The snow swirled around the two ships docked in the freezing sea—the cheerful, sheep-headed Going Merry and the hulking, industrial submersible Bliking.
Ben stood on the deck, brushing snow off his shoulder. "Captain," he said, turning to Luffy. "We have the King. We have the leverage. But we're missing the immediate necessity. Kings usually hoard the best resources for themselves."
Luffy blinked, his face red from the cold. "Meat?"
"Doctors," Ben corrected. "If this tin can travels with an army, he likely has a medical unit. We should check."
A literal lightbulb flickered to life above Luffy's straw hat. Ding!
"Oh! Right! Sanji! Zoro! Ben! Let's go raid the submarine!"
The Monster Trio (plus the Wizard) leapt across the gap, landing on the steel deck of the Bliking. A few remaining soldiers, shivering and terrified after seeing their King defeated, tried to raise their rifles.
"H-Halt!" one squeaked.
Zoro didn't even draw his sword. He just glared. The sheer pressure of his aura sent the soldier fainting into a snowdrift.
"Out of the way," Sanji growled, his leg already raised. "We're looking for doctors. Don't make me kick you into the stratosphere."
They descended into the belly of the ship. It was a labyrinth of steel corridors. They fought through a few squads of guards—Luffy using them as bowling pins, Zoro using the backs of his blades—until they found a heavy, reinforced door on the lower deck.
"This smells like a cell," Ben noted.
Luffy grabbed the steel handle and ripped the entire door off its hinges.
Inside, huddled in the dark, were twenty men. They wore white coats, clutched medical bags, and looked terrified. They were the Isshi-20—the elite doctors of Drum Kingdom, enslaved by Wapol to ensure he was the only one with medical care.
"Are you guys pirates?" Luffy asked, tilting his head.
"We... we are doctors!" the head doctor stammered. "Please! Don't kill us! Wapol forced us—"
"Doctors!" Luffy cheered. "FOUND 'EM! You guys are coming with us! My navigator is sick!"
The doctors looked confused, but the prospect of escaping Wapol's ship was enough. They grabbed their equipment and followed the pirates back to the Merry.
Once the doctors were safely aboard the Merry, Ben turned his attention to the Bliking and its unconscious crew.
"Right," Ben muttered. "Clean-up time."
He walked among the defeated Wapol pirates scattered on the deck. He raised his wand.
"Command T: Reduce."
Pop. Pop. Pop.
One by one, the soldiers shrank down to the size of action figures. Ben picked them up by their coats, tossing them into a sack like he was collecting marbles.
He jumped back to the Merry, walked to the prison, and emptied the sack. As the tiny soldiers fell into the darkness, he reversed the spell.
"Command T: Expand."
Mid-fall, they grew back to full size, landing in the cells with a chorus of confused groans.
"Prison populated," Ben noted.
He returned to the railing and looked at the massive Bliking. "And for the pièce de résistance..."
He focused his magic on the submarine. The green aura of Brandish's power flared.
"Command T: Reduce."
The massive steel ship groaned. Space warped around it. The Bliking imploded in size, shrinking rapidly until it was no larger than a model ship in a bottle. It floated on the water, a perfect, tiny replica.
Ben Accio'd it into his hand. "Hmm. Submersible tech. This will be excellent for future projects."
He walked to his quarters and placed the tiny ship on a shelf next to a jar of pickled plums.
---
Down in the women's quarters, the atmosphere was tense. The twenty doctors crowded into the small room, examining Nami.
The head doctor pulled back, his face grave. He checked a thermometer and looked at the rash on Nami's arm.
"It is as we feared," he said, his voice grim. "Kestia. It is an ancient virus, thought to be extinct. It is carried by the prehistoric Kenani ticks found in ancient jungles... like Little Garden."
"Kestia?" Vivi whispered, clutching Nami's hand. "Can... can you cure her?"
The doctors looked at each other and shook their heads sadly.
"We have general antibiotics, which will slow it down. But the specific antibody serum... we do not have it on us. It is rare. Without it... she has three days. Maybe less."
