The silence in the high-tech laboratory of the Going Merry was absolute. It was the kind of heavy, suffocating quiet that follows a devastating explosion.
Vice-Admiral Monkey D. Garp, the Hero of the Marines, the man who had cornered the Pirate King and shattered mountains with his bare fists, sat entirely motionless in the plush leather armchair. The small, enchanted pouch of infinite rice crackers rested forgotten on his lap. His broad, scarred chest rose and fell in slow, measured breaths, fighting to control the tempest raging within his mind.
Blackbeard. Marshall D. Teach. The son of Rocks D. Xebec.
"Teach..." Garp grunted, his voice sounding like two grinding stones. He dragged a massive, calloused hand down his face. "If what you say is true... the balance of the Three Great Powers is already fractured. He is a ticking time bomb."
"He is," Ben agreed smoothly, seated across the mahogany desk. He picked up a delicate porcelain teapot and poured himself a fresh cup of Earl Grey. The tea steamed in the cool, air-conditioned air of the lab. "Teach is the ghost of the past, stepping into the present."
Ben set the teapot down. The soft clink of the ceramic echoed sharply.
"But now that you know the truth of God Valley, Garp-san," Ben said, leaning back and resting his fingertips together in a steeple. "Now that you understand the ghost that haunts this era... let me tell you what will happen in the future."
Garp frowned, his bushy eyebrows knitting together. He looked at the Magician, his skepticism warring with the horrifying accuracy of Ben's previous revelations. "The future? You claim to see the path ahead, but the future is written by the men who fight for it. How can you be so certain?"
"To know the future," Ben said, his voice dropping into a solemn, almost reverent cadence, "you must first truly understand the past. Not the past you lived through, Garp-san. Not the past that the World Government allows you to know. I am talking about the true history of this planet."
Ben raised his right hand. The Elder Wand slipped from his sleeve into his grip.
With a slow, sweeping motion of his wand, the sterile walls of the laboratory completely dissolved into shadows.
Garp flinched, gripping his armrests as the room around them transformed. They were no longer sitting in a ship; they appeared to be floating in a vast, ethereal void.
Between them, a massive, hyper-realistic illusion of the planet materialized, woven from swirling silver starlight and deep blue magical mist. The continents of the Red Line and the Grand Line glowed faintly within the floating sphere.
"Long ago," Ben began, his voice echoing in the illusory void like a historian lecturing in an empty cathedral, "the sea level of this planet was far lower than it is today."
Garp stared at the glowing magical sphere. "Lower?"
"By two hundred meters," Ben nodded. He flicked his wand. The illusionary globe shifted. The blue mist of the oceans receded rapidly, revealing massive, sprawling landmasses that connected many of the scattered islands of the present day. "If you go deep enough underwater, you don't just find shipwrecks. You find entire sunken continents and ruined cities. It proves one terrifying thing."
Ben looked into Garp's eyes through the glowing mist. "The islands we live on today... the places you Marines protect... they are just the mountaintops of a drowned world."
Garp's breath hitched. He was a man of the sea. He had sailed the Grand Line, the New World, and the four Blues for over fifty years. He knew the erratic weather, the impossible currents, the bizarre magnetic fields. He had always accepted the chaotic nature of the world as the whims of nature. But looking at the projection of the ancient continents, a terrible, logical dread began to creep up his spine.
"Two hundred meters..." Garp whispered. The sheer volume of water required to raise the global sea level by two hundred meters was incomprehensible. It defied natural evaporation and glacial melting.
"And worse still," Ben added, his eyes narrowing slightly behind his glasses. "The process has not stopped."
The magical globe began to pulse ominously.
"This is not a natural phenomenon, Garp-san," Ben declared. "The flooding of the world was caused. Deliberately."
Garp's hands clenched into fists, the leather of the armchair creaking in protest. "Deliberately? Who could possibly wield the power to flood an entire planet? That is the power of a god, not a man."
"To explain why," Ben said, sweeping his wand through the globe, causing the image of the planet to shatter into thousands of golden fireflies, "I must speak of a period erased from all historical records. The century that your Marine textbooks do not mention. The Void Century."
Garp stiffened. The Void Century. It was the ultimate taboo. As a Vice-Admiral, he knew that merely expressing curiosity about those missing hundred years was grounds for execution or a Buster Call. He had spent his life willfully ignoring the shadows of history to focus on the justice of the present. But bound by the unbreakable Soul Vow, he could not run from the truth now.
The golden fireflies swirled around the room, expanding the illusion until it engulfed them completely. Garp found himself sitting in the middle of a magnificent, ancient metropolis. Towering spires of gleaming white stone and impossible technology stretched into a phantom sky.
"Eight hundred years ago," Ben's voice took on a tone of quiet awe, "there was a kingdom that was basically a utopia. They had endless energy, flying machines, and cures for almost any disease. Their society makes ours look like the Stone Age."
Ben's expression darkened.
"And it was destroyed."
The illusion violently shifted. The pristine city around them burst into spectral flames. Shadows of massive battleships blotted out the sun. Towering ancient giants fell to the earth, and the sky rained ash. Garp watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the phantoms of a global war played out around his armchair in terrifying, silent detail.
"There occurred, eight centuries ago, a massive global war," Ben narrated over the silent destruction. "It was a clash for the very soul of the planet. And in the end... one side was completely wiped out."
Ben pointed a finger at the burning city.
"Their history was erased. Their names were made forbidden. Their legacy and their grand cities... all of it was buried beneath the sea."
"And the other side?" Garp asked, though his gut already knew the answer.
"The victors of that war," Ben said softly, "united their kingdoms. They climbed up to the safety of the Red Line and called themselves the World Government. The history you know... the justice you serve... was written entirely by the people who survived."
Garp closed his eyes. The headache he had felt earlier was returning, but it was accompanied by a deep ache in his heart. The organization he had bled for, the uniform he wore with such pride, was born from the ashes of a magnificent civilization that it had systematically eradicated.
"When that Ancient Kingdom was destroyed, the world didn't just flood by accident," Ben explained, bringing the conversation back to the oceans. "That much water doesn't just appear out of nowhere. It was deliberate."
Ben leaned forward, the glow of the desk illuminating his serious features.
"Someone used weapons so powerful they cracked the earth and forced the oceans to rise, drowning entire continents. You know them from the classified Marine files."
Garp's eyes snapped open. "The Ancient Weapons."
"Poseidon. Pluton. Uranus," Ben listed them off, his voice like tolling bells. "These instruments of destruction continue to exist. You know this. The World Government fears them falling into the hands of pirates. But what they fear more is not having them for themselves."
Garp frowned. "The Government prohibits research into ancient weapons to protect the world. That is their stated mandate."
"A beautiful lie," Ben scoffed, a rare flash of genuine anger in his eyes. "Tell me, Garp-san. Do you respect Dr. Vegapunk?"
Garp blinked, surprised by the pivot. "Vegapunk? Of course. The man is a genius. His inventions save Marine lives every day. He is a man of science, not malice."
"He is," Ben agreed. "But science requires funding. And the World Government is currently funding Vegapunk's greatest project: the creation of the Mother Flame. An endless power source."
"An endless power source would revolutionize the world," Garp argued defensively. "It could stop resource wars. It could bring light to the darkest corners of the seas."
"It could," Ben said softly. "But that is not what the Five Elders or Imu want it for. They are paying Vegapunk to create the Mother Flame so they can fuel one of the Ancient Weapons they already have."
The air in the room seemed to freeze.
Garp's heart skipped a beat. "They... they have one?"
"They do," Ben confirmed. "And if Vegapunk succeeds in powering it... if they start firing it again..."
Ben waved his wand, dispelling the burning city. The image of the globe appeared again, suspended between them. Slowly, horrifyingly, the blue water levels rose. They swallowed the Grand Line. They swallowed every island until only Red Line remained.
The illusionary water then spilled out of the globe, flooding the room. Garp instinctively pulled his feet back as the spectral tide rose to his chest, visually drowning them in the abyss, though it left no physical wetness behind.
