To Home: (of an animal) to return by instinct to its territory after leaving it

"How the heck are you not hurt, bro?"

"I scattered like bones in the wind! Yohohohoho!"

Laughter was infectious, so Luffy couldn't help but chuckle. Robin smiled along as she pushed wet hair out of her face.

"Even so," she said, gathering everyone's attention, "how do we intend to get out of here?"

They'd fallen into this place. The beach of a new island had given out underneath their feet, making them fall into an underground lake—or through one, as it turned out. Seeing a large, standing pool of water above one's head was strange. Even if one had the ability to swim, the overwhelming heaviness looming above would make anyone nervous. Luffy was disappointed he couldn't see any fish from this angle.

Franky lifted his sunglasses, reaching out to poke a small glowing rock embedded in the water. "I guess this is what's keeping the water suspended?"

"It must be. I can feel some kind of spiritual power from the glowing parts," Brook said. He was serious, but he didn't sound worried about it, so Luffy was content to leave it at that. He knelt to pick at the weirdly colored pebbles and rocks embedded in the sandy floor, instead.

Robin hummed, skimming a finger between floating stones.

"I don't think I can just blast us back up," Franky said, "I don't have enough cola. I can't see any light from the top, so we're probably a long way down. Better find another way out than get stuck in the middle and drown."

Luffy couldn't feel the other half of his crew members with his Haki, either, but he was confident that the only people in danger were the ones with him. And they were with him, so obviously they would all be fine; they would find their way back together eventually. They always did. He started piling small stones together, the clacking bouncing off each other in the quiet. The pile was lopsided.

People rarely understood his crew and how they fit together. His crew had a lot of leeway compared to most out on the seas, even among other pirate crews. They worked together well, but they weren't a team. Teams were rigid and organized, like the Marines. Luffy's crew was like the ocean itself, wild and chaotic yet a functional and cohesive, living, breathing thing. The only real crime in this world was trying to restrain it.

Luffy cupped his hands, scooping up his stack of dirty, rounded stones. His crewmates looked at him curiously, but Luffy picked one out of the pile and cocked his arm back, bracing his legs. He wound his arm from the shoulder down, twisting it into a tight coil.

"Gum-Gum-" he said, pausing, trying to come up with a name, "WINDMILL!"

His arm unraveled, spiraling, flinging the rock at the ceiling. As his hand came down, he grabbed a new one, letting his spinning arm become a rapid-fire slingshot. The rocks bounced off the ceiling, ricocheting in every direction.

The water didn't even ripple when he was done.

"Could you give us a little warning?" Franky said, stepping out of Robin and Brook's way. His metal body was perfect for shielding his crew from little things like rocks.

"You're all fine," Luffy said. His crew was competent enough, and knew him well enough, to not need warnings.

"Perhaps we would be better off looking down than up?" suggested Brook.

"Digging through the sand would be a bad idea. It would almost certainly cave in and suffocate us all," Robin replied. "Sand isn't sturdy. A wall would be our best bet."

They unanimously swiveled their heads around, darkness stretching in every direction. The only sound to be heard, except for their own breathing, was the soft, distant murmur of water flowing back and forth.

"Can't go up, can't go down…" said Franky. "Can't even look around. Let's just pick a direction."

Setting off in a light jog, Luffy decided he was going to head the direction of the water noise. Silently, his crew followed.

Blindly stomping across wet sand was an endless trek, made worse by how there was no indication of time passing. Eventually, Brook got bored and pulled out his violin. Declaring the oppressive atmosphere familiar yet inspiring, he began to play a slow, haunting tune that raise goosebumps on Luffy's bare arms. As Brook became more invested in his song, a thin layer of frost crackled across the water above them, radiating from the glowing rocks like translucent lily pads.

"Are you doing this on purpose, Brook?" Robin asked.

"I'm afraid not. It is a novel sight, though, isn't it! Perhaps this song will be titled, 'When the Sky Becomes Ice!'"

They paused, watching the frost expand until it ran into itself, covering the water above them with a thin skin. The light diffused through the murky ice, making the ceiling glow like a fluorescent light. Behind it, something writhed and formed, casting a shadow over Luffy and his crewmates.

"You seein' this?" Franky asked, flipping his wrist downward to reveal a gun barrel. He pointed it at the mysterious creature. "Wanna bet this thing is the reason we're here?"

Luffy pressed his hat down against his head.

The creature in the water floated toward them slowly, placing a webbed hand against the ice to stop its momentum. With its other hand, it used a clawed finger to carefully scratch intricate symbols into the barrier. It wrote boustrophedon, writing left to right before jerking its hand straight down to write right to left and back again. Though scratch marks didn't lend themselves to intricate, curved motions, the figure nonetheless managed to create a very rounded set of glyphs, as if it had written with a brush instead.

"Oh!" Robin said, stepping forward, "There's someone that still uses this?"

"Poneglyphs?" Brook asked. His playing slowed, quieter and on edge.

"No," she said, "though similar. An obscure writing system known as Lonko-Lonko was used by an ancient fishman society and is only known to write their own language."

The figure, seemingly oblivious to the people beneath it, finished the last glyph with a flourish, and its form scattered like a school of fish, fleeing in every direction and disappearing into the dark. The final note of Brook's song trailed off, evaporating into nothing.

The ice groaned.

"That's it?" Luffy said.

