After dispatching the wayward pirates, Ace, Thatch and Teech stopped at the nearest port to share a drink.
“A toast! To Pops’s flag!”
“I’m not toasting.”
“Zeha ha ha ha! Food after a job well done tastes so good, it’s to die for!”
Eat, fight, drink. Teech was a model pirate. As long as you fed him and let him rumble now and then, you could be assured he wasn’t going to cause trouble.
The town was one where Whitebeard’s Jolly Roger flew overhead. The trio were pirates, but they were on friendly terms with the owner of the tavern.
“Really, Ace? Red-Hair actually said that?”
With some drinks in them, they were more talkative than usual. Thatch often cooked with alcohol in the kitchen, but never drank it there. It was a sacred workplace for him, so he preferred to relax and drink at other people’s establishments.
“Yeah. He pointed to the scars on his left eye and said, ‘It was the Whitebeard Pirates who gave this to me.’ ”
It was one specific pirate under Whitebeard’s flag, in fact.
“So who is it?” Ace asked. “I’m kinda curious.”
Thatch thought it over. “Someone on our crew did that to Red-Hair? Hmm…”
“Huh? You mean it’s not a well-known fact with you guys?”
That came as a surprise to Ace. You would think that whoever put that scar on Red-Hair’s face would have become quite a legend among the crew.
“It wasn’t even a division leader, right? If one of them had done it, that would’ve been a big deal. You know about this, Teech?”
“Eh? About what?”
“Someone on the crew put a scar on Red-Hair’s face, apparently. I just can’t believe—”
“That was me,” said Teech, through a mouthful of food.
Ace and Thatch stared at the large man before them, one of the senior members of the crew, in total shock. Teech shoved a whole pizza into his mouth without cutting a slice. Then he washed it down with a swig of wine that emptied a small barrel.
“Just kiddin’.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“Yeah, no way.”
It was just a stupid drunken joke. Ace sighed. “Well, he told me that at a little party we were having,” he admitted. “Maybe Red-Hair saw me as a rookie and just wanted to scare me a bit.”
He took a swig of his drink. Thatch paid attention to the movement of his arm and noted, “By the way, Ace…what’s with that joke of a tattoo you’ve got?”
It was something he’d been wondering about and used the drunken opportunity to ask. The question was one that Ace had heard many times over the years.
“Nah, never mind. Don’t wanna talk about it.” It was a long tale to tell, and it wasn’t particularly interesting.
“Oh yeah?”
“The X through the S is the symbol of my late brother. That’s all.”
Right after he went to sea to become a pirate, Ace’s blood brother Sabo was sunk by a Celestial Dragon ship. Ace made an oath then with his little brother, Luffy.
Listen to me, Luffy. We have to live our lives so we don’t have any regrets!
That could mean a lot of different things to different people. The point was not to do anything you’d be ashamed of.
“Only time can answer that question.”
It was after Sabo’s death, when he first had to truly grapple with the concept of death, that Ace began to think in earnest about what it meant to live.
Death would come one day. So the last thing he wanted to do was go out with nothing to remember but hating his father and the world. Leading such a pointless life would be an insult to the brothers he shared ritual cups with.
But Ace wasn’t the type to speak freely about his innermost thoughts, or the names of his brothers.
“Hmmm.”
“I do have another brother, though.”
“Oh yeah? How old? What’s he doing now?”
“Three years younger than me. We decided that we’d set out to be pirates when we turned seventeen. So he should be leaving any day now.”
“Is he strong?”
“My brother ate a Devil Fruit when he was a little kid. I didn’t eat mine until after I was a pirate. But I never lost a fight to him, even back then.”
Ace and Sabo had always competed with one another and kept score. Luffy joined the competition when he got a bit older, but as the youngest, he always lost.
“So long, Luffy. I’m heading out now!”
“Okay! When I go out to sea three years from now, I’ll be way tougher than I am now!”
Ace left Luffy behind at Mt. Corvo and started his personal voyage.
Luffy was probably still dreaming of being King of the Pirates. Ace couldn’t even begin to imagine Luffy looking defeated or ready to give up. Now Ace had run up against the wall that was the Four Emperors. What would Luffy say at a time like this?
“A Devil Fruit, huh?” marveled Thatch. Drinking put him in a good mood. “We got a couple guys with Devil Fruit powers, too. Marco, Jozu, Pops…”
Ace hadn’t even been powerful enough to antagonize Whitebeard into using the powers that made him such an infamous monster.
“The rule around here is, if you find the Devil Fruit, you get to eat it. You could sell it and make a hundred million berries, of course. But if I could choose one Devil Fruit to have, it would be yours, Ace.”
“Why the Flame-Flame Fruit?” wondered Ace.
