Yes, this it is! The rewritten version of The Bird and The Cat(for those of you who have read it). If you are a new reader, ignore the previous comment. Haha, haha. But yes, I've changed some things and added a lot to make the plot more interesting and yada yada. I hope you'll enjoy this. :)
Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece! I only my own beloved character and plot. :P
The Cat's Predicaments
Chapter 1: The Pirate Hunting Cat
Felicia wasn't really sure whether pirates were just plain stupid or fearless.
As the black haired woman watched the pirate that was out in the open and unguarded, she realized that she had forgotten one case: arrogance.
Of course, pirates are arrogant. This is their age, she thought.
Their age to do whatever and act however they want. Felicia had experienced it first-hand. It was a bitter thought and she had no time to think about the past right now. The woman had a pirate to catch.
...
Grabbing the black cat mask from her black messenger bag, she quickly put it on, hid her bag, and jumped off of the shadowed roof.
Landing soundly on her feet, she silently stalked the pirate; like a cat stalking a mouse.
Felicia watched the pirate as he strolled along the quiet streets with a posture that screamed arrogant. The woman mentally snorted at the thought. He won't be arrogant for long but humiliated, she thought and smiled at the sadistic thought. Oh yes, the pirate wouldn't be arrogant for long.
Felicia knew the man had been drinking. She was watching him all afternoon and she could smell the stench off of him. Knowing this, she patiently waited for the right moment to strike.
A couple minutes passed and the pirate's walking became staggered and when he finally stumbled, the masked woman pounced on him.
The sudden weight and unfocused mind caused the man to fall on the ground. When he looked up at Felicia, the sunlight shone on her mask; highlighting and enhancing every detail. Unlike the other normal cat masks, Felicia's mask was a bit different. It covered her whole face and though it had the regular shape of a cat face, it had weirdly shaped edges. The edges, in a way, resembled the same ones you would see on a bird mask. The rest of the mask was normal, except for the fact it was missing whiskers. Though the cat mask would have seem normal, the edges gave it a weird feeling. It was a quite strange cat mask.
The feeling of fear crept on the man as the strangeness of the mask added with the wearer's intimidating and un-human like eyes stared at him. And when the man suddenly came out of his drunken stupor and recognized the mask, it was too late; Felicia knocked out the pirate with a quick blow to his head before he even had the chance to struggle.
As Felicia tied up the unconscious pirate she came to the conclusion that the man she had just captured was both arrogant and just plain stupid. There was no way this man was fearless. In fact, he was an idiot. What kind of man got drunk in the afternoon? An idiot. And what kind of man was he? A pirate. So in conclusion, the man was an idiotic pirate.
The amber eyed woman dusted the dirt off her hands while she looked up at the sky. Taking note of the position of the sun, she knew there were only a couple more hours before nightfall, so she quickly slung the man over her shoulder and headed for the marine base.
For a regular woman, capturing a pirate was no easy feat but the way she spent her childhood made her agile; plus she had become a pirate hunter a year ago, giving her plenty of time to perfect the task of capturing pirates. And, the pirate was drunk. Drunk equaled sluggish movements and slower thoughts- not a good condition for fighting.
Felicia chose to walk through the streets that most of the townspeople didn't use or avoided since the pirate hunter didn't want to attract any unnecessary attention to herself. She wanted to lay low, be a shadow, because she knew the trouble attention caused. She knew it very well.
...
Twenty minutes later, Felicia arrived at the town's Marine Base.
"Welcome! How may I help you?" a woman, the secretary (a new one Felicia noted), asked with a cheery tone.
Felicia, remembering her manners, dipped her head in greeting.
Rule #1: When someone greets you, greet them back.
"Collecting a bounty for a captured pirate," Felicia stated politely, shifting a little so the woman could get a clearer look at the captured pirate.
She shifted some more when she realized the woman was staring at her with wide eyes.
Not being able to stand the pressure of a gaze, Felicia cleared her throat, catching the woman's attention. Yes, the woman was quite new.
"Ahh, I'm sorry," the secretary apologized, "right this way."
Felicia nodded and followed the woman. The marine's base design was like every other marine base, white and blue, except for the occasional island things in the building.
The pirate hunter was led to a room where there was bounty posters posted all over the walls; not one single white space was seen. A table with chairs was set in the middle of the room and a single desk was placed in the far left corner near a door. Felicia had become quite familiar with this place over the past month due to the fact that she had been doing the same thing earlier on and had to come here to drop off the captured pirates and collect the bounties.
"Mr. Lockwood will be arriving shortly," the secretary said.
