A Few Inches Shy
Chapter one: Scream, Aim, Fire.
Ten marine warships along with five vice-admirals was not a nice thing to wake up to, especially after lady Kokoro ruining my dreams of mermaids. God- that was horrifying. So to do the crew a favor, I bowed out as the crews lined up; ready to massacre anyone foolish enough to stand in their way. Although we really did have it coming to us, I mean, we kind of just declared war on the marines and their almighty government. Ten warships meant a hell of a lot of cannons, and a bunch of cannons meant trouble, escape ship or not. So, theoretically mind you, if the aim on all those cannons where to, say, shift. Just a couple inches, nothing noticeable of course, it might cause for some poor aim. And poor aim in this case meant, a possible opening. The crew on the ships seemed a bit too preoccupied by dancing around like monkeys getting their heads lobbed off by our ever pissed off crew or firing at said crew to notice one solitary princely eggplant sneaking around their ships. I remember a sunny Christmas with our crew (Grandline weather, right?) where I had an interesting discussion with our resident sniper.
-Flashback-
"Hey Sanji, you mind if I sit in here for a while?" I turned to see a dejected looking Usopp closing the door softly behind him.
I contemplated his request for a minute before nodding, "Mhh, so long as you don't try to snatch food or blow anything up I don't mind." He gave a silent nod thanks as he sat down and started disassembling a small pistol. Normally I would have just ignored him or, more likely, kicked him back out on deck. Since my favorite (and pretty much only welcome) visitors were my lovely ladies, but Usopp was never really dejected after getting made fun of by the more ruckus members of our crew. He'd just tell them another fanciful tale and have them eating out of his hands by the time he was done, well, Chopper and Luffy at least. I poured two glasses of my homemade eggnog with some brandy and moved to sit down opposite Usopp. As I set one of the glasses in front of him I finally spoke. "Don't normally see you with an actual gun." I mused slowly.
Usopp looked up from his task and smiled at the glass in front of him. "Thanks," I just nodded, waiting for him to go on. "Well, I got to thinking…" I ignored the first smart-ass response that popped into my head (along with the following ones) and just sat watching him. "Since we deal with enemy ships a lot, what about when we run into one with a good sniper?" It wasn't really a question, and if it was, it wasn't one that I was supposed to answer. "Of course none can be as great as me, but say they were pretty good…"
Ignoring his temporary ego boost, I swallowed the liquid in my mouth and put down my glass before responding, "Well it's not like it's that big of a deal, right. We'll just take care of them when they come."
"Ah, that's where you're wrong!" I raised my visible eyebrow at his comment, he had his old energy back but there was something conspiratorial in his tone. And I guessed that a light bulb had just gone on somewhere in his head. "Start the presses; I am just about to be brilliant!"
"That'll be a first." He rolled his eyes at my implied hint to 'just get on with it.'
"I was cooking up something even better than last night's dinner before I was interrupted by those buffoons." That was saying something; last night's dinner had been a masterpiece by any standards. "What if a small ball of lead was placed on one of the far sides of the interior of the cannon, just in with the gunpowder? The explosion would still happen and the cannon ball would still be launched the expected distance and all, it would just fly in a slightly different direction. Here, see?" He drew me a quick diagram, on my white table cloth of course. One rather-large-lump-on-the-side-of-Usopp's-head-and-a-very-pissed-off-me later he managed to speak again. "Sorry 'bout that, hehehe…" Another glare from me and the conversation was finally going again. "You see, place said ball of lead here and instead of straight," He enunciated each point by pointing to his diagram and imitating the estimated movement with his finger. "That blessed cannonball will rakishly of the inner walls of the cannon. And with such limited space it will be bounce back and forth at a high enough speed that, when it finally comes out, the possibility of it shooting straight will be a smaller decimal than worth thinking about."
"Hmm, I see your point, but how does one get that small ball of lead into the cannon in the first place?"
"Ahh, good point, but I have already thought of a way around that problem." A gloating smile came on his face as he silently reveled in his genius.
"Oh? Do tell."
A small metal tube, skinnier than a small straw, was produced from Usopp's pocket, "The end of this is sharper than anyone of Zoro's katanas, its inner diameter is slightly more less than a half a millimeter, and a special kind of liquefied 'lead…'" he did the quote thing with his index and ring finger to enunciate 'lead.' "…Can slide right through it, solidifying immediately after it exits the tube. With the material this tube is made of, the air inside keeps it hot enough that it will slide through it in seconds. Pretty good, huh?"
"Very nice, does it work?"
"Well I hope so. Can you do me a favor?"
"Depends on what it is." My reply was meant to be completely serious but my curiosity slipped in with it.
"Since you're the most likely to ever come across a situation where this would be needed, 'cause you seem to excel in background work and all. If the situation ever arises, I'd like you to try it out. Please!"
"Alright Usopp, but you'd better give me enough lead to take on a small fleet at least. 'Cause I doubt we'd need it otherwise."
"Really? Thank you! I'll get it to you in the next couple days!"
-End Flashback-
I had completely forgotten about the little box, it had become a sort of routine to put the small box which contained all that would be needed for cannon sabotaging into my suit pocket every morning. I'm kind of surprised I hadn't already lost it. Crossing my fingers, I pocked the tube through the spot in the cannon Usopp had instructed me about of-so-long-ago. Then poured the small amount of the metal in after. It went in find and to my surprise the minuet hole closed seconds after the tube was removed. The first ship was done in a little over a minute, then the next, and the one after. I gained speed, quickly getting used to the routine of sneaking around, inserting the metal and running onto the next cannon in need of corruption. I was on the second to last ship when things started to get a bit hairy, one of the vice captains was lingering a bit too close to one of the cannons for comfort. But thank Kami; I managed to finish that ship and move on to the last in record time. The last one was easy, too easy. In my rushed and worried state I just marked it off as some good karma that I didn't deserve. But nothing is free and luck isn't even lucky. Any other time I could have dodged that bullet, but the metal still had two more seconds till it was into the last damn cannon. Any sudden movement and the gunpowder in said cannon would have been anything but stationary. All I could do was shift my head and that alone saved my life. Instead of blowing out my brains, the cylindrical lead bullet took my left eye as compensation. Even if Chopper had been right there, there was no saving my left optical organ. And there was most defiantly no time to mourn it, so I pulled out the tube and ran like hell. Just in time to grab Chopper and company from being blown sky-high along with our escape ship. I was grateful for the hair covering the left side of my face, because although it was blood soaked, it still covered my now empty eye socket. And I smoothly answered Nami's question as to where the hell I had been with a little white lie. 'Some errands to run' was pretty accurate, right? And because it wasn't hectic enough, the next thing I knew, all hell had finally broken loose.
TBC?
AN: So, just wanted to let the people who read Belle's Bane that I am still alive and currently working on the next chapter of that story. Life is crazy right now but I have been thinking of you. If anyone is interested in another chapter to A Few Inches Shy just drop me a comment and I'll be only too happy to indulge! I love comments and they help get me off my lazy butt to actually write something. And on that thought, thank you to fanmind and filipalope88 for their reviews!