This is a thread [Fox n Buk]

[Smiley]

Really high up! In a small island! An island that has next to nothing in terms of life, mostly a rock that is very high up from the sea. How is it still standing? Nobody knows or, if they know, Bucket never cared to actually learn it. Instead, he saw it as a nice rock climbing exercise that he did without any sort of safety equipment like the rebellious boy he is, using nothing but his strength and endless confidence to climb all the way up without fearing for his life even once. Or maybe he did and wouldn't show it to anyone, not even himself!

Whatever was the correct answer, he was standing at the top. High up, not so high up that the air would thin out, though he did find it slightly harder to breathe; besides that, the tiny island was not THAT small that one could just walk from one end to the other in minutes. If anything, it was like a big property for a family, like a rich dude who owns a good amount of land. He could find himself running around that spot, training there, doing what he pleased...

Yes, training. This was a good place to start training, to strengthen his lungs and test out his survival skills in an island with almost no life on it. If there was any life in it, he hadn't checked. Instead, all he did was start running, feet smashing against the rock below, raising a good amount of dust and some rubble as he moved such a huge body at great speeds, still trying to train his swiftness with practice. Sure, he knew how to move very quickly with sheer brutal force, but he was not the most agile of creatures.

After all, his "acrobatics" were seriously lacking. Maybe if he knew someone who could really move.

[Vio]

A small boat. A rowboat. That was the only item that Fox Gillie currently had to her name as she traversed the East Blue in search of her next challenge, but that was good enough. For the aspiring pugilist, each stroke of the oars was a chance to train her arms further, rowing her way to victory one movement at a time. However, she now found herself at the foot of a cliff of all things — the rugged coastline of an admittedly tiny isle in the midst of nothing but open blue.

Stowing one of the oars in the boat, she reached out with an elongated arm and took hold of the stone. Coarse, with traces of erosion from being constantly battered by the sea during seasonal storms, what might’ve once been a more impressive isle had been reduced to little more than a giant pillar in the water. Now, Jill was no geologist, so aside from the obvious she was otherwise stumped as to what best to do.

Splish…! Splash…! Miss Fox looked around as seawater was disturbed. Bits of rock, none too big or particularly threatening to a small boat, were falling from above. Each hit the water with a distinct sound, almost in rhythm, once every few seconds. Was the island collapsing? She hoped not, for her own sake. The very thought of the entire cliff’s face collapsing upon her was almost enough to make her turn pale. But with the cessation of the falling debris, she assured herself that wouldn’t be the case.

“Well, the only way’s up… Climbing will be good training!” Nodding firmly, Gillie fastened her belongings to her back, used a little rope to secure the small boat to a suitable outcrop, and began to climb. Long limbs served to aid her in finding sufficient purchase on small ledges and minor overhangs at best big enough for a small seabird to nest upon, pulling herself up little by little. It wasn’t long — not even a minute or two before her arms were already starting to ache. This was going to be a difficult climb…

---

Fox Gillie ❘ #4fca16

[Smiley]

He had been doing quite a bit of exercise at that island-top, fighting against the thinned up air and the lack of anything around serving to be an empty arena for him to practice freely, without impediment. Sure, he might not have much of anything to cook anything with, however, his species wasn't really one that minded it when the situation called for it. If anything, he was built for eating things raw! The tentacles that could hold prey tight and still, not even counting his hands and his sharp, hidden beak that could crush bone, tendon and muscle to eat things without whittling them down with things like cooking.

So, once he got hungry enough, he looked up into the sky, doing his best not to get blinded by the sun. As birds liked to fly by, they were the perfect targets for a new way of training: he had the ability to shoot out projectiles with the nice blend of skill and brutal power that only a fishman (or a very well trained human) could achieve.
So, as a nice, fat seagull was flying by, the giant of a man cocked his fist back a bit, taking proper aim. 

"Keep goin..' keep goin..! BANG!" The man loudly shouted as his fist swung up into the sky in a harsh manner, the loud, singular crack of air breaking as a shockwave traveled quickly into the skies, slamming into the seagull that had been flying up above: it fell, very much knocked out. 

Time and time again, this happened as birds kept passing, something that Fox could actually see. Now there was proof that something was up there, that it wasn't just a coincidence that the small amount of rocks was just falling due to erosion.

