Inside the confines of Trans Town, Gibbs lay unconscious on a narrow, squeaky cot.
His sturdy torso was snugly wrapped in fresh, clean linen bandages, while rough wooden splints held his broken ribs tightly in place. His breathing was heavy and shallow, but thankfully, it no longer had that terrifying, wet rattle that had turned Pintel and Ragetti into nervous wrecks just an hour earlier.
Red finished tying off the last knot of cloth before dipping his stained hands into a brass washbasin.
"There," the old man murmured, drying his thin fingers on a threadbare towel. "For a sailor of his age, his bones have a stubborn strength."
Ragetti stood glued to the side of the cot, watching Gibbs' mustache twitch with every breath. "Does that mean he's out of the woods, doctor?"
"It means the steel just barely missed his heart, but I'm not a doctor," Red replied gently.
"That wasn't exactly reassuring."
Red offered a soft, melancholic smile. "It's the only truth I can give you."
Ragetti swallowed hard, dragging a creaky wooden chair closer and slumping into it. Red placed a comforting, weathered hand on the pirate's trembling shoulder.
"Stay with him. Keep his brow cool. If his breathing gets worse, call for me."
Ragetti nodded curtly.
Pintel crossed his arms over his belly, trying to look brave. "Gibbs is tough as sailcloth! Always has been!"
Emporio Ivankov, perched precariously on a stool that creaked under the weight of his massive hair, shot him a look. "HE WAS TAKEN DOWN IN LESS THAN A MINUTE, DARLING!"
"I didn't say he was invincible!" Pintel snapped back. "I meant he's tough in spirit!"
"That distinction makes absolutely no sense!"
"It makes sense to us!"
Red chuckled softly as he put his medical supplies back onto the cluttered wall shelves.
Paintbrushes, wood-carving chisels, and rolls of gauze shared the same dusty space, making it hard to tell if the cottage belonged to an eccentric physician, a master artist, or just a hoarder who hadn't thrown anything away in ages.
Ivankov had long since stopped pretending to be at ease. His sharp, heavily made-up eyes flicked nervously between the small glass windows, the bizarre oil paintings, and the securely locked front door.
Outside, Trans Town buzzed with vibrant energy. Children giggled as they chased hoops down the cobblestone streets, while merchants shouted their prices. A wooden wagon creaked by, rattling past the glass.
But to a trained ear, something felt off.
The sounds reached the window panes just a heartbeat too late—as if the outside world only remembered to come alive when someone inside dared to look.
"We should pull anchor," Ivankov hissed, leaning his massive head closer to Pintel. "This place reeks of bad magic!"
Pintel glanced at Gibbs' pale face. "He can't walk, can he?"
"Then we'll carry the big fool!"
"We barely managed to drag him up the hill!"
"Because you whined like a beaten dog the whole way!"
"I was not whining!"
"You were going on about how rum makes a man heavier!"
"It does! It's a thick liquid!"
"It does not!"
Red let out a soft, melodic chuckle. "You pirates have such spirited personalities."
Ivankov completely ignored the compliment, fixing a fierce, yellow-eyed glare on the old man.
Pintel, however, scratched his dirty chin and stepped forward. "Now, old timer... do you happen to have any strange, unnatural tricks up your sleeve?"
The room fell into a heavy silence. Ivankov stiffened, relieved that the dim-witted pirate had voiced the very question that was burning in his own mind.
Red paused, a jar of thick crimson paint hovering above a shelf. "Tricks?"
"Devil Fruit curses," Pintel clarified, leaning in closer. "Or special powers. Or... town magic. Anything that might explain why this place feels like a tavern full of ghosts." He gestured wildly out the window.
Red turned his pale eyes toward the glass. "I have no dark curses. Only my art."
Ivankov's expression turned icy and sharp. "Art doesn't breathe life into a graveyard of a town, old man."
The gentle warmth on Red's face flickered for a moment. His eyes wandered to a large canvas hanging on the far wall.
It captured the very town square outside, alive with cheerful citizens beneath a painted blue sky.
"This town..." Red murmured softly, "is stitched together from the fabric of my sweetest memories."
Pintel waited, squinting in curiosity. Red fell silent.
"Well," Pintel finally said, "that was pretty vague."
"Yes," Red replied quietly.
"So, you're not going to elaborate?"
"Nope."
Pintel nodded slowly, a hint of admiration in his eyes. "Well, I guess you get points for being honest."
Ivankov, however, was far from satisfied.
He couldn't detect a hint of bloodlust from the old artist, but the very walls of the house felt like they were pressing in on him, suffocating his Observation Haki like a heavy blanket.
Every smiling villager outside seemed like a mere shell. Each footstep resonated with a uniform, mechanical beat.
Pintel glanced out the window again, then shifted his gaze to a painting near the hearth.
The canvas showed a butcher's family standing proudly outside their shop. Through the wavy glass, Pintel could see the same family in the same pose, clutching the same basket of sausages.
Pintel's fingers twitched nervously toward his belt. The peculiar, heavy sensation of his Slow-Slow Fruit stirred beneath his skin, ready to be summoned, though he hadn't yet drawn his hand.
He wasn't fond of mysteries that grinned at him with false smiles.
