Under His Own Name

New log entry is up.

Grab a seat on deck. The sea is about to get loud.

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Coby had practiced the sentence while standing outside the office. It came apart as soon as the door opened.

"Name?" asked the Marine at the desk.

"I want to enlist."

The Marine looked up from a stack of damp papers. He had ink on two fingers and a strip of bandage at his temple. "That wasn't the question."

"Coby," Coby said. "My name is Coby."

The Marine turned over a blank sheet. The room had once held recruitment posters; their corners were still pinned to the wall, but someone had taken the posters down. Pale rectangles remained in the dust. Outside, the last light of the day lay across the yard. By morning, Luffy and Zoro would be far enough away that the sea would have its own plans for them. Coby had no way to know where.

He had left the public room only after Iona's watch changed. Fenwick stayed at the street entrance, and the new guard had given her name to the woman waiting inside. Coby had not asked for the woman's account. Voss had heard her name already; pretending otherwise would not keep her safe. Coby could do one useful thing here: keep his own name from disappearing behind a convenient version of the fight.

The Marine at the desk dipped his pen. "Family name?"

"Just Coby."

"Age?"

Coby answered. The Marine wrote it down, then slid another page out from under the stack. This one was headed INCIDENT ACCOUNT. Several lines had been filled in, though no one had asked Coby a question yet.

"I was told you were present when Captain Morgan fell," the Marine said. "I need the account before I can send you to the enlistment desk."

"Who told you?"

"Three people. None of them gave me the same order of events."

That sounded like the courtyard. Coby took the chair opposite him. It wobbled, and he gripped the edge until it stopped. His cheek still hurt where Luffy had struck him. He had thought the bruise might help him look less like Alvida's cabin boy. It only made him look like a cabin boy with a bruise.

The Marine read from the prepared lines. "Civilian youth Coby was seized by pirate intruders during an assault on this base. He did not participate in hostilities."

"That's wrong."

The pen stopped. "Which part?"

"I wasn't seized. I came with them."

"Then you may want to think before I change it."

Coby knew he was being offered a way through. If the page said he had been dragged along, he could be a harmless witness. The Marine would not have to argue with anyone about admitting a boy who had arrived beside pirates. Coby would not have to explain why he had run toward Helmeppo with no weapon when every sensible person was getting away.

He thought of Luffy at the door, grinning just before the punch. The public lie had given Coby room to ask for a future. It was not a license to build that future out of more lies.

"Please change it," he said.

The Marine set down the pen. "All right. Start where you arrived."

Coby told him about the small boat and why he had left Alvida's ship. He did not make the years under her sound like a daring escape. He had cooked, cleaned, obeyed, and waited for somebody else to be brave enough to create a door. Luffy had done that. Coby had walked through it.

"You served a pirate captain?" the Marine asked.

"Not by choice at first. I stayed because I was afraid. I can't make every day after the first day sound like a separate kidnapping."

The Marine looked at him for a long moment. "You know what that sentence does to your application."

"I think so."

"Thinking isn't the same as knowing."

"Then tell me."

"It gives the reviewing officer a reason to refuse you before he meets you."

Coby's stomach dropped. He had asked for the truth and resented hearing it, which was not a noble feeling. He waited for it to pass. It did not. He spoke anyway.

"I don't want him to accept someone who wasn't there."

The Marine picked up the pen again.

When they reached the courtyard, the questions slowed. Coby could name where he had stood, the barrel he had crouched behind, and the place where Helmeppo had held Rika. He had seen Morgan come down the stairs. He had seen Luffy and Zoro fight him. He had not seen every blow; plaster and people had been between him and part of it.

"You can say you saw the captain order the rifles raised?" the Marine asked.

"Yes. I heard him say fire."

"And the Marines fired?"

"Some tried. Luffy hit the rifles first. I don't know which ones would have fired after that."

The Marine nodded and wrote the difference down. Coby watched the ink form words he would have been too frightened to insist on yesterday. It mattered that the page did not turn a hesitation into an act or an act into a pardon.

"Helmeppo?"

Coby's hands found the chair edge again. "He had a pistol near Rika's head."

"Near?"

"Close enough. I heard him threaten to shoot her."

"And then?"

"I ran at his legs. I knocked him off balance. The pistol went up and fired. Zoro cut it after that."

The Marine's pen hovered. "The first account says the swordsman disarmed him without help."

"He did disarm him. I made the shot miss. Both things happened."

