One Piece: Dream of Immortality

Chapter 451: Taken

 n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"I don't believe that I caught your esteemed names?" Otsuru said, still looking a bit sheepish for spilling food on Cherry. Cherry only managed to convince her that she was forgiven after the third apology.

"Luffy-!" Luffy declared.

"-taro. His name is Luffytaro and I'm Zorojoro," Zoro barely managed to keep their cover.

"I guess I'm Sakuranbo, then?" Cherry said, unfusing the last dregs of red bean soup from her clothes.

"You guess?" Okiku asked with a raised eyebrow.

Cherry shrugged. "It's just a fake name after all."

"Oi, don't tell her it's fake!" Zoro snapped at her.

"Oh shush. You barely even tried to disguise your name and face. If you at least had a fake mustache like you did in Dressrosa, I'd put in some effort," Cherry retorted. "I bet you a hundred thousand beri that Usopp has a whole backstory with a wife and kids at home, and a back up backstory in case he gets called out for the lie too!"

"That's a sucker's bet," Zoro refused.

"Exactly. Which begs the question of why you didn't follow his example," Cherry said.

"It's hard to think up elaborate lies on the spot..." Zoro looked away.

"Shishishi! That's true!" Luffy agreed.

Otsuru and Okiku gave the three of them strange looks. That was the natural reaction to have towards people openly talking about how the names that they just gave you were fabricated. "Otsuru!" A skinny man ran over. "My son, he went swimming in the river and drank some of the water by accident! I need your special herbal tea!"

"Oh dear!" Otsuru quickly went to fetch some of said tea to give them man. She saw the question on Luffy's face and explained, "I've used my experience to craft a special blend of herbal tea to detoxify the body after ingesting the poison. Sadly, it is not effective enough to help with high exposure, such as when eating the unclean animals from the wasteland..."

Luffy and Zoro frowned. This drew their attention back to the difficulties faced by the poor in Wano. Most of the people in Okobore were clearly malnourished. The fact that there was a direct cause of this suffering stoked their senses of justice, especially Luffy who valued food so highly.

"Tama said they were growing fresh food somewhere..." Luffy remembered.

"Yes, that will be the Paradise Farm at the foot of the mountain over yonder," Otsuru pointed out the large shape in the distance. "It was created by Oden-sama many years ago to feed the people of Kuri, but the shogun has since restricted those who can enjoy its produce to his own people and the wealthy who can afford his exorbitant prices."

It was one thing for the shogun to hoard the produce of a private farm for himself, that was bad enough. It was another thing entirely for him to hoard a previously /public farm meant to feed the entire region. If Luffy hadn't been filled with righteous indignation before, he most certainly was now.

"Should we rob the farm?" Cherry suggested.

"Let's do it!" Luffy agreed instantly.

"We're supposed to be keeping a low profile," Zoro advised, though there wasn't any heat in his words.

*fwoosh**TANG!*

Zoro blocked an arrow just as it would have hit Cherry. He understood that she didn't need his help, but it seemed to be the polite thing to do.

"I overheard you! Conspiring to rob the Paradise Farm, are we? Perhaps you're in league with Ushimitsu Kozo?" an odd bat-like man wielding a bow with wings coming off of his legs shouted down.

A flurry of arrows were fired down onto the group, but Zoro was already aware and ready for such an attack, easily cutting down every last one.

"Wha...?! How did you block all my arrows?!" Bat-legs exclaimed. "Hold on, are you that one- eyed ronin from the wanted posters?"

*ZOOM*

Swift footsteps and a breeze blasted past them out of nowhere. It was a man wearing fishnet stockings over a pair of gazelle legs, and he was carrying a person under one of his arms.

"You can't catch me, I can run at a top speed of two hundred kilometers per hour!" Fishnet- stockings shouted, already racing over towards the horizon. "If you thieves want to see your little girl again, follow me to Bakura town if you dare! Hahahahahaha!"

"Tama?!" Luffy shouted.

"What?" Tama replied next to him.

"Huh?" Luffy was confused.

"Where did Sakuranbo-san go?" Okiku asked.

Everyone squinted their eyes at the distant gazelle man and saw that the person that he carried was wearing the same red robes as Cherry had been.

"We must rescue her!" Okiku declared.

Luffy was immediately on board, but Zoro looked doubtful.

'What kind of game is she playing?' Zoro wondered silently.

Whatever it was, it probably had something to do with robbing that farm, right? Some kind of weird plan?

Meanwhile, Cherry was oblivious to the happenings of the world around her, including the fact that she had been kidnapped and confused for a child by a man who didn't slow down to actually look at the person he was kidnapping.

She didn't know why she received a moment of enlightenment right after she suggested a food heist, but she wasn't about to complain about it. She dove deep into her mind as she practiced her cultivation method to make the most of this very rare and fortuitous opportunity!

It wasn't like anything bad could happen to her with two of the strongest men on the planet

sitting next to her.

"Hop on!" Tama said, bringing Komachiyo over to give chase.

"It's going to get dangerous, brat. You should stay here," Zoro warned.

"I will not abandon my savior, and Komachiyo won't listen to you if you don't bring me along! Now hurry!" Tama insisted and Komachiyo growled in agreement.

Luffy hopped onto Komachiyo's back and Zoro followed since his captain made up his mind. To their surprise, Okiku also jumped onto Komachiyo's back with a sword in hand. Komachiyo jerked into motion, faster than one would think he could carry his rotund form.

"What are you doing, woman?" Zoro asked.

"I am going to assist you," Okiku said. "I, too, am a samurai."

Komachiyo dodged around a volley of arrows when Luffy tugged on his mane. Zoro was getting annoyed, so he launched several counter attacks on his own, but Bat-legs was more accustomed to aerial combat than Zoro was to combating it. Still, the near misses seemed to dissuade Bat-legs from sticking around and finding out if Zoro would get lucky. Not to mention that he had a limited number of arrows on him since he wasn't expecting this much

resistance.

After twenty minutes of running, having long lost sight of the gazelle man, they arrived at the

edge of Bakura town.

"This place is huge, how are we going to find them?" Luffy wondered.

"Keep an ear out for explosions?" Zoro suggested.

"Explosions? Do you expect a masseuse to cause that much noise?" Okiku asked.

Zoro chuckled. "You have no idea how much trouble that /masseuse can cause when you take

your eyes off of her."

Some gate guards began to approach them, but Luffy put them to sleep fairly easily with his conqueror's haki. "Right! Let's get to looking!"