Early SCC 1516.
Gran Tesoro was ready to open.
The premise of the city had always been unusual, and seeing it for the first time made the concept feel even more abstract. Two enormous island turtles served as the city's foundation, their shells built over with structures that had taken years to complete, their movements slow and patient and indifferent to the civilization that had been erected on their backs. Because the turtles moved, Gran Tesoro moved with them, wandering between sea areas according to no fixed course and belonging to no nation's jurisdiction. This had been the point from the beginning.
For the opening ceremony, Tezoro had brought Gran Tesoro to the New World Gateway, positioned approximately three days' sailing from Mary Geoise. The timing was deliberate and the location was calculated to the degree that Finn had come to expect from the man.
A World Conference was scheduled at Mary Geoise: the first in eight years, combining two postponed terms into one gathering. The previous conference had been cancelled when Fisher Tiger's attack burned significant portions of the Holy Land. The reconstruction hadn't been completed until late SCC 1515, and Mary Geoise had decided to wait for completion before hosting. Now, with the city rebuilt and the Five Elders in a mood that bordered on confident after their successes in Alabasta, the invitations had gone out to one hundred member-state royal families simultaneously.
Which meant every prince, king, duke, and wealthy noble who had standing to attend was currently making their way to the same general area of the New World. Gran Tesoro, positioned three days from Mary Geoise, could accommodate all of them on the way to the conference and on the way back without anyone missing a meeting. Tezoro had identified this window with the precision of someone who had been planning the opening for years and had adjusted the timeline specifically to land here.
The neutral zone provisions extended to a one-day sailing radius around Gran Tesoro. Within that radius, the laws of Gran Tesoro superseded any national claim and the Marine's enforcement authority was suspended by the terms of the arrangement. No one fired on anyone. No one arrested anyone. The entertainment complex that had taken nearly a decade and an extraordinary investment to build was open to every faction simultaneously, which was the entire point of calling it a neutral zone.
Finn woke up to the sound of someone moving in the cabin.
He was alert before he was fully conscious, which was a habit that had developed over years of sleeping in places where being slow to wake had consequences. By the time he'd opened his eyes, he'd already registered that the movement was Stussy getting dressed and that nothing about the situation required immediate action.
He relaxed back against the pillow. The ship was moving steadily. Outside the porthole, the light had the particular quality of early morning in open water: clear, flat, without the warmth that would arrive later.
"How much longer?" he asked.
"We should see Gran Tesoro within the hour," Stussy said, without turning around. She was working on her buttons with the focused attention of someone who had decided to be efficient about the morning. "Which is why I'm getting up."
They'd met at Pleasure Street first, a detour that had added time to the journey but that Finn hadn't objected to. He hadn't seen her since the vacation, and eleven months was long enough. The relationship between them existed in a space that neither of them had formally defined, which suited both of them, and the time together had been what it was without either of them needing to categorize it.
Now she was finishing the last button and giving him the look that indicated she was about to say something that would sound like criticism but was actually logistics.
"You're not coming off the ship with me," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because you're the Admiral representative of Marine Headquarters and I'm the Queen of Pleasure Street, and arriving together would invite commentary that neither of us needs in the week before I officially take the CP Director position." She turned around fully. Her expression was not unkind. "I've spent years managing how I appear to the Five Elders. I'd prefer not to hand them something to work with right at the moment when I'm about to stop needing to manage them."
Finn looked at the ceiling. She wasn't wrong. "Fine."
"Thank you." She picked up her jacket. "I'll see you inside."
She stopped at the door, turned back, and kissed him in the brief, decisive way of someone who had decided to do a thing and was doing it without overcrowding the gesture with explanation. Then she was gone, her footsteps fading down the corridor.
Finn lay still for a moment.
"She tolerates me," he said, to the empty cabin, "out of the goodness of her heart."
He got up.
By the time he was dressed and had made it to the deck, the situation outside had changed considerably.
