…
'In the beginning the word was, and the word was with Haki.'
- Mahatma Gandhi, 1987
...
I stood near the centre of the deck with a strip of black cloth tied around my eyes, arms loose at my sides while the ship rolled gently beneath my feet. Somewhere ahead, my News Coo waddled around near the mast.
The idea was simple.
Observation Haki was all about sensing people without relying on your ordinary senses. Rayleigh had trained Luffy blindfolded and thwacked the shit outta him; I remembered that clearly, and while I unfortunately didn't have a seventy-eight-year-old Haki master available to beat the lesson into me, the basic principle couldn't be that complicated.
Remove sight + Sense everything else = Awaken Observation = PROFIT!!!
For the first hour, I genuinely thought it was working. Something strange had been at the edge of my awareness whenever the bird moved. Not hearing exactly, because the deck creaked constantly, the sails moved overhead, and waves slapped against the hull. It was closer to the vague impression that something living was moving around me.
I'd almost celebrated, but then, on the second day, I pointed directly toward the bird while blindfolded.
"There." I smiled. "Got you."
The News Coo walked three steps to my left.
My head followed automatically.
Then another three.
Followed again.
I slowly untied the blindfold.
He was staring at me from beside a barrel.
I stared back. "Why are you moving so loudly?"
He pecked the deck once. I tied the blindfold again and stuffed cloth into my ears.
That helped for approximately half a day.
Then I started noticing vibrations through my feet.
So I sat down.
My skin became more sensitive to changes in air pressure.
I wrapped myself in a blanket.
My sense of smell improved.
At that point, I removed everything and sat there with the blanket around my shoulders, staring at the ocean while accepting an unfortunate truth.
My adaptation was a double-edged sword.
Blind myself to force Observation Haki? Ah, vision has become unreliable. Here is better hearing.
Block my hearing? Excellent. Enjoy improved vibration sensitivity.
Reduce that? No problem, king! Have you considered smelling people?
Useful adaptations, clearly.
JUST NOT RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
How would I train even the most basic haki if I'm adapting AWAY from the results/variables I needed to be in? It was useless for what I was actually trying to accomplish.
I rubbed my eyes and sighed.
You're too helpful
The wheel mark across my hand remained completely unapologetic.
Observation wasn't impossible, though. That first sensation had definitely been something, even if my own fruit had immediately buried it beneath several alternative solutions. I just needed a method that didn't rely on creating a sensory weakness because every time I removed one sense, adaptation started upgrading another before Haki had enough time to properly emerge.
Annoying.
Armament was going better, though I use the term loosely.
I'd spent most mornings striking an iron plate I'd bolted against the mast, partly because focusing on "hardening" my fist while hitting something solid felt vaguely correct and partly because my knowledge of Haki training amounted to remembering scenes from an anime I had watched a decade ago.
There had been progress, though.
Three times now, I felt something gather around my knuckles immediately before impact. It wasn't adaptation, or at least it didn't feel like it. There was no familiar shift beneath the skin, no wheel movement and none of that sensation of my body changing itself.
This was closer to pressure, something inside me pushing outward.
The first time, I got excited, lost focus and punched the plate hard enough to rip one of the bolts from the mast.
The second lasted half a second, and the third lasted less than that.
No black coating yet, unfortunately, so I wouldn't be blackfacing anytime soo-
Armament. I meant Armament.
Don't clip that!
Still, something was there. I'd take something.
Conqueror's Haki, meanwhile, remained an entirely different category.
I had absolutely fuck-all. I'd tried concentrating on people, intimidating people, getting angry, staring dramatically across the sea, and even glaring at the News Coo for almost a minute.
He bit me.
Clearly, my royal presence needed work.
The annoying part was that Conqueror's wasn't really something you trained from nothing anyway. You either had the disposition for it, or you didn't, and then combat, ambition and experience apparently brought it out and strengthened it.
A little bit on the nose, Oda, but I'll let it slide.
Anyways, all I could really do was keep getting into increasingly unreasonable fights and hope somebody eventually fell unconscious because I was standing near them.
I better have it. Seriously.
