At the outer gate, Magellan fell into step beside Finn with the expression of a man who had something he wanted to say and was choosing his moment carefully.
"Admiral," he said finally. "You're certain you don't want to continue?"
Finn's eye twitched slightly. He looked at Magellan, who appeared entirely sincere.
"I'm certain," he said. "For today."
"We have additional fruit in storage here. You wouldn't need to use what's on the ship—"
"I appreciate the offer." Finn kept walking. "Next time."
Magellan nodded, looking genuinely a little disappointed. He had arrived at the executive conclusion, somewhere between the third and fourth death on Level 6, that Admiral Finn's methodology was not merely permissible but actively beneficial to Impel Down's operational goals. Dangerous abilities redirected into Marine hands rather than dispersed randomly into the world. Prisoner population reduced without corresponding administrative burden. It was, from a management standpoint, an elegant solution.
Finn, for his part, was not going to explain that he had hit a physical wall. The process of extracting abilities looked clean from the outside, and he intended to let it continue looking that way. In reality, somewhere around the eighth or ninth transfer, the cumulative drain had started compounding badly. Each successive extraction cost more than the one before it, not unlike the way the body stops recovering efficiently after a certain point of sustained exertion. By the time he'd worked through the Level 6 list and then selected additional targets from the lower floors, he was running on stubbornness and momentum.
He had fought Whitebeard. This had been, in a different way, worse.
It was clearly work to be done across multiple visits, paced properly, not attempted in a single afternoon out of efficiency. The World Conference was approaching. He had other things to do.
So he had stopped, and Magellan had tried to persuade him three more times before accepting it, and now they were at the gate and the open air of the outer dock was a genuine relief.
"I'll be back," Finn said, and shook Magellan's hand. "Take care of the remaining ones. I'll make arrangements in advance next time."
Magellan straightened and nodded. "I'll have everything prepared, Admiral. Don't give it another thought."
They boarded the warship. Garp's vessel was already running lines alongside, and within a short time both ships had pushed off from the Impel Down dock and caught the Justice Current flowing back toward Enies Lobby.
On deck, Vergo was personally overseeing the transfer of the fruit crates belowdecks, moving with the careful deliberateness of a man carrying items worth more than most nations' annual revenue. The fruits would go into secure storage under lock and Marine seal, catalogued and accounted for until Finn decided what to do with them.
The applications were straightforward enough. Officers who had demonstrated sustained exceptional performance, loyalty, and the kind of character that made additional power a reasonable investment rather than a risk. The Marine had no shortage of people who met that standard. It had always had a shortage of ways to reward them at the highest level.
That shortage was now somewhat less acute.
Finn watched Vergo disappear below with the last crate, then turned his gaze along the deck.
Robin and Olvia were standing at the rail together, watching the sea. Olvia had not seen open water in over a decade, and it showed in the way she looked at it, not bored, not nostalgic, just fully present with it, as if she was recalibrating something. Robin stood close beside her, not saying much, which was right.
Nearby, Garp had Luffy by the ear.
Luffy looked approximately like someone who had lost an extended negotiation conducted primarily through being hit. His face bore the evidence of the discussion in some detail. But his eyes were alert and undefeated, which Finn had come to understand was simply Luffy's baseline state regardless of external conditions.
He walked over.
"What did you choose?" he asked.
Luffy reached into his vest, produced the roster, and held it out. "I kept looking at the Calm-Calm Fruit," he said, "but Grandpa hit me every time I said it, so I didn't circle it."
Garp released his ear.
"Smart," Finn said.
He had quietly adjusted the list before giving it to Luffy, removing Rosinante's entry from the options. He was not going to kill Rosinante to obtain an ability for Luffy, and he was not going to explain why. The roster Luffy had was a curated version.
"I haven't decided yet," Luffy admitted, clutching it. "There are too many good ones."
Finn turned to Garp. "Speaking of good ones. I pulled the More-More Fruit from Byrnndi's transfer. I had you in mind for it, actually."
Garp raised an eyebrow. "Byrnndi World's fruit."
