Eight years later.
Sea Circle Calendar, year 1492.
Moon, Endless Earth.
"Imu! You bastard!!"
Inside a half-collapsed ancient ruin, Brook's roar echoed across the dead-gray surface. His voice bounced back from cracked stone and rusted metal, swallowed by the silent stars.
He was going mad.
For eight years he had been trapped here, hacking apart one broken-down automaton after another, little robots that had long since lost their energy cores and yet still twitched and crawled like dying insects.
Eight years.
If he hadn't pushed the Yomi Fruit all the way to awakening, if his body couldn't ignore hunger, if he hadn't been wearing several pure gold rings to halt the passage of time, he would've long since withered into a skeleton, just like in the "original story" he remembered.
He finally understood what the Three-Eyed Raven's "escape from death" had really meant.
It wasn't escaping the World Government's execution.
It was being thrown onto this silent graveyard called the Moon.
Even if they had locked him in the deepest level of an underwater prison, Brook was confident he could have escaped eventually. But the moon?
How was he supposed to escape from the moon?
"Do I really have to wait for Enel to show up…?"
Brook clenched his teeth. In the original history, that lightning man arrived with Ark Maxim and the Goro Goro Fruit.
But in this world, the Thunder Fruit had been eaten by Redfield, and the Demon Ark Maxim and "God" Enel both existed elsewhere on the sea.
That meant his chances of hitching a ride by reenacting the original "plot" were almost zero.
Unless Linlin and Redfield somehow realized he'd been exiled to the moon and came for him on that golden ship, flew up through Sky Island and the Birka route, and somehow found the shortest path to Endless Earth.
Otherwise, at those altitudes, one mistake meant instant death.
"Damn it… this world's moon is tiny, right next to the planet, and it even has air! There's no logic at all!"
Brook shouted into the empty sky, more out of spite than hope. If he had eaten the Thunder Fruit instead, he could at least power up the robots scattered through the ruins.
But he was the user of the Yomi Fruit.
There was no energy here, no life, no souls left that weren't already his. The moon was nothing but a frozen tomb.
And the longer he stayed, the deeper the loneliness gnawed at him.
He might really never go back.
"How's my wife doing now…? The kids…?"
"Did the Hell Pirates fall apart…?"
"Did everything just slide back onto the 'original' track without me?"
Without his presence to suppress them, would monsters like Shiki, who also bore the Conqueror's spirit, split off and form their own factions?
The more Brook thought about it, the more irritated he became. The more irritated he became, the more he hated Imu.
Exiled to the moon.
That man actually dared to throw him into the sky like trash.
In the early years, Brook had even smashed and detonated large sections of the lunar surface, using soul explosions and DYNA stone fragments to send up massive flashes visible from the world below.
He had hoped that Redfield, Linlin, or even Vegapunk's instruments would notice the suspicious blasts on the moon and guess that Brook was trapped up here.
But nothing happened.
No miracle arrived.
His stamina bled away day after day. In the end, he stopped wasting energy and slipped into a kind of "standby" state, conserving everything, waiting for any chance to escape.
He had even pinned his hopes on the doctor from Robot Island.
If Dr. Tsukimi saw the explosions on the moon, maybe he'd put the pieces together and realize someone was up here.
After all, the mass-produced robots that Tsukimi created on Robot Island were almost identical to the assembly-line units lying in the ruins of ancient Birkans on the moon.
That mysterious doctor was almost certainly the direct descendant of the moon people who had migrated down to the surface world, and a successor of the great kingdom from eight hundred years ago.
The robots he crafted were not simple tools.
They had intelligence. Emotions. They could even cry. They were almost indistinguishable from living beings.
After Tsukimi was killed in the moon explosion incident, those little robots flew into the sky on balloons and rockets, heading toward the moon, trying to find the culprit and avenge their creator.
But those little robots were too weak. They were wiped out in an instant by space pirates.
Then those space pirates were also wiped out in an instant by Enel.
"Space pirates… whether you're aliens or from the Blue Sea, I don't care! Hurry up and come already!"
Brook finally understood: the space pirates were his last hope.
