Chapter 7
Ace woke up late the next day. He hadn't intended to sleep in, not really, but the moment he'd opened his eyes the first time, he'd decided that he would much rather be unconscious than awake, hence why he hadn't really gotten out of bed until around noon.
Sabo was long gone - of course - and Ace contented himself with a few pieces of toast, a couple bowls of cereal, and two bananas just barely on the verge of being inedible.
They needed to go grocery shopping. He'd ask Sabo about that later. For now, with his stomach full, Ace decided that he was going to figure out exactly what the hell was going on with his memory. Plan set, the amnesiac walked into Sabo's room and casually searched through a few drawers before pulling out a blank notebook. Sabo had mentioned his enjoyment of writing over one meal, and Ace had suspected that the man kept spare notebooks around somewhere. Hopefully, he either wouldn't notice or wouldn't care that Ace was taking one.
Snagging a pencil off the counter in the kitchen, Ace went into the sitting area and plopped down haphazardly on one of the armchairs, sprawling over it in such a way that it was a miracle he didn't fall off.
After staring at the blank page for a few minutes, Ace began tapping his pencil in annoyance.
"C'mon, what was the first thing?" He muttered.
Then it clicked, and Ace quickly wrote, "Name: Ace" on the page. He bit his lip and then added, "Age: 18-22?"
He didn't bother with a physical description; he knew what he looked like, and doubted that it would really affect him if he lost his memory again.
"Next one, next one," the young man said under his breath, casting his gaze to the ceiling. "Ah! That guy!" A few seconds later, Ace had, "Weird thing with the guy on the sidewalk - recognition?" written on the page. He nodded to himself and then wrote, "Can fight; hold own against Sabo?"
He tapped the pencil again and then began absently twirling it around his fingers, only stopping when it fell to the floor and he had to pick it up.
The next time, he hardly had to think about what to write.
"Luffy," he said, scrawling the name on the page. He circled it several times and then underlined it for good measure. Next to that he put, "guy with weird eyebrows?" and "Baratie?", largely because he got the feeling that he should know those two things as well. Plus, they were clearly related to Luffy. After a second's hesitation he put a brief description of the kid, figuring that it wouldn't hurt.
Then Ace recalled the incident after the game with Kid and wrote, "three boys; two + me, friends?" The pencil hovered less than an inch above the page. He slowly put it back to the paper.
"Brothers?"
Ace wasted another ten minutes just trying to remember something else, but there was nothing there, not even some kind of wall. At least then he would know that there was something; without that wall he felt like a man stumbling around in the dark, fumbling for lost memories he couldn't possibly see in front of him.
Once he came to the conclusion that picking his own brain wasn't going to yield any more results, Ace set the notebook and pencil down on his couch and sleeping area, smoothly covering it with the bedsheet.
Then he looked at the accumulated laundry and sighed.
Two hours and three loads of laundry later, Ace had put his clothes and Sabo's in their proper places and tidied up the apartment as best he could. He left Sabo's room untouched, since the man - for all that he appeared proper and organized - had a system that Ace couldn't even hope to understand.
Snagging the last apple, Ace bit into it while musing about what he could do. He didn't feel like going out, but there wasn't really a lot to do in the apartment. He swallowed and took another bite, brows furrowed.
And then it came to him. Sabo had given Ace permission to check out his stash of weapons, and Ace hadn't taken advantage of it yet. Now was the perfect time to look into it.
After finishing the apple, core and all, Ace walked briskly over to Sabo's room and quickly shifted the mirror out of the way, flicking on the light as he stepped into the narrow passageway. Turning sideways, Ace shuffled his way down the short stretch until he emerged into the armory area. The array of weapons was still as impressive - and intimidating - as it had been the first time, and Ace absently wondered how long Sabo had spent amassing all the guns, pipes, knives, grenades...The list went on and on.
Of course, given that Ace now had permission, the place didn't feel quite as ominous as it first had. Before, it had been a secret, a kind of, "my roommate and savior might be a serial killer" thing, but now it was just, "my roommate and savior probably isn't a serial killer but could be if he wanted to".
Ace glanced around and then scowled. His eyebrow twitched with irritation, and he quickly stalked around the room, ripping down the paper signs that Sabo had put up over each of the sections of weapons.
They were all incredibly demeaning; the grenades had a giant explosion and a simplistic stick figure with X-ed out eyes and the words "Danger: Can blow you apart" written in large red letters underneath the picture. The stick figure even had an obnoxiously large label - this is you - slapped over it. The guns had a similar picture, and the swords had a stick figure being decapitated. The knives weren't much different.
"Friggin' annoying piece of…"
Ace dumped the pages on the floor and then stomped on them a few times for good measure, feeling oddly pleased when his boots left ugly marks, tore, and twisted the paper.
Irritation out of the way, Ace pushed the signs from his mind and focused on the veritable treasure trove of deadly toys in front of him.
Ace immediately wanted to examine the pipes again - especially that one that had made him feel so weak for no reason - but he held himself back and went to the guns first. After checking that the first pistol he grabbed had the safety on, he carefully checked it over, noting its model and caliber. It seemed new, and Ace found himself instinctively raising it and aiming at the far wall.
He paused, realizing what he was doing, and quickly put the gun back on the wall.
"Experience with guns," he muttered, mentally adding that to the growing list of talents he hadn't known he had. Giving the rest of the pistols a quick once-over, Ace moved on to the knives.
He picked one at random, a short combat knife, and experimentally drew it from its sheath. The weak light glinted off its razor-sharp blade, and the metal seemed to be in near-perfect condition.
