Doraemon.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
Terminator.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
In fiction, the premise of "something comes from the future" carries a tremendous sense of the extraordinary, yet it's a pretty popular scenario. You can find it in all sorts of stories from every era, every corner of the world.
So even if the word "future" pops up in a novel or manga you're reading, I don't think it's hard to just accept it without much resistance. "Oh, so that's the kind of story this is." At least, that's how it is for me.
That said, actually getting caught up in that kind of plot development yourself... that I truly never could have predicted. Or rather, it'd be strange if anyone could predict that.
But then again, this world is The World of One Piece, so technically it is a fictional world... but then again, as long as I'm living and breathing in it, you could just as well call it reality...
My head is spinning.
Well, setting aside any analysis, personal theories, or opinions about that kind of plot development... let's focus on the facts right in front of us.
Because right now, standing before us are two people claiming to be "Future Persons."
Naturally, there was no way we could immediately believe two suspicious individuals claiming to be "Future Persons," and on top of that, claiming to be "my daughters."
Everyone had that look. The "what the hell are these two talking about" look. The kind you'd give a con artist or something equally shady.
Even accounting for the impossible powers they'd demonstrated, starting with the Tremor-Tremor Fruit and the Soul-Soul Fruit, the story was absurd beyond measure. That they'd crossed time and come to the past.
But... from my perspective, their story had... a certain degree of persuasiveness to it.
There were multiple pieces of evidence that made sense if you accepted their claim.
First, the book the two of them had brought to show us.
Its publication date listed a date that, from our current standpoint, was in the future... and yet the book itself was incredibly worn out, like an old secondhand copy.
The date and condition alone might have been forgery, I suppose... but the problem was its contents.
It was clearly a story I'd been developing in my head, one I hadn't even begun to write down on manuscript paper, let alone publish.
The title, the plot, the setting, the characters... everything matched what currently existed only inside my mind.
On top of that, there were writing quirks throughout the text that I could instinctively recognize as "ah, I wrote this."
And then there was one more thing.
This is something everyone had already witnessed earlier... the Devil Fruit powers.
The earthquake power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
The soul-manipulating, lifespan-controlling power of the Soul-Soul Fruit.
Both of these were powers whose current users had been identified in this world, in this era.
The Tremor-Tremor Fruit belonged to one of the Four Emperors, "Blackbeard" Marshall D. Teach.
The Soul-Soul Fruit belonged to one of the Four Emperors, "Big Mom" Charlotte Linlin.
Needless to say, both were very much alive. Blackbeard in particular had continued his rampage across the New World, steadily expanding his forces, and had recently begun to be called one of the "Four Emperors" in the wake of a certain incident.
As a further note, when I asked about it, the weapons the two had been using, the Green Dragon Crescent Blade and the Black Blade, had each been fed a Devil Fruit as well, just as I'd suspected.
The Green Dragon Crescent Blade had eaten the Zoan-type Mythical Zoan, the Fish-Fish Fruit, Model: Green Dragon.
The Black Blade had eaten another Zoan-type Mythical Zoan, the Bat-Bat Fruit, Model: Vampire.
I didn't know about the Vampire one, but the Green Dragon was apparently a power held by one of the Four Emperors, Kaido of the Beasts. Another ability with a living user in this era.
Two Devil Fruits with the same power cannot exist in the world at the same time.
It's said that when an Ability User dies, the fruit bearing that power is reborn somewhere in the world.
In other words, as long as the current Ability User is alive, it should be impossible for anyone else to possess the same power.
And yet, these two undeniably possessed and were using those very powers.
If this wasn't some kind of cheat involving Artificial Devil Fruits or the like... then the impossible was happening.
But flip the logic... as long as it wasn't "simultaneous," those Devil Fruits could potentially exist again.
For example... in a "future" where the current Ability Users had died, and their powers had become available once more.
There were several other small details that caught my attention, but... for the time being, we decided to bring these two, Snow and Iris, back with us.
Regardless of whether the "Future Person" claim was true or not, we couldn't just leave beings with power like theirs unattended. If we let them roam free, some other faction would absolutely set their sights on them.
So it wasn't that we believed their story, but for now, we decided to guide them to one of our bases positioned nearby, since bringing them straight to Merveille would be too dangerous.
