Cat on Water

Chapter 35

Yoruichi was cringing continuously as she went through the past 20 minutes.

‘Oh fuck why did I think acting like that was a good idea…..’ she complained, mainly to the culprit and ‘inspiration’ of that persona.

Rain just snorted in her head, and grumbled, “You are the idiot who thought that the way This King acted was a good way to get ‘Arrogant Idiot’ to put people off their guard. Truly an arrogant idiot.”

Yoruichi gave the lion an affronted ‘look’ in her mind, which was more of a cuff of the backside of his metaphorical head than any actual look.

Currently Yoruichi was following the gorilla, Scarlet, deeper into the ship that that had arrived at. When it had first showed up, Yoruichi thought they were under attack by way of mountain getting dropped on their heads, but then it settled down like a good boat and Yoruichi realized that Shiki was a much more dangerous person than the Marines had told her. What else could someone who could make literal islands fly be but extremely dangerous, and thus extremely annoying to fight?

The kitty Shinigami shook her head to disperse her thoughts as she followed behind Bison, last in the line. They had already taken the lift up, and immediately got led into the deep bowels of the ship via some sort of freight elevator. They got taken down numerous twisting and turning blank halls, until they reached what looked to be some sort of greenhouse area, which opened up from some ornate doors into multiple squares of grass filled with random plants that Yoruichi did not recognize whatsoever.

At the end of the greenhouse, there was a cobblestone brick wall with stairs leading up to it, along with another section of greenhouse glass panels operating as a half sort of ceiling/window on top of the bricks. There was long straight staircase leading up to the upper section of the greenhouse windows, which then opened up into some sort of platform with golden trimmed red oak doors leading at the top.

Scarlet paused in the entrance of the greenhouse, and turned to face both Bison and Yoruichi.

“Bison, you have been here before, so you know the rules.” Scarlet said calmly. He glanced at Yoruichi and said, “Yoruichi…. Don’t. Touch. Anything.” He then turned around and didn’t elaborate any more.

‘Yeah yeah yeah, you ass. I’ve been around Kisuke’s labs more than enough to know not to touch any ‘suspicious liquid’. I don’t want to turn into a hairless cat.’ Yoruichi thought wryly.

Looking around, Yoruichi couldn’t see anyone inside the greenhouse, or outside the glass windows, despite there being more buildings and even walkways for people. However, she could feel a decently sized presence within the door that was at the top of the staircase, about enough to barely be a seated officer rank, if only a low one. She could also feel some sort of chemical agent whirling around in the person’s bloodstream.

Yoruichi’s eyes narrowed a bit. Usually, spiritual senses shouldn’t be able to detect chemicals, as they were pretty much a purely physical thing. But this…. ‘It seems like somebody was messing around with spiritual poisons….’ She thought pensively.

Spiritual poisons were not exactly uncommon in the Soul Society, especially during the pre-Gotei 13 era, and even more so within the Shihoin clan, given their clan’s specialties. Yoruichi herself, while not even close to being a master of the art, was proficient enough to easily identify and create many poisons, as well as oversee the growth and cultivation of their ingredients. She had to be as the Shihoin clan head, since many people within Squad 2 and the Stealth Force used poison within their repertoire, whether it be through their zanpakuto, on hidden weapons like Yoruichi herself does, or through other applications.

Thinking of the poisons she was familiar with, Yoruichi shivered, her bodily control slipping slightly as intentionally suppressed memories came back up unbidden. Most don’t know this, and for good reason, but the Shihoin clan are the main suppliers of the Soul Society’s medicinal plants, mainly to squads 4 and 12, due to their tendencies to need them in various research/medical procedures.

Of course, with how little of the Shihoin bloodline is left, with only herself, her brother Yushiro and her father, Yugureni being the last 3, the main handlers of the plant business are  the Fon clan, being the only subsidiary clan on the Shihoin clan still around.

But the fact that the Shihoin manage medicinal plants had barely anything to do with why Yoruichi was shivering from simple memories. No, that…honor… went to something else. Someone else, to be specific. A black haired, front-braided utter demon of a woman.

When Yoruichi had apprenticed under Retsu Unohana, due to her father, well, forcing her to, Yoruichi was forced to endure the ingestion of poisons, venoms, and other pathogens, particularly of the bloodborne variety, due to Unohana’s particular affinity for blood.

If anyone was a poison grandmaster, it would be her sensei. Yoruichi shivered at the memory of a kind smile of utterly terrifying proportions while she was getting her blood forcefully pulled out of her and manipulated to build up a variety of resistances to substances. It didn’t help that her Bankai gave Unohana a very, very good ability to control blood, as well as her general ability to heal you from pretty much straight up death, even if something, like say a particularly nasty Bankai corrosive poison was killing you repeatedly. I’m looking at you, Gin Ichimaru.

‘Its part of your healer training…’ Yoruichi snarked internally. ‘Everyone goes through it, so now it is your turn. Knowing your clan’s usage of the arts, its best that you get these resistances now rather than later. It will help you in the long run.’ She mimicked, in a mocking tone of voice.

‘Fuck healer training, fuck the Shihoin clan’s use of poison, and. Fuck. You. Sensei….’ Yoruichi shouted in her mind. There was no way she would verbalize that sentence, no matter how much she wanted to. Retsu Unohana might just tear through dimensions just to beat her ass in the name of discipline.

While Yoruichi was having plant induced flashbacks, Scarlet had made it to the top of the stairs, and was about to open the door before he glanced behind him. Yoruichi was forcefully snapped out of her daze when she heard Scarlet shout, “Hey, Yoruichi?! What are ya starin’ at the plants for, dey are just plants! Get over here!”

Yoruichi shook her head, and bounced her way across the greenhouse in a kitty gallop, forcing her thoughts to think about the current situation.

While she was running over, she took a closer look at the presence she could feel. The poison in the person’s veins seemed to be some sort of fire-based poison, and had mixed quite decently with the bloodstream so it wasn’t actually causing them harm, but rather gave their blood a corrosive quality, similar to an acid.

‘I wonder that they did to get their blood like that…’ she wondered idly as she finally caught up to Scarlet.

Just to keep up with appearances, she spouted some arrogant nonsense that Rain would definitely say. “You have done the proper action of waiting f

or this Highness to walk.” She said. “We can now continue on our journey, to, uh, wherever it is we are heading.”

When she said that, she noticed that Scarlet had rolled his eyes and directly ignored her, idly mentioning, “Well, your highness, we are here.” As he turned around and opened the door, letting out a waft of unidentifiable smells flow out of the room which was undoubtedly a lab of some sort.

‘Yep. Definitely Indigo.’ Yoruichi thought. She followed Bison in, who had a pensive expression on his face as he hesitantly made his way into the chief scientist of the Golden Lion pirate’s domain.

In her research of the Golden Lion pirates. The main one, was someone that was found out by Ciper Pol when they realized that the Scientist of the original Golden Lions was not on the ship with Shiki when he was arrested the first time. They found him, or found about him, after Shiki broke out of Impel Down and immediately went and ripped out the island in the west blue that Indigo was hiding on. After that, he disappeared, along with the rest of the crew.

Inside the room was a flat room with dull lighting barely illuminating the area. There was multiple machines around the place hooked up to pipes that lead across the walls and into a center piping area that led back out into the greenhouse area. There was a circular ceiling of tinted glass windows in, looking much like a dome.

In the corner stood a white lab coat wearing man with blue hear sticking out of the sides of his head like a mad scientist. He was around 8 feet tall, and Yoruichi could see the ends of blue pants from underneath the coat as he moved. She could also see the utterly massive clown shoes the man was wearing as he bent over the machine he was working on.

When he heard the door open, the man turned around to face the newcomers. He had his lab coat sleeves rolled up, and was wearing brown wrist length gloves. Around his neck he had a blue polka dotted scarf that wound around the inside of his lab coat, partially covering his bear chest from what Yoruichi could now tell were blue overalls with golden buttons running up the side, covering up his pot-belly. His head was a stark white, looking like a bone mask, with a very wide mouth and jaw, and bugged out eyes.

When they entered, the man, who was definitely Indigo, he looked no different from the last time the government had gotten a picture of him for his bounty poster of 200 million beri, turned around and started miming a greeting at them, with a extremely wide smile on his face,

He gave an exited wave to the two people in front of Yoruichi, who noticed that while the man’s gestures of pointing at who she assumed was Bison and doing a weird twirl with his arms, his eyes had immediately glanced over both of them and locked onto Yoruichi with unerring precision.

Almost halfway through his miming, Scarlet jumped forward and smacked the man in the side of the head with a long limb, sending him sprawling to the ground.

“All right, you crazy asshole, enough with da miming. We got the next rubbing for you to use.” Scarlet grumbled as he crossed his arms in annoyance.

Indigo, from his spot on the ground, immediately started laughing. “PiroPiroPiroPiro, you truly have it? So, Shanks had the Fishman Island Poneglyph then?” he asked, his voice becoming louder and louder as he spoke.

Yoruichi could tell that this guy was probably insane, but that didn’t really say much for this crew. Bison, who was standing there awkwardly, stepped forward at that moment. “Uhh, no he did not…” Bison said, looking a bit fearful of the scientist. “He only had this rubbing of the ponegriph. Or whatever it is.”

Bison pulled out a tube that was completely white, with caps on the end and held it out to Indigo, who snatched it from his hands and popped one end cap off at lightning speed.

All three of them then heard the mutturings of the scientist as he unfurled the scroll and took at look at what was written on it. “Hmm…. It looks different from the other two…..Don’t know what it says, obviously, but more data to work with…..”

Yoruichi was kind of curious as to what he was looking at. She could figure out quite easily that the rubbing was of something called a Poneglyph, and that she had heard Bison and Shiki talk about it over den den mushi, but she had no idea what the word actually meant.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t take a look at the scroll since Indigo had already turned around and hidden it from the rest of them with his body.

After a moment of curiosity, she just shrugged. ‘Eh, I’m sure I’ll figure it out later.’ she thought wryly. ‘Now that I’m here, I have to figure out my next step.’

Yoruichi knew her overall goal, the defeat of Shiki. But there was also the involvement of the underworld. She had no idea who ‘Joker’ was, but if he was important enough for the Marines to basically put a hit out on one of his associates, then she should probably see if she can learn more about the man while she is here.

Decisively ignoring the others in the room, Yoruichi decided to head over to one of the tables that held a shelving unit behind it. It was covered in various vials, both empty and full, and once Yoruichi got close enough she could clearly see various liquids floating inside, along with some of them even holding samples of some kind.

She quickly hopped up on the table, and reached her face up close to one of the open topped vials, giving it a quick sniff. She regretted it almost immediately and sneezed violently, sending her skidding back a bit, and was then wracked with coughs.

“Orhm Ow Ourgh…. What the hell…. WHO KEEPS CAYENNE PEPPER IN A TEST TUBE?!” she shouted when she was finally able to clear her throat.

