Summary: Kaya and Chopper to the rescue! Also various other bits and bobs.

  Chapter 57: Cleaning Up

  Kaya was sweating as she pulled back from her test effort at fixing someone affected by MIQ. Another success, she was pretty sure, at least as far as success could be measured with the solution she had found. She'd need to wait for the woman she'd been working on to wake up, to be truly sure. Physically, the virus she'd worked out with the Sick-Sick Fruit had done a good job turning the horrific merger of some sort of feline and a girl-next-door sort of beauty into a much more low-key mutation. A local woman that had apparently disappeared after signing on with the Fated Winds for work as a maid.

  Despite her best efforts, she and Chopper had quickly realized that there was no way to fully revert the victims to pure baseline human. The MIQ mutagen had somehow fused them with the animal traits at a genetic level, and there just wasn't enough of the original genetic code left to have any hope of a full reversion. Having given up quickly on that idea, Chopper had instead suggested a more radical approach that Kaya had quickly agreed might be their best option.

  Specifically, that they take a cue from the studies he and Kaya had been performing of the crew's various Zoan transformations. His own Human-Human fruit and how it affected him on a genetic level was the most important in this case, as it provided raw human genome data. More importantly, Chopper and his mentor had put a fair bit of time into studying it, and their efforts had only been farther refined once he showed Kaya their results after joining the crew. Her own specialty meant she'd been able to start filling in some bnks on the Spiritual Energy side, things the purely science driven pair had been rgely blind to. Not out of disbelief, but simple ck of expertise. Doctor Kureha had known Spirit Healers existed, but nothing about using it herself.

  After several days of intense efforts, pulling in Luffy and some local healers as well for some additional insight, Kaya had managed to create a virus with the Sick Sick Fruit that she only just barely understood. Luffy had called it a 'knock off CRISPR,' whatever the hell that meant. What it actually did, was go in and selectively modify DNA. On its own, that wouldn't be enough to undo the mutations. But combined with Spirit Healing and the utter bullshit that was the Sick-Sick Fruits ability to make 'diseases' that could alter physical forms, they'd bludgeoned together a working fix of sorts. A partial one, at least.

  They couldn't completely remove the spliced in animal traits from each person, but they could dial back the prominence of those traits to remove the negative and enhance the positive. The young woman she'd just finished on was a perfect case in point. The original, painfully crude, mutations had given the woman heavily muscled and cwed 'arms' and legs along with fangs and a warped jaw that had not done her any favors. No thumbs, poorly mutated joints, reduced intelligence with heightened aggression. It was pretty typical of the crude work the conspirator's 'doctors' and mutagen together had managed. The woman would have been in constant pain, not to mention having her lifespan dramatically shortened and her intelligence reduced to barely above that of an animal. A half-rabid animal, given the heightened aggression.

  Now, after Kaya's best efforts, the feline portions of her DNA had been shifted and moved. Her arms and legs now looked human, even if her entire muscuture had been modified to give her something like a quarter of a Zoan Fruit user's physical boosts. Her eyes were slitted, but back to their original color, and provided pretty good night sight. The biggest physical indicators overall were the fact her ears were now on top of her head, and were fluffy furry cat ears instead of human. Her hair had a bit of a furry feel to it as well, and she had a matching tail. The st one Kaya had tried to get rid of but hadn't quite succeeded. She'd at least been able to make it fully functional and useful for improved bance.

  Overall, the end physical result was actually quite attractive, in an exotic way. Which, along with the advantages, Kaya hoped would be enough to help the woman come to accept and adjust to them. She wouldn't be alone in making that adjustment, as this end result was pretty typical of what she'd managed so far. The features weren't all the same, but she'd managed to reduce overall animal characteristics to around 10-15% in all cases she'd processed, of which this woman was one of the st.

  Now, all that remained to be seen was how much her mind had suffered. That, unfortunately, varied a lot more from person to person. Kaya could restore their brain to a functional state, even a better state than their original most of the time. But the memories of what happened remained, and some people had been…damaged by it. In ways that she couldn't fix. Hopefully, the woman would be one of the good ones! She'd been a more recent capture, so Kaya thought there was a good chance! For now, she'd just close her eyes for a few minutes while waiting for the woman to wake.

  Just…for…a…few…minutes…

  She was out like a light by the time Usopp snuck in, five minutes ter, to put a bnket over her with a sad smile. He knew this was important to her, but he hated how hard she was pushing herself. It wasn't like the captain was going to force them to leave before they'd seen to everyone, after all.

