LeafyxThiefy: Hey guys, so one of the main reasons all my children have been neglected was due to the conceiving of this brain child. Emy and I both took on the task to join the opbb as a pair author story and wrote this little fic. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it.
Have fun!
A young man sighed, tapping out an indistinguishable rhythm against his thigh restlessly. He'd been feeling uneasy all night thanks to an odd pain in his his side. It felt like he'd been caught by surprise and rammed by a hungry Luffy, but the child was inside and asleep, as he should be at this time of day.
Instead of joining the child in his slumber, he sat at the edge of the castle's roof, green eyes cast upon the horizon as the dull ache continued to gnaw at his side. Every pseudo breath he took made his body shiver, and he felt weighed down with fatigue. It was almost as if he was short of breath, but climbing up here hadn't been taxing in the slightest, so that couldn't be the reason. And how could he be breathless when he no longer had any need for lungs?
"Ace? Wow, I wasn't expecting you to be awake this early, yoi," a quiet voice spoke from behind the freckled male, who grunted in response.
Uneasiness marred Ace's usually smiling face as he looked up to where his brother was standing beside him. "I can't sleep, Marc. What about you, is there a meeting today?"
"Yes, Phoenix spotted a hunter camp stationed at the base of the mountain a few hours ago, yoi. We're holding a meeting soon to discuss where to go next from here. Should I assume that you'll be skipping this one as well?" he asked, frowning down at Ace.
A small twist of his lips was Ace's only reply. He didn't like the meetings, and in fact, he was notorious for taking every possible opportunity to avoid them. "Nah, Lu'll be getting up soon, I should keep him busy for you guys. Unless you want me to bring him with me?" he teased.
Only sighing in response, the blond wished Ace a good night and made his way back inside, leaving Ace alone with his thoughts and that damn phantom ache once more.
This was the third camp they'd taken over in a full moon cycle. Those hunters were certainly getting cocky, it was a wonder how they hadn't taken themselves out by now.
As Ace continued to sit in silence and watch the slowly darkening sky, he became aware of a throbbing pain in his feet as well. His comfort levels were quickly plummeting into nonexistence, and the longer he sat here, the more his lungs burned, demanding for the breath he no longer needed. With practiced ease, Ace willed the sensations to the back of his mind, refusing to give them the attention they longed for.
Instead, the dark-haired prince focused on the sun setting in the blood red sky, its flames pressing against the bare flesh of his torso and warming the blood that had run cold within his veins so many years ago. The trees on the mountain below him were painted every possible shade of gold, red, and orange, giving off the illusion that they were burning in the waning light. Emerald eyes watched the large star as it slowly sunk below the horizon, taking the bright colors of sunset with it. Violets and midnight blues blended beautifully with pinks and oranges, creating unique color combinations never seen before. Their bold colors nearly took Ace's mind off of the discomfort plaguing him, but they returned after only a few moments, relentless in their need to be acknowledged.
Ace turned away from the sunset grudgingly, but not before capturing the scene once more in his mind's eye. Sunset was his favorite time of day, but he was rarely awake in time to watch one in its entirety. Perfectly capturing the colors of a sunset on paper was always a challenge, but it was a peaceful one. Maybe, if he could find enough time later, he would try to recreate this moment. If he could focus past the strange aches he was feeling, that is.
Ace stood and slipped back inside the castle, just as a joyous laugh rang through the corridors.
"Acey!" a child cried out, and Ace braced himself just in time to capture the small boy in his arms. "Acey, I just had the best dream! There was this yellow flower that was brought to the castle, but then it was bent all wrong and it started to fade, but then-" The child stopped and rubbed his sleep filled eyes blearily, a small yawn interrupting his story. "Then… shishishi, it was a neat dream," he finished. Ace smiled fondly, his discomfort fading to the back of his mind.
"That sounds like a great dream, Luffy. A flower, huh? Like the ones in Izo's garden?" he asked curiously.
Luffy climbed up onto Ace's shoulders and perched himself there, leaning against Ace's head in a comforting manner that the older raven appreciated. "Yeah, but even beautifuller! You were in my dreams too, Acey, and so was Pineapple and Thatchy and mister Moustache! It was fun," Luffy decided, and Ace believed him. Most of Luffy's dreams were tons of fun, filled with adventures and excitement. One could expect no less from a five year old's imagination, after all.
"Oh, Ace! Is it time for meat yet? I'm starving!" the boy asked excitedly, gripping onto Ace's hair and leaning forward precariously.
"It should be. What do you say we go take a look?" Ace grinned deviously as he heard doors being opened far below them. The meeting was about to start, meaning that most everyone in the castle would be down there and far away from the kitchens, including a certain head chef who usually guarded the galley like a hellhound. "What do you say to an early kitchen raid?" he asked the child on his shoulders.