‘Oh, my days, I just inhaled some of that shit.’ She thought in regret, ‘I really should have paid attention to Scarlet saying not to touch anything….’

Unfortunately for Yoruichi, her leap and subsequent disturbance of the table on which she sat drew the attention of the others in the room, which caused all of them to turn around and look at the unfortunate incident that happened next.

From the top shelf a large beaker filled with a slightly viscous fluid of a suspicious yellow tint started shaking with every sneeze and cough Yoruichi gave. Finally, with Yoruichi’s shout, the beaker slipped off the top shelf and upended its contents directly onto the Shinigami’s head.

Almost immediately, everyone in the room noticed what the effects of the liquid were, as the hair on Yoruichi’s feline face started to ‘shed’ itself and pretty much dissolve into thin air.

Yoruichi sat there with an open mouth, stunned, as she saw the bits of hair fall past her eyes.

Slowly, almost mechanically, she got up and walked her way over to the edge of the table, where she remembered a shiny trash can with a lid on it to be sitting. When she got to the edge, she peered over, almost afraid of what she would be seeing.

When she did, she froze in shock and horror. What she saw was a completely hairless, slightly wrinkled cat face with red rimmed golden eyes staring back at her from the trash can lid.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” came the ungodly shriek from the mouth of a less than a foot tall cat. Scarlet, Bison, and Indigo, who were just staring dumbfounded at the cat, jumped in shock. Indigo then chuckled darkly, and mumbled, “Well, that’s what you get for being so stupid…. Good thing you’ll be a test subject soon. Can’t have you breaking out on me.”

Only Scarlet was close enough to hear Indigo, and he gave the clown-like man a questioning glance from under the brim of his bucket hat. Seeing the glance from Scarlet, Indigo subtly shook his head, indicating that now was not the time, nor place to discuss anything. Scarlet just shrugged, used to the man’s silence on many things.

Meanwhile, Yoruichi was still screaming bloody murder. “AHHHHOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL WHY IS THAT KIND OF STUFF IN AN OPEN CONTAINTER!!! LOOK WHAT IT HAS DONE TO MY FUR!!!!” she shouted in despair. All of a sudden, she froze as a horrifying thought crossed her mind. She then decidedly shifted back into her human appearance, not even caring that there were others in the room that she was trying to hide her ‘persona’ from.

With a puff of smoke, Yoruichi appeared naked as the day she was born. With a quick flash-step, she was beside the trash can and was already holding it up to see her face.

“No…nonononoono… MY HAIR!!!!” she despaired. Similar to her cat form, Yoruichi’s human form had lost all of her hair from the neck up. No hair, no eyebrows, not even eyelashes anymore.

 Yoruichi’s grip on the trashcan tightened, eventually causing it to creak and then crumble into scrap, which caused all of the trash to spill out onto her front, covering her face, neck and shoulders with various bits of paper, glass, and other bits.

Yoruichi then chucked the trashcan to the side, throwing it with enough force that it bounced directly off the floor and flew directly into the machine next to the table, which happened to be some sort of cooler. When the can hit the side of the machine, both the wall of the cooler and the trashcan warped irreparably, and some cold mist started leaking out of the machine, quickly covering a quarter of the room in ice-cold fog in a matter of moments.

Indigo had already turned back to continue working on whatever he was doing with the rubbing from Shanks, but stopped when he heard the shouting, bangs and slight hiss of fog coming out from behind him. He then turned around, but couldn’t see anything near the wall where Yoruichi was due to the fog. He then turned to Scarlet and Bison to ask what the hell happened, but noticed that Scarlet had some blood leaking out of his nose, while Bison looked like he was about to piss himself from fear.

He took a few steps forward, his abominable clown shoes making farting sounds as he walked, and asked, “Ahh, what just happened?” Indigo got no response as suddenly, a pressure that could only be described as demonic wafted out of the fog, along with the words, filled with rage, “You. Will. Shut. Those Fucking Shoes. Up. Or I Will Take Your Feet Off.”

Indigo practically shit himself with how fast those shoes came off and were across the room, as far as possible from him.

Yoruichi stalked out of the fire, her golden eyes practically glowing in anger as the snarl on her face made cold sweat drip down Indigo’s back.

Yoruichi took a glance at the other two in the room, and with a flick of her fingers golden ropelike energy shot out and entangled itself around both of their arms. Another flick of her fingers sent the two sprawling into the corner. She kept walking toward Indigo, who, while almost twice her height still felt like with every step she got bigger, and bigger, and he just kept getting smaller.

As Yoruichi stalked forward, her gaze snapped to where Scarlet and Bison had fallen. Bison had passed out from the impact, foam coming out of his mouth, while Scarlet was a bit sturdier, and was now staring confused at what was going on. When he noticed Yoruichi was looking at him, he started yelling, “Hey! Pretty woman! I know you’re a bit mad, but dat doesn’t mean you should take it out on ol’ Indigo! He’s a good guy, I swear! Jus- Mhrrm!”

The golden ropes had crept up his arms and wrapped around his face, acting like a gag and stopping Scarlet from speaking. It also had the side effect of stopping him from breathing well, if at all, and he subsequently passed out from the exertion of his struggles and lack of oxygen.

His fall to the ground was ignored by both Indigo and Yoruichi, who had finally gotten close enough to be within arm’s reach of the scientist. Indigo kept attempting to move backward, but he was out of space. His hip hit the corner of a table, causing him to stumble, which then caused him to trip over the stool set up next to it.

