Chapter 17: Waiting on the Sky to Change
June 10th
There were murmurs of surprise the following morning when two things were discovered: first, the freshly vandalized flag, and second, Ace's continued presence on the island. Thanks to his reasoning for his departure, him now sticking around in the wake of this latest attack on Whitebeard's honor wasn't a surprise.
Those murmurs started up just past eleven because Ace, caught thinking late into the night, got an even later start to his morning. He had a hunch. No, at this point, a theory—a theory that was one conversation away from being a reality. The more he turned it over in his mind, the more certain he became he was right. All the pieces lined up.
It started with that boat in the harbor. A ghost vessel, lacking any record of its arrival or passengers, presumed to have been washed over by that storm. Ace was certain now that was how the saboteurs had gotten onto the island somewhat undetected initially. Probably, their main craft had been too big to make it into the relatively narrow gap in the rocks that offered natural protection to the harbor.
It continued with main street. The saboteurs had been tracked at least that far, before the smells interfered. The ocean, Ace wasn't inclined to believe; Roscoe had lived on Foodvalten her whole life, she'd know to ignore that. But food? That was as good of a way to cover a scent as any.
It ended with Emi. Emi, whose father went missing near to the time the sabotage began, whose pastries Old Siev loved, whose cooking was more than good enough to hide anything slipped into the food, whose establishment had a basement Ace had never been in.
Yeah. It ended with Emi.
There was one stop to make first, the hot flames of his fury having subsided enough by now that he felt obligated to do what he skipped last night: make sure Old Siev and Roscoe were okay rather than simply alive.
Old Siev remembered nothing from the previous night and was still groggy when Ace went over to check on him. That grogginess did nothing to improve his usual mood, and by the middle of that conversation, he and Ace were freely cursing at each other, Ace matching his frustrated malice because he was very aware the flag was harmed on his watch, thanks, and his plan to catch the idiot in the act and failed and he knew Old Siev had a point about him being useless so far but he was about to solve the fucking mystery so if this guy could just lay off for a single second when Ace had only come here just to see if he was okay—
"Just tell yer damn crew to lend a hand!" Old Siev snapped when Ace saw fit to remind him he'd fallen asleep on duty before.
"A division commander is more than enough!"
"Tell that to the fucking flag!"
Ace sucked in a deep breath and composed himself. This guy got under his skin like no one else other than maybe Luffy when they were kids. "I'm not sending a message to drag anyone else out here—the cowards behind this don't deserve more attention."
"Well, they've clearly got it."
"What are you talking about?"
"Turn that useless head o' yers and look for yerself!"
Ace followed Old Siev's extended finger to the harbor, and then beyond to the ocean visible past the white cliffs sheltering the island. There, just barely visible on the horizon, was a looming ship. Even at this distance, the black flag flying from its mast could just barely be seen.
It was too far to make out details, but Ace knew: "That's not Whitebeard."
Marco would've said something, and moreover, the shape of the ship was wrong. It was too big, too square in the places the Moby Dick and its fleet were round. He couldn't tell how big it was from this far away, but instinct told him it was big. Too big to fit in the harbor. As he kept looking, though, he picked out other shapes nearby. Satellite ships, a whole fleet of them. They would slip in no problem.
So much for going to see Emi.
"Get somewhere safe," Ace told Old Siev. "Tell everyone else that, too."
This time, there was no arguing. Old Siev shuffled off to raise the alarm. Ace, knowing he had time before the ships made landfall, spent a moment collecting Whitebeard's flag from the dirt. He dusted it off as best he could, but there was no mending these tears right now. Instead, he laid it out over Old Siev's chair—better than the ground—and started walking down to the harbor.
Though the safest play for any devil fruit user was a fight on land, the smartest play here to protect Whitebeard's territory was to take the fight to the ships out on the water. It wouldn't be the first time Ace and Striker took on an opponent on the open ocean.
Over the sounds of rising panic as the residents of Foodvalten took shelter from the approaching pirates came one particular cry, a familiar voice: Emi's, raised and sharpened by both fear and anger.
Ace knew what he'd see before he turned around, but that didn't mean he was happy to be proven right. There was Emi, her hands bound behind her back, chin tipped up not because of pride but because of the gleaming knife at her throat, a knife that cut a shallow line in her flesh to shut her up. Behind her, a man in loose, dark clothes with purple and blue accents, a dangling earring carved in the shape of a lightning bolt catching the early morning sunlight.
Emi's eyes met Ace's, and in them was that anger he'd heard—but also an apology.
