6 months since awakening, 3.5 weeks since the Drunk Pirates. Date: Feb 12th, 1522.
They were a week away from the reverse mountain and a peaceful time since.
Herbie had obliterated the pirate ship with ease, and they had even tested the range of the cannon, which was around 7 nautical miles, more than double the range of the average cannon; it might change in the Grand Line, but there was no way anyone was beating Herbie's fire rate unless you were called Vegapunk or The Thousand Sunny Go, who cheated with lasers and air cannons.
Fredric had chosen [Portal] and well... Dud and Fredric were pretty much untouchable; they had also practiced and experimented with it, becoming familiar in using it in battle, not that it has been needed so far.
They were also skipping islands and heading straight to the Reverse Mountain with plans to stop at Jump Town (the name did not do the massive city any justice considering it was the Logue town of North Blue), the last civilized island before the Reverse Mountain.
"That is the biggest snail I have seen." Said Dud as Herbie activated [Lesser Imp].
(beep)
"Do you think we should hail them?" asked Dud.
(A series of worried and scolding Beeps.)
"Yeah, you are right; I am going to infiltrate it alone," decided Dud.
(BEEP!)
"What's gotten Herbie so worked up?" asked Fredric as he entered the bridge to relieve Dud.
"I was going to infiltrate that," said Dud, pointing at the ship-sized snail visible on the horizon.
"Use a clone to do it," said Fredric as he sat behind the wheel, earning him reprimanding Beep.
"Don't worry, Herbie. No one will know I was there, and what's the worst that can happen?" asked Dud, setting up a narrative flag THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE AUTHOR AT ALL.
POIV [1]Shift.
Reiju Vinsmoke was having a ...day. It was one of those rare days she could be away from her heartless family. The power was nice; comfort was a priority, but being the 'evil guys' was honestly shit, and she wished they weren't, but semantics.
She hummed as she walked around the ship taking a break from the stuffy control room and making sure everything was functioning properly.
"Good morning, Reiju-sama," greeted one of the staff as they hurried past her carrying a mop and bucket. Reiju nodded in return and stopped and turned towards them.
"You stop." She called after the man.
"Yes?" asked the man as he turned to her
"Where are you going?" she asked, walking up to him.
"There is a leak in room 806L. It has been patched, but we still needed to clean," he informed her.
She stared at him for a moment and then ran to the room, and sure enough, the room had a patch that patched two holes, one that had burst a blood vessel and another one a few inches to the left. The troublesome thing was what was in the next room. It was a 'hidden' room that contained sensitive data related to one of their experiments that could not be allowed to come to light. She scowled.
"Initiate Protocol Pink Trap," she said to the tiny den den she had in her gauntlet.
"Affirmative," came the reply, and she started trying to build a metal path, trying to track an invisible intruder.
'Pink Trap' was or is a provisional name for contingency number 823. It is a plan in which the core personnel, i.e., non-clone personnel of the ship, slowly and nonchalantly lock themselves in airtight rooms while the ship slowly fills with a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that made the one breathing it in... 'high' is one way to put it; it lowered their caution and made them think nothing was wrong even as their skin started to form angry rashes that leaked blood, and then they fell unconscious and died of blood loss.
Thankfully, the clones were modified so the poison did not affect them, and Reiju just found the poison pleasant. Dud, on the other hand, was confused; he could not figure out why no one was answering him or reacting to his presence as he poked people, yelled loudly in their ears, knocked things off their hands, and generally made himself a nuisance.
Back on Herbie, Fredric looked at the captain as he cycled through depression, determination, and annoyance.
"You okay, Captain?" asked Fredric, making Dud concentrate here and clearing his mind a little.
"I think I need to concentrate on the infiltration. I am going to my room. Can you handle things here?" asked Dud as he left for his room, getting a shrug in response to his question.
Once he was in his room, he had a 'eureka' moment and deactivated [Imp] back on the giant snail ship. He was immediately jumped by the clone soldiers, which confused him, but he grinned as he handled them non-lethally and ran away laughing when more soldiers arrived and led them in a wild goose chase all over the ship when he was kicked through a wall into a mess hall by the eldest Vinsmoke.
"That hurt," said Dud as he rose from the rubble, his mind clear and heart racing from excitement.
"Who are you?" asked Reiju, frowning as the soldiers formed a perimeter around them.
"Are you the one that kicked me?" he asked her instead, his yellow eyes gaining a faint iridescent glow.
Reiju said nothing as she kicked him again; only Dud caught her and threw her into a table, shattering it.
Reiju's enhancement made it so that she wasn't that rattled, but that changed when Dud, still holding on to her ankle, tried to slam her into another table, but she activated the jets on her ankles, breaking at the apex of the swing, breaking away, and releasing a pink mist of poison that would have killed most people but reduced Dud to a coughing mess.
