Chapter 9: Chapter nine- setting sail and testing strenght
Cocoyashi village was full of life once again, people singing and dancing, tables were full of food of all sorts and this was the third night after the fall of Arlong park and people were still celebrating.
Gabriel could only smile and laugh as he watched everyone as he sat with a mug in his hand full of drink as he partied with them late into the night until the hours grew late and he found a place to lay down and look up at the stars in the sky above.
He knew that tomorrow he and the rest of the straw hats would be setting out so he would need to get a good night's sleep for the day ahead but before he did he opened his system screen to take a look at the points he had to spend.
He hadn't gotten the completion notification for the mission involving Nezumi and getting a bounty just yet but he knew that it was just a matter of time, even if he didn't get a bounty from it this time he knew he had still fulfilled half of the requirements by beating Nezumi as he had, and the quest didn't specifically say that he had to get a bounty from him, though it would have been nice.
Either way he still had two talent points and two hundred and thirty affinity points to use up and he knew just where to put some of them as he moved to the combat screen and dropped forty of them into Combat stamina to bring it up to an even hundred to match his other skills in that category before spending a talent point on Combat speed and dropping a hundred points into it as well.
He knew that both of them were the reasons that he had such a hard time in his fight with Chew, he wasn't fast enough to land a hit on him, strength meant nothing in a fight if your opponent too fast for you to hit or you were too exhausted to put your all into an attack, this should hopefully prevent that from happening too soon in the future.
As he put those points to use and closed the screen he felt the energys flood his body, he felt lighter and knew that he'd be able to move faster than before now, it wasn't extremely noticeable, more like taking off a heavy coat and stepping into the warmth of a fire, it felt good.
Opening his eyes he sighed before standing up now he was too energised to sleep and shook his head as he decided to go for a stroll to try and burn off some of his new energy. As he walked he saw lights on in one of the buildings ahead of him and decided to see what was going on.
As he reached the building he realised it was the local clinic and that the Doc was currently seeing someone and realised what was going on, Nami was getting her tatoo, that gave Gabriel an idea. In his past life he had wanted to get a tattoo but had never actually gotten around to doing so, right now there was nothing really holding him back from getting one now and he smirked as he took a pad and pencil and walked over to a chair and sat down and began to sketch out the calligraphy of what he wanted.
Nearly an hour later the doc came out and saw him waiting in the other room and arched an eyebrow at him, "Can I help you young man?" he asked.
Gabriel nodded and held out the pad of paper to him and nodded, "yea, do you think you could do it before tomorrow?" he asked curiously.
The Doc took the pad and looked at the words that were sketched out in the stylised text and arched an eyebrow, "I don't recognise this language, what dose it mean?" he asked.
Gabriel smirked, "I'll take that as a yes then," he said as he got up and walked to the door as he took his shirt off and nodded to the pad, "I'll tell you once were done"
The doc just nodded and sighed before following him into the room and set to work.
Time skip
By the time the next morning was coming around the straw hat crew were all busy loading the going merry with what supplies they would need for their voyage, the villager had only been too happy to donate whatever supplies that they needed.
Gabriel was making his way to the docks having just finished up with the doctor and currently had his shirt hanging over his shoulders letting the air get at his new tattoos proudly displayed across the back of his shoulders and the base of his back in intricate script like text.
As he came to the end of the peer Gabriel grinned, "Oi Luffy!" he called getting the straw hats attention as Luffy came to the side of the ship.
"Yeah what's up?" Luffy called down to him.
Gabriel smirked, "you forget about our agreement about what we would do once Arlong and his crew were taken care of, we've been partying for the past three days so maybe its slipped your mind?"
Luffy frowned for a moment before a light clicked on in his mind and he grinned, "Oh yeah!" he said before jumping down to the peer with a grin on his face as the others looked on curoisly.
"What's going on?" Zoro asked from the ship.
"Just a little test of strenght to see which of us is stronger, me and Luffy have similar dreams, so its only natural to have some friendly competition between us isn't that right Luffy" Gabriel grinned.
"Yep, still going to kick your ass though" Luffy grinned as they started to walk away from the peer a bit so that they were on solid land.
"Wow hay are you two really going to fight here?" Ussop yelled.
