"It's all thanks to your support, Admiral," Robin said, and she was smiling in a way that was difficult to contain, the kind of smile that comes from something having finally, after a very long time, actually happened.
"Alright, alright," Garp said, waving a hand. "Stop standing around congratulating each other. Magellan's coming."
Finn looked up. The warden was making his way toward them along the dock with a small retinue behind him, a large man moving with the careful deliberateness of someone who had learned, through experience, to be thoughtful about how he occupied space around other people.
In terms of raw authority, Magellan was not a small figure. As the warden of Impel Down, he sat in a category somewhere above a vice admiral and below an admiral, the kind of position that rarely mapped neatly onto standard Marine ranks. But he greeted Finn first and greeted Garp second, and neither order of precedence required any deliberation on his part.
"Admiral Finn. Vice Admiral Garp." He inclined his head to each of them. "Welcome to Impel Down."
"Good to see you again, Magellan," Finn said, with genuine ease.
Garp studied the warden with the frank curiosity of a man who considers social filters optional. "You've stopped leaking poison everywhere. What happened?"
Magellan's face did something complicated. "I can manage it, for a period of time. With concentration."
"Hm." Garp seemed to file this away as interesting, then moved on.
The Poison-Poison Fruit was not a subtle power. Magellan was a Paramecia user of the first order, and in a closed environment like Impel Down, where he knew every corridor and his opponents could not simply run far enough to escape, he was effectively unbeatable. His abilities had never leaked to the wider world in any useful way, which was by design. Walk in not knowing, and Magellan could kill you before you finished your opening sentence.
The side effects, however, were their own problem. His breath carried venom. His sweat carried venom. In moments of physical stress or simple inattention, various other aspects of his physiology also carried venom. His subordinates kept gas masks within reach at all times. It was simply understood as part of the working environment of Impel Down, along with the cold and the dark and the sounds that drifted up from the lower levels.
After a few minutes of conversation at the dock, Magellan fell into step beside them and led the group toward the main entrance.
"How many people are we clearing for entry today?" he asked.
Garp pulled a folded warrant from his inside pocket and held it up. "Don't worry. I'm not here to make your life difficult. Everything's authorized."
Magellan glanced at it and waved it off entirely. "Vice Admiral Garp, with the Admiral present, that really isn't necessary. Impel Down cooperates fully with Marine Headquarters. I'm simply curious about the purpose of the visit."
Finn smiled. "I'm here to meet a couple of old acquaintances. Vice Admiral Robin has received a pardon for one of our prisoners." He glanced at Robin. "The paperwork cleared?"
"Yes, Admiral," Robin said.
She had been trying, with only partial success, to keep her expression professionally composed. Her mother. After years of careful work, years of operating under cover in places where the wrong decision would have meant dying anonymously in some country she had never intended to visit, years of Gion looking after her and Finn keeping his word quietly in the background, this was the day. She was standing at the gates of Impel Down as a vice admiral of the Marine, with a pardon in the system and no remaining bureaucratic obstacle between herself and her mother's cell door.
It was difficult not to let that show.
She was also trying to work out who the second old acquaintance was. Her mother was obvious. But Finn had said two.
Garp answered that question before she could ask it. His expression had shifted, just slightly, into something that on a less weathered face would have read as sentiment. "How's Rosinante holding up in there?"
Robin blinked.
Donquixote Rosinante. She had heard the name, in the way that Marines who paid attention to internal history eventually heard most names worth knowing. The Minion Island incident. The Ope-Ope Fruit. A mission that had gone badly in ways that had cost several people a great deal, and at the end of it, Finn arriving in time to keep the man alive, and a life sentence for his trouble.
Except that Sengoku, once he had made Fleet Admiral, had apparently been quietly methodical about that sentence. Reductions, filed through proper channels, accumulated year by year. Life had become ten years, and ten years would not last forever.
Whatever else Impel Down was, it was also, apparently, the place where Rosinante had been living. And from the warmth in Magellan's answering smile, it did not sound like he had spent that time suffering.
"He's doing very well, Vice Admiral Garp," Magellan said, and he seemed to mean it. "He's genuinely well-liked here. By almost everyone."
Garp relaxed. "Good man, just had a moment of rashness. It cost him."
Finn, walking beside them, considered this and decided to move on from whatever mental image had briefly presented itself.
They passed through the outer gates and into Impel Down proper. The air changed immediately, heavier and more still, with a faint chemical undertone that was simply part of the architecture here.
As they walked, Finn said, "By the way, Magellan. The prisoner population is primarily devil fruit users at this point, yes? Most of the ordinary inmates are in the Calm Belt."
Magellan nodded. "Correct. Those with Devil Fruits present discipline complications that make Calm Belt deployment impractical. Anyone with a significant ability has stayed here."
"How many, roughly?"
Magellan paused, with the expression of a man who genuinely manages the population of an enormous prison and has not committed individual headcounts to memory as a personal hobby.
Finn read the pause and waved a hand. "No need to answer now. After we've seen Olvia and Rosinante, could you have someone pull together a list? Names, Devil Fruit, current status. Nothing urgent."
It was phrased as a request. Magellan responded to it the way anyone in his position would respond to a request from an admiral, which was to say, it was already done in all but the paperwork.
"Of course, Admiral. I'll have it prepared."
Luffy had been quiet for approximately as long as it was physically possible for him to be quiet, which was to say, not very long at all. He was staring at everything, the walls, the architecture, the guards, with the expression of someone cataloguing it all for future reference.
"Can we see the lower floors?" he asked.
"No," said Garp.
"What's on the lowest floor?"
"People you don't need to know about yet," said Garp. "Walk."
Luffy walked, still looking around, apparently satisfied that the answer was sufficiently interesting.
Finn let that exchange pass and returned to Magellan. "One more thing, while I'm thinking about it. I heard Impel Down has two pillars when it comes to strength. Yourself, and someone named Shiryu?"
The shift in Magellan's expression was immediate and involuntary. He composed himself within a second, but the second was enough.
"Yes," he said. "You wanted to meet him?"
"No, I'm just curious. Something happened?"
Garp pricked up at that, and Robin's attention sharpened.
Magellan was quiet for a beat, in the way of a man deciding how much of an embarrassing story to volunteer.
"Shiryu was the head jailer," he said finally. "He had a tendency toward... excessive discipline. Killing prisoners without cause or authorization. The behavior had become increasingly difficult to manage."
"Killed any with Devil Fruit?" Finn asked.
Magellan's expression confirmed it without requiring words.
That was the problem, and Finn had already worked it out before Magellan finished speaking. Ordinary prisoners were a renewable resource in the current era, cycling through the Calm Belt operations and replaceable by the steady stream of piracy that the Grand Line produced. But Devil Fruit users were something else. Their abilities died with them. A prisoner on Level 2 carrying a moderately useful fruit was worth considerably more than the cell they occupied, and Shiryu apparently had not always stopped to make that calculation before making other decisions.
Magellan had endured it to a point, cleaned up the consequences twice, and then apparently reached the end of what he was willing to endure.
As the warden of Impel Down, his authority within these walls was close to absolute. He could, technically, execute the entire population if the circumstances somehow warranted it. Applying that authority to a subordinate who had become a problem was, in context, remarkably straightforward.
Shiryu was now a prisoner.
"He didn't care for the prisoner population," Magellan said, with the diplomatic restraint of a man summarizing something that had personally infuriated him. "So I gave him an opportunity to experience their perspective directly."
Finn looked at Magellan for a moment. "Remind me not to give you too much trouble."
Garp laughed at that, loudly enough that it echoed off the stone walls around them.
Magellan allowed himself a small, dignified smile, and led them deeper into the prison.