Two more chapters to go!

Kind of. I mean, two more chapters for me to write. There are still, like, 8 more chapters to go after this one. I just have to—well, you get the point. Next update should be within the next few days if everything goes as planned.

Chapter 11

Unfortunately, Ace, Luffy, and Little Ace had little time to even think about their encounter with the First Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates. They spent the rest of the day preparing for the inevitable Marine sweep of the island. It was highly unlikely that the Marines would go into the forest, but the brothers prepared a backup shelter just in case and even warned Dadan and her bandits about what was coming the next day.

Once their preparations were complete, they sat outside the bandit hideout. Luffy had found some beetles and was playing with them while Ace and his younger counterpart played cards. Well, tried to.

Ace had picked up the cards while in Fuusha Village and had forgotten about them until just that morning (he usually forgot about the things he stuck in the blue pouch looped around his leg; Thatch had pranked him more than a few times by putting chocolate in it, which melted very quickly thanks to Ace's abnormally warm body). At the moment, he was trying to teach his younger counterpart solitaire, a game that one of his old Spade Pirate crewmates had taught him while they were sailing to another island. The guy had only done it because Ace had been restlessly pacing across the deck, full of excitement and anticipation for the adventures yet to come.

"If you get an ace, you put it here," Ace explained, demonstrating. Little Ace watched and then repeated what Ace did, only for the latter to sigh. "No, you can only do that if you come across an ace every three cards. You can't just pick it out of the pile."

"That's stupid."

"It's how the game works!"

"Still stupid."

Ace didn't fault the kid; he'd thought the same thing at first. What was the point of just wasting time? But his crewmember—Splint had been his nickname and Ace had never forced him to explain its origins—had been patient and forced Ace to learn the game. It was calming, and Ace had found quickly that it organized his thoughts in a way that pacing and running a hand through his hair didn't.

"I understand that, but trust me, it'll come in handy later."

"How?"

"Can't say."

Little Ace rolled his eyes. "Fine, whatever. I bet I'll beat you soon."

Ace grinned, accepting the challenge. "Really?"

"All I need to do is have more cards in those ace piles than you do, right? That's not hard."

"Keep being cocky and you'll lose right away," Ace warned, but he was still smiling. After all, he'd been pretty good at the game right off the bat and was confident that he could beat himself. It all came down to a mix of luck, planning, and observation. He had a decent mix of the latter two and figured he could fake the first well enough. After all, he'd been playing this game for years whereas Little Ace had just—

"I win."

"Wait, what?"

Blinking, Ace examined the game that he'd been playing on autopilot. With a sinking feeling in his chest he realized that his younger self had managed to put all his cards in the ace piles. Ace groaned, running a hand through his hair and setting his cards down.

Little Ace, for his part, had his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. "What, you a sore loser? After all, you just got beaten by a first-timer. Lame."

"I'm not lame!"

"Lame!" Luffy called from where he was still playing with bugs.

"You're not even a part of this conversation, Lu!"

Brotherly Bonds

Thanks to his earlier stunt in the kitchens, Ace was now welcome in the bandit base, and they even encouraged him to help with cooking since he was better than most (if not all) of the chefs there. They were bandits, after all. No one had bothered to learn advanced cooking skills while on the run and living in the middle of a forest.

The Marines had come that day, doing a thorough sweep of Edge Town and High Town as well as the Gray Terminal in search of "an elusive Whitebeard Pirate", or something along those lines. Either way, Ace found it funny when a patrol got too curious and journeyed into the forest, only to get chased out by the extremely territorial beasts that lurked within. They were East Blue Marines, after all; they weren't exactly strong. Reinforcements from stronger areas would take way too long to arrive, anyway, and even the people at Marine Headquarters knew that Whitebeard would be long gone by the time an admiral or two showed up.

Even so, Ace felt inexplicable relief when the Marines left. He still felt a faint burn in his chest whenever he saw the all-too-familiar blue and white uniform.

Now, however, the young man was trying to get as much meat into his mouth as possible before Luffy's impressively quick hands managed to steal it away. Little Ace was having similar difficulties and the bandits nearby had all but given up on actually having dinner, since Luffy's stomach appeared to be nigh bottomless.

"Lu, I was gonna eat that!" Ace growled, trying to grab Luffy's wrist before the boy could steal a particularly juicy leg of meat.

"Too slow!" Luffy declared, stretching his limb and taking a massive bite of the food. Scowling, Ace retaliated by stealing some of the food from Luffy's plate, only for that food to be taken by his younger self. What ensued was an all-out battle for dinner, with more than a few unfortunate bandits getting dragged into the fray.

"Stop stealing my dinner!" Little Ace snapped as Ace valiantly struggled to reclaim his meal.

