Keita woke up in his small room, once again with red, puffy eyes, as he had been crying himself to sleep the night before. The young boy had been wondering why his parents abandoned him, and he wasn't getting anywhere with asking his uncle for this information, his uncle had simply been dead silent. Keita had simply been working for the past few years, and it seemed that his life wasn't really going anywhere, and he wondered if he would die on this little island in the middle of the West Blue without ever learning anything about his parents. All he knew, or rather all he was told, was that he was left there with his uncle. Today, however, was very different, as the sun crept into the sky and filled his room with its rays, the door suddenly rocketed open. In the frame of the door was a large man with a grey beard and a large scar on his face that paired well with the very stern look he had. It was Keita's uncle, although Keita wasn't sure why he had just almost kicked down the door to his room, and he hoped that would be explained quickly. Keita knew that it was better to just wait until his uncle said something, as talking back to him was something that would end in punishment, and Keita thought that simply asking him why he was barging into his room would have also been fairly rude, so he held his tongue. His uncle suddenly yelled "Get your ass out of bed! It's time to train!" Keita sat there puzzled, a bewildered look on his face that was a mixture of shock and questioning, as he was wondering what he was going to train in. His uncle simply walked up to and grabbed the young boy, tucked him under his right arm, and walked outside towards the small forest in the center of the island that was rather underpopulated. Keita was stuffed right next to a tree stump that seemed to as tall as he was, and he was looked at his Uncle with a bit of a stern face.

"So uncle, what's this about?" Keita questioned the old man.

"Che, it's about time you started to learn to stand on your own and stop moping about! Run around this island ten times before dinner, or you won't get any!" His uncle snorted back at him, before simply walking away.

It seemed Keita was in a bit of a denial stage, as he didn't start running, he thought it was dumb and simply started to walk back towards his house with his uncle, who turned around and hit him in the face. Tears welling up in his eyes, Keita simply stared back, and it was almost as if his uncle was severely pained by hitting his own nephew, so Keita just shook the tears off and started running around the island. Running around the island was really hard at first, and it was really hot, so Keita wasn't really optimistic about making it around the island ten times before dinner, and so he started running really fast. This tired him out very quickly, and soon he was barely walking while the sun was starting to go down. He tried to remember how many times he had ran around the island, and after a bit of asking some of the other villagers on the island, they had seen him four times before this. It seemed like he could only make it around the island five times, but he was determined to at least finish the fifth time, so he found some inner energy within him and started running faster again. It was almost like a runner's high, allowing him to finish the fifth time, before vomiting in the sand due to over working himself, and he was trying to get back to his house, but simply fell asleep in the cool sand under the trees where he started the first lap. As he was unconscious, his uncle sighed, and then scooped him up into his arms and carried him home. He didn't get any dinner, but the next morning he was going to be able to eat a large breakfast. His uncle was actually surprised that he made it so far on the first try, and hopefully this would give him some sort of drive for his life, so that he wouldn't be confined to this island for his whole life.

The next morning, Keita woke up with the grumbling of his stomach, and the burning in the muscles in his legs and lungs. He hadn't pushed himself that hard before, so he was suffering a little bit, but soon his uncle came into the room and grabbed him again for breakfast. His breakfast was a large feast of fish, fruit, and meat that the island rarely got from traveling merchants. Keita was surprised, and asked his uncle why they had gotten meat, as it was fairly expensive, and his uncle simply responded that since he failed and didn't eat dinner the day before, he would have to make up for that, and although he was having meat today, it wouldn't be a reward for failure anymore. His uncle then asked him if he was going to fail again today, and Keita was unusually fired up by this statement, and ran out after eating. Keita was sure that he was going to pass eventually, perhaps not today, but he was going to try his hardest and make sure that he was someone that his parents would be proud of, in case they ever met again, or perhaps if they were dead. Keita shuddered at that thought, but he wasn't going to dwell on it, as he had already cried for years because of them, there was no more use for the tears anymore. Keita learned from the previous day, and started by stretching his muscles quite a bit. He wanted to get passed at least the seventh time of running around the island that day, so he needed to be in tip top shape, although he was already a bit sore from the day before. Passing out would have been bad for his back as well, so he was grateful for his uncle carrying him to his bed so that he could have a nice nights sleep. Keita was a bit busy stretching, attempting to touch his toes, holding his legs up until he felt muscles ache, etc, so he wasn't truly aware of his surroundings as another child from the village came over to him.