"The remaining land will eventually vanish beneath the sea," Ben stated, a grim prophecy delivered with absolute certainty through the illusionary water. "The world will drown, Garp-san. The World Government will rule over a graveyard of water, safe in their high towers in Mary Geoise, while the rest of humanity sinks into the abyss."
He allowed the truth to settle. The silence stretched for a full minute, the only movement the gentle swirling of the magical currents around them.
Garp stared at the holographic water. The image of innocent people, of the citizens of Water 7, of Foosha Village, of his own subordinates drowning in a catastrophic, man-made flood flashed through his mind. His jaw clenched so tightly it threatened to crack his teeth.
"Why?" Garp finally asked, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and despair. "Why erase the past? Why drown the world? What are they so afraid of?"
"For eight hundred years, pirates have been labeled enemies of order," Ben said, dissolving the watery illusion entirely. The familiar walls of the laboratory snapped back into reality. "Rebels have been branded criminals. Entire bloodlines have been feared and hunted to extinction. But history is rarely so simple as 'good Marines' and 'evil pirates'."
"In that ancient war, there was a man who stood at the center of it all," Ben revealed. "A figure remembered only in myths and forbidden stones. A man who tried to do the impossible. A man who attempted to unite the world."
Garp listened, entirely captivated by the tale.
"His name was," Ben said, "Joy Boy."
Garp had never heard the name. It sounded ridiculous, like a character from a children's fairy tale. But the gravity in Ben's voice suggested this man was anything but a myth.
"He was the world's first pirate," Ben continued. "He sailed the seas with absolute freedom. He made promises to kingdoms. He gathered allies across the races—humans, fishmen, minks, giants. But... he failed in his mission. He lost the great war."
Ben pointed a finger at Garp. "The future of humanity, the survival of this planet, may depend entirely upon finishing his dream. The truth of the past has been hidden because Joy Boy's ideology is the exact opposite of the World Government's control."
"And what does this ancient pirate have to do with the present?" Garp challenged, crossing his arms.
"There are people alive today who carry the legacy of that forgotten age," Ben explained. "Individuals connected by an initial passed down through generations. A letter that the World Government fears above all else."
"D." Garp whispered.
"Yes," Ben nodded. "Monkey D. Garp. Monkey D. Dragon. Monkey D. Luffy. Portgas D. Ace. Marshall D. Teach. For centuries, scholars have debated this initial in secret. The bearers of this name are not descendants of royalty. They are not members of a single, unbroken bloodline. They are a diverse group of humans and giants alike."
Ben tapped his own chest. "They are inheritors of a will. The Will of D. The natural enemies of the 'Gods' of Mary Geoise."
Garp stared at his own hands. The hands that had fought for the 'Gods'. The irony was bitter and sharp.
"During the final days of the ancient war, when defeat was inevitable, Joy Boy's allies made a desperate decision," Ben narrated. "They knew they couldn't win by fighting. The enemy was too strong. So... they wrote their history and their promises onto indestructible stones and scattered them across the globe."
"The Poneglyphs," Garp realized.
"Exactly," Ben smiled slightly. "Those stones aren't just history books, Garp-san. They are instructions. A map left by a dying civilization for our era."
"Instructions for what?"
"To finish what Joy Boy started," Ben said. "You see, the Ancient Weapons—Pluton, Poseidon, Uranus—were never meant just to kill people or sink islands."
Ben stood up, walking around his desk.
"They were built like giant bulldozers for the planet," Ben revealed. "They were meant to tear down the Red Line. To destroy the Calm Belts. To break the massive walls that divide our four oceans."
Garp's eyes widened as the sheer magnitude of the concept hit him. "To tear down the walls of the world..."
"The final objective of Joy Boy's plan," Ben's voice rose, filled with a quiet, fierce passion, "was to merge the world back into a single ocean. A unified landmass where no race would be isolated. A sea where fishmen could live under the sun, where the skies and the oceans were open to all. The sea of legends."
"The All Blue," Garp whispered, remembering the fairy tale cooks and dreamers often spoke of.
"Yes," Ben nodded. "But the plan failed. And for eight centuries, the World Government has stopped anyone from fulfilling that promise. They like the divided seas because divided people are easier to rule. They guard the Red Line because it keeps them physically above the rest of humanity."
Ben stopped in front of the Vice-Admiral.
"The coming era, the war that is brewing right now, will determine whether humanity repeats the tragedy of eight hundred years ago and drowns... or transcends it and unites the world."
Ben let out a long breath. "I only say this: this world will sink in the future if nothing changes."
Garp sat in the leather chair, looking older than he ever had. The jovial, cracker-eating Marine was entirely stripped away, leaving only a tired warrior bearing the weight of a shattered worldview. The justice he had fought for was a system designed to keep humanity divided and oblivious to an impending, watery grave.
But Garp was a pragmatist. He was a man of action, not a scholar.
He looked up at Ben, his eyes narrowing, his jaw set in a hard line.
"It's a terrifying story, Magician," Garp grunted, his voice gruff. "A tragic history and a doomed future. But tell me this... what does that have to do with me?"
Garp scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. "I am an old man. My era is over. I might die before this 'final war' you speak of can even arrive. I am just a grandfather trying to make sure his grandsons don't get themselves killed. I cannot fight the tides of history."
Ben didn't look offended. Instead, a slow, wide, and incredibly dangerous smile spread across his face. It was the smile of a man who held the ultimate trump card.
"You think this doesn't involve you, Garp-san?" Ben asked softly. "You think you can just sit back and watch the era pass?"
Ben leaned down, resting his hands on the arms of Garp's chair, trapping the Marine Hero in his gaze.
"Joy Boy was a formidable warrior," Ben said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "He possessed immense Haki, yes. But he also ate a Devil Fruit."
Garp frowned. "A Devil Fruit? Many pirates have Devil Fruits."
"Not this one," Ben shook his head. "This fruit was special. It was a Mythical Zoan. A fruit which bore the name of a god."
Ben paused, locking eyes with Garp.
"The Sun God, Nika."
Garp froze. The name hit his ears like a physical blow, triggering a cascade of buried memories.
Nika. He frowned, rubbing his temples as the memories clawed their way to the surface. He had heard that term before. Not in official Marine briefings. Not from Sengoku.
He had heard it decades ago. In the dark, filthy holds of slave ships. In the blood-stained auction houses of the Sabaody Archipelago. Whenever he, as a young, idealistic Marine, had tried to ease the suffering of the slaves owned by the Celestial Dragons, he had heard them whispering in the dark.
They weren't praying to the World Government. They were praying to a myth.
"The Warrior of Liberation," an old, beaten slave had whispered to a young Garp. "He brings the dawn. He fights with a smile. The Sun God, Nika... he will come for us."
Garp looked up at Ben, his eyes wide with realization. "The slaves... the oppressed... they prayed to him. They asked God Nika to liberate them."
"They still do," Ben confirmed. "The legend survived the eight hundred years, passed down through whispers and prayers in the darkest corners of the world. The Warrior of Liberation who fights bringing smiles to the faces of those who suffer."
"So," Garp asks. "Where is this... this Devil Fruit now?"
Ben smiled. It wasn't a malicious smile, but a triumphant one.
"You see, Garp-san," Ben explained, "Zoan Devil Fruits are unique. They have a will of their own. And that is especially true for a god-level Mythical Zoan. The World Government has been desperately searching for the Nika fruit for eight hundred years."
Ben stood up, walking toward the door of the laboratory.
"They sent CP agents. They scoured the seas. But they could never find it. Or, more accurately, they could never keep it," Ben chuckled softly. "Because the fruit itself has been escaping their clutches since the Void Century. It evaded them, waiting for the right time. Waiting for the right inheritor of the Will of D."
"Twelve years ago," Ben said, his hand resting on the door handle. "The World Government finally managed to secure it. They placed it under heavy guard on a CP9 transport ship. But a certain pirate intercepted that ship and stole it."
"And right now," Ben turned back, his blue eyes piercing through the silence of the room. "The fruit has chosen its master. The bearer of the Sun God Nika, the new Joy Boy, the man who will turn this world upside down and finish the war of the Void Century..."
"...Is a new rookie named Monkey D. Luffy."