Ace raised his hand at the pirate, index and middle fingers extended, his fire eager for his command, but he paused when the pirate stopped his forced march and pointedly angled his knife to catch the light. "Who's faster, you think?"
Emi whimpered. Ace narrowed his eyes. He was accurate, Izo and hours of practice had made sure of that, but fast? He could move fast, and his fire bullets were fast, but fast enough to stop the bastard from cutting her throat? He wasn't sure, and there was a life hanging in that uncertainty.
"Please," Emi whispered, the knife having come away just enough to permit her to speak. "They have my dad, and I care about him way more than that scrap of fabric. Even if you save me, they'll kill him. You Whitebeards are all about family, right?" Tears streamed from her eyes and mixed with the blood trickling down her throat. "I'm begging you, don't take mine away."
Ace's supporting grip on his extended right arm faltered. He couldn't…If he tried his haki, he could take down the guy holding Emi, but the pirates coming ashore would see it, would know something was wrong. If her dad was on that ship, or that ship had a snail to contact wherever her dad really was, then Ace would be signing his death warrant.
"All this," he said, trying to buy time. "The flag, the hiding out here—it was just to lure me away from the fleet, keep me here until your backup arrived."
"Not you, not you specifically. You're a bigger catch than we expected, and it took the captain a while to pull the fleet together." The pirate's gap-toothed smile made Ace's skin itch. He'd seen a smile like that all too often in the Gray Terminal, and even more in his adventures beyond Dawn Island. All teeth and greed, nothing but more greed behind it. The kind of smile that saw two snot-nosed brats not as kids but as easy targets. "Big bounty, you've got, Portgas D. Ace."
"How's yours?"
The smile soured. Ace felt his hopes of finding a way out of this diminishing with the distant sound of many footsteps getting closer and doing so quickly. He started to turn, but the pirate dug the knife in, Emi whimpered, and Ace clenched his jaw. Fire flickered along his shoulders, impotent and furious, while several ships' worth of assholes closed in on him from behind.
"What's your name?" he asked, staring at the pirate, committing his face to memory. Searing it there, really.
"Misu. Remember it when they take your head, Portgas."
Ace never saw the blow coming, but he felt it: a sickening thunk against his temple, a pommel slamming into his skull hard enough to rob the strength from his body and send him to the ground. Dazed and working hard to not puke, there was little he could do to stop them from restraining him.
Sea stone cuffs, he could tell instantly from the weakness in a league of its own stealing over him, utterly oppressive relative to the hit to his head. They'd had those cuffs ready and waiting, because of course, Misu had told them exactly who was here and that there would be two hostages from this trip: Ace, for his bounty; and Emi, to—in the words of the asshole who slapped the cuffs on Ace hard enough to bruise—keep Ace honest.
They were no kinder to Emi than they were to Ace, but at least she didn't have to endure the persistent discomfort of sea stone restraints. Prisoners both, they were dragged onto a smaller skiff nestled amid the creaking hulls of the fleet and then out into the main craft waiting beyond the harbor. The sun disappeared behind the door leading belowdecks, the refreshing ocean breeze replaced by the damp and stale air of a ship that had gone too long without regular cleaning. It did nothing to help Ace's unsettled stomach.
Nor did getting bodily thrown into a tiny cell, his head cracking against the planks that made up the far wall. This time, the stars were so numerous he couldn't see or hear anything for long enough that the pirates were gone when he regained his senses.
Not even a guard? No, there was a guard—down there, at the end of the hall, playing poker with a second guard Ace hadn't noticed. Focusing his eyes on something that far in the dark made the nausea looping around his stomach squeeze like a vice.
There was a bucket in the corner of his cell. He puked into it, then retched a few more times for good measure—not that his body would let him avoid that right now—wincing at the burn of bile with each convulsion that seized his stomach. The rocking of the ship, normally a comfort on the Moby Dick, became a nuisance that fed the vertigo holding him by the neck. He didn't bother fighting it; an empty stomach would settle faster.
Eventually, the retching faded, the need becoming a faint and fluttering urge that pulsed in time with the heartbeat he could feel both in his chest and where the sword pommel had cracked against his skull.
In the cell next to him, Emi had curled up in the far corner, finding a scant bit of comfort in leaning against the curved wall and straight metal bar. Blood had drawn stark crimson lines down her neck and stained the top of her shirt, but from what Ace could see, the wound wasn't actively bleeding anymore.
He spat to clear his mouth, and when he was sure he could go from kneeling facing away from her to sitting facing toward her without toppling over, he did just that. Slowly. And carefully. And with a few winces; their captors had taken cheap shots while he was getting dragged.
He cleared his throat. "I need you to tell me everything."
