Chapter 23: Going Nowhere

After reuniting with Deuce, Bront, and the rest of his division's strike team, Ace formally resumed their mission. At first, it was as hectic as it had been before Ace took his break in Alabasta, but that didn't last forever.

At the moment, they'd finished clearing out a particularly seedy port town with a bar that had been far too interested in reporting on Whitebeard Pirates' exact locations to anyone with a bit of money and were now languishing on the water while they figured out their next move.

Maybe this was the time for Ace to head to Dawn Island. An immediate marine target after leaving Alabasta had stalled that plan in the moment, and that stall had continued as Ace and his crew chased leads all over the ocean. But there wasn't anything demanding their attention right now.

Problem was, they were back in the New World. Dawn Island was a bit of a trek.

Oblivious to Ace's focus wandering toward East Blue, Deuce leaned over the map Bront had once again spread out on the galley's main table and indicated roughly where they were in the New World. "We could head southwest, toward the Calm Belt. Rumor is some remnants of the Brink Lightning fleet that weren't at Fukitsune are hiding out near there."

Ace tapped his dagger's sheath. "I thought Vista's fleet was in that area."

"They moved north a couple days ago, chasing some scout ships that were getting a bit too bold."

"Hm. And Namur?"

"Also chasing marines away."

Well, that was both of the other commanders in the area. "We could. Wouldn't hurt, and it beats floating aimlessly." Dawn Island would have to wait another day. "Tell Shadi to set the course."

"Commander Ace!" The door crashed open. "Marco's on the line!"

"Rushing in here like that—what's wrong?"

"Wrong? No, he's just calling."

Bront sighed, Deuce shook his head, and Ace flicked the messenger on the forehead. "I keep telling you to dial it back a little. Not everything's worth getting worked up over, you know?" He ducked out of the galley—twice already he'd smacked his forehead on the low exit out onto the deck—and headed to where the snail was waiting in the wheelhouse. At night or in bad weather, he kept it in his quarters, but it was open to the rest of the crew during the day. And today was a good day: clear skies, a warm breeze helped by Ace's devil fruit, and fish so plentiful that one had leaped so far from the water it had smacked one of the fishing crewmembers in the face.

Picking up the receiver, Ace leaned against the low wall around the wheel. "Marco, heard you were asking for me."

"Ace, good to hear from you-yoi."

"You still on the Moby?"

"I just got back, actually. A report came in this morning—marines, pulling more of that Blue Cross Pirate nonsense. Apparently, they're going by Blue Dogs this time."

Between the marines and the other pirates…vultures, the lot of them. "Where are they?"

"Hingeki Island."

"Never heard of it."

"Most people haven't. It's a quiet town, and Pops hasn't officially claimed it but we consider it ours. Technically Vista's territory, but—"

"He's chasing off other marines, I heard."

"You're already in the area-yoi?"

"Yeah. I'll handle it."

"Appreciated."

"Take care, Marco."

"You too."

Ace hung up and headed back to the galley, collecting their navigator, Shadi, as he went. They had a new course to plot.

It was all too clear in hindsight. The two other commanders pulled away, leaving only Ace and his crew to answer the call. That call causing them to reach the island, dock, go straight to the local hangout—an inn, this time—and flush out the marines masquerading as pirates. By now, the whole crew were professionals about it, and they acted like it, moving in practiced patterns.

Practiced patterns that went straight to hell when Akainu's warship emerged from a hidden cove. Only the quick thinking of those who stayed behind on their own ship kept it from getting blasted apart and burned to cinders, but their hasty escape from the port left the others stranded—and there was no getting down to the docks to borrow another craft with Akainu himself having disembarked to stand in their way.

"Get to the backside of the island," Ace ordered, staring down from the top of the hill that the main street climbed. "I'll keep him off you. Have the guys on the boat leave Striker there and get away from here."

"Without you?" Deuce said, indignation twisting his lips into a thunderous scowl. "You think I'm doing this again? We're not—"

"You are," Ace snarled. A spike of dread shot through him and he shoved Deuce away just in time for a cannonball made out of dripping magma to hurtle through the space he'd been. In its brief passage, it sucked all the moisture from the air and left Ace's face tingling from the heat. No longer making it a choice, Ace bodily threw Deuce away and started running toward Akainu. "Go! Get away from here, all of you!"

