Stronger 05 - The Alternative
Hina was rather fond of her crew.
"THIS IS NOT OVER, HINA!"
She knew that Smoker had a less-than-high opinion of certain members of her staff. Private Fullbody, for example, spent more time taking care of his hair than Smoker was comfortable contemplating. In Smoker's universe men did not know what moisturizing conditioner was, and if they did, they were embarrassed about it.
Jango was also proving to a be a problem for Smoker. Due to Hina's extensive experience in dealing with difficult Marines, Headquarters had a tendency to send her the wierdos and the troublemakers.
Hina didn't mind. Smoker could go hang himself from the mainsail. The insane Marines were the ones who made life interesting.
Hmph. Besides. At least her crew wasn't full of jarheads too afraid to let their commander out of something so trivial as a locked office.
"I ORDER SOMEONE TO LET ME OUT OF HERE! THAT MEANS YOU, HINA! I'M PULLING FUCKING RANK!!!!"
Smoker's crew was making itself understandably scarce. That was not a problem for her own men.
"Another gin and tonic, Captain Hina ma'am?"
"Stop crowding Captain Hina, Fullbody! Maybe she would prefer a moist towlette!"
"I.. I didn't think, Jango! I am so sorry, Captain Hina, ma'am! Would you prefer a moist towlette? Or perhaps an iced lemon drink?"
"DO YOU HEAR ME!???!? RANK, HINA! RANK!"
"That will be quite enough," Hina nodded to her lackeys, who had materialized as soon as she exited Smoker's office.
"Of course, Captain Hina ma'am!" Fullbody was carrying her briefcase, and also a parasol in case she wished for shade, and also a fan in case she was feeling hot. ... Perhaps she was letting this get a little out of hand. "That brute must have ruined your appetite for the day."
"Jangoooooooooooooooo," Jango did an odd little pirouette, in what appeared to be an attempt to cheer her up.
Hina ignored the both of them, and set out on her way. They'd follow her, naturally, but if they were encouraged she'd never get anything done. One word of approval from Hina and there'd be a professional-grade tango exhibition waiting for her in the dockyards.
Goodness knew how they found the time and energy for choreography. Life at lea was hard and laborious. Hina would have put a stop to it, had she not felt that her crew's new hobby was a healthy team-building activity.
"ARE YOU STILL THERE? HINA? HINA!!?? FUCKING HELL!!!"
Smoker's howls provided a wonderfully melodic counterpoint Jango and Fullbody's sycophantic scramblings. Hina was not sure if the pair were genuinely (if clumsily) besotted with her, or if they were merely drastically overcompensating in an attempt to hide their own sessions of horizontal disco.
Fortunately, she had no real reason to care.
Hina scoured her pocket for new cigarettes. Fullbody handed her a fresh pack. The messenger from Smoker's underling was pretending not to hear his Captain, while he led her off to solve the mystery of their missing young Lieutenant. Smoker's shouting had subsided but there were loud smashing sounds coming from his cabin.
Hina stifled a laugh with her glove. This day was looking up.
***
This day was definitely not looking up.
The humid air was a shock to Tashigi's system. She could feel the dew on her skin, and the water pooling in her throat. Dark clouds and a choppy sea threatened rain. The village itself was built on platforms over the water, which was halted abruptly by the legion of rich green palms that stood sentinel at the shoreline. The trees of their island (island?) stretched up and out and endless, radiating a sinister heat. She could see why they chose to live on the ocean.
There was no way that a rainforest like this could logically be in Albasta. There was also no way that she could logically NOT be in Albasta.
Sometimes, it seemed like the Grandline took personal pleasure in torturing those who sailed it. Did this happen to pirates, too? Or was it the malevolent will of Gold Roger, that cursed Marines who entered his waters be made to pay a toll blood?
