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Chapter One

Idon’t want to die. I can’t stop now.

Those thoughts were the only thing that kept my feet moving. With each step, snow crunched softly underfoot. I wondered how far I had walked. All I could see in any direction was fir trees and a world of silvery white. I couldn’t guess how far I had to go until I reached the town Cora had told me about.

Dammit! My hands and feet were starting to go numb. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise; after all, I had walked for three days with no food. At this rate, I’d die of starvation and cold before I could succumb to my white lead disease.

My body felt heavy and I began to lose consciousness. The thought occurred to me that it would feel so good to just collapse into the snow and rest forever. But I couldn’t. If I died here, the man who saved me would have lost his life for nothing. Corazon had rushed urgently around the land in an attempt to cure my disease, and his efforts cost him his life. His death had to mean something.

I reached into the pouch at my waist and pulled out a scalpel. Then, without thinking, I stabbed it hard into my left arm. The pain caused me to scream reflexively.

That should wake me up, I thought. I tied a bandage around the cut and started walking again. If a wolf or a wild boar caught wind of my spilled blood and found me in the forest, I’d be helpless to defend myself. But there was no point in thinking about that now—I just needed to get to the town. The next town over, where I’d promised to meet Cora.

Just as I was starting to lose my ability to put one foot in front of the other, I saw them: Lights! This was it; those were the lights of a town.

“I’m saved! I’m gonna make it!” I mumbled out loud. My steps suddenly felt lighter. There would be food in town, warm soup to fill my belly, and a soft bed for me to sleep in.

Before long, I had reached the edge of town. It was encircled by a brick wall, with a sign at the entrance that read “Pleasure Town” in large letters. I hadn’t seen it from a distance, but there were crowds of people walking in the streets. This boded well; it seemed I was going to make it after all. Once I explained my situation, the people here would show me to a nice warm house and take care of me. I started to run, ready to call out to the first person who saw me.

Then my feet stopped moving. I stood in a daze, just outside town, thinking back on everything that had happened to me. I had memories of being persecuted for having white lead disease: memories of being shunned, despised, and wounded by so many people. A wave of horrible, bitter memories flooded back all at once.

Flevance, my hometown, was known as “White Town,” and it had been isolated, cut off from the rest of the world by people who believed that white lead disease was contagious. We were abandoned by the World Government and left to suffer brutal attacks in which my parents, my sister, and the other children at our church were killed.

I escaped by hiding in a pile of bodies. Each hospital Cora and I had visited treated us like garbage and threw us out. The day Flevance was set on fire and every person who had ever been kind to me in my life was slaughtered, I swore an oath to never believe in anyone again.

The only reason I joined Doflamingo’s Donquixote Family was for the chance to fight back a little before I died, to do my part to ruin the world that had ruined me. Despair was the only emotion I knew.

But there was one person who cried for me: Cora. He sobbed and blubbered and called out my name. The world was hell for me, and I saw no hope in it, but thanks to Cora, I was able to believe in someone, and to believe in humanity again.

But now, on the brink of salvation, I couldn’t move, suddenly terrified at the thought of going into a town full of people. What if I were to be persecuted again? Maybe I’d be hurt even worse than before. The thought brought me up short, and my knees knocked with fright. Somehow I managed to push onward and walk through the gate. A short way in, I came across a person shoveling snow.

“Um, excuse me!” I called out.

“Oh goodness! Your face…” Her voice trailed off. She’d seen it. She knew I had white lead disease. I could predict the scornful look that would come next, the expression of disgust. It was a look that said I had no right to be alive.

“Hey, wait!” the woman called out, but I was already running the other way. I wasn’t brave enough to continue speaking. Pathetic. You showed all the love in the world for me, Cora, but I still can’t bring myself to trust a single person.

I wandered away, finally arriving at a shoreside cave I’d seen on my approach. At least there I might find a little protection from the cold. My stomach growled—what I really needed was food. Fortunately for me, a bunch of dead branches near the entrance to the cave had been protected from the snow and were still dry. Some of the branches were thick, some were thin; I was able to grab a few and rub them together to start a fire. It was ironic to me that the survival skills I learned from the Donquixote Family were coming in handy now. Once the fire was smoking and popping, I warmed my hands over it and was momentarily comforted.

Although I knew I couldn’t spare the time to sit around and rest, I didn’t realistically have the strength to go out and hunt for food. I tied a string around the end of a branch, then dug around in the dirt for worms. Finally, I crawled toward the shore and lowered the bait over the nearby rocks into the sea. Despite being assembled in a pinch from scrounged materials, the little fishing rod was good enough to fetch me two large fish.

I was about to pass out from hunger. I hurried back to the cave, gutted the fish, skewered their meat on a stick, and cooked my meal over the flame. It smelled heavenly, and I couldn’t wait to eat and recover some strength and spirit. Then I would be able to sleep and figure out what to do next. But before any of that happened, a stabbing pain hit me all over my body. My limbs, head, and back were in blinding agony, and I could barely breathe.

Though I always knew this moment might come, it still took me by surprise. According to my calculations, performed as soon as I knew I had the disease and based on my parents’ medical data, I would have three years and two months left to live from the time I contracted the disease. Those calculations had been made almost three years ago. Only once before had I experienced a painful spasm like this, when I was with Cora. Considering the margin of error, this could easily be my time. But what could I do?

I’d eaten the Op-Op Fruit, and from what Cora said, whoever ate the fruit gained body-altering powers that would allow them to heal any disease. But that didn’t mean that I could suddenly perform magical feats, and I found that it didn’t mean my disease was cured the moment I ate the fruit. I needed to learn to wield the fruit’s powers or they would be useless to me.

“Dammit!” I cried out, slamming my fist against the ground. I was already feeling feverish. Death had been pursuing me, and now it was just around the corner. I could feel it—my muscles were already going weak. I toppled backward.

No! I can’t give up yet.

The Op-Op Fruit was Cora’s life’s work. He wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for his determination to get that fruit for me.

“I have to survive! I can’t let his death be for nothing. I refuse to let that happen!” I yelled out loud. I couldn’t let Cora’s kindness—that last smile he gave me—mean nothing. Never!

Ba-bump.

My heart pounded in my chest. Ba-bump, ba-bump. The pulse grew stronger and fiercer. Ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump…

It felt like my body was a pump whose sole purpose was to circulate blood. It wasn’t a bad feeling—if anything, it was like a new force was awakening within me.

Next I heard a hum. I realized that I was in the center of a dome-like membrane. What the heck is this? Inside the dome, I could see through everything—even my own body. I focused my thoughts: Brain, heart, lungs, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, spleen. In some new way, I understood each organ. From my internal organs to my muscles to the pathways of my nerves, I had an innate understanding of how each part fit together and what it all did.

This must be the Op-Op Fruit’s power.

It wasn’t just that I could see inside my body; my instincts told me that I had the ability to augment anything inside of the dome. I could move things, switch their positions—I had power over everything within. This dome would become my operating table.

I think I can do it now… Once again, heat surged into my dying body. I would cure my white lead disease. There was now a powerful intent driving my actions. I closed my eyes and focused. White lead disease was caused by an internal buildup of the particular metal the disease was named for. To cure it, I only had to remove that buildup. Carefully and thoroughly, I checked every place in my body. When I looked into my liver, I found a huge deposit of white lead.

I walked to a barrel that had been left behind in the cave and took out my liver. There was no pain. I could simply reach in and take out my internal organs, as though it were perfectly natural. I put my liver on the barrel.

This is the hard part. I couldn’t cut the liver out entirely. That would kill me before the white lead disease did. I had to remove the lead, then put the liver back into my body. First, I used my powers to gather the lead from all around my liver and concentrate it in one place. Then I took a scalpel from my pouch.

It was time for me to make use of the medical expertise my parents had passed on to me. Ordinarily, a person’s internal organs don’t feel much pain. But because the organ I’d removed was still connected to my body, when I touched it I would feel the pain in the membranes that surrounded the organ. I took a deep breath and wished I’d prepared an anesthetic.

Finally, I was ready. I grabbed the scalpel and jabbed it into my own liver, then screamed out loud as the agony jolted my body. It felt like an electrical current passing through my body, threatening to seize my consciousness and drag it into darkness.

The effort made me pant and groan, but the operation wasn’t over yet. Somehow my wits were still intact, and I was able to remove the built-up white lead with another bold stroke. Again, I screamed in pain; I worried that the agony alone might kill me. But I wasn’t done, and I knew I had to see it through to the end. I removed a needle and thread from my bag, stitched up the spot I’d cut out of the organ, and then returned my liver to my body. Operation complete.

After removing the white lead, I gradually felt the pain and heat begin to recede from my body. It was a success. I was going to survive.

“Did you see that, Cora? I managed to use the Op-Op Fruit you got for me! Thanks to you, my life will continue!” I shouted to the empty cave. The joy was so fierce that I nearly forgot the pain.

The flood of relief also brought fatigue. I had a fire going, but I didn’t want to lose consciousness now. Still, my stamina was nearly gone. I just needed a little sleep. Before my mind slipped into darkness, I saw Cora standing before me. He was wearing his black hood and his silly makeup, like always—and underneath it, I knew he was smiling.

I woke in warmth, enveloped in something soft. It felt as though I’d woken from a very wonderful dream, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Bit by bit, my awareness sharpened. My eyes flickered open, and I found that I was in a bed, staring up at an unfamiliar wooden ceiling.

Where am I? I sat up and looked around. In the room around me was a desk, a chair, a shelf stuffed with books, a fish tank with goldfish swimming around inside of it, and a hearth with a roaring fire going. Someone had brought me to their home. Just then, I heard a metallic click, and the door opened.

“Ah, you’re finally awake,” said an old man who was completely unfamiliar to me. He was carrying a tray with a bowl of soup. I guessed the man was about sixty. His white hair was slicked back behind a bright red sun visor, and he wore a strange tropical-patterned shirt and shorts with sandals. He seemed to me to be a very odd and suspicious character. And of course I wondered if he wore those clothes outside in the snow in the dead of winter.

But none of that mattered; the pressing question now was the identity of this person. Thanks to Cora’s covering for me, Doflamingo and the rest of the Donquixote Family believed that I’d been taken into naval custody. But if they found out that the boy the Navy took in wasn’t actually me, they would search the entirety of Swallow Island to find me. My identity must be kept secret.

Doflamingo was desperate to get the powers of the Op-Op Fruit. If the Donquixote Family put a bounty on me, then anyone might decide to sell me out to Doflamingo.

This old man might have already called the Family, and now it’s just a matter of time before they arrive.

“You must be hungry,” the old man said.

He set down the soup on a table by the bed. The fragrant smell tickled my nostrils, and I swallowed hard. I hadn’t eaten anything in days and wanted to hurl myself at the bowl and gobble up every last drop. But I didn’t—instead, I leapt behind the old man, scalpel in hand. I got my left arm around his throat and pointed the edge of the scalpel at the defenseless skin there.

“What do you want, old man?” I yelled. I wasn’t fully recuperated, but I could still get the better of an elderly man. I needed to know what his intentions were. But the old man barely reacted.

“Oh, come on, now,” he said. “Hmph!”

“Whaa—?!” I called out, finding myself suddenly flying through the air. The next thing I knew, my back slammed on the floor. What just happened?

“I might be old now, but I was a peak physical specimen in my day,” said the man. “Some kid jumping on my back won’t be the end of me. Not by a long shot.”

I realized the old man had thrown me to the floor. Yes, I was a boy, but in the Family I’d had proper combat training. Maybe that confidence was my undoing. I jumped to my feet and faced the old man. I kept my eyes open wide and glared at him, doing whatever I could to maintain my edge and keep from collapsing in fear.

“Wild one, aren’t ye? Got eyes like a ravenous beast,” said the old man. He did not attack me, but picked up the bowl of soup and the spoon and approached. “Eat. Your body was practically frozen through. You’ve not had any proper nutrition in too long.”

Oh, but it looked so tasty. The thick broth had some kind of meat in it, either poultry or beef, and chunks of bright vegetables stimulated my appetite. Still, I was afraid. Maybe this old man was planning to knock me out with tranquilizers in the soup, to buy time until Doflamingo showed up. I couldn’t let my guard down or let myself be at ease around him.

“You’re worried I put something in it? Hmph,” the man said. “So you can’t trust anyone. I see how it is.”

I kept my eyes on him, not saying a word in response. The old man leaned down and sipped from the bowl. Twice he slurped at the brim, then exhaled with satisfaction.

“There. Now you know it’s not spiked,” he said. “You’re safe here. I’m not your enemy. I don’t consider myself some kind of hero, either, but I’m not so low-down that I would play mind games with a dying boy.”

He offered me the soup again, and before I knew what I was doing, I was holding the spoon. I kept my scalpel trained on him with the other hand and carefully took a spoonful of the soup. Its delicious flavor filled my mouth, and it was as though I could feel the nutrients seeping into the very core of my being.

The next thing I knew, I was crying. The soup was so good and so warm, and I finally realized that my life was being saved. All the emotions swirled in my mind until I could no longer hold back the tears.

“Dammit. It’s so good. It’s so good!” I sobbed.

Once I started eating, I couldn’t stop. I set down the scalpel and shoveled the soup into my mouth—the delectable meat and vegetables and rich broth—until there was no more. Perhaps it was because I was starving, but that soup tasted like the best and most important meal I’d ever have in my life.

“I’ll bring you some more,” the old man grinned. He seemed happy to see the alley cat he’d taken in finally letting down its guard.

After eating, I did as the old man instructed and took a bath. Having eaten a Devil Fruit, I couldn’t move that well in the bathwater, but it didn’t feel bad to just lie back, soak in the hot water, and feel my muscles relax.

As I scrubbed my skin, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and noticed a major change.

“Oh! They’re gone,” I said out loud. “The white patches from the white lead disease are gone. My face is back to normal!” I slapped my cheeks, confirming that the disease was well and truly cured. Incomparable relief flooded through me as I realized that I’d never have to worry about white lead disease again. Finally, I relaxed enough to truly enjoy the bath. And once I was done, a clean change of clothes was waiting for me.

“Those are my son’s. I’m glad I kept them around. They’re old, but they should do the job,” the old man said.

I put on the clothes he gave me, and we sat down in two chairs, facing one another. The menacing, antagonistic air was gone. I no longer felt wary of the old man.

“Hey,” I said.

“What is it?”

“Did you really just, like, save my life?” I asked him.

“Hmph! I was on my way to town and heard screaming coming from the cave. When I went to investigate, I found a bedraggled, unconscious kid in there,” the man explained. “If I’d let you stay there and die, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep well tonight. All I did was take you home and put you in bed.”

“Hmm,” I said, considering this. So he wasn’t an agent of Doflamingo’s or a greedy person hoping for a reward. The old man had saved me purely out of the goodness of his heart. Suddenly, I felt terrible for doubting him.

“Old man,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I’m grateful to you for saving me.”

“Hah! Obnoxious little brat!” the man exclaimed sarcastically. “It’s a give-and-take world, kid. Now you owe me a favor. See what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” I responded, waiting to hear his price.

“So tell me about yourself. I’ll consider that your payment, and we’ll be even. Why would a young boy be passed out all alone in a cave in the dead of winter, anyway?”

I answered all of his questions, telling him my story bit by bit. I told him about how I was born in Flevance, the White Town; about learning medicine from my parents; about the white lead epidemic, and how our town was abandoned by the government. I explained to him about the war, how my parents and sister and the other kids were burned alive, and how I came down with white lead disease. I told him how I became cynical toward the world, and so I joined a pirate crew. And I told him about Corazon, the other man who had saved my life.

As I revealed the details, one after the other, I felt my heart growing lighter. Maybe what I really needed was someone to simply hear my story and share that burden. The one thing I didn’t tell him about was the Op-Op Fruit—I didn’t want him to change his attitude toward me and start thinking of me as either a freak or a way to make money. I revealed only that a skilled doctor had cured me of my white lead disease. Once my story was finished, the old man crossed his arms and murmured to himself thoughtfully.

“I see,” he said. “So you might be just a brat still, but you’ve been dealin’ with a lot of rough stuff already.”

“Don’t call me a brat,” I protested. “My name is Trafalgar Law.”

“Law? Pretty bold name, that. So basically, you’re all alone in the world now, and you got nowhere to go and no goals in life. Do I have that right?”

Goals? No, I didn’t have any of those. For a long time, I’d only ever thought about how to wreak vengeance on the world. Thanks to Cora, my goal had become saving my life, but now that had been achieved, and I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do next. I felt anger at Doflamingo for taking the life of the man who saved me, but I didn’t have any plans to seek revenge.

“What are you going to do with yourself now?” the old man asked.

“I dunno,” I replied.

He slapped his knees and laughed. “In that case, you should stay here until you figure out what you want to do.”

“R-really?” I said, surprised. “I can stay here?”

It was a tempting offer. I was in an unfamiliar place where I didn’t know anyone, and I couldn’t safely show myself in town. Having a warm bed, meals, and a roof over my head would be truly life-changing.

“But keep one thing in mind,” the man added mischievously. “Life is always give-and-take. This is a deep conviction of mine. You’re going to go to work for me—washing, cleaning, tending fields, and helping me with my work. There’s a lot to be done! I’ll give you a safe place to live, and you give me your hard work. Do we have a deal?”

Was this how the old man expressed his affection? The thought was so funny that I accidentally let a chuckle escape my lips.

“You finally smiled,” the old man said, beaming.

“Hey, wait a minute. What kind of work do you do, old man? Because I don’t want to be an accomplice to a burglar.”

“You little fool! Who do you think I am? I’d never stoop to such dishonor,” he grumbled.

“Actually, I have no idea who you are,” I responded.

“Ah, good point. I haven’t introduced myself yet,” the man conceded. “So clean out your ears and pay attention. My name is Wolf! When people talk about Wolf, the genius inventor with the once-in-a-generation talent, they’re talkin’ about me!”

“Genius inventor?” I gawked. “You?”

I took another cursory glance at the sun visor and brightly patterned tropical shirt he was wearing. He looked more like a con artist than an inventor to me.

“What, you don’t believe me? Wait right here,” he said, and left the room. He came back holding a box full of strange objects. “This here is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You get a demonstration of several of my greatest inventions. Look at this one! It’s the Anywhere Hot Spring, Version One! Using this, you can make even frigid water boil immediately. No need to gather firewood when you want to heat up a bath!”

“Whoa…” I marveled. That did sound pretty helpful. The old man seemed like an eccentric coot, but maybe he actually was a genius inventor.

“There’s one downside, however,” he continued. “There’s no function to stop it once the desired temperature is reached, so the hot water will eventually boil off and evaporate.”

“That’s not helpful at all!” I cried.

“But wait! Wait! That’s not all. Look at this one—it’s the Super Cleaner, Version Three. It senses garbage and messes and will clean your whole house with no effort on your part.”

“Whoa.”

“But there’s a downside. If it’s in operation for over three minutes, it will explode with enough force to knock this house clean over.”

“That’s more than just a downside!” I marveled. “It’s worse than useless!”

“Incidentally, the original Super Cleaner, before I improved it, couldn’t tell garbage and non-garbage apart. It nearly tore off my right foot, believe it or not.”

“Stop telling me about these things!” I protested. “They’re horrible!”

The man continued to show off his inventions, but each one of them had some flaw or drawback that made it completely useless.

“Anyway, I think you’ve seen my greatness for yourself by now,” he concluded.

“No, I haven’t,” I replied indignantly. “Not even the tiniest bit!”

“Well, starting tomorrow, you’ll be my research assistant. You need to learn which of these items are safe and which are dangerous, and keep them straight at all times.”

It seemed crazy—a job that could actually cost me my life. I took a deep breath and sighed. Then I considered my situation.

“Hey, Junker.”

“That’s even worse than calling me ‘old man’!”

“Thanks again for saving my life. And I appreciate you giving me a place to stay for now. You’ve got yourself a deal,” I said, and stuck out my hand. Wolf snorted with laughter, grabbed my hand, and shook.

“I’m going to get some good use out of ya! That’s how give-and-take works.”

Thus my life with Wolf began. I would wake up before sunrise, help him out in the fields, and then assist with research for his inventions, sift through various books on his shelf, have a home-cooked meal, practice my swordplay with a borrowed weapon, and talk and laugh with him at night. It was a peaceful, comfortable life.

The field work was perhaps the most surprising to me. Swallow Island has long winters, and trying to grow vegetables in the cold season was a waste of time. But Wolf had built a plastic greenhouse in his backyard and had come up with mechanisms that adjusted the temperature and light inside, allowing him to cultivate a variety of plants all year long.

“What do you think, Law? With the Veggie-Veggie Boy, Version Seven, you can practice greenhouse horticulture at home. Pretty soon we’ll have so many vegetables, we’ll be selling them to the townsfolk!”

That invention was incredible, even if it had a stupid name. Knowing that I was playing some small part in creating products that actually helped people felt kind of good, deep down.

Depending on the day, I sometimes went hunting with Wolf. I worried about an old man confronting wild boars and large bucks, but Wolf’s shooting ability was legitimate—he could take down any target with just one shot. Once I asked him how he had become such an accurate marksman. He just smiled and said it was a skill he’d learned a long time ago. I didn’t inquire further.

Together we shared meals, talked, and laughed at one another’s jokes, but I didn’t interrogate Wolf about his past. In return, he wasn’t too obnoxious about hovering over me and treating me like a child. That was the kind of relationship I needed, and it felt good.

Once a week, Wolf went into town to sell his inventions and vegetables, then bought what he needed with the money he’d made. I never went with him. Staying at the house suited me fine. I didn’t need to get to know any of the townsfolk. Or so I thought.

While Wolf was away from the house, I read any medical books I could find on his shelves. And when I got bored of that, I went out for a walk. By a month after he took me in, I had started to get used to having a normal life again. But I still didn’t have a goal, and there were times when I wondered if that was a bad sign.

I was considering this topic on one of my walks, when I happened by the edge of the forest and saw a huge polar bear with two human kids.

“Stop it! Stop that!” the bear was saying.

Yes, the polar bear was talking.

“What the hell?” I said out loud. A talking polar bear? Whatever was going on, it didn’t seem like a friendly situation. The two boys were kicking the unresisting bear on the behind, over and over.

“Heh heh! Can you believe what a wimp this bear is?” said a brown-haired boy wearing a casquette cap. He punched the bear on the head.

“Yah! Yah! Go back to the forest!” jeered the other boy, who wore a hat that read “penguin,” as he smacked the bear in the ribs.

Why are these guys ganging up on that bear?

“Tch!” I clicked my tongue, disgusted by the scene before me. The boys heard the sound and turned to look at me.

“What do you want? Clear off! You got a problem or something?” the casquette-cap boy snapped. It was the kind of thing a stereotypical bully might say.

“Nope. I don’t care about you or that bear. Do whatever you want,” I replied.

“Quit actin’ so high and mighty. I don’t like your attitude. But if you give me any valuables you’re carrying, I’ll let you go!” threatened the penguin-hat boy.

No matter where you went in the world, there were always bullies like this around somewhere.

“Quit actin’ like you’re so cool!” the boys yelled, rushing at me with a knife and a bat.

Good grief!

Quietly, I murmured “Room.” Immediately, a large domed circle appeared around me, enclosing the three of us.

“W-what’s this?”

“A-are we trapped in here?!”

It worked. I’d been practicing my powers on the sly, when Wolf wasn’t around, and had gotten better at wielding the Op-Op Fruit’s abilities. Whatever was inside the circle was within my grasp, and I could move it at will. I picked up two rocks near my feet and chucked them high into the air.

“Chambres,” I said, switching the boys’ positions with the rocks’. The boy in the casquette cap and the boy in the penguin hat wound up high above the ground, then plummeted to earth. They were knocked out cold.

“Hmph!” I muttered. I’d had a feeling that my powers could be used for battle as well as for medical procedures, but this experiment had worked out even better than I had hoped. Of course, I’d feel bad if it turned out they had died, so I took a moment to look closely at the two knocked-out kids. They were only unconscious, and would probably wake up in a few minutes.

I’d solved that problem, and old man Wolf would be coming back soon. I turned to head home, but no sooner had I started to walk than the polar bear grabbed my shirt and held me back.

“W-wait!” the bear said.

“What do you want?” I asked, slightly annoyed.

“Um, thanks for saving me. I was just so scared that I couldn’t even fight back.”

“Whatever. I only knocked them out because they tried to attack me instead. I didn’t do it for you.”

“Even still! Even still, what you did really made me feel better.”

The polar bear kept its grip on me and broke down into sobs. What an irritating bear. I waited for a moment, but the bear still wouldn’t let go, so I agreed to follow it to a nearby cave to talk.

“Listen,” I said. “Why didn’t you just fight back? You’re a polar bear! You should be strong enough to handle those kids.”

“They talked to me.”

“So?” I asked.

“I thought that maybe we could be friends,” said the bear.

“Huh? They were punching and kicking you, and you wanted to be friends?” I couldn’t understand it.

“Yeah,” replied the bear, as though it were perfectly normal. “I thought that if I just stayed still and didn’t fight back, we might end up being friends.”

Friends. It was a word I hadn’t thought about in a very long time. I didn’t have any friends anymore. They’d all gone up in flames. The thought made me remember my family and everyone at the church when they were alive. Yeah, my life wasn’t so bad back then.

What was this polar bear doing out here by himself, anyway? Maybe he’s all alone in the world, like I was not that long ago. The thought made me just the tiniest bit interested in this bear’s situation.

“So, do you live around here?” I asked.

“No, I just got to this island yesterday. I don’t know anyone here, and I have nowhere to live,” the bear responded.

“Where did you live before?”

“Uh, do you know what the New World is?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I said. After all, I was part of a pirate crew. You tended to pick up information about the sea and its many destinations. The New World was what people called the latter half of the Grand Line, a stretch of sea that ran all the way around the world. It was a place that any pirate hoping to find the One Piece would have to contend with.

“Wait, are you saying you came from there?” I asked. The polar bear nodded.

Everything you thought you knew about the sea stopped making sense in the New World. Currents, climate, magnetic fields—all the variables that were necessary to understand if you were going to survive at sea were completely screwy in the New World, Doflamingo had said. It was the kind of place where a typical pirate navigator couldn’t even get their ship to sail.

This bear came from the New World to visit Swallow Island in the North Blue?

“You sailed your own boat to get here?” I asked. That would mean that he was quite a skilled navigator.

“Not exactly. I’ve been studying navigation, though. Um, there’s this island in the New World called Zou.”

“Zou? That’s a weird name. You were born there?”

“Yeah, I’m a Mink. That’s where we live. Things were peaceful on Zou, and I got along well with my family, but one day, my older brother just disappeared.”

“Without leaving a note?”

“There was nothing to go on. So I decided to get on a boat and go searching for him. The problem is, I got on the wrong ship, and the next thing I knew, I was here in the North Blue.”

“That’s a hell of a mistake.”

“I know…the ship was rocking like crazy, and we were nearly struck by lightning…I thought I was going to die.”

“Ha ha ha! How silly! I guess even a talking bear is still just a dumb animal!” I said.

The polar bear got to his feet, picked up a nearby rope, and began to tie it around his neck.

“Wait, wait, wait!” I cried, “Why are you doing that?!”

“Don’t mind me,” said the bear, sniffing sadly. “The world’s better off without dumb animals like me in it.”

“Hey, man! I didn’t really mean it, I was kidding. You’re too sensitive!” I said, grabbing the rope and throwing it a safe distance from us. I thought about how I could distract the bear; I certainly didn’t intend my harmless joke to make him want to die!

