Gradually the sky turned darker and darker red. Another day was coming to an end. Ace and I finished eating our fruit, complaining about the taste all the while, and sat next to one another, watching the sun set over the horizon. As usual, the island was breathtakingly beautiful. I recalled the skeleton I found earlier near the bushes at the edge of the sand—when he washed up here alone, did he also gaze out at the sunset this way?
All alone. No one to talk to.
With that in mind, how lucky was I that at least Ace was here with me? It had taken me all this time to realize that I wasn’t alone. Thanks to Ace, I could survive on my own. It was knowing that someone else was on the island with me that led me to choose solitude, to make it on my own.
Ace seemed to be thinking about it the same way.
“Look at the sun,” he said abruptly. “If I think ‘Man, that’s gorgeous,’ but it’s just me all alone, then what does it matter? If nobody else is seeing it with me, what’s the point of it all?”
He chuckled to himself. The sun would be going down in minutes, but it didn’t feel as cold as it usually did at this time of day. Must have been because I finally had some food in my stomach. Or maybe it was having Ace sitting nearby.
It was a mysterious feeling. In fact, it almost felt warmer than it was earlier in the day.
I turned to look at Ace.
He was burning.
Not emotionally. He was actually burning. He was literally on fire—flames were shooting from his skin.
“Yeow, it’s hot! What’s going on?!” I screamed, just as Ace also realized something was amiss.
“Whoa! W-what is this?!”
Ace yelled and panicked on the spot. I picked up some sand with my hands, and hurled it at Ace, but it had no effect on the flames on his skin. If anything, they seemed to get hotter.
“W-why did you suddenly catch on fire?!” I yelled, as I continued shoveling sand onto him. But something about it struck me as odd.
Ace’s body had caught fire, but it didn’t seem to be actually burning his clothes or skin. Strangely enough, it was as though his entire body—and everything he wore on it—had actually become fire…
“Aaaaah! It’s hot! It’s hot!! It’s…not hot?”
Ace instantly regained his cool. And in a matter of moments, the flames covering his body became noticeably smaller and finally vanished. There wasn’t a single burn on his skin, and no damage to his clothes or hat. Not even a speck of soot.
“Do…do you think that fruit,” I murmured in a stunned daze, “could have been a Devil Fruit?”
The forbidden fruit. An incarnation of the devil of the sea.
Whether true or false, the legend was that if you took a single bite, such a fruit would impart demonic powers. In exchange, the person who ate the fruit brought upon themselves the wrath of the sea. They would never be able to swim again.
Without realizing it, we’d been eating one of those legendary fruits which I’d never before seen outside of a book, and which would probably go for a minimum of a hundred million berries at auction. That had to be the answer—I couldn’t imagine any other explanation.
“That was a Devil Fruit?” said Ace, staring at his palm in wonder. “Wait a second. Does that mean I can’t swim anymore?!”
He leapt to his feet and promptly rushed toward the water, not hesitating a bit as he pushed out into the waves.
“Hey, check it out, Deuce. I’m just fine. It’s not the Devil Fruit!”
He walked farther into the sea.
“It wasn’t a Devil Fruit. I’m just fine. I’m just…fahhh…”
Suddenly, Ace crumpled like a puppet with no hand controlling it.
“What are you doing?!” I shouted, rushing toward the sinking man. I grabbed him and dragged him desperately back to shore. When it was done, something occurred to me.
“Hang on…Why am I okay?”
I looked over my own body, the way Ace had done with his. There were no sudden bursts of flame on my skin, and I was perfectly fine in the water.
“The Devil Fruit only bestows its power to the first person to take a bite,” said Ace, sitting upright, his strength apparently regained. It was hard to believe he’d been totally weakened a second ago. “The rest of it is just a nasty-tasting fruit.”
He stared at his fingertips. The light seemed to waver around them, and suddenly a small fire rose from the ends.
There was no doubt now that it was a real Devil Fruit.
“So this is the Devil Fruit… It doesn’t quite feel real,” Ace murmured, staring at his fingers again. The reddish flicker of fire calmed, and when it was gone only pristine fingertips remained.
“Hmm. Interesting,” he muttered, taking it all in stride.
I asked him, “Do you know a lot about Devil Fruit?”
“I told you I have a brother, right? His name’s Luffy. He’s got Devil Fruit powers too. So in a way, I’m used to it. Though I used to win every single fight we had.”
“You sound like wild brothers. How is possible that a regular person could beat someone with such powers?”
It was all so new to me; my mind was having trouble keeping up with the details.
“My brother’s a rubber man with the power of the Gum-Gum Fruit. It’s pretty funny. His arms stretch out like beeyoiiing,” Ace said happily, sticking out his fist and mimicking his arm extending outward.
Ace was generally cheerful and outgoing all the time, but he was especially excited when talking about his little brother. He truly seemed to care a great deal about him, despite not being related by blood—or perhaps because of it. Even stranded here at the end of the world, on this empty island, he didn’t lose his love for his family.
“While I kinda like the idea of being in the same situation as Luffy with the fruit,” he continued, his face darkening a bit, “this is a terrible problem to have on a deserted island. Now I can’t swim. The next time my boat sinks, I’m done for. I can’t escape now.”
Ace stared at his hand. This time his entire palm lit up with flames, not just the fingertips. The sun was beyond the horizon now, and the fire brought light to the darkening beach. It was almost like a campfire. Our shadows flickered, shifting like the sound of the waves.
He stared at the fire in silence. His worries were entirely justified.
If you ate a Devil Fruit, the sea despised you, and robbed you of the ability to swim. And it wasn’t just being unable to swim, as was true of many people. Simply being in the water made you completely weak and helpless. This was now Ace’s reality.
I didn’t need to think too hard to understand the implications.
Unique sea currents surrounded the entire island. It was an enormous, aquatic version of an antlion trap. Ace had built a number of boats while trying to escape. Even if he got tossed from the boats, he could still swim and cling to them. When they broke, he swam back to shore. These endeavors would no longer be possible.
If he fell overboard, only death awaited.
That was the price he paid for this power of flame that he hadn’t even asked for. It could bring light to the darkness, but it couldn’t take him across the sea.
Ace’s ability wasn’t just that he could make fire come off of his skin—it actually turned his entire being into fire. Accordingly, the name of what he ate was the Flame-Flame Fruit. Fire was supposed to be the tool that allowed man to conquer nature, but in Ace’s case, it was merely trapping him here.
A body turned to fire—flames that leapt off his physical self. One of the most powerful forms of energy found in nature. And it was at Ace’s beck and call now.
I had a sudden flash of inspiration.
“Ace! You can control that, right?”
“Hmm? Well, I might need a bit of practice at first, but it seems to be pretty easy.”
He made the shape of a gun with his hand and shot a small ball of fire from his index finger toward the sea. It curved up, then down, and vanished into the dark of night.
“Well, what if you just used the force of expelling the flame? Like, by regulating its output, or something. Can you consciously control it to that extent?”
“I dunno, but I feel like…it could be possible,” Ace said.
I grinned back at him. “Then maybe we can get off this island.”