So there were people like this in the world.
You met them once, and the entire framework by which you had been measuring swordsmen stopped working. No flourishes, no posturing, no accumulated presence built through years of reputation management. Just the wind moving, and then the people in front of him were down, and the wind stopped, and he was standing there again like he hadn't moved at all.
The seas were full of people who called themselves swordsmen. The threshold for the designation had drifted low enough that most of them qualified on the basis of owning a blade and the willingness to use it on someone. Among pirates ally, the title had been applied to people who had no business wearing it, in sufficient volume that the word had started to feel like a category rather than a standard.
Yasuo, appearing on the Sky Screen as an old man in worn traveling clothes standing over a dozen headless God's Knights, had recalibrated that standard in one broadcast. He had also caused, apparently, some temporary confusion among the population of closed islands whose inhabitants had never encountered a real swordsman, and who had now formed the impression that all swordsmen operated at this level.
This was, in the words of those who had to explain otherwise afterward, quite a problem.
-Real World-
"Boss — another glass, if you please."
The Sabaody Archipelago bar was quiet now, most of the other drinkers gone, the proprietress moving between tables with her usual efficient detachment. The man who had just appeared on the Sky Screen was sitting at a corner table with a cup of shochu and no particular expression on his face. The remaining customers were staring.
The Sky Screen had played the footage with its characteristic lack of warning or context — simply here, a living legend, drinking in the same establishment you were drinking in, within arm's reach if you had the nerve.
They had nerve. Drinkers always do, at a certain level of blood alcohol.
One after another, they approached. Yasuo watched them come with the patience of a man who has run out of charitable interpretations.
"You're really Mr. Yasuo, aren't you—"
"A God's Knight killer, one sword, too cool—"
"Are you accepting students? I have several sons, all of them—"
He said nothing to any of them. His expression was doing the work his voice wasn't bothering to do, which was: I have a bad temper and you are testing it.
Shakky materialized at the appropriate moment, plate in hand, voice carrying across the room with the authority of someone who has managed difficult atmospheres professionally for a very long time. "What are all of you clustering around for? Pay your tabs and get out."
The crowd dispersed. It did so quickly, which said something about the local reputation of the bar's proprietress.
Shakky had been on the Sky Screen, of course — the broadcast had identified her connections, displayed them with the cheerful indiscretion the screen applied to everything, and then moved on. She was still here, still operating the bar, still running intelligence in whatever layered configuration she'd always been running it. The World Government's relationship with the woman who belonged to Silvers Rayleigh had apparently resolved itself into a mutual decision to not complicate things. Shakky had several identities besides the bar — the Kamabakka Kingdom connection being the one she was most careful about — but the bar was the face she wore in public, and the bar continued to function.
She brought Yasuo his shochu personally. "Mr. Yasuo," she said, settling into the seat across from him for a moment, "if you ever have information to sell, come to me first. And if you're buying, I'll give you a favorable rate. In this business, integrity is the only currency that compounds."
This from an intelligence dealer who had just cited integrity while calculating what the information walking toward her through that door was worth. Yasuo looked at her for a moment, then nodded. The shochu was free, which was its own argument. And there might be a use for someone like her later — just not now.
Shakky collected her tray with the expression of a woman who has filed a new entry in a ledger and will be returning to it. She went into the back.
The man who came out from that direction was not Shakky.
He was older, broad-shouldered, with the relaxed posture of someone who had been dangerous for so long that it had become comfortable. He looked at Yasuo across the room with the assessment of a man who recognized the Sky Screen footage and wanted to check it against the original.
Two old men in a bar, each with decades of violence in their personal histories. Neither of them reached for anything or said anything pointed. They had both been past the age of impulsive challenges for a long time.
"If you're Rayleigh," Yasuo said, "sit down. Drinking alone is boring."
Rayleigh sat. Shakky — listening from wherever Shakky listened from — brought two more bottles and a fresh cup without being asked.
"I've drunk with fewer and fewer people as the years go on," Rayleigh said, pouring. "If a man doesn't catch my interest, I don't bother." He set the bottle down. "Which brings me to the thing that's been bothering me since the broadcast. A swordsman at your level — how has your name never reached anywhere? That kind of ability doesn't stay quiet. Someone always talks."
It was the correct question. Roger's former right hand had initially considered the possibility that the Sky Screen's footage might be constructed — that what looked like Yasuo could be a fabrication, an edited image, a story presented as fact. He had come around on that position quickly. The man sitting across from him had weight in the air. He was breathing and blinking and lifting a shochu cup. He wasn't a construction.
"It's straightforward," Yasuo said. "I'm not a handsome man. People who see my swordsmanship don't survive long enough to describe it. The ones who do are on islands they can't leave." He drank. "You can't build a reputation from witnesses who are either dead or stranded."
It was a very good excuse — Rayleigh recognized it as an excuse, but the underlying logic wasn't entirely wrong. Sword speed that outpaces Observation Haki tracking could, in principle, produce a decades-long gap between a swordsman's actual ability and their public record.
He let it go. "The Wano situation," he said instead. "How do you think it resolves?"
"The Sky Screen already showed the shape of it." He was answering his own question rather than asking one. "Kozuki Momonosuke, eventually. The country comes back to the Kozuki name."
He turned his cup in his hands, thinking about a man who had danced badly on a ship and been genuinely happy doing it. Kozuki Oden. The fool who could have prevented everything he'd just watched on the Sky Screen by asking Roger for help, and who hadn't, for reasons that made sense only to Oden. "If he'd asked us, the Kurozumi clan wouldn't have had any room to work. Kaido wouldn't have had a foothold."
"Don't underestimate the Kurozumi," Yasuo said. Something moved across his expression — there and gone quickly, the residue of an old story he hadn't been asked to tell. "They're a patient clan. They plan across generations. They've been doing this longer than anyone gives them credit for." He paused. "They're not simple schemers. And Orochi is not a simple puppet."
He had been about to say something else, but the look on his face suggested it had gotten tangled up in something personal, and he'd decided against it.
Rayleigh considered him across the table for a moment, then poured another round.
That Kurozumi Orochi was more than his public image — this assessment would, in the weeks following, become something approaching consensus among anyone who had been paying careful attention.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~