Those higher beings resurrected me specifically to settle a powerscaling argument involving Mahoraga. Giving me the adaptation and then denying me one of the main power systems necessary to reach the top of One Piece would be blatant match-fixing.
Also, I was apparently a D. now.
Cough it up, verse.
I stood and tossed the blindfold onto the table.
For now, Armament seemed like the best direction. Observation would need a different training method, and Conqueror's could reveal itself whenever destiny stopped being stingy. There were more immediate things to handle anyway, like the enormous desert country appearing on the horizon
I stepped toward the bow.
Alabasta.
Finally.
…
To clarify something before anybody questioned my navigation skills, I had not somehow sailed from Reverse Mountain directly to Alabasta because the plot wanted me here.
(○｀ 3′○)
I'd been island-hopping for months.
A lot.
Some islands were interesting. Some had pirates. Some had bounty hunters. One had a town where everyone apparently considered fermented cabbage a delicacy, and I left that place voluntarily before adaptation could make me tolerate it.
You don't need to hear about every single island I visit.
The difference now was that travelling between them had become significantly easier.
The Log Pose around my wrist gave me reliable magnetic routes, while my own increasingly weird internal sense let me distinguish pulls without depending on it completely. Add newspapers, shipping information bought or stolen from ports, and a News Coo who had become disturbingly good at recognising places where other News Coo gathered, and finding particular countries became less "pray the ocean likes me" and more actual navigation.
Alabasta had been easy to identify once I got close.
Even from sea, the place looked hot.
Long stretches of pale coastline sat beneath an almost painfully clear sky, and farther inland, everything turned gold beneath the sun. Merchant ships moved constantly around the harbour ahead, carrying crates, fabrics, spices and enough people that I could hear the port long before my ship reached it.
Nanohana.
I barely remembered that name.
I brought Crest's stolen vessel into the harbour without hitting anything, which remained an achievement worth mentioning, paid an extremely suspicious dockworker to leave it alone and stepped onto Alabastan soil for the first time.
Heat pressed down immediately.
My body barely cared, and the suit would make it worse anyway.
I looked around the port.
Merchants shouted over one another beneath canvas awnings. Travellers moved through the streets wrapped in light fabrics, carts rolled past carrying jars and sacks of grain, and somewhere nearby someone was selling perfume so strong that even my formerly useful enhanced sense of smell considered resigning.
A man walked past carrying three baskets.
I stopped him.
"Excuse me."
He looked up, then continued looking up until he reached my face.
"Yes?"
"Nearest suit shop."
He blinked.
I waited.
The man glanced toward the harbour behind me, then at my clothing, then back up.
"Suit?"
"Yes, something bespoke, you know? Maybe a tuxedo?"
He pointed deeper into the city. "Two streets east, then right at the fountain. Tailor named Basha."
"Thank you."
I started walking.
Behind me, he called, "Are you going to a wedding?"
I looked over my shoulder.
"Something more important."
There were goals in life.
Some were grand.
Become the strongest.
Discover what the fuck my Devil Fruit actually was.
Find the truth of this world.
Maybe beat certain people whose names started with Akainu if life presented the opportunity. And then there were the smaller goals; these are what truly fulfil you.
Twenty-five minutes later, I stood in front of a mirror wearing a black suit.
White shirt beneath it. Black tie. Clean dress shoes. The jacket needed immediate alteration because apparently most Alabastan tailors didn't keep clothing ready for absurdly broad, white-haired criminals wandering in off the Grand Line, yet Basha took one look at the handful of berries I put on his counter and found professional motivation.
He stood behind me, pulling slightly at one shoulder.
"Try moving."
I rolled my arms.
The material tightened across my back.
Basha frowned. "Again."
I raised both arms and the seam made a…noise.
He returned to adjusting the jacket, and once he finished, I stood properly and looked at myself.
Something ancient inside my soul healed, Mahoraga becoming a lawyer :)
At last.
I turned slightly, then the other way, adjusting my cuffs.
Basha watched from behind me. "You like it?"
"You have no idea."
I bought a black leather case from a shop down the road even though I had nothing particularly legal to carry inside it.
The vision needed commitment. Unfortunately, the whole operation had also eaten up most of the berries I had left on hand.
