Note from the Author: See, I totally jinxed it. As soon as I said I had an update schedule, I wasn't able to get the chapter written in time.

So, FYI I imagine Nausicaa talking like Jimmy Fallon's "Ew" girl. (Also, that little boy pretending to be Troy a few chapters back is totally Cat Bug from Bravest Warriors. Circe sounds like Apple Jack from My Little Pony. Yeah, call Oda...I've already got my voice actors picked out, ha ha!)

Ch. 11 – No Match for the Ghost Princess

With her abnormally large eyes abnormally larger than usual, Perona stared down at the woman in overalls lying unconscious at her feet. Beating Circe had been a good deal easier than she had anticipated, and it was putting her in a foul mood.

"You ruined our plans, I hope you know!" she shouted to the unconscious captain. "Now Zoro won't be able to make his dramatic, romantic entrance! Geez, what's wrong with the navy these days?"

She turned to another unconscious woman, well, more a girl really, wearing a Navy ball cap.

"You weren't much help at all!" Perona added. "Couldn't you have at least TRIED to make it a fight?"

She turned to her ghosts. "Humph. Well, obviously they were just no match for one of Moria-sama's commanders," she said, shrugging. "I guess I had better get back to the others. Holo-holo-holo-holo!"

Early that morning, Captain Circe would never have believed she could be beaten at all, much less by a spritely young woman with pig tails. She had her fair share of worries though as she called her men to order.

"Listen here, you no good bleaters," she said, marching through their ranks with her hands clasped behind her back. She wore her captain's jacket over a pair of well-mucked overalls, her frizzy red hair barely tamed into a pair of braids on either side of her head. "You'd better have good news for me, or poor Bruce over there will end up on the Vice Admiral's dinner plate."

Poor Bruce honked despondently from where Circe had tied him up to the barn with a leash of old, fraying rope. He wasn't quite as pure white a goose as the king, but he'd do in a pinch, grey feathers and all.

Circe listened with growing impatience as one after another her marines reported that their search through the night and into the morning had proven fruitless; Ilium's King remained at large. When they had finished fessing up to their failure, Circe eyed them all disdainfully.

"Alright, back to being sheep then, you useless good for nothings," she grumped. "Baaa!" At the sound her cadets started to glow. Their white marine uniforms seemed to puff out and frizz, their faces turned long and ebony black. Within a few moments, Circe had a herd of a few dozen sheep gazing at her despondently.

"Wow, that's, like, totes awful," a squealy voice said, drawing Circe's gaze. "Like, what are you going to do, Mom?"

The Captain turned to where her sixteen-year-old daughter sat chawing away at a sliver of neon green mint chewing gum. 'Bring-Your-Daughter-to-Work Day' couldn't have fallen at a worse time.

"Nausicaa, darlin, could you chew a little less loudly? Momma's tryin' to think."

Nausicaa stuck her tongue out, revealing one of her many piercings. Honestly, what had her father been thinking, letting her perforate herself like that while Circe was away on the job? That's what she got for marrying a city slicker.

"An' fix yer hat, fer Pete's sake!"

The Navy ball cap Circe had given her sat at a jaunt over the girl's pastel rainbow hair. Despite her mother's commands, the girl did nothing to adjust it so it would actually serve its purpose, and used her hand instead to shield her eyes from the sun.

"So, like, are you really going to feed that dude to the Vice Admiral?" Nausicaa asked, carefully using a wrapper to take the gum from her mouth before flicking it to the ground. "That's, like, totes cray cray."

"Only if we don't find the king, darlin'," Circe informed her as the teen pulled out a king-sized candy bar and started peeling away the wrapper. "I've got to keep order in them there ranks. Brucey over there fell asleep on the job and let the King sneak away, y'see."

"So you're, like, going to feed the King to Regent if you catch him then?" Nausicaa asked, face contorted in disgust. "Mom, that's like, cannibalism, isn't it? Ew!"

"It's not cannibalism," Circe insisted. "Not if they're in the form of animals."

"Well, um, if you say so, I guess," Nausicaa said with her mouth full of chocolate. "Oh Em Gee! Didn't that cadet say Regent is going to eat you instead if you, like, don't deliver? You can't turn yourself into a goose, and, like, if you could, like, why would you?"

Circe decided it was best not to frighten her daughter by telling her that though Regent had never eaten a human in human form so far as she knew, she wouldn't put it past him. After all, he was part dragon.

