Clang

Clang.

Clang.

The noise echoed in the long hallway of the old empty cellblock. There was a desperate tone in the noise that kept Usopp from protesting, even as the monotonous clanging rang in his ears. He was sitting by the metal bars of his cell with his back against the concrete wall and his legs out in front of him, feeling his head pound painfully by every loud clang that echoed between the walls. But he was still happy to notice that the pain in his head took some of his attention from the throbbing mass in the middle of his face that was his nose. It had been broken in at least three places during the battle he had fought together with Chopper outside Albana, and even if he was quite used to getting his nose broken, the pain was something he had a hard time adjusting to.

Clang.

Tugging at the brown bloodstained bandana that was tied tightly around his aching head, Usopp closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the wall and wondered how many clangs it would take until he went completely insane. He could hardly think in the noise, not even to try to figure out a way of escaping from the cells, but he still didn't say one word in protest.

"Usopp?"

The voice coming from the other side of the concrete wall behind him was thick with hidden worry. Usopp opened his eyes and turned his head so that his left cheek rested against the rough concrete. He lifted his left hand and rubbed his forehead lightly.

Clang.

"What is it, Nami?" he asked, trying to keep his voice as calm and collected as possible, even though the noise coming from the other side of the hall was making him want to stand up and scream.

"You're not worried, are you? I mean, he'll get us out in the last minute as always, right?"

Usopp hadn't been worried. In fact, he had almost assumed that they were going to get out of trouble in the last minute like they always did. But his friend's question triggered a chain reaction in his mind. The last time he could remember seeing Luffy was when they arrived to the Marine base. The captain had been unconscious, carried into the large concrete building by two Marines without even waking up. Usopp didn't know what was wrong with their captain, but now he suspected that the risk that they wouldn't be able to count on their trump card this time was pretty big. However, he told himself, there's no way I'm telling that to Nami.

Clang.

"Of course, Nami," he said instead, trying to make his voice sound as cheery as possible. "You know him. Nothing in the world can keep him from becoming the Pirate King, not even these pesky Marines."

He hesitated for a moment, not sure if he should continue talking or not. Then he could hear his own voice join the clanging echo between the walls of his own cell.

"You know, before he met any of us, he was sailing around over East Blue on his own, and he ended up being captured by the Snake tribe of Bharadia in southern East Blue. The Snake-people looked almost like humans, but they had long poisonous fangs and they didn't have any legs. Instead, they had long snake-bodies where the legs would have been. Like centaurs, but with the bodies of snakes instead of horses. And they were really angry at Luffy. Do you know why?"

Clang.

The lie made Usopp's stomach twist uncomfortably. Even if it wasn't the best time to tell one of his stories, he felt that if they could only get their mind off their current situation, they could get a chance to regain some of their high spirits. The only thing that bothered the marksman was the annoying clanging that clouded his imagination and made it harder to come up with a punchline for his story.

"No, why?"

Usopp could hear the smile in Nami's voice and he could feel his worries ease a little. Nami had never fallen for any of his lies, and she would probably never fall for one either, but to hear her smile at his story was giving Usopp the impression that the navigator shared his desire to think of something other than the situation they were in.

Clang.

"Well, the Snake people had caught Luffy eating the food that was going to be sacrificed to their mightiest god, Thuli'in, so they weren't all too happy about having him as a guest in their village. Then the Snake Elder spoke up, suggesting that they should sacrifice Luffy to Thuli'in instead, since he had eaten all the food that was meant for the god. So they quickly surrounded him, and Luffy was just about to surrender, when…"

Usopp's voice trailed off in the middle of the sentence when a soft laughter rose from the other side of the wall. Judging by the echo of the laughter, Usopp guessed that Nami was sitting by the wall right behind him.

"Now I know that you're lying, Usopp!" Nami said, laughing again. "Luffy – surrender? I don't even think he knows the meaning of that word. Are you sure that you're not mixing this up with one of your stories, oh brave and noble Warrior of the four oceans?"

Clang.

Now it was Usopp's turn to laugh. It felt like a heavy weight was lifted from his chest once the laughter bubbled out. He playfully slammed his fist against the wall behind him, turning his head to look up at the low ceiling. Closing his eyes as his ears once again registered the rhythmic clanging, he smiled softly.

"Stop interrupting me! Anyway… There he was, surrounded by a whole tribe of Snake-people with no chance of escaping…"

"Why didn't he just use his Gomu Gomu powers?" Nami asked from behind the wall, her voice sounding more and more interested in the story.

Clang.

Usopp found the eager and interested tone in Nami's voice soothing. Her voice reminded him of Kaya, and the memory sent a needle of disappointment aimed at himself through his heart. Usopp wasn't supposed to sit there in some stupid prison cell in some stupid Marine base while telling stupid lies to keep his stupid mood from dropping. No, he was supposed to sail the seas to become the brave warrior of the sea he always had dreamt of becoming. Then he was supposed to return home to his island and tell Kaya and his old clan about the many adventures he had been out on.