Before anyone could think about disobeying, he threw up a massive flame net dozens of yards high and thick enough that even the Whitebeard Pirates would think twice about trying to jump through. More importantly, they'd obscure Akainu's view of the fleeing pirates.

The flames covered his back. In front of him, the oddly undulating construction of this island's main port town, reminiscent of the ocean itself and colored in a similar way with the white-edged blue roofs, spread out below him, and again, hindsight flagged how quiet it was. The people here had been evacuated long before Ace showed up. Any townspeople they'd glimpsed on the way in had been marines in disguise.

And there, in the center of main street and slowly walking closer, not even deigning to run, was Akainu, admiral jacket billowing in the wind and his red suit standing out starkly against the island backdrop.

Ace swallowed. His mouth was dry, his hands clammy, his heart hammering in a chest that was already burning.

"Running is pointless," Akainu called. "You're all going to face justice today."

A shiver wracked Ace despite the roaring flames behind him. He had to focus on breathing just to get enough air to stave off the walls trying to drive his vision into a tunnel. An echo of his own voice hit his ears:

"LUFFY!"

He swallowed again and gathered his strength. This wasn't Marineford. Luffy wasn't here. He had other brothers to protect, though, and he would protect them, and then they'd all laugh about how stupid they'd been to spring this trap tomorrow.

Injecting cockiness into his posture and voice to hide the trepidation beneath, Ace replied, "Your justice is worthless. I'll pass."

Out on the water, Akainu's ship was giving chase to Ace's. The smaller Whitebeard ship was horrifically outgunned by the marine battleship, but his crew members were putting up a fight in their effort to gain distance and circle around the island.

Magma dripped from Akainu's arm, slid down over his fist, and landed hissing on the ground. The sound snapped Ace's focus away from the ocean. He fought to breathe, unable to tear his gaze from the cooling rock.

"Regardless of what that fool Sengoku says, you're too dangerous to be left alive. Whitebeard's era is ending; he can't protect you anymore."

Ace stiffened, rage eating at the fear. "What?"

Akainu stopped a dozen yards away and adjusted his glove. More magma was rolling down his sleeves. "He's a doddering old fool, a relic from an age that just doesn't know how to die. You're proof enough of that." He clenched his hand into a fist. "I think it's time we helped you lot figure it out."

Flames roared to life along Ace's shoulders. He grabbed that rage and held it tight, trusting it to keep at bay everything Akainu's presence was trying to dig up. "You have no idea what you're talking about. Whitebeard is the greatest pirate alive. There's no one closer to Pirate King."

His words only merited a scoff accented by the distant booms of cannon fire. "Worthless titles for worthless people."

Ace's patience snapped. The fire fist exploded out from his fist with twice again the force he'd brought to bear in Alabasta. Daylight turned dark by comparison, and when the flames cleared, the entire block had been erased. Only the sloping ground had saved the rest.

This time, Ace knew he wasn't mistaken. There had been flickers of blue flame in the red, thicker than ever before.

In the middle of the destruction, Akainu flicked a few errant embers from his coat and gave no other sign Ace's attack had done anything but singe his clothes. "Like a tantrum," he noted. "What did you expect that to do? You may be fire, but I'm magma. You can't burn me."

He'd known that going into this but that didn't make Akainu saying it aloud any less annoying. "Maybe I haven't found the right flame yet," Ace retorted, knowing it didn't really make sense, knowing it was the most Luffy-like answer he could've given. All he wanted was to keep Akainu talking. The more he talked, the less he attacked, and the longer Ace could hold him back. His crew would use that time to deal with Akainu's ship and then Ace would get away on Striker and they'd all have that story to tell.

"An arrogant pirate is a dead pirate."

Done with talking, Akainu lashed out with a magma fist to match the fire fist Ace threw to counter it. Globs of molten magma flew through the air and Ace's fire was swiftly outmatched, but Ace was already diving to one side, propelled by a blast of fire from his leg. A few stray bits of magma splashed over his limbs and sent bolts of searing heat up his nerves before he could throw them off.

