Chapter 11: Training Sessions and Conversations

Warnings: injuries, broken bones, blood, vomit, panic attacks

"So… this is goodbye." Isuka asked the young Pirate Captain.

"For now. But we've got a deal right?" Ace asked his marine contact, not that she knew she was one.

"I… yes. We have a deal Captain Ace." The redhead nodded and bowed her head, Coby and Rika copying her. They both wanted to see the Spade Pirates off. Coby and Rika wanted to say goodbye to their friends (Rika would miss Luffy; he made her smile and laugh, but at least she still had Coby with her and now Isuka as well.)

"Great! We'll see you in five years." Ace said and then pulled her close to whisper in her ear. "If there is anything you find out about any Old Generation pirate, please call me immediately. You have my Den-Den number, memorize it and then burn the paper."

Isuka nods seriously, knowing that whatever the reason for Ace asking for information about the Old Generation, it was serious and life-threatening. She just hoped they wouldn't be pulled into a war. She was a Marine, but she didn't feel comfortable killing. She didn't follow Absolute Justice for a reason.

"Bye, you three! We'll see each other on the Grand Line!" Luffy called out as he waved to the three people on the pier that were waving back at the straw-hatted boy.

Luffy turned to the others on the crew: his brothers, Deuce and Aggie. "What now?" He asks, munching on a piece of food. They didn't have a cook yet, so Aggie had to cook for them, the food was edible but tasteless, which kind of damped the mood of their meals together.

"Training." Ace spoke up from the wheel as he stared at the map he was looking at; it was the one of Loguetown.

"Yay!" Luffy bounced up and down in excitement.

"Not so fast, Lu." Ace said to his youngest brother. "You need to learn control, and Sabo needs to learn how to restrain his Haki to one area. Also, I want you to train with your pipe. And figure out how to combine both of ours together, as one weapon or two weapons, it's your choice, 'Bo."

Sabo nods but frowns for a moment. "Isn't Haki dangerous? Shouldn't we not do that kind of training on the ship?"

"It is, but that's why we are training. You and Lu both need to learn control. Also, you need to get better with your Observation Haki. This will be perfect training for you and Luffy." Ace grinned; it wasn't nice as both brothers shivered.

"Get to it!" Ace clapped his hands and then turned to look at his other crew mates who were fearing for their lives suddenly. "Now… you two need to learn how to use your own weapons." The older D-Bearer glanced at his brothers and called out, "Lu, pipe."

"Why?" Luffy whined and then got hit on the head with Sabo's pipe. "Ow! Sabo!"

"Watch our fight, don't get preoccupied." Sabo told him gently, and patted his head.

Luffy pouted but tried to hit his brother again. "Gomu Gomu: Pistol!" He shouted as reared back and attacked. Sabo was able to deflect the boy's attacks with his pipe; the blonde was trying to use Armament Haki on his pipe but was failing.

"Gomu Gomu Bullet!"

"Armament: Hardening!" Sabo screamed, trying to push as much of his Will as possible into his hands and pipe. His arms and pipe turned black as he smacked Luffy's hands away. What he and Luffy didn't know though, was that blunt attacks worked on Luffy, that is, only if they were coated in Haki.

Luffy screamed as he felt the bones in his hand shatter on impact with the Haki-coated pipe. Ace turned into fire and was next to the younger D-Bearer in an instant. "Luffy! Oh God! I- I didn't mean- I don't know what happened!" Sabo cried to Ace, distraught about what he just did to his younger brother.

"Deuce, how bad?" Ace asked, knowing that neither Luffy nor Sabo knew of Luffy's natural resistance to blunt-force attacks if they weren't Haki-coated. 'Shit, I shouldn't have told Sabo to use Haki on Luffy when he doesn't know that blunt attacks don't work on him, or do bullets.'

This will be hell to explain how he knew all of this about his brother's Devil Fruit. Ace knew he was hiding a lot and that Sabo was getting angry at him, but he couldn't tell him everything. Some of the things he knew… were too dangerous for his brother to know.

