Punk Hazard Research Institute.
Dr. Vegapunk stood in the sterile laboratory, carefully cradling a test tube of red liquid and examining it as though it were a fragile relic. Not far from him, a glass chamber held a large, purple apple submerged in solution. Upon closer inspection, faint circular patterns were slowly forming on its surface.
At the bottom of the container, data blinked rapidly on connected instruments, numbers and lines streaming in endless waves.
Vegapunk's face was tense and uneasy. After a moment of hesitation, he squared his shoulders and stepped toward the glass chamber.
Suddenly, a vortex of darkness ripped open right in front of him. The startled scientist jumped back, his hand shaking, causing the test tube to shatter on the floor, splashing crimson liquid in every direction.
Vegapunk's eyes went wide, his heart skipped, and he nearly fainted from shock.
From the swirling void, Lloyd emerged, dark and silent. The scientist blinked repeatedly before his anger collapsed into teary relief.
"Saint Lloyd," he sputtered, voice trembling, "must you always show up like this? A heads‑up would be nice sometimes! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"
Lloyd lifted an eyebrow, his voice cold and flat.
"What? Are you running another secret experiment again?"
Vegapunk flinched, realizing his earlier outburst had been disrespectful. He hurriedly corrected himself.
"No, no Saint Lloyd! I swear! You can ask kuma and Spandine, whatever I'm working on, they already know! It's not hidden!"
Lloyd's expression didn't soften. He asked plainly,
"So where are those two now?"
"They…they went traveling," Vegapunk answered weakly.
Lloyd's eyes briefly narrowed as he thought to himself that kuma was likely serving as the reluctant second‑in‑command under Admiral Kizaru's lazy squad.
Despite the tension, Vegapunk truly wasn't hiding anything sinister. He gestured toward the spilled red liquid on the floor.
"Saint Lloyd, please believe me, I am just researching artificial Devil Fruits. This blood spilled here… it's extremely rare and precious experimental material."
Lloyd raised an eyebrow.
"Whose blood?"
"…Kaido's," the scientist gulped. "Last time he was captured by the Marines, I extracted blood from him. That body is notoriously tough, I barely got enough to support one final experiment. All the previous trials failed, and now all that was left was just enough for one more attempt, and now it's wasted."
Lloyd paused for a moment and then stated simply,
"Kaido gets captured all the time. Next time just get more."
Vegapunk shook his head and pointed at the glass container holding the purple apple.
"I can't," he said. "Each time Kaido is captured now, he becomes stronger and harder to take down, so extracting anything is almost impossible. And this experiment… it used every rare material I had. If we had to gather everything again, it would take nearly twenty years."
Lloyd's mind went quiet for a moment. In the original timeline, Vegapunk really had spent two decades perfecting this project. In other words, if this accident had not happened, that artificial Blue Dragon Fruit might have been created now regardless.
Vegapunk continued, unaware of Lloyd's thoughts. He explained how that artificial fruit, left behind on Punk Hazard and assumed "failed" because its initial result transformed its eater into a pink dragon instead of blue, was later eaten by Momonosuke, giving him dragon transformations similar to Kaido's Fish Fish Fruit, Model: Azure Dragon. Vegapunk had judged it a failure for superficial reasons rather than flaws in its potential.
For someone like Lloyd, who cared only about results and not unnecessary emotions, that made the situation even more ridiculous.
Vegapunk's scientific obsession was so intense that even tiny deviations from his expectations were unacceptable — it was almost comical.
Lloyd glanced down at the drying crimson stains on the floor. After a moment, he nodded once and said in a voice devoid of warmth,
"Oh, I see."
He extended a finger and lightly hooked it. The spilled blood instantly coalesced into thin threads that rose from the ground. On Lloyd's fingertip, they gathered into a small crimson orb about the size of a ping‑pong ball.
Lloyd held the blood orb in front of the stunned Vegapunk and asked,
"Where should I put this?"
Vegapunk snapped back to full attention, overjoyed. He pointed at an instrument beside the glass container.
"There! Put it there!"
Lloyd flicked his finger, and the blood orb flew precisely into a receptacle atop the instrument.
Almost immediately, the solution in the adjacent glass chamber began to boil. The purple apple heated rapidly until it turned bright red, the circular markings becoming intricate designs alternating gold and orange.
Both Vegapunk and Lloyd watched as the fruit simmered and gradually cooled. When it settled, the apple wasn't purple anymore — it was blood‑red with distinctive gold and orange circular patterns.
Lloyd studied the fruit with mild interest. For a moment, he reflected on what the anime had shown about the artificial fruit Momonosuke had eaten, and momentarily wondered if he had remembered its appearance incorrectly — perhaps it hadn't been purple after all, or maybe the experiment had "failed" in a different way than he expected.
But Lloyd's expression didn't shift beyond a flicker of curiosity.
And so the experiment, whatever its final outcome, stood somewhere between failure and success — perhaps defined not by its inherent power, but by whether someone was capable of wielding it.
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