She drew her knees up to her chest, a position made awkward by her hands still being bound behind her back. "You heard them. They want the reputation for taking out a Whitebeard Pirate, and they want the bounty for it, too."
"That doesn't explain why you and your dad got caught up in it."
The ship rocked—back out on the open ocean, under sail, whatever it was, and Ace leaned against the wall to avoid losing his balance, sliding his legs out from under himself until he was sitting with his cuffed wrists resting on his lap. A cursory inspection of the keyholes didn't show anything fancy, but it wasn't like he had anything he could use to pick them; the bastards had taken his dagger while they dragged him through the ship.
And that, right there, was one too many thoughts to think in a row when his brain felt like a scrambled egg, so he squeezed his eyes shut against the pounding pain and tried to stay upright while his sense of balance rocked back and forth out of rhythm with the ship.
"A-are you…okay?"
Concussion, bruised ribs, a dozen small cuts and bruises, sea stone cuffs, and to top it off, the taste of puke refusing to leave his mouth, just for that last little extra bit of misery. About equal to Impel Down, though Jinbe was better company.
He swallowed and cracked an eye open to look at her. "How did they take him?"
She winced and looked away, trying to pull in on herself more only to give that up when a lurch of the ship nearly tipped her over. "Th-there was a storm. Bad. My father went out with a few others to help secure the boats."
Burying her face in her knees, she continued. "Near the end of the storm, someone was banging on my door, demanding to be let in. I didn't want to—the rain and wind—but then I heard my father and I, I opened the door, and it was my father and a pirate with a knife at his throat, and then another pirate forced his way inside. It was either help them or they'd kill my dad. One of them left with him when the storm began to calm, said I'd only see him again when the job was done. That his life was over if I said anything, if I let anyone know I had a pirate in my basement." She sniffled. "I'm sorry."
Ace sat absorbing that for a minute, in part because it was worth taking his time on and in part because if he went any faster his brain was liable to pull itself apart.
Most likely, the pirates were taking them to either a home base or the actual flagship if this massive vessel wasn't it; otherwise, Ace would've been brought up before the captain rather than tossed in a cell. And if they were trying to stay off Whitebeard's radar, their destination wasn't going to be too close.
There were two possibilities with Emi's father: either he was already dead—the pirates not wanting to go through the trouble of holding a prisoner—or he was alive and being held wherever they were going. For Emi's sake, Ace hoped it was the latter. Another glance at her—crying silently to herself, dirtied and bloodied and scared—didn't make him confident she'd handle that former revelation well.
Must have been nice, having a biological father worth crying over.
Ace closed his eyes again and leaned back against the wall. "Might as well get comfortable," he offered. "We're going to be here a while."
She raised her head a fraction. "Where are we going?"
"Not sure."
As the ship rocked again, she wiped the tears from her eyes. A spark burned behind her pupils, a spark born of anger and indignation and desperation. "What can we do?"
Heartened by her change in attitude, he adjusted the weight of the cuffs on his lap. "I've got a few ideas."
Someone's spittle caught Ace on the cheek. Could've been any of a dozen people; they were all so close, yelling and screaming and jeering, and they kept sneaking cheap shots into his arms and legs.
The slow parade through a sea of hostility was familiar territory. Ace faced it with his head held high even as his heart pounded in his chest.
His scar ached.
One pirate tried to trip him, which was a mistake; Ace's hands were bound, not his feet, and he stomped on the guy's foot hard enough to break something. He caught a club to the back of the knee for that, staggering him, but it didn't dim his satisfaction. Familiar territory, but also new territory; these people weren't marines. They weren't about to hear the name he despised and they sure as hell weren't about to see him die.
Six hours of fitful sleep on the ship hadn't done wonders for his head, but it had helped, and he was even feeling fairly acclimated to the suffocating weight of the sea stone. It was more than what he'd worn on the Moby Dick, but the effects were the same. It still meant no devil fruit, but physically? He was doing okay.
He idly scanned the leering mugs of the pirate crew around him while some stranger kept prodding him in the back with the end of a rifle barrel to keep moving. It was a long walk from the docked ship to the imposing stone castle these guys had commandeered and that one particular spot next to his spine was smarting from all those jabs.
One face had been absent during his and Emi's departure from the ship, a face Ace now hunted for in the people assembled to harass him. Some were pirates—most of the fleet this crew headed, he was sure, but some weren't as quick to throw the stones and rotten fruit in their hands, were too quick about looking away when he looked at them, weren't quick enough to hide the shame in their eyes. The local townspeople, forced into this farce.
He looked for that one face. He didn't see it.
