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"Do you have a compelling reason for scattering chess pieces all over the floor?"
Sakuya stepped in front of them both, looked at the mess, and then looked at Kaito with a perfectly blank expression.
"There is a reason! It's all Veldora's fault. If he had just let me take back my move, I wouldn't have... I..."
Kaito trailed off. Even he couldn't finish that sentence with a straight face.
"So there's no valid reason."
"I'm sorry! It was my fault! Please, just this once!"
With no other options available to him, Kaito dropped his head and admitted it. Veldora, watching from the side, burst out laughing.
"Hahaha! Kaito, you coward! Afraid of your own maid! This great me would never — completely — absolutely would never — "
Sakuya turned and looked at Veldora.
Veldora's neck shrank into his shoulders.
" — think there was anything wrong with what you did."
"Veldora-sama. If you have nothing else to do, go and check whether the children have finished packing."
"Yes! This great me will go at once!"
Veldora did not look at Kaito's desperately pleading face. He left.
Sakuya turned back to Kaito, and the expressionless look gave way to something more tired than angry. She activated her time ability.
The chess pieces rolled back across the floor, rose up, and settled into their original positions. The board was whole again.
Sakuya took Veldora's seat, placed Kaito's piece back where he'd wanted to move it, and said calmly:
"There. Where are you moving it?"
Kaito stared at the board for a moment.
Then at Sakuya.
He'd never said it outright, but since the day he summoned Izayoi Sakuya, his life had been looked after in a way he hadn't known he needed. She woke him up every morning. She cleaned up every disaster, including the ones he caused himself. He didn't know when it had become something he simply relied on.
"Sakuya. You've been with me for a long time now."
"You spend all day looking after the house and everyone in it. Is there anything you want for yourself? Anything at all?"
Something moved across Sakuya's face, a flicker of memory, and then settled into a quiet smile.
"Hehe. Thank you for thinking of me, Master."
"But I don't need anything. Being able to look after you is already more than enough."
Kaito looked at her for a moment. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pendant.
Sakuya looked at it.
Then she made a sound she almost never made.
"Pfft."
The pendant was a chibi figure of the two of them, sized proportionally. The chibi Sakuya was bringing a broom down firmly on the chibi Kaito's head, and the chibi Kaito was crouched on the ground with one enormous teardrop streaming down his face.
"Here. I don't know if it's to your taste."
Sakuya took it. She looked at it for a moment longer, still smiling.
"I like it very much. Thank you, Master."
She clipped it to the waist of her maid uniform.
"KAI-CHAN!!! Are you ready?! It's time to go!"
Milim's voice hit the door before she did. The door swung open a second later and she walked straight in.
"I hear you, Milim. You don't have to shout."
"Yo! Everyone's here, perfect. Let's move out. The children have been looking forward to seeing Vivi's palace."
"Mr. Kaito!"
Vivi stepped forward, and Nami looked at her with a bright expression.
"With Mr. Kaito's help, your country is going to be fine, Vivi!"
"Mm."
Kaito said nothing more and led everyone outside.
Once they were all standing clear of the villa, Sakuya pressed something.
The villa vanished into a thick cloud of white smoke.
When it cleared, there was nothing. Just desert, flat and empty, as though the building had never existed.
"What... how did a house that size just disappear?!"
"I've never seen anything like it in my life!"
"Hmph! You don't know about this? Let Milim explain!"
Milim launched into a thorough and heavily embellished explanation. By the end of it, Luffy and the others had a reasonable grasp of how Koi-Poi Capsules worked.
"Sugoi!"
"The technology is completely beyond anything I could have imagined!"
"Does that mean we could put the Going Merry into one of those capsules and just... carry it?"
"Exactly! Shocked? That's the Jura-Tempest Federation for you!"
Milim announced this to the group with enormous pride.
'Milim, strictly speaking, you're not actually part of the Jura-Tempest Federation.'
Kaito kept that observation to himself.
"Would your country be willing to sell these capsules?"
Vivi asked immediately, and the urgency in her voice was real.
The capsule was simply too useful. And if the World Government ever got wind of this technology, the Jura-Tempest Federation would have a target on its back overnight.
"Not for sale. Not yet."
Kaito said it without any particular concern, as though the question of whether the world's most revolutionary technology should be sold was a minor logistical detail.
Vivi let out a quiet breath of relief. Then her expression turned serious.
"That's good. I would strongly recommend your country keeps this technology out of sight. If the wrong people find out about it, you'll have everyone coming to take it."
Kaito's expression straightened.
"Take it? That lot? Even if the World Government threw everything they had at us, I wouldn't lose sleep over it."
"Sugoi! He's incredible!"
Chopper stared at him in admiration. Vivi pressed on, worry evident on her face.
"I understand your strength is extraordinary, but the World Government's reach goes beyond what you might imagine. They have — "
Kaito raised a hand.
"Miss Vivi. Your concern means a lot. But what I want to say is this."
He smiled.
"It's not that the World Government's power is beyond our imagination. It's that our power is beyond theirs."
He glanced back.
"Rimuru. Milim. What do you think?"
"A mere World Government."
"I'm a Demon Lord!"
Luffy and the others looked at the three of them — each more casually arrogant than the last — and every word they'd been about to say faded into silence.