Nine Forms

"Then that's easy!"

Vivi eagerly jumped in with her answer. "Once you've confirmed they're a rabble, you can't go wrong sending elite officers to wipe them out!"

"Wrong! Completely wrong!" Ma Qiao shook his head again.

"Why?" Vivi exclaimed. "Was the intelligence wrong? Was the rabble a smokescreen put out by the enemy?"

"No, the intelligence was correct."

Ma Qiao shook his head and explained calmly, "But remember, not a single person who survives on the seas is simple!

"For example, that idiot captain who only seems to know how to drink, eat meat, and throw parties might be the grandson of a high-ranking Marine, the young master of the Revolutionary Army, the nephew of a Marine Admiral, the nephew of a great swordsman, or even the incarnation of the Sun God...

"For example, the lecherous cook might be the third prince of a kingdom of violence and a genetically modified human...

"Or the lying sniper might actually be the god of causality...

"Even the money-grubbing navigator who looks frail and easy to bully might have mermaid blood running through her veins...

"As for that swordsman with no sense of direction, he has a special inheritance too..."

"Stop, stop, stop!"

Vivi hurriedly interrupted Ma Qiao. She stood up with both hands on the table and protested, "There's a limit to how much nonsense you can spout! How could anything so ridiculous happen in this world?"

"Who knows?"

Ma Qiao picked at his ear with his pointer and said with a curl of his lip, "I think it's ridiculous too, but in theory, it could happen. I never rule out that possibility!

"Even if you told me one day that your real identity was a princess or a Celestial Dragon or something, I wouldn't be surprised..."

"Huh?"

Under Ma Qiao's gaze, Vivi felt a pang of guilt. She waved a hand and covered her mouth as she laughed. "Hahaha, that's such a funny joke, mister. How could anything like that happen...

"But you do have a point. A lot of people who look completely ordinary often have powerful backgrounds..."

"That's right! You never know what extraordinary figure you might provoke by acting rashly."

Ma Qiao also seemed to have merely been joking.

"In short, the correct answer to this question is either to go all out from the start, like a lion hunting a rabbit. Concentrate all your forces, capture those guys quickly, then immediately hand them over to the Marines for Beli, leaving the trouble to the Marines and Impel Down.

"Or make peace with them and become friends as an early investment.

"What you absolutely must not do is use the salami-slicing tactic, continually sending your officers after them from weakest to strongest, giving the enemy targets to level up on.

"Still less should you knock someone out with one blow and assume everything is settled, unaware that you've already become a mentor on their path to growth...

"To sum it up in one sentence: never underestimate the enemy. Always use an ox cleaver to kill a chicken!

"Of course, if you're not concerned about collecting the bounty, the best choice is to grind the enemy's bones to dust and destroy every trace of the body..."

Vivi watched Ma Qiao's sweeping strokes as he wrote on the blackboard, looking as though she didn't understand a word but was deeply shaken nonetheless. She asked timidly, "But... but... I don't have an ox cleaver. I don't even have a chicken knife..."

"That brings us to the second question I'm going to discuss today!"

Ma Qiao picked up the chalk again and wrote two large characters on the blackboard: "Trump cards."

"Trump cards?" Vivi blinked, a little confused.

"Remember what Santini said? He was actually a competent pirate, and he did a good job of hiding his trump card as a Drill-Drill Fruit User... but..."

Ma Qiao shook his head. "He had too few trump cards. And the moment he revealed his fruit ability, his trump card was no longer hidden and lost its original power!"

"Then..."

Vivi tilted her head and suddenly asked, "Then how many trump cards do you have, mister? How were you able to defeat a Devil Fruit User?"

"Well... take a guess?"

Ma Qiao shook his head. "In any case, from now until the end of your internship, you'll be building up your own trump cards."

"What should I do?"

Vivi was curious and expectant, but also a little worried.

She was curious because Mister Ma Qiao came from the homeland of the legendary great pirate Wang Zhi, so he might have a special training method.

That was naturally something to look forward to.

Vivi was already prepared to endure hardship in training, even to get hurt and bleed.

Her slight worry was that she wasn't sure whether she would be trained into a devilish musclewoman like Miss Monday...

But what Ma Qiao said next was completely beyond Vivi's expectations.

"Our Ma Family Kung Fu doesn't concern itself with set routines or grueling training. It has always concerned itself only with fate and sudden enlightenment."

With a flash of white light, Ma Qiao used Flash again, appearing before Vivi. "Little girl, I have a move called the Flying Thunder God Technique. It's a secret our family never passes on to outsiders, but now I can teach it to you for just 32 million Beli. What do you say?"

"32 million Beli?"

"That's right! For 32 million Beli, I can teach you the Flying Thunder God Technique. It's one of the Ma Family's Nine Forms, and you've already experienced what it can do."

The so-called "Nine Forms" were, naturally, something Ma Qiao had made up.

Although the pirate world was, at its core, a supernatural world that emphasized individual strength, judging from the plot, factions were still very important.

Aside from Dracule Mihawk, few strong people in the pirate world ventured across the seas relying solely on their own strength.

If his only goal was to become one of the Shichibukai, Ma Qiao thought he only needed to focus on accumulating heroes.

But to go further, besides having heroes as retainers and senior officers, he also needed mid-level officers and foot soldiers.

To mass-produce mid-level officers, the Marines had created closely guarded secrets like the Six Powers.

Ma Qiao figured that, as a gold-medal instructor, he ought to create a "Nine Forms" of his own to outdo the "Six Powers" in sheer presence.

Of course, none of that had taken shape yet.

Ma Qiao hadn't even decided which nine forms they would be. He only knew that something like Tekkai was absolutely out of the question.

In any case, Ma Qiao reasoned that Vivi was a princess. Though she had fallen on hard times, she ought to have some savings.

So he went ahead and made his boast.

With how convenient Flash was, there was no need to worry that Vivi wouldn't be tempted. It would be extremely useful for her to increase her strength and save her country.

So Ma Qiao was sure he had her.

And so, the ignorant girl was indeed taken in.

But Ma Qiao was stunned too.

Because...

Click.

Vivi suddenly undid the button at her collar, and the blouse over her camisole slipped down her fair, tender collarbones to below her shoulders.

Ma Qiao's eyes widened, and he covered one with his hand.

"What are you doing? Am I, Ma Qiao, a teacher who doesn't know how beautiful his wife is, that kind of man? Put your clothes back on!"

Ma Qiao had wanted to shout that rebuke at the girl before him, but she was too fair, too dazzling...

Don't misunderstand. What was fair was Vivi's long, swanlike neck, and what was dazzling was the emerald-green gemstone on her chest.

"Mister... I don't have that much money... but this necklace was left to me by my grandmother. It's worth at least 100 million Beli. Please, you have to help me get stronger!"

"Because there's something I absolutely have to do!"