Chapter 4: Attack x Plans
(A/N: Comments are appreciated!)
(A/N: Word Count: 4074)
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Saru was the first to make it to the ship, easily vaulting up the side and hoisting himself over the railing on board.
It was a medium-sized ship, one that Kaizen had only found during the recent months. Its location had been relatively hidden, so he hadn't noticed it until his observation haki had reached the threshold to cover the entire island.
The ship was a common one. It had a sturdy wooden hull and a single mast sporting a weathered sail that Kaizen had stitched together using his spiritual power. Measuring about 60 feet in length, it had a compact but efficient layout.
The main deck featured a simple helm at the stern, a small cabin at the bow for shelter and storage, and a few scattered barrels and crates for supplies. Below deck, there was a simple living space with bunks and a small kitchen area, showing signs of damage but still in working condition.
The ship had clearly seen better days, but with the help of Kaizen was still seaworthy and ready for their journey.
Approaching the ship, Kaizen ascended into the air, stepping on invisible platforms as if climbing a staircase, until he gracefully landed on the deck.
Making his way towards the living quarters, Kaizen noted Saru swinging playfully from the ship's mast.
Upon reaching the lower deck, he placed the bag he had been carrying on the floor and snapped his fingers.
Instantly, the bag slowly opened up like a blooming flower, spreading back into a net and laying all the items out neatly on the floor.
With another snap of his fingers, the net disintegrated, leaving the items behind, ready to be organized.
"SARU!"
Kaizen's shout echoed throughout the ship, calling for his little friend.
Moments later, a small head poked out from the entrance to the room, eyes wide with curiosity.
Locking eyes with Saru, Kaizen managed a warm smile. "Come on, help me put these things away."
Saru, seemingly understanding his intentions, bared his baby fangs in a playful grin before darting back through the doorway.
Kaizen's smile turned sly. "Oh, you want to play," he muttered. In a flash, he activated Shunpo, vanishing from his spot to chase after the mischievous baby gorilla.
They played like this for a few minutes, Kaizen not truly chasing, as it would be over in an instant if he did.
When Kaizen felt it had been enough, he increased his speed, instantly appearing in front of the now wide-eyed Saru.
After giving a soft flick to his forehead, he picked up the little devil and made his way back below the deck.
Thirty minutes passed in a flash, and all the items had been organized in the living quarters.
Looking at the room that now seemed to give off a faint homey vibe, Kaizen glanced at the visibly exhausted Saru before patting him on the back.
Though it had taken longer than necessary, Kaizen had used this as an opportunity to improve Saru's intelligence.
The process involved Kaizen standing to the side while directing Saru with his hands and voice on where to place certain things. It had been full of mistakes and retries, but in the end, they finished.
Saru only glanced at Kaizen with resentful eyes, obviously dissatisfied with his lack of help.
Kaizen smiled sheepishly. It definitely wasn't the case that he didn't want to do the boring tasks of storing all his items again so he dumped it onto his little friend. Wanting to divert attention, Kaizen walked over to the kitchen and retrieved a large, plump fruit.
The second Saru saw it, his mouth began watering. It was obvious that he liked it very much.
"Here, a reward for your hard work today." After speaking, Kaizen tossed the fruit towards Saru, who grabbed it with lightning-quick speed and began devouring it in small bites.
Leaving Saru in the room to enjoy his meal, Kaizen made his way back to the upper decks. It was time to finally set sail; he had delayed long enough.
In truth, he was kind of nervous. Having finally adapted to life on this island, he felt reluctant to leave behind the comfort he had created for himself. The familiar surroundings had become a sanctuary, and stepping away from that felt like venturing into the unknown all over again.
On top of that was the fact that he would be sailing in the middle of the ocean, something he had no prior experience doing.
Thankfully, he had the ability to fly, so he didn't have to worry about capsizing and being swept up by the sea.
"Nervousness is the price one must pay for ambition," Kaizen reminded himself.
He wasn't content with staying cooped up on this island, knowing there was a whole world for him to explore and discover.
