A/N: I could not resist this one, especially because it was the only point that Ace was going to be able to get a POV in this fic. I wrote this one in a break from my NaNoWriMo story that had was giving me writers block, only 4 days in, so it was nice that it just flowed out.
As always, thanks for the faves and follows.
ilovecartoonsgirl: Thanks. Chopper is adorable so I'm glad I was able to put a little into his chapter.
Arxhaelogist: Thank you. I was happy to get to Chopper, and I felt with the crew getting larger and together for longer, it allowed those who were now more settled on the crew to help the new members.


Ace settled back into the Striker with a small smile. It was good to see his troublesome little brother again after so long, and get a glimpse of the crew he had built for himself. It had only been a short reunion for them and he hadn't had a proper introduction to each of the members because both parties had their own goals that needed to be met and time constraints on them, but it had been enough for a rough idea of things.

Ace had always been good at picking up nuances in groups of people and picking up dynamics in various relationships, blame it on his isolation from much of society and feeling he needed to be able to know the reactions of the people around him in case something slipped. This had served him well not only in his childhood but also in his time as the Spade's captain and even more so as a Whitebeard pirate, and was also the reason why he was so annoyed and had felt so much responsibility that he didn't pick up the true danger of Teach until after he made his move. But he refused to allow that traitor ruin his mood from seeing his brother.

Better to think of the odd group that had gathered around his brother and their reactions to him and each other. That was a much better subject to ponder.

The muscular, green hair man with three swords at his hip, the orange haired girl who had spoken most often for the crew-members, the long-nosed boy whose name sounded vaguely familiar, the small, fluffy creature, the sharply dressed blond and refined blue haired girl. Certainly an interesting group, especially given the size and how far they had come together so fast, it had only been a few months since Luffy had turned seventeen.

But it was the way in which the crew had interacted that had caught Ace's interest, and it seemed almost completely subconscious too, it seemed this crew may be destined for greatness from the brief glimpse that he had gotten. Ace had always known that Luffy was going to do something with his life as a pirate and that when Luffy thought of the pirate he wanted to be it was based on Shanks and his crew, but he didn't think he would be able to find the right pieces for such a crew so quickly, and this was only the outline of the beginning.

It was obvious that Luffy was the Captain of his little crew but that the crew had no problem letting him know if he should have done something or reminding him of simple facts, which as his older brother, Ace knew he needed in order to remember certain lifesaving things. It was also obvious to Ace that although the orange-haired girl did most of the talking, she was not the next down in the chain of command on the ship. She was a highly respected and positioned crew-member but she was not the first mate.

Ace may have made the mistake of believing that she was, if he hadn't seen the looks directed at the mostly silent green haired man at the moments Ace had been introduced, had asked them to look after his little brother and asked if Luffy wanted to join the Whitebeards. The kind of looks that he had seen given by the Red-Haired pirates to Benn Beckman when Shanks was saying, or doing, something outrageous, or the Whitebeard pirates directed at Marco when Whitebeard didn't seem to be making any sense to the rest of the crew, or a bit of history was brought up. Glances looking for reassurance of the situation from the next most powerful person on the crew, the first mate.

But what impressed Ace most about the entire situation wasn't that the swordsman didn't once seem to waver but that the seeking of reassurance wasn't conscious, that it was looked for and received without any of the participants seeming to realise what had happened. This was something Ace had noticed on a lot of prominent crews, the making of a crew from just a group of many individuals out for themselves to a working unit that relied on each other without doubts, without even thinking of it.

Yes, if that crew continued as it was and any new additions followed on, they would go very far. His brother was going to make a mark on the seas, and Ace wasn't yet sure whether to be proud or concerned.


A/N2: Also I noticed that one of the reviews I got from the last chapter, that I got the email for, wasn't showing on this site, so if this has happened previously and I have not replied to your review, sorry, I usually reply from the review list on the site.