Red momentum - Luffy's Otherworldly Memory

The Beginning of the Three-Month Shadow Plan

The moment Luffy pushed open the wooden door of Makino's bar, the world outside seemed to exhale. Night air, thick with the scent of distant storms and brine, spilled in with a hushed roar, curling around the corners of the low-ceilinged room and threading between lantern-lit shadows. It carried more than moisture and salt—it whispered of far-off seas, hidden dangers, and promises of adventure that bent the edges of thought.

Inside, the bar was a sanctuary of soft amber light. Lanterns cast circular glows over worn planks, illuminating the curls of dust that danced in their warmth, like drifting spirits trapped in amber. The tang of sea salt lingered, mingling with the heavier aroma of spilled ale and old wood, a memory of the docks that clung like a familiar hymn. Uta's hum floated from the back room, a delicate, haunting thread of sound that seemed to tug at the edges of consciousness, threading through shadows, and tugging lightly at Luffy's dreaming mind.

Makino's sleeves were rolled to her elbows, her hands busy restocking bottles. She muttered under her breath about pirates who "forget coins but never forget drinks," her voice carrying the familiar cadence of exasperation intertwined with affection. The motion of her hands, deft and rhythmic, was almost a dance—every bottle placed just so, every cork reseated with a soft twist, a ritual of order amid the chaos of the tavern.

Luffy shuffled forward, dragging his small feet across the floorboards, each step marked by the soft creak of worn wood beneath his weight. His eyelids, heavy with fatigue, wavered like sails in a stubborn wind. He barely reached the counter before his body gave in; he collapsed, cheek pressed against the polished wood. The fall was as natural as breathing—instantaneous, unresisted. The boy was asleep, the world outside fading from his perception entirely.

Shanks entered behind him, a grin fixed on his face that seemed to hang between warmth and mischief. Yet beneath that mask, his awareness was taut, like a drawn string ready to snap. His eyes moved with deliberate precision, scanning the bar, noting every shadow, every vibration, every subtle shift in the air. With a subtle, almost imperceptible motion—two fingers raised in a silent signal—he conveyed the imminence of attention.

Ben Beckman froze mid-polish, Yasopp's joke faltered in midair, and Lucky Roo caught a meatball, suspended as though time itself hesitated. Each of them understood. Danger had arrived—or rather, it was approaching. Invisible, yet tangible, curling like smoke through the room.

Within heartbeats, the Red Hair Pirates moved as though liquid, slipping through the space with almost inhuman grace. Boots whispered against the floorboards; blades clicked softly into place. Half-finished ales were abandoned with a precision that spoke of years of practice. Chairs remained upright, bottles still, the air itself seeming to bend around them. Makino, engrossed in her task, never perceived the subtle exodus. Uta hummed on, unaware of the quiet storm moving around her. And Luffy? His dreams had already carried him across vast, unseen seas.

A single note remained on the counter, its ink blurred by a thumbprint of ale:

We'll be back in three Months.

—Shanks

Makino froze, hands gripping the edge of the counter. "…I'm charging them double next time!" Her voice, a mixture of exasperation and fondness, filled the room, catching in the floating amber light.

The bar door burst open. Dadan and Donden entered like twin tempests, the air itself bending to their momentum. Dadan's grip on Luffy was effortless, her shoulder lifting him as though he weighed no more than driftwood caught in a tide. Her eyes, always sharp, flicked with calculation and awareness—movements honed through years of knowing the difference between a threat and a mere shadow. Donden followed, pockets jingling with half-finished gadgets, their subtle hums and clicks hinting at understanding far beyond their apparent mischief—mechanisms placed with a rhythm that suggested precision training, instincts being tempered in silent exercises, a whisper of techniques not yet named.

"See you at sunrise for chores and training!" Donden called, his voice sliding through the chaos like a practiced melody. By the time Uta's mind caught up to the storm of movement, both were gone.

Makino dead-bolted the door with a practiced click and turned to Uta. "You stay here. Help me clean." Her gaze swept the room, noting the battlefield of spilled stew, overturned chairs, and eight scattered boots. Uta's protests melted into reluctant acceptance, her shoulders rising and falling in sync with the lamplight shadows.

Outside, the night continued its silent watch. Storms churned beyond the horizon, tides whispered secrets, and somewhere in the sea-borne shadows, plans began to unfold with the careful precision of a predator circling its prey.

The moon traced a thin, silver arc across the sky, its light spilling across the dock like molten glass, highlighting the textures of salt-worn wood and glinting on the steel-bound edges of crates that lined the harbor. Each ripple on the black water seemed alive, vibrating with stories the eye could not read but the soul could sense—a tide whispering secrets to those patient enough to listen. The wind brought hints of far-off storms, scents of brine, driftwood, and the faint metallic tang of distant ships, heavy with unseen cargo. Even in its tranquility, the harbor felt charged, a threshold between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between a village's quiet life and the wide, indifferent chaos of the sea beyond.

Shanks' Griffinite blade hung at his side, catching the moonlight and refracting it into a subtle iridescent shimmer. To the untrained eye, it was a beautiful, otherworldly piece of metal, like molten feathers captured in a frozen moment. To the trained, it was far more than steel: each layer had been tempered with storm-forged silver, infused with energies that bent toward Nen as naturally as a river bends to the valley. The metal sang faintly under his fingers, a whisper of its latent power, waiting for the right mind to guide it. Shanks rested his thumb on the hilt, feeling the currents of intent rolling off his crew and the distant, dormant potential of a small boy sleeping in Fusha Village.

The rare Nen-orb at his belt caught the moonlight too, subtle in shape but singular in purpose. He placed his palm over it, and the orb flared to life, spilling a tapestry of energies into the night air. Threads of golden, silver, and liquid metal light wove around each other, mapping a boy's instincts, patterns, and the dangerous depth of something older than his years buried deep in his spirit. Shanks' Haki, honed to a refinement few could comprehend, slid seamlessly into the Nen perception, breaking through the veil of distance and age. He saw the raw potential—Enhancement adaptive and reactive, attributes that shimmered like mercury under the sun. A six-year-old child, yet with instincts so vast, so far-reaching, it was as though a seed of ocean itself slept beneath the ribs of his body.

"He won't lose himself," Shanks murmured, voice low enough to dissolve into the night wind. "Not him. Not ever."

Ben Beckman, standing just behind him, did not need to ask who he referred to. In their world, when Shanks' face betrayed even a trace of concern, the men listened. When it did not, even the strongest storm could pass unnoticed. Ben nodded, the faintest crease appearing at the corner of his eyes. "A dangerous seed," he said softly, "but anchored. For now."

Lucky Roo stretched one leg along a crate, letting his grin flash in the moonlight. "Anchored or not," he said, "if he ever wakes full force, I hope the world's ready for the mess."

Yasopp didn't laugh, but the corner of his mouth twitched. He squinted toward the horizon. "Mess is one thing," he said. "But the precision in that mess… if the wrong people wake him early, we could lose more than a dock or a village. That child… he's a storm that can't be caged, but a storm that doesn't know its own eye yet."

Shanks' thumb tightened on the Griffinite hilt. The subtle pulse of Nen from the blade communicated back through him, whispering a language only a select few could parse. He let the currents of the boy's potential wash over him, reading his adaptive intelligence, his raw instinct, the careful balance between curiosity and lethality buried beneath a childlike exterior. The boy's aura was unformed but enormous, a Enhancement type too vast for his body yet responsive, malleable, and precise.

He looked to Ben. "The CP0 transport… it's moving something big. I don't care how quietly they think they're moving it, we've seen the tendrils of their plans. The moment a ship like that leaves the New World, it doesn't just carry cargo—it carries intent."

Ben exhaled, the tip of his cigarette flaring briefly before going dim again. "Level Null," he said. "Restricted materials, sensitive documents… a crate humming with something unmarked. And the fruit. If the rumors are true, it's in there."

Shanks' eyes narrowed. He inhaled, letting the ocean's nocturnal scent fill his lungs. "Then we intervene," he said simply, a single sentence carrying the weight of strategy, experience, and the awareness of unmeasurable stakes.

