A/N: I present the second portion of the introduction to this story. Thank you to those who have read. *Bows*
I addressed the formatting issue one reader brought up for the previous chapter. I will endeavor that I don't repeat the same mistake.
I still do not own One Piece.
Hours, days, minutes, a week. Usopp could only guess how long he sat on the floor of his childhood home, clinging to the crown his captain had worn.
Orientation returned as quick as it had left him. The shock of it almost drove him to nausea.
He lay on the floor for several minutes longer, adjusting to the deafening silence left behind by all the memories.
'I'm hungry.'
Less conscious thought and more instinct, he nonetheless acted on it. Slowly, he rolled over and sat on his knees. Vacantly, he checked the vegetable garden out back.
"Oh," he said mildly, noting the sorry state of his home grown produce. "No good."
He wandered outside in a semi-conscious state.
How far back had he gone?
"-Opp! Usopp!"
"Huh?"
Usopp came back to the moment in the middle of Mr. Root's little market, about the only place for produce in his tiny village. The owner himself stood over him with a bemused, disapproving frown.
"Did you hear a word I said?" He asked with a lifted eyebrow.
"Um." Usopp answered dumbly. He was preoccupied with figuring out when he'd collected the carrots, onions and peppers in his hands.
"I assume you can pay for those?" Mr. Root asked, tapping his foot.
"Oh." Usopp shifted the vegetables to one arm and patted his pockets. "Uh." He replied after failing to find his purse.
"Look, I get it's been tough for you," Mr. Root said with a shake of his head. "But even if your Mom passed, I can't abide by you being a thief."
A flash of fiery orange and a blue pinwheel stuck in his mind's eye. Usopp sniffled.
"Hey, no," Mr. Root said, suddenly flustered, hands hovering uncertainly.
"Aw hell, kid, I'm not gonna let you starve or anything! Don't go water works on me!"
Usopp blinked.
'Oh,' he realized. 'He thinks I'm crying over the food.'
Or maybe his Mom. Being displaced so far in time was profoundly weird.
The boy sniper almost laughed.
"Look, I'll give you this one freebie," Mr. Root said with a sigh. "But only because you haven't been spouting your nonsense about pirates for a few days."
Usopp nodded absently in silent thanks. He plodded back to his house.
"They aren't coming today," he murmured, almost like a prayer. "But one day, they will."
He lifted a pot out of the cupboard and boiled his vegetables into a stew, feeling too empty for anything more substantive. After just one serving, he crawled into bed and hugged his knees to his chest.
He lay on his side, eyes wide and staring into the night through his window.
No snoring.
No sleepwalking midnight kitchen raids.
No wayward limbs invading his hammock- his bed.
Usopp lay there, awake and scared out of his mind.
"I-I am Captain Uso-"
His voice died out in the middle of his attempted bravado. It had been just another one of his lies before, but it felt blasphemous with the breeze outside silently judging him.
He brushed his fingertips against the straw hat- he'd never parted with it for a moment.
The sniper gingerly placed it over his head.
"I'm the Captain!"
He emulated the man he followed.
"Shishishishi!"
The forced laughter shook his shoulders.
"Shishishi…"
The shaking turned to trembling.
Alone, Usopp cried himself to sleep.
He ran when he woke up. Not from anything or to anywhere, just movement for movement's sake.
If he stayed in bed, if he sat still for another second, he would suffocate.
He sprinted off the beaten paths, beyond the woods and bugs and spiders he knew so well, until he reached the north shore.
The boy sniper panted, untrained body exhausted by the exertion.
'What am I going to do?'
Usopp had suffered through plenty in prison when his nakama were dead. A single day of being back, back, and knowing they were alive again, threatened to crush him, feeling too much all at once.
He stared at the waves lapping up the beach.
"How far can I swim?" He wondered aloud.
He tried piecing together where they'd all be- he'd figured out, from context and a cursory glimpse at a paper the previous day, after he remembered, that he went back fifteen years. A full decade before Luffy landed on his shore.
The sniper didn't even want to imagine Robin or Brook's circumstances. Franky might not have gotten as far as being an underworld figure yet, and Usopp doubted Chopper had eaten his devil fruit. He could only hazard the roughest guess as to where Jinbe would be. Was the helmsman a Shichibukai already?
The Grand Line was out of the question anyway- even if he could swim to Reverse Mountain and survive the entry, that ocean was too vast, and without Nami, he'd be helplessly lost inside of an hour.
Not quite as lost as Zoro at any given moment (he had a theory that the swordsman just appeared out of thin air one day and had wandered ever since), but still high on the list of 'legendarily boned seven-year-olds'.
"Oh Kami," he murmured. "Nami."
The crew's navigator was eight, and Arlong would arrive in Cocoyashi in two years to destroy life as she knew it.
Usopp shot to his feet, pacing back and forth. Where would Nami's island be relative to him? He skimmed over his memories to figure how many days they were at sea after they left the Gecko islands.
