Another morning dawned in Black Iron Town, seemingly no different from the more than seven hundred mornings before it.
The sea breeze carried a salty, damp chill, and the horizon was just beginning to show the pale white of dawn.
Seraphilia quietly left the cabin just before the sky fully brightened. Before stepping out, she glanced back at Robin, who was still sound asleep on the bed. The girl's curled sleeping face was serene and fragile; she was the starting point and the destination of all Seraphilia's actions.
She quietly closed the door, skillfully dissolving into a stream of cloud that almost merged with the morning fog, silently gliding over the low rooftops of the slum, and reforming her figure in a blind spot outside the Navy Base wall.
The morning wind lifted her silver hair. She straightened her immaculate uniform and stepped into the training grounds amidst the last echoes of the morning bell.
Routine morning runs, drills, physical training... everything proceeded like clockwork.
She was private first class Seraphilia, the recognized rising star of the 73rd Branch, a Devil Fruit user with the Cloud-Cloud Fruit, possessing an extremely high mission completion rate, and a solitary but irreproachable personality.
However, the air today seemed to carry an unusual tension.
During a break in training, she overheard several familiar non-commissioned officers speaking in low voices, almost spitting on each other in their excitement, their faces a mixture of excitement and awe.
"Did you hear? From Headquarters..."
"My heavens, it's that 'Great Counselor'..."
"Stop talking nonsense, it's Vice Admiral Tsuru!"
"A true legend, inspecting our little corner of the world?"
She hadn't intentionally tried to listen, but her long-maintained alertness allowed her to catch these fragments.
Vice Admiral Tsuru?
The Navy's strategist, the user of the Wash-Wash Fruit?
Her heart inexplicably skipped a beat.
In the afternoon, the sharp whistle for an emergency assembly pierced the air above the base, its urgency greater than any drill before.
All soldiers lined up in the parade ground. The Branch Leader, puffing out his signature beer belly, now didn't dare even breathe loudly, standing at the front with a grave expression.
Beside him stood a general in a Justice Coat whom she had never seen before.
It was a woman whose temperament was as still as the deep sea, yet whose gaze was as sharp as a falcon's. Her silver hair was impeccably styled, and the deep laugh lines and wrinkles around her eyes did not suggest old age, but rather spoke of the vicissitudes of time and unquestionable wisdom.
The three stars and the Vice Admiral insignia on her shoulder epaulets reflected a steady light under the West Blue sun.
She simply stood there, not deliberately exerting any presence, yet she was like a massive magnet, drawing in all the sounds and all the restlessness of the entire parade ground, leaving behind only a deathly silence.
Vice Admiral Tsuru.
The strategic mind of Marine Headquarters, the Great Counselor.
Seraphilia stood in formation, her ice-blue eyes calmly fixed ahead, but her heart was pounding in her chest.
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