"Whatcha doing?" the child asked. The child was about the same age as Keita and was a female of the village. Keita didn't really talk to the others, so it was strange that he was outside and actually doing something that wasn't errands for his uncle.

Keita decided to respond back with simply running, and then started to jog around the island. He had figured out that perhaps it wasn't the best to try and sprint the whole way until he passed out, and then sprint again when he had recovered his energy. Keita was a fairly smart kid, and wondered just how far he could go while keeping an even pacing around the island. As he was running, he noticed the other child following him, but Keita simply ignored her. The child was keeping up with him for the most part, until Keita rounded the island for the fourth time, and that's when the child seemingly gave up. Keita was fairly tired at this point, but he wasn't completely out of breath, and he knew that he was going to beat his previous times around the island by quite a large margin, he might even be able to reach his original goal of seven times around t he island. As he was jogging, he found that the wind of the island was growing colder, and that there were clouds starting to form in the sky. He knew that it was probably going to rain soon, but he wanted to finish the track if at all possible. As he was running around the island, he was huffing and puffing, and soon found himself around the island for the seventh time. He figured that he still had a bit of energy left, but it has started to rain. A light trickling of rain droplets were falling on the island, and Keita decided that he could make it one more time around the island before having to give up. He was running through the rain, which meant that he was getting far more soaked than he would if he had simply walked through the rain, but he didn't care, he had a drive and a devotion to what he was doing, and while it was in sight, nothing would stop him. He was on his last legs as he rounded one of the corners that led to a final straight away to complete the lap around the island, when he started coughing.

In reality, he was very stupid, not quite thinking of how the rain soaking him to the bone would make him catch a cold, and although he had reached the eighth time around the island, he had started to develop a fever, and barely made it home in time to shock his uncle with it. His uncle called him an idiot and immediately started brewing some soup for him to eat. The soup didn't do much to quell the fever, and in fact did barely anything to calm him down, so his uncle decided to go out into the storm to find a doctor. There wasn't really a cure for idiocy, but perhaps his uncle could find someone that was willing to care for an idiot. As his uncle grabbed a coat and hat, Keita told him that he was fine and that tomorrow he would definitely finish all ten laps around the island, and his uncle couldn't help but smile and sigh. Keita was going to grow up to be a good man, but only if he could find a doctor on the island that would help him. His uncle came back a little while later, and with him was one of the only two doctors on the island, a man in his early thirties. With him came his daughter, which was the child he talked to briefly earlier in the day. Keita could easily hide the embarrassment that he felt though, since his face was already stricken red with the fever he had received from running in the rain. Keita gave a weak smile to her as she seemed very worried about it. He was glad in the end though, as the doctor had a dose of medicine that would help the young man through the fever, but it was going to take several days to get over the sickness. Keita was really disappointed, and this gave him an appreciation for his body that he wouldn't have had other wise, since this feeling of being confined to your bed, feeling hot and cold at the same time, and sometimes you would puke for no reason was absolutely the worst.

His uncle never left his side for the three days that it took for Keita to break the fever, but his uncle told him to hurry up and get back on the running so that he could have a good dinner. Keita was a bit tired after the fever, and it had weakened him a bit, so he was sort of sad to learn that he could only reach the seventh lap around the island before he had to quit. He continued on like this until eventually he could run the whole ten laps. When he finally did complete the tenth lap, he ran back to his house, although he was a bit winded, and told his uncle that he had done it. His uncle just laughed and said that wasn't that large of an accomplishment, but they had dinner together all the same. Keita felt great going to sleep with a full belly, and when he woke up the next day, he wondered what he was going to do. The next few months were filled with Keita learning that he needed to run the ten laps before lunch, and then before breakfast. This developed a system where he was continually building up not only his speed, but his endurance as well. After a long while, he was running the ten laps every day before breakfast, and even had time to prepare his own breakfast. When that point happened, his uncle decided to move on to the next form of his training. His uncle told him that he should increase the number of laps as long as he could, going slowly so that he could always complete that number before breakfast, and that he was also adding in another layer to the endurance training, and that was balance training. In between meals, Keita had to carry things to and from places with heavy weights that weren't properly balanced in the container they were put in, so they shifted frequently.

