Garp didn't say how long he would stay.
He was simply at the dining table the next morning, finishing a portion large enough for three people, then heading into the forest without explanation. Dadan, who saw him leave, didn't ask. She had enough experience dealing with Garp to know that asking wouldn't produce a useful answer.
Luffy, seeing his grandfather already in the forest, knew what he had to do.
The first fight happened on the second day.
Luffy appeared at the flat area by the river's edge where Garp sat with a rice cracker in his hand, straw hat pulled back on his head.
"Gramps. Again."
Garp raised one eyebrow. "You sure?"
"Again."
Garp set down his rice cracker and stood.
The fight didn't last long.
Luffy used Soru to close the distance and struck with Gomu Gomu no Pistol at close range. Garp didn't move from where he stood. Luffy's fist slammed into Garp's raised palm and Luffy was pushed back several steps, his hand feeling like it had hit something far beyond mere stone.
Luffy looked at his hand for a moment. Then at Garp.
Garp was no longer where he had been standing.
Luffy heard a sound above him and jumped sideways. Garp's fist hit the ground and left a hole that was considerably deep. Luffy was already in the air using Geppo, his arm stretching back.
"Gomu Gomu no Pistol!"
Garp caught the fist with one hand.
Not dodging. Not deflecting. Catching. Like catching a ball thrown by a small child.
Then Garp twisted his body and threw Luffy into the ground.
Luffy hit the ground hard, the earth around him rising, and before he could stand Garp was already beside him.
"Again?" asked Garp.
Luffy pushed himself to his feet and brushed the dirt from his clothes. "Again."
Day three.
Luffy tried Geppo to attack from an unexpected angle. Garp followed him into the air with a Geppo far more stable than his own, like standing on invisible ground, and knocked Luffy downward before Luffy's attack could arrive.
Day four.
Luffy tried Gomu Gomu no Gatling at close range, dozens of fists from multiple angles simultaneously. Garp stood in the middle of that downpour of fists with his arms crossed over his chest, letting every strike hit his forearms. Not a single one made him shift.
Day five.
Luffy combined everything he had. Soru for speed, Geppo for aerial mobility, Gomu Gomu no Gatling for volume of attack. He moved without stopping, giving Garp no room to breathe, attacking from above, from the side, from below in rotation.
Garp followed every movement without appearing to try.
At the end of day five Luffy lay on the ground staring at the sky, his breathing heavy, lumps scattered across various parts of his body. Beside him Garp had gone back to his rice cracker, his expression just as relaxed as when the fight had started.
Luffy stared at the sky and thought.
There was a wall in front of him. A wall that couldn't be broken through by simply doing the same things harder or faster. He had used every technique he had. His physical strength was at the limit of what he could reach by the methods he knew.
What Garp had was different. Not merely stronger or faster. There was something fundamentally different in the way Garp moved and struck, something that made every one of his punches feel like hitting something other than what was visible.
Haki, Luffy said to himself.
And there was something else that kept turning in his head. Something about his own body that he hadn't fully explored yet.
The next morning Garp was gone.
His chair was empty. Nothing was different from usual at the dining table except that one person who had been there was no longer there. No message. No goodbye. Just gone.
Luffy looked at that empty chair for a moment.
Then sat down and ate as usual.
Two and a half months.
That was what Luffy had before he set sail and he had no intention of wasting a single day of it.
The question that had been turning in his head since the last day of fighting Garp hadn't gone away. If anything it had grown louder. Something about his own body that he hadn't fully explored. He had been using his rubber body from the outside for years, stretching, enlarging, bouncing. But what about from the inside?
His body was rubber. Rubber could be pumped. Rubber could expand under pressure.
The idea was simple enough to feel stupid. But Luffy had never rejected an idea just because it sounded stupid.
He concentrated something inside himself on the first morning after Garp left, trying to pump something through his blood vessels, accelerating that flow faster than usual, harder, pushing that pressure throughout his entire body at once.
Nothing happened on the first attempt.
Nothing happened on the second through the tenth.
On the eleventh attempt his body began to feel strange, like a pressure building from within, then suddenly heat spread from his chest through his entire body. His skin began to change color, reddening like water close to boiling. Thin steam started rising from his pores.
Luffy stared at his hand that was now red and steaming.
Then he punched the tree in front of him.
The sound it produced was different from before. Louder. Deeper. And the tree that usually only shook now cracked down its middle.
Luffy laughed.
"Hahaha!"
