"It smells really nice just from sniffing it, that grass stuff..."
The wary little cat hadn't been lured away by the suspicious bad woman Hancock, but Yimi was still utterly fixated on the catnip, gesturing with both hands as she described her encounter to Shakky and Rayleigh.
The two elders sat quietly before her, listening, their smiles thoroughly grandfatherly.
She might as well have been recounting a trip to paradise.
Unfortunately, Yimi's descriptive abilities were atrocious, so it sounded more like Hancock had suddenly gone into some kind of illicit trade.
"Hancock, hm? It has been quite a few years since I last saw her." Rayleigh stroked his beard and glanced toward the Marine warship that hadn't budged all day.
"She's not a bad person, really. If I recall correctly, she's a strong young woman who protects herself behind a sharp exterior."
"She gave me grass that makes you feel all floaty when you smell it." Yimi raised her hand to add.
"Catnip, I'd imagine? My bar used to stock something similar—for certain Mink customers." Shakky hugged her own shoulders, looking for all the world like a grandmother watching her granddaughter come home from a playdate too full of snacks to eat dinner.
"How come I never saw it?" The little cat tugged at her clothes.
If they'd had something this good, why hadn't they given it to the cat sooner?!
Shakky smiled thinly and lit a cigarette. "What are you talking about, little Yimi? My bar was destroyed by you and Akainu working together, remember?"
Yimi quickly looked the other way, pretending she hadn't heard.
Shakky pointed at the orange tabby Yimi had brought back. "Is that your catch of the day?"
"Meow!" The tabby yowled in protest.
Yimi hid the cat behind her. "This is my friend."
Big-big cats were truly terrifying creatures—they'd actually treat a small cat who hadn't grown into a big-big cat yet as prey.
"Is that so? How sweet of you." Shakky chuckled softly, ruffled Yimi's head, and held out a roasted rabbit. "Want some meat? Careful, it's hot."
"Yes."
"Eat up tonight. Tomorrow we start Haki training—you need to master Haki before you can fight an Emperor." Rayleigh was still trying to talk her into it.
"Mm..."
They'd said the bad woman wasn't actually bad, so tomorrow the cat would go find her again and stock up on that catnip stuff before heading back out to sea.
Rayleigh had spent nearly the entire day just rowing the boat. By the time they finished eating, night had naturally fallen.
Yimi had already slept for ages during the day, but they managed to coax her to sleep all the same.
Getting Yimi to sleep was actually quite simple. All you had to do was place a box of just the right size on the ground, and she'd voluntarily shift into cat form and curl up inside it. She'd be out within minutes.
Shakky reached in and gently stroked her fur. "This is so peaceful... I wish things could stay like this..."
"How could old folks like us ever chain down a young person's yearning for freedom?" Rayleigh scratched at his waist, only then remembering the booze was long gone.
"I was wondering which clueless Marine had set a fire in the forest trying to smoke me out. Turns out you lot snuck over here."
"Sister, the newspaper already said she's connected to Rayleigh..."
Right around then, Hancock arrived with her two sisters in tow.
One of her subordinate's cats had been carried off by Yimi, and the owner had been sniffling in front of Hancock nonstop. Finding it annoying, she'd come to reclaim the animal.
"We've been perfectly responsible with our campfire, thank you." Rayleigh countered with a grin.
Hancock strode toward them, glanced down at the wooden box blocking her path, and at the kitten curled up inside it.
Reflexively, she kicked it.
"..."
The next day.
Kick, kick, kick, kick—
The most troublesome thing about Amazon Lily? The Calm Belt surrounded it. The Kuja Pirates could come and go freely because their ship wasn't wind-powered—giant sea serpents towed it forward like horses pulling a carriage.
So for Vice Admiral Momonga, whose entire crew had been turned to stone, leaving him the sole survivor who'd resisted the charm by stabbing himself to stay lucid, getting out was next to impossible. He was subsisting on Sea Kings that drifted through the area, and once his fresh water ran out, he was as good as dead.
As mentioned earlier, Hancock did value her Warlord status to some degree, so after leaving Momonga to stew for a day to vent her frustration, she grudgingly came back to check on him.
"Impressive that you haven't died yet."
"With a war on the horizon, you think I'd die here?"
Kick, kick, kick, kick—
Momonga held his blade before him like Perseus raising his shield against Medusa.
But he gave Hancock no room to back down. "Did you come to silence me, or to answer the summons and keep your Warlord title?"
Hancock sneered. "Well, since you put it that way—sorry about this, but we're in the Calm Belt. If I did silence you completely, went back and told the Navy an accident happened and we never received your notice, there wouldn't be a shred of evidence, would there?"
The so-called most beautiful woman in the world, with her Devil Fruit's boost on top of that—the notion that she'd "be forgiven no matter what she did"—meant she barely considered consequences for certain things.
"You wouldn't dare."
Oh, she absolutely would.
Just as the tension reached a razor's edge, the two sisters who supported Hancock unconditionally looked distinctly uneasy.
Because throughout this entire standoff, a small child wearing a hat and hiding her tail had been standing right next to Hancock, rudely kicking at her calf over and over, stamping a row of shoe-prints onto her pale skin.
Kick, kick...
A grudge-holding cat.
"Would you knock it off and go play somewhere?!" Even Hancock, who always maintained her composure, couldn't help snapping at Yimi.
Momonga's gaze shifted to Yimi. His pupils contracted slightly. Hat or no hat, a vice admiral's keen eye wouldn't miss a figure this important.
"Perfume Femur!"
Noticing his micro-expression, Hancock abandoned diplomacy entirely and attacked outright, leaving zero room for negotiation.
When you thought about it, bringing the "Problem Child" aboard the ship for this meeting in the first place had already eliminated any possibility of negotiation, hadn't it?
What was done was done. The only option now was to cut off any loose ends.
"This just got a lot more complicated..." Sandersonia watched the two clash, hand to her forehead. "Then again, compared to going to war against Whitebeard, this is probably the safer option."
"Whitebeard?" Yimi latched onto the key word and craned her neck up at the odd-looking woman.
Whitebeard, one of the Four Emperors. The strongest man in the world. The Marines themselves had assessed his power as "capable of destroying the world." Wielder of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit, his strength was so immense he could punch cracks into the very fabric of space.
Even so—given the precedents she'd already set—none of that stopped the little cat from looking down on this so-called Whitebeard.
Was an Emperor coming to her?
Yimi tugged at Sandersonia's clothes, wanting to ask exactly what was going on.
But the fight on Hancock's end had already wrapped up. The stalwart Momonga, who stabbed himself the instant he sensed the onset of charm to stave off petrification through pain, had ultimately been unable to maintain focus and was knocked unconscious.
Dealing with a vice admiral who was already exhausted and self-wounded hadn't taken much effort, despite the man being genuinely formidable.
Yimi hurried over, resumed kicking Hancock's calf, and turned her head toward Sandersonia to ask: "Is Whitebeard coming?"
Multitasking.