After thinking for a moment I asked, “So you don’t have any place to stay right now?”

“Nope. I want to find a ship going back to the New World, but there won’t be many setting sail on such a dangerous route. And if I tried to sail there on my own, I’d more likely get smashed in the waves, considering my beginning navigational skills.”

“So your goals are to become a better navigator and get back to searching for your brother, then,” I inquired.

“Yeah, I guess,” the bear replied glumly.

“All right. Follow me.”

“Huh? Eh?” The polar bear was panicking a little now, but I ignored him and kept walking. Eventually the bear plodded after me at an uncertain pace.

“So what’s your name, anyway?” I asked.

“Oh, my brother’s name is Zepo. It means ‘handsome’ in Mink language.”

“Not his name, your name! Tell me your name!”

“M-me? My name’s Bepo,” replied the bear.

“Bepo. That’s easy to say, at least. I’m Law—Trafalgar Law.”

“Law… Hm.”

“So there we have it. Now, you should just follow me and do what I tell you to, Bepo. Don’t worry, I won’t eat you.”

“R-really? You’re not planning to attack me and put me in a big pot of bear stew?” Bepo asked.

“No way!”

After walking for thirty minutes, we were back at the house. Wolf was already there.

“Hey, Junker,” I greeted him.

“Don’t make me say it again! I’m not ‘Junker,’ I’m Wolf, the genius inventor…” Wolf trailed off, noticing the bear. “Wait, why is there a huge bear following you?”

“Oh, this is Bepo,” I informed him. “He’s a lost polar bear. He’s gonna live with us from now on, okay?”

“Shouldn’t I get a say in it?” Wolf asked. “It’s my house!”

“What’s the problem? He can help out with some of the tougher chores,” I said.

“Ah, hello, sir,” said Bepo. “My name is Bepo. I’m not really sure what’s going on right now…”

“Yikes! That bear talks!” Wolf was shocked.

“Cool it, Junker,” I snapped. “Are you gonna let him stay here or not?”

“Hmph. Well, you brought him here, and I trust you have a good reason.”

“Yeah!” I said.

“All right, then,” Wolf relented. “Let’s hear his story.”

Wolf and Bepo sat on the sofa and talked for the next hour or so. Wolf asked him many questions about his past and his family. Once the conversation was winding down, Wolf went to the kitchen to make tea for the three of us. When he returned, we drank our tea together in silence.

Bepo seemed more relaxed now. He was enjoying the tea, though it was quite surreal to see a bear delicately sipping from a teacup.

“All right, I think I get the gist of it,” Wolf remarked. “You want to learn to navigate so you can search for your brother. Hmph. You’re a bear who really cares about his family! It seems unlikely, but everything about your story adds up, and you answered all of my questions. You don’t seem like a bad bear to me.”

“So…” I urged him.

“That’s right. The bear can stay here. However! Don’t forget that this is a give-and-take relationship, Bepo!” Wolf said, launching into his spiel. “You’re going to work for your room and board. Nobody here gets to eat for free. If you slack off and don’t take the work seriously, I’ll toss you out in the cold!”

“Aye aye!” Beppo proclaimed. “Understood! I’ll do my best to help out!”

Wolf snorted and retreated to the bedroom, muttering about how he had so many kids to take care of now. But by then I knew Wolf well enough to understand how he really felt. He only snorted like that when he was secretly happy.

Bepo and I shared my room. Since I had gotten there first, I got the bed, and Bepo slept on a blanket on the floor.

“Hey, Law, how come you’re being so nice to me?” Bepo asked quietly after the lights were out.

Why was I being so nice? I didn’t know, either.

“I just feel like it,” I told him.

That seemed to satisfy Bepo, who was soon soundly asleep.

I think it’s because of his family history. Every now and then, I thought about what family meant to me. My parents, who were kind and nurturing and taught me about medicine, and my sister Lammy, who smiled through the pain of the white lead disease. Yes, once I had a family too, but they all died.

With all my despair and rage toward the world, I’d stopped thinking about family. But lately, I found myself confused—by Wolf’s affection for me and by my own decision to help Bepo. The only conclusion I could reach was that I wanted to believe in people again. There was no doubt that this was thanks to Cora. I had seen the way he’d given his own life to save me.

So what did Cora mean to me? We weren’t related. We didn’t even spend that much time together, in the long run. Still, Cora and I were family. He didn’t need to say “I love you” for me to feel that sentiment. Would I ever feel love for someone else in that way again? As I spent more time with the Junker and the bear, would I feel love for them, too? Or would our relationship always be the way the Junker described it—a straightforward case of give-and-take?

Which way should it be? What should I do about it? Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out the answers.

A month passed, and the snow kept falling. According to Wolf, only a quarter of the year on Swallow Island was actually warm. I was getting accustomed to the cold, though, and swinging my sword and doing hard work in the fields raised a sweat. Of course, Bepo was a polar bear, so the cold didn’t bother him in the slightest.

Bepo turned out to be more useful than I had anticipated. He helped with Wolf’s work, did some cooking and laundry, and studied the tricks of the trade of navigation in his spare time. The bear was pretty smart after all.

One day, while Wolf was off developing new inventions in his lab, Bepo and I went into the greenhouse to harvest vegetables. We could grow veggies in there that you couldn’t usually get in the winter, and manage the different harvest times of the various crops. I had to admit that when his contraptions actually worked, the old man was a pretty good inventor.

“Hey, Law, can we harvest these plums yet?”

“Don’t you dare! I mean…you aren’t planning to make dried sour plums, are you?” I asked, suspecting the worst.

“Well, of course I am. They taste great, and they go well with rice balls, so…”

“I don’t care! Listen, don’t you ever talk about sour plums around me, ever!”

“Yikes! F-fine, I won’t. Just stop yelling at me…”

Great, he’s sulking again. That polar bear really takes things to heart. But I’m not going to apologize—it’s his fault for talking about dried sour plums. How can they be so sour? It makes my tongue tingle in the worst way. If you ask me, dried plums are the real Devil Fruit!

On second thought, I realized that one way or another, the Junker would harvest those plums, and as long as I didn’t have to eat them, I shouldn’t be so upset…

Suddenly, an explosion rocked the air. The sound came from the forest, and the blast must’ve been huge if we could hear it from the greenhouse.

“Law!” Bepo called out to me.

“Yeah! Let’s go, Bepo!” I shouted, and we rushed out of the greenhouse and ran for the forest. As we got closer, I could see a great plume of smoke billowing up to the sky. I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but I figured there was the possibility that this might be the work of someone who meant us harm. Bepo and I crept carefully through the forest toward the source of the smoke, trying not to make a sound. We could hear a voice ahead of us—it sounded like the crying of a small child.

We came to a clearing in the forest and found two injured children who seemed to have lost a lot of blood. After a minute, I recognized them as the two bullies who’d been picking on Bepo. The one with the casquette cap was bleeding from his side, and the one with the penguin hat had somehow had his right arm ripped off at the elbow.

It was a bad scene. Even if I hadn’t known anything about being a doctor, it was obvious that these two would die if they were left here.

“Bepo! Pick up the one with the casquette cap over there! I’ll get the penguin hat! We’ve got to take them back to the house to fix them up!”

“Y-yeah! Let’s do that!” said Bepo. He didn’t hesitate for a minute about helping them, despite the fact that they’d tormented him before.

We picked up the kids and ran. I made sure to grab the penguin hat kid’s forearm.

“Oww! Owwie…”

Good—he’d lost a lot of blood, but at least he was still conscious.

“We were attacked by a boar, and…”

“Don’t talk! Just shut up and let me carry you!” I interrupted, hurrying back toward the house.

My breathing was getting heavier. Sprinting while carrying another person was really hard, but I knew that with the severity of their wounds and the blood they’d lost, there wasn’t a second to waste.

“Junker!” I shouted, kicking the door open.

“Law! There you are again, bringing people here without permission…” he trailed off after noticing the kids. “What in the world? That’s a lot of blood!”

“They’re both hurt really badly. I need to operate on them here,” I told him.

“All right! I’ll heat up some water, you focus on helping them!” said Wolf, springing into action. He could tell how serious the situation was from the tone of my voice.

We set down the two kids in the living room, and I rushed to the bedroom to get my surgical tools.

“W-what should I do, Law?” Bepo asked, his voice quavering. He was clearly rattled.

“I’m going to start with the casquette cap kid. You stop the bleeding for the one in the penguin hat. Tie a tourniquet around the joint of his arm, nice and tight, and keep it pointed upward. Then put the other part of his arm in a plastic bag and stick it in ice.”

“Aye aye!”

I put the unconscious Casquette Cap on the table and examined the depth of his wound. Thankfully, it wasn’t too bad. There was a lot of blood loss, but no damage to his major organs. I wouldn’t need to use the Op-Op Fruit on him.

“You still awake, Penguin Hat?” I asked the other kid.

“Y-yeah…”

“Do you know his blood type?”

If he didn’t get a blood transfusion, he was going to die. But if we put the wrong type of blood in him, he could have a hemolytic transfusion reaction. If that happened, the red blood cells in his arteries would get broken down and dissolve into nothing. So it was vital that we knew the blood type.

“I know it…” the kid said. “It’s type X. I remember because it’s the same as mine. I guarantee it.”

“Type X?”

This wasn’t good—it wasn’t my blood type. And we didn’t have time to go and get blood from elsewhere.

“Take my blood, Law! It’s type X!” said Wolf.

“Junker…”

If Wolf’s blood was type X, then he could donate blood that their bodies would accept. But there was a problem.

“They’ve both lost a lot of blood, old man,” I said. “If you’re going to donate for both of them, we’re going to need a ton of it. If it all comes from you, then it might actually…”

“Yes, you fool, I know what might happen!” the old man said. “And I’m telling you that I’m giving them blood! Don’t worry about me. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I lost blood on the battlefield in my youth. I’m made of tough stuff—giving blood to two kids isn’t going to kill me.”

“All right, then. I’ll do it!”

We were in a race against time. I filled a syringe with the old man’s blood, then I transferred it to a clean plastic pack and ran a tube into a vein in Casquette Cap’s arm so that it would flow into his body slowly. I repeated the process for Penguin Hat.

That would do for the blood transfusion, at least.

“You all right, old man?!” I yelled to Wolf. I’d taken a lot of blood, and though I tried to be as careful as possible, the blood loss could have sent him into shock.

“Nothin’ to worry about! Just a little dizzy, that’s all…” said the old man, looking woozy. “I got a bit lightheaded, maybe. Stop wasting your time on an old man and get to helping out those boys!”

“All right, I will. And thank you.”

“Hmph. Remember, it’s all give-and-take… you and Bepo will be taking on all the chores next week,” said Wolf groggily, before he went to sit down on the sofa.

“The rest is up to me,” I said. I gave Casquette Cap an injection of a medicinal plant–based powder dissolved in water. It was a powerful anesthetic I’d mixed up after settling at Wolf’s house. This would ensure the kid didn’t wake up during his operation.

Using a scalpel sterilized by an open flame, I wasted no time in cutting open his stomach. A section of his intestines was ruptured, but it wasn’t too bad. I got the needle and thread and quickly sewed the wound up, then checked for other damage. I found nothing else, so it was time to close his stomach back up. One down, one to go.

“Bepo!” I called out. “Bring Penguin Hat over here!”

“You got it!”

We moved Casquette Cap from the table to the sofa and put Penguin Hat on the table in his place. He’d lost so much blood that he couldn’t speak, and he flopped back without a sound. This operation was going to be much more difficult than the first one. If all I wanted to do was save his life, I could sew up the wound from his severed arm to stop the bleeding, and he’d probably survive. But I wanted to reconnect his arm and make sure it could move properly again.

I didn’t know why I felt so strongly about this. But if I took the easy road in this case, I knew I’d be putting to shame all the medical knowledge I’d gained in my life thus far. My parents ran a hospital because they wanted to heal people so they could go on to lead good, happy lives, and I wanted to live up to their example. It was as simple as that.

As I did with Casquette Cap, I administered a general anesthetic to Penguin Hat. Then I examined the spot where the explosion had torn his arm off—the tissues were a real mess. It wouldn’t be so difficult to reconnect if it’d been the clean cut of a sword, but when the opening was as messy as this, repairing it became much harder.

Can I even do this? Having the powers of the Op-Op Fruit didn’t magically make you better at performing surgery or reattaching severed body parts. The only thing that would help me in this case was knowledge and technique. And yet…

“I’m going to do it,” I muttered to myself. I wasn’t doing it out of sympathy, or because I wanted them to be grateful to me. I’m not even a particularly good person. There’s just one reason I made the decision I did: my pride as a doctor!

“Junker!” I called to the old man. “I’m going to borrow that microscope!”

True to his preferred title of “genius inventor,” the old man did have some useful gadgets around. I put the sleeping Penguin Hat’s arm under the microscope and tied it down to keep it immobile. Then I focused the lens on the wound and adjusted the zoom.

There we go…I can see it! Under the scope, I could make out each and every vein and nerve.

“Bepo! Give me the severed arm!”

“A-aye aye!”

We placed the severed forearm and hand onto the tray. It was still properly cold. The cell structures were alive and intact.

I think I can do this! I picked up my needle and thread and began to suture. The most important thing was to be as careful as I could be. Any little mistake in what I was connecting, and it was all ruined. I couldn’t afford even the tiniest error.

Remember what your parents taught you. Remember the things you read in all those books. First, patch up the muscles and tendons. There we go. It’s looking good. Then reattach the nerves. If this doesn’t go right, he won’t be able to move his arm. I can’t be even a single millimeter off. They have to be perfect. Connect them quickly but accurately.

I was losing my sense of time. How long had it been since I started? Two hours? Three? Even longer? The mental exhaustion was intense. It felt like I was more likely to croak than my patient was at this point.

“Let me wipe the sweat for you, Law. It’s about all I can do.”

“Thanks, Bepo.”

“They’re not going to die, are they? They’re going to make it, right?!”

“Of course they will. Who do you think I am? I’m the genius surgeon…Trafalgar Law!” I said, copying the Junker’s favorite line in the hope that it would bolster my spirits. As it turned out, saying that I was a genius actually did seem to fill me with strength, even if it was just lip service. The operation continued. I sewed the last of the nerves together.

There we go. That should be right. Perfect.

My legs were about ready to give out, but I willed myself to stay strong as I focused on the veins. Attaching the veins…done. Attaching the arteries…done. Lastly, I sewed up the skin of the arm itself. Surgery complete. I toppled backward and crashed onto the floor.

“Law!” cried Bepo.

“Hey, Law!” said the old man.

I’m so tired. Why do you two look so worried?

“Watch the transfusion needles so that they don’t come out… I’m just a little tired…but I’ll be up in…no…time…” That was all I could manage to say. My relief at finishing the surgery surged through me with the strength of the sandman. As I fell asleep, I felt only the deep satisfaction of knowing I’d achieved the very difficult task I’d set out to do.

When I woke up, it was dark outside. The first thing I did was check on the two patients. Both were still asleep, thanks to the effectiveness of the anesthesia. I took out the syringes and administered injections of a different solution, a nutrient mix my parents had developed. The patients’ pulses were steady, and they didn’t even have fevers.

Whew. They’re through the worst of it.

“How are the brats looking, Law?” Wolf asked me.

“You’re awake, old man?”

“Hmph. Can’t relax enough to go to sleep, knowing that someone might be dying in my own home.”

“It’s all right,” I reassured him. “My operation was perfect. As long as we’re diligent about preventing infection, they should be fine.”

“I see…” the old man murmured. “Well, that’s good.”

“Good? It’s surprising to hear you say that, given that you’re not getting anything out of this situation,” I said.

“Saving the life of a child is more than enough payment for me,” Wolf replied, looking away. His clumsy expression of kindness made me feel a little warm inside.

Four days later, the two of them were conscious again. They had no memory of what had happened. Casquette Cap was weak because of the surgery on his abdomen, but if he kept his food intake light and rested up, he’d recover just fine.

My real concern was Penguin Hat. It wasn’t just that I wanted him to survive—if my reattachment surgery went wrong in any way, and his arm was permanently damaged, he could suffer a major shock.

“I’m going to take the bandage off now,” I said to him. “Then we’ll see if you can move your arm and fingers.”

“A-all right,” said Penguin Hat, who looked nervous. The old man and Bepo and Casquette Cap watched with nervous anticipation.

“Take it slow. Start with just moving them a little to see if the sensation is still there,” I advised.

“Okay…” said Penguin Hat, looking nervously down at his arm—the arm that might never move again for the rest of his life.

Twik.

His pinky twitched the tiniest bit. Then he moved his ring finger, middle finger, index finger, and thumb. After that, he slowly bent his elbow and lifted his forearm. It was a success. His nerves had been properly reconnected.

Ha ha! This doesn’t feel so bad. I finally understood a part of what my parents had tried to teach me—that “joy of being a doctor” feeling they talked about.

“Waaaaah! I’m so happy! I’m so happy for you!” Bepo wailed, hugging the kid in the penguin hat.

That bear is too friendly for his own good. He’s completely forgotten that these were the guys who were tormenting him!

Casquette Cap and Penguin Hat were quietly sobbing now, sniffling back the copious snot that mingled with their tears.

“Thank you…thank you!” Penguin Hat said.

“I thought I was gonna die…I was so scared…but thanks to you guys, I’m still alive!” wailed Casquette Cap, his face all scrunched up. He could still barely move.

“Oh, I just did it for a laugh. Don’t be so serious,” I said, turning away. I didn’t want everyone to see the embarrassing grin that was creeping across my face.

A week later, the two of them had recovered much of their strength. Wolf and Bepo were eager assistants in the process of rehabilitating Penguin Hat’s arm. Wolf in particular snorted a lot and acted as though he were being put upon, but he never once threatened to kick the brats out of his house.

Since the injured kids were in stable condition now, we felt comfortable asking them about exactly what had happened. How had they ended up in such a bad situation? We figured they owed us plenty of answers.

“First things first! Let’s do some introductions,” started Wolf. “It’s a bit late for this, but I’m called Wolf. That’s Wolf, the genius inventor. Remember to always respect my name!”

“Oh, and so you know,” I interjected, “you two can ignore most of what this old man says. He’s just a junk collector.”

“Shut your mouth, Law! Don’t interrupt!”

“Fine, fine.”

Sheesh. The old man’s always blushing.

The kids looked at each other, then began to talk. The one in the casquette cap was Shachi and the one in the penguin hat was Penguin. They spoke hesitantly, as though even after everything that had happened, they were still afraid of us.

“Shachi and Penguin, huh? All right, then. Now how about telling us how you got hurt so badly?” said Wolf, more gently and kindly than he usually spoke.

“Me and Shachi built a little cabin in the woods, and we’ve been living there for about two months,” Penguin said, speaking for the two of them since Shachi’s stomach was still hurting. “We’re decent at hunting, and we found some trees that grow fruit in the winter, so we were eating well enough. Then one day we were preparing to eat a bird we’d hunted, and a boar was drawn by the scent and charged us. It all happened so suddenly, we didn’t have time to react. The boar ran right up and gored Shachi in the stomach.”

Penguin paused there and took a deep breath. He sounded tired.

“No need to rush,” said Wolf, offering Penguin a glass of water.

“The boar came right at me next,” he went on shakily. “I could’ve just turned and run, but I didn’t want to leave Shachi behind. So I rushed into the cabin and took out an explosive that I planned to throw at the boar. But it blew up right in my hand, and…”

“And it took off your arm. Why did you have a bomb, kid?” Wolf asked.

“I stole it from someone in town. I thought it would be useful to have, since we’re living in the forest.”

“Ahh. Well, stealing isn’t the way to go about it, but you had the right idea, using it as a defense against wild animals,” Wolf said, sipping his tea.

There was an important part of their story that hadn’t been explained yet. I had a feeling that Bepo and Wolf were thinking about it as well.

“Where are your parents?” I asked. It was easier not to beat around the bush.

“Both Shachi’s parents and mine died several months ago,” Penguin replied. I was taken off guard by his answer, and he started to explain. “We were having a barbecue with our families at the most beautiful beach on Swallow Island. We were having such a great time that no one noticed what was happening in the water. We didn’t see the tsunami coming for us. It was so huge, it could’ve swallowed the whole island. Shachi and me were climbing trees uphill from the beach, which is the only reason we survived. But my mom and dad…and Shachi’s mom and dad…they all got taken by the wave…”

Penguin trailed off and didn’t say anything else. He was clearly fighting back tears. Once he’d had time to collect himself, he continued with their story.

After some discussion among their relatives, Shachi and Penguin were taken in by Shachi’s aunt and uncle. But it turned out they didn’t care for children at all, and instead planned to use them as tools. The boys were forced to take part in illegal weapon smuggling and jewelry store heists, and were only given meager rations of water and bread.

I felt the furrow between my brows getting deeper as their story went on; there was a rage building in my chest. The idea of adults taking in poor kids who’d lost their parents and then knowingly putting them through hell made me sick to my stomach.

“They didn’t even treat us like human beings,” Penguin went on. “Shachi and I were just slaves to them. So we ran away. But we didn’t have anywhere to go, and no way to make money, so we built that little shack in the woods. In the end, even that didn’t work out for us…I don’t even know why I keep going on! What’s the point?!” Penguin wailed. He lowered his head and quietly sobbed.

Shachi managed to sit up in bed, tears streaming down his face, and move over next to Penguin.

“If you hadn’t saved us when you did, we’d be dead right now. Thank you for saving our lives! And also…” Shachi looked awkwardly at Bepo. He hesitated, summoning the strength to say a difficult thing.

“Polar bear, you’ve been helping care for us when we were bedridden, feeding us porridge and nurturing us back to health… I can’t express how grateful I am!”

“I-it’s fine, you don’t have to say it,” said Bepo awkwardly. “Helping people who are hurt is just a natural instinct, you know?”

“It’s not that natural! I mean, I—we were tormenting you. We kicked you and beat you. It’s not natural that someone would turn the other cheek and be so kind to the people who were picking on him!” Shachi cried. He lowered his head in apology to Bepo. Penguin followed suit.

“Polar bear…I mean, Bepo, thank you for saving us. And we apologize for taking out our frustrations on you! We’re so sorry!”

Silence settled over the two boys. Bepo said it was fine and wasn’t such a big deal, but Penguin and Shachi refused to lift their heads. Their tears dripped onto the floor.

“I don’t know why I keep going on,” Penguin had said. Shachi probably felt the same way.

Dammit! I don’t know why, but I just feel horrible. It’s like they’re giving voice to how I felt after my town was burned to the ground.

“Hey, you guys,” I said to Penguin and Shachi before I knew what I was doing. “You don’t have anywhere to go, right? And you’re not going back to your aunt and uncle’s house?”

“Nope…we’re never going back to that place,” they said.

“Then you should be my followers. I can promise you a place to stay, at least,” I said. Their faces broke out into huge smiles. At least they understood that this wasn’t a joke.

“I keep telling you, this is my house!” the old man complained, but I ignored him.

“And just so you know, Bepo’s already my follower,” I said.

“Really? I didn’t know that! Aye aye!” Bepo replied.

Shachi and Penguin shared another look. Then they nodded, turned to us, and said, “Please let us stay here! We’ll do anything!”

Wolf sighed loudly and began to grumble about having more brats around the house.

“Listen up, kids! Since you don’t have any better options, I guess it’s up to me to give you a place to stay. But don’t get this wrong: I’m not your parent. We’re not family, and we’re not friends! Our relationship is one of give-and-take. You want a place to live, I want help with my inventions and chores. That’s an equivalent exchange, and once you’re all healed up and healthy again, you’re all going into town to find work! And that means real labor, not just helping out with the household tasks! Got it?”

No one raised their voice in complaint. No one looked downcast or upset. Wolf suddenly blushed, as though he felt very self-conscious about the blustering act he’d just put on.

I’ve got to spend more time thinking about the meaning of the word “freedom,” like Cora used to talk about. Me and Bepo and Penguin and Shachi have all felt some of the worst kinds of loneliness this world has to offer, but we made it past that despair to get to this point.

I still don’t know what this freedom thing really is, but I do feel a kind of warmth and comfort in Wolf’s house. Why is that? He claims that his relationships are all about give-and-take, but Wolf never tries to put us down or make us feel small. It feels like he respects us as equal human beings. So maybe this is the right place for me. Maybe sticking with these guys will help me find that concept of freedom Cora tried to explain to me.

There’s no evidence of that—I just have to have faith. I’m certain that I’ll find what I’m looking for in this strange group of five. Looking at it that way…maybe my life in this world ain’t so bad after all.

As the other four carried on in their noisy way, I sat and thought in silence, and a secret little grin slipped onto my face.

Chapter Two

“Hey, Penguin, you jerk! I was grilling that alligator meat for myself!”

“So what?! Finders, keepers!”

“Hold on a second! Both Penguin and Shachi have had three pieces already! I’ve only had two! You guys are newer, so you should be watching out for me!”

Dinner was always a noisy affair for us. It usually started with Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo fighting over food.

Things would be much easier if we gave them each equal portions, rather than putting out a communal plate of meat to argue over. I thought it over as I silently shoved a fourth serving of meat into my mouth.

“Pipe down, you little brats! How many times do I have to tell you to eat in silence?” growled Wolf, slapping the table. Once he got riled up, the old man tended to lecture us for hours. I rose from the table quietly, trying to leave the room without drawing notice…but a powerful hand grabbed the back of my collar.

“Hey! I know you’re trying to sneak off on your own, Law!” the old man said. “You’re the leader of this band of miscreants, so clearly the example you’re setting is causing their bad behavior!”

“It’s not my fault,” I defended myself. “They’re my followers, but that doesn’t mean I’m responsible for taking care of them.”

“Enough! I’ve had enough of all this sassing! Ugh, what happened to all my peace and quiet?”

“Oh, calm down. Your life is way better and more exciting than when you were just sitting around alone building junk,” I said.

“Watch your tongue, you obnoxious little punk!” Wolf exploded. Then I was the one who had to endure his long lecture about manners. The others watched apologetically, but I knew that they’d be back to the usual shouting match in no time. Having lived with them for a while, I had come to realize realized that any lesson they learned they’d surely forget before the day was over.

Two months passed in the blink of an eye once the five of us started living together. We ate meals under the same roof, came up with games to play, and goofed around together. It was a way of living that I’d never experienced before.

When I was with the Doflamingo Family, I had no hope. I was fueled only by a dark desire to see the world burn, and nothing I did felt fun. Doflamingo, Diamante, Lao G., Gladius… Each of them taught me many things, but only with the purpose of turning me into a tool who would do their bidding.

I didn’t know what future awaited me after my time with Wolf, Bepo, Penguin and Shachi. But in contrast to the Doflamingo Family, they at least treated me like a fellow human being. I wasn’t a tool, but a person—a companion who talked and felt and laughed and did stupid things alongside themselves.

My anger toward Doflamingo hadn’t gone away. The drive for vengeance still lurked in my heart, dark and searing, and occasionally rose to the surface. But now I had friends—people who would do silly things with me and help me forget the anger and hatred. For now, that was enough.

We became better and better at splitting up the work, too. Whereas at first we were awkward and uncertain, starting arguments and blaming each other about workloads, as time went on we started acting like a real team—even me.

Every morning Wolf would leave the house at eight and walk to his laboratory, which was thirty minutes away. For about a month he’d had business in town after his lab and rarely returned before it was dark out.

