Chapter 21: Logue town: Planning and stealing
Summery: I may never know how it truly began, but I do know that I never truly had a choice in the events that led me here. I am in one piece now, and have unwillingly left my own world behind. That is all that matters, and all I need to know.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with any legal rights to one piece in any form, I do not own one piece or any part of the merchandising, gaming, manga, anime, characters, or anything of the sort. Please do not sue me as I do not have any money. The only things that I own from this fic are my own original characters.
Note: You can look at artwork for the story by going to my profile and clicking on them the links.
Amazingly, I am already 45/53 of the way through the first season, and once it's over, on to the Grandline! :D
1) O.O OMG! 8 reviews for one chapter? IN ONE DAY?! 'is very happy' I wish I had that many reviews for each chapter, but I only have half that amount. In T-T anyway, glad you all liked chapter 20. I hope you like this one just as much.
. : ?.? Um, Logue town comes before the Apis ark anyway. The apis ark comes right after Logue town, and right before the Grandline.
MonkeyGurl : don't worry, Momoo will show up again later in the fic, sort of. -shifty eyes- but don't tell anyone.
'thoughts'
"Words"
(inner Kaede)
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The diaries of Kaede Tsuda Burnett, day 33
I can't believe I actually fainted. God, that was embarrassing. After everything I've seen, after all the fights and the near death experiences, it was seeing my own bounty that did me in. Well, I guess that is just kind of the way I am.
Anyway, I'm still a little surprised by the fact that I got a bounty in the first place. I guess that's one of the drawbacks of being a witch, the government will destroy you at the first chance they get.
After I finally woke up from my 'episode', I ended up trying to learn how to read with Nami again, then looking through the spell book for new spells to try. I found two that I really wanted to try out, but unfortunately they bother require that I learn other spells first.
The first one that caught my eye was Slow, which will slow the movements of your enemies down to about a third of their normal speed once mastered, but it requires that I master at least the two first blizzard spells before I'm aloud to use it. I guess it has to do with slowing down particles, like when you slow down the particles of water to make ice.
The other spell that caught my eye was Haste, which had the exact opposite effect and requirements as slow. It speeds up you and your friends to three times your normal speed, but I have to master the first two Fire spells before I can use it.
Limitations suck. Anyway, onto a different subject.
We just spotted Logue town about an hour ago and we're already almost to the harbor. I'm keeping my broom in my froggy bag so that I can make a speedy get away if I need to, but I have a feeling that flying around when I'm a wanted witch isn't the best of ideas.
I've already started my planning for stealing from the marine base, and the best I can do is hope that my thunder and blizzard spells, both of which I have been practicing with for the past two days, will be enough to take care of anyone I come across.
I also need to buy some things, and I plan to steal from the pirates that I remember seeing Smoker take out at some point. They're supposed to have landed already, but smoker should find out about them until well after we have already headed out into the town, so I should be able to steal from them and get out before he gets there if I use Choco to get there as fast as I can.
Anyway, I have to go, the others are calling me. L8r!
Signed, The diaries of a Mad Cat Woman.
Closing the journal, I quickly stashed it into it's usually spot and headed up the stairs to see what everyone was all worked up about, though I already had an idea of what it was.
"I was wandering when you were going to show up." Nami said, pointing at the docks as we slowly pulled in. "We're here."
"Woohoo! This is gonna be so fun!" Luffy shouted excitedly as we pulled into the harbor of Logue town.
"Every pirate headed for the Grandline stops here to resupply." Nami explained as we got closer and closer to the docks.
"Actually, from what I've hear, only stupid pirates show up here now. Something about a smoker." I said, causing her to look at me as though I was crazy.
"Ya mean they're scared of someone with cigarettes?" Usopp asked, staring at me as though I was crazy.
That was generally the consensus lately.
"Nah, she probably means some bounty hunter that smokes a lot." Zoro said, having figured out a long time ago that I was always going to be a little criptic about what I knew.
Ah Zoro, he knows me so well.
I'll have to change that.
If he knows how I think then the pranks will stop working... if he figures out how I thing, then I wont get to let boats land on him anymore.
And that would be boring.
"What?!" Nami asked, clearly not liking this bit of news. "If you knew something like that, then why didn't you tell us before we go here?!" She demanded, wanting to know why I would let us get into a situation that could be potentially dangerous.
Nami turned around and headed for the kitchen to turn the boat around, dead set on not going into the town where some smoking guy was that was probably going to kill us.
"Hey," Luffy said, getting her attention. "If she thought it was important, then she would have told us already. Trust her to do her job about warning us." he said, reminding me that he had his moments every now and then.
He might be a little bit of an air head sometimes, and way to naive for his own good, but every now and then he would say something smart. He sometimes pointed out, in his own (and very strange) way, that we were all capable of doing what we thought was right and could handle any situation.
(A/N: in writing, this may seem a bit ooc, but it's not. Luffy does actually this a couple times in the anime. He tells everyone that they should trust Zoro to get his job done, so it's not out of character for him to do this, it's just extremely rare.)
