Architect

"Where are we?" Pekoms asked.

Looking around the space that he now found himself in, he would hazard to guess it was some kind of crawl space.

"You should tell me. I only just happened to find it as I passed through the walls and decided that it was private enough in here to let you out." Cherry explained.

"This is inside the chateau?" Pekoms scrunched up his face.

As far as he knew, the Whole Cake Chateau shouldn't have any spaces like this between the walls; only between the floors. He supposed that they were simply unimportant, but the fact that they weren't on the floor plans suggested that there was a secret surrounding them.

"This space isn't nearly wide enough to be a hidden escape route. Most of Mama's children are adults of large stature." Pekoms wondered if it was meant for only the youngest children.

'Mama doesn't usually give that kind of consideration to them, though…' Pekoms thought to himself.

"It's too wide to just be the normal space between walls too. It's clearly meant to be walked through by an average sized human." Cherry noted.

Cherry heard footsteps and turned to look down one of the four passages the two of them stood in the crossroads of. She made eye contact with a slender, but tall figure through the near darkness. Whoever it was sucked in a quick breath and took off running back the way they had come from.

Pekoms, though he couldn't see very well here, had heard everything that Cherry had with his keen feline ears. He instinctively gave chase against this presumed intruder without considering that he himself was technically an escaped fugitive.

Cherry chuckled as she followed behind, wondering where this little adventure would lead.

She noticed that the further she went along, the more well-used the pathway became and even started to see markings or carvings on/in the support beams. One she saw was a somewhat crude likeness of Katakuri without his scarf and the words 'TURN AROUND' carved into a beam within a path that branched off from the one she was following.

'That carving is far from new, and though it's hard to tell, Katakuri looked rather young in it…' Cherry hummed in thought.

If her directional sense hadn't betrayed her, that path could easily pass by Katakuri's bedroom. With his observation haki, she didn't doubt he could detect someone hiding inside the walls of his own room, even if it was a younger version of himself.

Cherry continued onwards, keeping pace with the mysterious squatter and his lion mink pursuer easily. The former was as quiet as a mouse despite running through tight spaces and taking sharp corners every now and then, whilst the latter was making one hell of a racket.

Unfortunately for the wall dweller, their home turf advantage was negated by Pekoms' superior athleticism and was promptly cornered after a few minutes of chasing.

Pekoms had a tall thin old man pinned to the floor when Cherry caught up to them with her leisurely stride. He wore ragged well fitted clothes and had a gray head of hair and a beard, both of which extended down below his waist in long, simple braids.

"Gao, who are you! What are you doing here!" Pekoms growled at the man.

Whilst the old man struggled in Pekoms' grasp, Cherry observed their surroundings. They were in a room of sorts, not nearly as grand in scale as the bedrooms of Big Mom's children, but about the size of one of the supply closets which was notably larger than the pathways she had just been running through.

There were a number of makeshift shelves holding a wide assortment of what could be described as knick knacks, though there were also several framed photographs of three people from childhood to adulthood; two women and a man.

The hammock and a few scattered books that look to have been handled thousands of times told a story of a man living here for a very long time.

"Unhand me, miscreant! Don't you know who I am!" the old man finally spoke. His voice was gravelly and the words sounded as if he were unfamiliar with using them, or perhaps using any words at all.

Before Pekoms could begin interrogating the old man proper, Cherry asked him, "Who are these people in these photographs, Pekoms?"

Pekoms flinched slightly, apparently having forgotten she was there in all his excitement. "Hm?"

Pekoms squinted his little eyes at the photographs in the darkness, then after Cherry kindly illuminated the room he finally recognised them.

"These are photos of Cracker, Custard, and Angel. Why do you have these?!" Pekoms demanded answers from the old man, who he thought looked increasingly familiar despite being certain he had never met the man before.

"Why shouldn't I have them?! Can a father not have photos of his children?!" the old man complained in an accent that could sound posh if not for how rough his voice was from disuse.

"Your children? You're… You're Mama's sixth husband…? What was his name again?" Pekoms became lost in thought for a moment. "That doesn't matter right now. Why are you here, gao?"

"My name is, er… It's Heinrich! I knew that witch would try to kill me when I was no longer useful to her, just like the five who came before, so I created this escape route in the chateau to get away when the time was right!" Heinrich explained.

"Then why didn't you, you know? Escape?" Cherry asked him.

"When I first stepped foot into my escape route, my children's faces flashed before my eyes." Heinrich had a pained expression. "I couldn't raise them myself, but I could at least watch over them from the shadows…"

Pekoms loosened his grip slightly. To think this man was only trying to be in his childrens' lives in the only way that he can. He could almost tear up because of it.

Cherry glanced at the wall where faded blueprints of the chateau were pinned. "Oh, I see. You forgot to include an outside exit."

"That too," Heinrich admitted.

"Damn it, give me my pity back, you bastard!" Pekoms wanted to throttle the man.

"An architect, huh? I'm not sure whether you're any good or not. Whole Cake Chateau has some impressive craftsmanship, but it looks just awful. And you can't build secret passageways worth a damn." Cherry brutally critiqued.

"I was in a rush! I had only a day to modify the blueprints in a way that wouldn't draw attention during construction after I figured out what happened to Big Mom's first five husbands!" Heinrich defended himself.

"What happened to them?" Cherry asked curiously.

"The first one was lucky. He angered Big Mom by insisting that he alone would be her husband, so he got a bullet in the chest and a watery grave…" Heinrich explained. "The four that came after… It isn't good to speak of such things in polite company."

"What about Pekoms and I makes you think we're 'polite company'?" Cherry asked amusedly.

"I didn't say that. I'm the polite company; you two are pirate scum." Heinrich somehow managed to hold his nose up in the air despite being pinned on his stomach.

"This guy's funny. Let him up, Pekoms, if he hasn't done any harm in who knows how long he's been living in the walls, then he isn't going to start now." Cherry said.

Pekoms grumbled, but he couldn't argue with that logic.