"Give me a moment to translate this," said Robin.

They had nowhere to go, so Luffy flopped onto his back in the chilly sand. Franky, with a marginally larger amount of grace, sat cross-legged next to him, allowing Brook to lean on Franky's massive shoulder.

With his eyes closed, Luffy could hear the slightest cracking and groaning of the ice above them. It was strained, which didn't make much sense since the ice wasn't holding anything up. The water floated. But there was no sound from within the water either, which was unnatural. Even tiny puddles had a bright, clear sound to them, temporary as it was, like a sparrow's song.

"Brook," Luffy said, "play that song again. I wanna hear it."

Brook's afro bounced as his head snapped up, full of more life than the man it was attached to. "If our dear archaeologist doesn't break my leg for interrupting her!" he said as he once again placed his violin on his shoulder and readied his bow.

Which was unlikely. Robin wasn't much like Nami and rarely threatened bodily harm for silly antics. Though Luffy supposed if anything would make her, it would be something related to words.

Luffy couldn't understand the fascination. He understood that it was Robin's thing, and it was a very dear and important thing to her, so he was never going to ask her to stop reading. He just didn't get it. Words on a page or a rock were dull and lifeless. Words were scratched and smeared onto a surface, lifeless voids of meaning, which was such a shame when they danced and flew when spoken. Even harsh words had a certain alluring shape.

When Brook started playing, the ice settled back down, calm and in no danger of caving in on them. Robin would have all the time in the world to read those scratches, though he doubted they contained anything important.

While the music was nice, it did little to soothe Luffy's nerves—he wanted to fight the thing in the water, since it was the only interesting thing they'd seen, but it didn't look like that was going to happen. Instead he listened to the distant sound of the ocean. It crashed and bubbled, chipping away at continents and rocky outcrops like a tireless old man intent on completing his magnum opus before he died. And yet, despite how careless and powerful the sea was, the sound was rhythmic and calming, like music, or hard work. Though it may only be the virtue of distance, the more Luffy focused on the sound, the more content he became.

Until he realized that it was coming from underneath him, a little to the left.

Luffy lurched forward, vaulting from his back to his hands and knees, and started digging.

"Woah bro, what's gotten into you?" Franky asked, scooting away.

"There's a tiny ocean under here," Luffy said.

"Like a way out?" he asked, "That's a great find, but we still can't leave till Robin's done. Maybe leave it alone for a minute."

Ignoring him, Luffy shifted around in the dirt, dragging the sand out between his legs like a dog. The deeper he dug, the clearer he could see his breath fog in front of him. Soon the ground's texture morphed from a moist beach to an overly saturated riverbank, sopping and muddy, yet coarse. Churning the quicksand for a moment, he plunged his arm into the hole, shoulder-deep, and almost passed out from the woozy sensation that followed.

It wasn't the whole-body numbness he was used to when he fell into seawater; this felt like something was gripping onto his arm with icy claws, sucking the life out of him like a sea-vampire. He seized up involuntarily, making a strangled noise that caused Franky to grab his other shoulder, pulling his whole body off the ground and out of the hole. Clenched in his hand was a very familiar, though filthy, spiny blue shell.

The sound of moving water stopped. Luffy held the shell above his head, staring into its open cavern as if expecting to see another body of water inside it. Instead of finding the source of the noise, the motion shook wet sand off his fingers, which fell into his mouth. Gross.

"Ooh," Brook said, leaning over Luffy's shoulder as he spat onto the ground, "I've never seen a shell quite that that before. It's so pretty."

"Yeah, it's a pretty super find," Franky said, "Do you think it does something useful, like a tone dial?"

"No," said Luffy as he tried to scrape the sand off his tongue with his teeth. Why did everything have to be useful? Why couldn't things just be fun? Granted, a shell that stopped making noise once he picked it up wasn't fun so much as annoying, but still. Live and let live. Or not live and let not live, since it wasn't alive? Do not disturb? Something like that could be applied to this situation, probably.

"I've finished my translation," said a tiny version of Robin's voice. There was an itty-bitty mouth on a rock next to Franky's foot. Luffy grinned and spun around, dashing in her direction.

"What'd it say?" he asked. He didn't actually care what it said—if that mysterious figure wanted to fight with them or party with them, it could tell them itself—but Robin's voice got all soft when she would test out her translations against her tongue, lips stumbling over themselves in a way they never did when she spoke her own thoughts. Luffy could almost understand the appeal of writing, then, when someone added their distinct, living cadence to it. It made empty words feel full. He bounced on the balls of feet in anticipation.

She cleared her throat, looking back up at the scratch marks.

"There once was a king from the seabed
who never once knew what he needed.
Happiness wouldn't stay
It kept slipping away
In the end, he just wanted to be dead.

Then he met a siren—unplanned—
who sang a song so gorgeous and grand
He danced and he cheered
As all others jeered
And he disappeared into the sand."

"That's… depressing, I think." Franky said.

"So like life then," said Brook, pulling his bow away from the strings. Rather than fall into silence, the ice above them cracked loudly, splitting straight through the limericks, and the glowing rocks went out completely, plunging them into darkness. A torrent of freezing water crashed down on them, sweeping them into a ferocious current. Luffy tumbled ass over head, flopping about like a taut-less rubber band when claws once again plunged into the meat of his arm.

