20 Chapter 20

20

That's why he was training to master Geppo. One might ask how training in Soru would let him learn Geppo. Well, it's easy, according to the book.

Soru was kicking the ground ten times in less than a second, and when you compress that strength in one kick you get Geppo. It was a speed-based technique, and that's why he was trying to make his soru faster. As he still was a bit away from mastering Geppo.

Seven out of ten times he would fail. So that's why he was trying to improve that.

But there was also a problem. He could only use Soru in the mastered state in gear one. And he needed to master it in his base form.

His gear one wasn't just gimmicks. It multiplied his overall strength and speed, so he still needed to increase his base strength.

He was also working on his own version of the finger pistol.

But where the book really helped was the Life Return Kami-e and Tekkie.

Mainly Life Return: Kami-e

That's why Luffy wanted to master rubber kami-e… it might seem odd that a rubber man was trying to learn a lower-mimicked version of his own technique. But he had a reason.

Life Return was fully being able to control one's body. You can take it as an advanced version of Tekkai. 

And  Kami-e was turning your body like paper using Life Return, to avoid strikes, but he remembered one of the unimportant CP-9 agents use Kami-e sludge version, so why couldn't he make a rubber version for it?

What if something like Ace happened to him, he was captured by marines and put in sea prism cuffs. His fruit would be nullified, but what if he could use kami-e rubber (which was non-devil fruit-based) to slip out of them? That's the reason why he was trying to get so familiar with his rubber body and gear one.

Call him paranoid. But he might need to fight under the sea, or in cuffs and then having something similar to his devil fruit would help him a lot.

For now he was mainly focusing on, Tekkie, he would learn to do it with his devil fruit before doing it without it. The book didn't have any specific info on it, except contracting one's muscles till it matches the durability of steel. So he planned to use his devil fruit to learn it first, before learning it with his fruit powers.

But that would take time. After that he would move on the Life Return and go from there.

The tempest kick was also something that he couldn't do right now. As with what Boagrd hinted at, learning to cut steal was essential for wind slashes. And Tempest Kick was a swordless air slash, so he would need to learn that first.

"Okay, let's get back to training… Learning Geppo fully by the end of this week would be awesome. So I don't have any time to waste." With that Luffy stood up, but then he noticed something odd.

His hat was missing. "What the…"

He looked around and found his hat in the top of a tree. "How did it get there…" he shrugged, the wind maybe. He stretched out his rubber hand and tried to grab it. Only for the hat to disappear.

Luffy blinked, he saw something at the last moment before the hat moved. And sure enough, looking to his side he saw a small monkey wearing his hat. But this monkey looked a bit different from the monkey that he usually fought on the island.

It was also smaller, two feet in height maybe. The most distinct feature of it was that, it had six arms. This species of monkey was definitely not from this island.

"Hey, give that back," Luffy said, not moving from his spot. "I don't like playing games with my hat."

The six armed monkey grinned before he pulled down his eyelid and stuck out his tongue.

"Yes very mature of you…" Luffy said disappearing from his spot, and appearing right in front of the monkey. "But I will have to take that back…"

But the moment he tried to grab the hat, the monkey disappeared.

And Luffy was wide-eyed. "Am I seeing things…" he looked a bit foward, where the monkey was dangling from a tree. Luffy was sure… that monkey just used soru now.

Was that even possible…

But Luffy couldn't ponder on it much as the monkey gave a mocking scream before it started to dangle of into the jungle.

"Why you… hey, wait!" Luffy followed the six armed monkey this time using soru again, but to his surprise, he missed the little imp. It went on for a while, before Luffy had it enough.

"Okay, this is dragging on for too long." Luffy said, half annoyed. The monkey was having fun of course. "Soru!"

With that Luffy appeared right above the strawhat wearing monkey. "Got you now…"

But all he got was a foot to his face as the monkey jumped in air… and it started climbing it.

"I call it bullshit!" Luffy flabbergasted. "First Soru… now Geppo. What are you the next marine fleet admiral."