"But! There's a strange man out there that might want to kill us!" Usopp said, suddenly coming down with 'I-can't-go-to-that-island-or-town-frightus', a decease he seemed to be prone to.
"Just trust her." Zoro said, speaking up and getting our attentions as he walked to the front of the boat. "She might miss things every now and then, but she always warns us if she doesn't know if something is going to turn out alright. If she didn't mention it before, then it doesn't matter if he's there or not: He isn't going to be a problem."
The fact that Zoro had stated something about my abilities without throwing in some barb or comment was new. He had never spoken about my abilities without at least saying that he was expecting me to miss something that was going to get us killed.
Either that man needs a doctor right away, or he was finally starting to trust me.
Either way, I fear for the very fabric of time.
Scary.
"That's right! Kaede sweat is amazing!" Sanji said, once again doing that damn-weird-ass-leg-dance.
'I swear I'm going to get nightmares if he doesn't stop that.' I thought, wishing he would finally get that I found his strange wiggling dance disturbing as it made me think of his legs getting broken in several places as he did it.
Legs don't bend in eight different places. They just don't.
It was bad enough that he had done it on the Baratie, but he had also done it the entire time we were on Nami's island, and ever since we had left it as well. Any time he spoke about Nami or I, he would do it, and it was really starting to freak me out. He had even nearly done it on one of my melted glass pools, which would have burnt his feet off if it hadn't been for Choco stopping him.
"Didn't say that Choco thinks your dance is disturbing?" Zoro asked off handedly, causing Sanji to instantly stop dancing and glare at him.
"What was that marimo?! I'm gonna kick your ass!" He said angrily, cause Lil to cover her face with her paw in exasperation.
"They're never going to stop, are they?" She asked as I hopped onto Choco's back with her in my arms.
"Nope, I don't think so." I said before patting the side of Choco's neck.
Choco kwehed happily at the fact that I was finally riding him, something that I hadn't done before. He then ruffled his feathers and took off running as fast as he could.
"See you guys later!" I shouted as Choco took off and jumped the twenty feet from the ship to the dock, causing everyone to shout after me.
"Hey! Wait a sec!" Usopp yelled, wandering where I was off to in such a hurry. "We haven't even decided on a place to meet up at!"
ignoring Usopp's comment, I quickly had Choco run over to and jump up onto the nearest building, disappearing before any of them could get a chance to stop me.
It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to them, it was just that I had way to much to do in the few hours we had in the town before smoker would try to take Luffy, and I wanted to get as much done as I could
I kind of felt a little bad about not saying goodbye to them, but I wanted to steal from the pirates as soon as possible so that I could head off and start shopping before I had to infiltrate the marine base. It was all a lot to get done in one day, and I was going to have to be quick about it if I wanted to manage it.
"Ok, Do you see the any pirate ships in any of the docks?" I asked Lil once we were on the highest rooftop we could find. She was currently sitting on my head in an attempt to help me find any pirate ships we could steal from.
"Several, you'd be amazed at how many pirates seem to be stupid enough to actually come here when Smoker's around." she said, shaking her head at the fact that most pirates seemed to be idiots.
"Hey, you do realize that you're talking about us too, right?" I said, alerting her to the fact that she had just called herself stupid.
"Hey! Fine, whatever. Anyway, I think I see a pirate ship with a heart as part of it's symbol, want to hit them first?" She asked, causing me to perk up almost instantly.
"You're kidding! That's Alvida's ship! Let's go!" I said in excitement, happy that I could steal some stuff from her in a preemptive strike for what she was going to try to do to Luffy with Buggy later.
Before she could even get down to the safety of my backpack, Choco took off in the direction she had indicated, causing her to scream out in surprise.
"Please don't do that again." Lil pleaded seven minutes later when Choco had finally reached Alvida's ship.
Luckily, there only seemed to be three people guarding it, and none of them looked like they were going to be much of a problem.
"Do you think Alvida will be made if you let someone steal stuff from her ship?" I asked one of the guys from behind him, causing all three of them to spin around in surprise as I grabbed my normal mallet and bashed each of them over the head with it. "Yep, way to easy." I said, smiling as I hoped onto the ship and headed down into the cabin below.
Once inside, I quickly found all of her food and water supply and stuffed it into my bag, though I hadn't actually been looking for it in the first place. It seemed that more then half the rooms on the small ship were for storing food, which kind of made me think that she still ate way more then she should have even though she was thin now.
I guess it has something to do with the slip slip fruit, because I couldn't imagine anyone else eating nearly as much as she would have had to in order for all this food to not rot before she got to it.
Well, Luffy could have, but he's a garbage disposal, so he didn't really count.
"Ok, now to find Alvida's room." I said, walking from room to room and stuffing everything I found into my froggy bag.
It took me six tries to finally find Alvida's overly glamored room, which looked like it had been swallowed by a Pepto-Bismol princes, then vomited back up again.
"Ok, this chick has pink problems." I said, staring around the room and wandering if there was something wrong with her.
Don't get me wrong, I like pink just as much as most girls do, but when you cover every single thing you own with it, then you have a problem.
"Ok, if I was Alvida, I would probably set traps all over the place." I said, looking around the room and shrugging my shoulders when I couldn't find anything. "Ok, that was pointless, she would probably have them hidden so no one would see."
and with that, I commenced my search, and wasn't at all surprised when I nearly got decapitated four separate times while just trying to look into her jewelry box.
'Damn, this girl has trust issues.' I thought, smiling as I finally managed to dump all her jewelry into my pockets.
Twenty minutes later I had finally managed to hit the jack pot by finding her hidden stash of treasure, which I quickly alleviated her of by putting it all either into my froggy bag for safe keeping, or into my backpack so that I could sell it as soon as possible.
"Ok, now for the final touch." I said, heading out of the ship and onto the deck, smiling when I saw that the three idiots were still knocked out cold. "Since no ones in the ship," I said, turning around and smiling at the door of the ship. "THUNDER!"
I really didn't like the fact that they were going to try to kill one of my friends, and I was going to make their lives a living hell for everything they were going to attempt today. It wouldn't take much for me to do it either, because spells could come in handy in so many ways.
"Great, now let's see if we can find Buggy's ship." I said, completely forgetting about the other guys ship that I had actually headed out to find in the first place. Buggy and Alvida were both on my shit list, so they came first.
Buggy's ship was so ridiculously flashy that it took me less then a minute to find. It wasn't anywhere near Alvida's ship, and I had a feeling that they had done that so that smoker wouldn't be able to catch them as easily as he would have if they were both traveling together. It was a pretty smart plan two, if it wasn't for one little problem.
There was a witch that was going to get them, and their little lion too! Ehehehe!
Sorry, I've been having Wizard of Oz moments for some reason.
Anyway, the point was, I was going to ruin any chance they had at getting away from Smoker before the battle even got started. Don't fuck with the mallet, or the chick that wields it. Trust me, it will bop you so hard that your tongue will shoot out your ass.
It took me less then half an hour to find all the loot in Buggy's ship as he didn't seem to even bother with setting traps to guard it with. He probably thought that he was so great that no one could ever even get past his men, who were sleeping when I walked into the cabin.
With a quick mallet to each of their heads, and a few minutes of dragging them all out side an onto the dock, I was free to do as I wished with the ship. I stole everything he had on it, including the treasure and food, and then set fire to it with a well placed thunder spell like I had with Alvida's ship.
It burned quickly, and I didn't even have any marshmallows to celebrate with. Damn.
"Let's go." I said, ignoring the fact that I was starting to think that I might be growing cold hearted.
It was only a small part of me that thought that, but it was still there. The larger part of me told me it wasn't cold hearted to protect me friends.
But was this protecting them, or was it sheer vengeance for something that hadn't even happened yet?
I wasn't sure, and I knew that it probably didn't matter either way. The only point to it was that I was doing something that would help my friends later, like stealing Buggy's body parts, which I was still kind of wandering if he was ever going to figure out that I took them in the first place.
I hoped not, but it was always a possibility.
"Ok, think we have enough treasure?" I asked Lil, who simply shrugged her shoulders at me.
"No idea, we could always hit another one, but I think three pirate ships catching on fire might draw some unwanted attention." She said, causing me to raise an eyebrow at her.
"Unwanted attention? Since when did you talk like a mobster?" I asked, wandering if my stealing and slight electro pyromania was having a bad influence on her.
"Hey! I'm just saying that we might not want to get ourselves caught, or alert people to our thieving since we're going to be stealing from the MARINE BASE here. Right?" she said, pointing out that to much commotion would just make it harder for us to get in and out, especially with Tashigi and Smoker running around.
"Fine, you're right. Let's go sell some of this junk and meet up with Nami, I think we have a couple of hours to kill before everything starts." I said, hopping onto Choco's back and having him jump onto the roof tops a few yards away.
It took us only about seven minutes of jumping from roof to roof to find another member of the crew, but it wasn't Nami I found first, it was Usopp.
"Hey, Usopp!" I shouted as Choco jumped down off the roof and landed next to him.
"Hu?! Oh, Kaede! You scared me! What are you doing here?" he asked, having had the living daylights scared out of him when Choco landed right next to him.
"Sorry about that, I just got done stealing treasure from Buggy's and Alvida's pirate ships." I said, causing him to look at me in confusion.
"And who are they?" He asked, not knowing who they were since he hadn't been with us when we met them.
"Right, I forgot you didn't weren't with us back them. Sorry about that." I said before explaining who they were.
I told him all about how Alvida was the first pirate that I had ever met and how Luffy had fought her the same day I became the first member of his crew. I also told him about Buggy and the crazy cannonballs he calls buggy-balls and how Luffy had kicked his ass too for destroying a small town.
