Doomed by Fate

"You aren't going to stop them?" Cherry asked Tesoro.

"Why? They don't even know that their whole plan is a set up by Carina, so they're efforts are utterly pointless." Tesoro seemed quite smug about that. "Pirates always fall for this ruse without even stopping to question it. At least the ones who are trying to steal from me and run away, abandoning the hostage I took, have a small amount of sense. The ones who actually think they could repay their debt with my own money and get away are the height of stupidity. Ha!"

"You have to admit that they're pretty competent idiots though." Cherry complemented.

"I suppose I do. Usually my 'security measures' have to be adjusted on the fly so they don't get caught too early." Tesoro admitted.

At that moment, Brook fell under the eye beams of a Red-Eyed Owl, followed soon after by several more. He held up his arms defensively and screamed as if to futilely hide himself.

Tesoro spoke into a den den mushi. "Don't sound the alarm, just have them move on."

The eye beams moved away as they were bade and they heard Sanji say they must not consider him to be alive.

"Bahaha! How foolish can you be!" Tesoro laughed. He explained to Cherry, "Certainly Red-Eyed Owls will naturally hoot and holler when they spot something with body heat, but that doesn't mean they won't become alert to movement as well."

They continued to watch the antics of the Straw Hats' heist until it was time for Gild Tesoro to step in personally. "I'll take care of the preparations for the execution now. Baccarat will escort you to your V.I.P. box to oversee it shortly."

Tanaka appeared and took Tesoro with him to intercept Luffy and Franky where they were trying to sabotage the fake central control den den mushi.

Cherry looked up at Baccarat who was waiting patiently to lead her away with her usual professional smile.

"Say, how long does that devil fruit of yours last, by the way?" Cherry asked a seemingly innocuous question.

"It wouldn't be very wise of me to say. Knowledge is power, as they say. Even Tanaka doesn't know the details behind the workings of my devil fruit beyond whatever he's managed to put together himself from what he's personally witnessed of me." Baccarat said reasonably.

"Hmm? I see." Cherry hummed disinterestedly. "I can't say I know your devil fruit, but I understand luck very well. It was very brave of you to take Luffy's luck the way you did. Such loyalty to your boss, he's lucky to have you."

Baccarat was confused by what she said. It didn't make much sense to her, but there was a foreboding feeling creeping into her heart after hearing them. She asked, "What do you mean by 'brave'?"

"Trying to gauge how much I know, are you?" Cherry raised an eyebrow and smirked, as if to say 'I know your game.'

Baccarat nodded placidly, carefully maintaining the calm smile on his face.

"Very well, then," Cherry relented. "At the risk of oversimplifying, I'm of course referring to the pendulum-like effect that occurs when changing a person's fortunes. Whilst most people's fortunes can be affected with hardly any backlash, someone with extreme variance of luck like Luffy tends to kick back at you something fierce, doesn't it?"

'What the hell is she on about?' Baccarat studied her face, wondering if she was just blabbering for no reason. Instead she found no lies in the piercing gaze that Cherry leveled at her.

"Nonsense." Baccarat spoke plainly, her smile becoming somewhat more genuine but also mocking. 'She's just a superstitious fool. I can't be roped up in her bullshit so easily.'

"As expected of you! It's so refreshing to meet the genuine article for once. We're so few and far between these days, aren't we?" Cherry seemed positively elated suddenly. "Yes of course it's nonsense!"

Despite what Baccarat thought to herself before, she was actually relieved to hear that her words had actually been nonsense. Then the words 'genuine article' rang in her head again, calling her attention to them.

"I respect you even more now. You must be very skilled at the delicate art of karmic balancing to invite such disaster upon yourself." Cherry nodded and stood up. She wrapped her arm around the once more confused Baccarat's shoulders and led her out of the office towards the elevator. "Let's have a good chat, shall we? I believe there's still a bit of time before the big event, unless of course you'd like a longer chat after the fact?"

"Huh?" Baccarat felt like she'd been swept up in a storm in a rickety row boat with only a single broken paddle.

"You know, I once met a self-proclaimed fortune teller who could turn people's life around." Cherry segued into an anecdote as the elevator doors closed.

At the ground floor the doors opened once more and Cherry finished, "It took me hours to get her blood and cerebral fluid out of my favorite robes, the stupid bitch."

Baccarat was pale in the face. Either Cherry was an extremely creative story teller or she'd just heard the most terrifying true story in her life; one that mirrored her own life experience in a few too many ways than was comfortable.

Cherry's story was in actuality mostly true. She just changed some of the details because it was actually about a foolish cultivator dabbling in powers they didn't understand than a common fortune teller finding a strange artifact.

"I still have it, you know." Cherry pulled out an ancient looking Tarot card depicting a great wheel and strange creatures. A sea of stars laid behind it and gave a sense of depth, like one could simply reach inside and pluck stars out of the black abyss. The card gave off an inexplicable feeling of both joy and dread as Baccarat gazed upon it. "I haven't used it of course. A bit beyond my skill, you understand. My area of expertise lies in the great beyond after death, not in the fortunes of the living."

Baccarat was on the verge of outright panic now. One look at that Tarot card and all doubts about Cherry's words vanished and were replaced by horror at the fate she had unwittingly brought upon herself.

The only thing that kept her from crumpling to the ground, assuming the fetal position, and hyperventilating until she fainted was the gentle hand on the back of her head. She didn't even question why the hand of a relative stranger was there in the first place.

Cherry was enjoying herself immensely. Hypnotism wasn't her forte, which was why she needed direct contact to her target's head to muddle their thoughts. Even then, she could only do this to people with weak wills; something that was much rarer here than in her past life.

Usopp, the coward that he was, would be completely immune to her feeble skill in this particular art.

Baccarat was different; even with the best teachers in the world, she would have no hope in awakening haki of any kind. Her will was so weak that Cherry could even implant small hallucinations into her perception, like turning a 1,000 Beri bill into an enigmatic Tarot card.

Cherry tucked the bill away and continued, "What that little fortune teller did wasn't anywhere close to as bad as what you did, so I look forward to seeing how you handle it."

Baccarat slumped to her knees and grasped Cherry by the legs. With tears of terror in her eyes she begged, "Please save me!"

Outwardly Cherry looked surprised, but inwardly she cackled gleefully.