Using all his remaining strength to pull his arm, and whatever was attached, in front of his face, he kicked at it, feeling his foot connect with firm muscle—

"Ow!" said Zoro halfheartedly, pulling Luffy's face out of the water. His hand around Luffy's forearm was firm and warm and nothing like ice.

"Eh?" Luffy asked, because really, what other question covered all his bases?

"Don't 'eh' me," he said, throwing Luffy's numb arm over his shoulder. He swam toward the beach where Sanji and Usopp were, similarly, pulling Brook and Robin out of the water. Luffy could see Nami and Chopper running down the beach, bringing towels back from the ship. Luffy felt like a sopping, dead weight.

"What happened?"

"Beach gave out underneath us," Zoro said, "Nami and Chopper were fine, but everyone else got soaked. The rest of us fished you guys out. Dunno what happened to Franky, he seems kind of out of it. But he managed to make it back to shore on his own after a thump on the head."

Luffy sucked in his bottom lip. Out of the corner of his eye he could feel, but not see, the strangely colored conch shell still in his hand. In the back of his head was buzzing hum, unlike anything he had ever heard before, distorted beyond recognition.

It was a lilting rhythm, one that punched and pounded like a surprisingly pleasant headache. Sort of like a song at the edge of his consciousness that only needed a slight nudge to be found. Luffy felt as if he had forgotten something important, but it also felt like it was right there, with him already. He clenched his hand weakly around the shell. His fingers didn't touch, simply sliding across grains of wet, sticky sand.

"Did you see anyone else?" he asked.

Zoro blinked at him. "Do you think someone set a trap for us?"

"No, I don't think anyone else is here," Luffy said. "Let's just go."

Zoro stared at him like he just announced that he would trade his straw hat for a marine cap, but he got them to shore safely. From there, they made it back to the ship without incident.

Later that day, Luffy stood next to Brook, hanging towels out to dry. Brook patiently waited as Luffy scrubbed the shell clean with the last towel, humming a peppier version of When the Sky Becomes Ice. He supposed Brook was refining the song further.

"Hey Brook, have you ever listened to a seashell?"

"Of course," he replied. "I think every child who has ever thought of sailing has at least once in their life. Though I haven't done so in many years."

"Listen to this one," Luffy said.

To his credit, Brook neither hesitated nor seemed bewildered by this order. Instead he plucked both the shell and the towel out of Luffy's hands, listening intently. One would think that reading the expression of a skeleton would be difficult, but Brook was one of the more expressive members of the crew. The shadows on Brook's face shifted slightly when he listened to something. Brook, like Luffy, was one of the few people who absorbed the sounds he heard as they were, and not how he thought it was or should be. He didn't listen to the meaning on the surface, but rather to the actual content of the sound.

If anyone heard like Luffy, it would be Brook, right?

"It sounds like an a cappella," he said confidently. "Like someone singing alone on a mountain top, clear yet deterred by the wind."

"Oh," said Luffy.

"Hoping for something nautical, were you?" Brook said. "Most people say it sounds like the ocean, but I never thought so. Too much wind, not enough water. It's too light to be the ocean. The ocean is full of secrets, and that sound has none. Mystery, perhaps, or wonder, but not secrets."

While he was still disappointed, Luffy could see where Brook was coming from. He hummed noncommittally.

"I also," Brook continued, "stole that description from an old crew member. It's how he described Laboon's cries, shortly before he started following us, when he was sad about being abandoned by the other whales." Brook twisted the filthy towel around his bony fingers, dirtying them as if he'd clawed his way out of a grave. "Somehow, it's both strong and weak to the ear, isn't it?"

Luffy nodded seriously. "I get it," he said.

"Still," Brook continued, "Later on, that lonely a cappella became another part of the songs our crew would play! Truly, a wonderful and unique sound. It's what gave the Rumbar Pirates our identity, musically, I think, and is something we always sought to regain."

Luffy grinned, completely able to imagine Brook finding a way to make a joyful song out of Laboon's cries. Brook's music could turn any moment into a joyful one. It's the reason why Brook's music was the absolute best, no contest.

"Thanks Brook!" he said, holding out his hand expectantly. Brook calmly returned the shell to him. "I'm gonna ask what everyone else thinks, too."

Brook perked up slightly. "Ah, of course! That's all I had to say, captain. If you want to speak to Franky, then you'd best find him soon; he mumbled something about installing a submarine mode in himself, somehow, and I believe he's going to be quite busy."

"Got it!" Luffy said, running off. Brook's distinct laughter chased him down the hallway.

Franky was, as Brook predicted, gathering materials in his workshop, standing above a pile of various metals like a crime lord passing judgement on his subordinates. It wasn't an inaccurate description.

"Franky!" Luffy said, popping in the door without warning, "Can you listen to this and tell me what you hear?"

"Listen to what?" Franky said as he turned around, revealing a large lump on his head. "That shell again? So was it like a tone dial after all?"

"No. S'just a shell. A weird one."

"Ah, well. I can do that for you anyway, bro."

"Thanks!" Luffy said as he stretched onto his toes, shoving the shell in Franky's face. Franky chuckled as he carefully pinched it between his massive fingers, holding it next to his head. A small ear trumpet popped out, extending to the shell's open cavern. Franky considered it for a short moment.

"Sounds like steam," he said.

"Steam," Luffy parroted.

"Yeah, you know, like from a sea-train back home," Franky said. "Except far away. Which just means that it's working properly! Nothing quite like hearing a steam train getting closer and closer."

"The only trains I've ever heard, I've been on..."

"Yeah, at the time we all had bigger concerns. Doesn't leave much time for listenin' to the little things," Franky admitted. He smirked at the face Luffy made, dropping the shell back into his hand.

"It's okay," Franky said, "it's a sound I heard a lot as a kid, you know? Tom's life mission had been to build the sea train, and he made and tested so many different ones. Sometimes Tom would take them for test drives on his own and we'd wait by the window of the workshop for him to come back. We always heard him before we could see him."

Luffy smiled widely, perfectly able to imagine a young Franky pop his head up from whatever new toy he was fiddling with when he heard it. Of course, Luffy's image of a child Franky was a lot like the large, metal behemoth he was today, but the spirit was there. He could imagine the fondness, the longing. It was a feeling Luffy had known and heard a lot as a kid.

"What'd you ask for, anyway?" Franky asked. "I doubt you'd want anyone to reminisce about the past."

"Yeah, no," Luffy said. "I just think it sounds weird. I wanna see if anyone else hears what I do."

"I don't think there's anyone like you," Franky said. "But, if you don't mind, I've got some super ideas for upgrades I wanna work on..."

Luffy's eyes sparkled. "Are you adding more lasers?"

"Always!" Franky said. "I'll show you when I'm done. But that means I actually gotta work on 'em, yeah? I'll talk to you later, bro."

Luffy cheered as he bolted out of the room.

Luffy understood why Franky and Usopp liked their workshop, but if was pressed about it, it was his least favorite part of the ship. It was just the opposite of what he liked. He liked to sit on the ship's figurehead and feel the wind by his ears, with nothing but the sky itself above his head. Hearing the birds trill in the distance reminded him that the world was still alive even when they went weeks without an island. But instead of heading toward his favorite seat, once he got to the deck he decided to head toward the stern. As he scaled the steps, he could hear the soft shifting of metal digging into dirt, and he was unsurprised to find Robin tending her flower garden. Fit for a picture, Luffy could see a small part of her hand, gently patting the dirt like a mother comforting her children.

"Robin!" he yelled as he ran up to her, "Can you listen to this?"

"To what?" she said, turning to give him her full attention. She always did. He waved the seashell in front of her face. "Oh, this is what you found in that cavern."

"Yup!"

She clapped her hands together, courteously trying to remove the worst of the dirt despite knowing Luffy wouldn't care, and obligingly placed the seashell next to her ear. She listened for much longer than Brook or Franky had and closed her eyes to listen closer, finally gracing him with a single nod, moving the shell to her lap.

"I do believe it sounds like any other seashell," she said.

"Really?" Luffy asked, surprised.

"Sadly, yes," Robin said. "When I was younger, I spent a lot of time at the beach listening to seashells, so I know it very well."

"Why'd you do that?"

For a moment, she just stared at him, as if debating the best way to explain it. It was an expression he got a lot from people. Just not much from Robin, these days.

"When I was a child," she said, "one of the scholars at Ohara had a book on what he called 'common ocean lore.' It was his research notes of universals, or at least common threads, between the various folk tales of different regions of the world." She looked down at the shell in her lap, wistful. "One 'universal' kind of tale was about being able to find a magic seashell on the beach, which would whisk you away to a faraway land. I'd always wanted to find one."

Luffy remained quiet, staring directly into Robin's eyes from underneath his hat. The wind blew past them from the east.

Robin's expression softened, and she gave him a small, barely-there smile. "Of course, I eventually found something much better, so I don't have any hard feelings about it. I think this shell is quite lovely."

"You do?"

"I do," she said, handing the shell back to him gracefully. "It's quite an unusual color, isn't it? It looks more like the ocean than it sounds like it. Perhaps it was seeing seashells like this that inspired those old tales, wondering what sort of mystical place could create something so beautiful."

"Makes sense," he agreed, since he knew very well that dreams made people say and do all sorts of crazy things.

Robin stood, tossing her garden spade into a small green bucket. She looped the handle over her forearm like a purse, looking no less elegant with the smudges of dirt. Somehow, she never got any on her face.

While he usually ignored such things, Luffy knew when the conversation was over.

"Thanks Robin!" he said.

She chuckled. "Anytime, captain."

Luffy slid down the banister, not having a set destination but not wanting to stand around. He took a seat on the ship's railing, alternatively listening to the seashell and to the sound of the wind itself. Thus far, everyone seemed to agree it sounded like air, in some way, which—made sense but didn't. The sound of the seashell was too deliberate, too consistent. It didn't sound like anything else from nature. Luffy didn't think it even sounded like a normal seashell. Its sound was as unique and striking as its appearance, but in a way that was much more difficult to quantify or describe. The sound blended into the wind, certainly, like the way the coloration of the seashell would allow it to be invisible if submerged underwater, but blending in was not the same thing as being. A tiger can blend into the forest, be part of the forest, but a tiger is nothing like a forest.

He poked at one of the shell's spines with the tip of his middle finger, almost puncturing the skin. Instead he flipped it over, as if it were an animal showing its belly, exposing the source of his frustration to the world. The blue fading to a sea-foam green as it collapsed in on itself looked like a whirlpool, like the one he had almost died to at the very beginning of his adventure. It was a reminder of how dangerous and unpredictable the ocean could be.

Being sucked to the bottom of the ocean and drowning had nothing to do with the feeling of wind in his hair, chapping his lips day by day, yet both were unavoidable realities of the ocean.

Frustrated, he got off the railing and went back inside the ship. Finding Chopper had not been a conscious decision so much as Luffy almost bowled over him in the hallway.

"Hey, watch out!" Chopper shouted as he quivered, hooves clutching a small box of plants and vials to his tiny chest.

"Sorry," Luffy said. Then, not one one to waste time, he asked "Did you ever listen to seashells as a kid?"

"Listen to seashells?" Chopper asked. "I don't know what that means."

Excitedly, Luffy crouched down, knees tucked up to his ears, and held the mystery seashell between them.

"If you listen to this, you can hear… stuff," Luffy said. "Tell me what you hear!"

"Like an audio version of a Rorschach Test?" Chopper asked as he gently placed his box on the floor. With the nubile grace of both a steady-handed doctor and a deer, he carefully gripped the shell with both hooves, uncertain if there was a wrong way to hold it. "It's pretty, like blue cotton candy…"

Holding it up to his ear, he could hear… well. Chopper tilted the shell in various directions, trying to manipulate the way it sounded, before getting annoyed and switching which ear he was using.

"It… it sounds like rushing blood." he settled on tentatively.

"Blood?" Luffy asked. Blood was seen, or felt, or tasted—how the heck did someone hear blood? Dripping onto the ground from an open wound?

"Yeah, when listening through a stethoscope. But the part between the heartbeat."

"A s'death-ohs-goat?" Luffy asked, imagining the unholy combination of the zombie, a jack-o-lantern, and a goat. He kind of wanted to meet one.

"No, a stethoscope—that cold circle thingy I use to listen to your chest and back, sometimes."

"Oh!" Luffy said brightly. "What's that do?"

Chopper stared at him.

"…it lets me hear things better."

"Can we use it to listen to this, then?"

Chopper looked like he swallowed a lemon.

"No, it needs to be put on skin to work. A seashell is too hard," he said, reaching into his box. He pulled out his stethoscope, slotting the earpieces into Luffy's ears. Shifting into a more human-like form, he pressed the diaphragm against his own torso.

It was a novel sound, literally hearing the inside of his crewmate, though Luffy didn't think it was particularly interesting. It mostly sounded muddy. Thick. There was a sort of wispiness between the thumping, but it was almost completely drowned out by the other… body sounds. It was an auditory mess.

"Neat," Luffy said, because it was. He pulled the headset off his head roughly, prompting a noise of indignation from Chopper.

"Anyway," Chopper said, shifting back to his normal form, "it's a good sound, I think. Means they're alive."

But seashells weren't alive. They were empty houses, full of sadness and longing. A house no one would ever return to.

"…Okay," he said. Chopper gave him a quizzical look.

"That's a weird reaction," he said, stepping closer and looking up at Luffy's face, hoof on his chin in consideration. "Are you feeling okay? Zoro said you were a little weird after he fished you out of the water."

"I'm fine!" Luffy said. Chopper stared at him, concerned, and Luffy wanted to reassure him more but knew that anything he said would have the opposite effect. There wasn't anything wrong, not really, and Luffy's frustration was irrational. Empty problems lead to empty placation.

Maybe there were more empty sounding things in the world than he thought.

"I'm fine," he repeated. "I just don't get medicine stuff."

"Oh," Chopper said thoughtfully, "Well, it's a not a perfect dupe of the a heartbeat sound, for what it's worth. You heard the thumping, right? If I heard a constant stream of noise with no beat, I'd probably start freaking out. I wouldn't get what's happening either."

Luffy grinned, picking Chopper up under his arms.

"But not getting it's never stopped you. You always figure out what's wrong."

"I'm going to be the best doctor ever!" Chopper said, bringing his hoof up in what would be a determined, clenched fist if he had fingers. "Of course I'm going to run into stuff I've never seen before. But it's for everyone's health. Not figuring it out isn't an option."

Luffy pulled Chopper into a hug, probably squeezing a little too hard. Not that Chopper minded. He wrapped his arms around Luffy's neck, burying his nose into the place where Luffy's jaw met his throat. Chopper was warm, a personal heating pad for both body and soul.

"Thanks," Luffy said, and he meant so much more than just the hug.

Chopper giddily grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "Anytime, you bastard!" When Luffy put him back on the ground, he grabbed his box and left, smiling widely.

Luffy wandered the ship a bit, turning the shell over and over in his hands. He didn't get what his crewmates were saying, but that didn't make what they were hearing wrong. He thought back to where they found the shell. How cold it was. The floating water, beautiful and intimidating. How quiet, until the shell started to make noise. While falling through water hadn't been a pleasant experience, actually being down in that cavern hadn't been so bad. It had been calm but new, and just another adventure. Maybe Luffy was looking for something that wasn't there.

But there had been something there. There had been that weird thing in the water that wrote those poems.

Luffy thought and thought, his face turning tomato red.

"That looks painful," Sanji said as he walked by, looking at Luffy in a mix of amusement and concern. "What's with that face?"

"I'm thinking," Luffy said.