Midair, he crossed his fingers in front of his chest and aimed the beam of guiding light straight at Akainu's chest. His fire, ever-present and ever-willing, welled up inside him. This attack always called for it to be compacted down, and now Ace put even more effort in packing his flames as tight as he could. "Jujika!"

The condensed flames flared up around his hands and then rushed down their set path to crash against the arm Akainu threw up in defense. Ace landed and rolled back to his feet, taking in the effects of his work.

"Pointless," Akainu snarled, lowering his arm. Magma dripped from it like blood, but Ace ignored it. His fire fist, even hints in his flame net, and now with jujika—that last attack had carried more blue in it than any before.

Blue fire.

"Why's the flame blue?" Thatch, repeating Ace's question, glanced over his shoulder from where he was taking some kind of torch to his latest dessert. "It's hot, obviously."

"So's this," Ace replied, holding up his hand and letting it turn to flame. Thatch chuckled and turned back to his work— brûlée, so he'd said. Something about making sure the top of the dessert was perfectly crispy.

"Sure, that's hot, but it's not hot enough, not for this. It would take way too long. Ignoring Marco's weird phoenix flames, blue fire's way hotter than red or orange or even yellow fire. I bet it could even burn you."

At the time, Ace had scoffed, but Thatch had rejected his requests to prove that fire wouldn't hurt a man made of flame. Now, with magma burning him, he was starting to think Thatch had been right.

And if blue fire could hurt him, and if magma could hurt him…then maybe blue fire and magma were on even footing.

"You know," Ace began, trying to buy himself some time to figure out that blue fire thing. He wasn't doing it intentionally and never had, but clearly, there was some way to increase the temperature of his flames. He'd done it a little now and again to help Thatch cook, but he'd never focused on getting them to be as hot as they could possibly go. "All these taunts make you sound a little desperate, Admiral. And only one ship? Someone might think you're not exactly following orders by coming here."

"I only need one ship."

But Ace had clearly struck a nerve, because the ground under his feet suddenly shook and fractured.

Shit!

Ace leaped into the air and used an extra burst of flames to extend his leap clear of where Akainu's magma was bursting from the ground. That whole time, the bastard had been shoving molten rock through the ground, trying to catch Ace unawares.

The main street swiftly became a bubbling, boiling wasteland; as Ace watched, stable in his hovering above it all, the nearby buildings began to sink into the morass of magma.

That was bad enough. Worse were the two dog-shaped collections of molten rock hurtling toward him. He spun to avoid the first and, when the second changed course, he opened up a hole in his own body to let it pass harmlessly through. Even when he was just fire, though, the heat of the magma passing so close was painful.

He jetted off to one side, vaguely aware of Akainu giving chase with his own magma blasts. Magma fists punched through the air, each one threatening to knock Ace out of the sky, but time and again Ace tapped into his haki to avoid them by hairs.

Where were—there! Seeing his crew's ship and the marine vessel getting far too close to it, Ace angled himself down into the homogenous birch forest that took up the island's eastern coast. He landed right on the edge of it where grass gave way to a rocky beach. He wasn't close enough for a fire fist to work and even St Elmo's Fire wasn't stable enough to keep its shape over that long of a distance, but he didn't need fire for this. Those marines were distracted by his crew, probably confident in their admiral's ability to bring Ace to heel.

The trunk of the first tree he reached didn't last through a single haki-infused punch. Ace seared off the branches with a wave of flames and, conscious of the rising temperature behind him as Akainu closed the distance, hefted it up onto his shoulder.

Maybe he didn't have Gramps's throwing arm, but he could manage this just fine.

He braced himself, took a deep breath, and focused his haki. One step, two steps, three four and five to build momentum and then, with an explosive release of all the tension in his muscles, he sent the javelin-like trunk sailing through the air in a high arc.

The instant the tree left his grip, he turned his throwing motion into a dive and roll. Akainu's magma fist whizzed just over his head, singing his hair, and crashed into the ocean with an explosion of steam. The birch forest had slowed him down on his way to Ace and paid the price; now, the pale trunks, their leaves burnt to ash, stuck out like bones as they were consumed by the magma field that had once been the ground.

