I Sell Gacha Jars in One Piece

"Is that... cola?"

Cola existed in the world of pirates. Franky had bought it before, drank it on occasion, knew the look of it and the smell of it. He brought the bottle close and took a careful sniff, and the carbonation confirmed it. He leaned back with a satisfied expression.

"This is just regular cola. Cola counts as a treasure?"

"Who said anything about cola?" Amon kept a straight face. "This is the Otaku's Happy Water. It's an energy-enhanced carbonated drink. One sip and you'll be operating at full capacity, whenever and wherever you need it."

Franky looked at the bottle again, then at Amon.

"Energy-enhanced carbonated drink."

"That's right. And beyond what it does to the body, it can also function as a fuel source for machinery. You could use it to power a ship's engine. Load it into a cannon. The energy output from this particular bottle is considerably stronger than what it looks like."

"That strong?" Franky turned the bottle over slowly.

"Try a sip if you don't believe me."

Franky opened the bottle, tilted it back, and took a careful mouthful.

"...Oh."

He stood still for a moment, taking inventory of what his body was doing.

"That's incredible. I actually feel like I'm full of energy. Like something just switched on."

He hadn't been entirely sure it was real before. Now he was. The sluggishness he'd been carrying without quite registering it had disappeared, replaced by something humming and ready, like a coil wound tight.

Then the energy had to go somewhere.

Franky's expression shifted. He angled away from the group, and what followed was a sound of considerable enthusiasm and volume, accompanied by an outcome that sent a column of water shooting skyward several dozen meters off the side of the ship.

Everyone looked at the water.

Then at Franky.

"Super!" Franky raised both arms in his signature pose, apparently unbothered and in fact delighted. "Completely super!"

The particular nature of Franky's enthusiasms was, Amon reflected, consistent across all available information about him.

"The ship applications are where it gets interesting," Amon said, moving things along. "Take it back to the Franky Battle and test it in the cannon. You'll see."

Franky's eyes lit up. He was already moving before the sentence finished, leaping the gap between ships with full energy.

"Place the bottle near the power intake," Amon called after him. "That's all you need."

"Like this?" Franky positioned the bottle, and a brief sound emerged from the Franky Battle, something between a chime and a resonance.

"Charging complete. Windstorm Cannon available."

Franky stared at his own ship with an expression that cycled through confusion, understanding, and barely contained excitement in about two seconds.

"Windstorm Cannon?"

He fired it.

The shot that left the Franky Battle's cannon didn't behave like a cannon shot. It left a path through the water that evaporated on contact, the sea surface smoking where the energy had passed through it, and the impact further out sent a column of displaced water high enough to briefly block the horizon.

Franky stood at the helm looking at what he had just done.

Then he did the pose again.

"Super Windstorm Cannon!"

Amon watched from the ship and did his quiet mental calculation. That attack, from a standard gun platform running on enhanced cola, had produced output somewhere in the six-to-seven thousand bounty range. A single bottle had done that. One third of the bottle's contents, to be precise, which meant three full charges per bottle, and the bottle regenerated three full charges per day.

Not unlimited, but significant. The cola would need to be rationed.

"Impressive, isn't it?"

"Incredibly impressive, super impressive!" Franky came bounding back. He was holding the bottle now with careful reverence. "This is better than anything I've built."

"And here's what it pairs with." Amon reached into the collection and produced the Optimus Prime model, setting it down on the railing between them.

Before, when it had come out of the jar, the model had been small enough to hold in one hand. Franky had looked at it briefly and not made much of it. Now, with Amon's identification behind it, there was something different about it. A weight to the presence of the thing that hadn't been there before.

"This is Optimus Prime," Amon said. "Bond with the energy core, and this armor becomes yours to command."

He set it down.

The model unfolded.

It was not a slow process. In the span of a breath, the palm-sized figure expanded, joints extending, mass arriving from somewhere that didn't entirely make sense, until a five-to-six meter armored figure stood on the deck of the ship, occupying the space with authority.

Franky's eyes went gold.

If cola was the practical side of a man's soul, then mecha was the romantic side, the part that had never grown up and had no intention of starting. No boy who had ever looked at something enormous and armored and powerful had ever needed an explanation for why it mattered. Franky was many things, but underneath all of it he was still exactly that boy, and the sight of Optimus Prime standing in front of him made every other thought temporarily irrelevant.

"That's," he said.

And then couldn't continue.

"You just need to bond with the energy core," Amon said, holding out a small, glowing component. "Press your fingerprint to it. That's all."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

Franky took the core with hands that were not entirely steady, pressed his thumb against it, and held his breath.

[Ding. Optimus Prime armor bonding confirmed…]

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