Broadcast of Two Devils (One Piece What If)

CHAPTER 4 - borrowing flags

Morning on the Calm Belt looked exactly like yesterday: flat sea, flat sky, monsters underneath.

The only difference was the tension in Vox’s shoulders.

He stood at the bow again, watching the water. The afterglow from yesterday’s training still hummed under his skin—circuits running smoother, teleports not quite as suicidal, screens snapping into place faster when he called.

Barely enough.

A faint icon blinked at the corner of his vision. The Leviathan had picked up something ahead: metal, wood, transponder, tiny Den Den signature.

Vox zoomed it in.

A squat Marine cutter crawled along the glass sea like it hated its job. Two masts. A single cannon. Standard mast snail on top. Maybe twenty men on board if they were lucky.

Small. Slow. Weak.

He stared at it in silence for a moment.

Then a line of text scrolled across the map, tagged with the Leviathan’s assessment:
CALM BELT SWEEP – LOW PRIORITY.

Vox snorted.

“Perfect,” he muttered. “A tutorial boat.”

Bootsteps clicked behind him.

Alastor joined him at the rail, hands behind his back, eyes on the distant speck.

“Friends?” he asked.

“Future donors,” Vox said. “We need uniforms, codes, and a cover story. That thing’s wearing all three.”

He straightened, already feeling the plan lock into place.

“We hit it quiet. No deaths unless someone insists. We take the hull, stash the crew on the Leviathan, then show up at Impel Down as G-Whatever on routine patrol. Nobody questions boring.”

Alastor’s grin sharpened.

“A test run,” he said. “Boarding, control, restraint. Low stakes, by local standards.”

“Exactly,” Vox said. “If we can’t handle a Calm Belt sweep, we’re not ready to pick a fight with a prison.”

The Leviathan had already started to turn, subtle course correction bringing them onto an intercept that would close the distance from behind and to the side. From a distance, it would just look like another shadow on the dead water.

Vox headed for the bridge.

The ship’s internal map floated over the central table as he walked in, the cutter’s icon pulsing at the edge. He flicked through layers—signal strength, weapons, the pathetic little comms network rattling around on that boat.

“Step one: shut them up,” he said.

He pressed his palm against the glass.

This time he didn’t push his awareness into the Leviathan. He reached past her—along the thin thread of Den Den frequency his systems had already sniffed out.

The space between ships felt thick, like wading through syrup made of static. Then he hit the cutter’s mast snail.

It jolted.

Vox pushed.

Teal rings rippled out from the snail’s pupil; its eye rolled back. A short burst of white noise exploded out of its mouth and into every attached speaker on the patrol ship.

Then Vox clamped down.

The snail’s thoughts went sluggish. Its antenna sagged. The status lamp on its shell flickered once and went dark.