Whitebeard looked around, searching for Ace, only to see a displeased Fleet Admiral kicking at the cuffs on the execution platform, while Garp the Fist was busy laughing his ass off. In other circumstances, Whitebeard would have laughed as well, but in this case, who could have thought that the Marines were hiding Ace? Had they been tricked into coming? If Ace was still at Impel Down, they would have noticed it, and made headings towards that as well.
"Guararara...How many decades has it been, Sengoku?" Whitebeard bellowed as he stood on the upper deck of the Moby Dick facing the Fleet Admiral. "Where is my beloved son? He...had better be safe and sound!" There were roars of frustration on board as more and more his sons were informed that their Second Division Commander was not present in Marineford. There is a general aura of anger. The Marines had lied, and brought this war on themselves. Whitebeard crosses his arms, before punching the air. Cracks eminated from his fist, shattering the air. The tides receded, slowly moving away from the shore.
"Get back!" He could hear the Marines warning each other, as they continued to retreat from the shoreline.
"Prepare yourselves, Marine HQ!" He roared once again.
"What's with this rumbling...!?"
"It's coming! The sea quake he just caused...has turned into a tsunami heading straight for us!" He could hear Garp warning those in front.
"Don't go thinking we can overcome him with sheer military force! We might actually be the ones to meet our end..." Sengoku shouted as he continued to order the Marines to move away. It's no use, his mind tells him. Whenever that man punches the air like that, more Marines would fall. His mind casts back to the numerous reports that he had received after each and every conflict with Whitebeard. Close to three thousand Marine deaths could be attributed to him alone, as the waves wreaked their power onto the Marines who had pursued him in the twenty three ships that had disappeared. Whitebeard was truly merciless in his actions.
"This man holds the power to destroy the world!" He shouts back, as Whitebeard prominently displayed a grin as two enormous tsunamis came into sight.
"This war has started! Fight!" That Akainu! He still had the nerve to say that? Did he not see the need to preserve their forces? Was that man so focused on his goal that he failed to see the need to minimise casualties? Your high-handed ways would kill you one day, Sakazuki...
"It's a tsunami!" Just when the wave was about to collapse on them, he could see Aokiji disappearing from his seat, before reappearing right at the edge of the wave itself. With a cry, the two waves froze entirely, and he heaved a sigh in relief. Thankfully, one of them had sense.
"Sir, we need to retreat from this area! Ace isn't here, so fighting the Marines is a waste of time!" The wanderer shouts, furious at this display of arrogance. Why had Whitebeard attacked the Marines? There was no Ace, so there was no reason to battle with the Marines.
"Guararara!" Whitebeard laughed in return, "They should know what happens when they try to capture one of us!" But he could see the steady disappearance of the allied crew. Whitey Bay continued to carve out a path through the ice created by Aokiji, but one by one, Wild Knight Doma, Thunder Lord McGuy, the Decalvan brothers, Vortex Spider Squard disappeared beneath the waters. Convincing all of the allies to do coating was worth it, he thinks, as the memories of the previous hours came to mind.
"Marco! We need all our allies to do coating!" Marco had looked up from the communications room. Goku had suddenly stormed in, placing a few maps on the table. "If our intel is right, all three Admirals are going to be there! Aokiji is sure to freeze the waters, and only Whitey Bay's got a ship capable of navigation on those waters.
"We were planning on doing so." Rakuyo shrugs. "For our invasion to succeed, Pops wants us to go for the undersea route."
"I know that, but rather than popping the bubble after we emerge into Marineford, tell them to leave it on until we get confirmation that Ace is present!"
"Could it be...That we're covering the backs of our allies?" Goku realises. Whitebeard laughs again, and Goku is willing to take that for a confirmation. He breathes a sigh of relief, before transferring his attention and focusing on his own Haki.
Where is Ace? He asks in his head.
Unconscious...Sleepinghelphim...King...He strains his brow, desperately sending his Haki in all directions. Now that he knows Ace isn't here, he needs to give the Whitebeard Pirates their next heading. At least with the Marines, it was simple and well thought out. Now though, he can't tell where his adopted brother is...
He knows he can't stay too long with the crew after this though. Not after the revelation that Shanks had brought about. Even after Roger had conquered the Grand Line, the title of Pirate King was not given until the World Government had proclaimed him so. Thus, he was still able to hold on as long as there wasn't a new Pirate King being recognised. After this, however...
His time is coming soon. Hurry, my friends, find Ace, make sure that this crew survives for the next two years...
...I want to spend some more time with this crew. At least a little while longer.
He was really getting too old for this. He wondered if that was how his former crew had felt when he had died so senselessly on Dawn Island. He had surrendered himself to the authorities, in hopes that like the previous crew before him, they would be left in relative peace. But the Marines who hated him had decided to get rid of the Pirates once and for all.
