Through a Canine's Eyes

Chapter 2

Slowly my eyes cracked open and I noted the stiff aching in my muscles and my pounding head. I realized just how foolish I was to not take care of my injuries before I fell asleep. Even if I was a canine now, I still could have done something to clean out my wounds. I recalled reading somewhere that a dog's saliva acts as an antiseptic, and it can kills the germs in wounds. That's why dogs lick their wounds. Well, that and their tongues are rough enough to dislodge anything in the wound like dirt or stones. It's how wild dogs and wolves tried to stop their wounds from becoming infected.

With a whimper I dragged myself woefully out of my den in the boxes, limping a bit due to the stiffness in my muscles. 'What a pain in the ass,' I thought, my ears dropping back against my skull to show my displeasure.

Once out of my little hidey-hole, I stretched my muscles, arching my back and stretching my legs to try and get the stiffness and cramps out. I then sat down, mentally sighing about how weird this would be. Hesitantly I began to lick the bite marks I could reach to try clean them out. I noted that my once light orange coloured coat had stains of blood through it, causing my nose to crinkle.

'Next thing on the list,' I thought, 'I need to have a bath. This place is near the sea right? So I should go for a swim in the salt water. Salt water is meant to be good for wounds,' I smiled in self-satisfaction about my plan, but my grin quickly faltered as another thought came to me. 'But how did I get here? What happens if somehow I now have the powers of a devil fruit? It's perfectly plausible, which would mean going near the salt water would not be a smart plan at all.'

Before now I had not been thinking too much on how I had gotten there. I had been concentrated on the there and now. With some time to finally stew on it whilst I was licking my wounds, I thought of several ways I could have got here. But, none of them made sense. It's like a bad dream, or one huge joke. But somehow, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was as real as I was and that I wasn't just going to wake up at home. The sense of loss then hit me like a ton of bricks.

'My family! I won't see them anytime soon. Oh Gods, how is mom going to cope?' Guilt was the next feeling to hit me, causing me to stop my cleaning and to lower my head dejectedly.

After several minutes of moping, I realized that it was the last thing I needed to be doing right now. I was never a person to get sad for long, or to have lots of self-pity. When something bad happened I focused on the positive, never dwelling on the negatives for long if at all. So why change my ways now? I need to suck it up, and see what was good in this situation. Like the fact that I am in an anime, I'd be lying if I said I'd never wished something like this would happen. Of course I could have thought of better places to go, but many people would kill to be in my situation, so I figured I needed to stop being a baby.

I must be here for a reason, right? Well I hoped so anyway, and since one of my first encounters here was with one of the main characters, I guess my reason here is to fit in with the main time line. And, if I'm not wrong, Zoro will be tied up for a while before Luffy came along to save him. Although, it wasn't exactly a willing escape to start with… What the hell am I meant to do in the meantime? Well, let's start with that bath. I had to figure out sooner or later if it's a devil fruit's powers that got me here. Might as well do it on my own terms rather than get thrown into the deep end in a critical time.

I followed my nose to the sea - a dog's sense of smell is amazing, so much stronger than a humans, so it was easy to find. I kept to back alleys and streets, shying away from people. For all I knew, Helmeppo could have put some sort of reward out for me, or may have people watching for me, so I better lay low for now.

When I finally made it to the sea I noticed that there were no beaches, the town was on a platform that kept the sea out, or it sort of looked like that. Over the side of the platform was the sea, just a straight drop. But, when I thought about it, it made sense, after all the boats need deep water to be able to dock anywhere.