Every knows it's coming, everyone is gearing up for it, but NOPE! Someone just has to do something that prevents us from that sweet sweet violence and the resulting Exp.

Share a story about a time when someone cheated you out of combat you were looking forward to.

(On another note, I can think of a Meta Reason why Nat would do that. Usopp is a sniper, so he's pretty much geared towards one on one matches unless he has ways to keep entire groups at bay for long periods of time (All Usopp's successful fights have been 1 on 1, or 1 vs a few, after all). Fighting Arlong, the boss, and his minions at the same time would be suicide. Or Nat was just that deep into her role playing. But Usopp really is single target burst damage built.)

I mentioned it a couple days ago - I went up to talk to some scavengers and get information for my Inquisitorial acolyte cell so we could find the heretical cult we were assigned to purge. A few characters would rather have slaughtered them, but as we were outnumbered by a 5:2 ratio and we desperately needed a lead I decided I'd really rather not get sprayed with bullets before meeting the cultists, and got a contact for my troubles.

Time for parlay!

You know, when I first heard the word parley I had just begun playing RPGs. I was learning the ropes from a group of guys who'd been playing for years. As a result, they often used shorthand phrases. At any rate, newbie that I was I thought parley was code for launch a surprise attack and I ended up shooting the one guy who might have been able to stop a war. At the time I was mortified, they ,however, thought it was hilarious mostly because the DM did not take that possibility into account

Talking is a free action. I like to tease a DM by making spell incantations anything from knock knock jokes, to a long, impassioned speech on the beauty of ash.

After the first casting, the incantation is no longer necessary. Most players get a kick out of it.

"“Parley” is the French word for “everyone else is flat-footed and bare-handed”."
-Shamus Young, DM of the Rings

As a DM I once made a large walled bandit camp with a system of caves as the main area. I thought the party planned on just charging in the front door like they usually do, but they planned out a siege and burnt the whole place down, as well as collapsing the caves with explosives.

So I've got two different stories of combat denial from the same campaign. One involves coffee, the other involves a parlay. I'll be telling the coffee story.

In the aforementioned campaign, I play an alchemist with over +30 in his craft skill. The 50-something result catches our GM off guard, so he rules I turned all the sewage within a mile of me into the best and purest coffee that ever was (No fecal matter in my brew!). We bottled some after sitting down to drink it.
A while later, we came across this storm giant being a major jackass to these cloud giants, and that thing was decimating them. Rather than challenging him, I called for a parley to get him to spare our lives by giving him some of what the GM called my "God-Coffee". The thing was wary, until the bard duped him into thinking it was an ultra-powerful potion that we didn't want him to drink. Naturally, the Storm Giant grabbed the water skin and downed the whole thing. Here's where it gets interesting, folks.
Keeping in mind what the GM called it, there was, in fact, a major side effect to drinking this stuff. For many non-me or non-player characters, the brew had a very depressing effect on people, as the realization would hit them that the greatest moment of their lives was a cup of joe, the likes of which they'd likely never taste again. As a result, every NPC or enemy that drank some of my "God-Coffee" would proceed to commit suicide mere moments later. That giant inhaled a water skin of the stuff, gave up on the fight, and just flew straight up and repeatedly impaled himself.

...So, yeah. I effectively killed someone. Without initiating combat. By letting them drink Coffee.