—Broadcast — Holy Roman Empire, Year 1940—
The Sky Screen concluded the Helmeppo arc and, as it had done before at the end of significant story threads, stepped sideways into something smaller. A glimpse of the future. The kind of life that existed in the Holy Roman Empire in the era that the people of the present day were, without knowing it, working toward.
Borsalino was wearing civilian clothes and pink sunglasses, and looked like any older man on an evening walk who had perhaps made some interesting aesthetic choices.
"Barry," he said, as they moved down a street with very few people on it, "the film you took me to see last time — was that genuinely what passes for entertainment in this era?"
Barry Allen, second-generation Flash, experienced a brief cardiac event. He had spent several weeks in the anxiety of a person who had introduced their idol to something they were now unsure about, and had just received confirmation that the idol remembered it.
"That was a different category of film," he said, keeping his voice low. He had learned, after the first few days, that Borsalino's volume settings did not naturally account for public spaces. "A different category entirely. What I'm taking you to see tonight is a real movie. It's adapted from something that actually happened in your era, as far as anyone can tell."
Borsalino processed this. The enthusiasm level was immediately reduced.
He had spent the previous night watching everything in Barry's collection. He had opinions about the production quality across decades and had communicated them at length.
The walk to the cinema took them past a couple moving in the opposite direction — a large man with an impressive afro and a woman wearing rather less than the ambient temperature seemed to recommend.
Borsalino whistled.
The man stopped.
Barry was already moving, inserting himself between the two parties with the practiced efficiency of someone who had done this exact thing before, which he had, because Borsalino had no functional social filter when it came to attractive women and this was not the first evening they'd been out.
"My uncle," Barry said, smiling at both parties simultaneously. "Country background. Just arrived in the city. He has no idea how things work here. I'm so sorry. He means absolutely nothing by it and I promise this won't happen again."
The man looked at Borsalino, who was looking pleasantly at the evening sky with the expression of someone who had simply stepped outside to enjoy the air and had no involvement in any recent events.
"The next person he tries that with might not be as patient as me," the man said. He pulled his companion away. The matter concluded.
"People in the future have very comfortable lives," Borsalino said, resuming walking. "The last time someone threatened me for something like that, it took considerably more effort to de-escalate."
"The last time someone threatened you," Barry said, "they probably regretted it immediately and in detail."
"They did." A pause. "I miss that."
Barry had explained the ability situation on the walk over.
The Holy Roman Empire, in the process of coming to power and stabilizing that power, had moved to suppress circulation of Devil Fruits and had implemented monitoring of people who demonstrated unusual abilities. The cameras on the poles — Barry pointed to one without drawing attention to the gesture — fed into systems that flagged anomalous physical events. Using Logia transformation on a public street in Year 1940 would produce a response within minutes.
Borsalino understood this intellectually and found it difficult to feel in his body. His entire career had been built on being the most physically anomalous person in any given situation. The adjustment required was conceptual rather than practical, but it was still an adjustment.
"The professor who taught you to manage this," Borsalino said. "The one in the wheelchair. I'd like to meet him."
"He's at the university. I've tried to set something up but he's very busy." Barry held a door open. "Maybe when things calm down."
Barry had connections at the cinema — a former classmate who sold tickets had agreed, through the social mechanism of someone who wanted to keep a larger favor in reserve, to let two people in free for the late showing. There were almost no other attendees. The lights were still up. A couple in the third row was leaning into each other and watching the pre-show reel.
Borsalino and Barry took the back row.
The film was called Love in the Closed Country.
The setting, Borsalino recognized within the first establishing shot — Wano Country, rendered through the lens of what someone imagining Wano Country from several generations of historical distance would produce. Which meant it was beautiful in ways that Wano Country actually was and incorrect in ways that people who had never been there couldn't know to correct.
The protagonist was bald.
He was introduced mid-battle — a Marine vessel engaged with pirates in open water, the kind of scene the film's production budget had handled with considerable ambition if not quite convincing results. The ship went down. The bald young Marine was the sole survivor, deposited by the current onto a Wano Country beach.
A village girl named Hibari found him.
The head injury he'd sustained in the water had taken his memory cleanly. He didn't know his name. He didn't know he was a Marine. He didn't know he had a fiancée who would spend the rest of the film occasionally appearing in worried close-up while the plot continued without her.
The villagers of the area were simple and kind and entirely lacking in suspicion about the bald stranger who had appeared among them with strong arms and no history. They named him Helmeppo. He was good at farming. He and Hibari began spending time together in the way that films about people in close proximity inevitably move toward.
Borsalino watched this for a while.
"The screenwriter," he said, at a volume slightly above appropriate, "is either extremely well-informed or extremely lucky. If I didn't know the actual people involved, I would find this entirely believable."
The couple in the third row turned around.
Barry smiled at them apologetically and made a small gesture toward his uncle, conveying: old, unfamiliar with cinema etiquette, working on it.
They turned back. The film continued.
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