Dreams of Electric Snails

Cherry found herself a nice little supply closet tucked away in a nearly abandoned corner of the chateau, making sure to avoid being seen by Big Mom's homies before arriving.

Fortunately, this closet was unoccupied by hiding lovers looking for a private place to make out or get frisky. Which made it perfect for Cherry's needs.

'I wonder if someone saw me here if they would think I came to kiss the den den mushi?' Cherry thought idly.

She looked at the snail phone in her hands curiously and found that the idea almost didn't disgust her. Almost.

Shaking the deviant thoughts from her mind, she pushed into the supply closet and shut the door behind her.

Cherry nestled the den den mushi in a corner in a nest of clean washcloths behind a barrel of water.

Cherry poked the den den mushi, "Wake up."

The snail opened its eyes lazily and gave a big yawn. It wasn't used to being woken up so gently. Most of the time it was either from receiving an inbound call or being made to make an outbound call without warning. It found that this way was more comfortable.

"Good. Now, I'm not 100% sure this isn't going to just kill you; so if you die, then I'll donate a hundred million to that den den mushi retirement charity, 'kay? Great." Cherry nodded with satisfaction that the snail seemed to understand her.

The snail did not understand her. It just thought she was kind of stupid for not knowing how to properly make a call.

For the first test, she'd be attempting to travel a relatively short distance with a direct connection via call.

She picked up the receiver and dialed the number of the Thousand Sunny's den den mushi.

After a short moment, she felt the two ends connect. She didn't need anyone to answer it on the other end fortunately, just the connection itself.

"Here we go, buddy. Wish me luck and I'll wish for yours." Cherry said.

The den den mushi blinked at her blandly, as if to say "You're supposed to wait until someone answers before talking, silly."

Cherry's form burst into ghostly white flames, then entirely transformed into said flames. The snail widened its eyes in surprise when those flames rushed into its head!

There was a brief twinge of pain in its mind, like accidentally swallowing food that wasn't chewed well enough to smoothly go down, then it was alone in the supply closet and had no idea what just happened.

Cherry felt herself racing along a sort of psychic stream through a very strange place. Images of strange locales flashed past her senses and were gone before she could properly make sense of them.

She felt other presences beyond the two she was traveling between, a few of which were clearly other den den mushi, but rest didn't feel like snails at all.

Before she could mull this over properly, she hit the other end of the stream and allowed herself to squeeze through before her ethereal body hurt the Sunny's den den mushi.

This time she knew what to expect, so the snail wouldn't experience any pain.

*purururu-* *BUUURP*

The Sunny's den den mushi's eyes widened as it suddenly belched a gout of ghostly white flames. It was even more surprised when its burp transformed into Cherry.

The snail and Cherry blinked at one another.

"Are you alright? Does it hurt anywhere?" Cherry asked.

"..." the snail naturally didn't answer, but from the way it settled itself to go back to sleep, Cherry assumed it was fine.

"Sweet." Cherry sat down on the deck-lawn to mull over her experience.

The first experiment was a resounding success, but it was also going to be the easiest thing she will have tried. Fortunately, the den den mushi accepted her presence in their collective mindscape smoothly, even more so than she expected. So that would help things along, hopefully.

"What were those other creatures in there though?" Cherry wondered aloud.

They hadn't felt dangerous to her, and they probably weren't if they left the snails alone.

"Only one way to find out!" Cherry slapped her thighs and stood up.

Slipping back into her Ethereal Star form, she dove into the den den mushi's head without bothering to wake it up and call another one this time.

When Cherry's feet touched solid ground, she was monetarily confused. She looked around and found that she was still on the Thousand Sunny, except… the ship was out to sea?

"Did I get stuck inside and time passed without me realizing it?" Cherry thought. As she did so, the words spilled out of her mouth involuntarily, which confused her even more.

"Which scallywag be stowin' away on me ship?!" an unfamiliar voice cried out.

Cherry turned and saw the spitting image of Gol D. Roger glaring her down, cutlass at the ready. mWell, there was one detail that was off about the image, which clued Cherry into the fact that this was not actually Gol D. Roger returned from the dead.

That being the fact that his head was a den den mushi instead of, well, a head. He still had the mustache though.

To be more specific, the den den mushi head looked exactly the same as the den den mushi from the Thousand Sunny, which was conspicuously missing from its sitting stand on THIS Thousand Sunny.

"Ah, I've intruded on his dreams!" Cherry thought out loud accidentally.

"An intruder!" Gol D. Snail exclaimed. "No, wait, I recognise you… Ah, yes! You're my cabin boy, of course!"

"Sure I am, bud." Cherry saw no reason to spoil the snail's delusions of grandeur. She thought aloud, "Now, how do I…?"

As soon as Cherry thought of going somewhere else, she did exactly that and found herself in a vast field of knee-high flowers as far as the eye could see. "Huh, how about that."

There were a few small openings in the endless flowers where something had laid the flowers flat. Cherry wandered over to take a look and found a woman with pigtails and a blue dress, a robot, a scarecrow, a lion, and a little dog sleeping soundly on the ground. All of them had den den mushi heads, which were five of the den den mushi that Cherry had seen in the communications room.

This time, Cherry tried to focus on finding the den den mushi that she left in the supply closet, and just as suddenly as she arrived, she was whisked away to someplace new.

"It seems that all those other strange creatures I sensed before were den den mushi after all; just in the forms they were dreaming themselves as," Cherry posited as she arrived in a banquet hall where a snail-headed king was chomping down on a feast of vegetables.

It was certainly true that den den mushi spent most of their time sleeping, so it made sense that they would be dreaming as well.

"I wonder if these dreams are so vivid because of their potent psychic nature or if it's like this for everyone?" Cherry wondered aloud. "Maybe I'll ask one of the others if they mind me snooping around in their heads when they sleep sometime…"