OP C07 - Doctor Perry sets sail to save the world (or die trying)

Six months after Lope's operation, I finished my first of two rounds of teachings by Kureha on the snowy Sakura Kingdom island. The old woman held a wealth of knowledge so vast I could probably spend years with her and not tap into even half of her medical knowledge. But that wasn't necessary in the first place.

Apart from being a surgeon, I didn't want to do much else. Becoming a diagnostician or getting another specialty simply wasn't worth it, and my dream wasn't to find the cure to everything like Chopper. Handing over cold medicine to a patient with a cold if needed would be enough for me. Kureha had been quite glad when I showed her that I knew my limits and didn't want to branch out too much and earnestly started teaching me everything I needed to know for my chosen field as well as most 'medical common knowledge' she knew.

My proficiency in surgery earned me a few brownie points with the old witch. It wasn't enough to become a prodigy on Hogback's level, but thanks to the ridiculous physique's of the people in this world I could reliably reattach limbs even if they were ripped off by a shredder.

Dragon's recommendation was paramount to even getting my foot into the door with Kureha, but my ability to care for and even expand her medical garden was what won me her good graces first. She didn't share any actual secrets with me and I never pried. I would like to think she liked my character and my way with patients. A doctor's heart she called it.

My future ship that should land in less than an hour would be fully stocked with a secret garden department just below the deck. I more or less grabbed one of everything from the medicinal herb garden I grew for the witch when I went to the port this morning.

'The Green Fortune', my future ship, was a three mast galleon designed and built by Mayor Iceburg of Water 7 as a way to pay me back for what I did in Enies Lobby when I told the marines that the Galley-La Company men were not to be touched as they retreated so that most of his workers and Water 7 citizens raiding the marines returned home largely unscathed and without bounties. The ship was ordered by me in person to give as little information about my actual affiliation out as possible.

Somehow, the marines never did any investigation on who it was that called the marine HQ, or at least they never inquired with Iceburg or held him accountable for what happened. So good on him, and let's see if that stunt ever comes back to bite me in the ass.

From this day forward as I set to sea, Doctor Perry - an alias I created with my last lives name in it - would roam the seas as Kureha's student and heal the sick and the poor while secretly growing food and hunting criminals.

Doctor Perry had a fearsome bodyguard from the mythical Skypiea, 'Wine Goddess Raki', who recently became famous for revealing herself to be a logia fruit user thanks to my wine-wine fruit and catching a few pirates with around twenty to sixty million belli bounties. Her being absolutely gorgeous only increased her fame even more.

Robin and Dragon had accompanied me to Skypiea together with a few more revolutionaries who wanted to see if they could make a base out of the cloud-dwelling piece of...land? cloud? before I began my studies with Kureha.

I, personally, wanted to recruit three Skypieans but sadly only managed to recruit one: Raki. She had not yet opened that cafe with Conis who was my second recruitment target and was intrigued at the idea of fighting more tyrants and even more interested in the promise of power I gave her in the form of a devil fruit.

Since she never once wavered and merely questioned Wyper once that I was aware of and for good reason, too, I knew the Shandia warrior to be loyal from my canon knowledge - so far, it hadn't betrayed me.

Conis, however, was somewhere between adventurous, timid, and excitable. She would have been a great recipient for the cloud-cloud fruit - and not just because of her cloud fox pet. But the expert on dials who would have come in handy on the ship refused to leave Skypiea now that it was finally peaceful. I only learned later that she actually refused because she had a boyfriend she didn't want to leave behind, but even Raki who was one of her best friends didn't know his name.

Wyper gave me pretty much the same reasoning, though, from a different perspective. The man who would have gotten my rust-rust fruit denied my request to join me by telling me that he wanted to help keep the peace they had fought so long for.

In the end, I gave the cloud-cloud fruit to Lope, the mink I saved when Robin came to the RA HQ. His white polar bear mink fur always reminded me of clouds even before, but now the guy was simply an actual fluffball. Much to his annoyance and my amusement. Every girl he's ever met since eating the fruit wanted to touch his fluffy fur and the few who were allowed to never want to stop touching it.

My money-money fruit went to Marie, the nurse I rescued in Sabaody half a year ago. The poor woman turned out to be twice unlucky because we found out she was pregnant with Judy's child - something she would have to remember her fiance by forever. But she lost the baby in the first trimester, something not even Kureha could have prevented without being psychic.

Her devastation quickly turned to inconsolable anger and fury at the world, the world nobles, and the unfairness of it all. Something Koala, Belo Betty, and a few other empathetic members of the army thankfully were able to turn into more productive feelings before they turned even more destructive. It took quite a few long talks to get the caring nurse back into her original mindset of wanting to help people.

I had to promise her blood, though. It was a weird lifegoal by the standards of the general population of OnePiece, but she told me she refused to die before killing at least one Celestial Dragon.

I didn't quite know if that was just the grieving mother who lost her potential child talking, but we would cross the bridge when we get there. I certainly wanted to bash a few noble skulls in, too.

Oda really outdid himself when he made these villains. Kind of like the actor for Joffrey Lannister. He perfectly portrayed an absolutely revolting character that was just so easy to loathe.

In any case, Marie revealed that she grew up in a cartographer's shop in Sabaody. A shop her bratty younger brother was given by her parents when she chose to pursue a life as a nurse. Still, she was taught from a young age how to do the books and even had a little knowledge about navigation. It wouldn't be enough for the grandline, and she wasn't our navigator. But she did earn the job of treasurer - perfectly compatible with her new fruit.

Our actual navigator came from the unlikeliest of places: the middle of the desert in Alabasta. As a favor to one of the Revolutionary Army members, I grew three giant oasises filled with cactuses that would grow water fruits as well as regular fruit trees and sugar canes along the river.

I was happy to do it, too. Drum Island, nowadays better known as Sakura Kingdom, where I studied under Kureha, was super close anyway. I took me less than two days, and nobody even saw my fox form. No one except Hator.

The buff, tanned man with shades on and one of the squarest jaws I'd ever seen used to be part of the Rebel Army during Crocodile's shadow reign, and his father is a royal guard, though the two were no longer on speaking terms after what happened with the rebels as they stood on opposite sides. I was pretty sure I saw Hator somewhere before, but not in the anime of OnePiece.

The reason I decided to add him to my crew was that he somehow had access to observation haki without ever training in it. How else could he have seen me in my fox form when no ordinary man could? Well, it turned out he didn't have haki yet, and when he saw me, he was high out of his mind because he ate the wrong fruit from the wrong cactus, giving him illusions. Crazy that one of the many illusions turned out to be me as a fox.

At that point, I had seen his potential in navigation, however, which was at first only based on sandstorms in the desert. He proved to be a prodigy in it regardless of his low starting point. His loyalty was quite easily earned, too. The more food I grew in sand, the more his eyes started shining when he looked at me.

When people randomly started finding food every hundred meters along the rivers in Alabasta and the port towns became more lush green than sandy yellow a few weekends later, Hator practically swore to follow me for life. He got a crashcourse in navigation through my resources as a member of the RA and ate the rust-rust fruit.

Together, we were often seen training the basics of Hasshoken and spear arts with wooden spears - wooden, because they weren't affected by Hator's fruit as much as a weapon made of metal. And wood was the one abundant resource we would have on the ship.

Since Raki only posed as a bodyguard for us to appear non-threatening while being able to cash in bounties, she will also fill the role of chef on our ship. Her cooking was more than decent and Lope and I promised to help whenever she didn't feel like cooking all alone.

With that, we had me as captain, doctor, engineer, and shipwright until we found a substitute for the last two. We had Marie with the money-money fruit as treasurer, nurse, and substitute navigator in case Hator was indisposed. Raki with the wine-wine fruit fronted as 'guard'/main fighting force, chef, and sniper - she was a real all-rounder. Lope with the cloud-cloud fruit was the helmsman, liaison to the RA, and musician, though he only played a weird form of two-stringed banjo that quickly sounded old. And, finally, we have Hator with the rust-rust fruit as the navigator. He was okay with a rifle, so hopefully, Raki could shape him up to be a passable sniper soon in addition to his actual fighting style. Being good at many things meant you could become someone else in the eyes of others, after all.

Additionally to that, Dragon had a few more people I will come to lovingly call 'randoms' board the ship because sailing a three mast galleon with five people was nuts! They were sailors with no redeeming qualities and no ambition to grow stronger so I would leave them out of my strengthening routine after they were sufficiently strong as cannon fodder. At least Dragon assured me that there was no way a spy was among them, which I will take... under consideration.

