An Ace who didn’t jump in front of Luffy to save him is an Ace who didn’t raise Luffy just like how an Orpheus who doesn’t look back at Eurydice is an Orpheus who never went to the Underworld
Looking back at Marineford, it makes me sick knowing realized just how small and young Ace and Luffy were compared to Whitebeard, Blackbeard, the WB commanders, Sengoku, Garp, and the Admirals. They were practically babies, they never should have been dragged into this bloody, pointless war.
Oh, Ace. Poor, sweet Ace; first he’s tortured in prison while awaiting his execution, humiliated by having his worst secret forcefully exposed to the entire world, forced to watch as his brother and his family risk their lives to save him and is powerless to stop it, then he dies after protecting Luffy, just as he’s found the will to live and was so close to escaping that hellhole.
Seeing the flashback of Ace making the hat for Little Oars made me go like this 🥺; it illustrated just how kind Ace is and why he is so loved and cherished by the Whitebeard Pirates to the point they’ll literally go to war to save him and who openly cried as they mourned his death. He was the baby of the crew, the youngest and the smallest of Whitebeard’s commanders, it’s no wonder they were so protective of him.
It broke my heart seeing Ace cry multiple times throughout the arc, because he was so young and vulnerable, and he did nothing to deserve any of this. He was so loving and kind, and of course he was going to die protecting the person who he loves more than anything and who gave him a reason to live. He cherished every moment he spent with his family and friends. Forcing himself to smile despite being in unspeakable pain, in order to comfort his brother and his crewmates, just killed me. He had so much kindness and love to give, but he couldn’t extend that to himself because he couldn’t recognize his own positive qualities, to the point where he referred to himself as “a useless fool with the blood of a demon running through his veins.” 😭
And poor Luffy, he did everything he could to save Ace; he broke into Impel Down, fought Magellan, sacrificed 10 years off his lifespan, and fought through hordes of Marines, pushing his body to its absolute limits, and was so close to success, only for it to go horribly wrong through no fault of his own. Watching Luffy undergo a mental breakdown that rendered him catatonic after witnessing Ace sacrifice himself to protect Luffy, dying in his arms after thanking him for loving him, was so painful. His rampage on Amazon Lily after he woke up wasn’t much better; if Jinbe hadn’t been there to remind him that he still had his friends to live for, Luffy likely would’ve killed himself.
It made me so angry that the older, supposedly wiser adults around them orchestrated this stupid, senseless conflict for the sole purpose of displaying military dominance. They caused tens of thousands of people, pirates and Marines alike, to die needlessly and wasted vast resources just to kill this beautiful boy for the unforgivable crime of existing. And it was all for nothing, because not only did Ace and Whitebeard’s deaths start a new pirate era, Blackbeard was able to acquired Whiterbeard’s devil fruit and rise to power as a new Emperor who terrorizes the seas and runs a slave market on Pirate Island.
Luffy and Ace were only 3 apples tall each, why did Oda put them through all this just to deny them the happy ending they rightfully deserved? I don’t care what anyone says, Ace did not have to die in order to give Luffy character development and motivate him to get stronger. He deserved to live, he should be healing and learning to love himself like Robin has, he should be reunited with Sabo, he should heading to Wano to fulfill his promise to Tama and Yamato, he should be celebrating and bragging to everyone how powerful his little brother has become after he awakened his devil fruit and became an Emperor.
People really forget that at the end of the day, Ace and Luffy were just kids. They went through so much, babies 😭
I also agree that Ace shouldn’t have died and I don’t know if you’re up to date with the manga but…some characters had worse injuries than Ace and survived. I know "Ace died because he wanted to" but like…still, I disagree that he had to die for Luffy’s character development.
Marineford was traumatizing enough to give Luffy character development and I will die on the hill that he shouldn’t have died 😌
You rather liked your home. It had taken a very long time for you to be able to say that honestly but now, as you sat in your chair and looked over its façade, you had to admit you’d become almost proud of it. The early morning light complimented the photograph you’d snapped of it, highlighting the greenery on the walls and the mix-coloured roof.
You carried it back inside to your half-finished coffee.
The portable toolbox you'd found beneath your sugar bowl sat upside down in the sink, still dripping seawater into the basin one slow drop at a time. Beside it, the letter rested across the dishrack with its corners clipped beneath two mugs to stop it curling while the ink continued bleeding gently through the paper.
You hoped it would dry. It had sat, damp, for longer than usual – arriving some time in the night.
Nami said it might not be nighttime for you too but that’s weird because we sleep at the same time. Unless you’re like an owl and you sleep in the day?
