Ch. 14- The Trip to the Woods
"What the hell's the matter with you two?!" Shanks shouted at Kurt and Elie, "She was bleeding and you still held her down and hit her."
"She asked for it." Elie answered.
"And she deserved it." Kurt added.
"Listen, you two: I don't want you to do any fighting without me telling you, especially when your opponent is bleeding. You got that?" Shanks ordered.
Elie and Kurt grunted, but didn't give an actual answer.
"I said, 'you got that?'"
"Fine. Whatever." Both of them answered.
"Good." Shanks turned his attention to all of the students that were in the room, "Now I want all six of you to find your desks and sit in them."
At almost the same time, all of the students rolled their eyes and sat in their own desks. All of the occupied desks were split apart from everyone else, much to the student's disapproval and though they were new, the seats of the desks' chairs were very hard, harder than the ones on the old desks. Most of the students were fidgeting in their seats, trying to get comfortable.
"These desks suck." Kyler shouted, "I don't give a damn if they are new."
"Well, you're going to have to deal with them for the time being." Shanks said to him.
Then the bell rang. Manson's voice came through the intercom, asking the class to stand and say "The Pledge of Allegiance." None of the class members stood up. After the pledge, an announcement came over the intercom:
Welcome back students. Today is Friday, March 9th and the weather outside is damp, but warm. I'm sure you realize all the changes made to the classrooms and we apologize for some of the clubs that were not able to go on in the three days we had no power. All clubs will continue on as normal in their usual places. All tryouts for the end of the year play The Saviour in Blue will be held after school in the cafeteria. Have a nice day.
The announcement ended and it was time for the day to officially begin.
"Okay, children. The announcements are over, so now it's time for us to continue from yesterday's lessons. Since the weather is nicer, we will be taking our fighting lessons outside and we will finally get around to Victoria's control over the Kaze Kaze no Mi. Today's lesson will be subtraction since we have not gotten around to it yet." Shanks announced. He was answered with a bunch of groans from the occupied desks. "Shut up. Now, any questions?"
Victoria raised her hand, "Mr. Shanks, before we do anything else, could we please change desks?"
"Why? What's wrong with where you're sitting?" Shanks asked.
"Well, I just would feel more comfortable sitting next to somebody else." Victoria explained.
Shanks looked at the desks and nodded. "Okay. Everybody stand up and take some pencils and papers with you." All of them obeyed him. "Good. Victoria, your new spot is in the far left desk in the second row. Elie, you will sit next to her. Kyler, you're sitting in the front row, second desk to the right. Maura, you will sit in the far back row, second desk to the right. Kurt, you will sit in front of her. Johnny, you will sit to the left of Kurt. When Larry and Lynn come back, I will pick spots for them."
The students grumbled due to the fact that they were not satisfied with their news spots, but after realizing that it seemed better than their original spots, they went to their new spots and sat down.
"Hey, I can't see! Johnny and Kurt are taller than me!" Maura shouted from her new desk.
"Tough shit. You wanted a new desk, so I got you one." Shanks simply told her. He turned to the others in the desks, "Anybody else have a problem with where they're sitting?"
Victoria, Kyler, Elie, Kurt, and Johnny raised their hands.
"Tough shit. I moved you to new spots, so that's where you're stuck sitting." Shanks told them. At the same time, they groaned.
Shanks ignored them and turned back to the blackboard. "Now, subtraction is a little more difficult than addition. Rather than adding onto numbers, you take away from them. If you take the number 2 and subtract, or take away, 2, you do not end up with 4 like you would in addition. You would end up with zero because you would take away all the numbers. If you take a number and subtract zero, the number would stay the same since you have not taken away anything. I hope you're all taking notes on this because there is going to be a test."
About four minutes into the lesson, the door to the class opened and in walked Larry and Lynn. Larry looked about the same as he did when he left but with a tired look on his face. The blood was washed from Lynn's hands and face. A bandage was covering her nose and a cut was formed on Lynn's lip. She was silently crying.
"Welcome back." Shanks told them. He turned his attention to Larry and asked, "So, how bad was it?"
"She screamed the entire way down to the nurse's office, but all she got was a bloody nose and few cuts on her lip when she bit down on it but nothing serious." Larry explained.
Shanks nodded, "Okay. Well, we changed seats, so Larry, I want you sitting to the right of Kurt…" Larry sat down in the desk.
