NOT FINISHED – REVELATION NEEDS TO BE DONE

Hey guys sorry it took me so long before I updated this. Life happened. Anyways, sorry I forgot to pass on another clue last time but to be perfectly honest someone has already won the contest so I'm calling it now. The winner is (drum rolls) Valeria Aurelia, who answered correctly with Sabo! points next to me

Tumbleweed rolls by

Eh, Sabo? He was here earlier. Uh…I'm going to go look for him…also don't own One Piece in any form, nope. I only own what is spawned from my own head.

Night has fallen on the island and most people have returned to their homes, same could be said for a certain group of pirates, at least most of them. And so into the galley of The Thousand Sunny where the dinner is not, for once, barely restrained chaos though that might have to do with the missing person. "So no one saw Luffy at all since he left the ship?" Nami frowned, and so did the others after all it certainly was out of character for him. Sanji took a bite before replying, "I was at the market all day and I never saw him." Franky paused in his coke resupplying, "I was there too, you saying no one's seen Luffy-bro? Ussopp-bro, Chopper-bro did you not find him?" Ussopp looked up from his food, "Oh sorry, we didn't but Chopper smelled Ace around as well." The others who had met Ace relaxed, "Luffy ran into Ace huh? No wonder we didn't see him, they must have gone off together somewhere." Brook put down his cup, "Sorry but may I ask who Ace is?" Franky and Robin also seemed confused, "Who is this Ace?" Nami chuckled, "Sorry guess we forgot to tell you guys. Ace is Luffy's older brother." Franky and Brook both gave spit-takes while Robin gave a smile, "Luffy-bro has a brother!" "Yohohohoho I never would have guessed that." Zoro yawned, "Yeah we only found out when we met him in Alabasta when we first arrived. He travelled with us for a few days before parting ways." Nami nodded, "That Vivre Card Luffy has belongs to him." Robin chuckles "Captain-san's brother must be an interesting person." Ussopp nods, "Yeah he's a part of Whitebeard's crew and he's out here looking for some guy named Blackbeard." Franky performs another spit-take, "Luffy-bro's brother is a member of Whitebeard's crew!" Robin chuckles again, "Captain-san is really full of surprises, I assume you mean his brother is Fire Fist Ace the 2nd Division Commander of Whitebeard's crew?" Nami nods, "Yeah that's him. He's so polite, it's hard to see that they're related." Ussopp then proceeds to launch into an extremely over exaggerated story of how they met Ace to Franky and Brook, Chopper listening on excitedly despite having been there for the entire event and putting it down to forgetting this stuff to heat exhaustion. Sanji leaps to his feet to get drink refills for Nami and Robin while simultaneous getting into an argument with Zoro for some reason, looking to start an actual fight between the two when everyone hears a thump of something heavy landing on the deck. Everyone stopped talking as Zoro paused in pulling out his sword as a second thump followed by a third in quick succession came from the deck followed by a yell of "Damn it Luffy!"

5 mins earlier, Ace and Luffy finally reached the docks. The sun had already begun to set by the time Luffy came round, during which time Ace kept watch as well as checking over the Striker to make sure there was no damage. There wasn't, however once a few tests Ace tried out to test his flames resulted in him getting a few new burns and making a couple of them worse, attempting to sail over in the Striker was considered a no go and so they proceeded to carry the Striker together through town. Luffy got put in front so he was always in Ace's sight. Normally Luffy would grump about Ace's over-protectiveness which tended to pop up after something really exciting (read: dangerous and potentially life-threatening to Luffy) happened to him but after the events at the beach today, even Luffy knew how close he'd been to losing his brother and kept turning his head round to at him only to trip on something or walk into something and drop his half of the Striker. It also didn't help that his new biology made him clumsier than before. As such, it took them a good couple of hours at least to make it to the docks. Ace sighed in relief that they'd made it to the docks with little trouble if he ignored all the times they had to stop because of Luffy's clumsiness. "So Luffy, where's the Merry docked?" "Oh right, Merry died…but we got a new ship, Franky made it and it's called the Sunny. Over there!" Ace looked over to where Luffy pointed and chuckled, instinctively adjusting his grip on the Strider as Luffy wobbled and dropped one side of the ship. The Sunny shape on the front was a perfect fit for his brother and the ship was a lot larger to fit his growing crew and their needs. "Nice ship you got there Luff'." The two brothers carried the Striker over, "Looks like we'll have to throw her up on deck the climb up afterwards." It took a good heave but they managed to get the Striker up on deck and Ace was looking to see the best way up when a rubber arm wrapped around his torso and Ace barely had a chance to open his mouth before Luffy rocketed them up to the deck where they slammed into the mast before crashing into a pile on the deck with Ace on top of Luffy. "Damn it Luffy!" Luffy just laughed as Ace punched him in the head, that landing had hurt. Both of them looked up as the galley door opened and light poured out through the door as the rest of the Strawhats came out to see what in the world Luffy had done this time.

