Cat on Water

Chapter 34

Almost an hour later, both Scarlet and Bison woke up from their blood loss induced comas. Bison woke up with a splitting headache, and a bit of a hazy memory, but he chalked that up to the booze he had been drinking.

“Oi, Scarlet sir, it’s the next morning, isn’t it? Wasn’t Shiki supposed to pick us up?” he asked, holding the back of his head. It seemed like he hit his head on the floor when he passed out. Bison’s comment got Scarlet to shoot up from his prone position, only to hold his head in pain.

“Urgh, what da hell happened to me?” Scarlet muttered, grimacing in pain. His eyes then widened, and his head spun toward Bison.

“Oi, oi, what did you just say about da boss?” Scarlet asked, in a slightly fearful but loud tone.

Bison grimaced at the shouting, wondering how that damn monkey could still talk so loud. “Urgh, stop with the shouting, man. It hurts my head. Wasn’t boss supposed to come pick us up today?” he grumbled.

Both of them froze, and then checked their watches, then scurried to the nearest window to look outside. They both froze at the midday sun, even leaning slightly toward early afternoon.

“”Aww shit, we gotta go!”” they both shouted, and then regardless of their aching heads, they shot around the room gathering up what items they could then ran down the stairs.

They, subsequently, didn’t even notice the little black cat that was napping in a sunbeam by the very same window. Hearing all the commotion, Yoruichi yawned, showing off her sharp teeth, then stretched out in a downward dog position, but cat.

“Muh mah mah.” She yawned, chopping her jaw in a sleepy motion. “Why do those idiots have to be so annoying, it’s only been an hour….” She grumbled to herself, her deep voice still carrying across the room despite the low tones.

She then belatedly recognized the words that they had said, and, in a surprising amount of alertness for a cat who just got napblocked, she darted out the door, disappearing in an instant.

 

 

…

 

Yoruichi was easily able to catch the two idiots, or idiot and gorilla, as who wears a pink blazer with beach shorts, as they were nowhere near outside her spiritual senses range.

However, since Yoruichi, along with most if not all Shinigami, usually use their spiritual senses in their general vicinity, and only seek for soul power, she noticed something else that she hadn’t noticed before, only due to the fact that with her extended focus on her ‘6^th   sense’ so to speak, she was able to notice that they kind of spiritual power that usually resides within life, the earth, people, etc. was not what it should have been.

It seemed like someone was ‘living’ within the island itself.

‘Great. Probably another devil fruit user.’ Yoruichi sighed. What happened to the ‘Devil fruits are rare’ idea that she had been told by Garp. They certainly don’t seem rare when she continually runs into them, especially Logia users, on an almost monthly basis since she got to the Grand Line.

She shrugged off her annoyances, but pulled her presence closer, vanishing from even profuse Observation Haki users such as Kizaru. Granted, that fucker still had ways to detect her with his light, but his observation Haki couldn’t sense her, much less anyone else.

She was able to make it down the 3 floors faster than the two ‘men’, and watched as they zipped by the tables in the tavern portion, completely ignoring Bison’s entire crew who were still eating.

She quickly followed them, weaving through pedestrians as they were rudely shoved out of the way when Bison and Scarlet ran by. Eventually she got tired of slipping through people’s legs, and decided to hop up onto the nearest roof by use of a low down tent next to a building.

She left behind a very upset and angry merchant as she jumped up and used her claws to cling to the side of the canopy, tearing rips through the tent and ruining the man’s shelter. Once she reached the top of a building, she peeked over the edge and saw that her two targets were still stumbling their way through the throng of people, many of whom looked two be pirates that were about to attack them for the affront to their person, only to see who it was that had pushed them out of the way, which caused them to pale considerably and turn around to walk away.

‘Hmm. Interesting.’ Yoruichi thought. ‘They must be quite well-known and feared here for people to shy away from them like that.

They kept running, eventually veering off the main street they had found themselves on and back to more alleys. Yoruichi was easily able to follow them, using the occasional flash-step to skip over gaps in buildings, and watched as they left the city proper and went outside and into the small forest that was situated on the western side of the island.

 Eventually, Bison and Scarlet broke through a thicket of trees and bushes and pushed their way into what looked like a port on the northwestern part of the island, if you were looking at the skull face on.

