Unknown Justice 2

I really expected Psychoprotective to win this month. Well, it didn't, so... Here you go. 

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One of the few advantages that Tanya provided that Tenko appreciated was the enhanced rate of healing. Normally, being put in a full body cast would take half a year or more, followed by even more months of physical therapy.

With the constitution of a shapeshifter, on the other hand… Tenko was back on his feet in less than a week. Although some of that might just be a difference between worlds, given that Garp mentioned that ‘his grandsons’ would only be held back for three weeks at most after ‘that kind of a beatdown’.

…The fact that Garp has grandchildren makes the mystery of what happened to Monkey D. Soandso or whatever his name is even more mysterious.

But enough about the Vice-Admiral. The infirmary that he recovered could only admit patients at the order of a Vice-Admiral or higher, and the doctor that released him passed on a message to meet with Borsalino after his release.

Borsalino, or “Admiral Kizaru”, was in the same dojo that Tenko met the Fleet Admiral in, fully restored from the no doubt extreme damage inflicted during the battle that had occurred between Tanya and Sengoku. He was smoking a cigarette.

“Hey, Tenko.” He said. “Sengoku ordered me to get more involved in your training. First… here.” From his back, underneath his coat, he took out what appeared to be a western sword. A broadsword? Longsword? Bastard sword? Despite being passably familiar with fantasy weaponry, Tenko wasn’t quite clear on the difference between most of the blades.

Tenko caught the sword as Borsailno threw it at him, immediately going into a combat stance after drawing it. It was heavier than the katana he was used to, and it felt… a bit like Tanya did. Not in the sense that he thought it came from Being X, but… like it hated him. Which was a very odd thing to feel from a sword. It was large enough for him to need two hands to use. If he was bigger… He could maybe use it one handed sometimes. Its guard had four points sticking out, protecting his hands and possibly letting him stab someone at extremely close ranges.

“I don’t remember where I picked that up.” Borsalino said. “I used to use it before I ate my Devil Fruit, though. It’s called ‘Crane’. It’s a Great-grade Meito, so some people think it has its own will.” The Admiral snorted. “That’s… pretty much bullshit, but you should learn to use it anyway. It’ll help when you master your devil fruit.”

Tenko considered the blade. “How?” He asked.

“Well, your other half seems to prefer that kind of sword. She made a similar one out of nothing.” Borsalino yawned before manifesting a duplicate of the blade out of light. “Well, I got stuff to do soon, so I’m going to show you some stances and swings, you’re going to learn them, then I’ll leave you here to run through them a couple thousand times.” Ah, normal swordsmanship training.  He could do that.

At least, that’s what he thought. Every time the blade came even close to his skin, Tenko ended up cutting himself with it. The difference between a western sword and a katana should not be this great!

“Hm, that didn’t work…” Borsalino said after the ninth time Tenko cut himself with the blade.

Tenko picked the scabbard back up and sheathed the blade carefully. “It’s like the balance shifts as I swing it.” Tenko complained. He didn’t like the idea, but… “Perhaps the idea of a sword with a will isn’t so far-fetched?” After all, this world has fruits with their own wills…

“Hm? Oh, it isn’t.” Borsalino confirmed as he took the cursed blade back. “Swords like that carry the lingering Haki of both the swordsmith and past wielders.” He shrugged. Haki? That was a loaded word. What exactly did he mean by that? “I didn’t know that until after I stopped using it, so I thought it might work the same for you.” He recreated the sword of light, the one that duplicated Crane, and held it out. “Here.”

Tenko looked at the laser sword with askance. “Won’t that burn me?”

“Only if I want it to.” Borsalino said, smiling just as casually as before.

Well, if he couldn’t trust his “father” to avoid maiming him for his own amusement, he’s made several terrible decisions already. Too late to change course. Tenko accepted the laser sword, which stirred the presence that was always in the back of his mind. Tanya was interested in the laser sword.

