Cat on Water

Chapter 33

Almost a full day had passed since Yoruichi had left the company of the Red-Haired idiots, and she, honestly spent it wandering around in a daze. She had always been taught to bury her emotions, her true emotions to a degree, so as to make sure she could complete whatever task was in front of her, whether that be make a judgement as head of a Clan, or as a Captain of the Gotei 13.

 And to be quite honest with herself, Yoruichi had frankly had it. Had it with Kisuke sending her to this place and had it with everything she had found out and everything she still could tell she hadn’t. When she started complaining about being bored, and got ‘asked’ to take a vacation, she was not prepared to have to deal with all of the shit that she had found when she got here.

Currently, Yoruichi sat on the mast of a ship, munching on some jerky she pilfered from Shanks, and watching the pirates who were operating the ship, completely none the wiser That she had hitched a ride on their ship. She found them 6 or so hours ago while following the Eternal Pose to Pirate Island, and was quite surprised when she boarded them and listened to a few of their conversations.

As it turns out, these pirates, the Cobweb Pirate group, led by one Tadarise ‘Web’ Bison, someone who Yoruichi actually recognized as an ally of Shiki from her initial research. They were one of the pirate crews in Shiki’s original pirate armada, and one of two that had survived their Captain’s capture and imprisonment.

Unfortunately for them, that meant that Yoruichi had a somewhat vested interest in them, as they were the first actual lead she had on Shiki in literal months, outside of hearsay and rumor.

She tilted her head to look down at the cabin door, where Captain Bison had just walked out of.

“Raise sails! Rudder 50 Degrees North Northeast, we have new orders! We are to be picked up for transport at Pirate Island!” he shouted, his gruff face splitting with glee as he moved. He was a fairly tall man, by normal standards, standing at around 6 and a half feet tall. (200cm). His pulled back spiky white hair and sharp features were something of a defining characteristic, with the rest of him not being that outstanding. He didn’t even have a captain’s coat, just plain brown trousers, and a grey linen shirt, with brown boots.

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Yoruichi perked up, freezing in place as she was attempting to put more snacks in her mouth.

‘Mmm. Pickup? How convenient.’ She thought, her yellow eyes locked onto the captain.

She watched as the man went right back into his cabin, and she wanted to go see what new ‘information’ he had gotten.

Yoruichi quickly hoisted herself up and ambled her way across the boom of the sail, her arms out slightly as she balanced. When she got to the end of the sail, she did a little backflip off the end like a diver and let herself fall silently onto the railing, next to an unsuspecting pirate. The man was completely oblivious to her presence as he perked his head up at what he thought was a gust of wind, then shrugged it off and kept coiling the rope he was working with.

Yoruichi walked across the rail like a balance beam, and quickly slipped her way off the rail and onto the stairs, and into the closing door. Once inside, she slipped down the nondescript hallway and into a side room that Bison went into a few moments before. Inside was what looked to be a large assortment of snails and log poses on shelves.

She walked in on Bison sitting down at a table with a receiver to a den den mushi up to his head. “Boss, boss I’m sorry! I didn’t know we would be found by Big Mom’s men. That damn egg baby fucking top hat wearing quack job almost killed us all.” He was saying in a rush.

Yoruichi stopped for a moment, then crept her way around the man until she could get a better view of what he was doing. Moving to the lest, she quickly got a view of the snail Bison was talking through. It looked like it had a long, triangular face with dark facial hair going down the side of its head, along with a blonde goatee as well as long blonde hair falling from the side of its head.

‘That’s…… Shiki isn’t it?’ She thought, her eyes intensely taking in all the information she could. Personally, Yoruichi didn’t really care about the man. What would she care about some random pirate that ‘destabilized the order of the world?’ Wasn’t there already 4 of him that did the same thing?

The only, only reason she was looking for the guy was because the Fleet Admiral was correct in that they could make things very annoying for her if she decided to flip them the bird.

He had already proven with Kizaru that they had people she would struggle against. Yes, she could fight Garp to a standstill for a while, but that was contingent on her ability to actually hit the man, and not have to rely on stupid material world physics to ‘cheese’ her way through attacking them.

That’s not even counting Sengoku himself, who, after meeting him for the first time, she found out that he was pretty much Garp’s Marine rival and best friend and could match him blow for blow.

Even though Yoruichi was quite confident in her skills, fighting four ‘captain’ level enemies, potentially at the same time, not to mention the other Vice Admirals which could be considered Lieutenants, was not something she wanted to test just yet. Maybe with her Shikai and Shunko she could make it work, but she simply didn’t have enough destructive power outside of pushing her Shunko to the limit without her Zanpakuto.

