One Piece: Lust Haki

The training ship was smaller than the transport that had brought me to Marineford six months ago. Narrower hull, shallower draft, rigged for coastal patrol. Three-day exercises where the point was discomfort and the lesson was that the ocean didn't care about your complaints.

Forty recruits boarded at 0600. Kits stowed, bunks assigned, drills starting before the harbor was out of sight. The Petty Officer running the exercise was a woman named Bekke who had a voice that carried across open water and opinions about everything. She split us into four squads of ten, assigned squad leaders from the senior recruits, and started barking orders before the last kit bag hit the deck.

My squad leader was a third-year named Hiro who'd been on four previous exercises. He assigned me to navigation checks and tactical assessment, which meant I spent the first morning standing at the chart table with a compass and a set of coastal maps while Hiro told me what he thought the correct headings were.

They were wrong. Two of the five headings would have run us into shoals that were clearly marked on the chart he was holding. I pointed this out. He didn't like it.

"The current compensates for the shoal proximity."

"The current runs northeast at this latitude. The shoals are northeast. The current pushes us onto them, not past them."

He looked at the chart. Looked at me. Looked at the chart again. A recruit behind us coughed.

"Adjust heading two points south on legs three and five," Hiro said, like it had been his idea.

I adjusted the headings. The ship didn't hit any shoals.

Tashigi was in her element. I'd seen her competent before, with Shigure, in the common room, during the evaluations. But Tashigi on a ship was different. Her feet were steady on the deck when other recruits were bracing against the roll. She moved through the rigging assessment without checking her notes, identifying lines and cleats by touch. A recruit from an inland posting was staring at a tangle of rope he was supposed to coil, and Tashigi stepped in and showed him the technique without being asked, her hands moving fast and clean, the coil forming under her fingers.

"You grew up near water," I said, during the lunch break.

"My village was on a cliff above a harbor." She pushed her glasses up. The salt air was fogging them. "I spent more time on the docks than at home. The fishermen let me help with the boats when I was small."

"You're better at this than the squad leader."

"The squad leader is fine. His knots are terrible, but his navigation is adequate."

"His navigation was going to put us on a reef."

"His initial navigation was going to put us on a reef. His corrected navigation is adequate." She looked at me. Adjusted the glasses again. "Thank you for correcting it without making him look stupid."

"I made him look a little stupid."

"You made him look corrected. There's a difference."

Isuka adapted. She always adapted. I'd watched her adjust to training halls, sparring rings, combat evaluations, and a transport ship under pirate attack. The training vessel was just another environment with things to read. By midday she'd mapped the deck layout, identified the best positions for combat drills, and was running her own supplementary footwork exercises on the port side where the roll was strongest. She trained into the instability instead of against it.

The afternoon drills were combat readiness checks. React to a simulated boarding. Secure the deck. Coordinate with the adjacent squad. Hiro's plan involved a bottleneck near the mainmast that would have gotten three recruits killed. I suggested a flanking approach through the cargo hold. Hiro used my plan and called it his plan. The exercise went cleanly. Bekke marked our squad as the fastest to secure.

Nobody mentioned who'd suggested the approach. Hiro clapped me on the shoulder after. I didn't correct the record. Correcting the record would make an enemy and I needed a competent squad leader more than I needed credit.

The sun went down. Dinner was rice and salted fish from a galley that made the Marineford mess hall look like a restaurant. Forty recruits ate in shifts because the below-deck mess table held twelve. Isuka ate fast. Tashigi ate carefully and got salt spray on her glasses twice. A recruit named Dal told a joke about a Sea King and a fisherman that had no punchline. Everyone laughed anyway because the alternative was silence and the ocean was loud.

The hammocks were as bad as Isuka had promised.

Canvas slung between iron hooks, spaced eighteen inches apart, swaying with the ship. The below-deck compartment was dim, one lamp at each end, both turned low. Thirty hammocks in rows. The air was close and smelled like canvas and sweat and salt.

