Chapter 19: Progress

Josh's PoV:

It has been almost 2 weeks since setting off from Gecko island. With a little "persuasion", both Luffy and Nami has been training a little more seriously. Honestly, I can't really blame them, they don't know the true horrors of the Grandline. From the story, it doesn't really hit them until they got forcefully disbanded and Ace dies.

All Luffy wants is adventure, and Nami isn't really worried about anything else other than saving her village.

The one person I can't seem to get through to is actually Usopp. His cowardly nature is just too tenacious. He still does the physical training everyday due to Zoro's "insistence".

I had to pay dearly...as in my little brother down there, for the little prank I played on Nami a while back. When she realized what I'd done, she flipped out and even threatened to kick everyone off the ship to go for a 'nice' swim. I'm not gonna say what I did to her..but ever since then, she would accept private tutoring from yours truly from time to time. (A/N: The first person that can guess accurately, I'll make a shout out to you. It's nothing big.)

Right now, I'm training Nami. We first start off with some stretching to loosen her muscles. Unsurprisingly, she was pretty tense and stiff the first few days, must be the stress. After a good 10 minutes of stretching, I had her meditate for a bit to loosen her mind.

After all of those preparations, all she would have to do is dodge my attacks without moving away from her spot. As I noticed, Nami is really suited to learn the Kami-E. Maybe it was due to her slim and agile body plus her career as a thief, but she was very nimble and once in a while, would actually look like she's using the Kami-E.

I said "look" like it because it would only be for a few strikes and then she would get hit. But I'll take progress where I can get it. Of course I hold back most of my powers when I hit her, but it wasn't like that at first. I didn't want to injure her when we first started out, so I would stop just before my strikes landed.

This method, however, yielded no results even after a few days. Upon getting permission from her, I started to actually land weak hits on her, just to get her moving.

I purposefully aim for openings so that she wouldn't show them as often, and she's getting better at it. I'd give her a few more weeks and she will have the basics down, all she would need is to utilize them in real combat to improve even faster.

As for Luffy, I paid a bit more attention to him. The little captain keeps loosing focus and gets even me distracted sometimes. However, once threatened with food, he would meekly comply. I feel like I tamed a wild monkey.

The problem with Luffy's Geppo is mainly because of his lack of focus which disturbs his concentration, therefore, his body center, and then his balance. He fell on his head countless times during practice.

The other problem is his leg strength. Luffy isn't able to kick on the ground all 10 times in a second, offsetting his Geppo already, then his leg muscles couldn't keep up with the multiple uses. At most, he is able to go about 3 to 5 times now, which is a huge improvement by the way.

Usopp's '2 weeks of hell', as he calls it, is going pretty well. He definitely looked a tad bit more muscular than before, and I don't think he gets sore that much anymore. Still doesn't stop him from complaining or whining though.

He once asked me to teach him the Soru already, so when I did, he was actually able to preform it. Just once though. Right after he used the technique, his legs wouldn't stop spasming for over 5 minutes and his mouth wouldn't stop screaming for the next 30. With that experience, he made sure to not ask again before he was deemed ready.

Unsurprisingly, Zoro is the one who made the most progress. The man had been the one who was most focused, strict, and disciplined out of everyone, including myself. He had been at it since day one and never gave up.

Yesterday, after intensive meditation, Zoro, in front of everyone's gazes, drew his sword and swung it at the ocean from Merry's side. I was pleasantly surprised by his successful wind blade or flying slash, however you want to call it. The rest of them were in awe at his success and we promptly partied.

Although Zoro has been able to successfully create a flying slash (I'll just call it that from now on), he still wasn't able to use his legs to preform a Rankyaku. The reason is simple, his leg muscles just weren't strong enough. If I had to guess, Zoro's leg strength is probably a bit more than Usopp's.

As a swordsman, he mainly focused on his arms and upper body. It wasn't like he totally ignored his lower body. Zoro just spent more time on the sword wielding part of his body. Even though I say just a bit more than Usopp, Usopp is by no means a wobbly leg.

The long nosed liar has been running after a lie for almost half of his life. Compared to the average person, his legs are at least 3 times better. He has quite a bit of stamina as well.

In the anime, he was portrayed as such a weakling because in front of the opponents they faced, there was truly not much he could really do, that was until the time skip. In fact, Usopp is probably the bravest person in the crew. Now hear me out before you ruin my ears, a courageous person isn't one who can stand in the face of death and simply smile...those people are called fearless... or idiots. A truly brave person is one that overcomes his fears in the time of need. Wouldn't you agree?

Third Person's PoV:

As a certain Blonde was sleeping inside their shared room on the Merry, a loud sound of cannon woke him up.

"Who's the idiot shooting cannons so early in the morning!?" He startled with a furious voice. In all of his life, sleep was one of the most sacred thing to him. Josh went to sleep early and woke up late, except for on special cases *cough* the day he died *cough*.

As he groggily got up from his single size bed, he put on all of his gears and rushed out the door to knock some sense into whoever that was.

When he stepped out of the door, he was greeted by the sight of 2 newcomers. One on the floor, presumably passed out, while the other is holding his hands as if to never want to let go of a lover. The blonde suddenly remembered that he knew these two, they were Johnny and Yosaku.

Johnny is the one who's not passed out while Yosaku is the one laying on the floor with his tongue sticking out.

Johnny has short black hair, a tattoo on the left side of his face, and oddly, a sunglasses. He wears a blue hoodie with a black shirt underneath, light pants, and he also has a sword strapped to his left side.

Yosaku on the other hand, has a red helmet guard, a long green robe that stretches past his knees, black shirt, black boots, and yellow shorts. Unlike Johnny, Yosaku has his sword on the right side of his hip.

Nami interrupted his grievous cries of sorrow and effectively saved the life of Yosaku who is suffering from scurvy, a very common illness that is deadly enough to kill. The cause of this illness is lack of vitamin c, so some simple lime juice should be able to prevent him from dying.

Nami sighs as she commented, "this is why you need a cook when your out on the sea. Good thing we have one." As she finished, everyone turns to Josh's direction and he immediately shook his head.

There is no way that he would allow Sanji, the pervert that he is, to miss out on his dreams just because he happened to be able to cook as well!

"I'm not a sea cook. There's a difference. I picked up cooking as a hobby, so I know some recipes but that is it! A proper sea cook should know all the necessary nutrients to survive on the ocean, so we still need one." As he said this, Luffy and Usopp, who just came back from putting Yosaku to rest, also heard it.

"What? But I thought.." Nami tried to argue further, but she was prematurely cut off by Josh who turned towards Luffy.

"Captain, wouldn't you like to have 2 chefs, rather than only one? That way, you can eat more meat!" Just as the blonde finished baiting, Luffy's eyes turned into literal meat and he started drooling at the thought.

When Nami saw this, she had no energy left to argue. The cat burglar just raised her hands in defeat.

"I know of a restaurant called the Baratie, they have really amazing cooks there." Johnny decided to pitch in his own sale. "It's not that far from here either."

After this, it was settled, along with my worries. We were heading for the Baratie and going to go get Sanji. Hopefully, a surprise like just now doesn't happen again where a future crew mate is at stake.