The open yard of Udon Prison was littered with half-melted chunks of ice, and most members of the Beasts Pirates were still trapped inside their frozen prisons, only partially thawed.
King and Izo made their way through the crowd and headed straight for Jack, who was sitting off in one corner.
"Where's Queen? Why haven't I seen him anywhere?"
King got straight to the point. He had come looking for Queen because several people who had passed near Oden Castle had suffered mild exposure to the poison mist, and he needed someone capable of treating them.
Yet after searching the entire area, Queen was nowhere to be found.
Jack's expression became strangely awkward.
He scratched his cheek and quietly stepped aside.
What King and Izo saw behind him was—
a gigantic head.
Nothing else.
Queen's bald head lay on the ground with unfocused eyes and his tongue hanging limply from one side of his mouth.
There was no torso.
No arms.
No legs.
Nothing.
Just the head.
King and Izo both recoiled.
"What happened to him?"
King stared in disbelief at Queen, who had returned to human form yet somehow been reduced to nothing but a head.
"Did he finally die?"
King crouched, grabbed Queen by his long braid, and lifted him up.
He shook him several times.
Queen's head swung back and forth like a pendulum, eyes still vacant and tongue still hanging uselessly from his mouth, looking thoroughly dead.
King didn't hesitate.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
After several hard slaps, Queen's eyes finally moved.
"Why am I so damn tired…"
Then his pupils abruptly focused.
"Wait!"
Queen's eyes bulged.
"MY BODY!"
His voice exploded through the prison yard.
"DON'T TELL ME IT FELL INTO THE OCEAN!"
If Queen hadn't undergone such extreme mechanical modification that his head could remain alive after separating from the rest of his body, he probably really would have been dead by now.
In some ways, his modifications resembled an artificial, technology-based version of Buggy's Chop-Chop Fruit.
Unfortunately, Queen's head and body were still connected on some level. With his body now missing, the head had been left completely powerless on the ground.
It wasn't hard to guess what had happened.
And the obvious culprit was floating right behind them.
Bella innocently looked left.
Then right.
She began whistling as casually as possible.
"B-Bella doesn't know anything…"
…
Meanwhile, aboard one of the Marine warships, Ryokugyu had finally adjusted somewhat to the Seastone chains wrapped around his body.
He was still completely drained of strength, but after a tremendous amount of effort, Aramaki finally managed to wriggle free of the burlap sack.
Something immediately felt wrong.
His entire body felt tightly enclosed.
Not in the ordinary sense of being bound by chains—the Seastone restraints were certainly tight, but this was different.
Something else seemed to be wrapped around him.
Aramaki looked down.
Then froze.
At some point, he had somehow ended up wedged inside an enormous, bizarre structure.
It was bloated, heavily modified, and unmistakably mechanical in places.
Queen's body.
Aramaki stared at himself.
"…What the hell is this?!"
…
Elsewhere—
"I never thought the biggest prize we'd take home from this trip would be Queen's body."
Garp strode toward the shogun's residence, sounding almost impressed.
Sengoku walked beside him.
"Well, it's not as though we can transport Kaido right now. Just retrieving him from the bottom of the sea is going to be a problem."
He sighed.
"Besides, how many times have we captured that man already?"
"And what happened every time?"
"He escaped."
"If Wano can keep him securely imprisoned for once, we should leave him here instead of trying to drag him all the way to Impel Down and risking another disaster halfway there."
Sengoku's expression then became more serious.
"But Kaido himself isn't what concerns me most."
"If his weapons factories stop producing entirely, every country relying on those weapons to maintain its current balance of power could descend into chaos worse than the wars they're already fighting."
"That's exactly why I said the Beasts Pirates can't be completely dissolved yet."
"As long as the organization still exists, they can claim that production reserves are temporarily insufficient and stall deliveries. That might preserve the fragile balance for a while."
"But if the entire organization simply disappears, we'll be dealing with a mountain of consequences afterward."
Sengoku frowned.
"And most of those places aren't World Government member nations, which means the Marines have no legitimate reason to intervene."
"You can imagine what that leads to."
"That's easy."
Garp answered almost immediately.
"Just give the problem to Dragon."
Sengoku stopped dead.
Garp continued casually,
"The Revolutionary Army would probably be delighted to step in and calm those places down."
