Usopp said yes.
It didn't happen immediately. Luffy asked and Usopp looked at him for a long moment with the expression of someone running a very fast internal argument between two parts of themselves that had different opinions about the same thing.
Then he looked at Kaya.
Kaya was looking back at him. Something in her expression was doing the thing expressions do when they're trying to communicate more than one thing at once and the person receiving it has to figure out which part to listen to first.
"Go," she said.
"Miss Kaya—"
"Usopp," she said. Gently. Firmly. Both at once somehow. "You've been telling stories about the sea since I've known you. You've been pointing at that horizon since you were small enough that pointing at it required effort." She looked at him steadily. "Go find out what's actually out there."
Usopp looked at the horizon she'd indicated. At the actual sea at the end of the village road.
"You'll be alright," he said. Not a question but not quite a statement either.
"I'll be fine," she said. "Klahadore is gone. The village knows what happened. People will look after me." Something warm came into her expression. "They always have. I just wasn't always able to see it."
Usopp was quiet for a moment.
Then he looked at Luffy.
"I have conditions," Usopp said.
"Okay," Luffy said.
"I'm not taking orders from anyone except the captain."
"That's normal," Luffy said.
"And I get to tell stories. As many as I want. Nobody tells me to stop."
"Why would we tell you to stop," Luffy said.
Usopp blinked. "People usually tell me to stop."
"That's their problem," Luffy said.
Usopp looked at Ronald. Ronald gave him nothing — just an open expression that didn't push in either direction.
Usopp looked back at Luffy.
"Alright," he said. "I'm in."
Kaya smiled. The kind of smile that was glad and sad at the same time in equal measure.
---
They spent the night in Syrup Village.
Kaya insisted. She had the house — the real house, not Klahadore's managed version of it — and rooms enough for all of them and the particular determination of someone who had been unable to do things for a while and was now catching up. She fed them. Properly. A cook who appeared from somewhere in the village's general direction and produced a dinner that even Luffy had difficulty finishing completely which Ronald suspected had never happened before.
After dinner Ronald sat on the porch and opened his status window.
```
╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ SIGN-IN REWARDS ║
║ Syrup Village ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ GUARANTEED LEGENDARY ★★★★★ ║
║ ║
║ Reward 1: ║
║ VAMPIRE PRIMOGENITOR BLOODLINE ║
║ ║
║ → Ancient bloodline of the first ║
║ vampire ancestor integrated ║
║ into host's existing physique. ║
║ → Works in conjunction with ║
║ Supreme Heavenly Body. ║
║ → Passive regeneration activated. ║
║ → Enhanced physical senses. ║
║ → Accelerated cultivation speed ║
║ toward immortality increased. ║
║ → NO negative effects — ║
║ sunlight, garlic, holy water ║
║ immunity maintained via ║
║ Perfect Immunity passive. ║
║ → Host does not require blood. ║
║ ║
║ APPLIED ✅ ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ GUARANTEED RARE ★★★ ║
║ ║
║ Reward 2: ║
║ BEGINNER HAKI — ARMAMENT ║
║ ║
║ → Foundational Armament Haki ║
║ established. ║
║ → Currently at 1% activation ║
║ capability. ║
║ → Further development requires ║
║ host's own training and effort. ║
║ ║
║ APPLIED ✅ ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ RANDOM REWARDS ║
║ ║
║ Reward 3: ║
║ INTERMEDIATE SWORDSMANSHIP ║
║ ★★★★ Epic ║
║ ║
║ → Swordsmanship elevated from ║
║ Beginner to Intermediate tier. ║
║ → Advanced sword forms and ║
║ techniques transferred. ║
║ → Compatible with Armament Haki ║
║ development. ║
║ ║
║ APPLIED ✅ ║
║ ║
║ Reward 4: ║
║ MEDICINAL KNOWLEDGE ║
║ ★★★ Rare ║
║ ║
║ → Comprehensive knowledge of ║
║ herbs, remedies and treatment ║
║ transferred. ║
║ → Applicable to injuries and ║
║ illness encountered at sea. ║
║ ║
║ APPLIED ✅ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════╝
```
He read it carefully.
The Vampire Primogenitor bloodline was the one that needed the most thinking about. He could feel it had already done something — the passive regeneration was subtle but real, a background process running quietly. The enhanced senses were more noticeable. The world had a slightly different texture now — sounds carried further, the details at the edge of his vision were crisper, the smell of the sea from the porch was more layered than it had been an hour ago.
He sat with it for a while.
The immortality cultivation track was building. The Supreme Heavenly Body established the foundation. The Vampire Primogenitor bloodline accelerated it. He wasn't immortal. Not even close. But the direction was set and the path was wider than it had been.
Armament Haki at one percent was essentially nothing in practical terms. But it existed now. It was real. Something to build from.
He closed the window.
Zoro came out of the house and leaned against the porch railing. He looked at the night sky for a moment.
"You were inside your own head," Zoro said.
"Thinking," Ronald said.
"About what."
"Where we go from here," Ronald said. Which was true.
Zoro was quiet for a moment. "That ship. The one in the harbor — the small one. Usopp mentioned it belongs to the Kaya family."
"The Merry," Ronald said. He'd seen it when they arrived. White hull, sheep figurehead at the bow, well maintained.
"We need a real ship," Zoro said. "The boat we came in is fine for three people going slowly. It's not fine for where we're heading."
"I know," Ronald said.
"You think the girl will give it to us," Zoro said.
"I think Kaya will offer it," Ronald said. "Without being asked."
Zoro looked at him. The sideways look that had become familiar — the one that said he'd noticed Ronald knew things without explaining where the knowing came from.
"You think a lot about people," Zoro said.
"It's useful," Ronald said.
"Most swordsmen I've known think about opponents," Zoro said. "Techniques. Strengths and weaknesses." He looked back at the sky. "Not people."
"Opponents are people," Ronald said.
Zoro considered this. "Fair."
They were quiet for a while. The village night around them. Crickets somewhere. The distant sound of the sea doing its constant thing.
"Your swordsmanship," Zoro said. Not a question exactly.
"What about it," Ronald said.
"You haven't used a sword," Zoro said. "In either fight. Orange Town or here."
"No," Ronald said.
"But you could," Zoro said. Again — not a question.
Ronald looked at his hands. The intermediate swordsmanship sitting in his status window like a tool he hadn't picked up yet.
"I'm building toward it," Ronald said.
Zoro nodded slowly. Like that answer made sense to him in a way that a more detailed one might not have.
"When you do," Zoro said. "Spar with me."
"When I do," Ronald said.
---
Morning.
Kaya found Ronald in the kitchen before anyone else was awake. She was moving slowly but more steadily than the previous day — whatever had been pressing on her in that house having lifted enough that her body was responding to it.
She made tea. Handed him a cup without asking if he wanted one. Sat across from him at the table.
"The ship," she said.
"Yes," Ronald said.
She looked at her cup. "The Going Merry. My family's ship. It's been sitting in that harbor for two years. My father used to sail it." She paused. "I can't sail. And Usopp is going with you." She looked up. "It should go with him."
"It's a significant thing to give," Ronald said.
"He saved my life," she said simply. "He's been trying to save it for weeks while I wasn't listening." She looked at the table. "A ship is the least of it."
Ronald held the cup of tea. "He'll take care of it."
"I know he will," she said. "He'll tell stories about it too. Probably." Something warm came into her face. "Good stories."
Ronald almost smiled.
"Can I ask you something," Kaya said.
"Yes," Ronald said.
"The man — Kuro. How did you know so quickly. At the gate. You opened something, I don't know what, and then you told Usopp he was right." She looked at him steadily. "You couldn't have known from just looking at him."
Ronald held her gaze.
She was sharper than she looked. The illness and the isolation hadn't touched that part.
"I read people," Ronald said carefully. "It's something I've been developing for a long time. I picked up on things from how he looked at us when we came through the gate. The way a person looks at a threat is different from how they look at an inconvenience." He paused. "He looked at each of us like he was calculating risk. Not the risk to Miss Kaya. The risk to himself."
Kaya listened to this. Turned it over.
"You're not telling me everything," she said.
"No," Ronald said. "But what I told you is accurate."
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded once. The nod of someone who has decided to accept partial information because the partial information is honest.
"Look after him," she said. "Usopp. He's braver than he knows and more fragile than he shows."