Yoruichi was still confused about that, why the hell was there a skull carved out of what was probably a mountain in the middle of the island. ‘Eh, its probably a sign of this place being a pirate haven or something.’ She mused, her golden eyes still staring at the hard-to-miss gorilla in a pink suit jacket. She hopped onto another tree that was closer to the edge of the tree line and was not surprised at all by what she saw.

It looked like some sort of port that was hidden by an inlet from outside views. She could see many warehouses of people moving things around, and what looked to be prepping them for transport, packaging things like weapons, food, water, and other supplies and putting them on pallets to be hoisted into the cargo hull of a ship.

While Yoruichi glanced around to see what was there, she also kept an eye on the two who had just arrived, and stopped on the top of the decline into the cove proper.

They walked over to a railing that had a steep set of stairs off to the right side, leading down in a zigzag pattern to multiple levels of storage areas as well as what looked to be housing.

Both Scarlet and Bison stopped at the edge, and leaned on it as they looked down into the cove,  both of their breaths coming in heavy pants.

“Haah. Hah. We. Hah. Made it.” Scarlet said, his dark fur hiding the red blush of exertion.

Bison nodded tiredly, and then came to a realization about something. “Yeah. Haah. We did make it. Haah. Haah. But where is the boss?” he said, his voice taking on a tone of urgency.

That caused Scarlet to freeze, his widened eyes really taking in what was at the port for the first time.

After a moment, he slumped down on the rail, and it groaned in protest.

“Aw, shit. It hasn’t been a day, has it.” Scarlet tiredly asked, his head down between his arms.

Bison did one better and turned around to put his back to a post of the railing, and slid down in exhaustion. “What the hell. Did we miss the ship?” he muttered in slight disbelief.

“Nope, it’s just been an hour since you guys passed out. Seriously, how dumb do you have to be?” a deep voice called out, and both men turned to look up at a tree.

Yoruichi sat there, her tiny form doing a very good impression of a leopard lazing in a tree, her tail swishing in the air as her head rested on her paws.

After a moment, Scarlet let out a wordless yell as he pointed to Yoruichi. “AHHH! It’s you!   The weird little talking kitty! What da hell are you doin’ here?” He said loudly, then paused for a moment and turned to look at the inlet he had his back to.

“You followed us here, didn’t you!” he accused, whipping his head back around. No one had ever accused Shiki’s lieutenants of being stupid after all. Bison tried to get up from his seated position, but Scarlet put his hand on Bison’s head, stopping him from moving. “Oi! What the hell are you doing?? Get your fuckin hand off me!” Bison roared, his right arm going up to slap Scarlet’s, only to be utterly ineffectual in moving it.

“Wait, Bison.” Scarlet said, his face back to its normal stoic visage. He kept his eyes on Yoruichi, who was just sitting there watching what was happening with very poor interest. “We didn’t have anything to drink.” He paused, remembering the handle of rum he had almost finished by the time Bison showed up, “Well, you didn’, but tha’s beside the point.” he muttered under his breath. “EITHER WAY!” he shouted, suddenly gaining a second wind. His other hand unoccupied with keeping Bison from charging the cat, like the bull he was, came up to point at Yoruichi again. Scarlet’s eyes narrowed, gaining a sly look. “There was da woman that was in our apartment around the same time you showed up.” He then smiled a feral smile, more baring his teeth at Yoruichi. “You’re da distraction, ain’tcha? Just like last time.”

He was expecting the cat to so a bit of concern for his comrade, since he had been called out and the ruse was up, but he wasn’t expecting the utterly baffled expression that crossed the cat’s face.

“The hell are you talking about?” Yoruichi said, her expression a bit weird. “I am a cat. A male cat. I haven’t seen a human female in your building all day.” She paused for a bit, then stage whispered conspiratorially, “Between you and me, it might be the smell.”

Bison looked a bit confused, but Scarlet just kept staring at her with his blank face. “Soooo, no woman?” he mumbled, more to himself.

Yoruichi vigorously shook her head. “Nope, nada, no, zero women within 1.5 miles of you.” she said with a forceful hint to her voice. After a moment or two of the pair of them staring at each other, eyes locked in a battle of wills with Bison just looking even more confused at what was going on, Scarlet eventually started nodding to himself.

