章 354: Cat and Mouse

The Whole Cake Chateau, as it was called, was quite the opulent building in Cherry's opinion. She would call it more fanciful than fancy, what with it being styled after an actual cake both inside and out.

Cherry was easily distracted from the almost absurd decoration of the place due to the nearby presence of a monster not so far away within the very same building. Big Mom's vital energy was almost detectable even without using Life Sense, a vague pressure that Cherry could feel as she got closer to where Big Mom was.

Katakuri regarded the woman skipping down the hallways to keep up with his long strides. He frankly wasn't sure what to think of her now. She was responsible for perhaps his only professional failure since he had started working for the family proper over twenty years prior, but now she had done a service for his most precious little sister, completely unprompted no less.

Brulee couldn't keep her eyes off of her own reflection. She had always claimed that the scar didn't bother her at all, but it was undoubtedly the greatest source of the mockery leveled towards her throughout her life. It certainly didn't help her love life, either.

It occurred to him that Harpin D. Cherry could potentially rid her off the scar as well. She had done unbelievable work on Chinjao's head, surely some scar tissue wouldn't be a challenge?

Katakuri couldn't be the one to ask though, no matter how well intentioned. Not at the risk of hurting Brulee's feelings. She had gained that scar because his bullies were too afraid to fight him and targeted her instead. He might as well slap her directly if he was going to ask Cherry to "fix" his sister's face.

Katakuri noticed Cherry was staring at him.

"What is it?" Katakuri asked sternly, but the edge he addressed her with before was mostly gone.

"I'm growing on you, aren't I?" Cherry smiled delightedly.

"Like a fungal infection, perhaps." Katakuri retorted.

"That's too bad for you. No medicine or poison can get rid of me." Cherry snickered.

"I'm not opposed to hacking off a limb if I have to." Katakuri said.

"Huh? Why are you going to hack off a limb, Onii-chan?" Brulee asked.

Katakuri frowned and shook his leg vigorously. Brulee looked down to find Cherry wrapped around his calf.

"Let go." Katakuri commanded.

"But Daaaad, I'm tired~!" Cherry cried out.

"..." Perospero rounded a corner and paused at the strange sights and sounds before him.

""..."" Katakuri and Brulee looked back at him, unable to say anything.

"Oh, hey Uncle Tongue dude!" Cherry waved at him.

"I… wasn't aware you had a child, Katakuri…" Perospero was very confused.

"I don't." "HE DOES~!" Katakuri spoke and Cherry shouted over him.

"Kukuku," Perospero chuckled as he recognised the gremlin clinging to his younger brother's leg. "I see you're being quite tolerant in your efforts to recruit Miss Harpin, brother, but I don't think you need to be THAT tolerant. I do wonder why you've taken this duty upon yourself, though? I understand that Mama had asked Smoothie to be her point of contact with the family?"

Katakuri chopped off his leg, leaving Cherry to fall with it to the floor and get covered with gooey, uncooked mochi. "Geck, gross!"

"I hadn't intended to, but she is unfortunately very nosey. As such, I have determined it to be prudent that I keep an eye on her so that she doesn't cause any trouble." Katakuri said, which was largely the truth.

"He's just being shy. He loves me." Cherry insisted.

"Mhm," Perospero didn't sound convinced. He looked at Brulee and now that he wasn't distracted he took in the changes her appearance had undergone. "Why-?"

"Obviously I changed my looks with my devil fruit, to accentuate my theme. You can hardly judge, can you Nii-san?" Brulee interrupted him, feeling remarkably confident.

"No, I suppose I can't. I'm surprised that you've kept it up for so long, though. Even I have to take a break from the candy theme every now and then." Perospero said.

"My girl Brulee is built different." Cherry said, shaking off the last of the raw mochi from her clothes.

"If you'll excuse us. Our… guest interrupted Brulee's dinner, so we were just going to place an order with the kitchens." Katakuri interjected.

"Of course. Have a nice night, and keep a close eye on our… guest." Perospero bid them goodbye before walking away.

"The way you're saying 'guest' makes me think you're luring me into a trap." Cherry spoke aloud, causing Perospero to stumble slightly. She added, "You shouldn't wear those heels if you can't walk with them. You'll sprain your ankle."