Coby had no wish to claim the cut. Zoro had made it with a precision Coby could barely understand. But Rika might have been shot before that blade reached her. He would not make his own part vanish just because it had been clumsy and terrified.

"You struck the captain's son," the Marine said.

"I struck his legs."

"He was holding a civilian child at gunpoint. That belongs in the same sentence."

The Marine wrote it carefully. Coby realized he had been bracing for a trick. The man was tired and exacting, not friendly. That was better than friendly would have been.

A shout came from the corridor. Someone wanted the infirmary list. The Marine called back that it was not his list and stayed at the desk. Coby thought of Sela in the public room and almost asked whether anyone had come for her. He stopped. This was his statement. Her name was not his to supply, and the room had windows of its own.

"Where were you when Morgan went down?" the Marine asked.

"Near the side of the yard. Zoro had already stopped Helmeppo."

"Did you see the final blow?"

"Yes. Luffy struck Morgan after Morgan tried to rise."

The Marine read that back. Then he read the whole page, slowly enough that Coby could stop him.

"You left out what happened afterward," Coby said.

"The pirates departed."

"Before that. I told them I wanted to join the Marines. Luffy hit me. People saw it."

"That is on another witness account."

"Put it on mine too."

"Why?"

Coby looked at his bruised cheek. He could say Luffy had been cruel. He could say it was a trick and make the punch into an explanation of their friendship. Both versions would ask the Marine to believe something Coby could not prove from the outside. He settled for what he knew he could own.

"I said I wanted to join. He hit me. I stayed here. I don't want it written as if I never had a choice about which side of the door to stand on."

The Marine wrote that Coby had declared his intention in front of witnesses and remained at the base after the pirates left. He did not write why Luffy had struck him. Coby let that part stay where it belonged, between the people who had lived it.

"Read it," the Marine said, turning the sheet around.

Coby read every line. He could not judge the legal weight of any of it. He knew the names that appeared, the ones that did not, and the blank space beside his. No civilian witness had been added to his account. Morgan and Helmeppo were there because Coby had seen what they did. Luffy and Zoro were there because he had arrived with them and watched them fight.

The Marine had written that Coby took part in the disturbance. The word stung. It did not need changing.

"Is this what you said?" the Marine asked.

"Yes."

Coby signed his name. His hand shook enough to make the last letter ugly. He did not ask for a cleaner page.

The Marine marked the time, then folded a cover over the statement so the ink would not smear. He made a second notation on a narrow strip and handed it to Coby. It held only a reference number and the words APPLICATION REQUESTED. No acceptance, no rank, no start date.

"That's all?" Coby asked.

"That's what I can give you. The reviewing officer may ask more about Alvida. He may ask why you were with Luffy. He may decide none of it is worth the trouble."

"Will he read what I wrote?"

"If the statement reaches him."

Coby looked at the covered page. "You don't know whether it will?"

"I know I will send it. This base has had a long day learning the difference."

The Marine stood, took the page to a shelf above the desk, and placed it under a weight beside two other accounts. He did it where Coby could see. That was not a guarantee either. It was an action by a person whose face Coby would remember.

"Your name?" Coby asked.

"Corporal Tern."

"Thank you, Corporal Tern."

"Don't thank me for a pending application."

"For reading it back."

Tern's expression shifted by less than a smile. "Come tomorrow. Ask what the officer needs. Don't tell the other applicants the pirates recommended you."

"They didn't."

"Good."

Coby rose. His legs felt strange after sitting so still. At the door he turned back.

"If someone asks for names of civilians who came to the base today, I haven't given them to you."

"I didn't ask for them."

"I know. I want that to stay true."

Tern glanced at the covered statement. "Your account is about your conduct in the courtyard. Other people speak for themselves."

Coby left before he could improve the sentence into a promise neither of them could keep. The lamps in the passage had been lit. A Marine carried fresh water toward the public room; another came from the infirmary with bandages under one arm. No one stopped Coby or saluted him. He was still a boy in a dirty shirt with a sore face and a numbered slip.

Outside, the harbor was dark. Somewhere beyond it, Luffy would be doing something loud and impossible, and Zoro would complain while helping. Coby hoped they were safe. Hope was all he could give them from here.

He unfolded the strip once to make sure the ink had dried. APPLICATION REQUESTED. The words did not make him a Marine. They made him someone who would have to return tomorrow and answer under the same name he had signed today. He put the strip in his pocket and walked toward the town, leaving the office light burning behind him.

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