Sea Age 1527, Day 55.
Today, Robin and Chopper left. There are many more ruins to find, books to read, and patients to treat-- and there are places only the most careful feet can go.
Usopp's going too. He's setting sail for Little Garden. His plan is to get Dory and Brogy, meet up with Kashii and Oimo, then he's going to Elbaf, apparently.
On this blue sea, we'll definitely meet again.
Sea Age 1527, Day 91.
We reach the Red Line once again, and Brook reunites with Laboon. We partied to the light of day, drunk and giddy and never happier.
Brook stays with him. They're going on their own, long-overdue journey together.
Gather up all of the crew, it's time to ship out Bink's brew!
Wave good-bye, but don't you cry: Our memories remain.
Sea Age 1527, Day 147.
Vivi's doing great. We took Zoro's suggestion this time and kidnapped her out to sea.
It's okay, we'll give her back before the next Reverie
Sea Age 1528, Day 10.
Luffy's missing.
That fucking idiot.
Sea Age 1528, Day 12.
Apparently he went to visit Katakuri. Can you believe him? Apparently he destroyed a few fleets of Marines on the way and ate half of the island.
Dear lord that mochi bastard has a soft spot for the rubber glutton fuck knows why
For god's sake, we're the Emperors now! They're not just going to let him waltz up to Totto Land and say hi!
Sea Age 1528, Day 22.
We don't know what he talked about there, but now he's leaving for real.
He made sure to tell us his plans.
he even talked to Coby
though it's not the kind of plan I should write in the logbook before the day. It's a promise to us only in words, and he's going to find the others and tell them himself, before he does it.
No longer wearing his stupid straw hat, smiling like the sun.
Our Pirate King walks away.
Sea Age 1528, Day 68.
Zoro and Sanji stayed behind in the New World.
I hope they didn't fight and drown once we left, that rowboat was small
Momonosuke is turning twelve soon, and Zoro's been commissioned to be his personal master in the sword. He's going to stay in Wano until Momo becomes king.
Sanji opens his own sea restaurant in the New World, and it's a big hit with only the most notorious of pirates. Of course, every worker in there packs a mean punch. Or kick.
Sea Age 1528, Day 111.
Franky leaves on a passenger ship toward Sabaody, leaving behind the Thousand Sunny in the Sea Forest ten thousand meters under the surface.
It's amazing how there are daily ships in and out now. Shirahoshi-chan's brothers are working really hard, aren't they?
Jinbei lords over the Fishman District now, approving efforts of bringing the island to the surface and the surface to the island. The Strawhat flag flies proud and strong at the entrance of Fishman Island, and Jinbei is the gatekeeper.
Everyone's settled down somewhere, and now it's my turn.
Today, I'm going to close this book, Sunny.
I still haven't decided where to go. I never knew I'd stay this long. Maybe I'll pay Gen-san a visit.
It really makes me wonder how Buggy decided to settle down where he did.
He may have been a wimp, but he watched his own captain die and stood back up.
The road we walked on narrowed, but as long as we're alive, there's always a way to keep going forward.
Even though our journey's over, we'll always be nakama, Sunny.
The Strawhats are Eternal.
There are happy moments in the log. There are sad moments in there, too. But what it doesn't have-- is the truth of what comes after.
It's a deceivingly beautiful ending to a magnificent adventure.
With the execution of Pirate King Monkey D. Luffy, the Worst Era comes to an end. What comes next certainly lives up to the name of the previous generation.
Decades into the next era, someone will find the Thousand Sunny in the depths of the sea, and they will find their logbook.
And by the end of it, surely, they too, will mourn the bitter end of the Strawhats.
This isn't the story of what comes after. We don't have time for all that.
This is the story of two people who will make sure it never happens again.
Regarding the King of the Snipers.
Usopp's arms are bound on either side of the wall, and his legs are crossed in a way that was him trying to get himself comfortable as he slept.
He wonders if Ace felt like this too, before his execution. Man, his shoulders ache. Is that joint even still connected?
But Usopp knows that no one is coming for him. It's not something he particularly wants at this point-- his time is over.
Speaking of time, it's hard to grasp the flow when you're in Level Six of a high-security prison. He wonders if the world is still intact out there.
He doesn't resist, and just waits for the next storm to take the world.
The world has really become more boring since Luffy's execution, hasn't it?
He would've been really disappointed. When will the successor of his legacy come by?
He wonders if Rayleigh felt like this, wearing those bomb shackles and pretending to be a slave in the human auction, just as a pastime.
