Chapitre 9: Ch9: Ability, Plans
Days went by and the identity of the attacker was revealed. After digging through the marine papers about pirates, Gary finally found an older notice of a disbanded pirate crew. They were just a small pirate group to the point that their name wasn't even written down. Apparently one day when they stopped by some village to pillage and party, a marine vessel just happened to pass by. The captain and most of the crew got taken down, leaving only a few who managed to run away.
After some questioning, the pirate said that he paid the merchant to smuggle him to another village, so he could hide himself.
Unfortunately, when they stopped at Cocoyasi Village, he couldn't restrain himself and got out of the ship to have some fun. He thought that it wouldn't be a problem, since they would leave later.
Caden learned that from Genzo himself, after finding him talking to the villagers, saying that no more pirates are in the village and there won't be more attacks. Also he mentioned that when they find the hero who helped Shanon, they will compensate him for his good deed.
The merchant managed to flee, so It seems that he will be free from consequences, at least until a marine ship passes by the village and they manage to inform them of the situation.
The pirate for now will stay in the cell at the police station, until said marine ship comes by.
That whole situation got Caden thinking. 'I really have no idea how to fight. These three years I mostly spent on training my body and fruit, getting closer to Bellemere's family and having fun. Looks like I need to find a teacher, or at least some manual on fighting styles or something.'
Going slowly through the village, he looked at the stuff laying around. Getting closer to the library, he found some books laying before the entrance.
'Man, it would be so amazing if I somehow found a Rokushiki training manual or something just laying around.' He thought, looking closer at the books.
'Oh, these are the new ones that the librarian ordered last time. Let's see..'
Looking through the books, he found some normal history books, a few story books and something that made him take a look, shake his head and take a second one.
'So Elegia is a real island. Adding to that, it's actually in our East Blue?'
The book was about the interesting islands of the East Blue, which mentioned Elegia being one of the closest islands to calm belts.
'Hmm, I wanna read more of that, but first let's bring those inside.'
Later that day, he left the library with new knowledge about Elegia. For some reason almost no Sea Kings get near the island, even though it's so close to their breeding grounds.
It also is the number one place in the whole world involving music. Musicians from around the world come here to learn more about their passion.
It's one of the most entertaining places in the world.
Walking down the streets, Caden had some thoughts about that.
'If Elegia exists and isn't yet destroyed, then I'm not sure that Uta exists too. I know it's still too early for the island's destruction, so maybe I should visit it before the inevitable happens? After all, I remember some songs from my past and other fictions. I might be able to replicate them here, money is money after all, great musicians probably have a lot of it.' He thought, making plans for the future.
'Anyway, I still have time before the world gets on the highway to hell. Arlong won't come here for another few years, Luffy is still far away from starting his journey and I am also too young for most stuff. First things first, I should make some plans about my lacking fighting experience.'
Looking ahead at Bellemere's home in the distance, he continued his musings while getting closer.
'Maybe some sword training wouldn't be so bad, it's a weapon, I wouldn't have to fight with just my fists like I recently did. If my memory isn't wrong, the dojo where Zoro learned how to wield a sword was in the Shimotsuki Village. His childhood friend Kuina should still be alive too.'
Getting to the house, he entered and found that Nami was drawing Bellemere for some reason.
"Hey Nami, why are you drawing Bellemere?" He greeted, asking the girl who with a smile was drawing her mother with crayons.
"Hi big brother, I'm drawing mommy to prove that I can make great drawings of everything, not just islands!" She said happily before giving him a hug.
Having spent half of her life with Caden around, made the girl treat him like an older brother. The fact that he spends more time with them than in the orphanage, made that feeling even stronger.
Currently, Nami showed great talent at drawing, doing it even better than Bellemere and Caden. That's very impressive, coming from a child only 6 years old.
"You should try painting next time. I would love it if you painted me in the future when I become a great explorer who visited all the islands of the world."
"Hmm, maybe. Right now, I want to draw mommy, so go away, you distract me." She said, pushing him to another room.
"Ok, ok. I'm leaving. Tell the rest that I will come for dinner, I have something to announce."
"Sure, now go!" She said, closing the doors on him.
Nami was getting her character from her mother, who said once that she was much more aggressive in the past, not including how she always made trouble whenever the chance arose.
Getting thrown out of the house, Caden got on the way to his secret base, which got much more interesting after these years.
The tree in the center now sported a tree house, together with a swing below. To get to it, there was a small rope ladder swinging from the top.
Closer to the forest were many contraptions that Caden built to train. One of them was supposed to help with learning observation haki.
It worked in a simple way. There were many pieces of slime hanging down from some ropes attached to the ceiling, which was a sort of crisscrossed bunch of branches. It was held in the air by another set of ropes that were tied to the trees.