By the end of the explanation, Usopp had a much better idea of why stealing from them was such a big deal for me, and he also now understood why the marines would give Luffy such a big bounty.
"Oh, so that's why his bounty's so big! I though it was just because you were a witch, but if he's taken down that many people, then I guess I can see why the World Government would be so worried." He said as he lead me into a strange shop that had large pink, heart shaped windows a and a western styled saloon door.
It also had a few swords, a shield, a tambourine and a large sign sitting in front of it that looked as though they belonged in a garbage can instead of in the front of a shop.
As we walked into the shop, I was a little surprised to find that it was so clean cut looking and had a Grandline theme to it, but wasn't surprised at all when I saw all that it was full of junk with prices so high that they just kind of screamed scam.
Great, just what we need, a store that makes you pay a lot for cheap ass junk.
"Wow, crazy! I think I've died and gone to trinket heaven!" Usopp said in amazement, looking around at everything in the shop while I simply glanced from price tag to price tag, wandering if his shop was even legal.
As many scams as there seemed to be in the shop, I seriously doubted it.
"Ah! A customer! Come in, come in, come in!" A weired looking man with purple hair and the worlds largest uni-brow said happily. "In this humble store, almost everything you see is a priceless pirate artifact from an adventure to the Grandline! I am certain you will not find a store like this in the entire world."
The fact that he said this while wringing his hands gave me the creeps, it was as if he had just spotted his next big scam, which I wasn't about to let happen.
"So then, everything in this store has been to the grand line?! Is that what you're telling me?" Usopp asked in amazement, causing Lil to roll her eyes behind him.
"You are so observant." The weird shop owner said, getting closer to us as he said it. "We only except a certain type of clientèle in this establishment, as you might imagine, and I can tell by your domineer that you're my type of client."
Just as Usopp's mouth was starting to resemble a river of saliva and drool, the shop owner pulled out a blue, fish shaped cork gun and held it out to him.
"Observe, I hold here the very same gun that was favored by none other the Gold Roger!" he said, showing Usopp the gun he was talking about, causing me to blink in surprise when Usopp believe him.
Oh, hell no.
"Lier, that's a cork gun of some kind, Gold Roger used a hand musket of some kind. That thing isn't even close to what he was known for using." I said, remembering a picture I saw somewhere that had Gold Roger with a musket like hand gun at his waist.
"What?!" He exclaimed, trying his best to look insulted by my words, only to change his mind a second later when I started dragging Usopp toward the door. "No! Wait! We're having a sale!" he said in a singsong voice, following us out as I headed down the road. "Every thing's half priced!"
H followed us for about a block, but stopped when several people started entering his shop at hearing that there was a sale. He didn't want to leave his scam unattended, so he was willing to let one customer go.
"Hey! Wait! Didn't you see all that stuff from the Grandline?! I gotta buy something!" Usopp said as I continued dragging him, trying desperately to get out of my grip.
"Usopp, none of that stuff was from the Grandline. I'm a psychic, remember? If I say it isn't from the Grandline, then you should probably trust me on that, got it?" I said, causing him to stop his struggling.
"You mean that entire shop's nothing but a scam? What a rip off!" He said, finally stopping his struggling and folding his arms as I continued dragging him to the next store, where I ended up running right into Nami.
"Oh! Nami! I was looking all over for you!" I said, which was half true.
While I had been looking for her, I had kind of given up the search when I found Usopp.
"That's great! I needed someone to try on clothes with! Come on, there's this nice little shop over this way that's having a sale, all the dresses are seventy percent off!" she said happily, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me off, leaving Usopp to do his own thing.
"Ack! At least let me turn around!" I pleaded, knowing that I was going to fall over at any minute.
Not being the worlds most graceful person, I a tendency to fall over when I was walking forward, and I didn't want to find out how bad it was when I was going backwards.
"Fine, fine." She said reluctantly, only letting me turn around when I had nearly tripped over some poor child's stroller. "So, on to shopping!"
"Fine, but in about an hour, there's something we need to do." I said, smiling evilly behind her as we walked into a shop.
What? You didn't think I was stupid enough to try and infiltrate a marine base with smoker as it's head all on my own, did you?
"Really? What?" She asked, wandering why any sane girl would even consider putting a time on how long she had to shop. It just wasn't normal.
"Nothing, I'll tell you later, but for now, I think we should get to the shopping, and I'll share some of the gold and treasure I just stole with you if you pay for the stuff now." I whispered so that no one else could hear me, causing her eyes to light up.
"How much treasure?" She whispered back, unintentionally alerting me to the fact that I had already convinced her.
The truth was, I hated shopping for clothes, but I needed to butter her up if I wanted to get her to sneak into a highly protected marine base with one of the worlds best captains guarding it.
While I knew I would miss the gold and treasure, I was more interested in what I could get from the marines, especially when it meant that I might get one of those prism stone stick thingies. Those were kind of nice.
