Chapter 17
Ace
Consciousness came slowly, little streaks of light through his mind until the sun rose and he could open his eyes. The room was dark. His shoulders ached—no, his whole body ached. His thoughts sludged through his brain like magma, slow and burning. Where was he?
His mouth tasted like copper and muck. He worked his jaw for a few seconds and then spat. That little action took most of his energy and didn't even help the taste. Ace tried to free his hands—they were suspended above his head in chains—but couldn't. There was no strength in his limbs, and his wrists were circles of painful fire, chafed raw and coated in dried blood. He didn't have the energy to lift his head. He didn't have any energy at all.
The floor offered no answers. He was on his knees. Still clothed, but his jumpsuit was gone. Streaks of black decorated what skin he could see. After staring at those streaks in incomprehension for a minute, Ace realized they were probably blood. If he moved his shoulders a little, he could feel little shifts along the surface of his arms, as though dried blood was cracking and flaking off.
He blinked. The dark stone floor was cold, which was strange, because Ace was still burning. With an effort of will, Ace lifted his head. The only light came from outside the cell, because this was a cell, there were the bars, creating distinct shadows that stopped just before they reached Ace's knees. He couldn't hear anyone. He couldn't see anyone.
Ace let his head fall and closed his eyes. The black welcomed him, tried to pull him under, but he resisted.
Where was he, and how had he gotten here? What was the last thing he remembered?
The mission with Marco, obviously. The…the route, through the Grand Line—they had—they were going through it. Ace had been—he'd been piloting, with Marco calling out warnings from the common room with some weird projections he'd programmed into the holotable. Things had been going fine—the Grand Line hadn't been nearly as difficult as Ace had expected—but then…something…something went wrong.
There was…it…
Ace could remember the seconds after. Yelling, struggling to control the ship, blaring warnings about hull integrity and flashing lights. A flashing light outside the ship. Then…
An explosion. Another one. Mines. There had been mines in the Grand Line. But that still left a lot unaccounted for. There was a massive blank space in his memory. Ace searched harder.
The ship had been torn apart in the second explosion. Ace had been knocked unconscious by the blast, but his jumpsuit had protected him. He remembered waking up, spinning, in space. The explosion had launched him out of the Grand Line, towards Farrow.
Had he landed on—
No, no, there was…the moon. He'd landed on the moon. Bovekk, probably, because he…he remembered fire.
Ace shuddered. The fire—it was in him. He could feel it.
"Are you finally awake?"
Ace didn't react to the voice. He didn't have the energy. The speaker continued anyway.
"Well, I know you are—cameras picked up you moving around. There's no pretending here."
Ace didn't bother to hide his scoff.
"Oh?"
"The only one pretending here is you," Ace said through a parched throat. "I'm the one in chains."
"So you do talk."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
The man didn't respond. When Ace forced his eyes open and looked up, no one was there. Had he imagined the whole thing? He wasn't even sure if he'd said that last question out loud. Everything was blurry, indistinct.
He let his head drop. The darkness surged and receded, but the fire never faded. He was sweating, he knew that, but there was nothing he could do to cool himself down. Ace tried to find refuge in his own mind, but sleep eluded him. He hovered in a state of semi-consciousness. In a brief moment of sanity, he recognized that he was severely dehydrated. After that, everything turned hazy.
The next time Ace was aware, he wasn't alone. Someone was tipping his chin up, and his mouth was blissfully full of water. Ace swallowed greedily, hoping in some part of his mind that this water would drench the fire within.
It didn't, and the water was taken away all too soon, alongside the hand holding up Ace's head.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," a familiar voice said. Ace, gasping a little, stared at a pair of black boots. "Nearly lost you."
"What…a damn shame," Ace managed. His hair hung over his eyes, full of sweat and oil.
"Do you know where you are?"
Ace closed his eyes. "Who are you?"
"I asked first."
Ace didn't respond. He wasn't saying anything until he knew where he was and who had him. If it was the UBMC, he wasn't saying a damned thing. He wouldn't risk his identity being known. The other man sighed.
"Listen. I'm not with the UBMC."
"Prove it," Ace said without moving.
"How the hell am I supposed to prove it? Just trust me."
"I don't trust that easy."
"I hadn't noticed. Let me ask again: do you know where you are?"
