Chapter 90: Teddy Bear

Chapter 90: Teddy Bear



Cherry carefully snuck up on the newcomer and Moria through the forest.

When she found a good vantage point, she saw the large man with little bear ears speaking to Moria.

"What?! Them?! Defeat me?! I won't be done in by a bunch of upstarts! Crocodile was a fool and a loser, I'm not the same as him!" Moria shouted at Kuma, clearly offended.

"It appeared that you were running away from them just a moment ago?" Kuma replied monotonously.

"Damn you, Kuma! I wasn't running away, I'm just forcing them to split up and search for me, then I'll take their shadows one at a time!" Moria exclaimed.

"You can ask for my assistance if you need it." Kuma replied.

"Never! I have my own pride, I won't ask for YOUR help to kill a few brats!" Moria insisted stubbornly.

"Very well. In regards to Crocodile, his successor had been chosen." Kuma explained the situation around Marshall D. Teach, also called Blackbeard.

Cherry briefly recalled Luffy mentioning the name 'Blackbeard' and that his brother was apparently hunting the man.

Cherry turned her attention to this Kuma fellow, who was apparently another Shichibukai. Most of his body had apparently been replaced with nonliving material, similar to Franky. There was a good chance he was also a cyborg.

Another thing she noticed, though it was just her intuition, is that this Kuma fellow is a big softy. She wasn't a hundred percent sure, but she'd bet a lot on that fact.

The two Shichibukai finished speaking and Moria stalked away whilst Kuma went in another direction. Cherry considered whether to follow one of them, and which one if she did.

Kuma was going to pass the time until events here were over, then make his report to the world government. He would not go out of his way to help the world government, and certainly not for Moria's sake.

'Perhaps I can blast away a few of Moria's subordinates to make things difficult for him..." Kuma thought, but he suddenly stopped walking.

He could feel something tugging on his decorative bear ears.

"By the way, that Blackbeard fellow you told Moria about. What did he do to get the World Government's attention? It had to have been something big since you said he never even received a bounty before." Cherry asked.

"I suppose it will be known to the public soon anyways. He captured 'Fire Fist' Ace and brought him to the marines." He said.

Bells seemed to ring in Cherry's mind. 'Ah, so that's how it is... So be it.'

She sighed and simply walked away from Kuma, then stopped to look at him. "I won't tell anyone you're a revolutionary."

Kuma nearly lost his balance at those words. "What...?"

"Oh wow, really? Interesting." Cherry grinned at him, then turned away to leave for real this

time.

'She would be a valuable asset to have in the war effort. Something tells me that she wouldn't go for it, though.' He sighed in defeat and went in a different direction.

After a while, Cherry noticed the fog lifting whilst she enjoyed a bottle of rare wine that she snatched from the kitchen. The light of dawn was threatening to break over the horizon, it would bathe the massive ship with light in less than an hour.

Luffy and the others had finally manage to corner and force Moria to fight them properly. Instead of releasing the shadows from his zombies, he chose to absorb them for a massive

power up.

Cherry elected not to intervene, as they could handle him just fine without her. Moria last words before blacking out were something along the line of "If only I had Oz...", whatever that meant. Probably another zombie he never got a shadow good enough to put into.

Kuma reported Moria's defeat to his superiors, who then ordered him to destroy the

witnesses.

Cherry knew he wasn't going to do that though, especially since his real boss is Luffy's father. As expected, he found his own excuses not to eliminate them.

A big party was held to celebrate Moria's defeat and the return of the many shadows of his victims. Moria's unconscious body was dragged away by the invisible pervert and who she presumed to be Doctor Hogback. Strangely there was no signs of Perona, Cherry was curious when and how she left Thriller Bark, but didn't spare it much thought.