The Five Elders' former office was enormous. Five men had apparently required that much space to run eight centuries of shadow governance, and now it served as the Marine's internal meeting room, with room to spare.
The conference day had wound down into free time, which in practice meant that everyone immediately became busier with the things they'd been putting off. Sengoku occupied a sofa with a stack of documents. Tsuru sat across from him with her own. Garp was present in the way Garp was always present — occupying more space than strictly necessary and contributing to the atmosphere by existing in it. Gion had taken a chair near the window.
Finn was on the far sofa, attending to his ears with an ear pick.
"The Commander-in-Chief's position on the garrison is that Mary Geoise should be managed jointly," Sengoku said, setting down the page he'd been reading. "The Marine, the Revolutionary Army, and the CP Agency sharing responsibility for security. I think that's the right call. If it's only our people running the place, the royal families will never fully relax."
Tsuru nodded. "No disagreement from me."
The others were similarly untroubled by it. Mary Geoise was not Marineford. It didn't make sense for the Marine to hold it the way you held a base.
"There's so much to deal with," Sengoku continued, with the faintly burdened air of a man who had not anticipated quite this volume of administrative work. "I spent years watching the people here and thinking they didn't do anything. It turns out the international affairs side of this operation is genuinely unpleasant." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "A soldier. I'm a soldier. I'm not built for this."
Finn rotated the ear pick. "Then delegate it," he said, without looking up. "Dragon is Secretary-General now. He's turned the Revolutionary Army's military command over to Kuma and taken a civilian role. That's exactly what you want — someone with political instincts and no competing military authority. Let him build a cabinet, get the organizational structure moving, and step back. The first thing everyone needs to agree on is the President. Once that's settled, the new structure can start running under its own momentum and we can leave."
"I know that," Sengoku said. "The problem is that the Presidency is the most contested seat in the room. Everyone wants it. Coordinating enough of the member states to converge on a single candidate is not a fast process."
He had a point. The Pan-World Convention had drawn in not just the original hundred kingdoms but a substantial wave of non-member states that had been watching the old system from outside and had decided, with Mary Geoise no longer a going concern, that joining the new arrangement was worth doing. The hall was full of people who had never had a seat at any table before and were not yet sure what to do with the one they'd just been given, except hold it as tightly as possible. Every appointment was a competition. Every competition took time.
"Who are the realistic candidates?" Finn asked.
Sengoku counted. "Kuma. Stussy. Dragon. Several of the senior member-state representatives though they're more names on a list than serious contenders."
Finn thought through it.
Kuma was, in terms of pure qualifications and name recognition, the obvious first choice. Former king, former Warlord, the public face of the Revolutionary Army's transition into legitimate governance — his background told an arc that people could follow and find reassuring. But he'd already stated clearly that he had no interest in the Presidency at this stage. He wanted to observe, learn the civilian side of politics, and build from a subordinate position rather than be thrown into the top seat without preparation. It was an uncharacteristically humble call for someone of his stature, and Finn respected it even if it complicated the arithmetic.
Dragon was another matter. His prestige was genuine — the man had been the symbolic face of resistance to the old order for decades, and half the world had been following his movement's work for years without realizing it was him. But prestige and political viability were not the same thing. The world's most famous former criminal organization leader sitting in the founding President's chair at the very first world conference would be a provocation to exactly the constituencies the new Convention most needed to bring in calmly. He'd gotten the Secretary-General role, which was already more than most people would have predicted possible. The Presidency would come later, after years of visible, competent civilian service had rebuilt his public identity. He seemed to understand this himself.
Which left Stussy.
On the surface, "former chief of the world's intelligence apparatus" was not an obviously warm origin story for the head of a new democratic organization. But the particulars of how she'd arrived here mattered. She'd spent her career in the dark, cultivating something that looked like loyalty to the old system while quietly maintaining a different allegiance underneath, and at the critical moment she'd used the founding charter of the CP Agency itself to neutralize the Five Elders and throw the agency's weight behind the Marine's position. That was the story that would be told, and it was a story with a shape that people could find compelling — the insider who chose right when it mattered, who knew the machine from the inside and could therefore be trusted to dismantle its worst parts and keep what worked.
She also had, practically speaking, the clearest operational advantage. She was already in Mary Geoise. She already controlled the local security architecture. She already knew every representative in the building and had been managing relationships with most of them for years from her previous position. She had a hunger for the work that Dragon didn't particularly have and Kuma was explicitly declining. And she had the Marine's implicit support, which everyone in the room could see even if no one stated it out loud.
"Stussy wins," Finn said. "If Kuma isn't running, no one else comes close."
A few heads turned toward him briefly, then away. Nobody argued the point.
Sengoku picked up the next document. Before he could open it, there was a knock at the office door.
"Come in," Finn said, from the far sofa.
No one commented on this. It had become, over the past two months, simply a thing that happened.
Hina came through the door at a brisk walk, a sealed document in her hand. She went directly to Sengoku. "Fleet Admiral. Priority dispatch from Admiral Sakazuki at the forward position."
Sengoku's expression sharpened. He took it from her, broke the seal, and read it quickly. His face shifted through mild tension to something closer to calculation. "Sakazuki reports that Whitebeard's, Big Mom's, and Kaido's forces have all gone dark at the forward line simultaneously. Intelligence suggests they're massing for a coordinated surprise attack, taking advantage of the current situation at Mary Geoise. He says facing a combined offensive from all three, he cannot hold position alone, and he's requesting additional support."
The room was quiet for a moment.
The timing wasn't implausible. Mary Geoise in transition, the senior Marine command occupied with a two-month conference, the normal chain of authority temporarily distributed rather than concentrated — from the pirates' perspective, if there was a moment to press, this was the shape of one. The fact that they'd gone quiet after the news broke didn't mean they'd given up; it might just mean they'd shifted to a different kind of preparation.
Finn raised his hand. "I'll go."
Sengoku looked at him.
"Look." Finn set down the ear pick. "I've been sitting in this room for two months contributing nothing. You've seen it. I'm here as a warm body. I have no opinions about governance structure and no objections to offer to any of it. You don't need me here." He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. "But Sakazuki on the New World front against three coordinated Emperors — that's a different problem. Two Admirals at the front changes everything. You can hold meetings here, Sakazuki and I hold the line out there, and by the time you've finished arguing about the Presidency, we'll have dealt with the situation and everyone can move forward." He spread his hands. "That's a better use of everyone's time. You know it is."
Sengoku looked at him for a long moment with the expression of a man who was identifying several layers of motivation simultaneously and choosing not to interrogate them.
"Go," he said.
Finn was on his feet before the word finished.