Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece Oda Eiichiro does. I don't own the character of Victor Von Doom he belongs to Marvel. I don't even own this brain that I'm using to write really, it was all wrinkled when I got it, I've been wondering "Who wrinkled me this brain?" my whole life.
Author's Note: I know in this chapter it seems like I've made him too powerful, I assure you I haven't. He only has the manuals for Haki and Rokushiki, he hasn't learned them yet and I intend to afford those techniques all the gravity that they deserve, he isn't going to master them overnight or even any time soon.
After appropriately freaking out about that particular revelation. I focused on the details that were downloaded into my head regarding Latveria the most pertinent being that it no longer existed and that when it did exist it was allied with Ohara and they were considered sister cities. The fact that my "grandfather" personally knew Clover probably didn't help calm him down either.
"I suppose I should be thankful ROB made this world's version of my grandfather into a badass but did he really have to piss off the entirety of the fucking marines in the process ?!" I muttered out loud, once more back in control of my emotions and done with my mini freak out.
"I suppose Akainu isn't gonna come after me himself since he was mostly busy with shit going down in New World until the war." I thought out loud staring over the horizon to the sea and trying to picture the massive red line somewhere out there.
'But still, I am gonna get one hell of a bounty because of that family history.' I thought. I focused on the rest of the download I got from my backstory.
Apparently that devil fruit I just ate is the secret royal devil fruit of the Von Doom family much like the royal guard zoan fruits of Alabasta. Though the flashback had no information about the actual capabilities of the devil fruit itself other than the fact that the royal family had been passing it down for generations with each user making sure to keep a peach with them when they died so that the fruit would stay in the family, it was lost once or twice in history but it never got far enough that someone outside of the Von Doom family had the chance to eat it.
Once Garp negotiated the ceasefire with my "grandfather" he somehow managed to convince Sengoku to honor it. Garp sailed from the grand line back to east blue with me and my severely injured grandfather and stashed us here on this island 19 years ago. Since I was 2 years old back then, that makes me 21 years old now and since I have a year to train myself up it would make me 22 years old when canon story starts. 'Would that make me the oldest of the straw hats until Robin joins up? Hm, I think so.' I idly wondered.
I continued analyzing my backstory, which was essentially blank until 12 years ago when I was 7 years old. My "grandfather" had been fatally injured in the clash at Marineford, he had never recovered back to his peak and had even managed to lose most of his capabilities of Haki. He had pinned all of his hopes on raising me to be the best fighter I could possibly be and had kept no secrets from me ever since I was young. He noticed that I exhibited incredible intellect and had very keen senses since I was young so he decided he would take a gamble to give me an edge in Haki. See, while Ohara specialized in looking to the past to get the answers to the mysteries of the world, Latveria specialized in looking to the future and they were one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world
So my "grandfather" used some of the technological knowledge of Latveria and he conducted an experiment that involved stuffing me into a sensory deprivation tank in a desperate bid to awaken my Observation Haki, instead it killed me, I was dead for two and a half minutes.
The experiment also had an interesting little side effect of giving me random visions of the future that I couldn't control. 'I'm guessing this is the excuse ROB decided to give me for using my foreknowledge. I doubt this side effect will trigger often enough to make any real use of it but it's a convenient enough excuse I suppose.' I wryly remarked.
The experiment left my "grandfather" distraught and he decided that he would no longer take any shortcuts and train me up the old fashioned way and offer me Haki and Rokushiki training once I was old enough to handle it and could make the choice to do so myself.
The flashback picked up again for a short bit when Garp came for a "friendly" visit 10 years ago with his 3 grandsons in tow, those 3 being Luffy, Ace and Sabo. I got to know all 3 somewhat as they only stayed for a couple of weeks. Of course Luffy being Luffy decided that my name was "Dumb" not that the name was dumb instead he mistook Doom for Dumb and stuck with it calling me "Dumb Guy" with Ace and Sabo egging him on after they saw that it pissed me off. I kicked Luffy down a cliff for that one, I knew about his Devil Fruit but still it felt right. Those two weeks were not all fun and games though since Garp decided that he would train all four of us and that my grandfather was being too lax in my training. Which is how I found out that there's a mountain somewhere over in the forest that I can't see from where I'm standing 'How did you found out there's a mountain in the forest you ask?'. All I can say is 'Monkey D. Garp'.
