Prince Musshuru had been exiled.
He would grow up in the Land of Fire, Kilauea, where his spores would have no effect.
He was thirteen and bored. Sooooo bored.
So much so that he wanted to try his new Devil Fruit on the skin of his future subjects.
Reluctantly, King Othman had sent him to the rulers of that distant land, since he enjoyed their benevolence.
The boy with the fuchsia bob had headed to his room, where he would be helped to collect his belongings to take on board.
On the threshold, while he was busy opening drawers and wardrobes, Wapol, his younger brother, appeared.
He was seven years old, with wild purple hair and piercing eyes somewhere between gray and brown. He was playing toss and catch with a green apple.
"Do you want some advice, big brother? Next time try not to knock out your future subjects. Or do you want to rule over the lapahn?"
The child burst into mocking laughter, to which Musshuru reacted violently; he suddenly closed the drawer he was emptying at that moment, producing a sharp noise that made Wapol stop laughing, and before he could even realize it, the latter found himself dangling, tightened by the grip that Musshuru had placed on the collar of his pajamas:
"Funny that you advise me to leave people alive, you, my mother's murderer!"
The voice of the prince, now former heir to the throne, had become dark, much more mature than his thirteen years of age:
"If it hadn't been for you, mom would still be here!"
He had dropped him, and their gazes had met for very long seconds, before Musshuru disappeared through the door in search of the servants.
"One day I will be your king and I will make you crawl…" Wapol had murmured, sore from the blow he had taken.
Near Musshuru's room there was Dalton, the boy King Othman had found injured in Bighorn woods six months before, the only survivor of a family of lumberjacks who had fallen victim to a tragic accident.
He was training to become a royal guard, and had overheard the unpleasant conversation between the two princes. He hadn't intervened and hadn't mentioned it to the sovereign or to Wapol himself, who cheerfully greeted Musshuru with his middle finger raised, receiving in return a few curse words muttered between lips.
From that moment, something changed in Wapol.
Dalton had noticed the prince's spoiled and rather domineering attitude, but being seven years old he was convinced that he would mature, however after Musshuru's departure he worsened. A lot.
He ate outside of meals, at any time of the day or night. He was often tormented by brutal nightmares he refused to tell anyone about, and if anyone tried to make him vent, he violently rebelled.
He couldn't stand obligations, he couldn't stand limits, he didn't want to study or learn etiquette. His father was desperate, but one evening the climax was reached. Six months had now passed since Musshuru's departure.
They were having dinner and Othman had invited young Dalton to their table; he had noticed that Wapol liked to be with the boy, perhaps because he was the same age as Musshuru.
That evening, while Wapol was devouring his steak, his father spoke to him about his brother:
"Son, today I received a letter from the rulers of Kilauea. It seems that Musshuru is doing well, he is also learning some basic self-defense skills."
The boy didn't say anything, he just started to eat the remaining potatoes on his plate.
"You miss him, don't you?"
Silence.
"Wapol? Wap-"
"NO, I DON'T MISS HIM! HE HATES ME AND I HATE HIM!"
The purple-haired child had let out a blood-curdling scream, and his father was greatly shaken by it.
Wapol started crying and finally spilled the beans:
"Musshuru told me it's my fault that mom died. He never loved me..."
Othman had no idea that his eldest son would harbor such a grudge against his younger one. Musshuru was six years old when Wapol was born and his mother had died in childbirth, and the ruler had never noticed any negative feelings on his part towards his little brother. Evidently he was wrong, he had been very good at behaving like an impeccable brother with Wapol. Sure, they had their disagreements, but nothing that suggested such hatred.
He didn't know what to do, what to answer him. By now Musshuru was far away and there could be no direct confrontation.
He then chose the wrong answer, the one that would have dug a hole in his son's heart, that would have allowed him to create an internal alibi for misbehaving, that would have left him with an unresolved scar.
"Wapol, I'm sure your brother didn't mean such a bad thing. Forgive him if you can."
King Othman never returned to the subject, nor did Wapol. The child, although quite young, understood that his father was shut on the subject and it wasn't worth talking to him.
Not only that: the king began to spoil his son tremendously, indulging in many small whims and trying to cover that lacking he otherwise didn't know how to cover with new gifts and clothes.
Othman was an excellent king, but he didn't know how to be truly close to his son, he didn't know how to fill the void of a mother he had never known, nor how to make up for the distance of a brother who had left with a heavy burden.
Dalton was perhaps the only person who knew how to calm Wapol's outbursts of anger, but even here there was a problem: growing up, the heir to the throne of Drum had become almost morbidly attached to the boy with dark brown hair, he considered him his property.
He also bonded with Chess, son of the royal cook, and Kuromarimo, son of a guard.
Kids with dubious education, who literally hung on Wapol's words and always helped him in his thousand spiteful acts.
Dalton wasn't happy with that trend, but he always tried to stay a step back, to give moderate advice.
