“The prince will be returned back home, safe and sound, in a few days.” Shigeuchi wasn’t going to insult the girl’s intelligence by pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about, not when they weren’t exactly trying to hide the fact they were responsible for the kidnapping and not when she had a dagger to a crewmember’s neck. Of course, he didn’t bother to say what would happen if their demands weren’t met, but even then the prince himself would be fine; he’d be days away in Water 7 with them when the bomb planted in Alabasta went off in seven days’ time. “Until then, he’ll be staying with us I’m afraid. No negotiating, unless you’re saying you’ll pay his ransom here and now?”
Shigeuchi shifted position, subtly moving his hands to rest on his hips so that they would be closer to the sword at his waist. “Is there any way I can convince you to walk away from this without bloodshed? You and you’re captain can’t take us all on by yourselves.”
I'd assume not honestly, but for the purposes of this RP where it really only affects my character, I'm fine with that limitation. I think powers like Trafalgar's and Sugar's that affect a person directly would still work since from what we've seen water doesn't stop a power from working, i.e. it doesn't remove a power's effect after it has been applied, it just stops someone from using their power in the first place.
@ladyonyx04 Lexi couldn't be swapped because of the water, so it was taken into consideration. If the water evaporated then that protection would go away; looking at the wiki it's actually any kind of water that causes a Devil Fruit user to lose their powers, not just salt water, i.e. it's the water not the salt that matters.
There's a lot more to that weakness than I thought. Moving water like rain or waves won't have any effect, but standing water of any kind will. Devil Fruit uses with more than half their bodies submerged will lose their strength but having any amount of their body in contact with standing water will cause them to lose their powers, unless the properties of their bodies have been changed by the Devil Fruit in some way.
Shigeuchi watched as Kuroda left the ship, disappearing in a flash of light as he reappeared by the young woman on the docks. He began to distract her, by which he meant drawing his swords and attacking the other Logia-user with a half-hearted swing, engaging the water-manipulating woman in combat. The older pirate watched as the youngster fought with the clear intent to delay rather than actually hurt his opponent, while the girl dodged and spent more time talking than trying to fight back. He let out a sigh; the fact the upstart had managed to get his hands on that fruit of all things was a bit concerning given his attitude so far. If he tried anything, like trying to oust either himself or the captain for example, then it wouldn’t be as simple as throwing him overboard and letting him cool off on his way back to shore, they’d have to kill him.
He’d have to give the kid The Speech soon and hope that it sank in. Power didn’t automatically mean authority, but if he didn’t realise that himself and accept it then there would be problems.
Nikko gave the order to depart, breaking away from the docks in a more literal sense than normal. The Golden Lion MKII would head out to sea first, gaining some distance from their attackers before deploying their balloons and taking to the skies; they didn’t need to win this fight after all, just escape, and the longer they spent tethered to the dock the more time the Royal family or the marines would have to mount a rescue. It meant leaving Kuroda behind, which Shigeuchi would be fine with, but unfortunately the upstart could fly back to the ship before they got too far away.
A gunshot rang out on the docks and Shigeuchi turned his attention back to the fight between the light and the water to see the former take a bullet through the shoulder. That the bullets drew blood either meant that Kuroda still wasn’t used to his Devil Fruit power and hadn’t turned intangible in response to the attack or that the shooter had imbued the shots with Haki before firing. Shigeuchi scanned the dock for the gunman, expecting to see the white uniform of a marine or another crew involving themselves in the fight; he saw nothing of the sort however, nothing but a panicked crowd of bystanders running for cover. It was perhaps a lone gunman, but a one gunman that could use Haki was a problem he didn’t want to deal with.
It was a kind of rule that Logia-users who were new to their powers thought themselves invincible until they had their first run-in with a Haki user, at which point they either learned a harsh lesson in life or died. Kuroda may have just learned that lesson, Haki was a rare skill even in Paradise after all, but judging from the way he continued to attack rather than panic or freeze up suggested he was familiar with it already.
