#chapter 1088

Leeeet’s get ready to...respect Michael Buffer’s intellectual property because he is a litigious, litigious man. No guarantee we’re coming back fully to the main story next chapter true, but we’re seeing Egghead again. Don’t see how Marco could outdo Garp’s lead-in anyways. Just like the previous chapter, we see the narration get a little funky. Listing the headlines for tomorrow’s newspaper. Which does have me wondering if a hunch is paying off. Are these ships arriving the next morning? Meaning we have skipped over a night in the lab? That’s what the structure implies. 

I care because of what it opens up the potential for. We cut away around the time Sentomaru & Stussy are coordinating evacuation efforts. We frame it as the events of the day before. There was already a morning paper leading into Egghead and we see Morgans reacting to early leads but wanting to spin the story. This whole incident seems predicated on Luffy stumbling into a tense situation that has nothing to do with him and last we left off the Straw Hats were in pretty dire straits. So if things turned around overnight...how? This is the basic type of structure I’ve been keen on, well before we really got we were doing it in the intermission. Think Zou, if we start going forwards/backwards on what comes next that opens up a lot. There’s one other aspect here too: 

The Blackbeard Pirates are floating around the main story as well. Process of elimination suggests Lafitte & Catarina, a pair that suggests stealth. This is a huge wildcard if the timeline is that they slipped in while the scramble on Egghead was spiraling out of control. Also note the direction of the Frontier Dome; if LaTarina were arriving at the same time as the Navy you’d theoretically be able to see them on either side of this panel. So I’m excited at the prospect of cutting back to Egghead on the next day. If they’ve already evacuated the rank-and-file, that’d make the Night in the Lab a mystery like God Valley or Onigashima. No one is quite sure what happened.

Let’s call it getting the first number right on a lottery draw. Could be wrong, could go any number of ways. But the “Subverted Sabaody” is very possible from this situation. The Straw Hats stand tall in an incident of historic proportions because something shifted overnight. They’re in control of the situation enough to handle the heavy hitters and the Grand Fleet smashes the siege. Of course, y’all know my other wrinkle here. A sociable quartermaster stepping out onto the scene after we cut away actually threads the needle here stupidly well. Even beyond the Grand Fleet. That could solve a lot of problems.