Chapter 6 (Wow. Love all you guys who pushed the cookie button! Everyone has been so nice and constructive! It's good to know you guys like my story. I hope that not too many of you hate my version of Ace/Luffy/Sabo's backstory. And there's still more you guys don't know! (~e u e)~ Hope you guys like the next installment of Kill the Rabbit.
Anna Bannana: Congratulations! You're my first anonymous reviewer! You get a bigger cookie. :) Thank you! Yes, I think Ace can be that way too. Especially considering my revised version of his childhood. I'm glad. Hare's a jerk. You're right, he's sinister and you as a reader don't really know much about him yet. I'm glad he's a believable character and not just a Gary Stu. I'd be pissed if I realized I'd been writing in one of those hated entities the entire time. Thank you! I hope this is updated soon enough for you!)
"Why did you lie to them?" Thatch had just begun to climb down the ladder of the crow's nest when he heard Serpent speak. The words froze Thatch where he was. A pause followed, and it was because Thatch was still that he was able to hear Ace's quiet reply.
"Because they deserve better than the truth."
Thatch remained on the ladder for a moment, but no further conversation followed, or, if it did, it was too quiet to hear. He climbed down the ladder with furrowed brows. What was a lie and what was truth? Was any of it true? He crossed the deck, mind crowded with unanswerable questions. If Ace is lying…how can we trust him? Why would he lie in the first place? Thatch walked, still on autopilot, into the kitchen to begin making preparations for dinner.
(Line across page. Still haven't found out how to make one show up on webpage)
Ace pinched the bridge of his nose. This had been going on for a good half-hour now and showed no signs of stopping. Selma and Joshua had been arguing religion all through dinner, and for some reason found it necessary to speak in overly loud voices even though they were right next to each other. Joshua was strictly catholic, but Selma was a hard assed scientific. She believed in evolution and all that, while Joshua supported creationism. They had been going back and forth on the presence or lack of a god and it had gotten nowhere. They were really almost shouting now. Selma turned to Ace suddenly.
"What do you think? Is there some gigantic, random man in the sky who just decided 'Hey. I think I'll create a universe today!'" Joshua turned to her in frustration.
"You don't get it at all! It's all part of His plan! And He's not just some random guy! He's God!" Ace sighed.
"If I offer my opinion, will you both just shut up?" They nodded eagerly. A second vote in either direction would end the discussion. "Looking at it mathematically, the probability of our universe even existing is unbelievably small. Then, you throw in the factors necessary for life, the probability of stars creating all the necessary heavy elements, the chance that humans survived evolution despite many disadvantages, and the continued existence of our universe, the odds become almost astronomically small that anything like earth or humanity could exist simply by chance. That said, if there is a god, he's not some loving, liberating, all-powerful Christian God. Or if He is, He abandoned this world long ago." Ace's voice had taken on a darker tone. Joshua looked at him, appalled.
"But He is there! He cares about all of us!" Ace looked into his eyes.
"Then why is there conflict? Why is there crime? Why do bad things happen to good people?" Joshua had no response. Selma looked at him smugly.
"That's what I've been trying to say this whole time. Why don't we dump your Captain Catholic ass in a rowboat and leave you out on the sea and God can keep you company?" Ace looked between the two.
"Alright. I cast my vote, now could the two of you please let me eat my meal in peace?" They both laughed and left Ace, joking and talking as though there had never been any conflict between the two. Ace just shook his head and resumed eating, smiling slightly.
(Another line that I still don't know how to make. Could someone tell in a review?)
It was late. It was really late. Marco was dragging his ass down to the galley to get some more coffee before starting on his next round of never-ending work. He gave a massive yawn. Oh what he wouldn't give to be anyone else on the crew right now. He was working his ass of while those lazy morons were in bed. Okay, so that wasn't exactly the most charitable of thoughts, but still. He walked into the galley and it took him a moment to realize there was a light already in there. He squinted his eyes and blinked at it blearily.
Waking up a little more, Marco realized it was Ace sitting at one of the tables, a lantern sitting next to him on the table's surface. He was slouched over, his back to Marco. Marco approached slowly, not wanting to startle him but not wanting to wake him up if he was sleeping. Ace mumbled to himself and sat up, lifting a bottle and drinking some of whatever was in it. It looked like alcohol. Is Ace drunk? It was very rare that Ace got anywhere near liquor. He described it as a 'deadly poison that only led to bad choices and worse outcomes.'
"Ace…?" Ace didn't seem to react, and only slouched down over the table again. Marco was now close enough to identify the bottle. It was some kind of alcohol, and judging by the smell, damn strong too. "Ace…what are you doing?" Marco was standing to Ace's right. Ace seemed to finally notice Marco and turned his head to look up at the blonde.
"H'llo Marco." Ace's voice came out thick and slightly slurred. He's really drunk. As long as Marco had known Ace, he'd never seen him like this before. Even on the few occasions that Ace had ingested alcohol, no matter what he had his speech had never been indistinct like this. Ace took another swallow from the bottle. Marco looked at him worriedly.
"I think you should give me that bottle, Ace." Ace shook his head slowly from side to side, and seemed to grow dizzy, almost falling, but grabbed on to the table before he did. He raised the bottle in his fist, holding it up to the light. It was about three quarters empty.
"Gotta finish this. Not gonna have any more fuckin' nightmares." Marco stared at Ace in shock. Ace drank from the bottle again. He began to laugh, but it wasn't a happy sound. It was broken, almost hysterical. "The Hatter's still smiling, drinkin' his bloody tea. But his teeth 'r black now, rotted out by mirror-sweet time. He's tainted now. Stained. Stained, stained, stained, stained, stained. The god damned rabbit's gonna kill us all. Nun o' you know. He's gonna eat you up like candy. Thatch too. Fuckin' said so. But the blud won' show up on that perfect white fur, never one god damned spot. And he's never late." Ace stopped laughing, and looked at Marco with a serious, deeply worried face.
"Sumthin's breaking, Marco. Sumthin' important. What's braking?" Ace's eyes roamed the room, searching for the answer. Marco was beginning to grow mildly afraid. Ace was drunk, yes, beyond anything Marco had seen of him before. But this was different. Ace was beginning to look frightened too, his search for the braking thing growing more and more desperate. Marco had to calm him before he grew hysterical.
"Nothing's braking, Ace. Everything's fine." Ace turned to look at Marco, looking like nothing so much as a lost child, but after Marco finished speaking seemed to settle down again. He nodded slowly, accepting what Marco had said as truth.
"Now, why don't you give me that and we'll get you to your room where you can sleep this off, okay?" Again, Ace nodded at Marco, looking alone and lost, but accepting Marco's lead. Ace handed him the bottle and Marco put it on another table in favor of helping Ace stand.
It took them quite a while to walk to Ace's room. Ace's balance had been completely ruined by the alcohol and he had to stop every now and again as he would have violent dizzy spells. Marco helped him in whatever ways he could and once they were in Ace's room, helped Ace take off his boots and hat before getting him settled in bed. Ace seemed to have passed out at some point, but Marco supposed this was better because at least he wouldn't have to worry about Ace getting up in the night. Marco took one last long look at Ace, wondering what could have driven him to this. Ace was dead to the world and his unconscious face wasn't exactly giving out free answers. Marco sighed and turned to leave.
When Ace's hand wrapped around Marco's wrist, he nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned to look down at Ace in surprise. Ace looked up at him drowsily, seemingly about to drift off again at any moment.
"You're dancing with monsters, Marco. And only the Cheshire Cat will be smiling in the end."
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Ace opened his eyes. Light stabbed through his eyeballs and beat on his brain with a metal stick. Ace shut them again with a groan. Okay, bad idea. Ace, keeping his eyes closed, tried to sit up. He instantly felt lightheaded and nauseous. Okay, double bad idea. He settled for just laying on his back, eyes shut and head pounding like a parade of base drums. What happened to me? I was…I was in the galley. Okay. Good start. Marco showed up at some point, but that's hazy at best. I was drinking something obviously. Ace thought for a few minutes more, trying to reconstruct what happened to him last night. He groaned. All this thinking was just making his head feel worse.
