章節 374: Dreams of Electric Snails
Cherry found herself a nice little supply closet tucked away in a nearly abandoned corner of the chateau, making sure to avoid being seen by Big Mom's homies before arriving.
Fortunately, this closet was unoccupied by hiding lovers looking for a private place to make out or get frisky. Which made it perfect for Cherry's needs.
'I wonder if someone saw me here if they would think I came to kiss the den den mushi?' Cherry thought idly.
She looked at the snail phone in her hands curiously and found that the idea almost didn't disgust her. Almost.
Shaking the deviant thoughts from her mind, she pushed into the supply closet and shut the door behind her.
Cherry nestled the den den mushi in a corner in a nest of clean washcloths behind a barrel of water.
Cherry poked the den den mushi, "Wake up."
The snail opened its eyes lazily and gave a big yawn. It wasn't used to being woken up so gently. Most of the time it was either from receiving an inbound call or being made to make an outbound call without warning. It found that this way was more comfortable.
"Good. Now, I'm not 100% sure this isn't going to just kill you; so if you die, then I'll donate a hundred million to that den den mushi retirement charity, 'kay? Great." Cherry nodded with satisfaction that the snail seemed to understand her.
The snail did not understand her. It just thought she was kind of stupid for not knowing how to properly make a call.
For the first test, she'd be attempting to travel a relatively short distance with a direct connection via call.
She picked up the receiver and dialed the number of the Thousand Sunny's den den mushi.
After a short moment, she felt the two ends connect. She didn't need anyone to answer it on the other end fortunately, just the connection itself.
"Here we go, buddy. Wish me luck and I'll wish for yours." Cherry said.
The den den mushi blinked at her blandly, as if to say "You're supposed to wait until someone answers before talking, silly."
Cherry's form burst into ghostly white flames, then entirely transformed into said flames. The snail widened its eyes in surprise when those flames rushed into its head!
There was a brief twinge of pain in its mind, like accidentally swallowing food that wasn't chewed well enough to smoothly go down, then it was alone in the supply closet and had no idea what just happened.
Cherry felt herself racing along a sort of psychic stream through a very strange place. Images of strange locales flashed past her senses and were gone before she could properly make sense of them.
She felt other presences beyond the two she was traveling between, a few of which were clearly other den den mushi, but rest didn't feel like snails at all.
Before she could mull this over properly, she hit the other end of the stream and allowed herself to squeeze through before her ethereal body hurt the Sunny's den den mushi.
This time she knew what to expect, so the snail wouldn't experience any pain.
*purururu-* *BUUURP*
The Sunny's den den mushi's eyes widened as it suddenly belched a gout of ghostly white flames. It was even more surprised when its burp transformed into Cherry.
The snail and Cherry blinked at one another.
"Are you alright? Does it hurt anywhere?" Cherry asked.
"..." the snail naturally didn't answer, but from the way it settled itself to go back to sleep, Cherry assumed it was fine.
"Sweet." Cherry sat down on the deck-lawn to mull over her experience.
The first experiment was a resounding success, but it was also going to be the easiest thing she will have tried. Fortunately, the den den mushi accepted her presence in their collective mindscape smoothly, even more so than she expected. So that would help things along, hopefully.
"What were those other creatures in there though?" Cherry wondered aloud.
They hadn't felt dangerous to her, and they probably weren't if they left the snails alone.
"Only one way to find out!" Cherry slapped her thighs and stood up.
Slipping back into her Ethereal Star form, she dove into the den den mushi's head without bothering to wake it up and call another one this time.
When Cherry's feet touched solid ground, she was monetarily confused. She looked around and found that she was still on the Thousand Sunny, except… the ship was out to sea?
"Did I get stuck inside and time passed without me realizing it?" Cherry thought. As she did so, the words spilled out of her mouth involuntarily, which confused her even more.
"Which scallywag be stowin' away on me ship?!" an unfamiliar voice cried out.
