Sea of Dreams Re: Transposition and Revelations

The room smelled like iron. That was my first thought as I woke up from my deep slumber. My second thought was, why did my mattress feel like a sheet of solid rock?

I slowly opened my eyes, happy to see that the bandages that had been wrapped around my skull were no longer there. That was just about the only good thing about this situation.

I looked around slowly, ignoring the throbbing in my skull as I took in the dingy clinic that I had suddenly found myself in. Though calling it a clinic was pushing it. I had seen more properly sanitized public bathrooms. The room was made entirely of stone, as if it had just been carved into the wall of a mountain. Supporting this idea were the wooden beams criss-crossing all across the ceiling, rotten and barely looking like they could hold themselves together, much less support hundreds of tons of rock and stone.

I was laying on a bed that felt like it was made of compacted straw, with a sheet thinner than any I had ever seen before covering my body, and as I tried to raise myself up to get a better look at myself, I was stopped almost immediately by the clinking chains attached to both of my wrists, keeping me bound to the bed.

I jerked on the chains, only to freeze as I caught sight of my wrists. They were thin and emaciated, almost… childlike?

As I stared down at myself in frozen shock, a voice broke through the groggy confusion, clinical and almost tired, “She's awake. Bring me my equipment.”

There was shuffling behind me and I tried to turn my head to see what was going on but couldn't quite manage it. After a moment, a masked face drifted into my vision, leaning towards me with a dead look in his eyes.

“Stay still please. Don't make this harder than it needs to be.” A gloved hand pressed against my forehead, fingers opening one of my eyes wide as a bright light shone directly in my retina.

After a moment it was taken away, and I was allowed to blink the spots out of my eyes as the sound of a pen scraping across a clipboard entered my ears, followed by a dull voice, “Pupils aren't dilated. Responses seem normal. Brain damage is probably, but not likely to be detrimental to her performance.”

“Wha-!” My words were cut off by hacking coughs the moment I tried to speak. My throat was drier than a desert and completely raw. Speaking was definitely a no go right now.

The doctor put a hand on my head, ignoring me coughing my lungs out, “Hmm… No overt deformities in the skull despite the earlier damage. Sudden brain death is unlikely.”

He backed away, saying something illegible, and another voice came into the mix as footsteps approached my bed, “Are you sure about that? Because she doesn't look like she's all there right now.”

The doctor mumbled something unintelligible and as he did, the man who spoke before leaned into my field of view, allowing me to get a good look at him.

He was youngish, with a strong jaw covered in a patchy beard and dark skin, but my mind didn't focus on any of that. Instead, I was left staring with confused recognition at the white cap sitting on his head with blue letters inscribed on its face. Marine.

I recognized the lettering and even the man's uniform, but I couldn't believe what my eyes were telling me. There was no possible way that entity sent me there, right? That would just be absurd.

“Where am I?” I asked the man through the pain in my throat, trying to figure out where I had been sent and praying that I was wrong.

My question went completely ignored as the doctor spoke again, “Alright, she's alive and awake. That means she's not my problem anymore. Get her out of here. She's on bed rest for the rest of the day and then back to work in the morning.”

He pulled out a key from somewhere and went about unlocking the chains keeping me bound to the bed. As the cuffs fell off of my wrists, a hand immediately grabbed onto my arm and hauled me upwards with incredible strength. I grunted and only their grip on my bicep kept me from falling face-first onto the floor as I was forcibly pulled off of the bed.

“Sure thing. I'll take care of it.” The man from before said as I got my feet underneath me. He looked down at me and scowled, jerking my arm hard enough to make me stumble, “Come on. Get moving.”

Knowing that making a snide remark probably wasn't in my best interest and honestly not even sure if I could do it anyway, I kept my mouth shut as I was forcibly led out of the clinic and out into the… cave? Huh.

I had never seen an actual mine before, but like most people, I had an image in my head that came to mind when I thought of the word. And though modern life had skewed said image quite a bit, I was cognizant enough to recognize this for what it was.

It wasn't a hollowed out tunnel with holes in the wall where special machinery had found deposits of valuable ore. Instead, it was much more akin to what one would see in a fantasized imagining of the setting. Massive wooden walkways extended high up in the cavern walls, upon which were dozens of ragged looking slaves with pickaxes. They slammed them against the stone with repetitive motions, as if they had done it a million times before. I couldn't tell what material they were mining for, but besides each of them was a small box holding chunks of off-white rock, clearly different from the stone around them.

