A Young Sailor's Swordsmanship 2

Just realized I never posted this here when someone paid up.

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Father's boat still needed several minutes to reach the dock, plenty of time to get down from the crane and walk there. Well, it's plenty of time when you account for the mildly superhuman levels of agility and strength that she's developed through frequent climbing, running, and eating plenty of meat. Meat was actually cheaper here than, say, leafy greens, although she made sure to eat vegetables too. One story drops were casual, and there were enough ropes and chains around that swinging was actually a practical method of moving short distances. There was even some traffic that she needed to avoid as she went, butchers and day laborers moving around to help haul the new sea king into the other half of the butcher yards, the beast getting cut into sections to better fit.

Father was dressed in an interesting manner. He wore no shirt, but had a black trench coat with dark pink sleeves that had floral designs in a lighter pink, the coat's interior matched the sleeves. The coat was open, showing off his thickly muscled torso. He had a cross on a necklace, although now that the man was within half a mile, she could make out a small seam: it was a knife. His white pants and black boots were not particularly interesting, purely functional. He was clean shaven with distinctive sideburns that were clearly shaped with attention to their aesthetics, and had a black hat with a plume decorating it.

In short, her father was a man that cared about his appearance and had an eye for fashion. She assumed he was assessing her equally, as his eyesight was likely as good if not better than hers. Unless he was older than she thinks, the man looked less than thirty.

She wore faded blue overalls and knee high sea king leather boots in her size, the legs tucked into the boots as was necessary in the butcher yards. Underneath was a simple brown shirt that had a drop of sea king blood drop on it on the way down, the red stain looking like she had gotten cut to those unused to the sights of Nishihoshi. She had her knife in her pocket, and she realized she was gripping the hilt tightly; it was a nervous habit. She had a thick winter jacket tied around her waist by the sleeves, the weather could drop into freezing temperatures with as little as two minutes notice, although she could usually feel it coming a bit further out than that.

Mihawk waited until his tiny coffin-shaped boat reached the dock to stand, grabbing a rope that was already tied in a lasso-like knot and tying it to the dock in a move so smooth and graceful that you could miss that he did it at all, the rope practically tying itself to the dock as he simply walked off his boat.

He walked straight up to her, having not dropped eye contact since the second he stood up. "Well, what do we have here?" He asked, his voice bored, although there was an odd undercurrent to it.

"I assume your presence here is a coincidence, then." Tanya replied drily. It made sense, the man's been here before, presumably he could have reason to visit again.

"I came here to stock up on wine." He admitted, "I'm killing time." He elaborated.

Well, that's… not as bad as it could be. Tanya was vaguely aware of the types of goods that flowed between the Grand Line and the West Blue, and among them was the product of a particularly famous West Blue winery. If he just wanted a crate of bottles for his wine cellar, coming here every few years to stock up at a reasonable price wasn't exactly a bad idea, and didn't necessarily mean he was some kind of drunkard. "Well, you owe child support." Tanya said, as if it was fact. It was.

Mihawk raised his eyebrow. "Where is your mother?" After a moment, he added: "And how old are you?"

"Today is my fifth birthday." Tanya said, did he not remember the last time he came here? "Mama's dead." She added, even as a lump formed in her throat. It wasn't even her first time as an orphan, why does it still hurt?

"Your guardian, then." Mihawk said.

"I don't have one." Tanya explained, blinking away the tears her traitorous eyes leaked out. "I live alone. I told the Marines to send for you twenty months ago."

Mihawk's uncaring expression slipped into confusion. "...what."

Tanya looked around. They were drawing quite a bit of attention… "Follow me." She said, turning and walking deeper into the island.

Mihawk followed, disregarding his boat.

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"You live here?" Was Mihawk's first question when he saw the sturdy but simple shack that was in the lot that used to be a comparatively nice two bedroom house, even if that house was also a one-woman brothel. The size difference between the lot and the structure inside it was stark, and honestly a bit of an eyesore now that all of the surrounding lots have been rebuilt.

