324 Saving the Mink Tribe

"*whistle* They did quite the number on those two didn't they?" Cherry said, catching sight of who she could only assume were Duke Dogstorm and Cat Viper.

The two were crucified side by side and showed all the signs of being tortured. The fact that they were still hanging on to life despite each missing a limb without proper treatment was a testament to their will and vitality.

"Release Pedro this instant!" A sword, crackling with electricity, pierced towards Cherry.

Cherry reached out and caught the sword at the tip, ignoring the electric current entirely as it raced into her hand. She thought, 'That's interesting. Her vital energy is naturally amplifying the static electricity generated by her fur?'

Pedro pulled himself to his feet, gratefully finding his footing much steadier than he expected. "It's okay, Wanda. She's helping us… she's going to help Duke Dogstorm and Cat Viper."

The dog woman, Wanda, widened her eyes in disbelief. Here she was barely standing, but Pedro who had fought just as hard as her was seemingly fine now? She felt herself get tugged off balance by her sword and the human woman's hand clapped down onto her shoulder. Before she could even put together what was happening with her dizzy mind, she felt a soothing warmth flood into her body.

"You can Pedro bring anyone who can be moved to me while I work on the big doggo and the scary kitty. They're gonna need more time and attention than the rest and they'll be too unwieldy to drag around whilst I help others." Cherry commanded before marching over to the wooden Xs that Duke Dogstorm and Cat Viper were strapped to.

Pedro and even Wanda didn't ask pointless questions and got to work doing as she said. They only had this small hope to cling to and they'd be damned if they were going to let go of it just because Cherry spoke rudely about their rulers.

Cherry first went to the big doggo since gravity was working against him much more than the scary kitty with his missing leg. Ripping a sleeve off of her robes, she tied off the stump and then used vital energy to forcibly constrict his leg muscles to reduce the blood loss to the absolute minimum.

After making sure he wasn't going to kick the bucket in the next minute or so, she immediately hopped over to the scary kitty and started working on his missing arm. With precision application of vital energy and her fusion fruit, she was able to more permanently end the blood loss from his stump arm until the real doctors showed up to do a proper clean up of the mess.

She returned to the big doggo and did the same for him. Once she was sure they were both beyond the point of dying before Chopper and Law came, she turned to the people that Pedro and Wanda were bringing to her and started tending to them.

It wasn't long before the noxious gas was swept over by a different gas that seemed to make the poison melt away and disappear. A few minutes after that, Law swapped into the square where they were and frowned at the sight of a big doggo and scary kitty. Wanda tensed, but relaxed as she noticed that neither Cherry nor Pedro were on guard against him.

"I need you to help me with these two, Cherry-ya." Law took charge immediately, and Cherry was happy to let him do so. She was no doctor and these situations were annoyingly stressful since it wasn't her own life on the line. Thankfully she had already worked with him a bit back in Dressrosa, so she settled into his work flow easily.

…

Three hours later. Ryunosuke's progress up the elephant: 31%.

"""Thank you for saving us!""" Pedro, Wanda, and a large number of mink prostrated themselves before them in gratitude.

The emergency surgeries on Duke Dogstorm and Cat Viper went very well with the combined efforts of two world class doctors and the miraculous abilities of Cherry. They were expected to make a full recovery in only a few days, though they neglected to mention that to the minks since the two doctors would prefer they get a bit more rest than the bare minimum. Even now they haven't woken up yet.

As for Caesar, while he did technically have medical experience, they weren't about to trust him to work on patients directly beyond administering antidotes for his own poison.

"There's no need to be so formal about it," Nami said shyly. "We helped because we wanted to, that's all."

The minks were instantly on their feet instead of doing the cliche of insisting on being overly respectful. Instead the minks rushed them and suddenly there were many "Garchuu~!"s as they showed off the unique way that minks displayed affection and gratitude.

"Damn it! Why am I only getting rubbed by men?!" Cherry wanted to issue a formal complaint to the manager.

Pedro, who was currently pressing his cheek against hers, explained, "We minks have very good instincts, and those instincts are telling the women that you'd get into big trouble if they gave you a garchuu. That's what Wanda told me earlier, anyways."

"Well, I suppose it could be worse…" Cherry looked over at Brook, who was currently surrounded solely by dog minks who were suspiciously salivating.

Since it was a cultural thing, and the mink men reminded her more of Chopper than human men, she just went with the flow and let them get it out of their system. Though she suspected that this would be a recurring event during their stay on Zou.

Still, though, why couldn't she cuddle with the cute animal girls?! What kind of trouble could she possibly get into for that?!

…

"Achoo!" Robin sneezed, then scrunched up her face. "I feel like Cherry is up to no good…"

…

"Let's have a feast for our saviors!" a lion mink, whose name was Shishilian and had a glorious beard announced with his sword raised high in the air. Cheers resounded.

At the same time, the elephant's trunk raised high in the sky and sprayed a tidal wave's worth of ocean water up into the air, which then fell back onto its back and washed over the mink country through aqueducts and natural grooves in the elephant's back.

"Perfect timing! Capture as many fish as you can, comrades!" Shishilian declared. Normally the fish harvest wasn't something that everyone in the country did, but today was a special occasion and they had run low on food after days of fighting against Kaido's Beast Pirates anyways.

"I hope that water doesn't wash the others out to sea to suffer a watery doom." Cherry said.

"Stop it!" Nami reprimanded her.

"I have to say it since Robin isn't here." Cherry defended herself, as if that was a perfectly normal excuse. "I hope that that stupid 'dragon' doesn't get erased by the water. They're probably near the top by now at least."

It did get erased, causing them to all fall back down to the Thousand Sunny. They were also nowhere near the top and now had to start all over again.