A young swordsman's adventure 9

“There’s not much left for you to know, when it comes to dueling.” Father said as they walked towards where the humadrills are. “Some of your techniques could use some polish, but it’s mostly your youth holding you back. Your haki outstrips your raw strength by a far greater margin than is normal.” He paused, thinking about his words. “Well, as far as ‘normal’ can be used to describe those who use haki.”

It made sense. Even in the Empire, she was notably weaker than her men in most ways, it’s just that magic meant that them being able to lift a hundred kilograms more than her didn’t significantly affect their relative lethality. “So I'm supposed to defeat the humandrills without using haki?” She asked, dreading the answer.

“At first, yes.” He confirms. Great. “I have no doubt you could defeat even the strongest of them one on one, but that’s not the point of this training.” What is? “Haki is limited, if you need it to fight every enemy, you will never be able to defeat someone who brings hundreds of men against you, even base thugs.”

Ah. She understands now. This is practice for dealing with armies. “Of course there are also people with just as powerful haki but also strong bodies to back them up.” She added.

“It is so.” Father agreed. “It is no coincidence that of those who stand at the top of the world’s strength, I am among the smallest of them.” And given that Father was already quite a tall man by normal standards, that was telling. “Yoru evens the scales in that regard, but if I could not exert physical strength along with my haki, I would never be considered the strongest swordsman.”

The humandrills were dueling each other with swords, using surprisingly well-made weapons that were sized for them, which meant that they must have smithed them. Interesting… They used an interesting fighting style, occasionally using their prehensile feet to wield their blades to get an extra advantage.

To her surprise, when one of the apes fell, their fellows pulled the loser off the ‘arena’ and tended to his wounds, although their medical techniques left plenty to be desired. It was only after the winner celebrated his victory that the group of humandrills noticed their presence, and Father’s claims of having them cowed proved true: they flinched away as one and stood in place nervously.

“Go on. No Armament until I tell you.” He said, “Minimize your Observation as well.”

Swallowing thickly, Tanya drew her sword and walked to the opposite side of the unmarked arena from the previous winner. “I challenge you!” She announced.

The humandrills calmed down, understanding what was going on now. The previous winner slammed his offhand on his chest, roaring in an attempt to unsettle her. Tanya stood in place, unmoved by his threat display.

Satisfied with her courage, or perhaps incensed by her lack of fear, the humandrill grabbed his sword with two hands and, with speed far in excess of what one would expect of something of his size, brought his sword down on Tanya with all of the strength his massive body could muster.

“Pillar.” Tanya murmured to help focus as she assumed one of the formal ‘techniques’ of the Vigilant Blade style. It was kind of hard to describe, but by tensing all of her muscles, even the contradictory ones, she locked her body in place, becoming a lot more durable than normal. More importantly, the increased solidity made any force acting upon her travel through her body a lot more easily, allowing more of it to go into the ground beneath her feet and less of it to affect her on the way. When properly braced, it vastly amplified the ability of one to block an attack instead of parrying or deflecting. Not that it didn’t help even when you weren’t braced, but you had to stay completely still to make the technique work, so it was not advised to use it for longer than one enemy attack.

It kind of reminded her of fighting games, where perfect reactions to your enemy’s attacks allowed you to completely ignore their attacks, even their best moves that were otherwise unblockable.

Even with that technique, her arms and knees shuddered at the impact of the humandrill’s blade. Ow. The humandrill, shocked that his full-strength attack was blocked, switched tactics to a different style, blatantly copying Father’s wide slashes without properly understanding why he used them.

With that easy-to-exploit mistake, Tanya swiftly defeated the first humandrill. Afterwards, she raised her sword in the air and laughed victoriously, repeating the earlier celebration.

The next humandrill did not make that mistake. However, it started to use some of her own attacks, which made more openings for her to exploit, as they were attempting to use moves designed to fight someone bigger than them against someone smaller.

