September 11, 1503, Age of the Sea Circle
Three days later, Orion and his two companions arrived at the island where the new Named Character that had suddenly appeared on the system map was located.
Orion had hesitated a little about whether to come and visit this Named Character, since he wanted to return home quickly, yet in the end he simply could not resist the temptation to go take a look and evaluate the person in question.
After all, if he had decided not to go and later discovered that he had missed the opportunity to recruit an incredible prodigy for his forces, Orion would undoubtedly have regretted it.
Although this individual labeled "Prince Grus" on the system screen was not a Named Character (VIP), that did not mean he could not be a great talent, since the VIPs were those who were important to the original timeline of this world, and were not necessarily the strongest people, even if those two aspects often happened to coincide.
After mooring the small sailboat at the pier, Orion left Galus there to keep watch and headed out together with the little clone Mitsu to look for Grus. According to the information provided by the system, the boy was currently eleven years old, so Orion expected to find an immature child without particularly developed abilities.
Walking through the streets of the large port city, Orion and Mitsu reached the area marked on the system map, which was located in the wealthiest district of the city, where the nobles and aristocrats resided.
Orion did not want to draw too much attention during his brief visit to Grus, so he used his Pocket Dimension to evade the guards who were stationed at the entrance to the nobles' district, moving forward stealthily until he reached the mansion belonging to Prince Grus's family.
The great mansion in which this Named Character lived was similar to Count Cindry's estate, so Orion felt a faint touch of nostalgia as he recalled that occasion when he had accompanied the beautiful actress to her home for the first time, pretending to be her boyfriend.
Perhaps it was because the island they were on was not very far from the kingdom where Victoria and her family lived, but the architectural style of the surrounding mansions was very similar, and it reminded Orion of the European buildings from past centuries in his previous life.
"Orion, is that the kid you're looking for? He has a stupid-looking face," Mitsu said, pointing from the bushes where they were hiding at a small boy in the distance.
Orion looked at the boy who was walking with his head down while eating an apple, and he nodded, confirming Mitsu's speculation.
Prince Grus was a rather scrawny child with messy green hair, and just as Mitsu had bluntly said… he did not look like the brightest kid around. Even so, through his Prism Eyes, Orion could see that the boy's talent was genuine, although it was only average when compared to his other subordinates.
It was not that Prince Grus was weak; it was simply that Orion's crew was already full of monsters. Not to mention, the little girl at his side possessed far greater potential, and even Galus was slightly superior in that regard.
Even so, Orion believed that Prince Grus was someone worth recruiting, since his morality was perfect and his strength would undoubtedly become a great asset once he fully developed. Orion needed all the help he could get for his future conflict against the World Government, so he would not dismiss talents like Prince Grus without good reason.
The problem now was how to recruit such a young child. Unlike other subordinates of Orion who had been in critical situations, Grus lived the life of a wealthy noble, so there was no real reason for him to follow Orion to the other side of the world and join his kingdom.
Moreover, Orion did not want to spend too much time in this place, since he was quite impatient to return home.
In the end, Orion decided to observe Prince Grus for a day and then try to recruit him directly and without detours. It was likely that such a method would fail, but perhaps he could at least establish some kind of bond for the future. If he could set up a way to stay in contact, he might be able to convince him to join his forces later on.
With this plan in mind, Orion began to silently follow Prince Grus in Mitsu's company, only to discover that the boy was far more eccentric than he had imagined —as tended to be the case with the Named Characters he had encountered so far.
During the very first hour in which Orion observed him, Prince Grus bumped into 27 different things —from furniture and objects to trees and people— because he walked at full speed without ever lifting his head.
Furthermore, due to his physique, which was clearly stronger than that of an ordinary person, he generally ended up causing significant damage to everything he collided with, people included!
Fortunately for the boy, he had not set foot outside his family property, so everyone he had crashed into had been household staff and family soldiers, who had no choice but to force a smile and avoid creating any conflict.
