"Do you understand?" Cherry asked the cheerful cloud.
"I do! When the sword turns into lightning, suck up as much as I can and grow as big as I can to support the island!" Zeus nodded rather enthusiastically.
Cherry had told him that he lost snack privileges, but there wasn't much of a choice here. Zeus needed fuel to hold up this much rock.
Cherry could probably manage the sheer weight of it if she pushed herself to the maximum. The problem was that she didn't have the surface area to stop Onigashima from falling apart around her.
And that's not even considering how impossible Geppo would be. No matter how fast and hard you kick your legs, the air simply couldn't support that much mass.
"Are you sure this will work, though?" Zeus expressed his doubts. "I've never held up anything larger than Mama's ship before…"
"I've done the math. I'm at least 80% certain that you can manage it," Cherry assured him.
"You're not 100% sure?!" Zeus looked far less confident than he had before.
"There's no such thing as 100%. Besides, most of that 20-ish% is in the case somebody interferes with you. Like Kaido, to give you an example," Cherry waved away his concerns.
"That's worse! You get that that's worse, right?!" Zeus' voice pitched up a couple of octaves.
"Relaaax," Cherry insisted. "Kaido is going to be busy fighting for his life soon enough. He won't have the time or energy to waste on you."
"W-what if…?" Zeus began.
"Oh shut up," Cherry interrupted. "Aren't you one of Big Mom's special homies? How are you such a coward?"
Zeus rumbled at that. "I'm not afraid! I've just never had this much responsibility before! Never this… this independent!"
"Now's the time to get used to it, then," Cherry dismissed. "Just be ready when the time comes. If this island comes crashing down, then I'll feed you to Brook."
"Gulp," Zeus said.
"Did you just say 'Gulp'?" Cherry asked. "You know what? Nevermind."
Cherry left the weird cloud to his devices.
…
"Oh, my spine is tingling! Yohoho!" Brook spoke to himself. "Is somebody using me to make ominous threats?"
"Well, that's for finding out later," Brook said as he stepped into a banquet hall. "Excuse me ladies~"
Brook ignored the unmoving women whose eyes were glazed over as drool dripped from their slack mouths. A shame that they were poisoned and quite incapacitated; he'd rather like to ask to see their panties. Perhaps another time.
"Yohoho! My friend, you're in quite the pickle, hm?" Brook cheerfully greeted Sanji.
"Huh?" Sanji's heart shaped eyes were unwillingly dragged away from the valiant form of Pudding as she fought to save him. "What do you want, Brook? Can't you see I'm busy being a damsel in distress?"
"My apologies~!" Brook chirped. "This is hardly the time to be slacking off, though."
*clack*
Brook sheathed his sword before Sanji saw him draw it. The webs around the chef's body froze solid and crumbled with only the slightest of movements.
"Tsk, I suppose you're right," Sanji agreed, though he didn't look happy about it.
"We should be able to slip out without any issues. That spider lady seems to have forgotten you were even here and her servants have been rendered harmless by your sister, by the looks of it," Brook told him.
Black Maria's spider head managed to chomp down on Reiju at that moment, causing Sanji to tense. Fortunately the fangs were not meant to cause great harm by themselves, but rather served to deliver their venom. Something Reiju took full advantage of, stabbing out all of the spider's eyes and causing their owner to scream in fury and pain.
"It's fortunate we have so many ladies on board, and that they are so competent," Brook noted. "You'd be doomed otherwise."
"Don't I know it. That was really close!" Sanji agreed readily. Brook laughed at him, but he didn't mind. He was truly blessed to travel with a crew that could help him when his chivalry got in the way.
"Oh? It looks like I'm late to the party," Robin strolled inside too.
"Fashionably late~!" Sanji corrected.
Robin laughed. "I suppose. I wanted to look cool, though…"
"Robin-chan~ always looks cool!" Sanji insisted.
Pudding yelped.
"I've got you!" Black Maria laughed madly with Pudding caught in her grasp. "I'm going to make this hurt-! AGH?!?!?!"
Black Maria's fingers tumbled away from her palm along with Pudding. The three eyed woman looked rather confused at the turn of events before she spotted a metallic spider standing on the remains of Black Maria's missing digits.
The spider pointed a leg and Pudding followed the direction with her gaze, only to find Robin with Sanji and brook at the doorway.
"You're welcome~!" Robin waved and blew a kiss.
Pudding stomped her foot and pouted something fierce. "I don't need your help!"
Black Maria's hateful eyes landed on the trio at the door. "What? Wait…"
The poor spider woman looked so terribly lost. Her head was full of foreign memories, rendering her understanding of the present fractured and mixed up. She barely even remembered that she had been holding Sanji hostage to get at Robin; but now that she saw the woman in question, it started to come back to her.
Black Maria's response was to abandon all reason and charge the door as she let out a war cry. If she could not make any sense of the conflicting realities in her mind, then she'd forget about it all and destroy everything in her way!
"My my, you've done quite the number on her, Pudding," Robin said, vanishing in a puff of flower petal when Black Maria's flaming polearm slammed into her.
"Damn it! I almost had her! I was going to handle her all by myself!" Pudding growled as she chased the rampaging spider woman.
"What am I, your sidekick?" Reiju said, hot on her heels.
"You're my sister in law! That's basically the same thing!" Pudding declared.
Sanji looked ready to faint, even as he pranced out of Black Maria's reach. They weren't technically married, but it was a close thing! It almost happened! If Cherry hadn't shored up the blood vessels in his nose, he'd be bleeding profusely right now!
"Get a hold of yourself, you lovesick fool," Reiju slapped him upside the head.
"B-but she called you her sister in law! That means…! That means…!" Sanji stuttered.
"That means she plans to marry you," Reiju finished, then she smirked. "Or one of our brothers~"
Sanji stood ramrod straight. "I'll kill them! There can only be one!"
Reiju stopped him from racing away, presumably on some vague quest to purge Judge's bloodline, by grabbing the back of his collar.
"You're a right handful, little brother," Reiju sighed.