-Broadcast-
Most pirates would consider it suicidal to move against Rome while the Marine's entire command structure was assembled there. All twelve Admirals in one room — not dispersed, not stretched across patrol routes, but present and concentrated. To create a meaningful diversion, you would need at least twelve opponents capable of occupying an Admiral each. The calculation was obvious.
And yet.
There was another way to read the same situation. Precisely because the Marine's fighting strength was so densely concentrated in one location, the security apparatus extended outward from there had never been less vigilant. Rome's defenders would be watching the hall, not the horizon. Overconfidence had a way of producing the same result as negligence.
The sky above the sea had been clear. Then, from one direction, it wasn't.
Dark clouds rolled in, thick and heavy, piling against each other like storm water finding low ground. They blocked the sun entirely in their path, pressing down with a leaden weight that made the air below feel compressed. Lightning moved through them in horizontal arcs — brilliant, continuous, filling the atmosphere with interference that played havoc with Observation Haki. Anything trying to sense through that electrical noise would find only static.
Above the clouds, something enormous moved.
A city drifted in the sunlight above the storm layer, its outline brilliant and vast. It was built to a scale that made the eye uncertain — skyscrapers rising like columns, streets laid out in geometric order, people moving through them with the busy purposefulness of a population that had long since stopped finding their home remarkable. It traveled slowly, deliberately, on a heading it had been given.
The Infinity Castle.
At the Castle's exit, a large group was assembled and waiting. They had not come together out of affiliation with each other — the flags behind them made this clear at a glance. The Beasts Pirates. The Blackbeard Pirates. The Big Mom Pirates. The Joker Pirates. Four Emperor-faction banners sharing the same space, the cadres seated beneath them watching each other with the wary attention of powerful people who had chosen cooperation for tactical reasons and were not pretending it was anything else.
The four Emperors themselves were absent. They had not come.
The officer who had received this gathering on Buggy's behalf was Galdino — the third-ranking figure in the Joker Pirates' internal hierarchy, known in his previous life as Mr. 3 of Baroque Works. He was a man of medium build with hair styled into a distinctive "3" shape above his broad forehead. A pair of glasses sat above his thick lips, lending him an air of scholarly temperament that was either cultivated or genuine — probably both. Blue-and-white striped shirt, clean jeans. Nothing about his appearance announced danger.
"We're moving faster than projected. We likely won't be in position to act until evening. Buggy-sama will make his move at Mary Geoise."
Galdino stood at the edge of the Infinity Castle's platform and looked down through the cloud layer. Through breaks in the storm below, he could see the shape of the Sabaody Archipelago passing beneath them. They were passing over it now, on their way to the approach vector.
"Marineford." A voice came from behind him. Clear and unhurried, with a neutrality of tone that belonged to neither male nor female registers, carrying instead something that made it simply worth listening to. "They call it Rome now. I still find myself thinking of the old name."
The speaker sat in stillness, long pink hair hanging over one shoulder and partially obscuring a face that would have drawn attention in any room — delicate in its proportions, carrying a beauty that blurred conventional categories. His eyes were closed. He appeared composed, even serene.
[Sky Screen Character Note: Coby — Captain of the Blackbeard Pirates' Tenth Ship. Blood-Lord of Rings. User of the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Miroku (Human-Human Fruit, Mythical Beast — Bodhisattva Form).]
Six years was a long time. The young Marine chore boy who had once cried over his own limitations and pushed himself toward every goal he could name was difficult to find in the person sitting here now. The Bodhisattva fruit had not remade him from the outside in — it had waited for him to arrive somewhere and then reflected it back. What Coby had become after the Battle of Marineford was already most of the way there.
He had watched Garp's grandson perform at Marineford. He had watched powerful men become grotesque and powerful institutions become absurd. And somewhere in that chaos he had understood, with a clarity that his earlier self would have resisted, that sincerity and effort alone could not place you correctly in the architecture of the world. You also had to choose your position. And then stand in it.
Sometimes he was grateful to Luffy for the education.
"If you'd stayed in the Marine and not defected," said Chrollo Lucilfer, closing the book in his hands — a collection of Buddhist legends acquired from the Infinity Castle's library — "you might have made Rear Admiral."
"And you find that preferable to the present arrangement?"
Chrollo's expression suggested he found it marginally more defensible but declined to argue the point. He and Coby had arrived in the Blackbeard Pirates at different times and by different routes, and their private understanding of each other was built on the frank acknowledgment that their values were opposite and that this made them, paradoxically, better sparring partners than most. They needled each other without malice. It passed the time.
"Teach apparently became bald because of the fruit," Coby remarked, returning the conversational favor. "I wonder if you'd recognize him immediately, looking the way he does now."
Chrollo did not respond to this. He reopened his book.
Across the assembled cadres, beneath the Big Mom Pirates' flag, a large bald man with the wide third eye of his clan sat watching the two Blackbeard officers with undisguised suspicion. Tien Shinhan had not forgotten the infiltration of Totto Land. Chrollo Lucilfer and his Nusumu Nusumu no Mi (Thief-Thief Fruit) remained the single active threat his Ki-sense treated as requiring constant monitoring. A Devil Fruit thief operating within arm's reach of the strongest abilities in the world was a category of problem that warranted vigilance above social convention.
The infiltration of Totto Land had taught the Blackbeard side a lesson about the limits of their approach. Chrollo and Van Augur had used the stolen Suke Suke no Mi (Clear-Clear Fruit) to move invisible through the island — but Tien Shinhan's sensitivity to Ki did not depend on visual perception. He had found them anyway. After dozens of exchanges between a man who held stolen Devil Fruit ability and a man who needed none of it, the Blackbeard incursion had failed to extract what it came for. Van Augur had opened a door and pulled Chrollo through it, then gone to collect Blackbeard from Nine Snake Island. The three of them had spent a long period afterward on Beehive Island, silent.
Now they were here, under different flags but aimed at the same target.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~