Green Bit, New World
"Wow…! I didn't know such a place existed, Master!"
Yamato's wide, fiery eyes shimmered with childlike wonder as she gazed across the sprawling cavern. Her voice echoed faintly, swallowed by the vastness around her.
Calling it a cavern was an understatement. This was no natural hollow—it was an empire carved beneath the earth. The Donquixote Family's most secret base, the beating heart of their hidden dominion, and the crown jewel of their clandestine power.
From the vaulted ceiling to the furthest depths, everything here pulsed with silent purpose. Great stone pillars—each carved with the sigil of the ancient Tontatta tribe—rose like ancient guardians, supporting the chamber that stretched endlessly into darkness. The air was warm, humming with machinery, the rhythmic clang of hammers echoing from distant workshops.
"This isn't even close to the bottom," came a soft, proud voice.
The tiny figure of Princess Mansherry sat perched on my shoulder, her elegant tail glinting in the lamplight. She puffed her chest proudly, her tone bright with satisfaction. "There are many more layers below this one! Our Tontatta tribe built them all—every corridor, every tunnel, every brick!"
She wasn't exaggerating. The Tontatta had transformed Green Bit's soil into a fortress of impossible design—a labyrinth that spiraled downward, layer upon layer, each holding a different secret of the Donquixote family. But the deepest layer of all contained the greatest secret in the world: Pluton.
Yamato leaned over the railing, eyes sparkling like molten gold as she took in the surreal sight of the underground metropolis—workshops of coral steel, trains of conveyor belts, and glowing veins of molten ore illuminating the darkness like rivers of fire. "Master, can I look around?" she asked, nearly bouncing on her heels.
I nodded, glancing toward Mansherry, who gracefully hopped from my shoulder onto Yamato's.
"Don't disturb those who are working," I warned with a faint smile.
"Got it!" Yamato grinned, and the two—along with Leo and a handful of Tontatta tribe members—hurried down the bridges that wound through the labyrinthine city, their laughter quickly fading into the distant hum of machinery.
I turned my gaze to the man beside me—Tom, the legendary shipwright, the fishman whose genius had shaped history itself. His eyes, wide and unblinking, reflected the light of the cavern's core. For the first time since we arrived, the old master shipwright said nothing.
"Come, Tom—san," I said, guiding him down the sloping causeway that led deeper still—toward the heart of the base.
As we stepped through the final gate of the lowest layer, Tom froze. Before us stretched an enormous hangar—a cathedral of steel and stone so vast that even giants could have walked its floors like ordinary men. Gantries and cranes hung suspended from above like spiderwebs of brass, and the air itself thrummed with energy, with creation.
And in the center of it all lay a skeleton of unimaginable scale—the framework of the next generation Pluton.
A ship so vast that it made even the greatest of sea kings seem like ants. Its incomplete hull glistened under the orange forge light, ribbed with adamantine plates, its interior lined with conduits that pulsed faintly like veins. Every piece of it whispered of divine craftsmanship—technology centuries beyond anything the world above had ever seen.
Tom took a step forward, his gills flaring with awe. "This… this can't be…" he muttered, voice trembling.
He turned to me, disbelief etched across his weathered face. "How long has it been… since you Donquixote brothers took those blueprints from me? Five years? Six? And you've already… this much…?"
I smiled faintly. "Time bends when one knows how to build in the dark."
All around us, the Tontatta tribe swarmed the scaffolding like tireless ants, guided by the voices of their overseers. At the far platform, a small figure stood before a wall of glowing monitors — a boy, or so he seemed at first glance. His white hair was wild, his eyes hidden behind tinted lenses that flickered with data.
But he was no ordinary child. He was Einstein—a clone of Dr. Vegapunk himself, one of the greatest minds in the current world, born and bound to the Donquixote family's cause. His fingers danced across the consoles as if conducting an invisible symphony of creation.
Beside him stood another—Dr. Wolf, the stoic genius who had served the Donquixote family since its inception in the North Blue, his sharp eyes overseeing every equation, every schematic, every measurement, and every bolt driven into Pluton's colossal frame.
The sight left Tom speechless. The perfection of it. The madness. The scale. For a long moment, he simply stood there, staring at the half-built god of destruction—the ancient weapon of legend, reborn in secret beneath the world's feet.
"…You've done what even the World Government could not," he whispered, almost reverently.
"Not yet," I corrected softly. "But we will. In time."
