The pirates had finally finished with their revelry, and everyone was sitting or lying down on the soft, spongy ground. Most of the crew was getting drowsy. Yasopp yawned sleepily, stretching his arms out.
Robin looked around. "It seems that most of us are about ready to go to bed, Luffy. Do you mind bringing us to closure shortly?"
Luffy began to speak, but then paused. "Uh, yes?" He shrugged. "Closure is like closing something, right?"
"Ouch," Roux said as Benn and Shanks simultaneously banged their faces on the railing. "That has got to hurt."
Luffy sighed. "Shanks, we're you doing that? I'm going to tell you about Jaya."
Yasopp looked up interestedly. "Jaya? We stopped there once, a long time ago. I met this really cool man with a chestnut on his head. What was his name?" he mused. "Montblanc Cricket?"
Usopp nodded. "Yeah, old guy? Blondish? Scary?"
Yasopp nodded once. "That's the guy!"
"The City of Gold…" Shanks said, smiling. "That's a memory that I'd like to relive."
Luffy hit him over the head. "Shh, Shanks! I'm not to that part yet. You'll ruin it."
Shanks rubbed his sore head. "Wow, Luffy. That hurt. What, did you use Bosushoku Haki? It seriously hurt!"
Luffy grinned. "Yeah, it was supposed to! I knew I wouldn't bother you with just a normal punch, so I decided to go all out!"
Shanks winced. This headache won't go away for at least an hour. He thought sourly. "Well, Anchor. Thank you very much for your trouble."
Luffy nodded, not getting the point of sarcasm at all.
Shanks sighed. "Just go on, Luffy. What happened when you got to Jaya?"
"Actually, it was before that." Luffy frowned. "First there was the monkey."
Yasopp stood up and took a clipped bow. "Thank you!" He sat back down.
"He didn't fly, though," Luffy continued.
Yasopp deflated, even as Roux poked him in the arm to taunt him.
"We were salvaging a sunken ship." Luffy said. "This guy came up and told us that the ship was within his place, and that he got to have it. It had maps of a place called Skypeia in it, and we were underwater looking at them."
"Wait," Shanks said. "Even you, Luffy? Really?"
Luffy blinked. "Of course, I'm the Captain! I can't let an adventure like that go to waste!"
"Even with, you know, a devil fruit power?" Shanks said pointedly.
"What's your point?"
Shanks grimaced. "I don't know why I even try."
Luffy grinned. "Anyway, we met the monkey guy named Masira, got eaten by a giant sea turtle, escaped, saw three giant shadow people, stole a eternal pose to Jaya, and went to Mock Town!"
Benn frowned. "Did you say 'Eaten by a giant sea turtle'?"
"Giant shadow people?" Yasopp asked nervously.
"Yep!"
Shanks massaged his forehead. He could feel more creases by the minute. "Let's skip the turtle for now, because that sounds remotely normal. What about the shadow people?"
"We didn't know what they were yet," Nami said. "So we just assumed that they were monsters and got out of there. We got to Mock Town right after." She shuddered. "Then we met Bellamy the Hyena in a bar."
"Bellamy?" Benn piped up. "I heard that he was a goon of Doflamingo's. What was he doing on Jaya?"
Yasopp snickered. "Goon!"
Benn frowned. "Yes, you are. I'm trying to talk, do you mind?"
"Maybe."
"Hey!" Nami snapped. "Who do you think you are, Zoro and Sanji? Luffy's trying to tell you something."
Luffy smiled. "It's okay! Bellamy heard Zoro, Nami, and I talking about Skypeia. He laughed at us." Luffy's normally cheerful face creased. "And then he told us that our dreams were stupid, we'd never find the Gold City or One Piece, and that we were idiots."
Shanks stood up. "Did you beat him up?"
"No, we let him beat us up."
Shanks' jaw dropped. "Luffy! Why'd you do that?"
Luffy frowned. "Hypocrite."
"It was different back then!"
"How?"
"I don't know, but you shouldn't have let yourself get hurt."
Luffy shrugged. "It wasn't too bad. We just left the bar after that." He nudged the ground with his sandaled toes. "What happened next? Was it Cricket, Knock Up Stream, Monkey number two…" His mumbling faded away.