Patrick Redfield stepped into Trans Town without making a sound.
His polished, knee-high boots clicked against the cobblestones, yet the bustling crowd parted and flowed around him like water around a jagged rock, completely unaware of his presence.
A fishmonger loudly advertised his morning catch. A flower girl carried a basket of lilies across the square. Two young boys dashed past Redfield, giggling as they chased after a rolling hoop.
Redfield suddenly came to a halt.
His crimson eyes followed the boys closely. Not a single shadow was cast by either child on the bright stone beneath them.
He turned his gaze toward the fishmonger, who repeated his pitch with the same words, tone, and inflection, as if stuck in a loop. Then, he did it again.
The lilies in the girl's basket shimmered for just a heartbeat, momentarily transforming into rough splashes of wet paint before snapping back to their delicate form.
"A phantom landscape..." Redfield murmured, his voice smooth like silk.
He shut his eyes.
His Observation Haki surged outward, flooding every corner of the settlement like a tidal wave of raw, terrifying intellect.
The false world trembled.
The laughing children morphed into grotesque, stretched smears of paint. The shopfronts dripped into a wet canvas. For a fleeting second, the faces in the crowd lost their eyes and mouths, filled with terror, before snapping back into their usual forms.
Redfield opened his crimson eyes.
The grand illusion steadied, but just barely. His overwhelming spiritual pressure threatened to rip the fragile fabric of the illusion apart simply by his presence.
He could sense the nexus now. A strange, miraculous power—not scattered across the island, but anchored to a single, pulsing heart.
A quiet cottage sat at the edge of the square.
A slow, wicked smile crept across Redfield's thin lips. "So... that's where you've crawled to hide."
The Devil Fruit he sought had to be inside that cottage.
The manifestation was odd—perhaps not the exact form he had imagined—but the island's reality was warping around it too strongly to be anything else.
Once he pried it from the artist's dying hands, he would track down the crimson bird.
Then the sniper.
Redfield moved forward. With each step of his polished boots, Trans Town unraveled around him.
The stone walls flickered into raw, unpainted wood. Citizens dissolved into loose, running streaks of red and yellow dye before frantically reassembling themselves.
High above, the blue sky fractured into jagged layers, reminiscent of dried paint, before weaving itself back together.
Inside the cottage, Red suddenly froze, letting his jar of paint slip from his grasp. It shattered on the floorboards, the vibrant liquid pooling like fresh blood.
His face lost all color.
Ivankov sensed it a moment later, his massive purple hair standing on end. "WHAT IS THIS?!"
Red remained silent.
A heavy, suffocating weight descended upon the small room. The thick oak beams creaked ominously overhead. The paintings on the walls swayed violently on their brass hooks.
Outside, the lively chatter of the town fell silent—cut off as if a blade had sliced through the very fabric of the sky.
Ragetti shot up from his chair, reaching for his cutlass. "What's going on? Is it an earthquake?!"
Red's gaze was fixed on the wooden door, his hands trembling uncontrollably. For the first time, the gentle old man appeared utterly, terrifyingly doomed.
"Do not... do not open that door," Red whispered.
Pintel turned toward the entrance, his hand resting on the hilt of his flintlock. "Why not?"
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three polite, perfectly timed strikes echoed through the wood.
Nobody dared to breathe.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Pintel took a cautious step toward the handle. Ivankov lunged forward, gripping his shoulder tightly. "Are you out of your mind?! DON'T!"
Pintel shot him an indignant look. "He knocked politely, didn't he?"
"THAT DOES NOT MAKE HIM A FRIENDLY NEIGHBOR!"
"It's bad luck to ignore a caller! My mother always said that manners keep a pirate off the gallows, and also to never learn anything from my father, not that I ever knew him."
"He could be a dangerous person!"
"But we can still be gentlemen! My mother always taught me to be a fine gentleman, always showing respect to ladies."
Before Ivankov could give him a good shake, Pintel unlatched the heavy iron bolt and swung the door wide open.
Standing there was a tall, impeccably dressed noble, framed against a sky that looked like it had been splattered with cracked paint.
A closed, black-handled umbrella rested casually on his shoulder. His long, crimson velvet coat was pristine, completely untouched by the sea fog, and his silver hair framed a face that was strikingly handsome, utterly calm, and completely devoid of any human compassion.
Pintel blinked, staring up at this towering figure.
Redfield looked down at the scruffy pirate. Neither of them had the slightest clue who the other was.
But Ivankov did.
His yellow eyes widened, nearly bulging out of their sockets.
The ancient wanted posters from his youth... the bloody legends whispered in the shadowy corners of the Grand Line... the nightmare who had single-handedly taken on an entire era.
Patrick Redfield.
Redfield offered Pintel a faint, disturbingly polite smile. "I do apologize for the intrusion, gentlemen."
Pintel stood frozen in the doorway, his mouth hanging slightly open.
Redfield's crimson gaze drifted past him, slowly surveying the modest room, the peeling paint on the floor, and the injured sailor on the cot.
"I'm in search of a particular item of value," the pirate master said, his tone as pleasant as a tavern song on a warm evening.
His smile, however, didn't quite reach his eyes.
"If you would be so kind as to hand it over without any fuss... I promise to grant each of you a mercifully swift death."