The world was a blur of pain and shattered stone. Usopp's back screamed with every new impact as Miss Merry Christmas, cackling from somewhere beneath the earth, used him as a living battering ram through the short perimeter walls.
CRUNCH.
"Agh!" Usopp cried out, mortar dust filling his mouth. He'd been so sure—a simple plan. Lure her, let her crash. But she didn't crash. The walls crashed for her.
"Usopp!" Chopper's voice was a distant, panicked whistle.
"Having fun, little liar?" Miss Merry Christmas's voice bubbled up from the ground right beside his ear. Her clawed hands were vise-tight around his ankles. "Let's see how many walls your skull can take!"
She whipped him sideways. Another wall exploded into fragments. White-hot agony lanced through his shoulder. This was it. They were going to die here, in this dusty alley, smashed apart by a mole woman and her silent, baseball-bat-wielding partner.
Through the haze of pain, he saw Chopper—not fighting, but staring at the ground, at the network of fresh tunnels scarring the earth. The reindeer's eyes were wide, not with fear, but with frantic calculation.
"Chopper… run…" Usopp croaked.
"All the tunnels…" Chopper muttered, his voice barely a whisper. Then it sharpened. "Usopp! They're all connected!"
Before Usopp could process it, Chopper moved. In a blur of blue fur, he snatched up the whimpering gun-dog, Lassoo, who had reverted to its canine form. He didn't aim at the enemies. He aimed at a dark hole in the ground—one of Miss Merry Christmas's fresh exits.
"Point-blank! Full auto!" Chopper yelled, shoving Lassoo's muzzle into the earth.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
The concussive blasts were deafening in the confined space. The ground beneath Usopp shuddered violently. Miss Merry Christmas shrieked, her grip loosening for a split second.
"NOW!" Chopper roared.
Usopp didn't need telling twice. He scrambled, his body protesting every movement, and bolted after Chopper. They didn't look back. They ran until the alley opened into a wider square, then dove behind a crumbled fountain.
A second later, the world behind them erupted.
It wasn't a single explosion. It was a symphony of them. The connected tunnel network became a chain of gunpowder veins. The ground heaved. Columns of dirt and stone geysered into the air from a dozen different points, followed by a rolling wave of heat and sound that knocked the breath from Usopp's lungs. The entire block seemed to groan in protest.
Silence, then, broken only by the patter of falling debris and Usopp's own ragged, wheezing breaths. He lay on his back, staring at the unforgiving Alabasta sun.
"Did… did we get them?" he whispered, the hope a fragile, desperate thing in his chest.
Chopper, panting beside him, was staring at the settling dust cloud. His small body was tense. "I… I only have a minute and a half left," he murmured, a tremor in his voice.
The dust began to clear.
A silhouette emerged. Tall, hulking, unmoved. Mr. 4 stood there, his baseball bat resting on his shoulder, his expression as blank as ever. Not a scratch.
The fragile hope shattered.
"No… no, no, no…" Usopp stammered, pushing himself up on trembling arms. The sight of that implacable figure broke something inside him. The pain, the exhaustion, the sheer, overwhelming power of these Baroque Works agents crashed down. "They're monsters! We can't beat monsters!"
He scrambled to his feet, instinct screaming one command: FLEE.
"Usopp, wait! We can't run!" Chopper cried out, but his voice was already fading behind him.
"You really can't, sniper boy."
The voice came from beneath his feet. Two familiar, clawed hands erupted from the earth and locked around his ankles like stone manacles. Miss Merry Christmas's head popped up, her fur matted with dirt and a furious gleam in her eyes.
"See?" she sneered, her grip tightening until Usopp felt bones creak. "A weak captain makes for a weak crew. It's just nature."
The words were meant to break him, but they sparked a different, colder fire. Captain. His captain.
"What did you say about Luffy?" Usopp growled, ceasing his struggle.
Miss Merry Christmas laughed, a grating, ugly sound. "Oh, that straw-hatted idiot? Mr. 0 crushed him. Squashed him like a bug in the streets. The rebellion's already started, and your precious captain is its first casualty. He's dead."
Time stopped.
The words didn't make sense. They couldn't. Usopp's mind rejected them outright. He saw Chopper freeze, the color draining from his furry face.
"LIAR!" The scream tore from Usopp's throat, raw and furious. "LUFFY'S GOING TO BE KING OF THE PIRATES! HE WOULDN'T LOSE TO SOME FILTHY SAND GATOR!"
Miss Merry Christmas threw her head back and howled with laughter, the sound echoing cruelly in the ruined square. "Pirate King? That dead kid? Don't make me laugh!"
Rage, pure and incandescent, burned through the fear, through the pain. It was a lie. It had to be a lie. Luffy couldn't…
"CHOPPER!" Usopp bellowed, his eyes locking with the reindeer's across the square.
It was a cry of defiance, a refusal to accept the world this woman described. But before Chopper could move, before Usopp could twist free, Miss Merry Christmas's laughter cut off.
"Time to finish this," she hissed.
With a terrible, subterranean heave, she yanked Usopp down—not just to the ground, but through it. The solid stone of the square's foundation rushed up to meet his face.
SMASH.
Darkness.
Consciousness returned in a nauseating wave of dust and blood. He was being dragged again, backwards now, his vision a smear of upside-down ruins and a triumphant, grinning mole face.
"Let's see how strong your convictions are when you're paste on a wall!" she crowed.
Usopp's spinning eyes caught a final glimpse—Chopper, in his heavy point form, roaring as he charged toward Mr. 4, the last seconds of his Rumble Ball ticking away. And beyond them, at the far end of the alley she was dragging him toward, a final, thick, unbroken stone wall loomed.
She was going to drive him straight through it at full speed.
He was going to die here, in this dust-choked alley, believing a lie about his captain.
The wall rushed closer. The grating of stone against his back was deafening. He squeezed his eyes shut, a final, silent prayer on his lips.
Luffy…
The impact never came.
Instead, a new sound split the air—a sharp, metallic SHING of something cutting the wind, followed by a wet, heavy THUD.
The dragging stopped. The brutal pressure on his ankles vanished.
Usopp hit the ground, gasping. He rolled over, blinking grit from his eyes.
Miss Merry Christmas was standing frozen a few feet away, her expression one of utter confusion. Then, a thin red line appeared across her chest. As Usopp watched, her upper torso began to slide smoothly, cleanly away from her lower half, before toppling to the ground.
Standing between the two halves of the Baroque Works agent, the setting sun glinting off three gleaming blades held casually in one hand, was a figure he never thought he'd see here.
"Tsk," clicked the demon of the East Blue, his golden eyes glinting with bored menace. "You're making an awful lot of noise."
Zoro had arrived.
But as Usopp's heart leapt with desperate relief, Zoro's gaze shifted past him, toward the square where Chopper fought. His scowl deepened into something truly dangerous.
Because from that direction, alongside Chopper's pained cry, came a new, earth-shaking tremor—not from an explosion, but from the colossal, four-ton, seastone-weighted baseball now arcing through the air, hurled by Mr. 4 with enough force to level a building, and aimed directly at a time-expired, vulnerable Tony Tony Chopper.
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