"The Marines were pretty fast to erect these sturdy shelters after the attack." Tanya explained, fighting to keep her voice even at the mention of those incompetents who did not deliver her message. "The weather here's too chaotic to not have something to keep the heat in." Now that she thought about it, the insulation they put into these shacks was actually fairly impressive. She wondered what they used. "I get water from the communal well down the street, and the chaotic weather also means that it's never below freezing for longer than two hours." She gestured to the large pile of blankets that was atop her mattress. "This is enough for those times."

Mihawk opened his mouth to say something but she held her hand up. "Do you have winter clothes?" She asked. The air pressure just shifted…

"On Hitsugibune." He replied. Of course he named his coffin boat 'coffin boat'. Does he even understand Japanese? …Or Wanogo? She should have asked Izou about that when he showed up the second time.

Tanya unraveled the knot on her winter coat's sleeves and put it on. "You have ten minutes to get something warm on." She warned him seriously. Outside, she could hear a few old people complaining about their joints and warning everyone to bundle up. Just another day on Nishihoshi.

Mihawk's expression was still difficult to read, but he seemed… impressed at her familiarity with the local weather patterns. It was just normal for someone who spends their lives here… He walked to her bed and, after taking off the massive sword from his back and laying it against the wall, sat himself down and wrapped himself in the available blankets. "We'll talk while the freeze passes." He said, his voice softer than before. "What's your name?" He said to start.

"Dracule D. Tanya." She replied as she put her hood up. She pointed to his bounty poster on the wall. "Technically Bizness D. Tunyav, but…" Tanya went silent as she tried to figure out how to phrase 'I don't want my name to be a joke like Mother's was' without sounding disrespectful to the dead. "...I like it better this way." She eventually said without elaborating.

Mihawk raised both eyebrows. "D.?" He asked. "What's it stand for?"

Near as she could tell, it had a similar meaning to 'von', where it meant she was descended from a noble lineage or had earned it, but whatever culture that practiced such a thing has been long dead, now just a blind family tradition. But she couldn't exactly explain that without having the concept of 'von' already known to her audience. "Dunno." Tanya said instead. "Mama didn't know either. Family tradition, she said." All she knew about her grandfather was that he was named Bizness D. Selle, and that he was a Sea King hunter that got lost at sea. She also never met her grandmother Mai, who sailed off to become a reporter after Mama was old enough to make it on her own. Mama always made sure to point out her articles in the World Economic Journal when they popped up. She was a gossip columnist. "What's it like being a Warlord?" She asked in return.

"Boring, mostly." Mihawk replied, "There's rarely a challenge for me to enjoy." Ah. He was a battle maniac. That explains so much. "I spend most of my time sailing around, fighting challengers, finding the few swordsmen worth my time and dueling them…" He shrugged, waving his hand vaguely. "Sometimes the Government calls me for a meeting with the other Warlords, sometimes that's interesting, but it rarely is."

"Does it pay?" Tanya asked.

"Not directly." He answers immediately. "In addition to my bounty, " He looked at his old poster. "-being rescinded, I can redeem the bounties of others." So he was turned from a "Marine Hunter" to a Pirate Hunter. Poetic.

Mihawk was about to ask another question when the weather finally shifted fully, the temperature of the air plummeting from the balmy spring weather it was before to below freezing over about ten seconds. As usual, Tanya's sinuses complained at the rapid shift and she sneezed, fixing the imbalance that irritated her nose. Mihawk sneezed at exactly the same time.

Fortunately, putting on her coat ten minutes before the cold front arrived meant that her insulation was already warmed by her body heat. "How do you eat?" He asked, looking around the shack and seeing no kitchen.

"Fairly well." Tanya explained, "The restaurants give me discounts in consideration for my status," to be more precise, the restaurants have inflated prices to bilk the foreign sailors, and locals pay much lower rates, and run up tabs to conceal this fact from their other customers, "-and I can sing well enough and know enough songs to earn free meals, and tips sometimes." Wait, she's lost sight of her objective. "But now that you're here, I can make long term plans." Depending on how much support he was willing to give a random bastard of his.