Yasopp shifted, letting the rifle across his shoulders settle, fingers brushing the polished wood. "Subtlety," he murmured. "We're hunters, not raiders. They'll have no reason to suspect until it's already gone."

Lucky Roo tapped the deck twice with his boots, a rhythm that matched the lapping waves. "I like hunting in the shadows," he said. "No fireworks. Just ghosts." His grin widened. "Well… except for the ones we let see us."

Shanks allowed a small smile, brief and fleeting. "Exactly. We craft the narrative they expect. Then we take the pieces no one notices."

Shanks paused on the main deck of his flagship, the night's silver haze curling along the waves around him. The fleet moved in near-perfect silence, a ghostly ballet against the moonlit sea, but his mind was elsewhere—stretching across dimensions of perception few could even dream of understanding. His Haki, trained and sharpened over decades, throbbed like a living pulse beneath his skin. It spoke of presence, of intent, of danger. He felt the tension in the wind before it touched him, the unspoken weight of the sea, the ripple of thought in the minds of his crew. Every footstep on deck, every adjusted sail, every subtle flicker of light or shadow was catalogued and interpreted.

But that was only the surface.

Beneath it, hidden and subtle, the Nen flowed. Not in an overt wave of power or combat display—this was Shanks, not one to flaunt even the slightest advantage—but as a quiet, precise resonance of possibility. Where Haki told him what is, Nen revealed what could be. It allowed him to perceive patterns in the invisible, to sense growth, adaptation, latent potential that had yet to manifest. Where Haki screamed of life and death, Nen whispered of evolution, of trajectories bending to unforeseen outcomes.

He placed a gloved hand on the Griffinite hilt at his side. The metal's warmth and faint hum beneath his touch synced with both forces. Griffinite was more than a weapon; it was a conduit. It could amplify Haki, conduct Nen, and respond to both in subtle feedback loops. It was as if the blade understood his intent before he willed it, aligning with his consciousness to become an extension of himself.

The rare Nen-orb hung at his belt, an artifact of near-mythic rarity. One in a trillion, he often reminded himself. Placing his palm atop its surface, he let it flare, a soft explosion of iridescent energy that wrapped around his senses. The orb was not a passive observer—it interfaced with him, translated the chaotic symphony of life around him into a language he could read with surgical precision. And it had done so for the boy sleeping in Fusha Village.

Enhancement. That was the type displayed on the orb's surface, the shimmer of liquid metal flowing across the energy lattice. But Shanks knew this was insufficient. Nen type was only a frame, a foundation. It did not capture the depth, the interwoven complexity of Luffy's mind. Even asleep, the child's aura was not inert; it was active, algorithmic, assessing, predicting, adapting. Luffy's subconscious was running contingencies, calculating probabilities, storing options in a hidden lattice of instinct. Where most six-year-olds reacted, Luffy preempted.

"He's a living paradox," Shanks murmured, voice almost lost in the sigh of the waves. His gaze drifted toward the distant horizon, toward the faint outline of Fusha Village where Luffy slept, unknowing of the oceanic ballet orchestrated for him. Ben Beckman, leaning against the railing nearby, tilted his head, the tip of his cigarette glowing faintly in the darkness. "Not just strong, not just clever… adaptive enough to make things happen before they appear," Shanks added, letting the words hang, dense as storm clouds, over the deck.

Ben exhaled slowly, smoke spiraling into the night like spectral threads. "A dangerous one," he said, each word measured, deliberate. "We train him wrong, or too fast… and we lose control before he even knows it. Train him too slow, or too cautiously, and he could become a force of balance instead—unpredictable, yes, but restrained by intent rather than impulse." His voice was both caution and acknowledgment; he had studied many prodigies in his time, but none like this. None that hummed with both instinct and an almost unnatural grasp of potential.

Shanks' fingers tightened on the Griffinite hilt, feeling the blade resonate faintly, as though responding to the thought itself. "And that," he said, "is our task. To guide the storm without breaking it. To show him how to wield power that can reshape the seas before he even steps outside this village. To teach him discipline, cunning, perception. And to do so invisibly, so that the world does not see what is forming in shadow."

The waves below seemed to respond. Perhaps it was his imagination, perhaps it was the subtle influence of Haki intertwined with Nen, but the sea pulsed, swelled, and retreated with an almost deliberate rhythm. The distant horizon was bathed in a gray-silver haze, broken by streaks of faint moonlight. Each vessel in the fleet mirrored his focus, crew members moving with quiet precision, adjustments executed with the kind of innate understanding that could only be forged in long years of trust and shared purpose.

"Captain," Beckman continued, lowering his voice so that only Shanks could hear, "the CP0 scouts are likely measuring currents and wind for that transport. Their sensors aren't ordinary—they rely on both mundane observation and… enhanced detection. If we misstep even slightly, the operation could be compromised."

Shanks' eyes narrowed. "Let them measure. Let them probe. They'll find nothing but phantoms and shadows. Our real prize moves unseen. And even if they suspect…" His words trailed, almost a whisper: "…they won't understand what they sense."

There was a subtle pulse through Shanks' Nen perception, the faintest vibration of intent emanating from the fleet. Each sailor was a node in a lattice of awareness, linked invisibly by Nen threads and guided by the subtle currents of Haki. Even the wind, the motion of the waves, the whispering echoes of the night—all were part of the network, feeding back into his consciousness. He could feel when a sail shifted too early, when a rope had a minor slack, when a cannon fired a fraction of a second too late. Every detail mattered, for perfection was not merely desired—it was essential.

And yet, for all the precision, he could not ignore the boy. Luffy's aura shimmered faintly even through miles of distance, a flux of raw potential intertwined with instinctive genius. The orb had revealed patterns that even Shanks could not entirely predict: the child's thought processes were a lattice of contingencies, a dynamic web of adaptation. It was as though Luffy's mind had been coded with solutions before problems had even emerged. He could see hints of it in the orb's subtle shimmer, and it made Shanks' heart both proud and wary.

"They say you can predict some events," Shanks said to Beckman, voice low and thoughtful, "but you cannot predict him. Even his sleep is a calculation."

Ben exhaled, smoke drifting in spirals into the night. "That's exactly why the training must be selective. We cannot give him everything at once. Too much, too fast, and he could unravel our guidance—or worse, the guidance itself might corrupt him. We shape his perception before the world shapes him."

Shanks leaned back slightly, letting the waves carry the weight of thought, letting the currents translate intention into form. "Balance," he said finally. "That is what he must learn first. Balance in perception, balance in force, balance in restraint. Haki gives the body, Nen gives the mind, and instinct binds the two. If he can grasp that… if he can weave them as I can, then he will not merely survive—he will adapt, evolve, and command. And nothing in this world will be able to anticipate him fully."

His gaze softened briefly toward the horizon, toward the village sleeping quietly beneath the veil of night. A faint hum of life drifted from the shore: waves crashing against rock, an owl calling from the trees, distant footsteps of a watchful guardian. Even here, the air seemed thick with promise, a tension that made the hairs on his neck rise. The boy's potential was already echoing in the world around him, subtle yet undeniable.

"They say Haki and Nen are separate," Shanks murmured, almost to himself, "but I see them as two streams of the same river. One flows across the surface—force, awareness, reaction. The other dives beneath, subtle, unseen—pattern, intent, adaptation. They mingle where understanding exists. They separate where ignorance rules. And he… he will not ignore."

A faint pulse of light flickered across the orb, reflecting Shanks' thoughts. He had touched it once more before leaving the shore earlier that day, and it had responded almost audibly, shivering with recognition of the boy's presence. The orb's display of Enhancement shimmered like liquid mercury, but even within that simple label, Shanks could perceive layers of latent capabilities: instinctive adaptation, analytical improvisation, and a near-perfect survival algorithm woven into the essence of Luffy's being.

"Danger," Shanks whispered, his voice threading into the wind. Not a warning to his crew, but a recognition of reality. "And yet… opportunity. All at once."

Ben Beckman glanced at him sharply. "Danger and opportunity, Captain. The two sides of the same coin. And the boy… he is that coin in living form."

