Ominous

Sabo


Holding his hat so it wouldn't fall, Sabo looked up at the last sunrays disappearing over the forest's line. What was evening was rapidly becoming the night. "Shit…" a quiet curse left his mouth as he increased his speed. He sprinted through the Grey Terminal, squinting at the path in front of him and trying to spy the random trash lying on the ground to avoid tripping over it.

The daylight had dwindled to a barely perceptible lightening. Each trash heap was identical to the next, melting into a single shadowy form under the quickly darkening sky. Not a single soul could be seen around this hour, all Grey Terminal's dwellers safely hidden inside their shacks and behind barricaded doors.

Everyone knew that once the sun went down, the red-eyed monsters came out to hunt and play.

Sabo was running late.

A movement in the shadows at the corner of his eye made the boy skid to a stop, his heart threatening to pound out of his chest. No more than a rustle, but in this failing light, he couldn't discern where it came from. More noise followed. Sabo spun around to face it, eyes wide and a pipe clenched tightly in his hands, ready to fend off whatever stalked the night.

An empty tin can rolled out of the darkness and bumped into his feet.

Sabo gulped, feeling sweat pooling across his forehead. Unblinking, he stared into the surrounding blackness, all muscles in his body drawing taut in alarm. Like a rabbit wound up tight at the slightest possibility of a predator's presence nearby.

Seconds passed.

Nothing happened.

Maybe he was too paranoid with all those scary rumors going around. Sabo allowed a tiny bit of tension to seep out of his stiff shoulders.

Sinister red eyes gleamed in the darkness and, without a warning, a shadow moved forward. In a blink of an eye, it erased the distance between them and pounced.

Sabo couldn't react on time. Couldn't even see who or what it was. His pipe flew away and clattered somewhere nearby as his back hit the ground, hard, all air rushing out of his lungs. Before he could catch his breath, a clawed hand shoved his face into the dirt. It left his bare neck unprotected. Someone straddled him—he couldn't move.

A white-hot feeling of terror climbed up Sabo's chest and then his throat.

"Leave him alone!"

The weight pinning him down suddenly vanished. Sabo savored his freedom before he forced his trembling arms to move and pushed himself up into a sitting position. Someone was here: a black-haired boy with his back turned to him. It took the blond a few precious moments to recognize his friend. "…Ace?" he called out, voice still shaky.

Ace whipped his head around to glance at him and Sabo's breathing hitched. Instead of black eyes he had expected to see, glowing crimson ones with slit pupils stared at him now.

With a click of his tongue, Ace looked away. He didn't move, standing between his friend and the attacker.

"This one's mine!"

Sabo stiffened. The darkness concealed the speaker, but he could swear he heard a feminine childish undertone in that deep, angry growl.

Nonetheless, Ace matched it with a growl of his own, "Sabo's off-limits!"

The blond unconsciously held his breath when those vicious red eyes flicked to him, narrowed, and studied him for a moment as if trying to gauge his worth.

"He's not protected."

This time, Sabo was certain that the other person was a girl. Probably around their age too.

"What do you—" Ace fell silent, furrowing his brow. Then, he gritted his teeth and glared harder. "Of course, he is!"

"No, he's not!" the girl argued back. "I'd never miss your mark on him! I could even sense the mark on Shanks and it was made twenty years ago!"

"You can already sense it?" Ace sounded genuinely surprised.

"What, you don't?"

The boy stayed silent.

"Heh," the girl scoffed with a distinct lilt of mockery in her voice. "Who's the weakling now, Buttface?"

Ace bared his teeth. "He's off-limits! And that's final, Ugly!"

The girl huffed. Her gaze lingered on Sabo for a bit before she turned around and disappeared into the night.

Ace faced his friend. The way the latter tensed the moment he looked at him didn't go unnoticed. He tsked under his breath, raking fingers through his unruly hair. When he opened his eyes again, they were back to normal. "I guess I owe you an explanation," he said. He hesitated, but ultimately extended his hand to help the other boy up.

Despite everything, Sabo didn't even think about not taking the offered hand. Ace was his friend and this rescue wasn't his first. He trusted him. "I'm all ears."


Sabo sat leaning against the boulder, an open book in his lap. It was a remote spot in the forest with nothing but trees, grass, and a sprinkle of blooming wildflowers swaying gently in the wind and showered by the shafts of light that burst through the gaps in the leaf canopy above.

"Yo!"

Admirably, Sabo didn't jump out of his skin at the unexpected voice next to his ear. He would have slammed the book he was reading straight into that person's mug though, if it had been anyone else but her. His body just froze, still remembering that night a couple of days ago.

The night when his best friend confessed being a D. Ds were as much a myth as Devil Fruits were, yet Sabo had read about them before.

Legends stated that a long time ago, people from a certain island rebelled against the gods. They used wicked means to summon demons from another world to aid them in their fight. The war was long and arduous, but the gods ended up victorious. Rebels were punished and summoned creatures imprisoned inside their souls forever.

Ace simply shrugged when he recounted that story and casually said that despite having one, he didn't know its origin.

"What are you doing?" the girl asked curiously, leaning forward over his shoulder from where she was squatting on top of the boulder. "Hm? A book?"

Sabo could see her profile now. She seemed to be younger than him with a wild mane of black hair and an oversized straw hat on her head.

"What's it about?" she continued asking, tilting her head to look at him now. A small scar arched under one of her eyes. Her distinctly black eyes.

She did kinda remind him of Ace.

The blond wet his lips. Regardless of being 'off-limits', whatever that meant, he felt innately uncomfortable with her so close to his neck. He lifted the book to show her the title and in the same action inched as far from her as possible without being noticed.

The girl—what was her name? Ace mentioned it… Lu-something—squinted at the words printed on the book's cover. A second later, they grew impossibly wide. "The crown in the dark?!" she all but squealed, mouth stretching into a toothy grin to Sabo's absolute horror. "That sounds awesome! Hey, hey!" She poked the stiff blond. "Is it about the Pirate King?!" Not waiting for a reply, the girl fist-pumped the air. "Because I'll become the next Pirate King!" And then laughed, loud and happy and carefree.

"Umm…" Sabo started carefully. "It is about the king, just… not the Pirate King."

Lu's shoulder dropped. "Eeeeeehhh?" she dragged it out, jutting her lower lip forward into a pout. "How boring…"

"I'm…" The blond cleared his throat and tried again, "I'm Sabo."

The girl's expression evened out, her eyes instantly snapping to look at him, sharp and searching. It unnerved Sabo, but he didn't survive the Grey Terminal every day without having guts of steel. And so, he held her stare.

Slowly, Lu broke into a bright grin, displaying her abnormally long fangs. "I like you," she declared, eyes closing in delight. "No wonder Buttface thinks of you as a Pack."

"…A Pack?"

"I'm Luffy!" she exclaimed, ignoring or not paying attention to the boy's confusion. She slid down from the boulder and settled next to him, almost pressing at this side. "My dad used to read me stories…" she said, so quiet all of a sudden. So sad. Wistful. She picked at the loose thread in her shorts for a bit, then blinked those big, dewy eyes. "Read me your book?"

Sabo never possessed enough strength to resist such a devastating pair of Puppy Eyes.