"WHERE IS DRUM KINGDOM'S FLAG?!"
"Kak kak kak!"
Kureha stepped into her front yard with Chopper. Seeing the former idiot king throwing a tantrum over the old rag she'd burned, she couldn't help laughing. She'd laughed at him years ago, too, when he tried to enlist her into his collection of all of Drum's doctors. Dr. Hiriluk's pirate flag looked a sight better anyway.
"Drum Kingdom doesn't exist anymore." She said, pushing her tinted specs up into her hair.
"Dr. Kureha!" Wapol said, accusing. "You'll pay for defiling my castle!"
Kureha put a hand on her hip, staring down Wapol. His two cronies, Chess and Kuromarimo, flanked him on either side. She only knew their names from overhearing the stupid king barking orders over the years.
'Sidekick one, write this down!'
'Sidekick two, get me a danish!'
Time at sea clearly hadn't improved Wapol's personality or made him any less of a brat.
"You're the ones trespassing," she said. "I've turned this place into a mausoleum for Dr. Hiriluk. Step off my property!"
"Hiriluk? Mahahahaha!" Wapol cackled. "That old quack?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Kureha saw Chopper stiffen. He bristled at the insult to his foster parent and lowered his head, reflexively taking a stance as if to charge.
Good. He needed to learn how to stand his ground and hold his own in a fight.
"Hey! It's you!"
Before talks could break down properly, though, the straw hat kid charged past them out of the castle. One of his arms stretched out behind him.
Gomu Gomu no-
The kid's fist struck Wapol's alarmed face with a satisfying pow!
Bullet!
The whiny ex-monarch went flying back toward the edge of the mountain.
"Wapol-sama!"
His two lackeys were the only reason he didn't fall.
"Still alive, huh?" Luffy asked. "Good!"
He cracked his knuckles, wearing an outright gleeful grin.
"I owe you more than one."
"You know them, kid?" Kureha asked.
"Yeah!" He said, steaming mad. "That guy tried to eat my ship, and they gave me a lot of trouble on the way up here!"
"Hold that thought," Sanji said. "Luffy, aren't you freezing?"
A look of realization crossed the rubber boy's face.
"Wait, he's a king?!"
"Glad you're paying attention."
"Whoa! It's cold!"
"How is that the second thing you noticed?!"
A valid question, given the kid was only wearing a sleeveless vest and shorts.
"It's -50°!" Chopper said in his 'doctor' tone, almost scolding.
Kureha chortled. Her apprentice had always been an eager learner, if not especially outgoing or lively. He needed some friends his age.
That, and Wapol's goons obviously didn't take well to being ignored. Their faces were pretty amusing.
"Mahahaha…" Wapol chuckled darkly, righting himself. "You insolent fools! You've made me mad now- prepare to be eaten ali"
"Pause," Sanji said casually. "He ran inside to find a jacket. We'll be more than happy to kick your asses in a minute."
"What did you say to me?!"
Twang.
Wapol snapped his jaws around the unidentified projectile like a well-trained terrier. Or, more accurately, like a massive moron who relied too much on his Devil Fruit.
Just as Usopp had predicted.
The phony king's eyes bugged out when he noticed Usopp waving at him.
"You!" Wapol pointed a damning finger. "I was stuck on the throne for half a day because of you!"
Usopp made a mental note of his concoction's effectiveness and took up a spot between Sanji and Chopper.
"I figured you'd need more laxative," he said. "Since you're so full of shit."
Oh, how delicious was Wapol's expression of dawning horror. All color washed out of his face, expression shifting from fury to terror to nausea.
"Oi," Sanji said mildly while the three stooges panicked. "There is a lady present."
"Shit is literally your favorite word," Usopp countered seamlessly. "Besides," he said, glancing at Kureha. "I don't think she minds."
"KAK KAK KAK! Oh, Kami, that's genius! KA~K KAK KAK!"
The witch doctor had thrown her head back, cackling raucously at Wapol's plight.
Across the way, Chess- the clown dressed in a checkered jester getup- and the other one assumed fighting positions.
"You'll die for this outrage!" Other One declared. He wore some kind of cape to ward off the cold, and his thing seemed to be afros. Even the ends of his mustache were tiny afros. "Starting with you, Dr. Kureha!"
