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Time off and free passage had been given to Kaku and Jericho on one proviso.
Flying through grey cloudy skies to warmer climes, a song about summer love played over the sound system. Jericho smiled and hummed along. There'd be no waiting in the winter for Kaku and her to enjoy a warm get away.
Not to say that the CP0 quarters were not tropical, but they were CP0 quarters. Kaku had giraffe running in his zoan genes and Jericho's were vulture, so warm climates suited them anyway. Gyps tenuirostris—the slender billed vulture—was mostly extinct in cooler areas and when it had been more populous, would have migrated to warmer regions in winter months.
She didn't like to think too much about the cold, anyway. Her bones ached with a dull North Blue chill like snow fluttering against window panes, but flashes of a man—her father she guessed—his hands full of manakeesh flatbread from the bakery, warmed her. Flashes of accompanying the fresh bread to the family table and all the kids rushing in and crowding round. Other women—maybe her mother, and aunts?— baked their own too, seasoned with ground spices, sesame seeds and olive oil.
Her mouth watered. She brushed her earrings, which helped ground her. That and the few bottle tops she kept in her pocket. Running her fingers along the serrations settled her heart, but the metal and shape had triggered the detector when they'd tried clearing security. Of course they'd had to empty their pockets and load their laptops into the trays, but they had CP0 clearance to fly in a specially allotted plane. Jericho thought security clearance was part of the deal. Or it would be if not for Kaku.
"Protocol is protocol," Kaku had said, giving the security guards a quick two-fingered salute and a warm smile. Jericho tamped her annoyance. As long as she got the bottle tops back, she could handle it.
"My granddad had a bunch of these on a stick," the guard who'd taken them from her said. He weighted the bottle tops on his palm, moving them like dice. "Monkey stick, it was." He slipped the tops into a Ziplock bag. "Banging away." Jericho and Kaku's luggage cleared the screening, and the smaller bags of S-Snake and Turquoise followed through. "Smashing it on the ground." He thumped the floor with an imaginary monkey stick. "Only bottle tops, but sounded right nice with Nana's bagpipes." He passed the Ziplock bag to her. "On the house," he smiled.
She'd thanked him, and had tipped them out once she'd walked around the corner, and slipped them back into her pocket. They were just bottle tops.
Kaku gave her a hard time. But it was just Kaku. They'd been stuck at security for a while. There were more things than just bottle tops to worry about. Turquoise, Guernica's little one, had followed Jericho through the security gates. S-Snake, joining them for a touch of R&R and, if Jericho knew Kaku , a bit of training, stood on the other side. Kaku was with the seraph.
Turquoise, Guernica's girl, was fine, but a handful. Only three, and missing both of her parents, a little kindness went a long way. One day Jericho might let her know that her father's corpse, at least, and his powers, had become a part of her as her devil fruit kicked into being in the aftermath of the battles on Onigashima. What an awakening, but Jericho was nothing if not a recycler.
Both Guernica's power and his body had been temporary passengers, and she could not make use of the power of his devil fruit. Great powers weakened her. Her people weren't known for aggression, but for their prosperity and resilience, art and culture, for warmth and openness and inventiveness, before hard times (pillaging pirates) brought them to their knees again and again. Jericho's hand crept to her ear again.
Curly-haired, black-eyed, Turquoise tugged at Jericho's trouser leg. The little girl had the longest, thickest eye-lashes. Better that an ally had buried her father than any of the Beast pirates or other non-government sources. Before CP0 had left Wano, humidity had layered the skies like a rain forest canopy as Ryokugyu approached. Guernica buried beneath a riot of green was another possible form of the life cycle, but Jericho was glad she'd been the one to eat his carcass. One of her own.
Working for Galley-La, she'd recycled and repurposed scrap metal and parts of graveyard vessels, a crucial role in the shipbuilding business. She'd met Kaku there, Rob Lucci, Blueno and the rest. Lucci had encouraged her to join CP0 and she had. Better to have some power against pirates than to let them decimate lands and people. Even if that power came in the people she knew rather than direct action. Her memory was dim on a lot of things.
