Chapter Text
Aline Stone's career in the Marines started auspiciously. She graduated in the top 10% of her class at the Mariner Officer's Academy, without the benefit of growing up with a Marine parent or having the money to hire specialized tutors to coach her through the rigorous math and physics courses.
She left a lieutenant, ready to serve.
Lieutenant Stone was hopeful to one day rise up the ranks to a colonel one day, the very first in her family to serve, creating a role model for her many nieces and nephews.
Not long after graduation, Lt. Aline Stone was assigned to a doddering old Lieutenant Colonel, years past retirement. He was slowly being pushed out and it was her job to diplomatically and gently organize his years of work.
It wasn't the job for an officer, but Lt. Stone figured they assigned her to him as a sign of respect.
The old man liked her well enough. She was young, bright, and pretty, so he didn't mind her rummaging through his filing cabinets and boxes as he chatted about the old days.
Finally, after one slow year, at the end of the day in the middle of the week, the Lieutenant Colonel asked Stone if she could make him one last cup of tea.
"It's pretty good, but you steep it just a minute too long" was his final advice to her. The old man sent the home office his letter of resignation and a letter of recommendation for Lieutenant Stone to be promoted.
And that is where her luck ended for a long stretch.
The newly promoted Captain Aline Stone worked for a Major this time, a man who spent equal time at the gym and the desk, leaving few precious hours for sleep. But what was the point in wasting time sleeping?
As the Major liked to say, several times a week, "I'll sleep when I'm dead."
But one of the first things out of the Major's mouth when he saw Captain Stone wasn't about resting or dying.
It was a question.
The Major asked if she had ever considered switching to medical services.
"A woman like you would make a damn fine nurse," He then turned his back to her to gaze out of his window. "Make a fresh pot of coffee, would you?"
The fact that Capt. Stone had not immediately run off to nursing school caused the Major no end of consternation.
He brought up her compatibility for the career on a regular basis, always with a shake of his well-pomaded hair.
When she couldn't bite her tongue any longer and informed the Major she was qualified to apply to medical school to become a doctor, he just laughed as if Captain Stone had told him a very funny joke.
Capt. Stone filed paperwork for a transfer. The Lieutenant Colonel above her and the Major didn't understand why.
Not even when she told him "I can do more than make coffee and take notes."
The request for transfer ruffled feathers.
Aline could feel it in how more senior officers addressed her now. The Major had a lot of friends.
However, he also had a reputation as a blowhard and a bully to men he viewed as weak.
So, there was no small amount of sympathy and understanding. The other officers were just being cautious, not unkind.
The next Major seemed like a breath of fresh air at first. He asked for her opinion and listened to what she had to say.
And when the Major asked Captain Stone to create a backup presentation on locating and countering embedded double agents aboard Marine vessels, she was thrilled.
Finally, a real opportunity to show her worth and move up.
She waited on a bench outside of the conference where the Major was making his presentation and possibly hers.
When the Major exited, he was surrounded by Lieutenant Colonels and even a couple of Colonels.
They were congratulating him on her plan.
Captain Stone waited for the Major to point her out, to give her the smallest acknowledgement.
But he barely nodded at her as the group walked past, on their way to the Officer's Club.
The next morning, the Major apologized and explained to Aline that she's one of the brightest officers he has met in a long time.
" . . . It's the only way they'll be taken seriously. You're just a captain, a female captain at that. What's most important to you, your ego or your ideas going into practice?" the Major asked, with his hands gently squeezing her shoulders.
At first, she put up with it, buying the Major's way of thinking.
And then she watches.
Captain Stone sees how he soaks up the praise for her ideas, smiling without shame.
There is talk about how the Major is at the top of the list for a promotion. Men, both enlisted and officers, are saying the Major's a late bloomer, a stealth thinker, a man who never wanted to show off his intelligence before.
Maybe all her frustration will be worthwhile in the end. If the Major moves up, perhaps she can apply for the newly opened position.
When Aline asks if he will recommend her, the Major's face betrays him before he has a chance to answer.
He's been spending more and more time with the younger male captains at the Officer's Club.
Captain Stone has never spent leisure time with her boss. A female officer was just asking for trouble and a bad reputation if she did so.
Aline looked at how the Major's mouth tried to twist into a smile so he could lie to her face and she knows exactly why.
He has a huge presentation due in three months, recommendations on refitting warships.
It's the kind of work that could become a chapter in the Marine Academy textbooks. If it goes well, an officer could coast on the reputation of it for years, maybe decades, to come.
Captain Stone fills out the request for transfer paperwork that night.
The Major calls her into her office the next day. He rips her paperwork in half in front of her and tells her she's not going anywhere, not now.
She can apply again in a few months.
Aline calmly leaves his office, telling him she will be in her office redrafting the paperwork.
He can sign it or she can send all her notarized rough drafts of the plans she had created for the last project she worked on.
The one he had proudly claimed had come to him in a dream when presenting with their Lieutenant Colonel for all those Colonels at Mary Geoise last spring.
The Major signs her transfer paperwork, but he is well liked and he is angry.
He makes sure she ends up with the lowest of the low in reputation among all of the Marines.
Spandam.
And the Major asks Spandam to do him a favor, which Spandam is happy to grant. Spandam needs all the good favor he can curry.
Give Captain Stone a task she is bound to fail, one that will make her the target of powerful men, but make it a secret so that it looks like it was her own rogue idea.
In turn, the Major promised to put in a good word for Spandam when others bring his name up.
Spandam agreed, but truth be told, he would have gone through with the plan for nothing.
It would have been his pleasure to watch some like Captain Stone humiliate herself. A woman who thought she was smarter than everyone else had destroyed his career.
It would be a revenge by proxy.
Then Spandam had a genius idea. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Why not seek his revenge in earnest?
On Aline's first day, she was called into Spandam's office. It was cold, at least ten degrees colder than the other rooms in the building.
Spandam stayed behind his desk as she entered. This wasn't unusual for a superior officer.
What was unusual was his smile. It was the smile of a predator about to eat an injured animal after he finished chasing it for fun.
"I've heard much, much about you." Spandam let that sentence hang in the air before continuing. "I have orders that are to be followed to the tee. You are not to breathe a word of where you received them. This comes from the top, but I didn't say that."
Aline's stomach dropped. She was going to be sent on a high loss mission. She knew she burned bridges, but she didn't think the Major wanted her dead.
"You think you're a genius? A real loss to your last boss? Well, here's your chance to prove yourself," smirked Spandam. "Your mission, whether you choose to receive it or not, is to eliminate the Straw Hat pirates."
Spandam stared at Captain Stone, the tip of his tongue flicking over his lips in anticipation of her reaction.
He wanted to taste her cries of protest and frustration.
Aline breathed in, feeling her ribcage expand and making her back straighten.
She wrote her final paper at the Academy on the analytical calculation of ship bending moments in regular waves.
That was a real challenge.
"Alright. Got it. I want to choose my own team and I'll need a discretionary budget."
Even behind the ridiculous mask, Capt. Stone could see Spandam's face fall. Not at her answer, but at her confidence.
Aline stared straight ahead. From here on out, everything was a trap.
All she could do now was follow the path of justice, wherever it took her, letting the consequences fall where they may.