"You son-of-a…I can't see a damn thing on the board now!" Maura shouted from her spot.
Shanks ignored her and looked around the room for a spot for Lynn. Hmmm…I don't want to put her anywhere near Maura or Elie. She won't be any better sitting by Kyler, so…yes, maybe that could work. "Lynn, I want you to sit in the front row, farthest desk to the left…or the desk with your name on it. You're the only one in the class that isn't changing spots."
Lynn, though she was still crying, walked to her seat and sat down. Shanks continued his lesson.
"Now, there will be some numbers that are too big to subtract. Those are called Negative Numbers. If you take 5 and minus 8, you will get a negative 3. Normally, real life doesn't worry about negatives unless you're using it in science, but if you're trying to live like a normal, average person, then negatives shouldn't bother you. All you will need to know is that if the second number is bigger than the first and it is subtracted, then it will most definitely be negative. Any questions?" Nobody said anything. "Good. I guess you'll be ready for the test tomorrow then." Shanks looked outside of the window. There was a small wooded area outside of the school. Perhaps it would be a good way for the class to practice their fighting without being noticed by anybody else in the school. "What's the wooded area used for anyway?" Shanks asked.
"It's used for the students who are taking Backpacking and Survival. They go out there so they can learn how to survive in the wilderness with nothing but a backpack. They also build campfires, learn what wood and plants are used for burning, and how to signal for help if they need it." Victoria explained, "But the class is usually taken around 11:00 or somewhere in the afternoon, so the woods should be free."
"How do you know that?" Shanks asked out of curiosity.
"My sister, Anna, takes Backpacking and Survival around 11:00. My brother, Keith, takes it around 1:15pm." Victoria explained.
"Okay. Well, then it seems like the woods is free and the weather is better, so we're all going out there to do some fighting with things harder than a desk. Let's get going." Nobody moved. "Well, I guess we could all stay here and I can sing you guys more songs that I sing with my partners." That got everyone to stand up and walk out the door. "Oh, come on! My singing's not that bad!" Shanks shouted after them as he walked down the stairs.
"That may be true," Johnny answered, "But the thing we don't want to hear is any more of those gay songs."
"Not all of the songs we know are gay and the ones that are gay, we don't sing." Shanks told him, "In fact, most of them are mostly about piracy and drinking."
"So, you're pretending to be a pirate in order to hide your homosexuality?" Johnny asked.
"I told you already: I'm not gay." Shanks said as the class walked out the door and to the wooded area.
"Right."
The conversation between Shanks and his students continued on like that until they were finally in the wooded area, away from any other person in the school. Almost immediately, most of the students went running off in different directions. Kyler and Johnny picked up average sized branches and pretended to sword fight with them. Maura climbed onto a rock and began leaping gracefully onto the other rocks. Victoria took a stick and began to draw a little on the earth. Larry walked around for about a minute before Maura jumped on him from behind and tackled him to the ground, laughing the entire time. Kurt stood in front of a large tree without saying or doing anything. Lynn looked into a discarded metallic plate, crying about the way her face looked. Elie was nowhere to be seen.
The first thing Shanks had to do was quiet everyone down and since Lynn was closer, she was the first person to calm down. "Come on, Lynn. It doesn't look that bad. I'm sure you can take the bandages off soon and you can put make-up on your lips to hide the cuts. Nobody's ever going to notice." he said in his nicest voice. It didn't help any. She was still crying and staring deeply into the plate.
"You're both acting like children." Victoria said from behind Shanks.
Shanks turned around and saw Victoria looking at Larry and Maura. Larry was now onto his feet with Maura on the upper part of his back. He was moving around wildly while the girl held on with her feet dangling in the air. Larry smirked at Victoria and before anybody could say anything, he ran up behind her, grabbed her by the shirt, and lifted her up over his head with his left hand clutching her shirt and his right hand rested on her tailbone for balance. Victoria was screaming and moving around with Larry, but also laughing along with Maura.
From about three feet away from Larry, Kyler and Johnny were continuing their little sword/stick fight. Both boys were laughing as they swung their "swords" at each other and either hit the other "sword" or hit the air. Finally, Johnny's "sword" hit Kyler in the rib, causing the boy to fall to the ground.
"And I win." Johnny told Kyler.
