A/N: Finally updated all the way on DA. X''D Didn't mean for it to go on this long, life just gets in the way sometimes. You guys continue to be amazing about this fic! I'm so glad you all love it so much! As for your questions, all will be revealed in due time. Fufufu~!
Chapter 5: Help Usopp! Attack on the Going Merry II!
On the deck of the Going Merry II, four weeks later, the Great Captain Usopp tumbled across the wooden planks, bouncing onto his feet with his Kuro Kabuto aimed and ready. He gave a hearty, proud laugh, and launched the small round sack from the modified slingshot.
"Flying Fish Star!" He declared as the balloon exploded against its target, showering the poor man with ice cold water.
It wasn't a big deal exactly, as the weather was hot and sunny, but it was a shock and the man, who had previously been a servant of the sniper's wife's house in Syrup Village, jumped around on the prow of the caravel like a crab, trying to keep the freezing droplets from running down his back unsuccessfully.
"Yosh! The Great Captain~ Usopp strikes again!" The curly-haired sniper posed for the woman of his dreams, with a bedsheet tied around his neck like a cape.
"Uh, Captain? We-we have a-a-a problem," the lookout called down from the crow's nest.
He was seeing something impossible, something terrifying: a ship flying a flag with the symbol of a man known to be some years dead. It was either a ghost ship or... something much worse, a copycat.
The captain of that vessel stood with his arms crossed, a demented grin on his face and the wind blowing his short blond hair back from his eyes as he set sight on his prey.
"Eh?" The sniper frowned and pulled his goggles to his eyes, scanning the water in the direction of the lookout. "Wh-wh-WHAT?! AAHHHHHH! BATTLE STATIONS!" The men aboard the Merry II looked at their self-appointed captain for a few moments, blinking, as the brunette's knees were shaking horribly. "M-m-man the cannons! For God's sake!"
The second order did it, and the few that had traveled with them from the East Blue did exactly that. Hoisting sails for speed. Someone at the tiller for control. And everyone else taking up rifles and other long-range weapons, as the double Rogers on the main mast flapped angrily in the same wind bearing the enemy. The higher, larger black flag bore the symbol the world knew as the Pirate King, the Straw Hat atop a grinning skull and crossbones, but beneath it, the placement marking the Going Merry II as subordinate to the Mugiwara, flew a second Jolly Roger, a skull and crossbones with an screaming style mouth, proclaiming them to be the Usopp Pirates.
And if there was one thing the Usopp Pirates knew it was distance fighting. Ninjin, Tamanegi, and Piiman flanked their captain, each armed with similar kabuto. As soon as everyone was in position, the sniper's nerves actually calmed somewhat. They'd known this could happen, and they'd trained for it. All they had to do was sink the ship before it could get too close.
"Yosh. Kaya-koi, hide in the galley. You shouldn't see this; the sheer power of the Usopp Pirates could very well blind you as it did the strongest of warriors from Elbaf!" Usopp laughed louder to cover his worry—the man was dead, and this shouldn't have been possible.
Donquixote Doflamingo, curse that demented pink bastard's soul, had, at the pinnacle of his power, a reach that stretched across the globe. No one on the seas had been able to completely escape him. But, somehow, one of his toys had managed to live—this toy. He had been a favorite for a very short time because of his striking resemblance to Don, except for the scar above his right eye and being obviously much smaller. To boot, this one had reason to hate Luffy and his crew in particular: they had been the former shichibukai's excuse to discard him like so much rubbish. If he'd been more inclined to think logically about it, the fact that Don had discarded him probably aided in his, and most of his crew's escape, but this man didn't think logically. Considering how well, and how often Don had played with him, it was a wonder the man could think at all.
A grin more suited to a demon from Hell or a wild beast split his face, and he crouched, quite literally coiling his strength. It wouldn't be long now, and then he could mop the floor with the damned straw-hat bastard who'd handed him his first and most humiliating defeat. He still had the faint imprint of the asshole's fist in the side of his skull.
"FIRE!" Usopp screamed, as soon as the other ship was in range.
He would take no chances. There were few flags that Luffy demanded be retired, and this was one of them. The mere fact that the person, whoever he was, had the gall to fly that flag incurred the Strawhats' wrath. The fact that the enemy ship was also bearing down on them without slowing gave another good indication that this was not a friendly social call, as many of the other encounters had been for the mostly timid villagers intent on accompanying Ms. Kaya on her trip down the Grand Line to Raftel to see the Pirate King for the first time in many years. So, as cannon balls flew, exploding bullets rained, and the sniper's own personal armament was launched, no one was quite ready for, or heard, the coiling of springs.
