-Broadcast-
Quarreling was never the goal. But sometimes it was simply unavoidable.
That conservatives and radicals could even share the same room — sitting within arm's reach of each other and exchanging insults rather than drawing blades — was already something of a miracle. The lecture hall, as it turned out, was not miracle enough.
"Don't think we don't know what you've been doing behind our backs. You've been butchering civilians and writing the bodies up as combat victories."
"Ha! You're sitting pretty in headquarters, sipping tea and keeping a woman warm. What kind of life do you think I'm living out on the front lines? If letting fewer of my brothers die is a crime, then fine — I'm guilty."
A conservative Vice Admiral and a radical one sat close enough to share a desk lamp. They had long since run out of tolerance for each other. Their definitions of justice were fundamentally incompatible, and no amount of shared rank was going to change that.
Was the radical Marine really killing innocents for credit? The conservative Marine could have buried him under hundreds of witness testimonies and stacked the evidence so high it would have blocked out the sun. Every piece of it solid. None of it refutable.
Ever since Marshal Artoria overhauled the Marine from top to bottom, military merit had become the lifeblood of advancement. The radical faction had thrown their full weight behind her for exactly that reason, which was precisely how she'd survived the critical early period before the World Government could move to replace her. By the time they realized how firmly she'd rooted herself, it was already too late.
Perhaps some radical officers weren't personally interested in padding their kill counts with civilians. But they couldn't always hold back the men beneath them — men who had learned that more heads meant better housing, faster promotion, and a future not built on misery. The pressure came from the bottom and moved upward like water finding cracks. Grassroots Marines and junior officers arrived at a quiet, unspoken agreement: close your eyes, and everyone benefits.
The result was a fighting force that sharpened itself against every stone it found — terrifying in courage, utterly indifferent to mercy. That ferocity had steadily compressed the operational breathing room of the conservative faction. Where conservatives once tried to take prisoners and process them through proper channels, the radicals simply kept swinging until there was no one left to chain.
"The justice you people believe in is kindness to enemies and cruelty to your own. If real pirates ever push hard enough to reach the coast, are you going to talk them into surrendering?"
"I'm not soft on enemies. But think for a moment — if we kill everything that moves until only Marines are left standing, what exactly are we protecting? The difference between us and the World Government is that we're supposed to care about something beyond the next battle report."
The radical Marine operated on a warrior's instinct: act first, philosophize never. Zero tolerance for piracy, clean and simple. Their conviction was that the only lasting solution was a physical one — every pirate eliminated, every root cut, because severe measures were the only language troubled times understood.
What the conservative Marine hated most was the cycle. They had seen it clearly: killing bred killing, and once you stepped into that abyss there was no climbing back out. If brute force were truly the answer, the World Government would have delivered peace centuries ago. These officers hadn't forgotten where they came from — villages, families, people who paid taxes and feared the sea. Their justice meant winning those same people back. Giving potential criminals a reason to become citizens instead.
Two factions. Two worldviews. Neither willing to budge an inch.
The voices that began at a controlled volume crept steadily upward as the minutes passed. Insults gave way to accusations. Accusations gave way to threats. The air in the hall grew thick.
Then came the shoving.
Discipline evaporated. Officers grabbed at each other's uniforms, at collars, at hair. Someone on the conservative side hurled a shoe and connected cleanly with a radical school officer's temple. That was all the permission anyone needed. Within seconds the room was a throwing gallery — logbooks, canteens, report folders, anything not nailed down became ammunition. The sounds of shouting, shoving, and indignant shrieking layered over one another until the noise threatened to lift the roof clean off.
It was tense. It was undignified. It was, in a sideways kind of way, almost funny.
What made it genuinely surreal was the front row.
All twelve Admirals sat perfectly still.
Not one of them had moved. Not one had turned around. Their expressions were closed, their posture composed, as though the eruption behind them were a distant weather phenomenon of no personal concern. The contrast was stark — a hall in full riot, and twelve of the most dangerous people in the world sitting through it like statues at a museum, watching a farce that had nothing to do with them.
Behind them, Vice Admirals and Rear Admirals flailed and argued and threw things with the energy of people who had been waiting to do exactly this for months.
The blonde girl on the elevated seat at the front watched all of it without expression.
Her eyes moved slowly across the hall — cold and vast and quietly indifferent, the way a winter sky moves. The chaos surged around her like a tide. None of it touched her.
Then she said, "Silence."
Her voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It carried something else — a quality that bypassed the ears entirely and arrived somewhere deeper, colder, more fundamental. Like a temperature drop in a sealed room.
The noise stopped. Not gradually. Not reluctantly. It simply stopped, and the hall stood very still, and every face turned toward her.
Artoria Pendragon let her gaze sweep the room, unhurried, until she was satisfied it had landed on everyone worth looking at.
"Look at what you've made of yourselves." Her tone held no heat. It didn't need to. "Have you forgotten what military conduct looks like? Return to your positions."
The conservatives and radicals hated each other. That hadn't changed. But they all understood, very clearly, what it meant when the iron fist of the Fleet Admiral was directed their way. Whatever resentment they carried went back down their throats, because the alternative was considerably worse than losing an argument.
Artoria Pendragon had not reached her position by luck alone. She had used that luck as a foothold and climbed with both hands — through political maneuvering sharp enough to draw blood, through decisions the old guard had never seen coming until they were already signed and filed. The mass retirements hadn't been a purge. No scandals manufactured from nothing, no executions dressed up as accidents. She had simply made it impossible, through one carefully constructed mechanism after another, for certain people to remain where they were.
Killing was never the goal. Getting things done was.
The hall settled. Slowly, with the sullen energy of men unconvinced of anything but aware of their limits, both factions returned to their seats.