Chapter 18: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
This story is written by Zialema (original in French). English translation by 3A07.
I have the author's permission.
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Ace picked up the authorizations and could not refrain a sadistic smile when Malfoy handed his.
Like he did that morning very morning with the First years, Ace presented what was Haki.
When it came to demonstrate the Conqueror's Haki, however, no one volunteered.
"Oooooooh, no one... I guess I'll have to name a volunteer..." said Ace with a sad face.
He scanned the group of student who unconsciously swallowed, before Hiken's smile spread wide on his face, having spotted his prey.
"Draco Malfoy, you shall be my guinea pig. Don't worry, you won't be hurt..."
Malfoy blanched. He looked for help within the class, but could not find anyone. He went to the middle of the room as Ace required and waited.
Ziioooooon...
Bam!
Malfoy passed out, covered in cold sweats, after having pissed himself.
Ace had fun to wake him up with a few slaps, but once the blond woke, he ran out out the room screaming.
"Can someone tell him that if he doesn't come to the next class, everything he knows about Haki will disappear, and no one else than me will be able to teach it to him?" asked Ace. "Alright, explanations are done, let's start the training!"
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Ace stayed back, watching the incident happening. When spells where cast, the pirate reacted.
Everyone was surprise to see him standing between Harry and Malfoy, hands raised, holding two spells in them, each hand black from Haki coating.
"I thought it was forbidden by school regulation, to do magic in the hallways?" asked Ace staring at Malfoy who made himself as small as possible and started to shake in fear.
"Who are you, kid?" asked Moody, who had cast the second spell.
"Your worse nightmare, ossan."
"Portgas! Professor Moody! What is happening?!" barked McGonagall who arrived with her arms loaded in books.
"Konnichiwa sensei" welcomed Ace.
"Hello professor" calmly answered Moody still staring at Ace.
"What are you doing?"
"I tried to teach, but this kid interposed." answered the DADA professor.
"You teach by attacking students with... a transformation spell, I would say..." inquired Ace. "Sure, what Malfoy did, trying to attack Potter wasn't the smartest move, but your choice of method leaves something to be desired."
Ron coughed a little, behind the pirate.
"Would you prefer the alternative method, Weasley?" asked Ace , understanding the coughing sound.
"No, not at all." assure the redhead, turning white.
Ace broke the spells in his grip.
"Fifteen point to Gryffindor for your intervention, young man." thanked Minerva. "Moody! We never use transformation for punishment!" said the cat animagus. "I am sure Professor Dumbledore must have told you?"
"He might have mentioned it, it's possible" answered the man, scratching his chin. "But I thought a good shocking session..."
"We give detentions, Moody! Or we talk with the Head of their house!"
"Fine, that's what I'll do." he answered looking at Malfoy with disdain.
"Sensei, can I give detentions?" asked Ace with hope.
"Unfortunately no, Portgas. You can give or remove points during your class, but if the situation requires a detention, you need to refer it to me."
Ace pouted.
In the meantime, Moody grabbed Malfoy and dragged him toward Snape's office.
"Oh you, kid... Portgas, is that your name?" asked the man over his shoulder.
"Iie. For you it will be Gol D. Ace. This way the day I will slash your throat, I will have a good hate reserve against you, to not hesitate."
Moody burst laughing, cutting short McGonagall's protests.
"You're really not afraid! Gol D. Ace.. I'll remember."
Ace tightened his fists, which immediately burst in fire.
"Ace, your flames." called Hermione to order.
Ace shook his hands, cutting the flames, and walked away to go eat.
"I thought that you despise that name, why give it to Moody?" asked Harry while they sat at a table.
"I said it clearly. More he calls me by that name, more hate I will have for him. So the day I need it, I will not hesitate to slash his throat."
"You can't be serious!" exclaimed Ron.
"Who said I wasn't?" inquired the pirate.
The others smartly decided to drop the conversation.
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Harry could only notice that the number of students for the Haki course slashed by more than half since last year.
Ace took presences as if nothing happened, checking names on his list before putting it back in his bag.
"Very well, today we won't start by an exercise but a lesson which I judge fundamental." Ace told the group. "Sit down and pay attention."
Everyone sat.
Ace hoisted himself on the chair's back and looked at them, extremely serious.
"I want all of you to keep what I am about to tell you in your head. The world isn't all rainbows. You are part of the last generation conceived during war times. You might believe that the danger is behind you. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is false. Snake Face, which is the name I gave Voldemort..."
Ace had to pause for the time everyone reacted in ridicule fashion to the name.
"As I was saying, Snake Face is not the only big bad meany in the world. Not every villain or bad person is in Azkaban. Be it Muggle or Wizard, degenerates are everywhere. Thiefs, assassins, rapists, and my others... the world isn't rainbows. You have no idea what might happen outside. My goal, by teaching you Haki, is to give you an edge, a few seconds lead on the people that might want you hurt, or worse. A precious few seconds, during which you will be able to choose between multiple options: to do noting; to run away; or to fight. I will not pretend that what I am giving you will save your life, that would be a presumptuous on my side. All I am saying, is you now have plenty of good cards to win the game. All is left to know is what you will actually do with what you have in hand. I push you to develop your resilience, to take a maximum of hits, until you may be found. I give you endurance and make you work on speed so you have a small possibility of eluding your opponent. I offer you Haki to unmask your adversaries before they attack, but in no way to naively walk around believing all is nice and pretty, sunshine and rainbows. That's just false."
A hand was raised.
"Yes, Bones?"
"Why are you telling us all this? Why are you caring so much?"
Ace hesitated a little, then decided to answer with honesty:
"If I care so much for these lessons it's because I don't want you to finish like me. Or worse. I have scars. Many many scars. Not as many as Bad-Eye, but enough for competition, and that makes me miraculous."
Ace's hand rose to his chest, where Harry had seen his worse scar, and his two friends knew he had one.
"I fought too often for my life not to bear it's marks. I saw enough horrors to lose faith in human kind. I want to be certain that the day I leave Hogwarts, I will leave students able to defend themselves. Any other questions? Other than how I got my scars, which I will not divulge. Nor do I intend to show them to you."
Silence was his answer.
"Very well, let's start the exercise, I will launch the bludgers."
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Ace was about to go to bed when Hermione grabbed his arm, right before the dormitories' stairs.
"Pull up your T-shirt please. I completed your tattoo." murmured Hermione.
Ace did as asked, there was no one else in the common room anyway. Hermione brushed his scarred skin and mumbled a magic spell and quickly, the Shirohige Mark repaired itself.
"I... I'm sorry you died, Ace." whispered Hermione letting his arm go.
"Not me." answered Ace putting his shirt back. "Sure, I died without been able to see my brother climb to the top, but especially, when i had decided that I was happy to be alive. But I don't regret to have died. I'm proud of it."
"Why?"
Ace offered a sad but proud smile.
"It was either that, or letting Luffy die. My brother is far too precious for me to stay still when he was about to be killed. I intervened, and took the hit in his stead. A magma punch. That's all... Oyasumi."
"Oyasumi nasai."
Hermione briefly hugged Ace before letting him go.
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Thursday and the whispers were still going strong in the hallways whenever Ace walked by.
"Maybe it was a bad idea to talk like that during your class." commented Harry on their way to DADA.
"They'll know what is waiting for them if they fuck up. A warned man is worth two." answered Ace.
"Still, it's not every day a cute guy goes shirtless, you should have done that. Would have stuck more." puffed Hermione, trying to orient conversation toward less troubled waters.
"Don't talk to me about that, Brown asked me if I wanted to go out with her, while I still had my shirt on."
"Did you agree?" asked Ron with clear interest.
"Iie. I already have someone in my life, and don't plan to look anywhere else."
"And when did you see her last?" inquired Harry.
"Before I got here. Don't try to understand my sentimental life is none of your concerns, Potter!"
Ace offered him a malicious smile.
They entered the classroom and Ace went close to the window, his back against the wall, the three others went in front of the desk.
Soon enough, Moody arrived and asked them to remove any books, before calling presences.
"Portgas D. Ace..."
