“We saw forests, rivers, and even towns … There’s even a big tree that’s shaped like a whale!”
Nodding along as Yoko recounted their day and the various sites they went to; Bill and the others made their way to Sunset Palace.
“So, Zou has different rulers during the day and night, eh Miyagi?” Cut in Ricky who wiped his forehead with his remaining hand.
Bill was interested in this too, he had been told before that there were two rulers on the island but had only just learned that they were broken up into ‘Ruler of the Day’ and ‘Ruler of the Night’.
‘Seems like Dogstorm really got the better end of that stick.’ He thought to himself with a chuckle since even though there were nocturnal mammals, most Minks would naturally be diurnal.
As Miyagi went on describing the system of government on Zou, Bill looked over his crew and after seeing them in fine health closed his eyes.
Being brought back up to perfect health and having gotten the warnings about Duke Cat Viper, he shifted his soul’s and when he opened his eyes the world became more vibrant.
His unburdened Observation Haki gave him a slew of abilities, from ‘Observation Killing’ or erasing his physical presence in front of most people, to ‘Sensory Awareness’ which was a kind of sixth sense that made it impossible for him to miss anything in his immediate area.
But for all his abilities, weak or strong, the ability of ‘Thought Reading’ distressed him the most.
Deeply opposed to such invasions of privacy, Bill had nonetheless experienced the loss of too many of his people to completely swear the power away.
Thinking about this, and more, it wasn’t long before the group met up with a two members of the ‘Ruler of Night’s’ court. One was a particularly ferocious jaguar Mink who did the speaking, calling himself Pedro and introducing the monkey Mink, Keith.
Keith didn’t speak so much, but Bill did notice that he continuously cut eyes to and from Yoko.
Compared to the reception he had received by Giovanni, which itself had been not great initially, Pedro grilled the group with question after question. Often times asking the same question in two different ways, and this nearly culminated in a fight once he had turned his probing towards the kids in the group.
It turned out, Bill had come to learn, Roule had as much bravado as either Yoko and Akisu – but unlike them, he seemed to lack coordination, and thus his fighting ability was likewise nonexistent.
Being as reserved as he could be, he was somewhat glad when the monkey Mink Keith spoke up to quell Pedro’s questions to Yoko. Only somewhat glad because the monkey had kept quiet while Pedro grilled everyone else.
Sucking in a breath, Bill stopped himself from reading the monkey’s thoughts despite desperately wanting to and the group made their way to the Sunset Palace just as the sun dropped below the horizon.
The nighttime sky in this strange world was fascinating.
With multiple moons that changed in color and position, with so many stars that were arranged in every conceivable order, and the grandness of how it all came together formed a picture of a boundless dreamscape.
The first to notice, Bill looked up and stopped walking only to be quickly mimicked by Yoko. Then, when she let out a ‘Woah’ the rest of the group joined her and together they looked up in amazement.
Being so high up made it feel like they could reach out and touch the moon, and the milky white clusters of stars looked to be right there for the taking.
Seeing their guests look up, the Minks smiled to each other and waited for several minutes until they had to go inside. Cat Viper was waiting for them, and so breaking the trance Pedro coughed and the crew nearly uniformly looked in his direction.
“The Duke is just inside.” He said, not quite politely but also not baring his teeth.
Replying with a simple ‘Alright.’ Bill ushered the others into the palace, through the entrance hall, and finally into the grand hall.
Laying on a bed shaped throne that was perched high into the room was a giant feline Mink.
‘Feline’ was the only word that Bill could think of since Cat Viper didn’t strictly look like any ‘cat’ he’d ever seen. Orange stripped fur seemed to say ‘tiger’ but that was offset by a giant lion’s mane and a huge maul that housed shark-like teeth.
When the procession entered the room, the Dukes eyes were closed despite the announcement of visitors and the kneeling of the Minks present.
Doing what he had done before, Bill refused to kneel but offered a salute which the other Marines promptly imitated. Staying like this for several minutes, he looked around from the corners of his eyes and when he found the others not moving, he decided to introduce himself again.
When his voice echoed around the room, two large yellow feline eyes snapped open, and focusing on the Marine Captain, the Mink Duke menacingly said: “Do you-gara think I didn’t hear your name the first time?”
Jumping off his cat-bed throne, Cat Viper stood in front of Bill and towered over him. The Ruler of Night was about as tall as the Ruler of Day; however, he was several times wider, and it was unknown if it was flesh or fluff that made it so.
Looking up at the Mink Duke, Bill felt pressured but controlled himself as he attempted to diffuse any hostilities, only to be rebuffed in his attempts time and time again.
