The highest echelons of Marine Headquarters did not smell like blood, gunpowder, or the salty spray of the Grand Line.
They smelled, quite aggressively, of green tea and bureaucratic despair.
I was currently standing at parade rest in the center of an office that was roughly the size of a small gymnasium.
The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves overflowing with tactical reports, budget requests, and the tears of a thousand overworked clerks.
I was eleven years old, wearing my impeccably tailored grey suit, with my fedora pulled low to hide the fact that I was actively practicing sleeping with my eyes open.
‘Standing requires the continuous engagement of the quadriceps, calves, and core musculature,’ my internal monologue drawled lazily, entirely detached from the high-stakes disciplinary hearing occurring around me.
‘It is an inefficient use of calories.
There is a very comfortable-looking leather sofa exactly fourteen feet to my left.
If I utilize a low-output *Soru*, I could reach it in 0.2 seconds and enter a rapid REM cycle before anyone notices.’
Before I could execute my tactical nap, the man sitting behind the massive mahogany desk slammed his palms down, cracking the wood.
“He bisected a man, Garp!” Admiral Sengoku roared.
The man was a towering figure with a braided goatee, wearing round glasses and a hat adorned with a life-sized seagull.
“A pirate captain with an eighty-five million berry bounty! With a single inch of exposed steel! He is eleven years old!”
“Bwahahaha!” Garp, sitting entirely too comfortably in a chair that was groaning under his weight, slapped his knee.
“I know! The kid has great instincts! You should have seen the look on Iron-Bones’ face when his club fell apart!”
“It is not a joke, you imbecile!” Sengoku bellowed, his face turning a shade of purple that suggested a high risk of hypertension.
“He is an unsanctioned combatant! He isn’t a cadet, he isn’t a commissioned officer, and he isn’t even legally registered in the World Government census! You can’t just pick up a psychopathic child, put a fedora on him, and call him your ‘shadow’!”
As the two titans of the Marine forces bickered, my fragmented assassin’s mind instinctively went to work on Sengoku.
‘Target: Admiral Sengoku.
Threat level: Apocalyptic,’ the red mist whispered from the dark corners of my brain, calculating the geometry of the room.
‘His muscular density rivals Garp’s, but his breathing pattern suggests internal energy manipulation.
A Mythical Zoan anomaly.
If he transforms, the shockwave alone would liquefy my internal organs.
Lethal strike zones: Inaccessible.
Vulnerabilities: High blood pressure and an apparent allergy to paperwork.’
I shifted my gaze slightly downward.
Standing next to Sengoku’s desk was a small, white goat.
It was currently chewing on what looked like a highly classified deployment schedule for the G-5 base.
‘The goat is systematically destroying Marine intelligence,’ my mind noted with genuine respect.
‘It operates with zero intent, completely bypassing all Haki detection.
A master of stealth.
It is the most dangerous entity in this room.’
“He’s staying with me, Sengoku,” Garp said, his boisterous laughter fading into the heavy, immovable tone that brokered no argument.
“The kid has a lock. He knows the rules. If he steps out of line, I deal with him. But out there? He’s a ghost. He gets things done while your shiny admirals are busy posing for the newspapers.”
Sengoku rubbed his temples, a headache visibly pulsing behind his eyes.
He looked directly at me.
I maintained a perfectly deadpan expression, though internally I was begging for permission to sit down.
“You,” Sengoku pointed a massive finger at me.
“Do you have any idea the logistical nightmare you’ve caused? The paperwork required to cover up the fact that a child just butchered an entire pirate vanguard?”
‘Paperwork,’ I thought, a cold shiver running down my spine.
‘The true enemy.’
The temperature in the room didn’t drop.
It didn’t spike.
Instead, the air simply felt…
clean.
The heavy, oppressive tension of Sengoku’s anger and Garp’s stubbornness seemed to instantly wash away, replaced by the crisp, calming scent of fresh laundry dried in the sun.
An older woman walked in.
She was relatively small compared to the giants in the room, wearing a standard Marine coat over her shoulders.
Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and her sharp, observant eyes carried a quiet, terrifying authority.
Vice Admiral Tsuru.
Instantly, the Absolute Murderer locked inside my scabbard panicked.
‘WARNING,’ the psychopathic static in my head screamed, a visceral, biological alarm that made the hairs on my arms stand up.
‘Anomaly detected.
Threat level: Conceptual.
Her presence actively deteriorates lethal intent.
The red mist is neutralizing.
Evade.
Retreat.
She is unmaking the math.’
I gripped my scabbard tightly with my left hand, my knuckles turning white.
It wasn’t kinetic fear.
I knew Tsuru couldn’t punch a mountain into dust like Garp, and she couldn’t turn into a golden god like Sengoku.
But her Devil Fruit—the Wash-Wash Fruit—didn’t just clean clothes.
It washed and folded *hearts*.
It cleansed malice.
And my entire survival mechanism—the synthetic, red-mist life-support system that allowed me to fight monsters and break the laws of physics—was constructed entirely out of pure, unadulterated malice.
To her, I wasn’t a threat.
I was a stain.
“Stop yelling, Sengoku, you’re giving the entire fortress a headache,” Tsuru said calmly, her voice smooth and grounded.
She walked past the arguing Admirals and stopped directly in front of me.
She looked down.
I looked up, keeping the brim of my hat low.
For a long moment, she didn’t say anything.
Her eyes scanned the tailored grey suit, the exhaustion etched into the bags under my dead eyes, and finally, her gaze fell to my left hand, entirely white-knuckled around the black wooden scabbard.
She didn’t use Observation Haki.
She didn’t need to.
She just looked at me and saw exactly what I was.
“You must be exhausted,” Tsuru said softly.
The words hit me harder than Garp’s two-ton anchor.
For an entire year, Garp had treated me like a weapon to be tempered.
The cadets looked at me like a monster.
The pirates looked at me like a grim reaper.
‘She is disarming us without raising a hand,’ my internal monologue calculated, the frantic static of the Absolute Murderer slowly fading into a bizarre, quiet peace.
‘She is not exploiting a physical blind spot.
She is exploiting our absolute lack of a healthy sleep schedule.’
“I am currently operating at a caloric deficit, ma’am,” I replied, my voice flat.
“And my feet hurt.”
Tsuru’s lips twitched upward into a very small, motherly smile.
“Sit down on the couch, boy.”
I didn’t wait for Sengoku’s permission.
I turned on my heel, walked the fourteen feet to the leather sofa, and collapsed into it.
The cushions were heavenly.
I immediately pulled my fedora down over my face, crossed my arms, and let out a long, heavy sigh.
Sengoku sputtered.
“Tsuru! He is currently under disciplinary review for unsanctioned slaughter!”
“He’s eleven, Sengoku,” Tsuru replied smoothly, turning back to the desk.
“Look at him.
He’s holding onto that scabbard like it’s the only thing keeping him from falling apart.
Garp gave him a lock, but a lock isn’t enough.
He needs an anchor.
If you leave him entirely in the hands of this idiot,” she gestured to Garp, who was now feeding rice crackers to the goat, “he’s going to snap, and then you’ll have a real massacre on your hands.”
“Hey!” Garp protested through a mouthful of food.
“I’m a great teacher! I threw him off a cliff and he figured it out!”
Tsuru ignored him, fixing Sengoku with a stern glare.
“Make him officially a Warrant Officer. Assign him as Garp’s shadow, off the public books. But I will be taking over his psychological evaluations. He will report to my quarters twice a week for tea, and I will make sure his suit is properly washed. He’s a killer, Sengoku. But he doesn’t want to be.”
Beneath the shadow of my hat, my eyes were closed.
‘The woman is a tactical genius,’ my lazy inner voice hummed, completely ignoring the horrific implications of my own mental instability.
‘Tea time implies sitting.
Sitting implies a severe lack of cardio.
Psychological evaluations mean I get to sit in a chair and stare at a wall while someone else talks.
I am completely on board with this arrangement.’
“Fine,” Sengoku groaned, rubbing his face and finally admitting defeat.
He glared at Garp.
“He’s your responsibility, Garp. If he steps out of line and draws that blade on a Marine, I will execute him myself. Understood?”
“Relax, Sengoku!” Garp laughed, slapping his desk and cracking it further.
“The kid is lazy! Unless you make him do paperwork, he’s completely harmless!”
From the couch, I let out a soft snore, having already achieved a perfect state of REM sleep.
The Absolute Murderer was locked in the scabbard.
Garp was the immovable wall that kept me in check.
But as I drifted off to sleep, wrapped in the lingering, clean scent of Tsuru’s presence, I realized I had finally found something just as important.
I had found a babysitter who wouldn’t make me run laps.
It was, undoubtedly, the greatest tactical victory of my entire life.