Mihawk stared at her, his gaze searching. "You said you were five?" He asked. Ah, she's acting too mature. Kind of on purpose, but if he disbelieved her parentage…

"It's my birthday." She repeated, pretending to not know that she was being strange. It worked in her second life… "I know you probably don't have a gift for me." She added, missing the point on purpose. She stared into his eyes with her best innocent expression.

"...You're not staying here." He said after staring at her for a whole minute. She counted.

Tanya smiled widely. "So you're taking me with you?"

Mihawk did not immediately reply. "...if nothing else, I could take you to my parents. It would be safe there." Good enough!

"In that case…" Tanya said, "I have arrangements to make." Like finalizing the sale of the land, packing, settling all of her tabs… "After the freeze passes, we'll start by getting you your pay." Mihawk raised one of his eyebrows questionably. "For the Sea King you killed." She elaborated. "You saved them from having to fix the harbor from that Sea King attack and you deserve compensation for that."

"...You are five."

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The coffin boat was not designed for a passenger. She had initially wondered how the man handled storms in that tiny boat… but as it turns out, he just cut the clouds with his big black blade every time things started to get rough, and somehow that worked. That 'Best Swordsman in the World' title was not just for show, apparently. He could just… send out flying slashes at will. Powerful ones.

She spent most of the time tied to the mast, because she fell into the water twice within the first two hours of the trip, before they even reached the crossing station for the Red Line, purely because the waves kept throwing the boat around, but Mihawk's superhuman balance meant that he just sailed the ship with no issue, even when the boat was ninety degrees because of its position on a massive wave. The boat was light enough that the man just grabbed the mast and manually fixed the orientation mid-air if it wasn't right-side up for whatever reason. Large waves were dealt with by, you guessed it, him swinging his sword in the direction of the wave, which split even the largest waves in two.

When the boat gently arrived at the Red Port, the government-controlled passageway through the Red Line and also the way to the World Government's capital, Tanya was not ashamed to admit that she had not handled the rough conditions with dignity. "Land, beautiful land!" She declared, hugging the dock. She misses being able to fly.

After a chance to refresh themselves, they made their way across the massive continent. There apparently wasn't a tunnel through the Red Line at the port, like she had assumed. Or rather, there was, but it was underwater and required a special procedure to allow an ordinary ship to become a submersible. As the coffin boat was very small, it was instead carried on the special lifts that were used to ascend the cliffs, and they didn't even have the most luggage on the lift, which was called a "Bondola".

"What are my grandparents like?" Tanya asked as the bondola ascended. She was looking over the railing, watching the sea get further and further away.

Mihawk took a moment to think about his answer, and presumably his own childhood. "I didn't get to see my Father much growing up." He admitted, "He was the Vice Captain of a pirate crew, and he dropped by for a few months every year, and taught me swordsmanship." Tanya wondered how much the student had surpassed the master in this case. "My Mother raised me, of course, and retired from captaining her own pirate crew in order to do so when I was around your age. She opened a bar, which is where we're going."

Tanya nodded along with the story. "Are they expecting us?" She asked.

"I was going to visit on my way to my next duel with Shanks, so they're expecting me." He explained, "They're not easy to get a hold of via snail, so you'll be a surprise." For some reason, this world had something resembling a cell phone network. This network involved weird snails that could somehow communicate with each other with radio waves. It was very strange.

After a moment, Tanya was struck with a realization. This was the first time in this life that she got to breathe in air that didn't stink of saltwater. She took a deep breath. It's been so long… "Is the bar on the Red Line?" Tanya asked.

"No." Drat.

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The Sabaody Archipelago was yet another example of very strange geography. It was a mangrove forest rather than actual land, with root systems great enough to provide a foundation for structures and such. This included a mysterious sap that created bubbles that could float.