Enel and Ark Maxim were off the board. Dr. Tsukimi robots had no ship. But those pirates had flying ships that could reach the moon.
Yet he had waited eight full years.
Now, he truly understood the loneliness of the Brook in the original story, drifting through the Florian's Triangle for decades.
Just as he was cursing his fate with a mix of frustration and madness, a thunderous explosion tore through the stillness.
Brook froze.
Then his eyes widened, and joy exploded across his face like dawn breaking. To him, that sound might as well have been the voice of a god.
He yanked the pure gold ring off his finger to reduce the restraints on his movement and vanished in a blur, soul body and bones sprinting at full speed toward the source of the blast.
…
The far side of the moon.
"Boss, do the legendary ruins of Birka really exist?"
A subordinate with fur and ears like a tiger Mink looked up at the cratered horizon. In truth, they were not aliens at all, but natives of an isolated technological island in the Blue Sea.
Seven or eight years ago, their boss had seen the moon erupt in a strange explosion.
When he compared that sight to the ancient records preserved on their island, he became absolutely certain that the Birka ruins were real.
Their heritage traced back to the moon people and the great kingdom from eight hundred years ago. Their ancient books were full of records about the moon.
"It definitely exists," said their leader. "Once we obtain the technology from the Birka ruins, our First Island of the Universe will have enough strength to open its borders and compete with the humans outside for rule over the world!"
Captain Inu-kun of the Space Pirates spoke with fanatical certainty. He was not only the ruler of the First Island of the Universe, but also the founding captain of the Space Pirates.
The crew's flag bore the skull of a Long-Head tribesman, the rest laid out like a standard pirate emblem from the Blue Sea.
Inu-kun himself was a mixed-blood child of the Mink Tribe and the Long-Head Tribe.
His ancestors had come from the Minks of Zou and the Long-Head clan of the giant kingdom.
From them, he had inherited the power and instincts of the Mink Tribe, and the keen intellect of the Long-Head tribe.
After confirming the existence of Birka's ruins, he had mobilized the entire island.
They dove into their records, revived ancient spacecraft schematics, and, after years of effort, finally built a vessel capable of landing on the moon.
Then, brimming with ambition, Inu-kun led his people into the sky, determined to seize the technology of Birka and use it to dominate the Blue Sea.
"Keep bombing! The Birka ruins must be inside the moon!"
Inu-kun barked to Tuo Hu at his side as the crew's cannons rained high-energy blasts on the lunar surface.
He could practically taste the future, the moment when the First Island of the Universe would reign over the world below.
"Yohoho! You're finally here, I love you guys so much!!!"
A mad, joyous laughter cut across the battlefield.
Brook appeared on a shattered ridge, tears in his eyes, stars practically shining in his pupils as he looked at the space pirates as if he were seeing long-lost family.
Not only had they come.
They had come decades earlier than in the "original" timeline.
"Now then, I declare this a robbery! Hand over all your food, right now!!"
Brook wiped the tears from his face and shouted excitedly. It was the first time in eight years he had laid eyes on living beings.
A dark, primal hunger rose up inside him. For a moment, he even felt like a Saiyan prince, eager to devour these humanoids on the spot.
But remembering they were the ones piloting the spaceship he needed, he forced that hunger back down.
Inu-kun, for his part, had never imagined there were other life forms on the moon.
He ignored Brook's words, raised a high-tech pistol, and fired without hesitation.
No one was allowed to interfere with his excavation of the Birka ruins.
A flash of light.
The next moment, the pistol vanished from his hand and reappeared in Brook's grasp.
Inu-kun's pupils shrank in shock.
"Two of you stay awake and find me food and information," Brook said coldly. "The rest of you, lie down."
His Conqueror's Haki erupted.
The overwhelming pressure crashed down on the space pirates, and, one after another, they collapsed on the lunar surface like puppets with cut strings, leaving only a pair of subordinates trembling on their feet, staring at the moon's lone undead king.
--------------
Inukun's eyes went wide and his whole body trembled.
That pressure just now, that suffocating weight on his chest, it was the legendary aura of a king.
Tuo, who was standing beside him a moment ago, had already collapsed limply to the ground, staring up in terror at the monstrous human who had appeared on the moon.
All around them, the rest of the space pirates lay sprawled across the lunar rock. Crocodile tribe, seal tribe, bird tribe, humans… without exception, every last one of them had been knocked out cold by Brook's Conqueror's Haki.
A pirate crew that couldn't even beat that "Enel" from the old records was not qualified to stand against Brook.
"You," Brook said, pointing casually. "Take me to your kitchen."
He grabbed Captain Inukun, the mixed-blood with dog fur and a long skull, by the collar with one hand and kicked the quivering Tuo with his foot.
Tuo jolted as if struck by lightning and rushed to obey, leading Brook toward their space pirate ship.
Pinned under Brook's Haki, Inukun didn't even dare curse his subordinate for "betraying" him.
Soon, a somewhat comical-looking space pirate ship came into view, floating above the lunar surface.
It was covered in clunky machinery and docked small shuttle craft, an ungainly hybrid of ancient hull and high-tech plating… and to Brook, it looked like hope itself.
Hope of going home.
Once aboard, Brook headed straight for the galley.
Then he began to eat.
And eat.
And eat.
He devoured everything on the shelves like a starving beast. Bread, canned meat, vacuum-packed rations, dried fruit, jerky, more bread, more meat… he even brewed whatever passed for liquor on this ship and gulped it down in huge mouthfuls.
He hadn't eaten in eight years.
Any other Devil Fruit user would have long since died of starvation.
Imu, that ancient monster, clearly hadn't expected the Yomi Fruit's awakening to allow Brook to walk the line between life and death in such an absurd way.
In Imu's calculations, even an "immortal" would eventually starve to death here.
And even if Brook somehow clung to life, there was no way to escape the moon.
Yet here Brook was, sitting cross-legged in a steel kitchen on the lunar surface, devouring an entire ship's stockpile.
Inukun and Tuo Hu could only watch in despair as their precious food reserves disappeared bite by bite.
When this human finally finished, they would have to rush back to their "First Island of the Universe" at top speed just to avoid starving themselves. As things stood, they might not last a few days.
"Haa… finally half full."
Brook leaned back and exhaled, patting his stomach in satisfaction. "I can feel my strength coming back."
He had eaten like a man getting revenge on eight whole years of hunger.
He grabbed the last bottle of wine, took a long drink, then wiped his mouth.
"Yohoho… so," he said, eye flames flickering as he looked at the dog-fur captain, "what are your names? Are you aliens, or from Blue Planet? And why are you speaking Blue Planet's language?"
Inukun swallowed hard.
"R-respected strong one," he said, bowing his head. "My name is Inukun. I am from Blue Planet. From the First Island of the Universe."
Inukun had already accepted his fate.
He had never imagined that such a terrifying human existed on this barren moon. His grand plan to descend upon the ruins of Birka, seize ancient technology, and dominate the Blue Sea had been shattered before it started.
They hadn't even found the ruins yet.
And this mysterious man had already taken their ship, their food, and their lives in his hands.
"I want to return to Blue Planet," Brook said quietly. "As fast as possible. Understand?"
His gaze locked onto Inukun like a blade.
He couldn't wait any longer. He had to see the New World again, his woman, his grown children, and what had become of the Hell Pirates.
"…Understood."
Inukun answered without hesitation.
At the same time, a faint spark of hope flickered in his chest.
If he could just deliver this monster safely back to Blue Planet, then replenish food and water at home, the ruins of Birka would still be waiting on the moon for him to claim.
But his little fantasy lasted only a second.
"On the far side of the moon," Brook said, almost casually, "I've already dug a few large holes. Inside are the remains of the old Moon People. Plenty of bodies… and plenty of books. I'll have your men haul some of the texts and a few small robots back later."
Brook smiled faintly as he spoke.
He had located the entrance to the Moon People's ruins years ago when he was smashing craters into the lunar surface out of boredom and rage.