But not on her devil fruit: Tori Tori no Mi (vulture model: Gyps tenuirostris). Another recycler. Like the sacred scarab beetle, the scavengers of the earth were the lynch-pin of biodiversity and survival for all species. It was a shame that Jericho hadn't known just what her devil fruit did until she'd stumbled across Guernica's body on a mission to collect the dead after the Onigashima battles. Grief and consumption. Fear. But there was little time for that.
The instincts of the fruit took over—you needed a strong mind as a zoan—to harness those urges before they harnessed you. She'd also had to eat Guernica before he turned into a shish taouk on the still smoking grounds. Raw was always best—necessary—for her to be able to digest whichever corpse CP0 and the World Government wanted her to disappear. In some cultures, a corpse that vultures avoided brought bad luck.
Jericho had no such agency, but if her devil fruit didn't work it didn't work. It usually did, but digestion didn't always do its job.
CP0 had let them have the jet on a proviso, and she didn't have time to get nervous, ushering the kids and Kaku through security, but she wasn't terribly strong, and the guns of the security guards set her on edge.
Government doctors had checked her over after she'd eaten a corpse the CP0 wanted removed from existence. Her fruit had to be entwined with Gypaetus barbatus too, because bones were no problem for her to ingest. However, there were a few disadvantages that her long-necked, slender-billed counterpart and her bearded counterpart did not have. Vultures usually ate carrion after bacteria had turned on the body, starting to break it down, creating toxins harmful to most living creatures. But vultures themselves carried high doses of flesh-eating and poisonous bacteria in their guts, enabling them to eat rotting bodies.
Jericho's tests came back positive and she carried even higher concentrations of anthrax and botulism-causing bacteria than vultures in the wild. Considering most of the bodies she disappeared were kept on ice, or were fresh kill after and during battle, she didn't have the benefit of time to soften the corpse, although an exit wound or shrapnel mutilation helped. Luckily, her zoan beak was strong. Her digestive system also had the elasticity of the bearded vulture and she could carry whole bones before breaking them down.
Her digestion process was advanced enough to even wipe out the DNA of the subjects she ate, although she hoped that she carried a little of Guernica that she could somehow impart to Turquoise one day. Ideally, in a way that wouldn't raise eyebrows. Vulture mothers regurgitated food for their young. Penguins did the same and never got flack. That's just how vultures did it. Jericho thought it was caring. But there was enough prejudice against mouse kins without her adding to their stigma. Plus, Turquoise might not be able to handle the acidity.
From the series of tests the doctors had run, the vomit her vulture-tendencies expelled also burnt through skin, bones and rubber (she had her eyes set on the last pirate to see Guernica alive). Kaku and she commissioned CP0 scientists to work on a special coating for their bathroom items. That acidic mess could be spat over three metres and, when startled, it wasn't unknown for Jericho to bring up and drop a recently eaten corpse's hand or foot as a deterrent to an enemy. If she'd been a fighter, an expelled femur would have made the perfect weapon. Hina often let her know how much of an asset she was to CP0.
Nonetheless, feeding Turquoise through regurgitation wouldn't go down well in the airport, setting aside the fact it would probably kill her. Fortunately, these toxic elements were limited to Jericho's work life and subsided an hour or two after she had devoured a body. What was carrion to vultures was a fresh or preserved corpse to Jericho.
S-Snake called out to Jericho from the other side of the security gates. She glanced over. Kaku was meant to be with her. Jericho bent down and picked up Turquoise.
S-Snake’s wings, wider than the width of the screening frame, caught on the edges, and the flames at her back caused the alarm light atop it to spin. She couldn’t get through. Seraphim could be a little hard to communicate with, depending on how Vegapunk had programmed them. Jericho spread her own wings and, turning around, demonstrated how to retract them. At a 1.72 metres tall, she had height on many humans, but CP0 and the pirates they came up against, and other elites and abnormalities, were insanely tall. Kaku had twenty centimetres on her, and they teased him for being short. She had to crane her neck to look up at him.
