'[Cover Story: Chopper and the Quack Doctor Vol. 16 - "You Will Die at Four O'Clock Three Days From Now"]'
'Chopper invited Hiriluk to have a meal together in Kureha's treehouse, and everyone laughed happily. Yet while laughing, the quack doctor suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood onto the floor... A terminal illness remained a terminal illness. No matter how much one fantasized, death could not be stopped from drawing near. Wiping her glasses, Kureha calmly told the quack doctor exactly how much time he had left...'
---
To officially receive the title of 'Oka Shichibukai', and to pry into the Marines' files regarding the whereabouts of 'Donquixote Doflamingo', Liam and Robin immediately set out for 'Marine Headquarters, Marineford'.
Before making that trip, however, they planned to make a brief stop by the 'Whitebeard Pirates'.
Robin had heard about the North Blue underworld organization known as the 'Donquixote Family' through the newspapers. Moreover, for a man like Donquixote Doflamingo to be worthy of Liam making a special trip to find him, his strength was obviously something Liam acknowledged. To be safe, Robin naturally didn't mind boarding the 'Moby Dick' once more to refresh the Whitebeard power stored in her 'Hana Jizai'.
Speaking of which, the reason Robin had been able to use Whitebeard's Hana Jizai clone to defeat 'Baron Tamago' and 'Hitman Poppy' of the Big Mom Pirates this time was actually due to a special circumstance.
In the past, the flower clones copied through the powers of the 'Flower-Flower Fruit' could generally only be maintained for about a month. After that month had passed, it became nearly impossible to successfully summon the corresponding clone. For example, about a month after leaving 'Amazon Lily', Robin had tried summoning Hancock's flower clone, but failed.
For a long period, Robin had conducted experiments using ordinary people as test subjects, and the results consistently followed the same pattern. A flower clone created from an ordinary person would last roughly a month, give or take a few days. If she did not use the Flower-Flower Fruit to touch that person again and "update" the stored power, the clone could no longer be summoned.
Robin could easily understand the reason. As the Flower-Flower Fruit user herself, she could create clones of herself anytime and anywhere because the fruit's power was constantly updating and synchronizing with her own state.
However, when it came to Hana Jizai clones modeled after other people, those individuals were not Flower-Flower Fruit users. Once the condition of the copied clone diverged too greatly from the original person's current state, a severe mismatch occurred. At that point, the mechanism of "the flower clone's perception feeding back to the original body" and "the clone's power being copied from the original body" could no longer function properly. As a result, the Hana Jizai clone became impossible to summon.
"Although Whitebeard has recovered his health, he's still over sixty years old," Liam said after some thought. "Unlike Hancock and me, whose bodies are constantly improving and changing every moment."
"So the point at which Whitebeard's real body and his flower clone develop a significant discrepancy comes much later. That's why his Hana Jizai clone can remain summonable for a longer period..."
Even so, it probably wouldn't last much longer. Whitebeard might no longer be growing stronger, but he was still aging day by day and gradually becoming weaker. The decline simply wasn't as obvious as the rapid growth experienced by young people.
Robin tested it by trying to summon the Hana Jizai clones of the Whitebeard Pirates' commanders whose powers had been collected aboard the Moby Dick that day. As expected, every attempt failed.
"We can test later how long the 'flower mustache' can be stored," Liam said. "For now, let's go refresh it first."
Robin smiled and nodded.
---
On the seas of the 'New World', the small ship of the 'JoJo Pirates' rode the wind and waves.
Inside the Den Den Mushi castle, in the spacious and comfortable living room, a small piece of paper rested on the coffee table. It was Whitebeard's 'Vivre Card', which Robin had secretly taken from Marco when they left the Moby Dick.
A Vivre Card would always slowly drift in the direction of the person it represented, indicating where that person was. When that person was injured or their life was in danger, the Vivre Card would begin burning without fire. The more it burned, the greater the danger to the owner's life. If it burned completely to ashes, it naturally meant the person had died. However, if they were rescued before truly dying, even a nearly destroyed Vivre Card would mysteriously regenerate and return to its original condition.