I hope it’s nighttime for you too then you could look at the stars too. There are so many above the Sunny. I tried to count how many but I fell asleep halfway so I don’t know. Only woke up now because Zoro’s snoring and I thought another fish jumped on deck.
I’m sad it hadn’t.
Also, Nami wants to know if you have a photo of your house.
It was a strange letter. Not for its length or diction but rather… well, you’d never received a letter from the other Straw Hat Pirates before. Luffy spoke of them enough that the names were no longer unfamiliar and he sent you their wanted posters all the time. (You had been reassured that even though Sanji’s one looked funny, it was mostly accurate).
This though, was the first time you’d received a direct question from one of them instead of him and it was a little strange. Nerve-wracking in a way.
Flattering, too. To know that they knew about you. You hadn’t been sure Luffy would ever mention you to his friends.
I’m sorry I went to bed so early. I would have loved to look at the stars with you. We do have the same nighttime but remember, the day is kind of weird here. The sun never fully sets so I mostly listen to my body, more than the sky.
I’ve sent a photo of the house again but please ignore the wall still being unpainted. I know I said I would do it but I got distracted installing a new bench for visitors. You can see it on the left.
I hope you have a fun day! Try not to fall in the ocean.
They must have been at sea for you to receive such frequent letters. Luffy was quite predictable. If they approached an island, your letters would slow until after they left when you’d receive a flood, telling you about everything that had happened – as though he’d been keeping a list. Those letters would always be thick or multi-paged and sometimes come with coins or shiny rocks he’d found.
For this frequency, they were probably between adventures and you couldn’t help but wonder just what they’d get up to next.
It was exciting enough to linger on your mind even as you finished your breakfast.
And then, behind your sink, you found another one of those little bags with yet another letter in it.
Sorry, that’s not what Nami needed to see. She wants to know about the weather and what the hills look like and stuff but that’s a cool bench.
Also, what if you painted our flag on the wall? It’d look cool! I’ll draw what it looks like for you!
Chopper likes that deer statue thing you have.
At the bottom, a quick sketch of his flag as though you hadn’t seen it blazoned over every newspaper in the sea. You briefly considered doing it too. If only for fun. Nobody else would be likely to see it.
You made your way outside and stood beside the gate, turning slowly until the hills filled the frame instead of the sea, not sure why it mattered but happy to oblige. Maybe they were all just bored. It happened at times.
You took one last look at the sky before uncapping your pen. The clouds were behaving themselves today but there was no guarantee they would continue. They rarely did.
You took an extra photo of your deer lawn ornament with its one broken horn and fading paint before you wrote your response.
The weather here is always strange. I can have rain for days straight and then snow and sunshine within the same hour so it’s hard to show with a picture. It’s a nice day today which is good because I thought I saw a whirlpool opening up yesterday evening and was worried it might bother the gulls nesting on the west side.
But I’m sure you know firsthand how strange the weather can be on the grand line…
You sent it back with a smile and turned back to your front door. That wall was bothering you. Maybe you should get it painted for another photo. It wouldn't match your other walls perfectly. You'd run out of the original coat and never found it again, but it'd be close enough.
You reached into your pocket for the key and pulled out a small jewellery box with earrings still inside.
We get crazy weather all the time but do you really see that stuff on your island too? I thought it was only out on the ocean. Is it cool?
You laughed and hurried to send back your response; you just hoped those earrings were something they’d found and not a pair that belonged to any of his crew members.
A bird landed in the grass and fished out a particularly shiny button. You quickly took a photo right as it took off, smiling at the little snail as he printed it for you. If only that had been a second earlier…
Luffy loved seeing the birds that flew around and you would have attached it to your note without having to wait for him to message first.
It would be alright. He never went long without sending something.
But still, sometimes you wished.
Meanwhile, the Thousand Sunny was sailing along open water, moving toward a log pose while Nami tried to work out a puzzle provided by the most infuriating person who could possibly give information.
She stared at the two photos Luffy had given her and then put them down carefully on the table. The most average-looking climate on an island with just hills. No strange plants or weather patterns or anything like that. The closest she had was that it was apparently an area that could experience whirlpools somewhat near the shore.
How close? How would she know because Luffy’s questions gave her no real answers.
“I’m going to write a list,” Nami said. “And then you can just attach the questions when you send a normal note, okay? And if you ever, ever, use one of my earring boxes to send a letter again, I will throw you overboard.”
He nodded. “That’s fine. I don’t even need to send it. You can do it yourself. She gets plenty of letters.”
“Through the same way you send them?”
“Yeah.”
Robin, sympathetic for their navigator but also highly amused, took one of the photos to examine it in case she recognised anything. The island looked untidy. Footpaths wandered where they pleased, walls disappeared beneath climbing plants and what should have been a garden seemed to blur into scrubland. Even in this photo, she found nothing that stood out aside from a strange hat that looked caught in one of the thorny bushes.
