Shanks takes the locket from Marya's palm.
His fingers—calloused and scar-mapped from decades wound around sword hilts and bottle necks—fold over the silver with an almost sacred tenderness, strength gentled by memory. He holds it up, letting the afternoon sun play across its surface, watching the triple clef sway on its chain like a pendulum marking the passage of time.
His thumb traces the music clef. The gesture is slow. Reverent. His touch carries the hush of recognition, as though the silver remembers him—its weight returning from another life, another time, another world where the girl who wore it still drew breath.
His voice is quiet when he speaks. Quiet in a way that makes the men around him go still, their laughter dying in their throats.
"Marya. There is something you need to know."
Marya cuts him off. Her voice is steady, but there's an urgency beneath it—a thread of something that might be desperation, might be determination, might be both.
"That wasn't her."
Shanks' eyes narrow.
The warmth drains from his scarred features, replaced by something harder. Something colder. Years of buried hurt gather in his face, the old grief beating beneath his silence like a second heart.
"She died in my arms, Marya." His voice drops. The words come out like stones, each one heavy with the weight of memory. "I was there."
Marya takes a deep breath. She holds his gaze—golden rings meeting scared eyes that have seen too much, that has carried too much, that has spent years trying to convince itself that the past is the past and the dead are dead.
"Do you remember what I told you? Before you went to go and get her?"
Shanks' lips draw into a hard line. His expression closes like a door against the past, but the memory waits on the other side, patient as a grave.
Ben answers for him.
His voice is quiet, measured, tempered by decades spent as the shadow at his captain's back. "About the cloning facility."
Marya nods. Her eyes remain fixed on Shanks, but her words are addressed to both of them.
"Yes. Did you find it?"
Shanks and Ben exchange a look.
It's a silent conversation—the kind that only happens between men who have fought together, bled together, survived together. Their eyes speak volumes: Do you remember? Do you remember looking? Do you remember what we found?
Hongo pushes off the railing. His arms fall open as he steps forward, confusion shadowing his features, as though the conversation has become a tide pulling the deck from beneath him.
"What are you trying to say?"
Marya's eyes sweep across the crew of the Red Force. She sees the confusion on their faces, the uncertainty, the flicker of something that might be hope or might be fear.
"I think you found it. And I think your memories were manipulated to make you think she died."
Silence.
A silence taut as the sea before lightning, every sound drawn beneath its darkening surface.
Hongo's expression darkens. He takes another step forward, his voice rising like a drawn blade, every word bright with the fury of guarding what grief has made sacred.
"We buried a body, Marya. She consumed wake shrooms."
Marya meets his gaze without flinching.
"You buried a clone that consumed wake shrooms."
Shanks' fist closes around the locket. His jaw flexes. The muscles in his neck cord with tension.
"Marya." His voice is low. Dangerous. The voice of an Emperor addressing a challenge to his authority. "I know what I saw. I know what I felt."
Marya steps closer. Her voice remains calm, yet every word carries the quiet gravity of a vow kept alive through years of sacrifice and unanswered questions.
"I can prove it."
Shanks jolts.
The word hits him like a physical blow. His eyes widen, and for a moment—just a moment—something flickers behind it. Something that looks almost like hope. Almost like fear.
Ben exhales a plume of smoke. His expression yields nothing, but caution shadows each word—the quiet wariness left by too many miracles arriving with knives behind their backs.
"How?"
Marya reaches into her jacket. She pulls out a transponder snail, its eyes blinking lazily, its shell patterned with the markings of a Den Den Mushi that has seen hard use.
"Bring him."
The snail crackles. Atlas's voice comes through, lazy and unconcerned.
"Sure thing, Boss."
The snail clicks silent.
Marya reaches into her pocket again. This time, she pulls out the flyer—the paper crumpled, the ink slightly smudged, but the words still legible. The jolly roger—skull and crossbones with scissors—stares up at her like a challenge.
"The person who sold us the locket also gave us this."
She holds it out.
Shanks takes it. His eye moves over the page with the swift precision honed by years of deciphering intelligence reports, battle plans, and every secret laid before an Emperor.
Beckman moves to stand behind him, reading over his shoulder. His expression remains neutral, but something flickers in his eyes—something cold, something calculating.
Shanks' expression begins to turn dark.
The warmth drains from his face. His jaw locks. The flyer shivers in his grasp, rage moving through him like a fault line waking beneath the sea.
His voice comes out low. Dangerous.
"What is this? Where did you—"
Thud.
Everyone looks over.
Atlas Acuta has arrived.
The rust-red Mink drops Romano Armando onto the deck of the Red Force like a sack of annoying potatoes. The promoter is bound and gagged, his eyes wide with terror, his ink-stained fingers twitching against the ropes that secure his wrists.