Stepping back, Tenko went through a few sword forms with the weightless blade. Unlike when he used those same forms with Crane, the moves were technically flawless, as simple as most physical tasks in this life. Most of his trainers attributed it to his ‘Lineage factor’, which he gathered was just a fancy way to say ‘because his father was strong, he was too’. Or it was another way to say DNA. He wasn’t sure. Oddly, after a moment, he started to… feel the blade. It was similar to the feeling he got when holding Crane, but… different. He could feel a sort of… heft to it. It wasn’t a physical weight, but more of… he wasn’t sure. It was hard to describe. But every time he swung, the blade flashed and the ‘heft’ diminished, but every time he shifted into a ready or blocking stance, the feeling grew. Was it being fed power by Borsalino?

Suddenly, Borsalino drew Crane from its scabbard, throwing the ornamental covering to the side, and rushed Tenko with a flurry of sword swings, although it wasn’t until he was three blocks in that Tenko realized that the man had slowed himself to be just barely faster than Tenko could handle, as his fruit allowed him unmatched speed,  and he was holding back his strength so that Tenko could block, if with difficulty. Normally the sheer size advantage Borsalino had over Tenko would make comparisons of strength utterly unfair.

When Borsalino backed off from his assault, Tenko immediately went on the offensive. Not because he was particularly angry with the surprise attack, but because it was what Tenko had gathered to be the expected pattern to training sessions. The fight doesn’t end until they say it does, and if you did anything but focus on victory until that happened…

Borsalino positioned Crane one-handed, lazily, but his twists of his wrist unerringly put the sword between Tenko’s laser sword and his flesh. Tenko couldn’t even hurt him if he did land a hit, as the man was made of lasers. It was as if he knew exactly how Tenko would attack the instant he began his strike, or even before. His skill… terrifying. Even when Tenko started to mix in some traditional kendo forms just to catch him off guard, he unerringly intercepted each strike as easily as he did the strikes that he had just taught Tenko.

“I’ve seen what I need to see.” Borsalino declared, and Tenko disengaged, on guard for any tricks. “What I didn’t tell you is that I’d need to keep focusing on keeping that thing active.” Tenko glanced at the laser sword. And? “I stopped doing that before you even finished your forms.” What?

After a moment of confused silence, Borsalino sighed. “Your fruit, Tenko. It can make a sword of light, like mine can. I got you started, but that’s your sword now.” He chuckled. “It’s weird that you ended up eating that fruit. How’d that happen, anyway?”

Tenko shrugged. “Not much of a story to it. The orphanage, once a week, gave everyone some fresh fruit from the traders as a reward they could threaten to take away the rest of the week. So I was enjoying my bundle of grapes, and it turned into a devil fruit a second before I put a handful in my mouth.” Well, Being X also decided to gloat about the ‘blessing’ he bestowed upon him, but he wasn’t going to say that.

“Right.” Borsalino said. “It’s quite the coincidence. Hoo, wouldn’t Vegapunk like to take a look at you.” Tenko twitched. The mad scientist with the massive head? Borsalino shrugged. “They’re going to have to live with just the samples they took while you were knocked out.” What!? Noticing Tenko’s surprise, Borsalino chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. I’m in charge of the science division, they’re not going to do anything too crazy.”

Well, that was… not as reassuring as Tenko would like, given how much control his superiors seemed to have over his actions, but there was nothing more that could be done. “...What is your Justice?” Tenko asked, now that the spar was over.

“Finally got the guts to ask, huh?” Borsalino mused. “Well, you’re probably not going to like the answer.” Tenko braced himself for dissapointment. “Sakazuki practices Absolute Justice, where every law is important, and to deviate is to earn death.” He snorted. “Kuzan, on the other hand, practices Lazy Justice, where the law should only be enforced on matters of importance, when it has a real impact.” Borsalino snorted at that as well. “Me? I’m somewhere in the middle. I practice Unclear Justice, as what is Just cannot be determined in advance, and can only be properly judged after the fact. So… don’t worry about it!” He gave another lazy smile. “Just do what you have to, and if you feel like it, do some extra so you can look good to the boss.”

Tenko stared at his sire. What kind of philosophy is that? That’s the kind of attitude you get when you’re counting the days to retirement in a cozy corner office! That’s not justice at all! “...I will meditate on your words, Father.” He said neutrally.

