Chapter Four
A slightly plump woman with perfectly coiffed blonde curls hummed to herself as she inserted a tiny golden key into a similarly painted door. The hallway that she entered to was as gilt-edged and gaudy as one could expect, the boundaries of good aesthetics pushed by the owner's excessive need to display her wealth. Paintings hung along the wall, a series of pointed-nose individuals swathed in thick paints, and over a sinfully plush carpet. The furniture was delicate, spindly and of surprisingly sturdy white wood, the curtains honed of velvet-crushed mauve. In any direction, vases bursting with roses and lilies in full bloom choked the air with their strong scents. A chandelier of rainbow-glimmer crystals was momentarily darkened, drawing a quiet titter from the woman of incompetent help. The mood of the owner was nonetheless maintained as her heels made a distinct click-clack down the hall and to a living space of orderly spread out couches. Even in the dim light, a dark figure could be seen leant against the center chair.
Mantwin Roslyn curved her painted lips in a seductive smile, as she reached for the light switch and flipped it on. Then she screamed.
Portgas D. Ace winced. And he had thought that Luffy was loud.
"B-b-burglar!" Roslyn shrieked, stumbling back against the wall. "Someone save me!"
""Calm down. I'm not going to hurt you." Ace jumped up and raised his hands. "Yelling isn't going to work anyway. Everyone else's been knocked out and the walls are too thick for anyone to hear you."
That wasn't the right thing to say. The woman's shrieks only grew louder. "Cad! Thief! Murderer!"
Ace sweat dropped. 'Well, that escalated quickly…'
"Get out of my home, you filthy street urchin!" Roslyn looked around wildly. "Where is-?!"
"Over there." The dark-haired boy helpfully pointed to the generously-waisted noble lying prone on the floor, half-hidden behind a coffee table. There was a massive lump on his head but no other visible sign of injury. "Still wearing his marriage band even. You two aren't very good at this, are you?"
"Tomlin!" Credit given where it's due, the woman did run forward and try to swing her purse at his head. It was easy to dodge but still. "You monster!"
"Hey, I'm not the one having an affair with a married man," Ace sniffed. He dodged the next swing and then snagged the purse string as inertia pulled it back around. It came out of the woman's loose grip easily, to which she fell over her lover with a tearful wail. "Stop that. You're making a fool of yourself."
"Did that bitch pay you to come here?!" Roslyn sobbed. "It doesn't matter what she does! I'll still love Tomlin and he'll still love me!"
"Good for you," Ace replied distractedly. "Let's just talk this out-"
"Nothing you do will ever change my mind! I'll die for my love if I have to!" The woman passionately declared. She held her arms up as a shield in front of her bountiful chest, even as the boy rolled his eyes. Her arms cradled the adulterer's head in a most awkward angle. "I'll always love him! Always!"
Ace shifted uneasily on his feet. The woman was acting ridiculous. She had painted cheeks and perfumed curls and probably hadn't done an honest day's work in her life. She was also reminding him uncomfortably of Lu's tears dripping over his dying body in Marineford. "I don't want to hurt you."
"You'll have to kill me to get to my honeybear!"
"...Right," Ace said, instead of pointing out how easy it would be to accomplish such. "I don't want to hurt him either."
"Then what do you want?" Roslyn demanded haughtily. "My money? My jewelry? My gorgeous body?"
'Not the first time a prisoner asked me to ravish them,' Ace thought, suppressing his instinctive recoil at the memories. There were some legitimate crazies out there. 'But I never thought I'd have to deal with it as an eight-year-old.'
Maybe it was the height. He had always been tall for his age.
"No!" Ace winced. "No, thank you. I wanted to ask you for a library card."
Printing presses were not an uncommon technology but it was rare for many books to circulate outside of their own sea. The Red Line limited intra-sea trade and the World Government exacerbated that with their absurdly high taxes on the few ships willing to brave the Reverse Mountain currents. Knowledge was heavily censored and any books that were published on the common market needed government approval for the presses to run them. Even with those limitations though, there was plenty of valuable information to be mined at the local library. Books were a resource that Ace had left untapped for most of his life and hadn't even realized the true value of until Marco, nosy as he was, figured out that he struggled with reading and straightened him out.
