Chapter 477: The Silent Five Elders
Brett delivered Zephyr and the others to the NEO Navy's secret base, tucked away on an island deep within the New World.
"I suppose this is where I leave you."
He smiled, his voice easy and unhurried. "Doesn't seem like there's much more I can help with from here."
"You've already done more than enough."
Zephyr's scarred face was etched with gratitude, every line of it open and unguarded in a way Brett rarely saw from the old man. "The debt we owe you is long past anything we could ever repay."
If not for Brett, every single one of them would have been ash by now.
"We're comrades who fight side by side," Brett said, glancing between them with a casual wink. "Didn't we already swear to watch out for each other? That's all this was."
Zephyr gave a single heavy nod.
There was nothing left to say. Everything else would be proven through action, in the days to come.
"There's someone else I need to thank properly, though."
Brett turned his gaze toward Bartholomew Kuma, who stood apart from the others in quiet silence.
Without this man's emergency intervention, there would have been no escape. None of them would be standing here.
"You said it yourself," Kuma replied. His voice was nothing like the frame that carried it. For a man of his size, it was remarkably gentle, the kind of voice that settled over you like a hand brushing a feather across still water. "We're comrades."
Brett smiled at that.
Right. Between true companions, gratitude didn't need to be spelled out.
"Then I'll head back."
He straightened, looking toward the horizon. "That thing has already been deployed once. I'm not easy about leaving Fish-Man Island alone."
"Of course." Zephyr nodded. "Go. And Brett, whatever happens, you call."
Brett understood what he meant. Whoever the enemy, whatever the odds, help would come.
"Then."
He took one last long look at Akainu and Aokiji, both standing behind Zephyr, something unreadable and settled in their eyes.
"Farewell."
The next instant he was already gone, a streak rising into the open sky, swallowed by distance before anyone could track him.
"He's really just leaving like that."
Aokiji tilted his head back, watching the sky long after Brett had disappeared from sight. There was something wistful in it. "I was looking forward to talking with him more."
"There'll be plenty of time for that later," Zephyr said.
"Zephyr-sensei."
Akainu spoke then, his voice measured, turning the words over like a man who had been sitting with a question for longer than he cared to admit. "Brett. What kind of man is he, really?"
Not long ago, Akainu's answer to that question had been simple. Brett was an enemy. A man who killed Marines. A man who stood against Justice, someone to be eliminated, full stop. The only thing that had separated him from other enemies was the sheer fact that his strength was extraordinary, far beyond anything Akainu himself could match.
But now, looking at it from a different angle, the picture had blurred. He couldn't quite make the shape of the man out anymore.
"Brett?" Zephyr considered it for a moment. "He's nothing like Joy Boy. He's not the kind of man who burns with some grand vision of liberating all of humanity. If anything," the old admiral allowed himself a grin, broad and almost mischievous, "he's a fairly selfish person."
"Selfish?" Aokiji hadn't expected that word from his teacher's mouth.
"Though perhaps selfish isn't quite right either." Zephyr's expression softened into something thoughtful. "He doesn't have any ambition to change the world. Honestly, if he had a choice, he probably wouldn't want to be in conflict with the World Government at all."
"He just wants his people to be free."
"That's all it is."
"But," and here Zephyr's smile returned, broader than before, "even though he'd never call his own goals noble, anyone who dares stand in his way gets knocked aside without a second's hesitation. Every single one of them."
"I see."
Aokiji nodded slowly.
That's no small thing. Not everyone has the courage to keep moving forward like that, to push through no matter what it costs.
"He sounds like an excellent partner to have."
"Without question." Zephyr's answer came without hesitation. "He's the kind of man who will throw his life on the line for the people beside him."
"Is that so."
Aokiji looked out at the open sky, long and quiet.
If that was true, then the situation had shifted in a way he hadn't quite let himself feel until now. The strongest man in the world had become their most steadfast ally.
"Enough standing around. Let's move."
Zephyr drew in a long breath, and when he exhaled, the general's bearing that had never quite left him settled back fully into place. "The time we have is already short."
The decisive battle was drawing near.
Akainu turned the thought over in his chest as they filed in.
And found, to his own surprise, that he was almost looking forward to it.
At that same moment, somewhere else entirely, another presence returned to Mariejois.
The vast hall was dark. No lights had been lit. A dim, sourceless glow filtered through from somewhere, just enough to make out the grand sweep of the chamber, the high vaulted ceiling, the long sweep of stone steps rising to where they met the throne at the top.
The throne that was never supposed to hold anyone.
A shadow sat upon it.
Five figures knelt at the base of the steps in reverent silence. The Five Elders had not spoken since they entered the room, and the figure above them had not spoken either. For a long time, the silence was absolute.
"We failed."
When the voice finally came down from above, it was dry. Stripped of everything. A sound like old parchment.
The five old men raised their heads almost in unison.
They could not process what they had heard.
This being was telling them they had failed?
The being who had not failed once in eight hundred years was sitting there, telling them that this time, this particular attempt, had come to nothing?
How? How was that possible?
The Five Elders kept their gazes carefully low, but behind their composed exteriors, their faces had gone slack with something past ordinary disbelief. A shock so complete it had drained the expression away entirely.
"A troublesome creature," the voice from the throne continued, almost to itself, a faint note of something like reluctant acknowledgment woven through it. "Joy Boy, at least, was cleanly defeated when the time came."
"Imu-sama." Saint Saturn was the one who found his voice first, and even his was thin with the effort. "What do we do now?"
"An opportunity like that will not come again." The reply was unhurried. "Prepare for a decisive confrontation on the open field. It should not be long now. Give it everything."
A pause.
"This may be a war unlike any before it."
Unlike any before it.
Imu-sama had said that.
The cold sweat broke across five foreheads at once.
Which meant that Brett, and the forces he had gathered around him, had risen in Im-sama's reckoning to something beyond even Joy Boy. A more dangerous opponent than the liberation fighter who had once shaken the entire world.
The Five Elders fought to keep their composure, and found there was very little left to keep.
"Akainu and Aokiji have almost certainly surrendered," Imu added, as an afterthought, still in that same flat tone. "And the Warlord Kuma. That one has been standing on their side all along."
"What!"
The sound escaped all five of them at once.
The bad news kept coming.
Another one. Another traitor from the Warlords, that cursed institution. Did it ever produce anything but defectors and failures?
But no. More important than Kuma, far more important, were Sakazuki and Kuzan.
Captured was bad enough. But they had crossed all the way over to Brett's side?
Two fighters of Admiral caliber, now counted among the enemy. That was about as catastrophic as news could get.
The enemy had grown stronger.
They needed to move fast. Shore up their own forces, fill the gaps, build back the strength they'd lost and then some.
Caesar. Wretched as the man was, they were depending on him now.
His experiments had better be producing results.
And perhaps it was time for another mass recruitment.