Stumble
The next week on the Red Force passed without much issue: Ace did very little other than eat phenomenal quantities of food –even by his standards– sleep and lie around on deck. His hair had gone a very distinctive shade of indigo and his eyes were now dark amber. He was also growing at an incredible rate: he was now a full foot taller than Fox, rapidly approaching Benn Beckman in height and was already broader through the shoulders than said grey-haired first mate. He had to move carefully as his ridiculous growth spurt made him so stupidly uncoordinated it was laughable; he was constantly misjudging his own height and bashing his head or tripping up. Marco thought it was hilarious and he wasn't the only one; Jozu had asked only the other day if Ace was trying to set a record for most injuries incurred on board ship outside of a fight.
Fox spent most of her time in his general vicinity, patching him up when he damaged himself, checking his injuries regularly and helping him get to grips with the changes. She didn't just hover though: she always had some other piece of work to hand, be it a shirt she was making, baby clothes she was knitting, mending she was helping with –everyone on board a ship had to be able to sew but Fox was neater and faster than most– or her log books she was writing in. She also taught him how to monitor the boundaries of his mind and recognise which thoughts were his and which had drifted in from elsewhere. Zoro was a great help too: he knew more about what it was like to adjust to suddenly having a mindscape and connections when your Devil Fruit didn't involve that kind of thing.
There was also a lot of difficulty with Ace' own Devil Fruit: Fox said it was the stress of his near-death experience that had twisted it, but the result was that the Logia was having to relearn control and experiment all over again. Fox had begged him not to try too much until they found a nice deserted island for him to raze to the bedrock, so Ace was sticking to little things.
He was playing around with his Hotarubi, making them dance in specific patterns, when a sudden alien feeling of profound grief exploded through his head, making him lose control. The little fireflies exploded into sparks and he heard a startled scream from the stairs and a thud. Scrambling to his feet Ace dashed over towards the source of the commotion: that had been Fox, who today was helping with the laundry. The grief was muted now, buried under the thick weight of frantic panic that was radiating from Zoro. Ace hadn't known the asura very long but he'd wandered into a few uneasy dreams involving Fox and staircases; apparently he'd lost his best friend as a kid after she fell down some. Hurrying to the top of the flight leading belowdecks Ace paused, looking down.
There was the basket of laundry, lying on its side and spilling wet clothes over the floor. There was Vista with his eyes bulging in shock. There was Fox, cradled in the arms of a shadowy six-armed demon that looked kinda familiar-
"Asura?" Ace blurted out in shock.
Fox had been carrying the basket of wet laundry up to the deck to be hung out to dry when Luffy had woken up all at once: he had been unconscious for so long she had 'tuned' her connection to him to be as sensitive as possible, but rather than coming to gradually he had exploded into awareness full of tearing grief. Fox had been so startled she'd missed her footing on the stairs and fallen backwards with a startled shriek. As she let go of the laundry basket, letting it slide past her, she'd sensed Zoro's utter horror at her accident and felt him roll across her mind like a tidal wave. There had been an instant of disorientation as he rushed through her, then she'd come to her senses cradled in shadowy arms with a three-faced head gazing down at her in consternation.
"Asura?" came Ace' startled voice from the top of the stairs.
Fox glanced up as the shadow holding her shifted sideways so it could look both up and down the stairs with its lateral faces, the central head not taking its eyes off Fox as those of its hands not holding her up roamed over her legs, body and face, checking her for injuries.
"I'm unharmed," she said gently, raising a hand to caress its cheek; it felt solid. The look she got back expressed profound doubt. "Really," she insisted. "You can put me down."
The left-hand face scowled up the stairs at Ace, who was carefully making his way down towards them.
"Hey," the flame Logia protested, throwing up a hand, "don't you give me that look; I can't be everywhere."
The shift in the asura's stance indicated it felt Ace should at least try. Fox elbowed her rescuer gently.
"He's not well yet, or even fully himself," she pointed out. "Once he's got the hang of the changes he'll be much quicker on his feet."
The six-armed shadow reluctantly lowered her to her feet at the bottom of the staircase, then wrapped all his arms around her and kissed her fiercely before fading away to nothing. Ace whistled lowly.
"Overprotective much?"
Fox shrugged. "We all have our panic buttons, Kajin. Asura's just happen to involve girls falling down stairs."
"What was that?" Vista asked, finding his voice. Fox then properly noticed their audience.
"That was her lover," Ace said dryly, stepping down to check Fox over for himself. "He's really kinda overprotective."
"I thought your lover was Roronoa Zoro?" Namur asked.
"That was Zoro," Fox admitted; "when he's sufficiently serious to manifest his spirit, anyway. I wasn't expecting him to work out how to do that on demand yet, let alone remotely."
"You fell down the stairs," Ace pointed out blandly, "and I get the impression he learns best under pressure."
Fox chuckled. "Heh. True."
"That was Roronoa? The Pirate Hunter?" another pirate asked faintly. "That demon?"
"How did he just appear like that?" Vista asked.
"It's technically a spirit projection technique;" Fox explained, "a manifestation of his true nature. He projected it through me and then used it to catch me before I hit the stairs. No bleed-over whatsoever, amazingly; he seems to have got the hang of how to coexist without overlap."
Vista whistled appreciatively. "That's a hard trick to master. I'll have to fight him sometime."
"I'm sure he'd be delighted," Fox said absently, more concerned right then with the distant dizzy feeling she was getting from Zoro and the excruciating grief still keening through her mind from Luffy. "Ace, help me will you?"
"Sure thing precious," Ace said nonchalantly, dropping to his knees to help her pick up the wet laundry. "What made you fall?"
"Luffy woke up," she said quietly, tossing the wet clothing into the basket as quickly as she could, "and he's mourning."
Ace' eyes widened. "That was Luffy? To hell with the washing, Limpet; go answer!" he shoved her up the stairs.
"But-"
Her best friend growled at her. "Look, I'll do it! You grab the letter I wrote and run!" He glanced over her clothing as she turned to leave: she was wearing an old pair of baggy shorts gathered below the knee that had probably belonged to Shanks once, had nothing on her upper half except a breast band and her feet were bare. "Grab a shirt as well!" he called after her as she vanished from sight around the corner.
"Will do!" drifted back before a door slammed. Ace set about loading up the laundry then carefully hefted the full basket onto his hip and cautiously made his way back up the stairs. He hoped his little brother would be okay soon. The howling grief echoing across from Fox' mind made his heart clench in guilt. If only he'd been more careful…
Life goes on and Luffy wakes up. Oh, and Fox gives Zoro the fright of his life.