I couldn't help the small, hollow chuckle that escaped me as Tom stood there, jaw slack, every breath a shudder of disbelief. The hangar swallowed his figure whole—pillars and cranes and scaffolds climbing into darkness—but his eyes were locked on the skeleton of Pluton, on the ribs of steel and the veins of molten conduit that promised a force older than kingdoms.
"Tell me, Tom-san," I said softly, letting the question hang between the roar of hammers and the murmur of a thousand Tontatta voices, "is the scale of this ancient weapon as grand as you imagined?"
He had read the legends—stories passed down from his master about the last Pluton, about an age when the shipwrights of Water 7 poured their lives and pride into a single creation for almost a century. He had imagined greatness. He had never imagined this.
Tom swallowed, the sound like a ship's wreck groaning. He staggered one step closer, fingertips brushing the cold frame of the hull as if to measure its reality. Up close, the metal seemed to breathe. Even in its infancy, Pluton looked like a continent-sized idea starting to walk.
"Tell me true, Rosinante-kun," Tom said at last, voice raw as a ripped sail. "Are you brothers planning to liberate this world… or to erase it?"
The question was the center of gravity in the cavern. Every hammer stroke, every whisper, seemed to pivot around it. Tom's face, weathered by salt and years of building marvels, betrayed a storm beneath his calm. He had given his life to creation, to making things that carried people forward—and now he stood before an engine that could carry the world backward into silence.
I met his eyes without flinching. Nothing I could say would soften the truth without betraying the very men I'd sworn to. So I gave it straight, because he deserved no comforting lies.
"Time will tell, Tom-san," I answered, the words steady but cold. "If the world must be destroyed to be rebuilt, we will not hesitate. But we would prefer to use this as a scalpel, not a hammer. We built Pluton to take the fight to the World Government when the day comes—and to make them remember. That is the purpose."
For a moment he said nothing. The cavern's glow painted his gills the color of old bronze; his hands trembled as he wrapped them around his forearm. In that silence I saw the man he had always been: a craftsman, a father-figure, a man whose bones had been built from patience and care. He had never wanted power—only the perfect line, the right curve, and the proud keel that would make a ship sing.
"What you ask me to build," he whispered finally, "is not a ship. It is judgment." The word tasted like iron in his mouth.
He took a slow breath and remembered his master's lessons: that tools are extensions of their maker's heart, and a good shipwright must know what he builds will carry. He closed his eyes, and for a while I could see the clockwork of his memories—late nights bent over planks, the smell of fresh pine, the first time a hull held water and didn't leak, and the faces of those who'd trusted him with their lives.
His hands found my sleeve, fingers gripping like a pledge. "You are not hiding this from me," he said. There was accusation there, but no betrayal—only the ache of a man realigning himself to a new, terrible truth. "I appreciate that. I cannot say I agree. I cannot say I do not fear what may come if you are wrong. But I will not build something with false faith."
His eyes opened then, bright and terrible with honest grief. "I am a builder," he said. "If this is what the world needs… I will make it true. But know this, Rosinante-kun: I will carve the soul into the keel. I will make it bear witness to the hands that launch it."
It was the most humane thing he could have offered: not an oath to destruction, but a promise that whatever was born of his skill would also carry the marks of conscience. In that pledge lay the entire tragedy—Tom's kindness would follow Pluton into the world.
Tom stepped back, finally allowing himself a long, ragged breath. His chest rose, and in that rise I read the resolution of a gentle man forced into terrible work. The shipwright who mended hulls and saved lives would now lend his soul to a leviathan.
"Give me time," he murmured, more to himself than to me. "Let me put in the pieces that will give people a choice. Let me make the thing so that if it must be used, it will leave a way to save what's left."
"Come then, Tom-san," I said quietly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Let me introduce you to the ones you'll be working with from now on."
Before the fishman could respond, the air around us warped—black lightning crackled in jagged veins, reality itself bending for a heartbeat—and in the blink of an eye, the world blurred away.
When our feet touched solid ground again, we stood on a colossal platform suspended high above the hangar floor. Below us, the half-formed skeleton of Pluton stretched across the cavern like a sleeping god. From up here, the shipwrights looked like ants, sparks and welds glimmering like a sea of stars. The sound—the rhythmic clang of hammers, the hiss of steam, the pulse of machinery—rose as one endless heartbeat.
The platform itself was a kingdom of order. Dozens of people worked in silence around massive glass consoles and mechanical relays, each screen tracking some portion of the project—hydraulic flow, armor density, reactor stability. Cables and pipes ran like veins through the walls, pulsing faintly with energy. It was less a workshop and more a command cathedral, a sanctum of creation where even a single misstep could damn the entire world.
