"What are you thinking about?" Zoro asked when he noticed the expression of the girl walking beside him.
Furrowed brows, unfocused gaze, feet moving mechanically.
"What?" Tashigi snapped awake instantly and immediately tripped over a root, causing her to grab Zoro involuntarily. Both froze at the unexpected contact like a pair of stone statues, two pairs of eyes locking onto one another. Turning scarlet like a poppy, the girl recoiled, drew her head into her shoulders, and even hid her hands behind her back for good measure. An incredible contrast. One moment she could dice an entire mountain of iron-hard wax into tiny cubes; the next she was incapable of hiding her embarrassment like a teenage girl. Tashigi herself did not understand what she was doing. Zoro might be extremely slow when it came to relationships, but even his vision darkened with desire at that moment. It had been a very long time since he parted from Nojiko, especially for a young man his age. No amount of training or willpower could defeat ordinary biology forever.
Exerting truly titanic effort over himself, he nevertheless managed to regain control.
"So what were you thinking about?" Zoro asked indifferently as he continued onward.
The indifference was genuine. Right now he did not care about the girl's thoughts at all; he was desperately trying to control his own. The question had been asked only as a distraction.
"Huh? Oh! Um... uh... hm?"
Tashigi's answer was extremely informative. The young man was not the only one trying to get his thoughts under control. It was worth clarifying that she had not only failed to understand what he was asking, but had not even noticed herself beginning to follow him. Complete autopilot.
"Could you be more specific?"
"Uh... I was thinking about my strength!" she finally managed to force out.
The girl carefully kept several meters between herself and Zoro as though he were a huge red-hot stove or bonfire and she feared getting burned. If Luffy and Nami knew what melodrama they were missing here, neither would sleep properly for the next month. That pair, bored and sitting together, could read several romance novels in a single day, and Zoro and Tashigi's relationship could easily fill an entire novel by itself. A brutal pirate killer and a beautiful Marine lieutenant taken captive by him, between whom an unexpected forbidden feeling had flared. It was the perfect romance plot.
"And what did you decide?"
"I... I don't know what to think yet."
"What do you mean?" Zoro tilted his head slightly, now genuinely interested in the conversation.
"I think I've become very strong, but I don't feel strong," Tashigi admitted. "Before, I couldn't even dream of strength like this. Now it feels insufficient, like I'm still far too weak. Do you think I want too much?"
"You're wanting exactly the right thing," the young man objected. "Don't you dare start thinking you've become strong. You're strong only compared with a backwater like East Blue, where powerful people are the exception rather than the rule. In reality, just as you said, your strength is still insufficient. You're not wrong about that. Inexperience is your biggest problem now. You spent far too long tucked safely under your captain's wing. If you truly want to become an outstanding swordsman, you need to participate in battles. Nobody reaches the summit of this world without leaving mountains of corpses and liters of spilled blood behind them—both their own and other people's."
"Do you really believe that? Is killing and spilling blood absolutely necessary? Is there no other path?"
"By asking such stupid and naive questions, you're only proving your inexperience again. If you doubt me, then when you return to the Marines, try gathering every piece of information you can about the current admirals. I'm sure most of it is classified, but even what's publicly available should be enough to draw conclusions. You just have to interpret the information correctly."
"Correctly? What do you mean?" Tashigi frowned.
Not even five minutes had passed, and she had already forgotten her caution, caught up with Zoro again, and resumed walking beside him as before. Zero resistance, perhaps even negative. The exact level where the relationship could progress merely from the man's presence. He did not even need to do or say anything; the girl handled it herself. Any action or conversation simply accelerated the process.
"It means that when you read about some admiral defeating a previously famous criminal, first find out how many corpses remained after the battle. And whether the criminal himself survived. I think once you gather all the information, you'll understand for yourself what price you'll have to pay to climb to the summit of this world. And believe me, mountains of corpses and liters of blood probably won't make up even half of that price."
"..."
Tashigi remained silent. In the past she would certainly have launched into a heated argument, trying to prove... actually, even the girl herself was no longer sure what she would have tried to prove. But she definitely would have tried. Perhaps she would not have objected to liters of spilled blood, but she certainly would have challenged the mountains of corpses. Now that was much harder to do, to put it mildly. The path she had chosen had turned out far darker and bloodier than she once believed. She had not yet decided what to feel about that. What she understood clearly, however, was that Zoro was completely right. She truly was too inexperienced. The quiet waters of East Blue and her supposedly dead captain's protection could never have prepared her for something like this.
"And here's our Sanji," Zoro said.
The young man's words had barely faded when a loud, dull clang sounded, as though someone had delivered a powerful strike to a solid iron block, followed by the crash of breaking trees. After another hundred meters or so, the pair stepped onto an artificially created clearing where the earth had been churned everywhere and most trees had been broken into small splinters. Sanji stood in the center, his legs visibly trembling and his complexion pale and unhealthy. The young man never took his eyes off the edge of the clearing, where someone unknown was trying to crawl out from beneath a pile of fallen trees. Soon Tashigi and Zoro saw the bloodied figure of Daz Bones, who had long since lost all his earlier confidence, bloodlust, and arrogance. One glance was enough to understand that a battle of endurance was taking place here and now.