However, if this child behaved the same way while walking through the city… he would probably end up getting beaten up by more than one hot-tempered person.
Orion was not the only one worried about this peculiarity of Prince Grus, since his mother had noticed the problem many years earlier and had designed a perfect countermeasure to solve it, although her scatterbrained son tended to forget to apply the solution she had proposed time and time again.
For that very reason, when Orion saw that Prince Grus was about to leave the safety of his large mansion and head out into the outside world, he feared for the boy's physical integrity —though fortunately, his mother was paying close attention to her young son's movements.
"Grus! How many times have I told you to wear your cap? If you keep forgetting to use it when you go out, I'm going to sew it to your head!" the boy's mother said vehemently from the sitting room, as she elegantly set down the cup of tea she had been drinking and picked up a luxurious slipper, ready to educate her son if necessary.
"Ah!" Prince Grus abruptly lifted his head when he heard his mother's voice, showing an expression of sudden enlightenment, as if he had just remembered his own name after years of amnesia. Then he ran to the coat rack beside the front door and put on the large cap his mother had given him years earlier.
His mother watched the boy's actions and let the diamond-adorned slipper fall to the floor, then calmly sat back down to drink her tea, completely satisfied with the results of her years of education. As long as her little Grus wore his cap, there would be no problem! That was an infallible method she herself had devised to help him live a normal life.
Once he had put on his cap, Prince Grus dashed forward at full speed, keeping his head lowered as if some mysterious force were dragging his gaze toward the ground, and after only a few brief moments he was already about to collide head-on with a large tree.
However, before the collision occurred, the tip of the cap's long visor made contact with the tree, and Prince Grus immediately changed his trajectory, almost as if he were using Observation Haki.
The same scene repeated itself several times, and the eccentric boy eventually stopped bumping into anything at all along his path. After years of using this method, he was capable of dodging anything in front of him without needing to see it, and he could do so the very instant the slightest contact of the cap's visor touched the surface he was about to crash into.
Even if his cap brushed against a person, it did so so lightly that no one noticed, since at the faintest touch Grus was able to change direction at once. It was almost as if this strange boy were using some kind of superpower.
"His senses are extremely sharp… In that regard, he might truly be a genius…" Orion murmured as he watched Grus's movements, already thinking about possible training for him in the future.
Without a doubt, he would put him through Observation Haki training, and high-mobility and assassination techniques might also be areas in which he could excel.
Orion was thinking about all this with great interest when, all of a sudden, Mitsu puffed out her cheeks slightly with a jealous look and ran off at full speed toward Grus. Then, with truly prodigious agility, she leapt off the nearby buildings and snatched the large cap from Grus's head without him noticing.
Mitsu showed a triumphant smile and put on Prince Grus's cap. Then, under Orion's surprised gaze, she began running at full speed with her head lowered, dodging everything in her path while feeling the faint vibrations produced by the cap's visor as it came into contact with the surfaces of the things around her, just as the boy had done a moment earlier.
Truth be told, Mitsu was quite a jealous girl, although she had not shown this side of herself to Orion until now, since during their travels from the New World to the West Blue they had never encountered another child her age.
Because of her particular upbringing, Mitsu had serious emotional issues, so she could not tolerate the attention of someone she cared about being stolen by someone else. Generally, these jealous feelings did not arise when Orion interacted with adults, since she did not consider them to belong to the same "category" as her.
However, when Mitsu saw Orion looking at Prince Grus with great interest while thinking about possible training for him in case he recruited him, the little clone had felt that something that belonged to her was being taken away.
For that reason, she had not stood idly by —she had stolen Prince Grus's cap to wear it herself and prove to Orion that she was far superior to that stinky boy. Everything he could do, she could do better, so there was no need whatsoever for Orion to pay attention to Grus. He only had to pay attention to her.
