A Light Touch (Eustass X Reader)

Chapter 13: Tactile

You tap the index finger of your left hand on the table. Your head's resting against the crook of your right arm against the dining room table and you look aggravated.

"Still feels off?" Killer asks, setting breakfast in front of you.

"Yeah." The plastic and mylar fingers clicked and clunked as you tapped them all against the table. You could feel through the taps, but it felt weird. It was less of a thump against wood and more of a click against metal.

The hand was what had been provided by the hospital, and you had spent the last couple days trying to adjust to it. Opening and closing your fingers was easy enough, and you'd even managed to button your jeans with little frustration this morning. Control any finer than that was difficult, and talking with Eustass, it seemed the biggest problem was the lack of tactile input.

Even being made of plastic, the connectors and the tech should be sending the right signals. Wood should feel like wood, grass like grass. Instead, it all felt muted and clicky – like a button being pushed.

The second hardest adjustment had been trying to sort out how much weight it could take. The connector was deep into your arm, and you had healed up perfectly, so according to Eustass you shouldn't have anything to worry about. The new hand should survive more weight and damage than your original hand could have ever hoped to.

But weight on the hand was weight on the connector, which was a sensation you felt in your arm. It didn't hurt, it wasn't even uncomfortable, but because you could feel the sensation it gave you pause.

You go to pick up the fork with your left hand and instead bat it across the table. There's a frustrated sound that escapes you and you reach out and collect the fork with your right hand before carefully placing it into your left. Once you had the fork in your hand the rest of the process was easy enough, and you made it through breakfast with little issue.

"I've heard people say that the first prosthetic from the hospital never works right. We'll get you something better soon." Killer says, trying to make you feel better.

You make a sound but can't muster up the energy to continue the conversation. The third straw on your back is how little of Eustass you've seen since the workshop incident. He wasn't exactly avoiding you, but he wasn't easy to find, and part of you knew why you wanted to find him, even if admitting it out loud seemed like a bad idea.

Kid and his crew had gotten more comfortable around you in the last month or, so you had been staying at the house and that comfort had them slipping more than you think they realized. You weren't just mostly sure the group was a gang; you were completely positive. From what you could gather they did a lot of stuff, but most of it had to do with metal work – cars, guns, machines, computer tech. You wouldn't be surprised to find out that they were in some sort of underground paperclip business, to be perfectly honest.

Grandline Metro had a lot of regulations to keep the Emperors in check, and the underground had become as robust as it was because of that. Not that there was a better solution for the Government, there wasn't a viable way to keep the Emperors in check in the sprawling 600 sq km metropolis. The DFU was even a part of that – though, knowing that three of the four Emperors have devil fruits doesn't really do anyone much good. None of them were shy about it.

Whatever all they did though, this crew did it well. You never went more than a couple days without seeing someone, and no one showed up in bandages and casts. Since people didn't heal the way you did, you could at least assume that they weren't getting into desperate fights every other night just to keep their feet planted.

The idea that you were being protected by a gang didn't bother you. It had felt a little surreal at the beginning of things, especially since you'd turned Luffy down to lead a nice quiet life, and now you were getting ready to train with combat specialists. At least, once you adjusted to your new hand a little better.