"Let's just find the royal pain before it comes to that, hm?" Circe said.

"Ok, well, I've noticed someone in the field for the past few minutes," Nausicaa said, tossing her candy wrapper on the ground. Circe said nothing to protest the litter. "Like, do you want me to check it out with my powers?"

"Why else would I let you toss yer garbage all over my field?" Circe snapped. "Make yerself useful, darlin'!"

Nausicaa closed her eyes and for a moment the piles of litter at her feet dimmed to the color of old newspaper, albeit so briefly that if one blinked they'd have missed it. A moment later, Nausicaa's eyes shot open and she smiled.

"Your goose is, like, over there with, like, two other people. One of them's a girl with big pink pigtail's. The other's got one of my bags over his face. El Oh El." She giggled. "Must be totes ugly. He's way ripped though, and he's got some swords, too."

"One of the Queen's soldiers, maybe?"

"I'unno," Nausicaa shrugged. "He's, like, not wearing a uniform. Oh, General Rabbit is with them too."

"Hmm…well, what are we waiting for? Let's call the herd over!"

She lifted up a large cowbell and started to ring it. Not that the bell served any real purpose, it just made her feel more like a rancher. She'd found it in the dilapidated barn.

Next she started to yodel. Nausicaa covered her ears at the sound –naturally, because Circe was so loud; it had nothing to do with the quality of her yodeling of course. She had always had a special talent for yodeling.

"Get out of sight, darlin'," Circe instructed her as the rumble of a cattle stampede announced their approach. "You just let your momma handle this."

"But moooom, can't I help? I'm good for more than spying!" the girl whined and Circe shot her a glare. Nausicaa pouted stubbornly, forcing her mother to change up the yodeling a bit.

The teenager's eyes widened beneath her heavily painted eyelids as in a hypnotized trance the sheep soldiers all started crowding around the fence post on which she sat. They nudged and pushed her until she was forced to stand up, then nudged her some more. She stumbled and squealed loudly about gross, dirty animals and how she was getting mud on her converse shoes. Soon she disappeared behind the side of the barn furthest from the field.

Leaving a few of her disguised sheep soldiers to guard Nausicaa, Circe allowed the rest to meander back into the barnyard. They played the part of sheep convincingly mostly because she'd had them disguised like this off and on for a while. They knew better than to complain by now.

A moment later the cows came into sight, running toward the sonorous sound of Circe's voice. She immediately noticed the big swordsman her daughter had warned her about. He stood on the bare back of the largest of the herd – a big, mean looking, orange bull with a bushy beard hiding his muzzle. The Queen's General, trapped in rabbit form, sat perched on the swordsman's shoulder. The clever rodent had tied his ears under his chin to keep from falling under her spell.

Her goose, however, was nowhere in sight. Nor did she see the girl her daughter had mentioned.

"Well, boy howdy. Ain't it nice to have company." She leaned her mature, squat frame back against the side of the barn, taking a piece of wheat from her front overall pocket and sticking it between her teeth.. "What do they call you in these here parts, Cyclops?"

"Thanks for the lift, big guy," the swordsman said to the bull he'd been riding, ignoring her for the time being. He leapt nimbly off of his bovine steed, landing with perfect balance atop the fence post her daughter had been sitting on earlier. "If I had to venture a guess, I'd say you're probably Menelaus."

The bull nodded, free of Circe's power a few seconds after she stopped yodeling.

"I see you know these fellas," Circe went on. She acted nonchalant, but her nerves were on high alert as she eyed the three katana at his side. "You a friend of the king's then?"

"Something like that," the Cyclops replied. He eyed her in the same way she eyed him, pretending to be nonchalant though he kept one of his swords a thumbswidth out of it sheath. It surprised her a bit. She usually had a way with getting people to lower their guard: the accent helped, and generally people didn't expect much out of a slightly flabby, older woman. "You the Navy Captain I've been hearing about?"

Circe turned to show him the seagull on her dirty white coat, pointing at it with her thumb. "I guess that depends on what you've been hearing about me, stranger."

"Only that a certain goose I know would rather I take you down before he ends up on someone's dinner plate." The swordsman jumped down from his post, crouching into a fighter's stance now, though he didn't draw.

"You mind tellin' me where that feathered fella's got himself off to?" Circe asked, grinning as winning a grin as she could muster. "I'm in a right fix without him."

