I had butchered military vanguards, stared down pirate captains, and survived being drop-kicked off a jagged cliff by the Hero of the Marines more times than I could mathematically count.
But as I limped through the ash-choked ruins of the pulverized cathedral toward the trembling eleven-year-old girl, I realized I was completely and utterly out of my depth.
Approaching a crying child in a war zone required empathy, warmth, and a comforting, paternal demeanor.
I possessed absolutely none of these things.
I was a fourteen-year-old boy in a shredded, blood-soaked bespoke mafia suit.
I was bleeding profusely from my forehead, carrying a cursed sword that whispered about murder, and radiating the lingering, heavy aura of a mass casualty event.
‘I must look like the Grim Reaper’s intern,’ I thought, stopping a few feet away from her so I wouldn’t trigger her flight response.
‘I am the absolute last person a child wants to see in an apocalypse.’
She backed up against a shattered stone pillar, her small knuckles turning entirely white around her broken wooden practice sword.
Her kimono was ruined and coated in thick grey ash, and her knees were badly scraped, but her dark eyes were blazing with a stubborn, frantic defiance that completely overshadowed her fear.
“Stay back!” she yelled.
Her voice cracked, betraying her sheer terror, but she leveled the jagged point of the wooden stick directly at my chest.
I looked at the splintered stick.
I looked at her shaking, soot-stained arms.
‘If she swings that, the splintered wood will shatter against my Haki-trained dermal layer, and the kinetic rebound will undoubtedly dislocate her fragile wrists,’ my brain calculated.
The cold, psychopathic math was still running, but it was entirely inverted.
It wasn’t looking for ways to hurt her; it was desperately analyzing every possible variable to ensure she didn’t accidentally hurt herself.
I slowly raised my hands in a universal gesture of surrender, wincing visibly as my cracked ribs protested the movement.
“I am not going to hurt you,” I said.
My voice was a deadpan, exhausted whisper that barely carried over the howling wind.
“Please put the stick down before you give yourself a splinter. Splinters lead to infection. Infections require medical paperwork. Please, do not create any more paperwork for me today.”
She didn’t lower the stick.
In fact, she swung it.
With a desperate, tearful cry, she lunged forward, closing the distance between us, and brought the broken wooden sword down hard directly on my shin.
It connected with a hollow, entirely pathetic *thwack*.
It didn’t hurt—Vice Admiral Garp had literally dropped a boulder on that exact leg three weeks ago during morning drills—but the physics of her attack immediately backfired.
She had vastly miscalculated her own momentum.
As the stick bounced harmlessly off my shin, her wooden sandals caught hard on a jagged piece of pulverized limestone.
She pitched violently forward, her arms flailing wildly like a broken windmill, and she landed entirely flat on her face in the ash with a muffled *splat*.
I stared down at her.
She didn’t move for a solid three seconds.
‘Tactical assessment,’ my brain drawled lazily as I watched the dust settle around her unmoving form.
‘She possesses absolute, commendable fearlessness, but her center of gravity is tragically flawed.
She is a biological hazard to herself.
If left entirely unsupervised, she will undoubtedly trip over her own feet and perish before she reaches adulthood.’
She slowly pushed herself up, spitting a mouthful of grey ash out onto the rubble.
Her face burned bright red beneath the soot, a mixture of profound embarrassment and sheer anger.
To spare her fragile pride, I obligingly took a dramatic half-step backward, grabbing my knee and feigning injury.
“Ow,” I said flatly, projecting absolutely zero pain.
“You have bested me. I yield to your devastating technique. My leg is surely broken.”
She blinked, wiping the ash from her nose, clearly confused by my absolute lack of resistance.
She looked at her broken stick, then back up at my dead, tired eyes.
I slowly unbuttoned my ruined, dust-covered suit jacket.
I slipped it off my shoulders and gently tossed it over her trembling frame.
It was massive on her, engulfing her like a heavy, bloodstained grey tent, but it immediately stopped her violent shivering.
“My name is Bogard,” I said, crouching down carefully to her eye level, ignoring the screaming pain in my chest.
“You are very brave, but the ceiling is currently missing, and it is very cold. What is your name?”
She pulled the oversized jacket tighter around her shoulders, sniffing loudly.
“G-Gion.”
‘Gion.’
The name echoed in my head, slotting into place like a final puzzle piece.
Gion.
The future Marine Admiral candidate, Momousagi.
The incredibly powerful, fiercely loyal swordswoman of the Navy.
But right now, she was just a clumsy, fiercely stubborn eleven-year-old orphan standing in the ruins of a crushed kingdom.
‘She is perfect,’ I decided instantly, the cold logic rewriting my entire life plan in a microsecond.
‘She possesses zero hesitation, excellent combat aggression, and she fits perfectly in my spare jacket.
I have no income, no permanent address, and my legal guardian is a giant who eats blocks of cheese for breakfast.
I am entirely unqualified for parenthood.
I am claiming her anyway.’
Before I could vocalize my completely unhinged unilateral adoption, a blur of white and gold dropped from the boiling sky, landing heavily in the rubble directly between us.
The dust cleared, revealing Vice Admiral Tsuru.
She was in her prime—a fierce, untouchable tactician—but right now she looked breathless, her usually pristine Marine coat scorched and torn.
Her eyes darted frantically around the ruined courtyard until they landed on the tiny girl wrapped in my oversized suit jacket.
“Gion!” Tsuru gasped, her voice cracking with a profound, overwhelming relief.
“Tsuru-san!” Gion cried out.
She dropped the broken stick, tripped over the hem of my jacket, recovered clumsily, and ran past me, throwing her arms around the Vice Admiral’s waist.
Tsuru dropped to her knees in the ash, wrapping her arms tightly around the girl, burying her face in Gion’s dark hair.
I stood up slowly, adjusting my fedora to give them a moment of privacy.
I watched Tsuru carefully check the girl for injuries, wiping the soot from her tear-streaked face.
Gion was the little sister of Captain Kaji, Tsuru’s protégé who had perished in the initial impact.
Tsuru had clearly been desperately searching the rubble for her.
‘The tactical goat has secured the asset,’ I thought lazily, feeling the adrenaline finally bleed entirely out of my system.
My cracked ribs throbbed with a dull, nauseating ache.
Tsuru finally stood up, holding Gion’s hand securely.
She looked over at me, her sharp eyes taking in my shredded shirt, my bleeding head, and the fact that I had draped my only jacket over the child.
“You found her,” Tsuru said softly, the gratitude evident in her tone.
“Incorrect, ma’am,” I replied, crossing my arms and wincing.
“She found me. She assaulted a Marine Warrant Officer with a blunt instrument, and then immediately headbutted the ground in an unprovoked attack against the pavement. I have decided to overlook this transgression, on one condition.”
Tsuru raised an eyebrow, her brilliant tactical mind instantly wary of my deadpan tone.
“And what condition is that, Bogard?”
“I am claiming her,” I stated bluntly.
“She is my cute little sister now.”
Tsuru stared at me in complete silence.
Gion peeked out from behind Tsuru’s leg, looking at me as if I had just sprouted a second head.
“Excuse me?” Tsuru said, her voice flattening into a dangerous, icy tone.
“You heard me,” I continued, entirely unfazed by the terrifying aura of the Great Staff Officer.
“She has excellent form, she is not afraid of ghosts, and she is phenomenally clumsy. I have evaluated her, and she requires immediate, constant supervision. I will take responsibility for her meals and her swordsmanship. You may handle her laundry, as my skills in that department are severely lacking.”
“Bogard, you are fourteen years old,” Tsuru snapped, her exhaustion briefly giving way to sheer maternal exasperation.
“You are an unsanctioned assassin who sleeps with a cursed sword and operates entirely outside the law. You cannot claim a traumatized child like a stray cat you found in an alleyway!”
“I just did,” I argued lazily, leaning back against a shattered stone pillar.
“It is a done deal. The paperwork is entirely mental, but I assure you, it is filed.”
“She is an orphan of the World Government!” Tsuru scolded, stepping forward to shield Gion from my sociopathic flavor of adoption.
“I am placing her under my personal protection. You are not adopting a sister, you little psychopath!”
“I am a psychopath,” I nodded reasonably, conceding the point.
“Which is exactly why she needs me. Who else is going to dismantle the people who try to make her cry? You? You use fabric softener. I use severe blunt force trauma. It is a highly synergistic dynamic for survival in the Grand Line.”
“I am going to strangle him with his own necktie for what he has done to your brain.”
“Hey,” Gion piped up, her voice small but stubbornly defensive.
She glared at me from behind Tsuru.
“I’m not a stray cat! And I don’t need a weird, bleeding teenager to protect me! I didn’t even trip, the ground moved!”
I looked at her, a rare, microscopic smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth.
‘Fierce.
Independent.
In complete denial of her own lack of coordination.
Yes, she is definitely my sister.’
Before I could explain to Tsuru the logistical benefits of having a sibling to pawn cardio drills off on, the sky above us violently ripped open.
The argument was instantly drowned out by a deafening, apocalyptic roar.
We all snapped our heads upward.
High above the ash clouds, the clash between Garp and the Golden Lion had reached a terrifying crescendo.
The atmosphere wasn’t just cracking anymore; it was fragmenting like a shattered mirror.
And falling directly through the center of that shattered sky was a piece of a floating island—a massive slab of bedrock the size of a Marine battleship, completely engulfed in roaring flames.
And it was hurtling directly toward the courtyard we were standing in.
‘Threat level: Absolute,’ my mind calculated, the deadpan humor instantly vaporizing, replaced by a cold, terrifying singularity of focus.
‘The blast radius will vaporize this entire sector.
Tsuru cannot shield the girl from this kinetic mass.
Evasion is impossible.’
Tsuru’s eyes widened in horror.
She grabbed Gion, pulling the girl tightly to her chest, bracing for an impact they couldn’t possibly survive.
I didn’t brace.
I didn’t breathe.
I stepped smoothly in front of them, placing myself directly between my new little sister and the falling sky.
I widened my stance, completely ignoring the agonizing scream of my cracked ribs and my torn muscles.
My left hand gripped the black wooden scabbard.
My right hand hovered over the hilt.
I didn’t draw the sword all the way.
I only needed a fraction.
*Click.*
The blade slid exactly one inch out of the scabbard.
The world went dead silent.
The red mist erupted from my pores, compressing instantly into the exposed steel.
I didn’t feel tired anymore.
I didn’t feel the pain.
I only felt the Absolute Murderer, unified in a singular, protective purpose.
I looked up at the falling mountain, my dead eyes glowing in the shadow of my fedora.
“Nobody,” I whispered to the sky, “drops a rock on my sister.”
**Author’s Note** *Drops mic and immediately faceplants into a pillow…* **Typing_In_My_Sleep** here.
Alright folks, I have officially completed my part of the bargain.
The chapters are out in the wild!
Now, the rest is entirely up to you.
Or honestly, just do whatever you want with it—I am way too tired to micromanage your reading experience!
My end of the deal is done, so I am retreating back to my natural habitat: burying my face in textbooks and taking a very, very long nap.
Alright, fading into unconsciousness now.
Wake me up when the next chapter is due…