"God for you, ossan." rectified Ace.
"I remember what you said, and taking note of it." growled Moody with a ferocious smile.
He wrote it down and finish taking the roll call.
In any case, Ace was the only one knowing the significance of having Gol D as his name. It's not like bearing it could be a death sentence here, in this world.
The class finally started... kind of.
"Bad spells. They come in many shapes and their power also varies depending on the case. If we stick to the recommendations from the Ministry of Magic, my assignment is to teach you defence spells, nothing more. I am not supposed to show you how the hexes manifest until you are in sixth year. Which will be bothersome for our War Mage in Training, I think... where is he?"
Ace briefly raised his hand. Moody nodded and continued his speech:
"Before that, we esteem you too young to know the details. Professor Dumbledore think more highly of your character and thinks you can learn more. I will add that sooner you know what is waiting for you, the better. How could you defend yourselves against something that you never saw before? If a wizard is about to cast one of the unforgivable curses, he is not going to warn you first. He will not do it nicely and politely. You need to be ready to react. You must be attentive, always on guard. Miss Brown, you don't need to look at that while I am talking."
Lavender jumped and blushed. She was showing, under her desk, the horoscope she had finished to Parvati. Apparently Moody's magic eyeball could see through wood, and behind his head.
"So... can someone tell me which hexes are, by law, forbidden and reprimanded with the most severity?"
BAM!
Ace's head fell on his desk.
Moody raised his eyebrow.
"Ace is narcoleptic." explained Neville.
"Oh, we shall wake him quickly!"
Moody raised his wand...
The spell left and hit the desk, where, the previous instant, Ace was.
VLAM!
Ace fell from the ceiling, on Moody, sleeping eyes, sit on the man, blocking his hands with his feet and menacing him with the wand that he took from the professor and one of his personal weapon.
The young man seemed sleepy. He yawned, without moving, and looked at the surprised man from the quickness at which he was taken out of the fight.
"You are lucky it was not a spell with the intent to hurt or kill me, because you would have lost one or more of your limbs. My narcolepsy does not bother anyone, other than you."
"You were pretending to sleep brat, who do you take me for?"
"You and I do not have the same reflexes, nor the same instinct. Whether I am deep asleep or not, the slightest threat wakes me up immediately."
Ace got back up. Put away his blade and left the wand on the desk before returning to his desk, under the admiring gaze of every student.
"I most truly be getting old if a youngster such as you can surprise me! You will make a good War Mage! Let's resume! Which spells are forbidden by law?"
A few timid hands raised, including Ron and Hermione's. Moody motioned to Ron, his magic eye back between Lavander and Ace.
"Euh..." said Ron in an unsure voice. "My father told me about a hex... the Imperium spell, or something like that..."
"Oh yes." agreed Moody with appreciation. "Your father must know that one. Back in the past it cause a lot of issues to the Ministry's people, the Imperium."
Moody who had sat back on his desk, slowly raised, opening one of the desk's drawers and getting a glass jar with three spiders dancing around inside it, visibly trying to escape.
The ex-auror dove his hand in the jar, grabbing one of the spiders and kept it inside his hand so everyone could see it. Then he pointed his wand to the poor arachnid and whispered:
"Impero!"
The spider than jumped from his hand, letting itself slide down an invisible silk thread and started to swing itself, like doing a trapeze exercise. Then it straightened out her paws and executed a back somersault, cutting the thread and arriving back on the desk where the started to do wheel-carts in circles. Moody agitated his wand again and the spider raised itself on her back paws, starting to act like a tap dancer.
Everyone started to laugh.
Everyone except Ace.
He tightened his fists, trying not to ignite from anger.
"You find it funny, eh?" grumbled the professor. "Would you like it if I forced you to do the same?"
The laugh died out immediately.
"Total control." explained Mad-Eye in a low voice while the spider curled up and turned on itself from one side to the other of the desk. I could instruct it to jump from the window, or to drown, or jump in someone's throat or one of you..."
Ron was shaken by chills.
"Years ago, numerous witch and wizards found themselves under the Imperius." continued Moody.
Harry knew he was talking of the time Voldemort was all powerful.
