The artificial Sky Island archipelago "Merveille," home base of the Golden Lion Pirates.
At roughly the center of the Winter Island positioned at its heart stood a mansion serving as the Golden Lion Pirates' Hideout.
Alice and the others returned to that mansion, not through the lavishly constructed main gate used for normal comings and goings, but through what could only be called the "back entrance," used for covert entry and exit.
They brought Bartholomew Kuma with them, his weight effectively reduced to Zero through gravity Reversal, making him easy to carry. Or rather, easy to haul.
After temporarily entrusting Kuma to her two close aides with a "Take him to Grandma's Lab!" Alice headed deeper into the Hideout.
She was going to report her return and mission completion to the mother and grandfather who should be waiting there: Sue and Shiki.
It didn't take long. Alice walked down the familiar hallway and arrived at Shiki's room, but she never got to knock on the door.
The instant she raised her hand, the door swung inward with a click. Her hand cut magnificently through empty air.
Nobody had done it on purpose. Pure coincidence.
The person who appeared from beyond that door was her most beloved mother.
"Oh, welcome back, Alice. That was fast. You're home already?"
"Ah, I'm back, Mom. The errand wrapped up pretty quickly, and Luffy's group gathered faster than expected too. They set sail into the sea without a hitch, so they're probably at Fish-Man Island by now. Is Grandpa here?"
"He is, but..."
Sue glanced back over her shoulder.
There sat Shiki at his office desk, as always, doing his work as "Supreme Advisor," which was to say his work as the de facto ruler of the Golden Lion Pirates.
But his appearance was slightly different from two years ago.
Not enough to notice at a casual glance.
But enough that anyone who knew him would see it clearly upon closer inspection. The Great Pirate Shiki the Golden Lion had grown thinner than before.
No, "haggard" might be the better word.
Perhaps noticing Alice peering in from beyond the door, his eyes met hers.
Immediately after, perhaps about to call out something like "Hey, welcome back," he started to raise his hand, pen still in its grip, in the manner of a casual greeting, and then...
"Hrk, koff koff."
Before words could come, coughs spilled from his mouth.
Not exactly as a substitute for Shiki, but Sue held Alice back and said:
"He seems to be feeling a bit under the weather right now, so... it might be better to come back another time."
"Ehh, ah... got it. Grandpa, I'm back for now, and the mission was a success, okay?"
"Yeah, good work... sorry 'bout that, makin' ya worry."
"It's totally fine, no worries at all! Make sure you take your medicine and get better soon, okay?"
She said that with a bright smile, and together with Sue, closed the door. Without ever having entered Shiki's room.
Left alone, Shiki took several slow, deep breaths, and the coughing subsided quickly.
What came out instead was a long sigh.
Gazing at the door through which his daughter and granddaughter had disappeared, Shiki murmured to no one in particular:
"Get better soon, huh... If it were an illness that could be cured, I'd have gotten better a long time ago."
The words fell quietly into the empty room.
***
Change of scene. We're in Mama's Laboratory now.
After I and Alice left Shiki's room (Alice never actually went in), we arrived to find a moving reunion already underway.
"...Dad... dy...!"
Kuma, still in the same state as when he'd been guarding the Thousand Sunny at Sabaody Archipelago. Injuries and damage exposed all over his body, painfully battered.
Bonney had thrown herself against his chest. His body was too large for her arms to reach around, but she spread them as wide as she could, clinging to him.
Kuma showed no response.
His sense of self already gone, possessing only the consciousness to carry out orders, he was unable to respond to anything.
On top of that, Mama was still using the Mold-Mold Fruit's Powers to suppress Kuma's brain functions.
There was a nonzero chance that some kind of safety mechanism had been installed during the modifications, something like an automatic rampage mode triggering indiscriminate attacks if captured by hostile forces. Until that could be confirmed, they couldn't let him move. Couldn't let him respond.
...Though even if the Mold's control were released, the chances of him moving or responding were... probably nil.
And as for that safety mechanism, Mama had already checked for it using the Op-Op Fruit's Powers.
Mama was reasonably well-versed in the structure of Pacifistas.
The Old Model Pacifistas that Alice had brought back in bulk during the Summit War.
The Prototype Seraphim recovered during the NEO Marine incident.
And several units of "Shirokuma," weapons that the NEO Marines had possessed, apparently Old Model Pacifistas stolen from the Marines and modified into their own fighting force.
Having analyzed every last one of those, scanning and performing a Diagnosis on Kuma's internals, which likely classified as an Old Model, was child's play for Mama.
"So how did it go, Mama?"
"There were several weird devices built into him, so I went ahead and removed the ones I could for now! One of them is probably a self-destruct device, or possibly some kind of emergency shutdown or safety mechanism! I'll take it apart and examine it later!"
"Oh my... even for a 'Weapon,' that's brutal..."
