139 Kuma's Memories
Cherry stayed with Bartholomew Kuma until she was ready to sleep for the night.
She spent this time rooting through what few memories he possessed in his current state in hopes of gleaning some useful information. There was definitely something to be learned as he had been protecting the Thousand Sunny for some reason, even though he was little more than a mindless robot at this point.
Under most circumstances, prying into the memories of someone without permission was considered extremely rude at the very least. However, considering that Kuma could barely be considered a person right now, and the fact that the vast majority of the real Kuma's memories weren't present in his mindscape at the moment, she didn't bother caring about that and just went ahead with it.
It was pretty easy to sift through his memories given the low quantity of them. Normally it would be a huge pain in the ass because each person's mindscape was generally an unique and complicated maze of sorts.
You might be in the middle of viewing a memory only to be cut off and have to go searching for the rest of it, among other complications.
Naturally that problem only increased with the subject's age, which was especially true for cultivators with their typically vast lifetimes. It became pretty pointless to even try it for older people without having the person's help in doing so.
Cherry found a memory of interest during the few hours she spent looking.
The strange old punk, Vegapunk, was standing in front of her, or rather standing in front of Kuma.
["My friend, I hope doing all this will be worth it to you."] Vegapunk spoke vaguely.
Kuma did not not speak to him, only stared down at him as if waiting for something. No thoughts went through his mind either.
["... Execute your orders."] Vegapunk said solemnly after studying his face, like he was hoping to find some semblance of the man he once was that was no longer there.
Kuma looked up, leveling his field of view before turning around to exit the room.
Cherry caught a glimpse of something strange in the memory. It was a large mass of some unknown substance in the shape of a giant paw print, floating in midair inside the room.
She glanced at Kuma's hands which even now twitched in futile resistance, doubtlessly attempting to make use of the devil fruit power they contained. In particular she focused on the paw prints on his palms which were identical in shape to the strange energy in the memory.
'What is that?' Cherry wondered, when a thought struck her. 'Didn't Kuma extract Luffy's "pain" for Zoro to absorb back on Thriller Bark? Is that energy pain, or perhaps something else?'
It was a lead she could follow up on, if she decided to go find Vegapunk.
Cherry decided to quit for the night and go to bed. She wasn't tired, but the work was mind numbingly boring.
"Did you find anything of interest?" Robin asked, waiting for her to come to bed under the covers.
"Yeah, but I mostly only have new questions than answers. Just more reasons to have a long chat with Vegapunk one day." Cherry said, flopping onto the bed lazily.
Robin said nothing more and only wrapped her arms around one of Cherry's before closing her eyes to sleep. Cherry followed her example.
…
A tall, cloaked figure gazed emotionlessly at a handful of wanted posters.
Among them were the wanted posters of Portgas D. Ace, Monkey D. Luffy, and Harpin D. Cherry. All three were figures who could cause great turmoil in the world, and all three possessed the name of D.
The figure set aside all the posters with the exception of one, Harpin D. Cherry's poster.
The son of Monkey D. Dragon and the son of Gol D. Roger had both been anticipated to become annoyances for some time, but Harpin D. Cherry had seemingly come out of nowhere.
The cloaked figure turned their gaze to a corpse inside a glass case. The corpse was of a young man who had died some months prior during the war at Marineford. The cause of death was a piercing wound through the chest, the weapon that caused it was likely to be a spear according to the autopsy.
The strangest thing, however, was that the body had hardly even begun to decay even after so long and with no special attempts made to preserve it at that.
The cloaked figure believed there to be some connection between the murdered young man and Harpin D. Cherry. The latter had disappeared during the battle and returned to it from behind the marine forces, so it was likely she was responsible for the former's death.
The question was 'Why?' The cloaked figure wondered if the body's lack of decay was related to the reason for his death. Harpin D. Cherry possessed some strange abilities the figure couldn't account for, did the young man also have something similar?
However, there were no connections between the two according to several investigations into their backgrounds.
The cloaked figure didn't like not knowing things. Information was power in its own right.
Still, it wouldn't do to simply have Harpin D. Cherry killed. The cloaked figure MUST know what the secret was before she died, else the secret may be lost forever, and that was an unacceptable outcome.
The cloaked figure didn't know that their hesitation out of curiosity would eventually remove the option to simply kill Cherry, as such an action would become quite impossible.
…
Cherry woke up to the light of dawn poking through the window of the room. Robin wasn't in the bed with her and a quick scan with Life Sense showed she was in the ship's kitchen.
Cherry reluctantly pulled herself out of bed. She still hasn't made a decision about Kuma and getting up brought her that much closer to needing to make that decision.
Cherry trudged her way into the dining room where the other ladies were waiting for Robin to finish making their breakfast. Only Merry had decided to try and assist her, and she couldn't really help with much being a sheep and all.
Cherry rolled her eyes at the lazy gluttons before joining Robin in the kitchen. She didn't really want to help either, but at least she'd get some brownie points with Robin if she did so.
"Good morning. It isn't like you to sleep in." Robin commented, whilst flipping a pancake.
"Good morning." Cherry yawned, walking over to tend to some bacon frying in a pan.
Robin cast a glance at her. "You'd almost think you were normal the way you're acting today."
"I'm perfectly normal, what are you talking about? It's everybody else who is weird." Cherry retorted. Though she said it jokingly, she was secretly serious. There was no way she'd ever accept the people of this world as 'normal'.
"Hmmm, am I weird too then?" Robin asked with a raised eyebrow.
"As weird as they come." Cherry replied without hesitation, earning a playful smack on the bottom from a bloomed hand.
Breakfast was served to the lazy piggies waiting in the dining room. Merry's breakfast was a bit interesting as whilst it was mostly greens, she insisted on having some meat included. A habit she picked up from Luffy no doubt.
"So what are you going to do with Kuma?" Serene asked.
Cherry was thoughtful over the question, letting it hang in the air for several moments before opening her mouth.
"I think I'm going to leave him here for now. I need more information and moving him will only cut off possible routes I can take. Bringing him to the revolutionaries will only compromise him in the eyes of the world government, and I don't know if I want to do that just yet." Cherry said.
Cherry told Robin, Cabernet, and Perona to head over to Shakky's rip off bar.
She knew that Kuma would try to leave if she left him as is, so she decided to muddy up his recent memory. Hopefully that would make him think whatever mission he completed here was no longer complete and return to guarding the Thousand Sunny.
Fortunately she wouldn't need to be too careful in going about it as he didn't have any important memories at present that she could mess up as collateral damage.
Cherry put on a mask so that he wouldn't recognise her hopefully.
After finishing up in his mindscape, she released Kuma after unlocking his devil fruit seal, but not removing it altogether as it may still come in handy later.
Kuma returned to his place in front of the Thousand Sunny where they found him before. He showed no indications of leaving, so Cherry figured it was safe to leave him now.
