SMILE

A month later,

(Ashen's POV),

It's been a month since I stroke the deal with Doflamingo to buy SMILEs fruits and fire weapon, and since then I got around 100 fruits in my hands, ready to be consumed. Of course, I wasn't going to feed them to my crew members not even the lower ranking ones, I don't want them to suffer the consequences if they fail.

Instead, I recruited some new people, did some test to them and made sure to get rid of the weak ones before I explained the situation to them. I offered them a good amount of money and a position in my crew if they eat the SMILE fruit and succeed.

I told them about the success rate which is 10%, meaning for every ten people only one of them will get the power, and the rest will lose their ability to swim and express negative emotions without gaining anything.

Some of them of course backed down when they heard that, which is understandable but there were still some people who chose to accept the offer.

Normal Zoan fruits are very hard to get, matter of fact all devil fruits are extremely rare and hard to get even in the underworld, on top of that they can be very expensive. Also, even though I'm a devil fruit user myself, I still believe Haki is more important and that depending on devil fruits too much is not a good idea, that's why I didn't let everyone in my crew to consume them in order to have some balance.

Anyway, as I expected after the 100 people ate the SMILEs fruits only 10 of them gained the abilities and a boost in their physical strength. As of the rest, we got rid of them after giving them a small compensation for ruining their lives.

The results turned out to be, two horse SMILEs, one lion, one giraffe, one gorilla, two bear, one snake, one eagle and finally one monkey.

"So, these SMILE fruit only give the ability turn certain body parts of the animal's body, unlike real Zoan which can transform into an animal as well as being able to go on a hybrid form" Calvin remarked while standing beside me "But they do grant enhanced physical abilities, it all depends on your luck after all"

"Can't believe someone will take their chances knowing well that it might 90% ruin his life" Enel said, while observing them.

"That's exactly why I brought some random people, and gave them that offer…It's their choice, no one pressured them and they knew the consequences…but it's a big addition to us nevertheless, if we can get a few hundreds of these guys we might as well have the strongest army in the world, though I doubt we could do that at this rate, the SMILEs production is too low and Kaido is getting half of it as well" I stated, with Shiki's mutated animals it can become quite the army.

Speaking of the old man, he's been on a rampage the past years. He got out of his hide and built himself a new fleet, he even clashed with Admiral Aokiji recently 'He definitely haven't lost his touch, he will be a massive help in the future'

Other than this, there was a major twist I few years back that I never expected. When I went to visit Totto Land, precisely Big Mom's previous castle in Whole Cake Island, I was shocked to see a little girl roaming around with three eyes. When I thought about it carefully, our fight with Big Mom was around 16 years before cannon including the two years time skip, so she most has given birth to her shortly before that.

Knowing fully well her potential ability to read the Poneglyphs, I didn't hesitate to take her back with me to Hachinosu. If she can Awaken her third eye, she'll be able to read the Poneglyphs, which will save me the trouble of going after Robin.

I also encouraged her to not hide her third eye, maybe using it more often can speed up the awakening process or whatever that might be. Other than that, she recently started calling me dad for some reason, maybe she thought I'm her father since I've been taking care of her since she was like seven 'I might need to clear up that misunderstanding in the future'

"Dad, Dad!!"

"D-Dad?…I'm not getting used to that anytime soon" I said, as I sighed loudly, before the 11 years old Pudding appeared.

"Can you play hide and seek with me?" She said with an innocent face as she took my hand.

"Pfffft--" When Enel and Calvin who were standing behind me heard that, they couldn't hold their laughter.

"The demonic emperor is playing hide and seek" Calvin said in amusement.

"Can't you play with Yamato? I'm quite busy right now" I asked her since she gets along with Yamato very well.

"Yamato said, she's training…Pleeeeeease"

"Ashen, you need to do your job as a father" Enel said, as he put his hand on my shoulder while keeping a serious face, he was obviously trying to troll me.

'I'm going to give them a good beating later on'

…

A few days later…Inside the Skull building,

I was resting in my room on top of the building as usual before Calvin showed up with something in his hands.

"Calvin, what's up?"

"Ashen, there is something you might need to see…" Calvin said as he took a seat in front of me and placed two wanted posters on the table.

[Ghost The Black Swordsman – Captain of The Ghost Pirates]

[Phantom – Vice-Captain of The Ghost Pirates]

"What is this? It's just some pirates…I've seen them in the newspaper a few times, but why are you showing me this?" I questioned while taking a look at the wanted posters before Calvin spoke again.

"That's what I thought at first, but there is something else I noticed…You see the captain, he's a devil fruit user and his fruit is none other than the Mochi Mochi no Mi" Calvin stated with a serious face.

"So what? Katakuri and his siblings have been dead for more than a decade, it's possible that his fruit was eaten by someone else" I stated.

"You bet? He's vice-captain has the Bisu Bisu no Mi, Crackers devil fruit…What are the chances?"

"I believe Ian killed them all 11 years ago, you're telling me two devil fruit users survived after their ship was destroyed in the middle of the sea?"

"The fight was pretty close to an island, so they could've been drifted there. You should be extremely luck for that to happen but it's not impossible…plus, if you see their posters, they are both wearing these weird masks. He even changed his weapon to a massive sword instead of his trident"

(Picture of the Mask)

"He became a Warlord recently, and he's been dealing with the underworld as well…He's crew has some other prominent figures, but these two are the ones that strike a chord" Calvin stated.

"Hmmm…It could be a coincidence, but if it's not, then I'll personally go there and behead them" I declared, before I continued "But let's not jump to conclusions yet, if they are who you think they are then they will show themselves sooner or later…plus, more strong people mean more chaos, and chaos is something we're going to need in the future…" I said as I took another glance at Ghost's wanted poster.

"…Black Swordsman…what is he? thinking himself Guts or what?"

"Who's that?"

"You wouldn't get it" I responded with a grin.