  ... ...

  Luffy arched his back, reaching over his head to stretch and groaning at all the cracks that resulted. Channeling a bit of Spirit Energy to help align everything just right after abusing his body by staying far too still for far too long, he reached over a moment ter with a glowing hand to do the same for Pagaya. The older man blinked and straightened in surprise, seemingly only aware just how much stiffness and ache had built up once it was gone. He pulled back from the delicate work he'd been doing on the Dial instaltion a moment ter to stretch in a simir way to what Luffy had just done.

  "My joints thank you, Captain. Also, I think we're just about done here. A few more minutes and the alignment will be perfect. Then we can lock everything down and move onto the next set."

  Luffy snorted, then gestured at the sky.

  "After lunch on the next set, I think. I'm sure Sanji will come yell at us if we miss it again."

  The older man blinked, then turned to look at the sky himself, his expression turning sheepish as he realized how te in the morning it was. He nodded.

  "After lunch for the next set sounds good, Captain. I wouldn't want to miss one of Sanji's meals anyway."

  No one ever did, so that was fair. All the more so now, since he was experimenting with new recipes and ingredients from the Sky Isnds. Most of it they likely wouldn't get again for a long time, but some of the spices, at least, they would be able to store in rge amounts. A few of the herbs he'd discovered, Sanji had even badgered them into making growing terrariums for. Luffy had already been making some that could duplicate the conditions of the White White Sea, as there were a number of things he wanted to take with them back to the Blue Sea for study. As such, making another set that could host a few pnts that Sanji had discovered gave food some interesting properties was no major hardship.

  That was particurly true when one of those properties was boosted healing, which interested Luffy, Chopper, and Kaya all three. Add in the samples of the original IQ pnt, found in the form of flower seeds that had been smuggled out of Merveille, and there was more than a little easy justification of the terrariums for medical study as well. The original, untainted version of the IQ flower had some serious potential for far less horrible uses than MIQ, after all. Chopper was virtually certain it would be a powerful antidote, and Kaya thought it could be used to boost some of the more beneficial uses of her Devil Fruit.

  Shaking off those random thoughts, Luffy began cleaning up and racking tools while Pagaya bent back to finish up the st fine tuning touches of the Dial array that he and the local Dial engineers had been delighted to tackle. That group working for the Crystal Suns had been in R heaven for years, and had fully adjusted to the idea of making absurd things work. With that in mind, when it became clear it would take Chopper and Kaya a couple of weeks to process all of those who'd been mutated, Luffy had put a challenge to those engineers. How do you make a Dial array that could create Milky Roads at Blue Sea level?

  They, unlike Pagaya, had known for sure that the normal methods wouldn't work. As Luffy had half-expected, things like Isnd Cloud required specific conditions to exist. Conditions that didn't exist naturally below the White Sea. This meant that the standard Milky Road Dials wouldn't work either, which was much more annoying. Sure, being able to generate and sail 'up' a Milky Road might only be discount flight. But it was still a sort of flight, which could be seriously useful in a lot of ways.

  Not just for the Discovery, either. Long term trade between the Sky Isnds and Abasta wouldn't be viable if Vivi's fruit was always needed to make it work. The idea of Zeppelins was somewhat viable as a means to reach the White Sea, but chancy at best in the turbulence of the Grand Line. Being able to generate a Milky Road at will, though? Starting within the retive stability of a weather zone, such a Dial array would allow a ship to ascend to the White Sea mostly safely and go from there.

  So he'd presented the challenge, and the engineers had been gleeful to accept. Particurly since, if they could work it out, they could cut a deal with Abasta and Skypiea to get more directly in the loop on the trade happening between them. For a trade hub, that was tempting, particurly as getting access to metals and wood from the Blue Sea would allow them to build a viable fleet for the White Sea. A fleet rger than anything they'd ever had, even before things went downhill from Enel's actions. It was a real chance at greater prosperity than ever, and the city's pnners were all for it.

  The engineers were pretty sure they'd cracked the problem, too. Though the Discovery was going to become the testbed. Just as it was also going to become the testbed for some new crystalline metal hybrids that Luffy had tested to destruction and found to be exactly what he needed to farther reinforce the Discovery's structure, with the goal of eventually supporting flight. There was no way he was going to completely convert over to the new material without time to test it, let alone try to fly with it, but he was taking full advantage of the time here to coax the Discovery into threading some of the new material through the existing superstructure. He could keep an eye on it over time and, if it worked out as well as he thought it would, they could have Nojiko create more of it for the Discovery to use.

  The new material needed her Fruit to make it anyway, as he and the locals had worked together on the idea of having her perfectly align the atomic matrix of the crystal so that it supported itself in a way that was distinctly unnatural. It had stressed the hell out of her fine control, causing her to break through into being able to manipute more than just crystals, and only the locals' knowledge about crystalline structures had made it possible at all. The result though? A crystallized metal harder than diamond, without the brittleness that diamond brought with it. If it worked the way they were almost sure it would, it would make the future Discovery insanely tough. It also required quite a bit of effort on Nojiko's part to make even a small amount of it, though. Which was another reason he was only weaving bits of it through the ship as reinforcement at this point.

  Luffy was happy enough to take the time to improve the ship yet more, given this might be their st friendly port in quite some time. He had to admit he was getting a bit itchy to move on, though. He was more than a little concerned that they were coming up to the point where Ace might have been captured. He hoped that Ace being stronger, and Marco bringing reinforcements into the hunt for Bckbeard, would change the results. But he wanted to be somewhere to get news and make pns if it hadn't…

  ... ...

  Robin was finding the looks of admiration she was getting, as she wandered through the city, exploring its bookstores and asking elders about its history, very surreal. Lady Nora Isabule had announced to the whole city that her crew were heroes, having defeated a vile plot and brought back trade just for good measure. Since Robin had been part of the infiltration team, she'd even been mentioned by name and unexpectedly pointed out to the public during the speech.

  The result was that Robin was getting recognized…without any looks of fear or avarice. Well, not beyond a few looks of lust from quite a few men and a smaller number of women. But even there, it was honest appreciation rather than desire to conquer and keep. She couldn't remember the st time she'd seen almost entirely positivity leveled her way by any single group, let alone an entire isnd. Actually, she was virtually certain she'd never seen that, not on this scale, at least.

  Even as a child, she'd been unwanted. She didn't know why her mother had left her when she was just 2 years old, she'd never known who her father was, and her aunt had actively hated her. Just for good measure, possibly proving past lives existed and she'd kicked God's favorite puppy during one of hers, she'd gotten her Devil Fruit young. Its abilities, in one of the Blues where Devil Fruit weren't exactly common, had disturbed the isnders of Ohara. Only the archaeologists and researchers had ever treated her as one of theirs before, and that smallish group was massively different than having an entire isnd leveling what could only be called hero worship her way.

  That hadn't even happened at Skypiea, where they'd pyed forceful middlemen and peacemakers for two angry groups even after freeing both from Enel. Something that led to more than a few sour feelings from both sides. Here, there was virtually none of that hesitance, even from those that might have been aligned with the defunct Merchant Houses. Most such people had been unaware of what their bosses were up to and utterly horrified when it had all come out. Meaning even those unfortunates were generally positive about her having taken part in bringing the issue to light and dealing with the monsters involved. It was frankly a little uncomfortable, in most ways.

  Yet…

  Never before had she been so tempting to just…stay somewhere.

  If not for her growing fondness for the extremely odd crew of technically-pirates, two of whom had helped her take the rgest forward step toward her dream in years, she might have been overcome by the new found temptation. As it was, she found her steps taking her towards somewhere other than her usual haunts. The Captain…she had some idea of how she might want to thank him in the future. If she could convince their navigator it was a good idea. Which, given Nami's roaming eyes where Robin was involved, she thought was very possible. But as for the other? What, exactly, did one get a Princess to express both apologies and thanks? Vivi sharing the journal of her ancestor with Robin had been just as important as the information Luffy had provided and the actions he'd taken on her behalf.

  Hopefully, she could find something suitable. There did seem to be quite a lot of beauty to be found in The Crystal City. Maybe there was something that could at least capture a small portion of her gratitude…

  ... ... ... ... ...

  A/N 1: Halfway Broken makes a triumphant return after losing the patreon poll for February's update to Harry Potter: Pandora's box! Please remember that only two of my stories are locked into guaranteed updates every month (currently, My Hero Automata and Dispced Hero). The third release every month is voted on by patrons :-).

  A/N 2: Yes, Kaya made a catgirl. Also dog girls and other Kemonomimi. No, it doesn't really matter, but it amused me to make that the solution. One Piece is already such a glorious hodge-podge of Anime Tropes that it clearly needed Kemonomimi ;-).