He stopped and his nervous energy paused. What could he even do if he managed to get there? He paced again, twice as agitated.
Sanji! He knew where Sanji was, and if he could make it to Baratie, surely the boy cook would know something and want to help a girl in trouble! His mentor was a former pirate, and a formidable one at that!
"Yes!" Usopp muttered, excited and wringing his hands.
They could go to Nami's island, warn her about the fishmen, maybe call the marines before Arlong showed up! If things went south, Sanji and Usopp would help Nami and her family escape, and she'd never have to slave away under that bastard shark! They could look for Luffy and-
Swish!
A stiff breeze rolled over his head and carried the straw hat out over the water.
"Captain!"
Usopp bolted down to the beach, wading in until the water reached his chin. He dove down and swam, kicking for all he was worth. When he finally reached the hat, he could barely keep his head above water. He buoyed up his stomach and let the current carry him back to the island.
He hadn't made it out very far.
'Even with a boat, I couldn't reach Sanji alone.' He thought. The boy washed up on a different beach.
Did Baratie even exist yet? How would he convince Sanji to leave? And what could he say to the people on Nami's island?
Usopp flopped his thin arms at his side and squeezed his eyes shut in frustration.
"What can I do?"
"I'd get out of those soaked clothes, for starters."
Usopp's eyes shot open at the sudden presence. A high-pitched, small voice spoke again from behind him. He'd been so emotionally strung out he didn't sense its owner.
"You'll catch a cold lying there like that. It's not sunny enough to dry out."
He craned his neck to look upside down at his visitor.
A girl about his age regarded him curiously from an arm's reach. Her pale complexion and blond hair told him she probably didn't venture outside much.
She seemed familiar.
"What are you doing, anyway?" She asked.
"Um," Usopp said intelligently. He rolled upright and turned to face her. "Thinking."
"Does dunking your head in the ocean help?" She asked with a twinkle of humor.
Usopp huffed, crossing his arms and wracking his brain trying to place the girl.
"Of course," he said. "Haven't you ever been to the beach?"
"Yes," she replied, folding her little arms. "But my parents never let me swim, since they don't think my constitution can handle it."
She spoke with a diction that denoted education and probably money. She pouted and her name sat on the tip of his tongue.
"Miss Kaya! Where did you run off to?"
'That's it!' Usopp perked up. He face-faulted. 'Wait, WHAT?!'
"Coming, Merry!" The young heiress called back. She waved with a small smile at the stunned sniper and skipped away.
Usopp spent two minutes reconciling the outgoing girl he'd just met with the sickly, scared young woman he remembered.
She must have learned timidity somewhere along the way.
"Kuro." He hissed, the fake shit-butler's name leaving a sour taste in his mouth.
Usopp curled his hand into a fist and pounded the sand. He jumped up and sprinted back to his house.
He couldn't save Nami, but he'd found something he could change.
'I've gotta get stronger.'
Kaya turned another page in her book, seated comfortably in the library of the family manor. Her cough after the other day's outing was tame, so she was allowed to wander on the condition she stayed indoors.
As much as she tried concentrating, her thoughts kept deviating back to the tan boy she'd met on the beach. She couldn't imagine what had possessed her to leave Merry's side, let alone speak to the boy! Her parents and tutors always encouraged her to be kind and courteous, but she was typically shy around new people.
To be fair, she didn't often encounter new people washing up onto the shore, soaked and spread-eagle. Besides, he hadn't been unpleasant with her, and it wasn't as though she had a thriving social life. Her tutors were strict but fair, and Merry was a sweetheart, but there weren't really any children on the island, at least none that she'd seen. She wished she was allowed outside more often.
A knock at the front door drew her out of her musings. As a rule, she didn't answer the door, on the rare occasion visitors came, because the house staff (which, really, meant Merry, the only member on staff who wasn't a cook) were paid to do so.
Seized again by an unbidden urge, however, Kaya slipped out of the library and padded down the hall. She came to the end and peeked around the corner.
She was on the second floor, and from her position she could see the whole foyer. The tile floor on the ground level meant Merry's footsteps were louder than hers, so she crept closer to the banister at the top of the stairs. The young butler cracked open the tall double doors before stepping back, and Kaya's eyes widened.
The boy from the beach was there, in her doorway.
She lowered herself to keep out of sight and listened.
"Hi," the boy said. "I'm Usopp!"
'Usopp,' Kaya repeated in her mind. 'It suits him.'
"How did you get past the gate?" Merry asked, more curious than accusatory.
Kaya frowned. She didn't want Merry chasing off what might be the only potential friend her age on the island. She could tell the boy had a decent heart from his slightly surprised and embarrassed laugh.
"I, uh, I climbed over it," Usopp said. "I wasn't sure how to tell someone I was here."
Kaya's eyebrows rose. To her, scaling the fence around the manor was a daring feat.
"Should I not have?"
Kaya heard Merry sigh.
