-Real World, Across the Seas-
The Sky Screen had been systematically dismantling the legend of Joy Boy for weeks now. Each broadcast chipped away at the foundation of faith that had sustained oppressed peoples for centuries.
Surprisingly, the individuals most shaken by these revelations were not Kaido and his chosen successors among the Beasts Pirates. Rather, it was the true believers—those who had built their entire worldview around the promise of a liberation warrior who would one day free all slaves and oppressed peoples.
The followers of Joy Boy's legend were watching their god revealed as a myth.
And none suffered more than the Buccaneer bloodline, represented most prominently by a father and daughter separated by duty and deception.
-Somewhere on the Grand Line, Aboard the Bonney Pirates' Ship-
Jewelry Bonney sat cross-legged on the deck, devouring a pizza with the single-minded intensity that had earned her the nickname "Big Eater." Her pink hair caught the afternoon sunlight as she chewed mechanically, eyes fixed on the Sky Screen projection above.
The young woman had made quite a name for herself during her time at sea. The Bonney Pirates weren't the largest crew on the Grand Line, but they'd earned respect—and fear. Bonney's Devil Fruit ability to manipulate age made her a terror in combat. Enemies who underestimated her based on appearance found themselves transformed into helpless children or decrepit elderly, easy prey for her crew.
Pirates who knew better gave her a wide berth. In the Paradise half of the Grand Line, Jewelry Bonney was a name spoken with caution.
Yet if anyone knew her true age, they wouldn't believe it.
Jewelry Bonney was ten years old.
She'd gone to sea with her father's trusted friends, driven by a single desperate goal: find Bartholomew Kuma somewhere in the vast ocean. See her father again. Understand why he'd left without explanation.
As a qualified adoptive father, Kuma had given Bonney the happiest years of her life. Even while she suffered from the Sapphire Scale disease that should have killed her, Bear had stayed by her side, told her stories, made her laugh even through the pain.
Bonney remembered those days with crystalline clarity. She'd dreamed of adventure—of sailing the seas with her father once her illness was cured. Even as a small child, she'd possessed a heart too large for the confines of the Sorbet Kingdom's church or Vegapunk's laboratory. She'd wanted freedom. Wanted to see the world.
Bear had promised they would sail together one day.
But now, years later, she was at sea without him.
"Father..." Bonney whispered around a mouthful of pizza, "the Joy Boy you believed in might have been a deity from the very beginning. Liberation warriors... just a beautiful fantasy created by desperate people."
She remembered the stories Bear had told her during long nights when the pain kept her awake. Tales of the great liberator who would one day return. The Buccaneer race's messiah who would free all slaves and break every chain. Her father's eyes had shone with such absolute faith when he spoke of Joy Boy.
The Sky Screen was revealing that faith as delusion.
Tears began sliding down Bonney's cheeks despite her efforts to hold them back. She was still just a child—a little girl who missed her father desperately and couldn't understand why he'd abandoned her.
"Why haven't you sent any letters?" she said to the empty air, voice cracking. "Why can't we find you anywhere on the sea? When will I see you again, Papa Bear?"
Behind her, two of Kuma's old Revolutionary Army comrades exchanged uncomfortable glances. They'd been searching the Grand Line for months with Ginny's daughter, following every lead and rumor about the Warlord known as Tyrant Kuma.
Nothing. Not a single confirmed sighting outside official World Government business.
"It doesn't make sense," one of them muttered. "Kuma has the Nikyu Nikyu no Mi (Paw-Paw Fruit). He can teleport anywhere in the world by bouncing himself through the air. If he wanted to find Bonney, he could do it instantly."
"Unless something's preventing him from coming," the other replied grimly. "Or unless..."
Neither wanted to finish that thought.
Kuma was one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea—a position granted directly by the Five Elders themselves. He had access to Marine intelligence networks, knew Bonney had become a wanted pirate with her own bounty poster. If he'd wanted to track her down, the resources existed.
So why the silence? What chain bound Bartholomew Kuma so tightly that he couldn't even send word to his daughter?
Bonney began doubting the legend of Joy Boy—just as the man in Mariejois who watched over her from afar had planned. The bear and his daughter were slowly falling into a trap set by human hands, their faith being systematically dismantled to make them more pliable, more controllable.
