The old man, in addition to his sword, overly-tall sandals, and yukata, was wearing a big pair of fake wings and a red mask that had a nose almost as impressive as Usopp's. His white hair was long and pulled towards the back in a free flowing style. Cherry got the impression that he was a man of importance, judging by the way he held himself.
"Have a seat, old man. There's plenty to go around," Cherry said. The old man was skin and bones, so it was clear that he wasn't starving Tama while stuffing his own face, at least.
The old man, who calls himself Hitetsu these days, watched the woman play keep-away with a roasted chicken on a tray. The stretchy man was rather desperate to obtain it, but her movements were too erratic for him to catch it.
"I am not hungry," Hitetsu declared.
*GROWL*
"I am not hungry," Hitetsu reiterated, ignoring his traitorous stomach. "Tama should have her fill, first."
"I've had plenty, master! In fact, I'm more full of food than I've ever been in my life! So please, eat…" Tama said, looking like she was about to start crying if he refused again.
*GROOOOOWL*
Hitetsu clenched his teeth. His apprentice's puppy dog eyes and his wailing stomach made it increasingly impossible to remain stubborn. He did not deserve to eat so well, but… perhaps, a reminder of the delicacies he once enjoyed would make a suitable punishment?
"No," Hitetsu spoke with a firm resolve, sheathing his sword. "There are many in this land who are starving death at this very moment. I will not stuff myself whilst my countrymen suffer."
His stomach began to protest once again, but he sent a deadly glare at it and shut it up.
Cherry accepted the old man's rejection and let Luffy have the chicken, which was picked apart in about a minute flat. She felt that he had his own reasons and wasn't being stubborn just for the sake of being stubborn.
Unfortunately, it did seem that Tama was going to follow his example, even as she gazed longingly at the basket full of fruit that she hadn't touched yet.
"Have some fruit, Tama. Don't you want to grow up to be a big, strong kunoichi?" Cherry tempted, tossing a vibrant red apple up and down before crunching down on it with her teeth to showcase how crisp and juicy they were.
Tama shook her head. "I don't want to be big and strong! I want to be lithe and beautiful!"
"My bad. Eat some anyways," Cherry insisted, dangling another apple by the stem before her face.
Tama turned her face away obstinately.
"Well, if we're done with the meal then I guess I'll go have a bath in the river," Cherry said.
"You can't! The river is poisonous!" Tama waved her arms about in a panic. Hitetsu opened his mouth to concur with his apprentice, but paused as Cherry glanced at him meaningfully.
"Why should I believe a disobedient brat like you? You just don't want to share," Cherry said. It was exceedingly obvious what she was doing, but Tama was young and too worked up to notice.
"What?! But- but…!" Tama stammered.
Cherry stood up and started walking in the direction of the river. Even without enhanced senses, one could hear its rushing nearby. Tama moved to stop her, but Cherry just kept on walking like she wasn't pushing against her with all her strength.
"I- I'll eat some fruit okay?! Just don't go into the river!" Tama shouted.
"Alright," Cherry said, stuffing the apple in her hand into Tama's hands.
Tama felt like she had just been played. Of course, that was because she had.
*crunch* "So sweeeeet~!" Tama squealed in joy.
Hitetsu smiled. Cherry wondered what the red mask was made of with the way it morphed and stretched around his mouth.
"Why do you live next to a poisoned river?" Luffy asked, having finished off all the food he could get his grubby rubber hands on.
"It was not always poisoned," Hitetsu frowned at the dour change of subject. "There used to be a whole village here called Amigasa, the village of woven hats. The last of us were driven out or killed by one of Kaido's new subordinates by the name of Drake, in spite of the five samurai who fought to protect them."
"Why?" Cherry asked with a frown. "He already rules the country. What could he possibly gain from doing this?"
Cherry hadn't had the impression that Kaido was a mindless destroyer. She reckoned that he was, at worst, like Big Mom in his attitude. Perhaps she would need to reevaluate that assumption. At least Big Mom only destroyed settlements because she wanted something from them.
"They hid themselves away, which was as good as rejecting the rule of Shogun Orochi, as far as that wretched man is concerned. It even worked for a time. This was a small village, even before the famine took many of their lives, so they were easily forgotten. Alas, they were forced to leave their relative safety in search of food, which brought the Beasts' attention and wrath down upon them," Hitetsu said.
"Why are you still here, then?" Luffy asked bluntly.
