"Wake up, maggots!"
I didn't actually shout that. I wasn't a Marine drill instructor. I was a pirate. But the sentiment was there.
It was five in the morning. The sun hadn't even thought about rising yet. The mist was so thick you could chew it. I stood in the center of the clearing, looking at three very sleepy, very grumpy genin and one groggy cyclops.
"It's... too early," Naruto groaned, rubbing his eyes. He was wearing his pajamas and a nightcap that looked like a giant sock.
"Ninja wake up before the sun," Kakashi mumbled, though he was leaning heavily against a tree, his single eye half-closed. "But usually... we have coffee first."
"Coffee is for closers," I said cheerfully. "And you guys haven't closed the deal on survival yet."
I clapped my hand against the hilt of Gryphon. The sharp sound cut through the morning air.
"Listen up!" I commanded. My voice wasn't loud, but it carried that unnatural weight that made people listen. "Yesterday, you asked for power. You asked to be able to flick a Jounin across a field. You asked for the secret."
Sasuke straightened up instantly, sleep vanishing from his eyes. "The secret."
"Today," I said, pacing in front of them. "We begin the basics. But first, a ground rule."
I held up my index finger.
"You saw me turn my sword black. You saw me knock people out with my presence. You saw me sense things before they happened."
"The scary magic!" Naruto shouted.
"It's called Haki," I said. "Ambition. Willpower. And I am not teaching it to you."
The clearing erupted in protest.
"What?!" Naruto yelled. "But that was the coolest part!"
"Why not?" Sasuke demanded, stepping forward. "If that's the source of your strength—"
"It's the source of my dominance," I corrected him, my voice dropping low. "But it is not the source of my physical strength. Haki is the armor of the soul. If you try to use it with your current bodies... you'll die."
It was a lie. Mostly. In One Piece, even children had Haki sometimes (like Aisa on Skypiea), but teaching these kids spiritual dominance before they could do a proper push-up felt irresponsible. Plus, I had no idea how Haki interacted with Chakra coils. I didn't want to accidentally blow up the main character.
"Your bodies," I continued, gesturing to their skinny frames. "Are ships made of balsa wood. Haki is a cannon. If you fire a cannon from a balsa wood boat, what happens?"
"The boat breaks," Sakura answered timidly.
"Exactly. The boat shatters. You need to build a battleship first. You need iron bones and steel muscles. You need to break the limits of human biology."
I grinned, a wide, predatory grin that I felt belonged to the original Shanks.
"I'm going to teach you the Rokushiki. The Six Powers."
Kakashi perked up. "Six Powers? I've never heard of that Taijutsu style."
"It's not a style," I said. "It's an evolution. It's forcing the human body to do things physics says it shouldn't."
I walked to the center of the clearing.
"There are six forms. Soru (Shave). Tekkai (Iron Body). Rankyaku (Tempest Kick). Geppo (Moon Walk). Shigan (Finger Pistol). And Kami-e (Paper Art)."
I looked at them. "I don't expect you to learn them all. Honestly, you'd die trying. But we are going to focus on the basics. Movement. Defense. Evasion."
"Show us," Sasuke challenged.
"Gladly."
I looked at a tree fifty yards away.
"First, Soru."
I didn't channel chakra. I didn't weave signs. I simply kicked the ground. But I didn't just kick it once. I kicked it ten times in the blink of an eye, using the elastic force of the ground to propel myself.
VWOOP.
To them, I vanished.
I reappeared instantly next to the tree, my hand resting on the bark. The sound of my movement—a sharp crack like a whip—arrived a second later.
"Explosive speed," I called out. "Faster than the eye. Pure leg strength."
"That's... like the Body Flicker Technique," Kakashi analyzed, his eye spinning. "But Body Flicker uses chakra to vitalize the body. You just... brute-forced the friction?"
"Second," I said, ignoring him. " Geppo."
I jumped. And then, when I reached the apex of my jump, I kicked the air.
BOOM.
A shockwave rippled out. I shot higher. I kicked again. BOOM. I was walking up a staircase of air. I stood fifty feet in the air, looking down at them.
"He's flying!" Naruto screamed, clutching his head. "He's flying without a broom or a bird or anything!"
"Physics is a suggestion," I shouted down. "If you kick the air hard enough, it becomes solid."
I dropped down, landing softly.
"And finally... Tekkai."
I walked over to Sasuke. "Punch me. In the stomach. As hard as you can."
Sasuke hesitated. "I don't want to hurt—"
"Do it."
