"Now show me everything you can do," the young man added when the girl accepted the offered sword. "If you manage to interest me, perhaps I'll help you kill me." He bared his teeth smugly, though the grin came out far too bloodthirsty. It looked as though he found the prospect of training his own killer enormously entertaining. Then again, why only looked? That was exactly how he felt.
Tashigi's reaction was predictable and perfectly suited to the moment.
"W-what?!!" Her eyes opened wide with boundless astonishment and her mouth fell slightly open, giving her a rather foolish but simultaneously cute and charming appearance.
"Do you want to kill me or not?" the young man taunted. "Here is your chance to learn more about your enemy."
"Is he serious?" Usopp could not believe what he had heard, while Nami silently covered her face with one palm.
"I've said it more than once, but every now and then I truly forget that Zoro is our first mate, personally chosen by Luffy." Yosaku shook his head.
"Yeah, he's good at disguising it," Johnny nodded.
"Training your future murderer... There really is something to that!" Predictably, Luffy gave his complete 'approval' to the proceedings. Such insanity was precisely to his taste.
"Don't you dare injure her!" Sanji remained true to himself as well.
"You... are you certain there's nothing wrong with your head?" Tashigi's expression changed from surprised to wary, as though she had encountered a madman and no longer knew what to expect from him.
"What difference does it make?" The bloodthirsty grin remained firmly on Zoro's face. "The main question is how badly you want revenge for your captain."
At the mention of Smoker, the girl's expression changed at once. Several seconds later, she gripped the bokken's handle with both hands and assumed an attacking stance.
"That's what I thought." Zoro nodded with satisfaction. "Now attack." Holding the practice sword in his right hand, the young man beckoned with his left. "Show me everything you can do, and perhaps I'll agree to train you. Then you'll have at least some chance of avenging your captain. After all, who should surpass a teacher if not the student?" Every family member could say with certainty that Zoro was taking immense pleasure in the situation.
"I'm so proud of him right now!" Luffy said with a revoltingly affectionate expression. "Yet another confirmation that he has finally become strong."
At that exact moment, Tashigi attacked Zoro. The result surprised no one, including the girl herself. She then began raining blow after blow upon him.
"I don't understand what this has to do with strength." Johnny raised his eyebrows comically in surprise. "Seems to me this is simply all your fault."
Tashigi began circling Zoro, never pausing for even a moment as she showered him with strikes from her bokken. As she soon discovered to her displeasure, however, all her swift thrusts lost completely to the seemingly slow and even somewhat lazy movements of the swordsman opposing her.
"Partly right." Luffy nodded. "After all, it was mainly thanks to me that he became this strong. Without me, I don't even know how he would have ended up." The young man shook his head. "I don't know whether I've told you this, but when we first met, this little idiot seriously believed he had a decent chance of defeating the World's Strongest Swordsman. For comparison, if present-day Nami met past Zoro, she wouldn't leave a wet spot of him even without accounting for her Fruit's power. With the power included, she could torment him for as long as she pleased."
Hearing Luffy's words, every family member paused while trying to imagine a Zoro that weak. Nami was by no means weak, but she and the swordsman were completely incomparable opponents—like a lifeboat against a battleship. Again, no insult to Nami was intended. Zoro, meanwhile, heard Luffy's words and used his entire body to demonstrate how deeply focused he was upon sparring with Tashigi, which naturally meant he could not possibly hear his captain's speech.
"And still, how is his desire to train his own murderer connected to his strength?" Johnny refused to be distracted.
"Directly." Luffy shrugged slightly, expressing confusion that the other man could fail to understand something so obvious. "Remember what you were like before joining the family. Remember every time you had to hide, retreat, grovel, or be afraid... Remember? Now place your present selves in those same conditions and think how the situation would develop today. With your current strength, knowledge, money, and the support of the rest of the family... Actually, no. Strength and knowledge alone would be enough."
Luffy's words made not only Johnny and Yosaku, but also Nami, involuntarily remember their pasts. Sanji, Usopp, and Zoro had an easier time of it. The first had old man Zeff beside him, who might not interfere in most of the blond man's fights but always came to his aid at the most critical moment. Usopp, aside from the incident with Kuro the 'Strategist,' had never fought at all before joining them, and therefore still did not fully understand the importance of personal strength—or how greatly its increase expanded the horizons of a world that had seemed long familiar. Zoro, meanwhile, had already been strong in his own right when he went to sea. From Kuina's death until meeting Luffy, he had never found himself in a situation where his personal strength was insufficient. Johnny, Yosaku, and Nami were entirely different.
"Our current selves in the past..." Yosaku murmured, beginning to smile involuntarily.
"That would be something!" Johnny began smiling as well.
Unlike Zoro, almost all their memories before meeting Luffy came down to being too weak. A bastard they could not arrest. Pirates they had to avoid. Corrupt officials. Bribed Marines. Money-hungry bounty hunters who cared nothing for the pleas of ordinary people. So many different situations. So many unpleasant memories. How much could they have changed if they had returned to the past with their current strength and knowledge?
"Remember that bar in Richfond?" Johnny asked.
"You probably mean whether I remember that bastard Sars," Yosaku replied.
"Yeah. Imagine if he said something like that to us now?"
"Are you joking? That coward? He wouldn't have the nerve!"
"Agreed, but just thinking about what we'd do to him, his bar, and the gang he once commanded makes me happy!"
"He and his gang have been dead for a long time anyway."
"It's only a shame it happened without our involvement."
While the men laughed cheerfully over names meaningful only to them—Sars was followed by Gil, then Chad, and then some Edward "Scissorhands"—Nami involuntarily considered how she would have acted if she had possessed her current strength four years earlier. The more she thought, the more she understood how simple everything would have become. She could have collected one hundred million berries in a couple of weeks—one or two months at most! Yet an important condition was not only strength, but her present memories. Experience and knowledge could sometimes matter more than any power, and the experience and knowledge gained through contact with Luffy were practically priceless within East Blue.
"That's what I meant," Luffy said after giving the men and the girl ample time to dream. "The stronger a person becomes, the fewer restraints remain upon them. Then situations that seem impossible and dangerous to some become nothing more than an excuse for entertainment to others—or even an entirely ordinary day. Right now, if Zoro were weak, training his own murderer would be deadly stupidity. Sailing aboard the same ship with someone who wholeheartedly desires your death would not be the best idea either. Poison, a knife in the back, and attacks during sleep still exist. That is the ordinary logic of ordinary people. And I can assure you that there are no such people in our family. Do I need to remind you what happened to the Marine when she tried attacking Zoro while he slept?" Only a couple of hours had passed since the incident, so the question could safely be considered rhetorical.
"Now that you mention it..." Yosaku murmured under his breath with a frown.
"All of you enjoy calling me insane, but in reality, aside from my complete indifference to the lives of strangers with no connection to me, I'm perfectly normal. And yes, I'm entirely serious right now," Luffy added when he saw the faces of the surrounding family members lengthen. Only Zoro failed to react, while Tashigi simply did not hear him. "The issue is that you and I still exist at very different levels of strength. Accordingly, what is perfectly normal at my level remains abnormal at yours... I can offer a few simple examples, if you like. Shall I?"
Everyone immediately expressed complete agreement. When Luffy became serious, in stark contrast with his usual self, he never spoke foolishly.
"Then imagine an ordinary shopkeeper for a moment." Leaning his elbows and back against the railing that ran along the ship's side, the young man continued his explanation. "A man a little over thirty, raised in a completely ordinary family, who has worked in a shop for a good half of his life. Day after day he reads news of wars, famine, genocide, pirate attacks, and so on and so forth. This continues year after year. Then one morning, after yet another piece of bad news, he unexpectedly decides to declare war upon the entire World Government because it has clearly rotted through and has long since failed to perform its functions... Now, do you believe such a man is insane? And what chance does he have of success?"
Nami, Johnny, Yosaku, Sanji, and Usopp silently exchanged glances, uncertain how to answer such a question. Even Zoro, despite Tashigi's relentless attacks, looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. On the one hand, the answer seemed obvious, but serious Luffy always managed to confuse them thoroughly.
"Why are you thinking so hard?" the young man smirked. "Of course he isn't insane. He simply reached the limit of his tolerance, and that can happen to anyone. People must not be driven into a corner. But what chance does he have of defeating the World Government in an open confrontation? Barring a miracle, I can tell you with certainty that he has effectively none. Thus, while not insane himself, he made a one-hundred-percent insane decision. Naturally, every other ordinary person would regard him as a complete madman, because the level of a shopkeeper is utterly incomparable with the level of the World Government. One ordinary man cannot challenge a state that controls almost the entire world. That is ordinary logic. Yet there is a man in this world who did challenge the World Government, and he has been fairly successful. I doubt I need to say his name."
"Dragon..."
"The leader of the Revolutionaries..."
"Isn't it amusing?" Luffy smiled faintly. "Two men of flesh and blood make the same decision, yet one would pass for an ordinary lunatic who belongs in an asylum, while the other is the world's most wanted criminal. Why? It comes down to the level of personal strength. But now I suggest you consider another example, taken directly from your own lives. Let us use Yosaku as our starting point, since he so enjoys playing 'Russian Roulette' with various bastards. From an ordinary person's perspective, he appears, if not completely insane, then at least like a thug unafraid of death—or perhaps actively seeking it. Whichever way one looks, an ordinary person would unquestionably consider Yosaku abnormal. In reality? Everyone here knows that losing 'Russian Roulette' costs him only a few minutes of oblivion. Once that price is known, his abnormality immediately becomes normal. After all, if there are no consequences, why not? Thus, a deadly game for one person is ordinary entertainment for another."
Breaking off, the young man allowed everyone to digest the new portion of information.
"I'll repeat it once more: everything comes down to one's personal level of strength," he continued after a moment. "The old Ryu and Yosaku would have considered someone insane for daring to attack an entire pirate crew alone. Now, men, think for yourselves: is there anything strange about it? What can one pathetic East Blue pirate crew with fewer than a hundred members actually do to you? At most, splash blood on your clothes—and even that isn't guaranteed if you act carefully. Understand? You act carefully not to defeat the enemy, but only so that the enemy's blood doesn't stain your nice clean suits. From an ordinary person's perspective, isn't all of this complete insanity? Now remember how many times everything I just described has happened in reality, and think again about whether it is insane. Personally, I find the desire to avoid staining one's clothes with an enemy's blood perfectly logical and normal. What do you think?" By the end of the speech, Luffy's smile had become openly provocative. He was plainly inviting everyone present to try disproving his words.
No idiot willing to challenge their captain could be found, but despite all his examples, no one hurried to agree either. One of the most important qualities Luffy had instilled in every family member was the ability to use their head — a very impressive skill, without joking. Consequently, in addition to the central idea, each of them managed to see a certain number of hidden pitfalls. Yosaku, perhaps the most thoughtful person in the family—and immortal besides, which was hardly insignificant when dealing with Luffy—was the first to express his thoughts about what they had heard.