The days before the Conference opened were quiet ones for Finn, at least on the surface.
He walked the city. He visited the sections that had been rebuilt after the fire, catalogued what had changed and what hadn't, and built a working picture of the new Mary Geoise in his head. Pangaea Castle had come through relatively intact, the structural damage from Dragon's tunnels and the fire itself had been cosmetic more than foundational, and the repairs had restored it largely to its previous form. The surrounding city was different in places, newer materials showing through in the facades, certain streets rerouted around the reconstruction work, but the overall shape was familiar.
He was standing on the rooftop of a building northeast of the castle, looking out at its towers, when Borsalino arrived beside him with a folded blueprint under one arm.
"Does this still apply?" Borsalino asked, holding it up.
Finn glanced at it. "The floor plan? Largely. The castle hasn't changed much internally. Though in the end we don't actually need it." He looked back toward the distant silhouette of the castle against the morning sky. "There's only one place in all of Mary Geoise where Lord Im is going to be. The hall with the Void Throne. That's where the Five Elders go to report. That's where the photograph needs to happen."
Below them, the social square of Pangaea Castle was already crowded with the particular kind of people who had nowhere more important to be than the most important social event in the world. Kings, their retinues, minor nobility who had attached themselves to major delegations, merchants who had found legitimate reasons for proximity. The World Conference was, among other things, the largest recurring venue for alliance-building and marriage negotiation in existence. Every four years, fortunes changed hands in casual conversation over wine in that square.
Today it simply provided useful cover for two admirals standing on a rooftop pointing at things.
"The photograph," Borsalino said. "Who's taking it?"
Finn had thought about this. "Morgans has a photographer. Devil Fruit user, some kind of invisibility-adjacent ability. Good enough that targets don't notice the man even with a camera in their face." He paused. "But Morgans isn't one of ours, and this operation cannot have any component we don't fully control."
"Agreed," Borsalino said. "So internally then. Robin?"
"She'd be my first choice. Intelligence background, professional at undercover work, and her ability is genuinely suited for close observation without direct exposure." Finn's expression shifted slightly. "But she's not strong enough to fully suppress her presence around Im. Whatever Im is, he's had eight hundred years to develop. He'll be sensitive. If he detects her, we lose the operation and possibly Robin."
Borsalino looked at him sideways. "You've just ruled out the outside option and the inside option. I'm noticing a pattern."
"As a senior admiral of the Marine," Finn said, turning to him with an expression of complete sincerity, "I believe this responsibility falls to you."
"My ability," Borsalino said, with dangerous calm, "produces light. Significant, extremely visible light. You want me to conduct a covert infiltration operation using an ability that literally announces itself."
"There's also Sakazuki," Finn offered.
"You want to send Sakazuki on a stealth mission into Pangaea Castle."
"I'm exploring options."
"He would set something on fire within the first two minutes."
"Possibly," Finn admitted.
Borsalino crossed his arms. "You're the one who should do it. Think about it properly. This requires someone powerful enough that getting caught doesn't immediately end the operation, trustworthy enough that we don't have to worry about the photograph being used against us later, and with an ability that actually suits the task." He paused. "The Dark-Dark Fruit. You've been practicing with it. Can't you pull yourself into the darkness entirely? Compress yourself into it and move unseen?"
Finn was quiet.
"Emerge when the moment is right, take the photograph, withdraw. Clean and simple." Borsalino unfolded his arms. "I'm not wrong, am I?"
Finn stared at Pangaea Castle for a moment. The logic was sound and he knew it was sound, which was slightly annoying.
"I'll think about it," he said.
"That means yes," Borsalino said.
Neither of them noticed, in the crowded square below, a figure in the uniform of a royal guard from the Goa Kingdom who had stopped moving and was standing very still with his face turned slightly upward.
Dragon had arrived in Mary Geoise several days earlier, attached to the Outlook III delegation as their captain of the guard. Ivankov's skills made the disguise comprehensive enough that Garp himself would have walked past without a second glance. Dragon had spent those days doing exactly what Finn was doing, walking the city, observing, positioning his people.
He had looked up and seen two figures on the distant rooftop, one of whom he had recognized by posture and bearing before he was close enough to make out features. Finn, unmistakably. And Borsalino beside him, both of them oriented toward the castle.
Dragon had not used Observation Haki. That would have registered, and Finn's own perceptive capabilities were not something to test carelessly. Instead he had done what his ability allowed naturally, opened his senses to the movement of air currents between the buildings, listening for fragments of conversation carried on the wind the way a sailor reads weather.
The words came in pieces. Incomplete. Enough.
Void Throne.
Finn would personally enter the castle.
Something inside Pangaea Castle, something significant enough to require the Admiral of the Marine to handle it himself, on a covert basis, during the World Conference.
Dragon looked at the castle. His expression was unreadable beneath the guard's uniform, but his mind was already working through the implications, stacking them against everything he had already deduced about the Marine's intentions.
He did not know what was in that hall.
He did not need to know exactly. He only needed to know when Finn moved.
"I follow Finn," he decided quietly, in the noise of the crowded square where no one was listening, "and I find out."
He was in the dark already. Finn, by identity and position, had to operate in the light.
That was, for once, an advantage that belonged to Dragon.
Above, on the rooftop, the two admirals finished their conversation and stepped back from the edge, and Dragon tracked their departure with his peripheral vision until they were gone, then turned back to the castle and waited.