บท 175: Admiral Candidates
Cherry brought out her spear and released Sakura Tengoku, which transformed into lightning and buried itself into the ground.
'Great, now we have to look out for ghosts AND lightning from the ground.' Both Gion and Tokikake complained in their minds.
Gion leapt backwards to give Tokikake some space while he reared back his fist.
"Moon Crusher!" Tokikake's fist flashed forward.
In spite of its speed, Cherry felt that it had a certain weight to it. She dodged in the direction of Gion, causing the punch to barely miss her.
Tokikake redirected the punch into the ground and the ground cracked in a wide radius, quaking beneath their feet like a bomb had gone off.
Cherry countered with a swift spear thrust. Gion approached from behind with a stab, but was blocked by a bolt of lightning from the ground between them.
Tokikake tried to deflect the spear thrust with a fist. He was successful in changing the trajectory of the attack, but he took some damage to his arm from the vibrations contained within.
The villagers of the Fungwood heard the sounds of distant battle. To them it sounded more like an all out war than a duel between only a few participants.
More of Perona's Hollows encroached the battleground in an encirclement. Gion and Tokikake would be forced to deal with them to avoid demoralization, but Cherry was immune to their existential depression.
Sakura Tengoku danced in and out of the earth, moving faster than a person could with the Rumble Rumble Fruit without the weakness of perception to restrain it.
"Web Cutter!" Gion shouted.
Her sword flashed quickly, forming a web-like pattern out of sword light that rapidly approached Cherry and threatened to dice her up.
Cherry could not block this, but she did not attempt to dodge either. This attack was unfocused and as such it was weak. The trap that Tokikake was waiting to hit her with, however, was not weak.
Cherry held out her arms like she planned to hug an old friend. Her body was coated head to toe in armament haki the very moment that Gion's attack arrived. Full body armament haki was a tricky thing to maintain, but easy enough to do if you only held it for a few seconds and you didn't plan to move.
Tokikake frustratedly redirected the attack he planned to hit her with when she dodged into the lightning sword instead, sending it flying away as it reverted to its form briefly. He also batted away a few Hollows before charging Cherry once again.
Tokikake and Gion worked very well together. Even though they had trouble getting any good hits in, they covered each others' backs well enough to prevent themselves from taking any major damage.
Cherry had some minor scratches from the sword light web across her body, but she was largely unfazed and flashed towards Gion with aggression she hadn't yet shown to them.
Gion raised her sword to deflect the incoming spear and found herself clashing with it several times a second. The force of each of those strikes was nothing to sneeze at and the vibrational energy was quickly building in her arms with each time she blocked.
Tokikake tried to intervene, even bashing away the returning lightning sword as he tried to flank Cherry.
He was completely caught off guard with what happened next. A gigantic tentacle stretched out from Cherry's back and slammed into him and pinned him to the ground.
"What the hell is this?!" "What the hell is that?!" Gion and Tokikake were utterly flabbergasted by what they were seeing.
Cherry had surprised the world several times with her strange techniques and weapons, but having a sea king sized limb grow out of her back was definitely the most unexpected and strange of everything she's shown before.
Tokikake was lifted into the air and hurled away before he could recover from his confusion and counter attack. Takako then retracted her tentacle back into Cherry's body.
Although Takako had Cherry's nourishing energy to strengthen her, that would take a long time to show real results. So she only really had her size going for her, nothing that can stand up to a high level marine's haki.
'Good girl. I'll get you some nice snacks later.' Cherry praised Takako through their mental link.
Gion's arms were spasming and growing weaker by the second. Her observation haki warned her of the lightning sword about to hit her. She couldn't block the sword and the spear at the same time and Tokikake was too far away to help her.
Gion took a gamble and reached to block the lightning sword with a haki coated hand.
"AHHH!" Gion screamed out.
Her remaining arm holding the sword was taking the full brunt of Cherry's spear assault. She had stopped the lightning sword from passing through her body, but it still sent electricity surging into her arm.
Tokikake finally returned and distracted Cherry from Gion, giving her room to recover and breathe.
The man was visibly upset that the woman he fancied and worked with for some time had been hurt. He could hate Cherry for it, but he knew they had been the ones to foolishly rush in.
Cherry switched targets and focused on Tokikake this time. He had it worse than Gion did, as he didn't have a sword in between himself and Cherry's frightening vibrations.
"Taking a little rest, little lady? That's a bad idea, I can fight for weeks on end without sleep or rest." Cherry mocked.
Gion and Tokikake knew it was over now. Cherry had hardly spoken a word once the fight had started proper, but now she was giving them advice of all things.
The question was whether they should try to retreat or if they should push to the end.
Cherry's character was unclear. She might just let them leave if they retreat, or she might take advantage of their weakened resolve to kill them outright. They knew the straw hats didn't have a tendency to kill their opponents, but Cherry had threatened to kill marines before and the other straw hats weren't around right now.
"Hehehehe, you want to leave huh? Go ahead, I won't stop you. It was a good fight, you two are pretty tough. Maybe one day you'll become admirals, hm?" Cherry instantly saw through their thoughts and backed off.
"..." Gion and Tokikake were still hesitant and took advantage of the lull in the fighting to get some energy back in case they needed to fight.
"Hey now, I've never killed any marines before so don't look at me like that. I only threatened Sengoku because he took my friend hostage, and you don't have any hostages as far as I can see." Cherry said.
Perona's Hollows started to encroach en masse as she had the time to build numbers. They left a clear escape route in the direction of the marines' ship.
Gion and Tokikake shared a look then started to retreat, keeping their guards up the whole time.
Cherry didn't stop them, she thought they were good people. At least they were better than the 'absolute justice' marines like that spider freak. They actually cared about their subordinates.
Cherry found Luffy's way of doing things to be an interesting challenge. As a cultivator she had a lot of blood on her hands and was very used to murder, so not doing it was a strange and new experience.
She did wonder why in the heavens he was like that, though. He certainly didn't get it from Shanks, who he idolized. Shanks was as much a killer as anyone else dwelling at the top of this world.
Perhaps he got it from Garp, then? She didn't think it was very likely, even though he was a big softy.
'I guess it's just his thing. Maybe he wants to gloat after becoming the King of the Pirates that he didn't take a single life doing it? That's a pretty good boast…' Cherry walked back towards the village with various thoughts.
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