"Kuma, if you could travel, where would you want to go?"
The unexpected question caught Kuma off guard. He clearly hadn't expected Gern to ask him something like that.
"Travel?" He blinked, looking at Gern in confusion. "Well, I haven't really thought about it."
"Really?" Gern smiled, his gaze sweeping over the church's sparse but cozy furnishings.
Burnt bread sat on the wooden table, herbs Kuma had gathered from the forest were piled in a corner, and a few patched clothes hung on the wall.
"Your home is very cozy. A girl lives here with you, doesn't she?" Gern said with a slight smile.
"Uh..." Kuma, who secretly liked Ginny, couldn't help averting his eyes at Gern's teasing. He changed the subject.
"Mr. Gern, I'm very happy with my life right now. I haven't thought about traveling."
The Paw-Paw Fruit granted a powerful ability, and Gern himself had favored that Devil Fruit back then.
Unfortunately, he had missed out on it, though he didn't know whether that was because the pirate world kept its characters bound to their destined paths.
Still, now that Kuma had eaten the Paw-Paw Fruit, he would become a formidable fighter in the future.
And as Gern climbed through the ranks of the Marines, he would inevitably need a faction devoted to his own brand of justice.
For that, rather than recruiting people already within the Marines, Gern preferred bringing in outsiders to build his faction's strength.
Especially with his foreknowledge of the plot, he could easily snap up plenty of promising people, such as Kuma right in front of him.
As for Kuma joining the Revolutionary Army, Gern believed that had only happened because Ivankov and Ginny had happened to be there at the time.
Kuma didn't really have strong opinions of his own. He