The evening air had grown cooler by the time the last sip of tea was gone and the laughter had settled into warmth. The golden light of the chandelier still bathed the dining room in a soft glow, but the night was well upon us.
Kaya moved slowly, her steps careful and deliberate as she rose from her seat. Nami and Merry flanked her like natural supports—Merry on one side and Nami on the other with the light, instinctive care of someone who had quickly come to understand how delicate Kaya's health could be.
She had a soft heart, shielded by a brittle shell.
I watched the three of them begin their slow climb up the grand staircase, their figures rising against the wide staircase's carved railings. Kaya's hand rested gently on Nami's arm, her fingers curled just enough to keep balance.
Carina lingered behind, just for a breath longer.
She stepped close with a fluid grace and planted a quick kiss on my cheek. I blinked, startled for only half a second. She pulled back with that same mischievous grin always lingering at the corners of her mouth. Then, with her index fingers raised in front of her chest, she mimicked a measuring gesture. A cheeky little tease paired with a stifled giggle.
She turned on her heel and skipped up the stairs, her laughter fading into the sound of soft footfalls and hushed voices. The girls were already close with Kaya—even in such a short span of time. Which meant they'd been talking. A lot. About everything.
Girls always knew how to cover ground faster than anyone else. My guess was they spent hours together before dinner, breaking down walls with laughter and soft questions.
I caught Merry's eyes once more before he disappeared around the landing with Kaya. I gave him a small nod of thanks.
He nodded back.
With the last echoes of footsteps fading above, I turned and made for the front door.
And there he was.
Klahadore.
Leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, posture relaxed in the way people look just before they strike. He didn't speak. Didn't glare. Just waited. I stepped past him, giving him a look of faint amusement, and he fell into step beside me.
We walked down the garden path in silence.
The path had changed little since I left. Stones spaced evenly underfoot, the edges framed by low hedges trimmed with painful precision. The kind of trimming that suggested boredom, discipline, or both. The garden glistened faintly from the earlier mist, and the breeze that swept across the hedges smelled of rosemary and soil.
The silence between us was thick but not awkward. It was the kind of silence that held unspoken things—not tension, but calculations.
Klahadore said nothing until we reached the wrought-iron gate at the edge of the estate.
He pulled it open, the latch clicking like a clock hand resetting.
"Shōkin kasegi?" he said in the most mocking way he could ever speak.
Bounty hunter.
He asked it like a riddle. Like he already knew the answer and was testing whether I would lie.
I didn't reply with words. Just turned my head slightly and gave him a wide, toothy grin. The same one I'd given him before I left this place behind. The same smirk Anya would have called a good smile.
I said nothing else.
And Klahadore? He didn't flinch. Didn't narrow his eyes or press for more. He just watched me walk away, his eyes fixed on my back as though trying to decipher a code that refused to solve itself.
I didn't look back.
The paper fluttered in my hand. Kaya's handwriting—elegant, beautiful—etched the number of her Den Den Mushi in clean, dark ink. It had taken some effort to make sure she even had the snail with her tonight. Twenty thousand berries each to Carina and Nami for a 'favor'. Worth every coin.
I pulled out my own Den Den Mushi and turned the dial for Usopp.
It rang. Once. Twice. Then came the sound of something crashing—metal pans, maybe a wrench or two. Typical. When he finally picked up, his voice was a blur of confusion, half-asleep and scrambling.
I didn't wait for the usual banter.
"Kaya."
That one word snapped him fully awake. I could hear it in the way his breath caught.
I gave the number. Slowly. Clearly.
Then, without hesitation, I added,
"Kanojo ni denwa suru."
Call her.
Before he could say a word, I ended the call.
It wasn't my place anymore.
Whatever happened next was between the two of them. Their story. Their chapter. Not mine to edit. Not mine to star in. I had played the role I needed to play. Set the stage. Planted the seed.
Now, it was up to Usopp to make it grow.
I stood at the fork in the village road, staring at the snail in my hand as it slowly closed its eyes again. Somewhere, Usopp was either sweating or floating on hearing a gentle sound. I couldn't know which. Maybe both.
But I hoped... I hoped he would take that step. Say the things he'd never said aloud. Be braver in heart than he ever was in battle. This was his fight now, and the enemy wasn't a pirate or a beast—it was silence, distance, misunderstanding.
