Summary: The chapter title says it all! Time for an intense training montage!

Chapter 13: Training Montage

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They had ended up staying in Syrup village for an additional week. It had been longer than Luffy had originally wanted, but a number of factors had convinced him to delay. The first had been that, frankly, Kaya proved to be some sort of prodigy with Spiritual Energy. Just a few doses of Spirit Tea and some minimal guidance from Luffy, and she'd begun to instinctively build a sort of meditative exercise for herself to help regulate the messed up flows in her body. The moment he saw it, Luffy recognized it for what it must be. Specifically, a foundational skill that he was lacking, that made you more aware of the flow of your own energy. His various System-granted skills had all been narrowly focused, with bits missing around the proverbial edges, and the combined bundle of instincts from them had practically screamed that this was one of those missing bits. Something likely so basic that it wasn't offered as a Perk…just as a Skill that Luffy had managed to pick up by mimicking Kaya's efforts.

As far as Kaya's treatments went, it was a massive relief. She would, they both thought, still need periodic help from an outside source with the worst of the tangles in her energy. But simply repeating the Skill he now knew was called Spirit Circulation, would slowly unknot and align the less drastic tangles. All while also relieving her symptoms quite a bit. Add in leaving her some Spirit Tea for bad days, and Luffy felt a lot less like an asshole for leaving her with only periodic visits. They'd quickly discovered what Luffy had expected would be true, after all, which is why he'd planned from the start not to stick around and do it all in one go. Specifically, that once untangled, each fixed piece of the Spirits Energy pathways in Kaya's body would need time to settle. Trying to do too much at once was both painful and, most likely, counterproductive.

The second advantage to staying that additional week was all about Usopp. While the teen was in modestly decent shape, he was still pretty far from where he ought to be if he was going to set foot on the Grand Line. His insane marksmanship made up for that to a degree, but only to a degree. Thankfully, that thread of pure determination pulsing in his soul under all other emotions was enough to get him taking things seriously, once they'd displayed the difference between him and them. Luffy and Zoro had set him up with a fairly brutal, but sustainable, set of exercises that would focus him on a high-mobility, high-dexterity fighting style. Given a couple of years, it would turn him into someone ready to survive if he stepped on the Grand Line, even if he'd never be a frontline fighter. He'd also been very interested in Luffy's pistol, as well as a couple of rifle designs Luffy had sketched out for him. He wasn't up to Luffy's level yet, but Usopp was a budding tinkerer and gunsmith that was clearly intent on adding to his arsenal, now that he'd been given a few ideas to start from.

All of that, however, had meant a longer stay in Syrup than Luffy had desired, given that he wanted to really start training with his only two truly confirmed crew members. Not to mention wanting to monitor them to make sure they weren't suffering any negative psychological effects from their first kills. With those thoughts in mind, they'd made only a single quick stop to deposit the bank bonds from the bounty and pick up some supplies for the ongoing ship project, then beelined straight back to Dawn…

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Kuina actually growled at Luffy's smirk as he faded away from her, forcing his arm to shift to lightning as he did. He could have made her miss entirely. But, instead, he punished her lack of keeping up her Armament Haki by letting the blade pass through that hand. Doing so sent a nasty jolt of electricity back through her blade, locking up her muscles for just an instant. She stumbled, jerking away to keep him from following through…but he couldn't have anyway, as Zoro's three blades flashed through the space where Luffy had just been. He'd managed to turn his fade into a backwards Soru step just in time to avoid those blades, one of which was mostly black with Haki. Of course, a moment later, Zoro was forced on the defensive as a round cracked out from Luffy's revolver. It was a training round, but Zoro knew to treat it like the real thing, and grit his teeth as he just barely managed to shift his Haki-blackened blade into position to deflect it.

