Aside from the awful entertainment, the Beast pirates knew how to throw a decent party.
The other partygoers were a bunch of amoral jackasses, but that just meant Cherry could mess with them guilt free!
In fact, she has collected over a thousand wallets so far. Most of them were barely worth the effort in stealing, but it all added up to a tidy sum of Beri.
That wasn't all, though. They weren't very likely to even notice that they'd been pickpocketed, given that many would die before dawn's light at the hands of angry samurai. So she had to do something earlier than that; something that wouldn't set off alarm bells in the heads of their leaders, but would still upset and inconvenience them.
Embarrassing tattoos were one of those things. More than a few Beast pirates had the size of their manhood questioned in bold letters this night.
Another was the redistribution of the laxatives she found in an infirmary during her wandering. How cruel it was of Kaido to hoard them all for himself.
She thought to drink all of their booze as well, but the fools just thought it was a game to cheer or jeer at her for. She couldn't stand for increasing the amount of fun they were having, no sir.
'Oh! I know!' Cherry had an idea.
After finishing off the barrel of rum she'd been chugging, she evaporated the whole lot and let it out in a great, big burp. Unladylike, perhaps, but a fantastic way to hasten the intoxication of her audience without letting them enjoy any of the actual drinking.
Cherry caught sight of Ace leveling a very judging look at her.
At about the same time, the Beast pirates around her started to sway and drop like flies. She may have underestimated how much more quickly alcohol would be absorbed through the lungs rather than the stomach. Oops.
Cherry hopped off her table-stage and bounced on over to Ace and his buddies.
"Grace! Long time no see!" Cherry spoke in a faux slurred manner.
"We saw each other yesterday," Ace said.
"Hehehe, but it feels like forever, no?" Cherry slapped him hard on the back, sending him stumbling a bit. "Let's get out of here, yeah? I heard they got pretty dancers over in the west wing~"
"Er, okay…" Ace agreed. Mostly because putting up a fight would draw attention and he didn't want to be a hypocrite.
…
Ace was slightly surprised that there actually were dancers in the west wing. They were pretty as well, but… there was something off here.
He looked at Cherry, about to ask if she was picking up the same vibes as he was, but almost flinched back at the look in her eyes.
"You can tell too, huh?" Cherry spat.
"What's going on?" Deuce asked, not being perceptive enough to see the same thing his commander and Cherry did.
Cherry just pointed at the dancers. "They aren't Beast pirates."
It took Ace but a moment to understand, and only one more for his crew to as well.
The dancers weren't Beast pirates, which meant they were citizens of Wano. In turn, this meant they weren't here of their own volition. Even if they were being paid, they still didn't have the choice to refuse. Worse still, they were about to find themselves in the middle of a war zone.
"Damn it," Cherry grumbled. "Why do I have to go to work so soon? I just wanted to enjoy myself a little more before the action started!"
Cherry marched off in the direction of the dancers and Ace quickly followed suit.
"I assume you want to evacuate them, but how are we going to do it without sounding the alarm?" Ace asked.
"Huh?" Cherry looked at him like he was stupid, and oddly it even made him feel stupid. "Like this."
*VOOM*
Every Beast pirate in sight fell to the ground like marionettes whose strings had been cut.
"That's your plan?!" Ace howled.
"I'm not taking any risks with the civilians," Cherry said. "Alright, girls! Gather up, I'm getting you out of here!"
The dancers were naturally confused and frightened by the display. Their reluctance to do as she said mixed with their fear of acting, making them stand there frozen to the floor.
"Hey!" All except one, that is. "Like, what the fuck if your problem, bitch! You can't, like, tell me what to do! I'm getting paid a hundred silver taels for this!"
"Kaido got robbed, like, a week ago, you dumb bitch. You aren't getting paid anything~" Cherry answered, perfectly mocking her ridiculous accent.
"What?! That's, like, totally bullshit! These animals can't, like, treat me this way!" The dancer turned and started marching herself towards the exit. "Like, come on girls. Let's blow this joint before they start waking up and leering at us again."
The complete and total disregard for any threat that Cherry may have posed seemed to reset the brains of the other dancers. They followed behind their self elected leader like ducklings following their mother.
"That went way better than I had hoped," Cherry muttered. "Grace, be a dear and make sure they get outside, yeah?"
"Uh… Okay." Ace scratched his head, just as baffled as the dancers had been at the display. "What if the fighting starts without us, though?"
"No offense, but we didn't need you to begin with. If you miss all the fun, that's your own fault," Cherry said. "Keeping innocents out of harm's way is a perfect use of your unnecessary presence here."
Ace wanted to argue, but… Damn he really couldn't just leave them on their own, could he? He hated how easy it was for Cherry to lead him around by the nose. When did he become such a softy?
He looked at his crew, only to find that they already knew what he was going to do, because they were following after the dancers already.
"Hey! I'm not a pushover!" Ace griped as he chased after them.
"Sure you aren't, commander," Deuce replied, highlighting the fact that Ace still resisted Whitebeard's efforts to put him in the captain's seat.
Cherry nodded in satisfaction. Annoying chore dodged!
Now she could get back to-
"Really?" Cherry rolled her eyes in exaggerated fashion, despite the fact that nobody could see her at the moment. "Why are you causing trouble, Luffy?"
Cherry ignored the hypocrisy of that question and leapt into action.
She had just taken a scan of Onigashima with her life sense and noticed a commotion occurring between Luffy, Zoro, Kid, and some other people. She couldn't tell what they were doing exactly, but they were moving about a lot rather erratically. That usually meant a fight.
"I think that devil fruit was one of the ones at Sabaody two years ago, right?" Cherry wondered aloud.
If she recalled correctly, and she usually did, then the guy's name was Scratchmen Apoo? He had some sort of musical devil fruit, if the information on his bounty poster was accurate.
She wanted to get a close look at him, see what made his devil fruit tick. It was bound to be a weird one, as many paramecia types tended to be, and that made it one of Cherry's favorite kinds. She was getting sick of all the Zoan types.