Chapter 160: Be My Son!
Before Valentine could get a word out, the man with the crescent mustache continued: "Gurararara — you kept your head in a tough spot, I'll give you that. Starting to like you a little. Be my son! What do you say? Take the Whitebeard name!"
Valentine: "???"
Whatever he'd been preparing to say evaporated entirely.
...Son? He wants me to be his... son?
He briefly considered the possibility that something was wrong with his hearing.
He was the President. One of the most powerful men in his world.
And he was being asked if he wanted to be someone's adopted child.
"Please don't make jokes like that," he said, after a few seconds of recovery. "You said you came to negotiate. What are your terms?"
He'd placed Whitebeard at his own level the moment he saw what the man was capable of. Using respectful address came naturally.
"Gurararara! Fine, suit yourself." Whitebeard's tone carried a flicker of disappointment that vanished quickly. "Old man doesn't like going around in circles — so straight to it. We want a designated territory in your world. A special zone. You recognize it officially and announce it to everyone. In exchange, we don't come back with a counterattack."
No ceremony. No preamble. The message underneath was unmistakable: agree, or we hit you again.
Valentine processed this.
A special zone. Another world's territory, established on Earth. That sounded alarming on the surface — but on reflection, the actual location would be somewhere near the spatial passage, which meant it would be on the small nation's territory, not his. That country could be completely erased and he wouldn't lose sleep over it.
Carving out a piece of their land for a cross-world zone was, practically speaking, a trivial concession.
As long as the zone was bounded. How large could a special zone be? Roughly New York-sized, at most?
The small nation had the land area to absorb that. Its leadership, if they had objections, was welcome to go negotiate with the other-worlders themselves.
Still. The feeling of having no real leverage was profoundly uncomfortable.
He thought for a moment, then looked up. "I can accept that proposal. I can agree to a special zone on Earth. But respect is bilateral. If your side establishes one here — could our side establish one in your world as well?"
Whitebeard shook his head without hesitation. "No."
Valentine's expression tightened slightly. "Why not?"
"Because you're not qualified."
"..."
That landed exactly as bluntly as it sounded.
Not qualified. Which meant the combined power of this entire planet wasn't enough to negotiate from a position of equality.
"I know what you're thinking," Whitebeard said. "The strongest thing your world has is probably those mushroom bombs. Gurararara — go ahead and try one. See if it does anything to us."
Valentine's eyes narrowed.
"There are at least seven of us who don't have to worry about those," Whitebeard added.
Valentine went very still.
Seven.
All immune to nuclear weapons.
He had no way to verify whether Whitebeard was bluffing. But the cost of assuming it was a bluff and being wrong was — he ran the math involuntarily — catastrophic. Seven beings with that level of physical resilience, operating without restraint for a few months, could potentially reduce the global population to single-digit millions.
"Can you give me time to consider?"
"Twenty-four hours. Gurararara."
The screen went dark.
Valentine slumped back in his chair.
He was soaked in cold sweat. The entire conversation had produced a pressure he couldn't quite explain — some quality in Whitebeard's presence, even through a screen, that had made his pulse behave wrongly and the back of his neck go cold. In person, without the barrier of the display between them, he wasn't confident he would have been able to speak without stammering.
The man felt like a king. Not a metaphorical one. Something that belonged to a different category entirely.
"Less than two weeks since this started, and it's already over?" He looked at the dark screen. "Did we lose this fast?"
He thought about the footage of the sea battle.
The thought of resisting produced no feeling. Just exhaustion.
Whitebeard, for his part, wasn't particularly focused on Valentine's internal state. He dialed another frequency on the equipment Wolffy had sent over.
A new face appeared. Startled.
The crescent mustache creased upward. "Gurararara — you should know who I am too, right? Want to have a little talk? Though looking at you, you're a bit old for adoption. Doesn't feel right."
A short distance away, Kizaru's mouth twitched.
The Whitebeard he'd imagined — the legendary pirate, one of the Four Emperors, the man said to shake the world — was supposed to be either terrifying or magnificent or both.
This man was an eccentric old grandpa.
Who opened every conversation with adoption offers.
How was this supposed to produce coherent diplomatic outcomes?
Kizaru kept the observation to himself and looked back at his own screen. Wolffy's technology had given him access too. He'd connected to the leadership of a major nation.
The smile that appeared on his face was, in Ryū's assessment, extremely concerning.
"Hello there, leader of a foreign nation~ Would you be interested in letting us establish a small piece of territory on your planet? Have you ever experienced a kick at the speed of light? The kind that takes out a few thousand people in one go~"
Ryū stared at him.
"..."
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