The flashback only gave me the highlights of those two weeks but I can still tell that Monkey D. Garp is a fucking maniac, who the fuck drops an eleven-year-old at the top of a mountain with nothing to fend off the horrifying wild life of the One Piece world, sadistic child murderers that's who, and the crazy ass bastard did the same thing to the other three and considering that Ace and Sabo were nine years old and Luffy was fucking SIX years old at the time, that just makes it so much worse. Oh, and when I finally managed to make it back to the mansion half dead, he knocked me through a damn wall with his "Fist of Love" to "congratulate" me.
'Fucking crazy ass Monkeys'. I thought exasperatedly. The other 3 made it back safe-ish too, with Luffy carrying a comically large piece of meat that was half raw from the looks of it, how that little shorty managed to kill something that big I will never know, but I guess that's what makes him the protagonist. That particular flashback also introduced me to the freakish recovery rate of people in this world because; I had gotten several scratches and gashes courtesy of the wild life on my trek back to the mansion that would have taken several days to heal in my old world. Instead, they were gone by the time I woke up the next day, I was still sore and extremely hungry but not even a scar was left from those wounds.
From there the last chunk of the flashback was another infuriating one since ROB continued its blatant plagiarizing ways and incorporated my actual backstory with my past from this world. It made it so that about 5 months ago, my "grandfather" was getting close to death from finally succumbing to the injuries from Marineford though he still had some time left but then the bandit clan from a nearby island found out that the rich guy living on top of the hill near the village was close to death and decided to pay my "grandfather" a visit while I just happened to be away in the forest, from there the flashback pretty closely mirrored my actual life story fairly closely at points. I found my "grandfather" dead with the drunk bandits ransacking the mansion. Since I was actually trained by an admiral in this world I proceeded to kill them in slow and painful ways after interrogating them about who they worked and over the past 6 months I had been exterminating the bandit clan of about 300 members and had just gotten back today and decided to pay my respects to my grandfather's grave that I had dug with my own hands and the headstone that I had carved as well.
I put my hand on the headstone and whispered. "You may not be my actual grandfather but I suppose I will try to do you proud and maybe one day finish what you started with those two assholes. At least I can say with confidence that you were one Marine that put his honor above orders and that's more than I can say about any others, even Garp."
I slowly traced the insignia from the flag of Latveria "If you or my actual grandfather can see me, I promise you one thing above all. Now that I'm here, this world is either going to change or it's going to burn, I will not give it any other choice."
With my peace said, I turned around and decided to head to the mansion I saw earlier. I took a few steps and then I remembered something so I turned around and went back to the silver tray and found the peach pit I had cut out from the devil fruit earlier. I picked up the gnarled, knotted and honestly angry looking little thing. "I think I'll keep you around as a reminder to stay well away from water." I said as I pocketed the peach pit and for the hell of it grabbed everything else on the tray as well and brought it with me. 'Waste not want not as they say'.
I finally made my way up the winding path to the mansion, as I got closer and closer to the mansion I could see it was built in the gothic style with pointed arches above the windows with flying buttresses and carved reliefs of the Latverian insignia all over the walls. I looked up to the roof to notice the honest to god gargoyles glaring down on me, I bet at night under the moon light this place would not look out of place in a horror movie. Then again I suppose I do like this kind of aesthetic ever since I was young and watched Addams Family for the first time, for a kid that wasn't as emotionally active as the rest of my peers around me, Wednesday Addams was kind of my role model growing up. I can only hope to reach the heights of Don't-Give-A-Fucktitude that she accomplished.
I could see the moss building up on the walls and other signs of nature trying and failing to reclaim the mansion. My flashback memories tell me; I am the one mostly responsible for the up keep on this place for the last several years as part of my endurance training. Although since I haven't been back for the last 5 months or so, some parts of the mansion have started losing the fight against nature to reclaim it, I can see some rain damage on the roof on the west side of the mansion, I guess it must have rained for quite some time. I can also see one of the windows has fallen in, thankfully there's nothing important in that room just some old furniture.
I walk in through the dark blood red oak main doors and am greeted by the classic bifurcated staircase with some stairs going up on a landing and then two sets of stairs going to the left and right side of the mansion. The internal walls are all done in dark greys, blacks and greens on the highlights such as paneling and door and window frames. I walk in to the study and sit down on the chair next to massive oak desk that my "grandfather" used rarely when he needed to get some paperwork done. I recline on the chair, put my feet up and think about my next step as I stare at the ornate design on the ceiling.
'I need to figure out what the hell my devil fruit does and I need to find those manuals for Haki and Rokushiki, one year is not a lot of time and I have a lot to get done.' I think to myself.
"Now, where would those manuals be? Hmm, the safe? Yeah, I should check the safe." I wonder aloud. I got up and make my way to my "grandfather's" room upstairs, the room was nothing special just a bed, a writing desk, a singular painting hanging on the wall opposite a window looking out over the cliff to the sea and a closet.