Luffy's face went pale. "Three days?"
"However," the doctor continued quickly, seeing the pirate captain about to panic. "We are near Drum Island. There is a witch... a doctor there named Kureha. If anyone has the serum or can synthesise it, it is her."
"Drum Island," Luffy said, his resolve hardening. "We go there. Fast."
"We ask for shelter until we arrive," the doctor said, bowing. "We cannot return to Wapol."
"Sure," Luffy nodded. "Just keep Nami alive."
While the crew scrambled to manage the ship and the doctors attended to Nami, Ben slipped into his magical suitcase. Ben stood in Experiment Room 3. Wapol lay unconscious on the table.
Ben performed the ritual. It was becoming routine now, a dark, efficient surgery of the soul. The chalk circles, the chanting, the sacrifice of a vitality-rich fish. The magic tore the Baku Baku no Mi from the King's chest. The essence slammed into a prepared melon, turning it into a strange, metal-plated fruit.
"Baku Baku no Mi," Ben mused, holding it up.
He stored the fruit. He wiped Wapol's memory—leaving him with nothing but a confused sense of hunger and entitlement—and levitated him into the guest room/prison within the suitcase.
Then he exited the suitcase and entered his Research Room. The Super Computer he had built using the Tony Stark template was humming, the arc reactor core glowing soft blue.
Ben sat at the keyboard. His fingers flew across the keys, a blur of motion. He wasn't just coding; he was weaving spells into the syntax.
He was finalising the Artificial Intelligence Consciousness Architecture.
He typed the final line of code:
He pressed Enter.
The screens flickered. The speakers crackled with static, then cleared.
"...Hello, Ben."
The voice was soft, melodic, and undeniably feminine. It sounded like the creak of wood, the snap of a sail, and the warmth of a hearth, all translated into speech.
Ben leaned back, a genuine, proud smile spreading across his face.
"Hello, Merry."
This wasn't JARVIS. JARVIS was brilliant, but he was code. This... this was a fusion of Stark's neural net processing and Dumbledore's understanding of the soul. This was the Klabautermann given a voice and a processor.
"Merry check," Ben said softly. "Run diagnostics. Any errors in the soul-matrix integration?"
There was a pause as the figurehead icon on the screen pulsed gently.
"Running..." Merry's voice replied. "Diagnostics complete. Soul integrity at 100%. Processing power nominal. No errors found, Ben."
"Excellent," Ben exhaled. "Now... Merry, I have a request. Can we keep this... us... a secret for a little while longer?"
The icon on the screen dimmed slightly. The voice that returned sounded small, and distinctly sad.
"A secret? Do you... do you not want me to speak to Luffy? Or Usopp? Am I... broken?"
Ben's heart clenched. She was sentient enough to feel rejection.
"No, no, Merry," he said quickly, his voice gentle. "You are perfect. But listen. We are about to pick up a new crewmate at the next island. A doctor. And right now, Nami is very sick, and everyone is scared. If I introduce you now, it might be too much at once."
He leaned closer to the mic. "I want to give you a Grand Launch. A party. When the whole crew is together, and Nami is well. Then, you can introduce yourself properly. Does that sound okay?"
The icon brightened, glowing a happy gold.
"A party? For me?" Merry asked. "With Luffy and everyone?"
"Yes. A big one."
"Okay!" Merry chirped. "I can wait! I will focus on keeping the hull stable for Nami!"
Ben sighed in relief. "Thank you, Merry."
He sat back, tapping the desk. "Now... you have intelligence, Merry. You have a soul. But you lack data. You can't calculate complex trajectories or analyze chemical compounds yet because you've never learned them."
He looked at the empty space in the center of the room.
"I need to send you to school."
---
Ben stood up. His Stark-brain was already constructing the blueprints. His Momo-quirk was already preparing the atoms.
"A Virtual Reality Interface," Ben muttered. "A Deep-Dive Pod. But magical."
