The scene shifts to the harbor where Punk Hazard's tanker lay at anchor.
There, yet another fierce battle was underway.
"Slippery little bastard... but don't think you can keep running forever!"
"Again...? Take this!"
Striding through the poison gas without a care, the dream combining robot: Franky Shogun.
Facing it were the two envoys Doflamingo had dispatched to retrieve Caesar and the others: Baby 5 and Buffalo.
Buffalo flew in every direction with wild abandon, somehow managing to dodge the barrage of cannon fire from the robot's left arm, while Baby 5, riding on top, intercepted what she could, shooting them down and canceling them out.
The fight had started from a bit of a misunderstanding, but since they were enemies to begin with, the outcome was the same either way. If anything, it was a battle that was bound to happen. The misunderstanding was probably never going to get cleared up anyway, so the two sides kept exchanging sparks in earnest.
"Then try this on for size... General Boomerang!!"
Franky Shogun's shoulders popped open with a click, and from within, a chain-attached iron ball emerged with a heavy rattle. Gripping it, the Shogun swung it around with tremendous force like a hammer throw and let it fly.
Buffalo barely managed to dodge the iron ball, which was moving at considerable speed.
"That's obviously not a boomerang! It's an iron ball! And naturally, it's not coming back!"
A perfectly justified retort from Baby 5.
The iron ball sailed through the air in a graceful arc and splashed loudly into the distant sea.
"If I say it's a boomerang, then it's a boomerang even if it's an iron ball! Don't sweat the small stuff!"
"I'd say that's a pretty big thing to sweat, dasyan!"
"As expected from a nonsensical machine puppet... there's absolutely no getting through to him."
A headache-inducing exchange, but the two regained their composure and got back to fighting.
Buffalo, an Ability User who'd eaten the Guru-Guru Fruit, channeled rotational momentum to swing the weapon Baby 5 had transformed into using her Arms-Arms Fruit Powers. Simple yet powerful combination work.
"If you like iron balls so much, I'll be happy to oblige... Weapon Metamorphosis: 'Hammer Girl'!"
"Ngyeeeee~~!!"
With the human-sized iron ball Baby 5 had become gripped in both hands, Buffalo spun his entire body at high speed, and with that momentum, slammed the accelerated iron ball into the Iron Soldier before them.
A tremendous crash rang out, but Franky Shogun stood firm. The armor on the arm that caught the blow might have dented a little, but beyond that, it didn't look like it had any effect at all.
"Ow... not bad, that packed a punch... you two've got a decent Boomerang there."
"I definitely said 'Hammer' just now, didn't I?!"
"She didn't even throw it, dasyan. If anything, I'd love to hear what similarities it has with a boomerang, dasyan."
"My turn now... I'll show you one of the new weapons I created over these two years!"
Completely unfazed, Franky activated his new weapon.
From the caterpillar treads on his back, multiple drills emerged, rising up and lining themselves in a row across his shoulders.
Every one of their tips pointed squarely at Baby 5 and her partner.
"Drills...?!"
"General... Drill Missile!!"
And every single one of them began spinning at high speed with a deafening whirr, then launched.
The sight of spinning drills serving as warheads was vicious enough, but a closer look revealed it wasn't just the drill tips rotating. The entire missiles were spinning.
Still, lethal was lethal. Baby 5 transformed into Missile Girl, using the blast to blow them all away. The two managed to fend off the attack.
Reforming from her fragmented state, Baby 5 cursed under her breath.
"Honestly, everything about this is absurd... I can't even begin to understand. How is it a drill and a missile at the same time?"
"He just threw together whatever sounded strong, dasyan. It's a miracle it even works as a functional design... the developer must be one hell of a skilled idiot, dasyan."
"Oy oy, what's with you two, throwing cold water on everything? That's a real shame, I tell ya. I went to the trouble of showing off my new weapons, and you people don't understand a thing about romance."
"What romance is there in an excavation tool...?"
"There's been a Picture Story going around lately with something like that in it, dasyan... you're way too influenced by it, dasyan. Are you making light of battle...? But I'll admit, I can't deny that a drill makes an excellent weapon, dasyan."
"Right, exactly... then let us answer in kind... as a parting gift for the afterlife!"
Baby 5 leaped and transformed once more.
Her body stretched and twisted, reshaping into a massive Drill inscribed with a double helix.
"Weapon Metamorphosis: 'Drill Girl'!!"
Buffalo gripped the handle at its base with both hands and began spinning his upper body using his Powers.
"Daaasyan-dasyan-dasyan-dasyan-dasyan-dasyan-dasyan-dasyan-dasyan...!!"
Rotation was Buffalo's home turf as an Ability User. The drill in his hands spun at an incredible pace, and combined with its sheer size, the pressure it gave off was extraordinary.
Easy to imagine that anything human would be reduced to a bloody mist on contact. Even bedrock would be pierced without effort.
