The midday sun hung high over the shimmering dunes of Alabasta, casting a brilliant, golden glare across the deck of the ship. Lunch had been a lively affair—a whirlwind of clashing silverware, Luffy's boisterous laughter, and the rhythmic sound of Sanji's constant movements in the galley. But as the meal wound down, a different kind of energy took hold.
Ben stood up, his gaze fixing on Nico Robin. The archaeologist was leaning back, a cup of coffee held delicately in her hands, her sharp eyes taking in the chaotic warmth of the crew she was still learning to call her own.
"Robin," Ben said. "Follow me. It's time."
Robin didn't ask for clarification. She simply offered a small, enigmatic nod, set her cup down, and rose from her seat. She followed him through the corridors of the ship, the transition from the sun-drenched deck to the cool, dimly lit interior marked by the soft hum of the ship's advanced systems.
When they reached the heavy, reinforced door of the research room, Ben placed his hand on the scanner, and the door hissed open, revealing a sanctuary of high technology and ancient secrets.
Inside the room, the air was crisp, smelling faintly of ozone and old paper. Ben walked over to a sleek, metallic case and opened it. Inside, nestled in padded slots, were several vials of a shimmering, translucent fluid—the Super Soldier Serum.
Robin watched him with an analytical curiosity. She wasn't a stranger to the concept of power, but Ben's approach was different from anything she had encountered in the underworld or with Baroque Works. This wasn't about a Fruit's curse or a hidden weapon; it was the calculated evolution of the human form.
"You've seen the others," Ben remarked, pulling a specialized injector from its sterile packaging. "Nami, Vivi, Usopp, Chopper... even Luffy. They've all undergone the integration. Only Zoro, Sanji, and the giants haven't taken this version for their own reasons."
Robin nodded. Without a word, she rolled up the sleeve of her coat, exposing her pale, slender arm.
Ben stepped forward. The injector hissed as it made contact with her skin. Robin didn't flinch. She felt a sudden, cooling sensation spread from the injection site, moving through her veins like a rushing mountain stream. It wasn't painful, but it was a feeling of every cell in her body suddenly waking up from a long slumber.
"There will be changes, Robin," Ben said, stepping back to monitor her vitals on a nearby screen. "It's a gradual process. You'll notice a slight increase in your height—nothing dramatic, perhaps an inch or two—and your physical proportions will shift. Your bone density will increase, and your musculature will become more efficient and defined. Like the others, it's about reaching the peak of human potential."
Robin looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers. She felt a strange, buzzing vitality under her skin. "I've seen the results," she murmured, her voice steady. "If I am to survive the journey to the True History, I cannot afford to be the weak link. I accept the change."
Ben watched her for a moment, satisfied with her reaction. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, metallic cube. It looked like a mere trinket, a child's toy, until he placed it on the floor and focused.
Using the Brandish magic, Ben willed the cube to expand. In a matter of seconds, the air groaned under the sudden displacement of mass.
The tiny object surged in size, growing until a massive, weathered block of blue-green stone sat in the center of the room. Its surface was etched with the rigid, unmistakable script of the Poneglyphs.
Robin's breath caught in her throat. She moved toward it, her fingers trembling as she reached out to touch the ancient carvings. "Is this... the Poneglyph from the Royal Treasury of Alabasta?"
Ben let out a dry chuckle. "Actually, no. This one is from an ancient ruin we found—an underground castle buried deep in the desert sands near Rain Dinners. It was quite the find."
Robin blinked, looking from the stone to Ben in genuine confusion. "An underground castle? Near Rain Dinners? How did you discover such a site? I've studied the maps of this region extensively, and there were no records of such a structure."
Ben's smirk widened. "Zoro got lost."
The silence that followed was brief. Robin stared at him, her mind trying to calculate the sheer impossibility of someone wandering away from a path and stumbling into a buried civilization.
But then, she pictured the green-haired swordsman—a man whose sense of direction was so broken it bordered on the supernatural.