He wanted it to work by pushing the balls to the sides, letting them swing back in his direction with him dodging them and pushing them again.
He was supposed to be blindfolded, but quickly found out that it was much harder than he thought. Still, he trained like this almost every day, but the results were very slow to show up.
Sitting in the middle with his back to the tree, he decided to explore that weird power which healed his fingers. To test some things, he also had a knife laying on the side.
'Right now, I feel that those three fingers which were cut off work much better than others. They seem to have much more mobility to them and I can basically move them however I want.' He thought, moving them in front of his face.
'Also, my pain receptors seem to have been greatly suppressed in them, making it possible to bend them in weird ways.' At that, his fingers almost acted like they were boneless, bending to the sides and acting like little snakes.
'I wanna check if I can repeat that with all of them, but I really don't want to chop them off myself. While I'm at it, let's check if my skin is even resistant to sharp objects.'
Taking the knife into his hand, he slightly cut himself on the arm.
'Damn, it went in so easily, I don't even feel much pain from this. Maybe my pain resistance is just higher than normal? Could it be the work of my devil fruit?' He thought, getting back to his fingers.
'I remember that when he chopped my fingers, he cut off some of them in place where the bone should be. I understand cutting between those, but doing that to the bone itself? Shouldn' they be tougher?'
Deciding to check that some other day, he went back to the present.
Concentrating on the wound, slime appeared again, closing it and stitching the skin back together.
'So it also works like this, hmm. I feel again that the spot which the slime repaired is clearer in my mind. This is similar to that Life Return technique.'
Looking at his healed arm, he got some more ideas.
'If that works like that every time, I should cut myself everywhere on my body or going by the logic of my fingers, I should chop off my head and reattach it to make my whole body respond better.' That crazy idea appeared, but before it took root in his mind, he decided to try something else first.
'Before I try to kill myself with something like this, let's see if I can replicate that without hurting myself.'
Focusing on his power, he tried to do that again without a clear place where the slime could work.
The effect was interesting, he really experienced that feeling again, but this time in a very small way, but on a much bigger scale. It's like his body got more elastic, his every movement more in control of his mind.
Still, if he were to compare it to how his fingers are, it should be like a 1% change overall. That doesn't mean that after a hundred times of doing that he will be just 2 times more perceptive of his body. It will increase exponentially with every repetition, until he has full control over his own body.
It will have a similar effect to fully mastering Life Return, getting full bodily control, to the point of moving his hair or changing its color.
For now, he doesn't know that, so the effect made him only a little happy.
Later that day, he went back to Bellemere's house for dinner and to tell them about his plans.
After getting inside, having dinner and finishing it, he told them the news.
"I plan to leave the village." He said with a serious tone.
"What?!""When?!""Why?!" Three voices asked at the same time.
"Slow down, I will make it clear to you girls. I need to learn how to fight. Lately I found out that I completely lack experience in that department, so I want to change that." Said Caden, looking at the three women around him.
Nojiko seemed to understand why he said that, remembering her talk with him last time.
Bellemere looked conflicted, thinking that he is too young to learn how to fight, but on the other hand thinking that he is mature enough to make his own decisions about this stuff.
Nami was clearly sad, thinking that he said it because she threw him out of the house earlier today.
"I'm sorry big brother! I won't throw you out again, please don't leave us!" She said, jumping on him and hugging him with all her power.
Through the years Caden got very close to the whole family, with Nami depending on him in most situations.
Whenever she went out the house with Nojiko, she alway quickly got into some mischief, hiding from her sister and making trouble. Almost always when she did something wrong, Caden helped her out.
For example, once when she went to Bill's bakery, she took some buns and tried to steal them, but the owner caught her.
She almost received a spanking, but Caden was around and convinced Bill to leave the punishment to him, since he knew her well. The devilish look he had that day made Nami think that she is in deep trouble, but he only took her back to her home and forced her to wear some cute outfits he bought the other day.
Nami greatly preferred just showing him some outfits over getting spanked. It made her depend on him, making him cover for her many times, because since then every time she did something bad, saying "Forgive me, Caden is my big brother!" made most people leave her, going to Caden instead to get some compensation.
He was once fed up with her behavior, telling Bellemere about it, but she again joked that since she's so poor, she will have to pay him with her body. He quietly said to her "Better count that, because I am going to cash that out in the future." Which made her speechless.
Fortunately or not, Nami who was eavesdropping on them didn't hear that part, so she thought that paying with her body meant to dress up like she did for him before, so she also started saying that.
It worked well, making her happy.
She will get a great deal of teasing comments for this, but that's for the future.
~2181 words
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone