Another 26 chapters dropped to patre0n.com/moctopus (total 34 chapters ahead of public release)
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Before answering, Johnny waited until he stopped coughing up water with every new breath.
"I figured out why Nami and Luffy's relationship is so confusing!" As soon as he could breathe more or less normally, the boy immediately shared his 'revelation.' "Have you noticed how she hangs all over Robin and Vivi?" Johnny asked with inexplicable delight. Or perhaps the delight came from his 'revelation.' "If our Nami plays for the other team, then all the weirdness instantly makes sense! I can't believe such an obvious possibility never occurred to me before!"
Usopp stared at Johnny as though he were a complete idiot. Yosaku, who had never expected anything sensible to begin with, did not even react, nor did the happily smiling Luffy. In the end, Nami was the only one who responded strongly.
"YOSAKU!!!" Luffy nearly got blown off his feet again. "THROW THAT IDIOT BACK OVERBOARD!!!"
"Hear how angry she is? The truth must hurt, that's why she's mad!" Johnny said, not discouraged in the slightest.
Vivi, who had spent the entire exchange sitting quietly beside Nami at the very edge of the table, could describe the situation with only two words: complete madhouse. Apparently breed did matter after all, because only five days after her second awakening, the girl no longer resembled a terrified little rabbit. She was still far from normal, but she had stopped flinching at every sound. Someone else in her place might never have recovered fully, no matter how long they lived, while Vivi was already rapidly returning to normal. Although there was no denying that Nami deserved a great deal of the credit. And perhaps, if the rest of the family had not been around, Vivi's psyche would have recovered even faster. The phrases 'complete madhouse' and 'signature insanity' were perfect descriptions of any day spent near the Straw Hats. Not exactly the most favorable atmosphere for restoring a shaken emotional balance. On the other hand, it was an excellent atmosphere for intimidating enemies. And allies. And friends. And acquaintances. And, generally speaking, absolutely everyone.
"Vivi-chan, yesterday Law-chan suggested after your examination that I start training you," Nami's voice and the arm practically wrapped around Vivi's waist pulled the princess out of her thoughts. "He said training with me would help you recover faster and reveal any negative consequences from your treatment. He thinks there almost certainly aren't any, otherwise they'd already be showing, but better safe than sorry. If something does happen, while Law-chan is still nearby, he'll be able to fix it quickly."
To be frank, no one believed in any serious negative consequences. Law's fruit was simply too absurdly powerful and allowed him to 'cheat' shamelessly during any operation. Still, there was no harm in checking one more time. Besides, training could also be used as a tool for restoring a damaged psyche. Or damaging it even further. It depended on the training. In Vivi's case, the second option proved closer to the truth. Not so much because of the training itself, though, as because of the consequences of the operation that it revealed. Not negative consequences. Just consequences.
"Can't say I'm very surprised," Luffy said while rubbing his chin and looking at the shocked Vivi standing in the middle of a small crater. "Something like this was fairly predictable, even if it wasn't guaranteed."
The lengthy warm-up passed without any problems. Nami deliberately made Vivi perform various stretches far beyond any reasonable amount, trying to reveal any negative consequences of the operation the girl had undergone. As expected, however, she felt excellent. No pain, real or phantom, no unpleasant sensations, no discomfort. Truth be told, if Vivi herself had not known just how serious her condition had been on that fateful day, she might have doubted by now that the operation had ever really happened. To the absence of pain and discomfort one could safely add the complete absence of scars. It was as though her memories of the terrible wound and her own death had not come from real life at all, but were merely the aftermath of an ordinary nightmare. Those thoughts might even have had the most beneficial possible effect on treating her post-traumatic stress, but the sparring session that followed the warm-up cut them off at the root.
"Is something like that even possible?" a surprised Usopp asked.
All of Nami's training sessions could easily take their rightful place beside 'flowing water,' 'fire,' and 'other people working'—things one could watch forever. And so everyone watched, which meant every member of the family witnessed what happened. Everyone except Zoro. The swordsman preferred watching the training of another person, whose combative little face by itself filled him with fondness. Not that a single muscle moved on his own face! That was simply how he was.
"Until today I was absolutely certain something like that was impossible," Johnny admitted with complete honesty. "As far as I know, when a Devil Fruit user dies, the fruit immediately goes to be reborn."
"You just answered Usopp's question yourself," Yosaku said around his cigar smoke. "Vivi-chan received the organs while the donor was still alive, so the Devil Fruit didn't reincarnate. It simply flowed into a new host at the moment the previous one died."
For combat, Vivi used weapons called Peacock Slashers. It had to be admitted that they were rather strange weapons, resembling spearheads—made from gemstones—attached to cords on one side—except the 'cords' were actually fairly heavy chains—while the other end had a small ring that Vivi used to spin each 'Slasher' around one of her fingers. Vivi had two of them, and she handled them with surprising skill. The girl did not so much fight as dance around her opponent. Considering Vivi suffered from no shortage of beauty, watching her 'dance' was doubly pleasant. Or even triply so! Because she was 'dancing' around Nami. Vivi's only drawback was her age. At not quite sixteen, all the Straw Hats perceived her as a naive, inexperienced teenager. Which, in essence, she was, and beside Nami, Vivi's youth became even more obvious. The contrast between them sometimes grew so large that at certain moments Nami did not look like a young woman resembling Vivi's older sister, but rather like an adult woman who could easily pass for her mother. Most of the time, however, Nami naturally looked and behaved precisely like an older sister.
"Flowed into a new host?" Usopp asked again. "Is that even possible?" He repeated his first question almost word for word.
"Do you have another explanation?" Yosaku pointed with his smoking cigar toward the pale Vivi still standing in the middle of the small crater.
The warm-up had gone perfectly, and the sparring had started just as well. Nami, smiling broadly, blocked every strike from Vivi, who 'danced' around her, using her staff without any trouble. Thanks to the power of her fruit, Nami did not actually need to block the attacks coming from every direction at all, but if she chose not to, the sparring session would immediately lose all meaning. As a result, the first five minutes looked completely normal and gave no warning of problems or surprises. Nami simply stood in place and defended against all of Vivi's attacks, while the princess felt somewhat stiff under the attentive gazes of so many spectators. They were training not far from the Going Merry, which the male half of the Straw Hats took advantage of by seating themselves directly on the ship's railings. Robin remained standing, choosing a place beside Usopp on the exact opposite side from Luffy. The Heart Pirates, meanwhile, occupied the sofas scattered around the area. Once it became clear they would be staying on the island for a while, everyone had quickly built sturdy awnings above them for protection from rain and sun. Now they could sit in comfort despite the downpour the previous day.
"As far as I know, no one really understands what Devil Fruits actually are," Luffy said. "Personally, for a long time I thought each Devil Fruit was a colony of ridiculously advanced tiny robots capable of various energy manipulations and changes to a person's genetic structure, but later I had to discard those possibilities. Some abilities granted by Devil Fruits simply couldn't be explained by tiny robots or altered human genetics."
"If a person's genetic code changed, then the abilities would be hereditary," Yosaku said, shaking his head. "And fruit reincarnation doesn't fit that theory very well either. Or do you seriously think that when the user dies, tiny robots run out of the corpse?"
"And that's only a couple of the reasons I eventually had to change my mind," Luffy agreed with a nod. "You can also add the fact that every Devil Fruit user loses the ability to move in standing water. Neither changes to the human genetic code nor the presence of tiny robots inside the body can explain that weakness. When those theories first came to me, I simply didn't have enough information yet."
"And now you do?" Sanji asked. "So what do you think now?"
"I'm leaning toward the idea that everything is tied to some kind of energy we don't know about," Luffy shared his newest theory. "Or maybe an energy we do know about, but being used in some way we don't understand. You could call it Soul Energy or something like that."
"Soul Energy?" Johnny raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not sure about the soul part, but the theory that Devil Fruits contain some unknown type of energy sounds far more believable than tiny robots," Usopp offered. "I doubt robots that small even exist anywhere in the world."
The process of changing his worldview continued. Not so long ago, the boy would never even have considered such a theory worth discussing. It would have sounded far too unbelievable to the 'old' Usopp. Now he merely expressed cautious doubt. The others, however, were far more categorical.
"They do!" they answered in unison.
"And strictly speaking, they're called nanorobots, not mini-robots," Yosaku added. "They're no larger than a molecule, if I remember correctly."
"Seriously?!" Usopp's eyes bulged. "Something like that actually exists?!!"
"Start getting used to the fact that nothing in this world is impossible," Johnny advised him with complete sincerity.
"Otherwise you'll wear yourself out being surprised all the time," Sanji agreed with a nod. "I've already seen plenty myself, but no matter what stories I told the Damn Old Man, he always said I still hadn't seen anything. No matter how incredible the incident I described, he listened with a completely unreadable face. And he always told me to save my surprise for the Grand Line."
At that moment Igaram finally broke out of his prolonged stupor.
"VIVI-SAMA!!!" he shouted, rushing toward the girl.
As already mentioned, the first five minutes of sparring between the girls passed without any problems. Vivi 'danced' around the stationary Nami, trying to reach her with her Peacock Slashers. Gradually the blue-haired princess became more and more absorbed in the exercise until she finally forgot about every gaze directed at her. Immediately afterward she began moving far more confidently and attacking noticeably faster and harder. Nami decided that would be a good moment to begin her own counterattack. She blocked another one of Vivi's strikes and attacked in return. And that was when things became interesting. Vivi sharply leaped aside, but instead of the expected couple of meters, she flew roughly ten meters sideways and seven meters upward. It was as though, at the moment she jumped, she had suddenly lost almost all of her weight. Naturally, that development made Vivi panic. As a result, she instantly restored all of the weight she had lost and immediately dropped straight down. Only when she slammed into the ground with a deafening crash, as though a ten-ton steel block had fallen from the sky, did everyone realize exactly how much weight she had restored.
"VIVI-SAMA!!!"
That was how the young princess ended up standing in the middle of a small crater. In fairness, Vivi was far from the only person overwhelmingly surprised by what had happened. Unlike the Straw Hats, Law's people could not boast quite the same level of emotional 'thick skin.' Their reaction was even stronger than Usopp's. Devil Fruits already raised countless questions and inspired plenty of amazement, and no one present had ever heard of abilities being transferred in such a way. No one had even suspected it was possible. Certain assumptions about Devil Fruits were simply too deeply rooted in people's minds. For example, everyone believed that the only way to obtain a fruit's powers was to eat that fruit. No one even considered any alternatives. Or, at the very least, such alternatives were not publicly known.
"Now I'm immediately curious. If a fruit's power can be transferred through organ transplantation, could you use that method to create two people with the power of one fruit?" Johnny said while watching Igaram loudly fuss over Vivi, speaking his thoughts aloud more than asking an actual question.
"Like transplant a kidney, unwind some intestines, and transfuse some blood?" Yosaku considered the idea completely seriously.
"If my theory about an energy component in all Devil Fruits is correct, then I doubt that method would work," Luffy said, shaking his head. "I think the fruit's power would simply remain with the original owner. Personally, I doubt Vivi would've gained her new ability if that... uh..."
"Miss Valentine," Johnny helpfully supplied, understanding why the boy had hesitated.
"What difference does it make what her name was?!" Luffy immediately snapped at him, not appreciating the help in the slightest. "What's with your stupid habit of remembering the names of dead enemies? Living ones, fine, but why the dead?"
"What about respect... for a fallen... opponent?" Usopp started confidently, but Johnny, sitting beside him, abruptly made a cutting motion across his throat, urgently signaling for him to shut up, so the long-nosed boy finished in a much less certain voice.
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