By that point, Kuina had recovered from the lightning burst and tried to come in for another assault, only for Luffy to shift the game a bit by managing an air-slash. It was still crude, more of a blunt thing than the cutting force it should have been, but both of them had to shift to cut the air-pressure with their own blades or risk being knocked back. Unfortunately, letting him open up the range was the last thing you wanted to do with Luffy when he was serious, as bursts of lightning erupted from his sword-tip to join another three rounds from his revolver. The revolver was empty after that, the other two rounds having been fired earlier in the match…but Kuina cursed and dropped out of the fight as one of this most recent pair of shots took her in the left breast. Right where it would have gone through her heart if it was a real round.

After that, Zoro did his best, but both he and Kuina had learned quickly that there was a world of difference between fighting Luffy as a swordsman, and fighting against Luffy's full combat style. Even with his gun empty, he still used its Haki-blacked barrel as a parrying weapon, and any contact with either blade or barrel risked being electrocuted. They'd changed out the wrappings on the hilts of their Katanas to something that provided at least a little insulation from that, and passing through both his and their weapons was enough to weaken the lightning too. Even so, the shock was still enough to freeze muscles at bad moments. The result was predictable, or had become frustratingly obvious to the pair at least, in the weeks since they'd demanded he fight them seriously. Without Kuina's support to keep the pressure on as his muscled locked, Zoro lost in just over thirty seconds.

Luffy grinned as both of his minions friends, slumped as they lost the fourth match of the day. Zoro and Kuina were both panting…while Luffy was almost fresh, enjoying the side effects to stamina from being a Zoan. He'd been a little curious about why that didn't show up in his stats, at first, only for his relatively recent revelations from gaining the Spirit Circulation skill to provide an answer. Zoan fruits didn't boost stats, so much as they increased the 'bandwidth' and density of your Spirit Channels. In human form, he had no frame of reference from before his Fruit consumption. But given how both those aspects improved drastically when he used his Zoan animal forms, but less drastically when he actually shifted to pure lightning, he suspected the change was the reason for the known 'stamina boost' that all Zoans got. There was, he theorized, likely some underlying requirement to being able physically shape shift. Perhaps something to do with the conservation of energy? There was a notable difference in mass between many of his forms, after all. Assuming physics wasn't utterly broken here, that mass had to be both coming from and going to somewhere. Conversion into and from Spiritual Energy made some sense…sort of.

Shaking that puzzle off, he cheerfully pulled bottles of his personal 'recovery drink,' a blend of fruits and vegetables that he'd come up with by combining both his previous worlds and this ones understanding of nutrition and medicine. Kuina's eye twitched as she saw him pull it out of thin air, something he'd finally revealed to them he could do, but she accepted the drink with at least some grace when he tossed it to her. Zoro, on the other hand, just groaned and let it thunk him on the head, much to Luffy's amusement.

"You two are the ones that insisted you wanted to fight me 'for real,' you know."

Zoro growled, pushing upright and grabbing the bottle as he scowled over at Luffy. Kuina, already half-done with hers, just shrugged.

"And we were right to do so. The fact that it stings to lose, even two on one, only makes that more true, not less. There will be others like you where we are going, and we need to have some idea how to fight Devil Fruit users. Even if most of them are hopefully less utterly bullshit than you."

Luffy laughed as she shook the bottle of recovery drink, indicating what she meant. He hadn't told them everything, but enough for her to be thoroughly annoyed about things like his inventory. As well as what he'd simply described as a way to 'better estimate someone's level of strength and skill.'

"I can't change how I was born, and even I don't understand how it all works. More Spiritual shenanigans, I assume."

Which was true, actually. With his increasing awareness of his own Spiritual Energy, he'd come to recognize that everything the System did seemed to use it. Sort of. It lacked the feeling of a living Spirit, but the energy was almost like a detached, clinical version of the same energy. Not quite mechanical, but…other. He tried not to think too hard or too often on what that meant. Better to focus on the here and now, anyway.

"Also, it is true that you do need to be prepared for people like me. Still, you've both come quite a long way in barely six weeks! Now, if only you could keep up Armament Haki for more than a second or two Kuina. I think part of your problem is mental, so I want to…"

Even Zoro stopped being quite so surly as they began discussing training plans going forward.

