Searching for up to eighteen needles in a haystack the size of the entire ocean led to exactly no leads.
It wasn't Isobu's fault. He was a champ, constantly ferrying me and my little boat around the various island chains that made up the world. When we found a new set of islands that seemed safe, and I needed supplies, he'd spit my boat out somewhere no one could see, and then I would fumble my way through sailing skills I faked having (via subtle use of ninjutsu) until I got to shore. On a couple of occasions, I literally walked the miserable little rowboat to shore on a rope like I was pulling a recalcitrant donkey.
Once finally on solid ground again, I…admit that I cheated quite a lot to avoid causing any kind of ruckus. While I didn't have any iconography from the Whitebeards on any of the clothes I'd brought with me, I still had less than no interest in accidentally getting into trouble that could be traced back to them. I barely had any interest in starting and dealing with my own trouble. To that end, every new island met a new version of me—or rather, the Transformation Jutsu cover version. If I had to wander around town in the form of a cat, a dog, or as a young man who looked a bit like Kabuto, then I would.
"Here you go," said the bartender in the fifteenth roughneck island I'd run into, setting my drink order down in front of me.
"Thanks," I said in a voice that wasn't anywhere near mine. I sounded more like Mr. Pack-a-Day Yamaguchi-sensei than anyone.
Looking more like a mix of Jiraiya and Genma had given me enough distance from my usual appearance that I didn't worry about being recognized even by Whitebeard's crew. Even if I added in my personal twist—Isobu-gold eyes—I doubted my best friends would have picked me out of a crowd.
Sure, they would have picked the idiot using the Transformation technique out of a crowd easily enough, but they wouldn't have instantly been able to tell it was me.
…And the frilly-as-fuck tropical drink might've been another hint, but I had never liked straight sake even if getting drunk was something I was willing to risk. As for the million other combinations of perfectly acceptable beverages and rotgut? Pass.
I believe alcohol counts as a kind of poison for the purposes of your resistance to it. Or have you been affected and I have simply not noticed?
That's still a solid no. That was the other consideration, particularly in this world where the exact rules were so different. So why not get something that didn't taste like gasoline?
I downed the bluish concoction in one shot, not even feeling the burn.
For all that I'd been hanging out in some pretty sketchy areas, whether visible as myself or not, I hadn't heard any of the rumors I really cared about. Oh, I heard plenty about new bounties—and memorized the posters when the mail-birds brought news—and various excursions the Marines and World Government made against pirates. For example, whispers spoke of Admiral Akainu, the ultimate attack dog, taking on someone or other and melting everyone involved. I even saw a report of a few proper as opposed to summary executions, and learned that the World Government paid thirty percent less money for dead pirates than live ones.
But no one talked about giant monsters other than Sea Kings, which meant I had to move on and keep looking.
I'd been looking for two months. In an ocean, which Isobu could effortlessly traverse twenty-four hours a day, Sea Kings or not.
I did not have the patience of a saint at the best of times, but this was a new threshold of bullshit. My chakra sense's range being only fifty kilometers had never bothered me before, but the free-roaming sea was so big that it rendered that hard-earned perception worthless. If there was more land—or more people with chakra—I might've been able to get some leads and stopped aimlessly wandering. But between that and the mind-skype being unavailable, I felt a lot like my boat must've felt being steered by a landlubber like me. If I'd cut the rudder off.
Two months and I wasn't any closer to going home.
I slapped some beri notes—and man had I been confused when I found out what the currency was called—down on the counter before moving on. Still in my vague-aged-dude disguise, I shoved away and out the door before anyone could view me as anything other than a weird drunk. Really, most of these towns were so full of weird drunks that it didn't make the slightest bit of difference.
I sauntered back to the docks, since this town was an apparent bust. After paying the harbormaster, I'd been allowed to moor my little boat for a few days, but it was really time to get going.
Though I sighed internally as I checked my wallet again. I'd need to start trawling the ocean for sunken treasure again soon enough.
While taking advantage of my newfound immunity to crushing water pressure made it easier for Isobu and I to ensure that wrecks were picked clean, it was still a pain in the ass. But since my other idea involved becoming a bounty hunter and inevitably smacking into the hypocrisy of hunting pirates when the ones responsible for my little startup venture were pirates, picking over wrecks it was. In hindsight, I probably should have asked for a list of people the Whitebeards would be okay with me attacking, but that was too little, too late.
As I strode down the docks, still looking like a remarkably buff old guy, I spotted something slightly amiss. Specifically, there were two ships flying Whitebeard's flag at the end.
One of them was mine, and damned if I knew how the flag I'd been given was flying proudly now, since I'd locked it away. My little boat was tooth-marked thanks to the mini-Isobu clones and rather tiny, but it was mine as long as one of the Whitebeards didn't want it back for some reason. No one should have been messing with it.
The other boat, though? Striker.
…This was going to go so well.
Thankfully, this confrontation got to happen at what was probably three in the morning, when even the local drunks had already long since stumbled home.
Anyway, I stepped closer and spotted a bowed head with the owner's iconic hat solemnly removed, sitting in my boat and eating every single scrap of food I'd managed to acquire.
"So," the figure said, with Whitebeard's mark emblazoned across his back and his mouth sounding rather full, "are you the guy who owns this boat?"
"Kind of a stupid question," I replied, two emotions warring within me. On one hand, Ace was probably going to set everything on fire in a second as he took his "revenge" on me. On the other…well, I was tempted to mess with him. Badly.
I hadn't really laughed in quite a while, not after being met with frustration over and over again ever since I'd left the Whitebeards. The second urge won out.
There was a swallowing noise. "So you did take it."
And Ace lunged, knocking me over and almost into the bay. While I caught his wrist on reflex, it didn't change the fact that all the fingers of that hand were on fire, and that his other hand was gripping my collar. Or that he was sitting on my chest with clear murderous intent.
Must you do this?
In hindsight, this was not my best plan.
"What did you do to the woman who owned this boat?" Ace demanded, dragging my face up until we were nearly nose to nose. As cliché as it sounded, his eyes literally blazed with rage. "What happened to her?!"
"Seriously? I'm right here." I canceled the Transformation technique in a massive puff of smoke, shedding my disguise. In no time at all I was back to…well, what passed as normal. As bizarrely endearing as Ace's worry was, this had gone far enough. I liked my innards uncooked.
Dropping the disguise still left me pinned under the Whitebeards' Second Division commander, but hey, it was my joke and I could pay for it. "Yo."
"…Kei?" Ace stared, lowering his raised fist and letting his fingers be fingers again. He sat back a bit, putting his weight mostly off my lungs and stomach, and then decided to roll off me and help me back to my feet.
"In the flesh." I didn't quite smile, but I gave it my best shot. What exactly was I supposed to say to a guy who'd almost turned me into a charcoal briquette out of misplaced anger? Even if that bit was my fault.
...I was a terrible prankster. Why did I even bother anymore?
Ace took the opportunity to indulge in the by-now-common reaction people around here had to unexpected news.
"YOU'RE ALIVE?!"
To wit, screaming their heads off.
I clapped my hands over my ears slightly too late. "Ow, dammit!"
"Sorry, I just—how are you alive?" Ace asked, fighting down a grin that totally ruined whatever apology he was trying to communicate.
"Try screaming a little less and I'll tell you," I responded somewhat grumpily, digging my pinky finger into my left ear. Fucking ow.
"Oh, it's definitely you," Ace muttered under his breath. Still, he poked my shoulder like he didn't really expect his finger to stop when he touched me. "But how?"
"I think I need to know why you'd think I was dead, first," I said, "because the sea has a lot of ways of doing that."
Ace considered it. "Not here," he said after he'd thought it over. "Somewhere less exposed. I'll tie your ship to mine and we can talk where it's safer."
"I was perfectly safe until you ruined my disguise," I said flatly. By, for example, putting up the Whitebeard flag.
