— Real World. Whole Cake Island. —
Of all the Emperors of the Sea who would have the strongest reaction to learning that Stussy was a World Government agent, the answer was not a competition. The other three combined could not match the particular fury of Charlotte Linlin in full temper.
"That damn bitch." The table went over. The pastries that someone had spent the morning preparing for her scattered across the floor in a pattern that communicated the trajectory of her emotions clearly. "She used my old friend's face to lie to my face. My face. Stussy, you deserve—"
The children in the vicinity had already recalibrated their positions. Those who were close enough to their mother to have standing approached; the rest found reasons to be somewhere else. Charlotte Perospero was close enough, and he had already calculated the intervention.
The cake was from Fish-Man Island — an offering that had arrived that morning, an expensive tribute from an institution that understood what its relationship with Big Mom required. Perospero placed it in her field of vision before her next sentence could reach its conclusion.
She stopped.
She looked at the cake. She reached out, took a substantial portion of it in one hand, and began eating.
Perospero waited for the mathematics of this to complete itself.
"Mom." He kept his voice measured — the tone of someone managing a situation rather than responding to one. "Getting angry at outsiders is tiring. And practically speaking: Stussy's cooperation with us was never deep. She's CP0 and a Vegapunk product. The ones with a real problem are the Celestial Dragons." He paused, letting her eat. "Whole Cake Island loses very little if we cut commercial ties with the pleasure district."
The anger receded in the way that food made it recede — gradually, without fully completing the process, leaving a residue.
What remained, after the practical evaluation settled, was something closer to personal offense. Stussy had the face of Buckingham Stussy — someone from Linlin's past, a face that carried the texture of the Rocks Pirates era and all the ambitious people she had moved through the world alongside back then. Looking at Stussy had been, without her knowing it, a private form of remembrance. The Rocks Pirates had been dismantled at God Valley, the crew scattered or killed, the name diminishing with each year into something that only people of a certain age and experience still recognized fully.
She had not enjoyed discovering that the face was a manufactured copy rather than a genuine echo.
She finished the cake. She allowed the residue of the offense to be classified as something she would carry quietly rather than act on immediately.
There was a more pressing question on the table.
The Kozuki Momonosuke situation had been generating disagreement among the senior family members for the duration of his stay.
Two positions had emerged and neither had moved.
Katakuri's position: sell him. Kaido and Kurozumi Orochi both had reasons to value the Kozuki heir, and either of them would be willing to pay in something concrete — territory, resource agreements, a favorable realignment of existing arrangements. A transaction with lasting returns was better than holding a variable that required ongoing management.
Perospero's position: keep him. The Sky Screen had established what the Kozuki bloodline represented in terms of future potential. A one-time transaction sold that potential at today's price rather than tomorrow's. The long-term yield from controlling access to someone of that importance substantially exceeded whatever Kaido or Orochi would offer immediately.
Neither son had convinced the other. The impasse had arrived at the place it always arrived: in front of Linlin.
She considered it for a moment. Then she reached for the Den Den Mushi.
The connection to Kaido established itself without delay. He had perhaps been expecting the call. His voice arrived immediately, in the particular register of someone who already knows what the conversation is about.
"Linlin."
"I have something you want. What are you offering?"
The directness suited both of them. Kaido's response was proportionally direct: leave Kozuki Momonosuke to him, and he would commit to one thing of her choosing. One promise, from a man at his level — that was the offer.
Linlin was not satisfied with it.
"Half of the seastone business," she said. "And I want to try what Wano Country actually eats. Show some sincerity, Kaido."
The pause that followed communicated that Kaido was deciding whether to be amused or offended, and had landed on a version of offended.
"Old woman." His voice had not changed in temperature. "Don't overreach. Kozuki Momonosuke is a child who hasn't finished growing. How much value are you actually extracting from him? Are you so certain you want me to come to Whole Cake Island and take him myself?"
The threat was not empty. Since he had acquired the Sun God's power — difficult to use fully, still being integrated, but present — the ceiling of what Kaido could bring to a confrontation had risen substantially. A direct war between their two forces was not an outcome that favored Linlin cleanly. If Kaido chose to suppress her personally while the secondary engagements ran their course, the overall balance would tilt in his direction regardless of what the other combatants achieved.
"You heartless bastard." She had enjoyed exactly as much of this conversation as she intended to. "If you dare come to my island for him, I will eat him before you arrive. I would rather do that than hand him to you."
She set down the Den Den Mushi.
The call had not produced terms, but it had produced information. The urgency in Kaido's responses — the fact that he had been waiting near the Den Den Mushi, the ity with which he had responded, the speed with which the threat emerged when she pushed — told her what she needed to know about how much the Kozuki heir mattered to him.
Which meant Perospero was correct. The long-term value was real. It was not a trade for short-term exchange.
Katakuri had been doing his own calculation separately, and the variable he was tracking was different from the negotiation.
"He hasn't eaten a Devil Fruit," Katakuri said. He had checked — the ability the Sky Screen had established for Momonosuke's future, the artificial Dragon Fruit with the Azure Dragon form, was not present in the boy currently aboard their fleet. "The future has shifted. He didn't eat the fruit."
The implications of this branched in directions he was not comfortable mapping fully. Futures that the Sky Screen had shown as established had a different quality from futures that had diverged. The second kind was harder to plan around.
What he was not saying, because he rarely said things that revealed vulnerability: the future had also shown Charlotte Hikaru — his sister, a child with Uchiha bloodline, a person who should not have existed given the standard architecture of the Charlotte family's lineage but who did exist in that broadcast future, sitting on his shoulders. If the future had changed enough to prevent Momonosuke from eating his fruit, it had potentially changed enough to prevent other things as well.
A man with Uchiha bloodline capable of producing a child with their mother was not easily found.
Linlin had reached her own conclusion, from a different direction.
"The Hyuga bloodline is also acceptable." She said this in the manner of someone making a practical decision about resources. "If the Uchiha bloodline isn't available right now — the Hyuga is still worth having. The Kozuki connection to that lineage is confirmed." She had already moved past the part of the reasoning that a room full of her children was still processing. "He should be usable in the relevant sense. Even if the situation is different from what I'd normally arrange."
The children around her found reasons to look at various points on the floor.
The calculation Linlin was running was medical as much as strategic. She was in her sixties. The biology involved was not straightforward even for a woman of her physical capability. The risks of what she was proposing were real risks, the kind that power did not entirely neutralize.
She had decided they were acceptable.
In their hearts, collectively, Linlin's children mourned for Kozuki Momonosuke.