In a surprising display of nimbleness, Indigo did a back handstand as he fell backward, flipping himself over and using his hands to thrust himself up into the air. For a normal person, they would only get a few inches, but for a New World pirate that meant that he was shot up into the air, and landed nimbly on the railing of the second floor overlook.

With his head held high, Indigo sneered down at Yoruichi, even though he felt like he was being stared at by a hungry, angry, lion. “Hah. Its your own fault that you are now bald, but don’t take it out on the rest of us. If you do….” Indigo raised both hand with palms up and shouted, “Chemical Juggling!” and a bunch of green and purple mixed fireballs appeared in a circle between both of his hands, looking like he was juggling them like a clown.

“If you do, I will torch you to ashes and forget about using your body as a test subject! Oh… wait… you’re a devil fruit user, so that’s why you can talk…. EITHER WAY! You will die.” Indigo cried, while almost getting lost in his own thoughts. Indigo and Shiki are really two peas to a pod. Or they just have early onset dementia.

In the glare of the fireballs and Indigo’s own monologue, he failed to notice that the target of his fireballs was no longer where he thought she was. All of a sudden, Indigo was engulfed in a red light and suddenly he couldn’t move. His fireballs fell and splattered against the floor, letting loose high pitched hissing as the acidic properties of the chemical fire started eating through the floor.

Yoruichi appeared behind him, and spoke in a hoarse whisper, “What was that about test subjects….?” She waited a moment, waiting for a response, but then remembered she had paralyzed the scientist. Which included his vocal cords. Mindlessly shrugging, she mumbled, “Oh, might as well do this another way.”

Yoruichi then reached out and gripped Indigo’s arms and wrenched them behind him. She then brought the man’s wrists together, and held them with one hand while she held her palm above them. “Bakudo #63, Sajo Sabaku.” She said, and golden chains appeared and wrapped around Indigo’s arms, wrapping around his palms to prevent him from even closing his hands, and wound up his arms until they reached his elbows. Yoruichi then created a bit more chains, and then looked up at the ceiling for a good place to hook them to.

After a moment, she could see a nice metal beam with holes going through the middle, and she jumped up and fed the chains through the hole, and then held on and let her weight drag the chain down with her as she fell, and subsequently Indigo upward.

She then released the paralyzing kido, and utterly ignored Indigo’s pained screams from his arms almost being yanked out of his sockets.

Yoruichi looked around for a chair, but could only see the stool that Indigo knocked over. She quickly flash-stepped down, grabbed the stool and tossed it up onto the balcony, ‘accidentally’ hitting Indigo in his right thigh.

“AHHH OW YOU STUPID BITCH, LET ME DOWN SO I CAN BARBEQUE YOU!” he yelled.

Yoruichi just ignored him and flash-stepped back up to the second floor and bent down to flip the stool back up, and then sat down on it, both of her feet on the top rung as she put both of her elbows on her knees and cupped her chin with the palm of her hand.

She sat there pondering what she should do with this guy. The other two were pretty much worthless at this point, and they seemed like more upperclass grunts than anything else. All of the information she had gotten from the marines, and her own investigation led to her belief that Shiki and Indigo are the only active members of Shiki’s original crew, with the others either out of the public eye entirely or just straight up dead.

“Hmm, what to do, what to do.” Yoruichi said musingly, her eyebrowless eyes boring into Indigo’s skull.  “I could ask you about Shiki’s plans, if you even know them, but I’m more interested in why you thought you were going to turn me into a test subject?” she finished lightly, even putting a smile on her face, which caused Indigo to have a full body shiver.

Indigo was more than smart enough to answer the implied question, but Yoruichi watched his jaw set in what she thought was an out of character bit of stubbornness, as he stared at her with surprisingly hard-set eyes.

“I’m not gonna tell you anything. Not about the boss, not about what I do for him, and definitely not about our plans for world domination.” Indigo said, almost smugly.

Yoruichi just ignored him, utterly not believing anything that came out of his mouth right now. Though she probably should, because Indigo most likely felt like he was utterly safe on the ship, which was already leaving port, even if Shiki had originally intended for Bison to get off before he left. After a moment, Yoruichi made her decision. She honestly didn’t care that much about Shiki’s plans for world domination, as he would probably be dead or captured very soon. What she did care about, or more precisely, the Government cared about, was Shiki’s connection to Joker, the underworld bigshot. She also wanted to see what those Poneglyph things were all about, just out of personal curiosity. After all, if they are important enough for Shiki to send someone to rob an Emperor for just rubbings of them, then they have to be somewhat important.

She leaned back and clapped her hands once, startling Indigo a bit, which jostled his arms enough that he let out a little whimper of pain. “All right,” she said, “First off, what was in that container that made me go, well, bald?”

Indigo, despite his slowly dislocating shoulders, just snorted in contempt. “Hrmph. You spilled like half the shelf on top of you. I have no idea what it was, and even if I did, I wouldn’t give you my cure.”

Yoruichi smirked at that. “Oh, so you do know what it was, since you have a cure for it. I wonder where…?”

She got up from her seat and quickly reached over into Indigo’s pockets, ignoring his indignant protests as he tried to squirm out of her reach, only twisting his own arms even more. Quickly, Yoruichi pulled out a notebook and pencil from one pocket, a bunch of vials and sealed bottles from another, and in the third… two balloons that were circular and had a little opening tab coming out one side.

When Yoruichi saw the balloons, she just stared blankly at them, then looked back at Indigo who just avoided her eyes with embarrassment. “…….They’re what make my shoes make noise…...” he mumbled halfheartedly. Yoruichi just looked at him with disappointment.