When Wapol was fifteen, King Othman was diagnosed with an aggressive and unstoppable lung disease.
Now dying, he called Dalton to his bedside and asked him to come near him, so that he could talk to him a little; by now his voice was reduced to a feeble whisper.
"Dalton, my boy, I'm glad I saved you eight years ago. Your parents would be proud of the man you have become. However, I am sorry about one thing... I am sorry for not having been able to keep my family together... If Ema had been there, I am sure that she would have managed to reach the hearts of my boys..."
Othman coughed and Dalton supported him by taking his hand.
"Please, Dalton… Have faith. I am sure that one day Wapol will understand what true richness is and will be able to govern with justice. Please... Please... Hope for me too..."
Having said this, the king passed away and Dalton notified the servants.
If Wapol suffered from that situation, if losing his father was a source of heartbreak for him, he never showed it.
He attended the funeral with his eyes fixed in front of him, colder than steel, impenetrable.
His brother was also there, he had come purposely from Kilauea, and left the day after the funeral, without too many words.
By now his life was in the Land of Fire, far from Drum.
Wapol was the new ruler, and up to eighteen years of age he would have ruled with the help of his court.
Wapol's eighteenth birthday was the point of no return.
Dalton had made a solemn promise to Othman to support his son and hope for his maturity, but with each passing day he saw that task as something absolutely difficult.
For starters, he had been appointed as Wapol's right-hand man and stuck in a forced collaboration with Chess and Kuromarimo.
The young man had lost count of the times he had to grin and bear it.
Wapol was close to the other two as well, but the pivot on which he counted most of all was him, and every time he had to accompany him somewhere or had to carry out an unpleasant task, such as collecting taxes, he felt his indecipherable gaze on him, made of both implacability and mellifluous smoothness, as if he wanted to make him understand every time that he had his life in his hands, and that he could make it a paradise or a hell.
One day, Wapol invited his three loyalists to his table. On a plate lay a purple fruit, similar to a large grape.
"Do you remember the strange fruit we picked yesterday? If I'm not mistaken, this is one of the legendary Devil Fruits, givers of incredible powers. Today I want to test it myself."
Dalton stopped him, alarmed:
"Your Highness, if you eat it you will lose your ability to swim."
The young ruler looked at him mockingly.
"Come on, Dalton… Who cares about swimming, I have my fleet and the water in Drum is freezing anyway…"
The captain of the guard fell silent and Wapol bit into the Fruit voraciously. Chess and Kuromarimo were elated, while Dalton watched the scene worriedly.
He had every reason: the Fruit in question turned out to be the Munch Munch, with the ability to swallow anything, even inedible and potentially toxic.
It was a disaster: Wapol, being able to completely indulge his gluttonous nature, abused it and dislocated his jaw, having to resort to an unsightly tin plate to allow the Fruit to unleash its limitless power.
Not only that: he began to eat non-organic material, pieces of rock and artillery, trees and even live animals, eager to contemplate the assemblage effect that the Fruit granted him. Such a disordered diet, despite the intercession of the Munch Munch Fruit, still had negative effects on Wapol's health, causing his voice and skin to age prematurely. At twenty he already looked like he was fifty.
However, he didn't care. If there was one thing Dalton could credit him for, it was that he had never been vain.
Furthermore, the night before leaving for the Reverie, on Dalton's twenty-seventh birthday, Wapol unexpectedly gave him a gift: a Devil Fruit.
Dalton felt his heartbeats becoming incessant, he wasn't sure he wanted to try it.
"Did you give one to Chess and Kuromarimo too?" he asked, very nervous.
Again, Wapol's otherwise satisfied look turned bored, disappointed, contemptuous.
"No, this is for you. Eat it."
It was an order.
From that brown fruit with horns, Dalton gained the Zoan power of the Bison, and his physical strength increased.
More months passed. The situation with Wapol continued to worsen.
At the Reverie he had beaten Princess Vivi only because her father, King Cobra, had reprimanded him.
Dalton felt his hope sinking more and more every day.
Six years before he had made a promise to King Othman, but it was proving in vain, there was no goodness in Wapol's heart.
And then… That day had arrived.
It was December and the snow was falling incessantly.
Doctor Hiriluk, the only man who had tried to cure Drum out of its melancholy apathy, was dead.
Dalton, tired of having to submit to a sovereign who was as cowardly as he was cruel, blurted out:
"No matter how much progress medicine makes, no matter how many new medicaments are created… THERE WILL NEVER BE A CURE FOR STUPIDITY!"
Wapol knew that comment was directed at him. Immediately, the overweight sovereign was reminded of his brother Musshuru's face, his eyes veiled in disgust, the ease that his father, albeit in good faith, had always had for that problematic relationship between brothers.
"There, you said it… You wanted to say it, huh? Dalton, you know what happens when I get really angry, right? Yes you know..."
The chief of the guard met his king's iron gaze and engaged him in a merciless fight.
He came out a bloodied loser.
