Vice Admiral Tsuru's Interview

The corridors of the Strategy Division were much quieter than those of the training camp.

In the training camp, there were always footsteps, shouted cadences, and the dull thud of an iron whip striking the sand. Here, there was nothing but the hum of fluorescent lights and the occasional ring of a distant Den Den Mushi. The marble floor was polished enough to reflect a person's face. When Jack's military boots struck it, each crisp step echoed down the corridor for several seconds.

At the end of the corridor stood a dark brown wooden door. It bore no sign, only a brass plate marked "Strategy Division · 07." The brass handle gleamed without a fingerprint on it. Jack raised his hand and knocked three times, his knuckles making dull thuds against the wood.

"Come in."

The voice came from behind the door. It was quiet but clear.

Jack pushed the door open.

The office was larger than he had expected, though it did not feel empty. A desk stood by the window, piled with paperwork: open folders, stacked maps, and several half-sheets held beneath a paperweight. The paperweight was a fist-sized chunk of raw Seastone, its gray-green surface matte under the fluorescent light.

A metal filing cabinet stood against the wall, one door half-open to reveal a mass of case files with numbered labels on their spines. A sea chart of the New World hung on the wall. Routes marked in red and blue crisscrossed it, dense notes covering most of the chart. The lines between islands looked like a spiderweb.

A cup of tea sat on the coffee table. It had gone cold, and a tea leaf drifted in circles on the surface. Beside the table stood two chairs with wooden arms and leather cushions. They looked sturdy, but one glance told Jack they would break if he sat in either of them.

Tsuru sat behind the desk.

She wore the white uniform of a Marine officer, its collar fastened with meticulous care. The vice admiral's insignia on her epaulettes gleamed silver under the light. She looked younger than Sengoku and Garp, though the fine lines at the corners of her eyes and the faint creases on her forehead betrayed her age. Her hair was pinned up behind her head with a black hairpin, a few loose strands hanging by her ears.

She held a pen, its tip moving across a sheet of paper. She did not look up when Jack entered. The pen continued for another two or three lines, then stopped. She set it down, raised her head, and looked at him.

Her gaze was calmer than Hairt's, sharper than Sengoku's, and more focused than Garp's. She was not sizing up a person; she was reading a file. Her eyes swept from Jack's head to his boots and back again, quickly but without haste, as though she had memorized every detail about him and was now checking it against his photograph.

"Sit."

Tsuru's voice was as flat as a cup of tea gone cold.

Jack glanced at the two chairs and stayed where he was. "I'll stand."

Tsuru's mouth twitched, barely. She leaned back, folding her hands on the desk. Her fingers were long, her nails neatly trimmed and unpainted.

"Hairt says you can graduate early." Tsuru stated it as a fact, not a question. "Your physical abilities meet the standard, and you've learned all of the Six Powers. How long did that take you?"

"Half a month," Jack said.

Tsuru watched him without replying. The silence lasted about three seconds. Her gaze never left his face.

"The 16th Branch in the West Blue received a combat capability rating of zero two years ago." Tsuru picked up a document and opened it to the first page, dense with writing and tables. "No combat assessment, no equipment rating, no tactical score. Bastian ran the branch like a junkyard. How would you rate the 16th Branch now?"

Jack did not hesitate. "Seventy percent."

Tsuru tapped her pen against the paper. "What's missing?"

"High-end fighters." Jack's voice was quiet, but every word was clear. "The rank and file can fight, the patrol boats can move, and the intelligence network works. But against a powerful pirate or a Devil Fruit user, they won't hold out."

Tsuru wrote a couple of strokes, then looked up at him. "Since you left, a sergeant named Colin has been running the branch. Is he up to it?"

"He is," Jack said evenly. "If he isn't, no one else in the West Blue is."

Tsuru wrote another couple of strokes. She turned a page, her gaze falling on the next line. "Iron Cage City. You crushed a Devil Fruit. What type was it?"

"The Ox-Ox Fruit. Bison form."