As good as she was at kido, she was not at the level of Kisuke or Tessai, or even Unohana. Her old mentor had multiple thousands of years' worth of experience with the art, and both Kisuke and Tessai were absurdly talented with it, as much as she was with Hoho and Hakuda. She could still use Kido very well in her fighting style, but as someone who prefers to be in and out, and a quick fighting style, chanting full incantations for spells that she would probably need to deter multiple Admirals at once does not fit well with her.

Hence the situation she was in of spending multiple months searching for an eccentric old pirate with a broken piece of wood in his head.

Bison stopped talking at this point and was listening to his ‘boss’s’ reply.

“You should have informed me earlier.” The snail replied, sounding like someone distinctly from the Caribbean area of the material world. “With my 20-year plan almost complete, you and my other allies are the most important next step! With copies of Shank’s Road Poneglyph, plus the one we, er, strategically transferred to an alternate location, and the entirety of the east blue’s islands and resources, I will be unstoppable! I will finally beat that old bastard at something Jihahahahaha!” The snail said, its monologue turning a bit more insane with every word spoken.

Bison sat there with a slightly unnerved look on his face. “Uh. Boss?” he asked tentatively.

“What~” The snail replied, obviously still happy.

Bison asked his question, his hesitance more and more obvious with each word he said. “Aren’t Poteglymphs or whatever banned by the world government?”  

The snail just laughed in his face. “Jihahaha! Of course they are! Anyone who even has knowledge about them would be hunted down by Cipher Pol. And you have a copy, so don’t get caught~! And its Poneglyphs, not Pote-whatever you just said.”

Yoruichi saw the man wilt immediately.

‘Originally, I was gonna kick their asses to blow off some steam, but now I just feel bad for them.’ She thought. ‘I have no idea why Poneglyphs are outlawed, or even what a Poneglyph is, but having your boss tell you you now have a massive potential target on your back after finding said target, definitely sucks.’

Yoruichi turned her attention back to the captain as he started shivering a bit, his eyes wide as he probably started thinking about the terror that was the Cipher Pol unit.

“Bo-Boss, why did you not tell me this before?! I don’t want CP coming for me!” he cried, his demeanor suddenly going from confident pirate captain to terrified poor sod that just got told he is being sentenced to death.

“Rellaaaaxxxx~ This is the New World. Cipher Pol has very little pull out here. Besides, why would they go after some random no-name pirate anyway?”

Yoruichi’s mouth pulled into a contemplative line. ‘They just might, because the guy is a known associate of Shiki’s. Mah, not my problem.’ She thought. She then watched from the corner of the room as Captain Bison and Shiki the Golden Lion ended their call.

Once he was done, Bison slammed the receiver down on the snail, causing to let out a shriek of pain.

“I dunno why I even wanted to join up with that insane bastard. He’s going to get us all killed.” He grumbled to himself. At that moment from behind him he heard a quiet chuckle, and “You would be right about that one.” Then all of a sudden everything went black.

Yoruichi stood over him with her hand outstretched, having just knocked him out.

“Hmm, can’t really kill him since I don’t know where Shiki is. Butttttt I can still get some stress relief from these guys. Guess it’s time for some R&R~” she said jovially, and she hauled the poor Captain of the pirate ship off his chair and put him on the floor.

“I cant hurt you physically, but I can hurt something else~” Yoruichi whispered to herself, as she pulled her satchel in front of her and reached inside. After a moment’s searching she pulled out a bucket of paint, a large roll of streamers, some very suspicious liquids, and what no one would recognize on this planet, a sharpie.

She put everything else down on the floor before she grinned evilly and popped the cap on the marker, and flipped the man over onto his back.

“Hehehe~ I wonder what your boss is gonna say to this….” And she leaned forward, prepared to utterly kill a pirate’s pride.

 

 

….

 

A Week later

Yoruichi(Kitty) POV

 

For anyone who was on the docks of Pirate Island during the day, they would have been witness to a, well, peculiar sight.

A ship limped it’s way into port looking like it had just been apart of the worst battle of it’s life.

That’s not to say it was barely able to sail. It was actually perfectly fine. The sails were not torn, perfectly full of wind, Rigging was taut and strong as a ship should have, and a hull and deck planking in impeccable shape.

