The Navy High Command Is Alarmed

Marineford, Marine Headquarters.

Warships lay neatly moored in the harbor, seagulls circled and cried overhead, and the sunlit sea glittered with ripples—a picture of peace.

Yet the air inside the office was so heavy it felt as though water could be wrung from it.

Sengoku sat on the sofa by the window rather than behind his broad Fleet Admiral's desk. He held a photograph with worn edges, his thumb repeatedly stroking its surface.

The photograph showed a young Rosinante, his brilliant smile almost painful to look at. The boy wore an ill-fitting suit and a crooked tie, making an awkward V-sign at the camera.

It had been taken when Sengoku brought him out shortly before he infiltrated the Donquixote Family as a Navy undercover agent.

Rosinante's death was like a thorn that could not be pulled out, buried deep in Sengoku's heart. That clumsy but kindhearted child, the child he had secretly taken in and treated as his own, had died without clear cause. Yet as an admiral of Marine Headquarters, Sengoku did not even have the right to mourn him openly.

Because Rosinante had once been a Celestial Dragon.

Even as a high-ranking Navy officer, Sengoku had no right to openly adopt a Celestial Dragon, not even a former one.

That was an ironclad rule of the World Government, the cornerstone holding up that hypocritical balance.

Sunlight streamed through the blinds, casting alternating bands of light and shadow across the desk, but it could not penetrate the gloom in his eyes.

Just then, hurried knocking came from the door.

Sengoku frowned. Just as he was about to reprimand whoever had so seriously violated protocol, the door was shoved open.

"Admiral! Fleet Admiral Kong—"

A young Marine rushed in, his face filled with terror, carrying an exquisite metal box in