Chapter 002 Part 1 (Revision):
It's called Devil Fruit, silly
(or gaslighting, gatekeeping, girlbossing)
Something D. Something was waiting at the police station's interrogation room for someone. She wasn't sure who, because these people didn't have Den Den Mushi but honest to god cellular phones, and she wasn't sure of Den Den Mushi-phone compatibility. They had really modern stuff now that she thought about it, what with the skyscrapers and all. Still, if you didn't even know what a Devil Fruit was, it didn't matter your technological level, you lived in the loonies.
Her patience was rewarded when a guy in an overcoat with a really dapper hat entered. He took a seat in front of her and gave her a defusing smile while showing his hands in a placating gesture.
"Hi-eh… sorry, but the guys at the station didn't say your name. What's it?" he asked kindly.
Something D. Something thought about it, and decided to tell the truth.
"I don't know, but you can call me D. If I turn out to not have a name, I kinda want my middle one to be that."
Her answer was not what he was expecting, but he took it in stride. He was a professional after all… or at least, he dressed like one. She wouldn't know, she only knew that his hat was really impressive.
"Right… D. We tried communicating with your guardian, but we couldn't… understand your instructions. Could you repeat them for me please?"
"Really?" she asked, now assured she was in the loonies. "What don't you understand about calling his Den Den Mushi? Do you not have his number, or the number of anyone on Dawn Island?"
He nodded along and relaxed when she finished speaking.
"Ah, I see. You mean his phone, correct?"
"No, I mean his Den Den Mushi. It's a snail that communicates through radio waves with other snails. It's obviously not a phone as it is, again, a snail. How do you even confuse the two?" she explained, letting him know through her condescending tone how obvious it was, "I knew I was in the loonies, but for you to not even know what a Den Den Mushi is…"
Honestly, his baffled expression almost made her laugh, but the irritation at being trapped in a nowhere island was trumping it. She didn't know her time limit, and every second counted.
"Have you ever used a… Den Den Mushi?" he questioned. "Was it not simply a phone shaped like a snail, or someone playing with a snail pretending it was a phone?"
"Well, personally I never used one myself." She admitted, which seemed to bring relief to the man. "However, I doubt you could pretend that the snail moved its mouth and spoke with a different voice, the same voice of a different person you know and can potentially see in the distance muttering those same words being transmitted."
He was raising his finger and about to retort, but she already guessed what he was about to say.
"A ventriloquist could do it, I guess, but if everyone uses Den Den Mushi to communicate, then either they're real or every person is doing the most complex and coordinated ventriloquist act I have ever seen. I have even read about government officials using them to order genocides which were then carried out, so I doubt they would maintain the act for something so serious." D shrugged. "Look, if-"
"Hold on!" he shouted, interrupting her speech. "Genocides?!"
"Yeah?" D answered back, completely forgetting that Buster Calls weren't supposed to be common knowledge. "You know, Ohara Island being burnt to the ground and wiped from the maps because of some dangerous knowledge they discovered? I thought you would be old enough to have read about it on the newspaper, it wasn't exactly subtle to raze it to its foundations and killing everybody on it."
His face told her he didn't know, which was understandable. It wasn't exactly broadcasted, but anyone who heard of Nico Robin probably knew something about Ohara since she was from there. Of course the Marines justified it by demonizing the citizens, but it was more of a necessary tragedy than a triumph, so it made sense that the average person wouldn't know about it if they didn't care to read the news.
"Are you sure it wasn't a joke newspaper? Could you name it?" he asked while taking out a notepad and writing something down.
D thought long and hard about it, because while the News Coos delivered it, it wasn't named after them despite how funny it would be. No, it was something serious, it was…
"…The World Economy Newspaper." She recalled after wracking her brain for a minute, before glaring at the detective. "And it wasn't a joke. You're lucky that Nico Robin isn't here or she would strangle you for daring to insinuate her island's genocide was a lie…"
"And who is she?" he asked, ignoring her hateful stare which wasn't as impressive as she thought, something obvious considering her child's body.
"The sole survivor, but we're getting off track. Look, if you don't know where Dawn Island is, just take me to Loguetown. Even you should know where Loguetown is." She resisted the urge to strangle him herself when he did not recognize the name. "The town of the beginning and the end? Where the Pirate King Gol D. Roger was executed and announced the existence of the One Piece? Where the golden era of piracy began?"
