Prison Demon

"Sea Circle Calendar, March 3... It should be March 3, right? I've run into a bit of trouble..."

Facing the situation before him, Sig began, bewildered, to pretend he was writing in a diary.

Thinking back, Sig remembered that it had been the night after he returned from the "ghost ship." He had finished his training and was resting in a hammock on deck.

When he woke up, Sig found himself in... a prison?

It looked like a dungeon, too. The place was cold and damp, water dripped everywhere, and the stench of rot assailed his nostrils. It could have passed for a sewer, but the reason he'd immediately thought "prison" was that he'd just gained the ability of the Prison-Prison Fruit!

If this had happened right after he'd crossed over, Sig would definitely have thought he'd been reincarnated as Naruto Uzumaki!

Steeling himself, Sig continued farther in. Sure enough, there were cells on either side...

As he went deeper, Sig saw a huge throne. The figure seated upon it looked much smaller by comparison—the chair seemed built for a giant, while the figure on it was merely a burly man.

The other man rested his elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced beneath his chin. Taking advantage of his long legs, he struck the classic Commander Ikari pose with his knees.

The light was too dim for Sig to make out the man's features, but he had a vague sense that they looked familiar.

"Who are you?" Sig demanded at once, raising his hands into a Fish-Man Karate stance.

"Heh."

The man gave a cold laugh, dropped the Commander Ikari pose, and raised his face slightly...

Once Sig got a good look at him, his heart tightened. He shifted his feet and took a small step back.

He'd spent ages preparing himself mentally. Even if he saw a face covered in barnacles with fleshy sprouts growing out of it, he wouldn't have reacted this strongly.

And yet...

What Sig saw was a handsome face—at least, he thought so. After all... it was his own face!

"Who... what are you?" Sig's mind went blank. The Telepathist's ability to analyze microexpressions was of no use to him now.

"Me? I'm you, and I'm the Prison-Prison Fruit." The figure on the prison throne leaned back, folded his arms across his chest, and crossed his legs, adopting the pose of a big shot.

"A product of the Devil Fruit ability combining with part of my personality?" Sig asked tentatively.

"Part of your personality? You're pretty confident..." The figure on the prison throne spoke mockingly. After a pause, he continued, "You should say that I'm the real you, finally brought to light by the power of the Devil. I'm you, but you're not me!"

"So what do you want?" Sig asked cautiously.

At the same time, thoughts raced through Sig's mind. He hadn't expected absorbing a Devil Fruit ability to come with so many complications!

In the original story, no one had ever "lost control" because of a Devil Fruit ability. There were two possible explanations for this strange situation.

One possibility was that Sig hadn't obtained the ability by eating the fruit in the usual way, causing some deviation that other ability users didn't experience. The other was that this was normal, but other ability users hadn't noticed. Because of his Listener or Telepathist abilities, Sig had searched through the reflections of his own mind and seen this scene.

"What do you want?" the figure on the prison throne asked in return.

"Huh?" Sig was puzzled. Hadn't the "him" in front of him brought him here? Why was he asking Sig that?

"It feels great not to be restrained by that hateful power... Want to command the power of the Prison Demon? Then are you ready to become a prisoner?" The figure on the prison throne looked at his palm as if testing his strength, then asked Sig with a cold laugh.

"No, I don't have the Pathway of the Bound..." Sig said, half joking and half testing him.

Sequence 9 of the Pathway of the Bound was the Prisoner, but that had nothing to do with Sig.

Sig had no idea how much this "thing," which seemed so closely connected to him, knew about him!

Did it know about his memories from before he crossed over? Did it know about... the Paths of the Divine?

"Pathway? You seem to know a lot of interesting things. You even pierced through the barrier of that power earlier and heard my whisper. Then let me see just what you know..."

As the figure on the prison throne spoke, he reached out toward Sig. Countless iron bars shot from his palm, like the bars of a cage, and thrust rapidly toward Sig.

Sig quickly rolled out of the way. Several holes had been punched into the spot where he'd been standing, and the iron bars were closing in around it. If he hadn't dodged, he would have been caught!

At the sight, Sig's heart stirred. This felt a bit like the Cage-Cage Fruit from the original story, but logically speaking, it should be part of the Prison-Prison Fruit's ability, shouldn't it?

He'd thought the Prison-Prison Fruit was nothing special, but from another angle, it at least felt like an upgraded version of the Cage-Cage Fruit!

To a certain extent, Devil Fruit abilities resembled the Sequences of the Paths of the Divine—both were powers that relied heavily on "symbolism."

The Listener, for instance, wasn't merely about having good hearing. It extended the symbolic meaning of "listening."

And when Devil Fruit abilities were developed to their fullest—especially special-ability Paramecia fruits and Logia Devil Fruits—their symbolic meaning was undoubtedly extended as well.

For example, Bartholomew Kuma had developed the Paw-Paw Fruit's "paws" into the concept of "repulsion," to the point where he could even repel abstract concepts like pain. Crocodile had developed the Sand-Sand Fruit in the direction of drying and withering.

Sig had made another discovery...

This guy wasn't that strong, either!

At first, Sig had thought he'd be a terrifying opponent. Especially since this was the other man's home ground, the fight would be a one-sided crushing, like the Nine-Tails against Naruto when he was still growing up.

Yet... after they actually fought, Sig found that the other man's abilities weren't all that impressive!

He was stronger than Sig, but not by much.

Here, Sig naturally couldn't use the power of the Prison-Prison Fruit. But he could still dodge the other man's wide-ranging attacks with his nimble movements, and he even dared to gradually try closing the distance!

The figure on the prison throne... the Prison Demon, for lack of a better name.

At this moment, the Prison Demon was also at a loss. Normally, he should have all of the host's power, plus the "fully developed Devil Fruit ability." Meanwhile, the host would only have his own strength here and wouldn't be able to draw on the fruit's power. It should have been a one-sided fight.

But...

The problem was that Sig also had the ability of the God's Sequence!

That meant they were using the same stats, but Sig had five Sequences of the Divine, while the Prison Demon had the Prison-Prison Fruit ability...

Since Sig only had Sequence 8, even with five Sequences, he was bound to be hard-pressed against a "fully developed Devil Fruit ability."

Still, he wasn't completely helpless. After all... if the bonuses from his five Sequences of the Divine were stripped away, Sig's stats were actually low, severely limiting how much he could get out of the fruit ability.

Though he didn't have the Telepathist ability, the Prison Demon seemed to have figured out what Sig was thinking. He couldn't help snapping, "Bastard! You're the weak one, aren't you? You're just... too weak!"