Reiju wasted no time and created a leather arrow of poison that she launched at Dud, killing his clone, or at least that was what was supposed to happen, but the moment the arrow reached Dud, something invisible cut the arrow out of the air, and Dud stood grinning and breathing in the poison mist like it was nothing.
"This scent is quite pleasant. If it wasn't so dangerous, I would have asked for a bottle," said Dud as he shook his arms and got into a stance.
"Attack," she commanded as Dud was swarmed by the soldiers who were at this point wearing masks that protected them from Reiju's poison. Dud dealt with them quite easily; [Divine Hand-to-Hand Combat] made it trivial to handle any number of enemies, and Silver Chariot took care of any projectiles like bullets.
Reiju watched as the last of her soldiers was disabled and thrown into one of the piles.
"That Huff was fun!" said Dud, catching his breath. Who knew taking on an army alone was so exhausting? Not Dud, apparently.
Dud had cuts on his arms and legs and shallow ones on his side where a few of the soldiers had gotten lucky, combined with the rashes from the poison. Before he adapted, he was soaked in his own blood.
Reiju walked closer and stopped just out of his reach as she released a special gas, one that wasn't really poison; it was eerily similar to the hormone that induced sleep and was very dangerous because, unlike the hormone, the body had no capabilities to neutralize this.
"You fought well, but this is the end for you," she said as Dud began swaying, the gas and his own exhaustion combined with blood loss making it very hard for him to stay awake.
"There are, *huff*, two things I want to say to you," said Dud as he fought to stay awake.
She raised her eyebrow curiously.
"Thanks for *Huff letting me experiment," which confused her. "*Huff and *Huff, you are coming with me!"
Reiju had no time to do anything as Dud exploded, and his blood spread in a dome, blinding her and hiding her from anyone watching.
90% of the blood cocooned her, keeping her encased and bound, while the rest kept her obscure as a portal formed and she was taken away as whatever remained of Duds' body dissolved into nothingness.
On Herbie.
Reiju immediately expelled poison from her raid suit, breaking the blood cocoon and destroying whatever was around her when a hand clamped on her shoulder and someone whispered something that was too quiet to make out, and she felt dread as strength left her body and something hit her on the head, knocking her out.
"Now what?" "What am I going to do with her?" Dud asked himself as he looked at the knocked-out princess in his arms.
A few minutes later.
Reiju woke up restrained, but she pretended to still be unconscious as she heard.
"You should really stop trying to recruit people by chasing them down and locking them up in the brig," said someone exasperated and annoyed.
"You have a point," said the voice of her kidnapper.
"On a serious note, next time you do something monumentally stupid like this, keep me in the loop. I can't do my job as the first mate if I don't know what's going on," said the first man as he left.
"Yeah, I know," said her kidnapper before addressing her. "You can stop pretending, you. I know you are awake."
Reiju opened her eyes to find herself restrained and in a hazmat suit. Her kidnapper looking pristine, much to her confusion.
"Introductions first. I am Dudda Shaughnessy; you can call me Dud." He introduced himself and waited for something, and she just looked at him.
"What's your name?" asked Dud after a few moments of awkward silence, which continued as she narrowed her eyes at him.
"You really don't know who I am?" she asked.
"All I know is you are someone important in Germa and have a moveset eerily similar to Poison Pink from the 'Adventures of Sora.' I can't believe that Germa is a real nation," said Dud, muttering the last part to himself.
"Does the name Vinsmoke mean anything to you?" she asked.
"No? This is the first time I have heard of it." Dud said with a shrug as someone banged the door once, and Dud left to talk with whoever made that sound, and when he came back, he had a confused/pained expression on his face.
"Are you Vinsmoke Reiju?" asked the ignorant explorer, receiving a deadpan in return.
"Excuse me for a moment." He said as he went out of view.
"HOLY SHIT! I KIDNAPPED A PRINCESS!" yelled Dud.
A harsh whispered discussion between Dud and the person outside, and Dud returned apologetic.
"So... if you promise not to bring the wrath of the entirety of Germa's resources on my ass, I can drop you off on the ship that I kidnapped you from?" offered/questioned Dud.
She just stared at him like he was some sort of strange animal, and he just nervously stared back.
"You are an idiot." She concluded.
"No one is denying that." He agreed.
"First get me out of these restraints and this ridiculous suit, and then we will talk." She demanded, and Dud stared at her for a moment and shrugged, and the restraints opened on themselves, and something unzipped the hazmat suit, and she wasted no time getting out of it.
She took a deep breath outside of that stuffy suit and looked at the nervous man in front of her.
"What was the thing about me offering me a position in the crew?" she asked, and a flicker of something iridescent passed in his eyes, which went unnoticed by the modified human.
"You will have to sign this first before I give you the pitch and the tour," said Dud as he gave her the non-disclosure contract and a pencil.
She read it, raised an eyebrow at Dud, and signed it with a shrug. A few hours later a battered Reiju stepped out of a purple and gold portal onto her snail ship, and another came out of a hot shower in her room on board Herbie.
[1] Person Of Interest View.