meet the doc : Heat

[mekachu04]

Meet the Doc by Mekachu04

Additional Tags:

discussions of previous injuries Killer isn't with his crew becuase he's too hurt Kidd is being a little shit because of it Kamazo was an oiran for Orochi when he wasn't being used as an assassin based on his obi its more talked around here and not said outright but learning this is what sends ikkaku here to check on the women of the kidd pirates

and then the group at large when she realizes no one else has the kidd pirates are just happy to have a fellow pirate come to visit that doesn't want to screw them over or piss off thier captain they share a meal Post-Wano Arc

Summary:After the Raid on Onigashima, Ikkaku - Sole woman of the Heart Pirates - takes it upon herself to check on the other women that fought in the Raid. It was an olive branch most accepted. She's got one group left on her self-imposed list and she was not prepared.

By the time lunch had wound down, Heat had come to collect her to show off the 'clinic' they had set up for her to use. They'd repaired a table at some point; it looked like a breeze would knock it over, but it remained stable when she put her re-acquired notebook and tea cup on it. It was a low set one common to the island, but Kidd Pirates had rebuild the legs so it was at a height she'd be more accustomed to using, and some empty barrels fashioned with pillows for makeshift chairs. The rice paper screen walls that had been put back up had heavy blankets nailed over them the to reduce noise and to give more privacy. The same curtain effect was in place over the sliding door, which while made coming in to the room odd, worked well enough. The corner they'd picked out had a window on both outer walls to let in natural light and to provide a breeze to keep the room from getting too stuffy.

She's satisfied, Ikakku pulled the heavy curtain away. The door had not yet been side closed behind her, and there was a clear line forming. Sure, no one's standing at attention, but there's been a clear shift of bodies towards the door, and everyone's now lazing on her side of the open area.

She was expecting to have to fight to get anyone to come talk to her. She wasn't expecting... all of them. Heat was the first to step forward. The door slid closed behind him, blanket falling over the exit. He regarded her for a moment, features flat, before moving to sit on the second chair.

"Halo a-rithist, Dotair Ikkaku." he said unblinking.

"I don't know what that means." she said back just as deadpan. He smirked at her. Okay, this was more what she was expecting.

"Master Kidd said no one would talk to you unless everyone talked to you. So here I am, setting a good example and being seen talking to you."

"But you don't actually plan on talking to me, do you."

"Not at all." he agreed.

"I should have brought a deck of cards, we could have played Go Fish then."

He gave a dry laugh at that, like he was testing the sound out, "Best you didn't. While I know it's not the same, I'm afraid we're all done with card games for a while."

"Hawkins." Ikkaku guessed. Penguin, Shachi and Bepo had gotten captured after they'd all first come to Wano. Captain Law had saved them, but Penguin had confided in her later that Supernova Basil Hawkins had been the one to interrogate them. Apparently he'd been a bit braggadocious about doing the same other pirates; it hadn't taken long to figure out Hawkins was referring to the selling out the Kidd Pirates to Kaido.

"You can see why having you here has them on edge." Heat warned. The Heart pirates had gotten very lucky when it came to alliances. Cloine hadn't wanted to align with the Strawhats - he argued they'd be to weak to pull their weight. If they'd picked any of the other crews, she'd be sitting on Heat's side of the table. Betrayed, back-stabbed, sold out. There'd been four Supernovas crews on Wano before her alliance arrived. Three of them under Kaido's rule, with the last under his heel.

Heat was on edge because he cared about his crew, and Ikkaku was absolutely going to use it against him, even if it was to help them. "When you arrived on Wano," she need to know who'd been injured before that, but that was better saved for person to person, "I understand your captain was sent to one of the mining camps. Was that where everyone went, labour camps?"

"No. Master Killer's bounty was too high, they wanted to keep him closer. Wire and I too. We started in Orochi's prison at first, as hostages. Different lords came though and bought the crew though."

"Bought?"

"Hmmm. Oraochi made sure we saw the money pass hands. Liked to count it in front of us, before handing our people out. He'd promise the lords that all purchases would be well behaved, because they all knew we'd take the hits for any insubordination."

"Did you? Have to 'take the hit'."

"At first. I didn't mind. Rather us then them. They stopped being brought back after a while eventually."