"To wait for Ace to come back!" Tama blurted out.
"Ace?" Luffy suddenly had a big, goofy smile on his face. "So, you met my brother, huh?"
"Ace is your brother?!" Tama gasped in shock. "If you're here, does that mean he's coming here soon, too?!"
"No clue!" Luffy laughed as Tama wilted in dejection.
Cherry snatched the hat off Luffy's head, much to her captain's annoyance, and focused on Ace's vivre card that was sewn into the infamous straw hat's band.
"Huh, he's not that far away actually. It'll be a while before he gets to Wano though, if this is where he's headed," Cherry said.
"Really?!" Tama's smile was as bright as the sun, as was Luffy's.
Hitetsu looked a bit skeptical. "I have seen those papers before, but I was not aware they could be used to gauge distance as well as direction to a person."
"For most people, that's true," Cherry said. "I'm not most people."
Hitetsu wasn't sure whether to trust Cherry's word or not, but he couldn't think of a reason she would lie about it. Pointless cruelty was doubtful, given they had let Tama eat her fill from their own food supplies, much in the same way that Ace and his crew had shared their own when they had come to Amigasa.
Perhaps he could afford to trust these two, then. Besides, he didn't have the heart to poison Tama's hope with his own doubts.
"Right! Where's the closest place we can get food and water?" Luffy slapped his thighs and stood up.
"That'd be Okobore, the town of leftovers. However, you would need to cross the wasteland to get there, and it is a dangerous place if you don't know which way to go," Hitetsu said. "Unfortunately, I have my own circumstances because of which I cannot guide you myself."
"I'll guide them, master!" Tama shot her hand up like an eager student in a classroom.
Hitetsu looked unsure, but ultimately nodded. "Be sure to keep to the safe route, Tama. Don't stray too far from it, if you must at all."
Tama nodded seriously, neglecting to mention that she had gotten captured while returning home along that "safe" route. Surely nothing bad would happen a second time, though?
Hitetsu made Luffy get dressed in some local clothes; a yukata with a rather ugly patch job, though the needle work was well done, so the issue was more with a lack of materials than a lack of skill on the maker's part.
As for Cherry, she was pretty much already wearing something that fit in with the locals. She might draw some attention due to the quality, but she would fit right in at the Flower Capital according to Hitetsu.
"I'm going to borrow this sword, old man. I'll look like a proper samurai!" Luffy declared, stepping out of the house.
"Oh, that's a good one," Cherry commented.
"No, you can't take that one! It is a great grade Meito created by my ancestor; Nidai Kitetsu!" Hitetsu shouted. "Even touching it without reverence will bring its curse down upon you!"
Naturally. Hitetsu was more concerned about Tama than about Luffy. He did not want any of the misfortune that Luffy brought upon himself to affect her by proximity.
Cherry scoffed. Certainly the Meito could be temperamental at times, but none that she had encountered thus far were truly cursed. Not by her definition of the term, anyways. The worst she had seen was that knife that the sheriff on that mushroom island had. Even that only brought out the man's innate bloodthirst, not something that came from the blade itself.
Cherry drew the sword from the sheath that Luffy was holding, causing Hitetsu to gasp in shock. She ran her fingers along the deadly edge as she eyed the blade up close.
"Are you insane?!" Hitetsu charged over and tugged Cherry's hand away from the sword edge forcefully and carefully.
He sucked in a cold breath at what he saw; not even a scratch on the woman's deceptively delicate fingers.
"Relax, old man. Nothing less than a black blade could harm me without the wielder's haki flowing through it," Cherry pulled her hand free from his grasp.
She wasn't angry at him for being rude, since she had deliberately done that to spook him. She actually felt a little bad seeing how concerned he was, even if she believed it was more out of a sense of responsibility for the sword than care for someone he just met.
"Is it even sharp- OW?!" Luffy asked as he touched the tip of the sword with a finger and drew blood instantly.
"Of course it's sharp; it's a sword," Cherry stated whilst giving him a dry look.
Cherry jabbed Nidai Kitetsu at the sheath that Luffy was holding. Hitetsu nearly had a heart attack as he witnessed the most egregious disregard for proper sheathing form he had ever seen. He could only call it a miracle that the cursed blade perfectly slid into place instead of skewering Luffy.
Cherry snickered at the gobsmacked look on Hitetsu's masked face before saying, "Let's get going. This is no time to waste time."
