"ATTENTION!"
Scrambling up from his bed to line up, 427 could already tell he was going to get tired of this "alarm clock."
Like clockwork, what looked like the same clone from yesterday - Is that racist? No, because I'm one too! - stalked past the group.
"Recruits! Today you will be practicing firearms and CQC!" In the pauses when he wasn't talking, the drill sergeant would move his jaw like he was chewing on something. It was bizarre to watch.
"Follow me!" Wha- Already?
Lining up in two columns - Thank you data installation - the clones marched out. It was almost funny watching the larger clones like 341 take awkward, small steps to match the rest.
The sun hadn't even risen in the sky by the time they left the barracks. After a quick breakfast of the ever delicious swamp slop, they headed to the firing range.
For a futuristic tech nation, it was surprisingly basic. Just some moving dummies off in the distance, with separate ranges for urban, jungle, and other environments. Certain ranges also had targets much further away, presumably for snipers.
"Line up!" The clone who had woken them up was apparently in charge of their training. 427 still didn't know his name… err number.
In front of them was a sleek, wood and metal rifle. Despite visibly being a flintlock, it wasn't a muzzle loader. There was a little chamber on the side for the ball, similar to a bolt-action. Overall, it was functional looking, but slightly jarring when you thought of the sci-fi tech of Germa 66.
"This is your new best friend, the GR-3. You will love this thing more than your own life! If it's dirty, you clean it. If it's clean, you clean it. It should ALWAYS be ready to fire." The Sergeant wasn't exactly screaming, but his voice sounded so loud that it was basically the same.
Does he have a megaphone gene installed in him or something?
"Get ready!" Utilizing the programmed muscle memory, the clones all stepped forward. They picked up the guns, loaded in the powder and round, and pulled back the hammer. There was no firing cap, which 427 chalked up to magical Germa technology, or something along those lines.
The range was based on an urban environment, or at least as urban as the One Piece world got. There were various human-shaped targets hidden in windows and behind walls. 427 spotted a disturbingly small one under a cart meant to be drawn by a horse.
Why not? He shrugged and aimed at the little target.
"Ready, aim, fire!" The simultaneous crack of the gunshots whipped through the air, with dings coming off of every successful target hit.
Lowering the gun, 427 saw a fairly average spread. A few were directly on their bullseye, but it was pretty rare. Looking at his own target, he thought
Wow, I'm dogshit
Shooting really just wasn't his thing. He had hit the 9th ring away from the center of the target. If it was a real kid he was shooting he might have blown off an ear or something.
So maybe it's a good thing?
The next few hours consisted of the same monotonous exercise. The drill sergeant was recording notes on a clipboard. About halfway through, however, a few of the clones were taken away, 341 amongst them.
Perhaps the most accurate become snipers?
Regardless, the only thing he would be sniping was the toilet bowl while taking a piss, because his accuracy was abysmal.
If I'm this bad at fighting too, I might as well kill myself now to make it easy on the enemy. Guns would be the primary form of combat for the foreseeable future. He wasn't exactly happy to see this result.
He wasn't entirely hopeless. By the end of the training he had shifted from hitting the ninth ring to the eighth ring.
Sorry to any future child soldiers out there I suppose.
After that riveting display of marksmanship, the clones trooped out for lunch. On the way, they met those that had split off earlier.
At his table, he sat beside his best pal, 341.
"So," he said, mouth full of goop, "what did you guys get up to?"
"Chew with your mouth closed." 341 said, without looking up. He pushed his sunglasses and continued eating slowly and methodically.
Chew? Do I even need to chew it? It's already liquid.
He swallowed it down, and stared at 341, waiting for a response.
"I've been selected as a sniper. Our training will be focused more on long distance shooting rather than closer quarters. In addition, we have to learn parkour."
It's a good thing that 427 had gulped down his slop, because if he hadn't, he surely would have spit it out at that statement.
Parkour? What the hell? As if reading his thoughts, a response came.
"The most important thing a sniper needs to be capable of is relocating themselves." 341 stated, pushing his sunglasses up again.
Oh, that makes sense.
"But why do you keep pushing up your sunglasses? They're literally form-fitted to our head."
341's hand faltered as he was reaching towards his glasses for a third time. He looked at his hand for a second and then set it down, choosing not to say anything. They both sat in silence until lunch concluded.
After lunch was when the real excitement began. They marched on over to the fighting grounds, where the older clones were already going at it.
Is that all they do?
"Alright recruits!" the sergeant said. "I'm splitting you into pairs. Practice the basics you learned for now. I'll walk around giving pointers."
Seriously? Straight into sparring? 427 was flabbergasted. Was this really the best way to teach someone how to fight?
He was placed with some random clone he didn't know, but it wasn't like those were rare.
Thank God it's a balanced type like me. If I was fighting a bigass giant I'd be cooked. Would beat the shit out of a midget though.
"Begin!" The drill instructor's bark snapped him out of his musings. He looked up to see the other clone's jab flying towards his face. It slowly ballooned in his vision, and with an instinct he didn't know he had, he dodged it by snapping to the left.
He overextended.
427 swung towards the clone's body with a left hook thrown at full force. It connected, and was most likely a liver shot from the way the unfortunate clone's eyes bulged.
The clone dropped to his knees and threw up. 427 absentmindedly stepped back to avoid it, inspecting his fist.
It's almost like… a videogame skill?
It was an apt way of putting it. The programmed moves were powerful, but it was like a skill in a video game. They could execute the move, but couldn't react while doing it. Against an experienced fighter, it would be an easy flaw to take advantage of.
Until he made it his own, it would be his greatest weakness.
No wonder the clones never grow in combat. How can they be expected to make a fighting style their own when they don't even really have a sense of self? Well, except for 9.
