One Piece: Dream of Immortality

Chapter 405: Armor Keeps Your Insides Inside



With a sudden *Clank* Cherry was clad in her blood bound armor.

A swift kick to the ground changed the vector that Cherry was moving at directly back towards Big Mom as the emperor got to her feet.

Cherry's clenched fist slammed into Big Mom's left eye, prying a screech of pain out of her. Big Mom's meaty paw slapped against her face with a resounding *Smack* just as Cherry bounced out of the way.

"Phew wee! Even her eyeballs are tough!" Cherry exclaimed, shaking her wrist in mock discomfort. "It feels like punching a cannon."

That was actually more of an understatement than an exaggeration. A cannon probably would have given way a bit more, and it wouldn't bounce back into shape like Big Mom's eyeball.

Cherry heard and felt the cloud overheard munching on more electro balls from Nami's ClimaTact, which was presumably what the younger woman was after. Cherry didn't care too much about it, since she didn't plan on letting Big Mom get past her.

"Whoops~" Cherry twirled to the side as a massive sword sliced through the ground where she had been standing. "Looks like she's getting serious! Hehehe!"

Cherry was going to fight Big Mom today, and nothing was going to stop her. At the bare minimum, she needed to beat some much needed fear into the monster so she wouldn't dare to target the people back on Boulder Island.

She might also just kill her and be done with it, if she could manage it. That was easier said than done inside of Big Mom's own territory, since her brats were heading this way right now.

Cherry swung Sakura Tengoku and clashed with Big Mom's second sword swipe. Black lightning sparked in the air as the nearby homies were either blasted away from the two of them or directly ripped apart by the force of it.

"Cherry! I did it, let's go!" Nami shouted to her as the group was now floating away on top of Zeus.

Cherry cupped her ear as if she hadn't heard her perfectly well. "WHAT? I can't hear you over all the haki lightning!"

"You're full of it! I know for a fact that you can hear me just fine!" Nami shouted back, voice tinged with annoyance.

"No I can't!" Cherry returned and chuckled when Nami called her out for answering her.

Truthfully, Cherry was at all worried about Nami snitching to Robin about this. Robin was only worried about her getting hurt, so as long as she came back unharmed, Robin wouldn't actually be that angry.

She was even wearing her armor, which she hadn't worn in a proper fight until now. To demonstrate, Cherry let Big Mom hit her directly with her sword, Napoleon.

"""Ahhhhh?!?!?! She got hit!!!"""Several members of Cherry's group shouted in panic.

The attack had buried her into the earth like a hammer driving a nail into a rotten plank. Big Mom turned her ferocious gaze back to the group with an evil drooling smile. She took a thundering step forward, only for Cherry to reach up out of the hole and grab her foot, tripping her.

The ground shook as her mass smashed into the ground. Cherry clambered up over her form and posed victoriously for the group, seemingly unscratched.

Well, her collar bone had broken from the force of the blow... but the armor had stayed perfectly intact!

"I think she's okay," Jinbe said. "Perhaps we should just leave her to it."

"We can't just leave her b-behind!" Chopper declared, despite his clear fear.

"Cherry has vivre cards with her that she can follow us with, if need be. Rather, we are causing her more trouble by not extricating ourselves from this situation," Brook said reasonably.

"WRAAAAAH!" Big Mom roared.

"Stop moving, you big bitch!" Cherry could be heard shouting.

Looking over, it appeared that Cherry was trying to shave the emperor's head with her sword, even as Big Mom stood up and tried to grab at her.

"Let's go," Luffy spoke sternly. No one argued with him.

Someone who didn't know Luffy well might wonder how a man who aimed to be pirate king could run away whilst his crew member fought an emperor of the sea. Luffy was wise in strange ways, though, and understood that the sea was a big place and that there would be no shortage of powerful rivals who would stand in the way of his journey in the future.

He did not need to prove anything to anyone but himself, and he would be the one to face Kaido when the time came.

"You should have lost all this stupid pink hair when I roasted you!" Cherry didn't have such complicated thoughts. "Now I have to cut it all off!"

It wasn't enough to simply defeat Big Mom, especially since she wasn't sure she'd have the chance to finish her off. No, she had to humiliate her too, show her and the world that Harpin D. Cherry wasn't somebody you could fight dirty against and get away with it.

"I'm the only Cheapshot here!" Cherry cried out, grappling Big Mom's big thumb and wrenching it in a direction it wasn't supposed to go with a sharp *Crack*!

"ENOUGH!" Big Mom bellowed and grabbed her sun homie, Prometheus, and bathed the area in its flames. "YOU WON'T STAND BETWEEN ME AND MY WEDDING CAKE ANY LONGER!"

Cherry leapt back and out of reach of the torrential fire. She noted the fact that Big Mom continued to use her broken thumb without issue. She needed to kick this into gear, and fortunately her friends were quickly leaving the area.

*THUMP thump*

Cherry smirked underneath her helmet.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

King Elizabello claimed that his King Punch could bring down an emperor with a single blow. Likely he meant a direct blow, and not just the resulting shockwaves, but even then Cherry was a bit skeptical of the claim.

Which was why she fully intended to test that claim rigorously, now that the opportunity had fallen into her lap. She'd start with replicating Elizabello's version, since her own was stronger on account of the fact that her body could contain the energy much more efficiently.

*THUMP thump THUMP Thump THUMP THUMP*

"What's that noise? You got some kind of heart condition?" Big Mom asked. Though her words seemed concerned, her tone was anything but.

"Oh, yeah! I've just got all this love to give and not enough people to give it to, you know? You wouldn't do me a huge favor and accept my tough love, would you?" Cherry answered.

"Mama, this tin can is only getting in the way! Straw Hat is getting further and further as we speak, and they stole Zeus!" Prometheus tried to reason with her.

"No no, Prometheus. This little girl is too troublesome. We can catch Straw Hat after I kill her!" Big Mom growled.

Prometheus and Napoleon shared an exasperated look, but they wouldn't disobey.

Cherry and Big Mom stepped towards each other, ready to properly duke it out until one or the

other came out on top.

...

Meanwhile, on the Thousand Sunny.

Katakuri stepped out of the mirror in the girls' room, with several of his siblings and some of the stronger homies following behind. Worst case scenario, he could destroy the ship, but his instincts told him that Cherry wouldn't be a problem for a while yet.