"There will never be a cure for stupidity? Are you suggesting that I'm stupid? Stop playing vigilante, Dalton!"
He had been locked up in a cell.
"A week in here will cool your heels."
Dalton remembered that week in the cold cell of Drum Castle as the worst of his life.
Every afternoon, in rotation, he received a visit from Chess or Kuromarimo who would punch or kick him and try to get him back on their path. The man-bison had noticed two different attitudes in his companions: Kuromarimo was disappointed because he respected him as a fighter, while Chess had let himself go to a rather bizarre confession:
"I admired you, Dalton, we could have been Our Majesty's triad forever. I don't understand why King Wapol still considers you his favorite, despite everything..."
Did Wapol really still have the attachment he had shown him as a child? On one hand it made him think with nostalgia of the past in which King Othman was still alive, on the other it caused him a feeling of suffocation, where Wapol's honeyed words mixed with the poison he poured on him, in a swirl of possession and domination that made him feel like a prisoner even without chains.
On the sixth day of captivity it was Wapol's turn.
"I forgive you, Dalton, as long as you get on your knees and apologize. Then you can leave here and I will forget this nasty episode."
Dalton, still weak and wounded, crawled on the dusty floor of the cell and approached the sovereign whom he no longer had a shred of respect:
"Wa-Wapol… Don't you ever think about your father… King Othman?"
"Hm? What does my father have to do with it now?"
"You are dishonoring him… He would have wanted you to be a wise man, a loving king… Instead you are selfish, tyrannical, foolish! None of your subjects will ever love you! YOU ARE CONDEMNING OUR COUNTRY TO OBLIVION!"
At that point, Wapol violently slapped him.
"My father may have been adored by those yokels down the valley, but as a parent he wasn't worth a single Berry. Not only did he send his eldest son away at the slightest mistake, he also downplayed the relationship his children had with each other." growled the twenty-one year old with his cannon hand pointed at Dalton.
"Musshuru almost made a massacre, Wapol! Your father had no choice..."
"For my father we have always been a burden…"
Dalton bowed his head.
King Othman wouldn't have the desired peace, his sons hated him.
"Come on, Dalton… Stop thinking about that old fool. My father is now dead, there is no longer any way to remedy what happened. I am the present and the future of this country. If you apologize to me, I will stop fiddling with your chains... Hear what a beautiful sound they make..."
At that point, Dalton had given up hope completely.
And now… Wapol was on the run from Mary Geoise with Vivi, aided by Morgans.
Seeing the girl with light blue hair despair over the death of her father had thrown him into a deep crisis, despite the tense relations that had existed between him and King Cobra.
The king of Black Drum had realized, at that moment, that he had thrown away the great fortune he had had by being born a prince.
He had thrown away the possibility of living a peaceful relationship with his father.
He was now far away, in mind and body, from his older brother.
What did he have left? A flourishing kingdom, for heaven's sake, a great toy factory...
But on the emotional side?
Chess and Kuromarimo no longer accompanied him as often as before, busy as they were with checking on Black Drum's progress while he was away.
Dalton despised him.
His wife was a social climber, a privilege grabber and she didn't even hide it. Yet when he married her he knew it, he too was using her as an image of his popularity, as Kinderella was Miss Universe. It was a loveless marriage, a simple business contract.
Did he really want to keep having emptiness around him?
He was alone.
So, one evening he knocked on the door of the room that Morgans had prepared for the princess and brought her a steaming dish for dinner.
"Vivi, dinner!"
The girl, shaken by sobs, immediately replied:
"I'm not hungry!"
"Vivi, you haven't eaten for three days…"
"WHY DO YOU CARE? ARE YOU GOING TO BE A DO-GOODER NOW? YOU?!"
Wapol startled, but couldn't say he was surprised.
He deserved it.
He didn't want to give up, however:
"It may seem strange to you, but what's happening is helping me think."
"Pondering how you can reign again without the World Government sending an assassin to kill you?" Vivi muttered darkly.
"Also, but this applies to you too. You are the new ruler of Alabasta now."
Vivi gasped. Her kingdom needed her, but how could she return? She would have condemned it.
Slowly, Wapol heard the chair move and the girl's footsteps approaching the door. The key turned in the lock.
"Thanks for the soup. Now I'll eat it."
While Vivi ate, the king of Black Drum remained to keep her company, in a surreal atmosphere, almost as if they were old friends.
After Vivi finished the meal, Wapol opened his mouth and spoke sincerely:
"I am sorry. For everything. For the slap I gave you and the contempt I had for you. I was undignified. Dalton was right, and so was that old Hiriluk owl. I was the disease of my country, and now I have discovered that an even worse disease could befall us..."
The girl was stunned, he no longer seemed like the arrogant man she had met eight years earlier at the Reverie.
"How will we get out of this?"
Wapol took a deep breath; he was afraid, but he would no longer run away:
"I don't know. But I am sure of one thing: together."
Finally, King Othman's soul could rest in peace.