A month passed since Shanks and his crew left Foosha Village.
The bar had gone quiet again after they sailed out. The village returned to its usual pace — slow, steady, unbothered. Fishermen going out in the morning and coming back in the evening. Old men sitting outside shops. Kids running around the dirt roads with nothing particular to do.
Ronald used the time well.
Every morning before the village woke up properly, he was already outside. He'd mapped out a route along the coastal path that took him around the edge of the village and up along the hillside. It wasn't a long route but it was uneven — rocks, slopes, loose dirt, narrow ledges along the cliff side where the path got thin and the drop down to the water got real.
He ran it twice every morning. The first time slow and deliberate, paying attention to his footing. The second time faster, pushing the body to keep up with what his mind already knew the terrain looked like.
The body was young and it got tired quickly. That was just the reality of it. But it also recovered quickly which was the advantage of being seven years old that he was willing to acknowledge.
After the run he'd find a flat spot near the rocks above the dock and do everything else. Push ups, sit ups, bodyweight squats, balance work on the uneven rocks. Nothing sophisticated. Just fundamentals, done every day without skipping.
He wasn't trying to become strong overnight. He understood better than most that strength built the way a wall gets built — one brick at a time, each one sitting on top of the last.
Luffy found his morning routine within the first week and immediately attached himself to it.
"You're already here," Luffy said the first morning he showed up, slightly out of breath from running to catch up. He had his straw hat on despite it being barely sunrise.
"I'm always here," Ronald said, mid push up.
"Why didn't you tell me you trained in the morning?"
"You didn't ask."
Luffy dropped down and started doing push ups beside him without another word. His form was terrible — back dipping, head too far up — but his energy was genuine and he didn't complain once.
After that he just showed up every morning.
Ronald didn't mind. Luffy was the kind of person who made silence comfortable even when he was technically making noise. He'd hum to himself, or comment on a bird he saw, or point out something on the water — but it never broke the rhythm of what they were doing. It just became part of the background.
---
About five weeks after Shanks left, they were sitting on the rocks after their morning session. Luffy was eating something he'd apparently brought from home — a rice ball wrapped in cloth. He offered half to Ronald without saying anything. Ronald took it.
They sat eating and watching the early morning water below them.
"Grandpa's coming next week," Luffy said.
"Garp?" Ronald said, keeping his voice neutral.
Luffy looked at him sideways. "You know my grandpa?"
Ronald caught himself again. It was becoming a habit. "I heard his name around the village. Marine Vice Admiral right?"
Luffy groaned loudly and fell back on the rocks dramatically. "Yeah. He's going to make me do crazy stuff again. Last time he threw me into a pit of wolves to train me."
Ronald looked at him. "Wolves."
"Yeah."
"An actual pit."
"Yeah."
Ronald looked back at the water. "And you survived obviously."
"Obviously," Luffy said from flat on his back. "But it wasn't fun. Well—" he paused. "It was a little fun. But don't tell him that or he'll do it again."
Ronald finished the rice ball. "What kind of training does he usually put you through?"
Luffy sat back up and started counting on his fingers. "Throwing me off cliffs. Tying me to a balloon and letting me float away. Throwing me into the jungle and making me find my way back. Tying me to a post in a place with dangerous animals." He thought about it. "Mostly throwing me into dangerous situations and seeing what happens."
"That's one training philosophy," Ronald said carefully.
"It's terrible," Luffy said cheerfully. "But I'm tougher because of it probably."
Ronald thought about Monkey D. Garp. Vice Admiral. A man who'd cornered Gol D. Roger multiple times. One of the absolute legends of the Marine world. Coming to this tiny village to visit his grandson.
And apparently to throw that grandson into wolf pits.
"Is he going to notice me?" Ronald asked.
Luffy blinked. "What do you mean?"
"If he sees me training with you. Is he going to get involved."
Luffy's expression shifted to something between sympathy and apology. "Probably. Grandpa gets involved in everything."
Ronald nodded slowly. That was what he'd expected.
"Okay," he said simply.
"You're not worried?" Luffy asked.
"Should I be?"
Luffy thought about it genuinely. "Maybe a little."
"Then I'll be a little worried," Ronald said. "And then I'll deal with it when it happens."
Luffy stared at him for a second. Then he grinned. "You're pretty weird you know."
"You're not the first person to say that," Ronald said.
---
Garp arrived on a Wednesday.
Ronald knew he was coming before anyone announced it because the village had a particular energy when something was about to happen — people moving slightly differently, a subtle shift in the usual rhythm. He'd noticed it the morning of and filed it away.
He was in the middle of his afternoon run along the coastal path when he heard the ship.
He stopped at the top of the hill and looked out at the small harbor. A Marine vessel — not huge but solid, official looking, the Marine emblem visible even from a distance — was pulling in toward the dock.
He watched it for a moment.
Then he turned and kept running.
He met Garp for the first time an hour later, not by choice but because Luffy came sprinting down the road toward him with the pure velocity of someone running away from something and nearly collided with him at full speed.
Ronald stepped to the side smoothly. Luffy skidded past him and stopped, spinning around.
"He's here," Luffy said breathlessly.
"I know," Ronald said. "I saw the ship."
"He already wants to start training."
"Then go train."
"He wants to meet you first," Luffy said, pointing behind him.
Ronald looked up the road.
Monkey D. Garp was walking toward them with the relaxed stride of someone who owned every road they'd ever walked on. He was big — genuinely big, broad across the shoulders, the kind of physical presence that made sense once you knew who he was. A Marine coat over his shoulders, a domed helmet on his head, and a grin on his face that was somehow both warm and slightly terrifying at the same time.
He stopped a few feet away and looked down at Ronald with sharp eyes that missed nothing.
"So you're the kid Luffy's been training with," he said. His voice was exactly what you'd expect — deep, easy, carrying the weight of someone who'd never once in his life needed to raise it to be heard.
"Ronald," Ronald said. "Ronald D. Cefiroth."
Garp's eyes sharpened slightly at the initial. The same reaction Shanks had. Less hidden though.
"D.," he said. "Hm." He crossed his arms and looked at Ronald with an expression that was harder to read now. "Who are your parents?"
"Don't know," Ronald said. "I was found near the shore as a baby. Greta raised me."
Garp looked at him for a long moment. The grin had settled into something more neutral. Then he uncrossed his arms and the easy warmth came back like a light being switched on.
"You've been training with Luffy every morning?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Show me something."
Ronald looked at him. "Right now?"
"Right now."
Ronald glanced at Luffy who gave him a look that said *just do it, it's easier this way.*
Ronald turned back to Garp. He moved to the flat patch of ground beside the road and dropped into push ups. Clean ones, steady pace, back flat, consistent breathing. He did thirty without stopping and stood back up.
Garp watched with his arms crossed. His expression didn't give much away.
"How long have you been training?" he asked.
"About two months consistently."
"Before that?"
"Nothing formal."
Garp nodded slowly. He walked around Ronald once like he was appraising something, which Ronald found both slightly amusing and slightly uncomfortable. Then he stopped in front of him again.
"Your form is good," he said. "Better than it should be for someone your age with no teacher."
"I figured out what works," Ronald said.
"Through trial and error?"
"Through thinking about it."
Garp looked at him for another long second. Then he let out a short laugh — a genuine one. "Luffy thinks about things about as much as a cannonball does before it fires. Good to know someone around here uses their head." He clapped a hand on Ronald's shoulder — heavy, but not rough. "You'll train with us this week."
It wasn't a question.
"Alright," Ronald said.
---
Training with Garp was a different experience from training alone.
Not because Garp pushed them past their limits — though he did — but because of the way he watched. The man had eyes that caught everything. A slight imbalance in your stance, a moment of hesitation before a movement, the way you breathed when you got tired. He noticed all of it and he commented on it without mercy but also without cruelty.
"Your left side is weaker," he told Ronald on the second day, after a long session of running, carrying heavy rocks up the hill, and doing more push ups than Ronald's arms wanted to cooperate with. "You favor your right without knowing it."
"I'll work on it," Ronald said.
"I know you will," Garp said, which was a strange kind of compliment but felt like one.
Luffy was getting thrown into things. Literally. Garp would pick him up and throw him at a hill and tell him to climb back down on his own. Or tie a rope around him and swing him over the water repeatedly until Luffy figured out how to time his grip. It was insane by any reasonable standard. Luffy took it like it was just weather — unpleasant in the moment, forgotten about five minutes later.
In the evenings they'd end up at Makino's bar. Garp ate enormous amounts of food and talked with the ease of someone who had ten thousand stories and was deciding which ones to tell based on the audience in front of him.
One evening it was just Garp, Ronald, and Luffy at a corner table. The bar was quiet. Makino was cleaning cups behind the counter. Outside the window the night had settled over the village.
"Grandpa," Luffy said, mouth full of rice. "Tell Ronald about the Pirate King."
Garp gave Luffy a flat look. "Why would I tell a child about Gold Roger."
"Because Ronald knows stuff and he'd find it interesting."
"I'm a Marine," Garp said. "I'm not in the business of making pirates sound interesting."
"You make them sound interesting all the time," Luffy said.
Garp opened his mouth. Closed it. Pointed at Luffy. "You're a problem."
Ronald leaned his cheek on his hand and watched the two of them with quiet amusement.
Garp looked at him. "What are you smiling at."
"Nothing," Ronald said.
Garp stared at him for a second. Then he sighed and leaned back in his chair heavily. "Roger was—" he stopped. Started again. "He was the kind of man that the world only produces once. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on who you ask." He looked at his cup. "I chased him for years. Cornered him more than once. He was never — easy. Not even close to easy." Something moved behind his eyes briefly. "He laughed at his own execution. You know that? Stood there in front of the whole world and laughed."
The bar was quiet.
"Why," Luffy asked, fully focused now.
"Because he'd already done everything he came to do," Garp said. "He'd reached Laugh Tale. He'd found the One Piece. He'd sailed every sea and done what no one else had managed." He picked up his cup. "A man who finishes what he set out to do — death doesn't scare him the same way."
Ronald was quiet. He'd known all of this. But again — hearing it from Garp, who had actually stood in the same space as Roger, who had chased him and known him in some strange complicated way — it was different.
"That's what you want?" Garp said, looking at Luffy now. "To be that kind of man?"
"Yes," Luffy said. Simply and completely.
Garp looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at Ronald. "And you?"
Ronald met his gaze. "I want to be strong enough that the answer to that question actually means something when I give it."
Garp held his gaze. Something moved in his expression — hard to name, somewhere between respect and concern. Like he'd just heard something that landed more solidly than he'd expected from a seven year old.
Then he picked up his cup and drank.
"Not a bad answer," he said quietly.
Outside the window, the sea moved in the dark, steady and endless, going on further than any of them could see from where they sat.
---
*End of Chapter 4*