Okay, so here I am with chapter 2 :) I had this one written even before I started posting, and 3 is almost done (pending some revisions and tweaking), so it shouldn't take too long.

Thank you so much for the reviews :D

Chapter 2

Ace and Marco spent most of the time in silence, save for their short discussion of the most likely island that Teach would have headed to. It was probably for the best, because, given both their moods, Ace wouldn't have been surprised if they had ended up arguing had they tried to have a conversation.

They agreed that it was unlikely for Teach to have gone to one of the crew's territories, because Teach didn't know how long it would take for the crew to discover what he had done, and he couldn't know how long it would take him to get away from one of their islands if he had to flee again. On many of them, the locals would try to stop him if they learned of what he had done. Thus, Ace and Marco decided to head for the nearest island that wasn't part of their territories: a small place that barely fit a town just on the edge of the Calm Belt. The island wasn't part of any of the other Yonko's territories either, and their presence there wouldn't cause any trouble with them. Truthfully, Ace knew neither he nor Marco would have cared if that island had been under the protection of another Yonko.

As soon as they set foot at the port, Marco stopped and closed her eyes in concentration.

"He isn't here," she said after nearly a minute.

"You mean we got the wrong island?" Ace asked, and surprised himself by how hard it was not to growl the words.

"Not necessarily. He has a few hours on us, he could have left. Let's ask around."

Ace nodded and marched off to the nearest bar. As much as it angered him to admit it, he and Teach had some things in common, and their appetite was one of them. Ace was starving after the trip, which meant it was likely Teach had been, too. Even if he hadn't stuck around to eat anywhere, he would at the very least have bought food, and certainly enough of it to be remembered after only a few hours.

There were many advantages about being such recognizable members of the Whitebeard Pirates, one of them that nobody was inclined to lie to them. Especially not when they asked their questions in as brusque a manner as they did here. Ace didn't have the energy or inclination to even fake his usual friendly behavior, and it seemed that neither did Marco.

They didn't learn anything in the first three bars, but the bartender of the fourth remembered a guy that had come in very early that morning asking to buy a massive amount of food. He fit Teach's description, when Marco gave it, and the bartender also remembered that the guy had asked if there was any ship heading for West Blue at the time.

"We're a small town, you see, but a lot of the ships that want to cross the Calm Belt stop here. He seemed to be in a hurry, so I told him to go ask around the port," the bartender explained, and Ace was halfway to the door before he was done.

Two hours later, they found a woman who remembered a ship that had left for West Blue sometime after dawn, but she didn't know where it had been headed. She did, however, remember seeing Teach speak to the captain.

"They seemed to be bartering, but don't ask me what about, I got no idea. Saw him board the ship. He had this huge bag with him."

"He's gone to West Blue?" Ace hissed the moment they were out of earshot from the woman.

Marco shrugged. It was a reasonable move. Staying in the New World meant staying close to the Whitebeard Pirates and all of their allies. Teach was probably trying to disappear from their radar.

She looked up at the reddish sky of sunset.

"We'll need a map of that sea. Let's go see if we can find one, and then somewhere to spend the night."

"We're not spending the night anywhere, Marco," Ace growled at her. "As soon as we get that map, we're crossing the Calm Belt."

Marco sighed, completely unsurprised by Ace's refusal. And yet, she really didn't have the patience to deal with his stubbornness right now.

"Ace," she started, summoning as much calm as she could manage, "crossing the Calm Belt will take us nearly a full day on the Striker. You need to rest."

"I don't need to rest," Ace snapped. "I need to catch Teach as soon as possible and kill him!"

Marco hurried two steps forward, whirled around, and cut Ace's path with a glare, her hands clenched by her sides.

"You barely slept last night. You fell asleep twice on our way here, and once more while we asked around. You need to sleep, or we'll be stranded in the middle of the Calm Belt while you take a fucking nap." Ace opened his mouth to argue, but Marco didn't let him. "Besides, as much as I want to kill Teach, it's very unlikely we'll catch him quickly when we don't even know where in West Blue he was headed. We can't be so reckless, Ace, or you'll be dead on your feet by the time we have to fight."

Marco saw Ace's mental struggle through the emotions crossing his face. He wanted to argue and just charge towards the Calm Belt, but he also saw that Marco had a point. Eventually, Ace nodded curtly, his mouth pulled down in distaste.

"Lead the way, then."

Marco nodded back and turned around. She stopped a passerby to ask where they could find maps.

Marco did not sleep that night. Despite his original reluctance, Ace had passed out the moment his head had touched the pillow, but Marco… she doubted she would sleep. She could go on without sleeping for weeks thanks to her power, she wasn't tired at all, and while falling asleep was usually easy (it was a routine for her, after all), Marco knew she would struggle with it if she tried.

So she didn't try.

Along with the West Blue map, Marco had bought a few navigation tools for that sea (she hadn't expected to leave the New World and hadn't brought any of her own), a case of pencils, and a notebook.

By the time Ace woke up, she had managed to draw two sketches of a reasonable likeness to Teach. They had cost seven snapped pencils and half the sheets in the notebook shredded to pieces, but she had eventually reigned her temper in enough to get the drawings done. They would be a good help for their search.

"What's that?" Ace asked from the bed, in a subdued voice that didn't fit him at all. Marco had heard him as he tried not to wake up, and she had decided to give him some time.

Marco raised one of the drawings and showed it to Ace.

"…Oh. That's—that's a good idea," Ace acknowledged. He then looked around. "You haven't slept." It wasn't a question.

"I'm not sure I can," Marco admitted. She pushed away from the desk and stood up. "But it's fine, I don't need to sleep, not so soon anyway."

Fortunately, Ace didn't push the issue or try to argue that he hadn't needed to sleep, either. He just nodded and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Let's go get some breakfast and head for the Calm Belt," he said, reaching for his boots.

"We'll need some provisions, too. It's a long trip."

Marco folded the drawings and stuffed them in a pocket of her bag. She then picked the West Blue map she had been studying whenever she needed to calm down from the effort of remembering Teach's face. She had located the closest island easily enough, but navigating the Calm Belt would be a tricky affair. They would have to rely on the log pose while they were close enough to the Grand Line for the islands' magnetic fields to affect a normal compass, then switch to the conventional tools once they had moved far enough.

"We'll probably have to fight a handful of sea kings," Marco commented, lifting her bag. "The Striker may not need wind to sail, but we don't have the seastone covering its bottom that protects most ships from being noticed by sea kings."

"Good," Ace said, finally standing up. "I think both of us could use a fight or two."

"Yes, we really could."

Ace thought that crossing the Calm Belt was a good experience for them. He felt some of the tension that had gathered on his back dissipate after scorching a few of the giant sea kings that inhabited the Calm Belt, and Marco seemed more relaxed after beating up a few of them herself.

Ace wouldn't go so far as to say they were in a good mood, neither of them were, but at least by the time they reached an area of sea with waves they could exchange words without snapping at each other. And, while he wouldn't say it, Ace admitted that Marco had been right when she insisted on spending the night at the previous island. It was almost dark by the time they reached West Blue, and after the fighting and powering the Striker the entire day Ace felt tired. He had fallen asleep once, and according to Marco their small boat had been attacked by five separate sea kings in the time that it had taken Ace to wake up.

"How far are we?" Ace asked, careful to follow Marco's directions. He rested his chin on her shoulder to look at the map she was holding. Marco's blue fire illuminated it, and it was a good thing her fire didn't burn because Marco had both hands occupied and the fire was in contact with the paper.

"Maybe half an hour. This island is very close to the Calm Belt."

Ace hummed.

"You know, after all that blue sky and still sea, I was half-expecting to come out into a storm or something, but things are pretty quiet around here."

"Oh, shut up," Marco told him, but she didn't sound angry. "A storm is the last thing we need. This thing would be useless," she gestured vaguely down at the Striker.

They asked around, and nobody recognized Teach in any of the hotels, bars, or restaurants at the port town. Marco hadn't sensed his presence anywhere in the island (which wasn't much larger than the previous one and thus she could sense around the whole place), but she had hoped that someone had at least seen him.

Frustrated, Marco convinced Ace to rent a room at the last hotel they visited and sleep for the night, while she went out to the bars again to try to learn anything that could help them. Ace gave her a worried look, but he didn't argue over her skipping sleep a second night.

"I'm leaving this here," she said, placing her bag on one of the nightstands. She removed the New World log pose from around her wrist and put it in one of the inner pockets of the bag.

Twenty minutes later found Marco sitting on a stool in a reasonably full bar, a beer in hand while she tried to talk to the girl behind the bar. Marco's attempts to ask her questions were interrupted a few times by clients shouting orders, but the girl came back to where Marco sat every time (she probably found a lone woman to be preferable company to any of the many drunk men around; Marco would have, back in the day), and Marco finally managed to ask what she needed.

"Islands where ships that come from the Grand Line stop?" the girl asked, surprised. "But… West Blue crosses into the second half of the Grand Line, you know?"

"I'm aware," Marco replied vaguely.

The girl opened her mouth, but she was called from across the bar and had to leave.

"You want to go to the Grand Line?" asked one of the men that were close to Marco. He had a drink in his hand, but he didn't even slur, which meant he probably hadn't arrived much earlier than Marco. He grinned and approached her. "You don't need one of those lousy ships to do that, sweetheart."

Sweetheart? Nobody had called her that in… years, really.

"That's not what I'm interested in," Marco replied, putting as much disinterest in her voice as she could manage. She saw the barmaid looking at them from a few feet away, but the girl didn't approach. Marco identified the worried expression on her face.

"No? Because I'm taking my crew to the Grand Line, and if you wanted to come, we'd be all very happy to let you tag along," the man insisted, leaning closer to Marco.

Marco moved as far from him on her stool as she could and a realization came to her: he did not recognize her (no one had, now that she thought about it: there had been no surprised or scared stares). Usually, while some people ogled her despite knowing who she was, very few dared to approach her, and no one had leered at her the way this man was doing in a very long time.

Here, sitting at a poorly lit bar in a tiny island outside the Grand Line where no one seemed to know who she was, with an entitled asshole far too close into her personal space, Marco remembered being the sixteen year old first mate of a tiny pirate crew who got propositioned every time her captain mentioned his dream.

She looked the man up and down.

"You're a pirate?"

He grinned, obviously not noticing the disdain in her voice and on her face.

An entitled asshole all right, she thought in annoyance.

"With a bounty and everything. You haven't seen it?" he sounded both surprised and as if he was trying to cover how offended he felt with faked courtesy. It would almost be cute if it wasn't so pathetic.

"Afraid not."

"Fifteen million," he announced proudly, and Marco couldn't have held back her snort for all the money in the world.

What percentage of my bounty is that? She thought in amusement.

He didn't find it so amusing. His demeanor changed completely. His attempt at flirtation and charm was replaced by a snarl as he reared a hand back.

"What's so funny, bitch?!"

Marco could have just stopped his hand, she could have flipped him on the ground or the bar, or maybe thrown him against a nearby table, even just dislocated his shoulder. She didn't. Instead, Marco reached out, grabbed the wrist of the fist aimed at her face, and twisted. She both felt and heard the bone break clean from the rest of his arm, flesh and muscle ripping around it. Marco was impressed by how the man managed to muffle his scream, even if to do so he had to bite so hard the inside of his mouth that blood started to trickle out of it. Only a pitiful, pained whimper escaped him.

Marco let go of his wrist and he staggered back.

Not many people noticed the incident in the din of the bar, but the man's companions —his crew, no doubt— hurried over and stared in horror when they saw what had happened exactly. Marco would bet he was the captain, with a bounty like that out here. The man's damaged hand was dangling limply at the end of his arm, covered in blood that slowly dripped to the floor, and he was trying to hold it with his other hand. It wouldn't matter, it was almost guaranteed that he would lose that hand.

"Leave," Marco told the crew coldly as soon as the first few turned to look at her.

They didn't need to be told twice.

Marco turned on her stool, back to her drink, and noticed that the barmaid was still staring, her hands now covering her mouth and her eyes blown wide. Marco felt a trickle of embarrassment over the scene.

"Sorry about that," she said, and managed a weak smile. She reached for the paper napkins to try to wipe off the blood that had splattered her hand. "I think I'd better leave."

The barmaid lowered her hands and shook her head.

"N-No, there's no need." She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "You wanted to know about those islands, right? I could write you a list of the ones I know of."

"Thank you," Marco said. She put the napkins to the side once she had cleaned as much as she could, raised her mug to her mouth with her other hand, and resolved to leave a very large tip.

To be continued

Some of you may be wondering about the trip to West Blue. Here's my reasoning:

I've been thinking a lot about how Teach managed to go all the way from the New World to Drum in around three weeks, because I don't believe for a second that he could've crossed that distance in either the boat he stole or that raft his crew used pre-timeskip. Then I remembered something: when Lafitte showed up at Mariejois, Tsuru identified him as a former policeman from West Blue with a horrible reputation (the fact that SHE knew him on sight tells us just how horrible that was), and I realized that the Calm Belt separates West Blue from the New World. If Teach had crossed it, and then relatively quickly headed for Reverse Mountain, it could explain that he made it to Drum before the Strawhats (assuming that Drum really isn't in the Strawhats' original route and they reached it by accident in their desperate search for a doctor).

More explanations on my theories of the routes and everything as we advance. I don't want to spoil the plot :)

Remember to comment before you go ^^