Inheritance (One Piece Fanfic)

Revival

It was unusually cold inside the medical bay. Condensation fogged the windows and it seemed like frost was forming over the glass. This was odd considering the Sunny was docked at a summer island. Even at the peak of night it should never have gotten this cold.

Zoro's body was laid out still on the table, the room encompassed in dark excluding the small sliver of moonlight that cast across the empty space, courtesy of a porthole at the far side of the room. A band of light fell over the crisp clean twin cot and fell onto the hard wood floor of the medical bay, stopping just before the corpse. There was a sheet draped over the body, it had since stained through.

A pair of luminescent red eyes lit up the dark corner. They blinked once before seeming to glare over towards the corpse on the table. They widening slightly as the silhouette of a dark figure became more apparent. It stepped closer into the stream of light.

The figure revealed to be a man who was easily in his mid 20s and taller than an average person. Nothing about him seemed out of the ordinary other than his sudden appearance. His skin was faintly pale and muscular. He was dressed neatly in a loose black suit with a simple dark button up shirt with the first few buttons from his collar undone. His dress jacket hung open as he stepped into the light.

There displayed on his chest was strange amulet with a crest carved into it. His glowing red eyes faded to a natural gray and stopped glowing. His pupils were sharp like a cat's eye. His hair was silver and messy like it'd been groomed back with his fingers. It stuck up in the front with several untamable pieces that fell over his forehead. He was very handsome.

He approached the dead pirate with a steady pace his footsteps made no noise, every movement was completely silent.

The strange man stopped in front of the swordsman. He reached his hand out to reveal black painted nails, his middle finger baring a big silver ring with a strange looking insignia on it that was hard to distinguish from far away. Black coursed through the veins in his forearm and down through his wrist and to his fingertips.

He pinched the sheet covering the corpse, pulling it slowly before whipping it off in one swift movement. It furrowed onto the ground, revealing the man beneath.

Zoro's body was the text book definition of broken. His chest was bare and ashen instead of his usual tan complexion. His signature green waist band was tattered and stained. Blood oozed from of his wounds soaking every inch.

There were cuts everywhere from the small ones that were on his face and neck to the long lacerations that cascaded across his chest. The blood that has yet to be cleaned away instead dried and hardened into a flaky brown substance and stuck to the skin. His pale flesh was decorated in grimacing purple bruises from the heavy blows. Despite the worst of it all, where it seemed like a saw drilled holes in his body. The most prominent wound, being the stab in the center of his abdomen left as a parting gift.

Some still fresh blood ran down from the injury; with the cloth sheet no longer draped over to stop and soak it up, it instead pooled along his side on the table. With the swaying of the waves, the blood ran down in streams on the steel dripping over the edge of the table onto the floor. Despite the shape of his body, the look on his face was peaceful and calm.

The stranger looked over the man and fixed his cold eyes on his face. This was their first meeting. He kept an eye on him for years. He never expected it to be along these lines when he finally stumbled across home. He had no idea what he was.

"Such a pitiful state to be in," He spoke in a deeper voice then expected from a young man.

He fiddled with his cuffs and removed his jacket. He eyed the chair by the cot, draping it over its back. As he walked back to the body, rolling up his right sleeve cuffing it behind his elbow and flexed his fingers, cracking them.