With each tactic he tried to ease the Dukes fierce retorts with, the feline Mink would go off on another topic and eventually Bill had no choice but to use Thought Reading.
Then he discovered that ‘Cat Viper’ was completely bird-brained!
At any given time, there were three-to-four responses ready go, and they could be wildly different. Sometimes, Bill discovered, all the Dukes thoughts were negative and were so for opposite reasons.
Simply put, oftentimes there was literally no ‘winning’ argument that could be said!
Verbally jousting back and forth, the only time Bill really felt threatened was when Dogstorm was brought up. He had clearly learned that Duke Dogstorm proclaiming him as a ‘friend to the Mink’ held negative value with Cat Viper.
This was mostly due to the fact that Cat Viper held no respect for Miyagi’s ‘Miracle Drug’ claiming with a toothy sneer that true warriors didn’t need supplements.
Bill himself didn’t know how he felt about it, except to say that he thought the medicine showed potential and thought to himself that while the Ruler of Night did seem exceptionally powerful, he didn’t feel quite like Whitebeards 3rd Commander, Jozu, had.
During the intense back and forth where Cat Viper had started stomping his feet as he exclaimed how much disrespect he was shown, the rest of the room stayed quiet and didn’t dare interrupt the two leaders.
As much as Bill could gleam from the scattered thoughts of Cat Viper, the object of contention for Cat Viper seemed to boil down to the fact that Bill had met with Dogstorm first, and since nothing could ever change the past, Bill could only internally sigh and readied to excuse himself.
Speaking calming, he started by saying: “Duke, I want to than- “BALL!”
From the corner of the room a red bouncing ball had bounced halfway across the room before Cat Viper dived on it with a wide toothy grin.
Seeing the ferocious looking feline Mink playing with a ball, Bill stood there with his thoughts racing.
Glanced at his crew mates, each of whom seemed stunned, he was caught dumbfounded for a moment until he nearly laughed out loud, think ‘Why I didn’t I think of it!?’
Clearing his throat, he told the Ruler of Night that before he and his company departed they wanted to give him a gift; and for the Duke, who was in a good mood happily chasing the red ball, that seemed like a nice gesture.
Turning his head towards his crew members, Bill told Ricky to watch the others and wait there. He said he’d return quickly, and like that, he shot out of the palace.
Taking to the air for the first time since their arrival, Bill saw just how amazing the Island of Zou was, but it was only a passing glance as he sped towards Zunesha’s rump and down to the Frontier Run.
Traveling faster than he had ever gone before, he slowed himself down with a series of mid-air somersaults, landing on the deck hard, he was immediately surrounded by the night watch. “Captain?! Is everything alright?” They asked, startled by his sudden appearance, but waving them off he told them not to worry and headed towards his office.
Once inside, he went to his desk and pulled out bits and pieces of gadgets he routinely fiddled with.
He grabbed pieces from one of his experimental Pulse Boots, a red targeting lens from one of Isaacs robots, and several other bits and pieces of his collection and began furiously putting together his creation.
“Bill?” Asked a female voice from his doorway. So absorbed in his work he hadn’t even heard her footsteps he looked up and said: “Ah? Oh, hey, I told the night guard to be at ease. I’ll talk to them about it later, you can go back to sleep.”
“It wasn’t them, I heard the noise and came up, what are you doing?” she ignored his advice and walked into the office, eyeing his makeshift device.
“Just a gift.” He responded nonchalantly and began cutting the lens into a smaller circular shape. With fingers that could rip apart iron blocks he didn’t need anything besides the simplest tools for such an ad hoc creation.
Still feeling her presence as he began assembling a tiny electromagnetic induction device to produce a small amount of electricity he said: “On Zou there are two Dukes, one of the Night and one of the Day. The Duke of Night is a cat Mink who’s not very bright.”
“Naturally.” Sasha responded and he didn’t need to look up to know she had a raised eyebrow.
“Well, he was feeling some kind of way since we met with the day Duke, and aft…”
Bending over a piece of metal and soldering a switch in place, Bill looked at the flashlight shaped object in his and looked up to finish his sentence: “And after some back and forth I learned he had a peculiar personality.”
Smiling broadly, Bill pointed the object in his hand at the wall and after flicking the switch a red quarter-sized dot appeared.
“And that has to do with his personality?” Sasha asked, doubtfully, but Bill just laughed and said he had to get going.
With his large laser pointer in hand, he Air Stepped back up Zunesha’s rump and made his way back to the palace. Needless to say, not much sleep was had that night as the feline Minks in the Dukes palace had gone wild chasing the new toy.