Sengoku's eyes widened.
"Garp!"
"You still expect me to believe you aren't secretly plotting something?!"
"Now you're casually dragging the Revolutionary Army into this too? Are you trying to get yourself thrown out of the Marines?!"
Garp scratched his cheek.
"Uh… hahaha. They were just the first people who came to mind."
"Dragon is kind of a professional at that sort of thing, isn't he?"
"Professional my ass!"
Sengoku lunged at him.
"You are not contacting him!"
Within moments, the two old men were wrestling again.
Uta, who was walking ahead and guiding them toward the shogun's residence, looked back with deep exhaustion.
Still, she stepped in to separate them.
They had important work to do, after all.
Especially since the upcoming negotiations were supposed to be staged.
If they were going to perform, they needed to make it convincing.
…
In the original course of events, Doflamingo's earlier defeat had already disrupted the underground weapons trade, while the Revolutionary Army had begun taking action in response.
By the time Kaido later fell, many regions destabilized by the weapons shortage had already been handled by the Revolutionary Army, so the eventual collapse of Wano's arms supply created far less disruption.
This timeline was different.
The Revolutionary Army was still operating largely from the shadows and had not yet entered the stage of full-scale action.
…
Three days passed quickly.
As planned, Garp and Sengoku gathered the Wano-born Marine samurai and used their relationships with the local population to stage a carefully orchestrated confrontation inside the shogun's residence.
There was shouting.
Cups were smashed.
Tables were struck.
Threats and protests flew back and forth while they argued fiercely with Yamato.
Eventually, amid all the chaos, the final arrangement was agreed upon.
King also participated in the discussions.
He was somewhat surprised to see the Marines appear, but not nearly as shocked as one might expect.
Under normal circumstances, the arrival of Marines would almost certainly mean war.
But once the Monkey family entered the equation, normal Marine logic seemed to stop applying altogether.
King had long since accepted that there was little point trying to predict how these people operated.
For those three days, the shogun's residence remained lively almost constantly.
Ace, meanwhile—
was still having trouble "giving birth."
Nearly every day—or more accurately, every night—his agonized screams echoed through the residence while Yamato remained faithfully by his side.
Even Garp and Sengoku had no idea what to do.
Neither of them had ever encountered a pregnant man before.
If they had known this would happen, they might have brought Law along.
Admittedly, they had gotten into the habit of thinking of Law whenever something medically bizarre happened, to the point that they were practically treating him like a convenient tool, but calling him now would take far too long.
Queen was currently just a detached head and couldn't help either.
That left the Beasts Pirates' other medical officers to examine Ace.
After repeated examinations, they finally figured out the problem.
When Bell had used his flames to repair Ace's damaged internal organs, those flames had fused with the healing tissue itself.
That was why every time Bell moved even slightly, Ace experienced unbearable pain.
At this point, the fastest and most effective solution was obvious.
Surgery.
Cut Bell out.
"What?! You want to cut me open?!"
Ace immediately panicked.
"No! Absolutely not! No way!"
"You don't have to."
The medical officer answered calmly.
"You can simply wait for your body to naturally metabolize the tissue that belongs to the Homie. Once that process finishes, Bell should be able to separate normally."
Ace stared at him suspiciously.
"How long?"
The doctor considered it.
"Roughly the length of a normal pregnancy."
"About ten months."
"Possibly longer."
Ace's face changed instantly.
"Nope!"
He shouted without hesitation.
"CUT ME OPEN! I'LL DO THE SURGERY!"
His scream carried straight through the wall.
In the neighboring room, Cain shot upright in bed.
For the past several nights, Ace's screaming had been following him into his dreams.
Combined with the several sleepless nights he had spent fighting Kaido, Cain's subconscious had become an absolute mess.
That final scream had yanked him directly out of a nightmare.
Cain sat rigidly on the bed, staring blankly ahead while the remnants of the dream still floated through his mind.
"…It started with me fighting Kaido."
He slowly rubbed his face.
"So why did it suddenly turn into Yamato helping Kaido give birth…"
Cain's expression grew increasingly horrified.
"…and the baby was Ace, completely covered in flames?"
He sat there in silence for several seconds.
"…What the hell kind of nightmare was that?"
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