"Lieutenant Tashigi!" came a lively voice from behind the girl.
The mentioned Tashigi, after scanning the street in front of her with the steely gaze of her dark brown eyes, which saw the world through glasses with red rectangular frames, turned toward the voice of one of her subordinates.
"Petty Officer, report," the girl said in a surprisingly soft voice, pushing back the half-drawn katana into its sheath.
Unlike her subordinates, who were dressed in the standard attire of the Marine Corps, the girl showed no signs of her affiliation with the Navy, except for the color of her clothes. Tashigi wore blue jeans, a blue denim jacket, an untucked plaid shirt, and white sneakers. She also wore a katana with a green hilt and white sheath inlaid with emeralds on her left hip.
"A ship of the 'Pirate Slayers has docked at the port," the petty officer immediately reported the most important thing. "Captain Smoker ordered us to find you immediately."
"'Pirate Slayers..." the girl involuntarily whispered, and then her eyes widened, and she quickly turned around, once again scanning the crowd with a keen gaze.
"Lieutenant?" the sergeant asked uncertainly after a moment.
"…Nothing… let's go," Tashigi responded after a good minute.
The girl calmly descended from the porch and, still calm, headed in the direction from which the patrol had come. Only the whitened fingers gripping the hilt of her katana betrayed how tense Tashigi was at the moment. She didn't even remember that she had intended to have the mentioned katana sharpened and polished by the shop owner.
"And some people still have the audacity to claim that destinies don't exist," Luffy said into the air, watching the departing patrol from the edge of the roof of the three-story building located directly opposite the sword shop.
Standing next to his captain, Zoro also watched the departing patrol intently, but his unblinking gaze never left the back of the girl leading them. Dark brown eyes, dark blue hair cut just above the shoulders, face, forehead, nose, chin, ears, chest, height, build, and even the katana on her hip… this is exactly how Kuina, Zoro's long-deceased childhood friend, would look if she had lived to twenty. And this is how twenty-one-year-old Tashigi, the Marine Lieutenant, looked. However, even when the patrol, along with the girl, disappeared from view, Zoro still couldn't fully believe that he was seeing someone else, not his late rival.
The boy's mind was at odds with his heart.
Zoro's mind understood that Kuina had long been dead, as he had personally witnessed the burial of her coffin with her long-cold body. But his heart didn't care about all the arguments of reason. His heart desperately wanted to believe that Kuina had somehow miraculously survived and that he was seeing her before him. What was worse, this possibility couldn't be completely ruled out. And, of course, it was worse not because of the presence of a living Kuina but because of the impossibility of completely abandoning what was essentially a meaningless hope. Zoro had seen so much crap in the past couple of years. Crap that he had once been unwaveringly sure couldn't possibly exist because its existence contradicted all common sense and logic. But it did exist, and its existence was undeniable. For this reason, Zoro sometimes wondered… could there be a way to bring Kuina back from the dead somewhere in this world? Some resurrection fruit? Equipment for returning souls? After some experiences, such things didn't seem so impossible to Zoro. And now, seeing a living double of his childhood friend, all these thoughts returned with redoubled force, flooding his mind with various probabilities.
"If you're interested, it is indeed possible to bring someone back to life," Luffy said into the void again. If Luffy had kicked Zoro in the stomach with all his might, he wouldn't have been able to knock the spirit out of the swordsman as effectively as that one spoken sentence. "However, I can't promise you that you'll be able to bring her back, even if you spend the rest of your life trying," the boy added immediately. "Unless you eat an immortality fruit like Yosaku, but even then, it's not a certainty. You can only rely on the will of chance."
"…It doesn't matter," Zoro replied after a brief silence, taking a deep breath. Clarity of thought gradually returned to the swordsman. "What's done is done… there's no point in thinking about what you can't change. It's better to live for the future than the past… besides, part of Kuina is always with me," the boy's hand naturally rested on the white hilt of his katana at these words. "And we will fulfill our dream together… the title of the Strongest Swordsman in the World will be ours."
Zoro was right. And it was powerful. It's a pity there was no worthy audience. For the swordsman was now accompanied only by Luffy. Not so much insensitive as capable of going against his own feelings. Not out of necessity, but out of pure contrariness.
"I'll kick you and your sword out of the family if you don't!" Luffy's one sentence, spoken with genuine indignation, was enough to instantly dispel all the dramatic tension. Luffy rarely succumbed to the moment. And even when he did, it was hard to be sure if he had really succumbed to it or was just pretending to. "Let's go to the shop already; your new swords are clearly waiting for you… I can feel them from here," Luffy said, and, placing his hand on his head, stepped over the edge of the roof… Nami had taken his hat, but the habits he had developed over the years remained.
With an unreadable expression on his face, Zoro looked at his captain, who was casually walking along the street below, then shifted his gaze to the sword shop. Luffy wasn't lying. Thanks to his haki and the fact that he was, without exaggeration, an outstanding swordsman, Zoro could feel two very strong presences in the shop. Unlike Luffy, who seemed to be able to sense everything around him with his haki, Zoro could only easily identify people and swords. Moreover, Zoro could identify swords even better than people. Apparently, it was due to compatibility… which, in turn, said a lot about Zoro himself. Being a person, he was much more inclined towards sharp metal blades entirely meant for killing, regardless of what others might say about protection, than towards other people.
Lifting his foot, Zoro followed his captain. As with Luffy, the three-story height was no obstacle for him, so within a minute, both boys entered the sword shop with the soft jingle of a doorbell. Casting a glance at the thin shopkeeper, who was resting his head on his hand behind the counter, Luffy and Zoro almost simultaneously took a step to the right of the door, towards the barrels of 'cheap, low-quality swords.' At least, that's what the price tag screwed into the wall above the barrels said. However, 'cheap, low-quality swords' could only be considered such by the standards of this particular shop, while on any other East Blue island, these swords would be, if not the best and most expensive available, then definitely solid middling options. And the sword that had caught Luffy's and Zoro's attention had nothing to do with ordinary swords. In fact, all named swords were like their own kind of metal monsters. If we draw an analogy with people and pirates in general, even the most mediocre named sword had a bounty over one hundred million berries. And now Luffy and Zoro were looking at such a 'hundred-million' sword… selling for fifty thousand berries. And that was when no named sword ever sold for less than a million.