章 368: Meeting Big Mom
Cherry continued to rattle off any nonsense that popped into her head, speaking loud enough for everyone around her and Smoothie to hear loud and clear.
Many of these things were thinly veiled innuendo to salacious or controversial matters, almost all of which were complete fabrications. So it was only natural that these things would be repeated by those who heard them, often exaggerated or altered to be even more entertaining for the gossips who spread them around as newly minted rumors.
"I know you want to squeeze me tight, but there's no need to hurry, you know?" Cherry would say and the townspeople would repeat, "Smoothie-sama is thinking about eloping with her secret lover!"
And by far the worst of the lot was Morgans, owner of the World Economy News Paper and Emperor of the Underworld. Morgans knew, of course, that it was just a bunch of bullshit that Cherry was spewing; he was one of the best reporters in the world, after all. However, this was the sort of gossip that certain people would buy his newspaper to read, even if he himself didn't find it particularly exciting like a proper scoop.
His instincts were telling him that there would be a great story coming out of this wedding, though. All he had to do was be diligent and attentive to his surroundings, and soon enough the story would reveal its tail. Then all he has to do is catch it!
"Oh, what's with the large crowd? You didn't have to gather so many people just to greet little ol' me~" Cherry said, drawing Morgans' attention.
Sure enough, a war party seemed to be forming in front of the whole Cake Chateau for some reason. Morgans' keen ears picked up and parsed the voices of the crowd made up of Big Mom's children and homies.
'General Cracker was defeated by Straw Hat Luffy?' Morgans pieced together. 'Does this mean Cheap Shot Cherry was actually captured by General Smoothie?'
It certainly looked that way now that he thought about it, in spite of Cherry's unconcerned blathering. However, his instincts and logical reasoning both told him that this wasn't the case.
For one, Cherry wasn't even tied up, which according to his information about her would be just begging for her to escape. She was slippery like that.
Secondly, he frankly didn't think that Smoothie was even capable of capturing her. He might not be a top of the world powerhouse himself, but he had a good sense for danger; and that sense was telling him that Cherry was by far the most dangerous person amongst the massive crowd of Big Mom's children. He even thought that she might be able to take them all out at once, including Smoothie.
"Smoothie!" Mont-d'Or called out as he spotted his younger sister. "As expected of you! You easily captured that woman after hearing the news about Cracker!"
"Hm? What's this about?" Cherry spoke curiously.
Smoothie shot a look at Mont-d'Or that said 'Shut the fuck up before I shut you up!', which had the desired effect on the man. "I don't know what you're on about, Mont-d'Or. I'm taking our guest to meet with Mama."
Smoothie wasted no more words with her elder brother and marched on inside. Mont-d'Or felt like he screwed up somehow, and hoped that it wasn't too bad, whatever it was. He could guess that he shouldn't have said what he did in front of Cherry, but that was all.
He hoped Smoothie wouldn't hold a grudge, as she had a cruel temperament that was almost as bad as Big Mom's. She wouldn't kill him of course, they were family, but she could make his life suck pretty bad for the next few months. Like finding his morning juice inexplicably replaced by something far less palatable than the fruit variety.
Sadly, Morgans could not as easily follow them into the chateau. Although he felt like he would miss something interesting if he didn't gather his courage and boldly sneak inside, he felt like whatever that was wouldn't be the main event of the coming celebrations. So he could let this go for now, lest he find himself violently uninvited to the wedding.
In the meantime, he had a piece to write under a pseudonym. "A Sweet Love Triangle: Will Charlotte Katakuri and Charlotte Smoothie divide the Big Mom Pirates over love, or will family prevail?"
Elsewhere, Katakuri felt a shiver go down his spine for unknown reasons that he could not discern.
…
Charlotte Linlin, otherwise known to the rest of the world as Big Mom, was now in a foul mood.
She had just been informed of Cracker's defeat at the hands of a rookie, which gave her two reasons to be annoyed and angry. First, that someone dared to attack her children, and second that Cracker had failed despite holding the title of one of her Sweet Generals.
Two of her strongest homies, Zeus and Prometheus, started to feed off of her roiling emotions and desire for blood to be spilled. As a result, the sky overhead of the chateau grew dark with ominous thunder clouds, signaling the entire island about her ire. It could be worse, most of them supposed; she could have had another difficult craving and wrecked the city again.
Even so, the coming wedding quickly regained her attention and built her anticipation for her favorite food in the world. Wedding cake!
A door opened and another of her Sweet General marched inside, her very own wonderful daughter Smoothie.
"Smoothie, dear! What brings you to me?" Big Mom asked.
"I've brought Harpin D. Cherry, Mama. She was taught how to read the poneglyphs by Nico Robin, and I have won the right to demand she read them for us in a game this morning." Smoothie stated bluntly.
Big Mom's eyes widened and her smile became hungrier as her gaze shifted to rest on Cherry, still grasped in smoothie's hand. "Really now? And this wouldn't happen to be a trick, would it? I would be MOST displeased if it were…"
"Who's tricking anyone? I can read them and I agreed to do so, there's nothing else to say about it." Cherry pouted.
This was an odd attitude to take with Big Mom, in that just about everyone meeting her for the first time was terrified of her. Cherry, however, showed no signs at all that she feared the Emperor.
This meant, according to Big Mom and her children who were present, that Cherry was either very good at hiding how scared she was, or she was a tremendous fool who hadn't figured out how much danger could very well find herself in yet. They didn't even consider the possibility that Cherry didn't have the slightest bit of fear towards the monstrous woman.
'What's she gonna do? Eat me?' Cherry sneered inwardly. 'That'll just make it easier to kill the bitch; from the inside!'
Sure, Cherry could see that Big Mom's devil fruit related to souls somehow, but Cherry was quite confident that none of the other three Emperors possessed soul defenses as good as hers and they were still alive, weren't they?
In fact, the only people in the world who could truly inspire fear in Cherry were Whitebeard and Sengoku. The former because that old man was just plain intimidating, and the latter because Cherry got her ass whipped when he awakened his Buddha fruit and she had no clue what its full capabilities were.
"MamaMama!" Big Mom laughed, then she squinted her eyes in suspicion. "That's quite the offer… but I have some concerns."
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