-Real World-
The revelations about Ace, Sabo, Luffy, and Uta rippled across the world like stones cast into still water, each spreading circles of astonishment that crashed and merged with the others. Viewers watching the Sky Screen couldn't help but marvel—and despair—at how thoroughly these four lives intertwined with the Grand Line's three greatest powers. It was a tangled web of blood, fate, and circumstance that left even the most cynical observers shaking their heads.
The more perceptive minds had already pieced together the uncomfortable truth: this wasn't an adventure of scrappy nobodies clawing their way up from nothing. This was the saga of second-generation elites—children of legends thrust into a world that demanded too much, too soon. Sons and daughters of monsters facing enemies their bloodlines alone couldn't defeat. The seas had changed too drastically, too violently, leaving these inheritors to stumble into battles they weren't ready to fight and fall to opponents they couldn't hope to match.
Tragedy in motion, dressed up as adventure.
Elegia
What had once been a thriving kingdom of music and culture now resembled little more than a graveyard with pretensions of habitation. Shattered columns jutted from cracked plazas like broken teeth. Weathered stones bore the scars of some ancient catastrophe, their surfaces etched with burns and fractures no amount of time could fully heal.
Yet over the years, refugees had trickled in—the desperate, the displaced, the dispossessed—drawn by the simple promise of shelter where none else could be found. They'd settled among the rubble, rebuilt what they could, and gradually formed something that might charitably be called a community. They had no voice in governance, no real opinions of their own. King Gordon ruled them all with the benevolent firmness of a shepherd tending frightened sheep.
Until today.
Today, the sheep had teeth.
Gordon stood alone at the threshold of Uta's residence, his aged frame looking frailer than usual as he faced the surging crowd. His voice, normally so steady and commanding, had been reduced to a desperate shout nearly drowned in the cacophony.
"Please! Everyone, listen to reason! Uta is no devil!"
A middle-aged man near the front of the mob sneered, his weathered face twisted with contempt. "No devil? That's rich coming from you, old man! The country was destroyed in her hands last time! Do you want a repeat performance?!"
Murmurs of angry agreement rippled through the crowd.
"In the future—the one the Sky Screen showed us—Elegia becomes a dead place!" Another voice rang out, shrill with fear. "And Uta has an unshirkable responsibility for that! She brought this doom upon us!"
"My child is innocent!" A thin woman clutched a small boy to her chest, her arms trembling around his small frame. The child, perhaps four or five years old, had been sleeping when they'd dragged him here. Now he stirred against her shoulder, sensing his mother's distress. A moment later, his wailing joined the din, small lungs contributing to the chaos.
An elderly man stepped forward, leaning heavily on a gnarled walking stick. His face was deeply lined, each wrinkle a map of hard years survived. "I am an old man who has seen much," he said, his voice carrying surprising weight despite its reedy quality. "Miss Uta has shown us kindness in the past, I'll grant you that. But I would ask her—as a final good deed—to leave Elegia as soon as possible. For all our sakes."
The old man had once received small favors from the red-haired singer. A song when he'd been sick. A smile when the world seemed too heavy. Minor kindnesses that had warmed his heart at the time.
But when life and death hung in the balance, past kindness couldn't balance the scales. When fear gripped tight enough, gratitude became a luxury no one could afford.
More people crowded around Uta's modest home, their voices rising in a discordant chorus of accusations and demands. The noise filled the air like smoke, thick and suffocating. The space became unbearably oppressive, every voice adding weight to the invisible pressure crushing down on all of them.
Gordon felt his power slipping through his fingers like water.
Since the kingdom was still in its recovery period—still, always, perpetually recovering—he had no guards. No soldiers. No means of enforcement beyond moral authority and the respect his people bore him. And on ordinary days, that had been enough. Everyone was polite. Everyone got along. Everyone understood that Gordon had their best interests at heart.
But this wasn't an ordinary day.
Faced with a mob unified by terror, one old king couldn't hope to restore order through words alone.
"Everyone, please!" Gordon's voice cracked as he shouted the same plea for what felt like the hundredth time. "I have already burned the music score! The one about Tot Musica—it's ash now! That demon will never appear again! I guarantee it with my dignity and personality as a king!"
His words may as well have been whispers in a hurricane.
The truth was simple and brutal: he'd underestimated how deeply fear had taken root in these people. Ever since the Sky Screen's exposure, Uta had been inextricably linked with Tot Musica in the public consciousness. Two separate entities merged into one nightmare in the collective imagination.
Singer and demon. Girl and monster. Cause and effect.
And then there was the other issue—the resurrection that defied all logic.
The two mainstream theories had merged into one terrifying narrative, and no amount of love or kindness Uta had spread across Elegia could counterbalance that primal fear.
These were weak people. Fragile people. People who'd already lost everything once and couldn't bear to lose it again.
They were terrified of waking up one morning to find the world turned inside-out, their fragile shelter transformed overnight into a hell of musical nightmares and endless illusions. So they made their choice—the only choice that made sense to them.
Better to betray one kind girl than risk all their lives.
Better she leave now, while they still had the courage to demand it, than wait until it was too late.
