—Real World—
The future Admiral Tenryu was about to cause catastrophic disturbance in Mary Geoise's holy land. For many observers across the world, this represented merely an advance rehearsal of an inevitable larger event.
The Celestial Dragons could avoid this particular crisis, but they couldn't escape the next one. Sooner or later, they would face complete liquidation for eight centuries of accumulated sins.
History's wheel turned slowly but with inexorable momentum toward judgment.
If one were to identify which force suffered the greatest internal conflicts and ideological divisions, the Revolutionary Army would rank first without serious competition. The Sky Screen had played an immeasurable role in exposing and accelerating these fractures.
Some cadres of the Revolutionary Army had been pushed forward initially by common ideals of liberation. They'd possessed shared vision of a world without tyranny, without slavery, without the Celestial Dragons' divine right.
Many times they'd been so excited by revolutionary fervor that they hadn't thought too deeply about methodology or leadership decisions. Passion overrode analysis.
However, the Sky Screen provided dialectical perspective—showing multiple viewpoints, revealing consequences, exposing contradictions. Even members who weren't particularly intelligent could sense that something was fundamentally wrong with their leader Monkey D. Dragon's decision-making patterns.
Currently, the Revolutionary Army had lost two commanders simultaneously:
Bartholomew Kuma had voluntarily quit the organization for his daughter's sake, accepting transformation into a Pacifista to cure Bonnie's illness. He'd sacrificed his consciousness and humanity on the altar of paternal love.
Ivankov—who'd been a life-and-death friend of Big Bear, someone who'd fought beside him through countless battles—remained imprisoned in the underwater prison Impel Down. Eight years of incarceration without any rescue attempt.
Not to mention whether the Okama King could even be successfully extracted from that fortress, the more troubling question was: Why hadn't the leader of the Revolutionary Army taken any action whatsoever to retrieve such a valuable commander?
At this moment, Ivankov resided in the gap between Impel Down's fourth and fifth floors—a space between Hell levels that the prison administration didn't officially acknowledge.
He'd opened up a kingdom that belonged to his followers: Level 4.5, the Okama Paradise. A sanctuary for those who didn't fit conventional categories, who rejected binary gender norms, who found freedom in fluidity.
He'd helped many prisoners escape the floors above and hide in this secret level, becoming the de facto leader of this hidden community. Under his inspiration, many men had voluntarily embraced androgynous presentation—finding liberation in rejecting the masculinity they'd been forced to perform.
Ever since the Sky Screen had been mysteriously inserted into the seabed—somehow penetrating Impel Down's massive underwater structure and appearing even in the deepest levels—they'd gained new entertainment programming.
Discussing the future was now the most common activity these prisoners engaged in daily. What else did they have beyond speculation and gossip?
It was human nature to gossip when bored and confined. But today, when the Okama King Ivankov witnessed the future fates of Bonnie and Big Bear displayed on the Sky Screen, his normally flamboyant expression became rather gloomy.
The transformation was so severe that other subordinates didn't dare speak loudly in his presence, terrified of saying something wrong and making their beloved leader unhappy.
"Monkey D. Dragon," Ivankov muttered quietly, staring at the Sky Screen with hollow eyes. "What on earth are you thinking? I really can't see through you anymore, darling. If Ginny knew her child would become this—a butcher hunting Revolutionary Army members—she would die with even deeper regrets."
Ginny, Ivankov, and Bartholomew Kuma were survivors of the God Valley Incident.
The friendship between these three was like family forged in fire and blood. They'd witnessed horrors together that bonded them more tightly than biology ever could.
Eventually, all three had joined the Revolutionary Army simultaneously, believing in Dragon's vision of liberation. But the results they'd received were more tragic than each other—a descending spiral of suffering without redemption.
Ginny had been captured by Celestial Dragons during a Revolutionary Army operation. She'd been enslaved, forced to bear a child conceived through violence.
In the last moments of her life, she'd been escaping—running desperately through sunlit lands while suffering from Sapphire Scale disease.
She'd been exposed to direct sunlight during her escape, and the disease had progressed rapidly. After handing baby Bonnie over to Bartholomew Kuma—entrusting her daughter to the only person she could trust—Ginny had passed away shortly after.
The smiling woman in Ivankov's memory had her body gradually covered with blue crystalline stones before death. The stones growing directly out of her flesh and blood, replacing skin and muscle with mineral formations—this was definitely pain that ordinary people couldn't endure.
Ivankov couldn't imagine how his friend had survived under direct sunshine for the entire journey from Mary Geoise to the South Blue. How she'd pushed through agony that would have killed most people within hours.
All the thousands of words he wanted to say compressed into one sentence: She was truly a great mother.
After that tragedy, Bartholomew Kuma had been labeled a "Tyrant"—ironically, since he was one of the gentlest men Ivankov had ever known. But Ivankov had already been imprisoned in Impel Down by that time, unable to help or even communicate.
A question haunted him: Was the disease Bonnie suffered—the same Sapphire Scale affliction—inherited from Ginny? Passed down through blood from mother to daughter?
Ivankov couldn't help feeling profound anger when analyzing the sequence of events.
Monkey D. Dragon possessed connections with Dr. Vegapunk through various channels. He could have simply asked the world's greatest scientist to treat Bonnie's illness directly.
Why had he allowed the situation where Vegapunk performed human experiments on Kuma instead? Gradually erasing Kuma's emotions and memories, transforming him into a cold mechanical weapon?
Was it strategic calculation? Callous pragmatism? Or genuine inability to see alternatives?
Ivankov thought about his own experience with bitter clarity. He'd been imprisoned for almost eight years now. The Revolutionary Army had never attempted rescue operations. Not once.
If there wasn't a prison riot in the future—if external circumstances didn't create opportunities for escape—would he simply die of old age in this 4.5-floor paradise he'd built?
Some things couldn't withstand careful examination. Once you allowed yourself to truly think about patterns and decisions, the irrationality in life became exposed from all angles.
A terrible suspicion formed in Ivankov's mind—one he'd never entertained before:
Could Monkey D. Dragon be deliberately betraying his own subordinates?
Before the Sky Screen's appearance, Ivankov had never permitted himself this heretical thought. Questioning Dragon was questioning the revolution itself.
But viewing problems from an objective third-party perspective—seeing the broader patterns laid out across time—revealed that the Revolutionary Army's pessimistic future had obvious seeds planted in present negligence.
Even if Monkey D. Dragon himself harbored no deliberate malice, when you examined his actual decisions objectively, they formed a pattern of stupidity repeated again and again.
Abandoning commanders. Failing to leverage connections. Allowing valuable allies to suffer when alternatives existed. Maintaining silence when communication was desperately needed.
Whether through incompetence or design, the results were identical: the Revolutionary Army hemorrhaging its most capable and loyal members.
Inazuma—the Revolutionary Army member most trusted by the Okama King, serving as his primary advisor and confidant—could understand Ivankov's profound pain.
He also felt deep sadness about what had happened to Ginny, Bonnie, and Kuma. The entire tragic sequence could have been prevented through better leadership.
However, many things had already occurred. Past events were basically impossible to change now. They could only influence the future.
"Bonnie will become so extreme in the future that she kills any Revolutionary Army member she encounters on sight," Inazuma observed quietly, his wine-glass-shaped hair casting strange shadows. "Dragon bears unshirkable responsibility for creating that outcome."
Inazuma didn't intend to excuse the Revolutionary Army's supreme leader. He and Ivankov had been imprisoned in this underwater prison for eight years without rescue attempts. It would be a lie to claim he harbored no resentment.
Without strong external support, the strength concentrated in Level 4.5's Okama Kingdom wasn't sufficient for even Prison Director Magellan to handle alone if he discovered them.
Magellan's horrific Doku Doku no Mi (Venom-Venom Fruit) was the perfect counter to concentrated populations. Once his poison stuck to bodies, without corresponding antidotes to remove the toxins, the stronghold they'd built with such difficulty would be completely wiped out.
As for Impel Down's jailbreak record, only Shiki the Golden Lion had succeeded—escaping by cutting off his own legs to slip the Seastone shackles. He'd been a great pirate as famous as Whitebeard and Gol D. Roger himself.
Even if Ivankov and Inazuma combined their abilities, they weren't worthy to be compared with the Golden Lion. They simply didn't have that capability.
Revolutionary rescue? It had never come.
Baltigo
The comrades imprisoned in Impel Down harbored many grievances. But the Revolutionary Army's headquarters on Baltigo experiencing even greater turmoil.
The internal atmosphere was profoundly wrong at this moment. Doubts about their leader had been brought to the surface, gradually becoming an important obstacle to subsequent combat operations.
How could you fight for someone you didn't trust? How could you risk your life following orders from a leader whose judgment seemed fundamentally flawed?
Dragon naturally heard the winds of discontent. Intelligence reached him from multiple sources about growing unrest.
But he chose silence once again. The pattern that had defined his leadership—strategic non-communication, allowing situations to develop without intervention, maintaining mysterious inscrutability.
Many commanders couldn't withstand the verbal torture from their comrades anymore. They chose to directly confront the leader and demand explanations.
Even an extremely perfunctory excuse would be better than complete silence! If Dragon continued turning a blind eye to their concerns, it would become impossible to lead the Revolutionary Army. The unity they'd worked so hard to cultivate would slowly dissipate over time.
"Why is the leader avoiding me?" one commander complained bitterly to his peers. "How can I explain to my subordinates if he maintains this silence indefinitely?"
"He owes us an explanation for the Kuma incident!" another agreed passionately. "And Ginny's situation—how could such excellent commanders end up suffering such fates while leadership did nothing?"
Sabo listened to his Revolutionary Army comrades' complaints with carefully neutral expression. At this moment, his identity was extremely sensitive—he couldn't afford to take sides openly.
He didn't want to start new factions or split the Revolutionary Army into competing organizations. That would destroy everything they'd built.
But knowing the future in advance meant he received disproportionate attention. Everyone watched him for signals about which direction the organization should move.
A significant part of why Bear's daughter became so extreme in the future was that the Revolutionary Army led by Sabo would adopt more radical methodology. The Sky Screen had mentioned this repeatedly.
The liquidation of old aristocracy would be the most violent approach possible. Basically killing nobles on sight, physically eradicating the oppressive class positioned above the common people's heads.
Although this strategy was undeniably radical, it was also the most effective revolutionary path. Sabo actually agreed with this approach in his heart—though he couldn't say so publicly yet.
Although King Bulldog and Queen Mother Connie of the Sorbet Kingdom could be called kind monarchs by conventional standards, the throne they'd inherited wasn't clean.
Wasn't that throne's foundation built through oppression of the poor by previous generations? Blood and exploitation compounded across centuries?
Forgetting the suffering of generations upon generations after receiving a little personal kindness—wasn't that profoundly ungrateful? Wasn't it despicable to empathize with the ruling class just because individual members showed basic decency?
The aristocracy as a class needed to be eliminated. Individual kindness didn't absolve collective guilt.
This was the logic Sabo found himself embracing. The logic that would eventually drive him to lead even more violent revolutionary campaigns than Dragon had ever authorized.
The logic that would partially create Bonnie's hatred—though he didn't fully recognize his own complicity yet.
The Revolutionary Army stood at a crossroads. Dragon's silence was pushing them toward more radical leadership.
And the future shown on the Sky Screen suggested that radicalization would cost them dearly.