"Where are you taking me?" Tashigi asked the young boy clinging to her hand, who was leading her the docks at an alarming pace (at least holding on to another person kept Tashigi from falling into the water. It looked unwelcoming, and full of vegetation. This must be some kind of bay.) His grip was so solid that he might as well have been some new, undiscovered species of mollusk. A mollusk dressed in shabby brown overalls, with sandy blonde hair.
Tashigi was no marine biologist, but she was pretty sure that such a thing wasn't natural. Still, she couldn't bring herself to break the kid's mood. It was so nice to see children taking interest in wholesome activities, like helping travelers, instead of doing disturbing things like idolizing pirates or becoming involved in youth gangs. She'd read something in the intel reports about this "Usopp" character establishing just such a criminal enterprise in his hometown. It was appalling what those pirates would do. It was one thing to harass adults, but Tashigi could not forgive anyone who would lure innocent children away from the right side of the law!!! Disgusting rabble. Roronoa Zoro was exactly the kind of person who would associate with such a scumbag.
"We're going to the Mayor's!!!" Tashigi could hear the boy smiling. "Everyone will be so excited to meet you, and I'll get out of diving today for sure!"
Tashigi stubbed her toe, and hopped a bit so as to not pitch off of the pier. The kid did not notice.
"Diving?" Ooooh, Tashigi hoped that she wouldn't be diving. She would have to be extra-careful on these walkways. She could swim (it had been a necessary skill to acquire, considering her unlucky tendency to fall out of warships... and yachts... and sailboats... and small buildings... ) but her Shigure would weigh her down, and she had a chest full of Devil's Fruit to think of. If she lost the fruit, then she would have no evidence against that pirate!
Er, not that she and Captain Smoker ever needed evidence, but it was the principle of the thing.
"Yeah. We have to dive for things on the bottom of the ocean, or else we starve," the boy grumbled. "Sometimes we trade the food we find there for other food that isn't gross and slimy from being underwater."
"Oh," said Tashigi, profoundly.
"So what do you do?" Tashigi was ushered around a corner, and towards a larger-looking hit. It had cleaner thatch, and its platform was painted. "Is it really really cool? I bet it is, right? Do you get to travel and go on adventures? I bet you see lots of neat places!"
"I'm a Marine," Tashigi explained, not wishing to misrepresent life at sea. Thoughts of adventure tempted too many young people into piracy! They had to be taught that the best adventure was the kind that could be enjoyed with a clean conscience. Otherwise, perfectly good little boys transformed into sleazy, untrustworthy, chauvinistic men. "I fight to promote justice."
Well... alright, that wasn't entirely true. Tashigi also fought because swords were used in fighting, and she would just whither and die if she didn't get to use her sword. Swords were at their most beautiful when they were being used in a battle - flush with life and flashing with violence. In a way, she guessed that she had inherited her mother's love of the theater. There was nothing so graceful as the arc of a falling katana, no music so powerful as the sound of steel on steel. You couldn't find costumes more exotic and entrancing than the wild garb of pirates and bounty-hunters, with their elaborate-scabbards and lovingly-wrapped hilts. Certainly, there was no climax more satisfying than bringing a pirate into the custody of the law.
Ummm... not that the kid needed to know that.
"So... that means you fight pirates?" the boy stopped suddenly, his big blue eyes wide as saucers. They seemed to have reached their destination.
"Of course!" Tashigi pulled back, surprised and slightly indignant.
"This is GREAT!"
The 'greatness' did not stop the boy from unceremoniously shoving Tashigi through the Mayor's door.
***
Smoker had stopped yelling a good hour and a half back. If his crew had yet to retrieve him by that point, odds were they weren't going to acknowledge his situation at all.
... when he got out of his office, there was going to be RETRIBUTION. Those sissies wouldn't know what hit them. There would be drills. Oh yes, there would be drills. And drudgery. And pain. Maybe, by the end of it, those ladies would be MAN enough to unlock a fucking door! He couldn't believe that those sad, wilting little girlyboys were too afraid of a small show of temper to run for a welding torch.