“Well, first you have forms to do.” Borsalino pointed out. If he noticed what Tenko thought about his philosophy, he was utterly unbothered by that opinion.

“Ah, I believe I can practice with this blade, Father.” Tenko said, waving the laser sword.

Borsalino checked a pocket watch. “Yeah, I have other things I have to do. Form one, one thousand times. If you don’t manage it in six hours… go get lunch anyway. I’m not going to be counting them. Then, you know the drill.”

“Duty roster.” Tenko replied, nodding affirmatively. Six hours divided by one thousand is about twenty seconds, so he’ll need to get pretty fast to cut it down that low. Hopefully the weightless sword will allow him to go faster.

Tenko started to swing the laser sword, and absolutely didn’t imagine or vocalize lightsaber sound effects as he swung. Anyone who said otherwise would be slandering the son of an Admiral of the Navy.

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“The Egghead log pose is deviating again, sir.” Tenko reported from his watch post. “Variance of seven degrees.” Log poses were… strange. Apparently, the magnetic fields of individual islands overpowered the planet’s overall magnetic field, making compass navigation impossible. However, sailors instead used compasses that ‘attuned’ to an island’s field somehow, allowing it to point to a specific destination.

The part that was strange is that when close enough to the center of a field it was attuned to, log poses had a tendency to change their attunement to another nearby magnetic field. They can be protected from this, but it was bewildering to contemplate, as a modern man.

“Let me see.” Insisted Lieutenant Flect, the navigator of Father’s battleship. After double-checking the variance himself, he snorted. “Should be fine. Ensign, go warn the Admiral. At this distance, there shouldn't be more than half a day of delay if we miss it.”

“Yes sir.” Tenko said, saluting.

Borsalino liked standing on the front turret of his warship, his shoes perfectly balanced on the edge of the cannon. Tenko knew from experience that he would, when attacking another ship, instruct them to fire and literally ride the cannonball to the enemy ship. Some of the men thought he was just showing off, but Borsalino clarified, when he asked, that it prevented the enemy pirates from deflecting him off of a mirror or diverted through a lens or prism like they might be able to if he just turned into light and charged. “You only need that to happen once before you start thinking of ways to prevent it.” He had explained.

“Admiral!” Tenko shouted once he had reached the turret. The seas and winds were a constant roar that made talking at normal volumes rather difficult when the ship was moving. “Potential delay from the log pose! Half a day at most!”

Borsalino nodded in acknowledgement. “At ease, Ensign.” He said. Tenko relaxed, jumping on to one of the other cannons and mimicking Borsalino’s stance. It was a difficult feat of balance, but he could manage it if the ship wasn’t in exceptionally rough waters. It was a little chilly on the Grand Line today, so Tenko was wearing his officer’s coat as an actual coat, instead of as a cape, as that was the fashionable thing to do. “Wonderful day on the sea, isn’t it?” Borsalino said after a moment of silence.

Tenko nodded. The seas were ordinary saltwater, it wasn’t raining, there weren’t any underwater volcanoes erupting, the temperature was on the cold side, but above freezing, the wind was strong and only necessitated a course correction every ten minutes or so, and the sun was shining brightly, without a cloud in the sky. “Fantastic day.” Tenko said in agreement. “The best weather since we left the Red Line.”

“It’s an excellent day for transformation training.” Borsalino said. Ugh. “Just like last time: Let the fruit take control, just focus on staying awake.”

Once more, Tenko issued the tiniest of prayers to unlock the power of Being X’s curse. “Lord, grant this petitioner the sight to fully appreciate this beautiful day that you have blessed us with…” Their suddenly-extant wings picked up the wind, and instinctively, Tenko started to glide along the same path of the ship, like he’s seen birds do on occasion. Their bare feet, now over a meter distant from the surface they touched before, kicked back and forth before Tenko settled their body into a parallel position with the deck of the ship.

“Tanya, was it?” Borsalio asked them after a moment passed where violence did not break out.

Tenko felt their lips move as Tanya replied: “That is the name granted to me by The Lord, yes.”

“Glad to see you’re not sore over your last couple of appearances.” Borsalino said casually. “That could have been awkward.”

