United States, New York.
Dull, muffled thuds echoed from a dark alley.
Anyone could tell from the sound that someone was being struck with considerable force.
Under the dim streetlights, one or two pedestrians occasionally passed by.
After hearing the noises, they simply hurried their steps.
Clearly, they had no intention of meddling.
If anything, they were afraid that walking too slowly might somehow drag them into the trouble.
“Ah, what should I do?”
A low murmur came from a somewhat slender figure.
The boy was around seventeen or eighteen years old, with black hair and black eyes.
He wore casual clothes, and what stood out most was the large bag he carried in one hand.
His hands were covered in black, skin-tight gloves.
He stood there quietly, staring at what was happening deeper inside the alley.
His expression was calm, but his eyes kept flickering as he clearly weighed his options.
Several burly men were beating a young man, punching and kicking him relentlessly.
One of them eventually grew tired and stopped to catch his breath.
He raised his head and glared viciously at the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boy.
“What are you looking at, yellow monkey?
Hurry up and get lost!
Otherwise, we’ll beat you up too!”
The boy remained expressionless and continued watching for a while.
Only when the thug seemed ready to make a move did the boy turn around and slowly walk away.
Even after he had gone some distance, he could still hear the man’s voice from behind.
“Good thing you know your place, yellow monkey.”
The boy continued walking with an expressionless face, but his thoughts were anything but calm.
“Should I turn back and deal with this?
But what if S.H.I.E.L.D.
finds out?
They’d definitely come into contact with me.
I don’t dare treat them with the same disdain as the protagonists in those novels.
What if they arrest me?
Sigh…
If only I could train my Observation Haki to the level of divine sense.”
The black-haired boy was named Ethan Chen.
He had come here from another Earth.
There were no supernatural powers on that Earth, so compared to this Marvel world, it had been much safer.
This had all happened sixteen years ago.
At the time, Ethan had been watching a hugely popular anime from his previous life, One Piece.
While watching it, he had fallen asleep.
When he woke up, he had inexplicably transmigrated into this world and become a baby.
He had been abandoned outside a house, and there had been a note inside his swaddling clothes.
His name, “Ethan Chen,” had been written on it in.
“Ah, looks like I’ve transmigrated.
But what’s wrong with my hands?
Paw pads?
Could it be that my obsession with the Paw-Paw Fruit was simply too strong?”
In his previous life, while watching One Piece, Ethan had felt that the most underrated character wasn’t Enel, who possessed the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, but Bartholomew Kuma.
In his opinion, the Paw-Paw Fruit should be a powerful Devil Fruit no less impressive than the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
Granted, it might not be able to match the Tremor-Tremor Fruit in terms of destructive power, but when it came to one-on-one combat, it was practically the natural enemy of powerful physical fighters who lacked special abilities.
People like Garp, Jack the Drought, and even Kaido, one of the Four Emperors.
Ethan believed that in a one-on-one fight, none of them should be able to do anything to Kuma if he possessed the Paw-Paw Fruit.
The fruit’s ability was to repel absolutely anything.
In Kuma’s hands, it could even repel intangible things such as fatigue and pain from the body.
Not to mention physical attacks from monsters like Garp, Jack, and Kaido.
In Ethan’s imagination, a battle between Kaido and Kuma would probably look something like this.
Kaido would frantically attack Kuma, while Kuma would calmly raise his hands and repel each attack one after another.
Although Kuma might not have a way to defeat Kaido either, Kaido definitely wouldn’t be able to win against him.
And if things really came down to it, Kuma could simply ask Kaido, “Where do you want to go on a trip?” before sending him flying.
If all else failed, he could even repel himself away and escape.
But back to the main point.
After transmigrating, Ethan Chen was adopted by a Chinese-American couple.
His father was named Daniel Chen, who also had the surname Chen.
After seeing the note, he decided to give Ethan Chen the same name.
He worked as a truck driver.
His mother was named Emily Chen and worked as an accountant.
When the couple found the baby abandoned at their doorstep, they had originally planned to send him to an orphanage.
The two had grown up in China and had a strong sense of belonging to the country with five thousand years of history.
They had been childhood sweethearts.
When they were nineteen, they followed their families to the United States, found jobs there, and eventually got married.
After saving money for some time, they had finally bought a house.
They felt that their lives had stabilised and were preparing to have children when they found Ethan Chen.
They discussed the matter and prepared to drive Ethan Chen to an orphanage.
However, they discovered the note and learned that the child was Chinese.
Having lived in the United States for many years, they knew that the child might face unfair treatment in an orphanage and would probably have difficulty being adopted.
He might simply remain there until he turned eighteen, at which point he would be sent out to fend for himself.
After thinking it over, they decided to adopt Ethan.
Seven years later, they also had an adorable daughter.
And so, Ethan began his new life in this family.
He quickly adapted to his new environment as well.
Calling them “Dad” and “Mom” came naturally, without any sense of unfamiliarity.
Everything fell into place as though it were meant to be.
The family wasn’t particularly wealthy, but their old-fashioned habit of saving every penny had remained unchanged.
From the moment Ethan was born, both of his tiny hands had bear-paw-shaped pads.
The couple didn’t dislike them at all.
In fact, his mother, Emily Chen, loved them.
She would often grab Ethan’s little hands and feel the paw pads in his palms.
His younger sister loved squeezing them even more.
Thinking about that, Ethan couldn’t help but twitch the corner of his eye.
However, because he rarely showed any expression, no one could tell.
When Ethan was one year old, he saw a photograph of Tony Stark in a newspaper.
He also occasionally saw promotional segments about the American hero Captain America on television.
By then, Ethan already knew that this was the Marvel world.
It was an extremely dangerous world.
If he wanted to survive and protect his family, he had to possess power.
Ethan’s obsession with Kuma really was that strong.
From a very young age, he began imitating Kuma’s expressionless face and rarely spoke.
When he did speak, his voice was also soft but magnetic, just like Kuma’s.
However, although he didn’t talk much, his thoughts were extremely active.
His constant stream of sarcastic commentary never stopped.
Ethan’s hands possessed the same abilities as Kuma’s Paw-Paw Fruit.
Because he spent all day thinking about one thing or another, he also awakened Observation Haki.
“Hmph.
There’s no way I’m going to train Observation Haki in such a stupid way like they did in the anime.”
Ethan felt that Luffy’s method of blindfolding himself and letting others attack him was far too crude.
Having been influenced by five thousand years of civilisation, how could he possibly use such a method?
Of course, he should instead learn to sense all things and achieve unity between man and nature.
That was the true path.
Didn’t the original story itself say that Observation Haki at its highest level could allow one to hear the voices of all things?
Thus, beginning at the age of two, Ethan started developing his Paw-Paw Fruit and Observation Haki according to his own ideas.
As for the Paw-Paw Fruit, there was no need to explain it.
He naturally had to develop all the techniques shown in the anime.
Repelling himself to teleport, compressing and repelling the air at high speed to create a pressure cannon, sending others flying with “Where do you want to go on a trip?”, and repelling incoming attacks.
The latter three techniques developed smoothly.
Ethan once fired a pressure cannon at an abandoned factory.
In an instant, without making much sound, the factory’s walls were blasted straight through.
Seven or eight walls from one end to the other were left with palm-sized holes shaped like bear paws.
Its destructive power was truly terrifying.
As for sending others flying, Ethan declared that technique a success after he sent an adorable little rabbit flying so quickly that it disappeared from sight, leaving behind nothing but a fierce whirlwind where it had been.
As for repelling other people’s attacks, Ethan hadn’t practised it yet.
However, the technique itself was extremely simple.
With Observation Haki, he only needed to sense an incoming attack and hold out his hand to receive it, and it should work.
The only difficult part was teleportation.
Ethan spent a full ten years mastering the force with which he needed to repel himself, the exact point on his body to use, namely his buttocks, and the posture required to arrive at his destination.
By the time he was twelve years old, Ethan had shifted the focus of his training to Observation Haki.