The air shimmered with heat and the acrid scent of burning hair. Chew's scream was a raw, bubbling thing as the flames from Usopp's *Kaen Boshi* engulfed him, the rum on his skin becoming a pirate's pyre.
"AAAAAGH! YOU LITTLE—!"
But a fish-man's instinct for water is primal. Through the agony, Chew's bulging eyes locked onto the nearby pool. He stumbled, a living torch, and made a desperate, staggering run for salvation.
Usopp, panting behind the splintered remains of a tree, his own blood mixing with the dirt on his face, watched. The victory felt thin, fragile. *He's not down. He just needs water.*
"No," Usopp whispered, his hands trembling as he reloaded his slingshot. "Not yet."
As Chew lunged for the pool's edge, Usopp moved. Not with the grace of Zoro or the speed of Sanji, but with the frantic, cornered courage of a liar who had run out of lies. He burst from the smoke, the massive *Usopp Hammer* already in a two-handed swing.
"Your bath time's over!" Usopp roared, the sound tearing his throat.
*THWUMP!*
The hammer connected with a sickening crunch against Chew's burning back, not to injure further, but to redirect. Chew's trajectory shifted, his plunge into the water becoming a clumsy, flaming belly-flop onto the rocky bank. The flames sizzled against the wet stone, but didn't die.
Chew pushed himself up, his skin blistered and furious. "I'LL DROWN YOU IN THAT POOL!"
Usopp didn't let him finish. Fear was a fuel now. He swung the hammer again. "This is for my village!" *CRACK.*
Again. "This is for my crew!" *THUD.*
A third time, with every ounce of his failing strength. "AND THIS IS FOR ME!" *BAM.*
Chew's head snapped back with each blow. Before he could collapse, Usopp switched tactics, his slingshot snapping. "*Usopp Wagomu!*" A heavy rubber band slammed into Chew's jaw, snapping his head to the side. And finally, one last, overhead arc of the hammer.
*KER-SMASH!*
Chew went down, face-first into the mud at the water's edge, and did not move. The last of the flames on his back sputtered and died, leaving only tendrils of foul smoke.
Silence, broken only by Usopp's ragged, sobbing breaths. He dropped the hammer, his arms screaming in protest. He stared at the fallen fish-man.
"I… I did it?" The words were a disbelieving puff of air. Then, they grew. "I DID IT! TAKE THAT, YOU OVERGROWN GUPPY! THE GREAT CAPTAIN USOPP PREVAILS!" He threw his head back, a manic, triumphant laugh bursting forth. It was relief, it was hysteria, it was the sound of a boy convincing himself he was a man. He danced a little jig on shaky legs. "Did you see that? Huh? That's what happens! Never underestimate a genius sniper!"
He was alive. He'd won. The promise he'd whispered to himself—*the pretend pirate days are over*—echoed in his chest, feeling suddenly, wonderfully real.
His celebration took him a few steps closer to the still pool, his reflection grinning back at him—a bloody, bruised, victorious mess.
It was in that moment of triumph, staring at his own ragged smile in the dark water, that he saw it.
The water *bulged*.
Not a ripple. A deep, violent distortion from the depths of the small pool.
Usopp's laugh died in his throat. His reflected smile twisted into a mask of dread.
Before he could even gasp, the surface exploded. A colossal shape, sleek, scaled, and monstrously powerful, erupted from the water. It wasn't Chew.
It was a giant, serpentine sea king, its maw wide enough to swallow a ship's mast, its single, cold eye fixed directly on the petrified sniper. The wave of its emergence drenched Usopp, washing away Chew's blood but replacing it with the primal scent of the deep.
The creature's head, larger than the *Going Merry*'s galley, hovered for an eternal second, water cascading from its jagged teeth.
Usopp's mind went blank. Every clever plan, every lie, every ounce of bravado evaporated.
The sea king hissed, a sound like tearing metal, and then it *struck*, its gargantuan maw plunging down toward the tiny, frozen figure on the bank.
The last thing Usopp saw was the dark, endless tunnel of its throat.
**TO BE CONTINUED…**