"Good luck, brother." Perospero spoke with as much dignity as he could muster, before disappearing around another corner.

"Piggyback?" Cherry held up her arms.

Katakuri darted down the hall. "I'll meet you in my room, Brulee!"

"Oh, he wants to race does he? Hehehehe~" Cherry exploded into motion, hot on Katakuri's heels.

Cherry knew what this really was. Katakuri wanted to know how fast she was, and so was playing to her own playful nature. All so that he could be perfectly prepared to capture her, when the time came. How devious!

'I need to get away from her before she frays my last nerve.' Katakuri wasn't thinking about that at all.

"Alright, Onii-chan!" Brulee called out to him as he vanished around a corner, Cherry barely a split second behind him.

A teenage girl with a black ponytail and light brown eyes was hidden around a different corner watching it all happen.

"Who is that slut?! Stay away from my Katakuri-nii-san!" The girl chewed her nails in frustration, floating above the floor with an odd, polka dot, balloon dress. "Hmph! I'll deal with you, just wait and see!"

The girl floated away to come up with some nefarious plot against Cherry. A plan that was sure not to have any dire consequences for her.

Cherry reached out to grab Katakuri, but he was already slipping out of her grasp before she could grasp him. She wasn't moving at her full speed, no need to give away valuable information about herself for a game of cat and mouse, so Katakuri was proving to be difficult prey.

Multiple times she tried to grab him, but it was made abundantly clear that he knew what she was going to do before she did it. Stupid precognitive observation haki.

So Cherry did the only thing she could do, given the unspoken rules she had set for herself. Train her observation haki until she could predict and also fool him.

*shwing*

Cherry latched onto a chandelier, ripping it from the ceiling it hung from and threw it at Katakuri. Not enough to actually harm him, but would definitely slow him for an instant if he got hit. Katakuri dodged by changing directions into another pathway rather than lose any speed.

Cherry was there to meet him, leaping towards his chest with her arms outstretched.

*Shloop*

Katakuri parted his mochi body in a perfect shape to allow Cherry to pass straight through him, even adjusting the shape as Cherry flailed to catch a grip on him.

Cherry laughed, "That's so damned cool!"

'If I don't catch him before he gets to those kitchens, then I'm training all night!' Cherry resolved herself. Though, it would be Katakuri who suffers as her unwilling training partner.

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章 355: Tricky Woman

Katakuri reached the second set of stairs going up to the third floor. It was still a while until they reached the kitchens on the eighth floor, but he was already starting to think it would have been better to suffer through Cherry's constant teasing than to have started this impromptu game of tag.

His eyes flashed, observation haki warning him of another grab, but this time it was different. Cherry's form blurred in his foresight, two overlapping images of her barely more than a centimeter out of place from one another.

Katakuri dodged, easily leaping over her grasping hands and once more leaving her in his dust as she collected herself momentarily from her failed attempt.

"Hehehehehehe~!" Cherry cackled behind him, and he knew why.

Up until that moment, Katakuri had used only the barest minimum of effort to evade her. This time he didn't, because he couldn't. The two futures he had predicted were nearly identical, but that was enough to force him to leave some wiggle room for himself, and that mad woman understood it immediately.

'What a monster…' Katakuri thought. If it came down to it, he'd have to put her down himself to make sure she didn't grow into a real threat, no matter his conflicted gratitude towards her. The family came first, no exceptions.

*flash* *SHWING* *CLANG*

Katakuri ducked out of the way of two trajectories of a decorative axe that Cherry pulled off the wall and launched at him. A shiver went down his spine because they were a bit farther apart this time.

'It's been barely 30 seconds?!' Katakuri's common sense was being swiftly torn apart. 'At this rate, won't she be a match for me before we reach the 7th floor, let alone the eighth?!'

Katakuri turned on a dime into a room, slamming the large double doors behind him and quickly making for the windows.

*Slam!*

Cherry burst through the doors into what looked to be an outdoor courtyard at a glance. However, it was apparent upon closer observation that the lawn wasn't real grass and the blue, cloudy sky was painted on the walls and ceiling, albeit quite realistically. The quality was high enough that she might have believed it were it not for the windows showing the darkened outside world.