He didn't even tell Buggy everything about what he knew about the Family of D, or about Blackbeard, which in all honesty, he probably should have since Blackbeard doesn't only concern him, but Buggy and Shanks as well. The Whitebeards too, if Teach was on the crew and plotting on getting the Yami Yami Fruit and killing Thatch again. Ace would not let that happen again if that bastard is on the crew. But he would have to play this smart, he couldn't run in half-cocked, that would get him killed again too early to change anything.

"Deuce!" Ace yelled to the Doctor.

The blue haired teenager ran over to the three boys and checked Luffy's hand. "It's definitely broken, but the good thing is that I can splint this and it should be good as new in a few weeks." Deuce told his Captain quickly. The blue haired teen slowly picked up the hurt Devil Fruit user and went to the infirmary. Ace and Sabo followed the Doctor as Aggie took to guiding the ship in the direction of the next island in East Blue.

Deuce set Luffy on the available bed and worked on wrapping his hand and splinting it to make sure it healed properly. The whole process only took 20 minutes. "There you go, Luffy. You can't use that hand for the next few weeks, alright. So that means no training or fighting, no swinging either. You are on bed rest for the week." Deuce told the boy sternly.

Luffy pouted but nodded, looking down at his hand. "Can I watch you train?" He asked Ace. Ace was the Captain and that meant that even though he didn't want to, he needed to listen to his big brother.

Ace sighed and glanced at Sabo. His blonde older brother had a guilty expression on his face and bowed his head as Ace looked at him. "Fine, but if Deuce or I tell you to go to your room and rest, you will rest, got it?"

Luffy takes a moment to nod. "What will happen to Sabo?" Luffy tilted his head as he watched his older brothers carefully.

"Nothing, but I'm training with him. Not any of you. Or at least not until you both learn enough control to not break each other. Do you understand?" Ace glared at Sabo who flinched.

"I didn't mean to…" Sabo whispered, he was getting scared of Ace. The blonde boy didn't know what his brother would do.

"Maybe not, but this is the situation we are in now. Let's leave Luffy alone so he can sleep. We'll wake you up when its dinner." Ace told his youngest brother.

Ace grabbed Sabo roughly and dragged him to his room, the Captain's quarters. "Ace-" Sabo tried to say but was frozen as he felt his brother's King's Will flare visibly around him. Sabo shut his mouth and prayed that Ace wouldn't kill him.

Shutting the door to his room, Ace finally let go of Sabo's arm and turned to face his terrified brother. "I'm not going to hurt you, Sabo." Ace huffed, not wanting to scare the living hell out of the slightly younger boy, but needing to get his point across.

Maybe projecting his Will was a bad idea.

"What now?" Sabo whispered, still having his head down. Ace walked up to his brother and lightly lifted his chin so that he could see his brother's blue eyes. Sabo flinched at Ace's touch and the older boy retreated away from the blonde.

"Nothing… for now. You and I will train together. You need to learn to control your Haki and to get a better handle on your pipe. I will also be starting to use King's Haki while we are all training or just on the ship. We need to be prepared for anything. That including facing off against someone else that has King's Will." Ace crossed his arms over his chest and looked at his skittish adopted brother.

"Who else… There are other people that have King's Haki?" Sabo asked, his eyes wide.

Ace's face darkened considerably. "A lot of the Old Generation as well as a good chunk of the people in Roger's Generation, the generation before the one we're in now. The New Age, that's what this generation is called, there are those that have King's Haki in our generation and that's both good and bad, if we can recruit them as our allies." Ace told him.

"Are you saying… are we facing a war?" Sabo asked, facing paling even further as the realization of that thought struck him hard.

"Yes." Ace answered and Sabo ran to Ace's bathroom and vomited in the toilet.

Ace wrinkled his nose but otherwise didn't react to his brother throwing up the contents of his stomach in his bathroom. Sabo stumbled out of the bathroom after ten minutes looking horrible. He was pale and shaking, his shirt also had a bit of vomit and food on it, but Sabo didn't look like he cared or noticed.

"How… When?" Sabo's voice was hoarse when he spoke again to his brother.