"I see," Robin said, her expression softening into a look of amused resignation. "If it is Mr. Swordsman we are talking about, then falling through the roof of a lost civilization is perhaps the most logical thing he could have done. It is a talent of his."
"Merry," Ben called out, looking toward the ceiling. "Display the scans of the Royal Treasury Poneglyph on the main monitor."
"Initiating display, Ben," the ship's AI replied.
A massive, crystal-clear holographic screen flickered to life on the wall. It showed the Poneglyph from the tomb of the Alabasta kings. Robin turned her attention to the screen, her eyes darting across the characters, her mind working with the speed of a master linguist.
"Tell me what they say," Ben said, crossing his arms. "The full truth."
Robin took a deep breath, her voice taking on a formal, almost reverent tone. "The Poneglyph from the Royal Treasury... it is as I suspected. It contains the precise coordinates and the 'key' to the location of the Ancient Weapon, Pluton. It describes a warship capable of erasing entire islands from the map with a single volley."
She paused, turning her gaze back to the physical stone in the room—the one Zoro had 'found.'
"And this one... this is different. It isn't a map of destruction. It is a message addressed to the Royal Family of Alabasta. It speaks of a promise made in the Void Century. It says that in the future, when 'Joyboy' returns, the Alabasta line must stand ready to assist him. And to do so, they are to use their 'Guardian Deity' to pave the way."
She finished and looked at Ben, expecting him to press her for the location of Pluton. She expected the hunger for power that she had seen in Crocodile's eyes, or the cold ambition of the World Government. But Ben simply stood there, nodding thoughtfully.
He didn't ask for the coordinates. He didn't ask how to find the ship.
Confused, Robin stepped closer. "Ben... do you not want to know? The location of Pluton is right here, in my mind. With it, you could rule the seas. Why do you not ask?"
Ben looked at her, and for a moment, Robin saw a spark in his eyes. He gave her a small, confident smile.
"Robin, there's no need for that," Ben said simply. "Pluton is a relic. It's a piece of history, and I respect it as such, but I have no use for it. If I wanted to, I could build a weapon more powerful than Pluton from scratch. Between my magic and the technology I'm developing, old-world warships are just... obsolete."
Robin recoiled slightly, her eyes wide with shock. "More powerful than an Ancient Weapon? Ben, aren't you overestimating yourself? These are the weapons that the World Government fears above all else. They are the reason the Void Century was erased."
Ben walked over to her, his tone softening but remaining firm. "Darling, you are underestimating me. The people who built Pluton were limited by the resources and the physics of their time. I am not. I can create anything I can think of. Why would I chase a ghost when I can build the future?"
He gestured to the Poneglyph Zoro had found. "As for that 'Guardian Deity' mentioned in the text... we actually found a Devil Fruit in those same ruins. Given the context, it's almost certainly a Mythical Zoan. That is the 'deity' the prophecy refers to. It's not a machine; it's a power passed down or hidden away."
Robin nodded slowly, processing the sheer scale of Ben's ambition. It was terrifying, in a way, but also strangely liberating. He didn't want to control the world through the shadows of the past; he wanted to outpace it.
---
Robin's eyes drifted away from the Poneglyph and toward the walls of the research room. For the first time, she truly noticed the sheer volume of books lining the shelves. There were thousands of them, their spines representing a dizzying array of subjects.
She had stayed away from this room until now. Despite Ben's openness, she had felt like an outsider—a stowaway who hadn't yet earned the right to sit in the sanctum of the crew's leader.
"Ben," she said softly, her fingers trailing along the edge of a mahogany shelf. "These books... would I be permitted to read them? I noticed some of these are from Drum Island, and many others appear to be from the Alabasta Royal Library."
Ben turned to her, his expression warm. "Robin, you don't have to ask. You're part of this crew. You can spend as much time in here as you want. Take whatever you like back to your quarters, too. I've already had Merry scan and upload every single one of them into the ship's servers, so the physical copies are mostly for the feel of the paper."
