The Return Of Joyboy!

Chapter 6

Garp and Luffy were at the beach where Luffy was playing with the sand and making sand castles. He looked happy and Garp observed the kid with keen and fond eyes.

"Grandpa?" Luffy asked as he lifted his head from the so-called castle that he had made. He looked towards Garp with a gummy smile. Garp hummed as he asked him to continue.

"I want to be strong," Luffy declared with determination shinning in his eyes. Garp could see the sparkles of wonder. He could see the same resolution which he saw in Dragon all those years ago.

"And why do you want to be?" Garp asked as approached the grinning kid.

He saw Luffy thinking hard, with his face scrunched, and turning red. 

Garp laughed at the antics of the little kid. "Do you want to be a marine?" Garp's eyes lit up at the possibility. His mind racing thousands kilometers per second about the benefits which Luffy can get.

Luffy scrunched his face in disgust, and poked his tongue out before speaking, "I don't like marines." 

Garp couldn't help but reward him with a 'fist of love' for his bravery.

"You will become a fine marine." He said as he lifted up the boy and started advancing to the jungle for training.

As long as Luffy's secrets will be hidden, he could help people by becoming a marine. Garp thought as he threw the boy before the monkeys.

.

That same day, the sea seemed to be seething in anger, which had most of the fisher men of the village stay from the ocean. Makino didn't think much of it as she was serving her costumers, when suddenly the doors to her bar opened. Makino's eyes went straight towards to watch in horror, as Garp was holding a beaten up Luffy who was covered in dried blood. Dropping all her work, Makino rushed towards the boy, horrified by his wounded self.

"What happened?" She asked as she placed the boy whose left eye was swollen badly on his chair. 

"T-Train...ing," The little boy coughed out before taking a heavy breath. Makino glared at Garp who ignored her gaze and whistled innocently.

"I might have overdid it?" Garp said or asked. "But throwing him off a cliff, making him fight the monkeys and tying him with balloons doesn't seem much training." The old man said before continuing. "He would be dine."

Makino agreed with Garp on one thing. The thing which Luffy had gone through was not training! Hell, torture seemed a better way to describe what the four year old boy had just gone through!

Makino couldn't stop the occasional training which was going on and on. It didn't help when the training started getting more and more brutal. Whenever Garp visited, he left Luffy immobile or unconscious. She had protested at it but all Luffy told that he wants that. He wants that hellish training to get stronger. From that day on, Makino could only tend to the wounds of the little boy and make sure that he recovered completely from the aftermath.

Whenever Dragon would arrive at the times when Garp would be busy training Luffy, he would be petrified to see Luffy emerging from the forest with the help of a walking stick, or trying to climb a cliff to reach the top with him all bleeding over. Sometimes, the poor man had to pull his son from the air where he would be struggling to get himself out of the many balloons which were tied to his person by a thread.

Dragon would always end up fighting with his father, angry on using such extreme methods on a mere kid. But Garp would listen to any of it, and would beat up his son in name of 'training' the revolutionary leader.