He had explored them thoroughly, looting anything that looked remotely useful. Over the years he had piled up a considerable trove of technological texts.
The only problem was that he couldn't read a single word.
He hadn't learned the ancient script of the Void Century, and he certainly couldn't read the script of the Moon People. To him, the books were like sheets of ink-covered stone, utterly unreadable.
"You… you already found the Birka ruins…?"
Inukun staggered back a few steps, his pupils shaking.
Everything was gone.
This guy had beaten him to the ruins.
"Good," Brook said, voice turning cool and commanding. "Then you should join my Hell Pirates. We can study the Moon People's technology together. I also have the strongest scientist among humans under my command. Interested in competing with him?"
The tone he used didn't leave any room for refusal.
Brook could tell at a glance that the space pirates' technology was impressive, though their personal combat strength was pathetic.
Any island that could build a lunar landing craft in this era was only a step or two behind the technological island from eight hundred years ago.
"Impossible!" Inukun snapped. "How could technology from the sea possibly compare to our Island?!"
In his eyes, the Blue Sea's current technology lagged behind theirs by at least several centuries.
Wooden sailing ships, iron cannons, powder rifles… how could that compare to their composite hulls and gravity drives?
Brook chuckled.
"We have Pluton's blueprints," he said lightly. "Want to see them? You can study these lunar texts from the Birka ruins too. If you do well, perhaps I'll even hand the management of the moon over to you in the future."
"Pluton…? Pluton is really in your hands?"
Inukun was stunned.
He had read about the ancient weapons in his island's old records.
Weapons that could erase an island in a single strike, embodiments of the greatest technology of the ancient age.
"That's right," Brook said. "Now wake up your men. Once they're conscious, we'll go back to the ruins, load everything we can carry, and return to Blue Planet tomorrow."
His voice carried a weight that made Inukun and Tuo instinctively straighten and nod like chicks pecking grain.
Soon after, Brook walked out onto the lunar rock again with Inukun and Tuo at his sides.
They woke the unconscious crew together. Under a second wave of Brook's Conqueror's Haki and Inukun's barked orders, the space pirates had no choice but to obey.
The entire crew boarded their shuttles and flew toward the gaping craters on the far side of the moon.
There, in the frozen halls of Birka's ruins, they began hauling out everything Brook pointed at: stacks of Moon People books, strange devices, and a number of small, dormant robots.
As he watched the treasures piling up in the ship's cargo bay, Brook's heart was burning hotter and hotter.
New World, I'm coming back.
Imu, you old fossil…
Sooner or later, you'll taste this kind of crushing loneliness yourself.
In the end, thanks to the efforts of the Space Pirates, a large number of Moon People texts and small robots were stowed aboard.
But the ship's cabin capacity was limited. Brook had no choice but to leave a portion of the books behind in the ruins.
It made him think wistfully of his storage clerk, the parrot. If he had the powers of the Castle Fruit at his side, he could have emptied the entire Birka archive.
Under Brook's orders, the space pirates finished their preparations for departure.
They had come to the moon dreaming of glory.
Now, with a full harvest in their holds, they were nothing but porters for a human king.
On the space pirate ship, Brook stood in the corridor and felt the gentle vibration of the hull.
The ship shook.
Gravity shifted.
Slowly, a faint sense of weight pressed down on him.
They were leaving the moon.
Brook's soul flames trembled with excitement.
Right now, he felt like a child about to go home, aching for the sight of the blue sea.
…
Meanwhile, in Blue Planet, on the Grand Line, in a country where war never stopped.
A young soldier drove his blade through the chest of his treacherous superior.
He watched the man fall, then turned his back on the flag he had once sworn to protect and walked away from the country that had brought him nothing but shame.
He wanted to become the strongest.
He set his sights on the New World and set out without hesitation, toward the sea where only power mattered.
On another route, several boys and girls slipped quietly through Fishman Island, hid their identities, and returned to the Grand Line.
They landed in the Sabaody Archipelago under disguises, hearts pounding.
They had only one goal.
To find every scrap of information on that man.
Then tear him out of whatever prison the World Government had buried him in.
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