Act Four

"What happened?" Zoro heard an unfamiliar voice call. "Is everything all right?"

"What hit the deck?" the next voice was clearly Usopp. Zoro sat up as he and Robin turned towards the source of the sound, the open doorway to the Going Merry II's cabin.

The first voice showed himself as a burly, blond-haired man with a neatly-trimmed beard being the only thing neat about him. He wore a vest that had once been a jean jacket with roughly cut-off sleeves in spite of the snow. His hair was long, a stubby cigar jutted from his lips, and his open vest showed a well-toned chest. Zoro squinted at the man, wondering if this new change might have yielded a new Sanji, but it wasn't the cook. Memories flashed back through Zoro's mind, and he found a name to match the face.

"Paulie?" he asked, "is that you?"

The shipwright gave Zoro a puzzled look. "Yeah it's me, who were you expect- hey!" he suddenly yelled, pointing an accusing finger at Robin. "Put some clothes on! What the hell do you think you're wearing?"

Robin was wearing a fairly conservative skirt, but she complemented it with a button-down blouse that did have a few too many buttons undone to be considered entirely decent (again, in spite of the apparent snow, nobody seemed to be dressed for it) though this was normal for Robin. It seemed that Paulie's idiosyncrasies had not changed.

"Zoro fell," Robin said plainly, ignoring Paulie's exhortation. "Something seems to be wrong with him."

"Maybe my there's-no-way-we're-going-to-Argus disease is spreading!" Usopp added, emerging behind Paulie and approaching Zoro and Robin where they sat. "Seriously, we should turn back."

"It's not one of your made up diseases," Zoro said bluntly. "But something really weird is going on. Tell me," he said, looking at each of them in turn. "Are we still allied with Big Mom?"

"Yeah…" Usopp said slowly, not knowing where Zoro was going with this.

"Then," he said, looking at Paulie directly this time. "Do you have a den den mushi for getting in touch with her people?"

"Yup," the shipwright said. "Down in my workshop. Why?"

"One more question," Zoro said, switching gears and looking at Robin. He wanted to clarify something. "You and I are still engaged, right?"

"Are we?" Robin said, resting her chin on the hand that bore what was apparently their engagement ring.

"Close enough," Zoro said. "All I want to say is it's been a really weird day for me. When I woke up, our ship was the Thousand Sunny, we were traveling to Zou, our shipwright was the cyborg Franky, and you and me," he said, looking at Robin again. "That never happened. Then I was on this island called Forcas, engaged to Robin and still with Franky as our shipwright. So… yeah," he ended lamely. "I need to make a call."

His three crewmates regarded him with varying looks of surprise, from Robin's mild curiosity to Usopp's utter disbelief. "Chopper!" Usopp screamed. "Quarantine code Z!"

"What?!" Chopper's voice came from belowdecks. "No, Zoro! Hold on!" Heavy-point Chopper soon surged out of the cabin door, first-aid kit in hand. "Stay still!" he said as he charged towards the swordsman. "I'll have you diagnosed in no time!"

"I don't need diagnosed!" Zoro protested as Chopper accosted him with a stethoscope.

"Zoro is sick?" Now it was Brook who emerged on deck. Brook also seemed to have changed somewhat, which was made apparent through the multicolored rastacap he wore jauntily on his afro. "How unfortunate!"

"You better not get Robin-chwan sick too, marimo," Sanji followed Brook in emerging. He seemed fairly unchanged.

"Sanji, I'm still hungry…" Luffy moaned, following at Sanji's heels.

"What the hell!" Nami joined in with a shriek, emerging from the upper cabin. "Can't I get one hour of peace to draw my new map!?"

"Put some clothes on!" Paulie barked.

"Zoro's got a new disease!" Usopp added. "He's gone crazy! It's an emergency!" The scene quickly devolved into general chaos as several arguments broke out at once. Zoro joined in the shouting as he endeavored to dislodge Chopper.

"Veinte Fleur!" Robin came to the rescue, a series of hana-hana hands reaching out and gagging all of the squabbling crewmates, as well as forcibly prying Chopper off of Zoro.

"Please," she said, a quiet danger behind her polite veneer, "let him speak. This is Zoro's problem."

Looking sheepish, the others backed down and the hana-hana hands dissolved. "Thank you," Robin said kindly.

"Thanks," Zoro said to Robin directly. Like him, she often stood as a bystander of the crew's shenanigans, but had a presence that could corral them if necessary.

"So…" Usopp began cautiously, not sure if Robin would let him speak. "You said things have been changing for you since you got up this morning?"

"Yeah," Zoro said grudgingly. He was getting sick of explaining this over and over again. "We fought this guy, Jimmy Troy, who was allied to Big Mom, and he could change things. I'd slash at him, and I would always miss. Stuff like that."

"Big Mom and us are enemies?" Luffy said. "Wild."

"Then after we beat him, little things started changing. Then bigger stuff. Soon I was at a different island, and me and Robin were engaged."

"You mean you weren't before?" Nami asked. "That just seems kind of sad." Nami, or this Nami anyway, seemed to be a big fan of their relationship.

"Nope," Zoro replied. "When I ended up with Robin, we were on this island called Forcas. The crew all sat down to figure out what was happening to me. Chopper said something about how Troy had been focused on me when he got knocked out, then Franky looked like he had an idea, clapped his fists together, and now I'm here."

"Excuse me, but who is Franky?" Brook asked.

"It was before we met you," Sanji said. "He's a shipwright at Water 7, and gave us the wood to make the new Going Merry. How did he join us, anyway?" he asked Zoro. "He helped us fight CP9, but he decided he wanted to partner with Iceberg to run the Galley La company."

"Yup," Paulie added, picking up where Sanji left off. "So I spearheaded the design of the Going Merry II and decided to go with you guys, so I could see where my ship would go. What's this Thousand Sunny like?"

"It's really not important," Zoro said, not wanting to spend the next hour talking shop with a shipwright that he didn't even really know all that well. "I just want to make a call, and get this all sorted out."

"Indeed you should," Robin put in, a dangerous half-smile playing on her lips that Zoro had seen only a few hours before, in another world. "You may be Roronoa Zoro, but…"

"Yeah yeah," he cut her off. "I may be Roronoa Zoro, but I'm not your fiancée, and you want him back." Now it was his turn to smile at Robin's nonplussed expression. "You told me that already. Take me to that den-den mushi," he said to Paulie.

"I see," Nami said. "You think that Troy person has something to do with this still?"

"That's what they… er… that's what you guys said," this was all getting a bit too confusing for Zoro.

"But who knows if he's even allied to Big Mom?" Chopper asked. "He is where you came from, but we weren't."

Zoro grimaced. He hadn't thought of that, but if it was true, it was out of his power. "Down in your workshop, right?" he asked.

"No, bring it up here!" Luffy said. "I always love listening to that egg guy talk-don!"

"No, no," Usopp corrected "it's "bon."

"Bon!" Luffy laughed. "Bring it up, Paulie!"

So Paulie retreated belowdecks, returning with the den-den mushi that Tamago had given to Luffy back at Fishman Island. The crew was abuzz in conversation, but Zoro himself got a brief moment of peace, giving him more time to ponder the situation. A number of thoughts floated through his mind in those brief moments. First he recalled what Chopper, the Chopper from Forcas Island, had been saying right before the last change: Chopper had gotten a solid idea off of Usopp's crazy idea that this was all a dream. The other thought, nagging at the back of his mind, was that he was still engaged to Robin in this new scenario, despite how different other things were. Being engaged to her had seemed like a wild, impossible chance, and yet it persisted even in this other continuity.

His thoughts were interrupted as Paulie emerged, a den-den mushi in hand. "Here ya go," he said, chucking the snail Zoro's way. Zoro caught it neatly, picked up the receiver and made the call.

Purupurupuru purupurupuru purupurupuru, click.

"Hello, is this Straw-Hat, soir?" Tamago's voice came from the other side.