The span of Jericho's wings was more than her height, and feathers brushed the face of the guard who'd returned her bottle tops. Turquoise giggled at the soft brown, and clumped her hand into the downy white around Jericho's neck. She stayed in hybrid form. Not everyone was on board with vultures (although they soon would be).
Jericho tucked in her wings, and Kaku then turned into a giraffe. Hybrid form. It wasn't a competition, but she guessed it was the secret agent in him, and maybe he thought it was a show of solidarity.
The guards clapped.
"It's not a variety show," Jericho snapped. "Show her how to fold her wings, and ask her to dim her fire." Kaku instead tried walking through the security gate, boxy giraffe shoulders wide, neck tall. He held S-Snake's hand, wings still out and fire burning. The alarm intensified in colour. They'd soon have more attention than they needed.
Kaku as a top CP0 member had a security pass after all. He was so reluctant to ever use it, wanting to be the everyman for everyone. She loved him for it, but at times like these~.
Luckily, S-Snake was the brains in the outfit. Kaku hadn't emptied his pockets of his lanyard wallet (so would have held them up further). S-Snake fished it out while Kaku's boxy shoulders were bouncing off the edges of the screening gate. If the guards hadn't been doubled over with laughter, they probably would have pulled tasers on them. Kaku often clowned to put people at ease and maybe that's what he was doing. Turquoise laughed. Jericho ran a hand down her back, and a quick smile crossed her own face. Fool.
S-Snake was undoubtedly the smartest of all the seraphim. S-Flamingo thought he was, but he just had a loud mouth and a wide gait. S-Hawk had the cunning of a bird of prey, but S-Snake needed to use her wits. She pickpocketed the pass easily and passed it over to a guard.
The reaction was immediate. The airport was a navy facility, so the status of the passengers coming through should have been known, but CP0 were top secret for a reason. The guard who'd returned the bottle tops to Jericho paled, and she wished he hadn't. A side gate was opened for both hybrid Kaku and S-Snake. They slipped through and collected their bags, although Kaku had some trouble grabbing them in his zoan form.
"Change back."
"You too."
Kaku and Jericho returned to their usual height and form.
"Just something to cheer up the youngsters."
"They're all older than you."
As they wheeled their baggage away, Kaku smiled at the guards again.
Jericho taught S-Snake how to fold her wings, and dim that ever-burning fire at her back so that they could fly. Scorched seat policy would come out of their pay packets.
The skies cleared and, fittingly, another song about the change of seasons and love piped through the plane. This was one of Kaku's favourites. The aircraft was mostly theirs, except for a curtained off section at the back, filled with government agents. Jericho snuggled into Kaku. The girls, sleepy from cranberry biscuit treats, slept in a row of seats across the aisle from Kaku and Jericho.
Glasses tipped slightly down his nose to read, warm in his soft orange and purple hoodie (faded from line drying), Kaku folded one leg over the other. Jericho smiled at the fluffy rabbit slippers, a gift Turquoise had picked out. They wouldn't have much use for them when they landed, but comfortable footwear while flying was a must, even if it wasn't recommended. She wiggled her toes in a similar fluffy chicken pair.
Kaku leant forward, jostling Jericho. He picked up a coffee, planted a kiss on Jericho's head, then took a sip of his drink, and placed it back on the tray. He turned a page of Brag Men, and then slipped a finger under the necklace S-Snake had given him.
S-Shark had helped her pick it. If S-Snake was the smartest, S-Shark was next in line. Resilient too. He had good taste. Beads painted like pearls sat next to plain wooden ones, and were separated by brass spacers. Turquoise gems completed the look. It must've been fate. Guernica was still with them. Jericho inhaled the worn-in Kaku-scent of his hoodie, her eyes slowly closing.
A steward walked from the back of the plane and a hand gently shook her awake. "Sorry, Ma'm, but you're needed." He tipped his head towards the curtained-off area.
Free passage and time off had been given to Kaku and Jericho on one proviso. Jericho squeezed Kaku's arm and stood.