-Broadcast-
The Infinity Castle had terrorized the seas for years, untouchable by any fleet because no artillery shell in the Marine's arsenal could reach ten thousand meters into the sky. Warships had trained their guns on it helplessly, again and again, watching the Joker Pirates commit their crimes from behind a wall of altitude. Today, at last, that impunity had been answered. The Fleet Admiral had reached out and erased the Castle as though it had never existed.
Every surviving sailor who witnessed the golden lance fall broke into applause.
The prevailing opinion was unanimous: those lawless pirates had deserved this for a long time.
The true measure of the Fleet Admiral's power rewrote the Marine's understanding of what was possible. Artoria Pendragon was a young blonde woman with an unremarkable face at a glance — but the display she had just given left the men and women around her with nothing left to say. Admiration had replaced words entirely.
No one felt this more acutely than Sakazuki. He stood holding the injured Aramaki in his arms, his eyes fixed on the point in the sky where the holy lance had fallen. When the Rhongomyniad struck, his gaze had been blazing. He believed now, without reservation, that Fleet Admiral Artoria Pendragon was the undisputed embodiment of justice in the Marine.
In the great upheaval that had not been seen in a thousand years, every power in the world would be reshuffled. The Marine, long treated as a watchdog kept on the World Government's leash, had finally stepped onto the stage on its own terms.
What generations of admirals had collectively failed to accomplish, she had done alone — driving the Marine forward and demolishing every force that blocked their path.
Artoria felt the admiring gazes pressing in from all sides like heat. She heard the voice of justice in each one of them.
She closed her eyes and began to draw her aura back inward.
The divinity that had flared through her during Rhongomyniad began to recede, like a tide pulling back from the shore. The human side of Artoria Pendragon returned with it — quieter, more worn, and more real. Her golden hair, which the surge of power had pressed flat, rose again around her face.
A king who stands before her people cannot remain a monument forever. The throne is cold and lonely, and she knew this better than anyone. Between the divine and the human, she had always been searching for the point of balance.
"See to the wounded in Rome. I have avenged our martyrs." She paused, letting the weight of that land. "You each know what needs doing. Those with reports follow me."
The brief order was enough. The Marine's command chain reactivated as though a circuit had been restored, every department surging back into motion. No one wanted to disappoint her.
The admirals received no additional orders. The injured were sent to the medical department without ceremony — recuperate as long as needed, the battle was over, rest was not weakness now but necessity.
Sakazuki took Aramaki to the ruins of the science base. His most loyal subordinate was in a state that would have killed any ordinary man; everything below the chest was missing, internal organs absent, the broken edges marked by animal bite wounds. But Aramaki's eyes still moved. He had recognized Sakazuki's face before losing the ability to speak.
The plant nutrient solution developed by Caesar Clown and Vegapunk working together was the most viable path to accelerating Aramaki's recovery. His Mori Mori no Mi (Forest-Forest Fruit) Logia body operated on plant-based biology — conventional medicine would do nothing for him. He could only be treated as what he was.
The two scientists, when they finally laid eyes on Aramaki's cellular activity, forgot themselves entirely. In the intervals between emergency procedures, they quietly cut off several samples and began studying the tissue without the admiral's knowledge.
Smoker, Wendy, and Esdeath made their way back to the medical center in Rome. All three had been seriously injured in the Castle, and their returns were subdued. Each carried a small secret they had not yet found the words to report to the Fleet Admiral.
Admiral Borsalino had disappeared. Admiral Kuzan intended to search the surrounding area for him.
Admiral Gin took on the task of patrolling Marine Headquarters, methodically checking every corner of Rome for any suspicious elements that might have gone to ground during the chaos.
The gap in the Red Line was not a theory anyone needed to investigate. Admiral Kaitora had already confirmed it with his own eyes, swimming through the opening to the other half of the Grand Line, and that intelligence had been relayed to Marine Headquarters. The sea breeze from the second half of the route was already reaching Rome.
For anyone whose mind was functioning, the conclusion required no debate. A piece of the Red Line was gone. The holy land of Mary Geoise, which had stood at that location for eight hundred years, was gone with it.
Whether the Celestial Dragons were still alive was a question the Marine turned over with studied neutrality. Most of the officers had the good sense not to say aloud what several of them were thinking.
The most immediately pressing embarrassment was the Judicial Island.
When the tsunami receded and the World Government's agents there finally saw the hole in the Red Line with their own eyes, they understood in the same instant that their masters were nowhere to be found. Men and women who had spent their careers as faithful dogs to the Celestial Dragons suddenly discovered that the leash had no one holding the other end. A hollow, directionless unease settled over all of them.
When the golden lance had destroyed the Infinity Castle, every agent on the Judicial Island had turned instinctively toward Rome. They stared at the Marine Headquarters in the distance, guilt written plainly across their faces, and none of them had the first idea how to go about introducing themselves to whoever would be giving the orders from now on.
The Sabaody Archipelago, of which perhaps one in ten had survived the tsunami, was already a Marine priority. Supply warships were dispatched without delay.
Survivors were valuable. The archipelago still needed people for reconstruction, and the Marine — whose talent for generating revenue had always been modest — at least understood the practical necessity of collecting taxes from a population that had to exist first.
The destruction of the Red Line and the phenomenon in the sky could not be concealed from the pirates in the second half of the Grand Line. The stronger groups caught wind of it almost immediately and began making course for the gap.
After Chrollo escorted Coby back to Beehive Island, he opened a door a second time — and stepped through to deposit Marshall D. Teach at the edge of the Red Line, where the gap was visible from the water.
The two of them watched in silence as the last traces of the Infinity Castle's destruction faded from the sky above Rome.
"The Marine's new leadership keeps a low profile right up until the moment they don't." Teach let out a slow breath, and then began to laugh — a rolling, unhinged sound. "Buggy the Clown really lost everything this time."
He had been right not to go to the Marine Headquarters. That much he was certain of.
Buggy had vanished along with Mary Geoise. There was undoubtedly some enormous secret buried in that fact, but it did not occupy Teach's mind for long. He was thinking about the Celestial Dragon vaults. Eight hundred years of accumulated wealth — mountains of gold and silver, the compound interest of a world held under one thumb. All of it gone, swallowed by whatever had obliterated the Holy Land.
The loss was painful. The pirates who had been quietly circling that treasure in their dreams for years felt the same ache, though none of them would admit it.
Chrollo broke the silence.
"Captain — do you believe you could defeat the current Marine Fleet Admiral?"
He asked it plainly, the way he asked everything — professionally, without softening it. He had wanted the answer for some time and saw no point in approaching it sideways.
Teach stared toward the gap in the Red Line. His gaze drifted past it, to the shape of Rome in the far distance. After a long silence, he spoke.
"Maybe fifty-fifty. When you reach this level, strategy stops being the deciding factor. On a flat field, I would need a little luck."
He was not certain he could win. He had never had trouble admitting that about anyone worth admitting it about.
But his luck had always been exceptional. The fruits he had wanted, one by one, had found their way to him. The women, the influence, the recognition — it had all arrived, eventually, the way things seemed to arrive for people the world had decided to favor.
With the Marine currently at the height of its power, the Blackbeard Pirates had no pressing reason to expand their territory. They would watch. Let the sea settle into whatever shape it took after an event like this. Understand the new geometry. Then plan accordingly.
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