Gran Tesoro was visible. The island turtles were massive in person in a way that maps and reports didn't fully prepare you for: the scale of the shells, the city built across them, the towers and domes and entertainment structures rising from what appeared, from a distance, to be a low island. Closer, the details resolved into something between a city and a fortress and a palace, all of it sheathed in gold that caught the morning light in ways that made the sea around it look comparatively colorless.
The waters surrounding Gran Tesoro were more interesting.
Finn stood at the rail with a cup of tea and looked out at the assembled shipping. The neutral zone's protections had drawn every faction with a reason to attend within the same radius, and the result was a gathering of flags that would have been impossible under any other circumstances. Member-state royal vessels with the formal crests of their respective kingdoms. Merchant ships from every Blue and the Grand Line. World Government ships flying the Celestial Dragon emblems of their owners.
And pirates. Quite a few pirates.
He could see the Whitebeard Pirates' flag. The Beasts Pirates. Big Mom's emblem on a vessel that was treating the Marine warships in the area with the studied casualness of something that knew the rules applied to everyone and had decided to make a point of demonstrating that it understood this.
Whether the commanders were present in person was a different question. Finn thought they probably were, or at least some of them. The opening of a declared neutral zone was exactly the kind of event that the New World's major powers would want to assess directly rather than through subordinates.
"Sir." Vergo appeared at his side with the quiet efficiency that was his default mode of existence. He had a report in hand but wasn't offering it yet, which meant he had something to say first. "The Donquixote family ship is in the port approach queue."
Finn looked in the direction Vergo indicated. The ship in question was large and flew its crest without ambiguity: the Donquixote family's distinctive emblem, from Mary Geoise's Celestial Dragon nobility, not from Doflamingo's line.
"How many Celestial Dragon delegations?" Finn asked.
"We can't confirm exact numbers. Their itineraries are handled through channels we're not read into. But from what's visible, at minimum five families. Possibly more." Vergo paused. "They're attending as guests, not as inspectors. Gran Tesoro's entertainment offerings have been attracting considerable interest in certain Mary Geoise social circles."
Finn made a short sound that expressed his view of this without committing him to anything specific.
He thought about the Donquixote family and what he knew of them. In the original sequence of events, a member of that family had gone to Fish-Man Island and caused an incident that ended in Queen Otohime's death. In this version of events, the incident had apparently concluded differently: some kind of conversion, the sort of genuinely absurd moral reversal that occasionally appeared among the Celestial Dragons precisely because their circumstances were strange enough to produce unusual outcomes. The man had apparently brought Queen Otohime to Mary Geoise. Otohime had apparently said something to him that had effect.
Finn thought about this and found he could believe it. The Donquixote family had produced both Doflamingo and Rosinante from the same parents in the same circumstances, which was itself evidence that the family's capacity for internal variation was considerable. An eccentric Celestial Dragon who responded to genuine human contact was strange but not impossible.
In any case: Jinbe had dealt with the radicals at Fish-Man Island, Otohime was alive, and the trajectory of Fish-Man Island's integration into the wider world was proceeding. Finn had provided support where it was useful and had kept his personal involvement at the level that his actual role warranted. That was sufficient.
"What else?" Finn asked.
"Doflamingo will be attending the World Conference as King of Dressrosa," Vergo said, "and would like to know if we intend to act during the conference itself."
"He's asking through you."
"Yes."
Finn considered the question. The financial independence condition had been reached faster than expected. Stussy's appointment was confirmed. Sengoku was ready and had been for some time. The pieces were in place, and the World Conference was the kind of event that drew every relevant party into proximity simultaneously, which had a logic to it as a moment for action.
But logic and timing were different things.
"If the opportunity presents itself and the justification is solid, yes," Finn said. "If not, not. We don't manufacture the moment. We identify it when it arrives." He glanced at Vergo. "Tell him that."
Vergo nodded once, without commentary. He understood the distinction.
The warship continued its approach toward Gran Tesoro's harbor. Around them, the assembled fleet of a dozen factions moved on the same heading, all of them converging on the same point, all of them operating under the temporary fiction that the rules applied equally to everyone and that the city on the turtle's back was genuinely neutral ground.