Chapter 75: Mind and Nature
"You misunderstood."
That was what Axel wanted to say, but by the time the words reached his throat, the female Marine had already fled without a trace.
He let out a helpless sigh, then quickly stripped down until only a pair of shorts remained.
The speed of his movements had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with trust. Tsuru was not the sort of person who acted on impulse or indulged in pointless curiosity. If she had told him to take off his clothes, then there was a reason for it.
Even so, what had just happened clearly left a mark on her composure.
For someone as calm as Tsuru, being misunderstood like that in front of her own subordinates was no small matter. She closed her eyes for a few breaths, calming herself before opening them again.
Then she picked up a pen from the table and said, "Take this."
Axel followed her gaze.
It was the same kind of pen she had used before when explaining the structure of the seas. Nothing special about it. Still, he took it without hesitation.
Tsuru was not trying to embarrass him. She was trying to confirm something.
Over the past two months, she had run more than a few tests on him. Some had been obvious. Others had not. By now, many of her guesses had already been proven right.
She took a coin from her pocket.
This time, however, she did not place it on the table.
Instead, she pinched it between her fingers, aimed at the pen Axel was holding, and flicked it with surprising force.
Clang!
The coin struck the pen and bounced off.
It hit the floor with a crisp metallic ring. When it stopped rolling, a clear dent could be seen in its surface. The pen, on the other hand, remained completely intact.
Tsuru looked at the result and said calmly, "As expected. Your ability can attach itself to objects."
That explanation was not entirely precise, but it was close enough.
Axel's vector manipulation did not simply cling to objects on its own. The true mechanism was that once his skin made contact with something, he could alter the direction of the forces acting upon it. So long as that contact remained valid, outside force could be redirected at will.
That was why his clothes did not get shredded apart in battle.
That was why objects in his hands did not instantly break apart from the forces moving through them.
But what did that have to do with anything?
Axel still could not see where she was going with this.
Tsuru glanced at him and said, "Put your clothes back on."
Axel did so immediately, picking his uniform off the floor and dressing in silence.
Once he finished, Tsuru resumed.
"Tell me. Which has the greater reach, a fist or a sword?"
Axel frowned slightly, then answered without much thought. "A sword, obviously. Even without thinking too hard, the answer is obvious. A sword extends the reach of the arm. That alone makes its attack range far wider than a fist."
Then he paused.
His eyes sharpened.
The question and the experiment from before suddenly connected in his mind.
"You mean…"
Tsuru's lips curved into the faintest trace of a smile as she interrupted him, "Your ability requires skin contact as a medium. That is your greatest current weakness. As for Haki, once trained to a high enough level, it can resist Devil Fruit powers. But the reverse is also true. A Devil Fruit developed far enough can break through Haki. The two are relative, not absolute."
She folded her hands before her and continued, "So I believe you should take advantage of what you have."
Axel's eyes flickered.
What Tsuru called a weakness was indeed the thing he feared most.
The Dark Dark Fruit alone was enough to make him wary. It could drag abilities into nullification upon contact, absorb attacks directly, and force the user to bear pain instead of dispersing it. In some ways, it was like an Imagine Breaker without the illusions, only cruder and even more unpleasant to deal with if wielded by a monster.
He exhaled slowly.
Then he voiced the conclusion forming in his mind.
"You want me to become a swordsman?"
Tsuru nodded.
Though she was seated, her bearing remained steady and composed. She rested her interlocked fingers beneath her chin and said, "I did consider guiding you along my path at first. But after observing you, I discovered something."
Axel raised a brow. "What? That I have no talent for it?"
"No." Tsuru's answer was immediate. "Quite the opposite. It is because you are too talented in that direction that I think you are unsuited for it."
That answer truly confused him.
Too talented, so unsuitable?
Was that not backwards?
Tsuru did not elaborate immediately. Some things were not easy to explain.
The path she walked was one of strategy, calculation, compromise, balance, and ugly truths. It demanded an understanding not only of justice, but of darkness, greed, politics, institutions, and the rotten logic that kept the world moving. A staff officer had to protect Marine interests first. Often that meant calculating losses instead of clinging to ideals.
Precisely because Axel was intelligent, he would understand such things too quickly.
Too deeply.
And once he understood them too well, he might end up seeing far more than was good for him.
Tsuru changed the topic instead.
"Do you think the training you underwent over the last two months was meaningless?"
Axel answered honestly. "Yes."
Tsuru did not look offended.
Instead, she asked, "Then what changes have you noticed in your body?"
Axel lowered his head and examined himself.
He looked over his arms, his shoulders, his hands. He even used his power to sense the finer state of his body. Aside from growing a little taller over time, he could not find anything especially remarkable. If anything, his physical condition had dulled somewhat from the lack of direct exercise.
After a while, he looked back at her and said with certainty, "None."
"None at all?" Tsuru asked again.
Then, in a perfectly even tone, she said, "You are a girl."
Axel froze.
For a moment, he simply stared at her.
Then he understood.
Tsuru's gaze rested quietly on him. "Well? Have you noticed the change now?"
Axel slowly frowned.
"Yes," he said at last. "My temperament."
If someone normal were insulted or misunderstood like that, their emotions would flare instinctively. Annoyance, resistance, embarrassment, anger, something would show. Yet when Tsuru said it just now, Axel did not react the way he once would have.
There had been no real resistance.
No sharp rejection.
That, in itself, was abnormal.
And that meant something inside him truly had changed.
Still, he could not help asking, "Why use that sentence? You could have used any other example."
Tsuru waved the question aside. "That is not the important part."
Then she looked at him directly and said, "My Wash Wash Fruit can cleanse away part of the evil in a person. But it only works well on those who are not consumed by violent hostility. Against certain types, it is nearly meaningless."
Her tone remained calm as she continued.
"Right now your strength far exceeds that of your peers, but your temperament does not. And for a swordsman, temperament matters more than most people realize."
Axel's pupils narrowed slightly.
Temperament.
The word lingered in his mind.
Understanding the heart. Knowing one's nature. The blade follows the mind, and the mind shapes the blade.
Those ideas had existed even in the world he came from.
A swordsman without inner control was like a sharp edge without a handle. Dangerous, perhaps, but ultimately unstable.
Tsuru's method over these past two months had not been about strengthening his body.
It had been about grinding his temperament down.
The chores, the irritation, the humiliation, the daily hanging on the line, the constant tiny frustrations. All of it was meant to stir dissatisfaction, impatience, complaint, resentment, then wash those things away again and again until his disposition gradually settled.
That was why she made him work.
That was why she made him endure.
That was why she used her fruit on him every day.
In truth, it was an enormous help to him.
His power was tied to calculation, and calculation was tied to the state of his mind. If his emotions spiraled out of control, his ability could become equally unstable. Someone like Accelerator in Academy City could carry monstrous force precisely because he kept so much locked down inside himself. If that restraint ever shattered completely, the destruction would be beyond prediction.
For Axel, Tsuru's training had not made him stronger in the obvious sense.
But it had laid a far more crucial foundation.
The room fell quiet for a moment.
Then Axel looked at Tsuru and said, "So these two months were never meant to strengthen my body. They were meant to sharpen my mind."
Tsuru gave a small nod. "And to let your nature settle."
Axel fell silent.
This time, it was not because he had no answer.
It was because, for once, he genuinely did not know how to joke his way past what he had just been given.
.....
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