OPSR: Chapter 12 (Patreon)

I spoke, barely concealing my disgust as I tried to comfort her. “It’s fine. I have a big and strong body, so I probably won't get sick.” In my head, I was thinking ‘AH AH AH AH AH! Oh shit! Oh, shitty shit! What if she had tuberculosis or some other contagious disease?’ I was about to continue when I noticed something. I could tell something from drinking her blood, but it wasn’t enough.

I started to wipe the blood off my face and into my hand as everyone stared on in horror as I licked it. Once I passed a threshold of DNA absorbed, I could read her lineage factor and absorb a portion of it to strengthen my own. What I got from her is that one of her ancestors within three generations was a Skypiean. 

I felt my natural observation haki improve; it wasn’t enough to activate it, but everyone had a passive field they controlled. Awakening observation haki wasn’t as amazing as it was made to be in the manga; you needed to constantly train it to make the range you can scan bigger and bigger. Think of it like a bubble; the only way to increase that bubble was training it like a muscle, and even someone who never trained their bubble would still have it, it would just be flush with their body, not allowing them to sense anything outside the bubble.

The Skypiean lineage factor would make awakening and training observation haki much easier, because up that high, they would need to see oncoming threats from further away or hidden under the clouds, otherwise they’d die. I could more acclimatize to low-oxygen areas now as well. I only received the smallest fragment of the skypiean lineage factor, though; the bonus to those things was negligible, and would mean that if it took 10 years to awaken my observation haki, I could do it in nine now.

It got me thinking, if she were a descendant of a Skypiean, where were her wings? I remembered what she told me her symptoms were. Struggle moving because of weakness of breath, struggle breathing as if something was pushing against her lungs… Were the wings stuck in her back? They had to be. I asked the million-dollar question now. “Do you know you’re the ancestor of a Skypiean?”

Kaya’s mother(Kanis) froze as she looked up at me with shock and fear in her eyes. Just like any non-human race, if anyone found out she was Skypiean, there was a real chance slavers would come looking for her and her children. Everyone always overcomplicates these things. “Your husband is rich, no one but us knows about it, and I’m not going to tell anyone, but it would be a good idea to higher bodyguards for you and your family on this tiny island just in case pirates show up.”

I moved behind her as I asked her to take off her shirt, exposing her back. Even as sickly as she was, she was still a confirmed beauty, even more beautiful than her daughter. Heavy ‘One Piece’ sized breasts and a thin ‘One Piece’ sized waist. Something that would be extremely difficult for a person to look like and would make them one of the more attractive people on the planet, and it was just par for the insanely beautiful world course here.

I could tell what was wrong as soon as I saw her back. Smooth, perfect skin gave way to lumpy areas, the wings that should have popped out instead lay stuck inside her back, one of the side effects of diluting her Skypiean blood. All I had to do would be... As my scapel slid across her skin, the wing I was trying to free popped out like a jack in the box.

I was worried about leaving scars, but it seemed the only thing holding the wings against her back was a secondary layer of skin. Once I freed the other, I could hear her taking deep, gasping, full breaths for the first time in her life. Another side effect of lineage dilution was that her wings were even smaller; perhaps the wings originally could fly, but no longer could from cross-breeding. These wings would have killed her eventually, but Kaya’s wings would only leave her sick her entire life.

My guess was right as I cut open Kaya’s back to free her wings; hers were slightly smaller. Both women heaved for breath. They had something pressing against them their entire lives, only now that they were free to take full breaths for the first time in their lives. Kanis might not die now; she would always be weak, but Kaya could now grow into her body; she wouldn’t be sickly and could become much healthier than she was in the original story.

What I learned from this situation was good. I could consume the DNA of other races and grow my power in a way other than devil fruits or haki. Now, I was looking even more forward to Arlong's arrival, because he would be delivering plenty of fishman lineage factor I could absorb from his crew. I looked at Uchina, and the look I gave her made her back away slightly.

I quickly grabbed her hand before cutting her finger out of curiosity about her. I would have felt bad if she hadn’t been a complete bitch to me ever since we met, obviously wary of the slightly older boy trying to get close to her friend… Well, that makes sense to me, but in this world, kids often make friendships with adults, and I was only a few years older.

She had tontatta and giant lineage factors, but those ancestors were so old that I got no effect from her blood. It was unfortunate that she was ugly, but I’d end up being roped into bringing her on board if Kaya joined my crew and there was… The smooth fruit! If Uchina ate the smooth fruit, she might be able to slip off her ugliness. Alvida didn’t need it in this timeline. I off-handedly mentioned.

“Oh, I think I met your father. Yasopp, right?” I mentioned him to sort of bridge the gap between us, but instead of excitement, she answered me with a frown. “Don’t mention that loser in front of me.” I tried to figure out why she didn’t like him, but before I could even think about it, she told me. “That loser abandoned his wife and child to go play pirate. Why do you think I’d care for my deadbeat father, who has never visited me since I was born?”

Yeah, that checks out. She is a girl in this universe, and it seemed she was better friends with Kaya from the beginning. I wasn’t sure her mother was alive or dead, but her thoughts of how her father acted would, of course, be different now that she was a girl rather than a boy… And I just shot myself in the foot again, trying to close the distance she put between us.

“I’m sorry. If I knew you didn’t like him, I’d have given him a good slap when I saw him passed out at the table the Red Haired Pirates were visiting.” I was still learning so much about the world, but everything that was different threw off my entire groove as I tried to desperately recorrect. She took it as the peace offering it was. We had made our way out of the mansion as the mother and daughter were patiently waiting for their husband/dad to return.

“Well, keep an eye on Kaya for me. I don’t know if there will be any side effects of having her wings out in the open. They’re too rare not to be coveted. Anytime you see someone new on the island you don’t know, you go warn them to stay covered, okay?”