1) The Village that Breathed Steel
Shimotsuki Village greeted Heaven's Embrace with the quiet poise of a bow well-aimed. Wooden homes with paper screens lined streets swept by hands that loved rituals. Prayer flags whispered in the breeze like sword forms remembered by old wrists. Somewhere a bamboo fountain ticked—shishi-odoshi, clack, hush—marking time the way a dojo tells students to mind their breath.
Nami eased the ship in, reading currents like sentences. Nojiko's eyes wandered over rooftop gardens, imagining cuttings for the orchard. Bell-mère checked her rifle, then softened at the sight of children practicing kendo in a dusty yard.
Kaya stood at the rail, a soft smile tucked under her calm. "It smells like polished cedar," she murmured.
Vegito tipped his chin toward the hill where the dojo sat like a deliberate thought. "Shimotsuki school," he said. "The place that taught a boy to swear an oath and a girl to carry a blade heavier than the world gave her permission for."
Bell-mère blew a breath through her teeth. "Let's go make permission irrelevant."
They disembarked in a ripple of white coat, orange hair, purple hair, and a soft-blue shawl. Villagers paused—curious, wary, respectful of the ship that hummed like a dragon enjoying the sun. Word had run ahead of them (word always ran ahead of them now): Cocoyasi's liberation, Arlong's broken teeth, a miracle mother made current again, Syrup Village's guardian witch with hands that healed. The bounty poster had arrived with the Coo: 120,000,000. The number made people whisper and it made them look up.
The dojo gate stood open. Inside, Koushirou watched students move through kata with the patience of snow. His glasses reflected a world he insisted on seeing clearly. When Vegito's shadow crossed the threshold, a dozen bamboo swords paused mid-arc.
"Visitors," Koushirou said, bowing with the exact weight required. "We don't often get pirates who knock."
"We're not good at pretending to be wind," Vegito said, bowing back. "My name is Vegito. This is my crew. We came to pay respects. And to keep a promise someone else made to herself."
Koushirou's mouth compressed; something like warning moved through his posture. "We keep many promises here."
Vegito glanced past him to the courtyard's far wall, where a small, simple stone lived under a plum tree. The earth around it was neat. The offerings were fresh. The name was carved with love and regret.
Kuina.
Kaya's breath caught; even her hands felt reverent. Nami's jaw tightened; anger wore respect like a uniform. Nojiko squeezed Bell-mère's arm, feeling the tremor she wouldn't show.
Koushirou followed Vegito's glance and bowed his head. "You knew her name," he said, softly.
"I knew her dream," Vegito said. "And I know the world that refused to let her finish speaking."
The dojo students had gathered behind their teacher, eyes wide. A boy with a gap-toothed grin whispered, "That's the sky pirate," and another elbowed him with ceremony.
Koushirou adjusted his glasses, studied Vegito like a blade whose temper you're trying to judge before you trust it. "What do you seek here?"
"A miracle," Vegito said, simply. "And the right witnesses."
Koushirou's throat worked. "Miracles are tasteless things when used to challenge fate."
"Fate is just a coward with good PR," Bell-mère said, and a few students gasped because they weren't supposed to like the sound of that sentence as much as they did.
Vegito stepped into the yard and looked up at the plum blossoms. "Koushirou," he said without rank, only respect, "if she returns, will you be the kind of teacher who bows to the fact that your advice created a promise too small for her… or the kind who watches his student surpass all the words in his mouth?"
The dojo master's face cracked under something like shame, like hope, like the knowledge that men who tell girls what they can't be build coffins with vowels. He closed his eyes.
"If she returns," he said, and the students held their breath at the if, "I will be the kind who learns."
Vegito nodded once. He turned toward the stone.
2) The Stage of the Impossible
Word filled the courtyard in rings: villagers, elders, a blacksmith with permanent soot on his laughter, a grandmother whose cane had memorized every stone on the street, children with eyes like unsheathed blades. Heaven's Embrace's figurehead could see the yard from the water and somehow seemed to listen.
Vegito stood before Kuina's stone and let his voice carry without shouting.
"Kuina," he said, as if calling someone to dinner. "The world tried to put a period on your sentence. I'm here to erase it."
Kaya stepped forward, hands folded over her chest, eyes shining with the kind of belief that heals scars you can't see. Nami, Nojiko, and Bell-mère flanked her—witnesses and family and threat, all in one constellated stance. Koushirou stood straight as a prayer.
Vegito lifted a hand.
The air shifted as if the earth inhaled. Runes lit along the hull of the ship out in the harbor; the dragon-woman figurehead smiled openly now. Light gathered in Vegito's palm—the same white-gold he had used in Cocoyasi, but brighter, as if fate had taken this as a dare.
The plum tree's blossoms trembled and fell upward instead of down.
The ground before the stone glowed with threads of light that found old laughter embedded in dirt, the weight of a wooden sword thrown down in fury, tears that had fed roots, a vow whispers had worn smooth: I will be the world's greatest swordsman.
The threads braided and then bloomed.
She came back like a blade being drawn: clean, bright, inevitable.
First the outline of a girl at eleven—then the weight adjusting, bones lengthening, muscle finding itself, hair spilling down like a banner that remembered wind. The face sharpened into a woman's certainty layered over a girl's fire. And then breath; life rushed in like the sea reclaiming a shore.
Kuina opened her eyes.
Silence dragged knuckles across the courtyard. It hurt, it was so loud.
She was taller than the memory most of the village kept. Still lean. Still built like motion distilled. Her hair—the same dark fall—brushed the middle of her back. Her eyes were steel when steel is warm in late light. She wore simple white and a blue waist sash because the ship had some modesty layered under its appetites.
Kuina looked down at her hands. Flexed fingers. Turned palms. Swallowed.
"You dropped me," she said, voice husky with new chords and old vows.
Koushirou's eyes filled. His glasses blurred. "Kuina," he whispered, and his knees almost tried something undignified. He caught himself, then didn't; he bowed so deeply his forehead touched the dust. "Forgive my words. Forgive the prison I tried to build with care."
Kuina stared at him for a long breath. Then she knelt and touched his head and made him rise. "I never needed your permission," she said, not unkind. "But I always wanted your pride." Her throat tightened. "Do you—"
"I am proud," he said. "I am proud. I am proud."
Some of the students sobbed; a few tried to be tough and failed; all of them learned something about the shape of the word sensei that day.
Kuina turned to Vegito, eyes wild with focus. "You," she said. "You pulled me out of a story."
"I hate boring endings," he said.
She took him in, nodded once, accepted the impossible quickly because she had always been built to move forward. Then she squinted at the sky like asking the sun to show ID. "How long?"
"Years," Vegito said softly. "But we can fix that. If you want."
She weighed him, the ship, the gathered faces. She looked at her father—Sensei—and found permission already waiting because he had decided to move out of the way of a tide. She looked at the plum tree and decided it had done enough guarding.
"I want," Kuina said.
3) The Door Where Time Behaves
Heaven's Embrace's Hyperbolic Room waited like a hush you can enter. On the outside: a lacquered door with a simple sigil. On the inside: a white plane under a white sky, gravity tuned to honesty, time re-threaded through a needle that made years sew themselves into days.
Kaya and Nami stood with Koushirou at the threshold. Nojiko held Bell-mère's hand because even miracles ask you to mortgage something tender. Students crowded the gangway, whispering their own names like spells to hold themselves together.
Vegito explained with the ease of a man who knew he should scare people and chose to soothe them instead. "One day out here is a year in there. Twelve days, twelve years. You won't age poorly—think of it as giving your body the time it was owed to grow into your will. I'll spar with you. We'll feed you. We'll watch over you. You'll come out when you say."
Kuina's face took on that look swords get when they realize their edge is good enough for truth. "If I fail?"
"Then we try again," Vegito said. "Failure is just the part where you learn things you'll brag you always knew."
Kuina smiled. It was a small, dangerous smile. "Good."
Koushirou cleared his throat. His voice wobbled. "A sword is a promise you make to yourself. Remember that your body is the sheath. Treat it gently."
Kuina bowed to him, deep enough to hand him back years he thought he'd mislaid. "I will, Father."
He closed his eyes around the word and opened them a younger man. "Go, then."
She stepped through the door.
4) Twelve Days, Twelve Years
Time is a wild animal that will sit if you teach it with kindness and impossible math.
Day 1 felt like a sunrise in bones. Kuina moved through stances her muscles remembered like a song in a different key. Vegito sparred with her at a speed tailored to break arrogance without bruising pride. She bled from the lip, laughed, and kept going. The gravity tuned up a whisper. Her lungs learned a new essay on work.
