~Chapter 30 – Disappearing ~

Whitebeard felt quite relaxed even if the whole situation with the traitor wasn't resolved, yet. But at least his sons and daughters were safe for the time being.

He lifted his sake cup to take a sip when he felt something tickling his cheek. The captain glanced to his side and chuckled.

"You know that you can't really hide in this form of yours, Marco."

The blue phoenix looked at him like he was pouting before transforming into his first division commander.

"It's not what you think, Oyaji, yoi." The blonde pouted while holding the newspaper.

"You know taking the newspaper with you makes you suspicious of rumours, Marco", a softer voice said behind the boy making the phoenix jump a bit. "Izo. Don't scare me like that."

The black-haired omega shook his head slightly.

"I didn't even try to scare you. You must be really in deep thought if it was that easy, Marco", Izo told him and took the newspaper.

Now that it wasn't folded any longer, Whitebeard could see the title page clearly.

Shichibukai dismissed after a big hostage situation

Under the headliner was a picture of a grinning boy. Wasn't that Garp's grandkid?

"So that's why you are so jumpy. The kid reminds you of the child you met on Fishmen Island", Izo said, making Marco jump again to put his hands on the other male's mouth while looking around.

Whitebeard laughed. It was quite amusing how his two youngest commanders were the ones who acted the most like siblings despite some issues like Marco being reborn and Izo's time travel accident which would reduce the time they really know each other to around 5 years instead of 8 years.

"Would you stop speaking about that? I don't have the nerve to deal with Thatch or Haruta about that topic, yoi", the blonde slightly complained. Izo sighed. "Fine, fine. I will stop. Even if I think that Thatch would do well with a topic change regarding love life", the omega seemed slightly annoyed but Whitebeard didn't want to pressure it. Because it could to the two on his side hiding his sake again.

So he did the best thing a father could do. "What is the deal with the hostage situation which made them dismiss the kid as Shichibukai?"

"Well, if what Morgans wrote is true then they held Celestial Dragon hostage in an auction house and even hurt one of them. The kid and his crew are really painted in a bad light in the article", Izo said while reading the article before skipping through the paper to take out new bounty posters.

"It went up quite a lot for the crew. Now every one of them does have a bounty and seems like there are two new members. A cyborg and skeleton. And huh?"

"Huh~ did someone catch your attention without you catching a hint of their scent?" "Don't jump to that if you don't want to talk about your own, Marco-chan", Izo said a little darkly before his eyes went back to the picture of the whole crew. "It is just. I am not sure but that sword seems similar to Shusui. At least from what I know. But the picture isn't good enough to determine it."

This got Whitebeard's interest. "Shusui? Wasn't Wano's national treasure?" It wasn't often that Wano was mentioned. Especially around Izo to avoid stressing the omega with everything that had happened. "Yeah, I wonder how he got it if it is not fake", his sixteenth commander said.

"Then we should meet them."

"That won't be possible. The article mentioned that they disappeared without any trace", Marco said who had started to read over Izo's shoulder.

"Oyaji, we got a letter from Jinbe", Namur shouted and came over with the letter in his hand. "From Jinbe?" "Yes, I did already read it in case it was an emergency. But it isn't anything urgent. He just wrote us that they are hiding two humans on Fishmen Island who got involved with the auction incident the Shichibukai caused in his successful attempt to rescue a mermaid."

Whitebeard looked at his eighth division commander before he started laughing. The brat didn't fit the position of Shichibukai but he made life interesting for sure.

"Well", he said before taking the letter to read it himself. "I can't wait to meet them."

So yeah, I said I will talk a little more in this note.
First off, I decided to speed it up a bit as you can see with these two chapters. Because for some reason most of my ideas seemed to focus on stuff happening in the New World so I had to hurry to get there without doing much damage to the story. So this way seemed like the best option.
So as you can see there will be a time skip as well like in the manga/anime because while yes everyone on board started to learn about Haki it still takes time to get good at it. And to be honest, if I didn't put in the time skip I feel many possibly fights would end in plot armor and that's something I like to avoid.

As of now, I think about making the story around 60 chapters long. This means 30 will still come after this dealing with everything that happens in the New World. That is the plan at the moment. But nothing is set in stone, yet.

Also, I know there will possibly be some comments regarding the Luffy part in the last chapter. When Luffy said that he can't think when Law and Ace are around it is because of their protective/parental nature towards him. Both of them respect him as captain but they care for him a bit too much so they like to take heavy decisions away from him to make his life easier.

That's all I wanted to say. Hope to see you in the next chapters because it will be fun ;)