Father had to step in at the fifth enemy, using his Observation to predict the exact moment that Tanya would take a wound and sending out a small flying slash with his knife to deflect it. “That’s enough for now.” He said, his presence halting the humandrill in his tracks. He took the massive bag he had brought with them, and unfurled it to reveal a pile of food. During the battles, he had set up a camp kitchen, and Tanya went over to start cooking. The humandrills looked at them curiously, several of them staring intently as the two of them cooked.

It took only four humandrills for the next intervention, which was rewarded by gifting the winner one of the sweets (essentially candied sausages) they had brought with them before setting that ape aside and beckoning the next to come in.

By the end of the day, the humandrills didn’t need much prompting from Father to follow along with the training. By the end of the week, the humandrills were indistinguishable from your average sports audience in how they prepared their own concessions and used the times between Tanya’s fights to arrange for more fights between themselves, trying to figure out how to translate Tanya’s fighting style to their larger bodies and additional prehensile limbs.

All she needs to do is get stronger faster than the humandrills can get more skilled.

…no wonder Father expected this to take years.

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One day, Father had gone off to meet Dr. Vegapunk again, seeking to use his botanical knowledge (the man apparently had invented a fast-growing flower that grew in gunpowder of all things) to create seeds that would thrive in the damp, low-sunlight conditions of Gloom Island.

Or rather, he had already done so, and was merely picking up the result. But along with it…

The corgi barked in joy, licking Tanya’s face. Tanya laughed as the affectionate dog greeted her.

“Won’t the humandrills attack him, though?” Tanya asked in concern.

“No.” Mihawk said, “Watch. Saifu!” Purse? The dog perked up. “Bag.” He said, pointing at Tanya. The dog barked and lunged out of Tanya’s hands over her shoulder… only to turn into a backpack.

“...what.”

“Dr. Vegapunk’s experiments were related to infusing objects with devil fruits.” Father explained. “It only works with zoan fruits, you see, but any such object is only as intelligent as the animal appropriate to the fruit.” He shrugged. “I asked him if he could use something I could give to you, and he obliged. He’s done with her now, so you can keep her.”

Tanya grinned as she realized the implications of having a dog that was also an inanimate object. “Thank you!” She said, hugging her father. “I’ve always wanted a dog!” Unfortunately, she’s never had the chance to own one. Her apartment back in Japan didn’t allow pets, and while she had planned to get a house after her next promotion so she could… that never worked out.

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The music was joyous on Lodestar Island, the ‘last’ Island on the Grand Line. This was only the case for two reasons: One, Log Poses, the mysterious compass-like devices that attuned to individual island’s magnetic fields, didn’t reset to a different island here in any timescale that people knew about, so if you lacked a vivre card or eternal pose, you were essentially stuck, because the waters and skies were too treacherous for stellar navigation to work. There was a relatively new navigational innovation where three Log poses, and they never attune to the same island, which helps, but nevertheless they just had a Gloom Island eternal pose so they didn’t need to worry about that.

“Three cheers to the Fourth Emperor of the Sea!” Announced Lucky Roo. “Hip hip!”

“Hooray!” Shouted everyone at the party.

“Hip hip!” Shouted Yasopp.

“Hooray!”

“Aw, guys, you’re making me blush! Or is that the sake?” Shanks said, laughing at his own joke.

“Hip hip!” Lucky Roo said again, ignoring his captain.

“Hooray!”

The party was the largest one Tanya had ever participated in. The Red-Hair pirates were in the place of honor, of course, a stage with couches, where the biggest one sat Shanks, holding court with a beautiful woman at each side of him. They fed him small snacks and refilled his sake saucer as he imbibed, able to indulge without moving a single inch from his spot.

Among the large picnic tables surrounding the stage were Shank’s subordinate pirate crews, which were, for the most part, very weak pirates. Some of them weren’t even real pirates, like the Social Club pirates, which were literally a bunch of retirees who pretend to be pirates for fun. Not one of them had retired from piracy, although admittedly most of them were fishermen and thus at least sailors.

That wasn’t to say that the Red-Haired pirates were weak, it was just essentially held together entirely by the strength of the original pirate crew, with little if any contribution from the subordinate crews.

Well, except for the Giant Warrior Pirate remnants. “They agreed to work for the Marines for one hundred years?” Tanya asked incredulously.

