With Kin'emon's full hearted and enthusiastic consent, Cherry followed Wanda to where they were keeping their stolen weapons.
"Good heavens, look at all this crap. Even the marines have better swords than this," Cherry scowled at the piss poor excuse for an armory. "Even if it's mass produced… I've seen nails of higher quality than this!"
"There isn't much else we can do about it. The only weapons we have easy access to are those being made in the factories, and they're meant to be sold for cheap to various criminal organizations and rebel armies short on cash. Kaido's own men aren't using these, so he doesn't care all too much about the quality." Wanda sighed.
"And you can't go raiding Kaido's forces to take their weapons without exposing yourselves, yeah yeah…" Cherry scratched her head as she made calculations. "I can improve this junk; make it passable, at least. A step above marine grade, perhaps, but no further than that."
"That's already ridiculous," Wanda furrowed her brow.
"Well, without the help of my devil fruit, it wouldn't be worth my time trying. Better to start from scratch; melt them all down, remove the impurities, adjust the carbon levels, etcetera," Cherry explained, then she smiled. "With my devil fruit, though? I can make most of the necessary changes without reforging them at all! It'll save a hell of a lot of time and effort, even if it's sinful."
"Sinful?" Wanda asked, confusion crossing her face.
"Of course. It isn't a proper sword if you didn't do it the right way; it's just an implement for murder," Cherry said, giving a shake of her head. "It wouldn't have the spirit to truly be called a sword."
"Murder!" Toko giggled.
"If you say so," Wanda acquiesced, giving Toko an odd look.
"Let's get started, then. I imagine this stuff has places to be, so there's no need to waste any more time." Cherry placed her hand on a blade and got to work.
…
Wanda hadn't stuck around to watch Cherry work.
She had already seen Cherry working on the swords for their Mink warriors and what she was doing now had quickly proved to be far less interesting.
Cherry had gathered a large quantity of wood, scorched it all into charcoal, then she had started rubbing the swords with it.
Wanda had her own work to do, in any case.
When she returned to ask Cherry if she wanted to take a break for dinner, and more importantly making sure that Toko got something to eat, she was outright shocked by what she found.
"Are you… Are you already finished?" Wanda asked.
Cherry wasn't rubbing swords with charcoal any more. Instead she was using a forge that hadn't been here before. Wanda might have assumed that Cherry was just doing some "proper" forging to break up the monotony, if she wasn't currently teaching Toko how to make knives instead of using the forge herself.
"Hm? Oh, yeah, I finished ages ago," Cherry said, watching over Toko as the little girl swung a hammer at a red hot blade on an anvil. Toko exclaimed, "Sparklies!"
"But… there were several hundred swords here?" Wanda was rightfully incredulous. She only left Cherry to it a few hours ago!
"That's true, but that was my first time doing that, you know? It's only natural that I'd streamline the process as I became more familiar with it," Cherry said. "Watch your thumb, Toko."
Wanda couldn't be certain that Cherry wasn't just joking. There was only one way to confirm the validity of the claim without making a fool of herself.
She walked over to where the weapons were all neatly arranged in their crates and drew one of the swords free.
She looked at it closely, felt the edge and the weight distribution. Frowning, she moved to another crate and did the same. One by one, she inspected the swords to see if they'd been altered and after a dozen or so she was fairly satisfied that they truly had all been modified as Cherry said she would do.
Wanda looked over at Cherry and found the human woman looking back at her with a smirk. "Are you satisfied, Wanda? I'm not going to fool around when it comes to my craft, you know?"
"Well," Wanda started, but something was bugging her. Some instinct in the back of her mind telling her that something was off, was wrong.
Wanda held up the last sword she had inspected. She gave it a few test swings more and couldn't help but feel that her unease was sourced from the blade in her hand.
"Doesn't feel right, does it?" Cherry asked, her gaze directed back at Toko's fumbling but enthusiastic work.
"I… I don't know. It's… wrong?" Wanda searched for an appropriate word for her feeling but found none that were adequate.
"I told you already, didn't I? That weapon doesn't have any spirit," Cherry reminded her.
"But… they didn't feel this way before!" Wanda found it difficult to accept that there could be nothing physically wrong with the blade and it could still feel so wrong.
"That's because you didn't expect an inferior product to have any sort of spirit. Now that it's actually pretty decent, its missing spirit is much more glaring to your subconscious senses," Cherry explained. "It'll do its job well enough, I assure you. Probably best not to give those to any warriors of your caliber, though; it might throw them off their game."
Wanda nodded. She certainly felt like she wouldn't be able to give a fight her full attention if she was using this sword- no, implement of murder. That was what Cherry called it. She was surprised at how well it described the thing in her hand.
Wanda tossed the weapon back into the crate, not wishing to touch it any more.
"You're all done and that's what matters. We're hoping to get more since we plan to have a few thousand recruits for the final battle, but we'll talk about that when we get there," Wanda said. "Do the two of you want to have some dinner?"
Toko tossed the hammer in her hand straight up into the air. "Food! What are we eating?!"
Cherry caught the hammer before it came down on top of the child's head. "I guess I could eat."
The three of them wandered over to where Kin'emon, Duke Dogstorm, Pedro, Carrot, and Shishilian were having a tasty smelling stew.
Toko pitter pattered over to the stew pot. Shishilian was kind enough to serve her a bowl.
"That's quite a lot…" Pedro commented.
"She's a growing girl!" Shishilian defended the overly generous serving.
"Leave beard-kitty alone! Toko is hungry!" Toko exclaimed, and apparently she was determined to prove it as she immediately started to stuff her little face.
"It is a glorious beard," Cherry agreed. Shishilian gave her an extra portion for the compliment. "So where's Cat Viper?"
"He went to speak with Whitebeard. He'll be back for the final battle," Dogstorm informed.
"Really? Do you think Whitebeard will give any aid?" Cherry said.
"Hopefully. Oden-sama was once a comrade aboard his ship, before joining Roger on his final journey," Dogstorm said.
"Oden was a busy guy, huh?" Cherry thought for not the first or last time she would have liked to meet the guy.