Then Kaya screamed, and Usopp whipped around faster than any of the gathered fighters had ever seen before. "Let her go!"
The sheer determination on his face was something to be reckoned with, and had his opponent been a weaker, or more sane, man, he would have blanched at the fire in the sniper's eyes. However, the cracks in the enemy's mind only made him laugh harder. It was easy to see why he'd been given the nickname 'the Hyena'.
"Come and get her, if you think you can, little Strawhat." The blond man leered, his legs already coiling.
Kaya screamed again, flailing and kicking.
"Kaya-sama!"
Several of the servants tried to advance on the pair, only to be met with the booted feet at the bottom of the man's springs. They went flying in both directions, crashing through the Merry II's walls and railing like she was made of toothpicks. Piiman charged under the barrage of splintered wood, his baseball bat, now reinforced with steel plating, poised to clobber the Devil Fruit user.
He never got the chance.
Ninjin dove for the railing as the unconscious body of his comrade sailed through it, "Pii!"
As such he didn't see the attack that sent him launching up into the air with an explosion of blood from his mouth. Just because the captain of the enemy pirates was on the deck of their ship didn't mean that the rest of his crew was going to sit back and twiddle their thumbs waiting for him to return. And as Usopp was frozen, paralyzed by the attack on his wife, a sniper from the crow's nest of the attacking ship had sent a scatter shot straight through the young man's chest.
He coughed again, body spasming, and he fell to the deck, his eyes glazed over and staring lifelessly at his captain, who spun faster than he could blink and fired back.
"Grow Up Kuro Kabuto! Kaiken Star!"
A dagger, more accurate than any arrow was launched from the five-prong, jet dial enhanced device, arcing through the beautiful sea air with a spin that turned the double-bladed knife into a drill that quickly embedded itself into the eye socket of the sharpshooter who'd dared to challenge the King of Snipers. The body of the deceased man fell from the crow's nest in what appeared to be slow motion, and everyone on both ships held their breath. Then as the crack of bone on wood broke the silence, followed by a shrill scream from the assaulting ship, a roar from behind him made Usopp flash back around, arm raised and weapon ready.
"HOW DARE YOU!?" The blond, spring-loaded pirate tossed Kaya to the deck where she landed with a small scream, and launched himself, full force at the Strawhats' long-range weapons master.
Usopp dove to the deck in the nick of time, repeating the somersault and hop that he'd used earlier in levity, to bounce on the balls of his feet with his weapon drawn. "Kaiken Star!"
The second dagger sailed at his enemy, but because of the springs on his legs, the larger man ducked and the blade buried itself in the Merry II's mast. The Hyena's grin was back as he stalked forward, winding up his legs, while Usopp realized he'd been backed into a corner.
"Uso." He swore, trying to edge his way out, but a spring-loaded punch made the wall to either side of his head explode into splinters, and tumbling him into the galley.
Kaya pushed herself shakily to her feet. "LEAVE HIM ALONE, YOU BASTARD!"
"NO! KAYA!" Usopp screamed as his wife launched herself at the attacking pirate.
"So ready to be in my arms, pretty thing? My pleasure." The Hyena twisted the spring his torso had become to re-capture the pale woman, and on a whim, he made her scream again by using his obscene tongue to lick from her jaw to her hairline. He purred in her ear, loud enough for Usopp to hear him, "Mmmmm, I love it when they scream."
"Get… your filthy hands… off my wife!"
The sniper was back on his feet, a bit shaky, with scratches covering his bare shoulders and face where the wall had collapsed around him. His eyes were shadowed, and though his breath came in short bursts, his hands were steady, raising Kuro Kabuto in its small form with ammunition already loaded in the pouch.
The Hyena grinned again, hefting his prize up onto his shoulder, "Make me!"
He jumped back, and shot his foot at the sniper, bouncing off one of the servants with a sickening crunch, before pounding the curly-haired man back into the ruined kitchen. His laughter resonated around the ship, and he hopped his way to where Usopp was once again picking himself up out of the rubble of the shattered wood.
"USOPP!?" Kaya screamed, beating the blond man's back with her fists and kicking her feet.
"Settle, baby." He smacked her ass, making her cry out again. "We'll get to the fun part later."
His insanely widened eyes, swirled with the promise of all sorts of torture for the King of Sniper's wife, making the brunet roar his anger and charge at the assailant. There was more laughter and the impact of Usopp's head with the corner of the stove occurred simultaneously with explosion of a cannon and the scream of a woman.
"USOPP!"