As we walked, we passed several people who looked just as bad as I felt. They ranged from all ages, from children to elderly, and most of them were bruised and all of them were filthy.

I glanced to the side, staring at one of them who was laying on the stone floor, completely unmoving, and wondered where the hell that being had sent me.

Eventually, we came up on a row of small cells carved into the wall of the mine. They were bare and tiny, with only the bare essentials held within. It reminded me of those pictures I’d seen

We stopped in front of one cell in particular. This one looked like all of the others, with two thin straw mattresses covered in tiny, hole-riddled sheets and a bucket to shit in. Unlike all of the others though, this one was already occupied.

A girl around thirteen years old was curled up in one corner of the cell. She had navy blue hair and dead cyan eyes that stared off into space. Her spirit had clearly been broken.

She looked up as the guard opened the cell and pushed me inside, slamming the door shut behind me and walking off.

Our eyes met and there was a beat of silence, before her eyes widened and she gasped loudly, life returning to her all at once.

“Irana!” She yelled out the name as she stumbled to her feet, and it took me a moment to realize that she was referring to me. A moment that the girl used to close the distance between us and wrap her arms around me, squeezing the life out of me.

I winced in discomfort. Though the girl was rail thin underneath her ragged clothes, she somehow had quite a bit of strength in those tiny arms. The fact that I was just as small as she was probably didn't help things either.

Deciding that this was the perfect opportunity to figure out where I currently was, I looked down at the girl, taking a moment to observe her trembling shoulders and the way that she was clutching onto me like a lifeline, before hesitantly speaking up.

“I'm sorry but who are you?” I asked.

She froze, before slowly bending back to look at me. Her eyes were wide with surprise and hurt, “What are you talking about? It's me, Umi. Don't you remember?”

Feeling slightly awkward, I shook my head, “I don't. Sorry. I… the doctor said I have amnesia or something. I don't even remember my own name.”

That little white lie would hopefully make things go smoother. It wasn't like I could explain what was actually going on, and amnesia was a plausible reaction for someone with a shattered skull.

Umi stepped back, looking stunned, “You… don't remember me?”

I glanced at Umi and nearly grimaced at how pitiful her face looked. I wasn't sure who Irana had been before I hijacked her body but she and Umi must have been incredibly close. I hadn't seen someone look so devastated in my life, and I knew I only had a single moment before this girl broke down completely.

“Hey, look…” I said as softly as I could, placing a hand on her shoulder, “I’m sorry I don't remember you, but I need your help. I don't know where I am or even who I am, and I have a feeling this isn't really the best place to not know what's going on. I need you to fill me in. Can you do that for me?”

Umi sniffled trying to get ahold of herself, “I… I guess I can do that. What do you want to know?”

The next few hours were spent asking Uni questions which the girl tried her best to answer. Umi could barely hold it together as we talked, but managed to answer my questions to the best of her abilities as I was slowly enlightened on my situation.

The most obvious development and one that didn't even need that much clarification, was my new status in life. I was a slave. And so was Umi. And everyone else that I'd seen so far except for the guard and the doctor, though I honestly wasn't even sure about the latter.

Umi was captured three years ago, taken from an island of little renown other than its inhabitants’ fishing skills. I, on the other hand, had apparently been here for much longer. Apparently Irana wasn't very forthcoming with her origins, but by the time Umi arrived, she had already been here for two years.

As for where here was, well… it turned out that my fears had been well founded. Not only was I no longer in my original world, but the world I had found myself in was all too familiar to me.

One Piece. A world of pirates and adventure at least for the main cast. For practically anyone else, it was a world where you could get into a fight with a random joe on the street, only to discover that he could throw a cannonball hard enough that the cannon wasn't needed in the first place. A world of danger, where criminals practically ruled the lawless areas of the ocean where the World Government couldn't get to or simply couldn't be bothered to take care of.

According to Umi, the place we were currently in was a seastone mine. Those white stones that were being dug out of the wall were even more valuable than gold, all thanks to their mystical properties when it came to suppressing Devil Fruit abilities. This particular mine was owned by the World Nobles or Celestial Dragons, and they were apparently the ones who owned all of the slaves working here. Including me. And apparently I, or at least Irana, had grown sick of living under their boot.

