The grass was warm. Not "scorched earth" warm like midday summer in the open, but "perfect nap fuel" warm—the kind that made you melt into the earth like butter on toast.
Gale lay on his back beneath the shade of a wide tree at the edge of the palace garden, one arm folded beneath his head, the other draped lazily over his chest.
He wasn't doing anything. Not training. Not plotting. Not hero-ing. Just… existing. Like a particularly decorative rock.
His eyes were half-lidded, not quite shut, not quite alert. A lazy breeze drifted through the trees, carrying the faint scent of flowers and roasted nuts from the city's afternoon stalls.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird was trying to sing and failing miserably.
Gale couldn't even be bothered to judge it. He was that relaxed.
And then, without warning, his mind slipped sideways—off the pleasant Vashiri breeze and back to an old, familiar one.
Karate Island.
He hadn't thought about it in a while. Not properly. But now, lying here, doing nothing at all, his thoughts meandered back to her.
Claribel.
The name alone was enough to soften the edges of his smirk. Sweet, maddening Claribel. He could practically hear her scolding him for getting grass in his hair—while flopping down right next to him and doing the exact same thing five minutes later.
Lazy afternoons under trees like this had basically been their thing back on the island. Just lying around, shooting the breeze, watching clouds go by like they owed them money.
He wondered how she was doing. If she was still working at that tavern. If she still got up early just to brew that criminally strong coffee she liked. If she still wore her hair in those slightly uneven braids she insisted were "intentional."
And then there it was—that little pang. That stab of guilt that came crawling up through his ribs whenever he thought too hard about it.
He'd left too suddenly after Florencio died. No real goodbyes. No letters. Not even a dramatic sunset farewell. Just poof—gone. Classic Gale.
"I should've at least said goodbye," he muttered under his breath. "But…"
The words faded before he could finish. He wasn't good at those. Goodbyes. Partings. Endings. Always left him feeling like he'd swallowed a rock.
And deep down, he hadn't been confident he could actually leave if Claribel asked him to stay—especially with those wide, watery eyes of hers. Puppy-dog eyes weaponized by years of practice.
They were his kryptonite. Well, that and spicy food. And Isuka's lectures. And bureaucracy.
But mostly the eyes.
He chuckled softly, nostalgic.
It hadn't even been that long since he left, not really. But some days, it felt like a whole lifetime had passed. And the dumbest, most random things always reminded him of her.
The shade. That one song in the back of his brain he couldn't place. The smell of roasted almonds. The first sip of coffee in the morning.
Claribel lived in all of them. Rent-free.
And just as Gale was about to drift into a full-blown memory spiral, the peace shattered.
"WE'RE IN TROUBLE!" came a very unhelpfully familiar voice from across the garden.
Gale didn't even move. He just cracked open one eye as Poqin came sprinting up the hill, waving a newspaper like it owed him money.
"Big, big trouble!" Poqin yelled, his silhouette bouncing wildly against the sun. "Capital letters kind of trouble! Possibly the 'this will fuck up your day, week, month, and year' kind!"
Gale let out a long, weary sigh, like a man who'd just realized the sandwich he bit into was actually filled with paperwork and regret.
"What is it?" he asked, rubbing his temples. "Did they find out you were training the royal hound to smoke or something?"
Poqin gave a solemn shake of his head. "No. Worse."
Gale raised an eyebrow. "Worse than nicotine Pomeranians?"
"Way worse."
"Did someone find out you accidentally swapped our laundry with the royal family's again?"
Poqin waved that off like it was a minor footnote in a far more damning saga. "Even worse."
Now Gale was genuinely concerned. There weren't many things worse than explaining to an entire court why the ruler of the nation was wearing floral-embroidered boxers that said "MONK LIFE" on the back.
"How much worse are we talking?" Gale asked slowly.
Poqin didn't answer with words. He just gave him that rare, flat, almost serious look—then shoved the newspaper into his hands like it was radioactive.
"Read the damn headline," he said grimly.
Gale took the paper with a skeptical grunt, unfolded it, squinted at the front page... and immediately froze.
It was a full-color photo. A damn good one too. There he was—Gale, mid-strike, standing like some mythological badass atop the parted fog, his rapier extending into the heavens like a divine judgment bolt.
It captured everything. The wind in his coat. The glint in his eye. The heroic glow of a man doing something very stupid, very flashily.
The headline read in bold, triumphant font:
"YOUNG MARINE HERO DEFEATS INFAMOUS PIRATE CAPTAIN ATTEMPTING TO CONQUER A NATION!"
Gale's eyelid twitched.
He slowly lowered the paper.
Then, just as slowly, turned around and gently but firmly headbutted the tree behind him.
Thud.
Poqin winced. "That's bark, y'know."
"I know," Gale said through gritted teeth, his forehead still pressed to the trunk like it could drain the consequences from his soul.
It wasn't the photo—hell, the picture was actually good. They got his good side, the lighting was perfect, and the fog made for a killer dramatic backdrop.
It wasn't even the title. That was… dare he say… flattering.
No, the problem was that some bastard journalist had the gall to publish the fact that he—Harlow Gale—defeated Blight. In bold. In the kind of font that screamed, "Send this everywhere, immediately."
Which meant the newspaper was already sailing across the world via seagull.
Which meant Marine HQ was going to see it.
Which meant…
"I look like I've been dragging my feet to avoid getting redeployed," Gale muttered, horrified. "Because I was."
Poqin nodded solemnly. "I thought that too."
