One Piece (Love Story) [Part Two]

Chapter Two Hundred and Seventeen [Rewritten]

-Chapter Two Hundred and Seventeen-

"Take it easy, you shouldn't be out of bed yet!" Chopper worriedly frowned at Usopp's quick movements.

"Come on, calm down! Stop your whining and listen to the doctor!" Nami scolded, being a lot firmer with the sharpshooter compared to the doctor.

"They're right, Usopp, you need to take it easy and rest" I nodded in agreement as I gently tried to coax the sharpshooter into laying back down.

"So...is there a chance we might get our money back after all?" Usopp hopefully asked once he settled back down into his makeshift bed on the floor.

"Well, maybe—we won't know for sure 'til that Franky guy shows up" Luffy answered.

"I see...I'm sorry..." Usopp dejectedly apologized.

"There's no need to apologize, none of us could have foreseen something like that happening" I assured him, gaze nervously drifting toward the booklets currently sprawled out on the table.

"Hey, even if we can't get the rest back, we still have 100,000,000 belis leftover—don't worry!" Luffy laughed as he attempted to quell our sharpshooter's worries.

"Yeah, but he lost twice that much!" Nami snapped.

"Nami!" Chopper scolded.

"Nami, we're trying to make him feel better, not worse" I frowned.

"Sorry, Usopp" Nami quickly apologized, not really wanting to upset the sharpshooter any further despite her own frustration.

"No, it's fine" Usopp assured her, not seeing any reason for her to apologize just for stating the truth. "More importantly, is Merry going to be okay?" he suddenly asked. "I mean, we can get her repaired with the money that we have left, we're lucky we have all these awesome shipwrights to work on her!" he brightly smiled, causing my heart to painfully ache. "But...I know things are going to get rough out there, so I want her to be stronger than ever before! We got to do a lot more than just a little touch-up!" none of us could bring ourselves to really look at him...

To tell him the truth.

"So, do you think those guys will do a great job if we only have 100,000,000 to pay with?" he hopefully asked. "You talked to them about it, right?"

"Uh...yeah, but we aren't having them repair it" Luffy admitted, causing Usopp's eyes to widen as his jaw went slack. "We decided to get a new ship instead—I know that we probably should have asked you first, but we didn't have much choice" the captain continued, not bothering to acknowledge the sharpshooter's reaction. "Either way, I made up my mind. The Going Merry has taken good care of us, but it looks like our journey with her has to end here" he said. "Anyways, Icepop gave us this amazing ship catalog to flip through" he smiled as he picked up one of the booklets from the table.

"There are all kinds of different ships we could pick from in here and if we decided to shop for a used model, we could go bigger than Merry and still keep our budget under 100,000,000!" he cheerfully exclaimed, trying his best to make the idea of a new ship sound as pleasing as possible to the stunned pirate.

"Wait! Just stop!" Usopp shouted, cutting Luffy off before he could say anything else. "I get it, Luffy, but the jokes gone on long enough—okay? See, Chopper doesn't know you're kidding" he nervously laughed as he motioned to the sniffling reindeer. "Look how upset you're making him, geez, captain.

"You should know better than to treat your crew like that—come on, Nami, back me up here" he said, looking to the ginger who only turned her head the other way in avoidance. "Huh? Hold up...does that mean...we don't have enough for repairs...? It's because I lost the 200,000,000, isn't it?" he shakily asked, voice now rising in volume the longer he spoke as he quickly stood up on his knees. "And now we can't afford the work on the Merry—is that what this is about?! After all, a first-class shipyard is going to cost a lot, right?!"