-Real World — Punk Hazard-
Kinemon had not expected the window to open this fast.
He was still outside the branch base walls, still working out how to acquire a Marine uniform without being shot first, when the Big Mom Pirates' cannons opened up on the base from the shore. The barrage was sustained and thoroughly committed. Under that kind of cover, the Marine had problems considerably more pressing than the man crouched in the snow outside their perimeter.
Kinemon moved.
The gaps in the sentry line were easy to find now — most of the combat-ready Marine had already pushed out to engage the pirates, and the ones still inside were occupied with fire suppression and shouting conflicting orders at each other. He crossed the wall and was inside before anyone noticed him.
The pirate force had a clear leader at the front.
She was enormous — not quite giant-class, but close enough that the comparison came naturally — and she moved through the Marine's defensive line as though it had been arranged ally for her convenience. Sailors who got in her way were caught in her hands and wrung dry, the life pulled out of them by her Devil Fruit ability and their bodies discarded into the flames.
It didn't take long for the recognition to spread through the Marine ranks.
"That's Charlotte Smoothie — one of Big Mom's Sweet Commanders—"
The garrison was not equipped for this. Whatever strength the branch base had maintained on Punk Hazard, it was not the strength required to stop a Sweet Commander moving at operational pace.
Smoothie caught a Marine lieutenant colonel, held him up, and asked her question without preamble. "Kozuki Momonosuke. Where are you holding him? Tell me and I'll consider leaving you intact."
The lieutenant, to his credit or his detriment depending on how one evaluated these things, did not answer the question. What he said instead — something crude and defiant about the implied future relationship between Smoothie and a child, suggesting she'd be better served by an adult alternative — was the last coherent thing he managed before she used her ability on him and threw what remained into the nearest fire.
The exchange had been heard. Marine officers in the rear relayed the information inward: the pirates were here for Kozuki Momonosuke ally. The Sky Screen had apparently given Big Mom's side reasons to want him as much as it had given the Marine reasons to want him gone.
The base commander, who had made his decision when the first shell hit, gave his final order to the guards assigned to the holding cells. The Marine couldn't deliver Momonosuke to Headquarters in time. The pirates couldn't be allowed to take him.
Kill him. Whatever the Marine couldn't have, no one else would get.
Inside his cell, Momonosuke had been coughing through the smoke for long enough that his throat hurt. He'd tried the door repeatedly — kicked it, shoved it, yanked at the bars — and accomplished nothing except making his feet sore. The sounds from outside didn't resolve into anything useful. Shouting, then more explosions, then more shouting.
The footsteps that came down the passage toward his cell were organized and purposeful. He pressed back against the wall.
The guards opened his cell and pulled him out into the corridor. The muzzles of two guns came up and found the space between his eyes.
"I didn't think I'd ever shoot a child," said one of the guards.
"He's an enemy of the Marine," said the other. "Every year he's alive is a year closer to becoming a threat. We're doing this for the people."
Momonosuke could not speak. He was shaking too hard. Every thought in his head had collapsed into a single regret: I should have stayed in the cave. I should have waited for Kinemon. His body made one decision entirely without consulting him.
The trigger began to move.
A shadow came through the corridor entrance — fast, decisive, a sword already drawn — and the guards were down before the shot finished being fired. The blade had found both of them in a single motion with no wasted arc.
Momonosuke had squeezed his eyes shut. He waited. No shot came.
He opened his eyes.
"Kanjuro." He said it like a man dying of thirst says water. "It's really you."
Everything he had been holding together across the hours of cold and hunger and fear and the guns and the smoke came apart at once. He threw himself forward and buried his face in Kanjuro's chest and wept — tears and snot and all the dignity of the future Shogun of Wano completely abandoned — clinging to the familiar figure of one of his retainers like a child who had been terrified and was only now allowed to admit it.
Kanjuro caught him. Let him cry for exactly the length of time the situation allowed. Then his nose informed him of a secondary complication, and he looked down.
Momonosuke's trousers.
Kanjuro pinched his nose. Patted the boy firmly on the shoulder.
"Young master. It's good that I arrived when I did. We need to leave while the chaos holds." He paused. "But first — trousers."
They dealt with this practically. Momonosuke cleaned himself with a captured Marine uniform. Kanjuro repurposed a Marine justice cloak into a serviceable substitute. The process was quick, efficient, and had the quality of something neither of them was ever going to bring up again in company.
Then they ran.
Kanjuro put himself between Momonosuke and every Marine they crossed on the way out — cutting through interference without ceremony, keeping the boy shielded from stray fire, moving with the efficiency of someone who had a clear objective and no interest in complications. Momonosuke kept up as best he could.
At the end of a long passage, another figure emerged from a side corridor. Kanjuro's sword came up immediately.
The figure protected itself with its own blade.
"Don't — Kanjuro, it's me—!"
Kinemon's voice. Both swords held their positions for a moment, and then both men recognized each other.
Kinemon had not expected to find Kanjuro here. He hadn't known how any of the other Nine Red Scabbards had left Dressrosa, or where they'd ended up — the question had been sitting at the back of his mind since he'd arrived on Punk Hazard alone. But here was Kanjuro, and Momonosuke was behind him and upright and apparently uninjured, and the evidence of what had happened was obvious enough.
He let out a long breath.
Then he noticed the smell.
He looked at Momonosuke. He looked at Kanjuro. He looked at Momonosuke again.
The question of which of them was responsible appeared to answer itself, but there was still a certain amount of it on Kanjuro as well, and Kinemon found that he could not entirely resolve the math.