Brook/Abilities and Powers

Abilities and Powers
As much as Brook normally goofs around on the ship engaging in acts of silliness with Luffy, he is none-the-less as formidable an opponent as the others if not being one of the strongest, given his previous experiences and skills that he amassed from the days when the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger was still active making Brook, in all respects, a veteran Pirate (though these attributes are somewhat downplayed by his overall demeanor, along with the fact that his isolation in the Florian Triangle seemed to have eroded his knowledge of modern society). His value to the crew was already evident during the Thriller Bark arc, where he proved indispensable for the Straw Hats on their encounters with island-vessel's many undead inhabitants. Brook is a musician who is able to play any musical instrument. He usually uses a violin to play his music, though after two-years he is seen with a guitar. His musical abilities are so good that Laboon used to sing along to his music when they were together. When Brook fights, his battles often have a comical element to them. Examples include making several members of his crew fall asleep while fighting the Flying Fish Riders, playing dead halfway through a battle, or launching at an enemy with erroneous results.

Music
Brook's devotion to music not only helped him to pass the lonely days but also serves as a combat tool. Most of the techniques that he deals out are named after or related to music. One of them even acts as a hypnosis that sends his enemies to sleep, however, this can also affect allies. Due to his musical background, Brook also moves according to the rhythm of music to assist him in battle, and soon became a world famous rock star during the past two years, at which point his records in tone dials were sold in millions and his fans on his final world tour in Sabaody Archipelago were either crying or fainting at his presence.

Devil Fruit
While he was still alive, Brook ate the Yomi Yomi no Mi. Should the user of this fruit die, it allows them the one time opportunity to return to life. Though his soul wasn't able to find his body in time before it decomposed completely to a skeleton, he gained some advantages that would otherwise be impossible to do without being a skeleton supported by Devil Fruit powers. One advantage is that because he's just comprised of light weighted bones, he can use his speed and light weight to run across water, but, like all Devil Fruit users, he still can drown when submerged. With the aid of the Devil Fruit powers, he is also able to function like a regular human being, and retains all the strength he had when he still had actual muscle mass. He is able to do normal acts such as drink, eat, cry, digest, and even "poop" normally. He has also proven that calcium (such as in milk) will rapidly heal any damaged bones. Due to his light-weight skeleton body, he can leap great distances, jump very high and run fast, and can also store things in his skull cavity such as a Tone Dial. His skeletal appearance not only gives him immense amounts of agility on par with Zoro and Sanji, the fact that he doesn't have body parts allows him to take less damage in a way of speaking, it also means that he doesn't have the physical limitations of a normal human. His bone regeneration from milk also allows him to heal a lot faster than the rest of the crew, effectively making him one of the most tenacious opponents in battle. Due to his agility, he has managed to leap close enough to firing harpoon and destroy it with his sword, whilst the harpoon is in flight with relative ease.

Fighting Style


At one point being the captain of the guards in his home country, Brook is well versed in swordplay. Despite his usual goofy personality in battle, he is extremely capable and can do more than look after himself. In his cane, Brook hides a sword known as a shikomizue which he can use to great extent. His fighting style while using it resembles classical fencing and iaidō.

Brook's main advantage is his tremendous speed which is possible because of the light weight of his skeleton body. This allows him to deal extremely accurate blows and quick maneuvers before his opponent can react (once taking down and purifying a whole swarm of Surprise Zombies in a fraction of a second) that are much swifter than he was when he still had flesh and blood back in his mortal days. With these advantages, Brook excels best at fighting and taking down large enemy numbers of average fighters on his own. Despite not retaining any muscle tissue, it seems that Brook can still grow stronger over time, as he said to Ryuma that he is stronger than five years ago.

Brook's signature attack as of yet is known as 鼻唄三丁:矢筈斬り, "Hanauta Sanchou: Yahazu Giri", loosely translated into "Three-Verse Humming: Arrow-Notch Slice". The attack is the fastest cutting technique of his kingdom's assault squad. It was originally named "Requiem Banderole", but was given the other name by his old nakama. Due to the attack's blinding speed and Brook's distracting humming, enemies often don't notice they have been hit until after Brook has sheathed his sword.

When the need arises, Brook can also employ his music to aid him in battle. His technique, "Nemuriuta Flanc", loosely translated as "Lullaby Parry", shows this, where he strums his violin with his shikomizue like a violinists bow, creating a soothing tune that makes anyone who hears it immediately fall asleep.

Although an extremely fast swordsman, his skills are not of the same caliber as Zoro's, the Straw Hats' other swordsman. While Brook had been unable to defeat Ryuma no matter how hard he fought and while Ryuma only used a fraction of his power, he noticed that Zoro was able to defeat him at full power with only two of his swords. Although Ryuma did say that Brook's protectiveness of his afro held him back somewhat.

At the Sabaody Archipelago, he struck a Pacifista with a high speed sword attack, yet failed to do much damage to it and had to be rescued afterwards. However, when Zoro attacked the same Pacifista, the results were much different. Although not on par with Zoro, he was able to keep up, visually, with what Zoro was doing while he fought Ryuma showing that he is still a very skilled swordsman. He works very well with Zoro, as they defeated a Flying Fish Rider together, that was inches away from killing Hatchan.

After the 2 year time skip, it has been revealed that Brook still uses his shikomizue.