damned_institute | Day 28: Bus 2

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Day 28: Bus 2

Momo tugged on the collar of the light blue sweater she was wearing as she followed her nurse to wherever these buses were, winding her hair up into its customary bun as she went. It was an odd feeling, knowing she was about to go outside of the institute's borders. Maybe the Head Doctor was about to make an error and the shinigami, as well as everyone else, would no longer be limited and they could finish what they started several nights back.

That was probably too much to hope for. She was feeling better this morning, even with the blood moon, and was mildly looking forward to the bus ride. Captain Jack said he was going to be here this morning and even if it wasn't customary breakfast in the cafeteria, she's be satisfied with him sitting next to her on the bus.

The nurse handed her a muffin, some napkins, and a small box with a straw. She stared at this box for a moment before shaking it. From the sound it contained liquid. How odd... Momo wasn't sure why they would but liquid inside a small paper box - it didn't make any sense to her and she wasn't sure how one was supposed to get it out of the box.

Clambering onto an empty bus, Momo chose to sit in the very back near the emergency exit. Maybe she could force her way out of it as they were moving and escape the limiter enough to come back and level the institute, freeing everyone. Or maybe she just wanted to be able to see everyone that was on the same bus as her. Wishful thinking versus reality.

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Usopp jumped at the question, startled out of his contemplation of window size versus head and shoulder size--and the realization that the windows didn't look very easy to pry open anyhow. The top half appeared grooved to slide down into the bottom half, probably designed specially in order to prevent crazy patients from ~~escaping~~ jumping out.

Still, he caught his nerves and his manners enough to turn to Bridget, smiling awkwardly. "Uh, hi... I'm Usopp. The legendary Captain Usopp!" He tried not to stare as he wondered what exactly he was facing. Was this a boy or a flat-chested girl? The clothes were just slightly feminine, and a woman's chest could be hidden under that pink vest, but Usopp could imagine Sanji donning the same outfit under the right circumstances.

To stop himself from looking too hard at Bridget or thinking too hard about how difficult getting out that window would be, Usopp opened his breakfast bag and pulled out the muffin. "So, um, how long have you been here, Bridget?"

"Ooh, a captain?" Bridget settled into the seat beside him. "Are you a pirate? The only captain I know is a pirate captain."

He could tell that the other young man was unhappy and uncomfortable, but maybe Bridget could help. His smile brightened. He liked cheering people up.

That had been the right button to press, because Usopp's face immediately lit up in response. "Yeah, that's right! I'm the fearsome Captain Usopp, leader of the Usopp Pirates, destroyer of countless ships and leader of over eight thousand fighting men!" He hadn't done the whole spiel in a while, it felt nice to throw himself into it with a little gusto. "See this bandanna?" He pointed to his forehead. "That's the symbol of the great Usopp Pirates!" His act finished, he paused to take a bite of his muffin.

Around here, there didn't seem to be many people who knew much about pirates. It was weird, especially for someone who came from a world in the midst of a Great Age of Pirates, but Usopp had started to adjust. Having someone else bring pirates up first was a wonderful change of pace.

He wondered if the other captain was Luffy, or if Bridget had pirates in her... his? ... world.

Bridget clapped, listening carefully, and then reached into the bag himself. Instead of food though, he tugged out Roger and settled the bear into his lap. He's left the food behind (he hadn't been very hungry) and stuffed the bear in when it became apparent that the nurse wasn't going to allow him to bring the bear.

Now though, it was too late to do anything about it and he settled the stuffed bear in his lap, smoothing the fur.

"That's so amazing!" Bridget was beaming. "I'm an honorary member of the Jellyfish Pirates back home," he went on. "They are the most feared pirates there, led by Captain Johnny."

"Wow, really?" Now Usopp was beaming back, the fear for his life utterly forgotten. He noticed the bear in Bridget's arms, but didn't think too much of it. Sure, it was weird, but considering some of the people Usopp had met, his sliding scale of weirdness had expanded to safely include plenty of behavior before things got so weird that Usopp was actually taken aback. "Captain Johnny? The Jellyfish Pirates? That's a great name! There's a really famous Captain John legend back where I came from."

Usopp hesitated, still torn, but decided that Bridget seemed friendly enough. "Can I ask you a personal question? I don't mean any offense!"

"Really? I'd love to hear about it," Bridget said. "And about your adventures too!" Bridget liked stories, especially fantasitc stories.

Personal question? Bridget smiled and nodded. "Go right ahead." He had a feeling he knew what it was.

"My own adventures are so varied and legendary that we'll never have time for all of them on this little trip!" Especially if we go careening off a cliff to our dea--stop that! He gestured imperiously with his muffin to imply the scope of those stories. "But I would be happy to regale you with some of the most amazing adventures I've been on, for the time we have!"

And now, the question. His muffin hand lowered as he looked over at Bridget one last time, nervous and a little guilty. His artist's eyes were telling him the body shape was as flat as his own, but the face and voice were so... well, it would just be a lot easier if everyone wore labels like Bon-chan, that was for sure. "So, Bridget!" He tried to sound casual. "Are you, um, a woman, a man, or both?"

Bridget knew it, but thought that the way the young man had asked was, without a doubt, the sweetest way he'd ever heard. People usually assumed (and were wrong) or glared at him and demanded to know (and were hit) or else they found out the hard way (Poor Johnny).

He brought up a hand and laughed behind it, the feminine gesture contradicting his next words. "I'm a boy," he said, smiling warmly. "And don't worry. I get asked that a lot." He hoped Captain Usopp wouldn't dismiss him now. He liked making friends and exciting stories sounded like a great way to pass the time.

"Okay, I just wanted to check, in case I called you one and then I was wrong!" Usopp smiled awkwardly back, blushing just a little bit at Bridget's smile. Actually, Bridget reminded him of someone other than Bon-chan... Kaya, that was it. Bridget looked kind of like a male Kaya.

Which made storytelling seem all the more natural. "So, Bridget, what sort of story are you in the mood for on this journey? Would you like to hear about when I was nine years old, and my pirate crew captured the dreaded Queen of Eels, a horrible monster that was half eel, half queen, and all evil?" He took a bite of his muffin after the introduction, giving him a pause so he could start thinking ahead about what exactly might have happened when he captured the Queen of Eels. Besides, maybe Bridget didn't like stories with eels or queens in them.

Bridget clasped his hands together and beamed excitedly. "You were already captain at nine? Wow." He hugged Roger closer to him, so that the ~~currently broken~~ stuffed bear could hear as well, and nodded. "I would love to hear that tale Captain Usopp!"

He was so glad that Usopp hadn't minded, or asked why Bridget looked like he did. It was something of an uncomfortable subject.

"Actually, I was a captain at age three! You see, my father is also a great pirate, and so piracy is in my blood! As a child, I set out on a great journey across the world to explore and fight as a pirate!" Usopp's non-muffined hand thumped his chest manfully for emphasis. "Soon I had followers, and at age nine, I had already gathered my crew of eight thousand men. We roamed the seas for years, the terror of the law yet the friend to innocents!"

Well, that had been exciting to tell, but it hadn't really advanced the story. He harrumphed, before beginning the tale properly. "It all started as we were leaving Tree Island, an island that was really just a gigantic tree grown right up out of the ocean, when one of my trusty crewmen spotted a dingy floating in the water. And on the deck of that dingy was a man collapsed from exhaustion! We brought the poor soul aboard, and he told us of how he was fleeing the reign of terror on a nearby island. As soon as we heard about the monstrous creature that had taken over that island, of course, my whole crew was filled with excitement at the thought of a new battle and a new adventure! So we set sail towards Isla Rojo, where the Queen lived..."

Now absorbed in his own story, his whole face was animated, grinning and gesturing to emphasize each action. He hadn't had a good audience in a long time.

Bridget had a tight hold on Roger as he listened intently, all wide smile and bright eyes. What an amazing place this person came from! It sounded so much more interesting than his home world. He held up a hand, something catching his attention.

"Pirates in your world sail the sea?"

That certainly stopped Usopp short. "Well... usually. Most really big crews have land bases by the sea, but all the major battles and things take place at sea. What do they sail where you're from?"

Usopp had heard of pirates that sailed sand dunes in desert places like Alabasta, and he guessed being Skypiea meant sailing the sky rather than the normal blue sea, but those were exceptions.

Bridget smiled. "Sky ships." He let got of the bear for a moment to trace a shape in the air.

"The Jellyfish pirates have the largest non-military airship in the world with enough power behind it to take on anything." He beamed. "The oceans are too dangerous to sail in now and with the threat of the floating nation of Zepp, the sky was just the way to go I guess."

He turned back to Usopp and gathered Roger up again. "Go on," he said happily. "I didn't mean to interrupt you."

"Ahhh." Usopp's mouth widened, distracted entirely from his own story by Bridget's explanation. "We've sailed in the sky before, but we had to put wings on Going Merry--that's our ship--and take a special route. I've only ever been on one ship that was designed to fly." And that had been terrifying, walking through the bowels of Maxim, knowing just enough about technology to realize so many complicated machines just meant so many things could go wrong and send the ship plummeting to doom. "Why's the sea dangerous? Do you have Sea Kings in your world?"

He added with a bit of pride, "The sea is pretty dangerous where I'm from, too. Before my crew was taken here, we had been on the Grand Line--people call it the 'pirate's graveyard' because of how dangerous it is!" How he'd let himself be dragged into a place called "the pirate's graveyard" would always be a mystery. Stupid enthusiasm. "Anyhow, we defeated the Eel Queen by discovering her weakness. See, she was obsessed with her looks, because for a fishperson she was considered very beautiful. So ten of the tallest, ruggedest and manliest men in the crew went to distract her by pretending to bring her gifts, while I snuck into the castle and found where she kept all of the special water-proof make-up she used to keep herself looking the same. When she discovered it was missing she was outraged, because make-up for fishpeople is really expensive, more expensive than even painting yourself with solid gold! She came after our ship in a rage, but we were ready for her. We captured her in a net that was especially built to be sticky so eels couldn't slip through, and then we made her promise never to terrorize a human village again before we let her go on another island that didn't have any people."

Bridget shook his head. "No, we don't have anyone really sailing the seas. After the wars, the seas were so ruined that to go out on them was suicide."

He smiled as the story continued and, once it was done, Bridget clapped and smiled happily. "Amazing! You're so kind for a pirate, Captain Usopp."

"Yes, that's what men call me. The kind and generous Captain Usopp!" He posed a bit, nose in the air, to let Bridget appreciate his unique and powerful profile for a moment.

But then storytelling time was over again, and he took another bite of his muffin before asking, "What do you mean by ruined, though? Are the seas made of poison or something?" The island Usopp had grown up on was so small that there was literally nowhere you could stand that the sea was out of the range of vision, although it might be blocked out by trees or houses at spots. Life without the sea was unthinkable. Even the brief journeys they'd made onto larger island-nations had left him wanting to get back to the ship.

Bridget shrugged. "They certainly aren't clean," he said. "And there are still a few left-overs from the wars swimming around out there." He tilted his head and brushed some hair from his face.

"It's also not as large as it used to be," he added. "I've seen the old images of the world before the wars and the ocean covered so much of the planet it was almost totally blue." He smiled at the idea. "I'd like to sail the ocean."

"That's awful," Usopp sympathized. He couldn't imagine a world where the ocean wasn't just smaller, but unsailable. He wondered what Bridget meant by left-overs. Maybe sea monsters made by evil scientists for the war or something?