Gentle rocking soothed the pounding in his head when he began to come around again. He tried to sit up, shifting rubble from his chest and coughed several times, agony tearing through his skull. He rolled over, spitting congealed blood from his mouth and pushing away from the floor to try and stand. His first attempts failed, something in his side grinding ominously and his hand wouldn't hold him, but on his fourth try, he got to his feet, though the pitch of the ship had him stumbling to lean against the opposite wall after tripping over the broken debris. He groaned, his mangled hand on the wall, the other on his head, as he picked his way carefully back out into what had become night.
A peaceful full moon shone down from a velvety blanket of twinkling stars to reveal the most stomach churning scene on which the sniper had ever laid eyes. Bodies, thrashed beyond repair littered the deck and into the rigging. The mast itself was toppled, crushing most of the aft cabin. That explained why there had been so much damage to the galley. The crow's nest was gone completely, torn from the top of the once proud pillar like some giant had mistaken it for a popsicle. Growing his slingshot to use a crutch, Usopp stumbled further onto the deck. All of the people he'd set out from his home were gone. Necks snapped. Gunshot wounds. A full half of the prow was blown away, leaving the carved sheep's head to tilt dangerously to the side with the body of the man for whom both incarnations of the Going Merry had been named sprawled across it in grotesque mimicry of Luffy's favorite napping pose. Taking in the destruction, he saw the worst was yet to come as the tiller had been snapped off completely and then jammed back into its slot to destroy the gears and mechanisms beneath it. Even if he'd had a cola engine or a breath dial big enough, with no way to steer the ship, he was as good as dead in the water.
He collapsed to his knees, tears streaming down his face. "Kaya…"
The one piece of good news was that his beloved wife was not among those that had been slaughtered. It wasn't much, since she was obviously in the hands of the damned spring-loaded Hyena, but at least he could hope that he could get a message to the other Strawhats so she could be rescued. Unlike his three apprentices. Piiman was lost at sea, Ninjin, he'd seen shot to death personally, and Tamanegi he found beneath the mast, crushed.
With no one to be brave for, the curly-haired brunette threw his head back and howled at the moon through his tears. So many innocent lives. Why? It made no sense! What good was it to attack his family?! He wasn't even one of the more important Strawhats. Surely going after the Baratie, or Laboon, or even Cocoyasi Village would have been more effective than this!? Wouldn't it?
As his body drained of what little fluid he had left to use for tears, Usopp supposed that no, it wouldn't. The smartest strategy would be to take out the weakest link first, and even if he was the best marksman in the world, he was still nothing compared to the Monster Trio, the Cyborg, and the Devil's Child. His face hardened. The bastards had taken the one thing he treasured most in the world, and he resolved that even if he died there on the disabled deck of the Merry II, he'd do it trying to get back to Kaya.
Those thoughts carried him into a fitful sleep that was broken by the sound of sea gulls crying overhead. His body ached. His mouth was dryer than it had ever been, even in Alabasta. And his soul felt like a wrung out washcloth. But he remembered his resolution, and that made his heart pound in anticipation of seeing the blond bastard's face again.
Imagined ways that he could torture the Hyena got him through wrapping his loved ones in makeshift shrouds cut from the mainsail, and the things he planned to do with Kaya when he rescued her bolstered him through laying all of them to rest in Davy Jones' Locker. With each one, he sent a sliver of the ship, a coin from Kaya's coffers, and an offering of food. He'd been amazed that they hadn't been robbed, and he knew he had precious little to offer the spirits if he wanted to survive as long as possible to get back to his wife, but he had to give them something.
The first few days were unquestionably hard, as he kept whipping around from whatever task he was doing, thinking he heard someone's voice or caught a glimpse of one of his deceased apprentices from the corner of his eye, on top of fighting off agony from more broken bones than he liked to count. At night, he began to hear Merry fixing herself, just as her predecessor had done. And as the days became weeks, he grew to appreciate the stories his Nakama had told him about their childhood ordeals. Somewhere around day 3, he realized how crushing it was to have the one person he cared about more than anything else in the world be gone beyond where he could reach her. Day 8 brought the mind-numbing loneliness that gave him a sense of what it was like to be the sole survivor of a massacre. His food stores began to run out by day 13, and the gnawing hunger that had been a near constant companion due to his rationing quickly grew to an all-consuming beast within his belly.
It was a full three weeks after the attack before the Going Merry II, in her dilapidated state, bumped into another vessel. By then, all Usopp could do was lay on the deck, in a tent made from what was left of the sails, his tongue and lips cracked from a lack of water, his skin sunk in on his bones from no food, and all of his injuries were healed completely wrong due to a distinct lack of medicines and bandages that had been ruined by the fall of the mast. Most of his vision was hazed over in constant hallucination and his mind had begun to transport him into the place where the most desperate go for salvation while waiting at death's door. He wasn't even aware of the change in his situation until much, much later.