Illusion Queen

Chapter 8

So far, Tsukimi can say that she got the basics and limits of her powers down. She can create illusions and have them follow people to a certain distance. In addition, if each of her illusions has an illusion den den mushi, the illusion den den mushis can communicate with one another. That's useful for communicating information to the closest illusion so the illusion can make its way to Tsukimi and tell her the information. She also thought that if illusions can fool the eyes, why not fool the other senses? Thus, she went into the forest with either her father or mother and practiced on the animals. (No animals were harmed in her training.) It took a while to perfectly capture the feel of natural forces (e.g. wind) while maintaining the scents of the forest from the supposed natural forces and the sight and sound of the leaves rustling.

It was a slow, grueling process. Sometimes, it would be frustrating but she grins and bears it. She knows that all this training is going to pay off in the future and possibly save her life. She thought of all the times she could use this to find culprits and she mentally drools. Among the months of training with her mother and training with her devil fruit powers, she made 2 new friends. They're more like fans of hers because of her piano playing.

Tsukimi just finished playing one of her song requests before a child no older than 3 sat on the chair and requested "a song that fits the town". Tsukimi thought for a while, deciding on "Claire de Lune" by Debussey, a French composer. The little girl opened her eyes in awe as the song ended. Instead of walking away after thanking Tsukimi, she took out her hand for a handshake. "Hi, my name's Mayoi! I just moved to Luna Town from Sola Town! Can I be your friend?"

Tsukimi, blinded by the sudden brightness of the girl's smile, agreed and shook Mayoi's hand. Looking back at this moment, Tsukimi would've grimaced and sighed about mischievous, little girls with the face of an angel and the personality of a fox.

The other friend she made was named Sake on her very first case as a detective. The problem was that Sake was accused of breaking a window of a house with a stray ball. Tsukimi swiftly proved otherwise by explaining that the shards of the glass that fell looked to be made by greater force than a child's. The ball that was in the house was too small and had no glass shards around it. Sake confirmed that he accidentally left that ball there through the open window (the window that's now apparently shattered) and came by to get it back. Tsukimi also pointed out that there was more smoke than usual in the owner's house than normal. (The owner was a heavy smoker but the smoke didn't smell like cigarettes. Mark proved Sake's innocence by walking to the house's owner and roughly apologizing for the use of one of his father's merchandise: a small cannon made for smoke bombs. The reason there was no ball left behind was because it dissolved itself once it exploded.

After the owner lectured Mark for his troubles and demanded that Mark's father compensate him for his broken window, Sake, the 4 year old boy, profusely thanked Tsukimi. He would later be seen following her around if he's available and hanging on to Tsukimi's words like a lovestruck person. He would ask Tsukimi about her detective work and be awed by how awesome a 2 year old detective and famous pianist can be. He would repeatedly be heard calling Tsukimi, "Tsukimi-senpai!" Tsukimi's father didn't exactly like this new boy hanging around Tsukimi. He preferred Mayoi. He was really proud when Tsukimi made friends with a girl and not another boy. The town kids didn't really try to be Tsukimi's friends, mostly because they thought of the 2 year old as the strange, weird girl who plays good piano. It's also because they felt like she's too mature and won't be good friends with them. Tsukimi doesn't mind, she accepted that she's probably not going to make friends her age because of her serious personality from her previous life. Thus, she was happy that she made a friend with Mark even though he was 5 years older. Mayoi was a friend around her age, just older by 1 year and Sake was older by 2 years.