One Piece: Overlord Buggy

"So no one said a thing?"

"... No, but it should work, right?"

She was trying to make her idea the one that would work, as if there were nothing wrong with it.

"Okay, I know they entrusted you-"

"Sensen."

"Hmm?"

"Lord Sensen wanted me to do this."

"Mhm. Okay then. Lord Sensen apparently entrusted you with with making a working ship, right? Using only one sail doesn't get you anywhere. Have you seen actual ships?"

"Yeah, but those masts get in the way!"

"How?"

She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't, and stood there, looking at me, and then looking down. She then quickly lifted her head up.

"But how do you see? How do you see with masts in the way?"

"That's a dumb reason. We are talking about how to make a ship FLY AND STEER, not just FLY. Or float, for that matter."

"What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong is that what you propose to fly, is just to MAYBE keep the ship in the air, and MAYBE glide a little before it gives out and the ship plummets. And besides, what're you gonna do to make this ship work outside the island?"

"It's going to work outside too!"

"You've never been, and yet, you think it will work? You see, there are these things called docks, where a good majority of the time, the ship will stay while you are on a different island. Yet, you want to keep a sail in the sky the entire time? The wind will die down, and it will float gently down, and you don't have even a sliver of a way to keep it there. ESPECIALLY at docks. There's also the anchor, or anchors, weight distribution, basically, the ship has to be built alongside this, and it has to be an actual ship. You can't just expect ONE sail to act as steering, the way to keep an entire ship afloat, AND to have it constantly stay in the air."

Halfway through what I was saying, I had turned to face her fully, to which she looked at me, and was bewildered, and some anger had very much started to stir within her. I could tell.

I took in a deep breath, and then turned to lean on a drafting table, my hand on my forehead.

"... But now that I think about it a little.. your wishful thinking was somewhat on the right track."

I felt her anger subside, and then hear her, exasperatedly say "What?"

"While only having ONE sail was wishful thinking, it brought about another idea. You never spoke of what form this sail would take. I, stupidly, thought it would just be a normal ship sail, but I had a brilliant idea to use a different form."

I could tell she lifted a finger, before retracting it.

"Uh.. yeah. I-I thought of that, toooootaly."

It was way to obvious she didn't think about it before, but I was trying to level the field so that neither of us were angry about anything, so that I could help the one person on the island get us off of it.

I turned, and raised an eyebrow, then letting her think this through.

"Well, fine. I didn't. I wasn't taught anything aside from how to read the weather by listening to everything. My father said it was listening to the air shaking and finding wind, or if it was going to rain by listening to wind moving something, known as the clouds. I wasn't taught this stuff because no one in my family remembers everything about these drawings, so I kinda had to figure stuff out without any help! I just decided to test a weird drawing I made, that board with a sail on it, and thought that was the best way to do it! No one on the island was willing to help, because Sensen designated ME as the one to figure it out! When I couldn't build anything, he decided to give me some builders and it would be fine! I'm not actually able to design things, he just trusted that my family would be able to get us out of here, and pushed these responsibilities onto me! I'm sorry I can't design stuff like you, because I never could!"

Xetalona got more and more angry as she talked, and by the end, she was heavy breathing, and I could tell she was venting some frustrations. I didn't know from what, but I could just tell.

'Well, that was an outburst.. I didn't expect that from someone I just met like two or three hours ago. That.. is some frustration if I've ever seen any.'

"Lona?"

"WHAT?" She was still pissed about it, but I recoiled slightly before speaking again.

"What if.. I help you?"

"What?" This time, she asked in a calmer manner, but I could still tell the animosity was there.

"I mean, I can help design this ship to get off of this island."

She gave me a look of 'Really, you can?' with some fire very much in her eyes.

"Well.." I turned to look at the board once again. "You can very much design. I only just realized that the reason you aren't as good a designer is because you don't know as much as I do."

"Heh?" An irk mark appeared on her forehead, and I decided to rephrase.

