Chapter 182: Biggest Fan
Popeye crushed a can of spinach, squeezing the contents into his open mouth.
"Popeye is pulling out his patented 'Spinach Rush' move! As you know, Popeye ate the Punch Punch fruit and became a punching man! What a treat for us, ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer cried out.
*BOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBONG!!!*
Popeye hammered away at the barrier with wild abandon, each punch stronger than the last.
Bartolomeo paid no attention to the ruckus going on behind him and he didn't really need to as the barrier was holding strong.
"R- R- R- R- R- Robin Nee-can?! And C- C- C- C- C- Cabernet Nee-san too?!" Bartolomeo was freaking out.
His eyes landed on Perona. She perked up a little bit waiting for his star struck reaction.
"Who?" Bartolomeo didn't remember this one.
"Screw you!" Perona roared in outrage.
Bartolomeo scanned the crowd in search of the other member of the greatest pirate crew in the whole world.
Whilst he frantically searched for his heroes, he felt something clamp down on his ankle.
"Hm?" Bartolomeo hummed.
The little old lady who had rung the start bell too early had put what looked like some sort of shackle on his leg. He was sure he had seen this exact shackle design from somewhere.
He understood when the weakness came. He toppled over, unable to bear his body weight on his own legs. Worse still, his barrier faded away, giving his three opponents free access to his now helpless self. It was a pair of standard issue marine sea stone cuffs.
*Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam!!!*
Bartolomeo was pummeled into the floor of the boxing ring before his crew could even move a muscle.
"Save the captain!" One of his crew shouted from the audience.
Then the other audience members around them pulled out hidden weapons and they found themselves surrounded. In addition, the three Sweethaven champions turned their eyes away from the unconscious Bartolomeo to them.
"Scatter!" The pirate changed his tune quickly and wisely decided they should flee first and save their captain later.
The audience member sitting in front of Cherry suddenly stood and whipped around holding a bazooka. He fired it within point blank range seemingly without any sense of self preservation.
However, it wasn't an explosive projectile that flew from its muzzle, but an expanding sea stone net.
Cherry made no moves to resist and allowed the net to fall onto her.
"Haunted House Party!" Perona shouted as hollows erupted from her body and sent all the nearby audience members into deep depressions.
"Grab that foul mouthed fool and escape while I hold off those three." Cherry said.
Robin bloomed hands to grab Bartolomeo, careful not to touch the sea stone cuffs, and threw him into the air. Cabernet swooped over the heads of the audience and caught him before flying straight up through the glass skylight.
Perona cleared a path through the audience with her hollows that she and Robin used to escape.
"Don't let them get away! They're worth more than a billion Beri together and I'll take every Beri we lose out of your hides!" Olive Oyl shouted from the VIP box.
Bluto in his half pig form and Popeye charged towards the escaping Robin and Perona whilst Oxblood went over to grab Cherry.
*CRUNCH!!!*
Oxblood was taken completely off guard as Cherry unexpectedly slammed her fist into his chest and crushed his ribs.
"H-how? The sea stone…?" He managed to ask in confusion.
"I guess you got scammed. I don't feel weak at all?" Cherry said, tossing the net aside.
That was nonsense of course. The sea's curse was only an inconvenience to her with body puppeteering.
She vanished and reappeared in the path of Bluto and Popeye, catching them by surprise.
Even being surprised they recovered instantly and launched a coordinated attack against her. They might hate each other's guts, but after working together as bounty hunters for well over a decade, their teamwork was excellent.
Cherry met their boxing gloved punches with her own fists. Bluto was knocked backwards from the collision, but she was shocked to find that Popeye's punch, despite not being as strong as her own punch, still carried forward and sent her flying away.
Cherry landed on her feet and wondered if that was the effect of the Punch Punch Fruit.
"My mama raised me not to hit a lady, but you're a pirate before you're a lady so don't expect no quarter from me." Popeye spoke.
"Let's dance, sailor boy!" Cherry was excited to study his devil fruit and perhaps fight a tricky foe.
Cherry didn't draw any weapons. Sometimes it was fun to fight an opponent on their own playing field.
She charged him and he raised his arm in a defensive stance.
When she thrust her fist towards him, he didn't block. Rather he sent out a straight punch to meet her attack once again.
Cherry covered her fist with the maximum amount of hardening she was able with Armament Haki.
Still, she was the one who was sent flying whilst Popeye held his ground.
She wasted no time in throwing herself at him once more.
Next she added Hasshoken into the mix. Popeye grunted in pain, but Cherry was still sent flying.
Cherry was getting a bit over excited and started to feed vital energy into her haki.