Gabriel shrugged, "as good a time as any, but I don't think we'll go too crazy, just a friendly spar for the first time right Luffy"
"Sure, we can save the big fights for when we find somewhere that has more open space" Luffy agreed as they paced away from one another and then turned to face each other.
Usopp, Sanji and Zoro all came to the back of the merry to watch what would happen, and they weren't the only ones to notice. The villagers saw that something was going on and began to gather to watch.
Gabriel grinned at Luffy and tossed his shirt off to the side before cracking his neck to limber up, "you ready Luffy"
Luffy grinned as he balled his fists and took a stance, "yeah, I'm gonna kick your ass"
Gabriel laughed, "you can try, "future pirate king"" he said before balling his own fists.
Gabriel knew that physical blows would hurt Luffy with his devil fruit powers, he didn't intend to win this fight, to him it was just meant to be something to give him an idea of what level of strength he needed to aim to be at for now, if he could keep pace with Luffy then he knew he was on the right track.
Luffy took the initiative to start things off and rushed towards him throwing his arm back as it stretched, "gum gum pistol" he yelled as he threw his punch.
Gabriel's eyes narrowed as he saw the speed of the attack he immediately made his body phase out while moving to dodge it, his speed had certainly improved but apparently Luffy was faster just by a bit as his fist passed through Gabriel's shoulder as he moved out of the way before rushing forward and around the rubbery arm.
"My turn, shatter fist!" Gabriel yelled as he rushed Luffy and threw his shaking fist into his gut.
Luffy who hadn't had time to retract his arm couldn't dodge in time and took the punch to his gut and as a result was lifted off the ground from the force and multiple rapid impacts.
Gabriel didn't let up, "and knee" he said before jumping up and driving his shaking knee into the same spot sending Luffy tumbling back only to recover with a grin on his face.
"Nice one, that even hurt a little" Luffy said with a grin before it widened, "but now it's my turn"
Gabriel narrows his eyes and braced for whatever Luffy has in mind, and he was glad he did as Luffy took two steps forward as he began to throw his fists at him and they began to blur into multiple after images.
"Gum gum Gattling!"
Faced with the wall of fists coming towards him Gabriel only had time to attempt to dodge only to be caught a second later and knocked back before a second fist caught him and another and another. Instinctively he tried to phase to avoid the attacks but he could only keep it up for a few seconds before he became solid again and was hit.
Gabriel skidded back on his knees and coughed after taking over a dozen punches and felt his knees become a little weak, "damn" he said as he took a breath to steady himself, "you're good, I can barely keep up"
Luffy grinned, "you're not to bad yourself, still gonna kick your ass though"
"We'll see about that" Gabriel commented and ran at Luffy, he had learned his lesson about fighting Luffy at range, any distance and Luffy could build up some steam so he planned not to give him that.
Luffy saw him coming and rushed him as well throwing his arms out behind him to prepare an attack.
Gabriel saw that and guessed what it was, he smirked and got ready to phase.
"Gum gum Bazooka" Luffy yelled as he brought his hands forward to hit Gabriel just as they got close.
But being ready Gabriel phased and his fists passed right through him before he ducked down and under them only to come right back up with a right upper cut that drove into Luffy's jaw and launched him backwards with force and made him tumble coming to a stop on one knee his hand going to his jaw and rubbing.
"Ow, normally blunt blows don't hurt but yours do for some reason" Luffy complained.
"Must be the multiple rapid blows from my devil fruit ability, you're used to shaking off single hit attacks but mine are like multiple of the same all in one spot, even rubber gets strained at times" Gabriel mentioned, "let's call it here, we can't exactly do much more now, and I think I've got the measure of your strength now"
Luffy nodded as he stood up the pain in his jaw already fading away, "yeah same," he said before grinning, "shishishi you're really strong"
Gabriel smirked, "same to you" he said before turning to walk over and pick up his shirt.
That was when Luffy noticed the tattoos on his back, "oh cool tattoos,"
"Thanks just got them last night, seemed like the right time" Gabriel said as he took up his shirt.
""morior Invictus"" Luffy read the words inked across his shoulders, before looking down to the small of his back, ""invictus maneo", what do they mean?"
Gabriel smirked, ""Death before defeat, I remain undefeated" I thought it appropriate given my ambition" Gabriel explained before putting on his shirt.
Luffy chuckled, "yeah, sounds cool" he agreed before the pair of them walked back to the peer to help the with last of the loading.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone