Storm

Location: South Blue, Sombre Kindom, near the village of Glace. Smash. Smash. Smash. That’s it. I’ve had enough, I’m going to go and… and shout! “Help! He’s killing me!” punch. “Ow!” “Calm down, your doof,” another punch. “We’re training Rokushiki, Kami-e technique,” remarked the grandpa quietly. “You’ve definitely lost your mind, old man, if you’re teaching me with a cane wrapped in a Kairōseki net.” “Mind?” Another punch dodge. “In that case, we have both lost our minds. “Generally speaking, you shouldn’t have consumed the Devil’s Fruit. It’s your own fault.” “Grandpa, why are you sitting with me. Why not my mum? I ask you. You could have remained in the Marine” “How can you imagine a commodore with a wooden prosthetic leg?” “Simply! They’ll call you Jack Wooden Leg! Maybe you’ll be an Admiral… at the age of a hundred.” “But that’s not what my name is.” Grandpa frowned “It makes no difference to me; it’s a better name than yours, Romeo. Who thought of such a pathetic name?” “What did you say, doofus?!” Smash. “I say I love you very much, Grandpa. Nya-ha-ha!” “All right, you’ve had enough for today. We’ll continue training tomorrow.” “Grandpa, are you even sure that’s how Rokushiki trains? All you were doing was hitting me while I was running away,” I asked. It’s just that I suspect, when it comes to how he’s trained me that he’s making it up as he goes along. No, there’s nothing wrong with normal physical development. And with Rokushiki. Trying to hit me with his cane while I’m running away from him is not yet the strangest training. One day he hung me upside down from a tree, tied me up with a Kairōseki net and began to throw knives at me. I had to dodge them and of course I failed. When the first knife hit me, I was about to say goodbye to my life until my grandpa ran up to me and slapped me. He said: “You fool, look, do you see you’re bleeding?” I couldn’t see it, and I couldn’t see the knife in my stomach, either, where it had hit me. Luckily, the knives were very dull. “I have no idea. I don’t own any of the Six Styles except Sigan,” replied the briskly paced grandpa. After he said this, I stumbled and fell face down on the ground. I stood up and became outraged: “Oh, crazy old man, why teach me what you don’t know?!” “So that’s, there are a lot of people in the big world who don’t give a damn about your fruit’s ability, so I’m training you to dodge. Only when you Logia, reach the Grand Line, you start thinking about dodging.” Well, it’s hard to disagree. I’ve only been a logia for three months, but my head is blown off almost every day with a false sense of omnipotence. Luck the grandpa is nearby and helps to put it back in place with his cane, which is wrapped in a Kairōseki net as usual. “Grandpa, I’m hungry,” I started begging for dinner early. In general, because Grandpa spent most of his life in the Marine, he gets a military habits in some things. “Goofy. What are you going to do without me when I’m dead?” “I’ll cry for a while and find myself a new grandpa. Why do you ask?” “Goofy, don’t say that!” Punch. “Ouch, that hurts.” I realised at the age of three that I was not a normal kid, I was too clever and too quick-witted. I cared a lot about being different from other kids because they wouldn’t be friends and play with me because of those differences. Yes, somehow kids always avoided me, didn’t think I was one of them, a kid. My grandpa, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough of my intelligence, insight and wisdom, which was far from childish. Everything fell into place when I finally remembered my past life at the age of five. Oh, how I laughed and celebrated then. I was able to cheat death and be reborn in another world. Yes, it’s another world. A world of adventure and opportunity, of secrets and mystery, of unbreakable friendship and betrayal. An incredible place where anyone can achieve anything they want. Whether you want to be king of a whole country or just have a big, friendly family doesn’t matter at all. If you really want to do something, here you can work hard and put in the effort to make it happen. A world where every island is an amazing piece of land unlike any other. The world of One Piece! I was born on one of the islands of the Sorbet Kingdom, currently ruled by Bartholomew Kuma, into a family of hereditary Marines. The same Kuma who may soon become one of Seven Warlords of the Sea. I am mostly taught by Grandpa. Saw my parents three times a year at best, as they serve in the first half of the Grand Line. “Grandpa, do I have to be a marine?” I asked the question I used to annoy my grandpa with every day. “Of course you are! You are the son, grandson and great-grandson of the Marines! You can’t be anything else. Being a Marine is in your blood.” “What if I want to be the new King of Pira…” I get hit on the head with a cane, “Ow, that hurts!” It doesn’t really hurt that much, by the way. It’s just very unpleasant to suddenly lose all your