[Vio]

It took her a long while to reach the top, that much was certain. Despite an elongated reach, more than sufficient strength, and speed and reflexes tuned enough to quickly compensate for minor mishaps that could have sent her tumbling back to the bottom, Fox Gillie finally found her fingers grasping the ledge of the clifftop, hauling herself up with one last burst of strength. Victory left a sweet taste in her mouth.

It was nice to see the top. Almost.

“Eh…? Who are you?” the blonde boxer asked, spying little to nothing upon the otherwise flat top of this seabound mesa save for sparse greenery, gull feathers, and what appeared to be a goliath of a man with a bucket on his head a little across the way with his back turned. Around him lay more than a few twitching birds — a morbid sight to behold, though she didn’t seem all that dissuaded by it.

“What, do you live here or something?” Jill added, laying down her pack and belongings as she shifted herself away from the cliff’s edge. She flexed her arms and fingers, limbs a little sore from the hard climb which had indeed left her somewhat out of breath, and took a moment to glance about across the tabletop of the islet. Upon spying a person, she’d half expected to see a little shack or something, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, there was barely enough in the way of raw materials to even construct such a thing.

---

Fox Gillie ❘ #4fca16

[Smiley]

By the time the long-arm actually reached the top of the island, Bucket was looking through the birds he sniped to find the fatter ones, seriously needing a lot of nourishment right about now. He didn't have time to be picky with taste either, just find whatever seemed to have the most calories in its small body and start eating it up, one by one. So was the natural circle of life, specially for a being that, quite irrationally so, refused to eat any living being in the sea. Fish, aquatic mammals, whatever else, name it. 
He ain't eatin.

"I'm Bucket. I was trainin' here, small woman." Bucket introduced himself in very short words, as he was still squatted down, looking through the birds he had concussed out of the sky, finally finding one that seemed pudgier to him. It would be the first to go, in a display that the typical person would wish to never see: as the bucket in his head actually revealed itself to be something far more alive than expected, as the lower point of it, around the level of the bottom of the anchor "painted" in his head, opened into a large, gaping black void of a mouth; at which point several pearly white, orange ringed tentacles came out to wrap around the half dead bird and hide it inside the darkness of his mouth.

As the bucket closed once again, the distinct noises of crushing and squelching were heard, as the hidden, yet terrifyingly strong beak that most cephalopods had, including nautiluses, that they used to eat beings smaller than themselves. 
By the "smaller being" theory, Bucket could very likely eat a human. He never gave it much thought, though. Humans look kinda nasty and way too bony for him. The ones with actual meat or fat on them just look gross to eat, so he never cared to even entertain the thought.
"And you? Here to do the same thing? ..You want a bird?" Bucket asked, having eaten the entirety of the bird, feathers and all, knowing that even if he couldn't exactly use that as nourishment, his stomach would still very much digest it. Didn't leave a mess either, since it all happened inside his shell.

A more pressing matter, however, was if Fox Gillie, who had just witnessed something that was VERY much not human eat a full sized bird in one apparent chomp, would stay around to train.

[Vio]

“S— Small woman?” Fox Gillie repeated, somewhat confused by what this figure meant by such a statement. He didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to her, sorting through unconscious gulls at his own pace. At least he had gone and answered her questions, introducing himself by a name that, at second glance, certainly made a lot of sense. What seabirds had to do with training was unknown to her, until he opened his mouth.

Mouth was one word for it.

“Uhm,” the Long-Arm groaned, disturbed by what she was seeing. On the bright side, at least it was only her eyes that had glimpsed such a scene as shell plating returned to position. Only a little pale from what she had just witnessed, Jill shook her head as Bucket spoke again.

^{“And you?” he asked:
“You want a bird…?”}

“No. Thanks,” she answered. “But,” Gillie announced, smacking a fist into her palm, “training is exactly why I’m here!” True enough, the blonde had been taking up every possible opportunity to further hone her strength and reflexes. Admittedly, she was running out of steam at this point — the combination of rowing and climbing had taken their rolls upon her stamina, draining the well all but dry. She could feel it. Some of the usual oomph had faded.

Her stomach growled.

“Uh!” Miss Fox’s face briefly flushed with embarrassment. “M— Maybe I should eat first,” she suggested, more to herself than the man known as Bucket, and reached into her pack. The benefit of being a Long-Arm meant she didn’t have to squat down to rummage through her belongings, withdrawing some nutritional biscuits, nuts, and a bit of jerky upon which she began snacking. “Oi,” she turned to the goliath, holding up some of the jerky, “you want some? Probably better than eating gulls!”