It also contained the bar that Mihawk's mother ran, Shakky's Rip-Off Bar. Shakuyaku looked very good for a fifty-one year old woman, Tanya would have guessed early thirties by her looks alone; which explained why she guessed mid-twenties for the thirty-year old Mihawk, and her appearance also killed any hope she still had for having a non-hourglass figure once puberty kicked in. That's going to suck. There was also a rather strong family resemblance between mother and son, although her eyes were more ordinary than Mihawks. "Oh, if it isn't my favorite young man on the Grand Line." Were the first words out of the woman's mouth when the pair of them entered the bar.

The bar had customers, pirates by the looks of them. "Hey, you said I was yer favorite." The one in the fancy hat said, slurring his words.

"You're my favorite customer, yes." Shakuyaku confirmed, "You're the one who's paying, after all. He's just the one that will stop anyone from skipping on their bill." She elaborated, still in that sweet tone of voice she had been using. She took a drag from her cigarette. Ugh, Grandma's a smoker, lovely. "Isn't that right, Hawky?"

The pirates all paid attention to Mihawk, and one by one seemed to recognize him. "I-it's Hawk-Eyes!" One of them shouted. "Run for it!"

After a brief but chaotic scuffle, the bar was cleared and their bill was paid (the prices were exorbitant, but the place was called the Rip-Off Bar…), with a generous tip for the bartender, before the bar was closed early for the day. Tanya only had to stab two people who tried to take her as a hostage. If they got medical attention, they could even manage to recover the use of their hands.

"So who's this little cutie?" Shakuyaku asked after the chaos was over, pinching Tanya's cheeks. If there was any doubt that this woman was a grandmother before, they are now gone. "Here, have a glass of milk."

"This is Tanya, my daughter." Mihawk explained, which caused Shakuyaku's eyes to gleam with interest. "I only found out about her two days ago, on my way here." The man had not had a proper night's sleep during all of that time, instead taking naps during the Bondola trips.

"Does this mean I'll hear wedding bells in the future?" Shakuyaku asked.

"Mama's dead." Tanya informed her in the blunt way that only children can get away with. "The Beast Pirates attacked and she died." This was surprisingly good milk, she wondered what animal it was; there was no guarantee that it was a cow in this world, and it didn't taste quite like any milk she's had before, maybe some kind of seal? Tanya licked away the lingering liquid on her upper lip.

"Well that's just a shame." Shakuyaku said, "Feel free to call me Grandma, by the way." She turned back to Mihawk. "Your Father's on a coating job, he'll be back in a few hours. You look tired, go into the back and take a nap. I can handle a little girl for a while." Tanya felt the sudden urge to prove her wrong. As usual, she suppressed the whim of childish irrationality after evaluating the idea for potential merit. Sabotaging her relations with the grandparents could end up with her right back where she started, if he even goes that far.

Mihawk didn't verbally respond, but he walked into the back rooms and Tanya heard him start removing his sword and coat once the door closed.

With custody properly transferred, Grandma's gentle smile widened. "Let's go shopping." She said simply in a conspiratorial tone.

…she's in danger.

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On one hand, Tanya did sorely need a new wardrobe. Most of her clothes barely fit, and several had to be adjusted as she outgrew them. Further, she wore clothes for dock working in Nishihoshi's conditions, with the sole exception being a single dress she had received as a gift. On the other hand… did everything have to be so girly?

That isn't to say that she only got dresses. They were just all embroidered with flowers. "I'm just going to outgrow these in half a year, why are you spending so much?" She eventually asked as she modeled a dress with a long skirt with a slit up the leg. It had flowers and snakes as a design. "I'd be fine with some sturdy clothes instead of all of this delicate fabric."

Grandma chuckled at Tanya's complaint. "That fabric is more durable than it looks, Tanya." she explained. "It's Kuja flax; very breathable, very tough." She took the skirt between her hands and pulled at the fabric. "Very stretchy." The segment she pulled at tripled in length before going back. "It's also in the traditional Kuja style, of course. It's what a Kuja princess should wear."