-2 Weeks Later-

Luffy paled and suddenly came to a stop. Kuina pulled her blow at the last second, looking at him oddly.

"We're…about to have a visitor. Try not to die?"

His companions both blinked, Kuina turning her head a fraction as she felt someone moving fast enter her own much smaller bubble of observation Haki. The blur was too fast for her to follow, however, as it crossed that bubble in a heartbeat…and planted a fist in Luffy's guard. Despite managing to get that guard up and cover his arms in Haki, Luffy was blasted back twenty feet and through a tree. Kuina, despite her surprise, instinctively tried to respond by lashing out with her blade…only to abruptly find herself flying through the air, Wado Ichimonji headed in an entirely different direction. Zoro flashed through the clearing a moment later…only to have his blades flat out shatter and his body sent through another tree.

"Damn it, gramps! Can't you say hello like a normal person! Now I'm going to have to remake Zoro's swords again!"

Luffy was on his feet again, nursing a visibly bruising pair of arms, even as he scowled at…the man in a Marine Vice-Admiral's uniform. Abruptly, through the fading pain, his crewmates put two and two together and realized who this was. Both of them paled and inched just a bit father away from the muscled giant of a man who was scowling just as fiercely as Luffy.

"Not when my boneheaded grandson has gone and LEFT THE ISLAND without telling me! What's this about you bringing in bounties!"

Luffy grimaced at that. Well, it was bound to get out sooner or later. Forcing nonchalance, he shrugged.

"I had to get some practice with my sword, you know. So I've been visiting an island with a Dojo on and off. When Zoro and Kuina decided to join me, we had to do a job or two for supplies and things. But we've still been mostly just training here on Dawn. Also, I haven't used my Devil Fruit where anyone can see it."

Garp scowled, then sighed.

"Damn it, Luffy. Even without that, you're going to attract attention! And you're not ready yet!"

Luffy shrugged, determined to stand his ground. Garp was being serious, for once, so he would be too.

"Which is why I've done so few bounties, so far apart. I suspect you wouldn't have ever heard anything about it…if not for that ship we saved being a Naval Auxiliary. That's how you found out?"

Garp nodded, then finally looked shifted his gaze to examine the two others in the clearing who had been trying not to be noticed.

"The commander that paid the bounty is one of the few Marines I know well here in the East Blue. He's a good man, even if he never had the fighting talent to make it out of the small pond." Another sharp nod followed as he finished assessing Zoro and Kuina. "At least you were smart enough to take two strong swordsman with you. Makes it look like you were a hunter crew, and made it easy to ensure you're names were marked down as a group. Congratulations, you three are now an unknown crew of bounty hunters officially known as The Five Blades."

Luffy blinked, processing that. He'd thought through a lot of possible reactions from the man when Garp eventually found out about Luffy's wandering. This hadn't been one of them.

"What?"

The dark grin spreading across Garp's face sent shudders through all three of them as he ignored Luffy's question.

"Congratulations, now you get to go through hell until I'm sure you can handle anyone in the East Blue. Even the handful of small time Grand Line vets floating around." Knuckles were popped ominously. "I have months away this time, after calling in a favor…and training starts NOW!"

Luffy yelped as a blackened fist struck out at his nose, even his observation Haki barely letting him get out of the way. And then the battle was on…

-3 months later-

"Your grandfather is a monster."

The half-terrified, half-reverent whisper was only uttered by Kuina now, as Garp's distinctive ship pulled away from the island. The last three months had been hell for all three of them, which is why the comment got a whimper from Zoro and a weak nod from Luffy.

"You…can't really argue with the results, though?"

Kuina snorted, falling back on the grass in an undignified manner. Even her usual unconscious refinement and grace had faded in the stretch, faced with Garp's training.

"That is true. But you won't see me volunteering to go through that again. I do feel slightly better about you being stronger than me, now. If you grew up with…that."

Luffy chuckled, even if the sound was a rueful one.