"Hundred-fold multiplication. Speed, strength, size. If you ate it and developed it properly, I genuinely think I'd have trouble fighting with you." Finn said this without any performance of humility, because it was accurate.
Garp was quiet for a moment. He had known Byrnndi by reputation for decades, had been part of the operation that eventually brought him in. The More-More Fruit was not a subtle ability. Applied to someone of Garp's existing physical baseline, the results would be difficult to model.
"It's a real devil fruit," Garp said.
"No question."
Garp rolled the thought around, then shook his head. "I've never eaten a Devil Fruit. I'm not starting now. I'm in my golden year; I'm not going to become a landlubber at this stage." He glanced at Luffy. "Give it to someone who'll use it properly."
"Luffy, if he wants it," Finn said.
Garp nodded, then looked at Finn with the expression of a man who has just caught up on something. "You're being very accommodating about this."
"He's family," Finn said.
Garp studied him for a moment longer. "Mm."
He said nothing more, but something had shifted in his assessment. He thought about it while Luffy flipped through the roster again at the rail, and by the time the current was carrying them toward the Gate of Justice he had worked out the shape of it.
The Dark-Dark Fruit. Nullification field. Gravity layered on top. Finn, against an opponent without a Devil Fruit, faced someone whose full toolkit was available. Finn, against an opponent with a Devil Fruit, gained the additional option of sealing their ability entirely, which shifted the matchup dramatically in his favor.
So encouraging Garp to eat the More-More Fruit was, in one reading, generosity. In another reading, it was converting Garp from a fighter with a reasonable chance against Finn into a fighter whose additional power would be partially negated by the one man in the world positioned to negate it.
Garp filed this away without particular resentment. They were not enemies. There was no scenario in which he was going to be facing Finn across a battlefield, which made the whole calculation theoretical. And the man was a monster in either case, double Devil Fruit user, and that was simply what it was.
He decided he didn't need to say any of this out loud.
"The power is extraordinary," he said instead, watching Luffy. "Whoever gets it, their character has to be solid. Power at that level changes people if they let it. The fruit ends up controlling you instead of the other way around."
Finn nodded. That was true and he had no objection to it.
He looked at Luffy, who had found the More-More Fruit's entry in the roster and was reading it with the focused intensity he usually reserved for food. The boy was many things, most of them baffling. But in the years Finn had been around him, through the training and the beatings and the simple observation of how he moved through the world, one thing had remained consistent: Luffy did not become someone else when circumstances changed. He was, with an almost unreasonable completeness, himself, at every moment and in every situation.
That was not common. It was, in people who had it, genuinely rare.
"Uncle Finn." Luffy appeared at his elbow, holding the roster, face still carrying the afternoon's record. "Is the More-More Fruit the strongest one in here?"
"It's competitive for the top spot," Finn said.
"If I eat it, could I beat you?"
Garp opened his mouth.
Finn spoke first. "It's possible. It's a very powerful ability. I think you should eat it."
Garp closed his mouth. He looked at the sea.
Luffy's eyes went wide, then wider. The calculation he was performing was not complicated but it was clearly thorough, involving some version of ability plus ambition plus the image of Ace's face when he told him about it.
"Then I want the More-More Fruit," he announced.
Finn laughed, and put a hand briefly on top of Luffy's head.
Not today, he decided. The crossing back to Marineford would take what remained of the afternoon, and eating a fruit of that magnitude deserved proper conditions and someone standing by who understood what they were looking at. Tomorrow was soon enough.
The Gate of Justice opened ahead of them as they approached Enies Lobby, the massive doors swinging wide to admit the Justice Current's passage. On the dock at Enies Lobby, Finn could make out the small figure of Spandine, who had apparently come to see them off and was now waving with the helpless courtesy of a man who had arrived to find the ships already leaving.
Finn waved back, briefly, then went below to sleep for an hour before Marineford.
When the warships docked at Headquarters as the sun was going down, Luffy ran down the gangway still clutching the roster with the circled entry, and Finn followed at a more reasonable pace, and Marineford received them all back into its ordinary noise without ceremony.