The Ordnance Department smelled of gun oil and metal shavings, and it was not a place Admiral Sakazuki visited often. Today was the exception. He had placed the order weeks ago, and the craftsmen had clearly understood the assignment. The revolver sat in its case like a promise kept: custom-gripped, balanced, and engraved along the barrel with precise care.
Sakazuki tucked the case under his arm and left the armory at a pace that was, by any objective measure, faster than his usual stride.
He would have denied this if anyone pointed it out.
Vice Admiral Onigumo stepped out of his office just in time to see the broad back of Admiral Sakazuki disappearing around the corridor bend. Then he spotted Fleet Admiral Sengoku and Chief of Staff Tsuru also heading toward the exit, both apparently finished with work well ahead of schedule. Onigumo blinked.
He had never once seen Sengoku leave early for anything that wasn't a military crisis.
He caught a fragment of conversation drifting back down the hall. Ace. Military academy. Tomorrow.
Onigumo glanced back at his own desk, at the stack of reports still waiting for his signature. He drummed his fingers once against the doorframe.
Admiral Sakazuki had taken a personal interest in Ace, which meant the hawkish officers who orbited Sakazuki's faction had done the same by extension. Among them, Onigumo had arguably spent more time with the boy than most. Ace, who shouted that he was going to exterminate every pirate on the seas. Ace, who ate twice what any adult could manage and then asked if there was more. That violent, endearing brat.
Onigumo left the reports where they were and followed.
The Marine Club occupied a comfortable corner of Marineford's residential district, close enough to the harbor that you could hear gulls arguing over the evening catch. Bellmere ran it with the same matter-of-fact warmth she brought to everything, and on most nights the place smelled pleasantly of rice wine, grilled fish, and the faint sweetness of whatever she had baked that afternoon.
Tonight it was livelier than usual.
Sakazuki pushed the door open and took in the scene without breaking stride. Garp was holding court near the bar, gesturing expansively at Zephyr, who looked mildly entertained. Kuzan occupied the far corner booth with a glass and the expression of a man conducting a serious and private nap with his eyes open. And there was Ace, standing in the middle of the floor in a brand-new Justice vest, presenting himself to Luffy with the solemn ceremony of a king displaying crown jewels.
"Don't touch it," Ace was saying. "Instructor Zephyr gave me this. I'm wearing it to the academy tomorrow and I am not showing up with fingerprints on it."
Luffy, whose fingers were already hovering hopefully near the hem, pulled back with the reluctant expression of a man accepting a court verdict. "Can I at least smell it?"
"No."
Luffy's face fell with theatrical tragedy. Then Ace reached behind himself and produced a vest from some mysterious reserve. It had clearly been washed many times. The white had graduated to a soft, ambiguous yellow that spoke of long service and frequent adventures. He dropped it over Luffy's head.
Luffy's face immediately reversed into radiant joy. "Thank you, Ace!"
"You're my brother," Ace said, adjusting the collar with two fingers as though he were knighting him. "Obviously I'd give you my old one."
"In two more years, Luffy, you'll be old enough for the academy," Garp called from the bar, laughing. "Zephyr will give you a new one then."
Zephyr, who had an asthma inhaler at his lips, took his spray and raised it in vague agreement. "Door's always open."
It was at that moment that Ace turned and spotted Sakazuki crossing the threshold. The boy's face did something complicated and immediate: it went from composed to openly delighted in the span of half a second, and he crossed the room in four strides.
"Uncle Sakazuki!"
Sakazuki's expression, which had been set in its usual rigid lines, shifted in a way that the other senior officers in the room quietly noted and would never mention aloud. It softened, not completely, but enough. He looked at Ace, thirteen years old and standing straight in his new vest, and produced a sound that was something in the neighborhood of a smile.
"Ace. Congratulations on making the academy cut." He set a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I heard you didn't pull any strings. Good. That's how it should be."
Ace grinned. "I had a role model worth living up to."
The flattery landed perfectly, as it always did with Sakazuki, who was constitutionally unable to resist sincerity from people he respected. He opened the case and held it out.
Ace went still. His eyes dropped to the revolver and stayed there for a long moment. When he picked it up, he turned it over in his hands with the reverence of someone who understood exactly what he was holding.
