[Action/Voice 25]

[earthrumblegod]

[Toph sits up when she senses familiar footsteps outside her room. She turns incredulously in the direction she feels the vibrations from, because those footsteps shouldn't be here. Just as she thinks she's imagining it all, she hears the voice of the person she thinks she's hallucinating. She can't make out words, but the voice is her mother's.

Comments

[ voice ]

[sniperkingftw]

... Toph?

[ voice ]

[earthrumblegod]

Yeah, what? [She sounds a mix between pissed and teary.]

[ voice ]

[sniperkingftw]

[ ...he's a fan of distraction. Because when Zoro got sent home, he found a person could only appreciate so many "I'm sorry"s. ]

Wanna hear a story?

[ voice ]

[earthrumblegod]

[What? Talk about random. Toph just blinks for a second.] ...Sure, I guess.

[ voice ]

[sniperkingftw]

[ All part of the plan. His tone isn't exactly gentle, but it's softer than normal. ]

No one on the crew has told you about Thriller Bark yet, right?

[ voice ]

[earthrumblegod]

I haven't heard a lot of your stories, no. Is that some kind of monster tree?

[ voice ]

[sniperkingftw]

No- there were some really creepy zombie-trees, though. Thriller Bark looked like an island, but it was really just a giant ghost ship.

We were sailing into the Florian Triangle- it's a place on the Grand Line where ships disappear into this really thick fog, never to be heard from again. That's where we first met Brook, too. He was sailing out there and tried to warn us before we got caught; someone was stealing people's shadows, and without a shadow you could never leave the fog or the sun would destroy you. [ Pausing to grin. ] Luffy wanted him to join us right away, so he said he'd get his shadow back. Brook sort of disappeared on us after that, I think he didn't want to get anyone in trouble. But we ended up finding it anyways, of course.

[ voice ]

[earthrumblegod]

[Okay, she knows what he's doing. It's a distraction thing. She's seen this before. But it's not like she doesn't want to be distracted from thinking about this for a little bit, so she goes along with it.]

People were actually getting their shadows stolen? How did that work?

[ voice ]

[sniperkingftw]

There was this really creepy guy called Moria behind it- he had a Devil's Fruit ability. He actually ended up getting Luffy's shadow, too. And Zoro, and Sanji, and Robin. We only had one night to get them all back, and Brook's, plus there were all these other things happening that we had to take care of.

And there were zombies everywhere.

[ voice ]

[earthrumblegod]

Woah. Sounds sweet. Zombies are those living dead people that eat brains, right?

[ voice ]

[sniperkingftw]

[ Shudder. ]

Yeah, they're supposed to be. The really weird thing about these zombies was that they were a bunch of different parts put together and given someone else's shadow. Some of them were kind of like people we knew who were missing one.

[ voice ]

[earthrumblegod]

Oh, ugh. That sounds creepy. Really, really creepy. Like the animals here, only worse. Were they like evil zombie clones of the people?

[ voice ]

[sniperkingftw]

It was creepy. [ Excellent question, Toph. ] Sort of, for a while. The zombie that Sanji's shadow ended up in still wouldn't kick Nami. And Luffy's zombie- well, he was definitely Luffy's zombie.

[ voice ]

[earthrumblegod]

So if Sokka got a zombie he'd still be obsessed with meat and make bad jokes?

[ voice ]

[sniperkingftw]

Yeah. Luffy's even still wanted to be Pirate King, for a while.

[ voice ]

[earthrumblegod]

Man, you guys get all the cool adventures. We never got zombies. 'Course, we did have armies of people who shoot fire, so I guess that evens it up.