Tom's gaze moved slowly across the figures on the platform—scientists, engineers, metallurgists, all handpicked, all sworn to secrecy. Yet even their loyalty was a fragile flame carefully shielded by the Donquixote family's will.
Every one of them was watched without exception.
Even here, in the heart of the Donquixote's most sacred undertaking, eyes lingered in the shadows—tiny observers that blended with the dark corners of the chamber, unseen but always present. Every breath these men and women took was monitored. Every letter they sent and every word they spoke beyond this cavern was known to us.
When they left Green Bit and traveled to Dressrosa to visit their families, they were escorted by unseen guardians—shadows from the Tontatta Corps, a special division created by the Tontatta king in order to safeguard the kingdom and its secrets.
Their families remained untouched, unaware, blissfully ignorant of what their loved ones truly labored on. But even a careless whisper, even an innocent mention of forbidden schematics… and the family's wrath would come down upon them like divine punishment.
At first, Doffy had wanted to lock them away completely—confine the entire research division on the island, away from the world, until the project's completion. No risks, no leaks, no sentiment. But I had convinced him otherwise. Imprisonment breeds rebellion, and resentment festers faster than loyalty. If this weapon was to be born of human hands, those hands needed to feel trusted—at least a little.
So we reached a compromise.
They would be free to see the sun, free to hold their children again—but under the silent gaze of the family. And every one of them knew, deep down, that this mercy was conditional. A single betrayal, even by accident, and not just they, but everyone they loved would be erased—cleanly, silently, without a trace left in the world's memory.
That knowledge kept them obedient. That fear kept the project alive.
Tom felt the chill of that truth as he looked around, his gills flexing as if the air had turned heavier. He could feel the tension in the air—the loyalty born not just of faith, but of dread. He had seen shipyards filled with laughter, craftsmen singing as they worked. But here… here was devotion forged from necessity, from belief in something greater, or darker, than themselves.
"Tom-san," I said, breaking his silence as I gestured toward the center of the platform. "These are the minds that will help bring Pluton to life. Every man and woman here has sacrificed something—freedom, family, even their peace of mind—for this vision. Einstein," I nodded toward the small, silver-haired boy perched by a cluster of blueprints, his fingers dancing across luminous schematics with machine-like precision, "is our architect of logic. The family's greatest mind, and beside him, Dr. Wolf—the heart that keeps this madness from devouring itself."
Dr. Wolf — gaunt of cheek, eyes like ground glass — glanced over his shoulder and started, as if seeing a ghost. It had been months since anyone had shared daylight with him; his world had narrowed to blueprints and burnished metal. The silver-haired boy at the console, however, did not look up. He mumbled to himself, fingers dancing over holographic schematics as if coaxing answers from pure logic.
"He's only a child," Tom breathed, incredulous. The word fell from his lips like a shipwright's prayer.
"Don't let his age fool you, Tom-san," I said, a soft smile in my voice. "He may be the greatest mind of this era."
Einstein flicked his eyes at us for the briefest beat and then vanished again into the problem. Whatever knot of equations and tolerances had snagged his thoughts had him pinned; his brow furrowed in a way no machine could smooth. Science could write the laws, but a vessel — and a weapon like Pluton — needed flesh and hand: the feel of timber, the way metal sang when struck, the secret give in a joint. That was why Tom was here.
"I don't understand," the boy muttered, irritation sharpening his tone. "Theoretically, the section should hold. We've modeled it, rerun the simulations a dozen times — yet the fabrication tests keep failing. The tolerances crack at the welds. Stress concentration… it shouldn't—" He broke off, hands hovering over the console.
Tom didn't wait for invites. He never had. Without ceremony he stepped to the enormous drafting table, boots ringing on the metal grating. The smell of hot iron and resin rose as he leaned over the holographic plans: framing ribs, longitudinal girder runs, and the lattice of braces that would let the hull shoulder unimaginable loads. Where the scientists saw numbers, Tom saw motion—the way a hull breathed in a storm, where the sea would bite first, and the routes of force that would travel like lightning through the ribs.
He walked the lines with his fingers, tracing imaginary caulking seams, feeling for the places where the world would tug and tear. He spoke quietly as he worked, voice low and precise, the way a master measures wood by sound.
"Your welds concentrate shear at the knuckle here," he said, tapping a point on the glowing plan. "You've let the flange end bluntly; that creates a stress riser. At scale, that riser will open like a seam under the first great load."