It did feel nice in the warm climate of Sabaody, that was true. "I'm not a Kuja princess, though." Tanya pointed out. "Also, who are the Kuja?"

"They're my people, of course. You may have heard legends of the Island of Women, where men are forbidden." Grandma explained. "Amazon Lily, the home of the Kuja. I used to be their Empress, before I came to settle down here."

Ah, that explains a bit. Dressing the granddaughter in traditional clothing is pretty normal. The skirt does seem fairly easy to move in… "What happened?" Tanya asked, more to continue the conversation than actual curiosity.

"The same thing that happens to all Kuja Empresses." Grandma said solemnly. "One day, it'll happen to you, too." That sounded ominous. "I contracted… Love Sickness." Oh. She's just being dramatic.

"Love sickness?" Tanya asked incredulously. When in doubt, repeat the last thing they said.

"The title of Empress and the title of Captain are one in the same, on Amazon Lily. The Kuja pirates are among the most fearsome on the seas." Grandma said, getting out a second dress, this one also in the Kuja style but in purple instead of red, and with minor differences in cut. "The previous Empress, Gloriosa, had abandoned the Kuja in an attempt to cure her own case of Love Sickness. It was a dark time for the Kuja."

Tanya started undressing so she could put on the new outfit. Having a family comes with strings, she knew this. It was still better than having to fend for oneself when one was not in a position to get gainful employment that wasn't glorified begging. "What happened?" Tanya asked.

"A grand tournament was held to replace the Empress, and I won." Grandma said matter-of-factly. "So after five years of captaining and ruling, a pirate ship full of men came to the shores of Amazon Lily. We attempted to repel them, of course." Grandma sighed, smiling as she reminisced. "But the Captain just took our attacks as an enthusiastic welcome, the maniac." She was smiling as she said it, which Tanya could understand. It reminded her of her battle maniacs, the ones she left behind. They probably thought quite poorly of her, after her screw up at Brest. "This was before the two of them had become big shots, of course." She said, apparently forgetting that Tanya didn't actually know who she was talking about. "The Vice Captain, my Rayleigh… it's a common story, he was a lot older than me, but I was just overtaken by the Love Sickness. I had to have him, or I'd die." Her resolve melted as she laughed at herself for the silly assertion. "Or so it felt like it at the time. Long story short, I sailed with them for a few years, came back to rule for a bit, and had to leave when the other Kuja realized your father was, in fact, a boy. He was four at the time. Came here and set up shop."

"At least it ended well." Tanya said, trying to keep her opinions on the matter out of her voice. Was this really a story one should be telling a five year old? "Is the Pirate Empress, Boa Hancock, a Kuja?" She asked. She knew of the current Seven Warlords of the Sea, of course. "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World" ascended to that post just last month, it was in all the papers.

"She took over from my successor about two years ago, or so I hear." Grandma said, nodding. "Hancock's really made something of herself since the last time I saw her." She paused, her smile vanishing for a moment. "But that's a story for when you're older." After a beat, she added: "Much older." Tanya was a little curious about why that story was so unsafe, but not enough to ask.

When Tanya had a full wardrobe of about twelve outfits, only four of which weren't some kind of dress (including one copy of her father's outfit plus a shirt) plus a travel chest to put them in, and other miscellaneous things that were important to have, they returned to the Bar, where her grandfather was seated with his son.

Her grandfather was a man dressed in simple clothes with a nice-looking sword at his waist, blonde but with many gray hairs and a goatee that was much darker, although still half-gray. "This must be Tanya." He said, smiling as he ran his fingers through the tuft of beard he had dangling on his chin. "You look mighty cute in your new dress, I must say."