"Sorry, sorry. I meant to say, you can very much design as well as I do, but thanks to a lack of the same obscure knowledge I have, you have a slight misunderstanding of how much stuff you have to think about. It's probably thanks to all the people here that you don't know enough to do it. How long have you lived here?"

"My whole life. Sixteen years."

"Sixteen? Wow. That's a long time to be kept in the dark about the outside world and knowledge that would be good for this."

And she snapped once more.

"You know what? You're right. People, everyone who lives on this island, haven't given me any knowledge of how to do anything! Sensen asked me to do this without telling me anything! He and everyone... He has kept me in the dark about stuff I would need to know, if he did, we could have been gone by now! I swear that if everyone who knew about-"

"I'm sorry to interrupt.."

She stared me down, and just waited for me to continue, obviously thinking of what she was going to continue to say.

"But why did you switch from this Sensen guy and the  rest of the people here to only Sensen?"

"I was told by my father than Sensen got here about twenty years ago, and since then, he's become the leader of everyone on this island, and he told everyone to just leave it to me to get us off! Everyone just listened to him for some reason, and now I'm stuck with only people who can build, not even design or anything! That's just left to me! I changed from Sensen and everyone to Sensen because stuff probably got lost through generations of the people living here, but Sensen doesn't have an excuse to keep it to himself! I'll have to talk to him about it later!"

Xetalona then stomped away, and fell on a couch in the lounge rather dramatically, limbs flying up as she fell and landed.

I watched her the entire time, and then asked "Sooooooooooo... Can I help you out with this? Or.. do the designing myself?"

With eyes closed, she answered "You can design by yourself, but I want to learn stuff from you while you do it!"

"... That's reasonable. Let's start on it tomorrow, because I feel you need to cool down from.. that."

I stared at the blueprints for a while, set down my scythe on one of the tables, and just didn't move for a little bit.

'So, what I got so far on this island, is that the whole effort to get OFF was pushed onto this girl, Lona. AND! To top it all off, her father, or anyone else in her family, didn't fill her in on what to do with these blueprints. At least she can MAKE blueprints, they didn't have the.. designer touch of thinking of everything. I guess no one in her recent family did anything with designing on paper, just how to sail, and to listen to the wind for stuff. Actually, that's a pretty cool power.. or is it even a power? Man, she would make for a good navigator, but it seems she has too much connection to this island, and the people on it. I can't exactly just drag her along without her being okay with it. I may want to become a pirate, but I still have some morals.'

Taki and Rem both appeared at my sides, scaring me a little, just enough to jump off the ground ever so slightly. Then putting my hand up to my chest, I was about to say something, until Rem asked while whispering "Are we trusting this girl with getting us out of here, or are you doing it?"

"Yeah, um.. Bugs? How are we gonna get out of here?" Taki chimed in with another question, also whispering.

I just decided to go along with it and said quietly "I am designing, she is learning some things from me designing, her people will help build it, and if you must know, we are going to make a weird combination of what she designed, a hot air balloon, and a lot of other stuff."

"... Okay then. You DO have a way off. That's good to know. At least we can trust you with this, even if you are the one who got us stuck."

"I'm sorry! I'm not good at navigating through whirlpools! I'm fina at SOME waves, but not crazy weather! We didn't experience any when I was training how to sail with Rosa!"

"At least we're safe. Ro-Ro would have killed you if she learned what happened. I'll keep it secret, because I trust your judgement to fix it, captain."

And then, an audible knock came from a door I hadn't noticed, one against the back wall where the lounge was.

I watched as Xetalona got up, and headed to the door out of sight, and I heard some quiet speech before the person came in, and looked at us, Xetalona behind him. It was some guy I didn't think was important at the moment, and i was immediately off put by him saying "Huh. Are these new people to the island? Aren't you going to take them to Senco?"

"Yes. I was going to, but forgot for a minute. I'll head there as soon as I tell them."

"Okay then." He then turned to us, put his hand up to his neck, arm against his chest, and spoke "Hail Anudikelto!" He then smiled and left, and I was more concerned for what was about to happen.