"Luffy," Robin said gently. "You remember, I know you do. Who did you meet next?"
Luffy looked up, and the look of hatred in his eyes made a few people step back. "Then," Luffy snarled, "I met Blackbeard for the first time."
"Oh." Shanks understood now. He couldn't have known who the traitor was at the time, he'd never met him before, and Ace hadn't left a sufficient description. "What happened with Blackbeard, Luffy?"
Luffy's mouth contorted into a half grimace-half sneer. "He was the one I'd met earlier in the bar. He has terrible taste in pies and drinks!"
Shanks paused his nervous wringing of hands. "What?"
Luffy continued on. "And then he goes and tells me that I should believe in my dreams, and never give up, and that I shouldn't let them discourage me! Why would he do that?"
Shanks frowned. "I'll ignore the pie comment." He thought for a moment. "Luffy, there's almost no way that he knew who you were. He was trying to encourage you to do what he believed in. If he had known that you were the little brother of his previous Commander, Portgas D. Ace, there is almost no doubt that he would've done something to you just to mess with Ace. You're lucky that it was the last you'd see of him in a while."
Luffy looked away. "He believed in the same things I did. Why is that? They're not back ideals."
Shanks smiled. "Of course not! Blackbeard is just one of the dregs of society. Forget about him. There's nothing that you could've done back then."
Luffy quieted. "Yeah."
All was silent on the Thousand Sunny.
Yasopp nervously broke the silence. "I don't know about everyone else, but I want to hear about this City of Gold. Can you tell us?"
Zoro snorted. "What, did you think that we'd just leave you hanging?" He went on sarcastically. "Sorry, that's it. You have to figure the rest out yourself."
"Hey!"
Luffy cracked his knuckles. "You want to hear about the City of Gold? But what about Bellamy? Don't you want to hear what happened to us after that?"
Shanks rubbed his head. "There's more? I thought that he just disappeared after that. If not, please tell us more. Did you teach him a lesson?"
Luffy snorted. "Well, yeah, we beat him up, but we didn't do it for fun!"
Benn raised an eyebrow. "Really? It seemed so much like you…"
"It does not!" Roux cut him off. "Luffy always beats people up for a reason."
"I guess, but don't you think-"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because," Nami said, grinding her teeth, "Luffy is still talking, morons!"
They both shrugged and stopped, slowly edging away from the furious pirate.
Luffy sighed. "They stole the old man's gold, the stuff he got from diving so much. And they beat him up, too."
"They beat up an old man?" Shanks asked, affronted. "Well, that was rude!"
Chopper frowned. "He was sick, too! They didn't even consider that!"
"They wouldn't," Yasopp said, laughing a little. "They're pirates."
Shanks grinned. He leaned back against the salty eastern breeze. "Let me guess, Luffy. You went up to Bellamy and absolutely destroyed him in a fight simply because he beat up a friend of yours."
Luffy blinked in surprise. "No way! How did you guess?"
"It seems to be a recurring pattern," Benn murmured.
Robin laughed next to him. "Wait and see, his heroism gets worse as he continues."
"Robin!" Luffy scolded, having overheard. "I told you all, I'm not a hero, I'm a pirate!"
The older pirates gave a small cheer. "That's what I was thinking earlier," Shanks mused, "I just couldn't think of how to put it."
Benn frowned in disbelief and turned his head to face Shanks. "You had trouble thinking of those words? Words Luffy thought of?"
Shanks winced. "Well, if you put it like that..."
Luffy carried on, oblivious. "I beat him up! It was awesome! He was very springy, so that was really strange."
"Springy?" Roux asked curiously. "He could bounce really high?"
"Nah, he was made out of springs."
"What the h- oh, devil fruit?"
"Yep."
Shanks groaned. "They make devil fruits stranger and stranger as the era goes by." He cracked his back, clearly wishing for a different pattern. "Can you tell us about Skypeia now?"
Luffy frowned. "First there was that weird bird with the weird head. It was called, uh, a north-"
"South."
"-south- thanks, Nami- bird. It helped us find the Knock Up Stream."
Roux and Yasopp nudged each other and giggled.
"Grow up, will you?" Benn groaned. "This is why we're not respected by the other Yonko."