The dark-haired boy had two main ways to get ahold of useful books. The first was the local library at Edge Town. Most noble kingdoms sponsored local libraries for their 'lesser' citizens but it was a hassle to get a card without an available birth certificate and proof of residence. Ace had neither and while he could steal the books easily enough, figured a card would make it easier for Sabo to parse the collection. It would also build a paper trail for his brother to use to shed his current identity.
The second was Garp's personal library. It was a little known but still rather valued fact that Monkey D. Garp was not loyal to the World Government. He believed in law, order and justice, so his loyalty belonged to the Marines, whom he saw as the main driving force behind a more peaceful world. He also, quite like his granddaughter, had trouble following rules. To that extent, his house was filled with books on all manner of subjects, including plenty of black market texts lifted from the Grand Line and ship logs from the pirates he defeated. Garp presumably kept them around to study up on his enemies; Ace planned to snoop through to find good blackmail material on his brothers.
Roslyn's blinked at him in bemusement. "...A library card?"
"I need you to claim a nephew- Saro is fine, use your last name- that lives in another kingdom. He'll be visiting you in a few months and you want to order a library card for him beforehand," Ace explained. He had scouted beforehand for the perfect 'aunt' for his brother and settled on this woman, as her hair was a similar shade of blonde. She was also a noble's mistress; powerful enough to influence the common folk but without enough exposure to recognize Sabo from his childhood. "I'll be picking it up in a day or two."
"W-w-what if I refuse?" The woman attempted a glare and then averted her eyes with a high-pitched yelp when she glared back. The child looked innocent, all floppy dark hair and a smattering of freckles, but when that smile crossed his face, it was as if a demon took his place. "Please don't hurt me!"
"I don't need to." Ace cocked his head to the side, smiling sunnily with eyes closed. The woman shuddered. "Your husband maintains this house, doesn't he? Wealthy merchant, works hard, rarely home? I wonder what he would say, or all of your neighbors, when he learns of Tomlin?"
"No one will believe a street urchin…" Roslyn whispered, eyes wide.
"Only one person needs to," Ace countered. "And even if he doesn't… the seed would be planted. More eyes would be on you. More questions. Why were you late for dinner? Who are you buying those sweets for? Do you have a lover? Are you still cheating on me?"
Ace leaned closer, the grin widening to a sharp flash of white teeth. "We don't want that, do we?"
The dark-haired boy didn't mean to terrify the woman overmuch but he didn't have time to take the gentle approach. He had bailed on early morning lessons with Sabo to take care of a few errands but promised to return in time for Makino-nee's wonderful lunch. At this rate, the merchant's wife was going to make him late and Ace couldn't allow that. He hated breaking promises to his family.
Fortunately the woman didn't have much of a spine on her, so after a few more minutes of explicit verbal threats matched with implicitly threatening smiles, Ace got her acquiescence. This capped off a most productive morning. He had started with ordering a phone system for the four transponder snails he would keep, selling the remaining two at undercut prices at the shop. Even then, the 200,000 Beli earned covered the equipment cost and bought four shirts, three pairs of shorts and a sweater for himself and Sabo each, in their preferred colors of red and blue, respectively. Afterwards, he tracked down the old man near Grey Terminal that had bought animal skins from them last time around and sold all of his available crocodile and bear stock for 17,000 Beli. This gave him roughly 82,000 Beli total to open an account at a wholesale warehouse and order all of those food supplies that he couldn't find in the forest, like buckwheat powder and beef stock, in bulk amounts.
There had only been a minor issue with his age.
"Eh, are you sure you haven't just lost your parents, kid?" The skinny teenager stared down from the cash register with insufferable condescension.
Ace bristled. "I'm twenty-one, you asshole!"
"Sure you are," the teen scoffed. "Look, take a seat and I'll use the sound speakers to call for your parents. Did you come here with your mom or your dad?"
The dark-haired boy's eyelid twitched. He took a deep breath to try and control his temper- Ace had a fair bit of practice after the Mera Mera no Mi- and then mustered a forced smile. He was then surprisingly gratified when the other cashier leaned over from his own station to slap his coworker over the head.
"Show some respect, brat," the older man huffed. He turned a bristly white mustache and kind eyes over to the boy. "You want to open an account then, sir?"
