"So annoying! I agreed to sparr with you so stop dodging already."
"Never! How could I as the vice-captain lose to anyone but Jackson-nii, the captain?!"
"I am not asking for your opinion on this!"
"And I'm not telling you my opinion! I'm merely stating facts!"
'*Sigh* my poker session with Shachi and Penguin got disturbed by their noisy fighting again…'
Sabo and Law were currently sparring to make Sabo adjust his fighting style. During this last week we have been testing his limits and uses of the devil fruit and I am quite impressed with the workings of the fuwa fuwa no mi.
As is already known, whatever he touches not only can be freed from gravity's force, it can also be somewhat controlled.
The downside is that depending on how far he develops his devil fruit powers, it can take more time making things levitate. For example a thin tree is relatively simple, but something like a house or a big ship, he would need to be in contact with for a long period of time, as well as touch most of the surface but he can still affect them!
We were happy after having learned more about his power but Wolf was kinda pissed when he came back from town and saw his house levitate.
"I'm going all-in!"
"If you dare use the card you have hidden beneath your cap, I'll beat you into a pulp!"
"! How do you always find out?!"
"Wait! Were you actually cheating all this time? Penguin you son of a gun!"
I've also started to get along with this duo. Their friendly quarrels somehow remind me of Luffy and Ace.
'I wonder how they are doing right now…'
Having finished the game I went and looked for Kuina. As always she was still training. She was standing bare footed on two wooden poles, that have been rammed into the ground, and practiced the horse stance while holding a metal bar pierced into a big boulder in each of her hands with outstretched arms.
A third boulder of similar size was bound by thick robes which she was holding with her mouth. To top it off she wore a blindfold as well as plucks for ears and nose. By limiting these three senses, her body's balance get heavily affected but she even put a bucket with water on her head so she would notice when her stance was off.
She realized that her physical strength was a bit lacking after she recovered and came up with insane strength training methods. The methods she thought off frightened even me and I had Law do a check up to make sure she didn't damage her body regularly.
I tried to stop her from going too far, I really did but when she asked me wether that was an order from her captain and looked at me with determined and stubborn eyes she made me realize that instead of stopping her I should try and help her not get hurt too much on her path towards power.
Next to her was Bepo, doing the same training. He added quite a few ideas when they thought of training methods. They trained together for over a month and their growth speed was ridiculous at worst. Kuina even more then Bepo, she might be learning only two of the six rokushiki unlike Sabo but she will most probably master these two before him.
I on the other hand tried to develop a two sword fighting style. Since I got Shiki's sword and planned to develop a different fighting style from Roger's this would have been perfect but it didn't turned out as planned.
Flashback:
My movements felt awkward and having a second sword in my hand even more so. If taken a fair amount of time, developing a decent two swords style might be achievable but it's inefficient.
A lot of time invested for decent at best as a result isn't what I'm aiming for. So I tried developing new techniques following my current one sword style I got from pops and I managed to pull off something interesting.
Following the principles of advanced armament haki, I tried to infuse conqueror's haki into the blade instead of coating it but that turned out to be a grand failure.
My old cutlass was torn apart by the conqueror's haki as if it had a will of it's own and was saying 'nothing can hold me' or something like that.
'Once again Rest In Peace old comrade.'
Still not wanting to give up I tried it a few more times with minimal amounts of haki and on different objects until I moved to my new swords. This time they didn't burst but the conqueror's haki couldn't be infused into the swords.
Instead I discovered something else I considered interesting. Going through the sword the haki would gather on one side of the blade and accumulate there.
I couldn't really understand why that was happening since I could apply 'Ryuo' without any problems but conqueror's haki just reacted differently.
Getting frustrated after almost a month without real results I launched flying sword slashes to release a bit of my frustration but who could have guessed that the accumulated haki on the sword's blade would latch itself onto the attack.
Flying sword slashes are just cuts, strong and fast enough to create pressure based wind blades so I really couldn't understand how the conqueror's haki I didn't disperse could suddenly infuse itself into a flying sword slash.
Nonetheless the result was amazing. As if getting completely dominated the sword slash expanded and gained momentum similar to a released beast.
Rough. Not precise enough. But unbelievably fast and powerful and more than that… big. A black slash with red outlines mowing down a part of the forest in a blink of the eye.
Based on how it looked like I decided to name this unintentionally developed move… 'black getsuga tenshou'.
Flashback end.
The next day arrived and we were ready to set sail. Wolf gave us a big farewell gift. It was Law's sub marine. From the start it was something Wolf had build and now he decided to gift us this ship.
Now only one problem remains. We neither have a name for the ship nor a Jolly Roger of our own.
"Any ideas for the ship's name?"
Law asked us and it didn't take long for a name to pop into my mind.
'Let's keep that name for a ship we might build later on…'
In the end I decided against calling it Oro Roger… this time.
"How does little Anne sound?"
"?" (everyone)
They looked at me strangely, probably wondering where this came from.
"I was told that if I had a sister or was born a girl her name would have been Anne."
"Ok. Cool story bro but what does that got to do with a ship?"
"It's just something my family does. You don't like little Anne?"
"I don't mind that name."
"I'm in favor of little Anne."
"Me too."
In the end the name was decided but the Jolly Roger was still nonexistent. They were all looking at me.
'No matter how much you stare, my handsomeness won't go over to you!'
It wasn't like I never thought of a Jolly Roger so I explained the design I had in mind. It's a skull with my hair drawn on it. It carries a big golden crown and on it's left and right the capital letters G and J were drawn in gold
Sabo understood what the letters meant immediately and was in favor of this design to be our Jolly Roger.
After having finished it all we finally set sail once more, this time with a doctor and a navigator. The time when we will enter the Grand Line draws closer and closer every day.