Cherry turned and saw the spitting image of Gol D. Roger glaring her down, cutlass at the ready. mWell, there was one detail that was off about the image, which clued Cherry into the fact that this was not actually Gol D. Roger returned from the dead.
That being the fact that his head was a den den mushi instead of, well, a head. He still had the mustache though.
To be more specific, the den den mushi head looked exactly the same as the den den mushi from the Thousand Sunny, which was conspicuously missing from its sitting stand on THIS Thousand Sunny.
"Ah, I've intruded on his dreams!" Cherry thought out loud accidentally.
"An intruder!" Gol D. Snail exclaimed. "No, wait, I recognise you… Ah, yes! You're my cabin boy, of course!"
"Sure I am, bud." Cherry saw no reason to spoil the snail's delusions of grandeur. She thought aloud, "Now, how do I…?"
As soon as Cherry thought of going somewhere else, she did exactly that and found herself in a vast field of knee-high flowers as far as the eye could see. "Huh, how about that."
There were a few small openings in the endless flowers where something had laid the flowers flat. Cherry wandered over to take a look and found a woman with pigtails and a blue dress, a robot, a scarecrow, a lion, and a little dog sleeping soundly on the ground. All of them had den den mushi heads, which were five of the den den mushi that Cherry had seen in the communications room.
This time, Cherry tried to focus on finding the den den mushi that she left in the supply closet, and just as suddenly as she arrived, she was whisked away to someplace new.
"It seems that all those other strange creatures I sensed before were den den mushi after all; just in the forms they were dreaming themselves as," Cherry posited as she arrived in a banquet hall where a snail-headed king was chomping down on a feast of vegetables.
It was certainly true that den den mushi spent most of their time sleeping, so it made sense that they would be dreaming as well.
"I wonder if these dreams are so vivid because of their potent psychic nature or if it's like this for everyone?" Cherry wondered aloud. "Maybe I'll ask one of the others if they mind me snooping around in their heads when they sleep sometime…"
章節 375: Popping In
Cherry approached the feasting snail king and dove into its open mouth. She emerged in the supply closet within the Whole Cake Chateau just as she expected.
'No problem traveling via den den mushi without a direct connection, then.' Cherry concluded her second experiment. 'No problems navigating between den den mushi with their collection mindscape for short distances either.'
Next was long distance travel, but this had greater risks involved, particularly in the risk of getting lost. She had found nearby den den mushi that she was familiar with easily enough, but had no idea if she could do so, say, from here to wherever Law's den den mushi was at the moment.
'It might be better to do that after we've settled things here though…' Cherry thought.
She checked on the situation outside and found the Vinsmoke family along with Sanji moving away from Luffy, Nami, and Jinbe who were standing still a little ways away from the Whole Cake Chateau.
'Did they meet already? I guess that Sanji hasn't been convinced to give up on this nonsense yet, huh?' Cherry observed.
She supposed that she could have tried to convince him, but had thought it best that Luffy did so. Their history was longer than hers with him, and he was the captain of the crew to boot.
'There isn't going to be a wedding anyways. Big Mom sealed her fate when she threatened my grandma and my two idiots back home.' Cherry thought coldly.
Not that she thought any goons that Big Mom sent to keep an eye on them would stand a chance against Grandma Angela. That woman was a force of nature even before she gave her a cultivation method. That's the Kuja blood in her.
'I won't give them the chance, either.' Cherry decided.
She turned back to the snail who was still sound asleep and plunged back into the snail-scape.
"Now then," Cherry looked around the kingly chamber.
She didn't want to go randomly charging through the snail-scape blindly, so with a thought she fashioned a string of sorts out of spiritual energy with some effort and tied it firmly around the heavy wooden table that the snail king was feasting at.
"Let's begin!" Cherry declared.
She pushed off with her fleet and suddenly she was flying, then falling through the vast open sky. In the distance she saw a vast, majestic bird soaring over the faraway lands below. Of course, it had a snail for a head.
