บท 398: Schmoozing with Crime Lords
Cherry had to admit that Big Mom knew how to throw a party. If it wasn't for the scum and villainy that made up most of the guest list and the fact that Smoothie was juicing a 'woman who had stabbed a hundred men' and an innocent giraffe, then she could even imagine having a good time here.
She did try the freshly squeezed lava juice, though. It had a peculiar flavor that didn't quite compare to anything that was actual food. The closest was probably pure capsaicin on rotten scrambled eggs with an iron and charcoal aftertaste, but somehow not horrifically disgusting?
She'd just stick to wine.
"If it isn't Cheapshot Cherry. It's the first time I've seen you at one of these. Are the Straw Hats planning to fall under Big Mom's flag, perhaps?" Morgans asked with that ever curious glint in his eyes, giving no signs that he had met her before this moment recently.
The men and woman he had been socializing with turned to regard her as he addressed her. Cherry suspected that they were prominent individuals in the underworld if Morgans was giving them any attention.
Cherry eyed the woman among the group. She was a blonde beauty with a bodacious body, but that wasn't what caught Cherry's attention. It was the fact that she held herself like a master of Rokushiki would if they were trying to hide the fact that they were, in fact, a master of Rokushiki.
It was in the way they could hold an incredible amount of tension in their muscles while appearing perfectly at ease at the same time, so that they could act in an instant without drawing suspicion beforehand. The perfect martial art for an assassin and/or infiltrator.
Cherry would know what that looks like since she had met a few folks like that back at Water Seven, though she had to give the mysterious woman credit where it's due because she nearly missed it herself.
"Probably not," Cherry answered Morgans before an awkward silence could arise. "My captain is far too willful to subordinate himself to anyone. I'm just here to make sure this isn't some roundabout method to assassinate our cook."
"Do you think that's likely?" The blonde 'totally not a Cypher Pol spy' asked. "Oh, I'm Stussy, by the way. I run the prostitution business around these parts, if you're unfamiliar with me."
"Don't sell yourself short, Stussy. They call her the Queen of the Pleasure District, you know, but don't take that to mean she is easily bullied!" A man in a striped suit that made his tall lanky form seem even more so, which would have made him imposing if not for his long pink nose and bushy gray mustache. "Giberson, they call me 'The Concealer'. If you ever want to get into smuggling, give me a call."
Giberson handed her a business card for a seemingly innocuous shipping company.
"I was trying not to spook her with a meaningless title," Stussy looked nonplussed that Giberson had outed her identity.
"It's hardly meaningless, and she'd find out soon enough anyways," Giberson defended.
"Shut your yapper, Giberson! Let her answer Stussy's question, I can smell a story!" Morgans spoke quickly with more than a hint of irritation.
"I doubt it. Most likely this is just those scummy Vinsmokes sacrificing a piece that doesn't belong to them, but Sanji wants to go through with it, so I won't stop him," Cherry sipped at her wine glass unconcernedly.
Morgans managed to look disappointed and Stussy looked thoughtful.
"Cut it out with the dour mood, this is a party! How often are you able to enjoy one of these? Once or twice a year?" Giberson exclaimed, chugging down a bottle of wine.
"That's true. This may even be the only one I'm invited to, so I intend on enjoying it quite thoroughly," Cherry said, smiling knowingly at Morgans. "Maybe I'll catch you later."
Cherry left them whilst shooting finger guns in their direction and giving a wink at Stussy. To anyone else, it was just a quirky way to say goodbye, but Stussy took it an entirely different way.
'How does she know?! How does she know?! How does she know?! How does she know?! How does she know?!' Stussy's mind swirled in turmoil even as she smiled sweetly on the outside.
Stussy was one amongst a rare few who had mastered Shigan's advanced form, which turned an already lethal finger jab into a deadly ranged attack. Cherry's finger guns were practically screaming 'I know who you really are~', and she couldn't fathom how.
She was far too confident in her abilities to believe the truth, that Cherry had simply sussed her out with a glance. It was far more likely, in her mind, that there was an information leak. That would place her in an incredibly dangerous position.
'I need to corner her and get some answers…' Stussy thought dangerously.
Cherry was blissfully ignorant of the storm that was brewing because of her little joke. Currently she was busy trying to orient herself above the kitchens in such a way that she could slip down and back up to the rooftop without anyone noticing that she had left.
Fortunately, that wasn't very difficult to do as the rooftop was covered in ostentatious décor that provided more than enough in the way of breaking line of sight with the other guests.
She became ethereal, fell through the floor and directly into the massive wedding cake that the chefs were putting the finishing touches on. She took a large mirror out of her armor pocket directly at the center of the cake, just as Luffy had asked her to do.
His plan was to use Brulee's power to burst out the cake with a bunch of animals from the forest that Brulee had altered to look like himself, creating a maelstrom of chaos as a result.
It was a good idea that served to call attention away from Bege as he enacted his own part of the plan, or it would if not for an obvious flaw.
'Big Mom will probably go into one of her hunger pang fits when this cake gets trashed, won't she?' Cherry thought.
She couldn't imagine that Bege hadn't realized this possibility, unless he was even dumber than she thought he was, which would be quite the feat. Cherry reckoned that he must be absurdly overconfident in his success, because at that point Big Mom should be dead and therefore her hunger pangs wouldn't be an issue.
Cherry was the opposite. She was certain the Bege would fuck up big time, and as such her hunger pangs were a very real and almost guaranteed complication.
'And I'll be there to save the day, hehehehehehe~!' Cherry cackled to herself.
A muffled "Did you guys hear somebody cackling?" caused Cherry to go silent and resume her task.
She situated the mirror upright and created a small hollow space for it to sit inside so that this side of the mirror wouldn't just be a wall of cake.
'Now I just need to go back up, enjoy the finer side of life for a bit, and wait for everything to kick off with the escape mirror,' Cherry nodded at her handiwork.
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