“Whatever it is Wolf’s up to, is everything okay with him? Between his inventing work and his trips to town, I’m worried he’s going to wear out,” Bepo remarked.

“Not a problem,” I reassured him. “That Junker’s body is made special. He was boasting about his latest invention just this morning. He said, ‘Pretty soon you’ll get to see the whole landscape from up above!’”

“Well, as long as he’s okay…”

Wolf was actually the picture of good health, and I knew that for sure. I’d given him a physical just to be certain, and all of his numbers were good. On top of that, his overall musculature and lung capacity were much better than most younger men’s. He didn’t like to talk about his past, but it was obvious to me that he’d kept himself incredibly fit.

While Wolf was away we worked in the fields, went fishing, and took care of cleaning the house and doing the laundry. Sometimes it was a pain in the butt, but I did feel sort of proud about being able to get the job done.

When we had free time, we each spent it on our own interests. I read books on medicine and practiced using my powers, while Bepo almost always studied navigation.

Penguin and Shachi often spoke of wanting to get stronger. But training without any supervision wasn’t going to help, so I borrowed some weapons from Wolf and taught them to fight with swords and guns. It was a lot of work and was often tiring, but it wasn’t boring. They both had a talent for fighting, and because they were willing to listen and learn from me, they quickly improved. I hadn’t realized how satisfying it felt when people followed my instructions and mastered the lessons I gave. When Penguin and Shachi hit a distant target with a great shot and celebrated together, I would find a smile turning up the ends of my mouth, too.

When evening came and Wolf returned, and we all sat together to eat dinner and talk about the day, I went to bed tired and slept well. It was a daily rhythm that I found quite satisfying and fulfilling. But our life of leisure was about to end.

“We’re all going into Pleasure Town tomorrow,” the Junker announced solemnly one night after dinner. “You remember the deal we made—I don’t just need you helping out around the house, you also have to work for me in town. Over two months have passed since you showed up, and it’s time to keep up your end of the deal. This is a give-and-take relationship, and if you’re going to stay here you’ll need to account for your rent and meals.” Then he fixed us with a meaningful look.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t agree right off the bat. Going into town… Just the idea of it made me shiver with fright. Yes, my white lead disease was cured now; the white patches on my face were gone, and nobody would freak out like the last time I was there. But still, the memories of my past hadn’t just vanished. Their sediment remained, clogging up my system. I thought back on the times I spent walking through the snow with Cora, and of doctors who were all smiles until they heard the words “white lead disease,” and then suddenly acted as though they were in the presence of something disgusting and unspeakable. I was scared.

“I’m going to hit the sack now. We’ll leave in the morning, right after breakfast,” Wolf said, and retreated to his bedroom. He wasn’t goofing around this time; I even thought I detected a cold tone in his voice.

The rest of the meal felt strange and anxious after he left. I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t excited about the old man’s request.

“Hey, Law,” Bepo said weakly. “Do we really have to go to town?”

“The old man’s got a point. We promised him we’d help with his job in town at the start of all of this. So we can’t just go back on our word.”

“But I’m scared. It frightens me to think of what people will do when they see a talking bear.”

“What are you gonna do, then? Just stay here in comfort and be the man’s house servant for the rest of your life?” I asked Bepo. “That’s not what you came here to do. You gotta go outside if you want your life to move forward.”

Dammit. It’s like I’m talking to myself. I bet Shachi and Penguin feel the same way Bepo does. But they actually came here to escape their previous home, so they might be even more worried about it than we are.

“Shachi, Penguin. Is Pleasure Town a dangerous place?” I asked.

“I dunno. We lived at Shachi’s uncle’s home, and we weren’t allowed to associate with anyone in town at all,” Penguin said lifelessly.

“The only times they let us leave were when we were smuggling weapons or breaking into stores for them, so we never really talked to anyone in town. Law, I don’t want to go either,” Shachi admitted. “Me and Penguin have done a lot of bad stuff in our time. Someone might remember our faces. Not to mention that I have a panic attack at just the thought of my aunt or uncle catching sight of us there.” He hung his head miserably.

Oh, I see. They’re afraid of adults, just like me. They understand very well that not all grown-ups are as kind and considerate as Wolf. As young children we were supported and pampered, but now we’re terrified of being despised, humiliated, threatened, and picked on by the adults of society. And yet, I have a feeling…

“It’ll be fine,” I said. They all stared at me. After hesitating for a moment, I went ahead and told them the story of my white lead disease. I told them how I’d been persecuted because of the disease and shunned by adults over and over again. I also spoke about the pain I’d felt when I lost someone important to me. They listened to the tale of my life in silence.

“You went through all of that, Law? I had no idea…” Penguin whispered.

“It’s not the kind of thing you go around telling people about. My disease is totally cured now. The point of this story is that you just have to learn to be strong. Yes, I was persecuted, and I went through hell, but I’m still alive. Maybe we’ll have a bad experience when we go into town tomorrow. But if you sit around terrified of what could happen next, you’ll never move forward in your lives! You’ll just spend the rest of your years trembling in fear of having contact with anyone in the world. That’s no way to live.” I said all of this calmly, making a real effort to impress my point upon them.

Their gloomy expressions turned a little bit brighter.

“Yeah… Yeah, you’re right! I can do this! I’ll talk to some people and find myself a proper job!” Bepo said, pumping his fists.

“There you go, that’s the spirit,” I told him.

“Heh heh. You know, I think I feel better now. Thanks, Law. You’re really something, you know? If I were you, I’d be too scared to go into town,” said Shachi.

“Is that so?” I replied. I’m no different from you guys, Shachi.

The truth was, my hands and feet were starting to get cold with anxiety, and a drop of nervous sweat trickled down my spine. Thinking about what might happen tomorrow made my stomach hurt, but I had to put on a tough front.

Bepo, Penguin, and Shachi… I had asked them to follow me. That meant I was responsible for them; it was like I was their boss. I had to be strong and put up a brave front. If I started moping too, they would never learn from me to be strong and live a life without fear. They’d always be looking over their shoulders. I didn’t want that. I had my own pride to uphold. And if I had to act a little braver than I really felt, that was a small price to pay.

“All right, let’s get to bed. If we sleep in, the old man’s gonna chew our ears off again.”

“Aye aye, sir!” the three said loudly, seeming a little happier now. We returned to the bedroom and laid down to sleep. Whatever happened, it would all become clear tomorrow. It’ll be fine, I repeated silently to myself, as I pulled the blanket over my head and closed my eyes.

In the morning we ate eggs sunny-side up with rice, courtesy of Penguin. The old man hardly said a word.

C’mon, man, you could at least reassure us a little. He should have known that we were all feeling nervous about this. But then suspicion started gathering in my mind. What if it turned out that Wolf was just like all those other adults and was planning on turning us into money-making tools? Yet I didn’t think he’d been faking it when he showed us all such kindness over the last few months. I just didn’t get it, and not knowing what Wolf was thinking made me more nervous than ever.

“It’s time. Let’s get going,” Wolf said.

We filed into his giant buggy. It was an invention of his, an eight-seater. I sat in the front passenger seat, while the other three sat in the back. The buggy raced down the road to town with alarming speed. I could hear the other guys talking in the back, and they didn’t sound very happy. I glanced over at Wolf as he drove but couldn’t learn anything from the look on his face.

After ten minutes, we were at the town’s entrance. Like before, the first thing I noticed was the big sign saying “Pleasure Town.” In moments, we would be passing into the town, talking to the people, and getting jobs. I took a deep breath.

I have to be strong. I have to stick up for my followers—for my friends.

“All right, let’s go,” Wolf said, parking the buggy and marching off. We stumbled after him uncertainly.

The town was lively, the streets bustling with people selling food and equipment of all kinds.

“We’ve got fresh fish here! Step right up and catch yourself some!”

“My meat’s the finest around! We’ve got a special 30 percent–off sale going right now!”

There was dancing and singing in the large town square, even first thing in the morning. The atmosphere felt festive, and I noticed that in addition to merchants, there were tattoo artists, fortune tellers, and even shops that sold musical instruments and picture books. The hustle and bustle was almost overwhelming. But the biggest surprise was the way everyone reacted to Wolf.

“Hey, Wolf! Good to see you again!” a man selling his wares on the street called out. “I’ve got something you’ll really want to use in your inventions. Come on over and get one!”

“Thanks, I’ll take a look later,” Wolf responded.

“Hey, Wolf! Who are all those kids with you?” someone else inquired. “Are they grandchildren, perhaps?”

“No, fool!” he retorted. “They’re freeloaders!”

“Oh, really? Well, they look like such sweet children. Why don’t you take a few apples? They’ll be free for the boys.”

“If you’re offering, we’d be happy to take some,” Wolf said.

Wherever we went, people knew Wolf and called him by name. Apparently he was a bit of a local celebrity, and because we were with him, people were interested in us as well. No one regarded us with disgust or derision.

“Feeling better now?” asked Wolf, who was smiling kindly at us as he always did. His cold expression from that morning had dissipated. “This town nearly burned to the ground seventeen years ago, thanks to some no-good pirates. After that happened, we developed a slogan—‘A town where everyone can rejoice. A town where everyone can be kind.’ So the people here aren’t going to be smug about a talking polar bear. They do their best to offer a warm welcome to everyone who passes through. That’s how the folks in this town are.”

“Old man, did you know this would happen?” I asked.

“Of course. A genius inventor like me can predict certain things.”

“Then couldn’t you have given us a heads-up?”

“Hmph. You wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told you. You’d still have been up all night fretting. See, you can’t really conceive of the kindness of strangers until you’ve experienced it for yourself.”

Wolf was right. We wouldn’t have believed that this place was safe just because he told us. But walking around the lively town with him and witnessing each casual and friendly interaction had completely eradicated our fear and anxiety.

“Now let’s head to the police station,” Wolf went on. “If you’re going to get jobs here, you’ll need to get work permits.”

We crossed the square to a small brick building, which I assumed was the station.

“Rudd! You here?” Wolf called out. A man wearing a red uniform and a sword at his side came out of the building. A police officer, I assumed.

“Why, if it isn’t Wolf! Whatever’s going on, it must be something out of the ordinary if you’re seeking me out.”

“I’ve got a request for you. Would you put these boys to work in town? I’ve been taking care of them over at my place for a little while now.”

“Taking care of them? You?” the officer seemed confused. “What brought this change about?”

“Hmph. It’s not a big deal. I’m letting them live with me in exchange for their labor. It’s a simple give-and-take relationship.”

“Well, if you say so… Here, sign this form as their guardian. Then you can go ahead and walk around town to see who might be interested in hiring them.”

Wolf signed the form, and we wrote our names on it too. All of our names on the same sheet of paper. It’s just like…we’re a family.

“Say, Wolf?” said Rudd, his voice a bit subdued.

“Hmm? What is it?”

“Do you think you’ll ever feel like coming back to town? We’d all be happy to have you. Folks would look kindly on you and those kids you’ve got with you.”

“Ha ha. I’ll have to pass on that offer. I like the life I’ve got now. And you know I couldn’t experiment and invent to my heart’s content here in town. The outskirts of the island is the best place for an old crank like me.”

“Well, all right. I’m not going to twist your arm over it. But if you ever change your mind, don’t hesitate to come to me.”

“Hmph. Well, I do appreciate the sentiment,” Wolf said. There was a note of something that sounded like loneliness in his voice, but I wasn’t really able to describe what I heard.

We all told Wolf what kind of jobs we thought we’d be good at, and he took us around to the places that seemed like a good match. I went to the town’s medical clinic. Bepo went to a factory where his strength would be useful. Penguin became a waiter at a restaurant. Sachi became an assistant at a beauty salon.

Wolf accompanied us to each destination and explained that we had good intentions, would work hard at our jobs, and could be trusted. Thanks to his endorsement, each one of us was hired on the spot. It was so easy, I almost started to get suspicious again.

“I’ve always wanted to work at a salon! Once I’ve learned all their tricks and tips, I’ll give you guys haircuts!” raved Shachi.

“You’ve always been good with your hands, Shachi. I bet you’ll be a great stylist. As for me, I’ve always wanted to try serving food, but I am nervous about dealing with customers. I hope the cooks aren’t mean,” worried Penguin.

“So I’ll be working at a factory… Do you think they’ll let me operate drills and diggers and stuff? I always thought those machines were really cool,” Bepo mused.

The three of them were so excited that it seemed their fear from that morning had entirely evaporated. Funny how that works. Then again, the truth was, I was really excited too. Of course, the clinic would start me off doing basic tasks, but I was just happy to be working for a place that practiced medicine.

I could still remember the satisfied looks on my parents’ faces when they cured a patient of what ailed them. A lot of time had passed since I’d seen that, but the thought of working as a doctor, just as they did, filled me with an intense warmth at the center of my being.

“Still, I’m scared I might screw up and get in trouble,” Bepo murmured.

“Don’t worry, Bepo. If you come to the clinic all beaten-up and bloodied, I’ll fix you up,” I reassured him.

“So you’re expecting I am going to get maimed and mauled at my new job?! Aye aye!”

Ha ha…this is fun.

It had never even occurred to me that I’d be laughing and having fun about the idea of getting a job with other adults. Though I hated to admit it, it was probably Wolf’s good deed that had changed my assumptions. Just then, I realized that Wolf, who had been so friendly and happy in front of us moments ago, now had a bitter scowl on his face.

“We’ve got one last stop. C’mon, brats,” he grunted and marched in the opposite direction of home.

“What do you mean, Wolf? You bought your springs and coils and stuff for your inventions. Shouldn’t we be going home now?” asked Penguin.

“And we already got our household supplies and foodstuffs, too,” added Shachi.

But Wolf didn’t respond; he walked on with great purpose. All we could do was trust in him and follow along.

“Hey, aren’t we heading toward…?” I thought out loud.

“Yeah!” whispered Penguin and Shachi behind me. They were clearly uneasy about the situation.

Eventually Wolf came to a stop in front of an extravagant mansion.

Does he have friends in there?

“Why are we here?” the boys said with alarm. I turned toward them and realized that Penguin was absolutely ashen.

“What? I hoped I’d never see this place again…” said Shachi, his voice trembling.

Oh, I get it now. It all made sense; this was the house where Shachi and Penguin had lived with Shachi’s uncle and aunt.

“What are you up to, Wolf? Why did you bring us here?!” Shachi yelled, on the verge of tears.

“Shachi, Penguin, I know you didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, but it’s still a fact that you were a party to wicked deeds. If nothing is done about this, the townsfolk are going to figure it out sooner or later, and they could lose their trust in you. That means it’s time to atone for your past.”

“B-but! I don’t think I can face my aunt and uncle… My legs keep trembling!” Shachi clenched his jaw to hold the tears back.

But Wolf put a protective arm around Penguin’s and Shachi’s shoulders and said, “It’ll be fine. Just stand back and watch—this part is my job. It’s a grown-up’s responsibility. Trust me.”

He opened the mansion’s front gate and walked toward the front door. Before he could get there, a maid opened it.

“Y-yes? Who are you?”

“My name is Wolf, the genius inventor,” the old man said. “I’m sorry to drop by unannounced, but I’d like to talk to the owners of this house.”

“I see,” she responded nervously. “But if you don’t have an appointment, I’m afraid I can’t—”

“Then tell them I’ve brought Shachi and Penguin!” Wolf exclaimed.

“V-very well, sir.” The maid retreated into the house. A few minutes later, a man wearing a gold lamé suit and an abundance of glittering jewelry appeared.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Penguin and Shachi!” the man said. “Did you really bring them back for us, old man?”

I’d never heard this man speak before, but it was a voice I knew very well—the voice that grown-ups use when they want to mock and belittle someone. I instantly knew that this was the guy who’d treated Penguin and Shachi like his own personal servants.

“Just to confirm, am I correct in assuming that you are Shachi’s uncle?” Wolf asked.

“Yes, I am. I’m Shachi and Penguin’s guardian. The boys just ran off without a word, and it caused me a lot of trouble. Thanks for hauling them back here for me,” the man in the golden suit said, stepping toward the two boys.

But Wolf quickly sidestepped, standing in front of Shachi and Penguin.

“Hmm? What is the problem?” the man asked. “I haven’t seen my nephew in weeks. I’m sure they’ve been in a terrible condition since they ran away, so let me bring them inside where they can feel at ease.”

“I’m not letting you have these kids,” Wolf stated bluntly.

“What? Are you nuts, old man? Have you gone daft already? Oh…of course, now I see! You didn’t bring these kids back here for nothing. How much do you want for them—five hundred thousand berries? A million? They’re valuable tools for me—of course you deserve a reward!”

“Tools?” Wolf’s eyebrows rose dangerously. If looks could kill, this one would do it; I had never seen Wolf like this before. “Unfortunately for you, I did not come all this way to bring them back to you,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I hear that you made Penguin and Shachi help you commit various crimes. Smuggling weapons, breaking into jewelry stores, and the like. Is that true?” Wolf asked.

“You little brats! You told him about that?” the man started to rant. “I don’t believe this! Apparently I didn’t teach you your lesson the first time!” The man lifted his fist to swing at the boys, and they stood there stock-still, too traumatized to react.

But Wolf reached out and easily caught the man’s fist.

“Hey! Let go, old man! What the hell? You’re so strong… S-stop! You’re going to break my hand!”

“Is this the hand you used to beat these boys with?”

“Yeah, that’s right! You got a problem with that? I was the one giving these miserable orphans a place to stay! I’m the one who found a use for garbage like them! When they screw up, they get hit! That’s how you teach them to work better next time. From useless trash to useful tools! It’s a good thing!”

I can’t stop shivering. But this feeling wasn’t fear. A groundswell of rage surged through me when I heard the man talk about Shachi and Penguin that way.

“Screw you!” I shouted, before I could stop myself. I couldn’t control my emotions; frustration and sadness combined with my intense anger. “Those boys follow me and they’re important! You’re just a rotten scumbag! Don’t you ever refer to them as ‘tools’ again!”

“Law,” said Shachi to me tearfully, overcome with emotion.

“Don’t you understand how they feel?” I went on. “They lost their parents and they didn’t have any grown-ups to rely on. Then you forced them to do things they knew weren’t right. Don’t you realize how much pain you caused them?”

“Look at this little brat who thinks he knows something about the world! Listen up, you! I took them in. I gave them a home, a place to sleep, and food to eat! Well, rat food, more like, but garbage spawn like that doesn’t deserve anything better!”

“You…” I couldn’t take it anymore. I rushed at the man, ready to pummel him. But before I could get there I noticed something. Wolf’s fist was buried in the man’s gut.

“That’s enough from you,” Wolf said calmly.

“Urgh…guh…” the man gasped, then toppled forward and passed out.

“Shachi! Penguin!” Wolf shouted. “You boys aren’t anyone’s tools. You’re not garbage! You’re not unwanted! You’re both precious to me. There isn’t any reason why this rotten man’s words should hurt you!”

Bepo and I stood motionlessly, taking in the drama around us. Shachi and Penguin fell to their knees, crying. There were so many things I wanted to say, but Wolf had said them all.

“Wolf! What happened?” called Rudd, the policeman, who had heard the clamor and come running as fast as he could manage.

“Perfect timing, Rudd,” said Wolf. “This man and his wife, who I assume is somewhere in the house, were forcing these children to smuggle weapons and break into shops downtown. You ought to search their place immediately.”

“I’ve heard rumors about this place, but we can’t go and search a private residence without reasonable cause,” said Rudd.

“Hmph!” Wolf snorted. “I’ve got plenty of evidence. Here are some documents I got from the organized crime group that this man was selling weapons and drugs to. It’s got a list of the substances, amounts, and buyers, all right here.”

“But how did you get this?”

“I’ve spent the last month gathering information from the people in town. I was eventually able to track down the group’s hideout. When I went to retrieve this evidence yesterday, I even got involved in a little bit of a brawl.”

“Junker,” I said, “when you said you had business in town, is this what you were doing?”

“Hmph. I didn’t think it would take a whole month to find their place. And in the end I had to fend off five of them at one time. It was more trouble than it was worth.”

So he was running all over town for the last month trying to find evidence against a criminal gang? And he fought five men at once? Has he been this brave and strong all along, and I just didn’t know it?

“This should be plenty of evidence to perform a search,” Rudd responded, looking down at the paperwork. “Give me a minute to call for backup.”

Within moments several police officers showed up and marched into the house. As Wolf promised, they found plenty of evidence of Shachi’s uncle and aunt’s crimes. It wasn’t just the stuff Shachi and Penguin had told us about, either; they were also dealing drugs themselves, and even had plans to abduct children and sell them off the island. They were arrested on the spot and taken to the police station.

“You’ve done great work here, Wolf,” said Rudd, removing his hat.

“Hmph. I owed it to the kids for all the hard work they’ve been doing. Just a little perk of the job.”

“You never change, do you?” the officer responded. “You always make things harder for yourself.”

“Mind your own business, Rudd. I live the way I want to,” Wolf said gruffly.

Rudd laughed, and Wolf scowled, looking away to try to hide the blush on his face.

“Wolf!” shouted Penguin and Shachi, rushing toward him.

“Hey, kids. Sorry you had to witness such an ugly scene. But now that it’s public what they were getting up to, nobody’s going to blame you for it. Now you can go to your new jobs without that hanging over your heads,” he said.

Wolf crouched down and placed his right hand on Shachi’s head and his left hand on Penguin’s. Then he tousled their hair roughly.

“There’s no one out there who can scare you anymore,” he said, as Penguin and Shachi leapt to embrace him, burying their faces in his chest and wailing. Wolf just grinned and picked the boys up, one in each arm. Their faces were covered in snot and drool.

“Law, do you think Wolf was planning to do all that stuff for us from the start?” Bepo asked.

“I dunno,” I replied brusquely, but it was obvious to me what the answer was.

As we left town a crowd of onlookers came to see us off. Just as it had this morning, the buggy started up with a roar and rumbled down the road. For some reason, I found the sound to be relaxing on the return trip.

“Whew. It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it? That’s tough on my old bones. But get ready, brats! The real work starts tomorrow. It’s not easy to handle your chores at home and work an outside job. If you get lazy and start overlooking things, I’m gonna have something to say about it.”

We nodded at Wolf’s outburst, letting him know we understood. It really had been a tiring day. Personally, I felt more worn out mentally than physically. I’d met a bunch of different kinds of people, especially adults from the town, and made more small talk than I ever had before, so it was only natural that I’d be exhausted. And yet I didn’t feel bad, just tired.

“Hey, Wolf,” said Bepo, out of the blue.

“Hmm? What is it?”

“Is it really true that you don’t want to live in town, like you said to that officer?” Bepo inquired. “People there really seem to look up to you, and it would make shopping for supplies much easier. What’s the downside?”

“I already told you, I like the way I live now,” Wolf replied. “Besides, what would happen if I moved my workshop into town and one of my experiments exploded? There’s also the matter of… Well, never mind. My point is, it’s better off for everyone if I’m not in that town.”

Something about Wolf’s last muttered statement sounded sad and lonely, and none of us wanted to try to force him to talk about it, so we left the topic alone. I had my own dark past, and the other boys had theirs; surely Wolf had his own memories to wrestle with. It didn’t seem right for us to intrude, so we gave him his privacy.

“Oh!” Bepo shouted from the back seat. “I forgot to say thanks for helping us! I was afraid at first, but thanks to you, I’ve realized that there are people out there I can trust after all.”

“Me too,” said Shachi. “I tried not to think about it once we were all living together, but I never stopped worrying about my aunt and uncle coming to take me back. Now that you took care of the situation, I never have to worry about it again. Thank you!”

Wolf’s face went red, and he hemmed and hawed a bit before finally saying, “Hmph, it’s just the way life works, give-and-take.”

Our lives became much busier after that day. In the mornings, we’d ride Wolf’s electric bicycles into town. (Wolf wanted to call them ‘Super Comets,’ but we vetoed that name.) Then we did our jobs during the day and rode back home. At home we cooked, did laundry, and sometimes helped with the crops or with Wolf’s inventions, depending on what was needed. All of those things were hard enough to manage on their own, but Wolf also wanted to make sure that we set aside time for pursuing our own interests and studies.

Shachi and Penguin had become much better at using the sword and gun, and Bepo started learning to fight with his fists in addition to teaching himself about navigation. I didn’t know if it had something to do with his being a Mink, but Bepo picked up new things very quickly. I convinced him to try out a spinning roundhouse kick, and before I knew it, he was almost able to knock me off my feet with it.

Despite the constant activity, however, we made sure that all five of us were present for breakfast and dinner each day. Even when we were busy with our own activities, the fact that we could make time to eat together made us feel connected.

My job in town was a lot more fun than I had expected. The clinic was a small one, with just one doctor and one nurse, but there was plenty to learn, and the doctor was willing to teach me everything he knew. He told me about previous patients, diseases that were difficult to treat, the time he felt anemic and passed out in the middle of an operation, the state of medicine in other countries, and all manner of symptoms and techniques that I’d never heard about before. I was fascinated by everything he told me.

I wasn’t the best at dealing with patients, but the doctor valued my knowledge and skill, and before long he was letting me carry out some of the simpler operations. These procedures were fun for me, not because I got to cut people up, but because I had the opportunity to heal those who were in pain or in medical danger. Getting them on the road to recovery was very fulfilling.

“You’re going to make a good doctor, Law,” my employer said one day, beaming.

A good doctor… What does that mean? Good at surgery? Knowledgeable about medicine? Successful and wealthy?

It was probably some combination of those things, but I couldn’t narrow it down to one answer. I suspected I’d have to think for a long while to figure out exactly what I wanted.

One night we were joking and goofing around in our room when Penguin brought up a story he’d heard in town.

“I heard some of the customers talking about it—apparently there’s a legend of hidden treasure on Swallow Island.”

“Treasure? There’s treasure on this island?!” Bepo asked excitedly.

“Yep. Sixty years ago an infamous band of pirates came to this island, but they had been infected with a plague during their travels, and they all died when they got here. Before he died, the captain supposedly hid their treasure somewhere on the island.”

“Hmm. That’s interesting, if true. But if it hasn’t been found in sixty years, I don’t know how likely it is that the treasure even exists.”

“C’mon, Law, can’t you dream a little? It’s real… It has to be real! And after we find it, we’re gonna lead a life of decadence and luxury.”

“Calm down, Bepo,” I said. “Why are you so obsessed with this treasure? It’s just a story—you’re not supposed to take it seriously.”

“Speaking of stories, I heard a good one, too,” Shachi interrupted. “Apparently, there’s a swallow on this island that can fly through the sea.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? If it’s in the sea, wouldn’t it be swimming, not flying?” I pointed out.

“This story’s not as old as the other one. On a number of occasions in the last few years, fishermen here have seen an enormous swallow under the waves. And whenever the swallow shows itself, you can hear a loud cry echoing across the island.”

A swallow under the waves with a very loud cry. Interesting…

“What is it, Law? You look really intense,” said Bepo, who was watching me closely.

“I was just thinking…” I said, “I might have heard that cry before.”

“What? Really?!”

“Yeah,” I explained. “It was a day when I didn’t have to go to work, and I was alone in the house. It was just after lunch…and I was swinging my sword in the back when I heard this loud, high-pitched noise. It went away after thirty seconds or a minute or so, but it was totally freaky.”

“Wow! So the swallow that flies through the sea is real!” Penguin marveled.

“I didn’t say that. It sure didn’t sound like a bird to me,” I responded.

“Well, if it’s a really rare and special swallow, then it probably doesn’t sound like a normal bird!” Penguin reasoned.