Einstein blinked, then leaned in. "But the flange—if extended—would add weight we cannot afford. The armor matrix—"
Tom's hands moved faster, sketching notations in the air with grease-stained fingers. "Extend it, but taper it. Feather the flange into the skin with a compound fillet. Add an interleaved honeycomb of tempered ribs beneath—not to stiffen the plate alone, but to give it a sacrificial path.
Let the outer skin flex and bleed stress into the honeycomb, where we can control the failure path. Use graded alloys in the knuckle: hard facing where the contact is, then a ductile core to absorb tear. You weld with a straight bead now; use a stitched weld—intermittent—to allow controlled shrink and to block crack propagation."
He described it the way a captain might describe a harbor: practical, intimate, born of memory and a thousand hands. The language was simple but precise—things only a shipwright who had felt a keel bend beneath a storm could name. Tom's palms were scarred, fingertips black with pitch; he smelled of tar and iron and old timber. His eyes shone with the peculiar calm of the man who has built things to outlive him.
Einstein's fingers paused. Algorithms rearranged on his displays as the boy translated Tom's tactile terms into variables and constraints. He punched in the corrections—altered the weld profile, substituted a graded alloy matrix, and rerouted the ribbing into the honeycomb scaffold that Tom had sketched in air. The simulation re-ran in a flurry of numbers and colored stress maps across the hull segment.
The result came back with an almost audible exhale from the room: the failure point vanished. Stress lines rerouted like rivers finding new beds. The integrity index jumped well beyond projection—margins that had been tight bloomed into comfortable reserves.
The silver-haired boy finally turned, eyes wide until the rims shone. For the first time since Tom arrived, Einstein looked less like a machine and more like a child who had just been shown a new color. "You—how did you—" He stammered, then steadied himself.
"This—this is elegant. Your solution redistributes energy flow rather than just resisting it. The fabrication success rate improves by twenty-three percent. The weld cracking no longer propagates. You've given us not just strength but predictability."
Tom smiled, a little crooked, not proud so much as relieved. "Ships speak to those who listen. A hull tells you where it wants its breath. You can brute-force a hull together with numbers alone, but at this scale you need seams that sing true—seams that fail safe, where they must. That's what a craftsman gives you." He cupped a hand above the console, feeling the glow as if it had weight. "You boys make the brain. I make the bones."
Around them, the platform shifted almost imperceptibly: Dr. Wolf's thin mouth pressed into a line of approval, the engineers exchanging looks that blended awe and respect. The room—for all its humming genius—had recognized its missing voice and found it in Tom. Where theoretical constructs had stalled, his lived knowledge bridged the gap.
Einstein's face brightened in an odd, human way. "Stay," he said simply. "Help me think the rest." The request was no longer deference; it was hunger.
Tom's laughter was quiet but full. He had not come as a cog; he had come as a maker. Around him, the great skeleton of Pluton breathed under construction, and the truth settled over the hangar like a weight and a benediction: to build a god, you needed scholars and madmen, gadgets and steel—and you needed a carpenter of the sea who knew how to make something endure.
Within minutes I found myself excluded from the circle like an unskilled brute dropped into a table of scholars. Tom's sleeves were already rolled up; his hands moved over the plans with the quiet violence of a man who could see the world in rivets and seams. He began laying out solutions for problems that had gnawed at Einstein for weeks, and the platform hummed as equations bent to the rhythm of his experience.
Wolf caught my eye, let out a short, dry chuckle, and waved me away as if to say I was no longer required—an ornamental ghost in a hall of reason. I could have stayed and watched the miracle of minds, but the truth pressed at my ribs: one legendary shipwright, however brilliant, was still one man. If the original Pluton had demanded nearly a century of Water 7's finest hands, and we intended to finish this in decades, then we needed not just master craftsmen but scale—muscle, size, and numbers beyond what the island could raise in a generation.
So I turned and climbed.
Up through the levels, higher than the great hangar, the particular level narrowed into workshops and then into a colder, more secret tier. There I looked out over our empire of creation and felt the problem in my throat: the skeleton of Pluton beneath us grew in breadth and complexity by the day, but the crews that bent to its will were still ordinary in stature. For a vessel of that immensity, you needed more than human hands. You needed giants.
Legends held their answer. The old sagas spoke of the Garelian (Gallelia) shipwrights—towering giant craftsmen bred to shoulder keels the size of islands, smiths who could wrest a mast into shape with two hands. Elbaf remembered them; history forgot them. However, the Donquixote family had access to them, frozen behind ice capsules, frozen by time.
I made my decision there and then. If this project was to be finished in time, we would wake the mountains.