"Hiding is one thing," Sakazuki said. "Going deep enough to stay hidden is another problem entirely." He shook his head. "When a wall starts to crack, everyone puts their shoulder to it. The pirates who've been sitting on fences all over the New World are already reconsidering their positions. They need supplies. They need ports. Every time they surface, there's someone with a reason to pass that information along."
Finn understood immediately. It was the same logic that had governed informant networks for as long as there had been informant networks: the more isolated a position becomes, the more expensive the loyalty required to maintain it, and the New World's pirate ecosystem ran on calculations of advantage, not principle. Charlotte Linlin's Totland and Kaido's Wano had both seen defections in the weeks since the Mary Geoise news broke. When the ship looks like it might be going down, the passengers start evaluating their options. That kind of information moved.
"So you have a location," Finn said.
Sakazuki spread a nautical chart across the table.
The New World spread out in ink lines and depth markings, its island chains and open water expanses annotated with the sparse precision of a man who had been navigating this sea for decades and had stopped needing the chart to remind him of what he already knew. Sakazuki's finger landed on a point near the center of the map.
"Beehive Island."
Finn raised his eyebrows. "Rocks's old base."
"The same." Sakazuki straightened. "Geographic center of the New World. Sits at the intersection of all three of their territorial ranges. Before the conference news broke, the three of them had a plan — they were going to strike during the World Conference while most of our senior command was occupied in Mary Geoise, secure the gateway waters of the New World, and create enough strategic depth to advance or retreat freely on their own terms." He crossed his arms. "Then we happened, and they stopped. But they haven't dispersed. If there's been no change in the past twenty-four hours, all three of them are still there."
"Whitebeard, Big Mom, Kaido. Together." Finn turned that over. "All three."
"That's my assessment."
Finn looked at the chart for a long moment, chin in hand, with the expression of someone doing arithmetic. Beehive Island had a particular resonance beyond the Rocks history — it sat deep in contested water, equidistant from the territorial borders of all three groups, which made it difficult to approach without going through someone's sphere of influence. That was the problem Sakazuki had flagged. Close enough to have a general location, far enough that any serious approach required either a force large enough to be obviously visible or a small enough force to be meaningfully dangerous to send.
"What are you thinking?" Finn asked.
"Two options." Sakazuki's voice settled into the flat, considered register he used when he was presenting something he'd actually thought through. "The first is a full frontal campaign. We use the Marine's structural advantage — numbers, logistics, the Vice Admiral depth — and press from multiple directions simultaneously. Systematic, methodical, no improvisation. We can't lose that way, and it doesn't ask any individual to carry more than they can handle." He paused. "The cost is time. We'd be waiting for Sengoku's group to finish in Mary Geoise before we could move with the full weight behind us."
"That was the plan I had in mind before I left," Finn said. "What's the second option?"
Sakazuki looked at him directly. "Before I say it, tell me something. How strong are you right now? Honestly."
Finn considered. Not a deflection — a genuine consideration. "Back at the God's Abode, I think I could have beaten Imlia. Maybe." He tipped his head slightly. "The fight we had was unfinished, so I'm not certain. But the weight of it felt like something I could have won."
Sakazuki absorbed this without reacting visibly. He had fought Im himself. He knew what that comparison meant.
"Whitebeard?" he asked.
Finn's mouth curved. "Comfortably."
Sakazuki held his expression carefully neutral for about two seconds, which for him was the equivalent of visible surprise. Then he let it go. "Right," he said. "The second option is a decapitation operation. We go to Beehive Island ourselves and take out their leadership directly."
Finn was quiet for a moment. The logic was straightforward and the results, historically, were unambiguous — of all the tactical approaches available on the sea, this one had the most consistent return on investment. Take out the center of command and the structure collapsed. Pirate organizations especially, which ran almost entirely on the personal gravity of their leaders, tended to dissolve rather than reorganize when the top was removed. Whitebeard's crew and Kaido's crew were both built on that model. Big Mom's operation was more systematically organized and would likely survive leadership loss in some form, but with the Marine in its current position even a temporary disruption was probably enough.
The principle was clean. The execution was the problem.
"You're talking about two of us," Finn said slowly, "going into a location that currently contains three Emperor-class pirates who have been cooperating since before any of them held that title, who know we're coming at some point, and who have had weeks to prepare."
"Yes."
"And if the three of them coordinate properly—"
"They won't be perfectly coordinated," Sakazuki said, with the flat confidence of a man who had spent years watching how pirate alliances actually functioned under pressure. "Their history goes back to the Rocks ship, yes. But Whitebeard and Big Mom have been in a cold war more years than not. Kaido and Big Mom fought each other seriously over Wano. These are people who share a coalition of convenience, not a unified command. When the pressure hits, the coordination will fray."
Finn thought about that. It wasn't wrong. The Rocks-era veterans had a history that included working together, but it also included the accumulated weight of thirty years of separate interests and territorial conflicts. A coalition formed out of shared threat calculus was fundamentally different from one built on trust. Under real pressure, with Sakazuki and Finn simultaneously targeting different points in their formation, the cracks would appear.
The remaining issue was containment. Defeating them was one thing. Defeating all three of them in a way that prevented any of them from escaping was another calculation entirely. If even one got away with fighting capability intact, the problem had only been partially solved.
"I can handle the combat side," Finn said, thinking it through. "The Dark-Dark Fruit is specifically built for this kind of situation — I can hold people in place even if I can't immediately finish them. The concern is scope. Three of them, maximum containment." He worked it through once more. "It's workable. With both of us there, the margin is real." He nodded slowly. "Let's do it."
Sakazuki gave a short nod. Settled.
Then Finn looked at the chart and said, "Who's holding G-1 while we're gone?"
Sakazuki opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the chart with the expression of a man who had just discovered a very obvious problem that he had not previously considered.
A decapitation operation by definition meant concentrated force at a single point. It was the entire logic of the approach. What it meant in practice was that both of them would be absent from G-1, deep inside New World territory, at a location selected because of its strategic centrality — which also made it difficult to extract from quickly if the situation at the base changed.
If the three Emperors had anticipated exactly this response and divided their forces — some waiting at Beehive, some moving on G-1 the moment its two Admirals left —
Finn watched the understanding arrive on Sakazuki's face. "You hadn't thought about that."
"I had." A beat. "Not as specifically as I should have."
"The wisest man can make mistakes," Finn said, with a mild smile.
Sakazuki looked at him without expression. "Don't."
"Just saying." Finn turned back to the chart. "All right. Before we do anything, we sort out the G-1 command question. Who do we leave behind, and what's their mandate if it goes wrong."