It's Monday morning here. That means a new chapter. Remember, 4 chapters a week, Monday-Thursday.

Enjoy

Chapter 10: Manhood, Restoration and Robbery

A bunch of people were kneeling in front of a man in his early thirties, who was leisurely smoking from his pipe. A closer look at the ones that were kneeling would reveal that most of them were shaking. It would seem that they were scared of the smoking man. The man in question had some papers in his hands, on which were depictions of a blurry figure surrounded by a storm of blades. Some of the images were just the figure with its bladestorm, while others showed people who looked to be screaming while drowning in a sea of blood. The man looked from paper to paper, getting angrier and angrier as he flipped them.

"What the hell am I looking at?!" He thundered. The people that were kneeling started shivering more violently, so much so that the armors they were wearing started producing a cacophony of jarring clattering noises.

"Stop with the damn noise and tell me what the hell is going on!" The man demanded, sitting up from his throne, causing his robe to flutter.

"L-Lord Bru, those are the pictures that our Den Den Mushis managed to capture of the Buzzer Pirates' encounter with the Chairman. We don't know why, but in every picture, the Chairman appears as a blurry figure, with no notable characteristics." The man kneeling in front spoke up, gathering some of his courage.

"So you're telling me that one person alone managed to kill all thirty of the pirates AND rescue the captives?" Bru's tone was flat, which caused the ones kneeling to further quake in fear. They had witnessed their Lord's anger too many times to not know that it was just the calm before the storm.

"Hmm. It is probably a quirk of his devil fruit, or maybe he has some device that messes with the snails. Either way, we don't know if this Chairman fellow is actually that cripple or someone else." Bru turned towards the leader of his personal guards. "How are Gru and that idiot of a Marine Captain faring? Is Sorbet willing to hand the things over?"

The guard captain gulped as he answered. "My lord, Augustus has personally intervened."

*CRUNCH*

Gru's pipe shattered as he gritted his teeth in anger. "Go on."

"He says that he wants to host a meeting between the Chairman and Lord Gru, and Captain Hebinu is welcome to attend. The Chairman apparently agreed to hand over the things he got from the pirates to Sorbet."

*SWOOSH*

Bru suddenly disappeared from where he was standing, reappearing in the place of the guard captain, who he now held by the throat.

"You will attend the meeting with Gru. Tell that stupid son of mine to give up on his dreams of inheriting the Nostrade household if he can't get the job done. Understood?"

The guard captain barely managed out a faint "Yes" before Bru let go of him, causing his heaving form to fall to the ground. "You are dismissed. Tell number 12 and number 17 to join me in my chambers. I need to vent."

The guards stood up and saluted before leaving the throne room.

"All this for just a girl?" A female voice sounded out from behind Bru, causing him to sigh.

"You know as well as I do how important that girl is. Also, stop trying to scare me with your sudden appearances." He turned around, one of his arms wrapping around the woman's waist while the other slowly snaked its way towards her private parts.

She slapped his hand away. "You're on probation until you get that parcel", she said as she flicked the bulge on his pants with her finger. Nostrade Bru, lord of the powerful Nostrade family of nobles, fell to the ground in pain after his manhood was (wo)manhandled.

"So you can bring others back to a previous state?" Cancel asked in between mouthfuls of food.

"Boy, if I have to tell you one more time to not talk while you have food in your mouth, I'll snap your neck." Larry said without even looking back. Cancel and the rest were seated at the table, while Larry was cooking more food at the stove-top.

"Bah! Do you have any idea how excited I am to learn about a new devil fruit? I'll have you know, I was the second most prominent fruit scientist back home."

"Who was the first?" Shirley asked. She was seated on the opposite end of the table from Cancel. Crocoid was to her left, his food was completely untouched. The entirety of the old doctor's attention was grabbed by the wooden animal in his hands. Bruno was seated opposite him, to Cancel's left and Shirley's right. He had three different wooden animals in front of him. Cancel smirked as he saw him playing with the toys.

"Heck if I kno-"

*SLAM*

He was interrupted as a wok slammed into the back of his head, courtesy of Larry. "NO. TALKING. WHILE. CHEWING!" Steam was coming off of Larry's ears, the old cook's face red in anger.

Cancel swiveled around in his chair, giving Larry a glare, which the cook obviously returned. The two got into an eye contact challenge, neither of them willing to back out. It went on for a whole minute, until Larry sneakily knocked down pepper mill, causing powdered black pepper to fly towards Cancel.

"To think I'd lose to a bit of piperine" Cancel muttered as the alkaloid of pyridine present in the black pepper caused him to break into a sneezing fit, signaling his loss.

Larry pumped his fist into the air. "That's what you get for messing with me kiddo. Now finish swallowing before you talk. I don't care how important the discussion is to you." With that the old man turned back towards the dish searing away at the stove-top, no longer paying attention to the happenings around him. "Gah! The fond is about to burn!" He screamed as he poured in some white wine to deglaze the pan.

Shirley put her hand in front of her mouth as she giggled, which turned into a full-blown laughter once Cancel glared at her, with a bump on his head, courtesy of Larry's wok.

Both Crocoid and Bruno were brought out of their world at the sound of her laughter, looking confused at what was going on. Soon however, they both shrugged as they went back to either studying or playing with the toys.

Shirley spoke up after her laughter died down. "It's more like borrowing their past self and replacing their current self with it."

"How does that even work?" Cancel asked. Shirley had given a rough explanation of her devil fruit powers, and like every time a fruit researcher learns about a new fruit, Cancel had to actively ignore his existing knowledge to make room for the new information. Devil fruits were weird like that.

"I don't know. That's just what it feels like to me. It could be that it works in a completely different way and that's just how I visualize it." Shirley shrugged.

"Yeah, that's probably the case. After all, history is inviolable. You cannot go back in time. That is the one truth about the universe that we can be certain of." He paused to eat another mouthful of noodles and paprikash, continuing only after he swallowed the food, "Still, that's an enviable ability to have. Can you use it on yourself?"

Shirley shook her head. "Not directly, no. Only if I Restore someone to a state that was particularly far in the past will the effect spills over to me. When I first ate the fruit as a child, I could only restore people back a day before I too started going back. Now however, I can go a bit over a year without any side effects."

Cancel hummed, letting the information float around his head for a second. "So how does the side effect work? Say you restore someone to three days over your current limit of a year. Do you get restored back three days or a year and three days?" He asked.

"I only get back three days. Oh and I almost forgot, I can snatch time from dead bodies, though only the people in this room and my brother know that."

Cancel perked up. "What do you mean by 'snatch time'?" He asked. Shirley's abilities were getting more interesting the more he heard about them.

Shirley ate a mouthful of food before she answered. "I haven't used that part of my powers for years now. It feels like disrespecting the dead. Basically, if I use Restore on a dead body, it turns into a child, and I get a pool of time depending on how long the person had lived. The conversion rate is horrible though. I only get about a day of time per year of that person's life. I can consume that pool of time when restoring people beyond my threshold, instead of going back in time myself."

"That's interesting. What about the person's mind? If you restore someone back a month, do they retain their memories of that month?" Cancel asked.

"It depends." Shirley answered. "I can choose to only restore them partially or fully. If I choose to not restore their mind, they retain their memories. Partial restoration is a lot more taxing than full restoration, however. Also, people with Observation Haki can resist my attempts at restoring their minds. And people with Armament can resist with their bodies."

Cancel was about to ask more questions when the door to the room burst open.

"CANCEL!" shouted a boy as he came running in, panting and sweating. He looked like he was about to pass out, presumably from exhaustion, when Shirley put her hand on his head. Her hand shone with a blue light, which slowly entered the boy's head. Within seconds, the boy was back in top shape.

"I restored him back twenty minutes", Shirley said.

The boy took a few seconds to get back his bearing.

"Breathe, Eric, breathe." Cancel helped the boy calm down. "Now tell me, what's got you so winded that you ran all the way from the store rather than just calling me on the snail?"

Eric was an orphan that Cancel had recently taken under his wing. The boy had the makings of a world class engineer. He was a cheerful little guy, with bright green eyes and dark orange hair. At this moment however, his cheerfulness was nowhere to be seen.

"Cancel, I couldn't stop it. I couldn't do anything!" He cried out, tears beginning to roll down his eyes.

"You are not making any sense Eric. What happened? What couldn't you stop?" Eric was also a decent brawler, having fought for food since he was but a little child. Cancel had already started training him on the Gas Port Fighting Essentials – the six basic skills that every combatant in Gas Port had to learn. They were developed during the era of Cancel's great grandfather. Erik wasn't able to perform a single one of them yet, but he could at least put up a decent fight.

"The marines! They ransacked the workshop!"