Shanks' eyes narrowed, absorbing the thought, letting it roll across him as if it were a wave striking the bow of the flagship. "Then we guide. Not impose. We train, not dictate. And we remain shadows in the wind—ghosts to the world, anchors to him. Only then will he awaken into a sea he is already meant to command."

The sea, ever responsive, pulsed faintly in resonance. Moonlight glinted across the water, reflecting off the polished surfaces of the shadow fleet. The rhythm of the ocean, the subtle vibration of the hulls, and the Nen-and-Haki threads flowing through the vessels all coalesced into a symphony of precision. Each note, each movement, each decision was part of a plan that spanned miles, days, and unseen contingencies.

Shanks' hand tightened on the Griffinite hilt, feeling it thrum in response. He allowed the threads of Haki and Nen to pulse outward subtly, a protective lattice over the fleet. Invisible, nearly imperceptible, yet as real as the tides themselves. And somewhere beyond the horizon, in the village that would soon cradle legends, Luffy slept, unknowingly at the epicenter of a force that even the world's most secretive organizations could not yet measure.

Back in Fusha Village, the night seemed alive with quiet energy, the kind of subtle pulse that could be felt only by those who had long attuned themselves to the rhythms of the world. Even the wind that sifted through the cracks in Makino's bar and the narrow alleyways carried a faint resonance, like a whisper of distant storms and unfolding destiny. Luffy lay asleep, cocooned in a blanket Dadan had tucked around him with practiced efficiency, the threads of warmth pressing lightly against his skin. He breathed evenly, chest rising and falling, yet beneath the still surface of slumber, his body and mind were anything but dormant.

The boy's fingers twitched almost imperceptibly, curling and uncurling as if grasping invisible objects. Tiny muscles along his forearms and shoulders flexed in small, almost mechanical movements, responding instinctively to energy currents he had never been taught to perceive. It was a nascent awareness, the kind that would have seemed uncanny to any ordinary observer: a subconscious alignment to forces he could not name, the faint stirrings of Nen threading through his instinctive cognition. Even without the formal awakening, Luffy's body remembered what it had experienced in countless lifetimes—training, adaptation, improvisation.

Around him, the room told the story of chaotic genius. Small gourds, hollowed and etched with crude levers and compartments, lay scattered across tables; tin capsules, sealed with resin and filled with pebbles and scraps of wire, rattled faintly with the motion of the wind. Tiny wooden levers stuck out of half-finished contraptions, and clay figures, cracked at the edges from repeated drops, bore faint markings of imagined mechanisms. Each object was a seed, a miniature puzzle, a conduit for training disguised as play.

Dadan had been meticulous in her care, arranging the boy's immediate environment to subtly guide his instincts. Her hands, roughened by years of both affection and discipline, traced invisible arcs as she tucked blankets and adjusted pillows. Her movements were quiet, deliberate, a rhythm of instruction so faint that no casual observer would suspect it. She had learned the language of hidden training—how to teach endurance, precision, and anticipation without ever saying a word. The boy's body, so adaptive, absorbed the lessons in ways even she could not fully perceive.

Donden, meanwhile, added his own subtle layer. Sitting at the edge of the room, he tapped a mechanical device in his pocket, the click soft yet consistent, a heartbeat of precision. The device was crude, a prototype of what would one day become intricate tools and control mechanisms, but the act of measuring pressure, timing, and response carried over into the atmosphere of training. Each tap, each subtle vibration transmitted through the floorboards, imparted a rhythm that Luffy unconsciously matched. Donden's eyes, sharp and calculating, traced the arc of each flick of a finger, each minute twitch of a muscle, noting the boy's reflexes even in sleep.

To the untrained eye, the scene was pure chaos: overturned chairs, scattered boots, half-finished gadgets strewn across the floor, and the faint odor of solder, resin, and spilled stew mingling in the air. But for those attuned to patterns, it was a carefully orchestrated environment. The arrangement of objects, the sequence of motions, the faint hums and clicks—all were designed to imprint lessons subliminally. It was subtle enough that Luffy perceived it as play, yet precise enough that the foundational principles of strategy, engineering, and adaptation were weaving themselves into the fabric of his subconscious.

Dadan's hands paused momentarily, hovering over a gourd tipped on its side, and traced a subtle figure-eight pattern in the air before pulling back. It was an instinctive demonstration, almost imperceptible, of spatial awareness and motion control. Luffy's fingers twitched again in response, following invisible arcs that his conscious mind could not explain. A minor shift of muscle, a slight repositioning of his wrist, and the gourd rattled softly as if responding to the subconscious energy he projected.

Donden clicked the small device again, and this time a faint light blinked on its surface. He muttered, half to himself, "Pressure's optimal. Timing's off by two ticks… but close enough for adaptation." He made a small adjustment in the mechanism, and the subtle pulse of rhythm transmitted through the floorboards once more, intertwining with the boy's unconscious motor patterns. Luffy's arm shifted slightly under the blanket, his fingers curling to mimic the rhythm, his mind absorbing without question, without comprehension—like a seed germinating beneath layers of soil.

Even in the quiet of the night, the faint hum of energy seemed to move across the room. Dadan and Donden had trained for years in techniques that required observation without interference, discipline without imposition. They were not aware that their subtle guidance intersected with currents of Nen, that Luffy's body and spirit were already responding to patterns far older and more profound than they could teach. Yet, their instinctual methods—silent tracing of air currents, rhythmic tapping of devices, spatial alignment, and micro-corrections—acted as conduits, allowing Luffy's latent potential to engage in self-directed training.

The boy's subconscious was already experimenting. Tiny flexes of his muscles anticipated movement before it was required. Imaginary forces, undetected by the room's inhabitants, were calculated and counterbalanced with minute adjustments. When he twitched his fingers or rolled over, it was not simple motion—it was micro-training in ergonomics, reflex, and adaptation. Objects shifted slightly under the blanket's weight, small obstacles were navigated, and even the sound of distant waves seemed to provoke minor mental simulations: calculating distance, timing responses, predicting patterns.

Somewhere deep within the boy, hints of evolution instincts flickered. A plastic gourd rattled under his twitching grip, and in that simple motion, Luffy unconsciously tested outcomes: weight distribution, leverage, balance. These instincts were primitive, embryonic, but they were unmistakable. Luffy's subconscious had begun to model adaptation, to calculate the potential for change, to assess objects as more than static—they were variables in a dynamic system. The mechanics were small, almost invisible, but they were training seeds for concepts he would later fully comprehend.

The night air carried a faint melody from Uta, still humming in the back room. The sound wove through the cluttered space, a soft, invisible thread of rhythm. Danden had noticed how the boy's breath seemed to match the cadence unconsciously; Luffy's pulse subtly mirrored the vibrations in the air. He shifted under the blanket, eyes closed, fingers twitching. Even sleep did not break the pattern. Music, motion, balance—each element of the environment coalesced into a tapestry of instinctual learning.

Donden's eyes flicked toward the moonlit window. The surface of the sea glimmered faintly, reflecting the same currents and pulses that the Red-Hair Pirates were navigating far beyond the harbor. "He feels it," Donden muttered softly, more to himself than anyone else. "Even now… he reaches out without knowing. The boy already understands something no one has shown him."

Dadan's hands rested on the blanket again, smoothing it over his chest. She did not fully understand what Donden meant, nor the true depth of Luffy's subconscious activity, but instinctively she recognized that every object, every rhythm, every adjustment mattered. The subtle choreography of training continued even in the absence of conscious teaching. She whispered a soft admonition, playful yet instructive: "Keep your fingers steady, kid… don't break it." Her voice was half-laughter, half-command—a tonal pattern that even in sleep embedded itself in his neural rhythm.

The moonlight pooled across the wooden floorboards, highlighting the edges of scattered toys and devices. Each piece seemed to hold a latent lesson, waiting for Luffy to discover it. A small gourd tipped slightly, rolling against a makeshift scale, and the tiny weight inside shifted, subtly demonstrating leverage. Luffy's fingers twitched again, gripping the blanket as if testing the shift. His eyes remained closed, yet the micro-adjustment was precise. Unseen, the interaction seeded principles of cause and effect, mechanics, and consequence—preludes to innovation he would later refine into actual tools, capsules, and even the first inklings of evolution experimentation.