"No harm done, I suppose. What can I do for you, Usopp?"
Kaya also wondered why Usopp was at her doorstep.
"Well, I remembered meeting Kaya the other day and I was wondering if she wanted to come outside?"
Kaya hummed an affirmative sound and made a firm decision to herself- she was going to be Usopp's friend.
"I'm afraid that won't be possible."
She pouted.
'Boo!'
"Miss Kaya has been worn out from her excursion earlier. She cannot leave the house right now."
Usopp folded his arms and looked thoughtfully at the floor. Kaya hoped he didn't turn away.
"What if we stayed inside the gate?"
Kaya nodded. It sounded reasonable to her.
'Please say yes.'
Merry regarded the young lad- Usopp, he knew- that stood in the doorway.
The butler knew that pirate blood ran in him. His father had been absent for the death of his wife because he was at sea. It would be prudent, in the interest of her upbringing, to keep Miss Kaya from associating with him.
That is, if Merry cared, or suspected his employers cared, quite so much about elite standing and such. He was not heartless. He knew the boy had to be grieving, and to his knowledge, essentially alone.
"Young man," Merry said, leveling his gaze on the tan boy. "Can you promise me that you will not allow Miss Kaya to tax herself?"
Usopp's posture straightened, and something flashed across his face in an expression that, frankly, startled Merry.
"I won't let her get hurt."
Merry witnessed something extraordinary. The lad, who couldn't have been older than eight, looked like a grown man for a moment. Merry didn't think Usopp could have given his word with more gravitas if he'd been told the fate of the world rested on his shoulders. Extremely unexpected, and, in the same instance, unnerving to see in one so young.
Merry immediately deemed him trustworthy.
"Miss Kaya!" He called, smiling at the young girl who came running down the stairs, face bright and shining.
Perhaps she would benefit from a friend her age.
Merry took a deep breath and stepped back inside.
"Now, how to tell the master and mistress."
Procuring the master and mistress' approval that young Kaya have a friend proved wonderfully easy.
Their reactions to the topics the heiress came home discussing, however, were, ah, lukewarm.
"Fishmen?" The lady of the house repeated Kaya's outburst.
"Yes!" Kaya nodded emphatically. She almost leaned over the table in her enthusiasm. Her mother tutted, and she remembered her etiquette, though it did nothing to curb her excitement. "Usopp's been telling me about them! Did you know that they're born on an island leagues under the ocean surface on the Grand Line?"
"Yes, dear."
The master of the manor slid Merry a glance, and the butler shifted sheepishly.
"Perhaps you ought to invite this Usopp for lunch next time." Her father said with a cautious smile.
Kaya positively beamed at the suggestion, unaware of the looks her parents exchanged. Merry couldn't fault them. They were careful to avoid smothering their daughter, but as they were both often occupied with work and left day-to-day care with Merry, it only stood to reason they would vet the people who associated with her a bit.
The suggested gathering didn't take place for several weeks, but Merry noted young Kaya had a bounce in her step that hadn't been present before.
"You seem rather charmed by this Usopp lad, Miss Kaya." He commented offhand after serving her tea in the library.
Too young to be embarrassed over fondness for a boy, she tittered.
"He's great, Merry! He tells the best stories, and he paints such vivid pictures with his words! I know mother and father will adore him!"
Merry smiled.
Indeed, on the assigned day, young Usopp, while quite clearly aware of the subtle scrutiny ("I wore my, uh, best pair of overalls.") carried himself well.
"Oh no, sir," he said in answer to one of the master's questions. "They're born naturally stronger than humans, but that's primarily because they have to withstand intense water pressure changes."
"Fascinating," the head of the manor murmured, obviously enthralled. "I feel so ignorant. I was raised under the belief they were little more than brutes."
Merry noticed a scowl flash across Usopp's face. It vanished so quickly he almost doubted he'd even seen it.
"Well, there are a few bad ones, like there are bad people," he said, only barely catching himself from placing his elbows on the table. "But most of them are just as likely to be goofy as the rest of us."
"You're quite knowledgeable," the lady remarked. "And especially for your age. Where did you pick this up from?"
Usopp scratched his nose and affected embarrassment.
"My father left the island when I was young, but he sends back letters every so often about what he sees."
Merry watched the master's expression closely- it was the first time Usopp's heritage had been mentioned, even tangentially.
The master smiled, however, unconcerned.
"Personal experience is the best teacher," he said. "Kaya, your friend is welcome to visit again any time."
"Really?" Kaya asked, elated.
"So long as he doesn't sell you on any flights of fancy."
Merry saw Kaya's face fall, just a little. She snuck her hand over to Usopp's beneath the table and crossed his fingers, even as the boy gave his word.
Kaya cast a pleading eye at Merry. The butler pursed his lips. Once he saw the master and mistress take up their own conversation, he winked at her.
Merry very likely erred on the side of spoiling his charge, but the precocious child never exploited him.
And who was he to deny a child the joy of dreams and imagination?