She then put the vials and notebook into her own pockets, holding the balloons with one in each hand, and used a Kido spell that caused a bit of fire to light up in her palm. It was the basis for most fire-based Hado spells, and even some of the Bakudo ones as well, though the only thing that it did was generate a flame.

Yoruichi then summarily lit both of the flatulence balloons on fire, which caused them to let out pitiful farts as they went up in flames, and Indigo to let out a single tear of sadness that he couldn’t do his fart shoes anymore. Yoruichi got a little bit of vindictive glee out of making the idiot that caused her hair to fall out sad, but she put the satisfaction out of her mind and pulled the notebook out of her pocket and cracked it open to look at what was inside.

Quickly flipping through the pages revealed notes about many different things, from chemical concoctions designed to flash-freeze anything within splash distance, to notes on various animals’ biological properties. It was in that section that she found out the answer to her implicit question from earlier; what he meant by ‘test subject’.

Indigo had already started an entry of notes on her even before he had met her. Yoruichi paused in thought after reading that. ‘Hmm, it seems like Shiki wanted to boost his ‘forces’ ability to stealth themselves.’ She thought to herself, ‘The notes say “subject shows remarkable ability to hide itself from Captain Shiki’s formidable Observation Haki. Further study of limits of this ability warranted.” Looks like Shiki put me off as useless. Guess the ‘arrogant idiot’ shtick got him pretty good then, huh.’

Yoruichi then shrugged noncommittally. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had thought she would be a good test subject. When Kisuke was Division 12’s captain, his Lieutenant at the time Kurotsuchi had basically begged him to ask her for the chance to study her cat transformation.

‘Hrmph. That idiot is lucky he was Kisuke’s assistant, or I would have slapped him so hard he would have ended back up in the maggots nest.’ She grumbled viciously. She really didn’t like the psychopathic scientist captain of Division 12.

Flipping through more pages, Yoruichi didn’t find anything interesting. Just more concoctions and biology entries. She didn’t even find anything on the stuff that removed her hair!

‘Speaking of….’ Yoruichi thought and raised both hands to her head. She then released a judicious amount of green Kaido as she quickly felt her skull and ridges above her eyes start itching like mad, and then started growing hair back at a rapid pace. After about 5 minutes of use, Yoruichi quickly had her hair back to her waist length locks, and whipped it all back up into a ponytail, with a white bandage and thin red ribbon holding it all together.

“Ahh. Much better.” She said while grinning at the now quite weirded out Indigo.

He sputtered a bit in shock then shouted, “Wha-What the hell was that?! I-who-why would you even get mad at me if you could just do that??!” he cried after a moment.

Yoruichi just smirked at him, and shrugged, “Well, it was fun.”

Indigo just paled a bit, then started muttering to himself under his breath. Yoruichi could hear him of course, he wasn’t that far away, but it was the effort that counts.

“stupid cat ladies, making me think I’m going insane. I could have swore she was a man with that voice of hers in that cat form. But nooooo, its just that she’s utterly terrifying either way… stupid cat lady, stupid captain for giving the stupid cat lady to me, what am I gonna do now? The boss should have noticed by now, but I guess he doesn’t care, does he…” he said, eventually reaching a point where Yoruichi had thought he had gone insane, if she didn’t think he was already.

Yoruichi walked back to her stool and sat down on it, this time holding the book out in front of Indigo’s face with both hands.

“Now,” she said with a soothing tone, like she was talking to a child, “I want to know some stuff. And you’re going to tell me.” She then waved the book in front of Indigo’s face, getting his attention to it. “Or I will burn your notebook.”

She watched as a bit of indecision washed over the ‘clown’s’ face, but after a moment he stood firm and said, “I am not so disloyal to my captain that I would tell his secrets on mere words.”

The book started smoldering.

Again, Indigo said, “I-I mean, I believe we can come to an agreement of a sort. I wont spill secrets though!”, hastily amending his last statement. He then eyed his notebook with palpable relief as he noticed it had stopped smoking.

Yoruichi smiled a bit and lowered the notebook. “Good.” She said smilingly, “Glad we could come to an understanding. Now… Who is the Joker?” Yoruichi put a palm of her hand underneath her chin and looked at the scientist expectantly.

After Indigo just gave her a weird look, something like ‘Why the hell are you asking about that?’, but said nothing, again, Yoruichi sighed in exasperation and groaned, “Oh come on! You said you wouldn’t spill your boss’ secrets. The Joker isn’t your boss, so spit it out man.”

Indigo just kept staring at her with an increasingly weird look. After a while of the two sitting in a battle of stares, Indigo finally relented and asked inquisitively, if hesitant, “Uh, why, well, why do you want to know about him?”

Yoruichi groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Holy shit…. Will he just answer the damn question? I feel like I’m the one getting interrogated instead of him with how much he keeps asking his dumbass questions.’

She sighed, and listed the notebook up to indigo’s face with one hand, and with the other flipped the notebook open, revealing the white pages with scribbles upon them. She then resolutely reached over to the top of the first page, and ripped it out with a giant yank.

Indigo visibly cringed at the sound, tears coming out of his eyes fully. His eyes reddened as Yoruichi looked back at him with full eyes and subsequently set the offending paper on fire.

“Hey, hey hey hey! Stop it!!” Indigo yelled, openly bawling at the destruction of his work. “What are you doing that for?? I just said I would cooperate!”

He just got an ‘are you serious’ look back at him from Yoruichi.