"Onwards!" Luffy recklessly drew Nidai Kitetsu and pointed it inland.
"I can't trust a fool like you with that sword!" Hitetsu shouted, but Luffy was already surging forth, too fast for the old man to keep up with. "Come back here!"
Tama jumped onto the lion-dog-thing's back and raced after Luffy, whilst Cherry kept pace with her captain with light steps.
As Hitetsu's complaints faded into the background far behind them, Luffy would slash at the occasional bamboo stalk that wasn't really in his way at all.
"Are you sure it's okay to let him play with it like that? Master never even let me into the same room as that sword…" Tama spoke in quiet tones, as if afraid that Luffy might overhear and take offense.
"It's fine; let him have his fun," Cherry dismissed her worries with a wave of her hand. "If he lops his own leg off or something, I'll just stick it back on him."
No sooner had Cherry's words left her mouth that they heard a yelp and a thump.
Cherry sighed and Tama screamed at the sight of Luffy on the ground, one leg cut off above the knee. If that wasn't enough, he also managed to accidentally impale himself through the stomach when he fell after losing his balance.
A minute later, they were once again underway. Luffy had decided, for reasons unrelated to his inadvertent amputation, that he was done playing with the sword for the moment.
"My leg feels all tingly, shishishishishi!" Luffy wiggled his toes as he marched along.
"That's because your nerves haven't realized they're reattached yet. Give it a few hours," Cherry advised, receiving a nod from Luffy.
Tama was looking a bit pale and reconsidering her choices in life.
Soon, they found their way out of the bamboo forest and into a vast wasteland. Nearby, they saw a group of beasts chasing one another in a line, but Tama warned against Luffy eating them as they drank from the contaminated water.
"Is that the factory making the meat bad?" Luffy pointed at the horizon where a towering structure spewing smoke could just be seen.
"That's it. They have a mine and a weapons factory there, both heavily guarded by Kaido's forces. We should stay away from them," Tama warned.
"What do they eat and drink if the river and the animals are poisoned?" Luffy complained.
"They have their own farms with fresh water, secreted away where us commoners can't reach it," Tama shook her head.
"If we get desperate, I can just purify the food and water, Luffy. Stop worrying so much about your next meal," Cherry said.
That seemed to satisfy him, so they began their trek across the barren land.
"Hm, looks like Zoro is pretty close. I'd wonder why he's in a place like this, but I think that's obvious," Cherry said as she checked her vivre card book.
"Oh, because he got lost!" Luffy laughed.
Changing directions slightly, they soon saw a cloud of dust being kicked up by a group of riders. Cherry clearly heard the riders jeering at a woman that they were chasing.
'Is my every encounter with the Beast pirates going to have them acting like common bandits?' Cherry wondered with a frown.
Before she could act, however, a lone figure on foot came up quickly behind the group of riders and decimated them in seconds.
"Ah, that's Zoro," Cherry said.
"ZOOOOORRRRROOOOO!!!" Luffy shouted and ran towards the carnage.
"Huh?" Zoro turned as he sheathed his swords amidst the fallen Beast Pirates. The way that his eye lit up and he smiled when he called back "Luffy!" was very cute in Cherry's humble opinion.
Luffy jumped and slammed into Zoro, who managed to keep himself upright.
"It feels like forever since we split up!" Luffy said.
"It's nothing like those two years, though," Zoro acutely pointed out.
"Where's everyone else?" Luffy asked.
"We got separated, but I'm sure they're fine," Zoro answered.
"Do you mean 'we' as in everyone, or 'we' as in just you?" Cherry asked as she caught up with Tama in tow.
"Shut up! Cabernet was the first one to vanish!" Zoro spoke as if that was some grand accomplishment for him.
"Really?" Cherry knew that her little wine barrel was too curious for her own good, but she thought after Alabasta that she had had her fill of wandering off on her own.
"Meat!" Luffy sniffed around a bag at Zoro's waist.
"You can have it. There's plenty of animals running around here to eat," Zoro said.
"You can't eat them! They're poisoned!" Tama shouted.
"Oh, yes, Tama here is quite correct," spoke the woman who had been there the whole time.
Before anyone could ascertain the woman's identity, however, someone else made an appearance.
"The wanted Ronin, Zorojuro, and… Straw Hat? I see, you must be responsible for my missing men?" Basil Hawkins, one of the worst generation, strode up whilst flanked by two dozen Beast pirates.
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