A commotion on the deck dragged his attention back to the ship. Turning his head he saw the assassin, the young captain’s so far only confirmed crewmember, holding one of their own crewmembers hostage. She had made it aboard somehow, sneaking onto the boat before they could leave the docks and now holding a knife to someone’s throat.
With an exasperated, drawn out breath Shigeuchi drew his sword and pulled a nearby crewmember in front of himself, lining the two of them up so that he could see both the pirate and Lexi at the same time. Raising the sword above his head and placing both hands on the hilt, Shigeuchi prepared to cleave through the crewmember before him with one stroke. “Don’t move.” He reached out with his Devil Fruit ability, attempting to wrap both the pirate and Lexi with his power and swap their positions and cut the assassin down before she knew what hit her.
He tensed his muscles and drew power into his arms, the blade of his sword turning black as he imbued the weapon with Armament Haki just in case, and made the switch.
The power fizzled out and Shigeuchi stopped the blade a millimetre above the pirate’s collarbone before he could cleave his own crewmember in half. With a huff he sheathed his sword and pushed the somewhat shaken crewmember aside, forcing his way through the disgruntled pirates until he stood at the front of the circle of guns and swords surrounding Lexi. “Nice trick, whatever it is. Captain’s busy, so you get me instead; what do you want?”
“Oh, what now?” Before Reiko could think of a suitably scathing response to the fact Manaka had forgotten to give them their objective, alarms starting blaring out across the server for all to hear. Her head snapped up and began to turn to look every which way in the empty corridor they stood in as she looked for some indication of what was going on; she didn’t think that she and Harumi were to blame, so the alarm was probably due to something the other group had done, but just because they weren’t the cause didn’t mean they didn’t need to be concerned.
If people were looking for intruders then their flimsy cover, which so far consisted of the fact that Reiko was wearing a hoodie that she had found back stage, would be blown as soon as someone questioned who they were. And if the audience began to spill out of the auditorium into this corridor and saw them out here alone they may not even bother to ask questions. “We need to get out of the open like this. We’ll look too suspicious for being the only people not listening to the concert when the alarm went off.”
Reiko’s gaze fell on the sign leading to Siren’s room and had an idea. If Siren was the person on stage then her room was probably empty right now and if she was the leader of this group, or at least someone important, then this list Manaka wanted might be there as well. It was also most likely guarded and the first place Siren would check after an alarm, but they were critically short of options right now. “Damn it. Let’s go this way.” Reiko grabbed Harumi by the sleeve and began tugging her in that direction.
Shigeuchi slumped down once the switch had been made, falling back into a chair that had been set up behind him for just that purpose. To be completely honest, swapping someone he could only see through a live video feed with an object in front of him was something he wasn’t sure if he could do and he wasn’t sure if he Devil Fruit ability had a maximum range to it or not either. His Kōkan-Kōkan No Mi seemed to work on anything that he could see, limited only by the range of his vision, and in his many years of having it he thought he had tested the limits of what it could do; he needed a clear image of what he could see for one thing, along with a sense of the distances involved, and moving objects were harder to target. He’d used a telescope or a pair of binoculars to extend his range before, but he thought that using a television would be pushing things a little; apparently not though, as the young prince stared starry-eyed around the deck at the various criminals, vagabonds and cutthroats surrounding him.
It took more out of him though, that was for sure. Or maybe it was just his age catching up to him.
“Looks like the Prince won’t be any trouble; I guess those stories of Luffy being friends with the Queen back in the day were true.” Shigeuchi turned to look at Nikko out of the corner of his eye, before raising his voice to be heard by the rest of the crew and the prince. “Prince Vivian, you’ll be our guest for the next few days; don’t cause any trouble and this will be a nice, peaceful trip for you to tell your mother about later.” He left it up to his imagination what would happen if he did cause them any trouble. “Crew, prepare the royal chambers for the Prince; we’ll leave as soon as he’s stowed away.” Several crew members began moving around, heading below deck to make sure the prince’s cell was ready for their new prisoner.