“Yes…. Yes, that’s right. I was jus’ drunk enough to hallucinate dat stripper.” He said to himself.

Yoruichi’s eye twitched.

Bison, who finally got his bearing in the conversation, said helpfully, “Uh, boss, I don’t think you were hallucinating…. I saw her-Urk” Scarlet interrupted him with a forceful push on his head, using Bison as a bit of leverage to push himself up and closer to Yoruichi. This caused Bison to fall forward in an uncontrolled lilt and smash his face into the dirt with the power of a gorilla behind it. He was knocked out, again, almost instantly.

Yoruichi eyed the man, and thought dryly, ‘If we keep this up he’s gonna go braindead from the concussions.’ She then summarily ignored him and focused on the gorilla man who was now starting to walk toward her. She did not move at all except for the shifting of her tail. That wasn’t because she didn’t care about what was happening, but simply because she was utterly dumbfounded at how that trick even worked.

‘The-the hell just happened?’ Yoruichi thought incredulously. ‘Did he just gaslight himself into thinking I didn’t exist??’ She shook her head internally, as she wasn’t just going to not accept that her opinion of how dumb these two could get even lower.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Scarlet was on a roll today. A roll into the position of dumbest dumbass to ever walk the earth. He walked forward, and extended his hands out in a thankful gesture. “Ahh, Thank ya for your help!” Scarlet cried, “I thought I was getting mugged or something, but if I was just hallucinating it, then I guess everything is fine!” His stoic face cracked into a warm smile, and he asked Yoruichi, “So, my helpful new friend, what brings you here to our port of operations for the Golden Lion Fleet?”

Yoruichi stared at him.

And stared some more.

And some more.

Until she thought, amazed at the sheer mental gymnastics this utter baboon had to make to get to the conclusion he had come to, ‘How the fuck is Shiki still free with morons like this as his lieutenants?!’

Rain, who was quite amused at the current events, said blithely, “Well, This King’s personal phrase for that is; Monkey see, monkey do.”

Yoruichi scoffed. ‘Yeah, I think this guy didn’t get that memo.’

Rain gave a wordless snort as he went back to his perpetual nap, or whatever it was that he did in her mind. Yoruichi eyed the gorilla that was still spouting praises at her, and glanced over his shoulder at the now drooling ‘Captain of a New World Pirate Crew’ Bison, who hadn’t moved from his spot in the dirt. ‘Eh, what can go wrong. Might as well have fun with it.’ She thought dryly.

She then smiled, which looked quite odd on her feline face, and she sat up on the tree branch into a majestic pose. She channeled her inner stuck-up lion and ‘roared’, “Well, let me enlighten you as to why my majestic presence is here; I, Yoruichi, the Flash-godde-er, God, have come to grace your pirate crew with my amazing abilities.”

Scarlet paused in his salutation of greatness for the cat in front of him when he heard that. “Oh, well, why didn’t ya say so earlier? I wouldn’t’ve tried to grab at ya when you came to my door in th’ first place.” He said, a bit confused.

Yoruichi paused in her act to give the Gorilla a truly pathetic look. ‘Why am I even here….. Shiki’s crew would crash and burn of it’s own accord even if Sengoku himself gave them a red carpet to the depths of Marineford.’ She then glanced behind both Scarlet and Bison down into the port, and thought wryly, ‘Right. Easiest path to Shiki that literally stumbled right into my lap.’

She looked down at Scarlet with narrowed eyes, and deadpanned, “Well, if someone didn’t act like they saw my glorious personage and try to molest my person, we would have already had this conversation.”

She then returned to her ‘majestic’ pose, much like an actor getting back into position after she was cut from a scene, and continued, “REGARDLESS! I am the, uh, King of Cats! Yeah we will go with that… And what better way to showcase my powerful claws is by assisting the King of Lions in his conquest for world domination!”

Scarlet grinned, his large tusks on the side of his face moving. “Oh. Well, da Captain isn’t going to be here tomorrow, but I am sure that you will be a fine addition to our little group.” He said giddily.