He seemed baffled for some reason, as if this was some news to him, which… yeah, if she was here before Roger was executed, hearing about how he was executed would come as a shock.
"Sorry, were you a fan?" she asked gently, because if your idol died it would be quite sad. "Listen, it's kinda a secret, but as long as you don't tell anyone it's fine. He was going to die anyway from a disease, so he wanted to go out with a bang. He died happy. Or will die happy, I don't know when I am yet."
Her reassurances went on deaf ears, which she accepted. Hearing about someone as infamous as Roger dying to something as trivial as a disease was rare, but it happened. They were all humans after all, except Devil Fruit users, and fish-men, and long-men, and mermaids, and basically all other species. 'They were all people after all' would have been better, she's gotta be more sensitive now that she's here.
"I do not know who that person is, or recognize anything you named." he managed to say, struggling with himself before deciding on a new line of questioning. "…Could you expand on that last sentence?"
"What sentence?" she asked, because her tangents made her easily forget what she says.
"'I don't know when I am yet.' What do you mean by that?" he questioned.
"Oh, yeah, you don't know what a Devil Fruit is, of course you wouldn't have heard of anything like the Time-Time Fruit." Mmh, how to explain it? "I know where I am, the East Blue in some backwards island, but not when. I don't have dates, but can measure time based on events, so tell me if you recognize anything I say. Void Century, Joy Boy, World Government, Marines, Pirate King, Gold Roger, Garp the Hero, Red Hair Shanks, Straw Hat Luffy. If you recognize any of those names, could you tell me since when did they exist, starting from the most recent one?"
"I don't recognize any of those words except the marines." he mentioned off-hand while hesitatingly writing on his notepad. "By World Government, do you mean the United Nations?"
She knew that he wouldn't know about Luffy based on previous experiences, and Shanks was acceptable, while the Void Century and Joy Boy were mythical things unless she was in that time. That she understood. But to not know of the Pirate King Gold Roger and Garp the Hero was worrying, and not knowing what the WORLD GOVERNMENT of all things was yet knowing of marines…
She didn't know. She couldn't fathom what that meant. Was there a place so isolated, with phones of all things, that could still be so ignorant of everything around them? To not know of the World Government… it would have to not exist yet, unless the United Nations was a proto-world government.
Was she… was she IN the void century? Maybe even before it?
"Oh… I think I know when I am. Thank you." she thanked automatically, still processing the sheer implications of when she was.
"And when would you be?" he asked conversationally, perfectly masking his curiosity of the strange child's ramblings which registered as truth.
"I'm…" she hesitated, weary of catastrophically altering the timeline, before deciding that it probably wouldn't matter. "I'm before the Void Century. Or in an early part of it."
He hummed at that, and she now noticed he was taking extensive notes. Yeah, in retrospective, if you lived before the Void Century, most of what she said would sound like mad ramblings. Did Devil Fruits even exist in this time? Fish-men at least did, if the orca-man was any indication.
"Could you explain to me what you call 'the Void Century.'" he asked, and she didn't really question why she was being taken seriously, she simply answered.
"The Void Century is, as its name implies, a century where there's no knowledge of what happened during it. We only know that when it ended, the World Government formed from the Twenty Countries and the Celestial Dragons ruled a majority of the world. I don't know if they are from that period of time or before it, but there are also Ancient Weapons, things of mass destruction, each one taking a different form and being more dangerous than an atomic bomb."
She… just blurted out a secret that would get her killed by the world government for even knowing, and it may have no consequences because of when she is. That… was weird to think about.
"Also, before the Void Century ended, a Time-Time Fruit user -that is to say, someone who has power over time- traveled centuries forward and lived her life then. However, I don't know a lot about that person, other than her ability to move herself or others forwards in time." She stopped, then continued. "If you know of any person with that or a similar ability, I would like to be sent… 800 years into the future? I'm not sure about the dates."
After finally saying her piece, she realized that yeah, she could just find the Time-Time Fruit user, copy her ability, and make jumps in time herself.
"I can copy their ability if it only allows themselves to be sent forwards in time." she added helpfully, broadening their possible scope.
The guy was taking everything in stride, so either he believed her for some reason, or was just humoring her and not really listening. Or had a really good poker face.
"I see, and how did you learn of this information or reach these conclusions?" he asked, which fair.
"I… I guess that I read it in a historical manga." she said, realizing it technically was historical here. "Specifically, I read it in the historical manga detailing the rise of the second Pirate King, Monkey D. Luffy. Though I also learnt a lot from osmosis, you know, everyone just passively talking about it."
After all, she stopped reading at Dressrosa and still knew about Big Mom and Kaido, and some things relating to the crew.
"In fact, they were quite rude, telling me things I didn't know about as if it was common knowledge. I get that the current bounty of someone is that number, but I'm reading about the part when it's lower and it's supposed to be a surprise there. And if I want to search something I just read, I often get current knowledge that contradicts what I read because it's in the present, but I'm reading about the past."
Honestly, the last time she googled the Gum-Gum Fruit she was blasted with future knowledge without even a spoiler warning.
"Anyway, do you have a time traveler on hand? I really don't want to get stuck on the Void Century." she pleaded with a whine.
He simply looked at her with a haunted look, which was quite rude, and began tapping his finger on the table. After a minute, he seemed to come to a conclusion.
"Everything you said is true from your perspective." he stated.
"Well, yeah. The sooner I can get this over with, the sooner I can go with Luffy."
"You're saying you are a time traveler, and you believe it to be true." he corrected. "Insane people say they're time travelers, and they believe it to be true."
"Rude." she coughed behind her hand.
D was also suddenly aware that from his perspective, she was a time traveler because of how she worded it, while she was treating her situation as being stuck in the past and wanting to go to the future but belonging to an entire different world. She… maybe was technically a time traveler, but she was mainly a dimensional traveler. Depending on when she truly was D also wanted to be a time traveler, so she didn't care about being called one.
The detective continued, unaware of her musings.
"What's worse, not only do you believe that, but the people around you believe that from your perspective. You read 'historical manga' and 'newspapers', which could perfectly be a piece of fiction manufactured to misinform for… reasons, despite how obviously wrong they are." he said while tapping his pencil. "You are somehow mistaking it for reality so much that everything you said is the complete truth, no imagination or make-believe in sight. And according to you, other people believe it too." He hesitated before looking at D directly in the eyes. "I… I'm honestly amazed. You would have to never gone to school or interacted with anyone who knew the truth and been taught exclusively by others on how the world works for you to reach such a point of view. It's impressive, if it leaves me wondering why someone would go to such lengths to educate a child so wrong…"
"Hey! Everything I said is correct!" she complained at the detective who clearly didn't know how the world truly worked. "You're the one that's wrong!"
"You say you are from the future, and are conveniently stuck in an era where knowledge of it is scarce." he continued, ignoring her comment and how she never actually claimed to be from the future, only knowing of it. "So, if you knew something which is common knowledge now but not 'then', it would be an inconsistency that would reveal your lie. What they taught you should have some cracks, things that accidently slipped that didn't fit what they wanted you to know, either a literal slip of the tongue or maybe a piece of media that mentioned something off-hand."
He spread his hands and gave her a smile.
"You just have to bombard me with nonsense, and when I tell you how everything you said is absurd and how it really works, you saying it is your way will be a lie because you will realize that what you were led to believe was misinformation. I just have to remind you of details you forgot or were told weren't truth until you realize you're wrong." he declared, as if he found the solution to a complicated mess. "Or something. I'm not even sure of what I said, only that what I said is correct, somewhat."
He tapped his chin with his pen, deep in thought and ignoring the strange enigma in front of him.
"Also, you are at least legitimately spouting insanity and not lying, which is a good point for you. I'm used to people pretending to be insane to shout nonsense, so talking to a real nutcase is a breath of fresh air, even if you being a four-year-old is incredibly concerning." he murmured something about cults under his breath, but she didn't catch it. "So, tell me, how did you transform into an orca, and then into a cat?"
"Oh, I think that's my Devil Fruit power."
He nodded, sure of himself.
"I have no idea what that means. Please expand."
Well, he said please, so it was only polite to answer.
