Chapter 3

And Found?

"I really don't get how you can be so callous about this, Ace," Sabo said, shaking his head in distaste, "What's wrong with you?! Luffy is missing and you're acting like it's nothing out of the ordinary!"

Ace shrugged and turned the other way with a stubborn look on his face, avoiding Sabo's gaze. "I'm not being callous, I just don't think he's missing," he said, sounding rather put out. "He's probably off sulking somewhere. He'll turn up eventually, don't worry."

"You … you …" For a moment Sabo was actually speechless. Then he exploded. "You're an absolute berk, you know that?!"

Ace whipped around, about to give an angry retort, but Sabo carried on before he could even open his mouth. "Let me spell it out for you – our little brother is missing. We can't find him. After the both of you had a fight he said he was going home and when I looked for him there he was nowhere to be seen – which means that either something must have happened or that he has run away to God knows where. And just to get this straight: both of these possibilities are not good!"

Ace glared at him, his teeth clenched in anger. "Right, just to get this straight then," he bit out, the sarcasm heavy in his voice. "He. Is. Sulking – not missing! As you said, we had a fight – one that didn't go too well for him – and then he ran. He's probably off hiding somewhere just now, you know what a crybaby he is. Give him some time, he'll be back before it gets dark."

"And what happens if he's not?!" Sabo countered, fists shaking. "If he's in danger he needs us to find him right now – we might come too late if we put off looking for him! I don't want him to get hurt!"

Ace gave an angry twitch. "And I do, is that what you're saying?!"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Sabo said, flabbergasted. "What's got into you?! Of course not! That's why I'm asking you to help me!"

"Tch," Ace scoffed, turning his head away with a deep frown on his face.

It seemed that Sabo would have to haul out the big guns in order to get past Ace's hurt pride.

"Besides …" he began, the terror in his voice only half feigned, "Can you imagine what the old geezer would do to us if he found out that Luffy had gone missing? He'd kill us!"

Although initially Ace gave a slight twitch of fear – an instinctual reaction which happened whenever his adopted grandfather was mentioned – Sabo's argument did not turn out to have quite the effect he had hoped for. "Tch …," Ace scoffed again. "Gramps would be just fine with it – he'd probably see it as some form of training. Luffy has been through far worse thanks to that guy's influence."

That was … probably true. Sabo sweatdropped. To cap it all, the crazy old man would probably give them an award for contributing to Luffy's training …

"Alright … fine …," he sighed, pinching his nose, "I'm asking you then, please, to help me – I'm really worried, I want to find him and I think that two heads would be better than one in this." Sabo looked at Ace imploringly. "So please, will you help me?"

There was silence for a couple of seconds, which was only broken by the birdsong coming from the canopy of trees above them. Then Ace sighed.

"Fine … let's see where the idiot has got off to – although I can promise you Sabo, he's absolutely fine."

Sabo smiled in relief. Finally … "Great!" he said. "I think we'd best start at Dadan's then! Perhaps he was thinking of hers when he said he was going home."

Ace grimaced. He seriously doubted that was true …. But he supposed it was as good a place as any to start their search.

"Alright then …," he said, "But you explain it to Dadan if he isn't there and she starts asking questions. She'll probably start breathing fire when she finds out that Luffy's disappeared."

Sabo gulped.

The outburst was, as it turned out, just as Ace had predicted.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'YOU CAN'T FIND LUFFY'?!"

The sheer volume of the shout had Sabo stuffing his index fingers into his ears in protection, while both he and Ace leant back slightly from the towering figure of Dadan. Their foster mother was doing a very impressive impression of an erupting volcano, causing the two boys to shrink back a couple of feet to avoid the escaping lava, i.e. spit and cigarette ash that was currently spewing from her mouth.

Predictably though, Ace refused to be cowed and after a moment of gathering his wits about him he began to shout back. 'So much for letting me handle this,' Sabo thought, with no small amount of relief at seeing Dadan narrow her attention on the other boy.

"Exactly what we said, alright?! He wasn't at the tree house when we looked for him, so we thought that he might have gone back to yours."

"Well, he isn't here though, is he?" Dadan said.

"I can see that!"

"Well, where is he then?" Dadan demanded, her nostrils flared in a way which made both of the boys think of an angry hippo wearing a wig. "What did you do with him?! Did one of your blasted wild animals finally eat him while you weren't looking and now you're trying to shift the blame onto me?!"

A very vivid image of Garp asking her about the whereabouts of his grandson appeared in Dadan's mind and she had to swallow. Given the often perfect timing of Garp's sporadic visits … Nervously, she glanced out the window, but thankfully the clearing remained empty of the swaggering walk of the marine's hero.

"What?! NO!" There were few things in this world which would make Sabo willingly shift the focus of Dadan's wrath from Ace to himself. However, the suggestion that he was not taking good care of his little brother certainly ranged at the very top of that list. "We would never let that happen to Luffy! That's just stupid!"

Dadan subsided a little at the vehemence in Sabo's voice, but still folded her arms in front of her chest forbiddingly, "So where is he then?!"

"We're … not sure," Sabo eventually murmured, his eyes downcast. "He said he was going home, so when we didn't find him at the tree house we thought that maybe he'd gone to you."

Sabo looked over at Ace and watched as the other boy wrapped himself in contemplative silence. It was not hard for him to guess at what Ace was thinking about at that moment.

"H-hey!" Sabo shouted after him, one hand extended towards Luffy's retreating form, as if to grab him from behind, "Where are you going?!"