Keita had to show that he could adjust the strength in his legs accordingly while carrying them, and this was actually extremely difficult for him the first few days. He sort of kicked himself that it was so difficult for him to do this even though he had finally got the hand of distance running, and his uncle told him that if it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing. That phrase stuck with Keita, and although it was a fairly common phrase among older people, he had never heard it before with his isolated island life style. Keita took that to heart, and he built up a foundation that training and completing tasks made him happy. In the afternoons, he went down to the other parts of the village and tried to help people with their requests, since he had a bit of free time and didn't really know what to do with it. Even though he was sore, the villagers were essentially using him to do their chores, but Keita didn't really care about that, and simply did them because it was fun to do them and he was helping people. This went on for a while, until a crew of pirates stopped by the island. They were there to get drunk, and Keita wondered what kind of people they were. Most of them were just loud, obnoxious, and acted like they owned the island, and Keita was really annoyed by them. However, there were a few of them that seemed like they didn't really like violence, and were simply there to stop, gather some supplies, and have a good drink. There was a tavern on the island, as a few ships that were mostly Marines would stop by and have a drink, plus it was good for when merchant ships came by as well. The problem arised when the pirates started getting a little too friendly with the bar maids, and one of them slapped the pirate. There was a large commotion, and the pirates had killed one of the villagers.

That information reached Keita's ears, and so he rushed down towards the bar to see if he could simply help, perhaps diffuse the situation or drag some of the injured people away. However, what he saw were some of the pirates had taken hostages, and were threatening to kill or kidnap the women of the village if their demands weren't met. Keita stood up to them foolishly, and even though he was a tough little kid, they simply beat him up. They were talking about finishing him off, and debating the merits of killing a child, but before they could finish their conversation, Keita's uncle showed up. His uncle commended him for being such a strong young man, and then took care of the pirates fairly swiftly. With nothing but a few swift kicks, the pirates seemed to almost teleport away, as their bodies went limply flying into the ocean or into the walls of the bar. Keita had never seen anyone move that fast before, and the attacks were also quite strong. He wondered how his uncle was able to do that, and he also wondered if he would be able to learn one day. Once the rest of the pirates apologized and surrendered, the only one the village wanted to keep was the one that dealt a lethal blow to the villager that died. He was executed on the spot, and the pirates were banned from ever coming back to the island. The island didn't really have a large ship or anything to go and contact the Navy with, so the pirates were allowed to simply leave, with the caveat that if they ever came back, they would be dealt with, no warnings. Keita's uncle seemed to not be bluffing, and his face was undoubtedly burned into the minds of those pirates, he was like a monster.

The next few days were filled with Keita pestering his uncle to teach him how to do that, the swift but brutal fighting style that had grace and power, agility and poise, everything that made Keita have wonderment about it, but as Keita was describing the style to his uncle, his uncle had wandered off somewhere. Keita was trying to find him, but gave up after a while, as he was already a bit late to start his training regimen for the day. He had gotten pretty good at leg balance, to the point where the container that he carried wasn't really heavy anymore, and he could adjust his leg strength to compensate without getting tired or sore anymore. It was revealed that he was lugging around a metal box with a canon ball inside of it that liked to wander around, and Keita wondered why it was so heavy, and why they needed two boxes like that, and why oh why he had to carry them back and forth throughout the village. His uncle merely laughed, and Keita got to see the side of him that usually no one else got to. He was a very strict and stern man, but once Keita actually started to take control of his own life and try his hardest at everything he did, t he old man softened up fairly easily, although his softened up state was still a bit cold. Keita was happy that he saw his uncle laughing though, and he couldn't help but smile. This intense training was far from over however, as he still needed to train his legs. Keita asked his uncle why he was training his legs specifically, and wondered why his arms were only trained to be sturdy and reliable. His uncle decided to explain that he had been preparing Keita to learn the fighting style that was passed down in their family. His father knew the fighting style, and they were the only ones in the world that did, the fighting style was rare and powerful.

Keita was a bit shocked that the first thing that he learned about his father was that he had this devastatingly powerful fighting style and so after that, Keita started assaulting his uncle with all sorts of questions again after a long period of time simply accepting the fact that he might not learn anything about his parents. His uncle answered back with a very bland response, which was to ask them themselves. This seemed bland to Keita at first, but then he was hit with the weight of the suggestion. His uncle had basically told him to leave the island and find his parents with his own two hands, so that he wouldn't have any regrets when he learned the information. This seemed like it could be a bad omen, such that his parents could be hardened criminals, or they could be dead already, although the ask them yourself comment made it allude to their not dying quite yet. Keita was invigorated once again, and although he knew nothing of the world outside of his small island, he made it his purpose to get stronger, and thus he started training his legs for the fighting style. This was the first time Keita would be doing something akin to actually fighting and actually practicing martial arts, and that was simply kicking the cut down tree in the forest that he was put in front of at the beginning of his journey. He was supposed to kick it ten thousand times in a single day, with each leg. Keita gasped at the gravity of this, and told his uncle that he could never do that. His uncle said that this was as far as he could reach then, and simple walked away, but Keita just got more fired up, and couldn't waste on ifs and could haves. So, he started kicking the log, which hurt really badly, but he did it all the same. He wondered how hard he was supposed to kick it, but he started kicking it as hard as he could without breaking his own shins.