Then he dropped to his knees, his entire body feeling like it had been burned from the inside, his breathing ragged, and his consciousness began to leave.
He passed out beneath that cracked tree.
Gear Second, that was what Luffy called it in his head.
Pumping blood faster through his rubber body like a pump, drastically increasing pressure throughout his body and producing speed and strength that far exceeded his normal limits.
The problem was one. The side effects were severe.
The first use knocked him out for nearly an hour. The second use the next day was briefer but the effect was the same, a body running too hot, muscles feeling torn from within, vision blurring before consciousness departed. Every time he tried to use it longer, his body forced a stop in its own way.
But in every failed attempt something was a little closer. Duration slightly longer before the side effects arrived. Control slightly better over where the pressure was directed.
Not yet reliable in an actual fight. But the concept was there and Luffy knew the concept was right.
Gear Third came from a different logic.
If Gear Second was about speed and internal pressure, Gear Third was about size and destructive power. Luffy pumped air into the bones of his hand, letting that air expand, filling the space inside his rubber frame until his hand grew far beyond normal size.
Not stretching. Enlarging. Like a giant's hand.
The first successful punch that hit a large boulder on the mountain slope shattered it to pieces with a sound that carried far. But the moment Luffy lowered his hand, his entire body shrank, returning to the size of a small child, and he couldn't move properly for several minutes afterward.
Luffy, now shrunken, sat on the ground staring at his small hands with a flat expression.
"...Problem."
He lay flat on his back on the ground waiting for his body to return to normal, staring at the sky above.
Two powerful techniques but neither usable properly yet. Severe side effects in both. And he had two and a half months to find ways to reduce them.
Might not be enough. But it was what he had.
For Haki Luffy had no guide other than Garp's brief explanation, which had contained more laughter than concrete instruction.
For Kenbunshoku he asked Dadan and her subordinates for help in a way that made Dadan stare at him like he had just requested something that made no sense.
"You want me to attack you with your eyes closed?"
"I'm the one closing my eyes. You all attack from any direction whenever you want. I try to feel where the attack is coming from."
Dogra and Magra exchanged looks.
"Boss," said Dogra quietly toward Dadan, "are we doing this?"
Dadan snorted loudly. "Just do it. But don't let him die."
"I won't die from your attacks," said Luffy.
"I'm not talking about you," said Dadan. "I'm talking about them if you accidentally hit back."
The first session ended with Luffy collecting more lumps than usual because he hadn't managed to sense a single incoming attack. The second session was slightly better. By the third and fourth sessions something had started moving inside him a second before an attack arrived, too faint to rely on but enough for his instincts to begin searching for something invisible.
For Busoshoku Haki Luffy trained without using his Devil Fruit ability at all. Punching trees, rocks, anything in the forest with bare hands until his hands bruised and bled, then healed because of his rubber body, then trained again. He didn't know if this method was correct. But there was no other method he could think of.
After two and a half months the results didn't look like the Haki Garp had once shown. But his instincts and senses were far sharper than before. And the hands he punched with felt more solid, heavier, more real than before all this training had begun.
Not Haki yet. But heading toward it.
In the final week before setting sail Luffy started going down to town.
Not to play. Not to eat at Makino's bar.
He went to the busier parts of town, the places where nobles from various places often gathered, people with clothing whose price could probably feed an entire village for a month, walking in ways that showed they believed the world existed for them.
Luffy didn't like people like that.
He also needed money for a boat.
Two reasons he considered sufficient.
His method was simple. He didn't take much from any one person. Only a little, amounts that might not be noticed missing for days afterward. From one person maybe only a few thousand Berry. But the town was busy enough and Luffy was fast enough not to draw attention.
After going down to town several times across the week he had enough. Enough for a decent small boat and supplies for a few weeks.
Luffy counted the money on his bedroom floor the night before departure, making sure everything was there, then packed it away carefully.
Tomorrow he would set sail.
That night Luffy didn't go straight to sleep.
He sat outside the hideout alone, staring at a sky full of stars. The night wind blew from the direction of the forest carrying the smell of earth and leaves that had become deeply familiar in his nose over the past almost-year.
Tomorrow all of this would become a memory.
Luffy stared at the stars above without moving.
Then he lay back on the grass, hands folded behind his head, and closed his eyes.
For the first time in nearly a year no uncomfortable feeling came before he fell asleep.
Only stillness.
And underneath that stillness, something that felt like ready.
End of Chapter 6