As much as a bright neon blue and bubblegum pink ship covered in various suspicious liquids and random streamers can have. TO be honest, while the ship looked fine, its décor made the pirates of Pirate Island think that some sort of party clown ship had just rolled up with a ‘pirate’ disguise.

Every single person stood in shocked silence, a stark contrast to the normal shouting and hustle of the docks, and stared at this ship. Obviously, Pirate Island gets their fair share of ‘interesting’ ships, hell one of the Yonko has a ship shaped like a whale. But this, this ship was definitely not like that normally. Which means that something had happened, and like sharks smelling blood, the pirates on the docks REALLY wanted to know what happened.

So, they stood, waiting for something to change as the newest batch of entertainment creeped it’s way into port. After a while, around 10 minutes or so, the ship reached a place to rest and unseen crew members skillfully threw lines to the workers who, while still interested in what was going on, did their jobs of tying the ship to the dock.

There was a palpable tension in the air as the ship finished its docking, but that tension immediately dissipated and turned to shocked silence upon everyone catching sight of the first pirate to disembark with the Gangplank.

That shocked silence was broken by a single snicker from somewhere in the crowd. Then another. And another. Then full-blown laughter erupted from what amounted to probably a good quarter of the residents of the island.

“””BAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA””” was the only sound heard as the pirates marched one by one off their ship, in probably the single worst Halloween costume getup anyone had ever seen.

One by one, the pirates walked down onto the dock, attempting to keep the shame off their faces. No one could really blame them for the way they tried to curl in on themselves in a way to appear smaller, but no matter how small they could be, they would still be quite noticeable.

This was due to the fact that pretty much all of them were covered in various combinations of blue and or pink, like someone had just dunked them in a vat of both colors like a tie dye tee-shirt, along with a ‘tar and feathered’ like appearance but with a bunch of streamers of every color of the rainbow hanging from them.

One even had one from his ass like a tail, but he was too embarrassed to notice. However, that wasn't really what caused the hysterical laughter erupting from the crowd. What really caused it was the black markings on each and every single one of their faces, along with the ‘designs’ that were shaved into their heads after what looked like the single worst barber shop visit any one of them had ever seen.

The worst though, was the captain, who came off last. He was the most covered, most decorated victim of whatever deity decided they hated them enough to shatter their pride that day, and most importantly, his wild locks of hair had been all shaved off, except for a bit on the top of his head that was somehow stuck in the shape of a chicken in a position that looked like his head was coming out of the chicken's butt.

Amongst all the commotion, no one noticed a small black cat slipping off the side of the ship and into the crowd. ‘Heh, I had way too much fun with that’ the cat thought as she sat on a pier post and watched the show.

The cat, Yoruichi, sat with smug little look on her kitty face as she watched her handiwork walk by.

‘Ah, sometimes a little pranking goes a long way to some stress relief.’ She thought, as she licked her paw in satisfaction. She had spent around a week utterly terrorizing those pirates, and she wanted to get the result she was aiming for. Of course, a large part of that ‘goal’ was self-medicated terrorism, but she also wanted the pirates to rush right to their boss, Shiki, with a bit less thought and awareness to what was around them.

Hopefully, Yoruichi could use them as a distraction to sneak along with them and get to wherever Shiki is hiding. She watched gleefully as her poor victims walked down and through the crowd, getting more and more embarrassed as time went on.

Once they got far enough away, she hopped to the next post, and then the next in a nimble example of feline grace, keeping out of the way of the large group who was gawking at the tastefully decorative ship.

‘Du du du du du…..’ Yoruichi sang in her head jovially, prancing along as she watched the pirates try their best to make it to the side alleys that littered the island’s port city so they could hide their appearances better. Every so often she would use a silent Bakudo #9, Horin, as a little tripwire every so often to trip up the pirates as they made their way out of the public eye.

Eventually she watched them slip their way into a nondescript tavern, as much as a whole crew of hot pink idiots stumbling down a street. It was a pretty much carbon copy of the general theme of the island, all sandstone buildings reminiscent of some desert cities. Yoruichi slid up to the side of the building, all brown and dusty, bits of dirt getting into her fur as she edged her way to an open window she had noticed around the side.

With a quick hop, Yoruichi succeeded in her objective, with barely a glance coming from the people inside. After all, it was quite normal for cats to come to the taverns, one of the only places on the island that have a secure place for food.

She quickly laid down in the windowsill, acting like a lazy cat who had just found a new sunbeam to lay in. (Yoruichi completely ignored the involuntary purr of happiness she made when she stretched out in the sun.)