"So, people don't have powers normally… except if you're not human, like fish-men, or giants, or cyborgs. Also, there's Haki, but everybody can do it if they try. But if you're a baseline human and don't have Haki, you can get a power by eating a Devil Fruit, though I guess if you are the others you can also get it too. Each one is unique, tastes like crap, and gives a power upon consumption at the cost of sinking in the sea like an anchor. I believe I ate the Copy-Copy Fruit without realizing, since I was able to copy the Orca-Orca Fruit or the orca fish-man, and also the Cat-Cat Fruit of that police officer."
He seemed to want to question something, but simply scribbled on his notepad and asked another thing.
"Right. Well, that's wrong." he adjusted his awesome hat a little. "In fact, I would say that what you said before mentioning Devil Fruits is more correct than your entire explanation afterwards. People are born with special powers; they don't get them from fruit. I'm honestly curious at how you arrived at that point or why people told you so."
"Well, it's not necessarily a Devil Fruit. I know someone who ate another person with an ability, and they got the power without eating a Fruit." she was ignorant of the look the detective gave her as she tapped her chin in thought. "In fact, babies kinda eat their mother while in the womb, so maybe if she dies in childbirth, people could be born with their mother's Devil Fruit ability, which would explain your misconception."
Man, she felt smart, deducing why the cop would have that wrong belief.
"I… your explanation is so wrong, but also aligns with quirks in such a bizarre way…" he sighed. "So, that's your belief on quirks, but why would someone…"
Huh…
"What's a quirk?" she asked, curious at the word that she could bet she heard before.
He looked at her funny, which he was doing quite a lot.
"Quirks… otherwise known as Meta Abilities," he paused for her reaction, to which she shook her head in denial, "are what you call the superhuman ability that a person possesses, determined at birth and normally manifested at the age of four. Over eighty percent of the world's population has one."
"…Weird. I didn't know there would be enough Devil Fruits for the whole world… but, I don't know a lot of the Void Century, so I won't question it. Maybe you can mass produce them without secondary effects, like SMILE, and eat them at birth to gain powers."
The detective seemed to stiffen, before robotically writing something.
"Could you tell me about 'smile'?" he asked with forced calm.
"Oh, they are artificial Zoan Devil Fruits-ah, Zoans are the ones that give you animal characteristics, including humans and extinct or mythical creatures. You can go human, hybrid or full beast." she then remembered SMILE, and shuddered. "SMILE fruits are called that because 90% percent of people who eat them lose the ability to express negative emotions, forced to smile even when in pain. Even when successful, they can have side effects, like getting stuck in a form, or the animal part gaining sentience and going against the human's wishes."
The detective seemed quite tense after that bit of information for some reason, so she decided to reassure him.
"Don't worry, that's in the future, it hasn't happened yet."
That didn't seem to reassure him.
"And… how do you know about SMILE? And do you know anything else about it?"
"Oh, you know, the historical manga. It showed the failed experiments, some that were functional but with errors and the truly successful ones. It also went over the facilities, the process of production (though they didn't give the secrets to how it was made), the person in charge of production was Caesar Clown, the one who gave funds for the project was Donquixote Doflamingo and the main buyer was Kaido."
The detective was furiously writing down everything she said, before realizing something and facepalming.
"You read it in a 'historical' manga." he said in frustration. "Yet you believe it to be true. I keep forgetting that… Actually, why is it a historical manga? Or why did you 'guess' it was historical? If I can prove your source is wrong, then this will be a lot easier."
She stared at the detective, unsure of how to explain reincarnation and the entire isekai genre to him, so she compromised and selectively told the truth.
"I… There's no other explanation for everything. Nobody from where I come from has powers, no mention of it on the news or any obvious physical change like Gang Orca. Not a single person. So when I'm suddenly in the middle of an unknown street with people who have extraordinary powers, then I understood that the manga was historical because… because it makes sense? It was detailing things I didn't think were real, but now I'm here and obviously people have powers, I gained powers as soon as I made it here and I'm not even sure how I did so."
The man reacted to her words with genuine surprise, like hearing something that both finally made sense but also didn't make sense at the same time.