“I’m the one asking questions here. Not you.” Yoruichi growled, waving the notebook in front of his nose. “If you keep avoiding the question, I’ll rip out more pages, one by one. Once they’re all gone…..” Yoruichi smirked a bit, but left the end open for interpretation.

Obviously, Indigo had a slightly hyperactive imagination,  as his already pale skin paled even further, as he thought about exactly what he thought Yoruichi would do to him once she ran out of stuff to burn.

After a moment, he shook himself out of his stupor and cried desperately, “WAIT! Wait. I just wanted to know why you would even bother asking about Joker, is all. We have basically zero connection to the man. I just used his services once or twice to smuggle some valuable goods over into the new world. He’s all up in Kaido’s business anyway, and even Shiki stays away from that crazy fool. That’s it, I swear. “ he was visibly panting at the exertion of airing out his reasons so desperately, as well as wincing a bit as his shoulders got wrenched just a little bit more out of place.

Both of Yoruichi’s newly renewed eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘’No relationship…?  That can’t be right.’ Yoruichi thought to herself. ‘I doubt the Marines would have that shitty of an reconnaissance team that they would mistake a major underworld connection like that. Unless…..’ Yoruichi got lost in thought.

The only reasons she could see that the Marines would even think that the Joker, whoever he was, was involved with Shiki was twofold. One, Indigo was lying. Or two, someone lied to the Marines.

Option one was much more plausible, but she had Indigo right here in front of her. And while Reiryoku was not exactly able to tell if someone is lying or not, that combined with her physical senses, gave Yoruichi a pretty good idea of what is going on in Indigo’s body.

His heart rate was high, but that was mostly because she had him chained to his own lab ceiling. He had no abnormal fluctuations on that end, and he wasn’t showing any other real signs of deceptiveness. Which meant he was, probably, telling the truth. At least as he understood it. And as Shiki’s right-hand man, he probably either ran the operation with Joker, or Shiki held Indigo in much less importance than the scientist thought.

Yoruichi sighed internally, her earlier anger almost gone by that point. It was now being replaced with an ever-increasing feeling of annoyance, and a slight bit of anxiety at what the second option probably meant.

‘If the first option is ruled out, then no matter how improbable the second option is, it must be the truth. Or however that goes.’ She thought wryly.

It might just be Yoruichi’s paranoia from being the head of an assassin clan, but her instincts were flaring at the situation. ‘Something doesn’t feel right here….. I don’t know what, but I am missing something.’ She mused.

After a moment of thought, Yoruichi couldn’t think of a reason for why

the marines had even sent her on this ‘mission’. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She could see exactly what Sengoku and the other higher up marines were worried about. A probable emperor level pirate teaming up with a massive underworld conglomerate who had connections to other, actual emperors? Especially ones that were formerly of the same crew? Recipe for disaster all in one.

Her real issue was, if the information was fake, why would the World Government feed it’s own branch false information? What did they have to gain from that?

Yoruichi knew that the World Government and the Marines weren’t exactly the same entity. Yes, the Marines acted as the sword arm of the World Government, and usually were under the executive purview of the 5 Elders of the Celestial Dragons, who were the heads of the organization as a whole, being top members from the 20 founding nations, but nominally, the Marines were under the collective control of the 170 nations that made up the World Government.

The Marines normally operated independently from the World Government, who had their own agents to do work for them, called Cipher Pol. With all of the resources at the Marine’s exposal, Yoruichi could not see them being even able to misconstrue the idea that Joker was closely associated with Kaido and Shiki at the same time.

The only way that Yoruichi could see such an expansive organization gaining information and going through all the verification needed for such information to be considered fact and acted upon, was for the World Government to give the information to the Marines to act upon in a somewhat public manner.

In that scenario, the Marines, or more specifically what Yoruichi was starting to think of as the ‘Admiral’ council, which to her, consisted of Sengoku, Garp, Tsuru, and probably Zephyr, who she had never met but had heard of from Garp himself probably decided that the information could be trusted to have been already verified by the World Government’s Cipher Pol agents, and they decided to act upon the information in the form of using Yoruichi as a roundabout way to avoid the public attention drawn to such a large issue.

However, for all that Yoruichi didn’t trust Sengoku or Tsuru, she did trust Garp. He was what she could probably consider a decent friend by now in this dimension, and besides that, he seemed to be too lazy to lie to her anyway.

Yoruichi decided to put it out of her mind and focus on what she was here for anyway. ‘It isn’t the first time that politics has gotten in the way of things anyway.’ She thought, ‘There is probably some things going on in the background that they didn’t decide to tell me, and to be honest, if it is something as big as this, I probably can’t blame them. I would have done the same in their position. After all, I am not tied to their organization, and Sengoku pretty much just blackmailed his way into getting a hit out on Shiki. Either way, not my problem.’

Focusing back on Indigo, who was still in the same position, she asked a few more questions at the threat of book burning. Things like where Shiki has been hiding out, which she just got a shrug and the word ‘Merveille’. She also asked what was up with the Poneglyphs, but all Indigo could tell her was that they were records of ancient history, and that certain ones led to Raftel, where Gol D. Roger left his treasure. According to Indigo, Shiki wasn’t really interested in ‘His Rival Roger’s’ leftovers, but was still curious enough to see what the man had left behind.

Indigo let slip that Shiki only had half of the four required to find Raftel, Big Mom’s and the copy they had stolen from Shanks, who supposedly had his hands on copies of ones from one that was on  Fishman Island, which was protected by Whitebeard.

The only thing that interested her about the Poneglyphs was what the World Government thought of them, but when she had asked Indigo about it, he gave a weird answer.