"So those injuries wouldn't be recent," Ikkaku prompted, making a note on the page she'd started for Heat. He sat up, eyes narrowed as he tried to decipher her thoughts just based on pen strokes.

"No. All healed up just fine."

"Would you tell me if it was otherwise?"

He didn't say anything at first. It was clear he hadn't planned on it. "Healed well enough."

"If they haven't fully healed by now, they maybe healing incorrectly. The time to correct that would be now, or it might never heal right." she was careful to keep her tone neutral, unaccusatory. This was a judgment free zone, and she needed them to understand that.

"Well enough" he concluded, and Ikkaku frowned in disappointment, but said nothing. She did make a point to write that down on his page. He watched her with growing suspicion. She wasn't sure where he wanted to go from here, intent on staring at him in awkward silence until he felt his duty bound 'talk time' had passed.

He surprised them both with a question, "Can you fix Master Killer?"

"I can't talk about another patient without their explicit permission," she stated bluntly, holding up a hand to cut him off before she went on, "I also was not one of the people assigned to him, so I don't know anything anyway." Which was half true. She had not been one of the doctors Mr. Chopper had recruited to help. But she had heard rumors. She'd heard - quite loudly - the things not said. And if Orochi and his men had did what they implied they did, they'd did it to more than just Kidd's second, which is why Ikkaku had argued to come by in the first place.

Heat settled back on the barrel, "So I see," he said softly.

He was worried about his crew - she could understand that, "Captain is one of the best surgeons in the New World; He's more than qualified to fix the physical damage Mr. Killer sustained while in Wano." She toyed with her pen. She didn't want to give them false hope, but... "Captain worked with Caesar on Punk Hazard for a while, and while I know his intention was to destroy anything that Joker was involved with, he did see some of the process Caesar had regarding making SAD...."

The look Heat gave her indicated she lost him. While Caesar's weaponized gas was common knowledge in the underground weapons market by this point, his dealing with Joker and the Smile fruit wasn't so advertised. Her own Captain was involved in the the dismantling of it and she only knew the details third-hand via a sophisticated gossip mill on the Tang and her own private conversations with Miss Nami and Miss Robin. From the best timeline she'd been able to piece together, the Kidd Pirates were well into their captivity on Wano by that point, and news from outside was scarce enough. She doubted something like Joker's downfall at the hands of her Captain and Captain Strawhat would have been announced, especially not to the enslaved masses.

"It's... it's a compound that you grow normal fruit in, and it makes them SMILE fruit. Caesar was making SAD for Joker, who in turn had a growing operation in Dressrosa for the fruit itself. Then, Joker was selling the fruit to Kaido."

"Weapons." Heat realised, "Kaido had us making far more then he needed for his own people. I figured he must be selling them somewhere." He groaned, rubbing his forehead, "Captain liked to keep tabs on who was playing the market at any given point, and we assumed Joker had to be getting them somewhere else. I just didn't make the connection. We must have been making them for Joker. For the damn fruit." It was highly unlikely any of the weapons the Kidd pirates had been forced to make in the labour camps had been traded for the exact SMILE fruit Mr. Killer had been coerced into eating, but it was still an awful thing to ponder. From what Ikkaku had learned about Orochi - it would have been the kind of cruelty to expect from him.

She didn't want to leave the commander stewing in his own building guilt; it would do nothing to change things now, nor was it his or his crew's fault to being with. "Mr Chopper is a highly skilled pharmacologist, and he also had a chance to talk with and work along Caesar when he was in Strawhat's custody. If it is possible - and I don't actually know if it is - but if it is possible to counter, or mask, or even cure someone from the SMILE Fruit effect, Captain and Mr. Chopper will be Mr. Killer's best chance."

Heat gave her a soft nod of acknowledgement.

"I have a feeling..." she hazarded, "that this will be a popular question for me today."

"When one of your people don't come back right...." Heat looked so sad that she almost wanted to offer him a hug, "I'll talk to Captain, see what we can tell everyone so you don't have to answer it another 30 times. He and Wire will probably still want to hear it from you."

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tentatively not being updated because while i know where I want it to go, i don't have a good enough handle on the minor kidd pirates characters needed to get it there yet.