous, non-zero chance thoughts about the statistical guarantees in a possibly-no-longer-theoretical infinite multiverse, I nod vaguely at the young man who’s slowly overlapping with a concept in the back of my mind. The thought of possibly (impossibly!!) already knowing his name is making a funny (bad), hysterical feeling bubble up inside my gut again, but that just gets shoved into the “for later” box, too.
“Yeah I’m… Kind of both. I dunno what just happened, but…” I swallow thickly, tasting salt and blood. I must’ve bit my tongue or my cheek at some point, but I don’t feel it. Or at least, not anymore. What happened between now and my efforts to find the toilets? I don't feel like I have to shit anymore, but is that just because I'm freaked out of my gods damned mind or because I just can't remember taking that shit? Has time passed? Has a lot of time passed!?
What happened to me!?
Another burst of uneasy confusion gets speared into the growing pit of ‘to be dealt with later’ problems. I’m going to be so busy later. Who am I kidding, I’m going to be so busy now.
“Last I remember I was at a-” Wait, do conventions exist here? What’s a good equivalent? Actually, wait, should I really be immediately lying!? It’s not like it’s criminal or outlandish..! “-convention,” I say, mentally squashing my panic down with extreme prejudice. Shit, it’s like a mental and emotional game of whack-a-mole in here.
I don’t want to lie, mostly because lying makes me feel bad, but also because if this guy is (like!) who I think he is, then it doesn’t really- yeah, there’s the blank expression of incomprehension.
“It’s a kind of… Festival. Don’t even worry about it,” I say, waving my hand in a dismissive, yet fervent manner. So, conventions don’t exist here. Probably. It’s not good to use such a small sample size for data. It's probably an especially bad idea when it comes to this guy. Probably-hopefully-Not-Luffy probably doesn’t know a lot of things that would even be normal and natural to this world (that is totally normal and my own, by the way, just making sure the universe understands this!!).
Probably-hopefully-Not-Luffy makes an ‘oh!’ face, tapping his fist to his palm. “You got super drunk and lost, then!”
… Well-
“I really doubt that- and I really hope I didn’t, cuz' I don't like alcohol…” I mumble with a troubled frown, swiping loose hairs away from my face again. I undo and redo my hair bun as a distraction, while the young man scrunches his face thoughtfully at me, hand to his chin and the other to his elbow. Fuck. They’re such similar expressions. Nail #i-don’t-know-anymore meet coffin.
“Hmmm… A mystery, then!” He decides, nodding decisively to himself and hammering yet another nail in the ‘this guy is absolutely who I fear he is’ coffin via Bouncy Boy mannerisms alone. Then he straightens up, props a fist on his hip, and holds out a hand to me.
“By the way- I’m Monkey D. Luffy! I’m gonna be King of the Pirates!” He says, as reality seems to coalesce into tangible, capital ‘T’ Truth around him. I suck in a breath at his words and sudden aura, heart rate spiking again as goosebumps roll across my shoulders and arms. Like a sick elk seeing death on the horizon, an odd sense of resigned acceptance foists itself upon my lap.
“Who’re you?” The impossible boy-man-god asks me.
I continue staring at the boy, making the herculean effort to not freak out and call him something like an overly committed cosplayer on instinct (sweet abyss I wish, but there is no plausible context or set up, there is no one to perform for but me- and fuck there’s literally nothing but us out here-!), and especially to not break into hysterics at the vast and not-optimal implications behind and in front of my being here, sopping wet and at the feet of a character I’ve adored for years at this point.
That internal scream is becoming loud.
“I’m…” I trail off faintly, tunneling vision slowly lowering to his outstretched hand. Breathing is starting to get a little hard, so I start manually doing it. Vision and sensation is starting to get a bit fuzzy around the edges, even, so I bite the inside of my cheek to ground myself some more.
My therapist is not gonna like how much disconnect and compartmentalizing I’ve been doing today… Or my methods of coping... But, gomenasorry Miss Joy, but your aptonymic ass can investigate my growing case for an Insanity diagnosis when you can figure out how to get me home, safe and sound of mind.
