"Ahhhhhh! Your head has been cut off!" The pin dragon screamed.
"Why did you call me father, vile creature?! Do you know where my son is?!" The samurai interrogated.
"How can you still talk after getting decapitated?!" The pink dragon asked.
"A noble warrior such as myself cannot be killed by simply removing my head! Now answer my questions, beast!" The samurai shouted irritably.
"I- I am Momonosuke…" The pink dragon answered.
The samurai looked incredulous at the claim and seemed to be getting ready to explode into more shouting, so Cherry decided to step in here.
"That should be easy enough to confirm. You're a Zoan type, so you just need to change back to your original form." Cherry said.
"Huh? I can change back?!" The pink dragon asked, eyes filled with hope.
"Of course you can, dufus. Have you never seen a Zoan type in action?" Cherry asked.
"How do I do it?" The pink dragon asked.
"Just do it! It should come naturally to you, so don't think, just do it!" Cherry said.
Although she said it would be easy, Cherry wondered if that would really be the case. Now that she was up close and could study the inscription of the pink dragon's devil fruit, she could see that it contrasted with other devil fruit in a pretty glaring way.
'This devil fruit lacks the elegance in its inscription that every other devil fruit I've come across has. And it just doesn't flow from one part to the next as smoothly as it should.' Cherry thought.
If she had to compare it with something, she would say it's like a blind man learned how to paint and attempted to copy a world famous masterpiece, and he actually did an okay job somehow.
Cherry watched as the little pink dragon stretched, strained, and twisted in exertion. She and the samurai were getting impatient, so she gave him a light whack on the head which oddly enough did the trick. With a poof the little pink dragon took on the human form of a child.
"Momonosuke!!!" The samurai cried out.
"Father!!!" Momonosuke cried as well.
The boy had the top of his head shaved with the rest of his hair pulled into a bun at the back of his head. He was also in an unfortunate state of undress, which was quickly resolved by the samurai's devil fruit ability.
"I see, you can turn trash into clothes. Perfect for a wandering hobo like you." Cherry nodded her head in understanding.
"I can create disguises from almost any small object, not just trash! And I'm a noble warrior, not a hobo!" The samurai argued.
"Well, does the noble warrior have a name?" Cherry asked.
The samurai opened his mouth to speak, but then seemed to think better of it. "I will give you my name if you help me find the rest of my body."
The samurai had his reasons for withholding his identity and he couldn't quite trust this woman just yet with such sensitive information. He would at least need to rectify his current helpless state before he properly introduced himself.
"Alright, then. Keep your secrets." Cherry said. "You should turn your torso around and go the other way. It's getting a bit too close to a body of water."
"How do you know such things?" The samurai asked.
"Secret ninjutsu art." Cherry said.
The samurai grumbled at her deflection whilst Momonosuke's stomach grumbled about his long days without eating.
"Somebody's hungry~" Cherry teased.
"I am not hungry! I was just growling in anticipation for battle! GRRR!" Momonosuke claimed with a rosy blush appearing on his cheeks as he tried to look fierce.
Cherry saw the samurai looking at Momonosuke with a mixture of pride and concern, so she pinched his cheeks painfully and said "Why are you teaching your son weird things?!"
"Unhand him!" Momonosuke shouted and weakly punched at her sides.
Cherry ignored the child's feeble attempts to attack her and pressed onwards. "Don't you know anything about nutrition?! If he goes hungry while he's young then he'll grow up to be scrawny and weak! Don't teach him to act tough when he's hungry!"
The samurai looked guilty and Momonosuke looked shocked.
Cherry then turned to Momonosuke with an ominous look in her eyes. "You're gonna eat or I'm gonna force food down your throat, got it?"
Momonosuke nodded vigorously without even thinking. This lady was terrifying!
…
Trafalgar Law just got done thrashing the G5 marines, including Vice Admiral Smoker and Captain Tashigi, without spending hardly any effort whatsoever. To add insult to injury, he also plucked out Smoker's heart and swapped his consciousness with Tashigi's for good measure.
Straw Hat and other members of his crew had shown up in the middle, but he redirected them to the other side of the facility where they would talk. In the meantime, he needed to smooth things over with Caesar by giving him "Smoker's" heart to buy some time for himself.
He'll stop by the cafeteria to grab an onigiri first, though. The food here was pretty good and he wasn't going to stick around much longer, after all.
Law stopped at the open door to the cafeteria and his face twisted into a frown. Before him were a few dozen guards who had been forcibly separated from the animal legs he'd given them, as well as bashed in the face to knock them out judging by their blackened eyes and bloody noses. Nearby he could hear a ruckus in the kitchen, but couldn't see the cause.
Before any of the unconscious, bisected guards woke up and spotted him, he warped into the kitchen by swapping himself with a ladle on the floor.
"Have some more, you little punk." Cherry said, piling more food in front of a stuffed looking child.
"I can't eat anymore…" Momonosuke moaned, but receiving a glare from Cherry he started shoveling it into mouth fearfully.
Cherry nodded and returned to her dark work of pouring a vile looking brownish-green liquid from a blender into a funnel she had stuffed into the mouth of the samurai's head. "I told you, Mr. Shogun, that I wouldn't accept your refusal. Now be a good role model for your son and drink my patented, ultra-nutritious, everything-sludge smoothie!"
"What are you doing?" Trafalgar Law finally regained enough of his wits to speak.
"They haven't eaten in days! Too prideful for their own good, I tell you!" Cherry answered him as if she knew he'd been there the whole time, which she did.
Law furrowed his brows. "If they haven't eaten in days, they shouldn't eat so much at once. They'll get sick and might even die."
Momonosuke froze in terror.
"Relax, I took care of that. I'm not stupid." Cherry said, surreptitiously giving them both a booster of vital energy so they wouldn't die. "What are you doing here, anyways? You better not be involved in the kidnapping and child guinea pigs."
"I sent your captain around to the back of the facility. You should go meet back up with him instead of dallying around here." Law said, not answering the question.
"Alright, I'll heed you for now, but if you try to run away I'll turn you into a eunuch when I catch you. Understand?" Cherry threatened casually.
Law began to sweat nervously a little bit and nodded his head. He was confident in himself, but he also had an inkling of how strong she was and he didn't like his chances. He wasn't even sure he could dish out enough damage to beat her, let alone kill her. He'd seen the wounds she had received from Akainu and how easily she had walked them off.
Cherry studied him with a casual smile on her face. "It's not a date though, just to be clear. I'm a taken woman! Don't go falling for me, okay?"
Law's eye twitched in frustration as he watched her scoop up the samurai's head and the boy and sink beneath the floor. The samurai's head only just caught sight of him as he hadn't had a good angle to see him before and started shouting at him, no doubt angry to see the man who had chopped him up. The shouting became muffled when the floor sealed up and eventually faded away completely.
Law grabbed an onigiri and munched on it as he made his way to speak with Caesar.