He was still looking at the platform when something caught his eye at the edge of his vision.
Two boys roughly his age were standing a short distance away, also looking at the structure, though with considerably more visible feelings about it than he had. The first was hard to miss. He had a round clown nose painted on his face, blue hair, and the expression of someone working through a powerful emotion that had not yet decided whether it was grief or outrage. He was talking continuously, gesturing at the platform, apparently making a case to his companion that was going unacknowledged.
The companion was not listening. He had red hair, the kind of bright red that was difficult to look away from, and he was watching the platform with an expression that was quieter and considerably heavier than his friend's. He was not speaking. He did not appear to need to.
Lucien looked at them for a moment too long.
The red-haired boy's gaze moved from the platform and found him, suddenly and directly, the way certain people's attention moves when they become aware of being observed. He looked at Lucien for a long moment with an expression that was difficult to read, assessing in a way that did not feel hostile but did not feel entirely comfortable either.
Then he turned, grabbed his still-talking companion by the collar, and ran away. The blue-haired boy's protest trailed behind them down the street and then was swallowed by the crowd.
Lucien watched the space where they had been for a moment. He did not know their names. He filed their faces away anyway, the way he filed most things, and turned back to the platform.
He had seen enough of the platform. After a few more minutes he turned and walked back through the crowd toward the inn, figuring it was about time Cael returned.
He was passing the old man's door when he stopped.
Laughter was coming from inside. Not Cael's particular brand of dry amusement but genuine, boisterous laughter, the kind that filled a room and pressed against the walls. Lucien stood in the corridor for a moment, genuinely uncertain he was at the right door, and then opened it.
Cael was sitting at the small table with a cup in his hand. Across from him, occupying considerably more of the room than the furniture had been designed to accommodate, was a man of extraordinary size sitting cross-legged on the floor with a large mug balanced in one hand.
He had distinctive purple hair and the build of someone who had never encountered a physical obstacle that gave him serious trouble. The room looked like it had been designed for a different species.
Neither of them acknowledged the door opening.
"You should have seen Garp's face," the large man was saying, still riding the tail end of his laugh. "His own son quit the Marines and walked out after breaking out of his own cell. Sighed for a week straight, that man did." He shook his head with something between admiration and grief. "That boy was something special. I trained him myself. Kong had his eye on him for Fleet Admiral. Real talent, genuine talent."
"He saw things he should not have seen at too young an age," Cael said, in the quieter register he used when he was being careful with words. "And he could not accept what he saw the way it was packaged for him. A strong sense of justice and an early education in how the world actually operates is a difficult combination. It was only a matter of time before he left, the same way many of us did."
The large man noticed Lucien in the doorway then and looked at him with the open, unhurried appraisal of someone accustomed to assessing people quickly.
"This the boy?" he asked.
"This is the boy," Cael said, without turning around.
The large man looked at Lucien for a moment longer, then nodded at the floor beside him. "Sit down. No point standing in doorways."
Lucien sat.
The large man looked him up and down with the unhurried assessment of someone who had evaluated a great many people and had strong opinions about what he found. "Skinny," he said. "Very skinny. And this is the reason you came back near a Marine base after all these years." He looked at Cael with an expression somewhere between disbelief and amusement. "Send him to me instead. I will have him strong and sorted in no time."
Cael turned and looked at him with a blank expression that lasted long enough to constitute a response on its own. Then he said, "I am training him. That is sufficient." He took a drink. "And the Marines. This boy would lose his mind inside that structure. Caged to the same post, the same orders, the same ceiling for years on end. He would be gone inside a month."
"Three weeks," Lucien said.
Both men looked at him.
"Conservatively," he added.
"Zephyr," the large man said, extending one enormous hand. "You can call me what everyone else calls me, or you can call me that. Either works."
Lucien shook the hand that required both of his. "Lucien Vosgrave."
Zeff looked at Cael. "Vosgrave's son."
"Vosgrave's son," Cael confirmed.
After that, Lucien ceased to exist as far as either of them were concerned. The two men fell into conversation with the easy, unhurried depth of people who had not seen each other in a long time and had a great deal of accumulated ground to cover.
Lucien followed it for a while, catching names and places and references that meant nothing to him yet, and then caught less of it, and then was horizontal on the floor with his coat over him without being entirely sure when that had happened.
Waking up, Lucien couldn't see either of the two men and knew they had gone away as he just walked out to look around what the famous Loguetown had to offer. For the next 2 days, he just walked around, ate stuff, and looked around. Before he knew it, the day arrived.
Gol D Roger's Execution Day Arrived.