Even the floorboards themselves became instruments in this unseen training. Danden and Donden had arranged the furniture just so, creating subtle obstacles that would force the boy's body to navigate balance and leverage unconsciously. Rolling slightly, Luffy's hand brushed a tin capsule, the movement precise enough to avoid toppling it entirely. The capsule rattled faintly, a soft affirmation of micro-coordination. He flexed, twisted, rolled, and adjusted—all in sleep, yet each motion left traces on his muscle memory, his subconscious learning.

Outside, the shadow fleet glided between waves, their sails a dark counterpoint to the moonlight. Shanks' orchestration of ships, routes, and decoys echoed. Though the Nen-orb rested in its leather sheath, the resonance of what it had revealed lingered. Shanks had seen the boy's potential—the dangerous, sleeping power that could awaken at any moment. The boy's subconscious was already a node in a network of latent abilities, preparing to respond, adapt, and create.

Luffy shifted beneath the blanket, a soft murmur escaping his lips in dreams, almost as if negotiating the dynamics of objects he could not consciously see. A tin lever clicked in response to his slight adjustment; the gourd tipped again, this time balancing perfectly as if obeying an unseen hand. Danden's eyes softened, recognizing the emergent patterns without fully understanding them. Donden continued his rhythmic tapping, each pulse reinforcing timing, anticipation, and precision. The room hummed with quiet learning.

It was subtle, invisible, yet profound. Each tiny motion, each micro-adjustment, each unconscious calculation laid a foundation for future feats: mastery of Haki, eventual awakening of Nen, early inventiveness, and instinctive understanding of evolution and adaptation. Even the moon seemed to pause, casting a faint silver glow over the tableau, as though acknowledging the quiet forging of a prodigy.

Far beyond, the shadow fleet maintained its vigil. Currents, wind, and unseen patterns of intent flowed together into an unseen choreography that mirrored, in essence, the micro-training happening miles away. The boy in the village and the men of the fleet were bound by rhythm and intent, separated by distance but linked by the unseen forces of Haki, Nen, and subtle influence. The night carried their presence and purpose, a silent promise that what was being sown in the room would one day grow into something the world would struggle to comprehend.

The future was already breathing. Luffy, asleep beneath blankets, surrounded by scattered toys and unseen lessons, was its quiet architect. And the seeds of training, subtle yet enduring, had already taken root.

movements of the fingers, subtle adjustments of posture, even the mental rehearsal of evasion and improvisation were already forming neural maps that would guide him through invention, combat, and survival. Haki and Nen, Enhancement and instinct, all intertwined invisibly in the boy, ready to awaken when the time came.

And Shanks, standing at the bow of the flagship, felt it all: the weaving of currents, the pulse of the ocean, the subtle alignment of chance and intent, and the prelude of a force that would, one day, reshape the seas themselves.

2 1/2 Months later

Location: New world

Time: 21:00(49:00) 10 hours till dawn

The plan was never to fight. That was the first maxim Ben said aloud and the last Shanks would ever let any of them forget. Fight meant noise, and noise meant witnesses — and witnesses meant questions that would reach ears nobody wanted listening. At the center of every careful word, every cut of rope, every whispered signal, there was one tiny, sleeping life: Luffy. The boy's future demanded perfection; the world's secrecy demanded absolute silence.

"Get everything," Ben repeated, sliding a leather-bound dossier across the chart. "No one wakes. No one knows. No evidence. Frame it. Make it a freak accident or a bureaucratic failure. That's our objective. Everything else is contingency."

Lucky Roo cracked one of his trademark grins and then went quiet, which, to anyone who knew him, was as serious as a vow. "All crates," he said. "No floating breadcrumbs, no sailors with stories. We take the lot." He looked at Shanks. "You sure you want the Fruit in your hands and not buried under five miles of ocean?"

Shanks' hand rested on the Griffinite hilt as though it were already a seal on a contract. "We cannot let the World Government control what it alone thinks should be buried. And for reasons beyond the obvious, this must be done without fanfare." His gaze fell across the dark line of the horizon toward Fusha Village and the small island hearth where the boy slept. "If word reaches ears that have no right to it, history twists. Luffy's life—his mind, his eventual awakening—cannot become the world's curiosity."

That phrase, the vulnerable center of the mission, made the whole doctrine change shape. This was now a silent heist with surgical objectives: extract, erase, misdirect, and—if necessary—eliminate.

PHASES OF THE OPERATION — A NAVAL BELLWETHER

Recon & Vectoring (Night window, tide + moon calculations)

II. Infiltration (Silent approach, micro-skiffs, sound-damping)

III. Secure & Extract (Containment, crate transfer, neutralization)

IV. Elimination & Erasure (Silent kills, evidence burning/dissolution)

V. Attribution & Misdirection (Frame as accident, publish false manifests)

VI. Aftercare (Village anchors, neural stability for Luffy, burn-slow rumours)

Every phase had teams, timing, failsafes, and a chain of Haki/Nen signaling that could cross miles in the dark without a single flare.

I — RECON & VECTORS

"Currents dictate everything," Yasopp said, the map spread like a tide. He had spent the last two weeks circling the suspected route—quietly, impersonally—and reading the sea the way a tailor reads cloth. "We don't fight them; we ride them. Ebb-tides, eddy pockets, kelp gardens—these are our doorways. Tide windows open for twenty-six minutes every hour across this strait. That's our rhythm."

Ben's fingers tapped where the route narrowed into a throat: a line of jagged rock and a deceptive swell where sound misdirected. "CP0 chose this narrow passage because it's easy to watch but hard to reach quickly. They think control. They miscalculate the trade-off between surveillance and mobility. We exploit that."

Vectoring is not just position; it is timing and geology. The Red Hair plan used:

Tide windows and thermal currents to hide acoustic signatures.• Moonlight phases to force CP0 reduced-light protocol (they mask lanterns on half-moon nights; that creates dark spots in their watch patterns).• Local shipping lanes to provide believable noise—merchant traffic acts as auditory camouflage.• Biological cover—schooling fish, migrating pods—that confuses sonar-like Nen sensing if timed correctly.

Recon teams used silent crawlers—dories hung with sound-dampening resin and old sea-leather—and small observation kites that trailed micro-flares mimicking fisherman's lights. Yasopp's scouts moved in three-hour rotation, each platoon overlapping by seven minutes; that overlapping margin is where errors live. Ben called that the "seven-minute seam." Exploit the seam, and a ship's sentinel is always one step behind perception.

II — INFILTRATION: "GHOSTS," NOT PIRATES

Approach was everything. No heavy sails. No thunderous rowers. No announcing horn. The infiltration fleet divided into cells:

Cell One — The Ghosts (silent approach + boarding)• Cell Two — The Crackers (lock systems, crate seals, neutralization tech)• Cell Three — The Hands (crate transference & micro-submersible specialists)• Cell Four — The Whiteout (misdirection & manifest authors)• Cell Five — The Sweepers (evidence removal and corpse handling)

Ghosts sailed in micro-skiffs built low to the water, hulls rubbed with pitch and coated in old kelp to break light reflection. The skiffs were oiled, with resin patches over any protruding metal. Men wore water-leather boots cut silent and cloaks sewn from sound-deadening weaving. Approach relied on Haki and Nen in concert: Shanks' crew used low-level Observation Haki waves to sense the breath of the ship well before any surface watch would; those with Nen threaded small, invisible lines into the water (subtle—just enough to read the ship's wake signature, not to trip any internal alarm) and feed info back into the orb-linked net.

"Don't touch the hull," Ben instructed. "Board at the aft where maintenance ladders drop. They keep those unlit for night checks; we climb only if the tide gives us the cushion. If the ladder's chained, consider the over-hook. No metal-on-metal sound. Rope grippers only."

Boarding teams resembled phantoms. Small teams of three—two boarders, one anchor—climbed the after rigging with grapnels wrapped in cloth. The moment the boarders' boots hit wood, their Haki threaded outward in a thin veil, dampening their presence like a hand over a candle. The veil was not absolute; it was enough to blur intent, to make first glances miss small irregularities in gait and breath. Shanks' Haki, nurtured into an almost Nen-like perception, could align multiple veils, synchronizing teams over distances by subvocal Nen pulses—these were short, coded impulses that only those attuned could parse.

When the ghost-team landed on deck, they were silent as shadows. They moved with practiced choreography: three steps, pause, two steps, search. Their knives were curved silent blades—steel anchored in Griffinite tempering for edge retention without clang. If they needed to cut, they took cloth and burlap with them: a simple strip pressed over a snapped line muffled sound far more than any metal device.

III — SECURE & EXTRACT — THE CRATE DANCE

CP0's crates were layered like vaults. Inner seals, redundant sealing chalk, and energy dampeners. Ben's Crackers were craftsmen and chemists, trained to treat each crate like a living organism rather than a box of goods. Their toolkit was surgical—micro-saws that left ragged wood designed to simulate rot, solvent applicators that ate glue but left cellulose intact, Nen-fused disruptors that allowed temporary suspension of alarm glyphs without burning them (Nen manipulation of sealing glyphs is delicate; it required Ben's touch, and the orb's calibrated backing).

"Open on the seam," Ben murmured into his woven comm-line. "Track the dampener's rhythm. Once you find the phasic lock, run a micro-shadow thread and phase it for two minutes. Cut, don't rip. Make it look like weather."

Crate extraction was choreography:

Crack the outer seals with solvent—leaves residue identical to salt corrosion if done precisely.

Use Nen-threaded clamps to lift crates without the jack-squeal metal makes. The clamps disperse micro-pressure across the wood grain to avoid splinters and audible snaps.

Transfer contents into ghost Harries—empty crates with identical paint and manifest markings—or into micro-submersible pods that sink themselves to the seabed on command. The pods were weighted and ballasted with quick-release anchors triggered by Haki-coded signals.

Re-seal the exterior to match typical storm-damage patterns: scorched wax, saltwater streaks, patches of fake rope wear and tear.

The transfer teams worked on a ninety-second cycle: open, scan, move, re-seal. Ninety seconds to ensure the tide and watch rotations were out of phase, ninety seconds to make the ship's log show a harmless anomaly. Ninety seconds to keep the CP0 watch thinking storm-stress, not theft.

For the Devil Fruit crate—handled as a priority—the protocol changed. Fruits are dangerous objects that hum with resonance; the team used Seastone-lined transfer vaults and Nen-dampening pouches to prevent resonance spikes. The moment a Fruit leaves recognizable containment, it can emit a low-frequency pattern that attracts Nen attunement. To prevent that, the Red Hair team wrapped the crate in Seastone netting and submerged it to a micro-depth in a ballast pod—effectively placing it in a moving, sealed pool away from immediate sensors until the orbit of the fleet allowed safe transfer.

IV — SILENT KILL & CLEAN EXTRACTION TACTICS

If CP0 forces confronted them, the rule was simple and immutable: quiet elimination, no survivors, zero evidence. But this was not slaughter. It was surgical. The Red Hair's Sweepers trained to remove threat without spectacle.

Techniques included:

Haki-Choke: not a theatrical audible snap but a closing pressure of Armament Haki delivered with precise force to render a sentry unconscious by suffocating muscle control—no external wounds, no blood trails. (Used only on single sentries where no medics are waiting.)• Nen-Freeze: temporary neural stasis via focused Nen pulses; it induced a catatonic state for minutes, enough to move a subject. Dangerous in the hands of the inexperienced; used only by Crackers.• Garrote & Whisper-Knife: classic methods coated in acid-absorbing resin. Cuts were clean, and the edges were quickly micro-burned to remove forensic indicators.• Subliminal Haki Pain: for group suppression—small Haki pressure to induce disorientation and nausea, not death, allowing teams to move through corridors with minimal disturbance.

Bodies were handled on the spot. Each Sweepline carried pouches of dissolution compound: a blend culled from years of smuggling chemistry—enzymatic flakes that ate through organic tissue in hours and a mineral slurry that hastened decomposition. Where discard was risky, bodies were zipped into weighted Seastone pouches and sunk in deep gullies far beneath shipping lanes. No one followed there, and currents buried weight quickly. For higher-risk targets (commanders, eidetic recorders), the Sweepers left no trace—removal, memory wipes (if possible), and submergence.

Ben's warning was always gruff and curt: "No heroics. No trophies. You leave nothing worth telling."

V — OCEAN-BASED Misdirection & Psychological Warfare

The heist was as much theater as it was theft. The Red Hair pirates used psychological warfare to channel CP0's assumptions into predictable pathways.

Tactics:

Staged Sightings: Plant a Red Hair ship off an old tavern three nights before the operation. Let rumors flow. Let the world think they'd returned to the New World. When the CP0 intercepts show up to confirm, they find only a ghost—an abandoned skiff and a forged manifesto. Their attention is pulled to the wrong quarter.• False Defectors: Send a "converted" ex-sailor to a known informant, whispering that the Red Hair are gathering a small private armada to stage raids. CP0 reallocates resources to anti-raid posture.• Echo Logs: Introduce falsified logs into the market—penned sailors' diaries, drunken confessions, single-scene witnesses—enough to create cognitive overload. CP0 agents spend hours chasing human noise.• Signal Overload: Torch a non-lethal but alarming sequence of flares and fire-stacks in distant cove; response teams dispatch, leaving the real transit corridor lighter.

These forms of misdirection forced CP0's intelligence to fracture; their time and resources had natural psychological thresholds. Ben exploited those thresholds: if an intelligence network is fed three plausible stories, it will spend seventy-two hours testing them. That's seventy-two hours of "where not to look." The Red Hair only needed carved pockets of time—thirty to ninety minutes—to act.

VI — HAKI + NEN INTEGRATION (TACTICAL)

Haki and Nen were not just metaphors; they were tactical instruments.

Observation Haki: scouts used it to perceive micro-movements across the deck, to differentiate truth from fake watches (a false watchman who "tensed" differently betrays training). They could sense if a crate's weight signature matched manifest claims and detect if a crewmember's breath patterns matched stress markers.

Armament Haki: used as a silent tool—pressures applied to lock pins that jam or compress to allow silent breaks. Armament pulses could also obscure fingerprints and micro-impact marks when used in short bursts to "harden" a hand and form a seal, then released.

Nen Threads: the Crackers engineered Nen-thread clamps that interfaced with crate locks—short-lived, non-binding threads that temporarily desensitized alarms. Nen could also create a faint field that threw off CP0's "silent type" detection by mimicking their own signature, tricking their sensors into discounting anomalous readings.

Shanks himself threaded the most dangerous net: he used the Nen-orb to feed coordinated pulses to teams as a timing lock. These pulses were not detectable as sound—or even as thought—by normal men; they were a surgeon's metronome guiding extraction phases. The orb's light allowed him to see not just Luffy's potential but the energetic cloud in which the whole operation existed—an overlay he used as a live map.

VII — EVIDENCE ERASURE PROTOCOLS

An operation's success is measured not by how many crates you take, but by how many stories remain identical afterward. Ben's erasure playbook was surgical and exhaustive:

Burn Patterns: Use slow, corrosive acid smoke into the hold to leave marks consistent with engine overheating. Corrosion applied within the seams to mimic long-term salt damage.

Paper Trails: Replace manifests with aged forgeries. Plant legitimate-looking logs in known courier routes. Send a fake "inventory-reconcile" message from a minor clerk to explain missing items as administrative error.

Physical Marking: Re-seal crates with rope that was pre-soaked in oily residue and rubbed against existing dock beams to match wear. Use the same paint flakes as the ship's hold to mask new scratches.

Forensics: Introduce marine microbes culled from local waters into the hold—when investigators take swabs, they find typical marine flora and assume normal water ingress.

Witness Memory Management: If survivors exist, a small stipend and stories planted by Lucky Roo over food and drink make recollection unreliable. Roh-American technique: give them a single compelling narrative and a night of sleep; human memories compress to fit coherent tales.

Legal Cover: Ben's forgeries attach a short log of "known engine soot" and "damaged seals." An audited report by a "third party" (a planted forger's report to be discovered and forwarded to the government) frames the losses as internal negligence, not theft.

Seastone pouches, weighted and sealed, served as final burial coffins for the most dangerous items. Where burning could be traced, slow dissolution and submergence into deep canyons with local marine scavenger blooms sped decomposition. The sea did the rest.

VIII — NAVAL INFILTRATION – FORMATIONS, ROLES, TIMINGS

Ships formed an inward spiral to avoid leaving predictable transits. The outer ring—"the noise"—contained decoy traffic that flagged to CP0 as the crew's likely vector. The inner ring—the "needle"—was three small cutters carrying extraction teams. At precisely T-00:13 minutes the cutters slipped lines and ghosted to the target; at T-00:07 the Crackers sent their Nen-threads to freeze alarm glyphs for two minutes; at T-00:02 the Ghosts boarded.

Each cutter carried a single priority: crate count not exceeding four. The submersible pods were launched simultaneous with transfer; they sank, weighted by quick-release anchors that would detach on a Haki-signal when the pod reached a pre-determined depth. Ben insisted on redundancy: two pods per crate. If a pod failed to detach, the second had an acoustic timing detonator that would create a plausible hull-breach, explaining loss via a mechanical accident.

IX — PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE (THE LONG GAME)

Psychological operations stretched far beyond the night. The Red Hair wanted to make CP0 believe the world was sloppy at the seams:

Introduce a rumor that the World Government's chain of custody misfiled the manifest.• Plant a mid-level clerk who "professed remorse" and offered a note implying internal mishandling.• Seed a story in three taverns about a suspicious lantern sequence near the strait on a foggy night—enough to make the government launch an internal audit rather than a black ops chase.

Why? Because bureaucracy eats up time and focus. The more time CP0 spent staring inward, the less likely they were to hunt outward; the less they hunted outward, the more time Shanks had to move Luffy's future into safety.

X — TIES TO LUFFY — WHY SILENCE IS SACRED

This section was never an afterthought. It was the mission's core.

Luffy was a sleeping storm. Shanks' orb had shown Enhancement and instinct beyond years. The Devil Fruit in CP0 custody was not a simple prize; it was both a threat and a catalyst. If CP0 performed protocol—if they studied or ritualized the Fruit in place—it could create energetic noise that unfolded across the Nen spectrum. That noise would be a beacon to any Nen-sensitive observer: ancients, hunters, or other governments who might sniff out a child with a latent, resonant aura. The last thing Shanks wanted was for the World Government to associate a missing or stirred Devil Fruit with the village where a child named Luffy lived.

Moreover, Luffy's eventual eating of the Fruit would, by design of fate, reactivate an old memory stream in him. That stream had to be allowed to bloom privately, not under the microscope of the World Government or the forensic greed of CP0. If CP0 learned that the fruit had been intercepted by a crew that touched Fusha Village, they would immediately draw lines, ask questions, and threaten the anchors—Uta, Dadan, Makino—who kept the boy tethered to the present.

So silence was not merely tactical; it was paternal. The heist wasn't for wealth or leverage. It was to keep a boy's life from becoming a laboratory sample.

Shanks leaned forward, voice low, the Griffinite's faint pulse under his palm. "If we succeed quietly, Luffy will wake into a life we prepare—rooted, steady, taught. If we fail, we hand the world a story about the child who ate a government fruit. They will dissect him. We cannot allow that."

Ben's reply was cold and precise. "We do this because he cannot be known. Because the moment he becomes known, he will be weaponized, studied, and either erased or enslaved. The world will not see a boy. They will see a property to be cataloged."

Lucky Roo spat into the sea in a slow arc. "Then we steal like thieves in the night and erase like the tide." He winked toward the chart. "And we make it look like a storm ate the lot."

CONTINGENCIES — WHAT IF CP0 ANTICIPATES?

Shanks was not a gambler. He planned contingencies:

If alarms trip, immediate switch to Classic Displacement: small controlled explosions in non-critical hull sections to force an evacuation. Sweepers then collect the crates in the chaos.• If a Silent Type is present (the entity Yasopp could not feel), Crackers deploy Nen-lures that mimic that silent signature but in a different frequency, drawing the agent to a location where Sweepers could neutralize without trace.• If direct engagement becomes unavoidable, the plan invoked a surgical extraction: kill, remove, dissolve. No prisoners. No records. No survivors to speak.• If the village is compromised, immediate burn of ties: false letters, staged desertions, and the disappearance of obvious anchors. The crew would provide area economic disruption that kept CP0 busy with damage control rather than hunting a child.

But the real contingency was always silent: if any variable suggested the mission would become noisy, abort, retreat, and wait another tide. The pirates had time. The world had deadlines. They preferred time.

AFTERCARE — SEALING Luffy's PRESENT

Aftercare protocols extended beyond the ship. Once crates were moved and the sea swallowed ballast pods, Ben prepared the legal sleight-of-hand: intercepted inspection logs, a forged accounting note claiming partial loss to corrosion, and an anonymous audit report that would attribute the incident to "procedural oversight." Lucky Roo fed a dozen taverns and two port clerks a story of a Red Hair sighting that never was. Yasopp and the scouts planted micro-evidence—cigarette butts, rope fibers—that suggested an accidental collision.

And perhaps most importantly: Uta's humming and Dadan's hands remained sacred. A dedicated liaison crew kept Fusha Village untouched, bringing supplies under plausible circumstances and ensuring that the boy's anchors remained steady. Shanks insisted on the ritual: Three months—visibility without exposure—less than rumor, more than neglect.

THE MORAL CUT — WHY CLEAN DOESN'T MEAN KIND

There was no romanticizing silence. The Sweepers' work was death-scented and exacting. There were bodies that would not be mourned, images that would never surface. But Shanks and his crew had measured the cost and chosen. The alternative—exposure, study, brutalization of the child—was worse.

"We are not saints," Ben said once, cold and honest. "We are guardians who must answer with actions reality understands. If that means blood in a cove so that a boy can breathe in a kitchen, then we carry that weight."

Shanks' hand rested over Luffy's name on the map for a long moment. Then he rose. "Then we move."

THE NIGHT MOVED WITH THEM

Wind shifted. Tide turned. Lanterns hummed their slow little lights. Teams ghosted to their positions. Nen-threads hummed invisible signals; Haki veils tucked shadows into themselves. The fleet's spiral closed like a fist—but a careful fist, not to crush, but to snatch with minimal noise.

For the boy sleeping in Fusha Village, the night would register as nothing more than a dream and the soft chorus of the sea. For the Red Hair Pirates, it would be another wound in a life of a hundred silent operations. For the World Government and for CP0, it would be, if all went well, only a whispered anomaly later blamed on bad paperwork, bad luck, and a gale that came out of nowhere.

And for Shanks, Ben, Yasopp, and Lucky Roo, it would be the moment they chose discretion over spectacle so that Luffy might one day wake, whole, and unobserved—ready to write his own storm across the world.

The world was not quiet, even when the night pretended it was.Far across the sea—ten thousand miles from the East Blue village where a six-year-old boy slept without a single burden—another ocean churned with a hidden war no one would ever read about in the newspapers. The New World sky was a vault of black sapphire, its constellations rippling with the giant planet's slow atmospheric oscillations. On the Red Force, Shanks stood near the prow as if listening to a whisper no one else could hear.

But he wasn't listening.

He was feeling.

The Nen Orb in his hand pulsed with a sensation older than the world, a deep, cosmic thrum that resonated with the shape of human potential. Its surface was a sphere of transparent crystal-glass, yet inside it a nebula of tiny motes swirled like the memory of a collapsed star. Ancient techniques—now lost—had forged it from condensed aura, fossilized spiritual essence, and a mineral no modern blacksmith had ever smelted: Astryxite, a crystal mined only from fallen meteor husks at the bottom of the All Blue Rift.

Inside the orb, tiny gravitational flares drifted like solar fireflies, their positions shifting depending on the aura of the one holding it. Normal Nen Orbs read potential. They aligned with one of the six Nen types, lighting in a pattern that matched the user's latent aura configuration.

But this orb was more than a reader.

It was a judge.

It was a witness.