Usopp had been essentially loitering in the castle since he'd woken up save for periodically checking on Nami and talking to Chopper. He'd only come outside because he'd noticed Luffy's 'voice' racing back indoors.
The sniper hadn't been present for Wapol's confrontation with Luffy in his first round. The whole mess had been resolved by the time he'd gone up on the gondola, though. Really, in terms of being a threat, Wapol ranked just a couple notches higher than Don Krieg in Usopp's mind. Even then, that was only due to his Devil Fruit ability.
Still, he figured he could at least play until Luffy got back.
Other One plucked a bit of hair from his afro and pinched it. The hairball somehow expanded between his fingers.
Kuromarimo's Static Cling!
Other One flicked the mass of hair at Kureha. Ever chivalrous, Sanji intercepted the projectile with his leg, glowering.
"Wait," Usopp said, holding up a hand. The sniper couldn't help asking. "Your name is black moss ball?"
"Hey," Sanji said. "Will you pay…"
The cook trailed off, staring at the hairball still clinging to his pant leg. He snapped out a kick, yet it held fast.
"You've been caught," Kuromarimo said, chortling. "My hairballs will stick to any surface they touch!"
"Tengu!" Sanij yelled, disgusted. He threw out gradually more frantic kicks to get rid of his new passenger. In the moment Usopp had looked away, the cook had failed to dodge another pair of hairballs thrown at him. "Get these off me!"
"Okay, okay, relax." Usopp said, reaching out.
"You can only get rid of them by passing them to someone else!"
Usopp went dead still, made direct eye contact with Sanji, and then backed away.
"OI!"
"One more fact about Kuromarimo's hair," Chess said, pulling out a bow and several arrows. "It's extremely flammable."
Usopp blinked.
'Seems obvious, but it can't be that easy.'
. . .
Twang.
Four fiery projectiles sailed through the air.
One of them toward the cronies.
"Huh?"
Fire Star!
Kuromarimo's head erupted into flames.
"YIEEEEE!"
'It's that easy.'
"Wha" Chess stammered, alarmed.
Chopper, taking advantage of the distraction, sprinted as a reindeer to close the distance before shifting to Heavy Point.
Thock!
He clocked the jester with a well placed backhanded fist.
"Mahaha," Wapol laughed with a bit less gusto than earlier. The asshole ex-king got to his feet. "Your tricks won't work so well this ti- WHAT THE HELL?!"
At a glance, things weren't going well for team 'Take back the castle'. Both of Wapol's men were in the snow. Chess had been soundly put there, and Kuromarimo stood bent over with his ass in the air after dunking his head to snuff out the fire.
"Bad day for the fatty," Usopp commented. He glanced behind him into the castle. Luffy, now clad in a coat, was charging back to the scene. "About to get worse, too."
He realized something.
"Wait, how's he back on his feet?"
"This country has some of the best medical experts in the world," Kureha said. "Aside from me, all the doctors here work for him. They probably came up with a fix for your laxative." She smirked. "Though I'd wager it's only temporary."
Wapol did look fairly uncomfortable.
"Hey, jerkface," Luffy called as he got close. "I'm gonna- huh? What's he doing?"
Usopp's captain came to a screeching halt beside him, just as Sanji finished dusting off the last of the snow he'd tumbled through.
"I'll show you the power of my Devil Fruit ability!"
Wapol's considerable frame expanded further, and he grew almost twice as tall. A door appeared on his stomach with a window on each side, a smoking chimney popped out of the top of his head, and his hands turned into cannons.
"Oh no~," Usopp said. "He got fatter."
Under any other circumstance, Wapol's Devil Fruit would have fascinated Chopper. he could alter his body into what he ate, and even take things in and reorder them in his body!
Hence…
"I am Chessmarimo!"
"Woah, that's cool!"
"No, Cap'n. Robots are cool. Lasers are cool. That is a pair of grown men playing piggyback."
"But they fused!"
"They only thing that 'fused' is their outfits."
"I'm just glad they came out the shitty door."
As a doctor, the physiological aspects were amazing.
Except they were dealing with Wapol, the root cause of the sickness in Drum that Dr. Hiriluk spent years trying to cure.