"This is for me?"
"I had it made. Don't lose it."
"I won't." Ace looked up. "Thank you, Uncle Sakazuki."
"Don't mention it."
Nearby, Garp had commandeered a bag of rice crackers from Nojiko and was crunching through them with the contentment of a man with no outstanding concerns.
Nojiko had her indigo hair pinned back and wore an apron that suggested she had been helping Bellmere with the evening prep before the gathering got out of hand. She watched Garp steal her crackers with the patient resignation of someone very accustomed to it.
"Nojiko," Garp said, through a mouthful, "you're sure you don't want to join the Marines? You'd be good at it. Hina says you're sharp. Gion thinks so too."
"Mr. Garp," Nojiko said, "listen to the situation at home. Bellmere-san retired from the service. Ace is enrolling tomorrow. Luffy has been announcing to anyone who will listen that he intends to become, and I quote, 'King of the Marines.' And Nami—"
"I passed the first-level navigator qualification exam," said Nami from two stools over, in the tone of someone reciting a business report. She had a brass barometer turning slowly in her left hand and a volume on marine climatology propped open in her right. Her short orange hair caught the tavern light. She did not look up from the page. "I'm still too young to be assigned to a ship, but Sister Hina forwarded my thesis to an instructor on Visteria Island. He's agreed to take me on as a research student. When I come back, I'll qualify for a special-track enlistment."
Garp stared at her. "You wrote a thesis?"
"On cyclonic weather patterns in the Grand Line's first half. It was well-received."
Garp looked at Nojiko. Nojiko shrugged, as if to say: yes, we know.
"Four out of five of us in the Marines eventually," Nojiko continued. "I am personally going to inherit Bellmere-san's property and become a wealthy woman. This is my plan and I am committed to it."
Garp laughed and seemed ready to accept this reasonable arrangement. Then he paused, cracker halfway to his mouth.
"Wait. You said a family of five."
"Yes."
"I'm your grandfather. That makes six."
Nojiko patted his arm with the weary affection one reserves for lovable elderly relatives. "Yes, yes. A family of six, with five of us in the service."
"Hahahaha," said Zephyr, from across the room.
The door swung open again, and Gion came in.
Bellmere, who had been refreshing drinks at the bar, looked up immediately. Gion's eyes carried the particular flatness of someone who had been in meetings for the past ten hours and was operating on professional momentum rather than any remaining personal energy. Her hair had been pinned up at some point and had partially given up.
Bellmere came around the bar without being asked.
"You look terrible," she said, with the frank warmth of a longtime friend.
Gion managed a small, real smile. "I've been busy."
"Take a seat. Have you eaten?" Bellmere was already moving. "You should take a page from Finn's book, rest a little. I heard he's on vacation again?"
The smile cooled.
"Among all the senior officers at Marine Headquarters," Gion said, with the precise calm of someone choosing their words carefully to remain diplomatic, "he is somehow always the one who finds time for leisure."
She dropped into a chair, and her gaze drifted across the room. It found Kuzan in his corner booth, who had progressed from his earlier state of alert drowsiness to something that was now simply sleep with the glass still in his hand.
"And that one," she said, voice sharpening. "Finn didn't develop his vacation habits on his own. He had a teacher."
Kuzan opened one eye.
"I'm right here," he said.
"I know."
Kuzan closed the eye again. Whatever his defense was going to be, it was not worth the energy.
The door opened a third time, and the ambient noise settled slightly as Fleet Admiral Sengoku and Chief of Staff Tsuru entered together. Both of them paused just inside the threshold, reading the room.
"Is everyone here?" Tsuru said, with the mild surprise of someone who had not expected full attendance.
The answer was: nearly. Finn and Hina were somewhere on vacation in the first half of the Grand Line, and no one expected them back for something like this. Borsalino was in the New World dealing with the continuing disaster of the Punk Hazard aftermath and had no particular connection to Ace regardless. Beyond those absences, the roster of Marineford's senior leadership was effectively complete and currently occupying a tavern in the residential district on a Tuesday evening.
Garp spread his arms with undisguised pride.
"It's because I have a great reputation," he announced.
