00016. Garp is a devil.

After getting home, the boys were greeted by Makino, Dadan and her bandits who came to the bar. After getting chewed out by everyone for going missing, they ate a big meal which kinda turned into a party.

Afterwards they took a long bath, then went to bed early and passed out within moments of laying down. Garp smiled to himself after putting the boys to sleep, tomorrow training would begin.

Garp walked into the boys room early in the morning with a large bucket of ice water. He removed each boy from their bed and placed them next to each other on the floor. Then he lifted up the bucket and dumped the ice water on all the boys.

"What the!?!?" All the boys yelled out at the same time.

"Get up you brats, it's time to train!"

All the boys were shivering as they glared up at Garp. But Garp only smiled as he focused his gaze on all of them and said, "Get up and go outside, I want to see how you progressed since last year."

As the boys stood up and went to get dry clothes, Garp stepped in front of them and pointed towards the door as he said, "I said go outside."

"But…"

"No buts, go outside." Garp said as he fixed his gaze on Luffy.

The boys reluctantly moved outside, where Garp then led them out to the forest. He took them to some large monkeys and made them fight till the monkeys were defeated. Then he led them to an area with bears and had them fight again.

For about half the day, Garp made the boys fight tougher and tougher animals until they finally lost and were knocked out. Once they all lost he carried them back home and woke them up to eat lunch.

While in the middle of eating Garp said, "No wonder you lost to those marines, none of you made it to level two with the harnesses."

Ace frowned as he said, "I'm close, I can move while using it."

"Moving with it on isn't hard, training with it on is what counts. You need to be able to move normally while using level one, to start training in level two. It's the same thing for all the other levels." Garp said.

Garp glanced at all of the boys before he said, "Looks like I'll need to push you boys harder so you can pass level one by next year."

All the boys shared a glance as they thought about how Garp could possibly increase their training from what he did last time. While they weren't completely sure what he would do, they knew it wouldn't be fun…

After eating lunch Garp took the boys outside and after they put on their training harnesses, he started them on their new daily training regiment. It started off somewhat normal with a ten mile warm up run around the village and surrounding area.

Then it went off the rails as Garp made them do push-ups while having small boulders on their backs. The weight of the boulders wasn't that bad, but combined with the training harness it quickly became too much for the boys. Within a few minutes all of the boys were trapped beneath their own boulder.

As they were trapped on the ground Luffy said, "Grandpa, help us!"

Garp who was eating some crackers while sitting in a beach chair said, "I am helping you. This is teaching you how to endure!"

Needless to say, Garp left the boys trapped for over an hour before he helped them out. Then they moved on to a leg workout on the beach, where each boy was given a decent sized tree trunk. The exercise was to squat one hundred times while balancing the tree trunk on their shoulders. Then they needed to carry it through the sand for one mile and do another set of squats.

None of the boys were able to complete even twenty squats, let alone transport the tree a mile down the beach. Grap still pushed them to complete as many squats as possible before he moved to the next exercise.

It was about an hour from sunset as Garp led the boys down the coast from the village to a vertical cliff, which was easily four hundred feet tall. When they arrived, Garp pointed to the top of the cliff and said, "Climb to the top, before sunset."

Marcus glanced up the sheer cliff face and asked, "This doesn't seem very safe… What if we fall?"

Garp patted Marcus on the shoulder as he said, "Just don't fall and you'll be fine. Bwahahahaha!"

With Garp's words of encouragement, the boys started to climb up the rocky cliff face together. Garp on the other hand relaxed in his chair and enjoyed some crackers as he watched the boys struggle to climb up the cliff.

About twenty minutes into the climb Luffy lost his grip and started to fall, luckily Marcus and the others were next to him when it happened and caught him.

That only worked the first time, because Marcus lost his grip a few minutes later. This time when they went to grab him, Luffy lost his grip, which made Sabo and Ace lose their own grip. A second later all the boys fell almost a hundred feet to land on the somewhat soft sand below.

Each boy suffered some minor injuries from the fall, but the sand somehow cushioned it. Which made no sense to Marcus or the other boys. Garp just glanced at them before he said, "Just because you fell doesn't mean you're done. You still have at least half an hour."

The boys wanted to complain, but that would only make things worse. So the boys dusted themselves off and started over again. As they moved next to the wall, Marcus said, "Ace take the lead this time and find a route up for the rest of us."

Ace glanced at the others who nodded in agreement before he started to climb. With Ace finding secure feet and hand holds for everyone else to follow, it made it a lot easier the second time. Within fifteen minutes they were back where they fell from originally and just about to move past it.

