"The handcuffs are off," Yamato said. "What else is there to arrange?"
She wasn't being difficult. The question was genuine — in her mind the equation was simple. Chains removed equals freedom. Freedom equals go.
Ornn pressed two fingers to his forehead.
"This is your father's base camp," he said patiently. "Every approach route on this island has surveillance Den Den Mushi. Every cadre below him knows your face. If you knock that gate down tonight, Kaido will have a pursuit fleet in the water before we reach the treeline." He looked at her. "We're both new to the open sea. Are you confident we outrun that?"
Yamato opened her mouth. Closed it.
The mace swung through the air twice in agitation — not at anything, just needing somewhere to go.
"So I have to sneak away like I'm ashamed," she muttered. "Tail between my legs."
"I didn't say that." Ornn's voice carried a quiet edge. "I said wait until I make the arrangements. There's a difference between sneaking away and leaving on your own terms." He paused, letting that settle. "Besides — what's the point of knocking over a decoration? It won't even scratch him. If you're going to do something on your way out, make it something that actually hurts."
Yamato went still.
Then her eyes lit up with the particular brightness of someone who has just been handed permission to do exactly what they wanted to do anyway.
"What did you have in mind?"
Ornn laid it out.
A cargo ship came to resupply the factory every two weeks — Sake Iron Ore, materials, provisions. By his count, it was due tomorrow night. The plan was straightforward in structure, complicated only in execution.
Seize the ship first. Quietly. Then split.
He would go into the factory and make enough noise to occupy every available body inside. Yamato would take the torii gate — not as a symbolic gesture, but as a tactical one. Kaido's subordinates couldn't respond to two simultaneous crises without splitting their attention, and a split force was a manageable force.
In the chaos, they would take the ship and go.
Yamato listened with the focused expression of someone mentally rehearsing each step. When he finished she was already smiling.
"Tomorrow night," she said. "Together."
She disappeared back toward the island's interior with more energy than someone who'd just had fourteen years of Sea Prism Stone removed should reasonably have had.
Ornn watched her go.
Then he turned back to the four unconscious Beast Pirates lying in the sand.
He stood over them for a long moment. The ocean moved behind him. The fire had burned down to coals.
In a world like this, he thought, some things can't be avoided.
He took out the sharpened poker. Gripped it until his knuckles were steady.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, to no one in particular.
Then he did what had to be done.
It was fast. He made sure of that. The four never fully regained consciousness — just surfaced briefly toward the pain, made small sounds, and were gone. He did not look away. He owed them that much, at least — to not treat what he was doing as something he could distance himself from.
When it was over he stood up and breathed slowly until his hands were still again.
He pressed his palm to the chest of the first.
[Capable Person's Heart — Animal Class: The heart of an Okapi-Okapi Fruit user. A necessary component for casting legendary creations. When the blood contained within contacts heated Sake Heart Steel, a transformation occurs.]
[Assessment: Sacrifice is the foundation of all great things.]
He took out the Sake Heart Steel ingot. Called up a thin thread of his ability — the minimum needed — and heated the steel to a deep red. Then, carefully, deliberately, he pressed it to the heart and let the blood make contact.
The sound was quiet. The smell was not pleasant. But the result was immediate — some quality in the blood, some essence that the Devil Fruit had left behind, soaked into the grain of the steel like ink into parchment. He felt it happen more than saw it.
[Sake Heart Steel with Devil's Power — 1/5]
He moved to the second. Then the third. Then the fourth.
With each absorption he felt something leaving his own body as well — flowing outward through his hands into the steel, some quiet authority that his fruit carried, settling over the absorbed powers like a hand pressing down on conflicting currents to keep them from tearing the material apart.
Without that, he understood, the steel would fracture. Five different Devil Fruit essences pulling in five different directions, each one foreign to the others — only his power, the forge god's dominion over materials, could hold them in coherence.
[Sake Heart Steel with Devil's Power — 4/5]
He set the ingot down and looked at it for a long time.
One more.
The donkey-faced warden's narrow features appeared in his memory with no effort required. The whip. The casual cruelty. The boredom in his eyes when he administered pain — the particular ugliness of someone who hurt people not from hatred but from convenience.
Your heart, Ornn thought, is the last piece. Seems right.
He looked at the handcuffs Yamato had left behind — Sea Prism Stone, heavy, still carrying the ghost of fourteen years of weight. He needed them. Going after a Beasts Pirates cadre at his current level without something to neutralize the man's Devil Fruit ability was a risk he wouldn't take on pride alone.
He stripped the outer clothes from one of the fallen pirates and changed quickly, pulling the Beast Pirates uniform over his frame. Then he tore his old clothes into strips and began the slow, unpleasant work of binding the handcuffs to the broken poker — wrapping fabric between his skin and the Sea Stone whenever his hands had to make contact, managing the weakness in careful doses.
It took longer than he'd have liked.
When it was done he looked at what he'd made — improvised, graceless, functional — and nodded once.
Tomorrow night.
The sun dropped and rose and dropped again.
Ornn was waiting behind the factory when Yamato arrived. She came around the corner, saw the Beasts Pirates uniform, and the mace was already moving before she'd consciously registered the threat.
"It's me."
The swing arrested itself about a foot from his head.
Yamato stared. Then lowered the mace with the expression of someone recalibrating.
"Why are you dressed like that?"
"So I can walk onto the ship without anyone asking questions until it's too late for them to do anything about it." He turned toward the water. "See it?"
The cargo ship was visible at the edge of the bay — running lights low, approaching the dock at the unhurried pace of a vessel that expected to be welcomed. The factory guards were already moving to receive it, falling into their usual formation.
Ornn checked the wrapped poker at his hip. Checked the ingot in his interior pocket, warm against his ribs.
"I'll move first," he said. "Get on board and get clear of the dock. Once I'm in position, you take the gate. Make enough noise that nothing else matters to anyone on this island for the next ten minutes."
Yamato's tail swept the air in a slow, anticipatory arc.
"Ten minutes," she repeated. "I can work with that."
"I know you can."
He walked toward the dock, adjusting the Beast Pirates collar around his neck and settling into the posture of someone who belonged exactly where they were going. Behind him he could feel Yamato watching, waiting, coiled.
The guards were occupied with the ship. One looked up as Ornn approached.
"Hold on — where are you from?"
"Master Theo sent me." The lie arrived flat and certain, no hesitation in it. "Big shipment tonight. He wants extra hands for unloading."
The guard looked him over. The uniform fit. The demeanor was right — not nervous, not eager, just a man doing a job he'd been told to do.
"Fine," the guard said, and turned back to the ship.
Ornn walked up the gangplank, nodded once to the crew members nearest the railing, and moved toward the interior of the ship with the unhurried pace of someone who had absolutely nothing to hide.
Behind him, somewhere in the darkness above the factory, Yamato was watching the torii gate and counting down.