Chapter 23

The best thing you can
do for yourself is live a
life that's fulfilling and
do all the things that
make you happy.

- unknown

"I say we let Shanks know," Sabo suggested.

Right after finding out that Luffy wasn't on the ship, they held a meeting with only Whitebeard, commanders, and Law present.

"Why? I'm pretty sure this entire ship can take them out," Law crossed his arms.

"Because. Imagine what would happen if Shanks finds out, and what if he's closer to Dressrosa than us," Ace growled.

"I don't see the problem with that. If it get's Lu-ya saved quicker, then what's the problem?" Law argued back.

"Because we want to be the ones to save Luffy!" Both Ace and Sabo whined at him.

"Actually," Marco interjected, "it'd be a huge problem if Akagami saves Luffy. Luffy is already known to the government to be one of us and part of ASL. A wanted kid with connections to two Emperors would cause a stir. Add in a marine hero, and the Revolutionary's Leader, we would have the World Government up in arms-yoi. The Five Elders would want his head, and Sengoku wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. That means we have to let Garp and Dragon know too, just in case. At least tell them to keep their hands out of Dressrosa."

"Now the problem would be, how do we contact Dragon?" Haruta said.

"Luffy left his hat," Ace held up the straw hat for everyone to see.

"What does that hat have to do with contacting Dragon?" Thatch asked.

"Lu likes to keep his treasures in one place, so he doesn't forget where he puts them," Sabo answered as he put his fingers behind the red ribbon and pulled out a hair clip. "He has a full sheet of vivre card that his dad sent him." And he pulled out another hair clip. And another. And another. He glared at Law, who smirked back in return. Giving up when all he kept picking up were more hair clips, Sabo turned the hat upside down and started shaking it violently, all the while keeping his glare on Law.

Thatch gave a low whistle. "How does he keep all that in there?" he asked, looking at the small collection of hair pieces and other small shiny pebbles that must have came from stolen treasures.

Ace shrugged and picked up the large white sheet that already has a piece torn off. "It's Luffy. Who knows. He says it's a mystery. Here," he waved the paper around for everyone to see.

"Ace, Sabo," Whitebeard said, gaining everyone's attention, "I want you and your division to find Dragon and let him know the situation. We'll have you use a nondescript ship as to not alert the marine. Law will stay to help us update Garp and Shanks."

"It'd be faster if we take Striker 1 and 2," Sabo said.

"But it's also eye catching-yoi. We don't want to alert the Marines, or anyone else for that matter, about our connection to the Revolutionary Army. At least this way, you'd have some bonding time with your division and have someone fish you out if you happen on a storm-yoi," Marco explained. "You tell your division whatever you want regarding Dragon, but don't forget that Luffy handpicked quiet a few of your members-yoi."

"We'll tell them the truth, but we'll also tell them not to tell anyone else," Sabo said.

"Yeah," Ace ran a hand through his hair, looking down. "Luffy trusts them, so will we."

-*/-*/-*/

During the first day of sailing, Ace and Sabo explained to their men why they were going to see the leader of the Revolutionary Army. They were all surprised, of course, but not one of them backed down from anything to save their Luffy. Most of them were there when the three of them were saved and knew the boys. They didn't care, because they knew that Luffy rarely had any contact with his dad. To them, it doesn't matter who the kid's parents were, he's part of their family.

The rest of them were ones that Luffy saved from living on the streets and getting killed, giving them a new home on Moby Dick. They owed Luffy their life and were more than happy to save their little ball of sunshine.

It took them a little over a month to get to the island the vivre card pointed them to. That is, unless it's pointing to an island that's directly in line with this one. If it was, then Sabo's going to have to keep Ace from blowing this island up. They were wasting time, and it's already been over a month! They had to go back to the first half of Grand Lineg, sailing in a choppy line as they followed the vivre card's random change of direction. It wasn't like they could go in a straight line in Grand Line anyway. There is no straight line, just like north isn't always north. But then again, it could be Dragon moving about and not staying in one place.