"Hmmm…" Cherry checked her tether and found it was still attached, though now the other end was suspended in mid air where she had appeared above her current position.
She couldn't tell what direction she had gone, so she did the natural thing and willed herself towards the giant bird-snail.
With a faint *fwoosh* she appeared once more in the material world.
"How did you get in here?!" a gangster fellow exclaimed, fumbling for his gun. The man hadn't expected an intruder in this place of all places.
"Where is 'in here'?" Cherry asked, grabbing the man by the tie and half choking him with it.
"You're trespassing inside Don Bege's inner sanctum! Where else would you be?!" the gangster shouted, hoping someone would hear him. He didn't see the need to lie since it shouldn't be possible for her to be here without knowing that.
"Interesting." Cherry knocked the man out and jumped back into the den den mushi.
"Not nearly far enough." Cherry spoke, clearly dissatisfied.
Bege was ON Whole Cake Island right now, so she hadn't gone very far at all with that leap. If that was all that she could manage, then she could forget about leaving Totto Land, let alone moving from one Blue to another.
Cherry focused her will, but did her best to keep from immediately moving away this time. She allowed it to build until the psychic manifestation of air began to tremble around her, then released it!
Cherry felt herself whisked away much in the same way that she had when she traveled via the two-end call, only faster and far less smooth. She felt herself being buffeted from all sides as she passed through dozens upon dozens of dreams in quick succession.
Finally, she stopped inside of a large library where a snail-headed man wearing a purple robe was quietly reading a book whilst sipping tea.
Cherry made sure her tether was fine one again before descending on the unsuspecting den den mushi.
*fwoosh*
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH?!?!?!?!" The first thing Cherry heard was a high pitched scream of distress from right next to her.
"Oh, hey Buggy. How are things going for you?" Cherry asked genuinely.
"Y-y-y-y-y-you?!" Buggy stuttered out. "How did you do that?!"
Seeing his eyes dart to the den den mushi and back to her, she understood that he had seen what she just did completely, unlike Bege's gangster.
"It's complicated. The real question is, are you going to keep this to yourself and stop your subordinates from coming in here, or are you going to do something stupid and make me silence all the witnesses." Cherry spoke with a dark smile.
Buggy gulped. At first his arrogance had flared up, but he quickly suppressed it. This woman wasn't one of those fools who bought into his illusion of power. Not to mention that she was an unkillable fiend who could easily cut a bloody swathe through his Cross Guild. Worst of all, his Buggy Balls wouldn't be safe if he crossed her.
Buggy went to the door of his room with haste.
"Captain! We heard you scream, was there an assassin?!" Cabaji, one of his long time and most loyal men asked, concerned.
"Everything is fine!" Buggy managed to keep a panicked squeak out of his tone. He then whispered, "I… saw a spider."
"Ah, I see. Do you need me to take care of it?" Cabaji asked without a hint of ridicule that a Shichibukai screamed at the sight of a spider.
"No need, I was only surprised and took care of it." Buggy waved him off. "Make sure no one disturbs me, especially not Crocodile."
"Of course, Captain…" Cabaji felt this was a little strange. His captain hadn't asked for any 'alone time' since their time in East Blue. He had loads of women practically begging to be in his bed these days.
Buggy thought there was a misunderstanding occurring, but left it alone. A misunderstanding was better than the truth. He shut the door and found Cherry going through his stuff.
"I see you've done well for yourself after escaping Impel Down. Good for you. A shame that I never got the chance to train you, though. You have good potential, even if you're an utter failure at reaching it. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time." Cherry said, putting a solid gold statuette of Buggy down where she found it.
"Why would I accept being trained by you!" Buggy shout-whispered indignantly. Then he realized he was being rude and amended, "Ahem, I meant that I'm not worth your time…"
"You should be more confident, Buggy. Real confidence, not the false confidence that you project to all your little minions." Cherry encouraged honestly. "Now, down to business."
Buggy looked very nervous and wondered whether he shouldn't have called for Crocodile after all.
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