Vidal's Class
High above the boundless, majestic sea, a small boat flew swiftly through the clouds, a thousand meters up in the open sky.
"Man, Issho, your ability really is convenient. I'm almost jealous!" Vidal said with a laugh as he lay on a white beach chair, basking comfortably in the sun.
He really hadn't expected the future Admiral Fujitora to have eaten the Press-Press Fruit so early. He'd thought it would be many years before that happened.
But on second thought, without decades of training and development, pulling asteroids down from outer space and turning them into meteors would be impossible.
Sitting across from him, Issho ate his noodles with chopsticks and replied casually, "That's about all it's good for. In an actual fight, it's not as useful as my swordsmanship."
He had eaten the fruit less than two months ago and had yet to see what was so powerful about it.
"Oh?" Vidal raised an eyebrow. His friend didn't seem to have realized how powerful gravity was.
No, that wasn't right!
Judging by what Issho would do in the future, his fruit's power wasn't limited to gravity. It would be more accurate to call it gravitation.
After all, gravity was one component of gravitation.
"By the way, do you know what the fruit you ate is called?" Vidal asked.
"I don't know, but I call it the Heavy-Heavy Fruit." Issho swallowed the noodles in his mouth, then picked up his bowl and took a sip of broth.
He didn't know? That made things easy. Vidal chuckled inwardly. He felt it was his duty to correct his friend's mistaken view.
"Actually, your fruit is called the Gravity Fruit. It's one of the top-tier Paramecia fruits, and its power isn't as simple as just gravity," Vidal said, making it up with a perfectly straight face.
"How do you know?" Issho stopped moving his chopsticks and looked over at him in confusion.
"Because my family has a Devil Fruit Encyclopedia. I read some of it out of curiosity when I was little," Vidal continued to bluff.
"I see."
But Issho believed him. He had heard of the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia, though usually only wealthy families kept a copy.
And Vidal's family was more than merely wealthy. It was hardly surprising they had an encyclopedia.
"Then can you tell me what the encyclopedia says about the Gravity Fruit?" Issho lowered his head and continued eating, readily accepting the fruit's new name.
He was naturally more interested when it concerned his own fruit's power, especially since Vidal had called it a top-tier fruit.
"Broadly speaking, the Gravity Fruit can be developed in three directions: what you call gravity, the repulsion you're using to make the boat fly right now, and its opposite, attraction."
"All three have limitless potential, whichever one you choose!" Vidal's expression grew a little more serious.
For the next half hour and more, he drew on Issho's future techniques and the ways powerful figures from other worlds used gravitation, explaining in detail what it could accomplish.
Once he got started, he realized that gravity-related abilities were much the same, setting aside their sources and the names of their techniques.
It all came down to pulling things in with attraction, pushing them away with repulsion, crushing them with gravity, and floating or flying. More advanced applications included creating black holes and the like.
Even so, it opened the young Issho's eyes. He felt as though he had only just realized how powerful his fruit's ability was.
"Your talent for developing fruit abilities really is extraordinary!" Issho said admiringly. His bowl was already empty.
"Nothing would make me happier than if it helps you. Oh, and don't forget to use those technique names I just mentioned," Vidal said with a mischievous grin.
"All right!" Issho nodded solemnly.
"I wonder if you've heard of Golden Lion Shiki, the captain of the Flying Pirates, who's been making quite a name for himself lately?" Vidal asked.
"I've heard a little, but I don't pay much attention to such matters, so I haven't looked into him," Issho replied calmly.
"Golden Lion Shiki's fruit ability is a lot like yours. It's the Paramecia-type Float-Float Fruit, which lets him free himself or anything he touches from gravity and make it float."
"As I see it, your Gravity Fruit is a superior version of the Float-Float Fruit. Not only can it do everything the latter can, but it also has several additional areas of ability."
At that, Issho finally took an interest in Shiki. "Can you tell me how he uses his fruit's ability?"
"Of course. That's exactly what I wanted to tell you." Without the slightest hesitation, Vidal described Golden Lion Shiki's abilities and techniques in full detail.
"So as long as you train your ability to a certain level, you can whip up waves, tear up the ground, and lift islands into the air just like him. You could even do things he can't, like bringing down meteors from the sky!"
"Another similarity is that you're both swordsmen in fighting style. Of course, you're nowhere near a match for him right now. He's a genuine master swordsman."
Even now, Vidal could still recall the scene from the movie in which Golden Lion Shiki used "Chopping Wave" to cut through more than a hundred kilometers of sea.
In his view, the power of Golden Lion's own swordsmanship far exceeded that of his Float-Float Fruit ability.
After listening, Issho fell silent. He was taking in everything he had just heard and considering how he would develop his ability in the future.
Though he looked down on Golden Lion Shiki for being a pirate, the man's various applications of his ability were indeed worth learning from.
"There's also something called Awakening when it comes to Devil Fruit abilities. It's an advanced state that only a very small number of ability users can reach."
Vidal intended to tell him everything he knew. Otherwise, once he entered Zephyr's special training camp, Issho would have to spend a great deal of time and effort learning these things on his own.
"Devil Fruit Awakening is often accompanied by great power. For example, someone who produces a substance related to their ability might gain the power to turn things around them into that substance."
"Or take you: right now, you can only control things you touch. After Awakening, you might be able to apply your ability over a wide area, just like Golden Lion."
"But you must understand one thing. Awakening isn't a state you're guaranteed to reach just by training your fruit ability. It also requires a certain trigger and opportunity, or even talent."
Issho felt like he was attending a class, listening to a course called Devil Fruit abilities, taught by Vidal. He had indeed benefited greatly from it.
"Then have you awakened yours?" Issho asked curiously once Vidal had finished.
"Uh, not yet." Vidal looked awkwardly up at the sky. Though they were already in the sky, one had to remember that there was always a sky beyond the sky.
He wondered whether Sakazuki and Borsalino had awakened theirs. After all, they were both in their twenties now, and Borsalino was already twenty-five, a full five years older than him.
Come to think of it, compared with Vice Admiral Garp's future grandson, he had accomplished little as a transmigrator. He was twenty and wasn't even a field officer yet.
Still, all those years of hard work had brought him considerable gains in strength. As for exactly how strong he was, he would have to wait until next year to find out.
It wasn't as though he had never sparred with his father, a Vice Admiral, but their most recent bout had been four years ago. Since then, his father had always found one excuse or another to put him off.
And the key point was that he had lost that match four years ago!
I've found that updating at 12:05 a.m. works really well, so from now on I'll post one chapter at midnight, then another after I get up. The rest of the time, I'll focus on writing and stockpiling chapters.
Also, I looked into Issho's fruit ability, and there's no clear official answer. We don't even know whether he's an ability user, since some people think the power comes from his sword.
So please treat this as the setting for this book and don't get too hung up on it.