Lara's POV;
We're now ten years old. Both of us are cute children and have really long blond hair. Lia tends to keep hers in a group of long braids, while I have a long and wide pony tail. At first, we were somewhat concerned about the danger of being grabbed by it, but we quickly learned that we could apply armament Haki on it. The fact that hair was still a part of the body made it also possible to cast or produce our Devil Fruits powers outwards from them. That quelled most of our fears.
Dad stayed true to his words and began to train me in the way of the sword since I was five. I was already skilled with it from my last life. This was shown when I learned his specific style rapidly. It uses a shirasaya, a sword with only a scabbard and hilt. There is no guard for protection and the style itself has no blocks at all. The whole sword style is built on attacks. Fast and deadly. The few defensive manoeuvres it has, use moves to redirect the attack and push an incoming blade away. True deadlock blocks are not possible, the risk of losing one's fingers is too great.
He first started on body strengthening and only gave me a sword a year later. He said that the body needs to be ready for the sword, but I think his order for a shirasaya sword took so long to come. Numuro was a backwater village that only gets a visiting ship once every six months.
Anyway, he said I'm a prodigy and my latest achievement was cutting a tree with the thickness of a meter. His teaching is easy to understand and stays interesting. He was no fan of repeating one sword attack over and over until you got it in your muscle memory. He sure said that training an attack was useful, but he had more focus on spars and getting a feel for the moves.
A true fight wasn't stationary, so why should I train a single stationary attack until I can do it perfectly again and again and again?
Anyway, I can cut wood without my Devil Fruit, with it I can cut metal. The problem is that my sword is not good enough. It vibrates to strongly and gets damaged if I use too much of my power. But with it, I am able to cut through any normal block and a redirection at least chips some of the sword's blade off. Dad still thinks that a truly high ranking sword will not be damaged yet but that may change with a better sword on my side.
I do not have a shirasaya sword in my inventory, but everything I need to make one and I have [Blacksmith]. Creating legendary swords was easy for me, that was if I had a forge. Something that has to wait until we leave the island.
Lia on her side got creative with her power and played with some things that may not look to be connected with pressure. Like gravity. Gravity is the pull a mass has on a different mass. It can be big like it is with the planet, or small as it is with humans. That's the overly simple explanation.
But pull is only a different word for pressure. The pressure something has on you drawn in a direction. She then tried to increase the pressure the planet has on us and managed to create a high gravity field around her. But that was not enough for her, she also wanted to do it from a distance.
My [Mana Pressure] from my second life gave her an idea, something that she wants to recreate. We both had little success at first. Affecting things away from us did simply not work. I first thought we need to awaken our fruits like Don Flamingo has done. But it was never said how such a thing was possible.
But then I remembered that the power a Devil Fruit gives is only limited by its concept and the mind of the user. So nothing should stop us from influencing the world. Turned out there was nothing but the mind blockade. Both of us can now apply our power from a distance. The larger the distance gets the weaker our powers will be.
But that did not mean that her normal arsenal was weak. Her pebble shots now pierce through trees and leave holes in rocks.
Our bodies were now also strong enough for the Rokushiki skills, well some of them. We can hold ourselves in the air with Geppo for a few seconds and use Soru once.
Lia is more skilled in the Rankyaku and Kami-e, while I am better at Soru. We are not yet able to use Geppo and Soru for anything useful.
However, our Haki is our best field. I am now able to apply armament over my whole body, but it's weak if I do so. I can also equip my sword with armament. My observation Haki allows me to anticipate a few attacks from my dad and almost none of Lia's.
Not that I am really able to evade Lia's, her observation Haki is way stronger than mine and we both can already feel the emotions of our parents or each other. Mine is harder to feel, probably thanks to my [Calm Mind] skill. My range is nothing impressive, maybe a meter or so. But she can if concentrated on it reach the village. Yet, her armament isn't as strong as mine, she also can't put it on objects. That's mostly what we have learned so far.