"You lived in an entirely quirkless zone?" he asked, dropping the pencil he was writing with. "There… there aren't quirkless zones, with the population size and how quirks can grow spontaneously with two quirkless parents, even a quirkless space would eventually birth quirked people… Yet you're telling the truth, the full truth with no 'historical manga' in the middle to muddle things. You just said 'nobody has powers,' and fully believed it, but it's literally impossible. How-but why… No, it couldn't be… Unless… Yes, that's it…"
D wasn't afraid to admit she was scared of the glint in the detective's eyes, but before she could run for it he straightened his back, picked up his discarded notepad and continued as if nothing happened.
"Could you tell me more about Devil Fruits?"
She wasn't sure why it was quite the big deal for a fruit to give you powers if so much of the population already had them, but she complied anyway, not wanting to test the sanity of the man.
"Well, you can't eat two of them or you explode." he nodded at that with an expression of steel, as if remembering something painful. "Besides Zoan, there are Paramecia and Logia. It's easier to explain them in reverse. Logia change your make-up, for example, you are now a human made of fire instead of flesh, and you can create and control your element. Paramecia are everything that is not Zoan or Logia, normally you have them affect the world around them, such as controlling strings or causing earthquakes, but there are weird ones too that let you have more arms or petrify people if they love you."
She thought about it for a moment, and then continued.
"Devil Fruits can also awaken." the detective nodded at that. "That means that, somehow, the user suddenly expands their ability in some way, such as a great increase in power or a new way to use the ability."
He seemed almost comfortable with the concept of awakening, which was weird, because awakening was extremely rare… but, if so much of the population had abilities, then having an awakening was simply a statistical guarantee, now that she thought about it.
"How would you identify a Devil Fruit from a common fruit?"
"Oh, that's easy. All of them have swirl marks or patterns, except the SMILE ones, they are always apples with ring patterns."
He wrote it down, and focused his gaze on her.
"Do you know of any other way to gain quirks?"
Mmh… yeah, there was that spoiler, wasn't there?
"Yeah, by copying the lineage factor of someone who already ate a Paramecia Devil Fruit, you can create Green Blood. By replacing the blood of a person with Green Blood, that person can gain the original's Devil Fruit ability. Logia don't have any way to be replicated, their lineage factor is just too complex, but I think you could get a Zoan Devil Fruit this way too." She stopped to think about it, then spouted her own theory. "They said lineage factor, but I think that was another way to say DNA."
She wasn't sure if there was a difference, but they felt like the same thing. The detective muttered quirk factor, so at that point nobody could truly know.
"And again, how did you come by this specific bit of information?" he asked, just to make sure.
"I read it in that historical manga and some supplemental material." she answered. "Well, most of it. That Green Blood thing I got told. I don't remember who specifically, but they sounded pretty sure about it, so I didn't question it."
He sighed at that.
"Any more… drugs I guess, that you want to mention?" he asked, hoping the answer was no.
Unfortunately, the answer was yes.
"Oh, there are also Rumble Balls!"
He looked like he didn't want to know what they were, but was obligated to ask.
"And they are…?"
"Oh, they are these balls that a Zoan can consume that lets them change their shape into different forms. They were invented by a doctor reindeer who ate the Human-Human Fruit." He just gave up on that sentence. "He had Guard Point, Horn Point, Kung Fu Point, Jumping Point, Arm Point and Monster Point, alongside the regular three states. However, after using them for enough time, he could change form without using them, except Monster Point, because of how powerful the transformation was. I think all Zoans can do this, it just wasn't widespread enough, or maybe every Zoan requires a different chemical composition for their Rumble Ball."
The detective looked at his notes, then at her, and exited the room. Only then she realized he had been quite rude and hadn't even said his name.
Chapter 002 Part 2:
True Man's horrible-horrible day
(or conspiracy theories and mental gymnastics make a grown man weep)
Tsukauchi Naomasa, otherwise known as True Man for his ability to tell the truth from lies with his Quirk, was having a migraine.
Everything he heard in that interrogation room had been true, or at least 'D' thought it was true. Of course, an insane person telling you they were a time traveler still meant they were an insane person with a warped view of how the world truly was. And if everyone around you said the same thing, well, that just meant you were in the middle of a cult.