Felicia nodded, signaling that she heard and the secretary left.
Felicia sighed with relief when the woman was gone and dropped the pirate, her catch, on the floor. She couldn't stand being near people, especially people who kept staring at her. She hated being stared at. Remembering the staring incident earlier, she shivered.
A couple minutes later, Felicia heard footsteps approaching and the door opened; a man, Mr. Lockwood, entered.
"Well! If it isn't our masked hunter, Cat! Back already! And with a new catch! Geez, you're something." he exclaimed as he sat at the desk.
"Thank you." Her voice was quiet yet firm. It also had a formal feeling and polite edge to it, like this was how she grew up.
Rule #2: When someone compliments you, say thank you.
Mr. Lockwood nodded. "So who's the pirate this time?"
"Drunkard Noah: 5,000,000 beli bounty," she stated while grabbing the pirate's bounty poster from her bag.
"Was he drunk, just like his nickname?" the marine joked.
Felicia wasn't really fond of marines. She had a dislike for them, a huge one but she still had her manners.
"Yes, he was," Felicia said flatly.
The marine's face dropped in disappointment but it quickly disappeared.
"That's a pretty low bounty, lower than the one you usually go for, and quite easy," he commented and left the room with the captured pirate.
The woman shrugged in response and looked around the room. Seeing the many posters reminded her that she needed to restock her own stash of bounty posters.
Moments later, the marine was back with the money.
"Here you go. Exactly 5,000,000 beli for the captured and alive pirate," he said and handed her the money.
"Can I have some more bounty posters?" she asked politely.
"Sure!" he exclaimed. The marine took out a small stack of bounty posters from the desk of his drawer.
"In here are bounties ranging from your usual amount 60,000,000 and above. I also included some really big ones since you seem like the kind to be able to handle it," he explained and set the stack in front of her.
"Big bounties?" she questioned through her mask.
"Yup. Big ones."
"How big?"
"Past 100,000,000 beli."
Felicia thought about what he said. Pirates with bounties past 100 million beli tended to be harder to catch, but they also tended to be very arrogant which most of the time, proved to be their downfall.
"What pirates?"
"Some are pirates from the New World, others are rookies, but the ones most people know are the Whitebeard pirates."
"Whitebeard pirates?" Felicia had heard of the name before, but she didn't know much about them.
"Yes! The Whitebeard pirates! They are currently one of the strongest crews out there! Their captain is one of the four Yonkos of the New World and he was even tied with Gold Roger when they fought. Plus their commanders are insanely strong," he exclaimed with a shudder, "but they're also insanely arrogant and cocky."
Felicia didn't have much interest at first when she heard about the Whitebeard pirates, but when she heard the last part, she couldn't help but think what it would feel like to crush their arrogance and pride.
"I see," she said and the room lapsed into silence.
The man cleared his throat.
"Well!" he exclaimed, trying to clear the awkward silence, "it's been very nice having you hunt down the pirates in town for the past month. How about you join the marines?"
Felicia's mouth opened to say 'thank you' for the compliment but when she heard the last part she narrowed her eyes.
Become a marine? She would never! She wouldn't become like them. She was enraged at the thought.
"Never," the masked woman hissed angrily.
The man shrank back at the sudden harsh tone of her voice.
Still mad at the marine, she brushed past him; forgetting her manners in the process.
Felicia subconsciously heard a skitter near her, and turned her head towards the sound in response. She slowly opened her eyes, having just woken up, her eyesight was still blurry, but she could make out a small round shape with two yellowish dots in the middle. The drowsy woman wondered what in the world was the thing in front of her. When Felicia's vision finally cleared, she shrieked and scrambled away when she realized that the thing in front of her was a rat, a huge one.
The rat scurried away in fright, but Felicia was even more frightened than the rat. She took a huge breath and let it out, trying to slow her frantic heartbeat. When her heartbeat finally slowed down she looked up at the sky and noticed she had woken up just when it hit night, like an internal clock.
After Felicia had left the scene earlier, she had napped for the rest of the daylight hours in a open yet secluded dark alleyway.
She had already taken off her mask and changed out of her all black outfit; she didn't want people knowing who Cat was.
Sighing, the woman got up and dusted herself off.
Having reached night, the town had quieted down and people were all rushing home.
Knowing that at night there were no places except for a couple of bars and inns that were open; she decided to head for the bars, hoping to get some info about any treasures or jewels.
Stepping out of the dark open alley, the moonlight shone on the quiet town as Felicia headed for the bars, beginning another long night.
Beta'd By: Everlude