Lia also started to cook with mother and we both learned how to sew. It will come in handy when we are on a ship. Making our own clothes and repairing sails is a good skill to have.
Oh and mom is also pregnant with another child. She will get it soon and dad is totally nervous about it. The wife of the village elder will act as the midwife and stays in our house since mom was due anytime now.
Anyway, Lia and I were currently inside the forest, doing or normal training. This means that we both have restriction seals activated and Lia also increased the gravity on us. Moving was a shore and doing a workout a killer in this environment.
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“Hey Lia, are you able to increase the pressure in a globe? Like a ball of pressure? We're kinda not able to train like this on a ship. The pressure might sink us”, I suddenly said. This small tidbit was important and I patted my back for thinking of it.
“I don't know, maybe?”, she answered not sure at all. She stopped the pressure and then raised a stone slab from the ground by putting pressure on it from the underside. She looks more and more like a Jedi by now. Last week she even learned a force choke. She said she only had to apply pressure on a few different sites on different strength and then finished the iconic attack.
She was also sure that she wouldn't have been able to do it without the skill [Multitasking].
A moment later and she finished a small bridge made out of grass, dirt and stone. She stepped on it and applied pressure on the compressed dirt.
“Put your hand under me, there should be no pressure”, she then said and I did so. There was pressure, but not a strong one.
“There is some, but not strong”, I informed her.
“Yes, it's the same strength I have up here, I didn't think it had to be strong. Wait a moment”, she explained and the pressure increased and decreased a few times before it completely vanished five minutes later. In fact, I now felt a pressure from under me.
“There is now pressure coming from under me”, I said and pulled my hand away.
“I did not find a way to stop the pressure, so I made a counter against the pressure and am cancelling both out”, she said while jumping down from the dirt bridge.
“We should go back I have to make dinner”, she then said. Lia was now making dinner because mom was too pregnant for dad to do most things. I was just about to agree when we both heard an explosion from the village
“This was a cannon”, she said and I nodded. There is no cannon on Numuro, so the only possible explanation would be an attack.
“Let's tell dad”, I said and we run back home. We reached our house and heard more cannon being shot.
“Must be pirates”, I said while running inside the house. Inside we saw something really untimely. Mom was in labour. Dad had his sword at his side and almost run into us.
“Thank god you're both safe. The village is under attack, you two stay with your mother while I help to defend the people”, he said and pushed my sword into my hands.
“I'll try to not let a single one reach you, but you both have to be strong and defend our home in case someone does. Can I trust you two to defend your mother and sibling?”, he further said, more urgently with the increase of explosions. I felt fear rolling off of him. We all knew that he did not want to leave us but had to, as the strongest on the island.
“We can, no one will touch the house or mom”, I assured. He smiled proudly at us and his fear got a tiny bit less.
“Don't act rashly and remember what I thought you. Lia, you are the first wall against anyone. Your distance attacks are exactly for this. I have trust in you. And you Lara only attack when they managed to get too close for Lia to shoot. You are good with the sword and strong for your age. I know that you will manage”, he said. He then kissed each of us on the forehead and rushed outside towards the village.
Mom was laying on her bed with Gintry in front of her. She looked at us once and then shooed us out of the room. So we decided to jump on the roof and watch for anyone coming close to us.
Lia began to concentrate and was taking the role as a commentator. “Just now a man died from our village. The people are getting herded into a group. Women separated from the males and children”.
“What about dad?”, I asked.
“He's on his way. Didn't know father was this fast, he will reach them in a few seconds.... He just arrived and did something towards the ship”, she answered and a loud crash came from the village.
“Must've been a force blade aimed at the ship”, I said with a grin.
“Yes, six lives were sniffed out from the attack. He's now cutting a path through people. So far no one was able to resist”.
“What did you expect? He's from the New World and we're in East Blue. I'm sure that we are strong enough to kill most normal people in this part of the world”, I said in a duh tone.
“You can prove your claim in a few minutes. A group of five decided to flee. Father hasn't noticed them and they are on a direct line towards us”, she informed.
