OP C08 - First stop: North Blue

Our first stop in North Blue was Deul Kingdom. The island was part of the World Government, so they paid Heavenly Tribute, and their huge port town had a big marine base on the same level of Loguetown on it.

When I had the randoms go out into the port to offer my free medical services to the poor and advertise that the fact that we only charged those who can afford it, I stayed on the ship and watched Kalifa with my observation haki.

The cell she was in had sea stone bars, so even with her soap-soap fruit, she wouldn't get out. She came to only three days after I removed the brambled splinter and had been eating and training in her cell with a lot of fervor.

My last interview with her was weird to the say least. She promised me on her life that she changed, that my torture gave her perspective and that she would do anything to redeem herself in my eyes - a desperate plea that had Iceburg put her on my ship after he nursed her for so long. The sentimental bastard.

I wanted to believe her, but in Enies Lobby I played her by pretending to be CP0 and I was sure she was smart enough to see through it by now, even if she was bound to a bed for so long. She was willing to clean the ship, even help with any chores we gave her... but could I really allow her to walk around on my ship? People would eventually recognize her, and even if they didn't... it would take one den-den mushi call when I wasn't paying attention, and I would be in big trouble. I wasn't strong enough yet to ignore it, so I left her in the brig.

Being a student of Drum Island in the grandline gave me a lot of clout in the eyes of ordinary people, so I quickly got my first patient. Poor sailors and fishermen with aching teeth, inflamed joints, or ingrown nails were among the most common cases. The number of rotten teeth I pulled that day with long wooden tongs exceeded everything I had thought possible. I decided to grow more of that plant that could temporarily replace a toothbrush when you chew it and hand them out to any 'customer' later on.

When I finally did my first real surgery among all the bad breath, and I had to endure that day, a small boy with a gunshot wound to the shoulder was brought in by his mother. She was dressed in rags and pleaded that she would sell herself as long as I helped her kid, but instead, I told her to use our bathroom and get a linen dress while I save her kid.

Some would argue that I was putting it on a little too thick in trying to cement my benelovent doctor persona, but I genuinely liked improving the lives of these people. And, making a simple linen dress from a bolt of fabric took me less than ten minutes. To top it all, it helped me relax.

After the first 'beggar', as I would like to put mildly, came to the ship, it was like a dam burst open. I abused Kalifa's wish to improve her image hard by preparing a few barrels of soap with her powers and allowed a bunch of them to take baths in my ship. Decent hygiene was the first step in good health, after all.

The simple dresses I had prepared were quickly gone, too, and it took Hator's menacing glare for people to not try taking more than one. And just like I imagined from a kingdom affiliated with the world government, they didn't like us helping the poor one bit. The monarchs of this world were really weird like that. Yet, sadly, for every peasant involved, might actually did make right in OnePiece.

If a mob could tear down your castle with torches made from dry branches and simple pitchforks, it made sense to appease the 'peasants'. If your chief security officer is six meters tall and has eaten a devil fruit that turns him into a fricking grizzly bear or lion the size of a small house, that concern suddenly is no longer as pressing.

As the security officer of the port argued with me that helping filth would tarnish my image as a respectable doctor, it took my entire willpower to not roll my eyes whenever the man finished another sentence. Though, he did finally reach the point in his argument where he pointed out that my services should be paid as much as they are worth - which was when I pointed out that I charge as much the patient thinks my care was worth to them.

That also stopped the noble in his tracks that had just tried to piss off without paying a single belli after his guards removed the other filth on the deck so that I could treat him in peace. I allowed that just to win this kind of argument. In my wording, the noble finally noticed the trap. If he paid as little as the peasants, that made him the same as the peasants.

He came here hoping he could scam me out of my services of removing a hurtful ingrown hair for free, yet paid more than the rest of my four hours of services earned me. A sum he paid with a look as if I made him the most sour lemonade in the world.

Well, if life gives you lemons...

After that exchange, the helpful port guards came back thirty minutes later 'to guard' my ship. Which pretty much meant they would block the poor from getting on my ship. Word had already gotten around about my competency, quick work, and clean work ethics - a scheme by that noble where they would pay as much as he had to safe face.

Nobles were really weird creatures. Every single one of them looked like they ate a bowl of shit, but not a single one told their friends about the price of my services. In the end, I made almost a million bellis just on this one island, making me wonder if there were only quacks here that nobody trusted, or if my treatment of minor inconveniences was really as groundbreaking.

Kureha didn't seem phased when I showed her what I did for minor things like ingrown hairs, but it looked like doctors of this world apparently handled stuff like that very inefficiently or not at all.

I even removed a splinter from a toe that looked like an overripe tomato where the doctor simply cut off the part of the splinter that poked outside and left the rest in. At that point, I no longer wondered why news of my services spread like a wildfire on that island.

When I finally closed the ship's practice at sunset, I took a nap while my crew defended the ship. The battles didn't take long - they weren't even really battles - as plenty of nobles sent their underground gangs and assassins to try and get their money back. Raki's fame apparently hadn't spread to North Blue yet, or she hadn't shown her face as much.

As the crew weeded out Deul Kingdom's underground forces en masse, it was a few hours past midnight, and I got up to take care of my second and third objective of coming to any island. Feeding the poor and looking for slaver rings.

As I stealthily planted fast growing vegetables at random places in and around the slums and left wooden tools for farming in places where my observation haki felt people, especially kids, I didn't find a single person snatching said kids.

So, good for this kingdom's security. They treated the untouchables with disdain, but at least they didn't sell them. The slums were also much less horrendous than the Grey Terminal in Goa Kingdom, where the nobles planned to burn up every beggar who dared to live in a pile of trash.

In the end, I learned about an illegal port on the island's other side that was mostly for... well, pirates. The world still believed me to be an honorable doctor who slept off his stressful day, while the nobles thought I was cowering below my bed as my guards defended my life. So they wouldn't know who it was that killed the group of bandits that had a few kids in cages.

The kids didn't know either because I killed those bandits as a fox with an antler and in the middle of the night. The bandits, too, simply vanished, leaving no trace of their whereabouts behind because I made them fertilizer for the forest they lived in while I left all the treasures for the kids. They would have to fend for themselves because I couldn't do it all for them - though yet again, I left them some food and wooden farming tools.

Of course, I would point the revolutionary army in this direction, but since this island belonged to the world government, it would be hard to get the kids off the island. Maybe I would rub a few braincells together to make a plan for that in the near future. It was a little unsatisfying to leave the job only half done. I taunted Akainu with Orphanage Island, which, to my knowledge, didn't exist. Yet.

Maybe I could create one with the money we will earn on our trip - not just from treatments but also from robbing those who tried to rob us and all the bounties Raki would turn in.

After that, we stayed in Deul Kingdom for another day, where some exciting piece of news was heard around the world. I still didn't hear much about what happened to Rayleigh after the shortened version of the Summit War, but finally one casualty of the prison break in Impel Down was confirmed: Whitebeard's crew found the Dog Dog fruit Model: Kyubi no Kitsune or Nine-tailed fox.

And since Ace, who found the fruit, already had a fruit, he gave it to his right-hand man: Masked Deuce. Which meant Blackbeard didn't have Catarina Devon in his crew.

Kaido, of course, made a big ruckus saying that since it was a mythical zoan, it should belong to his crew, but so far, no war broke out between the two emperors. If it did, the world would soon find out about Whitebeard's demise, I mused. Maybe Whitebeard will actually challenge his fellow emperor to go out with a bang, though I won't presume to know what a man of his power thinks.

When we finally left the island of Deul Kingdom, the nobles who participated in trying to rob us were gritting their teeth in anger and it wasn't hard to think that they would do more than just watch us leave the island in peace. With an information broker that was a front of the revolutionary army, Lope quickly learned from the HQ that the nobles of Deul Kingdom had given us a bounty on the black market since they couldn't openly give us one with the marines - I had after all healed quite a few minor wounds for the marines at the big base and created a stellar image in their minds.

Three islands in nine days later, 'Big News' Morgans contacted me through a reporter for an interview to tell my story: Doctor Perry healing the world.

I refused the interview if he didn't tone down the title, to which he agreed with a big laugh. It got me thinking that was either a test or I somehow fell into a trap.

When we reached the fourth island, my interview I conducted with a reporter stationed in North Blue who came flying to our ship on a news coo as if they knew where we were at all moments was finally printed.

