221 Severed Head

'What the hell are these guys?' Cherry thought as she sensed a group of unusual life signatures approaching the ship from a distance and stop. 'Wait, is that…?'

Shortly after she detected them, a faint gaseous poison flowed from the direction of the group and started to affect the crew. She considered intervening, but decided otherwise. It wasn't particularly harmful and would likely only put them to sleep. She could revive them easily enough if it came down to it.

She did discreetly tell Merry to go inside and take her figurehead form, then pretend to be inanimate. Merry gave her a quizzical look, but went along with it regardless. Cherry was the reason she could continue on her journey with the Straw Hats, so he trusted her implicitly.

Soon enough, the others fell asleep from the poison gas. Jinbe managed to stay up long enough to realize something was wrong, but he had already breathed in too much to resist for long. Cherry sat atop the crow's nest waiting for the strange group to make a move.

On a side note, Cherry found it utterly ridiculous that Brook somehow fell victim to the gas as well. What's the point in being all bones if some poison gas is still going to do you in?

'Should I regrow his flesh? I'm not sure it'd even stick, it might just rot back off of him in his current state.' Cherry pondered. She refocused when the group of strangers boarded the ship.

They wore yellow, sealed outfits that were clearly designed to keep the gas out, even having their own clean air supply in tanks.

They searched the ship and did an inventory of the people present, confirming that they were a pirate group that no one would miss if they went missing.

'So they're trying to keep their presence a secret. Makes sense since Punk Hazard is a restricted area. Probably not a government operation then.' Cherry noted.

They picked up the unconscious forms of the others and hauled them onto their smaller boat, leaving enough on board to move the ship. As expected, Merry and Brook were left behind as they didn't seem to be alive. They would be enough to protect the Thousand Sunny from these low level goons.

Cherry followed behind the smaller boat from the air. She wondered what these guys wanted with live pirates. She would find out soon enough.

They circled around the island to the freezing cold side and entered into a hidden waterway and eventually reached a massive frozen complex built into a mountain.

Cherry dove into the stone and swam around like it was water, having far better control over her devil fruit now than she did during her infiltration of Impel down.

She used Life Sense to memorize the structure as people walked through the halls, finding a few interesting characters inside. One of them was familiar to her.

Trafalgar Law.

'Hehehe, I bet he'll be happy to see me, won't he?' Cherry chuckled to herself sadistically.

There were other people of interest, but she could visit them in good time. For now she'd continue mapping out the passage ways then go wake up the sleepyheads.

Once the coast was clear, Cherry dropped into the holding cell that the others were unceremoniously dumped into. She rudely called the gassy men idiots in her mind for not at least separating them into different cells. They didn't even have any surveillance watching the cell, nor any mechanism to fill the cell with more sleeping gas. 'Pathetic.'

Cherry ignored the chopped up head in the corner of the room, electing to prod each of her friends with her finger and inject a small amount of vital energy to clear out the remaining poison.

"Ugh, my head…" Usopp sat up rubbing his forehead that felt like the worst hangover he ever had, though it was quickly fading.

"Where are we…?" Nami asked in confusion, not remembering how they got here.

"We have been kidnapped." Jinbe stated bluntly. "They used some sort of sleeping gas to knock us out."

"Oh no! Are we going to be sold into slavery?!" Chopper panicked.

"That wouldn't be very super." Franky added in a serious tone.

"Nah. They probably don't have any intentions of letting us leave the island. Human experimentation, perhaps?" Cherry reasoned.

"Nooo! I don't want to be a lab rat! I'm a reindeer, not a rat!" Chopper cried.

"What about Brook and Merry?! Are they already experimenting on them?!" Usopp suggested with worry.

"No, they're still on the ship. They didn't realize they were alive." Cherry reassured them.

"That's good." Nami sighed in relief. "Wait… how do you know that?"

"Because I watched it happen?" Cherry said, as if it was obvious.

"So you just watched them knock us out and kidnap us?!" Usopp whispered angrily.

"Yeah, I thought it'd be interesting. So far, so good." Cherry smirked at him.

Usopp sighed in exasperation. "You're worse than Luffy, sometimes…"

"""Agreed.""" Said Chopper, Nami, and Franky in unison. Jinbe was pretty new to the crew and couldn't come to that conclusion just yet.

"Excuse me, friends? Would any of you have a talent in the art of Hanjimono, or puzzles as foreigners would say?" A voice came from the corner of the room, drawing their attention.

Whilst the others chirped questions curiously, Cherry directly walked over to what she knew already was a pile of head bits.

"Looks like Trafalgar Law got to you, huh? Don't you just hate a dirty, rotten cheater like him?" Cherry said as she crouched down.

"Trafalgar Law, is that his name? I must agree, he is MOST dishonorable! A warrior ought to fight fair and square, not with dirty tricks!" The head agreed. "You seem to be the righteous sort, perhaps you could do me a favor and pice my head back together?"

The cowardly trio might have made a fuss about a talking, chopped up head if they hadn't heard Law's name come up. They were at least vaguely familiar with his devil fruit from that time at Sabaody Archipelago two years prior, after all.

"Yes, we upstanding and righteous folk must stick together! If not, then those terrible villains of the world may just prevail over us!" Cherry said resolutely.

Cherry's four friends standing behind her looked at her incredulously. Even Jinbe was doubtful, though he maintained his poker face quite well.

Cherry's hands flashed and a split second later the man's head was put back into its proper order.

"That's much better, you have my thanks." The head said. He then tipped his disembodied head over and tried to roll himself away, with very little success.

"What are you doing?" Nami asked.

"What?! A woman should not speak to or question a warrior in such a way! They should be modest and demure in a man's shadow!" The head chided loudly.

"What the hell does that mean? You didn't have any problems with Cherry?" Nami asked while pointing to Cherry, clearly annoyed by his blatant sexism.

"Of course I don't have any problems with him! He's a man and a fellow honorable warrior!" The head spoke.

"Yeah, Nami. You know that I'm sensitive about my pretty face and high voice. My new friend here is a noble warrior, he would not judge a man by such shallow qualities!" Cherry said sternly.

"You have spoken true, friend! Woman, you should apologize to him! Especially seeing that he is being so forgiving of your rudeness!" The head spoke.

Usopp, Chopper, and Franky looked ready to explode from barely contained giggles, but Nami wasn't happy at all. Not. One. Bit.

Jinbe, seeing that he was the only sensible adult in the room, decided to intervene. "Cherry is a woman, not a man."

"Hm? How can that be? He is wearing men's garb, I can tell even through the loose cloth that his physique is lean but powerful, and above all else he says he is a man! Are you calling him a liar?!" The head seemed offended.

"Yes." Jinbe answered immediately. He wasn't exactly intimidated by a head.

Ussop, Chopper, and Franky burst into fits of laughter, not being able to take it any longer after Jinbe's deadpan response.

The man's head looked to Cherry to express his condolences over his terribly rude companions, only to find that Cherry was biting her lips to hold in her own laughter. The head turned his eyes to Cherry's chest and squinted as if trying to locate something that was well hidden.

"No, that cannot be. Cherry does not have any brea-" *WHACK*

The man's head was dazed by a sudden blow to the head, his tunnel visioned eyes turning to the culprit. Cherry's gaze bored straight back into his and the smile on her face did not reach her eyes. "What was that? What don't I have?"

The man's head realized he'd been tricked, backstabbed, and quite possibly bamboozled. "You have no honor!"

"Damn straight, and you better not forget it!" Cherry nodded, satisfied with his answer.