"Should we really be wandering around on our own? Kin'emon said that he'd prefer that we stay where he can see us," Yamato asked. "Not to mention that someone might see me and report our location back to Kaido..."
"Nonsense!" Cabernet refuted without a shred of evidence. "Kin'emon isn't the boss of me. And besides, what if they have a vivre card for you? Then they'll be able to track you straight to the war camp!"
"I think if they had that, they would have found me by now," Yamato sighed. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, actually. It was like his so-called father didn't even care if he ran away. "Maybe they're stupid and forgot they had it, or they lost it somewhere?" Cabernet offered.
"That doesn't seem very likely..." Yamato said.
"Cherry told me that even smart people are really stupid sometimes. Always better to err on the side of idiocy," Cabernet argued.
"Well... alright," Yamato let it go. If they got spotted by a Beast pirate, they just needed to silence them.
"What's that?" Cabernet pointed to the distance. Black smoke rose on the horizon over a rocky hill.
"Let's go see," Yamato said, and they hastened their pace.
Yamato's hands were clenched in tight fists as the two of them entered the village.
The air was thick with the scent of burning thatch and wood, the source of which were the houses that once stood in this place.
Of greater note than that were the charred bones of the residents inside the hollow ruins of their homes.
In Yamato's mind, there was only one suspect; Orochi, and by extension Kaido.
"Cherry can't fix this..." Cabernet muttered to herself. Pedro had been extremely lucky that despite the terrible state Cherry found him in, his brain had been intact; there was nothing that could be done with dead bones, at least not with her powers.
Yamato took a deep breath to steady himself, but rage surged to the forefront as soon as it was pushed back.
"AAAAAHHH!" Yamato punched a wall that was barely still standing, causing it to collapse in a heap of ash. "I'll kill that bastard!"
Yamato may have realized that he wasn't actually Oden reincarnated, but that didn't change the fact that he had firmly sided with Wano and its people. "Why would he do this?! What could they have possibly done to deserve this?!"
Cabernet stayed silent. She wasn't sure what to say here, not knowing her new friend well enough to comfort him.
Yamato made a split second decision, then. Perhaps it was a mistake, but he would still choose to make that mistake a thousand times over and never once regret it. His body shifted and grew in size, taking on the appearance of a horned wolf surrounded by frigid air.
Yamato put his nose to the ground and started his search, filtering out the scent of ash and death. He found what he was looking for, even if it wasn't quite what he expected to find.
"This scent is sweet, and still somewhat fresh. This can't have happened more than an hour or two ago," Yamato thought aloud for Cabernet's sake.
"Sweet?" Cabernet furrowed her brow.
"Yes, but..." Yamato couldn't place the scent for anything he was familiar with. "It's strange. It doesn't smell like any sweets from Wano."
Cabernet frowned. "Big Mom...?"
Yamato looked at her with widened canine eyes. "Do you think she is here?"
"I don't know," Cabernet answered truthfully. "She's probably really big though. Can't be easy to miss her."
Yamato led the way, following his nose after the scent towards the south east. He stopped dead in his tracks when he found someone else's tracks among a number of others. Oversized for a human, but very deep which suggested an enormous weight. They were shaped like a woman's high heels.
Yamato and Cabernet shared a look.
"We can't fight, Big Mom," Cabernet said.
Yamato grumbled, though it came out like a growl. "They can't just get away with this! It's bad enough what the people of Wano have to endure under Kaido and Orochi's rule! They don't need another pirate coming in and making things worse!"
"That's why we have to tell Cherry," Cabernet nodded.
"And if they slaughter more villages in that time?!" Yamato shouted.
"Big Mom isn't alone, and we couldn't beat her if she was," Cabernet said. She took a deep breath and continued, "That doesn't mean there's nothing we can do, though."
Yamato knew, logically, that fighting Big Mom was folly, so he immediately nodded when Cherry said there was something that they could do about it.
"I'll distract them and you'll go tell Kin'emon about them," Cabernet said.
"Hell no!" Yamato denied instantly. "I'll distract them and you go warn the others!"
"That won't work," Cabernet denied in turn.
"Why not?!" Yamato demanded more than asked.
"You're not tough enough to take their attacks, or fast enough to run away," Cabernet
"What?!" Yamato actually took offense to that. "I am too!"
"Maybe against normal punks, but what about King? Or Kaido? If you attacked them, would
you have any hope of getting away?" Cabernet asked.
"Y-yeah...?" Yamato answered with much less gusto than his previous shouting.
Cabernet gave her a disbelieving look.
"Okay, no!" Yamato admitted. "Being stuck in a prison cell for years hasn't done my battle strength any favors!"
"That's why it has to be me. Even if they somehow catch me, they'll have a tough time killing me," Cabernet reasoned.
Yamato recalled that Cabernet wasn't harmed in the slightest by the explosive cuffs and couldn't argue against the claim. "Fine... but you better be okay! I won't forgive you or myself
Cabernet flashed him a smile and a thumbs up before taking flight, following after the
obvious trail left behind by the Big Mom pirates.
Yamato watched for a moment before turning back the way they came. "So much for 'they'll track you back to the war camp', huh?"
There was another reason it had to be Cabernet to chase after Big Mom. Cherry would be able to follow their connection to find her, and thus find Big Mom. She was a living homing
Cabernet wished she had asked Cherry about Big Mom and her group when they had reunited. As it stood, she was going into this effectively blind and against foes with the advantage of both numbers and individual power.
They were probably smarter than her, too, now that she thought about it.
So how was she going to play this? Sneak attack? Frontal confrontation? Hit and run?
Why couldn't she be an unstoppable force of destruction like Cherry was? Hell, she'd be happy just being as strong as King, but she was only comparable to him in toughness.
"Why is Chopper a genius, but I'm just normal? He's only got a human model fruit, too!" Cabernet complained to no one in particular. "At least I'm better than Usopp..."
Cabernet didn't quite manage to work out a plan of action before she caught up to Big Mom's group. Since that was the case, there was nothing for it but to stop overthinking it.