---

Fox Gillie ❘ #4fca16
Bucket ❘ #1979e6

[Smiley]

Well, it was her loss for not wanting to eat some good bird meat. And she was here to train too, so even more of a loss! Animals eaten whole have a good deal of calories and protein, they are perfect to pump up the muscles that he, looking at her, figured she lacked. Hard to know for sure, though, everyone smaller than him generally looks so lanky, even if they are perfectly well toned, capable and strong on their own. 
He had spent a while interacting with humans and their funky-looking cousins for a while now, but he could never get used to such a species. 

"Jerky? For me? Aw, you're too kind." Bucket showed himself to be quite friendly in disposition and mannerisms, sitting down, cross legged, next to the kind woman who offered him some food for him to eat, once again opening up his shell, surprisingly clean considering what he had just crushed in there, to throw it in, so that his tentacles and his beak could get to work. It had a terrifyingly strong taste, which meant that he loved it.
Once swallowed, he decided to ask some more questions, since she was there to train as well. 
"Small Woman whose name I don't know, you're to train too, huh? What is your mode of fighting? Does it use the deadly big arms you have? 

I know you're one of the funny-looking humans I see sometimes, I know that you guys are super strong compared to the normal humans! I bet you could pull a mean clothesline!" 

The excitable giant motioned with his own tree trunk of an arm, as if he was swiping it at someone's neck to take them down, imitating what he'd figure Fox could pull off with her long arms. He had yet to compliment her figure, mostly because he was largely uninterested in flirting - specially not when she actually mentioned something fight-related with such a determined gleam in her eyes. It's something he cannot ignore.

[Vio]

Even sitting, the man known as Bucket was nearly as tall as she was, though Fox Gillie did not find this particularly intimidating. Perhaps the most bizarre thing about this man was his mouth, something she turned away from slightly when he accepted her offering. For all his muscle and mass, he seemed not quite a gentle giant, but certainly somewhere between the typical expectations. A rather friendly approach came.

^{“Huh? Oh,” Miss Fox realised:
“It’s Gillie! And I’m a boxer!”}

Chewing her own jerky, she folded her elbows into a typical Long-Arm stance, almost as if to accentuate her chosen style. Fists raised into what seemed a southpaw position, proximal elbow pointed downwards and back and distal half raised, to any normal humanoid it would have looked rather ineffective to have one’s arms in an open triangle. Fortunately, most people severely underestimated the sheer power such a stance could provide. In split seconds, Jill could unleash high speed punches with little warning, but this was just a demonstration.

“Huff! Huff!” Two slow jabs off to the side revealed the enormous reach that being a Long-Arm provided, though she put very little effort into them before sitting down and partaking of her own meal. Again, sustenance was an important factor that she did not want to pass up.

^{“What about you?” she asked:
“What’s your style…?”}

---

Fox Gillie ❘ #4fca16
Bucket ❘ #1979e6

[Smiley]

A boxer! A long-arm who used boxing, yes. Sure, it might sound a bit stereotypical and like it "conforms to social norms", but Bucket really did respect someone using their god-given assets to great effect. It works for fighters, works for politicians, works for seductors. Denying the use of one's own body to its fullest potential is simple stupidity.
Which is why Bucket does anything he wants because his body is the peak of perfection, obviously, so he could be anything. Honestly, he kinda wanted to learn more fighting styles. 

Since he only had one.
"Style I use? Fishman Karate, of course! Any self respecting fishman who wants to fight learns that style." He didn't strictly believe that, of course. He learned it because he was forced to when he was little, showed talent but, for reasons he refuses to tell anyone, which probably meant that the big guy was just bored with all the forced and repetitive training, he quit when he was super young. 

And spent his childhood, teenhood and early adulthood just finishing his basic education and helping out in any way his big, strong body could.
Only recently had he actually improved and built on the bases he had never forgotten, making rapid, appropriate progress for someone of his caliber. Not that he ever doubted that, after all, he's the coolest. And cool dudes are smart dudes. 

Or was it the other way around?
Either way, he showed this to her by pointing his finger at yet another passing seagull who hadn't gotten the message from the ground below it, the big fishman throwing out a terribly strong punch against the air, letting a crackle boom from around it: as air moisture moved rapidly in a straight projectile, it very much looked like a punch when it slammed into the gull, soon having it crash down onto the island as well. 

"People who use guns for projectiles are dummies." Said the fishman with more muscle than brains, giving his new friend Gillie a confident thumbs up after that simple display.

[Vio]

^{“Style I use?” Bucket questioned:
“Fishman Karate, of course!”}

Fox Gillie’s familiarity with such a trademark style was admittedly absent, though she could certainly say this wasn’t the first time she’d heard of it. In her profession, you often heard about other styles of martial art, especially those practiced by native races of the Grand Line. Fishman Karate was perhaps one of the most well known of those styles, though she had never witnessed it in action until now.

That has to be some kind of advanced manoeuvre, she noted as she watched Bucket punch a gull clean out of the air. A single punch propelled through a void to strike the creature clean in a manner she’d never witnessed, nor even heard of. She wondered, could she perhaps achieve a similar technique? Bucket had the advantage of genetics and knowledge of the original style, assuming at least one of those was a necessity, but Jill had perseverance. As it stood, the only physical advantage she truly had was reach, at least as far as she could tell.

“Yeah,” she nodded, agreeing with the Gyojin’s remark. “Guns are for weaklings,” Gillie added, expressing her own distaste for those who relied on such inventions — primarily humanity. Surely both could appreciate it, for neither was of a bloodline welcome to the World Government’s unusual ideals. With a long history of discrimination against both of their peoples respective, it was understandable, though she was uncertain if Bucket shared the same kind of mentality in regards to humans.

“Anyway,” the blonde noted, taking a second glance about her surroundings. “What kind of training were you even doing? There’s nothing here!”

---

Fox Gillie ❘ #4fca16
Bucket ❘ #1979e6

[Smiley]

Advanced? Oh boy, he better not start talking about how it's actually some of the simpler moves that one can learn in Fishman Karate and that the real tough stuff comes when one adds the Jujutsu into the mix and mesh it all into a big confusing pile of poopy. 'Course, he wouldn't say it, he just kept his head high, chest puffed out and pride just pouring out of him, like always.
"I'm sure you can learn it! You look strong, yourself." 

"Speaking of my training, though, it's pretty simple - it's cardio! Like.. try to take a sharp breath in. A biiiiig inhale that you would do when fighting or training hard." Bucket instructed, still sat tight with legs crossed, wanting her to notice that the air noticeably thinned, not to the point where it would fuck someone up, but noticeable after someone spents days, weeks, MONTHS at sea. 
It lied, in there, the entire basis of his cardio training. To make it so that he'd have to do more while using less, unless he wants to just run out of air, fall down, be humiliated, have the birds eat his corpse and be buried in the tomb of the unskilled fighter.

That might be a tinge of paranoia speaking.
She didn't need to know that.

"Wanna try it out? Pushing yourself as hard as you can while having to breathe less? Bet you can't!" 
The man, ever prone to gloating, kept looking higher up into the sky, in a comical fashion, clearly doing so to entertain more than some sort of malicious gloating or self aggrandization. Still, he had some seriousness to it - the invitation to join him in that interesting, ever so slightly unorthodox way of training, to see how she'd fare in working hard with less air available.

[Vio]

“It’s pretty simple — it’s cardio,” Bucket explained, presenting her with a concept she was rather familiar with, but not before suggesting the possibility that she too could learn to project her punches. Fox Gillie wasn’t entirely sure of it, at least not immediately, though she believed it was definitely plausible if she continued her training. Amongst the Long-Arm Tribes there existed those who had mastered signature punching techniques, igniting their fists and shattering steel with a single blow. That was the epitome of Long-Arm Boxing.

^{“Wanna try it out?”}

“Hmm,” the blonde considered, though it did not take her long to come to a decision when Bucket suggested otherwise. “Of course I can! Champions aren’t just born — they’re made! If I don’t push myself to my limits, I have no right to call myself a boxer!” Pumping both arms in confident determination, she looked him straight in the eye as she declared her entitlements. Any step forwards was a good step in her eyes and, as suggested, she inhaled deeply. A deep breath that filled her lungs, but something was definitely different.

He’s right… Miss Fox’s eyes widened slightly in realisation as she found herself at her lungs’ limit, forced to exhale. Was it because she was still slightly out of breath from the climb? No, her respiration would have returned to normal by now. The air was thinner, like a steep hilltop on a cool night — fresh but light. That explained it; in the short-term, it wouldn’t have mattered, but cardio exercises emphasised long-term endurance. And in the long-term, even a slightly lower than average amount of oxygen would begin to tax the body.

^{“It doesn’t matter,” she said with a nod:
“I have to keep going — no matter what!”}

---

Fox Gillie ❘ #4fca16
Bucket ❘ #1979e6