"Lucci! What happened to my sweet, beautiful baby boy?!" Saint Roswald raged whilst sitting atop his mindless mount, Bartholomew Kuma, whose back had several swords sticking out of him.
"By order of Elder Warcury-sama, Saint Charlos is to be confined in a holding cell," Rob Lucci said.
One might think that this would be a great annoyance to him, getting stopped by Charlos' father of all people, but he had actually purposefully shown himself to Roswald. Given Roswald's advanced age and poor health, Lucci had hopes that the man might actually have a stress induced heart attack or stroke. They weren't high hopes, of course, since Lucci didn't believe that most celestial dragons had much capacity for love, even for their own children.
"What?! Elder Warcury did?!" Roswald started to sweat.
Topman Warcury was the elder responsible for overseeing justice across the globe, but especially so for internal issues that may crop up between celestial dragons. Disputes were common amongst such selfish people and as such Warcury was the elder with the most contact with the lesser celestial dragons. As a result, he was also the Elder that was feared the most.
"M-make sure that Charlos is placed in the most luxurious cell, Lucci, and get a doctor to see him as well! I need to get this sorted out quickly…" Saint Roswald gave Kuma a whack with his mallet. "Bring me to Saint Garling's residence, quickly! I'm sure he'll know what to do!"
Lucci did as he was bade, slightly disappointed that Roswald didn't keel over dead and also because he was planning to dump Charlos in the worst holding cell, but now couldn't. The worst holding cell would still be considered luxurious by the standards of the common man, but when Charlos woke up inside it he would have been beside himself with outrage.
Out of sight, a figure of a pink haired girl, tears of grief and rage streaming down her face, watched in horror as her father crawled away with a shred of dignity. She swore revenge on the monsters who dared to treat Kuma that way.
At the same time, hidden underground beneath the streets of Mary Geoise, there was a pocket of air molded by the push push fruit of Morley, commander of the West Blue Revolutionary Army. Inside the pocket were two other commanders, Lindbergh and Karasu, as well as Sabo.
"Calm down, Sabo!" Lindbergh hissed.
"Calm down?! How can I call down when those bastards are treating Kuma like an animal!" Sabo roared. "That's our comrade out there, our kind hearted teddy bear!"
"We know, Sabo, but retrieving Kuma isn't our only goal here. You know that," Kurasu spoke evenly.
"Saving him won't be simple, either. We can't afford to get caught here, what with CP0 and Marine HQ only minutes away. When we show ourselves, it can only be once we're ready to leave," Lindbergh added.
*crumble*
All four jumped into defensive positions as the dirt wall opened up beside them. As surprising as it was for someone to barge in on their supposedly secret meeting, it was even more surprising to see who was doing the barging.
"Dragon is sparing no expense, I see. That's good, it'd be annoying to track him down just to kick his ass for being cheap," Cherry brushed the dirt from her robes. Despite her joking tone, there was no smile on her face.
"Cherry? What are you doing here? How are you here?" Sabo asked.
"I wanted to have a look at the Reverie and figured that I would check on Kuma while I was at it. I made a vivre card from his hair so I knew he was still going strong, but I couldn't help but worry, you know?" Cherry said. The frown on her face twisted into a scowl. "If I'd known how he was being treated, I might have just burned the whole city to the ground, though. On top of that, when I saw that creep trying to take Shirahoshi, I almost turned into him to paste on the spot."
She hadn't expected Kuma to be treated well on his unwitting spy mission in Mary Geoise, but his vivre card never showed any sign of the torture they were putting him through. He was just too tough for it to register, she supposed.
As for Shirahoshi, Cherry was quite proud of the girl's progress as well as her strengthened will. Cherry had no doubt that Shirahoshi would one day be a force to be reckoned with.
Sabo didn't miss the fact that she did answer how she was here, when she was supposedly just at Totto Land weeks ago. He very much doubted that Luffy and the Straw Hat crew sailed all the way back here, especially in such a short time.
"I overheard you chatting, so what can I do for you?" Cherry asked. "I can't stick around for too long, but I can come back in a few days if you need me to. I'm a lot sneakier than you guys, too, if you need me to be."
Lindbergh shared a look with Kurasu. A pirate who was already in direct opposition with the World Government could act more freely than them at the moment.
"We have four main objectives in Mary Geoise," Lindbergh started.
"Two of which are to serve as our declaration of war," Kurasu continued.
"We're really bringing her in on this? Haaah, alright," Sabo sighed. Technically he was in charge here, but if both Lindbergh and Kurasu saw bringing Cherry into the plan as a good idea then he wouldn't argue with them. "You can't be seen, though! This is our declaration of war, so we can't let them gloss over it as a random attack by an infamous pirate!"
The primary objectives, as laid out by the revolutionaries, were to rescue Kuma, free as many other slaves as possible, destroy a famous symbol of the celestial dragon's authority, and to destroy the food stockpile of Mary Geoise.
The last was the most important from a military strategy standpoint, as it would take lots of time and manpower to restock their food. The biggest problem with absolute rulers was that no one could stop them from making incompetent decisions, like insisting on gourmet cuisine during a food shortage.
"First, find the food stockpile for us. We'll destroy it ourselves when the time comes, but it'll take us time to find exactly where it is," Sabo said.
"Can do~" Cherry saluted and dropped into the ground.
While she did that, the revolutionaries would find as many slaves as they could. Undoubtedly they wouldn't find them all and of the ones they did find some would sadly get left behind, but they would free those they were able to. It would take days to plan out the whole operation.
"Found it!" Cherry popped back out of the ground beside Lindbergh, making him jump.
"""Already?!""" they could hardly believe it.
"Totally," Cherry nodded. "It's not like it was hard to find. I just looked for the places with the largest concentrations of people, since the celestial pigs like to live in big empty mansions."
The four revolutionaries suddenly felt like their jobs were about to get a whole lot easier.