Day 2 taught her to listen with her skin. Vegito's fingers brushed her wrist and she felt an echo of directions—like a compass that pointed to where a strike had been born, not where it landed. Observation Haki sniffed at the door. Kuina invited it in because she was a good host.
Day 3 cut calluses where they belonged: on purpose. Vegito introduced Rokushiki footwork but demanded she wear it like shoes, not as a costume. She learned to shave without screaming. Geppo came next—she stepped on air and laughed like she'd tricked gravity into a date.
Day 4—the blade. Heaven's Embrace provided a sword that had been waiting in some drawer of the world for her hand: a simple katana, well-balanced, no pretension. She named it Tensei (Rebirth) because she wasn't subtle and didn't need to be. Vegito's Spirit Sword flickered into being and they played notes no musician would ever score.
Day 5 broke something elegant and put it back stronger. Kuina hated her old weak lungs and then forgave them. Kaya checked on her between drills, glow-hands smoothing away small tears and scolding dehydration. Kuina tried to call her Doctor and ended up calling her Kaya because friendship was faster here.
Day 6—Haki. Armament inked her forearms in invisible lacquer until she could catch Vegito's barehanded strike without shattering. She screamed once in triumph and the Hyperbolic Room took it and turned it into weather. Observation expanded until she could tell what Vegito would do three heartbeats before he pretended to decide.
Day 7—sword intent. Vegito opened the door a crack to worlds Kuina would never visit but could learn from: the way a certain wandering swordsman writes poems with killing, the way a hawk-eyed man edits space with a slash, the way a boy with green hair would someday fight her at the edge of everything. She smiled at that last one and sharpened for him.
Day 8—style. She danced with wind. She made stillness magnetic. She learned how to sheath a blade so quietly reality didn't know it had been cut until she told it to fall into two pieces.
Day 9—toughness. Vegito tuned the gravity up to a confession. Kuina's knees trembled and then remembered they were forged from stubborn. Bell-mère visited and yelled kind obscenities about hydration. Nami arrived with charts of footwork patterns and a bet that Kuina could break them. Nojiko brought songs that stuck to your ribs. Kuina did pushups until her smile forgot how to leave.
Day 10—sparring. Fast now. Honest. Vegito enjoyed himself and admitted it out loud. Kuina got inside his guard once and nicked his shoulder and almost cried with joy until Kaya healed him with a look and told her to get back to work.
Day 11—mastery. Not perfect. Perfect is just an insult to the day after. But mastery. Kuina learned her breath's weight. She learned to leave. She learned to arrive.
Day 12—quiet. They drank tea and stretched. Vegito told her about the world waiting: the Grand Line, Wano's ghosts, women with spines like mountains, songs you can only sing after surviving storms. He told her about Tashigi—without names, only shapes—because he wanted her to meet her mirror with grace. She told him about a girl who fell down the stairs in a way the world found convenient. He listened without flinching. He apologized for a planet he didn't break. Then they set the weight of their promises carefully on their tongues and walked back to the door.
They stepped out.
5) The Return
Twelve days had turned the village into a drum roll. Children left candies on the threshold and argued about whether miracles preferred citrus. Koushirou had not slept much; he had moved through forms like penance and prayer.
When the door opened, the Hyperbolic Room exhaled. Kuina walked out and the courtyard forgot how to blink for a beat.
Twenty-three now. The lines of a woman's strength on a girl's legacy. Her hair tied back high, a few strands escaping like rebellious thoughts. Tensei at her hip. Armament Haki like an invisible poem along her arms. Her eyes—oh, her eyes were ready.
Koushirou dropped to one knee by accident and then pretended it was a stretch. Students gaped, then tried to pretend they weren't. The blacksmith whistled, low and reverent. The grandmother's cane knocked in applause.
Kuina bowed to the room, to the tree, to the stone that had held her place. Then she bowed to her father, slow and deep. "Sensei," she said.
He bowed back, lower than any of them.
Nami, who had seen too many men put themselves in front of women's futures, smiled like a storm taking a day off. Nojiko let her breath leave her body like she'd been holding it for twelve days and twelve years. Kaya's eyes were wet and proud; Bell-mère snarled affection to hide her own wipe-of-the-eye.
Vegito tilted his head. "How do you feel?"
