Borsalino lay quietly in the crater, his eyes fixed on the sky slowly regaining focus.
He was very familiar with the childish voice calling out from the forest.
"Old man!"
Soon, a chubby, round little child with a cute bowl cut and a red bellyband poked his head over the edge of the crater and looked down.
Borsalino turned his head slightly toward the child at the rim and forced a smile. "Sentomaru, what are you doing here?"
As Borsalino asked the question, the barefoot young Sentomaru slid straight down the wall of the crater. Dirt cascaded toward the bottom with a rustling sound, and clods of earth smacked Borsalino right in the face.
"Ptoo, ptoo."
With a mouthful of dirt, Borsalino could only look helpless.
Sentomaru was a child Borsalino had picked up several years ago while out on a mission. When he had first found Sentomaru, the boy had been living alone in the wilderness. Relying on his natural physical gifts, Sentomaru had already been able to wrestle black bears at the age of six or seven.
Borsalino had thought the child exceptionally talented. Besides, leaving Sentomaru alone in the wilderness did not seem like a good thing, so he had brought him back to the Marines.
However, Sentomaru, already accustomed to life in the wild, had struggled to adapt to life in Marineford. To make him more comfortable, Borsalino had brought him to Egghead Island.
The Marines' experimental base on Egghead Island had not been established long ago, and much of the island was still covered in undeveloped virgin forest. Before building the base here, the Marines had thoroughly surveyed the island, and all dangerous carnivorous animals had been cleared out.
Once Sentomaru arrived, it was as if he had returned home. Whenever he had nothing to