"So....,"
Nami said as she stirred chocolate chips into her whipped cream,
"What's bothering you lately?"
Usopp dug a spoonful of cookies'n'cream and answered,
"Another dream."
before swallowing. Nami looked at him in surprise as she ate a spoonful of her vanilla and chocolate swirl herself.
"Another one?"
Usopp was worried about how Nami was going to take *this* dream. It hadn't been pleasant.
Nami knew all about him. She knew he was into mechanics, about his abandoned past, what he liked eating and how he acted. He knew the same things about Nami as well, which was why he was pretty sure that she wasn't going to take this dream in lightly.
He had started having the strange dreams since primary school. At his younger age, he had dreams of a home with a set of parents in a place of green fields and trees, with blue skies. It was incredibly weird; he could remember every single detail of every dream he had, and it actually *made sense*. It was as though his dreams were of an alternate universe; another world with another life.
As he grew older, he grew older in his dreams as well. His mother had died, his father had abandoned him, yet he kept pride in his father. The details then started to fade a little, although certain images still remained in his mind, bright and clear. For example, he had heard of a young girl who was sick from depression. He had told her stories to cheer her up. Lies as they were, the stories had worked, and Usopp suspected that he and that girl had felt something a little deeper.
Then a sharp, clear cut dream of a bunch of bandits attacking his home-town had come. And, like a pandora's box, hope had come along with the evil.
A green-haired swordsman, a stretchy sort of guy, and most amusingly, Nami. He had told Nami about her; how she was a money-crazy as she was now, and had exactly the same attitude towards him as she had now. Like him, she had laughed.
Usopp hadn't explained any physical details to Nami because those sort of details were hard to remember. It was easy enough for him to recall emotions and actions, but to remember a certain image of a person from his dream was difficult.
It was also hard to recall terms and words used in his dreams; he knew that there was something that made the stretchy guy in his dream; well, stretchy, but he couldn't remember what the something was called. And it wasn't a 'bunch of bandits' that had attacked his home-town, but something else... a word that seemed to be at the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn't seem to remember it.
"Usopp?"
"Huh?"
He blinked, looking at Nami tap her chin with a spoon with a raised eyebrow.
"I asked, 'another one'? You know, as in, another dream?"
Usopp nodded, back to reality.
"Yeah. It was disturbing enough, Nami."
"So bad enough to make you want to talk about it, ne?"
Nami murmured, the hint of concern in her voice mismatching her monotonous expression.
"Yeah."
He set down his spoon with a bit of a grimace.
"Well, this dream... okay... I can't remember much, but this word 'Arlong' remains in my head."
The most strangest thing happened. In a split second, Nami's eyes darkened, her lip curling into a frighteningly un-Nami-like scowl. What startled both of them and Nami out of her sudden reaction was the crack of the glass bowl holding her ice-cream, her hand withdrawing from the ice-cream as though she had been burned.
"Wh-what the..."
Usopp stared at the cracked glass, melted ice-cream starting to drip out of it. Nami blinked, her eyes clearing and a look of confusion settling on her face.
"What the hell Nami?! That freaked me out!!"
Usopp exclaimed, his expression alarmed.
"S-sorry! I don't know what happened!"
Nami said honestly, now looking bewildered,
"Something just came over me. I didn't know I had the strength to crack glass, either."
"That's not what scared me,"
He muttered, her darkened eyes surfacing fresh in his memory.
"What?"
"Nothing."
There was a short silence as Nami looked at her hand, still in surprise. A pain lightly throbbed in her right shoulder.
"Look, nothing's wrong, okay? Go on."
She said, and Usopp nodded slowly before continuing.
"Well, you left the group."
"Left it?"
"Let me rephrase that. You kicked off some people off our ship, took all the treasures and betrayed us completely by taking the ship with you and betraying our trust."
Her jaw dropped at the malice in Usopp's voice.
"Hey! Don't get mad at me. It's just a dream - I don't know what I did in it!"
"Yeah, well, I don't know why, but it really hurt. It kind of hurts to look at you even now, actually."
Nami looked at him in surprise. Usopp's eyes and voice really were stained in pain, and now that he had remembered his dream, he couldn't seem to meet her eyes now.
"Be reasonable! It's a dream. I didn't do anything!"
She cried.
"Oh? How do you know you didn't *really* do it?"
He snapped back without thinking.
"Usopp!!"
Words came to his mouth without his thinking.
"You were ours,"
He muttered,
"Not his."
"Cut it out, Usopp!!"
He gave himself a mental shake before saying softly,
"Sorry Nami. This time, I don't know what came over *me*."
"Damn right you're sorry,"
She snapped, her cheeks flushed with a mixture of shock and anger. There was a long, uncomfortable pause as Nami steamed inside at the weird attitude of Usopp's while he himself wondered what had him so wired up.
He checked his watch, even his movements making him feel awkward, and hitched up his bag as he said a little stiffly,
"I was meant to be at Melinda's Charity House fifteen minutes ago."
"You better get going then, haven't you."
She said frostily. He winced at the frostbite.
"I'll call you later..."
His voice trailed off as she refused to meet his eyes. Her icecream was still leaking out of the crack in the glass. Usopp adjusted his glasses before murmuring,
"I'm sorry."
He turned and left the ice-cream parlour with a depressed expression. Nami sighed, abandoning her ice-cream and standing up. The whirl of emotion within her seemed to melt away, like her damn ice-cream was doing now. Sadness, anger, pain - it was a bloody confusing cocktail.
"Damn it!!"
She started to curse Usopp inwardly, but stopped. Remembering the pained look on his face when he had muttered 'You were ours, not his' made Nami's insides clench a bit.
"Damn your stupid dream..."
She muttered, then realised something with a jolt.
"Damn YOU Usopp!! You left me to pay for your ice-cream?!! ARRRRGGGHH!!!"
***THURSDAY::
* Morning Classes:: 07:30 AM - 09:45 AM - PHYSICS
* Evening Classes:: 20:15 PM - 22:30 PM - MATHS
Zoro read his timetable for Thursday in disbelief.
'I get evening classes?!! Damn it!!'
He thought, looking longingly at his mattress. His eyes returned to the timetable, then checked his watch. It was 20:11, meaning he had four minutes to get his butt in the Maths classroom. Grumbling, he got up, pulling on a bag, when his head felt a little weird.
'Oh, I forgot my bandanna. Now where the hell did I put it...'
He looked around his bed, his bag and the floor and finally found it when he patted his pockets. He deftly swathed his head in the blue, string-dyed material before checking his watch again. 20:14, giving him sixty seconds.
He hitched his bag up and jumped down whole flights around the stair case till he met the grassy grounds, then wondered where the classroom was.
"Oh shit..."
He muttered, consulting his timetable again, knowing that even though he despised Maths, it was his best subject out of the three, so if he really couldn't get out of the place, at least he would have a good score on Maths.
**First Extension, Third Floor, Classroom 35**
Read Zoro. He ran as hard as he could towards the extension, pounded up three flights of stairs before bursting into a Physics laboratory full of students studying the night skies with telescopes. Everyone stared at the slightly panting green-head in a blue bandanna mutter something before dashing out of sight.
'What the hell?!!'
He thought frantically as he pulled out his timetable again. He had read the wrong thing - he had just entered the lab he was to have for Physics. With a sweatdrop, he noticed the correct classroom below it, this time definitely for Maths.
Zoro entered the right classroom in the main building on the third floor breathing a little heavily, officially thirteen minutes late.
"S-sorry I'm late,"
He mumbled, looking around the classroom full of kids working out problems at their desks, the silence broken by his noisy breathing.
'Shit, this is kind of embarrassing.'
He thought as he tried to control his deep gulps of air into smaller breaths while the teacher gave him a weird look before picking up a register-looking thing up from his desk and enquiring,
"Zoro Roronoah?"
Zoro nodded as the teacher sighed and made a little tutting sound before jabbing a thumb towards an empty desk.
"Ask Johnny what we're doing,"
The teacher said, passing Zoro a thick, green textbook,
"I'm sorry I can't be with you right now, but I'll talk to you next class."
Then in a louder voice, he called to the class,
"I've got a meeting to go to, so behave little children!"
The kids chorused a mixed 'yes Mr. Saunders!' before dissolving into laughter, and waved their teacher off before continuing with their studies.
Zoro sat down in his desk, and felt a weird sort of feeling behind his back. He turned around to notice the girl from before - the orange-haired girl he had seen on the stairs. Her long, orange hair was tied in a quick knot at the back of her neck, and she was chatting animatedly with a blue-haired girl next to her. Zoro was momentarily struck with a numbing sense of...