"I do," Ace relaxed. He put the thick wad of Beli on the desk and offered a sheepish quirk of his mouth as bushy eyebrows rose. "I know it's a lot of money. My Da's a businessman from Gecko Island. He wants to open another branch here and told me to set up an account at the warehouse."
"Big responsibility to give to one boy," the man noted. "At twenty-one, you're not a boy though…"
"Some asshole pirate with the Small-Small Devil Fruit attacked my village and deaged me," Ace added a scowl to great effect. "Went to a specialist to fix it but all he could say is that I've been brought back to my child body. As if I didn't know that!"
"Bad luck then!" The cashier said with sympathy. "Those damn pirates can't leave anyone alone. Heard of those nasty devil fruits before, though you're the first victim I've met."
"Probably not the last, if the Marines don't get off their lazy asses and catch these criminals."
The cashier scoffed. "Don't hold your breath. Pay your taxes all nice and regular-like, miss one month and they're at your door. When you need them though…"
"Can't get anything useful done," Ace agreed. "Can you point me to the produce aisle?"
The freckled boy had ordered a generous selection of the most common food items but left them reserved at the warehouse for the next day. When he was done, Ace had gone directly to one of the crafts stores in Edge Town. He needed to get his hands on some wind chimes.
x
Lucillia swung both her legs from her perch, entangling mint green cotton fabric between her knees, as she rolled a lollipop around in her mouth. Her matching ribbon had been confiscated by Ace only moments ago when he ran out of fishing line and sewing thread to hang up bells and wind chimes on the forest branches. She didn't mind though; their little corner of the forest rung with a fragile melody as the breeze danced between the chimes. The bells glowed like miniature glass stars as daylight reflected off of them and the sound was both pleasing to the ear and unlike any she had heard before. The pattern was ever-shifting, the bells glimmered in and out of sight and many appeared swaying in the crisp afternoon air as their lines were invisible to the naked eye.
The overall picture would have been a helpless enchantment had it not been for the freckled boy hanging upside down from the tree by his knees, her ribbon in his mouth. Ace's dark grey eyes were narrowed in concentration as he tied another wind chime into place. Then, with an expertise and flexibility she had never seen before, the dark-haired boy swung backwards, flipped his body over and landed gracefully on the forest floor. He absently took the ribbon out of his mouth and tied it around his wrist, looking at the finished product in quiet satisfaction.
'I have to bug him into teaching me that,' Lucy decided. There was a low groan next to her and when she looked over, she saw the blonde boy with his face buried in his hands. "You okay, Sabo?"
"Fine, Lucy!" He looked up quickly, a nervous expression on his face. "You know, you look a lot prettier without a ribbon in your hair!"
"...Thank you," the girl answered drilly. She liked Ace's friend, she truly did. He was very kind to Makino-nee and didn't mind playing with her, but he did occasionally say the strangest things. They came out of nowhere too, like when he asked about the thickness of her window curtains at breakfast.
"Hey! Are you two going to get down here or not?" Ace called up, "Hurry up, slowpokes!"
She briefly took her lollipop out to stick down her tongue at him and then made a snap judgement about the ground. It was a lot shorter than the distance Ace easily traversed but it would still be more sensible to carefully climb down… One look confirmed that Makino-nee had moved away from the kitchen window. Lucy grinned and jumped down.
"Woohoo!" There was wind flying through her untamed locks and then all of the energy of the landing shooting up her legs. The force compelled her a couple steps further if she didn't want to topple over or buckle down, only to trip over her feet and be caught by an unsurprised Ace. She stared up at the sky for a moment, arced over the boy's thin arms, and then tumbled down when he unceremoniously dropped her to the ground. Lucy laughed. 'Worth it.'
She scrambled back up to her feet. "Why did you hang the bells up?"
"This," Ace gestured grandly to his ad-hoc work of household thievery and bell chimes, her green ribbon waving merrily from his wrist, "Is our training ground."
"I like it," Lucy approved. "What are we training for?"
"Observation Haki! Sabo and I will be learning this vital skill because we need it to be awesome pirates," the dark-haired boy boasted. "Lucy, you're here because Makino-nee gives us cookies to babysit you."
"Jerk!" The boy quickly sidestepped her weak punch. "I'm going to be an ever better pirate than you!"