Inside the castle and out of the dreary rain that was just light enough to soak through everything before you realized what it was doing, the jeers were magnified tenfold, bouncing around the grand hallways and archways and beating down on Ace's ears. No more townspeople, just pirates eager to see him brought low. He breathed deep through it, centering himself, keeping calm and focused, chin up and shoulders straight because that pissed the pirates off more, and as long as they were focused on him they weren't focused on Emi.
This castle was old—centuries, probably. But someone had begun the process of retrofitting it with more modern comforts, and so steam pipes lined some of the walls, trying and failing to keep the drafty interior warm.
A pair of grand doors at the end of the hall wrought in iron and with painstaking silver decals left tarnished by these pirates' lack of care groaned open, then hit the walls with a bang that shook dust from the ceiling. He felt more than saw Emi flinch behind him.
Pirates milled around the throne room beyond, some clearly having looted the local nobility for their finest clothes judging by the cashmere and suede and rich purples on display. More poured in after Ace and Emi were through, eager for the show, a small sea of people on either side of the silver-bordered green carpet that spilled across the floor, up the three dais steps, and stopped at the foot of the grand old throne. Even at a glance Ace could tell the chair was worth a fortune—or it would have been, had someone not taken a dagger to the inlay to tear out every gem and pricey scrap of fabric from the upholstery.
The man sitting in it, too, depreciated its value. Greasy black hair spilling out around a dark blue bandana worn as a headband, but solidly built and with a massive purple coat accented in gold, he looked down at Ace with a wide, avaricious grin. It was the same kind of smile Ace had seen on the face that still hadn't shown itself anywhere he could see.
The captain, because he had to be, stopped slouching to look down at Ace, who was encouraged to stop at the foot of the bottom stair when two people grabbed his shoulders and kicked the backs of his knees, forcing him down.
"Fire Fist Ace," he said. "Not so hot now, are you?"
Ace glared up at him. All these people liked to do the same thing: flaunt their power, taunt those they thought were without. Flex and posture right up to the edge of the fire, believing they couldn't get burned.
When Ace offered nothing but silence, the captain scoffed and waved someone over. That guy hopped up onto the dais and presented the captain with a piece of paper—Ace's bounty poster.
"Five hundred and fifty million beri," the captain read. "You know, there's even a rumor that for you, there's more to that if you're alive."
A chill raced up Ace's spine. "If you're going to be someone else's errand boy, you could try to pretend otherwise. Save what's left of your dignity. If there is any."
He swayed to avoid the punch he knew was coming and ended up taking it on the shoulder instead of the jaw. The captain held up a hand to stop Ace's apparent guards, one on either side, from retaliating more. There was a gleam in the captain's eye, a warning tone to his voice. "That's a dangerous accusation to make to me, in front of my crew."
A few echoes of agreement rose up from the ranks. So, the crew didn't know.
"Who was it? Who put the stupid idea in your head to target Whitebeard? You all know the price of going after my family, but you did it anyway. Well? What was so good? If it was the bounty alone, someone else would've done it. You had no idea you've get me, either. You think you have a way to avoid the consequences." He narrowed his eyes. "Someone told you the consequences wouldn't matter."
This time, there was no avoiding the retaliatory blow, and the captain didn't bother stopping his crew until Ace was facedown on the ground, a split lip oozing a bloodstain onto the expensive carpet already ruined by dirty footprints. They grabbed him by the hair and hauled him back up to his knees, where he swayed, trying to bring the captain back into focus.
"We choose our own fucking targets," the captain spat.
Liar, Ace thought, a little loopy from the pain. No one here would say it, least of all the captain—if he even knew who was really pulling his strings, or if there had been a whole team of middlemen—but there was only one man so interested in whittling away at Whitebeard's strength without anyone the wiser, in poking holes in his indomitability, in testing the strength of the net where its edges were coming undone.
Bastard.
"Whose house am I getting bled in?" Ace asked when he had control over his mouth again.
Satisfied for now that his authority had been reasserted, the captain leaned back on his stolen throne. "You're kneeling before Captain Uragiri, fleet commander of the Brink Lightning pirates and king of Fukitsune Island."
Fukitsune Island. Ace ran through what he remembered of New World charts, only to abandon that effort when the cost of pulling up those memories drove a knife through his brain. It didn't really matter, anyway. It was within a day's travel of Foodvalten and inhabited, which meant Ace could fairly easily find a way to get a message out, whether that meant sailing back to Foodvalten or finding a more convenient method here.
There was just the small matter of getting his freedom back, first.
"Sorry," Ace said, "never heard of you. Small-timers don't catch my eye." And if Uragiri was a king instead of a usurper, then Ace would eat his boots.