"...Sanji can't win?!" Tashigi whispered in shock.
What she saw made no sense to her. Because of the blond man's attitude toward women, she had never trained against him seriously herself, but she had seen more than enough of his sparring matches with Johnny and Yosaku. The power and speed of his kicks had long since reached mind-boggling levels.
"This is the clearest possible example of why Haki matters," Zoro replied calmly, indifferently watching Sanji's bloodied opponent get sent flying through more trees yet again.
"That sound..." Tashigi frowned when she saw the blond man's kick land on Daz Bones. "Is he made of iron?"
Zoro looked at her as though she were an idiot.
"What?! Oh! Right!"
For what felt like the hundredth time that day, the girl's face reddened from embarrassment. She asked nothing else and listened instead.
"Steel... he really is steel."
One could not learn to cut iron with a sword without knowing how to 'hear' the breath of things. That was one of the three primary reasons Tashigi had already begun showing signs of awakening Observation Haki. The ability to 'hear' the breath of things was effectively one aspect of Observation Haki, and the main reason most swordsmen awakened it before Armament Haki. In the girl's case, her talent and diligence were no less important. Like Zoro, she clearly leaned naturally toward Observation Haki. In Zoro's case, however, one could say with confidence that his talent for Armament Haki stood only one step below his primary affinity. The same could not yet be said of Tashigi, though it would become fully clear only after her complete 'awakening'.
"Most likely he ate some kind of metal Fruit," Zoro shared his impression.
"But I've seen Sanji kick straight through a five-centimeter iron plate with my own eyes. And he did it without any difficulty. I doubt the power of ordinary iron could protect anyone from his kicks."
Tashigi knew exactly what she was talking about. Every one of the blond man's kicks easily surpassed a cannon shot, while his strongest attacks could kill even Yosaku with a single blow. Ordinary iron could not save anyone from that.
"It's not that simple." The green-haired swordsman shook his head. "A stationary steel plate is one thing. A living person made of steel is completely different. If you'd paid more attention, you'd have seen that when this guy turns to steel, he retains the normal level of absorption found in a human body. Sanji is effectively striking living iron, with all that implies, including the ability to recover. And this guy isn't weak. Our family aside, he's stronger than anyone else on this island. Much stronger."
"You mean Sanji can't beat him?" Tashigi asked in disbelief.
"Depends what you mean by 'beat'," Zoro answered somewhat evasively. "Give him another ten minutes and he can probably kill this steel idiot, but after winning he'll be useless for at least the rest of the day. Personally, I'd call that a combat draw."
"...Whoever survives is right."
"Luffy's words?" Zoro smiled. "True. If you judge it that way, Sanji will win. But for someone at his level of strength, a victory like that deserves to be considered a defeat."
"...I think I understand why you brought me here," Tashigi said.
She might not have been in her best form today, constantly saying silly things or asking stupid questions, but she was no fool. First rescuing Yosaku, now helping Sanji. Reaching the right conclusion was not difficult. The girl simply did not know what to feel about it. On one hand, she was clearly being used as part of the training of men who far surpassed her in strength. That could hardly fail to flatter her. On the other hand, male pride, male chauvinism, and humiliation were involved. In other words, the men would clearly be humiliated by her interference in their battles, and that left an unpleasant taste in her mouth.
"If you understand, then go finish it," Zoro ordered.
Frowning, Tashigi stood still for a moment, clearly considering her options, then moved forward after all. Only the strong had the right to decide for themselves. The more time she spent among the Straw Hats, the more clearly she understood that immutable truth. One of many. Whatever one might say, prolonged exposure to the Hats brought more than negative consequences alone. The real question was whether it was worth the price. There the answer was far less clear. For someone like Zoro or Nami, the price looked absurdly low. The former wanted to become the World's Strongest Swordsman, while the latter wanted to free her island from fish-man oppression. Both had been willing to give their lives for those goals. Against that background, the price they had paid barely amounted to a restaurant tip.
With Sanji, Usopp, Yosaku, and Johnny, matters were somewhat more complicated.
Sanji, being a cook and dreaming of the All Blue, had never needed to become a pirate at all. He could simply have traveled the seas aboard merchant ships or cruise liners. His chance of achieving his dream would have been much smaller, but it would also have been a million times safer than any journey aboard a ship with Luffy as captain. Usopp wanted to become a 'brave warrior of the sea', and fulfilling that dream did not even require sailing the Grand Line. Before meeting Luffy, Yosaku and Johnny had not dreamed of anything particular at all. Eat, sleep, drink, earn more money, and, at the absolute limit of ambition, establish a long-term relationship with a woman. Somewhere among those desires, they occasionally dreamed of becoming outstanding bounty hunters, but without Zoro's or Nami's fanaticism. Ordinary wishes of ordinary young men, millions of whom existed and were perfectly satisfied with such lives. So Sanji, Usopp, Yosaku, and Johnny could easily have chosen not to join the family and lived differently. The other side of the matter was that joining the family brought them far more advantages than disadvantages, making the price look perfectly acceptable.
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