Chapter 174: The Operation
On Chopper's side, the situation had grown dire. The flying squirrel mink reconnaissance team had returned with grim news: the Elephant Lord's leg, where Jack's fleet had concentrated their bombardment, was severely damaged. The ancient creature's skin—thick as castle walls and weathered by a millennium of ceaseless walking—had been torn open by sustained cannon fire. Flesh the size of islands gaped beneath the wound, and the elephant's pained listing had caused the entire country of Zou to tilt dangerously.
As captain, Luffy immediately approved Chopper's treatment plan. The minks had already assembled teams to rappel down the elephant's leg with medical supplies, but the scale of the injury was almost incomprehensible. How did one treat a wound larger than most cities?
Law glanced around the chaotic assembly. Franky was organizing the rope teams. Usopp was distributing supplies. Zoro had somehow gotten lost and ended up three levels down in the wrong part of the forest.
"Itachi-ya's missing," Law muttered.
"YO! Tra-guy!" Franky's voice boomed across the clearing. "I need your abilities! We've got to get these supplies down to the medical teams, and your Room would make this a hundred times faster!"
"You want me to do something this tedious?" Law's expression soured.
"How can you call saving the Elephant Lord tedious?! Tra-guy, you're so cold-hearted!" Usopp jabbed an accusing finger at the surgeon.
"Fine, fine. I'm coming." Law raised his hand and deployed a Room, resigned to his fate as the alliance's logistical support.
Usopp scanned the crowd, one hand in his pocket, fingers brushing against his newly modified weapon. He'd been wanting to show Nami the upgrades. "Hey—where's Nami? NAMI?!"
No answer. The navigator was nowhere to be found.
In the forest, Itachi finished his account. The visions. The wars. The great kingdom that had fallen. The united smaller nations that had risen from its ashes. The cataclysmic final battle, when the great kingdom's armies had been deployed abroad—and its heartland had been struck by something from the sky.
Robin's face was pale. Cold sweat traced lines down her temples. "Small nations... war against a great kingdom..."
Even Nami, who had no scholarly background in the Void Century, felt the pieces click into place. "Robin. The structure of the current World Government—you know it, right?"
"Intimately." Robin's voice was barely a whisper. "The World Government was founded by the first twenty kingdoms to join the alliance."
"Then that means..." Nami's eyes widened.
"The current World Government came to power by overthrowing that ancient kingdom through war," Robin finished. "That's what the Void Century is hiding. The original sin of the world order."
Itachi nodded slowly. "There's something else. In the visions I saw, the earlier battles all had clear outcomes—victories, defeats, territorial changes. But the final battle was different."
"The great kingdom's armies were still deployed in the smaller nations at the vanguard when..." Robin's voice caught. "When the kingdom itself was destroyed."
"A devastating blow," Itachi confirmed. "Something that came from above. Something that could erase a civilization in a single strike."
Robin's hands were trembling. "In the final engagement... the allied small nations deployed a weapon of immense power against the great kingdom. Something capable of annihilating a nation in a single strike."
"What kind of weapon could do that?" Nami asked.
Robin spoke the words with the weight of a death sentence. "I believe that weapon... was Uranus."
Nami's hands flew to her mouth. "One of the Ancient Weapons?! The one they call the Heavenly King?!"
Itachi's mind raced back to Doflamingo's final confession in the ruins of Acacia. The secrets the fallen Warlord had whispered to him before the Marines took him away. Yes. Robin's theory aligned perfectly with what Doflamingo had revealed.
And there was more. The old man Kozuki Chidō's last words echoed in his memory: The Spirit of the Tree World is a key. A key to awakening the Ancient Weapon, Pluton.
"The three Ancient Weapons." Itachi's voice was quiet but certain. "Their locations are becoming clear."
"Wait." Nami held up her hands. "The Ancient Weapons—Pluton was supposed to be in Alabasta, wasn't it? During Crocodile's—"
"No." Robin shook her head firmly. "The Poneglyph in Alabasta only recorded Pluton's location. The weapon itself... is in Wano Country."
Wano. Again. Every thread, every secret, every buried truth seemed to converge on that closed nation. The Kozuki clan. The Poneglyphs. The Road Stones. Pluton. The old man's mission. The Spirit of the Tree World.
"Poseidon is Shirahoshi," Robin continued, her scholar's mind assembling the puzzle with cold precision. "Uranus remains in the hands of the World Government—the weapon they used to destroy the Ancient Kingdom eight hundred years ago. And Pluton sleeps beneath Wano."
She turned to Itachi, her expression grave. "This information... if the World Government even suspected we possessed it..."
"They would annihilate us," Itachi finished. "With the full force they used against Ohara. This stays between the three of us. No one else can know."
Nami nodded so vigorously her hair whipped around her face. "I don't want to die! My lips are sealed! Completely sealed! I didn't hear anything!"
"Good." Robin's voice was firm. "Because this kind of knowledge—"
"Is an absolute death sentence," came a dry voice from directly behind Itachi.
Law stepped out of a swirling blue Room, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. "Itachi-ya. Why are you hiding in the forest with these two women?"
The three of them froze. Nami's face went through several colors. Robin's composure cracked just slightly. Itachi's hand, hidden beneath his cloak, had already formed a seal—but he released it when he recognized Law's voice.
"We were discussing Straw Hat internal matters," Nami said quickly, her voice pitched a little too high. "Private crew business. Nothing an outsider needs to worry about."
Law stared at them for a long moment. Then shrugged. "Whatever. I don't care about your secrets."
He turned to Itachi, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "Though I have to admit—when I couldn't find you, I assumed you'd dragged these two off for something romantic."
"Nothing of the sort," Itachi said flatly.
"Shame." Law's smirk widened. "Anyway. Itachi-ya. The submarine. Now. We have work to do."
Law's Submarine — Medical Bay
The submarine hummed with the quiet efficiency of well-maintained machinery. Law had already prepared the surgical bay—instruments sterilized, monitors calibrated, the central operating table positioned beneath a bank of adjustable lights.
"First things first. I need your DNA." Law pulled on surgical gloves with practiced efficiency. "Simple enough. Just a few cell samples from your body. Cheek swab. Blood draw. Standard procedure."
He turned, a scalpel glinting in his hand. "The complication is your eyes. Specifically, to maximize the probability of successful cloning—admittedly, the probability is not high—I need to extract genetic information directly from the source tissue. That means..."
"A sample from the neural tissue behind the eyes," Itachi finished.
"Correct. A micro-biopsy of your ocular nerve cluster." Law's tone was clinical. Professional. "I'll need to open a small window in your skull and extract a slice of brain tissue approximately—"
Itachi sat up.
"—the size of a neuron, a thousand times thinner than a human hair, completely non-damaging, and—" Law broke off, staring at Itachi's raised hand. "Are those shuriken?"
Itachi glanced at his right hand. At some point during Law's explanation, his hand had moved to his weapon pouch and produced three shuriken, now held between his fingers in a throwing grip.
"...Instinctive reaction," Itachi said. "When I sense danger, my body moves without conscious input."
"DANGER?! I'm a DOCTOR! I'm performing a ROUTINE PROCEDURE that I've ALREADY DONE ONCE BEFORE!" Law's eye twitched. "When you were unconscious after Punk Hazard, I had your skull open for THREE HOURS! I reconstructed your entire chakra network! And NOW you're threatening me with SHURIKEN?!"
Itachi slowly, deliberately, placed the shuriken back in his pouch. "I apologize. Continue."
"Were you infected by Straw Hat-ya's stupidity?! DON'T COMPARE ME TO THAT IDIOT!" Law took several deep breaths. "Listen. Ope Ope no Mi. The Op-Op Fruit. SURGERY. I am a SURGEON. The incision I need is smaller than the tip of a needle. The tissue sample I'm extracting is microscopic. There will be NO damage. NO pain. NO side effects."
"Understood." Itachi lay back down. "I overreacted."
"YOU THINK?!"
"Your right hand is still holding that scalpel in a stabbing grip."
Law looked down. His right hand was, indeed, holding the scalpel like a dagger aimed at Itachi's throat.
"...Instinctive reaction," Law muttered, placing the scalpel on the instrument tray. "When a patient threatens me with shuriken, my body moves without conscious input. Now LIE STILL."
Itachi lay back on the operating table, a faint smile on his lips. "Proceed, Doctor."
(End of Chapter)
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