"In this town?" Ace scoffed.
I sighed. Okay, so maybe he probably knew more about the area than I did. The town was a shithole anyway. "Fine. I'll get the dinghy out. But I'm putting the flag back where I had it."
"It's our flag, though," Ace protested. "If you kept it, why aren't you using it? Everyone knows Whitebeard protects anyone who flies our symbol for real."
"That…is a question I will answer once we get going," I said, tossing him the mooring line to my boat so he could tie it to Striker's stern.
I mean, I couldn't guarantee that my boat wouldn't be completely swamped in seconds by Striker's wake, but hey. A plan was a plan.
Ace thankfully remembered that burying me in Striker's rooster-tail would have probably been bad form, so our two linked boats sailed peacefully across the bay and toward the totally deserted end of the island. I had a theory about that, involving Sea Kings and giant crabs, but Isobu had called my idea "foolhardy" and I hadn't been able to protest at the time due to a haze of sheer fatigue.
That had been a bad night. This was looking to be a long one.
Once we got to the correct spot, I dragged my nameless boat's nose up onto the sand directly, while Ace did the same for Striker. Afterward, I gathered wood for a campfire before he just lit the entire stock ablaze in one shot, since the sun was rising soon.
Then the two of us sat down on driftwood logs and didn't talk for a while.
The crackling fire prevented a total silence from descending, but I wasn't really sure what to say.
"I apologize for not being dead?" Isobu suggested.
Uh, no. "Hey, Ace?"
"Yeah?" He looked up from where he'd been staring into the fire, apparently about as tired at three in the morning as I was. Even if he had just eaten all of my food as a "midnight" snack.
Well, since there wasn't really a way for me to be circumspect… "Why'd you think I was dead?"
Ace's expression went blank for a worryingly long time. Then, "…You were eaten by a Sea King. Namur saw it happen."
I winced inwardly. So much for keeping Isobu a secret.
"We didn't believe it at first, but then we remembered that a big one was sitting on the ocean when those Marine ships attacked. Do you remember that?" he asked, looking back down at the fire again.
"Kinda hard not to," I replied. That had been an eye-opening afternoon. I'd seen two other Logias in action since—including some jackass whose power involved creating sludge—but the first one stuck out.
"Near as we were able to tell, it was the same one." Ace sighed. "But it's been two months, and then we kept hearing about one of our boats showing up at random islands all over the New World. No flag, but we knew. We have people everywhere, and there are ways to tell those things apart."
I dropped my face into my hands. Double crap.
"Only there was always a different description of the owner, so it must've changed hands a lot," Ace continued. "And unless we were dealing with a ghost skiff, then someone must've recovered the thing and sold it on—but we didn't know if you'd made it. And if your boat did, why wouldn't you?"
"But I kept changing appearances and throwing you off," I mumbled. So much for trying to keep a low profile. "Sorry about that."
Ace at least appeared to hear my apology, but anything past that I couldn't determine. Still, he changed the topic slightly with, "Why were you doing that, anyway? And how?"
"I was trying to keep a low profile so if I did need to do something underhanded, no one would come after the Whitebeards for it," I explained, though my reasoning seemed a bit inadequate now. "Only I guess I should have actually sold the boat and gotten a new one to make that work…" I dismissed that line of thought with a wave of my hand. No point worrying about it now.
Ace snorted. "You—you were trying to protect us?" He choked down a laugh, but not very successfully. "Y-you wanted to protect one of the Four Emperors? From who?"
"It sounded better in my head," I grumbled. Lots of things did. Like half of my jokes. "And I don't know, maybe someone who doesn't even exist. I was being cautious."
Really, I wanted to keep them from being associated with me. In general, jinchūriki tended not to attract positive attention.
I had no idea what my adventure would lead me to do, but there were some crimes I was still willing to commit that would sully even Whitebeard's reputation. I wouldn't be happy about it, but I was a shinobi and a designated weapon. The whole reason I existed the way I did was because one man wanted to utterly destroy millions of people for being happy when he wasn't. Compared to the Whitebeard Pirates, I just…had a lot more depth to sink to, if I so chose.
"Hey, no, none of that," Ace interrupted, before my thoughts could get too dark. It was probably a bad sign for my self-control if my mindset was so obvious to someone I had only known for a few weeks a month ago. "Tell me how you keep changing" —a sweep of his hand encompassing the entirety of me— "everything."
"It's just a surface-level disguise. It's the same power that lets me control water," I explained with some forced cheer, "but I learned when I was eight instead of thirteen. It's really a basic skill where I come from."
"Oh, is that all?" Pause. "Wait. That doesn't explain anything!"
I said somewhat teasingly, "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." I sat back, glancing up at the lightening sky and watching the stars start to slowly disappear.
"So the funny hand motions you make before that? That's not sign language," Ace pressed. I focused on him again, noting his serious expression—or at least what I could see of it from below the brim of his hat.
"It's a hometown secret, Ace. Even if I was allowed to explain, you couldn't do it," I said, leaning forward to rest my head on my hands again. "Believe me, I've been checking every single person I meet. No one does these things the way I do."
And wasn't that a kick in the pants.
"So that's what you're looking for." Ace frowned thoughtfully, then pointed offhandedly at me. "Other people like you are out here, aren't they?"
My eyebrows did not rise. Ace had made the right logical leap, but he was clever when I wasn't deliberately making him too impatient to make the best judgments. "Yeah. They're out here somewhere, but I don't know if I'm even in the right region. The world's just" —I shrugged helplessly— "too big. But I have to find them before I can go home."
Not for the first time, my chest ached as I thought about my goal. Two months of fruitless searching wouldn't have done great things for my optimism even if the reservoir hadn't already been low. Even with Isobu as my constant companion, homesickness dogged my heels every time we went to a new island and found nothing.
"…You're not the only one who has something to do before going home," Ace said, lifting the brim of his hat. His free hand burst into flames, just for a second, and the fire in front of us got a hell of a lot bigger for a little longer than that. If I'd been sitting much closer, I wouldn't have bangs anymore.
I'd seen Ace that angry once. "You're going after Teach." And for all I knew, Teach had eaten the Devil Fruit and had some strange new powers that no one had ever seen. "Does Whitebeard know?"
"It's better to ask forgiveness than permission," Ace replied, defiant.
I narrowed my eyes. "I don't even know how old you are, but you're still too old to be using 'running away from home' as a solution to anything."
"I'm twenty," Ace said, clearly not willing to consider that argument. "And as an adult, I can make my own decisions."
While essentially the second mate of his crew? No. He was supposed to be listening to his captain and reinforcing those orders unless things had gone to hell. "I get that he was one of your men—"
"You really don't. Not if you finish that sentence," Ace growled. Taken aback, I fell silent. "You don't know what it means when—our crew is our family. Teach was more our brother than anyone we have by blood, and he spat on it because he wanted that Devil Fruit."
I… I tried to imagine it, but my brain defaulted to Tobi and I didn't want to think about that at all. It was a bad mental space.
Ace got to his feet, shoulders already aflame, and paced as he talked. He gestured rather emphatically, too. "He almost killed Thatch over something he could've just asked for, and no one hurts one of ours and gets away with it."
I pressed my lips together and looked away.
"Even if he hadn't attacked you and Thatch," Ace said in a quieter voice, with the flames dying down, "he's been tearing up towns in Paradise. He's our mess—my mess—and needs to be stopped. Not killing him then makes him my responsibility now."
There was no precise, direct equivalent to Ace's situation. For most of the village's history, there had only been two iconic traitors to whom all later candidates were compared. Everyone else we could find was hunted down and destroyed with extreme prejudice, but it created a sort of evolutionary pressure among scumbags. The only ones that lived long enough to be infamous were the ones too strong to kill.
