"What we have to do is put our damned heads together to figure a way out of this mess!" Bege shouted impatiently. "This castle is my body! It's tough, but hardly indestructible! When I get taken down, the rest of your sorry asses are dead too, you hear me?!"
"Brulee is still useful to them, isn't she? We may not be able to exchange her for safe passage, but we can buy ourselves a little time, right?" Nami spoke hurriedly.
"It's not like we were planning to take her with us, or kill her for that matter. Now that we don't have any mirrors to use, she isn't doing us much good anymore," Cherry added.
"Wait, Cherry! Couldn't you fuse a mirror back together?!" Nami realized.
"Sure, but all the shattered bits are outside and it isn't like they're going to sit back and watch me do it. I'm good, but not 'put a glass jigsaw puzzle together whilst fending off an army' good." Cherry countered. She neglected to mention that she could just run outside and grab the pieces before bringing them back here.
Bege suddenly jerked painfully and spat blood. "Damn it, Big Mom has already come to her senses! You may not feel it in here, but she's beating the hell out of me out there!"
His interruption came at the perfect time, as it distracted Nami before she could think to question Cherry and the others were too busy panicking or wracking their brains for other ideas.
"Do you have windows in this thing?" Cherry asked.
"Of course I do," Bege huffed heavily. With a motion of his hand, a window with a balcony appeared on the wall of the room. While the outside was rigid in its arrangement, Bege could rearrange the space on the inside however he pleased.
"Let's go Nami," Cherry said, scooping up Brulee.
"Huh?" Nami said in a higher pitch than usual.
"It was your idea to buy time with Brulee, and I can't think of anyone better at negotiation than you regardless. Just remember that you ARE buying time; we can't trust any deals they offer us," Cherry said, motioning for her to hurry up.
Nami whined but couldn't argue with Cherry's reasoning and ultimately had to go whether she liked it or not. The fact that Bege had been knocked off his feet and spat blood again hurried her considerations.
They pushed through the curtains just enough to show themselves, Cherry holding Brulee by the throat to make it clear what was happening here; that she held Brulee's life in her hands, literally.
Big Mom actually did pause her assault on Bege when Nami called attention to herself. Brulee was a very valuable piece in Big Mom's crew and Big Mom currently had enough control of herself to recognise this fact.
Cherry didn't say a word throughout the negotiation, only squeezing Brulee's throat until she squealed once or twice to make it clear that she wouldn't hesitate to end her if this went poorly. Nami was far better suited for this sort of thing than herself, since cultivators generally negotiated with violence rather than words.
She was saving her breath for something more important anyways.
"This is getting nowhere, Mama! They"re just stalling for time!" Perospero was the first to see through the truth.
"You dare to trick me?!" Big Mom roared, rearing back one of her massive fists to begin pummeling Bege again.
They had managed to buy about ten minutes, which wasn't a long time to find a way to escape, but was a very long time for Bege's poor body, so it could be counted as a major success.
""Eep?!?!"" Nami and Brulee squeaked in fright as they saw the mighty fist barreling towards them.
Cherry pulled them both behind her and opened her mouth wide, revealing an increasingly bright glow at the back of her throat. Her eye caught Katakuri's at the split second that he foresaw what was about to happen.
***SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!!!***
The flash was so bright that those who put their hands over their eyes instinctively saw the bones silhouetted through their flesh and closed eyelids. The sound was like a thousand bombs shattering a mountain made of glass.
Big Mom's form disappeared into the dense, roiling mass of plasma so completely that those still capable of seeing briefly entertained the idea that she simply ceased to exist in that moment.
Alas, Big Mom never failed to disappoint her children, reappearing shortly after. Her awful pink polkadot dress was burned black and reduced to rags that barely maintained the woman's modesty and her skin was gnarly red with blistering here and there, like a bad sunburn over her entire body.
"WRAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH?!?!?!" Big Mom screamed in pain, but mostly unadulterated rage.
Many of the Charlotte children trembled at the thought of being subjected to the same attack, only they wouldn't get off as easy as their nigh indestructible mother did and they knew it. Had they been a bit closer, there would be nothing left of them now.
Katakuri had instead calmly come to the correct conclusion that Cherry had spent the last ten minutes building that up; which he believed was the real reason she hadn't said a word in that time, as it was impossible for her to hold her tongue for so long otherwise.
Katakuri's eyes flash with another prediction. He held his hands up above him, receiving questioning looks from his siblings until Brulee, screaming, flew straight into his waiting arms.
Cherry saluted him with a wink and ducked back inside Bege's castle form with Nami just as Bege broke his legs free from their restraints and started to make a run for it. The heat from Cherry's attack seemed to have melted Perospero's candy.
Inside Bege's body, the man was barking orders at his men to get the cannons un-mochi-ed and ready for combat.
Vinsmoke Judge's mind was on other things than his immediate survival as he watched Cherry return inside. He had heard about the 'flame' attack that she had used at Marineford two years ago and dismissed it as devil fruit nonsense, but now having witnessed it for himself his thoughts were different.
'Vegapunk's dream to create a near limitless source of energy for the world… is that what he was talking about? Or was it something else entirely?' Judge wondered.
"Hey, are you going to get your asses out there or not?!" Bege cut through Judge's mulling.
"We're going," Judge moved for the exit with his three sons and Reiju following.
Cherry's attack had been unexpected even for them, because she hadn't told anyone she was going to do it, but they were quick to take advantage of the opening while it lasted. Judge had agreed to stall the Big Mom pirates to give them a chance to flee, both because they could fly away when Bege was clear and to settle the debt they owed for their lives.
"You're going with them too?" Cherry asked as Reiju passed her.
"I have to," Reiju said simply.
"Do you? You could come with us, sail the world with your favorite little brother, keep him out of trouble and all that," Cherry suggested.
It struck Reiju that she COULD do that, that she wasn't subject to her father's will any longer thanks to Cherry's meddling. It was only a moment later that she realized she had stopped following her father. He had ordered her to follow, and the fact that she had stopped doing that without further input from him had revealed the truth.
She was almost afraid to look at him, but she did. Judge was looking at her with a shocked expression that was just… delectable. She knew right then and there that her decision had already been made.