I found my assignment. Fourth hook, second row. I slung my kit under it and climbed in and the canvas sagged under my weight and the hammock next to mine swung in response.

Isuka.

She was already in hers. Facing the hull wall. The vermilion hair was loose, spread across the canvas behind her head. Her uniform jacket was off, folded and stowed, and she was in the undershirt and standard-issue trousers. The rapier was under her hammock, handle within reach.

She didn't look at me.

I settled in. The canvas held. The ship rocked and the hammock swayed and the ropes creaked against the hooks. Around us, recruits were settling. Conversation fading. Someone three hammocks down was already snoring, a wet rattling sound that would be there all night.

The lamp at the far end dimmed further. Someone had turned it down. The compartment went dark enough that the outline of the hull beams above me was visible and the shapes of bodies in canvas and nothing else.

Isuka was eighteen inches away. Facing the wall. Her breathing was even and controlled.

She wasn't sleeping.

The Observation didn't have to reach. At this distance it was just on. Her body heat registered in the hammock next to mine, the mass and presence of her, and underneath the surface read there was the heartbeat. Seventy-eight beats per minute when she'd settled in. The resting rate of someone in good shape who'd had a full day of training and should be tired.

I closed my eyes. The ship creaked. The snoring three hammocks down settled into a rhythm. Someone turned over and their hammock ropes groaned.

Her hair smelled like the sea and rapier oil. Salt over metal. I'd caught it in the corridor after the evaluations, again when she grabbed my wrist. The sea had added a layer but the metal was underneath.

Eighty-four.

Her heartbeat had climbed. Six beats in however many minutes I'd been lying here. She was still facing the wall. Still breathing evenly. Still not sleeping.

I stared at the hull beam above me. The wood grain was invisible in the dark but I stared at where it should be. The ship rolled. Our hammocks swayed. The motion brought us closer for a half-second and then apart, closer and apart, the canvas almost touching and then a foot of dark air between us.

Eighty-nine.

A recruit at the far end of the compartment muttered in his sleep. The snorer shifted and the rattling stopped for three seconds and then restarted.

Ninety-two.

Mine was doing its own thing. I wasn't counting mine.

"Stop listening."

Her whisper was barely a sound. Aimed at the wall, not at me. If I hadn't been lying eighteen inches away with my Observation running I wouldn't have heard it.

"I'm not doing anything."

"Your Haki." She still didn't turn. Her voice was low enough that the snoring recruit three hammocks down covered it. "I can feel it. You're sensing me."

She was right. The Observation was on her. Instinctive, the same pattern Hina had identified six weeks ago in the officers' mess. I'd been lying in the dark and my Haki had found the person next to me without being told to.

"Sorry." I pulled it back. Drew the Observation in until it covered my own hammock and nothing else. The ship sounds got quieter. Her heartbeat disappeared. The space where her presence had been went flat and empty.

She didn't say anything for a long time. The ship rocked. The snoring continued. A rope somewhere above us creaked with the swell. I lay in my hammock and listened to the ship with my ears instead of my Haki. Without Observation she was just a shape in canvas in the dark.

Minutes passed. I didn't count them.

"I didn't say stop."

The whisper was quieter than the first one. She still hadn't turned. She was facing the wall with her hair across the canvas and her rapier under her hammock and her heartbeat was whatever it was because I couldn't hear it anymore.

I let the Observation go. It expanded and the reads came back. The compartment. The thirty bodies. The snoring recruit. The hull beams and the swell pattern and the deck above.

Isuka.

Ninety-four. Her breathing was the same careful even rhythm. Her body hadn't moved. Her hands were still, one under her head and one at her side, and she was facing the wall and running at ninety-four.

I didn't answer. She didn't say anything else.

The ship rocked. The hammocks swayed. Eighteen inches of dark air between us.

I didn't do anything about it. She didn't do anything about it. That was the point.

I lay there with the Observation on her heartbeat and the salt and metal in the air and I didn't sleep for a long time. Neither did she. Ninety-four all night. The ship creaked. The sea moved under us.

I listened. She let me.

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