I could cite Madara—who had fucked over negotiations with Iwa so badly that Konoha was still paying for it—but Ace wouldn't know what I was talking about. Madara had specifically done his best to ruin my life and those of all my friends in one last-ditch attempt to ensure his legacy as an unmitigated monster, but he had never been my friend. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he was probably the longest-running single enemy I had ever faced. If he'd had his way, his plots would have continued long after he got me to kill my own family.
And there was Orochimaru who, like Madara, bore me no particular grudge at first but corrupted everything he touched. As far as I knew, the only people who even marginally cared about his continued existence were Tsunade, Jiraiya, and the Third Hokage. As for everyone else who didn't share a childhood with him? My friends and I had enough grudges to keep the entire Uchiha clan in the black. Orochimaru had murdered the Chinatsugumi and made my students orphans, nearly killed me, had been the motive for Sasori ambushing my brother, Anko, and Jiraiya, and torn Yamato's peers to genetically scrambled pieces just to recreate Wood Release.
And in both cases, no one loyal to Konoha would do less than kill them if given half the opportunity to do so. I'd personally ripped Orochimaru limb from limb more than once after what he did to Sorayama. Did it bring anyone back? No. But keeping him away from survivors, even if it killed me, mattered too much to me then for me to stop before I collapsed.
If I was being honest, could I blame Ace for wanting to exact justice?
I'd be one hell of a hypocrite if I did. "Okay."
"Okay what?" Ace asked, having not been privy to the history lesson inside my head. Still, he seemed mollified that I'd stopped arguing with him.
"I'll come with you to hunt Teach down," I said, meeting Ace's eyes patiently.
That brought him up short. Hands on his hips in a sort of defensive suspicion, he asked, "Didn't you just say you had a different mission?"
"You say that like I was getting anywhere," I muttered, though I hated to have to think about that. Still, I had a pirate to convince. "Ahem. I can still do that on our off hours. They say two heads are better than one. And I…" —specifically Isobu— "well, there's someone you need to meet who wants his pound of flesh from Teach, too."
"He can get in line," Ace said flatly. "Nothing's gonna stop me from giving that traitorous son of a bitch exactly what he deserves."
"…I think you'll understand why I think it matters once you meet him," I said after a bit of a pause. "Also, I can't navigate worth crap and I need help."
I can navigate perfectly well.
Yeah, but I think hitting islands randomly isn't really working out for us, even if you can always find land.
…You could be right about that. Isobu sent me an image of the beach, bonfire, and both Ace and me, and said, So, you want me to introduce myself.
It would be nice. He'd find out sooner or later if we follow this plan, and there's still enough darkness that the rest of the island shouldn't spot you.
Isobu made a vague rumbling noise, but subsided with bad grace. People tended not to react well to Isobu, for all that he was probably one of the shyest of the Tailed Beasts and mostly just wanted to be left alone.
…I wasn't sure if it said more about him, my influence on him, or what, that such a statement was probably not the case anymore.
"Hello? New World to Kei. I'm still here, you know," Ace said, waving his hand in front of my face.
I tried slapping his hand aside irritably, and nearly set my sleeve on fire when he automatically transformed. Luck was on my side, though. I had a segue. "I was just talking to my travel buddy. He wants to meet you."
That did not seem to make Ace any more assured of my good judgment. "…What?"
I did not say that.
Too frickin' bad. I stood up, faced the sea, and waved my arms overhead. I knew where Isobu was, big mass of chakra and all, and looked right at him. "Isobu, it's time to say hi!"
Ace tried putting his hand on my shoulder to stop me, but I shrugged him off. "Who the hell are—WHAT THE FUCK?!"
Seeing Isobu for the first time was never a sanguine experience for people not in the know. And sometimes even for people who were. This time, he chose to lever himself into our firelight with all the subtlety of a tectonic plate shifting, his golden eye glowing like a lamp as he slowly moved closer and closer to shore. His body dragged over the seabed because he was too big for it not to. All three of his tails hung in midair as water poured off him in a seemingly endless cascade, and it hadn't finished by the time I kicked sand over the fire to make it a bit smaller.
"Get back," Ace insisted, hand on my upper arm. He'd clearly been holding back when we fought, because his grip was like iron as he tried to pull me back and away from Isobu's gigantic jaws. "That's—"
"The thing that ate my boat?" And if I was grinning like an idiot, so what? "Only because I asked."
"It—" Ace said, then paused for a second to try and get his thoughts in order. "That's a Sea King. You can talk to Sea Kings?"
I was already shaking my head by the time he was halfway through that statement. There was some kind of cultural baggage there that sat heavy in his tone, but I would ask him about that later. "No. Isobu is a Tailed Beast."
Isobu's huge golden eye moved slowly from me to Ace, pupil narrowing on exposure to the remaining firelight.
"If he talks, he'll probably hurt your ears and won't really be able to hear you unless you yell back," I said while Ace continued to stare. "Lucky you're a Logia, right?"
"I—uh, I guess so?" Ace cleared his throat and removed his hat. So he bounced back to being polite when no better options presented themselves. Better than meek. "Portgas D. Ace, at your service!"
I covered my ears and preemptively winced. Through them, I still heard Isobu say in one of his quieter voices, "You nearly drowned in front of me two months ago."
"I…might've done that," Ace said somewhat sheepishly, though he was clearly still uncomfortable addressing something that much bigger than he was (that wasn't hostile). His ears flared orange for a second as the damage to his eardrums came and went.
"You already know my name," Isobu said, still in his softest tone, "and as far as I am concerned, there is no line. Whichever of us finds that traitor first will be the one to kill him."
Everything went silent for a second, including the waves, as the universe processed that statement. I smacked my hand into my face. Oh no.
"He is mine," Ace argued instantly. With a giant turtle monster.
Oh, he was definitely one of a kind.
"No one strikes my partner and lives," Isobu growled, making all of the nearby water start to bounce.
How many responses were there to something like that?
Ace glanced at me. When I just shrugged, he said, "So…we're good? I fought Kei the last time we met."
"Neither of you were fighting to the greatest extent of your power. Give me some credit for measuring hostile intent." Isobu rolled his eye. Then, looking down at me, he asked, "Can we continue our search now? We have places to be."
I planted one foot against the bow of my boat and pushed it into the water, toward Isobu's mouth. He scooped it up and swallowed the entire craft without any trouble, as usual, then returned to looking down at Ace and I as though we were errant children.
"Okay, no. If it's all the same to you, I'm sticking with Striker." Ace picked up his rucksack and tossed it into his raft, not interested in the Isobu Express. He'd learn, probably. "Isobu can follow me, right?"
"I can answer for myself. And yes," Isobu responded.
"Great," Ace replied in a tone that said he wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not.
"And where are you going?" I asked, crossing my arms.
"…To the next island?" Ace said blankly.
"Well, I'm not. You ate all my food, you jerk."
"…Oops." Ace rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry?"
"'Sorry' doesn't keep me from starving to death," I reminded him. "I'm gonna head back to town and buy food and then we can leave."
Isobu snorted and started lurching his way out to sea again, clearly done with the whole landlubber business. I had no idea how much of the seabed he was turning into piles of pulverized sand, but I probably didn't want to know. Call on me when you are going to do anything important.
I waved as he left, and Ace seemed to copy me mostly because he didn't know what else to do.
"So," he said once Isobu had gone, "any other life-changing secrets you wanna tell me?"
"We can talk without needing to use our mouths or meet face-to-face," I said instantly, since I was on a roll. "He's half the reason I space out."
"And the other half?"
I shrugged. "Genuinely not paying attention."
"Well, this is the start of a beautiful friendship," Ace muttered, and that was definitely sarcastic. In a louder tone actually meant to carry, he said, "Hop on Striker and I'll get you back to town."
This time, I rode sidesaddle while Ace stood up for the entire trip over. Definitely better than weighing the mast down.
I feel as though you should have seen this particular twist coming.
You're not helping.