Yes, the girl obviously came from a cult, he realized after talking to her. To be so ignorant of how the world works and believing so much misinformation, she would have to be isolated from everything that would prove her beliefs wrong. Thus, she was groomed inside a cult. A… Quirkless cult, apparently.
Now, a Quirkless cult that hates Quirks is something he's familiar with. He lost count of how many Creature Rejection Clan branches he shut down due to murders performed by extremists. A cult that believes Quirks will be the downfall of society is also something he knows exists, though Humarise didn't do anything wrong yet. These were understandable.
A Quirkless cult that denied the existence of Quirks, no, that outright didn't know they existed? A cult that was so manipulative that it created fake newspapers and even zones where they limited access to its members, preventing them from realizing Quirks were a thing? The sheer thought of denying Quirks' existence was so backwards, and yet managing to trick people into believing it…
How? Did they develop drugs to prevent children from manifesting Quirks? How did nobody hear about this, just how isolated were they on 'Dawn Island'? Did they exile whoever developed one? But that doesn't make sense unless they control the flow of information so much that they can prevent everyone else from learning about the first Quirk manifestation. Did the leader have a memory manipulation Quirk and simply erased from existence the accidents? Were the adults aware but simply didn't tell the children? Maybe D part of the first batch of children who were taught this false truth, and thus her sudden appearance in a random street without even knowing her own name after she developed her Quirk?
And Ohara… an entire genocide which she read in a newspaper. A newspaper whose name doesn't exist, even as a joke one, which gave credence to his isolated cult theory. This little girl knew what a genocide was and accepted that one happened in Ohara, possibly knowing the sole survivor if her treating them as a real person who could strangle him was any indication. The adults in her life would have definitely explained it wasn't real if she read it in a fictional piece, if only to console her after they explained what genocide meant. So, perhaps Ohara was a branch of the cult that was eradicated after they learnt the truth and tried to spread it or for some other reason he didn't know.
The other thing that wasn't directly tied to the historical manga were the Den Den Mushi. They were a stretch, but he could understand if multiple Quirked snails were bred to communicate safely without a chance of being eavesdropped or noticed. It was just… Why snails in particular? Wouldn't parrots be a better option due to their vocal cords? Or just people instead of animals?
Ignoring most of her crazy ramblings from the 'historical manga', Naomasa was interested in a specific detail. The girl had confirmed explicitly that Green Blood wasn't something she read, but something she was told, which could be a cult member slipping up. A new drug that allowed Quirkless people to have Emitter Quirks sounded much more plausible than everything else she said. But why would a Quirkless cult that denied Quirks existed develop a Quirk drug? It didn't make sense, and Green Blood's existence was muddied with D using the manga's terminology.
Her definitions were… curious. It wasn't as clean a switch as he thought it would be. Zoan were exclusively animals, while Mutants could be objects or other things. Emitters were grouped up with Transformation in Paramecia, but at the same time, Zoan could transform. Which normally he would think is an error… but that new villain with the 'Chimera' Quirk suddenly piqued his interest. If Rumble Balls were real, then they had a clean target that could prove it.
And if Rumble Balls and Green Blood could potentially be real… then what of the rest of what she said? He never saw someone with the characteristics listed for a Logia, at best a person made of liquid, but they didn't have control over water nor the ability to create it. If someone turned up with a Quirk like that… could that be a potential lead to prove Devil Fruits?
It sounded silly, but the concept of Devil Fruits was easier to accept if he stopped thinking about them like magical fruits and more like drugs that could develop naturally or be artificially created. Obtaining Quirks besides birth would seem fantastical… if he wasn't aware of the underworld and All for One. In fact, this could be the latest plot of the boogeyman. Giving quirks to fruit could potentially make the transition easier than if he just simply gave them one. And all the details that the child mentioned…
Lineage Factor could be an analogue to the Quirk Factor, or maybe the ease at which the Quirk can be transferred. SMILE sounded simply too morbid to invent in a children's manga, and the idea of eating two Devil Fruits leading to death was cemented in truth thanks to All for One's… failed experiments. Furthermore, awakenings weren't common knowledge besides some experts, mostly to prevent desperate people from facing certain death in hopes of getting a better Quirk.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Logias were a composite Quirk, made up of all types of Quirks to maximize their power in a particular element. Zoans were Mutant-Transformation composite, which would then allow criminals to hide in plain view because of how they were previously thought to be permanently Mutant. Paramecia seemed to simply be Emitters, but her examples… cause earthquakes, petrify people if they love you… they seemed powerful or insidious.
