Once again, Usopp barely suppressed the desire to start smashing his head against the rail. Fortunately for him, at that exact moment a pterodactyl tried to eat the clucking Karoo. A genuine pterodactyl! Apparently the bird had been attracted by the duck's yellow color and size, so it tried carrying him away from the ship. As a result, the poor creature not only broke its claws, but also crashed down onto the deck from sheer surprise, where the terrified Karoo successfully trampled it to death. Why let perfectly good food go to waste? They lowered the sails before even reaching the island, and Sanji immediately put together a late lunch. After everyone tasted pterodactyl, they began looking forward to the promised dinosaur barbecue with considerably more enthusiasm. It was also worth noting that Nami and Robin, who joined the feast, looked like complete opposites. Nami was cheerful, lively, and completely self-confident, while Robin looked as though her familiar world had been utterly destroyed and she was now trying to glue something recognizable together from the resulting pile of fragments.
They prepared food under Sanji's supervision, ate lunch, took a nap after lunch, and then spent some time overcoming their own laziness. In the end, by the time the Going Merry finally reached shore and Johnny dropped anchor, the hands on the clock were already pointing to six in the evening. By then, the Baroque Works hunters had grown tired of asking questions and had invented an entire collection of theories regarding the 'Pirate Slayers' strange behavior. Why lower the sails only a few miles from the island? And for so long? What had that been, and why? Some clever plan? Had they changed their minds about landing? Gotten frightened? Decided to flee? Or had one of them been seriously injured during the pterodactyl attack? If so, could all of them really be that weak? The family's improvised lunch had genuinely caused the Baroque Works people no small amount of trouble. The moment the lookouts spotted a small ship approaching the island beneath black sails with the vague white outline of a skull-and-crossbones wearing a straw hat, the hunters' camp had declared a combat alert. Everyone gathered together, poured onto the clearing Mr. Three had designated as the battlefield, and began waiting. And waiting. And waiting again. And then waiting a little longer. And then just a little bit more. By the end, the lookouts had been driven half-mad by constant calls over their Den Den Mushi!
"All right, everybody listen up!" Luffy began issuing orders in his now traditional fashion, jumping onto the ship's rail for a better view after the anchor had been dropped and everyone gathered around him. "Tashigi stays in charge of the ship!" he announced first, stunning not only the named girl but Robin and Vivi as well. "You're responsible for defending the ship and Zoro!" The aforementioned swordsman had collapsed onto one of the deck chairs for a nap after lunch and was still sleeping there, openly indifferent to the entire surrounding world. "Robin, Vivi, and Karoo will help you!" With that he finished off all three named girls and the duck along with them. "The moment we go ashore, the hunters will try to surround Merry with fifteen of their ships at once, so don't even think about relaxing. When I come back, I'll inspect her, and God help all of you if our Merry has even one new scratch on her! Nobody will have enough room to hide!" the young man declared ominously.
"Good luck, girls!" Johnny supported the aforementioned girls with an approving grin and a thumbs-up. All three looked as though somebody had just smacked them over the head with a dusty sack.
"Accordingly, Ryu, Yosaku, Sanji, and Usopp will be wiping out the hunters," Luffy continued issuing orders as though nothing unusual had happened. "Most importantly, while you're wiping them out, don't forget for even a second that you have to do it stylishly and look cool!" The young man raised one index finger to emphasize the special importance of his words. "You'll be responsible for the face of our entire family, after all, so don't you dare let that face hit the dirt! Otherwise I'll let Nami do the same thing to you that she did to our Robin, but unlike Robin, I doubt any of you will enjoy it!"
The black-haired woman stared at Luffy with eyes round from shock, rapidly turned red, and then just as rapidly went pale. Finally, Robin looked at Nami as though the redhead had betrayed her in the vilest possible fashion.
"I didn't tell him anything!" the girl standing beside her immediately rejected every possible accusation. "I already explained Observation Haki to you! It lets Luffy and Zoro keep track of everyone on the ship. You can't hide anything from them! And yes, of course Zoro knows too."
Robin liked that explanation even less. The color of her face now matched Usopp, who was swaying nearby and looked more dead than alive.
"Can we get details?" Johnny raised a hand. "Maybe I'd actually enjoy it after all?"
Without a word, Yosaku stretched one arm sideways and smacked his friend across the back of the head with enough force to kill a normal human being on the spot. Johnny shut up immediately, folding almost in half while clutching his nearly cracked skull with both hands.
"So, while some of you defend our ship and others wipe out our enemies, Nami and I will take on the hardest and most responsible job of all," Luffy announced, completely ignoring Johnny's words. "We'll walk through the Baroque Works camp and their ships looking for everything valuable and interesting!" the young man declared shamelessly and without the slightest embarrassment, describing the easiest task of them all.
"Hey, that's not fair! I like rummaging through other people's ships too!" Yosaku complained, mildly disappointed.
If Johnny had not been so occupied with his head, he would certainly have supported his friend. Over the course of hunting pirates, the entire Straw Hat family had developed a considerable fondness for digging through their enemies' possessions, so Yosaku would not have minded joining Nami and Luffy at all. Sometimes the most incredible things could be found aboard somebody else's ship! It was like a real treasure hunt! And what pirate did not enjoy looking for treasure?
"Who's stopping you? Hurry up, kill all the hunters, then rummage through their ships as much as your heart desires!" Luffy countered. "Just don't take any longer than tomorrow morning," he added immediately, completely unconcerned by the contradiction in his own words.
All Yosaku could do was sigh heavily.
"So, does everyone understand everything?" Luffy asked, then continued before anyone had time to answer. "Excellent! Since everyone understands everything, disperse!"
