"This kid has potential, sure — but isn't she baing a little cocky?"
Sengoku frowned from his high vantage point. The training ground below had been divided into a number of combat arenas for live trials. There, the officers watched closely.
At the corner of the platform a nondescript figure stepped forward — an orange-haired man wearing a multi-holed horned mask. He glanced up to Sengoku.
"Go on, Bastille. I'll arrange the ring." Sengoku ordered.
"Yes, sir."
The 2.91-meter vice admiral Bastille nodded, shouldered his nearly two-meter-long sawblade, and swaggered down to the arena.
Laurentina, by contrast, wore a little shark-hat and barely reached 165 cm.
The contrast in presence could not have been more cruel: one a roaring beast, the other a slender lamb. Some recruits even blurted out pleading for restraint — don't bully the girl.
Bastille smiled and entered the private sparring ground tucked beside the balcony. Sengoku had chosen the location deliberately: away from the general crowd. A Vice Admiral could never be seen to lose to a recruit — not publicly.
Once both combatants were in place, Sengoku and the assembled officers took their seats and the match was called.
"Blood Spear."
Laurentina pressed her fingers together in a blade shape. Drops of blood condensed at her fingertips, and with a light motion she sent a thin filament of blood streaking across the arena.
"Oh. Not bad. But that's not exactly the Flying Finger Gun," Bastille mocked, flashing forward to parry. He redirected Laurentina's thrust and answered with a heavy slashing blow.
Clang!
Laurentina blocked with a sweep of her chainsaw. Sparks flew where metal met metal, and she followed with a horizontal slash aimed at Bastille's midsection.
"Just a clever use of her Devil Fruit."
Laurentina shrugged off the exchange and said mildly, "If I win, will you change your nickname — and maybe your favorite food and the name of that ridiculous saw of yours?"
Her own nickname was Ghost Shark. Facing a Shark-Slayer Vice Admiral felt like a cosmic insult.
"Huh? Is that all?" Bastille seemed puzzled, but he still dodged neatly and closed in for another chop.
"Agor Waltz!"
Laurentina planted a hand on the ground, kicked elegantly, and closed the distance in a spinning slash. The long-handled chainsaw — Remubito-forged — danced in time with her, golden teeth whirling and spitting sparks. One hand opened like a blossoming flower; her movement resembled a graceful waltz.
Smoker in the stands stared, dumbfounded. Pointing at Laurentina, he looked at Aokiji in disbelief: "Has she always fought like this?"
Aokiji's mind drifted to their first meeting and he nodded once.
Tashigi reached into her pocket for a cigarette — and froze. The lighter was full of Pocky, chocolate sticks in multiple flavors, and a tiny note:
"Tina-neechan still looks cool even when she 'smokes' Pocky."
"Smoking Pocky still looks cool?" Tashigi mused aloud, mildly scandalized. Kids these days.
She plucked a stick anyway and handed the lighter to Smoker with a wry smile.
The exchange finished, the duel resumed. Back and forth they clashed.
Laurentina's strikes were unorthodox — fleet, flowing, and ever-following, like a shark gliding through the sea or a bird returning to its nest. The style was elegant, calm, and shockingly effective.
Marines who had never seen her fight gawked. A Vice Admiral was not supposed to be trading blows like this with a recruit. Bastille belonged to the corps' backbone — and yet he matched a recruit blow for blow.
"This pair's fighting like they won't kill each other! Use your strongest moves!" Garp bellowed from the stands, laughing.
Bastille had just survived a brutal cut, and his expression was full of question marks. Since the girl had shifted into her Vampire Form, he'd found her difficult to handle — and she still hadn't shown her serious side. Would she really go all out?
Laurentina considered the same. At the current tempo, it was fifty–fifty. Neither could dominate.
But she wanted to settle a grudge. Shark-Slayer — it grated on her.
"Flesh and Bone Split Apart!"
Black, ominous energy smothered her. Her eyes grew hollow and a red trail of light extended from the corners, turning her into that same deranged, sadistic form from earlier.
"Heh… hahahahahaha… amuse me…!" she sang, the voice warped with delight.
Her strength doubled. Her style became raw chaos — every motion aiming to destroy.
"Is this for real?" Smoker's forehead beaded with sweat. The killing aura felt like a real, physical tremor.
"It's terrifying… this form of hers," Tashigi said, suddenly grave. The orange-pocky she held tasted like ashes.
Tsuru's expression shifted too — something remembered stirred in her features, and she turned to Sengoku. He nodded subtly.
This power… that aura…
Does this child have ties to that lost city? Tsuru wondered, distracted.
PZZZT.
The chainsaw tore open Bastille's lower abdomen, ripping a deep wound. Armament Haki could bolster defense, but he had fallen into an abyss.
The blank-eyed Laurentina sniffed the blood on her saw and smiled with enjoyment; a flush climbed quickly up her throat.
"Return to the abyss…" she whispered, and the saw cut down again.
The one-sided torment continued. Flesh split and blood flowed; Armament barely slowed the carnage. Bastille slumped, and Laurentina put a boot to his chest.
"Ahhh…"
The Vice Admiral's paind screams seemed almost like a lullaby to Laurentina. A playful expression crossed her face as she ground her boot in, savoring the scene.
Another howl tore through the arena. Her face flushed with a disturbingly joyful hue — as if the violence filled her with some perverse rapture.
"Sengoku." Someone called up to the balcony. The fleet admiral watched the barely conscious figure of Bastille and frowned.
"Frozen Time Capsule!"
A shockwave of cold blew through the arena. Aokiji, never one to be idle in such scenes, unleashed a chilling technique he controlled with deadly precision — the same method that once immobilized Jaguar D. Saul.
Ice crept from the ground up and around Laurentina's legs, encasing more than half her body in crystalline frost in an instant.
"You must pay for this… you must…" the deranged nun murmured, but the cold from deep within consciousness steeled her voice into something colder, and finally, unable to continue, she collapsed.
At the same time, Tashigi used a sudden Moon-step and a swift clinch, and Smoker moved in to catch and hold Laurentina.
"Ara ara — that final line startled me," Aokiji breathed, letting out a puff of cold air.
He wasn't keen to deal with this again. What if the girl grew up holding grudges?
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