Author's Note:
This chapter contains a fair amount of fabrication, or rather, some pretty forceful alterations. What's that? It was already like that last time? Hahaha! ...So please be warned if that's not your thing.
---
Long, long ago, in a time no one could say when.
A story of a certain small village in a certain country, on a certain island in a certain sea.
In this current Great Pirate Era, Devil Fruit Ability Users are feared as beings who wield tremendous power. But in ages past, in a certain era, things were not so.
In a time when Devil Fruits were still poorly understood, Ability Users who wielded powers clearly beyond those of any human were called Devils themselves, hunted down and persecuted.
Of course, this was limited to certain eras and certain regions. It was not the case everywhere in the world.
In such an era, two Ability Users were born.
One was a girl who could transform her body into paper.
One was a girl who could lead people into a world of dreams through song.
The two were the closest of friends. Even amid discrimination and persecution, they encouraged each other and lived strong.
The Paper Girl loved writing all kinds of stories. She also composed songs for the Song Girl and wrote out Sheet Music for her.
The Song Girl loved singing more than anything. She loved seeing the smiles of people made happy by her songs. And of course, the Paper Girl was one of her most cherished fans.
But then one day, some of the villagers went on a rampage, declaring they could no longer allow the Devils to roam free, and they killed the Paper Girl.
The Paper Girl, known to be unkillable by beating or cutting, was locked inside a house that was then set ablaze. She was burned to death.
Along with her, every story she had ever written, every piece of Sheet Music, was reduced to ash.
All except the Song Girl, who by chance had not been in the house at the time.
When the Song Girl learned what had happened, she was consumed by boundless rage and despair.
In that moment, a song welled up naturally from the deepest recesses of her heart.
The girl gave voice to it.
This girl, who had always, always sung for the happiness and smiles of others, for the first time in her life surrendered herself to sorrow and hatred, fury and despair, and sang.
The grief of having her dearest friend taken from her.
The rage toward those who took her.
The hatred for a world that would not accept them.
The despair that those joyful times would never return.
The song imbued with all of these took form, emerged from the dream world, and appeared in reality.
The incarnation of destruction and slaughter that later ages would call the Demon King... Tot Musica was born.
The Demon King did not stop at that village. It destroyed the entire country.
And just as it began to move to destroy the world itself, from the burned remains of the two girls' home, several sheets of paper fluttered out like dancing things, soaring through the air... and were drawn into the Demon King.
The Demon King froze in its tracks... and vanished.
What remained were four fresh sheets of Sheet Music.
Songs, music, are composed and performed according to Sheet Music.
Therefore, if the Demon King was born from song, then the thing to seal it, the wedge to control it, could be nothing other than Sheet Music.
Perhaps it was a miracle wrought by the lingering will of the Paper Girl, the little of her that remained. Because she did not want the Song Girl's songs to hurt anyone else.
And so, the Demon King born from a girl's despair through the power of the Sing-Sing Fruit was sealed away by a girl's wish through the power of the Paper-Paper Fruit.
The place of sealment was inside the Uta World. In other words, the Sing-Sing Fruit and the very existence of its Ability User served as the box of the seal.
The song of ToTMusica was the key.
The Sheet Music on which it was written acted as a lock, or chains, restraining and holding the Demon King in place across both the real world and the Uta World.
Therefore, simply breaking the seal required nothing more than a Sing-Sing Fruit Ability User.
However, the Paper-Paper Fruit was originally involved in this seal as well.
And so the Demon King, through the Sheet Music, through that paper, was able to interfere with the Paper-Paper Fruit's Ability User... and with the power that influence granted in limited measure, it was able to draw Sue and Uta into the Uta World.
But at the same time, by interfering with Sue, the Demon King touched a fragment of her Experience, memories, and consciousness, and...
The Demon King saw in them the same thing the Paper Girl of old once had: hope, in the form of stories written on paper.
For an incomprehensibly long time, the Demon King had operated on nothing but despair, hatred, and the impulse to destroy.
No matter what it saw, no matter what anyone said to it, it had no ears to listen... or rather, it was practically devoid of the capacity to hear or feel such things in the first place.
To that Demon King, through the power of the Paper-Paper Fruit, through the Sheet Music... for the first time, something reached it. Something resonated.
As a result...
...a whole lot of things glitched out.
***
"...is apparently what happened."
"""Uhh..."""
Yeah, uhh... the story so far!
So basically, from the second night onward, getting pulled into the Uta World was the same as before, but... the situations kept getting weirder and more unique.
That didn't change on the third day, or the fourth. In fact, Tot Musica started branching out into more and more genres.
It honestly felt like being summoned into some VR game world. All that tension from the beginning just evaporated somewhere.
Let's see, the dream on the second night was Super-Tennis and the Broadway Trial...
The third day was like a fishing game, competing to see who could land the bigger catch...
Since we were doing it on a ship, tuna and marlins kept popping up left and right. I hate to admit it, but it was fun.
The fourth day was a cooking showdown. Where it even learned this I have no idea, but watching that thing, looking the way it does, wielding a wok like a Chinese cuisine master and whipping up perfectly separated fried rice left me absolutely floored.
Well, I managed to hold my own thanks to the skills I'd honed as a Mom satisfying my daughters' appetites.
The fifth day was finally combat. After steeling my resolve, it took days and days before we finally got to actual combat.
But it wasn't the head-on showdown I'd been expecting. It was more like... a fleet battle simulation? Commanding multiple warships, firing cannons... It was an exquisitely anticlimactic letdown.