"I have no idea, but it was six times the size of my backpack when it's fully, and I had to stuff most of it into my froggy bag, but I kept a few in my pockets to bribe you with now." I whispered back, pulling out the two gold necklaces and the diamond bracelet I had stolen from Alvida's ship. "What do you think? Of course, you might have to help me with something later, stealing more I mean."
"Deal!" She said happily, not even bothering to consider what it was that I might need her help with stealing.
'Works like a charm.' I thought happily as I let her drag me around and force me to act as her dress up doll like always.
I might hate it when she forces me to act like a 'my size barbie', but at least it was for a good cause this time.
Nami seemed to enjoy the fact that I was actually willing to let her dress me up this time. She also seemed to be happy that I was actually trying to find clothes for once.
It's a girl thing, and yet, I still didn't understand it. I had always been a bit of a tech-girl or a grease monkey, and had never actually understood the appeal of shopping for a bunch of clothes that you were probably never going to wear in the first place.
For instance, Nami had forced me to get a dress that I was sure would never get taken out of my froggy bag again as it was so short that I wasn't sure it actually covered anything.
It was definitely something that I would have put in the 'tops to go with skirts' category, and not the 'dress' category on it's own.
She had also gotten me a top that I wasn't that against getting. It was a bit more glam then I was used to, but it wasn't bad at all. It was a tight black top with little slits in the arms so that it showed off my arms slightly, thought it was still long sleeved. It also had those things at the end of the sleeves that you put your middle fingers through.
It was nice, and I was a little surprised that she had picked it out for me as it wasn't at all what she normally liked.
"Um? Not that I'm complaining, but this is a little weired for you to be picking out. Normally you go for t-shirts, tank tops, or fancy things you can wear at parties that we're never going to be able go to." I said, holding the top up and looking it over. "What gives?"
"Hey, I might not dress in those kinds of things, but you seem like the kind that would dress in that, either that or in overalls with oil stains." She teased, causing me to throw the top at her head so that she could hand it to the cashier.
"Thanks, I think." I said as she payed for all the clothes.
"Ok, one more shop and I think we'll head to the cooking contest I heard about earlier." She said, causing me to blink at her for a few seconds.
Was it really that late already? Sanji wasn't supposed to start that contest until we had been their for a few hours, not until after Usopp had his fight with daddy the father.
It was probably on Nami's way to whatever this shop was that she found Usopp, so the it was probably best if we headed off to find Usopp now so that we could see the dual.
"Sorry, but I think we should go find Usopp, I think I just saw him get shot in the back of my head." I said, causing her to look up at me in horror.
It might have been a lie, but it seemed to do the trick, because no sooner had I said it did she grab my arm and drag me out of the store and up the street.
"I knew this was going to happen! That idiot just had to go and get himself in trouble!" She said as she dragged me along the street with Lil and Choco following us as closely as they could on the roof tops, trying not to get them selves spotted in the process.
It wasn't that they thought that it would be bad if they were spotted, it was just that I had told them to do this so that they could practice for when we needed to sneak around places. It was actually starting to work to because I was barely able to tell that they were even there, and that was with me actually trying to spot them.
"I bet this is that smoking guy you were talking about earlier, isn't it?" She asked, thinking that it was the same person.
"No, this is someone else. His name is daddy or something." I said, finally pulling my arm out of her grip and stopping, causing her to turn and look at me.
"Hey, we hav-" She started, only to realize that she didn't even know where Usopp was.
She had pulled a Luffy without even noticing it.
"You don't even know where to look." I said, grabbing her arm and dragging her down an alleyway. "Come on, we should be able to find him from the roofs."
"Huh? And how do you expect me to get up onto them? These buildings are all at least three stories high!" She said, looking around and realizing that they were probably even higher then that.
"Oh, that's the easy part." I said evilly, grabbing her and jumping from wall to wall and up onto the roof tops like how you could get up walls in Mario 64.
being a witch was cool, and being a witch with cat abilities was even better because the moment I lost my footing, a quick blizzard spell and I had a ice ledge to hold onto.
"Ok, that was close." I said, doing another one aimed at a spot on the wall that was just below my feet and using the resulting ice ledge to jump up and onto the roof.
Nami wasn't exactly happy with the fact that I had done that without telling her first, something about how I could have dropped her. She even bopped me over the head as though I was Luffy about half way through her ranting, and said something about stupid little sisters.
Yeah, she thinks of me as her little sister... wait, aren't I the older one?
"Hey, I'm older then you by a year!" I said defensively, sulking slightly at the little sister comment.
"What ever! Will you two look of Usopp already?!" Lil demanded as she and Choco appeared out of nowhere.
"Right!" we both said in unison, looking around and trying to spot the long nosed member of our crew somewhere.
Nami was the first to spot him walking up a huge thing of stares with a man and a little girl, something that I had been waiting for.
"That man's the guy I was talking." I said, taking off and leaping from roof top to roof top to get to them as Choco run up behind Nami and shoved his neck under her legs, forcing her to get on.