Fucking hell. If Tashigi were around, he'd have been out of this hole an hour ago.
Smoker frowned, from his seat in an overstuffed armchair. This was not the way to accomplish his goal. Sweet vengeance would have to come later. This was a time for action.
His eyes were closed. His breathing slowed, and then stopped. He was trying to focus on the lapping sound of waves against the hull, so that he would not hear his heartbeat.
The Devil in him did not have a heartbeat. There could be no tightness in its nonexistent chest, as it had no need of oxygen. It scoffed at rest. It scorned all food. It thought touch an inconvenience. Indeed, it had no need of flesh. The Devil in him was muzzled by the force of habit.
Form was its prison.
And the Devil he was hated prisons. So Smoker was going to break out.
It was easier to forget who he was supposed to be (had been, had thought himself to be, before he'd made his choice and signed his pact and renounced his good name for something else. Smoker wasn't a name for a person, printed on birth-certificates and argued-over by nervous parents. Smoker was the name of the Devil he'd once aspired to be) in the heat of battle. He pictured what he had to do to win, and then he did it. That was all there was to it. He didn't have to go through all of this stupid-assed zen crap in order to be a column of smoke in the shape of a man.
Sadly, being a column of smoke in the shape of a column of smoke was another matter entirely. Especially when there was no heat of battle to melt into. Smoker was a very physical person. He liked: getting drunk, hitting things, riding fast, and the taste of blood and vinegar. He did not like being a bodiless, formless cloud. When he thought of it that way, it almost seemed like he had a wussy stealth power.
Fucking Devil Fruit. Fucking irony. Fuck it.
Hina was slipping. She hadn't plugged up all the cracks. He could feel every curve and contour of the room through the thick white mist of his awareness - and there were spaces between the floorboards that an enterprising cloud of smoke could slip through, if he could stop being pissed off long enough to forget the shape he thought of himself as, and remember the devil he actually was.
"Fuck this," Smoker heard himself curse. Which meant that he still had a mouth.
"AUUUGH! GodDAMN it!"
This was going to take a while.
Still, he was damned if he was going to let HINA win this. Goddamn Hina. Goddamn Albasta. SMOKER WOULD NOT BE DEFEATED.
Deep breaths.
Deep breaths.
His eyes were closed. His breathing slowed, and then stopped...
***
The hut was very.... clean. Mostly because it was also very... empty.
Tashigi didn't like to say mean things about good people. Maybe the owner of this place was poor or non-materialistic! It would not be very nice to think awful things about his or her shabby-looking quarters, decorated with only a few sticks of furniture and a battered-looking stove. It was sad to see the state that some of these underpopulated areas were in.
Tashigi was sat down on a venerable-looking wooden chair by an elderly woman in a grey shawl. The lady was wiry, with a shock of hair like steel wool and skin worn to the consistency of well-worn parchment. Maybe she wasn't so old, after all. That was the kind of age a person earned, not the kind that a person grew into.
"This is Tashigi and she's a Marine with a big sword and you can't make me dive today!" the kid babbled, running around the room. Just watching him tired Tashigi out. She stowed her box under the chair and leaned against the woman's kitchen table gratefully.
"Behr? Slow down, son..." said the woman, who was giving Tashigi a Look. It wasn't quite a Look of Death, but it was definitely a look of suspicion. It bothered Tashigi to have an innocent civilian look at her like that. She wondered how the pirates stood it. " On second thought, why don't you run and fetch some firewood, hmm?"
"But I wanna..."
"NOW, Behr."
Oh no! What if the woman had seen her sword, and thought she was a pirate!
The kid stalked out.
"So," Tashigi cleared her throat, "Behr tells me that you're the Mayor of this town? It's very nice to meet you. I'm Second-Lieutenant Tashigi, of the East Blue Marine Armada."
There. That should clear things up. Tashigi would understand, if the woman did not trust her - Tashigi carried no proof of her position - but she hoped that her conduct would eventually be evidence enough of her good intentions.