He shook his head lightly, wincing as the headache flared up again. It wasn't a good time to start thinking of what had happened.

Clang.

"Why he didn't use his Gomu Gomu powers?" Usopp asked, surprised by how cheerful his voice sounded. "Have you ever seen a snake ready to strike? It moves faster than the blink of an eye – and Luffy wasn't nearly as strong or quick as he is now. The Snake-people kept moving away from his attacks while they tried to crush him with their long snake-bodies and bite him with their poisonous fangs. All Luffy could do was to dodge the attacks and try his best to hit his enemies. Suddenly, they had him pinned up against a building and were arguing over who was going to get the honor of preparing the sacrifice."

Clang.

As the echo of the noise faded away, Usopp could hear Nami chuckle lightly on the other side of the concrete wall. He smiled and tried to force his mind to come up with an end for his story. The headache was giving him a hard time trying to make the story up as he went on talking.

"At first, Luffy wasn't sure what the snake-people were doing since they had stopped attacking him. So he relaxed a little and watched the tribe argue about him. Very soon, he got bored of watching the arguing snakes, so he tried to call for their attention to continue the battle. However, the snake-people paid only little attention to him before going back to their argument."

"Didn't that make him annoyed?" Nami asked from her cell on the other side of the wall.

Usopp nodded to himself, almost completely absorbed in his own story. It wasn't a very good story, and he was well aware of it. But he figured that he could always blame the poor storyline on the fact that it wasn't one of his own adventures if anyone would complain.

"Of course. He even tried to punch the one standing closest to him just to get their attention, but the snake-man just moved out of the way and glared at Luffy. Luffy just glared back for a moment before he put his fingers in his mouth, stretched out his cheeks and rolled his eyes like a madman."

Clang.

A soft chuckle rose from behind the wall again. Usopp was having a hard time imagining Nami laughing at what had to be his worst story ever, but when he thought of the stress they were all feeling, he figured that she could have reacted in other – and probably worse – ways.

"The snake-people fell silent as they noticed him making faces at them. At first, they were just staring at him, but then they started to laugh. They laughed so hard that after a moment or two, every single one of them had tied knots on their long bodies. Some even looked like giant balloon-animals – poodles, parrots, lizards… almost every animal you can think of – and some even looked like weird balloon-hats. So Luffy had no problem with getting away after eating the rest of the food in the village. Of course, he was pretty miffed about missing out on such an awesome battle, but he took that out on some pirates who tried to steal his little boat later that day."

By the time he finished his story, both Usopp and Nami were laughing until their sides were sore. The laughter was hollow, and there wasn't much enthusiasm in it, but Usopp still felt a little better as he laughed. But as the laughter faded, reality crept up on him like a silent predator. He remembered that they were still inside locked cells in an old cellblock in some Marine base, and that their chances to escape were getting narrower for every hour that passed. The clanging noise was suddenly so much harder to ignore.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

Usopp moved up to the metal bars of his cell and leaned his head back against the concrete wall behind him. He looked out between the bars towards the other side of the hall where the noise came from. He could see the bars of one of the cells rattle with every clang and sighed.

"Do you think he'll ever stop?" Usopp heard himself ask.

Clang.

Clang.

"I doubt it…" Nami answered. Usopp registered that all emotions in her voice were long gone. "He's been doing that non-stop for a day and a half now. Ever since he woke up, I suppose. I'm worried about him."

There was a moment of silence that broke the steady rhythm in the clanging noise. It was a silence that pressed against Usopp's ears in a more painful way that the echoing clangs. One last clang echoed through the hall, this time louder and with a more desperate tone than before. Then a dull thud was heard as from something falling to the floor.

"Shit…"

Usopp's ears perked up by the sound of the hoarse voice coming from the other side of the hall, and he leaned closer to the bars of his cell. From his position, he could only see a faint shadow of the man sitting on the floor in his cell. But judging by the way he was leaning forward over his bent knees, Sanji looked exhausted.

There was a faint rustle from the other side of the wall behind Usopp's back as Nami moved inside her cell. Usopp tried to guess what the navigator was doing as he listened to her footsteps walking across the concrete floor.

"Sanji-kun? Are you alright?"

"Don't – don't worry about me, Nami-san," Sanji's voice was hoarse and heavy as it echoed from across the hall, and Usopp could clearly hear that the cook was trying to hide his fatigue behind his usual cheery voice. "These bars are stronger than they look, but I'll break them down if I have to tear the walls to pieces."