He could only kick the stump a realistic twenty times with the strength before he could no longer stand. All that endurance training didn't quite help him with kicking a stump, so he was beaten and bruised as he essentially hobbled and crawled his way back to his house. His uncle finally explained why he was doing what he was doing, and that once you kick the stump enough times, tiny bone fractures form in your legs and make them stronger. Do it enough times, and the legs can be strengthened to the point of iron, and that's what Keita was looking for. The legs need a solid foundation for the fighting style to be worth learning, so he was going to have to go at it again and again until he could kick the stump ten thousand times and not be hurt. Keita started to doubt that his uncle could do the same, although he assumed that the stump would just shatter into pieces eventually. Keita took a day of rest every time he kicked the stump, so that his bones could heal, and in between the days, he practiced other things, such as starting to learn about the human body. He had become friends with the doctor's daughter, and started going over there and learn little bits and pieces. She was a prodigy in the field, absorbing information extremely easily, but he still had fun learning a little bit about it. He was thinking that if he could learn about what was happening to his legs, he could get something that would make the process faster. The doctor admired him, and helped him come up with a few things. The first was a pill that would help him recover. He would still have to wait the whole day, but it healed the bones stronger, so it was less likely that something like a large break would happen, it was a fortifying pill so to speak. The ingredients weren't that hard to find either, it was simply a matter of collecting them when he was busy.

Keita enjoyed filling his days with training and his afternoons with collecting medical ingredients around the island, and it was overall quite fun, although he never forgot his original goal of eventually leaving the island and finding his parents, although his uncle was being super stingy about their information. It was going to be extremely hard to find his parents without their names, and without knowing anything about them, but perhaps this was going to be something that would help Keita in the real world, so he just believed in and trusted his uncle's teachings. While kicking a stump was something that grew very boring after a while, Keita was beginning to understand what he was doing, and that wasn't just kicking a stump, it was practicing how much power to put into his kick. All of these training sessions were to boost Keita's endurance and stamina, so that eventually, he would be able to take a hit and learn from the encounter and become better. Keita was slowly understanding the basis of the fighting style he was learning, and that was to incorporate useful things into the fighting style, and to use the most effective method of dealing with a problem. Wasted movement needed to be weeded out, so practicing the moves a thousand or ten thousand times over would ensure that the movement and the attack or defense was near perfections, and Keita enjoyed realizing that aspect within the fighting style. When he went back to his uncle to talk to him about his discovery, his uncle asked how he got all that from him telling the young lad to kick a stump. His uncle acted like that wasn't anything about the fighting style and that he was annoyed that Keita was reading into it further than he needed to. Keita just sighed, and started to go about his daily business of learning a little bit about the human body, he focused mainly on bones and muscle groups, and was attempting to learn how to make pills as well, but he never had any success with that.

He stuck with simple things for the moment, as he was a fairly simple person, he liked simple things, and he didn't like when things were too complicated. He continued this sort of lifestyle for a while, until it was getting to not be a challenge anymore. the kicking of the stump was always a challenge for the most part, as he wasn't making much progress on the whole, kick the stump ten thousand times in a day, mission that he set out to do, but he was making progress on the strength and speed of his legs. He was going to be taught the actual martial arts soon he figured, but his uncle was slacking off a lot, although he didn't really do much other than teach others how to throw a punch. The mighty kicks were for Keita's eyes only, and it made him feel a bit special. Over the time spent practicing and going through town, the villagers were starting to look up to Keita, as he had worked so hard to get to where he was today, that all of the villagers started to help him on his dream. He was still training, but he got free food and other things from some of the villagers, and it was happy times. However, Keita knew that this wouldn't last forever, and that someday soon, he would need to leave the island so that he could find information on his parents. He wondered if the villagers were going to try and talk him out of it, but that wasn't going to happen. There was still a final part to Keita's training before his uncle let him go to the real world, and that was actual sparring and the teaching of techniques. His uncle would find him finishing up kicking the stump, and by now the parts that he had kicked were worn down, you could see a fairly sizable portion of the trunk had been indented inward at the two spots he had continuously kicked. Because he had done this type of training so often, it seemed like he had gotten plenty of scars on his legs, but they were healed with no complications, so they were just sort of rough looking.

