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It does not take long for Rayleigh to notice the shift.
In fact, the first thing out of his mouth when he steps foot on Rusukaina again is, "You feel different, Luffy."
Unnervingly different, really. It's in details, of course — it always is in details: it's in the way his hair is puffier and fluffier than Rayleigh remembers it being; it's in his strangely tinted irises trying to change their familiar black-brown to something new; it's the way the snow seems to avoid his exposed skin and little moisture on his clothes. Gray eyes skim over the boy, needle-quick in the action, eyebrow quirking at the indent in the white ground being just a little too big for it to be just body heat.
There's also a strange resonance in the air, in the haki, that feels like a humm of a starting engine. Or, perhaps an echo of a beat.
Luffy, though, only blinks at Rayleigh, slow and measured thing, completely unbothered in the face of the strangeness, and says, "I am different."
He tilts his head ever so, like he loves to do, lips pulling into a smile, or a smirk, maybe. It crinkles his scar, stretching it just slightly past reason, uncanny with precision to let it look natural enough. It shows gums, and barred teeth, because every smile of his should be, — is, — unbound by logic and wide like horizon; but for all that grimace should be humorous, he feels that it's somewhat blank.
That smile isn't the one Rayleigh's familiar with.
(It, perhaps, should've been the first sign.)
"Oh?" He continues, still. "How so?"
For a heartbeat, nothing happens. A bird tweets somewhere above, once-twice, and falls silent. The frigid wind stills like it never before blown.
Tension rises, suddenly.
Then, Luffy attacks.
Trees behind him part from the pressure, creaking like old furniture from the strain, and he's upon Rayleigh like a wild animal. It's a familiar dance they did for over a year now, attack and defense, with hardened fists and cracked wood bits flying all over the place — Luffy punches and Rayleigh evades, whipping the normally harmless sticks like a razor-sharp sword to counterattack and for Luffy to defend against; they almost always break on block now, too, instead of leaving angry bruises on the rubber skin. It's a significant upgrade from the painful blobs of black-purples that dotted his skin in the beginning of training, both in terms of evasion and defense — what a good student Rayleigh got himself, he thinks, truly.
A student that starts giggling when the next wooden piece disintegrates upon his punch.
(This should've been the second.)
He can't help but raise an eyebrow at the behavior. Luffy seems particularly carefree, now, feet sliding on the soil to spring into the running start. It's cocky, taunting even, to be this wild against an opponent seemingly too strong to take, though it's clearly deliberate, if his sharp eyes were anything to go by. He bends in unexpected ways, rubber body allowing impossible acrobatics, — gravity nothing but a suggestion he's inching to ignore, — sweeps too stretched or not stretched enough, and it's as mesmerizing to watch as it is uncanny.
Still, Rayleigh's smile becomes just a little more real, always does so when progress is made, and he remarks almost offhandedly, "You've improved."
Luffy laughs at the thin praise. There's a crack in the air just where his head was a moment ago, and another echoes as he heaves his body off the ground to stand on his arms. He twists in the air then, like a spring or a torrent, the whip of stretching skin speeding toward Rayleigh's seemingly unprotected back.
Of course, he leans out of the way of the grabbing hand without looking. He twist his hand slightly, adjusting the angle, and then-
"But that's not what I meant."
-slices at the boy frozen midair.
Luffy sees his attack too late to dodge, doesn't thrusts his muscle-drilled block fast enough, and everything
seems to
stop.
(Time stretches.)
He moves through the air like it's something too sticky, too thick, too sweet, and his haki screams, suddenly, blaring red alarm going off in his head like fireworks. There is static between the wooden pole and Luffy's skin, small lightnings of something not-there biting into rubber like needles. Everything is charged, — with what, though, Rayleigh cannot fathom, — and it's hard to breath through the inexplicable heat.
Those are blinks, scorching warmth and dancing dots, and when his vision focuses just enough to see the opponent he sees
nothing.
(A nothing that is just too much-)
Rayleigh stumbles.
