You Can't Change a Thing

Luo thought about what joy was like. Bucky, at any rate, couldn't care less.

And just as he'd expected,

the moment he returned to the Navy's District 66 Base and stepped inside its thick concrete walls,

he was promptly locked up.

As if he were some heinous pirate.

In an underground interrogation room whose depth below the base was anyone's guess, Bucky finally met the base commander.

"Do you really think you did that for the sake of justice?"

Sicily's voice was openly accusatory.

He had a square face and a crescent-shaped mustache.

The hideous scar beneath his left eye showed how different he was from Bucky.

It was obvious that his position as a Rear Admiral had been built on the heads of countless pirates and innocents.

"Fool!"

"This island was like this a hundred years ago, it's still like this now, and it'll be the same a hundred years from now."

"You can't change a thing!"

"Stop putting on that hypocritical act. The entire Lux Family was destroyed because of you!"

What Sicily could least understand was why—why a man who was already a beneficiary of the system, and even a participant in the slave trade, would swagger into another auction house with such self-righteous arrogance and raid it.

He'd even declared in the papers that he would free the slaves!

"That's a shame."

Bucky casually flicked the shackles on his wrists, then glanced around the solitary cell.

What a familiar feeling!

"But what do you think I did it for, Your Excellency Sicily?" he asked politely.

For some reason, when Sicily heard the question, a shiver rose from somewhere deep inside him.

It was as if something terribly frightening was about to happen.

"Psycho!"

At last, he spat out the word through clenched teeth.

A psycho—that was how he judged this Noble Major.

The cell where they'd locked up the major was on the base's third underground level.

A cold iron bed took up a third of the cell.

An incandescent bulb hung from the ceiling.

Beyond the lonely bulb stretched a long darkness.

There wasn't a sound, and there wasn't even a guard in sight.

The deep gloom and silence seemed like an unfathomable abyss, dragging the mind ever downward.

"We've never used this solitary confinement room before. Is it really all right to lock Major Arrow in there?"

"And the order from Headquarters was only temporary."

"Shut up." Sicily shot a glare at his tactless adjutant.

The look on Bucky's face when he asked that last question had left him feeling uneasy.

So uneasy that he'd needed to lock Bucky in the lowest solitary confinement room just to feel a little more at ease.

"Check again. Find out who Major Arrow has been in contact with besides Diouf."

"No, check Diouf too!"

"I refuse to believe someone can be perfectly fine at the detention base and turn into a psycho the moment he gets here!"

"Whoa, look! A Ferris wheel!"

At Soap Bubble Park, the Straw Hat Pirates ran around hollering like country bumpkins seeing a big city for the first time.

The incredible bubble creations instantly captured their attention.

"Hehe." Robin covered her mouth and chuckled. These cheerful people seemed to be able to chase away all the oppression she'd endured in the past.

But she also noticed a stifling atmosphere among the people passing through Commoner Street.

Ears sprouted from the corners and alleyways nearby, and she vaguely heard

that it had something to do with a newspaper that was no longer being printed.

She reached out and took a newspaper from someone's home.

Then, passing it from her left hand to her right,

she used the power of the Flower-Flower Fruit to make her limbs sprout wherever she wished.

The newspaper landed in front of her.

"Navy... Slave-Liberating Arrow"

"How unbelievable."

Having grown up constantly hunted by the World Government, Robin understood the weight of that headline better than most.

Connecting it to the stifling atmosphere on Commoner Street, she began to understand.

"Robin-chan!"

"What are you looking at?!"

The exuberant Mermaid Keimi came over, full of curiosity about the human world.

She was so excited that she accidentally let her fish tail show.

A few people at the street corner noticed.

They slowly approached.

Robin's gaze turned cold. She crossed her arms, ready to twist the newcomers to death at a moment's notice.

"Please be careful!"

The newcomers looked displeased. One of them was holding a yellowed price list.

He pointed at it. "Female mermaids can fetch an astronomical seventy million Beli from those Slave Catchers!"

"I'm worth that much?!"

"Who are you?"

Robin blinked. The contrast was a little unexpected.

The newcomer gave a good-natured smile.

"We're Major Arrow's Followers!"

"Followers?"

"That's right. Even if the Navy won't acknowledge his response, at least Major Arrow really did something. If he hadn't burned down the Human Auction House in Area 1, those Slave Catchers would be even more brazen!"

The newcomer still sounded indignant. "The Navy and the World Government are no different from the Slave Catchers!"

"They're even banning newspapers that have already been published."

"Speaking of which, the newspaper you're holding is a rare find. We've all hidden away copies of that day's paper."

"Thank you, then."

Robin couldn't help smiling. A Navy man calling for the liberation of slaves really was something special.

Even Keimi beside her looked shaken.

She'd heard from her fellow merfolk what happened to slaves.

It was a hundred times more terrifying than being served as sashimi!

"Don't mention it!"

"'We refuse to accept a cruel world.' That's Major Arrow's declaration, and it's our creed too!"

The newcomer's gaze grew more resolute as he clenched his fist.

"We won't let them cover up what Major Arrow did, even if they're making a big show of publicly executing a pirate named Ace to steal everyone's attention!"

"Ace?!"

"Execution?!"

Robin jolted as if she'd been struck by lightning.

There was only one Ace the Navy would publicly execute: Fire Fist Ace of the Whitebeard Pirates!

How could the man known as the Strongest Man in the World just stand by and watch his son be executed?!

This was

a harbinger of war!

Beneath the lonely incandescent bulb,

Bucky tapped the iron bed over and over, humming a little tune now and then.

Alone in a dark solitary cell—

Well, wasn't this fresh!

The solitary confinement room at Arkham Asylum had felt just like home.

"It'll start soon, won't it?"

"Wait... I still have to wait..."

Just thinking about the Joyful Game that was about to begin, a game powerful enough to sweep across the world, made him snicker uncontrollably.

His smile grew ever brighter.

There was no one watching him here, so he could show his real face.

In the dark solitary cell, all alone,

a clown could be seen snickering to himself.

Look closely, and you might also notice

that with every delighted laugh,

the fingers Bucky tapped against the iron bed left a few faint, splitting white marks in its surface.

The Devil was quite pleased with him!