Chapter 14: Foodvalten

June 2nd

In terms of New World islands, Foodvalten was mild. Mild in its climate, mild in its terrain, mild in its inhabitants. Top to bottom, end to end, Foodvalten was just plain mild. Its most distinguishing feature, other than the white cliffs that sheltered the interior from the worst of any passing weather, was that all residents wore a single feather on their heads.

The last time Ace had been here, he'd been a bit too busy trying to take Whitebeard's head to appreciate the absurdity that was such a banal island existing in the New World. Now, drifting up to an open spot in the calm marina created by the island's protective cliffs, it was hard to ignore.

Once he was bumping up against the dock, he jumped up from Striker with rope in hand and swiftly secured his boat. He was straightening up by the time the dock authority reached him.

"Morning," Ace greeted the retinue of three people. The one in charge based on his uniform, who was also the tallest of the three and the one with the smallest feather, nodded back.

"To what do we owe the pleasure?"

They must've seen the large Whitebeard insignia emblazoned on the back of his shirt on approach—either that or they recognized him or Striker from his bounties—because even with that lack of pleasantries, they were the politest port authority he'd ever dealt with.

"Heard about the flag." Ace slung his bag over his shoulder. "What can you tell me?"

"We can show you. It's right this way."

He let them lead the way while steadfastly ignoring the complaints of his stomach. That stint in the marine base had been one of several delays and detours on his journey, which had left his generous store of rations running empty a full day ago.

Hungry as he was, seeing to the insult against Whitebeard came first.

The creaking and salt-encrusted wood planks of the marina gave way to stone as they approached the flag. It was right at the entrance to the rest of the island, tied up on two crossed wooden poles, a plank with the island's name on it suspended beneath with some fishing line. Simple, straightforward, and stable. At least when one of the posts wasn't sawed nearly all the way through. Under the natives' wary gazes, Ace crouched down and poked at the splinters sticking out. There were scorch marks on the other pole—whoever'd tried to burn it hadn't counted on the frequent rains this time of year keeping the wood from catching fire.

The flag itself, though…Ace stood and stepped back to get a better look and felt fury stirring in his gut. It was torn in several places like someone had taken a sword and tried to slash it to ribbons but hadn't been able to reach more than the bottom half. The Foodvalten sign had caught some strays, too. There was the disrespect of vandalism and then the disrespect of lazy vandalism.

If nothing else, though, the damage was repairable. He just needed some sewing supplies—even the rough skills he'd picked up from Makino and used off and on the last several years were better than leaving the torn cloth to flap in the wind. Pops deserved better.

He pocketed that plan for later and turned to the dock workers. "What do we know?"

"Not much. It's been defaced three times. The first was two months ago, using bleach. We replaced the flag. Then, a few weeks after that, they came back with paint. We replaced the flag again. Now, a week ago, this. You asked us to leave it for investigation." He added the last part defensively, as though he expected Ace to get mad at him for letting a damaged flag continue to fly.

"Any pattern in the timing?" Ace asked. "Always at night, or…?"

"No. The first happened at night because someone reported the flag being fine the evening before and we noticed the damage in the morning, but the second happened in the middle of the day. And this, we're not sure. There was a storm that rolled through; everyone was sheltering inside. They must've used the weather as cover."

"And no visitors to the island who've been here for that whole time, I bet."

"Right."

Ace returned his attention to the flag. It was nearly three yards above the ground. To make those kinds of cuts with the Foodvalten plank in the way, the attacker was either a head taller than Ace himself or he'd used a platform of some kind. Unfortunately, with the stone ground, there was no evidence he could use to find the right answer.

"We posted a watch," offered another one of the dock workers. "Old Siev, over there, he keeps an eye on it, weather permitting. You should talk to him."

"I'll do that, thanks."

While the dock workers returned to their posts, Ace strolled over to old Siev. Old Siev was, as his nickname implied, old. He was as wrinkled and worn as a quality pair of boots at the end of their lives and smelled about the same, but his eyes were bright and alert and focused on Ace when he got close.

"Good morning!"

The guy grunted.

"My name is Ace. I'm investigating the vandalism on the flag. What can you tell me about it?"

Another grunt, this one a precursor to the man pushing himself a little more upright in his tilted wooden chair that looked as though it'd been sitting out in the sun and salty ocean spray as long as Old Siev, if not longer. His beard, all salt and no pepper, rustled in the ocean breeze. "Whitebeard send you?"

"Something like that."

"Hn." Old Siev was unimpressed by Ace's polite tone, his polite smile, and his polite bearing in general. "Those whelps tell you I'm keepin' watch?" Ace nodded. "Well, been here every day since the second incident 'cept for the day of that damn storm, never saw a thing."