I walked out of the shop looking magnificent and financially unstable.
[IMAGE OF THE FIT!]
Fortunately, I found a solution almost immediately.
Across the street stood a casino.
I stopped walking.
Golden lettering stretched across the front beneath a huge painted scorpion, with two men in matching vests standing beside open doors while music and voices drifted onto the street.
I looked down at my coin pouch.
Then at the casino.
Then at my suit.
Oh.
Oh, this was destiny.
…
The Golden Scorpion Casino was considerably nicer inside than the places I'd gambled in during my previous life. Which was none cause I was legally too young for most of that, which was probably for the best.
Rows of tables filled the main floor beneath hanging lamps, with cards, dice and roulette wheels spread beneath clouds of cigar smoke. Waiters moved constantly between customers, carrying drinks, while dealers in matching red vests managed games with the calm expressions of people who had watched thousands of idiots convince themselves the next hand would fix their lives.
I immediately recognised three bounty hunters; they just gave off a vibe, perhaps observation haki was picking them out?
Then I recognised my own wanted poster.
It was pinned behind the security desk.
The guard standing beneath it looked at the poster.
Then at me.
Then back at the poster.
His hand moved slowly toward the pistol beneath his coat. The older man beside him caught his wrist, and they exchanged a quiet sentence I couldn't hear from this distance.
The younger guard looked at me again.
I smiled politely.
He removed his hand from the gun.
Good customer service.
I walked directly to the cashier and placed my remaining berries on the counter.
"Chips, please."
The woman behind the desk stared at me for several seconds.
Her eyes moved toward the wanted poster.
"All of it?"
"All of it."
She looked down at the money.
"Sir, I should warn you that casino chips cannot be refunded once placed into play."
"I appreciate your concern."
"I am required to say it."
"Oh."
She eventually exchanged the berries, and I carried my embarrassingly small stack toward the card tables.
Twenty minutes later, I had fewer.
"This game is shit." I huffed.
The dealer continued gathering cards.
"It is blackjack, sir."
"I know what it is."
"Then you understand you chose to hit on nineteen."
"I believed in myself," I muttered.
The man sitting beside me snorted into his drink.
I ignored him.
The dealer's hands moved the same way each time he distributed cards. The shoe had a limited number of decks. Cards disappeared, returned, got shuffled, moved again. At first, tracking everything was difficult.
Then less difficult. Then surprisingly easy.
My memory sharpened around the sequence, and numbers stopped being individual cards and started becoming proportions.
The dealer shuffled once again, and my eyes followed.
The next hand came.
I stayed.
He revealed eighteen.
I had twenty.
The next round came.
I won again. Then again.
The man beside me stopped drinking, and the dealer's expression stayed professional, though he began glancing toward the floor manager.
I pushed the winnings forward.
"Let it ride."
The dealer looked at the chips.
"All of it?"
I nodded. The cards came down.
Twenty-one.
The man beside me slowly lowered his drink.
An hour later, I changed tables and the casino had already changed dealers twice.
I had considerably more chips. Roulette proved harder because there were fewer patterns to exploit.
One section had slightly more resistance. The ball made a different sound depending on how quickly it lost speed along the outer rim, and the dealer releasing it had a remarkably consistent wrist movement.
All that Observation training finally contributed something, just not Observation Haki, unfortunately.
Beautiful.
I watched three spins without betting.
Red.
Black.
Black.
I listened to the fourth.
"Seventeen."
The woman beside me glanced over. "Confident?"
"No."
I pushed half my stack onto seventeen.
Her eyebrows rose.
The ball travelled around the wheel.
Slowed.
Bounced.
Seventeen.
The table erupted. People around me shouted while the dealer stared at the wheel long enough that somebody had to remind him to pay me.
I stacked the chips while a woman still watched me.
She was definitely attractive, with dark hair, gold earrings, and a lovely smile.
I liked her smile.
"That was impressive," she said.
I immediately became aware of where my hands were, and I adjusted my tie for no reason.
"Thank you."
She smiled more.
"You always gamble like that?"
"Wouldn't you like to know" I smiled.
She laughed.