Goku laughed. How foolish. As if they hadn't learnt from the War of the Best on how not to put an end to the Pirate Age.
There won't be any War of the Best this time. He promises to himself. I will ensure it, even if I were to die permanently.
"Boss, what are we to do with him?" The Chief of Staff doesn't look up from his papers. He is terribly busy these days; even on missions he brings his paperwork to do. It is a tedious task, being the second-in-command of the Revolutionary Army.
He cast his mind back on the man lying on the bed in the infirmary. The ship's doctors have looked at him and pronounced him fine; so has too one of the revolutionary leaders who were in the same state as him.
"Leave him as he is." There is a heavy weight pressing against his mind. He does not like it; he wants his mind clear while he works. However, the unconscious man stirs up forgotten memories and feelings that are at the edge of his consciousness.
"Sabo-boy!" Ivankov calls out. He forces himself to turn away from the documents on his desk, and faces his fellow revolutionary leader. Inazuma is sipping on some fresh wine; the okama king on the other hand is busy fanning himself with a sheaf of papers in an exaggerated motion. The Chief of Staff recognizes the gesture for what it is, and comes out of his room together with the two escapees.
"Thanks for rescuing us. How about Straw Hat-boy?"
"He'll be fine. While we are here rescuing you, Koala and Hack are infiltrating the Marine Bases." When the cat is away, the mice will play. Because of the mobilization at Marineford, the Revolutionary Army finds it a walk in the park to commit espionage on a grander scale than before. Much of the ease is due to their new members, willing and able to work for a group which holds better ideals as compared to the previous organisation they had worked at.
Admiral Akainu is making their recruitment efforts so much easier; his dogmatic ways drives those who are disappointed with the Marines to join their cause. Now, the Chief of Staff knows that should Akainu be promoted to Fleet Admiral, they would have a harder time of maintaining their operations. But the Revolutionary Army he has grown up in for ten years have gone from strength to strength; they have liberated more countries than ever before with the jump in manpower.
If only he could find out how Straw Hat is related to him. The boy had stared at him, screamed his name, and fainted when they had first seen each other, much to the ship's amusement; Ivankov attributes it to the adrenaline boost he was given being not strong enough. Sabo thinks that Straw Hat must have been overly exhausted after his spell in the supposedly impenetrable prison.
Shichibukai Jinbe is at unease. Apparently, Straw Hat's brother, the man named Portgas D. Ace was supposed to have been shipped to Marineford for execution. Yet another name that had appeared to be familiar, in addition to Straw Hat's real name. Sabo thinks that he might have met them in East Blue; that is where the Revolutionary Army had found him. Maybe they could tell him who his family was? Sabo does not know whether he wishes to reconcile with them, as the only thought that remains from before the murky, dark depths of drowning is the strong wish to never go back.
He looks at Monkey D. Luffy, and wonders. Why had Dragon not rescued his son? If what Straw Hat and Ivankov says were to be true, both Portgas and Straw Hat were Dragon's blood. Yet Dragon had not moved, even when proclamations of Portgas' upcoming execution were relayed throughout the world. Dragon would have caught notice at Baltigo; it is what Sabo had done while travelling from Centaurea. In fact, he would have found it suspicious that the News Coo would have gone to him, giving its cargo in exchange for the petty coins and the pat that Sabo had given it. He was not usually approached by the birds, but the News Coo seems to be almost begging for him to read its burden.
The Chief of Staff is curious about how simply reading the article had given him a headache. Admiral Akainu had spoken about how 'Justice would be pursued'. Bullshit. As if the massacre at Ohara as well as a dozen other places whose only crime was to go against the World Government had been 'justice'. Sabo couldn't tell if the man was a psycho, or a genuine zealot whose extremism went beyond the bounds of duty. He had caused trouble for the Revolutionary Army, using above-brutal force in his tactics.
Come to think of it, didn't the Straw Hat help them as well, even before the supposed break out from Impel Down? The Cipher Police 9 were a pain in the posterior for the Revolutionary Army; it's by dumb luck that they've made enemies of the Straw Hats and subsequently had found themselves crash and burn for it. He should probably thank Straw Hat when he's awake, for indirectly alleviating their burden. Right now, their ship was heading towards Marineford because Ivankov insists on helping Straw Hat rescue his brother.
"Boss!" One of his man from the communications room is shouting. "We've got a report! Whitebeard has arrived at Marineford! But Portgas had gone missing!" Both he and Ivankov startle in shock.
"Impossible! Ve've heard him being transported away from the prison!" Ivankov cries, holding his hands to his mouth. "Then vhere could Ace be?"