"The Old Generation, both pirates and marines, have a shit-ton of enemies that have enemies in Roger's Generation as well as the New Age. One of those enemies, not that anyone truly knows, is Luffy and I." Ace closed his eyes and went to his desk, pulling out his journal. "The Yonko, besides Shanks, are from the Old Generation. Shanks is from Roger's Generation. However, that means that if mine and Luffy's lineages are leaked to the public we will be hunted down by pirates and marines from all three generations." Ace stared at Sabo, making sure he knew what Ace was telling him was off limits to everyone on the crew, especially Luffy.

"I… what? God, Ace… this is insane." Sabo grabbed his head, pushing his face into his lap, curled up on the floor. Ace took that as his que to sit down next to his brother and hug him.

"Yeah, it is. But that's the life we chose. I told you before; hell is coming for us all and with it, a storm so large that no D-Bearer will ever be able to lock away again." Ace said lightly, knowing that Sabo would overthink all of this when he goes back to his room to think of some plan to help him. Ace appreciates it, but there wasn't any way all of them were getting out of this war alive.

"Who will we face when this war happens?" Sabo asks, still hugging Ace. Not that either of them had any complaints to that.

"The Yonko, a lot of top marines, maybe even the Shichibukai and the Celestial Dragons. But the major players that I know of are going to be Charlotte Linlin, Edward Newgate, Kaido, Sengoku, and the three Admirals."

Sabo started to laugh but that quickly turned to sobs. The blonde was horrified and scared and he didn't know what to do! "What the fuck Ace… What the hell was your family even up to?!" Sabo screamed, tears running down his cheeks.

"I don't know." Ace said, frowning.

He didn't know everything about the Family of D or the Will of D. What he did know wasn't enough to placate him or Luffy. What Garp had told them, about Roger, and the straw hat, wasn't enough. It wouldn't be until they knew the whole truth. And the only one that Ace would trust with that would be Luffy when (not if) he finds Laugh Tale and brings him along as well. Because he knows his brother, and he knows that Luffy will want him and Sabo with him and the Straw Hats. But they both knew that the secrets of the Family of D, and the Will of D, are theirs and that meant that no one but a D-Bearer would ever know the whole unfiltered truth.

He knew that the Void Century was a big turning point for their family, as well as the pact between the Kozuki Clan and the Akamatsuki Clan (according to Lady Toki), but other than that, there was still a lot for them to learn about their family and about why the Celestial Dragons wanted to kill them.

Ace learned that fun fact when he was on Saobody Archipelago in the other timeline.

Oddly enough, when he had said: Family or Duty, it was something that seemed to haunt Garp. And Ace knew that it was connected to the Old Generation. Not that he wanted to really think about that. Because that meant thinking about the implications of the odd relationship that Edward Newgate, Garp, and Roger had. And that was a can of worms he did not want to open just yet. Not until he was in the New World.

"What do we do?" Sabo finally broke the tense silence in the room.

"Not all of us will make it out of this war alive, and those who do survive will never be the same again." Sabo stayed silent, thinking of ways to make sure their crew survived the shit-storm that was heading straight for them.

"But for right now, we train as hard as we can before we go into the Grand Line. All of us need to master either our Haki or our weapons. Not all of our crew or Luffy's when he starts recruiting, will unlock Haki; very few people on most crews have unlocked Haki. I don't know if Deuce or Aggie or any other crew member we get will be able to use Haki. But I will make sure none of us die because we didn't train enough. If I can stop your deaths, I will." Ace whispered the last part.

"You have more people that you want to add onto the crew. Who are they?" Sabo asked, looking at his brother and Captain with determined eyes. He would not fail his crew or his brother.

Ace grinned. "Most of the people I want to add are in East Blue. I actually didn't think that Isuka was even here. I thought she was-" Ace stopped suddenly and frowned. "Isuka will be extremely helpful to us for getting information about the World Government, the Marines and other pirate crews." He helped Sabo up off of the floor and to the bathroom.

Ace cleaned off the vomit and spit still around Sabo's mouth as he took off the shirt and threw it in his sink to clean later. Sabo rummaged through Ace's shirt and chose a yellow shirt with an orange sun on it. "Does this have any meaning?" Sabo asked, holding up the shirt to Ace.

Ace chuckled and nods. "Yeah it does."

"Are you going to tell me?" Sabo asks, waiting for an answer from his annoying brother.

"Nope!" Ace smiles back at the blonde, who pouts. "You'll have to figure it out on your own."

After Sabo wasn't covered in vomit and smelled relatively okay, did Ace gesture for him to climb into his bed. The two brothers just lay down next to each other, taking in the other's quiet presence before Ace spoke up once again.

"There are three people I want to add but they are out in the Grand Line. Two of them are in the New World so we will have to make a few detours to find them." Ace thought of Tama and Kotatsu, he really missed them. He still had a promise to uphold, and this time he won't let that little girl go for a second. Tama deserved the world, and if she would be happy on his crew, with the Spade Pirates, then he would do everything in his power to ensure her survival.

Sabo nodded and then asked the question that had been on his mind for a while. "What about the Roger Pirates?"

Ace looked startled at the question but then settled on a neutral expression. "I'll find those that I can and offer them a place as my allies. Most of them are from the Old Generation or early in Rogers Generation. If they want to join the crew that's fine, but I highly doubt that they would do that, even if I am their Captain's son." He shrugged, not at all bothered by the prospect of seeing his father's former crewmates.

"But…" Sabo trailed off, his voice failing him. He didn't understand. "I thought you hated Roger, what happened?"

"A lot, too much for me to properly tell you. But I do know where two of Roger's crew are. We'll go to them, but later. There are others that I think are alive and I have a few ideas on where to start looking for them, but I'm not so sure. Regardless, I know that all of Roger's crew bet on him, which really wouldn't surprise me. But that means that most of them either have no idea I exist or they know and have been keeping their distance so as to not attract any attention to me." Ace shrugged, turning to face his brother.

The son of the Pirate King finally answers his brother's question about his father. "I don't hate Roger, Sabo. A lot of things in my life have been very complicated. My father died before I was born but believed in me and my mother to make sure I had a good life. My mother died giving birth to me. Did you know that she held me in her womb for 20 months? If she hadn't of done that I would be dead." Ace whispered, tears rolled down Ace's cheeks as he thought about his mother.

"I want to show you something." Ace's voice broke halfway through the sentence.

Sabo sat up on the bed and looked at Ace, not sure of where this was going but he would do whatever it took to make his older brother smile again. The blonde watched as Ace went over to his desk and open up the drawer and pulled something small out of it.

He came back and carefully handed the item to Sabo. Sabo took the photograph and stared wide-eyed and in utter shock at the picture in his hand.

"Wha… this is…"

"The Roger Pirates. That's Roger, and that's Rouge, my Mom." He pointed to his father and mother in the picture. Sabo continued to stare at the photo not comprehending what he was seeing.

The large man in the photo hugging the strawberry blonde haired woman, her hands on her stomach made it all the more real to Sabo. Those were Ace's parents. Those were the two people who gave Sabo and Luffy their older brother.

Roger and Rouge knew that they wouldn't survive to see Ace grow up, so they made sure that he had a family to protect him should anything go wrong.

Sabo wondered if that family was him and Luffy, or if it was the Rogers or something completely different, but whatever the answer was… Ace was here with Sabo and Luffy and he couldn't be more grateful to Roger and Rouge.

"That photo was taken the day that Rouge told Roger that she was pregnant with me." Ace told him, smiling softly seeing his parents and his father's crew.

Sabo looked down to the photo again and did a double take. "Is that… Captain Buggy?" Sabo asks, awe in his voice as he points to the little blue haired boy who had his arm around a redhead boy.

"Yep! The kid next to him is Shanks… Red Hair Shanks." Ace smiled, showing all of his teeth as his brother stared in shock at him. Ace burst out laughing at Sabo's expression.

"Captain Buggy and Red Hair Shanks were on Roger's crew?!" Sabo yelled in shock, his blue eyes wide open staring at his older adopted brother.

Ace cackles hysterically, doubling over. "Your face!"

"Shut up!" Sabo pouted, his cheeks a light pink from his embarrassment. "Will you just tell me who our other members will be?" Sabo asked, trying to get his brother back on track.

"The members that will be joining us, or hopefully joining us, will be a girl named Tama, she lives on an island in the New World, and Kotatsu, a Mink from Zuo." Ace tells his younger twin.

"That's two people, who's the third?" Ace grins and then grimaces. The last member he wants to add might be much harder to convince and help for multiple reasons. Reasons that not even he knew the full context about since she hadn't told him but the basics of her very bad relationship with her father.

"I can't tell you that, not until Kotatsu and Tama are settled on the crew." Sabo sighed, there Ace went again with all of his secrets.

"Fine, but you are telling me everything you can once we get into Paradise, no stalling. You are telling me what the fuck has been going on with you since we became brothers. Do you understand?" Sabo asked, his blue eyes hard and determined.

"Yes, I understand. I'll tell you once we are in Paradise." Ace promises, knowing that he will need his brother on his side. Even though Deuce is his First Mate, Ace trusts Sabo a bit more than Deuce, even though he knows that Deuce is his most loyal crewmates.

The ringing of a Den-Den-Mushi interrupted the party that the Red Hair Pirates were currently celebrating. "This is Shanks! Thanks for calling the Red Hairs!" What the crew didn't realize was that the Den-Den that was ringing was Shanks personal one, a White Den-Den-Mushi.

"Shanks get your ass to Drum, NOW!" Buggy, his best friend and brother in all but blood yelled into the Den-Den.

Shanks immediately straightened and his eyes narrowed. "Buggy, what's going on?"

"Drum Island, now. We need to get to the Doctrine."

"That doesn't answer my question." Shanks said, worried.

"For fucks sake! Shanks we have a massive Old Generation problem on our hands! Haul ass to Drum and meet me before we go to Doctrine!"

Shanks paled, his eyes narrowed into slits as he relived some of the worst years of his life in a split second.

"It's going to be far worse than Edd War, Shanks."

"You mean…." The redheaded Captain couldn't breathe for a moment, remembering the conversation he and Buggy had overheard when they were cabin boys on Roger's crew.

"I'll meet you on Drum, be discrete. Shit is going to hit the fan so hard and fast when the New Age starts to go into the Grand Line." Buggy says, his voice strong yet sounded so broken.

Neither of them wanted to go into another war, but apparently they had no choice.

Shanks said his goodbyes to Buggy and turned back to his crew who were looking at him like a crazy person. "Benn, you're in charge until I come back. If any of Roger's Generation or the Old Generation wants to start something, you go to Yukiryu Island, do you understand?" His crew nods.

Benn, Yasopp, and Lucky Roux followed their Captain to his quarters. "Shanks, what's going on?" his first mate asks, worriedly chewing on his cigarette.

"War. Utter and complete war that will destroy the world if we're unlucky enough." Shanks tells his most trusted crewmates.

"Shit." Yasopp muttered, running his hand through his hair.

"What do you want to do?" Benn asks his captain.

"Nothing until I get back. After, we will make a plan to hopefully survive the shit-storm that's going to be coming for us." Shanks winces. "Or me, rather." Benn, Yasopp, and Lucky Roux glanced at each other at that.

Shanks then dismisses the three of them and starts stuffing a bag with clothing and rations, quickly heading out to their smaller boat to get to Drum Island as fast as he could.

Characters:

Gol D. Ace, Isuka, Masked Deuce, Aggie, Sabo, Monkey D. Luffy, Buggy the Clown, Red Hair Shanks, Benn Beckman, Yasopp

Mentioned Characters:

Marshall D. Teach/Blackbeard, Thatch, Coby, Rika, Charlotte Linlin/Big Mom, Edward Newgate/Whitebeard, Kaido King of Beasts, Sengoku, Kizaru, Akainu, Aokiji/Kuzan, Kotatsu, Tama, Portgas D. Rouge, Doctrine Kureha, Lucky Roux, Monkey D. Garp