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First some context :
Leonardo was mostly a self-taught Genius. His formal education had been very basic and completed at a very young age. His brilliance stemmed not from a natural talent (even though any drawing from his youth is obviously advanced). But his Genius instead stemmed from an insatiable spirit driven to reach a goal that he gave himself from again a very young age. He was so mesmerised by the beauty and workings of nature in Tuscany (his original home) as a child that he chose to learn absolutely everything there was about how nature worked! He decided no secret held by nature would be kept from him. One of Leonardo’s motivations of his inventions was to mimic nature, learn from it or in a sense control it! The true Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci was thus a product of his overall positive and driven attitude with his endless energy flowing from his deep commitment to complete his goal. Leonardo was often called “one of the greatest brains of all time” and “the man 500 years ahead of his time”.

Does this description sound familiar ?

Yea you guessed it, this is exactly how Vegapunk has been described in the One Piece universe. That’s right he was inspired by Leonardo D. Vinci (I know is Da Vinci, is just a little play on word lol).This will come in handy later. Now back to Vegapunk.

Some of his inventions :


Notice anything particular in his cyborg animals and pacifistas. Vegapunk like to numerate his cyborgs, which bring us to this guy:

This guy is a cyborg with a number and is based in an extremely mechanized island. Yea that’s right he seems like one of Vegapunk cyborgs. Unless Kaido got a great scientific mind who likes to numerate his inventions, this is clearly the work of Vegapunk, but why would one of Vegapunk’s inventions would end in Kaido hands? That’s right because Kaido and Vegapunk are working together. As for the why are they working together, we will give an answer soon, but first, another area of Vegapunk research is this:

He was the first to create an artificial Zoan Devil fruit thought it was deemed a “failure”. We got this :

That’s right like the mechanicals inventions, Vegapunk is also giving artificial Zoan to Kaido.

Wow wow wow, you would say, have you even read the manga ? Kaido Zoan army are coming from the Smiles that Caesar Clown and Doffy are producing. Ok fair enough let’s examine some facts :
Smiles are far from perfect

We don’t know what those risks are, but think about it, if you were to build an army, would you gamble so that your army is vulnerable who knows how and when ? Maybe, maybe not.

Smiles are known by lots of people
Like in the image above, we know Law is aware not only of their existence, but also of their limits, we got Caesar who also claimed this :

So I think it is safe to assume that not only Kaido, but lots of people heard or even possess Smiles.

Smiles are made by Joker and sold in the black-market.
Like stated before, lots of people know and have probably access to smiles, then don’t you find it Odd that only Kaido got the idea to build and army (why not Blackbeard, Big Mom or any major player). I think is because the risks are too high.

Smiles are produced by Caesar
Seems odd that Vegapunk was the first to create and artificial Zoan, and with his genius obviously greater than Caesar, why would Vegapunk stop to produce artificial Zoan and Caesar would continue successfully. Doesn’t make sense.

Here’s the deal, Vegapunk continued his research and his artificial devil fruits are far superior to Smiles. Since he and Kaido are working together, they decided that the best way to keep it secret is to make believe the entire world that Kaido was using Smiles to build his army of Zoan, when in fact he is using Vegapunk superior artificial fruit. They do this, because, everybody knows the risk of Smiles, so if Kaido appears to by using them, his army is not much of a threat to the big players if they are aware of the weakness of his Zoan Army, so they leave him alone. It also protects Vegapunk, if they make believe that Kaido is using Smiles (accessible in the underworld) nobody thinks that Vegapunk is working on artificial devils fruits too.

OK, you make it till here, and you think all this is at least a bit possible, you will ask yourself, but why Vegapunk would work with Kaido.
The short answer, they are both working directly for the WG.
Don’t you think that those bastards at the WG would try to have an influence in the Yonko’s territory? Who is best to make a deal with than a ruthless, hungry power Yonko like Kaido. In exchange of his collaboration, the WG agreed to give him access to weapons (cyborgs and artificial devil fruits) through Vegapunk research.
Also if you remember in marineford arc, the marines couldn’t track Whitebeard movements, even though they knew he was coming to marineford. But with Kaido, they not only knew his intentions, that he was going after WB (because it was an order from the WG) but also that he was stopped by Shanks (because Kaido told them). So it seems to me that Kaido is working with the WG

Now about Vegapunk, he seems like a nice guy, who care for others, why would he work with the WG and a men like Kaido.
Here’s come the Leonardo Da Vinci parallels. Much like Da Vinci, Vegapunk is a naïve good man who thinks that with his inventions he would help make the world a better place. As a young inventor he saw the limits of his resources, so he did what anybody with a good heart with the intention to help his fellows humans would do, join the good organization: The marines. Like that he got access not only to materials resources, but also human resources and information to make his inventions come to fruition.

As he worked with the marines in the higher spheres, he saw the corruption and the bad thing that were done by the organization. He also heard of the awful things that pirates do. So like any naïve genius would do, he became disenchanted by the state of the world, he became bitter to the point of thinking that the world needed a renaissance (again Da Vinci was one of the architect of la renaissance, an age where the scientific mind led the world to a better place).
Vegapunk got the genius, but he knew he needed power, so he turned to the most powerful faction, the WG to make his plan work. Now he became the archetypical disenchanted scientific, he went from a naïve good guy thinking his inventions would help the world, to this scientific mind with the mission to save the world no matter how (cleanse the world of all of his madness, even if it means destroyed it). Moreover, don’t you found enigmatic that if he was still a good guy, that is really incompatible with the fact that he created the Cyborg weapons – the Pacifista, and the even more bothering fact is that “Pacifista” seems to come from the word “Pacifism” or “Peace”, witch fit this idea of his resolution of “saving the world”.

Now you may say, why he didn’t join the revolutionaries. First he is described as an old geezer. So by the time he got disenchanted and bitter, probably the revolutionaries weren’t still actives. Some say that he may be a spy for Dragon, again doesn’t make much sense to me, why would you send your best scientific mind (to build weapons) to your enemy organisation, usually spies are important guys, but not that important.
Then there’s the whole Kuma action.

Because Vegapunk made a deal with Kuma (who is a revo) people think that Vegapunk is a revo too. But again if both were revo, why would they need a deal. If I remember correctly, Vegapunk accepted the deal because Kuma “got some dirt on him”. Why would he need to blackmail if both were revos.

Finally and not least, with his genius Vegapunk will surely one day create a weapon so powerful that it would destroy the world (to cleanse it of all his “evil”), but we know there’s a man who would counter this invention :

With his invention, Franky is going to surpass him in terms of innovation and technology; hence he will become the greatest inventor of the world, fitting the King of pirate’s equipage.

So do you think that Vegapunk is working with Kaido?

*Theory by Suuuuper

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