After Crocodile left Turtle Island, Nico Robin suddenly found herself with nothing to do. Only then did she realize that without someone to spar with, life on the island was rather dull. Jones and Drake spent all day training with a diligence that bordered on absurd, as though neither wanted to hold back Loa, the man with a ten-billion-Beli bounty.
Whatever their reasons for joining his side, neither of them would allow himself to be the weakest.
Ask them why, and all they would say was, "For a man's pride!"
"All right, that's a man for you," Robin said. Then she went to have tea with Perona, Turtle Island's mascot.
Having lost her body, Perona should technically have been dead. By all rights, she should have vanished when her Devil Fruit power disappeared. Yet she hadn't!
The question had baffled everyone on Turtle Island for a long time. It was only after Loa arrived and studied her closely that they understood why, and managed to piece their shattered understanding of the world back together.
A soul was itself a form of energy. Thanks to Loa, everyone already knew that. Perona's out-of-body technique differed from the ghosts she usually created. Though it, too, was a ghost made by her Devil Fruit power, her own soul resided within it. Her consciousness hadn't merely entered it, as she had believed.
By a stroke of luck, when she died, the outer shell she had created vanished, but her soul remained intact.
Perona wouldn't have to worry about disappearing until her soul burned itself out.
For a woman who cared about her looks, it was an enviable turn of events. If Loa wished it, Perona's life could go on forever!
Imagine it: a young woman forever in her prime, innocent yet mature, never aging past