And by the next morning Bill was pronounced a ‘Legendary Friend’ of the Mink tribe.
“Come and sleep in my-gara palace today!” Cat Viper had bid him, his attitude having done a complete 180, but Bill had to refuse, saying that they were on a tight schedule to return to their base back on the grand line.
He had spoken about his Department and their work in the East Blue, some Minks found it fascinating, some found it boring, but now there was a different light in Cat Viper’s eye.
Yawning out loud, just before the sun crested the horizon, he shouted over to one of the flying squirrel Minks and said: “Musatobi! You’ve wanted to see the sea, even wanted to join Pedro as a pirate, instead of that, why don’t you-gara join our friend’s crew?”
Jumping down from one of the in-built perches that the squirrels liked to sleep on, Musatobi glided down to the floor and looking up at Cat Viper wide eyed said: “Really?!” then turning towards Bill he said: “I-gara don’t know anything about the Marines, but I’m a really good at finding stuff! No, I’m one of the best!”
Troubled by this, Bill saw the looks of anticipation in both Musatobi’s and Cat Vipers eyes, and so relented.
Letting out a loud “Goro! Nya! Nya!” laugh, Cat Viper said that it was good that Bill had taken one his people with him and crawling up to his bed throne declared that ‘others who wanted to see the sea’ should also go.
With the sun coming up the palace fell silent. Bill didn’t wake up Yoko or the others and started to walk with Ricky, Miyagi, and Wanda back to Dogstorm.
“The Duke will want to know what happened tonight…” said Wanda ominously, and when asked what that meant she just let out a tired sigh and replied.
“You-teia don’t understand the rivalry between the two Dukes.”
As she continued to speak, Bill began to regret his ‘genius’ idea to win over the Ruler of Night.
UberNuber If you enjoy the fanfic consider hitting the heart icon and leaving a rating!
Next chapter will start a montage-style 2(ish) year time skip. The story will resume during the canonical period when the Straw Hats are leaving the Florian Triangle... or in other words, well after the incident on Enies Lobby.
What will our guys be doing while the Straw Hats are causing havoc and recruiting skeletons? I've foreshadowed it a lot, but, Stay Tuned!
Cat Viper
Spoiler [collapse]Musatobi
Spoiler [collapse]
“We saw forests, rivers, and even towns … There’s even a big tree that’s shaped like a whale!”
Nodding along as Yoko recounted their day and the various sites they went to; Bill and the others made their way to Sunset Palace.
“So, Zou has different rulers during the day and night, eh Miyagi?” Cut in Ricky who wiped his forehead with his remaining hand.
Bill was interested in this too, he had been told before that there were two rulers on the island but had only just learned that they were broken up into ‘Ruler of the Day’ and ‘Ruler of the Night’.
‘Seems like Dogstorm really got the better end of that stick.’ He thought to himself with a chuckle since even though there were nocturnal mammals, most Minks would naturally be diurnal.
As Miyagi went on describing the system of government on Zou, Bill looked over his crew and after seeing them in fine health closed his eyes.
Being brought back up to perfect health and having gotten the warnings about Duke Cat Viper, he shifted his soul’s and when he opened his eyes the world became more vibrant.
His unburdened Observation Haki gave him a slew of abilities, from ‘Observation Killing’ or erasing his physical presence in front of most people, to ‘Sensory Awareness’ which was a kind of sixth sense that made it impossible for him to miss anything in his immediate area.
But for all his abilities, weak or strong, the ability of ‘Thought Reading’ distressed him the most.
Deeply opposed to such invasions of privacy, Bill had nonetheless experienced the loss of too many of his people to completely swear the power away.
Thinking about this, and more, it wasn’t long before the group met up with a two members of the ‘Ruler of Night’s’ court. One was a particularly ferocious jaguar Mink who did the speaking, calling himself Pedro and introducing the monkey Mink, Keith.
Keith didn’t speak so much, but Bill did notice that he continuously cut eyes to and from Yoko.
Compared to the reception he had received by Giovanni, which itself had been not great initially, Pedro grilled the group with question after question. Often times asking the same question in two different ways, and this nearly culminated in a fight once he had turned his probing towards the kids in the group.
It turned out, Bill had come to learn, Roule had as much bravado as either Yoko and Akisu – but unlike them, he seemed to lack coordination, and thus his fighting ability was likewise nonexistent.
Being as reserved as he could be, he was somewhat glad when the monkey Mink Keith spoke up to quell Pedro’s questions to Yoko. Only somewhat glad because the monkey had kept quiet while Pedro grilled everyone else.