"This time was…worse than usual, since he's genuinely worried, I think. But yes, he's always pushed beyond the usually limits of sanity. Still, if that's what it takes…than that's what it takes. And I'm less worried about one of the targets we need to take out now."

Zoro's gruff voice finally joined the other two.

"The one you think is extorting that navigator friend of yours?"

Luffy made a noise of acknowledgement even as let himself flop back on the ground with the other two. He hadn't told them about Nami's exact situation, but he'd warned them about the danger at least. A danger he now felt more ready to take on, particularly as needing to survive the last two months had finally pushed him into spending more of his bank of stat points. As a comfortable silence fell between the trio, Luffy brought up the visual proof of their improvement, taking a good look…

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Status

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Name: Shimotsuki Kuina

Title: Sword Saint

Age: 18

Level: 36

Spirit Fruit: N/A

Stats:

Strength: 95

Dexterity: 129

Endurance: 107

Intelligence: 59

Wisdom: 53

Charisma: 65

Luck: 38

Description: The Youngest member of the Shimotsuki Family and heir to its famous sword style. Irritated with her father's misogynistic views, she had struck out on her own to prove she can be the World's Greatest Swordsman.

Relationship to Gamer: Admiring Friend, Loyal Crewmate, Respectful of Gamer having survived Garp this long. Despite being three years older than Monkey D. Luffy, Kuina had grown to greatly admire her new Captain's strength and capabilities. She believes, more than ever after recent events, that following him will provide her the path to overcome her greatest challenges.

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Status

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Name: Roronoa Zoro

Title: Sword Fiend

Age: 18

Level: 34

Spirit Fruit: N/A

Stats:

Strength: 130

Dexterity: 93

Endurance: 135

Intelligence: 39

Wisdom: 42

Charisma: 43

Luck: 71

Description: An orphaned (distant) descendant of the Shimotsuki Family, Zoro has created his own Three Sword Style, proving him to be an exceptional talent with a blade. Defined primarily by his love of swords and love/rivalry of/with Kuina, Zoro is determined to one day beat not just her, but anyone else he has to in order to be acknowledged as The World's Greatest Swordsman.

Relationship to Gamer: Admiring Friend, Crewmate, Barely able to believe that his Captain Survived Garp. Despite being two years older than Monkey D. Luffy, Zoro respects new Captain's strength and capabilities. His loyalty is still primarily to Kuina, however, seeing overcoming her as his best path to being the World's Greatest Swordsman.

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Status

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Name: Monkey D. Luffy

Title: Inheritor of the Will

Age: 15

Level: 40

Spirit Fruit: Mythical Zoan - Model Raijū

Money: 8,345,000 Belli

Shop Points: 14,550

Perk Points: 10

Spirit Coupons: 0

Stats:

Strength: 150

Dexterity: 150

Endurance: 150

Intelligence: 101

Wisdom: 101

Charisma: 102

Luck: 75

Free Stat Points: 50

Perks

Gamer's Body: Grants a body that allows for the user to live the real world like a game. Wounds healed on rest. Status Effects removed on Rest.

Gamer's Mind: Allows the user to calmly and logically think things through. Gamer can suppress negative emotions at will.

The Will of D: Bearer holds the inherited will of the Family of D. Effect: Live in Interesting Times, ?, ?

Outsider's Perspective: Imported save data increases relevant stats, as well as relevant skills when acquired.

Danger Sense: A combination of Haki and gut instinct for trouble lets you sense dangers to you and others near you. Whether or not you can do anything about them is up to your skills.

Designer (General): You're exceptionally talented at more than one field of design! You have an intuitive sense of how best to optimize designs you've come up with!

Empathy: Beyond merely your Haki, you have a very good idea what the people around you are feeling. You're nearly impossible to lie to and everyone finds you easier to open up to.

Gifted Hands: You are naturally good with your hands. Anything from art to martial arts gets a helping hand. Your instincts for all such things are 10% better than they should be, and you get a 5% boost to XP gain for any skill based around working with your hands.

