Chapter Text
The woods had swallowed her days. Long, hot, lonely things that stretched into nights filled with scratching branches, animal eyes, and her own questions echoing back at her from the darkness.
Usopp had built herself a makeshift lean-to beneath a slanted tree. One side was reinforced with bark slabs and woven vines. Her traps were reset. Her skin was sticky with sweat, and her thighs were chafed from hiking and crouching too long. A bruise bloomed purple under her collarbone from where she'd fallen wrong on a trap spring. There were scratches along her shins, a knife blister on her thumb, and a bloodstain on her underwear that she’d tried to ignore until it forced her to sit, breathing slow and sharp with a lump in her throat.
She wasn't scared of bleeding. She was scared of not understanding it.
The fire was small tonight—just a bundle of ember-glow under a stone ring. She’d caught a squirrel and was roasting it with quiet determination. She’d broken its neck herself. She was learning. But still... she missed voices. Missed warmth. Missed the cruel, clever smirk of the woman who’d sent her out here in the first place.
So when she heard the familiar scuff of boots—not rustling like an animal, but confident, patient steps—Usopp didn’t flinch. She didn’t even look up.
“You’re late,” she said.
Bachina stepped out from between two trees like she’d always been part of the forest. Her silhouette was lit from behind by moonlight, casting a long predator's shadow across the clearing.
“Wrong. I’m precisely when I meant to be,” she said, lips twitching. “You're the one running ahead of schedule. Bleeding already. How adorable.”
Usopp scowled. “How’d you know?”
Bachina tapped the side of her nose. “I can smell it.”
Usopp’s cheeks burned.
Bachina strode over, crouched beside her, and examined her carefully—checking her arms, her stance, her firewood stack. Her eyes gleamed with approval and something like nostalgia.
“Hmm. You've survived a week. No infections. No dead animals attracting scavengers. You’re filthy, but that’s fine.” She sniffed the meat skewered over the fire. “You even figured out which rodents taste best. Good girl.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“No, you’re worse,” Bachina said fondly. “Dogs don’t lie.”
After the squirrel was picked clean, Bachina sat cross-legged across from her, pulling a small pouch from her coat. She poured a dark powder into her palm and sprinkled it into the embers.
The fire hissed, flared blue, then green, then curled back to gold.
"What was that?" Usopp asked, eyes narrowing.
Bachina licked her finger and stirred the ashes. “A curse.”
Usopp went still.
“A binding one,” Bachina explained lazily. “Anyone who tries to enter your camp with intent to harm will feel their jaw lock shut. Painfully. It will last a full day. Gives you time to run or stab.”
"Where did you even learn that?"
Bachina smirked, staring into the smoke. “There was a woman I met once on a haunted coast. She walked with a limp and cursed like a sailor with poetry in her lungs. She taught me spells in exchange for stories. I told her how I once cracked a nobleman's skull because he tried to buy me.”
“…Buy you?”
“Oh yes,” Bachina said cheerfully. “Men do that. They think everything is for sale. Especially girls.”
She leaned closer, eyes glittering with something sharp.
"Let me tell you what that woman told me. She said: Some men deserve to be taught with fire and curses. But the worst ones? The worst ones you teach by making them fall in love with you before you kill them.”
Usopp stared, half-horrified.
“That’s messed up.”
“Is it?” Bachina shrugged. “Or is it art?”
Bachina rose suddenly and tossed her coat over Usopp’s shoulders.
“Take off your trousers,” she ordered.
“Wh-what? No—!”
“I’m not going to ogle your knobby little knees,” Bachina said dryly. “But I’m not letting you stew in bloodstained fabric all night either. Take them off. I brought something.”
Blushing furiously, Usopp obeyed. Bachina handed her a small folded square of dark cloth.
“Wash up. Wrap this tight.”
Usopp fumbled with the cloth in awkward silence, then asked, “Is this… what it’s like? Being a woman?”
Bachina was quiet for a beat. Then she walked to the edge of the firelight and stood staring out into the trees.
“It’s not what makes you a woman,” she said. “But it marks the moment the world stops treating you like a child and starts wanting to own you.”
She turned back to Usopp, her smile full of danger and pride.
“From now on, you’ll have to learn how to weaponize your presence. A glance. A word. A refusal. A laugh. All of it can break someone, if you do it right.”
Usopp sat cross-legged, staring at her feet.
“I don’t feel powerful. I just feel sticky and crampy and mad.”
“Good,” Bachina said. “Stay mad. Stay sharp.”
She crouched in front of her again, touched her forehead lightly.
“Congratulations. You’ve stepped into the lineage of terrible, glorious women.”
Usopp blinked. “Is… that a good thing?”
“Oh, honey,” Bachina whispered. “It’s the only thing.”