strength from contact with a Kairōseki. “You don’t say silly things like becoming a pirate!” Yes, Gol D. Roger was dead eight years ago, exactly the year of my birth. I was two months old at the time of his execution. He said his legendary words about the treasure, about One Piece, and people rushed out to sea to find the legendary treasure, each wanting to be the new pirate king. I don’t care about the treasure itself. I have another dream: I want to travel, learn new things and meet interesting people. And my dream doesn’t really fit in with being in the Marine. I am a very free-spirited person. I do not like being told what to do. “At the age of fifteen, on my and your father’s recommendation, you may go to Marineford to study and sail from there already in with the rank of Ensign. I don’t understand why you’re not happy about being a marine, because you won’t start at the bottom like my father, you won’t have to scrub decks and obey everybody. After six months at Marineford, you will be an elite officer, albeit the youngest.” Once we were seated at the table, I asked a new question: “Grandpa, why don’t you teach me some kind of Shigan, since you have it, as opposed to Kami-e?” “Romeo, your body is not ready to learn this technique. Oh, and your fruit will interfere with its mastery. It makes it very difficult to harden your body, you just miss the damage by absorption.” There is such a thing as a disadvantage with the fruit. For example, my grandpa once made me beat up a makiwara to harden my fists. Knowing it would be long, tedious and a bit painful, instead of just punching with my fist, unconsciously used the power of my fruit to push back the makiwara with gusts of wind. Yes, my fruit is the Logie of air, the mixture of gases that living organisms need in order to exist normally. But I have little control over such a formidable fruit. I can dodge attacks like any other Lore, fly and create gusts of wind. That’s my arsenal at the moment. But I’ll add to it, I just need to remember something about air. Incidentally, I ate the fruit by accident. I once came across a patterned blue strawberry between other strawberries. My thought was that my grandma, who gave us these strawberries, simply grows a variety of different strawberries, among which there are blue ones. In my previous life I had eaten strawberries with food colouring. So why not try them in One Piece? What if it taste different to each other? It was different, very different. There was nothing worse in my memory that had ever been in my mouth before. It was as if you had mixed a large amount of sugar, salt, red pepper, sand and glue, shaped it into a berry and tasted it all. My grandpa and I are not only in training for our bodies and fists. He’s also teaching me everything he thinks every self-respecting sailor and marine needs to know: navigation, first aid, marksmanship, construction of various types of ships, the Code of the Marines, how to survive at sea and on land, and other useful skills and knowledge. If he could read poneglyphs, I think he’d teach that too. “No, I still don’t understand, why did you talk so much? Perhaps I have hit you a little too hard on the head? Romeo, come here, let me have a look at you.” Yes, I am also called Romeo, like my grandpa. Romeo Eiglis, that’s my name in this world now. I am a brown-haired guy with a neat face in which nothing but my eyes stand out. I call myself Darth Eiglis in my thoughts because the irises of my eyes are golden. I have inherited my mother’s face and eyes, her fine features and golden irises, as the body type of my father’s. I am quite tall for my age and thin, while my father’s height is over six and half feet, same my grandpa, and for this world it is normal for some of its people to be tall and have some other distinctive features. “I agree, Grandpa. Where have you seen kids being beaten like that?” — I said, turning to my grandpa. “What would you say if you met Yonko at sea, for example? Would you ask him to hit you gently?” “No, that’s stupid. I’d rather be part of his team. Besides, you told me that Big Mama used to be pretty and had lots of kids. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get one of her beautiful daughters.” I get hit on the head with the cane and fall down, clutching it. “It hurts like hell!” “Don’t talk nonsense like that! You’ll drive me to my grave by what you say!” “You can’t lie up there! Even now, with your seventy-year-old grey beard and prosthetic leg, you run faster than me! Sometimes I think I’m the old man here, not you. Pensioners aren’t that fast.” Despite the cane strokes, I’m still going to make jokes about him because he has such interesting and lively facial expressions. Nya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Smash. Ow. “And now for what?” “I could tell by your laughter that you had something unpleasant to say. All right, let’s get on with your lesson. So, what are the different types of bleeding, Romeo?”