“Oh yes, little one.” Said Gerd, the statuesque giant woman that she had struck up the conversation with. “Oimo and Kashi are true men for volunteering.”

“I’m a bit surprised that Doggy and Brogy were successfully imprisoned.” Tanya commented, “Containing Giant warriors cannot be simple.” or cheap. The whole deal didn’t make a lot of sense for the World Government, to be honest.

“We know they still live and are healthy, for their vivre cards are pristine.” Gerd said, certain in her words. Tanya was sitting at a table that was on a platform raised high enough via a pole to be at face-level for a seated Giant. “Interpreting the condition of such a card is not a simple matter, but I have found no issues when I inspect them, which I do every month.” Gerd was a doctor, as it so happened.

“It’s hard to argue against that, at least.” If they weren’t imprisoned, they should have been heard of by now. They started their duel nearly one hundred years ago, after all. “Seems strange to not elect an interim captain, though.”

Gerd shrugged. “Some of us think we should, yeah. I wasn’t even born when Doggy and Broggy started their duel. Hajrudin has been trying to recruit for his ‘New Giant Warrior Pirates’ idea, but we’re not allowed to use the Giant Warrior Pirate’s official ship, and he’s having a hard time getting a replacement.”

Tanya hummed. Yes, Giants had a hard time shipbuilding, for obvious reasons. Well, they had a hard time building ships that could hold more than two or three giants at a time, which is all they needed for fishing vessels. If this Hajrudin had a difficult time convincing the Elbaf Navy to allow him to take one of their military vessels, or enough of his fellows to steal one… In the end though, the world is probably better off without a crew of literal twenty meter tall giants raiding and pillaging. “Good luck to him with that.” She said instead, and took another bite of the delicious sweet roll that the giants had brought, a traditional celebratory dessert called selma. She also stroked the straps of Saifu, who was in backpack form, and she wiggled in appreciation.

“Speaking of health…” Gerd said, coughing. “I’m given to understand that you don’t have a mother. Given your age, there are certain topics…”

Tanya cut her off. “Grandma gave me the facts of life, don’t worry.” She lied. It was actually Visha that informed her of the practical side of how such things were handled, although the internet had been her source for the biological side of things. This would be an actually useful conversation if she only had this life to draw on.

“Good.” Gerd said approvingly, before leaning in close and whispering. “If you have any questions, I can answer them, as a doctor. Shanks asked me to inquire, as he worries about his friend, your father.” Giants could whisper surprisingly quietly, she expected it to sound booming. “I’ve prepared a list of topics that you should know, if your grandmother missed anything, I will be happy to fill you in.”

Tanya looked over the mortifyingly thorough list, and thankfully didn’t see anything surprising. It reminded her of her college notes, too brief to be educational if you weren’t already familiar with the subject, but it had enough information to confirm her knowledge as accurate. “Nothing she said disagrees with any of this.” Tanya said softly, stoically bearing the embarrassment. It was a sincere attempt to help, it was a sincere attempt to help…

“I’ll say no more about it, then. Keep that.” Gerd said. Tanya folded the paper and stuffed it inside her coat.

…Yeah, this was too awkward. “I could use something more meaty.” She said, standing up, stuffing the last of the selma in her mouth, and waving goodbye before jumping off the designated ‘talk to the giants’ table.

Tanya sat next to her father, who was drinking on the same couch Shanks was sitting at. She grabbed one of the meat skewers that were being passed around by an old lady pirate, taking a bite without bothering to ask what it was made of. Mm, spicy, that has a nice burn to it. Beefy, too. Was this dinosaur? Reminded her of that triceratops… “So how’s being an Emperor of the Sea feel?” She asked Shanks. Saifu turned into full dog mode and wriggled into her lap, begging for some of the meat and for belly rubs. Tanya snatched up a less spicy snack for the dog.

“Oh, it’s great.” Shanks said immediately. “Lots of friends, and providing protection to people is a lot better than raiding them. I get to party pretty much every night!” He took another swig of his sake. “I’ve been all over the Grand Line, I’m done exploring. Keeping people safe from Linlin and Kaido is worth doing, and the Marines certainly aren’t going to do it out here.”