He got booed and insulted for that, as though they hadn't already been doing that from the moment he was tossed onto their ship like so much cargo.
The captain scoffed and waved a hand. "We'll see where that bravado is when you're on an execution platform. Toss them in the dungeon with the others. We'll coordinate with the marines for that bounty payment."
Ace was hauled to his feet. He offered no help and made himself dead weight. When the two pirates were utterly focused on their struggle to lift him, Ace drove his shoulder into one and kicked out at the other's leg. The first recovered and snapped a punch at Ace's face, only to reel back with a howl of pain, his broken fingers held aloft. Ace grinned, his cheek shining black.
That armament haki vanished to be replaced with bands around his wrists, just under the cuffs. Captain Uragiri pushed out of his chair with a cry.
"Don't let him—"
Yelling, Ace drove his hands down on either side of his knee. The chain, held taut between the cuffs, weaker than the cuffs themselves, shattered into a half-dozen broken links against the anvil of his haki-coated knee. Ace spun to turn that momentum into a brutal backhand swing that bludgeoned two pirates trying to stab him from behind with the cuffs. They flew into their comrades while Ace kept moving to keep his momentum up and—more importantly—keep all eyes on him while Emi picked up a dropped dagger and melted into the crowd.
Ask the version of him of five months ago if he could take on a whole room of pirates with sea stone on his wrists and he'd have hesitated. There was no hesitation now, no room for it; do or die. That was how he'd grown up, how he'd always lived, and the familiarity of the adrenaline roaring through his veins threatened to bring a smile to his face as he dove forward under a wild swing from a massive club into a handspring that let him drive his boots into the chin of the giant man responsible. His lights blew out like candles in the wind and Ace caught the club falling from unconscious fingers as he flipped back to his feet. The next idiots to charge him learned exactly how fast that club could move in Ace's hands.
There was a bang, a whistle past Ace's ear, and then a blooming heat along his cheek. Ace turned his gaze to the captain who'd finally worked his pistol out of its holster and the club—hurled like a javelin—followed an instant later, pinning the guy to the wall hard enough to splinter the stone. He fell and didn't get up.
Something slammed into Ace's back and launched him into the wall to his right, driving the breath from his lungs. He dropped to the floor, landed on his feet, and realized there was a steam pipe attached to the carved stone next to him.
Well, he thought. Don't mind if I do.
He yanked a section off the wall, tested its weight, and nodded before using it like a bat to brain the first pirate unlucky enough to reach him.
Then Ace was running into the throng of pirates for cover as more bullets began to fly. His haki saved him time and again: observation, to tell him what was coming and where from; armament, to let him survive what he couldn't dodge.
But each usage of both tapped reserves of strength already straining under the weight of the sea stone, and Ace was working harder for each breath, for each spin and counter and blow that kept him moving through the throng that wanted nothing more than to pin him down. In the chaos, he caught sight of Emi bringing a discarded baton down on a pirate too focused on Ace to notice her coming. She swiped something from his waist—keys.
Their eyes met. Hers broke away—toward the door, the prison and the man beyond. She could flee, leave Ace to his fate, and bank on the odds that she and her father could find a ship and escape. No trust in a pirate required, the certainty that if nothing else their lives would be in their own hands.
Something sharp slashed across Ace's back. He let out a grunt of pain and kicked out blindly, feeling his boot connect with something hard that splintered under the impact. In the next moment, something shiny was flying toward his face.
Trusting the pirate. Trusting that Ace was strong enough to win and honorable enough to keep them all safe.
He snatched the key out of the air and jammed it into the left manacle, head butted the guy trying to stop him, and then flung his left elbow into the nose of another while the manacle fell away. Some of the weight eased and he could breathe easier, easier enough to kick another attacker back and then kick up and off another into the air. His pipe shattered the hand of a pirate reaching for him; the man recoiled with a howl of pain. The right manacle clicked open; he threw both it and the still-attached key back toward Emi.
The sea stone left his fingers. Left his skin. Left. For a split second, Ace was horribly cold.
Then the sun rose in his chest, he was the sunrise, and he blazed to life with a vengeance for being caged. He landed from his flip and released a wave of scorching flames that bowled over and burned everyone in a twenty-yard radius. Screams of panic cut through the roars of rage. Bullets rained down, and Ace once more tapped his haki, seeing the sea stone rounds amid the rest before they hit and opening holes in himself to avoid them as he seized the offensive and refused to give it up.
Within ten seconds the anger in their eyes had given way to fear. Within twenty seconds, many were trying to run. Ace felt the shift, ignored most of the faces around him, hunted for just one. Just the one.