Almost immediately, she noticed the slight commotion that the Cobweb Pirates created when they started filing into the building.

Every conversation in the building suddenly dimmed, as heads swiveled to the door to gawk like the people gathered around the docks. However, this time was different. As soon as Bison stepped in the door, he let loose a loud growl at the patrons and all of them quickly averted their gaze.

“Grr. Damn lowlifes.” He muttered, his glare piercing into every man’s eye that even dared to look at him and his men. He turned toward the bar, his glare targeting the unfortunate man who stood behind the bar, a reedy young man who definitely looked like he wanted to be anywhere else. “Barkeep! I want a bath drawn for me and my men, and when we are done, some food.” He shouted at the man, who almost dropped the glass he was cleaning.

He didn’t even wait for a reply as the man shivered in fear at the attention. Bison went up the stairs off to the side with a scowl on his face, as his men forcefully ejected patrons out of the seats nearest to the stairs as they sat down and glared at anyone to even think about their current look. Yoruichi saw that, and decided to get up and stretch, her paws going out in front of her. She then quickly hopped back down onto the outside of the Tavern, then looked up the side of the building. It was actually three stories, with the first being the bar, and the next two floors being an inn.

Looking around, she saw a drainage pipe crawling its way up the side of the building. Crouching down, Yoruichi jumped up and scampered her way up the pipe, her claws clinging to the metal with supernatural sharpness.

It only took her a few moments, and once she was gone, she slipped off onto the roof and disappeared.

When patrons of the bar left or went to their rooms for the night, they would find out that their water was not working in their rooms, and the alley beside the Tavern was starting to flood.

Yoruichi crested the building’s roof, and immediately found to be completely empty, save for a roof access door.

‘Hmm, convenient.’ She thought, as she made her way across the dusty roof to the door and hopped up with her claws extended.

She made quick work of the handle, her claws piercing through the metal with her Reiryoku bolstering herself. She rarely had to actually reinforce herself with Reiryoku in her cat form, but she could do it. It just wouldn’t be as good as her normal human form.

Once she shredded the handle into pieces (It was locked, okay? What is a kitty to do?”) she bumped the door open with her furry shoulder and snuck her way inside. She only found an equally dusty staircase leading down with a platform about 20 feet down leading off into the third floor of the inn.

Skipping the stairs entirely, Yoruichi vaulted over the railing and landed in silent grace on the last step to the third floor. Surprisingly, it was completely empty except for a suite room around the middle of the floor.

She could feel Bison, alone, save for one other person who was two rooms away, sitting in a position that suggested he had gotten his bath. Yoruichi paused for a moment outside the suites to think about her next move.

‘You know, I spend like a week on their ship but I never did try to figure out what they were planning on doing other than get “picked up” by something.’ She thought. It only took a few moments of further thinking before she decided to just throw any potential plan out the window and go with the flow.

‘Eh, fuck it. At this point I don’t really care about a plan. In this weird ass place, making plans always ends up with me in the weirdest places doing the weirdest things. If I tried to make a plan here, I’d probably have to box a gorilla at some point.’ Yoruichi thought.

At this point Rain decided to chime in for the first time in a while. “Are you sure it’s because you don’t care anymore? Or was it that Bogard was right, and you are simply getting corrupted to the insanity that happens daily” he said with a poorly concealed grin in his voice.

Yoruichi groaned out loud, her deep voice bouncing off the walls of the corridor. “Urggghhhhh. Don’t. Remind. Me. Of. That.” She growled.

Both of them shivered as they thought back to when she had met up with Garp to take her to the grand line, and had a lengthy conversation with Bogard about his experiences as Garp’s right hand man.

“When on the grand line, you can’t use common sense to guide your actions. Trust your instincts. Most of the time they will guide you to a place that is at least usable.” The man had said. When Yoruichi asked him what the hell he meant by that, he just said, “The grand line is weird. It will corrupt the common sense of anyone who stays on it for too long.” After that, he just left Yoruichi alone to ponder the purpose of insanity.

Of course, Yoruichi did not have to ponder long as pretty much as soon as they crossed into the grand line they were beset on a bunch of cat-fishes which were the size of small mountains, and had the faces of actual cats, fur and all. They were then almost instantly eaten by other fish, or dog-fish, which were the size of large mountains, and that’s what led to Yoruichi’s first mass seaking fight in the grand line.

After that point she didn’t hold her breath on the weird shit that happened in the most unnatural place she had ever been to.

Regardless of that, while Yoruichi and Rain were having a bad flashback, they did not notice the other person on the floor get up to go investigate the voice outside.

The only thing Yoruichi heard was the door being pushed open violently, and she immediately jumped back away from the door that she had gotten close to. It still didn’t stop her from skidding to a stop almost immediately as she stared up at a 10-foot-tall gorilla wearing a pink double breasted suit jacket, polka dot blue beach trunks and a yellow bucket hat with stars on it.

‘Yo what the-‘ she thought, before her thought process was forcefully cut off by the veritable wave of sound that came from the gorilla’s lungs as he shouted, “WHO DA HELL IS MAKIN NOISE OUT HERE?!”

Yoruichi just sat there with a dead face. ‘It’s a goddamn monkey. What the fuck.’ She thought.

At that moment, the Gorilla looked down at the floor and said loudly, again, “Ah! I didn’ see ya down theyuh.” He then reached down with his unnaturally long arms and tried to pick Yoruichi, but she quickly leaped backwards as close to the far wall as possible while shouting, “BACK FOUL DEMON!”

All she got was a deadpan face from the gorilla, like he was carved out of stone and very good at ventriloquism.

“Das not very nice, don’t ya know.” The gorilla said, his face still completely void of any expression.

The gorilla then paused, an odd expression finally coming over his face. “Oi oi, did a cat just talk?” He said, bewildered.

Yoruichi growled at him, “Hey, you’re one to talk, you fat monkey!”

“Aw, how cute!” the gorilla cooed loudly, his stonelike face cracking with happiness. He bent to reach down and pick her up, his extremely long arms extending out to get her.

Yoruichi hissed at him, a paw swiping claw marks down the back of his right hand.

“AH! BAD KITTY!” The gorilla yelled, jumping back into a fighting stance. 

Yoruichi just sat there and gave him a ‘Bitch, puhlease’ look.

Yoruichi just sat there, now confused as to why there was a gorilla in this dude’s room. ‘I mean, I wont shoot down people’s preferences, but I think the de-evolution kink might be taking it a bit too far.’ She wondered, then immediately pulled out the metaphorical bleach as she scrubbed that image from her head, regretting her idea instantly.

“Yo yo yo, I heard this is where all the cool kids hang out.” Yoruichi said flippantly, laying the bravado on thick. She sauntered past the still flinching gorilla, tail flicking side to side. 

The gorilla just stood there, surprised at the sudden turn of events. He honestly thought he was about to throw down with a cat that was barely the size of his foot, but it looks like the demo- *cough* cat wants to have a chat.

He cradled his scratched hand as he closed the door with a dexterous foot once Yoruichi had entered.

As soon as he turned around to face her however, he was immediately struck in the face with a puff of smoke and then almost instantly after wrapped up in some glowing orange rope, which no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t break out of. It even got his legs together! Although, the rope positioning looked a bit suspicious.

 “Oi, Oi! What da hell is this?” the gorilla said as he looked down at the glowing rope. When he looked back up, instead of getting mad he almost immediately got hearts in his eyes and had blood dripping out of his nose. “Oh~lala~” he mumbled, more to himself than anything at that point since he almost immediately passed out from the blood leaving his brain and going to his ‘other head.’

Yoruichi had to act quickly as she didn’t exactly support the gorilla with his standing, and had to catch him with the rope by tying him to the ceiling. She then let out a “Ughhhh. Perverts….” And shook her head. “Why is it always perverts that I need information from.”

Of course, Yoruichi, having turned back into human form to use her Kido, was utterly stark naked, not that she cared all that much, but at that moment the door to some other part of the suite decided to slam open and Bison came running out with a knife wielded above his head, like the typical barbarian pirate that he was.

“SCARLETT, I AM HERE TO Assisttt….. youuu…..”

He skidded to a stop when he saw what was happening in the front room, his face a vision a masterpiece of bewildered idiot, that quickly turned to perverted idiot.

“Huehuehehe….. Scarlet didn’t tell me he was getting a woman to the room.” The man had a lecherous grin on his face, his own nose starting to bleed at record time. He went to put the knife away, and take a few steps toward Yoruichi, who just shook her head in disgust and flash-stepped behind him and punched him in the back of the head, causing his eyes to roll up and him to fall to the floor with a thud.

Yoruichi stood there, just looking around at idiot one and idiot two as she just pinched her nose and looked up at the ceiling. “What did I do to deserve this…..” She then turned back into a cat, and laid down on the couch in a corner of the admittedly sparse room, and went to sleep.