I had cleaned up his things and put them away in the closet after his death, I went over to the wall with the painting of a castle that looked a lot like this mansion but a whole lot bigger. I slid the painting of the wall to reveal the safe underneath and opened the safe, I know the combination since my grandfather told it to me a few months ago, saying that he didn't have much time left and everything in it was meant for me anyway. Which is why this was the first place I chose to look.
I opened the safe and found the only thing in it to be a metal box with the Latverian insignia carved on it. I pulled out the box and took it with me to the study, I took off my jacket and threw it on the desk and put the box on top of the jacket. I opened the box to look inside and found there were two books inside of it.
On the top was the Haki manual and it was un-surprisingly very thin, less than 20 pages all in all. The Rokushiki manual on the other hand was significantly more detailed and must have had at least 200 pages in it.
I picked up the Haki manual, leaned back in the chair, put my feet up on the desk and opened up the Haki manual. This book it seemed was written by hand though I didn't recognize the handwriting, so my "grandfather" didn't write it. It started with an introduction of what Haki was and then went on to explain its types and their uses.
It went over the basic uses for Observation Haki, how it could be used to sense the presence of living things and how it could be used to sense the strength, emotions and intent of people. It also went over the unconventional uses of Observation Haki, that it could be used for any number of things aside from just combat, it was used for navigating the seas, predicting weather conditions and even medical diagnosis. It made no mention of the future sight ability of Observation Haki however which means I will have to figure those out myself.
It went over the basic uses of Armament Haki, how it could be used to harden your body, it explained imbuement and how you could imbue swords and even gun bullets with Armament Haki. Though again it made no mention of the advanced uses like emission and the Ryuo Haki of Wano. It also described unconventional uses of Armament Haki but to a lesser degree, the manual introduced some non-combat applications but those mostly boiled down to making yourself tough enough to do non-combat tasks like lifting boulders to help with construction and whatnot, the few direct non-combat uses for Haki included extending Armament to fragile parts of things you were constructing to provide support until the construction was complete and extending Armament to a ship's hull so it could weather dangerous New World waters better.
It briefly explained that Conqueror's Haki existed, that no it could not be awakened, you either had it or you didn't. It explained that it could be used to dominate the will of others and even completely incapacitate them if your will was strong enough. But again it made no mention of the advanced infusion ability of Conqueror's Haki.
All of that covered almost the entirety of the little booklet with the last 3 pages each describing a training method for awakening Observation and Armament Haki.
For Observation Haki it said that the best way to train was with a partner who would try to hit you with things by varying their intent to cause harm from mild to actually life threatening. There was also a mention of what my "grandfather" tried to do with his experiment with the sensory deprivation tank, by removing all of your regular senses and reaching out with your mind instead you can train your Observation Haki. 'Except that sensory deprivation tanks require that you enclose yourself in a tank and submerge yourself in salt water and with my history that's just never gonna happen. Not only that since I'm gonna be training on my own the buddy method isn't gonna work either.' I thought depressingly.
For Armament Haki it proposed a very interesting training method that I honestly hadn't thought of before. It offered that you should start with making deliberate actions, instead of letting your "instincts" take over your actions or what I interpreted as instead of letting your unconscious motor functions govern your actions such as walking or drinking tea or climbing stairs. You instead take all actions deliberately with each tensing, pulling and pushing of the muscles done deliberately with clear intentions in your mind of what you want to achieve. What this will do is train your mind to associate your "will" with your actions so instead of just punching you will "will" to punch instead and it will make it easier to unlock and channel your Armament Haki.
'Huh, that is a surprisingly coherent way to train Armament, you essentially harmonize your intentions with your actions thus; incorporating your will with your actions. I can do that; it will be tedious as hell but I can do that." I thought hopefully.
I then skimmed through the Rokushiki manual which came with a warning of not disclosing the secrets of the manual to unauthorized personnel or there will be dire consequences blah blah blah. This one was far more detailed than the Haki manual. This manual described different exercise regimens and different meditation exercises for each of the seven Rokushiki arts. Though the crux of the matter was that Rokushiki was divided in two categories, reflex arts and strength arts.
Reflex arts included Soru, Geppo and Kami-e. Whereas strength arts referred to Tekkai, Shigan and Rankyaku. It also stated that the secret seventh art Rokuogan was both a strength and a reflex art, since it requires tremendous strength to make the blow have enough power behind it and tremendous reflexes to maneuver your muscles in such a way that the shockwave of your attack ripples through the target.