-Mariejois, Seven Warlords Meeting Hall-
Bartholomew Kuma sat in his designated chair, massive frame utterly still, expression carved from stone. Around him, the other Warlords engaged in conversation—some hostile, some merely cautious. Politics and posturing filled the ornate chamber.
Kuma participated in none of it.
To outside observers, the enormous man appeared disconnected, perhaps even asleep with his eyes open. His cold expression revealed nothing of his thoughts.
But inside, Bartholomew Kuma's heart was in absolute turmoil.
He and Kozuki Oden shared similar fatal flaws: both were the type to easily believe in the goodness of others. Kuma had faithfully fulfilled every promise made to Saint Saturn, trusted the Celestial Dragon's word. And the half-truths presented on the Sky Screen had shaken his faith to its core. He believed perhaps ninety percent of what he'd witnessed.
The Buccaneer race had worshipped Joy Boy for generations. Kuma's people had been hunted, enslaved, exterminated—yet they'd clung to the promise that their liberator would one day return. That faith had sustained them through centuries of suffering.
What if it had all been a lie?
Three people appeared frequently in the Sky Screen's broadcasts: Vegapunk, Borsalino, and Jewelry Bonney. Each had deep connections to Kuma's life. Whenever footage featured any of them, Kuma focused with laser intensity, mentally recording every detail in the small notebook he kept hidden.
He knew the gesture was futile. Knowledge of a future that might not come to pass couldn't save anyone. But he wanted to leave something for Bonney—some record of his thoughts, his fears, his love for her.
Even if it was only his observations about the Sky Screen, at least it would prove he'd been thinking of her.
"Kuma~" A mocking voice shattered his contemplation. "You're so powerful, yet you don't appear on Dressrosa in the future. Aren't you worried about what happens to you?"
Donquixote Doflamingo leaned back in his chair with theatrical casualness, that infuriating grin plastered across his face. The flamingo seemed to have temporarily forgotten his own precarious situation, reverting to his old habit of stirring up trouble.
Doflamingo himself was effectively a dead man walking according to the Sky Screen. But when it came to fanning flames and creating chaos, the former Celestial Dragon wouldn't abandon his specialty. He hoped the Seven Warlords would cause problems here in Mariejois—anything to create an opportunity for his own escape from Saint Saturn's breeding experiments.
The Sky Screen had mentioned that the Marines eventually disbanded the Seven Warlords system, scattering these powerful individuals across the seas. Some had joined Buggy the Clown's organization. Others had simply disappeared from the narrative.
Kuma and Jinbe's ultimate fates remained unaddressed. Had they been captured by the new Marine regime? After all, the World Military Draft produced three new Admirals—surely such powerful forces needed to achieve results to justify their existence.
Kuma already knew his future five years hence. By then, he would have surrendered his consciousness entirely, transformed into an emotionless cyborg weapon at the World Government's disposal. The man named Bartholomew Kuma would cease to exist.
His only remaining fear was what might happen to Bonney. Thankfully, the Sky Screen had revealed nothing about his daughter's fate yet.
Small mercies.
"Doflamingo," Kuma's deep voice cut through the chamber's ambient noise, each word deliberate and cold. "You really did give birth to a remarkable daughter."
The pink-feathered Warlord's grin froze on his face.
One sentence. That's all it took to completely deflate Donquixote Doflamingo's swagger. His mind flooded with memories of humiliation.
Rage burned in Doflamingo's chest, hatred for both the Sky Screen and the Five Elders who'd reduced him to this reaching new peaks. But he lacked the strength to lash out now. Not here, not surrounded by enemies both obvious and subtle.
He would wait. Bide his time. And when the opportunity came, he would make everyone pay.
For now, silence seemed the wisest course.
As the only female among the Seven Warlords of the Sea, Boa Hancock often thought along different lines than her male counterparts. Her perspective, shaped by trauma and eventual salvation, gave her unique insights into matters of time, choice, and regret.
"Jinbe," she said suddenly, her melodious voice drawing the Fish-Man's attention. "Let me propose a hypothesis. If Admiral Kizaru's ability to travel through time could be used by us... would you want to go back and change anything?"
