Marine Headquarters did not calm down after Zaraki's departure.
If anything, the restless energy worsened.
When a storm sits directly overhead, people are afraid to move.
Once it passes, they finally start talking about the shape of the clouds.
Within an hour of the warship sailing out of the harbor, Zaraki's na had infected every corridor, ss hall, sentry tower, and bathroom stall in Marineford.
Rumors mutated with every telling.
So claid he could spontaneously create Haki users with a single glare. Others insisted he had defeated Shiki and stolen his swords while laughing.
A few swore they had personally seen Akainu take half a step back.
The most desperate whispers claid the black training room was ancient technology stolen from the Void Century.
By the ti the gossip reached the recruit camp, Zaraki had been reimagined as a terrifying combination of Garp's secret grandson, Vegapunk's failed experint, the Dark-Dark Fruit user, and the reincarnation of a demonic swordsman from the old era.
The Marine Recruit Training Camp was the strictest place in Headquarters.
Rumors usually went there to die—because Zephyr despised them.
...
The afternoon sun scorched the parade ground until the air warped.
Hundreds of recruits in sleeveless training shirts held perfect horse stances, sweat dripping from their chins to form dark puddles on the concrete.
No one dared wipe their face. No one dared shift their feet.
At the front of the formation, a muscular old man with short purple hair and sunglasses paced back and forth.
Zephyr.
Forr Marine Admiral and the current Chief Instructor.
The massive chanical arm strapped to his shoulder—the Battle Smasher—reflected cold sunlight.
Every heavy step struck the ground like a hamr directly onto the recruits' nerves.
"Is this your limit?!" Zephyr's roar exploded across the field.
Several swaying recruits gritted their teeth and forced their backs straight.
"You can't even hold a horse stance for two hours?! Then you're not Marines on the battlefield! You're fresh at delivered to pirates in nice packaging!" The recruits flushed red as Zephyr's voice grew colder.
"Tell ! What supports justice?!"
"Strength!"
"What protects civilians?!"
"Strength!"
"What keeps you alive when pirates laugh at your ideals?!"
"Strength!"
Zephyr snorted. "At least your mouths still work."
His gaze swept the formation from behind his shades before stopping dead on the left side of the third row. An empty spot.
The air around Zephyr sank.
In this camp, recruits crawled to the field with broken legs.
If they fainted, they fainted in formation. Arriving late wasn't a minor mistake; it was a challenge to his discipline.
"Whose spot is that?" Zephyr's voice dropped into a terrifyingly low register.
Standing next to the empty space, Ain felt her heart skip. The girl with wavy sea-blue hair broke out in a cold sweat beneath the afternoon heat.
She shot a desperate side-glance at the gap and groaned inwardly.
'Tashigi, you idiot.'
Tashigi wasn't the most talented, the strongest, or even the most coordinated recruit.
But she was painfully diligent. She was the kind of girl who would trip during drills, apologize to the ground, and repeat the movent a hundred tis until her knees shook.
How had she chosen today of all days to be late?
"Report, Instructor!" Ain shouted through gritted teeth. "It's Tashigi!"
"Tashigi?" Zephyr repeated.
The image of a clumsy girl with glasses, always clutching a sword manual beneath her arm, surfaced in his mind.
Not gifted, not smooth, but incredibly hardworking. His expression darkened further.
"Hmph. Even that child was corrupted by the atmosphere outside?" His chanical arm let out a low hum.
"She heard about so shortcut and decided basic training no longer mattered?"
The recruits lowered their heads, none daring to speak.
Zephyr was about to announce punishnt when frantic footsteps echoed from the entrance.
"S-sorry!"
Tashigi stumbled in, panting so hard she nearly folded over.
Her neat dark-blue bob was a bird's nest, her glasses sat crooked, and her training uniform was wrinkled and dusty, missing a sleeve as if she had fought her way through a mob.
She looked less like a late recruit and more like the survivor of a stampede.
"I'm late! I'm sorry!" She rushed to the front and bent into a ninety-degree bow so sharp she almost face-planted.
The training field fell dead silent.
Every recruit stared at her, thinking the exact sa thing: You're dead.
Zephyr stopped pacing, his massive shadow swallowing Tashigi completely.
He raised his chanical arm, pointing first at the blazing sun and then at the field's clock.