Good shit, Kai, keep it going.
"You have beautiful eyes," I said.
There was a short pause which wasn't terrible.
Still recoverable.
Then the other woman beside her leaned closer.
"Which one of us?"
Huh, who the fuck is you!.
I hadn't properly processed this and both were looking at me now.
"W-Well."
My brain stalled.
The first woman covered her mouth, already laughing.
"I meant hers," I said, pointing toward the first, then immediately realised pointing at people during flirting was probably not optimal. "Not that yours aren't also nice. They're perfectly good eyes."
The second woman started laughing harder.
I could feel heat reaching my face.
"I have a husband," the first said.
"Wonderful."
Wonderful?
"Congratulations."
WHY DID I SAY THAT?
She completely lost it.
I turned back toward the roulette wheel, covering my face.
"Dealer."
He was visibly trying not to smile.
"Yes, sir?"
"Spin."
The ball went around.
I lost that one.
No adaptation could save me from women; some phenomena were simply too powerful.
…
By late afternoon, the Golden Scorpion had stopped enjoying my presence.
I had moved through cards, roulette and dice, and somewhere along the way the amount of money in front of me became large enough that employees began appearing solely to stare at it.
Dice had been the funniest.
Their table was rigged.
Not blatantly. I probably wouldn't have noticed before the fruit. One pair was slightly weighted, and the dealer changed them depending on which bets had attracted the most money.
Unfortunately, using consistently weighted dice against someone whose entire ability revolved around adapting to repeated phenomena was poor strategic planning.
I watched six throws.
Then started betting.
"Let it ride."
Win.
"Again."
Win.
"Sir."
"Let. It. Ride."
Another win.
The crowd around the table got larger as people began copying my bets. The casino began losing money to several dozen strangers at once.
The dealer called for his supervisor, who watched three throws, whispered to someone else, and disappeared.
I pushed everything forward again.
The dealer stared at the pile.
"All of it?"
I leaned back in my chair, suit jacket open slightly, one ankle resting over my knee.
"LET IT RIDE!"
The dice rolled. One bounced off the side, spun across the felt and stopped.
The second settled beside it.
The room exploded.
I threw both hands up.
"I CAN'T STOP WINNING!"
Several people cheered with me.
The dealer did not. Across the room, the two security guards from earlier had been joined by four more.
None approached, though, which was still interesting to me. A regular casino should have thrown me out ages ago, accused me of cheating or at least asked several extremely pointed questions.
These guards were nervous. Like they knew exactly who I was and had been told not to touch me.
Then I saw the card.
One of the floor supervisors hurried from the security desk toward a side corridor, jacket open enough that something black showed inside his pocket.
Plain rectangular card.
Exactly like the one I'd taken from that bounty hunter months ago.
Baroque Works.
Well. That saved time.
I collected my chips and moved to another table without reacting.
So Crocodile already had operations running in Alabasta. Good.
Well, not "good," but good that the canon was on the right path.
That alone wasn't surprising. Finding one twenty minutes after arriving was, although in fairness, casinos were an almost offensively obvious place for a criminal organisation to move money and meet bounty hunters.
The more interesting question was how developed the organisation already was.
And whether Robin was here.
That mattered more than Crocodile.
I had considered going straight after him once I reached Alabasta. Find Rainbase, kick the door open and proceed according to the tradition of catching these hands.
Classic.
But that would be stupid, even for me.
Crocodile was not Vale or Crest. Baroque Works had thousands of moving parts in canon, hidden identities, agents across multiple islands and an entire civil-war operation built around nobody knowing who the boss actually was.
If even half of that structure already existed, barging into the centre immediately would waste an opportunity.
I needed information first.
Fortunately, they were discussing me. The supervisor had disappeared down the corridor, about thirty metres away, behind two closed doors.
Normal hearing shouldn't have managed much through the casino noise.
Mine was no longer normal.
Funny how that worked.
I took a drink from a passing waiter and pretended to care about the card game in front of me while separating voices from the noise.
Music.
Chips.
Glasses.
Customers.
The roulette ball.
Then, faintly, through the wall.
"...confirmed?"
"Absolutely. White hair, hand marking. One hundred twenty-five million."
My mouth almost twitched.
Me.
Another voice answered, lower.
"He isn't hiding?"
"No. He walked through the front entrance."
A pause.
"Does he know?"
"Impossible to tell. He's been gambling for hours."
"He's taking us apart."
Another pause. I appreciated the clarification.
"Do not engage him. Circulate the notice through the internal network. Every local cell needs his location before sunset."
"And headquarters?"
The answer came quieter.
"Send the report upward. Miss All Sunday will decide whether this reaches the boss."
My hand stopped above the cards.
Miss All Sunday, otherwise known as the lovely Nico Robin.
She was here.
Or at least she was already inside Baroque Works.
I had spent months wondering whether I'd arrived too early. Crocodile existing was one thing; Baroque Works appearing was another, but Robin had been the piece I couldn't place properly. I didn't remember exactly when she'd joined him or how long their arrangement had existed before Luffy arrived.
Apparently, I didn't need to guess anymore.
Miss All Sunday.
Still there, unless Crocodile had somehow employed a different archaeologist with the exact same codename, which would have been extremely irritating.
The dealer cleared his throat.
"Sir?"
I looked down.
Everyone at the table was waiting.
My cards showed sixteen.
"Oh."
I hit.
Twenty-six.
The dealer gathered my cards.
The man beside me smiled. "Finally."
I stared at the empty space where my bet had been.
Nico Robin had just cost me money without even being present.
Unacceptable!
Still, I couldn't stop smiling.
I had come to Alabasta knowing roughly where the story should eventually go, yet not enough to trust any of it completely. Now I had something solid.
Crocodile had Baroque Works and Robin was Miss All Sunday, the canon had not completely shit itself while I was busy punching people in the East Blue.
Excellent!
I finished the drink and stood as the security guards tensed instantly.
Several customers nearby noticed them, then me, and the conversation around the closest tables thinned out. I ignored all of it and walked toward the cashier with enough chips stacked in my arms that one employee hurried over with a tray.
The woman from earlier stared at the amount.
"You won all of this today?" She looked shocked.
I smiled. "Thanks for the heads up earlier."
Her eyes narrowed as she started counting.
While she did, I glanced toward the side corridor.
Somewhere beyond those doors, Baroque Works was already passing my name up the chain.
Exactly what I wanted.
Finding Crocodile directly would have been possible eventually. Finding Robin across an entire country without knowing where she operated would have been significantly more annoying.
So I wasn't going to search.
Not yet.
I looked at my winnings, then at the wanted poster still hanging behind security.
One hundred twenty-five million berries. Baroque Works was an organisation filled with bounty hunters.
I stood inside one of their operations, wearing no disguise, taking their money in front of half the casino while their employees hurried to tell higher-ranking agents the 'Branchbreaker' had arrived in Alabasta.
A very stupid idea began assembling itself in my head, then it became a good stupid idea. The cashier finished counting and pushed several heavy bags toward me.
"Your winnings, sir."
I lifted the first.
"Thank you."
"Will you be returning?"
I looked toward the casino floor.
Dealers watched me.
Security watched me.
Somewhere behind the walls, Baroque Works was probably still writing reports.
I smiled. "Oh, absolutely."
If Baroque Works wanted to know what Kai Voss was doing in Alabasta, I was more than happy to give them something worth investigating; and if I became expensive enough, troublesome enough, and interesting enough, somebody important would come to see the problem for themselves sooner or later.
I adjusted my tie, picked up the rest of my winnings and walked toward the door.
The suit really was an excellent investment.
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 3768
a/n -
This chapter ended up WAY more brainrotted than planned, but honestly, who says that's a bad thing?
I went into it thinking, "Okay, this one will properly introduce Kai trying to learn Haki, establish some of the problems his adaptation creates, then get him into Alabasta and start moving toward Baroque Works."
Then yeah, it got a little outta hand; maybe I'm just tired (´.＿.｀)
Anyways, lemme know what you think of Kai's Haki problems so far. Also, the Elden Ring x LoL/Runeterra fic is officially out, so go check that out too before I start threatening people.
Cya brodies!