บท 328: Arm
Cat Viper roused from his deep slumber.
A difficult thing to do, given how comfortable he felt at the moment, but his sense of duty to his people outweighed his feline instincts to continue napping.
Sitting up, he took stock of his surroundings then quickly got to his feet, ignoring the throbbing pain making itself known to him coming from what remained of his left arm.
"Ah! Master Cat Viper, please lie back down! You need to rest!" A reindeer mink woman in a nurse's clothes entered the room after hearing him get up.
"Nonsense! What's the situation with the battle?! Are we still fighting or did we win?!" Cat Viper demanded.
The reindeer nurse didn't flinch at his commanding tone and tried to block the door with her body. "The battle is over, Master Cat Viper! Jack's forces retreated and the reason for their retreat, the Straw Hat pirates, arrived not long after and saved us!"
Cat Viper paused, not because he decided to go back to bed as he was told to, but because he wasn't needed urgently if Jack and his forces were no longer present. "The Straw Hats?"
"Pirates, Master Cat Viper. The newspaper said they defeated a man called Doflamingo. We think perhaps this Doflamingo is one of his allies," the reindeer woman explained, unsuccessfully trying to nudge Cat Viper back towards the bed.
Cat Viper had a vague recollection of someone helping him off the wooden X, though it was pretty fuzzy given his severe blood loss, poisoned state, and general exhaustion at the time. The only thing that stood out was, "That piercing gaze… Hawkeye? Was that swordsman with them as well? He was the one who took me down from the cross, no?"
The reindeer nurse didn't know who Hawkeye was. He might be a world famous swordsman in the outside world, but Zou was incredibly isolated. A regular citizen such as herself wouldn't be familiar with most famous and infamous figures from the outside.
"It was Cherry who brought you down from the cross and helped treat your wounds, Master Cat Viper. Aside from the fact that she's definitely a woman, I don't think she had a sword either…" the reindeer nurse answered, pushing against his chest with all her might to no avail.
"Hm…" Cat Viper figured she must just be a similar looking human to the Hawkeye he's somewhat familiar with. "I will go to meet this Cherry!"
Cat Viper pushed past the nurse, much to her chagrin, and ignored her pleas for him to simply go back to bed. He may have been covered nearly head to toe in bandages, but he felt much better than he really ought to. There was no good reason, in his mind, that he shouldn't go right now.
A bit of wandering and inquiring led him to the blacksmith. An odd place for a doctor to be, he thought. 'Perhaps she wanted them to forge new medical tools for herself?'
His guess was proven wrong as he witnessed one of his Guardians, Pedro, run a rapier through a log twice as thick as the leopard man's torso with the same ease you might stab a baked apple with a fork. The woman then demonstrated her spear's even more exceptional quality. Her hawk-like red eyes made it clear she was the one he was searching for.
From the whispers of the warriors, he gathered that she had made the rapier that Pedro was wielding just now. 'Is she a doctor or is she a blacksmith? Both?'
Cat Viper made himself known. Despite his large form, he was difficult to notice when he wanted to be. The warriors paid their respects, as they were so insistent on doing, and after a quick greeting he addressed the human woman who was sizing him up with her gaze.
"You are the one who helped me and my people?" Cat Viper asked to be sure.
"I suppose I am," Cherry confirmed. "You're a lot scarier when you're awake."
"Goronyanyanya!" Cat Viper bellowed a strange laugh that sounded a bit like purring and meowing. "You don't look that scared, though?"
"Scary cats are cute too." Cherry nodded as if she'd just spoken some profound truth.
Cat Viper laughed again, then turned serious and gave her a bow. "Thank you for your help, on behalf of my people!"
"Don't worry about it. More importantly, are you going to let me make you a new arm?" Cherry asked, her eyes glittering unnervingly.
"A new arm?" Cat Viper was a bit confused at that, then he looked at Pedro's rapier and an idea struck him. His own eyes glittered then as well. "Can I leave it to you?"
The ground beneath Cherry's feet poofed and she appeared next to Cat Viper. She grabbed a hold onto his right arm and started eye-balling the measurements, prodding at the musculature, and fiddling with his claws.
Shortly after she vanished again, leaving a trail of dust straight into the smithy. A few seconds later her head popped out again and she said, "Go get Franky for me, would you? He'll be a big help in making a functional, artificial arm."
Then she was gone again, the forge literally roaring to life as Cherry started to go all out instead of keeping her pace slow enough for the other blacksmiths to learn from watching.
'A functional arm?! I thought she was just going to make a sword arm or something?' Cat Viper was surprised.
The mink warriors also seemed to come to the same conclusion. Several of them even looked at their own arms in contemplation.
"Oh NO you don't!" the reindeer nurse scolded them. "If any one of you 'misplaces' one of their arms, I will personally make certain that Cherry does NOT make you a replacement!"
Half pouted and clicked their tongues and the other half gave her puppy dog eyes.
"No means NO!" she annoyingly and adamantly refused.
Seeing they wouldn't be able to convince this stubborn nurse to let them mutilate themselves in exchange for a sweet, metal arm, they scattered to search for Franky, the so-called 'cyborg' crewmate that Cherry had asked for.
"Cherry needs my help to make an artificial arm for the big cat dude? That's a SUPER idea! I've been meaning to work on some collaborative projects with her!" Franky immediately forgot entirely about the samurai issue in favor of something that was far more interesting.
To the others' (mostly Nami's) frustration, he pranced away to join Cherry.
"It was bad enough that Cherry was arming them when we don't know if they'll turn on us! Now Franky's gone to help her!" Nami whispered irritably.
"I don't think we have anything to worry about." Jinbe was quite calm. Brook seemed to mirror his attitude, though he was kind of hard to read being a skeleton and all.
"We'll see-" Nami gave up.
"FOOOOD!" Luffy slammed into a table bearing mostly fish dishes.
The dust that his abrupt landing had kicked up had hardly settled and he was already stuffing inhuman amounts of food into his stretchy gob.
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