Chapter 492: The Meeting
Gion was sitting on the sand of Mermaid Bay with her knees drawn up.
In front of her, across the surface of the water, beautiful mermaids were playing and laughing in the shallows.
She had known this place existed. She had even been here before, under very different circumstances. But coming here now, with no objective and no agenda, the beauty of it landed on her differently.
What an extraordinary place. What an extraordinary gathering of people.
This far down in the deep ocean, and there was sunlight, and white sand, and clouds reflected in calm water. There was something almost dreamlike about it.
She had arrived on Fish-Man Island with the logistics convoy several days ago. By then, her worst injuries had stabilized enough to move on her own, and she had gently declined the Fish-Men's company. She was genuinely grateful to them, and the hostility she'd once carried toward them had dissolved somewhere in the dark ocean. But she had come to terms with the fact that her aesthetic sensibilities had not shifted in quite the same direction as their eyes when they looked at her, and after several days of those looks, she was grateful for some quiet.
She had spent the time like an ordinary traveler.
Moving through Fish-Man Island, taking in whatever was in front of her. When she ran out of money, she found short-term work, which wasn't difficult. The island's economic growth had produced enough casual employment for someone willing to work without paperwork. No identification? No problem. An outside Fish-Man was a plausible enough story.
She visited the famous landmarks. The commercial districts, busy and loud and full of life. The residential areas, quiet and ordinary.
She walked the island on her own feet and let it show her what it was.
Without the filter of hostility, without the distortions of what she'd been told, the island looked different. The prosperity was real. The safety was real. The community was real. If this were a human-led nation, if its founder weren't the World Government's most wanted enemy, every Marine would have called it a model worth aspiring to.
Over those several days, she talked to people. She worked at drawing them out, asking what they thought about the world, about Fish-Man Island, about the life they lived.
The answers were varied in ways she hadn't quite anticipated.
Some people spoke about humans with open hatred. One man told her about his relatives who had been enslaved by Celestial Dragons, and how Tiger had freed them. The hatred was clean and specific and grounded in actual loss.
Others said the opposite. Humans had their share of good people too. You couldn't paint them all the same.
And one person, an older man who seemed to have been thinking about this longer than most, offered a more layered view entirely. Most individual humans weren't the problem. The problem was the small group at the top of human society, the nobility, the people who moved the levers of power. They were the ones exploiting minority races. They were also the ones exploiting the humans below them. The foot soldiers on both sides of that divide were being used by the same hands.
She heard perspectives she hadn't expected to hear from a Fish-Man.
Even opinions about Brett, which she had assumed would be almost completely uniform, turned out to have gradations. The majority of Fish-Man Island's residents spoke of him with outright reverence. He had changed the island. That was the simple consensus.
But a small number expressed real wariness. That Brett had quietly accumulated too much influence. That he had essentially taken authority from the Ryugu Palace without ever going through the formality of taking it. That his ambitions were real and sooner or later they would show.
She found herself oddly fascinated by that.
Brett didn't seem to care what people thought of him.
What kind of person was he, really?
She was beginning to have a shape for an answer.
Whatever else might be said, he had genuinely wanted this island to flourish. That wasn't performance. The results were too concrete, too deeply woven into the fabric of the place, to be anything but intentional.
By the standards of this island, he was a hero.
Gion sat in the light coming off the bay and turned that word over.
Even an enemy could be a remarkable enemy.
It was then that a group arrived on the beach.
Armed. Mounted on sea creatures. Moving with purpose.
"Found me, then."
Gion looked up at the sea creature overhead.
Someone jumped down from its head and landed in the sand in front of her. An octopus-type Fish-Man, carrying a blade, looking mildly uncertain about how to start the conversation.
"So, uh." He scratched the back of his head. "Director Brett wants to see you."
"Lead the way."
Gion stood.
She wasn't surprised. If she was being honest with herself, she had expected this from the moment she chose to stay on Fish-Man Island. She had been preparing for it.
Under a collection of curious stares, she climbed up onto the sea creature's head alongside the octopus Fish-Man and they set off in a direction she didn't immediately recognize.
The sea creature moved steadily. Gion looked out over the island's landscape in silence, offering nothing.
The octopus Fish-Man, Hyouzou, kept glancing at her sideways.
He had been nervous when Brett sent him. This was a woman who had been a candidate for Admiral appointment until very recently, and she had been transformed on top of it. What was he supposed to do if she decided to cause trouble?
But Brett-aniki had said it would be fine. That she wouldn't make a move.
He hadn't quite believed it at first. Looking at her now, he was starting to come around. Brett-aniki did have a way of being right about things like this.
The sea creature passed out of Fish-Man Island's boundaries and approached the Sea of Trees.
The coral forest. Gion remembered it well. The last time she had been here, she had been caught.
The sea creature began to descend.
It came to rest in front of a large stone.
Gion saw the stone first. Then the figure standing in front of it.
She dropped down from the sea creature.
As she landed, Brett turned around from the stone and raised a hand toward Hyouzou, indicating he should go. Hyouzou took the hint and guided the sea creature away without a word.
Just the two of them now.
"A Poneglyph?" Gion studied the stone.
She was familiar with the concept. It was the kind of thing the Navy had been ordered to report and suppress for as long as she could remember. Seeing one in person was new.
"Yes. It's an apology letter Joy Boy wrote to the mermaid princess of the time." Brett said it plainly.
"Joy Boy."
She knew the name. Not much more than that.
"Anyway, the Poneglyph isn't my concern anymore," Gion said, setting it aside. She turned to face him. "I expected you to come yourself."
"I watched you for a few days first. Needed to be sure there wouldn't be a fight." Brett said it without apology.
"So I was spotted from the beginning."
Gion let out a quiet sound that might have been rueful amusement, might have been something else. "Does that mean everything I heard here was something you arranged for me to hear?"
"I'm not that theatrical. And the people here aren't that good at performing." Brett's expression was flat. "I was just watching."
"Then." He looked at her with genuine curiosity. "What actually happened? What's going on?"
He really was curious. The last time they had been in the same place, this woman had been stubbornly, comprehensively opposed to working with him. The change in circumstances clearly went well beyond something simple.
"I haven't decided yet whether I should be telling you any of this."
Gion made no effort to hide her distrust. She didn't dress it up. "I need to talk to Zephyr-sensei."
"Reasonable enough."
Brett gave a small nod. "The question is whether Zephyr-sensei will want to see you."
"..."
Gion paused. Then: "What happened after that day?"
"Nothing too complicated." Brett's voice was easy and without any particular drama. "The Government's secret weapon came for us. Out of the tens of thousands who were there, fewer than a hundred survived."
"..."
Silence from Gion.
"In any case. The decision should be Zephyr-sensei's to make."
Brett reached into his coat and produced a Den Den Mushi.
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