Two Dreams, One Adventure

Visit From a Big Brother

Zoro was clingy to Luffy. He was fine with it, but Zoro wanted to be with him at all times. Luffy understood why. But he was distracted, too. He hadn't gotten any answers about Ace. What he was doing, where he was going. They'd left too suddenly. "What's wrong?" Zoro asked when he was training and Luffy was watching him sweat without a shirt on quite shamelessly.

"I didn't find out anything about what Ace was doing or where he was going," Luffy said with a frown. "And I can't smell him right now. He might not have gone to Alabasta after all." He was moping, hunched over. Zoro said going to Alabasta wasn't like a real road that was strict and compact. Ace could have gone to Alabasta but not in this area. "Still..."

Sanji came out with a chocolate lava cake with blood in the center. Luffy was surprised by it, but happy. He didn't ask why, but was grateful and ate it happily. Sanji didn't say a thing about it. Maybe because he was there when Luffy was really bad at the castle, near death. They were all kind of clingy. Kept asking how he felt.

Guilt was in him every time they asked. He'd scared them so much. A second time for the three boys. Besides Chopper, who was also clingy to Luffy. He wasn't used to being around so many humans, even if they were nice. He said Luffy didn't smell like a real human, so he was more comfortable to be around. The doctor was no longer bothered by the threatening aura Luffy unconsciously and unwillingly gave off.

Luffy was different, like he was, and that was comforting. Luffy wasn't upset about him being around, even if it annoyed Zoro. Luffy was distracted about Ace, truly. But it didn't stop him from eating too much and realizing too late. Five minutes after he found out he ate most of it (with Usopp and Chopper, too! Wasn't just him!), he was in a cell. "C'mon, let me out!" Luffy called as he was confined in a cage, scrunched up like a ball. Usopp had made the cage out of wood and sheet metal. The kind that they wouldn't use.

"No, you ate all of the food for the 8 of us on our way to Alabasta! You get to stay in time out!" Sanji shouted. Luffy whined that he wasn't a kid. "Adults know to not eat all the food and leave the rest hungry, idiot," Sanji said. "It's not the same for us. You have blood for spare, we don't!"

"But Usopp, Chopper and Carue ate some, too!"

"You traitor, Luffy!" Usopp shouted as Sanji focused his anger on them next. He turned and begged Nami for a fridge with a lock. Nami said that might be for the best. Luffy called out he was hungry from the cage.

Sanji refused, pissed at the boys for taking the food. Damn it.

That night, Luffy was released from the cage, and sat with the others as Vivi explained Crocodile's position in Alabasta more. Luffy was drinking a blood bag like a juice box, nobody really caring anymore. It was nice, feeling so accepted. He just didn't drink from Zoro in front of others. It was way too intimate to do around others.

"Crocodile is the hero of Alabasta?! Isn't he the villain here, though?" Nami said in confusion, saying what Luffy thought.

"In a way. The Seven Warlords work for the government in their own way. Crocodile pretends to behave so the government won't revoke his position. He's very strong, so he could take over Alabasta more directly, but he's doing it in the shadows so he doesn't get caught. At least, that's the conclusion I've come to. Though it also is probably because having the country turn on itself will do less work.

"He's hard to understand. It's hard to understand evil people," Vivi added. Luffy was in Zoro's lap and Chopper in his, regardless of the blood bag. Chopper was a doctor and had been around blood a lot. It was nothing new.

Sanji asked if anyone suspected him. Anyone that wasn't royalty. "No. I don't think so. He drives pirates off, protects the country from them. So everyone sees him as a hero."