It painted me as a traveling saint healing the weak and featured me as a man who brought good fortune - which tied in nicely with my ship's name. Everywhere I left, wooden tools turned up out of nowhere, and where there was previously none, food was suddenly found, which helped feed the poor. Nobody knew my devil fruit, and I denied all knowledge of these circumstances, so Morgans portrayed me as someone bringing good luck and health to the people.

If that article did have a good impact on the image of our comings and goings to islands, it was something we would have to find out on the next island. Because, when we reached the new island simply called Notice, we were greeted by a bunch of people with swords drawn and cannons pointed at us.

The people demanding our fortunes and our services for free under their discretion were oddly familiar until a man called Sarquiss demanded I sell Raki to him - which was such a weird question. Weren't they holding us at gun point to force me into slavery? Why pay me for one of my subordinates, then?

And then it hit me. These people were the Bellamy pirates but without their captain. I vaguely remember that when Bellamy was forced to join Doflamingo that the men left his crew behind, but it was never shown where those third rates went after that. Apparently, in this world, they went back home to become 'big shots' who survived the grand line.

To protect my image as a doctor who couldn't hurt a fly, Raki and Hator decimated the 'Sarquiss bandits', as I dubbed them, before I had to lift a finger. None of these clowns had a bounty, not even Bellamy's ex-right-hand, so I left them tied up at the port while feeding them the bare minimum during our stay.

The crew had a ship's doctor called Muret. She was quite the beauty with a cute mole under her left eye, coral colored hair, and the standard long-leg, small waist and big bust build most pretty women in this world had. Well, Muret tried everything from crying to pleading and begging all the way to seducing to get me to take her with us away from her 'horrible crew'.

Lope gave me a knowing look, Raki did, too, but I quickly refused the woman. No matter how good-looking she was or how good a doctor - I didn't need a woman of her character on my ship.

If she was truly serious, I gave her the mission of going to the island we were at last that was truly impoverished and to treat people there for free for a month. That would be roughly the time frame of us staying in North Blue so we could get her on our way to West Blue.

When we left islands, we usually left behind one of the crew members or sent them ahead to the next island or even ones we didn't visit - so far only Lope or Raki - to take care of any slave merchants in the area. It wouldn't do to take care of all of them the moment I was on the island after all. The ringleaders wouldn't take two attacks to connect my ship to the deaths of their subordinates.

Lope, who became a master at Moonwalk thanks to his fruit always came floating back to us with a technique he dubbed Cloudskating while Raki had a small one person boat that had two propulsion systems. A rare jet dial that was given to her and many other Shandia warriors by Gan Fall as thanks for her service to the people of Skypiea was the one she used most. The other was a prototype combustion engine that ran on high percentage alcohol I made from my last lives engineering knowledge.

The thing only had one gear because I hadn't yet figured out how to craft a working gearbox - I was more interested in material sciences last life so sue me - which meant the jet dial was much more effective for Raki to get back to us.

And both came back without fail so far. How did they find us without a navigator? Well, both had a piece of my vivre card - they even owned a piece of Marie's just to be on the safe side.

North Blue had relatively tame waters, so here the plan still made sense. In the unpredictable weather of the grand line, we would have to do something else. I won't send Raki on such a mission in her little motorized nutshell. It would capsize the minute a stiff wind blows in her direction.

After a month in North Blue, where we visited fourteen islands in total, my fame reached tremendous heights. 'Doctor Perry' appeared in every issue of the World Economy News Paper. Morgans, who by now had the number of my den-den mushi, excused my exposure by the need to report some uplifting news in these trying times - and so far, I never disappointed.

My altruistic approach and unquestionable medical expertise - as well as the good fortune I brought that reached mythical proportions - were being lauded by everyone they interviewed. Some nobles, of course, tried painting me in a bad light with rhetoric, but at this point in time, it didn't work out for them. Morgans was clever enough to print every word from those nobles but added a Q&A with me regarding the topics without fail.

For example, when a Duke of Deul Kingdom called my medical knowledge and kindness into question after 'praising me' because I refused to treat his son. In reality, I refused him because his son was a thirty something waste that abused his servants. The signs weren't lost on me.

