The morning after the great wave was a world of damp salt and heavy silence.
The ground beneath our campsite was still a sodden marsh, the earth struggling to drink the volume of seawater that had crested the 250-meter cliffs.
My first priority was logistical.
I commanded the Jade Wings to expand once more, weaving a reinforced floor of chains several inches above the mud to give us a dry base of operations.
Once the “floor” was secure, I turned my attention to the guest the sea had left us.
Using the black chains with a surgeon’s delicacy, I reached into the twisted branches of the shattered tree.
I plucked the unconscious Marine from her perch and lowered her gently onto the mesh floor near our fire pit.
Up close, she looked even worse.
Her Marine coat was shredded, and her skin was a mosaic of deep, purplish bruises and jagged lacerations.
Her left arm was a ruin of fractured bone, but it was the dried blood crusting her hairline that concerned me most.
I knelt beside her, my hands hovering over her shattered limbs.
“Gammamon, watch the perimeter,” I said, my voice low.
“This is going to take a lot of focus.”
I took a deep breath and reached for the energy bar in the back of my mind.
It was nearly full from my morning drills.
I began to channel a steady stream of Fa-Jin into her body.
I had to be careful, I wasn’t just “patching” her up.
Kinetic energy healing is a violent, biological process.
It forces the cells to accelerate their metabolic rate, knitting bone and sinew at a speed that defies nature.
If I dumped all the energy at once, the sheer sensation of her bones grinding together to reset would probably kill her from the shock alone.
I had learned that the hard way during our first week of “Hell Training.” Instead, I opted for a slow, agonizing crawl of reconstruction.
I watched as her broken arm twitched, the radius and ulna sliding back into alignment beneath her skin with a series of muffled pops.
The deep bruises began to fade, yellowing at the edges before vanishing entirely.
The lacerations on her face sealed shut, leaving only faint pink lines that would soon disappear.
It was a fascinating, gruesome sight, the human body being forcibly “corrected” by the energy of a world it didn’t belong to.
Despite the physical repairs, she didn’t wake.
The head injury was a different beast entirely.
My energy could fix the skull and the swelling, but consciousness was a sovereign state.
The brain would reboot when it was ready, and no amount of “gacha” power could force it.
“How do you think she got injured?” Gammamon asked, his yellow eyes wide as he watched the pink skin knit together.
He was sitting on his haunches, fascinated by the process.
“Probably that wave from yesterday,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow.
“The question isn’t how she got injured, but what kind of monster pushed enough water to crest a cliff this high.
Only the Marines have the technology to sail these waters reliably.
That coat of hers, the ‘Justice’ kanji, means she’s HQ staff.
If my memory serves right, I think I know who she is, but I could be wrong.”
“How sure are you?” Gammamon tilted his head.
“Ten percent,” I admitted with a dry chuckle.
“That’s low,” Gammamon deadpanned.
“Are you sure you watched that show properly?
You were an fan, weren’t you?”
“Give me a break, Gammamon.
There were over a thousand named characters in that series.
I didn’t spend my life memorizing every background officer.
Besides, things are changing.
Look, when she wakes up, we play it cool.
If she asks what you are, we tell her you’re a Devil Fruit user.
A ‘Zoan’ or something.
It’s the easiest lie to sell in this world.”
“Okay,” Gammamon said, standing up and dusting off his scales.
“I’ll go find some breakfast.
I think I saw a strawberry bush near the Zone 3 border.
I’ll be back soon.”
I watched him trot off into the green, a small, white dinosaur with a blue scarf, moving through a prehistoric jungle with the confidence of an apex predator.
(Hototogisu’s POV)
The first thing Hototogisu noticed wasn’t the pain, but the voices.
They sounded muddled, like they were traveling through deep water.
“…lucky we were able to pull that move…
digivolved or not…”
“Ya ya, I know I got greedy…
but strawberries, Victor!
Do you know how hard they are to find?”
Her head felt heavy, as if it had been filled with lead, but as the fog of unconsciousness began to lift, she realized something impossible.
She didn’t hurt.
The memory of the wave, the crushing weight of the ocean, the sound of her own bones snapping as the ship disintegrated, was vivid and terrifying.
She should be dead.
At the very least, she should be a paraplegic.
She forced her eyes open.
Her vision was a blurry smear of green and gold, but it slowly sharpened.
She was lying on a strange, metallic floor that felt like woven rope but sounded like steel.
In front of her, a man was sitting by a campfire.
He was wearing a dark blue shirt and khaki trousers.
He looked fit, dense, functional muscle that suggested a life of constant physical labor.
He was talking to a small, white reptilian creature that was currently gesticulating wildly with its paws.
“You know the lady behind you woke up a few minutes ago?” the small creature said.
Its voice was gravelly but youthful.
The man didn’t turn around.
“Ya, noticed her breathing change.
