—Broadcast—
The Sky Screen had shifted its attention to the news.
The open-plan office of a World Economy News branch filled the projection from wall to wall — dozens of editors at their desks, each holding a Den Den Mushi to one ear, each writing with their free hand, the ambient noise of the room a continuous layered hum of incoming information and outgoing copy. Some of the voices on the other end belonged to staff reporters. Others belonged to intelligence brokers who had information to sell and no other reliable buyer. In the World Economy News system, the distinction was professional rather than ethical.
Moving through the floor with the particular quality of someone inspecting their own machinery was the President himself.
Sky Screen Character Note: President of the World Economy News — Morgans. Zoan-type · Tori Tori no Mi, Model: Albatross (Bird-Bird Fruit, Albatross Form).
He held his Beast Form in the office, as he held it everywhere — the large beak, the small sharp eyes, the white feathers dense enough to suggest the quality of something that had never needed supplementary insulation, the wings shaped in a way that a standard albatross wing was not, the fingers articulated and functional within the feather structure. The black top hat and the black cloak over it were the parts that were chosen. The rest was what he was.
"Move faster." He did not raise his voice. Volume was not required when the alternatives were understood. "Everything verified today. No one goes home with unconfirmed stories in their notebooks. Move."
His editors moved.
The subordinates who had worked under him for years had no confusion about the Beast Form — they had never been given an alternative to observe, and they had stopped asking about it approximately one week into their employment. The President's caution about his human appearance was not something he explained or defended. It was simply a given, like the editorial standards and the deadline policies and the rule that the World Economy News did not kill stories that powerful people wanted dead.
A secretary in heels navigated the editorial floor toward him with the urgent efficiency of someone carrying information that could not wait for a convenient moment.
"Sir — a distinguished guest has been waiting in the branch's private reception room for several hours. She asked ally for you."
Morgans processed this.
He had arrived at this branch on an unscheduled rotation — part of the operational practice that had kept him several steps ahead of everyone who had tried to track his movements in the last decade. That someone had anticipated his route and was already waiting was either coincidence, which he assigned low probability, or a leak in his internal communications, which was a more interesting problem. That they had been waiting for hours without announcing themselves more forcefully indicated patience and a degree of calculated good faith.
He went to meet her.
The private reception room was built on a principle he had specified himself, years ago, after a meeting that had gone unexpectedly physical. It was divided into two chambers by a wall with a narrow wooden window — close enough to conduct a conversation, too narrow to pass anything larger than a document, the kind of architectural arrangement that a confession booth would understand immediately. Both parties received privacy. Neither party received vulnerability.
Morgans settled into his chair on one side of the wall. He could not see the guest. He could hear breathing, and, beneath it, the particular quality of someone's lungs that were not entirely cooperative.
"I apologise for the wait," he said, with the warmth of a professional. "Whatever you've come to discuss — if you set the terms, I'll tell you whether they're something I can work with."
"I need information delivered to the Marine." The voice was a woman's. She spoke carefully, in the manner of someone managing the distance between words and coughing. "Not directly from me — I can't contact the Marine without complications. If you can position the story in a way that compels them to investigate, I'll give you something in return."
Morgans ran the voice through his memory. He had an accurate memory for voices — it was a professional asset he had cultivated deliberately — and this one returned no match. Not disguise, not performance, simply: new. He had not heard this person before.
"The new Marine is not an organisation that responds to general prompts," he said. "Fleet Admiral Artoria Pendragon has been methodical about where the organisation's resources go — she has been rebuilding internal discipline and administrative capacity for years, and she is not going to redeploy top-tier forces because a newspaper suggested the situation was interesting." He paused. "What you're asking for requires something concrete. Something that can't be explained away as rumour."
There was a sound from the other side of the wall. The wooden window opened.
A box appeared on the ledge.
The woman's hands opened it without showing the rest of herself. Inside the box was a human eye. The entire eyeball was white — not the white of illness or damage, not the white of age, but a structural white that went all the way through, the iris absent, the pupil absent, the whole organ unified into a single colour that it should not have been. Even the sclera, which in a sick eye takes on its pallor from surrounding systems failing, matched the rest.
Morgans looked at it for a long moment.
"The Byakugan." He said it quietly, mostly to himself, then: "Orochimaru wasn't exaggerating." His hand moved toward the box instinctively, the journalist's reflex of reaching for evidence when evidence is finally present.
The woman closed the box and withdrew it.
"After the task is complete," she said. "Not before."
He settled back. The negotiation had established its structure.
She passed a folded newspaper through the window. Not a headline page — a small interior section, the kind of filler column that appeared between more important stories, the sort of thing that regional correspondents submitted when they needed to fill column inches and the day had been quiet. She had circled a passage.
Morgans read it.
The story was this: a wholesaler had received a wine order from a pub in a particular city on the twenty-eighth of October. One hundred barrels, delivery the following day. He had arrived on the twenty-ninth and had been unable to enter the city — no explanation given in the original article, no follow-up filed. He and his entourage had left the area. In the months that followed, the same call came through on the twenty-eighth. One hundred barrels. Delivery the twenty-ninth. The calls had continued for more than a year — regular, identical, from the same pub, in the same city — and every time the wholesaler attempted the delivery, the city remained inaccessible.
The article had been filed as a curiosity. Local colour, slightly strange, not requiring investigation.
Morgans set the paper down.
The story, on its own, was unprintable — no named source, no confirmed location, the kind of thing that appeared in regional editions to fill the quiet days and disappeared without trace. He had printed better and he had printed worse, and he knew the difference between something that could drive readership and something that could drive response.
This required both.
"How long has this been happening?" he asked.
"Over a year." The coughing came then, before she could continue — sudden and sustained, the kind that moved through the body rather than just the throat. She brought it under control. "I don't know how far it's progressed inside. The longer it continues without intervention, the less recoverable the situation becomes."
Morgans looked at the article again. The date stamps. The repetition. The fact that someone had been calling to place an order for one hundred barrels of wine, every twenty-eighth, for more than a year, from a city that no one could enter.
"If you want me to bring the Marine into this," he said, "I need evidence I can print. Something that makes the story undeniable. One anonymous newspaper clipping and a Byakugan that I can't display without explaining where it came from is not a campaign — it's a liability."
The breathing on the other side of the wall was controlled now, but only barely.
"Then tell me what form the evidence would need to take," she said. "And I'll see what I can provide."