Chapter 464: Old Beggar

Chapter 464: Old Beggar



Before Cherry did anything, she needed to ditch this laughing loser. They'd been walking for almost five minutes now and the creep still hadn't taken his arm off of her shoulders. It was a small miracle that he had enough sense not to try something more than that, because Cherry most certainly wouldn't let him keep the offending limb, disguise be damned.

The prolonged physical contact did afford Cherry the chance to get a good look at the way the failed S.M.I.L.E. fruit interacted with a host, however.

"I see, I see..." Cherry said out loud, which the buffoon assumed was directed at whatever nonsense that he was spouting and that Cherry hadn't been paying any attention to.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Back in Dressrosa, the S.M.I.L.E. fruit that she found in the underground factory had been mostly failures like this one, but they had all been fairly unique in composition. No two were the same, so why was it that they seemed to all have a similar effect, enough that Kaido named an entire part of his crew after said effect; the Pleasures?

Cherry almost regretted that she mulched all the S.M.I.L.E. fruits that she got back then. Now she was going to have to find a bunch more of these guys to get a proper sampling. Without that, she was going to be stuck with an annoying mystery and that was unacceptable.

'I suppose that I'll have something to fill my time here after all. That and possibly mass producing arms for Kin'emon's army, but I don't need that much time to make some basic weaponry,' Cherry thought to herself. 'I suspect he'll just steal weapons from those factories, though.'

Suddenly, Cherry's glazed over eyes regained their focus as they locked onto someone passing her and her escort in the street. An old man with a big head wrapped in a polkadot bandana, patchy clothes, and an enormous smile on his face.

The old man briefly met her gaze before averting his own. Cherry wasn't a hundred percent sure, but despite the smile on the old man's face she thought she saw hatred in those eyes. Hatred directed towards Beast pirates.

A quick scan with Life Sense confirmed her suspicion. The old man was indeed a bearer of a failed S.M.I.L.E. fruit, and somehow she doubted that he had eaten it of his own volition.

'What a wicked way to torment someone,' Cherry thought, suppressing a frown. 'I'll have to find him later. Maybe he'll accept a free massage? Or I could just pay him to sit still for me while I have a look and compare.'

"Oh!" Cherry piped up out of nowhere, interrupting a thrilling story about beating up a beggar one time. "I almost forgot the reason I came back this way, what with how handsome you are and everything!"

Cherry discarded the beast pirate clothes she was wearing and dropped them into a muddy puddle, replacing them with her other robes, then off she went.

...

Yasuie hated being in the Flower Capital.

The false prosperity built on the backs of his countrymen made him sick to his stomach. How anyone could willingly smile in the place boggled his mind, especially those who had lived through the true prosperity the city once enjoyed.

Alas, he had mouths to feed and stomachs to fill.

Begging and making a fool of himself didn't get him all that much money, what with how little empathy the people living in the Flower Capital possessed, but it was something. It was also a decent cover story for his occasional thievery. No one suspected an old fool. Yasuie had gathered enough funds for a bag of rice, so soon he would be out of this wretched place. Hopefully, if he was fortunate, he could catch a glimpse of his daughter on the way out. "Hey," the voice nearly made Yasuie tense up, but that wasn't the correct reaction. "Hahaha! Who's there?" Yasuie twirled around to look at the person who spoke to him, the person who had managed to sneak up on him somehow. She was a young woman he had seen before, holding some dango that she munched on casually.

"I've got a proposition for you," Cherry spoke with half chewed dango still in her mouth. "Haha! This old man is a bit too far over the hill for a proposition from such a young lady~!" Yasuie said.

Cherry snorted. "You're right about that, but you can cut the act. There's no one else here but us."

Yasuie resisted the urge to look around. He didn't know how or when it happened, but the side street they were on was conveniently empty. Instead he spun on his heel, hand over his eyes and said, "Where did everybody go~? Hahaha!"

"I just waited for an opportune moment and everybody happen to leave, giving me a chance. Don't overthink it," Cherry finished off her dango. "Now then, would you like a free massage?"

"A massage?! That sounds amazing, Haha! These old bones could use one!" Yasuie exclaimed just a bit too loudly, hoping someone would overhear and come to see what was happening. He had no such luck.

Cherry smiled a smile that unnerved him. Even more so than the permanent smile on his daughter's face did, though in a different way.

"Perfect. I'll bet smiling all the time really wears you out," Cherry said.