He wanted to adventure and see more of this crazy world he had crossed into.
Reaffirming his resolve, he leaped off the side of the ship, landing next to the platform he had created to hold it on the beach.
The platform was essentially just two wooden supports connected to each other that held the ship up, preventing it from tipping over.
Wanting to get moving, Kaizen appeared next to the supports and began pushing them towards the sea.
The way they were designed allowed Kaizen to easily deploy the boat. Once they finally entered water, the supports would detach from the ship, letting it float in the ocean.
With his strength, in less than a minute, the ship was already perched on the shore, Kaizen appearing on the deck.
It didn't take long for another figure to appear beside him—it was Saru, with obvious stains around his mouth from the meal he had just finished.
Unfurling the sails, Kaizen approached the steering wheel and set their course.
He had no real sailing experience aside from being able to get a ship moving, so they would have to hope and pray they run into an island sooner rather than later.
Slowly but surely, the sails began to catch wind, and the ship increased its speed, sailing into the distance.
At some point, Kaizen appeared on the stern, watching the island gradually shrink behind him. He felt a mix of excitement and nostalgia as he left the place that had been his first home in this world.
With one arm wrapped around his leg, baby Saru also stood, this time with a sad expression instead of his usual playful demeanor.
Kaizen gently patted Saru's head. "Don't worry, little guy. We're heading towards new adventures. There's a whole world out there waiting for us."
Saru looked up at Kaizen, his eyes reflecting a mixture of sadness and curiosity. Kaizen smiled reassuringly, his own resolve strengthening as they sailed into the deep blue.
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One month later...
Kaizen sat at the stern of the ship with a makeshift fishing pole in his hand as it slowly moved through the waters.
It had been one month since they embarked on their journey out at sea, during which they had encountered absolutely nothing. The last body of land they had seen was the island they left behind.
As of now, their food supplies had begun to dwindle. If they didn't find something soon, they would have to start relying solely on creatures from the sea for sustenance.
SPLASH
The sound of something breaking the water caught Kaizen's attention. It was Saru, who had grown a bit and was now the size of an elementary schooler. In his hands, he carried a few small fish that he had caught.
During these past months, Kaizen had allowed Saru to enter the water to hunt after being pestered by the little bugger constantly. He would always make sure nothing that could threaten him was nearby before allowing him to go, though.
Kaizen smiled as Saru clambered back onto the ship, shaking off the excess water. "Nice catch, Saru," he said, patting the little gorilla on the back. "These will keep us going for a while longer."
Saru beamed with pride, holding up his catch for Kaizen to see. Despite the boring journey, the bond between them had only grown stronger.
Kaizen turned his gaze back to the horizon, the endless expanse of ocean stretching out before them. "We'll find something soon, Saru. I can feel it," he murmured, more to himself than to the young gorilla.
Determined, Kaizen resumed fishing, hoping to catch enough to sustain them until they found their next destination.
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By the time the sun began to set, Kaizen had managed to capture a dozen or so small fish. With the help of his observation haki, simple tasks like this had become exceedingly easy.
As he gathered his supplies and made his way back to the cabin, darkness began spreading across the ocean like a thick, heavy blanket. The moon began to hang in the sky, casting a faint glow over the water.
Every time Kaizen passed a torch hanging on the ships walls, it would automatically light up in flames. This was another custom Hado he had created, called Spark, which concentrated his spiritual power and transformed it into a small fire.
The flickering light from the torches illuminated his path, casting long shadows on the wooden walls of the ship.
When he finally reached the living quarters below deck, he placed his things on the ground and lit up the remaining torches. The room gradually filled with a warm glow, driving away the encroaching darkness.
As the light spread, Kaizen could see Saru sleeping peacefully on one of the bunks, curled up in a small ball. The little gorilla's chest rose and fell with each gentle breath, a picture of innocence and tranquility.
Kaizen smiled softly, a sense of calm washing over him. He quietly set about preparing a quick meal before heading off to sleep, careful not to wake Saru.