And all of it had once been scripted to go wrong.
I knew that much.
When I was gone, the story had tried to reset itself. Like some force was pulling the pieces back into place.
Klahadore—once pushed to the shadows—had begun to reclaim his stage. Bit by bit, he'd wormed into favor again. Built trust. Built image. The butler reformed. The reliable guardian. The village had started to forget. Or maybe they wanted to. People liked comfort. Predictable roles.
And meanwhile, Kaya had gotten sicker.
Merry had grown colder to Usopp.
It was as if the narrative—this cursed script of the world—was trying to erase my interference. Trying to nudge everyone back to where they were "meant" to be.
But now? A dinner. A necklace. A laugh. A call.
And suddenly, the pieces had shifted again.
Merry trusted again.
Kaya smiled again.
Usopp had a chance again to see kaya be happy a little faster.
I was a catalyst, and I knew it.
It wasn't about stealing anyone's place. I didn't want to be the hero of every story. I just wanted to make sure the people I cared about got the shot they deserved. But even I wasn't sure anymore—was this just me tugging threads? Or was something bigger playing puppeteer above us all?
Had the plot taken over, correcting the course after I left? Or had Klahadore, clever as ever, used my absence to build favor, exploiting the void I left behind?
How deep did his manipulation go? Or was I just paranoid? Maybe the world wasn't scripted. Maybe people just gravitated toward familiar patterns when left alone.
Maybe.
I ruffled my hair with a frustrated hand as the cold breeze washed over me. The sea wind carried salt and something else—something unspoken.
I walked the road back toward the shack, the village dark and quiet around me. The sky was ink now, and stars blinked above like they were watching, waiting to see what came next.
The world might have its plot.
But I had mine, too.
And mine wasn't over yet.
--------------
BOOM.
Another blast tore through the forest clearing, louder and deeper than before. The sound didn't just echo—it resonated, bouncing off tree trunks and hillsides like nature itself was stunned.
Smoke curled into the air, black and glowing at the edges with flickers of ember. The heat wave rolled outward, distorting the air above the fresh crater. This one was bigger. Easily twice the width of the last. Ten meters across, three meters deep. The kind of hole that could swallow a cart whole if someone wasn't careful.
Thermite had done its job—and more.
I stepped closer, arms folded, my boots crunching on charred grass and stray ash. The trees at the perimeter had taken the brunt of the explosion. Their bark was blackened, some branches twisted, curling inward as the thermite ate through them like acid. The chemical hiss was still audible—faint now, but persistent—as if the air itself was trying to recover.
You could hear the trees burn. Not the crackle of dry firewood, but the scream of living wood, cooked alive from the outside in.
God, I loved it.
This was no longer an experiment. This was performance. The kind of performance that didn't need an audience, because the land itself remembered every step, every spark, every wound.
The thermite grenades were done. Finished. Beautiful. Metal fragments would have been redundant—excessive. The thermite alone did the work of both fire and shrapnel, carving heat and pain into everything it touched. Precision wasn't the point. It was about saturation. About burning not just flesh, but hope.
And now… now came the next stage.
Thermite bullets.
I grinned as I loaded the first round. Simple setup. Gunpowder base. Standard musket model—nothing fancy. Just enough to carry a heavy, unstable metal ball filled with hellfire itself.
I cocked the hammer back, thumb resting lightly. Aimed down the sights at a tree just beyond the blast radius. Dead center. Then I squeezed the trigger.
The shot thundered. The metal ball surged forward—and midway through its arc, it erupted.
This wasn't fragmentation. This was release. It erupted in a fiery halo mid-air, spraying molten metal across the clearing. The tree didn't fall from impact. It stood there, still intact for half a second too long.
Then it started to melt.
The bark peeled back like skin under a blowtorch, the insides hissing and popping. The base crumbled before the top did, and the tree fell like a slow-motion surrender.
It was perfect.
A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. This was it. A miniature gun of flaming death. Less force, more effect. The damage this thing could cause in close or mid-range combat—absolute carnage. Especially if the wind played along.
I holstered the gun, the barrel still smoking, and walked to my workbench—a slab of salvaged wood surrounded by crates of tools and various half-finished shells. Usopp was there, writing furiously into a thick notebook, muttering under his breath as he tracked blast radius, temperature spread, and shrapnel distance.
