The grenade exploded in the distance.
A clean blast. Loud enough to rattle the treeline. Fla and smoke burst upward in a short-lived bloom of fire, curling into the air before the silence swallowed it whole again.
I stood still, eyes locked on the impact zone.
It was acceptable.
But not enough.
The puppet it hit was torn apart, sure—but I could still see chunks of it still standing. No splintering. No secondary damage. No reach. Just heat and noise.
I turned toward Usopp and gave him a small shake of my head.
He looked crushed. His shoulders sagged, the grin he’d been wearing seconds earlier already fading into sothing tangled between disappointnt and confusion. He held the empty fuse stick like it had betrayed him.
"Naze jūbunde wa nai nodeshou ka?" he muttered, almost to himself.
Oh, Usopp.
Out here? In these waters?
Enough is never enough.
I gestured him over with a beckoning wave, already walking toward the wreckage. The puppet had been ripped open at the joints, but its spine was intact. I needed the shards. The blast was insufficient—but the potential, the concept, was there. It only needed refinent. Improvisation. A little imagination and a willingness to bleed.
Usopp hesitated for half a second, then jogged after , his sandals crunching on gravel. He looked nervous. His eyes kept drifting down—at the field, at the shards, at the dark sars of my blood that still soaked patches of dirt. I knelt beside the ruins of the puppet and started picking out bits of jagged tal, still warm from the explosion.
Usopp followed my lead.
He flinched the first ti his fingers grazed a rusted piece stained dark red. His hand jerked back like he’d touched fire. But after a mont, he reached again. And again. Carefully.
He didn’t ask questions.
He was learning.
We worked in silence. I moved quickly, thodically, wrapping each usable piece in a strip of cloth and setting it aside. Usopp followed the rhythm, sotis lagging behind, sotis matching . Sweat beaded on his forehead as he picked up another blood-marked shard, examined it with a furrowed brow, and slipped it into the pile.
I wanted to explain.
I wanted to tell him the plan—how we’d take these fragnts and lace them around the next grenade, turn a simple blast into a maelstrom of cutting force. But words failed . Not from lack of trying—just a chasm in language, in culture, in years apart.
Still, he watched . Closely.
I began wrapping the cloth of shrapnel around the grenade shell, leaving a clean ring for the fuse to burn.
I checked it and nodded. "Frag Grenade."
"Frag Grenade." he echoed, voice trailing with the Japanese accent when speaking English.
He didn’t understand what it ant. But it was a matter of ti.
I lit the fuse.
The hiss was sharp, fast. No room for error.
I grabbed Usopp by the collar and yanked him behind the thickest tree I could find. He yelped, stumbling over his own feet, and we hit the ground hard just as the grenade detonated.
BOOM.
Not just sound—pressure. I felt it in my bones. The air cracked. The bark of the tree behind us splintered as tal tore through it like paper. I heard the whistle of shrapnel as it zipped past our heads, embedding itself in nearby stones, branches, the earth itself.
We stayed low. Still. Breathing in the silence that followed, sharp and heavy.
I could feel it in the air: death.
Not theoretical. Not hypothetically.
Real.
We stepped out a few seconds later, slow and deliberate. The field had changed.
tal shards had carved gashes into the soil. The nearest puppet had been reduced to a scattered heap of limbs and scrap. The one further out—easily fifteen ters away—had shards embedded deep into its chest and neck. So pierced straight through. Any living thing standing there would’ve been torn open in a heartbeat.
Usopp stared.
He didn’t blink. Didn’t speak.
I turned to him and said it plainly. "Motto yoi mono." I wanted it to be better.
His jaw dropped open.
He looked at the grenade remains. Then the shredded puppets. Then . I could see the gears turning behind his eyes. He hadn’t just seen destruction—he’d seen evolution. A tool pushed beyond what it was designed to do.
He created the grenade.
But I had made it into sothing lethal.
And now, his expression had changed. Gone was the doubt. Gone was the disbelief.
What remained was awe.
His eyes shone with admiration. With hunger. He didn’t just want to build now—he wanted to be like . Soone who didn’t just tell stories of power, but wielded it.
I smiled.
This was what I wanted.
Another step deeper into the lie.
A lie that was slowly becoming real.
I handed him the remaining shards, fingers brushing his palm. "Korera o katsuyō shite kaizen shimashou."
He nodded, almost trembling.
Then he saluted.
Not mockingly. Not ironically. A real salute, clumsy but sincere. He turned on his heel and ran full speed toward his workshop, clutching the tal like treasure.
I watched him go.
His energy, his imagination, his heart—it was all boundless. And the best part? Every ti he made sothing, he’d look at and wonder what I’d do with it. What damage I could unleash. What story could be told after.
And I?
I would keep feeding that fire.
Because the more impossible I seed in his eyes, the more permanent I beca in his world. Not as a footnote. Not as a friend.
But as legend.
Soone worth telling stories about.
And maybe, just maybe—those stories would co true. One grenade at a ti.
------------
The tal shard scread past my ear, close enough to whisper death. I didn’t flinch.