'Of what?'
He wondered.
"Hey. I'm Johnny."
The moment cracked and shattered as Zoro turned back around, and he found a black-haired guy wearing sunglasses smiling friendly-like at him.
"Zoro."
Zoro replied, then asked,
"Uhm, are you allowed to wear those things in here?"
Johnny laughed.
"Hell, yeah! You're allowed to wear bandanna's too."
Johnny then opened his textbook, gesturing for Zoro to do the same, and asked,
"You got a geometry set?"
Zoro bit his lip.
"It's in my dorm. I didn't think I needed it now. Should I go get it?"
"Don't bother."
The feminine voice behind brought Zoro's attention back to the orange-haired girl, and she passed a set to Zoro.
"Here. Use mine."
"Don't you need it?"
"Nah, I just finished the module. I'm taking a break until the teacher comes back till the next one."
Zoro took the set with a grateful nod.
"Thanks."
He turned to his bag and pulled out his notebook and a pen, and turned to ask Johnny which page they were on to be startled. He hadn't noticed Johnny staring at him with a dropped jaw, the sunglasses slipping down the bridge of his nose.
"Uhm, Johnny... which page are we on?"
"Zoro, do you know her!?"
"No, I don't."
"She's only the most popular girl in this whole university!"
"Oh, okay. So which page are we on?"
Still in disbelief, Johnny mumbled,
"167. I've never even talked to her..."
before lapsing into a depressed silence. With a sweatdrop, Zoro said,
"Oi, don't make that face."
Johnny sighed, picking up a pair of compasses and sketching a circle before saying,
"Yeah, okay. Eaten dinner yet?"
Zoro shook his head, and Johnny smiled again.
"Great! How's we go to the cafeteria right after this? I'm meeting another friend there too."
"...yeah?"
Johnny sighed in relief when Zoro smiled in response.
***
Thanks for all the positive feedback! ^^* By now, you probably will have realised that I'm going through scenarios with characters one by one, though not necessarily in any particular order. ~_^ I love to hear your opinions! Give me a review now and then to cheer me up, 'right? ^^*
Nami said as she stirred chocolate chips into her whipped cream,
"What's bothering you lately?"
Usopp dug a spoonful of cookies'n'cream and answered,
"Another dream."
before swallowing. Nami looked at him in surprise as she ate a spoonful of her vanilla and chocolate swirl herself.
"Another one?"
Usopp was worried about how Nami was going to take *this* dream. It hadn't been pleasant.
Nami knew all about him. She knew he was into mechanics, about his abandoned past, what he liked eating and how he acted. He knew the same things about Nami as well, which was why he was pretty sure that she wasn't going to take this dream in lightly.
He had started having the strange dreams since primary school. At his younger age, he had dreams of a home with a set of parents in a place of green fields and trees, with blue skies. It was incredibly weird; he could remember every single detail of every dream he had, and it actually *made sense*. It was as though his dreams were of an alternate universe; another world with another life.
As he grew older, he grew older in his dreams as well. His mother had died, his father had abandoned him, yet he kept pride in his father. The details then started to fade a little, although certain images still remained in his mind, bright and clear. For example, he had heard of a young girl who was sick from depression. He had told her stories to cheer her up. Lies as they were, the stories had worked, and Usopp suspected that he and that girl had felt something a little deeper.
Then a sharp, clear cut dream of a bunch of bandits attacking his home-town had come. And, like a pandora's box, hope had come along with the evil.
A green-haired swordsman, a stretchy sort of guy, and most amusingly, Nami. He had told Nami about her; how she was a money-crazy as she was now, and had exactly the same attitude towards him as she had now. Like him, she had laughed.
Usopp hadn't explained any physical details to Nami because those sort of details were hard to remember. It was easy enough for him to recall emotions and actions, but to remember a certain image of a person from his dream was difficult.
It was also hard to recall terms and words used in his dreams; he knew that there was something that made the stretchy guy in his dream; well, stretchy, but he couldn't remember what the something was called. And it wasn't a 'bunch of bandits' that had attacked his home-town, but something else... a word that seemed to be at the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn't seem to remember it.
"Usopp?"
"Huh?"
He blinked, looking at Nami tap her chin with a spoon with a raised eyebrow.