In a few moments the deck was abuzz with activity, crewmembers either leading the prince away or taking part in the preparations to leave; they couldn’t actually take off until Nikko closed the door to his chamber, but there was a lot to do before the Golden Lion MKII was ready. Those who weren’t moving were instead standing guard and as Shigeuchi looked around the ship he saw one of the men standing at the decks edge trying to get his attention.
He stood and walked over to him and as he reached the railing the guard pointed off the side of the ship towards the crowded docks. Or more specifically he pointed towards the two young and persistent women from the bar, Caitlyn’s white hair standing out like snow in a desert town; even if the girl’s hair wasn’t as distinctive as it was, the obvious use of her Devil Fruit power would have been enough to give her away; a wide patch of clear space grew around her as people moved away from her and her dangerous abilities. The other girl was nowhere to be seen, but no doubt she was skulking around somewhere.
“Tch, I’ll give them points for effort, but they really need to learn when to call it quits. Hey! New guy!” Shigeuchi turned and fixed his glare on Kuroda; the young man had followed them onto the ship, but as far as Shigeuchi was concerned he had yet to be accepted onto the crew. “Consider this your audition. Keep that girl busy until we’re ready to take off and I’ll make you a junior member of the crew.”
Well, that was considerably more dramatic than he’d expected. The Flame Lance shot out of his hand with more speed than his previous attempts, the more concentrated spear of energy almost seeming to pull itself through the air with its drill-like rotation towards the stream. It also didn’t explode once it had bit into his target like it had previously, though that might just be because the spitting and steaming water hid what was happening. The skill message popped while the water was still boiling away quickly followed by the level-up message he was hoping to see.
He didn’t need to read the description to know that the spell cost more Mana than a regular Fireball as he felt his reserves drain considerably as the spell left his hands. That it was faster than a regular Fireball was also evident, but the note that it could potentially lower his opponent’s defence was interesting. Due to its cost it was a spell that would be best used sparingly, either to crack opponents with strong defences or to hit opponents which were too fast for his other spells to hit. Costly or not, it added yet another tool to his kit, another solution to a potential problem that may show up in the future, which is exactly what he wanted.
Speaking of his tool kit, with his recent level-up he had another five skill points to spend and given their imminent meeting with a potentially dangerous Goblin tribe he planned on using them to prepare for any eventualities that may happen. His skill list hardly looked any different than it had a few moments ago, so he was able to ignore the information displayed to him having already thought about what he wanted to spend his points on. They were about to enter into negotiations with a group of creatures native to this world, his first non-hostile encounter with something that wasn’t reincarnated like himself, and he had a Charisma skill that was close to completion that might come in handy in the upcoming meeting; normally he wouldn’t want to spend points on anything that close to ranking up by itself but considering he hadn’t seen any progress in the last day and a half he felt okay in this case. He could also spend some points in ranking up his Alert skill, just in case these Goblins tried anything sneaky.
“System: show current experience.”
Before that however, there was something he wanted to check. He knew that creating skills gave him experience, and ranking them up might do the same, but did purchasing skills with points also give him experience? He would assume not, but given that he now had a rare opportunity to find out for certain, he was going to make use of it.
“Put one point into Charisma. Show experience again.”
It would be interesting to see what the results of this would be. If buying skills gave experience, even if it was less than what you would gain when earning the skill through natural development, then they might be able to use that in an emergency somehow; not to mention that if spending one or two skills point could trigger a level-up and thereby gain them five more skill points, that would be a net gain no matter how you looked at it. And if it did give less experience than creating a skill normally then that would give them more reason to try and create skills naturally wherever possible.
“Put four points into Alert. Show experience again.”
At this point Oberon wasn’t sure if ranking up a skill gave any experience at all, but with this he would hopefully soon find out. He knew, or could assume at least, that learning new skills granted about 10% experience from what he had seen, though that would likely change over time as he grew in level and more experience was required. He had no evidence that the same was true for ranking up an existing skill and even after this he wouldn’t know if buying a new rank gave the same or less experience. Since his skill list showed him that he had a couple of skills that were very close to gaining a new rank however, it wouldn’t take him long to find out.
