Chapter 366: Cracking a Cracker
Cracker started to crack apart in a literal sense, with an odd clapping sound accompanying it just like when his single pair of arms split into three pairs. Likewise, three identical Crackers emerged from the single one, and the clapping sound didn't stop there.
Seeing that things were about to get dicey, Luffy quickly bit into his haki coated arm and blew. His body expanded into his Gear Fourth form and he charged forward, smashing apart one of the Crackers.
Jinbe understood that this was about to become a battle of attrition and he knew that Luffy could only sustain Gear Fourth for so long, so he similarly acted quickly and smashed apart another Cracker with a few powerful blows.
However, by the time they had destroyed those two Crackers more moved in to take their place, much to Nami's horror. Cracker had already been putting up a challenging fight, how were they supposed to fight more than one of them?!
"These biscuits are too tough. At this rate, we'll expend all our energy just fighting the fakes," Jinbe complained calmly.
"If they're made of biscuits, then I'll just eat them to restore my stamina!" Luffy declared, biting into the thick neck of one of the Crackers. "Ouch! They're so hard!"
"Of course they're hard, you fool! Did you really think you could eat them?!" The real Cracker mocked him from within the crowd of Crackers.
Luffy started to shovel the smashed biscuits into his mouth and swallow them whole rather than try to chew them up.
Jinbe thought it was a bit silly, but let Luffy do his own thing. Luffy had a way of getting shit done with the wackiest tactics.
Meanwhile, Nami was trying to come up with a way to help. She looked around at the scattered remnants of the destroyed Crackers as they reformed into new crackers.
Suddenly, she had an idea. If the biscuits were too hard to bite, then she'd just have to soften them up!
She spun her Clima-Tact over her head, quickly manipulating the moisture and temperature of the air in the forest. Not long after, clouds formed amongst the canopies and started to sprinkle, then rain, then downpour onto them all.
Sure enough, as the water soaked into the biscuits of the Crackers they were becoming softer and easier to eat.
"Thank you for the assistance, Nami!" Jinbe called out, gathering water along his hands before firing cannon ball sized bolts of water through the Crackers.
"Ah, yes, of course…" Nami said, realizing she should have done that from the start instead of doing it to make it easier for Luffy to eat the biscuits.
"Tsk, so that woman is going to be a problem after all?" Cracker clicked his tongue, realizing he had been too dismissive and should have dealt with the weak link first. "Are you cowards just going to stand there, quaking like newborn fawns?! Or am I going to have to report your treason to Mama?!"
A massive, monstrous tree and half a dozen or so odd creatures stood a fair distance away from the battle. The tree stuttered out in fear, "W-we can't, General Cracker! She feels just like Mama! We can't attack her!"
"Why not?!?!?!" Cracker was enraged at their inaction. "Stop beating around the bush!"
"It's coming from her overinflated chest, General Cracker!" A rabbit man in a musketeer outfit cried out, literally quaking in his boots.
""Huh?!"" Both Nami and Cracker were surprised to hear that. What in the world could they mean by that.
Nami only had one clue on the matter, so she fished out something she had received and forgotten about over two years ago on Thriller Bark. A slip of paper given to her by the captain of another pirate crew named Lola, who had promised that her mother would treat them well if they showed it to her.
They hadn't had any clue who Lola's Mother was before now, but Nami was putting the pieces together at record speed. Nami held it out towards the homies that were cowering behind her and asked, "Is it this?"
"""Ahhhhhh?!?!?!?""" the homies screamed in terror.
Nami's unsure expression became a confident and sadistic smile. "Hoh? This little old thing has you scared, does it?"
As Nami thought about how she could leverage this newfound power, Jinbe and Luffy continued to demolish the increasingly soggy Crackers, and Luffy continued to swell to an enormous girth. It got to the point that Luffy was even huskier than Jinbe, and still kept eating!
This completely ruined any plans of a battle of attrition that Cracker had. While he could make new biscuit soldiers endlessly so long as he could clap his hands, their defensive capabilities were reduced in the dense rain while Jinbe was only stronger with the presence of so much water.
He had to end this in a single blow!
The real Cracker launched forward towards the immobile mass of rubbery flesh that was Luffy; an easy target!
Jinbe moved to intervene, and even succeeded in breaking Cracker apart. However, the real Cracker was a much smaller man hidden within the larger man's biscuit form!
Cracker continued his charge unaffected by Jinbe's failed interception.
"Die!" Cracker shouted with a smile that was more of a snarl. He thrust his sword into exposed belly unimpeded. "Huh? Wait, what is this-?"
"Gear Fourth: Tank Man!" Luffy flexed his abs in a way that sucked Cracker further into his rubbery flesh. Then with another flex, Cracker was sent flying through the air, through several of his biscuit soldiers, through the homie trees, and away into the distance! "Get lost!"
…
Smoothie was getting tired of waiting for Cherry to come back and was deciding whether to barge into the Vinsmoke castle looking for her charge when she got a call on her den den mushi.
"What?" Smoothie answered casually.
"General Smoothie!" A voice she didn't recognise, so it must be a nameless subordinate. "General Cracker just flew all the way from the Seducing Woods and crashed into the Chateau! He's all beat up and unconscious!"
"Who did it? I'll kill 'em right now." Smoothie demanded.
"We're not totally sure, General! He was on a mission to capture Straw Hat, that's all we know!" the subordinate explained.
"What's your name?" Smoothie asked out of nowhere.
"Er… it's Deeduo, General…" the subordinate answered dutifully.
"Good. For being so useless, I'm going to kill you later. Don't run away or I'll kill your family in front of you first." Smoothie hung up the den den mushi without waiting for a response.
"How the hell did Cracker lose to a rookie?" Smoothie wondered aloud. Certainly Cracker was the weakest of the three Sweet Generals by a country mile, but he most certainly wasn't weak. Moreover, he was in the Seducing Woods, which was made entirely up by homies.
It was a mystery. However, she wondered if she should even bother to go personally. It was likely that a small army of her brothers and sisters was already forming to take revenge; and while they were individually weaker than Cracker, quantity was a quality all on its own.
Plus, she had her own duties to attend to. Would Cherry back out of their deal the moment she left her to her own devices?
"Probably," Smoothie concluded. Then again, she really didn't want to deal with the troublesome woman any more, either. What a quandary.
Chapter 367: Insights
"So my lineage factor was… changed, by my devil fruit? And this is what granted me the powers of fusion?" Cherry asked with mild interest.
"That is correct. Unfortunately, I have yet to pinpoint the changes that devil fruit enact to the user's lineage factor. Otherwise, Germa would truly have the greatest unmatched military might in the world!" Judge managed to bring the topic back around to himself.
Cherry kept a lazy appearance, but in reality she was very intrigued. What this meant to her was that the greatest minds of this world had discovered bloodlines, and were even capable of replicating and manipulating them!
In fact, Cherry was sure that Judge knew more about bloodlines than the cultivators did back in the Myriad Realms, let alone Vegapunk.
Most importantly, this gave her a key piece of information regarding the inner workings of devil fruit. In a way, she and Vegapunk both had separate halves of the same puzzle. Vegapunk had an understanding of how devil fruit altered the user's bloodline, and Cherry understood the vital energy inscription element.
If she can meet with Vegapunk someday and convince him to share his insights, then she could finally understand devil fruit in their entirety; possibly even create them from scratch.
On a side note, the way Judge kept bringing up Vegapunk just to minimize the man's contributions to their lineage factor project was hilarious. Cherry naturally assumed that Vegapunk did most of the work as a result.
"So what did you find in there in regards to my ancestry?" Cherry asked casually.
"It's… as I expected. Kuja lineage factors are extraordinarily dominant, but some of your father's traits were strong enough to present themselves, such as your eyes. I would need to perform an eyesight examination to confirm, but you should have at least 20/10 vision." Judge spoke professionally.
'At least, he says…' Cherry suppressed a chuckle.
At her stage of cultivation, her eyesight could near perfectly process every scrap of light that entered her eyes. She could even expand her visible range a thousand fold, but that was honestly more annoying than it was useful.
Well, she supposed that her eyesight might have been better than standard before she started cultivating in this world. She just hadn't noticed because it had been a considerable downgrade compared to before she died.
Cherry sensed part of the blood sample she gave being squirreled away by one of the Germa scientists, so she remotely disintegrated it without them realizing.
Cherry clapped her hands together. "Whelp, it's been fun. However, as I am an introverted person, my socializing batteries are quite drained so I think it best that I head on out."
"I see. Perhaps we will speak again after the wedding." Judge spoke politely, but Cherry got the sense he didn't actually mean it. Whatever he wanted from her, he believed that he already had it.
"Show me out?" Cherry asked Reiju who was waiting silently to the side.
Reiju opened her mouth to answer, but stopped to glance at Judge as if asking for permission.
"Go ahead, Reiju," Judge said dismissively, waving her off as he marched away.
"See you later, Sanji!" Cherry waved to him goodbye.
"Hopefully sooner rather than later, Cherry-chan," Sanji smiled gently. The fact that he lacked his typical overexcitement when speaking to her since he has been here did not go unnoticed by her.
Cherry held out her arms for a hug. Despite his dour mood, Sanji was still Sanji so there was no way he could refuse.
After a quick embrace, Cherry traced her hands down his arms and paused on his explosive bracelets in a way that an outside observer wouldn't notice, but was obvious to Sanji himself. Cherry winked at him, confirming his suspicion that she had done something to them.
That something was pretty obvious when you consider that Cherry has a vested interest in Sanji's hands NOT exploding.
Reiju led Cherry out.
"You aren't like the other three, your idiot brothers." Cherry said once she and Reiju were alone.
Reiju glanced at her. "I'm certainly smarter than they are."
"Hm, that too. However, I meant that you seem to have the full range of human emotion, even if you hide it well. I would have thought that was a requirement for Judge's idea of a superior human," Cherry said. "Sanji was considered a failure, wasn't he?"
Reiju studied her with a blank smile. The smile dropped as she turned thoughtful. "Yes, he was. I'm more of a successful prototype than the final product. Even with my emotions intact, though, I am… obedient."
There was something hidden beneath her voice with that final word; obedient. Cherry tucked that nugget of information away in case she needed it later.
They exited the castle and found Smoothie waiting for them.
"It's about damn time. Let's go." Smoothie spoke impatiently.
Cherry shrugged at Reiju. "I'm a popular girl it seems. Catch you later!"
"Thanks for being Sanji's friend," Reiju waved goodbye to her before going back inside.
Smoothie rudely grabbed Cherry around the waist and started to march away with her in grasp.
"Where are we going?" Cherry asked calmly like she wasn't being manhandled by a woman who could juice people like an orange.
"We're going to see Mama in the chateau." Smoothie declared.
"Neat." Cherry said. "Do you think she'll engage Katakuri and I?"
Smoothie stopped dead and looked at her with both confusion and condescension. "I'll admit that you're a little quick on your feet, but that doesn't mean you're worth a Sweet General's hand in marriage."
"Not even someone who can read poneglyphs?" Cherry amended.
Smoothie actually paused to consider that. "I… I don't know…"
"It's okay, sister-in-law. No one knows everything." Cherry nodded and patted her thumb.
"Don't patronize me." Smoothie continued onwards. "It isn't very likely, not with Katakuri. Mama might agree to a marriage, but Katakuri is her strongest card. I don't believe she'll risk displeasing him, even for this."
"Why would he be displeased?" Cherry fluttered her lashes.
"Don't flatter yourself. And don't flutter your eyelashes like that; it's creepy." Smoothie said.
Katakuri and I got along just fine last night, though…" Cherry blushed and tittered like a school girl in love. "Even Brulee-nee-sama approves of me~"
Smoothie sputtered in disbelief. "You- You really have a way of screwing with people, you know that?"
"Yes, of course I do. I did plenty of screwing around last night, too~!" Cherry smiled deviously.
"Just, please… shut up." Smoothie rubbed her nose between her eyes. She really needed the wedding to be over with already.
"No can do! Hehehehehehehe~!" Cherry cackled with delight whilst kicking her legs.
'Let's see if you can keep acting like this when you meet Mama,' Smoothie thought to herself.
Smoothie picked up the pace. The faster that she reached her destination, the faster that she could get away from Cherry.
Little did she know that a certain bird-man caught sight of the strange duo, one carried by the other.
"I smell a story!" Morgans muttered to himself. He would have to be sneaky, but thankfully 'sneaky' is his middle name!
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
149 Power
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