Obviously, I worded my answer quite differently and instead explained that I was first and foremost a surgeon and didn't know how to treat the son's disease. I told him further that I hoped he would find a diagnostician soon that could help find a cure. Morgans pompously spun that as 'Doctor Perry' being extremely humble, and he further described me as having more integrity than any other doctor he ever interviewed.

Needless to say, I was starting to feel suspicious about how hard Morgans tried to make me the good guy and how much attention he gave me in the first place. I felt a fall-from-grace, hero-turned-villain news arc coming, but I didn't know how to shield myself against that since this world only had one real newspaper.

Morgans clearly had connections to the underworld. Were the few slave merchants we targetted already too much, and he got wind of our true purpose? Morgans didn't strike me as someone who had his hands... or wings in that kind of business.

As we reached Spider Miles, Doflamingo's old haunt and base of operations, we orchestrated the news of a Revolutionary Army ship being spotted near the island for the first time. It gave us ample opportunity to let loose and kill everyone working in the underground without fail - all we had to do was kill everyone without them reporting back our names, faces, or abilities.

That was plenty easy seeing that everything we did was overkill in one of the blues. Easy, until I found someone strong with my observation haki on my second day.

He came early in the morning to my ship wearing a baby's bonnet, a diaper, and he had a pacifier hanging from his neck. I quickly identified him as one of Doflamingo's officers: Senor Pink.

In his arms, he carried a freckled woman with shoulder-length orange hair. It was his wife who was left in a vegetative state for almost ten years after a landslide. Together with her just losing her baby, the woman seemingly gave up on life and responded to nothing except for Senor Pink making baby noises in that getup.

As I inspected Russian, that was the name of the woman, with all the tools I had at my disposal, I noticed that there was too much pressure on her brain. How someone could survive ten years in such a condition instead of simply dying was beyond me. Just from her atrophied muscles, I judged she wouldn't have long, though.

My observation haki told me where to drill to let out the excess fluids pressing on her grey matter, and I fixed the physical condition she was in. If that would help her wake up from her state, I didn't know.

Since Senor Pink was marked for death the moment I saw him on the ship, Russian would have to wake up to a dead husband and being truly alone anyway. So I let loose and used my powers to give the atrophied muscles of the woman a jump start that would allow her to walk around upright the moment she did wake up. I also left her in the surgical room and told Marie to move around her limbs to stretch her tendons.

Around midnight, when Senor Pink used his swim-swim devil fruit to sneak back into the ship to look for his wife, the officer of the Donquixote Pirates suddenly felt a haki clad spear pierce his throat. I looked at him with cold eyes as I lifted my presence cancelling and he desperately tried to get away, but I grew hooked thorns into his flesh, once more covered in haki to make sure he wouldn't swim away.

"Don't worry, your wife is in safe hands," I told him as his panic dimmed a little at my admission. "Your boss, however, will die in two years-time at most. I know all about Sugar. So Doflamingo's plans are bound to fail since Ceasar's SMILEs aren't completely ready yet. I even knew about Vergo, after all."

Pink's eyes widened immediately. He didn't recognize any of my abilities or my appearance, but he knew about the masked man who exposed the warlord's scheme at Marineford over half a year ago. Since I knew so many secrets, Senor pink, in the last moments of his life, recognized with regret that I might really be able to outplay Doflamingo.

"I hope you don't have too many members on ships tonight. I'd prefer if my crew manages to kill everyone tonight," I said, hoping to find any other information through his reaction. When I saw resignation, I knew the crew he used to come here to take care of his wife was all present on the island. I'd still scan the port to make sure nobody was guarding their ship.

Who knew? The Donquixote pirates dealt in devil fruits on the black market, so maybe Raki, Hator, or Lope find a few of common ones in the various bases on this island.

Or, well, it turned out I did. After tossing Senor Pink's corpse into the sea, my observation haki quickly found a single person stronger than most in North Blue guarding a ship that was clearly of higher quality than anything else in the port except for my Green Fortune. Or rather, the man guarded a chest on the ship.

He never saw fox-me sneaking up on him, and I killed him by growing a stake through his heart from the chair he was sitting on. For good measure, since this was the OnePiece world, I made the stake grow countless branches inside the man's body.

Taking all the money and the chest back to my ship while being unseen, I found myself to be the owner of two new devil fruits. I was given a devil fruit encyclopedia when I was with the RA, so I was able to identify them both. When I did, I contacted Dragon that he should send someone to pick up the Snake-Snake fruit Model: Black Viper and Bird-Bird fruit Model: Seagull.

And I had to call him again because Hator brought back a fruit of his own. Another zoan, this time around the Cat-Cat fruit Model: Ocelot.

Giving these fruits to the army served several purposes. For one, this attack could be linked to me if one of my crew members turned out to have the fruit. For another, my strongest and true crew already had devil fruits, and I didn't care much if Eenie, Meanie, 3 Mikes, or Moe had a devil fruit. Instead, if they found an RA member with the fruits, my cover with the reported RA ship in the vicinity would be even more solid.

I would consider holding onto a fruit I found on a pirate ship for a future crew member, for example, but if I truly needed something like a regular zoan, I could contact the RA. I wasn't the only one finding devil fruits, and paying forward three only a month into my mission meant I could likely choose whatever I wanted. And that was before talking about Sabo's mythical zoan that I provided.

After getting a full hang of his fruit, Sabo went on a mission to overthrow tyrannical monarchs well ahead of the original 'canon schedule'. And instead of his canon moniker, he was now crowned the Monkey King... by his own design. I called him when I read about it in the newspaper, telling him that he was undermining his own authority by calling himself a monkey, but he argued that it was easier to get into people's hearts with such a name. I stopped arguing, Sabo had the protagonist aura anyway.

Crazily enough, Sabo didn't need a ship to get from island to island anymore. When he came with me to recruit Raki in Skypiea, the moment he touched a cloud dial, the item changed just like his Ruyi Jingu Bang did after eating the fruit and from that moment forth the dial held a golden nimbus cloud he could ride... just like Son Goku and Sun Wukong.

I definitely didn't curse Adam that day when that fruit could have been mine!!! Nope, I didn't. Okay, I definitely did when Sabo told me he can go from Sabaody at the Redline to Whiskey Peak near the other side of the Redline in a little over a day on his cloud if he used up all his stamina which the cloud was linked to.

At least it was much slower when he took more people with him. I should have rolled a dice and made six different timelines. Abed from my last life would approve. And I would have the calming reassurance that I ate the fruit myself in one timeline... lifetime?

Spider Miles would wake up to a port town bathed in blood in a few hours, and I planned to show myself as a compassionate healer - something I had to prepare for. It was a bit psychotic and sociopathic since I was the reason so many people lost their lives, but I had no regrets. People selling other people forfeit their lives in the pursuit of their career choice.

The day started off with one of the lookouts being brought to me with a severed arm. An arm I managed to reattach thanks to OnePiece bullshit physiques, allowing an arm that was severed for more than two hours and lying around in dirt and warm weather to still be useable for surgery.

Letting him live with such an injury was by design, too. The man was a simple guard from what Hator had gathered, and we would need to be seen healing people in a grand gesture. What followed were me stitching up a bunch of wounds that split open from heavy hits to the head and giving out medicine for concussions and telling the people to take it easy for a few days.

When we left toward Empty Bowl island, where we would either find Muret or wouldn't, we were intercepted by a floating kingdom I kinda wished we wouldn't see. Germa 66.

A man with a golden horned helmet, a giant mustard colored mane, and two pointy mustache hairs greeted me to 'politely' invite me to his kingdom for a chat.

Welp, if they do have bad intentions, I'll just have to shake off all pretense and show the extent of our powers, I mused. They should be enough to flee if my three logia users and Hator and I catch them off-guard.

"You don't seem intimidated by us," the giant gruffly said as he led me down a hallway leading to his throne room.

"Should I be?"

"You appear in that accursed paper for weeks. Surely, you have seen 'Sora, Warrior of the Sea' by now?"

"Ah! You think I would recognize you guys as the villains of that comic and shit myself? Eh, I don't believe everything I read. There's no way Morgans presents everything as truthfully as my own story. The World Government would never let him."

The Vinsmoke patriarch regarded me for a while with narrowed eyes, "Critical thinking. That's rare. So you aren't a lapdop, planted by Cipher Pol to make good press?"

"Nope. Why are you asking? Are you guys secretly revolutionary army members and want to recruit me? I'll tell you the same thing as the marines I helped in Deul Kingdom: no thanks, I'd rather be free and help whoever I choose to help."