"Hey!" She said in surprise, having not been expecting Choco to get her onto him and run off with her on his back.
The moment Nami saw who it was that Usopp was fight, as the two of them were standing back to back in a formal dual stance, she realized why I was in such a hurry to get to Usopp.
"Only an idiot would try to fight daddy the father." She said, having heard stories about the legendary gun slinging bounty hunter.
She was right too. Only an idiot like Usopp or Luffy would fight daddy the father, though you would think that only Luffy would be able to survive, all things considered.
"Usopp!" She shouted as Choco and I landed on the railing right behind the little Daddy The Father's daughter in the stone area on top of the hill that they were standing on. The stone clearing was set just in front of a cemetery, which was already giving me the creeps.
If this was how being in a normal cemetery made me feel, then how was I going to feel when we got to Thriller Bark. (A/N: I thought it was Thriller Park until I saw the manga. XD)
"What the hell are you doing?!" Nami exclaimed at Usopp when Choco landed, causing him, Daddy The Father, and the little girl to turn to us in surprise. "It looks like you're facing Daddy The Father in a dual! Are you nuts?!"
"You're not helping! You never have anything nice to say!" He said in annoyance, wishing we would get him out of this.
Not going to happen.
I kind of considered this to be one of his major turning points, so I wasn't stop it. He needed this more then he realized, and it would only hurt him in the long run if I were to interfere with it.
"You get one shot." The girl said, turning around and ignoring us. "Are you ready?"
Usopp started sweeting profusely while Nami grabbed onto my arm, practically trying to force me to intervene so that Usopp wouldn't get killed.
"Don't worry, he wont die." I told her, whispering so low that the little girl couldn't hear me.
"One!" The girl shouted, causing both Usopp and Daddy The Father to take a step forward. "Two!" Another step. "Three!" A third step.
The girl continued to count, leading up to the tenth step that everyone was waiting for.
It was hard to wait it out, even harder then I had thought it would be. It was once again the painful reminder that, while I knew something was going to happen, actually seeing something happen was a lot harder then knowing about it.
I half wanted grab Usopp by the nose and dash off, dragging him behind me so that there was no chance of him getting killed. The fact that I had seen him only get the gun shot out of his hand didn't help me very much as I knew very well, thanks to the Momoo incident, that everything might change.
It was painstaking to watch the dual and not just grab Usopp and run.
Once the girl said eight, Usopp spun around as fast as he could and threw one of his smoke pellets onto the ground, causing a huge cloud of smoke to appear. He then spun around again and took off running, determined not to get shot in the process.
Daddy The Father instantly went to work, spinning around and shooting the gun out of Usopp's hands, seemingly taking pity on him for some odd reason. I wasn't sure why, and didn't know if it even mattered.
I knew it had nothing to do with the fact that he had lost to Usopp's father years ago, but I didn't know what the reason was. It was probably just that he didn't kill people that he dubbed weak, or that he simply felt bad for someone that ran away in fear.
Whatever the reason, he had simply shot the gun out of Usopp's hands and hadn't killed him instead.
"I just shot the cowards gun away." Daddy The Father explained plainly.
"What were you thinking? Have you no shame? Cheating during a dual? You should be ashamed of yourself! You're pathetic!" The little girl said angrily, causing my own anger at the way she acts to get the better of me.
Usopp had just turned around and was about to open his mouth to beg them for forgiveness when I cut him off and spoke my self.
"Look who's talking." I said, causing the little girl to turn and glare at me for my comment, while her father simply gave me a look that said that I should apologize for it. "Sorry, but your father and you basically forced Usopp into the dual, kind of negates any rule that says he isn't supposed to run away during the dual."
"Hay! We didn't force him into it!" The little girl said as Nami hopped off of Choco and walked over to Usopp.
"Intimidation is a form of force." I said simply, causing Daddy The Father to raise an eyebrow at me. "And threatening to get the marines to kill him when you wrongfully took something that you knew he was trying to by is rude and not how a lady should act, but I have a feeling that everyone here lets you get away with it because of your father. I might not be able to do anything about it, but I can certainly stand up for him."
The girl seemed furious about this comment, but tried to sweet talk her father into forcing me to take it back.
So not going to happen.
"It's alright, some people just don't have any manners, it's not their fault." He told her, causing me to roll my eyes at me.
Making a snide comment was the fastest way of getting my anger to transfer to you when I'm pissed, and I already had enough things to dislike him about.
People that abandon, or try to abandon their kids are nothing but assholes in my book, regardless of the reason. There are very few reasons in this world to abandon your child, and being embarrassed that you lost in a dual wasn't one of them.
"Yes, and I think the same could be said about people that would rather die then take care of their own child and would need to have a pirate knock some since into his head." I said, causing him to blanch.
Clearly, he hadn't been expecting that.
"Your daughter gets away with being rude to people simply because they are afraid of you, and yet you wanted to die instead of raising her. How ironic. Somehow, I don't think spoiling her was what Yasopp had in mind when he told you to live and raise your daughter." I said, causing his eyes to go wide and for him to look at me angrily.
