Chapter 488: Momousagi's Strange Voyage
"Fleet Admiral Sengoku! What is the meaning of this!"
The door to Navy Headquarters' most restricted office, the Fleet Admiral's personal chambers, flew open with enough force to take it off its hinges. Vice Admiral Chaton stormed through the gap, crossed the room in three strides, and brought both hands down on the Fleet Admiral's desk hard enough to crack the entire surface.
"There is no world in which Gion would ever betray us!"
Every line of his face had been rearranged by something that went well past anger. The creases at the corners of his eyes had gone tight enough to cut. "She and Zephyr-sensei were close once, yes. Were. The moment Zephyr turned on the Navy, she cut ties with him completely! There is no version of this where that old man talked her into anything!"
The order that had come down from the Fleet Admiral's office a short while ago had sent him here at a near run.
Gion. A traitor.
Impossible. Categorically impossible. Someone had made a mistake somewhere, and he was going to find out where.
"My trust in Gion is no less than yours." Sengoku exhaled slowly. "But Kake. Not long ago, I trusted Kuzan and Sakazuki the same way."
"..."
Chaton went silent.
He had no answer for that. Gion was unquestionably loyal. But Akainu, and Aokiji, those two men had been the living embodiment of what it meant to be a Marine. The Navy's unshakeable center. If there was anyone who could never possibly have betrayed their ideals and their service, it should have been them.
And yet.
"I know it's hard to accept. But look at this, Kake."
Sengoku set a stack of photographs on the shattered surface of the desk.
Chaton picked them up.
Rubble. A site reduced to rubble, barely distinguishable as having once been a structure except for the scattered fragments of scientific equipment and the broken remnants of Science Division markings still visible among the debris.
"Is this, the Science Division?"
The words came out rough.
"Shortly after Gion arrived there, Zephyr led a strike force against the base." Sengoku's voice was heavy. "They must have known about the Government's experiments. They would never allow us to develop the means to challenge Fish-Man Island's control of the deep sea."
"If the Government hadn't had a CP0 senior operative positioned specifically to protect Doctor Caesar, the entire Science Division would have been destroyed."
"Even so, the operative sustained serious injuries."
Chaton was looking at a photograph of a figure on a stretcher. The white robes had been reduced to blood-soaked rags. Across the chest, a wound of remarkable size gaped open.
He studied that wound.
It was unmistakably Gion's sword technique.
The color went out of Chaton's face.
"..."
Sengoku sighed quietly.
Chaton left without another word.
A moment later, a different figure entered the office. Lean and composed, sharp-eyed despite the years that showed in her face.
"Keep an eye on Kake," Vice Admiral Tsuru said, her voice unhurried, revealing nothing of whatever she might be feeling about a person she had always thought of as a younger sister. "The blow he's taken won't be a small one."
"Who could have predicted any of this." Sengoku rubbed his face and let out a tired laugh. "I'm starting to wonder what exactly Zephyr has been doing to all of them."
One after another. How could this keep happening?
Tsuru offered a quiet sound of agreement.
She knew Gion well. Under ordinary circumstances, she would never have believed it. She would have assumed there was something else going on, some piece of the story that didn't fit.
But ordinary circumstances no longer applied. Sakazuki and Kuzan were gone. The foundation of what she had considered certain had been dismantled. She could no longer say with confidence what Gion would or wouldn't do.
Zephyr. What have you done to them?
And for the first time, Tsuru found herself genuinely unable to read her old friend.
Gion. What are you thinking right now?
What Vice Admiral Momousagi Gion was thinking, at that precise moment, was nothing.
She was moving through the deep ocean, and blood was streaming from the wound along the length of her blade, trailing behind her in the dark water. The warmth was leaving her body steadily. Her thoughts were growing thick and slow, like something setting under cold.
She didn't know where she was. She didn't know which direction she was moving in. She was simply moving, mechanically, because stopping meant dying.
The CP0 agent had been extraordinary. Even with everything she had, she couldn't have won cleanly, and the fact that Doberman had thrown himself into the fight to buy her those final critical seconds had cost him everything. She had made it out because of that.
But the injuries were too severe.
She could feel herself beginning to fail. Even in a Fish-Man's body, capable of deep-sea travel in ways no human body could manage, this was beyond what discipline and will could compensate for.
She was going to bleed out here in the dark.
She couldn't.
She absolutely could not die here. She had to report what had happened at that research base. Every detail. Someone had to know.
Momousagi Gion held on to consciousness with everything she had left.
But the wound was physical. The body had its own accounting, and it did not negotiate with willpower. The darkness at the edges of her vision was spreading. Sound fell away. She couldn't feel her hands anymore.
She was still moving forward, but more and more of it was simply falling downward, sinking toward the lightless floor of the ocean.
Is this how it ends.
The thought surfaced through the dimness, faint and shapeless.
Not like this. I don't want it to end like this.
The last thing she felt was the sensation of falling. Slowly, endlessly, into nothing.
And then, from inside the darkness, a sound.
"Kin... Kinfolk... Kinfolk..."
Kinfolk?
Who was calling whom?
Everything went quiet.
She came back to herself at some point she couldn't measure.
Sensation returning first. Then thought. Then the sharp reality of a dozen injuries flaring to life as her body remembered what it had been through.
Momousagi's eyes snapped open. She sat upright.
The motion sent a shock of pain through every wound she had, and her hand moved automatically to her hip for her blade.
Nothing there.
"Oh! You're awake, kinfolk?"
A voice, close by.
She turned her head.
A face was grinning at her. Blue-green skin, prominent gills on the neck, teeth that could have belonged to something much larger than a person.
Fish-Man. Unambiguously.
And not one of them. A group. Armed and watching her with expressions of friendly curiosity.
Kinfolk.
The word landed differently now that she was awake enough to turn it over. Of course. She had been transformed. She carried Fish-Man blood now. To them, it was natural to call her that.
"Did you rescue me?" she asked.
"Just happened to be passing by." The Fish-Man at the front grinned wider. "Lucky for you, kinfolk. Without us you'd have finished the trip on the seabed."
He looked her over with mild curiosity. "You're not from Fish-Man Island, are you? The local residents don't usually come out this far."
"I left the island when I was very young." A reflex answer, close enough to plausible. She looked around for the first time, taking in her actual surroundings. "Where are we exactly?"
"The deep sea! Obviously!"
She took in the full picture then. She was on the back of a massive sea creature. Several more enormous creatures moved around them in the same direction. And the water itself was moving, fast, with the particular character of a deep-sea current being actively navigated rather than simply encountered.
"You're..." Something clicked. "The Fish-Man Island Logistics Company?"
Of all the possible coincidences.
"That's us!" A wave of proud smiles moved through the group. "Didn't expect a kinfolk from the outside world to know our name!"
"Your company has quite a reputation."
Momousagi dipped her head in a careful bow despite the pain the motion cost her. "In any case. Thank you. Sincerely."
Whatever the politics between Fish-Man Island and the Navy were, these people had pulled her out of the ocean and kept her alive. That was a debt that stood on its own.
"Don't mention it! We're all kinfolk here." The Fish-Men laughed, easy and generous about it. "Looking out for each other is the most natural thing in the world."
"The thanks is still necessary."
Momousagi said it with quiet firmness.
She paused, then glanced toward them with a slightly awkward expression. "One more thing. If it's not too much trouble, do any of you have a Den Den Mushi I could use? I need to get in touch with someone."
"Of course!" A Den Den Mushi appeared from somewhere within the group without hesitation, offered out freely.
A Fish-Man pulling her out of the ocean. She was going to need to sit with that for a while.
***
60+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces