Creak—
The heavy oak doors continued swinging back and forth, the harsh squeak scratching against the dead silence inside the Fleet Admiral's office.
The goat in the corner finally swallowed its half-chewed docunt and let out a loud belch.
That absurd sound broke the spell.
Sengoku stiffly pushed his glasses up his nose as the emotions cycled through him: shock, disbelief, and finally, a slow-boiling anger.
A re ssenger had just stood before the highest military powers in the world and completely abandoned rank, fear, discipline, and basic etiquette—all for a single training slot!
"This..." Sengoku slamd his hand onto the desk, rattling every teacup in the room. "What kind of disgrace is this?!"
To his surprise, no one responded to his fury.
Kizaru bent down slowly, picking up his fallen nail clippers and blowing away nonexistent dust.
Behind his tinted shades, the Admiral's usual teasing laziness had thinned into sothing unreadable.
"How scary~" he drawled, the mockery noticeably absent. "I never realized those little soldiers who usually tremble at the sight of us could run that fast."
"They aren't ignoring death," Tsuru said, calmly setting her teacup down.
Her gaze drifted past the broken doorway as if she could already see the chaos beyond it. "They are afraid of dying, that is different."
The office quieted again.
"In the New World, ordinary Marines without Haki are crushed like ants beneath monsters they cannot even touch," Tsuru continued gently, the weight of her words settling over the room. "Zaraki has shown them a possible way to survive. When a drowning man sees a rope, he doesn't ask if the rope is official Navy issue."
Akainu's face darkened. "And survival justifies ignoring their superiors?"
Magma crackled faintly at his fingertips, filling the room with the stench of burning leather. "This is the beginning of disorder."
"Disorder? No, no, no, Sakazuki, you're too sensitive!" Garp had finally recovered from his shock, his expression breaking into wild laughter.
He tossed a handful of crushed rice crackers into his mouth. "This is desire! Sengoku, listen carefully. What do you hear?"
Sengoku froze.
He had been too focused on the absurdity inside his office to notice the outside world.
Now that he listened, he heard it.
A roar.
Countless voices layered together into a low, boiling hum that poured through the broken doorway and rattled the windows.
Even the floor beneath Sengoku's feet trembled—a vibration he usually only felt during massive deploynts, Reverie-level security movents, or the monts preceding a major Headquarters expedition.
"Co on!" Garp stood abruptly, his grin threatening to split his face. "Let's go see what that brat has done to the Headquarters!"
Without waiting for permission, the old hero rushed the floor-to-ceiling window, shoved it open with a crash, and leaped over the balcony like a giant child who had never learned how to use a door.
"Garp! Use the damn door!" Sengoku roared.
He cursed under his breath, but his body moved on instinct, grabbing his Justice coat and throwing it over his shoulders.
Tsuru sighed, calmly straightening her collar as she stood.
Aokiji scratched his head and followed with a yawn, while Kizaru simply vanished in a beam of light.
Only Akainu remained seated for a mont longer, staring at the swinging oak doors with flickering magma in his eyes.
Logic dictated that the military police should suppress the disorder imdiately.
But curiosity was a stubborn thing, and the phrase one short session, multiple Haki signs had lodged in his mind like a rusted blade.
If it was true, the fundantal rules of Marine training were about to be rewritten.
"Hmph." With a cold snort, Akainu disappeared, leaving only a smoldering burn mark on the sofa.
...
When Sengoku stepped onto the command platform overlooking the Central Plaza of Marineford, even the man known as the Wise General sucked in a sharp breath.
The plaza was packed.
Not crowded—packed.
The central square, which could comfortably hold twenty thousand soldiers during formal assembly, looked as though thirty thousand had been violently shoved into it.
The crowd churned like a living sea.
Uniforms squeezed against uniforms, swords knocked against rifles, and officers shouted over soldiers who shouted right back.
Sowhere in the middle of the crush, a man waved a crumpled registration paper like it was a treasure map leading to the One Piece itself.
"That lower-armory slot is mine! I'll pay three months of allowance!"
"Get lost! I'm a Chief Petty Officer! I go first!"
"Rank ans nothing! This is Zaraki's special training! Being one second late ans betraying your own life!"
"Who kicked my balls?!"
"Who cares about your balls? I'm trying to awaken Haki!"
The shouting surged upward like a tidal wave.
The air was thick with sweat, dust, salt, and feverish hunger.
These were Marines—soldiers who usually obeyed orders, saluted perfectly, and maintained formation under artillery fire.
Now, their eyes were bloodshot over a single chance to enter an underground room that had reportedly tortured its first participants half to death.
Sengoku recognized that look.
It was hope.
And hope, once ignited in a desperate crowd, was infinitely harder to command than fear.
"These damned idiots..." Sengoku's face darkened, veins throbbing at his temples. "What do they think this is? A fish market?!"
But beneath his curses, a heavy realization sank into his chest.
This was Zaraki's true influence.
It wasn't derived from rank, speeches, justice slogans, or propaganda.
He offered only one thing: a path to strength.
"Puhahaha! If they weren't crazy, that would be strange!" Garp laughed beside him, looking proud enough to fra the chaos and hang it on his wall.
He slamd a palm against the marble railing, cracking it instantly.
"Silence—!!!"
His roar exploded across the square like a physical shockwave.
The boiling crowd froze.
Thirty thousand pairs of eyes snapped toward the command platform. The mont they saw Garp, Sengoku, Tsuru, and the Admirals, the respect and fear drilled deep into their bones managed to suppress the frenzy beneath a thin layer of discipline.
"V-Vice Admiral Garp!" "The Fleet Admiral is here!" "The Admirals too!"
A restless ripple spread through the packed crowd.
Everyone tried to step back, but the sheer density of the mob only caused them to squeeze tighter together.
"Move aside for this old man!" Garp laughed loudly, jumping straight off the platform.
Boom!
He landed in the densest part of the crowd, kicking up dust and forcing the surrounding soldiers to stumble away.
"Since you all want to go so badly, let's see if you brats even have the qualifications to embarrass yourselves!"
'That lunatic is making things worse again,' Sengoku cursed inwardly, though his feet didn't stop moving.
Flanked by Tsuru and the Admirals, he followed Garp into the plaza.
The crushing pressure of the Navy's highest fighting forces forcibly split the crowd, creating a narrow path through the human sea.
Sengoku walked with a glacial expression, his eyes sweeping across the soldiers like blades.
He was searching for proof.
If this was a farce, he swore he would drag Zaraki back, bury him under paperwork, and force him to write reports until he begged for pirates to fight.
But the further Sengoku walked, the heavier his expression grew.
He could feel it.
Within the chaotic sea of anxiety, exhaustion, excitent, and fear, there were several faint yet strangely firm auras.
They were weak and unstable, flickering like candle flas in a storm, but they were real.
It was the barest sprouting of Haki.
A stronger commotion erupted ahead.
Several officers had ford a circle, staring at sothing as if they had uncovered a buried treasure chest.
"It's real... it really turned black!"
"That hardness... is this Armant Haki?"
"Don't move! Let the Fleet Admiral see!"
Sengoku stopped.
Akainu and Aokiji halted at almost the exact sa ti. The crowd hurriedly parted.
At the center stood a freckled Chief Petty Officer.
His face was flushed red, his breathing chaotic, and his right fist clenched so tightly his entire arm shook.
On that fist, beneath Sengoku's shrinking pupils, a black tallic sheen flickered unevenly. It appeared, vanished, and appeared again like a fla struggling against the wind.
It wasn't stable, mature, or reliable enough for real combat, but it was unmistakable.
Armant Haki.
Boom!
Perhaps overwheld by the intense scrutiny, the Chief Petty Officer punched the granite paving stone in front of him.
He didn't use much force, yet the slab—sturdy enough to endure ordinary artillery shock—cracked from the center.
Sengoku's eyelids twitched.
If the man had been a Rear Admiral, he wouldn't have cared.
A Commodore would have earned a nod of approval.
But this was a Chief Petty Officer!
Judging from his insignia, he hadn't even been enlisted for three years.
"Is he the only one?" Sengoku's voice was calm, but the underlying tension was palpable.
Tsuru didn't answer imdiately.
Her Observation Haki spread outward in absolute silence, washing through the crowd like an invisible tide.
After a long mont, her expression turned grim.
"No." Her voice was soft, but every word landed like an anvil. "There are at least seven people here with newly awakened Haki signs. Most are unstable, and so may lose the feeling if they aren't guided properly, but the signs are real."
The plaza went dead silent.
Seven.
Only seven out of thirty thousand Marines seed laughably small, but every high-ranking officer present understood the terrifying reality of that number.
Those seven hadn't been cherry-picked from elite New World veterans.
They had sprouted after a single, short exposure to Zaraki's training room.
If the thod could be stabilized... if the risks could be managed... if the room could be used repeatedly...
Sengoku suddenly understood exactly why the soldiers had lost their minds.
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