One Piece: Dream of Immortality

Chapter 499: Onimaru



"I won't be distracted again!" Zoro declared, centering his entire focus on his opponent. *sploof*

Then he was struck on the back of the head by a snowball.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"Nice one, Toko," Cherry complimented the girl.

"Don't encourage her- AH! Stop it!" Zoro got distracted again and almost got cut again. "Quit playing around!"

"If you want us to stop playing around, then you should stop playing around first," Cherry shot back with both words and a snowball of her own.

"This guy's clearly not on the enemy's side, so I don't want to kill him!" Zoro gave his excuse.

"That doesn't matter, I can just fix him up again," Cherry dismissed.

"Oh..." Zoro realized. After striking an unnecessary pose, he vanished from place and appeared again from behind his opponent.

Blood sprayed and the large man toppled over. "Shimotsuki...-sama..."

""Hm?"" Cherry and Zoro both gave a curious grunt.

"Is the master of your dojo from Wano, Zoro?" Cherry asked as she approached the bleeding

man.

"I don't know... Wait, how do you know the name of my master?" Zoro asked, squinting his one good at her.

"I paid them a little visit after the whole Big Mom fiasco. I was making sure there wouldn't be any retaliation against our homes and what not," Cherry explained.

"Uhuh, and not at all out of your own curiosity." Zoro didn't believe her.

"Your baby pictures are very cute, yes," Cherry said.

"Wha-?! I don't have any baby pictures!" Zoro denied.

"None that you know about, apparently," Cherry teased.

Cherry reached for the large man, paused for a moment to bat away his feeble sneak attack, then rested her hands on his body.

"It's so strange how many human devil fruits there are in the world. This guy is the fifth I've seen personally, but I wonder how many more there are," Cherry wondered aloud.

"This guy is a devil fruit user?" Zoro looked at him oddly. "If I had known that, I would have just dumped him into the river."

"Mm," Cherry hummed in agreement. "This guy is like Chopper."

"An animal, then?" Zoro rubbed his chin.

"He's a... fox? I think?" Cherry guessed based on what she could tell in his transformed state.

"I guess a fox wielding a naginata isn't any stranger than a reindeer who is a doctor," Zoro muttered.

Zoro hopped up onto the man-fox's back in search of Shusui, but he was unable to find it among the pack of weapons. He asked aloud, "Where'd you take Shusui, huh?"

"Nowhere," the man-fox grumbled.

"Is it that way?" Cherry pointed towards the other side of the bridge.

"No," the man-fox answered.

"I see, so it's that way," Cherry nodded.

"It is not that way," the man-fox tried to get up, but Cherry pushed him back down easily enough.

"You can worry about Wano's cultural heritage when its people are in charge of it again," Cherry said. "Why don't you tell us about Shimotsuki-sama?"

"That's my dad's name!" Toko piped up, as if she had resisted saying it until she burst.

"Oh? Is it Shimotsuki Yasuie you were speaking of?" Cherry asked the man-fox.

"No. I speak of Shimotsuki Ushimaru," the man-fox answered, looking at Toko with interest in his eyes.

Cherry looked at Toko. "Does that name ring any bells?"

"Bells?" Toko tilted her head. "I've never heard that name before."

"You're too young to know the names of every figure of note in Wano, I suppose," Cherry said, having already expected her answer. She asked the man-fox, "Who is Shimotsuki Ushimaru?"

"He was the daimyo of Ringo... and my friend," the man-fox spoke in a quiet voice.

Cherry didn't need to ask why he spoke in past tense.

"Sorry to hear that, bud," Cherry patted his head. "You should be okay to move now." The man-fox scrunched up his face in confusion before he realized that his chest didn't hurt as much any more. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and ran his hands over his torso to find that the sword wounds that had been deep enough to put him out of action were now largely superficial.

"How?" the man-fox asked in wonder. "Why?"

"As my friend said, we don't want you dead," Cherry repeated Zoro's words from before. "And you know you're not strong enough to get in our way now."

The man-fox frowned at her and turned to Zoro-

He shot to his feet. Zoro was already far beyond the other side of the bridge.

"I shan't let you go!" the man-fox cried out.

Cherry kicked his legs out from under him, but the man-fox transformed mid-fall into just a fox, sending his pack and weapons clattering onto the wood of the bridge. If she were slower than she was, she wouldn't have been able to catch him by the scruff before he landed. Which she did.

"No need to worry about him. He'll get all turned around and be back here in no time. It was a small miracle that he managed to track you down at all," Cherry said to the squirming fox. The fox bared his teeth and snarled at her, doing his best to claw at the offending arms to little avail.

"Fine, fine. Let's follow him, then," Cherry relented, though she didn't release the fox. Instead she brought him up to cradle him more comfortably in both arms and pretended that

he wasn't trying to claw her eyes out.

"So fluffy~!" Toko seemed to like his big, poofy tail.

...

"..." Onimaru could hardly believe his eyes.

When the infuriating and indestructible woman had claimed that the green haired swordsman would lose his way, he dismissed it as a jest; perhaps even making fun of some poor sense of

direction on his part.

Onimaru realized now that the woman had been dead serious. Saying that the green haired swordsman had a poor sense of direction would be no different than saying Mount Fuji, which reaches far above the clouds, is taller than an anthill; a gross understatement, to say the least. The tiny pink haired girl hadn't stopped laughing for the last ten minutes. Onimaru might have done the same, if the man that just walked around in circles several times before resuming in his previous direction wasn't trying to steal Shusui.

Onimaru glanced at the woman who held him like a human baby. She had been in on the joke for a while, but now she was looking at the man with genuine concern in her eyes.

*Poof!*

Onimaru took his monk form, which was naturally too large for the woman to hold in her arms, even if she possessed the strength to do so.

"That man is cursed," Onimaru stated.

"Honestly, yeah, I believe it," Cherry said. "I swear he wasn't always this bad."

"I'd almost pity him," Onimaru said. "If he wasn't trying to rob the grave of Ryuma. As it

stands, I can only consider it a fitting punishment for his misdeeds."

Onimaru stomped over to the bridge, which Zoro had crossed no less than five times somehow, to retrieve his weapons.

"Perhaps we can make a bet?" Cherry spoke up.

"A bet?" Onimaru was familiar with the concept, but had never made one himself.

"Yes. If my friend finds his way to Shusui all by himself, you'll let him use the sword until it

comes time for us to leave Wano," Cherry said. "At which point I'll make sure it is returned to

its rightful place."

Onimaru frowned. Shusui was not his to gamble away, but he was also convinced that this

woman could not be stopped by himself alone. Perhaps this was the only way he could ensure

it stays in place, however.

"What do I get if he doesn't," Onimaru asked.

"Scritches?" Cherry offered.

"Deal," Onimaru agreed instantly. The woman's hands were very nice, after all.