"Yeah, I bet you are," the Cyclops said, narrowing his eye.

"So where's your girlie friend?" she went on, still leaning against the barn. "She planning on ambushing me or something? Or did she run off with my goose?"

The Cyclops didn't say anything, eye still narrowed beneath the paper bag. The rabbit leapt off of his shoulder in preparation for the inevitable fight.

While Circe hadn't gotten the swordsman to lower his guard, she had managed to keep his attention on her. He didn't seem to notice as the herd of sheep meandering into a circle around him.

She spat out her stick of wheat, grin widening as she stood upright. "Well, maybe I should ambush you first! Baaaa!"

At the sound, her marines shed their wool, transforming back into humans in a bright flash of golden light. As they were used to the transformation, they had already reared up on their hind legs, swords and guns at the ready as they changed. The Cyclops didn't stand a chance.

At least, that's what she thought. One moment her men were leaping in the air, bleeting battle cries as they went in for the attack, the next they lay in the mud around him in heaps.

The men she'd had guarding her daughter charged out from behind the barn, sabers raised. At least they had the sense not to try sniping him with their rifles. – that would have drawn attention to Nausicaa, putting her in danger.

"I'd get away from that barn if I were you, kid."

Somehow he knew Nausicaa was there anyway! A haki user! –that didn't bode well.

The Cyclops let loose a flying slash, and though they blocked it with their sabers, it sent her remaining men flying back into the barn, punching a hole through it. The slash followed them, splitting the barn in half horizontally and cutting through Poor Bruce's rope. The goose flew free with a honk of joy, only managing to escape because Circe was so distracted by the rickety barn collapsing into rubble behind her.

She took in a breath to yodel, thinking to make the cattle charge the fence and come to her aid. It was no use; the Cyclops was already after her. Though she drew a revolver and started to unload it in his direction, she knew she was finished the instant he locked his single eye on her.

Just as he charged her, the bag around his head contracted, catching him like a clothesline and knocking him flat onto his back. He quickly sat upright, but before he could get to his feet, the bag floored him again, face forward this time.

He scrambled to get the piece of litter off of his face, only to have it drag him a few feet through the dirt. A final attempt to get upright only ended in his getting pulled through the air by his head to land on his side at Circe's feet.

"I told you my litter litter fruit was good for more than just spying," Nausicaa said, coming out of her hiding place.

"Ol' McCirce had a farm, ee ay ee ay oh," Circe sang. "And on that farm she had a fox, ee ay ee ay oh!" She reached down and tapped the Cyclops on an exposed part of his skin. He started to glow, his limbs shrinking as green fur sprouted all over his body. An instant later she held a dazed green fox by the scruff of the neck. "With a…heh heh, well, unfortunately for you I don't know what sound a fox makes. That means there won't be any turnin' you back. Sorry, pard."

"Aw, he's totes adorbs, huh?" Nausicaa squealed, then rounded on her mother. "Why didn't you baa at him or whatever, huh? He, like, almost killed you, Mom!"

"I already told you, hon. I can't use my animal calls to transform anyone unless they've been under my spell already within the past twenty-four hours," she explained, eyeing the fox in disdain. He came to his senses and started wriggling angrily in her grip, trying to nip at her hand without success. "Anyway, he wouldn't have killed me, darlin. He flipped his sword around, see. Would have knocked me out I reckon, but he's apparently got a chivalrous streak, doncha little fella?"

The fox growled at her.

"Aw, is that why you, like, warned me before you slashed the barn in half?" Nausicaa asked him. "That was way sweet of you. If I'd been next to it, I would have gotten my clothes all dirty."

Circe and the cycloptic fox stared at her for a moment. The barn falling on her clearly would have done more than get her clothes dirty. Rolling her eyes, the Marine Captain decided not to point that out. Her daughter had always had a weird obsession with hygiene.

"So, are you, like, going to make him show you were the goose king is?" Nausicaa prodded.

"Darlin', you read my mind," Circe replied. Dropping the fox, she took in a breath to use her mind control yodel, only to stop a moment later when a rabbit jump-kicked her hard in the back of the knee, dropping her into a crouch. Seeing his opportunity, the fox head-butted her in the gut, knocking the wind clean out of her.

As quickly as he had appeared, the rabbit was gone, taking the fox with him. By the time Circe got the breath back to yodel, they were obviously out of range; she couldn't make them come back to her.