Yoruichi sat on the stool with a pretty much spent Indigo in front of her. Around her on the floor were multiple piles of ashes where Yoruichi had burned papers from his notebook.

“So. I have heard a lot of things about these Poneglyphs, but what I don’t get is why the World Government doesn’t want anyone knowing what is written on them, or even how they managed to make it so no one remembers what is on them.” Yoruichi asked.

Indigo gave a slightly off smile when she said that. “Oh, you want to know about Poneglyphs? Naughty naughty~” he said, the hour or so of questions getting to him a bit. “Well, uh, they’re forbidden because they tell of the Void Century. More specifically, some of them tell of what the World Government did to rise to power, and the Celestial Dragons don’t want people knowing that for some reason. Fat lot of good it does, since none of them can read ‘em either.”

Yoruichi leaned forward at that last bit. “What do you mean, they can’t read the Poneglyphs?” she asked intently.

Indigo shrugged, then winced as the motion hurt his shoulders. “It’s a lost language. There are very few people who can read it nowadays, even less so after what happened to Ohara. Now it’s rumored that there is only one person who knows the language left, the Devil Child. Government has been hunting that woman for pretty much 20 years straight.”

“What did they do to Ohara?” Yoruichi asked. Indigo gave her a weird look.

“Aren’t you one of them? How do you not know?” he asked a bit incredulously.

Yoruichi smiled in disdain, “Work for them? Hell no. I’ve told that crazy bastard so many times I wont join the marines he probably went deaf from hearing it. Though he probably went mute first from how many damn times he asked.” She bemoaned. She then glanced back at Indigo, and casually said, “Nah, I am not a marine. Though I have done a job or two for them before. First one that lasted this long though. Anyway, onto the Ohara stuff. What happened?”

Indigo was a bit lost. ‘If she isn’t a marine, then who the fuck is she?? And how is she that strong and no one has heard of her before? Could she be…... CP0? Oh no. Please don’t be CP0. This has to be a test, isn’t it? To see if the boss knows too much? Should I answer her truthfully? Probably, if I lie, they will probably kill me for ‘falsifying information to a government agent’ or some bullshit. I should stick to the ‘common knowledge’ just to be safe. Yeah. That’ll work.’

Not knowing that Indigo had just talked himself into a corner, Yoruichi just kept looking at him expectantly. After a moment of silence, Indigo said a bit hesitantly, “Well, it’s not super well known to the common person, ignorant sheep that they are, but Ohara had a Buster Call ordered by the World Government on them for trying to learn more about the Poneglyphs. They then missed one person for some reason, who then was labeled the ‘Devil Child’ and hunted relentlessly by the world from then until now.”

Yoruichi paused in thought. She knew what buster calls were, if only because she found an old schematic in the library for some reason discussing the initial designs of the ships. She really didn’t see the point of having them. Anything that a full squad of super destroyers could do, an admiral could do the same, if not better. More discrete too.

Yoruichi decided to shelve the Ohara train of thought after a moment. She then went back to focus on the Poneglyphs themselves again. With narrowed eyes, Yoruichi asked, “So, if the CP agents go and hunt down anyone who knows this ‘forgotten language’ until there are none left, then why would you go around getting some of them? I’m assuming you guys are the geniuses behind the theft of Big Mom’s Poneglyph, and with the one you presumably got from Shanks, if it isn’t the same one, that is. You can’t even read the things. Why bother collecting them?”

This time Indigo smiled wildly. “Why, simple curiosity! Don’t you wonder what the Government is hiding, if they go so far as to utterly erase the ability to even read what was speculated to be the dominant language of the time?”

Yoruichi thought that the man had a point. Yoruichi had already heard terrible things about the World Government, and that was without even hearing about the stuff they didn’t want others to know about.

Indigo continued to speak, obviously Yoruichi had found a slight pastime of his. “I have been attempting to translate the Poneglyphs using salvaged texts from Ohara, along with examples of the Poneglyphs themselves. It is hard work, but very interesting. I would show you my work, but it isn’t here. This is only a peripheral lab to the main one I have at Merville.”

At that point, Yoruichi was pretty much done with her questioning of the man. She didn’t really know what he would be able to answer, and anything he could, she would probably have a better chance of figuring out a clear answer on her own anyway.

She stood up from her stool and tossed the partially scrapped notebook over her shoulder, sending it tumbling down to the first floor where it landed in some of the leftover goop from Yoruichi’s ‘accident.’

She then clapped her hands together once, and said with a happy smile, “Well, that was fun. Hope to do it some other time.” She then turned around and vaulted over the ledge of the balcony and back down to the first floor.

She heard Indigo cry out, “Hey! What are you going to do, leave me here?!”

Calling over her shoulder, Yoruichi chirped, “Yep!” As she started walking toward the door, she had passed the corner that she stuffed Bison and Scarlet into. Both of them were still out cold, with Scarlet even snoring in his sleep.

She also walked by the table with the Poneglyph rubbings on it, two sheets of paper that had been pulled out from their protective tubing and laid out on the table by Indigo.

Deciding to appease her curiosity before she most likely destroyed most things on the ship with what was probably going to turn into a massive fight with Shiki, Yoruichi stopped and took a few steps over to the table.

She could see the slightly curled paper covering the writing on the pages, and when she got close enough to the table, she reached over and casually plucked one off the table and unfurled it, the dry paper rustling against her fingers.

‘Hmm,’ Yoruichi thought idly, ‘Let’s see what we have here—' As soon as Yoruichi saw the writing on the papers, her mind froze in shock.

