The next month passed by quickly with most of their time occupied by training.
Robin made good progress with her cultivation, which was a given with Cherry providing cultivation pills and advice. Likely she would be ready to break through in a couple more months at most. She also made steady progress with her martial arts.
Cherry meanwhile grew by leaps and bounds in her haki training. She was able to properly sense Dragon's attacks now, no matter how sneaky he was being, so he brought in one of his specialist fighters. The man was a deadly sniper with a particular talent in hiding from observation haki.
In fact, he was so good that even Dragon couldn't detect his attacks until after he fired the bullet. It was unfortunate that he wasn't nearly as talented with armament haki, so he could never be a real threat to the big shots of the world.
Cherry made sure to pester the man to teach her his secrets of stealth. He was somewhat unwilling, but acquiesced since Dragon himself had been teaching her.
"There's something I want you to do for me, Miss Harpin." Dragon said at the end of their training session.
"Already? You're trying to get work out of me soon?" Cherry raised an eyebrow at him with a smirk.
"You're learning much more quickly than anticipated. If I don't get some work out of you now, you'll run off without upholding your end of the deal." Dragon correctly pointed out.
"Tell me then, do you want me to gather information? Or maybe seed ideas of rebellion in a population? Or perhaps empty out a kingdom's treasury for your war effort?" Cherry asked.
"Recently a man called Wapol, former king of the Drum Kingdom, has made some waves with his new "Wapometal". The world nobles recently acknowledged his achievement and gave him another kingdom to rule. The man is as much a cruel tyrant as the world nobles are, so the people of that kingdom are now suffering under him as his former kingdom had. I want you to do whatever you can to sabotage his regime, his company, and if possible kidnap him." Dragon laid out the mission.
"Wapol, huh? I'm surprised he managed to make a name for himself somehow. Why do you need me to do it though? That's like using a sea king to sink a rowboat." Cherry asked.
"On top of the fact that the World Government has a close eye on him, he's just not high enough of a priority for our cause to deal with right now. We're stretched thin as it is and dealing with him won't bring us many gains. It's also a chance to see how you work. I know you're strong and getting stronger by the day, but I'd like to see if you can do subtlety as well." Dragon said.
"Well, alright. Cabernet was getting antsy anyways, she could use some fresh air." Cherry said, waving goodbye as she went to prepare for the journey.
Cherry received a vivre card for a member of the revolutionary army that wasn't on the island for them to return. They limited access to vivre cards or eternal log poses directly to the island to make sure they couldn't be used to find their base.
Both Robin and Perona were coming along as well, of course. They were also looking forward to the field trip, as they were getting sick of the cold temperatures of the winter island.
"Why can't we just kill the loser?" Perona asked, not understanding the logic behind it.
"No particular reason, I suppose. Luffy doesn't like to kill people, but at this point I would say I just learned to enjoy not getting blood on my hands." Cherry said, to which Robin also nodded. She had killed her fair share of people in the past when necessary, but never liked doing so.
"Besides, I can think of a few ways to take him out of the picture without killing him. In fact, one such idea involves you, Pepperoni-sama~" Cherry said.
"Stop calling me that! Cabby, she's bullying me again!" Perona complained, but she couldn't help but wonder what Cherry had in mind.
Cabernet transformed into her ship form and took off into the air after they finished loading supplies on board.
Their destination was the new Black Drum Kingdom in South Blue.
Since they were heading to South Blue anyways, Cherry decided to make a stop at Karate Island. There she planned to learn and steal martial arts as it was renowned around the world for its martial artists.
After crossing over the calm belt, navigation became much simpler as they could rely on normal compasses again. Once they got their bearings it was a simple matter to find a route to head straight to Karate Island and later to the Black Drum Kingdom.
The port city of Boxington was a busy place full of many kinds of people, not the least of which were the martial artists who came in many shapes and sizes and disciplines.
Seeing that three out of four of them were quite infamous at this point, they elected to disguise themselves so as to avoid recognition. Perona didn't really need to, as she didn't have a bounty or any known association with the Straw Hats, but she wasn't going to miss a chance to play dress up.
Cabernet was able to pass as a man when wearing a chest binding due to her muscular body and height. Robin was also able to do so using the trick she learned to bloom her hair from her face, forming a beard, in addition to a chest binding.
"You don't even need to bind your chest, Cherry! You're flat as a board already!" Perona mocked.
"Whatever you say, doll eyes." Cherry shot back.
Perona started to tear up and sought refuge with Cabernet, who gladly proceeded to soothe her with head pats.
Perona wore a rather fanciful black dress and a half mask. She stuck out like a sore thumb in this place, but it drew attention away from the other three so that was fine.
Cherry was dressed like a ninja with the outfit previously made for her in Impel Down by Inazuma.
They decided to split up, Cabernet with Perona and Cherry with Robin, to gather information. Although Cabernet and Perona were likely just going to treat it as a date, they hadn't really had the opportunity to go on a proper date after all.
Cherry and Robin quickly located an information broker by asking around the shadier parts of town and made their way over.
The broker was an old woman with a missing eye she didn't bother to cover up, likely to intimidate any weaklings who might otherwise get some funny ideas.
"So what do you want to know? You gotta show that you've got the money upfront before I give you anything." The old woman said.
"Tell me everything you can about the strongest martial arts schools here." Cherry said with a lowered voice, dropping down a few dozen 10,000 Beri bills.
The old woman smiled and happily started to give up everything she knew about the schools for about the next hours or so.
"She knew more than I expected her to, I guess these so-called martial art schools aren't very protective of their secrets." Cherry said.
"Well, they certainly weren't going to be as paranoid as those sects you told me about." Robin said.
"Hm, I guess you're right. They'd probably get in trouble if they killed any petty thieves, especially with the heavy marine presence here." Cherry concluded.
Cherry and Robin went on a date to pass the time until nightfall.
"Time to steal some secret manuals!" Cherry spoke to herself, preparing to zoom around the island and rob every martial arts school in a single night.