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"Y-You couldn't h-have gone a b-bit easier on our sh-ship?" Rosinante spits out through clenched teeth, overwhelmed by violent shivers as he glares at his comrade.
"I just thought your clumsiness would have carried you overboard by now," Kuzan justifies, not looking the least bit apologetic for turning their mode of transportation into a popsicle. "Hurry up and unfreeze yourself so you can start thawing those two kids."
Rosinante doesn't stop his one-sided staring contest with the easygoing man, but nonetheless complies, albeit somewhat reluctantly.
They've been dragged to the bathroom of the ship, with the majority of the room's occupants tinted an off blue color—a feat courtesy of the ever so overpowered, ice-cold Vice Admiral. Despite the obvious damage done to what is essentially their home on the seas, though, Kuzan seems more amused than anything at the trio's suffering.
"W-What an a-asshole," Nao snaps as soon as Rosinante successfully thaws out her face. She knows full well, though, that if Kuzan had really wanted the three of them to perish, they would've been frozen solid by now. This, she decides, is probably his skewed idea of a practical joke to play on the clumsy blond, and she and Ace just so happen to have been caught in the middle of it.
But in spite of just how shitty the situation appears to be overall, Nao spares him a pained grin.
"How about we say you owe me a favor and call it even?"
Kuzan crosses his arms, looking anything but ready to agree to wholly submit to whatever future whim the devil-in-disguise could have. "How about I freeze you again and turn you into a makeshift buoy instead?"
"I'm not the one who froze my boss' kid."
"Boss?" Kuzan raises an eyebrow. "Garp and I have the exact same rank."
Nao rolls her eyes, though her stiffened movements after the unwanted ice bath make it seem like more of an awkward twitch. "How many times has Garp rejected a promotion? Three? Four? He's pretty much your superior."
"Pretty much isn't good enough," Kuzan speaks flatly, yet still distracting her with conversation in his own way.
Nao hisses as Rosinante begins working on her arms, the hot water having created a burning sensation on her frozen limbs. It's excruciating—absolutely awful, in fact—but her pride causes her to refrain from making too much of a scene. To her left, Ace is being defrosted by the very same man who had turned the ship into a glacier in the first place, and he's taking it like a champ.
Nao would be damned if she let a kid best her in a battle of wills.
Regardless of the sharp pangs of pain shooting through her arms, though, Nao isn't impaired enough to not note the irony of it all. Here Ace is, essentially being rescued by the man who'd fight tooth and nail to have him executed in a little more than a decade. (It's a fuckin' Greek tragedy, really.)
"You're d-definitely making up for this by doing all the paperwork that G-Garp was trying to have me do," she demands.
"And m-mine," Rosinante adds.
"A-nd m-in-e," Ace joins in, choosing to stretch his words out rather than stutter in a childish attempt to mask how much Kuzan's devil fruit power had destroyed them all.
Kuzan stops in his thawing process to give Ace his own fist of love. "Don't repeat things just because you feel like it, kid."
There's a common misconception about Ace, one that Nao had once had herself. He is, in fact, not as much of an idiot as those around him would rightfully think, and it's in moments like these—moments where Ace just can't stop his sharp tongue from slicing their egos in half—that that becomes apparent. "Gramps is gunna give ya all the paperwork now."
"Why? Because I froze you?" Kuzan looks unperturbed at the threat. "Your gramps is the guy who enjoys putting you through hell the most."
But Ace, too, doesn't look the least bit fazed at Kuzan's rebuttal. "Maybe, but if I tell 'im that I'll think about bein' one of ya marine bastards, he'll do what I want."
Prior to this encounter, Nao probably would've never though Kuzan's expression could ever get so panicked. (Just what in the hell did Garp's favors and paperwork entail?)
"... What do you want, kid?"
Nao blinks, not believing what she's hearing. (Is the motherfuckin' future-Admiral of the marines, baddy-baddy, I'm-ruthless-and-I freeze-all Kuzan really trying to negotiate with Ace, the former Pirate King's son? The very same son who he'd eventually help kill?)
Ace's expression grows smug. He has—unfortunately—learned the way of the marines. "I want my own favor."
There's a near unexplainable weight in those words—what a favor really means to those at sea.
The sea is a vast place—a place where one misstep can guarantee death. In a world so harsh, there must be an unspoken law, of sorts—a code of honor, as one might call it. Even if killing to survive is a norm, there are lines that must not be crossed, and the line of dishonesty is certainly one of them.
Both pirates and marines alike understand this law, and both pirates and marines wouldn't dare to go back on something they've sworn to do. To owe a favor is nearly to owe everything except perhaps one's life to someone, and when the time comes to collect that favor, an honorable man will not disappoint.
Ace is asking for a helluva lot more than just a small, simple 'favor'.
And Kuzan, surprisingly accepts. "Okay, kid."
All three of Kuzan's victims of harassment chorus a word of surprise. "Really?"
"I'd sooner be demoted to a cabin boy again before being caught filling out paperwork in place of Garp," Kuzan elaborates on his shocking answer, looking more surprised at their reactions that they had been at his acceptance of the deal.
"Well, you better start finding an old sailor's uniform then, Kuzan."
All four of the bathroom's occupants whip their heads towards the entrance into the room. Despite two of them being powerful marines in their own right, one kid being the' battered, life-hardened, Pirate King's son, and the other one really being a twenty-something year old trapped in a kid's body, all of them look just as guilty as mere children caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
"G-Garp-san!" Rosinante greets warmly, though the stutter gives away how nervous he actually is to see his superior on board the ship in the midst of an absolute shitshow.
"Yo," Nao grunts, raising her hand near her face, half in an attempt to say hello to the vice admiral, and half to obscure the shit-eating grin on her face. Watching the two grown men squirm under Garp's patronizing stare is just too amusing.
"You brats," Garp starts, beginning to reprimand them regardless of the fact that two-and-a-half of them are literal, full grown adults. "What the hell did you do, Kuzan?"
Kuzan lazily waves his hands as if the man regarded as one of the most powerful marines still active wasn't a few words away from letting him experience the second worst ass-whooping of his current life. (The first, of course, would be Akainu's, but no one—aside from the all-knowing brat smirking in the corner—knows about that one yet.)
Rosinante grabs Nao and Ace, tugging them out of Garp's probable path of destruction.
"Look," Kuzan points at the freckled boy "he's barely even frozen anymore. Just toss him into the sea for a few minutes and he'll be fine."
They were all assuming that Garp's fury was incited by the sight of popsicle-Ace.
They were also all assuming wrong.
Garp puts on his famed lecturing expression, hands rested on his hips as he leans forward to, scold his messy subordinates. At least, that was what the stance had first seemed to be.
Then he speaks.
"That was a good exercise for Ace to train his resistance to devil fruits, but," he pauses for a dramatic flair, "did you have to take my ship down in the process?"
It's then that everyone realizes that they aren't the only things that look a bit blue-hued. The walls, the ceiling—even the goddamned condensation on the windows—have all been frozen solid. (Completely. Fuckin. Solid.)
Kuzan chuckles sheepishly.
Once again, he's on the receiving ends of everyone's accusatory glares. Even Ace—the sole person involved that seems somewhat uncaring of the situation—is shooting daggers at him out of some kind of odd sense of peer pressure.
"I'm the one who gets money deducted out of my payroll for this shit, Kuzan," Garp exclaims, looking absolutely horrified at the amount he'd probably owe Sengoku once this is a done deal. "You're filing the paperwork for the rest of this month—no, this year."
"But—"
"Face it, Kuzan. You've been busted," Rosinante snickers, only to have his joy at his comrade's well-deserved suffering be shattered by none other than Garp himself.
"And you," Garp snaps, pointing a finger at the now-terrified blond, "need to tell me how on earth my office is charred and frozen."
"Well, sir, there was an explosion, then we all were rushed by the escaped slaves, more shit blew up, and eventually Aokiji-san showed up to to screw us all over even more. I wouldn't even be surprised if the explosions were caused by his icicles impaling something flammable on the ship," Nao answers for Rosinante, feeling bad for the poor guy who always seems to be getting the short end of the stick.
Rosinante throws her a thankful look, and she moves in a vague way that looks somewhat like her eating a fruit in order to remind him of why they really need Kuzan.
It's not hard to deduce from his pained expression that Rosinante doesn't want to be asking his sort-of friend for any favors right now, but he, being the self sacrificial guy that he is, does it anyways.
"Yes, that's precisely what happened." He clears his throat while Kuzan looks just about ready to curse both him and Nao to the grave for throwing him and only him under the bus. Despite being in a place so cold that it could be mistaken for the North Pole, he's sweating buckets as he starts to make an excuse to leave. "I-I do believe that I should probably make my leave now. Sengoku-san expected me to have already infiltrated into the Donquixote Pirates' crew by now."
He starts a casual saunter towards the exit, choosing to throw in his request of Kuzan once he's a safe distance away. "Nao ate a devil fruit by the way. I think Kuzan could help with that instead of the paperwork if he wants to do me a favor."
They all know damn well that his mention of the word favor makes it more of an unofficial mandatory mission than anything.
Garp crosses his arms to show his dislike of him already losing his new cabin boy to Rosinante's strange demand, but he doesn't say anything to go against his subordinate's word. He would never be caught intruding between a promise held among two men of their caliber. "Call in if you need any help, Rosi."
"Will do," Rosinante's voice echos back so softly it barely registers in Nao's mind—though she can't tell if her lack of comprehension is from shock or simply because he's too far away to be heard now. She does, however, hear the unmistakable sound of the klutz tripping on his way out.
She can't even understand what just happened.
Rosinante just left their boat in the middle of a goddamned war—although Garp's reappearance makes it quite clear that the main battle has ended—and now she's being thrown to the sharks by being the unwanted pupil of Aokiji? The Aokiji? The wolfish man who singlehandedly changed half a fuckin' island's climate? That Aokiji?
Everyone in the room is baffled at Rosinante's brazen words.
Or at least—nearly everyone, that is.
Ace picks his nose.
"So when're ya takin' me back to Dadan, Gramps?"
Y'all I have laughed so hard while imagining the dynamics between Garp, Aokiji, Rosinante, and Sengoku. They're just a huge, powerful mess!
Guys! We reached a 100 reviews and this is marks over 10 chapters that I've written since my return! Thank you so much for sticking it out with me over the past year or so, and thank you for dealing with my prolonged absences! Next chapter, Sengoku will make an appearance!
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Have a good day!