章 222: Not-Giant Children
"Who are you scoundrels?!" The head shouted.
"We're pirates, and from your top knot might I assume you are a samurai of the Wano country?" Jinbe answered him truthfully and asked his own question.
"Pirates! I should have known! I had thought that we might work together to escape this imprisonment due to our shared circumstances, but NAY! I shan't work with pirate scum!" The head harrumphed loudly.
Usopp was about to protest, but remembered what pirates had almost done to his own home. Anyone can have their own reasons to hate pirates, he realized, and so kept his tongue behind his teeth.
"So you're a samurai, eh? Is there some kind of samurai code that forbids you to accept help from pirates?" Cherry asked curiously.
"Working with honorless scoundrels like pirates would dishonor me! Now leave me be!" The head yelled.
"M-maybe we should leave him alone! The distress call said that it was a samurai cutting people up." Chopper suggested.
"Zoro cuts people up all the time." Cherry stated. "Besides, Mr. Samurai here wouldn't just cut people up at random, right? After all, he's a ~noble warrior~"
"O-of course, not!" The samurai said, not sounding very sure. He quickly recovered his resolve, though and said "However, I shall not spare anyone who stands between me and my goal!"
"Would failing to accomplish this goal of yours bring you more dishonor than accepting help from pirates?" Cherry asked.
"Geh…" The samurai's head made a very unwilling expression. Clearly Cherry had hit the nail on the head.
"I-I suppose I couldn't object if you were to forcibly take my head with you…" The samurai seemed to be trying very hard to preserve every bit of honor he could.
"Well, since you're practically begging me to help you, I suppose I can lend a hand…" Cherry chuckled, even as he loudly protested that he said no such thing.
"How will we get out of this cell? If I had water, I could break us out immediately." Jinbe said.
"I've got this! FRANKY RAD-" Franky said excitedly, his arms stretched out before him and beginning to glow.
Cherry walked in front of him and simply pushed the thick steel door open.
"""...""" The room was silent.
Franky powered down his Franky Radical Beam and pouted.
"You should always check to see if a door is unlocked before causing a racket to break it down." Cherry said pragmatically.
Nami glanced at the severed locking mechanisms in the frame and looked at Cherry quizzically.
"I didn't say THIS door was locked." Cherry answered her unasked question.
They ignored Cherry's nonsense and picked a direction to run. As she shut the door and relocked it, Cherry said "Not that way, unless you want to reveal that we've escaped already." Turning back around to the other direction they rushed through the corridors, heeding Cherry's advice when she gave it, until finally coming upon a very large doorway which Cherry "unlocked" for them to pass through.
"Children?" Chopper was the first to say.
"Is this Elbaf?" Usopp asked.
"This isn't Elbaf, that's much further into the New World. And look, not all these children are of giant stature." Jinbe pointed out.
"Look, that scary lady is holding someone's head!" One of the children shouted in fear, pointing accusingly at Cherry holding the samurai's head.
"It's okay, it's only a flesh wound, see?" Cherry said calmly holding up the samurai.
"I am fine, children! Have you seen my son, Momonosuke?!" The samurai asked, perhaps a bit too forcibly as the children shrank back.
Nami whacked both the samurai and Cherry on the head. "Cut it out, you're scaring them!"
The children were able to be calmed down by the presence of Chopper, the adorable transforming raccoon, and Franky, the ultra cool robot.
"Can you tell us what this place is?" Nami asked softly.
One of the children bucked up some courage to say "Can you help us?! We don't want to be here, we want to go home!"
Other children piped up to add "We aren't sick anymore!" "I want to go back to mommy!" "I hate it here!"
The childrens' cries to help played upon their consciences. Even knowing that it would be terribly difficult to return them to their homes, their hearts screamed at them to try.
"I can take them home and meet back up with you guys later?" Cherry suggested, strangely solemn for some reason.
"""Now way!""" The children denied immediately. They absolutely did NOT want to go alone with the lady with the scary eyes.
"Well the most realistic option would be to hand them over to the marines to sort out. In fact, Smoker is coming here isn't he? Let's just foist them off onto him. He might look like a thug, but I can tell he's a big softy at heart." Cherry said.
"They said they were sick, what if they still are? We might be hurting them more than helping them…" Chopper said quietly so as to not be overheard by the children.
"That's bullshit, Chopper. I know exactly what's wrong with these kids, but the people here are absolutely not trying to help them. In fact, I'd wager these people are the ones who made them 'sick' in the first place." Cherry explained to him.
That convinced the reindeer doctor, in addition to infuriating him.
"I want to help these children." Nami said, leaving no room to argue with her, and no one wanted to or dared to.
"This tricky part will be getting out of this facility without getting caught. They don't seem to know we're out yet, but with a group this big, pun intended, it's only a matter of time before they find out." Cherry said.
"It wouldn't be safe to fight around the guppies, either." Jinbe added.
'Guppies…' Cherry thought that was a rather cute way to refer to kids.
"I'll draw their forces away whilst you guys lead the kids out." Cherry suggested. "I'll come straight to you if something goes awry."
That was as sensible a plan as they could come up with under the circumstances. Cherry briefly explained the possible paths they could take to the outside and how to reach the Thousand Sunny once they get that far.
"Cherry, what IS wrong with the children?" Chopper asked before they split up.
"They aren't supposed to be that big, Chopper. They're regular human children. Their life force can't sustain a body that big, but even right at this moment they're growing unnervingly fast." Cherry explained.
Chopper didn't need to ask what would happen if they got any bigger. Although his medical knowledge didn't really compute with Cherry's concept of 'life force', he knew enough from their previous chats that lacking it would mean death.
"What about Momonosuke?!" The samurai shouted.
"Don't worry, samurai. You're coming with me, not them." Cherry answered with a smile that the samurai didn't like.
"I am unable to resist in this state." The samurai said stubbornly.
He knew not how strong Cherry was, but he knew she could slip through the walls. That was a useful skill for him to have on his side at the moment.
"Good." Cherry said, splitting up with the others and deciding where would be the best place to be a pain in the ass of these kidnappers.
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