Chopper didn't have time to be impressed or distracted.
"Drum is my kingdom," Wapol said, raising a cannon-arm. "And this is my castle! I won't stand another second looking at that old hack's flag!"
"Stop!" Chopper yelled.
Boom!
A cannonball flew screaming toward Dr. Hiriluk's pirate flag, on a direct collision course.
And said cannonball whiffed. It overshot the castle and sailed off the mountain.
". . . Huh?"
Boom!
He fired again.
And missed again.
"EH?!"
Wapol lifted his other cannon arm.
Twang.
Boom! Boom!
"Hey, this is kinda fun," Usopp said, holding a slingshot. Overhead, both cannonballs whizzed by the black flag. Across the way, Wapol's expression turned apoplectic. "Just a sli~ght change in trajectory can be infuriating, huh?"
"YOU-!"
Pistol!
Luffy's fist flew into Wapol's face and cut him off.
"Hey, big mouth," Luffy said, stomping forward. "You don't hoist a pirate flag on a whim. You only fly that flag if you're willing to die for something!"
Wapol slowly got up, jaw clenched.
"Frauds like you could never destroy that kind of symbol of faith!"
Chopper knew he could never be friends with humans. He was too different.
"C'mon, Chopper," Usopp said as Wapol gave the order to attack. "Let's evict these chumps. I'll back you up."
If he could, though, he'd want them to be like these pirates.
Nami poked her head out into the hall and looked around. She felt well enough to navigate, and she could take bedrest whenever she wanted on the ship.
Time to leave, before Kureha came back.
She cinched her blanket tight around her shoulders- Luffy still had her jacket- and stepped out. As long as she kept quiet, she could avoid the fight outside and meet up with the boys later.
"Another pirate? In my castle?!"
. . . Or, y'know, not.
"What, me?" Nami asked, the picture of innocence. "No, no, I'm just passing through!"
"Ah," he accuser- probably the 'Wapol' Chopper mentioned- said. "Is that so?"
"Mhm!" Nami nodded emphatically. "I'll be on my way now!"
"Of course, have a nice day."
Klomp.
Nami glanced back as she walked away. Wapol shimmied up a pillar to the second floor with surprising agility giving his physique.
"As if, you lying little wench!"
'Dammit!'
Nami booked it for the stairs to the main floor. She took them down as fast as she dared, three at a time.
Thunk.
"Ga-argh!"
She chanced a look back once she reached the bottom. Her oversized pursuer had gotten himself stuck in the entrance to the stairway.
Nami paused long enough to catch her breath, worn out by the short sprint and feeling acutely aware that she was still recovering. She missed the comforting weight of her Climatact.
The grumbling behind her stopped, replace with the sound of… eating? She looked again.
And her mouth fell open, struck speechless.
Wapol's lower jaw expanded, reached up over his face, and gradually consumed his body until it disappeared. The metal cylinder left behind hopped down the stairs on its own.
"What. The actual. Fuck."
Nami pressed her hand to her forehead. She considered the idea that she hadn't actually left her bed and was in the middle of an insane fever dream.
A sleeker, much thinner Wapol leapt out of his own mouth, rendering the question quite moot.
Wapol Slim Down!
Nami broke into another sprint, panting more than she would've liked.
"You're not getting away!"
Wapol leapt at her and tackled her to the ground. He held her arms down and laughed.
"Mahaha! All of you pirates and trespassers will d-OOF!"
A sandaled foot smashed into Wapol's face and knocked him off Nami.
"Wait," Luffy said as his outstretched leg snapped back. "Wasn't he fat?"
"Momentarily." Nami muttered, standing and dusting herself off.
She glanced at her captain, surprised by the intact state of the coat she'd lent him. She'd planned on putting him in her debt after he inevitably damaged it during the fight.
'This is probably Usopp's fault.'
She didn't have any proof, but it felt right.
"End of the line, pirate brat!"
Wapol stood in front of a huge door in the middle of the chamber.
"This is the armory, stocked with every kind of weapon! Once I eat them and mutate my body, I'll be an unstoppable juggernaut!"
The former fatty reached for his belt-
"Now, I'll unlock the door to your demise!"
and grasped at empty air.
". . ."