Not a Sky Island, just a regular island on the Blue Sea. It was fairly large with well-equipped facilities... you could call it our largest base outside of the sky islands.
In the process, the two of them readily accepted our "just in case, would you mind being restrained?" request, which we'd made not really expecting them to agree.
With Seastone accessories placed on their arms to seal their powers and their weapons confiscated... the two were rendered powerless with startling ease. Yet they showed no sign of anxiety whatsoever, boarding the ship looking perfectly at ease.
Did they trust us... or if what they'd said was true, their "mothers"? Or had they figured that, given how suspicious their circumstances already were, this much was necessary to earn our trust? Either way, it took guts.
***
We arrived at the base without it taking very long.
Considering the discussion might get complicated, we brought the two to the Dedicated Section at the very back of the Facility, where no one outside the family would be watching. This way, we could talk about dangerous topics without worry.
The "we're Future Persons" revelation from earlier had been shocking enough... but that was merely a coming-out, so to speak, explaining who they were.
What they wanted to do in this era, what they wanted to tell us, had to be something else entirely.
We were about to hear it. But first, I needed to conduct one "final verification."
"Alright, you two. Like I explained earlier... you're really okay with this?"
"Yes, of course."
"Go ahead. There's nothing I'd hide from you."
The two of them, Snow and Iris, still wearing their Seastone accessories but otherwise completely unrestrained, answered without hesitation.
Sitting on the sofa, they remained in a natural, unresisting posture, as if entrusting everything to me.
Taking them up on that offer, I walked over and... pressed the index finger of each hand gently against each of their foreheads with a light tap.
"Heaven's Door...!"
The soft rustle of turning pages.
Their bodies transformed into books... and their past memories began to manifest as text that could not be hidden.
This was my ultimate measure for interrogation and fact-checking, one that permitted neither lies nor concealment. They had known about this power too, of course... and just like with the Seastone, they had accepted it willingly.
A verification method where the subjects themselves cannot lie, even if they want to. If confirmed through this, it would prove that what they'd been saying was true. That was their reasoning.
There was one additional thing Snow had cautioned me about beforehand, though.
'If I may... Mother.'
'Well, we'll verify the accuracy of that form of address shortly, but... what is it?'
'Yes. When you review our memories... beyond confirming whether we are indeed your "daughters," I believe you will encounter various other things as well. Most of them will likely be deeply shocking truths for you, so... please, steel yourself.'
That's what she had said.
With a flicker of unease, I turned my eyes to the pages of Snow and Iris's "books" and began to read...
Read further...
Read further...
Read... fur... ther...
"...Snow, Iris."
"Yes."
"...Is this... real?"
"We can't see what's written there, so it's hard to say for certain, but... what you're seeing is most likely... the truth."
"I know it's hard to believe, but... everything has already happened. At least... for us."
"...You're kidding me...!"
"Huh? Wh-what? Mom?"
"...Hey, Sue. What the hell was written in there?"
Alice and Papa called out in confused voices, but... sorry, I just don't have the capacity to respond right now.
That's how overwhelming the facts I'd just seen were.
What Snow had warned me about earlier wasn't an exaggeration at all. I was feeling the full weight of that now.
The contents recorded by Heaven's Door are a person's past memories.
There is no lying.
Which meant this was... fact.
'...For real... the future turns into something like that...!'
As I reverted the two from their book forms back to normal, exhaustion crashed over me. I sank deep into a nearby sofa, went limp, and let my body fall back against the cushions.
Seeing how visibly drained I was from just reading... everyone looked bewildered, wondering what I'd seen.
The two of them stood up from the sofa and stepped forward to face everyone, who clearly wanted an explanation.
"Mother has just seen it for herself, but... we would like to tell all of you directly as well. The reason we two came to this era... why we're here."
"And the means we used, of course. If you have questions along the way, just ask. We'll answer properly. ...Mom, if anything catches your attention too, please speak up... sorry to bother you when you're so exhausted."
"...Yeah, okay. Got it."
That came out a little vacant even to my own ears, but it was a proper reply.
The whole time, my head was still a jumbled mess... well, can you blame me? When you're told facts like these about the future.
I let out a single sigh... and then, unbidden, a thought crossed my mind.