Luffy's eyes practically sparkled at the suggestion. "YOSH! MEAT AND JUICE!" the five year old cheered, pumping his small fists in the air and making Ace laugh at the unique enthusiasm the child possessed.
He quickly put a finger to his lips, signalling to be silent. "Remember what I told you Luffy? We have to be extra quiet when we go on kitchen raids, Thatchy doesn't like it when we're noisy."
The words had Luffy shushing back up immediately, though he still swayed with excitement, happily murmuring under his breath about meat and juice. Ace chuckled and took off down the corridor, opting to take the longer route to the kitchen in hopes that they'd avoid running into the others along the way.
Less than a minute later saw the pair sitting in the large walk-in cabinet in the kitchen. The cooks had apparently seen it fit to start the meal later than usual, and as a result it was still cooking over a slowly burning fire. While they waited, Ace had diverted Luffy's attention to the pantry for some pre-breakfast snacks.
"Acey, I found the pudding!" Luffy announced triumphantly, holding out his findings to the older, but Ace wasn't seeing Luffy. He'd been drawn off into the distance by the growing sense of discomfort again. An opened bag of jerky lay in his lap, but the food inside was untouched as Ace tried to pinpoint why he felt so off.
"Ace?" Luffy tried again, nudging the father's foot in an attempt to get his attention. "You look sad Acey. You need a flower," the child stated and climbed into Ace's lap, snapping the older vampire back to the present. Luffy impatiently shoved a pack of pudding into Ace's hands to open.
Ace smiled down at him, shaking his head. "I'm fine, I just couldn't sleep. No need to worry," he assured, ruffling Luffy's hair affectionately. He opened the pudding container for the child, but not before swiping some away with a strip of jerky.
"Stingy Ace," Luffy accused, puffing out his cheeks in protest before taking some jerky and doing the same. Ace laughed at that, and Luffy's smile grew at the sound.
As soon as the food was ready, Luffy jumped up and raced into the empty kitchen, crying, "Meeeeeaaaaaat!"
Ace got up as well and followed after him, watching with a fond smile as the child ran around the kitchen chanting "meat, meat, meat!"
The unnatural cold he'd felt before surrounded him again, making Ace shiver slightly. It was odd that he was still cold inside of the warm kitchen, but it wasn't anything some warm stew couldn't solve. Ace grinned, opening a pot and serving himself and Luffy two generous servings each.
"If you're hungry, you could always ask for something instead of sneaking around and stealing everybody's food, yoi."
Ace jumped a foot in the air as the door opened, much to Luffy's amusement. "Pineapple! Have breakfast with us!" the child called out and dug back into the meal, not caring in the slightest that they'd just been caught red handed.
Ace grinned sheepishly as Marco approached them. "But it's more fun for Lu when we sneak, and nobody was around so technically it wasn't even sneaking?"
"The Pirate King doesn't sneak!" Luffy added cheerfully.
"So those weren't your hushed whispers just now," Marco said dryly, though a slight twitch of the lips gave away his amusement. "I only dropped by because Thatch was afraid for his meal, but I see now that I'm too late." He glanced down at the incriminating bowls sitting in front of them.
Ace smiled innocently. "Whispers? We have no idea what you're talking about, right Luffy?"
"Shishishi we're on a meat hunt!" the boy announced loudly before lowering his voice as an afterthought. "But we gotta be very quiet because it's a surprise from Thatchy," he revealed in a hushed tone before Ace could intervene. Ace facepalmed mentally at the child's inability to keep a secret or even lie.
"I told you it was a secret Lu," he said disapprovingly, and Luffy looked at him with wide eyes.
"But Acey, we can trust Pineapple, right? He's on my crew after all!" Luffy turned to Marco again with a bright grin. "And Pineapple likes flowers too!"
Marco looked between the two for a moment before sighing and taking a seat at the table with them. "Do you care to remind me again why you're not at the meeting? There's a reason that it's mandatory for all commanders, yoi."
"Because they say the same thing every time," Ace groaned. He pushed the last of his stew across the table to Luffy, who happily accepted it. "I know we took over a camp and I assume we're taking that as a chance to expand our boundaries?"
"Essentially yes, though it's more of a warning to other hunters who may be growing overconfident. We were discussing what to do next when I left, yoi." His eyes flickered to the window behind Ace. "The remaining survivors should be here any minute, actually."
Ace snorted, "I don't know why we bother taking them in Marc, all we're doing is wasting food to feed them." He suppressed a violent shudder as the cold suddenly returned, much stronger than before. "Do you think they'll even talk? Just drain them and make them useful that way," he muttered, glancing at Luffy who was ignoring their conversation in lieu of Ace's uneaten food.
