Chapter Text
Coming back from a fishing trip with your small dinghy, you notice something massive and… pink? in the harbor. Was that supposed to be a ship?
The closer you get, the more you regret taking so many mushrooms last night. Not only did you fall into the ocean once due to your hangover while out fishing, now you’re hallucinating a huge flamingo figurehead on top of a pink ship flanked by flamingo wings.
Honestly, you wouldn’t even have thought yourself to be creative enough to make this stuff up.
You guide your boat to go right by the ship’s flank, staring up at it. It doesn’t get better up close. There’s an elderly man who must be at least 200 standing there in the most offensive combination of red and blue you’ve ever seen and right beside him is a large woman with two-coloured hair spinning around and singing something obnoxious.
But if this is just a fever dream, you might as well approach them, right? You must be safely laying in your bed dreaming all of this, after all.
“Oi, grannie! Gramps! Who are you?”
They stare down at you like you’re the person that looks incredibly out of place in this small harbor instead of them.
“Young maste-e-eeeer!!”, the woman sing-yells and bounces away.
“Oi! Answer me!”, you yell up. You know, for a fever dream, this is all pretty realistic. You can feel the salty breeze running through your hair and that bath in the ocean earlier felt rather real too.
The old man doesn’t respond, just staring at you, mumbling something to himself.
You can hear a loud SWOOSH and then before you know what’s happening, a large man is crouching on the railing of the ship right above you, looking down towards you. He must have some giant genes based on how large he looks even at a distance.
He scrutinizes you quietly and you blurt out the first thing you can think of, seeing him balance himself on the railing so carelessly, merely the front of his shoes connecting him to the ground. “Be careful! Don’t fall!”
He looks taken aback before laughing loudly. He throws his head back and now you’re even more concerned for his safety.
Suddenly, something invisible lifts you out of your boat and up into the air, towards the large flamingo dreamship. Your struggles are useless, it feels like you’ve been bound in place, but there’s no visible reason given.
The invisible force sets you down almost gently on deck and now you’re even more certain that you must be dreaming. There’s a man who’s half as tall as the mast, another man who looks like a slug bathing in snot, there are tiny kids running around and somebody just tripped and fell over a cannon. Honestly, you find this fever dream rather entertaining. Certainly better than the travelling circus that comes around once every year.
“I’ve never fallen off of the railing. But thank you for your concern, mother.”
You whip around at the sound of the voice. The man you’d seen on the railing is now right in front of you. You can barely reach his hips and looking up to meet his face is a distinctly uncomfortable sensation. “No problem.”, you reply bluntly.
Not knowing what else to say, you take in his appearance. An unbuttoned white shirt, plain orange trousers, set off by a massive pink coat draped around his shoulders. Oh, right. Probably made of flamingo feathers, based on the design of the boat. You’ll have to look up what it means to dream about flamingos. Probably something about fertility, as per usual.
The large man leans down to inspect you more closely and now you can see that he’s wearing purple sunglasses. On anyone else, you’d call his fashion sense a disaster, but somehow, this man makes it work. Another sign that this is a mushroom-induced fever dream and not reality.
“Do you have business with us, little caretaker?”, the man inquires.
You shrug. “Probably? I don’t know where this fever dream will take me next.”
“Fever dream?”, he repeats. “I see.”
“So, seeing as you’re literally the man of my dreams, what’s your name? Maybe I can look that up in my psychology books too.”
You never knew lucid dreaming could be so fun. The man seems genuinely startled by your blunt approach - but he’s a figure in your dream, shouldn’t he be aware that he exists only in your dream? At least by your usual dream logic he should be. You were getting a headache thinking about this too much.
He catches himself quickly. “Donquixote Doflamingo. At your service, madame.” He bows dramatically and you can catch a brief glimpse of his eyes as he does, crinkling with delight at the mystery unfolding before him.
The elderly man looks like he’s about to have a stroke seeing Doflamingo bow. Probably not an unfounded worry in his old age, you think to yourself. He waves around his hands, his expression pained. “Sir, are you alright?”, you ask him worriedly, trying to see if he’s able to control the left side of his face. At least you’re pretty sure that’s what you need to look for when somebody has a stroke, you couldn’t tell for sure. You pat his cheeks forcefully, trying to figure it out.
Doflamingo pulls you back, prying you off of the old man gently. “It’s all good, little nurse.”
“I’m a fisher. Not a nurse.”, you correct him promptly.
Doflamingo completely ignores your correction, speaking as if though he hadn’t heard you. “Tell me, little nurse - have there been any rumors of devil fruits appearing on this island or any of the neighbouring ones lately?”
“No? Not that I know of.” Aha! So maybe your dream would take you on the hunt for a devil fruit.
“Most unfortunate. I’d heard rumors… but alas, oftentimes humans embellish their stories senselessly.” His voice is laced with genuine regret.
Doflamingo invites you for tea and you’re all too happy to accept. It’s strange, having this much downtime in a dream with nothing happening. Usually your dreams are more action-filled than this.
Come late afternoon, after his associates scoured the island for any useful information, Doflamingo gives the orders to set sails again. He turns to you. “It’s time for you to go home, little caretaker.”
You bristle, putting your hands on your hips. “What?! That’s not how this works! I’m the main character here. You don’t get to just throw me off the ship and hunt for devil fruits on your own. I won’t stand for it!”
Once more Doflamingo seems more than just a little taken aback. “The main… character?”, he muses. “Very well. If you work for your meals, you’ll be allowed passage on the ship. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
You’re surprised how tired you feel at this point. Sure you’d spent all day out fishing and out in the sun, but this was just a mushroom induced delirium. Oh well, no point in thinking about it too much.
It isn’t until you wake up the next day in a foreign bed, entirely unfamiliar with your surroundings, that you realize that you have made a colossal mistake.