“Yeah, that must be it! And if the story about the swallow that flies through the sea is real, then maybe the story of Swallow Island’s hidden treasure is real too!” exclaimed Shachi.

We continued to chat sleepily about how we might catch that swallow, and where the treasure could be hidden, until we finally fell asleep. Something about these stories aroused my sense of adventure, and I became more excited than usual. Of course, I didn’t know if the stories were true, but they seemed worth considering if only because of the thrilling feeling they gave me.

Hold up—is that Bepo and the others? My shift at the clinic had just ended and I was riding my bike home when I spotted the other three at the town gate.

“Hey, Law!” said Shachi, waving at me.

“What are you guys doing?” I asked them.

“Oh, we all happened to finish work at the same time, so we were waiting for you to get out.”

“I get it. Since we’re all together, let’s race each other home. The rotten egg has to clean the bathroom and make breakfast for a whole week,” I suggested.

“You’re on!”

I pedaled as hard as I could, and the wind gusted against my body; the day was becoming quite chilly. But I was focused on winning the race, and pedaling warmed me up. Soon I didn’t even notice the temperature. We finished a ride that usually took an hour in half that time.

“Yesss! I’m first!” I was having so much fun that I even pumped my fist and struck a pose. Behind me were Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo, in that order; Bepo was in last place.

“Ha ha ha. See? Leg strength isn’t everything when it comes to a bicycle race, Bepo,” I said. “You never seem to get any better at the balance part. When you ride a bike, you’re always wobbling back and forth. I’m always afraid you’re going to fall over.”

“I know. Sometimes I wonder why I can’t ride a bike the way you guys can. I think I need to go on a journey of self-discovery to figure out what’s wrong with me,” he responded glumly.

“Hey, stop being so gloomy! You still get depressed too easily, too!”

We got off our bikes and went into the house, trying our best to bolster Bepo’s spirits. By this time, Wolf was usually home. We were hungry and ready to eat.

“Hey, Junker! We’re back!” I called out but got no response.

Is he still out? I wondered. It seemed strange. The old man might seem to be a lackadaisical sort, but when he was on a set schedule, he almost never deviated from it. Was it possible he just got really absorbed in one of his inventions?

“What should we do?” Bepo asked. “Get started on dinner, maybe?”

“Let’s do that. We got some good fish today… Hey, Law, what’s that?” Penguin said, pointing.

“Huh?” When I looked out the window in that direction, I saw black smoke billowing up over the field. It seemed ominous.

“Let’s go check it out, guys!”

We rushed out the back door and sprinted for the field. We found what looked like an airplane crashed into the ground, belching smoke and flames—and lying next to it, covered in blood, Wolf’s body.

“Old man!” I shouted, rushing to Wolf’s side and doing a quick examination. He was unconscious and had lost a lot of blood; his breathing was shallow and his pulse was weak. He was in a very bad state.

Once a human has lost around 30 percent of their blood, their life is in imminent danger. And from what I could tell, Wolf had already lost nearly that much. Time was of the essence.

“I’ll carry the old man!” I shouted to the others. “Bepo, go and boil some water! Penguin, prep the operating table! Shachi, get out my surgical tools!”

“G-got it!” they called back.

“The tools are ready, Law!” Shachi shouted to me. “They’re all sterilized!”

By the time I got Wolf into the house, the table was prepped in the middle of the living room. I managed to set the old man onto it and took my tools from Shachi.

“How bad is he?” asked Bepo with obvious concern.

I wished I could tell him it wasn’t as bad as we all thought, but that would have been a lie. The situation was very bad.

My guess was that he was flying the aircraft that had crashed in the field. The wound on his head wasn’t too bad, but his blood loss was severe, and worse than that, his internal organs were all messed up. A few organs had ruptured with the shock of the fall, and there were lacerations where shrapnel from the airplane had struck him all over. If I was honest with myself, they didn’t look like survivable wounds.

“Hng…” the old man grunted softly. “Is that you, Law?”

“Don’t talk right now,” I told him. “Just lie back and stay still.”

“Am I hurt bad? Damn. I was testing that electric airplane, thinking it could be fun for you boys to mess around with, but I got hit by a gust of wind and lost control. This’ll damage my reputation as a genius,” he mused haltingly.

“Stay quiet!” I ordered him again. “We’ll have plenty of time to listen to you natter on after we get this taken care of!”

“What should we do, Law?” Penguin asked. “Hurry back to town and call for the doctor?”

“Don’t bother, Penguin. It’ll take close to an hour just to get there. We don’t have that kind of time,” I told him.

“Then what can we…” he trailed off.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

“Law…” Bepo said, with concern in his voice.

“I’ll perform the operation,” I announced again, as firmly as I could manage. First I had to confirm what injuries he had sustained, and where.

Damn, I can’t even see which of his internal organs are ruptured because there’s so much blood coming out!

“Shachi! Penguin! We need a blood transfusion! I need to take some blood from you,” I told them.

“Sure thing!” said Shachi.

“You got it!” said Penguin.

As quickly as I could, I prepped Wolf for the transfusion and got Shachi’s and Penguin’s blood flowing. But this was just triage; close and sew up his wounds, and he’d kick the bucket within minutes from hemorrhagic shock. The problem was, I wasn’t experienced enough to know how and where he was injured. Even if I could figure that out, I probably couldn’t perform the necessary surgeries fast enough.

Thump. My heart thudded. It felt like it was being constricted. I was terrified. My hands were trembling. When I worked on Penguin and Shachi, the actual procedures I had to do to save their lives were simple. But this was different. It was going to require extremely advanced analytical and technical skills.

Do I really have the skills to do this? I’m scared—I’ve never done this before. My actions now will result in the life or death of another person.

Just thinking about it made me dizzy, and I nearly toppled over on the spot.

What do I do? Think, think.

My breathing grew ragged and perspiration poured from my skin. My thoughts were confused and jumbled.

I can’t— What if I— Gotta move quick— He’ll die— Wolf won’t make it— What do I…

Something clenched my left hand. I turned to see Penguin, Shachi, and Bepo, enveloping my hand in theirs, fighting back tears.

“We’re sorry, Law. We can’t help you with anything. All we can do is stand back and put the burden on your shoulders. But we know you can do it! You saved me and Penguin—you can do it again! I’m sorry we can’t help more…but you gotta do it, Law! Save the old man, please!” Shachi begged.

Suddenly all of my panic evaporated. My friends’ warmth flooded through my hand—and the warmth of their desire to save Wolf.

That’s right, there was no reason to hesitate in the first place. There’s no other option, so it’s pointless to wonder about what would happen if I failed. Right now I just have to put everything I have into performing the operation. My hands were no longer trembling.

“I’m all right,” I said. “Stand back. Trust me, and watch what happens.”

I felt the weight of their hands lifting from mine. Then I took a deep breath.

“Room.”

My powers were deployed: The domed film expanded to encompass the whole living room.

“Huh? W-what’s that?” asked Penguin.

“This happened the first time we met Law,” Shachi noted.

“That’s right! When he rescued me!” Bepo cried.

The three of them were alarmed by what they saw, but explanations would have to wait until later.

“Law, is this…?” the old man said weakly.

“Shut it, Junker! I’m doing what it takes to save your life!” I responded.

I knocked the old man out with a strong anesthetic, then focused my thoughts within the Room.

“Scan!”

I could see it now. The damaged parts of his internal organs were as familiar to me as the palm of my hand. His intestines were torn. His stomach was ruptured. There was a piece of metal jammed into his liver. I could see it all!

“Takt!” I cried, causing five scalpels resting beside the operating table to float into the air. Another one was clutched in my right hand.

“Here goes…” I murmured.

With a total of six scalpels at my command, I proceeded with Wolf’s operation. The tools moved exactly as I envisioned they would, including the needle and thread for sutures, the forceps, and the retractor. Inside the Room I could use them all as I pleased.

Maybe I can do this!

I cut into the liver with the scalpels while sewing up a wound on the stomach, stanching blood loss in the femoral artery, extracting a rib that had punctured Wolf’s lung, cleaning the blood that spurted all over everything, checking on the state of the blood transfusion, and restoring his tattered kidneys to their normal position.

There we go… It’s looking better. I’ve stopped the blood loss, and his breathing is steady. I can do this… I can do this! Just as I thought it was all going to work out, a splitting pain pierced my skull and I screamed.

It felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer to the inside of my skull. Despite all of my practice, it seemed that this pain was the inevitable cost of using my power at its maximum extent for so long.

Crap, I’m going to lose consciousness. My legs won’t hold me up any longer! I slumped to my knees on the floor, scalpel still in hand.

“Law!” the others yelled.

“It’s…fine. Don’t…worry.”

They had nothing to be concerned about. I would clear away every possible concern that was making them look at me that way. I didn’t remove my Room. I didn’t undo the Takt.

Wolf called it give-and-take. His motto in life was that he did nothing unless there was something in it for him. But none of that mattered to me; I was simply being driven by the power of my own impulse. A dying patient, the old man who’d taken such good care of me for so long, was right in front of me, in dire need of help. So I would do everything I could to save him.

All I had to do was keep standing there, keep being a doctor. I didn’t want any return or reward. The desire to keep Wolf from dying was enough to keep me moving.

Hang in there, I thought, praying as hard as my weary mind could manage.

I don’t know if there’s a God or not, but in that moment I prayed that God would be on my side.

I don’t want to see anyone else I care about die before my eyes! Don’t collapse, don’t stumble. You’re almost there.

“Don’t you die on me, Junker!” I shouted. By then I had treated nearly all the wounds. The last thing I needed to do was stitch him up. My hands were almost numb, and I had to focus hard to keep them moving, to run the thread through the needle and stitch closed his open torso.

Finally, his limbs and chest were no longer bleeding. The stitches were holding. Surgery complete.

“Whoaa…” I gasped, as my right knee suddenly gave way, and I nearly toppled backward. But my friends were there to hold me up.

“Law!” they called out to me.

“I’m all right. Just feeling a little woozy now that the operation is over.”

“The old man’s gonna make it, right?” Shachi asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The surgery went pretty much perfectly. But he had already lost too much blood when I started. We’ll just have to pray that his will to live is strong.”

We set up four chairs around the old man and sat by his side. It wasn’t time to sleep yet—you never know when a patient’s condition might turn.

I glanced at those who were seated around me. Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin were probably all totally exhausted, but they weren’t showing it a bit. They just stared intently at Wolf’s sleeping face. No one complained about the situation.

These followers of mine aren’t half bad. Three hours passed. Four hours. Five… By this time of night we’d all usually be asleep, but no one seemed like they wanted to go to bed.

“Shouldn’t you get some rest now, Law? We’ll stay here and watch him, and if anything happens we’ll wake you up,” Bepo insisted.

“Don’t be stupid. The boss can’t go for a snooze and make his underlings keep working. That’d be dishonorable,” I said.

After that, no one said another word. But strangely, I felt certain that we were all thinking the same thing: Stay with us, stay with us, stay with us.

When twelve hours had passed since the operation began, light started coming through the windows, and birds sang in the field. Morning had arrived. The sunlight streaming through the curtains hit Wolf’s face.

Then, right on cue, he said, “Hmmph… Morning already?”

The old man was awake. We all looked at one another.

“He’s alive?” “He’s talking?” “He made it?”

“Yeaaaaaaaaaah!” Our quartet of roars joined as one. Even I was bellowing at the top of my lungs.

“You did it, Law! You’re amazing! The old man’s back to life!” Penguin cheered. (Not that he was actually dead at any point.)

“Oh…I thought I might be in heaven by now. Instead, I’m surrounded by the same brats, screaming and carrying on. So I take it I’m alive?”

“Hmph,” I said. “You’re not going to die easy. I thought I was going to be prepping for your funeral.”

“So, Law,” Wolf said to me. “You saved me, I’m guessing.”

“It wasn’t just me. Bepo and Shachi and Penguin helped. We all worked together. If any of them hadn’t been here the operation wouldn’t have been a success.”

“I see,” Wolf said, before drifting back to sleep. That was no surprise; he was greatly weakened by his ordeal. I checked his pulse and his stitches, just to be sure, but didn’t see any problems.

I just saved a human life. A feeling of satisfaction like nothing I’d ever felt before surged through me.

After Wolf woke up, Penguin headed into the village to get the doctor. When they returned, the doctor brought a machine to help get a clear picture of Wolf’s condition.

“There’s no internal bleeding, and his pulse is fine,” the doctor announced, “We just have to be careful of complications. Are you the one who treated him, Law?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s perfect work. Perfect. I always knew you had prodigious talent, but this confirms it.”

“Well, thanks,” I said, feeling self-conscious about it. I still wasn’t accustomed to being praised by others.

The doctor estimated that Wolf would need two months for a full recovery. I would have liked to stay and keep an eye on him the whole time, but that wasn’t an option, as I felt that I was needed at my job. The doctor said I could have the time off work, but I chose to monitor Wolf’s condition for just a week before resuming my work at the clinic.

However, we didn’t want to leave him alone, so we all adjusted our work schedules to make sure at least one person was home to watch over Wolf every day.

“I’m all better now! Stop worrying about me and go do your jobs!” he raged, as I expected he would, but we ignored him. If a complication suddenly arose and no one was around to help, the results could be disastrous. So we kept watch over the old man and maintained our daily schedules.

“Hey, you’re that kid at Wolf’s place,” someone called out to me one day in town.

“And you’re the tattoo artist, aren’t you?” I asked, recognizing the man’s face.

“I heard he got hurt real bad. How’s he doing?” the tattoo artist asked.

“His wounds are almost totally healed, but he’s not quite up on his feet yet,” I explained. “He sure does have a healthy appetite, though.”

“Ah, I see. Well, that’s good. The doctor at the clinic said you’re the one who operated on him. That’s impressive.”

“It’s not that special. I had no choice but to do it. We didn’t have time to carry him into town.”

“Ha! Hey, don’t be so modest!” he laughed.

Just then a thought popped into my head. “Hey, tattoo artist.”

“Hmm? What’s up?”

“Would you be available to give me a tattoo right now?”

“Yeah, I could do that. But are you sure you don’t need Wolf’s permission?”

“Mmm…nah,” I reassured him. “It’ll be fine.”

The truth was, I’d always had a fascination with tattoos. The idea of engraving something on your body just seemed cool to me.

“Okay then! I’m gonna give you a sick tattoo. You’re going to love it,” the man said with pride. He showed me to his parlor—the interior of which was decorated completely in black and white—and sat me down on a plush chair.

“What do you want? You gotta decide what kind of tattoo and where it goes,” he instructed.

I could think of plenty of designs, like brilliantly colored flowers, or cool swords and guns. But I didn’t choose any of those. I had something else in mind.

“I want you to spell out DEATH on my fingers. One letter for each finger, on both hands,” I said, without hesitation.

“Death?! You really want that?” The man was incredulous. “Why would a doctor want that tattooed on their fingers?”

“Actually, I want that tattoo because I’m a doctor.”

“Huh? I don’t get it. But if that’s what you want, sure thing.” The tattoo artist happily put his needle to my hands and got to work on my request. The needle pricking my skin did hurt a bit, but it was nothing I couldn’t deal with.

D-E-A-T-H. He put the letters on both hands, one per finger.

“There we go, all done! What do you think?”

“I like it. Thanks,” I said.

“No problem, man. Send my best wishes to old Wolf!” he said.

I left the shop, staring at the lettering on my hands. The reason for my choice wasn’t that profound. I wanted it because as a doctor, I always wanted to remind myself that death was close at hand. I wanted to know at all times that I had the power to keep people alive, to keep those I cared about from dying. It was important to me to remember that the lives and deaths of those I was working with were in my hands.

Doesn’t look too bad, if I do say so myself.

When I got back home, the first thing I did was show off my tattoos.

“Those are awesome!” said Shachi.

“Holy crap!” Penguin exclaimed.

“Really nice!” Bepo agreed.

They all loved my tattoos.

“Did it hurt when you got them?” Shachi asked.

“Yeah, it hurt like hell. I don’t think you guys could handle the pain,” I teased them.

I considered showing off the tattoos to the old man when I brought him dinner later, but I figured he’d probably yell at me, so I chose not to. The last thing I needed when he was almost fully recovered was to have him get all worked up and yap my ear off.

Later that night I had some trouble sleeping, so I lay down on the living room sofa to read by myself. Soon Wolf showed up.

“You feel well enough to walk around, old man?” I asked him. “It’s only been a month.”

“Hmph. Don’t judge me by other people’s standards. At one time I was pretty much the fittest man in the world. A month is more than enough for me to recover.”

“Ah. Well, I’m glad to hear it,” I said, feeling an unexpected flood of emotions knowing that I’d well and truly saved his life.

“But I’ve got something to talk to you about, Law,” the man said in a serious tone.

“T-talk to me about?!” I yelped. This couldn’t be good. “What is it, Junker? Did you notice the ink?”

“Ink? Oh, is that slang for your tattoos? No, I don’t care about that. Getting tattooed is a personal choice. That’s not something I’m going to bother with.”

“Oh, okay…” I said expectantly.

“Come over and sit with me,” Wolf said with a serious expression as he pulled up a chair. I took it, and we sat face-to-face across the table.

“I’m going to be straight with you, Law. That power you used when you operated on me… That was the Op-Op Fruit, wasn’t it?”

“Huh? How…how did you know about that?” I had never once spoken to Wolf about the Op-Op Fruit. Whenever I practiced using my powers, I made sure that I was completely alone.

“Hmph. Being old doesn’t mean I’m ignorant. When I was a young man, I sailed all around the world. You hear all kinds of stories when traveling that way. There was a time when I was fascinated by Devil Fruits and read many books about them.”

“Really?” I was fascinated by his story. I always knew he wasn’t just an ordinary old man, but I hadn’t guessed that he’d traveled the whole world.

“Do you know about the true power of the Op-Op Fruit?” he asked.

“True power?” I asked. What did he mean? All I knew is that it gave me the ability to perform miraculous operations and cure even unfamiliar and difficult afflictions.

“I take it that you don’t, then,” the old man said.

“Well, tell me. What is it?” I asked.

“The Op-Op Fruit is sometimes called the Ultimate Devil Fruit. And that’s not because you can use it to perform surgeries and heal people. Those who master the powers of the Op-Op Fruit can perform something called the Immortality Operation. It’s a procedure that gives another person eternal life.”

“The Immortality Operation? I’ve never heard of that,” I murmured.

“It might sound like a wonderful power, but it comes with a terrible price. Performing the operation will cost the user his own life. It’s a miracle that can only be performed one time, because it will result in your death.”

“A surgery that costs your own life…” I wondered. The idea was incredible to me.

“Everyone in the world who knows about it wants to get ahold of that fruit, and there are even more who seek to use the one who possesses its powers for their own advantage. So you should never, ever tell anyone else that you’ve eaten this fruit, Law. People will flock to you with all sorts of devious plots to get you to perform the Immortality Operation. That’s how intensely powerful the fruit is, and the allure it holds for others,” Wolf explained.

Things were starting to add up now.

“If he’s already eaten the Op-Op Fruit, I’ll need to raise him so that he knows to die for my sake!”

Those were the words I had heard spoken by Doflamingo while I was under Cora’s protection. So, he had wanted to make me perform the Immortality Operation. He’d wanted eternal youth, at the cost of my death. Which explained some of the things that Cora had said to me.

“Someone who meant a great deal to me said something about that,” I told Wolf.

“What did they say?” he asked.

“That if I ate the Op-Op Fruit, everyone would be my enemy—the pirates, the Navy, the government. He said I’d have to be ready to fight to survive. This must’ve been what he was talking about.”

“Even if you just want to lead an ordinary life, you’ll have to be very careful,” Wolf explained. “That fruit’s power drives people mad. You’ll constantly be under threat from the greed of those who seek eternal life.”

“Ah…” I sighed with frustration. Now I knew why Doflamingo was so fixated on the Op-Op Fruit, but it was too late for me to do anything to help Cora.

Damn this stupid power!

“Hey, don’t look so gloomy,” Wolf said. He put his hand over mine where it rested on the table. “The Op-Op Fruit is certainly powerful and dangerous, but the books I read also talked about how many lives the people with Op-Op Fruit powers saved in their time. Diseases that we didn’t know how to cure in those days, lives that no one else knew how to save. The power you hold is a wonderful thing indeed.”

“Yeah, but it can also cause a lot of grief for a lot of people,” I retorted.

“Hmph! Have some perspective, kid!” Wolf insisted. “You have the power to save the lives of people who would otherwise die. I was on the brink of death, and now I’m perfectly fine. That can’t be such a bad thing. Listen, Law—if you’re going to continue being a doctor, you must make use of these wonderful abilities. The real issue is what’s in your heart. If someone who is consumed by greed gets their hands on this fruit, the consequences could be dire. But if someone who truly desires to help others obtains it, the fruit becomes something entirely different. That’s how all power works. It can be good or evil, depending on the person who wields it. And the Trafalgar Law I know would use his power to make people’s lives better.”

Wolf looked into my eyes again. It was a look of testing, of gauging.

I fought back tears and replied, “Of course I will work to make people’s lives better. I don’t care about the Immortality Operation. I’m going to be the best doctor around. That’s what I’ll use my powers for.”

Once I made that declaration, I couldn’t help but notice a satisfied look come over the Junker’s expression.

“Is that all you wanted to talk about?” I asked. “I want to go back to my room. I’m feeling tired.” It seemed like a good time to wrap it up and move on, but Wolf looked panicked for a moment.

“Uhh, wait! No, that wasn’t the main thing,” he said, holding me back.

“What? You mean there’s more?” I said.

Wolf wasn’t forthcoming. He scratched at his head and looked uncomfortable for a minute. Then he finally looked up, right into my eyes.

“Listen, is there anything you want?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“It doesn’t have to be an object. Anything you want to see, places you want to visit? Anything I can make happen for you.”

“What are you going on about, Junker? I don’t have an answer for you. I like the life we have here, and I don’t really want anything else. Oh, actually…the fishmonger said he’ll be getting a special kind of fish tomorrow. If you get some of that we can have it for dinner…”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!” Wolf shouted, slapping the table. He looked desperate. “You saved my life, Law! I have to give back something of equivalent value! It’s my policy of give-and-take. But I can’t think of what could be worth a human life. So if there’s anything you want, anything you desire, I’ll do it, whatever it is. If you asked me to be your servant for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t complain.”

“Shut up, old man!” I shouted. Now it was my turn to be angry. “I didn’t save you because I wanted something out of it! And the same goes for Bepo and Penguin and Shachi. Whatever values you live by, that’s your business. But those guys were crying tears of joy that you survived… That was all we wanted, and that was enough! I’m not going to listen to you insult their tears like they mean nothing!”

A wrinkle formed between Wolf’s brows. He clammed up. For a while, silence settled over the room.

“I…I suppose you’re right,” Wolf admitted eventually. “I take back what I said. It was insulting of me to suggest that. I’m sorry.”

“As long as you realize why it was insulting,” I told him.

“You boys really do have the hearts to do things for others without expecting anything in return.”

“Shachi and Penguin and Bepo aren’t keeping track of who owes what. They’re just grateful to you for taking them in and caring for them. Of course they’d be desperate to save your life.”

“And you?” Wolf asked.

“Me?” I said, surprised by the question. “I want to be a doctor, so I save people who are dying. It’s just what I do!”

“Heh heh heh. Fine, I won’t push you any further. At any rate, it’s a fact that you saved my life. And that means I have to do something for you in return.”

“I told you, I don’t want…”

“Shush! Let me finish! My point is, it would be rude to try to give you boys money or gifts, so I’m going to make it up to you in a different way.”

“What are you getting at? Just spit it out already!”

“I’m going to be your friend!”

“Huh?” My mind went blank. That wasn’t at all what I expected.

Wait a minute. Did he just say “friend”? No, I must’ve misheard that. I’m too tired for this.

“Sorry, Junker. I’m too tired. I don’t think I caught that. Say it again?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself!” he shouted. “I’m saying that Wolf, the genius inventor, wants to be friends with you boys! Y-you should be honored!”

What is he talking about? I burst out laughing.

“W-what’s so funny?!”

“Nothing. All right, Junker. I accept your thanks. From now on, we’re friends!”

“Hmph…”

Wolf crossed his arms. His face was as red as a boiled octopus.

What a joke. How funny is that… He wants to be friends.

Such a commonplace, unremarkable idea. It was strange that he had gotten so worked up about such a thing. But after the time I’d spent living with Wolf, I’d come to understand the kind of person he was. Friendship was something that existed outside of the bounds of his give-and-take policy. There was no gain and loss in friendship. You became a friend simply by caring for another person. I realized that for Wolf, who always put things in the context of a give-and-take relationship, to actually talk about true friendship took a lot of bravery and determination.

If I don’t meet him on the same level, I’m going to look like a weak, petty person.

“All right then, Junker. Go ahead and make me dinner.”

“Okay, now you’re trying to treat me like I’m your servant!” Wolf snapped.

We glared at one another, then burst out laughing. Maybe we laughed too loud, because Bepo and the others came down the stairs at that moment.

“Junker,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“They’re not strangers, are they?”

“Hmph. Of course not.”

“Then I guess I can tell them about the Op-Op Fruit…” I started.

Friendship: a hard-to-define relationship that’s much more than strangers, but not exactly family, either. Maybe it’s the kind of relationship that’s just right for someone like me. That evening I really hoped our time together of feasting and having fun would continue for a while.

And it did, for three whole years.

Chapter Three

The sound of crying children. Screams in the air. The town burning. My beloved parents and my sister Lammy, my family… I couldn’t protect any of them. I couldn’t save them. Everything vanished in a blaze. I raced through the town, looking for someone, anyone, to save. But there was no one. The world before me was only ash. Smoking, charred bodies lay at my feet.

I woke up and bolted upright. My pajamas were soaked with sweat. I was breathing heavily, and for a second, I didn’t know if I was back in reality or still in the nightmare.

“Law…?” said Bepo with concern. He’d been sleeping right next to me.

“Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“It’s fine. I’ll go get you a glass of water.”

“Thanks.”

I’d barely gotten any sleep over the last few days. It was hard for me to actually fall asleep, and when I did drift off, I was inevitably awakened by a nightmare. This had been going on for several days now, and I knew exactly why. It was an article I’d seen on the front page of the newspaper five days ago. It was an article about Dressrosa. The headline read: “New King Reigns in Dressrosa! His Name Is Doflamingo.”

Just seeing the headline made me dizzy. It felt like I could see all the points come together to form a line: this was what Doflamingo had been after, ever since back when I was in his crime family. The article continued:

Dressrosa has long been known as a kingdom of peace, until the shocking recent incident in which the king went mad and slaughtered his own citizens. The pirate Doflamingo put a stop to it and has now taken over as the new king, bringing the chaos under control.

I knew it was a setup. I didn’t have any evidence, but my instincts told me things hadn’t really happened that way. Likely the king’s “sudden madness” was some kind of machination Doflamingo had orchestrated.

I also understood the message Cora had given me was to prevent this exact situation from coming about. He believed that what was written in the message could save the kingdom of Dressrosa.

I felt sick to my stomach. If only the sailor I’d reached out to wasn’t one of Doflamingo’s men. If only I’d known what Cora was thinking sooner. For that matter, if only I hadn’t met Cora at all… So many ifs ran through my head, one after the other. I knew that Cora wouldn’t be happy to see me spiraling like this. And yet, I couldn’t help but lament my own helplessness.