"Oh noes!" Nausicaa exclaimed in her cutesy way. "What are we gonna do, Mom?"

"I'll tell ya what we're gonna do. We're gonna find that fox," she growled. "Use yer litter litter fruit to spy around and see what you can find."

"But Mom, I've, like, only dropped my litter in this field and the city."

"Then you check the city, I'll look through the forest," Circe growled. "They can't have gone far."

Several hours of fruitless searching later, Circe returned to the barn in a foul mood. She hadn't found the fox, or the rabbit. She had, however, found a goose, whom she dragged by his webbed feet as she stormed back to her hideout. His head bounced along the ground, and he let out a pathetic honk every now and again, but he made no signs of resistance.

Her daughter was waiting for her, wearing a cranky scowl.

"I looked everywhere," she reported despondently. "Wait, is that…?"

"This here whack-doodle is Bruce," Circe grumped, lifting the despondent goose up for Nausicaa to see. "I still haven't found the king."

"Oh em gee. Are you going to feed that marine to Regent, then?" the girl exclaimed. "That's so not right. You're going to have to do it, aren't you? Ew!"

"I reckon so," Circe said, lifting up Poor Bruce so she could get a good look at him. "I dunno if he'll buy it though."

An explosion turned both their heads toward the field. Nausicaa closed her eyes and the trash around her dimmed.

"Ring your bell and start yodeling, mom!" she cried. "The cows are getting loose!"

Circe did just that, yodeling at the top of her lungs. Only no cows came running.

"Um…they're sitting in the far side of the field all like, meh," Nausicaa reported.

"Like meh?" Circe asked. Sometimes she wondered if her daughter spoke a different language.

"Like, sad or something," she tried to clarify. "They've stopped running and they're, like, too depressed to come to you. Weird."

Circe stared at her. She'd understood her this time, she just couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "My cows are…depressed?"

"I might have something to do with that! Holo-holo-holo-holo!"

Circe and her daughter stared at the other side of the fence, where a girlish young woman with pink pigtails stood giggling with her hands on her hips. She looked at them through unnaturally large eyes, her gaze made sinister by the long bangs overshadowing her face.

"Who 'n blue blazes 'r you?" Circe demanded.

"Mom, it's that chick I saw with that foxy swordsman earlier," Nausicaa informed her.

"So you're the one what ran off with mah goose!" Circe exclaimed, bearing her teeth.

"Yeah, he's long gone by now," the girl replied. "You're never going to find him."

"I will if I've got you to lead me to 'im," Circe informed her, hopping the fence. "Them pink piggily wiggily tails o' yers put me in mind of just the right animal too."

"What?" the girl shrieked, waving her hands out in front of her in alarm. "Not a pig! I'm too cute to be a pig!"

"Ol' McCirce had a farm, ee ay ee ay oh!"

"No! No! No!" her soon-to-be victim cried, shaking her head in protest. Circe grinned evilly, but she should have realized something was fishy when the girl didn't try to flee.

"And on that farm she had a pig…!" the Captain reached out to grab her, only to grab hold of nothing. Her sturdy, work-worn hands passed straight through the girl as though she were a…

"Ghost!" Nausicaa shrieked in alarm.

"Holo-holo-holo-holo!" The girl started floating for effect, grinning evilly at them. "That's Ghost Princess to you, Tacky."

"Tacky?" Nausicaa blustered angrily, glancing at her leggings and too-big shirt, then looking back up at her. "My clothes are totes lit. At least I don't dress like I came out of a Tim Burton movie. Ew!"

"It's not your clothes so much as your piercings. You're trying too hard," the self-proclaimed 'Ghost Princess' went on. "Less is more, honey."

"Says the girl wearing too much eyeliner."

"Says the girl who has how many different colors of highlights in her hair? Did a unicorn throw up on your head?"

"Darlin', she does have a point," Circe interjected. "Yer a right fashion disaster."

"YOU CAN'T TALK, OVERALLS!" both girls shrieked, only Nausicaa said 'Mom' instead of 'overalls.'

"At least they're practical," Circe muttered under her breath.

"Hey!" Nausicaa cried, "I hear mooing!" She closed her eyes, the trash around her dimmed as she spied on a distant part of the field. "They're, like, getting away again, Mom! That rabbit is herding them!"

"We'll see about that!"

Circe raised her cowbell, took in a breath, let out the first, warbling note…

"Negative Hollow!"