“It’s a nice house,” she admitted though the architecture of it was strange. It leaned slightly and the windows were all different sizes. “Maybe we could look into it from a political view? It might not have a name but maybe whoever’s in charge does?”
“If we get a name, we can look through newspapers and ask others about it,” Sanji mentioned.
Luffy ruined that idea with a shrug. “Nobody’s in charge. She lives there alone.”
“Alone?” Nami repeated.
“Yeah. People visit sometimes but they don’t stay for long so she’s normally by herself.”
Robin considered the size of the island. It wasn’t the best photo but large enough that she'd have expected a small town at least. “Strange,” she said. “So, she clearly wasn’t born there then.”
“Nope. She moved there long ago though. I can’t even remember when.”
Nami grumbled something under her breath and went back to her maps. “I think I just need the name of the closest island and how to sail from there. It’s impossible to not know where the nearest island is. How does she travel?”
“I don’t know.”
“How does she get home?”
Luffy shrugged. “If I ask, she’ll know we’re looking for her. It won’t be a surprise anymore.”
“It won’t be a surprise if we can’t even find it!”
Robin laughed softly to herself and gently opened one of the letters; she brushed sand from the creases as she read over a story about a small tide pool before she closed it again. With Luffy’s permission, she had been going through the letters he had, organising them by the numbers on the back and searching for any information Luffy might have forgotten.
There really wasn’t very much. She’d found three letters referencing a cliff on the island’s west coast and put them aside. Gulls were often spoken about but they didn’t help much because it never mentioned what type they were. Though they nested there so it couldn’t be close to an arctic island.
And she’d found only one that even referenced the devil fruit’s ability at all. An old letter that contained nothing more than information she’d already known.
Your letters are coming through very wet. I’m struggling to read some of them so please try putting them into things.
It didn’t tell her much at all. She kept to the side though – her only reference at the moment that either party writing even knew they were using an unusual method of doing so.
She lifted another pile and immediately spotted one toward the bottom. Written on a thick, almost luxurious paper in comparison to the others, Robin turned it over in her hands to see the number written shakily at the top; scrawled in a way that caused the ink to run.
“Luffy?”
“Yeah?” He turned his head back to her and Robin held up the letter.
“This one’s very different from the rest,” she said. “Is it still okay for me to read it?”
Luffy tilted his head and walked over to the table where she (with Sanji’s very offered assistance) had been methodically detailing them. He grinned when he saw the one she was holding up and nodded.
“Oh those? You can read ‘em but I don’t think there’s anything on them. There should be more than one though.”
Sanji looked over the two bundles at his feet and shook his head. “I don’t have any others like that.”
“Neither do I,” Robin noted.
Luffy reached for it and she handed it over for him to open, reading through what was written before he handed it back with a frown. “That’s the fourth one…” he said. “But I thought I put them all together. I don’t want those to be gone.”
He tapped his chin in thought while Robin turned it over, her curiosity far too strong to feign indifference toward it.
Sanji leaned over and she moved it so he could see.
I think it’s a difficult feeling to explain because it’s not the same for everybody. That’s probably why you think it’s like hunger because food is important to you.
For me… It’s hard to describe accurately. It’s a refreshing feeling that runs through my heart and makes me feel light inside. Like I’ve been stolen by the first summer breeze. But being in love isn’t easy to put into words.
Then again, it’s not hard to imagine somebody could fall in love with you.
Robin reread the letter twice before she looked toward Sanji who was frowning. Interesting… This entire time she had been thinking that the two were just friends but it wasn’t hard to imagine that a friendship for so long could grow into something different.
“What was the rest of the conversation about?” she asked.
“Eh?”
Robin ran her finger over the paper. “Why were you asking her about being in love?”
“Oh, that was about Hammock. There was this newspaper thing talking about how she was in love with me. I didn’t know why they thought that when we’re friends but…”
Boa Hancock’s affection for their captain was hardly hidden but Luffy never seemed that interested in it. Robin considered her captain for a moment before she looked at how shakily the number had been written on the back. Nervously.
“And what about your letter friend?” she said slowly, as gently as she could.
“What do you mean?”
“This one reads rather intimately,” Robin said. “She may appreciate hearing your thoughts about it.”
Sanji shook his head and lit another cigarette. “How you keep managing to sway ladies’ hearts…” he muttered under his breath.
Luffy still wasn’t getting it so Robin sighed.
“She might be in love with you too.”
“Oh,” Luffy said with a shrug. “Yeah, I know that. She says she loves me all the time. Haven’t you found a letter with that yet?”