"Ace, you're a fucking cheapskate," I growled under my breath.
The evidence of my traveling companion's crime manifested in the form of stacks and stacks of plates that had been scraped utterly clean, their contents having been long since disappeared into Ace's black hole of a gullet. There were easily enough plates there for ten men his size, or maybe one Akimichi, and Ace had nonetheless managed to run the hell away. That left the poor restaurant owners and workers with no money to show for all their efforts. The culprit was long gone.
I unslung my bag and from my shoulder, loosening the drawstring once I set it on the table. The sobbing waiter looked up, eyes bright red and puffy, as I said, "I'm not sure I have enough beri notes for this, but could you tell me how much that guy just cost you?"
The waiter quoted a number that sent my eyebrows shooting upward, but I could still pay it. It would just take a large chunk of my weapons fund.
"Okay, then this should cover it," I said, dropping a large stack of moderate-denomination bills. "Have a good day, all right? Or at least a better one than this."
Then I skedaddled before the waiter could ask why I was paying for a dine-and-dashing pirate.
About ten minutes later, I met up with Ace outside of the nearest weapons shop, having once again failed to locate anyone who could make kunai from the description alone. He sat casually on the fence that blocked the forge of the nearby smithy, totally unaffected by either the heat of the building or the swirling snow at the street. Even if he wore a trench coat against the cold.
"No luck?" Ace asked, since I once again had returned empty-handed.
"I can't exactly commission twenty replacements when I don't have a design or a sample." I glanced up at the sun, then shook my head. The Drum Kingdom wasn't exactly a place where weaponry of my favored type was popular. Since Teach had rolled through, flattened the army, and scared the king out of the country, chances had only dwindled.
Hearing that Teach had originally showed up because he needed medical help had been heartening, but ultimately it felt mostly like this particular venture had been a waste of time.
"Did you finish what you had to?" I asked Ace, after watching my breath fog in the cold.
Ace tipped his hat against the wind. "Yeah. With any luck, my brother will be at our next stop."
"I wondered why you wanted to spend ten days in Alabasta," I admitted, already thinking of how much money I would need to spend to compensate for Ace's eating habits. "What's Alabasta like, anyway?"
"It's a desert country, but it's a lot bigger than Drum. You might be able to find what you're looking for here."
Deserts. I hadn't liked deserts since long before I'd visited the Land of Wind for their Chūnin Exam. The lack of water forced me to use larger amounts of chakra to be combat effective, I hated the extreme temperature swings, and the way sand got everywhere really chafed. Still, we didn't have any more leads on Teach to chase down, so we didn't have better options.
Going by the widening grin on Ace's face, my lack of enthusiasm was showing on mine.
I schooled my expression into something more neutral, then tightened the strings on my thick winter coat and said, "I'm hoping I can at least find the right kind of paper there."
"You never did tell me why you need that much, or why cartography paper wouldn't work," Ace remarked as he hopped off the fence. His boots crunched deeply into the snow, and if he hadn't been a walking, talking, impending pyrotechnics display, I probably would have fussed at him for not wearing long pants in snow.
As it was, I ignored it. "Ace, I don't tell you a lot of things," I pointed out. Still, as we headed back toward the Drum Island harbor and to Striker, I thought that over again. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to relax my policy on secrets a bit. "Once I have the right paper and ink, I'll be almost back to full strength. It'll make the rest of this much easier."
Sure, I could still turn everyday objects into grenades without ink or paper supplies, but some problems needed a bit more finesse. I might have been of the opinion that a sufficiently large explosion covered most combat situations—typically by obliterating them—but an explosion couldn't store drinkable water or food in a 2D space. Nor could I shut down opposing jinchūriki from a cold start, because most of my counterparts were annoyingly durable. I definitely needed proper sealing supplies for flexibility's sake.
Now, if only places other than World Government hubs stocked any.
"I still don't get how it's so important to you," Ace said, "but Alabasta's a trading hub. And if nothing else, ten days should be enough to make the weapons."
"Maybe." I shrugged and dismissed the entire issue as a problem for at least a little longer. Until we got there and got sunburned, any plans were conjecture at best.
Soon enough, the two of us were tearing across the waves on Striker once again, with Isobu silently coasting underneath the waves in our wake.
Just before we left Drum Island behind, I thought I felt a flicker of chakra on the edge of my sensing range.
Isobu? Did you have any luck contacting your siblings earlier?
No, why?
…No reason.
I wasn't sure if it was the faint feeling of another chakra signature somewhere out in the vast sea that put me in a somewhat better mood that day or what, but I woke up on the fourth morning on Sandy Island with the feeling that things were going to go my way.
It ended up being a bit of a mixed bag.
"No, this isn't going to work," I said with a deep sigh, letting go of the paper sample I'd been given. "Thank you for letting me look through these, but I'm afraid none of the samples have been suitable."
The shopkeeper woman made a face like she'd swallowed a lemon, and I didn't blame her. In my search for the perfect paper for my fūinjutsu, I had poked, prodded, and felt a sample of every single paper made of every kind of tree that she stocked. And not one of them was suitable. Either the gauge was wrong, or the texture, or it wouldn't hold the type of ink-and-blood mixture I needed to use in the right way, and that put me back at square one.
Dammit, was it too much to ask for one thing to go right without having to commit some kind of crime?
"We do have one last option," said the shopkeeper's assistant, who was carrying a massive roll of what had felt like butcher paper back toward the storeroom like it was nothing. "Remember that one shipment from Wano, from years ago?"
"No one will ever buy that," said the shopkeeper. "It's too fragile to last on a ship."
But perhaps it would survive in a storage seal. "Can I see it?"
Both the shopkeeper and her assistant looked askance at me, then the former waved her hand, "As long as it gets you out of here."
Several minutes later, the assistant returned carrying a small box with half a dozen postage marks on it. I recognized the old symbol of Wano from the books I'd read on the Moby Dick, and took the box reverently from the worker.
He cut the ropes binding it shut with a pocket knife, then popped the lid.
It took me a bit to recognize what was in front of me, but after that? I knew I'd found the fucking Holy Grail.
"Is this—it's kozogami." Of all the places to find the perfect paper, a desert country wasn't one I'd expected at all. Especially not after Wano had been taken over by Kaido. And its isolationist policy before then meant that very few products ever left its shores, at least outside of pirate hands. "It's the best for what I need, oh my goodness. How much?"
And as usual, the quoted price made me want to track Ace down and strangle him with his necklace for the food bills he kept racking up, but it was still affordable. Broadly. I'd just have to dig up another shipwreck and waste two more days selling off everything I could to a local pawn shop to get back up to par.
"Rip-off artists, I swear," I muttered to myself, but paid the price-gouging pair what they asked. I needed the paper too much to blow the deal by haggling or screwing around.
Thankfully, I'd already found the high-quality ink elsewhere. It had taken ditching Ace for a few hours (via judicious use of genjutsu and a scarecrow) and sneaking into a Marine base to find anything near suitable. In the end, I stole the Vice Admiral's inkwell—and all his spare ones, after leaving an anonymous apology note—but I got what I needed.
All I had to do was get back to Isobu without anything being destroyed, and I was set for at least a little while. As long as I made sure all of my non-explosive seals were literally handcrafted.
I thought about sealing the box into the storage seal that sat empty on the bottom of my foot, then belatedly remembered why I hadn't done that with my original island survival gear—sheer inflexibility in reusable seals. It was only designed to accept that one particular kunai back, and that weapon could have been at the bottom of the sea for all I knew.
So I ended up lugging my precious cargo around town on my hip as I went in search of Ace. Stepping out into the bright sunshine, I thought to myself that it looked just like any other day. No trouble lay on the horizon.
In hindsight, I'd doomed myself about four times over within an hour. That statement was just the last straw.
"Okay, if I was a bottomless pit of a pirate, where would I go?" I wondered quietly, chin in my free hand and the other pinning the box of paper to my side. Then I replayed what I'd just said and sighed. "And I just answered my own question."
Who are you talking to?
Myself, for once.
Sooner or later we'd be coming up on the end of Ace's time limit for his brother. Just a little longer before the hunt for Teach was on again—or as he'd been calling himself lately, "Blackbeard." Originally, I hadn't been able to tell if he was trying to coast on the association with Whitebeard's moniker or not, but then he'd gone and proven his asshole credentials by running roughshod over any towns or islands too isolated to get help from anyone in power.
I was of the opinion that he'd fit the role better after Ace set his hair on fire, but that was just me and my otherworldly knowledge talking. With that cheery thought in mind, I turned one corner or another and continued to follow the smell of roasting meat and spices wafting around town. Sooner or later, the largest concentrations of food would attract Ace like a moth to a…well.
Shaking my head at my own lame almost-joke, I walked along the city streets without any real fear. Mainly because I'd bought desert-gray robes and didn't look a whole lot like myself—and without using the Transformation jutsu this time. While I wasn't making a habit of wasting chakra on now-useless stealth procedures, some things stuck. With my face-splitting scar, I stood out too much as myself to feel entirely comfortable that way, and the extra layers provided a way of getting around that.
I took pride in small victories.
I didn't really know much about Nanohana as a city, but it reminded me a bit of Sunagakure with far more colorful buildings. Many of the local roofs were domed, gilded, brightly painted, or all of the above, as opposed to Suna's love of architecture that practically melted into the sandstone surrounding their village. There also weren't any uniformed people around other than the local guards, but desert chic dominated where Suna's fashion varied wildly between that and the same kinds of clothes favored by Konoha—mainly T-shirts, pants, and sandals. At least most people here still wore sandals.
There were also a lot of mustaches, but I honestly wasn't sure if that was a thing in this world or just this particular Summer Island. I'd seen more mustaches in four months than I had in the twenty-whatever years before that.
My nose eventually led me to a new…well, I wouldn't call it a plaza because that would have implied there was formal city planning involved. No, there was just a large blank dirt patch in the city that could easily be used for a market or a parade but currently wasn't, and my destination happened to be cozily stationed on one side of it.
The Spice Bean smelled encouragingly of curry, garlic, and other fragrant things that I knew would draw Ace in like nothing else. Still, I wasn't sure if I had nearly enough money to pay for his inevitable bottomless pit impression, and so I hesitated.
I hesitated long enough for someone in a Navy coat to stalk past me like the restaurant had done something to offend him. Whether I had to be on the lookout for a follow-up death squad or not I wasn't sure.
God damn they grew people big here. The guy had to be at least seven feet tall like Thatch was, prematurely gray, built like a brick shithouse, and also allergic to shirts. Though seriously, smoking two cigars at once with two bandoliers of more cigars? Rin would have materialized out of nothing and slapped him in the mouth if he was one of her patients.
"Excuse me?" I asked someone who happened to be passing by.
"Oh, hello. Can I help you?" she responded reflexively. If not for the katana on her hip that had a white-and-gold Marine finish instead of my sword's deliberately generic one, and the fact that she had "MARINE" literally emblazoned across the back of her shirt, I would have written her off as a tourist. There was something about her that was kinda spacey.
"Who was that?" I asked, pointing at the retreating back of the…the guy. The only other person who really stuck out like a sore thumb around here, besides this woman.
She adjusted her glasses, squinting, then said, "That would be Captain Smoker. I wonder where he's going? Is he hungry?"
I did not have an honest answer for that question without involving Ace. Because there was no way a Marine looking like he was plotting murder would be heading for just any random restaurant in Alabasta. No way in hell was I that lucky—or anyone else that unlucky.
I was going to be well out of immediate range when the delicate balance of a peaceful afternoon ended in explosions.
"Maybe I'll have to get lunch there sometime," I said neutrally, deliberately missing the point. Assuming it's still standing. "Well, thanks anyway."
"No problem! I'm Officer Tashigi, by the way," she said cheerfully. "If you see anyone suspicious, be sure to report them to the Marines right away!"
I smiled in a somewhat fixed way, already turning away. "Of course." I'll do it right after I send Teach a fruit basket.
Your new explosive notes would be a better gift. While activated. Or perhaps my teeth…
I walked away before Tashigi could notice me standing around arguing with thin air about excessive use of force. Not that I was sure she'd be paying attention to me at all. Especially after I slipped into an alleyway, checked for witnesses, and transformed into a rough mix between Anko and Rin's appearances. Doing so cut a hand's span of height off me and removed both my scar and visible pupils, but I considered it a basic precaution at this point.
Then I went to go poke my head into the Spice Bean and keep up with whatever chaos was going to happen next.
Looking in through the front window, I got a great view of a whole lot of stunned patrons staring as Smoker stood dead in the middle of the room, smoking (hah!) like a chimney even though he was indoors. Ace sat with his back to yet another massive pile of accumulated plates, one leg crossed casually over the other like he wasn't obviously going to get in a fight in a few seconds.
And I didn't have enough money to pay for that. Not now.
While the crowd behind me gathered—since we were all trying to get a look at the impending fight like a bunch of high school students—Smoker and Ace kept talking. While I wasn't sure quite what they were saying through glass, I heard snippets that went basically "Justice" and "pirate" and "take you in," which gave me enough of the gist to guess the rest. And the widening smirk on Ace's face promised exactly one thing.
I stepped away from the glass just as Smoker's entire left arm evaporated away into a thick cloud of grayish smoke. Not because I was afraid of them, but flying glass in my eyes didn't appeal. At the back of the group, I was much less likely to be collateral damage.
"Gum-Gum…"
…Eh? Why did that sound kind of—
"ROCKET!"
And then that was the least of my worries as a red-and-blue blur shot right through the open restaurant door. I darted to the door a moment later, blinking at the sudden rubble dust, and then found myself struck dumb by the sight.
Ace and Smoker were both gone, with a hole smashed through the back of the Spice Bean—and several walls behind it—to show for their absence. In their approximate place, one seat to the left of where Ace had been (since there was a new gap in the counter) was a kid in a red vest, cut-off shorts, and a big straw hat with a red band. And he was eating away like he hadn't just punted two grown men through several buildings.
What did they feed people around here?
…Why was I asking that question when the answer was literally right in front of me?
As I watched with a kind of morbid fascination, the kid continued eating even as Ace finally recovered from being knocked through entirely too many walls. I heard him grumbling to himself as he finally made it back through the first hole, saying things like, "What kind of idiot would do something this crazy?"
Then he spotted the kid. He opened his mouth, smiling entirely genuinely, saying, "Lu—Hey, Lu—"
And then Ace was face-planting into rubble for a second time, because Smoker was really about as patient as the last guy I'd met who didn't have eyebrows. Zabuza being the way he was, I kinda expected the kid to be choking to death on smoke in a few more seconds.
"Straw Hat!" Smoker snarled.
Yes. Yes, the kid did have a straw hat. So did tons of other people. What was Smoker doing moonlighting as the fashion police?
Even so, the kid was still stuffing his face like a chipmunk, oblivious to the danger. Maybe it was time for me to get out of the doorway…
With that thought in mind, I scooted out of the way and decided instead to skitter around to the other side of the building. It was, overall, probably safer being behind Smoker than in front of him. I still needed to grab Ace and shake him awake to make any kind of clean getaway that counted. No man left behind and all that.
I reached Ace just as Smoker took off in pursuit of the straw hat kid, yelling "Halt!"
Coincidentally, that was when Ace recovered, shot to his feet, and took off while yelling, "Wait, Luffy, it's me!" He was already out the door and running. "Hey, wait up! Luffy!"
I sat back on my heels there for a second, face in my hands and rubble under my feet, and said to myself, "I am an idiot."
I thought his brother's name was supposed to be "Lucy."