He grasps some shred of news, every once in a while, from some newbie that wants to goad him into action. But Usopp is beyond that now. A brat's ramble is far from anything that can anger him.
"I heard Roronoa Zoro had to disembowel himself before the masses!"
He closes his eyes and he goes to sleep, not at all expecting the scenery to change when he wakes up again.
Usopp regains his awareness in the Spring of Sea Age 1518, nearly three to four decades earlier than he was supposed to be in.He doesn't know why or how he understood the precise date in such suddenness-- perhaps it was the way the wind blew through his face-- the way his limbs felt light-- the way the stone before him felt distinctly like a grave-- but he justdid.
His hands are free. And small. And his shoulders don't have the chronic ache from being shackled to the wall for much too long. The agony of the muscle atrophy was no longer there-- and he could breathe-- because the walls weren't musky, the air was fresh-- and sweet, and salty, like the sea.
The sea.
He was-- he was outside.
Not in Impel Down's Level Six-- truly, truly, outside.
His vision is blurry, as it has been for the past how many years since he was captured and chained to Level Six. But the world right now isbrightandcolourfuland so many colours Impel Down evidently isn't.
Blotches of so many colours, yet he can't see the clouds.
For the first time in a while, he wishes he had his eyesight back.
(He still remembers the agony when those marines spilled acid over them, laughing in glee at the aspect of the greatest sharpshooter in the world, crippled forever.)
(Joke's on them, Usopp can shoot them down a mile away, blind or not.)
What's going on?
The sunlight is harsh against his head. The sea is a painful cobalt blue. The tombstone before him says Banchina, in loving memory of a beloved mother. He knows because he runs his hands over them and feels each carved letter, and he knows it's new.
He hugs himself.
He's too small. Too thin and soft and lacking muscles.
He closes his eyes (they're useless anyways) and his mind stretches. He thinks he's dreaming when he feels the amount of people in the town around him. The amount of gentle, good-coloured people.
His heart expands across the terrain, up strangely familiar roads, and rests on the girl that has always been his one lifeline.
(It's Kaya.)
Usopp buries his face on his mother's grave and sobs.
Sobs, because this isn't a dream.
It makes no sense, but it's real, it's happening, he's young again, and all his adventures definitely aren't his imagination. His blindness is proof of it.
He's back.
He may have lived alone after his mother died, but that didn't mean there were no adults to take care of him.
Shortly after realizing Usopp hadn't shown up for groceries a while, the local fishmonger's wife decided she was going to pay the poor kid a visit. She even brought along lunch and veggies from the supermarket ossan.
What they stumbled upon was a horrifically messy house, and Usopp sitting upside down in the middle of that chaos like a kitten trying to pretend this wasn't his fault.
Cue panicked screaming, fussy neighbourhood aunties, a doctor's visit, and a very nice house remodeling session courtesy of the carpenters in the village.
In his past life, his reputation was 'the boy who cried pirate'.
This time, by total accident really, he becomes known as the boy who cried himself blind. Apparently.
Sudden blindness doesn't quite occur so, uh, suddenly, after all.
"No sign of an external injury," the doctor says, "but it's not going to get better. I suspect it's something like what took Banchina… but instead of his life, it's just taking his eyes."
They can only theorize. Sudden blindness in one night? No way. But maybe it's a disease that takes away his eyesight? That is just a little more likely than time travel.
(They still don't know what took Usopp's mom from them, so maybe it's this, just a different form of it? There are plenty of diseases that only attack certain body parts. So maybe Usopp is absurdly lucky and it only took his eyes instead?)
All in all, Usopp is glad that they're going to explain this for them and he doesn't need to come up with a lie for it.
But if they do ask, it's not like they'll believe his tragic retelling of how his wife's jealous ex-husband from his last life's forbidden romantic relationship cast a curse over his eyes so he'd never be able to see his beloved's beautiful face again.
Usopp spends his first few days home trying to figure out where everything is.
Haki can only see souls, so Usopp can't see fixtures and furniture.
He sits on his bed, and he admires the colours of the world again.The sky is a blue blur. His bed is a white blur. His desk is a brown, black, white and green blur.
And a bit of red. What's the red?
It's the wax seal from the letter Yasopp sent. Banchina had read it lovingly, and Usopp thought the wax seal was cool so he kept it like a lucky coin.
He can't even remember how the pattern looked like anymore.
And now he'll never remember.