Gun Nut: Despite your age, you've managed to learn a lot about guns! How to clean them, how to make them, and even a little bit about how to shoot them! Gain instinctive knowledge of any gun you handle, as well as 10% faster XP gain for the Gunsmith and Gunslinger skills.

Haki Savant: Having proven talented with all three forms of Haki at a young age, you are 30% better at wielding it and 15% better at teaching it.

Inspired Design (Ships): You never run out of inspiration when working on designs for a ship! The results of you following your inspiration improve the end quality of any ships you personally work on by 20%.

Inspired Design (Weapons): You never run out of inspiration when working on designs for a weapon! The results of you following your inspiration improve the end quality of any weapons you personally work on by 20%.

Intuitive Combatant: You are naturally gifted at learning combat. You are 15% faster at learning any type of combat, from the use of guns to punching lights out with your bare fists!

Training Expert 5(Max): Get the most out of training! Not just for yourself, but for your crew too! Gain instinctive knowledge of the best ways to tweak your training for those GAINS BRO! +50% XP for Training your own skills, or for Training others in skills in which you outrank your trainee by at least 10 points.

Sage's Curve: You learn intellectual pursuits much faster than normal, and retain the knowledge more completely. You have a 20% boost to learning speed and memory retention of any intelligence or wisdom-based skills.

Sword Enthusiast: Despite your age, you've managed to learn a lot about swords! How to clean them, how care for them, and how to identify them! Gain instinctive knowledge of any sword you handle, as well as 10% faster XP gain for the Blacksmith(Sword) and Swordsmanship skills.

Sword Savant: You have created a new sword style at an incredibly young age. Know its flaws and how to fix them instinctively.

Quick Shot: You have incredible accuracy with firearms while on the move. +100% natural aim while firing without sights.

Quick Draw: You are an incredibly fast draw with any weapon, be it sword or blade.

Weather Sense (Intermediate): You can predict normal weather with considerably accuracy, everywhere but the Grand Line.

Spirit Healing: By learning a certain amount about medicine and a great deal about the manipulation of Spiritual Energy, you've learned to heal others by infusing them with your Spirit. Accelerate someone else's healing by 687.5% so long as you are actively healing them.

Spirit Manipulation 2: Learning more about spiritual energy has granted you a more intuitive ability to use it. You temporary boosts to your speed, strength, or endurance no longer cause exhaustion, unless you run out of Spiritual Energy. All Spirit Energy abilities are 10% more effective (Spirit Healing, Spirit Recovery, Etc.)

Spiritual Recovery 2: Meditation allows you to tap into the Spirit of the World to recover your own more quickly. This ability will now heal your own physical wounds at the same rate as Spiritual Healing would for others.

Spiritual Transference: By learning about Spiritual Energy and how it can effect others, you've gain an understanding of how to transfer energy to others to aid their recovery. Also improves Spiritual Healing by 25%

Status Effect Resistance: You are extremely resistant to being poisoned and virtually immune to disease.

Bonus(Dex): Ambidextrous! Through hard effort, you've become genuinely ambidextrous. Provides a major bonus to attempts to dual wield, the ability to pat your head and rub your belly at the same time, and more!

Bonus 2(Dex): Heightened Precision! Through extreme training and body awareness, your movements have become far more precise than a normal person can achieve. From dancing to heart surgery, your body moves the way you want it to, often in ways that baffle others. 

Bonus(Endurance): Damage Mitigation. You've toughened up to the point that 15% of all physical damage dealt to you is mitigated outright.

Bonus 2 (Endurance): Damage Mitigation 2. You've toughened up to the point that 30% of all physical damage dealt to you is mitigated outright.

Bonus(Intelligence): Accelerated Thought. During moments of intense effort or danger, you can think much faster than a normal person, allowing you to break through blocks in your workflow or create desperate plans on the fly!