Monkey D. Luffy’s head tilts a little at my prolonged silence.
Right. Freak out later. Introduce yourself to an anime/manga character made real first.
...
… No one knows me here. That name doesn’t exist here, as far as I know. I’m not obligated to show ID, especially not to this guy, who doesn’t even know what an ID is. I’m not obligated to awkwardly go through the song and dance of “yeah, but I just go by this”, or to just smile and tamp down the hurt hurt hurt when my words get steam rolled or people just don’t care in that glossing, thoughtless sort of way.
I don’t have to wear her mask here.
I inhale.
I exhale.
“... I’m Aeon. And I’m also very lost… Can I catch a ride wichya for a while?”
“Sure! Shishishishi!”
“What about your favorite bug?”
“Hmm… I think bugs are super cool, but they freak me out in person. So like- super cool, but only from a distance, y’know? I think my favorite’s gotta be a tie between Spiders and Ants, though. I think it’s really cool how talented they both are. Both can make their own little houses and are very important to their lands, all for their own different reasons,”
Oh man…
“You’re right, that’s so awesome! Plus nobody’s said spiders before! Mines Beetles! The Hercules and Atlas Beetles are my favorite kind, though! They’re just- Mrphgh! So awesome!”
“That they are,” I agree placidly, pulling my wrung out shirt back on. Ah, much better. Moist clothing is uncomfortable, but it’s a lot better than the fully drenched of before. “They can get pretty big, and their horns remind me of weapons… Like-Like sumo wrestlers who wield polearms… Also, you can turn around now,”
It’s Luffy, so of course he’d get bored of just sitting in silence while I tried wringing the water out of my… everything, but I’d thought the ice breakers would be a slog. It always is with other people, either because they never actually wanted to do it in the first place, which I can understand, or… Well, I don’t really know.
… No. No, I do have an idea, but I don’t bother pulling such an unpleasant reality face up. I don't need to see and linger on it to know it. I’d rather face the guy open and eager for companionship, who reaches back as greedily as I’d learned to be afraid to be.
I just know that Luffy is genuine and enthusiastic with his words, eager to know the person he’ll be drifting with for seas knows how long (and I pretend that I don’t know, that I don’t know about the whirlpool coming up, or Alvida, or Koby, or Shells Town, or every other person and town coming up for him in the next 2-3 years).
I just know that he’s equally as tactile as I am (a scared, lost little animal desperate for comfort, for grounding and assurance that they are real, that anything is real anymore), reaching and grasping to swing our hands between our legs even as he lounges against the opposite side of the boat.
I just know that it’s easy to put myself away and drift a little, to pull all my existential terror and confusion and worry (as well as everything else, even the clinging chill of my wet clothes, of the strange texture of Luffy’s skin, of blood on my tongue and salt in my nose) out with me to watch myself nod and indulge the energetic boy.
“What’s your favorite food, Luffy?”
“MEAT!! I loooove all kinds of meat! Gator meat, tiger meat, fish, rabbit, birds, goats, bears! All of it! Any of it! What’s your favorite meat, Aeon?”
“That’s so based… And so scary… Uhm… I think I really like shellfish, like crabs, and lobsters, and shrimps- whatever’s available. They’re kinda rare and expensive where I’m from, though, so I usually just get fish. Or chicken… Oh yeah, you’ve had all sortsa meat, is it true that different meats can taste like chicken?”
And so we go on and on, for I don’t know how long. I blink and the haze and distance lessens enough for me to realize that the sun is setting. Great. Awesome. We could’ve been totally obliterated by a whirlpool and I wasn’t even paying attention.
I bite my tongue, trying to ground myself as Luffy fills the silence with an explanation on… Trees. Trees with good coverage. For sneaking. I have no idea when or how we got to this. It’s alright, though, the mounting pain in my previously numb tongue lets me zone back in more, pay attention better.
I shift my limbs for the first time in ages, my sore legs moving to stretch out a little (careful of the knee, always careful, I can’t afford to be useless) as I unclenched my hand from where it was locked around the collar of my jacket. I’d set the thing over the barrels at the back of the boat to dry, but it’d almost gotten blown away as soon as I did, leading to my staring at the indents of the collar in my palm.
I didn’t realize I’d been white knuckling it. I should be careful. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to replace it or repair it. What do I do if it wears out before… before I...
I don’t know if I’m ever going to go back. Wake up. Stop hallucinating. Whatever is going on. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t-
“-on..! Ooooooi - Aeon!” Luffy’s insistent calling jerks me back into my body.
“Ah, sorry, I was… thinkin',” I immediately tell him, blinking to focus on his pouty face, which has since found its way right next to me. Right up in my own face. I stiffen as I come back fully into my senses, as Luffy inspects me like the bugs we were talking about at… some point, I don’t know. I forgot.
(I don’t know if I can go home.)
I swallow thickly, flexing my hand and rolling my wrist under the weight of his dark-eyed gaze. I'm expecting the usual clicks and grinds that 15 years of art and writing has given me, so I find myself a little surprised at the lack of it. Disturbed, I instead move my hand to the big, rolling beads of my necklace (coral and lava rock, right from the home I don’t know how to see again, how to wake up to).
Completely oblivious, or perhaps completely aware of my troubled mind, given his bizarrely accurate intuition about people, Luffy seems to find whatever he was looking for. He nods sagely, scooting in closer as he reaches over and pulls my jacket over both our legs. “Aeon’s not feeling good - you’re tired! We should go to sleep!”
“Oh,” I breathe, not really surprised. A little self-conscious, though. “Uhm, I’m not really tired. I’m- I just kind of, uh, always have these,” I tell him, tumbling over my own words in my embarrassment as I gesture vaguely at my eyes - or more specifically, the Gucci ass eye bags I sport. Fuck, I don’t think I could sleep tonight even if I tried. I’m way too freaked out for that.
A part of me wonders if he was listening to me through the Voice of All Things. Part of me wonders what kind of tired he picked up on.
Regardless of whatever he observed of me, I find my protests ignored and wiggly arms stretching around my midsection (holy shit is that a lot freakier in person and fuck fuck fuck- it’s real it’s real he’s real! I don’t know how to go back, I don’t know how to wake up-!), pulling me flush against his side and further down into the little row boat.
Panicking and skin prickling with goosebumps, I instinctively lift my arms, letting Luffy use one as a pillow as he tucks his smaller body against me (younger, smaller, still a kid, fucking hell I forgot that he’s a kid, I need to look after him- no, all of them, for the longest time the crew is literally just a handful of poorly adjusted teenagers, how could I forget-?). Our knees bump together as his hat bangs into my cheek, slipping off to hang across the back of my arm.
I stay frozen like that for a moment, before slowly lowering both arms, stiff as a board and hyper aware of every point of contact. Luffy is warm against me, almost uncomfortably so since I also run warm myself, but I don’t move in fear of jostling him.
His skin has an odd texture that -who could have guessed?- reminded me of rubber, yet it didn’t have that tacky quality that would normally catch on fabric, on clothes, and pull in unpleasant ways. He’s also deceptively boney, lanky in the way most kids are when they have their first real growth spurt.
Blinking owlishly, I have only a moment to realize something before a raspy little snore greets my ears.
I have never once snuggled or slept beside someone in my entire thrice damned life.
I frown a little deeper, still wide-eyed and avoiding looking at Luffy directly, but I still don’t dare move, don’t dare disturb him. Better that at least one of us gets some sleep, after all...
… Am I actually that comfortable to sleep on, that he could fall asleep nigh instantaneously? There’s no way. I’m tense as fuck, and I’m pretty sure Luffy could fall asleep in any number of unconventional locations given his childhood and powers.
Clenching and unclenching my jaw, I force myself to relax, starting with my legs and going up. The goosebumps and hyper awareness don’t go away, and I doubt they ever will, so after a while of just staring at the darkening sky and wondering how fucked my back is gonna be in a couple hours, I hesitantly and very slowly reach for my back pocket.
