The twenty-one days following the wave were a slow-motion car crash of personalities, cultures, and lies.
For the first week, Rear Admiral Hototogisu was little more than a corpse that still drew breath.
To see a rising star of the Marines, a woman whose “Justice” was an absolute, unwavering light, reduced to a shivering heap on our chain-link floor was a jagged pill to swallow.
She didn’t eat, she didn’t speak.
She stared at the dying embers of the campfire with eyes that saw only the churning black water that had swallowed her men.
I had to play God to keep her alive.
Every night, while Gammamon kept watch, I would sit at the edge of our chain dome and bleed kinetic energy into the floor that was then transferred into her body.
I called it “The Pulse.” Fa-Jin energy is a vibrant, aggressive thing, it didn’t just knit her bones, it set her nervous system on fire.
It was a biological hyper-stimulant.
By the middle of the second week, she had developed a “kinetic fever.” Her mind wanted to stay in the dark, but her body was being forced into overdrive.
It was a cruel necessity, I had to poison her with energy just to force her to want to live.
The result was a woman who woke up with a terrifying, artificial vitality.
And the moment she was back on her feet, the “Rear Admiral” returned with a self-righteousness that soured the very air of our camp.
The second week was defined by the mask.
“You move well for a civilian, Victor,” she said one afternoon, her eyes tracking me as I moved through shadowboxing drills.
She sat on a fallen log, cleaning her fingernails with a piece of sharpened wood.
Even in her tattered orange polka-dot shirt, she carried herself as if she were standing on the bridge of a battleship.
“I spent my life in the South Blue,” I replied.
This was the lie we had polished.
“I’m from Karate Island.
We don’t believe in standing still there.”
“Karate Island,” she mused.
“A place of martial tradition.
Is that where you learned your…
imitations?”
She was referring to the Rokushiki, the “Six Powers.” Earlier that morning, she had caught me using Soru to dodge a training strike from Gammamon.
She hadn’t been impressed, she had been livid.
“These aren’t imitations, Admiral,” I said.
“The Rokushiki originated from the martial masters of Karate Island long before the World Government was a force.
The Marines simply took our heritage, modified it, and called it their own.
What you call the ‘Six Powers,’ is our heritage.”
It was a total fabrication, but I said it with the conviction of a man who had lived it.
Hototogisu’s face flushed a deep, angry red.
“Blasphemy,” she hissed.
“The Rokushiki is the sacred pinnacle of Marine training.
I forbid you from using those moves in my presence.
You are not a soldier of the law.
You are unworthy of using the Marine’s techniques.”
I just smiled.
I had also told her Gammamon was a rare beast from the sky that had consumed the Hito Hito no Mi, which had transformed him into his current form.
To her, he was just a “Zoan freak”, a powerful asset the Marines would eventually want to catalog.
The true test of our “alliance” came on the tenth day.
Hototogisu, frustrated by her physical stagnation, demanded a spar.
“I want to see what your ‘Zoan’ can actually do,” she challenged.
Gammamon looked at me, and I gave him a subtle nod.
Keep it Rookie.
No fire.
No evolution.
The clearing became a blur of motion.
Hototogisu didn’t just move, she exploded.
She launched herself forward, her hands a rhythmic storm of palm strikes and knife-hand chops.
Gammamon dropped low, his reptilian agility allowing him to slide beneath her guard like a shadow.
He lunged upward, snapping a Shigan toward her shoulder.
Hototogisu pivoted on a dime, her heels digging into the dirt as she parried the strike with the back of her wrist.
The sound of their collision was like two slabs of metal hitting a granite floor.
She didn’t let up, transitioning into a low sweep that Gammamon avoided by backflipping into a tree trunk.
“Too slow!” she barked, appearing in front of him before he could even land.
She unleashed a flurry of a dozen strikes in three seconds.
Gammamon was a dervish, parrying with his claws, his scarf fluttering wildly.
He caught her wrist, tried to throw her, but she used the momentum to drive a knee into his chest.
Gammamon grunted, his feet skidding across the mesh floor as he stabilized.
They reached a stalemate, both breathing hard, their eyes locked in mutual respect.
“He is…
formidable,” Hototogisu panted.
“But he fights like a wild thing.”
The peace was shattered on the fourteenth day.
Hototogisu was foraging with me when a piercing, metallic shriek tore through the canopy.
A Phoenix-Peacock Hybrid, the living, breathing titan of Zone 2, had attacked us.
“Battle stations!” Hototogisu screamed.
The bird plummeted like a falling star.
It began to launch its feathers, each one a crystalline shard of fire, like a volley from a heavy machine gun.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
The feathers hissed through the air, turning trees to splinters.
Hototogisu moved with a speed that blurred her movement.
She didn’t have her sword, but she used her bare hands to swat the fiery projectiles aside, her skin darkening with the first real trace of Armament Haki I’d seen her use.
“Victor!
The chains!
Bind its wings!”
I unleashed the Jade Wings.
I kept them as simple blades but extended the chains, weaving five hundred meters of black metal through the undergrowth.
Hototogisu tried to close the distance.
The bird let out a Sonic Scream.
The wall of sound vibrated our very bones and sent us flying backward.
The world spinning as I slammed into a rock.
Hototogisu was the first back up.
She engaged the bird in a brutal, close-range dance.
She was using everything, her Marine training, and her pride.
The bird’s four talons shredded the earth where she stood, but she was already gone, reappearing above its head for a crushing strike.
I saw the opening.
I willed the chains to constrict.
They wrapped around the bird’s throat and its massive wings, pinning it to the earth.
“Now, Victor!
Kill it!” Hototogisu yelled.
“No!” I shouted.
I threw myself between her and the beast.
I could see its nest a little further away from where we were fighting, filled with unhatched eggs.
I used the Jade Wings to manually drain a small amount of its blood, just enough for a clone, and then I channeled a burst of Fa-Jin into the bird’s wounds, stabilizing it.
“Go!” I hissed.
The bird vanished into the canopy.
“You are weak, Victor,” Hototogisu whispered, her eyes filled with disgust.
“A Marine would have finished the job.”
A week later, I “allowed” Hototogisu to command me into sending my new scout, the stone-green Jade Clone of the Phoenix, to find a ship.
When the clone returned, it nuzzled its cold head against my chest.
I looked at Hototogisu, my face a mask of false sincerity.
“The bird found it.
A ship.
It saw the blue prow and the Marine markings.”
Hototogisu fell to her knees, relief escaping her.
“Thank the stars…
We are saved”
“It’s roughly eighty miles to the East,” I announced, intentionally feeding her the wrong direction.
“We move at first light.”
Late that night, after the fire had burned down and Hototogisu had finally collapsed sleeping, I leaned toward Gammamon.
“The bird did find a ship,” I whispered.
“But the ship is North.”
Gammamon nodded, his yellow eyes reflecting the glowing coals.
Gammamon looked at the sleeping Marine, then back at me.
“She thinks she’s leading us to her world, doesn’t she?”
“Let her think that,” I whispered, a cold, cryptic smile touching my lips.
“We are not under any obligation to follow her.
Tomorrow, the final phase begins.
She won’t realize the board has been flipped until it’s far too late.”
Gammamon bumped his paw against my arm.
We sat there in silence, two silhouettes against the dying embers, waiting for the dawn of a voyage that only one of us truly understood.
Word Count: 1386
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