Summary: Luffy takes his first trip away from Dawn Island...and a first look at what he's planning for his future ship!

Chapter 7: Training and a Trip!

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"Again!"

Luffy panted, but gamely pushed off into the bastardized version of Soru that he'd managed to make after seeing Garp use it. He hadn't quite managed to reproduce the real thing yet, his leg strength not quite up to it, but even his bastardized version accelerated him beyond what a normal human could manage. It wasn't enough, of course. Just like the faltering coating of black on his fist wasn't enough. Garp's 'Fist of Love' caught Luffy's punch fist-to-fist and it was Luffy who howled in pain. Garp's control was far better than most would realize. They saw him break through walls and considered him an oaf with no control. They didn't realize it wasn't that he couldn't control himself. He just usually didn't care. Here, he did, and the counter had been just shy of breaking anything in Luffy's fist, even as it hurt like blazes. The follow up punch to his stomach that launched him into a tree was equally metered. Hurt like a bitch, but it didn't break anything.

"Enough."

Luffy, who had been trying to gain his breath and roll back to his feet, slumped at the word. Garp was a brutal trainer. But no one could consider him anything but an effective one, too. Honestly, this probably counted as child abuse…but Luffy didn't mind. He knew it was what it would take to get him where he needed to be, and pushed just as hard as Garp could want him too. A fact that had actually brought their relationships closer as Garp took pride in Luffy's advancement.

"I'm leaving again. You'll stay with Makino, of course."

Luffy just nodded, even as Garp roughly shoved a coconut with a finger-hole drilled right into its top at him. Luffy drained it, trying to rehydrate.

"How long this time?"

Garp shrugged.

"Don't know. Longer than the last. It's getting harder to keep the old bat from chewing me out when I leave for a bit."

Luffy chuckled at that, even as he hid a bit of internal glee behind his exhaustion. Garp had not, in fact, taken him to Dadan. As best Luffy could figure, he'd likely done so in the story his previous life had known in a genuine attempt to protect Luffy. Little idiot that his original self in this world had been, he'd been far too open about shouting his plan to be King of the Pirates. If anyone of importance had connected the dots between Garp and Luffy, and heard Luffy shouting that…yeah. That wouldn't have been good. He'd likely hidden Luffy with Dadan out of desperation to keep him from being assassinated for his big mouth.

There were downsides, of course. Luffy hadn't met Ace. Didn't even know he existed, officially. But…from his fuzzy memories of watching the series as Alex, young Ace had been an asshole anyway. Original Luffy had been desperate for bonds. But he wasn't. He wanted them, of course, but he was content to wait for them. He might try to connect with Ace in a few years, hopefully once the hot head had met Sabo and leveled out a little. For now, Luffy was perfectly find with his interactions with the villagers of Foosha. He was mentally a teenager, after all. Maybe not exactly a world-wise one or something. But enough past the kid stage that interacting with Makino and Mr. Minatomo was enough social interaction for now. Not forever. But for now. And staying in Foosha, with Garp periodically here and forcing training on him, while also periodically absent so Luffy could do his own thing? It was honestly an ideal situation. One that had been going on for almost two years now. Long enough for Luffy to get stronger…and to put together several pieces of his long-term plan. For the moment, however, he had other things to focus on.

"Hey Gramps! Race you back to the village!"

Luffy, already having bounced back from the sparring, shot off like a rocket. He heard his grandfather laugh behind him…then felt the breeze as the overly competitive bastard used the fully-realized version of Soru to zip right past him. Luffy howled at that and pushed his still tired body to use his own version, even knowing he couldn't possibly catch the old man. Still, the race was fun, and sometimes it was nice just to be a kid for a bit!

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Two days later, Luffy had left Foosha. He'd made a habit of doing that every time Garp was off doing Marine things. At first, Makino had worried and even followed him once or twice. She'd quickly realized, however, that he was just camping and training, and had eventually given in and let him vanish for as much as a month at a time before tracking him down. He'd actually felt guilty about worrying her…but he'd done it for a reason. He'd known that, eventually, he was going to need to slip away from the island for weeks at a time, and establishing a pattern of vanishing was the best way to get away with it.

Today was the first day he was going to make use of that planning. He'd have preferred to do it a year or more ago, since he had no real way of pinning down the timeline for certain events he hoped to disrupt. But it had taken this long to get everything he needed to do it right. The biggest piece being the modest-but-amazing little ship he was currently uncovering from it's hiding spot in a tiny cove. It was the third iteration of the ship, the first one having sunk and the second one having not felt quite right to his Sailing skill. The instincts his Skill had given him had told him it would capsize in rough seas. Which definitely meant it had been done wrong. The whole point in all the time and effort he'd spent in raising his Crafting (Ships) skill so far had been to make a specific type of ship that was extremely good at handling rough seas, after all. As he pulled off the last of his camouflage, he stepped back to admire the vessel with Observe.