Ace slowly ventured an attempt at opening his eyes again and found that he could, indeed, see. He sat up and reached a hand up to rub his aching forehead. He moved slowly, so as not to disturb his protesting head any further, and put his feet on the floor, throwing on his untied boots and tossing his hat on his head. The hat was nice, it shaded his eyes a little. The boots were not so nice. It took Ace much longer than it should have to tie them properly, but after maybe 15 minutes of struggling he managed it. He stood carefully and turned to look at himself in the mirror. Despite feeling terrible, he actually didn't look that bad. He had finally gotten a legitimate amount of sleep, and the circles under his eyes had faded somewhat. He glanced out the window and was surprised to see the sun already high in the sky. Ace guessed it was around eleven o'clock if not noon. Ace walked over to the window and looked down at the assortment of plants growing on the sill. He rummaged through the plants for a while until he came up with a small, scrappy-looking shrub about 4 inches tall. It had densely packed leaves and branches, and among the branches many bright red berries could be seen. Ace plucked three. They were small and perfectly round. He popped them in his mouth and swallowed before the bitter taste could catch up. Almost instantly he felt his headache fade to a much more bearable throb in the back of his skull. He smiled slightly and turned to head out the door and face the day.
Out on deck, everyone seemed to be busy, moving quickly on deck, tying off lines and adjusting sails. Ace looked around in confusion, blinking intelligently. Thatch saw him and approached.
"Hey! Where've you been this morning? I haven't seen you at all yet today, and the day's almost half over!" As Thatch spoke, Ace noticed something different about him. The smile was still present and as warm as ever, but something in Thatch's eyes had changed. Something was a little more distant. Ace was confused, but shook it off in favor of finding out what was going on.
"What's got everyone so excited? I haven't seen them move this fast since we were trying to escape the last big cyclone." Thatch blinked at Ace incredulously.
"How can you not know this? We're approaching an island. Navigation says it's uninhabited, but even so, the crew is excited to be on land again. The island was apparently abandoned centuries ago, and I'll bet there's some pretty interesting ruins there, if not some kind of ancient treasure!" Ace's eyes showed interest when Thatch had mentioned ruins, and Thatch smirked. "I'm assuming that look means I can count you in as far as exploring goes, right?" Ace grinned at Thatch cheekily.
"Damn straight."
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When Marco saw Ace appear on deck shortly before their arrival at the island, his first thought was of asking Ace about what he had said last night. Having seen the amount of alcohol Ace had consumed, though, he highly doubted Ace really remembered any of it anyway. Marco had sighed. What Ace had said last night hadn't made much sense. It could have been that Ace was just drunk, and the alcohol had made him delusional or paranoid, but Ace's words had stuck with Marco nonetheless. Ace had truly unnerved Marco last night, and if there was some kind of mad truth in what Ace had said, Marco needed to know.
"You're dancing with monsters, Marco." Ace's words from last night still echoed in his head. "And only the Cheshire Cat will be smiling in the end." Marco looked up at the approaching island, a hint of trepidation corrupting his excitement.
"The rabbit's gonna kill us all." What rabbit? Was it literal or figurative? Or was it untrue entirely?
"Somethin's breaking, Marco. Somethin' important." What the hell was that supposed to mean? Marco could tell all of this was important, but he just couldn't put it all together. He didn't have all the pieces. But he had to figure it out. He instinctively knew there was some kind of time limit here, like a lit fuse. "The god damned rabbit's gonna kill us all…
"And he's never late."
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(A/N: Well? What do you think? I think the plot is filling in nicely. I can't decide what I think of this chapter :I There are parts of it I love but I'm not sure what to make of the overall thing. What do you guys think? Oh, and could someone PLEASE tell me how to make the goddamned line that goes across the webpage? I've tried freaking EVERYTHING! BTWs, magic button still present. Cookies being delivered by teleportation powers daily. :) Please keep reviewing. It helps.
ALSO! I feel obligated to tell you that my faithful computer, Glitchy (aptly named, too), is being taken into the repair shop to be fixed. I won't be able to write for the next few days, but I promise to have the next chapter up as soon as I'm able. I WILL STILL BE ABLE TO REPLY TO YOUR REVIEWS. Seriously guys, send them. They make my day. I kid you not. Thanks for listening! ~Mountain97)