(Stumbles, loses balance for the first time in what feels like twenty years, and the fire that should not be here envelopes his vision like a tide, half-formed shape of a not-quite-human in the center, and he sees something that is both too-white and too-red out of the corner of his eye, deformed beyond recognition, and)
Luffy's grin, wide and wild before, becomes borderline manic,
and Rayleigh slams him into the mushy ground before he can take a breath.
The boy gasps; doesn't even try to fight the steel-tight grip Ryleigh has on him. There's a coughing, shuddered inhale drawn with a wheeze. He's not pinned to the point of inability to breathe, or speak, but the hand holding him down is locked in this position, muscles taut with tension.
For a second time today, the forest becomes eerily still.
(Surprisingly, Rayleigh's hands are not shaking.
He feels like they should be.)
He works his jaw, trying to form words that aren't there.
"...Luffy." Rayleigh starts after a moment, tone somewhere between bewildered and completely dead, "What was that?"
In quick succession Luffy blinks away the daze from the hit — and if Rayleigh hadn't paid attention so intently to his figure, he'd miss the way the boy's eyes seemed to spin just a little too much and just a little too unnaturally. He almost looked like he wanted to shake his head like a dog too, Rayleigh thinks distantly, if space between the ground had allowed it.
Instead of answering, of course, he focuses solely on the hand holding him with a pouty frown. "It was just starting to get fun." He fires back, almost whining, and,
what?
"What?"
Rayleigh's grip relaxes just enough to lose the Armament coating he subconsciously used. Luffy notices this, naturally he does, and rightfully decides to seize the opportunity to escape. Rayleigh expects him to start trashing, twist his abnormal body to attack back or try to jump away from the reach, but he just blinks again and suddenly-
Heat.
He yanks his hand away from an open flame. It cackles, deforms and sparks as he jumps away, spinning in a torrent that does not go farther than something vaguely human — vaguely familiar human. Rayleigh is dumbfounded, watching the fire lick the ground curiously before becoming sandal-clad feet, before the fiery vortex becomes a body, before the blob feverish heat becomes a face of a very smug teenager, cheshire smile taking half of it. Some of his parts are still a little blurry from the blaze, but they stitch themselves together quickly enough that had Rayleigh not watched the whole thing, he'd never guessed it could've been any other way.
Sparse birds tweet, wind blows, and no one says a thing.
("Hey, Ray." Roger started one time, when they were still too-many crewmates short, shitty boat and an unspoken dream. "Hadn't you ever wondered about Devil Fruits?")
Luffy snickers. "Rayleigh looks so stupid."
Rayleigh's mouth clicks shut. The snow is uncomfortably damp under him when he sits, ground muddy and sticking to his clothes in chunks. It would take a whole day of scrubbing to get it all out, and even then, Sabaody is too humid for it to dry quickly. Shakky will be very displeased with the dirt, considering this, and make him go though the entire laundry bin in retribution. It will be a very sad couple of hours, all alone with his thoughts and methodical drilling work. His hands will probably be angry raw-red.
He will hate it. He always did, so he tries to avoid it at all costs.
It is all but a distant trouble, though.
("Of course," Rayleigh replied then with a wave of his hand, watching the horizon for the storms. "Everyone did it at least once.")
"Luffy." He says, feeling with uncomfortable clarity of his body's age. The boy makes a questioning noise at the tone, but doesn't really provide more. Rayleigh sighs and asks again, "What happened while I was gone?"
He makes another sound, behaving a lot more vocal than before their quick spar. "Not much." Luffy says. Then, his gaze slides someplace different and glazes over, like he sees something entirely different than the jungle he became familiar with. It's quietly that he says, "I found Mera Mera three days ago, I think. Dunno how long it's been here, though."
("I'm obviously not talking if they're real. They are, I know it." Roger continued. "But, like, have you ever wondered why they often fit their users perfectly? In the stories?"
"Because they're stories?"
Roger only shacked his head at the dismissal. "No, Ray, I don't think it's just that. They always fit the guy that eats 'em, y'know. Like they also choose who's gonna take 'em. Isn't it strange?")
The boy sits down in front of him, legs crossed and a complicated look on his face. "It wanted me." He explains. "It said so itself."
Rayleigh's expression twists in a way that Rayleigh himself isn't familiar with. "You ate it."
Luffy closes his eyes and humms.
"I did."
And at that…
("Does it matter that much? Those are legends — of course they always have a perfect answer to the hero's problem." Rayleigh huffed. "Unless it's trying to teach you something, I suppose."
"Of course it matters!" Roger squawked. "If the Devil Fruits really choose who gets to eat them, what would it mean if two choose one user? Would they fight over it? Is that why people die?"
Roger then stood up on the poor dinghy, almost toppling the three of them, — Rayleigh, the boat and himself, — over and ignored the growl Rayleigh let out to articulate just how insane he sounds.
"Just think about it!" He said. "Wouldn't it be so cool to have two!?")
Rayleigh can't help but laugh.
"You are an enigma, boy." He says ruffling Luffy's hair, and surprising himself. The boy makes an offended noise and tries to bat the persistent hand away, fruitlessly.
All five seas be damned, this child is worse than any pirate he had met before, and possibly will meet in the future. Worse than any Supernova, separate or combined. Probably worse than Roger himself, now that he thinks about it.
At least Roger hadn't gone farther than theories on the topic.
Luffy cocks his head to the side after straightening his puffier-than-normal locks. "I refused at the start, y'know. I don't really need more than rubber. But it said I won't die, and…" His head lifts up, looking underneath naked treetops. "It felt like I knew it was right. I knew people died after eating two, I knew it since I was little from Gramps' stories, but this one felt-"
He makes a vague hand gesture, and then a sound that Rayleigh can only describe as desperate to be understood without needing to say it.
"Different." Rayleigh concludes when Luffy doesn't attempt to explain himself further. "And you can't explain why?"
Luffy frowns.
"Not really." He says. "It just felt right."
Rayleigh humms. There's dirt all over him from melted snow and mushy ground, pristine white blouse looking no better than rags he sees on people in the Auction House all the time. It's a little uncomfortable with all of it sticking to him, and he's a little envious of the way the mud seemingly dries on Luffy's skin nearly instantly and cracks off by itself.
And speaking of that, "Are you fine with this whole thing, Luffy?"
At the mention of his name, the boy snaps his head back down, and looks at Rayleigh with confusion.
"Having two Devil Fruits." He clarifies. "Being something unthinkable- something new. " He squints at Luffy, as serious as he can get. "It feels a little strange, doesn't it? Having that additional limb that you've never used before, and never had until three days ago. You need to adjust your balance to it, sometimes physically and sometimes mentally, or you'll stumble and fall."
Rayleigh locks his eyes with his, and sees the way they flicker in their color.
"Are you fine with this whole thing, Luffy?"
Luffy blinks at him, slow and measured just like he did when Rayleigh just came from the shore. The stillness stretches just a little too much for normal conversation's comfort, but, frankly, Rayleigh is familiar with the way this boy behaves and there's no way this can be classified as a normal conversation anyway. Still, Luffy maintains his silence just slightly too long.
And then, just as Rayleigh is about to either repeat the question or drop the topic, he says, "Yeah, sure."
Rayleigh's eye twitches. That little shit.
"Well then." He says standing up, and makes a face when what follows him can only be described as a muddy abomination. This is going to be painful.
He hears Luffy snicker. Brat.
"I wouldn't laugh if I were you." Rayleigh says, whipping up his forgotten stick — just as dirty as he is. "We're going to train that fire of yours too."
The kid jumps up, full of energy and zero complaints. There's a grin plastered on his face, — wild and uncontrollable and unnaturally wide, full of white teeth and showing gums, — as he stretches his shoulders and a flame flickers all over his hair. His skin ripples like the sea, rubber and fire making it seem more mesmerizing than it ought to be.
(It suits him though, Rayleigh thinks, right to the T.)
He feels his own mouth forming a smile,
and then his vision is full of fire.