From the deck of Pluton, Brook narrowed his eyes at the colossal silhouette on the island below.
"That figure… San Juan Wolf?"
The size wasn't quite what he remembered from the "future" legends in his mind. Smaller than the mountain-sized monster he had imagined.
Had San Juan Wolf not yet fully grown?
And of all places, why was this oversized giant standing on Ancient Giant Island?
"Yohoho… is this fate?"
This was Pluton's first official voyage after its grand refit, yet instead of heading straight to the Rocks Pirates, Brook had chosen a different path.
First stop: the Ice Kingdom, to test the old ice demon and subdue the ice giant said to be slumbering there.
On the way, though, they passed the withered homeland of the ancient giants.
At the loud, unanimous protests of his children and disciples, Brook had allowed a "small detour" to visit the ancient giant tribe.
He had never planned to recruit the ancient giants. Their numbers were too few. If he dragged them into his war, the race really might vanish from the world.
Out of a rare sense of "humanitarianism," Brook intended to let the ancient giants continue their fragile line in peace, maybe even arm them with weapons so they could better defend themselves.
That was the plan.
Until the kids saw San Juan Wolf.
··
On the golden ship, Hades, Kanna, and the others spread their wings and dove from the sky.
Those without natural flight weren't left out. Jet boots flared to life, while others kicked off the air itself with practiced moon steps, hanging in the sky like a squadron of fledgling monsters.
"Hey!!! Ancient giants, what are your names? Want to join our strongest rookie division?"
Kanna flared her frost dragon wings, swooping right up in front of San Juan Wolf's face and raising both hands like she was auctioning off treasure.
"Food, housing, weapons, and crazy benefits included!!"
She wanted to snatch the initiative and claim the first giant recruit for their rookie team before her father moved.
"Yes, yes, join us, giant!"
Osiris, the second prince, beat his crimson sky dragon wings and shouted, eyes gleaming. "You're so huge you could be turned into a battleship."
"Who are you people?! What are you doing on Ancient Giant Island?"
Little Oars Jr once again drew his battered iron sword, glaring fiercely. He wasn't afraid of these human kids, but the steel fortress hanging in the sky behind them made even his giant heart pound.
"Hehehe… why does that giant's voice sound so childish?"
Moria stood on a cloud conjured by Marco's Cloud-Cloud Fruit, snickering. He himself was only an eleven-year-old boy.
"Are you a kid from the ancient giant tribe?"
"I'm not a kid! I'm a descendant of the great Boars!"
The childish voice from below sounded tough, but Little Oars' flushed face betrayed him completely. He was unmistakably a young ancient giant.
"Descendant of Boars, the Demon of Misfortune?"
Abel's eyes widened.
His father, Abefu, had told him clearly: one of their goals in the Ice Kingdom was to find Boars' corpse.
"Perfect. Then you can tell us what's going on here."
As the steel battleship Pluton drifted closer and closer over the island, Little Oars Jr's panic grew. His instincts screamed at him to run back and shout for his tribe to hide.
"We're just passing through," Hades called out, voice calm but carrying. "We came to see the ancient giants, but now we want to recruit you."
He pointed at Little Oars and then at San Juan Wolf.
"We'll provide food, a place to live, weapons, and training to make you stronger. So? Interested?"
The eldest prince's eyes cut briefly toward Pluton in the distant sky. If he snatched up an ancient giant and a mountain-sized freak for the rookie division, surely Father wouldn't be mad… right?
"You guys can leave. We ancient giants don't sail."
Little Oars Jr snorted.
"Wait twenty more years or so. Maybe I'll go to sea after I become an adult."
Hearing that these human kids wanted to recruit him, his fear faded a little. But he still wanted to see what the strong people behind them decided.
"More than twenty years? You need that long just to become an adult?"
Hera, the second daughter, flapped her blue phoenix wings and flew up in front of Little Oars, cheeks puffing slightly.
"So you're an adult giant already?"
Kanna, meanwhile, shot upward, frost dragon wings slicing the air as she flew to San Juan Wolf's eye level.
"You're this big and you're not an adult yet?" she demanded anxiously.
"Phew… I'm sixty years old. I'm an adult."
San Juan Wolf gave a simple, innocent smile.
He remembered being driven out by his tribe when he came of age. That memory alone tugged his mood downward.
"Sixty?! You're older than Father, and giants only just become adults at that age?"
Shana, the third daughter, gasped in shock.
The next second, her feet left the air as a pair of cold hands scooped her up. The familiar scent made her instantly relax and grin as she twisted around to look.
"Is Father old now? Your butt must be itchy. You're making Daddy angry."
Brook lifted Shana one-handed, smiling despite himself. Did this little brat not understand that a man's age could also be a taboo topic?
"Father is the youngest! Only eighteen! Shana loves him the most!"
Shana stuck out her tongue and clung to his neck, laying on the flattery with zero shame.
Brook chuckled, tossed her lightly, and set her down on the Somersault Cloud Hera. Then his gaze returned to San Juan Wolf, interest sharpening behind his eyes.
"San Juan Wolf," he called up, voice echoing through the island.
"You're not an ancient giant, are you? So why are you here? Do you want to join us? I can make you into a giant everyone respects."
Another mutant, another misfit thrown away for being too strong and too strange, just like Charlotte Linlin.
Brook understood that type all too well.
"Don't you think I'm too big?"
San Juan Wolf's voice trembled faintly with excitement.
"And they're too small."
He didn't even stop to wonder why this human knew his name. His emotions surged, and his mutated blood answered.
His body began to swell.
In the space of a breath, he grew past a hundred meters tall.
"Whoa! He can grow even bigger!"
"Is he a Devil Fruit user?!"
Kanna, Hera, Shana and the others shouted with delight instead of fear.
In their eyes, the bigger the giant, the cooler. Imagine the looks on people's faces when they brought a walking mountain into battle.
"Not scared, huh?"
San Juan Wolf slammed a palm down on a nearby hill.
The earth cracked, the hill flattened, and the giant trees in his way snapped like twigs. His destructive power was terrifying.
"Scared? Hah!"
Kanna whipped her head up and roared.
"We're the strongest rookie division of the Hell Pirates! How could we be afraid of you?!"
Her body stretched and twisted, transforming into a frost dragon nearly thirty meters long. Pale scales glittered, blue white spikes erupted along her spine, and the temperature around her plunged.
Frost crawled over the ground, and Little Oars Jr shrank his neck with a shiver.
Osiris' sky dragon form was even more extreme. His slender red body extended for hundreds of meters, coiling around the air itself, as if he could loop the golden ship in his coils.
The other second generation and disciples refused to be outdone.
Hellhounds with three snarling heads, blazing phoenixes, towering earth giants, hulking ice giants, and other mythical beasts manifested one after another, each showing off their power.
They weren't just intimidating San Juan Wolf.
They were also putting on a full performance in front of Brook, flaunting just how far they'd come.
Hades alone remained calm, devil wings beating just enough to keep him hovering at Brook's side, not snatching the spotlight from his siblings.
"Amazing…"
Little Oars stared blankly at the mythical beasts, all of them bigger than he was.
But the thing that shook him most was still San Juan Wolf, swelling larger and larger.
Was he an ancient giant? Or something even more ancient than the ancient giants?
"Phew… so you're all mutant freaks like me, huh?"
San Juan Wolf's eyes shone as he looked around at this bizarre group.
For the first time in his life, he felt like he might have found his own kind.
------------
When the giant's dopey-sounding line dropped, everyone fell silent.
You're the mutant freak here, not us, they all thought in unison.
"This is clearly a devil fruit ability, you idiot!"
Kanna, still in her frost dragon form, stared up at the over hundred meter tall figure with a complicated expression.
"Growing that huge has to be a devil fruit power!"
"I dunno," San Juan Wolf scratched his head, looking honestly puzzled. "I just get bigger when I get excited."
He seemed so desperate to get along with these "freaks" with devil fruit powers that it was almost pitiful.
"San Juan, can you swim?"
Brook finally stepped in, cutting off the noisy second generation and students. His gaze turned serious as he looked up at the giant.
This had been bothering him for a long time.
How had a giant almost 180 meters tall ended up locked in Impel Down without starving to death for over twenty years?
When Blackbeard broke into Impel Down in the future Brook knew, the level where San Juan Wolf was imprisoned wasn't even 180 meters high. His upper body practically filled the whole space.
Yet on the way to Marineford, no one saw a fortress sized giant drifting behind the Blackbeard Pirates' ship at first.
San Juan Wolf seemed to "appear" at Marineford only when the battle reached its climax, as tall as the fortress itself.
Many people in that future world assumed he was a devil fruit user who could change his size at will, but there was one huge problem with that theory.
This guy could swim.
When Blackbeard was on the lava island trading a warship to Akainu for the captured Bonney, San Juan Wolf had complained that the island was too hot, then casually jumped into the sea for a cold bath.
He'd even whined that little fish and Sea Kings kept biting him.
A devil fruit user couldn't do that.
And if he really were a devil fruit user, where would he get enough food to maintain that massive body?
His favorite food was salt grilled Sea Kings.
Aside from Sea Kings, the world simply didn't have enough meat to keep him fed.