Kyler smirked, "The hell you do!" Before Johnny could say anything, Kyler hopped onto his feet and tackled Johnny to the ground like Maura had done to Larry. However, unlike Maura and Larry, the boys didn't laugh it off. They actually started hitting each other.
"Okay, guys. That's enough!" Shanks shouted at them. They didn't stop. "I mean it! That's enough!" Still nobody listened to him.
Kyler and Johnny started moving as they hit each other and they got dangerously close to Larry, Victoria, and Maura and if the two boys kept moving, they would knock into Larry, which would cause him to lose his grip on Victoria and drop her to the ground and he could fall backwards and crush Maura, injuring both girls in the process.
Shanks placed his fingers into his mouth and made the same loud, sharp whistle he used when he went to rescue Elie and Maura from the storm. Almost immediately, the five stopped what they were doing. "Larry, put her down." Shanks ordered Larry.
"Which one?" Larry asked, indicating at both Victoria and Maura.
"Both of them. I don't want to have to deal with their parents if they get hurt. It's bad enough that I'm stuck dealing with them already."
"Fine." Larry said. "Sorry girls, but fun time's over." He carefully placed Victoria on the ground while Maura released her grip from Larry and hopped onto her feet.
"And as for you two…" Shanks turned his attention at Kyler and Johnny, "If you want to do sword fighting rather than fist fighting, then I'll teach you that stuff before you go around acting like jackasses and injuring each other."
"Yeah yeah." Both boys said gloomily.
Shanks looked around the area. Someone was still missing. "Okay, where's Elie?"
Without saying anything, Kurt pointed up at the tree branches above him. At first Shanks couldn't see anything, but when he walked next to Kurt and looked up, he saw Elie, sitting calmly on the tree branches above. "Elie! Get down from there!" Shanks shouted.
Elie shrugged and hopped off the branch. She fell about three feet before landing on Shanks' shoulders, causing him to fall the rest of the five feet to the ground.
"That wasn't what I meant." Shanks told Elie after she got off of him.
"You should have told me to climb back down." Elie simply told him.
Shanks chose to ignore her comment as he got back onto his feet. "Okay, everyone. Today we will be doing some more fighting. We will start with Victoria." Shanks announced to the others. Finally, he turned his attention to Victoria only. "You have the power to control the wind and you can use that to your own advantage. You can make the wind do anything you want it to do. You can make gusts of wind that do the same damage as swords. You can make the wind carry light items to use as a distraction on your opponent. You can even make a wind barrier if you want to. All you need to do is practice and can get it done and I'll be here to help you every step of the way."
"Mr. Shanks, if it doesn't bother you, I would rather not use my wind powers as a weapon, but I am up to using the powers for a barrier." Victoria explained timidly.
"Okay. Today's lesson is the barrier move. Just for a head's up: I don't have any powers, but I have been around those that do have powers and I think I can help you with all I know." Shanks told Victoria, "Now, I want you to do what I told everyone else in the class to do a few days ago before they attacked the desks. Close your eyes and forget about everything. Pretend that nobody is there but you."
Victoria took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her eyebrows twitched a little as she attempted to forget all of her troubles.
"Now, think of what you want to do with your powers. You want to make a barrier, so think of a wall to protect you." Shanks told her. "Can you visualize it?"
Victoria's eyebrows twitched more as she attempted to visualize a wall. She could visualize something, but wasn't sure if it was a wall. "I think I can."
"Don't think. You have to know." Shanks told her.
"I can see it now." Victoria answered as soon as she was able to visualize a wall of wind.
"Good. Now, open your eyes and keep thinking about the wall. Your barrier should be up soon." Shanks told her.
Victoria opened her eyes and kept her concentration on making her wall of wind. She had almost got the move down when her concentration was broken when she started laughing.
"Victoria! What the hell was that?!" Shanks shouted at the laughing girl.
"It's not my fault, Mr. Shanks. Kyler's making faces at me." Victoria laughed, pointing at Kyler.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Victoria." Kyler said in a fake-innocent voice.
"Kyler, knock it off!" Shanks shouted at Kyler. "Okay, Victoria. Let's try it again."
"I…can't." Victoria was still laughing.
"Oh, for the love of…well, there is another way to get your barrier up." Shanks grumbled. He walked away from Victoria and picked up an average sized rock off the ground. Then, without any warnings, he threw it at the girl at a rather fast speed.
Victoria let out a little scream and closed her eyes. She felt a gust of wind coming around her body and heard a dull thump of the rock hitting something that was surrounding her. Slowly, she opened her eyes and saw Kyler, Johnny, and Larry, and Maura staring at her with wide eyes and mouths. She could not see what was surrounding her, but could still feel the gusts. Kurt picked up another rock and threw it at Victoria. That's when she saw what was surrounding her. She made her barrier even if she couldn't see it and it was made when she was afraid.
Victoria blinked and took a deep breath. Her body and mind started to calm down and her body began to calm down. The wind stopped and her barrier disappeared. "I did it." she said calmly and with a smile on her face.
Shanks couldn't help but to smile back at her. "You did good. Next time I'll teach you how to fight with the wind. Believe it or not, you'll have to fight sometimes." Shanks' smile went away and he turned towards Kyler and Johnny. "Now, as for you two. You want to sword fight? We'll sword fight then." Shanks picked up a nearby stick and held it in front of him like a sword, "Come at me with everything you got!"
Kyler and Johnny grabbed the sticks they were originally fighting with and, at the same time, ran at their teacher with the sticks swinging. Both were blocked by Shanks' "sword" and were even knocked back a few feet. They tried running back at him again, Kyler from the front of Shanks and Johnny from behind. Again, they were both blocked and knocked back. After their fourth attempt, both boys felt a stick hit them on the head rather. Johnny and Kyler let out cries of surprise and let go of their sticks. They seemed to have done worse with their little "sword fighting" than they did when they were practicing with the sticks.
"You guys suck. You should stick to soccer and repairing things or at least fist fighting if you have to fight." was all Shanks told them. He turned to everyone else and said, "Okay. For the other fighters, get ready to fight something harder than desks."
"What? Rocks?" Elie asked.
"Not that hard. Looks like we got some trees. We're going to take care of the fallen ones. Listen to this." Shanks walked over to a fallen tree and knocked on it three times. A dull sound came from the knocks. "It's not hollow, so it's going to be a little harder to attack. Unfortunately, I don't think you're ready to attack it from down the middle, so I want you to take the branches. They aren't as thick as the actual tree, but they are still long and thick. I don't want you using your hands except if you punch the branches. You can take the body of the tree if you want, but I don't recommend it unless it's Kurt since he has the biggest muscles. Maura, I want you to stand on the tree and dance across it. It will ensure your balance and when some of your other classmates will swing at you so you can dodge them. Just remember, take the advantage of fighting back even if you don't go much damage."
Like with the desk fighting a few days earlier, nobody seemed to argue or be hesitant. Kyler, Johnny, Larry, and Elie ran to the thickest branches they could find while Kurt attempted to break the tree from the middle. Maura climbed on top of the tree and began to walk down, half dancing and half walking. A few times the other fighters stopped what they were doing and took a swing at her with their fists or legs and she was able to dodge them. Whenever she could, she aimed a kick at those that swung at her. She mostly missed, but she took the opportunity at least.
The fighters stopped after fifteen minutes. Kyler, Johnny, Larry, and Elie had all broken their branches with their fists and legs. Kurt had not broken through the middle although he did manage to crack some of it. When the first four had broken what they were ordered to, they ran off into different parts of the wooded area. Kyler and Johnny returned to the left of the fallen tree, picked up two sticks, and restarted their little "swordfight". Elie returned to another nearby tree and scurried up like a monkey. Maura hopped back on Larry's back and placed her chin over his left shoulder and grinned. Only Kurt stayed where he was.
Shanks turned his head towards Victoria and saw her with a stick in her hand, drawing in the dirt. She was drawing Larry and the grinning Maura on his back. It didn't look as good as her drawings normally would if they had been on paper with a pencil or pen, but it was still pretty good for being drawn into the dirt and surrounded by twigs and rocks.
Shanks let out a groan. He was back at the beginning again. Nobody wanted to listen. In fact, it seemed like all they wanted to do was play games. That or cry, which is what Lynn was still doing. He tried ordering Elie to climb back down the tree, but she refused. He would have climbed up after her, but the problem was that the all the strong branches of the tree were closer to the top, where Elie was seated and it wasn't easy to climb with only one arm. Plus, his weight would likely break the branches.