"I asked, 'another one'? You know, as in, another dream?"
Usopp nodded, back to reality.
"Yeah. It was disturbing enough, Nami."
"So bad enough to make you want to talk about it, ne?"
Nami murmured, the hint of concern in her voice mismatching her monotonous expression.
"Yeah."
He set down his spoon with a bit of a grimace.
"Well, this dream... okay... I can't remember much, but this word 'Arlong' remains in my head."
The most strangest thing happened. In a split second, Nami's eyes darkened, her lip curling into a frighteningly un-Nami-like scowl. What startled both of them and Nami out of her sudden reaction was the crack of the glass bowl holding her ice-cream, her hand withdrawing from the ice-cream as though she had been burned.
"Wh-what the..."
Usopp stared at the cracked glass, melted ice-cream starting to drip out of it. Nami blinked, her eyes clearing and a look of confusion settling on her face.
"What the hell Nami?! That freaked me out!!"
Usopp exclaimed, his expression alarmed.
"S-sorry! I don't know what happened!"
Nami said honestly, now looking bewildered,
"Something just came over me. I didn't know I had the strength to crack glass, either."
"That's not what scared me,"
He muttered, her darkened eyes surfacing fresh in his memory.
"What?"
"Nothing."
There was a short silence as Nami looked at her hand, still in surprise. A pain lightly throbbed in her right shoulder.
"Look, nothing's wrong, okay? Go on."
She said, and Usopp nodded slowly before continuing.
"Well, you left the group."
"Left it?"
"Let me rephrase that. You kicked off some people off our ship, took all the treasures and betrayed us completely by taking the ship with you and betraying our trust."
Her jaw dropped at the malice in Usopp's voice.
"Hey! Don't get mad at me. It's just a dream - I don't know what I did in it!"
"Yeah, well, I don't know why, but it really hurt. It kind of hurts to look at you even now, actually."
Nami looked at him in surprise. Usopp's eyes and voice really were stained in pain, and now that he had remembered his dream, he couldn't seem to meet her eyes now.
"Be reasonable! It's a dream. I didn't do anything!"
She cried.
"Oh? How do you know you didn't *really* do it?"
He snapped back without thinking.
"Usopp!!"
Words came to his mouth without his thinking.
"You were ours,"
He muttered,
"Not his."
"Cut it out, Usopp!!"
He gave himself a mental shake before saying softly,
"Sorry Nami. This time, I don't know what came over *me*."
"Damn right you're sorry,"
She snapped, her cheeks flushed with a mixture of shock and anger. There was a long, uncomfortable pause as Nami steamed inside at the weird attitude of Usopp's while he himself wondered what had him so wired up.
He checked his watch, even his movements making him feel awkward, and hitched up his bag as he said a little stiffly,
"I was meant to be at Melinda's Charity House fifteen minutes ago."
"You better get going then, haven't you."
She said frostily. He winced at the frostbite.
"I'll call you later..."
His voice trailed off as she refused to meet his eyes. Her icecream was still leaking out of the crack in the glass. Usopp adjusted his glasses before murmuring,
"I'm sorry."
He turned and left the ice-cream parlour with a depressed expression. Nami sighed, abandoning her ice-cream and standing up. The whirl of emotion within her seemed to melt away, like her damn ice-cream was doing now. Sadness, anger, pain - it was a bloody confusing cocktail.
"Damn it!!"
She started to curse Usopp inwardly, but stopped. Remembering the pained look on his face when he had muttered 'You were ours, not his' made Nami's insides clench a bit.
"Damn your stupid dream..."
She muttered, then realised something with a jolt.
"Damn YOU Usopp!! You left me to pay for your ice-cream?!! ARRRRGGGHH!!!"
***THURSDAY::
* Morning Classes:: 07:30 AM - 09:45 AM - PHYSICS
* Evening Classes:: 20:15 PM - 22:30 PM - MATHS
Zoro read his timetable for Thursday in disbelief.
'I get evening classes?!! Damn it!!'
He thought, looking longingly at his mattress. His eyes returned to the timetable, then checked his watch. It was 20:11, meaning he had four minutes to get his butt in the Maths classroom. Grumbling, he got up, pulling on a bag, when his head felt a little weird.
'Oh, I forgot my bandanna. Now where the hell did I put it...'