Tanya was wearing a simple white dress with some subtle embroidery decorating it, similar, if fancier, to the one she wore at the orphanage in her second life and now owned three copies of, although the embroidery was different for each one. She wore a dagger on a sword belt, one that Grandma deemed 'fashionable'. The fact that the handle was molded to look like a snake made the Kuja origins of the dagger clear, but while it was a bit big for her to use her trench knife skills with it, and it was a little short for her to use it two-handed effectively for her other weapon skills to translate, she could still coat it with a mage blade, or whatever she was doing, so she could probably improvise with it just fine. "Thank you." She said, as was expected of her, before yawning. It was getting late…

"Well, this conversation can wait for tomorrow." Rayleigh declared, "Shakky, can you put her to bed?"

Tanya tried to stay up and listen in to the conversation the adults had, which surely had to do with her custody, but they filled the time with smalltalk until she had dozed off.

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In the end, it was decided that Mihawk would take responsibility, officially claiming her as his daughter, and take her along with him on his travels. He bought a boat that, while of a similar size (only half again as large) and aesthetic as his coffin boat, was much more capable of housing two people, and had amenities that his old one just didn't have. Like actual beds. They were coffins, and they had restraints to prevent rough waters from causing significant injury to the occupants, but it was quite comfortable.

They spent a week at Sabaody as the new boat was built, which was plenty of time for the men to fit in some swordsmanship lessons between visiting the amusement park, the gambling halls, and a concert.

"Just keep swinging until we tell you to stop, exactly like we showed you." Grandpa said, which wasn't a huge surprise. She learned some kendo in her first life, she knew the score. Even if the shinai she was using was heavier, and the exact swings were subtly different. The point was to ingrain the motion, and to build the appropriate muscles. Thoroughly unpleasant, but she had resigned herself to learning how to use a sword well before Father had actually shown up, and expected at least this much as part of it.

The two men were lounging on beach chairs on Father's old boat as Tanya practiced at the shore, wearing vacation shirts like American tourists and shorts with sandals as they fished. Yoru was placed in the boat's sword stand, along with Grandpa's sword, which was a straight blade that seemed a little large for the man's frame, but it was clearly well used and cared for, and he was supposedly a "big shot" pirate back in the day. She wondered if he still had an active bounty… His sword was still smaller than Yoru, so oversized swords are just likely how they learned. It did explain why her shinai was so damned heavy, it must be five whole kilograms at least.

But… she was definitely stronger in this life than she was in the second. The meat heavy diet certainly helps, but she couldn't have swung this weighted hunk of wood nearly this much without using magic, before. Her first life she probably could, when she was sixteen and still on the kendo team, but it would have been close, and assumed that the weight of the training tool was not scaled up.

It was a little strange, training to fight on the ground. She thought that she was past making mistakes from no longer being able to fly, but she kept finding herself adjusting her feet to direct her flight formula rather than to properly adjust her balance, although she caught herself most of the time before she disrupted that balance beyond some shameful weaknesses in her stance.

Weaknesses that the two men had noticed, although given that she could count Grandpa's gray hairs from her position it was not surprising that Father could spot her mistakes from a similar distance. "Your footwork is wrong." He said bluntly. He took a stance next to her. "Pay close attention."

His movements seemed rather strange at first, like he was teaching her wrong… but when she copied him, letting her legs move as he did, she realized he was compensating for the differences in balance between them. How did he do that?

After a few iterations and adjustments, tapping her legs with a stick as she moved them incorrectly, he let her do it with the sword movements as well, and after two more corrections in form, bade her to continue before going back to the boat to resume fishing. Tanya kept swinging the shinai, focusing on the proper movements instead of remembering her old battlefields.

After Tanya had long stopped counting, and her arms and legs felt like jelly, she was invited onto the boat, and promptly collapsed. Grandpa burst out laughing at her pained whine, and Father got back up, leapt onto the beach, picked her up, and settled back onto the boat, holding his fishing pole with one hand while the other kept her steady on his lap, lightly pressed into his chest. Wait… she remembers this. This is a hug.

Father hugged her to his chest as the boat rocked steadily to the waves. Tanya settled in, deciding to rest her eyes along with the rest of her.

This was her life now. …It wasn't bad.