damned_institute | Nightshift 48: Gardener's Shed

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usopp

Nightshift 48: Gardener's Shed

[from here]

Usopp did his best to survey the place with the light as soon as he started to move inside, hoping to avoid unhappy surprises later. His will to stay alert unfortunately broke down at the sight of the shed, filled with recognizable tools. Granted, they were gardening tools, but Usopp didn't feel like being picky. He didn't know what other people had been struggling into the shed for; he felt satisfied with these prizes.

"Excellent work! Now, we plunder the treasure, and... wow, I wish I had a wrench." Maybe he could get the whole lawnmower into his room somehow, if he could just come up with a really creative idea. Even getting gasoline or the engine out of it would be nice. He'd have to find something to carry things in, and it'd be hard to do with both his hands generally occupied. Hopefully Scourge would help. "Now, loyal follower, let's start figuring out what to plunder first and how." Usopp stepped further into the shed, kneeling next to the lawnmower. "I should probably get out of the habit of calling you loyal follower before your hearing comes back, shouldn't I?"

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Scourge knew little of gardening, but much about sharp and pointy. "Has this been in here the whole time?" he asked incredulously, stepping inside with eyes wide. Here he'd broken his back (literally, in some ways) just to earn a sword and this brilliant stack of bludgeons and flesh-renders and limb-snippers had been sitting merrily in the courtyard the entire time. He'd have to spread the word back to Lugnut and the others.

He set down the notebook and thought little of it. He'd have his hearing back in a day and Usopp hadn't bothered doing much besides gesturing; a permanent weapon was better than fleeting words. That thing with the spikes on the end was looking pretty friendly...

Usopp nodded in enthusiastic agreement, then went back to looking at some of the machines in the shed. None of them were very large, and while he'd only seen some of them before, everything in the shed had at least a passing resemblance to things Usopp knew from home.

For example, just like home, without a screwdriver or wrench he was going to have a lot less fun. Usopp picked up the weedwhacker, but couldn't force the casing open with his bare strength. The scalpel came to mind, but he hated to waste the sharp blade or potentially break it. Standing, he reached for a trowel.

"You want anything? That was a stupid question, I'm glad you didn't hear it. Okay, we need to divide up things!" Usopp tried gesturing around, not sure whether he was giving an impression of vastness or maybe an attack by flying insects, then at them each again. "Let's figure out who gets what. I want this trowel, annnd... kinda want this. I'm not sure what it is, but doesn't it look like something you'd hate to be hit in the head with?" Usopp hefted the weedwhacker. "So it's got that going for it." Maybe he could take it apart to build something fired with Kabuto, or maybe not, but for the moment it seemed stupid to waste possible resources.

Scourge picked up a rake and inspected the tips. "Not as sharp as it could be, but I think Lord Recluse might fix that." The sword went back in his pants and Scourge made a few chopping feints with the rake to see how it feels in his hands. It was pleasing.

As to Usopp's newest device, Scourge was less thrilled. "With those tiny blades on the end, you couldn't do much damage no matter how fast they were going," he commented as he looked the hting over. "It looks more like a device to do something to a standing target or attach to something else."

"You really think so? Of course you do, you're a robot, you're probably made of metal. I think it could hurt anything made of meat. What's a Lord Recluse?" Usopp bothered with the object while he talked to himself, shrugging off Scourge's disagreement. He hoped to take it apart for pieces, but if he couldn't, it was actually better than Kabuto for the moment so far as weight distribution and blunt hitting went. Not too much heavier than his old Usopp Pound.

"Now, that thing I wouldn't want, I wouldn't know what to do with it even if you made it sharper." Usopp gestured at the rake in a surrendering fashion. "I don't know why people don't tear down walls to get here every night. Actually, I don't even know why all this great stuff still would be left here. Or where the burn marks from my fighting yesterday went. Or..." Usopp trailed off, still looking at the rake and holding the other device in his hands. "I wonder why they take away what people have, then arm us again. I guess you wouldn't know either, even if you could hear me."

Poor Usopp. It was too late, Scourge had gotten to the pronged thing first and no matter how much the human made sad faces he wouldn't get a trade. Scourge pointed at the end of the odd device, wiggling the plastic cover on the end.

"See, this is the big problem. Someone comes at you from the front, you might get them, but if it's from the side this plastic thing blocks the way and if they get the shaft it's all over for you. A better one would have bigger blades and a shorter shaft, maybe some sort of small projectile to compensate. The splatter shield makes it nearly useless." Silly human weapons. Why did Landel even need them, when he had those big monsters on his side?

Usopp nodded and listened to Scourge's comments, although he couldn't help snickering to himself for a moment. "You said, 'if they get the shaft.'" He tugged at the shield a little himself, looking closer at how it was attached.

"Maybe you're right, although I'm pretty sure these are just tools we're going to use as weapons. Help me turn this over? I want to look under it." Holding Kabuto over his shoulder, Usopp started to try to turn the lawnmower on its side. If the blade was in proportion to the little flimsy shields, and that was a bigger version of what Usopp had, he had a feeling the bottom of the odd vehicle would be really worth looking at.

Oooh. Scourge crouched to get a look at the beast, pushing up on it to help Usopp turn it over.

"See, bigger blade. That's what I'm talking about." He poked the inside of the lawnmower, wiggling the blades to see if they'd rotate without power. "But what I'm wondering is why they're on the bottom where nobody can even see them. It might just be a tool, but I can't figure for what." Strange human devices, making no sense and being locked up for no good reason. What a waste of perfectly good spinny killing machines.

"Yeah, they're all gardening tools. You drive the little car part around, and underneath the blades cut the grass ev--why am I explaining? You can't hear and you're a robot. Anyhow, this is ancient mysterious magic."

Usopp leaned back, looking the machine over one more time, before starting in with the trowel he'd picked earlier, working at some of the screws. "Even if we don't have a wrench, I think a lot of this is gonna come apart. Then the magical vehicle, which we probably messed up by turning on its side now that I think of it, will reveal its secrets. And by secrets, I mean the big sharp parts and anything else worth carrying. This is why you should do all your treasure hunting with a reputable legendary pirate."

Scourge seemed so obsessed with weapons. Not that Usopp couldn't blame him. Having a way to keep other people from beating the crap out of you, or possibly knocking you deaf somehow, was always useful. And when he wasn't in any danger, they were fun all by themselves. Not that he knew how to use a large blade any better than he knew how to use a rake as a weapon, but there was also a principle at hand.

While Usopp worked the screws, Scourge kept exploring the shed. He still had his pillowcase bag with him but most of this stuff was too big to fit inside. He'd have to bring them here instead--a pointy thing on a long stick would be much better than that dinky frying pan Lugnut carried around.

"Wonder how fast that little car type machine goes," he muses. "If we can't get the buses that might be the next best thing. Anybody getting in our way would be pretty slicey-dicey after we hit them." Scourge wasn't sure if they'd both fit, though.

"I don't know, probably not very fast. It's not large enough to have... buses?" Usopp gave Scourge an odd look, and thought about trying to grab the notebook, then shrugged and turned back to taking apart the lawnmower. He could ask someone later.

Slowly, he removed the two large blades, and looked at how they were connected deeper in. It looked pretty simple, actually, but Usopp knew he'd have to pick and choose what to take and what not. He figured that Scourge would probably want some parts, maybe one of the blades. "It's a good thing I didn't bring two people along. I wouldn't have thought robots'd really go in for being swordsmen. It seems like a really difficult weapon if you're fighting other metal people. I guess that's not the case here, anyway..."

"You'd have to get those attached to some kind of hilt or handle to keep them from cutting your hands. Humans are so soft, you can cut right through them with just a sharp enough object." In case Usopp didn't know what his own body was vulnerable to.

Scourge didn't understand humans at all. They needed food constantly, couldn't survive without air for more than a few seconds, their skin was soft and easily punctured, they broke down and died in about a vorn, and it took way too long to make a new one even if you could obtain a pile of squishy parts to build it yourself. And yet there were more of them than Cybertronians. It wasn't fair.

Usopp made a face at that, sticking his tongue out briefly. "I know. Thanks for the description. At least I'll never have to worry about rusting." Over the course of a few seconds, he wondered if Franky had that problem, decided Franky had probably invented some sort of bizarre Cola-based lubricant for his internal functions, and then resolved to never, ever ask Franky about it. The whole idea got weirder the more Usopp thought it out.

