I came back to consciousness, and nothing was the same afterward.

  My eyes cracked open. Light stabbed into them, sharp enough to make me wince. Out of habit, my arm reached for a pillow to block the sun. I remember mumbling, “…five more minutes…” like I always did.

  But this time, nothing was answered back.

  No annoyed groan.

  No voice.

  No presence.

  Just silence.

  Strange.

  Then something else hit me—my vision was too clear. Not “better.” Like someone had wiped a lifetime of fog off a lens I never knew was dirty.

  I could see individual hairs on my arm, threads in the blanket, tiny imperfections in the wall. I didn’t understand it yet. That revelation came later.

  I pushed myself upright, sluggish, and yesterday’s weight crashed onto my shoulders all at once.

  That’s when I noticed my gear.

  Both weapons rested beside the bed, cleaned and repaired. Even my clothes had been changed—someone had tended to me quietly while I was unconscious. I got dressed quickly.

  My pipe had no holster anymore—probably shredded—so I carried it by hand.

  As I rushed out, a mirror caught the edge of my vision.

  Something white flashed.

  I froze.

  Turned.

  And stared.

  My hair.

  White.

  Then Ace’s voice from last night echoed through me like a falling tree:

  “It’s nothing… you just changed. And I’m not sure you’re gonna like it.”

  He’d been right.

  My once sunflower-yellow hair was now pure white-silver. Two fox ears perched atop my head—fully real, fully mine.

  And my human ears? Still there.

  Still working.

  It took time before I stopped reaching up in confusion.

  My body felt different, too—sharper, faster, alive in a way that wasn’t entirely mine. Like someone had rewritten the blueprint and forgotten to tell me.

  But I know what you actually want to hear about—the armor, the aftermath, the world I woke up to.

  The World Government didn’t abandon Goa. Supplies arrived, and the Marines helped rebuild, though they estimated it would take four years before anything resembled normal. Surprisingly, they left the mountain bandits alone.

  I never got a straight answer from my grandfather, but I knew it had to be him. Garp didn’t operate by logic—he operated by will. If he wanted them left alone, then that’s exactly what would happen.

  And honestly? It was fair. If the bandits hadn’t come when they did, I wouldn’t be here.

  But maybe… if they hadn’t, she

  As for Kalman, he was in deeper trouble than any Admiral could fix. They were shipping him to Impel Down, but the real issue wasn’t the prison—it was the armor. No one could remove it.

  Something had fused him to it, body and soul. Curse, Devil Fruit, something older? I didn’t know. But I almost pitied him.

  He wasn’t a monster.

  Just a man who let duty eat him alive.

  For weeks, I drifted—too angry to grieve, too numb to fight.

  And then Garp snapped me out of it.

  I had started to fear the inevitable: who would be next to die because of me? Forming a crew felt like a sick joke. Why gather people who would just die in my shadow?

  Then Garp did the impossible.

  When he found out I’d killed a Celestial Dragon, I braced for hell. Instead, he sighed, called me an idiot, and punched me in the head—not to hurt me, just to knock the arrogance out.

  Then he hugged me.

  After everything—after losing Luffy, after the destruction IT caused, after almost dying from my own rage—he still held onto me.

  He should’ve disowned me.

  But he didn’t.

  I don’t know why. Maybe I never will.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  That was the day he told me the truth about our training.

  He never pushed us to be strong to make Marines out of us—he pushed us because he didn’t want to bury us. His biggest fear wasn’t what we’d become; it was that he’d outlive us. As long as we survived, he didn’t care if we were pirates, revolutionaries, or something else entirely.

  He even told me about Luffy’s father, Monkey D. Dragon. If I wanted to join the Revolutionaries, he wouldn’t stop me.

  But I had already made my choice.

  “I’m going to be the Pirate King,” I told him. “But not just any Pirate King. I’m going to create a free world. A world without slavery. A world where no one has to watch their brother die… or cause their brother’s death.”

  Garp laughed—deep, booming, enough to shake the sky—and gave me a grin I’ll never forget.

  When he sailed away, I threw myself into training.

  Harder than before.

  More relentless than ever.

  If I wanted to change the world, I had to survive it first.

  I remember age eleven far more clearly than any other year. Unlike the years before it, this was the most turbulent time of my life. I changed more during this single year than in all the others combined.

  What I struggled to describe back then—what I still struggle to fully put into words now—was what I was thinking at the time.

  I had never felt so disillusioned with myself.

  I didn’t just look different; how deeply different I had become — not just in body, but in mind.

  A normal person might look back on that kind of change with pride or joy, seeing growth where there once was weakness.

  But for me, it brought no comfort.

  It was only a reminder of who I had lost.

  I still had the same fur, the same ears, the same red, damn eyes.

  I remember walking along the beach, feeling the rough sand beneath my feet—especially between my toes. The waves would wash over them, sweeping the sand away, cold like a wet rag. Normally, I would have noticed every detail.

  But my mind was elsewhere.

  I was trying to solve another problem: my mother’s fighting style—the one I wanted to perfect, to master.

  I remember thinking that I wouldn’t leave that beach until I figured out who I was, and what exactly was wrong with her style.

  There was one thing that had never changed.

  I knew that for certain.

  Even back when I was a boy mistreated by his village, when I had to protect my sister… even when I became a tyrant—I still had it.

  My refusal to give up.

  My knuckleheaded stubbornness.

  My recklessness.

  I practiced my sword forms on the rocks nearby.

  Every swing.

  Every pivot of my feet.

  I started angry—though I wasn’t sure why. That anger made me fight harder, train harder.

  But it brought me no answers.

  Eventually, I collapsed into the coarse sand, not caring if it got tangled in my hair. My hair was longer now, nearly mid-back, my bangs hanging over my eyes. That alone irritated me.

  I’d never had hair like this before the disaster.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about my conversation with Grandpa. He had sounded… vulnerable. Had he always been like that? Or was I only just now able to see it? I’d always thought of him as unshakable—someone who only ever showed anger or a sharp grin.

  Sadness felt out of character.

  Maybe he was more complex than I’d ever given him credit for.

  I grabbed my face and cried, convinced it was all my fault. She would still be here if it weren’t for me. No matter how much I reassured myself, I could never forgive what I believed I’d caused.

  Was that my old self taking over? Or was this just who I really was, and I was trying to push the blame onto someone I used to be?

  I screamed into the open air, swearing until my throat burned, then sat up abruptly. My enhanced senses—gifts gained after the disaster—overwhelmed me.

  I could hear everything within a three-mile radius.

  Any normal person would have gone insane.

  Luckily, I was neither normal nor particularly stable.

  All my senses together felt like my mind was being pulled apart, stretched in five different directions at once. I wondered how Kurama had lived with a perception like this.

  I could sense chakra from miles away, yet I rarely enhanced my physical senses with chakra.

  Consciously, it seemed like a foolish limitation.

  Subconsciously, I think I knew the truth.

  I couldn’t handle it.

  As I wrestled with that thought, another memory surfaced.

  I was standing on a different beach, staring out at countless whirlpools spiraling in perfect synchronization.

  Strangely, I felt calm.

  I breathed in the ocean air.

  It was terrifying to think that people once lived on the other side of those whirlpools—that this was meant to be a natural barrier.

  A strong female voice echoed in my memory.

  I tried to deny it.

  “What are you talking about, sis? I’m not feeling sentimental,” I said, my voice strong but unsteady.

  “We came here to learn powerful Uzumaki techniques and establish a base of operations. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  She saw through me instantly. My lips twitched, and I knew she could read me like an open book—a child’s book, at that.

  “Man, bro,” she teased, “you’re the most terrible person I’ve ever met.”

  “I terrible,” I replied flatly. “You know how I keep people away. I’ve killed people—some of them didn’t even deserve it.”

  I should have laughed more back then. I should have made her smile more—made her laugh that beautiful laugh.

  She was pure.

  Genuine.

  Everything she did came from the heart.

  Despite her intelligence, she was often even more reckless than I was—and yet far more responsible, especially when it came to running an entire village.

  Her love life, though… that was a story for another time.

  I nodded, giving the signal to begin Operation: Return of Uzu. Together, we leapt into the whirlpools.

  I snapped back to the present just in time to roll away from a flying fist.

  “What are you doing, moping around?” Ace shouted. “I know you’re stronger than this.”

  That damn smirk of his—still infuriating.

  Even then, I knew he was trying to help.

  I just didn’t want his help.

  I needed to figure this out on my own.

  If I didn’t, I was afraid I’d never truly learn—and worse, that I’d slip back into the person I used to be.

  But I didn’t want to become someone else either.

  That was the dilemma.

  “You need to get over yourself,” Ace yelled. “You didn’t cause their deaths.”

  I snapped.

  “No. You’re wrong,” I shouted. “I cause their deaths. If I hadn’t cared about that damn sword, he’d still be alive.”

  I hurled Fox Slayer into the ground. The impact shook the beach. I was far stronger than before.

  They fell silent.

  Ace shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I should’ve known something was off when Sabo warned us. It was my idea to work with the Bluejam Pirates. Luffy and I share that blame.”

  He smiled faintly. “And if you hadn’t checked those crates… I don’t know what would’ve happened.”

  Only then did I notice how different Ace had become from when we first met. Back then, he didn’t want brothers—he wanted us out of his way.

  I tried to argue, but he cut me off.

  “Shut up, you miserable little fuck,” he snapped. “It was all of our faults. You need to accept that.”

  I brought up Sabo again. The rescue we never attempted. The compromises we made. Luffy’s death. The betrayal.

  Ace stopped me cold.

  “Sabo chose freedom,” he said. “Even if he’d lived, he would’ve been trapped. He died for what he believed in.”

  The truth hit me hard. It wasn’t me. It was the Celestial Dragons. The corrupt system of Goa. The fire that consumed Gray Terminal.

  But my mind refused to let go.

  Ace hugged me instead of hitting me.

  “Don’t forget them,” he said. “But don’t live like this either. They’d hate that.”

  That was when I understood.

  Kurama didn’t save me for a grand destiny.

  She saved me out of love.

  And I shouldn’t be ashamed of how I look—because that would mean being ashamed of her.

  That day, my rage changed.

  It wasn’t malice.

  It was love.

  And I finally learned what I was fighting for.

  That was only the first quarter of my eleventh year.

  Four months later, everything changed again.

  Sword Art Online. I think I mentioned that I had finished Volume 11—I’ll have to go back and check.

  Sword Art Online that speaks to me in a way I can’t really describe. I actually had ideas I wanted to express in my writing even before I read the story, and then I found Sword Art Online and realized it already explored a lot of those ideas. How funny is that, right?

  Edit: I apologize for the confusion earlier. Due to a copy-and-paste error, the chapter was only partially published, which caused issues with continuity and made it feel incomplete.