In the distance, there was a crash, splintering wood, and distant cries. Ace risked a brief glance over his shoulder and realized he'd managed even better than he'd meant to. He'd intended to just hit somewhere on the marine vessel to distract it and slow it down, maybe take out a cannon or several marines, but his missile had slammed into the main mast about a quarter of the way up and cracked it severely. The marines, the ones not pinned under the fallen log, were hurriedly trying to furl the sails before the wind could break the mast completely. Without the wind to aid the oars, they'd never keep pace with Ace's ship.

Satisfaction pooled in Ace's gut as he faced Akainu again. The admiral was walking—rolling, really, on a wave of magma—onto the beach, his expression nothing short of thunderous.

"Sorry," Ace said, readying himself, "but we're getting out of here."

A few more minutes, his crewmates would be picked up from the far side of the island. Once they made it far enough to be out of reach of Akainu's longer-range attacks, Ace would hop on Striker and join them.

Just a few more minutes, he told himself, as the wave of magma Akainu rolled in on didn't stop and began to devour the beach. Ace was reminded of Teach's Black Hole technique. A bead of sweat dripped into his eye and he blinked it away.

Just a few.

Not for the first time, Akainu scoffed in the face of Ace's defiance. They'd already established fire wouldn't do anything to him, so he was probably feeling pretty good about his chances.

A small part of Ace also felt pretty good about Akainu's chances. A small part that Ace was resolutely ignoring. He'd fought Pops a hundred times, been trained by the other commanders, and had even battled Jinbe to a draw before any of that. He'd thought his journey to the top ended with Whitebeard's mark on his back, but that wasn't the case. There was still one volcanic peak he had to climb.

Fire was out of the question for now, so Ace called on his armament haki. It coated his fists and most of his forearms in a black sheen. He flexed his fingers, then launched himself at the admiral with a shout. Akainu, naturally, retaliated with a magma-infused punch that could level a city block. Ace used a jet of flame to spin himself around it.

Sure, he couldn't use his fire to hurt the guy, but he could sure still use it to augment his own speed and movements. His fist crashed into Akainu's stomach.

Akainu grunted. Stepped back.

And retaliated with a brutal counter that sent Ace skidding across the sand and into the waterline. Only a last-second transfer of his haki from his hands to his chest had saved him from having more than just the wind knocked out of him. Ocean washed over his legs, dousing his flames in an instant.

He scrabbled in the sand to avoid a hail of follow-up attacks, Akainu having been too impatient to sit back and wait for Ace to get to his feet. His flames were guttering and weak until the water evaporated from the heat of Akainu's attacks, but even with them back, Akainu was pressing the attack too hard for Ace to think about anything other than defense.

Bit by bit, though, Ace started to see through Akainu's attacks, and he could buy himself precious split-seconds of breathing room by predicting where he'd strike. That was enough for him to draw his dagger. Fire wouldn't work, blunt force wouldn't work, which left him with cutting power.

For as long as he'd had the dagger, it had been far more of a tool than a weapon. His flames had always been enough for a fight and significantly less useful for day-to-day jobs like hunting and preparing food.

But it was a weapon all the same. And with haki, he could make sure the edge cut into Akainu's physical body rather than that bubbling magma.

"That's an interesting scar, Portgas," Akainu snarled after Ace leaped out of range of his last punch. Ace froze and glanced down at himself, where Akainu's magma had burned through his shirt to reveal the fist-shaped mark on his chest. His haki had saved his skin but not his clothes. Observation haki shrieked a warning and he spun out of the way of another blot of magma Akainu had lobbed while he was distracted.

The scraps of his clothes were only going to get in the way. He burned off the tattered remains of his shirt and rolled his shoulders, bringing his knife up in challenge. "Mind your own business."

"A monster like you is my business."

Akainu's insults were almost a blessing; each one sent Ace's rage to new heights, and it was easy to feed that rage to his flames. Inside himself, deep in his core where no hint of it would seep from his skin, he continued to take the most furious of that fire and urge it hotter.