Sucking in a breath, Bill stopped himself from reading the monkey’s thoughts despite desperately wanting to and the group made their way to the Sunset Palace just as the sun dropped below the horizon.
The nighttime sky in this strange world was fascinating.
With multiple moons that changed in color and position, with so many stars that were arranged in every conceivable order, and the grandness of how it all came together formed a picture of a boundless dreamscape.
The first to notice, Bill looked up and stopped walking only to be quickly mimicked by Yoko. Then, when she let out a ‘Woah’ the rest of the group joined her and together they looked up in amazement.
Being so high up made it feel like they could reach out and touch the moon, and the milky white clusters of stars looked to be right there for the taking.
Seeing their guests look up, the Minks smiled to each other and waited for several minutes until they had to go inside. Cat Viper was waiting for them, and so breaking the trance Pedro coughed and the crew nearly uniformly looked in his direction.
“The Duke is just inside.” He said, not quite politely but also not baring his teeth.
Replying with a simple ‘Alright.’ Bill ushered the others into the palace, through the entrance hall, and finally into the grand hall.
Laying on a bed shaped throne that was perched high into the room was a giant feline Mink.
‘Feline’ was the only word that Bill could think of since Cat Viper didn’t strictly look like any ‘cat’ he’d ever seen. Orange stripped fur seemed to say ‘tiger’ but that was offset by a giant lion’s mane and a huge maul that housed shark-like teeth.
When the procession entered the room, the Dukes eyes were closed despite the announcement of visitors and the kneeling of the Minks present.
Doing what he had done before, Bill refused to kneel but offered a salute which the other Marines promptly imitated. Staying like this for several minutes, he looked around from the corners of his eyes and when he found the others not moving, he decided to introduce himself again.
When his voice echoed around the room, two large yellow feline eyes snapped open, and focusing on the Marine Captain, the Mink Duke menacingly said: “Do you-gara think I didn’t hear your name the first time?”
Jumping off his cat-bed throne, Cat Viper stood in front of Bill and towered over him. The Ruler of Night was about as tall as the Ruler of Day; however, he was several times wider, and it was unknown if it was flesh or fluff that made it so.
Looking up at the Mink Duke, Bill felt pressured but controlled himself as he attempted to diffuse any hostilities, only to be rebuffed in his attempts time and time again.
With each tactic he tried to ease the Dukes fierce retorts with, the feline Mink would go off on another topic and eventually Bill had no choice but to use Thought Reading.
Then he discovered that ‘Cat Viper’ was completely bird-brained!
At any given time, there were three-to-four responses ready go, and they could be wildly different. Sometimes, Bill discovered, all the Dukes thoughts were negative and were so for opposite reasons.
Simply put, oftentimes there was literally no ‘winning’ argument that could be said!
Verbally jousting back and forth, the only time Bill really felt threatened was when Dogstorm was brought up. He had clearly learned that Duke Dogstorm proclaiming him as a ‘friend to the Mink’ held negative value with Cat Viper.
This was mostly due to the fact that Cat Viper held no respect for Miyagi’s ‘Miracle Drug’ claiming with a toothy sneer that true warriors didn’t need supplements.
Bill himself didn’t know how he felt about it, except to say that he thought the medicine showed potential and thought to himself that while the Ruler of Night did seem exceptionally powerful, he didn’t feel quite like Whitebeards 3rd Commander, Jozu, had.
During the intense back and forth where Cat Viper had started stomping his feet as he exclaimed how much disrespect he was shown, the rest of the room stayed quiet and didn’t dare interrupt the two leaders.
As much as Bill could gleam from the scattered thoughts of Cat Viper, the object of contention for Cat Viper seemed to boil down to the fact that Bill had met with Dogstorm first, and since nothing could ever change the past, Bill could only internally sigh and readied to excuse himself.
Speaking calming, he started by saying: “Duke, I want to than- “BALL!”
From the corner of the room a red bouncing ball had bounced halfway across the room before Cat Viper dived on it with a wide toothy grin.
Seeing the ferocious looking feline Mink playing with a ball, Bill stood there with his thoughts racing.
Glanced at his crew mates, each of whom seemed stunned, he was caught dumbfounded for a moment until he nearly laughed out loud, think ‘Why I didn’t I think of it!?’
Clearing his throat, he told the Ruler of Night that before he and his company departed they wanted to give him a gift; and for the Duke, who was in a good mood happily chasing the red ball, that seemed like a nice gesture.
Turning his head towards his crew members, Bill told Ricky to watch the others and wait there. He said he’d return quickly, and like that, he shot out of the palace.
