Benimaru sat at the small wooden desk in his barracks room, his fingers working methodically as he folded a piece of paper into a swan. He'd done this enough times over the past few weeks that he didn't need to think about it anymore.
He finished the last fold and held up the swan, examining it for a moment before placing it on the windowsill directly beside him. The early evening light filtered through the small window, casting long shadows across the room.
He hummed to himself as he looked at the older swans already sitting there, their paper getting crumpled and dirty from exposure to the air and occasional breeze that came through the cracked window. They looked worn down, faded versions of what they'd been when he first made them.
Benimaru reached over and gathered them up, crushing them in his palms one by one. After he was done, he tossed them into the small rubbish bin beside his desk, where they landed among the other discarded paper swans.
He then reached down and pulled open the drawer beneath the desk. Inside was just a pencil, a notebook, and an especially dirtier origami swan with dried blood staining its paper wings. The blood had turned dark brown over time, almost black in some spots where it had soaked through multiple layers.
Benimaru's eyes lingered on it for a second before he deliberately looked away. He ignored the origami swan and grabbed both the pencil and the notebook, pulling them out and setting them on the table in front of him.
He opened the notebook to a blank page, and began jotting down notes.
Notes that he'd been compiling for months, planning out how he'd get stronger, devil fruits he could get, strategies, and especially things he needed to work on. Since there were a lot of things he needed to work on.
His combat skills were extremely lacking, mostly because he'd never fought before in his life. Not in this one, and not in his other one either. So he was a complete beginner lacking in all elements. Which meant he'd have to train even harder than ever to get the basics committed to muscle memory.
'I also need to unlock Haki...' he groaned internally as he scribbled his plan in his notes, before scrubbing it out with an eraser.
Haki was a definite requirement if he wanted to get stronger, and especially if he wanted to survive the Grand Line and the New World. But he wasn't necessarily focused on that at the current moment, because he was far away from achieving it with his current abilities and wasn't even sure if he could.
He did remember Rayleigh's teachings to Luffy to an extent, but he wasn't sure what worked for Luffy would work for him. Given the fact that Luffy was the protagonist after all and had an insane amount of "luck" that played into everything.
But he especially wasn't focused on it since he didn't know if he had Conqueror's Haki. Which was a huge problem. Because without it... he was pretty much fucked in the New World. Since without Conqueror's Haki, he couldn't achieve Advanced Conqueror's Coating, and without that he couldn't even damage most of the Yonko's even if he wanted to and he couldn't get as strong as he wanted. But that didn't mean he still wouldn't try to unlock Haki, he definitely still needed it, but it was a worrying predicament he hoped he wouldn't have to face.
'Although, Observation Haki would be awesome to have right now... which should be on my main priority list over the other two,' he mused, rubbing at his chin.
Observation Haki was especially broken to have right now in the Blues. But also in general, if he could advance it, he could potentially develop Future Sight. That alone would put him leagues above most people in the early parts of the Grand Line.
He tapped the pencil against the notebook, thinking. Observation seemed like the most accessible of the three types. It was about sensing intent, presence, and danger, things that could theoretically be trained through sparring and combat experience.
Armament required understanding how to manifest willpower as armor, which sounded simple in theory but was incredibly difficult in practice. And Conqueror's... well, you either had it or you didn't. No amount of training could force that one into existence.
'But how would I train it...?' he hummed at the thought, thinking of a few ways to unlock Observation Haki.
He could've asked Ryota for tips on how to unlock Haki, but it would've been hard to explain how he knew about it and other things, so he'd rather not have asked. But still... he should've.
But that would have to be more of a side priority instead of a main one. If he focused too much on Haki right now, he'd have less time to focus on his main stuff. Which was his fighting style and weapon proficiency at the moment.
His fighting style was piss poor. Derek and anybody else he'd sparred with had completely destroyed him in one-on-one combat. While training with the Marines was great help for getting stronger, he rarely got any actual fighting style training since they mainly worked on physical conditioning. And without a proper instructor, he didn't know what the fuck to do. Ryota had explained the basics to him, but he still didn't even understand half the stuff he'd been told. He got the rough understanding of it, but executing it in a real combat scenario was a different matter entirely. And a month wasn't a lot of time to get proper training in.
Instructor Voss wasn't much different in that regard either, since there were too many people to train at once. It made it difficult for Benimaru to actually learn something when he asked, and most of the attention went to the more promising recruits in Voss's eyes, which didn't help at all.
Benimaru had tried asking questions after training sessions a few times. But Voss would either give him a brief, generic answer before moving on to someone else, or giving him an over explained advice that he didn't even understand.
It wasn't that Voss was a bad instructor. He was actually pretty good at what he did when it came to physical conditioning and general combat fundamentals. But with forty-plus recruits to manage, he wasn't fucking good at all for Benimaru.
"Why did that fucker have to go to the Grand Line..." he groaned annoyingly, thinking about Ryota.
Ryota was a Commodore, which in the One Piece world was still far above regular pirates in the Grand Line. Having Ryota train him would've been a huge jump to his success rate. Though he knew he couldn't really blame him since Ryota had important things to do. But like, damn, his nephew's entire family died and he just left like a scumbag.
Benimaru sighed. "Welp..nothing I can do about that."
Moving on to weapons, he wasn't like those dumbass MCs who'd fight with their fists for some reason. Of course he needed a weapon. But he wasn't exactly sure what weapon at the current moment was the best option for him.
The sword felt a little too basic and didn't pose a real advantage for him. A gun sounded good at first since he was training with it, but when he remembered people casually dodged bullets in One Piece, it made him change his mind. He didn't exactly have some powerful gun or anything, so his attacks would be pretty much worthless. He'd end up like another fraud Usopp copy.
A dagger sounded nice too, but his attacking range would be too short and would require him to get too close to his opponent, which at the current moment was a death wish. 'I could just add a chain to the hilt to increase the range... like that one guy, uh... Kratos, yeah, Kratos did something like that,' he thought.
It was a good idea, but he'd put that to the side for now and explore a couple more options first.
"Then again, I could just have a powerful devil fruit to supplement for all those weaknesses..." he mumbled beneath his breath. "But I don't want to end up like Ace..."
Ace had the Mera Mera no Mi, which was incredibly strong, and it was a Logia on top of that. But he was too reliant on it's Logia tangibility that he lost against someone like Blackbeard, who couldn't fight to save his life compared to others and needed two of the most broken fruits just to stay relevant. Ace was strong, but without his Devil Fruit he was fairly weak. So just in case he didn't want something like that to happen to him, he needed to get overpowered in all categories. If he wanted to get his revenge and become strong enough to take on the entire world if needed, he couldn't afford to have a single glaring weakness.
Finishing up the rest of his notes, he closed the notebook and placed it back in his drawer. Sure, it was wide in the open for anybody to see, and the minute anybody found it, things wouldn't end up good for him.
So of course he made sure every entry was written in a code he'd developed himself, a mix of jumbled letters, symbols, and random words that looked like they'd been translated into a completely different language. Even if someone managed to decipher the characters, it would just look like random bullshit that wouldn't make any sense, even to a professional interpreter.
The only person who could actually read it was him, kind of like how Toge Inumaki from jjk only spoke in rice ball ingredients.
So with the little time of morning left before he headed out to train, he'd get in his own little workout. He got up from the chair and instantly dropped to the floor and went through a series of push-ups.
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[A FEW DAYS LATER]
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By the end of the week, Benimaru found himself standing outside with all the other recruits, gathered around a large bulletin board that had three separate pages pinned up for the team assignments.
The crowd was thick, everyone trying to push forward to see which team they'd been placed on. Voices overlapped as people called out names, some groaning in disappointment, others expressing relief or excitement at who they'd been paired with.
"Who am I with..?" Benimaru muttered to himself, scanning the papers.
After a moment of searching, he finally spotted it.
[Team 7]
- Derek Mars
- Akari Tanaka
- Benimaru Kurogane
He read the names again, committing them to memory. Derek he knew since they'd sparred together. But the girl's name didn't ring any bells.
Before he could think about it further, a hand landed on his shoulder.
"Looks like we're together," Derek said, appearing beside him with a slight grin. He nodded toward the board. "But do you know the girl?"
Benimaru shook his head. "Nah, I don't know her either."
"Guess we'll find out either way..." Derek crossed his arms, still looking at the board. "Could be worse. At least I know you're not completely useless."
Benimaru gave him a flat look. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."
Derek just shrugged, still grinning.
. . . . .
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