Cherry decided to return to the fray since Big Mom was taking her sweet time on her hysterical scream.
When she turned around, she found Stussy watching her from a mere two meters away, showcasing just how sneaky a Cypher Pol agent could be.
Of course, Cherry had known where the woman was the entire time, but there was no need to embarrass her.
"Tell me how you know that I'm… how you know who I am, and I'll keep quiet about the fact that you're using Charlotte Brulee as an escape route," Stussy said calmly.
"Hoh? You've got guts," Cherry praised. "Unfortunately, I couldn't give two hoots who you tell what; and I don't give in to the threats of weaklings, besides."
"It's not a threat, it's a deal. I want to know how you know. It's one thing to guess my affiliation, and another thing entirely to know I'm an advanced Shigan user," Stussy whispered the last part.
"Advanced Shigan?" Cherry was surprised. There was more to learn from Rokushiki? She thought for a short moment and realized that Stussy was referring to the finger guns. "You can make flying finger pokes?"
Stussy realized that she had messed up then. She had interpreted the finger guns as a reference to advanced Shigan, but now she realized that was only coincidence and Cherry was only referencing normal Shigan. Fuck.
"Show me," Cherry demanded, deciding this was moderately more interesting than the surrounding chaos.
"What? No," Stussy was caught off guard by the demand as she was trying to think of a way out of this that didn't involve exposing her identity and/or dying a sudden and painful death.
Stussy's knees nearly buckled as a dense pressure slammed down onto her body. Cherry wasn't smiling any more as she took measured steps towards Stussy, who was quite unable to flee at the moment.
"Show me, or you can show everyone out there as you fight for your life," Cherry gave an ultimatum.
Stussy nodded as quickly as she could. She felt the pressure leave and quickly stabbed a finger into a lump of wedding cake a small distance away. Seeing that Cherry looked contemplative and was no longer paying attention to her, she took the chance to slip away unnoticed.
She wasn't unnoticed, but Cherry didn't have a reason to stop the woman. She already had what she wanted from her.
'Even more than I wanted, in fact,' Cherry thought with a smile.
What she had wanted was a nifty new trick to entertain herself with, and instead she received the key to something huge.
The advanced Shigan technique that she just witnessed was marvelous; a work of art. Certainly a flying sword slash was more damaging, but sending a slash through the air was comparatively easy and simple to do.
The fine edge was the key to a flying slash, and even a flying spear thrust was only a bit more difficult to accomplish. Shigan, however, was a blunt attack, even if it's a narrow one. Sending a blunt attack flying through the air without the energy of the attack dissipating in all directions was an entire world of complexity over a flying slash.
Even the King Punch was barely able to direct its energy. The advanced Shigan technique that Cherry just witnessed gave her a bunch of hints on how to change that. With some tweaking, she should be able to narrow the scope of the king punch to the width of her own fist, focusing all that devastating energy into a much smaller point of impact.
She was giddy just thinking about it.
"HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Big Mom bellowed.
Cherry had to actually shake her head clear when the scream mixed with the emperor's conqueror's haki slammed into her.
"Oh shit, it's time!" Cherry spoke under her breath. "Gotta get a good seat to see Bege fail spectacularly!"
Cherry pranced out of the wedding cake to find the entire battlefield except for Bege and his co-conspirators stunned by the scream. Cherry was honestly a bit surprised that regular ear plugs were enough to block out a scream like that, which also seems to suggest that Big Mom's conqueror's haki was completely infused into her scream. Neat.
The scream ended, Bege and his men lined up their shots. Even Katakuri, who fared the best against the scream, was too affected to stop them in time. The needle bazookas fired-!
"GYAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" then Big Mom unexpectedly screamed again, prematurely blowing up the poison rockets.
"Hehehe~" Cherry chuckled as Bege scrambled to get the hell out of dodge.
Bege searched and locked eyes with Cherry, making a beeline for her position. When the second scream ended, Cherry brought out the mirror and Brulee from her pockets.
"At least one of us did our job properly, eh Bege?" Cherry teased as he got closer. He didn't hear her words due to his ear plugs, but he got the gist and frowned.
"RYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Big Mom screamed a third time.
*Shatter!*
"""...""" Bege, Cherry, and everyone else watched the mirror shatter into little bits.
"Huh, how about that…?" Cherry said, feeling a bit embarrassed.
Bege didn't even have the wherewithal to rub the irony of the mirror shattering after she mocked him for failing in her face.
"Damn it all!" Bege quickly grew to a tremendous size, his skin taking on a stone brick texture as he became a castle version of himself. "Get inside, quickly!"
There was a mad rush to do as Bege bid them to. The Charlotte children were coming to their senses and starting to fight back, but they lacked the initiative to truly stop everyone from taking refuge within Bege's castle form.
Sanji even managed to free his father and siblings from their bonds and give them their raids suits so they weren't defenseless.
Cherry brought up the rear to make sure that no one got left behind.
"Onii-chaaaaaan-!" Brulee shouted for help even as the castle gate closed in on her.
Inside, Luffy and Chopper were acting like goofballs over Bege's 'transformation', much to the man's frustration.
"Do you have any idea how deep this pile of shit we've found ourselves in is?!" Bege bemoaned. "A year of planning, all down the drain in one fell swoop!"
"I don't suppose you have any spare mirrors lying around in here?" Cherry asked, looking around as if searching for just that.
"Of course I don't! You think I'd let that bitch on your back snoop around my insides? Hell, no!" Bege jabbed a finger in her direction. "Even if I did, I'd be the only one left behind, and I'm not gonna be YOUR fall guy!"
"Calm down, this isn't as bad as it seems," Cherry dismissed.
"REALLY?! The only thing standing between all of us and a painful death is my stone walls, which by the way, are far from indestructible!" Bege shouted. "Worse, all my cannons have been sealed up with Mochi and Perospero, that rotten bastard, has my legs all bound up in sticky candy!"
"Maybe we can negotiate using Brulee! They'll want her back safe and sound, won't they?" Nami suggested. Brulee nodded enthusiastically.
"They won't go for it. As far as they'll be concerned, Brulee is either a traitor or a weakling, both of which are expendable." Bege said, coming down from his adrenaline rush.
"What do we do, then?" Carrot asked.