As he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, his last thought was about finding something, anything, to excite their monotonous journey.
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CREAK
The sound of a wooden door opening roused Kaizen from his slumber.
Glancing in the direction of the noise, he saw the small figure of Saru stumbling out of the room. He didn't think much of it since this was a common occurrence. Saru would occasionally go out in the middle of the night to relieve himself.
Though he was sometimes annoyed at being woken up, he preferred this over the alternative.
Closing his eyes once again, Kaizen habitually sent out a scan of his surroundings.
The result, however, caused his eyes to shoot open with a cold light.
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Above deck, a group of pirates had silently snuck on board. Their pirate ship docked right next to Kaizen's, with a rope ladder extending to the deck.
Kaizen had grown too comfortable being at sea and not encountering any danger, which had caused him to slack on his vigilance.
As a result, while he was asleep, these pirates had stealthily approached and infiltrated his ship.
Currently, a group of them could be seen approaching the door leading to the cabin below.
At the same time, Saru, who had just woken up and was still groggy, was approaching from the opposite side, intending to take his nightly piss.
Saru, being the first to reach the door, opened it, unprepared for what would happen next.
The second he did so, he was met with the ugly faces of four pirates, whose expressions quickly morphed into terror upon seeing him.
Their nerves were already on edge from the infiltration, add the fact that a child sized gorilla appeared before them out of nowhere in the middle of the night, a bad concoction is created.
One of them, in a panic, raised their weapon and fired aiming for Saru.
BANG
Saru, equally terrified by the encounter, had froze in place, unable to react.
The bullet cut through the air, heading straight for the little guys head.
Just before the bullet reached him though, a finger seemed to appear out of nowhere, stopping it directly in its tracks.
From the finger quickly appeared a hand, which subseqently grasp the bullet and crushed it into dust.
Behind the hand, the body of Kaizen materialized silently.
His gaze not even focused on the now stunned pirates.
He first made sure Saru was fine before finally returning his gaze.
Kaizen's presence felt as if it were a volcano waiting to explode.
"You... picked the wrong ship," he spoke, with a calm voice that betrayed the anger he currently felt.
If he had been even a second late, Saru would have been killed. The realization caused spiritual pressure to leak out of Kaizen's body.
The result was immediate and overwhelming. The air around him seemed to vibrate and grow heavy, the very atmosphere thickening as if gravity had intensified. Nearby objects trembled, and the wooden planks of the ship creaked under the invisible weight.
The pirates themselves could barely even think, paralyzed by the sheer force of Kaizen's unleashed reiatsu. The four pirates in front of him, as well as the dozen spread out between his ship and theirs, were all affected. Thankfully, it was only a small portion, otherwise they may have just exploded on the spot from the pure pressure.
Spiritual pressure, or reiatsu, is essentially the embodiment of the spiritual power a Shinigami possesses. The more power, the more pressure the body naturally creates.
This pressure is capable of causing weaker beings to lose complete mobility when enveloped in it, and at higher levels, it can even directly kill someone.
Kaizen had trained extensively in controlling his spiritual power, which in turn allowed him to control his spiritual pressure, giving off the impression that he was just a regular person.
Now, however, in his anger, he disregarded controlling his spiritual pressure.
One sweep of his observation haki and he easily located all the pirates.
Bringing his attention back to the pirates in front of him, Kaizen let off a fake smile while restraining the reiatsu he had been unconsciously releasing.
The pirates, who could now think again, only had one thought in their heads: terror.
"Bakudo No. 4: Hainawa (Crawling Rope)," he spoke, extending a hand forward.
Almost instantaneously, thin glowing ropes of spiritual power formed in the air before shooting towards the four.
Before they could even react, they were already bound tightly and had fallen to the floor. The spiritual ropes constricted their movements, rendering them completely immobile.
"Consider yourselves lucky that I have some questions for you," Kaizen said, turning around and patting Saru's head as the little gorilla recovered.
