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While Kai holed up in Shimotsuki Village, relentlessly breaking down and rebuilding his entire sword style under Koushirou's watchful eye...
East Blue. Loguetown.
A massive Marine warship boasting an iconic dog-head figurehead broke through the Calm Belt and dropped anchor in the town of the beginning and the end.
Vice Admiral Garp had arrived.
Officially, he was here to resupply and gather intel on two major headaches, his idiot grandson Ace, and the Impel Down escapee, Kai.
Unofficially? He only really gave a crap about Ace. Kai could wait.
"Vice Admiral Garp!"
Captain Smoker, the gruff, cigar-chomping commander of the Loguetown base, marched down the pier to greet the living legend.
"Oh, if it isn't Smoker! Bwahahaha!" Garp boomed, picking his nose casually before flicking a booger into the ocean.
Smoker kept his face carefully neutral. As a former student of the legendary instructor Zephyr, Smoker technically shared a lineage with the current Admirals. And with his Plume-Plume Fruit, a rare Logia type, he had solid potential, even if he currently lacked the apocalyptic raw destructive power of monsters like Akainu or Aokiji. Garp remembered the kid well enough.
"Are you here for the fugitive, Kai?" Smoker asked, exhaling a thick cloud of white smoke. "According to our latest reports, he made landfall on Aiya Island. Stayed for two days, then vanished. We're still tracking his current heading."
Smoker didn't know the half of it. Kai had spent days drifting blindly at sea before finally reaching Shimotsuki Village. To avoid drawing the Navy's eyes, he had ripped down the Jolly Roger from his stolen ship before making port.
By the time Kai set foot in the village, the Marines had completely lost his trail. With no locals reporting his presence, Smoker's intelligence net came up totally empty.
Garp wasn't entirely dismissive of the Kai situation, but his priorities were clear.
"Keep looking for the escapee and let me know when you get a solid ping," Garp waved a heavy hand dismissively. "But more importantly... what about a pirate named Ace? You got eyes on him?"
Smoker scowled, his twin cigars flaring cherry-red. "Fire Fist Ace? Captain of the Spade Pirates? He's gone. Already crossed into the Grand Line. And my subordinate, Ensign Isuka, went chasing right after him."
Just thinking about it gave Smoker a massive migraine. Isuka, his hot-blooded subordinate, had completely ignored his orders. She was utterly obsessed with tracking down Ace, not just to arrest him, but to actively "reform" him.
Rumor had it Ace had actually saved her life by pure chance. Isuka, who suffered from severe trauma and a phobia of fire after pirates burned down her childhood home, had ironically been rescued by a pirate made of literal flames. She realized Ace wasn't a bad guy at his core, decided it was a tragedy he was throwing his life away as a criminal, and made it her personal mission to drag him back to the Marines.
It was a classic, absurd game of cat-and-mouse playing out in real-time.
Or, more accurately, it was a terrifying foreshadowing of Smoker's own future obsession with chasing a certain straw-hat-wearing rookie across the globe.
Either way, Smoker was exhausted. To replace his rogue Ensign, he had just taken on a new deputy, a clumsy but dedicated swordswoman named Tashigi. Hopefully, she'd be a bit more reliable.
Garp's face fell. He was too late.
"Dammit," the old hero grumbled. Ace had hit the Grand Line way faster than he anticipated.
Smoker filled him in on the rest of the intel. Ace had eaten the Flame-Flame Fruit, a top-tier Logia. With that kind of firepower, his crew had blitzed through the East Blue in record time.
With Ace gone and Kai entirely off the grid, Garp suddenly had nothing to do.
He lingered in Loguetown for two days, hoping for a lead on the Impel Down escapee. When the Den Den Mushi stayed silent, Garp sighed, ordered his men to weigh anchor, and set a course back to Foosha Village.
"Call me if he shows up," Garp told Smoker as the warship pulled away.
Meanwhile.
Kai had been training in Shimotsuki Village for a day and a half.
With his system running at full tilt, that was the equivalent of over one hundred and fifty days of non-stop, brutal, hyper-focused practice.
Combined with his already monstrous combat experience and Koushirou's precise guidance, the results were explosive. He devoured the foundational theories, filling the massive gaps in his technique with terrifying speed.
His sword style was finally forged whole.
If the skills he stole in Impel Down were jagged chunks of raw iron and steel, deadly but crude, he had now melted them down in the furnace of Koushirou's dojo. He hammered out the impurities, folding the steel over and over until he produced a flawlessblade.
He hadn't just learned a sword style. He had created his own absolute system of swordsmanship.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Down by the crashing waves of the shore, Kai swung a katana.
There was no wasted movement. No flashy explosions of power. Every arc of the blade looked lazy, almost effortless.
But with every single swing, the sheer, concentrated momentum of the blade cleaved the sea breeze in half, splitting the incoming tide down the middle without releasing a single flying slash.
Total, absolute mastery over his own strength. A casual flick of his wrist now packed enough kinetic force to cleanly sever a naval warship.
"Perfect," Kai muttered.
He slid the ordinary katana back into its scabbard with a sharp click.
It was just a cheap sword he'd looted from that pirate ship. But to Kai, the gap between a garbage blade and a Supreme Grade sword was practically meaningless right now. Unless he was crossing blades with another Great Swordsman of the exact same caliber, the quality of the steel in his hands didn't matter. He could cut iron with a butter knife if he wanted to.
With that, the first of his two East Blue goals was officially complete, visit Koushirou, break down his chaotic swordsmanship, and reforge it into something terrifying.
Next up Loguetown. The town of the beginning and the end.
That had been his plan since outrunning Kizaru. But after his latest miserable stint at sea, a third, desperately urgent goal had forced its way to the top of his to-do list
Find a damn navigator.
He was absolutely sick of getting lost.
Kai headed back up the dirt path to the dojo. He found Koushirou sitting quietly on the porch, and offered a respectful nod to the bespectacled master.
"I'm heading out," YeKai said. "Thanks for the guidance, Koushirou-sensei. If you ever need a favor in the future, just say the word!"