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Synnadine wrote:

Pearle's armor and haki vanish as she takes a step back, looking sternly at Jacob. "You said you wanted our help in training you, right..?!" Before Jacob can answer she lunges in, taking hold of Jacob's collar to twist it in her hand. She takes hold of his wrist with her other hand and slams him to the ground, pinning him. Struggle as he may, this is the moment Jacob realizes just how much stronger Pearle is than he is. "Then try to LISTEN! I say to stop adapting the powers of others, the FIRST thing you do is try to adapt my armor! You are using SMOKE to try and copy CRYSTAL! Do you not see any flaws in that?! Do you not see issues with the fact that your gears drain your stamina so much that in an extended fight you'd lose by default, that stamina drain is the exact reason you lost to my little sister! An alcoholic teenage girl!"

As Pearle says this she points behind her, over to where Iris is. That 'alcoholic teenage girl' is currently passed the hell out in the sand, sound asleep for presumably ever since she laid down in the first place. "Without your gears, you are weak, and they make you far stronger, but your gears themselves weaken you in the first place! You want us to train you so you can grow, well here's how you can grow! Reach a point where you don't have to use your gears to change the properties of your smoke, you can just do it on the fly without them! Reach a point where you don't need to enhance yourself with that Gear Fourth you can do, because you are strong enough without it so using it would only hinder you because of the drain to your stamina! YOU ATE A LOGIA FRUIT, SO STOP FIGHTING LIKE YOU ATE A PARAMECIA!!"

As Jacob lay face down in the sand and listened to everything Pearle was telling him what he was doing wrong. To his credit though he could barely feel her grip through the armour that he crafted around himself. She doesn't know... Hearing that his fighting style wasn't working well with his type was his downfall She doesn't understand... It doesn't matter that his gears burn his body, it'll just heal anyways, the pain will make him stronger. He doesn't need to fight like a Logia, people will expect him to fight like that SHE WASN'T THERE! It was pointless to learn how to fight like that, against true monsters it doesn't matter just how you fight. As long as you can adapt and have luck you can survive, sticking to a fighting style is pointless. "Like I care what fruit I ate!" Turning his shoulder joint and neck to smoke to smoke and twisting himself within his armour he uses both feet and boots through his armour to fick into Pearle's stomach to get her off of him before he gets up with the armour disappointing around him, his eyes filled with crazed desperation, his armour warping around him along with his haki as he relived the crushing helplessness and fear that he felt back in Calsnova. All that suffering done at his hand because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Why does it matter when people expect me to fight like a Logia?! THEY KNOW MY NAME!! THEY KNOW MY FRUIT!! WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL IT MAKE IF I LEARN TO FIGHT LIKE THAT OR NOT?! THERE IS NONE!!"

A single week spent trying to convince himself that he was fine was now blowing up in his face as the pressure was getting to him to improve. Day after day that's all he tried to do in an effort to grow stronger and protect his crew, his family from monsters like Enkara. No matter how pointless that endeavour was in reality that's all he's done instead of trying to deal with his mental state. Probably not the best time to have a mental breakdown all things considered, but given all that's happened to him from the civil war to the recent mutiny it was ultimately just a matter of time before all that stress came to rear its head. He just pushed himself far too hard far too soon.