It’s been burning a hole in my pocket for a little while now, ever since I realized that I might not go back, might not wake up, heavy and always present in my mind. I don’t even know what I’m expecting when I gently pull the device out, but it’s certainly not to find… Not my phone.
Just… a phone. The same model as my phone, sure, but definitely not my phone. The otterbox-like case that I'd certainly never had doesn’t even have a logo of some kind. I stare at it, dumbfounded. My blurry reflection stares back in the black glass, looking as haunted as I feel.
What.
Blinking blankly down at the unexpected, factory defaulted device, I press my trembling thumb against the power button.
There’s a tiny part of me, one that I’ve been suppressing this entire time, that expects this next part, but I am still made further lost by the discovery of the wifi, power, and service provider symbols being gone, by the bare bones apps and programs.
Vision blurring and hearing starting to ring, I turn it off and rest the shaking hand clenched around it on my lap. Breathing is becoming hard again, so I do it manually, trying to focus on each breath instead of what the discoveries about m… The device implies.
More illogical things. More impossible things. More fan fiction ass shenanigans that are going to put me in an even earlier grave than I was already heading for.
This is intentional, my arrival here. The work of higher beings. The work of my subconscious.
Why, though? Why me? Why here? Why now? Why can't I remember an encounter, if one ever happened? I am not anything useful or important, let alone anyone useful and important! I am a broken and dying thing. What could I possibly give? What could I give to these people, to this world, to whoever/whatever put me here?
Something is wanted of me, I am afraid to acknowledge this just as much as I know it to be true. Something is always wanted of the ones who befall such fates in the stories I’ve read. There are always prices to pay, consequences to deal with.
Entertainment. Fixing something. Finding something. Fueling something.
They were fun to read about, these stories about other people in other worlds, going to even further worlds.
Fun to think about.
That kind of thing was and would never be for me, though.
I wouldn’t be able to live in a world like this, not with how I am. I will die here, just like I would have, back home, although far faster and likely more gruesomely. Even this brief blip of my existence will change things, too. Molecules hitting molecules, breaths breathed, steps taken.
Butterflies and hurricanes, goes the saying.
I don’t know how to go back home. I don’t know how to wake up.
A glowing butterfly flutters daintily onto the figurehead of the row boat. I ignore it. This one more little thing on top of my pile of impossible things.
Ever paranoid of punishment, ever wary of consequences, the possible dangers of such a device existing within this world (of me existing within this world) flash across the back of my mind like ripples from a drop of water.
Electricity and the uses for it evidently do exist in this anachronistic world, but communications are still only limited to transponder snails, which have even worse limitations than even the first landlines of my world.
The World Government is very obviously an authoritarian government, run by and serving a select, very wealthy few.
Logical conclusion: Communications are controlled. Controlled and limited. There is power in the control and limits, and pretty much all of it sits within the World Government’s hands.
They will want this. They will want this tampered technology and not even know that it has been tampered with. Abyss only knows what they will do to me, thinking that I hold the secrets to it, to its creation and uses.
If anyone knows of what I know of this world, what would they think of me? What would they do to me? Who would they tell in turn?
Luffy snores a little louder, making me jolt.
Blessedly, he does not stir, but my blood goes cold and my heart races all the same. I just stare down at him, barely feeling his hair tickle my cheek and neck. I’m too swept up in how my vision and stomach churns, how my ears ring with an internal scream that's been echoing within me for over a decade, deafening for the first time in years as a typhoon of terrified indecision rages within me.
It feels like a swarm of butterflies, their fluttering wings ghosting and slicing in equal measure.
I don’t like lying. I lie often enough, to protect myself, to protect others, but I will always be bad at it, I will always feel bad in my flesh, in my stomach and chest. Floaty and chilled in my skin, jittery and terribly obvious if one cares enough to look.
What should I do? I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know-
I twitch, brought briefly back into focus, as the call I’d made doesn’t connect, cutting off with a few dull, muffled beeps.
11 misconnections.
My sister’s number is exactly as I remember, exactly one off from mine. We were always close like that, just slightly skewed off parallel to each other. Emi, dead ahead, Aeon, skewed just behind her.
