Master of time management

-At the foot of Reverse Mountain, Twin Cape.

This was the entrance to Paradise, the first half of the Grand Line. Starting here, fleets could use a Log Pose to decide which of the seven routes to follow.

The lighthouse at Twin Cape was the only building nearby.

Thanks to Vegapunk's technology, Navy and World Government ships entered the Grand Line through the Calm Belt.

As a result, Twin Cape was gradually becoming an unofficial entrance used almost exclusively by pirates.

Even the nearby villages and towns had relocated if they could, let alone the Twin Cape lighthouse.

Only an old man named Crocus still held his post here.

He was an accomplished fighter who had once fought alongside the Roger Pirates in their three-day, three-night battle against the Whitebeard Pirates.

Even at nearly seventy, he was still someone rookie pirates newly entering the Grand Line would do well not to provoke.

But recently, the Twin Cape lighthouse had entered its liveliest stretch in over forty years.

"Hey, ghost girl! Brook! Food's ready!"

Crocus held a megaphone and shouted toward the shore. Despite being seventy, he was still sturdily built, and his voice carried with plenty of force.

He wore casual clothes suited to a beach vacation, and his hairstyle looked like a cross between a programmer's and an art student's... the top of his head was the programmer part.

Then, as though deliberately showing off his shiny scalp, he wore a large saffron-flower-like headdress, its purple and yellow petals encircling that lofty seat of intelligence.

"Horo-horo~ Petal geezer, my name isn't ghost girl-call me Lady Perona!"

"All right, ghost girl. Where's Brook?"

"That pervy skeleton said he'd come over after finishing a piece for Laboon."

Perona floated over through the air, currently outside her body. For the past three days, her routine had mostly consisted of eating sweets, bickering, teasing Laboon, and playing with her pet.

When she teased Laboon, she flew around him in spirit form. He was simply too big.

"-Mmm-wooo-mmm-wooo-"

Seeing the enormous whale Laboon lift his head in the sea, happily sway his body, and let out a deep "song" was enough to tell them Brook was playing music for him on the beach.

"...Honestly..."

Crocus had already cried three days ago, but his eyes still grew a little damp. As though trying to make up for the forty-six years they had lost, Brook had spent most of these three days with Laboon, playing and singing.

"I'll take his food over in a bit."

Forty-eight years ago, Crocus had promised York, captain of the Rumbar Pirates, that he would look after the young Laboon. But many years had passed after that without any word from the Rumbar Pirates.

The heartbroken Laboon kept ramming the Red Line, leaving Crocus deeply distressed as well.

So when he encountered the Roger Pirates twenty-four years ago, he agreed to join them as their ship's doctor, mainly to search for news of the Rumbar Pirates.

Unfortunately, he failed. He could only return to his work as the lighthouse keeper and continue keeping Laboon company.

He had never imagined that after all this time, Brook, a survivor of the Rumbar Pirates, would actually return.

"Horo-horo~ I'm heading back for sweets first~"

Perona drifted through the air in a graceful arc. She passed straight through the Thunderhawk's metal wall and slipped back into her body.

Her body then woke in her room, and she sprang to her feet.

Though the room had been remodeled somewhat in a Gothic style, overall it looked like a hotel room of roughly twenty square meters, complete with all the amenities.

"Kumashi-"

"-"

The teddy bear lying in the corner immediately got up and followed Perona toward the dining room... even though he only needed charging.

Outside Perona's private room, the Thunderhawk's interior looked much more conventional. The living quarters resembled a modern hotel, and every crew member had been assigned a room.

(Some private aircraft on Blue Star even had suites and luxurious bathrooms inside, earning them the name "mansions in the sky.")

Although personal taste had led to the Thunderhawk's exterior being remodeled to resemble a Thunderhawk gunship from Warhammer 40K, the resemblance was only external, and even its paint scheme was different.

Its base color was a blue similar to that of the Ultramarines, but its emblem was a "lightning skull," and its other decorations mixed pirate styling with a few Gothic elements.

Science-fiction elements were hardly unusual in the pirate world. The original story had mentioned all sorts of technological islands. With examples like Vegapunk, Franky, and Germa, the designs could get far more outrageous.

A winged brick like the Thunderhawk was downright plain by comparison.

Sephiroth genuinely knew nothing about spacecraft design, much less the related disciplines. He could only cobble things together according to his own tastes.

In the dining room, Perona wore a smile of quiet contentment as she ate her sweets.

The two-head-tall workers bustling around the cabins were a newly released design built by reskinning lunar robot technology-the rush-rush-rush Ultramarine Bunbu!

Masters of all eighteen martial arts, experts in all twenty-four branches of housekeeping.

"Say, when do you think Lord Shining will be back?"

Early on the morning of their third day here, Sephiroth had said he had something to do and would return tomorrow, then vanished in a streak of lightning.

"..."

The Bunbu she had asked lay on the floor and stared down at it. This floor sure is a floor...

-Sky Island, Temple, Sanctuary Zero.

Dappled light from the painted enamel windows cast a rainbow of colors across Lilith's black wings.

She sat on a bench in the corridor outside the sanctuary, her thoughtful gaze resting on its tightly closed doors.

Sanctuary Zero lay in the deepest part of God's residence. Although there was no deliberate attempt to conceal it, few people ever came here.

This was the sanctuary where Lord Sephiroth meditated alone. Even without an explicit rule, it was understood to be an area one should not enter lightly.

After learning that Sephiroth had entered the sanctuary upon returning to the Temple, Lilith waited outside its doors, as she had a few things to report to him.

"...Lily."

Sephiroth's meditation usually lasted only about half an hour. Lilith had waited a little over ten minutes before she saw him push the doors open and emerge.

What washed over her was an invisible force of uncertain nature, something that seemed to exist more on a spiritual level, radiating a terrifying presence.

"Sephi, having fun with the band?"

"...We haven't started performing yet. It's better to fulfill the members' long-held dreams first."

-Why do you look like a little donkey asking, 'Is Endfield fun,' Lilith?

It wasn't as though Sephiroth had kept it from them. Isabella and Lilith both knew about his identity as Satellite Shining. The Bunbu aboard the Thunderhawk also frequently synced information with the satellite.

In fact, strictly speaking, Sephiroth hadn't been with Perona and Brook the entire time during the three days they had spent together.

Through the satellite system, he needed only a dozen seconds or so to reach the other side of the planet-a true master of time management.

The reason he had told them he wouldn't return until the next day this time was that he wanted to bring them some gifts. That meant he couldn't use lightning Teleportation.

His elemental form could only turn the belongings he carried on him into elements along with himself. Sephiroth couldn't figure out the principle behind that either, and eventually he simply gave up thinking about it.