I was waiting for her to gather her bearings before we played twenty questions.”
Hototogisu realized her cover was blown.
She suppressed a groan and pushed herself up into a sitting position.
She expected her limbs to give out, but they felt strong.
Better than strong, they felt revitalized, though her muscles were stiff, as if she had just finished a marathon.
“Who are you?” she demanded, trying to inject the steel of a Rear Admiral into her voice.
She felt exposed, vulnerable, and deeply confused.
“Where am I?
And what have you done to me?”
The man finally turned.
He had steady eyes, the kind of eyes that had seen things they weren’t supposed to.
“To answer in sequence: my name is Victor.
This here is Gammamon.”
“Yo!” the white creature chirped, raising a paw.
“You’re on a nameless island in the heart of the Calm Belt,” Victor continued, his tone conversational but guarded.
“We think you were caught in that displacement wave that hit us a few days ago.
As for what we ‘did’ to you, we found you mangled in a tree.
We used some…
local healing herbs to put your bones back together.
Your body is just adjusting to the rapid recovery.”
Hototogisu’s mind raced.
The wave.
The memory hit her like a physical blow, the Sea King swallowing the pirate ship, the wall of water, the screams of her men.
Her heart began to hammer against her ribs, a cold panic rising in her throat.
“My crew!” she gasped, her eyes darting around the small clearing, searching for any sign of white uniforms.
“Did you save anyone else?
I am Rear Admiral Hototogisu of the Marine Headquarters.
We were swept up by a wave created by a titan-class Sea King.
If I’m here…
they must be here.
Please, tell me you’ve seen them!”
(Victor’s POV)
The desperation in her eyes was a jagged thing.
She was looking at me like I held the keys to her soul, hoping for a miracle I couldn’t provide.
As an editor in my old life, I had seen scenes like this a hundred times in scripts.
In reality, it was much harder to watch.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, keeping my voice as gentle as I could.
“When that wave hit the island, it triggered an earthquake.
It’s a miracle you survived at all.
After we found you, Gammamon and I checked the coastline and the contact site for other survivors.
We found…
nothing.
Just driftwood and salt.”
I watched the light go out of her eyes.
It wasn’t a sudden change; it was a slow, agonizing realization.
Her face went completely still, an expression of total shock, while tears began to track silently through the grime on her cheeks.
“My crew…” she whispered.
“Captain Ru…
everyone…
no, no, no…”
Her voice failed her.
The weight of the grief was too much for her newly repaired system to handle.
Her eyes rolled back, and she began to slump sideways.
I didn’t let her hit the floor, I flicked my wrist, and a segment of the Jade Wings’ chain caught her, gently laying her back down on the mesh.
“That didn’t go well,” Gammamon said, his tail drooping.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“She’ll live,” I said, looking at her pale face.
“But losing your entire command?
That’s a tragedy you don’t just shrug off.
It’ll take time.
But on the bright side, I’m now about ninety percent sure I know her.”
“Really?”
“Yes.
In the future I know, she becomes a Vice Admiral under Great Staff Officer Tsuru.
She’s famous for her temper, especially with Garp.
She hates his cavalier attitude toward life.”
Gammamon perked up.
“A Vice Admiral?
She must be super strong then!
If she’s that strong, how did a Sea King take her out?”
“She’s not a Vice Admiral yet,” I corrected, leaning back and watching the fire.
“The timeline I know is five years away.
Right now, she’s likely a Rear Admiral.
Strength-wise?
She’s probably around a high-tier Marine Captain or a low Rear Admiral.
She’s formidable, but she’s not a monster yet.”
“So…” Gammamon’s eyes narrowed as he did some mental math.
“Could I beat her?
If she was healthy?”
I looked at Gammamon, the creature who had just soloed a pack of Zone 3 raptors because they touched his strawberries.
“If you stay in your Rookie form?
It would be a hard fight.
She probably knows basic Haki.
But if you digivolve into BetelGammamon?
It wouldn’t be close.
You might actually have the edge in raw destructive power.”
“Interesting,” Gammamon muttered, though he quickly lost interest in the unconscious woman.
He turned his attention back to the bird he was prepping, humming to himself while popping a strawberry into his mouth.
I didn’t turn away.
I kept my eyes on the Rear Admiral.
My mind, stripped of its “editor” distractions and honed by two months of survival, was already calculating.
She was a Marine official.
She had knowledge of the current world state, the Marine’s tactical movements, and, most importantly, she knew how to navigate the Calm Belt.
I had been looking for a way off this island.
I had been looking for a ship, or at least the knowledge to build one that wouldn’t be swallowed by a Sea King.
Fate had just dropped a Rear Admiral into my lap.
Now, I just had to figure out if she was going to be my ticket to the South Blue, or the person I’d have to bury in the forest.
Word Count: 1878
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