"I can't believe she did that," Usopp was frowning. "I can't believe you did that!"
"Shishishi, it doesn't hurt at all!" He was being clever. Sure, it didn't hurt, it just stung a little bit. Usopp was inspecting the bitemark on his shoulder while he held on to his hat, trying to rub it clean. He had been wrestling big fish all afternoon, so the fishy slime left by Shizu's skin blended right in. The grass on the other hand had a sprawling splash of shiny goop. He hoped Sanji or Nami wouldn't notice it before it dried away. He was so not cleaning that up!
The wierd mermaid was kind of cool in his opinion, he didn't really get why Zoro was so uptight about her. Robin and Chopper were constantly telling him that Shizu was a fish, but she didn't really look like a fish. Mermaids weren't fish, right? But...
"Hey, Usopp. Do you think she's really a fish?"
Usopp, trying to wipe up his shoulder from the viscuous mess to tie a bandage around it, didn't even look up from his job. "I don't know. Robin's really smart, right? Creepy, but right."
Luffy hummed and nodded in thought. He drew a sharp breath when Usopp's jostling had the injury throbbing. It wasn't that deep, but still. The sniper was still muttering about something under his breath that contained the word 'creepy' many times.
He knew Robin was really smart. Like, super smart! So, if she said Shizu was a fish, then Shizu must've been a fish.
"She's the wierdest fish I've ever seen!" he grinned and chuckled. Fish needed water to live and Shizu had been in big trouble when she'd decided to jump aboard. Luffy had just tried to help her. Biting him was a bit rude of her.
"Uh... yeah, I guess so," Usopp nodded. "She looks like she's never been in the sun."
Which was right. Shizu was so pale it wasn't difficult at all to see her moving under the ship on a clear day, or even if it was a bit cloudy. Unless she swam deeper, and then he couldn't see her anymore.
"Sanji really likes her."
"Sanji likes everything even remotely female."
Except that she might've not even been a she in the technical sense. It was one of the things Robin had said; "She-serpents all look like human women from the waist up, even the males. Shizu might be a boy for all we know."
To say she looked like a human wasn't much. In the brief brawl with the wierd mermaid-fish Luffy had noted that her hair wasn't really hair at all but long, thin strands of something else. It was the slimiest thing he had ever touched. Her mouth opened up way more than a human's should with two rows of sharp teeth (that could be counted from his shoulder now) and her eyes were completely black. Maybe that was what made her creepy in Usopp's opinion? The fin that started right where her butt should've been had sharp spines too, but the rest of her scales were nice and smooth.
"Her boobs were really hard."
Usopp bopped him on the head for that.