The reason Umi had seemed so surprised and happy to see me come back was because she thought I was dead. It seemed that Irana had decided that she'd rather be six feet under than spend another day as a slave and had tried to commit suicide via the warden's wrath and had gotten a shattered skull for her troubles. I hadn't asked for a description of the incident, but judging by the haunted look on the girl's face, I probably didn't want to know.

So not only had I been dropped into One Piece, I had been shoved into the body of a twelve-year-old suicidal slave girl who had the misfortune of being brained by the warden of the mine. How wonderful.

I brought my hand up to my head, running it through my hair, “Jesus… This is so fucked up.”

Umi fidgeted, playing with her hands, “I'm sorry if I made you mad. I tried to answer your questions the best ai could but I don't-”

“You were fine, Umi. You helped a lot.” I sighed, closing my eyes and feeling the weight in them. I felt slightly dizzy, though whether that was from the revelations or the damage to my skull, I wasn't sure “Look, I need to lie down. We can pick this up later, alright?”

Umi nodded, “Okay. Um… can I…? Nevermind.”

I raised an eyebrow at her odd behavior but shrugged it off as I crawled into my cot, or at least the one I was pretty sure was mine given that Umi didn't say anything. The mattress felt awful underneath me, barely offering any protection from the lumpy stone floor and I sighed, trying in vain to get comfortable, before closing my eyes to go to sleep.

Less than a minute later though, they snapped open again as someone else crawled into my bed with me, and as I looked down I was met with a mouthful of blue hair as Umi buried her face into my chest. Confused and slightly wierded out, I opened my mouth, ready to tell the girl to get the fuck out of my bed, but I stopped as I noticed she was shaking slightly, trembling sobs barely muffled by my shirt.

It seemed she could only hold herself together for so long.

After a moment, I sighed, deciding to just leave her be. I wasn't completely heartless; there was no way I was going to kick a crying child out of bed just because she made me slightly uncomfortable. I adjusted my position on the mattress, making myself as comfortable as possible as I settled in to sleep.

As I slowly drifted away, pulled into dreamland by the steady clanging of pickaxes on stone and a warm body pressed against mine, I distantly recalled the words of that strange being, moments before he sent me away.

“You are one of the lucky few who get another chance, child. Be sure that you don’t waste it.”

Second chance… What a fucking joke.

~~~

One Piece was a fantastical world where anyone could become someone great with a sufficient amount of determination. It was the kind of world that people literally dreamed of being sent to, and I was sure that in any other circumstance, I would be one of those people. Not now though, and certainly not as a slave.

Though the Celestial Dragon's would never dare sully themselves by actually visiting the mine, their presence was definitely felt in the sheer lack of care we were treated with. To them, we were less than dirt and ground into it more often than not. Food was scarce and clean water was non-existent, but beatings were abundant. I found out quickly that the guards were just as bored being here as we were and more often than not we were their only means of entertainment.

I'd never broken a bone in my old life. By the end of the first week here, I had broken three.

As the weeks wore on, I came to terms with what my life would be in this new world. A constant toil for survival amidst the harsh conditions of the mine, amidst the pitiful rations and daily beatings the moment someone stepped out of line. The suffering that I had experienced in my old life could not compare to the feeling of my frail, twelve-year-old body being constantly broken down day after day. Exhaustion and pain became my constant companions, staying with me throughout the days and even nights as weeks turned into months and months turned into years.

Umi was the only good constant in my new life. She stayed by my side and helped me get adjusted to this hellish place, and I would admit to growing increasingly fond of her. She reminded me of Bianca in some ways, and just like with my sister, I wish I could be a better person for her. To show her I actually cared like the real Irana must have. But Irana was gone, and I was here instead.

As I grew older, my body began to fill with the first strong emotion that I had felt in nearly thirty years on earth. It pushed through the grey fog that filled me perpetually, beating against the wall of my soul every time I saw one of my fellow slaves fall to exhaustion and get taken away never to be seen again or simply give up and fall to the floor, refusing to rise no matter how hard we attempted to rouse them.

The emotion grew and grew, steadily replacing the apathy for existence that had been all I knew in my old life. And then one day, as I witnessed an old man get beaten to death for no other reason than he was working too slowly, I finally had a name for this forgotten emotion that seemed to consume my every waking moment. Rage.

And just like before, it would be a long time before I felt anything else.