After twenty minutes of unsuccessfully trying to quiet down the rest of the class, Shanks chose to give up. He seemed to be doing better in the classroom than he was in the wooded area even though he finally got around to helping Victoria with some of her powers. "Okay, guys. Let's go back inside!" he called to the rest of his students. "We got work to take care of."
Kyler and Johnny looked at each other, shrugged, and tossed their sticks to the ground. Victoria stood up from her crouched position and dropped her stick. Maura climbed off of Larry's back. Elie leapt out of the tree and into her cousin's arms. All of the students followed Shanks back into the classroom.
Once the rest of the students and Shanks entered the class, they found that somebody was already in there. It was the boy in black that talked about sinning and wrote the confusing message on the blackboard last week. The boy smiled at everyone and said calmly, "Welcome back, children of God."
"Oh great. Father Alexander is back." Maura groaned.
"You guys know who he is?" Shanks asked the class.
"His name is Ian Alexander, but everyone in the school calls him 'Father Alexander'. He's a senior at the school and he wants to be a priest when he graduates. To show that he does, he often leaves his classes shouting praises at students and trying to convert them to Catholicism." Johnny explained.
"Look, we don't give a damn about God or religion, so get the hell out of here!" Kyler shouted.
"That is the devil speaking out of your body. Come, follow me into God's great light so you can be saved from eternal damnation." The boy, Ian, said loudly and a little too nicely.
"You have five seconds to get the hell out of here before we kick your ass out of here." Maura told him.
Ian looked a little uncomfortable, but rather than leave, he took a cross out from under his black shirt and held it in front of himself in self defense. It wasn't until a punch from Elie hit him in the cheek that he started running out of the room. He was lucky that he ran when he did. Johnny, Kyler, Maura, and Kurt were about to give him a punch, too and there would have been quite some damage done if they would have gotten to do what they planned.
Shanks wasn't upset with what Elie had done because honestly, he would have done the same thing, too. He came across peacemakers and religious people and though they were harmless, they were very very annoying, so annoying that a couple of times he beat the crap out of them himself. This "Father Alexander" was no different than the ones that he came across back at the sea.
The rest of the day went on like what happened back in the wooded area. None of his students were listening to him. Johnny was taking out a weird machine, which looked like some sort of automatic machine gun, and explaining to an interested Victoria what it did and how it worked. Kyler was seated in his seat with Maura on his lap. He was talking to her in hushed whispers while she was smoking a cigarette that Shanks didn't even know she had. Elie climbing anything like she had been climbing trees back in the woods. Instead she was sitting next to Kurt, in Johnny's empty seat, writing something and shaking her head when she didn't like what Kurt had put on the paper in front of him. Larry was sitting alone in his desk, looking over different pamphlets. Lynn was still crying as she sat in her desk.
Shanks went on with his lesson until the lunch bell rang and left with the rest of his students to the cafeteria. Nothing special went on during lunch. No fights started and neither did any students act up. When lunch was over, Lynn was not present. He was told that she hadn't even entered the cafeteria. Apparently she was so embarrassed about her injuries that she didn't want any of her friends or the other popular kids to see what she looked like so she just went home.
Even though Lynn was gone and the noise only slightly decreased due to no more crying, but not enough to keep the room quiet. Noises were coming from Johnny's machine with laughing from Victoria. Kyler was still talking with Maura. Every time Shanks took a cigarette away from Maura, she suddenly had another one the second he turned his back. Where the hell were they coming from?
It was only until the final bell ran before Shanks got some relief. All of his students left the room in a rush. After ten minutes of pure silence, it was time for him to leave. He locked the door and headed down the stairs. As soon as he hit the bottom of the stairs, he heard a voice call, "Thank you all for coming to the auditions. I didn't think we'd have so many people coming. We will start off with the main characters. We will hear from the auditions for the understudy of Deveon, who will be played by Kyler Hooker."
Shanks headed towards the voice and saw Johnny, Maura, Victoria, and Kyler sitting at one side of the table, looking at the stage in the cafeteria with a paper and pen in front of them. A large group of people were in the cafeteria and about twenty boys were crowded on the stage.
Victoria turned her head towards Shanks and waved him over. "Mr. Shanks, join us." she called. Shanks took up the offer and took the empty seat next to Victoria.
The boys on the stage ranged in different sizes, hair and skin color, and voices. They switched around a book for them to share and read off Deveon's lines. Some of them were trying to be funny and mess with their voices. One boy thought it would be funny to talk like someone Victoria called "John Travolta" but only he thought it was funny. After ten minutes of going through all the boys, the understudy for Deveon was a tall guy with dark skin.
The other people trying out for the back-ups for Johnny, Larry, Lynn, and Kurt's parts were about the same as the boys that tried out for Kyler's parts. They were all different in many ways. Some were acting funny and actually were funny, but others weren't. Finally, after a half an hour, a part for each character was given to four people. Only one girl tried out as Elie's understudy, so the part was given to her. After all the parts were given to somebody, either Victoria, Johnny, Kyler, or Maura wrote their name on the piece of paper with the pen.
The part of Maura's understudy was a little more difficult than the other parts. The ones that wanted to be Aeriala had to not only be able to sing extremely well, but also had to have excellent balance and moves. Some of the girls could sing but not move, others could move but not sing good, and some others couldn't even do both. Only two of the twenty-five girls that tried out could do both and they were both a part of Lynn's little group. Finally, the part was given to a blonde about Maura's height named Ashley.
Now it was time to take care of the minor parts. Some of the minor parts weren't that much of a big deal as they were extremely small and most students didn't want to have them. Those parts were some of the Royal Guards, the blacksmith, the grandfather of Kyler's character, and a few random townspeople with little or no lines.
Some of the slightly more difficult parts were the other two children of Shanks' character, a dead witch, a mysterious couple that would appear later on in the story, and three fairies. Had all of those fairies been female fairies, it wouldn't have been so difficult to find the parts, but two of the parts were for male fairies while the other had been female. It wasn't difficult to find the members for the male fairies. Only two male students tried out for the parts. One was the one called "Father Alexander" and another was a light haired boy in tight pants. According to Kyler, both were gay, but only the father denied it. The only problem with the other characters was that most of the people trying out for the parts were either too emotional or not emotional at all.
The hardest part for the play was for a pair of twins, siren twins. Not only did the girls with the part have to sing good, but they had to look enough like identical twins. They both had to have the same skin and hair color and they had to be close enough to the same height. Eye color was not that much of a big deal as not many people would notice if one girl had black eyes while another had green or something. The lighting and the lack of distance between stage and audience would take care of that. Most of the pairs of girls were looking enough like twins, but they could not carry a tune if their lives depended on it.
There was a pair that tried out for the twins and they had a nice high-pitched voice and they looked almost like identical twins, but there was a problem with them. They were two boys. They were trying to be funny and if it wasn't so obvious that they were boys, Victoria would have immediately hired them as the twins. It was so creepy to hear those two tall boys singing in a high pitched voice almost as good as Maura's and if they were hired for the parts, people would probably think that Victoria's play was a comedy rather than an adventure.
Finally, a pair of girls, twin girls with long brown hair and soft doe eyes named Suzette and Chloe were chosen for the parts. The two boys that tried out for the twins argued about the choice, but eventually let it go.
After all the auditions, Victoria called back a few of the girls that could sing along with a few guys and girls that couldn't to give them random background moves as servants, fairies, and animals. All together, there were forty parts (including the eight parts that already belonged to those in Victoria's class) that had to be given. That meant that over the weekend, Victoria was going to be working her ass off just to get all the parts completed.
"Alright. Thank you everybody for your rehearsals. We will all meet up on Monday after school and I will have parts for all of you that have earned a part in the play." Victoria explained.
Right after she said that, all of the other students except for the ones behind the table left the cafeteria and the school. Kyler, Johnny, Maura, and Victoria began to place the papers in their bags and stood up from their seats. "Okay. And we're done. Good job." Victoria told the rest that stayed.
"I'll come by your house tomorrow to help you make the copies, Victoria." Maura told her friend before leaving with Kyler.
"I'll see you on Monday, Mr. Shanks." Victoria told Shanks as she followed Johnny out the door of the cafeteria.
The entire cafeteria was now completely empty except for Shanks and the one janitor that was now starting to mop up the floor since the kids had already left. "Ah, what the hell. I might as well leave, too." Shanks muttered before following the kids' actions and leaving the school with the sun shining on his face as he walked down the streets back to the ship.
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A/N: Okay, that's chapter 14. I'm not exactly sure how Devil Fruit powers work on how somebody first learns powers, so I just made something up for Victoria.