Three years had passed since I left Cora behind and found my way to old man Wolf’s cabin. In that time, I’d grown to over six feet tall, and my body was tougher and stronger than it was before. I’d learned more about being a doctor, and I’d helped many patients at the clinic in town. I could use the Op-Op Fruit’s powers far more effectively than at the start. But I was still just a kid. An immature youth who didn’t know what to do next, even now that I understood what Cora was trying to do.

My life here had become precious to me over the last few years. Bepo and Penguin and Shachi and old man Wolf were cherished companions of mine. We could keep living together like this for as long as we wanted to. But somewhere in my heart, a voice screamed at me that this wouldn’t happen after all. I wouldn’t ever be truly happy if I ignored the unfinished business of Cora, the person who had first saved my life. I could still remember what he’d said to Doflamingo in his very last moments: “Just let him go! He is free!”

Cora had wished for me, a small and helpless child, to be free of all the ties that bound my life. But I couldn’t just follow his wishes and never look back. Simply living out a free and easy life with my friends wouldn’t be measuring up to his example.

Whether Cora wished for it or not, I bore a responsibility toward his memory. I owed a debt to the thing he was trying to protect. What should I do? How can I erase the hatred I feel for Doflamingo? How can I repay Cora’s love? How will I ever know true freedom?

Bepo interrupted my train of thought. “I brought you some nice warm tea, Law, brewed with herbs from the old man’s garden. It should help you relax a little.”

“That’s great. Thanks, Bepo,” I said.

“Don’t mention it. I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been tossing and turning a lot lately.”

“It’s true,” I agreed. “I’m sure Penguin and Shachi have been worried, too.”

“Is it something you don’t want to talk to us about?” Bepo asked gravely.

“Yeah. I’m still trying to process it. Sorry to be vague,” I replied.

“It’s okay. But if you ever do want to talk about it, I’m all ears.”

“Of course,” I said as we returned to our beds and tried to get back to sleep.

“Hey, Bepo?” I asked him in the darkness.

“What?”

“Is there anything you really, really want to do?”

“Hmm… Oh, I know! I want to go fishing with you guys the next time we all have a day off! And then we can cook it over the fire and eat it right where we caught it,” he said.

“Not like that,” I said. “I mean, grilled fish does sound good, but I mean more like something you’ve always wanted and dreamed and hoped for. Something big.”

“Hmmm…” Bepo put a paw to his chin to think. He knew it meant a lot to me and wanted to have a good answer.

“I’d still like to find my brother,” Bepo said eventually. “It’s really fun being with you guys, but I think about him often. I wonder if he’s all right, or if he’s going through hell. I’ve been studying navigation the whole time I’ve been here. I suck at it, but I am able to draw sea maps now. Someday I want to go out searching for my brother again.”

“I see,” I said. Someday.

“Sorry for being weird. Let’s go to bed,” I told him.

“Yeah. Good night.”

I lay back and thought to myself. Like Bepo, I wanted to go to Dressrosa someday. I didn’t know what I would do there, but I also knew I couldn’t just avoid the issue. However, as long as I qualified my desire with the word “someday,” I had a hunch that someday would never come.

There’s no use fretting over this. I need to actually get some sleep. Thinking about the future was all well and good, but I had a life here that I needed to protect. There was a world right in front of me that needed my help. And it was very important that I didn’t forget that.

I slept soundly for the rest of the night and woke up feeling great. Maybe it was thanks to Bepo’s herbal tea. I also felt like my thoughts were more organized and crisp. It seemed that I’d actually be able to get through my work that day.

“Hey. You’re looking better today,” the Junker said, laughing.

“What?” I asked. “Did I really look that bad?”

“Of course you did! You’ve looked miserable for days.”

“Oh… Sorry if I worried you,” I said.

“Now don’t get all weird on me! I guess you’re just not quite back to normal yet.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I just had some issues on my mind. I don’t want to make everyone else feel gloomy because of me.”

“Hmph… Well, that’s good to hear. When you’re off your game, the other kids get mopey along with you,” Wolf said. He patted me on the head and went over to the table.

At times like this, he never pried too deeply. I’d never heard him say, “You got something on your mind?” or “If you’ve got trouble, tell me about it.” But I understood that this was actually a sign of his kindness. We’d been living together for three years, so I knew him pretty well by now.

The old man treated me like an equal human being. That’s why he didn’t cross any boundaries or invade my privacy, the way parents might with their children. He treated me like a fully-fledged person with my own personal space.

That sense of privacy also felt perfectly comfortable to me. If I asked him for help, completely distraught, Wolf would listen to everything I had to say without hesitation and do what he could. He’d do the same for Shachi and Penguin and Bepo, too. That’s what he was like. And it was why we didn’t need to trade sappy lines. We respected one another and kept things comfortable, free, and easy.

Wolf and I were chatting at the table when the other three came down. It was time for breakfast, a daily ritual the five of us had shared almost every day of the last three years.

We dug into our meal of sautéed fish with rice. It was delicious. We took turns doing the cooking, but Penguin and Shachi in particular were getting very good at preparing meals. I wasn’t sure if they liked cooking or just had a natural talent for it. At the very least, I was thankful for it, because I never seemed to improve.

“How’s the fish today, Law?” Shachi asked me.

“It’s good! Great flavor,” I said.

“Yessss!” Shachi cheered. His happy mood was so infectious that we all broke out in smiles.

That’s right. This place is where I’ll always belong.

The snow from the day before had stopped hours ago, and now the sky was crystal clear. We got on our bikes and headed for town. The old man saw us off. I rode down the alley between the grocery and the bar, then passed the temple at the center of town to reach the clinic where I worked. This was how my days started.

I said good morning to the doctor, then changed into my white coat. Pleasure Town was a peaceful place, but because this was its only medical clinic, and three-quarters of the year the place was covered in snow, there was always a ton of sick people to deal with.

My expertise was in surgery, but thanks to the working experience the doctor had allowed me to have over the last three years, I could handle just about any kind of illness now. Colds were a no-brainer, and I could even attend to the needs of patients with serious, potentially fatal lung or heart issues with full confidence in my ability. And of course, it felt good to know that my skills as a doctor were increasing.

“Thanks again, Law!” said the fishmonger, waving. He’d asked me to treat the nerve pain in his left hand.

What if...what if there were no such thing as white lead disease? Would I be helping run the family hospital, along with my parents and Lammy right now? It was a dazzling thought to consider. That world was a vision of bliss.

But at the same time, it was a world that would never exist. I couldn’t return to the past; I had to face forward and keep moving. For now, I had the joy of close friends and a couple of nagging troubles to keep me company instead.

Once all the patients were seen to and the evening arrived, the doctor told me I was free to go. I removed my coat, said goodbye for the night, and walked out the door.

I exhaled heavily. My job was fulfilling and enjoyable, but it was also very tiring to spend the entire day dealing with peoples’ problems. I walked through the town, fantasizing about something bold and hearty to eat. I happened to notice a special on salted fish at the fishmonger’s, so I bought some to take home. A smile crossed my face as I imagined how surprised the old man and Bepo would be.

Then I noticed that something felt off…

In the distance, a group of people was running as though fleeing from something. I could also hear angry shouts and screams. This seemed like more than just a fight.

I hurried in the direction of the noise. “Pirates!” someone yelled. Making my way through the press of people, I noticed a group of about thirty unfamiliar men causing a scene in the square.

“Bring out all your food and drink, damn you!” one of them yelled. “Or, if you don’t want to do what we ask, just come out and tell us…if you think you can beat us!”

I noticed that one of them was holding a flag with an insignia of a skull biting on a gold coin. It was definitely a pirate’s Jolly Roger.

Every last one of the men looked extremely unpleasant. They swore and spat, kicking and punching and making demands of the townsfolk. I recognized some of those who were getting hurt, and I very nearly leapt into action. It made me sick to see folks who only ever had good intentions being subjected to violence, and it almost made me lose my cool.

“Law!” said a familiar voice, and Bepo’s tugging on my sleeve brought me back to my senses. Penguin, Bepo, and Shachi were standing behind me.

“Those are pirates,” Penguin confirmed. “You can tell by the way they’re showing off their flag.”

“What should we do? Can we put a stop to this before it gets any worse?” Shachi said, as though he were ready to pounce at any second.

“Wait, let’s see what happens. There are thirty of them, and most of them look like scrubs… But those two in the back are different. They’re the ones to watch out for,” I said.

The two I had identified as problems were obviously a different sort than the rest. One was dressed like a sumo wrestler and stood well over six feet tall, with a mawashi loincloth wrapped around his tanned skin and his hair in a topknot. A thick layer of muscle was visible through the fat that covered his body, and it was clear at a glance that he was quite powerful. The other one seemed like he might be even more dangerous. He was a skinny man who wore an elliptical pirate hat and had black hair down to his shoulders, but there was a certain madness in his eyes, and the way his crewmates were carrying on around him—while he sat on a wooden chest with a detached air—spoke to his command. I took him for their captain, and when it came to pirates, the captain was always the strongest one.

“There’s a transponder snail at the place where you work, right, Penguin?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Go and make a call to the Junker,” I told him.

“Sure thing!” Penguin sped off toward the restaurant where he worked.

What should we do? First things first: we needed to figure out what they were after. If they had just stumbled across this town and would be satisfied with some cash and plenty of food to eat, then it might be better to give them what they wanted.

Just then, Rudd the police officer came rushing into the scrum.

“You vermin!” he roared. “I won’t have you causing a scene in Pleasure Town on my watch!”

“Uh-oh, boys, looks like we got ourselves a hero,” taunted the man in charge. “Wait, is that Rudd? Ha ha! Fancy seeing you again!”

“Artur Bacca. What are you doing back in this town?”

“Hey, hey, don’t act so feisty, Rudd. I’m just coming back to indulge in the familiar sights and sounds of my hometown. It’s just a shame my cohorts here are acting in such an uncouth manner.”

“I don’t believe a word you say,” Rudd responded. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to trust the very man who burned this town to the ground twenty years ago?”

I didn’t know what had happened between Rudd and the pirate captain Artur Bacca in the past, but it was obvious this wasn’t the first time he’d attacked the town. The situation was devolving; Rudd was a very stubborn man, and at this rate, he really was going to try to take on all thirty of them by himself. Already the pirate crew was beginning to encircle him.

I owe him a debt. I can’t just abandon him to his fate, I thought, and took a step forward myself. But as I did, Bacca rose to his feet and spoke to his crew.

“Hold on, boys. If you kill him, we might lose a very valuable source of information. Let’s just calm down and talk things out, why don’t we? Ga ha ha!”

“Y-yes, sir, Captain!” said one of the men, cowering before the man who was clearly his leader. Standing up, Bacca seemed much more menacing than before.

“Law,” whispered Penguin, who’d come back from the restaurant, “I got in touch with Wolf. He said he’s on his way.”

“Looks like there’s a big fight brewing. It would definitely help us to have the Junker here,” I murmured.

Wolf was indeed an excellent fighter. Only in the last year had I managed to rise to his level, while Bepo and Penguin and Shachi were still no match for the old man. Having him there would be to our advantage. We watched and waited as the scene unfolded.

“I’ll ask you again, Bacca. What are you after?” Rudd said boldly, not budging an inch.

“Ga ha ha! What am I after? Yes, I suppose a man in your position would want to know, wouldn’t he?” Bacca leered, not intimidated in the slightest. “Two things brought us here. First, we were seeking some rest and relaxation. We just got back from challenging the Grand Line. We were extra prepared, but the place is even more dangerous than I thought. We battled another pirate crew at the entrance to the Grand Line and lost. Half the crew was lost, and those remaining were heavily injured. So we need a base of operations where we can heal our wounds and recover.”

“I see…” said Rudd thoughtfully. “Well, Bacca, if you really just want rest, and you make a solemn promise not to harm any of the townspeople, I can arrange some lodgings for you at an inn. It’s a small price to pay to make sure you don’t hurt anyone.”

“Hmmm. The problem is, it’s not that simple,” Bacca said with a nasty tone in his voice. “Our second goal is much, much more important. Tell me, Rudd, have you ever heard of the legendary treasure of Swallow Island?”

I gasped. It was the legend that Penguin had told us about years back.

“Never heard of such a thing,” Rudd said after a pause.

“Ga ha ha! Lying’s such an ugly thing to do, Rudd! I saw you glance away as you said that—you all but admitted to me that you’re hiding something!” No sooner were the words out of Bacca’s mouth than he walked up to Rudd, grabbed his collar, and lifted him off the ground.

“I used to think that it was just some fairy tale, like everyone else. Right? Who would believe that there’s some incredible treasure just hidden away on a pointless island like this? But then, on an island right near the Grand Line, we found it—Captain Ladoga’s letter!”

What?! Even I had heard that name before; it’d come up several times when I was with the Doflamingo Family. He was a legendary pirate who had reached deep into the latter half of the Grand Line, the “New World.” And he was a real person, not some fairy tale or myth.

“This is what Captain Ladoga’s letter said: ‘I will soon pass. I could not fulfill my dream, but I found many surprises in the New World. I’ve left my treasure amid the beautiful scenery of Swallow Island. If you are lucky enough to find it, use it however you will,’” Bacca said amidst gasps from the crowd. He went on: “At first I thought it might be a fake letter. But after researching the history and the handwriting, it became clear that the letter truly was written by none other than Captain Ladoga! So here we are now; we’re going to find ourselves a vast treasure, build up our crew stronger than before, and challenge the Grand Line once again!”

He wrenched Rudd’s collar. The police officer looked quite pained. It seemed we would have to get involved. I steeled myself for action.

“Stop right there!” bellowed the powerful and familiar voice of the old man. The square fell silent. Bacca let go, and Rudd fell to his knees. But the situation wasn’t resolved; if anything, it seemed more tense now.

“Stupid Junker… What are you thinking?” I muttered to myself. He got hotheaded at the worst times. If he came across too strong, they might just attack him and kill him.

However, contrary to my expectation, Bacca didn’t react that way at all. Instead, his cruel expression disappeared, replaced by a shocked stare, like he was seeing a ghost.

“Wait…Dad?!” he uttered.

“It’s been a while, Bacca,” replied the old man.

For several seconds I was frozen. I didn’t understand what could be happening. But Bacca had definitely called Wolf “Dad.” And Wolf didn’t dispute it.

“Ga ha ha! How many years has it been? Ten? No, at least twenty. I never even dreamed you’d still be alive,” said Bacca.

“Hmph. Right back at you,” retorted Wolf. “I just assumed you’d gotten yourself killed on some stretch of sea or another by now.”

“Is that all you have to say to your long-lost son? Father of the Year, this guy!”

“You remember what I said to you twenty years ago. We are no longer father and son,” Wolf stated. His eyes were shockingly cold.

“You haven’t changed a bit. You were always like this. You were never satisfied with anything I ever did,” Bacca complained.

“Of course. I was a parent trying to pull his wayward son back toward an honest path.”

“Wayward? Me? Ga ha ha! I don’t think I’m dishonest in anything I do. I’m true to my desires. So if anything, that’s evidence that you raised me to be a little too honest!”

“I’m not going to stand here and play this game with you,” Wolf said impatiently. “And I won’t stand by and watch you attack the town, steal all our food and valuables, and then slaughter its inhabitants in the end.”

“Hah! Well, look who’s high-and-mighty all of a sudden!” said Bacca. “You didn’t stop me back when you were a member of my crew!”

“That’s right… I was an incompetent father. I tried lecturing you and confronting you, but in the end, I couldn’t correct my foolish son’s mistaken ideas,” Wolf said.

I almost shouted at that point. What was this conversation about? Was Wolf actually once…a crewmate with this Bacca pirate? I glanced over at Penguin, Shachi, and Bepo, and saw that they were just as rattled as I was.

“Yeah, I’m honest about what I want and I don’t hold back! You know what needs to be done, right, Dad? You’ve been living on this island the whole time. I bet you have some information on Captain Ladoga’s treasure. So hand it over. If you do, out of respect for a former comrade, I might just spare all these people a massacre.”

“Hmph. There’s no evidence of anything. Besides, even if I did know where to find that treasure, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”

“Did you just challenge me?”

“I don’t believe you can keep a promise, and more importantly, you’re the man who already burned this town down once! I have nothing to give to the likes of you!” Wolf shouted.

“What, you’re still holding that against me?”

“Twenty years ago, you tried the Grand Line for the first time. You needed food, water, and money, so you came here—your hometown—and pillaged the people’s belongings and destroyed their homes! I left the group because I couldn’t stand your ways. I settled down on the edge of the island, but I never forgot my part in that. I was unable to stop the evil deeds of my own son back then, and that’s why I have a responsibility to stop you now,” Wolf boomed. It was a voice of true anger, something we had never heard when Wolf lectured us for our mistakes.

“So…I take it you intend to stop me, Dad?” Bacca asked sarcastically.

“That’s right. You won’t ever ruin this town again.”

“Ga ha ha! Then that makes us enemies. We might have been on the same side once, but it doesn’t matter if you’re my own father. I will destroy anyone who dares to get between me and what I want!” Bacca lifted his hands, brandishing two maces. In response, Wolf removed a gun from his waistband.

“Bepo! Penguin! Shachi!” I called to the others. “We gotta get in there!”

“Yeah!”

We made a beeline for Wolf and Bacca, but a crowd of Bacca’s pirates blocked our path.

“Who do you think you are?!” the flunkies barked.

“Shut it and fight, man,” I shouted, avoiding the slash of the first pirate who came at me and giving him a chop to the spine that knocked him clean out.

“Aye aye!” called Bepo.

“Hiyaaa!” exclaimed Shachi.

“Hwachaaa!” grunted Penguin, as they each threw in some hand-to-hand combat of their own, wreaking havoc on the pirates. These guys were no match for us.

Our real problem is Bacca and his enormous sumo wrestler pal.

“Feast your eyes on this! Stoppy Stopper, fire!” Wolf shouted, setting loose one of his inventions to attack Bacca. It was a light-ray gun he’d shown us back at the house. One shot could blast a brick wall into dust. But Bacca easily avoided its ray and got behind Wolf.

“You’ve grown soft, old man. It’s so obvious where you’re aiming and when you fire. Your feeble reflexes will never let you land a shot on me!” Bacca’s heavy mace struck Wolf on the head, and the old man toppled to the ground and went still.

Don’t do it; don’t rush! It took all my self-control to keep me from leaping out in front of Bacca. The old man wasn’t so flimsy that he’d drop dead from a blow like that.

“Law! It’s all right, he’s just knocked out!” cried Penguin, who had rushed to Wolf’s side. I would’ve liked to examine him myself, but there was no time for that.

“Bepo, Shachi! You guys take out the others! I’ll get the boss!” I told them.

“Sure thing!” they replied. I faced Bacca myself.

Up close, he’s actually really intimidating. He was skilled enough at fighting to easily dispatch Wolf, who was no slouch himself. I had to be very careful. I intuited that range was going to be crucial in this fight; I could see that the two maces he carried were extremely heavy and powerful, but Bacca swung them like they were twigs. It would be very important for me not to step into their range.

“What’s this, another weirdo? Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“I’m with that old man you knocked out,” I said, keeping my eyes trained on his.

“Ga ha ha! You’re with my dad? Then that means you’re my enemy, too!” he said. Before the words had left his mouth, Bacca sent one of his maces hurtling toward my face. It came dreadfully fast, but somehow I managed to avoid it and picked up a large brick to throw at him.

“That means nothing to me!” Bacca crowed, deflecting it easily.

That was just what I wanted him to do. The brick was intended to create an opening for me to get closer. He assumed that I was unarmed, but that was all part of my plan. I’d snuck a metal pipe I found on the street behind my shirt. That was my real weapon.

“Take this!” I yelled, pulling it loose and swinging as hard as I could at Bacca from close range.

I’ve got him. He can’t possibly dodge this one. But the pipe swished through the air. What happened? It was impossible. The blow should have split his skull where he stood, and yet the swing hit no resistance. I didn’t even graze him.

“Did you think you had me beat, boy? You’re soft as a baby!”

I’d left myself completely open to attack in the aftermath of my huge swing. Bacca’s mace buried itself in my torso. I flew away and landed on my back.

“Law!” shouted Penguin.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing,” I lied. The damage from the mace was significant, and I could feel my knees trembling as I tried to stand. I couldn’t let my opponent realize I was affected. I had to pretend that I was totally unfazed by it, so that he didn’t pile on again on right away.

“Is that the best you can do? You don’t hit any harder than the boars in the forest,” I taunted.

“Well, at least you talk a big game, kid!”

“Captain, don’t waste your time dealing with that kid. This is a job for me, Connie Boakeno! I’ll snap his spine in two for you!” Shouting from his captain’s side was the sumo wrestler, who had been at the edge of the scrum just moments ago.

“Nah, I’ve got this one, Boakeno,” Bacca replied. “I don’t like the look in this kid’s eyes. I’m gonna kill him myself. You just hold back the townspeople with the others.”

“Bya ha ha! Whatever you say, sir.”

“All right, kid. Let’s pick up where we left off…” Bacca charged then, and I was waiting for him. At the last possible moment I dodged, swinging my metal pipe at his shoulder as a counterattack. The timing was perfect. There was no way he could evade this one.

But it didn’t hit him.

Why? How? His next attack was imminent. Bacca stayed on the offensive, and all I could do was continue dodging. He wasn’t hitting me with the final blow yet, but I was clearly on the back foot. I couldn’t hit him for some reason, but if I took another straight-on hit from one of his maces, I was probably going down.

Suddenly, our eyes met. He had the clouded eyes of a villain, but I saw no hesitation in them. There was only malice and murderous intent. He was perfectly focused on putting an end to me if it brought him closer to his goals.

Is that it? Is that the difference in our strength right now? I recalled the nightmare I’d been having for the last several nights and was reminded of Cora, Doflamingo, and Dressrosa. I knew that I had unfinished business, that there were things I still had to take care of. But I didn’t have the determination to see them through. Fulfilling Cora’s wishes was something I would do “someday.” Not “now.” Which is why I hesitated and fretted. Now it felt like that hesitation was the difference between me and the man I was facing.

His urgency, his will to do what needed to be done, was a force that overwhelmed me and dulled my movements. I’m going to lose this fight. Just then, Bacca stopped and spoke to me: “You’ve got good control, kid. If we keep going, I’ll win eventually, but I hate wasting the time to get there. So instead I’m gonna take care of you a slightly different way,” he said, leering.

Suddenly I had a bad feeling.

“Boys, get inside!” he commanded his men. The pirates all rushed into a nearby building.

“No! Shachi, Penguin, Bepo! Pick up the old man and—” I tried to warn them.

“Too late! Melting Wave!” Bacca shouted. A bright spread of light shot out of Bacca’s eyes. I rolled on the ground to avoid it.

A shiver ran down my spine. He wasn’t just any pirate—he had Devil Fruit powers. I didn’t know if that was why my attacks kept missing, but it was undeniable that he had capabilities that were beyond those of the average person.

“Are you guys all right?” I called back to the others.

“W-we’re fine! We managed to avoid it!” Bepo shouted back.

I’d picked worthy followers, at least I could say that much.

“That was your special ability, huh? Sorry, pal, but you won’t hit me and my friends that easily,” I taunted, trying to hide my anxiety about the true nature of his powers.

“Ga…ga ha ha!” Bacca chortled.

“What’s so funny?”

“You move even better than I thought, if you managed to dodge my Melting Wave. But you should pay better attention to what’s around you, kid…”

Just then I felt a menacing presence behind me. A sword slashed at my back.

“Agh!” I screamed. In the nick of time, I managed to turn around and stop it between my bare hands. I wrenched the sword sideways and threw its holder to the ground.

Who was it? Had one of Bacca’s crew jumped out? When I turned to identify my attacker, I was stunned.

“Why are you—?” I asked, unbelieving. It was the doctor from the clinic. I couldn’t hide my shock. He looked at me with empty eyes, blade in his hands. There was clearly something wrong with his mind.

“What did you do to him?” I demanded.

“Ga ha ha! I told you to look around. Should you really be wasting your attention on him?”

Another attack came from a different direction. And this one wasn’t just one person. I counted two, three…even more of them. I jumped wide, moving farther away so I could get my bearings.

“What?!” I yelped. The townsfolk were attacking me from all angles. “Dammit…”

None of their attacks were very powerful or fast. To be honest, I could have beaten them all myself, but I certainly couldn’t bring myself to attack the townsfolk. The fishmonger, the lady from the restaurant, the tattoo artist… There were so many familiar faces among them. And all of them were coming after me with lethal intent and vacant eyes.

“Ga ha ha! What’s wrong, kid? You’re not lookin’ so sharp!” Bacca taunted, sensing my uncertainty.

He’ll pay for this. Whatever he’d done, it filled me with rage to see the townspeople turned into tools of battle.

I’ll have to use the Op-Op Fruit powers. That should help me find a solution. I have to protect these innocent people. I started preparing to deploy Room, but Shachi grabbed me from behind.

“Don’t!” he shouted. It was as though he knew what I was preparing to do. “We need to get out of here, Law. We’ve got the buggy; the old man drove it to town. We can get away and plan our next move. Don’t reveal what you can do while the enemy’s powers are still a mystery.”

Shachi’s advice helped cool my fury for long enough to regain my senses. He was right. Charging at my enemies without a plan or a proper weapon was basically suicide.

“All right,” I muttered and turned to run in the opposite direction of Bacca.

“Don’t be a coward, boy! Ga ha ha! I thought you were better than that!” he shouted after me.

It didn’t matter to me. Shachi, Bepo, and Penguin were keeping their cool, and I certainly wasn’t going to be the loose cannon that caused more trouble for us all. I trusted my followers, and that enabled me to cast aside my stubborn pride and run for my life instead. I couldn’t even hear the enemy anymore.

“This way, you guys!” called out Penguin, waving at us. Bepo and Wolf were already on the buggy. Once Shachi and I were on board, Penguin revved the engine.

“We’re gonna put on some speed! Don’t fall off!” Penguin warned.

The little car peeled out, leaving the enemy behind. I took a quick look at Wolf, long enough to note that he only had a mild concussion. He’d wake up before long.

Behind us, I spotted not just Bacca’s crew but the whole town, all carrying weapons.

I’m running away for now…but I’m going to save you, I thought.

None of us spoke on the way back to the house.

Once we were home, we took turns in the shower and changed our clothes to give ourselves a chance to reset and calm down. Wolf was conscious by then, and the five of us gathered at the table and went over what happened while Wolf was out.

The mood was dark. There were a number of pressing issues to discuss, but after the shock we’d just experienced, no one wanted to speak.

“I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through.” Wolf spoke first. His expression was hard; he knew that there was a lot to unpack about the situation, but he didn’t know where to start.

“Who are those guys, Junker?” I asked him. “And what’s going on between you and that Bacca guy?”

“Yes…yes, I’ll start there,” he replied.

The others didn’t crack any jokes, they just waited for him to explain. We all knew that it was not going to be a pleasant conversation.

“Bacca is my son,” Wolf said, lifting his head to look at us. “He’s always been a tempestuous lad. He was always fighting and stealing in town, always getting arrested. It was about twenty-five years ago that he finally told me he was going to be a pirate. I was against it at first, but then I actually felt a little hopeful, thinking that the bracing freedom of the seas might change him for the better. Sometimes experiencing all that the world has to offer forces you to grow up… But it didn’t take long for me to realize my mistake. I went out to sea with him as part of his crew. Bacca needed someone to keep an eye on him, and I had my own dreams of seeing rare and interesting inventions across the sea.”

He stopped there to sip his tea. I knew how painful it could be to tell others about one’s deepest, darkest past, so I didn’t rush him. We waited until Wolf was ready to tell us more.