"I'm terribly sorry," the woman instantly brightened. Wonderful! Clearly the Marines had kept their good name in this stretch of the Blue. "Has Behr been bothering you? We don't get many visitors on an island as remote as this. I must admit, I was wondering what a young lady like you was doing in a place like this. But it makes sense that a Marine would show up here."
It did?
"Yeah," Tashigi stalled, while the Mayor started puttering around in her cupboards. The hinges squeaked, and the porcelain handles were chipped. "I've been traveling, and I got a little... lost."
"Don't you worry, young lady," the Mayor smiled. "We'll get you set right in no time."
"Thanks so much! I really don't want to impose, but if you happen to have a phone handy..."
A part of her hoped that they did not have a phone handy. The same part that told her if she made that call the whole wide world would come crashing down on her. The sky looked heavy. It could fall. You never knew - and Tashigi, more than most, was aware that accidents were bound and determined to happen. What if she called and Captain Smoker didn't want to have anything to do with her because she was weak, and he'd only kept her around before because he felt sorry for her, and now that she was gone he was happier? What if they demoted her back to private for going AWOL during an important mission? She'd deserve that. What if... what if...
Tashigi just wanted to go to sleep and forget that the world existed. But her thoughts were racing too fast for the rest of her to slow down.
"Certainly. You just sit yourself down. If you don't mind my saying so, dearie, you look awfully tired. While you're making your call I'll get you a nice cup of tea."
Oh... good.
***
Smoker's underling had brought the witness to the brig of Hina's flagship. He'd hadn't been happy about letting the witness go, but Hina had been forced to insist that Omar be relinquished. Goodness knew what would happen to the man if he were left to the nonexistent mercies of Smoker's crew.
Smoker would have threatened to personally beat their witness until he talked. Hina liked to think that she took a slightly less crass approach.
"Fullbody, hit him," Hina gestured from her seat. Jango had remembered to bring her folding chair, which was very thoughtful of him, since this was really quite the show. Of course she was not going to actually have Fullbody hit Omar. The Albastan government had little reason to trust the Marines, since the Marines had abandoned them to Crocodile. They could very well throw a fit if one of their civilians was roughed up the Marines.
... yet this Omar fellow did not know that. He looked about to soil himself.
Hina amused.
"My pleasure, ma'am," Fullbody cracked his steel knuckles, and then pulled back his right fist.
"I swear," their witness shuddered, "I'm telling you the truth..."
"Ma'am?" Fullbody looked askance at Hina.
Well. So that was how their witness was going to play it, was it?
"Do you know what we Marines like to call it when people LIE to us?" Hina flicked the ashes from her cigarette, her voice cold and measured.
Hina liked to be amused. It was one of the reasons she had joined the Marines, and she felt that it gave her a positive outlook that helped with her job. She could make the best of any odd working situation.
When Hina was NOT amused, brave men trembled.
"When people lie to us, we call it obstruction of justice," said Hina. "Do you know what the penalty for obstruction of justice is?"
The witness' whimpers grew high-pitched and insistent, "I didn't put her anywhere. The pirate made a magic door. I told you... I told you that..."
"With all due respect, Captain, I really doubt that this guy could have put the Lieutenant anywhere," said Fullbody, lowering his fist to smooth back his hair.
" I know that. But he has to be covering for whoever did," Hina stood, looming over the chained-up prisoner. "A magic door? Really. Who says such a ridiculous thing to a Marine fleet-captain? Who!? What kind of lie is that? Do I look slow to you, Mr.Omar?"
Omar's manacles tightened menacingly.
"Captain Hina?" Jango interrupted, gliding through the door to the brig. Ugh. The sunlight stung her eyes. "Switchboooooard. Someone's on the telephone for you."
Hina swore under her breath. They were operating under time constraints, here!
"I'll take it in my office."
