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 still a formidable opponent. Given his previous experiences and skills that he amassed from the days when the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger was still active which makes 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 switched his main instrument to 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 himself at an enemy with erroneous results. After the timeskip Brook's over-all skills have proved to be a very important asset during battle. Unfortunately, his personality has somewhat hampered that a little. He grew significantly in physical strength as he is now able to launch an air bullet strong enough to break thick ice and can block a chain blow from an above-average fishman.

Music
Brook's devotion to music not only helped him to pass the lonely days during his long isolation, but also serves as a combat tool. His technique, "Nemuriuta Flanc", loosely translated as "Lullaby Parry", shows this, where he strums his violin with his shikomizue like a violinist's bow, creating a soothing tune that makes anyone who hears it immediately fall asleep. Due to his musical background, Brook also moves according to the rhythm of music to assist him in battle. His musical skill is such that he became a world famous rock star during the two years the Straw Hats were separated; his records in tone dials selling in the millions and his fans during his final world tour stop in Sabaody Archipelago were either crying or fainting at his presence. His music also show capabilities to change its listener's attitude and emotions such as when he was sent to the Namakura Island by Kuma his music inspires the cult there to fight back against its invaders, the Longarm Tribe.

During the fight with the New Fishman Pirates, Brook revealed that he has developed his musical ability to the point where he could completely change the mood and hypnotize his opponents to believe they were at a festival. His opponents believed the illusion was reality and ended up using their cannons as fireworks. Since he is a musician, he has great hearing skills, as he detected where Zeo was while invisible even though it was shown to be difficult to figure where he was based off of sound.

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 his 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 perform 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 so fast that he can even run on water without sinking, 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, but the fact that he doesn't have body parts allows him to take less damage in a manner of speaking, as 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 a firing harpoon and destroy it with his sword, while the harpoon was in flight, with relative ease.

After the timeskip, it is revealed that he can separate his spirit to move individually of his body similar to Perona (at the time being it is unknown if Brook's body can move or not in this state). During his battle with Zeo, Brook recalls how in the last two years, he discovered the true power of his cursed fruit, and how he's no longer animated by organs or bones, but by his spirit. Brook is shown to be capable of reattaching his head (and possibly other limbs) in the event it is pulled off. According to Brook, as long as his bones aren't broken, his core remains unharmed. Brook has also shown being able to call upon forces from the other side as seen when he channelled the chill of the underworld through his sword.

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 hold his own. His fighting style resembles a combination of 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 "Hanauta Sancho: Yahazu Giri". 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.

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 very 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 time-skip, Brook's swordmanship has increased to the degree where a samurai from Wano commended his skill.

Weapon
Brook uses a type of sword called a shikomizue, a sword concealed inside a cane. He uses this sword in conjunction with his fencing skills and has had it for at least fifty years.

After the timeskip, Brook has named his sword "Soul Solid", due to him developing the ability to coat it with the aura of his soul, freezing it in the process. He also claimed that the Longarm Tribe has helped him sharpen the sword.