'This is The World of One Piece... right? So why is something like the Android Arc starting?'
***
Third-person perspective.
Snow and Iris.
Two girls claiming to be Sue's daughters, come from twenty years in the future.
The world of "twenty years from now" that they described... was on the brink of annihilation.
Not on the level of some country. Not on the level of some sea.
The entire world.
The Four Seas, the Grand Line, the countless islands and nations dotting those waters.
Even the Red Line... and the Celestial Dragons and World Government that had made their home atop it.
And of course... the innumerable pirates that had existed across every sea in the world.
The vitality of the current era was nowhere to be seen... a world of apocalypse where one could be certain that within a few more years, humanity in its entirety would go extinct.
The cause was a calamity brought about by a single man.
His name was... "Z."
Also known as... Former Marine Admiral "Black Arm Zephyr."
And the calamity he had unleashed was called... the Grand Reboot.
A Cataclysmic Eruption that engulfed the entire world in a sea of fire, destroying everything... stripping humanity of every place to live and driving the species to the brink of extinction.
It happened approximately one year after the Summit War.
For a certain reason, Zephyr, the Former Marine Admiral, lost all faith in the "Justice" upheld by the Marines and the World Government, and left the Marines behind.
Several months later... he reappeared on the world stage under the name "Z."
He had established himself as the supreme commander of a private armed organization called the Neo Marines, built from those who admired him, including Executives like Ain and Binz... and he set about systematically purging every pirate in the New World.
Their ultimate objective was... to annihilate every single pirate in the New World.
To that end, they utilized the End Points.
The End Points were three geographically unique spots that existed within the New World.
Each of these islands was a volcanic island, and if all three locations were to erupt or be destroyed through some artificial means... the underground magma flow would be activated, triggering a Cataclysmic Eruption engulfing the entire New World.
Zephyr exploited this, showing no regard for the innocent civilians who would be caught in the devastation... and resolved to wipe out all the pirates living in the New World.
Aided by several fortunate coincidences, he evaded and outmaneuvered the Marine pursuit and interference, executed his plan... destroyed all three End Points, and successfully triggered the Cataclysmic Eruption.
That success, though, was simultaneously a failure.
The Cataclysmic Eruption that instantly consumed the entirety of the New World... did not stop there. It kept spreading.
It burned through the entire Grand Line, including Paradise.
It boiled the Calm Belt, annihilating countless Sea Kings.
It collapsed the Red Line, filling the air with the death cries of the Celestial Dragons.
It swallowed even the Four Seas... destroying nation after nation.
Not just the New World and the pirates within it... the entire world suffered catastrophic damage. Mountains that should have been dormant or extinct volcanoes spewed fire and smoke, overflowed with magma... and incinerated everything.
And it wasn't just the volcanic eruptions.
The earthquakes, tsunamis, superstorms, and heat waves that followed, along with every other form of extreme weather... an all-star cast of natural disasters, as if the very forces of nature had bared their fangs against humanity.
And the finishing blow, arriving in the wake of all those disasters... an abnormal, unprecedented rise in sea levels.
These unprecedented catastrophes submerged or destroyed over 99% of the world's landmass, and the vast majority of the remaining 1% became uninhabitable.
Even the sky islands, including Merveille and Skypiea, were caught up in it. Some were devastated by the extreme weather, while others simply ceased to exist as the Sea Clouds and Island Clouds lost their form due to the radical environmental changes.
Naturally, everyone who had been on those islands was hurled down to the Blue Sea.
It goes without saying, but against such fury of nature, humans had no hope of resisting or surviving... so many people died that counting them was meaningless.
Even those who tried to flee had nowhere to go, and those lucky enough to survive found it impossible to keep living in a world stripped of all shelter, food, and provisions.
On top of that, fighting broke out over the scarce remaining land and supplies... and humanity reduced its own numbers even further by its own hand.
Among those who, through one stroke of fortune upon another, managed to survive, people gathered together and fought desperately to keep living... but crops wouldn't grow, and there was no stable food supply. The extreme weather, still far from over, continued to bare its fangs... sometimes bringing floods with heavy rain, sometimes drought with scorching heat.
Unable to endure the harsh conditions, humanity's numbers dwindled steadily.
