"I suppose a good place to start would be talking to the local law enforcement?" Robin suggested quite reasonably.
"What? We're PIRATES! With BOUNTIES! And you want to talk to the guys who are paid to arrest us?!" Perona refuted animatedly.
"I'm sure it'll all work out." Cherry said, before marching off to grab another villager to interrogate- no, to ask for directions.
She approached a teenager with the great misfortune to be both covered in warts and a lot of painful looking acne. Judging by the scowl on his face, he wasn't very happy about it.
"Excuse-" Cherry started politely.
"Fuck off!" The teenager cursed and made a rude hand gesture in her general direction.
Cherry exerted the smallest amount of pressure with her conqueror's haki and nearly made the young lad piss himself in fear.
"If you answer my question, I'll clear all that nasty shit off of your face with a special technique. How does that sound?" Cherry took a different, less polite approach this time.
The teenager nodded his head furiously. He didn't believe that she could actually do it for a second, not even the village doctor could do anything for him. However, he wasn't about to upset the terrifying demon lady any more than he had already done.
"Where's the local law enforcer?" Cherry asked calmly.
The teenager's arm jerked up and pointed towards the center of the village. "Big sign says "Constable", can't miss it!"
"Good boy. Now hold still, this will only hurt for a moment." Cherry spoke ominously.
"What-" The teenager tried to turn to run away, but he was only a regular person so he was far too late.
Cherry poked him on the tip of his nose, which happened to be one of the few relatively clear areas of skin on his face.
The teenager didn't feel any different and seeing Cherry walk away with her companions, he figured she was just messing with him. He ran in the opposite direction that she went and hoped not to run into her again.
He only managed to get a few meters away before he started to feel an odd pressure building in many places under his skin all over his body.
Suddenly all the acne and warts he had all burst outwards along with a rather painful sensation.
Before he could even scream the pain had vanished. He felt his face with his hands in terror only to find that the wounds he expected to find weren't present. Rather his skin felt soft and smooth.
He found a bird bath to look at his reflection. Aside from a bit of blood from the unsettling experience, he found that his skin was completely clear of the less than charming pimples and warts.
Shedding tears of happiness, he silently sent a prayer of gratitude to the angel who had visited him in his time of need. Surging with self confidence, he decided to ask out the girl he was crushing on before the day was over.
Cherry was oblivious to the religion with a single follower that she accidentally created whilst Robin and Perona were wishing they had had such a technique when they were dealing with acne in their teenage years.
They arrived in the village center quickly and sure enough, the local constabulary was plain to see.
They stepped inside the stone building and took in the scene.
One decent sized, steel barred jail cell took up half the building's floor space with its door flung ajar. A snoring unkempt man was sleeping comfortably on the rather uncomfortable looking bench within the cell.
Behind a desk to their left, they saw another man wearing a sort of uniform. His hair was cut very short and stubble decorated his face. He appeared to be trying to fill out a single sheet of paperwork whilst sipping on a beer at the same time. The paper had a number of stains to suggest he had spilled on it a few times.
"Are you the constable?" Cherry asked.
"Hm? Oh!" He swiftly set down his bottle and stuffed the sheet of paper into a drawer haphazardly. "Yes, I'm Constable Ricky! Not often we get visitors in the Fungwood, toxic spores and all that."
He glanced at the bottle. "I'm not drinking alcohol on the job, promise! That's, er, mushroom… water…"
"Right." Cherry said. She glanced at a bulletin board she hadn't had a good look at and noticed it was covered in bounty posters.
Constable Ricky followed her gaze and they both landed on a particular poster that held the likeness of Cherry as well as her name.
Their eyes returned to each other and made contact.
"Um, strange coincidence, huh? The world's such a big place, I'm sure every big bounty has a few people who look just like 'em!" Constable Ricky said, sweating a bit from nervousness.
"Sure is. Seems I've even got the same full name as well. Crazy, isn't it?" Cherry spoke with a smile.
"Right. So what can I do for ya?" Constable Ricky said, trying to change the subject.
"We want to solve the mystery! Catch the Killer! Punch his teeth down his throat!" Cabernet excitedly exclaimed, pumping his fists in the air.