Gale let out another sigh and peeled himself away from the tree like a man realizing the executioner had just knocked on his door.
"Does the prince regent know?"
Poqin scratched the back of his head. "Yeah. He saw the paper this morning."
"And?"
"He's planning to file the official report today."
Gale's brain short-circuited for a second.
"TODAY!?" he shouted, practically leaping three feet into the air. "We have to stop him!"
Without another word, he took off sprinting toward the palace like a man possessed by pure panic and at least four espresso shots. Poqin blinked, then took off after him, waving the crumpled paper like a flag of shame.
"What even is the plan!?" Poqin called as he tried to keep up.
"We tell them we couldn't contact HQ because the transponder snails got jammed up by Blight's devil fruit or some other nonsense!"
Poqin squinted. "Can fog do that?"
"I don't know!" Gale shouted. "But we're gonna pretend like it can, and that we only just got it working again!"
Poqin nodded, impressively calm for someone in mid-panic jog. "Oh, that kind of lie. Alright."
"If we report now," Gale huffed, ducking under a garden archway, "right after the newspaper drops, we'll look so guilty it might as well be a confession."
"Won't lying make it worse?"
"Not if we lie well!"
They rounded a corner, palace guards blinking as the two uniformed lunatics charged past them at full speed. Gale's cloak billowed like a cape of desperation behind him.
All he needed—all he needed—was a one-day delay. Just enough plausible deniability to dodge paperwork, and more importantly, another assignment.
Because if Fleet Admiral Sengoku found out too soon?
He was going to get deployed to something even worse than a pirate invasion.
Like a Revolutionary sweep.
Or a budget hearing.
...
Deep in the jungles of Torino Kingdom, beneath a canopy of rustling leaves and squawking birds, inside a hut held together more by hope than structural integrity, the unmistakable sound of a screen door slapping open broke the midday lull.
"Oi, Kiwanu!" Shanba called, stomping in with muddy boots and an annoyingly smug expression plastered across his face.
At his desk, half-buried beneath a pile of tangled wires, half-built contraptions, and something that might've once been a toaster, Kiwanu looked up from his latest "invention"—which was currently buzzing ominously—and narrowed his eyes.
"What the hell do you want, Shanba?" he grumbled. "And where'd you get that newspaper? Don't tell me you touched my potato launcher."
Shanba rolled his eyes. "I'm not a lunatic like you. I subscribed like a normal human being."
Kiwanu snorted. "Pft. Subscribed. You're wasting perfectly good money on trained birds when God gave us tubers and trajectory math."
"It's all the same result, old man," Shanba said, flipping the newspaper onto the table with a dramatic flair. "But this one's worth the price. Thought you'd wanna see it."
Kiwanu squinted at the paper like it had personally insulted him, then glanced back at Shanba with suspicion. "Is this another one of those dumb tabloid things? The one with the talking monkey that started a religion?"
"No," Shanba said, grinning. "This one's got your favorite drama."
Kiwanu raised a bushy brow. "That so? What, another scandal about world government tax hikes?"
Shanba chuckled. "Nope. Some marine beat a big-name pirate."
Kiwanu leaned back, unimpressed. "And why the hell would I care? Marines beat pirates all the time. It's their job. Sometimes they even do it without wrecking a country."
"Because," Shanba said, his grin turning sharklike, "you know this one."
That made Kiwanu pause.
"What are you yammering about—"
He snatched the paper off the table with the urgency of a raccoon finding a shiny object and scanned the headline:
YOUNG MARINE HERO DEFEATS INFAMOUS PIRATE CAPTAIN ATTEMPTING TO CONQUER A NATION!
Front and center, clear as day: a photo of Gale, blade raised high in the parted fog, looking absurdly heroic. Dramatic lighting. Hair windswept. The whole nine yards.
Kiwanu froze mid-scan, the newspaper trembling slightly in his hand.
"That's… Gale," he muttered.
Shanba nodded. "Sure is."
Kiwanu blinked. "And the headline says he's a marine."
Another nod. "Yup."
Kiwanu pointed at the photo. "And he's not even wearing the uniform."
"I know, right?" Shanba smirked. "Can't even commit to a dress code."
Kiwanu rubbed his forehead like the image of Gale in a coat without epaulets had personally offended his scientific sensibilities.
"The boy joined the marines…" he muttered, still stuck somewhere between disbelief and reluctant admiration. "That's... definitely in the top ten most unexpected things I've ever come across. Right up there with the time I invented a bread-slicing machine that almost achieved sentience."
Shanba leaned against the cluttered workbench, arms crossed, watching the gears spin behind those ancient, caffeine-fueled eyes.
"Still," Kiwanu said after a moment, setting the paper down, "I told you, didn't I? Kid couldn't stay in the background even if he tried. Once he left Torino, it was only a matter of time before the spotlight found him again."
Shanba chuckled, shaking his head. "Yeah, but I didn't think he'd get this famous this fast."
Kiwanu sighed. "Gale always was a magnet for disaster… and attention."
The jungle outside chirped and cawed peacefully. Kiwanu stared at the paper a moment longer, then turned and picked up a mechanical pigeon with a propeller strapped to its back.
"Where are you sending that?" Shanba asked, already concerned.
"Back page says there's a reward ceremony soon," Kiwanu said, tightening a bolt. "I'm sending a gift."
"A bomb?"
"A congratulations package!" Kiwanu said indignantly. "With only one small bomb. For humor."
...
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