One Piece: Lust Haki

Zephyr posted the squad assignments at 0500 and by 0503 Isuka had already read hers, found mine, confirmed they were the same, and gone back to her bunk to sharpen her rapier. She didn't say good morning. She said "We're Squad Nine" and left.

Squad Nine. Four names on a card pinned to the assignment board: Vance, Isuka, Tashigi, Ain.

I read it twice. Ain's name at the bottom was in different ink. Added later. Zephyr had written it himself, the handwriting larger and rougher than the administrative print on the rest of the card. She was being assigned to evaluate, which meant she was grading us while we fought. Combat instructor and squad member at the same time.

The exercise was a forty-eight-hour combat simulation in the forested training grounds east of Marineford. Twelve squads, objective-based, graded on teamwork, tactics, and results. The objective was a capture-the-flag variant: each squad had a marker, each squad had to protect theirs and take at least one other. Last squad standing with their marker intact won.

Zephyr's briefing was brief. "Don't disappoint me" and a nod toward the treeline.

We moved out.

The forest started past the eastern wall and climbed the hills behind Marineford in dense scrub and old trees that blocked the wind and held the humidity. The canopy was thick enough that the morning light came through in patches and the ground was soft with years of fallen leaves. The recruits ahead of us on the trail were loud. We could hear three other squads within the first ten minutes.

I stopped the squad at a clearing just inside the treeline.

"Observation gives us an advantage if we use it right. I can read positions out to thirty meters, rough shapes past that. If we stay quiet and let the other squads move first, I can map them before they know where we are."

Isuka had her rapier drawn. She'd been ready since we entered the trees. "Defensive start. Boring."

"Effective."

"Both."

Tashigi adjusted her glasses. Shigure was across her back in its travel sheath. "What's the terrain like deeper in? If there's a chokepoint, holding it would give us better positioning than chasing squads through open forest."

Good instinct. "There's a ravine north. Narrow, rock walls on both sides. One way in, one way out."

"How do you know?" Isuka asked.

"I looked at the training ground map before the briefing."

"When?"

"Yesterday."

Isuka stared at me. "You knew the exercise area before it was announced."

"I knew it was one of three possible areas. I memorized all three." I looked at Ain. She was standing at the edge of the clearing, arms crossed, her blue hair tied back and her throwing daggers in a belt across her chest. She hadn't said a word since the briefing. "Input?"

"The ravine is correct. Zephyr used it two cycles ago. The senior squads will expect it to be contested."

"Good. So we take it early and set traps before they arrive."

"Adequate."

We moved.

Ain set the traps.

I didn't ask her to. She assessed the ravine entrance, identified the sightlines, and started placing tripwires from her dagger belt with the efficiency of someone who'd been setting field traps since she could reach the branches. She worked in silence. The wires were thin, angled to catch ankles at sprint height, and connected to noise-makers she'd fashioned from shells and stones and a length of cord.

Tashigi took the chokepoint at the ravine's narrow section. Shigure drawn, glasses on, her stance clean and rooted. The ravine walls rose on either side and the gap was barely wide enough for two people abreast. Chokepoints were where Tashigi's clean technique worked best because the enemy had nowhere to dodge.

Isuka took point, forward of the ravine, in the trees. She wanted to be the one making contact and I stopped arguing about it because Isuka was always going to be the one making contact regardless of what the plan said.

I sat on a rock at the ravine's center with my Observation spread and waited.

The first squad came in about forty minutes later. Three recruits and a second-year, loud, confident, heading straight for the ravine because they'd had the same idea about the chokepoint and hadn't thought about who might have had it first. My Observation picked them up at twenty meters and tracked them in.

"Three approaching from the northwest. One trailing. The trailer has the marker."

Isuka: "Let the three pass the traps?"

"Let the first two pass. The third hits the wire."

The plan worked because the plan was simple and the people executing it were good. The first two recruits entered the ravine mouth and Ain's tripwire caught the third at the ankle. The noise-maker cracked. The first two turned. Tashigi held the chokepoint and her blade caught the light between the rock walls and both recruits decided they didn't want to test the gap. Isuka came out of the trees behind the trailing marker-carrier and her rapier was at his throat before he'd processed the sound of the tripwire.

"Marker," she said.

He handed it over.

The second engagement was harder. A senior squad, four members, and they came in quietly from the south where we hadn't set traps because Ain had run out of cord. My Observation caught them at the edge of range, fuzzy, moving in a diamond formation with their marker at the center.

"Four. South. Formation. They're better."

Ain appeared beside me. She'd been on the ravine ridge. "Formation type?"

"Diamond. Marker in the center, flankers wide."

"Pull Isuka back. They'll bait her forward and collapse on her flanks."

I'd been about to send Isuka forward. Ain's call was better. "Isuka, fall back to the ravine. Let them come to us."

Silence on the treeline. Then Isuka's voice, irritated, from the brush: "Fine."

