On the port railing, we see Luffy and Usopp sitting with their fishing rods dangling.
"So hungry..." Luffy groaned, his stomach growling a symphonic protest. "Sanji's snacks were good, but I need a fish. A big one. Like the Island Eater."
"Don't be greedy," Usopp whispered, adjusting his goggles. "The Great Captain Usopp senses a catch. The water tension is changing. The prey is near."
DING-DING-DING!
The sudden, sharp chime of the ship's bell shattered the silence.
"Ship sighted!" Merry's voice rang out from the mast speaker, clear and urgent. "Port side! Distance: 200 meters! Closing fast!"
"A ship?!" Usopp yelled, scanning the impenetrable fog. "I don't see anything! Merry, are you sure?"
"Positive, Usopp! My sensors detect a large displacement of water!"
"Maybe it's a Ghost Ship!" Luffy cheered, eyes sparkling.
Suddenly, the ship went through the mist. And nothing happens.
"Is that it? Where is the ship?" Usopp asked.
"I got it!" Luffy yelled as his fishing rod was shaking.
"Caught one!"
"Reel it in, Luffy!"
With a mighty heave, Luffy yanked the rod back.
A man flew out. He was dressed in a flamboyant blue swan coat, wearing heavy makeup, and spinning like a ballerina. He soared through the air, screaming—not in fear, but in delight.
"YOOOOOO-HOOOOOO!"
He landed on the deck of the Merry with a perfect, ten-point pirouette.
"Un-Deux-Trois!" the stranger posed, hands on his hips. "What a catch! You fished me right out of my boredom!"
The crew on deck stared.
Sanji, holding a tray of drinks, paused mid-step.
Nami lowered her newspaper.
Vivi stood up, Karoo quacking nervously beside her.
"Who..." Usopp whispered, "is that?"
The stranger grinned, a wide, infectious smile. "I am Bentham! But you may call me... a friend! For you have saved a drowning swan!" (He wasn't drowning; he was on a ship, but the logic didn't seem to matter).
---
The atmosphere on the deck shifted from tension to confusion, and then rapidly to a bizarre sort of party.
Bentham was loud, charismatic, and utterly ridiculous. Within minutes, he had Luffy and Usopp laughing as he performed a series of high kicks.
"So!" Luffy asked, chewing on a cracker. "Are you a Devil Fruit user? You look weird."
"Rude, but accurate!" Bentham laughed. "Yes! I ate the Mane Mane no Mi! The Clone-Clone Fruit!"
"Clone?" Usopp asked. "What does it do?"
"Observe!" Bentham shouted.
Without warning, his hand shot out and slapped Luffy hard across the face.
SMACK!
"OW!" Luffy rubbed his cheek. "Why'd you do that?!"
"Look closer!" Bentham commanded.
Luffy looked. The crew looked.
Bentham's face... shifted. His jaw squared. His eyes rounded. A scar appeared under his left eye.
In a second, Bentham had vanished. Standing in his place was a perfect, mirror-image duplicate of Monkey D. Luffy.
"SUGEEEEEEEE!" Luffy screamed, forgetting the slap instantly. "IT'S ME! I'M OVER THERE!"
"That's right!" The Fake-Luffy grinned. He touched his own left cheek with his left hand. Instantly, his face morphed back to the makeup-wearing stranger. "My right hand copies... my left hand restores! It is the power of memory!"
"Do another one!" Usopp cheered.
Bentham danced around the deck like a whirlwind.
He slapped Usopp. Poof. He became the long-nosed sniper. "I AM CAPTAIN USOPP!"
He slapped Nami (gently). Poof. He became the navigator.
"Whatever," the Fake-Nami shrugged, flipping her hair.
He spun toward Sanji.
"And you, Monsieur Cook!" Bentham reached out to slap Sanji's cheek.
Sanji's eyes narrowed.
For a moment, he didn't see Bentham. He saw the Okama Doll, Candy, chasing him through the halls of the Merry. He saw the lipstick. He felt the phantom sensation of a kiss he had narrowly avoided.
A cold chill of pure trauma ran down Sanji's spine.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!"
Sanji's leg moved faster than thought. He delivered a swift, brutal kick to Bentham's wrist, deflecting the hand.
"No one like you... is putting a hand on me," Sanji growled, smoke billowing from his mouth. "I value my personal space."
Bentham blinked, nursing his wrist. "Ooh! Feisty! I like it! Very well, the Cook is shy!"
He turned back to the group. "But wait! There is more! I don't just copy faces... I copy the body!"
He turned back into Nami.
"Observe!"
With a wicked grin, the Fake-Nami grabbed the hem of her shirt.
"Happiness Punch!"
He lifted the shirt, flashing the entire deck.
Sanji, despite his trauma, instantly rocketed into the air, a fountain of blood erupting from his nose, propelling him like a rocket. "NAMI-SWAN'S BODY! IT'S A MIRACLE!"
CRACK.
The real Nami appeared behind Bentham. Her Tempest Tact was crackling with static electricity. She slammed it onto Bentham's head with enough force to crack the deck.
"DON'T USE MY BODY FOR YOUR PERVERSIONS!" she shrieked.
"I'm sorry!" Bentham cried, rubbing the massive lump on his/Nami's head, quickly reverting to his normal form. "It was just a joke!"
"A bad one!"
Bentham laughed, unfazed. "Ah, you are a fun crew! I have memorised so many faces in my travels!"
He began to cycle through his memory bank, faces flashing across his own like a slideshow.
A pirate. A marine. A child. A shopkeeper.
And then... for a split second...
A bearded man with kind eyes and regal bearing. King Cobra of Alabasta.
Vivi, who had been watching silently from the side, felt her heart stop.
Father?!
She stared at Bentham. The face was gone in an instant, replaced by another, but she had seen it.
Why... why does he have my father's face?
Before she could speak, a foghorn blasted from the sea.
A massive ship, shaped like a swan, pulled alongside the Merry.
"Oh! My ride is here!" Bentham cheered. He leapt onto the railing. "Farewell, my new friends! Our meeting was brief, but our friendship is eternal! Keep laughing! Au Revoir!"
He leapt off the ship, landing on his own vessel, and vanished into the fog, leaving a confused, amused, and slightly violated Straw Hat crew behind.
---
As the swan ship disappeared, the laughter on the Merry died down.
Luffy was still chuckling. "He was funny!"
Vivi stood rooted to the spot. Her hands were trembling.
"Everyone..." she whispered. "We have a problem."
Nami looked at her. "Vivi? What's wrong?"
"That man..." Vivi swallowed hard. "One of the faces he showed... was my father. King Cobra."
Silence fell over the deck.
"Your dad?" Luffy asked. "Why?"
"Because," Vivi said, her voice rising in panic. "He is Mr. 2 Bon Clay. An Officer Agent of Baroque Works. He... he mimics people. If he has my father's face... he must have touched him. Or been close to him."
She looked at the crew with wide, terrified eyes.
"And now... he has touched Luffy. And Usopp. And Nami. And Me."
The realisation hit them like a bucket of ice water.
Nami paled. "He... he has our faces. He can turn into us. He can walk into Alabasta looking like me and do anything."
"He's a perfect spy," Vivi said. "We... we gave our identities to the enemy."
Sanji exhaled a long stream of smoke. He walked to the railing, looking at the spot where the swan ship had vanished.
"Not all of us," Sanji said quietly.
The crew looked at him.
"He tried to touch me," Sanji said, tapping his cheek. "But I didn't let him. He didn't touch Zoro. He didn't touch Ben. He didn't touch Gaints, Robin or Chopper because they weren't here."
Sanji turned, a grim smile on his face.
"He has half the crew. But he doesn't have the other half. That's our advantage. He doesn't know about the Wizard. He doesn't know about the Monster Doctor. He doesn't know we have giants below deck."
"Sanji's right," Nami said, her mind shifting into strategy mode. "It's bad... but Ben will think of something. We have to tell him immediately."
"Yeah," Luffy nodded. "Ben's smart. He'll fix it."
They turned toward the cabin door, placing their faith in the man who was currently building a god in the basement.
---
Deep within the Merry, in the Virtual Construct, Chopper and the avatar of Merry were floating in a sea of data.
"The artificial fruit structure is unstable," Chopper reported, manipulating a complex 3D model of a DNA strand. "If we use the Lineage Factor sequence I isolated from my blood, and bind it to the Super Soldier Serum... no, that won't work."
Meanwhile, in the Physical Fabricator Room, Ben was working on a project of his own.
He stood over a workbench. On it lay a skeleton.
But it wasn't bone. It was metal. Dark, grey, unpolished metal that seemed to absorb the light around it.
Uru.
The metal of the gods. The metal of Mjolnir.
Ben had synthesised it using Momo's Creation quirk to create a skeletal frame.
"Uru holds magic better than anything," Ben muttered, his Stark intellect guiding his hands as he etched microscopic runes into the metal bones. "It's the perfect nervous system for a soul-based AI."
He connected the skeletal frame to the main power conduit.
"Merry. Transfer secondary motor control protocols to the frame."
"Transferring..."
The skeleton twitched. The metal fingers flexed.
"Good," Ben smiled. "The skeleton is active. Now... the skin."
He moved to the Fabricator. Inside the hopper was a stack of glowing, silver-blue ingots.
Vibranium.
The strongest metal on Earth. Absorbs kinetic energy. Nearly indestructible.
"Start the weave," Ben commanded.
The robotic arms whirred. Lasers flared.
Layer by layer, the Vibranium was deposited over the Uru skeleton. It wasn't built like a robot; it was built like a human. Vibranium muscle fibers. Vibranium mesh for skin.
He modeled the appearance on Merry's avatar—a young girl, about ten years old, with innocent features.
Ben worked for hours. He carefully crafted the face, ensuring it wasn't part of the "Uncanny Valley." He used synthetic polymers over the Vibranium for the skin texture, making it soft to the touch, warm (heated by internal thermal coils).
Finally, he attached the horns—two curved, white horns made of high-density ceramic composite.
He stepped back.
Lying on the table was a masterpiece. A Vibranium-Uru Android.
It had no weapons. It had no lasers. It was purely a vessel. A physical anchor for the ship's soul so she could walk among her crew.
"It's ready," Ben whispered. "No magic in the body itself. Just pure, unadulterated engineering perfection. The magic comes from the soul that inhabits it."
He covered the body with a sheet. "Soon, Merry. Soon you'll walk."