It did not awaken users; it revealed truths. In ancient texts, it was called a Fate-Glass, a relic from an era long before humans separated Nen from life itself. It mapped futures, potential evolutions, and sometimes things too dangerous for the world to understand.

And 2 months, 3 weaks, and 4days ago—only 2 months, 3 weaks, and 4days, though it felt like an era—the orb had reacted to a child.

Shanks remembered the moment vividly. The orb slipped from passive starlight to a fierce golden-white sunburst the moment Luffy touched it. The light did not choose a Nen category at all. It refused. The surface vibrated like a drum struck by a god's fingertip. Lines of aura flared in an impossible pattern—something beyond Enhancer, or Conjurer, or Transmuter, or the Specialist box that didn't even correctly describe him.

It read something else entirely.

Luffy's path wasn't branched, nor linear, nor limited by skill trees. His aura formed spirals—fractal, infinite-adaptive spirals that only three historical figures had ever shown in recorded Nen history. Not merely Specialists. Something deeper.

Something meant to grow without ceiling.Something meant to embody freedom as a metaphysical force.

Shanks had watched the orbiting lights form a circular pattern like a halo, then rearrange themselves into a heartbeat shape. Nen Orbs never revealed entire destinies… unless the future burned so brightly it scarred the present.

The orb refused to awaken the boy. It refused to interfere.

That alone terrified Shanks more than any Dragon Night, any Celestial Dragon, any CP0 ambush. A path chosen by fate cannot be touched. It can only be protected.

The orb dimmed in his hand now, but only barely. In the reflection of its surface, Shanks saw faint glimpses of Luffy in years he had not lived yet. A silhouette laughing. A silhouette fighting. A silhouette burning brighter than the sun.

He exhaled.

"Still glowing," Beckman said quietly as he approached. His voice held the dull rasp of a man who'd already calculated tomorrow's thousand possibilities.

"It hasn't stopped since the moment it touched him," Shanks murmured.

He returned the orb to its casing—another marvel of ancient craftwork built from Etherglass, Starbone, and Nen-saturated Leviacrete that could suppress the orb's light. Even then, faint speckles leaked out.

Behind him, the Red Hair crew moved with purpose. Everyone had a place. Everyone had a job.

Tonight, they weren't pirates.

They were ghosts preparing for war.

Because ten thousand miles from the boy's dreams—far across a world twenty times larger than the maps pretended—two Devil Fruits pulsed inside a ship disguised as a Celestial Dragon Villa. One fruit pulsated with a desperate yearning, calling across creation for the soul born to wield it. The other pulsed with the opposite: hunger, silent and bottomless.

Both must be taken.

Both must be redirected.

Both must be stolen without the world ever knowing.

Shanks lifted his gaze toward the horizon where black waves rose like sleeping giants. The disguised villa-ship loomed ahead: a palace of white-and-gold marble, its hull painted to resemble a floating estate. Towers rose like ivory pillars. Underneath the ornate façade hid the steel and seastone skeleton of a World Government fortress-shipping unit, built for transport of classified artifacts, forbidden materials, and dangerous myth-grade Devil Fruits.

"Hour Zero," Shanks said.

The infiltration began.

Ben Beckman stood below deck, surrounded by maps, data-slate tablets crafted from Sky Moonstone, and an Auralink Den Den Mushi feeding into miniature illusion projections. The projected model of the villa-ship had three layers: superficial décor; false floor plans; and the true internal structure DMCP (Dragon-Marked Cipher Patterns) encoded. His cigarette glowed faintly in between calculations.

"It's a heavy transport," Beckman muttered. "Sixty meters deep hull, reinforced with triple plating: Seadrinker Iron, Mage-Forged Coralsteel, and that new polymer mixture… Morphic Resin from the Material List. Expensive stuff."

Rockstar leaned in. "Think we can cut through it?"

"Not without waking every Mushi alarm on board," Beckman replied. "That hull wasn't built to be breached. It was built to survive divine-scale assaults."

Bonk Punch scoffed. "Then how the hell are we getting in?"

Beckman inhaled, letting smoke curl in spirals. "We aren't breaching the hull. We're using its weaknesses. Every defense has one."

"How do you know?" Monster asked.

"Because humans built it," Ben said simply. "And humans always leave blind spots."

He tapped the shimmering tactical overlay. "Two escort frigates. A stealth surveillance barge tethered by frequency-link. Three rotating patrol ships disguised as trade caravans. Sniper towers. Internal Cipher monitors. And inside the villa-ship?"

The illusion shimmered, revealing internal cargo vaults carved from Cosmic Alloy Titanbone, crates of refined Starsteel, Elemental Material list cargos—Iceheart Ingots, Pyroclast Iron, Aether Gem dust, Voidglass plates, Electrum Seastone hybrid bars, Celestial Prism crystals—and five additional Devil Fruits in stasis jars like biological warheads.

Plus something more dangerous than any fruit:

Records.Blueprints.Cosmic coins minted from Mythic-grade stardust, used only by the Geoise.

If the crew grabbed half of it, they'd double their naval arsenal for the next ten years.

But beneath all of that lay the prize that had changed Shanks' expression:

Two fruits, pulsing even through projection:

A swirling red-purple fruit shaped like a curling wave of rubber flesh—Gomu Gomu no Mi.

And beside it, the obsidian-black fruit veined with iridescent shifting lines—Blava-Blava no Mi.A fruit of infinite evolution.A fruit whispered in secret myths.A fruit that could rewrite any power it consumed.

Beckman frowned deeply as the black fruit's projection pulsed on its own, almost as if aware they were discussing it.

"It's reacting," Hongo noted.

"It does that," Beckman said. "It pulses irregularly. Hungry. That fruit doesn't wait for a destined user… it searches for one."

"And the Gomu Gomu?" Lucky Roo asked, chewing a meat bone.

Beckman pointed at the frequency readings. "That one is screaming. Across continents. Across oceans. It's calling to a soul thousands of miles away."

Shanks approached from above deck. His tone was serene. "The world thinks Devil Fruits are random. They aren't. Not all. Some fruits resonate the moment their destined bearer is born."

Yasopp nodded. "So even this far out—ten thousand miles—the fruit still reacts?"

"Yes," Shanks said quietly. "It senses its future. And that future is a little boy sleeping in a small bar back in East Blue."

Beckman returned to the maps. "If both fruits pulse too heavily on the villa-ship, it'll alert the Cipher Overseers. So we take them before the pulses spike during the next proximity sweep."

"How long?" Yasopp asked.

"Thirty-seven minutes."

"And we need?" Limejuice asked.

"Complete infiltration, acquisition, and extraction before the next sweep," Beckman replied.

Limejuice whistled. "So basically steal two myth-tier fruits, twenty crates of forbidden materials, four cosmic coin vaults, five additional Devil Fruits, one classified archive, and get out before the Cipher sees anything?"

"Yes."

"Easy," Roo said.

Shanks smirked. "Prepare for silent approach."

The crew moved.

Yasopp took point on long-range overwatch. Haki sharpened every sound in the wind. He didn't look through a scope—he didn't need one. Through Nen and Haki resonance, the world expanded like a three-dimensional map in his mind.

"North lookout tower… Marine with a torch. His heartbeat's too calm—he's bored. Perfect."

He lifted his rifle, fired a single bullet made from Whispersteel—a metal that erased ballistic sound by absorbing kinetic ripples. The shot passed through the air without a whisper.

The flame in the lookout's torch flickered, sputtered, then went out.

The Marine panicked quietly.

Darkness spread.

Yasopp smiled.

Next, he targeted the surveillance barge tethered to the villa-ship. Rather than firing at the barge, he shot the Zaiphon Crystal powering the tether frequency.

The shot hit.

The crystal cracked like a spiderweb.

The frequency collapsed.

To CP0, it appeared as a normal distortion.

To the Red Hair Pirates?

It was their entry window.

"Frequency down," Yasopp whispered into the link.

Lucky Roo floated on a disguised driftwood raft reinforced with Seastone-threaded planks. He wasn't armed with guns tonight. He had chains, hooks, and drift anchors forged from Beast-Fang Iron and Coralbone—a combination light enough to throw but strong enough to jam a ship's steering rudder.

