The ceiling of the Marineford intensive care unit was a masterpiece of entirely unimaginative architecture.
I stared blankly at the pristine white acoustic tiles, taking slow, meticulously measured breaths.
My chest felt as though it had been tightly bound in thick iron bands, but the sharp, stabbing, white-hot agony of my cracked ribs had subsided into a dull, heavily medicated ache.
The faint, rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor provided a steady, monotonous soundtrack to my return to the waking world.
‘Internal clock estimate: I have been unconscious for approximately seventy-two hours,’ my mind calculated, a wave of lazy, administrative satisfaction washing over me.
The chaos of the Eidolon battlefield, the falling mountain, the golden pirate floating in the sky, the sheer panic of drawing sixteen inches of the cursed blade—it all felt like a distant, highly exhausting fever dream.
‘Three solid days of uninterrupted, medically mandated sleep.
No cardio.
No dodging flintlocks.
No Vice Admiral Garp kicking me off jagged cliffs to test my aerodynamics.
Getting crushed by the supersonic shockwave of two living gods colliding was, without a single doubt, entirely worth it.
I have discovered the ultimate loophole to the Marine training regimen.
I should get hospitalized more often.
I wonder if I can fake a secondary concussion for an extra week of bed rest.’
I slowly turned my head, wincing slightly as the stiff muscles in my neck loudly protested the movement.
A young Marine nurse walked into the private room, holding a metal clipboard and checking a silver pocket watch.
She jumped slightly when she looked up and saw my eyes open, the dark, deadpan stare peering out from beneath the heavy white bandages wrapped around my forehead.
“Warrant Officer Bogard! You’re awake!” she gasped, rushing over to my bedside to check my IV line.
Her hands were shaking slightly as she adjusted the drip.
Even unconscious, I was still the terrifying, blood-soaked anomaly of Headquarters.
“I need to page Vice Admiral Tsuru right away. The medical staff has been on standby. How are you feeling?”
“Like I was used as a baseball by a pirate emperor,” I replied, my voice a dry, raspy whisper that sounded like grinding stones.
I looked past her, toward the closed wooden door of my private room.
“Before you page the Vice Admiral, I require an immediate status report. Did the clumsy eleven-year-old girl survive the evacuation of the island?”
The nurse smiled warmly, the professional tension leaving her shoulders.
“You mean little Gion? Oh, yes. She hasn’t left the ward in three days. Vice Admiral Tsuru had to physically drag her down to the cafeteria just to make her eat a proper meal. She’s been sitting in the hallway waiting for you to wake up. She’s fiercely stubborn, that one. She tried to bite an orderly who told her visiting hours were over.”
‘The asset is secure and exhibits extreme, borderline feral loyalty,’ my inner voice noted with profound, dark satisfaction.
‘Excellent.
The unilateral adoption process is proceeding flawlessly.
I have successfully acquired a subordinate.’
As if summoned by the mere mention of her name, the heavy wooden door to my room slowly creaked open.
Gion peeked around the doorframe.
She was wearing a clean, crisp, standard-issue Marine cadet uniform that was slightly too big for her, the white sleeves rolled up past her bruised wrists. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
She stepped tentatively into the room, holding a small woven basket filled with fresh fruit.
Her dark eyes locked onto me, wide, hesitant, and shining with an overwhelming emotion she was clearly trying to suppress behind a wall of sheer stubbornness.
She took three rapid, eager steps forward.
‘Watch the transition strip,’ I thought lazily, observing her trajectory.
She did not watch the transition strip.
She caught the toe of her wooden sandal squarely on the raised edge of the linoleum, completely lost her footing, and pitched violently forward.
She didn’t catch herself.
She didn’t execute a tactical roll to disperse the kinetic energy.
She miraculously bypassed the edge of the hospital bed entirely and landed perfectly flat on her face against the hard floor with a muffled, pathetic *splat*.
Three glossy red apples spilled out of her basket and bounced cheerfully across the sterile white tiles.
I stared down at her from my pillows, not moving a single muscle to assist.
“I see your center of gravity is still tragically misaligned,” I deadpanned to the floor, my voice completely devoid of inflection.
“You are a biological hazard to yourself and the local agriculture.”
Gion’s face instantly burned bright red.
She scrambled up from the floor, aggressively rubbing her nose, her stubborn pride flaring like a lit match in a powder keg.
“I didn’t trip!” she yelled, pointing an accusatory finger at the ground.
“The floor here is uneven! The architecture of this hospital is deeply flawed! And you’re awake, you huge jerk!”
“I am awake,” I confirmed lazily, blinking once.
“And you owe my tailor forty thousand berries for the bespoke mafia suit you ruined with your tears and the ash.”