"Home!"

But what did that mean then? Where had Luffy gone off to? Surely he couldn't mean the Grey Terminal? No-one in their right mind could ever refer to that dump as home.

All of a sudden, a rough hand clapped onto his shoulder and Sabo looked up, startled, into the suspiciously smiling face of Dadan. A glance to his right let him know that Ace was in a similarly precarious position and the sinking feeling that had started to spread in his stomach solidified instantly. 'Uh-oh.'

"Ace … Sabo …" Dadan said, her voice sugary sweet, "You better get Luffy back, alright? Otherwise …"

Sabo didn't have the nerve to even swallow, even though his throat felt uncomfortably dry right then.

"THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY!"

WHACK. KICK. "AAARGH!"

"So … not at Dadan's either then, huh?" Sabo winced, as he rubbed at his behind with a pained expression on his face. "Damn, she didn't have to kick this hard …."

"Tch," Ace scoffed, "Her kicks can't do anything to me anymore. The old hag's seriously lost her strength."

Sabo looked over at the other boy, who was standing a few metres away, his arms crossed in his customary forbidding pose, the very picture of indifference. Although, as Sabo noticed with some satisfaction, his stance was slightly ruined by the fact that he was leaning to his right at quite an awkward angle.

'Lost her strength my ass …'

"So where do you think that Luffy went then? If he's neither at the hide-out nor at Dadan's? Or … do you think he lied?" Sabo asked hesitatingly.

"No." The response was immediate and left no room for doubt. "Luffy wouldn't lie about something like that. And even if he had we would have known about it straight away."

"That's … true …" Sabo thought, reflecting on the one instance he had seen Luffy lie before, back when Porchemy had been looking for their treasure. Even one of those blind fish thousands of miles underneath the surface of the sea would have been able to tell that Luffy had not been telling the truth at that moment. He might as well have turned his body into a human lie detector, flashing the words 'LIE! LIE!' in bold, capital letters above his head.

Sabo gave a frustrated groan and grabbed onto his hat. "Damn it, where could he be then? We've checked everywhere that could count as home …" After about a minute spent racking his brain, he turned to Ace with an absolutely frustrated glare. "Come on, Ace, I'm out of ideas here! You've known him for longer than I have, you've got to think of something!"

"Well, I don't know either, alright?!" Ace bit back.

"Oh geez, if you'd just talked to each other and apologised in the first place, none of this would have happened!"

Ace visibly stiffened, before he walked up to Sabo angrily. "Are you saying this is my fault then?! Because I'm not the one who sent you crashing into a tree with their useless ability!"

"What?! No! Of course I'm not saying that!" Sabo argued back almost as hotly as Ace. "I'm just saying that if both of you blockheads just finally learnt to talk to each other without being at each other's throats all the time we wouldn't have this problem now! If anything, this is as much Luffy's fault as it is yours!"

"So you ARE saying it is my fault after al!"

"Did you even LISTEN to a word I said just now?!"

The two boys growled at each other, openly raising their fists in each other's faces. It seemed that one more word would be enough to spark the tussle that both of them were secretly itching for … but surprisingly, after a few seconds of staring at each other in angry silence, both Ace and Sabo subsided at nearly the same moment.

"This is getting us nowhere," Sabo mumbled tiredly. "We should be working together to find Luffy, not fighting with each other."

"I know …," Ace said, his arms once again crossed in front of his chest and his face turned away in frustration. "The tree house … Dadan's … what other place might count as ho-"

Ace's head whipped around and he met Sabo's eyes which had got the same expression of sudden realisation in them. He groaned at his own stupidity.

"Of course … Fuusha!"

Leaves and twigs hit against his face repeatedly as Luffy rushed through the forest at a dead run, despite the pain of the little cuts he was getting all over his body.

Surely he had to be there soon … He had been running for what felt like hours already and his feet were beginning to hurt terribly. Having been busy arguing with his grandpa the last time he came this way, back when he was first taken to live with Dadan, Luffy only had a fuzzy memory of his journey to the mountain bandit's home – but it couldn't have been that far. Perhaps he had taken a wrong turning after all, back at the –

There was a break in the line of trees ahead and Luffy caught the sight of a windmill turning slowly in the distance for the split of a second. He let out a whoop of joy and started laughing, accelerating his pace, even though a mere moment ago he had felt on the brink of collapsing.

"Makino! Mayor! I'm baaaaack!"

He stepped out into the open and practically flew down the winding road – never noticing the figure which, after a moment of staring after him, turned back into the deeper shadows of the forest.

Right … it was time to inform the others.

A/N: Hello everyone :)! See, I did manage to update while I'm still in China - hooray! But just to warn you - this is likely to be the last update before I get back, which will be around the 29th of August. I'm really sorry about that! But there are three exams in Chinese that I've got coming up - I hope you can understand! Even though I know how annoying it is to wait for updates ... I'm really sorry! For what it's worth, I DO promise you that I'll update as soon as I can though!

And with that out of the way - thank you SO MUCH again for all the lovely reviews, story favourites, follows and clicks! I get all excited every time there's an email in my inbox xD! It's lovely to hear all your opinions! And on that note - I really hope you enjoyed reading this chapter just as much as I did writing it - I particularly loved the scene with Dadan xD. It was just so much fun to imagine and to get the words on paper! Anyway, you guys honestly rock! Until next time! *heart* (Since this website doesn't allow for the symbol xD!)