He was still so thirsty. "Water."
"You're really in no position to bargain."
Ace waited. After a few seconds, the man grumbled something, and the water was back. Ace kept his eyes closed in a small act of defiance until the man took the water bottle away.
Only to suddenly throw the rest of the water it contained in his face. Ace's eyes shot open and he spluttered, water dripping off his eyelashes and sliding over his skin.
"The hell was that for?" Ace spluttered, now fully awake. The man, whose face and body were completely hidden by a black and blue jumpsuit, merely inclined his head. After a second, Ace realized that the water wasn't sticking around. Incredulous, he looked up at his right arm, which was glistening with water—evaporating water. Steam curled from his skin in gentle wisps. Within a minute, he was dry again. Even the bloody remnants had dried and shriveled off.
"What the fuck," Ace said.
The man crouched down in front of him. "See, that's what I would like to know. We find you on a moon after repeated reports of unusual energy spikes, and you proceed to attack the rescue team. And the team that tries to extract the rescue team. And the team we sent to finally put you down."
Ace curled his hands into fists even though it made the manacles dig into the tendons on the insides of his wrists. "You tried to kill me?"
"It was the proper response when you wouldn't calm down," the man replied. "And the key point is tried. You are remarkably difficult to kill."
Ace scowled. "I don't remember any of that."
"I can assure you that I am not making any of it up. I was on the team that finally subdued you."
"Why not just kill me?"
The man tipped his head. Ace couldn't see any hint of his expression, but the man's tone came out even. "Three reasons: one, you ran out of energy before you could do any damage to my team; two, we found your IPSC identification card in your jumpsuit, Ace D. Portgas, and everything your history entails does not match what we have observed. Three, well…my suit is reading the current temperature of this room as just under 100 degrees Celsius."
Ace stared. The man continued, heedless of Ace's growing incomprehension.
"There is only one conclusion to make from your earlier behavior, which is a far cry from the way you are acting now—and your current physical state. You, my friend, have eaten a Devil Fruit, and that is something very rare indeed."
"You're insane," Ace said. "Devil Fruits are a myth. A fairy tale."
The man stood, producing a key from one of the pockets in his jumpsuit. Ace craned his head back to watch him insert the key into the lock between the manacles around Ace's wrists. "What are you doing?"
"Proving a theory. If I'm right, you'll know."
"The hell is that supposed to…mean…"
Ace trailed off the second the manacles opened, dropping his wrists down to his lap. The heat inside him surged and a hunger that wasn't his swept through Ace with such viciousness that Ace gasped.
"What…the fuck," he bit out between clenched teeth. The weakness was gone but something else's strength was trying to swallow him whole. Ace battled against it with all he had, but it was a losing fight. "Put them back on," he gasped.
The man hesitated.
"Now!" Ace shouted. The fire surged, dancing across his—no, it was his skin, it wasn't burning him, he was burning, he was the fire, and the fire—the fire wanted—he wanted—to burn—
Something yanked his arms up. The manacles snapped back into place and Ace slumped down, the other presence receding into the depths of his mind. His limbs trembled, and he held down a wave of nausea
"Believe me now?" the man asked.
Ace couldn't even lift his bowed head. He closed his eyes. After several seconds spent getting a grip on his breathing, Ace finally figured out how to speak again.
"Yeah." There was no arguing against the fire he'd seen flickering along his limbs. Ace swallowed, drew in a shaky breath, and looked up. "How do I get rid of it?"
The man didn't move. Then he laughed, a little incredulously. "You don't."
"The hell I can't."
The man raised his hands. "I am not saying it's a matter of will. In all recorded cases of Devil Fruit possessions, the person afflicted has never been able to remove the devil or its effects, except by death." Ace stiffened. The man's helmet hid any expression, but Ace got the impression he was being peered at. "You don't want to die, do you?"
Ace searched for any sign of emotion, of expression, but the man's opaque helmet gave away nothing. Ace let his head fall; his neck and shoulders burned from the effort of keeping his head up.
His whole body burned. He was hot, always, a cool outer skin melting from the heat beneath. He hadn't noticed, at first, with the chains and the exhaustion and the pain, but there was—there was something else, in his head, something waiting. It had come out in that brief moment when the man released the cuffs but now—now it was constant, straining against the seal it couldn't break. Emotions and desires that weren't his own swirled around in Ace's head.