***
*ring*
Hina nearly flinched when she walked into the office. The phone was ringing. Goddamn phone. She would be perfectly happy if she never had to touch another shell receiver ever again. Wasn't that what communications officers were for?
Hina's newfound dislike of telephone communication was no mere phobia: it was an ingrained response to negative stimulus. She had spent weeks after the Execution Tower Incident fielding panicked, uncomprehending phonecalls.
Her colleagues hadn't been able to comprehend what the hell Smoker was doing, and they were too smart to call him directly. So they bothered her about it instead.
*ring*
Hina could see why they did it, though that understanding certainly did not make things much more pleasant.
There was nothing new about Marines giving in to the lure of power and disregarding official directives. There were outposts in every Blue ruled by petty little men, leading petty little lives, taking what petty little pleasure they could from turning their posts into tiny fiefdoms. They were like smalltime Armed Seas, with none of the majesty and all of the ugliness. Headquarters kept their abuses from getting out of hand, and, in turn, they kept peace in their insignificant puddles of water so that the real Marines had time to go about more important business. Their unspoken arrangements with Headquarters were a fact of Marine life.
... Smoker, however, did not make arrangements. Smoker was no Major from some backwater rock. Smoker was the fleet commander of Loguetown - the symbolic home of global disorder and one of the four gateways to the Grandline. Smoker was the White-goddamn-Hunter, a veritable bogeyman to many of the lesser pirates of the East Blue. Smoker was not a person whom Headquarters could control unless he wanted to be controlled.
And it had seemed that he no longer wanted to be controlled.
*Ring*
Still on the line? Really... ought she to have issued a fax bulletin about Smoker's actions post-Straw-Hat? Hopefully news of this ceremony would get everyone off of Smoker's back - and, by virtue of association, off of hers.
People in the know from all over Grandline and East Blue had absolutely no idea what to think of Smoker's disobedience. Had Hina not possessed more class than sense, she would have told them that she was not Smoker's goddamn receptionist, and ended the questioning before it even began.
Had Smoker gone rogue? Was he still a Marine? Was he a pirate? Would he try to gather a crew and make a run for a position among the Armed Seas? Did he know what he was doing? Had he gone mad? Had he always been mad? What was up with this Straw Hat kid, anyway? Did Smoker not know how important Loguetown was? Did he not care how important Loguetown was? Would he attack any Marine ships that got in his way? Was it worth the trouble to get in his way? Did Hina know which way he was going? Could Hina maybe convince him not to go towards them? Had he opened up the gateway to the Grandline on purpose, in some grand Gold Roger-esque gesture of exasperation with the system? What were his political aims? Was this an attempt to blackmail Headquarters into giving him his Commodore's star?
... these questions and more had been Hina's pleasure to answer ten times a day, every day, for more days than she cared to think about. Ugh. There was nothing worse than a gibbering Marine.
*Ring*
Persistent fucker. Hina too fucking busy for this. She was starting to feel a tension headache coming on.
After this time - this one, last time - she was going to put a stop to all of it. The man was thirty-four, for gods sakes! This was not her job! How many times had she promised herself to stop going through this madness!? She needed sleep. She felt like shit. She felt sixteen again. Fuck it.
The only reason she was helping Smoker out now, Hina told herself, was because this was her mess too. Hina had been the only one who wasn't surprised when Smoker ditched his staid executive officer for a dangerously-unstable young Sergeant-Major, all but given the finger to Headquarters, and started tearing his way down the Grandline. This was exactly the kind of thing that one could expect to happen when Smoker was left unoccupied and unattended for long periods of time. Hina should have warned someone. She should have seen it coming.
*Ring*
Right. FINE.
"Hina speaking," Hina said, holding the receiver as if it were covered in bilge and twice as distasteful.
"Captain Hina? Um, I'm, uh, sorry if I've caught you and Captain Smoker at a bad time, ma'am. It's Lieutenant Tashigi. I'm in, uh, kind of a fix here, and if you're really not too occupied I was hoping that..."
"Lieutenant!? Where the hell have you been!!?" Hina demanded, surprised. "Smoker's been..." Hmm. Hina needed to phrase this without directly stating that Smoker had been disappointed, or worried sick. The girl had spent the last few months under the White Hunter's tutelage, and was now quite possibly more fluent in Smokerspeak than regular human modes of expression. Hina did not want to confuse the poor thing. Especially if she needed to be convinced to return to duty.
"Smoker does not appreciate his officers disappearing without leave. And neither do I! There are important Marine matters to attend to today. I realize that you may be having some troubles with your CO, but you need to get back here right away."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't think that that's possible."
"... what do you mean?"
"I'm kind of, uh, no longer in Albasta."
"... what do you MEAN?"
The usually upbeat young Lieutenant sounded very small, "I fell through a magic door."
"A.... magic door?"
"A magic door, ma'am. Really. That's the honest truth. Please don't be angry. Is Captain Smoker very upset? I tried to call him first but I guess he's not in his office. I thought he'd maybe be, um, with you, since the men said that you were together before I left. Is it that he doesn't want to talk to me? I'll understand if he doesn't want me to be his XO anymore, after all of these embarrassments I keep putting him through. I know that I failed to uphold his standards in Alubarna, and that this whole thing must be really inconvenient for him and it's all my fault for being too stupid and clumsy to get back to the ship from a walk in one piece. But you have to believe me - I didn't do this just to skip out on your ceremony, ma'am. Please don't discharge me! I really take my duties seriously and I would never..."
"I know, I know," Hina sighed around her cigarette, sinking into her desk. "You tripped and fell through a magic door."
"You... believe me?"
"I believe you," Hina groaned imperceptibly. Lovely. Just what she needed - their witness filing a complaint with Headquarters. "Now tell me the whole story from the beginning."
Gods. She'd had such high hopes, too.
Now, in order to make her ceremony a success, there was no choice but to resort to the alternative.
***
To know men was to distrust men, and Tashigi knew men very well.
The male of the species thought in pathways and patterns that Tashigi could not even begin to navigate. They lied. They fought. They cheated. They stole. And for all years that she had spent in the company of males, Tashigi still could not fathom why. They never saw the beauty in combat - all they could appreciate in her weapons were their capacity for bloodshed. All they wanted was power that they could abuse. There had to be a reason that ninety-nine percent of pirates were men - some fundamental defect of maleness which Tashigi had yet to discover. Men did bad things, because they were bigger than women, and because they could. It was so stupid and senseless and... male!
Working in Loguetown had been a valuable experience. Pirates and their hunters gathered were drawn to the city like sharks to blood. The criminal connections there were deep, and strong, and enduring - even Captain Smoker could not wipe out the memory of Gold Roger. In Loguetown Tashigi had seen it all, and then some.
And she had worked for men, with men, and against men, for almost half of her life. So she knew for a fact that men were capable of anything.
Forgetting that led only to pain and humiliation. Roronoa Zoro had reminded her of that. Every man had his own inner Roronoa, lying in wait under the surface for the opportunity to run wild.
(Except for Marines like Captain Smoker, obviously. He was too strong for that.)
"Here, dearie. It's got a little tessaroot in it - that should help you refresh yourself a bit. Would you like a cookie?"
"Thank you," Tashigi munched happily on a thin brown biscuit. The Mayor was so nice! She's been really hungry, and these treats were delicious. Tashigi wondered if the lady baked them herself. Neither Tashigi nor her mother had ever even attempted to be good at baking, so she really appreciated good sweets. She wondered if these were maybe the kinds of things that grandmothers did.
"I do hope you don't think too harshly of our poor hospitality. We don't have very few people to impress out here. Only you and Captain Bell. We really have to be careful of him - I'm sure you understand. "
"Oh, not at all!" Tashigi washed the sweet down with a gulp of tea. This Captain Bell must be the local base Captain. Things were going so well! Talking to Captain Hina had really taken a load off of her shoulders. She knew now that she wasn't crazy, and that she also wasn't kicked out of the Marines, and that Captain Hina would take care of Captain Smoker for her until she got back. Relief washed over her like a wave. A powdery-sweet, chewy-chocolate, blood-warm wave...