Jinbe the Knight of the Sea—former member of the Sun Pirates, current Warlord serving reluctantly to protect Fish-Man Island—possessed moral character that surpassed most humans. The Empress enjoyed conversations with this kind-hearted representative of his race. The other Warlords she largely ignored.
The question struck at Jinbe's deepest wound.
What would he most want to change in the past?
The answer came immediately: save Fisher Tiger.
His captain, his brother, the spiritual heart of the Sun Pirates—Fisher Tiger had died too early, killed by the very humans he'd freed from slavery. Compared to the illusory Joy Boy of legend, Fisher Tiger had been a real liberation warrior. A man who'd climbed the Red Line with his bare hands and burned Mariejois, freeing thousands of slaves.
That was heroism. That was sacrifice worth emulating.
"I would go back to save my captain," Jinbe answered honestly, his voice heavy with old grief. "If Fisher Tiger still lived, the Sun Pirates wouldn't have fractured. Arlong wouldn't have..." He trailed off, jaw tightening.
Jinbe thought of the Sky Screen's prophecy about Fish-Man Island. Arlong—his former crewmate, his responsibility—had become a cultist in the future. That rage-filled fool would bring an evil god to their homeland, threatening everything their people had built.
The revelation had shattered any lingering sympathy Jinbe held for Arlong.
Originally, he'd planned to use his privileges as a Warlord to extract Arlong from whatever prison held him after Luffy's defeat of the Arlong Park crew. Rescue his wayward brother, perhaps guide him toward a better path.
Now? Arlong could rot in Impel Down for all Jinbe cared. Some betrayals were too severe to forgive.
"The Marine and World Government are interrogating Arlong about the cult connections," Jinbe continued bitterly. "He's suffering inhumane treatment—torture similar to what Douglas Bullet endured. They'll beat information out of him whether he knows anything or not."
Boa Hancock nodded slowly, understanding in her eyes.
If she could travel back in time, what would she change?
Two possibilities presented themselves immediately. First, she could help her benefactor—though even thinking his name in this place was dangerous. Fisher Tiger had freed her from slavery along with hundreds of others. She owed that man everything.
But more selfishly, more desperately, she wanted to warn her younger self. Wanted to grab that innocent girl and scream: Don't go to that place! Don't get captured! The Celestial Dragons will brand you like cattle and destroy everything pure inside you!
The Slave Brand of the Celestial Dragon's Hoof—that mark burned into her back—would follow her for life. No matter how powerful she became, no matter how many men fell to their knees before her beauty, she would always be marked property in the eyes of those who knew.
Being in Mariejois for these Warlord meetings was torture. Every marble column, every gold-trimmed hallway reminded Hancock of her years as a slave. Nightmares walked these corridors wearing human faces and ridiculous bubble helmets.
But for the sake of Amazon Lily, for the safety of her people, she endured.
She buried her hatred deep in her heart, smiled when required, and waited for the day she could be free of this place forever.
"If time travel were possible," Hancock said softly, almost to herself, "I wonder how many people across the world would use it. How many desperate souls would try to undo their mistakes, save their loved ones, prevent their own suffering."
"Everyone," Jinbe replied simply. "If given the chance, everyone would change something."
"Then perhaps," Hancock murmured, "it's a mercy that the past remains locked away. If everyone could alter history, what would become of the present? What would become of us?"
The question hung in the air between them, unanswered and perhaps unanswerable.
Around them, the Seven Warlords meeting continued its tedious proceedings. Negotiations and threats dressed in diplomatic language. Power plays masked as cooperation.
But three individuals in that chamber—Hancock, Jinbe, and the silent Kuma—had stopped listening.
They were thinking about the past. About the futures the Sky Screen had revealed. About the weight of choices made and opportunities lost.
And they were wondering, each in their own way, whether faith in legends like Joy Boy had ever been anything more than a coping mechanism for those with no other hope to cling to.
The Sky Screen's revelations continued to ripple across the world, gradually shaking the foundations upon which entire belief systems had been built. For some, like Jewelry Bonney, it meant confronting the possibility that their fathers had wasted their lives pursuing phantoms. For others, like Bartholomew Kuma, it meant questioning whether the sacrifices they'd made had been for anything real at all.
Faith, once shattered, was nearly impossible to restore. And across the seas, in small ways and large, people were beginning to realize that the liberation warrior they'd waited for might never have existed in the first place.