Ch7: Stupid heroism, New ability?

More than 2 years have passed since Caden had the talk with Bellemere and in that time not much has changed.

Mastery of his devil fruit has gone up a little bit, he could now make 3d shapes without fail and change them on the fly.

He learned to make his slime more sticky or focus the stickiness in one place.

Additionally he learned how to make his slime keep a given shape, as long as it was somewhat circular. So although no sharp angles or smooth and long edges could be made, a ball was easily doable.

Combining it with being sticky, he could put that ball or other shape and leave it sitting on the wall or the ceiling.

Learning that it wasn't bouncy made some of his plans to copy Luffy's abilities go down the drain.

Alas, you can't have everything.

A potentially useful application of his slime he has found in the stickiness + imitation combo. One time he tried to stick the slime to himself, which worked great. Next he made the slime change shape, giving himself another arm, after which changing its color to match his skin, which worked perfectly.

As his slime control is mostly based on his thoughts, he could move the artificial limb however he wanted. Downside was at the start, as the amount of concentration needed was astronomical. With many tries and errors, he managed to lower the needed focus, making it useful in daily stuff. Mostly in training his devil fruit mastery, which was already great, since his ideas on how to improve that were getting close to zero.

Still, the artificial limb was impossible to use in actual fights, as he couldn't force his mind to easily focus on so many tasks at the same time.

Different, more passive use of that was to modify his looks with the slime, as it could perfectly mimic the look of his skin.

For fun he tried it on himself. First he created a mask, which he modified to fit on his face, leaving holes for his eyes, nose and mouth. Next, he made it into his skin color on the outside, adding a few scars and other things.

Putting it on, he found that he looked like a completely different kid or rather a teenager, as in these 2 years he grew even more, being almost as high as a 12 year old, while being only 8. With this amount of growth, he will already be a massive man when he turns 15.

He went around the village, playing some pranks on people, acting like he's a different person.

Such a shame, if he was a little higher, he could do some adult stuff, but alas, a few years more won't make much of a difference.

While walking around, he approached one of the less walked paths between the buildings. It was one of the many shortcuts he found in the village. Through it you could directly leave the village premises and after a short walk get on the road to the port.

It was the second to last place he wanted to visit today wearing the mask, before going to Bellemere, because this morning a merchant ship was supposed to come.

When he got closer, he heard some voices, so he stopped behind the corner to eavesdrop, intrigued. From the side there were some big, heavy planks leaning on the wall, so he could even see a little into the alley.

What he saw made his blood boil.

"S-shut up woman, you scream and I kill you on the spot, you got it?"

Inside, in the shade was a man and a woman, the guy looked to be around 30 years old, with a black hair and beard. He sported a big belly, together with some muscles on his arms. He was wearing a brown coat with some stains and some gray pants with black boots.

He was pinning a woman to the wall, not letting her get away. 

She looked shocked and scared, fearing the man before her.

In one hand he was holding a knife, putting it near the woman's neck, while the other was exploring her body.

'Oh god, I better call somebody before he kills her.' Thinking so, he was almost leaving when he spotted who the woman was.

'Oh no! That's Shanon, Bill's wife! He always gives me some free buns from his bakery when I visit to help.' While thinking so, the situation started escalating.

The man started to tear apart her blouse, getting ready to rape her. Effectively, Shanon used some strength to resist him, moving her body to the sides.

"Stop struggling you bitch, one more move and I slit your throat." He said, putting the knife even closer, touching her neck directly.

As she moved again, from the knife's edge blood started slowly coming out.

The man paid it no mind, moving down to her pants.

Seeing that, Caden had no choice but to help her himself, who knew how long she would last before she bled out.

Trying not to make a sound, he got closer, staying out of the man's eye range.

As he was almost behind him, the planks from before slid down, making a sound.

Startled, the man turned around just to see Caden trying to pounce on him. Before he reached him, the man moved to the side, making a punch aimed on the intruder.

Barely dodging it, he swung his arm at the man, striking him on the shoulder, which made him drop the knife, before trying to continue with a punch to his face.

The man dodged, punching Caden on his abdomen, making him lean forward in pain. Then he struck him a second time in the face, which made the boy stumble.

Fortunately he quickly returned to his senses, barely dodging as the rapist tried to punch him to the ground.

Looking around for any possible thing to use as a weapon, he saw the knife laying down next to Shanon, who passed out. Throwing himself in that direction, he dodged another attack before trying to grab the knife.

Unfortunately, the man has body slammed him into the wall before he managed to touch the knife.

As he fell down, the guy took the knife and slashed at him. Trying to stop that, Caden put his hands out to catch the man's hand, but it didn't work.

The guy swung the knife at his fingers, cutting 3 of them before Caden put his hand out of the knife's range. With the sudden pain that came with getting his fingers cut off, he got into rage, swinging his arm at the man's face much faster than before, striking him in the cheek.

As the guy stumbled back, Caden shot up on his feet, punching the man in his groin, making him lean down before catching his head and kicking his face with his knee multiple times.

The man was unable to resist, dropping his knife again. As Caden let go of his head, he tried to reach out for the knife again, before being kicked with full force on the head again, making him lose consciousness. 

Looking as the man fell down, he kicked the knife back and looked for Shanon.

Getting closer, he saw that the wound was very shallow and already slowed down with bleeding, so he checked her pulse.

Taking her wrist and finding it, he tore a part of her sleeve and made a makeshift bandage, putting it to her neck, making the wound stop bleeding completely.

Getting up, he looked for his sliced fingers, thinking to himself.