"Where I'm from, the ocean covers the whole world. Other than the Red Line, everywhere is just different parts of ocean. The Grand Line's one of the big oceans, and I'm from East Blue, another ocean, and those two are separated by the Calm Belt, which is also a kind of ocean. They're just different because of the currents and weather patterns and things," Usopp explained clumsily. "Since it's hard to get from place to place, especially in the Grand Line, islands all tend to be really different from each other, so it's always interesting going to new places and meeting new people." That went for civilized islands, of course. Islands with no signs of civilization had a bad habit of being populated by horrible monsters. "So I guess there's no fishpeople where you're from either. What about giants?"

"Wow!" Bridget beamed. "That sounds so neat. It's kind of like how on my world, the different countries are isolated not by water, but by vast streches of empty land air or even the places in outer space." He laughed slightly. "Every place is so different it's always amazing to travel."

He brightened at the mention of giants. "One of my best friends is a giant! His name is Potemkin and he's the biggest human that I've ever met!"

"Outer space?!" Usopp was awed again. "We do have sky islands back home! It's hard to get to them, though, so hard that a lot of people back on the ground don't believe they really exist. But how could you get to outer space? It was tough even breathing on Skypiea at first--wouldn't your lungs explode or something?"

Finishing off his muffin, then licking his lips to clean off any crumbs, Usopp added, "There's an island of giants in my world too, called Elbaf. On Elbaf, honor and a warrior's pride are the most important things of all, even more than life itself! What's Potemkin like, is he a warrior too?"

"Oh no," Bridget said with a smile. "You can't breathe in space, but they have fake air up there that you can breathe so it's okay. I've only been up there a few times myself," he added. "It's neat, but I think that seeing an ocean like yours would be even better."

He thought that the Elbaf place sounded like Zepp used to, but it didn't sound liek a place that Potemkin would like. "He's really nice and only fights if he really, really has to." He beamed. "He likes art and is really good too, even if he has to be really really careful."

If they could make fake air, why couldn't they make fake water? He didn't ask out loud, because he could imagine possible answers by himself and didn't want to make Bridget focus on depressing things.

Instead he smiled some more, and nodded. "I wish you could see it too! You know, if this place can bring people from one world to another world, maybe someday you could come and see the oceans back home. I bet the others wouldn't mind if you stayed on Merry with us a little while!"

He leaned back in his bus seat, contemplating. "Being a giant artist must be tough. But you could paint or sculpt such amazing, huge things, too..."

"Wow, that would be so neat!" Bridget sounded pleased by the idea of travelling with Usopp and his crew. "The Merry? That's your ship? It must be huge to fit all your crew aboard it."

He smiled at the thought of Potemkin. "Yes, his gentle grip has about four tons of pressure to it, so he's got to be very careful. I don't know if he likes to sculpt though."

Thinking about his friends led to thinking about his family and that made him feel a bit lonely. He tried to keep his bright smile.

"Oh, well, I left my loyal crew behind to guard the castle of a beautiful princess I had saved from a wicked adviser. Luffy helped me in that fight, so I agreed to join his crew. Going Merry is the name of the ship Luffy sails on--a few of the other crewmembers from Merry are here too, now." Usopp took out his notebook. "Going Merry is a really small ship, actually, she's only a caravel, and we only have seven crewmembers. Even with so few crewmembers, though, we're an unstoppably tough crew and we've already all got huge bounties! With our help, Luffy's going to become the next Pirate King!"

Explaining all of that, Usopp started to sketch as he talked, finally turning the notebook to show Bridget a drawing of the Going Merry, with its smiling sheep figurehead and the Strawhat Jolly Roger on the sails. He couldn't get all the details down exactly, but he thought it was a good representation. It was for the sake of speed that he left out the damages and repair marks, he told himself. "This is Merry."

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