-Broadcast-
The SWORD team had watched from cover as Yasuo moved through the God's Knights like wind through paper.
Aramaki's warning — the one they had been politely dismissive of when he gave it — had acquired, in the space of about thirty seconds, the status of excellent advice.
The theory that a swordsman's ability declined with age had real application to fighters who relied primarily on physical capability. Speed drops, strength drops, the body becomes more vulnerable to everything a younger opponent can bring. A conventional fighter at seventy was a diminished version of themselves at thirty.
Swordsmen didn't work that way. Technique accumulated, economy of motion improved, the gap between what a swing needed to accomplish and how much energy was spent accomplishing it narrowed over decades into something that looked almost like stillness. The older the swordsman, the more precisely the blade went exactly where it needed to go, no more and no less. Old Yasuo was the demonstration of this principle taken to an endpoint that none of them had encountered before.
Kujaku had quietly put her whip away.
"Fortunate that we didn't interact with anyone on the island," she said, with a composure that she was maintaining through some effort. "I was not expecting that from an old man."
Yasuo had paused before leaving, his head tilting fractionally toward their position in the treeline. The breeze was in his favor — he'd read something from it, enough to determine they had no blood on them and therefore weren't his current problem — and then he'd moved on, leading the family of three in the direction of the next village. The corpses he left behind stayed where they were. Living people first, always.
Hibari lowered her telescope and pressed a hand against her chest. "He noticed us. He absolutely noticed us." She paused. "I'm going to be thinking about that for a while."
Grus checked the sun's position and made the calculation. "It's time. We need to make the Flower Capital by the contact point." He scanned the group — everyone still intact, nobody making eye contact with Todoroki Shoto's clearly visible desire to stop waiting around and do something. "Secretive route, avoid the contestants. Let's move."
They ran Rokushiki through the quieter corridors between Wano's terrain features, staying off the main approaches where the God's Knights were moving. The contestant distribution had developed a pattern: the peripheral territories were being systematically harvested, and the Flower Capital sat at the center of an unofficial exclusion zone — not formally declared, but observed by the majority of participants who understood that the capital's resistance would be concentrated and that concentrated resistance was best handled by concentrated force.
A handful of overconfident contestants had broken with this understanding and entered the Flower Capital early. None of them had returned to the leaderboard with high scores. The samurai class in the capital was considerably more capable than what the outer territories had offered, and a solo God's Knight without numerical support in a city full of armed people who had nothing left to lose was not a safe configuration.
SWORD reached the capital's outskirts and stopped. Helmeppo closed his eyes again — the quiet murmuring resumed — and then stopped abruptly.
"He's coming."
They watched the direction he'd indicated. A figure emerged from the Flower Capital's edge and walked toward them: a male, pirate's bearing, distinctive "X" marks on chin and chest. Medieval swordsman's hat, brim curled up at an angle that had settled somewhere between chic and careless over enough years of wearing it. Hooked nose. One eye behind a patch. The whole picture added up to someone who had lived through enough to stop worrying about how any of it appeared.
Grus moved forward and pulled the man into a hug before he'd fully closed the distance. "It's been years. You look exactly the same, which I resent."
Sky Screen character note: Former SWORD captain — X Drake. User of the Ryu Ryu no Mi, Model: Allosaurus (Dragon-Dragon Fruit, Ancient Species).
"I've been in the Flower Capital waiting," Drake said. "You moved faster than I expected." He looked at the group behind Grus — the new faces, the absence of old ones — and filed the information without commenting on it.
Drake's background was not the kind of thing that made Marine service an obvious destination. His father had been a pirate, and the Ope Ope no Mi had passed through their circle before Drake was old enough to have a say in the consequences. The Donquixote family had involved themselves in that transaction, in the way the Donquixote family typically involved themselves in anything of value: extraction and control. Drake had been the only survivor of what followed. Vice Admiral Tsuru had found him in the aftermath and had, with the particular pragmatism she applied to everything, decided he was worth something. He had converted from pirate's orphan to Marine officer and had remained Marine until the Marine's needs changed shape.
The defection was formal but not real. He was deep cover, placed inside the Beasts Pirates after Marineford, working his way into the Tobiroppō — middle-level cadre with access to organizational intelligence that went considerably above his apparent rank. The Fleet Admiral received what he gathered. Everyone in SWORD who knew about this arrangement had known about it for a long time.
"Your undercover status," Hibari said. "All Beasts Pirates pulled out of Wano — why are you still here?"
"Kaido needed a witness," Drake said. "Someone of his own, watching what happens. Whether it was deliberate or coincidental that I got the assignment, I was left in the Flower Capital." He paused. "There's something else. King contacted me just before you arrived. Yamato landed in Wano Country — came in with King and jumped off before King turned back. He's asking me to keep an eye on her."
The implication was operational rather than paternal. Yamato without her seastone restraints, in a country that had been stripped of its most powerful protecting force, could function effectively against almost any threat the current situation produced — with one category of exception. Garling was on this island. If Yamato encountered Garling, the calculation changed completely. Short of that, she was likely fine, and possibly more useful to Wano's surviving population than anything else currently present on the island.
"There's something I need to tell you about the Flower Capital," Drake said. "The situation here has changed since the Beasts Pirates withdrew. I've been seeing faces I don't recognize — people who weren't here before, appearing across the capital. And the people I do recognize from Orochi's regular court — some of them feel different. Behavior shifted. Personality inconsistencies I can't account for through normal explanation." He watched their faces process this. "It's similar to what happened with the Beasts Pirates' own intelligence network around Orochi. I think the people in Orochi's immediate circle may have been replaced."
The same pattern as before, but closer to the center.
"I have civilian clothes for you," Drake said. "Change into them, come into the capital with me. We'll draw less attention than five people in Marine-adjacent gear walking through a city that currently has a very complicated relationship with outsiders."
He was aware, as he said it, that the disguise was partly theater. Something significant enough to bring a SWORD team into the Flower Capital during a God's Knights hunting operation was not going to stay invisible regardless of what anyone was wearing. The capital was generating too many variables simultaneously for any additional actor to move through it without notice.
But the country was in crisis, and people in crisis paid attention to threats. A group of apparent civilians attracted less attention than a group of apparent Marines. It was the best available option, and Drake had learned to work with those.
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