The island before them was a barren dry land with no green in sight. The only things that could be seen were the various large stones and a stone-like building right in the center. Ace and Sabo used their Observation Haki as soon as they got their ship close enough to dock and disembark.

"Whatever happens, don't kill anyone here," Sabo said seriously to the crew behind him and Ace.

"But what do we do if they attack, Commanders?" someone asked.

"Don't die, of course," Ace answered with a smirk. "And don't kill them," he said seriously.

"Who knows what Dragon would do if we did," Sabo smirked at them evilly that caused most of them behind him to shiver at the thought of what the World's Most Wanted Man would do. "Oh look, here's your first test!" He clapped gleefully as a man walked out from behind a stone they neared.

"What are your reasons for coming? This island has nothing to see. Are you lost?" the man scratched his head. There shouldn't be any log poses that points here.

"Actually, we're here to see Dragon," Sabo gave the man a slight bow and an easy going smile.

"Dragon? There's no dragon here. Leave at once," the man said threateningly. How did they know?

"No, no," Sabo waved his hands in front of him in an effort to drive away the miscommunication. "Not a dragon. We're here to see Dragon. You know, the leader of the Revolutionary Army?"

"There is no Revolutionary Army here," the man growled, not giving away his nervousness. "Leave!"

The young blond hummed as he thought. "I'm pretty sure this is the right place. I mean, this island isn't even on any maps we have. So this island would be a great place for a secret headquarter. I'm going to assume Dragon is in that building over there." He pointed to the only building-like structure in sight.

"Sabo, this isn't working," Ace sighed before looking at the man. "Look, we're in a hurry. Just tell Dragon we're here about his son."

"Dragon doesn't have a son," the man blurted out in confusion before he realized what he'd said.

"See? You do know Dragon," Sabo said excitedly.

Just then an army of men came around the large rock formation with weapons pointed at the pirates.

"So what do you think, Sabo?" Ace asked as he leaned against his brother's shoulder, uncaring of the threat before them.

Sabo only hummed. Before he could answer, someone spoke up, "Leave them to us, Commanders. If you fight, who knows how many you'd fry on accident."

"Ah, right. Poker it is," Sabo shrugged before bringing out a deck of cards and sat down to deal their game.

Ace sat in front of him in a huff. "Just take away our funv why don't you. Just let us know if you need help."

It was easy to tell that the Pirates had the Revolutionary Arm out numbered, so Ace and Sabo weren't too worried. That was until reinforcement arrived with reinforcement. Even then, the two continued their card game.

Some time during the fight, one of the Revolutionary got close to the commanders and managed to swing their sword down on Ace's head. The man was caught by surprise when his sword went through flames rather than a human body.

"Damn it!" Ace said as he threw down his burning cards and stood up to glare at his attacker. "I had a good hand going!" He kicked his attacker and took the man's sword. "This is taking too long." He used everything he learned from Vista to knock out as many of the Revolutionarys as he could with the back of his stolen sword.

They both learned to fight with swords and pistols and just about anything else the other commanders could teach them, without letting Luffy know the real reason. They strove to catch up with their baby brother in terms of strength, so they could protect him from anything. As older brothers, they didn't want Luffy to worry about them or protect them. It was their job to protect him.

Sabo just sighed at his brother's impatience and shrugged and pulled out his metal pipe from the back of his jacket. Instead of joining his brother in the foray, he stood there, observing the battle around them. It seemed that the Revolutionary had set up a small team to retrieve the injured and unconscious to pull them aside and away from the fight to let them rest up before they came back in. Well, no wonder their side was getting overwhelmed.

Sabo walked up to Ace, hitting a few Revolutionaries here and there as they were in his way. "Hey, Ace," Sabo tapped his brother's shoulder has the dark haired teen punched someone out. "You know, you could easily put them all to sleep."

Ace stood frozen as he realized, yes, he could have done that and everything would have gone quicker. "Why didn't I think of that?" He didn't wait for a response before he released his Conqueror's Haki, taking down all the Revolutionary Armies around them.

He turned around to look at his division members to make sure they were all right, when he noticed most of them were looking at him with wide eyes. "I didn't kill them!" he defended himself.