Kuina drew Tensei an inch and let the world flinch. "Like the word impossible shrank."
"Good," he said.
"Test," Koushirou said, voice steady now. He held out a bamboo sword. Kuina shook her head and drew a circle in the air with a fingertip. The bamboo split evenly into thirds and lay there like it had wanted to be a puzzle all along.
There was a sound like a classroom trying not to cheer and failing.
Koushirou laughed—a young man's laugh. "Yes," he said. "Yes."
"Fight me," said a boy at the back who had grown hungry watching. He blushed. "I mean—please. Sensei. Captain. Somebody."
Kuina's smile warmed. "Another day," she said. "Today we don't prove. We choose."
She turned to Vegito and the ship behind him, glowing softly like a beast that had just been fed compliments. "Where are you going?"
"North Blue," Nami said. "To liberate a sister and ruin a family's business model."
"After a small detour to feed a promise in the snow," Bell-mère added.
Kaya touched Kuina's arm. "We could use a swordswoman who listens before she cuts," she said. "And who cuts very well."
Nojiko winked. "And who will not leave dishes in the sink."
Kuina looked at the village. At the boys who had learned to hold their wooden swords like letters in a language they were learning to write. At her father, whose pride had grown into a shape large enough to shelter her. At the stone under the plum—now a marker for a different thing: not a grave, but a beginning.
She breathed.
"I'll come back," she told them. "With stories worth teaching."
She faced Vegito. "I'll join," she said simply. "If your ship can keep up."
He grinned. "She races storms for breakfast."
"Then let's eat."
6) Wardrobe, Banter, Belonging
Heaven's Embrace liked dressing her people. The fabricator hummed and offered options with the enthusiasm of a matchmaker.
Bell-mère circled Kuina with a tape measure that appeared from a pocket no one had seen before. "We need something you can move in that also says break your heart on me," she declared. "Practical, but let the world understand it has been warned."
The output: a sleeveless dark-blue gi top edged in silver thread, a white underlayer that could be shed to scandalize villains, fitted hakama that flowed like water but hid reinforcement like secrets. A short white half-coat snapped over the shoulders—captain-adjacent, not imitating so much as rhyming. On the back, stitched small where only friends would notice: a tangerine with a star inside and a long tail curling beneath.
"Flag-in-progress," Nami said, pretending not to preen.
Kuina checked the fit, rolled a shoulder, bowed. "Perfect," she said. "If I lose a fight in this, then it's honest."
Bell-mère cackled. "You'll fit."
Kaya fastened a small talisman at Kuina's wrist—a charm for steady hands. "You will come back for tea," she said.
Kuina nodded. "You will make me drink water while I pretend not to need it."
"Exactly."
Vegito leaned in the doorway like a problem that had decided to be helpful. "You'll have a room," he said. "You'll have a library. You'll have sisters. You'll have enemies. You'll have a captain who asks before he assumes."
Kuina's eyes softened. "You'll have a swordswoman who doesn't wait to be asked to save herself."
"Deal," he said.
7) A Village Party, Traditional Edition
Shimotsuki does celebrations with restraint and depth. The food tasted like recipes that remember names. There was dancing that was mostly watching old men clap in rhythm and young women grin in ways that made the air applaud. The sake was politely strong. Koushirou sat with Bell-mère and argued gently about discipline and mercy until both decided they liked the taste of a middle where people don't get broken to be made obedient.
Kids swarmed Kuina and made her repeat the trick with the bamboo. She refused and taught them grip and footwork instead. They were disappointed for exactly three seconds and then became little furnaces of practice.
Nami traded shop talk with the quartermaster of a fishing boat and taught him a bookkeeping method that would make his grandchildren wealthy. Nojiko snuck cuttings with permission. Kaya did small healings in corners, the sort that make old hands stop hurting and young sprains forgive themselves. Usopp was not there, but a little boy with a slingshot insisted he could hit the temple bell from here and then did, and everyone decided that counted.
Vegito found Koushirou under the plum. They stood in a silence the color of respect.
"I misread the world," Koushirou said. "I told a child she was smaller than her hunger. Thank you for giving me time to correct the sentence."
"I didn't do it to shame you," Vegito said. "I did it because a girl's vow shouldn't be a tombstone."
Koushirou's smile tilted. "I think I like you, pirate."
"Good. We're collecting people who like us. It seems efficient."
