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.

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章節 418: Stocking up on Booze

"Straw Hat Pirates! You'll regret coming to my Liqueur Island!" A squat man, with a neck as thick as his barrel shaped body and mutton chops connected to his mustache, shouted as he waved a katana about (in a way that might have been threatening if it didn't look so silly) from the docks of Gin Town.

*conk*

Charlotte Zuccotto, Totto Land's minister of alcohol, was knocked out by a single hand chop from Cherry. Not even his oversized topknot could save him.

Cherry scanned the businesses that lined the mainstreet of Gin Town. There were many shops that catered to alcoholics of all kinds, but she was able to quickly discern which ones would have the finest drinks.

*Boom*

Cherry exploded into motion, landing before a large display window of the most ostentatious of the bunch. With a flourish, she traced her finger along the glass in a big circle. With a light push, the circle of glass tipped over and shattered on the floor and Cherry stepped inside, crunching glass beneath her boots.

Den den mushi started to howl in alarm, a loud and clear indication that a burglary was taking place.

Little more than half a minute later, Cherry stepped back outside having not left a single drop of liquid in the whole building. She even clogged the sinks with fusion for good measure.

Her next mark was a massive warehouse that seemed to deal in large quantities rather than individual customers. It had barrels and barrels and barrels of wine, beer, sake, whiskey, and all manner of spirits that you could imagine.

Five minutes later, nobody would ever guess that said warehouse did millions of beri worth of business everyday if they were to look at it now.

'I should have done this back on the Gran Tesoro. Oh well, I'm sure Totto Land has better stuff anyways,' Cherry thought.

The next place she went to was a run down little shop that was off on a side street, but still somewhat close to the main street.

She did less breaking and more entering this time, as she could see the carpenter's care in the craftsmanship of the building, choosing instead to unlock the door the old fashioned way; by turning her hand intangible and fiddling with the inside of the lock until it unlocked.

The door swung open without a peep from the well oiled hinges.

*BLAM!*

A little old man, trembling like the last leaf on a tree before winter, pulled the trigger on the blunderbuss held in his frail arms. The gun was almost as big as he was; and likely even older judging by the way the barrel ripped itself apart from the force of the blast.

Cherry was surprised by this. She already expected to be shot at, of course, but she hadn't anticipated that the one doing the shooting would be the one in grave danger.

Her perception of time slowed to a crawl as she danced forward. Her hands darted out and picked bits of the shrapnel out the air like she was plucking dandelions in a field. Some of which was fired from the blunderbuss, and some of which was the blunderbuss itself.

After making sure that there was no more flying metal to worry about, she gently placed her hands on the little old man like one would with a dance partner during a waltz. She spun him around to bleed off the momentum of the blunderbuss' recoil that had sent the man careening towards the counter behind him.

"Oh my, I didn't expect to be dancing so early in the morning. If I had, I would have worn the appropriate attire~!" Cherry joked.

"It's not early; I've been up for three hours!" the little old man replied loudly. He checked over his blunderbuss with confusion etched across his wrinkled face, eyes squinted. "Did this thing misfire?"

The blunderbuss had very little of its barrel left, leaving the stock and a few short strips of steel curled outward. It hardly looks like a firearm at all at this point

"Did what misfire?" Cherry asked. "Nevermind. Are you open yet? I'll be heading out to sea soon and I need some high quality booze to keep me out of trouble with my shipmates."

"Huh? Er… weren't you tryin' to rob me?" the little old man asked skeptically.

"Rob you? Who, me? Why would I do that?" Cherry blinked a few times, like she couldn't fathom such a thing.

"I saw you set off the alarm over at Roberto's!" he accused. "I couldn't care less about that snob's store, but you won't rob ME!"

"Wasn't me," Cherry said with a blank look.

"I may be old, but my eyes work just fine! It was definitely you!" he shouted.

"Nuh-uh," Cherry shook her head lightly.

The old man blinked at her. Cherry blinked back.

"Show me that you've got cash first!" he said after a moment of silence.

Cherry dumped a pile of gold onto his counter. "I'll take everything you've got."

"... Do you need help delivering it to your ship?" he asked.

Cherry left the little old man's shop rather pleased with her acquisition. She had had a little taste of his craft and she had to say that the old man really knew what he was doing. He had given her an earful about 'Roberto' and how he only used the finest ingredients to make mediocre liquor. Cherry would have to find out for herself later, though she suspected it would turn out to be true.

She decided to head back to the ship now, as that last store had taken longer than she anticipated. The old man had to give instructions on how best to drink each of his creations, and refused to sell them if she didn't.

She got back to the ship roughly forty five minutes after she had left. Sanji had yet to return, which made sense as he was always picky about his foodstuffs. Probably wanted to make sure they weren't poisoned by the locals since Reiju wasn't on the ship either.

Cherry looked at Pudding and approached her. "Savoring your last few moments of freedom before running home to Mama?"

Pudding actually flinched. She hadn't noticed Cherry at all, what with how distracted she was staring longingly into the town. "What?"

"This is the last stop, you know. After this we're leaving Totto Land, so this is your last chance to disembark or you'll have to swim. That wouldn't go well for you, I expect," Cherry said, looking disinterested.

"W-well… Maybe I don't want to be under Mama's- er, Big Mom's thumb anymore… I could just hop off on the next island with civilization…" Pudding mumbled indecisively.

"Hm? Did you ask Luffy to come along already? My bad," Cherry said.

"Eh?" Pudding widened her three eyes. "Ask…?"

"There's no way you'd just hang around expecting us to feed you and what not without even asking the ship's captain for permission to be here. That'd be silly," Cherry walked away, smirking to herself. "Good thing you got permission early. Gave yourself plenty of time to convince him in case he said no, not that you needed it."

Pudding crouched down, yanked her own pigtails, and screamed internally.

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