The closest escort frigate glided by.

Roo swung the chain.

It hooked onto their rudder assembly underwater.

The ship lurched.

Marines stumbled. Equipment fell. Lookouts shouted.

The escort changed course—unintentionally moving into the exact shadow Yassop needed.

"Escort off-pattern," Roo whispered.

"Good," Beckman answered.

Roo ate another piece of meat. "Nice."

Inside the Red Force lower deck, Hongo's infiltration team checked their gear: grapples forged from Cloudsteel, boots lined with Sky Serpent Hide for silent steps, daggers of Blackmist Iron to cut without leaving residue, and vapor capsules filled with Nen-infused mist to mask heat signatures.

Building Snake flipped open a case of Shado-Oil, smearing the substance across his blade. It turned the metal transparent.

"Howling Gab tested the breaching sabers made from Obsidian Fangsteel. "Cuts seastone?" he asked.

"Against thin sections," Hongo replied.

"And thick?"

"Pray."

Gab nodded. "Noted."

Rockstar adjusted his coat lined with Electrum Seastone threads. "What about sensors?"

"Ben is looping them," Hongo said.

At the same time, deep inside the villa-ship, the cargo hold guards felt uneasy.Marine Sergeant Alden glanced at the pulsing fruits.

"The hell is wrong with them?"

Cipher Overseer Varrel, masked, calm, unblinking, replied, "The pulse is an aura anomaly. Ignore it."

"But sir," Alden said, sweating. "I've guarded fruits before. They don't beat like that."

Varrel leaned toward the Gomu Gomu no Mi. "This one calls. It always has. Across the seas."

He moved toward the black fruit, the Blava-Blava no Mi.

"And this one… does not call. It watches."

Alden swallowed.

Varrel touched its container. His Nen shimmered faintly. "It is older than its myths. Dangerous. It adapts. The only reason it hasn't consumed itself into paradox is because this casing restrains its aura."

"What if someone ate it?" Alden whispered.

Varrel turned slowly. "Pray they never do."

Back outside, Shanks walked across the surface of the water. Not running. Walking. Nen hardened the liquid beneath each step. Aura shaped into a transmuted property: liquid turned firm, but only for his feet. No one else. No splash. No sound.

He reached the underside of the villa-ship.The hull was made of multiple layers of metals—Seadrinker Iron, Coralsteel, Morphic Resin—all thick.

But Shanks didn't break through them.

He reached into his Nen core, transmuted his aura into vibration-canceling resonance, and laid one hand on the hull. Soft pulses traveled through it, mapping interior spaces. Every breath, every step, every heartbeat of a Marine inside.

He found a space with no footsteps.

Perfect.

He unsheathed Griffinite.

The sword gleamed like black feathers dipped in lightning. Each stroke was soundless due to Nen-damping, cutting a perfect oval door.

Shanks stepped into darkness.

Inside the villa-ship, he ghosted through corridors filled with marble pillars shaped like Celestial Dragon statues. The falseness disgusted him. Behind the decor, seastone barriers hid Den Den Mushi surveillance nodes.

Shanks dissolved their signals by altering the Nen around them—changing how aura interacted with soundwaves. They fizzled silently.

He encountered two guards.

One reached for a whistle.

Shanks tapped him lightly with Haki-infused Nen. The man froze mid-motion, eyes wide, spirit overwhelmed.

The second guard blinked—

—and Shanks was already behind him.

They both collapsed without harm.

He advanced.

Beckman simultaneously instructed the Red Hair crew.

"Hongo, take the east corridor. Bonk Punch, Monster—sabotage the boiler systems. Limejuice, Gab, Snake—disable internal weapons. Roo, Yasopp—maintain outer-grid disruption."

Beckman himself boarded from the opposite side, using a grappling hook forged from Dragon-Bone Steel that clung silently to the hull. He pulled himself in with minimal motion and entered a sensor blind spot he had calculated twenty minutes earlier.

His presence suppressed, his Nen disguised, his footsteps nearly weightless, Beckman navigated the command halls toward the upper decks.

He would handle the officers.

Inside the cargo hold, Cipher Overseer Varrel straightened suddenly.Something shifted in the air.

A Nen signature that should not exist inside the ship.

"Seal the vault," he hissed.

Marines scrambled.

Alarms began to rise—

—but cut out instantly.

Varrel blinked. "What—"

Hongo's infiltrators detonated their Nen mist capsules. The room filled with silent haze that nullified sound and blurred light. Marines stumbled, coughing, confused. Weapons dropped.

Shanks stepped through the mist like a specter.

Varrel's eyes widened behind the mask. "Red Hair—!"

Shanks didn't answer. His movement was so silent it felt like watching wind cut a shadow apart.

One moment the iridescent black fruit container stood on a pedestal. The next, Shanks held it in his hand. The casing pulsed wildly.

The Gomu Gomu no Mi leapt from its cradle, pulsing so violently it nearly cracked its container.

Shanks caught it with his other hand.

Two fruits.Two destinies.

He turned.

Varrel lunged.

Shanks didn't even draw his sword.

A single pulse of Conqueror's Haki—focused, needle-tight—hit Varrel directly in the spirit. The Cipher Overseer collapsed into unconsciousness, mask cracking.

Shanks exhaled.

"Extraction," he whispered.

Outside, the villa-ship escorts panicked.

"Steering malfunction—again?!""We're losing altitude on the left float!""Barge disconnected! Reconnect the link!""Sir, we're reading internal power spikes—""Where are our communications?!"

Yasopp shot down their flares before they launched.

Roo used a drift-ram to shove the escort into its sibling ship.

The two frigates collided.

Fire erupted.

Marines shouted.

The entire escort formation fell into chaos.

Inside the villa-ship, Beckman reached the command deck. The officer in charge, Commander Fray, spun toward him.

"Who—"

Ben shot his pistol.

Aetherglass bullet.

Nonlethal.

The man collapsed.

Ben disabled the helm.Overrode the Cipher navigation.Set the ship to drift toward an uninhabited sea trench.

Then he whispered: "Ship destabilizing. Five minutes until they abandon."

In the cargo hold, Shanks and the infiltrators pulled out with crates of Elemental Materials—Pyroclast Iron bars, Seastone Electrum hybrids, Voidglass planks, Thunderheart Shards, Molten Core Steel, Eternal Ice Crystals, Lunar-Opal shards, Leviathan Bone Plates, Monster Metal ingots, Cosmic Coins, and more.

Rockstar grinned as he shoved a crate of Aetheric Gems into his pack. "We are SO rich."

"Focus," Hongo said.

Outside, the escorts abandoned ship protocol as fires spread.

The villa-ship sounded distress.

The Red Force moved in quietly.

Shanks regrouped with the crew on a stealth skiff.

Beckman arrived last. "And that's our exit."

The villa-ship exploded behind them as boilers ruptured.

To the world, it was an accident.

To the Celestial Dragons?

It was a disaster.

Three days later, at Mary Geoise, the surviving CP0 agents kneeled before the Geoise tribunal. White marble halls stretched like cathedral crypts. Dragon Nights lined the sides, silent and armored in Seastone Lamellar and Starlight Plate.

The Geoise elder at the center leaned forward.

"You lost BOTH fruits."

The CP0 leader trembled. "Y-yes."

The elder's voice was cold. "You lost the CALLING FRUIT… and the EVOLUTION FRUIT."

A Dragon Night stepped forward. "Summon the Drake Nights. This cannot stand."

The elder added, "The Red-Hair Emperor has stolen what should have never existed."

"And now," another elder murmured, "destiny accelerates."

On the Red Force, Shanks stared at the two fruits.

Beckman exhaled. "What will you do with the black one?"

"Keep it safe," Shanks said. "Until the world forces its bearer to appear."

"And the rubber fruit?"

Shanks smiled. "That one already knows who it belongs to."

He gazed across the massive sea.

"Soon."

The waves shimmered.

The night breathed.

A child slept thousands of miles away, unknowingly drawing fate toward him like a star.

And the Red Hair Pirates sailed on—carrying secrets that would one day shake gods.