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Punk Hazard still burned.
Even hours after Godzilla's rampage ended, fires continued consuming what remained of the research facility. Orange flames reflected off twisted metal frameworks. Smoke billowed into the night sky in thick columns that could be seen for miles across the ocean. The destruction exceeded anyone's initial estimates—nearly half the island lay in ruins, and repair efforts would require at least six months of intensive reconstruction.
By then, the instigator of all this chaos had already escaped that hell.
Trafalgar Law walked through the devastated material storage area, his spotted hat casting shadows across his tattooed features. His casual demeanor masked genuine concern as he searched the rubble for any sign of his informant. The boy who'd called himself Momoko had been useful—young enough to avoid suspicion, clever enough to gather intelligence, desperate enough to take risks.
But the storage room yielded nothing. No body among the crushed crates and collapsed shelving. No blood trail leading anywhere meaningful. The child had simply... vanished.
Law's fingers drummed against Kikoku's sheath as he considered the possibilities. In chaos like Godzilla's attack, dozens of people had died in ways that left no recoverable remains. Vaporized by atomic breath. Crushed beneath tons of rubble. Incinerated in chemical fires. Momoko could easily be among the uncounted dead.
Or he could have escaped.
Later that evening, Law reviewed the security logs that had somehow survived the destruction. One entry caught his attention: during the height of Godzilla's rampage, a Marine supply vessel had approached Punk Hazard's waters. The ship's captain, demonstrating rare good sense, had refused to dock after witnessing the purple fire and collapsing buildings.
Instead, the supplies had been ferried to shore via small boats—a process that consumed half a day as nervous sailors made multiple trips while their main vessel waited at a safe distance. Once the delivery was complete, the supply ship had departed immediately, sailing away before anyone could conduct proper inventory checks or crew verification.
If Momoko survived, Law thought, studying the timeline, that would've been his only chance. A ship leaving in chaos, with no one counting passengers or cargo carefully. Smart kid.
A faint smile touched his lips, though it didn't reach his eyes.
The boy had carried secrets—fragments of information about Doflamingo's operations, whispers about projects he'd overheard. Nothing critical enough to warrant pursuit across the Grand Line. Law had more pressing concerns than chasing down one escaped child spy.
Caesar Clown and Vergo were clearly brewing something significant in the background. The Giant God Soldier Project, whatever its true scope, represented an opportunity. Any intelligence that could damage Doflamingo's interests, any leverage that could destabilize the Heavenly Demon's empire—that was worth Law's attention.
Momoko's disappearance was simply... fortuitous for the boy. May he find better fortunes elsewhere.
Law turned away from the destroyed storage area, his coat billowing as he walked back toward the still-standing sections of the facility. Behind him, fires continued to burn, consuming evidence and secrets alike.
Just as Law suspected, Kozuki Momonosuke had indeed escaped aboard the Marine supply ship.
The boy huddled in a cramped storage locker near the stern, his heart still pounding from the terror of his escape. The images were seared into his mind—Godzilla's massive form silhouetted against purple fire, the screams of dying researchers, the smell of burning flesh and melting metal. Punk Hazard had been hell on earth, and he'd somehow survived it.
The supply ship proved to be a godsend. It was a purely functional vessel—no combat-ready warriors, no elite officers, just logistics personnel with enough connections to avoid dangerous assignments. The sailors aboard were the kind who'd never fully mastered Busoshoku Haki (Armament Haki) or Kenbunshoku Haki (Observation Haki). Even the ship's commanding officer probably hadn't perfected all six techniques of Rokushiki (Six Powers).
This was a ship of bureaucrats in uniform, not warriors. Perfect for a stowaway child.
The fleet sailed with several armed escorts leading the way—standard procedure for transporting supplies through pirate-infested waters. As long as they avoided major pirate crews, the journey would be safe. Boring, even.
Momonosuke waited until the deep hours of night, when most of the crew had retired to their bunks. The ship rocked gently on calm seas. Snoring echoed through nearby crew quarters. The boy crept from his hiding spot with practiced silence—months of survival had taught him how to move without making sound.
His destination: the ship's galley.
His stomach had been empty for so long it had stopped hurting, replaced by a hollow weakness that made his limbs tremble. But now, surrounded by food, that hunger roared back to life with devastating intensity.
The galley was dark, illuminated only by moonlight filtering through a porthole. Momonosuke didn't bother with subtlety—he dove into the leftovers from the crew's dinner, cramming cold rice and meat into his mouth with both hands. Tears streamed down his face as he chewed, the simple act of eating real food overwhelming his senses.
"Finally... finally I can eat human food again..." he whispered between mouthfuls, his voice cracking. "Even cold, it's delicious. It's better than anything... I never want to go back to that hell. Never."
The memory of Punk Hazard's material room flashed through his mind—surviving on scraps scavenged from corpses, drinking condensation from pipes, hiding among the dead to avoid Caesar's experiments. He'd lived like a rat for months, and the psychological scars ran deep.
Now, faced with an entire kitchen of provisions, something broke inside him. Gratitude mixed with desperation mixed with the simple animal need to consume everything within reach. To fill the emptiness. To erase the memory of starvation.
Momonosuke began systematically clearing out the galley. Leftover stew went down his throat. Bread, fruit, dried meat, cheese—anything remotely edible disappeared into his stomach. He worked through the storage cabinets with methodical efficiency, his small hands grabbing and grabbing and grabbing.
By the time his frenzy ended, his body had transformed. His belly protruded grotesquely, stretched so tight it was almost spherical. His limbs looked comically thin in comparison to his swollen torso. He'd consumed roughly one hundred adult meals in a single sitting—an impossible feat for any normal eight-year-old.
But Momonosuke wasn't normal anymore. The artificial Zoan Devil Fruit he'd eaten in Vegapunk's laboratory had altered his physiology in ways he didn't fully understand. Enhanced metabolism, maybe. Or perhaps the dragon transformation simply required massive caloric intake to function.
He sat on the galley floor, still gnawing on a chicken leg while clutching tropical fruits in both hands. His expression shifted from satisfaction to concern as the reality of his situation penetrated the food coma.
"Oh no... I ate way too much at once." He looked down at his distended belly with growing alarm. "How am I going to sneak around like this? I hope those Marine adults don't punish me too badly. They wouldn't hurt a child, right?"
The doubt in his own voice was telling.
Momonosuke's experiences had stripped away childish naivety. On Whitebeard's ship, the pirates had told stories about the Marine—portrayed them as villains who destroyed homes and killed innocents in the name of "justice." At Punk Hazard, the branch Marines had been accomplices to Caesar's atrocities, knowingly supporting human experimentation.
And now he'd stolen food from them. A lot of food. Enough food that its absence would definitely be noticed.
For a Devil Fruit user, jumping into the sea wasn't an option—the ocean would kill him faster than any angry Marine. He needed another plan.
His eyes landed on a large trash bin in the corner of the galley. It was meant for kitchen waste, currently half-full of vegetable peelings and discarded scraps. The smell was unpleasant but not unbearable.
Could it be worse than hiding among corpses? he thought grimly. No. Nothing will ever be worse than that.
The decision made, Momonosuke squeezed his bloated body into the trash bin. It was just barely large enough to accommodate him if he curled into a tight ball. The garbage compressed beneath his weight, releasing odors that would've made him gag months ago. Now he barely registered them.
He pulled the lid over his head, sealing himself in darkness.
The confined space was oddly comforting. Dark, enclosed, hidden—just like the storage lockers and corpse piles that had kept him alive in Punk Hazard. His survival instincts recognized this as safety, even as his rational mind recoiled from the degradation.
Exhaustion crashed over him like a wave. The combination of a full stomach after months of near-starvation, the physical exertion of his escape, and the psychological relief of temporary security proved overwhelming. Within minutes, Kozuki Momonosuke fell into the deepest sleep he'd experienced since his father's death.
He didn't dream. His mind simply... shut down.
Time passed in that dark cocoon. One day? Two days? Momonosuke had no way of tracking it.
While he slept, the ship's crew discovered the theft. The morning cook arrived to prepare breakfast and found the galley devastated—supplies missing, storage cabinets empty, evidence of gluttony everywhere. Panic spread quickly. A thief aboard the ship!
The commanding officer ordered a search. Sailors scrambled through the vessel, checking every storage room, every crew quarter, every potential hiding spot. But somehow—through incredible luck or complete incompetence—no one thought to thoroughly search the actual crime scene.
The most dangerous place is the safest place, the old saying went. The criminal hadn't fled. He was sleeping peacefully in a trash bin three meters from where the investigation began.
The search eventually concluded with no culprit found. The crew assumed the thief had somehow escaped overboard or was hiding in some undiscovered compartment. Security was tightened. Watches were doubled. And life aboard the supply ship continued.
All while Momonosuke slumbered in his garbage cocoon, digesting his massive feast.
When he finally woke, it was to sunlight on his face.
Momonosuke pushed the trash bin lid aside and inhaled deeply. Fresh air flooded his lungs—clean, salty ocean wind. His eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the brightness.
"The weather is so nice today," he murmured, stretching his arms. "There's not even a cloud in the sky..."
Then his brain caught up with his senses.
Wait.
He'd fallen asleep in the ship's galley. An interior space below decks. There shouldn't be sunlight. There shouldn't be open sky. The Marine wouldn't have an open-air kitchen—one bout of food poisoning from contamination could incapacitate the entire crew.
Momonosuke's head swiveled, taking in his surroundings with growing alarm.
The architecture was definitely Marine standard—the same white paint, the same utilitarian design. The trash bin hadn't moved from its corner position. But everything else had changed.
The galley no longer had walls. Or a ceiling. Or most of its floor.
The entire supply ship had been... cut. Sliced into multiple sections like a loaf of bread. The cuts were impossibly clean—smooth surfaces that reflected sunlight like polished glass. No splintering, no crushing, no explosive damage. Just perfect severance, as if a blade the size of a building had passed through metal and wood without resistance.
A swordsman, Momonosuke realized, his blood running cold. Someone with a blade strong enough to cut through an entire ship. But when? How did I not wake up?
He'd felt nothing. No impact, no sound, no warning from his Devil Fruit instincts. The ship had been dismembered while he slept mere meters away, and he'd remained completely oblivious.
The realization of how close he'd come to death made his hands shake. If the cutting angle had been slightly different, if the blade's path had intersected with the trash bin's position...
He'd have been bisected without ever knowing danger was present.
The smell hit him then—fresh blood, still wet, carried on the ocean breeze. Coppery and thick, the odor of recent slaughter. Momonosuke's enhanced senses picked out dozens of individual blood sources scattered across the floating wreckage.
The crew, he thought with mounting horror. They're all dead. Cut down with the ship.
Bodies lay scattered across various sections of debris—sailors frozen in death, many of them literally in pieces. The attack had been so sudden, so overwhelmingly fast, that most hadn't even drawn weapons. They'd simply... ended.
And he was the only survivor.
Momonosuke ducked back into the trash bin and pulled the lid shut, his breathing rapid and panicked. His small hands clasped together in desperate prayer.
Father, mother, sister... please protect me. Please let whoever did this leave without finding me. I don't want to die. Not after surviving so much. Please...
The trash bin suddenly felt less like a hiding spot and more like a coffin. But it was all he had. So he stayed perfectly still, barely breathing, praying to family members who couldn't answer.
The ocean lapped against the floating debris. Seabirds circled overhead, drawn by the smell of blood. Time crawled forward with agonizing slowness.
Then—
CRASH!
Something massive impacted the deck section near Momonosuke's position, hitting with enough force to make the debris platform rock violently. The trash bin tipped sideways, its lid flying open as Momonosuke tumbled out in an ungraceful heap.
He scrambled backward instinctively, his eyes wide with terror, expecting to see his death approaching.
Instead, he saw a figure rising from where they'd landed—a person who'd fallen from somewhere high above, hitting the debris field hard enough to crater the wooden planks.
But they stood up anyway, apparently uninjured, their form silhouetted against the brilliant sky.
Momonosuke's throat went dry as he tried to process what he was seeing. The boy remained frozen, caught between the instinct to run and the knowledge that running would only draw attention.
God, he thought desperately, why do you keep giving me these terrible surprises?
The figure turned toward him, their features still obscured by the angle of the sunlight.
And Kozuki Momonosuke realized his ordeal was far from over.
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