Sanji whistled, lips twitching up at the ends. "Miracles never cease."

He stopped and leaned against the wall, pulling out a fresh cigarette. Dressed in his standard suit attire, he looked every inch a philosopher, capable of putting thought into things Luffy didn't even know existed. Sanji was a smart guy, Luffy knew, even if it wasn't one of the reasons he had wanted Sanji as part of his crew.

"Listen to this," Luffy said, pressing the blue seashell into Sanji's hand. Sanji blinked, or Luffy assumed that he had blinked and not winked, eye roving over the shell. Then, with a shrug, he held the shell up to his ear.

In truth, it reminded Sanji of the first meal the old fart had made after they were rescued from that god-forsaken rock. Before the doctors had given them the green light to eat real food again, Zeff had dragged himself out of bed to a nearby kitchen and made maple-glazed salmon for the both of them. Sanji vividly, deliriously, remembered how the sound of sizzling fish had woken him up that night. It had been the first time since their rescue that he truly remembered being conscious, and not just technically alive. He'd fell into more than opened the kitchen door at the end of the hall, but Zeff had just wordlessly nodded his head at a chair.

When Zeff set that plate in front of him and Sanji had taken his first bite, it wasn't the first—or last—time he'd cried over a meal, but it was the moment he realized that, despite everything up to that point, he was going to become a chef. No matter what happened. That this was the reason he had been kept alive.

He wouldn't tell Luffy all that, though.

"Figured you'd recognize it captain," he said instead, "It's one of the best sounds in the world. It sounds like sizzling meat, doesn't it?"

Luffy started drooling. Figured.

"That's way better than sounding like the ocean!" Luffy said.

Sanji held the shell back out to him. "If you take this out of my hands, then I can start dinner."

Without any hesitation or art, Luffy snatched the shell back out of his hand. Which Sanji had expected. He blew cigarette smoke out of his nose in amusement.

"Dinner in an hour," he promised. "Why don't you go see what Usopp thinks of it? I'm sure it'll be entertaining."

"Okay!" Luffy said, running off with a giddy skip in his step.

Finding Usopp proved to be a bit difficult. Not that Usopp was hiding, but Usopp didn't stick to one or two places around the ship like most of them. Sometimes he was down below in his workshop with Franky, and sometimes he was up on deck tending his pop greens with Robin. Sometimes he was in the library with Nami, murmuring lowly about things Luffy couldn't begin to comprehend, and sometimes he was in the infirmary with Chopper, trying to distract him from making medicine to play a game instead.

Usopp, like Luffy, tended to be all over the place. It's just that normally they were all over the place together.

He quickly got sick of trying to play this one-man game of hide and seek and used his Haki. It turned out that he was in the Aquarium Bar, fiddling with something at the table. That was curious in itself, since Usopp didn't like working in places with low lighting. Hard to see, he said.

Luffy burst into the room, squinting at the lack of light. Usopp jumped in his seat, looking up at the doorway guiltily. Luffy knew that Usopp's heart was pounding in anxiety, though why, he couldn't imagine.

"Usopp!" Luffy said, sliding into the seat next to him, "Whatcha looking at?"

"It's…" he said, trying to obscure the table with his hands, "it's nothing!"

On the table sat a notebook and some pens.

"Drawing something?" Luffy asked. It was one of Usopp's many talents.

"Writing, actually," Usopp admitted. "Robin told us about your guys' little adventure earlier. I was copying down the limericks Robin found. I know she probably already has it in her own notes, but..."

"What's a limerick?"

"A type of poem. I felt like I'd heard it before, so I've been rolling it around in my head. But I've got nada. So now I'm writing it down."

"How's that supposed to help?"

Usopp brought his hand to his chin. "You know how sometimes you just get so angry you have to hit something? It's like that, but without the anger. I need it out of me."

"Ah, okay." Luffy said. "Did it help?"

"Not really. It's kind of weird that it has two limericks; normally those things are a one-and-done kind of thing. But these pretty obviously go together. Well, the first one could be a lone poem, I guess."

Usopp picked up his notebook, reading out the first poem. His voice projected much more than Robin's, with the flair of a storyteller.

"There once was a king from the seabed
who never once knew what he needed.
Happiness wouldn't stay
It kept slipping away
In the end, he just wanted to be dead."

Luffy frowned. "I don't get it."

Usopp leaned back in his chair, granting Luffy a soft smile. "No, you wouldn't. You always know what you want and have no problems chasing it. But I guess the king of the seabed was kind of like Vivi? Working so hard to make things better, but unable to figure it out on their own. Life is hard and complicated."

"I guess."

"But that's just a story of a life unfulfilled, if it ended there," Usopp said. "It's the second poem that really bothers me."

Usopp turned back to his notebook, eyebrows furrowed in almost comical concentration.

"Then he met a siren—unplanned—
who sang a song so gorgeous and grand
He danced and he cheered
As all others jeered
And he disappeared into the sand."

Luffy perked up. "That part sounds way better."

"That also sounds a lot like you. Dancing and cheering even as others mock you... it's, like, textbook you buddy." Usopp said. "But 'he disappeared into the sand?' I get the idea that a chance meeting made him happier, but I don't like the implication that his happiness meant that he had to leave home forever."

They were both quiet for a moment, letting the words sink in.

