Above deck, the Going Merry cut through the Grand Line's unpredictable waves with a rhythmic, soothing grace. The sun was high, the sky was blue, and the ship seemed to hum with a quiet, contented melody.
Nico Robin—formerly Miss All Sunday, currently a bewildered guest—walked the corridors of the lower deck. Her heels clicked softly on the polished wood. She was an archaeologist, a woman who had spent twenty years uncovering the secrets of the past, deciphering dead languages, and unearthing truths the World Government wanted buried. She was used to the impossible. She was used to the strange.
But she was not used to this.
She passed the galley door. Inside, Sanji was nowhere to be seen, yet the kitchen was alive. A sponge, floating mid-air, was scrubbing a steel pot with vigorous, circular motions. A towel was drying plates and stacking them neatly in the cupboard. The broom she had seen earlier swept past her ankles, ushering a small pile of dust toward a dustpan that held itself open.
"Fascinating," Robin murmured, her blue eyes tracking the broom.
She continued down the hall. The spatial dimensions were... wrong. From the outside, the Going Merry was a standard caravel.
Inside, the corridor stretched longer than the keel of the ship. The doors opened into rooms that shouldn't fit—a library with a ceiling that seemed to vanish into shadows, a training hall large enough to house a small giant.
She paused by a window. It showed the ocean rushing by, but the glass... it rippled. It wasn't just glass; it was a lens.
"Spatial manipulation," she whispered, her mind racing. "Telekinesis on a macro scale. Automation of inanimate objects. This isn't Devil Fruit power. No fruit has this much... versatility."
She wanted to find the navigator, or perhaps the cook, and ask. How? But she stopped herself. She was a fugitive, a guest on sufferance. Questions were dangerous. Knowledge was a burden. If she asked, they might lie. Or worse, they might tell her the truth, and she would be indebted to them.
So, she kept her silence, her sharp eyes cataloguing every impossibility, every rune etched into the doorframes, every whisper of the ship's timber. She realised, with a jolt of intellectual thrill, that she wasn't just on a pirate ship. She was sailing inside a mystery far older and deeper than she had anticipated.
---
While Robin explored the impossible ship, the architect of that impossibility was currently descending into a world within a world.
Ben stood in his quarters. On the desk sat a plain, slightly battered leather suitcase. He clicked the latches open.
He didn't reach inside. He stepped onto the desk, placed a foot into the case, and descended a ladder that dropped into a vast, cool, magically lit space.
This was his sanctuary. The Expanded Suitcase.
It wasn't just a storage unit; it was a mansion folded into leather. The interior was a marvel of architectural magic, spanning three full floors connected by spiralling wooden staircases.
The Ground Floor was a cozy, expansive living area with a roaring fireplace, a fully stocked kitchen, and a hall lined with portraits of landscapes he had seen.
The First Floor housed five bedrooms, each with an en-suite bathroom, intended for VIP guests or emergency shelter for the crew.
The Basement Level, however, was where the real work happened. This was the containment and research sector. It held three reinforced, magically shielded Experiment Rooms.
Ben headed straight for Experiment Room 3.
The air here was sterile, smelling of ozone, sulfur, and old parchment. The walls were lined with lead and inscribed with heavy Protego Horribilis wards.
In the centre of the room, strapped to a metal examination table by bands of glowing magical light, lay Mr. 5.
The Baroque Works agent was unconscious, breathing steadily. Ben had kept him in a magically induced coma since the capture.
Ben approached a side table. It was covered in a cornucopia of fresh fruit. Apples, bananas, melons, pineapples, pears—every shape and size available from the market.
"Right," Ben muttered, rolling up his sleeves. He picked up a stick of chalk and began to draw a complex circle around the table where Mr. 5 lay. "Theory time."
He had the Dumbledore Template. He possessed the knowledge of the greatest wizard of the modern age. Dumbledore had never created a Horcrux—he found the magic vile—but he had studied them extensively to defeat Voldemort. He knew the mechanics. He knew the theory.
Horcrux Theory: To create a Horcrux, a wizard must split their soul. The act of splitting requires the supreme act of evil—murder—to destabilise the soul's integrity. Then, a spell is used to encase the torn fragment into an object.
Ben paused, looking at Mr. 5.
"Devil Fruit users," Ben mused aloud, his voice echoing in the silent lab. "They don't have just one soul. They have two. The user's soul... and the 'Devil' inside the fruit. The Lineage Factor. The Curse."
His hypothesis was simple, yet audacious. The "Devil" of the fruit was essentially a foreign soul-fragment attached to the host. It was a parasitic bond. If he used the mechanics of a Horcrux spell—which was designed to rip a soul fragment loose and bind it to an object—he could theoretically rip the Devil out of Mr. 5 and bind it to a new fruit.
"But the catalyst..." Ben looked at a large, glass tank in the corner of the room.
Inside swam a Grand Line Tiger-Fish. It was a massive, ugly, vibrant creature, nearly ten feet long, bristling with teeth and overflowing with the sheer, aggressive vitality that characterised all life in this insane ocean.
"The Horcrux ritual requires a death," Ben whispered. "A sacrifice to generate the burst of metaphysical energy needed to shear the soul. The texts never specified a human death. They just required a life force strong enough to tear the veil."
In the world of Harry Potter, a human soul was unique. But in One Piece? The life force of a Grand Line beast was potent, dense, and wild. It was more than enough fuel.
"Sorry, fishy," Ben said softly. "But this is for science."
He moved the tank into the ritual circle. He placed all kinds of fruits around Mr. 5.
Ben took a deep breath. He raised the Elder Wand. The air in the room grew heavy, static electricity making his white hair rise. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to lengthen, reaching toward the circle.
He began to chant.
It wasn't the Latin of standard spells. It was something older, harsher. A vibration of sound that hurt the ears.
"Anima scindere... Vinculum maledictum..."
The circle on the floor flared with a sickly, pale-green light. The Tiger-Fish in the tank began to thrash wildly, sensing the gathering dark magic.
"Exsolvo!"
Ben slashed his wand downward toward the fish.
There was no physical wound, but the fish went rigid. A massive, visible pulse of white-hot life energy—the Vitality—was ripped from the creature. The fish dissolved into grey ash in the water instantly.
Ben caught the energy with his wand. It was fighting him, wild and heavy. He twisted his wrist, channeling that raw, screaming force directly into Mr. 5's body.
"SEPARARE!" Ben roared.
Mr. 5's body arched off the table, straining against the magical bonds. His mouth opened in a silent scream.
The room began to shake. The vials on the shelves rattled.
From Mr. 5's chest, a dark, oily smoke began to seep out. It wasn't just smoke; it was heavy. It moved with intent. It swirled, forming a vague, horrifying face—a skull made of explosions and smoke. The Essence of the Bomu Bomu no Mi.
It tried to retreat back into Mr. 5, clinging to his DNA, clinging to his Lineage Factor.
"Oh no, you don't," Ben gritted out, sweat pouring down his forehead. He focused his willpower surging through his veins. He used the death-energy of the fish as a wedge, driving it between the man and the devil.
"ANIMA... TRANSFERO!"
He slammed the tip of the Elder Wand onto Mr. 5's chest.
The dark smoke shrieked—a sound like a bomb whistling before impact—and was violently sucked away from the man. It spiralled, condensing, turning into a vortex of black and orange energy.
It struck the apple nearby.
The fruit glowed blindingly bright. It began to mutate.
The smooth red skin bubbled and warped. It turned a dark, matte grey. Swirls—the signature Devil Fruit spirals—etched themselves into the rind, glowing like burning fuses before cooling to black. The stem twisted, curling into the shape of a lit wick.
The light died. The shaking stopped.
Mr. 5 slumped back onto the table, breathing deeply, rhythmically. The tension of holding a demon inside him was gone.
And there, resting near him, was a fruit.
Ben lowered his wand, exhaling a long, shaky breath. He reached out and picked it up.
It was heavy. It felt warm to the touch, like a grenade left in the sun.
"The Bomu Bomu no Mi," Ben whispered, a triumphant grin spreading across his face. "Reborn."
He had done it. He had successfully extracted a Devil Fruit power without killing the user. He had industrialised the cycle of reincarnation.
"Mr. 5," Ben said to the unconscious man. "You've just made a great contribution to the Straw Hat arsenal. And you get to wake up as a normal man. I'd say that's a fair trade."
He walked over to a secure cabinet, unlocked it, and placed the Bomu Bomu no Mi inside a stasis box.
"One down," Ben murmured, looking at the empty shelf space next to it. "Many more to go."
He checked his watch. The ritual had taken an hour. It was time to head back up. The Merry was sailing toward Little Garden, and he had a feeling his crew was about to get into trouble again.
He climbed the ladder, exiting the suitcase and stepping back into the sunlight of the captain's quarters. He snapped the suitcase shut, locked it, and shrunk it down to the size of a matchbox, slipping it into his pocket.
As he walked out onto the deck, he saw Robin standing near the railing, looking at the sea. She turned as he approached.
"You were gone for a while," she noted, her voice neutral. "And... you smell of ozone. And apples."
Ben smiled, leaning on the railing beside her. "Just a little gardening, Miss All Sunday. Just a little gardening."
Robin looked at him, her eyes searching. She didn't know what he had done, but she knew one thing for sure:
The Wizard of the Straw Hats was the most dangerous man she had ever met.