Daud escaped into the sewers. His pursuer hadn't followed him in.
It had been a gamble, since there were fewer places to flee in the sewers, but he'd been betting that Cheapshot wouldn't want to trudge through filth just to catch up to him.
Their merry little chase, short as it was, had led Daud to believe that Cheapshot possessed a way to detect him outside of the normal five senses. She'd killed nine of his clones, so it was statistically unlikely that she was just bad at guessing. And that was before you factored in how she kept finding him afterwards.
Daud had been in the game for a long time. He knew the stories that came out of the Grand Line had to be true, even if he'd never seen it first hand. Daud knew better than to accept contracts on high ranking marines and pirates like Cheapshot don't usually visit remote islands in the East Blue like this one.
How vexing. Perhaps he shouldn't have chosen to stay in his little pond when he was a young man. He'd had the skills for it, he just didn't have the ambition. Not until he agreed to kill the queen, something he came to regret almost as soon as he'd done it. His life had just been a long string of bad decisions that led him right into the jaws of the world's most powerful woman, hadn't it.
It'd be funnier if it was happening to someone else.
A warning tickled at the back of Daud's mind. In response, he slowed and produced his tenth clone who went ahead at his previous pace.
Just as the clone passed beneath a manhole, a wire snapped taut around his leg and dragged him up and out of the sewer.
"Drat, another fake!" Cheapshot's complaint echoed from above. She was really laying it on thick, announcing how 'disappointing' it was that she hadn't caught the real him yet.
It wouldn't last forever, though. She'd grow tired of the game, and then it was game over for him because the game was rigged from the start. Not even cheating would save him, which was why he was going to flip the board.
Daud arrived at his destination, clambering up the ladder into another of his safe houses. It was only accessible by this ladder, unless of course you were a living bulldozer of a woman who took concrete walls as more of a suggestion of a barrier than an actual obstacle.
It didn't matter if she broke inside, though. If anything, he was counting on it.
…
Cherry 'watched' Daud climbing back up into a small warehouse.
She figured now was as good a time as any to wrap things up. The chase was an amusing way to pass a bit of time, but her time wasn't unlimited.
She also didn't want him to jump back down into the sewers. She'd have to collapse it on his head, because there was no way she was going in there no matter how immune she was to whatever diseases lurked within.
After a quick circle around the building, she saw that every entrance on the surface was thoroughly blockaded. Solid brickwork covered up with wooden boards so it wouldn't look suspicious.
Shrugging, she did the next best thing; force her way through the front door anyways.
"Honey, I'm hooome~!" Cherry announced herself as she pushed the bricked up doorway open like an ordinary door. Smashing through would be fun, too, but using her devil fruit to unfuse the mortar would look funnier.
"Would you like dinner, a bath, or me?" Daud returned in a deadpan tone.
"You, of course~" Cherry smiled. "Are you giving up, then? It's been fun, but I've got places to be later."
"I'm glad," Daud answered differently than expected.
"Whatever, for? You've lost already, Daud," Cherry stepped further inside, casting her gaze around the shelves at all the crates stored inside.
Daud didn't answer until she found him at the very center, standing with ease as he waited patiently for her. The whole thing screamed of a trap, and she was eager to see what it was.
"My final gambit wouldn't have worked as well if you weren't a devil fruit user," Daud finally explained, then snapped his fingers.
Instantly, the warehouse was filled with a cacophonous racket. More than a fair few crates were pushed apart by clockwork contraptions, quickly revealing themselves to be the autonomous soldiers that Reiju had seen in the prison.
Cherry had to catch herself with her body puppeteering technique as the most overwhelming weakness she'd ever felt overcame her. Daud was twitching on the ground now, but his eyes never left her.
Most of the clockwork soldiers were outfitted with blades or other weapons, but several were cranking massive music box-like devices that served as their torsos.
There were sea stones in those music boxes, Cherry realized, and their properties were somehow transmitted into sound and amplified further still.
"Incredible," Cherry marveled. "Had it been anyone but me, this trap would have killed them. Bad luck, that."
The first of the clockwork soldiers reached her and swung one of its blade arms at her. It thumped against her shoulder uselessly before she reached up and shattered it.
"I wouldn't want to fight a real threat in this kind of environment, but little ol' you is no big deal," Cherry said as she proceeded to turn the other clockwork soldiers to scrap.
Daud looked just a bit haunted as he stood up after the final music box stopped playing. He readied a sword and dagger and duplicated himself one final time. He wasn't running anymore.
Cherry smiled at him, then she moved.
…
"Back already?" Reiju asked as Cherry hopped through the window of their room.
"Indeed! I've got some fancy new trinkets too!" Cherry chirped. "I can't wait to show Franky and Usopp! They'll love them!"
"So where's Daud?" Nami questioned. "You didn't kill him, did you? Things will go a lot easier for Corvo if they have the actual assassin to put on trial."
"Of course he's still alive," Cherry huffed. "Do you think I'm some kind of brute?"
Nami raised an eyebrow at her.
"I know how to hold back!" Cherry defended. "And if I didn't, I could still put him back together after breaking him!"
"Anyways, I stashed him in a safe place. He isn't going anywhere," Cherry claimed.
…
When Daud awoke, he was greeted by an impossible reality.
He laid upon a bed of clouds, not mere water vapor but as soft as the finest feather down.
Daud didn't believe in any afterlife, but he'd been certain that if there was one, he wouldn't be going anywhere good. It was only this fact, along with his aching body from the beating he took, that told him he wasn't dead.
His back protested when he tried to sit up, so he just laid there as he looked around.
As unlikely as it seemed, he appeared to genuinely be lying on a cloud in the sky. To his left was a barrel labeled 'water' and a pile of hardtack. To his right there was a mini den den mushi in a terrarium filled with fresh leafy greens. On the terrarium's glass was a note that read, "Don't steal the snail's food, or I'll strangle you with your entrails."
Daud believed it.
At least he wasn't left to starve to death.