Vinsmoke Judge only 'hmm'ed in response until we met Sanji's three brothers who were leering at Raki's form since she was only wearing a form-fitting dress I made her that had a very deep neckline and a cut on the side exposing her legs with every step.

"So despite us being free agents with no ties to any higher faction, we would be unable to recruit you into our fold? My kingdom's laboratories could use a surgeon of your caliber."

"Yeah! And you already have half of the necessary tattoo done!"

I turned to Ichiji, Judge's oldest son and the red-haired brother of Sanji. He pointed to the side of his neck, and I knew what he was talking about.

Call me superstitious, but six was my favorite number. This was my sixth life. And I chose the sixth fruit when I opened Adam's gift. So I got a singular six tattooed on my collar bone. It wasn't normally seen when I was in my Doctor Perry persona because I wore turtleneck scrubs while in the infirmary, but right at this moment, they caught me relaxing on my ship.

At least they couldn't see the Whitebeard mark over my heart. That might complicate things. As I pondered how forceful Judge would be while trying to recruit me and as I watched his macabre paintings of the man standing over groveling monarchs, I realized he didn't really need me. 'A surgeon of my caliber'? Yeah, right. Like Germa 66 lacked something like that. Except for knowing Kureha, I showed no interest or even just knowledge in research, especially into fields related to the lineage factor or cloning. The fields he would be most interested in.

"No, sorry. I simply wish to treat patients."

I saw Reiju looking relieved from the corner of my eye, but I didn't know why. Judge obviously didn't care about my refusal either and turned to Raki. Ah, so that was what was up. It made sense. They discovered a logia fruit user who worked as a mere body guard to an upstart good samaritan. To top it all off, she was clearly from a race Judge never worked on before: the 'mythical' Shandians - distant relatives of the only Lunarian he ever worked on: King from Kaido's crew.

"Lady Raki. What about you?" Judge asked, clearly unbothered of possibly offending me. "I wish to employ you as a commander of my vast armies. If it's money you are after, I could drown you in belli."

For a moment, I thought about what Raki might do. After all, she already had the devil fruit and could clearly bank on me having to flee with the rest of the crew if the Germa 66 soldiers started attacking me.

"Sorry to disappoint your highness," Raki answered and stepped closer to me. "But the doc doesn't pay me in money."

She whispered the last part in a sultry voice barely loud enough for the royals to hear and caught me off-guard by licking my ear in front of the astonished Judge, slightly blushing Reiju and... angry? brother trio. It was hard to gauge their emotions because they didn't have any, technically. Why did they look like aggrieved, scorned lovers, then? I knew they still tried wooing pretty women as a sort of game, but this was too much!

Eventually, Judge gained a stony expression and looked like he gathered his thoughts. He simply said, "I see. Can I at least convince you to sell me a vial of your precious blood? I never had the pleasure of studying someone from your race, after all."

Raki looked to me, and I simply shrugged. I'd prefer if she did sell him a vial even if she didn't need the money strictly. It would increase the odds of us leaving Germa 66 with our covers intact. Yet, it was her body, and I won't force her to do what I wanted. Sure, the world might gain good-looking Shandia women clones because of my nonchalance, but I honestly didn't care much about that. I was fighting different issues in this world.

"Sure, let it be a gift so that you may find the key to bridge the gap between our races. I yearn for a world where we are all equals," Raki grandly offered with a smile so benelovent I thought she was switched with a different person for a moment.

We were allowed to leave after Raki filled a pint with her blood and another with wine made from her powers as a well-meaning gesture. Still, Germa 66 had deep ties to the underworld. They must have been aware of the bounty the various nobles from the first islands put on our heads so their actions left me baffled.

By this time, my head reached a bounty of fifteen million from the stingy nobles. So maybe Judge simply deemed the measly sum as too low. And catching Raki alive for a king who wanted her to be his concubine for ten million belli didn't seem worth it to Judge either.

I wondered if I would find the ship to be empty when we reached the Green Fortune, though. After all, Marie was worth quite the sum, too. Several young princes and sons of nobles wanted the nurse as their lover or simply plaything. Obviously, a bounty hunter could only satisfy one person's bounty of bringing her alive to the employer, but if you summed up every black market bounty on Marie's head, she was actually worth over a hundred million belli.