41 – Conomi
The briefing room was half full and the Lieutenant Commander running it had a voice that carried like he was used to larger rooms with worse acoustics. He'd pinned a map to the board behind him and the map showed the eastern arc of East Blue with patrol routes marked in red and incident reports marked in blue. There were more blue marks than last month.
"Increased pirate activity across the southeastern corridor. Patrol units from the 8th and 12th Branches report two additional engagements in the last thirty days. Merchant convoy losses up eleven percent from the same period last year."
I was in the third row. Isuka was two seats to my left. Tashigi was absent. The room held about forty recruits and a handful of junior officers. The overhead fan was broken and the heat was building.
The Lieutenant Commander tapped the map. His finger landed on a cluster of islands southeast of Loguetown. Small. The kind of islands that didn't make most charts.
"Conomi archipelago and surrounding waters. The 16th Branch under Captain Nezumi maintains jurisdiction. Branch reports indicate the area is secure. Patrol frequency is adequate."
A recruit two rows ahead raised his hand. "Sir, the merchant loss reports from the southeastern corridor contradict the 16th Branch assessment. If the area is secure, why are convoy losses spiking in adjacent waters?"
The Lieutenant Commander gave him a look that could have come with a manual on when not to ask questions. "The 16th Branch has not requested reinforcement. Branch-level patrol assessments take precedence over regional loss aggregates until a formal review is conducted. Next slide."
The recruit put his hand down. He wasn't wrong. The numbers didn't add up. But the numbers never added up when the branch captain was being paid to make them not add up.
Nezumi. The man who took Arlong's money and filed clean reports while a fishman pirate with a twenty-million-berry bounty ran an occupation out of a park made of concrete and steel. Whose reports said "secure" while a teenage girl drew maps in a locked room.
I sat in my chair and kept my face neutral. The Lieutenant Commander was discussing North Blue shipping lanes. The recruit who'd asked the good question was taking notes. Isuka, two seats over, was sitting with her arms crossed and her jaw tight. She'd heard the same contradiction.
I stared at the cluster of islands on the map. Small dots. Blue ink marking the surrounding waters as active. The 16th Branch's jurisdiction line ran around them in a neat administrative boundary that meant nothing except that nobody else was looking.
I could take Arlong. Probably. My Observation could read his attacks. My Armament could harden against fishman strength. Low tier against a twenty-million-berry pirate in the weakest sea. One-on-one on dry land, the math leaned toward yes. But Kuroobi's Fish-Man Karate and Hatchan's six swords meant the crew would require a coordinated team.
And I was a Chore Boy. No ship. No authority. If I sailed east and fought Arlong and won, I'd be a Marine who conducted an unauthorized operation in another branch's territory. Court-martialed. Discharged. Everything I'd been building, gone.
The Lieutenant Commander was talking about supply line adjustments. A recruit in the front row was asleep. His neighbor kept kicking his chair leg.
Six months. The Academy year ended in six months. Ensign rank. A ship assignment. An East Blue posting. Then I could reach the Conomi Islands through channels that wouldn't get me thrown out.
Six months.
The briefing ended. Recruits filed out. The Lieutenant Commander rolled up his map. The blue marks on the Conomi archipelago disappeared into the tube.
The training ground in the late afternoon. I was on the conditioning track. Running. My lungs burned and my legs were going heavy and the math on six months kept running alongside me.
Nami was sixteen. Maybe seventeen by now. She'd been drawing maps for Arlong since she was ten. Seven years. Bell-mère's tangerine grove was still growing on the hill above Cocoyashi and Nami was still in that room with a pen in her hand and a fishman behind the door.
I ran harder. The track curved past the weapons yard. The sun was low enough that the shadows were long.
Isuka was crossing from the yard to the main building. Rapier racked. Bag over her shoulder. She was walking at her usual pace, which was fast because Isuka didn't stroll.
Our paths crossed at the junction between the track and the walkway. She didn't slow down. Her hand came up as she passed and touched my shoulder. Two fingers. Brief. She didn't look at me. She kept walking.
Her fingers through my shirt, warm from training. She'd never done that before. Every other time she'd touched me had come with a reason attached. A correction, a grab, a punch. This was just her hand on my shoulder because she was walking past.
She turned the corner and was gone.
I ran another lap. The sand was warm under my boots and the sun was lower and I was still thinking about the Conomi Islands.
The barracks. Night. My bunk. The overhead lamp was off and the room was dark except for the light through the window from the harbor. The recruit below me was snoring in that slow, congested rhythm I'd been hearing for five months.
The ceiling had a crack in it. Long, thin, running from the corner above the door toward the center of the room.
Nami. I knew her face from pages I'd read in a life I didn't have anymore. Orange hair. Brown eyes. The pinwheel tattoo she'd get on her arm to cover the Arlong mark. She was in a room right now drawing maps of an ocean she couldn't cross for a fishman who'd killed the woman who raised her.
I couldn't reach her. Six months into a career that needed six more before I had the rank to do anything. I had the power. A Low-tier Haki user could take Arlong. But power without position was a guy with strong fists and no way to use them.
Six months.
The ceiling crack ran its line above me. The snoring continued below. The harbor light moved on the wall when a ship passed the breakwater.
For me, six months was training and rank and the grind of getting where I needed to be. For Nami it was another hundred and eighty mornings of waking up in a place she couldn't leave.
I pressed my hand flat against the bunk above me. The wood was smooth from years of recruits doing the same thing.
I'd get there. Rank and a ship and an assignment and I'd sail to those islands and break Arlong's jaw and open that door. Six months.
The crack in the ceiling didn't move. I closed my eyes.
Tomorrow was conditioning drills and a tactics lecture and the same mess hall with the same rice. Isuka with her notebook. Tashigi with her Skillful Grade report. Gion on the balcony. The same days, stacking.
I kept my hand on the wood. The harbor light shifted. I slept.