"How about you watch these guys for me while I go handle the rest?" he asked, gesturing to the four men tied up.
Getting a nod of agreement from Saru, he got back up from his crouching position and unsheathed his sword.
In the next moment, his body disappeared from the spot.
When he reappeared, he was behind two pirates who were currently trying to explore his storage facilities.
His stance was one of completing a sword draw.
The second his sword was completely sheathed, the bodies of the now-frozen pirates slowly separated into two pieces, with the upper bodies falling to the floor, leaving only the lower bodies standing.
Though, by this time, Kaizen had already moved from his spot. What remained was merely an afterimage.
If viewed from above, the moment Kaizen left Saru, it was like a bolt of light began ricocheting across the ship.
In under a minute, he had already taken down every single pirate that had climbed aboard.
When his figure reappeared, his sword could be seen drenched in blood.
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Currently, on board the ship of the Wolf Pirates, Captain Wolf could be seen sitting on the deck, shivering as if he were cold. He had just experienced the overwhelming force of Kaizen's spiritual pressure, and it left him paralyzed with fear.
He didn't even know what happened, one moment everything was fine, the next he couldn't even think let alone move.
Snapping back to his senses, he got up and immediately began ordering his men.
Whatever it was, it was definetely related to the ship he had just decided to raid.
His sixth sense was screaming to him, if he didn't leave now, he was going to die.
"Go! NOW! Leave!" he stammered, barely able to form complete sentences, consumed by panic.
He didn't even care for the pirates still on the other ship; he just wanted to escape from this area as quickly as possible.
Sadly though, that wouldn't be happening.
Wolf and his crew were stunned as a sharp line of light streaked above them, slicing their mast cleanly in half.
Turning towards the source of the light, they saw Kaizen standing in mid-air, his sword held casually at his side, drops of blood dripping from its tip.
The backdrop of the night, coupled with the eerie glow of the moon, made him look like a vengeful ghost.
Wolf could already guess what had happened to the other pirates that had boarded the ship. A chill crawling down his spine as he realized he didn't even hear a single cry for help.
Understanding that they had kicked a hard rock, he wanted to beg for mercy, hoping it could provide some chance at surviving.
The next second though, he swallowed his words before they were even spoken.
One glance from the figure in the sky told him everything he needed to know. He wouldn't be surviving today...
Kaizen began slowly descending from the sky, the spiritual footholds acting like an elevator, as he calmly examined each and every one of the pirates.
They could only stand frozen in fear as Kaizen intenionally, or unintentionally released a bit of reiatsu.
Their bodies instinctively tensed up at his presence. They pirates understood it was their bodies way of telling them that this man infront could easily take their life.
When he finally reached their ship, he simply pushed off with his arm.
The force causing a few pirates to stumble back and almost fall. The ship, however, began slowly drifting further and further away.
The pirates, free from the burden of his reiatsu and thinking that Kaizen might have spared them, began to breathe a sigh of relief. Wolf, on the other hand, his eyes never left the figure of Kaizen.
Sure enough, he noticed a strange smile form on his lips.
Kaizen's eyes flickered with a cold glint as he raised his hand, palm facing the retreating pirate ship.
"Hadō #33: Sōkatsui (Blue Fire, Crash Down)," Kaizen spoke, his voice steady and calm.
A burst of blue fire erupted from his palm, expanding rapidly while shooting towards the pirate ship in the distance. The flames roared through the night sky, illuminating the dark sea with an otherworldly glow.
The pirates on the ship could only watch in horror as the blue fire crashed down upon them, engulfing the vessel in a blazing inferno. The ship's wooden structure creaked and groaned under the intense heat, quickly disintegrating into a smoldering wreck. The faint cries of the pirates could be heard piercing through the sky, until they too finally disappeared along with their ship.
The Wolf pirates had been wiped from the face of this earth.
"."
Kaizen stood motionless in the sky, the realization of what he had just done settling in.
Doubling over, he retched, releasing his previous nights meal into the sea.