"Every day? When do you sleep?"

"Roscoe takes over for me."

"Roscoe?"

The pile of weathered cord next to Old Siev shifted and Ace realized to his amazement that it wasn't cord but a massive dog. It yawned, revealing a mouth that could fit Ace's entire head inside it, and then settled back down.

"She hasn't seen anything neither," Old Siev continued. "Tried gettin' her to track the damned miscreant after the last time, but the storm washed away the scent. Farthest we ever got was after the second time, a little way up main street before she lost the scent—all the shops around, see. That and the ocean. Hard on her nose."

"I see."

Old Siev gave him a withering look. "Not sure you do."

"I'm sorry, I meant no offense. Please, explain."

Mollified and after another adjustment in his chair, Old Siev relented. "Been living here longer than most," he said. "Near as ten years ago, this place was a mess. Every pirate saw our cliffs and saw a haven. Then the next crew came along and the third war in as many weeks broke out. Pirates died. We died. And our homes burned." He dragged in a breath and let it out slowly. "Look around and see the scars if you like. Point is, Whitebeard's flag changed that. I felt it in the air the second I saw his ship gliding toward our shores. Mark my words, no one who lived through those hellish days would lay a finger on that flag, I tell you what."

"You think it's an outside job."

"Either that or a young'un who doesn't realize the fire they're setting. If it's the latter, I ask you let us deal with it, pirate. I'll give 'em a thump upside the head so good they'll never get near that flag again."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Now get a move on. You're blocking my view."

"Right, thanks for talking with me. By the way, do you know a good place to eat around here? It's been a long trip."

"There's a place on main street. You'll smell it." He sniffed, a coincidence rather than emphasizing his point. "Bring me something, I'll consider us even for this waste of my time. Best food on the island."

Ace raised an eyebrow at the hostility, but nodded and left before Old Siev saw fit to sic Roscoe on him. His boots rang against the stone street while he turned over what he'd learned. It wasn't encouraging; no witnesses, no consistency in the type or damage or the timing, and just one old man's conviction that this wasn't the doing of any of the island's residents.

He'd have to grab the island's log from the port after his meal. For now, he'd humor Old Siev's theory that this was the doing of an outsider. That meant going through every visitor this island had recorded with a fine-tooth comb, which was going to be tedious, time-consuming, and the kind of thing for which Marco would express exactly zero sympathy if Ace voiced any complaints.

First order of business, though: food. He wasn't about to bore himself on an empty stomach.

Following Old Siev's advice, he meandered over to the main street, which he probably would've done even without the cantankerous old man's direction since it was the only large street coming off of the docks. As he walked without a destination in mind other than the first thing that could stand out above the overpowering smell of the ocean, he caught the attention of the residents who were out and about.

One woman tending to the plants outside her second-floor window dropped her watering can in shock when the logo on the back of his shirt came into view and only a quick shove from one of the boys below kept another boy from getting brained.

"Pirate!" a girl cried from where she was playing with a toy horse, only to get shushed by her mother.

"He's with the Whitebeard pirates, they protect this island."

And so it went.

A small café to his right caught his eye. It had some outdoor seating separated from the street by some quaint white waist-high fences and latticed wooden arches framing the entryway. He would've called it ritzy if not for the eclectic paraphernalia he could see stuck on the walls and hanging from the ceiling inside.

Most importantly, when he got closer, he saw some delicious-looking pastries on display on the counter inside. Their smell wafted out into the street, a tantalizing mix of fruits and spices. His stomach rumbled and he knew he had his destination.

There was only one person inside: a young woman with curly black—no, just a very dark purple—hair and freckles in a simple green dress with a white apron. She was mending a tablecloth but set her tools aside when Ace entered.

"Hi there," Ace said with a gesture somewhere between a wave and lazy salute. He'd manage better manners when it didn't feel like his stomach was trying to devour itself. "I'm looking to get some food—are you the owner?"

"I work here," she corrected with a tired smile while she headed behind the counter. "Are you a tourist?"

"No, but I am taking a look around the island." He pointed to several of the pastries that had caught his eye and she dutifully began pulling them out. When he just kept pointing and pointing at more and more, her eyebrows crept higher and higher.

"Is this all for just you?" she inquired. "I can package them up if you like."

"No, just me, I'll eat them here. It's been a long trip." And he had some pilfered money from the marine base to spend. "By the way, I heard about what was going on with Whitebeard's flag. This place is pretty close to the docks—have you heard or seen anything?"

She set his selection on the counter along with some kind of fruity drink. "Pairs well," she said at his questioning glance. "And no, I haven't. We close pretty early in the day and I'm quite busy taking care of things here after hours."