Taking to the air for the first time since their arrival, Bill saw just how amazing the Island of Zou was, but it was only a passing glance as he sped towards Zunesha’s rump and down to the Frontier Run.
Traveling faster than he had ever gone before, he slowed himself down with a series of mid-air somersaults, landing on the deck hard, he was immediately surrounded by the night watch. “Captain?! Is everything alright?” They asked, startled by his sudden appearance, but waving them off he told them not to worry and headed towards his office.
Once inside, he went to his desk and pulled out bits and pieces of gadgets he routinely fiddled with.
He grabbed pieces from one of his experimental Pulse Boots, a red targeting lens from one of Isaacs robots, and several other bits and pieces of his collection and began furiously putting together his creation.
“Bill?” Asked a female voice from his doorway. So absorbed in his work he hadn’t even heard her footsteps he looked up and said: “Ah? Oh, hey, I told the night guard to be at ease. I’ll talk to them about it later, you can go back to sleep.”
“It wasn’t them, I heard the noise and came up, what are you doing?” she ignored his advice and walked into the office, eyeing his makeshift device.
“Just a gift.” He responded nonchalantly and began cutting the lens into a smaller circular shape. With fingers that could rip apart iron blocks he didn’t need anything besides the simplest tools for such an ad hoc creation.
Still feeling her presence as he began assembling a tiny electromagnetic induction device to produce a small amount of electricity he said: “On Zou there are two Dukes, one of the Night and one of the Day. The Duke of Night is a cat Mink who’s not very bright.”
“Naturally.” Sasha responded and he didn’t need to look up to know she had a raised eyebrow.
“Well, he was feeling some kind of way since we met with the day Duke, and aft…”
Bending over a piece of metal and soldering a switch in place, Bill looked at the flashlight shaped object in his and looked up to finish his sentence: “And after some back and forth I learned he had a peculiar personality.”
Smiling broadly, Bill pointed the object in his hand at the wall and after flicking the switch a red quarter-sized dot appeared.
“And that has to do with his personality?” Sasha asked, doubtfully, but Bill just laughed and said he had to get going.
With his large laser pointer in hand, he Air Stepped back up Zunesha’s rump and made his way back to the palace. Needless to say, not much sleep was had that night as the feline Minks in the Dukes palace had gone wild chasing the new toy.
And by the next morning Bill was pronounced a ‘Legendary Friend’ of the Mink tribe.
“Come and sleep in my-gara palace today!” Cat Viper had bid him, his attitude having done a complete 180, but Bill had to refuse, saying that they were on a tight schedule to return to their base back on the grand line.
He had spoken about his Department and their work in the East Blue, some Minks found it fascinating, some found it boring, but now there was a different light in Cat Viper’s eye.
Yawning out loud, just before the sun crested the horizon, he shouted over to one of the flying squirrel Minks and said: “Musatobi! You’ve wanted to see the sea, even wanted to join Pedro as a pirate, instead of that, why don’t you-gara join our friend’s crew?”
Jumping down from one of the in-built perches that the squirrels liked to sleep on, Musatobi glided down to the floor and looking up at Cat Viper wide eyed said: “Really?!” then turning towards Bill he said: “I-gara don’t know anything about the Marines, but I’m a really good at finding stuff! No, I’m one of the best!”
Troubled by this, Bill saw the looks of anticipation in both Musatobi’s and Cat Vipers eyes, and so relented.
Letting out a loud “Goro! Nya! Nya!” laugh, Cat Viper said that it was good that Bill had taken one his people with him and crawling up to his bed throne declared that ‘others who wanted to see the sea’ should also go.
With the sun coming up the palace fell silent. Bill didn’t wake up Yoko or the others and started to walk with Ricky, Miyagi, and Wanda back to Dogstorm.
“The Duke will want to know what happened tonight…” said Wanda ominously, and when asked what that meant she just let out a tired sigh and replied.
“You-teia don’t understand the rivalry between the two Dukes.”
As she continued to speak, Bill began to regret his ‘genius’ idea to win over the Ruler of Night.
UberNuber If you enjoy the fanfic consider hitting the heart icon and leaving a rating!
Next chapter will start a montage-style 2(ish) year time skip. The story will resume during the canonical period when the Straw Hats are leaving the Florian Triangle... or in other words, well after the incident on Enies Lobby.
What will our guys be doing while the Straw Hats are causing havoc and recruiting skeletons? I've foreshadowed it a lot, but, Stay Tuned!
Cat Viper
Spoiler [collapse]Musatobi
Spoiler [collapse]