"Ah! No shortcuts!" Cherry realized that Katakuri planned to skip the almost maze-like interior of the Whole Cake Chateau through the outside windows. That would mean less time to learn from him! Unacceptable!

*BOOM*

The sound barrier shattered and Katakuri lunged to the side as a person sized projectile shot past him several times faster than a cannonball.

Cherry hit the window he was headed for at full force, but strangely it only spiderwebbed in cracks before reforming into its prior pristine state.

'She was holding out on me, though I suppose it doesn't matter how fast she moves if I can see it coming.' Katakuri concluded, already darting for another window. He was surprised when he reached it without interruption before realizing it was far too quiet.

Cherry swung down from above the outside of the window as he opened it, hanging by her feet and reaching her hands towards Katakuri's scarfed face.

Katakuri threw a mochi fist at her from a floating donut that manifested out of nowhere, socking her square in the chest and sending her flying away from the chateau wall. He promptly turned around and made for the hallways once more, understanding that perhaps the open air wasn't a good place to face off against Cherry.

The sounds of Cherry kicking the air and landing inside the room before he even got back out of it further confirmed the wisdom of that.

What he didn't understand, and didn't really have the time to think over, was how Cherry had gotten outside in the first place. The window she landed on didn't break nor was it open.

Katakuri started to get serious, pushing himself to run faster and preparing his devil fruit powers to make sharper turns than he could properly control at this new speed otherwise.

"Not used to running away, are ya?" Cherry called out from behind him.

Katakuri tilted his head to avoid a Rankyaku flying slash. "How did you learn Rokushiki? Did you train with the world government?"

"Aren't they pretty straight forward? CP9 used them a whole bunch right in front of me, of course I'd pick them up." Cherry answered, rounding a corner without losing any momentum.

"Right, of course. Easy." Katakuri rolled his eyes. "It's not like they're top secret martial art forms by a clandestine organization of spies feared by most of the world or anything."

"Totally, like this one!" Cherry launched several Rankyaku slashes in quick succession, all of them dodged. "All you gotta do is shape your thigh and calf muscles into a razor edge and do a flying sword slash like you do with a sword! Simple!"

"I'm not a swordsman." Katakuri said, launching several donut punches backwards at her as he reached the straight away for the stairs to the fourth floor.

"That sounds like a YOU problem. Swords are cool, you should learn how to use 'em. So you can be cool." Cherry said, hardening her two fists with haki and plowing straight through the mochi attacks. "Oh, they're softer than I expected. I guess you're an observation haki specialist?"

Katakuri almost stumbled at those words. Certainly his observation haki was stronger than his armament, but calling him a specialist when he outmatched most of the world's haki users in armament alone was insane.

However, judging by the way Cherry looked as she said it, she might actually mean it. Just how strong was her armament haki that she thought that his own was subpar?

'Better steer clear of the treasure vault, just in case.' Katakuri concluded. He couldn't risk the chance that she could break inside via brute force.

Katakuri took a left as soon as he left the stairs. Cherry shot straight past the intersection instead of following him, which was the direction of the vault.

Katakuri stopped instantly and spun around to give chase. His eyes widened in shock at Cherry's wide smile as she was hurtling towards his head, rather than charging down the other hallway as his observation haki told him she was going to do.

He jerked himself backwards limbo style, letting Cherry sail over him before she bounded off the air in pursuit.

A brief, but very intense scuffle occurred, but Katakuri ultimately managed to keep away from her and continue on his way.

'Did she really fool my observation haki just then?' Katakuri was both shocked and awed. 'No, I let my own thoughts get in the way. I didn't want her to go that way, so her trick was unusually effective against my predictions.'

He wasn't just making excuses. It was important to keep an open mind with observation haki, even more so the more adept you were at it. If an opponent's trick lined up with what was already on your mind, even a much weaker haki user could potentially fool you.

Still, it didn't bode well for Katakuri. At the same time, he found himself enjoying this more than he meant to. So often he was faced with pitiful fools or cowards who didn't stand a chance against him, it just felt like work. He might as well be an office worker most of the time with how boring it all was.

Now though? He could relish the challenge, even if it wasn't a traditional head to head fight.

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