Day 49: Morning - Bill's Hardware

[idontregret]

[from here]The room they entered was full of tools, and Heat was reminded for a moment of vendors he'd known in the past. The ones in the Junkyard had been far easier to sort through than this mess, though it helped that they'd had a better idea of what to look for then. This was just shelves and racks of various odds and ends, some which seemed

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[usoppsenchou]

Usopp had been examining one of the electric tools on display with more professional curiosity than real intent. It'd be hard to sneak an electric drill past the nurses under his shirt, even if he had been sure how to power and use it. The interchangeable bits were nice--if he'd been home, he might have used some of his shore allowance from Nami to buy it.

"I guess it comes in handy. It's more Franky's job since he's a real shipwright, but I try to help out too. When I was trying to do all the maintenance by myself, the ship just... wound up falling apart." For now, Usopp had forgotten the pretense of the great pirate captain, or how odd it would be for an actual captain to sound that disparaging of his contribution to his own ship. He gave the drill an almost affectionate pat, before standing up straighter. Pushing back the memory of Merry, Usopp added in a lighter tone, "Nobody can do everything, so as long as you've done what you can, that's okay, right? A pretty smart guy told me something like that once, even if I'd never tell him he's smart to his face."

Usopp smiled back at Zack for a moment. So he was a member of a military. Large enough island-nations still had their own private armies, even if they couldn't stand up to the World Government's power, and those didn't tend to worry about the larger pirate problems of the world. Still... "If you had to fight pirates when you were in the military, I wouldn't take it personally, don't worry! We wind up fighting other pirates a lot ourselves. You seem like a really easy-going guy to be a soldier."

[zack_fair]

Zack couldn't help blinking at the other patient when he mentioned that his ship (was it his, really?) had been on the verge of falling apart in the past. That couldn't be good. Even though any pirate was likely to be good at swimming, shipwrecks had to be pretty nasty. Zack was glad to hear that they'd found someone a bit more capable. Usopp didn't seem too self-deprecating, at least, especially if he had that nifty proverb to go by.

"Yeah, that sounds pretty good to me," he agreed, hands on his hips as he gave a firm nod. Zack had prided himself on what he was good at, but he knew there were other areas that he would not do as well in. Gardening, for instance. He could still remember the way Aerith had glared at him the second he'd gotten too close to her flowers. It was probably for the best, too.

When Usopp brought up the possibility of him having fought pirates during his career, Zack straightened slightly and then gave an emphatic shake of his head. "No, no, nothing like that," he quickly assured the other man. "I can't say there are that many pirates where I come from. But yeah, I try to be easy-going. There are way too many serious types out there," he remarked with a laugh. Sephiroth and Angeal were prime examples; Genesis had been too, with his incessant quoting. He'd treated Loveless like some kind of religious text rather than just a piece of fiction. Man, had it gotten annoying at times! And yet despite that, Zack still felt bad for what had happened to the guy.

In fact, he felt bad for the fate of all three of his superior officers. More than that, he felt guilty. Even knowing that Sephiroth had come back to make things even more difficult, Zack knew that it was partly Shin-Ra's fault that he'd turned out that way. It was hard to know where to direct his anger, especially when he was in this small town on another world, totally disconnected from it all.