301 Special V.I.P. Lounge

"Hehehe~" Cherry giggled mirthfully. "I suppose that once we've gotten to your ship, you'll want to try some handcuff play, hm?"

Gion's seductive expression didn't falter in the slightest; Cherry had to give her credit for her acting ability.

"Only if you want to?" Gion's eyes gave her a pleading look filled with desire.

At this point in time, Tokikake snapped out of his daze and softly pounded his fist down onto his palm in realization. "Oh! I get it now- ACK?!"

Cherry assumed that Gion had just kicked him under the table and was impressed that there was no visible sign from Gion herself that she had done so. 'Damn, she's good.'

"Heeeh? Well, we'll see." Cherry finished her drink and snuffed her cigar in the empty glass. "For now, I have some business to attend to, if you'll excuse me."

Gion and Tokikake watched her leave, the former with some annoyance and the latter with relief. It would be until some time later that Gion would notice her that her wallet was missing.

…

Cherry met back up with the other Straw Hats after walking around a bit more. She had a fairly solid grasp of the architecture of the ship now, as well as which areas were the most populated.

As it turns out, they were on quite the winning streak. That was good news since if they had lost a lot then Luffy was liable to borrow more chips. Although, it was a bit suspicious that they had won so much as well.

"My, my~! You're all doing quite well for yourselves~! In fact, we would like to invite you to our special V.I.P. area~! There, you can even become billionaires if you're lucky~!" Baccarat tempted the Straw Hat who were still feeling high off their winning streak.

"Ohhh! Let's gooo! Shishishi!" Luffy accepted immediately. After all, more money meant more good food! "Meat! Meat! Meat!"

Baccarat smiled sweetly, but sneered nastily on the inside. "Right this way~!"

Baccarat led them all to an elevator and pressed a particular button. The elevator hummed to life, which meant the poor muscle turtles hidden within got a little zap to get them moving.

After a short few moments the elevator came to a stop, but the doors did not open. Instead a creepy guy with the same proportions as the tontatta, only with an average human's height, phased through the back wall and greeted them with a bow. "Hello, honored guests. I am Tanaka, the head of security for the Gran Tesoro."

The first though in all of their minds was that this guy couldn't be trusted. Except for Luffy who rarely had any thoughts that didn't immediately spill out from his mouth; to him the guy just looked weird and that was that. It was his admirable way of seeing the world without any preconceived judgements.

Many eyes locked onto Baccarat, silently asking her if this guy even worked here. Tanaka's eye twitched at the thinly veiled mistrust.

Baccarat came in to salvage the situation before her coworker could be offended further.

"Good evening, Tanaka-san~!" Baccarat said in the same sugary tone as always. "Would you kindly escort our esteemed guests to the special V.I.P. lounge~?"

"Certainly." Tanaka replied calmly. It always felt nice for the beautiful Baccarat to speak to him so softly, despite knowing it was largely an act for the sake of their guests. "Take my arms, please."

The target of Gild Tesoro's interest, Harpin D. Cherry was the first to step forward, followed immediately after by her captain who was the only one who hadn't looked at him strangely.

Cherry wrapped one of her delicate looking hands around his right thumb. A cold sweat immediately began to form on his back for reasons he couldn't fathom. Cherry wasn't squeezing his digit in a vice grip or anything, but he still felt like he had just stuck his hand into a sea king's mouth and that the slightest agitation to the beast would cost him the whole arm.

The others grabbed onto Luffy and Cherry in a daisy chain and Tanaka pulled them through the wall of the elevator into a lounge that was even more absurdly fancy than the casino outside.

Two hulking men who were possibly half-giants stomped into the center of the room where a large iron cup rested and set down two oversized metal six sided dice. A man of shorter stature, but had a more dominating presence stepped forward and stood between the two dice.

"Who's that guy?" Usopp asked.

"That is Dice. He's the reigning champion of the underworld's deathmatch tournaments, but he had to retire because nobody would agree to face him anymore. Now he works as the dealer here." Baccarat informed.

"Trying to intimidate us, huh? That's cute." Cherry spoke aloud, causing Tanaka and Baccarat's brows to furrow slightly.

Dice grabbed the two massive dice and chucked them high into the air, then caught them with the iron cup and slammed it opening downwards. Taking up an axe, he threw himself into the air next and started to spin, before ultimately slamming his head into the cup and shattering it.

"So gooood~" Dice squealed in ecstasy.

"He didn't even need the axe!" Brook said.

"Sure he did. He used it to get his spinning motion going while in the air." Cherry said.

"Ah, is that so?" Brook said, seeming a little disappointed to have a reasonable explanation.

"That was ridiculous." Robin deadpanned.

"And a waste of a perfectly good giant cup." Cherry concurred. "I mean, how many times a day does he do that?"

"A few hundred times a day~!" Baccarat answered dutifully. "The Gran Tesoro has dedicated industrial forges to melt the metal back down and reforge it~"

Cherry eyes sparkled at her. The first time Cherry showed any genuine interest in what she had to say since they had met, Baccarat realized.

"What else do you make in the forges? How many blacksmiths work there? Where do you keep the forges? Can I see them?!" Cherry asked, speaking too quickly for her to answer.

"You can see the forges later!" Nami interrupted. "First things, first! How do we play?!"

Baccarat latched onto the question she was more familiar with answering. "Of course~! This is a high stakes game with no upper betting limit and a minimum bet of 10 million Beri~! If you win, you double your bet~! I am authorized to loan you 300 million Beri to play with if you want~?"

Nami had money in her eyes as she grabbed Usopp and Brook to strategize, only to hear Luffy shout "Everything on even! Shishishi!"

That got everyone's attention and snapped Cherry out of her quest to find the blacksmiths with Life Sense somehow. "Who left him unattended?"

Before any "take backs" could happen, the game began again and Dice rolled the dice.

"So GoOooOOod~!" "Snake eyes; even!" an employee announced the result over top of Dice's exaltations.

"Alright! Yahahahaha!" Luffy laughed boisterously.

Immediately Usopp and Nami were upon him, gushing over the doubling of their money.

"Amazing! If you do that again, why, you'll become instant billionaires~!" Baccarat said.

"Or you can quit while you're ahead." Cherry's suggestion fell as deaf ears, as she expected.

A sudden hullabaloo drew their attention. "It's Tesoro-sama!" "I can't believe it's really him!"

Slowly strutting down a flight a stair was the gaudy man from the performance earlier.

"Well, this is a pleasant surprise! I hope you're having a good time in my Gran Tesoro?" Gild Tesoro said, with an arrogant smile on his face.