Wapol did several consecutive double takes. His eyes bugged out at the absence of any key at his waist.
His face went comically neutral and he stared at the two Straw Hats.
Luffy regarded him blankly in return.
Wapol fled further into the castle with Luffy on his heels.
Nami sighed.
"Armory?" She muttered, regarding the key that had been 'misplaced' into her possession with a disappointed look. "I was hoping for a treasure vault."
Wapol huffed and puffed as he ran. He cursed Dr. Kureha once again for letting snow pile up everywhere inside his castle. Still, his final trump card would snuff out anyone who opposed him.
He'd personally eat that long nose hippo.
Wapol pulled the tarp back from his greatest weapon use as the rubber hippo entered the room.
"Meet my ultimate weapon," he said with his hand on the lever. "The Drum Crown 7-Shot Bliking Cannon!"
Wapol laughed at the pirate's stupid face.
"So long, Straw Hat!"
Klang!
Fsss.
.
.
.
Nothing happened.
Wapol stared.
Klang!
Fsss.
The cannon coughed.
Wapol's eyes bulged. His triumphant grin morphed into a closed-mouth smile that about split his face in half.
Klang! Klang! Klang!
Fsss. . .
'No boom.'
"Gwoogle."
Chirping preceded a family of snowbirds filing out of the cannon barrels.
His ultimate weapon. Defunct, because of nesting fowl.
"FFFFFUUU–!"
Crash!
Usopp looked up at the castle. Wapol's face and half his torso stuck out of a fresh hole in the roof of one of the towers.
"Guess Luffy's wrapping up." He murmured.
The sniper glanced back at the dimwit duo. They hadn't been exactly been weak, but they weren't that strong either. Chopper would've been able to handle their piggyback formation on his own. With Usopp providing cover fire, they'd been a joke. If Sanji had gotten involved, they wouldn't have been worth mention.
(Krak!
"Your back's still healing. Don't undo all my work, brat.")
He'd been, ah, sidelined.
"Doctorine." Chopper said quietly. He was also watching the final moments of Wapol's delusion before Luffy definitively shattered it.
Gomu Gomu no-
Usopp took a step back toward the mountains edge to give the young doctor a moment.
Bazooka!
That, and anticipate the group arriving on the gondola as Wapol shrank into a twinkle in the sky.
"Figures you're already up here."
"Usopp-san?"
Zoro and Vivi appeared first, followed by a bunch of other armed villagers escorting an injured Dalton. Zoro wore a coat taken from one of Wapol's soldiers. The swordsman must've gone swimming this time, too.
"All clear," Usopp said. "The goons have been dealt with."
"How'd you get up here?" Vivi asked, clearly more surprised by his presence than the idea that she'd missed the fight.
"Oh," Usopp hedged. "Well, y'know, this and that happened."
"Grah!"
Luffy saved the sniper from further questions by dive-bombing toward them.
"Oh," he said a split second before impact. "It's Zoro."
Wham!
Zoro groaned before he snapped at the boy captain.
"The hell are you doing?!"
"Shishishi! Sorry, I thought you were another bad guy."
"Luffy-san, where are Nami and Sanji? Are they all right?"
"Yeah, they're fine."
Vivi sighed in relief. With the urgent issues addressed, Usopp figured he should introduce everyone to Chopper. When he looked, though, the young doctor had already fled, presumably scared off by the sudden influx of people.
"Hm."
Chopper let out a long sigh. He'd finally escaped Luffy's persistent recruitment efforts by hiding on the castle roof.
"Reindeer!" Luffy shouted in the courtyard. "Come be pirates with us!"
And he was still looking for him.
"Give it up, Luffy," the one with green hair said. "He doesn't want to go."
"No!" Luffy insisted. "He's gonna be our crew mate!"
"What he wants and what you want are two separate things!"
"He's not gonna quit, you know."
"Ah!"
Chopper startled. Usopp stood nonchalantly beside him, watching his crew interact down on the ground. Chopper didn't understand how Usopp kept catching him by surprise. The sniper had even positioned himself downwind- did he do that on purpose?
"Our captain's really stubborn," Usopp said, making no comment on Chopper's reaction to his appearance. "And he doesn't accept anything done halfway. That goes double for rejections."
Usopp stared Chopper directly in the eye.
"If you wanna convince him, you need to at least convince yourself first. Might as well be talking at a wall otherwise."
The sniper left without another word, leaving Chopper alone with his thoughts.
He made his way down after only a minute of reflection. Putting it off just meant it would hurt that much longer.
"Oi!"
Luffy greeted him with a grin. Chopper took a deep breath.
"I can't go with you."
And he gave his reasons.
"I can't be friends with humans. I'm a monster! I'm a reindeer that talks like a human! A-and I have a blue nose! I can't be a pirate!"
Chopper sniffled, struggling to keep his voice steady.
"I can't go with you, but, someday, if you wanna come back"
"SHUT UP!" Luffy shouted. He raised his fists over his head and threw his head back. "LET'S GO!"
Chopper hiccuped, eyes moist. Luffy knew. He knew that Chopper didn't have any reasons to stay, only doubts.
Luffy didn't listen to doubts.
"OKAY!"
Chopper resolved that he wouldn't either.
Kureha took a long pull from her liquor cabinet. It'd been a helluva day, what with Wapol's influence decisively cut off and Dalton in her infirmary as a patient.
That pirate lass had impressed her.
("You're telling me Wapol had the only key to the armory?"
"I never knew him to keep it anywhere except on his person."
"You mean this key to the armory?"
"!"
"Let's make a deal, shall we?")
Girlie actually weaseled her way out of paying for any treatment and convinced Kureha to let her finish her recovery while they traveled. That rubber brat had certainly found a keeper.
"Doctorine!"
That left her with just one last item of business for the day.
"I'm gonna be a pirate! I'm gonna sail with them!"
There were, after all, some things he could only learn if he left home.
"What are you saying? Don't be absurd!"
She scoffed with a dismissive wave of her hand.
"Whoever heard of a reindeer going to sea?"
Chopper blinked at her, taken aback. He gulped and stood up straight.
"I am a reindeer," he said. "But I'm a man, too!"
"Good for you," Kureha spat. She picked up a scalpel. "You're still not going anywhere!"
She hurled the instrument at him blade first. He narrowly avoided it, eyes wide.
"Doctorine," he said softly. "Please, I just came to say goodbye."
"A crybaby like you thinks he's a man fit for the sea?" She demanded, arming herself with more tools. "Ha!"
"AAH!"
He ran away. She gave chase.
"You'll be no better than that old quack, wasting away thirty years of his life on a stupid dream!"
"It wasn't a waste!" Chopper shot back, running faster. He made for the ropeway and the sleigh he'd always pulled to bring her down the mountain. "The Doctor finished his research!"
She knew that. Of course she did. It'd been one of that troublesome idiot's dying requests.
("Thirty years for a tiny vial. Good for you, I guess. What's it got to do with me?"
"There isn't enough, and I don't have time to make more. You need to complete it for me."
"You've got balls making demands like"
"And! I want you to teach Chopper medicine."
"!"
"He cares so much about people, about life- all he wants is to be a doctor! I'm begging you to help him! It's the last thing I'll ever ask of you!")
'Only because you didn't live longer.'
Kureha watched Chopper take his new friends down the ropeway in the sleigh.
"Is this really how you want to send him off?" Dalton asked.
Kureha smiled a private, teary smile.
"If that brat saw me like this, he'd never leave."
She adjusted her glasses over her eyes and checked on the villagers. They'd brought the artillery out into the courtyard.
"Load those cannons!"
"All set, ma'am!"
"Fire!"
For thirty years, Dr. Hiriluk had worked to replicate the scene that saved his life. An image so poignant that it miraculously cured the illness in his body.
Three decades, all spent trying to bring spring to a snow country.
He'd been a fool to his last breath.
As his formula flew out of the cannons and dispersed on the wind, the sky changed hue. People all across the island looked toward the mountains. Gently glowing, pink snowflakes drifted down and lit up the night.
The world would've been a far more bitter place without such fools.
Kureha faintly heard Chopper's cries in the distance.
Her parting gift to him- a glimpse of the impossible.
Sakura blossoms on a winter island.
A man-reindeer as a pirate doctor.
"Set sail, my foolish boy."