The paper fluttered from between her fingers as she lost her grip on the paper. Yoruichi just stared blankly down at it as it twisted and twirled in the air down to the ground.

The only thing she could think about was utter disbelief. After a few moments of frozen silence, Yoruichi hurriedly reached over and snatched the other paper off the desk, almost ripping it in two with the pure force she unrolled it with.

Her eyes flickered at record speeds across the blocky characters. First, her eyebrows wrinkled in confusion, then comprehension as Yoruichi’s eyes moved from character to character, then they raised in slight surprise, only to end up back in confusion once she hit the end of the page.

Placing the sheet almost gingerly down on the table, even taking care to reach down and pluck the first one she dropped off the floor and place it neatly back on the table, Yoruichi turned around and with an uncharacteristic seriousness in her face, she flash-stepped back up to Indigo.

Once she arrived at the man’s left shoulder, she dissipated the Kido holding him to the roof and reached out with her hand and latched onto his shoulder, causing his collarbone to creak from the force.

Indigo was still shouting for Yoruichi to come back and let him out, but he wasn’t expecting her to come back and almost break his shoulder in the process. He could feel something oozing  out of her comparable to his past experiences with Conqueror’s Haki, although this felt like something had a chokehold on his soul rather than a weight upon his body.

As his brain struggled to catch up to what was happening, he was twisted around and faced with the utterly monotone face of Yoruichi as her eerie yellow eyes stared into what Indigo thought was his soul.

Yoruichi stood before the tall man, holding him down on his knees with one arm, and asked solemnly, in an almost quiet tone, “Where is your notes on the Poneglyphs?”

Indigo could feel his consciousness slip away from the combination of whatever aura was coming off of Yoruichi, as well as the blinding pain as his collarbone was slowly crushed. Before he was able to fully fall unconscious, he was able to get out, “Not. Here. Merville.” Before he closed his eyes and fell face forward.

Yoruichi looked down at the man for a moment, then sighed in slight defeat. She grabbed the scientist and flash-stepped down to where she had left Bison and Scarlet, and quickly tossed him into the dogpile. She then walked over back to the table and took one of the sheets of paper off the table.

Looking down at it, Yoruichi turned around and put her back against the wall next to the desk, and slowly slid down until she was seated on the floor.

After looking at the writing on the paper, she offhandedly tossed it onto the ground in front of her then brought her legs to her chest, and laid her forehead on her knees.

She then uttered probably the weariest sentence she had ever said since gaining her Clan Head position. “Why…. What is THAT doing here….?”

 

***

 

UKNOWN POV

A dark shadow sat in the belly of the Golden Lion’s flagship. It sat on a small chair with an equally small table in an utterly dark room. It was unknown how the shadow even got into the room, since it seemed to be simply a pocket of air within the mountain that makes up the ship.

“Purpururu. Purururu. Pururu-calick.” Came a sudden sound from a blue den den mushi with a black shell. Connected to it was a fat, entirely white snail that looked bored out of it’s mind. Once the den den mushi had it’s receiver picked up, it transformed itself into a long, blank face with a few spikes coming out of it’s head. It had no ‘eyes’, or really much of any other facial features except two red eyes that stared out of the snail’s sockets.

“Who is this….” Came a raspy, unidentifiable voice from the mushi.

“My lord, it is Cipher Pol.” The shadow said.

“Ah…. Your report?” the raspy voice replied slowly, as if distracted.

The shadow paused for a moment, then said in an even monotone, “My lord, the Lion has secured two Road Poneglyphs, one of the actual objects, and a rubbing. There also appears to have been a disturbance within the scientist’s lab. Currently a previously unknown person had defeated and knocked unconscious both members of the Golden Lion pirates who had recently boarded the ship unconscious, and just now did the same to the scientist after asking many questions.”

The shadow paused for a moment, as if hesitating to say something.

The snail noticed, and stated, “You have something more. What is it.”

The shadow wordlessly nodded, then replied, “Yes, my lord. The previously unknown person has been identified as “Yoruichi” unknown family name. Self identifies themselves with the epithet “Flash Goddess.” The previous time seen was on Charlotte Linlin’s territory for an unknown reason, and before that she has been seen in the company of multiple of the upper echelons of the Marines, with her being in the company of one Monkey D. Garp quite frequently. Some of the questions she was asking were about the Poneglyphs. She also seemed to have a reaction to seeing them as well.”

At the name of Garp, the snail sneered heavily, but did not say anything. It then took on a thoughtful expression, and after a moment, asked, “Was this, ‘Yoruichi’ seen in the company of the Monkey during the most recent Warlord’s meeting?”

The shadow replied immediately, “There were no confirmed sightings of the woman, but there were sightings of a small, black cat riding Monkey D. Garp’s head into the meeting. According to Joker, who was overheard talking about the meeting with one of his crew, the cat can talk. It matches the description of the cat that Yoruichi had been previously turned into when she had first entered my current location.”

The snail nodded absentmindedly. “Very well.” It said, “Continue with the current plan. Keep Shiki on course to his home base, and set up for the attack. Watch the… Flash Goddess with a careful eye. She may be useful, if only for a slight meal. Her soul did seem…. appetizing when I last felt her.”

The shadow nodded quietly, then promptly hung up the receiver and the snail let out a Ca-lick and turned back into its normal blue face.

The shadow smiled, revealing white, pointed teeth as a thin tongue flicked across their lips.

“Ahhh… I can’t wait. I have been starving for months, surrounded by all this food and not been able to touch ANY of it. Wuewuewwuewuewue….” It said with an eerie laugh echoing off the walls.