Alvida dragged him into a small house made of white clouds.
"Haven't you noticed something? Every time you take over someone's body with your Soul Possession ability, you use their powers way better than they do."
"Ok?"
Marcus had no idea what she was talking about.
Seeing his completely blank expression, Alvida started listing examples with her fingers. "We use our abilities every single day, right? We've had years to practice with them. So why can you use them better than we can?"
"Uh... because I know more than you guys? Knowledge is power and all that?"
"Bullshit!" Alvida jabbed a finger toward his nose. "Sure, you throw around a bunch of technical terms, but we're not idiots. Even if we don't understand the science mumbo-jumbo at first, you've explained this stuff multiple times. We get the concepts."
She was getting worked up now. "But here's the thing, even when we understand what you're talking about, we can't do it. Take Kira for example. She tried to recreate that dragon form you made with her Chimera Fruit. And yeah, she managed to copy the shape, but the size and power? Not even close. Same thing with the siren's Voice ability. She can mimic the sound perfectly, but she can't make it hypnotic like you did. It's just noise."
Marcus started paying closer attention. Now that she mentioned it...
"Okay, you might have a point, but—"
Alvida held up her hand, cutting him off. "I'm not done. When you push someone's ability or stamina past their normal limits, they get stronger afterward. Both Kira and Usopp have shown improvement."
She ticked off another finger. "Kira's Chimera Fruit works way smoother now. It uses less stamina too. And I asked Usopp earlier. His explosion power and intensity have both increased, even if it's not by much. Though you drained his stamina more than you pushed his explosive output, so the gains weren't as dramatic."
Marcus fell silent, thinking it through this time. She was right, that did happen. He'd assumed Kira's improvement was just because she was copying his technique, learning from observation. The Chimera Fruit was naturally versatile, so he hadn't thought much of it.
But if Usopp was also improving...
"So you want me to help develop your Slip-Slip Fruit? Train you or something?"
Alvida looked at him seriously. "Yes. I don't want to get left behind while everyone else gets stronger. I have pride too, you know."
After seeing Marcus split the sky with that technique, it would be a lie to say she wasn't jealous. And the others? Their growth had been even more dramatic, especially Zoro's three swords. She didn't see it first-hand, but after hearing Chopper describe it…
Her iron mace, on the other hand, was just... a club. It really didn't have any special traits, and its growth potential couldn't compare to Zoro's swords.
"I mean, I don't mind helping," Marcus said honestly. The idea interested him. "I'm curious what I can do with abilities other than Devil Fruits anyway."
The only issue was the Soul Possession itself. Having your body move without your control was deeply uncomfortable. Most people wouldn't accept it, especially women, for obvious reasons.
"You want to start now?" Marcus was already mentally preparing himself, curious whether the Slip-Slip Fruit could generate explosive power like the Bomb-Bomb Fruit.
"Let's do it."
Alvida nodded firmly.
Soul Possession: activate.
The familiar sensation washed over both of them as their souls swapped bodies. Marcus found himself looking down at a rather... prominent chest.
"Still not used to this," he muttered, his voice now Alvida's.
"Hurry up and start. I want to see how you'll use my Devil Fruit," Alvida said, wearing Marcus' face and body, eyes bright with curiosity.
Seeing his own face make that expression felt deeply weird to Marcus. It was like looking in a mirror that moved independently.
He activated the Slip-Slip Fruit, focusing on the sensation.
But nothing changed externally. He looked at his, Alvida's, hands and pushed the power to its absolute limit, making the skin completely frictionless.
The stamina drain was... pathetically low.
He was already maxing out the ability, but the Slip-Slip Fruit felt like trying to download massive files through a dial-up connection. It didn't matter how much power was available, the output was throttled at the source. Even pushing harder didn't break through that ceiling. It was like having gigabit fiber internet but being forced to download from a server that only gave you a trickle of bandwidth.
He activated the ability across Alvida's entire body. With her current stamina, she could maintain this state for an entire day without getting tired.
The Slip-Slip Fruit's energy consumption was just that minimal.
It was probably similar to Buggy's Chop-Chop Fruit or Luffy's Gum-Gum Fruit, if undeveloped and not awakened, the passive drain would be almost nothing.
But awakening... that was a different story.
How did Devil Fruits awaken anyway?
For Zoan types, you had to overcome or merge with the will inside the fruit itself. Once you dominated that consciousness, you awakened. The sign was two flame-cloud ribbons floating above the shoulders.