Whatever the Strawhats had expected, and planned to say went out the window when the galley lights cascaded out over the pair lying on the grass deck. While they could see Luffy's limbs under Ace, Ace was in full view including the number of burns covering his upper body. Nami slammed her hands on the railing as Chopper began screaming for a doctor, "What the world happened to you?! And you're the doctor!" Chopper stopped, "Oh yeah that's right!" Chopper ran down the stairs immediately after that to check on both of them and as such was the first to realise there was something very different about Luffy. "Eh?!" Chopper fell onto his butt staring at Luffy. Ace had sat up as Chopper had run over, so Luffy was very much visible to him. "Chopper, what's wrong?!" "Oi Oi, what the hell is wrong?" The Strawhats began clamouring and Zoro made to come down the stairs as Chopper slowly turned to them, revealing Luffy's figure accidently in the process. "L-Luffy's a girl…" It was silent for a couple of seconds as Ace let out a quiet groan, having obviously hoped for a bit more tactful of an approach but then this was Luffy's crew they were probably use to this sort of thing. "EEEEHHHHHHH?!" Jaws dropped and every member shouted to high heaven, well except for Sanji and Brook. Both saw Luffy, who was now a very cute girl whose breasts…were not really covered at all by his shirt and with the view. But it was totally Luffy and their brains just shorted out over the whole thing resulting in the two of them passing out from the conflicting information. Ace just let out another big sigh while Luffy cocked his head in confusion.

Finally they all got back into the galley so they could feed Ace and Luffy, figuring it was easier that way once everyone had calmed down and came too. Chopper had run for some good burn cream and insisted on beginning treatment of the burns, if Ace didn't want to live with numerous horrific burn scars. Ace put up with it as long as he could eat as well, wincing a little at the stinging the cream caused. Franky had taken the Striker below deck and store it in the same dock as Nami's waver which had the most space for another craft before coming back up to join the others. Nami eventually ran out of patience and slammed her hands down on the table. "Alright, what in the world happened to the both of you that left you covered in burns and Luffy turned into a girl?" Ace scratched the side of his face sheepishly, "Unfortunately, I don't think either of us understand it all. I suppose I should just start at the beginning?" Seeing everyone either just staring or also nodding, Ace figured he'd just start. "I suppose it started when I ran into Luffy in town, I figured a sleepy town like this one didn't need the brand of chaos Luffy can bring." He noticed the others smiling and nodding, all very familiar with Luffy chaos while Luffy continued to chow down. Ace defended his plate then continued, "Anyways I was in town stocking up, I've been following Blackbeard's trail but it recently went cold. Figured I'd travel with you guys for a while, Luffy was all for it." Ace once again defended his plate with a smirk towards the pouting Luffy. "So while Luffy told me about some things you had got up to, we headed towards the beach on the far side of the island where I'd come ashore with the Striker." Franky spoke up there, "That the name of your ship, Ace-bro? That is a pretty neat ride you got there." Ace nodded, "Yeah I power her with my flames to propel her across the water." Franky got all excited, "Wow that sounds awesome, I got to see that." Ace nodded, "Might have to wait a while though, with my flame issues." Franky deflated but nodded, knowing he'd get to see it. "Well we were heading to get her, then from there I was going to sail us round to join up with your ship here. On the way there, I thought I heard something in the forest but I just chalked it up to it being normal forest noises. We reached the beach and that's when we twigged something wasn't right. The Striker wasn't where I'd left it. It was also too quiet. We both got ready to fight and then these guys in a uniform I've never seen before poured out of the forest and we set about fighting them off. Unfortunately, these guys were very much prepared as they all had a sea stone weapon or a weapon treated with sea stone and not a single one of these guys was incompetent. We'd knock one down, and another or two would take their place." A number of the Straw Hats winced, these two were great fighters but being surrounded by a load of competent fighters with seastone, yeah they could see what had happened there. Ace obviously figured they'd got what he was saying, "Yeah after that fight this other guy showed up, he was obviously in charge of the group. And this guy is dangerous; he's crazy and sane all in one. He said he was taking Luffy and then hit him with something, Luffy seemed to pass out and I decided enough was enough and charged him. He's fast, really fast. Next thing I knew, he'd stabbed me in the chest and-" Suddenly Ace crashed face first into his plate startling everyone. Chopper freaked but quickly checked and sighed, "He's asleep..." Everyone who knew breathed a sigh of relief as Robin made a noise of understanding, "Narcolepsy I take it?" Chopper nodded, "Yeah I made sure to stock up on some medication for it in case we ran into Ace again or someone else with the condition."

Nami sighed and turned to look at Luffy who'd also been startled by Ace's sudden 'collapse'. Looking at him properly, she could see that as a girl Luffy was about her height with hair the same length as normal in a more girlish style. His figure as a girl was also slight though his chest...definitely was smaller than either hers or Robin's. Luffy seemed to fit in the kind of cliché petite cute girl. (Basically if I haven't said so already, Luffy looks like the female Luffy in the picture). Luffy seemed to notice she was staring and turned to blink at her. Nami managed to hide her annoyance at how cute Luffy was as a girl; he was cuter than she was. "Do you remember anything about this?" Luffy cocked his head, "I remember those guys holding me down, then that bastard started talking about stuff calling me a girl then he hit me and I nearly blacked out. I looked up and saw...Ace lying on the ground in a puddle of blood and then I felt really warm then nothing." Nami sighed, figuring she'd get nothing else out of Luffy than that. Ace suddenly shot up, "Shoot I fell asleep." Brook seemed to have chugged at least a full cup of tea in response to the 'heart attack' Ace had inadvertently given him and made a skull joke in regards to it which Ace seemed a bit bewildered at, Robin following up with a dark comment fitting with her dark humour which freaked out the 3 scaredy cats, and Ace to just seem to chalk it up to their personalities and turn back, "Uh where did I leave off?" That got Chopper out of freak out mode and back to acting as a doctor as he began to investigate Ace's chest, "You said just been stabbed in the chest? Strange, I don't see any evidence of such a wound. Where on your chest did he stab you?" "Through the heart, I was sure he'd killed me." Everyone turned to look at Ace, Luffy had said he'd seen Ace lying in a puddle of blood but this guy had actually killed him? That was hard to believe, seeing as Ace was sitting there. "But, that's not possible..." Ace shrugged, "I can't really say anything else. One minute, he's stabbed me and I'm certain I'm dying. Next thing I know, I'm standing on the now empty beach surrounded by fire and I'm sort of on fire myself and it's painful. I put myself off and had to fight to get the fire to go down which is when I found Luffy unconscious and turned into a girl." Sanji started up another cigarette and began to smoke it, "Luffy said something about the shitty guy calling him a girl?" Ace nodded, "Yeah he called himself Ichiro, and he called Luffy the Sacred Maiden. Makes me wonder if he has some odd devil fruit which lets him change people's genders." Robin frowned, "I believe there is a devil fruit like that, it was eaten by Ivankov of the Revolutionary Army but he was last reported being thrown in Impel Down. If he had died down there than it is possible...it was called the Horu Horu no mi if I'm not mistaken. The phrase Sacred Maiden does sound familiar but I can't think of where I've heard it I'm afraid." Ace shrugged, "Anyways I waited until Luffy woke up, attempted to make use of my flames which didn't quite work out then we carried the Striker back here and you know the rest."

Once the pair had finished eating, Chopper had wanted both of them to go to the Doctor's Office immediately. After all, who knew if there was something else wrong with the pair. However the discussions weren't finished yet. Mainly about what to do next. What was decided on was mainly along the lines of find this Ichiro and beat him until he reversed what he'd done to Luffy if they didn't find another cure first. Finding out more about who this group was was a definite on the list of things to do, Ace having managed to draw a crude version of the symbol on their uniforms but as he'd been kind of busy at the time, they all agreed it was unlikely to be totally accurate. They also wanted to know more about this whole Sacred Maiden thing and why this Ichiro guy was so sure it was Luffy that he'd attacked them and turned Luffy into a girl. Luffy didn't seem to care too much about being turned into a girl, in fact he didn't seem to see any differences really which resulted in several sighs. Robin brought up wanting to check the beach, and it was agreed someone should check but not alone. Either Ace or Luffy going back to the beach had been decided to be a rather bad idea and they decided that three members should go, with whoever was on watch as backup if something happened. Which meant Zoro who got watch that night was not illegible for the group. With Robin already going they only needed two more, and so pulled straws with Franky and Ussopp pulling the red straws meaning they were going. Neither liked the idea of going out at the break of dawn, but the decision to move on as soon as possible to not encourage any ideas for this Ichiro guy making another attempt for Luffy if was still around was something they couldn't disagree with. Ace's log pose had already set as he'd arrived the night before but trying to travel at night was a dangerous task. However once that was agreed on, where they'd try to get to the beach, Chopper put a stop to any more discussion and dragged the pair off for a full check-up. When asked, Franky said he could try and move Sunny closer to the beach and took Ussopp and Brook with him to help, least they could do is make sure he wasn't running into too shallow water. However luck would have it that the water was much deeper on the other side of the island and they were able to dock close enough to the beach they could just walk out. Nami raided her wardrobe for something Luffy could wear that fit better than the shirt and shorts he was currently wearing, after all the only thing keeping those shorts up was a length of rope keeping it there. Chopper couldn't find anything else wrong but wanted them to stay overnight anyways so he could do another check up in the morning plus this way they didn't have to quite deal with the issues of where Luffy was going to sleep yet. Neither brother seemed adverse to the sleeping arrangements for the night and crashed within 5 minutes of Chopper leaving. Zoro headed up to the crow's nest for his watch while Sanji cleaned up before turning in himself.

The sun had just barely begun to rise when the three came out onto the deck. Ussopp yawned and whined, "Do we really have to do this this early? Couldn't we at least wait until after breakfast?" Robin chuckled, "Sorry Longnose-kun, but the sooner we get this done, the sooner you can get some more sleep." Franky stretched, "Oh yeah, I'm all fired up." The three descended onto the beach that, even in the early morning light the trio could see the damage done by Ace's flames. Up in the crow's nest, Zoro had woken and noticed the three on the beach and could give only a low whistle at the extent of the damage on the beach. Robin quickly crossed her arms and used her devil fruit power to sprout as many eyes around the beach and into the forest as she could to make sure no one else was around. "...it's alright, there's no one around." Ussopp released a breath he hadn't realised he'd being holding as they began to spread out. Franky looked across the expanse of beach, "So what are we even looking for anyways? Doesn't seem like there's much of anything other than sand, burned sand and glass out here." Robin summoned up a number of hands to start moving the sand about, checking for buried items "We just need to see if the men who attacked Captain-san and FireFist-san left anything behind. From what FireFist-san said, they didn't have time to clear up the scene being forced away by his flames." Franky nodded, "Alright, but it's not looking very promising." Some distance away Ussopp was looking around and gulped finding an area of sand soaked with blood, it was quite obvious a body had lain there at some point. And there was something buried in the blood soaked sand and Ussopp shuddered, before he reached out and started lightly brushing the sand off the object. Brushing the sand off the object he stared at it before shouting back to Franky and Robin, "Guys I found something!" The pair stopped their own investigations to see what Ussopp had found. "Hey isn't that a-" Robin nodded, "Not just any...it belongs to FireFist-san." The trio looked around more, all of them more than a little spooked out by their find.