According to a certain expert, the theory had been put forward that the world's remaining humans would go extinct within a few years. That was how thoroughly terminal the state of the entire world had become.
That... was the future twenty years from now, the one Snow and Iris had come from.
In that hellish world, the few remaining humans... recognized their end was coming and resolved to put a certain plan into action.
That plan was... to use a certain Devil Fruit's power to send people back to the past... and save the world by preventing the Grand Reboot.
And the warriors chosen for that mission... were Snow and Iris.
***
Sue's Perspective.
I had already read everything they were now talking about through Heaven's Door.
But hearing it directly from their own mouths was different... it carried a different impression from just reading it, and I found myself listening intently.
"From here, we'll go into more detail... focusing on the colony where we lived. Some of this includes events from before we were born, so parts of it are inevitably secondhand, but..."
"First... as we just said, the Grand Reboot killed many people. Pirates included, of course... the ones called the Four Emperors among them. Especially the pirates of the New World. They were apparently wiped out without even being able to put up a fight. Kaido, Big Mom, Blackbeard, Red Hair... not a single one survived."
"...Damn. Those monsters who seemed like they wouldn't die even if you killed 'em..."
Papa murmured, his gaze drifting slightly as if recalling old memories.
The Four Emperors... I've seen all of them in person except Kaido, and indeed, to varying degrees, each one gave off this overwhelming aura of being in a completely different league.
Big Mom especially. She was so beyond human that I couldn't even imagine her being wounded, let alone dying... I remember her presence being so immense she felt like a being on a different biological plane entirely.
That even the Four Emperors couldn't escape and were all wiped out... the Cataclysmic Eruption must have really been catastrophic.
"We have been told that Merveille, where Mother and the others lived, being a pseudo Sky Island, suffered relatively little direct impact... However, the subsequent cataclysmic upheavals, making even a cyclone seem mild by comparison, made it increasingly difficult for Grandpa to keep the islands afloat with his power."
"And on top of that, the pirates and Marines who still had a fair number of survivors at that point came attacking. Since the damage was minimal, they figured there'd be that much more supplies left, and they came to take them. It turned into a fierce battle... and in that battle, Grandpa was killed. That's what we were told."
"...The hell? So I checked out pretty early, huh."
Papa sighed, looking exasperated at his future self.
His tone was light, but whether his feelings matched that lightness or whether he was actually shaken... I couldn't tell from his demeanor.
"Despite heavy casualties, they managed to repel the attackers... but by that point, even including Merveille, the world itself had no future left. Every kind of supply was running short, the environment itself was deteriorating to an absurd degree even for the Grand Line... and those who couldn't keep up lost their lives one after another."
"Personnel, supplies, facilities... all slowly dwindling. Even so, for a time, under Mother's leadership, the Golden Lion Pirates managed to run the colony reasonably well. However, as the sea was emptied of life and the soil grew barren and crops stopped growing... the world's capacity to sustain human life kept diminishing. After that, battles against raiders targeting their supplies continued again and again... each time costing more lives, and leaving those who survived wounded in every sense imaginable. And during those battles, Mother also suffered... grievous injuries that left her unable to fight any longer. That is what we were told."
By that point, of course, the surviving human population across the world had dwindled to such an extent that... even if people wanted to fight, they no longer had the capacity to do so.
As a result, conflicts between humans ceased after that, but... the point where you could say "we're safe now" had long since passed.
Everything needed to sustain humanity was becoming unobtainable... extinction was merely a matter of time, an unavoidable future.
Even so, the future versions of us refused to abandon hope and kept living... and it was during that time that the twins, Snow and Iris, were born.
As the last children of the colony the future us had been running.
"So what you're saying is, I ended up not having kids until humanity was practically on the verge of extinction... Couldn't even let Papa hold a grandchild. What a terrible daughter. ...By the way, who's the father?"
"The father... you say. How should I put this... a father in a sense, yes, but..."
Snow glanced in this direction.
"Yeah, um... it's more like, well... both 'parents' are mothers, you could say..."
Iris glanced in this direction.
Their gaze was directed not at me... but at the perverted brat sitting next to me.
With the similar name, the resemblance you could see if you looked closely, and Iris being blonde... I'd had my suspicions, but... seriously?
...She actually made me "bear her children"?
