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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"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."

"Oh, I see." Bridget nodded listening to the explaination. "That certainly sounds like something the kind and generous Captain Usopp would do." He beamed.

He looked at the ship. "Wow! You're really good at drawing! That looks like such a fun ship too." He knew nothing of sailing in the ocean, but he assumed that such a contraption worked.

"Of course, it might be kind of odd if I'm with you if you have such large bounties on you." He laughed lightly. "Back on my world I'm a bounty hunter after all."

Usopp laughed too. "Don't worry about it! Our swordsman was a bounty hunter too before he became a pirate. You wouldn't hunt down bounties who weren't bad guys, though, right?"

He closed his notebook again. "The government's just afraid of pirates right now. There's plenty of rotten pirate crews out there, but being a pirate is more about freedom than anything. We wind up in a lot of fights with other pirates, more than with the government really."

"Of course I wouldn't hunt down good guys," Bridget said, nodding. He chose not to mention the horrible mistakes he'd made the first time he'd tried his hand at hunting.

"That sounds like the Jellyfish to me," he said with a delighted smile. "They are good guys too, well, girls." He laughed softly. "With the exception of the captain, the whole crew is made up of girls." He blushed despite his smile. "It's why I'm just and 'honorary' member of the crew."

"An entire crew of just girls? That must make the bathrooms really hard to get into," was the first thing that came to Usopp's mind, because Nami and Robin used the toilet on the ship far longer than any of the boys ever did.

"I've met lots of female pirates, and I know some crews that are captained by women, but I can't think of any all-female pirate crews in my world." Usopp did have to give it some thought. Reading about pirates had been a life-long hobby, after all, and he knew about quite a few different famous crews. Surely a crew of all girls would be notable enough that he'd have heard of it somehow? "There's still a few crews that only have men because of superstition, but I think most modern crews are smarter than that."

Bridget pulled a face. "I don't like supersitions much and they are good enough without men on board." He smiled. "They're pretty good at what they do after all. They have almost total command of the skies. Or they did when I last saw them."

"Yeah, I don't know any reason why there shouldn't be an all-female pirate crew. Maybe there are some, and I just haven't heard of them." Usopp shrugged. "Two of our crewmembers are women, and we have... I guess kind of an 'honorary crewmember' too who's a woman. She wasn't able to come sail with us, but she's welcome as our crewmate any time."

He knew Sanji thought of women as delicate creatures to be protected, and Usopp did think, as a man, he had some responsibility to protect weaker women and definitely a responsibility not to hurt them. But he'd also had enough battles with women that he wasn't about to underestimate the 'fairer' sex. Besides, Bon-chan was male and female, and he/she said that made him/her stronger, right?

Just to change the subject, in case Bridget got the wrong idea about Usopp's gender views, Usopp asked, "So, if you're a bounty hunter, what kind of a fighter are you? Do you do martial arts or something?" And were stuffed animals involved?

Bridget brightened ~~could he get any more cheerful?~~ and his voice took on a proud tone. "I'm a distance fighter," he said. "I use my yo-yo's and Roger here," he gently jostled the bear in his lap, "to fight."

He frowned slightly. "Of course, most people don't take me very seriously becasue I don't like to right up close and personal..." He looked back at Usopp. "I can, I'm just not as good at it."

"Hey, me too!" Usopp perked up again himself, grinning wide. "I'm a sniper!" And he'd been right about the bear being a weapon. It sounded like Bridget's world wasn't very different from Usopp's in many ways, just instead of the ocean they had the sky and outer space to explore.

Crossing his arms, he nodded sagely. "There's nothing wrong with fighting from a distance if that's what you're good at! Some people are good at punching with fists, some people are good at slicing things up, and some people are meant to fight from far away!" In Usopp's case, ideally very far away. Perhaps from another island entirely. "How do you use the yo-yos, like bolas?"

Say, now there was a weapon he could design fairly easily...

Bridget nodded. "Kind of," he said. "My yo-yp's were given to me by my family before I left and they're both about this big," he placed his hands around six inches apart, "and are fitted with the latest weapons tech avaliable." He smiled.

"Flame throwers, explosives, blades, things like that." He hugged Roger once more. "And Roger is my partner, or ... well, he was. This place shut him down somehow."

"Flame throwers," Usopp sighed wistfully, his mind for a moment transported to another world, a world where he had all the tubing he needed and time to work on his favorite pet project... Even back home, he'd been thinking of how to incorporate some Dials into his weaponry for better flame throwing.

He did look sympathetic down at Roger. Was Roger maybe some kind of super robot bear or something? Anyhow, Usopp could understand feeling a strong, personal connection to an object. He wondered if Roger could talk.

"I use a slingshot, usually. I don't really like using pistols, you can't improvise with them and if you run out of bullets you're in trouble. But with a slingshot, as long as you have something around that's sort of aerodynamic, you're still armed!"

Day 28: Bus 2

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