“But Bacca didn’t calm down. If anything, the violent pirate lifestyle only made him worse. He became the kind of man who wants to hurt others and take what belongs to them, simply because he can. And after eating the Melt-Melt Fruit, his natural tendency toward cruelty became unstoppable.”

“The Melt-Melt Fruit…so he does have Devil Fruit powers,” I exclaimed.

“That’s right,” Wolf went on. “After obtaining that fruit, Bacca and his crew gained great power, and the government’s bounty on their heads jumped. They had enough power to attempt the Grand Line, and Bacca’s twisted personality only grew more evil because of it. He stopped by Swallow Island, raided the town, and stole from the townspeople. When he did that, I left the crew. Since then, I’ve kept myself busy with my inventions.”

Finally the details of the old man’s life clicked into place inside my head.

“So living on the outskirts of the island is your way of doing penance,” I surmised.

Wolf didn’t reply, but I took his silence as an admission that I was correct.

“The first time we went to Pleasure Town, you told us the town had nearly been destroyed seventeen years ago. That was when Bacca invaded, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. But I was helpless to stop him. I certainly tried, but I lost the fight. More than a few people died. I did my damnedest to help the town rebuild, but the dead won’t ever come back. I don’t have the right to live with them or accept their gratitude.” He let out a long sigh. It was the weakest he had looked since I’d first met him.

I was furious—at Bacca, for attacking the town and laughing about it. For making the Junker feel so defeated. But mostly at myself for not having the words to console a friend who was on the verge of tears. Although perhaps that wasn’t so important at that moment. It wasn’t like condolences were going to make the situation any better.

“Junker,” I said with resolve.

“What?”

“I’m going to fight,” I said, giving him a glare.

He didn’t need cheering up. I was going to get Wolf going in my own way. Maybe things would be scary, maybe I would be uncertain, but I knew now was the time for action, not some unknown point in the future. Now was the time to make my stand.

I was going to throw myself into battle against an enemy I didn’t know I could defeat, for the sake of those who had been good to me. If I couldn’t do that now, then anything I ought to do would always be pushed off to “someday” and never happen “now.” In other words, it would never happen.

Only the determination to do what needed to be done in this very moment would move us forward. I felt certain that this would be the first step in fulfilling Cora’s wish.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking or what you plan to do,” I said to Wolf. “But I’m locked in on what I have to do: take Shachi and Penguin and Bepo and go back to town to crush Bacca and his goons.”

“Law—” the old man tried to interject, but I kept speaking.

“What about you? If you choose to stay here at home, I won’t blame you. But this is the time, Junker. It’s the only chance you’ll have to protect the people of the town this time and free yourself from the guilt that weighs on you. Am I wrong?”

Ten seconds passed, maybe twenty. Wolf hung his head in silence. Then he snapped upright and walked toward me. He took a big swing and smacked me on the head.

“Hmph! Don’t patronize me! You think I need you to tell me not to run? That was never my plan! What you saw was just a brief moment of weakness. And yes, you’re right. Only I can make good on my guilt. So this time I’m going to show I can protect the town!”

“Didn’t Bacca just knock you out cold?” Penguin pointed out with withering timing.

“Huh…” Wolf grunted.

“He’s been a pirate this whole time. He’s probably stronger than you now,” Bepo said quite earnestly.

“Hrrm…” Wolf hummed.

“Do you have a plan for how you’re actually going to beat him?” asked Shachi, delivering the finisher.

“Urgh…” Wolf gulped.

They were all so straightforward and correct in their logic that Wolf could only sputter in reply, red-faced.

“For all the lectures you’ve given us, this time you don’t seem to be thinking about the most important part, Junker,” I reminded him.

“W-what?!”

“You can’t beat them all on your own. You can’t save the town single-handedly. That should be obvious. You can’t do it all on your own, which is why we’re here.”

“Hrrm…”

“We’re not going to send you in there to be hurt,” I went on. “We’re going in there together to beat up Bacca and his minions and protect the town. It’s that simple. We’re not kids anymore, Junker. We’re not hiding under your wing, needing protection. It’s our turn now. We’re gonna protect you and the place you care about. That’s what friends do, right?”

Wolf snorted again. A thin smile traveled across his lips.

“You snot-nosed punks think you can talk a big game just because you got a bit taller. But…I’m listening to my gut, and I trust you boys. I’m willing to put my faith in you guys—my friends,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.

We all smiled. The dynamic felt right again.

“Anyway, old man, if we’re going to fight, we’ve got to get a few things straight. First of all, what’s this Melt-Melt Fruit that Bacca ate?” I asked. Whatever strategy we settled on for defeating the pirates, there wouldn’t be any peace in town unless we took Bacca down. So the most important thing we needed to know was how his powers worked.

“It gives anyone who eats it the ability to dissolve,” the old man replied. “That’s the power of the Melt-Melt Fruit. Bacca can freely transform his body into a liquid. That’s why normal attacks won’t do any damage to him.”

“That would explain why my blows passed right through him,” I said.

“One other thing. Bacca can project beams from his eyes to control other people,” said Wolf.

“Beams?” I asked. “Like some kind of hypnosis?”

“Well, it’s a beam that can melt things. You said the townsfolk started attacking you—did Bacca shoot a beam just before that?”

“He did. We managed to dodge out of the way, but all the other people in the vicinity got hit.”

“That’s Melting Wave… When Bacca’s beam hits you, it melts your spirit and turns you into one of his unthinking puppets. Under his control, people would go so far as to grab a knife and stick it in their own chest if he told them to,” Wolf explained.

“Sounds like the ideal power for a sick bastard,” I said bitterly.

“I assume Bacca’s used his beam on the townsfolk and has them all as his dutiful puppets. Which is why we have to act quickly.”

“Before he escapes town, you mean?”

“No. They need rest and time to prepare for the Grand Line, so they’ll be staying here for a while. I’m talking about the people. Anyone who’s been hit by Bacca’s Melting Wave will die after twenty-four hours.”

“What?!”

“The power of the Melt-Melt Fruit can melt your heart—not just the organ, but the metaphysical heart that exists within each of us. If you’re under its control for twenty-four hours, your heart will completely melt away. Once that’s happened, there’s no saving you.”

A gloomy silence settled over the room once again as we thought about all those people in town who had been so good to us. Absolutely not. Not a single one of them is dying on my watch.

“How can you undo the Melt-Melt Fruit’s powers?” Shachi asked.

“They’ll disengage if Bacca gets knocked unconscious. But that may be easier said than done. We should probably fight him expecting to kill him,” Wolf said, his eyes hard. As horrible a man as he was, Bacca was still Wolf’s own son. Trying to kill your son wasn’t the sort of situation any father wanted to be in.

“Twenty-four hours…” Bepo mused.

“It’s been about four hours since the scuffle in town. So we’ve got twenty hours left,” Shachi said.

“And in that time, we have to go back there, deal with the townspeople trying to attack us, and defeat Bacca… That’s a lot…” Penguin murmured.

Bepo and Penguin and Shachi seemed daunted by the challenge before us, and I couldn’t blame them. It was no exaggeration to say that the lives of the townsfolk were in our hands at that moment. And it’s not like I was as cool as a cucumber. My hands had been shaking for most of the day. A whole town coming under attack by outsiders was a nasty reminder of my own trauma: Burning buildings, countless screams; my parents, Lammy, and so many other dead bodies in my hometown, Flevance…

“Let’s go up on the roof. Come with me,” Wolf said abruptly. We followed him up without a word. Outside, we could see that rain clouds were closing in. They seemed to be reflecting our dark state of mind at the moment, and it made me mad.

“We’re going to check on the town now,” Wolf said.

“What?”

“With my high-precision spyglass, the Seefer Miles, it’ll be no problem to see what’s going on in town. I’ve got two of them. Take a look with me, Law.”

I was skeptical, but I did what he said and put the invention, which had as stupid a name as any of them, to my eye.

I nearly gasped. I really could see the town in crystal-clear detail.

How does Wolf make these things?

“Looks like the folks really are under his control,” Wolf said.

“That’s right,” I said. People we knew well were wandering around the town with vacant expressions, holding unfamiliar weapons.

“Where’s Bacca, old man?” I asked.

“He’s in the temple. You’ve been there before, right? The pirates are gathered in the center of town, in the temple that honors the god of the sea.”

“Ah, yes, that’s about the biggest building in town,” I murmured, checking on the location before removing the eyeglass.

It was a tough situation. With the pirates occupying the temple in the center of town, there was no way we could avoid a confrontation with some of the townsfolk. I didn’t want to hurt them, but it was going to be difficult to break through without launching some kind of attack. Moreover, we wouldn’t stand a chance of winning if we were already all beaten-up and tired by the time we actually got to Bacca. Beyond that, none of those efforts would mean anything if we didn’t have a way to take him down when we got there.

We’re out of options.

“You guys got any ideas?” I asked the others on a prayer.

“Sorry, I can’t think of anything,” said Bepo, upset. “I wish I were a lot smarter. You guys don’t need a stupid polar bear weighing you down…”

“Stop getting depressed, Bepo! I asked because I don’t have any ideas, either.”

We all sighed in unison. With the exception of Wolf, who wore a confident little grin.

“I’ve got one,” he mumbled.

“Got what?” I asked.

“That’s it, of course! It’ll work! I’ve got it, boys! We need to prepare at once. Off to my lab!” the old man roared. “Bacca’s not gonna know what hit him!”

Once we’d finished preparing for battle, we got back into the buggy, and Wolf drove us to his lab. Although I felt the weight of Pleasure Town facing such a deadly threat, I was also a little excited about the trip. It would be the first time I’d ever set foot in Wolf’s laboratory. I’d begged him to let me see it before, but he always steadfastly refused. The thought that I was finally going to see the thing that the old man held dearest—his work as an inventor—put a little spring in my step.

In less than ten minutes, he stopped the vehicle and told us we’d arrived. But when we stepped off the buggy, there were no buildings in sight, just a wide-open field. The old man trudged out into the middle of the empty space until he reached a metal hatch on the ground. He put a key in the lock and turned it. A latch clicked, and the hatch swung open.

“Wow! It’s like a secret base!” Bepo exclaimed.

“There’s power down there, so we’ll have light inside, but the steps to it are steep. Careful not to fall,” Wolf said, leading the way down the stairs.

So it really is a secret base. I don’t usually feel childish excitement, but I guess I can make an exception for this.

After a few turns around the spiral steps, we arrived at a much larger space. This room was full of inventions, and they were nothing like the odd trinkets that littered the floor of the house. There were several small airplanes and vehicles of a type I’d never seen before. Beyond that was a pool full of strange cultivating material. The old man even had a lab with flasks and beakers and graduated cylinders for chemical experiments, and an area for axes and guns and swords with strange markings on their surfaces.

This is the laboratory of Wolf the inventor, I thought, marveling at the sight before us. If not for the situation at hand, I would’ve grilled him about what each item was and what their capabilities were.

“You really are an inventor, old man,” said Shachi, unable to hide the wonder in his voice.

“Of course I am! What did you think I was?! Anyway, you haven’t seen the really surprising stuff yet. The real shocker is still to come. Bring that sword over, Law. We’re going to need it when we fight Bacca.” As he spoke, he pointed at a katana in a sheath. I drew the blade and saw that it was honed and sharp. There was also an odd switch on it that I wondered about briefly.

Wolf led us into another passageway. I wanted to stick around where we were and look at more stuff, but time was of the essence, so we hurried after our guide.

After another set of creaking stairs, we came to a dark room. I could smell something briny in the air. Were we close to the sea?

“I’m going to turn on the lights,” Wolf warned us before hitting the switch.

“Whoa… Are we in a cave?” Penguin wondered.

Unlike the invention labs we’d just seen, this was a natural cave with walls of rock and sand.

“This is a secret cave that even the townspeople don’t know about. And that’s what I wanted to show you!” Wolf said, pointing toward the other end. That’s when we saw it.

“It’s huge…” Shachi said, amazed. It was an enormous yellow ship—a metal ship, floating on the water.

Could this possibly be another one of Wolf’s inventions? This was no ordinary ship.

“Junker, is this…?” I started to ask.

“Hmph. It’s exactly what you think it is, I suspect. This is the greatest invention ever made by Wolf, the genius inventor—the Invincible Flower Stamp submarine!”

“Stupid name!” the rest of us said in perfect unison. But regardless of the name, the ship was incredible. The yellow metal hull was overwhelming in size and shape.

“We’re going inside.”

“Really?!” Penguin exclaimed.

“Of course. This is the secret weapon that we’ll use to stop Bacca, after all,” Wolf said, snorting proudly. We didn’t know what he meant by that, but we followed him into the submarine.

“Whoa!” we cried out together.

The ship was stunning, but it wasn’t just for show. There was a control deck and various pressure gauges and inner workings, just as any submarine would have. The other guys took turns sitting in the seats and looking out the portholes, chattering excitedly among themselves.

“How about that?” Wolf gloated. “Are you impressed at my greatness now?!”

“Yeah, whatever, but how is this amazing submarine going to help us fight Bacca? He’s on land, after all, hanging out in the middle of the town,” I pointed out.

Wolf cackled to himself. “Hmph! You don’t understand the kind of raw horsepower this thing has, Law. Just take a seat.” He sat down next to me at the control deck, checked on a few of the instruments, then started the engine.

“Opening main ballast to seawater… Screw propeller is functional!” Wolf called out as a horrible, ear-rending screech filled the cave. All three of the others cried out in dismay:

“Whoa!”

“What is that?!”

“My ears hurt!”

The sound was like glass scraping against glass. We all put our hands over our ears. But I recognized that sound. I’d heard it three years ago—it was the same sound I’d noticed when I was practicing with my sword in the yard. I gasped at the realization. The story of the swallow that flies through the sea.

“Junker! Is this bird-screeching sound the one that everyone thinks is—”

“Hmph!” Wolf interrupted me “You’ve probably heard the stories people make up in town about it, but this is the sound of the Invincible Flower Stamp’s propeller reverberating through the cave, and it becomes a great cacophony when it reaches the sea and the town! Yes, this is the swallow that flies through the sea!”

It all made sense now: Wolf would take the submarine for test dives now and then. If anyone saw the submarine’s shape beneath the water after the roar of the propeller, of course they would make up a story to explain it.

“All right! All systems green! We’re taking off!” Wolf warned us, and with a loud thump, the submarine began to sink.

“Whoa, we’re really moving!” Penguin marveled.

Swallow is a rare type of island where most of the area underground is connected to the ocean. The submarine could take us under the island right up to Pleasure Town.

When the ship was down deep, I peered through the porthole at the sea around us. Schools of fish went swimming by. I’d never seen this underwater world before. It was so beautiful, I very nearly said it out loud.

This was a world I would never have been able to see on my own, after I ate a Devil Fruit and lost my ability to swim. But thanks to the old man’s invention, here I was now, gazing at a colorful profusion of fish dancing through the water.

The submarine had initially dropped straight downward, but now we moved horizontally—at a phenomenal speed.

“Whoa! This is crazy!” Shachi cheered.

“This thing is super fast!” Bepo said as the scenery rushed past us.

It felt like my body was fused to the submarine, moving faster and faster. We were going to be in Pleasure Town before I knew it. But hadn’t we forgotten something?

“Hey, old man. What’s your plan?” I asked him.

Wolf didn’t answer. He just chuckled gleefully as he piloted the sub.

“Should be any minute now,” he muttered. “Good, no problems on the radar. Bacca and his gang are in the temple, directly above us.”

“My point is, old man,” I persisted, “why disembark at the surface if we’re just gonna have to fight with the people under his control in town?”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk! What in the world are you talking about? We’re not disembarking at all. The Invincible Flower Stamp is made of one of the toughest metals in the world! It can smash through the hardest of rocks!”

“Wait, are you saying…” I finally got it.

“You boys better strap yourselves in,” Wolf advised. “We’re going straight up and through the earth.”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“We’re breaking through the earth and going straight into the temple from the sea! Trust in me! Screw propeller, Tailspin Torpedo!”

“This can’t be happeniiiiing!” the others all screamed. I didn’t want to believe it was happening, either. There was no way the old man could have done the necessary performance tests with this thing. But at this point, the only way past our fears was through them.

The submarine ascended at a high speed, emitting a grinding whine even more intense than the earlier sound.

“Three, two, one… Here we goooo!” Wolf cried.

Without losing speed, and making a tremendous crash, we broke through the layer of rock above and burst into the interior of the temple.

“What’s going on?”

“Where’d they come from?!”

“Oh, crap! We gotta tell the captain!”

We could hear the pirates panicking outside the sub. I couldn’t blame them—if I were in their position, I’d probably be freaking out, too.

“Well, this is quite the entertaining scenario,” I announced. At some point, you just had to laugh at the absurdity of life.

“Don’t drag me down, boys!” Junker called out.

“You stole my line, Junker!” I retorted.

The five of us burst out of the sub. It was time for the festival to begin.

Chapter Four

I felt confident in the amount of training and battle experience I’d had. Doflamingo’s family taught me the basics of fighting, and since moving in with Wolf on the island, I’d learned more techniques and gained strength.

But there was a major difference between now and the past. When I fought for Doflamingo, I believed in nothing and acted on nothing beyond my impulse to cause as much damage in the world as I could before I died.

Things were different now; there were people and places that I wanted to protect. The lives of the residents of Pleasure Town and of my dearest friends were hanging in the balance. I couldn’t afford to lose. It wasn’t an option.

A deep breath or two helped to release the tension in my muscles. If the leader of a group is feeling tense, those under him won’t be able to let go and fight with all their might.

To set the tone, I shouted, “Let’s go, people! Make sure you survive this! And make sure you win!”

“Yeah!” they called back to me.

I gripped the sword Wolf had given me at the lab and turned around. We faced more opponents now than we had earlier in town. There were fifty or sixty of them, and they each wore a leering expression as they waited to see what we would do. Clearly, they felt their overwhelming advantage in numbers would guarantee them victory.

“Don’t threaten us with a good time,” I said, fixing them with a murderous glare. Their obnoxious smiles vanished.

I didn’t see the two notable figures among the group: the captain, Artur Bacca, and his sumo-like henchman, Connie Boakeno.

This fight would be simple. We just needed to break through the enemy mass, defeat Bacca and Boakeno, and then we would win. If we fell in battle before that, we would lose.

“That’s big talk from an old fart and some little kids!” one of the pirates snarled, tired of the stalemate. He rushed at me with a sword. This was the signal for us to charge. First, four of them blocked my path, each one attacking from a different angle.

“You’re not fast enough,” I said. I could practically see them moving in slow motion. I delivered a kick to the jaw of the enemy coming from the right. A palm strike took care of the one in front. I thrust an elbow into the solar plexus of the enemy on the left. From there, my stance carried me into a roundhouse kick against the one creeping up from behind. Just like that, four enemies down.

“W-whoa. He’s tough,” I heard one of the pirates mutter.

The side that lost their nerve in the midst of the fight would lose. I wasn’t going to let that opportunity pass me by. Five, six, seven… For each enemy that came after me, I countered them and knocked them out cold. Onward I went.

Nearby, I could hear my companions shouting things like “Achow!” and “Ora-ora-oraaa!” Bepo was using martial arts and Penguin was mowing them down with spears, while Shachi destroyed the enemy’s weapons with his hatchet. Naturally, Wolf was having no trouble delivering precise knockout blows to his opponents.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen… The pirates were going down without landing a single hit on us. Eventually, their attacks ceased. I glanced around and realized that the five of us were the only ones standing.

“Easy peasy!” Penguin crowed.

“I guess all that practice really did make perfect,” Shachi marveled.

“Let’s keep it up and take down the boss!” Bepo shouted excitedly.

They were all getting carried away—except for Wolf, whose gaze was firm, his brow furrowed.

Yes, the real trouble was up ahead of us. The fight with Bacca and Boakeno was the true challenge.

“Keep rushing straight through to the back room—they’re probably there. Don’t expect the same results against them!” Wolf warned us. The flush of victory drained from Penguin’s, Shachi’s, and Bepo’s expressions.

“All right, let’s go!” I shouted and threw open the door.

“Hakkeyoi!” came the ear-splitting reply, as a mass of flesh burst toward me.

It was Connie Boakeno. He had a sumo wrestler’s mawashi belt around his tanned waist and a topknot on his head. His powerful charge split us into two groups.

Wolf and I had quicker reflexes and avoided the attack, but Bepo and the other two were bowled backward by Boakeno’s bulk. I rushed to help them. But Penguin held up a hand, urging me to stop and stay where I was.

“You and Wolf take care of Bacca!” Penguin shouted. “We’ll handle the sumo wrestler!”

For an instant, I hesitated. The sumo guy was a formidable foe, that much was for certain. But if we turned back to help the others, Bacca would likely attack us from behind.

“Let’s keep moving, Law,” Wolf said, laying a firm hand on my shoulder. “Trust them. They haven’t been training every day for nothing. One thing a leader has to learn to do is trust in his team’s strength.”

I closed my eyes and nodded. “Bepo! Shachi! Penguin! I’m the one who trained you up! You better not lose and make me look bad!”

“You got it!” they called back.

Wolf and I turned away and continued through the temple until we came to a massive door.

“Wait. Put these on before we go in,” Wolf said.

“What are they?”

“Small lenses for your eyes. Bacca’s hypnosis beam enters through the eyes, but if you have these, you can prevent it from taking over your mind.”

“Sounds like a good thing to have.”

“I’ve been working on this for years. I always thought the day might come when I would have to take care of Bacca myself. So I made sure I had the right inventions ready.”

A fight against his own son, his flesh and blood. Wolf must have felt much anguish over this decision. But now wasn’t the time to ask him about it. I just took the lenses and put them in my eyes.

“All right, then! Let’s go, Junker!”

“You bet!”

We opened the door.

“Yo, Dad. And that kid who ran away earlier.” Artur Bacca stood in the center of a chamber, flanked by a number of white marble pillars. Now that we were face-to-face again, his presence was intimidating.

“Ga ha ha! Hey, Dad…you know how my powers work. It’s already after dark. When the dawn arrives, all the people under the effect of my Melting Wave are going to be dead. And you’re here to kill me, driven by that cheap sense of justice you call a conscience. Am I wrong?” he taunted.

But Wolf was not affected by Bacca’s mind games. “It’s nothing as grandiose as that. I just feel responsible for raising an idiot son, and now I’m here to punish him.”

“Gah! I don’t actually care about the reason. I just want to kill you now so I have all the time I need to search for the hidden treasure. It’s very simple!” Bacca said, his unpleasant laughter filling the temple.

“I’ll say it one more time. There’s no treasure on this island,” Wolf muttered.

“Oh yeah? Only because you don’t actually know about the treasure. Captain Ladoga’s letter was real! He was a pirate with a considerable bounty on his head. That letter was his will and testament. He wouldn’t put lies in it!”

“Let me restate it. The treasure is already gone.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bacca said, no longer mirthful.

“Listen, Bacca. Do you understand how I got into this temple?”

“What? You charged up from underneath using that weird submarine. I heard the smashing. Obviously I had to go and take a peek.”

“At full momentum, that sub can break through solid earth. To build a craft that sturdy, you need a lot of unusually hard metal.”

“What’s your point?”

“It took an unbelievable amount of that metal to build a ship that big.”

“I said, get to the point!”

“So here’s my question,” Wolf continued. “Even you should be smart enough to realize that such a metal is not easily come by. And I am not nobility, nor am I a rich man. I didn’t have any savings. So how do you think I got so much of that metal?”

“No—are you saying…”

“I think you’re getting the picture now, Bacca. Captain Ladoga’s treasure did exist! But that was decades ago…before I found it!”

“You!”

“That’s right. It was worth good money. I used it to rebuild the town you destroyed and had enough left over to build an almighty submarine. It left me a poor man once again, but it’s a fun way to spend your money, don’t ya think? Ga ha ha!”

Fury crackled through the chamber. Bacca said nothing more. His body was rippling with pure hatred. A few seconds later, after a nasty glare, he looked down and exhaled.

“Whoa. I see, I see. Well, that makes sense. It is finders keepers with treasure, after all. Well, goodness me,” Bacca nattered on. “Never would have guessed my dear old Dad would beat me to the punch. I knew I should have killed you when you declared you were leaving the crew,” he lamented. Despite his casual tone, the furiously negative energy he was emitting hadn’t diminished in the least. “Still, at least this makes things easy now.”

His gaze rested on me next. “But there’s no need to lament. I just need to dismantle that submarine and sell off the metal to get that money. It’s just a slightly different set of steps. That’s right…and the first step toward that goal is killing all of you!”

He reached behind his back and pulled out his two enormous maces.

“Beg and plead for your lives all you want…I’m going to pound you, crush you, and turn you into mincemeat!” Bacca roared.

“Here he comes, Law!” warned Wolf.

“I’m ready!” I replied, taking a fighting stance. The real battle was about to begin.

“Once I’ve made you my puppets, it’s all over! Melting Wave!”

A bright light shot out of Bacca’s eyes. But we didn’t jump out of the way. The beam struck us directly, but he had no control over us.

“What…?” he muttered.

“Fool!” Wolf called out to his son. “I’ve been ready for your Melting Wave this whole time! That won’t hurt us.”

“Ahhh. I don’t see how you did it, but I guess that means you’ve actually planned for this. But even without the Melting Wave, you don’t stand a chance against me! My maces will crush every bone in your bodies!”

He swung his weapons around and around. Wolf and I leapt and dodged, somehow avoiding the cudgels. This wasn’t at all like when we fought him in town—a single hit would probably shatter my entire body.

“Gahaa!”

A mace smashed into the floor just next to me. I didn’t miss my chance, and countered him with a kick.

“Liquidate!”

Bacca’s body immediately turned liquid. My attack only splashed through him, doing absolutely no damage.

“Ga ha ha ha! You never learn, kid! Shouldn’t you have realized by now that attacking can’t hurt me? When you try, you fail—and I crush your skull!”

Dammit. I can’t fight him like this, I thought. When our stamina ran out and we were no longer able to dodge his attacks, we’d be ruined. It was a completely uneven situation.

“This way, Law!” said Wolf, grabbing my arm and pulling me aside.

“What’s the plan, Junker? The way things are going, we’re stuck.”

“Yes, I know. And I didn’t come to this fight without a plan for that.”

“Mind telling me what that is?”

“You need to distance yourself from Bacca,” Wolf said. “It’s simple—I’m going to stay on the move and make him vulnerable. When you get the chance, you cut him with that sword.”

“What’s the point if my attacks don’t affect him?”

“Trust in me, the genius inventor! It won’t be a problem. A swing from that sword will get to him. All right…good luck.”

“H-hey, wait!” I called after him. Before I could stop him, Wolf had charged off at Bacca.

I looked down at the sword in my hand. It looked like a typical sword with a normal hilt and blade. It was absolutely straight, with no distinctive curve or shape. The only defining feature was that strange switch on the handle.

Why would it matter if I hit Bacca with this? I didn’t get it, but I had to trust Wolf. He said he would give me an opening. He said that if I attacked at the right moment, it would hit Bacca. So it was up to me to wait for the opening and trust in my friend’s words.

“Take this!” Bacca screamed. He slammed Wolf in the stomach with a mace. But Wolf didn’t go down. He took the heavy shot to his gut and glanced at me.

It’s now or never. While Bacca’s attention was focused on Wolf, I swung the sword as fast as I could.

“Press the switch on the handle, Law!” the old man roared.

