-Real World-
The fight between two kinds of hell had made Galdino famous.
Not just in Arabasta, where he had spent years as the man who worked for Crocodile and occasionally caused problems at the Reverse Mountain checkpoint. Famous in the broader sense — the kind of recognition that followed a person across the sea and arrived in places before they did. A Devil Fruit user who could deploy a Domain was already operating at a level below only the Yonko and the Marine's top figures. The fact that the Doru Doru no Mi (Wax-Wax Fruit) was fighting at a geometric disadvantage against magma — and holding — was a demonstration that the Domain had genuinely changed the equation.
The white world and the red world traded territory on the Sky Screen, and people watching from everywhere in the world arrived at the same calculation independently: that man used to be Mr. 3.
Luffy watched with a piece of meat in each hand and a genuinely impressed expression.
"He got beaten up by Eren," he said, to no one in particular, "and look at him now."
Nobody disagreed with this observation, though Nami and Robin exchanged a brief look at the phrasing.
The mechanics of why Eren had been able to defeat Galdino during their earlier encounter were fairly straightforward, once you thought about it: the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Kyojin (Human-Human Fruit, Giant) produced enormous heat and steam as a byproduct of Titan transformation, which had acted as a natural counter to the Wax-Wax Fruit's base properties. Liquid wax was not threatening. Liquid wax was just something you stepped around. Without the Domain to change the governing physics, Galdino's fruit was vulnerable to anything hot enough.
With the Domain, the physics changed. The Domain was the point.
"If he's Buggy's man in the future," Usopp said, arms crossed, doing the calculation that cowards do faster than anyone, "and Luffy is also connected to Buggy somehow — then technically he's kind of on our side eventually? That means he won't be a problem for us personally?"
"You're hoping that protects you," Chopper said.
"I'm strategically assessing allied relationships."
"You want to avoid fighting him."
"Both things can be true."
Nami turned to Robin. "You actually worked alongside him in Baroque Works. Was there any sign of this? Any indication he was a Devil Fruit genius?"
Robin considered this carefully, with the expression of someone reviewing a file that turned out to contain surprises.
"When I think about it honestly — no," she said. "Mr. 3's strength was appropriate to his rank, and his rank was appropriate to his performance. He showed cowardice in situations where cowardice was inadvisable. He voluntarily surrendered when his life was at stake, which at least demonstrated survival instincts, but not the temperament one associates with future greatness." She paused. "His artistic pretensions were genuine, which I always found interesting. He cared about the quality of his work in a way that the ranking system didn't account for."
"He was the only one at Baroque Works who actually cared about what he was making," Nami said.
"Yes. That part fits, in retrospect."
What the future demonstrated — what the Sky Screen had now made visible to everyone watching, including the man's current employer — was that the ranking system had failed to measure something. Talent didn't always announce itself. Sometimes it sat quietly in the third seat for years, waiting for a context where it could emerge.
In Baroque Works' secret base in Arabasta, the meeting room had gone very quiet.
This was not the comfortable silence of a productive meeting. It was the silence that accumulated around Crocodile when he was holding something back by force of will, and his subordinates had all independently calculated that this was not a good time to speak.
The man himself sat at the head of the table with his expression professionally neutral and a notable density of visible veins along his temples.
Galdino sat in his designated seat and did not look directly at his employer. He was doing his best to take up a minimal amount of spatial and spiritual real estate, which was a skill he had developed across years of occupying the third position in an organization that occasionally reminded him of the limitations of that position. He was experiencing, simultaneously, a very significant private excitement — that's me, in the future, fighting an Admiral in a Domain of my own construction — and an equally significant private caution about expressing that excitement in this room.
He had correctly identified several categories of danger that the Sky Screen broadcast had just created for him.
Category one: the Marine would now know exactly how dangerous he was going to become. They would update his threat assessment. His bounty would move. People with authority to issue kill orders would start having relevant conversations.
Category two: every pirate crew and dark organization that had previously filed him under "minor threat, low priority" would be doing the same recalculation. Some of them would decide that the most efficient response to a future threat was to eliminate it while it was still present and accessible.
Category three, which he was presently sitting inside of: his own employer was now watching him with the expression of a proud Logia user who had just watched his third-ranked subordinate become a more compelling figure than himself in the same broadcast that dismissed the Suna Suna no Mi (Sand-Sand Fruit) as the inferior novelty of a man who could "only play with sand."
Crocodile had said nothing about that particular line. The silence around it was architectural.
"Mr. 3." Crocodile's voice came out even — the evenness of significant self-control. "I want you to remain in the base for the foreseeable future. No external missions. No public appearances. Consider yourself under my direct protection until the attention dies down."
Galdino stood, bowed, and found that he meant it when he said: "Thank you, Boss. I won't leave without permission."
He sat back down and did not allow any of his relief to appear on his face.
Crocodile was, whatever else could be said about him, a functional employer. He did not destroy assets out of jealousy. He was also, as a proud man who had been diminished publicly, now extremely motivated to understand how domain expansion worked and whether a Logia user — himself, ally — could access the same principle. This was the particular direction his thinking would take, Galdino knew, because it was the direction he would take in the same position.
Let him think about it. If Crocodile eventually figured out how to develop a Domain, the Suna Suna no Mi with Domain-stage expansion against any opponent who wasn't running a natural counter would be devastating. That would be good for Baroque Works. That would be good for everyone currently sitting in this room.
And in the meantime: the future had announced itself, and the future said Galdino would be Third Brother. Not Mr. 3. Not anyone's third seat.
He kept his face appropriate and his thoughts his own, and waited for the meeting to end.