'You know it occurs to me that the world government likely developed Rokushiki for their soldiers as training wheels to learn Haki. Kami-e is a gateway to unlocking Observation Haki and Tekkai is for unlocking Armament Haki, with the other arts helping them to adapt to unconventional fighting methods of the new world.' I mused to myself.
'You know that explains why Rob Lucci got the promotion to CP0 since he was a master of all seven Rokushiki arts and probably managed to unlock his Haki first.' I speculated as I stared idly at the ceiling.
After a while I sighed deeply and said. "Okay, time to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, I've already cursed myself by eating the damn thing if I don't make full use of it then what was the fucking point anyway."
I brought my hand up in front of my face and started trying to access my devil fruit when I realized something and stopped. "I probably shouldn't do this inside when there's a perfectly good forest I can potentially burn down right outside." I said as I eyed the fragile looking training manuals sitting in front of me.
"Wouldn't wanna destroy these before I had a chance to read through them thoroughly either." I said as I put the manuals back into the box and left it sitting on the desk as I headed out to the forest.
I made my way somewhat deep into the forest until I thought I was far enough away from the mansion that it would be safe from any collateral damage I might inflict because of my testing.
"Right how do I do this? The card said Alter-Alter Fruit which sounds like a paramecia ability. So, do I just try to alter or change something? But what?" I said as I brought my hand up to stare at it intensely.
"How do people access their abilities anyway? I don't feel any different than before I ate the devil fruit." I said trying to sense something different about myself and when nothing happened after a while. I decided "I suppose I should just try to use it on something."
I picked up a stone from the forest floor and tried to change it but the stone stayed the same. "Nothing happened, hmm maybe I need to be more specific than that, maybe I should try to change the stone's shape." I concluded.
I tried to change the stone again but this time I tried to imagine it being sharpened into an arrowhead and finally something happened. The stone shifted in my hand so suddenly that I almost dropped it but managed to keep a hold of it but since I stopped concentrating the stone stopped shifting and now it looked like a blunt stone with a pointed tip that it didn't have before.
"Okay, let's do that again without freaking out." I commented. I tried to change the stone into a stone arrowhead again and felt the stone shift again except this time I kept my concentration on trying to change it. I looked closely as I say the stone's surface ripple up as if it was liquid and start to take the shape I had in my mind of the arrowhead and when the stone adopted the image I had in my head the liquid parts of the stone turned back into solid stone. Except now it looked like a stone arrowhead with sharp edges and circular indent in the underside with grooves in it that you could screw an arrow shaft into.
"Huh, I wasn't even looking at the underside of the arrowhead and it still took the shape I wanted it to, that's useful." I examined the arrowhead a little longer until I collapsed to the ground and started laughing.
This tangible piece of evidence in my hand really drove home the fact that I am in a fantasy like world with weird and wonderful abilities and I have one of those abilities and a way to acquire more. I slowly got myself under control and laid down on the forest floor staring up at the canopy of trees. "I suppose I'm finally starting to see the fun side of this unexpected little trip." I said with a slight smile.
After a while I got up and said to myself. "Right enough daydreaming, let's see what else I can do." I concentrated on the stone again and changed to a different shape, this time a smooth ellipsoid which went smoothly. Then I altered it again and tried to imagine a perfect cube equal on each side. "I can't exactly measure it but it seems to have worked perfectly." I remarked examining the cube in my hands.
'Hmm, altering things huh. I wonder if I could.' I thought as I thought of another anime I watched a long time ago. Deciding to experiment a bit I tried to alter the stone cube into an iron cube, trying to clearly imagine the atomic structure of iron in my mind, without trying to change its shape or size in any way.
The stone rippled crazily in my hands and I felt a drain on my stamina instantly weakening me noticeably, not enough to threaten collapse but still inconvenient. The stone solidified into an iron cube but it was noticeably smaller than the stone cube it was earlier. I tried to eyeball its dimensions and concluded it was slightly less than a third of its previous size.
"So, it's basically alchemy without needing alchemy circles or the specific knowledge behind the process? not only that, it seems to be following equivalent exchange too since the cube shrunk. But that drain was no joke, I don't think I can do that more than 5 times more before I collapse, does the drain have to do with changing the material of the cube since I didn't experience it earlier?" I wondered as I observed the iron cube.
"Let's see if I can turn it back into a stone cube. If it follows equivalent exchange the other way too, the iron cube should turn into a bigger stone cube." I speculated and focused on trying to alter the cube again except I ran into my first hurdle.
"I have no idea what kind of minerals that stone was made up of, so I can't picture it." I realized.
