As the saying goes, “A night’s lodging and a meal are a favor to be owed.”
Once they’d observed the customary greeting, the underworld way of things was to welcome in a traveler with no place to stay.
“C’mon, all of you, don’t be shy! We’re having a party here!”
“Ooh, you’ve got a cat?”
“Go on, Kotatsu, show them your party trick. Jump through this fiery hoop!”
“Grrr…meowww.”
Two pirate crews met up in the cave on a winter island and carried on like old friends.
At first the Spade Pirates were intimidated by the presence of one of the Four Emperors, but once the booze started flowing, they loosened up and turned lively.
“So Luffy got left with a bunch of bandits, huh?” said Shanks, taking a swig of his gift of grog and reminiscing about years past.
“Old Garp said it was going to shape him up so he could join the Navy,” Ace explained. Luffy had been a snot-nosed little kid dropped on the doorstep of Dadan the bandit on Mt. Corvo one day. At that point he already had the Gum-Gum Fruit powers that made him able to turn to rubber.
“And he still had the straw hat?”
“Yes. It was more important to him than his own life.”
“How can something be more important than your life?”
“He said it was because he made a promise to you about it. He was keeping that straw hat for you, and would bring it back to you one day. Once he was King of the Pirates.”
They were talking about Ace’s little brother, Luffy, a boy who befriended the Red-Haired pirates in a village where they’d once stayed. According to the story, Shanks lost his arm in the act of saving Luffy when he fell into the sea.
“So Luffy’s the grandson of Garp the Hero?”
Whether he’d been aware of that fact or not, Shanks was bound to have an antagonistic history with Navy Vice Admiral Garp. Before the Great Era of Piracy began, the counteracting power against pirates like Roger were mighty Navy officers like Sengoku the Buddha—currently the Navy’s fleet admiral—and Vice Admiral Garp.
“We brothers made a pact. We each swore to go to sea when we turned seventeen.”
“And how old are you, Ace?” Shanks asked. Ace told him, and the pirate began to count on his fingers.
“That would make Luffy…uh…”
“He’s three years younger than me, so he’ll be leaving soon. He’ll catch up to me in no time.”
“That’d be nice,” said Shanks, giving Ace a gentle smile.
“You mentioned Roguetown. Did you see it when you were there?”
“See what?”
“The execution stand."
The place the King of the Pirates died…The place where the Age of Piracy began.
“It’s yours if you can find it. I left everything in the world there.”
The Great Age of Piracy—the great quest for the One Piece—began there, with the final words of Gold Roger before his execution.
And a young Shanks was there, in a corner of the town square in which the execution stand was built…
“Hm.”
“Hm?”
“Oh, I saw it, of course. It’s a tourist spot. But, unlike Luffy, I don’t have any interest in the King of the Pirates,” Ace said. He wasn’t going to reveal the truth about his father here.
“Ahh.”
“Then why’d you go to sea, Portgaz D. Ace?” asked the first mate, Benn Beckman, who was nursing his drink sip by sip.
“I knew I would set sail at the age of seventeen,” he replied. “Beyond that…I dunno. Maybe I was hoping to figure it out while at sea. Oh, but, there is one thing I knew I was going to do for sure.”
“And that is?”
“I’m going to make sure my name is heard around the world.”
Shanks did not miss the flicker of dark flame deep in Ace’s eyes as he said those words.
Wealth. Power. And…
“Fame, huh?”
“To you and the rest of the world, Gold Roger might have been a legendary figure, but to me…he’s just a dead man. He’d already been executed by the time I was born.”
That was why he didn’t care about the man’s title.
“If not as the King of the Pirates, then how do you plan to make yourself known?” Shanks asked.
“The Emperors,” Ace said. “First I topple the Four Emperors.”
A discordant air settled over the celebration.
“Ha ha ha,” Shanks chuckled. That eased the troublesome tension, nipping it in the bud.
“Oh, er, I didn’t mean it in the sense that I’d come to take you out. You’ve shown me warm hospitality here, and you saved my brother’s life.”
“Glad to hear I’m off the hook. But Roger was my captain once. Did you know that? I figured that all the young folks these days wanted to be like the King of the Pirates. I guess that’s not necessarily the case. I tell ya, it sucks to get old.”
The times roil and change.
Just as Roger’s generation had given way to Shanks’s generation, someday these rookies would have their day—the same way that the waves—and time itself—flow ever onward.
“Sorry, I guess I made things awkward for the party.”
“Well, if you don’t mind indulging my curiosity, which of the Emperors are you going after? Kaido? Big Mom? It wouldn’t be—”
“Whitebeard.”
Red-Hair and his men stopped and stared at Ace.
Hey! He thinks he’s gonna take down Whitebeard!
Whitebeard the pirate, more fearsome than a demon…
I’d die a hundred times rather than attempt a stunt like that!
This was in no way worth the trouble it would precipitate. Parents everywhere invoked Whitebeard to scare their children into behaving. His name was synonymous with a natural disaster, like a storm, earthquake, or tsunami.
Shanks told the young man, “A long time ago, there were the Seven Warlords and such who tried to topple Whitebeard…but I thought all those fools were gone now. Why Whitebeard?”
“Well, who else was Roger’s rival but Whitebeard? Plus, Whitebeard’s flag flew over Fish-Man Island. As I came into the New World, he was the first one to stand in my way.”
“Wait, you mean…”
“I put my own flag over Fish-Man Island,” Ace said, a fire now glowing in his palm.
“You burned it?”
“I suppose so.”
Shanks was silent, but the smile never left his face. “Well, I suppose it’s not my business to interfere with that.”
It was a four-way standoff. Each of the Four Emperors had such great power that it was nearly impossible for any of them to destroy the others. If any of them actually won such a war, the victory would come at a very high price and leave them vulnerable to the remaining Emperors.
The world was a big place. But it wasn’t quite big enough to contain the endless greed, power, and rivalry of mankind.
“I’m relieved to hear that. So if I take out Whitebeard, you won’t consider it an act of aggression against you,” Ace said boldly. It was a bit of a test.
Whitebeard was the most senior of the Four Emperors, so based on Aces’s way of saying it, Shanks could have taken this as an insult against himself.
Was it right for me to have been born?
That was the question Ace asked himself, from the first moment he could think independently.
He was born the son of Roger, King of the Pirates. From the time of his birth, his father was considered the worst criminal in recorded history. His mother had died, he was left with bandits, and he lived like a scavenger, picking through heaps of trash.
He would never tell anyone about that in order to win their sympathy. That was why Ace did not reveal that he was Roger’s son, and did not ask the Pirate King’s former subordinate Shanks for protection based on that connection.
What reasons did he have to keep living? The only ones Ace ever opened his heart to, to justify his survival, were his foster brothers back on Mt. Corvo before he went out to sea, the boys he shared ritual cups with—Luffy and Sabo.
Sabo went to sea a bit earlier than Ace did. Unfortunately, he perished, the victim of a cruel and unfair world. His boat was sunk for the so-called crime of passing in front of a Celestial Dragon’s ship.
The Celestial Dragons were the world’s nobles, the most privileged class of society. They lived in the sacred capital city of Marijoa, where they looked down upon the lower classes and owned many slaves. Even the higher-up heads of the military and government, and some monarchs, essentially lived under the brutal thumb of the Celestial Dragons.
What did Ace think when he lost Sabo? He had many thoughts about this, but he kept them confined to the moment they occurred to him, and did not go back to dwell on them.
The enemy that killed Sabo is the opposite of freedom.