"We will," Ronald said.
She wrapped both hands around her cup and looked at the window where the morning was coming in slowly.
"The sea," she said quietly. "I've always been afraid of it. Even before I was sick." She looked at it. "But when Usopp talks about it — when he describes all the things his father must have seen out there — it sounds like something worth being afraid of for the right reasons."
Ronald looked at the window too.
"It is," he said.
---
They left mid morning.
The Going Merry was a different experience from the boat immediately. Deck space that wasn't constantly being negotiated. Room to move without everyone being aware of everyone else's movement. Proper storage. A crow's nest. Actual cabins below deck.
Luffy stood at the bow with his hands on the railing and looked at the open water ahead and looked like everything he'd been pointing at for his entire life had just become something he was standing on.
Usopp was everywhere at once. Checking things, adjusting things, narrating what he was checking and adjusting to anyone who would listen and several people who were only partially listening. He knew this ship — he'd been aboard it before, had helped with its maintenance while it sat in the harbor, and his relationship with it was already established in a way that made watching him move around the deck like watching someone reunite with something familiar.
Nami was at navigation. She'd assessed the Merry's capabilities in the first ten minutes — sail configuration, rudder response, how it sat in the water — with the thoroughness of someone who needed to know exactly what she was working with before she trusted it with anything.
Zoro found a spot on the deck that was out of the way of the active work and sat down and went to sleep with the efficiency of someone who had identified the primary thing they needed and acted on it without delay.
Ronald stood at the stern and watched Syrup Village get smaller.
Usopp came and stood beside him.
He was watching too. The village. The harbor. The white shape of Kaya's estate on the hill. A figure at the gate that was too far to see clearly but that Usopp was looking at with complete attention.
"She'll be alright," Ronald said.
"I know," Usopp said. He kept looking until the village was small enough that details were gone. Then he turned and looked at the sea ahead.
His expression did several things. Settled into something that wasn't quite brave and wasn't quite afraid and was probably what both of those things looked like when they existed in the same person at the same time.
"So," he said. "Where are we going."
"Wherever Nami takes us," Ronald said.
"And where's that."
"She hasn't said yet," Ronald said.
Usopp looked at Nami at the helm. Then back at the sea. "Is that how this works? We just go?"
"Generally," Ronald said.
Usopp thought about this. "In my stories it was always more planned than that."
"Real things usually are," Ronald said.
Usopp was quiet for a moment. Then — "In my stories I was always ready. Like I'd already decided I wasn't afraid." He looked at the water. "I don't feel like that right now."
"No," Ronald said.
"Is that bad?"
"No," Ronald said. "It means you're paying attention."
Usopp looked at him. "That's a strange way to put it."
"You're afraid because you understand that what's ahead is real and significant," Ronald said. "People who aren't afraid at all either haven't understood that yet or they've already made peace with whatever comes. You're somewhere between those two and that's where most worthwhile things happen."
Usopp was quiet for a long time.
The Merry moved under them. Bigger than the boat. More solid. The feeling of something that could go places rather than something that was going places because no one had stopped it yet.
"Luffy said you were the one who figured out about Kuro," Usopp said.
"I noticed things," Ronald said.
"You noticed things and then you told me I was right," Usopp said. "Before you knew everything. Before there was proof." He looked at Ronald. "Why did you do that."
Ronald considered the honest answer.
"Because you'd been right for weeks and nobody had confirmed it," he said. "And a person who's right but keeps being told they're wrong starts to doubt the thing they know." He looked at the water. "I didn't want you to doubt it at the moment it mattered."
Usopp was very still beside him.
Then he looked out at the sea and sniffed once in a way that was casual enough to be completely unconvincing.
"Alright," he said. His voice was slightly different. "Alright."
From the bow Luffy shouted something at a cloud he found interesting.
Zoro, somehow asleep, didn't react.
Nami called back that Luffy should stop shouting at clouds because she was trying to concentrate.
Luffy shouted at a different cloud.
Usopp watched this with the expression of someone cataloguing material.
"These are going to be very good stories," he said quietly.
Ronald looked at the crew assembled on the deck of the Going Merry. At the sea ahead. At the sky doing its thing above all of it.
"Yes," he said.
"They are."
---
*End of Chapter 20*