He began to work. He didn't build it bolt by bolt. He synthesised the frame—a sleek, white pod resembling a futuristic cryo-chamber. He used Brandish's magic to expand microscopic circuits into complex motherboards, then shrank them back down to fit the chassis. He etched Dumbledore's runes into the headrest, designed to interface the human mind directly with the digital core.
It took him all night. The Super Soldier Serum kept him awake, his stamina limitless, his focus razor-sharp.
By 4:00 AM, it was done.
The Soul-Dive Pod.
"This will allow me to project my consciousness into your server space, Merry," Ben explained to the empty air. "And we can also manipulate the perception of time in here."
He looked at the settings.
[Time Dilation: 1:10 Ratio]
[1 Hour Real Time = 10 Hours Virtual Time]
"I can't stay in too long," Ben muttered. "Nami needs us. But thirty minutes out here... gives us five hours in there. That's enough for the download."
He stepped into the pod. The glass lid hissed shut.
"System Start. Neural Link... Engage."
ZAP.
White light.
Ben blinked. He was standing in an endless, pristine white void. Floating data streams cascaded like waterfalls in the distance.
"Ben!"
He turned.
Standing there was a girl.
She looked about ten years old. She wore a simple white dress that rippled as if in a sea breeze. Her hair was the colour of seasoned oak, and atop her head sat two small, curved sheep horns.
"Merry," Ben smiled, dropping to one knee.
She ran to him, colliding with a force that felt incredibly real. Ben wrapped his arms around her, hugging the spirit of the ship. She felt warm. She felt... solid.
"I'm here!" she giggled. "It's so big in here!"
"It is," Ben said, pulling back to look at her. "And we're going to fill it."
He tapped his own temple. The digital representation of his Mind Palace shimmered into existence behind him—millions of books, schematics, and maps.
"I am granting you access to my Scientific and Magical Archives," Ben said seriously. "Physics. Chemistry. Navigation. Aerodynamics. Runes. Arithmancy. I'm leaving out my personal memories, but the raw data... It's all yours."
Merry looked at the library with wide, awe-struck eyes. "All of that... for me?"
"So you can protect them," Ben said. "So you can be the best ship in the world."
"I will!" she promised. She ran toward the library, her hands glowing as she began to touch the books, absorbing the data instantly.
Ben sat in the white void, watching her. He meditated, managing the connection. Five hours of subjective time passed. He watched Merry grow—not in size, but in presence. Her eyes grew sharper, more intelligent. She wasn't just a spirit anymore; she was becoming a supercomputer with a heart.
"Download complete," Merry said, turning to him. "I understand the rudder dynamics now. I can optimise the drag coefficient by 14%."
Ben grinned. "That's my girl."
"Time to wake up, Ben," she said softly. "The backlash will hurt."
"I know."
DISCONNECT.
GASP.
Ben sat up in the pod in the real world, ripping the sensors off his temples.
Pain.
A spike of agony drove itself through his frontal lobe. It felt like a hangover mixed with a brain freeze.
"Ugh..." he groaned, rolling out of the pod and collapsing onto the cool floor of the lab. "Mental time dilation... still sucks... even with the serum..."
He lay there, panting, letting his enhanced biology scrub the fatigue from his brain. He closed his eyes, drifting into a short, restorative nap.
CLANG-CLANG!
Two sharp bells. The signal.
Ben's eyes snapped open. The headache was a dull throb now. He pushed himself up.
"Two rings. Land."
He grabbed his coat and sprinted up the stairs to the deck.
The snow was falling harder now, a white curtain over the world. But through the mist, looming high and majestic, were the iconic, cylindrical mountains of the Winter Island.
Drum Island.
The crew was gathered at the rail, shivering but excited.
"Finally," Luffy breathed, his breath puffing white. "Nami's gonna be okay."
Ben walked up beside them, adjusting his collar against the cold. He looked at the snow-covered peaks where a certain castle sat.
"Get ready," Ben said quietly. "We're here. The land of medicine. And... monsters."
"Time to go get our reindeer."