He needed a plan.
Multiple plans.
…All the plans.
That was why, instead of joining his fellow marines out in the practice arena or in the mess hall, Kaden secreted himself back to his bedroom.
It was a simple small, narrow place less than ten feet wide and twenty in length and barely had enough room for the single bed, closet and table and chair he had within the place.
The marine branch he was with before, had large barracks where the soldiers slept. But, G5 was different.
In the sense that the amount of marines stationed here, was pitifully small in comparison. Less than a hundred compared to most that had well over a thousand.
Not to mention, the chain of command was sloppy and terrible. Very little discipline was enforced by Vice Admiral Vergo who just let the marines do as they pleased as long as they weren't killing each other and honestly, the man barely interacted with any of them beyond dropping some orders and the like.
Which was why Kaden didn't need to worry about anyone bothering him, they simply wouldn't care unless it came to fighting pirates and he didn't show up.
As such, the blonde teen found himself sitting at his desk, a small journal opened up in front of him and tapping his pen to it.
Atop the page, multiple notes were jotted down.
Rokushiki
Soru - Yes
Tekkai - ?
Shigan - Maybe?
Kami-E - ?
Geppo - Yes
Rankyaku - Maybe?
At the forefront of equalizers for him, were the six powers. The Rokushiki were incredible techniques. The problem was…while he knew how a few were achieved, the others not so much.
Soru and Geppo were the most important bar none for sure and the ones that were thankfully from what he knew were rather simple in practice. Kicking the ground multiple times to push off with Soru and kicking the very air surface had enough to generate enough force to propel the user without a physical foothold with Geppo.
Simple in explanation, in practice however, they'd be insanely difficult. The others though, while he had vague explanations on how they were done, he wasn't really sure how to put them into practice.
'Kick fast and hard enough to create an air blade, tense your muscles hard enough to make them like an iron wall, thrust your finger fast and hard enough to puncture a target like a bullet….and make your body and muscles go entirely limp to limplessly move and dodge like paper.' Kaden nodded to himself.
Before slamming his head into the table with a groan, "That's fucking bullshit." he huffed in annoyance.
That was retarded and monstrous and didn't even make fucking sense. How did making your body and muscles go limp make one move like paper?
The others at least sounded slightly…feasible in explanation.
'Though Vergo knows the Rokushiki, do I wanna even chance asking him though?' he thought.
Personally, Kaden would rather not ever interact with the man ever again. Vergo could snap him in half right now in the blink of an eye.
But that brought him to the second part written down on the page. Notes over Haki.
He apparently had all three forms of Haki, but he had no idea what to do with Armament or Conquerors, only that great stress and threats to his life could bring them up to the surface apparently.
Observation he had a slight idea on how to train…some. Rayleigh taught Luffy by swinging sticks at him from behind while he was blindfolded.
Any of the meat head monkeys around G5 would happily take his place and do the same to Kaden if he asked.
He wasn't exactly looking forward to the idea of getting smashed over the head repeatedly though.
'…I could pull from other places though as well.' he mused. Like, there was one specific character from another series that he knew trained a similar power, with a blindfold as well at that.
What they did was tie a bunch of large logs to a huge tree and get in amongst them while they swung back and forth.
Still didn't sound like a pleasant time though.
Third on the list of notes, was-
Weapons
Meito - ?
Sea Stone - ?
Seven Star Sword - ?
He only had three entries, all he wasn't sure what to do with. If he was getting a weapon, he'd be going after a high grade one. Ones like the common cutlass he currently had possession of as a marine, alongside two flintlock pistols, wouldn't last long in any fight against anyone actually strong. If he wanted one to last, he'd need a meito.
He only knew of two up for grabs. One was being wielded by a weakling in Baroque Works, Mr 11, while the other was in the possession of a sword store owner in Logue Town.
Which brought him to the next thing, sea stone tipped weapons. Would it be worth getting one? Or making one at least. Sea stone could weaken devil fruit users, drain their power and even hurt Logia's, which he wouldn't be able to touch otherwise without Armament Haki.
Sea Stone was at least simple for him to get his hands on, he could chip some off the bottom of any of the battle ships, they were all lined at the bottom with sea stone to hide the ships from the Sea Kings within the ocean waters.
Though he had no idea how that worked.
It was just that, edging his current blade with sea stone, would be a huge waste if it was just broken in any old fight. So he either had to get a hold of some and hold on to for later, or play it safe in case he ran into a devil fruit user he needed a sea stone blade for before he was ready.
'And then there's you.' his eyes settled on the last listed weapon. The Seven Star Sword.
An obscenely powerful weapon he remembered from one of the movies. It enhanced the users physical abilities, allowed them to create mystical green fire and fire off shock waves and even bestowed upon them a low tier regeneration.
But the sword itself was possessed and would possess the user and turn them into a killing machine.
Yeah…he'd already found himself in a second body not by choice, he didn't quite want this one stolen from him either.
'Maybe if I could actually use Conqueror's Haki….' he mused wistfully. If he did, he could possibly just crush the will within the sword with his own.
Without that though, there was no point in even thinking about going for that weapon.
Which brought him to the final entry on the page.
Well, there was five originally, but he crossed off Fishman Karate. Since he highly doubted any fishman within their kingdom would happily teach him even if he did visit and the only thing that came to mind to learn it, was to head to East Blue, slaughter Arlong and his crew and force Kurobi to teach him the basics under threat of death.
Not something at all viable right now, even if Fishman Karate was one of the few abilities capable of harming Kaido due to the shockwaves one could produce with it and bypass physical toughness.
Alas, just not viable for him right now.
Which brought him to the most obvious on the list.
Devil Fruits
?
Devil Fruits, the ultimate equalizer in this world. With some luck, a complete weakling could go from trash to being able to crush anyone without Armament Haki or sea stone weapons.
The problem being, getting his hands on one. If he wanted to buy one, they were ludicrously pricey. Even the weakest or ones with unknown effects, went for at least two hundred million beri.
That was literally one thousand times the amount he got paid by month. So unless he managed to claim the bounty on some hot shot pirates with high bounties, that wasn't happening.
Beyond that, was the option for killing the holder of a devil fruit and grabbing the devil fruit when it reincarnated.
Only, the type of fruit a devil fruit reincarnated in varied and from what he knew had to be healthy and ripe to begin with. He'd literally need to carry around an assortment of fruit while being on the lookout for devil fruit users and they wouldn't last very long at all.
Honestly, he only knew of one single devil fruit that reincarnated into a specific fruit from his memories. The Axolotl zoan devil fruit reincarnated into apples.
So if he killed the user of it and had a ripe apple on hand, he could get it for himself. Which wasn't a bad idea in practice. Because zoan fruits even in the base form, enhanced the users physical abilities. And Axolotl's could regenerate.
'Except the Axolotl devil fruit is currently being used by a now sentient giant blob of toxic corrosive gas.' he snorted, then laughed despite feeling no amusement over it.
Like how the fuck was he supposed to deal with that?
Wait.
Speaking of Smiley, there was a devil fruit he knew the location of and a particularly powerful one at that.
The clone of the Mythical Zoan devil fruit - Fish Fish Fruit: Model: Azure Dragon.
Momonosuke and the red scabbards hadn't appeared in the timeline yet again and weren't due to for a while yet.
…And coincidentally, Punk Hazard was not far from here. In fact, it was a known location if thought abandoned place by marines as a whole where they used to store prisoners for experimentation.
That should be great. Why not? Literally a few days sail from where he was, he could find and get his hands on the equivalent of a mythical zoan devil fruit and one of the most powerful in existence.
Only, the thought abandoned research facility was currently being used by a meglomaniac with a powerful logia devil fruit, who was being attended by a woman with a snow logia. Who had a giant toxic sentient Axolotl pet at his command.
And was currently working for Doflamingo to produce fake zoan devil fruits known as 'SMILE'.
And was selling them….to Kaido.
Who would want his head if Kaden in any single way messed with that operation.
"Fucking annoying." he groaned.
There was not a single, simple answer for him at all. Honestly, if he could get his hands on that dragon devil fruit, he could use the flame cloud ability of it, to literally just fly away.
He could go anywhere he wanted with it, even a sky island and just avoid everything.
To get it though, he'd need to slip in, avoid everyone there, and there was quite a few pirates turned prisoner that had been 'helped' by Caesar Clown, the resident meglomaniac producing SMILE. They had forces numbering in the hundreds, most of them from the New World, if fodder that didn't last long.
Still far stronger than your typical person though.
After all, he struggled with just a few New World fodder from his memories and he was considered pretty damn strong in his old marine base.
"Guess I can literally only do one thing…" he sighed, running a hand through his hair in defeat.
He would have to train.
And train.
And train.
And if he wanted to make any headway quickly with the Rokushiki or Haki, he'd most likely….need to talk to Vergo and ask him.
"Peachy, just fucking peachy."
….He was freaking talking to himself now.
Well, at the very least, he liked working out and relished in the feeling of his body getting stronger. He was an avid sports player and even trained in martial arts in his own life and one of the few things he and the Kaden who originally had this body of his seemed to similar on, was training their bodies and getting stronger.
And maybe their taste in women.
But…who didn't like a curvy, voluptuous babe?
Not long later, Kaden decided to leave his bedroom and get down to business.
He had to get out of that room and stop thinking at the very least because at some point, everything just went in circles and sitting around wouldn't accomplish anything.
Though, instead of making his way down to the areas where he could train freely. He made his way up and up, straight to the top floor of the G5 marine base.
And stopped in front of the door to the office of the Vice Admiral.
…He bit the bullet. As much as he would rather not be around Vergo, the man was his best chance to get anything done quickly.
So he took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
"…Come in." the deep, almost emotionless voice of his current leader echoed from behind the door.
Soldiering his emotions, he plastered a grin on his face and opened the door, casually making his way inside.
He caught sight of Vice Admiral Vergo almost immediately, the tall, broad man over eight feet in height and dressed in all white casually sitting on a soft couch at the side of the room before a table, a cup of tea and an empty plate sitting on it.
….And a stick of dango stuck to the side of his face.
How the hell did he not even notice that.
He couldn't see Vergo's eyes because of his dark sunglasses that he constantly wore, but the slight tilt of his head towards Kaden let him know he had the mans attention.
"…Who are you?" Vergo asked, blankly.
Kaden resisted the urge to sigh as he kicked the door shut behind him, "It's me, Kaden, remember? I got assigned here after I was too violent five months ago?" he reminded him.
"Oh…okay," Vergo just shrugged uncaringly, "What do you want? I was busy eating a steak."
"It was dango." Kaden corrected him.
Vergo's head tilted to the other side, "Ah…so it was," he nodded, remembering…maybe? "Okay, but that doesn't change why you're here."
Why were there so many people with odd quirks in this world?
"I wanted to ask you for some tips," Kaden got straight to the point, honestly the quicker he was out of here the better, "I want to learn how to do that Rokushiki stuff you higher up guys can do and Haki as well. I think I know how to train the Observation one, but no idea how to train the Armament one."
"….I'm too busy to train you kid." Vergo replied.
"Figured, I did say just tips after all, that'll be enough for me to learn em, I'm a prodigy after all," Kaden boastfully claimed while internally rolling his eyes, "Just tell me what to do and show me them and I'll be able to figure it out."
Vergo stared at him blankly.
Or…he thought he did.
Again, he couldn't tell what the man was looking at with his eyes with those stupid sunglasses on.
Who even wore sunglasses on inside?
"Whatever, if it'll make you leave me in peace, I've got to go visit my wife late." Vergo shrugged and stood up, cracking his neck.
Vergo in fact, did not have a wife.
The Vice Admiral lifted his fist and then a spark of black erupted and covered it up to his forearm in a shiny black, ebony like armour, "Armament is simple. Punch stuff hard."
"….Punch stuff?" Kaden's eyebrows rose.
That…that was his advice?
"Punch stuff, hard," Vergo corrected, "Punch stuff you can't break. Punch it till' your hands hurt so much you wanna stop and cry. And keep punching until it breaks. Haki is all about willpower. Even if you aren't strong enough, you will that target to break, you will your body to be stronger. With observation you will yourself to see it coming and dodge. The stronger the will, the stronger the haki."
That…was decent advice he supposed and profound really. But, while the instructions were simple in theory once more like the Rokushiki, it did not at all mean they were simple in practice.
Fucking One Piece.
"….Right," Kaden resisted the urge to grimace, "What about Rokushiki?"
"….Instructions, unclear." Kaden grimaced, pulling his hand back from the tree he'd just finished…beating up.
His knuckles were torn, raw and bloody and the tree had fallen over. There was a gouge in the middle of it, from where he'd punched it over and over repeatedly.
He hadn't broken it though. Just loosened its grip in the soil from his repeated punches and forced it to collapse.
This was the fourth tree so far to suffer the same trait since he'd left Vice Admiral Vergo behind, six hours ago.
It was already night and dark outside and rain was falling gently.
Again. And would soon turn into another downpour.
He was pretty much soaked to the bone at this point, both from the rain and his own sweat.
He'd spent three hours training his body using the equipment of the G5 marine base. If…it could be called that. Most of it was broken and never fixed properly. Like the pulley system, instead of weights, it was now literally just a series of boulders of varying sizes with holes in them to thread ropes through.
The dumbbells and weights for benching and the like were gone. And in their place? Boulders of varying sizes.
There…were a lot of boulders of varying sizes instead of equipment. It was a little awkward to be honest to use them, but again, honestly, crude as it was, it was probably better.
Simply because…crafted equipment had real limits. Limits that did not faze people of this world nearly as much.
Take himself for example. He was fourteen, only turned it a few months ago even. And he could lift boulders easily over four hundred pounds in weight without much problem.
From there, he'd…taken some of Vergo's clipped advice about the Rokushiki and put it into play.
His success was…middling to say the least.
Though, he one piece of advice Vergo left him with he found sounded…actually smart.
'Stick with just one of them. You'll understand the others better after getting one down and with each new one, they'll get easier.' the traitorous marine had told him.
So he decided to focus all his efforts on Soru first.
Which led him to now, well, an hour ago when he decided to try out Vergo's advice when it came to Armament Haki.
By punching the crap out trees.
Plus he couldn't find an axe anywhere in the equipment storeroom to cut down the trees to use for his idea for training Observation Haki.
So he'd put that off for the moment.
"Though maybe I don't need to." Kaden couldn't help the grin that spread across his face as he stared at his bloody and raw knuckles.
It hadn't really occurred to him before.
But…he was strong.
Like, stupidly fucking strong. Even as his knuckles throbbed and stung, he couldn't help but relish in the fact that…
He'd literally punched multiple large trees, each over twenty feet in height easily and made them fall over.
Sturdy trees with thick, powerful bases and filled with sharp, hard and rough bark. But….he'd felled four of them just by punching them over and over.
That was impossible in his old body. Forget his old body, not even the strongest of strongmen back home could do anything like this.
He was…literally superhuman and could tear even the greatest strongman in his old world apart with his bear hands.
He was trash right now, fodder really compared to anyone of note in this world. But…wasn't Zoro once? Wasn't Luffy?
Hell, Coby.
That kid went from scrawny wimp to using the Rokushiki in just a few months of training and come the time skip was a complete beast.
He at the very least, had a much better starting body than him to go on from, even if the situation around him wasn't at all ideal.
"Yeah…I can do this." his grin widened as he stared at his bloody fist.
No, not just could, but would do it.
He had power right now.
A tiny fledgling spark of power, but he had it. And he liked it.
And he wanted more.
He had a year.
How high could he climb on up the ladder in that time frame? If he could match Coby's pace and get at least a few of the Rokushiki down, he might just be able to survive, possibly even thrive.
If he trained hard enough actually, he might just be able to make something of himself.
Power, wealth, prestige. Gol D. Roger had it and everything the world had to offer at his fingertips.
He didn't specifically desire the One Piece at all, but, there was plenty more in this world to attain if one had but the strength for it.
"Heh, a nice thought." Kaden shook his head in exasperation at his own tall day dreams.
He put it out of mind. That didn't matter right now. The greatest wealth he had right now, was an entire year of time and his own memories.
That was what mattered, everything else beyond growing strong enough to escape this position he was stuck in currently and live freely as he pleased, was secondary.
"The grind awaits." he cracked his neck.
…Yeah, that was a good creed for him right now. He had to throw himself into the grind and train himself into the dirt and take advantage of every precious second he had.
This world was simply too dangerous for him to remain weak.
He cast an eye at the fallen tree at his feet, before bending down and wrapping his arms around its wide frame.
And then he gritted his teeth, grunted and heaved up. "Rah!" he all about shouted as he rose to his feet, lifting the large tree thick three multiple hundreds of pounds in weight above his shoulders.
And he walked further into the forest he found himself within, his eyes searching out as he moved.
Deeper and deeper into the forest he walked until he found one.
An even larger tree. With thick sturdy branches. Thick sturdy branches that could support a lot of weight.
"Four should be enough for now." Kaden mused to himself as he dropped the thick tree and stretched out his shoulders, eyeing the tree branches above him.
Well, eight really since he'd break all four of the trees he'd felled in half at least to make them a bit lighter and to make more…hazards.
Now he just needed to find a blindfold. Well, the bandana tie thing of his marine uniform could work for that.
'What is this thing even called anyway?' he wondered, toying with it with his fingers as he about turned and walked back out of the forest the way he came, heading back towards where he'd fell those three other trees.
He grabbed the three other trees and one by one, relocated them with the last one at the tree he'd be using for his training.
And then stomped his boot clad feet down upon each one, right centre where he'd been hammering his punches into them, using all his weight and strength as he launched himself up and landed on them over and over to break them in half.
And when that was done, he headed back towards the G5 marine base to pick up some nice sturdy rope to use to hoist the eight tree…bludgeons into the air and create his very own training thingamajig.
'Haki Pendulum?' he thought, cupping his chain as he stared up at his handiwork, 'Yeah, that fits.' he nodded to himself.
His muscles ached and his stomach rumbled with hunger, but he couldn't fight the smile on his face.
Right now, he felt…not great, but better than he had in a lot of ways since he first woke up this morning.
It was amazing how simply having a goal in mind and taking the first steps towards it, could be so….liberating.
And back with chapter two of this. Some people are probably wondering what it is. But it's simply a replacement of Scotsman on Deck
Anyway, shameless Pa-atreon plug. I've got one, go by the same username on there, easy to find and all that jazz. Support me if you want, it'd be swell, but don't feel pressured lads and ladies, I'll be uploading my stuff outside it regardless and not keeping it all behind a paywall or anything like that.