Punishment and Countermeasures

After a night's sleep, last night's injuries had mostly healed.

Loa jumped out of bed, pushed open the window, and stretched toward the blazing red sun.

"Ah, another beautiful da—"

"Hey! Up there! Do you know people live downstairs? It's been leaking all night!"

Hearing the voice, Loa looked down and indeed saw a guy in a Recruit Camp shirt brushing his teeth while shouting up at him.

Loa turned back. Sure enough, only half the ice from the ice coffin remained in place. Because of his injuries, he had been too exhausted to clean it up last night. As the ice coffin slowly melted, the entire room had become soaked.

"My mastery still isn't good enough. The ice created by a life-saving finishing move actually melted overnight."

"Sorry, sorry, I'll clean the water up right away." Loa apologized as he thought, then walked over to the ice and estimated the distance while facing the window.

"Yoshi, this is the angle. Power kick!"

Bang!

Whoosh~~~

The roughly one-cubic-meter block of ice shot out the window, arced through the air, and landed in the artificial lake directly opposite the dormitory with a thud, sending water more than three meters into the air.

On the path beside the lake, recruits eating breakfast as they walked were drenched by the sudden splash, and the food in their hands was filled with lake water.

"Bastard!"

"Who did that?!"

"Come out! I swear I won't beat you to death!"

"..."

"Oh no, I caused trouble."

Listening to the furious public outcry from the lakeside, Loa shrank back, quietly closed the window, and drew the curtains.

After greeting the recruits he knew along the way, Loa arrived at the Recruit Camp.

Once the formation was lined up, the major general instructor appeared with a dark expression.

"Last night, a hailstorm fell over Marineford, centered around the Recruit Camp! Several buildings were damaged! More than ten patrolling soldiers were injured! Even Fleet Admiral Sengoku's goat was knocked unconscious! Which one of you did it?!"

The recruits of Squad Seven froze, then shouted in perfect, gloating unison, "Reporting to the instructor! Loa did it!"

"Very good, Loa!"

"Yes!"

"Step out!"

Standing outside the formation, Loa was completely baffled.

"What the hell? I can understand injuring the patrols, but why did I knock out Fleet Admiral Sengoku's goat too?"

He had forgotten that, in order to show off last night, he had fired his second Ice Dragon's Roar at an angle. And that direction happened to be toward the main body of the Marineford fortress.

The major general instructor walked over to Loa with a black face. "Did you do it?!"

"Uh, Instructor, would you believe this was a misunderstanding?" Loa scratched his face and explained awkwardly.

Loa's punishment was decided quickly. After consideration by Zephyr, the head instructor of the Recruit Camp, and because Loa had just arrived at Marineford while Fleet Admiral Sengoku chose not to pursue the matter, the punishment was lightened.

He was sentenced to clean toilets for one month and copy the safety regulations one thousand times by the end of the day.

Since recruit training was no longer very effective for Loa, they might as well find something for him to do so he would not sit around causing more trouble. Otherwise, at this rate, there would be plenty more headaches in the future. The major general instructor understood that as well. He did not even make Loa participate in training, kicking him off to clean toilets instead.

Wearing an apron and holding a mop, Loa leaned against the outside of the restroom and sighed lifelessly.

"I told you it was a misunderstanding~"

When a major general came to use the restroom and saw this, he roared with a dark face, "Don't even think about slacking off! Go clean the toilets!"

The recruits nearby snickered and whispered among themselves. Before entering the restroom, they deliberately stepped in mud, then pinched their voices in an affected manner once inside.

"Oh dear, sorry, Loa. I forgot you just cleaned this place."

"Ah, my apologies. I'll be done in a moment~"

Looking at this obviously deliberate bunch, Loa said nothing. He merely tapped the floor lightly with his toe and spread out a chill. The wet floor instantly froze, forming a thin film of ice.

The next second~

"Ow!"

"Hey, don't pee on me!"

"Ah, sorry, Instructor! I didn't mean to!"

Hearing the lively commotion inside the restroom, Loa smugly picked up his mop and headed to the restroom on the next floor.

"Could I develop this into a move that makes people slip? I remember that goofball Gray from Fairy Tail had a move like this. Was it Ice Carpet or Frozen Ground?"

Copying the safety regulations a thousand times was the easiest task for Loa. First, he found dozens of pens and arranged rows of notebooks side by side, securing them in place. Then he used Ice-Make Magic to create a device similar to a sieve, mounting each pen according to the spacing of the notebooks. He held the foremost pen and attached it to the frame, so writing one character was equivalent to writing dozens.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. He wrote furiously, finishing the several-hundred-word safety regulations in two hours.

Loa ran over with the notebooks filled with safety regulations. The major general instructor flipped through them in disbelief. "What?! You actually finished copying them so quickly?"

Thinking about how he had once been punished with copying safety regulations and had stayed up all night beneath a lamp until dawn, this kid was here to rub it in his face!

"Heh heh, of course. That's because I'm a genius!"

Though the instructor was suspicious, he had no idea how Loa had copied them so quickly. Unable to find any evidence, he could only let him go helplessly.

"Fine. As agreed, once you finish cleaning the toilets today, you may rest."

"Yes, thank you, Instructor."

After Loa left, the instructor brought Loa's copied safety regulations to Zephyr.

Holding the notebooks Loa had copied, Zephyr was equally astonished. "So fast? How long did it take him?"

The instructor said helplessly, "Precisely speaking, one hour and forty-seven minutes. I'm certain he cheated, but I can't find any evidence."

Zephyr nodded and flipped through the notebooks. Suddenly, he picked up one he had already examined and riffled through it, then slammed his fist heavily onto the desk, his face darkening. "Loa! That slippery little bastard!"

Not knowing what had happened, the instructor hurriedly asked, "Uh, Admiral Zephyr, what happened?"

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Zephyr pointed at two notebooks. "Look closely. Here and here, both places have the same misspelled word. After being corrected, even the curvature of the strokes is identical!"

The major general instructor was no fool. With Zephyr's reminder, he immediately understood and gritted his teeth. "That bastard actually dared to cheat! I'll go find him right now!"

He knew Loa possessed freezing abilities. If used well, copying dozens of notebooks at once would not be a problem.

"No need." Zephyr stopped him and stacked the notebooks neatly to one side. "You failed to notice the problem immediately. By now, he has likely destroyed all the evidence. There probably won't even be a water stain left in that room. Without evidence, you have no grounds to punish him."

At that, a faint smile tugged at Zephyr's lips. "That little bastard really is... interesting."

In high spirits, Loa gnawed on a meat skewer and waved goodbye to his fellow recruits.

The moment he stepped outside, he spotted Admiral Kuzan.

He gnawed the meat clean bit by bit, tossed the bone into a trash can, and hurried over.

"Teacher Kuzan, I'm here."

Leaning against the wall and sleeping with an eye mask over his eyes, Kuzan heard him and pushed the mask up, giving Loa a bleary-eyed look.

"Oh, you're here. Then let's go~"

"Okay, Teacher Kuzan. Where are we going, Teacher Kuzan?"

"Don't call me teacher! Ice Time!"