Bonus 2 (Intelligence): Eidetic Memory. You remember everything you've ever read or heard with near perfect fidelity. Works retroactively do to synergy with The Gamer status.

Bonus(Strength): Power Strike. You've gained the ability to focus all your strength to a fine point, doing far more damage with your hits than you ought to, though only in short bursts.

Bonus 2(Strength): Shatter. Things that normally shouldn't shatter do, for you. A pulse of strength allows you to shatter most physical objects, so long as you can bring that strength to bare.

Bonus(Luck): Fortune's Favor. Lady Luck likes you, in any situation involving luck, you can feel what the results will be, as if dice were tumbling in your head. Is it truly chance if they fall more often in your favor than not?

Bonus 1 & 2(Wisdom): Voice of the World (Lesser). You can hear the history of a place or objects speak to you more completely than someone with only a Faint gift. Grants a type of Psychometry that lets you know the history of objects or places that had a strong enough spiritual presence. With the Lesser modification, the required spiritual presence is significantly less. What once applied only to objects with great spiritual weight, can now be heard with objects that have meaning even for a single person.

Bonus(Charisma): Magnetic Personality. People are drawn to you, even if they don't know why. How that manifests varies from person to person. Friendship, hate, love or lust, all of them can be the result of your magnified Charisma. Everyone agrees that you simply stand out in a way they find pulls them to you.

Bonus 2(Charisma): Improved Relationship Panel. Your Observation ability can now see deeper into people. Based on your observations of even small things you might normally have missed, you can how build a history and personality profile of anyone who is at least an Acquaintance. Works equally well of enemies, so long as you know them reasonably well.

Skills

Brawling: 75

Blacksmithing: 69

Carpentry(Ships): 81

Gunslinger: 70

Gun Smithing: 55

Haki(Conquerors): 40

Haki(Observation): 95

Haki(Armament): 67

Knowledge (World History): 54

Knowledge (Navigation): 49

Medicine: 42

Observe: 85

Sailing: 67

Sciences: 56

Spirit Circulation: 29

Spiritual Manipulation: 47

Spirit Fruit (Model: Raijun) Master: 44

Sword Mastery(Wave Dancer Style): 81

More…

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Luffy was impressed that both of his crewmates had gained five levels from Garp's hell training…and was happy, if a bit haunted, by gaining even more himself. Garp had worked the other two hard, but Luffy had been by far his greatest focus. It showed in his near-impossible seven level increase in such a short time frame, even if Luffy agreed with Kuina that he wouldn't exactly leap on the chance to go through it again. Even he had limits and Garp had pushed those limits hard. Then even harder still until they broke a little bit. Pushing through that limit break had been what earned him the Inheritor of the Will title, which gave his Spiritual Energy reserves a significant boost when he equipped it.

It was also what had finally gotten him to spend a lot of his points, as well as pick up improvements to quite a few perks. He'd been a bit disappointed to discover he didn't get more bonus perks at 150 in a stat, though he held out hope for getting something at 200. In addition to boosting Strength, Dex, and Endurance to help survive Garp's hell training, Luffy had decided to push Wisdom and Charisma to 100. Both were hard as heck to level naturally at this point, so he felt it had been a good choice. Wisdom's new improvement was something he was certain would help in numerous ways…and he was likely going to get a lot of us out of the improved Relationship Panel. Even if not quite in the way he'd originally thought.

To be fair, his original thoughts that it would help in figuring out motivations, strengths, and weakness was true! He just hadn't expected to also accidently gain access to insights into people's hobbies, interests, crushes…and sexual preferences, kinks, and fantasies. He'd been unable to help himself and opened Kuina's for a few seconds, before blushing and forcing himself to close it before he'd gotten very far. Zoro was…probably lucky? Assuming he was okay with the fact that she was apparently very much a Top. Not something Luffy was going to think about if he could help it. Though his hormonal teenage body was not helping him in that regard.

One way or another, they'd all gotten a lot stronger. Which left Luffy feeling much better about their chances against an enemy he suspected they'd be facing entirely too soon…