Shanks jumped up. "Hey! What do you mean, not respected by the other Yonko?" He looked around desperately. "Newgate respected me!"
"Whitebeard is dead. And no, he did not respect you." Benn said, studying his nails nonchalantly.
Shanks looked affronted. "He did so! We drank sake together and everything!"
"If I recall correctly, he told you to bring the drinks, and refused to call you anything but 'snot-nosed brat' the entire meeting."
"I thought that meant we were friends."
Benn scoffed. "Really? Who are your friends?" He paused. "I guess I walked into that one."
Right now I'm almost crying because Ace was so awesome and I miss him so much and SABO. I love you, Sabo. I look forward to learning more about you. I need to catch up on everything. Yo, who do you like best: Ace or Sabo? Don't answer that, it's too hard. Sabo or Marco? Still too hard. I think that most of Marco's character interpretation is fanon. This could be problem later on. Like, what do mean he isn't edible? Here's a scene:
Marco woke up one day feeling oddly refreshed. He immediately knew that this was a bad sign. He was usually woken up by the sweet sounds of Thatch and Ace trying to disembowel something that sounded like a turkey. He also knew that the whole turkey situation was an attempt to scare him, seeing as his phoenix counterpart is a distant relative of the turkey. He shook his suspicions off and got dressed, and then went upstairs. He ducked under the unusually short doorframe. Had that always been there? Seriously, this was the ship of Edward Newgate. The first thing his blurry, sleepy eyes spied was Thatch and Ace, casually sitting on one of the side rails. This didn't bode well with him. He walked tentatively over.
"So, what's going on?" he asked nervously.
They both gave him twin Cheshire grins. "What do you mean? We're just sitting here, behaving," Ace said.
Thatch nodded rapidly.
Marco was suspicious, but continued on with his morning routine. (This did not include preening, no matter what Ace tried to tell anyone.)
By the time all of his duties and chores were done, he was so tired he could barely keep his eyelids open. He yawned as he walked down the long hallway leading to his quarters. He slowly opened the heavy wooden door at the entrance to his rooms. He walked inside and instantaneously stubbed his toe on something that sounded wooden, round, and heavy. He grasped along the wall for the light switch, giving himself splinters along the way. When he flicked the switch he turned around to see what he'd run into and swore so filthily that if his mother was still alive, he would've been tasting soap for months.
Thatch and Ace had snuck into his room and replaced his comfortable bed with a fully operational wooden nest. Those little scullions. That's what they must've been doing in the morning. He didn't even have the energy to go after them and chase them down.
Well, he was tired. And they had even stocked it with large, egg-shaped pillows. He studied the round bird's nest before sighing, and reluctantly settling into his new bed. In seconds he was asleep.
From the corner of the room, Thatch and Ace grinned deviously. "Got the camera?" Thatch asked.
Ace nodded and made his way silently over to Marco.
Five minutes later they sneaked out of their friend's room, and quickly when back to the kitchens, their base of operations. Once they were in the clear they stopped to catch their breath.
Thatch smiled at his newest brother. "I'm so glad you joined the crew."
Ace grinned right back at him. "So am I." He flipped through the freshly developed pictures. "What should we do with these?"
Thatch slung his arm around his brother's shoulders. "I think we can think of a good place." He whispered in Ace's ear.
Ace gasped. "You're good."
Thatch smirked proudly. "I've been doing this to Marco for longer than you've been alive. You'll learn in time."
Ace smirked right back at him. "That best is yet to come." He turned around and left the kitchens.
Thatch frowned. What did Ace mean by that? "Ace?" he called. He got no answer. "Ace, come back here!" He ran out of the kitchens in the dead of night, chasing after his friend.
Shanks shook his head dejectedly. "I can't believe that nobody respects me." He glanced at Luffy hopefully. "You respect me, right, Anchor?"
Luffy nodded.
Shanks sighed.
Luffy started to say something, frowned, started again, and just stopped talking. Shanks looked apprehensive. He shook his head and continued on to the next subject.
"Okay, weird bird with a weird head. Now what? I'm assuming you all went up the Knock Up stream-"
Roux and Yasopp giggled again, this time joined by Usopp, Franky, and Brook.
Shanks sighed and caught the edge of the pretty navigator's strange blue stick. "It's alright, just let it go. I'd have thought you'd get used to it by now."
Nami shrugged. "It doesn't mean I have to like it. Besides, they all could use a good hit over the head every so often."
They all flinched and snuck away, covering their heads with their hands. "I disagree!" Usopp said.
Nami shot him a quick glare. "Really?"
"No, he's good!" Yasopp said, covering for Usopp.
She turned away and continued talking with Shanks. "We all made it to the stream, but it put our original ship under remarkable strain.
"Original ship?" Shanks asked. "This isn't your original?"
Usopp smiled wistfully. "The Going Merry… that was our first ship. We might've mentioned it already. It was given to us by my friend Kaya after we saved her life."
Yasopp rubbed his chin. "I do remember you mentioning Kaya, but I'm not sure about this earlier ship of yours. Maybe I was distracted."
"With what?" Benn asked. "You have a one-topic mind."
"Probably you." Yasopp snarled back.
Roux chortled. "You were thinking of Benn? Oh, that's so sweet." He immediately walked a few steps back to hide behind Nami.
Nami groaned in disgust. "The boys were terrified of the Knock Up Stream."
"Hey!" Zoro snapped. "So were you! You screamed the loudest! And I was not scared!"
Shanks was getting impatient. "You got to Skypeia. Then what?"
Luffy had been chewing on a mysteriously procured piece of meat, the reason for his silence. "Uh, we met a sky knight and a bad guy."
"Sky knight?" Shanks asked excitedly. "Do you mean Gan Fall?"
Luffy looked surprised. "You know the old man?"
Shanks sighed and rested his head on his hands. "Well, I did make it up to Skypeia with Captain Roger. One of the people we met was Gan Fall. It was nearly thirty years ago, so I'm assuming he's a really old man by now."
Luffy nodded. "Yeah, he's reeeeally old." All of a sudden he started giggling.
"What?" Shanks asked. "What's so funny, Luffy?"
"As soon as we got there-" Luffy said between laughing fits, "-Usopp decided to go swimming in the clouds."
All eyes turned Usopp.
He flushed. "Hey, how was I supposed to know what'd happen? I'd never been up there before."
"It was a layer of clouds in the sky," Nami said exasperatedly. "What did you think was going to happen?"
"Actually," Yasopp said, "What did happen? I'm interested."
Usopp blushed even darker. "I might've started to fall toward the sky."
"Fall toward the sky?" mused Shanks. "That's not an expression you hear very often."
"Why not?" Luffy asked. "But then we went to the big cloud island, met Conis and her father, and almost got arrested."
"Arrested already?" Benn asked. "Wow, that's got to be a record."
Roux shook his head. "No, you're forgetting about that one summer island twenty-three years ago." When everyone stared at him blankly he elaborated. "You know, when we ran into Garp on his vacation?"
The three other pirates collectively winced. "I hate to inform you now," Shanks said sadly, "But I was trying to forget that."
"Oh, sorry."
Most of Luffy's crew looked on in confusion. "I feel like we're always missing something," Franky said.
Sanji shrugged. "Do you mean, like an entire era?"
Franky shrugged. "Hey, speak for yourself. I was alive then, unlike you guys."
"Old," Zoro said flatly. "I think you mean that you're really old."
"Am not! I'm still SUPER!" He thrust his large arms in the air.
"What is that?" Benn asked, horrified.
Yasopp covered his eyes with a hand. "I have no idea."
Luffy shot up in the air. "The trial!"
"What trial?" Shanks asked, still leaning away from Franky and the crewmates surrounding him.
"The one with the balls. Usopp, Sanji, and I had to beat a guy in a trial. He cheated, though! He used that mantra thing and I didn't know what it was!"
"Mantra?" Benn said. "Do you mean Haki?"
Luffy waved it off. "Yeah, yeah, but then it was mantra. We didn't know what Haki was yet." He pouted. "They used it against us when we had no idea what was happening."
Shanks laughed. "Were you expecting them to teach you how to use it so you'd be on equal ground?"
"No, but it was rude!"
"So, did you win?"
"Well, yeah," Luffy said uncertainly. "But then we had to beat Enel."
"Who's Enel?"
