"Correct," Redfield answered without hesitation. "But Observation Haki isn't only about glimpsing the future. It can awaken strange gifts. Most people will never touch them."
He himself could skim the surface of another's mind. That kind of Observation was not something you trained. You were born with it. In this world, such talent was vanishingly rare.
Ares grinned. "So that's how it is."
No wonder Redfield slipped his blows again and again. No wonder Ares could not force him to go all out Redfield was reading his attack lines before they formed.
Ares kept lazily carving the air with his thick, muscled arms, flinging out blade arcs as he muttered to himself, "If I polish my Observation until I can read the future too, I should be able to drag out your full strength. Or I find a way to stop you from using Observation at all. Then you lose your edge, you can't just sidestep me, and you'll have to fight for real."
Redfield drifted past a few more slashes, calm as mist. "Training Observation to the point of future-sight is not as easy as you think. I was born sensitive to it and still needed years. To this day, I have not met a second person on the seas who has taken it that far."
Pride shaded his pale, androgynous features. He was not boasting. Few ever reached the ceiling of Observation. By contrast, many pushed Armament Haki to fearsome heights.
Ares did not answer. His offense continued, but the fury bled out of it. Inside, he rewound memories Whitebeard and Golden Lion explaining Observation Haki, step by step, from sensing killing intent to widening one's field, everything short of future-sight. Back then he had poured himself into building a body of iron and had left those lessons on the shelf.
Seeing Ares seemingly split his focus, Redfield probed his mind with Observation and blinked.
"He is… training his Observation in the middle of a fight?"
Even if you gave the average man a year, he might not reach future-sight. Redfield felt no panic. His only worry was the Marines and the Rocks cadres circling the edges. He wanted out.
"Hey, Ares, don't waste time," he called, trying to needle him. "Future-sight is not something you 'pick up' on a whim."
Ares did not bite.
Redfield forced a wry smile. "Let me go. I do not want to keep trading with you."
Ares did not seem to hear. He kept breaking the lessons down with a mnemonic of his own, running the drills in his head while his body fought on autopilot. In a short span his Observation edged up… but future-sight was still far away.
He frowned. "Just 'getting' it won't cut it. I need time. I need to sharpen all five senses."
If not this path, then the other: make Redfield's Observation useless.
"That won't work either. Why would his Observation suddenly fail?"
He thought and discarded, thought and discarded again. Minutes later his eyes lit.
"If Observation rides the five senses, then I should… silence those senses."
He stomped down with a leg thicker than an elephant's, tail sweeping hard left and right. Dust geysered up across the island, swallowing sightlines whole.
"What are you doing?" Redfield murmured and then his face shifted as his Observation returned an answer. "He is blinding my senses?"
"This guy looks like a blunt instrument and he thought of that?"
Dust choked the sky. Ares pounded the ground in a rapid rhythm and vanished, the earth booming Soru. Noise bloomed from every angle, a scatter of false footfalls and shockwaves meant to scramble Redfield's hearing.
Redfield could not help the praise that slipped out. "Ares, you are much smarter than I gave you credit for. Unfortunately…"
"This does not work on me."
His warning had not finished when Ares struck, talons ripping the air. Redfield slid aside a heartbeat early; the claw whistled past.
"In all this dust, you can pick me out. Did you think I could not pick you out as well?" he said lightly.
The single line clicked a gear in Ares's head.
"Right. I did not see him. I felt him."
"So he is reading my presence too."
Understanding dawned. "If I hide my presence, future-sight won't matter. Observation will have nothing to grab."
"Then I need to smother my aura."
He attacked while trying to pull his own breath, heat, and bloodthunder tight to his core, until even the heartbeat seemed to shrink.
Redfield actually froze for a beat. "What am I looking at?"
"How did he jump straight to masking his presence so my Observation can't catch him?"
The swordsman's eyes narrowed in the rolling dust. "His fighting sense… his ability to grasp the heart of a technique…"
"This is obscene."
"In ten minutes he has grasped the bones of Observation."
"If anyone calls him stupid, I will pick a fight on the spot. I have never seen anyone this quick."
A bright thread of alarm ran through him. "This will not do. I cannot let him keep experimenting. If he finds a way to short my future-sight, my advantage is gone."
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