26 – Inspection
We'd been standing in formation for forty minutes and the sun was doing its best to cook us in our uniforms when the Marine coat appeared at the far end of the parade ground.
The coat came first because the coat was what you saw. White, draped over the shoulders, Vice Admiral weight. The woman underneath it was tall, lean, and walking like the parade ground owed her money. Short black hair cut above the jaw. Blue eyes. Red lipstick. A spiked choker around her neck that was either a fashion choice or a threat. Below the Marine coat: a black low-cut top with the Marine logo that showed her midriff and the edges of purple flower tattoos crawling up from her hips. Leather pants. Heeled boots on a parade ground.
Nobody wore leather pants to an Academy inspection. This woman wore leather pants to an Academy inspection.
The officer beside her was reading from a clipboard and trying to keep up with her stride and failing. She hadn't slowed down since she'd stepped off the dock. I'd watched from formation as the visiting ship came in, a light cruiser flying G-14 colors, and the Vice Admiral had walked down the gangplank and across the compound and into the parade ground without stopping for coffee or courtesy or a briefing, and the officers scrambling to receive her were still buttoning their coats when she reached the first row of recruits.
Vice Admiral Doll. G-14, outer Grand Line. One of the operational base commanders who spent more time in the field than at headquarters and came to Marineford only when required. I'd heard Gion mention her once.
Doll stopped at the first recruit in the line. Looked him up and down. The assessment took maybe two seconds.
"Acceptable."
She moved to the second. Same look. Same duration.
"Weak stance."
Third.
"Who taught you to hold a sword like that."
It wasn't a question. The recruit opened his mouth to answer and Doll was already past him.
She worked down the line. Every recruit got two seconds and a sentence. Most got "Acceptable." A few got criticisms delivered without malice or interest. One recruit whose boots were untied got a look that lasted a full second longer, and Doll didn't say anything at all, which seemed worse.
Two recruits down the line, a kid from South Blue was swaying. He'd been swaying for the last five minutes. Nobody was helping him and the kid was too proud to sit down.
I was seventh in the row. Isuka was eighth. Tashigi was further down, near the end, with Shigure at her hip and her posture textbook-straight.
Doll reached me.
She stopped. The two-second assessment stretched. Her blue eyes went from my boots to my face and stayed. The tattoos on her hips were visible at the edges of the low-cut top and the choker sat against the base of her throat and her eyes were flat and cool.
"So this is Momousagi's prodigy."
"Hina says you're interesting." The red lipstick moved around the words with bored precision. "Hina is easily amused."
She poked my chest with one finger. Hard. The fingertip hit my sternum through the uniform and the force behind it was casual and enormous and I rocked back half a step before catching myself.
"Harden your forearm."
I did. Armament coating my right forearm, the skin darkening, the density increasing. I held it. Three seconds of reliable coating.
She flicked my forearm with two fingers.
The hardening cracked. The coating shattered from the point of contact outward, splitting like ice on a puddle, and my arm was just an arm again and the flick stung where the broken Haki had left raw skin. The whole thing had lasted maybe a second and a half under pressure.
"Barely Low tier." She lowered her hand. "Prodigy is generous."
She walked on. I stood in formation with my forearm stinging and the ghost of her finger still on my sternum.
Isuka leaned toward me without turning her head. Her mouth barely moved.
"She's charming."
"She hit me harder than you do."
"I doubt that."
Doll was already three recruits past us. She gave Isuka a one-second glance and said "Good rapier posture" without stopping. Isuka's jaw tightened.
The inspection continued. Doll reached Tashigi, paused, looked at Shigure, and said "That blade's too good for your rank. Earn it." Tashigi's ears went red but her posture held. The South Blue kid had stopped swaying.
Doll finished the row, spoke with the Academy commandant at the end of the line, and walked off the parade ground with the officer still trailing her. The whole inspection had taken less than an hour. She hadn't smiled once.
The afternoon went back to normal. Drills. The mess hall, where the inspection was the only thing anyone talked about and the recruit with the untied boots was getting a different version of the story at every table. Tashigi said "Earn it" to herself during lunch, quietly, under her breath, trying different emphasis each time. I ate my rice and didn't tell her she was right about all of them.
A conditioning run after lunch. I used it to empty my head, which worked for about three laps before the emptying failed. My forearm where the Haki had cracked. Barely Low tier.
Isuka found me on the track's third lap. She fell into step beside me without asking, her breathing easy, her stride longer than mine but her pace matched. We ran in silence for half a circuit. The track circled the outer edge of the compound, past the equipment sheds and the armory and a gap in the perimeter wall where someone had knocked out two stones last month and maintenance hadn't fixed it.
"The Armament gap," she said, between breaths. "She's right about it."
I looked at her. We ran.
"Your Observation is better than mine in some reads. Your hand-to-hand is catching up. But the Armament is..." She ran for a few steps without finishing. "Inconsistent. I've noticed."
"I know."
"Do you know why?"
"Not in a way I can explain."
She ran beside me for another quarter-circuit. The gap in the perimeter wall passed. A bird was sitting on one of the knocked-out stones, brown and fat.
"Gion will figure it out," Isuka said. "She figures everything out."
She accelerated. Her stride opened up and she pulled ahead and the conversation was over and she ran the last lap fast enough that the gap between us was visible by the time I finished. She was at the water station, drinking, when I came in. She tossed me a bottle and walked toward the armory without looking back.
I was walking back from the track when I passed the corridor outside Gion's training room. Late afternoon. The door was closed. Voices inside. I recognized both.
I slowed. The corridor was empty.
"...unusual instincts but his Armament is lagging behind his Observation." Doll's voice, clear and curt through the wood. "The gap is suspicious."
"He's a late developer." Gion. Measured.
"Gion." A pause. "I'm not Hina. I don't catalogue. I just don't like things that don't add up."
Silence. Then the scrape of a chair. Footsteps. The door handle turned and I moved. Ten feet down the corridor and walking like I'd been walking the whole time when the door opened.
Doll came out. She saw me. The blue eyes registered my presence and my proximity to the door and the timing. She looked at me the way she'd looked at the recruit with the untied boots. She didn't say anything. She walked past me and turned the corner toward the docks and she was gone.
Gion appeared in the doorway. Arms crossed. Konpira at her hip. Her jaw was set and the crease between her eyebrows was deeper than it had been this morning.
She held my gaze.
"Thursday, Vance."
She closed the door.
A recruit came around the corner carrying a stack of files and nearly walked into me. The files slid. I caught the top one before it hit the floor and handed it back. The recruit muttered thanks and kept going. The evening light through the far window was turning gold.
Thursday was tomorrow.