“A noble goal.” Tanya said, nodding.

“So how’s growing up been treating you?” Shanks said, “You’ve grown a lot since I’ve last seen you.”

Well, she was eight then, so that’s hardly surprising. “It sucks.” She said bluntly. She hadn’t even gotten close to growing to full size yet… She died before she had to worry about this sort of thing last time! …that was actually unfathomably sad, she’s already outlived her second life. “I can’t breathe as deeply with these stupid bindings on.”

“You don’t have to bind them.” Said one of the girls at Shank’s side, not-so-subtly puffing out her chest to show off her most impressive features.

“It’s worse that way.” Tanya groused. They jiggle… “It’s so distracting!” As she had feared, there was every sign that she would end up as developed as her mother and grandmother. It really wasn’t that big a deal… now. When they were still small. But there was no defeating basic biology, even with magic.

Well, Grandma mentioned that armament haki can help, but she just couldn’t get it down. She’s long mastered it to the point of reinforcing her clothing, a very simple application, but she still had to tie them down to keep them out of the way.

“Well, you’re a teenager, everyone’s awkward at that age.” Shanks said, as if such a statement was wise. “You’ll figure it all out eventually, everyone does.” Speaking as someone who has met college students, that was emphatically not true, but Tanya just finished her meat skewer off instead of saying something.

“Hey, why don’t you sing the Emperor a song?” Shanks said, faux-haughtily. “I could go for a rousing round of Bink’s Brew!”

Tanya snorted, but obliged. “Yohoho, Yo hoho ho!” Saifu started howling along.

“Yohohoho, Yo hoho ho!” sang all of the officers.

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Despite the name, Gloom Island was not actually perpetually overcast. There was enough sunlight for crops, and getting the humandrills to cultivate the seeds designed by Dr. Vegapunk was, while not an easy task, quite manageable.

It may have been a mistake teaching them how to dig earthwork fortifications, though. Normal trenches weren’t too useful to combatants as agile and large as them, but the ones that preferred guns and cannons made good use of more modern varieties, meant to create protected firing positions rather than terraforming the whole battlefield.

After Tanya had started consistently winning against the humandrills without haki, the combat had been moved to one of the old war battlefields, that still stank of blood, rot, and gunpowder.

It smelled of the Rhine, and she hated that it felt like she was finally home. He sent squads of five at first, and Tanya couldn’t help but assign the smartest of each group the rank of Sergeant. Training them in squad tactics made things more difficult for her, but it also meant they had to get better at communicating.

She taught them sign language, a kind she had to invent because she never learned any formal variety. Their learning speed for nonviolent tasks accelerated immensely when she got them to understand when she was showing them how to do something on purpose.

In short order, she was fighting off an army in the most literal sense, with specialized divisions, chain of command, and combined arms tactics. It was exhilarating. She was allowed to use haki against the groups, of course.

Tanya lashed out with Gintama, detonating the artillery shell in mid-air. “Nice try!” She shouted, laughing as she cut down another squad. As they had successfully sighted her position, she needed to move. She leapt away, avoiding the four shells that followed the last, rebounding off the air to throw off the aim of the sharpshooters. How many are left? She sensed… thirty-eight more presences. She might actually win this time.

“Saifu, gun.” She whispered, and the dog’s head poked out over her shoulder, pistol in her teeth. Tanya grabbed it and fired off the six shots the fancy revolver could hold, detonating the shells of the four mortars they had been using, the two humandrills that had standing guard lucky to be even able to deflect one bullet each. Their reflexes left something to be desired, still.

With the mortar teams finally dealt with, lying on the ground dazed from the explosions, Tanya handed her pistol back to Saifu’s waiting jaws, who withdrew back into her backpack form. “Good girl.” She said, and the backpack barked happily, and she could hear Saifu’s tail pop out and whip around through the air behind her.

