4 Marine Based - 4

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.