My body simply reacted. Pressing the switch with my thumb, I slashed downward toward Bacca in an enormous arc. I felt no feedback. It was as if I’d merely run the blade through water.

“Aaaaaaahhhh!” Bacca was screaming at the top of his lungs. There was no better proof that he’d taken a bad hit. But how? I glanced down at the sword in my hands. The blade was emitting a shining light—and a crackling noise.

“What…is that…?” gasped Bacca, in his liquid state. He was definitely hurt. He leapt backward with great caution, trying to put distance between the two of us.

“That’s my genius invention, Law! I call it the Hyper Numby! When the switch is turned on, electricity runs through the blade! If Bacca tries to go liquid, it’ll hurt him bad!”

Aside from the incredibly stupid name, it was indeed the perfect secret weapon for our situation. With this sword, we didn’t actually have to land a direct hit. Whether solid or liquid, he still felt pain like any other human being, so if I just stunned him powerfully and repeatedly with slashes of the sword, I could actually take Bacca down!

“This is really impressive, Junker,” I said. Bacca stayed back, watching me carefully. But that pause was exactly the opening I was waiting for.

Immediately, I shouted “Room!” I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by, and wasted no time in activating my Op-Op Fruit powers. The entire area was now within my domain.

“Crap…you’ve got Devil Fruit powers?!” Bacca shouted. The realization came to him too late.

“Chambres!” I commanded.

As Bacca fled, I spotted a piece of marble in his path. I instantly switched my position with the rock.

“Wha…?” Bacca mumbled. My powers of teleportation utterly befuddled him.

From Bacca’s perspective, I had been several paces away from him and then suddenly appeared within sword’s reach of him. I could see how it would be baffling.

“Now die,” I said. Quickly, accurately, and efficiently, I slashed through Bacca with the electric sword, slicing his body in two.

“Gaaaah!” He screamed and convulsed. The electricity’s effect on him was devastating.

Two, three, four—while Bacca was wracked with pain, I continued to hit him with the sword.

“Gahaaaaah!” He shrieked again, but he didn’t go down. Just as I was about to hit him with a fifth slash, he transformed his body to liquid and flowed away from me along the ground.

“Huff, huff… So you had a trick up your sleeve. I wasn’t expecting that one…” Bacca grunted.

Now it was my turn to be shocked. Based on the light the sword was emitting, it must have carried a substantial electrical current. One blow from it would render the average person unconscious. But Bacca was glaring at me with evil rage in his eyes. Why wouldn’t he go down? How was there still so much power in those eyes?

Just then I was struck by the same sense of unease that I’d felt when we fought in town earlier. The difference in intent!It wasn’t just a matter of good and evil. Bacca was engaging in this fight with a dead-set determination not to lose. But what about me? Did I have the same steely determination to stand up to Bacca’s slimy, narcissistic greed?

“Dammit!” I shouted. Giving myself over to hesitation in the midst of the fight was the worst thing I could’ve done. I slashed at Bacca, again and again. I cut him until the pain should have rendered him unable to stand. But still he stood. He took the pain with a confident smile and came ready to kill me.

Then I slipped. There was a pool of water at my feet. Bacca had left a part of his liquid self on the ground, setting a trap to catch me.

“No!” I yelled in despair.

“Ga ha haaaa!” Bacca laughed. His maces were coming for me, and I had totally lost my balance. I couldn’t dodge this one.

“Law!” I heard Wolf call my name just as I was about to give up. Wolf leapt between me and Bacca. He lifted me up and bounded away. It took me out of the range of Bacca’s swinging maces. But there was a catch.

“Junker!” I cried out, realizing Bacca’s attack had hit Wolf square on the back.

“Grfh…” Blood spurted from Wolf’s mouth. He’d taken severe internal damage from the blow.

“I’m all right. You know me…even at this age, I’m tougher than anyone around…” he grunted.

“You’re just trying to act tough! Scan!” I said. I used the Op-Op Fruit’s powers to look inside Wolf’s body. Some ribs were broken and there was damage to some organs, but nothing fatal. He could still be saved.

“Quit interfering where you’re not wanted, old man!” Bacca screeched, pressing the attack before I could help Wolf.

I shouldered his weight and just managed to jump far enough sideways to get out of the way.

“Stop it, Law…” Wolf sputtered. “Don’t try to heal me right now…I refuse to be a burden!” I held back a sob as he went on. “Don’t worry, boy, I won’t die. I’ve got too much that I want to do for you and the other brats to kick the bucket now! Go and beat Bacca. I know you can do it. Take this genius’s word for it.”

“All right,” I said. It was the only thing I could say.

“Oooh, I got Dad down for the count first, huh? Now all I gotta do is squish the kid like a bug! This is much easier than I thought it’d be,” gloated Bacca, who was already acting like he’d won.

“Wipe that smug look off your face. You haven’t landed one good hit on me,” I said.

“Ga ha! Well, at least you know how to talk the talk, kid. Come at me again, then. Let’s see what your precious sword can do!”

I told myself to be calm. I could see that Bacca was also barely able to stand. If not for that moment of carelessness earlier, I would have been able to avoid taking a hit from his mace. I had the advantage. I faced off with Bacca and attacked him from the front with a primal scream.

“Raaaaahh!”

We crossed paths. I avoided his blow, while he took the full brunt of my electric sword.

I can do this. I can keep it up, and then I’ll win, I thought, just as I realized something felt off in my right hand. The sword felt light—too light. I glanced down quickly and gasped.

There was no blade.

“Why?” I murmured.

“Ah ha! That’s the look of a boy who doesn’t know what just happened, isn’t it?” Bacca leered with delight. “Didn’t you think it was a little too easy to hit me?”

Something about the strike had definitely seemed odd to me. Even when Bacca was on his feet and able to dodge, he still took the full brunt of my attacks. The broken blade lay at my feet. Upon a closer glance, I could see that it was covered in rust and corrosion. Now it made sense.

“You finally figured it out, eh? I let you hit me and used the opportunity to weaken your sword. When I use Liquidate, I can control the acidity of the liquid. After you started using that sword, I went fully acidic. You didn’t notice a thing, and kept slashing away at me until I’d eaten through enough of your sword that it broke! It was your own incompetence that led to this. Ga ha ha!”

I was speechless. If I had realized the change in my sword sooner, I could have done something about it. I didn’t think I was being sloppy, but there was no denying that I’d thought I had the advantage. It had never even occurred to me that it might have been Bacca’s trap.

“Whew! Takes a lot of stamina to use that acid, but now it’s settled. You can’t hit me anymore! The only thing left is for me to take you down! Ga ha ha!”

Wolf was unconscious, and I couldn’t inflict any further damage on Bacca. My pulse quickened.

Connie Boakeno’s body slammed Penguin, Shachi, and Bepo to the far side of the room.

“You two all right?!” Penguin called out at once.

“No problem!” said Shachi.

“I’m all right!” Bepo followed.

None of the three had been hurt too badly. But that didn’t mean that their opponent was weak. In fact, it was just the opposite: he had the strength to knock all three of them across the room just by charging at them. He had been blessed with a tremendously large body. He was well over six feet tall, and by the looks of him, likely weighed over six hundred pounds.

But the most alarming thing of all was the speed with which he moved. Despite the volume of fat that surrounded his physique, Boakeno was able to charge fast enough that his three opponents couldn’t dodge out of the way.

“He’s not just some fatty!” wondered Shachi.

“Nope. He’s heavy but fast,” Penguin affirmed.

“He’s taking on all three of us at once. He’s gotta be confident in his strength,” said Bepo. All three of them were now quite certain of the threat Boakeno posed.

“Bya ha ha! You boys got split off real easily. Should be a snap to polish off three little weaklings like you!” Boakeno taunted, then leaned forward, lowering his center of gravity.

“Look out! Here he comes!”

“Hakkeyoi!” Boakeno proclaimed as he charged at the trio, performing the same body blow as before.

That was all it was—a body blow. There was no polished technique, no special ability at play, just a pure charge of muscle and fat. But given the nature of Boakeno’s body, that alone was a lethal menace.

“We gotta keep him down together!” Penguin shouted. The three of them tried to stand their ground and stop the Hakkeyoi attack. Unlike before, they were ready for it and could brace themselves. But they couldn’t stop it. All three of them together were still no match for Boakeno’s physical power.

“Gah!” one of them screamed, and once again, they were tossed back against the far wall.

“Bya ha! Bya ha! Such scrawny children you three are!” roared Boakeno.

“Bepo! Shachi! We can’t be clumped up!” instructed Penguin. “We gotta split up to attack!”

“You got it!” the other two called out.

They split up in three directions before Boakeno’s next attack, surrounding him. Although they hadn’t communicated any specific plans, over the last three years they’d learned some combat basics from Wolf and Law: how to take down an opponent when you were in a group, the most efficient motions in a fight, and what you could do to give yourself an advantage.

Bepo would go first and unleash a martial arts move. Next, Penguin would attack with a spear from a blind angle. Lastly came Shachi, ready to perform the finisher with his hand axe. They understood that combinations like these were the best way to win, and they didn’t need to speak to pull one off.

“Whatever silly fisticuff lessons you’ve taken won’t help you beat the likes of me! So, which one of you should I kill first?” Boakeno taunted.

“Aye aye! I’ll take you on first! Let’s go, you eight-hundred-pound fatty!” Bepo responded.

Boakeno froze. “Hey, polar bear…did you just call me fat? That is the greatest insult you can give a sumo wrestler! I’ll start by ripping you to shreds!”

His entire body was red with rage, and his nostrils flared as he snorted and attacked Bepo.

“Achaaaa!” Bepo launched a roundhouse kick into Boakeno’s gut. In terms of power and speed, it was a first-class attack. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have any effect on Boakeno whatsoever. Bepo realized this at once. The thick layer of fat was completely absorbing the force of the kick.

Nothing seemed able to slow Boakeno down. He rushed straight at Bepo.

“Eat this… Doskoi!” he screamed, slapping Bepo powerfully on the head.

“Whoa…” Bepo was dazed—the hit was enough to give him a light concussion. Penguin and Shachi instantly realized their plan would fail and stopped in their tracks, but it was too late. Boakeno nimbly turned and slapped them, too.

“Doskoi! Doskoi! Doskoi!”

Boakeno’s hands flew like a powerful storm. They pounded everything they touched, including the marble pillars and nearby walls, as well as Penguin and Shachi, who were once again sent flying.

The damage to the pillars and the temple itself caused the ceiling to collapse. Thankfully, no one was trapped under the rubble, but the three of them were all alarmed. Their opponent was strong enough to destroy an entire building with his bare hands.

“You okay, Shachi?” asked Penguin.

“I’m alive, I guess,” he replied.

They’d taken the sumo slaps directly to the head and weren’t able to stand up.

“This isn’t lookin’ good. If Bepo’s kenpo techniques don’t work, then you or I will have to take care of this guy on our own,” Penguin said.

“True. How can we stop his charge, though? My spear and your axe can’t cut through all that flesh in one go,” replied Shachi.

“And if we get caught flat-footed by another attack, we’re done for.”

“But we can’t just give up!”

“Of course not,” Penguin rallied. “We’re gonna look real bad to the old man and Law if we get beat over here!”

They rose to their feet unsteadily.

“Bya ha ha! This is pathetic,” Boakeno said mockingly. “That’s the problem with letting Wolf lead you on and think you’re so great—you’ll end up dying in pain and defeat. Bya ha! What a miserable old man and his miserable brats. It’s quite hilarious!”

He held his sides and rocked with laughter. Penguin and Shachi gave him icy stares.

“…of him,” Penguin was muttering something that his opponent couldn’t quite hear.

“Hmm? Did you say something?” Boakeno asked.

“Don’t make fun of him! Wolf took us in and raised us after our parents died… He treated us like his own sons. You’re not even worthy of joking around about him!” Penguin shouted.

“Bya ha ha! So you’re orphans, huh? Byo ho ho! That’s even sadder! This is really funny! Treated you like his own sons? Don’t be so stupid! Wolf was just using you as free labor! No one’s ever loved you miserable snots!”

Penguin and Shachi were silent. They weren’t shaken. Nothing Boakeno could say to them would change the truth they’d felt and experienced: Wolf loves us.

Their knowledge of this couldn’t be shaken by cheap taunts and mockery. Instead, it awakened in them a quiet fury. They felt burning rage at this enemy who dared to belittle Wolf, hurt their friends, and take the lives of the innocent townspeople just to satisfy their own greed.

“Shachi.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m pissed.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I’m gonna knock him out, if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Without a signal, Shachi and Penguin leapt at Boakeno. They had learned never to let the enemy close the gap—they had to use their weapons on him before he could start thrusting more palm strikes at them.

“Raaaah!” Penguin roared and swung his spear, rotating it rapidly and adding centrifugal force before jamming it into Boakeno’s shoulder.

“Yaaaaa!” Shachi yelled—it was his turn to strike. His axe dug deep into Boakeno’s right arm.

The attacks struck home, but they didn’t slow Boakeno down.

Penguin’s and Shachi’s attacks couldn’t penetrate deep enough into the wall of flesh and fat to finish off their target.

“You brats!” Boakeno howled. “Your punishment for harming my beautiful body will be very severe indeed!”

The two of them tried to flee out of his range, but he grabbed them both.

“Now it’s time to feel my wrath…Yokozuna Bomber!” Boakeno’s massive body leapt into the air.

With Shachi’s and Penguin’s heads under his arms, Boakeno jumped high, then used his momentum to fall to the ground and crush the two of them beneath his six hundred pounds of solid bulk. Beneath him, they couldn’t budge.

“Bya ha! That is the power of sumo! Curse your own weakness and that no-good old man as you die…”

Several of their bones were broken. Their heads were ringing from being slammed into the floor. But even still, Penguin and Shachi rose to their feet.

“Nwah?!” Boakeno gasped.

The Yokozuna Bomber was Boakeno’s greatest move and had dispatched many worthy adversaries in its day. But these two had taken it directly and still stood.

It creeped him out; they were like zombies. His charges, his slaps, and his best technique had inflicted so much damage upon them, yet they were still alive. For the first time, Boakeno felt a kind of fear toward Penguin and Shachi. Then his eyes traveled back to Bepo.

“Byuh huh…” he giggled, a nasty smile crossing his face.

“Can you still fight, Shachi?” Penguin asked.

“Of course. I gotta land a shot on his skull… Hey, wait! What’s Bepo doing?”

Penguin looked up to see Bepo sitting still, staring directly upward.

“This ain’t no time for moon gazing! Crap, the sumo wrestler’s gonna go right for him!” Shachi fretted.

As a matter of fact, Boakeno had already set his sights on Bepo. At this rate the polar bear wouldn’t be able to avoid his Hakkeyoi charge. This hit could break through rock. If he targeted Bepo, the defenseless polar bear’s life would be over, and Boakeno knew it. He leaned forward.

At that moment, a strange chill ran through his body.

“What’s this?” he hesitated. Boakeno’s warrior instincts stopped him in his tracks.

Bepo was gazing motionlessly up at the sky through a hole in the ceiling. It was as though he wasn’t even present in the room. He seemed utterly vulnerable. There were no clouds in the night sky, just a brilliant moon. A beautiful, perfectly full moon.

“Bepo, get away from there!” Shachi screamed.

“He’s going after you! Run away!” Penguin called out.

But their cries fell on deaf ears. The polar bear’s eyes were wide open, transfixed on the sky and the full moon in particular.

“Hmph! Thought I felt something weird for a second…” Boakeno mused. “I guess my mind was playing tricks on me. I’ll send you to the afterlife now! Hakkeyoi!”

This time, Boakeno headed straight for Bepo.

“Bepoooooo!” Shachi and Penguin screamed, but it was too late. The man flattened Bepo. Or at least that’s what should have happened.

“W-what?” gasped Boakeno in shock. His surprise was warranted—Boakeno’s Hakkeyoi charge had been stopped in its tracks by nothing more than Bepo’s out-stretched arm.

“Awooooooooooo!” Bepo howled. It was a vicious, feral roar, nothing like his usual voice.

Then he began to change. With a loud, deep thump, his body enlarged. He became far taller than Boakeno, over ten feet tall. His white fur had all grown out as a thick coat covering his whole body. There was something almost spiritual about the image he presented. Shachi, Penguin, and even Boakeno were all stunned into paralyzed silence.

It was Sulong, the “moon-lion” transformation. This was a battle form that brought out a Mink’s latent feral side upon the sight of the full moon.

“What’s happening to him, Penguin?” Shachi asked.

“All I know is that Bepo turned huge… But we take advantage of it! Flatten that sumo wrestler, Bepo!” Penguin called out. Whether he understood the words or not, Bepo fixed Boakeno with a vicious glare.

“Vwoaaaaar!” Bepo roared, swung his arms, and attacked.

It was all Boakeno could do to defend against the flurry of blows that came next. Their weight and power were next-level.

If Boakeno could weather these strikes and survive, it’d give his pride as a sumo wrestler a boost, but even Boakeno could sense he was in danger of losing consciousness. All of his past experience taught him that he was in real danger now.

“Doskoi!” He threw a sumo slap directly into Bepo’s strikes.

“Vwoaaaaar!” Bepo roared again.

“Doskoi! Doskoi! Doskoi! Doskoi!”

They traded high-speed blows again and again. From a distance, it looked like an even fight—both Bepo and Boakeno were striking hard enough that landing one good shot would probably finish off the other. In speed and power, they were equals. Their exchange continued, each one effectively neutralizing the other.

However, there was a difference: Bepo was engaging in an unconscious rampage, and Boakeno was reacting sensibly with an unexpected change in tactics. Bepo took a larger swing, and Boakeno was ready for it. In the way that a sumo wrestler reaches for his opponent’s belt, he lunged toward Bepo and grabbed the bear around the waist.

“Vwoaaahh…” Bepo roared in frustration.

“I have you now!” Boakeno cried, picking up Bepo and leaping into the air. “Yokozuna Bomber!”

He had Bepo’s joints locked in his grip and was prepared to slam him to the ground. At that moment, Boakeno was certain of his victory. And in a sense, it should have been his. But he made one mistake.

He underestimated the instincts of the Minks, who are born combatants. Bepo had no rational mind at that moment. He had no complex thoughts. He simply recognized the innate danger of being slammed into the ground, and that was enough. His instincts as a warrior produced the ideal response to the situation.

“Vwoaaaaaaah!” As he fell through the air, Bepo unleashed all of his pent-up strength. He weighed more than Boakeno at the moment, and the Yokozuna Bomber, which used the attacker’s own weight to crush the opponent, was Boakeno’s most effective technique.

That was the very source of the sumo wrestler’s mistake—because it was his greatest attack, it would also be the one capable of destroying him if the tables were turned.

“Mmmmvwoaaa!” Bepo let out a massive bellow and unlocked the joints that Boakeno was gripping, then switched their positions in the air—turning the attack into Bepo’s Yokozuna Bomber instead!

“Hrrrrg!” Boakeno grunted as he hit the ground under the full weight of Bepo’s body. Even Boakeno the sumo wrestler, who prided himself on his ridiculous toughness, had never expected to be the victim of his own greatest technique.

“Oh, dear…oh nooo!” Boakeno whimpered, sensing that he needed to leave. He would take the punishment for running from Bacca later, if he had to. He just needed to get away right now. To that end, Boakeno used all the strength in his powerful legs to jump backward. And he did not realize that this was actually his fatal mistake.

“Hey, Shachi,” said Penguin.

“What, Penguin?” asked Shachi.

“I see something rushing toward us.”

“Yeah. And it’s something I wanna knock out.”

“I’ll take the right.”

“Then I’ll get the left.”

In his haste to escape from Bepo, Boakeno didn’t look over his shoulder. He didn’t notice the two grinning opponents waiting behind him.

“One, two, three!” they said in unison, pulling back with spear and axe, putting all of their strength into the attack. Both swings clonked Boakeno directly on the back of the head.

“Byaah. Byaahahhah. This is nothi…byoh…” The massive man crumbled. Shachi ran to him to check that he was completely unconscious.

“Heh. Was that it?”

“All in a day’s work for us,” they smirked to one another, and exchanged a high five. The fight against Boakeno was over…

“Vwoaaaaah!”

But Bepo was still in an uncontrollable rage!

“Waitaminute, does he not realize we beat the bad guy?” Shachi wondered.

“I think he’s only running on impulse right now,” speculated Penguin.

“Then we’ll have to stop him.”

“But how? You wanna put Bepo in a sleeper hold? He’d kill both of us!” Penguin tapped a finger to his forehead and thought hard.

“The full moon,” he finally said.

“Huh?” Shachi asked.

“Bepo was staring straight into the moon before he changed form. See how he keeps glancing up at the sky once every couple of seconds?”

“We’ll just have to try it, then,” replied Shachi.

Bepo continued to rage, tearing out chunks of the walls and the pillars around the chamber. If he kept it up, the whole temple would eventually crumble around them. And given the beating Penguin and Shachi had already taken, that would certainly kill them.

“Use this,” said Shachi, handing Penguin his casquette cap.

“All right. You want me to do the jump, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. It’ll be your shoulders getting kicked!”

They started off running. Shachi took a slight lead. Then, just before he entered the range of the thrashing Bepo, he shouted, “Penguin, now!”

“Got it!”

Penguin used Shachi’s shoulders as a springboard and launched himself into the air. He grabbed Bepo around the head, rotating around to his back, and used both Shachi’s casquette cap and his own hat to block the bear’s eyes.

“How do you like…that?!” he said. Bepo’s vision was completely covered.

Bepo continued to thrash, but Penguin refused to let go of the hats. After a number of seconds, Bepo came to an abrupt stop. His body returned to its original size, and his fur reverted to its usual length. The plan had worked.

“Hey, Bepo! You alive?!” Shachi called out, slapping Bepo on the cheeks.

“Mmm…Penguin, Shachi…? What happened to me? Where’s that Boakeno guy?” he said.

Penguin and Shachi sighed with relief.

“Oh, him? Yeah, we took care of him,” Penguin said nonchalantly.

“Huh?! Really? Wow, you guys are amazing… My kenpo didn’t do a thing to him…”

“Trust me, you put on quite a show,” Shachi told him.

“Yeah, you did,” Penguin laughed. “We can tell you all the details later, though.”

“Good point. I’m exhausted.” At that, Penguin and Shachi fell onto their backs. Bepo slumped to the ground, too; the transformation had taken all his strength. None of them had the energy to even lift a finger.

“Hey. Shachi, Bepo.”

“Hmm?”

“What’s up?”

“We won,” Penguin said.

The other two were taken aback for a moment, then joined him in a round of uproarious laughter.

There was still work to be done, however.

“Let’s make our way back to Law and Wolf,” Penguin suggested, after a few minutes’ rest. The other two agreed. They dragged themselves to their feet and headed to meet up with their friends. Defeat had never crossed their minds.

Bacca was clearly trying to wear me out. I can’t see a path to victory… But running away was never an option. I had made up my mind to save those people. I didn’t know if it was a sign of sentimentality, or just my doctor’s mindset, but I did know that the moment I gave up on that decision would be the moment I stopped being myself.

Use your head. Make complete use of your brain. Think only of how to defeat the opponent before you.

“Oooh… You’re still a chipper little guy, eh? I guess you need to learn more about absolute despair, then.” Bacca leered and sucked in a deep breath.

I was outside of his maces’ range. He couldn’t attack me here.

“Don’t underestimate the power of the Melt-Melt Fruit, boy. Now die! Melty Love!” A white beam of light abruptly shot from his mouth.

“Gah!” I twisted as best I could to avoid the beam. Behind me, his attack had burned a huge hole in the wall. The stone was audibly hissing.

“Ga ha ha! My Melty Love attack emits a powerful acid beam that melts everything it touches! Now, how long can you manage to avoid it? Melty Love!”

Once again, he inhaled and spat out the glowing light. I leapt sideways to escape its path.

“Melty Love! Melty Love! Melty Love!”

The beams just kept coming. It was all I could do to get out of their way. Because of that, I failed to notice how near Bacca was getting to me.

“You’re finished,” he said at close range, then shrieked “Gahaaah!” and slammed me with a diagonal mace swing, hurtling me into the wall.

“Agh…kh…” I sputtered. He’d hit me square in the chest.

I could barely breathe and my limbs felt weak. Now that I was lying on my back, the sound of my heart beating seemed annoyingly loud. The pulse of the heart, the sound of flowing blood, my respiration, a faint current of electricity running through me.

Wait… Electricity?

“Gaah haah… You’re done for, kid!” Bacca panted. “I’ve been through more battles than you! I’m more determined! I’m about to turn that submarine into the kind of profit that’ll make me a great pirate! And I’ll trample all over your worthless ideas of love and justice to get it done!”

“Hey,” I whispered to Bacca. “Is that really the kind of pirate you want to be?”

“Huh? Of course! Stealing, killing, ruling! That’s what a pirate does! As a pirate you’re free to live and free to kill! It’s the best thing there is!”

“And that’s what freedom is to you,” I went on.

“What? Isn’t it obvious? I live according to my desires! I devour according to my desires! What is that, if not freedom? I’m strong, and my strength gives me the ability to turn all of my desires into reality! That’s what a great pirate does!”

“I see,” I responded.

I felt strangely peaceful. At that moment I didn’t have any fear of being killed, nor did I worry about losing to Bacca. I think I was wrong about something. Sure, he’s driven by intent. But he’s simply intent on fulfilling whatever desire is currently running through his mind.

I had let Bacca’s determination intimidate me. Because I’d set aside Cora’s goals and my own objectives until “someday,” I felt that I was somehow inferior to Bacca. But that was wrong. Whether it was now or someday, if whatever I did wasn’t in pursuit of true freedom, then none of it meant anything.

I still didn’t know what freedom was, but I knew that the freedom Cora prayed for me to have wasn’t the stupid crap Bacca was talking about. Crushing others and following only your most selfish desires doesn’t have anything to do with real freedom.

At last, I had my own intent to work with. I was intent on destroying the corrupt concept of freedom that my enemy championed. I slowed my breathing and got to my feet.

“What’s this? Your final act of resistance?” Bacca inquired sarcastically. “Sounds good. I’ll give you the ending you need! Ga ha ha!”

I turned toward Bacca. He was already in attack mode.

“Pray to whatever god you believe in, kid! Melty Love!”

The beam shot out of Bacca’s mouth, but I had no reason to fear it. We were still within the boundaries of my Room.

“Chambres,” I said. I tossed the broken sword handle forward and used my powers.

In a blink, I had switched the positions of the handle and a huge rock from the chamber. Naturally, Bacca’s acid beam struck the rock instead of me.

“Hah! My Melty Love will turn that boulder into…into…into solid rock…? It’s not melting!” Bacca whined. The beam simply fizzled out in the middle of the boulder.

I leapt over it and got right up in Bacca’s face. “You yourself mentioned that using that powerful acid is exhausting. If that was your first beam, it would have melted the rock and me. But I noticed that the holes it was making were getting smaller and shallower. Your acid beam doesn’t have the same strength now.”

“W-what of it? It doesn’t change the fact that I have the upper hand…” Bacca insisted.

“True. If I didn’t still have another attack up my sleeve, you would have won this fight by now.”

Physical attacks did not harm Bacca. The only effective means of hurting him I’d observed was the electric shock from Wolf’s sword. But just because the sword was broken didn’t mean I couldn’t use electricity. The human body contains a faint current of its own—and I could sense it. I focused all my attention on my right thumb, gathering all the electricity from my body there, condensing and amplifying it.

