14 The future has yet to be written

November, 1512

Mt. Colubo, on Dawn Island

"Hey Luffy!!! That's my meat! Stop stealing my food or I'll beat you black and blue!"

"Ah, I thought you were finished? Shishishi."

*BAM*

"Finished my ass! That was the best part I was looking forward too!"

"Shihahaha! Ace your punch no longer hurts since I ate that fruit."

*BAM*

"ouch!! Ahhh it hurts! Ehhh?! Jackson? Why did you hit me?"

"Are you really asking me that after eating even MY food?!"

"That's why you hit me?! Food is meant to be eaten and even more so when it is delicious, so of course I ate it!"

'This brat… HE MUST BE DOING IT ON PURPOSE!'

I can feel my blood pressure rise so rapidly that I seriously would believe it if someone told me that I have entered gear 2 just now… and just as I was about to test out on the rubber brat, wether my strength and speed explosively increased, I heard another voice a bit further away from me.

"Ahahahaha, Jackson-nii even you got your meat stolen by Luffy!"

"… you find this funny?"

My voice came out cold enough to surprise even me, but it served its purpose since silence fell upon our camp that very instant. Sabo and Luffy stopped laughing and sweat started to run down their heads.

"Why did you idiot have to poke an open wound."

Ace commented from behind.

*BAM*BAM*BAM*

"ARGHH! That hurts!"

*MUNCH*BITE*MUNCH*

"ARGHH! My meat!"

Luffy and Sabo respectively cried out. We are currently having dinner beneath our base. Basically it's just a tree house but it's the first house of us brothers, that we own. Luffy has been staying with us for a while now and Sabo has moved in with us recently. Meaning the events regarding the Grey Terminal aren't far away.

I am still unsure about how much I should intervene in the coming events around Sabo, especially since I am rather cautious of Dragon. After all not much is known about him, not even his purpose for being in the goa kingdom. I highly doubt he came by just to see a world noble or just to check wether the goa kingdom plans to burn down the slums outside the walls. I doubt it's to check on Luffy even more since he shouldn't be stupid enough to do that. Sure he will safe the people in Grey Terminal and even Sabo, which is great, but that wasn't the purpose of his visit.

*Sight* Let's not think about it right now. What else happened in the last few months since Shanks left? Sabo finally unlocked observation haki, so I started guiding him. By guiding him instead of directly teaching him, he can learn on his own how to control and use it in a short time and not become dependent on others telling him everything directly. Thanks to his brains he figured things out relatively fast. His talent might be a little lower than Ace's but his intelligence is a bit higher. We also have stolen Bluejam's treasure after which I had to either beat up whoever he sent to get it back, or killed the person if underhanded tricks were deployed. Luffy is currently training his physical strength while also providing us good firewood. If we have to much to store away, we would sell it and go to party's bar to spent some time with Makino. Dadan is still being a tsundere even though it's becoming more and more obvious how much she cares for us.

Since the end of October she would come every night to check wether we were cold, or wether we had enough blankets. The least I could do for her was to convince Sabo, Ace and Luffy not to place traps around the tree house. We would also go back to the house very often and spend some time over there.

It's not only Dadan but grandpa as well. Ever since he brought Luffy to live with us, he no longer needed to split the time he was on leave between us and could visit us more often and for longer periods. Also since Shanks left I've started to have sparring matches with grandpa. Since he was still stronger then me, I knew that I could go all out on him, so I started using my sword even though I initially didn't want to use it when sparring against grandpa.

But thanks to that he was forced to take me somewhat seriously, witch gave me the chance to watch and study the use of the rokushiki. So far I've recreated soru and geppo and begun teaching them to Ace and Sabo as well. They still didn't quite meet the requirements for the techniques but they would get there while training.

As for the other 4 rokushiki techniques, I've got no idea so far. Soru is about kicking the ground 10 times at once to increase your speed, but the trick behind that is a bit different from what one might expect. It's actually instantaneous acceleration, allowing the user to reach their maximum speed ten times faster. Depending on the user's maximum speed and the time to reach it varies but with this technique everybody would look extremely fast.

Geppo works similarly. The difference is that instead of accelerating yourself instantly to max speed, you use your legs to accelerate the air by kicking, fast enough to compress it so much, that for a short moment it becomes dense enough for you to step on it.

I've tried similar principles for rankyaku but nothing worked so far. I feel that there is just one think missing that I don't know of. When I asked grandpa he just told me that he couldn't teach me if I don't join the navy but he also couldn't do anything when I am learning it on my own. Despite saying that he started to use the rokushiki almost during the whole sparring matches in various situations, to give me as much information as possible.

'Thanks grandpa!'

"OuOu! Jackson how can your fist hurt me so much?!"

"it's because of haki idiot. It makes his fist much stronger and harder."

Ace answered for me since he already learned a few things. Luffy looked like he didn't understand which isn't surprising by now and Sabo pouted not listening to the conversation. I honestly wouldn't mind to much if the days went on like this forever but I didn't come here to spend my time leisurely staying on one island for the rest of my life.

'My goal and ambitions… only the future will tell.'

(AN: Hey everyone, I noticed that my ff is now on rank ten in the monthly power rankings after barely 3-4 days and I wanted to thank everyone who donated powerstones! Thank you very much! I wrote an extra chapter as thank you, hope that's ok. I'm not going to actively push for a higher rank in the ranking and instead will just go with the flow and continue as I have until now. )