'Damn, this hurts like hell. Weirdly, I expected much more pain than this.' He thought, finding his fingers and tearing his own short sleeves, one to wrap the fingers in and the second to wrap his bleeding hand. With that done he picked them up, wrapping them in the cloth and taking them into his only healthy hand.

'I can't expose myself here, who knows who that guy is. Maybe he's from some gang and If so, I don't want any people trying to kill me anytime soon.' Thinking so, he was glad that he still had his mask on.

'I should move, maybe Nako can somehow sew my fingers back.' With that small hope, he got ready to leave. Going closer to the man, he again kicked him in the head, making him bleed from its back.

'I need to get someone to come here and get Shanon help. This dude is surely not waking up too soon, If ever. I don't really care. Even if he does, these planks look perfect to keep him in place.' He thought, pulling them onto the guy, covering his body from his neck down. Standing up, he took a deep breath.

"Help! There is fire here!" Screaming so, he fastly left through the exit on the port side, before running into the direction of Nako's clinic.

Why did he scream fire? That's because people are more likely to come and look for the fire out of curiosity and maybe help, rather than if he screamed rape.

Humans are just animals after all, their own survival is always more important. After all, if they tried to help and the assailant had a weapon, they could get hurt or even die.

Caden is the perfect example of that here, his fingers got cut off, because he tried to play hero and save the damsel in distress.

Walking through the village, he tried his best to mask his hand and look down, ignoring people on the way.

After a few minutes, he got in front of the clinic, going closer to open the doors. Standing in front of them, he absorbed back his mask before stepping inside.

Good thing that nobody was around at the moment.

Getting inside he looked at the front desk, but to his shock, where Nako should be sitting was Nojiko, looking down on some papers and writing something.

"Nojiko, what are you doing here?!" He loudly asked, confusion on his face.

Looking up, she noticed him, greeting him with a smile.

"Oh, hi Caden. Do you have some new slime for me to play with?" She asked, looking at him expectantly.

"No, not this time. Can you tell me where Nako went? I need his help with something." He answered, hiding his bloodied hand behind his back.

"Hmm, I will tell you, If you show me what you are hiding behind your back." She countered, getting up and walking in his direction with a teasing smile.

"This is not the time for jokes Nojiko, please tell me quickly where he is." Said Caden, getting weaker from the blood loss.

"Ok, but first show me what you're hiding!" Saying that she took his hand and moved it in front of her.

"Oh my gosh! What happened to your hand!" She screamed, looking at the blood soaked sleeve wrapped in the place of his fingers.

"Not important, everything is fine, now where is Nako!" He said trying not to sound desperate, as to not scare the girl too much.

"What do you mean not important, you are bleeding! Come with me, Nako has bandages somewhere here!" She said, taking his hand and dragging him after her to the room in the back.

Caden didn't have enough strength to escape her weak grip, which showed how bad his situation was. The bloodloss started to affect him more with every minute.

Getting to the bed, she pushed him on to sit, then took his hand to have a look.

"CADEN! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FINGERS! WHERE ARE THEY!" She started screaming, tearing up at the sight of his mangled hand with only two fingers, funnily enough them being the pinky and the thumb, making Caden show a 'call me' signal when he stretched his two fingers.

"A situation happened." He calmly answered, not having the power to shout.

Taking his normal hand out, he put the severed fingers on the side, showing them to Nojiko.

"My fingers are here, I hope Nako has some way to sew them back. Do you have any ice here? It should help me keep them fresh for later." He asked somewhat jokingly, to make the crying mess in front of him move her attention to somewhere else.

"No, I don't know if he has any! Let me help you stop the bleeding first, then I will run to find him!" She managed to say between sobs, moving to take the bandages from the cabinet.

'Damn, I didn't know she was there, If I knew I would have looked for Nako directly instead of coming here. She is too young to be seeing such wounds.' He thought, looking helplessly at her coming with a bandage.

As she took his hand and started to put a bandage on it, she unconsciously picked up his finger and tried to put it back in place, while sobbing and crying.

"How did this happen?" She muttered, putting his middle finger to its previous spot.

At that moment, Caden felt a sudden, small jolt from that place. Thinking that it was just pain, he ignored it, but as Nojiko repeated the motion two more times, he understood that it wasn't pain he was feeling, his devil fruit was trying to do something.

Feeling that, he told Nojiko. "Put my finger to the wound and hold it here for a moment, please." He weakly said.

"Wha- oh, okay." Confused, she did as he asked.

Closing his eyes to better focus, he directed his power to the wounded place, feeling as something started to change.

From the perspective of Nojiko, she saw as in the place where the finger was touching his hand, a slime started to form, looking for the severed part.

Reaching it, suddenly it burst in power, filling the space in between the flesh, binding the finger to the hand.

What Caden felt was that suddenly he could feel his finger again, but only barely. With every moment however, this feeling rose in power, before he stopped feeling pain in that spot.

Looking down at his hand, he saw that his finger was back in its place, with slime at the edge getting absorbed back into his body. Trying to move it, he found that his middle finger was perfectly working, even better than usual.

"Nojiko quick, put my other fingers back in place! No, you put them incorrectly, that one is the index finger, not the ring one! Swap them!"

As she put them correctly, the same thing happened, with them getting fused back in their rightful place.

Somehow, his hand was back to normal.

"Good job Nojiko, maybe you should become a doctor in the future." Saying so, Caden fell asleep, having lost too much blood. Fortunately, he stopped looking like he fought someone.

~2493 words