And then, her mention of people simply being not-human… Fish-men, giants, cyborgs, those were her examples, but she hinted that there were a lot more. And then, she said those people could eat a Devil Fruit and gain their power too. That meant that Devil Fruits could be eaten by people who already had a Quirk and gain a new one, with their original Quirk being dismissed as 'how they were born'.
Thus, Devil Fruit classifications aren't a different way to classify Quirks, but a different way to classify the results of the drugs… which were written in a 'historical manga', which D knows somehow yet didn't believe until today because of the Quirkless cult, which doesn't make sense if it's a true classification of drugs because it was written in a manga yet it could also be a way to hide results in plain sight by calling them fictional, which doesn't really have a reason to be done because why would you put your experiments' results in a manga read by you cult's children…
The more he thought about it, the greater the migraine.
What did historical manga even mean? She called it that because people had powers in it and she was in a place where no one had them before, so she confused it with reality when she found herself in this new place. It made sense. The problem was how it connected with everything else she said and how her common knowledge and the manga intersected in weird ways, so he recounted the facts.
Quirkless Cult and partial amnesia, absolutely real. Den Den Mushi and Ohara's genocide, quite real if it weren't for how outlandish they are. Green Blood, possibly real because she was told about it. Everything else was connected to the historical manga, yet Green Blood had ties with Devil Fruits due to how D explained it, which doesn't make sense because it's a fictional thing and it shouldn't connect. But her explanation for Green Blood clearly involved Logias, which were part of the manga, so something real was explained with fiction. Unless he's about to admit that it's all true, he must understand what… she meant…
…Wait, run that back… …Yes, yes! How didn't he see it before?! It was all in the terminology!
What is a manga but a series of images and words? Manga is such a loose word that a child could apply it incorrectly to something similar they don't know the name of. For D, there isn't a word for manga with real life people, or a manga with no speech bubble and only bottom text, or a manga with only some images and full of text. She could call either a picture book or a light novel with some illustrations manga and she would be telling the truth because she doesn't know better.
The manga wasn't a manga! They were everything she read that contained images!
Now it all made sense. D was possibly the child of someone important in the cult, thus her not being killed like the people in Ohara after learning the truth and even having access to information that would prove Quirks' existence. She was told it was fictional due to being unable to hide a secret because she was a child. Thus, all the progress reports and studies on Devil Fruit development would be called manga as long as they had pictures and she would assume they were fictional because of the Quirkless cult.
In fact, Monkey D. Luffy's 'rise to Pirate King' could be an after action report or a scientific study detailing an experiment, possibly an ongoing one that involved all the information she explained, and anything else was covered by her mention of supplemental material.
So, the theory would be that All for One created a new way to transfer a single Quirk that works all the time despite incompatibility or the original Quirk the person had. According to rumors, All for One didn't simply give Quirks to his lackeys because compatibility was a problem, and even Quirkless weren't a blank card, or at least that was the justification of why he didn't reign the world with his overpowered hypothetical Quirk. So now that point is possibly moot. Worse yet, these 'single' Quirks were more powerful than regular ones because they were composite of multiple ones or possibly the same one stacked multiple times to increase its output.
All of that he could understand, even if how the Quirkless cult factored in was an unknown, but what was said besides it was what he was having trouble with and making him doubt himself with how it connected to everything else.
Dawn Island and Loguetown didn't exist, unless they were secret locations or codenames for places where All for One was operating. But then the connections started to cross.
How was Monkey D. Luffy related to Gol D. Roger, the first Pirate King? Were they the same experiment performed in different subjects? He at least understood why Gol D. Roger would be executed due to a disease, All for One would probably want his Quirk back and would deem him too useless to be left alive. But how did Gol announce the existence of One Piece, and what even was that in the first place? And how did they not hear about it? Were the multiple islands isolated from the rest of the world in an archipelago somewhere and they all got informed of it through their newspapers, making D believe it was international news because of how big a deal the cult made about it?
