Peter looked over the setup for his new lab. He was extremely happy with it, though simultaneously he was also disappointed. It had been extremely easy for him to rent a small building and begin filling it with all the medical equipment he desired. Money talked and it talked loudly. Everything he bought was the best he could find and would dramatically improve his ability to make various brews.
However, it was also disappointingly low tech. The most advanced, and expensive, item he'd been able to purchase was a microscope. Even so, it only had a maximum amplification of twenty times. That wasn't even enough to see plant cells! Let alone strong enough to see things like bacteria or viruses. It would severely limit the shenanigans he could pull off. There would be no genetic tampering... yet.
That didn't mean there wasn't a lot he could accomplish! His current setup kind of reminded him of his college chemistry lab. Hell, he even had access to bunsen-stle burners that ran on natural gas to give him control over the heating of his creations.
So, yes. He was both thrilled and disappointed with his current setup.
His current plan was simple. First, he needed to strengthen himself. Right now he could function with his personal resistance set to three times normal thanks to his constant work outs on the journey to Cross Island. He was definitely stronger than the average person and he roughly estimated himself to be on par with some of the weaker pirates he was aware of. In short, he was still very much cannon fodder.
First things first, survival. His body was now in perfect health, which meant it was time to give himself a healing factor that would make Wolverine jealous. To do so, he began summoning various ingredients and feeding them into a variety of apparatus. Grind this, distill that, combine those, he worked like a man possessed for hours as he put together his most complicated potion to date. When he was done he was left with a glowing orange concoction that smelled like week old wet socks combined with sun roasted garbage and probably tasted just as good as it smelled.
However, he wasn't about to drink it! He retrieved one of the greatest finds he'd made, a syringe! He stuck the end of the needle into the potion and pulled back on the plunger to suck the liquid into the glass cylinder of the syringe. Once he'd gotten every last drop, he stared at the syringe with a slightly unhinged grin, "I'll never have to drink one of you disgusting things again!"
He was, of course, wrong about that.
He prepped the vein of his left inner elbow, made sure there was no air in the syringe, and jabbed himself. He slowly pushed the plunger down and watched in fascination as the glowing liquid spread. He could literally see its glow through his skin, though it faded the further it got from the injection sight. It took him a solid five minutes to slowly inject himself with the potion. Once he was done there was no dramatic change or any outward sign of success.
He knew it worked though and to prove it to himself he drew his knife, took a deep breath to brace himself, and sliced the palm of his left hand, just a bit. Blood flowed for just a second from the laceration, but only for a second. He watched, enthralled, as the open wound closed like a zipper and only left behind the spilled blood to prove it had even existed.
Now that he was nearly impossible to kill, bar very specific scenarios, it was time to work on something he'd been thinking about since he first bought the forty-four caliber revolver, special ammo! He retrieved the weapon and hummed as he looked it over. He planned to make some modifications to the weapon so it could handle more powerful ammo. He didn't need the barrel to accidentally explode when he fired it! That would have to be the second step though. The first step... he looked down the barrel at the smooth bore. It needed to be rifled!
To do the rifling he conjured a small piece of Adamantium shaped like a triangle. Using telekinesis he pushed the unbreakable triangle down the relatively softer iron barrel while slowly twisting it to care grooves into the metal. The grooves would impart spin to the fired bullets making them far more accurate than the smooth bores of other firearms. He pushed and pulled the piece of metal through the barrel until he felt the grooves were deep, and smooth, enough to work properly. He wasn't a master, or even apprentice, gunsmith so it was his best guess using what he knew through osmosis in his last life.
With the barrel fixed, he set the gun down and moved on to brewing a potion. At one stage of the process, he dropped the triangle of Adamantium into the brew with a smirk. The potion he was brewing was essentially Alchemy in a bottle. It would transform any metal dropped into it into the one provided during the brewing process. He was about to have an unbreakable pistol!
Just as he placed the revolver in the finished brew to begin soaking, there was a knock at his door. Rather than confusion, surprise, or suspicion, Peter was excited by the sound. He quickly made his way to the main entrance and threw the door open. Standing there was a pair of young men with a trolly that had a large glass container on top of it. One of the young men asked, "Doctor Dragon?"
Peter nodded, "That's me."
The man passed over a clipboard, "Sign here."
Even in the world of One Piece, bureaucracy existed to torture humans. Peter quickly signed the paperwork to accept his delivery. Once it was official, he grabbed the glass container and moved it into his workshop while kicking the door closed behind himself. Once in his workshop, he set it down in an area he'd prepared before hand. Finally, he could being to make his first homunculus!
The first one needed to be a fighter of some order. He wanted a bodyguard to help protect himself as well as to act as a training partner. The question became, who would he clone? He was going with the cloning process because although the person wouldn't have their memories, they would have their natural talents. They would gain their common knowledge from him automatically but anything else would require training.
He considered a lot of options, Artoria Pendragon or Sasaki Kojiro from TYPE-MOON, Kenshin Himura, Levi Ackerman, Atomic Samurai, and so many more... But, as he's thinking about them a name pops into his head that just seems... perfect as a bodyguard and teacher. Hell, the character he had in mind actually did become a teacher in his universe. Though, Peter would have to do something about the poor guys memory, an easy task.
With that in mind he got to work. He summoned pure liquid mana by the gallon to fill the one hundred gallon tank that had just been delivered. Making a homunculus didn't require liquid mana, but using it would only have positive effects on his creation. Once the tank was full he really got going. Materials were summoned and consumed by his chemistry lab to become various ingredients that all got poured into the tank. These were the materials that would make the beings body. By the time he was done the tank was bubbling and steaming softly as the reaction was primed. He summoned one last material, a small vial of blood. Yet, he didn't pour it in just yet. Rather, he set it to the side and pulled his knife once more. The second to last ingredient was the blood of the master, in other words, his own blood to bind the homunculus to himself. He sliced his palm and allowed a few drops of his blood to drip into the bubbling brew.
The moment his blood mixed in the brew became eerily silent and still as if waiting for the final moment. Peter didn't make the brew wait long. He popped the cork off of the vial and poured it into the liquid. The reaction was instantaneous and violent! The brew bubbled vigorously while pouring out white steam at a prodigious rate. The once full tank rapidly condensed down until less than half of it remained. Within the thick viscous liquid was a tiny fetus already visible to the naked eye and growing larger.
The process of making a homunculus wasn't instantaneous but it was quick. Relatively speaking. By the time twenty four hours had passed the creation would be in it's early twenties and ready to work. His new bodyguard would require some training still, but that's why he chose who he did. After all, the fastest learner he knew of in all of fiction was, Anthony Masters AKA Taskmaster, the man with Photographic Reflexes. The man could watch someone, just once, and perfectly copy their moves for himself.
Swordsmanship, martial arts, hell even bar brawling. With just a single look Taskmaster can learn it all and then teach it to other people. He was the perfect choice for Peter's first crew member as he could learn all the necessary skills and impart them to the rest of the homunculi that Peter would create. Even better, Taskmaster wouldn't be limited to a normal human body like he was in the comics. No, he would have the body of a One Piece human, a human that could grow strong enough to slice mountains in half with a single sword stroke WITHOUT needing special powers!