"How are you going to do that?" Ace teased, "I'll be a Yonko. You can't do better than that."
"Can too!" Lucy's cheeks were blown out adorably in her frustration. "I'll be- uh… the King! I'll be the Pirate King!"
The freckled boy opened his mouth, eyes bright and ready to respond, when Sabo interjected before the two could fall into a brief yet violent spat.
"That's nice and all but what exactly is Observation Haki?"
"Good question," Ace praised. "Now gather around my disciples, as I explain to you the wonders of Haki. The first thing that you need to know is that there are three types of Haki in the world, though the last one, Conqueror's Haki, cannot be taught. You either have it or you don't. Only one in several million people do but they tend to be uniquely strong and bull-headed, so Lu will definitely have it."
The dark-haired girl furrowed her eyebrows. "Are you making fun of me?"
"Yes," Ace admitted freely. She was about to snap back at him before the humor fled his face, leaving mist grey eyes settled firmly on her own. "Conqueror's Haki has another name though; it's known as the King's Nature. Those who have it are known as natural leaders destined to amass power and influence. People are afraid of that, Lu. If they know that you're a Conqueror, then they'll either want to control you or bring you down, before you're powerful enough to protect yourself."
'Bring me… down?' Hesitance skittered down her spine, as she nodded at him. "I won't lie to Gramps."
The thought that someone would be afraid of her was mystifying. Lucy hadn't ever had that particular emotion directed at her before. It was almost too hard to believe. She trusted Ace, especially when he had such a serious look on his face, but still wanted to talk to her grandfather later. Monkey D. Garp was the most knowledgeable person she knew. Makino-nee was the smartest but Gramps had old people wisdom.
Lucy caught a flicker of dissatisfaction and worry cross the boy's face before he smiled at her. "If that makes you happy, Lu."
"What does Conqueror's Haki do, that people are so afraid of it?" Sabo wanted to know.
Ace's brief explanation, that they willed their enemies into unconsciousness was met with patent bewilderment by the two children. Sabo looked at Lucy. Lucy looked at Sabo. At that moment, they were in complete agreement. Their friend was crazy.
Luckily for them, Ace merely glared at the action, before moving onto Observation Haki. This ability sounded just as enthralling and impossible as the last. Diffusing their willpower outside of their bodies to sense the presence, strength and even emotions of others. Skilled enough users had a limited form of precognition, able to discern and deflect the attacks of their enemies before the strikes even began. They would activate this skill by blindfolding themselves and running through the training grounds. Observation Haki would be needed to move around all of the trees, bushes and branches without disrupting the melody once.
'It's almost too grand to be true,' Lucy mused, over this remarkable mystery power. Not that she hadn't seen things that beggared belief before. 'Gramps can punt boulders over the forest canopy.'
"When we were in Grey Terminal…" Sabo's sky blue eyes were darkened in thought. "You hit those men behind me."
Ace quirked his mouth to the side. "Observation Haki."
"Huh." Sabo stared at Ace silently for a minute, until even Lucy was fidgeting in discomfort. She wanted to open her mouth and break the silence but an instinct held her back. "How did we meet?"
"I was losing a battle with a gang when you jumped in and helped me fight the stragglers off," the dark-haired boy answered. "You wanted us to split the beli since we worked together but I told you to buzz off, since I didn't need your help in the first place. You took offense to that and pickpocketed all the money from me. When I tracked you down later, you were fighting gang members and I helped beat them. We've been partners since."
"Right." Sabo took off his bowler hat and twisted it between his hands. "You changed, Ace."
"I've gotten stronger," the freckled boy acknowledged. "And I know things that I didn't before but I'm still your friend, Sabo."
"I don't doubt that." Sky blue orbs looked at her worriedly, before the encouraging smile on Ace's face had him barrel forward. "How…?"
"I can't explain it yet but I promise I will, one day," Ace said earnestly, looking between both of them. "Can you still trust me?"
'Explain what?' Luminous ink-toned eyes blinked curiously and then the question was dismissed by a radiant smile. "Ace is my friend. I trust him."
The freckled boy's cheeks flushed a bright pink as he grinned back at her. He turned to the blonde worriedly but Sabo had pulled his hat back on.
"...Yeah, me too." Sabo looked towards the obstacle course. "Let's learn Observation Haki then."
x