"I dunno," Luffy said, tilting his head. "Everyone else was making fun of him, right? So why not find happiness somewhere else. You left home with us cuz you wanted to get stronger, right? Same thing."

"But he disappeared. He probably died."

"So? He was unhappy and made a choice. Even if he died, he was following his dream. So are we."

Usopp stared at him. "I can't believe you're making sense."

"I always make sense!"

"You're right. But, with the way it's worded... it feels like he was chasing after... an empty hope. It's not like he sought out the siren, it was 'unplanned'."

"I never plan," Luffy said. "It works!"

"For you maybe, and monsters like you," Usopp said with a sigh. One part fond, one part frustrated. He leaned against the table. "It's just the lack of closure that bothers me."

"The what?"

"We don't know what happened to him," Usopp said. "Did he meet the siren? Did they live a happy life together? Did she eat him? Was it all a lie, and did he die alone and forgotten?" He shuddered, glancing back down at his notebook.

Breathing in slowly, Luffy wrapped both hands around the seashell in his lap.

"I don't know if he's dead," Luffy said, "But he's definitely not forgotten. We know his story, even if we had to fall into a hole to hear it."

Usopp looked up at him, head tilted. Luffy looked back at him, face serious.

"And nobody's going to forget about us, either. We're too awesome!"

Usopp stared for a moment before sucking in air between his teeth, puffing up his chest. His nose pointed up in the air dramatically.

"Of course we are! Stories about me are already being told by millions around the world! Why, even the wind is telling the world about the adventures of God Usopp!"

Luffy chuckled. Of course the whole world knew about him, all of them. He knew they'd be amazing, and that people would know all of their names. Even if they had never met them face-to-face.

"Hey Usopp," Luffy said, "Can you listen to this?"

Usopp blinked at him before registering what Luffy had in his hand. "Does it make a weird noise?" he said as he gently picked it out of Luffy's hand.

"Not really, but yeah," Luffy said unhelpfully. "Tell me what you hear."

Usopp took a moment to inspect the shell itself, gently trailing his fingers across its surface, carefully maneuvering between the spines. His fingertips glided like a skipping rock across the water, never staying in place but always moving with purpose. Where blue faded to green, he traced the lip of the opening from top to bottom, tilting the shell in various ways to peer inside of it. Always looking before he leaps.

Him actually putting the shell to his ear was anticlimactic, though.

Usopp stared at nothing as he listened. His face went through a variety of expressions, from biting his lip nervously to earnest contemplation and appreciation. From time to time his head bobbed, and he smirked a couple times before going back to a neutral expression. Occasionally, briefly, his eyes would flick to Luffy before darting away again, not wanting to be distracted.

When he was done, he handed the seashell back over, eyes tight and serious.

"It sounds like a crowd cheering," Usopp said. He punctuated this statement with a sage nod, as if he was imparting an important piece of life advice.

Luffy stared at him curiously, wondering if that was it. As he stared, Usopp fidgeted, and it didn't take long for his cool façade to break. His head dipped down nervously, drumming his fingers on the table.

"At a distance," he said. "I'm a sniper. So I'm at my best when I'm shooting something from far away. But, uh, just because I'm far away from the action doesn't mean that no one is rooting for me, or believing in me. Even if I can't see them. So it sounds like a crowd cheering at a distance."

Luffy's grin grew, and he put a hand on Usopp's shoulder. "And all those people will tell stories about you. They're not gonna forget anytime soon."

Usopp sighed. "I just prefer having the ability to go back home. And I like telling my own stories," he admitted.

Luffy's hand squeezed gently. "You can."

They smiled at each other softly, and Usopp, gratefully, resolved to create a third limerick for the story in order to tie up the loose ends. He certainly didn't need Luffy's help for that. Usopp muttered, testing out words and rhymes as he leaned low over his notebook. Luffy slipped out the door.

Next on his quest to ask everyone, he decided to find Nami. She was in the library, a terrifying and holy place that Luffy rarely dared to enter. But there she was, sitting at the desk in the center, hunched over and deeply focused. Her quill skittered across the page, like bugs tittering in a forest. Simple and familiar.

"Nami," Luffy said quietly. Quietly for him, at least.

The skittering stopped, and Nami's head popped up. She set down her pen before turning to face him.

"Woah, is something wrong?" Her chair squeaked as she stood.

"Nothing's wrong. Can you listen to this?."

Nami stared at the seashell, a tiny frown forming on her face.

"Seashells sound like the ocean. Everyone knows that. It's a childish thing to do."

"So? I'm asking everyone. Just listen to it."

Nami sighed, put-upon, but relented and brought the shell up to her head. Her eyes rolled up to the ceiling as she listened.

"It sounds like the ocean," said Nami. "Most shells do."

"Listen again," Luffy insisted.

Nami rubbed her thumb between two of the shell's spines as if she was rubbing behind Chopper's ear, gentle. For a moment it seemed she was going to argue with him but, deciding it wasn't worth it, she held it up to her ear again.

"…it sounds like the ocean," she insisted. "It sounds like a day where we're relaxing on the Sunny and there's a slight breeze to keep us all cool in the sun. Where the waves are gentle, and I can sit out on the deck and touch up one of my maps without worrying about my paperweights sliding off the corners." She pulled the shell away from her ear, dropping it back into his hands. "A day where I ask Sanji to make a drink for me and Robin out of tangerines and you guys are out having fun on the deck but aren't in danger of knocking over my table while I work. A day where I can walk to the railing to stretch and look down and see fish that we can catch for dinner. It's soft and ocean-y. That's what it sounds like."