"Oh, stop complaining!" Ace retorted, reaching for one of the few remaining pieces of food. "You're gonna be a pirate; who cares about stealing?"

""m g'nnabepirathking!" Luffy half-shouted around the food crammed in his mouth.

"Hey, you brats!" Dadan roared as a particularly large bone—picked clean thanks to the three local black holes—smacked her in the face. "Watch where you're . . . throwing . . ." The bandit leader abruptly went quiet as and face paled.

Ace froze, a strange, foreboding feeling washing over him and causing goose bumps to rise on his skin. Suddenly, he wasn't hungry anymore. Hell, his instincts were telling him to run, and run far. There was only one person capable of making him feel this way.

Glancing discreetly to either side, Ace noticed that Luffy and Little Ace wore similar expressions, both of their faces full of dread. They almost looked sick.

He really didn't want to turn around. Really, really didn't want to turn around. There was something horrible behind him, something absolutely monstrous and equally dangerous. Turning around would be a very, very bad idea.

But, for some reason, he still found himself slowly turning his neck, as though prolonging the discovery would help in any way. There was something dark in the doorway, a malicious light in its eyes, and the dread in Ace's stomach multiplied tenfold. It only worsened when he heard the voice.

"Pirates, eh? Dadan, just what have you been teaching these boys?"

"G—Garp!" Dadan all but squeaked. It would have been funny to Ace had he not been nursing the new bump on his head, courtesy of a Fist of Love that he had no chance to dodge. Little Ace and Luffy were in much the same predicament and all three were groaning under their breath.

"I told you to stop them from becoming pirates!" Garp roared, bopping the three boys another time and sending each one to the floor. Most of the bandits in the room had already fled, fearing the wrath of Garp the Hero, and with good reason.

"What do you expect from a bunch of mountain bandits?" Dadan spat. Garp's eyebrow twitched.

"What?"

"Oh, we've been trying so hard! We can't believe they haven't taken our lessons to heart! Every day; 'don't be a pirate, Ace, Luffy!' 'Be like your grandfather'!"

Garp snorted but let the matter go as he turned his attention back to the three boys. "All right, you three. As punishment for saying that horrible word, we're going to train. Ace, Luffy, Big Ace, we're going out."

"Now?" Luffy groaned. "I don't wanna!"

"What was that, you brat?"

Luffy whimpered, ducking behind Ace, who flinched when Garp's gaze landed on him. "Lu," he hissed, "what are you doing?"

"You're a shield!" The youngest declared quietly. Then he looked at Ace with his big, round eyes and Ace felt his resistance melting. "Unless you don't wanna be . . . then I'll just run."

"You wouldn't make it very far," Little Ace pointed out, wincing and rubbing his head. "'Cause this crazy old geezer would chase you down like a madman."

"I told you to call me Grandpa! Show some respect!"

Little Ace managed to dodge the first fist but got nailed by the second. He lay sprawled on the ground, clearly dazed and dizzy. Luffy immediately darted out from behind Ace, his mouth already opening to defend his older brother, but Ace pulled him out of the way right as Garp's fist careened through the space where Luffy's head would have been.

"And YOU," the marine began, "should think before you speak! You're going to be a great marine! Not some thieving pi . . . rate." It finally seemed to register with Garp that he'd missed his target. Ace knew from experience that that never happened. Ace stared at Garp and the aging marine stared right back.

The silence went on for almost a full awkward minute, during which the bandits stealthily left the room, only making enough noise to wake half the forest instead of the whole thing. Little Ace and Luffy were edging to the door, but Ace felt at least a little touched that they hadn't started sprinting yet. They were attached enough to him to risk Garp's wrath; that was something, wasn't it?

Oh, Garp was still staring at him. Ace swallowed; he remembered how his grandfather had acted in Marineford. He understood why Garp was such an overprotective idiot, but—

"I have no sympathy for criminals . . . But for family, I do."

That didn't make him any less irritated with the guy. Or mildly afraid of his Fist of Love. (Having a 550,000,000-beri bounty meant nothing in the face of a Fist of Love.)

Speaking of which, had he been hitting them with Haki the entire time? It would certainly explain why his punches were so damn strong.

"Who the hell are you?" The marine hero asked after a beat. Ace resisted the urge to face-fault, since Garp had literally referred to him as "Big Ace" less than a minute ago.

Silence reigned for a solid ten seconds while Ace scrambled to think up an actual response. His grandpa didn't recognize him? Had he really changed that much?

A small voice in the back of his mind reminded Ace that he couldn't really blame Garp; he definitely looked a lot different than he had before, and Garp hadn't seen him for a few months before Ace left Dawn Island. The marines had been getting busier and busier as time went on as newer pirates caused more and more trouble, so Garp hadn't been able to visit as much. Not that Ace was complaining.