A genuine, rare smile broke across Robin's face. "Thank you. Truly."
She began to wander the aisles. It was a treasure trove. There were medical texts from Drum that were centuries ahead of the rest of the world, botanical studies from Alabasta that detailed plants she had only ever seen in legends, and technical manuals written in Ben's own hand that seemed to describe impossible machines.
As she pulled a leather-bound volume on ancient flora from the shelf, the door hissed open again. Chopper trotted in, carrying a tray of small glass slides and a concentrated look of determination on his furry face.
"Ben! I've finished the cellular analysis of the latest batch!" Chopper chirped, then paused when he saw Robin. "Oh, hi Robin! Are you looking at the books? The one on the third shelf about medicinal herbs is really good!"
Robin chuckled. "I'll be sure to check it out, Doctor."
Ben checked a clock on the wall. "Alright, Chopper. Time is of the essence. We've reached a bottleneck in the synthesis process, and I want to try a new simulation."
Ben and Chopper moved toward two sleek, reclining pods at the back of the room—the VR interface units.
"We're still working on the Artificial Devil Fruit project," Ben explained to Robin as he climbed into his pod. "The problem isn't the physical structure; it's the 'soul' or the energy signature of the fruit. It keeps collapsing during the stabilization phase."
Chopper hopped into his own pod, his little helmet fitting snugly over his ears. "We're using a 1:5 time dilation today," the reindeer explained. "For every hour that passes out here, we get five hours of research time in the virtual lab. We're going to stay in until tonight."
Robin watched with fascination as the pods hissed shut. "Merry," Ben's voice came over the intercom, sounding slightly distant. "Initiate the dilation protocol. Load the Devil fruit research workspace."
"Understood, Ben." Merry replied.
The lights on the pods began to pulse with a soft blue glow. Inside the virtual world, Ben and Chopper were instantly transported to a vast, white laboratory that stretched into infinity. Here, they could manipulate atoms with their hands, slow down chemical reactions to a snail's pace, and run thousands of iterations of an experiment in the blink of an eye.
Hours passed in the real world. Outside, the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon, painting the Alabasta sky in shades of violet and deep orange. Robin remained in the library, lost in the pages of history, occasionally looking up to see the steady pulsing of the VR pods.
Inside the simulation, Ben and Chopper were exhausted. They had spent what felt like days hunched over holographic DNA strands.
"It's almost there, Ben!" Chopper shouted, his virtual form glowing with excitement. "The protein chains are holding! The Mythical Zoan data we integrated from the ruin's fruit is providing the stability we needed!"
Ben frowned, his eyes fixed on a hovering 3D model of a fruit that was flickering between a vibrant red and a dull grey. "No, wait. Look at the base of the stem. The energy is leaking there. We're close, Chopper. We're right on the edge of a breakthrough... but there's one final obstacle. The sequence won't lock. It's like the fruit refuses to exist without a conscious spark."
They continued to work, their minds linked through the ship's neural net, pushing against the boundaries of science and magic. They worked through the virtual night, through the frustration of a hundred failed simulations, and through the exhaustion that even a digital mind can feel.
By the time the pods finally hissed open in the real world, the research room was bathed in the cool light of the moon. Robin was still there, sitting in a comfortable chair with a stack of books beside her, a single reading lamp illuminating her workspace.
Ben and Chopper climbed out of the pods, their movements heavy. They looked weary, but their eyes were bright with the thrill of the chase.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" Robin asked softly, closing her book.
Ben ran a hand through his hair, looking at the dark screen of the main terminal. "Not quite. We're at the finish line, but the door is locked. We just need one more key."
He looked at Robin, then at the ancient Poneglyph still standing in the center of the room. The past and the future were sitting in the same room, separated only by the will of the people holding them.
"But we'll get there," Ben said, his voice returning to that steady, unshakable tone. "Tomorrow is another day."