The Marine Admiral arrived on a bicycle.
It was the first thing Kael saw from twenty miles out as the chakra signature breached his senses – a cold, negative space presence gliding along the surface of the Grand Line.
The signature rode a bicycle.
And somehow, the bicycle floated on the water.
The man himself was tall and lanky, and Kael had only ever encountered the kind of power contained in the Admiral’s chakra twice in this world – the kind of power which forced reality to give way around its bearer.
Kael felt it from the deck of the Going Merry while the crew was navigating through the aftermath of Long Ring Long Land.
Luffy was sleeping.
Zoro was sleeping.
Sanji baked bread.
Robin was reading.
Chopper treated a stretched dog whom they had taken care of for days.
Usopp stood on the dock and told Tonjit a tale about a king.
Kael went over to Robin with her book in hand.
“There’s an Admiral.”
She put down her book.
“Twenty miles out.
Coming this way.
He’s a cold one.
Aokiji, I think-he matches the description.”
“How long?”
“An hour, by his pace.”
“Should we leave?”
“He’s quicker than the Going Merry.
We can’t outrun him on the ocean.
And fleeing won’t make a good story compared to facing him.
We will face him.”
She got up, placed the book in her chair, and did not even need to ask the next obvious question – whether they would get along okay.
They ceased asking such things of each other weeks ago, two people who decided to take on the work together.
As the hour passed, the crew gathered.
Kael addressed the assembled members of his crew.
Luffy, hearing the word Admiral, got up with a strange stillness and silently asked if there would be a fight.
“Probably not.
He’s not coming here for the fight.
He’s coming to inspect.”
“Inspect what.”
“To inspect me.
And to take a decision about all of you.”
Luffy contemplated this bit of information for a while.
Then he simply nodded his head and settled back on the deck to await further developments with his hands resting on his knees.
Aokiji appeared from behind the eastern dunes of Long Ring Long Land at the expected time.
Just like Kael had anticipated, the Marine Admiral was on his bicycle.
The bicycle seemed rather ancient.
He wore a sleep mask on his forehead.
He was a tall and skinny guy of dark complexion, with the kind of long, angular bones that were characteristic of his physique.
His chakra, felt at a closer range, reminded Kael of nothing more than of the cold – endured for so long that it became the substance of his existence.
The Marine Admiral left his bicycle at the end of the pier, approached the middle of it, and came to a stop about ten steps away from Kael.
“You must be Ashwood.”
“Yes.”
“Aokiji, Marine Admiral.”
“I know.”
“We’ve had your name on our radar for some time.
I was assigned to draw you.”
“So it seems.”
Aokiji stood still without shifting position and keeping his hands to himself.
His chakra was obviously not trained to battle; it was burning steadily at a low rate, just like any Marine Admiral’s would.
Kael maintained the same posture, his orbs slowly rotating around his shoulders.
They both kept at the same distance from each other.
“I’ve gone through your report.”
Aokiji’s face changed slightly.
“How.”
“Someone got a copy of it to me.
It’s a highly informative report.
Thank you for that.”
“I see.”
“You haven’t inflated anything there.”
“I don’t really tend to do it.”
“No.
You don’t.”
A moment passed.
Then Aokiji glanced beyond Kael at the crew.
He was looking at Robin with a long, centuries-old look.
Her chakra was practically immobile, as it should be when one was prepared for something as predictable as Marines coming after her – she had spent too many years waiting for this day.
Aokiji turned his head back towards Kael.
“She’s with you now.”
“She’s with the crew.”
“Same thing.”
“You know what she is to me.”
“I know what you call her.
I know what she is.
They are not the same thing.”
This piece of information was absorbed by the Admiral.
His face took on the look of a man who devoted his entire professional life to balancing several things in his mind which did not balance very easily.
But Aokiji neither disputed the difference nor accepted the distinction.
“What I wanted to understand here,” he said at last, “is what you are.”
“Noted.”
“I have gone through the report I’ve written about you, your colleagues’ reports and their field assets’ accounts.
None of them know what you are.
And so I’m trying to formulate a category, since none exists yet.
This category is: things which have no name under the official designation.
It is a small category, with only two names apart from yours.
One of those is Whitebeard.
His age and lineage are known.
Your age and lineage are not known.”
“I am not from this world.”
This sentence hung heavily between them.
Having decided beforehand that he would say this to the Admiral if asked, Kael answered without hesitation.
Aokiji absorbed it.
From – what world?
“A different one.
I stumbled into it in a storm, a few months before I joined this crew.
I had my power before I joined it.
The way I’ve learned to live with it – as far as I understand – is not, as far as I’m concerned, totally clear to me yet.