Usopp listened to Sanji's short, rattling breaths for a few minutes as the silence fell over them. There was definitely something wrong with the cook, and Usopp thought that he could remember Chopper stating that Sanji's ribs probably were broken.

Once the clanging noise finally had stopped, Usopp could feel his mind starting to work freely again. Slowly, his brain switched to inventing mode, the most imaginative state of his mind – except from when he was lying. He got up from the floor and leaned against the metalbars of his cell, looking out into the corridor to find something that could help them get out. To the right, he could only see a mop and a bucket standing by the wall at the far end of the corridor – nothing that could be used to escape, sadly enough. But as Usopp turned his head to his left, he saw a huge, rusty old controlpanel next to the heavy iron-door that lead out from the empty cellblock. By the looks of it, there had to be some controls that opened the doors to the cells on that panel.

Usopp reached up for his goggles, pulled down the left lens over his eye – the lens that hadn't been partially destroyed during the battle between Sanji and Mr.2 Bon Clay in Albana – and tried to read the small signs below each button or lever. As he zoomed in on the controlpanel, he was very pleased to see that it was very old and not very advanced.

There were four levers, about forty small and one large button on the controlpanel. According to the signs below each of them, Usopp soon learnt that the levers were light switches connected to the four lamps hanging from the ceiling in the corridor. The large button in the top right corner of the panel was a switch that caused a security lock-down in case a riot would break loose in the cellblock.

Finally, Usopp managed to read the rusted signs under the smaller buttons. There was one button to open a cell-door and one to close it for each of the twenty cells in the two floors of the cellblock. Even though the buttons were all pretty rusted, Usopp was convinced that it would be easy to open the doors if he only knew which button was connected to which door.

The marksman growled and put the lens back above his forehead.

"If I only had my weapons…"

"Oh, that reminds me…" Sanji said from across the hall, a hint of amusement in his hoarse voice. "You wouldn't happen to know what happened to two of my best frying pans, would you, Usopp? I couldn't find them when I made the last inventory check back on Going Merry.

"Eh?" The image of the fake 5-ton hammer he had used against Mr.4 outside Albana flashed before Usopp's eyes. "No! Why would I know anything about that?"

Sanji chuckled. "Somehow, I knew you would say that. Then would you mind explaining the two dented frying pans I found at your battle scene?"

"I shall!" Usopp said quite loudly as he folded his arms across his chest, feeling a bit desperate to change the subject. "But not now! Anyway, as I was saying, if that damn Marine hadn't stolen my slingshot and my pachinko, I think I would have got us out of here by now."

"What?" Nami and Sanji said in unison, their voices echoing between the walls. "What are you saying?"

"I would already have got us out of these concrete boxes if I had my slingshot," Usopp repeated himself. There was a new clanging noise coming from Sanji's cell as the cook rammed his foot against the bars.

"Why the hell haven't you said anything about this before?" Sanji shouted from his cell.

"If someone hadn't gone completely insane and started to try to kick his way out of his cell directly when he woke up, I would have thought about it yesterday!" Usopp snapped in reply, reaching out to grab the bars of his cell. He felt a bit less agitated when Sanji didn't talk back. "But I don't know what to do since I don't have my slingshot…"

"Well, can't you use something else?" Sanji asked in a lighter, but still annoyed tone.

Usopp thought for a while, his eyes never leaving the controlpanel as he measured the distance in his mind.

"If I had some ammo, I might be able to make a primitive sling…" he said, mostly to himself. "Pachinko would be the best, but since I don't have any, pebbles would do just fine… But there are no rocks in my cell. These Marines are far too pedantic about their cells."

"There are some lumps of concrete here in my cell," Sanji said with a hint of hidden fatigue in his voice. "Most of them are about the size of the tangerines on Nami-san's trees back on the ship. The rest is mostly sand."

Usopp shook his head, absentmindedly scratching his chin. "They're too large, I'm afraid."

"I'll take care of that…"

Usopp could hear a shuffling sound and something scraping against the concretefloor on the other side of the corridor. Judging by the sound coming from Sanji's cell, Usopp suspected that the cook wasn't as alright as he claimed to be.

"What are you--"

He didn't get the chance to finish his sentence. A dull thump was heard, followed by a crackle and the sound of pebbles scattering over the floor. Usopp tried to poke his head out between the bars of his prison and saw Sanji's arm reaching out from his cell, throwing a handful of small rocks across the hall. The pebbles rolled across the floor up to Usopp's cell, and the marksman reached out for them.

"Perfect," he said, looking at the pebbles in his hand. They were about the same size as his Tabasco Stars.

Usopp took off his goggles, pulled the bandana from his head and leaned against the bars of his cell. Putting the goggles back on his head and pulling down the lenses in front of his eyes, he checked the distance to the controlpanel again before folding his bandana into a primitive sling. When he felt that he was ready, he took a deep breath and aimed carefully.