"No, Ace. Look behind you," Sabo pointed towards where the headquarter should be.

Ace looked behind him to see more Revolutionaries coming in their direction not far away. These look much stronger, especially with the light yellow fishman leading them with a young thin female right next to him.

Ace panicked and raised a wall of fire, separating their groups. "Now what?" Ace scratched the side of his head as he turned to face Sabo.

"I'd say, try talking to them, but that wall isn't helping any," Sabo gave his brother a mocking grin.

"Karakusagawa Siken," was all the warning they needed.

"Duck!" Sabo yelled out as he pushed Ace down.

In a matter of moments, the attack from the fishman doused the flaming wall and took down more than half of their men who weren't fast enough to react.

Ace looked over their men and looked back at Sabo, who was laying on top of him. "Okay. Now what?"

"Is that all you can say?" Sabo huffed before pushing himself up. Rather than answering, he pulled out a box from the inside of his jacket pocket. He put both hands up with the box in one hand. "We surrender," he called out, making sure the other side could hear him. "We're only here to see Dragon. Look, we even have payment for him," he waved the box giving them a hopeful smile.

"Or you could be tricking us and that box could contain a bomb," the blond girl said with their group a safe distance away in case the pirates decides to attack.

"How rude," Sabo huffed as he brought both arms down to his side. "If I were to have a bomb, I'd hide it somewhere for you to step on."

"Could we hurry this up?" Ace moaned from the ground, where he laid on his back with his arms out to the sides. "Everyone else got their jobs done. We're the only ones left." He then got up and glared at the Revolutionaries, lighting up his fist in the process. "We could just blow this place up. It'd be faster."

"Oh~" Sabo said, sounding impressed, clapping his hands, "that's great idea."

"It is?" the remaining Whitebeards said behind them.

"Yeah. If we're loud enough and flashy enough, the big man might come out and see what's going on," Sabo grinned at his men.

"Oh," they, Ace included, said.

"You guys take care of the others," Sabo waved at the men on the ground.

"Yes, sir!" With that they rushed to get all the downed pirates and revolutionaries to one place, as Ace and Sabo rushed towards the waiting Revolutionaries in front of them.

"As if we'd let you!" the girl shouted before going to attack them, along with the fishman and the rest of the Revolutionaries.

The two commanders weaved in and out, avoiding all their attacks, punching the ground with Hikens, causing the ground around them to explode. Dust covered their vision, but Ace and Sabo were still able to avoid being attacked by using their Observation Haki. Eventually, the fishman caught Ace by surprise. Hearing Ace's startled voice distracted Sabo long enough for the girl to take him down.

"We suggest the rest of you surrender," the fishman said, walking out of the cloud of dust with an unconscious Ace. The girl followed right behind with Sabo in the same state as his brother.

The pirates who were tending to the injured looked at them in surprise before shrugging to each other and raised their hands in surrender. Sabo did originally say they'd surrender to them anyway, before Ace decided it'd take too long to talk them into letting them see Dragon.

-*/-*/-*/

Sabo woke up to the sounds of voices around him. He moaned, grabbing the head of the person laying next to him close to his chest. He sighed in relief when the room went quiet.

"Boys, get up-yoi."

"Five more minutes, Pops," both Sabo and Ace mumbled with Ace's voice muffled by Sabo's chest. Ace then wrapped his arms around Sabo, keeping them both warm and comfortable.

There was a sigh and a girl's voice muttered, "I can't believe you made these spoiled brats your commanders."

Sabo tuned out whatever else was said, intent on getting a few more minutes of sleep. But there was something nagging in the back of his mind, something he's forgetting, something that's missing. The bed feels weird also. It was too still. There wasn't the slight sway from the waves hitting the side of the ship.

"We got a message from Luffy-yoi."

"LUFFY!" Sabo shouted as he sat up with Ace following him, both wide eyed and alert.

That got the attention of everyone in the room. Both he and Ace looked around and they noticed that they weren't on Moby Dick and that Marco was on the Den Den Mushi that was placed on their bed.