He clearly didn't like having someone bring up the past, especially when they were going to word it like that in front of his daughter. It wasn't that he had wanted to die instead of raising his daughter, it was just that he rather die a warriors death then to simply be shamed in life.
"Hey! My daddy would never do that and he would never loose!" The girl said angrily, her sweet little girl act momentarily disappearing as she let her anger get the best of her.
Sweet little girl my ass.
"How did you know about that?" Daddy The Father asked calmly, causing his daughter to look up in shock at him.
"You mean he lost to my father?!" Usopp exclaimed in surprise, unable to believe what he was hear.
"Your father?!" Daddy The Father exclaimed, his own surprise evident on his face.
"Yep, this is Usopp, son of Yasopp. Though he isn't nearly as brave as he should be, he's still his fathers son from what I know." I said, leaning back on the railing and looking at Usopp pointedly.
OK, so I might have said I wasn't going to interfere, but the little girl gets on my nerves. If I had acted like that when I was little, someone would have beaten the shit out of my a long time ago.
"So then you are his son." He said quietly, causing everyone to look at him, including his daughter.
"Poppa?" She asked, looking up at him and wandering what he was talking about.
"I met your dad." He said, looking Usopp in the eyes as he spoke. "And I've never told anyone about what happened on that fateful day, until now that is. We met on a hot, dry, port of town on a day much like to day."
This is about the point that my eyes glazed over as I wasn't to into hearing the story. Seeing it in the anime once was enough, having to listen to it again was more then I could handle.
The only part of the story that I actually heard was the part where he said that his actual name as Masterson, something that I hadn't known before.
I didn't even look up at them at the end of his story, or even move when they decided that Usopp would shoot some weather thingy on top of a roof as his one last chance.
The only thing that did make me look up was Usopp's movement when he fired his slingshot at the thing, though I didn't stop staring off at the graves.
Nami and the little girl seemed to think that Usopp must have missed and that Masterson was going to kill him. Though the girl had been a brat the whole time, she did manage to earn a few points in my book when she started pleading with her father not to kill him.
"Calm down, he can't kill him anyway." I said, not even turning to look at the weather vain as Nami, Usopp, and the girl turned their heads to look at me. "He hit the center of the crow, right on the middle circle that's supposed to be a gem or something."
"She's right." Masterson said, causing the the others to turn and look at him before turning their attentions to the crown on the whale shaped weather vein.
This had been one of my favorite episodes because it was one of the first times that Usopp actually showed that he was a lot stronger then he looked, apart from when he beat Chu that is.
"Ah! You did it Usopp!" Nami exclaimed, looking at the crown of the whale through a telescope she usually used during her mapping.
"Wow! You're a good shot!" The little girl said in amazement, causing me to smile at her.
OK, so maybe she wasn't such a brat all the time.
"You're as good a shot as your old man, and as brave a one as well. Your father will be proud. Go to the Grandline, you'll find him there." Masterson said, looking down at Usopp, who was now kneeling on the ground from the shock that he hadn't been killed. "He deserves to see what his son has become. "
"Daddy-" Usopp said, still not realizing that the mans actual name was Masterson.
The little girl ran over to Usopp and handed him a pair of binocular glasses, the same ones he and she had been fighting over in the shop.
"You're a pretty good shot old man." She said, smiling at him before turning around and running after her father.
"Thanks..." Usopp said in surprise, not even commenting on the fact that the girl had called him an old man.
"Wait poppa!" she said to her father as she tried to catch up to him.
I couldn't help but laugh slightly as she said she told him that she was going to try to be a nice little lady from now on.
She might not be as much of a brat as I thought, but that didn't mean that I thought she could actually be as nice as she claimed she was going to be.
As Usopp stood up and stared after Masterson and his daughter, a thought occurred to Nami that made her want to kill me.
"Hey! You said Usopp was going to get killed!" She said angrily, grabbing my shirt and holding me by it and causing Usopp to look at me in horror.
"What?!" He exclaimed, wanting to know if he was supposed to die just now and if I had been about to simply stand there and let it happen.
"Actually," I said, smiling at her deviously. "I do believe the word I used was shot, not killed. I never seed that he was going to die, just that I saw him get shot. You simply thought I meant he was going to die and you panicked. I never knew you cared so much."
Nami glared at me for a second before making me regret my moment of fun. The moment my words sank in, she promptly let go of my shirt and bashed me over the head with her staff, annoyed that I had played such a mean prank.
"That's not funny!" She said angrily as she hit me with it again.
Apparently, one strike wasn't nearly enough for this in her opinion.
"You mean I'm not going to die?" Usopp asked in relief, happy to know that his life was going to end any time soon.
"Ack! Stop hitting me!" I shouted in pain, running and jumping onto the next rooftop, only for her to follow after me, along with Choco and Lil as Usopp got left behind. "Ack! She's gaining!" I shouted in horror as I glanced back over my shoulder at her.