"M-m-maybe I'd b-b-better go through the s-sh-ships too?" the deathly pale Usopp asked in an equally trembling voice, raising one shaking hand.
"Right!" Luffy suddenly remembered. "I almost forgot about you!" For one moment he made the long-nosed young man happy, but only for one moment. "Here, catch!"
Usopp instinctively caught the object thrown to him—something that had appeared in Luffy's hands at some unknown moment from some unknown place—and only afterward realized that he was holding a mask. Completely white, oval-shaped, large enough to cover his entire face from chin to forehead, but with no openings for the eyes or mouth. Instead, it had a round hole in the center positioned perfectly for his long nose. After examining the mask, Usopp shifted his baffled gaze to Luffy. He was hardly the only one. Everyone had seen the mask, and nobody understood what Usopp could possibly need it for. Especially one without eye holes.
"This is an unusual mask!" Luffy declared importantly. "Under normal conditions it's completely useless, but if you ever find yourself in a situation where there's absolutely no other way out, it will definitely reveal its power. In other words, its function is entirely tied to emotion, so it only works when a person is in complete despair. Though that's not the only restriction. Out of our entire family, the mask can reveal its power only in your hands."
Nobody knew what to think. On one hand, it did not seem like Luffy was lying; otherwise Usopp might believe his words and end up dying because of them. On the other hand, the story about some artifact-mask sounded far too implausible. Devil Fruits were one thing, but artifacts were something else entirely. Everyone was skeptical.
"Hey, I'm not lying!" Luffy declared after understanding what everyone was thinking. "The mask really works! But it'll work only for Usopp and only in a critical situation. If there isn't a critical situation, you can sleep in it and it still won't do anything."
"All right, let's assume the mask really works. What does it do?" Johnny asked, even stopping his nursing of his 'unjustly' injured head for something this interesting.
"Of course it helps Usopp avoid dying! Why else would I give it to him?" Luffy shrugged. "But I'll repeat it one more time: it only works in a critical situation! And if that's everything, then... Nami, come here!"
Wrapping an arm around the approaching girl's waist, Luffy jumped from the ship to shore with her, after which the two of them quietly and peacefully walked off into the sunset. And into the jungle. But into the sunset too. Which was still far from actually being sunset, but the idea was approximately the same. Following Luffy and Nami, the rest of the boys jumped down to the shore, which lay almost ten meters from the ship. All except Zoro and Usopp. The first continued sleeping, while the second, entirely predictably, simply failed to jump far enough and splashed into the water. A couple of minutes later, all four disappeared into the jungle beneath the gazes of three girls. When the back of Usopp, trembling from fear and walking last, vanished among the trees, Tashigi, Vivi, and Robin involuntarily exchanged glances. They still could not believe what had just happened. Guard the ship? Them? A captured Marine, a captured assassin-enemy, and a young princess? You would not find a combination like that even in the setup to a joke.
While Tashigi, Vivi, and Robin tried to reconcile themselves with the insane reality that resembled a fever dream—the usual condition of anyone dealing with the 'Hats'—Johnny, Yosaku, and Sanji were forced to listen to the terrified Usopp's endless whining.
"Why do we even have to fight?" the young man grumbled, turning the mask Luffy had given him over in his hands and trying to find anything unusual about it. "First Loguetown, then Whisky Peak, and now this again! He finds enemies for our family, messes with everyone, and then hides in the shadows and leaves us to clean up the mess he created! How is that fair?!"
"In fairness, I should point out that today is the first time you'll actually be cleaning up, as you put it, a mess he created," Yosaku noted.
Indeed, despite the commotion in Loguetown and the brawl at Whisky Peak, most of it had passed the long-nosed young man by.
"What difference does that make?!" Usopp protested. "The point is the principle!"
"It makes a big difference," Yosaku calmly disagreed, swatting a strangely shaped and colored mosquito that had latched onto his neck. "By the fifth or tenth time, you'll probably get used to it and stop worrying."
"He does this all the time?!" Usopp's eyes bulged. Because of that he immediately tripped over a protruding root and nearly plowed the ground with his nose.
"Personally, I've never once seen him handle anything himself," Sanji answered. "And if you count it up, I've known him for almost two years." He pushed aside an enormous leaf blocking his path.
"What kind of idiotic question is that?" Johnny declared loudly, kicking away a snake that lunged at him. "We've already told you so much about our past that you should've figured out ages ago how our captain gets things done."
"Hearing about it is one thing. Seeing it with your own eyes is another," Usopp countered. "When you told the stories, everything somehow sounded more... respectable, I guess?"
"But in reality it's nothing but setups!" Johnny nodded in sudden understanding. "Get used to it. That's how it always is in our family. Or were you expecting something different?"
Instead of a proper answer, Usopp muttered several unprintable words. The coming battle not only scared the shit out of the young man, it was literally squeezing a constant stream of negativity out of him, which he continuously 'sprayed' over everyone nearby. It continued exactly until Johnny, walking at the front, rounded another gigantic fern bush and stepped onto the edge of a spacious clearing.
"Well, well! Not a bad welcoming committee!" he exclaimed happily at the sight before him.
The others emerged after him and likewise froze in place beside Johnny, staring toward the opposite end of the clearing. The moment Usopp saw the scene before him, he nearly fainted and immediately slapped Luffy's mask onto his face.
Nothing happened.
Predictably.
"IT DOESN'T WORK!!!" the young man shouted, furiously ripping off the 'useless' mask and throwing it onto the ground.
"...Luffy-aniki did say your life had to actually be in danger," Yosaku reminded him just in case.
"Are you saying I'm not in danger right now?!" Usopp exclaimed somewhat hysterically. "If we fight all those guys at once, I'm definitely going to die here!" he declared, pointing a trembling finger toward the far side of the clearing.
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