Their fists met and Cherry was still sent flying away, but this time Popeye's arm was ripped apart in the aftermath.
"Oops." Cherry broke out of her battle lust.
To Popeye's credit, he didn't scream in pain. He grunted and clenched his teeth, or rather clenched his gums. Then he raised his good arm and prepared to fight again, even as the other hung uselessly by his side.
*Boom Boom Boom*
Three bazookas fired sea stone nets at her. However, Cherry had gotten what she wanted so she ran away, easily evading the nets.
Bluto had decided not to intervene with Cherry and Popeye's fight and caught as many of members of the Barto Club crew that he could.
…
"Wake up, Bartolomeo-kun." A sweet voice like an angel spoke.
"What? Who's there?" Bartolomeo muttered and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
He realized his head was on Robin's lap like a pillow.
"Hey there, sleep head." She spoke gently and giggled.
"R- R- R- R- R- Robin Nee-san?!" Bartolomeo looked around and found Cherry Nee-san and Cabernet Nee-san too.
"Not just us, Bartolomeo-kun. The whole crew is here. Luffy has something important to ask you." Cherry Nee-san whispered in his ear.
Luffy-senpai walked into sight with the rest of the legendary crew following closely behind. His figure was the perfect blend of manliness and gentleness, with sparkling anime eyes.
"Bartolomeo-kun, I want you to be my first mate. No! I need you to be my first mate!" Luffy-senpai said, holding Bartolomeo's hands in his.
"W-what about Zoro-senpai?!" Bartolomeo asked, not wanting to step on any toes.
"Don't worry, Bartolomeo-kun. We all decided unanimously that you were the best for the job!" Zoro-senpai gave him a wink and a thumbs up.
*SLAP*
"What the hell are you muttering about?" Cherry asked, desperately fighting off the smile trying to appear on her face with a stern frown.
"Huh?!" Bartolomeo woke up from the same dream he had almost every night in confusion.
Looking around he noticed he was in a cave of some sort.
"Since we saved your life you're going to give us all your treasure, yeah?" Cherry extorted shamelessly.
"Sure! I-I'm your biggest fan!" Bartolomeo answered instantly and eagerly, though it did hurt his heart a bit to lose all his money.
"Fufufu. It seems that I win, Cherry." Robin said.
"Tsk." Cherry clicked her tongue.
Cherry and Robin had made a bet on whether Bartolomeo would willingly hand over his treasure. Cherry lost that one, but maybe she could win the second bet.
"Your crew was caught by the locals." Cherry said grimly.
Bartolomeo's face sank, the news spoiling his delight of being in the presence of his heroes.
"You could go save them, or… you could come with us?" Cherry tempted him.
Chapter 183: Hamster or Rooster
Bartolomeo was faced with a dilemma the likes of which no man has ever faced before in the history of the world, both known and unknown. At least it felt like that to him.
He was invited to join the greatest pirate crew in the world!
Only, his own crew who he had come all this way with were now in the hands of bounty hunters.
Could he abandon them to make his dream come true?
'What would Luffy-senpai do?' Bartolomeo asked himself.
That was a stupid question and he knew it. Luffy had declared war on the world government for a single member of his crew. He had charged into Impel Down, renowned as an inescapable prison, to rescue his brother. He then followed his brother in Marineford where he fought against the strongest powerhouses of the marines.
"I can't. I need to save my crew!" Bartolomeo choked out his refusal, feeling as if the words burned his mouth and throat as they came out.
Robin's smile widened as she won the second bet she made with Cherry.
Cherry grumbled under her breath. She had lost not just one, but two "Do anything I say" type favors from those two bets. With Robin, it was impossible to know whether she'd enjoy those favors or not.
Cherry noticed that Bartolomeo had tears streaming down his determined face.
"Ugh, stop crying. I was testing you, stupid. Congratulations on passing." Cherry said.
"Huh? You were testing me? And I passed?" Bartolomeo was shocked, then excited. "I see! If I abandoned my comrades I wouldn't deserve to be first mate of the Straw Hat pirates!"
"Oh, we're not inviting you to join for real. That's Luffy's prerogative. I guess if it ever comes up in the future I can put in a good word, though." Cherry said.
"Yes, of course! I was getting ahead of myself!" Bartolomeo accepted easily. "Um, can you take off these sea stone cuffs so that I can save my crew?"
They hadn't taken the sea stone cuffs off of him just in case he was dangerous. After seeing how tough his barriers were, Cherry was wary of him as she wasn't sure she could break them either.
She came to that conclusion from her experiments with Popeye's Punch Punch Fruit.