Much to Ace's surprise, it was Luffy who spoke up. "He's our cousin!"

"Twice removed," Little Ace added, quickly stepping in front of Luffy to shield him from Garp's view.

"Cousin?" Garp repeated, looking at Ace with a far more dangerous expression. Ace swallowed. "Twice removed?"

Ace thought that maybe this hadn't been the greatest of his ideas. No doubt Garp thought he was some kind of impostor out to get the two boys, and at worst the marine suspected that Ace knew their heritages and would want to . . . eliminate the potential threat.

"Oh, fuck," Ace said, never breaking eye contact with the rather irate Vice Admiral standing a step away. Garp grinned. It was a grin that promised pain.

"I would start running."

Ace had two options. He could stay and fight, exposing his ability and the fact that he was from the future to all the bandits watching from the other doorways, or he could run like hell and have a talk with Garp in the forest. They would fight anyway, of course, but there was a far smaller chance of serious collateral damage. Option two sounded much better.

So Ace dove past Garp, getting to his feet and sprinting out into the encroaching night, hearing rather than seeing Garp turn to give chase. He could also hear Luffy and Little Ace calling his name, and hoped that the two wouldn't follow. Their fear of Garp could probably keep them in place until the worst of the encounter was over.

Ace sprinted as though his life depended on it, tearing through the forest and simply burning through any vines or roots that tried to trip him up. He kept his eyes open and his senses alert, searching for a clearing that would allow him to talk to Garp—at a safe distance.

It took almost a minute but Ace finally found what he was looking for. He flew across it, eventually settling on the opposite side, giving him a fair bit of distance from the tree line where Garp would probably emerge. Sure enough, the marine came crashing through the underbrush mere seconds later, stopping in the clearing when he realized that Ace was no longer running.

"Finally gave up, eh?" Garp asked, grinning and straightening to his full height. "Smart. Now tell me what you were doing with those two brats."

Ace put up his hands, trying to appear nonthreatening. "Calm down, Gramps." Then he realized what he said and cursed.

"Gramps?" Garp repeated, his eyes narrowing. Ace felt his position getting very perilous very quickly and he hastened to fix it.

"Sorry, it slipped out. Um—shit. Don't know what to say."

"You've got three seconds."

"Uh—"

"Two."

"Fucking hell, I need more time than that!"

"One."

"Fine! I'm from the future! I'm Ace!"

The seconds stretched for longer than seconds should have been capable of stretching and the very air held its breath. Ace and Garp stared at each other, with Ace silently willing his adoptive grandfather to understand. Abruptly, Garp broke eye contact, rubbing his beard and looking up at the sky.

"Gramps?" Ace ventured, unsure what was going through the marine's mind. The older man sighed. In that moment, he looked so tired, nothing like the brash, confident Vice Admiral Ace knew so well.

"I came here under the impression that a Whitebeard Pirate could be threatening my grandsons," he said, though it was impossible to tell whether his words were meant for Ace or not. "I get here, the Whitebeard Pirates are gone, and I find a strange man claiming to be my grandson's cousin eating with them. The mark on his back identifies him as a Whitebeard Pirate, but I've never seen him before. Then the brat runs away, stops, and tells me he's from the future."

"It sounds a bit unbelievable when you put it like that," Ace admitted. "But it's the truth."

"Is it now?" Garp's voice was decidedly more dangerous than it had been before. "Then would you care to explain why you bear the mark of a pirate instead of the proud crest of the marines?"

Ace swallowed, his mouth going suddenly dry. "Luck?"

"WRONG ANSWER!"

Brotherly Bonds

Twenty Fists of Love and three libraries' worth of cursing later, Ace and Garp were sitting across from each other on fallen trees, the clearing a mess of charred nature and splintered nature. The entire forest probably would have caught fire had Ace not been actively trying to avoid that outcome. Still, there had been far too many close calls.

Garp was strong, dammit. But now they were both tired, Garp mostly because his endurance had been steadily declining over the years (though he made a point of the fact that he could still kick the asses of wannabe pirates any day) and Ace because he was only twenty and hadn't even fully developed his Haki despite spending almost three years in the Grand Line—the New World, no less.

"So you're really him, huh?" Garp said, giving Ace one of his rare I'm-actually-serious looks that unnerved the boy so much. Ace just nodded as he prodded a bruise already turning black that hadn't been on his arm five minutes before. "Heh. Of course a troublemaking brat like you would go to Whitebeard."

"He came to me, actually," Ace said, grinning as he recalled that fateful day, when he had fought Jinbe to a standstill and still had the energy to try to give his crew a chance to escape the Yonko that had just pulled up to the island out of motherfucking nowhere.

"Oh? How'd that go?"

"Got my ass kicked," Ace admitted almost cheerfully.

