One Piece: Dream of Immortality

Chapter 496: Chased in Circles



Charlotte Perospero's lollipop struck down on the lunarian woman's head with a resounding crack! He had put his all into the strike, to make sure that it wasn't shrugged off by the

infamous durability of the near extinct race.

The smug smile he almost always wore upon his face, especially when he was beating down some uppity rookie who bit off more than they could chew, faltered as he blinked at Cabernet and Cabernet blinked back at him.

He raised the stick his oversized lollipop had been attached to look at it in disbelief, bits and pieces of shattered hard candy still falling off of it. Then he reeled back as heat washed over his enlarged tongue, feeling as if he had mistakenly eaten a spoonful of lava instead of soup. That was also the moment that Smoothie gave up on clinging to Cabernet's leg, not wishing to lose her arm just to pin her down. She and Perospero got an explosion to the face in return for the favor.

"You let her get away," Big Mom accused not a moment later. Neither of them had the nerve to mention that she hadn't helped because she had been too busy chiding her homies.

They understood why she was sensitive about it, though. The loss of Zeus, one of her special homies that was made with her own life force, had been a significant blow to both her power and her pride. It was doubtful that Big Mom even knew that was a possibility.

Even though they didn't talk back to their mother, she was still angry with them. That was a dangerous place to be, even for two valuable members of the family such as them.

Big Mom opened her mouth to say something, only to be struck in the face with an explosive cannonball. The Charlotte children all turned their attention to the perpetrator.

"Take that, you ugly old witch!" Cabernet called out from a fair distance away, capping off the insult by sticking out her tongue and pulling an eyelid down in childish fashion.

Many jaws dropped at the sheer audacity of the action.

The smile on Big Mom's face when the smoke cleared was anything but friendly.

...

Yamato cursed his lack of speed. Even in his wolf form, he was far too slow for his liking. Even worse, he knew that this wasn't even the fastest he could go; he was simply out of practice from his years of imprisonment.

He managed to arrive at his destination all the same, albeit later than he was comfortable with.

"Kin'emon!" Yamato shouted at the top of his lungs after reaching the ruins of Oden castle. Yamato had rather inconveniently forgotten that no one in the war camp knew anything about his devil fruit. His shout might have come off with a bit of a snarl as well in the excitement. He didn't quite start a fight with the minks and samurai who were present, but it was a close thing. After calming down somewhat and de-transforming, it was easier to explain what happened.

"Big Mom is here?!" Kin'emon shouted in alarm. The others shared the sentiment.

"Why did she follow us?" Carrot held her ears in her hands with a worried look. "She got beat up by Cherry! Twice!"

"She must like her chances, provided that she can arrange an alliance with Kaido," Duke Dogstorm reasoned.

"We must inform Cherry-dono at once! If she defeated that woman before, then she can again!" Kin'emon declared.

"If those two start another fight, the whole of Wano will know it," Pedro chimed in. "Kaido won't ignore that. Cherry might have beaten Big Mom twice over, but are we willing to bet she can take them both at once? Or, are we willing to throw away all of our battle plans to back her up?"

Only silence answered him. There were far too many things that could go wrong without their meticulous planning.

"We can't just...! She destroyed that village, killed them all! What if she isn't done yet? Will we just sit back and watch her cut a bloody swath across Wano?!" Yamato growled in frustration. "And Cabernet! She's out there by herself and doing her best to slow them down, to buy time!"

Of course they couldn't do nothing, but there was also nothing that they could do.

"Shall I go?" the last person they could have expected spoke those words.

"You?" Kin'emon asked, more confused than anything.

"Indeed," Cobra confirmed, with a calm smile that didn't match the tension of the moment.

"No offense," Dogstorm said. "But what could that possibly accomplish?"

"Perhaps nothing at all," Cobra admitted. "However, you are at an impasse. You cannot fight for fear of losing your chance of winning the war. You also cannot leave them be, because you have consciences and your hearts still beat in your chests. So there is only the third option remaining."

"""Third option???""" a chorus of voices asked simultaneously.

"Diplomacy," Cobra smirked. "I happen to be quite good at it."

...

"Oh man, is she mad..." Cabernet muttered to herself, pushing her speed to the limit. The good news was that she had successfully distracted Big Mom. Mission accomplished! The bad news was that she was now being chased by Big Mom. Mission accomplished...? Perhaps it hadn't been wise to antagonize one of the most powerful people in the world, but it had certainly been effective.

"Come back here!" Big Mom's shout echoed through the sky. Even from a distance it was quite loud.

"Why are you so fast?! It's not fair! Cheater!" Cabernet answered with her own call.

"All is fair in love and war, Mama Mama!" Big Mom laughed.

Cabernet hated that the huge woman somehow seemed to be enjoying herself despite how angry she clearly was. She also hated that the woman was ridiculously fast despite her size. Not as fast as Cabernet, but Cabernet couldn't afford to escape from the woman until help came. The result was that Cabernet's back was getting sore from the constant overuse of her flames as well as, you know, the explosions.

She didn't even have the luxury to switch to flame-less flight because she couldn't be sure that Big Mom wouldn't catch up to her then and use her lowered defenses against her.

Cabernet also had to avoid settlements with people still in them; and since she didn't know where all of those were, she was essentially flying in big circles in northern Wano where she already knew there weren't any villages around.

That had the unfortunate side effect of letting the lesser Charlottes set up ambushes for her. So far she had thwarted three of them, but they were getting better at predicting her so Cabernet wasn't sure how long she could keep this up. Certainly not as long as she had hoped. Cabernet twisted out of the way of a thunderbolt, courtesy of Big Mom's new cloud Homie. She had been hit by the first one of those and it had hurt like a bitch, so she made a point not to let that happen again.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

When she used the opportunity to change trajectory once again, she spotted something she hadn't expected on the ground a ways away. Someone riding towards her and Big Mom on

horseback.