“You seek to forge the cowardly, sinful fool into a worthy vessel for the heavenly host.” Tanya said. “Heathens you may be, but for this small favor, I will offer you a chance to convert to the worship of the one true God.” Well, that was interesting. Within what Tenko expected, though.

“I’d think my bosses might object to me doing that.” Borsalino said. “I’ll have to pass.”

Tanya spat to the side, or at least mimed doing so. Their mouth was a pretty dry place, actually. Another point for the ‘doesn’t need to eat’ theory. “In that case, continue to build my vessel. Once my power is no longer constrained by this weakling, I will bring the glory of the Lord to all of you heathens.”

“Well, we’re about to find some pirates.” Borsalino said idly, pointing to the horizon. “Right over there. Looks like one of Kaido’s. They’re pretty common in this part of the New World, Egghead’s close to Wano, his seat of power.” There was a reason why they used an Admiral to protect any shipment of high value, after all.

“And?” Tanya asked, scoffing. “I have no flock to protect, it’s just heathens killing heathens to me. Why should I care?”

“Well, if you could just keep Tenko alive for the battle, that’ll be enough for me. If you think you can manage it, of course. That’s the High Card, and King is a bit above your weight class.” What? King ‘The Wildfire’? The strongest of the Three Disasters of the Beast Pirates? Second only to Kaido himself? What is he doing out here?

Tenko felt Tanya’s heartbeat accelerate. They were afraid. They gained a little elevation, rising higher until the ship became visible. Borsalino, as part of his fruit, gained incredible perceptive prowess when it came to light, in other words, amazing eyesight, which included the ability to peer over the horizon, just a little. So it didn’t surprise Tenko that Tanya needed to gain dozens of meters of elevation before she spotted the large pirate ship that was in their path.

Tanya’s sword of light grew, and with their surprisingly keen vision, Tenko could see that the pirate ship was already on an intercept course. They were looking for a fight. Tanya swooped back down near the ship. Tenko could feel their face twisting in a look of pure incredulity. “While normally I wouldn’t lower myself to instructing foolish heathens…” Tanya began. “Shouldn’t you be raising some kind of… alarm? Your flock is about to be in danger.”

Borsalino yawned. “Hm. Good idea. Take care of that, Ensign.”

Uh oh. Was he ordering Tenko to take back control? Tanya’s indignation spiked. “I am not one of your dogs, heathen!”

Borsalino’s head lazily turned to meet Tanya’s gaze, but his expression was anything but casual. “That’s an order, Ensign.”

The indignation sputtered and died along with their laser sword, as they bore witness to the conviction of authority that the Admiral wielded for the first time. Sensing weakness, Tenko attempted to seize control of the body, urging with all of his will for his body to comply with the command.

“Y-yes sir!” Tanya’s voice stuttered out, although Tenko could not be sure if he was responsible for the words or not. Flying up to the mast, Tanya stole the lookout’s snail, snorting contemptuously at the sleeping marine, who could have gotten everyone killed if the Admiral was any less diligent. Tanya hit the section of the cybernetically modified shell that sent the message to every snail on the ship before speaking into it. “Attention: Pirates are on an intercept course. Battle stations! High Card spotted, expect high ranking members of the Beast Pirates, including King ‘The Wildfire’.” Tanya repeated the warning twice before throwing the snail into the hands of the now-awake and panicking lookout.

“There. Now, I’ll just stay up here and enjoy the view.” Tanya said to themselves. “Or… I suppose I could start to show these heathens the glory of God.” Tenko felt the darkness closing in as his strength, worn out from their previous efforts, started to fail. “That damned heathen dares to imply that I cannot smite these vile brigands?” The Beast pirates are a Pirate Emperor’s crew! Do not engage! King would eat Crocodile for breakfast!

Tanya’s body had zero physiological reaction to the gripping feeling of Tanya’s attention on Tenko, but he felt that his heart had stopped anyway. “Damned mortal. God may have charged me with your conversion, but I’ll be damned if I let you tell me what to do!” Tanya re-created their laser sword before launching themselves into the air, and the last thing Tenko saw before his will gave out into unconsciousness was a pteranodon wearing what appeared to be a combination of a nazi uniform with a gimp mask, with extra studs, and a crest of flames around the back of their head.

