-Broadcast-
The Sky Screen had been running heavy material for a while. Sieges and demon lords and dying admirals and political collapses — the kind of content that accumulated weight. Perhaps whatever logic governed the broadcast recognized when the audience needed a breath between the large events, because what appeared now was something quieter: the future Straw Hats on a shoreline somewhere in the New World, the Thousand Sunny sitting at anchor behind them, and the particular atmosphere of a crew that had arrived somewhere for a reason and was waiting to see if the reason would resolve.
The future versions of them were different in various ways that the current observers could catalogue by degree.
Usopp was the most immediately striking. The sniper had grown sideways as well as upward — broad through the chest and shoulders, the kind of musculature that belonged to someone who had spent years training without any of the interruptions that plagued the present-day version. His face had set into harder lines. The long nose remained entirely unreduced by time or circumstance, a structural constant that evidently no amount of physical development could address. He stood on the dock with both arms crossed and the expression of a man who had developed genuine confidence somewhere along the way, which sat interestingly against the face it occupied.
Marlin stood beside him, the young helmsman watching the approaches with the focused attention his Sea God training had built into something habitual. Even at rest, he looked like someone who was reading the water.
"I still haven't met this girlfriend of yours," Marlin said, without particular provocation. "I'm starting to wonder if she exists."
"She exists," Usopp said. "She's a doctor. Or finishing becoming one, which amounts to the same thing for our purposes."
"I'm just saying. A woman who finds that" — Marlin made a gesture indicating the totality of Usopp's appearance — "compelling is someone I'd like to meet on general principles."
"You're jealous."
"I am actively not jealous. I am curious."
"Everyone on this ship is single except me." Usopp's voice had found the register of a man who knows he's won an argument by attrition and intends to enjoy it. "Men who are loved are the most handsome."
Nami ended this by walking up behind him and delivering a single precise strike to the back of his head with an efficiency that suggested she'd been waiting for the right moment to deploy it for several minutes.
Usopp went down, registered his grievance with the sky, and came back up. "How are you still that strong. I have significantly more muscle now."
"I also have significantly more muscle now," Nami said. "Chopper needs a doctor who actually knows what's wrong with him. Stop showing off and let her know we're here."
Chopper had been in a coma for six months.
The Dressrosa incident had done it, Chopper constitution and Zoan physiology had handled the physical damage during the coma's first weeks. The coma itself was the problem. His body was present and recovering. Whatever resided in him at a deeper level was somewhere else, doing something none of the doctors they'd consulted could identify, and the body was getting thinner while the diagnosis stayed blank.
Nami and Robin had taken turns. Six months of nights, six months of watching a crewmate's face for any sign of return, six months of bringing in one specialist after another and watching each of them reach the same frustrated limit. If it continued much longer, the something-else that was wrong would win by default.
Usopp had already pulled out the Den Den Mushi when the voice came from down the coastline.
"I see you! I'm coming."
She was walking quickly, a medical bag slung over one shoulder, her golden hair loose at her shoulders — the sickly girl from Syrup Village had grown up. Not only upright but fully present, the kind of person who walked like they had somewhere to be and the capability to get there. The brown eyes that had always been thoughtful were still thoughtful, but there was practice behind them now, the look of someone who had spent years learning to look at things and figure out what was wrong.
Character Note: The Peculiar Doctor's Apprentice — Kaya
Usopp was moving before she'd finished closing the distance.
They met in the middle of the dock and held on to each other with the quality of people who have been apart for a long time and have not yet used up the relief of not being apart anymore. Kaya had her face against his shoulder. Usopp had his arms around her back and was saying nothing useful, just the kind of quiet sounds that don't need to be sentences.
The rest of the crew observed this with varying degrees of comment suppression.
Sanji was watching from a short distance away, dressed in what had become his characteristic choice of attire — a black Lolita dress, impeccably maintained. The Okama Kenpō had taken him somewhere his previous self might not have predicted, and he'd arrived there without apparent regret.
"Good sisters," he murmured, to no one in particular, watching Kaya, "should not be given to men of questionable nose proportion."
"You could say that to him," Robin suggested pleasantly.
"He would not hear it. He's currently nourished by love." Sanji's voice contained the dry resignation of someone who had accepted that the universe distributes romance with no meaningful quality control. "I find it spiritually discouraging."
Kaya disentangled herself eventually and turned to face the rest of the crew with the practical manner of someone who had arrived for a purpose. Her gaze went to the ship. To the cabin where Chopper was.
"Tell me everything," she said. "From the beginning. Leave nothing out."
She was already moving toward the gangway before the sentence finished.
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