The heated discussion intensified. Gordon could no longer hold the threshold alone. Soon, several men surged forward and grabbed him—former neighbors, people he'd helped, people he'd trusted—and dragged him to the side. His protests died in his throat as rough hands covered his mouth, silencing him.
Others broke past, pushing through the doorway into Uta's private territory.
In their eyes, the red-haired singer had become a disaster personified. A witch from the dark pages of history. And witches had only ever met two fates: expulsion or execution.
Uta would have to choose which path she'd walk.
"Let him go."
The voice cut through the chaos like a blade through silk. Instantly, the noise died. The crowd fell into an eerie silence, hundreds of eyes turning toward the doorway.
Uta stepped out of her room.
The singer looked impossibly young, almost fragile—certainly not yet an adult. Her slender frame and delicate features gave her an air of vulnerability that should have made her easy to dismiss. The mob was composed entirely of adults, people who could physically overpower her without effort.
And yet, not one of them moved.
Fear held them frozen. Not fear of Uta herself—sweet, kind Uta who'd sung lullabies to their children—but fear of what might lurk inside her. Fear of Tot Musica waiting to emerge the moment someone laid a hand on its vessel.
No one wanted to be the first. No one wanted to find out what horrors awaited the person who harmed her.
Uta's gaze swept across the crowd slowly, cataloging faces. She saw emotions she'd never encountered in her fans before—complex, ugly things twisted up in expressions that made her stomach churn.
Some people frowned deeply, eyes radiating disgust so potent it was almost physical. Others sighed softly, their faces etched with what might have been pity or regret—sorrow for her situation, perhaps, but not enough to change their minds. Still others showed only helplessness in their eyes, as if they were powerless spectators watching an inevitable tragedy unfold.
The expressions shifted and changed like living things, a gallery of adult faces she'd never truly learned to read. And beneath every variation was the same underlying message: Leave. You don't belong here. Your existence is a mistake.
The pressure settled over her like a weighted blanket. Her body trembled slightly despite her best efforts to stand firm. She pressed her lips together, teeth clenching, trying desperately to suppress the grief and pain threatening to tear free from her chest.
In this moment, Uta felt like she was drowning in a strange world where she didn't speak the language. Loneliness wrapped around her like grave clothes. She didn't understand—couldn't understand—why the adults reacted this way. In her mind, she'd done nothing wrong.
The crowd had always loved her. Thousands of fans had held her aloft as their goddess of song, their celestial singer whose voice brought joy and wonder to their lives. She'd basked in that adoration, let it fill the hollow spaces inside her, believing it was real and eternal.
But now she understood the truth with terrible clarity.
One thought could transform heaven into hell. The mob that lifted you to the altar could just as easily drag you down and crush you beneath their feet. Adoration wasn't love—it was just performance. And performances ended.
There was no point explaining. No point defending herself or pleading her case. These people had already decided who she was and what she represented. Words would only wound her further.
"Since everyone wants me to leave," Uta said quietly, her voice steady despite the ache in her chest, "there's no place for me in Elegia anymore."
She turned to Gordon, forcing herself to meet his tear-filled eyes.
"Thank you, Father Gordon, for taking care of me all these years."
The goodbye was simple. Clean. Final.
Then she walked forward.
The crowd parted before her like water before the prow of a ship. People scrambled backward to avoid even the slightest contact, as if touching her would transmit some curse to themselves and their families. The gap they created wasn't respect—it was revulsion dressed up as caution.
Gordon's eyes had filled with tears. He tried to speak, tried to call out to his adopted daughter and beg her to stay, but the hands clamped over his mouth tightened. The men holding him wouldn't let him utter a single word. They'd decided her fate, and no amount of protest from an old king would change it.
Uta didn't take anything with her. She owned possessions, of course—years of accumulated belongings, gifts from fans, cherished instruments, luggage filled with clothes and mementos. But none of it mattered now.
The only thing on Elegia that had ever truly mattered to her was Gordon. She looked back one final time, memorizing his face, then turned away and took firm, deliberate steps toward the beach.
Everything else on this island had lost its meaning. The musical instruments piled in her room, the sheet music scattered across her desk, the trinkets and keepsakes—all of it became worthless the moment her dream of a musical utopia shattered into pieces.
She didn't know what came next. Didn't know where she'd go or what she'd do. Self-doubt gnawed at her insides like a living thing, but she kept walking anyway, one foot in front of the other, until sand gave way beneath her shoes.
The coastline stretched before her—empty, desolate, offering nothing but the endless horizon.
Uta walked until she reached the water's edge. She didn't stop even when waves lapped at her feet, soaking her shoes and the hem of her dress. The cold seawater bit at her skin, but she barely noticed. Her mind was elsewhere, lost in the wreckage of everything she'd believed about herself and the world.
Silence settled over the beach like a shroud.
And then—
"Uta! We're here to take you home!"
The voice carried across the water, shattering the oppressive quiet.
Uta's head snapped up. Her eyes widened as she recognized the ship cutting through the waves toward her—the familiar skull and crossbones, the red-haired jolly roger billowing in the wind.
The Red Hair Pirates.
Familiar figures stood on the deck, their faces coming into focus as the ship drew closer. People she'd known. People she'd loved.
People who'd come for her.
For the first time since she'd walked out of her home, Uta felt something other than despair.
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