"A self-destruct device...?! Vegapunk, that bastard, how far did he...!"
At those words, Bonney's tear-streaked face twisted with rage. As if sorrow and relief had transmuted directly into fury, she bared an intensity that had shattered past all limits in an instant.
A self-destruct device, huh... well, the World Government would do that, wouldn't they.
"So, Mama... based on what you found, how does it look? Can you fix him?"
"...!"
Bonney immediately pulled back her anger (temporarily, no doubt) and turned to face Mama. Alongside her tears, a light shone in her eyes, clinging desperately to a thread of hope.
Could her beloved father, modified and stripped of his self, unable to even remember her, be restored? Would they restore him?
But the answer that came back was not what she'd hoped for.
"...Honestly speaking, it's impossible!"
"...!!"
The despair and grief that had momentarily receded surged back onto Bonney's face with violent force.
She must have braced herself for this. But even so, being told plainly that "he can't be fixed" was clearly no small shock.
Watching from the side, all any of us could feel was... how painful it was to watch.
No one could find words. Among the daughters, Leona, who was particularly close to Bonney, asked in what amounted to near-parroting:
"Impossible... even for you, Granny? You're an incredible scientist who can not only replicate Pacifistas and Seraphim but even enhance and improve them, and it's still impossible?"
"Well, sure, if you told me to repair or upgrade Kuma as he is now, that'd be easy, but the problem is his consciousness and memories! The brain is one of the most delicate and complex parts of the human body, so forget about tampering with it, even examining it is incredibly difficult!"
Mama said this while climbing Kuma's massive frame like playground equipment and tapping his head.
She was already petite, so clambering onto someone Kuma's height made the size difference absurd. She looked like a doll for playing house, or even smaller.
According to Mama, without understanding exactly what state Kuma was currently in, it would be difficult to even search for a treatment.
The current Kuma was a Human Weapon stripped of personality and memory.
However, his brain functions themselves hadn't deteriorated at all. He still had the ability to properly listen to and obey his "master's" orders, and to think and make judgments on his own at key moments.
Without first understanding how that had been achieved, there was nothing anyone could do.
If it were simply a matter of erasing personality and memory, or implanting false memories, Mama had a few methods in mind.
But to do so without any adverse effect on his other "knowledge" or "judgment," leaving only his functionality as a Human Weapon obedient to the Government and the Celestial Dragons while keeping him operational like this... that should be impossible unless you could freely manipulate the contents of the brain itself.
The skill Vegapunk had demonstrated in pulling this off could only be called remarkable, and at the very least, replicating or understanding it from zero information was beyond Mama's abilities.
"This isn't something you can figure out just by scanning the internal structure! Reproducing it would require research from scratch into the underlying technology, which would take years, maybe even longer! And of course, you'd be burning through test subjects like water the entire time!"
"So what you're saying is, Vegapunk, or whoever it was, the World Government conducted research on that level, or something equivalent, to develop and establish the technology... That's a grim story."
How many sacrifices had been piled up to create Weapons bearing the pleasant-sounding name of "Pacifist"...
Of course, maybe that wasn't the case, and honestly I'd prefer it wasn't, but...
So in summary, even Mama couldn't restore Kuma's personality and memory. It wasn't something as simple as there being some machine in his head sealing them away that could be dismantled like bomb disposal.
Still unable to give up, Bonney pressed on.
"Then what about the surgeon who performed the modifications... Dr. Vegapunk? Could that guy do it?"
"I can only say 'I don't know' about that too! Like I keep saying, we don't know what methods or technology were used to strip away his personality and memory! For all we know, it might not even be something surgical or pharmaceutical!"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Whether it's machinery or drugs, doing something after the fact to an organ as delicate as the brain and causing only the targeted effect is hard to imagine in the first place! Implanting knowledge and memories into a blank slate like Clone Soldiers is one thing, but taking only targeted information from the brain of a human who grew up normally partway through, while keeping everything else running properly... I can't help but think some kind of Powers must have been involved!"
"A Devil Fruit Power, then... I see, that's plausible. It's true that while Pacifista manufacturing is Vegapunk's technology, he wouldn't necessarily perform every step of the process himself. There's ample possibility that someone else was involved in an intermediate step..."
"Especially in this man's case, he's the original for all the Pacifistas. A special existence if there ever was one. It wouldn't be strange if he went through processes not used on the mass-produced models. The problem is, while that possibility exists, we still don't know the method or the culprit..."
Snow and Iris offered their analysis, but ultimately arrived at the same dead end as before.
Seemed like they'd go in circles forever, but at that moment, as if something had clicked, Bonney stood up with a sharp gasp.
Leona, who'd been watching, was a bit startled.
"What's up, Bonney?"
"...That... might actually be my father's own Powers."
"Huh?! Your father, meaning...?"
"Kuma's own Paw-Paw Fruit Powers? Can they do something like that?"