Paramecia awakenings were trickier to document. Aside from Luffy's fruit, there were only a few confirmed cases that users had openly admitted to:
Doflamingo's String-String Fruit, Katakuri's Mochi-Mochi Fruit, Kid's Magnet-Magnet Fruit, and Law's Op-Op Fruit.
All of them shared a common feature: they affected the external environment, transforming surrounding materials into the fruit's element.
Both String-String and Mochi-Mochi literally converted the landscape into threads or mochi. The Magnet-Magnet Fruit worked slightly differently, instead of transforming matter into magnetism, it granted magnetic properties to external objects, essentially creating multiple poles of attraction instead of being limited to the user's body.
The Op-Op Fruit was the weirdest case. Its awakening allowed Law to project his ROOM ability at range and apply true-damage effects that ignored conventional defenses. That's how he'd managed to hurt Big Mom, not through piercing her body, but by causing internal shock damage that bypassed her natural durability.
But the core principle remained the same: affecting the outside world.
The Slip-Slip Fruit should theoretically awaken in a similar way, making external objects frictionless rather than just Alvida's body.
Its mechanics were probably closest to the Gum-Gum Fruit... except that one had secretly been a Mythical Zoan all along, which threw all standard assumptions out the window.
The Slip-Slip Fruit was definitely Paramecia, so its awakened form probably wouldn't be as flashy or ridiculous.
He focused, trying to extend the Slip-Slip Fruit's effect outward beyond Alvida's body. He pushed against the ability's boundaries, looking for any give in the system.
But he immediately hit that familiar resistance.
It was the same feeling as reaching the absolute limit of any ability, an immovable wall.
The Slip-Slip Fruit's ceiling was zero friction. Perfect slipperiness. It couldn't create negative friction or go beyond that absolute state.
So no matter how much power he pumped into it, the ability just stayed at that maximum, only expanding the area of effect.
He had felt this kind of barrier before.
The last time was with Kira's Chimera Fruit. When she'd tried to transform, he'd sensed a similar limitation, but that one had been easy to break through, like poking through tissue paper.
This time, though? This felt more like a solid wooden door.
But if it came down to smashing through it, he had plenty of juice for that.
In just an instant, he shattered the restriction.
Then he heard it, a sharp, pitiful cry that made him flinch.
Of course, the sound didn't come from Alvida's mouth, nor from his own while possessing her body. It was something else entirely, something internal that apparently only he could hear.
He looked around.
"Did you hear that cry just now?"
"Cry? No, nothing," Alvida replied, looking at him strangely.
But Marcus was certain, the sound had definitely come from inside him, from somewhere in this body. He glanced around, trying to pinpoint the source, but found nothing obvious.
Maybe the consciousness space?
He shifted his perspective inward.
The pure white consciousness space was still spotless and empty as always. Nothing unusual there.
"That's weird."
A disturbing thought crossed his mind. Could the Devil Fruit's will have been destroyed when he broke through that barrier?
No, that was ridiculous. He dismissed the idea immediately.
As far as anyone knew, only Zoan-type fruits had that kind of embedded consciousness. Other Paramecia awakenings seemed to happen naturally through training and development, though there were exceptions like Luffy, who'd awakened after getting beaten half to death.
But even after awakening, he hadn't understood what was happening to him. He'd been confused about why his body was still moving at all. Plus, awakened abilities that affected others usually manifested as black energy. Only his had been those weird white flame-clouds.
That detail had always bothered Marcus. It didn't fit the pattern.
"Forget it. Not like Luffy's a useful reference anyway," he muttered.
He examined Alvida's body carefully. No flame-cloud patterns anywhere. The Slip-Slip Fruit was definitely not a Zoan.
Alvida felt uncomfortable under her own body's intense scrutiny. "What's wrong? Is it... not working or something?"
She sounded disappointed. Her Slip-Slip Fruit really didn't seem that impressive compared to the others. No explosive power like Usopp's fruit, no versatility like Kira's Chimera abilities. Just... slipperiness.
Then she suddenly felt her body, Marcus' body, lighten.
She looked down and blinked in surprise. His clothes had slipped right off, revealing a lean, well-defined torso with visible muscle definition.
"The hell?!"
"This is what happens when you apply the slippery property to skin," Marcus explained thoughtfully, examining Alvida's hands. In his understanding, theoretically the Slip-Slip Fruit should make the surroundings slippery. So why was it granting properties to objects instead?