No one responded to this.
Sengoku took a seat beside Sakazuki. Tsuru settled beside Gion. Both conversations shifted to operational matters within thirty seconds.
Garp looked around the room, found no audience for his pride, and muttered something under his breath. Then he turned to Zephyr.
"Speaking of the new class," Garp said, "any other standout students besides Ace?"
Zephyr took another pull from his inhaler, tucked it away, and leaned back with the expression of an instructor who had found something genuinely interesting.
"A few. Hard to say until we've actually put them through the curriculum, but the raw potential is there." He paused. "There's a girl named Ain. Her Devil Fruit is unusual."
"What type?"
"Paramecia. The Revert-Revert Fruit." Zephyr said it with the small satisfaction of someone describing a rare find. "She can roll back a target's development. Age, growth, training, injuries. In the right hands, it's an extraordinary ability."
Garp's eyebrows climbed. "That's a serious fruit for a student."
"Mm."
A brief pause. Garp crunched a rice cracker. Then, with the careful casualness of a man attempting to ask a question he has already committed to asking, he said, "What does she look like?"
Zephyr stared at him.
"She's a child."
"I'm asking for entirely separate reasons."
"I'm forty-seven years old," said Zephyr, "and I genuinely cannot tell you what she looks like in detail because I was evaluating her combat aptitude, not—"
"Zephyr."
"Fairly cute. Fine features." Zephyr said it like a man reading from a form. "She'll probably be considered a beauty when she's grown. Is that what you wanted?"
"Hehehe," said Garp.
Zephyr pointed at him. "I know what you're thinking and you should be embarrassed."
"I'm thinking," Garp said, with tremendous dignity, "that she will be Ace's classmate. Three years of shared training. Young people in close quarters. And in several years, perhaps our family will have a great-grandchild, and I will be able to say I come from four generations of Marine service." He folded his arms. "Is that inappropriate?"
"Dragon is no longer in the Marines," Zephyr said flatly.
The dignity deflated slightly. Garp's jaw worked.
"He was a Marine," Garp said. "That still counts. And Bellmere is my daughter now, she is absolutely a first-generation Marine, which means I am the root of a legitimate four-generation military family and I will not be told otherwise."
Zephyr looked at him for a long moment. Then he took out his inhaler again.
Far from the warmth of that tavern, on the other side of the Grand Line's first half, the ancient kingdom of Alabasta received its summer evening with the indifferent patience of a nation that had been waiting for relief for years.
The port city was still prosperous, whatever was happening in the interior. The docks were busy; the stalls were stacked high with dates, melons, and rapeseed in full yellow bloom, their brightness peculiar against the sandstone and salt air. The smell of the place was sun-dried rope and spices and the faint sweetness of cane.
A man stood at the edge of the harbor, looking inland toward where the desert began. The rapeseed shifted in the harbor wind and he watched it with a small, considering smile on his face.
"We should go to Alubarna first," said Monkey D. Dragon, "and meet with His Majesty Cobra in person."
His companion did not argue. Dragon was not the kind of man people argued with lightly.
A moment later, both of them had blended into the foot traffic of the harbor and were gone, as cleanly as if they had never been there.
At a fruit stall thirty meters down the dock, a young man with dark hair and a lean, watchful quality that his casual posture was working hard to conceal watched the direction where Dragon had disappeared. He set down the melon he had been pretending to arrange.
His frown was brief and businesslike.
"Dragon," he said quietly. "I need to report this to headquarters."
X Drake, nineteen years old, son of the late Diez Barrels, and currently the least likely-looking member of Marine Headquarters' Intelligence Special Forces, began to calculate his options.
Finn had retrieved him from Minion Island and passed him along to Zephyr for foundational training. Chief of Staff Tsuru had spotted him shortly after, recognized the particular value of someone with no established connections at Headquarters, and transferred him to Intelligence with a speed that suggested the reassignment had been prepared in advance. Three months later, Drake had found himself deployed to Alabasta.
The situation in the desert kingdom was becoming stranger by the week. Dragon was now walking its docks in broad daylight.
Drake turned back to his fruit stall and reached for the hidden Den Den Mushi under the counter.