[LUQ]

Unlikely Naval Romance

[LUQ]

Part 2

[LUQ]

Upon arriving at G-5's training grounds, Monet stood across from the younger Lieutenant Commander with a relaxed smile on her face which Luffy returned with a wide grin. While part of her mind debated how strong the youth really was given his age, Monet ultimately reasoned that she had nothing to fear since it was, after all, a spar, not a battle to the death. Nonetheless, she decided that it wouldn't hurt to share a few things before they fought. "Lieutenant Commander?" She called out to him.

"Yeah?" The Officer replied nonchalant with his still present grin.

"Would you care to tell me what your strengths are as I share mine? I'd appreciate it if I knew what I was up against."

Luffy chuckled heartily before saying. "That kind of takes the fun out of it, don't you think?" He then ultimately shrugged. "Well, okay, if you really want to know. I'm a Rubber Human from eating the Gum-Gum Fruit, I know all moves of the Six Powers, and I also have been trained in all three forms of Haki, but I don't need to use that last one against you."

Slightly gaping that the youth in front of her was indeed that strong, Monet forced herself to respond back. "I happen to be a Snow Human from eating the Snow-Snow Fruit, but I can't say I have any martial arts training." She admitted that last part with a genuine blush of embarrassment on her face she tried to cover up with her arm. With the good amount of undercover assignments she had undertaken in over ten years, she never had time to gauge her own Haki potential, or at the very least, pick up a fighting style of her own as Lao G did with his Geo-Fist techniques. If there was one thing that was well-regarded about a person in the New World, is that they had more than a Devil Fruit to keep themselves alive through thick and thin.

Luckily, Luffy didn't appear to be disappointed, but was instead curious. "Uh, where are you from again?"

Pausing once more to think over her answer and knowing that mentioning either Dressrosa, or even her birthplace in the North Blue Sea would be tactically poor choices, Monet eventually replied with the name of what sounded like to her the proper place for a relatively inexperienced New World enlistee to originate from. "Applenine Island."

Thinking over her response, Luffy declared with an interested smile. "Oh, yeah! The snowy place with the giant apples!"

"That's right." Monet replied with a nod.

"Well, how about this, Monet? You show me what you're made of, and I'll let you in on how the Six Powers work. I can always showoff my Devil Fruit power another time."

Licking her lips in anticipation, Monet held both her fists up and readied herself for a spar. "Deal."

Chuckling, Luffy then exclaimed. "Shave!" Which was when he vanished before he then reappeared with an attempted punch to Monet's torso that she was quick to dodge by moving backward.

Smirking, Monet was more than happy to return fire, so to speak. "Snow Rabbit!" With a swing of her right arm, she released numerous rabbit-faced, solid snowballs at Luffy with the intent to weaken him in the cold.

"Paper Art!" Luffy, however, avoided the attack with extraordinary flexibility. "Moonwalk!" Jumping off the air itself, Luffy then brought his leg to let out a compressed air blade. "Tempest Kick!"

Her eyes widened, Monet only had ample enough time to make a move for defense. "Snow Hut!" Quickly forming a barrier of snow around herself, she then dropped to her knees as a precaution, but relaxed when the Tempest Kick failed to break it.

"Hey, no fair!" Luffy whined to the point that Monet could both imagine him pouting and barely restrain a giggle, which soon elapsed when she heard him run on the ground fast enough to attack at a very high speed. "Finger Pistol!" Fortunately for Monet, though, the technique didn't break through either.

"On the bright side, Luffy, sir, I didn't go for the ten layered version." Monet purposefully teased.

Grunting in amusement, Luffy replied. "Fair enough, but that doesn't change that I didn't want to do what I'm about to do now." Hearing him pace back away, Monet stood straight back up and waited to hear what he was about to do.

[LUQ]

Outside the snow hut, Luffy stopped pacing and turned back to it before running back to do a body slam with his muscles hardened as iron. "Iron Body!" With an earsplitting crash, he broke straight through the snow hut and then used Moonwalk to slow his acceleration. Turning back to what remained of Monet's barrier, however, he soon began to panic. "Holy crap! She disappeared! Don't tell me she disintegrated!"

Approaching what was left, Luffy almost began to call out her name before the snow that remained soon began to envelop him with Monet reappearing as a large snow monster with solidified fangs. "Perpetual Snow!"

As she attempted to sick the fangs into Luffy, the latter was, however, able to get through the severe cold Monet was unleashing to place both of his fists to launch a devastating shock wave right at the ground beneath her. "Six King Gun!"

