-Real World-
The Beasts Pirates, as a rule, had minimal investment in what the Marine chose to discuss at its annual meetings. The footage being broadcast from the lecture hall had produced a few yawns among the simpler-minded cadres and generated no intelligence that anyone felt a strong need to write down. Watching the Marine conduct its internal arguments was entertainment, at best.
That changed the moment the Infinity Castle broke through the clouds and its full silhouette became visible on the Sky Screen.
The room sharpened immediately. Cadres who had been half-present became fully present. Notebooks appeared. The other Emperor factions' cadres assembled on that floating city were catalogued with the focused attention of people who understood that knowing your future allies was nearly as important as knowing your enemies — and knowing your future disasters was perhaps more important than both.
Neither Meruem's current whereabouts nor his presence in the Sky Screen's future footage was something the Beasts Pirates had access to in the present. But Kurozumi Tama was already on Onigashima, a guest waiting for Kaido's assessment of her and her capabilities. She had not yet been taken particularly seriously.
Then Dark WarGreymon appeared in the sky.
Queen was supposed to be in the treatment room attending to King. He had arranged King's care and promptly found a reason to leave it, because something metallic and a hundred meters tall had just appeared on the Sky Screen and Queen had an acute professional interest in materials he had not yet encountered. He pushed his glasses up his nose and bent toward the screen with the focused attention of a man performing appraisal.
"She can actually command it. I want to study that body — Dark WarGreymon doesn't operate by any scientific principle I recognize. What a specimen."
He examined Kurozumi Tama's face at length from his position at the screen, searching for some external indicator of the gift responsible for this. He found nothing. She looked exactly like any ordinary girl from Wano Country, the unremarkable kind you encountered in large numbers in any town market. No physical sign of whatever allowed her to do what she apparently could do. Geniuses were deeply unfair people. They left everyone else behind with embarrassing ease, and no amount of effort by ordinary minds could close the distance that raw talent produced from birth.
"Can someone explain to me how this is scientifically possible? I also want to ride on its neck."
Queen had stopped pretending to have a professional reason for his interest. He was jealous. He was openly jealous. He did not see why this should be concealed.
Ulti had a different response. She had her arms crossed and her opinion forming before the image had finished loading. Another woman, a younger one at that, earning a Calamity position that the entire Tobiroppō had been competing toward — a position that represented more than combat ranking, it represented a kind of institutional acknowledgment that Ulti felt she had more claim to than a girl who had just arrived. The jealousy was less scientific than Queen's and more personal.
"I don't see what the fuss is. It's just a larger metal monster. I doubt its head is harder than mine."
She believed this when she said it.
The Sky Screen then showed the clip from the Giant Rebellion in Wano Country.
The street in the footage was very quiet in the way that streets become quiet after everyone alive has already run. Dark WarGreymon stood in it at full scale — a Kokushibontain that had chosen to hold a particular shape. The Colossal Giants around it were large. Dark WarGreymon was larger. And it had the unhurried quality of something that was not particularly concerned about the difference in scale.
It raised its hands. Dark energy gathered between them from the surrounding space, condensing into a sphere roughly the size of a large building — a black sun, rotating slowly, casting light that absorbed rather than illuminated.
When the sphere came down, it didn't make much noise. The street simply ceased to contain what it had contained before. The Colossal Giants were gone. The buildings were gone. What remained were black flames running along surfaces that had somehow survived, and the impression of a thoroughfare that had been thoroughly reconsidered.
Dark WarGreymon had been exercising restraint. It was standing on Wano Country soil — the birthplace of Kurozumi Tama — and it had adjusted its output accordingly. At full expression, the black sun could have taken considerably more than one street.
The room took a collective breath.
Every eye moved to where Tama was sitting.
She had a slightly confused expression. Her understanding of Dark WarGreymon's actual scale of capability was, apparently, still developing. She had seen it fight before. She had not entirely processed what she had seen.
"I should probably still just call it Kuro," she said, mostly to herself. "That was — there might have been innocent people on that street, besides the giants."
The girl watching herself in the footage from six years away looked back at the cadres watching her. The Tama in the sky and the Tama in the room were made of the same material. They did not resemble each other in any way that mattered.
Ulti slowly uncrossed her arms. The cold sweat arrived without permission. What she had said about the metal monster and her own head — she was retroactively removing that statement from the record of things she had said. Dark WarGreymon could have rubbed a black sun into existence large enough to eliminate most of the people currently in this room without adjusting its posture. That was not a comparison she wanted to have invited.
"I take that back."
How many companions like Dark WarGreymon Kurozumi Tama could call at once — nobody in the room knew, and nobody in the room felt entirely comfortable not knowing.
Most of the cadres' attention was now directed at the current Tama with the particular intensity of people reassessing a situation. The weight of that collective scrutiny was not something a girl who had only recently arrived on Onigashima was equipped to absorb without difficulty. She turned, located Black Maria's general vicinity, and attached herself to the woman's side, presenting the cadres with the back of her head instead.
She was adjusting. She just needed time.
Kaido had gone to check on King. He believed in King's ability to wake himself up — the man was not the type to stay down from pride alone. He was making his way back from the treatment room when the Sky Screen had shown what it showed, and the image of a metallic dragon beast that met his aesthetic requirements in every direction had produced in him an immediate and uncomplicated desire to understand it firsthand.
He found Tama before she had finished hiding behind Black Maria.
She noticed his approach from the corner of her eye. His height, his presence, the particular quality of the air around him — all of this reached her before he was close, and she found that looking directly at him was not something she was currently capable of. She pressed further into Black Maria's side.
Kaido slowed down. He made a deliberate effort with his voice.
"Since the Sky Screen shows you joining us in the future, you'll receive the same treatment from today. Begin communicating with the beast tribes beyond this world's boundaries as soon as you're able. Do it at your own pace — rushing would create problems I don't want. If you do good work, you won't be treated unfairly."
A pause. He had managed not to make the words frightening. He was reasonably satisfied with this.
"Thank you, Lord Kaido. I'll follow your instructions."
The sensible response. Kaido approved of sensible responses from people who had earned the right to give them. He gave Black Maria additional instructions on his way out — manage Tama's daily arrangements, ensure the less disciplined members of the crew left her alone, and no alcohol until she was older.
Kurozumi Tama emerged slightly from behind Black Maria's arm and tried to organize what had just happened.
She had come to Onigashima as a guest. She had arrived without a clear plan. She had watched the Sky Screen show a version of herself that she did not fully recognize, commanding something that she had not yet understood the full scale of. She had received promises from the King of Beasts himself and the protective arrangement of the crew's most politically connected Tobiroppō.
She was somewhat overwhelmed. Her brain, which she would have been the first to admit was not her strongest feature, was running at capacity.
Sometimes knowing your own future was a gift. Even when you weren't sure what to do with it yet.