“Your hands turn into fire, right? What more could a cook like me ask for? And I could make it whatever temperature I want.”
They say the cook’s soul is his knife, but flame could be something like a lifetime partner.
“I get it. If only there’d been one for you, too.”
When Ace was washed up on the deserted island, he’d eaten the Devil Fruit without realizing what it was.
“It doesn’t work that way, does it? There’s only one of any kind of Devil Fruit in the entire world at a time, I understand.”
“Yeah, that’s right! If you really want to eat the Flame-Flame Fruit,” Teech said, happily brandishing a table knife now that he had finished his barrel of wine, “you’ll have to kill Ace… Zeha ha ha ha! Once the person with the powers dies, the fruit will regrow somewhere else in the world.”
“It’s a bad joke. There’s no fruit I want to eat so bad I’d kill someone for it. Another wine over here, Miss!” said Thatch to the barmaid.
Ace just grimaced. “Then you’ll have to forget about the Flame-Flame Fruit. What about another one? Let’s say…an ice fruit, maybe. You wouldn’t need an ice chest.”
“No, that one’s out, too. Aokiji ate that,” said Thatch with a shake of his head.
“Aokiji? You mean…”
“The admiral from Navy Headquarters.”
Kuzan, who went by the nickname Aokiji, had the power of the Chilly-Chilly Fruit. The other admirals, Akainu and Kizaru, had Logia powers of their own.
“What about a knife? You could be a blade man who could cut anything.”
“That would be nice. But no, I think some assassin somewhere has that one. Besides, I like sharpening my knives.”
“Zeha ha ha ha! Well, even after years and years of pirating, you just don’t see Devil Fruits all that often!”
“What about you, Teech? What fruit would you eat?” Ace asked, turning the tables on him.
“Me? Let’s see…”
He took a swig from his barrel. Teech was so large that any vessel looked too small in his hands.
“Oh, I bet I know which one you want,” said Thatch, looking mischievous.
“What?! How do you know, Thatch?!” gasped Teech, suddenly looking shocked.
“Which one?”
“You know the one, Ace. The legendary Clear-Clear Fruit! Whoever eats that fruit can turn invisible…”
“Really? There’s a fruit that does that?!”
“Zeha ha ha ha! Ya got me!” laughed Teech, scratching his head and sticking out his tongue. “But of course, it’s every man’s dream…”
The uncouth scallywags imagined all the unsavory things they would do if they could turn invisible with the Clear-Clear Fruit’s power.
At that point, it dawned on them that several young girls had gathered at the table. They were children from the port. Their parents could be seen outside the restaurant where the pirates were celebrating.
“What’s this? We have such pretty young ladies here!” Thatch said, greeting them with a smile.
“This is a sign of our gratitude!” said the girls, presenting them with crowns of flowers picked from nearby fields.
“Oooh, such pretty flowers. Thank you,” said Thatch smoothly, bowing his head.
“No, thanks…I’d rather not,” said Ace, trying to push the flowers away.
“C’mon, Ace! Don’t embarrass these young ladies—they’re trying to thank you!”
“Zeha ha ha ha!”
Thatch took his flowers, and Teech held out a finger to drape them over. Since Ace didn’t want to make himself the bad guy, he hesitated and reluctantly allowed them to place the circlet over his head.
Had he ever received flowers before? He’d expected that even after he was dead in his grave, no one would come to place flowers at his headstone.
This was the remarkable nature of Whitebeard’s rule. The man exerted an incredible influence. And he used that power as the cornerstone of his territory, forming his own country. A country where people welcomed his rule. Where little children accepted the protection of a man more frightening than any demon, and even thanked him for it.
Power was a weapon that could be used to achieve ambitions. Sometimes, power enveloped others inside of it, becoming an even greater power. It was why people called Whitebeard the King of the Sea.
That was the man Ace was trying to crush.
“Are you guys good pirates?” asked one of the younger girls.
“Huh? I…uh…”
What was a good pirate? Was it a pirate who protected the people in his territory? To those from other locales, that same man might be considered a terrible pillager. And nobody who was truly a benevolent saint would get involved in the business of piracy in the first place.
“Listen up, girls,” said Teech to the children, “There are no good or bad pirates.”
He placed the flowers they gave him onto his plate of pasta and promptly began to devour his food, plants and all. The girls stared at him in shock; the last thing they expected was for him to eat their flowers.
“Mmm, these sure are good flowers! Gimme yours too, Ace!”
“Here you go.”
“All right, that’s enough of that!” said Thatch, clapping his hands loudly. “I’m sorry this old man and this young fellow are so boring and don’t make any sense, girls. But thank you very much. If I come back in twenty…no, ten years, will any of you agree to marry me?”
“Ew! No!”
“Aw…”