Sabo paces on the deck. So far, Straw Hat is here with them; Whitebeard is at Marineford with all of his allies. Which means that the two crews most important to Portgas are not responsible for his disappearance.
Where could Portgas be?
The boy is staring at the piece of fabric before him. Next to him, so is a woman, with long dark hair and pretty teal eyes.
"Luffy?" The woman asks as she gently strokes his head. "Do you know what that is?"
"Some mysterious cloth?" He knows that this piece of cloth has something that scares him. A little bit, but not as much as Gramps does. Gramps is old. He punches others with no rhyme or reason. Luffy doesn't even begin to understand the singular person that his grandpa is. Anyway, the woman is still talking to him, so he listens.
"It is. It is the tapestry of time."
"Tae-piss-tree?" He mutters, chewing on his finger. The woman laughs daintily as she scoops him up. "Hey, let me go!"
"Here, sit." He snuggles up to the woman's lap. She is warm, so he grins when his head flexes back after bouncing on the woman. He squirms closer to the woman, her body heat was so soothing and easy to sleep in.
"It's a piece of woven fabric." The woman frowns as she sits up. "But I think you know what it actually is."
"Hmm? It's some mysterious fabric?" Luffy says. Thinking hurts, so it's better to use simpler terms. Anyway, the woman isn't telling him much other than the fact that it's related to a tree. Luffy could plainly see that it's a cloth, not a kind of tree.
"Yes. Yarns are twisted together to form tapestries. Then, the kings of yesteryear would carry this around, to decorate their walls." She lifts her hand, and the mirror before them changes its reflection. Now, rather than a side view of the woman and the boy, it now shows another cloth, with a king sitting on a dais while his subjects moved into and out of the screen. The boy's eyes turned into stars as he watches the bustling activity that is silently appearing.
"SO COOL!" He shouts, stretching his hand towards it.
"It is, isn't it?" The woman chuckles. Then, her face grows serious, like when Ace is talking about his father, or when Sabo is talking about his parents. Luffy doesn't like this, because he associates this expression with bad memories. So he uses his fingers to point the corners of her mouth upwards, such that it is now in a grin.
"Don't be sad." He says. "Be happy!" The woman watches his action with amusement.
"I need to tell you something. Do you know of time travel, Luffy?" The boy shakes his head. She takes out two sticks, and two stone pebbles. Luffy is watching the motion with rapt attention.
"Time moves one way, from the past." She lifts a hand to place a stone into the space between the two sticks. "To the present, and onto the future." She places the first stone onto the space outside the two sticks on the right hand side.
"However, there was a man who did a very different thing." She lifted the second stone from the future, and dropped it into the other space outside the space between the two sticks. It is to the left hand side, where she inscribes 'The past'.
"He went from the future to the past." She points at the stone that is still stuck on the right hand side.
"So his friends were unhappy that he left."
"Why would he do that?" The boy wonders. It's not right! Nakama should always stick by one another.
"He did so, because the other alternative was..." She moved the second stone away from the sticks. "Dying."
"Dying?" He is not familiar with the word, so the woman elaborates, "Gone to heaven."
"So he didn't choose to do so!" He triumphantly says.
"No, he didn't." The woman's shoulders drop. "But his friends wanted him back, so they too followed him." She moved the stones back to the original position. "However, they were too late. The man had gone too far." She moved the second stone far to the left, while the first stone is stuck close to the border between the left space and the centre space. "And his friends couldn't follow him there. So he waited for them." She tapped the stone, akin to how a person walked. Clip, clop, clip, clop.
"Wouldn't he get lonely?" The boy asks, because it's obvious to him that if nakama followed him against the usual direction, he must have wanted to meet them as well.
"He did. And he waited. He waited until he saw his friends again. So this time, when he actually saw them, he didn't think they were real." The woman lifted a hand to her face, and Luffy could see her crying. Uh oh. He's usually the one who cries, so he doesn't know how to deal with someone else who is crying.
"It's okay. Some people do that." He thinks back to when Sabo had died. He had cried for weeks, and was overjoyed to see Sabo peeking from behind him. They had watched Ace together, bathed together, slept together...
Until he accidentally threw a hand into Sabo's face, and Sabo's ghost disappeared. He had started crying again, until Ace had carried him into his room, called him a crybaby, and the two had curled up to one another. Ace had scolded him for being a crybaby, but he had promised to himself, that things like that won't happen again. He won't cross an image with one of his friends, even if they were conjured by his mind.
He tells this to the woman, and she lifts her head, blinking tears away.
"Thank you for telling me this, Luffy." She says, grasping his hand. "Now we know." Before his very eyes, multiple people appear before him. A green-haired man with three swords. A woman with long orange hair in flowing waves, holding a pole. A man with goggles on his brow, and a really, really long nose. A blonde man, with MEAT!