He wasn't sure what the deal with 9 was, but there was no chance in hell he was at the level of a regular clone fighter.
Speaking of which, I definitely need that training. If this is the level of sparring I'm going to be facing, I don't fancy my chances at skill growth.
As the training dragged on, and they rotated partners, 427 breezed through. It wasn't that he was a good fighter, it was just that he had the same skills as the clones with the added benefit of, you know, sentience.
Eventually though, the sergeant noticed. That meant the next time around, he had a very nice present in store for him. It came in the form of some wide-bodied, built-like-a-brick-shithouse clone.
Remember, smile through the pain. Smile through the pain.
With the blow of the whistle, the shithouse led with the same jab as every other clone, only on this one caused literal winds to blast into 427's face while he dodged it.
427 tried to follow with - you guessed it - the universal left hook, only for it to hurt his knuckles more than the giant he was punching.
"Ah. Ahahahahaha" I'm so screwed.
Lucky him! Turns out he didn't need to fake the laugh. With a grunt, the giant turned his jab into a devastating backhand.
427 pulled his arms in tight to block, but the impact still sent stars into his vision. His arms throbbed, and the back of his fist had smashed open his lip.
Goddamn it, laugh!
"Hehehe." He managed a weak chuckle. "You got me pretty good." The giant beamed at that.
"Hahaha! Ready for round two?"
Screw my life.
"Round two it is."
After the pounding of a lifetime - pause - the hand to hand ended. 427 was bruised, battered, bleeding from the lip and nose, and just generally messed up.
Despite all that, he had the vestiges of a grin on his face, and a gleam in his eye. Unlike the boring early fights, and the firearms training, he could genuinely feel the improvement. Nothing crazy, but he reacted a bit faster and smoother each time. He was growing.
This is it. This is my path forward. My path to survival.
Wiping the blood from his nose and lips, he looked around as the instructor called a stop. 341 made eye contact, so he flashed him a smile and a thumbs up. 341 just stared back for a while and then looked back at the instructor. 427 shrugged.
He was refocusing on the instructor once he finished whatever speech he was giving, when all of a sudden the horn for dinner blew. Like clockwork, the clones snapped into formation, marching to the dining hall. Their Enhanced bodies wouldn't heal insanely fast, but at the very least it stopped the bleeding.
Dinner passed without much fanfare, and the clones split up to go wherever they wanted. I.e., the training grounds. Not that 427 had any other plans. If he truly wanted to go down the speed route, he needed to start training for it early.
Speed training was hell. He regretted choosing this path because the pain he felt made everything else feel like a joke. Weighted sprints, hill sprints, sudden starts and stops, all of it was designed to break down every muscle in his leg, and reforge it into an engine.
The agility and obstacle courses weren't much better. Like an American Ninja Warrior course, every time he messed up he would be flung off the track. Unlike the show, however, the obstacles sure as hell weren't padded. On the plus side, it gave him practice blocking hits from awkward angles and mid-movement.
It wasn't like he could neglect his upper body either. The regimen was just as demanding, making his muscles feel like they were ripped to shreds. He couldn't even lift his hands to wipe away his sweat. They started shaking halfway.
The worst part? Unlike the sparring, he couldn't feel immediate progress.
This really is the worst part of working out. Putting in all this effort just to feel like nothing's changing.
Still, he couldn't neglect it in favor of training. The basics mattered. There was a reason Garp was beating the shit out of Luffy and Co since childhood, and it wasn't because he was a sadistic asshole.
After limping to the mess hall for a late-evening goop run, he called it a night.
Sleeping at 11:30 and waking up at 4. That alone makes my life hell.
When he thought of training tomorrow with sore muscles, it made him feel like breaking down. Truthfully, he almost did. For someone who'd never experienced this kind of pain before? Let's just say it wasn't easy.
But he persevered, because living at the whims of some emotionless freaks was one hell of a motivator.
Taking his mind off darker thoughts, he thought about what he was actually eating. It had to at the very least fulfill basic nutrition. Did it give protein? Was it conducive to building muscle? He doubted it.
Ideally, I would get my hands on sea king meat, but a thought like that falls under the same category as devil fruits: delusional.
Thinking back to the dining hall, he paused for a moment.
Now that I think about it, where do the older clones eat? They're never at the dining hall.
Shrugging it off, he headed back to his tent, showered, and collapsed on the bed like a puppet with its strings cut.
"ATTENTION!"
You have got to be shitting me.
The second day of training passed almost identically to the first. Firearms training, he was still stuck on the 8th ring. Sparring, he got the stuffing ripped out of him a little less. Speed and weight training? The less said about that the better.
He knew he would eventually need more specialized training. The core of combat in One Piece has always been "special moves," unless you're a freak of nature like Mihawk. Speed, he at least had a general idea of. Soru and Kuro's stealth walk came to mind.
That didn't mean he would be recreating them based on the manga's general idea of "kicking the ground super fast," but it at least gave him a starting point for later on.
For claw techniques, he was lost. Ryusoken? Other than bending his fingers in a malformed vulcan salute, he didn't have the first idea where to begin. Shigan was a good starting point, he supposed, but the manga never really talked about how to do it.
Was it a localized tekkai? Did it require nascent haki? He knew nothing. He did have some ideas from other shows and the like, but they would take armament to actually work. The Raikage's hell stab was extremely appealing, but wasn't that just a form of shigan? Then again, that was sort of like saying galaxy impact was just a punch.
Regardless, these were problems for future him. He didn't have haki or superhuman capabilities. He would just keep taking one step at a time, until his current scenery fell behind him.
The day flew by, and before he knew it, their simulated urban warfare training was upon them.