— Real World. Marine Headquarters. —
Borsalino's segment from Central City was a minor thread in the Sky Screen's larger tapestry — not mainstream viewing, aired between other broadcasts whenever the signal shifted. Through it, and through films like Love in a Closed Country, people of the old era were building a partial picture of what the future looked like: its entertainment, its values, the heroes it chose to remember.
One of those heroes turned out to be the bald young Marine currently walking the corridors of Headquarters carrying a lunch tray.
Helmeppo had become, without quite intending it, something of a celebrity. Marine found reasons to cross his path. Conversations dried up as he passed, then resumed in hushed tones the moment he was far enough away. It left him in the peculiar position of feeling both noticed and deeply uncomfortable about it — a kind of pride that sat next to a kind of dread, because the achievement everyone was honoring had not actually happened yet.
He bore it as best he could and kept to his routine.
The guards at the detention block had changed shifts by the time he arrived. Two veterans watched him come down the corridor with familiar expressions — equal parts amusement and something warmer than they'd have admitted.
"That bald head really does suit him," one murmured. "I almost want to shave off his old golden hair myself and see if it would've suited him sooner."
"He's going to have his name in the history books," the other said. "Can't argue with the Sky Screen. A little hard to look at him the same way."
The discussion was not meant to reach him, and he gave no sign that it did.
From what Barry Allen had let slip across the years of Borsalino's displacement, Helmeppo's path to fame would run directly through the Blackbeard Pirates — stepping over their wreckage, one engagement at a time. A future built on dangerous people and dangerous places. That much the guards had apparently also pieced together.
He entered the cell and set the tray down.
Coby's eyes were bloodshot. The dark rings beneath them had deepened since the last visit. He hadn't slept — that much was obvious — and the weeks of isolation had stripped something from his expression that Helmeppo was not sure how to name. The resentment in his gaze had long since moved past simple anger into something that burned continuously, without target, without release.
"Are you here to show off?" Coby's voice came out unsteady, teeth pressed together. "Or to watch me like this? Is that satisfying for you?"
"I brought food."
Helmeppo kept his voice even. The plate held Coby's favorites — or what had been his favorites. There was nothing metal on it, no utensils that could be sharpened or weaponized. The Marine guard policy had been thorough about that.
Coby's eyes moved to the tray. He did not reach for it.
Instead, he reached for Helmeppo's collar.
The grab was sudden and hysterical — both hands twisting the fabric, pulling him down to eye level, voice cracking open. "Get out of here. You took everything from me. Get out—"
The guards were through the door in seconds. One stepped between them, firm hands pushing Coby back hard against the wall. The second reached for Helmeppo with considerably more care, checking him for injury, straightening his collar.
Coby saw the difference. He saw it clearly, and the seeing of it added a new layer to whatever was burning in his chest.
"His personality's gone completely rotten," one guard said flatly, not bothering to lower his voice. "No wonder he ends up the way the Sky Screen shows. Starve him a few days and he'll calm down."
Helmeppo wanted to stay. The guards did not permit it. Coby was a problem child, they said, and problems of this kind were not helped by indulgence.
He followed them out of the cell. The door closed behind him.
In the corridor, he kept his head low.
He was still just an orderly — the lowest rung of the institutional ladder. His days were washing clothes, scrubbing dishes, running errands for senior Marines who called him big star with the particular tone that meant they were half-joking and half-serious and entirely unsure what to do with him. The deference people showed him was borrowed from a future he hadn't earned yet. He knew that. It did not make it easier to carry.
His house and the life of a comfortable young man had receded so far they barely felt like memories. He had complained about that, quietly, to himself, and then stopped complaining, because at least this was real work. At least this was his.
He was walking with his head down when he walked straight into someone.
She was holding a whip. Blonde, composed, a little younger than the version of her he'd seen on the Sky Screen, and with a bearing that the film had only partially captured. The whip wasn't deployed; she was simply the kind of person who carried one, and the presence it implied was self-evident.
"Where's our big star going in such a hurry?"
He stared at her for a moment. The face was familiar in the way that the faces of people you had watched die on a giant sky broadcast were familiar — recognition arriving with a particular weight.
She waited until the recognition was visible on his face, then introduced herself, unhurried.
"Kujaku. SWORD Special Confidential Unit." A pause. "Going back to chores is a waste. Drake wants you in the unit. So do I."
There had been no formal order from Marine leadership — the top brass were still deliberating, fielding requests from multiple departments who had all watched the same Sky Screen footage and reached similar conclusions about Helmeppo's future value. Kujaku had not waited for the paperwork.
He pointed at himself. "I'm not a Devil fruit user yet and I don't even know that I will ever got that fruit. I'm just an orderly at the lowest rank. SWORD really wants someone like me?"
"Yes." No elaboration. No qualification.
He clenched his hands at his sides.
The Sky Screen version of himself — certain, capable, moving through the world with a weight and clarity he did not yet possess — felt very far away. He wanted to reach it. He wanted to be strong enough that Coby's imprisonment stopped being something he could only watch, that the future people were celebrating became something he had actually built.
Without strength, there was no voice. The Marine's senior command did not recognize achievements that existed only in a projected future. At most, they left a person with a reputation and a title from history. He needed to make it real himself.
He agreed.
Kujaku moved immediately to the next task. If they were going to be a unit, they should meet as one — she would take him to the captain and the other members, she said, and begin from there.
— Detention Block, Level Three. —
The plate of food had landed face-down against the far wall. Coby had not touched it.
He leaned his head back against the stone and tried to breathe. Helmeppo's expression wouldn't leave him — that even-voiced patience, that careful concern. That look. It was exactly the kind of look that made the resentment worse, because it could not be argued with, and things that could not be argued with were intolerable.
He hated his own weakness. He hated the Marine for believing a projection of a future that had not happened and locking him here because of it. He hated that Garp had stopped coming. He hated that Helmeppo had not.
His head met the wall.
Dong.
Again.
Dong.
The guards outside did not move. They had stopped monitoring closely. If the boy wanted to crack his own skull — that was his affair, and it would, if anything, simplify things.
Dong.
"Since you hate the Marine so much—" A voice, low and unhurried, threading through the silence of the cell. No second person was visible. No shadow that didn't belong. "—do you want the power to make them answer for it?"
Coby's head stilled against the stone.