Despite all his attempts to prepare himself, taking a human life was still vastly different from that of an animal. The screams of the pirates echoing in his head coupled with the burnt smell of human flesh assaulting his nose made him feel sick to his stomach.
Recovering slightly, he landed back on his ship and made his way towards the four pirates he had tied up.
The pirates, after witnessing Kaizen easily wipe out their crew, were already numb and lifeless. They simply sat there in a daze as Saru kept moving around in circles taunting them, obviously upset at the previous situation.
The moment they saw Kaizen, a switch seemed to flip, and they immediately began begging for mercy.
"Please, don't kill us!"
"We'll do anything you want!"
"I'll be your personal slave!"
"Shut up!" Kaizen snapped, releasing a bit of his spiritual pressure, which instantly stunned the men into silence.
He wasn't in the best of moods currently, after all, he had taken his first human life. Thinking about how close Saru had come to dying filled Kaizen with dread. In that moment, he hadn't thought twice about ending the lives of those pirates.
Another thing he realized was the fact that he had wasted the materials on board the pirate ship when he obliterated it in a sea of flames.
He hadn't even thought about that then...
Returning his attention to the four men, he crouched down to their level, his eyes cold and piercing.
Kaizen didn't notice it but the year of surviving in the wild had changed his character greatly. Though killing other humans affected him, it was by no means as serious as it would have been if he were still his previous self.
"I have some questions for you. Answer truthfully, and I might spare your lives."
The pirates nodded frantically, fear evident in their eyes.
"First, what sea are we in?" Kaizen asked.
"The East Blue," one of the pirates answered quickly, his voice trembling.
"And the year?"
"It's 1513," another pirate replied, his voice barely above a whisper.
Kaizen asked a few other questions to confirm some details he already knew, such as who the major Marine generals were and the current layout of the New World, as well as various other things.
These pirates though, having only ever seen East Blue all their lives couldn't provide information of that caliber. Their answers were limited to vague rumors and hearsay.
Kaizen however, was still satisfied, with this result he already had a preliminary plan for the future.
Since he didn't remember much about this time period, he decided he would head to Koshiro's dojo to refine his swordsmanship and fighting ability. Kaizen knew that his actual technique was rather crude, relying mainly on being able to overpower his enemies. If he faced anyone of similar strength, he would definitely suffer.
This would also be a chance to see how strong he currently was. Koshiro was definitely not weak. After all, he was able to teach someone like Zoro and also had connections with the Revolutionary Army. Kaizen wouldn't be surprised if the guy was a great swordsman.
Having gotten the information he needed, Kaizen stood up and looked down at the pirates. "You've served your purpose," he said coldly.
With a swift motion, he grabbed the spiritual rope and threw the bundle of pirates into the sea. While in the air, he cancelled his Hado, causing them to seperate as they landed in the water. The splash was violent, a chaotic mix of yells and splutters breaking the otherwise serene surface of the ocean.
Kaizen watched them flail around in the ocean for a moment ignoring their desperate cries for help, before turning his attention back to the ship and adjusting the sails.
He still felt a bit nauseous from before, so he decided to leave their lives up to fate. These guys weren't even strong enough to act as nourishment for his soul, he wouldn't be the one reaping them today.
He glanced at Saru, who scampered over and looked at him with curious eyes seemingly wondering what he had just done. The little gorilla had grown significantly since they first met, Kaizen could see the intelligence and understanding in his eyes.
"Bad guys, who want to do bad things, meet bad ends... Got it? ," Kaizen gestured with his hands, emphasizing his point.
Saru tilted his head sideways in contemplation, his expressive face reflecting a mix of thoughtfulness and a childlike eagerness to understand. After a moment, he nodded with a understanding look in his eyes.
Kaizen couldn't help but smile, feeling a warm surge of affection for his companion. He rubbed the top of Saru's head gently, the little gorilla leaning into the touch with a contented hum. This bond they were forming was becoming more precious to him with each passing day.
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(A/N: Chapter thoughts?)
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