Robin paused, a faint smile appearing on her face at the information. That certainly changed how she’d been reading most of these letters. “She does?”
“Yup.”
“Do you love her too?”
“Obviously.”
“Have you ever told her it back?”
“Uh… I don’t know. Probably? I don’t remember my letters.”
Sanji was staring blankly at his captain, clearly in mild shock. He looked to Robin for help but she just shrugged, not certain what the relationship was exactly. Then again, it was very possibly Luffy considered all types of love the same.
He was starting to give up looking in favour of watching something out the window and she wanted to get a little more information before she asked more.
“Has she ever sent photos of herself?” Robin asked. “It would be nice to have a face to pair with the name.”
“Yeah, I’ve got photos,” he said. “She has my wanted poster so she sent photos back. They’re really old though.”
His stomach growled and Robin hoped she could keep a little part of the captain’s attention before his appetite demanded all his thoughts.
“Perhaps you can show us? If she’s identifiable enough, we might be able to narrow it down to a region.”
“I guess. I don’t know where they are though. I lost them ages ago. They’re not that important.”
Sanji gave Luffy a look that threatened his portion of dinner. “If a woman has graced you with a photo of herself, you should treasure it far more than that. Why, if Robin-chan gifted me an image, I would never let it get lost.”
“Why does it matter? I can just ask her to send more.”
Robin laughed softly. She should have expected that. “Some women might find it a little rude if you don’t keep things they send to you.”
Which, naturally, meant that you came across a soaking letter in the dirt while you watered your herb garden; paint taken out for the wall but remaining unopened beside it. It was wrapped around a shoe and you sighed, hoping it hadn’t gotten too damaged to read. A small bug crawled over the surface and you pushed it away before you gingerly unrolled the fragile paper.
Would you be upset if I lost the photos you sent me?
It was a strange question. Weird enough that you frowned at it for a short while as you considered the best way to respond. You’d never even thought about it before…
You hung the letter over the bench to dry, with some rocks in case the wind picked up, and sat on next to it. The notepad and pen you’d taken to carrying around once again came in handy as you wrote out the obvious answer.
No. I sent those photos for you to have them. You don’t have to keep them for eternity.
If you ever want more, I’ll send some.
Like this little bird I saw in my garden earlier. I’ve been finding more buttons than ever lately and I think he’s enjoying it.
You rolled both up and tied them to the dripping shoe before you sent them off. The smudge of sea water on your fingers sapped some of your energy and you breathed out, relaxing into the bench for a while. Maybe you should have asked why he was worried.
But if it was important, he probably would have told you.
You didn’t pick up your watering can again. Instead, you made your way down the hill from your house, stepped over a discarded threadbare coat in front of your gate, and picked up an apple from a sack that lay against a stone.
Waves lapped endlessly at the shoreline as you approached; a steady thrum that gave music to the persistent fog on the horizon.
Ships passed now and then, little more than dark shapes moving through the mist. Most vanished before you had time to wonder who sailed aboard them. Once, only once, one had caught the light just right. Gold had flashed through the fog like sunlight striking polished metal and for one impossible moment you'd seen the lion's mane upon its bow before the mist swallowed it again.
You sank down to sit and took a bite of the apple. You knew you probably shouldn’t spend too much of your day watching but sometimes, you couldn’t help yourself.
Something fluttered against a nearby piece of driftwood and you leaned over to pick the paper bag up. The letter inside was drier, shoved in what looked like it had once been used to bring food from the market.
Oh, okay. That’s good.
Nami has a whole bunch of questions she wants to ask you by the way. She’s writing this list so look out for her letter. But don’t send any more photos of you yet! I want it to be a surprise!
I’ve seen those birds before at one of the islands we stopped at! They tasted really good but Sanji says you mustn’t try to make it unless you know how to do it. So maybe catch one then send it here. Then he’ll cook it and I’ll give it back!
Actually, send two. I want one too!
Maybe more if you can.
Also, Robin says I should tell you that I love you back. So, I love you!
You smiled down at the letter; melancholy lifting from your chest as you went over the last few words a few times. Sometimes, you could swear you heard how he laughed when he wrote these to you.
Why would Robin want him to say that? Had they been talking about it?
You were excited though, to receive a letter from another one of the Straw Hat Pirates. Nami’s list would be interesting.
You’d just have to make sure her letter didn’t end up stuffed into the half-rotting pile that had once been a mailbox.
I've remade this post with even more magical girls. Like last time if you don't like that I added a character than just move on and don't waste you're time reblogging because I am not remaking this post just cause you're complaining.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
areudirty
germansingergirl
gummygunk
vaporwave
stormborns
origamiaround