"Soir!" Luffy yelled, then fell to the deck laughing.

"It must be, bon," the voice out of the den den mushi now sounded icy. Luffy kept laughing.

"This is actually Pirate Hunter Zoro," he said. He did not often introduce himself that way, but he needed to make himself known.

"And how may we be of help to you, Monsieur Zoro?"

"I want to talk to another ally of yours. Do you have an ally named Jimmy Troy?"

The snail paused for a moment, then replied. "Oui, Monsieur Troy has sworn allegiance to Big Mom, bon."

"Bon!"

"Shut up, Luffy!"

"Shall I connect you to him, soir?"

"Yeah, please," Zoro said.

The den den mushi rang again for a while, then a new voice came through.

"Ah, Tamago-san!" Zoro immediately identified the voice as Troy's. "We've got the money, we totally do, you just have to give us…"

"This isn't Tamago," Zoro said, interrupting him. "But we're allied with her too." It still felt weird to say that.

"And? What do you want?"

Zoro scowled, but swallowed his anger. He just needed information. He acted on the idea that had been floating around in his head. "Has your devil fruit power ever gone haywire?" He asked. "Maybe when you were asleep or something?"

"How would I know if something bad happened when I was asleep?" Troy growled. "Seriously, you're just wasting my… Hey!" He suddenly protested, and there were sounds of a minor scuffle that the snail conveyed masterfully.

"Yeah, this is Wesley," a new voice spoke. "I'm ship's doctor, and I think I know what you're talking about."

"Really?" Zoro asked. The rest of the crew suddenly fell silent from their squabbles, listening intently.

"Some of the crew has strange dreams sometimes," Wesley said. "First things seem normal, then things switch around and get weirder and weirder. But aside from the changes, it doesn't feel like a dream, even though it only happens at night."

"How do things switch around?" Zoro asked.

"Randomly. Some of the guys said they ended up on different ships, with different crews, or we were still on this ship but in a completely different part of the New World. Somebody in the dream would snap their fingers, or something like that, and everything would just turn out different."

Zoro's eye widened, and suddenly it all made sense. Franky clapping his fist into his palm, Chopper clapping his hooves together, and way back at the beginning of all of this, Usopp trying to teach Luffy how to snap his fingers.

"And you think it has to do with Troy's powers?" Zoro asked.

"It's too similar just to be a coincidence," Wesley replied. "The captain's powers don't need him to actually snap his fingers, just to focus on somebody and visualize a change in their luck. The snapping just helps him through that. So he changes our dreams or something when he's dreaming and thinking about one of us."

"And when does it end?" Zoro asked finally.

"When he wakes up." There was a pause. "Why do you need to know about all of this any…" He was cut off as Zoro hung up on him. The swordsman had felt a sense of triumph in uncovering the source of what was happening to him, but that was all draining away.

"So there's nothing you can do about it…" Nami said after a pause. Zoro squinted suddenly as the fiery light of the setting sun glanced off the sea, beyond the snow-laden clouds.

"It depends on how badly he was knocked out," Chopper added.

"You said he didn't have a concussion," Zoro replied. "When I was in the infirmary, it did actually look like he was dreaming or something." Zoro sat down on the deck, propping himself against the base of the mast. "Whatever," he said, sounding calmer than he felt. "Nothing to do now but wait for him to wake up."

Robin turned towards him just as he closed his eye. "When did he get knocked out, Zoro?" she asked.

"A little before lunchtime."

"Zoro? Zoro?" Robin repeated.

"What?" He growled, "I answered your question!" He opened his eye again to find her standing over him, leaning down with an expression that was at once vexed and relieved. There was no ring on her finger.

"Everyone!" she shouted clearly. "I found him!" Zoro glanced around, quickly deducing that he was now leaning on the mainmast of the Lady Luck. He glanced up, and sure enough, there were slash marks in the mast. It was sunset, too, the same time of day it had just been.

