Speakers were hurriedly connected to Den Den Mushi throughout the Black Cat Hall and its surroundings.
"An unbelievable situation has occurred... I knew something was wrong from the sound of Kuro's voice, but I never imagined it was this bad..."
"The World Government was foolish... or rather, something that man Kuro did must have terrified them to their very core."
"And you're cooperating just because you want to investigate that?"
"Kuhahaha! As expected of the 'Dark King.' Well, I suppose you'd see through me."
In addition to the Black Cat soldiers, the former Marines who had just joined were also gathering. He was likely planning to say something to as many soldiers as possible.
When Crocodile looked up at the castle, he saw the kingdom's princess, seemingly wanting to listen, having her attendant open a window to observe.
(So the two royals they supposedly rescued in that battle are still holed up. I heard they extremely dislike appearing in public...)
Crocodile, having no particular interest in the royalty of such a small country, averted his gaze and began observing the members of the elite guard gathering around him.
They were all young, but well-trained.
"I expected the Marines to overwhelm us with numbers if another battle broke out... but with things like this, they won't even be able to fight properly."
"Indeed. And on top of that, organized pirate crews will likely make their move all at once. Some forces will probably try to conquer not just towns, but entire nations."
"...The Marines will be forced to deal with their own defectors while simultaneously responding to aggressive pirates."
"Kuhahaha! It really wouldn't be surprising if the Marines collapsed! How interesting!"
"...It would be more accurate to say we'd be lucky if it ends with just the Marines."
The hooded man drinking with Crocodile—the Dark King, Silvers Rayleigh—looked up at the princess with a worried expression, then turned his gaze to the Den Den Mushi connected to Kuro.
"At the very least, the nations of West Blue will undoubtedly come to desire your power... Kuro."
—Zz... Zz...
"Vice-Governor, setup in the courtyard is complete!"
"Amelia here. Setup at Shamrock's harbor, standby area, and salon is complete."
"The training grounds are good to go!"
Reports from the elite guard, who had scattered to complete the hasty preparations, came in through the communication line.
This was the greatest strength of the Black Cat pirates, the one Crocodile was most interested in—the one he wanted to obtain, or at least replicate, if possible.
This group, trained in Kuro's own footwork and in swordsmanship taught by masters like Mihawk and Rayleigh, excelled in stealth and mobility, making them excellent couriers.
Even from a distance, they could finish simple preparations in an instant.
"Bigle on Cannet Island. We've gathered the soldiers and patched in. We haven't set up any anti-eavesdropping measures, is that alright?"
"It's fine. As long as you're connected, there's no problem. —Captain, we're good."
They were connected to the distant Black Cat territories, and nearly all the soldiers were linked.
In some places, not just soldiers, but civilians were likely listening in.
"Right. Thanks, Daz."
A voice Crocodile was hearing for the first time, and one Rayleigh hadn't heard in a long time, caused the soldiers to stir.
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
"To the officers I speak with on regular comms, and to all the soldiers. I apologize for being away so long."
I can see the speaker's expression through the Den Den Mushi... but it's hard to get a feel for things when addressing such a large crowd. If I were there in person, I could read the atmosphere...
"Let's get right to it. We will re-confirm and share the current situation."
Hina and the other Marines were gathered around.
...Now that I think about it, what is this situation?
Issho is leaning against a nearby wall, not having touched his sake bottle or cup.
Please, drink.
You can use this as a snack, just please drink something.
It's incredibly unsettling being stared at so intently.
"Our recent trip to the Holy Land. The primary objective—to improve relations between the Marines and the Government, and to integrate us, the 'Black Cat' crew, as a third party in that new, reset partnership—has failed. Worse, it has resulted in a disaster that will likely erupt across the world, surpassing even the Pirate Alliance."
This side is fine.
Hina has regained her composure after wiping her face, as have the other Marines.
(Well, there's someone else I need to be wary of in a different sense... but that's for later.)
The problem is the other side of the Den Den Mushi.
As expected, there's some agitation.
I can't feel it on my skin... but I have a bad feeling.
(Yes, it's vital I speak now and readjust their direction.)
"From this point on, a scramble for resources will begin, rivaling—no, surpassing—the one that occurred when the Pirate Alliance first emerged. And not just pirates. Civilians will fight civilians, nations will fight nations. They will try to seize any and all resources for survival. Even if the opponent is a relative, or yesterday's friend."
From supplies like food, fuel, lumber, building materials, medicine, and ammunition, to simple manpower.
The clock has truly been wound back.
We could be looking at a Void Century level event... or to put it in more familiar terms, we're on the eve of a world war, or the outbreak of a great civil war...
