"Cover Story – Straw Hat Crew #12: 'The Silhouette of Windmill Village'"
"East Blue, Goa Kingdom, the outskirts of 'Dawn Island.' Brilliant fiery clouds surged at the horizon, and in the dusk, an aged figure stood at the village entrance. After gazing back with deep reluctance, he finally sighed, put on his dog-head hat, and quietly left."
...
"But the stamina consumption isn't small either."
Surrounded by arcs of lightning, Nao floated down to the ground. He looked at the training ground in the distance and pondered.
"An ordinary person's physique wouldn't be able to support a few high-speed teleports. Continuous use would likely lead to a physical breakdown and stamina exhaustion during the teleportation, making it difficult to reconverge into a human form."
"Even for me…"
He rubbed his chin, expression a little odd. "Hmm, I can only use it a hundred or so times continuously at most…"
A person's physique couldn't be generalized.
"But—it can still be improved."
Nao returned to the training ground, muttering to himself. "As long as I do this first…"
The pitch-black pupils in his eyes once again lit up with an azure lightning. With a thought, he quickly released the lightning particles, turning the large training ground into an "Electric Field".
In the next instant—
Nao's body disappeared from its original spot. He zipped and flashed, teleporting from the west to the east in an instant, and then from the south to the north…
In just one minute—
He teleported hundreds of times within the field, each spanning over a hundred meters. As his mastery grew, his speed climbed to another level altogether.
And the stamina cost…
"Almost negligible."
Nao's body reappeared. The crackling electricity on his body gradually dissipated, and his expression was thoughtful.
"So as long as I set up an electric field in advance, I can teleport infinitely within its bounds."
It wasn't much use for long-distance travel. But in battle… the potential was enormous.
As long as the field was maintained, within its range he'd be practically invincible. No opponent could outpace him there.
Not even Kizaru.
Outside the field, though, Nao had to admit—for now—Kizaru's mobility was still more reliable and powerful.
The elementization trials ended there.
Next came the "testing" for destructive power.
Nao turned around and looked at the southern side of the training ground.
Unlike the wire mesh on the other three sides, this wall was completely made of special steel plates several meters thick. It was specifically for the mid-level officers who practiced Armament Haki to test their power here.
After years of use, the steel wall in front of him was full of dents and covered with all kinds of footprints and handprints, but it still stood there, unmoving, in the moonlight.
Back when he was in the Elite Camp, Nao had also messed up these steel walls a lot. Now that it was time to test something with this thing again, he couldn't help but feel as if he had gone back in time two years.
"It's late at night. I can't make too much noise…"
Nao slowly raised his right arm. His palm was aimed at the steel wall a hundred meters away. "Let's start with a small move to warm up…"
Buzz!
The moment his voice fell, his entire right arm suddenly turned a translucent azure. Dazzling lightning erupted from his wrist—then a pillar of lightning, thick as a bowl, shot forth!
BOOM!
A deafening blast shook the training ground. The steel wall trembled violently, holding for only a second or two before detonating from within!
It wasn't just punctured—it was obliterated in its entirety.
Shattered chunks of steel flew in all directions as torrents of azure lightning cascaded like water across the ground, spreading to the distant avenue. Along the way, over a hundred maple trees were blasted apart before the thunderlight finally ebbed and vanished.
Uh…
Nao retracted his right arm. He lowered his head and squinted at his wrist, deep in thought. He had tried his best to hold back, but it seemed the power was still far beyond his imagination?
As expected of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit…
Hmm, what did Enel call this move?
It seemed to be "Inazuma"?
He wasn't very fond of the Wano-style skill name and didn't plan to use it. He didn't even have any plans to give it a specific name.
After all, to him, this level of attack was nothing more than a basic attack—hardly worthy of being called a "skill."
"Just a basic strike can cause this much destruction… but if I really let my imagination run wild, develop it more deeply…"
Nao took a deep breath, his eyes filled with the eager sparkle of a child who'd just gotten his favorite toy.
"Mm… I feel like I can come up with countless ridiculously flashy moves…"
The style ceiling of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit was simply too high.
Of course—
Creating cool, diverse moves was one thing.