"God!" Nami put in from the back of the crowd.
"Wait, what?" Yasopp said in confusion. "Who's God? Enel's God? Who's he?"
Luffy shrugged. "I don't remember. Ask Robin!"
Robin laughed. "You do remember, you just don't know what was going on."
"Yep!"
Robin sighed and started explaining to the confused pirates. "Enel was a man with a very powerful devil fruit. It held the power of electricity."
Benn leaned in. "Electricity? That's interesting. I read about it once, and I was wondering why one never showed up down here."
Robin frowned. "It's very good that it never came down here. It was very, very dangerous and almost invincible."
Shanks shrugged. "Well, I'm assuming Luffy beat this 'Enel', right?"
Luffy grinned.
"So why should we worry about a devil fruit if it can be beaten?"
Robin laughed. "I'd hoped you'd seen it. Luffy only beat Enel because he's special. Everyone else failed."
"Special?" Yasopp raised an eyebrow. "How is Luffy special enough to beat someone stylizing themselves as God?"
"Rubber." Benn said, rubbing his chin. "It's because Luffy is made completely out of rubber."
"You got it. That's why he was able to beat Enel. He was the only person able to beat Enel in all of Skypeia."
"Believe me," Sanji said. "Others tried. Do you remember Wiper?"
"Uh, no," Shanks said dubiously. "I wasn't there."
Sanji swiveled his head to stare at him. "I was talking to Luffy."
Shanks straightened up. "Okay. Right."
"Well, Wiper tried to beat Enel and failed."
"I guessed that."
"Good. Skypeia was a weird time." Nami said thoughtfully. "Robin, you liked Skypeia. Why don't you tell them how it went after that?"
"I'd love to." Robin said. She smiled at the older pirates. "We had finished fighting Enel, and we decided that it was time to go. But first, Luffy did something for his friend. Captain? Would you mind telling us?"
Luffy nodded. "We all saw some things that made us think that Skypeia was once part of Jaya, the island Montblanc Cricket lived on. When I was in the middle of the island I while longer, I saw a really big bell tower. I didn't know how else to tell the old man that I'd found his island right away, so I rang the bell as hard as I could."
Shanks grinned at him. "Oh, Luffy."
His crewmates smiled too.
That's very nice of you, Luffy." Roux said. "I bet you made the old man's day."
"More than that," Yasopp said. "You made his life. We all knew the story of Montblanc Noland."
"Did you?" Usopp asked curiously.
Yasopp puffed out his chest. "Yes, in fact, I knew the man myself!"
"Wow!" Chopper said.
Usopp leaned down and whispered in Chopper's ear. "Do you know what that means?"
"What?"
"It means that he's over five hundred years old."
"Really?" Chopper asked doubtfully. He cocked his head. "Well, I suppose if you look at him…"
Yasopp's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. "What did you say, you little reindeer?!"
Chopper blushed. "Oh, you didn't call me a tanuki. That's sweet of you."
Shanks rolled his eyes. "So, you rang the bell. Did you find the message my Captain left a while ago?"
Robin's eyes widened. "Why, yes, I did. Your Captain was a very interesting man, if I do say, Shanks- san."
Shanks laughed and stretched his arms on top of his head. "I can agree with you there," he said, chuckling.
He finally calmed down enough to ask more questions. "So, you used the Knock Up Stream to get up; what did you use to get down?"
"Oh, I forgot to mention the dials." Usopp said offhandedly. "They were machines with different functions. I attached one to an octopus and blew it up like a balloon. It helped us get down."
Shanks looked at him disbelievingly. "You rode down from Skypeia on a squid balloon?"
"Well, yes."
Benn frowned. "Well, you must've started descending rapidly after a while."
There were a few extremely agreeing nods.
"What I'm wondering," Shanks said jokingly. "Is what you said to whoever who landed by- or on!"
There was an eerie silence amongst the young pirates.
"Yeah, about that," Sanji said casually, waving his cigarette in the air. "We landed in the middle of an old marine base."
"You what?!"
"Okay," Shanks said for what felt like the hundredth time. "Explain to me again what you did in the Marine Base."
"Well," Luffy said, scratching his head. "Sanji and I made dinner for the Commander."
"Great," Roux said disbelievingly. "Was it good?"