"And if you keep talking about slicing people up, I'm going to pretend I hear something scary." Usopp shifted Kabuto a bit closer to himself. It could have been the result of too many blows to the head, but Usopp thought he'd pick blunt trauma over slicing for ways to fight, with a few exceptions. He tried gesturing at the blades, then held up two fingers, and tried to look as inquisitive as possible without spraining anything. "Sharp or not, do you want one? If you don't, I'll have to figure out a way to take both." He did know two people who seemed to be in regular need of sharp objects, so even if he wasn't sure he had a use for them right away, letting them stay in the shed seemed like a pity.

Damn straight Usopp was going to share, hadn't Scourge done all the hard work breaking the door?

"If it's anything like the chemicals upstairs, the stuff gets replaced while we're all asleep. We can each take one now, there'll be more the next time we come back." Scourge took the blade between careful fingers, turning it on its side to figure out how best to carry it. Oh, he'd bring Lugnut back here, Lugnut and Piper and everybody. It wasn't an armory but it was way better than frying pans and random blunt objects.

"They have all of this here, and they have chemicals for us to steal upstairs? They really want us to kill each other, huh?" Usopp nodded understanding, and took one of the blades for himself. Without better tools, he couldn't get more out of the machine. Even if the fuel, probably liquid, hadn't started leaking out after the machine was turned, Usopp didn't have a way to carry it. He sighed and patted its exhaust pipe, wondered if that was vulgar in robot body language and stopped. "This place is so damn weird."

Standing, he started trying to pull together his prizes. He was still keen on keeping the weedeater, too, even if it was just a heavy, partially sharp thing at the end of a stick. That he could carry alongside Kabuto, but climbing walls with it would be tough. The trowel could just be tucked into his pants. The blade was going to be the really tough thing, since he'd have to be so careful about moving it. Visions of tossing it over a wall, then going over himself, slipping at the top, and falling right onto it to impale himself flashed over his eyes. "We're going to have to go slowly to get out of here."

Cuts on the hands were so annoying, they made you twinge every time you touched things. Wouldn't it make sense to put most of the armor on the parts you fought with?

"Sometime tomorrow I'm going to hunt you down and get an entire transcript of whatever the heck you keep babbling about," he commented, puzzling over a pair of gardening gloves before slipping them on. Battle gauntlets, obviously, although they weren't powered or augmented like regular ones.

"Oh, hey, nice!" Usopp grinned at the gloves, and glanced around the shed one more time. "I guess you saw those first. I'll get some another time. Maybe this will help..."

The small shed barely seemed to have room with the lawnmower, but Usopp pulled down the wheelbarrow, then carefully lifted his blade and his weed eater to place them inside. He added a hose on impulse, humming under his breath in an off-tune. "Shopping, shopping, shopping is so much fun! I love to go shopping, and get things to hit people with so they won't kill me~." Dropping his song, he added, "I'd better start thinking of a really good story to write down tomorrow for you."

Usopp began to push the wheelbarrow forward, to see if he could get it out of the shed. Even if he couldn't exactly go over the wall with it, he couldn't climb carrying all he wanted anyway. If Scourge still wanted things, at least Usopp could be in position to leave whenever the deaf former robot was ready.

Blade down pants (no, he wasn't happy to see you) and other blades in hand, Scourge waddled out after Usopp. "So we're gonna go back to our rooms and hoard, yeah? Good plan. We need to hang out more often." Especially when Scourge could actually hear what Usopp was saying. He was pretty sure it wasn't pure insults, Usopp wasn't looking innocent enough for that.

On top of the practicality of the situation, this made Scourge feel very useful. He was disabled and useless for his true purpose and yet here he was, having a trained human lead him directly to a stash of weaponry and looting the store for the benefit of his allies. This was better than he'd done in the past three nights of flailing around with all his senses intact. Maybe he was just that good.

Usopp blinked at the blade's placement. "Are you sure that you want to risk cutting... uh, never mind, I guess that's your call." Coughing into his hand with embarrassment, he turned his attention back to the wheelbarrow.

"Now that we have looted, it is time for the next stage of our adventure! The daring escape! Let's go, my loyal follower, for the glory of the Usopp Pirates! ... A sub-group of the Straw Hat Pirates." Usopp added loyally. Even if the straw hat they had been named for was sitting in his closet at the moment...

[to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/849720.html?thread=67778360#t67778360)]

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Nightshift 48: Gardener's Shed

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