Misu was by the grand old doors, trying to shove his way through the rest to escape. Ace hefted his pipe and then, thinking better of it, slung it at a nearby rifleman before he could take his shot. Then Ace was sprinting the length of the throne room, leaving scorching footprints on the carpet with every step.
He deemed himself close enough. He skidded to a stop but that momentum didn't fade, he just transferred it back and then forward as he followed through with a blazing punch.
His namesake tore through the pirates like a battering ram and even ripped the ancient doors clean off their hinges. They released deafening bangs as they thundered down the hall, injuring scores more in their path before they crashed to the floor.
Misu, seeing Ace approaching, had been smart enough to drop to the ground when Ace launched his attack. Now, he wasn't fast enough to get to his feet, so Ace helped him up with a scorching grip on the back of his neck.
"Hey," Ace said, pleasantly. "What do you know, I do remember you."
His fist crashed into Misu's face, breaking his nose with a satisfying crunch and sending the asshole tumbling down the hall to join the rest of his groaning comrades. But there were still scores left standing, still bullets whizzing through the air, and one mistake with his haki would mean the end of the—
"Ace!"
He whirled, and there was Emi, her restraints gone but one eye blackened and shut while she tried to fend off a group of four pirates with a sword whose blade was snapped clean in half. The wall was at her back, and one of the pirates was already swinging his mace.
ENOUGH.
There was a moment of stillness, a wave of something that started with Ace and washed to every corner of the throne room and most of the hallway beyond, and then the pirates started dropping like so many marionettes with their strings cut. Ace straightened, confident his conqueror's haki had hit everyone.
And then the price of using it with a heavy concussion hit, and he crumpled, dazed and dizzy while his brain did its damndest to break out of his skull with hammer blows in time to his heartbeat.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that, trying not to pass out or puke, but a light touch pressed against his shoulder. He tensed, flames at the ready, only to realize it was Emi. She pulled one of his arms over her shoulder and stood straight with a pained grunt. Blood splattered the floor, dripping from the fingers of her other arm.
"The mace caught my arm, I think. I don't know. I think I blacked out for a second." She adjusted his weight while he tried to form a question, but she answered before he could voice it. "I'll be fine, and I have the keys."
She did, he saw them on her hip. "Do you know where…?"
"No."
They made an awkward pair, shuffling around and over the bodies of a hundred passed-out pirates, but with every passing moment Ace's strength returned until he could walk on his own again.
"You there! Hey, you!"
They paused in the seventh identical castle corridor at the harried whisper and glanced over to see a face peering out from behind a tapestry on the inner wall.
"Hello?" Emi greeted hesitantly. "Who are you?"
"I'm one of the cooks—the castle cooks, not with the pirates. They forced us to—well, never mind that, this way, quickly!"
After exchanging a glance with Emi, Ace shrugged and stepped into the secret passageway. Emi followed and closed the swinging stone door behind them. In the cramped hallway beyond, the only light came from old braziers along the walls. The cook was a wiry old woman with white hair pulled into a short braid on her head, her uniform wrinkled and her apron stained. She had bags under her eyes and a bright purple bruise on one cheekbone.
"You're looking for the dungeons, right?" she asked.
"Y-yes," stammered Emi, "but how did you know that?"
"That hair and feather of yours," the cook tapped by her temple, "and the rest, you look a lot like the fellow who's been rotting away in there the last long while. If we hurry, we can make it before they wake up and remember he's there."
The stronger pirates, Ace knew, would already be shaking off the effects of his haki. Emi had only done it so quickly because Ace hadn't wanted it to affect her, and maybe if he was able to practice it more, he could get better at sparing people from its influence entirely.
He'd burn that bridge when his brain wasn't trying to leak out of his ears.
"Lead the way," he said.
As they half-walked half-jogged through the winding paths, at times lit only by the fire Ace produced, and at just as many times suffering the feeling of cobwebs brushing across their skin, the cook explained more of what had happened to the island and its former king.
Several months ago, the Brink Lightning pirates raided the island. Fukitsune was a small bit of land, not much larger than Foodvalten but with better soil for farming, and they didn't have the forces required to resist the invasion.
"We had a pirate's flag up for protection," she explained, "but apparently that one bit the dust a year or so ago, and people have been taking over his territories bit by bit ever since. Many of us were killed, and those that weren't…forced to work for the pleasure of feeling their boots grinding down on our backs. Word about you two—you in particular," she clarified with a glance at Ace, "spread, and a couple of us went near the hidden passages in the throne room to watch."
"That's when you saw Emi and made that connection."
"Yes it was. We left as soon as the violence started—figured you'd be wanting a quick escape, so we tried to post ourselves near as many of the hidden entrances as we could."
"Well, I appreciate the help."
"It's nothing. If you Whitebeard Pirates are anything like your reputation says, I confess I'm hoping you'll drive these ungrateful invaders out."
Ace couldn't make that promise—claiming any territory was the decision of Whitebeard and Whitebeard alone, but he could offer, "As long as I'm here, I'll make sure they don't get any more ideas."
The cook nodded in appreciation and stopped by a stretch of wall that looked the same as all the others. "Here, this will put you in an empty cell in the dungeons." She pressed one of the stones on the wall and the door ground open with surprising quietude. "Don't worry about the cell door—it's designed to never properly close. Oh, and here." She produced two small portions of salted meat wrapped in paper from her pockets. "I swiped these from the kitchens on my way. Consider it an early gift of thanks."
"Thank you for your help," Ace said, accepting the food. He also accepted Emi's portion, because she was already running out into the dungeon. "Listen, all of you should get out of here, get someplace safe. They're going to wake up and they're going to want revenge. I can call for backup, but it won't get here right away."
She nodded. "There's a swamp a league north of here, and a path marked with a symbol that looks like a sickle. Follow that, you'll find an old hunter's cabin that should be fairly safe. There might be some people there already, but it's as good a place as any on this island for your friend to hide. Just come back through here on your way out, take the first to lefts, up the stairs, and then a right, and you should be at a back exit they don't know to guard."
He nodded in appreciation and the cook, her job finished, melted back into the dark to find her own safe place to hide.
Ace ate his portion in one bite—bear meat, tough and gamey but still his favorite despite Thatch's best efforts to sway him to other options—and savored the tang of the salt while he caught up to where Emi was striding down the central path between the metal-barred cells on either side. He could see from her frantic pace that she wanted to call out, but right now the guards here didn't know about the chaos upstairs and there was no need to raise the alarm early.
Ace tapped her shoulder and pressed the food into her hands when she paused.
"He'll need the strength," he said quietly when she tried to push it back at him. "Keep looking—I'll take care of the guards."
The guards numbered five, and they were unprepared when five fire bullets burst from the shadows. One for each, and that was all it took. Ace jogged back to Emi, who was fumbling with the keyring in front of a cell about halfway down the length of the hall.
"I know," she was whispering to the man inside, "I know, but I wasn't going to just let you die. Do you think I could face Mom like that? You can give me a hard time when we're both back home, okay? How's that sound?"
The old lock finally accepted a key and Emi yanked the door open. Ace caught it before it could bang on the bars and held it open while Emi rushed inside. The prisoner, a somewhat emaciated and dirtied version of the purple-haired man from the pictures in the café, rose to his feet to catch her in a hug so tight it made Ace's heart ache, and then the prisoner was noticing Ace and breaking out of the hug to shove Emi behind him—
"No, Dad, wait! It's okay, he's helping."
"What?"
"I can explain while we get out of here."
In the distance, they could hear muffled yelling, and the faint drumming of boots on stone. Ace gestured them both out of the cell. "We should hurry."
Their escape wasn't as clean as Ace had hoped; the pirates knew about the hidden passages, they just weren't as familiar with them as the locals. Still, Ace could deal with anyone who stumbled across them, and then when they were back in the open air, Ace let himself be the distraction again while Emi and her father made for the swamp.
He sprinted back through the town he'd been marched through, dozens upon dozens of pirates yelling for his head behind him. His head was pounding, his stomach was somewhere up in his throat, and there was vertigo threatening to seize him if he gave it too much attention. He kept swallowing it all down, not in the least because he wasn't going to waste the food that cook had given him.
Just a bit farther, to where their flagship squatted in the harbor. With the setting sun choked behind the miserable clouds still spitting rain, the ship was mostly one great shadow on the water save for the handful of lights dotting it where crewmen carried lamps. The other ships were quietly bobbing nearby, their own guard crews wandering their decks like fireflies.
A line of freezing water traced the edge of his cheek and fell from his jaw, splattering against his shoulder while he skidded around a corner. His boots slid on the wet cobblestones and he smacked into a wall on the far side before he could get a grip again. He spared a second to shoot off a bit of fire in the opposite direction, which fizzled into nothing when it hit wet stone.
Ten minutes he spent weaving his way through the village, using fire and crates and pipes and bricks and anything he could get his hands on to throw the pirates off his trail and make it less clear what he was trying to do.