But deep down, Nao knew with crystal clarity: if he wanted to truly bring out the full potential of this fruit, and use it to push his strength to the next level—
Then no matter how many development paths there were, they would all boil down to one core:
Power.
Raw power itself was the only real measure of a Devil Fruit's mastery.
For example, the Light-Light Fruit's core was speed.
The Flame-Flame Fruit's core was temperature.
And for the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, it was voltage!
Only by continuously refining and raising the maximum voltage he could unleash would he stay on the true path forward.
As he considered this, Nao had already set a clear plan in his heart:
—Voltage intensity. That would be the main line of his Rumble-Rumble Fruit development.
On top of that, he would branch out into two sub-lines.
The first sub-line:
Expanding the area of effect of his powers.
Being able to unleash massive AOE destruction with a wave of the hand was one of the most defining traits of a Logia fruit.
Blinding laser showers, volcanic meteors raining from the sky, seas and rivers frozen solid…
In the original story, all three Admirals possessed the ability to destroy an entire island—or even a nation—by themselves.
If they could do it, then Nao absolutely had to be able to do it as well.
The second sub-line:
Developing the compression and concentration of lightning.
In other words, the opposite of large-scale destruction—focusing on unleashing the maximum possible damage at a single point.
Once he achieved solid progress in both the main line and the two sub-lines, then he could consider other avenues.
For example, integrating his lightning abilities into close-quarters combat, greatly enhancing his hand-to-hand prowess.
Or even further—the idea that had always burned in his heart—perfectly fusing lightning with his Wind-Style Swordsmanship, breaking past the limits of his predecessors to carve out his own path as a Great Swordsman…
"There are too many things to try."
Nao clenched his fists and knocked them together heavily in front of his chest. Looking up at the bright full moon hanging in the night sky, he grinned.
"Time waits for no one. The honeymoon's long over—it's about time I got busy again…"
Marineford.
Your training maniac has returned!
…
Over the next stretch of time,
Nao practically reignited the same fiery passion he'd had back in his hardcore training days, once again throwing himself into a sleepless, relentless regimen. Outside of official working hours, he was almost always shut away in the training grounds.
His time with his family grew much shorter, but the girls all understood. After all, not long ago, he had applied for an entire four-month honeymoon leave just for them.
…
After sunset, it became normal for dark clouds to gather and for lightning and thunder to flash from time to time at Marine Headquarters.
The high-ranking officials of Headquarters naturally learned from Nao that he had "accidentally" found the Rumble-Rumble Fruit during his trip and had become a Logia-type user.
This news was quite a pleasant surprise for Kong, Sengoku, and the others.
Fleet Admiral Kong, who had always admired and valued Nao highly, even deliberately put a temporary hold on several assignments that had originally been scheduled for him.
He wanted to give this junior—whom he already regarded as the guiding light of the Marine's future—ample time to focus purely on training and raising his strength.
But for some of the Vice Admiral–level and above officers stationed at HQ, especially those close to Nao, these past months had been a bit of a nightmare.
Whenever they clocked out and planned to grab a drink or stroll the shopping district, Nao would drag them off instead—to serve as sparring partners, guinea pigs for his newly developed Rumble-Rumble skills.
Even though the spars stopped short of going all-out, they often ended up bruised and swollen, faces battered and blue.
And then there was Aokiji, who was a permanent resident of Headquarters, was the number one "electrotherapy" subject and was constantly in a state of getting beaten up and healing. Once, after a sparring session, he happened to attend a high-level strategy meeting at Headquarters.
With his hands still numb from the electricity, he fumbled and dropped seven cups of tea in a row in front of everyone...
And so—
Before he'd even earned the codename "Aokiji," Kuzan had already gained the nickname "Vice Admiral Cup-Smasher", which spread through the entire Marine like wildfire.
Enraged, Aokiji stormed to Nao afterward, intent on settling accounts. But faced with Nao's cheerful stream of apologies—and his offer to cover dinner and drinks for the whole night in the shopping district—his grievances instantly melted away.
That same day, they were back to being good brothers, leaning on each other and drunkenly stumbling back home in the middle of the night. At 4 a.m., when he was helping Nao back to his door, Gion, who had been woken up, was so angry that she gritted her teeth and kicked him out.