With the force of the blast catching Monet off balance, both she and Luffy collapsed on the ground exhausted.

"I thought you said you were using the Six Powers only." Monet commented through her panting.

Luffy had to bring himself to respond. "The Six King Gun is supposed to be achieved after a guy gets full mastery over the other techniques. Don't ask me why it's not called the "Seven Powers", though."

Monet ultimately shrugged as best as she could. "Makes sense to me." She then suggested. "Rest for now, demonstrate more moves later?"

Luffy chuckled. "Sure." He then thought about it before saying. "If you don't mind me asking, Monet, what's your dream?"

"My what?" Monet replied uncertainly.

"I mean, what do you aspire for? I plan on becoming the next Commander in Chief of the World Government to help bring good changes to it. What about you?"

Monet was silent for a long while before finally sighing. "I don't know. When I was more free-spirited, I did think about what it would be like to fly in the sky, but that feels like a lifetime ago for me. Now, I just want to make sure my litter sister can live a happy life."

Luffy smiled to himself. "Well, a dream for others is better than no dream at all, I guess, right?"

"Uh, yeah." Monet replied with some hesitation, which Luffy guessed might've been because she didn't expect to talk about her feelings and family at first.

[LUQ]

After a good amount of time honing Monet's aptitude for the Six Powers, she and Luffy soon went back to Vergo's office to discuss the finer details for both the former's formal enlistment and the latter's initial inspection of G-5. Upon being satisfied with his inspection, Luffy recommended for Monet to be granted the Navy rank of lieutenant and be placed under his command. Although Vergo himself was thorough in his asking of Luffy's certainty about Monet's posting, he eventually relented and allowed bid them both a safe voyage to Marineford. Once they were gone, however, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out an active Transponder Snail that quickly sighed in exasperation in mimicry of the caller.

"Well, old friend, you sure picked a bad time for going senile on us." The caller told Vergo with a man's voice no older than Vergo himself.

Vergo gulped audibly before responding in obeisance. "I know, my Captain and King. I take full responsibility."

The snail scoffed. "Please, it's not like Monet will actually tell that soft-headed brat anything relevant. For now, though, we'll probably just going to let you be our spokesman to Caesar, maybe even offer him membership into the Family. I don't trust that snot-nosed egotist, but his brains will give me the money and power I crave most."

Vergo nodded at last. "Understood, but will become of Monet, Doffy?"

The snail then showed a wide evil grin. "If nothing else, she can be my inside woman at Marine Headquarters. And even if she does do something stupid, I'll still get my money's worth from training and giving Devil Fruits to both her and her precious sister."

[LUQ]

To Be Continued

[LUQ]

Sorry it took a while to get back to this. Had a lot of other things on my mind, but after some recent thinking, I decided to update this to ensure everyone that I can update my work. However, said recent thoughts got me to raise two points about Luffy's Universal Queens: should I focus on just one girl per "story" and/or maybe mix it up in terms of continuation depending on what I have on my mind, or just follow through what I suggested last time? I'd appreciate some constructive opinions.

Looking back, however, I did forget to list some female characters that I think can be doable by either a Marine or Pirate Luffy such as Viola and Alvida among others and have also considered that there will be more ladies in the future. Nonetheless, while I am rethinking both my "focus per story" for Luffy's Universal Queens and my ideas for a Revolutionary Luffy story, I do want to keep some "stories" different from each one, especially if I do one love interest per "story", and I still can't say that I see a lot of common pairings between a Marine, Pirate, and Revolutionary Luffy, so I think I will keep this at Marine and Pirate levels, unless someone gives me some good ideas, of course. I was also inspired by FFN's Kowaba's Fairy Tail series of prompts called Family is Everything into making my own version of it with Luffy and his conceptual offspring per love interest as the focus, but while I do have some ideas, I don't know how I can make do with that, especially since One Piece seems to have several hundred more chapters to go before a good conclusion. Wouldn't mind some advice on that before I get going on that prospect.

Speaking of prospects, I've also restarted my Pat-reon thing in cohesion with my Ko-fi account for the sake of both short-term and long-term investments. I know how it sounds, but I need a good source of income and if it works for the YouTuber Studio Yuraki, I don't see how it can't work for me. Just remember that the former is more long-term while the latter can be more of a short-term option. Please consider it at least.

If anybody was disappointed by the spar or the length of this chapter, please understand that in the former, Luffy was just gauging Monet to see if she could be at a higher rank than most recruits, and I'm actually surprised by the latter as the rest of you. All the same, thanks for reading.