Yoruichi internally cringed and rolled her eyes at the dumbass in front of her, but said in an equally excited tone, “Oh, well then. I guess I will bless this port with my majesty then.” She spouted her best impression of her narcissistic Zanpakuto. She then hopped down from her tree branch and sauntered her way past Scarlet and Bison, who was still out cold.

Once she walked by and started heading down the stairs off to the side, Scarlet happened to glance down at Bison. “Oh, shit. Sorry Bison.” He mumbled, then reached down and picked the man up, slinging him over his shoulder and following the tiny kitty down the stairs.

 

ONE DAY LATER

SHIKI POV

 A tall man stood on the bridge of a ship wearing a Yellow striped coat with a top fur lining, along with a black with red lined kimono. He had long yellow hair coming down frim the sides of his head that were down to his waist. However, this man had two extremely distinct features. The first, was the fact that in place of anything on the top of his head, he had around a quarter of a helm’s wheel stuffed into his skull, with it sticking out like a mohawk.

Funnily enough, that wasn’t even the first thing most people would see about him. That particular honor would go to the twin swords he had forcefully attached to where his lower legs were supposed to be. He was standing with both of his hands at the helm of his ship, which was inside of a large Japanese style structured building. There was no actual wheel, maybe because the man had it in his head, but Shiki stood in front of a throne-like chair as he had his hands raised in front of him to guide his ship down. This ship, while definitely shaped like a ship, had a few peculiarities that made it stand out. First of all, the thing was flying. And while flying may not be an entirely unheard-of concept, the issue that came with the ship flying was the fact that while it was shaped like a ship, it was made out of a literal mountain.

It looked like someone had taken a mountainous island and ripped it out of the ocean, the lopped the top off in the shape of a ship, slapped some ‘sails’ on it (seriously, what are the sails for, it can fly.) along with a giant golden lion figurehead roaring to the heavens and called it a day.

That wasn’t even mentioning the trees dotted around the ship like they belonged there, and for all intents and purposes, they probably did, even more so than the ‘ship’s’ current occupants.

This man, and this ship was Shiki ‘The Golden Lion’. One of the former members of the Rocks Pirates, pirate rival to Roger (entirely self-proclaimed), and the only person to ever escape Impel Down, the most infamous prison of the World Government.

He stood at the helm of his rock, his waist long sideburn hair flapping in the wind. Both of his hands were on the helm, steering it into port at Pirate Island as he barked orders at his men to get the docking procedures done quicker. One couldn’t just let an island down on top of another island and expect it to go smoothly, did they?

‘Jihahaha. A bit less than a year until I get to move forward with my plaaannnssss~’ Shiki thought giddily. ‘Just got to go pick up the silly monkey first, along with that ‘tiger’ guy. Or at least I think he was a tiger. Eh. He will be what I call him, he doesn’t matter in the long run anyway.’

Shiki skillfully turned the helm to the right as he pondered the meaning of what makes yellow so bright, and eventually he made landfall to the dock of his own personal port on Pirate Island. Perks of being former crewmates with the boss of said island.

His observation Haki had already picked up both Scarlet and Bison, who were standing at the dock near some crates that he was having loaded up. Most of it was stuff for Indigo that he couldn’t make or grow on the set of Islands Shiki had given him to use,    but what caught his eye was the cat that was sitting on top of the boxes.

He couldn’t sense it clearly with his Haki, like the cat was trying to hide, which was quite surprising as he had never seen anyone able to hide from Haki before, except for the rumors surrounding Shanks, who, instead of hiding, just used his Conqueror’s Haki to stop others from being able to use their observation.

‘How curious.’ Shiki thought. ‘Maybe I should let Indigo experiment with the cat, to see how it is attempting to hide from me. If he could make his army of animals like that…… jihahaha, I wont even have to put any effort in!’ he laughed internally. An army of stealthy animals would be quite useful. But he would have to see if the cat was even able to be studied.

As for why Shiki didn’t even think about the possibility that the cat that had weird abilities down there was some sort of devil fruit user, well, the only fruit that turned someone into a housecat of that size was currently somewhere in the west blue, with a lowly ensign. Besides, this world has interesting things all over the place just waiting to be discovered.