But it didn't feel right. Ace pressed his lips together and set the knife back on its rack, picking up another at the same time.
This one - a serious-looking twenty-something inch bowie knife - didn't feel quite right either, and Ace put it back without even unsheathing it. He repeated the process for five other knives before giving the entire section an annoyed glance and moving on.
"Sabo doesn't know what a good knife is," he muttered, absently flexing his hand, unaware that it was hovering next to his thigh. "Those aren't right. And why is my memory being so goddamn annoying?"
Adding "experience with knives" to his mental notes, Ace walked over to a case full of grenades. Knowing better than to touch them - Sabo had told him in no uncertain terms that touching the grenades was a do-it-and-you-die action - Ace settled for trying to figure out what kind of grenades they were. He identified a simple explosive and one that was most likely a fragmentation grenade, but the others didn't look familiar at all.
"I guess I don't know grenades as well," Ace said to himself, giving the explosives one last glance before he moved on to the pipes. As before, he spent some time on the ones that seemed like normal, reinforced pipes. All the steel poles were essentially staffs, and as Ace picked one up he realized that they were heavier than they looked.
He took a few practice swings, making sure not to hit anything, and felt a smile curl his lips at the nostalgic whooshing noise. He automatically adjusted his grip and switched stances, lunging and then spinning to finish with a flourish that would have easily incapacitated his imaginary opponent.
"And I've fought with a pipe," Ace stated, returning the weapon to its proper place. He felt almost disappointed that he had to let it go, but squashed the feeling.
Moving down the row of staffs, Ace soon found the one that had made him feel so weird the last time. Its strange aura hadn't changed, and Ace's body told him not to touch the staff again.
He touched the staff again. Instantly, the strength left his limbs and he staggered back a step, head spinning for a second or two while he got his energy back.
"I don't know what I was expecting," Ace muttered, glancing at his fingers.
Shaking his head, Ace cast his gaze around the room, eventually finding the papers again. He walked over to them, picked a few up, and then went back to the pipe. Putting the paper between his hand and the surface of the pipe, Ace gingerly picked the entire thing up, making sure that he wasn't about to drop the weapon. Weakness stole through the limb, but it was bearable now.
The pipe was surprisingly heavy and Ace frowned upon lifting it from its stand. He knew from the moment he picked it up that it wasn't practical. The weight wasn't right and the pipe was too heavy to wield effectively as a staff. It would have a lot of power, sure, but no maneuverability. It didn't fit what Ace knew about Sabo, and so he set the pipe down and put the papers back where they had been.
He checked out a few of the other pipes and found that four of them made him feel weak too, but not nearly to the same degree as the first one. He realized that all of them were put in the same section of pipes and tried not to feel too stupid for not noticing that earlier.
Ace spent a few minutes examining the tag on the worst of the weakening pipes, the one with a slight blue tint.
"'Experimental Pipe Model S, series three'," he read, brows knitting. "I have no idea what that means." His eyes drifted over to the one next to it and read the tag on that one as well. "Experimental Pipe Model S, series two'." The other two were series one, and the ones that didn't affect Ace at all weren't labelled "Experimental".
Ace frowned, brows knitting as he thought. "Is Sabo trying out all these weapons or something? Testing them?" It seemed to be the most likely option, so Ace left it at that. He gave the room another look, still slightly put off by the fact that Sabo had a functional armory in his apartment, and then left.
"Hey, Sabo," Ace said, setting down the book he'd been skimming for the past few minutes, making sure that it wouldn't fall off the couch he was lying on. Sabo glanced up from his large stack of papers, one eyebrow raised in silent question. "I checked out your armory again -"
Sabo grinned. "It's really more of a collection than an armory. How'd you like my safety pictures?"
"They were so helpful. And shut up, it's an armory. Anyway, one of the weapons made me feel really weak - like, weirdly. What are those staffs made out of?"
Sabo's pen fell from his fingers. "What? Which staffs? What were they labelled?"
"Uh - the experimental ones?" Sabo shot to his feet. "Was I not supposed to touch those?"
"No, this is great!" Sabo shot Ace a grin. "It means you have a Devil Fruit, which narrows down who you could be considerably. Tell me what it felt like - did you touch all the staffs? Okay, then tell me what it felt like, from worst to best."
"Well, the Series three or whatever nearly made me collapse, series two made my arm, shoulder, and legs weak but I could stand, and series one just made my hand and some of my forearm go numb. But the series two and three didn't seem very practical -"
"That's why they're experimental," Sabo cut in, excitement dancing in his eyes. "This is perfect! I'll be right back!"
"Can you at least tell me what a Devil Fruit is?" Ace asked, but Sabo had already vanished into his room, the door closing with a bang.
Ace sighed, rubbing his head with a tired expression. "Should've seen that one coming."
He carefully picked up Sabo's scattered papers and organized them as best he could before grabbing his book again. Ace mused that he might as well learn more about pirates while he waited for Sabo to actually explain what was going on. Lying back down on the couch, Ace flipped to his page and began reading again.
Ace read until his stomach was rumbling almost continuously, but Sabo never emerged from his room. Even eavesdropping (what? He could only read for so long at a time) yielded nothing, since Sabo was speaking in low tones that didn't quite carry through the door. When his stomach could no longer be ignored, Ace made himself a quick dinner and then went back to reading, only for his narcolepsy to carry him off to sleep before he got the chance to ask Sabo about Devil Fruits.
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