Usopp was a genius. And with my unhinged thinking, I'd helped him build things far more dangerous.
If the Marines ever caught wind of what he was building here... he'd be gone. Kidnapped, silenced, or "recruited" into some secretive department where he'd spend his life designing weapons for people who didn't understand their consequences.
Thank god he was with me. I could work him to the bone and still protect him.
I stepped back to the gun and wiped the barrel with a soaked cloth. The damage was evident—second shot in and the heat had already begun to warp the interior. Thermite wasn't gentle. The wood grip had scorched at the edges, a hair away from open flame.
The third shot would destroy this weapon. I knew it. The gun couldn't take more. Still, I loved it. All I needed were old pistols. Disposable ones. Cheap metal, weak builds. Things I could carry in bulk. Burn one out, drop it, pull another.
Middle-range menace.
That's what I was building.
I dipped another bullet into the water bucket. I let it soak. A small experiment. What would happen to thermite when wet?
The answer came fast.
I loaded the soaked bullet into the damaged gun and fired.
No smoke. No spark at the barrel. The bullet flew smooth and silent—just a thump of recoil.
It traveled farther.
Then, a second later, it burst.
Not mid-air this time. At the far end of the clearing after hitting the tree. The flames erupted there—a safe distance, and the smoke curled beautifully. It was slower. But it meant something important.
Range control.
Wet bullets traveled farther before activating. A flaw? Maybe. But it was usable. Tactical even. I have an idea for the range if it works well.
A thermite sniper. I will be a menace to the world if that happens.
I picked up a wet grenade, pulled the pin, and hurled it into the distance.
Then I waited.
Nothing.
No blast. No hiss.
Just silence.
I approached it carefully, stick in hand. Tapped it once. Twice.
Still nothing.
The wet thermite grenade had failed.
Design flaw.
A dangerous one. If I was ever thrown into the ocean—or had to fight in the rain—my most reliable weapons would become duds. Not acceptable. Not for me.
"Bōsui!" I shouted—Waterproof!
Usopp's head popped up. He was across the clearing under a half-finished lean-to, scribbling notes and diagrams.
I held up the grenade, shaking it for effect. He nodded and scrawled the new priority across the top of his notes.
Behind him, tied to a tree, three heads bobbed and squirmed in protest.
The kids.
Tamanegi, Piiman, and Ninjin—tied to a trunk with a rope like a trio of mischievous goblins. They'd snuck in earlier, tried to leap into a still-smoking thermite cloud like it was some kind of carnival fog machine.
Idiots.
Curious, reckless, adorable idiots.
They protested, of course—shouting about injustice and 'training rights'—but they laughed through the whole thing.
I'd left them there under Usopp's supervision. It was safer that way.
Now they just looked grumpy.
I turned and hurled the dud grenade toward the far field. Might as well clear it from camp.
BOOM.
The explosion came late, unexpected, violent. A cloud of thermite burst skyward. The heat reached my face even from this distance.
I froze. Usopp froze. The kids screamed.
So... maybe not entirely a dud.
That was worse than a flaw. It was unpredictable. A wet thermite grenade was either a harmless brick—or a delayed time bomb.
I turned slowly to Usopp, holding up another grenade. His face turned pale as he jotted down notes in frantic chicken-scratch.
He muttered something about "chemical casing adjustment" and "slow-burn initiators."
We would fix it. Eventually.
But the danger? This made it an interesting unstable factor.
This was what people didn't get about invention—about creation. It wasn't always neat. It wasn't clean. The path from blueprint to brilliance was lined with burnt fingers and destroyed prototypes. With screaming kids tied to trees and surprise detonations in the backfield.
It was chaos.
But it was ours.
We worked until sunset painted the clearing in hues of red and orange. Ash floated lazily in the light like snow in reverse—soft and deadly.
I sat on a stump, hands black with soot, jacket singed in three places. Usopp was still muttering to himself, running calculations on a board he'd nailed to a tree. The kids had finally worn themselves out and were curled up sideways in the rope, now slung like a hammock.
I looked at the field before us. Blackened, cratered, still smoking.
And I smiled.
If the world called it madness, I'd know it was working.