Tsuru tapped a finger on the desk. "Do you know its market price?"

"One hundred million."

"One to two hundred million." Tsuru sounded as though she were reading from a textbook. "When you joined the 16th Branch, Bastian's monthly salary was eight hundred thousand Beli. You crushed something worth ten years of his pay. Why didn't you eat it?"

Jack looked at her. "Then I wouldn't be able to swim."

Tsuru's finger stopped. That expression at the corner of her mouth—not quite a smile—appeared again, then vanished. She closed the file, set it aside, and picked up a second one. The label on its cover read "Bastian Treason Case."

"You intercepted the evidence of Bastian's collusion with the enemy yourself." Tsuru's tone did not change, but she turned the pages more slowly. "Why didn't you kill him then?"

Jack's lips moved, but he did not answer at once.

Tsuru rested her fingers on the folder's cover and waited.

Jack was silent for three seconds. Then he spoke, his voice a little lower than before. "Under military law, treason goes before a court-martial. He deserved to die, but I'm not a judge."

Tsuru studied him for several seconds.

In the quiet office, those seconds felt long. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. A sea breeze slipped through a gap in the window, lifting the corner of the chart on the wall. Tsuru kept her eyes on Jack's face, looking into his eyes. There was nothing in them. No excuses, no concealment, no hunger for praise, no unease.

She stood and walked to the window.

It was open, and the sea breeze from Marineford gusted in, flipping several pages of the documents on the desk. Tsuru stood with her back to Jack, her hands clasped behind her. Her back was straight. Age had not bowed her shoulders, nor had years at a desk bent her waist.

"The way you follow the rules," Tsuru said from the window, her words thinned by the breeze, "worries me more than the way you break them."

Jack stood before the desk and said nothing.

Tsuru turned to face him again. Her expression was as calm as before, but something new lay in her eyes. It was not wariness. It was the focus of someone reconsidering her judgment. "I've met plenty of people who could master the Six Powers to this degree in half a month. Garp was like that when he was young, but he was more reckless than you. You're calmer than he was. Far too calm."

She returned to the desk but did not sit. From a drawer, she took a sheet of paper, unfolded it, and laid it on the desktop. A few lines were written on it by hand, neat without being stiff, in the script of someone who had practiced for years.

"You'll graduate from the training camp within three days." Tsuru's voice returned to its original flatness. "I'll arrange your graduation exam myself. Three instructors will attack you at once. No restrictions, no holding back. You'll have to withstand them on your own. Pass, and I'll promote you to captain at Marine Headquarters and give you a special assignment. But you'll still serve the full three months."

Jack looked down at the paper. The ink gleamed under the light. The spacing between the characters was even, each stroke drawn with force. After two seconds, he raised his head.

"Who are the three instructors?"

Tsuru capped her pen with a crisp click. "You'll find out when the time comes."

Jack's mouth twitched slightly, as though he wanted to say something, but he let it go. He turned toward the door, his boots striking the marble with heavy thuds. He gripped the handle. Brass gave a faint creak beneath his palm, and his Hardened Skin left a shallow ring of impressions where it touched the metal.

He opened the door and stepped halfway out.

Tsuru's voice came from behind him, quiet but clear.

"You did good work in the West Blue."

Jack did not look back.

He activated Geppo.

His feet kicked against the air in rapid succession, lifting him three meters, then five, then ten above the ground. The wind was stronger up there. It snapped at his uniform and lifted one side of his cap, exposing the old scar on his forehead. Suspended in midair, he looked down over the whole of Marineford's harbor.

Dozens of warships lay in port, their cannon barrels glinting coldly in the sun. The gray-white building of Marine Headquarters rose at the far end of the harbor, its flag spreading in the sea breeze and hiding a small patch of sky. In the distance, recruits ran laps around the training camp grounds. Sand rose beneath their feet, forming a pale yellow haze in the sunlight. Farther still, the horizon stretched between sea and sky, dividing one expanse of blue from the other.

He looked down for a few seconds, then descended. His boots touched the ground without a sound.

Three days.