"That so." He paid and then began munching on the first of the pastries, some kind of berry-infused bread. "Well, I'll be sticking around for a while. Let me know if you hear anything."

Her expression was full of rote politeness. "I'm sorry, I don't think I ever got your name."

He polished off the second-to-last pastry and took a quick drink. Something that had a ton of citrus in it—she was right, it paired well. "Did I forget? My apologies. Name's Ace, it's nice to meet you."

Blinking at his manners, she cocked her head. "Right, Mister…Ace."

"Ace is fine."

"Right. I'll, um, I'll be sure to tell you if I hear anything."

It was obvious from her tone that she had no intention of doing anything of the sort, and no wonder. To her, he was some random guy who'd strolled into her café. Still, after swallowing the last of his food and drink, he smiled at her, wide and genuine.

"Thanks."

Then he turned to claim a table and finish his meal. When he put his back to her, she released a quiet gasp; she must've noticed the mark on the back of his shirt like everyone else on the island. Maybe it would help her hearing to know exactly who he was.

Though she hadn't been helpful in his investigation, her pastries really were as tasty as they looked, and he polished them all off in short order. Oddly, despite the speed at which he ate, the ice in his drink was fully melted by the time he finished. He also ended up with an odd number of crumbs in his hair, which he spent a minute picking out.

Oh. He'd fallen asleep.

Stomach for the moment sated, he stepped back into the café, but the employee was nowhere in sight. He couldn't just take the sewing supplies she'd left out on the table; that would be horribly impolite, and the need wasn't so urgent he had to tarnish Pops's good name with petty thievery.

"Hello?" he called. He hadn't seen her step out, but maybe there was a back entrance. "I'd like to borrow your sewing supplies, if I can."

Still nothing—no, wait. Someone was coming, he could hear them running up some stairs in the back. There was the opening and closing of a door, presumably to the basement, and then the young woman was emerging from the back with a harried look on her face and a flush to her cheeks, probably from hustling back upstairs.

"Sorry, sorry. What did you need? Was something wrong with your food?"

"No, nothing like that." He pointed to the table with the sewing supplies. "May I borrow those? I want to mend the flag."

"Oh." She peered at him. "You can sew?"

He favored her with a smile. "I can. Sometimes I even do it well." When he wasn't accidentally burning what he was working on. "Do you mind?"

After hesitating another second, she slowly nodded. "As long as you bring them right back."

"It shouldn't take me more than an hour. Old Siev will keep me honest. Speaking of, he asked me to grab something for him."

She paused in the middle of gathering up the supplies into a little tote bag.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"No. Nothing. Here." She all but shoved the bag at him, then walked swiftly to the counter to grab a pastry.

"Thanks," he trailed off, realizing he'd never caught her name.

"Emi," she said. "Emi is fine."

"Well, thanks, Emi. I'm—"

"It's nothing. Take your time, I have a lot to do here. Just—just leave those on that table when you're done."

He gave up trying to give his name; clearly, she had other things on her mind. "I'll do that."

Old Siev kept him honest, in that Old Siev had relentless feedback for every little thing Ace did after pulling the flag down and setting to mending it. He couldn't go one stitch without the guy hollering that he was fucking it up.

Ace's gift of a pastry, rather than softening the man's demeanor, only seemed to make it pricklier.

"You know," Ace said pleasantly while his patience, a lit fuse dangerously close to its end, continued to burn, "you don't have to say anything. I can handle this."

"Like a pirate like you knows a damn thing about mending flags."

Ace's fire stirred under his skin. He held it in. One crotchety asshole wasn't going to be the end of him. "I'm trying to help, and I'm almost done, anyway. If you wanted this done the way you wanted, you could've done it."

"And deprive you of your precious evidence? Wouldn't dream of it."

Deep breath in, deep breath out. He decided any further responses were just going to give Old Siev more ways to poke at him, which Ace really didn't need since he'd jabbed himself in the thumb a half-dozen times already. It didn't hurt—his thumb was fire, after all—but each time he risked setting the flag aflame, and it was taking more concentration than he cared to admit to keep everything nice and under control. It didn't take long for him to break a sweat from the effort.

When he'd mended all the tears, he hung the flag back up. The repairs were clear if you got close enough, but it would do until a proper replacement could be made. He jumped back to the ground and stepped away a few paces to inspect his handiwork, then nodded in satisfaction. All those years of living in the moods, making and mending his own clothes and shelters, had paid off.

"It's crooked," Old Siev declared.

Ace's eye twitched.

After returning the sewing supplies—Emi was once again nowhere to be seen—Ace headed back to the marina to get those records about visitors to the island. While the port authority was digging those up, Ace struck up a conversation with one of the salt-crusted young men tending to the boats.

"You worked here long?"

