-Broadcast-
The audience was still sitting with the Red Line gap when the Sky Screen moved on.
Most of the world watching outside the broadcast had not finished processing the first thing before the second thing arrived, which was how the broadcast tended to operate. The Red Line — the most permanent geographical feature in the known world, unchanged since before recorded history — had a hole in it. Their worldviews had taken structural damage. The Sky Screen continued regardless.
Admiral Kisame surfaced on the second half's side, turned back, and looked.
Through the gap — a clean aperture in the red stone, wide enough that a large ship's armada could have sailed through it abreast — he could see the first half's sky, and below it the Sabaody Archipelago's reduced silhouette, and further behind that the distant mass of what had been the Marine's new headquarters in Rome, and at the edge of range, just barely, the outline of Enies Lobby. The field of view that a person standing in open ocean should never have been able to hold from that distance was simply there, because the wall between the two sides of the world no longer existed.
He held the position for a moment. Is the loss of the Celestial Dragons good or bad for the Marine? The question was genuine and did not have an answer he could reach from where he was standing, with the information he currently had. He filed it in the category of problems that required more data before they could be processed, and turned back toward Rome.
He was approaching the Marine Headquarters' position when the Infinity Castle began to come apart.
The Castle's collapse was faster than anything he had expected.
The Mato Mato no Mi (Castle-Castle Fruit) had merged Nakime's extradimensional architecture with the structural space of Rome — the Castle's interior occupying the same footprint as the Marine's new headquarters, the dark fog serving as the membrane between the two. For weeks of broadcast time this merger had held, the Castle containing the Admirals and fighting the Rome operation simultaneously. Whatever conditions had maintained that merger had now ceased to obtain.
The collapse was not a building falling. It was a dimension withdrawing. The dark fog that had swallowed Rome's skyline thinned from the edges, and as it thinned the architecture it had replaced came back — the Roman fortress reasserting itself against the space the Castle had borrowed. By the time Kisame had closed the remaining distance, most of the Infinity Castle had already retracted, and the sun was back on the Marine Headquarters' surfaces for the first time since the operation began.
The battles inside had reached their conclusions.
The score was mixed in the way that honest accounts of very difficult battles tend to be.
The engagement between Tien Shinhan, Meruem, and Monster Garou against the second-generation Seraph — Homelander — had ended with the invaders driven back. All three had been injured. The price they had paid was real and visible, and none of them had left without it. Against Homelander in a sustained three-on-one engagement, those injuries were the measure of how close the outcome had come to something worse. They had escaped. That was the result.
Admiral Smoker's engagement with Gajeel Redfox had produced two people who needed significant recovery time. Neither had definitively won. Admiral Gin's fight with the Joker Pirates' puppet-user — Sasori — had not produced a winner either, which in Gin's assessment made Sasori someone the Marine needed to understand better and eliminate sooner. A puppet-master whose technique could be accurately described as more broken than expected was not a long-term problem anyone wanted to defer.
Sasori had not abandoned his ally. When Gajeel Redfox was down, Sasori had deployed a flying puppet, loaded the injured iron dragon onto it, and retreated into the Infinity Castle's interior until Gin's pursuit range was exceeded. Gin had stopped, turned back, and returned to Admiral Smoker, who needed someone present with him. Smoker had inhaled too many seastone fragments over the course of the fight. His Moku Moku no Mi (Smoke-Smoke Fruit) was fighting his own body, healing at a fraction of the rate it should. He needed at minimum two weeks before he could operate at full capacity.
Admiral Wendy and Admiral Esdeath had faced Ainz Ooal Gown. The engagement had concluded not by defeat or retreat but by Ainz choosing to exit the Infinity Castle of his own accord, for reasons that had not been stated aloud. The two female Admirals had returned to the Rome headquarters with their lives and most of their capacity intact. What Ainz's unilateral departure meant in strategic terms was a question for people with more information about his objectives.
Admiral Kuzan's battle with Coby — the Blood Guanyin — had not gone cleanly. Chrollo Lucilfer had been present, and Chrollo in a confined space with an active book and a target worth stealing from was a problem that Kuzan had not fully accounted for. Chrollo had taken a page from his ability-storage book, immediately activated the Doa Doa no Mi (Door-Door Fruit)'s stolen power, opened a spatial door inside the Infinity Castle, and exited with Coby through it. Kuzan had not been able to prevent this in time.
The only clean result from the Rome operation's engagement log was Morgan.
Silver Axe Morgan — former Marine officer, Helmeppo's biological father — had been abandoned by both cadres who had been supporting him. When his backup evaporated, he had no remaining leverage and no remaining position from which to resist. Helmeppo had found him, and what Helmeppo felt about finding his father in this context had produced the kind of efficient arrest that complicated feelings sometimes produce. Morgan would not be leaving whichever cell he was assigned to for the rest of his foreseeable future.
Sakazuki stood in the sun.
The white space of Galdino's Domain had receded in the way of environments that have lost their power supply — not collapsing but simply ceasing to apply, the ordinary world reasserting itself through the gaps in the wax physics as the fruit technique lost its maintenance energy. The Sakazuki-shaped imprint it left behind was a space where the magma had been too dense and too hot for the wax to fully claim, which was the closest thing to a concession the Domain had produced.
The surroundings were returning. The Roman buildings were re-establishing their presence. He looked at the ordinary air and ordinary light and processed being back in it with the particular quality of attention of someone who has been inside a very problem for a long time and is recalibrating to context.
He had spent too long in there. That was the honest assessment. Galdino's Domain had not beaten him, but it had held him, which was the point — a delay mechanism operated by a pirate he had previously categorized as a minor inconvenience, and the delay had cost the Marine whatever the delay had cost. The full extent of that cost would require a situation report.
He had planned to go back into the Castle. Find someone with useful information. Get answers.
Then something fell out of the sky.
It was small at first — a dark spot against the sun, accelerating under gravity, resolving as it came closer into something that was wearing the remains of a Marine justice cloak. He was already moving before he consciously identified what he was looking at. Admiral Aramaki — Ryokugyū — came down at the speed of a man who had been dropped from a significant altitude by whatever had been holding him and was now subject only to physics.
Sakazuki caught him.
Below the chest, there was no Aramaki to speak of. Everything from the lower ribs downward had been removed — not destroyed, not charred or dissolved, but taken in the manner of animal consumption, the broken edges showing the rounded impressions of something with very large teeth. The internal organs were absent. What remained was the upper body of a man who should have died from this, and Aramaki had not died from it, because the Mori Mori no Mi (Forest-Forest Fruit) was a Logia class and because Aramaki's connection to plant life was not something that simply ceased when the lower portion of the container was no longer present.
His eyes were moving. He recognized Sakazuki's face. The recognition produced a quality of relief in his expression — the relief of finding your idol at the end of something very bad.
He was trying to speak. Sakazuki put a hand on his chest.
"Don't." There was no room in his voice for negotiation, but there was also nothing in it that resembled contempt. "Later. Rest now. There's time to report."
The Mori Mori no Mi would handle the rest. Plant physiology in a nutrient solution regenerated faster than almost any other Logia. Aramaki's recovery timeline was shorter than Smoker's would be, assuming an optimal treatment environment. Sakazuki would make sure the environment was optimal.
He held what remained of his most loyal subordinate and looked at the cleared sky where the Infinity Castle had been, and began calculating what the information in Aramaki's report would eventually cost him emotionally and what he intended to do about it.