The admiral wasn't exactly a chatty combatant, though, and as he launched a barrage of magma attacks, Ace was forced to give ground or risk gaining entirely new scars. Time and again, his armament haki saved his skin, letting him deflect the attacks he couldn't dodge—but every time, those attacks threatened to break through, and his skin was left red and blistering in their wake. Though he considered using more of that technique to pull his body out of the way, he wasn't sure he could pull it off reliably, and it required a lot more strength and concentration than armament haki.

Haki that was, Ace realized in a cold flash of clarity, starting to run dry. Akainu noticed his hesitation, the flicker of fear in his eyes, and rushed forward to buckle Ace's last nerve.

Which was exactly what Ace wanted him to do. Ace ducked his punch, got behind him, and hit him in the back with a haki-infused kick that—despite having a good chunk of Ace's strength behind it—was still only barely enough to send Akainu into the shallow surf. Spluttering, the great admiral suffered the same as any other devil fruit user in the ocean, and his magma lost its cohesion. Ace seized the opportunity and took off at a sprint that swiftly turned into a rocketing leap and sustained flight.

Instinct wanted him to head straight for Striker, but a calmer head that spoke in Sabo's voice prevailed. He angled himself several degrees off of where he'd glimpsed Striker's distinctive yellow hull.

His flight wasn't smooth; lurching and unsteady, it was closer to controlled falling most of the time. But there was no way Ace could chance running across the ground. As fast as he was, Akainu's magma had swallowed all but the edges of the island.

Sensing Akainu's recovery, Ace threw up three flame nets in quick succession, the effort digging trenches in his wavering reserves and making black spots dance in his vision. They wouldn't stop Akainu, wouldn't even slow him down—but they'd cut off his view while Ace filled his path with softly glowing green and yellow bombs.

The first trap worked exactly as Ace hoped it would: Akainu rushed through the flames only to get blasted back by the effects of Ace's fiery doll technique. The blasts wouldn't hurt, but they would slow him down.

They also annoyed him. Each slowdown grew the tide of magma behind him, and if Ace didn't get to the beach and Striker now, there wasn't going to be a beach, and Striker would go up like a lit match. The heat was choking; so bad it was distorting the air and making it hard to breathe. Or maybe that was just the memories clamoring for Ace's attention like they were at all the most important thing for him to focus on right now.

The second and third traps, Akainu destroyed by simply sending a wave of magma through the fire ahead of himself, harmlessly detonating the fiery dolls.

Ace's crew, when Ace could get his eyes to focus enough to see them, was already halfway to the horizon, well out of Akainu's reach. Even the admiral, if he could attempt to fly the way Ace did, wouldn't be foolish enough to try to chase them in the sky, not when the price of a single mistake would be a watery grave.

So he hoped.

A line of bright red bubbled up ahead of him and with a cry of surprise, Ace jetted himself back from the volcanic eruption that shot a wall of magma a hundred yards into the air, cutting off the way he'd been going. Ace swiftly adjusted, thankful he hadn't gone straight for Striker, only for another eruption to cut off that path too.

Fear curled tight in his stomach, threatening to weaken his already faltering flames. He grabbed it like the snake it was and choked it into nothing as he turned in the sky to see Akainu approaching.

He'd promised Luffy he'd never die. Now, the man who'd killed him had him cornered.

The universe had a sick sense of humor.

Akainu, of course, saw the instant Ace altered his course. He wasn't running away from the admiral anymore.

He was headed straight for him.

Ace saw the vicious grin split Akainu's face when he realized Ace had changed tactics. He probably thought Ace, seeing no escape, was trying one last gambit. And he was utterly confident in his ability to crush that last gasp of hope under his boot.

He wasn't wrong. Not totally, anyway.

There were still patches of safer ground amid all the magma, mostly fallen trees not fully consumed and rocks sticking out like steppingstones. Ace dropped from the sky and leaped off those, conserving his flames. As he closed the distance, Akainu pummeled him with all kinds of magma projectiles. Many were just those fists that would destroy anything they hit. Some were those dog-like things that looped around for a second or even third attempt at a hit. There was even the spray of smaller globs that weren't enough to kill on their own but could easily incapacitate.

Ace saw them all coming. He saw them. And because he couldn't afford to waste fire countering them, he let them come.