He looked around his bed, his bag and the floor and finally found it when he patted his pockets. He deftly swathed his head in the blue, string-dyed material before checking his watch again. 20:14, giving him sixty seconds.
He hitched his bag up and jumped down whole flights around the stair case till he met the grassy grounds, then wondered where the classroom was.
"Oh shit..."
He muttered, consulting his timetable again, knowing that even though he despised Maths, it was his best subject out of the three, so if he really couldn't get out of the place, at least he would have a good score on Maths.
**First Extension, Third Floor, Classroom 35**
Read Zoro. He ran as hard as he could towards the extension, pounded up three flights of stairs before bursting into a Physics laboratory full of students studying the night skies with telescopes. Everyone stared at the slightly panting green-head in a blue bandanna mutter something before dashing out of sight.
'What the hell?!!'
He thought frantically as he pulled out his timetable again. He had read the wrong thing - he had just entered the lab he was to have for Physics. With a sweatdrop, he noticed the correct classroom below it, this time definitely for Maths.
Zoro entered the right classroom in the main building on the third floor breathing a little heavily, officially thirteen minutes late.
"S-sorry I'm late,"
He mumbled, looking around the classroom full of kids working out problems at their desks, the silence broken by his noisy breathing.
'Shit, this is kind of embarrassing.'
He thought as he tried to control his deep gulps of air into smaller breaths while the teacher gave him a weird look before picking up a register-looking thing up from his desk and enquiring,
"Zoro Roronoah?"
Zoro nodded as the teacher sighed and made a little tutting sound before jabbing a thumb towards an empty desk.
"Ask Johnny what we're doing,"
The teacher said, passing Zoro a thick, green textbook,
"I'm sorry I can't be with you right now, but I'll talk to you next class."
Then in a louder voice, he called to the class,
"I've got a meeting to go to, so behave little children!"
The kids chorused a mixed 'yes Mr. Saunders!' before dissolving into laughter, and waved their teacher off before continuing with their studies.
Zoro sat down in his desk, and felt a weird sort of feeling behind his back. He turned around to notice the girl from before - the orange-haired girl he had seen on the stairs. Her long, orange hair was tied in a quick knot at the back of her neck, and she was chatting animatedly with a blue-haired girl next to her. Zoro was momentarily struck with a numbing sense of...
'Of what?'
He wondered.
"Hey. I'm Johnny."
The moment cracked and shattered as Zoro turned back around, and he found a black-haired guy wearing sunglasses smiling friendly-like at him.
"Zoro."
Zoro replied, then asked,
"Uhm, are you allowed to wear those things in here?"
Johnny laughed.
"Hell, yeah! You're allowed to wear bandanna's too."
Johnny then opened his textbook, gesturing for Zoro to do the same, and asked,
"You got a geometry set?"
Zoro bit his lip.
"It's in my dorm. I didn't think I needed it now. Should I go get it?"
"Don't bother."
The feminine voice behind brought Zoro's attention back to the orange-haired girl, and she passed a set to Zoro.
"Here. Use mine."
"Don't you need it?"
"Nah, I just finished the module. I'm taking a break until the teacher comes back till the next one."
Zoro took the set with a grateful nod.
"Thanks."
He turned to his bag and pulled out his notebook and a pen, and turned to ask Johnny which page they were on to be startled. He hadn't noticed Johnny staring at him with a dropped jaw, the sunglasses slipping down the bridge of his nose.
"Uhm, Johnny... which page are we on?"
"Zoro, do you know her!?"
"No, I don't."
"She's only the most popular girl in this whole university!"
"Oh, okay. So which page are we on?"
Still in disbelief, Johnny mumbled,
"167. I've never even talked to her..."
before lapsing into a depressed silence. With a sweatdrop, Zoro said,
"Oi, don't make that face."
Johnny sighed, picking up a pair of compasses and sketching a circle before saying,
"Yeah, okay. Eaten dinner yet?"
Zoro shook his head, and Johnny smiled again.
"Great! How's we go to the cafeteria right after this? I'm meeting another friend there too."
"...yeah?"
Johnny sighed in relief when Zoro smiled in response.
***
Thanks for all the positive feedback! ^^* By now, you probably will have realised that I'm going through scenarios with characters one by one, though not necessarily in any particular order. ~_^ I love to hear your opinions! Give me a review now and then to cheer me up, 'right? ^^*