Sneak Thieves

It was in the late afternoon, close to evening, that Cherry returned to the supply closet inside the Whole Cake Chateau.

"I'm probably not too late for supper, am I?" Cherry wondered, picking up the bewildered den den mushi and leaving the supply closet.

She left the little snail outside the communications room with a knock, and pranced off to the kitchens.

As it turned out, she was not too late for supper; but even if she were, Streusen assured her that he would bend over backwards to make her a meal if he had to. She supposed that his regained vigor was something that he was very grateful for.

"Ah, I would ask that you settle for the cooking of my subordinate chefs if you require a late night snack. I have a wedding cake to work on in the early morning and I must be at my best when I do so," Streusen added.

Cherry left the kitchen pulling a feast fit for ten behind her on a serving cart. Aoon, she arrived outside a room that she expected to be a prison, but was surprised to find was actually a library.

'I see, so it's both a library and a prison. That explains why Pekoms' life signature was so weird…' Cherry thought as she walked inside.

"This is not a place you should be, soir." An egg shaped man blocked her path.

"I'm just here to have dinner with Pekoms. You can join us if you mind your manners," Cherry said.

"Pekoms is not here. This is a bibliothèque," Tamago insisted.

Cherry blinked at him.

Tamago blinked at her.

Cherry glanced at a specific book on a shelf that held many oversized books ranging from three to four meters in height, then back at him. Tamago knew that was the very same book that currently held Pekoms within its pages.

Tamago's lips stretched thin beneath his mustache as he frowned.

'Do we have an information leak? No, this one has probably been snooping around…' Tamago considered quietly.

This was a tricky situation to find himself in. While any actions in direct opposition to the Big Mom pirates taken by Cherry could be responded to in kind, lesser subordinates like himself were forbidden from offending her only hours ago. Cherry wanting to share a meal with Pekoms was hardly a jailbreak, but it was easy to see how it could become one.

Unfortunately for Tamago, just going along with whatever she wanted could lead to that exact circumstance and if he failed to stop her, then excuses about what he was ordered not to do would more likely result in his head flying rather than being considered acceptable.

In other words, he was stuck between a rock and a hard boiled egg.

Tamago sighed, he could only do his best and hope for the best in turn. "Very well. I will be supervising, however."

"Do as you wish," Cherry said.

Tamago pulled the book out himself and turned to the correct page holding Pekoms' cell to avoid any shenanigans from Cherry.

"Pekoms! I brought some food for you," Cherry said when she saw the lion mink.

"Why?" Pekoms asked.

"Why not? At present, most of my crew is indisposed so I can't have a meal with them very easily, and I've grown quite used to having my meals with company. You're available, so why not?" Cherry said, setting up a folding table from the cart up against the bars in the book.

Pekoms was pinned to the back wall of his paper cell and naturally he pointed out this particular inconvenience. "I'm not exactly in a good position to keep you company either, as you can see."

Cherry looked at Tamago.

"Don't look at moi. It is not within my pouvoir to release him; neither by authority or ability." Tamago decided to be as unhelpful as he could be within reason.

"Guess you'll have to feed him then, with those long arms of yours," Cherry said, as if it were the only natural solution.

Cherry finished setting the table with three places, her own place being absolutely stacked with food.

Tamago looked at Pekoms and saw that his old comrade was drooling a bit. He could only set aside his own pride and acquiesce, it seemed. Pekoms certainly wasn't complaining as he'd hoped that he would.

Watching all this from the hallway were Brook and Pedro, who had intended to rescue Pekoms before moving on with their other goal. Stealing an etching of the road poneglyph from Big Mom's vault, while important, was not quite as important as saving an ally from certain doom.

"What should we do? Can we entrust Cherry to rescue Pekoms?" Pedro whispered a question quietly to Brook.

Brook stared into the room for a moment before turning to Pedro and… shrugging.

"That doesn't exactly inspire confidence," Pedro said.

"I don't believe that she'll let him come to harm… probably not anyways. It's possible that she has some other plan in mind with him, and by intervening we may put her in a bad position." Brook said. "Personally, I do not think that Cherry has taken quite as much of a liking to Pekoms as the rest of us, though."

Pedro stole a glance back inside the library and saw Cherry delightedly relaying a tale about how she had met Gol D. Roger earlier today, and that the old pirate king had had 'some work done' to avoid recognition.

"She seems to like him well enough, to me," Pedro remarked.

Brook said, "If Cherry is smiling at you, she is just as likely to see you as a friend as she is a walking dead man. You can trust my word on this, since I happen to be both. Yoho-!"

Brook's laugh was quickly silenced by Pedro placing a hand over his teeth and clamping his jaw shut. He had had to do this more than a dozen times since they had infiltrated the chateau. He was beginning to think that Brook had some sort of obsessive compulsion to tell bad skeleton jokes rather than just liking them.

Little did Pedro know that Brook only retained what little sanity he had left by telling himself those jokes over his half a century of isolation on a ship filled with his dead friends' skeletons. He really couldn't help it, but he also couldn't care less. There were people to laugh at his jokes now, and that sound brought him more joy and solace than anyone could imagine.

It was rather inconvenient to burst out laughing when he was trying to be sneaky, though, so he was grateful to have Pedro here to cut him off.

"I will just trust in her good nature. She helped my people for little reason and even less reward, I'm sure she will not leave Pekoms to die." Pedro chose to trust her. "I'd rather not fight with Tamago, either, so we should steal the poneglyph etching while he is distracted."

Brook nodded his agreement and the two of them skulked off to another part of the chateau where they would undoubtedly achieve their goal with little to no resistance whatsoever.