Tashigi blinked once, and then twice, and then fell drugged onto the table.
Tashigi had spent enough time around men to know not to trust them. But she had almost no experience of women.
***
Smoker pulled himself together outside of Hina's office door - not emotionally (Smoker was by no means that much of a pansy), but physically. After hours of trying to discorporealize himself, he felt tall and strong and solid - good enough to take on the world. Which was a good thing. It was about time that he acted like a man and laid down the law! Smoker hunted whom he chose, when he chose, and Hina was going to have to either respect that or stay the hell out of his way.
Smoker took an invigorating lung full of smoke - it had long since become a two-cigar day. Then he flung open the door, not giving a shit about manners or Hina's privacy. If he couldn't beat the shit out of something then fighting with Hina was the next best thing.
"Good. You're here. I've been waiting for you," Hina gestured impatiently towards the chair he'd sat in during their poker game the previous night. She looked, infuriatingly, like a duchess about to hold court. "We have final preparations to discuss."
Smoker stared. All thoughts of having a good, revitalizing screaming match with Hina vanished.
Hina rolled her eyes, "I suppose it was expecting too much to think that you'd get into your dress uniform on your own? Please tell me that I'm not going to have to personally shove the sleeves on your arms. I know that you know how to button up a shirt, Smoker! If I wanted to help people get dressed I would have spawned years ago."
Smoker continued staring. His XO was standing behind Hina's thronelike office chair, all dressed up in her good uniform and waving happily.
"Tashigi?" Smoker was startled. Then he remembered to be angry. "Where the HELL have..."
"SMOKER-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!! IT IS SO GOOD TO SEE YOU!!!!!!!!!" Tashigi shrieked girlishly, and then launched herself across Hina's desk. Smoker didn't even have time to settle into a good scowl. Before he knew it he was being attacked by a bouncing, giggling squinty-eyed THING which seemed to be intent on hugging him to death. He was also fairly sure that it had just felt up his ass, which he found disturbing.
Smoker unceremoniously pushed Tashigi to the other side of the room. Through no fault of her own, she fell into a bookcase.
"OW!"
"Hina," Smoker's mood had reached a low burn. "Who did this to my junior officer, and when can I kill them?"
"Calm down, Smoker, " Hina snorted. "Clearly that's not Tashigi. I presume that you've at least read enough of my briefings to have heard of Mr. Bon Clay?"
***
Author's Note: I love me some Bon Clay.
Tashigi REALLY loves her some katanas. Which is part of the reason Hina calls her dangerously unstable.
I hate writing setup chapters. That's why it took me so long to get done with this. Fortunately, the chapter of pain is over now, and I can move on to stuff I actually want to expend effort on.
Extra ffnet note: I know that I said that SMoker was 32 in a previous chapter. I was wrong! Smoker is t34, and Hina is 32. Oops?
P.S. Nik gave me inspiration pictures, because she ROCKS. Thankyou, Nik!
Next Up: Action chapter! Tashigi vs. Captain Clarion Bell, Smoker vs. shirts, and more. In both Nanohana and Devil's Garden, it's finally time for the shit to hit the fan.
Tashigi REALLY loves her some katanas. Which is part of the reason Hina calls her dangerously unstable.
I hate writing setup chapters. That's why it took me so long to get done with this. Fortunately, the chapter of pain is over now, and I can move on to stuff I actually want to expend effort on.
P.S. Nik gave me inspirational pictures, because she ROCKS. Thank you, Nik!
Next Up: Action chapter! Tashigi vs. Captain Clarion Bell, Smoker vs. shirts, and more. In both Nanohana and Devil's Garden, it's finally time for the shit to hit the fan.