Watching that sight barrel down from the sky, Franky let out a sigh from inside the Shogun's cockpit.
"Nice spin you've got there, buddy... which makes it all the more disappointing. That someone with your level of Spiral Power can't appreciate a man's romance..."
'Spiral Power??' The silent question from both of them went unanswered, unfortunately.
At best, if Law had been around, he might have explained a little. But unfortunately, he wasn't.
That rotation would certainly grant tremendous force to the drill the woman had transformed into.
But a drill... is not such a simple thing. Its depth cannot be measured by mere force, weight, or size. Probably.
"Still, I'll pay my respects for the willingness you've shown to meet me halfway... you won't understand this, but I'll show you the power of a drill imbued with a real Soul! Right arm, release... compressed deformation, release!"
Franky Shogun's right arm thrust skyward.
Its hand retracted inward, and in its place, with a sharp whirring sound, bands of metal emerged and extended, intertwining into a double helix shape.
It grew larger and larger until it formed an enormous Drill with a diameter one or two sizes bigger than Franky Shogun's arm itself.
Given the size of the arm, there was no way something that enormous should have fit inside, yet this too was a technology and material Franky had acquired during his two years of training.
The catalyst had been an encounter several months ago, one that had been a shock even to Franky himself: meeting another genius whose intellect and technical skill rivaled Vegapunk's.
"The new material I got as a parting gift back then... its name: Wapometal Z! On top of super toughness that surpasses regular Wapometal, this super alloy can compress and deform far beyond the limits of conventional shape-memory alloys, triggered by specific electrical signals. It gave me and my drill even greater power!"
The massive Drill at the end of his arm began spinning at tremendous speed.
Bracing the arm with his left hand, Franky aimed the tip directly at the incoming Buffalo and Baby 5.
"Feast your eyes! This is one of Franky Shogun's three ultimate weapons! Don't think you can stop it with a drill that's got no Soul behind it!"
From his back and legs came a piercing, screeching sound.
Inside, vast quantities of air were being compressed, waiting for the moment of release.
Then, the instant Franky Shogun crouched slightly, the enormous burst of air from his back and feet transformed Franky Shogun, drill and all, into a meteor.
The massive body shot forward in a straight line, the tip of the readied drill aimed squarely at the tip of Buffalo's oncoming drill, the two hurtling toward each other on a collision course.
Under the pressure of the approaching titan, a bead of cold sweat ran down Buffalo's cheek even as he spun. It was instantly blown away by the wind of his own rotation, but undeterred by his mission, he charged straight in.
Franky Shogun's drill versus Buffalo and Baby 5's drill.
With a thunderous roar, the two drills collided in midair like a scene from a Picture Story, and then...
"Generaaaal... Driiill... Breeeeeaaaaaak!!"
"Ngyaaaaaah?!"
"Kyaaaaaaaaah?!"
The match was decided... in favor of romance.
***
Afterward, Luffy and the others regrouped with Franky, successfully securing Caesar. They also grabbed Baby 5 and Buffalo while they were at it, and the joint operation on Punk Hazard concluded in success.
Then, completely ignoring Law's recommendation to "get out of here already," they launched into their usual banquet.
The rescued children, the Samurai Kin'emon of the Foxfire and his son Momonosuke who had been traveling with them partway, and even the Marine G-5 soldiers, who were supposed to be enemies, all joined in the revelry.
Pirates and Marines, sworn enemies who should never coexist under the same sky, yet at this point nobody cared about any of that, and bringing it up would only kill the mood.
It goes without saying that Captain Tashigi wore a wry smile while Vice Admiral Smoker sighed and held his head in his hands.
In the end, even those two, along with Law, seemed to have decided that caring was pointless and would only be exhausting. They didn't join the festivities, but they were quietly eating and resting their bodies.
Incidentally, during all of this:
"...By the way, Trafalgar. There's one thing I want you to tell me."
"Hm? What is it, White Hunter?"
"Something Caesar said earlier has been bugging me... why did that guy think he had my Heart?"
Before the operation began, Smoker had already had his Heart returned by Law.
A deal to save his life. The upfront payment for that deal.
In other words, Smoker's Heart had been in Law's possession the entire time. And yet, for some reason, Caesar had believed he was the one holding it.
As for Caesar himself, he was currently muttering, "How are you still alive, Smoker...?" in bewilderment, while being subjected to a rather low-level interrogation by the G-5 Marines.
"Bit late to be asking that... does the answer even matter?"
"Well, not really... if you don't want to tell me, that's fine. I figured you just swapped it back with your Powers at some point."
"...No. I never handed them over in the first place. Yours, of course... and my Heart too."
"...?"
Law casually pulled something from inside his coat.
It was a Heart, pulsing with a steady beat. It appeared to have been extracted using the Op-Op Fruit's Powers, sitting inside an invisible box as if the surrounding space had been cut away along with it.
"Whose Heart is that?"
"Mine. A Spare."
"...What?"
The next moment, the Heart stopped beating and went still.
Law tucked it back into his coat.
"It's a long story if I go into detail, but... it's my Powers, basically. The Hearts I gave to Caesar were both Spares. Even in the worst case, if they were crushed, neither you nor I would have any problems. That's all."
"...I don't really get it, but don't go making extra copies of someone's Heart without asking. That's creepy."
"Hah."
One of the things Law's growth over the past two years had made possible was Substitute Organ Connection.
Put simply, it was similar to how in modern medicine, when performing surgery on a heart or similar organ, a patient is temporarily connected to an artificial heart-lung machine to maintain life functions.
Even if the person's own heart temporarily stopped, as long as a connected and synchronized Spare heart existed, it would fulfill the body's pump function, continuing to circulate blood and oxygen throughout.
Rewinding several months.
When Law first came to this island, the deal Caesar proposed was: "Hand over your Heart to me." In return, Caesar's side would entrust Monet's Heart to Law.
Law accepted those terms, but what he actually handed over was not his own Heart. It was a substituted Spare.
It wasn't a mere fake. The Heart he handed over was unmistakably Law's own Heart.
However, it had been cultivated and replicated from Law's own cell samples using one of the inventions developed by the Golden Lion Pirates' research division: artificial organ technology.
Having anticipated that Caesar would propose a Heart exchange, Law had prepared a Spare in advance and connected it to his own Heart, synchronizing the two.
This meant that if anything happened to the real Heart, the Spare would be promoted to become the real one. Conversely, if something happened to the Spare, some of that effect would feed back to the real Heart.
For instance, earlier, when Vergo grew irritated at Law's defiant attitude and squeezed the Heart in his possession to make Law suffer.
That Heart had been a Spare, but while synchronized, some of the pain inflicted on the Spare transferred to Law himself.
This carried the risk of being subjected to pain, but conversely, that very reaction meant Vergo and the others never suspected the Heart in their hands was a fake.
It was advantageous to let the enemy believe they held his Heart.
If Law had simply handed over a plain fake and shown no reaction when it was suddenly attacked, they would have seen through the deception immediately and taken countermeasures.
When the time came, all Law had to do was sever the connection, and the Heart in Caesar's possession, the one being held hostage, would instantly become nothing more than a useless lump of flesh.
And in the worst case, if the Spare heart were destroyed, the connection itself would sever automatically, so there was no problem whatsoever.
Law had let them believe they'd put a collar on him, while the entire time, he was ready to snap the chain at will.
As for the Heart he'd given Caesar as Smoker's, that too was one of the multiple artificial Hearts Law had prepared, connected and synchronized with Smoker's actual Heart.
Even if the Heart belonged to a different person genetically or in terms of Lineage Factor, the synchronization rate would drop, but the connection itself was still possible. For the Op-Op Fruit, which could even connect the upper body of a human to the lower body of an animal, and for Law, who wielded its Powers at a high level, this was trivial.
'Technology and ideas I never could have reached on my own... accepting that position and taking the time to prepare was absolutely worth it. If it were the Professor, she'd go way beyond the whole Spare issue and pull off some insane modifications without a shred of hesitation... how she does it without batting an eye, I'll never understand... well, not that it matters.'
Thinking this, Law reached into his coat again.
This time, what he pulled out was the Heart entrusted to him during the deal: Monet's Heart. It still pulsed and moved inside the invisible box, which meant Monet was still alive.
Needless to say, if Law were to crush it here and now, Monet, alive somewhere out there, would die for certain.
After a moment of thought, Law put it back inside his coat.
As for how events concluded: after the banquet ended, the Straw Hat Pirates set sail from the island, taking Caesar, Law, as well as Kin'emon and Momonosuke aboard.
Their destination was Dressrosa, and from there, Green Bit for the deal.
The kidnapped children who had been imprisoned in the Laboratory, and the Centaurs who had been deceived by Caesar, or rather, the former-prisoner Laboratory staff, would be taken by the Marine G-5 contingent.
Of those, the children would be transported ahead on the tanker, accompanied by Tashigi and some of the G-5 Marines.
Since saving the children was also the will of the Straw Hat Pirates, particularly Nami, there was no disagreement about letting the Marines use the tanker.
Many of the children had grown so large that boarding an ordinary ship would be difficult, so if they were to be transported without waiting for a warship, the tanker was practically essential.
The remaining Marines, Smoker, and the Centaurs would wait for the reinforcement warship scheduled to arrive from G-5 before departing.
The Centaurs were not restrained in any particular way, but they offered no resistance and quietly followed instructions, remaining docile.
Among them, led by Brownbeard, were some who had unknowingly been used as subjects in Caesar's human experiments. They chose to submit peacefully, both to receive treatment and to repay the debt of being rescued.
And so, amid the children's smiles and gratitude, and the Marines' obligatory stream of insults, Luffy and the others left Punk Hazard behind.
To be continued...