Chapter 630: A Little Taste
Tia’s chittering horror skittered across the deck in pursuit of the fools who trusted her. Their screams of terror were a delight to her ears.
"Would you like coffee with your cake?" The cook’s sudden question made her jump.
As she cast her attention upon him, she soon realized that he was entirely unperturbed by the things she just created. Nor did he seem to care that she had set it loose on his crewmates. Did he not like them at all?
"You are not frightened?" Tia asked, unable to hamper her own curiosity.
The cook blinked, glanced at the horror from the deep, then back to her. "We’ve seen worse. They’re all just playing, too."
Tia’s brow furrowed. When she looked at the fleeing pirates, really looked, she was shocked at what she found.
They looked terrified, certainly, but it was a superficial kind of terror. The kind that children display when they played games of bravery near her house, trying to see who would dare to get closest to her door or even knock on it.
They were scared, yes, but they didn’t believe they were in any real danger.
Just like the children, though, they were wrong not to believe.
"Grandi," Tia hissed.
The crab-fish-thing, before only big enough to nip at their ankles, swelled to a hundred times its size.
Their screams, which in hindsight did have a playful air to them, became far more genuine.
Except the straw hat boy. He was laughing
.The reason for which soon became apparent. He stretched his arms and wrapped around the monstrosity, easily subduing the abominable creature.
"Sanji! Cook it for me! Shishishishi!" the boy laughed as the others sighed in relief.
"I don’t have a clue how to cook that thing, Luffy," Sanji shook his head in exasperation.
"So you can’t do it? Some cook you are," the green haired swordsman muttered from where he clung to the rigging.
"I’ll show you, moss-head! I can cook anything!" Sanji immediately fired back. "Bring that thing over here, Luffy! I need to see how much of it is crab and how much is fish!"
They were going to eat it??? She’d met starving sailors who might not touch that creature.
"You guys can do what you want, but I want nothing to do with it," the scantily clad woman said.
At least there were some normal people on this boat.
"Oh, I think these are king crab legs? Those are pretty expensive," Sanji analyzed.
"Maybe just a taste; it won’t hurt to try it..." the redhead changed her mind.
Tia should have given it pufferfish poison. She still could, but... going out of her way to murder people who have yet to slight her didn’t sit right with her.
Tia selectively ignored the memories of sinking ships for shits and giggles that bubbled up as she thought that.
Seeing that her attempt to fuck with the pirate crew had fallen flat, she absent mindedly put a forkful of coffee cake into her mouth.
"MmmmMmmMMMm~?!" Tia practically squealed in delight.
What is this?! Why does it taste so good?! She doesn’t even like sweets that much!
*clink*
Her fork hit an empty plate.
"What?" Tia’s eyes widened in shock. Had someone snatched her dessert right as she was enjoying it?
"Sanji works wonders, doesn’t he?" the brunette in the fancy dress asked with a knowing smile. "I was surprised, too, when I found my first plate of his cooking empty before I knew it."
When Tia thought about it, she found it was true. It was she herself who had shoveled the cake into her mouth as fast as possible. She hadn’t consciously realized it until now.
"The boy, Luffy," Tia changed the subject. "He ate one of those disgusting fruits, didn’t he?"
"Mm," the woman agreed easily. "Several of us have, in fact. Myself; the reindeer, Chopper; the winged woman, Cabernet; the sheep, Merry; and three others we expect to reunite with shortly."
Tia noted that the culture in the seas below must have evolved past fear and hatred regarding those cursed individuals, if she so freely admitted that. Those fruits didn’t dare to awaken in the Cheribbean sea, so it has been some time since she has met such a person.
Tia settled in to have a pleasant conversation with the woman as the two ships finally entered the fog.
...
What the fuck is that?
Cherry’s Life Sense picked up on her crew as they came into range. There was also a second ship that she discovered had both Norrington and Jack on board. Will was on her own crew’s ship, somewhere below deck understandably.
It was one of the other two strangers on the Thousand Sunny that set her on edge. Her Life Sense was telling her all sorts of conflicting information!
A person can’t be a hundred kinds of sea animals and a big ol’ bundle of seaweed all at once! Maybe she could buy somebody who can turn into those things, so long as it was one at a damn time!
She couldn’t even tell if this thing was actually a person or not! Only that it was human shaped! That didn’t mean anything, though!
"Finally starting to understand your situation, Ms. Turner?" Barbossa asked, wearing the smuggiest bastard smile on his face.
"Shut the fuck up, you apple fetishist. I’m thinking," Cherry didn’t bother pretending to be meek.
Barbossa didn’t expect her to be so blatantly disrespectful, especially with the moonlight exposing his bony-ness. "I will not be spoken to in such a-!"
Cherry leveled an icy glare at him and hit him where it hurts, "If you want your coins back, you’ll be a good little skeleton and- SHUT- UP."
Barbossa ground his teeth. "It’d be best if you-!"
"No, it wouldn’t," Cherry interrupted him a second time. "My name isn’t actually Turner, you see."
She got the impression that he’d be blinking at her like an idiot... if he had eye lids. Brook would have jumped on the chance for that joke; what an amateur.
"My name is actually Swann Elizabeth," Cherry continued. "I am the daughter and only child of Governor Swann of Port Royal. The new Commodore of Port Royal has been trying to propose for months, so I expect he’ll be launching a rescue mission soon enough. If you do not have me to trade, then all of you are dead men."
"Dead men?" Barbossa’s eyes were alight as he fit this new piece into the puzzle. "We’re already dead men, Miss Swann. What incentive do we have to keep you alive, then?"
"You don’t know which coins are real or, in fact, if any of them are," Cherry said, visibly unphased by his threat. "I have no accomplices here. None of your crew have betrayed you, at least not that I am aware. All of this is my doing."
"... I don’t believe you," Barbossa claimed, but his eyes were still searching her face.
Cherry’s hand shot out and her fingers hooked into his eye sockets, dragging him down to her eye level. He went for his sword and the few men he kept in here started towards her as well.
They all stilled when they saw a flash of gold.
"One," Cherry counted, allowing him a good, hard look at the skull coin in her hand. "Two, three, four, five..."
"I get it!" Barbossa shouted, taking his hand off his hilt and raising both in surrender. "How many fakes do you even have?! Where are you even keeping them?!"
"I’ve had a long time to prepare," Cherry smirked.