5 Days until the reverse mountain.
"What are you reading?" asked Reiju.
"Hmm..." Dud looked up from the [Grimoire of the Pyromancer], and a light bulb went off in his head.
"Hey, what do you think about fire?" he asked.
"In what context?"
Dud opened his mouth, and a rare spike of caution changed his decision.
"I think it is better if we do this in the aft deck," he said as he led the curious crewmate to the deck where they found Fredric tinkering with something made of [celestial bronze].
"What is that?" asked Dud.
"Oh, I am assembling a butterfly knife. What are you guys doing here?"
"I wanted to test this and see if Reiju would want it," answered Dud, holding up the [Grimoire of the Pyromancer].
"You haven't told me what it is," she reminded him.
Dud simply grinned at them and went to the railing and opened the page to an intermediate spell and channeled his 'mana,' causing various symbols on the cover to glow; he pointed his hand out to the sea and chanted.
"Flame Fauna," his voice gained an ethereal echo as orange flames belched out of his outstretched hand and formed a miniature island whale that was bigger than the ship.
The flame whale cartwheeled in the air before diving into the ocean, creating a huge plume of steam.
"Fuuuu, so do yo—" "Mine," interrupted Reiju as she snatched the grimoire and read it with a wide grin on her face.
"Do you have anything else as epic as that?" asked the first mate, eyeing the grimoire with slight envy.
"Nope!" said Dud with false cheer.
"I am calling dibs on the next epic thing you want to give away," Fredric declared, and Dud shrugged.
"Did you figure out any use for [Celestial Bronze]?" Dud asked somewhat seriously.
"According to Herbie, it is supposed to let us hurt Logia users and cause extra damage to Devil Fruit users, but..." Fredric trailed off.
"But we don't have access to devil fruit users." Dud finished and Fredric nodded.
"Fire Javelin!" yelled Reiju, launching a 2-meter-long, 2-inch-thick fire stick at the sea that went under the sea and exploded.
"Fire Rain," she followed, causing fire arrows to manifest and run down in a 100 sq ft area.
"Are you going to stop her?" asked Fredric as she cast another spell.
"Nah, I will just carry her to her room when she runs out and falls unconscious." answered Dud as Reiju cast a spell that made laughing fire pumpkins that floated around her.
Fredric shrugged and went to the workshop to tinker while Dud watched the newly born pyromaniac unleash her deepest frustrations on the sea... What? Oh, she started yelling all the things she hid in her head due to 'mana' deficiency, which is making her drunk, aka removing her filter and providing an outlet... I will stop now.
Reiju ran out of 'mana' completely after a few more spells, and Dud was there to catch her, and he carried her to her room. Time for a tiny time skip~
1 day until the reverse mountain, Jump Town.
"I would like to order 3 large log poses and 10 normal ones," said Dud to the shopkeeper.
"I can give you the 10 normal ones right now, and it is going to take me a few hours to get the large ones ready," said the shopkeeper as he brought up a large tray containing a selection of log poses for Dud to choose.
Dug selected 10, paid for it, thanked the shopkeeper, and asked around for a gun shop, where he found himself disappointed with the quality of the weapons, and went exploring and ran into Reiju carrying around a bunch of bags, and well, they basically had a date without realizing it.
Meanwhile, in Herbie.
BangBangBangBangBangBangBang *Click* *Click*
"Yep, that finalizes it. [Celestial Bronze] weave cloaks it is," declared Dud as he looked at the dummy that was wearing a cloak standing next to a dummy wearing bronze chain mail. They had identical damage and barely any bruises, despite emptying multiple guns into them.
"I still can't believe the level of protection it offers for its weight," said Fredric as he joined Dud in examining the cloak.
"Well, it is supposed to be divine metal. What color do you want yours in?"
"Deep brown/black, any clues on modifying the golems? Or 'Streetcleaner,' was it?" asked Fredric.
"I am not sure about the street cleaner, but any modification done to the golems gets left behind when I dismiss them, so any modified golems will have to stay summoned," said Dud, frowning in thought.
"Why don't you leave them summoned?"
"Huh?"