Orion was coming into contact for the first time with this side of the gluttonous girl, yet he immediately understood what was happening with her and thought that things might become a little complicated once Mitsu arrived at Pacific Kingdom, where there were several people her age with great talent who also had a close relationship with Orion.
Orion could already imagine Mitsu coming into conflict with Kalifa or Ace, who were the ones with the stronger personalities. Sighing, he tried not to worry too much about it, thinking that Mitsu would eventually learn to control her jealousy once she began interacting with the people in her new home.
"You're very skilled, Mitsu!" Orion said, lifting his thumb toward the girl, which made her smile joyfully after having achieved her goal.
"However, it would be better if you returned his cap before he has an accident…" Orion added, pointing at Prince Grus who, in the brief moment he had been without his cap, had crashed into a tree and two street food stalls, destroying them completely and suffering minor injuries in the process.
On the boy's head there was a swelling that had appeared after he had headbutted and toppled the sturdy tree, while his knees and elbows were scraped from falling to the ground along with the food stalls. Moreover, the two vendors who owned the stalls were still lying on the floor, unable to recover from the boy's charge, almost as if they had been run over by a truck.
Mitsu had achieved her goal, so she immediately returned to her obedient nature and, nodding her head, ran toward Grus to give him back the cap before he caused any more chaos along his path.
However, Mitsu did not arrive in time to prevent the accident. Prince Grus, running at full speed while looking at the ground, crashed squarely into the leg of a pirate, completely shattering the bones of the unfortunate man and causing a rather horrific compound fracture.
"AAArrrgghh! Damn bastard, catch him!" shouted the pirate as he clutched his leg, writhing in agony.
The pirates who were around the injured man immediately stepped forward, following their captain's orders, blocking Prince Grus's way and stopping him by force before he could continue.
Even so, Grus still hadn't realized what had happened, and he kept walking, ignoring the pirates —who, utterly enraged, unleashed a rain of punches and kicks upon him.
Although the boy was considerably stronger than a normal human, he was unable to withstand the pirates' assault, and after only a few moments they had thrown him to the ground and were kicking him violently.
Prince Grus simply held his head with both hands, curling up into a fetal position without attempting to attack the pirates. He had gone through similar situations in the past, before his mother discovered the solution to his problems and gave him his lucky cap, so he simply used the same method he had relied on years earlier to minimize the damage.
"That's enough, there's no need to go that far," a deep voice suddenly said, startling the pirates.
Orion appeared in the place like a specter, and with a single look he made the pirates stop their attacks and begin trembling in fear. Orion had improved a little in his use of Conqueror's Haki, and he could regulate the amount he emitted, although not with great precision.
Right now, he had released a small wave of Conqueror's Haki, scaring the pirates to the point they were about to wet their pants, but not enough to make them faint.
Orion ignored the pirates around him and approached Prince Grus, taking him by the arm and helping him to his feet. Grus simply remained there, looking at him with a somewhat dull expression, blood flowing from his nose and his face covered in dirt and shoe prints.
Orion couldn't help but think that, beyond being very physically resilient, this boy was a bit of an airhead, and he wondered whether that was his personality or if he was simply going through a phase.
In any case, Orion quickly treated Prince Grus's injuries and then placed the large cap Mitsu had taken earlier back onto his head.
"All right, you're as good as new," Orion said with a kind smile, and Prince Grus's eyes lit up slightly, influenced both by Orion's passive abilities that increased people's favorability and by the fact that he had helped him with the pirates.
"My name is Orion, and this is Mitsu. What's your name?" Orion asked.
"Grus… Thank you very much for your help!" the boy said, bowing so deeply that the long visor of his cap struck the ground.
"Nice to meet you, Grus! I want to talk to your parents —could you take me to them?" said Orion, who, after observing the boy for several hours, had decided to try recruiting him without beating around the bush, so that he could continue his journey right away.
Prince Grus nodded and prepared to start running back home, but Orion stopped him before he could do so.
