They docked at the harbour of Nanohana without much trouble. Sure, there had been the matter of some sacred fish-cat appearing, but since nobody aboard the ship was in any way starving, they let it go with only a minor reprimand from Vivi.

Explaining the matter of what all the other ships docking were had been a similarly brief interlude. Either way, when they finally docked and put down anchor, everyone was feeling the familiar buzz of excitement. They were finally there. Plus, if the presence of Mr 3's ship and Vivi's account were anything to go by, they'd likely have action crash down on their heads soon enough, so they had all reason to feel somewhat nervous.

This nervousness seemed completely absent in Luffy. The boy captain appeared more excited than anything, hopping from foot to foot, whining at being held from exploring the cool new city. Nami had good reason for forcing him to stay a moment longer. Namely, she really really needed to beat it into his head that earning any unwarranted attention would be a death sentence on account of his new bounty. His attempt to distract her by saying "But King's bounty is much higher!" was moot since nobody knew King had such a high bounty. Hence, nobody would recognize him.

Luffy grumbled something about how it wasn't fair. However, once he was doled out a little allowance to use as he pleased, he ran off. "You better pay back before sundown!" Nami had tried shouting at his receding back, but her words fell on deaf ears. Or maybe just willfully ignorant.

"At least King has the sense not to run off right away," Nami said, crossing her arms tiredly.

Usopp searched the small party gathered. "Uh, no, I'm pretty sure he also left."

"Goddamnit."

"...I'm looking for my little brother," Ace told the marine who had rudely interrupted his meal. By no means did Ace actually need to inform the marine why he was here in Alabasta, but it wasn't as though Ace was any interested in a fight either.

The marine - Smoker, Ace heard from the crowd in the restaurant - bit down on his two cigars, eyes sharpening. "Don't suppose you'd let me arrest you on the spot?"

"Reje-," the words got stuck in Ace's throat as his jaw slacked open. Something was coming.

Smoker raised an eyebrow. He didn't sense it, then?

Ace tried to swallow but found his throat as dry as the Alabasta desert.

Compared to many his own age, he was very proficient in haki. Not only had he awakened Observation at a remarkably young age, but so too was he an efficient user of Armament. That was why, when a presence shining as bright and heavy and strong as Oyaji stepped onto the island, he noticed it instantly. It was like a white dwarf star of power had appeared, caving deep cataclysms in the island's balance. Oppressing his every breath into gasps.

But even more than that, the presence was moving. Towards him.

Moving so quickly Ace only barely had time to notice its approach, enough time to gasp, enough time to instinctually turn his chest into incorporeal flames before the door exploded inward, the presence flying into Smoker's back with such immense strength and speed that the both of them crashed through the crowded restaurant, flying right through Ace's flame-body, smashing through the bar counter, narrowly missing the bartender himself and then cracking through several walls before finally skidding to a stop a fair way from where Ace still sat, jaw slacked open, eyes wide and trembling.

The presence that had flown in barely even wavered. Smoker, on the other hand, was knocked out cold. Ace wasn't one to typically show sympathy to marines, but he sincerely hoped the man wasn't dead. That kind of hit, from that kind of presence…

Ace, now on his feet, shuddered. Should he run? Should he fight? Could he fight?

Of course he could. Ace pulled himself into a defensive stance, drawn fists flaming around the edges. The second that pile of rubble moved, the second that presence rose once more, he'd-,

"Hey, no fair!"

The presence rose from within the pile of rubble, dust and sandstone clattering off of him like dried leaves. He didn't seem so much as scuffed. Smoker lay at his feet, head bloody and caked with dust. The man himself was…

Ace froze where he stood, flames ceasing to dance for just a moment.

Raven hair, black eyes and a self-inflicted scar grinning below his right eye. His presence beat with familiarity.