Sasuke scowled. He pulled back his fist, channeled chakra into it, and swung. It was a solid punch, strong enough to crack wood.
CLANG.
It sounded like he had punched an anvil.
Sasuke yelped, clutching his hand. He stumbled back, tears pricking his eyes. "It's... like metal!"
"Muscles tightened to the density of iron," I explained, patting my abs. "No chakra armor. Just muscle control."
I looked at the three Genin. They were terrified. And hungry.
"This is what we are doing," I said. "We aren't climbing trees today. We are breaking bodies. Who's first?"
The Training
It turned out, "breaking bodies" was a literal description of how they felt, but a metaphorical description of the workout.
I had them doing Marine conditioning. Which, compared to Ninja conditioning, was surprisingly boring but infinitely more intense in terms of volume.
"Keep your knees up!" I barked at Naruto.
He was running laps around the clearing. But not normal laps. I had tied a log to his waist with a rope.
"My legs are burning!" Naruto wailed.
"Good! Let 'em burn! Fire forges steel!"
Sasuke was doing squats. Two hundred of them. Holding a boulder.
Sakura was... struggling.
I watched her. She was doing pushups, but her arms were shaking violently after only twenty. She was physically the weakest by a large margin. In Naruto, she excelled at chakra control. Here, in the dojo of pure gains, she was drowning.
I walked over to her. She collapsed, panting, shame written all over her face.
"I can't..." she whispered. "I'm not like them. I don't have their stamina."
"No," I agreed. "You don't."
She flinched. "I'm useless."
"Stop that," I said, my voice stern. "Self-pity is for people who have given up. Have you given up?"
She looked at Sasuke, sweating and grunting under his boulder. She looked at Naruto, screaming at his log. She gritted her teeth. "No."
"Good. You're not a tank, Sakura. You're never going to have Iron Body. If you try to tank a hit from Zabuza, you'll die. So don't get hit."
I picked up a leaf from the ground. I held it over her head and dropped it. It fluttered, twisting and turning in the wind, unpredictable.
"Be the paper," I said.
"What?"
"Kami-e," I explained. "Paper Art. It's one of the Six Powers. It's not about being hard. It's about being limp. It's about surrendering your body to the airflow of the attack. When the enemy punches, you don't block. You flow around it like paper in the wind."
I stood her up. "Relax your muscles. All of them."
"That's... dangerous."
"It's terrifying," I corrected. "But for someone small like you, it's survival. Sasuke and Naruto are trying to be hammers. I want you to be the wind."
I poked her shoulder. She stiffened.
"Wrong," I said. "Do it again. When I touch you, go limp. Dodge by collapsing."
It gave her a focus. While the boys were grunting and groaning trying to build explosive power, Sakura stood in the corner, eyes closed, letting leaves fall on her, trying to move with them rather than against them.
Midday
Kakashi was the surprise.
He wasn't doing the drills with the kids. He was standing by a tree, kicking it.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He was trying to figure out Soru.
I walked over to him, eating a rice ball.
"You're overthinking it, Scarecrow."
Kakashi stopped, wiping sweat from his brow. "The theory is sound. Kick the ground ten times in a split second. But the stress on the Achilles tendon is... significant. Without chakra reinforcement, the tendon snaps."
"So use chakra," I shrugged.
Kakashi blinked. "What?"
"I don't use chakra because I don't have it," I said (which was true as far as I knew). "But you do. You're a ninja. Cheat."
Kakashi stared at me. "You're teaching them pure physical arts, but you're telling me to use chakra?"
"I'm teaching them to build a foundation," I said. "You already have the foundation. You're just trying to copy my engine when you have a different fuel source. Use your chakra to reinforce the tendon, then use the physical technique of the multiple kicks. Combine them."
Kakashi looked at his legs. He focused. I felt the familiar hum of chakra—that gray warmth I sensed with Observation Haki—flow into his ankles.
He blurred.
CRACK.
A chunk of the tree bark exploded outward as he pushed off. He vanished and reappeared ten feet to the left. He stumbled, nearly falling over.
"Fast," Kakashi breathed. "Faster than the Body Flicker. And it allows for mid-movement direction changes because it's based on friction, not a single burst of momentum."
"There you go," I grinned. "You just learned Soru. Now do it a thousand times until you don't trip."
Kakashi looked at me with renewed respect. "You're a strange teacher, Shanks. You break all the conventions of Shinobi training."
"Pirates don't have conventions," I said. "We just have results."
Evening
The sun was setting. The Genin were corpses.
