Warm Memories and Brotherly Bonds

Chapter 37: The Nightmare on Thriller Bark

The memory went dark and all that they could do was wait. But they didn't have to wait for long, for soon the memory was back, and they were suddenly in a large room, so large that it probably could fit the entire Merry inside it.

And there he was... in all his ugly glory... Gecko Moria.

He was as large as they remembered him and they wished they could've forgotten his devil-like face. He was probably the largest of all the Warlords they've seen—taller than even Kuma—with two horns protruding from the sides of his head and stitches running down from the top of his face and down his neck which was so much longer compared to the rest of his body. His teeth and ears were both pointed, and his lower body was fat and round so that it looked like he could start rolling over if he sat down. He also had purple hair and his skin was of a strangely pale bluish color that made him stand out with his bright orange and pale window-shaped imprints pants, black coat and gloves, and a blue crucifix-like ornament with claw-liked appendages.

If he was going for a look that made him appear like some kind of demon... he succeed.

"I forgot how freaky this guy looked," Franky said darkly, "Of course... this is nothing as to when we were fighting him and he ate everyone's shadows."

"If he wanted to look grotesque, he succeed with flying colors," Nami spat bitterly, but still felt a tremor of fear go through her when she looked at him. He was sitting in an enormous chair, looking around completely calm and relaxed, as if waiting for someone as Luffy continued to throw out insults at him from the cage that he was thrown into, still tied up with the spider webs.

At long last, three little zombies came running inside the room, roughly around Chopper's size when he was in his Brain Point... there was one that looked like a one-eyed samurai with an ovular head, a pinkish-red zombie archer with a triangular head, and finally a yellow zombie that looked like some kind of childish superhero with a bucket shaped head.

"Master Moria! Master Moria! The Mysterious Three have arrived!" they all chanted together.

"That's fast," Moria said approvingly. "Come in!"

"The Mysterious Three?" Nami asked in confusion.

"Including Moria there are four," Brook explained, "But they were the ones who ruled over Thriller Bark. Moria... Hogback... Absalom... and Perona..."

Chopper's eyes narrowed at the mention of Hogback; how could someone like him even think of himself as a doctor?

"Then there are the General Zombies, who were once legendary figures in life but serve as commanders for the rest of the zombies," Brook went on, "The Surprise Zombies came next..."

"Surprise?" Franky asked in confusion.

"Zombies that disguise themselves as everyday objects to scare enemies. Like those portrait zombies? Those were some of them," Brook answered as the Weakling Trio looked at each other and remembered that stupid jack-in-the-box and all those things in the dining room. Oh, why couldn't they have taken one of the others with them on Mini Merry?

"After that were the soldier zombies... just common zombies for combat," Brook counted off, "They were all over the island as you had seen. And there were two others... Wild Zombies that Perona controlled... and the Spider Mice..."

Usopp shivered at the memory of dealing with all those stupid animal zombies and that ghost girl. How could she really think those things were cute?!

Meanwhile the three little zombies all chorus, "Please enter!" and three people walked inside. Chopper's gritted his teeth at the sight of one of them... a man with a rounded body and thin limbs, a beak-like nose and pointed ears. He also had a scar that started from one corner of a big smile on his face as well as a black tattoo of two slashes that curled into swirls on his shoulder with a fishnet vest, purple pants with matching gloves that covered his long claw-like fingers.