"Ah, y-you heard about the deaths, I see…" Constable Ricky tugged at his collar. "Well, I guess you can help out if you want, but I won't be much help to ya. I'm mostly here to break up drunken brawls, not hunt for killers. I've deputized Deponte to do the investigatin' for the recent cases of unexpected death. You can find his house here."
Constable Ricky pointed to a point on the map behind him.
"I don't really got the smarts for investigations, ya see? DePonte is one of them cyan-tests." Constable Ricky said somewhat embarrassedly.
"What was that about the toxins? How come they don't make the people here sick?" Perona asked. Cherry's technique helped to clear out the toxins from her system, but they still affect her before they are filtered out.
"We actually didn't know about them until after DePonte came here. Said we must have built up "Aunty Bodies" against the spores over the generations of living here. The mayor's wife gave him a slap for that, but after explainin' what he meant we kinda sorta understood." Constable Ricky explained.
Perona was disappointed that there wasn't some secret cure, but then realized that this Deponte fellow probably had something to use for himself that she could use.
Deciding to go visit this DePonte, they bid farewell to the constable who promptly returned to his drinking of "mushroom water".
DePonte lived on the outskirts of town, which is apparently by choice rather than because he isn't welcome. Though whether he WAS welcome depended on who you asked. Most folk thought him odd, but harmless and wouldn't actively associate with him.
His home wasn't anything out of the ordinary for the village, except for his mushroom garden that was much larger than average from what they've seen.
*Knock knock*
The door immediately swung open and a middle aged man with pale, sickly skin, black hair with a thin handlebar mustache and goatee, and blood shot eyes.
"I've made a breakthrough in the case, Constable!" The man, presumably DePonte, shouted excitedly. "Oh, you're not him. Who are you?"
"We're helping out the Constable with the case as well." Robin said.
"In that case, come on in! Constable Ricky was never interested in my updates anyways!" DePonte motioned them inside his home.
DePonte's house was filled with a pungent scent of chemicals and fungi. A large, sturdy looking table was pushed into a corner and held many instruments of glass and metal, many filled with strange fluids and one even contained a small amount of blood.
DePonte led them over to a wall where he had pieced together the clues that he had gathered for the murder cases.
"This investigation has been most exciting. Although I've had to skip on some sleeping time to squeeze it into my busy schedule, it has been a welcome break in my somewhat monotonous routine." DePonte said.
"I suppose we'll start from the beginning. Here are the victims." DePonte stated, gesturing to various sketches of individuals.
"The first victim was the old Constable. He was already retired by the time I had immigrated here. He was a stern and intelligent man, unlike his son, Constable Ricky, who is a bit… slow. His death devastated poor Constable Ricky, he turned to drinking to cope with the loss." DePonte said.
"Then we have the beautiful Olympia as the second victim. A bit of a flirt, she was. Didn't earn her any favors with the wives of our fine village when she winked at their husbands." DePonte said.
"Finally we have the third victim, Patrick. He was the village's best hunter, and tended to spend his time alone." DePonte finished.
"How did they die?" Robin asked.
"They were all stabbed in the night inside their own homes, no witnesses. Afterward, the victims were drained of most of their blood. Their bodies weren't moved away from the crime scenes." DePonte informed.
"Do you have any suspects?" Cherry inquired.
"Well, it takes a little bit of know-how to drain a body of blood. The stab wounds aren't random either, so the killer must have some anatomical knowledge. The other hunters and the village doctor fit that bill, but those are just the people I know of that would hypothetically be able to for sure." DePonte stroked his mustache in thought.
"That's it? I thought you said you had a breakthrough in the case? Did you even ask around?" Perona interrogated.
"Ah, well, I'm not good at… talking to people. Bit of an introvert you might say." DePonte blushed slightly. "As for my breakthrough, I happened to overhear the village gossip, Maggie, whispering about a supposed affair that Olympia had with the Mayor. Would you mind following up on that for me? I was going to have the Constable do it for me, but since you're here…?"
Perona rolled her eyes, already dismissing the man as useless. "Can you tell me how you deal with the toxic spores, at least?"
"Oh! I'm glad you asked. I myself had some trouble with them at first, even with my general antidote. I developed a better solution with the help of the village folk!" DePonte said, rushing over to his lab table.
"Here you are! This antibody solution will most likely inoculate you to the spore of this island!" DePonte spoke proudly, holding up a frighteningly large syringe.
