-Real World-
There was a man in Skypiea who called himself God and meant it.
This was not unprecedented in the history of the sky islands—the title had been passing through hands for generations, each holder reinforcing the claim through the particular combination of Goro Goro no Mi (Rumble-Rumble Fruit) ability and isolation that made challenging the claim impractical for anyone living within the clouds. Enel had held the position for long enough that he had stopped thinking about the precedent and started thinking about the principle.
The Sky Screen had complicated this.
Sitting in the architecture of Skypiea's Golden Throne, Enel looked at the image playing out in the sky above him and felt, for the first time in recent memory, the specific quality of a man who has been considering himself singular finding evidence that the category is wider than he assumed.
"A supercontinent," he said, to no one in particular. "Most of the planet's landmass in one location. Intelligent species living within reach of each other without crossing water." He turned this over. "If I had lived a thousand years ago, I wouldn't have needed to go to the moon."
This was a genuine reflection and not a complaint. Enel had been to the moon—or had planned to go, or would plan to go, depending on the timeline in question—and the moon had struck him as the logical residence for a god who found the inhabited world too small. The revelation that the world had once been considerably larger than it was now produced a complicated quality of feeling that he declined to call wistfulness because gods did not have wistfulness.
Nika is a Sun God who chose a pirate as his successor. He sat with this. And I, the God of Thunder, do not appear to have inherited the memories of whatever Thunder God preceded me.
The distinction between the two categories of divine—inherited and self-made—had not previously seemed important. It seemed more important now.
He was still considering this when the Observation Haki at the edge of his considerable range registered an approaching fleet. His eyebrows rose slightly.
The Flying Pirates. He recognized the energy signature of the man at the lead—enormous, ungainly, the specific Haki quality of someone who had spent decades treating the sky as a personal convenience rather than an environment.
Shiki the Golden Lion was coming to Skypiea.
Enel looked back at the Sky Screen's ongoing account of future Marine conferences and drowned soldiers and king-level combat powers he had not been invited to witness.
Very well, he thought, with the composure of a god making a scheduling adjustment. I suppose the universe has decided I require humility today.
He would need the throne to be in better condition before guests arrived.
-Real World-
Marine Headquarters had the particular quality of a place that had recently survived something significant and had not yet decided how to interpret the experience.
The warship dead were being counted. The hospital wards held the injured, which at the Admiral level meant Sakazuki, who had sustained the kind of damage that required approximately a month of institutional rest and personal refusal to admit he needed the rest. Aramaki sat outside his door with the unwavering commitment of a man who had decided that this was his post and intended to maintain it regardless of the occupant's stated preferences.
Inside, Sakazuki stared at the ceiling with the eyes of a man doing arithmetic.
"If we had held Kaido here," he said, to the ceiling, "instead of allowing Uchiha Madara's intervention to determine the outcome—" He paused. Let the calculation complete. "The next time we meet Nika Kaido, he will be further along the process of mastering what he inherited. The Marine will pay a proportionally higher price for the same outcome."
Aramaki nodded from the doorway with the enthusiasm of a man who agreed with everything his idol said and wanted this communicated clearly.
"The current Kaido," Sakazuki continued, "is not the Kaido shown in the Sky Screen. That Kaido represents years of additional mastery. What we fought in the Devil's Triangle was a man who had just become something and did not yet understand the full geometry of what he'd become." He turned this over like a tactical problem. "We were frightened by the image of his future and lost ground to him in the present."
He said this with the quality of a man completing an audit.
"If Garp and the three Admirals had approached the actual engagement without that fear then the outcome might have been different. We might have created the kind of result that gave us leverage against Uchiha Madara rather than simply being grateful to survive."
This was Sakazuki's absolute justice speaking: the specific certainty of a man who believed, truly and without ornament, that the conclusion the world had drawn—King-class power is invincible, we are ants before it—was not the only available conclusion. That the Marine had simply reached for it first, out of fear, and in doing so had granted it more solidity than the evidence required.
Whether he was correct was a separate question. He believed it, which was the operative fact.
The conference room had the particular quality of a space where meetings happened several times a week and everyone present had learned to sit with the specific efficiency of people who had other places they needed to be.
Sengoku sat at the head of the table.
Fleet Admiral. Living bridge between the Marine that had been and the Marine that was becoming, if the Sky Screen was to be believed. He had the look, today, of a man who had been considering a particular problem from multiple angles and had not resolved it, and did not expect to resolve it, but had concluded that the absence of resolution was itself information.
Artoria was in the corner.
She was asleep.
Not performing sleep, but actually asleep, with the completeness of someone whose body had made an executive decision without consulting her preferences. Her chin had dropped to her chest. Her breathing had achieved the evenness of genuine unconsciousness.
The Marine officers around the table had collectively developed the policy of pretending this was not happening, because the alternative required someone to say something about it, and the someone in question was capable of cutting through enchanted stone and had survived Uchiha Madara's attention.
"The central question," said the officer to Sengoku's left—a Vice Admiral with the specific voice quality of someone who had spent years threading analytical needles in meetings like this one—"is what Buggy the Clown said to Uchiha Madara in those three minutes."
This was the question that the Marine's considerable analytical resources had been failing to resolve since the conclusion of the battle. What could a clown with the Bara Bara no Mi (Chop-Chop Fruit) say to a man who had just split the ocean with a sword that existed at the scale of geography? What opinion could produce the outcome they had witnessed—the deliberate dissolution of the Perfect Susanoo, the withdrawal of forces that had comprehensively outclassed everything they faced?
"He pointed at her," said Kuzan, nodding toward the sleeping form in the corner. His tone was the tone he used when he was being precise rather than comfortable—slightly drier, stripped of the conversational warmth he defaulted to in lower-stakes contexts. "Whatever Buggy told Uchiha Madara, it was connected to Artoria. He pointed at her twice and said the answer was there."
He did not add the editorial weight that the room was already supplying. He didn't need to.
"The gears of fate," the Vice Admiral offered.
"Yes." Kuzan looked at the table. "The clown said the gears of fate had begun to turn. And he said both he and Uchiha Madara believe in fate." He paused. "The question is whether Buggy the Clown has actually seen something, or whether he has simply made a prediction that a man who has lived through a thousand years of history found sufficiently plausible to act on."
Sengoku had been listening without speaking. He spoke now.
"I don't think Buggy learned what he knows from the Sky Screen."
The room shifted its attention to him.
"There are too many points of specific knowledge—things he acts on that the Sky Screen has not shown. Details that require a different source." He looked at his hands, then at the table. "I don't know what the source is. But someone, somewhere, has a broader view of what's happening than we do. And Buggy the Clown has access to that view."
This was the thing that kept the Fleet Admiral awake at irregular intervals and produced, in the spaces between meetings and obligations, a specific quality of discomfort that had nothing to do with the external threat and everything to do with the feeling of moving on a board you could not see the full extent of.
He looked at Artoria.
She had, while unconscious, managed to lean at a slightly more comfortable angle against the corner wall. She had not, in any visible sense, done this deliberately.
"She saved most of us," said Kuzan. Stating a fact. Not embellishing it. "Whatever else we think about what's coming, that is what happened."