The village was quiet when he got back.
A single lamp burned in Hitetsu's window. Everything else was dark, the houses settled into the particular stillness of a place that went to sleep early because there wasn't much reason to stay awake. The bamboo stood motionless around the perimeter. Even the dog was still — sitting outside the door, watching him approach with the calm evaluation it seemed to apply to everything.
Ornn set the animals down near the fire pit. The fox and the two he'd found afterward — enough for several days if they were careful. The dog's nose moved with sudden interest.
Yamato appeared in the doorway about thirty seconds later, drawn by some instinct that apparently distinguished between person returning and everything else. She looked at the meat. Then at him. Then back at the meat, with the expression of someone whose body had just reminded them forcefully how long it had been since dinner.
She had a fire going before he'd finished catching his breath.
He watched her work — quick, efficient, no wasted motion — and waited until she'd eaten a solid third before trying any himself. The toxins, when they arrived, were mild. A low background discomfort that sat in his stomach and complained without making demands. His body processed it the way it seemed to process most things lately: with the slightly put-upon resilience of something that had decided complaining was beneath it.
They ate until there was nothing immediately worth eating.
Yamato's color had come back fully by the time she set down the last bone, the seasickness and the hunger both finally addressed. She looked more like herself — that restless, physical aliveness that was her default state reasserting itself around the edges.
Ornn sent her to rest before it could reassert itself into a suggestion that they do something inadvisable tonight.
She went without much argument, which told him she was more tired than she was letting on.
---
The fire burned low. Ornn sat with it and thought.
He picked up a piece of bamboo and scratched in the dirt in front of him — not quite a map, not quite a list, something in between. The rough shape of a situation that had more problems than solutions and needed to be organized before it could be addressed.
Wano Country — temporary.
That was the foundation of everything else. Staying indefinitely wasn't viable — food was only the most immediate layer. Every day they remained, Kaido's search parties were working through the islands. Every time either of them intervened in something — and they would, because Orochi's people were everywhere and neither of them was constitutionally suited to indefinite passivity — they left traces. The calculation was simple: wait for the immediate search to exhaust itself, build what they needed, then go.
He wrote low profile with some force. Even when trouble arrived — and it would — identities needed to stay hidden. No large actions until they were ready to move.
Food.
Wilderness hunting was a last resort. Nutritionally adequate, logistically messy, and the magma he'd needed last night was the opposite of inconspicuous. What they needed was something consistent and sustainable without requiring him to light up the countryside every few days.
He wrote Tama and considered it.
The girl had a Devil Fruit ability — Kibi Dango that produced loyalty in those who ate them, specifically effective on animal-type Fruit users. The farms around Bakura Town ran on guards. Guards who were, by the composition of the Beasts Pirates' lower ranks, almost certainly Smile Fruit users of the animal-type. If Tama could reach them quietly, feed them — and if those guards then set aside portions of the weekly tribute shipments rather than sending everything to the Flower Capital—
The food problem had a solution. The question was risk. She was a child, and what he was considering brought her into regular proximity to Beasts Pirates regulars. He'd need to think carefully about how that conversation went, and whether Hitetsu would permit it at all.
He drew a line to the next problem.
Ore. Ship.
These were the serious ones. To forge anything worth having — and the Creation Illustrated Book contained a long list of things worth having — he needed quality Sake Iron Ore in real quantity. Not scraps. Not occasional finds. A reliable supply of the only material capable of carrying what he intended to make. And when the time came to leave Wano, they would need a proper vessel — not a fishing boat pressed into service and hoping for the best.
Neither existed in a forest village of a few dozen families.
He sat with the silence for a while. Then he wrote two names.
Kyoshiro. Shutenmaru.
Two aliases. Two men hiding inside them.
Kyoshiro — publicly Orochi's most trusted merchant and swordsman, accumulating money, influence, and resources under that cover while waiting for a moment that was still years away. His real name was Denjiro, and he was one of the nine red scabbards who had sworn themselves to Oden. He could supply ore and funding without anyone asking uncomfortable questions about where the money came from.
Shutenmaru — the name attached to a mountain bandit leader running the Atamayama Thieves, bitter and directionless, sitting on a collection of ships he'd been quietly salvaging for years. Damaged, most of them. In need of work. But ships. His real name was Ashura Doji, and he was another of the nine.
One had resources. The other had vessels.
Neither would be easy to approach. Both had reasons to distrust strangers, and both were operating carefully enough that a wrong first move would close the door permanently. But they were in Wano, they were reachable, and whatever their current circumstances, they were pointed in the same direction he was.
It was a starting point.
He'd need to give them reason to listen before they had reason to refuse. But they were in Wano, they were reachable, and whatever their current circumstances, they were pointed in the same broad direction he was.
It was a starting point.
He looked at what he'd scratched in the dirt, then smoothed most of it away with his palm. No point leaving a readable plan in the open.
The fire had burned to almost nothing. The bamboo stood dark and still around the village. Somewhere inside, Yamato was sleeping — and probably already plotting something, even in her sleep, which was simply the kind of person she was.
Ornn stayed with the quiet for a moment longer.
There was a lot to do. The list was long and the resources were almost nothing and the most powerful man in this country was actively looking for them.
He'd started from worse.
He put out the last of the fire and went inside.