He’s so dead…

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When Tenko awoke, he felt… fine. Clearly, the fight with King didn’t go quite as poorly as the one with Sengoku did. He’ll attribute this to Borsalino’s presumed participation.

“What happened?” Tenko asked, getting out of the extra-large hammock that was his bunk. One of the other Marines, Seaman First Class Raker if he recalled correctly, stood at attention and saluted. “Sir! The Beast pirates were repelled with zero casualties!” Reading between the lines, there was also likely no prisoners, either. He would have mentioned them if there was.

…He’s just an Ensign, he didn’t need a full report. “Thank you.” He murmured. According to marine regulations, he’s to report to the quartermaster as soon as possible in the event that the work schedule is disrupted, on behalf of himself and any of his subordinates. Seeing as he currently had no direct subordinates… “Do I have a message regarding my duties?” He asked Seaman Rake.

“No sir.” He replied. “Quartermaster Pellick should be in the galley.”

“Thank you.” Tenko repeated. “At ease.” He added, checking over his uniform. As expected for a battle where he only used Tanya’s skills, his clothing was undamaged, if a bit rumpled from sleeping in it.

As he made his way to the galley, Tenko noticed that all of the enlisted seemed to be giving him excessive amounts of respect in comparison to before. What happened? Once inside, he noticed the Quartermaster eating at the officer’s table, which was separate from the other tables but didn’t have any differences in the food. Also at the table was Lieutenant Flect, Commodore Lenser, and Vice-Admiral Yamakiji.

Before he could present himself properly to the quartermaster, the Vice-Admiral noticed him and jovially puffed his cigar. “Tenko! Sit down, sit down. Have some food.” Surprisingly, the food on a battleship was actually pretty good. Tenko assumed smaller vessels commanded by lower ranking marines probably had the kind of rations that he had read about in his last life, but the chefs on the Light of Progress were skilled and were stocked with quality ingredients.

That said, Marineford’s kitchens had a level of variety that modern grocers would be hard-pressed to replicate, given that it gathered food from all around the world. Tenko only recognized about one in three of the various vegetables and even less of the meats. There were no grand herds of cattle and industrial pens of pigs and chickens, able to feed billions, in this world. Instead, there were over one hundred different animals that were bred for their meat, lots of each were purchased every season by the logistical apparatus of the World Government for their military arm.

Pirates aside, this world was a foodie’s paradise, and he couldn’t help but remember his old friend back in college. He was going to the culinary program, but he enjoyed a good strategy game like most of Tenko’s friends. He would have loved it here.

“So, that was some battle, huh kid?” Vice Admiral Yamakiji said, incidentally exhaling some smoke in his direction.

Waving away the smoke, Tenko shrugged. “I don’t remember most of it.” Or any of it, really.

“Well that’s a damn shame, son.” Yamakiji said, his jovial attitude did not diminish one whit. “When you’d leave off? I’ll give you the play by play.”

Waving away even more smoke, Tenko swallowed his food and replied. “I remember King showing up.” The sad part was, it represented a significant improvement over his previous attempts.

The Vice Admiral stared at Tenko. “That’s it?” He chuckled. “That’s the whole fight. Kizaru mentioned you sucked with your fruit, but damn!”

Tenko continued to eat. If the Vice Admiral changed his mind on elaborating, that was his decision.

Eventually, Yamakiji went over the battle. “Okay, so you intercepted King as he was about to wing the sails, right?” Tenko nodded. That was the last thing he remembered. “You cut at him with your light sword, and it actually drew blood! You shouted about him being a…” Yamakiji frowned. “Hey Flect, did you catch what he said? It’s kind of hard to make it out when he’s using that high pitched little girl voice.”

“He called King a ‘cursed, atavistic nephilim’, Vice Admiral.” Lieutenant Flect replied.

“Right, that. Whatever that means.” The Vice Admiral said, his perpetual smile returning to his face. “So King backed off, probably spooked at getting cut like that. That’s when Admiral Kizaru started fighting him.” Ah, so Tanya only fought with him a little bit. That did explain the lack of broken bones and burn scars.

