The second year did not begin gently.
If the first year had been about breaking the body, the second was about denying it comfort entirely.
Koushirou stopped giving instructions in full sentences. He gave gestures. Looks. A single word, sometimes not even that. The students learned to understand intent rather than explanation, and the pirates were forced to adapt or suffer quietly.
Jack suffered loudly.
"Why," Jack demanded one morning while balancing on a single wooden post with a stone strapped to each ankle, "does everything involve pain?"
Koushirou sat nearby, eyes closed, listening to the wind. "Pain means you are doing it right."
Jack wobbled. "It also means I am breaking bones and I don't like it."
He nearly fell, corrected himself at the last second, arms flailing wildly before settling back into balance. He laughed in relief, then immediately yelped as the stones dragged his ankles downward.
"Unfair," he muttered.
Yet even while complaining, Jack was changing.
His movements were no longer wasteful. He stopped overcommitting. His steps grew lighter, quieter. Where once he would rush forward recklessly, now he drifted sideways, circling without realizing he was doing it. He learned to fight while moving backward, learned to turn slips into pivots, learned that agility was not about speed alone but about choice—choosing where to be and when.
Koushirou watched closely.
Jack absorbed everything.
Not like a prodigy who understood immediately, but like a sponge dropped into the sea—slow at first, then thoroughly saturated. Corrections stuck. Failures did not repeat themselves for long. Every mistake became data, every bruise a lesson.
The voice in Koushirou's mind did not speak anymore. The results were visible.
Pintel flourished in unexpected ways.
Once swords were introduced fully, his lanky frame proved deceptive. He lacked discipline, grinned too much, and treated sparring like a game, but his sense of timing was uncanny. He reacted late, yet somehow still landed hits. His footwork was sloppy, but his blade often arrived where it shouldn't have.
Unfortunately, Pintel also discovered that sword confidence translated poorly into social grace.
He flirted. Constantly. Badly.
The village women responded with remarkable consistency.
Slap.
Another slap.
Occasionally a thrown sandal.
Pintel learned to dodge those too, though not quickly enough to avoid further humiliation.
"Worth it," he insisted one evening, rubbing his cheek.
Ragetti himself became something else entirely.
He stopped flinching.
At first, this was concerning. Students would strike him, and he would simply absorb the blow with a grunt, wobble, and straighten back up. Over time, he learned how to turn his body just enough to lessen impact, how to brace without tensing, how to fall without injury.
He became, unintentionally, the dojo's safest training partner.
Students practiced dangerous techniques on Ragetti because Ragetti did not break.
"Are you alright?" Jack asked him once after a particularly rough session.
Ragetti lay on the ground, staring at the sky. "I think I'm becoming durable."
"That's not a thing," Jack said.
Ragetti rolled onto his side. "Tell that to my ribs."
Gibbs changed in quieter ways.
He trained less with the sword because he knew swords were not the thing for little old him. He kept track of news brought by passing merchants, listened carefully to rumors, and mapped the shifting tides of piracy and Marine activity. He helped repair the Black Pearl plank by plank with village craftsmen, learning which parts could be salvaged and which would need replacing later.
He spent increasing time with Koushirou's wife, Maki.
She was practical, sharp-eyed, and unimpressed by pirate theatrics. Gibbs respected her immediately. He carried water for her when her belly grew heavy, repaired broken furniture without being asked, and spoke little of his past unless she asked directly.
When she did, he answered honestly.
He told her he had once been a father.
Maki did not pity him.
She trusted him.
When her labor began, it was Gibbs who stayed calm while others panicked. He followed instructions, steadied shaking hands, and spoke softly when the pain grew sharp. When the child was born—a girl, healthy and loud—Gibbs cried openly and made no attempt to hide it.
Maki named him the child's godfather.
Koushirou did not like it.
He accepted it anyway.
Jack watched this all from a distance, pretending not to care, and then awkwardly holding the baby once before panicking and handing her back.
"She's fragile," Jack said.
"She's stronger than you," Gibbs replied.
"Not yet, but maybe in the future. Afterall teacher is her father. Now I almost pity her."
Sword training deepened.
Koushirou explained the difference between swinging and cutting. Between hitting and deciding. He corrected Jack's posture relentlessly, tapping his shoulder, nudging his hips, adjusting his grip until Jack felt like he was being rebuilt one bone at a time.
"You rely on movement," Koushirou said one afternoon. "That is not weakness."
Jack wiped sweat from his brow. "Good. I like to move it."
"But movement without intent is chaos," Koushirou continued. "You must choose where the chaos goes."
Jack nodded, then promptly tripped during the next spar.
Progress was not graceful.
Koushirou felt the weight of his teaching settle fully now. Jack's talent was not loud. It was subtle, growing sideways rather than upward, developing in places others ignored.
Agility over power.
Precision over force.
Danger hidden behind yapping.
-----
Swords, Jack learned, were not all equal.
Some were merely tools—sharp pieces of metal forged to cut and break. Others carried names, histories, and intent, shaped not just by smiths but by the hands and wills of those who wielded them.
Graded blades.
There were ranks among swords, hierarchies that mattered deeply to swordsmen. Ordinary blades. Skillful blades. Famous blades. And above them all, legends.
One evening, as Jack sat cross-legged on the dojo floor cleaning his wooden practice sword out of habit more than necessity, one of the older students spoke casually, almost carelessly.
"There are twelve Supreme Grade Blades," the student said. "Only twelve in the world."
Jack's hand paused.
"And below them," the student continued, "the twenty-one Great Grade Blades. Still monsters. Still priceless."
Jack looked up slowly. "Twenty-one?"
The student nodded. "Very few ever even see one."
Jack's eyes drifted, unbidden, toward the inner rooms of the dojo.