Once the crew, and Shiki himself, made sure the ship wasn’t going to float away, Shiki departed from his helm and made his way down to the starboard side of the ship, where he had a pulley system attached to the side to bring cargo up. Utterly ignoring the platform, he stepped off the side into midair and started falling toward the open ground.

Unlike what the average person would expect, there were not cries of surprise at his action. Shiki was the user of the Fuwa Fuwa no mi, the float float fruit, and his entire crew knew it. Besides, even if they did, they wouldn’t dare say anything about it, since Shiki was notoriously callous with his lower ranked crew members. Comes with kidnapping the lot of them island and all from their original location and forcing them to work for him.

Shiki fell like a rocket toward the ground, showing no sign of stopping. The wind threw his jacket and hair into disarray as he plummeted to the ground in only a scant few moments.

Once he was just about to impact the ground, Shiki’s hands came out from his sides like he was dropping a ball from them. Almost instantly, he slowed down in a singular moment with a dramatic gush of air being pushed out from under him, rustling the clothes and fur of the three near his landing spot.

“Jihahahaha, I see you have found some friends, Scarlet!” Shiki called out to the gorilla standing by the cargo.

Scarlet looked at Shiki with gleaming eyes, and spread his arms. “Ahh, yes, boss! You already know Bison, who arrived here a little while ago after completing his mission, and this is, Yoruichi, and he wants to join the crew.” He said with a slight happiness to his normally monotone presentation.

Shiki scratched the scruffy goatee he had on his chin in thought at those words. “Mmmhh, the cat wants to join? How the hell would Scarlet know that? Does the thing speak?’ he pondered. He then immediately resolved to figure it out for himself.

Shiki pointed to Yoruichi and beckoned him forward. “You, dog. Get over here.” He said with a far more gruff and intimidating tone of voice than the one he used with Scarlet.

The cat and the man froze for a moment, looking at him a bit weirdly. Scarlet just facepalmed at something, and then he coughed awkwardly and said, “Mhmhrm. Boss, that’s a cat.”

Shiki eyed the dog again for a second, then nodded. “Yes. That’s a cat. Why are you telling me this?” he said a bit distractedly.

Scarlet just shook his head and muttered something about ‘obliviousness’ and ‘happening all the time’ but Shiki just ignored him. It wasn’t his fault his monkey brained subordinate couldn’t articulate!

Shiki once more focused on the cat. “Raccoon, can you talk?” he said, pointing again at Yoruichi. Scarlet facepalmed again but didn’t say anything and the other two were already getting the picture of what was happening.

Yoruichi jumped down from the box and saw down with her head looking up at the tall man. The thing was barely bigger than mid-calf, if Shiki actually had calves.

Yoruichi then spoke, his arrogant tone instantly annoying Shiki. “Yes, I am offering you the chance to bask in my glory as I offer you my prestigious abilities to your….. crew.”

Shiki’s eyes narrowed at that last bit, not liking the tone that the cat used to describe the most powerful crew in the world. He then shrugged, at this point in his life used to the type of person this cat was. They all ended the same way anyway.

“Hmmmm.” Shiki said noncommittedly. He then turned to Scarlet and said, “Take the both of them to Indigo. He will know what to do with them.” Shiki then watched as Scarlet gave him a salute and step forward to grab the cat, who was now spouting off incensed language at the pirate captain.

Said cat just utterly ignored the gorilla as he hissed and spat vitriol at Shiki like it was going out of style. Bison just kept his head down, as he should have in the presence of his superior officer and followed the two others closer to the lift, which had finally made its way down to the ground. Lazy bastards up there need to be replaced.

Shiki turned and watched them walk off, then without looking at the crates and palates next to him just flicked a finger and they started raising into the air. He then pointed upward at the ship, and the crates started rising.

Almost as soon as he did so, he heard hurried shouting from behind him.

“Sir! Sir! Sir, please don’t take those, we aren’t done filling them yet!” a dockworker shouted from the far side, waving his arms above his bandanaed head. Shiki turned and gave the man a once over. Once he saw that Shiki had paused he slowed down his pace until he was right in front of the large pirate captain, barely up to his waist.