It took me about twenty minu7tes to get her to stop trying to kill me, and by that time I had already run out of breath and had been hit several times.
After I got her to stop hitting me, I quickly led her to the roof of the marine base, something that she wasn't all that happy about. Apparently she thought it was incredibly dangerous for us to be hanging around near the place where Captain Smoker normally was.
"One of the ladies in one of the shops told me about the captain here. She said he was a real demon, someone to ovoid no mater what. Do you really think it's smart to be standing on top of his roof?" she asked, starting to wander again if I was crazy, something that she and everyone else seemed to do on a regular basis.
"No, it probably isn't the smartest thing in the world to do, but he'll be leaving soon and everyone will be away from the base for about thirty minutes to an hour, that's when we'll sneak in." I said, causing her to stare at me in horror.
"You are nuts! I knew it! You're going to get us killed!" She exclaimed angrily, thinking that I was actually trying to get her killed.
"Calm down! I already said that most of the marines will be leaving the base soon, and we won't have to deal with them. The only ones that we'll have to deal with are the few weaklings that get told to stay behind." I explained, grabbing her by her shoulder and forcing her to sit down on the roof with me, Choco and Lil. "And as for you two." I said ,turning my attention to the two animals of the group. "Go find Usopp, and when it's time to leave, get to the ship. Don't slow Luffy and the others down though, when everyone starts running we all got to leave together."
"Right!" "Kweh!" The two of them said respectively as Lil got back onto Choco's back and the two of them left together.
"Huh?" Nami asked in a confused voice, wandering what was going on.
"Luffy and the others are going to be causing problems soon thanks to Luffy's unstoppable ability to get into trouble, so I thought we would take advantage of the situation and raid the marine base while they're all out looking for our cayos causing captain." I explained, causing comprehension to finally down on her face.
"Oh! I get it! Luffy's going to get in trouble soon and you plan to use it as a distraction instead of stopping him!" She said as her eyes turned into money signs that started glowing. "A big score, and I don't even have to put myself in danger to get it!"
"Yep, and it should happen any time now, though I have no idea if it's going to be a little different this time or not." I explained as I peeked over the edge of the building. "After all, Buggy had all of his parts when I saw this happen, so the fact that I took them back in that town where we met you and him might have changed it, but I doubt it."
"Huh? You stole his parts?" She asked, remembering how she had tied up some of his body parts when he had split up into a bunch of small pieces.
"Yep, the stuff you tied up I just put into my froggy bag, so he doesn't have them." I said happily, causing her to laugh slightly.
"That's so evil." She said, smiling at the fact that that meant that Buggy was still 'little Buggy'.
I had just been about to say something when Nami suddenly looked up at the sky, unowingly giving me the signal I had been waiting for.
"Huh?" She said out loud, looking up at the sky and wandering why the direction of the wind had just changed. "A storms coming."
"I know, and the fact that you just said that means that Smoker and his men should be coming out any time now." I said, peeking over the edge and seeing that I was right.
All most all the remaining marines in the building started exiting it, heading straight for the town square and straight for Luffy.
"Wait for it..." I said as they got further and further away, waiting for the last of them to turn the corner so that they wouldn't see us walking in if they suddenly looked back. "Now."
Nami didn't even stop to think what it was that I was saying 'now' about. She simply jumped up with me and ran to the back of the building and jumped into it's courtyard, where there were only two men, who were simply sitting around doing nothing.
In and instant her staff and my mallet were out and we both bashed one over the head before they could even say a word.
"Like I said, only the really weak ones are still here." I said as we both stood up and headed for the doors of the building, both of us looking between them and trying to figure out which way we should go.
"Ok, I'll go this way and you go that way." She said, heading for the door to the right and stopping when I put my hand on her shoulder.
"Ok, take the froggy bag with you to put stuff in if you find anything." I said, pulling my broom out of it and then pulling my back pack off my shoulder and dumping it out into the froggy bag. "I'll be able to carry everything on my broom if it gets to heavy, so you can use the froggy bag to help you."
"But what if?" She started, only to stop when I shook my head.
"If you only have it for a short time, I'm sure everything will be fine, just remember that we have to get out of here as quickly as possible. If a storm starts and you hear thunder, get outside as and head for the ship as fast as you can, because that's the signal that it's time to leave." I said as she took the froggy bag and nodded her head in understanding.
"Good, apart from that, have fun." I said, smiling as I entered the door on the left.
Let the stealing begin.
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Is it sad if I'm only updating so quickly because I want to get to the sky island ark?
The pairing poll is now up, you can go and vote on it now.
Question 1: should I skip the Apis ark? (For those of you that never watch the Japanese episodes, this is an ark that was skipped in the 4Kids English version of one piece, it comes right before they enter the Grandline.)
Oh! And PLEASE REVIEW! PLEASE? I BEG YOU! (or at least vote in the polls)
read and review, ------------ (and check my profile for polls, there's always one up,)