"Young Master Zoro, Young Master Toji, you are summoned to the main estate tomorrow. I will come back to fetch you when the time comes."
Nine months. The day had been coming fast, and the mental preparation had been ongoing—but when those words left the nurse's mouth, panic set in anyway.
Both Toji and myself had been pushed as hard as possible over those nine months, and the results were something to be proud of. Productive months, overall. Not without setbacks, but productive.
Armament Haki had been learned, and the assumption was that everything would flow naturally from there.
How wrong that turned out to be.
Observation Haki had been slow to develop, but each session brought a feeling of movement, of progress. This was different. Armament Haki, in its applied form, felt like a wall—solid, indifferent, completely unmoved no matter how hard it was struck or pushed against.
Making the process instinctive and instantaneous took nearly three months before the delay between intention and action became truly minimal.
And that wasn't even the hardest part.
The part that made me want to vomit blood was the infusion.
Getting a training sword had taken some effort—the nurses had eventually come through—and infusing Haki into it was absolutely hellish. The energy leaving the body refused to be controlled, let alone extended onto an external object.
It happened on one particular day, after thousands of strikes, in a moment stripped of all unnecessary thought and all self-awareness—a brief instant in which the sword and the body became one thing rather than two. The Haki followed naturally, almost without asking. An invisible aura sprang from the blade and left a shallow cut in the ground beneath it.
Flying slashes hadn't been mastered yet. That cut came from Armament Haki alone, amplifying the strike far beyond its natural reach.
The whole thing had happened in a state barely above unconscious. Two more weeks passed before the infusion became something reliable and repeatable.
After that, training shifted toward the second phase: Hardening.
Whether mastering invisible infusion had laid the groundwork wasn't entirely clear, but Hardening came together with surprising ease. No official document had ever offered a clean explanation of how it worked, so the theory had been built from personal experience and a generous amount of speculation.
Haki, in essence, is a real and tangible energy. If awakening meant concentrating it internally and then pushing it outward, then Hardening likely meant the reverse—externalizing it first, then concentrating it outside the body rather than letting it simply disperse.
Internal concentration. Release. Then compression of the externalized Haki around the body's surface, instead of letting it escape freely.
That was where infusion made the difference. The principle of concentration was different, but extrabodily control of Haki was common to both. With that already partially mastered, Hardening took roughly one month.
---
A metallic black substance coated the arm, catching the light as the fist lowered.
The nurse's words came back immediately.
"So it was tomorrow."
A full year had passed since meeting Naobito—time that had moved quickly—and yet the same knot sat in the stomach as it had the very first time.
The sky above was clear and deep, burning with the rich red of a late sunset.
Toji was nearby, working a tree with a series of kicks. The sight of him—shirtless, covered in sweat, muscles developed well beyond what his age should have allowed—pulled the memory of the entire road taken to get here.
He had become strong. Genuinely strong, even by adult standards. That was known. But knowing it wasn't the same as feeling it.
"Toji."
He stopped immediately and met the gaze head-on, then walked over without a word.
"Get in position."
No questions asked. He settled into his stance—different from what he had used before.
Right hand slightly open near the chin rather than closed into a fist, that arm held fully away from the body. Left arm extended forward, not fully straight, fist rotated so the thumb pointed downward. Weight on the toes, right leg bent behind him, left pointing forward.
*(NOA: Gojo's guard)*
He had found that stance in an action film and tried to reproduce it during training. It suited him better than anything conventional, and so it had been kept.
The stance taken on the opposite side was something different entirely.
No fists. Hands used as blades—straight, fingers pressed together. Roronoa Zoro's Mutoryu posture. Contrary to what the manga sometimes implied, there was quite a lot of material to draw from.
Toji's eyebrows shifted slightly at the sight of it, but focus returned almost instantly.
"You understand what this is." The voice came out level, serious. "This isn't training. This is a test. Pass it, and you come with me tomorrow."
No response. But the flame in his eyes said everything that needed to be said.
"Good. That's the look I want. Let's begin."
Toji charged the moment the words landed, driving a powerful straight punch forward.
It was read clearly. The left hand-sword deflected it with minimal movement, and the right came back immediately toward his abdomen.
He pulled back just fast enough to make it miss.
The pressure reversed. An immediate attac
—
Fwish!
Fwish!
Several hand-sword strikes landed in sequence, all of them dodged.
Taking advantage of the forward momentum and the slight imbalance it created, he brought his leg high and drove a Brazilian kick into the shoulder.
BAM!
No time to dodge. The impact was taken and used—instead of simply absorbing it, the body turned with the force, spinning to bleed off the power.
But Toji didn't pause. The moment both feet touched the ground, a second circular kick came in aimed at the head.
A duck, just barely. The heel passed close enough that the wind from it moved through the hair.
Up immediately—a diagonal right hand-sword strike.
He caught it on his forearm. The contact rang out sharply.
Then he went for the arm, trying to get a grip and throw.
A twist to break free, followed by a leg sweep targeting his left ankle.
He jumped over it and came down with a knee strike.
Both forearms crossed to take it. The force traveled all the way to the shoulders.
Distance reset. Briefly.
Then he came again.
Faster this time. More fluid. The combinations had evolved.
Straight punch. Hook. Low kick.
The first deflected. The second slipped past. The third jumped over.
Barely any ground under the feet before a high feint pulled the defense upward—and a body shot to the liver landed clean.
The breath went for a fraction of a second.
He moved immediately to capitalize, pushing forward to take the ground.
A deliberate fall backward. Both hands hit the ground and the legs swung outward in a wide arc, forcing him to create space.
Toji stepped back out of reach. Back on both feet.
Several seconds passed with nothing but heavy breathing between them.
He came again. More aggressive.
A punch connected with the shoulder.
Another grazed the cheek.
A third found the ribs.
The pain was genuine. Without Haki, every sense ran slightly behind his—and physically, the gap had nearly closed. He had almost reached the same level.
But technique still made the difference.
Soru
A sharp sound, and then the space where Zoro had been standing was empty.
Reappearing crouched in front of him, close.
Toji reacted instantly with a downward strike. A roll to the side took it cleanly, and both feet came back down behind him.
The hands changed shape—no longer flat blade-forms, but curved slightly, as though catching an invisible hilt. Arms stretched wide at shoulder level, one to each side.
Mutoryu: Tatsumaki.
The spin began.
Wind built around them both. Toji tried to dig in, but the rotation disrupted his footing. A blind strike swung out anyway—it grazed the flank, but without proper ground support the force behind it was nothing.
The tornado pushed him backward.
The rotation stopped. A lunge forward immediately.
His balance was still recovering. The hand-sword was already at his throat.
Eyes meeting his, voice calm:
"You lost, Toji."
His jaw set. His expression darkened. Nothing came out.
A hand reached down and pulled him up. His gaze stayed low, one fist clenched hard enough that the knuckles had started to bleed.
A turn away, toward the cabin. A few words left behind.
"You still have a lot to learn, and I want a full report of everything you did wrong. But for now—"
Already through the door when the last part came out.
"—well done."
The footsteps continued inside.
Behind, through the wall:
"YES!! I DID IT."