Luffy blinked at her.

"Yeah," He said dazedly, holding his hand out. Nami placed it onto his palm gently, frowning.

"Sorry for not having a more interesting answer, I guess" Nami said.

Luffy grinned. "No, it was a great answer! Thanks!"

Nami grinned like a cat, self-satisfied, waving her hand back toward the door. "Glad to hear it. But if you're done, I've got work to do and I don't trust you in here, so..."

"Got it!" Luffy said, flouncing out of the room. "See you later!"

And with that, there was only one person left to ask. He knew exactly where Zoro would be and what he would be doing, and that would be sitting on the deck's grass, leaning against a railing, polishing one of his swords. Maybe the white one, that one always seemed to get extra attention.

There was no acknowledgement as Luffy padded up to him, but Luffy didn't need to be told not to interrupt. He sat down next to him, letting the seashell rest in his lap as he watched Zoro ritualistically clean and polish a sword. His motions were smooth and practiced, equal parts mercenary and artisan. It's something he had done a thousand times and, with much skill and some luck, would do a thousand more. Luffy himself tended to get bored easily, but while he knew he would never have to patience to do something like this, every time Zoro did this looked like the first time, attentive at every step.

"Luffy."

Luffy blinked, looking up at Zoro's face. Zoro continued to stare at his work, eyes trained forward. Not at all like he was starting a conversation. The black sheen of the blade reflected in his eye like a dark highlight. Sliding the sword back into its scabbard, he inclined his head toward Luffy.

"You've been running around for a while. Got something to ask me, too?"

"Yep!" Luffy said. "I want everyone's opinion on this." He handed the shell to Zoro expectantly, not elaborating on the what or the why.

Zoro listened to the shell intently, with a sincerity most wouldn't expect. Even if listening to seashells was "childish," as Nami had put it, Zoro would never deny him anything. He would take it as seriously as anything else Luffy asked him to do. He frowned harder than usual, and Luffy sat next to him, uncharacteristically still.

"It sounds like the Sunny," he settled on, handing the shell back to him. Then Zoro turned his toward the sky, crossing his arms behind his head. "And like you. It never stops moving. Bobbing about or rushing around. Nothing real specific, though."

Luffy tilted his head. This answer pleased him, but it didn't really warrant a response. Instead Luffy rocked in place, counter to the movement of the waves. Zoro was right. Every member of his crew was right, in their own way. Luffy looked up, trying to follow Zoro's gaze, staring at the yellow-orange and purple clouds. The sun was going down. The sky, limited by his vision and limitless without him, didn't look much different from the ocean, sometimes.

"What do you hear, captain?" Zoro said. It was gruff, as most things he said were, but underneath it was a sincere curiosity.

In all honesty, Luffy hadn't expected to be asked. He held the shell up to his ear, though it's not like he hadn't heard it all before.

"It sounds like… the ocean!" he said, full of conviction.

"What? You wouldn't have asked us if it was that simple," Zoro said.

Luffy sucked in his bottom lip, thinking. Thinking and explaining weren't his strong suits, he knew. But more often than not, Zoro just got it.

To Luffy it sounded like a lot of things. The wind, maybe. The water too. He could hear the Lord of the Coast biting off Shanks' arm, and he could hear the sheer glee in the voices of his crew reuniting at Sabaody. He could hear Makino's voice whispering lullabies about distant seas to him to lull him to sleep, and he could hear the shrieking seagulls waking him up from a nap on the Sunny's figurehead. But more than anything else, he could hear the siren's promise of happiness, and he could hear the king from the seabed's relief at finding it.

"It sounds like the ocean, " Luffy said slowly, "The one people dream of. Not the real thing. The way they think it'll be."

Zoro considered this, staring at the sky. "...is that a bad thing?" he asked.

"No," Luffy said. "A dream is just an empty promise until it happens. But they're really nice. They sound nice."

He lifted the shell over his head with one hand, examining the way the sun reflected off it. It shone like the sea itself, effervescent and untouchable. There was something about it that made him never want to let go, wanting to cradle it and keep it all to himself.

Zoro looked at him, considering. "Sounds interesting," he said.

Luffy thought about it. Then he nodded.

"Sounds exciting," he corrected. He didn't do that to his crewmates very often.

Luffy stood, turning around and placing one hand on the Sunny's railing. The sun was going down, turning the sea red. How many people had seen the ocean like this, bloody and boozy like wine, and how many more would do so after Luffy?

Zoro snorted. "Well, we hear the ocean all the time. The real thing. You don't need that, do you?"

Luffy grinned, letting the wind do the work of pushing his hat out of his eyes. "Nah!" he said as he wound up and threw the seashell toward the horizon. It disappeared into the froth and foam, and Luffy stayed right where he was.

Total number of words in this chapter: 8741. Total Number of words I wrote that DIDN'T make it into this chapter: 548,774. This was a rough chapter to write, and there are parts of it I think are still crap and parts of it I think are great, but sometimes you just have to finish something, y'know? Sorry it took so long.

A big thanks to everyone who read this until the end. I would like to give a special shoutout to Harmonica_Smile, without whom this almost certainly would have taken even longer.