Coral of the Sea never leaves Monkey D. Luffy's side. He calls her sister, she calls her brother. He likes adventure, she fears blood.
As they embark on Luffy's mission to become King of the Pirates she searches for a life mission of her own.
OPLA ~...
The sterile room echoed with the sound of Coby's footsteps as he paced back and forth, glancing anxiously at Coral lying unconscious on the bed of the small clinic at Syrup Village. The doctor and nurses had just finished taking a blood sample from her, and as Coby watched the procedure, an uneasy feeling gnawed at him.
After the medical team left, Coby remained steadfast by Coral's side, the passing hours marked only by the soft hum of machinery. The doctor with the horns (that he observed, where actually part of his glasses frame) and that appeared constantly on a terrible mood, returned carrying a wooden board with the test results. Without much ceremony, he dropped it onto a nearby desk and left in a hurry with little explanation.
As the door closed behind him, leaving a gobsmacked Coby behind for his strange behavior, the young marine stood up and began to pace again.
The story Vice-Admiral Garp had drilled into them was that the girl accompanying the Straw Hat pirate was, in fact, a troubled missing girl whose family was searching for her. He even had showed Helmeppo and him a poster of her.
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At least he was certain the siblings were truly related by the shared last name. Yet, Coby desperately wanted to believe that it was for the best that she was with Luffy, that maybe there was more story to them that he knew. The siblings that had set him free from Alvida... The internal struggle weighed heavily on him.
The test results on the desk, a colorful array of medical jargon caught the corner of his eyes. In an attempt to forget his debacle, Coby walked towards them and read. Amidst the sea of technical terms, a side note made by the doctor himself was highlighted in bold black ink.
He was left perplexed.
"Salinity of about 4.5% = Sea water (?)" Confusion clouded Coby' eyes.
Could Coral have been drowning before? Adding a drowning scenario to the state he had found her in... The implications baffled him. Maybe her being with Luffy wasn't the best idea, specially remembering as plenty as he had learned of her in their short time together.
The girl was too kind, selfless to a fault and-- Heavens! -- didn't even know how to properly defend herself in a fight. Perhaps, she was also that he had suspected her of being: a bit cuckoo. And he was a Marine, he needed to do what was right. He needed to be one of the good ones.
His decision was halfway made by the time the doctor returned, expressing the need for a moment alone with Coral.
"Of course... I-I have an errand to run as well, anyway... so..." Coby said, concealing his true purpose. Leaving the room, Coby headed out of the clinic, and towards his superior.
What Coby didn't know then was that the note of the doctor wasn't about something the girl had drank, but rather that which ran through her veins which looked very much like blood but was anything but, something that had left Tick-Dum Ron as perplexed as him when he made the discovery. Something impossible which had led him to run home in search of his legendary Me No Tokei, carefully hidden under a fake board beneath his bed for years, and that urged him to use his own Devil Fruit ability to awaken the girl and later ask her:
