"Oh, if it isn't Law. I heard you became a Shichibukai, how is the role treating you?" Jinbe asked casually after noticing Law's presence.
"""Eh?! Trafalgar Law?! Shichibukai?!""" Usopp, Nami, and Chopper exclaimed.
Law wouldn't have spoken to them, but Jinbe's polite tone drew out a response from him, however short it was. "It's fine."
"Stop chatting with him, Jinbe! You said yourself he's a Shichibukai and he has Smoker here with him too! We gotta run!" Usopp insisted, trying to drag the whale shark fishman fruitlessly by the arm.
"Very well. It was nice seeing you again, Trafalgar Law." Jinbe relented.
The Straw Hats turned tail to run back into the facility in search of another way out that hopefully wouldn't be cut off by marines and a Shichibukai.
"Why are you following us?! You wanted to go home, right?! Go with the marines! Distract them for us!" Usopp shouted at the children who were still following behind them for some reason.
"We don't want to go with them! They're scary!" One of the larger children, named Sind, answered.
"Don't use the children as bait!" Nami admonished him, only refraining from hitting him because they were fleeing.
A strange transparent barrier passed them by but they felt nothing as it did so. Only a moment later they suddenly felt an out of body sensation, followed by a shift in perspective.
"What was that? Why did I become taller?" Franky asked.
"Taller? I became shorter?" Chopper said.
"We appear to have swapped bodies somehow." Usopp said, jutting his jaw for some reason.
"Ah! I became Franky?! Franky, how do I shoot beams?!" Franky asked, first horrified then excited.
Nami answered him "First you have to-"
"Get out of my body, you pervert!" Chopper screamed.
"This is confusing…" Jinbe said, fluttering his adorable eyes.
"I'm afraid I may not be much help in battle with this weak body." Usopp said, flexing his arms disappointedly.
"Who are you calling weak?!" Franky shouted.
"What happened?" Another giant child, Mocha, asked.
"It's okay, we just seem to be all mixed up…" Chopper said comfortingly.
"Okay, Doctor Tanuki." Mocha nodded her head.
"Ah, I'm Nami." Chopper said.
The children tilted their heads in confusion.
…
"Vergo, why are you here? I thought you didn't want Law to know you on Punk Hazard?" Caesar asked curiously.
"Somebody snatched the heart." Vergo said straightforwardly.
"WHAT?!" Caesar shouted in shock, not expecting that bad news at all.
Even Monet was surprised. Vergo wasn't anything special in the observation haki department, but he wasn't exactly a slouch either.
Caesar contained his rising anger, knowing better than to offend Vergo. "Who?! How?!"
"I just heard something in the hallway and when I turned back it was gone. Wait a minute…" Vergo reached up and groped his face, but only found the mostly uneaten burger patty, which he promptly ate. "Oh, I thought it might have gotten stuck to my face. Nevermind."
Monet chuckled, but Caesar wasn't in a laughing mood. Law's heart was his best insurance against him. Vergo might believe that he's enough to handle Law, but Caesar wasn't so certain.
"It's bad enough those Straw Hats are running about right now. I don't need Law to stab me in the back, too." Caesar muttered, wracking his super genius intellect, that was definitely way better than Vegapunk's, for a solution.
"Master! The S.A.D. facility was attacked!" One of Caesar's subordinates reported hastily.
Vergo furrowed his brows and Caesar started to sweat nervously. Caesar shouted at his slave- er, subordinate. "Who dares?! How many are there?!"
"It was a lone demon, I mean woman, master! She appeared out of nowhere and started ripping apart our bodies! Oh, and she had a severed head with her!" The subordinate answered faithfully.
Hearing 'appeared out of nowhere' caught the attention of Vergo, Caesar, and Monet. There was a strong likelihood that the culprit in both the stolen heart and the attack on the S.A.D. facility was the same person.
Vergo moved out immediately in hopes of catching the little thief's trail. Caesar put the whole lab on high alert. Monet went back to reading her newspaper.
…
Cherry stood inside the strangest room she had ever seen. Which was saying something given how many eccentric weirdos there were among cultivators in her last life.
All around her there were numerous pairs of legs, without anybody attached to them. Of course she could guess who they belonged to, but it still made for a very odd sight.
"I guess you can't expect much else from a room labeled 'Limb Storage', huh?" Cherry spoke aloud. "Oh, who's this?"
Cherry stopped in front of a pair of arms and legs that clearly belonged to a woman. Unlike the other legs in the room, these weren't suffering from severe atrophy and were kept inside of a glass vat that likely preserved them better.
"Stop gawking! I need to find my son!" The samurai said, although he himself was having trouble tearing his own eyes away from the attractive legs.
"Fine, fine. I don't think we'll find your son here, though. Unless he's dead. I guess we could check the trash shoot that leads underground for his corpse?" Cherry proposed ruthlessly.
The samurai went quiet then, staring into space hopelessly.
Cherry felt a bit guilty at the sight of that. "Hey, I'm sure he's fine. There's a devil fruit user down there, I'm sure we can ask them for information. I doubt they work for these bastards."
"Right… I mustn't accept defeat! I'll never stop searching until I find him and see him with my own eyes!" The samurai said, rousing his own spirit.
"Let's go then!" Cherry shouted, making a guts pose whilst still clutching the samurai's head in one of her hands.
She then promptly hurled the two of them into the nearest trash shoot.
*Crash!*
Cherry landed directly into a big box filled with used needles which immediately poked many tiny holes in her cheery mood. The samurai winced at the sight and thanked his lucky stars that Cherry had held him above herself instead of landing on him.
Cherry leapt out of the box and pushed the needles stuck in her back out with Seimei Kikan. Something occurred to her and she checked Law's heart, thankfully finding that it wasn't punctured.
"You over there! You'd better come out and answer my questions because I'm in a foul mood! Of course if you don't, then I won't mind taking out my frustration on you until you're feeling more chatty!" Cherry warned loudly, facing the direction of the devil fruit user hiding amongst the trash piles.
The small pink dragon that had scurried into a cardboard box to hide from this newcomer froze. He didn't want to reveal himself, but he also didn't want to be caught hiding in case this person would follow through with her threats. Making up his mind, he crawled out of his hiding spot and did his best to look intimidating when he revealed himself.
"Whomst will thou take thy frustration out on?!" The pink dragon said with false bravado in an archaic accent.
"It's a dragon! Quickly, slay the beast!" The samurai shouted with unusual hate in his tone.
"Huh? F-father?!" The pink dragon exclaimed.
"???" Cherry hadn't anticipated this at all.