"Really good, I tried it."
Yasopp frowned. "Doesn't that mean you ate the Commander's food?"
"Yep."
Sanji laughed. "Yeah, I taught the cooks how to do their job and ended up feeding a whole base. It wasn't supposed to turn out like that."
Shanks smiled. It did seem like something Luffy and his crew would end up doing. "Was that what Jonathan was talking about?"
When he received many blank looks from the vicinity he rolled his eyes. "I mean, he did mention something about a base and Luffy eating his food, and there aren't many people tolerant enough to let a little kid they think is a cook steal off their plate."
"Yeah!" Luffy said happily. "We all got split up in the base because it was so big, and Sanji and I ended up cooks."
"What happened to the rest of you?" Yasopp asked curiously.
Nami sighed loudly and rubbed her temples. "I was posing as a janitor, but Mr. Smarty-Swords had to get himself captured and almost blow my cover."
Zoro glared at her. "How was I supposed to know?"
"The uniform I was wearing, genius."
Robin quickly cut in. "Usopp and I were going to explore, but we split up."
"Why?" Benn asked.
"Because he wanted to get away from the base," she said matter-of-factly. "I wanted to gather information."
"Smart decision." Benn said approvingly.
She smiled back at him.
"Smart decision." Yasopp said proudly to his son.
Usopp gave him a high-five.
Franky sighed dramatically. "I wasn't there yet, but it sure sounds SUPER!"
Chopper winced. "It was not! Everyone thought that I was a lucky tanuki! I'm a reindeer!"
"Poor thing," Benn said sarcastically.
"It really was horrible," Usopp moaned. "I had to pretend to be a marine inspector, but they figured me out."
"How?" Roux asked.
Usopp slowly turned his head to the left. "Robin… What do you have to say for yourself?"
Robin looked the older pirates in the eyes. "Usopp managed to blow his cover." She shrugged. "I just saw an opportunity and took it."
Usopp ground his teeth. "You're right, you did! You had me thrown in the brig with Zoro!"
Zoro glared at him. "We got out eventually."
Usopp glared right back. "Eventually. It was so boring down there, except-" he suddenly started giggling.
All the pirates halfway leaned away from him.
"What's so funny?" Yasopp asked nervously. "What happened?"
Usopp nudged Zoro, who looked at him blankly. "Condoriano!" He whispered gleefully. "Condoriano!"
All of a sudden, Zoro seemed to remember. He grinned broadly and snorted, shaking his head. "Yeah, I almost forgot about that crewmember."
"What?" Benn asked. "Who's Condoriano?"
"Yeah," Shanks said suspiciously. "Why haven't I heard about this other crewmate of yours?" He suddenly paled. "He isn't dead, is he?"
Usopp waved his worries off with a laugh. "No, no. Condoriano wasn't a real crewmate. His really name was Shepherd, and he was the marine inspector Robin and I impersonated. When the guards came down to talk to us, they had already found his unconscious from where he'd been knocked out and thought that he was a pirate. We were all too happy to confirm their suspicions."
Yasopp snorted. "Good job. I'm proud of you!"
Usopp laughed back. "Yeah, that was right before we escaped, too."
Zoro turned away, crossing his arms. "It was all thanks to me."
"No way!" Usopp loudly protested. "It was me, remember? You just sat there."
"Who, this well-mannered snake?" Zoro retorted sarcastically.
Usopp blushed and his fiddled with his hands. "I'd hoped you'd forgotten about that."
"Never."
Shanks and his crew watched in confusion. "I'm not even going to ask." Roux said.
"Good," Chopper said. "And my story just involves a lot of blood and guts; you probably don't want to hear it."
Shanks smiled at the little doctor. "Let me guess, you ran around and saved dozens or more people's lives. That's amazing, Chopper. I'm sure you did wonderfully."
Chopper stared in awe up in the face of the kind Yonko. He now knew why Luffy loved him so much.
Luffy shrugged. "Chopper's amazing, that's that. We eventually escaped G-8, though. You met Jonathan earlier."
"So," Shanks asked, carrying on the conversation, "What ever did you do as soon as got out? Get in a fight?"
"Yep!" Luffy said. "A Davy Back Fight, to be precise!"