The pace slowed down after that and the boys only made it about half way up the cliff face as the sun was setting in the sky. As Ace tested his next hand hold, a rock clipped his hand and made him slip. As the other boys caught him, another rock hit Marcus making him fall off the wall and drag the other boys down with him.

After falling two hundred feet to the soft sand, the boys were a little more roughed up this time, but could still move around. Ace glanced at Marcus and asked, "What happened, why'd you fall?"

"A rock hit my arm and I lost my grip." Marcus said as he rubbed his bruised hand.

Ace frowned as he said, "A rock also hit my hand."

Garp laughed before he said, "You're welcome."

All the boys turned to glare at Garp as he laughed before he said, "I told you, get to the top before sunset."

"Then you should have told us to climb down!" Ace said while he rubbed a bruise on his leg.

Garp shrugged as he said, "This was quicker. Plus it helps toughen you up. Now come on, it's time to eat dinner."

Garp then led the boys back to Makino's to eat dinner. After they finished up dinner Garp said, "Alright let's head out to start the next set of exercises."

"What?!?" All the boys exclaimed at once.

Garp cast a glance over the boys before he said, "Shut up and get outside. Training just started for you brats."

The boys reluctantly moved outside and followed Garp up the mountain to practice punching trees. It was a task to punch down a tree with one blow, that none of the boys completed yet. So they spent the next couple hours punching trees in the dark, while Garp napped in his chair.

The next task Garp gave the boys was to carry large rocks as they walked through a waist high stream of water. More than once the boys slipped and fell into the cold water and were forced to continue till dawn. When the sun started to rise up, Garp took the boys back down to the village for breakfast at Makino's.

After breakfast he started the boys off with fighting animals again till lunch. Then their workout repeated from the day before with weighted push-ups, squats with tree trunks and climbing up the cliff. After dinner the boys were basically falling asleep on their feet, so Garp took them to the bath early and then let them go to bed right afterwards.

That seemed to help the boys out a lot because the next morning when Garp woke them up, they were completely refreshed and ready to go again. Which is exactly what happened as they were forced to train for two days straight again before they could sleep. Garp kept that training regiment up for his entire stay with the boys.

The day before he was going to leave, instead of training the boys he tested each of them personally. After completing destroying the boys and pointing out weak spots in their defense. Garp brought the boys into Makino's to rest for the day.

After eating lunch Garp went into the back of Makino's bar and brought out four wrapped presents and placed them in front of the boys as he said, "It's a little late but I brought you each a birthday gift."

Luffy was the most excited as he started to open up the present. Inside was a marine chore boy hat, which turned out to be the same thing all the boys received. Luffy complained first as he said, "What the heck is this? I don't wear hats."

Ace nodded in agreement as Sabo said, "I might wear a hat, but I'm not going to wear this one."

"Ya gramps, what the heck is this? You obviously forgot to get us gifts so you just grabbed some hats from a marine base on the way to visit us."

Garp sweated a little as he said, "I did not! I just got you all the same thing, so no one would think I was picking a favorite."

Marcus shook his head before he asked, "If that's the case, where's the gift you promised to bring back for the tournament winner last year?"

All the boys nodded in agreement before Garp said, "It'll be here tomorrow when I leave. I had Bogard help me pick it out, since I don't care about swords."

Marcus smiled as he asked, "So I'm getting a sword?"

"What about me? Do I get a weapon?" Ace asked with a hopeful look on his face.

Garp glanced at Ace as he said, "Why would you get a weapon? You lost."

Ace wanted to reply but Garp cut him off as he looked back at Marcus and said, "You might be getting a sword, but you're not allowed to use it against your brothers or in spars with them."

"Yes grandpa."

"Good, now let's relax and play some games until dinner." Garp said as he pulled out a deck of cards.

The rest of the night was spent playing different card games until dinner. After dinner everyone continued to play games, including Marcus until they went to the bath house. Afterwards they played a few more card games and then went to sleep for the night.

The next morning the boys woke up early and ate breakfast with Garp and Makino before they headed out to the dock. When they arrived at the dock, a navy ship was already approaching and Bogard could be seen standing on the deck.

Within half an hour, the ship docked and Bogard disembarked from the ship to meet Garp and the boys. Carried slung over his right shoulder was a purple colored cloth sack. When he stopped in front of Garp, he removed the sack from his shoulder and said, "Took a while, but I was able to find the perfect one."

Garp took the sack and directly handed it to Marcus as he said, "Here's your prize. Remember what I told you about using it."

Marcus nodded as he took the sack from Garp and felt something weird as he held it in his hands. He wasn't completely sure what was going on though, but was positive it had something to do with the sword. Bogard watched the exchange before he shook his head at their interaction and said, "Let's go to Makino's for a bit and I'll show you how to care for your sword. Since I know Garp didn't explain it to you."