Chapter 290: Vegapunk's Plan (Part 2)
Seeing that Vegapunk had stopped talking, Sentomaru assumed those were all his conditions.
"Then I'll go report it."
"Wait. There's one more thing."
Sentomaru's expression immediately turned impatient.
"Can't you just say everything at once?"
He sighed.
"Fine. What is it?"
"That child you brought here before."
Vegapunk smiled.
"The boy named Axel."
"Axel?"
Sentomaru's face darkened at once.
He still remembered the injuries that child had given him.
Even now, although the wounds had healed, they occasionally throbbed with phantom pain.
That battle had been the first time Sentomaru had ever felt himself standing at the edge of death.
"What do you want with that brat?"
"He would be useful, of course."
Vegapunk had prepared the explanation long ago.
"I already have a general direction for the Science Unit."
"However, combat machines created according to my current design may lack flexibility."
Vegapunk raised a finger.
"So what if we incorporate that child's ability into them?"
"His control could potentially improve their mobility and precision."
"If it succeeds, both their movement speed and fine control could reach an entirely different level."
Sentomaru fell into thought.
He had personally fought Axel, so he understood how troublesome the boy's strange control over force could be.
At times, an attack clearly seemed to come from one direction, only for the actual force to shift elsewhere.
Axel's speed was equally unpredictable.
His movements could change without warning, making him extremely difficult to defend against.
If that kind of control could really be incorporated into a combat machine, the result would be troublesome for almost any opponent.
Then Sentomaru frowned.
"Hold on."
He looked suspiciously at Vegapunk.
"How do you know what his ability does?"
Sentomaru himself had only understood Axel's power through direct combat.
So how had Vegapunk learned so much?
Vegapunk grinned.
"Did you know Devil Fruits aren't limited to humans?"
"Animals can eat them."
"Even weapons can be given Devil Fruit powers."
He spread his hands.
"For someone like me, figuring out an ability isn't particularly difficult."
"After you brought that child here, I examined his body."
"Tch."
Sentomaru clicked his tongue.
"You said you were only going to examine him."
"In the end, you went and researched him on your own."
His expression became annoyed.
"If Vice Admiral Momousagi finds out I brought that brat here and let you use him like a guinea pig, I'll probably get dragged into the trouble too."
Sentomaru paused, then gave a reluctant grin.
"Still, bringing him back might not be a bad idea."
"My world's strongest defense could use another test against him."
Vegapunk looked amused.
"Unfortunately, I can't make that decision."
Sentomaru continued.
"I'll report your request, but whether they agree has nothing to do with me."
"That's fine."
Vegapunk appeared completely unconcerned.
"You only need to report it."
He understood exactly how important the Science Unit was to the World Government.
As long as no one discovered that Axel's ability was not actually a Devil Fruit, asking the World Government to bring him in would not be especially difficult.
Sentomaru looked at him with irritation.
"That baseless confidence of yours really gets on my nerves."
Vegapunk laughed.
"That criticism should be directed at yourself."
"I still have no idea where you found the confidence to call your defense the strongest in the world."
"In my opinion, I can think of plenty of ways to break it."
"If that is enough to qualify as the world's strongest defense, then the title is rather cheap."
Sentomaru's eye twitched.
"I'm different from you," Vegapunk continued.
"My confidence always has a basis."
"Once I reach a conclusion, I've never been wrong."
"Tch."
Sentomaru snorted.
"What do you know?"
"This is my future world's strongest defense."
With that, he turned and walked out of the laboratory.
After the door closed, Vegapunk quietly added,
"Except this time."
Axel's actions had deviated from his calculations.
That surprised Vegapunk.
And it made the boy even more interesting.
Previously, after discovering that he could not penetrate Axel's strange defensive mechanism in a short period of time, Vegapunk had devised another approach.
Instead of attacking the defense directly, he targeted the brain responsible for creating it.
He transmitted electromagnetic waves into Axel's brain.
More precisely, he inserted information through those waves, stimulating Axel's brain and accelerating its evolution and internal division.
The purpose was to worsen weaknesses that already existed within it.
Axel's current condition had largely been caused by that intervention.
If his brain had been left to develop naturally, it would never have deteriorated so abruptly.
The changes would have occurred gradually.
Several years, perhaps even more than a decade, might have passed before something resembling a dissociative identity disorder emerged.
Such disorders did not normally appear overnight.
They were usually the result of long-term psychological pressure, trauma, or severe emotional conflict.
None of those conditions properly applied to Axel.
Vegapunk had accelerated the process.
After triggering the instability, he deliberately left Axel a clue.
Assassinating the Celestial Dragons would supposedly help him find the answer he was searching for.
The clue itself was false.
Vegapunk knew someone with Axel's intellect would eventually recognize that.
But the deception was never the important part.
The purpose was to plant a seed.
A suggestion.
A direction.
Once that seed existed inside Axel's mind, Vegapunk expected one of the boy's emerging personalities to eventually choose the path of assassinating Celestial Dragons.
At that point, Axel would inevitably place himself against the World Government.
Whether anyone discovered his identity during the assassinations did not matter.
If necessary, Vegapunk himself could expose the truth afterward.
The end result would be the same.
Axel would be forced into a position where only two outcomes remained.
He could join Vegapunk.
Or he could refuse.
Either outcome was acceptable.
If Axel joined him willingly, Vegapunk was confident he could protect him.
If Axel refused and was arrested by the World Government, Vegapunk was equally confident that he could negotiate for custody of the boy.
Everything in the world could be measured through interests.
Killing a Celestial Dragon harmed the interests of the Celestial Dragons.
If Vegapunk offered something more valuable than the punishment demanded for that crime, the World Government would have reason to compromise.
That had been his original plan.
What he had not expected was that Axel would choose the World Conference as the stage for his move and drag the Revolutionary Army into the chaos with him.
The moment Revolutionary Army operatives appeared inside Mary Geoise, Vegapunk's previous calculations stopped applying.
Whether the Revolutionary Army had actually killed the Celestial Dragons no longer mattered.
The World Government would blame them regardless.
On one side stood a known organization openly seeking to overthrow the World Government.
On the other stood an unidentified assassin.
If the government needed someone to blame, the choice was obvious.
And since the World Government had already been preparing to suppress the Revolutionary Army, the assassinations provided the perfect justification.
There was no longer any reason for them to continue digging for the true culprit.
As far as the public and most of the government were concerned, the culprit had already been found.
Vegapunk stared thoughtfully at the newspaper.
"What a troublesome brat."
Then his smile slowly returned.
"But was this exactly what you wanted?"
"To force me to come looking for you myself?"
Among the seven Celestial Dragons Axel had killed, the unnatural twisting of their arms had not been random.
Each distortion followed the same waveform pattern as the electromagnetic signal Vegapunk had once transmitted into Axel's brain.
Hidden within that pattern was a message meant specifically for him.
[I'm looking for you.]
Vegapunk had been searching for Axel.
And Axel, in turn, had been searching for Vegapunk.
But there was another layer to the message.
If Vegapunk wanted the boy, then Axel would give him a reason to actively request his presence.
Rather than merely waiting to be found, Axel had created circumstances that would force Vegapunk to reach out first.
Vegapunk had attempted to manipulate him.
Axel had responded by turning that manipulation back against its creator.
For the first time, Vegapunk's prediction had failed.
His gaze returned to the rows of glass containers filled with artificial brain specimens.
A trace of disgust crossed his face.
Now that the genuine article was within reach, what use did he have for imitations?
....
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