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Monkey D. Luffy's Catamaran

Grade: Uncommon

Dimensions:

Length: 30ft

Beam: 16.5ft

Draft: 3.5 ft

Abilities: Improved Stability, Improved Speed

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It was the culmination of one of his longest-term plans. Well, the start of that culmination? Eh, whatever. It was an important step! So far as Luffy knew, the world of One Piece didn't use Catamarans. Yet, the part of him that had lived before as Alex had known about them. Had even toyed around in the ocean with a few of the small sport models. They had fascinated him, particularly given that half of his heritage had come from people that used similar vessels to conquer the rough seas of the Pacific long before Europeans had done the same thing with their giant sailing ships.

This was one of the very few things that Luffy had been determined to reproduce here on this world. For damn good reasons. Catamarans were ridiculously stable in rough seas, far faster than monohulls, and could be manned with far smaller crews for their size. Literally the only way they suffered in comparison to monohulls was in their cargo carrying capacity and Luffy considered that the one truly broken thing about his System. The inventory could hold a lot. Even the default amount it could hold was enough to store food and water for a dozen people for a week and Luffy had spotted the ability to buy expansions for it in the System Store early on. He had, in fact, already done so once just to see how steep the increase in price each time might be. To his delight, the price had only gone up by 25%. Meaning he'd likely be able to buy several expansions, no problem, before leaving the East Blue. With his inventory neatly eliminating the one downside of the design, Luffy was all in with saying fuck the Going Merry, or even the Thousand Sunny. He would build a ship better than either one, given enough time, with this ship as his first successful prototype.

Grinning and jumping aboard, he checked everything over before releasing the ship from the hidden landing ramps he'd built for it. It slid near-silently into the water of the tiny cove and he cheered, setting the sails and steering for open water. He had his ship, a copy of the navigation charts Mr. Minatomo had been using to teach him the basics of navigation, and a great day for sailing in front of him. Even as he set out to sea to start working on his bigger plans, he took one last glance at his status and the progress he had made in the last two years…

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Status

Name: Monkey D. Luffy

Age: 10

Level: 17

Devil Fruit: N/A

Money: 1,252,000 Belli

Shop Points: 2700

Perk Points: 4

Spirit Coupons: 2

Stats:

Strength: 50

Dexterity: 53

Endurance: 62

Intelligence: 57

Wisdom: 42

Charisma: 39

Luck: 41

Free Stat Points: 90

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.

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.

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!

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 Adept: Having proven talented with all three forms of Haki at a young age, you are 10% better at wielding it and 5% better at teaching it.

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!

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.

Training Expert 2: 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! +25% XP for Training your own skills, or for Training others in skills in which you outrank your trainee by at least 10 points.

Weather Sense (Basic): You can predict normal weather with relative accuracy, by instinct.

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(Endurance): Damage Mitigation. You've toughened up to the point that 15% 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(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.

Skills

Brawling: 43

Carpentry(Ships): 41

Gunslinger: 23

GunSmithing: 24

Haki(Conquerors): 11

Haki(Observation): 53

Haki(Armament): 33

Knowledge (World History): 22

Knowledge (Navigation): 29

Medicine: 19

Meditation: 55

Observe: 68

Free Running: 35

Sailing: 37

Sciences: 36

Slight of Hand: 21

Sneak: 38

Sword Mastery (Wave Dancer Style): 43

Spear Mastery: 18

Staff Mastery: 22

More…

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Luffy smiled widely, pleased with his progress. He'd finally started spending a few stat points to get a few stats to 50, having discovered when he first passed that marked in Endurance that he got a bonus Perk for doing so. Having gotten a glimpse at Makino's stats with his much higher Observe, he knew he wasn't all that special yet in that area…if he'd been a trained adult. As a 10-year-old, he was a monster even without dumping the rest of his points. That said, he was beginning to see drastic fall off in how fast he gained stats naturally, which made it tempting to use up that bank of reserve points. He knew he was going to do so before his journey. But for now, he was still trying to eek out some more the natural way while he had years to do so with. He'd also carefully picked up perks with his long-term plans in mind.

Speaking of those plans. It was time he got about them. He had only a very little idea where some of the places he needed/wanted to go could be found, but he'd gathered enough information from merchants and his grandfather to at least have a few places to start. First stop, Shimotsuki Village. He was afraid he was likely too late for one of the things he'd originally hoped to change. But who knows? After all, the metal Practice jian sitting in his inventory had been made there, at the request of Shanks. Along with Shanks' own live jian. If the visit of their crew had shifted events even a little…maybe.

Well, Luffy could hope. And even if that particular hope was in vain, there were several other things he could accomplish there. From challenging the Dojo there with his own budding sword style, to meeting a certain green-haired hopefully-future crewmate. Time and fate would see how it would all play out!

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A/N: So...a very different ship ;-). I've always liked the idea of catamarans and the design is extremely good for rough seas, not to mention fast. That said, I'm in no way, shape, or form, a sailor. I'm doing my research as best I can as I go, including using real ships designs as a reference for sizes, speeds, and so on. But I'm bound to get some things wrong. Given that I'm pretty sure One Piece canon ALSO gets a lot of that stuff wrong, I don't feel too bad about it. I also won't feel to bad if someone lectures me on it either, though. Just be aware I may not change things just because they end up being wrong, if it was/is too important to the plot/planning I've made or am doing.