He kicked off Alvida's high heels next, and her bare feet pressed against the soft cloud surface below. The spongy texture felt strange through her soles.
Instantly, his ankles sank into the cloud floor like it was quicksand.
"So I can't transform the surroundings directly. I can only grant objects the slippery property?" Marcus frowned, clearly puzzled.
He paused, then his expression shifted. Maybe granting and transforming are just different modes of the same thing. I could probably switch between them if I wanted to.
He immediately focused on the cloud beneath his feet, actively granting it zero friction instead of just making his body slippery. The effect was similar, and he could adjust the range freely.
Or maybe transformation was always just granting properties, but other users did it passively while he preferred active control.
Yeah, that made more sense. Active control was definitely his style.
But almost immediately, he felt his stamina draining at an alarming rate. Granting friction properties to external objects consumed way more energy than just making Alvida's body slippery.
Then something else confused him, why wasn't he sinking further into the clouds?
After a moment of testing, he figured it out. There was solid material under the cloud layer. He stomped and felt something firm. Leaves, apparently.
Right. Everyone was holding this banquet on top of the God's Shrine, and that shrine was built on the island's massive vines and foliage.
"How does any of this even work?" Marcus muttered.
Watching his expressions cycle from confusion to excitement to deep concentration, Alvida felt like she was on a roller coaster. What was he discovering?
Then, without warning...
Swoosh.
Marcus, or rather, her own body, vanished completely.
"WHAT?!"
Not a trace left on the floor.
She didn't panic though. She immediately shifted her perspective and dove into her own consciousness space.
There, she found herself plummeting downward at terrifying speed, falling through layers of clouds like a stone.
"What is happening?"
"Simple physics," Marcus called out. "You're slippery. You touched a slippery surface. So you 'slid' right off. There's no friction to keep you in place, so gravity just pulls you straight down."
"That makes no sense!"
Marcus dispelled the ability and used Geppo to fly back up, his feet tapping against the air.
When they met again on the cloud floor, Marcus didn't bother opening the door to the house.
He walked straight through the wall.
"WHAT?!"
Alvida stared in shock.
"What is happening?!"
Marcus grinned, clearly pleased with himself. The Slip-Slip Fruit was turning into something way more interesting than a simple friction-removal ability.
"It's pretty straightforward," he explained, walking back through the wall to stand in front of her again. "When you make your body slippery, attacks slide right off, they can't get traction. But here's the thing: what happens when two completely frictionless surfaces meet?"
He held up a finger. "They slide past each other completely. They can't interact at all because there's nothing for them to catch on. That's what creates the phasing effect."
Alvida's mind was spinning. "And you think you can do this with people too?"
"Let's find out."
Marcus looked at his own body, Alvida wearing his form, and activated the full-body slippery property again.
Immediately, Alvida felt herself being pushed off balance, her feet sliding uncontrollably. Having zero friction on every surface made standing impossible.
Then something even more bizarre happened.
Marcus walked toward her, and their bodies overlapped completely. They passed through each other like ghosts, neither one feeling anything unusual. It was as if the other person simply didn't exist in the same dimension.
"Holy shit," Alvida breathed.
"Try attacking me," Marcus suggested. "I've removed your body's slippery property, so you should be able to interact with things normally now."
Still reeling from the weirdness, Alvida raised her hand and swung at her own chest.
Her arm passed straight through without resistance.
Marcus, whose torso had just been pierced by an arm, simply spread his hands in a "see what I mean?" gesture.
Alvida waved her arm back and forth through his body repeatedly, feeling nothing. No resistance, or sensation of contact. It was like punching through smoke.
"As long as I'm completely frictionless, physical attacks can't touch me. They just slide right through."
"What happens if you apply the slippery property to me while we're overlapping like this?"
Marcus' grin turned slightly wicked. "You'd probably get launched. Want to try?"
Alvida shook her head furiously. "Hell no! This is my body we're talking about. If something unpredictable happens and I get thrown through my own chest or something, I'm blaming you."
She pulled her arm back, watching as Marcus walked over to the wall again. This time he stepped directly into it, letting himself sink partially through before pushing back out, or rather, sliding out like he'd been ejected.
"Just as I thought," he said, nodding to himself.
"What?" Alvida asked, dying to know what conclusion he'd reached.
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