"...So what you're telling me is, your father... or rather, second mother... is..."
"Yes. It's the person sitting right there... Lady Alice."
"...If we weren't in the middle of such a dark conversation, I'd be jumping for joy right now..."
Alice said that while making a small fist pump with one hand. Not exactly hiding her delight.
So that's how it went... true to her word. Alice, you actually had kids with me, huh.
According to what they told us, as I'd just heard, after being wounded in battle and rendered unable to fight further, I shifted to focusing entirely on administrative work. Retired from frontline combat and everything else.
Of course, as they'd also just mentioned, there were barely any real battles after that point... so Alice, who took over the combat role, didn't have much work to do either.
And so, having fought enough and with no more occasion to fight (not that I could anyway)... I had nothing left to do.
Like someone who'd just retired and suddenly found themselves with too much time on their hands.
That's when Alice made her move... and I accepted.
And that's how these two came to be.
Incidentally, Alice had publicly declared she'd make both my older sisters hers as well... and as for how that turned out...
"That... unfortunately didn't come to pass. Aunt Leona perished in battle... and while Aunt Suzu survived, her injuries were even worse than Mother's... she didn't have the strength left to endure bearing children."
"So... like we said, in the colony where we lived... we were the last children. After us, the population could only decrease, never increase... and even as kids, we could clearly see that extinction was closing in. Honestly, the fact that things held together for over a decade was a miracle in itself."
At this rate, all that awaited was a slow march toward extinction.
But that didn't mean there was some strategy that could turn things around. The stage for gradually, steadily building up and breaking through to improve the situation... that stage was long gone.
In circumstances that could only be described as despair no matter which way you looked... one plan was proposed.
That very plan was to use a certain Devil Fruit's power to send Snow and Iris to the past.
At the very least, they wanted to send the last two children born in this colony somewhere safe, somewhere untouched.
But such a place no longer existed anywhere in this world.
Then, if they could send them back through time, to before the Grand Reboot occurred...
"There exists a Devil Fruit called the Time-Time Fruit. The power belonged to one of the people taken in by the colony... Lady Kozuki Hiyori. Her ability was said to transcend time."
"And that's... a power to send people to the past?"
"That part is a bit vague, honestly. We don't fully understand it ourselves. The previous user of the ability, her mother, a woman named Kozuki Toki, could reportedly send herself and others into the future. But when Hiyori ate that Devil Fruit... the power she gained was 'the ability to send people to the past.'"
"At best, the limit was a few minutes to a few days, we were told... To send someone back years, over a decade even, would almost certainly require the Ability User's life in exchange. Yet knowing this full well... she sent us to this era."
"Hiyori said... 'I've already seen everyone off. I have no attachments left to this world.' Everyone she'd ever known had passed away before her... she always looked so lonely. So I think, for her... there was no meaning or reason left to cling to her own life. In exchange for her life, she sent us twenty years into the past... to the present era."
"Indeed. We two came to this era carrying the hopes of Lady Hiyori, no, of everyone in the colony. One reason was to escape the world of despair, and the other... to stop the Grand Reboot and save this world's future."
"...If you stop the Grand Reboot, does that mean... the future you lived through will also change, with history being rewritten and everything saved?"
"That, we do not know. Whether the future that has already been decided, what is already 'the past' from our perspective, can truly be changed... There are no records of such a thing anywhere in the world. Perhaps it can be changed... or perhaps a separate future will simply branch off as a Parallel World... and the future we lived through will remain unchanged."
"Even so, we came here to take back a future where everyone can face tomorrow together, this time. Aunt Leona, Aunt Suzu... Grandpa, Grandma, and... Mom... this time, for sure...!"
Oh, right... when Iris saw me, she'd cried and said "Mom is alive"... so that means I died too?
And so, in other words... the primary objective of these two in coming to this era was...
"...Ideally, we would have done this on our own, without involving any of you."
"But... our strength alone is far from enough. So..."
"Please, we beg you! To protect this world... no, to protect everyone on Merveille...!"
"To protect a tomorrow where everyone can greet it together with a smile... please, lend us your strength to stop the Grand Reboot!"
Both of them, moving in perfect unison... bowed deeply at the waist, heads lowered, imploring us.
To be continued...