“I’m not going to surrender to the strength of your cheap desires. I’d be shaming Cora’s memory if I fell in battle to the shell of a person possessed by his desire for money and power,” I said. A crackling sound built around us. My thumb lit up as electricity flooded out of it. This was the final attack.

“N-no, wait!” Bacca squealed.

“Take this—Counter Shock!”

I thrust out my right hand, jabbing the crackling thumb into Bacca. The powerful current ran all through Bacca’s liquidized body.

“Gaaahaaaaaaaaah!” he screamed.

Light erupted within the chamber. There was a sound like sizzling meat. And without a word, Bacca toppled off his feet.

“It’s done,” I said to myself.

The fight was over. Now the townspeople would be free of the effects of his Melting Wave. But I wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon, either. I slumped to the floor and exhaled with relief.

A motion in the corner of my eye drew my attention to Wolf, who was conscious again and coming in my direction. But I realized he wasn’t walking toward me. The old man knelt next to the unconscious Bacca and took a knife out of his pocket. Then he held it up, blade down, over Bacca’s chest.

“Don’t.” I reached out and grabbed his arm before he could follow through.

“Let go, Law,” Wolf growled.

“You’re going to kill him?”

“I am.”

“He’s completely knocked out. There’s no need to go further.”

“This is my responsibility. Both twenty years ago and today, Bacca put the town and its people in danger. I have to pay the price for that. Now let go of me.”

“I won’t.” I held on.

I didn’t know what Wolf was thinking. His guilt, his agony, his pain—I didn’t know the depth of any of them. And yet I couldn’t stop thinking about one thing.

“You’re his family,” I said. I vowed to myself that I would not let go of Wolf’s arm under any circumstances. “No matter how far he’s sunk, how depraved he’s become, Bacca’s still your son. That’s reason enough not to do it. The man who saved my life was killed by his own brother. I don’t want to see family kill family ever again.”

Wolf said nothing, and I didn’t add anything else. Eventually, the knife slid out of his fingers. Wolf put his hands to his face and began to shed quiet tears. It was the first time I’d ever seen him weep.

“Law! Wolf!”

Just as the old man’s tears dried up, the other three came stumbling into the room.

“You guys look like hell,” I said.

“Yeah, you’re not so great yourself,” Bepo laughed.

“I wish you could’ve seen me go!” Shachi added.

“I’m so glad we all made it!” Penguin said, beaming. The outcome of their fight was clear.

“We’ve won,” I said, and we all exchanged high fives.

Our meeting was followed by a whirlwind of activity. The townspeople came back to their senses and rushed to the temple. With Rudd’s help, they tied up Bacca and Boakeno in ropes and chains.

“You’ve really saved us,” Rudd said, eyeing me.

“Whatever. It was just a whim,” I explained.

A few hours later, the Navy arrived at the temple and took Bacca and Boakeno away. Then the battle was truly over. But that didn’t mean it was time to launch right into a celebration. First, all five of us were seen at the hospital and had to stay for a full week of recovery. We didn’t get to indulge in any fun or partying—the doctor knew we were likely to start goofing around if we were together, so on his orders, we all had separate rooms. That made it extremely boring.

But it was time well spent for me. I considered a great many things while I was alone in my room. What do I want now? What should I do? Being forced to think for a week helped me come to an important decision.

“Woo-hoo! Finally home again!” Penguin gushed.

After a week in the hospital, Rudd escorted us home.

“Things will be back to normal!” Bepo exclaimed.

“Yeah…” I murmured. Then I turned to Wolf. “Hey, old man.”

“What do you want? Are you hungry?”

“No, I just wanted to talk with you for a minute. Do you have time?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Wolf said.

Wolf and I left the house and walked to a nearby clearing. A light fall of snow was coming down, and the air was bitingly cold.

“Three years,” Wolf said. “First there was you, then three more brats… It’s brought a lot of noise and chaos into my life.”

“Heh. That’s what helping people gets you—more trouble.”

“But I’ve enjoyed our time together,” Wolf reminisced. “It’s been many, many years since I gathered with companions every night for my evening meal.”

“Why are you getting all sappy now?”

“Because you’re about to leave the island, Law,” Wolf said, shocking me into silence. “Listen,” he went on. “I’ve been watching out for you since you were a little pipsqueak. I know what it looks like when you’ve made up your mind, and when you take me outside to have a little talk, I understand well enough that you’ve got something important to discuss.”

“Old man.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m going out to sea,” I told him. “I’m going to be a pirate. And as a pirate, I’ll gain strength and experience, and I’ll make Cora’s wish come true. I won’t be like Bacca. I’m going to be a pirate in a way that stays true to my values. And I won’t disappoint you, either.”

“I see,” the old man said thoughtfully.

“You’re not arguing against it,” I urged him.

“The world of pirates is a scary one,” he finally said. “The seas are wild, the weather is unpredictable, you’ll often lack food and water, you’ll face deadly foes, and you’ll argue with your companions. Many a promising young pirate has lost their way in the face of these challenges…like Bacca. If you’re aware of all these things and you’re set on going through with it anyway, I won’t stand in your way.”

Wolf spoke to me gently, like a bird encouraging a young chick out of the nest.

“I’ve gained so much from your help and care, old man,” I told him. “I’ve made real friends. You taught me the joy of life. But I know that even so I’ve got sorrow inside of me, a dark history. My hatred of Doflamingo and my desire to see Cora’s wish come true are urging me to take action.”

“When you let hatred and sadness into your heart, they don’t just go away. I’ve lived in agony for twenty years, so I would know,” Wolf responded quietly.

“I had a feeling that I couldn’t keep going like this. I had an idea that someday in the future, I would go to Dressrosa. But fighting with Bacca made me realize that I want to know what true freedom is. I need to understand the meaning of freedom that Cora was trying to tell me about. So that’s why I’m leaving for the sea now. I think it’s what I need to do.”

For a while we sat there in the grass and said nothing. I watched the snow fall silently and pile up on the ground.

“When are you going to tell the others?” Wolf asked.

“I’ll do it tonight. I don’t know how they’ll react. But I think I’ll ask if they want to come along.”

“When will you leave?”

“In a week. There’s still some stuff to be done on the island. I need to say my proper goodbyes to the folks in town, like the doctor and Rudd.”

“You won’t miss us?” Wolf asked, turning away. “You like that town. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t feel anything about it. But wallowing in sentimentality will slow me from doing what I need to do with my life.”

“That’s true,” Wolf agreed. “It’s getting cold out. Let’s head back.”

“Hey,” I stopped him.

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever wish…you could be a pirate again?”

“I’m staying here. At the end of the day, I like this island and the town. This life I’ve got of working on my inventions out here and going into town every now and then suits me. I’ll leave the pirating adventures to you kids. Ha ha!”

Wolf walked off with a spring in his step. I picked up my pace to follow him.

It seemed like there was more I should have said. But though I thought about it until our walk ended, I couldn’t find the right words.

That night, when we were in our room after dinner, I told the others about my plan. I expected them to be shocked, but I was surprised by how well they took it.

“We could tell there was something on your mind lately. I’m a little surprised that you’re going for the pirate life, but I’m not completely shocked,” Bepo said.

“I’m leaving the island in a week. So my question is, what do you guys want to do?” I asked, as casually as I could manage. “I’m not forcing you to do anything. You could stay here and have dinner every night with the old man, working your jobs in town. But…if I’m being honest, having you guys around would be a…huge help…” I thought I was being slick, but I really stumbled over my words. Apparently the lines I’d rehearsed in my mind were a lot more embarrassing out loud than I realized.

“I’m going with you! I want to go out to sea!” enthused Bepo after a brief pause. “I’ll stick with you, Law. I was thinking that I’d study navigation, get better at fighting, and then someday I’d go looking for my brother, but I’m so weak-willed that I know I’d never make the decision to get on with it on my own. So this is my time! I’m going with you, Law! I want to accomplish my desires.”

I chuckled a little. It felt good to hear Bepo reveal his innermost thoughts to me.

“I’m in, too!” said Shachi.

“Me too!” added Penguin. “We were heading down a rough path after our parents died, but thanks to you and Wolf taking care of us, our lives are so much better now. And hearing you talk about your plans made me excited! Just thinking about what might be waiting for us outside of this island, on the other side of the sea, makes my heart pound! I’m coming with you, Law.”

“I agree with Penguin,” said Shachi. “When we finally won that fight against Boakeno, it felt like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It was terrifying, and we were one wrong step away from death, but it made me realize that I can achieve great things if I try hard enough. So I want to go on an adventure. With you, and Penguin, and Bepo. I want to feel alive that same way again!”

The words they said seemed like they came from the heart. I had no choice but to take their feelings at face value.

“Then here’s to our crew,” I said simply.

“What are you going to do for a boat?” Penguin asked.

“I’ll ask around in town.”

“If we’re in the market for one, we might as well buy a big huge ship! One that holds like a hundred people!” Penguin enthused.

“We don’t have the money for that. We’re leaving with just four. A small boat will do fine,” I insisted.

From there, we argued about our ideal pirate ship.

“But, Law,” Shachi said to me quietly, “this means Wolf will be all by his lonesome.”

“Yeah…but that’s just how it goes. He has his own goals to accomplish. Saying goodbye is a part of life.”

“I guess you’re right…” he murmured.

Despite my own assurances, I too felt a nagging regret. I didn’t want to let it hang over my head. So I went to Wolf’s room and told him right then that we were all leaving together.

Wolf just said, “Oh,” and nodded. I went back to our room and went to sleep without giving it any more thought.

For the week after that, we continued with our usual daily routines. We woke up and ate breakfast together, then Wolf left for his lab and we went into town. We explained the situation to our employers and worked as hard as we could to show our appreciation for their support. Then we went back home at night, goofed around and had fun like we always did, and went to sleep when we got tired.

Throughout that time, no one mentioned anything about pirating. The closest we got was when I mentioned that I’d purchased a cheap wooden ship to sail in. Wolf, Bepo, Penguin, Shachi, and I laughed and chatted and bickered over silly things like usual, enjoying the time we had left to the fullest.

The day before we were set to leave, Wolf summoned us to his lab. We had completed our final shifts at work, said our goodbyes to the people who’d given us those jobs, and then headed for the lab.

“There you are,” Wolf said.

“Why’d you ask us here? Oh! Let me guess… You’re going to perform some weird experiment on us before we can go to sea…” Penguin speculated.

“You fool! What kind of mad scientist do you take me for? Now stop with your joking and come here!”

Wolf led us down the stairs and into the cave. When he turned on the lights, the yellow submarine was there, just like it was the last time. Despite having blasted up through solid earth and into the temple, the hull still looked pristine.

Then I noticed that one thing looked very different about it. On its side was a large skull and bones—the symbol of a pirate.

“Wha!” I gasped, taken aback. “What does this mean, Junker?”

“You were up late last night,” Wolf said, “sitting at the table and talking about which symbol you’d use for your flag.”

“H-how did you know?”

“Hmph. You think I wouldn’t notice all the pages of crumpled-up sketches in the trash? It was obvious. I also couldn’t miss the page that had big red writing on it saying ‘Final Design.’”

“Aw, sure, but why did you paint that symbol on the submarine?” I demanded.

Wolf grinned at me. “A pirate ship’s gotta have its Jolly Roger, right?”

“Huh?”

“Law, Bepo, Shachi, Penguin, I want you to have this ship,” Wolf said. “I designed and built it in case I wanted to go out on another adventure someday. But I want you to use it instead. I’d rather that you take it along as part of a dream I couldn’t fulfill on my own. That way my idea can live on through your adventures.”

“You’re sure?” I asked him.

“Hmph! If I heard that you went out on a wooden ship and got yourself drowned, I’d sleep badly for weeks! But it’s also on a whim. It’s just a thing I want to do,” he said.

It was a favor that was much too large for me to ever repay. I didn’t know how I was going to make it up to him, but I decided to accept Wolf’s generosity.

“All right, fine. It’s not nice of me to refuse the last wish of a dying old man.”

“Hmph. I’ll live for another fifty years, brat! You boys just make sure you don’t wind up as fish food on your voyage!” Wolf said, laughing in that distinct way of his.

Shachi, Bepo, and Penguin got into the submarine, their eyes sparkling.

“This is the greatest masterpiece of a genius inventor, so you’d better treat her well. Master the use of the Invincible Flower Stamp on your way to being great pira—”

“Listen up! We’re calling this the Polar Tang!” I said, talking over Wolf to reveal the name I’d come up with.

“That’s awesome!”

“Wow!”

“What a great name!”

They all loved it. Except for Wolf.

“How dare you! You can’t give my Invincible Flower Stamp such a frivolous name! Oh…whatever. It’s your ship, you can do what you like with it. Hmph…the Polar Tang. I guess it’s not such a bad name coming from some snot-nosed kid.”

He smiled, both resigned and secretly pleased.

“We’ll make good use of it, Junker.”

“You’d better. Show the world what a genius I am,” he said. We held out our fists and bumped knuckles.

Then it was time for us to leave. I opened the curtains to see that the sun was out, and there was no snow. The perfect day to head out to sea.

The townsfolk were planning to come out and see us off. We went to the lab and got into the Polar Tang, got some lessons from Wolf about how to pilot it, then docked the sub at Pleasure Town.

From there, we said our final goodbyes. To my surprise, the one who cried the most was Rudd.

“Waaaah! I can’t believe you boys have grown up so much! You’re going out on your own big adventure now! I don’t care if you’re going to be pirates, I’m just so proud of youu!” he sobbed.

I had no idea that he was such a weepy guy. Then again, there was so much that I still didn’t know about this town. There were so many things we could do—fun things, funny things, things to learn, things to say. But right now, we were leaving. We were charting a course for the wide open sea, each for our own reasons.

“All right, folks. It’s time for us to go,” I said, and we headed for the deck of the Polar Tang. Wolf planned to stay on the land among the townspeople and watch the rest of us go. It was time to say goodbye.

“So long, old man. We owe you so much. Live long for us!” I called out from the deck. Bepo and Shachi and Penguin added their own messages of gratitude.

Is this really it? Something was wrong. The fog around my heart wasn’t going away. There had to be more words to say…

“I’m going to start up the ship,” Bepo called out from behind me.

“All right.”

Slowly, the submarine began to drift away, distancing itself from the shore. I saw that Wolf broke into a smile.

“Law! Penguin! Shachi! Bepo! It’s been a blast,” he said casually.

And when I heard that, for the first time ever, I said it…

“Wolf!”

I called my friend by his name.

“Law, did you just…”

“Of course I’m going to miss you! You, specifically! There’s no way I can leave and not tell you how much I’ll miss you!”

I didn’t have pride or shame at that moment. There was something I needed to say to him; words that the Junker needed to hear from me.

“Thank you, Wolf! Thank you for always, always showing me kindness! Even if we’re apart and I never see you again, you’re still the best friend I could ever have!”

My voice cracked and faded at the end. I hadn’t intended for my eyes to get all wet.

Bepo burst out of the control room. The other three had their heads down and were holding their fingers over their eyes.

“Go on, you brats! Go and learn about the world! Go and learn about freedom! I had the time of my life…living with you!” Wolf called out. He thrust his fist into the air, and we lifted ours in response. Then we turned our backs on him. We wouldn’t turn around again.

“Go into the control room and get us going, Bepo,” I said.

“All right.”

The ship began moving again. Before long, the shore was out of sight, and we were pirates. In the days ahead, we would have to survive on our own and find the things we needed on our own.

As I was heading into the sub’s interior with Shachi and Penguin, a symbol popped into my head. “Heart,” I said.

“Huh?” the other two replied.

That was it. It had to be our crew’s name. The love I received from Cora. The kindness Wolf showed to us. The trust I had in my friends. All of these things were represented by the word “heart.”

“We’re the Heart Pirates!”

It was a clear day. The wind was at our backs. There was no need for any more tears on this greatest of days. We were facing forward and moving onward, right now, with nothing but belief in the radiant freedom that lay ahead.

Epilogue

In the early morning light, as the swallows’ calls began to ring out, a lone old man worked his body loose on the shore. He stretched all his muscles, starting at the top and working his way down, rolling his shoulders and taking little jumps now and then. He was getting to that age when it is difficult to maintain the full range of motion if you don’t take the time to loosen up every day. He had to be ready; he had a lot to handle on his own.

He woke up at the same time every morning and cooked himself a breakfast of eggs and ham. After exercising outside briefly, he walked to his greenhouse to check on the vegetables he was growing. Once that was taken care of, he headed to his underground lab, where he kept himself busy inventing until the sun went down.

Sometimes he created something entirely new, and sometimes he busied himself with improving an older invention. Thanks to the improvements he’d made a year ago to his Super Cleaner, Version Thirteen, he no longer needed to spend any time cleaning. With the press of a single button, it would clean his entire house for him without leaving a speck of dust behind. He was very pleased with this one; it worked just the way a genius’s invention should.

When he got home after the lab, he made dinner and sat down at the table by himself. Some folks in the nearby town had once inquired if he’d like a cat or some other pet to keep him company, but he wasn’t interested. In his mind, there was a certain pleasure to a quiet table. He washed his dishes, settled down for a nice bath, then turned out the lights and went to bed.

Once a week, he went into town to buy food and materials for his inventions. Everyone liked the old man, and a little crowd gathered each time he made an appearance. Many suggested, out of the goodness of their hearts, that he move into town, but he always declined the offer.

The man lived a very peaceful life. Of course, it wouldn’t be true to say that he was never lonely. There had been times in his past when his table was lively. He’d had meals that were noisy and raucous, and warm and pleasant.

Many things had changed over the years. The differences in his body were the most apparent; his muscles weren’t as strong, and he felt pain in his back more often. He never missed his morning and evening stretches. But the old man never lamented this or wasted his time moping. If he let it get to him, they’d just laugh at him.

After one morning’s exercise session, he was heading home when a man on a bicycle came riding up. He carried a bundle of paper in his hand, and he was shouting for the old man with great excitement.

“Hey, Wolf! You won’t believe what’s happened!” the man called out.

“What is it, Rudd?” the old man replied. “It’s too early for you to make such a racket.”

“Take a look at this! It’s the newspaper! There are bounty posters right on the front page!”

“Hmph.” The old man grumbled, taking the paper from the panting man. His expression didn’t change, but he moved quickly, adjusting his glasses so that he could get a good look at the picture in the newspaper.

Ah. There they are, he thought.

The article could be summed up pretty quickly: There was a group of nasty pirates who had settled in the North Blue in recent years, kidnapping youths and selling them off as slaves. They moved often, so the Navy was unable to find their hideout, and they were also ruthless fighters who couldn’t be defeated. There had seemed to be no resolution to the situation, until recently. A group calling themselves the Heart Pirates showed up at the nasty pirate crew’s HQ and completely obliterated the pirates, freeing all their prisoners. The Navy came by later and returned the freed prisoners to their families. The only comment the captain of the Heart Pirates would make was “I did it on a whim,” before departing in a submarine.

Featured on the front page of the paper was a picture of the two crews locked in combat. One of the captured youngsters had found a camera nearby and thought to snap a picture. It showed a young man with a fur hat and a large tattoo on his chest attacking an enemy with a violent look on his face. You didn’t need to read the article to understand how strong the young man was; the picture was enough. The image included others who seemed to belong to the same crew—some wore hats. There was a very large man, a woman, and even a polar bear in the group. Despite being outnumbered by their enemies, the group was fighting bravely and not giving an inch.

“It’s a great picture. Really shows you how proud and strong they’ve become. Oh, thinking about how far they’ve come from where they started, I just…” Rudd, the man on the bicycle, started to cry.

“Oh, enough with the weeping! It’s not a tearjerker!” said Wolf.

“I-I’m sorry…but aren’t you happy, Wolf? Just knowing that they’re doing well out there?”

“Hmph! I was never worried about them in the first place! I trained those kids, after all. They’d better not go around being defeated by inferior pirates. Plus, becoming a pirate means risking your life. If they chose that life and died, it would mean they just weren’t meant for it.”

“That’s a rather cynical way to think about it,” Rudd mused, “but not surprising, coming from you.”

“Oh, shut up. If you’re done here, get back to your work. I’m a busy man.”

“All right, all right. Stop by the station again the next time you come to town,” the man said, then swung his leg back over the bike and returned to where he’d come from.

After he had gone, the old man examined the paper again, this time excitedly poring over the front page. He took a close look at the bounty poster, where he saw the smiling face of a very familiar boy—no, a young man now.

Quite a long time had passed. It had been many seasons since he saw the youth, though he wasn’t keeping track of the years. All he knew was that those noisy days felt like the distant past now.

He remembered everything: Finding the boy in the cave; the day when the boy brought a polar bear back to the house; the time that boy asked two runaway orphans to be his followers. The old man remembered when the boy had saved his life after an accident with one of his inventions. He remembered the time they took a submarine to launch a sneak attack on some pirates who were marauding the town, and he remembered that he and the boy and his followers had risked their lives to win that battle. Finally, the old man remembered that the boy had stopped him from killing his own son, who was one of the marauding pirates. He remembered it all and could bring the memories back to his mind in vivid color.

As the man examined the other bounty posters, snow began to fall. The flakes shone especially bright in the sunlight. The old man approached the water’s edge and looked across the sea. He saw them on the horizon: The young men traveling vast oceans on a yellow submarine. One wrong move could mean the end of all of their lives, but they still smiled and laughed.

Somewhere out on the sea, his friends were alive, and they were fighting for the thing that he himself wasn’t able to reach. The thought of it warmed the old man and gave him courage. A renewed energy to face the challenges that awaited him in his own life suddenly coursed through his veins. He had to keep up with them; after all, he still had a job to do—keep creating the world’s most genius inventions. It was odd—his body had felt heavy earlier, but now it was light and full of vitality, like he was young again.

The loneliness was long gone. Images kept coming in the old man’s imagination: The young man with the tattoos, desperately trying to heal someone with a terrible injury. The young man with the casquette cap, cutting the hair of the man in the penguin hat and humming happily. The large polar bear, steering the ship through a powerful storm.

This was all he needed. If they were living their lives as they should, he couldn’t ask for anything more. But someday…perhaps he’d see them again.

“Can you hear me?!” he bellowed to the sea. “Nothing wrong over here! I’m leading a very fulfilling life! How about you?! Do you have smiles on your faces?! Are you proud of what you’re doing?! Are you any closer to true freedom?!”

There was no response, but the old man looked very satisfied. He believed the day would come when his friends would find true freedom and return to him with full smiles and empty stomachs to eat dinner around his table once again.

“Hmph…look at me, getting all sappy,” he muttered, and took off for the house with a spring in his step and a smile on his face.

A yellow vessel floated in the North Blue, and there was a party happening on deck. A group of people was celebrating and carrying on. Among them was a muscled young man wearing a fur hat, a man in a casquette cap, a man in a penguin hat, and a talking polar bear, who stood together and chowed down on gleaming hunks of meat. The meat had belonged to a massive crocodile over sixty feet long that had attacked them at the last island they’d visited. Any normal person would have been quickly overwhelmed by such a creature, but this crew had easily bested the beast.

In the midst of the feast, a flock of swallows flew overhead. At the same time, the four of them thought they heard a voice.

“Hey, did you just hear something?” asked the young man with the fur cap.

“You too, Captain? It was like a voice coming from the sea…” replied the one in the casquette cap.

The polar bear picked up a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon. “I don’t think there are any enemies nearby…but I definitely heard something,” he said, keeping his lenses trained on the sea.

“It sounded kind of familiar to me,” added the young man in the penguin hat, whose mouth was curling into a grin.

Catching on, the young man they all called “Captain” grinned in kind. “Yeah, me too.”

As the swallows flitted past, chirping away, the young man thought back on his past. Since his decision to become a pirate and an adventurer, a good deal of time and distance had passed. He didn’t usually have time to sit around reflecting on the past—he was the captain of a pirate crew, and he had to lead them and be the first one to rush into battle. Every moment was a battle for survival.

The crew had become infamous, and now many of its members had their own bounties, a fact that made the captain proud. Of course he would continue this voyage with his crew, braving new dangers and challenges. He couldn’t be naive and think about how things could’ve been.

Yet there were certain memories he couldn’t let himself forget: The man who had rescued him and taught him about love, and the old man who randomly came into his life when he needed it most and soon became his friend. The time he spent with those two men would always remain a source of warmth in his heart.

Perhaps as a result of the sound of the swallows overhead, the young man thought back on the old man from an earlier part of his life. Was he still doing well? Was he pushing himself too hard? Was he so busy inventing that he forgot to eat? Was he still getting along with the townsfolk? He had so many questions.

Man, I wanna see him again, the young man thought to himself. He had considered going back to visit the old man on a number of occasions. How much fun would it be to head to his island with the whole crew and have a great big feast together? There were times when the thought was very tempting.

But this was not the time. What he needed to do now was not to return to the warmth and comfort of the past—he had an enemy to defeat, a country to save, and a vast sea to travel with his crewmates. The most important thing for him now was to look ahead and keep moving forward.

Plus, he still hadn’t figured out yet what his true freedom was. If he went to see the old man without achieving that, the old man would just chew him out.

“But if I take too long, the old man’s gonna kick the bucket,” he muttered to himself quietly.

“You say something, Captain?” the polar bear asked.

“Hey, Bepo. Are you confident in your navigation skills yet?”

“U-umm…y-yeah… Totally! Who cares about storms and tsunamis? I’ve been studying every day so I can handle it!”

“I see,” the captain responded. “Then it’s about time.”

“Time for what?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, the young man stood and headed to the prow. The crew watched him go and paused their drinking.

“All right, people!” the young man shouted. “I’ve decided on our next destination!”

A murmur rippled through the crew. Some were worried that it might be somewhere dangerous, and some were excited about the adventures that could await them there.

“So where is it, Captain?” demanded the young man in the casquette cap, grinning.

“The Grand Line,” he declared.

“Whaaat?!” the crew exclaimed. After all, they knew full well how dangerous it was to go to that place. But their concerns evaporated quickly, and soon the whole group looked resolute.

“Let’s go!”

“Yeah, I’m pumped for this!”

“We’ll support you, whatever you decide, Captain! No use being scared now!” they roared in approval.

Do you hear that, Cora? This is my crew—our crew.

“Hoist the sails! Confirm our heading! Heart Pirates…move out!” the captain called.

“Yes, sir!” his crew responded.

The ship sailed on. A yellow vessel, bearing the dreams of its crew, cutting through the powerful winds and waves. A young man standing on the deck, staring at the endless expanse of blue and smiling to himself.

He imagined the fierce trials ahead of them, as well as the delight and exhilaration of the adventures to come. These were the experiences he needed to have to honor the memory of his savior. He had faith that on the other end of all of these experiences, true freedom awaited him.

“Just watch, Cora. I’m going to fulfill that dream of yours,” he said softly. His voice vanished under the sound of the waves.

But there was still a long way to go before the dream was fulfilled.

Eiichiro Oda began his manga career at the age of 17, when his one-shot cowboy manga Wanted! won second place in the coveted Tezuka manga awards. Oda went on to work as an assistant to some of the biggest manga artists in the industry, including Nobuhiro Watsuki, before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists. His pirate adventure One Piece, which debuted in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1997, quickly became one of the most popular manga in Japan.

Shusei Sakagami is a literary writer whose work includes Ojibi no Alice, which was published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha. His piece Time Bound, Sugumoto Haruo Torn Apart earned him a spot as finalist for New Writer Prize for the Japanese literary magazine Gunzo. His other published work has appeared in the Japanese literary magazine Eureka.