Walk To Sensen

We started to walk through the town, as the teepee homes had become more plentiful. Alongside that, the path turned from dirt into stone, and as I looked around, I saw people coming from the opposite direction, heading to some of the homes that we passed. Those same people, as Taki, Rem, and I had noticed, all had a look of disdain on their faces, and then they would just continue on with walking.

I just ignored it, but Rem slowed slightly to walk in pace with me, before leaning over and saying "U-uhm.. captain? Their gazes..." with some slight quivering.

I leaned over, and kept my voice quiet "What about them?"

".. They're.. they are like..."

I looked at her directly and found her starting to tremble a little.

"They're... They're like.. uhm.. Roy and... Rianna.. right?"

She nodded yes, I then continued "I would say I can do something about it for you, but they're looking at me the same way, I don't know why though. So, my piece of advice is to try and ignore the gazes. I don't know what those two did to you, but I can say that you don't need to worry about these people. There's gotta be an unknown reason. Besides, you can't be scared ALL the time."

She lifted her lowered head, took a breath in, exhaled, stopped shaking, and spoke "But aren't you...?"

"Aren't I what?"

"Scared of heights?"

"Do you want me to add onto that list? I'm not sure which ones are actually true, but I have several more I can add."

Apparently this was news to her, and she gave me a questioning look, to which I answered with "I'm not gonna try to tell you anything else, but I have fears too. They may very much seem odd, but I can bet you that everyone in the world has at least one thing they fear, so why hold me to a higher standard than everyone else?"

I caught her in a question she didn't expect, to which we walked in silence for a moment. I did notice that Taki's hood moved slightly, telling me she was listening, and most likely thinking about the question I had asked.

"Uh.. I didn't think of that.."

"Well, not everyone would. Especially with my apparently skewed view of humanity and all." I waved my hand, and stopped talking to find more people looking at us. I smiled a little.

"Hey, Rem! I got you to forget about people for a minute!"

"Hm?"

".. Nevermind. Let's just follow Lona. We're in the town and I don't know what people are like, aside from their weird disdain for us."

"Oh, okay." were the words she spoke before she sped up to walk alongside Taki before conversation struck. I could tell Taki was the one that instigated up the conversation, and I stuck with not listening and watching around us, including looking at the town.

I found we were deeper into it, and saw that the well that Xetalona had mentioned was in view. Accompanying the new sight of an interesting well, I noticed a difference in how some of these buildings were made. I was looking around to find that there was a small, open area connected directly to an oddly shaped building, one that looked like an elongated teepee, with it also standing taller than the homes around it. The doors to it took the entire bottom half, and was actually indented into the building itself, having a slight overhang over the doors. I used some Observation quickly to find it full of ovens, grains, and several other things, including bread. It was a bakery, although I couldn't find anything else aside from bread and, surprisingly, noodles.

I did find it odd that I didn't think about what foods would be made, as I didn't know how many foods were made, or could be made, especially since I didn't know if there was wildlife or not.

And Xetalona stopped, causing the three of us behind her to also stop. Someone was standing in front of her, a man looking around middle-age, with a moustache covering half his face. I then looked at his clothes to find just some normal clothes, like a long sleeve shirt, some pants, and some shoes, but I also saw him in a raggedy cloak made out of rags, it had a torn and dirtied look to it. On that, I looked around and found all of the people around us wearing something similar to the guy's cloak, there were jackets, trenchcoats, and even blankets, but they were all made of rags.

'Is that like a.. fashion statement? I mean, all of the people I've seen, including the many I didn't pay attention to, all had something like.. that. What is it, why is it like that, and why's it rags?'

I was broken out of thought by the guy who stopped us speaking.

"Xeta! Do you know that you missed the lucid sermon? Even SENCO HIMSELF was waiting for you, and you didn't even show up! So that made it late by almost half an hour!"

Xetalona shrunk slightly while being yelled at, and the people around us started to come towards us, surrounding us and having questioning, yet concerning looks towards Xetalona.

"This was the first time you've been away from one of them!" He took a quick step back and gasped. "Are you going to be like your parents? They stopped coming too, are you going to follow them as well, and stop listening to the enlightening words from Anudikelto?"

Xetalona started to freak out, sticking her arms out in front of her and shaking her hands.

"No, no no! I'm sorry I didn't show up! I got caught up in something, had to go down to the beach, and found these guys!"

She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder towards the three of us, a clown with a suit and a sword on his waist, a smaller person wearing a long cloak covering their entire body, and a platinum blonde haired girl wearing a mix of princess dress and military-esque attire.

Apparently, they hadn't seen us before, somehow, and only looked at Xetalona before she pointed us out and they all noticed us.

Xetalona had calmed down after realizing they were only concerned, even if one was yelling to get his own concern across. Smiling awkwardly, she started to speak "These are-"

But she was interrupted by several people in the small crowd surrounding us saying in unison """""People from the outside!"""""

I couldn't tell if they were concerned or happy when they all spoke that.

".....Yeeeeeaaaaaah, they are, but I found them on the bea-"

She was once again interrupted by the guy who stopped us.

"Are yo.. are you taking them to Senco?"

His voice quivered slightly, as if he was asking if we were going to do anything else.

"Eh.. yeah? I don't want to, but Sensen said to before, I can't NOT do that without him finding out anyway..."

"Good." Most of the people around us were relieved at the answer Xetalona gave, yet they still had some anxiety with us being there, as I could tell using my empathy haki.

"Now, get going, we don't need anything to happen before they get to Senco."

One of the people in the crowd had spoken, and several agreed, voicing their own agreement to have us go to who I knew as Lord Sensen from Xetalona.

And then, the group split so we could start walking again, only forming a path to the center of town. Turns out, more and more people coming from a building at the center of town had learned of the news, and were pushing to have us head there immediately, not even letting us move anywhere else, just straight towards the doors of a very church like building.

Nervously, Xetalona said "Ah- okay.. we'll just head straight to Sensen!"

And she started to exaggeratedly, and stiffly, walk through the path, like she didn't want to bring us there, and yet, didn't have any say. The three of us following not far behind, and as we walked through a path carved from people.

I watched above the people, and noticed that we entered a very wide area, most likely the town square, as each of the buildings, all looking like the teepee homes around them, had slanted rooftops, and then, I looked at the church.

It had a similar style to the building that Xetalona brought us to, being made up of a ship's hull with extra building added on for more space. There was a difference, mainly being that there were several hulls placed on top of each other, reminding me of the Sydney Opera House with how the hulls were placed, extra supports put in place when needed. The front did have a tower, with a teepee at the top, looking like a watchtower over the entire town, which I doubted was needed, but I wasn't the one who built it.

And then we passed by the well. A circular well. With its ornate stone exterior, patterns covering every single side of of it, it looked more like a hole in the ground, but I was quickly informed by Xetalona that "This is the main place we get water, and while it doesn't look like we use it, there are people who pull up mass amounts of it at a time, and the last one was recently."

'Cool. Didn't need to know, but that explains why my image of a well isn't here. I thought there would've been a bucket and a rope, but it seems like there's something else. Got it.'

And then, we ended up in front of the church building, the doors still wide open.