And then, the moment was over and everything else hit Ace like a sledgehammer. The clothing was all wrong, his too-muscled body torn with old wounds that must have left him near-dead at the time, reminding Ace of Oyaji. Though the man wasn't large by the standards of the New World (most men of any real strength had a tendency to somehow become massive), even where he stood several houses down, he seemed to tower over Ace. If not in physical height, then in sheer presence.

Their eyes met. Something was wro-,

The man disappeared in a flash, leaving clattering rubble and swirling dust behind. Ace suppressed the urge to glance around to catch a glimpse of the man, instead focusing inwards, sending out a pulse of Haki to locate his presence. In less than a second, Ace realized the man had already moved to stand mere inches behind him. With a curse in his throat, Ace swung around, fist flung out for a back-handed hit that should have made contact with the man's jaw. Instead, it passed through nothing. Ace stared gaping at where the man had stood less than a moment prior.

He could do nothing more to react before he was caught in a choking embrace from behind that trapped his arms to his sides.

Two strong arms clenched around his chest like an iron vice, lifting him square into the air. His feet kicked mid-air, breath pressed out of him, and for a moment, Ace braced himself for the suplex that was sure to follow.

But… it never came. Instead, he hung there, arms as thick as logs holding him in place. Without any application of haki.

Noticing an opening, Ace briefly flickered into flames, flying out of the man's arms to stand facing him, fists and teeth bared for what would surely be a slug down to remember. If he survived, that was. That didn't happen. Instead, Ace stared wide-eyed as the man (who still seemed familiar in a way Ace couldn't bear to consider) let his arms fall, a crestfallen expression, tinted by harrowing despair showing on his stubbled face.

The restaurant was now mostly empty, stools and chairs toppled over the second someone said: "They're gonna fight!"

All the privacy they could ever want. The man made no move to attack.

The brief lull in the action brought one question to the forefront of Ace's mind. "Who the hell are you?"

It was a valid question, all around. Ace was no ace when it came to the names and faces of the strongest people in the world, but even he knew that a man of this calibre - a man who was on equal footing with oyaji - should not have been an unknown. And yet, he was. He wasn't a shichibukai, he wasn't an emperor, he wasn't an admiral, and he certainly wasn't a pirate king. The only option Ace could genuinely consider was that the man was somehow a secret agent for the world government, possibly even hired directly by the celestial dragons.

But that didn't explain the man's expression. By now, his forlorn expression had somehow morphed into a frown. "You don't recognize me?"

"Am I supposed to?" was all Ace could think to reply. Trying to tread the man's waters without upsetting him was about as risky as walking on eggshells, and somehow, Ace could already feel them cracking under his feet. After all, just his non-saying reply, said in the hopes of making the man reveal his identity, seemed to only have made the man sour further.

"Ace, it's me!" the man said, face breaking into a trembling smile. "Luffy!"

That was-,

That… No. No, that was just…

Ace let his eyes wander over the man again. He seemed to be around thirty, forty years old, body covered in scars of almost equal age. Though, among these scars was the familiar one smiling beneath his right eye. His eyes and hair were both black, though in his eyes, alongside the familiar (why was it familiar?) soft-hearted glee and immense will, so too a promise of danger glinted. Most damning of all, there was the hat crowning his head.

"That isn't-," Ace started to say, but it seemed the man had stood still for too long, his trembling feet springing him to stand right by Ace, who now found himself once again in the arms of the seemingly older man. "H-, hey! Stop that, I still-," and then he felt it. At this distance, pressed up against the man's presence, there was no ignoring it. The man's soul thummed right next to him, swelling with power and exceeded potential and something all too familiar.

If Ace ignored the power, the endless blinding light, he found grooves and torn edges and bumps in the surface. Deep grooves and scars of pained trauma, gaping wounds belching pus and blood, trembling broken bones that never healed right and a confidence standing on toothpick stilts.

In the heart of it, the deepest innermost parts, Ace found a little wisp of will, a trace of an individual so fundamentally Himself that he couldn't possibly be confused for anyone else. Someone Ace knew all too closely. Someone he couldn't possibly believe was currently standing a full decimeter above him, holding him as close as only his brother can.

"L-… Luffy?" Ace croaked. The arms around him started trembling. Through the chest his face was pressed into he could hear the man - Luffy's - heart beat faster.

"I've missed you so much, Ace," Luffy whispered into his ear. His deep voice seemed to strain just by talking. As his arms tightened around Ace, he remembered that the familiarity and the bumps he had sensed in Luffy's presence were only a backdrop to a very real and very potent strength.

"H-, hey, take it easy, I'm not going anywhere," Ace said, still unsure whether to reciprocate the hug or not. His instincts and logic argued fiercely within him, one shouting about how the man hugging him clearly carried the essence of Luffy, while the other screamed that everything else was wrong and off and bad and how could he possibly trust such an obvious con?

And yet, in those arms that hugged just a little too tight, crushed against a man who trembled, could Ace really say he felt conned?

In the end, he decided to just pat the man on the back. "There, there."

After a while, the man finally released him. Strangely, he was frowning hard, eyebrows hunched and low, as if he'd tasted something sour. His eyes were red, his lower lip trembling. For a moment and a half, Ace couldn't figure out why he - Luffy - would be making such an expression. Then, as he mentally tried to superimpose Luffy onto the older man, he realized why. "Are you… holding in your tears?"

Luffy pursed his lips tightly and turned away.

"You are!" Ace said indignantly. "And you're clearly failing, too."

A single tear streaked down Luffy's cheek, getting stuck in his old scar. "Am not!" he said, pouting out his lower lip. "Just got a hair in my eye. It's nothing."

Ace squinted suspiciously at the man who claimed to be his younger brother. Focus on the younger. Sighing lightly, Ace turned his back on Luffy, wandered over to a toppled table and chairs and righted them. Sitting down on one chair, he turned to look at the man, who now stared at him with larger eyes than ever. Ace gestured to the chair opposite his own. "You gonna sit down or what?"

Luffy flinched, looking decidedly awkward where he stood. Nonetheless, he moved and sat down opposite Ace. They didn't have any drink or anything, and this certainly wasn't how Ace thought his reunion with his little brother would go. Even so, he had to ask.

"Alright. Go ahead and explain. I'm all ears."

"Explain what?" Luffy asked, tilting his head in such a characteristically Luffy-eque way that Ace was almost taken aback.

Instead, he gestured broadly to Luffy's body and clothes. "Everything."

"Oh! I, uh, heh," Luffy turned away, tugging at the dry edges of his straw hat. "Well, you know, I… A lot happened, yanno?"

"I don't think you could explain that with a growth spurt," Ace commented dryly.

Luffy hunched down further in his chair, shrinking to a point where he suddenly seemed smaller than Ace. "Um, about that, I… Would you believe it if I said I'm from the future?"

"Nope," Ace said. "Not in the least."

Luffy righted himself in his chair, perking up to face Ace again, expression turned stern and defiant. "W-, well that's what happened! I was just cruising along in my little rowboat, and then I was hit with a storm and I ended up all the way back here. It's true! And then I bumped into my old crew and Vivi, and then we met Bon-chan, and now we're here." Saying so, Luffy crossed his arms across his broad chest, puffing up like an aggressive pufferfish as he had done so often as a child. The difference was that now he was in the body of a man Ace found profoundly threatening in more ways than one.

"Time travel." Ace smirked to himself. "Compared to all the other stuff that happens on this sea, I guess it isn't so strange."

The more Ace tumbled the idea through his head, the more sense it made. It still wasn't a lot, but he could see time travel being a thing. Still, even though he could accept it, that didn't mean he trusted this "Luffy" person. There were too many unknowns in play for him to truly accept it.

"You believe me?" Luffy asked, eyes as large as saucers. "You really believe me?"