"The Golems," Fredric clarified. "It's not like they cost you energy to have them present," he explained.
"Huh," said Dud, realizing he could do that. "You are right; I did not think about it," Dud confessed. "Want to modify it with me?" he asked with a grin, getting a grin in response.
While one of the Dud clones was on a date, another was bonding with his first mate, and the final clone was keeping his promise, keeping Vorstin and Herbie company. An interesting development was taking place in the main laboratory of Judge, the tyrannical scientist ruler of the mobile evil kingdom called Germa 66. (I am having fun coming up with ways to describe people who would have thunk it?)
"Fascinating" declared Judge as he examined the growth rate of Dud's DNA. He found that unlike others, Dud's clone would have an extremely short growth cycle; if his calculations were right, a clone with Dud's lineage factor would only need 5 days to grow into an adult, and given what he knew about Dud's capacity, his army just got a massive boost.
He still needed to figure out a way to extract the lineage factors that put Dud way above humans, which was only a matter of time. (*Snort*)
The judge decided he needed more of the original's DNA, and his greed wanted to make sure that no one else got access to something so fascinating.
"Get in contact with the World Government; I want a 50,000,000-berry-only alive bounty issued on the intruder and place him as a priority target. I want him in my lab as quickly as possible." The judge ordered his secretary.
"Right away, Lord," came the answer of secretary number 19 as she went to fulfill his order.
A few hours latter.
"My Liege?" called the secretary with a troubled expression on her face.
"What?" The judge asked, not looking away from a monitor that was showing the results of an experiment.
"We found the intruder. He is called Dud and was last spotted a few minutes ago in Jump Town on a date..." she trailed off, preparing herself.
"What?!" the judge asked, annoyed, not looking away from the monitor.
"On a date with Lady Reiju."
"WHAT?!" thundered the tyrant, towering over the secretary who held up the report like a shield. The judge snatched it. Inside he found a photograph of the intruder wearing round sunglasses that rested in his hair, carrying bags while walking next to his daughter.
She looked remarkably similar to his daughter, with the iconic eyebrows of his children; she wore a crimson kaftan dress with a flame motif, black leggings, and brown boots. A strange book hung to her left on her waist.
The thing that made him hesitate to call the woman in the photo his daughter was her expression. She was looking at the intruder, Dud? with a smile that he only ever saw on his wife whenever she was talking with his daughter or the spare. She also carried herself freer and truer than he had ever seen his daughter.
"What's her name?" he asked the secretary as he scanned the document.
"The informant isn't sure, but they overheard the Dud call her 'Rei,' and she repeatedly addressed him as 'Captain.'"
"Hmm..." The judge hummed as he considered the possibility of 'Rei' being a clone of Reiju and immediately dismissed it; his children needed a highly specific diet the first few weeks following their birth or their enhancements would have killed them. Reiju especially had such an outlandish diet that he doubted anyone could come up with it.
"Issue a bounty on this 'Rei,' a normal one, about 10,000,000 berries, and fetch me my daughter," he ordered, placing the folder on a table.
"By your order, My Liege," said the secretary, going away to fulfill his orders. The judge returned to his experiment, but his mind was not really there.
Back on Herbie,
"Okay, that's the last of the things I needed to put away. Am I missing something?" Dud said to himself as he put away the last of the groceries into their proper places when Reiju entered the galley with a bemused expression decorating her face.
"What's up?" Dud asked and received a shush as a response, so he just shrugged and went back to pondering about missing supplies.
"How far away from the Reverse Mountain are we?" Fredric asked his captain as he entered the galley.
"About 11 hours." Dud replied, and Fredric nodded.
"What's for dinner?" Reiju asked, seemingly free of whatever had kept her busy.
"I am feeling lazy, so we are having Jump Town street food. What happened?" Dud asked curiously.
Reiju opened her mouth and then closed it, changing her mind on what to say.
"You will find out in a few days," she decided.
"It's about the bounty, isn't it?" Fredric asked, but it was more of a statement and was replied to with a wink, making him groan.
And so our lovely explorers spent the last night of relative peace as an ADVENTURE loomed on the horizon.