What quality makes one a captain?
I think it is being loved by others.
A captain is like the sun, shining bright to illuminate dark waters.
You can always spot the captain in the center of a crowd, a person who instinctively brings together people from different homes and upbringings and personalities and ways of thinking. No one who is not loved and cherished by others in this way can be a captain.
And Ace was meant to be a captain.
He had something that attracted people to him. Something special that went beyond simple concepts like charisma and heroism. It was this instant respect and fondness for Ace that prompted people to join the Spade Pirates.
Pirates are outlaws almost by definition, and the people who wound up in the Spade Pirates were outlaws among outlaws—those who had no place in other crews, or people with odd backgrounds who never would have become pirates otherwise. He even seemed to have a strange power of fate about him, effortlessly compelling such people across our path as we traveled, without having to seek them out.
So, as we traveled the Grand Line our comrades grew by ones and twos around Ace, and our ship grew bigger as well.
Then, one day…
✦ ✦ ✦
“Gaaa ha ha ha! Ace! I love you, man!”
A sweaty, bearded man swung a cutlass around on the deck.
“Shut your disgusting mouth!” I said, kicking him smack in the face. He flew straight off the ship.
“M-my bountyyy!” the man wailed as he plummeted into the sea. That was not one of the outlaws who came to Ace out of respect. He was the kind of outlaw who came for hostile reasons: an enemy.
Ace was known for being the captain of the Spade Pirates now, and had a sizable bounty on his head. Having a bounty naturally meant unwanted interest from people you encounter, and a group of them was attacking the ship on this day.
Sidled up next to our ship was the vessel belonging to the bounty hunters. They jumped over to our deck, roaring and with weapons raised, one after the other. There were many of them—several times our number, easily. Which side were the real marauders here?
In a blink, the Spade Pirates’ deck became a battlefield.
The marauders’ target was Ace, and he was instantly surrounded by bounty hunters and hidden from view. I got pushed off to the side of the deck, where many of our crewmates were isolated and outnumbered.
✦ ✦ ✦
It had all started when they’d claimed their ship was breaking down and they needed help. So we’d approached, none the wiser. It seems this group of bounty hunters often employed such a method to attack passing pirate ships.
It worked because everyone who lived on the water knew the terror of being stranded in the middle of the open sea. Under typical circumstances, no one would pass by a ship in that state without doing anything. It was practically unthinkable.
Even the wickedest pirate would stop their ship—if not to show mercy, then at least to put the poor souls out of their misery and seize their booty. So no matter what kind of pirate you were dealing with, they were going to stop and have a look. These bounty hunters had banded together to take advantage of that habit.
But doesn’t taking advantage of the kindness of others, especially those showing mercy to fellow sailors, make such people even more wicked than pirates?
“These bastards don’t have any sense of common courtesy,” I snarled, just before I noticed a burning sensation on my right cheek. “Whoa!!”
I spun around, and a bright red flame shot past me. The foes nearby were blasted off their feet, screaming piteously. Ace had swung a fist to hurl fire at them.
“Hey, be careful, Ace! You’re gonna burn my coat!” I yelled at him.
“Sorry! But I ain’t gonna throw off any fire that burns my crew!” he shouted back from a distance. Flickering flame surrounded his right arm, and he smiled. True to his declaration, none of our guys or the ship were harmed, and he was hitting the invading enemies with perfect accuracy. Ace had made great progress in his control of the Flame-Flame Fruit’s powers. So much so that his signature “Fire Fist” technique was becoming his nickname as well.
Ace raced across the deck, his fire shining along with him. The bounty hunters had no defense against his dancing, shapeshifting flames. And in the familiar confines of our own ship, Ace might as well have been in his own backyard. No one could stop him.
But while I was distracted by his combat display, a gunshot rang out.
I spun around and saw a bounty hunter right behind me, hunched over and holding his hand.
“Thanks, Teach!” I said, and kicked the man. His eyes rolled back and he passed out; if I had to guess, he probably wished that he’d been kicked into unconsciousness before he got shot. He’d been about to attack me when a sniper’s bullet came from nowhere and knocked his weapon out of his hand.
“Just be more careful, Deuce,” said a voice from nowhere, just like the gunshot. The owner of that voice was nowhere to be seen. He was nowhere to be sensed, either.
The man who’d fired the gun was named Mihal.
I and many others on the crew called him “Teach.” Because, rare enough among men who lived at sea, he was in fact a teacher at one time.
Mihal had a dream of sailing across the seas and providing education to children in remote places where schools did not exist. But this goal of his did not fit well with the ways of more traditional sailors. It was none other than Ace who recognized and supported his dream by giving him space on our ship.
“A man can’t do any good reading amid all this noise. These raucous guests of ours could use some education. Let’s get it over with,” said the voice, followed by several gunshots this time.
Elsewhere on the ship, bounty hunters’ guns sprang from their grip, diverted by his shots. And yet the man himself was still nowhere to be seen.
Mihal was a bit of a shut-in by nature, so he hardly ever left his cabin. He didn’t even come out when we stopped at port to buy supplies, preferring instead to stand watch with a book in his hand. Some people called him “Indoor Mihal.”
He looked rather like an intellectual, with his silk hat and pristinely polished glasses, but Mihal was quite capable in a fight. And his ability to shoot with perfect aim from unknown locations made him the perfect ship’s guard.
There was just one problem.
“I can never tell where he’s even shooting from!”
It made you wonder if someone like him was really cut out to be a teacher.