Naruto was lying face down in the dirt, twitching. Sasuke was sitting against a rock, his arms hanging uselessly at his sides. Sakura was dizzy from spinning and dodging all day.
I stood over them.
"Not bad," I lied. "For day one."
"I... can't... feel... my... legs," Naruto mumbled into the dirt.
"That means they're still attached," I said.
Sasuke looked up. His eyes were burning with that intense Uchiha fire.
"I saw... the flicker," Sasuke rasped. "For a second. When I was doing the sprints. I felt the ground... push back."
"Good," I said. "Hold onto that feeling. Soru is about violence. You have to hate the ground. You have to want to hurt it with your feet."
"Why..." Sasuke swallowed, his throat dry. "Why won't you teach us the sword? Or the black armor?"
He was obsessed with the Haki. He had seen the black blade cut the rock.
I sat down on the stump. The playful demeanor vanished. I let a tiny, tiny sliver of my "Emperor" persona leak out. The air grew heavy for just a second.
"Sasuke," I said, using his name seriously for the first time.
He froze.
"The black armor... Armament Haki... it requires you to have an unbreaking will. If you doubt yourself for a single second, the armor shatters. And if the armor shatters while you're blocking a blade, you die."
I pointed at his chest.
"You are full of doubt. You are full of anger. Anger is brittle. It burns hot, but it snaps easily. Until you learn to be cold... until you learn to trust your own strength without needing to prove it to anyone... you cannot wield the Haki."
Sasuke looked down, his fists clenching. He hated hearing it. But he didn't argue. He had felt the weight of my presence. He knew I was seeing something inside him he was trying to hide.
"However," I softened my tone. "If you master Soru... if you can move faster than eyes can see... you won't need armor. You just won't get hit."
Sasuke looked up. A small smirk touched his lips. "Don't get hit. I can do that."
"Shanks-nii..." Naruto rolled over. "What about me? Am I gonna get the cool wind kicks?"
"Rankyaku?" I laughed. "Maybe when you stop tripping over your own feet, Anchor."
"Don't call me Anchor!"
"Get some sleep," I ordered. "Tomorrow, we add weight."
"MORE WEIGHT?!" they collectively screamed.
Later that Night
I sat on the roof of Tazuna's house, looking out at the ocean. The fog was rolling in again.
I held a cup of sake Tsunami had managed to find for me. It wasn't the high-quality stuff from the Red Hair Pirates' stash, but it burned going down, which was all I really needed.
"You're pushing them hard."
I didn't turn around. My Observation Haki had sensed the gray fire of Kakashi ten minutes ago.
"They don't have much time," I said. "Zabuza isn't the type to retire. He's healing. He's planning. And he has that partner."
"The hunter-nin," Kakashi agreed, sitting down next to me. "I sensed him too. He wasn't trying to kill Zabuza. He was saving him."
"Fake death," I nodded. "Classic trick."
Kakashi looked at the moon. "You know, today... when I used that Soru move... I felt something. A liberation. We ninja rely so much on our chakra networks. We treat our bodies as vessels for the energy. You treat the body as the weapon itself."
"A vessel can crack," I said, taking a sip. "A weapon is meant to be used."
"Who are you, Shanks?" Kakashi asked quietly. "Really? You know too much about combat. You have the command of a Kage. But you act like a drifter."
I looked at the silver-haired ninja. I could tell him the truth. I'm a salaryman named Dave who got hit by a Toyota and woke up as an anime character.
Yeah, no.
"I'm just a man who bet his arm on the new era," I said, quoting the original Shanks because it sounded cool.
Kakashi looked at my empty sleeve. He didn't press further.
"Well," Kakashi stood up. "Whatever era you're betting on... I'm glad you're on our side for this one."
"Don't get comfortable, Scarecrow," I grinned. "Once this bridge is built, I'm setting sail. I need to find out if this world has any good parties."
Kakashi chuckled and vanished in a puff of smoke.
I looked back at the ocean.
I had taught them the basics. They were getting stronger. But Zabuza was a Demon. And Haku... Haku was a prodigy with a bloodline limit.
Physical strength was great. But against mirrors of ice and hidden mist?
"I hope I'm not leading lambs to the slaughter," I whispered to the waves.
I gripped Gryphon.
If it gets bad... I'll intervene.
But deep down, I knew the plot had to happen. Naruto had to grow. Sasuke had to awaken his Sharingan fully. I couldn't do everything for them.
I was the mentor character now. And mentors usually had a bad habit of dying.
"Not this time," I promised myself. "I'm keeping this red hair for a while longer."