Sigh.
Who could stay angry at a guy with a charm of 21?
…
And so, time slipped by. In the blink of an eye, more than four months had passed. When Nao had first returned to HQ after his honeymoon trip, winter hadn't yet arrived. Now, with a flicker of time, it was already the early summer of Sea Circle Calendar 1504.
In that fleeting spring, the desert kingdom of Alabasta welcomed the birth of a blue-haired little princess named Vivi. Around the same time, a pink-haired boy named Koby was born, as well as a tiny mermaid girl named Camie.
Meanwhile, in the distant New World, shocking news spread from Totto Land: Big Mom had given birth to ten children at once—five boys and five girls...
When Nao heard this news, he had just finished sparring with Aokiji. The two of them were walking out of the training ground together.
"That's a bit too much, isn't it? Even a sow can't give birth like that…"
Aokiji glanced at the newspaper, his face the very picture of that old meme: subway uncle looking at his phone.
"Tell me, Nao, isn't there a chance—I'm just saying, maybe—that it's because she failed to get you twice in a row, that she went crazy with marriages and children, out of some kind of revenge?"
"Get lost."
Nao snapped and kicked him straight away, a spark of lightning flaring from his toe and instantly numbing half of Aokiji's backside.
"Don't bring up that fat hag. Just thinking about that whole ordeal makes me sick to my stomach."
"Hey, it was just a joke."
Aokiji rubbed his butt casually with one hand. This level of shock wasn't even enough to count as a scratch—after months of being zapped daily, he was already used to it.
"Besides, the one who really couldn't swallow her pride and got all bitter… was clearly her, wasn't it?"
He folded up the newspaper, shooting a sidelong glance at Nao.
"By the way, since the start of the year, the Charlotte Family and the Beasts Pirates have been stirring again. Looks like the beating they took last time wasn't enough. If you ran into that old woman again, think you could take her?"
Back when they'd sparred in Impel Down, waiting around bored for the old warden, he and Nao had been evenly matched. No—Aokiji had even seemed to hold a slight edge, calm and unhurried.
But in the past few months…
Every sparring match ended with him getting fried, losing far more than he won.
And if they weren't comrades-in-arms, but true enemies fighting to the death—
Considering Nao's downright monstrous stamina…
Aokiji figured there was at least a seventy percent chance he would be the one to drop first.
"Don't think about it. I couldn't beat her."
Nao yawned lazily. "Those Sea Emperors are measured against the old guys like Sengoku and Garp. The future belongs to us, but for now? If I run into that fat hag now, I'll be the first to run."
You run my ass… Aokiji almost spat out a mouthful of blood. This guy really was exactly like Gion had said when they first met—
The more familiar you get with him, the more he just runs his mouth nonstop.
If they really ran into Big Mom, wouldn't this bastard be the first to charge headlong at her, yelling at the top of his lungs—even Sengoku himself couldn't hold him back?
As for the outcome…
Aokiji ran the numbers in his head. He probably understood Nao's progress over these past months—the mastery he'd gained over the Rumble-Rumble Fruit—better than anyone else.
With the fruit's unique properties, even if Nao couldn't outright defeat Big Mom, he could at least drag her into a drawn-out battle without really being at a disadvantage.
"Thing is, there just hasn't been the chance."
Nao seemed to see straight through Aokiji's thoughts, shrugging. "Honestly, being stuck at HQ, using you guys as training dummies over and over, is getting kinda boring. But these past months, the New World's been pretty quiet. Just minor turbulence here and there—no big incidents that needed us Marines to get involved."
"That's true, I suppose—"
Just as Aokiji was about to say something, the Den Den Mushi in his arms suddenly rang—brrr-brrr.
He picked up, and Sengoku's low, urgent voice came from the receiver:
"It's me, Kuzan."
"You and Nao should be together right now, right? Hurry to the top floor of the fortress. We're having an emergency meeting. Bring him with you. Don't be late!" He then hung up in a hurry.
"…"
Aokiji put down the Den Den Mushi and looked at Nao with a strange expression.
No way. Is it because I've been electrocuted so much that my words have become prophetic?