Usopp had done it.
He didn’t just et expectations—he obliterated them.
Smoke curled through the air as the field rang with the aftermath of his latest invention. Shards were embedded deep into the far tree trunks, splinters hanging loose where bark had exploded from impact. The crater was wider than before, but the real story was in the aftermath—the strange lingering sensations left behind.
But it was Usopp.
He made variations.
I picked up the first grenade, inspecting the small label he’d scribbled with shaky excitent. Chilly Frag Grenade. A second one read Itchy Powder Frag Grenade. A third, Slly Frag Grenade. All lethal. All wrapped with my salvaged tal shards. All bearing the unmistakable stamp of Usopp’s mind: brilliant, bizarre, and sohow—still kind.
Any other inventor would have gone all in on carnage. Maximized the radius. Amplified the pain.
But not Usopp.
He added powder that made you itch like fire ants had declared war on your skin. One that triggered a freezing chemical reaction on contact. One that released a stench so vile, it could make a seasoned pirate vomit on reflex.
All still deadly when used with shrapnel. All uniquely his.
He didn’t want to kill if he didn’t have to.
I respected that.
Still, I was the one who requested lethality. And he delivered that, too. Five total—three chilly frags, one itchy, one slly. All real killers. And one of each non-lethal version, which he had originally designed.
I only took one of each non-lethal.
The rest?
I handed them back.
Usopp bead, cradling the homade weapons like fragile treasures. He stacked them neatly in his overstuffed pouch with reverent care, whispering things to himself like, "Sarani chiripaudā o." and "Hassha chirishotto"
He was tired, his movents slower, fingers fumbling a little with the buckles. But his joy lit him from the inside. That feeling of having made sothing. Sothing that mattered.
I watched him work. Quietly.
With his nature he would make stuff that were harmless. But he was a man. He craved explosion. The frag grenade idea. He would use it sooner or later.
The sun had long since sunk beneath the sea. Now, the moon reigned high, casting silver over the training ground. The stars had followed, spattering the sky in cold fire, each one sharp and perfect in the night’s silence.
We had used up everything.
The last of the scrap tal, the final grams of gunpowder. I kept the small pouch I’d saved for my pistol—it wasn’t much, maybe four shots if I rationed carefully. But that would have to be enough.
My armory was modest, but precise:
- Two daggers, both sharpened to a whisper.
- One short sword, worn at the hilt, but balanced.
- One pistol, compact and brutal.
- Three non-lethal grenades.
- Five lethal ones.
It would do.
If not?
Well, I still had my trump card.
Self-destruction.
Not in a dramatic, heroic way. More in the cold calculation of if I go down, I take everything with . A final price. One only I could afford.
We finished cleaning the field—Usopp dragging a heavy broom, with gloves and an old rusted bucket, picking out the embedded shards that hadn’t exploded outward. The ones that stuck. The ones a kid might step on later.
They would co here again. The kids. Piiman. Tamanegi. Ninjin.
I couldn’t risk them catching tetanus or slicing a foot open trying to emulate their "Captain."
Usopp would watch over them. Teach them. Guide them.
But ?
I was just the shadow that made sure the path was clear.
Usopp didn’t complain about the cleanup. He winced every ti he brushed near sothing bloodstained, but he worked. He always did.
By the end, he was dragging his feet slightly.
And ?
I was beyond exhaustion.
But I showed none of it.
I didn’t hunch. Didn’t groan. I didn’t even pant.
I simply lay down on the grass, arms folded behind my head, breath slow and steady. The cold of the earth t my spine, and the sky poured over .
Usopp flopped down beside with a dramatic sigh, groaning a little as he settled.
I kept quiet. I gazed at Usopp and to the stars. The full moon laid out a beauty I could only express in poetry. But I didn’t. The poetry had only one recipient.
Instead, I raised one hand toward the sky, fingers spread.
Usopp looked over, puzzled. Then, after a beat, he copied . His smaller hand, callused from slingshots and fiddly tools, reached toward the stars beside mine.
We laid there, hands outstretched.
Above us: a universe.
A thousand galaxies. A billion stars. Trillions of possible lives and endings.
And from where we lay, they all fit in our hands.
I closed mine slowly, curling my fingers until I had grasped the entire sky in my fist.
Beside , Usopp did the sa.
The stars in my hand.
What a dream.
Not treasure. Not glory. Not even safety.
Just this.
The quiet mont after chaos. The heavy breath after fire. The calm with soone who still believed in you, no matter how bloodstained your hands beca.
I didn’t tell Usopp what I was thinking.
That if I died tomorrow, I wanted him to tell it like I was ten feet tall. That I never bled. That I once stopped a cannonball with my bare hand. That I could touch the stars and bring them back down if I felt like it.
He would.
He would turn my truth and lies into legend.
And that was enough.
The night air grew colder. The insects quieted.
Usopp yawned.
I stayed still.
The stars still in my palms.
Because this wasn’t the kind of mont you interrupted. It was the kind you lived in, quietly, until the world called you back.
And when it did?
You respond.
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