"Yeah... Dad's paw pads can repel, or push out, anything. Not just visible things, but things without form, things you can't even be sure exist."
Come to think of it, in the Original Work's Thriller Bark Arc, he'd pushed the "fatigue" and "damage" right out of Luffy's body.
The same way, but with memories...
"Even I've never actually seen him push out something like 'memories,' and I never asked if he could, but... I think Dad could do it. I mean, if you think about who could 'remove only a specific intangible target'... the only thing I can think of is Dad's Powers."
"But wouldn't that mean Kuma cooperated in losing his own personality and memories? I hate to put it this way, but that's basically the same as suicide. Would he really do something like that...?"
"Well, in the first place, we don't even know why Kuma agreed to be modified into the Government's Human Weapon, so... I think this ties into that. Some kind of desperate circumstances led to some kind of deal with the Government, and..."
"What could possibly lead someone to not only be modified into a Human Weapon and lose their entire personality, but to actively cooperate in doing it... If there were circumstances behind it, they'd have to be extreme."
...Circumstances, huh.
If mere guesses counted, I could think of several. But none of them were pleasant.
Even accounting for the fact that these were speculations, or fantasies, spawned by my novelist's creative mind.
One in particular... if it turned out to be right, I'd prefer Bonney never heard it.
Well, but in the end, all of it, including that, was just "guessing." There was no way to confirm any of it...
...No, wait.
There was. There was a way to confirm it.
No guarantee it would work, but... maybe, just maybe, that method could... even if the specialized technical stuff was beyond it, it might be able to "read" a certain amount of information.
Especially if, as the group had just theorized, Kuma himself had cooperated in extracting his own memories using his Powers...
I happened to glance to the side and found that among the daughters, Alice and Snow... and Mama too, were directing looks at me that clearly said they wanted to say something.
How like those three clever ones. They'd figured it out.
...Honestly, I wasn't keen on this.
As I'd just been thinking, if my worst-case guess turned out to be correct... that truth, even if brought to light, could wound Bonney far more deeply.
But doing nothing and staying silent wasn't...
Bonney had said before that she was prepared to face any painful reality. That she wanted to know the truth.
I couldn't forget it. When she trusted us enough to reveal who she really was.
'I'll do anything! Please, lend me your strength!' she'd said, bowing her head alongside her sailors.
...If that was the case, then turning my back on that would be... well, wrong.
"Bonney, do you have a moment?"
"?"
"...There might be a way to learn what happened to Kuma."
"...! Really...?! But how..."
When I explained the method, Bonney was astonished. 'It can do something like that?!'
But at the same time, I made sure to warn her about the risks. That she might end up learning truths she'd rather not have known.
Apparently, Dr. Vegapunk, Bonney, and Kuma were acquaintances, and they'd gotten along just fine.
Turning an acquaintance into a cyborg, not telling Bonney the reasons or circumstances behind it... there was definitely something dangerous lurking behind all this.
If Vegapunk had just been some consummate villain putting on a friendly act in front of those two, that might at least make sense, but... from what I'd seen when we met him before, he was far from normal, yet seemed fundamentally good-natured at his core. Then again, the "cats" (Satellites) he'd brought along had been quite the collection of characters...
I explained all the possibilities, including the fact that there was no guarantee this method would even reveal the detailed circumstances. Despite all that, Bonney nodded without a second's hesitation. "Please!"
...Frankly, I half-expected this.
Her resolve was just too firm... disproportionately so for her age.
So desperate, so brave, so pitiable... there was even a period when my daughters treated her like a little sister, cherishing and looking after her.
It never quite developed into her becoming a sixth daughter, though.
In any case, with her resolve confirmed... I stepped forward in front of Kuma and...
"Heaven's Door...!!"
...Success.
Kuma's body began peeling open in layers like a Book, becoming "readable."
This technique, if it worked at all, could access memories that even the person themselves had forgotten. Because it read memories carved into the body, memories the body itself retained.
It couldn't be used on the dead, though. On a corpse. When a person dies, all the writing in their Book vanishes and becomes unreadable.
In Kuma's case, the state of being "modified and stripped of self, dead as a human being," which were Bonney's own words, could have gone either way.
His Heart was still beating. Physically, he was technically alive. But he couldn't be said to be truly living as a person. Honestly, it was a gamble.
The result, as I said, was success.
With this, perhaps we could learn what had happened to him. How he came to lose his memory and personality. We might obtain that information, or at least clues.
With that hope, we began reading Kuma's Book in search of those answers, and...
Before we even reached the information we were looking for...
...We came face to face with the bottomless "malice" that humans possess, a cruelty, hideousness, and wickedness that no work of fiction could ever hope to match.
And the extraordinarily harrowing lives that Kuma and the others had been forced to endure, swept along by that malice.
...For the time being... I think the Celestial Dragons should just be wiped off the face of the earth.
To be continued...