His uncle started the training fairly fiercely, attacking Keita just after telling him to defend himself. With just having completed his stump kicking for the day, it was very difficult to defend himself with his legs. It was his first taste of actual combat training, as his uncle wasn't holding anything back. Keita was knocked unconscious in seconds as his uncle was trying to teach him that no one holds back. Keita stopped his usual training after that, and instead had to watch out for his uncle suddenly attacking him throughout the day. This made him fairly para noid most of the time, always looking over his shoulder, but it also made him ready to fight at a moment's notice. He had to control himself well as well, because there were a few times where he got too paranoid and attacked a villager that walked up behind him. After a while of this, he began to be exhausted. He never knew when his uncle would attack him and had to be prepared, but his uncle could lounge around and get sleep essentially whenever he wanted, while Keita had to be on the defensive. This lead to Keita having a bit of sleep deprivation, and it was almost like torture. His uncle wanted to temper his mind and his body, and soon, Keita simply fell asleep. His uncle poured cold water on him, and Keita took a defensive stance, but his uncle didn't attack him, instead, he showed Keita how to sleep while still being able to wake up if something happened around you, such as killing intent or noise. So, over the next few days, Keita was essentially hunted, but now that he knew the rules, it was a little bit easier coping with the constant attacks of his uncle, and although he was still slipping into exhaustion, it was much longer between times where he had to sleep. His uncle was tempering him, so that he and his body could be a cold blade in the darkness, ready to cut his own path through life. Although Keita wasn't learning anything about the world at large, he was gaining the skills to survive and adapt through challenges that were put forward to him.

Keita slowly learned how to be a light sleeper, although that wasn't truly how it was. Instead of being a light sleeper, he could sleep through nearly anything, as long as his life wasn't in danger or he couldn't sense the danger. This was a bit dangerous, but it was far better than simply sleeping through everything, so he had a leg up on the other people out there, and his uncle hoped that this would be enough. Keita was a survivor, so his uncle knew that he would be okay, or at least had to force himself to believe that he would be fine and be able to survive the harsh world that awaited him. Once Keita figured out the technique, that was the end of the constant attacks from his uncle, and he allowed Keita to get the much needed rest he wanted, without interruptions. Even people from the village came to try and speak to Keita the next day, since he didn't show up to their houses and other tasks that they had wanted him to do, however his uncle drove them all off so that he could sleep in peace. By the time Keita woke up, his uncle had fallen fast asleep, but woken up when he heard his nephew walking down the stairs to go outside. It was already passed noon, so Keita wondered how he slept in so long. After Keita finished stretching, his uncle told him that he would need to develop his own schedule for training the technique of the martial art, and that he had the basics down well enough to meld it into it's own style. Keita was really happy, as it was the first time he had set a lofty goal and completed it, all on his own merit, and over the years of training from his Uncle, he was ready to take on the world. First, he needed to wait until a merchant ship came and see if he could earn enough money to get a ship. Keita would always try to get lofty goals, and then rush head long to complete them until he did it. That was going to be his mantra in life, and nothing could break his way. Keita was almost in the middle of a monologue at this moment, when his uncle simply hit him on the head. All these lofty goals, the first of the goals should be for Keita to leave this island and actually explore the world.

Keita agreed with that, but it was going to be several months or years until he could afford enough money to buy a ship that would take him off of his island. But as for the lengthy time spent training his butt off for the world ahead of him, that was complete. although he would still continue to train every day, his foundation was rock solid. Keita still had something he wanted to complete, however, and that was searching his entire island for a special ingredient for a medicinal pill the doctor of the village that he had been training with wanted. In exchange for that ingredient, the doctor said he would teach Keita a thing or two about medicinal massage, or massage therapy. So, Keita spent the rest of the day, and even a little while after that, attempting to find this ingredient. He had to climb up a sheer cliff face to get it, but when he finally did so, the endurance and stamina he had built up over his training paid off, and allowed him to stay on the side of the cliff extremely long without needing to rest. He was finally done!

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Word Count: 5670/5625 needed

Trained 150 Stamina for the Non-Devil Fruit User.