The old swordsman's eyes narrowed fondly. "Take care of her."
"I intend to help her become so dangerous she takes care of me," Vegito said.
Koushirou laughed. "Then we understand each other."
8) Casting Off with Five
Morning draped the village in white silk. Heaven's Embrace thrum-hummed, pleased to be getting more footsteps on her spine. Kuina stepped aboard and paused, closing her eyes as if listening. "She talks," Kuina said.
"She gossips," Bell-mère corrected.
Nami handed Kuina a coil of line. "Welcome to chores. Great swordswomen coil rope."
Kuina grinned and coiled like it was a kata. Nojiko pointed out the galley; Kaya pointed out the infirmary; Vegito pointed out the library and then had to physically stop himself from going straight in and getting lost with them for an hour.
"Course?" Nami asked at the wheel.
"Short stop back in Syrup to wave and stock up on stories," Vegito said. "Then east by north to the land of clocks and iron—North Blue."
Bell-mère cracked her knuckles. "Time to annoy a family that deserves it."
Kaya squeezed Kuina's hand. "I want to meet a woman named Reiju," she said. "I feel like she needs someone to make her laugh when she's allowed to."
Kuina nodded. "Let's go make allowed to happen."
Lines leapt. Sails rose. Wings flexed once, twice, purely to brag. The figurehead grinned.
Shimotsuki Village waved, pride folding into their sleeves. Koushirou bowed low enough for the sea to blush. The plum tree showered them with three blossoms that floated out to boat-hull and stuck like signatures.
Heaven's Embrace aimed herself at the clean line where sea and sky pretend not to be touching.
9) Status Check — After Shimotsuki
[Status Screen]Name: VegitoRace: Saiyan (Full-Blooded)Titles: Sky-Treading Devil (Regional), Captain of Heaven's EmbraceBounty: 120,000,000 Berries (observed rising interest)
Attributes:
Strength: ∞
Speed: ∞
Endurance: ∞
Intelligence: S+
Ki Control: S+
Haki Mastery: S+
Core Techniques:
Kame Style Arsenal (stable; showmanship ↑)
Rokushiki + Rokuogan (teaching protocols enabled)
Wood Release (architecture, battlefield control)
Instant Transmission (restricted public use)
Kaioken (no backlash)
Ultra Instinct (Omen) in Base
Crew:
Nami – Navigator
Nojiko – Ops/Morale
Bell-mère – Quartermaster/Small Arms
Kaya – Doctor (Heal-Heal Fruit)
Kuina – Swordswoman (Tensei) | Haki: Observation (emergent), Armament (base coat), Geppo/Soru (applied) | Condition: Daily tea with Kaya, weekly kata with Bell-mère's "yell therapy," sparring curriculum with Captain.
Ship: Heaven's Embrace (Supreme-Class) – Mood: Smug, Protective, Gossiping.
Library (Ohara Index) – New reader profiles registered.
Hyperbolic Room – Cycle completed (12y). Cooldown: 3 days (ship discretion).
Clothing Fabricator – Kuina profile saved (Field, Formal, Winter).
Private Realm (Sakai) – Idle. (Captain's note: later.)
Events:
Cinematic Revival of Kuina (public; village witnesses)
Hyperbolic Training (12 days → 12 years)
Recruitment: Kuina
Reputation: Sky-Treading Devil reaches West & North Blue rumor mills.
Next Objective:
North Blue – Germa 66 Interference; Extract Reiju; Dismantle local operations; Acquire cook (Cosette); Prepare feast.
Vegito dismissed the screen and leaned on the rail as the spray feathered his coat. Kuina stood beside him, hand resting on Tensei the way trust rests on good wood.
"Captain," she said, voice not loud but impossible to ignore, "thank you for not asking me to smile to make this easier."
He smiled anyway. "You'll smile when you want."
She did. Small, sharp, real.
Behind them, Nami cursed cheerfully at a stubborn knot; Nojiko teased her into laughing; Bell-mère threatened the knot with a lecture; Kaya wrote out shipboard emergency protocols while sneaking everyone biscuits; Heaven's Embrace hummed a tune that sounded like found family and incoming trouble.
"Next," Vegito said, and the word tasted like challenge and candy, "we remind the North how to be honest."
Nami set the wheel. The ship obeyed. The horizon tried to keep its dignity. It failed with style.