章節 416: Sulong

Almost everyone sat around the dining table as they ate, only Jinbe remaining outside to keep the ship on course. Sanji had prepared a right and proper feast for Luffy's triumphant return, and Cherry had promised to save enough for Jinbe from Luffy's blackhole of a stomach.

There was even a carrot cake for Carrot, much to the young rabbit mink's delight.

"How did the fight with Katakuri-chan go, Luffy?" Cherry asked curiously. She wondered if the man had gone easy on her little captain or not.

"It was so annoying! He kept predicting all my moves with his haki and I could barely hit him or dodge any of his attacks!" Luffy spoke through a mouth stuffed to the brim with surprising eloquence. He did have a lot of practice, though, Cherry supposed.

Pekoms couldn't get over the fact that Cherry had just said 'Katakuri-chan'.

"How did you beat him, then?" Chopper asked curiously.

"I took a break on a peanut island. Rayleigh told me a little about people who could see the future with haki, so I figured out how to do it myself," Luffy drained a jug of water to wash a bowling ball sized mass of food down his throat.

"Pffft," Cherry burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" Name asked her.

"Most people never manage to see the future with observation haki, but our favorite idiot here did it just because he decided to; and in a ridiculously short amount of time, no less. That's hilarious," Cherry explained.

'As expected of a child of destiny. Completely unfair,' Cherry thought.

Even thinking as such, she wouldn't trade places with him in a million years. Too much trouble came with that much of Fate's attention.

"It is indeed quite impressive," Pedro complimented.

Chopper and Carrot watched Luffy with wondrous eyes, whilst Pekoms was choking on a chicken bone that he swallowed in shock from that revelation.

"What happened when you went back?" Cherry asked.

"We fought like men! I won!" Luffy declared simply.

"Mm, sounds about like I expected then," Cherry nodded, like what he said wasn't glossing over a bunch of details.

"WE'VE GOT SHIPS INCOMING!" Jinbe called out from above.

"The Big Mom pirates sure are a bunch of busy bodies," Cherry sighed. "Why can't they just sit back on their haunches and relax? I guess I'll go kick their asses again, you guys just enjoy yourselves."

Carrot and Pedro shared a look. Carrot said, "Let us handle it. It would be a shame to let a beautiful moon go to waste."

"That's not cryptic at all," Cherry said, causing Carrot to giggle. "I'm guessing you're talking about that secret weapon Dogstorm and Cat Viper talked about?"

"That's right. Are you coming, Pekoms?" Pedro asked.

"I think I've betrayed my old crew enough, thank you very much," Pekoms said. "It may not be enough to repay everything they've done for our people, but I do still have my pride."

Pedro nodded in understanding.

As Carrot and Pedro stood to go outside, Cherry gathered up Jinbe's share of the meal to bring it up to him.

Reiju stood to go as well, though only out of interest in what the minks' secret weapon could be. She was sure that whatever it was, Judge would love to know about it and she would be delighted to know something that he doesn't.

The others started to shovel food into their mouths so that they could be ready by the time they made contact with the enemy. Luffy seemed to take that as a challenge, because he sped up too.

"Here you go, Jinbe. I'll take the helm," Cherry said, handing over a bundle of food.

"Thank you," Jinbe said. "Perhaps I should eat afterwards, though?"

"Those two have it handled, apparently," Cherry said, gesturing to the two minks who stepped out with her.

And as it would soon turn out, they most certainly did have it handled.

The fleet of ships ahead of them neared quickly on account of the fact that they were paddle boats. While they needed a lot of fuel to keep themselves going at speed, in the distance between the islands of Totto Land, this wasn't an issue.

Carrot and Pedro cast their gaze up at the full moon. A change beset them that Cherry marveled at even more than the others since she could see what was happening on the inside.

Their fur lengthened and became stark white, and their eyes sharpened with barely contained fierceness. Their claws and fangs caught the moonlight, gleaming and ready to draw blood. Electricity buzzed across their entire bodies, making the hair of everyone else stand on end.

"Incredible," Cherry muttered. Sadly she didn't think that this was an ability that she could replicate, a power that was buried deep in their bloodlines. "Carrot, you look so cooool~!"

Carrot, who had taken on a colder and more serious appearance, had her ears twitch and she turned away to cover her face in embarrassment.

"No time to waste, Carrot," Pedro said, leaping clear across the large stretch of ocean between the new fleet and the Sunny in a single bound, and making it look easy too.

Carrot leapt over to the other side of the approaching fleet, her own jump looking much more graceful compared to Pedro's show of raw strength.

From there, the two of them began to tear the enemy ships apart. Masts were snapped like twigs, helms ripped from their decks, the large paddles jammed or outright shattered.

"Pedro?!" That was a voice that Pedro didn't expect to hear again. Perospero glared at him hatefully, still bearing wounds from his close encounter with death thanks to Pedro and still missing an arm from the experience. "How are you still alive?! I watched you blow yourself up!"

"Tsk, why could I have blown that tongue tongue off instead of your arm?" Pedro responded. "No matter, I can remedy that right now!"

Pedro let out loud, bestial growl as he leapt at Perospero, who panicked at the sight of his speed. The lackeys aboard the ship couldn't even muster the courage to attack Pedro, cowed by his ferocity.

Arcs of electricity lit up the night like a light show made just for the Straw Hats to watch.

Not even ten minutes after it all started, Pedro and Carrot returned to the Thousand Sunny with most of the enemy fleet disabled, or in some cases outright sinking.

The two minks heaved large sighs of relief as they hid their eyes from the moon, their bodies returning to their normal state.

"It really sucks to come down from that…" Carrot complained.

"It can't be helped. That is the price we pay for such power," Pedro said.

"Are you okay? Are you injured anywhere?" Chopper asked, even as he looked them over.

"No, no. We'll be fine," Pedro explained. "Sulong is powerful, but consumes a great deal of stamina. A major downside is that you can't even tell how much energy you've used up until you drop the transformation, so it is very possible to inadvertently fight until we drop dead. That's why it's better in short bursts."

"Oh! You two should go rest, then! Don't let us keep you," Chopper insisted.

Cherry overheard Chopper start muttering about possibly altering his rumble ball formula to draw out that transformation in minks, even without the full moon. She scooped him up in a hug, "You little genius! I like the way you think! I'll help, so let's get started right away!"

"Eh?!" Chopper yelped in surprise. "P-put me down, you bastard! Don't call me a genius!"

He said that, but he had a goofy smile adorning his face.

評論 6條評論

投票

章節 417: Tough Choices

"It'll be better to stimulate the subject's stamina in addition to triggering the Sulong state," Cherry said, looking over the chalkboard that Chopper and her had been drawing up the plans for the new pill.

"It'll be weaker if we do that, though," Chopper countered.

"That's true, but we have to consider the health risks of Sulong. It'll also be harder to end the effect voluntarily, making accidental death more likely," Cherry explained.

"That's true," Chopper nodded in understanding. "I was too focused on perfectly replicating the transformation."

Chopper erased part of the formula for the pill and wrote over the spot with a different ingredient.

"If you add some ancient dandelion root here, it'll increase its efficacy by about 3%?" Cherry pointed out. She was entirely sure since medicines weren't her specialty.

"It'll also give them purple polka dots on their fur…" Chopper said.

"I don't see the problem," Cherry snickered.

"W-we can't do that to our friends!" Chopper argued, though he was having trouble stifling his own giggles.

"It's fine. We'll just throw in some jungle cedar bark at the end," Cherry nodded seriously.

"Pffft-!" Chopper was hammering his work desk with his little hoof as he struggled to contain himself. "T-that… That will turn them completely GREEN!"

"Better than polka dots. It'll even work as camouflage," Cherry smirked.

Chopper lost it.

"What's so funny?" Carrot walked inside, blissfully ignorant.

"Chopper wanted me to turn your fur green. You know, for camouflage," Cherry explained.

"EH?! I don't want to be green!" Carrot cried out in horror.

Chopper wasn't able to defend himself, because her shocked reaction set him off again.

"Well, he seems to think that having multi-colored fur is worse than being green," Cherry said, glancing at Chopper with sadistic glee in her eyes.

The white rabbit girl grasped her shoulder length blonde locks, having misunderstood the statement. "You don't like my hair, Cho-bro?"

"Noooo!" Chopper managed to get a hold of himself. "I love your hair!"

Chopper quickly overexplained the process of creating the Sulong Ball from the initial idea to its current state of development over the last few hours. Carrot has smoke pouring from her ears by the end of it.

Carrot shook her head briskly to shake off the info-dump she just received. "So you're making moon medicine?"

Chopper and Cherry shared a look, then nodded at her.

"That's amazing!" Carrot clapped her hands with a bright smile. "You two are so smart! My people have never thought of such a thing before!"

Chopper started to wiggle-dance and curse again.

"But if you feed a mink a medicine that turns their fur a silly color, then you should expect to be gutted soon after!" Carrot said with the same chipper tone, though there was a threatening undercurrent to it that even gave Cherry shivers down her spine.

Chopper became so still, and mid-dance at that, that Cherry might have suspected he had literally frozen solid if she didn't know better.

"Ahem," Cherry cleared her throat, dispelling some of the tension of the air. "I might have forgotten how proud minks are of their fur for a moment. Sorry about that."

Chopper nodded so fast that he created a small breeze.

"I hope your work goes well! If we had had your moon medicine back when Jack attacked us, then we would have driven them away easily!" Carrot was back to her usual self. "Oh, right! We're going to make landfall shortly, that's what Jinbe said!"

"Oh? What kind of island is it?" Cherry asked. If it was something interesting, perhaps she would take a look.

"I don't know what it's called, but it has a bunch of big bottles and cups on it!" Carrot spread her arms high and stood on her tippy toes, as if to indicate the size of said bottles and cups.

"Oh?" Cherry rubbed her chin. "I hope that means what I think it means?"

It did indeed mean what she thought it meant. The big bottles and cups in question were suspiciously shaped like alcoholic beverages.

"Hey Nami, how do you feel about doing some more conventional pirate stuff?" Cherry gave the younger woman a toothy smile.

Nami caught on immediately. "Really, Cherry? I doubt they have anything particularly expensive…"

Cherry scoffed. "They probably got better stuff than the average island, at least. We need souvenirs too, and what better souvenir than a nice barrel of booze?"

"Yohohoho! She has a point!" Brook concurred.

"We need to stock up on supplies anyway, Nami-swan," Sanji said. "We don't know exactly how long it'll take to get to Wano, and you know how Luffy is…"

"Ugh, fine," Nami relented. "However, don't bring back any of the cheap stuff, Cherry!"

Cherry rubbed her hands together in anticipation. Some good old fashioned thievery was just what she needed to cool down from a hard fight; even more so after TWO hard fights.

Pudding, on the other hand, had an unreadable expression on her face as she stood near perfectly still, watching the island she knew to be Liqueur Island draw closer by the second.

The early morning light of the sun slowly illuminated her features, a gentle breeze pushing her bangs aside and revealing her third eye for all the world to see.

Not one person on the ship reacted negatively to her eye, in fact most didn't react at all. It just didn't register as strange to them, Pudding realized, and she supposed that made sense with so many strange people in their crew. Was an extra eye more unusual than a walking, talking skeleton or a reindeer with the human fruit who is also a doctor?

"It's hard to leave your family, even if you don't get along that well with them, isn't it?" Reiju leaned against the railings next to Pudding, looking out towards the island. "Scary, even?"

That was an extreme understatement. Aside from some friendly, but otherwise shallow relationships with a few of her siblings, she had no love for this family that had no love for her. Her own mother only cared for her as much as her potential future use of her father's racial abilities, whilst at the same time constantly disparaging her for the eye that made that possibility possible.

More than that, she was terrified of Big Mom. She envied her older sister Lola for her bravery to leave the safety of the crew and risk enraging their mother to seek out true love.

"Mama isn't some loser from a weak sea like Judge," Pudding said with a lot more venom than she intended. She was still getting accustomed to dropping her masks. "There's nowhere in the world I could hide from her. Lola only broke off an engagement with the giant king, and Mama wants her dead. Mama wouldn't kill me. She'd put me in a cage and weld the door shut, to make sure I could never run again."

Reiju looked at Pudding from the corner of her eyes, a certain softness contained within them. "Cherry beat her, you know. Twice as I understand it."

"She isn't dead, though. It wouldn't be the first time Mama lost a fight, and she wasn't afraid to challenge the ones who beat her before again," Pudding said.

"It sounds like you're trying to convince yourself rather than convince me," Reiju said. "Big Mom is old and all of us are young. We will grow stronger, and she will grow weaker. My father- Judge did a detailed analysis of all of Big Mom's activities over the years, and he surmised that she has already started to decline. That's why he had the guts to go for the alliance; he believed she was trying to increase her military power because her personal power was fading. Although it didn't quite go as he planned, it's likely still an accurate assessment."

It wasn't easy to argue with that. Pudding saw the state that her mother was in when she went chasing after the wedding cake on Bege's ship.

She had a lot to think about, and very little time to do it.

評論 6條評論

投票