It was a month ago that Haruta, Chief Communications Officer for the Whitebeard Pirates, had received the first call.
Or, well. That's not quite true.
Technically, it was one of his subordinates who had picked up. Whichever poor schmuck had been stuck manning the Whitebeards' public line. But Haruta had happened to be in the room then, going over a stack of then-recent reports, and happened to see his underling's increasing confusion and distress at whatever the person on the line was on about.
Eventually, wordlessly, Haruta had held out his hand for the handset, and the other guy gave it over with a look of gratitude.
"Haruta!" the stranger, either a child or someone with a very unfortunate voice, had exclaimed. Haruta had frowned at the snail, but it wouldn't have been impossible to guess about him, so he'd let it go.
He would soon reconsider, but not right away.
Because, as it turned out, the stranger, who Haruta had swiftly determined to be a little girl, only wanted to slander Blackbeard, a crewmate of his. He hung up and blocked her number.
Except that then, she called into one of the private lines.
And another.
And a third.
After the fourth, Haruta barked at her to just call his personal snail, and, feeling paranoid, talked some of the others into watching Blackbeard. Just in case he was involved somehow, and it was a prank, and Haruta might be made a fool of. The little girl, Treva, whose snail Haruta traces to the weakest Blue, is remarkably uninformative for someone who seems to know so much more than she should. And she keeps babbling about things that haven't even happened, with a confidence that Haruta doesn't like in the least.
In hindsight, after Blackbeard is thwarted just shy of killing their crewmate, Thatch, and runs off with a Devil Fruit, Haruta wishes he had simply been made a fool of.
In the aftermath, he sits at his desk, glaring at his poor snail. Finally, for the first time, he dials this Treva kid's number. After what happened with Blackbeard and Thach, she had left the Whitebeards suspiciously unharassed.
The snail rings, and rings, and rings. Treva doesn't pick up. So, Haruta tries again, and then again, and then again. He thinks it's fair, since Treva had been so determined to spam him first. On the sixth attempt, she caves.
"What do you want?!" Treva demands.
"To thank you," Haruta says. It shuts her up, which is a nice bonus. He smiles to himself, not exactly nicely, but not unkindly, either. "Because you went out of your way to warn us, Thatch is still alive now, and if I'd taken you more seriously from the beginning, we might've been able to stop Blackbeard from running off with the Dark-Dark Fruit altogether." Even though she can't see him, Haruta inclines his head, generally, in concession of the point. "So, thank you."
Silence, still.
Haruta taps his fingers on the desk's surface. "Would you rather hear it from Pops?"
"NO!" Treva yells, loud enough that Haruta has to scramble to put distance between his ear and the snail, or else risk his hearing. From the clacking he hears from her end, she must be shaking her head rapidly, and maybe waving her handset for emphasis. "No, no, no, no, no! You can't thank me! Don't thank me! Don't even think about me!"
Haruta frowns. "Why not?"
"Because this isn't about you! Or me! Or any of you!" Treva argues, nonsensically. "I'm not… I don't…" Here, she struggles a bit. Recovering, she goes on, "None of this has anything to do with me!"
"That's patently untrue," Haruta reasons. Treva proceeds to keep babbling at him, furious and incoherent, over the line. She repeats an unfamiliar name, Mary Sue, a few times, so Haruta resolves to have it looked into.
Most probably, this Treva, whoever she is, has a Devil Fruit that lets her see across long distances. Something similar to basic applications of Observation Haki, but more specialized; and it can't be Observation Haki, because Observation Haki powerful enough to see from the East Blue through to the New World is entirely unheard of, and it would be painfully obvious to anyone with a sense for Haki between the two points. So, it must be a Devil Fruit. Something along the lines of a Scry-Scry or Look-Look Fruit. If it wasn't Blackbeard that Treva had, seemingly, been spouting paranoid garbage to Haruta about, Blackbeard is the first person Haruta would've asked about it, since he's so preoccupied with Devil Fruits.
Haruta is very, very glad that he never mentioned a thing to Blackbeard.
But, nevertheless. The facts, as they are, are as such:
First, Treva had gone out of her way to be of assistance to the Whitebeard Pirates.
Second, Treva has a very useful Devil Fruit, whatever it is. A Devil Fruit that let her see Blackbeard making his plans, and so let her forewarn Haruta about what Blackbeard would do.
And third, if Haruta tries to express gratitude to her again, it might actually incentivize Treva to attempt to kill a Whitebeard Pirate—Haruta—herself.
Hm, Haruta thinks. Curiouser and curiouser.
"Treva," he says, deciding to run a test.
"What?!" Treva snaps at him.
"Is there anything else I should know?"
Once more, Treva shuts up. The quiet, though, feels more amiable to Haruta, and while he doesn't have a clue what she looks like, he's confident that she's mulling things over.
Eventually, Treva says, "There's gonna be a war."
"A war," Haruta echoes. "Against who?"
"Everyone," Treva tells him. "The World Government's gonna try to execute Ace, and it's all downhill from there."
Haruta freezes.
"Excuse me?" he forces out, barely more than a hiss.
"I'm not gonna let them," Treva clarifies, annoyed. "Who the hell do you think I am?"
Instead of reminding Treva that Haruta has no idea who the hell she is, he breathes out, slowly, through his teeth. His blood is ice in his veins, but he makes himself untense. Losing his shit will accomplish nothing, and if Treva's already seen the World Government making plans, then the clock is already ticking. Haruta doesn't have the luxury of wasting time.
But why would the World Government want to kill Ace? Ace, who's already run off after Blackbeard. Haruta has to talk to Pops. And then, he should get back to Treva, and try to parse her awful explanations.
But before that. "Treva," Haruta starts. "When the problem was that Teach would kill Thatch, you wanted me to kill Teach. You were very insistent."
"Yes," Treva agrees. Haruta imagines that she nods.
"Now," he continues, "The problem is that the World Government might kill Ace."
"I won't let them," Treva reiterates, even more annoyed, voice a little wobbly.
But that doesn't matter very much. Not right now.
"Treva," Haruta says again. "What do you want me to do?"
Conveniently, Treva has a lot of thoughts about that. Haruta can't make sense of most of them, certainly, and won't be able to use even all of them that he can make sense of, but it's a start.
The Whitebeards, he supposes, are going to war.
XXX
Note: I picked up the "Haruta is the Whitebeards' comms guy" headcanon from AO3 crackfic whatever you can still betray by midnightluck.