"Meat!" He says, and the swirly eyebrowed man tosses him the raw meat. He chews on it, before watching as new people continued to emerge from the door. A reindeer with a blue nose is standing at the same height as him, hugging him with tears running down its cheeks. A robot man with blue hair and three chins is giving him a thumbs up. A skeleton is dancing as he continues to play Bink's Sake on his violin, while someone else is singing as accompaniment.
"Well, you heard him, right?" The long nosed man says as he heaves his weapon, which seemed to be a slingshot with several green balls hanging off to his shoulder. "If our captain was to truly believe us, we need to get hit by him."
"That so, huh?" The swordsman scratches his head. "Then we might as well make our grand debut out into the world."
"Yohohoho!" The musician cries as he puts down his violin, and pulls out his cane. "Let us ride the waves once again, my friends!"
"Onwards!" The unknown voice cries, "To find One Piece!" The boy recognises this voice. He turns, and...
... Luffy wakes up. He's been lying on the bed, but the ship isn't one belonging to the Marines.
"Iva-chan?" He yells at the top of his voice. "Jinbe? Where are we?" He hurriedly sits up, craning his neck for any sign of his companions.
"Lie down." There is a man in a doctor's suit. "You're on the ship. The Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army is coming over, and he wants to talk to you." Luffy obediently sits, because there is an aura of menace that Nami wears when she is about to punch him. The door to the room is knocked, once, twice, and the man opens the door to admit Ivankov and another man in coat tails, pipe strapped to his back and head adorned by a top hat and goggles.
"Our Chief of Staff wants to talk to you, Straw Hat boy!" Ivankov says as he ushers the other man to the bed.
"Luffy, was it?" The man takes off his top hat, to reveal a face bearing a burn scar on the left side crowned by curly blonde hair. Huh. He had thought that it was supposed to be cut much shorter than that...
"Sabo!" He shouts happily. Then, he remembers his dream, and punches him on the face.
"Huh?" the man dodges the blow, before holding Luffy's hand in his palm. "Wait, what?"
"You're Sabo! I thought you're dead, but you were alive." Tears and snot are running down his cheeks, but he doesn't care. He's got one brother back!
"Sabo, we have to rescue Ace, he's at Marineford!" He says, shaking Sabo with his other arm violently. "Our brother needs us?"
"Brother?" Sabo gives a wide-eyed stare? "I have a brother?" Luffy shakes his head impatiently. Sabo is so slow! Luffy would need to explain things further.
"Ace got captured by Teach! Then the Marines took him, and sent him to Impel Down! Then I wanted to rescue him! But the Marines got to Ace first, and now they're moving him to Marineford! We need to save him!" Sabo is still looking at him in confusion.
"Ace..."
"Yeah, you know! Our brother! We swore to be brothers by exchanging cups of Sakazuki! You were three years older than me but three months younger than Ace! You were going to write a book of our adventures, while Ace was going to be a great pirate! And..." He breathes in.
"I'M GOING TO BE THE KING OF PIRATES!"
"CLAM UP, STRAW HAT!" Buggy's voice said in irritation. "Some of us are trying to rest here!"
"King of Pirates?" Sabo whispers. He glances at the window outside.
"How do you know me?" It's really heartbreaking to hear the note of confusion. Looks like Professor Luffy has to explain things further. He stands up, ignoring the protests of the doctor, and rummages through the newspaper lying on the doctor's desk, before pulling out Ace's bounty.
"Here! Ace, our brother!" Sabo blinks once, twice, before falling over.
"HEY!"
"Isn't that a Revolutionary Ship?"
"It is! Surround it, we have got some pride to salvage."
"Do you think we'll get a promotion?"
"Of course! Did you not see that man smoking there? It's Crocodile, one of the former Shichibukai!"
"So it is! 'Star Clown' Buggy from East Blue is there?"
"Really?" the pair of binoculars were passed over to another. "Well, I'll be damned. He raided my hometown, he's not getting away from me. "
"All in favour of chasing that ship to Marineford? We'll put someone else on the execution block instead."
"Aye!"
A/N: Marineford Arc: Start!
Now, where is Ace? Not with the Marines, nor with Whitebeard, nor with Luffy or the Revolutionary Army.
I'm planning an SBS! Fire all questions at me! The more humorous, the better!
Also, something went wrong with my reviews. Your reviews aren't showing up even when they are posted. I have asked Support to look into this, but in the meantime, please PM me so that I can see them!
Jarjaxle: Who is the one? Robin's plan worked only half way through, but it looks like Luffy comes to the rescue! Or not.
Spritely: Thank you very much!
