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"Stephen, if you're looking for a logical, biological explanation that fits into a textbook, you're going to be disappointed," Rosh said, his voice dropping into a tone that was both casual and immensely confident. "In the world of Devil Fruits, 'common sense' is usually the first thing to go out the window."
Rosh offered a faint, knowing smile as he watched the gears turning in the surgeon's brilliant mind. "The 'stitching' we're discussing here is fundamentally different from the medical suturing you've spent a lifetime perfecting. You're thinking in terms of needles, tension, and physical displacement. This is something else entirely."
He began to pace slowly around the display case, his eyes fixed on the bizarrely patterned fruit. "While the Stitch-Stitch Fruit does involve threads passing through a human body to fix, close, or secure tissue, these aren't medical-grade polymers or silk. They are threads manifested directly from the user's own willpower and Devil Fruit energy."
"The application might look like physical suturing to the naked eye," Rosh continued, "but the mechanism is revolutionary. These threads don't push cells aside or tear through membranes. They pass through the body without causing even a microscopic amount of trauma."
Rosh paused for emphasis, meeting Strange's skeptical gaze. "And when I say zero trauma, I mean exactly that. Absolute zero."
"But Shopkeeper," Strange interrupted, his voice rising with the reflexive protest of a man who had performed thousands of invasive procedures. "Even if the thread is a manifestation of an ability, physics still applies. To close a wound, the thread must physically occupy the same space as the tissue. It has to pierce. It has to anchor. How can you inhabit that space without displacement?"
"It does pass through the body," Rosh replied, his expression becoming inscrutable.
"However, passing through doesn't necessitate damage. Think of it like water passing through a silk screen, or light passing through a window. The medium remains unchanged by the transit. I realize this defies every law of biology you've ever memorized, but that is the essence of a Devil Fruit; it doesn't just improve on common sense; it transcends it to achieve the miraculous."
"I see. I suppose I'll have to accept that explanation," Strange fell silent for a moment, his brow arching as he processed the sheer impossibility of the claim. A flicker of genuine, childlike excitement, the kind usually reserved for a groundbreaking medical discovery, began to dance in his eyes. "It's essentially… magic, isn't it?"
'If the Stitch-Stitch Fruit truly offered trauma-free suturing, its clinical value was beyond calculation. It would eliminate post-operative inflammation, infection risks from the sutures themselves, and the need for delicate "re-do" surgeries.' Strange thought to himself.
"Because it causes no damage, once the threads are removed, they leave no trace behind," Rosh added, driving the point home. "No scarring, no puncture marks, and no fibrous adhesions, it's as if they were never there."
"And believe me, Stephen," Rosh leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "Beyond the operating room, this 'non-destructive stitching' has applications in some rather... unique scenarios that a man of your creativity would find irresistible."
"For example, in a disaster scenario, think a catastrophic earthquake or a massive storm at sea, where you need to secure someone quickly to keep them from being swept away or crushed. A Stitch-Stitch user can simply stitch a person to a wall, the floor, or any stable surface to keep them pinned in place."
"Stitch a person... to a wall?"
Strange's jaw dropped. He stared at Rosh in sheer disbelief. To a surgeon trained in the sanctity of the human form, the concept sounded less like a medical miracle and more like a scene from a psychological thriller. A visceral image from a movie flashed in his mind: a deranged woman, desperate to keep her lover from leaving, sewing his legs to the bedframe. The thought sent a cold shiver of dread crawling down his spine.
"Indeed, Stephen." Seeing the usually unflappable doctor looking genuinely rattled, Rosh couldn't help but let out a low, amused chuckle.
"Because the stitching causes no harm to the person, its utility moves far beyond the operating room. It's not just about closing an incision; it becomes a tool for absolute, safe immobilization and high-stakes rescue."
Strange forced himself to push the macabre mental image aside. His brain, ever the analytical engine, immediately latched onto a technical hurdle. "Shopkeeper, if you're talking about sewing someone to a concrete wall, the 'needle' created by the fruit must be special, right? A standard surgical needle wouldn't make it a millimeter into a concrete wall without snapping."
"Exactly," Rosh nodded, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. "The needles generated by the Stitch-Stitch Fruit completely ignore standard physical constraints. They don't care about density or hardness. Whether it's reinforced steel, carbon fiber, or even a raw diamond, the needle will pass through as if it's piercing soft butter."
"Which means," Rosh added, "the Stitch-Stitch Fruit can also 'stitch' inanimate materials together. You could sew two steel plates together as easily as you'd mend a tear in a shirt."
'Stitching steel plates.' Strange felt the foundations of his worldview being battered yet again. The word "stitch" had no business being in the same sentence as "steel." It was further proof that Devil Fruits didn't just provide a power; they were a total rewrite of the laws of reality.
Though his heart remained firmly in the clinic, Strange wasn't blind to the industrial implications. This power could revolutionize everything from aerospace manufacturing to deep-sea construction. But for a man who lived to save lives, the focus remained narrow: if he could stitch through steel, imagine what he could do with a shattered femur or a complex spinal reconstruction.
"Shopkeeper, I've heard a lot of impressive claims so far," Strange said, his tone turning solemn as he crossed his arms. "But aside from the unnatural nature of the needle and thread, is there anything else? Any... other special abilities?"
He hesitated, his analytical mind already weighing the cost-to-benefit ratio. If the fruit's only real selling point was "trauma-free suturing," it was arguably a luxury rather than a revolutionary new procedure. In the high-stakes world of neurosurgery, suturing was merely the final act, the finishing touch on a masterpiece. The true difficulty, the life-and-death struggle, lay in the procedure itself. Perfect stitches were a nice bonus for the patient's vanity, but they didn't save someone on the table; the surgeon's hands did.
"Stephen, if I leave it at that, the fruit does sound a bit mundane for a man of your caliber, doesn't it?"
Rosh shook his head with a soft, knowing laugh. "But when it comes to the actual mechanics of a surgery, I'm willing to bet that the true potential of this fruit will exceed even your wildest, most ambitious dreams."
Strange leaned in, his skepticism momentarily buried by a wave of intense curiosity.
"Think of it this way," Rosh began, his voice dropping into a rhythmic, captivating flow. "A user of the Stitch-Stitch Fruit doesn't have to perform like a traditional surgeon; hand in glove, needle in hand, one painstaking, steady stitch at a time. You're limited by your biology. Your hands can shake, your eyes can tire, and there are places in the human body that even your most delicate tools simply cannot reach."
Strange nodded slowly, his mind drifting to the countless times he'd wished he could just reach a fraction of a millimeter further into a patient's brain.
"But with this Devil Fruit," Rosh continued, "if the user is skilled enough, they can control the needles and threads with their mind. You can direct them to perform the suture autonomously, weaving through tissue with impossible precision, without ever having to physically touch the patient."
"You could call it... stitching by sheer will."
'Stitching with the mind!' Strange's eyes went wide, the shock hitting him like a physical jolt. His mental foundation, the very pillars of everything he had learned in medical school, began to crumble. His breathing grew shallow and rapid as the implications cascaded through his thoughts like a landslide.
If one could suture through sheer mental command, it didn't just mean "better" surgery. It meant that a vast horizon of high-risk, inaccessible, and previously "inoperable" cases, medical mysteries that modern science had abandoned as lost causes, would suddenly be within his grasp. He wouldn't just be the best surgeon in New York; he would be a god of the operating room.
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Next Chapter: Through the Sapphire Glass
Next Next Chapter: The God-Tier Op-Op Fruit
Next Next Next Chapter: Bruce Banner Returns
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