"The great chaos that is to come will bring poverty to all regions. ...It will likely spread and burn across the entire world."
A global skirmish... no, a great war is now unavoidable.
There's no stopping it.
"As poverty spreads and famine grows, the survival instinct they fuel will twist the lack of understanding for others into a warped hostility, and tragedy will begin as people mark the easiest person to strike as their enemy."
That is why I must make it clear who the enemy is.
"These are the things we must confront."
"They are what each of these three claw marks represents. They are the true enemy of us, the 'Black Cat' crew!"
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
In Spider Miles, a banquet celebrating the coming age of chaos was underway.
In the middle of a dilapidated, trash-filled town, in an even more dilapidated bar, the voice of a certain pirate cut through the din.
"Behehehehe! That idiot pirate is spouting nonsense again!"
The boss of the crew occupying the bar said nothing, merely listening.
He listened to the voice—one that was not base and mocking like his officer's.
The man with his eyes hidden by sunglasses, and the afro-haired man who had helped draw up the plans to this point, listened in silence.
"This is a story from when I was still in East Blue."
For the man—Donquixote Doflamingo—this pirate he had never even met had become an unavoidable presence.
His intellect was proven when he had, from a distant land, uncovered Doflamingo's plot, even if it was a step too late.
His military prowess went without saying. The sheer density of his accomplishments in such a short time already placed him among the top five in the world.
"I still remember it. We were all emaciated children, with no knowledge or skill to solve our situation."
He had, of course, investigated the man's roots.
A common abandoned child from East Blue.
In East Blue, seen as the "peaceful" sea, population culls were not uncommon in the many poor, forgotten villages.
It was simply a sea where the weakest were sacrificed before a conflict could even begin.
"Before I knew it, on the island we'd drifted to, I had become the one organizing the children. Though I had no experience, we all learned through trial and error how to set traps and fish, securing our daily food. We even managed to use a boat to trade with nearby people and earn money."
The "Black Cat" pirate's words—mentioning he had nearly drowned or died multiple times—were steeped in hardship.
For a moment, Doflamingo remembered the days he had scavenged through trash for anything his brother could eat.
(Living is a battle of snatching... If that's true for Kuro, then for a group of kids, unrelated by blood...)
"And so, we saved up a lot of Berries. The very night I spoke with the others about starting to trade in earnest..."
(...Then, well...)
"They all betrayed me."
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
"They must have been told by a nearby merchant that they'd be given a good life if they brought the money we'd saved."
The resentment towards me, the one who had taken charge, must have been strong.
I've replayed that time in my mind over and over. I treated them like children.
"They took all the Berries and left the island in the small boat."
Even if I try to correct it, I know the seed of arrogance is still stubbornly rooted inside me. Even if I suppress it and reflect, something so ingrained doesn't vanish easily.
"There was an evil inside me called arrogance, and it drove them, who were already cornered, to accept that easy invitation."
"After I built a boat and chased them, I found their rotting corpses. And I will never forget my own ugliness in that moment, when alongside the sadness, I felt, 'See? I was right.'"
"The human heart is filled with sludge. Everyone's. ...Especially mine."
And yet—despite knowing that reveling in power is evil, despite telling everyone to live strong, I was consumed by it in the Germa fight. I can't seem to wipe the sludge from my heart completely.
Even so—
"But, even so... it wasn't a lie. It wasn't a lie!"
"That I wanted to save those children who were abandoned with me."
"That I wanted to save Robin, who was hiding in that damp, reeking barrel."
"That I wanted to do something for everyone imprisoned in the ship's hold."
"That much... is absolutely not a lie!"
"The human heart is not just an accumulation of sludge!"
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
(...The sludge of the heart. Yes... it's certainly in everyone. ...Including me...)
Taki, who had fought as a Marine in West Blue for many years, had a bitter memory that still haunted her dreams.
Sixteen years ago. The year after her granddaughter was born.
She was on guard duty on an island a Celestial Dragon was visiting.
God Valley.
The island where the hero Garp, the Pirate King, and the legendary Rocks had once clashed. Taki had been there by chance.
Her ship was destroyed, and she swam for her life, landing on a beach. There, she saw the body of a woman, likely a mother, shot dead alongside her child as she tried to protect them.
Pirates must have done it.
That's what she thought at first glance.
No, it's what she wanted to think.
But she could never forget the sight of that parent and child, and the countless other bodies scattered around them, all wearing the same clothes, adorned with a mark... like a target.
Even after surviving that battlefield, a place of death created by the clashes between pirates and the hero Garp, she had buried the memory deep in her heart, beneath her duty and her happy family life.
