章 298: The Long Long Pirates Come Up Short
"Who's firing on us?!" Usopp shouted in outrage.
"It doesn't matter; they're done for no matter who they are! SUPEEEEEEER!" Franky replied.
"Should I get the cannon ready to return fire or should we wait until they get close?" Usopp wondered aloud.
*thump*
A heavy crate was set down on the port side of the deck. Cabernet pried off the top, revealing the contents; dozens of cannonballs.
"Way ahead of you. I'm gonna give them the Garp Special™." Cherry said, cracking her knuckles with a smile.
Cherry really enjoyed this. She came to understand why Garp would use this method even though the man could easily sink a ship with a well placed punch whilst traveling through the Paradise half of the Grand Line; hell, it probably didn't even need to be well placed for most ships. The reason was because it was really fucking fun!
The enemy ship came out of the tunnel; three longships chained together end to end. The front third held a cannon nearly as long as itself.
"Get 'em, boys! Take everything of value! We just need to keep gambling until we win big; it's only a matter of time!" some goofy looking dude shouted from the enemy vessel.
*boom*
The overly long cannon fired again.
"Hah!" Cherry threw a cannonball at the same time.
*BOOM!*
The two cannonballs collided in mid air and exploded! Notably, this collision was considerably closer to the enemy vessel than the Thousand Sunny. This meant that the cannonball that Cherry threw was much faster than the one fired from the long cannon.
"Keep 'em coming." Cherry held out her hands to either side.
Cabernet placed a cannonball into one of the hands and Usopp rushed over to feed her other side. Usopp might pride himself as the resident marksman of the Straw Hats, but he could chuck cannonballs by hand. Since that was the case, there was no point using a cannon that would take much longer to load when he could just feed ammunition to Cherry.
Cherry glanced at Usopp.
Cherry shut her eyes and said "Let's make this interesting. Tell me where to throw them, Usopp."
"Huh? How am I supposed to-?" *boom* *splash* Usopp flinched. That third shot almost hit them!
"Just go for it. A marksman of your skill shouldn't back down from a challenge, so guide me however you think is best," Cherry said with a smile. She added "Unless you want the Sunny to take damage?"
*Boom* The enemy ship was getting closer and thus more accurate.
"91.7 degrees laterally and 15.1 degrees up!" Usopp blurted out.
*chuck* *BOOM*
The two cannonballs exploded just 10 meters away from them.
"Ohhh~! You did it! Keep going." Cherry said, chuckling to herself. This was kind of fun too.
Usopp stopped gawking at his handywork and started rittling off more numbers, this time leaving off the cumbersome words since he's already established the first number as the left to right angle and the second as the up to down angle.
"""Oooooh!""" The Straw Hats marveled at the spectacle.
"""Aaaaah!""" The Long Long Pirates screamed in terror as cannonballs rained down upon them with deadly accuracy.
The two of them were getting faster and faster, yet still not a single 'shot' missed its mark. Usopp entered a sort of pseudo-trance and started spitting out numbers with even more decimal points. It was around that time that the Long Long Pirates started to get hit directly by cannonballs instead of just the ship.
"Damn it! Aim for that bitch throwing cannonballs at us!" the silly man shouted at his crew.
Usopp's eyes glinted with enlightenment. He could see that the enemy cannon was pointed in just the right direction in order to hit them. He said "90.746 17.836."
*woosh* Cherry threw.
Before the Long Long Pirates could fire their long cannon, Cherry's cannonball slid perfectly into the barrel of it.
*BOOM*
The back of the long cannon exploded, riddling the cannoneer with shrapnel.
The crowd was going buck wild. They had hoped for a fight to go with their show, but what they got was a prodigal display of marksmanship and a one sided demolition. The Long Long Pirates had been an obnoxious presence on the Gran Tesoro for the last week or so; so for a fair number among the audience, it was also a small revenge for them.
"Hoo! That was some damn good shootin', Usopp! I couldn't have done that last one by myself." Cherry praised.
"Oh, you don't mean that~!" Usopp involuntarily mimicked Chopper's happy dance.
"Don't do that." Robin spoke with surprising seriousness.
The show seemed to be wrapping up as the man in the center of it all waved his hands and liquid gold rose out of the water and started to wrap around the Long Long Pirates and their sinking ship(s).
"Hold on, hold on! We'll get the money to pay you, just give us a few days- no, two weeks!" Long Long begged, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. In but a few moments, they were all entirely encased in gold; unmoving and soundless.
"Well, that's disturbing. Reminds me of that candle guy, what's-his-face." Cherry said with a frown. She didn't care about the gruesome demise they would suffer soon, but rather about the fact that this man would do this just because he was owed some money. She reckoned he intended on cashing out whatever bounty the fools had on their heads to cover the debt.
From the lack of surprise from the audience, she guessed this was a fairly common sight as well.
The show was over apparently since the audience was filing out and the performers left the 'stage'. The Straw Hats and company moored their ship in an open dock and boarded the Gran Tesoro proper.
"This place is pretty interesting." Luffy said.
"This place is pretty shiny!" Nami sang.
"This place is full of beautiful women~!" Sanji said, with a perverted look on his face.
"Just be careful. That guy runs this place like a mob casino. That means they likely don't play fair, but instead maximize their profits by cheating at opportune moments. And don't accept any loans from them for the love of the heavens! I know you're all pretty much broke, so come to me or Robin for cash if you need it." Cherry lectured them.
Cultivators were no stranger to gambling of course, and she'd done her fair share in her time.
"Oh, how much do the two of you have, by the way? I know you were both traveling around over the last two years, so you've built up some savings right?" Nami asked with barely concealed greed. She wouldn't steal from her friends of course (especially not her fellow ladies), but she reckoned she could squeeze some Beri out of Cherry in other ways.
"Hmmm… How much was it again?" Cherry looked at Robin as she didn't pay much attention to it.
"A little more than three billion Beri last time I counted." Robin mused.
The other Straw Hats stopped dead in their tracks and gawked at the two of them.
"T-three billion…? You don't mean three million, right…? Right?" Usopp asked.
"Well, it's a lot easier to build it up when you don't have several goofballs wasting it all. We accumulated that much without even particularly aiming for it." Cherry said, amused at their gobsmacked expressions.
"You know, Crocodile saved up more than ten billion Beri before you beat him back in Alabasta, and that's just what I knew about. I think that King Cobra probably confiscated it to help rebuild the kingdom after the damage Baroque Works did to them," Robin mentioned, a hint of guilt on her face.
"Mm, it's pretty common for big time pirates to build up a lot of wealth, especially the shichibukai that hunker down in a particular country," Law said, then added after seeing the way they looked at him "I was too busy for that, so I'm just as broke as you guys."
"Shishishi! How much do I get~?!" Luffy said, clearly just wanted to muck around rather than having any illusions about winning a fortune in a rigged casino.
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