"The camp was a fairly sized one, they were too big of a threat to ignore. And since they're stationed so close, it's worth bringing a few back to see what they know, yoi. They're likely to have information on the other's movements, and it seems like they're planning something," Marco trailed off, drumming his fingers on the table in thought.
"Hunters are loyal dogs Marc, they won't talk. We're just wasting time and resources," Ace sighed.
"There's always a few who won't talk, but we can't simply pass up an opportunity to gain more information, yoi," Marco pointed out, though he sounded resigned to the fact. "They're having me oversee the interrogations again."
Ace wasn't a fan of humans by any account, but he knew Marco and the others held a higher regard for them and some sort of compassion for their kind, even. They never wanted to fight these humans, but the hunters had forced their hand, and now they did what they had to in order to protect themselves.
"What can I say, your bird's eye can spot a lie from a mile away," Ace attempted a light, teasing joke even as the cold continued to plague him, making his skin itch uncomfortably. Disguising a shudder as a stretch, Ace stood and headed back to the burning fire where the food was cooking. "Do you want some stew?" he asked amiably, already refilling his and Luffy's bowls.
Marco rolled his eyes at the poor joke, shaking his head. "No, Thatch will smell it on me if I eat any. I already know what your answer will be, but I assume you won't be making an appearance at all?"
"Thatch does have a good nose, the ba- barbarian," Ace amended, setting the bowls carefully on the table once more. "Nah, as interesting as it is to listen to everybody arguing over who gets what food and land, I don't really care." Marco didn't press the matter; the meetings were something they'd argued about countless times and by this point there was nothing either could say to sway the other.
There was a loud clatter as Luffy almost knocked over his bowl, and both vampires instinctively glanced over to see if he was alright. Ace laughed at the look of utter surprise on Luffy's face, disguising yet another shudder.
"Ace, what's wrong, yoi?" Marco finally sighed, unable to ignore it any longer. "You've been shivering the entire time I've been here."
"I'm not shivering, your eyes are just too droopy to notice," Ace defended and took another swig of his stew, trying to hold onto the warmth for as long as possible before it would be consumed by the cold.
Marco gave him an unimpressed look. "Don't lie to me."
"And the bird's eyes strike again," Ace grumbled and waved away Marco's concern. "I'm fine, just feeling a little cold. It's nothing a good stew can't fix."
Marco considered that for a moment before nodding and standing up. "Alright. I'll be returning to the meeting then. If you have any sense of self-preservation, you'll make yourselves scarce sometime within the next five minutes," he hinted.
"Will do, have fun in that meeting!" Ace called out wryly, saluting as Marco left. "Whoever finishes last is a rotten egg," he challenged Luffy, to which the child yelled that it wasn't fair and began chugging down the soup faster than before.
Luffy won by a single gulp, proudly declaring so before the duo was off and out of the kitchen before a certain redhaired chef came to scold them over the unplanned meal.
Sabo gave a grunt of surprise as he was roughly shoved from behind by one of the guards, tipping him off balance. His hands instinctively tried to reach out and stop his fall, but they were unhelpfully restrained behind his back, forcing him to land hard on his knees. He winced as the impact jarred his weary body, but quickly got back on his feet, ignoring how they protested the action. He caught back up with the group at his own leisure, but fast enough that the guard couldn't shove him again for being too slow.
Pissing off these vampires was the only way he could fight back now, so Sabo took advantage of every possible chance he got.
The attack on their camp had been entirely unexpected; even now, Sabo was still trying to figure out how nobody had seen it coming. All he knew was that one minute he was sitting by a fire chatting with Koala, and the next they were surrounded by vampires. It was chaos, fighting back. The normally so meticulously organized hunters had splintered into mayhem and blind panic in a matter of minutes, overtaken by an every-man-for-themselves mentality. It had been an utterly embarrassing defeat in every sense of the word.
He'd also lost his staff at some point, but that hardly mattered anymore. There were too many vampires for him to fight all one on one. From what he'd seen, everybody in the camp had been killed except for the other dozen or so hunters who'd been 'spared'. None of them were his friends, and Sabo felt sick thinking about just how many of them there'd been only this morning. The downcast faces he saw around him were familiar, but only in the way someone you saw fairly often but never spoke to was familiar. Logically he knew what that meant for Koala and the others, but the vampires had attacked late in the day when the sun was still up, there was a chance a few people could have survived. Sabo held onto that possibility as they continued walking through the forest, being prodded and shoved whenever their escorts deemed their pace too slow, which was to say all the time.