Until that day. The day the truth about her long-lost granddaughter was revealed.
"I will never forget. Daz, who tried to see sacrifice as a matter of course, still felt pain for those sacrifices."
The "Black Cat" crew's Number 2, sitting in his chair in the conference room with his eyes closed, smiled faintly.
"Perona, for all her curtness, works day and night compounding medicinal herbs, accumulating the knowledge and skill to do so for the soldiers and the people."
The youngest of the pirate crew, yet one respected as an officer, let out a small "Hmph!"
"Robin... who, despite being hunted by the entire world, was pained by the sight of a weakened Marine and sincerely lent her hand to help him recover."
The woman most beloved by the soldiers nodded happily at the voice of the man she had been so worried about.
"Not to mention the officers who constantly study tactics to reduce our losses and increase our survivors, and the Marines... how much they've worn themselves down, body and soul, for the civilians they rescued..."
The newly defected Marines—the soldiers who had run themselves ragged for the people in Mogwa and the surrounding countries—clenched their fists.
"I know. Every person carries sludge in their heart, and yet, deep within it, there is certainly... something that shines."
The soldiers here had, at one time or another, been hit with insults and complaints from the very civilians they had saved.
And at the same time, they had also seen those same civilians desperately encouraging their families, or sharing what little food they had.
"...This atrocity by the Celestial Dragons is, in a sense, the epitome of humanity. If you continue to indulge your greed in a narrow world, you can easily fall that low. ...Into the sludge, which presses down with unbearable weight."
The soldiers remembered the Marines who had participated in the "Human Hunts" discovered during the Pirate Alliance investigation.
The elite guard remembered the traitors, Marines who had sullied their hands with corruption and sold them out.
"It may be that many end their lives buried in that sludge, never showing their light. But... there is no room to doubt the existence of that light! It is dreadfully hard to see, but it is there!"
Strength filled every soldier.
A fire was lit in something they had believed in as children, something they had long since relegated to the back of their minds as an impossibility.
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
In the aid station of an empty, abandoned Marine base, Akainu stood with his arms crossed, silently listening to the pirate's speech.
"Poverty, hunger, and the lack of understanding for others, which allow that sludge to accumulate... as long as we are human, none can escape them. And that is why, if we do not find the resolve to face them, we cannot open the new era! Just as the World Government has stagnated for 800 years!"
"Black-Arm" Zeff, who had been lying in bed, pushed his still-aching body upright. He touched his chest, over the bandages.
He confirmed the three claw marks carved into his chest, right through the bandages.
The only ones in this aid station were veteran officers, primarily of Commander rank or higher.
In other words, they were the decent, proper Marines that Sakazuki and Zeff knew well.
Those Marines were standing rigid, clenching their fists, saying nothing.
"These three claw marks are the proof of that resolve!"
"A flag that swears to fight, to cut through the sludge of contradiction and malice!!"
Some of the soldiers lying in beds for treatment turned their eyes to the Den Den Mushi. Others were sobbing quietly.
They were mourning the tragedy that had occurred while they were fighting, losing so much.
From somewhere in the distant New World, a pirate who saw the world clearly was giving a call to arms—not to malice, but to belief in humanity's light.
He was putting into words the very thing they should have been championing.
And they all listened, in silence.
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
"Heed my words! Elites gathered under the three-clawed flag!"
Daz Bonez could feel the soldiers' morale soaring at Captain Kuro's words.
"At this very moment! We, the 'Black Cat' crew, have set sail on..."
"An endless war against the universal enemies born from humanity itself!"
The Den Den Mushi probably couldn't convey the full scene to the Captain, but he surely understood some of it.
That was why he had asked Daz to connect the locations with the most soldiers before this speech.
"The era has already begun to swell. Our journey will be a voyage through darkness, with no end in sight."
The soldiers' morale had already been high.
High enough to sail out and sink Government ships right this instant.
"That is precisely why! We, of all people!"
The atmosphere changed.
"Must take the first, proud step into this darkness, to become the compass for those who follow!"
The morale, which had risen from anger and hostility toward the lawlessness of the Celestial Dragons, sublimated into something more disciplined—something that could only be called a "martial spirit."
Hancock, with Galdino in tow, nodded in satisfaction at the state of her First Fleet.
Mihawk, too, gave a small smile at the high morale of the elite guard and soldiers he had taken an interest in.
"My elite soldiers! My comrades-in-arms!"
"Raise high our pride!"
In every "Black Cat" territory where this voice reached, an explosive roar echoed in response.
***
10 Advanced Chapters Available on my Patreon!
https://patreon.com/Well_being