Loguetown… sounded ominous. The town of the beginning and the end? An execution ground, where Gol and countless others died? Perhaps also where experiments are first created before being shipped to other locations? Or where they kill individuals like the ones from Ohara when the problems don't spread to the whole island. That name was something he could see All for One using, grandstanding suited someone known as the Demon King.
Still, there were a lot of things he didn't understand and that he would have to continue questioning later. Who was Joy Boy, or Red Hair Shanks, or Garp the Hero? Especially that last one, there was currently no Pro Hero whose true or hero name matched that. A future mole that All for One plans to infiltrate in hero society?
And most worryingly of all, the Ancient Weapons. According to D, they are three different 'things' that can surpass a nuclear bomb. He isn't even sure how you can surpass that, nor how you can do it in three different ways. A bigger nuclear bomb he could understand, but maybe a biological weapon too? A mass brainwashing machine? It was hard to think how to outdo a nuclear explosion, but apparently All for One was possibly planning three ways to do so.
The World Government could simply be All for One reigning as the sole king, and the Celestial Dragons could be his close circle given positions of power. Almost all the pieces he could give a place if he stretched what he knew, except for something. Or better yet, someone.
D.
How did she discover all this? She said she was from the future, but could that really be true? The answer, at least Naomasa believed, lied in the Void Century. A period of time where knowledge was incomplete, yet she knew all that she did and what would happen afterwards. If his instincts were right, he thought he knew what the true Void Century was.
It really was simple, if he ignored D's claims to being from the future and saw the real situation of her being in a cult possibly led by All for One. She knew all she did from the people around her and reading reports with pictures, after all. If she knew what would happen after the Void Century, but not what the Void Century itself was, then she knew the plans for after All for One became king of the world, but not how he would achieve it besides the vague Ancient Weapons.
Thus, the Void Century was a century-spanning plan of All for One to create a World Government with him at the head. D possibly believed herself in the past because she was told the world was already like that and she was no longer inside the cult's own world. Thus, the plan could possibly involve indoctrination with people believing All for One to deserve to be world leader and accustomed to his new technologies. In fact, making people believe they didn't have Quirks and breeding them to not have Quirks in the first place while hoarding access to Devil Fruits would guarantee he would always remain at the top of the food chain.
Her confusion of time was interesting. Apparently, All for One is planning to create, or already did, a Time-Time Fruit that would allow a person to jump forwards in time. It could possibly be a red herring for a simple cryogenic sleep, but he couldn't discard any possibility. Especially because the woman was supposed to be from the Void Century jumping several centuries into the reign of the World Government. It could be that one of his plans is to create an army of indoctrinated people throughout the ages and send them all to a point in time to take over through sheer numbers, or perhaps a way to deal with the Quirk Singularity, simply jump a few years every time it's reached and build again from the ashes as a God that brings salvation.
All of this is, of course, based on the shaky fact that D is telling a version of a truth, and not simply insane or incredibly misguided.
She was an unknown, a person who didn't even know their own name and was for some reason exiled from her cult, though if it was a true exile, an unlikely escape with her Copy Quirk or part of a bigger plan she's unaware of he didn't know. If he understood correctly, she probably wanted to be like Monkey D. Luffy and Gol D. Roger. She could even possibly be a prospective subject to be the third 'Pirate King.'
He looked at his notes again as he dialed the only number he thought could make sense of it all.
"Toshinori, I know you just gave me this number but I literally have no idea who else to call. I think All for One is real and may have evidence to prove it."
"…"
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD ALREADY KILLED HIM!"
(Misunderstandings galore. If you don't know when Toshinori met Naomasa and discovered he's All Might, I recommend reading Vigilantes. It's literally the same day as this conversation. Poor Naomasa is having everyone's secrets piled on his back in the same day and can't cope)
(Addendum: due to some fair criticism, added sections about Quirkless Cults and a more natural way for Naomasa to become a conspiracy theorist so the fic would feel less crackish. It still feels crackish, but there's less leaps of logic and OOC from Naomasa's part as he actually questions what he hears before forming a theory and pursuing it with more steps, even having his "Eureka!" moment with what is a manga. Unfortunately, confirmation bias is a thing and he arrives at the same conclusion)