*BOOM BOOM BOOM*
Sengoku's heavy footsteps tailed behind Cherry as she swiftly darted through the trees outside the marine base.
Cherry was easily faster than him, however. A fact that irritated him greatly.
He really wished that Kizaru had been sent here instead as was originally planned, as he would have been the better choice to deal with the annoying girl.
When Cherry stopped and turned to face him he was somewhat surprised as they hadn't gone that far away from the base. He had expected her to lead him far enough away that he wouldn't be able to return in a short period of time.
"Confused? I never intended to lead you on a thrilling chase. I can keep you away long enough even if I face you directly." Cherry said, answering his doubts.
Sengoku said nothing and wasted no time in attacking her, thrusting out a palm strike with his enlarged golden hand.
Cherry's arm flashed with lightning and she met the palm with a stabbing thrust of her own.
*RUMBLE*
A shockwave erupted out from them, ripping apart the trees and other plant life around them for over a dozen meters and damaging them for a greater distance.
Both of their blows contained a fearsome vibrational energy that countered one another, seeming to be close in power. Cherry's attack contained electricity as well which enabled her to come out on top in this particular contest.
'How did she change so much in such a short time? Did whatever she did for Whitebeard take that much out of her, or did she really grow so much?' Sengoku pondered, but then another thought came to him. 'Didn't Akainu's boy also experience some strange power ups over short periods? It was harder to tell since I never saw him fight, but he definitely seemed to get stronger like this as well. Did Harpin D. Cherry kill him and steal some kind of secret from him? She did disappear from the battle at Marineford for a short period…'
His thoughts were interrupted as Cherry took the initiative to send a flying lightning slash at him.
Sengoku knew that sword was going to be annoying. His golden exterior wasn't just for show and was practically begging to conduct all the electricity that Cherry sent his way.
'This girl is a bad match for me, even if I'm stronger than her. Do I need to awaken to deal with her? Ugh, let's just see how this goes first. There's no telling what I'll do in that state…' Sengoku thought, conflicted.
Their battle didn't stay one one spot and moved around quite a lot. Wherever they went, destruction was sure to follow them as any and all obstacles were shattered and blown away in the fierce winds created by their display of violence.
Sengoku's golden body showed no signs of damage, but his ragged breaths suggested otherwise.
Cherry on the other hand had a steady breath even with the many wounds she had taken from their repeated clashes and her clothes were almost shredded off of her body. She was unconcerned with the state of her clothing, though, as it certainly wouldn't have been the first time she'd been forced to fight in the nude. She hadn't been bothered about such things for hundreds of years.
Sengoku squinted his eyes. He could swear that her injuries were visibly healing themselves over the course of the fight. 'Of course they are. Now that I think about it, White Beard was the same way after whatever she did to him.'
Sengoku decided to bite the bullet and take a gamble.
Cherry saw his demeanor change in an instant and prepared herself to fight or flee. She understood why as she saw a shift in Sengoku's devil fruit with her Life Sense. He was undergoing the process of awakening.
She watched with a sense of fascination, collecting valuable information by observing the process in fine detail.
Sengoku brought his hands together as if in prayer and his expression took on a serene quality. Many golden arms appeared from his sides and multiple heads appeared beside his original one.
"Sengoku?" Cherry spoke aloud. She felt there was something very off about him at this moment.
"You seek perfection through endless hardship? I pity you." Sengoku's many heads spoke in perfect harmony.
"Mind your own business." Cherry answered coldly.
"I see. Then allow me to assist you on your path and see if you can continue to walk it." The strange Sengoku said.
*BAM*
Cherry slammed into the ground after Sengoku seemed to disappear then reappeared instantly behind her, striking her with a chop to the back of her head.
Before a palm strike could follow up, Cherry rolled to her feet and used Soru to appear several meters away. Sengoku followed swiftly behind, but this time Cherry saw the attack coming and counter-attacked.
Unfortunately, Sengoku had many arms with which he could attack her with, which is precisely what he did. Even as he lightning ran rampant through the first arm, another slammed into her stomach and sent her flying backwards.
Sengoku did not stand in place and continued to relentlessly assault her with his seemingly countless arms. Even when she was flung away by one of his blows, he would appear next to her in the next instant with another and another.
Cherry utilized everything she possessed in her arsenal. Her sword, punches, kicks, her spear, her revolver. She even tried to bite him when he grabbed her for a body slam.
Sengoku wasn't unaffected by her frantic attacks, but his face showed no sign of pain or frustration, not even the slightest. It was perfectly peaceful, as if he weren't fighting in a life or death battle.
Cherry was getting worn down by the ceaseless barrage of attacks. Her wounds would heal quickly, but new wounds were being added faster than she was healing them.
However, that was nothing new for Cherry. She had been beaten in the dirt many times before. No, she found something else far more concerning.
While Sengoku's attacks had become stronger and faster since he had awakened his devil fruit, the amount of pain she felt from each strike had increased by many times and continued to increase further. On top of the fact that during their exchanges, Sengoku had had a few opportunities to deliver strikes to more vital areas but he neglected to do so.
Cherry thus came to a somewhat disturbing conclusion. He was torturing her.
"What are you doing, Sengoku?" Cherry asked, spitting blood from her mouth.
"This is what you wanted, no? I am assisting you." Sengoku spoke in that calm self-harmony that seemed all the more eerie.
"I don't need any assistance from you." Cherry stated, hoping to end this madness.
"In that case, I will accomplish the goal my imperfect self wished to achieve." Sengoku said, vanishing once more from the place he was standing.
Cherry sensed an immediate threat to her life coming from all sides. There was no time nor any path to escape.
So she did something reckless. Something she had pondered about before but never tried to attempt before due to the risks.
Cherry activated her fusion fruit at the greatest extent she was able and fused Sakura Tengoku with her own body and as a result, imbuing herself with the Rumble Rumble fruit's lightning logia ability.
Cherry transformed into lightning and sank into the ground right before the many golden hands of Sengoku could crash down upon her.
Cherry reappeared inside the marine base next to Robin, Cabernet, Perona, and the newly rescued Betty.
She unfused Sakura Tengoku from herself the moment she had completely reformed her body. Her veins and arteries were black as coal, her skin inflamed and red, many gashes spewing blood.
"Cherry?!" Robin exclaimed, grabbing onto her before she collapsed.
"We need to leave, right now!" Cherry spoke in a gravelly voice, before falling unconscious.
They didn't need to be told twice. Cabernet immediately transformed into her ship form and took off the instant the others were on board.
And not a moment too soon, as Sengoku's golden form entered the courtyard they had just been standing in only moments before. His many faces gazed up at the flying ship escaping his grasp, unperturbed.
Perona and Betty felt a chill down their spines at that look, and they were quite grateful when Sengoku shrunk down to his normal body then started shouting obscenities as if he hadn't been calm at all.
Sengoku sat down on the ground after finishing his brief temper tantrum and inwardly admonished himself for losing his cool.
He reflected over his failure during this mission and came to the conclusion that there wasn't too much of a reason to be upset. There were too many unexpected variables, rather pretty much none of the variables they had expected had been present at all.
'I knew I shouldn't have awakened, haaaah…' Sengoku sighed.
The trouble with his awakening is that it had a drastic effect on his mental state. Primarily he obtains great wisdom and an endless capacity for compassion.
'That was the first time I've deliberately caused as much pain as possible while awakened though.' Sengoku thought with a strange feeling.
He knew that it had something to do with some profound realization he had about Harpin D. Cherry. It was unfortunate that after reverting from the awakened state that the loss of wisdom also resulted in the loss of that knowledge. Still, he knew that Cherry had a secret, something related to her quick increase in power. He suspected that there was something odd there and now had a confirmation to that end.
'Perhaps I should pay a visit to her hometown? Perhaps I'd learn something there, maybe by speaking with her family?' Sengoku pondered.
Sengoku wouldn't have to resort to these methods if enlightened Sengoku had just captured Cherry from the beginning instead of messing around. Of course he suspected that enlightened Sengoku never intended on capturing her to begin with, but only intended to "test" her.
'No, forget this bullshit! I'm retired, damn it! No more meddling, just let Aokiji take care of all this annoying crap!' Sengoku caught himself and promised to leave everything to the youngsters from now on.
…
Cherry opened her eyes and saw a clear blue sky above her, the sun burning high in the sky beaming down on her face.
Her body ached. Proof of just how much damage had been done to her body from forcibly fusing another devil fruit into her body. They weren't kidding when they said someone who ate a second devil fruit would "explode".
'The data I got from doing it was very informative, though. I might be able to work out a way to do it safely in the future.' Cherry considered.
The cause seemed to lie in the fact that the devil fruit inscriptions started to violently clash against each other. She was lucky that the inscriptions themselves hadn't been damaged by this.
Strangely, she didn't think that this was a technical issue with compatibility or a deliberate in-built function like the sea curse. Rather, she could swear that they felt "alive" somehow, like rivals fighting each other over her body. She cast that idea aside as soon as it occurred to her, though. How absurd would it be if they had their own will?
Cherry shifted her body, realizing that she was on a mattress and covered by a blanket.
"You're awake?" Robin asked from just out of sight.
"I see you remembered the time I said it would be nice to wake up to the open sky after getting knocked out. It was only an offhand comment I made several months ago." Cherry said, sitting up to look at her.
"Yes, well, I wasn't going to let you miss such a rare opportunity, was I?" Robin answered, sipping a cup of coffee.
"Thank you." Cherry said appreciatively.
"So what happened?" Robin asked, her expression shifting towards curiosity and a bit of admonishment for being reckless.
"I just fused Sakura Tengoku with my body to imbue myself with its lightning logia abilities, that's all. Most of the damage was from that rather than from Sengoku." Cherry explained.
Robin frowned at her. She'd figured that Cherry did something stupid, but not THAT stupid.
"Was Sengoku really so bad that you had to resort to that?" Robin asked.
"I'm not really sure that WAS Sengoku, to be honest. He was like a completely different person. If he hadn't gone easy on me after awakening his devil fruit, I would have been dead meat for sure." Cherry said, though her light tone contrasted with the dire implications of her words.
Robin felt that there was more she hadn't said, though. Something that weighed heavily on Cherry's mind. She didn't need to wonder for long, however, as Cherry wouldn't keep any secrets from her.
"After he awakened, he seemed to get an inkling of an idea about me. Some shallow understanding of our shared secret." Cherry spoke seriously.
It took a moment for Robin to realize she was referring to cultivation.
"How did he manage that? Did he already know beforehand?" Robin asked.
Robin knew just how terrible it would be for the World Government to get their grubby hands on cultivation. It would ensure that the world would never escape their grasp.
"No, Sengoku only just then seemed to get an idea of it. Even then, I doubt it would be much more than the most basic concept and nothing about the actual mechanics of it. The worst that can happen is that it'll paint a target on my back and I've already got quite the large target from my actions at Marineford, so no big deal." Cherry said, ending with a sigh whilst running her fingers through her messy bed hair.
Belo Betty came out from Cabernet's cabin with a tray of food.
"Oh good, you're awake. It would have weighed heavily upon my heart if you had died in my rescue." Betty said with a friendly smile.
Betty was wearing an apron, but wasn't wearing any sort of top beneath it. It seemed that she wasn't comfortable without some sort of cleavage showing at all times, not that Cherry or Robin were complaining.
She had prepared a simple but tasty meal consisting of white rice, some sort of boiled crustacean sea king meat, and soup. The faint aroma of her cigarette smoke reminded Cherry of Sanji's cooking, which she would never admit that she had started to miss.
Perona came out following the smell of the food and they all enjoyed a nice meal together.
They recounted their experiences during the rescue mission. Cherry was quite proud of the ladies for being able to take down two vice admirals, even if they were only of average strength for the rank. The other women listened to Cherry's tale in turn with a feeling of dread over Sengoku's oppressive strength.
"So how'd you get caught anyway, Betty? I know you aren't the strongest in the revolutionary army, but you should be better than that." Perona spoke somewhat rudely, slurping down a strip of oversized crab meat.
"To be honest, it is a bit shameful. We went to liberate an island from a pirate threat. There were some suspicions with the information, but it was plausible enough that we had to at least make sure it was real. The marine ships came out from behind pillars of rock as we approached the island to make landfall and sank our ship before we could put up any real fight. I wound up falling into the water where I could only wait to be captured helplessly or drown. I suppose I'm thankful they chose the former, rather than the latter." Betty explained. She wore a sad expression as the members of her crew had either perished in the brief battle or were taken away instead of being held at the East Blue marine base like herself.
"Ever since Aokiji took over as fleet admiral, the marines have become much more cunning in their approach to dealing with us and pirates. While it might be better for the ordinary citizen that he became the fleet admiral instead of Akainu, it's arguably worse for us as Akainu would typically be more aggressive and direct. Marine operations against us have actually reduced in number since he took over, but unexpectedly they have also become more successful." Betty said.
They finished their meal in relative silence after that, each with their own thoughts.
'I wish I could have some of that crab too…' Cabernet thought, mentally drooling.
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