"Reason."
If she said she overslept, she would run until sunset. If she said she was gossiping, she would run until tomorrow.
Tashigi straightened up, gripping the seams of her pants tight enough to turn her knuckles white.
She gasped for air, her face flushed with panic, but behind the crooked glasses, Zephyr noticed sothing strange: shock, joy, and a dazed confusion she hadn't fully processed yet.
"R-report, Chief Instructor!" she croaked, her throat dry.
Ain desperately shot warning looks, silently begging her to make up an excuse.
Stomach pain, delivery duty, a twisted ankle—anything was better than ntioning the current taboo.
But Tashigi had lost the ability to lie.
She took a deep breath, gathering every ounce of courage she possessed, and shouted her reason in front of hundreds of peers and the iron-blooded instructor.
"Because just now... near the lower armory... I entered Zaraki-san's special training room!"
Zephyr's sunglasses flashed with a cold light.
Tashigi swallowed hard. "And... and it helped bring that thing out!"
Several male recruits in the front row exchanged incredibly inappropriate looks.
Tashigi froze, her face exploding red as she realized how that sounded.
"I an Haki! Haki!"
The word struck the field like lightning.
Zephyr's brow twitched.
His instincts as a forr Admiral caught the shift before his mind did: a flow of will.
It was weak, raw, and intermittent, but unmistakably present.
Tashigi fumbled for Shigure.
She was so nervous the guard caught awkwardly on her belt twice before she finally freed the blade.
Shing—!
The steel caught the blazing sun. Gripping the hilt with both hands, Tashigi squeezed her eyes shut and desperately reached for the feeling from the training room.
The sensation of being crushed unless she gathered everything into a single point.
Her hands trembled. "Coat it... now!"
It wasn't an imposing shout, she sounded like a student begging her own body to cooperate.
And yet—a black color spread unevenly across the middle section of Shigure's blade.
It was unstable, patchy, and ugly, trembling as if it might vanish at any second. But it was real.
Armant Haki.
A collective gasp swept the formation.
Hundreds of eyes locked onto the sword.
This camp had monsters—Smoker, Hina, and several seniors could already touch Haki—but Tashigi?
The girl whose stance Zephyr had corrected dozens of tis?
The girl who had cried yesterday because she still couldn't feel the flow of will?
Behind his sunglasses, Zephyr's pupils shrank.
The hydraulic tubes in the Battle Smasher hissed, betraying his internal turmoil as he strode toward her.
Each step made the concrete tremble.
"You're telling this happened because of Zaraki?" Zephyr didn't roar.
His voice was terrifyingly calm. "You're telling years of sweat, repetition, pain, and discipline couldn't push you across that threshold, but that brat locked you in a tal box for a few minutes and suddenly you can coat your blade?"
Tashigi took half a step back. The Haki on Shigure flickered.
"N-no! It wasn't like that!" Her voice shook, but she didn't lower her sword. "It didn't replace training! It dragged out what was already there. If I hadn't practiced every day, if I hadn't kept trying to feel it... I don't think anything would have answered."
Zephyr's expression froze slightly.
That wasn't the answer he expected.
He expected blind worship or foolish praise for a shortcut. Instead, the clumsy girl had instinctively pinpointed the very thing he valued most: accumulation, effort, and a solid foundation.
But his anger didn't vanish.
If this thod was real, the training system he had spent decades building had just been challenged by a wild brat who had never even attended his lectures.
"Absurd," Zephyr said, his voice ice-cold. "Haki is the embodint of will. It is armor forged between life and death. Since when did it beco sothing handed out by a machine?"
He turned, his furious gaze sweeping the recruits. "Listen carefully! If any of you believe this ans instant mastery, get out of my camp right now! The Marines have no need for fools dreaming of leaping to the sky in a single step!"
He expected a thunderous Yes, sir!
Instead, a strange, suffocating silence settled over the training ground.
Zephyr narrowed his eyes.
He had been an instructor for too long not to notice the shift.
In the past, his roars were t with sha, fear, or renewed determination.
But now, their eyes were drifting.
Not toward him, but toward Tashigi's blade. Toward that fading trace of black on the steel.
Toward definitive proof.
The atmosphere was changing.
And for the first ti in his life, Zephyr felt his iron grip on the training ground loosen!'
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