He breathes out a heavy sigh.
Alright, he slapped his cheeks a few times. He blinked a few times, though his vision isn't clear at all. It's only going to get worse herein, and maybe, that's fine.
This time, he'll wait for his captain, and this time, he'll hold onto him tight.
Regarding the Burglar Cat.
Burglar Cat Nami had been a mercenary pirate for a few years before the purge began.
Current wealth? Insurmountable. Number of claimed islands? Every island that owes her money belongs to her.
Including Cocoyashi, that's about thirty five in Paradise, Twelve in the New World, and one Fishman Island. Oh, and one in North Blue, because of Torao.
Treasures? Countless.
Maps? Priceless.
What about the map of the world? That's buried in the ground, completed and perfect, revered as a legend just like her Captain and the rest of everyone's dreams that have already come true.
Burglar Cat Nami led a fulfilling, successful, very productive life. As documentaries often say-- she was a woman of fortune, a kitten of great wealth.
She spent most of her time in Fishman Island, being the core of human-fishmen relations, learning karate for fun, and occasionally mooting off Fukaboshi-chan's royalty.
It was a nice life.
Laying on the ground, her hair sprawled out over her figure as she lay on the cold, disgusting mud-- unable to bring her face away from the soil. She feels the blood under her, gathering in a pool of sickening red.
She feels the burn of the tears in her eyes, but she isn't scared-- she isn't frustrated, nothing like that.
She was just resigned-- simply waiting, for the cold to take her.
(Has it really been so long since Vivi was executed?)
(Vivi died, high and beautiful and as mighty as Ace's death had been. She hopes they meet up there, princes and princesses in their own right, scorned for their dreams and dying for the ones they loved.)
Nami is different.
Nami's death is ugly.
(At least, she thinks she dies.)
Like a stray cat, she curls up in the corner of some trash, dirty and drenched and missing a few limbs.She struggled, she struggled until she was the last one left-- but unlike the rest of her beloved crew, her death is one no one mourns.
No one she once loved existed anymore.
And no passersby approaches, because a dead body at the side of the road is just that.
Nami jerks awake in the Winters of Sea Age 1517, a scream at her throat and a rush of vomit churning in her stomach. She bites her fist, holding it back and shoving down the dissonance, praying and hiding and--hiding, from what?
She first cringes, reaching toward her arm stump and whimpering at the dragging, clawing, grinding agony. Phantom pains, not again. Not again. Not again. She has one foot less to brave against the soil.
No, something's wrong.
The stumps have been there for years. She's past the point of having phantom aches any time except rains.
Why do the stumps feel fresh and raw?
She opens her eyes to knees that are too small, too free of scars. She's between barrels, tucked under a blanket in a semblance of a shelter. She doesn't know where she is, but she knows, strangely enough, when she is.
(And it's not when she is supposed to be.)
Beside her, a bag full of beri.
There are sandals on her feet-- sandals, something she hasn't worn since she'd lost one foot so many years ago-- and a sleeveless shirt.
How long has it been since she's worn a sleeveless shirt?
Her tattoo was just too recognizable, so after a few years of gallivanting in a bikini top, she returned to the modesty of shirts.
Without her right arm (her right arm, her right arm, how is she going to draw maps without her right arm?) she can't lift the cloak that's covering her figure-- but somehow, she knows what's hidden underneath it.
Arlong's mark.
She bites her lip, holding back a whine.
She's back.
She's back, and this time-- this time she'll find them again, she just has to be patient.
She just has to wait, quietly, and she'll be back with them again.
She's the weakest, but when it comes to having a stubborn will to live, Nami wouldn't lose to Luffy.
The Arlong Pirates take her missing limbs hard, but she shows her stuff and she manages to convince them she's worth enough to stay.
(Cat Burglar Nami has drawn a million maps in her life. She could draw with her teeth and feet if she had to, and they'd still be the picture of perfection. Losing her dominant arm is a small issue.)
She's not sure how her missing limbs came back in time with her, but she isn't going to question it. Stranger things have happened in the New World.
She's missing her right foot from the ankle and down. She binds a contraption to it made of wood and stuck it in a boot, and it gives her enough leverage to walk normally.But not having a right arm will be tough, so she'll need to commission a prosthetic technician and get it fixed.
Okay then.
She'll first save up enough for a pair of prosthetics, and get at least some of her muscle and finesse back in her body.
Then, she'll find a way to slam Arlong back into the gutters.
Everything else comes after.