It wasn't often Ace regretted eating his devil fruit, but now, a twinge of that feeling was tugging on his heart. If he could dive into the water, he could swim around to the other side of the ship—out of sight of the island—and climb aboard undetected.
No point wishing for things he couldn't change, right now. He didn't have the focus to spare for it. On his winding way through the town, he'd grabbed some rope, and now as he snuck around the docks, he borrowed a hefty steel hook. Tying the former around the latter, he hefted his improvised grappling hook and nodded.
Though the pirates had left the gangplank in place—they'd been here so long they'd long ago dropped their guard—Ace couldn't traverse that plank without being spotted by at least three of them. He'd be able to handle any opposition, but it would make his reason for getting back aboard the ship much more difficult to realize.
The grappling hook was a gamble too, of course. He had no way to hook it silently to the railing; he just had to toss it and hope for the best.
Crouched behind some barrels near the end of the pier, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply a few times to center himself. His heart was still pounding from his escape, a concussive series of thuds his head was eager to mirror, and he still felt vaguely sick. The combination of the cool ocean breeze, hazy setting sun, and drizzling rain was firmly on the spectrum of miserable. Even if his fruit kept him plenty warm, his hair was plastered to his skin, and water kept getting in his eyes.
There was a distant explosion—the last of Ace's tricks to pull attention in another direction. A quick pulse of observation haki told him the pirates meandering the ship's deck had all gone to the other end to look at the rising smoke from the improvised explosive.
The first two throws failed and it was only Ace's fast reflexes that allowed him to reel in the rope and catch the hook before it could either smack against the ship or splash into the water. The third time, the hook caught. He tested it and then swiftly climbed the rope, flipping up onto the deck in one smooth motion.
As he'd seen, the pirates were all looking away from him, jostling each other and speculating about what was going on. Ace used their distraction to first gently lower the hook and rope into the water, then slip belowdecks. In the cramped passages, he found it easier to avoid detection; most of the pirates were bedding in the castle or in commandeered homes rather than the ship, and those that were on the ship were mostly in their own rooms or up on deck.
It took him twenty minutes of careful sneaking to locate his belongings in an empty room—Misu's, he was willing to bet. He closed the door behind him, eyes on the pile of stuff carelessly tossed on the floor. Misu had been going through Ace's things for the journey back, a thought that left a scowl on Ace's face. He jammed his hat back on his head, his dagger back in its sheath, and rummaged through his backpack until he found the dormant snail.
"Yeah, I know," he muttered when it grumbled at being woken up. "My day's not going much better."
At least Misu hadn't thought to do anything to the snail, just cram it back into the bag when it didn't look valuable. It begrudgingly began to ring while Ace, cross-legged on the floor, tapped an impatient finger against his knee.
The snail straightened up. "You're checking in late."
"I had an exciting morning. Listen, I'm on Fukitsune Island. I don't know exactly where that is, but it's within a day of Foodvalten. I could use some backup—I found the pirates responsible for the disrespect to Pops, but there are a lot of them, and they have a whole island to use as hostages if they want."
Plus, Ace added in the privacy of his own mind, I'm not sure I'm in any state for another multi-day fight right now.
He hated getting hit in the head.
"Fukitsune Island. We have…" Paper rustled. "Two ships in the area. One can be there within the hour."
"I'll take what I can get. I'll see what I can do to keep things under control until then."
"Ace—"
He cocked an eyebrow at the oddly hurried tone. "Yeah?"
"—just, don't be reckless."
"A little late for that, Marco." There were footsteps coming down the hall. Ace swallowed, knowing there was a distinct chance he'd be in bad shape when the fruit made its move. "Remember what I said about the fruit. I gotta go."
He hung up, swept his things into his backpack, and slung his backpack over his shoulder. Then he pressed himself against the wall next to the door, on the side that would be hidden by the door itself when it swung open. And swing open it did, revealing Misu with a bandage over his nose. He took a few steps into the room, clocked the lack of Ace's things on the floor, and turned around in time to catch Ace's fist to his nose for the second time that day.
Loosing a strangled scream of pain, Misu staggered back and brought a hand up to his nose. His other hand fumbled for his pistol, but Ace ignited his whole arm in warning and Misu froze.
"Who's faster, you think?" Ace asked. Misu's answer was to let his hand fall away from his weapon, the only answer Ace was willing to accept. "Here's what you're going to do: you're going to come with me up to the deck, and then you're going to tell all your friends on the island this: Take any of the locals hostage, damage any of their houses, do anything to test me, and I burn this ship and your entire fleet like kindling. Understand?"
Slowly, Misu nodded. Ace smiled an unkind smile.
And so the standoff began.