One Piece: My Evolving Aircraft

Next Bonus, 100!!

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As the Empress passed through the Gates of Justice, it crossed paths with the Marine fleet commanded by Vice Admirals Momonga and Onigumo, who were escorting Ace back to Marineford.

Jin watched them pass. He made no move to intervene.

Shortly after, they arrived at the Great Prison.

As the World Government's premier detention facility, Impel Down formed a strategic triangle with Marine Headquarters and Enies Lobby. The three strongholds were connected by a dedicated, high-speed Marine current, allowing for rapid reinforcement if any one of them fell under attack.

Because of this, Impel Down's reputation as an inescapable fortress was well-founded.

The only two successful "escapes" in its history had extraordinary caveats. The first was Shiki, whose sheer ruthless determination had cost him his legs. The second was this current, chaotic clusterf**k led by Luffy, Buggy, and Blackbeard, which only succeeded because the entire Marine force was completely tied up with the impending war against Whitebeard.

The massive main gates were still intact. There were no signs of a breach. Under Magellan's fierce resistance, the rioting inmates hadn't yet managed to force their way to the surface.

The Empress extended a series of heavy steel ramps, dropping them securely onto the docks.

The power of the Paramecia Steel-Steel Fruit.

"ALRIGHT, YOU IDIOTS! TIME TO WORK!"

Down the ramps marched the Clone Army. They were organized into squads, each led by one of the "Awakened" clones who had been promoted to captain.

In a fit of dark humor, Jin had dubbed them the "Dragon Ball Legion."

The thirteen clones who had achieved true Awakening were named accordingly:

Vegeta, Piccolo, Frieza.

Ginyu, Recoome, Burter, Jeice, Guldo.

Cell, Gero, Lapis, Yamcha, and Krillin.

Forged in the crucible of constant battle and mended by the soul-flames of the demonic carrier, these clones had gradually developed complete, independent souls.

Their combat power was nothing to scoff at.

With his "Dragon Ball Legion" in tow, Jin breached the surface level.

He quickly got a sitrep from the terrified guards stationed there.

Overwhelmed by the sheer ferocity of the Level 6 escapees, Magellan had been forced to take drastic measures. He had completely destroyed the main freight elevator leading down to Level 4. He was now conducting a fighting retreat, establishing defensive choke points on Levels 3, 2, and 1 to stall the advancing horde.

But with an ever-growing army of desperate prisoners crashing against his lines, the situation was rapidly deteriorating.

To hold the line, the entire garrison of Impel Down—over ten thousand guards—had been thrown into the meat grinder.

"Where is the vanguard right now?" Jin asked.

"They've broken through! They're somewhere between Level 2 and Level 1!"

Jin gave a curt nod. "Not far now."

Level 1. The Crimson Hell.

The inmates housed here had committed lesser crimes. Their individual combat strength was generally low; most couldn't even go toe-to-toe with a single Blugori guard.

Beyond the cells lay a massive, artificial forest. The trees bore leaves as sharp as razors—the "Bladed Trees." The ground was covered in "Needle Grass," capable of piercing human flesh with ease.

Prisoners were routinely chased through this forest by venomous spiders and sadistic guards, forced to run until they collapsed from exhaustion, their bodies sliced to ribbons by the flora, suffering endless agony.

"Hey! Let us out of here!"

Buggy and the inmates of Level 1 were practically foaming at the mouth with anxiety.

They could hear the sounds of the massive riot echoing from below. But the uprising had started on Level 4, spread down to Levels 5 and 6, and was now fighting its way back up.

Ironically, Level 1, which theoretically should have been the easiest to liberate, was currently the only floor where the cells remained locked.

Jin didn't rush down to reinforce Magellan.

Instead, he decided to "clean house" on Level 1 first.

He raised his hand. Small, swirling "black holes" manifested at his fingertips. With a flick of his wrist, he sent them flying. As they traveled, they rapidly expanded, entirely engulfing entire cell blocks—iron bars, prisoners, and all—swallowing them whole.

Naturally, among these thousands of inmates, there were bound to be some who were falsely accused or unjustly imprisoned.

Not every pirate deserved to die.

Some were genuinely evil scumbags. Some had been forced into piracy by circumstance. Some merely carried the title without the malice.

Therefore, Jin wasn't executing them outright.

As he harvested them, the "swallowed" prisoners were deposited into a specialized quarantine sub-space within the demonic carrier.

There, the power of the Memo-Memo Fruit was activated. It ruthlessly extracted and analyzed their past memories, subjecting them to an absolute, unvarnished trial.

Those who were rotten to the core—the irredeemable scum—were instantly executed.

Those who had extenuating circumstances, or whose hearts were fundamentally good and capable of rehabilitation, were spared. They were diverted to the labor camps for re-education.

Those with specialized skills or unique talents were segregated for future use.

However, to the terrified guard assigned as Jin's guide, it looked like absolute slaughter.

He watched in horror as these swirling voids simply erased entire cell blocks from existence.

"K-King Jin! You can't... they..." the guard stammered, trying to intervene.

After all, while these prisoners were criminals, their offenses didn't warrant summary execution.

"The moment you let them out of those cages," Jin said, his voice cold and devoid of pity, "do you think they'll stop to ask if you deserve to die?"

Pinned by Jin's freezing glare, the guard snapped his mouth shut.

With terrifying efficiency, Jin systematically "swallowed" every single inmate on Level 1. That included Buggy, who was swept up into the void along with the rest.

Level 1 held the least dangerous criminals, but it housed by far the largest population—easily over a hundred thousand souls.

Surprising?

Not really.

Ever since the "Great Pirate Era" began, the global pirate population had exploded.

Sengoku had once mentioned that Impel Down housed hundreds of thousands of prisoners. More than half of them were pirates.

It became painfully obvious why Sengoku, despite technically "winning" the Summit War, had been so unceremoniously forced to resign. This colossal failure was a major factor.

Even if only tens of thousands of prisoners had actually managed to escape the island... the sheer scale of the breakout was enough to horrify the world.

It was a catastrophic failure of security. A monumental embarrassment.

And faced with the furious accusations of the affiliated nations, the Five Elders were absolutely not going to take the blame. They needed a scapegoat.

The sheer scale of a prison required to house such numbers was staggering to comprehend.

One might wonder: given their reluctance to frequently execute prisoners, how could Impel Down possibly sustain this ever-growing population?

And why just imprison them? Why not just kill them?

The answer was simple, and brutally psychological.

For many, the most terrifying fate imaginable wasn't death; it was being stripped of freedom and forced to exist in a lightless void, utterly devoid of hope.

For anyone condemned to its depths, Impel Down was literal Hell.

In the real world, "a mountain of blades and a sea of fire" is a poetic metaphor for suffering.

In Impel Down, it was the actual geographical environment. And it was only the tip of the iceberg.

These environments were designed to inflict perpetual, agonizing torture on the inmates.

If one were to take a tour of Impel Down, it would become glaringly obvious: from Chief Warden Magellan down to the lowliest Jailer Beast, the concept of "human rights" simply did not exist here.

Shiryu had indeed been imprisoned for "indiscriminate slaughter." But that was only because Magellan was furious that Shiryu had started butchering his own fellow guards. It was a matter of internal discipline, not morality.

Some might argue that Magellan was different, that he was a principled man who, even when the prison descended into absolute chaos, refused to indiscriminately execute the rioting prisoners.

He constantly reiterated his absolute authority to execute them... but he generally came across as a stern but highly dedicated professional. He even went out of his way to protect absolute scum like Doflamingo from assassination attempts.

In reality, Magellan just abhorred the messy, uncontrolled "vigilante justice" that Shiryu reveled in.

But make no mistake: he felt absolutely zero pity for the inmates who died gruesome deaths due to the prison's horrific conditions.

Here, the guards killed without a shred of hesitation or psychological burden. The slightest infraction was grounds for immediate execution.

If an inmate was in the Starvation Hell, they simply withheld food and water until the prisoner wasted away. If they were in the Freezing Hell, a single sharp exhale was enough to flash-freeze their lungs.

In such extreme conditions, those without superhuman constitutions simply died.

To the prisoners, Impel Down was a waking nightmare.

The true reason they weren't all summarily executed came down to a simple metric: 'value.'

The inmates here were generally the most notorious and powerful pirates, or high-profile political dissidents.

Power, regardless of whether it's used for good or evil, has inherent value.

Even if it's just as lab rats...

Caesar Clown relied on Doflamingo to kidnap children for his sick research. Where do you think the World Government and the Marines sourced their test subjects?

Only the strong, living prisoners held any real research value.

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By the time Jin finished his "sweep" of Level 1, the vanguard of the breakout had finally breached the defensive line and surged up from below.

"CHARGE! FREEDOM IS RIGHT THERE!"

"VICTORY IS OURS!"

They roared, a tidal wave of desperate men.

At the very front of the charge were Luffy, Ivankov, and the others, alongside some of the most infamous pirates of the last twenty years.

Blackbeard and his newly acquired crew were nowhere to be seen among them.

And hot on their heels, pressing the attack from behind, were Domino and a horde of Jailer Beasts.

"K-King Jin! They're here!"

"Relax," Jin said coolly. "Engage them."

At his command, the clones of the "Dragon Ball Legion" racked the bolts of their rifles and opened fire.

Pirates fell in droves.

But more kept charging forward, stepping over the bodies of the fallen.

A chaotic, brutal melee erupted.

In the midst of the bloodbath, Jinbe, Ivankov, Inazuma, and a core group of revolutionaries managed to punch a hole through a weak point in the line, desperately covering Luffy's escape.

They were covered in deep gashes and burns, a testament to the sheer ferocity of the gauntlet they had fought through below.

Jin didn't intercept them.

He let them slip through the net.

Because...

"Now the real hunt begins."

Before Jin had even entered the facility, he had systematically severed all of Impel Down's communication lines with the outside world.

He drew Shusui. Channeling the power of the Munch-Munch Fruit, he unleashed a horizontal slash. A massive curtain of pitch-black "light" erupted upwards, forming an impenetrable wall that completely sealed off the exit.

Any pirate who slammed into the black curtain simply vanished.

Then, he plunged the blade of Shusui directly into the stone floor. Centered on the tip of the blade, a massive black hole manifested and began to rapidly expand, hungrily "swallowing" everything in its path.

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Level 2.

Magellan stood alone, an immovable object holding the line against the endless, crashing tide of prisoners.

This level was normally a menagerie of horrific beasts—basilisks, manticores, venomous scorpions. The inmates housed here lived in constant, paralyzing terror, knowing they were destined to become chow for the monsters.

But now, it had been transformed into a purgatory of toxic sludge.

Massive quantities of lethal venom and suffocating poison gas flooded the level.

Before Magellan lay a sea of bodies—tens of thousands of pirates, all incapacitated or dead from the poison.

He was breathing heavily, sweat beading on his brow.

He knew the truth. These rioters were nothing but cannon fodder, thrown at him to bleed his stamina. The true heavy hitters from Level 6 hadn't even shown their faces yet.

Those legendary monsters were far too cunning. They were wreaking havoc on the lower levels, systematically releasing more and more prisoners to drown Magellan in an endless sea of bodies.

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~ 70 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon

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