"The Ministry's workers had a lot of work to find who had been acting under constraint and who had acted willingly. The Imperius can be fought, and I am going to teach you how, but it needs a strength of character and not everyone is able to. It is better to avoid been a victim if possible. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he bark, making everyone jump.
He offered a ferocious smile to the deductible of the class who was glaring at him, being the only one not reacting to the scare jump, jaw tight. Moody grabbed the jumping spider again to put it back in the jar.
"Can someone tell me another unforgivable curse?"
Hermione's hand immediately raised, and, to the general wonder, Neville's. Usually the only class Neville willingly answered questions was in Botanic, clearly his favourite subject. Neville himself seemed surprised by his audacity.
"Yes?" offered Moody, his magical eye turning on the boy.
"There is one... The Crucio Curse." answered Neville in a small voice barely heard.
Moody stared at the boy, with both eyes this time.
"Your name is Longbottom?" he asked, his magical eye one the name list on his desk.
Neville, uncomfortable, nodded but Mad-Eye did not ask any further questions. Turning back toward most of the class, he grabbed another spider and put it on the desk where it stayed still. Apparently too terrified to move.
"The Crucio Curse." said Moody. "We will need to enlarge it a bit for you to be able to understand."
He pointed his wand toward the spider.
"Engorgio!"
Right away the spider quintupled in size. It was now bigger than a tarantula. Unable to withhold his repulsion, Ron immediately moved his chair as far away from Moody's desk – and therefore the spider on it.
Once again, the professor cast a spell on the arachnid, whispering:
"Crucio."
The spider's legs yield until it's body. She turned on itself, agitated by horrible convulsions, swinging every way.
Ace closed his eyes, deactivating his Haki that was transmitting the pain of the spider. He had been tortured in Impel Down, but this... what he went through on level six, it was nothing in comparison! He could not suppress shivers, trying to stay impassible and eject from is mind the feeling he had felt.
"STOP!" screamed Hermione with a piercing voice.
Harry turned toward her. It wasn't the spider she was looking at, but Neville, which the hand were so tight against the table, the joints were livid, his eyes spread open in terror.
Moody raised his wand. The spider's legs relaxed but it continued to convulse. Ace judge he could reactivate his Kenbunshoku without risk.
"The pain." said Moody in a low voice. "One does not need any weapon to hurt someone when he is able to cast the Crucio curse..."
Ace agreed with him. Thankfully the Grand Line knew nothing else than the Akuma no Mi, Rokushiky and Haki. Just imagining what people like Akainu would do with something like this... It was almost a nightmare.
"This one as well was used a lot some time ago. Can someone tell me the last of the Unforgivables?"
Hermione slightly raised a trembling hand.
"Yes?"
"Avada Kedavra." whispered the girl.
A few of the students, including Ron seemed anxious.
"Ah, yes the last one and the worse, Avada Kedavra... the spell for death." smiled Moodie which distorted his asymmetric mouth.
He slipped his hand in the jar and, like understanding what was waiting for her, the third spider seemed to start running frenetically at the bottom of the jar to escape. But the teacher caught it and set it down on the desk, where it started to run, like a prey in flight response.
Moody raised his wand and Harry shivered, like a bad feelings.
"Avada Kedavra!"
There was a quick green flash and noises similar to a heavy dusk of wind, like something enormous and invisible suddenly took flight.
Ace looked, raising an eyebrow, at the spider on her back. Complete, but dead on impact.
It life had been breathed away. No more voice.
"Not very nice." said the teacher in a calm voice. "Not funny either. There is no way to counter the spell. It is impossible to neutralize. We know only one person who ever managed to survive, and said person is sitting in front of me."
And he looked at a blushing Harry.
"Avada Kedavra is a curse that requires a great magic power. If you took your wands out right now, pointed them on me and pronounced the formula, I don't even think you would make my nose bleed. In any case, I am not here to teach you how to cast this spell. You might tell me, since there is not way to protect ourselves, why show it at all? Because you need to know. You need to be able to anticipate the worse case. And act to never be in a situation where you might suffer it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE! You must know that these three spells are called Unforgivable Curses. Using one of them against a human being is liable to a lifetime in Azkaban. These are the curses you will fight, the ones I need to teach you how to fight. For that, you will need some training. You need to gather the necessary weapons to fight it. But more than anything, you need vigilance. Take your feathers... Yes Gol?"