“Then the cannonballs started coming in.” Commodore Lenser added. “The High Card brought with it about seven other pirate ships to fight the Light of Progress.”

“We started shooting back, of course.” The Vice Admiral hastily elaborated. “But then you started singing about floods, arks, and the ‘eternal grace of god’, whatever that is. The ship started glowing, and every single cannonball did absolutely nothing to anything.” He chuckled as he lit another cigar, the other one having burnt down to a tiny nub. “As soon as King realized his distraction wasn’t doing anything, he high tailed it out of there and they went to a full retreat without even trying a boarding action.” He glanced at his sword, laid on the bench next to him. “It looks like Meiso won’t get to taste the blood of pirates this trip.”

“There’s always the trip back, Vice Admiral.” Commodore Lenser said consolingly. These war maniacs are going to get Tenko killed one of these days…

“I hope not.” Borsalino interjected with the voice of reason, somehow managing to sneak up behind Tenko without causing a commotion from the rest of the galley.

After Tenko managed to get the bit of unknown purple root vegetable out of his airway, Borsalino continued. “Fighting an Emperor’s crew, even if they attack us first, gives me so much extra work to do back at HQ.” Borsalino sat down, a heaping bowl of the stew of the day in front of him.

None of the other officers bothered observing the formalities of an Admiral entering the room, which was to the man’s preference.  “I have a question, Ensign.” Lieutenant Flect said, now that the conversation about the battle had died down. “You were like a preacher out there, and I’m curious: What kind of religion lets you do that?”

Tenko snorted. “You’re aware that my devil fruit has its own personality?” Flect nodded. “It considers its sworn duty to convert me into its religion, worshiping an egomaniac god that desires unthinking obedience to its every whim and endless amounts of praise from literally everyone for miracles over a thousand years in the past.” Tenko isn’t going to bother disputing the legitimacy of the miracles, as it really doesn’t matter when they were so far in the past.

“Ah, so not much different from-” Lieutenant Flect froze in his spot, the Vice Admiral glaring at the lesser officer with a warning look. “Ahem. So, before the Void Century?” He asked.

Ah. He forgot. The Void Century was a period between 800 and 900 years ago, where all records have mysteriously vanished. Immediately afterwards, the World Government formed. To any thinking man, the reason is obvious: The government did some absolutely atrocious things and don’t want anyone to know about it. There were a few other possible explanations, but given that the island of Ohara was bombarded within the last year or two by battleships until nothing remained for the crime of archeology…

Well, that wasn’t the official reason, but you hear things at Marineford. In this case, from a gossiping pheasant by the name of Kuzan who was slacking off in the training room when Borsalino was training Tenko. The point is, whatever reason the World Government has for snuffing out research into that time period could not be something flattering to them. “I guess.” Tenko said, projecting indifference. “Tanya’s not that talkative about history,” It was probably ill-advised to attribute Being X’s gloating to Tanya, but it seemed like some of the marines might convert if he didn’t stop them. “-except about whatever miracles that allowed his chosen people to flourish and how everyone is a sinful degenerate who doesn't follow the commandments, not much of interest.”

“Sounds to me like you’d be able to control your devil fruit if you converted to her religion.” Lieutenant Flect pointed out.

Tenko glared at his technical superior. “Or I could become completely subsumed.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get there.” Borsalino said, offering encouragement. “But if you do end up completely taken over by your fruit, we’ll have to stick you with the other zoans that lost themselves to their fruits.”

Vice Admiral Yamakiji chuckled. “I don’t think that tiny little girl form would fit in with the Jail Beasts of Impel Down, Admiral.”

“They’ll need to be put lower down. Tanya’s way too strong for level 2.” Borsalino replied glibly, as if they weren’t literally debating how deep of a hole they would put Tenko in if he ever loses his bet with Being X.

Of course. His value in this life has entirely to do with his combat strength. What a miserable world that Being X has put him in. For a place with the word ‘Justice’ written on the backs of every officer’s coat, this world sure doesn’t have much of it.

…That would be the point of the philosophizing, then.