I’m alone, I realize as I stare down at the 11 misconnections.
So very, very alone.
I don’t so much as wake up as I simply stop the long blink I’d found myself in.
I don’t remember the rest of the night. I just come back into myself, still in my dumbass Steven Universe cosplay, with the sun climbing the horizon and Luffy shoving a couple apples in my direction.
“Good morning… Luffy,” I hear myself say, my hesitation in saying his name going unnoticed as he rambles about how he lost his paddles to a sea monster yesterday. The apples feel like singular, tangible points of reality in my distant hands. They taste like nothing on my tongue. They feel like wet chalky clay between my teeth. I can barely hear the crunch over the buzzing in my ears.
… Wait.
My vaguely sore everything creaks a little as I lurch upwards, violently dragging myself back into my body as I frantically inspect the waters off bow side. That’s not buzzing.
It’s whooshing.
Whooshing water. A lot of it.
A lot of whooshing water going in big dangerous circles.
“L-Luffy..!” I call, needlessly, as he’s already curious about what I’d seen. I flap a hand in distress and point with the other. “Whirlpool..!”
“Oh, damn!” The boy of the hour says around one of his fruits, intrigued but completely unbothered. “It is a whirlpool!”
“Luffy! You just told me we don’t have any oars..!” I remind him in a desperate little hiss. He stares blankly at me for a moment, confused. Then he balks, panic washing over his face as he drops his half-eaten fruit and grips his head. “WE DON’T HAVE ANY OARS!!”
His panic makes my panic spike, so I immediately clamp down on it, shoving it down for the elusive 'later' like I have with everything I’ve felt since dropping from the sky. Eliminating the option to drown in my emotions leaves the only other thing I’m good at; completing tasks.
I don't have any tasks.
Make some tasks.
Grabbing the biggest of the two barrels, I dump its contents, pointing wordlessly but frantically at it, mute with terror and barely tethered sanity.
“Yeah! Good idea!” Luffy cheers, looking far less scared now. I dazedly hesitate to follow Luffy into the barrel for only a moment, mind flashing to my shitty fucking knee and how much this is gonna suck, before practicality decides that I’d be better disabled than dead (although the looming shadow I’ve been ignoring most of my life says what it always says; that I’d be better off as dead). Luffy’s… decently strong at this point, I could just hang back with Koby while he cleans house with Alvida’s crew.
If we even make it there. How much have I changed in just the few hours I’ve been here? With the weight of an entire other human being within the barrel, how far off course could we drift?
It’s a bit of a tight squeeze (“OW-! Dammit, Luffy! Feet down, not on me!” “Shishishishi, sorry!”), especially when I realize that I still have the fucking Hot Dog duffle bag and Cheeseburger backpack strapped to me (when did I put them back on again?), but Luffy’s squishy and I’m out of time to do anything about it. It’ll be fine- better even! It’s like bubble wrapping something precious or ceramic for a move..!
After Luffy twists the lid closed over us, I stuff the duffel bag between us and use the backpack to cushion our heads against the roof, teeth grit and heart hammering away as things immediately go to shit. As the boat creaks, breaks, then splinters outside, our barrel gets tossed around like bugs do when cats get their paws on them.
I bite back a scream as Luffy laughs, wondering how much oxygen we have and if I’ll still somehow get a concussion from this demented rollercoaster of a whirlpool. A dozen different ways this could end up entirely fucked strictly because of my existence present themselves in my mind like a shitty, panicky game of 52 pick-up: water park edition.
Each wildly vies for my attention, like terrible waves in the proverbial pool of potential dooms that I’d used in a metaphor a while ago was thrashed about on the back of a slipping baby deer. A slipping baby reindeer. With a blue nose. There’s water and potential and doom tossing and splashing about like the whirlpool we were just barely not drowning in.
Clinging desperately to the thought that Luffy survives this concussion-less and relatively unharmed isn’t enough to stop the stray elbow flying directly at my face, however. I’m not Luffy, after all.
I’m out before I can even channel my middle school bus driver to yell at him for intentionally bouncing when the barrel did.