Waiting in the freezing winds of Drum Island quickly got old. Just like Lope's banjo music. At least a few older women brought me warm soup or tea every once in a while because I was quite well known on this island after six months.

Thanks to me, many vegetables that grew in cold weather like a special breed of potato and a few different mushrooms were growing for the populace. With it, they could start rearing animals for furs and meat and get food without having to fear late shipments and price hiking as much. At least I indirectly helped grow mushrooms by spreading a moist moss called Fake Snow Moss in caves that kept these caves humid and warm enough for edible mushrooms to sprout.

Dalton, Sakura Kingdom's king, took only a month before he secretly named me honorary knight of his kingdom. Despite me trying my hardest not to become famous because I can grow food, Dalton didn't let off, so I reluctantly agreed on the condition that he named me knight for something else. He invented a story of me reattaching a toe he froze off if anyone from outside Sakura Kingdom would ever ask, and I honestly regretted asking him to invent something else.

When I finally saw her, The Green Fortune looked like any other... admittedly impressive, wooden galleon. Except for a slightly higher poop deck - the part of a ship whose name I shall forever find funny - at the stern or back of the ship that held the room for my garden above the captain's cabin, nothing about this boat was extraordinary. Nothing was, well, except for the namesake of the ship: three masts worth of sails in the same green color as my hair.

For its maiden voyage, my future crew had commandeered the ship without my help to Drum Island all the way from Water 7. Four named crew members together with Eenie, Meanie, Mike, and Moe.

Mike was the only name I was willing to learn from these guys in the short term, which was easy because 'Mike' was three people with the same name. Or to put it better yet, three of these six sailors were named Mike. Eenie, Meanie, Mike, Mike, Mike, and Moe. Meanie would have to legally change his name, too, because he had the craziest resting bitch face I had ever seen in my life. Eenie and Moe had different names originally, I assumed.

I wasn't yet sure if they or Dragon were pranking me with those three Mikes though. At least Mike #1 and #2 introduced themselves as able to cook so they would help Raki with cooking if she wanted it.

"Captain!"

"I asked you to call me Doctor Perry now," I chided as I used Moonwalk to land near the steering wheel on the quarter deck that was just in front of the poop deck.

"And I asked you to use anesthesia when you took that bullet out of me."

"Eat me, Lope," I answered as I held up a middle finger for the mink to see and I threw the few bags I carried near him to start looking at the beauty that was my new ship.

Since I already came on board, we had no need to dock at the winter island's port. Eenie, Meanie, 3 Mikes, and Moe were busy with Lope's commands for the sails, so I simply nodded to them in greeting, told them to carry on and walked the entirety of the upper decks out in the open until I reached the figurehead.

"What was Iceburg thinking?"

I looked at the figurehead for a few minutes until I shook my head and decided to discover everything that was below deck. There was no need for me to ponder why Iceburg thought it was a good idea to make the figurehead an octopus with a monocle and legs wrapped around the bow of the ship. It looked well made, amazingly so - but if this world had reddit, I would post a picture under r/ATBGE: Awful Taste But Great Execution.

I first started my tour below deck with the crew's quarters as I took a hatch at the front of the ship. All in all, I counted eighteen cabins, ten of which came with bunk beds able to hold three people. Meaning we could comfortably have a good forty people on the ship if we include the captain's quarters and the bed in the infirmary. We could hang up hammocks and increase that number to almost a hundred I was told, but that was for emergencies.

After the quarters came a big shared bathroom followed by a smaller second bathroom, likely for the ladies. I say likely because the smaller bathroom came with many more amenities and I didn't see Hator or the sailors winning a fight with Raki and Marie on who would get to use the bath with warm water and pale pink tiles.

After the bathrooms and a door, the hallway became a little more open, with better lighting, and it also looked a little more inviting. This was the infirmary I would treat the crew and my patients in later. It came with everything I would need, a consultation room with a surgery suite right next to it and a... wow, did this ship need a waiting room? Wasn't that what the deck or even just the port we docked at for?

