—Real World—
The Marine had built SWORD in the gaps between official accountability — a unit that formally disobeyed orders, technically held no ranks, and quietly received generous support from the people running the institution. It was a contradiction that the paperwork never quite addressed, and everyone involved understood that was the point.
In a corner of the Marine base observation room, Hibari watched the Sky Screen with her hands clasped, breathing out slowly when the three figures finally connected with Aramaki on the feed. "They made it. They're not dead." She said it twice, like the repetition would anchor it. "With the Admiral there, they'll be fine."
Kujaku looked at her sideways. "Have you already forgotten what Helmeppo said befpre? About how the Wano story ends?"
The question landed and stayed there. Hibari didn't answer it.
On the other side of the room, Grus sat on the table — he never sat in chairs when tables were available, a habit nobody had successfully argued him out of — watching his future self dissolve into a clay barrier over his teammates with an expression that was mostly composed. He'd thought about how he might die before. Captain of a unit like this, the question wasn't optional. Dying to protect the people behind him was the version he'd have chosen if the choice had been his.
He pulled the brim of his long hat down slightly.
What he was actually thinking about was Todoroki Shoto.
"The kid," he said, without particular preamble. "We should find him before someone decides to just put him in a cell and call it 'containment.'"
Kujaku raised an eyebrow. "The Sky Screen wasn't very clear on his background. All we know is that his father is apparently a problem."
"The Sky Screen said he had a father. It didn't say what kind." Grus shrugged. "If he's already operating at that level without proper direction, imagine what he becomes with it." He tilted his head. "Also — Helmeppo. He's currently someone's orderly, which is a waste. Let's fix that."
"I just like that stubborn type," Hibari said, mostly to herself.
The war room had a different atmosphere.
The people in it were watching the same Sky Screen with a different set of questions. Orochi's Eighth Form had performed far past any intelligence estimate. The strength displayed in that final shape was not Admiral-level — it was at the threshold of something above it, the kind of threshold that divided the world into those who could be relevant to a fight and those who simply couldn't, regardless of preparation.
Aramaki was sitting beside Sakazuki — not in the admiral's chair, because he wasn't an admiral yet. The future version of him on the Sky Screen was flying toward Wano on a flower propeller. The current version was sitting close enough to Sakazuki that the implication was obvious to anyone in the room paying attention.
"In the future, you operate too loosely on Marine missions," Sakazuki said, not looking at him. "Stay near me. I'll correct that. Make you into a proper admiral."
Aramaki absorbed this with the particular quality of someone who had been waiting a long time for it and was not going to show that on his face. The radicals needed capable people who weren't afraid to act. He was that. The acknowledgment that Sakazuki was willing to formally claim him — that was not nothing.
Tsuru didn't look at Sakazuki and Aramaki. She was looking at the Sky Screen.
"Nika Kaido is becoming a serious problem," she said. "And now there's Orochi on top of it. If those two formalize an alliance, we are not looking at a manageable situation."
She had done the calculation privately. From the conversation between the Broadcast-Helmeppo and Coby, he had personally confirmed that he was the only member of the Sword team to survive the Wano operation.
Kujaku was her granddaughter. The granddaughter was currently alive in this room, watching her future self on a Sky Screen, not knowing what came after the frames currently showing.
Tsuru did not say any of this aloud.
"Kaido seems to be leaning toward keeping Orochi alive rather than eliminating him," she continued. "If he wanted Orochi dead, the land would pay the price of that fight. He's calculating, even now."
Garp rubbed his temple.
The Kaido and Orochi problem was real, but it was not what was occupying his mind.
Kuzan looked at his teacher.
He looked at him for a long time.
In the future shown by the Sky Screen, Garp would be humiliated by Black Sperm. He would age faster than his frame was built for, spend everything he had left in the Gates, and end up submerged in a tide of reconstituted monsters. Coby, the one this man brought — would be the cultist feeding on believers in the same castle.
Kuzan considered the shape of that.
Coby was not yet what the Sky Screen showed. But the capacity was there.
If it was addressed now, cleanly, Garp would not have to live through what the Sky Screen showed.
Kuzan did not want to dirty his hands with it. But there were others who might be positioned correctly, if the right suggestion reached the right ear. He filed it away. Not a plan, not yet. Just a thought with a shape.
At the head of the table, the Fleet Admiral had not spoken for some time.
The question in his mind was the one nobody in the room had answered to his satisfaction: how had Kozuki Momonosuke defeated two monsters of this caliber? Kaido in his current trajectory and Orochi in his Eighth Form both represented things that didn't have clean solutions. The Sky Screen's confidence in Momonosuke as the eventual answer to Wano Country was a narrative he did not yet have the evidence to believe.
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