"Well?" the man prodded.
Ace didn't give an answer. He didn't have one. After a minute of stifling silence, the man finally left.
The next time the man came around, he brought water. Lots and lots of water. Ace drank until his thirst was finally satisfied. The second he was done, he asked the question that had been echoing in his mind for hours.
"Where's Marco?"
The man paused in the process of screwing the caps back on his thermoses. "Who?"
"Marco," Ace repeated. "He was my crewmate. Where is he?"
The man tilted his head. "I'm afraid that you are the only person we encountered. We were not exactly sending out search parties. If not for your actions on Bovekk, we would not even have found you."
Ace gritted his teeth. "Can you look into it? I need to know if he's alive."
"And why would I do that?"
Ace strained against the chains, incensed by the man's bland tone. "Cut the shit. He's my friend, you asshole."
The man lifted his hands. "Calm down."
"No," Ace growled. "You look and you tell me what you find or I burn this whole place down."
"Listen to yourself!" the man snapped. "Do you even hear what you're saying?"
"I don't care. I need to know about Marco."
"And do you always threaten to murder people who don't immediately give you what you want?"
Ace hesitated, and then felt something warm trickling down his arms. He glanced up. Fresh blood was flowing from his wrists, where his straining had made the chains break the tentative scabbing there. He hadn't even felt it.
A flash of fear grounded him. Ace forced himself to relax, to take a deep breath and center himself. Only then did he look back at the man. "Please," he said. "Please, I—he's my friend. It was my job to keep him safe."
After a silent contest of wills, the man sighed. "All right, I'll look into it. But don't get your hopes up."
Ace, out of energy, could only twist his lips into a bitter smile.
"What does it feel like?"
Ace lifted his head. The man was sitting across from him. He gestured at Ace's sweat- and blood-soaked skin, his hand just missing the three thermoses he'd brought in.
"You're pumping out heat like a furnace. Your body is clearly still trying to cool itself down. Do you feel hot?"
Ace bared his teeth. "Of course it's hot. It's in my blood."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to be insensitive."
Ace let his head fall. His shoulders should've been in agony, his arms too, from being suspended, but they weren't. His whole body wasn't…wasn't right. The muscle wasn't muscle, the bone wasn't bone, the skin…wasn't skin. It was all—it was all shifting. Melting. Reforming. If it was supposed to hurt, Ace couldn't feel it.
"Of course you didn't," Ace muttered. "Hate ta…offend the guy chained to your prison wall."
"It's necessary."
Ace spat. "Like I care."
He heard the folding of fabric. "I still would like to know your current mental state, Mr. Portgas."
Ace snorted. "Mr. Portgas?" he repeated. "You're really trying to get on my good side. I don't even know your name."
"I am trying to get a read on you. Would you prefer to be called Ace?"
Something about the way the man said his name tickled Ace's memory. The fire reacted, swirling sharper for just a second. Ace gritted his teeth. "No. Just Portgas. None of that 'mister' bullshit."
"As you say, Portgas. Have you thought about your condition?"
Ace wanted to laugh. Would've, if he'd had the energy. "If by 'condition' you mean uncontrollable, homicidal devil slowly taking over my body and mind that will eventually kill me, then yeah, I've thought about it."
"Kill you?" Ace glanced up in response to the genuine confusion in the man's voice. "There is nothing predetermined about possessing a Devil Fruit. It will not, by itself, kill you. From what I understand, the devil inside very much wants to keep you alive. You are a vessel for its powers, not a casket."
"Is that supposed to help?"
"It's all a matter of perspective, Mi—ah, Portgas. Devil Fruits can be controlled. They have been in the past. From what I understand, it is a matter of will. Of grounding yourself. Death is not the only answer to this question."
Ace forced himself to take a slow breath. "I never said that it was."
"Then I respect your tenacity. I must be going now, but—"
Ace glanced up. "But?"
The man shook his head. "Never mind." He gathered up the thermoses. "Good day."
Ace watched him leave, tracking him with his eyes. "It's always a good day 'round here," he muttered, bitterness that was probably his own sweeping through him.
If Luffy could see him now.
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