"Phew… yeah, I can swim. I'm pretty good at it too."
San Juan Wolf nodded earnestly.
"I swam from the West Sea all the way to the New World. I almost got eaten by those giant Sea Kings on the way. If they were only a couple hundred meters long, I'd catch and eat them. But if they were a few thousand meters, I'd just swim away fast. Luckily, I can breathe underwater."
"What?!"
Kanna and Hera, who had recently been studying navigation, almost shouted in unison.
"You swam across the Calm Belt?!"
The Hell Pirates' flying fleet crossed the Calm Belt using devil fruit powers and advanced technology.
This guy had said it like he just went for a long swim.
Monster. Absolute monster.
Definitely do not teach him navigation theory.
Just turn him into their living warship.
"You can breathe underwater too?"
That one line made Brook's eyes flicker.
A giant battleship who could swim, breathe in the sea, and puff up like a balloon.
"Huh? Yeah."
San Juan Wolf nodded again, still completely honest. The shock and interest on these humans' faces didn't feel like rejection. That alone made him happy.
"Excellent swimming technique, Fishman blood, swelling when excited, giant living warship…"
Brook pieced it together.
San Juan Wolf almost certainly had fishman blood in him, probably from a pufferfish fishman line, able to expand by drawing in air and water.
Fishman and giant mixed blood really did produce absurd monsters.
He thought briefly of giant fishmen like Bikupanda and Sebastian.
Giants and fishmen together, huh… now that was a terrifying combination.
"You'll join us from now on, San Juan Wolf."
Brook's voice rang out across the island.
If they trained this mutant with armament and observation Haki, he would become a walking nightmare.
"Me? Really? You're not scared?"
San Juan Wolf's tone wavered between hope and fear.
"I might crush houses or villages by accident. I eat a lot. But I can hunt for myself!"
"I am Brook, captain of the Hell Pirates," Brook declared.
"I formally invite you aboard, San Juan Wolf. From this moment on, you are an official member of the Hell Pirates, with the title, Giant Battleship."
"Really? You mean it?"
San Juan Wolf's voice broke with excitement.
"Thank you, Captain Brook! From now on, I'll be the Hell Pirates' giant battleship, San Juan Wolf!"
His joy surged, and his body swelled again, reaching his full 180 meter height.
Kanna, Osiris, and the others whooped and jumped onto his shoulders and head, running all over him like a living playground.
As expected of a giant battleship.
The entire rookie division fit easily on just one shoulder, with plenty of room to spare.
San Juan Wolf's grin nearly split his face.
For the first time in his life, he'd made so many friends who didn't flinch at his size, who didn't look down on him. He carefully memorized each of their names, repeating them in his heart.
Even Little Oars Jr couldn't help feeling envious.
He couldn't go to sea yet, not as a child, but now… he had something to dream about.
Someday, would he also meet companions like this on the ocean?
"Yohoho… you're Little Oars, right? Descendant of Boars, the Demon of Misfortune?"
Brook turned to the light green skinned ancient giant standing nearby.
The horns and fangs marked him as Boars' line, though the original Boars had reddish skin. After centuries of thinning blood, the color had shifted to this pale green.
"How do you know our names?"
Little Oars raised his rusty greatsword and squinted suspiciously.
"Are you trying to recruit me too?"
He puffed up his chest.
"I'll definitely go to sea someday to restore the glory of my ancestor, but I'm not an adult yet. I'm not going out with you. You two can go!"
The childish arrogance in his voice made Brook chuckle.
By human standards, Little Oars Jr was already thirty five, about the same age as Newgate.
For a giant, though, that was barely a teenager.
"How many of you ancient giants are left?"
Brook's tone softened.
"How's life here? Do you need me to forge some special weapons for you?"
The decline of the ancient giants weighed on him more than he'd expected.
Elbaf still had tens of thousands of giants. The Ice Kingdom held thousands of frost giants.
But on Ancient Giant Island, their once fearsome clan had dwindled to mere double digits.
A race on the brink.
The taller the giants, the fewer the children.
Elbaf's giants averaged twenty meters. The frost giants, forty. The ancient giants, around sixty.
Times had changed. Being bigger no longer meant ruling the world.
This was an age dominated by humans.
"Really? You'll make weapons for us?"
Little Oars' eyes lit up immediately.
"I'm going to tell Uncle Wadlow right now!"
He turned and ran, iron sword clanking at his side, leaving the "good guy" Brook behind in a cloud of dust.
That rusty, chipped blade in his hands had been passed down through generations.
If there was a chance to replace it with a brand new weapon…
He wasn't going to let that chance slip by.
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