Ace shrugged. "Until you prove me wrong, I guess I do." Ace didn't show it (or, at least, he tried not to,) but he sat guarded. Body at a slight angle, he was ready to leap into action at any moment. Just in case. Ace leaned his body into the table. "Any chance you could tell me what the future hol-,"

"SMOKER!" some sword-wielding chick shouted as she burst through the destroyed doors, her katana poised and ready. First her bespeckled eyes fell on Ace and his company, then they wandered over to the massive hole gaping right before her, running through several houses and ending in a pile of rubble, within which Smoker's unconscious body could be seen. It remained battered and bloody. "S-, Smoker!"

Ace watched with mild interest as Luffy stood up, grinned, and said, "Well, guess we'd better scramble!"

In a flash of movement, Ace could only comprehend through his haki as him and Luffy moving incredibly fast, they were suddenly far removed from the restaurant. Ace was put down in the shade of a small alleyway squeezed between two sandstone buildings beside the bazaar. It took a second for him to orient himself, but once he did, he found himself gazing up at Luffy where he stood just above him. Looking at him as though he'd expected him to disappear forever once he let him go.

In the bazaar just at the edge of Ace's vision, Marines scrambled here and there, yelling about how pirates were about. Luffy didn't seem to mind.

No, hang on, the man suddenly seemed thoughtful. "Uhhh, hang on, I think I might remember…"

Within a second or so, a trio of men, two women and a reindeer bolted past, pursued closely by a squadron of enraged marines on the chase. Luffy looked at the scene with a thoughtful expression. In the distance, the sound of fighting and shouting could be heard. Ace watched in awe as Luffy seemed to actually think before doing something.

"I think," Luffy said, scratching his chin. "We should head to your ship."

Stuck in reverie over seeing his thick-headed brother actually consider a situation before acting, it took quite a while for Ace to finally say, "Yeah. Let's."

Getting to his boat with Luffy's help was surprisingly easy. About as easy as it was awkward. Anytime a marine so much as stepped on the same road the two travelled, Luffy wasted no time either bodily removing the marine or just removing Ace and himself from the road. Either way, Ace was left dizzy and disarmed. The moments in between the more bombastic situations were silent and uncomfortable. Ace wasn't sure what to say to Luffy, and Luffy seemed content with just staring at Ace. It wasn't pleasant in the least, but until they both got to Ace's boat, there was nothing to do about it.

"I'm not sure if there's enough space for you," Ace said honestly, almost hoping Luffy wouldn't find some workaround.

"If I wrap myself around the mast I'll fit?" Luffy said.

Somehow, that worked. He didn't even have to wrap himself around it to work. He could just sit hunched behind where Ace stood blasting flames into his speeding one-man ship and it worked just fine. With Luffy's somewhat incomprehensible directions, they found the Going Merry pretty soon, leaving the harbour to set out on their mission. Ace eyed it strangely for a moment before glancing away to look at Luffy, sitting hunched right behind him. They left without him? was the unsaid question lingering in his mind.

Pulling himself back into the present, he prepared to unceremoniously board the caravan, doing so by a somersault onto a rail. He squatted there for a second before all members gathered turned to look at him. Some raised weapons, others paled.

"Ace!" one explained in apparent confusion.

Hm? Hang on. Ace pulled out the wanted poster he'd kept since he found it in the papers. Yup, that was the very same Luffy as the one on the poster. Then, either both Luffys existed at the same time, or there was some other kind of shenanigans at play here. Well, that could wait a moment. "Yo!" Ace greeted.

A few minutes later, Ace had been properly introduced to all of Luffy's crewmates, each colourful and intelligent and interesting in their own right. They had, in turn, been introduced to Ace. If their wavering presences were anything to go by, they found him just a little threatening. A healthy dose of self-consciousness never hurts. Though, with introductions over and done with, Ace supposed he could finally ask about the elephant in the room.

"So, mind telling me what's up with the other Luffy?" Ace asked, watching as the people around him first furrowed their brows in confusion before shooting up in realization.

"He didn't tell you?" Usopp asked, correctly assuming Ace had met the older Luffy.