“Haah. Haah. I am truly sorry sir, but we had some delays, and weren’t able to fully-“ the man said, but Shiki cut him off. “I don’t care about your delays.” Shiki growled. “You knew your deadline, and you failed to meet it. I will be getting a replacement.” He finished, and reached inside his jacket to pull out a single shot pistol. With lightning speed, he then pointed the weapon at the worker and pulled the trigger, a loud *bang* ringing out across the docks.

However, Shiki felt a pulse from his Observation Haki, and a barrier of earth rose from the water over the edge of the dock and intercepted the bullet before it could finish its mission.

The dockworker sat huddled behind the barrier, shaking in fear. Once he looked up with red rimmed eyes and saw the barrier, he fell to his knees in relief.

Shiki just glowered at the earthen wall, and turned his head to the left. There, he could see a muddy face peering out at him from a little hill of earth that had spontaneously appeared. Without missing a beat, the voice said imperiously, “Shiki….. I give you leave to run your operations here because we are former crewmates and friends. But do not take it too far. I have no issue with you disciplining your men, but do not use your methods on mine. Otherwise I will have to rethink your ability to supply here.”

Shiki said nothing, just let out a “tch…” and turned around and flicked his arm up, and the cargo started rising. Out of a far-off warehouse, the doors blasted open smashing into some more workers and sending them flying, and out flew 5 more palates. The rest of his supplies.

They followed their predecessors up into the air and onto the main deck of his ship, with Shiki himself following closely. ‘Tch. Fucking bastard has the nerve to challenge me, the future ruler of the world. He will get his eventually.’ Shiki thought furiously.

Down at the docks, the worker prostrated himself in thanks, though it could have been because the man simply couldn’t hold himself up anymore. “Th-th-thank y-you boss. I-I can never repay you.” The man stuttered out, his bandana already slick with cold sweat.

The face in the wall turned to face the man and indifferently said, “Don’t thank me. Shiki was correct in that you are a failure. I just wished to carry out the punishment myself.” And before the worker could even utter another word, or even look shocked at the face’s words, the earth itself opened up beneath him and swallowed him whole.

The face and pile of dirt disappeared back underneath the dock, with the rest of the workers surrounding it too scared to even move.

Back with Shiki, he had just about made it to the top of the ship, and floated over the rails and back into his helm/main residence. Once he was there, he quickly made his way to a side room, with a sliding wooden panel door reminiscent of traditional Japanese houses.

Once Shiki opened the door he revealed a multi-tiered table that was filled with den-den mushi with various labels under them. Each of these mushi were Shiki’s private lines through the ship, as well as to some acquaintances like Bison who were allied with the Golden Lions.

He stepped over to one of the ones near the center, which held a mushi with a white face, wide grin, and wild blue hair sticking out the side of its head. He quickly picked up the receiver and waited for the other end to pick up.

With a Ca-lick, the other end picked up but said nothing. This caused Shiki to scowl in annoyance, his already risen temper from the earthen face rising even more.

“Indigo, you have two people coming to you with Scarlet. Bison has the Poneglyph rubbings he stole from Shanks, give him the standard reward and we will let him get back to his crew members before we leave.” Shiki said indifferently.

Without waiting for a verbal response, because he knew damn well he wouldn’t get one, Shiki continued talking, “Additionally, there is a cat that looked eerily like my brother coming with them. It can talk and has made attempts to hide from Observation Haki somehow without using an advanced application of Aura. You are allowed to capture the cat to experiment on how to integrate its abilities into the SIQ serum. Use whatever methods you deem necessary.”

This time Shiki paused and waited for a response, knowing that his scientist, Dr. Indigo couldn’t resist stopping his stupid mime gig to get excited about new test subjects.

And he was correct, as a scant moment later the mushi perked up and said in a slightly raspy tone of voice with varied peaks of high-pitched tones, “Oh, new abilities to discover?! How Interesting~! I will get right on it boss!” Indigo said, before promptly hanging up in his captain’s face.

Shiki just sighed and put down the reciver. ‘Ah, you can never find genius with a normal personality.’ He thought wryly. ‘At least that cat would be worth something. No one who boasts that much has anything of real value outside of their flowery words.’

Shiki then turned and walked out of the room, leaving the doors to slide shut on their own.