I mean, aside from the first day, there hadn't been a single proper fight. Was that thing really the Demon King of destruction and slaughter!?
...That's what I was thinking, so I seized a momentary opening in the dream and used Heaven's Door on Tot Musica. And that's how I read out everything I just described.
Everyone has their history, I guess... well, it's not really a person, that thing.
Everything that had happened in the Uta World up to that point was based on worldbuilding from stories I'd written in some form or another as the Pirate Literary Master.
Apparently, the Demon King, having touched my inner world and memories through the Sheet Music and the Paper-Paper Fruit's Powers, had developed an interest in the various stories I'd penned.
The result was that destruction and slaughter took a backseat while it... just... how did this happen...
I mean, sure, maybe the peaceful route is fine? But I just couldn't shake this feeling of "You're going THERE!?" Like reading a spin-off with an absurdly forced plot, where you're thinking 'Is this really the same Original Work?' 'It's the same title in name only.' 'This is what happens when you ride a popular franchise's coattails and crash.' 'Nobody asked you to go this far.'
If this were a novel, I think it'd be pretty divisive.
...If I were to forcibly frame it in a serious way, though?
Among the memories I'd read, there was one about the Paper Girl originally loving to write stories, same as me... maybe that's the key?
The Demon King was originally a being born of despair and hatred.
It wasn't that it preferred those things. It simply didn't know any other emotions, so those were all it could express.
But the memories of stories inside my head almost always had feelings of happiness and joy attached to them. I mean, I fundamentally love happy endings. Friendship, effort, victory? Love 'em.
In fact, a lot of my stories are specifically about accepting or overcoming exactly that kind of despair and hatred.
From the Demon King's perspective, it had only ever acted that way because it knew nothing else... and from me, from my stories, it sensed something different from the despair and hatred it could offer. Something close to what the Paper Girl once had.
So to understand it, it changed its approach.
It was reproducing the stories from inside my head one after another, fighting through them. Desperately trying to learn something it didn't possess.
If you trace it all back, that hatred and despair... undeniably came from how deeply the Song Girl cared about the Paper Girl.
If that feeling remains inside Tot Musica, even in the twisted form of "I can never forgive any of this," then... it doesn't seem strange at all that it might want to know. That it might want to understand.
'...Tot Musica, in other words, isn't so much a Demon King with Evil... as one that has nothing but Evil. A being that was practically never taught any emotion besides Evil, never taught how to interact with people... is what this means...'
Until now, there had only been the Sing-Sing Fruit's power, only the key to breaking the seal, so all it could do was rampage according to the only emotions it had.
But this time was different. The power of the Paper-Paper Fruit, the only thing capable of interfering with Tot Musica, of delivering words to it, was here. So there might, just might, be the option of teaching something to a Tot Musica that couldn't listen before. Right now, we found ourselves unexpectedly standing in exactly that situation.
If that was the case, then what we needed to do was...
"...Uta-chan."
"?"
"Change of plans. We're going to keep playing along with Tot Musica's games for as long as it takes, until it's satisfied. It'll probably take time and effort, but... I think that's the surest way to change the situation we're in."
"Wha... Whaaaat!?"
It was the same as dealing with a child, basically.
It couldn't do something because it didn't know how.
If you demand something from someone who was never taught it, they can't do it if they don't even know what it is.
Then just teach them.
Right now, our voices, our feelings, could reach it.
Through the Sheet Music, Tot Musica was listening, was able to listen, right now.
Even if you're going to scold or punish, you teach first.
A Demon King born from Evil, subjected to Evil, capable of nothing but directing Evil outward.
In those eyes of pure Evil alone... I wanted to see something different kindle there.
More than anything...
'You know... I just really love happy endings.'
A brat who, because it knew nothing else, could only hate everything and rampage, who couldn't even suffer properly... had finally gained some awareness and was trying to learn about something it didn't have.
It was turning its gaze toward all sorts of things, reaching out its hand.
Then let's take that hand.
Originally, this was all about ensuring peace of mind and a good night's sleep for me and Uta-chan. No, that hadn't changed. It still hadn't changed, but... let's add something on top of that. Let's do something about this hopelessly rigid, estimated-several-hundred-years-old tragedy while we're at it.
My daughters were all well-behaved, easy kids who never gave me trouble, but hey, dealing with a brat like this once in a while isn't so bad!
"Ahh, there she goes, getting all fired up in a totally different direction, Mom."
"That's just how Mama is, y'know. Same as when she helped us... she just can't leave a struggling kid alone, or like, she's a natural caretaker without even realizing it."
"Aye, I know the feeling... once Mother gets like this, there's no stopping her. All of us were saved by this Mother of ours, so we know it well."
"In that case, we have no choice but to go along with it... very well, let us do what little we can."
"Right. If this is the kind of getting-dragged-along that's peaceful, or leads to peace, then it's exactly what we'd want."
My daughters sure had plenty to say... but it seemed they were on board to help.
All right, it's decided! Time for some proper discipline and education... let's do this!
"...By the way, Iris, I have a little question."
"? What is it, Father?"
"Hypothetically, just hypothetically, okay? If we could turn Tot Musica into one of the Homies in the Uta World and give it a cute-girl personification... its existence has lasted several centuries, but mentally it's immature and still lacking in knowledge and emotion, so... what do you think the odds are that we'd get something in the legal-loli or loli-grandma category?"
"...!? Wh-what imagination... as expected of Father...!"
...Oh. Right. I had a pair of equally dangerous idea-having brats right here too, parent and child both. Noted. Keeping an eye on them.
To be continued...