Tanya leapt through the air, dancing in the skies above the battlefield like she had never left it. The humandrills were getting better at Vermillion Wing, but only a few of them could manage to attempt to unseat her from her throne in the sky. “Twenty.” She whispered, counting down. Looks like all that was left was the Brute Squad. It was the group of humandrills that she called that due to their prodigious size, each one a full meter taller than the three meter average height of the large apes.

She planted her feet in the ground near them, knowing that the lot of them disdained anything but melee combat, and preferred to stay back unless she engaged them on those terms. It was one of the drawbacks of fighting with an intelligent training partner: they could learn to exploit the conditions of the test. They knew that she had to defeat all of them in order to succeed, and if they refused to give her a fight, she couldn’t pass.

Father allowed this, because he thought it taught a valuable lesson: sometimes you had no choice but to march to your enemy’s drum, and you could only power through the disadvantage. The fact that they would fight her if she engaged them straight on meant that she couldn’t claim them routed.

This was the second time she had brought the one thousand four hundred fifty-eight humandrills down to just the Brute Squad. She felt good, not having taken any significant injuries first like last time. Just a lot of bruises and a few flesh wounds that had already stopped bleeding.

She can do this! The Brute Squad approached her slowly, too slowly. She swung Gintama experimentallly, sending out a flying slash to probe at their plan, and it was clear that was their intention, for they immediately sped up and started to surround her.

Tanya closed her eyes and focused on her Observation. Due to the massive size difference, only two can attack her without getting in each other’s way, sometimes three for particularly well-coordinated attacks. Like their opening move. She flowed into a blocking stance, using Pillar at the last instant to block all three strikes, one using her haki-coated hand, another using Gintama, and the last using her skull. With their momentum dead, she disarmed the second one by ripping the sword out of the beast’s hand, tossing it into Saifu’s waiting throat to remove it from play. With her now free hand, she gripped Gintama and swung with all of her strength, scoring a deep enough cut across the chest for all three of the humandrills that they retreated from the battle, allowing their fellows to close in with their own coordinated strike.

This time, she was able to step aside from the powerful overhead strike, deflecting it into the second to foul them up, and she flexed her stomach to allow the now off-target third strike to deflect off the now-rigid surface. That one stung a bit…

Without the leverage she had last time, she cut down each of the humandrills one by one in rapid succession, and the Brute Squad’s coordination failed, each one attacking individually without forcing her to defend against simultaneous strikes.

In short order, she was facing the final boss: The largest Humandrill, whom she named Oyabun, who had managed to forge an inferior, albeit large, copy of Yoru and learned enough of her father’s swordsmanship style to be an actual threat as an individual. Worst of all, of all of the humandrills, this was the only one who managed to learn haki, despite all of them watching her fight with it for years.

She knew that Father was teaching this one, because this was the first time Tanya had ever had the chance to fight him. Oyabun was under her father’s strict instructions to only fight Tanya after all of his fellows were defeated. The only reason such a battle-hungry beast would have accepted such terms would be if Father had done so.

Not to say that Oyabun was some crazed beast. No, he wouldn’t have let Tanya style the fur on his face into a match for her father’s beard and mustache if that was the case. Nor would he have so stringently groomed himself to maintain the style.

Tanya took to the skies, sending out a flying slash as she ascended. Oyabun took form two to block the attack, and transitioned to unleashing his own massive flying slash in an attempt to knock her out of the sky.

Tanya dodged it with ease. “Okay, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” Tanya murmured to herself as she continued to dodge flying slashes. She didn’t need to reinforce her legs with haki in order to kick off of air anymore, so while she couldn’t keep it up forever, she could still keep it up for longer than that ordinary, if oversized, weapon could handle the stresses Oyabun is putting on it. At least, if she was fresh that would be the case. After fighting through all of the others? Unclear.

Unfortunately, while Tanya could expect the other humandrills to lose patience with a failed strategy and slip up, Oyabun had better discipline, and had actually slowed down his attacks, forcing Tanya to exert herself more as he steadily aimed and deflected the occasional flying slash she tossed in his direction. “Saifu, gun.” She whispered, and her fifth and final pistol was quickly in her hand. Unfortunately, despite her attempts, Saifu just wasn’t smart enough to manipulate the objects inside of her in a useful way, so reloading was out of the question.