The procession walked in silence through the forest, the only sounds being those of animals moving about and calling to each other through the trees, the scuffling of tired feet on the ground, and the labored breathing of some of the more wounded hunters. They were all tired from the fight, and their feet were aching and raw from being made to walk through the forest for hours on end barefoot. Sabo supposed he'd gotten off lucky in terms of injuries compared to the others though; he'd only received a few scrapes and nasty bruises where one of the others had a nasty gash over their eye that was bleeding profusely.
Not for the first time, Sabo wondered where the hell they were going. The slope of the ground beneath him had steadily been growing steeper as they headed up the very mountain the camp had been settled at the bottom of. The prisoners - that's what they were now, Sabo realized with grim certainty - were all reaching their physical limits, slowing down despite the guard's continued 'encouragement'.
Just as he thought this, they broke through a clearing in the trees, revealing a grand stone castle sitting on the side of the mountain. Lights flickered softly from the windows, lighting up the ground below. The sight was actually quite beautiful, rustic even, and Sabo would have appreciated it more had the circumstances been different. The fact remained that the castle they were heading towards was one ruled by vampires, and it was more than likely that none of the hunters would come back out alive.
Sabo wished he could have had a chance to observe his new prison more, but the guards allowed him no such luxury as they pushed the group to move faster now that they'd finally arrived. They crossed the grounds quickly, passing through a pair or large ornate doors and, once inside, Sabo looked around curiously.
The inside looked how a castle should, he supposed. He'd never been in one prior to now and as they trudged down long hallways, Sabo realized he'd been expecting dark, damp rooms overtaken with pests. It was a ridiculous assumption in hindsight, vampires were creatures of comfort above all else. They wouldn't have stood for those filthy living conditions in the slightest.
They travelled down endless corridors and huge staircases, and Sabo found himself impressed by the size of everything here. They never met another soul as they made their way through the castle, which was definitely unusual. If this coven was large enough to necessitate an entire castle, surely they would have crossed paths with one of the inhabitants by now. Of course it was possible they simply knew the path the group would take and were purposefully avoiding it, but it gave the whole castle an eerie, empty feeling.
When they reached their final destination in the dungeons, a guard took Sabo roughly by the arm and shoved him into a cell at the very end of a long, damp hallway, making Sabo stumble with the force used. He glared at the vampire as they shut the barred door behind him, locking it with a thick iron key before leaving, not sparing him another backward glance.
Once their footsteps faded away, Sabo moved to the front of the cell, testing the bars even though he knew that they would be solid, immovable. He paced the circumference of the cell, his hand trailing along the cobblestone walls. They'd been smoothed down, and Sabo had no luck trying to pry a stone away, or even chipping it. The floor was stone as well, dirty and stained with some dark substance that Sabo didn't particularly care to identify.
In the back right corner was a small window with bars, smaller than his shoulder width. Peeking out of it, he only saw grass and the trees a distance away, meaning that most of the cell was actually underground. There was no cover of any kind, and Sabo shivered slightly as a breeze drifted through the cell. That would certainly get troublesome at night, and Sabo pulled his jacket tighter around his frame.
He sighed and slid down the wall, finally giving his feet the rest they so desperately wanted. It was ridiculous, taking their shoes of all things, but Sabo supposed they'd accomplished their goal of tiring him and the other hunters out. His feet throbbed, and Sabo tried to massage some warmth into them as he sat and thought.
The longer he stayed here, the smaller his chance of escape would be, but he was already exhausted and couldn't see any way to escape as of now. He knew they'd brought him here to try and extract information, and he wasn't looking forward to their methods for motivating their prisoners in the slightest.
It was frustrating, to think he was already doomed, that all hope was lost. All those years of training and risking his life on missions would go down the drain by the end. He always thought he would die valiantly in a battle, or protecting his family. Not in some reclusive castle in the middle of nowhere, defenseless and ultimately anonymous in death.
Sabo shook his head, banishing those thoughts. He couldn't give up, there was always a chance some of the hunters had survived, or at least someone could come across the camp and organize a search party to find survivors. Vampires didn't just swoop out of nowhere, destroy an entire camp, and then disappear without a trace. They generally preferred to stay close to home, and Sabo knew that his fellow hunters would realize that before long. As unlikely as it may be, there was still a chance of survival, and Sabo focused on that.
There was still hope.
emygrl99: We'll be updating this story twice a week, every Wednesday and Saturday (though that is subject to change). Feel free to leave a review telling us what you think, as this is the largest project we've ever taken on and we would both love some feedback! We also have another in-progress collab up on Leafy's profile, called A Life Worth Living, so check that out if you're interested. Thanks for reading, and we'll see you on Saturday (: