Elian woke to the stark, blinding glare of a fluorescent ceiling lamp.
For a few fleeting, merciful seconds, his mind was entirely blank.
The rhythmic, swaying gravity of the ocean replaced the unyielding, blood-soaked cobblestones of Oakhaven.
He was lying on a stiff mattress in the medical bay of a Marine dreadnought.
His small, ten-year-old body was wrapped tightly in clean, white bandages, his skin scrubbed raw and free of the thick layers of gore that had coated him hours prior.
The stark white of the room burned his eyes, and the air smelled sharply of iodine and sterile linen.
He stared at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the ship’s engines.
He felt entirely hollow.
Then, the dam broke.
The memories didn’t return sequentially; they crashed into his brain all at once like a violent tidal wave.
The wet, tearing sound of Vane’s butcher knife sinking into his father’s neck.
His mother’s desperate, bubbling breath as the oleander poison drowned her lungs.
The horrifying, frictionless sensation of dragging a blade across a soldier’s throat.
The mountain of butchered corpses he had built with his own two hands.
Elian gasped, violently curling into a tight ball on the cot.
The grief wasn’t just an emotion; it was a physical, crippling agony.
His chest caved in as if he had been crushed beneath a boulder.
Hot, blinding tears streamed down his face, soaking into the pristine white bandages as he choked on his own desperate sobs.
He gripped his hair with trembling hands, pulling hard enough to sting, trying to wake up from a nightmare that refused to end.
He was just a boy.
He had fished for mackerel with his father.
He had helped his mother bake bread.
And in a single afternoon, his entire universe had been violently ripped away, replaced by an ocean of blood.
He trembled violently, a child completely shattered by the absolute end of his world, begging to whatever gods were listening for his parents to walk through the medical bay doors.
‘Heart rate is accelerating beyond safe parameters,’ a cold, clinical voice whispered from the fragmented depths of his past life.
It was an involuntary defense mechanism—the soul of a master assassin rising up from the dark to kill the pain before the pain could kill the host.
‘In the world I remember, this level of emotional distress in a hostile environment is a fatal vulnerability.
The physical tremors are currently destroying fine motor control.
Crying blurs the corneas and compromises visual threat assessment.
This grief is a biological liability.
It will get us killed.
We have to stop the pain.’
The crushing human sorrow began to curdle, rapidly transmuting into something sharp, vicious, and utterly devoid of humanity.
‘The only way to stop the pain is to ensure nothing else in this room is breathing.
Find a scalpel.
Sever the vocal cords of the massive presence sitting in the corner.
Quiet the environment.
Turn them into meat so they cannot hurt us.’
A faint, ominous red mist began to bleed from Elian’s bandages.
The raw, excruciating human trauma was actively being suffocated, forcefully replaced by the terrifying, familiar urge to slaughter everything in his immediate vicinity just to feel a modicum of control again.
His tear-streaked eyes went completely dead.
He sat up slowly, his gaze locking onto a silver tray of surgical instruments resting on a metal table nearby.
Elian’s head snapped toward the corner of the room.
Vice Admiral Garp was sitting heavily on a reinforced medical crate, aggressively crunching on a bag of rice crackers.
The giant of a man was completely unfazed by the suffocating killing intent that was rapidly dropping the temperature in the room.
“You’re not using Haki,” Garp said, chewing loudly, his dark eyes sharp despite his casual, slouching posture.
“I’ve fought monsters for thirty years, and I’ve never seen anything like what you did on that island. You’re not just swinging a knife. You’re taking pure, unfiltered killing intent and compressing it until it becomes physical. You’re forcing the conceptual weight of a massacre into a single motion.”
‘He is sitting perfectly on his center of gravity,’ Elian’s mind calculated obsessively, the red mist thickening in the sterile air, searching for the math to unmake the man.
‘Distance: twelve feet.
A scalpel to the jugular requires a throwing velocity that a normal child cannot physically achieve.
I will have to close the distance, drop below his peripheral vision, and strike upward beneath the jawline.’
“But it’s eating you alive,” Garp interrupted.
His voice dropped an octave, easily cutting through the boy’s obsessive, predatory trance.
“A human mind isn’t built to hold that much death, kid. You’re using it to hide from the pain. Every time you let that red fog out, it burns away a piece of your soul. Keep it up, and you won’t be a boy anymore. You’ll just be a rabid dog. And I put down rabid dogs.”
Elian froze.
Through the blinding, obsessive physics of murder, the terrified ten-year-old boy heard the unyielding, grounding truth in Garp’s words.
He didn’t want to be a monster.
He didn’t want to look at living people and only see the fastest geometric angles to stop their hearts.
He just wanted the agonizing ache in his chest to end.
Garp reached beside his crate and picked up a folded bundle, tossing it onto the foot of Elian’s cot.
Elian looked down.
It was a tailored, dark grey suit, sized specifically for a child.
Resting on top of the fabric was a wide-brimmed fedora, and beside it lay a standard-issue Marine katana, secured tightly in a plain, polished black wooden scabbard.
“You can’t get rid of the monster,” Garp said, the heavy gravity of a seasoned veteran anchoring the chaotic room.
“The things you’ve seen, the way your brain works now… that doesn’t wash out. So you have to cage it. You need a lock.”
Garp pointed a massive, calloused finger at the sword.
“That scabbard is your lock. From now on, you tie that blade to your hip, and you never draw it unless you intend to erase something from this world. As long as the steel is hidden, you keep your mind. You stay human. The second you draw it, you let the monster out. Understood?”
Elian stared at the sword.
His small, trembling hands reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the cool, polished wood of the black scabbard, something in his fragmented mind violently shifted.
‘Physical anchor engaged,’ his assassin’s mind rationalized, immediately tethering the chaotic, bleeding violence to the solid object in his hands.
‘Lethality is now conceptually contained within the sheath.
The threat is managed.
The environment is secure.’
The red mist instantly receded, sucking back into Elian’s pores like a dying flame.
The suffocating, heavy pressure in the room vanished, leaving behind only the sterile smell of iodine.
His mind cleared.
The deafening obsession with kinetic violence faded into a quiet, manageable hum in the back of his skull.
It was still there, constantly mapping the room for exits and vulnerabilities, but it was finally caged.
Elian slowly slid off the cot, his bare feet touching the cold metal deck of the dreadnought.
He stripped off the hospital gown and dressed in the grey suit, the thick fabric hiding his small, traumatized, and bandaged frame.
He strapped the katana to his waist, his left hand resting instinctively on the hilt.
The physical weight of the sword felt like a grounding rod for his sanity. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Finally, he picked up the fedora.
He placed it on his head, pulling the wide brim down.
The dark shadow of the hat fell over his eyes, perfectly hiding the lingering, inescapable sorrow of a dead fisherman’s son.
Garp watched the transformation in absolute silence, a grim, respectful smile tugging at the corners of his scarred lips.
He stood up, towering over the boy, completely filling the space of the room.
“What’s your name, kid?” Garp asked.
Elian opened his mouth, but the word caught in his throat like ash.
Elian was a boy who fished with his dad.
Elian was a boy who ate fresh bread with his mom.
Elian died on the cobblestones of Oakhaven.
That boy was gone forever, buried alongside the village.
He didn’t have an answer.
Garp nodded slowly, understanding the profound weight of the silence.
He walked over, resting a heavy, warm hand on the boy’s suited shoulder.
“Elian is gone,” Garp said softly, officially closing the book on the tragedy.
“From this day forward, you’re my shadow. You’re the blade I keep in the dark to protect the light. Your name is Bogard.”
The boy beneath the fedora didn’t flinch.
He simply nodded, his thumb resting firmly against the iron guard of his sheathed sword, holding the absolute murderer at bay.
“Understood… sir,” Bogard whispered.
His voice was completely flat, a deadpan echo of a child who had seen too much.
He turned away from the Vice Admiral and stepped out of the medical bay, walking into the bustling, brightly lit corridors of the Marine dreadnought.
The Marines he passed paid no attention to the tiny boy in the oversized hat, completely unaware that a walking massacre had just quietly slipped into their ranks.
The absolute murderer was safely locked away in its wooden cage.
But Bogard’s new life in the shadows had just begun.
**Author’s Note** *Yawns loud enough to wake the neighbors…* **Typing_In_My_Sleep** here.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room: that challenge I was supposed to finish.
Yeah…
that didn’t happen.
I looked at the deadline, my cozy bed looked at me, and the bed won.
Flawless victory.
We’ll get ’em next time (or maybe the time after that).
Second, a quick apology for my recent upload fumbles.
Navigating this app while sleep-deprived is rough, so I am officially renewing my *advanced forgiveness* subscription for any future mistakes.
I will definitely click the wrong button again eventually.
Finally, a heads-up: my subconscious has been busy cooking.
I might start dropping more fanfictions soon!
Some will be *One Piece* related, and others will be completely random universes I dreamed up while taking a nap.
Alright, my pillow is getting cold.
Catch you guys later…