Whitebeard's Vivre Card gently shifted across the coffee table toward a certain direction.
Meanwhile, 'B.I.B.' was replaying the memories gathered from the original body's latest journey, especially the battle between 'Katakuri' and 'Aokiji'. The unique nature of Aokiji's 'Ice-Ice Fruit', along with the never-before-seen power of a 'Logia Awakening', had greatly surprised B.I.B., exactly as it had surprised Liam at the time.
If Akainu's 'Magma-Magma Fruit' represented absolute destructive power, then Aokiji's fighting style was entirely different. By taking advantage of the hidden nature of his true elemental body and gradually lowering the temperature of his surroundings, Aokiji could continuously drain an opponent's body heat, stamina, and ultimately their life itself. He was the type who killed with a dull blade, slowly bleeding his enemies to death.
Even if one's strength was enough to resist being frozen solid, there was often little that could be done against Aokiji. More likely than not, one would simply watch helplessly as they were gradually exhausted to death within his frozen domain.
With that in mind, it became easier to understand why Aokiji eventually lost to Akainu in the battle for the position of Fleet Admiral. As a Magma-Magma Fruit user, Akainu clearly wasn't affected by Aokiji's "slowly draining enemies through cold" style. After all, how could a man who was essentially living magma lose stamina because of low temperatures?
Devil Fruit compatibility truly existed. Just like the natural counter relationship between 'Mad Monk Urouge' and 'Charlotte Snack'.
Snack's 'Torment-Torment Fruit' forced anyone who touched his skin to suffer agony comparable to being boiled alive in a cauldron of oil. Yet Urouge's ability allowed him to convert every instance of pain and damage he suffered into greater size and strength. It was a peculiar power known as 'Karmic Retribution'.
Liam had several suspicions regarding which Devil Fruit Urouge possessed based on the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia, but he wasn't completely certain. What was certain, however, was that Urouge's ability perfectly countered Snack's Torment-Torment Fruit. That was probably why Urouge had been able to defeat one of the 'Four Sweet Commanders', Charlotte Snack.
And speaking of the Four Sweet Commanders... B.I.B. naturally had not overlooked the several occasions in Liam's memories where he tested 'Charlotte Katakuri's' Observation Haki, the Observation Haki capable of 'seeing the future'.
"So?" Liam asked with a smile as he sipped his flower milk tea. "About his future-seeing Observation Haki, you came to the same conclusion I did, right?"
"Of course..." replied 'B.I.B.'
The Stand armor's narrow eyes glimmered as it replayed scenes from the Whole Cake Island arc, reviewing Katakuri's various demonstrations of future-sight Observation Haki. After returning, Liam had also rewatched those manga scenes to verify a few things.
"Katakuri's so-called 'seeing the future' isn't actually a time-related ability," Liam said confidently. "At the end of the day, Haki is still Haki. Observation Haki is still Observation Haki. Even if training causes it to evolve, it should only be an extension of its original abilities. There's no way it suddenly steals authority over time itself... This isn't some fantasy world where you suddenly comprehend the Laws of Time or something. That's nonsense."
"And the proof is this," Liam continued. "The 'future' he sees doesn't always come true. I deliberately used the King's Punch to test him, and it confirmed my theory perfectly."
B.I.B. said slowly, '"At the time, you never actually intended to attack Mont-d'Or and the others with the King's Punch... But because the King's Punch accumulates power so slowly, within Katakuri's future-seeing Observation Haki, it became a threat significant enough to 'form a future.' Or rather, judging from the ever-increasing danger contained in your fist, the probability of a future where you punched and killed Mont-d'Or and the others was extremely high."'
Katakuri's vision of the future was not the absolute future. During the tea party in the Whole Cake Island arc, Katakuri foresaw that one of the guests would make a statement seeking revenge. So he shot the man dead with a jelly bean before it could happen. Which meant that, in reality, the man never actually said the words Katakuri had foreseen.
It was a subtle detail, but enough for Liam to infer the true nature of Katakuri's future-sight Observation Haki. And the truth was often simple. Sometimes disappointingly simple.
"So-called future sight is something Observation Haki can already do by nature," Liam said after finishing his flower milk tea. "Otherwise, how would people predict an opponent's attacks before they're launched?"
In the manga, whether it was Skypiea's Mantra or Luffy's battle against Sandersonia and Marigold on Amazon Lily, Enel and the Boa sisters could accurately predict how Luffy would punch and from which direction he would kick. Wasn't that already a form of seeing the future? Just an extremely tiny fragment of it.
The difference was that ordinary Observation Haki couldn't do what Katakuri did, seeing clear images of events several seconds in advance. Even stranger, he could predict what other people would say several seconds before they spoke.
B.I.B. crossed its arms. '"I think we're thinking of the same term."'
"Exactly." Liam sighed. "And I have web novels to thank for introducing me to it."
After a brief pause, he and his Stand spoke the same phrase simultaneously:
'"Laplace's Demon."'
---
"Laplace's Demon?" Robin had just finished brewing a pot of coffee and happened to overhear the term. She looked puzzled.
A faint glow appeared in B.I.B.'s eyes as it rapidly pulled up an encyclopedia entry and read aloud: '"Suppose there exists an omnipresent and omniscient being that knows all forces acting in nature and the position of every object in existence at a given moment. If it could analyze all this information, then nothing would be uncertain to it, and the future would be laid out before it just as clearly as the past."'
Robin considered the concept. In other words, the hypothetical 'Laplace's Demon' could understand every cause in existence and therefore predict every future effect.
Liam then explained Katakuri and his future-seeing Observation Haki.
"So you're saying..." Robin quickly grasped his line of thinking and said in surprise, "Katakuri uses Observation Haki to collect information from everything around him, allowing him to predict the future?"
Liam laughed. "A quantitative change leading to a qualitative change. Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? When Observation Haki is trained to an extreme level of detail, observing everything in the surroundings, countless tiny futures of countless tiny phenomena accumulate together. Whether consciously or unconsciously, all that information gets processed by the subconscious. And then, boom! Something amazing happens. The images of the future get played in advance through Observation Haki."
If that was the case, perhaps Katakuri's unique future-sight Observation Haki should be called,
''Katakuri's Demon.''
---
After sailing for a while, a black ghost flew out carrying a green Den Den Mushi. It tapped the snail against the ship's hull.
'Biu!'
The entire ship instantly vanished.
Holding the Vane, B.I.B. sped across the seas of the New World. Inside the right eye of the Vane, Liam sat with Robin at the edge of the castle gateway, enjoying the ever-changing and spectacular weather phenomena of the New World.
Robin held Whitebeard's Vivre Card in her hand, occasionally reminding B.I.B. of the correct direction. After all, they were about to become official Oka Shichibukai. Furthermore, the outside world seemed convinced that the JoJo Pirates and Whitebeard Pirates shared some irreconcilable blood feud. Under those circumstances, it really wasn't appropriate for them to openly sail their ship directly to Whitebeard's vessel.
---
Somewhere at sea... Aboard the 'Moby Dick'.
The Whitebeard Pirates were inventorying their latest haul on deck. Marco was treating several injured crewmates when he suddenly heard a familiar voice behind him.
"Yo, who beat you guys up this badly?"
Marco's face darkened. Turning around, he saw Giorno and Jolyne suddenly appear out of thin air on the deck.
Jolyne was as quiet as ever, her eyes constantly observing her surroundings. And Giorno was still exactly the same as always... the kind of person who made Marco want to punch him the moment he saw him.
'(End of Chapter)'
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