Like bullets, he told himself. Like Izo's bullets, passing through the paths Ace saw coming. Paths Ace could pull his body out of, one bare-minimum piece of himself at a time.

Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty. And Akainu was realizing what Ace was doing, and he was bracing himself to change tactics, the magma flow behind him surging at his call—

And Ace was dragging that fire out of his core, that fire he'd been building and building all this time, that fire that said Whitebeard is the greatest pirate on the seas and My father is Whitebeard and Don't touch my family, and that fire exploded out of his palms and rushed back down into two searing lances of pure blue flames.

He gripped the lances that made Saint Elmo's Fire. His brain felt like it was cooking from the effort of just holding them without losing control. Before his grip could falter, Ace hurled them forward with a defiant yell even as Akainu, sensing the difference in this attack, raised a wall of magma and his haki-infused arms between them.

In this, his devil fruit betrayed him. That wall hid Ace, hid the lance's trajectories. He wasn't going for a kill shot, and Akainu's arms could only shield his head and upper chest. The lances hissed through the air and punched clean through the magma wall, leaving tiny holes in their wake.

The first embedded itself in Akainu's right leg.

The second buried itself in Akainu's stomach.

Ace slammed into a higher rock and stayed there. He couldn't help a cry of pain as he clutched at his right arm. That moment of pinnacle focus when he released his fire had meant a lapse in his haki and one of Akainu's projectiles had caught it badly. The pain was excruciating, threatening to white out what few thoughts he could string together.

There was a series of dull, wet thuds. Ace raised his head to see Akainu's magma constructs losing their form and splattering down, spraying him with tiny burning bits that were so inconsequential in the face of every other agony that Ace didn't even feel them. It took all his strength to stay conscious, to keep the black threatening to flood his vision at bay, to move his eyes instead to his opponent.

Stunned, Akainu lowered his arms and stared at the lances punched through his body. Then, for the first time in years of battle against pirates, he fell to one knee, then dropped to both. A choked grunt of pain escaped his clenched jaw.

Though his body wanted nothing more than to give out, Ace forced himself back to his feet, staggered once, and then called on his flames to get him away from the admiral. It was all he could do to stay in the air, and he listed heavily to the right. He passed over the bubbling fissures where Akainu had created two devastating eruptions, over the leading edge of the magma flow, and finally over the beach. He fell into Striker's seat, grateful his crew had left it pointed it away from shore.

The splash of his arrival was swiftly joined by a much louder splash. Steam hit Ace in a searing wave. More splashes followed, and with mounting horror, he realized Akainu was still launching attacks.

Panic, rather than rage, fueled his flames this time. He poured that fire into Striker's engine and tore away from the island, his hat's cord threatening to choke him as the hat itself caught the whipping wind.

Ever more magma projectiles crashed into the water, proof that Akainu was far from defeated. Ace's haki was spent; he resorted to looking behind him to judge where the magma fists would fall. He weaved through the hellish rain with an ease that belied the incredible feats of balance and devil fruit control required to execute each swift spin and turn.

For nearly a full minute at full throttle, he danced with Akainu's magma and the ocean itself, which seemed to swell more than necessary with each impact. But in that minute, so much steam collected over the water that Akainu lost sight of Ace. His attacks grew less accurate, then—when Ace was finally out of range—stopped entirely.

Heart fit to gallop straight out of his chest, Ace pulled up alongside his crew's ship. There were scorch marks on the hall, a couple holes from cannonballs that were thankfully above the waterline, and familiar faces calling to him from the deck. He couldn't hear the words, even though their voices were plenty loud.

Swaying as he stood, he tossed them a rope with the arm willing to move. Striker jerked as they pulled her close. Someone, seeing that Ace wasn't jumping up, threw down a rope ladder over the side. He caught a glimpse of blue; Deuce. They were all still calling things at him, loud enough to make him wince. He leaned toward the ladder, trying valiantly to bring it and the rest of the world into focus, but it kept blurring out.

The noise hit a painful high, his vision went black, and he collapsed.

fun fact: blue fire does actually burn hotter on average than magma

Magma's at ~2000 Fahrenheit (1093 Celsius) vs blue fire's ~2400 Fahrenheit (1316 Celsius)