"Hold on, don't run anymore… Come here, let me help you," Orion said with a strained smile, thinking it was better if the strange boy didn't have the chance to keep running, even if he now had his protective cap again.
Taking Grus with one hand and Mitsu with the other, Orion rose into the air using Geppo and advanced at full speed back toward the large mansion he had been at a short while earlier.
…
"No way!" said Prince Grus's mother, responding with intensity to Orion's proposal to recruit her young son.
"To begin with, Grus is just a child! He must be here with his family. If you want to recruit him for your army or whatever, come back when he's of legal age. As long as he's under my care, he won't be joining any suspicious faction!"
Grus's mother had no intention whatsoever of yielding in her convictions, even though Orion had shown her his official credentials as Duke of Aït-Ben-Skar and had even offered to move the entire family to his kingdom —although he had not told them that he was the king of a kingdom in the South Blue.
Orion had anticipated such a response after seeing the dynamic between Prince Grus and his mother, so he did not show too much disappointment.
"I understand. In that case, my offer will remain valid for the future. We would like to have a talent like Grus in our ranks when the time comes," said Orion with a diplomatic smile, which made Grus's mother calm down a little and show herself slightly more cordial.
"It is normal that you would want to recruit my son after seeing his great talent, so I have no complaints about your vision, but he will not leave our family until he is an adult," Grus's mother repeated once again, unwilling to back down in this matter.
Her little son was the treasure of the family, but also a concern for them, since from a young age he always got into all kinds of trouble because of his distracted attitude. She would not feel safe if she was not by her child's side to protect him at all times, even though she knew she could not spoil him for his entire life.
For that reason, Grus's mother had a simple mindset: she would take care of protecting him until he became a competent adult, and afterwards her son would be free to do whatever he wanted, having to learn to fend for himself. If at that point Grus wanted to join Orion, the Marines, or even become a pirate, she would not stand in his way, since that was a choice that did not belong to her.
Prince Grus, unlike many of Orion's subordinates, had a harmonious family that loved him and was always there to watch his back and look out for his future.
"Of course, I have no intention of insisting," said Orion, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender, fearing that the woman might continue expressing her firm stance even further.
Then, with a slight movement of his hand, he opened a door in the air and took out one of the Den Den Mushi stored in his Pocket Dimension.
"This Den Den Mushi is so that we can stay in contact. If in the future you ever need my help, don't hesitate to call me and I will come as quickly as I can," said Orion, handing over the snail as a gesture of goodwill toward Prince Grus and his family.
Grus's mother looked at her son, who was staring at her with a pleading gaze, and she couldn't help but laugh in amusement.
"Ha! If you want to accept it, go ahead!" said the woman, tacitly accepting Orion's goodwill.
Prince Grus took the snail from Orion's hands in silence, simply nodding his head. He was not a very talkative child.
Orion saw that his objective had been accomplished and nodded in satisfaction. Then, he seemed thoughtful for a brief moment, and with a wave of his hand he took a book out of his inventory.
"Here, this is a gift for you. If you're interested, you can read it in your free time," said Orion with a smile, handing the book to Prince Grus, who took it enthusiastically with one hand.
This book was a combat technique he had purchased from the system's shop, and it was one of the main close-combat techniques used to train the royal soldiers of Pacific Kingdom. The technique had several levels and was quite difficult to master, although even at the most basic level it was already fairly decent.
With the help of the system —Evaluation Card— Orion had seen that Grus had no particular talent with any specific weapon, so he had decided to give him a hand-to-hand combat training method for him to practice on his own.
If Grus focused on it, he would probably be able to obtain good results in a couple of years, increasing his power much more by the time he was finally recruited officially into his forces.
With a smile, Orion said his goodbyes to Prince Grus and his mother, intending to leave immediately in order to continue his journey back home. Even though his stay on that island and his encounter with Prince Grus had been brief, the outcome had been quite positive, and it had once again slightly altered the course of this world's timeline.