While shaking my head I reached the last part of the first floor below deck: the kitchen. Raki was currently inside mixing a drink for herself. Personally, I would forever find it weird that she more or less drank herself when she made different booze with her fruit powers, but Raki was really into it without becoming a downright alcoholic. Well, the amount of drinks she would need to down before she became tipsy was unholy anyway.

"Ah, D! Didn't notice we reached Sakura Kingdom already. Fancy a drink?"

"Nah, I'm good Raki. The grannies at the port saw me waiting and kept bringing me wines and soups. I'm good for a while," I answered as I began strengthening her with my fruit powers since we hadn't seen each other in a while.

"Oh my. Barely boarded the ship and our captain is already molesting me. I should seek justice through Sis Marie," Raki quipped with a wink.

"How's the rest?" I asked, ignoring her joke because I knew she wouldn't stop anytime soon.

"Ahhn, captain!"

"Come on, Raki," I admonished as I pinched her ass to give her something to actually moan about.

She quickly slapped my hand away and shot me an annoyed look, "Hator was waiting on his spear buddy and should be in the mapping room next to your fancy new cabin. You must have seen Lope, and Marie is one floor under us taking stock of our inventory. For the fifth time. You should tell her to relax, D."

"I will. How's your haki training?"

"Sabo is a sadistic drill sergeant but a fearsome warrior. That staff of his really has a mind of its own. Even now my observation haki barely registers the damn thing, but it works well for anything else. My armament haki is still a little spotty, but it's getting there. Sabo said you can take care of the rest."

"Mhm, I will. Anything else I should know?"

"Hmm, Iceburg gave us a guest in the brig. He didn't say what for or who the lady is but he said you'd know. She barely eats anything and cries with every wave that hits the ship."

"Thanks, Raki. Glad to have you on board."

"Hehe, don't you know it," she answered with a wink as I turned away.

'Please don't be Kalifa. Please don't be Kalifa,' I whispered to myself as I made my way down the stairs to the next floor.

Once down another floor, or two below deck, I saw Marie holding up a leatherbound ledger as she counted every crate and barrel. Which, according to Raki, my nurse did for the fifth time since their departure from Water 7.

"Hey Marie, is everything alright here?"

"Dave~! So nice, we finally get to go to sea together," Marie answered me a wide smile and big hug. We've gotten quite close in these months since Sabaody.

"Yeah, I'm real glad, too. Finally we get to do things that matter. Now, you didn't answer before. How is everything?"

"Seems to be in order. We have food for another one and a half weeks if you eat as much as you usally do - not counting potential fish caught," Marie recounted as she leaned back to look at the ledger.

"Raki tells me you've been down here often. Are you nervous about anything? I've only seen you obsess over stuff like this when you're anxious."

"I... I am... Hator and Raki are so much stronger than me. If you accept that lady in the brig to be part of this ship, I don't think you'll need me for much..."

"Is that lady in the brig 'Kalifa'?"

Marie nodded, sadly drawing the wrong conclusion that since I even know her name she is so much more likely to get replaced.

"Then you have nothing to worry about. Kalifa is one of those Cipher Pol agents who abducted me that I told you about. I don't know why Iceburg would think I ever wanted to see her again."

"He hoped you would help her remove something entangling her organs. She looks quite pitiful..."

I shook my head, "That was by design. I let them live only because I grew those things inside them."

Marie gasped and held a hand before her mouth, "You did what?"

Ugh, as much as she wanted to bash the skull in of every noble once she talked herself into a rage, Marie abhorred torture. After I calmed down my nerves and settled my mood from getting thrown into this world a tortured prisoner, I realized I did, too. It was why I didn't want to see Kalifa.

I knew I'd feel bad, I knew that since I actually tortured her with pain for so long, I'd likely go easy on her. And I couldn't. I shouldn't. But now I felt like the bad guy. It gnawed at me whenever I was in my reoccurring lucid dreams where I could train my haki.

It was my mindset of four lives in the 'modern' world that made me so disdainful of slavery and this life that made it so I was okay with killing those who enslave others... but torture, especially for long time of roughly eight months since Enies Lobby, was a completely different wheelhouse. I felt horrible about it and I wish I had chosen to simply kill them instead.

