Dialogue "sample"
Thoughts 'sample'
Author notes -sample-
Disclaimer: One Piece and all of its characters belong to Eiichiro Oda.
Chapter 133: Dimensional Travel
"Chosen one? You have to be joking…" Vivi made a disgusted expression.
"Yes, I find it hard to believe too. Even with the enhancements from the God Fruit, you are still an idiot…why did it choose you?" Oren wondered.
"That's not what I meant!" Vivi shouted.
"How do you even know that it was supposed to be me? Im not even from this word."
"Not everyone can eat the God Fruits. They had something of a mind of their own and chose who will acquire their power. And it chose you, of that, I have no doubts."
Vivi looked at the screen with a deadpan expression.
"Don't think too much about it, little girl. Just be honored to have been chosen" Spoke the old lady.
"Chosen for what exactly? to fight that crazy lunarian girl?"
"You wanted a new life, remember?...and the God Fruit merely chose you to be its recipient, nothing more. You can ignore everything I just told you and try to live the way you want, with your pirate friends. For as long as you can, at least."
"How did you get into my world? and how can this world even exist?" Vivi wanted to change the subject from this whole chosen one stuff. The idea of someone controlling her fate made her very uncomfortable.
If Oren noticed her intentions, she said nothing about it.
"After discovering my new mission in life. I realized that my first problem was going to be my own mortality…once I solved that I-"
"Whoaa!, hold on!" Interrupted Vivi.
"You can't skim over something like that! Did you find the key to immortality or something?"
"Not really. My body and mind are barely being maintained by the machines I built. The image that you are now seeing of me on the screen is just something fabricated by a computer. The real me is probably looking a lot closer to a corpse right now." Explained Oren.
"Ugg.. that's kinda gross…" Said Vivi.
Oren rolled her eyes.
"In any case…when I realized the futility of my situation, I decided to make clones of myself. They were meant to act as my assistants and help with the lab and the job of finding the candidates for the God Fruit. But they were proven to be useless. Unless I took direct control of them, they could only follow very simple orders like "Go there" or "Bring me that". Something like that."
"If I remember correctly, Doctor Vegapunk did manage to create functional clones." Vivi pointed out.
"Yes, I can imagine how he made those. I also found how to make my clones work like I wanted, but for that, I would have to give them a piece of my soul, that is the component they are lacking…"
"Your soul?!" Said Vivi in horror.
"Indeed…but I would never do something like that. Splitting the soul is a taboo I am not willing to violate under any circumstance."
"I see…" Vivi could understand that. If souls were real, that would make them your most important part. And fragmented them could only end up in regret.
"After three centuries with zero results in finding the candidate. I was growing desperate. That's when I came up with the idea of looking at a different world. The idea of different worlds or dimensions had existed for a long time, but dimensional magic was a very unexplored field, even during the golden days of my civilization. But at least I had something to start with."
"You can travel to other worlds? just like that?" Asked Vivi in awe.
"Of course not! you silly girl. I managed to create portals to travel within this world without much problem. But when it came to travel to different worlds….that was a different story." Oren looked very serious right now.
"I found a way eventually because I am a genius."
Vivi frowned. "Of course you are…"
"There were two catches…the first one was that it was only possible to travel into the world directly above or below this one." Explained Oren.
"You lost me already…" Admitted Vivi. "What is this above and below thingy that you are talking about?."
"Let me see…how I explain this in a way that you understand…try to imagine that worlds are like layers stacked on top of each other. Your old word was one layer above this one. For the inhabitants of your world, the people living here are just fictional characters and nothing more. But one layer below, everything is real. And the same can work in this world. If someone writes a comic book about some fictional word filled with imaginary characters, those people could be real in a world that is one layer below this one. "
"So, any fictional work from my old world could be a real one that is one layer below. Is that it?" Asked Vivi.
"That would sum it up, yes." Answered Oren.
"And you can travel to my old world and any world below this one where are right now."
Oren nodded. "However, it is a one-way trip. There is no way for your body to survive the trip, at least not for long. I had to send my clones, one at a time. They would last around a month before their body shut down. The travel inflicts irreparable damage to the body. We are not meant to travel through dimensions into different worlds."
"So, going back to my old world is not an option then…" Said Vivi with a complicated expression.
"No, is not. But if it was…would you want to go back?" Asked Oren.
"I suppose not…I had nothing left there, no family or friends. But here…I have people that matter to me now." Said Vivi with determination.
"That's good. I have already explained everything that you need to know for now. It is time for you to go." Spoke Oren.
"Good!" Exclaimed Vivi with excitement. "I can't wait to get out of this hellish place. Where am I going now?"
"It seems like I did not explain myself properly. I mean that is time for you to leave my lab and go back to the island's surface." Said Oren with an impassive gaze.
A.N- Now, let me explain some things about this chapter. First: No, Vivi will not be traveling to any other world. This fic is only about One Piece.
Second: The concept of 'stacked worlds' may seem a bit overly complicated, but don't worry about that, is not important for the story overall. Is just something I added to at least give an explanation of how Oren could have archived what she did and bring Vivi from the 'real world' to a fictional one.
The idea for the 'stacked worlds' comes from the "SCP- 3812:A voice behind me", story. If are not familiar with SCP, there are a ton of videos on youtube and they are very interesting to watch.