Six shots later and Tanya was cursing her father’s name. Did he teach Oyabun observation haki too!?

In the end, she had to land, firmly planting her aching legs on the ground as she was forced to block the brutally powerful flying slashes instead of dodging.

She should give up. If this keeps on its current course, she’ll end up taking an actually serious injury. Father wasn’t watching right now to save her… was he? She knew he could elude her notice if he tried, mostly by staying so far away that she could only use her eyes, and she didn’t have the time to search for him.

No! She’s so close! Never had she been so weak as to let something as small as a risk of death stop her from fighting as hard as she could. She avoided those situations when she could, she wasn’t a fool, but her objectives were never an acceptable loss!

In her mind’s eye, she looked at the massive Oyabun. She tries to picture Being X in his place, her usual go-to to motivate herself.

…She couldn’t do it. Oyabun was strong, powerful enough that Tanya could only barely cross the gap with her superior haki control. But he was no enemy. In a way, the massive ape was even a friend.

But he was standing between her and the next stage of her training. If she failed to defeat him now, she would have to fight and injure each and every humandrill again, only to find herself right here again. There was no outcome where Oyabun did not fall by her hand. Inevitable. So why not now?

Tanya felt that bubbling well of haki, that mysterious power that Father called Conquerors, swell in her chest as she resolved herself away from surrender. How does it go again?

Oyabun was taking deep breaths, clearly fatigued from the flurry of flying slashes and taking a break, locking his eyes with hers as he rested, ready to block any attack she could possibly use in either fighting style. He knew all of her moves, after all.

Which is why she should use her secret technique. She had intended to use it to surprise Father… but it’s not like he’s never seen it before. It would be better to use here.

Tanya shifted her stance, widening it and stretching her arm back, building tension as she abandoned the idea of defense. Supposedly, the inventor of the technique could unleash it so quickly that even powerful enemies were caught off guard by the sheer power of the move.

She had never actually succeeded. Oyabun, still resting, just watched her cautiously. She expected this, the humandrills trusted in their durability way too much to do the smart thing and stop her from doing something they didn’t understand, they lusted for knowledge far too much.

Too bad that this wasn’t something they could copy. Ever since she saw this move, the only attack she had ever seen her Father go straight to dodging, she wanted to know how it was done. Fortunately, Grandpa knew how.

Well, sort of. “Roger was always pretty poetic with that move. He never told me how he came up with it. I suspect he learned it from some ancient scroll, given how flowery the language he described it with was. Not like him at all.” Was what Grandpa said to explain it. “First, you focus your dream, your will to destroy, at the tip of your blade. Then, you trace the divide between heaven and earth. With that, you sunder the divine and cut the undivisable, destroying all that stands between you and eternity.”

Shanks was somewhat more helpful in translating the technique. You combined conqueror’s and armament haki, focusing on the tiniest cutting surface you could. Then, you trace the horizon precisely with your sword slash, and by using a flying slash at just the right time, you create an explosive force that shoots forward, attacking everything in a straight line.

Still, this was the first time she was able to feel her conqueror’s consciously, so it was the perfect time to try. Taking a deep breath and tensing her muscles, she begun a massive horizontal swing, shifting her stance to maximize the number of muscles utilized as she traced the horizon, invisible now but she’s spent years in the open sky, and even more on the open sea, the horizon is something she could picture perfectly every time she closed her eyes.

“Divine Departure!” She shouted as she completed the technique. It worked as advertised, creating a massive explosive force, far too blunt to be considered a flying slash, that not only blew Oyabun, who had braced with Pillar, clear off his feet, but sent him straight through two of the distinctive spiral hills of Gloom Island. Her Observation indicated that he was still alive, if severely injured.

However, her victory was not without cost. Gintama shattered in her hand, the mere Graded blade too fragile to handle the force of Gol D. Roger’s signature technique.

Well, that much was done. Time required? One hundred twenty nine weeks. “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds…” She whispered, before giggling to herself. She did it!