The Sprite raised a hand and created a Mana Orb before reaching out with his Mana Shape ability to start moulding the orb into a different shape. He had no goal in mind, no spell he was trying to create, Oberon just wanted to exercise Mana Shape until a system message appeared. He began by flattening the orb down, the circumference growing as the sphere was compressed and the sides bulged out; when viewed from the top it would look like a perfect circle still, but while viewed from the side it would appear to be an oval, one that was quickly growing longer and thinner as it was squeezed flat into a disc shape. Once it was mostly flat Oberon would work on the edges, pressing them flat so that the border of the disc was sharp rather than round and making the Frisbee of Mana look more like a large pizza cutter. In his mind the Sprite couldn’t help but picture a circular saw blade and even though he had started this with no aim in mind he began to think about how he could work the Mana into that shape.
The edges would need to be serrated, but doing so would require finer control and shaping of the Mana than Oberon had done previously; up until now he had really only worked with simple, geometric shapes after all. He focused on the flat disc hovering over his hand, imagining the shape he wanted it to take as he used Mana Shape to etch teeth into the rim of his creation. If at any point he received a notification about Mana Shape ranking up he would request to see his experience again, even as he became increasingly distracted with his newest idea.
Requested to see current level experience Spent one skill point on "Charisma" Requested to see current level experience Spent four skill points on "Alert I" Requested to see current level experience Used "Mana Shape I" on "Mana Orb II" to create flat disc of Mana with serrated edge Requesting to see current level experience if "Mana Shape I" ranks up
There was a lot of information to consider. The data he had just received from the system and his final experimentations last night, along with the analyses he had made when he had awoken during the night, had given him a lot to think about. He was very close to levelling up again, which was good news, and hopefully he would be able to get that last 8% before the Goblin tribe from yesterday arrived. He was also, as he had already suspected, in a party with the other three people in his little group; so far this didn’t provide many benefits, other than letting him know they were generally healthy, but if they could raise their bond somehow they might unlock additional benefits. Not that he had any idea how to do that.
Oberon thought back to what he had seen last night and the information he had gained from analysing his fellow party members. He had seen the Poison magic Ash had been using and it seemed like something he might be able to replicate but with more difficulty than someone with natural poison production might be able to; if he had a sample of poison it would undoubtedly be easier and he was in good company for something like that it seemed, but the spell didn’t seem useful enough or different enough from his other spells to be worth it right this moment. His analysis of Ash herself was more interesting, as it seemed to suggest that her glinting eyes from the night before was related to a new skill she had learned to observe Mana and her control over it had grown as well. Most likely this had something to do with the Mana Sense and Mana Control skills that had shown up in his skills list since the last time he had checked; either he had observed her using them, though the system surely would have let him know if he had, or more likely he had touched on those skills with his spell creation yesterday. Both sounded like useful skills to have so he would need to talk to Ash later on about learning them, perhaps when he was helping her with whatever she wanted his help with last they spoke.
The analysis of his other two party members, Torrent and Digbie, were less enlightening either because he already had a good idea what they were capable of or because he had analysed them before. Worryingly, they were both surrounded by some strange force as they slept, which might go some way towards explaining why he had felt so uneasy last night; the system said they were unharmed and there was nothing he could do about it at the time, even waking them up might have been dangerous, but he needed to speak to them both at some point about it.
Ideally it would be best to get all four of them together and have a conversation; about this world, about their experiences, what they had discovered, what they wanted to do, what their goals were both short and long term. He still didn’t know anything about them, not really; he had clues about Torrent, and he could guess that Digbie was younger than himself and that Ash was older, but that was it. They could have so much to learn from each other, not just skills but other things as well; just a short conversation yesterday about how he thought he could use existing materials to help create different spells apparently helped Torrent create a bunch of her own. More collaboration like that could have huge advantages for all of them.
He could tell them what elements they were weak against, for one. All three of them apparently had elements that they were weak to or strong against, either because of their affinities or the nature of their species; flying creatures were weak to Ice and Wind, underground creatures were weak to Light and Metal and Digbie was apparently weak to something called Taint. Those weaknesses likely held true for other creatures with similar features to themselves as well, such as all scaled creatures having a resistance to Earth or all flying creatures being susceptible to Wind, which could help them a lot in future fights. As he thought about it the Sprite looked down at himself and used Magic and Monster Analysis to try and find out his own elemental weaknesses; as a Light aligned creature he assumed he had a few.
Unfortunately, any meeting of the minds would probably have to wait until after they were done with the Goblin’s from the Broken Tower tribe and given how they were already on the way he had limited time if he wanted to try and gain a little more experience before they arrived.
The easiest way would surely be to complete another skill, or maybe to level up an existing one, unless another giant creature decided to attack their camp in the next five minutes. Rather than pin his hopes on a random encounter, Oberon thought back to the skill list he had just called up; his list of incomplete skills had apparently grown considerably since he had last checked it, more than he would have thought. Stronger, Mana Sense and Mana Control were all unexpected, while Wind Resistance was easy enough to attribute to his Wind Break spell exploding in his face and Air Read was a natural consequence of working with the element. The most interesting new addition however was Gravity Well, which was not something the Sprite ever expected to see in his skill list.
How had he gotten that? It must have been related to his attempts at Shadow magic, but what had he done exactly? He knew the attempt hadn’t worked, in fact he was so far off the mark the system felt the need to let him know about it, but somehow he seemed to have stumbled across an entirely different kind of magic. The message he had received last night told him that he was trying to draw in everything in his surroundings, which certainly sounded like a gravity well, but it also warned him that the spellcraft was unstable. He’d tried to reach out to the darkness, searching for Shadow, only to find nothing of the sort and instead tried to draw in everything; or he’d tried to draw in the darkness and since he was surrounded by nothing but darkness it was the same as trying to draw in everything. Whatever the case he’d stumbled across something that interested him very much, but he would need to be exceedingly careful with how he approached it.
Flame Lance. That would be the easiest spell to complete. He had already used it a couple times against the Giant Slime and it had seemed to work quite well even when he was just creating it on the fly. Standing up, Oberon raised a hand and conjured a Fireball above his palm before reaching out and reshaping the spell into the elongated, spear-like shape he had used before. The Sprite then compressed the Fire magic down as much as he could, attempting to harden the oblong shape so that it would be able to penetrate whatever he threw it at, like he had done to create the Mana Dart spell. Rather than stop here however, he tried to go a step further and concentrate the condensed energy even further, to shrink the fire down and gather it together in an even more solid form, to turn the flaming lance into a glowing rod of heat and energy.
Once he was satisfied with his work he let the Flame Lance 2.0 fly, aiming it at a rock across the stream from him rather than at a tree or anything else. The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally start a forest fire.
Used "Magic Analysis IV" on Oberon Used "Monster Analysis II" on Oberon Attempted to cast "Flame Lance" by compressing and reshaping a "Fireball I"
“I handle stressful situations just fine, thank you very much!” Reiko whispered harshly, doing little to support her point as she very much lost her cool. Despite current appearances however, under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been wrong; Reiko was quite good at handling a variety of difficult and stressful situations. Balancing exams in a number of advanced placement classes with a social life was stressful, trying to break through a firewall without alerting the security Digimon just around the corner was stressful, trying to maintain the carefully constructed and delicate balance of lies that had become your existence was stressful. And yet she managed to navigate all of it well enough.
Manaka was just managing to fray even Reiko’s nerves.
“Maybe if you had given us an objective for this test we’d be doing a little better at it. All you did was drop us in here and tell us to get around the threat, so I’m going around the threat by leaving as soon as I can.” And as soon as she was done with that she would be leaving Jormungundr and its annoying leader behind as well. The one condition she had had was that she would leave as soon as things got too dangerous and the very first thing Manaka did was throw them to the wolves. Surprisingly, Reiko didn’t appreciate that. “And what list are you talking about? If you forgot to tell us what we were supposed to do before sending us in here I am going to lose it!”
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