"Well, I guess I will change it to a generic rock then." I decided as I tried to remember what stones are made up of and the memory from science class came up surprisingly easily, so much so that it shocked me.
"Huh? I've never had a memory that good." I wondered bizarrely as I tried to remember other things from my past, tried remembering phone numbers of classmates and co-workers, tried recalling news events, college lectures and even tried to remember the financial spreadsheets from when I was filing the restaurant's taxes and all of it came up quickly and crystal clear.
"Okay ROB didn't mention this, so I'm gonna go ahead and blame this on the devil fruit. But how the hell does a devil fruit that lets me alter things give me eidetic memo- no wait! I read about this online once." and the article came to me in full detail. "It was called Hyperthymesia and it was actually a super rare disorder since not only can patients remember their entire lives perfectly they can't stop remembering with nearly everything in their surrounding triggering a memory of their past, one patient described it as a split screen of the present and past running simultaneously." I argued with myself as I started pacing in the forest and idly flipping the iron cube in my hands, the altering experiment completely forgotten.
"Thankfully I'm not suffering from the side-effects of Hyperthymesia so I'm just gonna call it perfect recall. That still leaves the question of how and why does a devil fruit that lets me alter things give me perfect recall?" I thought about that for a while as I continued my pacing in the forest.
Until finally I was struck with a thought. "Is the devil fruit altering me too somehow? But how would altering me give me perfect recall?" I wondered and then the image of that devil fruit flashed through my head.
"A PEACH! A MOTHERFUCKING PEACH! OH NO NO NO!" I screamed out and turned to the iron cube in my right hand and concentrated on sharpening left side of it, the cube rippled and quickly the left half of it liquified and started changing shape into a sharpened edge and then it solidified. I quick brought it to the palm of my left hand slashed out a cut in my palm.
It hurt a bit but, I'm no stranger to pain. Then I observed the wound closely with a pit in my stomach and just as I suspected, the wound closed within seconds.
"Oh fucking hell, I knew this whole thing was too good to be true." I lamented as I leaned back into a tree, still staring at my palm where the bleeding wound was just seconds ago evidenced by the blood still coating it.
"So the Alter-Alter fruit gives me a healing factor on par with Wolverine and since I didn't actively heal that wound it works automatically." I reasoned still looking at my palm. I thought deep and hard about this development and realized that depending on how absurd this healing factor is there are only a few real ways to kill me, one way would be by riddling me with seastone bullets and then making sure that the bullets stay inside or on me to keep me dead long enough for the fruit to reincarnate, suppress my devil fruit with Haki then kill me and then keep me suppressed until again the fruit reincarnates and finally to my dread the easiest way to kill me would be by drowning me to death and then keeping me under water long enough for the fruit to reincarnate.
As I concluded my dark realizations I was introduced to yet another shock and noticed that the blood on my palm was turning to dust.
"What the hell?!" I screamed as I flung my hand out and the dust fell off and scattered away.
"Okay that was weird." I decided to try the same thing again and slashed my palm at the same spot and watched closely as the wound closed again and kept watching and within seconds the blood turned to dust again.
"No seriously what the hell?!" I exclaimed exasperatedly as I thought about what the hell this meant.
"Let's try something else." I said as I picked a stray lock of hair from the side of my head and cut it with the sharpened cube and the looked at the hair closely and sure enough it turned to dust within a few seconds.
"Okay, so a healing factor and a weird effect that turns bits of me that fall off into dust." I sighed and concluded, deciding to ignore the weird mechanics as just devil fruit shenanigans and not thinking about it.
"I guess there goes my dream of being a walking organ farm, Wolverine really never realized the potential of the gold mine he was sitting on." I chuckled morosely at my dark joke.
I pulled myself out of the dark spiral I was going down and focused on the facts. "Right, what's done is done, so I know I have a healing factor whose limits I'm not testing any time soon, I have perfect recall which I can only assume is because the healing factor is somehow augmenting my neurons and finally I have a weird effect where any part of me that gets separated from me turns to dust after a few seconds." I concluded.
I stared idly at the odd shaped piece of metal in my hands that looked vaguely like an axe except, instead of tapering into an edge from a rectangular bar this thing abruptly sharpened into an edge from a cube shape. "I wonder if I sever my head with this if I will grow a new body from my head or a new head from my body." I wondered darkly with a smile, then took a deep breath and got myself under control.
"Right, that's enough of that, no more experiments today, let's just go to sleep. This day has just been the worst let's just sleep until it's over." I said as I turned around and made my way back to the mansion for a good night's sleep, vainly hoping for no nightmares.