Exactly. In my defense, I'd been named after my dad's uncle and had a boy's name. Everyone around here seemed to use a mélange of different cultures, so why couldn't a boy have a girl's name?
Straw Hat Luffy. Luffy—Monkey D. Luffy.
As though on cue, I heard a distinctly unmusical voice shouting through my head.
YO! ya-yo, ya-yo
Dreamin', don't give it up Luffy
Dreamin', don't give it up Zolo
Dreamin', don't give it up Nami
Dreamin', don't give it give it up give it up give it up give it up give it NO!
Hell and damnation. I wasn't just in any random pirate universe where the local physics were a fucking mess. Oh no. That would have been far too kind for my brand of luck.
I was in One Piece.
"Fuck my life," I groaned under my breath.
With that cheerful thought in mind, I ran the hell away while the restaurant owner and patrons were still gaping at all the damage. I would pay for most of Ace's random bullshit, but at this point I had to throw my hands up in despair and just accept that "innocence by Act of Luffy" was now a phrase I might actually have to use.
I didn't stop until I had a high vantage point, which was on a fourth-story rooftop overlooking the bay. I sat on my box and stayed out of the way, but could still tell where the tides of the action were moving.
As Luffy ran around town like a…like a man on the run, really, he gathered an impressive list of pursuers. In addition to Smoker and Ace—following in that order—Tashigi and the rest of the marines joined in. While I haunted a couple of nearby rooftops just to keep an eye on things, I didn't want to get involved no matter whose face I wore at the moment. Especially after I saw Ace and Smoker's respective powers mixing together to create an explosion hundreds of feet in the air.
Besides, I thought as I watched everyone still on the ground run around like they were in a Scooby Doo cartoon, Ace has this handled.
…Are we talking about the same human? Because I somewhat doubt that.
It'd be rude of me to interrupt the brothers' reunion, I told Isobu, as though he hadn't said anything. I patted the box of rare paper I had picked up like it was my newest pet. I have other things to worry about.
I hope you have a more effective plan with which to save that box, because I cannot surface.
Eh? Why not?
There are hundreds of ships in the nearest harbor. And outside of it, a small fleet is moving into position to attack stragglers. While I could destroy them, your policy on stealth…
I sighed. Not for the first time, my desire not to get involved in unnecessary fights or expose Isobu was getting in the way of the fastest solution. I get your point. Plan B, then. I'll meet up with Ace and his brother and we'll get out of populated zones so I can actually drop this off.
Isobu didn't directly respond, but I felt his chakra move off and out of the mouth of Nanohana's bay. We'd meet up later and hopefully he wouldn't have eaten anyone by then.
As he did so, I froze in place as I detected a second flicker of chakra that wasn't mine. It was maybe ten or fifteen kilometers away, in the desert proper, and probably in view of the city. I automatically oriented myself in its direction, noting its speed and course—toward Nanohana—before biting my lip in thought.
I had a hunch about that chakra signature—the sound of wind howling through stone—and carefully directed my own outward. Searching…
There, farther into the desert than I would have willingly walked, was Shukaku. I couldn't see him, but I could feel his strength even this far away, and knew that the other chakra signature had to be Gaara. I didn't know what he was doing here, but I wished fiercely that he was perceptive enough for me to send some kind of message without needing to dive into meditation.
I'd found one.
There we are. Isobu sighed in relief. Joy trickled into his mental voice as he said, I can hear him now.
Good.
Then I bit down on my excitement, recognizing that even if Gaara was there, I needed to check in. The mission's parameters hadn't changed that much.
Body Flicker. And I was gone, darting invisibly through the city rooftops on speed alone.
Several minutes later, I found them.
"But Ace, what are you doing in this country?" Luffy's voice drifted up from an alleyway, so I slowed to a silent stop and looked down over the edge of the rooftop. Going by the footprint scorched into the slats, Ace had done the same not long ago.
Ace sounded rather confused as he said, "Huh? You mean you didn't get the message I left in Drum?"
No, Ace. Of course he didn't. That would have been too easy.
"Drum?" Bingo.
"Yeah. It's no big deal or anything, though. I'm just in these waters on some minor business, so I thought I might look you up." That had definitely not been the sales pitch Ace had given me. Guess he didn't want his brother involved. I could certainly empathize.
While Ace downed half of his canteen in one go, Luffy repeated, "Minor business?"
Get this kid a piece of eight and call him Polly already, I grumbled silently.
While the brothers continued to talk—and Luffy instantly shut down Ace's recruitment offer—I leaned on the edge of the roof and glanced around. While neither of the boys below seemed to notice, there were people peeking out of hidey-holes all over the place. As they walked off, a number of the onlookers crept out of their hiding places and over the rooftops, following them.
I Body Flickered to the nearest one and concussed him with my box of paper, leaving his body to droop down onto the roof in utter silence.
The one after that I choked unconscious using his own bow as a garrote. Then the next crook I clubbed into submission, whacking him with the butt of his rifle. And so on and so forth. My personal favorite method was the archer, because after that it got monotonous pretty quick. Even if Ace was probably the next best thing to bulletproof, I could take some basic precautions with regard to his brother's safety.
Perhaps because I still wasn't taking things seriously enough, there were still some left by the time the gang finally decided to confront the two pirates.
"Fire Fist Ace! Your head is mine!" said the biggest, most Teach-like of the thugs. Sure, he was about half as large as the guy Isobu wanted to rip limb from limb, but he was still the biggest member of the gang. "Prepare yourself!"
The rest of them were armed with single-shot flintlock pistols, flintlock rifles, and the occasional sword.
Overall, a gang of thirty random thugs versus Ace and his brother? Not even a contest.
I canceled my Transformation technique and slipped out of the alleyway where I'd been surreptitiously choking out another member of the group. Once I was sure Ace could see me past the ringleader, I leaned casually against the nearest wall and waved.
Ace gave a miniscule nod to show that he'd seen me.
The ringleader went on for a bit longer after one of his men recognized Luffy, but ultimately both brothers just strode past him as though he wasn't there.
"We're gonna go find Luffy's ship," Ace said to me, not once looking back. "Right, Luffy?"
"Yeah!" Luffy agreed brightly. Then he blinked. "Oh, Ace, is this one of your crewmates?"
I was about to answer, but at that point the gang leader shouted, "Get them!"
Cue fight scene!
I'd put my box down ahead of time in the alleyway, because of course everything ended in a fight, and did my best Kakashi impression once the gang realized I was there. Dodging without really noticing was a breeze, and whacking people in the face with their own weapons was probably one of the easier self-imposed challenges I'd ever set for myself. Gai would have been ashamed of me.
Ace and Luffy? Even if either of them had managed to get in a jam, the other would have leapt into the other's part of the fight and staged a valiant rescue. Or else caught fire. It was really a toss-up. Either way, the gangsters didn't stand a chance.
And then.
And fucking then.
One of the gang members picked up my box, innocently out of the way until then, and threw it at Ace. Of course Ace turned his head into flames as always, and of course my box caught fire.
I might've punched a gangster in the face hard enough to invert it.
"Excuse me," I said in a voice full of forced calm. I stripped off my outer layer of robes, then methodically beat the flames out before the fire ate through it.
"Luffy, you might wanna get going," I heard Ace tell his brother. "This is going to be messy."
"Hey, don't just ignore—"
I didn't even look to see who I was attacking before I'd already kicked him fifteen meters back up the street. With my leg still extended, I addressed Ace without looking at him, "Go on ahead, Ace. I have business here."
Ace gave my statement his due consideration. Then he tilted the brim of his hat downward, hiding his eyes, and grinned. "Sorry, that's a no-can-do."
Well, then. I lowered my leg and shifted to the Strong Fist stance. With Luffy and Ace preventing the other gang members from escaping even if they could move (via beating on them, mainly), while I was broadcasting the will to turn other people into corpses like a morbid radio station, it was not even a contest.
And my box got away with some char-marks on the outside, but it didn't burn.
In the end, Luffy chose to rocket off to his ship directly via his ridiculous stretching powers. Ace and I went to find Striker before the gang—the Baroque Works Billions, apparently—could recover from the beating. Since the Straw Hats' ship was the only one with a flag and a sail with the iconic hat on it, it didn't take long to careen across the water and continue Ace's family reunion.
"So, did you find what you needed?" Ace asked as we cut through the waves. "That's what the box is, right?"
"Yep!" After having made sure that my paper was safe and given the Billions a beatdown, I was in a much better mood. "Once I can get a few free hours and a steady surface, I should be able to make all the seals I want."
And you found one of my brothers.
I suppressed a sheepish grin. I'm not sure how to break that to Ace, yet…
But Gaara's chakra was still heading our way, if somewhat stealthily. Shukaku's shied away from the ocean for obvious reasons, but was still keeping pace. We'd meet them properly soon, and then blow the lid off this secret.
"The steadiest thing you're going to find around here is either my brother's ship or your turtle's stomach," Ace commented, before cutting the fire input to Striker's engine. We were going to coast the rest of the way to the…whatever the Straw Hats' ship was called. Hopefully it had something to do with sheep, given the figurehead. "And I still don't get how paper equals power for you. Are you sure you haven't eaten a Devil Fruit?"
"You saw me swimming yesterday," I reminded him in a dry voice. "Also, it'd be a good idea not to tell the Straw Hats about Isobu. He's following us, but it'd be great if he could keep hiding from pretty much the entire World Government."
"Worried?" Ace asked as we were drawing about even with Luffy's ship.
"Not about Isobu," I muttered. But I was trying not to kill people, and from what I'd seen of the Marines and everything else to do with the World Government, they wouldn't give Isobu any choice. "But it's more attention than I want right now."
Because Mr. Shirtless Scene had the Whitebeard Pirates' symbol across his back and was about as subtle as a sledgehammer, he said, "And you're still traveling with me."
"I'm babysitting you," I corrected primly. Then I put on my best 'mom voice' to be annoying. "By the way, did you check in with Captain Whitebeard while we were in Nanohana? I know you have his snail number."
The fact that you can say "snail number" with a straight face worries me.
I talk to you and the other Tailed Beasts through a mindscape we call the mind-skype. We have no room whatsoever to talk.
Ace just laughed it off, then grabbed his vessel's line and leapt up onto the other ship.
"Punk," I griped to myself.
I checked the knots on Striker's lead and then followed Ace onto the railing, landing in a handstand before flipping nearly in place until I was sitting neatly on the painted wood as casually as if I had always been there. I even had my desert robes in perfect shape, if I pretended the burns didn't exist.
"And this is Kei," Ace said without missing a beat.
I waved. "Hello, everyone."
We didn't quite get to the introductions part before the swordsman—Zolo or Zoro?—of Luffy's crew noticed what I'd been able to see past him for entirely too long. The blue-haired woman in the belly-dancer outfit noticed second, and then it was on.
"Those are Baroque Works Billions ships!" cried the bluenette. I felt like I ought to ask, but it would be rude to interrupt.
The Billions might or might not have been yelling at us, but Isobu certainly said, Do you want me to take care of them? I thought the latter was more important.
"Those guys again?" Luffy wondered aloud, peering out across the waves. Maybe some of the guys we'd beaten up had lasted long enough to call reinforcements?
The ships were already out there. Again, I can handle this problem with a minimum of fuss.
"Luffy, let me deal with them," Ace said, still perched on the railing next to me like a half-naked gargoyle. For the next half-second—he dropped his bag on the deck and immediately jumped ship toward Striker with a yell that might've been a war cry.
"What's he going to do?" Nami wondered aloud, as the Straw Hats rushed over to watch Ace take off.
"Probably set them all on—" Ace was already unhooked from the big sheep-faced ship and shooting off toward the Billions' ships by the time I shrieked, "My box—ACE, GET BACK HERE!"
But no. Striker was so damned loud there was no way he would be able to hear me. Not after holding conversations with Isobu.
"I'm going to choke him to death with his hat," I said flatly.
With mounting sensations of mingled rage and horror, I watched with the Straw Hats as Ace did all the things. It probably looked like pure badass in action to the rookie crew, but all I could think of was my poor paper. Sparing a thought for the undisputed king of drowning didn't really factor in.
Massive leap over the masts of all of the ships that knocked Striker below the waves from the recoil alone? Check.
Rocketing through the air like a fiery mermaid or something just to get on the opposite side of all the attacking ships and thus give us a better view of the impending carnage? Also check.
Fire-punching five ships to death in a row and leaving only loose timber and ashes behind? Of course.
He was holding a fucking pose when the Straw Hats' ship went over to pick Striker up. Like he hadn't just put the box of paper strapped to the raft's mast in mortal danger and wasted four months of my life.
The Straw Hats were in awe by the time Ace hopped back onto the ship. I was…not. I was darting past him the second he was safely on the ship and wouldn't risk plummeting into the sea.
I landed down on Striker's nose and immediately retrieved my box.
My poor box was sodden, soaked in seawater, and perhaps a bit scorched all over again thanks to Ace's powers. Rather than punting Ace off the ship like a small, angry part of me insisted, I clambered back up onto the ship and set my box on the railing. And mourned.
"Ah…oops," I heard Ace mutter. "Sorry about that."
I was caught up enough in that, to the general bafflement of the pirates around me (and sheepish laughter from Ace), to not notice the sand-surfing twelve-year-old until he landed practically on top of my head.
Fortunately, the kid knew manners better than that. To the background sound of sand scraping along wood, he sidled over and peered at me. "You're…Keisuke?"
The penny dropped. I kept one hand on my box, but I knelt down and turned all off my attention to the raccoon-eyed kid in front of me. "Gaara!"
"Keisuke!" said Gaara, in about the most excited tone his raspy voice could manage without cracking. While I didn't get a hug for being the first jinchūriki pen pal Gaara had picked up, he smiled at me. I couldn't imagine how homesick or lonely Gaara must have felt to smile at me without reservations.
It was like winning the Big Sister Olympics.
"Gaara's back!" shouted Luffy, looping two rubbery arms around the second redhead on his team and hugging him without having to actually get close.
Since Gaara didn't immediately drop Luffy into a Sand Binding Coffin—not that I was sure how crushing force would interact with a kid made of rubber—I figured they had to be friends. Alternatively, this would be about karmic for Gaara given his propensity for violently crushing people.
Either way, it made me let go of my urge to kill my travel buddy, so things worked out.
And then it was question and answer time.
"How do you know Gaara?"
"Who is the man with the hat?"
"Your full name is Keisuke?"
But all at once was probably a bad place to start. In order to sort everything out, we needed time to do it. Therefore, Luffy's cook—the swirly-brow blond guy named Sanji—rolled up his sleeves and got to work creating enough food to feed an army. Or two black holes like Ace and Luffy, really. While he did that, the rest of us rolled out the utensils and things and generally tried to avoid being in the way.
Well, except for the miniature reindeer Chopper, Usopp (the only other human on the ship who was Luffy's age), and Luffy. Apparently they were jinxes in the kitchen.
"Is Gaara one of the people you were looking for?" Ace asked, sitting on a barrel with a mug of some alcohol or other in his hand.
"Yep," I said, though admittedly I was only half paying attention.
After getting the box of paper back from Ace and plunking it down on a stray mass of Gaara's sand, the redhead and I were slowly drying the contents of the box so I might be able to still use it. Kozogami was relatively water-resistant, but only for paper. Ace's stay of execution lasted until I got a death certificate on my purchases. If the paper died, so did he.
Not that I told him that. After traveling together for three weeks, he could just tell.
"Keisuke first visited my village when I was…I want to say two years old. We've talked some since then, but not recently," Gaara said, glancing at me for confirmation as his sand continued to work its way through the paper. "She introduced me to Shukaku, my partner."
And the reason Gaara and I hadn't been talking recently basically came down to "Chūnin Exams" and my residual twitchiness regarding his jōnin-sensei. I felt like a complete heel for that, now, but there wasn't anything to do for it now.
"I didn't really do much," I said modestly. "Isobu did all the work." And scared the shit out of every human nearby in the process, but Isobu and Shukaku were well past caring about humans for the most part.
Ace's eyebrows climbed until they vanished under the brim of his hat. "So Shukaku is…?"
"Isobu's brother, yes. They don't look…anything alike, really." How far down the evolutionary tree did you need to wander before "tanuki" and "everything in the ocean with a shell" shared a common ancestor, anyway? As I wobbled a hand in midair, I added, "It kinda-sorta makes Gaara and me family, in a way."
Assuming that Gaara didn't mind gaining a weird aunt.
"More or less." It seemed that he did not.
"Gaara, how did you meet these pirates?" I asked, "subtly" indicating that neither of us were quite in that category. Or so I thought.
"Gaara's our sentry!" Luffy said brightly, before Gaara could answer. "Did you know he never, ever falls asleep on watch? And that he can control sand like that Crocodile bastard? It's so cool!"
"We met him in Loguetown," Nami put in. "He helped us get away from Smoker."
"That Smoker?" Ace asked, jabbing a finger back over his shoulder and toward the port we'd just ditched.
"He's persistent," said Gaara. He picked up one of the loose sheets of sealing paper, resting it on top of his hand and a fine layer of sand. "Keisuke, I think this may be dry enough to use."
"Can I see it?" I asked, and he obligingly sent it drifting over to me. I rubbed my fingers together with the paper sample caught between them, then nodded to myself. "Then Ace gets to live."
"Oh come on," Ace complained. "Were you really going to kill me over that?"
"No, but I can't exactly go to Wano and buy it directly," I replied, annoyed.
"…You actually can." Ace frowned, clearly having no idea exactly how ignorant I was. "I went to Wano like a year ago and learned how to make hats. Oars Jr. was happy to get one that actually fit him."
This fucking planet, I swear. To the sound of Luffy's cackling laughter, I growled, "And how was I supposed to know that, exactly?"
"Ask?" Which would be hells of hypocritical given my policy on pretty much everything about myself. So, no. When I didn't respond, Ace changed the subject. "So, your actual name is 'Keisuke'?"
That topic was not any better.
Luckily, the rest of the topic died when Sanji finally arrived with food. Reminded that I hadn't eaten since breakfast because of all the chaos recently, I joined in the food-swiping fray. Luffy was the main culprit, which unfortunately made total sense given what else I knew about him, but I didn't expect to see how the others had adapted. While Nami and Vivi (the bluenette) avoided Luffy's food-stealing rubbery hands, Gaara's sand secured his claim at the "table," on pain of broken fingers for anyone who tried to steal his sautéed chicken gizzards.
Actually, Gaara's secondary role might as well have been "food guard." His sand effectively gave him as much extra reach as he needed to stop Luffy dead.
Yet somehow, Luffy still had enough food to himself to make almost pitch-perfect "om-nom-nom" noises. While Ace engulfed food just as quickly—if less messily—that particular bonus was new.
"At least no one's called me a tanuki since Gaara joined," Chopper muttered, grabbing a bowl of what was probably pudding, but looked so much better than the Whitebeards' non-Thatch attempts that I hesitated to put them in the same category. "But only if they see him first."
"A tanuki," I repeated, staring at Chopper. He had antlers. And a pink hat. And clothes. "Really?"
"I thought that's what he was at first," said basically everyone else. Including Ace, but not including Gaara, who knew better.
Gaara closed his eyes as though trying to forget the last ten seconds had happened.
"Say, Gaara, do you have one of these?" I asked, holding out my right wrist. When I pulled back the end of my sleeve, I turned my arm until he could easily see the kanji for "three" written in plain not-ink, and the surrounding black band.
Gaara frowned, having already automatically mirrored my gesture with his right hand. His wrist was blank.
"Not on top of your sand," I corrected, because I knew when the kid was using chakra to hide something that made him uncomfortable.
Gaara's skin seemed to crack, making a sound nearly identical to fracturing porcelain, before the sand finally returned to its normal light brown color and flaked away. Underneath it, a nearly identical black band circled Gaara's wrist—the main difference was that the kanji for "one" was located almost directly in line with his thumb. Based on the sizes of the symbols, there was enough space for a full nine kanji to run around both of our wrists.
Dammit.
"Do you know what this is?" Gaara asked, while the rest of the Straw Hats pretended (badly) to be focusing on food. Except for Luffy, anyway.
"I have a guess. Did Shukaku…wait, no, you don't sleep and Isobu didn't notice when I got mine…" I trailed off, then slowly pinched the bridge of my nose. "Can I see your hand? Maybe yours is different from…"
Gaara allowed me to take his hand in both of mine, but the second that our right hands touched, blinding purplish light erupted from both symbols. Behind everyone's shouts of surprise, I heard both Isobu and Shukaku's mingled roars, but I couldn't tell if they were just in my head or real.
YOU HAVE FOUND THE FIRST.
ASSEMBLE THE NINE.
And when the hell-glow on my arm and not-voice in my head finally abated, Gaara's band and mine matched. I had a "one" on my wrist and he had a "three" on his.
What happened? What changed? Isobu demanded, at the same time that Gaara put his other hand to the side of his head and seemed to be listening to Shukaku.
And I could feel Isobu's chakra inside my body again, without the sensation of impending pain. While Gaara's sand armor twisted off his body and started to form a rather familiar tanuki-like tail before dissipating, I summoned the first scrap of Isobu's chakra I'd been able to channel in months and grinned as my eyes itched in that familiar way.
I…think I know what's gonna happen every time we meet up with a jinchūriki, now. And it was an eyesore. If this didn't kill my stealth rating, I would be amazed.
Oh, now that is interesting. This next stretch of our quest should far easier—for you.
Shut up.
"Any idea what that was?" Ace asked, but was immediately pushed to the side by his brother before he could get an answer or I could come up with one. "Wait, your eyes…"
I cut myself off, letting the power fade. Across from me, so did Gaara.
Where could we even begin with explaining what we were?
"Hey, what is it?" Luffy demanded, sticking his head into our conversation on a very extendable neck. He turned his face toward Gaara, and said, "Remember? I said one crewmate's burden is all of ours. So spill it already!"
Gaara frowned deeper, considering the words that Luffy must have told him in the past. I didn't know exactly how Gaara had come to join the Straw Hats, but unlike the Whitebeards and me, it seemed that he actually had. As opposed to using them as a ferry service while befriending the various members and then…whatever the hell I'd done.
I glanced at Ace, rather than trusting my own judgement as far as that went.
"Once we're out of sight of Nanohana, it might be a good idea," was what he said.
"Eh? You know what's going on?" Usopp asked, gaping. "But no one ever gets anything out of Gaara!"
"Luffy did," said Zoro.
"Luffy doesn't know how to take 'no' for an answer," griped Sanji, puffing away on the cigarette Ace had lit for him.
If Luffy was nearly as charismatic and frightfully stubborn as Naruto, I didn't doubt it. I just didn't know if he could keep a secret worth a shit.
Ace knew him better than I did. "It'll be fine."
"I trust him, Keisuke," Gaara added, meeting my eyes squarely. "I trust all of them."
What kinds of adventures must this kid have gone on with the Straw Hats to see those walls come down?
I was clearly outvoted. To the crew at large, I said, "Fine, then. As soon as we get where we're going—"
"Erumalu," said Vivi helpfully.
"—thank you, then we can discuss this properly," I concluded.
And I hoped to high hell that it would work out.