Ace had hesitated a long time before saying what he had in mind, but had finally decided to.
"What I am about to say might make you think I should be interned, but I think those who suffer the Death Curse are the lucky ones."
Everyone looked at him like he grew a second head.
"Explain..." asked Moody.
"There are many worse ways to die. That spell... it's clean. Pouf! No pain, no injuries, instant death. The last minutes are not painful. But if we look at it like a whole, without distinction between Muggle and magical ways to kill, there are way worse ways to find death, and to kill. Add in the pain, slowly losing conscience of what is happening around. Feeling the blood dripping out of yourself, the panic to know you are condemned, the time to realize that you can do nothing more. That it's done. Those instants, which Avada Kedavra does not make one go through, are worse than everything else. That's why, I think, those who die this way are lucky."
Without breaking the staring contest with Moody he added:
"And from an assassin's side, it's worse. With this spell, what does the memories show... some light and a cadaver? Almost every other way, there is time to see the victim agonize, your hands to get bloody, his hatred for us, his fear, his refusal to die... his gaze slowly diminishing... in front of all that, I said it and I will repeat it, those who suffer the Avada Kedavra are lucky. Sure, there is a possibility of survival if death is given in other ways, but at least, you don't have to suffer."
A heavy silence enveloped the classroom. Ace resisted the urge to pull his hand to his chest, knowing personally how painful dying was.
"Your perspective is sound. It could even be an interesting debate. It is easy to see you did not choose the path or War Mage fore nothing, Gol."
Ace did not answer, settling for stroking with the tip of his fingers his emblem of his crew, while sitting down.
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Ace caught Neville at the end of the class.
"Come with me. I'll find you later!" Ace told the trio.'
Ron and Harry were perplex, but Hermione seemed relieved.
Ace dragged Neville with him before Moody could join them.
The boy was in such a shocked state that he did not resist. Ace quickly took him to the Requirement Room, which opened on the beautiful port of Hand Island. Ace took Neville to sit on the dock, close to the water, and sat beside him.
For a long time, neither of the boys said anything.
"Ace..." whispered Neville.
"Hmm?"
"Wh... Why did you say that to Moody, about the Avada Kedavra? It felt like..."
"Like I was talking from experience? It's because I was, even though I lived through by a miracle."
Ace laying himself backwards, his hands under his neck.
"Before getting to Hogwarts... let's say I had some big troubles. Trouble from which my little brother tried to save me. I should have been executed, but they succeeded in stopping it. Unfortunately, a few steps away from freedom, I played the fool, and I got burned for it."
Ace pulled his sleeve back, showing his right arm which bared some relatively discrete burns for those not paying attention.
"My brother fell from exhaustion. The man that burned me wanted to break me by killing him. I did not think, I took the heat in his stead. Think of Hagrid-sensei's fist, made of lave. That will be similar to what I received through my chest. I stayed there, lying in my little brother's arms who begged me not to die. I was slowly losing consciousness of what was happening. When I stopped hurting, while a had that hole through my chest, I knew it was finished. It's a miracle I am here."
Neville nodded.
"If I had to do, I would do it again. My brother did many things for me, I could not let him die. I should could not..."
"I won't say anything, I promise."
"I trust you."
Neville cleared his throat and explained:
"I... My parents... My parents were aurors. One day, shortly before Him-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Death Eaters came to our house. I was a little over a year, and they tortured both my parents with Crucio. Repeatedly... They... They broke. Since then, my parents are in St Mungo's, in a specialized wing. They..."
Ace put his hand on Neville's shoulder.
"They are alive, it's something." whispered Ace. "As long as there is life, there is hope, ne?"
Neville had a crisped smile, and, finally, looked around.
"Where are we?"
"My hiding place." maliciously answered Ace. "We'll go back to the tower when you'll be better."