“I didn’t ruin your stupid suit! You threw it on me!” she yelled back, though she immediately scrambled to gather the scattered apples, carefully placing them back into the woven basket.
She dragged a heavy wooden chair up to the side of my bed and sat down heavily, crossing her arms in a defensive huff.
She refused to look me directly in the eye, staring intently at the dripping IV bag instead.
Her small shoulders were tense, and her eyes were still slightly red-rimmed.
The silence stretched for a moment, punctuated only by the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor.
Then, in a very small, quiet voice, she muttered, “I didn’t even ask you to save me. I could have handled those pirates myself. You didn’t have to overdo it.”
‘She was armed with a broken, splintered stick, was shivering uncontrollably from shock, and was entirely prepared to die,’ my mind calculated, a rare, microscopic smirk tugging at the very corner of my mouth.
‘Her sheer, unadulterated delusion is incredibly entertaining.
She is absolutely my sister.’
“Of course you could have,” I agreed smoothly, humoring her massive ego.
“I simply stepped in to bisect them because I was bored and required some light stretching. The mountain was in my way. Now, peel me an apple. As your older brother and heroic savior, I require immediate sustenance to fuel my calcium regeneration.”
Gion grumbled a series of incredibly colorful insults under her breath—words she had undoubtedly learned from the sailors on the evacuation ship—but she reached into the basket and pulled out a small, sharp paring knife.
She grabbed a red apple and began to peel it.
It was an absolute, unmitigated massacre.
She was gripping the tiny knife like it was a heavy broadsword, hacking away massive chunks of the fruit’s flesh with aggressive, entirely uncoordinated chops. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Instead of peeling the thin skin, she was systematically amputating the apple.
Stray drops of juice sprayed onto her crisp white uniform as she fiercely battled the fruit.
“That apple looks like it is being violently interrogated for state secrets,” I observed, watching the sheer culinary carnage unfold.
“Are you trying to feed me, or send a terrifying message to the other fruits in the basket? Because I believe they are adequately intimidated.”
“Shut up!” Gion snapped, holding up the mangled, jagged core, which now contained perhaps two bites of edible fruit.
“Do you want it or not?”
Before I could politely decline the pulverized remains of her victim, the door opened wider.
Vice Admiral Tsuru stepped into the room.
The calming, lavender-scented conceptual aura of her Wash-Wash Fruit instantly rolled over the sterile hospital smells, neutralizing the lingering tension in the air.
She wore her pristine Marine coat draped flawlessly over her shoulders, her sharp eyes taking in the scene.
She looked between my heavily bandaged, deadpan face and Gion, who was aggressively wielding a knife at an apple core while covered in sticky juice.
“I see the patient is finally awake,” Tsuru noted, a knowing, warm, grandmotherly smile tugging at her lips.
“And I see you two are getting along perfectly.”
“She is attempting to murder an apple, ma’am,” I reported lazily, lifting a bandaged finger to point at the child.
“I am closely supervising the execution to ensure she doesn’t accidentally amputate her own thumb in the process.”
Gion let out a furious huff and aggressively shoved the mangled apple piece directly into my mouth to shut me up.
I chewed the uneven slice slowly.
It tasted overwhelmingly of spite.
“Garp is already asking the medical staff when you’ll be cleared for active duty, Bogard,” Tsuru sighed, walking over to the foot of my bed and reviewing the medical chart attached to the frame.
“He is eager to resume your… unique training regimen. He claims your lack of endurance is what caused you to pass out.”
My heart plummeted into my stomach.
The specter of cardio loomed over me like the Grim Reaper.
‘He is going to throw me into a volcano to build my stamina,’ my mind despaired.
“However,” Tsuru continued, her eyes flashing with a glint of absolute authority as she set the chart down, “I informed him that you are on strict, mandatory bed rest for at least two weeks. Your ribs require time to fuse, and your chakra—or whatever it is you call that terrifying red aura—needs time to stabilize. And Gion will be staying with me in the meantime to begin her basic orientation at the academy.”
‘Two weeks of mandatory bed rest,’ my mind echoed, practically weeping tears of profound joy.
‘No cardio.
No falling off cliffs.
Just sleep, supervised apple assassinations, and zero psychotic pirates.
This is paradise.
I love modern medicine.’
I swallowed the apple, looking between my fiercely clumsy new sister and the tactical matriarch of the Marines.
The Absolute Murderer was safely locked away in its scabbard resting against the wall, completely and utterly silent.
For the first time since waking up in this chaotic, physics-defying world four years ago, the hospital lights weren’t too bright, the mattress wasn’t too hard, and the universe felt entirely, wonderfully lazy.