Perona suddenly found that her headache wasn't so bad after all and decided against the inoculation.
Leaving the eccentric DePonte to his work, the group made their way back into the village in search of this gossip, Maggie, for questioning.
"That weirdo is definitely the killer!" Perona said.
"Certainly he is suspicious. We should follow up on other leads and build our case, though." Robin said reasonably.
"The easiest way would just be to catch the killer in the act, but they'd need to be dumb enough to act while we're around." Cherry said.
It didn't take very long to find Maggie. She ran the local tavern, which made perfect sense for the biggest gossip in the village.
"What can I get for you ladies, hm?" Maggie asked when they walked into her tavern.
Maggie was a heavyset woman in her 50s with graying blonde hair. At a glance she seemed perfectly pleasant, but looking into her eyes you could tell she was a hungry person, hungry for delicious gossip that is.
"Got any local specialties?" Cherry asked, ignoring the elbow that was jabbed into her ribs by Robin.
"We've got a few mushroom liquors if you're interested. Harder stuff than ale or beer, but not as much as traditional hard liquors. The deep fried mushroom bites pair well with them." Maggie answered, eyes glinting mischievously.
"Give us a good selection then. What's on your menu for gossip?" Cherry sat down at the bar. Robin gave a light sigh and sat down next to her, determined to make sure she didn't overdo it.
"Well, I don't make a habit of running my mouth off to strangers…" Maggie said, with false hesitancy.
"We happen to be helping with the investigation of the recent murders. Perhaps we can keep you 'informed', it's only right for the citizens of your fine village to know what is going on in their own village, wouldn't you agree?" Cherry said.
Maggie's smile became a bit more genuine.
"I'm grateful, maybe you can tell me a little about yourselves too. If we don't even know who you are, how could we trust you with such a sensitive matter?" Maggie said.
Cherry smiled in amusement. It was a shame this woman had been born on this island instead of somewhere she could put her talents to use.
Maggie prepared a small feast of local cuisine and liquors for them to enjoy. All of them were both interesting and/or tasty in their own ways. Cherry and Cabernet were naturally the biggest eaters, which pleased Maggie as they were racking up quite the bill.
"So what brings you around these parts? We don't normally get visitors. Well, we get pirates sometimes, but by the time they reach us they normally succumb to the spores." Maggie asked.
"We're pirates!" Cabernet exclaimed with food in her mouth.
"I see." Maggie said softly, having no change in expression.
Cherry heard something shift slightly beneath the counter however, suggesting that the woman wasn't as nonchalant as she appeared. She sensed no hostility from Maggie though, so she concluded it was only a precautionary measure.
"You might not have heard of us, since I doubt the News Coos can get here through the spores. We're pretty infamous though." Cherry said, thankfully having swallowed her mouthful before speaking.
"Really? What's your bounty?" Maggie inquired.
"Last I saw it was 800 million. I suppose that's to be expected after what I did in Marineford." Cherry spoke.
Maggie's hands jerked up from their hiding place and she placed them on the countertop with a slightly nervous smile. A soft thunk was heard at the same time, likely because she dropped whatever it was on the inner shelf of the counter.
"Hehehe, you're really smart, Maggie. How do you know I'm not making up tall tales?" Cherry asked, amused.
"I know a lie when I hear one. If you're good enough at lying that even I can't tell, then that's reason enough not to offend you." Maggie said.
"Well, don't be too nervous, Maggie. Luckily you were pointing that shotgun at me. It wouldn't have done me any harm, so I wouldn't do any to you either." Cherry said.
Maggie understood the insinuation underneath Cherry words, and thanked the heavens she hadn't pointed it at one of the other three.
"Let's talk about what we came for, shall we?" Robin broke the tension with her beautiful voice and gentle smile.
"I don't know much, really. Just that the Mayor probably had an affair with Olympia, I saw her leaving his house a few times. Naturally if I know, then the whole town knows, including the Mayor's wife, Jilly." Maggie said. "I really don't want to cause Jilly any trouble, she is such a sweet woman. She couldn't do something so horrible."
They chat with Maggie while finishing up their food and drinks to learn a little more about the personalities and relationships in the village before bidding her goodbye.
"Who next, the doctor? Maybe we can learn something more about the bodies or find out if he's suspicious in any way." Cherry said, receiving nods of agreement.