She fell back. They came in. Ain's assessment was right. The flankers tried to collapse on where Isuka would have been if she'd taken point, found empty forest, and stumbled into the ravine approach where Tashigi was waiting. The fight was messy and fast and Tashigi held the gap and Isuka hit their exposed flank and I caught the marker-carrier with an Armament-hardened fist when he tried to run south and the hardening held for the full strike and the recruit went down.

Two markers captured. Ours intact.

We held the ravine until the exercise horn sounded at dusk. Two more squads probed our position. One retreated when they hit the traps. The other tested the chokepoint, met Tashigi's blade, and left.

The field camp was a row of canvas tents on the ridge above the exercise grounds. Rations were rice balls and dried fish and lukewarm water from canteens that tasted like metal. I sat on a log and ate and the rice was cold and the fish was salty and I was tired enough that the world had gone flat behind my eyes.

Isuka sat next to me. Her rapier was across her knees. She had a scratch on her forearm from the second engagement where a flanker's practice blade had gotten through her guard. She picked at the rice with her fingers because she'd lost her chopsticks somewhere in the ravine.

Tashigi sat across from us on a flat rock. Shigure was propped against the rock beside her. Her glasses were smudged and she hadn't cleaned them, which meant she was tired enough that the smudges didn't bother her, which meant she was very tired.

Ain came to the fire circle last. She sat apart from the three of us, on a rock at the edge of the firelight. She ate her rice ball in precise, measured bites, and when she was done she wiped her hands on a cloth she carried in her belt and folded the cloth and put it back.

"Your tactical sense is adequate," she said. To me. Without looking at me. "Your Observation is above adequate."

"High praise."

"It wasn't praise. It was an assessment."

Isuka looked up from her fingerful of rice. "That's the nicest thing she's said to anyone all week."

Ain didn't respond. She finished her water and stood and walked to the tent assigned to Squad Nine.

Isuka watched her go. "She liked us."

"She assessed us."

"Same thing. For her."

Tashigi cleaned her glasses on the hem of her shirt. Put them back on. She blinked at the fire and the trees and Isuka's scratch and my face like she hadn't seen any of them clearly since they'd gotten dirty. "We worked well together," she said. "The formation held because each position had the right person."

"You held a chokepoint for six hours."

"Five and a half."

"With one sword."

"Shigure was sufficient." She pushed her glasses up. "Your Observation made the difference. Without it, the senior squad would have flanked us."

"Without Ain, I'd have sent Isuka into their collapse."

Isuka shrugged. "I'd have been fine."

"You'd have been surrounded."

"I'd have been surrounded and fine."

A recruit from another squad walked past the fire circle carrying a bedroll that was half unrolled and trailing in the dirt. He tripped on a root, caught himself, and kept walking. Nobody commented.

The tent was small. Four bedrolls, barely enough space between them to turn over without elbowing someone. Canvas walls, canvas floor, the smell of old fabric and damp earth and whatever insect repellent the supply office had treated the fabric with. A lamp hung from the center pole, turned low.

Ain was already in her bedroll. On her back, arms at her sides, blanket folded precisely at her sternum. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was measured and even. She was either asleep or doing such a convincing impression that the distinction didn't matter.

Tashigi was on the far side, arranging Shigure next to her bedroll in the narrow gap between the fabric and the tent wall. She'd changed into the field uniform undershirt and her glasses were off and her hair was loose and she looked smaller without them, younger, her dark blue hair falling across her cheeks.

Isuka's bedroll was next to mine. She dropped onto it and pulled the blanket up and turned to face the tent wall, her back to me. Her rapier was along her side, between us, the scabbard cool against my arm when I lay down.

I lay on my back. Isuka's back was warm on my left. Tashigi was on my right, settling in. The tent walls moved with the wind off the ridge.

My Observation was still running low-level. I couldn't shut it off anymore. The range was passive, fifteen meters, and inside the tent it picked up heartbeats. Isuka's was fast. She'd turned to face the wall but her pulse was awake. Her breathing was too controlled. She was managing it.

Tashigi's heartbeat was steadier but she wasn't sleeping either. Her breathing would slow and then catch and start over. She shifted once, turning toward me, and her shoulder touched my arm through the blanket and she didn't pull away.

Across the tent, Ain's breathing hadn't changed. Perfectly regular. If she was awake, her body wouldn't tell me.

I stared at the canvas ceiling. The lamp threw shadows that moved with the wind. Isuka's warmth on my left. Tashigi's shoulder against my right arm. One heartbeat fast, one heartbeat steady.

Somewhere outside, an owl. The exercise grounds were quiet. The fire had died down. A recruit in another tent coughed twice and stopped.

I closed my eyes. The tiredness won eventually. I went under and the last thing my Observation registered before it went fuzzy was Isuka's heartbeat slowing, finally, as she fell asleep facing the wall with her rapier between us.

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