Home Stretch

Now that Alex has the logs that Franco needs, he watches Franco get to work on their treehouse. He also helps from time to time in order to hasten the progress. He thought 'Man I wished I had more hands for this kind of work.'

Then like magic he sprouts 4 more pairs of arms and was surprised even Franco was surprised and asked, "WHERE DID YOU... WHAT DID YOU... HOW DID YOU?"

"I don't really know I just ate a fruit that tasted bad then poof got extra arms." Alex shrugged and explained plainly.

"We have to tell this to uncle. He might know what it was or what it does." said Franco as he doesn't know what was happening to his best friend.

"Let's just finish the treehouse first because we just got 4 extra pairs of arms." said Alex as he continues to help in finishing their upgraded treehouse.

A few hours later they went to Alex's house to ask Vincent about Alex's condition.

"Hmmm so you ate a fruit that had hand patterns on it and after eating it you sprouted 4 extra pairs of arms." said Vincent as he scrolled through his book about Devil Fruits which he noted all of the devil fruits he and his network have encountered.

"Okay here it is the 'Hito-Hito no Mi, Model: Thousand Armed Asura' which is a mythical zoan which has five stages until its awakening. Each stage corresponds to the number of pairs of arms you could control independently. The first stage is 100 pairs, the second stage is 200 pairs, the third stage is 300 pairs, the fourth stage is 400 pairs, and the last stage is 500 pairs. After the 5th stage there is no more information as no one has entered that state yet. The drawbacks are the more arms you use, the more immobile you get, and it would take a lot of energy to regrow an arm when it is destroyed or cut off. Basically, your extra arms can do anything, but you have to stay still making you a standing target. Well I think you can counter this by exercising while sprouting arms and see until when you feel the burden of the arms making you slower and putting you in a stationary state, then try to overcome that." explained Vincent as he read from the book and voiced out his opinions on Alex's Devil Fruit.

The next morning Alex just did his normal training with Franco while following his pops' advice on training with the devil fruit power activated. He also trained the arms in using his weapons. So basically, he can use both of his swords and guns at the same time. He also tried to use Armament Haki to his arms and was surprised it worked. So now while training he is trying to harden his whole body, including his extra arms, with Armament Haki in under a second so that it wouldn't be a burden during fights.

Franco, on the other hand, is trying to increase the number of seconds he can see in the future. After his training these past few years, he has only managed to see 1.3 seconds into the future as it is getting hard for him to increase the amount of time he could see in the future, but his Observation Haki has been trained so much that he could cover half of Momon Island with his sensing. 'One step at a time Franco. One step at a time.'

(Timeskip)

Another year has passed, and Alex and Franco are both excited as next year would be the year, they would set sail and begin their journey to the top of the world. They began to increase their training intensity as they trained everywhere in the island. For Alex, Vincent gave him seastone bracers to wear so he could build up a resistance to it and he also works out in the sea so that his weakness towards seawater will lessen and his opponents would only have a slight advantage over him. Alex did not only think of training as he also spent time taking care of his little sister as she played with her friends and when they were at home. He and his little sister have grown closer throughout the years and he would surely miss her when he sets out to sail.

"Alright Franco, we're at the home stretch, the final run, the last spurt, the uhhh... I got nothing but you get the idea." said Alex trying to hide his excitement.

"Yeah we've come so far you know. It was just like yesterday you asked me if I wanted to turn the world upside down with you." said Franco as he remembered what Alex asked him the day they first met.

'I'm glad that I accepted him as my captain' thought Franco