"Well, I'll tell you now I wish I did something else. But I just broke free from a full week of physical torture and starvation done by Cipher Pol. I was a simple man growing food and trees for ships before," I argued as I moved away from Marie's concerned gaze. What she was most concerned about, I didn't know.

"In any case, you're not getting replaced. You're in this for the long run. Nobody will ever replace you as my nurse unless you say so."

I purposefully didn't move to the brig just yet and inspected the rest of my ship. Apart from storage, there were a few more things like a dining room, a small library/study, a gym with weights and a lab that Raki currently claimed as her own to experiment on booze.

Sadly, except for more storage in the hull one floor below this one there was nothing else except the brig and the rest on the upper decks on the stern of the ship.

Reluctantly, I moved to the room holding four small cells and I wondered what Iceburg's intentions were placing the woman here instead of the infirmary for example. To get me to pity her even more? To appease me by having her incarcerated instead of running free? I'm pretty sure Kalifa would not have hesitated for a moment if she was ordered to stick a dagger in his eyes, so I don't know where Iceburg's compassion for the woman came from.

Still, a pang of guilt rang through me as I saw what I had done to the woman. She was only skin and bones, her cheeks completely sunken. Raki had placed a meal close to her, but it looked like she only drank the soup. I did remember punching her in the gut to leave a splinter, so I likely did a number on her intestines and stomach and everything passing through there must hurt.

"Kalifa."

She didn't even lift her head and simply wimpered, "I'm sorry."

Swallowing down my guilt, I opened the cell door with the keys hanging near the entrance and used my fruit powers to make the brambled wood inside her soft like cotton and pulled it out of her. It looked painful, but Kalifa didn't even scream or just moan in pain. Silent tears were all she showed.

I made the bloodied twigs in my hand grow brittle and threw them out of the small wooden window in this brig. Then, I walked back to Kalifa's cell and used my powers to accelerate the healing and give her enough strength to at least move around and eat.

She fell asleep as I did so with tears streaming down her face. I could just kill her now, but I'd rather hear her out, at least for my own consciousness. So I closed the door to her cell, took the keys with me instead of leaving them there, and walked back up. I dodged Marie's questioning gaze because I didn't feel too good about myself and went past Raki, who threw me a bottle to drown my sorrow if I needed, she said.

Back on deck, I grabbed my bags, ignored Lope taunting me with something, and went to the garden to start growing medicinal herbs and a little food. Right at this moment, the garden smelled really nice. But eventually, I would need to place fish guts in the soil to give the soil back some nutrition, and that would need me to find something to mask the smell or endure it.

Once that was done, I went to my own quarters: the captain's cabin. It was big enough that it had windows looking to the back and either side of the ship, only the front was missing because on one side when you opened the door there was my own personal bathroom and on the other was a tailoring suite.

After placing my mom's tailoring tools in the suite, I placed the rest of my belongings in the cabinets and dressers and laid down on the bed to rest my head and guilty conscience.

It was comfortable, made with those tangible clouds from Skypiea, and gave me every excuse to just fall asleep. This was not the first voyage I wanted with my ship! Damn you, Iceburg!

Hator eventually broke me out of my musings by knocking and entering at the same time. No matter how often I told him, he just wouldn't stop with it and wait for me to tell him to enter.

"Doc P, I still need to know our destination," my ship's navigator asked.

"North Blue. We'll start by cleaning up Doflamingo's slave trade," I answered with a weary smile. We didn't even really start, and I was already mentally exhausted.

"Sure thing, any island we should start at?"

"Is Spider Miles close to our entry point into North Blue?"

"I'd have to check..."

"If it isn't, just get us to the first island in North Blue, and we'll get a lay of the land there."

"Got it, boss. We sparring today?"

"I.. yeah. There's something I want to test with Hasshoken. I think I got the hang of it, but, a little different from the original."

"Can't wait. I'm one floor below if you need me."

I waited until he left and sat on the edge of my bed and started thinking.

'A mythical zoan user with strengthening abilities. Three logia users and someone who can destroy every inferior quality metal weapon on the battlefield. Without going to the latter half of the grand line called New World, our group is pretty much impossible to stop. Unless we somehow get a bounty and get hunted down by people on the Vice Admiral level or somehow meet a Doflamingo level pirate on our way, this should be smooth sailing...'

Moments later, I joined Hator in his navigator's study, and we started sparring with just hand-to-hand combat. With my ideas for Hasshoken and the manual, I was able to create an entirely new effect - well, a blend between two effects already seen in OnePiece, really. It was much weaker than the Hasshoken shown by Sai in the Dressrosa arc and so so much weaker than armament haki's advanced technique internal destruction, but I could direct a vibrational energy through punches, elbow strikes and knee kicks. I was still working on regular kicks having the same effect.

In neither life before this one was I ever taught Muay Thai, but from the little I knew about the sport, I took some inspiration. In two of my lives, I took karate lessons as a kid, but they did not help much. Why would they? I'm pretty sure those people teaching me karate got their own lessons by watching Karate Kid. Only the two years of kickboxing I was forced to take in my life of the Aussie banker were of any help in this life's need for martial strength.

By strongly flexing my muscles 'in place' at the moment of impact, my hits did more damage than a regular punch and a lot of energy was sent into the body of my opponent instead of hurting skin and the upper muscle layer. It was very much a work in progress still, and simple punches with armament haki did just as much if not more damage. Poking someone with a spear was so much more lethal in the first place.

After Hator and I beat each other senseless, I used up a whole month of physical training to strengthen him. He would need a while to adjust to it, but I learned early on with my crew that the more I use it the strengthening on someone that's already strong, the more we would 'rubberband' in our levels. The more I dragged them up, the more I could benefit from using up my own strength.

Gaining my own strength back would no longer take the month I sacrificed but three weeks instead. The next time I sacrifice a month for Hator it would be two weeks and three days, then twelve days and so forth - all depending on how strong he is in relation to me and I benefitted greatly the more effort he put into training on his own.

I was quite sure there was an upper limit to it, but I did not yet come close to finding it. We were all much weaker than a marine admiral or heaven's forbid; a yonko. So I wasn't too worried about finding the limit yet.

As we both lay on the deck completely drenched in sweat from training in our fur lined coats because of the cold weather the ship was still in, Raki made her presence known by coughing into her hands.

"D, Hatty, food's ready. Come inside quickly, you know I hate the cold," she scolded us before walking back inside. I only turned to her as she closed the door and saw her wearing at least three coats.

"We really have a crew of sissies. I can't stand the cold, you definitely can't stand the cold, Marie always complains and steals at least one blanket from me when it snows, and then there's Raki who sleeps hugging her oven. Only Lope is fine. Look at him steering the ship in shorts. Fucking smug, furry polar bear mink cheating asshole."

"At least my excuse is that I was raised in a desert country, boss. I've never been in weather where you would even need a shirt on before you found me in that oasis."

"That's bullshit, the desert should be super cold in the nights," I argued weakly, still not feeling like standing up.

"Not if you have a good head on your shoulders and sleep somewhere close to water. You know, like a port city."

"You have a good head on your shoulders?"

Hator finally sat up and regarded me with a dumb smile, "Sure do. No way you'd have me trained as a navigator otherwise."

"At least you recognize the good will I put into our friendship," I sighed out as I slowly and labourously sat up myself. "Not like Lope over there. Watch me invite him for food and him telling me I'd better count his calories so I know the correct amount of anesthesia to administer if I need to put him under for surgery."

And Lope did just that, the furry asshole. I wanted to be annoyed with him, but in all honesty it was nice to have people around that you knew well like this. Real friends, in a world I felt was fake. Or where I was fake. Either or... or both.

The disconnect I had with my surroundings vanished during my training with Kureha, but it didn't stop me from thinking about it just yet. Me consciously holding everyone at arms length to not form too deep of a connection with anyone didn't help.

Though, I did still indulge myself. And at least one woman on this ship was happy about that. The same week I gave Raki her logia was the week the two and I got physical for the first time. She said it was to repay me - her people were a little more open in that regard, and we simply kept doing it whenever one of us felt like it.

We were far from boyfriend and girlfriend, we didn't even kiss once in the months we've shared a bed on weekends when I wasn't on Drum Island. To me it was a nice stress relief. But one driving factor that kept Raki coming back to my bed was that my powers of granting others strength worked better with my dick inside someone. I was sure there was at least one Eastern culture that called the penis the root of vitality or something, so maybe that was where this dual cultivation nonsense came from. But that was neither here nor there.