Chapter 496: Both Sides Moving
Being able to read minds was genuinely useful. Brett had confirmed Chaton's state of mind with complete certainty.
That man was going to act. No question about it.
"That's probably the most we can accomplish tonight." Brett stretched his arms above his head. "Let's head back."
Momousagi looked up one last time at the dark cliff and the stars above it. Then she gave a small nod and followed Brett into the water, heading back toward Fish-Man Island.
Kake. You're the one I'm counting on now.
She let the thought settle and then let it go, and the deep water of Marineford fell away behind them.
Up on the terrace, Chaton had not moved.
"Gion..."
Decades of admiration. The woman had looked him in the eyes and spoken with everything she had, and he found it genuinely impossible to convince himself she was lying.
But if she wasn't lying, then the World Government was, and the implications of that were the kind of thing that made a person's thoughts run in circles and refuse to stop.
If the Government had really framed her, had really done what she said to those Marines, then what did that mean? What did it mean for all of it?
Chaton didn't dare follow the thought all the way to the end.
But precisely because the consequences were so enormous, wasn't this exactly the kind of story someone might construct to drive a wedge between the Navy and the Government? Zephyr and Brett's faction stood to gain enormously from that kind of disruption. The timing made sense.
He couldn't figure out what was true and what wasn't.
But he knew which way his heart was leaning.
Because he had known Gion for a very long time, and she was not a person who abandoned things easily.
"And besides."
The despondent man's mouth had, without his noticing it, pulled up at one corner into something odd and complicated and inexplicably hopeful.
"She came to me. Not anyone else." A longer pause. "That means I'm the person she trusts most, doesn't it?"
"If I can clear her name, and then ask her again properly..."
"She won't be able to say no."
"Yes! I have a reason I absolutely have to act now!"
Brett's read had been exactly right. Chaton had already made his decision.
It was partly Gion driving him. But it was also partly genuine doubt about the version of events he'd been given, the kind of doubt he couldn't simply argue himself out of.
"But," the short-lived excitement ebbed back into uncertainty, "where do I even start?"
The Government and the Navy operated as separate institutions. Finding his way into Government secrets wasn't something his position naturally allowed.
Although. If Gion's account was accurate and the experiment had succeeded, then the next step for the Government would be assembling the personnel to fill an army. That was going to go through the Science Division.
And Borsalino was in charge of the Science Division.
Could he approach Borsalino? Use that connection to get a look at what was actually happening inside the Science Division?
Chaton turned this over and found it promising.
He had a direction.
He would start by buying Borsalino a drink.
Having settled on a plan, Vice Admiral Chaton went inside with a smile on his face and slept better than he had in weeks. He dreamed, specifically, about a future occasion involving a certain ceremony with a certain person, and the smile didn't leave his face until well into the following morning.
While Chaton prepared to move, Brett and Momousagi had already made it back to Fish-Man Island.
"Chaton alone probably isn't enough." Brett had arranged for a room to be built near his own temporary quarters in the Forest of the Sea.
He had confirmed through mind-reading that there was no malice in this woman, but human intentions had a way of shifting. If something changed and she decided to do something she shouldn't, having her close by mattered. On all of Fish-Man Island, he was the only one who could contain her without real difficulty.
He was being practical.
As they walked back, he said, "We'll need to move from our side as well."
"If the Government wants to build a deep-sea army, then after the technical problem is solved, the next thing they need is people. Enormous numbers of people."
"Agreed." Momousagi nodded. "That force is being built with Fish-Man Island as the hypothetical enemy. Which means it can't be small. We're talking tens of thousands at minimum. More than a hundred thousand isn't out of the question."
Brett ran the rough numbers in his head. The World Government commanded the loyalty of over a hundred seventy member nations. Pulling together that kind of manpower was trivial for an institution of that size.
"An assembly of personnel at that scale can't be completely invisible, even for the World Government." He said it with a certain confidence. "They'll minimize the noise as much as possible. Most of the world won't notice. The Navy might not even notice. But I have people who are very good at this kind of thing."
Tesoro. Morgans. Katakuri. All of them maintained information networks that other people didn't know existed.
"I can't call it a certainty. But it's a direction worth pursuing." Brett rolled his shoulders. "I'll put everything we have on intelligence tracking toward finding where those people are going. If we can follow the recruitment, we can find the new base."
"Thank you." Momousagi said it with the particular formality she used when gratitude was genuine and she wanted that to be clear. "I mean it."
"You don't need to. This serves my interests directly." Brett kept his voice easy. "I don't want the Government fielding a deep-sea army any more than you do."
He paused.
"And if the Navy actually separates from the Government. That would be everything I could ask for."
Momousagi allowed herself a small smile. "Then let's hope we both get what we're after."
Brett smiled back.
Days settled into a pattern.
Brett spent each morning checking in with Tesoro, Morgans, and Katakuri, asking after the progress of their tracking efforts. The rest of each day went to confirming the state of Pluton's construction and the Seraphim's growth inside Vegapunk's laboratory. Two lines running in parallel, both slow, both critical.
Time moved steadily forward.
Then, in a secret facility that no one outside a very small circle knew existed:
"Please observe, Five Elders!"
Caesar was holding a Den Den Mushi up, conducting a remote presentation for the Five Elders with visible pride.
"This is the first completed batch!"
He grinned at the figures being captured by the Den Den Mushi's transmission, a long row of them standing in formation. "What are you all waiting for? Greet the Five Elders!"
What stood before him was a line of creatures.
The only word for them was creatures. Each one was a collision of human and aquatic anatomy forced together without elegance. An octopus head sitting atop a human skull, with two human arms extending from the sides of it. A human set of legs beneath a shark's torso. Variations on that theme repeating down the row, each one its own particular assembly of mismatched parts.
The word for the overall effect was disturbing.
"We greet the Five Elders!"
The creatures bowed in unison, lowering themselves toward the Den Den Mushi with a coordination that was somehow more unsettling than chaos would have been.
The voice that came through from the other end carried satisfaction.
"Well done, Caesar. You've done well. The Government's secret recruitment is already underway. More subjects will be sent to you shortly. Build us our deep-sea army, and do it quickly."
"Leave it to me."
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