"Uh, where are we?" Ace asked, scratching the back of his head.

"My office, which is also my bedroom," a deep, gruff voice answered.

"Who are you?" they both asked at the same time.

"Dragon."

There was a moment of silence as the boys processed this information. "No way," they both said seriously. "There's no way. Luffy's too cute to be your son."

"It's true," someone from their division said. "After you two were caught, we were supposed to be taken to their prison, but then this guy," he jerked his thumb towards the tall, gruff looking revolutionary leader, "brought us to his office instead after learning we're with Whitebeard. We went ahead and explained everything to him, since both of our commanders were out of commission."

"And to think, no one even knew our boss even had a kid," the girl glared at Dragon with her arms crossed.

"We're getting off topic-yoi," the den den mushi said.

"Right!" Sabo jumped up to leap at the snail. "You said Luffy sent a message?"

"Is he okay?"

"How is he?"

"Did you tell him we're coming?" Both Sabo and Ace asked.

"First, hands off the snail, Sabo. I don't need you to be hanging up on me after I answer your questions-yoi."

Sabo clicked his tongue in annoyance before setting the phone back down on the bed in front of Ace.

"Phone's down, Pops," Ace said. He laid on his stomach with his arms propped up to hold up his head with a huge smile on his face, happy to hear that his little brother was able to call home. "So?"

"It wasn't Luffy who called. They called themselves Tontatta Tribe. From what we gathered, they're a tribe of dwarves, little people-yoi. Anyway, they came across Luffy on accident, and Luffy asked them to pass on a message to us. He doesn't want us to come yet. He said to wait-yoi," Marco said.

"Luffy - Luffy doesn't want us to come?" Sabo said, looking torn.

"Yet-yoi. He wants us to come, just not yet. I think he's planning something," there were some snickering from the other side of the den den mushi.

"I don't think Little Luffy knows how to plan," they heard Kingdew's bland voice over the snickering. "He tends to ruin them."

"Lu-ya can plan if he wants," Law defended. "Sometimes. Maybe. Nevermind, I've never seen him plan anything. Even his meals are random."

"So, what? We have to sit still and wait until he says it's okay to go, Pops?" Ace practically yelled.

"Ace," Whitebeard's voice came over, "I'm sure Luffy has a good reason for all this. If we go now, before he's ready for us, things may go wrong for him."

That calmed Ace down. He wouldn't ever want to put Luffy in more danger than he already is. "Oh, right."

"Besides," Whitebeard continued, "it sounds like your brother is well. Leo, the one that passed on the message, said he's being well taken care of, and they'll call us with updates as often as they can."

"I was told you have payment for my cooperation," Dragon cut in, looking at the boys. "I take all my men out of Dressrosa and stay clear of the place, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Sabo pulled out the box out of his jacket pocket.

"I'm hanging up-yoi. Just a fair warning, Dragon, their version of payment is torture to some-yoi." And Marco hung up.

Dragon raised an eyebrow at the two on the bed who looked at him with bright smiles of happiness.

"Don't listen to Pops. We brought our treasure box for you. Look!" Ace said excitedly, and Sabo took of the lid to show them a box completely filled with newspaper clippings and pictures. "These are copies though. The originals are back at home. So you can keep these."

Everyone, including the Whitebeard Pirates crowded the bed to look in the box. Eventually, the Pirates backed away nervously. "Yeah, so, would someone point us to where we could get dinner?"

That had the Revolutionaries raising their eyebrows at their reaction.

"Why don't the rest of you go on ahead and show them the cafeteria and someone bring us back something to eat," Dragon said.

"I'll stay too," the girl said. "I'm Koala, an instructor here by the way."

"I'm Hack, also an instructor," the fishman said. "I'm also curious."

"All right. Bring enough food for the five of us," Dragon said before shooing everyone out of his cramped office.

"I suggest bringing enough food for thirty people," a pirate laughed as they all left.

Dragon, Koala, and Hack already had a few pictures in their hands, studying them and didn't hear what was said. The three of them looked confused at what they were seeing.