The devil fruit seemed to make his punching attacks into a pseudo unstoppable force. Even though the punches weren't that strong by Cherry's standards they just kept plowing straight through whatever they hit, including an all out attack.
From that she discerned that Bartolomeo's barriers were like an immovable object, and of superior quality to the Punch Punch Fruit's unstoppable force.
Cherry grasped the sea stone cuffs with her hands and wrenched them apart with some effort.
Bartolomeo squealed in delight at the sight of it. "Amazing! Leave it to Cheap Shot Cherry to refuse to follow the rules even with the devil fruit curse!"
"Now, do you want our help getting your crew back? Or would you rather show off what you can do all by yourself?" Cherry asked.
"I'll show off, of course! Watch closely, these country bumpkins don't stand a chance against me!" Bartolomeo proclaimed confidently.
No one mentioned the fact that those "country bumpkins" managed to pull one over on him.
Cherry led him to the entrance of the cave and pointed him in the direction of Sweethaven.
"My Nee-sans have high expectations of me! I need to go all out!" Bartolomeo spoke to himself as he charged towards the town with great determination.
Cabernet transformed into a ship and lifted off the ground. Cherry and Robin would watch Bartolomeo's rescue attempt from the safety of the air, while Perona went to take a nap having no interest in the annoying rooster man.
Bartolomeo formed a spherical barrier around himself, like a hamster ball, just in time for a rain of gunfire to come his way from Sweethaven as he approached.
The many bullets ricocheted around as they struck the barrier, some even hitting the townsfolk who were firing upon him.
Bartolomeo casually rolled his barrier ball through the streets in search of his crew, ignoring the enraged shout of the bounty hunter residents of Sweethaven.
At some point, the townsfolk noticed the flying ship floating above them and fired on it instead. It did little good though, as Cabernet was likely immune to cannonballs in her ship form at this point, let alone bullets.
Bluto and Popeye came out to confront Bartolomeo when he found the building where they were keeping his crew.
Popeye sent a punch at Bartolomeo, intending to send his barrier ball flying away as he knew that he likely couldn't break it.
Surprising him, though, Bartolomeo dropped the spherical barrier and instantly recreated it around Popeye instead.
Popeye thus sent himself flying away as his unstoppable punch pushed the barrier away from the inside.
Bluto tried to take advantage of Bartolomeo's now unprotected state, but alas he was too quick to reform the barrier as a wall between himself and Bluto.
Incidentally, Bartolomeo had the door to the building where his crew was held behind him, allowing him to stall Bluto as he hurried inside.
Cherry and Robin could no longer see what was happening, but they perceived with Life Sense that Bartolomeo knocked out several ordinary bounty hunters with ease and broke his crew out of a prison cell with the keys.
By this point, Bluto had gone around the barrier and broken directly through the wall, and Popeye was right behind him.
They found themselves being pushed back out the hole they came in from by Bartolomeo and his crew pushing against a barrier to drive them back.
"He's surprisingly quite smart with the way he uses his devil fruit. I had thought he might be an idiot from the way he used it in the boxing match." Cherry said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.
"I suppose Rooster-kun just wanted someone to crow at." Robin said.
"Rooster-kun? You've given him a nickname?" Cherry asked.
"Well he looks like one and crows like one." Robin defended.
"I guess so, but if you give him a nickname you might get attached. We've got plenty of idiots to put up with as it is." Cherry said.
Once outside the building, Bartolomeo formed another spherical barrier around himself and his crew. They rolled themselves quickly down the street towards the docks where their ship was.
They had already been on the island long enough to set their logpose, so they didn't need to wait any longer and could directly sail away.
The townsfolk realized what they were doing and tried to reach the docks first to stop them. They would have burned the ship, but they could reuse it for themselves as a fishing settlement. Plus the Barto Club could simply steal another ship so they didn't consider it a good idea to destroy it.
The townsfolk who reached the pirate ship before the pirates found themselves getting struck by lightning. Cherry didn't think it very sporting to steal someone's ship during a race.
Bartolomeo took it as a sign that his Cherry Nee-san approved of his performance and shouted at his crew to push faster.
Ultimately they managed to board their ship and set sail. Bartolomeo eagerly waved goodbye to the flying ship behind his barrier as it was struck by a hail of gunfire.
"I guess we should get going too. Perona's hollows already showed us where all the money and treasure in town were and we even got a log pose ready to go for the next island." Cherry said.
"I wonder if we'll see Rooster-kun again. Perhaps in the New World?" Robin wondered.
Robin found Bartolomeo was much more pleasing to the eye after he helped her win two unrestricted favors off of Cherry.
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
9 Power
stone 
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