The white noise of Law's Polar Tang travelling deep beneath the water was loud, but peaceful enough for Sanji to sleep through.
To him, the feeling of floating never felt as real as it did right now, while he rested his body flat against the hospital bed, succumbing to the somnolence that he truly needed, if he wished to recover soon.
And while the skilled Cook set his worries aside for the rest of the night, his Captain was fighting to wake up from a bothersome nightmare that he couldn't escape from.
Droplets of sweat ran down his neck and stained the pillow beneath his head, as the obscure scenes began to clear up, giving Luffy a closer insight of what was happening in the ongoing nightmare.
There he was, standing in the middle of what he believed was a wastefully spacious room, wide enough to fit in an entire group of pirates, and dark enough to get completely lost within.
Gathering the strength to walk around it, Luffy used what little light was seeping into the room from a small window in the distance to inspect his surroundings.
"I... Feel weird. What is this place?"
He spoke to himself, sensing something was off about the atmosphere around him.
Striding down the room to make his way to the window, the boy's instincts told him to not go any further.
But getting the impression that his mind was deceiving him while he was under pressure, Luffy ignored the signs he was being given and reached the window.
Waving his hands around the window, the boy felt a set of thick curtains covering it, so he pushed them aside.
"What? Why is it... Bright all of a sudden? Is that the moon?"
He questioned, staring out of the closed window, witnessing a very unusual moon, tinted a shade of dark orange.
When his eyes came in contact with it, the color changed to a fiery shade of red, shining its light down to where Luffy was standing.
Moving his feet a few steps back, he was faced with the difficulty of moving freely, when his flip flops got stuck to the ground.
"W-what the heck is this?"
Using a brute force to lift his foot up and release it from the sticky residue that was practically sealed around the bottom of his sandals, fear settled into Luffy for a second when he realized that what he was standing on wasn't just any regular form of sticky liquid like melted caramel.
"Blood... There's so much of it! What is this place?!"
He shouted, feeling strangely perturbed and mystified.
"Luffy..."
Before running a further investigation, the Captain stopped when his ears started picking up on the sound of a familiar voice calling out to him.
The voice was slightly distorted, almost in an eerie way that sent chills down his spine, and left an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Following the voice from nearby, Luffy's feet sunk into an unidentified liquid that gave off a foul, almost intoxicating odor which took no time to invade his nasal cavity.
"Luffy......."
Being brought back to his senses, the young man made his way to the wispy voice again, walking slower than before, similar to the way someone would walk if their legs were tied up.
He wanted to walk faster, but he couldn't.
In the midst of his need to get a better glimpse of the place he was in, Luffy ran his hands across the nearest wall he could find.
Tracing the entire wall with his fingers, part of Luffy's uncertainty faded away when he successfully found a light switch.
Flicking it upwards, the room was still dark, due to the insufficient brightness within the light he just turned on, but thanks to the small amount of light it provided Luffy with, he didn't feel as lost and confused as he did before.
"....Zoro?"
~~~
