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2 Years Later

(Rizu is 15 years old now)

Rizu POV

"Smoker, Hina, Chase." Z says as he looks at the three who are at the front. I stand in line watching. "Do your best out there and make sure you keep a level head." Z instructs while giving a fond smile to his students. The three of them nod their heads and salute to him. "Sir." they say.

"Good, now take care. Go up in ranks and show them your new power." Z finishes and the three of them nod their head. "Sir." they reply back with and he pats their shoulders. "Since today is your last day with us in training, it'll be best if we did something special." Z says and the group looks up at him. "We'll be adding more reps to your training and workout today, increase them by a hundred and run 10 more laps. Right after we'll get into sparing." he says.

We all widen our eyes at his words and he claps his hands together. "Get to it!" he yells at us and we scramble to start with our workout routine.

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"Kid you gonna miss me~" Chase teases me as he walks by my side. I look over at him and sigh out. "Yeah." I say and he goes on to say. "Yeah yeah, hell you will. Don't lie to me, you'll miss me." he says not quite hearing what I said. I wiped my hands on my pants and looked at him. "Yeah, I said I'll miss you. But not just you though." I say and he looks at me with wide eyes.

"You'll miss me for real?!" he asks in disbelief. "Yeah, my training partner. Go and become a vice admiral. I'll be catching up in a bit." I say and Hina and Smoker come walking towards us. "Rizu." Hina calls out to me and I look over to her and wave. "Hina." I say and she comes over to my right and pats my head. "Continue training, you're making fast progress. Will you be staying here for another year?" Hina asks since I talked to her before saying that I only normally spend a couple of years at a base.

I shrug my shoulders. "I don't know yet. I might just stay with Z and go from there." I say and she nods her head. Smoker stands next to Hina and looks over at me and Chase. "Will you two be missing each other? You'll be apart for a long time. Plus you two are pretty close together. Chase is almost like your brother now." he says with a smirk. I look over at him and nod. "Hmm. Yes, I will miss him of course and the same with the two of you." I say.

The three of them widen their eyes at my words and I raise my brow under my mask. Hina wipes her eyes and Chase just has his mouth open with wide eyes. Smoker just looks at me blankly. "That's so sweet." Hina says and pats my head. I hum at that. I sigh and continue walking to the sleeping quarters. "Well I do know that I'll be heading to HQ with you guys as you get assigned to your new locations." I say and Chase stops to look at me. "Seriously?" he says with disbelief. "Yes." I say and he nods his head.

We enter the building and start walking down the halls. Hina and I head to the right as the boys go to the left to their rooms. Hina's room came up and she went inside to grab her stuff. "Rizu let's head down together." Hina says before she closed the door. "Okay." I say and continue to walk down the hall and enter my room.

I close the door behind me and grabbed my bags that were in the corner of my room and packed my clothes that I would need to have for the time being and left some pairs of the uniform in my drawers. I walked over to my desk to pick up the picture that was from years ago, in the north blue. I put the picture in my bag safely and made sure to grab my convertible spear and put that in my bag as well. I also pulled out a draw and saw the few masks that I had made as my extras.

I took them out of the draw and put one in my bag and one on my body. Once I did that I adjusted my bags and made my way out of my room. I closed the door behind me and walked towards Hina's room.

As I got to her room I waited outside for a little bit and heard ruffling and things falling in her room. I raised my eyebrow and knocked on the door. "Hina? Are you okay?" I ask and another crash could be heard. I knocked on the door again. "Hina, I'm coming in." I say as I slowly open her door and see her on her floor with a bunch of clothes scattered around. "Uh Hina..." I say and she looks up at me. "Uh hi Rizu. I was just finishing up." She says as she gets up and scoops her stuff into a big pile and she has already multiple clothes almost overflowing her other two bags.

"Uh Hina, are you taking all of these clothes with you?" I ask and she looks at me and looks back at her bags. "Hina doesn't think so. I think I'll end up leaving this pile here and take what's in my bags." she tells me and I nod my head. I bend down to the floor and grab some of her clothes folding each item and placing it on her bed.

She soon does the same and shoves it in her dresser. Hina sighs out and grabs her three bags and another bag that held other stuff other than clothes. She nodded at me and I opened the door and left her room as she came out and closed her door.

We walked down the halls and made our way outside where the boys were waiting for us. Smoker raised his eyebrow at us and Chase gave a look. "What took so long?" Chase asks while looking at us. "Sorry" I say and start heading towards the docks. Chase walks beside me and looks at Hina. "What's with all the bags and clothes?" Chase asks me and I shrug. Smoker looks at Hina's bag and sweatdrops. "Do you really need all of those clothes Hina?" Smoker asks and Hina nods her head. "Yes." she says.

We left it at that and Chase looks over at my bags. "What do you have in your bag Rizu?" CHase asks as he sees mine. I look at him "Clothes, masks, and some other belongings." I say and he nods and gives me a look. "I always see you with a new mask after one breaks. I didn't ask you before but where'd you get them?" he asks with curiosity. The other two look over at me as well. "I got spare wood and made them." I said.

Chase widened his eyes at me and poked at my mask on my face. "You made this?" he says again and I nod my head. "Yes, Chase." I say and move is hand away from my face. He leans in closer to look at it. "Dang do you have another?" he asks and I nod my head. "Yes, I make extras so when one does break I have one to wear." I say and he nods his head. As we approach the ship he gives me a look.