Garp let out a sharp bark of laughter. "'Course you did, brat! Whitebeard was on par with Roger! He's not a man you can defeat!"

Ace's face reddened slightly at his grandpa's amusement. "It worked out in the end!"

Garp abruptly stopped laughing. "Well, no it didn't."

"Eh?"

"Why would you be here if it did?"

Ace's blood ran cold and it must have showed on his face because Garp held up his hands. "I'm not going to ask what happened. Hell, I don't really care. But don't think that just because you're a pirate in the future I'm going to stop trying to make you into a marine!"

"I'm going to be a pirate! I am a pirate, dammit!"

"You're going to be a marine!"

"Pirate!"

"Marine!"

"Pirate!"

"Marine!"

"Pirate!"

"Marine!"

"Pirate!"

"Marine!"

"Pirate!"

"MARINE!"

"PIRATE!"

The two growled at each other, having gotten way too close and personal at some moment during their shouting match, to the point where their foreheads were quite literally pressed together. The tension in the air was palpable and any wild animals with at least a shred of base intelligence had long since fled the area.

Then Garp started laughing, slapping Ace on the back hard enough to send the pirate staggering. "You never change!"

"I could say the same thing, damn old man!" Ace muttered. Unfortunately, Garp heard him.

"What was that?"

"N-nothing!"

"ACE! AAAAAACEEEEEEEE!"

"Quiet, Luffy! What if the old geezer hears you?"

"BUT I WANNA FIND ACE!"

"Luffy, shut up!"

"ACE!"

Ace winced at the sound of something slamming against flesh and didn't feel particularly surprised when Luffy came barreling out of the underbrush, quite literally rolling to a stop right between Ace and Garp. Not for the first time, Ace cursed Luffy's horrible timing. Garp was right there! He'd probably go after Luffy!

Little Ace stumbled out of the bushes a moment later and then froze at the sight of Garp. His gaze then went to Luffy, to his older self, to Garp, and then back to Luffy.

"You idiot!" He snapped, quickly marching over to Luffy. At first glance, he appeared to be genuinely angry, but Ace noted that his younger self had carefully moved so that he was between Luffy and Garp, cutting off the man's sight.

"Oh, good," Garp said. He sounded entirely too happy, and Ace didn't like the look on his face at all. "You two are just in time for training."

All three gulped. Ace could only hope that his intangibility would save him. But, knowing his luck, Garp's Haki would render his abilities useless.

Brotherly Bonds

"W—wait," Ace grunted, staggering to his feet and resisting the urge to prod at what was going to be a mosaic of bruises on his stomach the next morning. Garp turned, one eyebrow raised.

"What do you want, brat? That's all the training for today."

"Haki," Ace said, finally getting his balance. "I want to master Haki, but I don't know where to start."

Garp looked thoughtful; Ace tried not to be weirded out. "Haki, eh? It's a matter of will. Never cared to learn anything else about the details; I just did it."

Ace wasn't surprised, but he supposed that Garp's most recent bout of training had helped Ace with his Armament Haki; about one in twelve times he'd managed to soften or even nullify one of Garp's punches. Ace opened his mouth to say something else, but Garp had already disappeared into the forest. Sighing, the pirate turned to Luffy and Little Ace, wincing when he saw their conditions. He wasn't much better, of course, but his pain tolerance and stamina had increased dramatically over the years.

"I should probably fix you two up," Ace muttered, gently picking them up. He arranged them in the most comfortable positions he could and then headed off into the forest, warning away any animals with a simple glare.

A/N And there's the Garp encounter you people have been waiting for. I'll admit, I got stuck about halfway through, but it worked out in the end.

Reviews:

Guest: Marco isn't going to tell anyone; he might mention the fact that the kid he encountered on the island might make it to the Grand Line one day, but he won't go into details.

XxFire-PhoenixxX: I can't seem to track Luffy down at the moment, so the kisses'll have to wait.

Johnny Spectre: See previous response, plus: The Whitebeard Pirates couldn't stay on the island for very long because they had business to attend to in the Grand Line, meaning that they really didn't have time to have Ace board their ship and talk things out.

Narya Anima: There will be a meeting in a later chapter. It's shaping up to be . . . very interesting.

Nala1220: I don't plan on doing a sequel to this. As for why I didn't have the little ones on the Moby Dick, see Johnny Spectre's response.

Guest: Ace couldn't go with Marco; for one thing, it would've been extraordinarily taxing emotionally for him, since no one on the ship knows who he is. He also wasn't willing to leave Little Ace and Luffy just yet; he wanted to spend more time with them.

Man, I love hearing from you guys. A few reviews even gave me ideas in the past, which is why this story is several chapters longer than I thought it was going to be in the beginning.

-RoR

Please review.