I thought about this for a moment and then stood up. “Better fighting them inside the forest. Dad will only fuss around if he knows that we killed someone. We can hide the bodies”, I said and jumped down from the house and rushed at the incoming presences.
“Yes, that would be annoying. Let's quickly kill them and then burn or bury the bodies”, agreed Lia with me from my side. I drew the sword and put the scabbard in my inventory. While Lia pulled a pebble from a pouch on her side.
She aimed the pebble at a nearby tree and flicked it off. With a ping, it vanished, hit the tree, went through it. It then hit something else and four shocked screams came from our front.
“Wolth!”, cried one of them. We were now only a tree away from them. The man who said the name was crouching down and in a perfect position for me. I darted around the last tree and towards the dead man with his comrade crouched above. A slice of my sword, slightly enhanced by vibration, was enough to decapitate him. His head fell on his comrade and his remaining three friends stared at us in shock and horror.
Lia used the inactivity and pushed her fist into the face of one man. The wind she was making got increased by her Devil Fruit power and the air hit the man with such strength that his head snapped back. He was out cold and surely has a concussion.
The other two tried to run back to the village, but they tripped and I had not much trouble with killing them by piercing their skull. Now came the hard part, hiding the corpses.
“Any idea how we can hide them?”, I asked.
“Sure,” replied Lia with a smug grin. She then touched one of them and he vanished. She simply put him into her inventory.
“Ah sure, how could I forget”, I said with a laugh. I did it after her and put two of them in my corpse folder. Under the minion section. I have it in case I want to play necromancer and need some bodies. There's also a hero and beast section.
“Good that none of us is bloody”, said Lia happily while we walked back to the house. Yeah, explaining how we got all bloody without showing any corpses would be awkward.
We reached the house undisturbed and waited for dad to come back.
The pained grunts of mom during labour were luckily muffled from the house. And dad did come back, ten or so minutes later. According to Lia he only took as much time as we with our goons to finish them all off.
“Did something happen?”, he asked first and looked over us for any signs of fighting.
“No, no one came. Why did you take so long? Were they strong?”, I asked.
“Not really. Sorry, I had to cut the shackles from those who were taken prisoner”, he apologised. He grabbed me and Lia and jumped down from the house. He then rushed up to mom and was gone for the next few hours.
He called us in the late evening inside and we saw our new sibling. A boy, he had a blond tuft of hair and already longer than normal ears. Mine and Lia's were by now almost fifteen centimetres long.
Like all newborn babies, he looked ugly. At least he was quiet. Mom was exhausted and dad practically glowed with pride. “What will you call him?”, I asked with mild interest. Going by our names it will have an L at the start.
“We thought of Larn, what do you think?”, he replied, not looking up from the bundle in his arms.
“Why not something else? Like Dexter? Is there a reason for us having names with an L at the start?”, asked Lia. She hid a giggle when she suggested our brother to be named Dexter.
“There is indeed a meaning. We long-ear-humans live in tribes on our island. Each tribe has a letter that they use for each newborn. Our tribe has the letter L. You can always find a tribe member by their first name”, explained mom from her position on the bed.
“Huh, does that not create problems at some point? I mean more and more people will have the same name”, I asked.
“No, we long-ear-humans don't get children easily. Your mom and I tried since we came to Numuro. At most there are ten families in each tribe”, explained dad, who finally handed Larn to mom.
“Is it the same with our last name? We also have an L at the start”, I then asked. Lonore would match the rule.
“Yes, we included this rule in case someone marries into the clan. Their first name would not be changed to show their origins but their last name would have to be the clan the life with”, mom said and Larn chooses that moment to get hungry. She began to feed him and dad send us to bed. Larn would sleep with our parents for some time and then get the last remaining room. Lia and I were not upset with sharing a room. We mostly slept in the same bed anyway.
So now we had a brother, younger siblings are noisy and want to follow their older ones once they can walk. We have to be careful not to let him see us training seriously or following us into the forest. It might be good to build a fence around the house.