A wild little brat.
After getting kicked square across the bridge of the nose out of nowhere, Solomon pinched his bleeding nose and revised his first impression of Jewelry Bonney.
"You should apologize, Bonney."
"Hmph! Why should I? It’s Dad’s fault for dodging!"
Not just a brat, either. A brat with the makings of a legendary menace.
That was Solomon’s first impression of Bonney, and it made for a less-than-pleasant first meeting.
What a cheeky little thing. She’d made a mistake herself, then dumped the blame on her father. She was a natural-born expert at blaming others.
If CP0 or any other attendants had come along, this really could have turned into a disaster.
Still, he had heard she suffered from an incurable illness, but she hardly looked frail. If anything, she was bursting with energy. Hard to believe a child like this was supposedly doomed to die by the age of ten.
"I’m sorry. Bonney may not look it, but she’s very shy around strangers. Let me introduce her properly first. This is my daughter, Jewelry Bonney."
"Hmph." Jewelry Bonney shot a dissatisfied glare at the strange man her father had brought home. She had no intention of hiding her sulking mood.
And really, who could blame her? Her father had come back after so long, and the first thing he did was scold her over one little mistake with some random stranger.
He had no idea how much she’d missed him. And he started by getting mad at her. Mean. Hmph.
"She’s lively, isn’t she? Right. Ahem. Hello, Bonney. My name is Solomon. I’m your father’s friend. I also know a fair bit about medicine, so I came to examine your illness."
"You?"
"Bonney. He’s a guest. Be polite."
"How many times has Dad brought in quacks just because they called themselves guests and gotten scammed? This guy’s obviously another fraud who sweet-talked my gullible dad and came here to fleece him!"
To be fair, there was a reason for Bonney’s sharp attitude.
Most of the so-called doctors Kuma had brought in to treat her illness had been frauds.
Poor, naive Kuma had been swindled by them over and over, and even now he was still struggling financially because of it. He had only managed to buy his current pirate ship with help from the villagers.
Bonney hated scammers.
Hyenas who tricked her kind father and bled him dry.
If Dad couldn’t weed them out, then smart little me would do it for him!
Naturally, Bonney assumed Solomon had tricked her father just like all the others.
Especially with that soft, harmless-looking face of his. He looked so nice that anyone would let their guard down around him.
He had exactly the face a scammer ought to have...!
Quite apart from Bonney’s outrage, Solomon found her wariness rather interesting.
Being openly treated like a con artist despite being the Mage King was an astonishingly fresh, very "human" sort of experience.
Solomon searched through the memories of his previous life and sifted through his mental big data for the most appropriate response an ordinary human might make in a moment like this.
The result was simple.
He just had to prove he was not a fraud.
For all that he sought humanity, Solomon was still the progenitor of magecraft. It was difficult for him to cast aside the distinctly magus-like habit of rational thinking that could seem a little inhuman.
"That’s right. Actually, I’m not a doctor."
"There! Finally showing your true colors, scammer! I, the future Nika, will never forgive anyone who tries to rip off my big softie of a dad!"
"I’m a magus."
"What...?! Magecraft?!"
The force in Bonney’s posture, as if she were ready to pounce on him at any second, shifted into something entirely different.
Magecraft! A magus!
Bonney had seen a magus in a storybook not long ago.
He made a pumpkin carriage and turned poor Cinderelly into a princess.
"If you’re really a magus, prove it! Can you pull a dove out of a hat?"
"There’s no reason I couldn’t."
To be honest, even foolish Kuma was curious about the trick with the dove in the hat, so he quietly overlooked Bonney’s endless rudeness.
"Ta-da."
"What? There’s nothing there. You don’t even have a hat. So you really are a scammer!"
Solomon pointed at Bonney with deliberately exaggerated, comical gestures, but nothing happened.
At first.
Then the change came.
"Bonney. You were wearing a hat on your head, weren’t you?"
"Yeah. So what? My hat’s perfectly fi—w-what?!"
The round cap Bonney had been wearing had somehow turned into a living dove.
Kuma and Bonney were both so startled their eyes nearly popped out.
"My hat turned into a dove?!"
Coo, coo, coo. I’m a dove. Feed me. Coooo.
The dove, crying in a rather uncouth way, turned back into a cap once the duration of the magecraft ended.
"It’s real! Real magecraft! Dad! He really used magecraft to turn my hat into a dove!"
Bonney bounced up and down in place, excitement spilling out of her in a way only a child her age could manage.
"Wow. That’s amazing. Can you show me more?"
"Of course."
It did not take long for Solomon, who had been under suspicion the entire time, to rise all the way to the rank of Bonney’s special honored guest.
After showing her all sorts of little tricks a child would love, Solomon somehow acquired the title of "uncle."
"Uncle! Teach me magecraft too! I want to summon a golden dove too!"
"If you have talent for magecraft, there’s no reason you couldn’t."
"Huh. Solomon, is magecraft something other people can learn too?"
"If they have talent, yes. But most humans in this world don’t have Magic Circuits. Sadly, Bonney is one of them."
"Whaaat."
Bonney’s disappointment was obvious when Solomon told her she could not learn magecraft.
"Hmph. I was gonna become Nika anyway. You can keep your dumb magecraft all to yourself."
"...Nika."
The meeting had been unfolding in such a soft, cozy atmosphere that Kuma realized the danger of the situation rather late.
No matter how friendly he seemed... would a Celestial Dragon really let a commoner who knew about Nika go unpunished?
The trauma of childhood did not fade easily. Suspicion suddenly flaring up, Kuma clapped a hand over Bonney’s mouth before she could keep rambling about the legend of Nika in front of Solomon.
"It’s fine."
But contrary to Kuma’s belated fear, Solomon’s reaction was calm.
"Last Buccaneer. The legend passed down through your people is not merely a legend. Even if our World Nobles, led by the Celestial Dragons, try to bury it, Nika’s return is inevitable."
If any other Celestial Dragon had heard that, it would have been enough to bring down the Holy Knights or even the Five Elders themselves. As those explosive words left Solomon’s mouth, Kuma felt instinctive terror and a cold ache in his chest.
"You’re a Celestial Dragon... and you believe Nika will return?"
"Because Nika is not a legend but a real piece of history. History repeats itself. Nika’s return is also already set in motion."
Solomon did not bother adding that his knowledge of Nika came from a manga he had read in his previous life.
After all, it would still be a long time before the Nika of this era, Monkey D. Luffy, truly stepped onto the world stage.
But Kuma understood Solomon’s explanation in a slightly different way.
"With magecraft... can you see the future too?"
"To some extent."
"Then can you see Bonney’s future too?"
Kuma pleaded desperately. He wanted to find hope in the answer of Solomon, the Mage King, a man who was all but a miracle made flesh.
Solomon had only read One Piece here and there in his previous life, but he still remembered a little about Jewelry Bonney. She grew up just fine and became a pirate, so of course she would be saved.
Even if he had not known the original story, surely the wish of a father trying this hard would be rewarded. Wasn’t that just the standard cliché of a shonen manga?
"She’s destined to become a glutton. Yes. She’ll eat very well, grow up strong, and have an iron stomach if nothing else."
Kuma relaxed. Tears even welled in his eyes. If Solomon guaranteed it, then it was no different from a promise that Bonney would overcome the terrible incurable disease known as Sapphire Scales and one day walk proudly beneath the sun.
"Really? Really, I can get better?"
Bonney too was filled with joy at Solomon’s prophecy, now that he had already proven his "power."
She looked up at Solomon with shining eyes, thinking that maybe the journey Kuma had promised her at age ten might come even sooner.
Solomon barely managed to hold back the tears threatening to spill at the warmth sinking deep into his chest.
Whether it was his reincarnated self or the original Solomon, they had one thing in common.
Both were complete suckers.
He was far too weak against moving little comedies like this.
"Now then, let’s get to the main point. Bonney. Let’s replace your body."
"?"
The meaning of Solomon’s proposal was a bit too much for Bonney, who belonged to the category of fairly normal people with fairly normal common sense, to grasp in one go.
Kuma’s thoughts also froze for a moment.
"I’ll make you a new body. I’m not a professional puppeteer like Miss Aozaki Touko, but I do have the basic schematics in my head. Fortunately, Bonney is still young, so it shouldn’t take too long to make."
What the hell was he talking about?
Once Bonney belatedly realized Solomon was seriously proposing that she throw away her current body and switch into a new one, she became firmly convinced that he really was a scammer after all.
"Hey, Uncle Sol. If you say that wasn’t something you said in your right mind, I’ll still forgive you."
"It doesn’t hurt that much. We’d just move your soul into the new body made as a puppet and settle it in place—gaaah!"
"How are you saying such insane crap with a perfectly straight face?!"
Crunch!
As Solomon calmly continued explaining his magical knowledge, Bonney finally snapped and immediately kicked him in the shin.
"I-it’s true! We only need to change your body—"
"Even if you’re a magus, there’s a limit to what counts as common sense! You lunatic! Get out!"
Ignoring Kuma’s attempts to stop her, the furious Bonney stomped the floor a few times in frustration, then ran straight into the church confessional.
From her point of view, that was only natural.
There was no way she was going to calmly let some raving madman perform human experimentation on her after talking about replacing bodies and moving souls around.
Solomon felt wronged, Bonney was full of suspicion, and Kuma was left in an awkward spot.
To be honest, even he found Nika’s return easier to believe than the idea of remaking a body and transferring a soul into it.
Solomon had done nothing but speak the truth from a purely magecraft-based perspective, yet all he got in return was suspicion. He felt terribly wronged, but there was no one he could complain to.
In the end, Solomon really was, helplessly, a magus of the Type-Moon world...
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