"Zoro!" Chopper's overjoyed voice was heard from the Thousand Sunny nearby. "You're okay!" Chopper morphed into running point and leapt… straight over the rail and into the water. Sanji was mounting a rescue as Zoro stood up.

"So I was gone for, what, 8 hours?" he asked.

"Yes," Robin replied. "We all saw you disappear when Troy was defeated. We've been worried."

"Didn't the ship's doctor tell you?" Zoro asked. "This sort of thing happens when he gets knocked out."

Robin again looked vexed. "Their crew has no doctor," she said. "We didn't know anything. I suggested you had been sent to some horrible purgatory."

Zoro laughed, low and rough. "It wasn't so bad."

By now Sanji had fished Chopper out of the sea, and Franky had moved the gangplank to be a passage between both ships, so that Chopper made it across safely. "Are you okay?" he finally said, beginning basic diagnosis. "I saw you get hit on the head before you vanished."

"Yeah," Zoro replied. He reached up and touched his scalp, wincing as he did so. Apparently 8 hours had not reduced the tenderness.

"What happened?" Franky asked. "Where did you go?"

Zoro was about to open his mouth, then his gaze flickered to Robin and back again. "Somewhere totally different," he said, choosing in an instant to skip over a large part of the true story. "You weren't there," he said to Franky. "That shipwright Paulie came with us instead. Our ship was a remake of the Going Merry, and we were allied to Big Mom."

"What!?" Luffy exclaimed. "That's impossible!"

Zoro shrugged. "That guy's powers made it possible. Where is he, anyway?"

"He's still asleep in the infirmary," Chopper said.

"He isn't now," Zoro said.

The crew asked a few more questions of Zoro's experiences, then turned to the business of releasing Troy's crew from their imprisonment belowdecks on the Lady Luck, as well as returning their Captain to them. The crew seemed both penitent and grateful that their Captain was okay, and the Lady Luck was on her way.

The various Straw Hats then held a late dinner out under the moonlight, after which they dispersed, some going to bed while others went about their nightly business.

Zoro climbed up the mast, having thoughts of getting some training done, but he paused halfway up.

"In the time we spent together, we got to know each other better, and we discovered feelings that had been growing for some time."

Feelings that had been growing for some time.

Zoro climbed back down the mast.

~0~

"Oh, Zoro, what brings you here so late at night?" Robin looked up from her book. It was a rare enough sight to see Zoro in the Thousand Sunny's library at all, let alone after hours, when he either trained or slept. She herself did little sleeping even now, spending most of her nights in the library, reading by lantern-light.

"I just… wanted to talk, that's all." Zoro said with only a hint of hesitation. If Robin thought that comment strange, she did not make any sign of it. "Is that the book on chaos theory you got from Troy's ship?"

"How did you know about that?"

Damn. He had skipped over that part of the story too. "I dunno," he said dismissively. "How do you like it?" he said instead.

"It's really quite fascinating," Robin said sincerely. "Somebody on that ship really knew how important Troy's devil fruit power could be. With just a twist of fate, anything at all is possible."

"Ain't that the truth," Zoro said aloud.

Robin smiled knowingly, in only the way she could, and they continued their conversation.

End Act Four

Author's Epilogue Note: Not one of you guessed it, did you? The whole plot is a fairly straight-laced ripoff of Star Trek: The Next Generation, specifically the final-season episode "Parallels", in which something very similar happens to Lieutenant Worf (though the explanation is standard Trek physics-babel instead of a contrived Devil Fruit). I adapted it because the episode established the Worf-Troi ship, which has an appeal very similar to Zoro/Robin.

To that end, the story was peppered with small hints in terms of naming, from Jimmy Troy (Troi), or Forcas, named for Forcas III, a planet from the episode, or Argus, mentioned in passing in both the episode and the story. Tasha was more overt, as the character was named for and meant to resemble Tasha Yar, as well, in this Act, of Wesley the doctor (Wesley Crusher, son of Dr. Crusher). Rig Maratha was the only name of my own invention, and has no meaning.

Hope you enjoyed my little ripoff!