"So? How do you feel? Do you sense anything strange happening inside your body?"
Shirakawa asked, but Sardar didn't answer. He was too busy muttering to himself.
"How can something this disgusting exist in the world?" For a chef like him, it was utterly incomprehensible. Even with all his culinary skill, he doubted he could turn a Devil Fruit into anything remotely edible.
He shot a glare straight at Riddle, his eyes practically screaming, Why didn't you give me a proper warning? Why didn't you tell me it was going to taste this horrific?
"I did warn you! I told you not to chew it! You didn't listen, so don't pin this on me."
Riddle put on his most innocent expression. It really wasn't his fault.
Those words only made Sardar angrier. His figure vanished right in front of everyone's eyes, and in the blink of an eye, he was behind Riddle, fists and feet flying in a blur.
"Such incredible speed."
Sensing Sardar's movements, the other three, aside from Riddle, who was currently being pummeled, were all stunned.
"That's not the kind of speed Sardar had before, is it?"
Jora turned his head and asked Shirakawa.
"No. That must be the power of his Devil Fruit. It boosts his own speed. Could it be a Speed Fruit?"
"I don't know, but that sounds about right."
Sardar only stopped when Riddle's face was thoroughly swollen and bruised. He knew he didn't have the moral high ground, but the sheer frustration just boiled over anyway.
"Alright, Sardar. Do you understand your ability now?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but it definitely has something to do with speed."
"Yeah, I can tell your speed increases. But I'm not sure by what factor. Want to run a little test?"
"What kind of test?" Sardar asked Shirakawa.
"You could spar with Jora. That'll give us a sense of where your current limits are."
"That works." Sardar looked at Jora. It was ultimately up to him.
"No problem." Jora nodded. He was also keen to gauge Sardar's strength for himself.
"Then let the spar begin." Shirakawa leaped aside and watched the two with keen interest.
Sardar's weapons were his kitchen knives. That probably made him a swordsman of sorts. Dual kitchen knives in fact, a two-sword style practitioner, just like Jora.
Their fight wasn't flashy. It was attack and defend, defend and attack, the clashing of four blades ringing out in a rapid, crackling rhythm that grew faster and faster.
Gradually, Jora found himself unable to keep up with Sardar's speed. While Jora had the upper hand in sword technique, the gap in raw speed was far from trivial.
"Alright, that's enough."
Seeing sparks beginning to fly between them, Shirakawa stepped into the gap during a pause in their exchange. He caught both of their attacks, one with each hand, and brought the bout to a halt.
The two fighters withdrew their weapons. Jora's gaze lingered on Sardar, burning with the desire to fight again. That match hadn't satisfied him at all.
"I've observed enough. Sardar's speed is roughly eight times his normal pace. But I've got a feeling this isn't the Speed Fruit's limit, or Sardar's."
"I can do more than just accelerate," Sardar added. "I can decelerate too."
"Decelerate? What good does deceleration do?" Riddle, who had learned nothing from the beating he'd just taken, piped up again.
"Who says it's useless?" Sardar patted Riddle on the shoulder, but nothing visibly happened.
"See? Nothing happened," Riddle said, then moved his arm. Shirakawa and the others suddenly noticed Riddle's movements had slowed down.
"Riddle, try jumping."
"Oh, alright." Riddle had no idea what was going on, but hearing the serious tone in Shirakawa's voice told him this wasn't something trivial.
Riddle obediently jumped. While a person could consciously control the speed of a wave of the hand, jumping was a different matter. Or so Shirakawa thought, anyway. But just now, both Riddle's ascent and his descent were noticeably slower.
"That's a really impressive ability."
Shirakawa fully grasped how important Sardar's power could be.
"But to apply the speed effect to someone else, I have to make physical contact. And the speed multiplier scales directly with how much stamina I burn through."
"That's more than enough. Your ability is genuinely outstanding."
Now Sardar could serve not only as a support fighter but as an assassin too. In the future, if they ever had to face someone like Kizaru, they'd have a way to put a leash on his speed.
Originally, Shirakawa had assumed that if they ever clashed with the Marines, Yuristin would be the best matchup against Kizaru. But now, Sardar seemed like an even better fit. Better yet, they could team up. Sardar reels in Kizaru's speed, and Yuristin delivers the shot.
"Yuristin, give Sardar one of your bullets."
"Oh."
"Sardar, try applying your acceleration to a bullet. See if it works."
"Sure, let me try."
Sardar ran his hand over a bullet, then handed it back to Yuristin.
"Yuristin, test that bullet. See if the speed has increased."
"Alright."
Yuristin set up his rifle and aimed at a distant seabird. A single crack rang out as the shot fired.
The bird was hit. An outsider might not have noticed the bullet's speed, but to a sniper of Yuristin's caliber, what he had just witnessed was earth-shattering.
That bullet had traveled at least four times its normal velocity.
A sniper's fixed bullet velocity was always a stubborn limitation. Aside from modifying the gun itself, they had just stumbled onto another method entirely aboard their ship.
"So? Yuristin, did it work?"
"It worked. It absolutely worked." Yuristin's face broke into a wide grin.
He immediately gathered up all his bullets and placed them in front of Sardar, uttering only a single word. "Please."
"That's a small matter. No problem at all."
"It looks like Sardar's Speed Fruit has huge potential if we develop it properly."
With handful after handful of bullets now imbued with acceleration, Yuristin was fired up. The increased bullet speed meant he would have to recalibrate his entire marksmanship. Otherwise, he'd risk pulling the trigger too early.
"I gave all of these a fourfold acceleration boost. If you need more later, I can push it to eightfold now."
"Fourfold is plenty."
Bullets were already fast. Adding a fourfold boost on top of that made them absurdly fast.
It reminded Shirakawa of the Times-Times Fruit from the original story. That fruit could multiply more than just speed. It amplified power, size, weight, all of it. Its drawback was that it couldn't be applied directly to living creatures.
Sardar's Speed Fruit, by contrast, only affected speed, acceleration or deceleration. But it could be applied to anything, living or non-living alike.
/-\
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