"Then let me have this one." he says jokingly and pokes the mask. I look at him and raise my brow under the mask. "Why?" I ask and he nudges me. "So, I have something to remember you by and when I become an admiral, I'll give it to you as saying 'I became one before you'." he says with a smirk. I smile under my mask. "Yeah, but you'll be giving it to me pretty fast then." I say and Hina smiles at that. "In your dreams kid." Chase says with an irritated tone.

I chuckle and nod my head. "Sure, you can have it." I say and he looks at me again. "For sure?" he asks with a look. "You'll take off your mask here and show your face?" he asks while looking at me and this draws in Hina's and Smoker's attention as they stop their conversation. I deadpan at Chase. "When did I say that. All I said was that you can have it. But you'll need to wait." I say.

Chase nods his head and we head up onto the deck where other men are scurrying about on board getting ready to depart. Z stands in the middle telling the men what to do next and looks over to us and nods his head.

The four of us makes our way out of the way of the others and stand off to the side. I place one of my bag down and hold the other bag with my mask and other stuff. I open the bag and Hina looks at me. "What are you getting?" she asks and they look at me. "The mask." I say as I dig in my bag and pull out my other mask that I'll be wearing.

Chase speaks up. "You don't have to give it to me now." he says. "I'll give it to you now when I have the time to do this." I say as I grab a towel from the bag as when and open it up. They give me a weird look and I put the towel on top of my head where it hangs over my face and I reach under the towel and pull off the mask. "Here." I say as I pass the mask to Chase and take hold of my other mask and put it under the towel.

The wind picks up and starts to blow the towel lifting it off my face. I quickly attach the mask onto my face and grab the towel. I look at them now that I had my new mask on my face and Chase waves the mask around a bit and looks at it. "Thanks Rizu, I'll take good care of it till I become an admiral." he says cockily.

I smirk at him from under my mask. "Whatever you say Chase." I fold the towel and move some stuff around in my bag to put it back and the wind blows again. From my bag a paper comes flying out of it and I look up and it twirls and shows that it's not a piece of paper but my picture.

My eyes widen and I reach out to get it but it drifts higher and closer to the edge of the boat. Just before it could blow away out and over the boat, Smoker grabs it. I sigh in relief and Smoker looks at the picture as Chase and Hina lean over to look at it as well.

"A picture?" Hina asks and looks at each marine and slowly you find me close to the center standing close to one of the other marines who held a stern face. "When was this taken Rizu?" Chase asked while Smoker handed it back to me. I took it back and looked down at it. "A couple years ago. It was a bit before I came here, the base wanted to take a picture." I said as I glanced at the other soldiers and looked at me standing close to Drake.

"Who's that?" Chase points out to the man who's standing close to me. "The man who looks all stern and serious." Chase adds on. I look down at the picture again. "Drake, he was my sparring partner at the time and we would often talk." I said and he nodded.

"Are you close to him?" Hina asks and I look up at her after putting the picture away safely in my bag. "Hmm. I guess so. We spent quite some time together and I looked out for him for a good month." I say. Smoker raises his brow. "Look out for him?" he asks and I nod my head setting my bag down. "Yeah, for a mission the marines found him on an island and took him with us. He was injured but also caught a cold. So when we took him the base, I was assigned to look after him a bit." I said.

The three of them nodded and Chase thought of an idea. "Then why don't we all take a picture together commemorating the day when w split up to become admirals or higher in the ranks." Chase says.

"I think that's a good idea." A voice says from behind us. We widen our eyes a bit and look to see Z behind us. He smiles, "I'll have one of them bring a camera. We'll have a picture for the each of us." he says and calls over a man to grab the camera. "Nice Z-san!" Chase says. Z chuckles.

Soon enough the man comes with the camera and the five of us stand together as Smoker grumbles about the picture but Hina pulls him closer. I stand in front of Z where he still towers over me and Chase to my left where he puts his hand on my shoulder. Z puts his hand on my head and the camera flashes multiple times, to capture the same picture.

The man comes over to us showing the pictures and hands each of us one. Hina smiles as she looks at it and Smoker just stares at it while Chase smirks and looks at his fellow marines. "You three, we'll make it higher up in ranks and make Z proud." he says as Z chuckles and I hum at that and look back down seeing the picture.

It held a smiling Hina, Z, and Chase with Smoker standing there looking at the camera with his cigarette in his mouth. And me standing there with my mask raised a little bit showing my smile. "Oi! Rizu!" Chase yells at me and points to the picture. I turn around and look at him. "Did you just do that at the last moment!?" he questions and sticks the picture closer to his face and puts it in front of mine.

I look at it seeing that he is pointing at me with my raised mask. I chuckle and lift up my mask to show my mouth. "What do this? I don't like showing my face that much. But a memory of us right. It should be joyful." I say with a smile that I send at him. Z laughs and pats my head. "That's a nice smile Rizu." he says and rubs my head.

Smoker and Hina look back at their pictures and see's what their talking about.

"Sir! We are ready to depart." a marine says as he stands in front of Z. He nods his head at the man and glances at us. "It looks like we'll be going now." he says before he walks off to do his duties.

I look down at the picture one last time and smile before pulling down my mask and putting the picture away.