"All m'life."

Ace probably could've guessed that from the sun-weathered skin and hands calloused from handling rough rope and rigging. "See anything strange in the last couple months? Something out of the ordinary."

The guy shrugged. "Weather's been pretty calm for this time of year, 'cept the storm a li'l while ago."

"Any unusual ships come through? Pirate crews?"

"Naw. Well."

Ace cocked an eyebrow and the guy elaborated, pointing at a dilapidated old shed hanging off an unstable bit of unused pier.

"Shipwreck appeared over that way."

"Appeared?"

"One day, wasn't there. I went out to fish, came back a few days later, there it was." He shrugged. "Appeared. Prolly lost the crew and got damaged in the storm and got shoved in with the waves before it sank. Take a look if y'want, but mind the pier. Ain't stable."

"Thanks, I'll do that."

Ace spared a glance at the guy still digging through records and figured he had at least five minutes before that process wrapped up. Tipping his hat at the guy he'd been talking to, he strolled over to the shed. The quality of the wood under his boots changed dramatically when he got close: the solid thunks of his footfalls turned to soft impacts on faltering planks more inclined to bend and fracture than hold strong. Beneath them, the calm waters of the harbor lapped at the askew support pillars.

Inside the shed, the gentle slaps of the water were magnified with a half-dozen echoes bouncing off rusted equipment and abandoned building materials. A nice, constant reminder of the ocean that would see him happily drowned if the failing wood saw fit to dump him down into it.

Ace crouched by a pile of rotting crates. The smell had probably been horrific at one point, but time had dulled the rancid contents into a musty unpleasantness that could barely hold a candle to when Pops took his boots off to clean them.

"No one's been here for ages," he muttered, side-eyeing the layers of dust his entrance had kicked into silent swirls. He'd thought his target might be hiding here, but apparently not.

Though the shed tempered his expectations, he still took a minute to peer at the shipwreck on the other side. As the man had said, it was right there, sitting just barely below the waterline, sunken and clearly beyond salvaging based on the hole blown clean through the keel. Pretty impressive for any helmsman to manage that in Foodvalten's waters—or maybe it had encountered a particularly pissed-off seaking and barely managed to limp into harbor, her crew bailing her for all they were worth, before she breathed her last and sank.

On his way back to collect the logs, a plank shattered under his boot, and the one bearing his other foot gave way just to make it more interesting. Before his toes could touch water, he blasted himself up and out of the hole with a jet of fire, flipped, and landed on his feet on a much steadier stretch of pier. He glanced back to see the whole walkway he'd been strolling down listing and then collapsing into the water, its cracked pillars finally succumbing to the inevitable with a chorus of splintering wood.

He watched until the harbor waves smoothed out over the settling debris, then resumed his walk.

"It doesn't make sense."

"Maybe you missed something-yoi."

Ace gave the den den mushi carrying Marco's voice a baleful look. "I didn't." He ran a finger down the paper one more time. "Ever since Pops's flag started getting defaced, there have been exactly two people whose time in town overlapped with an incident: that couple visiting distant family on their honeymoon. And they left the day after, and the flag was messed with again the night after that, so it wasn't them. There isn't a single log here that explains the ship in the harbor or who was on it."

"You're sure you've been through everything?"

"Very. I even went back to talk to the guy who told me about the wreck and got the exact date. There's nothing recorded here."

"The logs could have been doctored."

"I thought about that," Ace confessed, "but there's no evidence of tampering, and it would be stupid to hide an entry when anyone can see the ship with their own eyes. It would just be inviting suspicion."

"So, you have no leads-yoi."

"I'll keep questioning the locals. There's going to be some hideout here I haven't found yet, or they'll slip up the next time they go after the flag—"

"You think they'll try again while you're there?"

"I don't know. We'll see." He sighed and stood. "I'm losing daylight. I'll call tomorrow."

"Good luck."

Marco hung up and the snail on Ace's desk fell dormant. At least he'd gotten through Marco's questions about his physical state quickly enough, and he hadn't even lied to do it. He was feeling fine. Annoyed about the state of the investigation, but otherwise fine.

Now, if only he could find these assholes causing problems—or remember literally anything about what he'd heard from Thatch the last time around—then he'd be feeling great. But Thatch's recounting of that tale had been the same night of his murder, and for all that Ace remembered feeling happy in those moments, he remembered far more finding his brother's cooling body lying on the deck, his blood pooling over and leaching into the planks they'd all walked over a thousand times.

He blinked now and could see it fresh behind his eyes. Nausea tried to stir his stomach, but anger swept it away. He was here, in this place, because of that moment. To stop it. There was no point letting it get to him when it was never going to happen.

With his next blink, he saw only the backs of his own eyelids.