One Piece: Dream of Immortality

Once Cherry's abundantly roomy pockets were stuffed to the metaphorical brim with ill gotten gains, she was mostly done with her business in Mary Geoise.

Are they really ill gotten gains if they were ill gotten by the celestial dragons in the first place, though? Cherry certainly didn't think so.

In her hands, all that hoarded wealth would eventually find its way back into economic circulation, much like the contents of Gran Tesoro's overflowing vault would in time. That was a lot of money to spend, even just counting her own share, but she reckoned she could manage it in a few decades at most.

Cherry wondered how Nami would react if she knew the "wasteful" ways that she planned to dispose of all that gold.

Well, nevermind that. She had more important things to worry about right now. Like making sure that Kuma escaped this cesspit.

Unfortunately, the man wasn't being forced to carry some ugly jackass who can't be bothered to use their legs when they go out for a stroll. That was a strange thought, but it did make the revolutionaries' job of extracting him much harder.

Currently he was being kept in a cell with a disproportionate amount of security, considering he was probably the most obedient slave in Mary Geoise after what they did to him. It seemed to have been specially built to contain him and was situated in a public square, presumably for the ease of access by whichever celestial dragon had their turn with him.

Cherry wasn't sure why the revolutionaries didn't wait for a more opportune moment to kick off their plan, but they surely had their reasons. Kuma's rescue was likely fairly low on their list of priorities. That may sound callous, since Kuma was a friend of theirs, but that was just the kind of stakes they were dealing with.

"I guess I'll do something about it then," Cherry decided.

Ideally her presence here wouldn't be known to anyone until she was long gone, if at all. Were she to be discovered, however, she wouldn't mind all too much. If nothing else, the revolutionaries could use her as a distraction.

Cherry sensed Morley moving through the earth below the cell. The cell was made with sea stone, so he couldn't just bust through it to get to Kuma. Not the way that Cherry could.

*woosh* *BAM!*

Cherry did a super sonic spinning axe kick onto the room of the cell. Like a perfectly cracked egg, the cell split in half down the middle. Jamming her hands into the split, she easily ripped the two halves apart, leaving Kuma no longer imprisoned.

Morley was quick to act, surging out of the ground and grabbing Kuma as the latter stood up to defend himself from a perceived attacker.

"You don't have to fight anymore, Kuma-chan!" Morley tried to reason with him, but Kuma wasn't having it and started wrestling against him. Fortunately, Morley was more than capable of overpowering the former Shichibukai.

A large crow passed overhead and dropped something towards Morley. Cherry recognised it as Karasu. "Morley, Sabo got these keys from the castle! Use them quickly and escape with Kuma!"

"Where is Sabo?" Cherry asked them.

"He's still in the castle," Karasu informed.

Seeing that she wasn't needed here any longer, Cherry slipped away quietly. Royal guards were starting to amass nearby, but they would catch neither herself or the revolutionaries.

"Just Sabo left," Cherry muttered to herself.

She didn't like this one bit. Touching upon the castle with her Life Sense only revealed that the "stench" had gotten worse. How that was the case, she didn't have a clue, but she wasn't entirely keen on finding out.

'I'm just going to have to avoid using Life Sense and go inside, aren't I?' Cherry thought with a grimace, feeling a bit ill just from that brief exposure.

Robin would be very cross with her if she knew what Cherry was about to do, but it wasn't like Cherry could leave Sabo in there alone. Robin would understand that this risk wasn't taken without good reason.

Cherry subconsciously held her breath and she dove into Pangaea Castle.

…

"Why is this place so damned big?!" Cherry growled in frustration.

It was becoming glaringly obvious that her ability to track down a particular person was inordinately lacking when she couldn't use Life Sense to do it.

Thus far, she had found the offices belonging to somebody named Saint Figarland Garling (which she promptly vandalized), the office of the marines' Commander in Chief Kong (which she promptly vandalized), and the meeting place for the Reverie inside of which were the various kings of the World Government (whose shoe laces she tied together under the table).

All of that, but no Sabo.

'I guess you can't say that Sabo is bad at what he does. I can't find a single trace of him!' Cherry praised inwardly, though she was simultaneously cursing him for his competency. 'I should have made a vivre card for him…'

'Hm?' Cherry spotted someone familiar. She wondered, 'What are you doing out here instead of at the Reverie, Wapol?'

Only one way to find out. She followed the strange little man through the vast hallways of Pangaea Castle. From the way he meandered about, you would think that he was lost or something.

'Ah, right, he's lost. This place is just complex enough to be frustratingly annoying, so of course an idiot like him got lost,' Cherry mused.

Wapol probably went looking for a toilet and completely failed to pay attention to where he'd been going. It was too bad they didn't let him bring his wife into the meeting; she could have saved him a lot of trouble.

What was a terrible misfortune for Wapol, though, could be a boon for herself.

If Cherry had learned anything from watching Zoro in the time she'd known him, it was that lost idiots could find themselves in the strangest of places. Wapol may very well be the key to her finding Sabo by wandering into some place he had no business wandering into.

'I wonder where King Cobra went off to, though?' Cherry pondered. Nefertari Cobra, the king of Alabasta and Vivi's father, hadn't been present at the Reverie either.

Unlike Wapol, she couldn't simply dismiss his absence as simple buffoonery. He hadn't looked to be in good health when she caught a glimpse of him a few days ago, either, given that he was bound to a wheelchair. Cherry had planned to visit him after the Reverie so he could make a "miraculous recovery" from whatever condition he was suffering from.

'Wait, did the World Government do something to him? Poisoning, perhaps?' Cherry frowned at the thought.

It was possible, she supposed. Cobra was simultaneously competent and had reason to be pissed at the World government after the whole Crocodile fiasco. That was a bad combination of traits from the perspective of the real ruling elite of this world.

That same competence also meant that they couldn't act directly against Cobra without angering the Alabastan people. Cherry didn't think that they wouldn't make any public moves if push came to shove, but it was more likely that they'd use Cipher Pol for a more clandestine solution.

'I'll figure out what's going on, first,' Cherry elected not to jump to any conclusions. It was dangerous for a person of her level of power to do that sort of thing.