One Piece: Dream of Immortality

Chapter 495: Cabernet's New Move



Charlotte Linlin's battle scars hurt. Her most recent fight wasn't the first time she had been wounded by an enemy, but it was the first time that she had sustained such devastating injuries. And they still hurt.

Worst of all, she had been told that they would scar even with the best medical attention the world had to offer. Her doctor was good, but not quite that good.

She might have handled it better if the scars were someplace that she could cover them up, but she wasn't going to hide her face. Her face may not be as pretty as it once was, but she was proud of how well she clung to her youthfulness. Now the only thing people would see was the massive scar ripped across half of her face.

'At least it makes me more terrifying,' Big Mom thought idly. 'Those villagers succumbed even faster than I expected.'

They may have been drained of their life force faster, but it was still too few for her liking. She needed every scrap of life force she could take if she was to achieve her goals in Wano.

'You're going to team up with me whether you want to or not, Kaido; or I'll burn your little kingdom to the ground,' Big Mom sneered.

"Mama, there's somebody coming! I think it's King!" one of her younger daughters, Flampe, called down to her from where she floated above them. The girl was acting as a lookout for them, and that's just about all she was useful for.

"Hmph, they're belittling me!" Big Mom growled. It seemed that Kaido had mistaken her defeat as weakness, if he was only sending his right hand man to confront her.

Flampe had a much higher vantage point than the rest of them, so it was a few moments until Big Mom herself saw the approaching lunarian.

"Hm? That's not King," Big Mom murmured to herself. The figure was much too small to be that man, and they weren't wearing his usual gimp suit either from the looks of them.

The black wings and the burning flame were unmistakable, though.

"Oh!" Big Mom grew excited.

If they were a lunarian that wasn't King, that was fantastic news! Lunarians were one of the few races of the world that she had yet to collect, with a rarity bordering on extinction. She had practically given up on finding any for herself when the only known survivor was Kaido's

man.

"Mama Mama! This is a fantastic opportunity! Catch her no matter what, children! Alive!" Big Mom shouted, preparing her special homies for battle as well.

If she was correct, and it was unlikely that she wasn't, then this was that little lunarian girl on the Straw Hat crew. She wasn't totally sure if she had eaten some kind of ship fruit or if she was a ship that had eaten a lunarian fruit, but that hardly mattered when she didn't have any lunarians at all.

She would also serve as an excellent hostage.

"Isn't she... coming towards us a little fast?" Flampe asked.

Flames erupted behind the distant figure of Cabernet.

*BOOM!!!*

Flampe's limp form was barely caught by Smoothie before she crashed into the ground, her skeleton is shambles after being struck by the mother of all lariats. The one responsible was long gone after the sonic boom had reached them.

-

"AHHHHHHHH!!!" Cabernet screamed.

She could barely see where she was going. Perhaps experimenting with her powers right before contact with the enemy wasn't such a smart idea. She was pretty sure that she managed to get one of them, though.

She did eventually slow down... when she slammed into the face of a small mountain some distance away and embedded herself into a few dozen meters of rock.

Once Cabernet dug herself free from her impromptu live burial, she brushed herself off and raised both fists into the air. "Success!"

A win is a win, even a sloppy one!

Now if only she could work out how to control it. The explosive force from her flames gave her a lot more speed than she expected.

Normally, extinguishing her flames was the way to go if she wanted to go faster. It would also weaken her defenses a fair bit, though that didn't matter much against weaklings.

However, after her short bout with King, she realised that her flames were rather underutilized. The bastard had pinned her down without much effort, so she wanted to be stronger. Not just emergency transport with a mind of its own, but a proper fighter!

Fortunately, her blood binding with Cherry strengthened her in more ways than she knew, apparently.

"One more!" Cabernet leapt into the air, and a second later she literally exploded into motion. The roar of the air being pushed aside as she forced her eyes to stay open against the pressure was deafening. She didn't need to hear though, she just needed more flames, more speed!

Clouds obscured her vision for only a moment before she burst through to the other side, islands of fluffy white scattered across the distant blue sea.

Then she turned, diving near straight back down to the earth below.

Big Mom made for a surprisingly good landmark from this high up. Not just because she was huge and pink, standing out like a sore thumb in Wano's countryside, but also because of that big ball of fire she had.

Cabernet ignored the fact that the ball of fire had a face, instead pouring more and more into her fire. She could see the smaller minions making a break for it as the ball of fire tried to intercept her, but it was too late.

*CRASH!!!!!*

The ground would not have even felt solid, she knew, if she hadn't reinforced it at the moment of impact with her relatively meager armament haki. She would have slipped right through and kept going for who knows how long.

Because she did reinforce it, though, the ground instead was pushed down with her. The earth quaked and ripped apart in web-like cracks before erupting with tremendous force.

If that wasn't enough, her flames spread around her in a grand inferno as well. Big Mom's crew fled like cowardly mice, and why wouldn't they? The heat was so intense that even Cabernet was suffering for it!

She even thought that the ground was starting to melt!

Unfortunately, she didn't get a chance to see if it really would, because the ball of fire was upon her not a moment later. It made a strange slurping noise and Cabernet's beautiful conflagration was pulled into its puckered lips.

"Mm Mm Mm~! Scrumptious!" Napoleon declared.

"Don't you dare!" Big Mom hissed, causing Napoleon's expression to become sheepish.

Cabernet didn't stick around. The little argument between Big Mom and her special homie was the perfect distraction to let her slip away with another burst of flames and speed. She figured that if she kept this up, she might even take out all of the emperor's subordinates-

"Ah!" Cabernet's foot snagged on something. Something that turned out to be the hand of a

very tall woman.

Her momentum didn't stop, though, so her trajectory was forcibly altered straight into the

dirt once more.

Cabernet tried to burn away at the hand, but the woman refused to release her even as the skin

of her arm started to blister and char.

"Hold still, you little wretch!" Charlotte Smoothie dragged her closer where a man with a large lollipop swung it at Cabernet's head.Nôv(el)B\\jnn