Something struck her through the chest and she fell to her knees at the Ghost Princess' feet, feeling lower than she'd ever felt in her life.

"I belong on Regent's dinner plate," she moaned. "As a chicken, not a goose."

She started letting out dejected clucking noises into the muddy grass. Bruce the Goose had escaped her grip as she lay wallowing on the ground, and looked at her with his bruised head cocked to one side. He didn't waste any more time escaping after that though. Soon he'd disappeared into the forest again, honking in delight at his re-found freedom.

"What did you do to her?" Nausicaa shrieked. Circe barely heard her over her own chicken noises.

"Just had to keep her from stopping our plans. See, I get a yacht when all this is over."

"Like, dub tee eff does a ghost need a yacht for? For realsies?" Nausicaa asked. "Whatever. Looks like it's up to me to stop you."

"And just how do you plan on doing that, you punk wannabe?"

"I prefer non-conformist with a touch of indie," Nausicaa replied. "Anywho, so, like, I can't touch you, but maybe my powers can."

The ghost girl's eyes widened.

"All right, garbage. Let's show this dumb goth what we can do." Nausicaa closed her eyes. "Ghosts of meals past!"

The various wrappers, paper bags, soda cans, and take out boxes dimmed around her, then let off a noxious-looking yellow steam.

"That is disgusting," the ghost girl pointed out.

"I know, right?" Nausicaa agreed. "My power is kinda, ew."

The steam formed itself into a humanoid, gaseous figure, which reached out to the Ghost Princess, enveloping her in a stifling embrace. She covered her mouth and nose, coughing.

"So, like, can a ghost suffocate?" Nausicaa asked. "I guess I'm about to find out."

"No you're not," the Ghost Princess coughed. "Negative Hollow!"

A pair of miniature ghosts flew from her hand, striking Nausicaa the same way it had struck Circe moments before.

"My next tattoo should be of a poop emoji…" Nausicaa lamented, faceplanting in the mud.

"You've got a tattoo?" Circe cried, coming to her senses. "What in tarnation was yer pa thinkin'?"

Nausicaa didn't sass back, or do much of anything except sigh disconsolately, curling into fetal position and mussing her clothes further. Circe knew it was bad when the clothing conscious teen didn't complain about getting dirty.

Unfortunately for the Ghost Princess though, Nausicaa's 'Ghost of Meals Past´ remained in effect, stifling her in a warm, garbage scented cloud. That mixed with the smell of the cow pasture had to be practically unbearable. She plugged her nose, her cheeks ballooning like a pufferfish as she kicked her legs midair in protest.

"Well, looks like that should hold yeh," Circe said, her face grim. "I take it mah cows 'r outta range by now. But yer power only lasts so long. Once Nausicaa comes too, she can take her little ghostie offa yeh…provided yeh tell us where mah goose done flew off to."

The Ghost Princess' face had started to turn blue. Tears stung her eyes.

"Aw, don't be such a drama queen. It ain't gonna suffocate yeh. It may stink, but you can still breathe."

A tiny ghost appeared in their captive's hand, and she snapped her fingers. The ghost detonated, lighting up the stink cloud like miniature sun. The explosion to follow sent both Nausicaa and Circe flying back into the fence around the cow pasture, smashing it and leaving both women dazed.

"You two think you can get away with treating me like this?" their attacker shrieked. The explosion apparently had no effect on her incorporeal form. "I told you, I am a Princess!"

Circe and her daughter stared up at her with wide eyes as she grew larger and larger, towering over them. The rays of the just setting sun shone through her, but the shock of seeing her transform suddenly into a giantess made her seem solid enough. Especially when she lifted one of her red leather boots up to overshadow them.

"I hope you think twice next time you try to pull a stunt like that! Holo-holo-holo-holo!" She lowered her foot, to all appearances completely crushing her opponents.

Perona lifted her foot and gazed in horror at her handiwork. Both Captain Circe and her stupid litter-litter daughter were out cold.

"Wait! I was just trying to psych you out!" she cried. "You weren't supposed to faint yet!"

She swore, shrinking back to her normal size.

"Wake up, you two! WAKE UP!" she whined, but she knew it was already too late. "Darn it! You ruined our plans, I hope you know! Now Zoro won't be able to make his dramatic, romantic entrance!"

She wrinkled her nose.

"Geez, what's wrong with the navy these days?"