Chapter 408: Ex-Husbands
A while later, as Cherry was puzzling together the shattered pieces of mirror that Luffy broke from the other side, a voice came calling through it.
"Nami, Jinbe! Is anyone there?!" Luffy asked from one of the larger broken pieces of mirror.
"Hey, Luffy. Are you still fighting in there?" Cherry asked back.
"Cherry, that's good!" Luffy said, as the rest of the crew gathered around to hear what he had to say. "I need you to break all the mirrors on the ship! They keep trying to send people through them, but I need to focus on Katakuri!"
"You just worry about you, captain. We're all good here. Anyone who comes through our mirrors that isn't you is going right into the drink," Cherry assured him. "Hold me up for Katakuri, would you?"
Luffy made a confused face, but did as she asked.
"Hey Katakuri~!" Cherry sang loudly into the shard. "I killed-your- mother~!"
The shard of mirror shattered into little bits in Cherry's hand with no apparent cause. "Oh, he didn't like that~"
"What did you do that for, Cherry?! Now he's going to be even angrier!" Nami rebuked.
"If he did get angrier, that's actually better for Luffy," Cherry said. "Foresight is a tricky thing to pull off even with a calm mind, let alone in a heightened emotional state. I'm not so sure that he would be upset by me saying that, even if he believes me, though."
"Why wouldn't he be upset if his mother died?" Chopper asked innocently.
"Because Big Mom sucks at parenting and drives away or outright kills all her childrens' fathers," Cherry explained simply.
"That'll do it," Jinbe agreed. A lot of the kids from the Fishman District back home had terrible parents that didn't exactly inspire emotional attachment.
"We should collect all the mirrors in one place, just to make sure we don't get any stowaways or let them set fire to the ship or something," Cherry said.
"Au contraire! I'm quite confident that there will be more than enough cannonballs to sink the entire fleet!" Cherry argued.
"Are you going to blow up dozens of ships with each shot?!" Chopper seemed to grow excited.
"Nope," Cherry denied him. She was good, but not that good. "However, they're going to be shooting at us, aren't they? They'll be handing ammunition to us for free! Hehehehehe~!"
Meanwhile, aboard Bege's ship off the coast of Cacao Island.
The new wedding cake had finished baking and was now ready for the frosting as it rested on the deck of the ship.
"Who is that weirdo?" Chiffon wondered aloud, watching the large, goofy looking man who had attacked her brother Oven multiple times as the latter was attempting to stop them from leaving, the last time just before now as Oven tried to boil the ocean to stop them.
"He's your father, isn't he? I'm quite sure that he's one of Big Mom's ex-husbands, and there is a certain resemblance between the two of you," Reiju said. "Fa- Ahem, Judge did a lot of research into the marriages of the Charlotte family prior to Sanji's engagement." "What?!" Chiffon blurted out before looking to the coast to see the man who was apparently her own father about to be cut down by Oven. "No!"
Oven's sword was about to strike down the man, who only waved goodbye to their ship with a goofy smile without paying any mind to the danger he was in.
Bege heard his wife's shout, but even if he immediately understood the circumstances and gave the orders to stop it, it was too late.
*BOOM*
The townsfolk of Cacao Island shouted, "Oven-sama was hit by a cannonball! Again!"
This time the cannonball hadn't come from Bege's ship like it had when the Fire Tank pirates first arrived to rescue Chiffon, but from one of the town's defensive towers.
A scrawny old man could be seen hanging out of the turret window, waving his fist about angrily. "Don't give up, Pound! I witnessed your bravery with my own eyes, and you inspired me to act! We ex-husbands have to stick together!"
It was Heinrich, the old man living in the walls of the chateau up until Cherry found him.
As for why he wasn't on his way to Dressrosa? For the same reason that Pound didn't leave when Big Mom told him to; he couldn't abandon his children, even if they had never known him as their father.