Punk Hazard. The Eclipse's lower-deck mechanical lab.
"Done!"
Jeno shot up from the workbench so fast he nearly sent his chair flying.
Through the glass, the Flame Dragon Staff lay still in its cradle. Faint pink veins now traced along the shaft, as if something had fused into the metal itself. And that failed Azure Dragon fruit? Completely gone.
"That's it?"
Buggy pressed his face to the glass, squinting from every angle. "The staff's just sitting there. Jeno, did you break it?"
"Shut your mouth, Buggy! What do you know!"
Jeno threw open the lab door and strode inside. "This is technology blending ancient science with the Lineage Factor. Zoan fruits house a consciousness. Right now it's adapting to its new body."
Sabo didn't hesitate. He followed Jeno in.
He looked at the transformed staff and slowly extended his right hand. His palm wrapped around the shaft.
The instant skin touched metal.
"Grah?"
A low roar echoed from inside the staff. A dragon's cry, but tinged with confusion. Young. Uncertain.
Then, before everyone's stunned eyes, the dark crimson alloy began to shift. A tight, dense pattern of pink dragon scales rippled across its surface. The front end twisted, elongated, and sculpted itself into a lifelike pink dragon's head, two horns and all. The rear end stretched into a spiked tail.
The weapon was alive.
"Whoa! It's adorable!"
Chopper stood on Kuma's shoulder, eyes sparkling. "It has eyes! It's looking right at you, Sabo!"
"Adorable?" Urouge adjusted his gravity pillar on his shoulder and rubbed his bald head. "Looks kind of silly to me. That pink dragon head. Is this really a legendary dragon?"
Sabo ignored the peanut gallery.
He stared into those amber, slit-pupil eyes and felt an indescribable bond flowing through his palm into his mind. The weapon showed no resistance. It accepted him as naturally as a newborn hatchling imprints on its kin.
"Can you understand me?" Sabo asked.
"Rawr!"
The pink dragon head at the staff's tip chirped happily. A tiny burst of pink flame flared along the shaft, as if showing off.
"Looks like you don't have to tame it like a wild beast. It claimed you as its master right away."
Ace leaned against the lab doorframe, watching with a grin. In the original story, both Spandam's elephant sword and Mr. 4's dog gun were living weapons with this same built-in consciousness and loyalty.
Sabo smiled and patted the dragon head, willing it back into staff form. "Let's head outside. Time to see what you can do."
The whole crew filed out of the lower deck and gathered in the open ruins plaza outside the research facility.
"Allow this god to see what a living Mythical Zoan weapon is capable of."
Enel hovered in the air, blue arcs dancing at his fingertips. He shot Sabo a taunting look.
"Enel, you might want to back up a bit."
Sabo tugged his hat down and gripped the Flame Dragon Staff with both hands, centered. He didn't rush to channel the Mera Mera no Mi's flames. Instead, he focused inward, reaching for the power the Azure Dragon fruit had embedded deep inside the weapon.
"Let's start with the basic hybrid form."
A roar split the air.
One end of the staff transformed in an instant. The dark crimson alloy melted and reformed into a pink-scaled dragon's head, eyes fierce. The rigid, straight shaft went supple as a serpent's spine, elastic and responsive, stretching endlessly with each flick of Sabo's wrist.
"Go!"
Sabo swung one-handed.
The pink dragon head tore across dozens of meters like a striking snake and locked its jaws onto the wreckage of a scrapped Pacifista.
"It can extend for attacks, and that bite force is harder than steel!"
Sabo yanked hard. The multi-ton wreck, clamped tight in the dragon's jaws, swung through the air like a ball-and-chain before crashing down into the ground.
"That kind of form shifting… there's almost no blind spot in close combat."
Shark watched from the side, Samehada on his back, a flicker of gravity in his eyes.
"Then let's see full beast form!"
Sabo's grin widened. He let go of the staff entirely.
"Roar!"
Freed from his grip, the Flame Dragon Staff twisted and swelled violently in midair. Within seconds, it had fully transformed into a pink Eastern dragon over a dozen meters long. The color was still ridiculous. But the orange flame clouds swirling around its body and the crushing Mythical Zoan presence pressing down on everyone?
That was real.
"Can it fight on its own?" Jeno shoved his goggles up, furiously scribbling data.
"It can do a lot more than that."
Sabo laughed. The compressed flames at his boot heels detonated, launching him like a blue lightning bolt onto the pink dragon's head.
"It can also be a mount. And… release a heat breath!"
Sabo didn't tap into his own Mera Mera no Mi power. He simply patted the dragon's horns with both hands.
The beast got the command. It reared its head back and loosed an earth-shaking roar.
The air scorched.
Inside that gaping abyss of a mouth, a searing glow gathered with terrifying speed. The pink dragon fruit's innate Mythical Zoan ability: heat breath.
But this heat breath didn't spray out like ordinary fire.
A deep hum vibrated through the dragon's body. The micro-compression air channels Jeno had meticulously built into the original Flame Dragon Staff, hidden deep inside the alloy, were now merging seamlessly with the creature's Mythical Zoan biology.
The blazing orange heat breath, just before erupting from the dragon's mouth, was squeezed. Compressed a thousandfold by those mechanical channels.
When the fire finally left the jaws, it had become a plasma blast beam meters wide, burning a blue so deep it defied belief.
This hybrid of primal instinct and modern compression tech ripped across the sky and slammed dead-on into a barren mountain peak a hundred meters high.
BOOM.
The sheer physical force of the blast punched straight through the solid rock. The mountain peak didn't crumble. It was cored. A bottomless hole gaped through its midsection, the edges melted into a glassy, molten glaze.
The debris didn't even have time to rain down. The residual heat vaporized it into white dust that scattered on the wind.
"That firepower…"
Carina stared at the canyon-sized hole and swallowed. "That's not a weapon anymore. That's a living cannon with homing and high-explosive rounds."
"Perfect! A miracle of feeding a Mythical Zoan to a weapon!" Jeno was practically dancing with excitement.
Sabo jumped down from the sky. With a single thought, the massive pink dragon condensed back into a scaled alloy staff and settled obediently into his grip.
He looked at the weapon in his hands and felt a confidence he'd never known before.
"Ace."
Sabo turned to his captain, standing by the rubble. His blue eyes burned with anticipation.
"With this weapon in my hands, I'm feeling pretty unstoppable right now. Want to spar with me? Let me see exactly how far I still have to go to catch up to you."
30+ chapters are available now and daily updates! @patreon.com/Authorzero