Ace smiled hesitantly, eyes trailing to where his boat still sat, with Luffy remaining on it for some reason. "He told me he was a time traveller. That's all I know."

A few glances were shared aboard the deck. "That's about all he told us as well," Nami finally said, shrugging broadly.

"Hm?" the older Luffy asked, now perched beside Ace. "What's this about what I told who?"

Ace damn near fell into the sea. "Bastard, the hell-,"

"Ah, Ki-," before Usopp could finish his entrance, older Luffy hushed him. "Huh? Wadduyamean?"

Older Luffy waved his hand dismissively. "Just keep talking. Pretend I'm not here."

Ace lifted his hat and scratched his head. Uhuh. Okay? Well, Ace didn't have much business left, so… In a single casual movement, he flicked a small piece of white paper into younger Luffy's hands. Luffy (who was so much more like Luffy than Luffy) accepted it with a confused sound. "Always keep that with you," Ace said, his words tinted with a fondness for the future. "It'll let us meet again."

Ace didn't miss how the older Luffy's presence turned to frozen lead at the words, hanging heavy around the man.

"Having a dumb little brother," Ace said. "Makes an older brother worry. He probably gives you guys lots of trouble, too. Not to mention the existence of his future self." The older Luffy gave an indignant grunt, but Ace continued. "Take care of him for me, will you?" With that, Ace hopped back into his little boat. The older Luffy simply watched him, expression vacant as the other people aboard the vessel asked why Ace couldn't stay longer. "I told you, I only came to do that. I'm chasing a major criminal right now. He's been calling himself Blackbeard Late-,"

Nobody else noticed how Luffy's presence became a bloody pit of despairing mass. How the air around him startled into death, how a veritable mist of blood-red contempt draped over him, choking the air and drowning the deck in his vitriol. "Blackbeard, huh…" he said with such calm malice that the hairs on Ace's neck rose. There was slick, icy familiarity in Luffy's voice, coloured by a darkness Ace could never have imagined coming from Luffy.

As quick as Luffy was to love something, he was equally quick to disliking it. It was one of his quirks - one usually expressed rather visibly. If Luffy didn't like something, he'd punch it. Simple as that. Be it a person or a thing or a place, Luffy's answer was almost always violence. Hiding his distaste for something wasn't something he did.

So, when Luffy sat there, eyes deep and black as pools of oil, face neutral as his presence growling with unkempt hatred, Ace couldn't for the life of him understand how nobody else could notice it.

Nothing on the man's face screamed anger, nothing in the way he sat expressed any intent to harm, but his Voice - the Voice of his soul - roared with a murderous need. On deck, the only one who seemed even slightly off-put at the moment was the swordsman, but even he seemed uncertain of where his discomfort originated. Ace knew better.

After a moment's consideration, the older Luffy stood up on the railing, slapped his knees, and said, "Mind if I come along?"

Ace blinked at him. "Huh?"

"W-, w-, wait, you can't leave us to fight a whole war ourselves!" Usopp, the crew's sniper, pleaded. "Without you, we're as good as doomed! R-, right?"

Luffy looked him up and down before finally shaking his head. "You'll do fine. I trust in you. Were I to stay at your side, you would not become strong enough to face the world. If anything, I'd be doing you a disservice." He shook his head, looking out over the seas. "No, where I'm needed is somewhere else entirely." He grinned; a bloodthirsty, hungry grin that gave Ace the shivers. "This time, things will go right."

As Luffy hopped down onto Ace's speeder and as the two of them waved goodbye to the crew of the Going Merry (for some reason Luffy had wanted a moment to say goodbye to the ship, too) and as they finally sped off into the distance, Ace couldn't bring himself to feel anything but unnerved.

Something here was wrong. Really, a lot of things were wrong.

Almost everything about Luffy was off, and Ace didn't like a single bit of it. The way he dressed, the way he acted, the way he talked, the way he walked…

Something about it was off.

But until the two of them found Blackbeard, he would never fully understand the fundamental difference Time had made to Luffy.