The fact of it remains.”
“You’ve brought your power with you.”
“I’ve learned to harness it here.
The medium in which it works is different in this world.
But the principles are mine.”
Aokiji looked at him for a long while.
Then he did something Kael hadn’t expected.
He sat down.
He settled onto the dock and dangled his legs over the water.
And he ran his hand over his face.
“Marine doctrine makes no allowance for that sort of thing.”
“There is no ‘way’ to do such things.
There is no ‘entrance’.
There is an assumption that all the powers in this world arise in this world.
They originate in it.
They belong in some fashion to the world.
Any power which does not originate in this world breaks the system.”
“If I reported that – using your language there – to my superiors they would refuse to believe it.
They might believe me secondarily, but only after much effort to disprove the idea – and even after it had proved too costly for them to try and disprove the claim.
Even that delay alone would be – useful to you.
I’m not sure I’m inclined to be useful to you.”
“I’m also not sure I’m inclined not to be.”
He looked up at Kael.
There was honesty in the look.
Kael saw the look of someone who had spent decades trying to be a good man in an organization which often did not behave as a moral organization.
And who had learned, through the process, to be comfortable working slowly – getting the answer in a moment or two after everyone else had it.
His chakra was the chakra of someone who lived with his conscience as a constant feature of his decision making process – and whose conscience weighed heavier on those decisions than did the regulations.
Kael sat down opposite him on the dock.
He let the orbs around him rotate slowly.
“What do you want, Admiral?”
“To go home and think.”
“Alright.”
“And I want – one promise from you.
If you can give it.”
“What.”
“I want you to tell me, whenever you plan to do anything which would allow Marines to call on me as their force commander in order to take action against you, that you are planning on doing it.
Not where.
Not when.
But that you’re planning to do it.
So I can be somewhere else.”
Kael considered this carefully.
It was an unusual request.
But on reflection – a moral one.
For Aokiji was not asking for information about an event in order to be able to interfere with it.
Kael could see in Aokiji’s chakra that he was tired of being called upon to fulfill his duty.
“Yes.
I can do that.”
“How.”
“You’ll get a cold day at sea.
One day before.
The day before will be me.
And you’ll know.”
Aokiji nodded slowly.
“That works.”
“Anything else.”
“One question, if you like answering.
What are you doing with these pirates?
Out of everyone in the world, why this group.”
Kael considered this.
He thought for a while about it – and then answered with total sincerity.
“Because their captain is the only person I have met in this world whose chakra has nothing calculating about it.
Because the crew – around the captain – has organized itself accidentally along the same lines.
Because they have given me the confidence that they would help me with the task that I have to do here.
Because they are – and this may seem strange – kind.
They are kind to each other, they are kind to strangers.
They are kind in a fashion that doesn’t flinch at kindness.
I haven’t met many crews like this before – in either life.
This is why I am with them.”
Aokiji processed this information.
He was quiet for a while as the water rushed past the dock pilings.
The sun was setting.
“Then it’s settled.”
He stood up.
He walked back towards his bicycle.
And he looked straight ahead, determined not to make eye contact with Robin anymore.
He was not inclined to.
He had also decided – this being the most generous act of his day – that his report would not contain any of the information from their discussion today.
He got onto the bicycle.
“One thing.”
“The other two names that fall into my category of special.
Whitebeard.
And the other one, whom I’ve mentioned.”
She thought about it for a while.
“Watch out for him.
He’s been looking for a chance to meet with you.
He won’t attack you like me – but he’ll be very patient until he finds what he needs from you.
His name is Marshall D.
Teach.”
Kael remained still.
He could feel in his sensing the double chakra of the man of Mock Town.
And the observation that had been going on from that table the night before.
“I know who he is.”
“Good.”
Aokiji rode away from the dock on his bicycle and out onto the water.
It held him up as it had done before.
He rode eastwards towards the open sea, with the fading sunlight behind him.
By sundown he was on the horizon.
And by sunset he was gone.
The crew met up on deck at the end of the Going Merry.
Luffy, who had been strangely quiet during the entire process – Kael had not noticed it until then – looked at Kael for a long while.
“I like him.”
“That sounds right.”
“He’s not going to fight us yet.”
“Good.”
Luffy went below deck to find Sanji and dinner.
The rest of them stayed on deck for a while.
Robin came over to Kael and put her hand on his shoulder.
He leaned forward and rested his head on her hand for a moment.
And Nami, up at the wheel, turned to the horizon where she could feel the cold leaving the area.
But she didn’t say anything.
She didn’t need to.
Tomorrow, they would sail.
They were headed for Water Seven.
The work would start again tomorrow.
But tonight they ate.