"These are mostly pictures of a girl, all of the same girl. I thought they'd be pictures of Luffy," Koala said in confusion.

"Those are Luffy. Isn't he cute!" Then they both started digging through the box, and Sabo finally picked one out and handed it to Dragon. "This one was taken about four months ago." This time it was a picture of a young boy in an overly large shorts and t-shirt with dirt, leaves, and twigs sticking all over him, hugging a tiger's head happily smiling. The poor tiger had a panicked look, wanting to be anywhere but there being held by the strange kid.

"Lu wanted to be friends with the tiger and wouldn't take no for an answer. Took him almost an hour to catch him," Sabo said proudly.

"Pops wouldn't let him keep Stripey Tiger Roar," Ace laughed, "even after Lu begged and begged. Grandpops eventually had to tell Lu why he couldn't bring Stripey Tiger Roar with us."

"Stripey Tiger Roar?" Hack asked slowly.

"Luffy has bad naming sense," they both said as they continued picked through the box for another picture.

-*/-*/-*/

When three revolutionaries returned back to the cafeteria from delivering dinner to their boss's room, they went to get their own food and sat down telling the others what happened.

"I swear it. I've never seen Dragon look that uncomfortable before. More like he's always expressionless."

"Even Koala and Hack looked like they wanted to leave but couldn't."

"There's no way I'd want to be stuck there, so we just left the food without saying anything."

"A part of me want to know what happened, while the other part is too scared. I mean, even Dragon looked scared."

The pirates who overheard this and laughed. "That's because our two commanders are very dotting to their youngest and craziest brother. You say they're spoiled, but you haven't met Luffy yet."

"Those two, plus their other brother that isn't here, spoils the brat with anything and everything he wants."

"I don't know. Marco seems to think everyone at home spoils him."

"So, this torture that Phoenix was talking about?" a revolutionary asked.

"That would be when our dear Commanders talk about their adventures with Luffy. The things the kid gets up to makes you wonder about your sanity. They can go on nonstop, unless one falls asleep, or it's time to eat," the pirates laughed.

"There was this one time Jiru, that's Speed Jiru, our information specialist, was trying to get one of our prisoner to cough up some information. Well, he had this bright idea to use the kids. Ace and Sabo were only 13 at the time, and Luffy was 10. Jiru told Ace and Sabo that someone had wanted to hear about their adventures. Granted, those two would never go around talking about their precious brother to just any stranger, so Jiru introduced the guy as his good friend. Brought the prisoner to his room and everything. Long story short, the man went through what your boss is going through right now. The poor guy broke down after an hour with the kids. They were so mad to find out that their Luffy stories were used as torture to get information. Marco thought it was creative and less messier than their usual torture and wanted to continue it, but they refused, saying that Luffy is too precious to share any random person."

"The sad thing is, most of us have seen the things those kids have gotten themselves into. Let'see. We never let them play hide-and-seek when we don't plan on being somewhere for long. The game can go on for days. They only break for food and sleep. Meal time with them is like a war zone. Stay away from them."

"Those are just the tame stories. Just wait til you hear the one with the tiger, sea king, and alligator."

-*/-*/-*/

The next morning Ace and Sabo woke up to Dragon's version of Fist of Love. "Wake up."

They both sat up in their shared bed rubbing their heads. "Why? It's not like we have a reason to be up yet."

"Phoenix gave me permission to keep you boys here until my son needs you," Dragon replied. "As thanks for updating me on my son, I'm going to train you personally. So get up and get ready."

"What?"

"You heard me. Meet me on the training ground in 15 minutes," Dragon said, then left.

"Well, at least we know for sure he's related to Shitty Gramps," Ace moaned, still rubbing his head.

-*/-*/-*/-*/-*/

A/N: And here we have what Ace and Sabo's been up to.

I'm going to be working on missing scene requests as omakes to add on at the end of the story. If you have any requests, please let me know. The first one I'll be working on is from 00-SilentObserver-13: what happened to Vista and the others when Marco got through with them for the reading incident (Luffy reading Vista's porn book to Whitebeard).

Just 3-5 more chapters left!