Atlas steps back, crossing his arms, his nib swishing with the quiet flourish of a final stroke laid across the page.
Hongo walks over, sliding the paper from Shanks' hand. Lucky Roux and Building Snake crowd behind him, reading over his shoulder. Their expressions shift—from confusion to concern to something harder.
Shanks ignores them.
He walks toward Romano Armando.
His footsteps are slow. Deliberate. Each one a countdown.
Romano Armando strains against his bindings, each muffled whimper climbing higher as the Emperor of the Sea eclipses the light above him. His bloodshot gaze flits wildly before fastening on Shanks' scarred eye, realization sinking through him like deep water closing overhead.
Shanks' voice is ice.
"Who is this?"
Marya moves to stand beside him. Beckman joins them, flicking ash from his cigarette, his expression unreadable.
"This is the man who made the flyer. He knows where the auction is."
Ben blows out a plume of smoke. His eyes don't leave Romano Armando, but his words are directed at Marya.
"And you brought him with you."
Marya smirks—a small, sharp expression that flickers across her features.
"He wanted to charge me. So I wanted to show him exactly how much it would cost."
Shanks replies, his voice flat. "Is that so."
Romano Armando looks up.
Three gazes converge on him—Shanks' scarred eyes, Marya's golden rings, Beckman's wintry stare—until Romano feels pinned beneath their silence, like an insect sealed in amber.
He tries to speak. The gag muffles his words, turning them into a stream of incomprehensible sounds.
Marya looks over her shoulder when Hongo calls out.
"Is this even real?"
The paper slides out of Hongo's hands, passing through the crew like a rumor. Each man reads it, their expressions shifting as the words sink in.
Marya tells him, her voice steady. "That's what I want to find out. And I want your help to do it."
Shanks doesn't hear them.
His attention remains fixed on Romano Armando. His voice crosses the murmuring deck, and every other sound folds beneath it.
"Untie him. I want to talk."
Atlas nods. His claws—sharp, precise, gleaming in the afternoon sun—pass through the ropes with the grace of a pen finishing its final line.
Romano Armando grins.
The grin trembles at its edges, a frail mask stretched over panic. Behind it, Romano rifles through every silver-tongued lesson he has ever learned, searching for the one phrase that might keep the ground from giving way beneath him.
He cowers, his body folding in on itself, his ink-stained fingers twitching against his chest.
"Your Emperor-ness!" His voice pitches high and thin, each syllable trembling beneath the sudden weight of the legend before him. "Romano Armando, at your—at your service! It is so, so nice to meet you. I have heard—I have heard—I mean, what I mean to say is—"
Marya interrupts him.
Her voice is calm. Measured. Each word falls with the finality of a door closing on his excuses.
"How about we do this again. Where is the auction? And who is the person that gave you the information?"
Romano Armando swallows hard.
His Adam's apple bobs. His eyes dart between the three figures looming over him, searching for an escape that doesn't exist.
"Um, well, you see, like I told you—Rosward Don J. Puth is the one who told me to spread the word, and you see, well, um, the auction is happening at Bootleg Island."
Marya's lips press together.
"Bootleg."
Atlas, leaning on the railing with his arms crossed, his nub swishing lazily behind him, speaks up.
"It's been a while since we've been to Bootleg Island."
Marya nods, her expression thoughtful. "Yeah. Interesting choice."
Luffy scratches his head, his brow furrowed as the conversation sails farther beyond him, leaving him marooned somewhere between Bootleg Island and everyone else's understanding.
"What is Bootleg Island?"
Atlas explains with patient simplicity, as if speaking to a child. "It's an island known for its black market connections. Pirates, brokers, information dealers—if you want something that doesn't exist, that's where you go to find it."
Ben looks at Shanks.
His voice is quiet, measured. "What do you want to do?"
Shanks holds the locket up.
He stares at it—at the silver, at the triple clef, at the memories that cling to its surface like ghosts. His expression shifts, cycling through a dozen emotions in the space of a heartbeat: grief, anger, confusion, and beneath it all, something that might be hope.
Marya speaks, urgency threading her voice, her resolve already set like a course beneath the stars.
"We should just go to Elegia. The clone is of little consequence. Uta is what is important."
Shanks replies, his tone dark. "No, Marya."
Marya glares at him. Her voice sharpens, honed by years of clawing back every inch the world tried to take from her.
"You are the only one—"
Shanks looks her in the eye.
His voice is quiet. Firm. Decision settles into every word, immovable as an anchor beneath a storm.
"We will go to Bootleg. And see what this is. I want to meet this Rosward Don J. Puth."
He moves to walk away.
Marya blocks him.