Ace yawned and opened his eyes looking up at the ceiling with a weight on his chest. Looking down he blinked blearily at the girl lying on his chest before his memory of the day before hit him. He yawned again and looked around as the door opened and Chopper entered the room. "Morning Ace, I just wanted to check on both of you before breakfast." Ace nodded, "That's fine. Hold on a sec." He shook Luffy who opened his eyes and looked up blearily. "Morning Luff', Chopper wants to look at us again before breakfast." That got Luffy up and moving and three quarters of an hour later the trio trooped out of the doctor's office before heading for the galley. Most of the time had been spent convincing Luffy to change from his normal shirt and shorts into what Nami had brought him last night. It took threatening to not give him any meat until he did to make him agree. Ace sighed as he sat down, he had the feeling Luffy wrangling was going to be a pain for the foreseeable future. Zoro and Brook were there as was Sanji, fortunately the two were not going at it already but the others were still missing. Sanji started serving up food, "Nami-swan went to check on Robin-chwan and the two idiots since they hadn't come back up yet and this idiot said they were still out there." as he point his thumb at Zoro who sniped an insult back and started the first of their daily arguments. The others with the long ease of practice ignored them and started eating and defending their food from Luffy, well Ace had infinitely more practice at the second option than the first but even he didn't give it more than a couple seconds thought before starting in on his food. Things continued though the pair stopped arguing attempting to get some food before Luffy ate it all. However things changed when the 4 missing members entered the room.

The 4 missing members entered and the air in the galley changed immediately. Everyone looked up and could tell whatever this was about was serious. Ace immediately put his hand over Luffy's mouth to keep it shut despite his brother's angry glare. Ace looked back up at them, "Did you find anything?" The others look at Ussopp who placed something on the table in front of Ace who felt his breath hitch. "We found that on the beach, buried in blood stained sand." Ace let go of Luffy's mouth to pick up the item, "It's the mera mera no mi..." Robin nodded, "When a devil fruit user dies, their devil fruit reforms somewhere in the world...yesterday you said you died. Your devil fruit reformed where you died sometime later." Chopper stammered "But Ace is still capable of using fire, but if he died and no longer has the mera mera no mi, how does he still have his fire?" However no one had any answers for him. This was just another question to add to the pile that had already formed yesterday. "So now what?" Ace looked up from where he was staring at his devil fruit, "What sorry?" It was kind of understandable he was distracted by things, so Sanji sighed then lit another cigarette before continuing "What are you going to do with it?" Ace sighed, "I'll eat it again, maybe with it I can get some control over my flames again." Ace took a bite and gagged before anyone could stop him, as Chopper instantly went Doctor Mode on him. "How could you do something so reckless?! What if your flames were part of your devil fruit still being there and eating it again counted as a second devil fruit! You could have killed yourself!" Ace put his hand up in an attempt to placate the Doctor who was having none of it and immediately dragged him back to the Doctor's office to see if his idiotic move had done anything to impact his health. Luffy seemed caught between eating more or following Ace, where eventually Zoro stood up and dragged Luffy out with him to minimal protest. The atmosphere relaxed significantly and Nami collapsed into a chair while the others also took seats while Sanji rushed to serve Nami and Robin as well as Franky and Ussopp. Soon everyone had food and continued to eat. Ussopp paused in his eating, "So what's the plan now?" Nami paused after taking a drink, "I think it'd be best to leave once we're finished eating. There's nothing left for us here and the log is set. We might be able to get some answers on the next island." Robin nodded "True, if nothing else we don't gain anything from waiting." Brook stood having finished, "Shall I tell Luffy-san and Zoro-san to prepare the ship to leave Nami-san?" Nami nodded, "Go ahead." Brook laughed and headed out to find the other two to get started on preparing the ship to take off. Barely an hour later, the Sunny departed from the beach heading off again deeper into the Grand Line, carrying the hopes of her crew looking for answers to what had happened on that small island.

And with that, Prologue: It Begins finally comes to a close. It certainly took long enough…no one wanted to cooperate when revealing Luffy's condition and it annoyed me. But I hope the fact it's longer makes up for it?

Sound of fighting and someone mashing buttons is coming from nearby

Oh yeah, I found Sabo. He's playing my copy of One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 on the PS4 right now. He's playing as himself at Marineford. It's actually what gave me the inspiration to write this chapter so yeah bonus. Anyways the next chapter will be the start of the next Chapter/Arc. So yeah, r & r and Valeria Aurelia, let me know who you want as the final member either by review or pm.