"Bo... Borsalino!?"
The moment Vegapunk saw the figure before him, now so emaciated he was little more than skin and bones, he cried out in shock.
No wonder every time he had previously asked Red about his old friend, Red had always given him an answer that put his mind at ease.
So it turned out...
His old friend, who had been missing for an entire year, had been in the Straw Hat Pirates' hands the whole time!!!
And perhaps because he was affected by Vegapunk's shout, the frail-looking figure's lips moved slightly, and he slowly woke up.
"Vegapunk..."
As his consciousness, dormant for so long, returned once more, Kizaru felt an intense sense of unreality.
Seeing his dear old friend before him, for a moment he could not tell whether this was reality or just a dream.
It was not until a stream of unknown liquid suddenly appeared at his lips and was quickly swallowed by him that a strange vitality surged through his body, and his awareness gradually recovered as well.
"Wh... where is this?"
Now with a bit of strength back, Kizaru sat upright at once. When he discovered that Seastone chains bound him, he immediately looked around.
And then he saw Red, who had just tossed aside an empty Super Potion bottle.
"It's you!"
The instant he saw Red, Kizaru's eyes widened abruptly.
He still remembered going to Enies Lobby to carry out a purge mission, only to be knocked into the sea by the Straw Hat Pirates working together.
After that, his consciousness had sunk into chaos.
Over the past year, it was not as though Kizaru had been unable to sense the passage of time. It was just that his mind had been too muddled, to the point that even his sense of time had warped.
But seeing the expressions on Red's and Vegapunk's faces, now that his ability to think had returned, he immediately realized that something seemed very wrong.
His thoughts flashed, but he did not struggle recklessly or make a scene. Instead, he calmly looked at Vegapunk and asked:
"So... what exactly is going on!?"
"As expected of a veteran Marine Admiral~"
Seeing how quickly Kizaru had calmed down, a trace of surprise flashed through Red's eyes.
But after praising him, he turned directly to Vegapunk and said:
"Then, Dr. Vegapunk, I'll leave this errand-runner extraordinaire to you."
"And here are the latest orders issued by the new Marine Fleet Admiral. I'm sure they'll make your communication much smoother."
"I'll be off first."
The instant his voice fell, Red's figure vanished on the spot.
Leaving only Vegapunk and Kizaru staring at one another in silence.
...
...
Handing Kizaru over to Vegapunk had been something Red had planned for quite a while.
After all, this Marine Admiral had been stored inside Usopp's body for years already. If they kept him there much longer, he might start marinating.
What was more, now that Marine Headquarters had already taken the Straw Hat Pirates' side, and given Kizaru's complicated, hard-to-define ties with Vegapunk, Kuma, and the others, Red believed he would make the right choice.
...
...
And sure enough.
When Red came to Thriller Bark again the next day, not only did he see several scientists busily at work on the island...
He also saw former Marine Admiral Kizaru standing guard at Vegapunk's side!
That's right.
In the handwritten order issued by Aokiji and stamped with the seal of the Marine Fleet Admiral, Kizaru had been directly stripped of his position as a Marine Admiral and assigned an undercover mission to protect Vegapunk.
Officially, it was undercover work, but in truth, the only difference was appearances. No matter how you looked at it, they were all on the same side, so what was the point of talking about whether he was undercover or not?
Clearly, even though Aokiji's order had not stated it outright, Kizaru had already seen through everything.
After a whole night of explanation from Vegapunk, he finally learned that during the year he had spent half-conscious, so many major events had taken place across the world.
It was as if he had reentered the world, only to find that heaven and earth had completely changed.
Fortunately, Kizaru was easygoing by nature and not the type to stubbornly cling to old ways.
Since the current Marine Fleet Admiral had already given the order, and Vegapunk was his friend...
Then he would simply obey.
Thus, early this morning, when the senior members of the Straw Hat Scientific Research Corps held their first regular meeting, Kizaru's appearance successfully startled the other three scientists.
And when they heard Vegapunk say that Kizaru had become his personal bodyguard, every last one of them was so shocked they nearly started doubting reality itself.
At that moment, they even felt that the multiple-ability user proposal Red had brought up yesterday no longer sounded quite so outrageous.
Fortunately, all of them had strong nerves. And after everything the Straw Hat Pirates had done recently, they had already been bombarded by one earthshaking revelation after another.
At this point, being shocked over and over again had simply become normal.
After the morning meeting ended, although the group still had major disagreements regarding the project, they each settled on their own research direction.
Vegapunk also made Green Blood technology public, allowing the other three to return to their respective laboratories and conduct their own experiments.
They would report back regularly and make adjustments based on each person's ideas.
That way, no one's line of thought would be swallowed up in forced collaboration, while everyone's research ability could still be brought into play to the greatest extent possible.
Not every idea would lead to success, of course, but as the world's top scientists, even the byproducts and technologies born from their experiments would still hold considerable value.
And this had, in fact, been the original operating style of MADS.
...
...
"What an unexpectedly harmonious scene~"
After silently observing the entire meeting, even though there were many things he did not understand, Red grasped at least one thing...
These scientists were all doing their utmost to contribute their wisdom to this project.
The combined intelligence of these people was enough to explore the very truth of the world.
So he believed that a mere multi-Devil Fruit ability project would be no great difficulty for them at all.
"Now that things here are finally on track, it's time for me to take care of some other matters."
Red opened the notes app on his Personal Terminal, only to see task after task recorded on it.
At the sight, he could not help letting out a bitter smile.
"Honestly, I clearly said I wanted to become the kind of capitalist who deserves to be hung from a streetlamp."
"So how did I end up turning into a workhorse instead?"
But when he thought of Luffy and the others in the Room of Spirit and Time, who had only played around for a few days before plunging straight back into hellish training, he casually tapped one of the items in the memo and marked it as pending completion.
When his crewmates were all working this hard, it would be hard to justify being too idle himself.
In the blink of an eye, another half month quietly passed amid the Straw Hat Pirates' busy schedule.
And after half a month of effort, Red finally managed, without interfering with his other work, to load Pokémon templates onto all twenty thousand or so pirates brought back from Festival Island.
Although he had not had the time to take these ordinary pirates into the Pokémon world to level them up, once they had Pokémon templates, they would still gain experience and improve their strength as long as they trained in the real world.
The only difference would be how much they gained.
"Now that the situation within the Pokémon Sea has finally stabilized completely, it's about time to set my sights on the outside world."
Sitting in the Going Merry's private office, Red absentmindedly played a tile-matching game on the computer in front of him while planning his next move.
The computer before him had been made with the help of Edison, one of Vegapunk's satellites.
That included several simple built-in games.
So far, it seemed to be running very stably. Once the issue of network coverage was solved, they could consider rolling it out across the Pokémon Sea.
"All right~"
After clearing the highest difficulty of the tile-matching game once again, Red suddenly stood up, opened the world sea chart software on the computer, and examined it thoughtfully.
"Even though it's still not certain whether the final Road Poneglyph is really in the land of giants, Elbaf..."
"Now that things here are settled, it's about time to prepare for Luffy to ascend the throne~"
"I really wonder what kind of treasure the legendary ONE PIECE is hiding."
"This time, I'm ahead of every pirate fan out there!!!"
The corners of Red's lips rose, and a gleam of excitement flashed through his eyes.
(End of Chapter)