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Ace doesn't want to try to assinate Whitebeard this night. He's tired and angry and he has been in his room for way too long, so long that he's started thinking about the big questions in life.
This night, Ace wants to debate. He longs a debate, a good debate with another intelligent and stubborn person. He longs a debate like those he had with Sabo, Deuce and even the Red Hair Pirates.
But Sabo is dead, Deuce is not on the Moby Dick, Benn Beckmann, Yasopp, Shanks and the rest of the band are somewhere in a Blue. They wanted to go to the West Blue, if he remembers that correctly.
Point is: since he's not on friendly terms with anyone in the Whitebeard Pirates (yet, Thatch is already worming his way into Ace's heart), he has no one to argue with. He's had no one to argue with for fucking weeks!
(Ace really feels like he might start a fucking argument with Marco the Phoenix the next time that blue chicken tries to berate him instead of acting like a spoiled brat with anger issues)
He really has to find someone to argue with. Because it's been fucking weeks and Ace is way too close to snapping. He's already becoming sarcastic and salty.
(Marco had asked him if he'd been dropped on the head as a kid when Ace had attacked their Oyaji in a really stupid manner and Ace had replied, all automatic sass and self-defense mechanism, "Bold of you to assume I was held."
Ace had said that. In front of all the commanders and Whitebeard. He really did ask himself if maybe Garp did drop him a few times on the short way to the bandits.)
Ace releases a frustrated sigh and sneaks out of his room. He feels cooped up in it and the walls are thin, it would do him no good to start an argument with himself.
He snatches his beloved knife and makes his way to Whitebeard's room. It seems like he's going go try and assassinate the old man once again. He's ready failed multiple times but Ace is bored and salty. And he can't sleep because of his narcolepsy.
Ace doesn't even try to be quiet as he opens the door and looks upon the giant man, snoring peacefully. For a moment, he feels kind of guilty for what he's about to do. Then, Ace closes the doors. It's assassination time. He approaches the man, quietly and flinches when a floorboard creaks beneath his feet.
For a tense second, he holds his breath. Whitebeard doesn't wake up. Ace wants to sigh in relief, because he doesn't want to go flying through a couple of walls again, thanks you very much, but he doesn't because he has learned not to push his luck.
He's standing at Whitebeard's side now, close enough to attack and not far away enough to dodge a punch, but if he stays away a bit more, he won't be able to reach him.
Ace stares at Whitebeard and he zones out. He feels like back when thunderstorms used to frighten him and he went to Dadan, wanting to wake her up and for the woman to comfort him, only to end up standing above her, trembling, not managing to disturb the woman's sleep.
He doesn't like it. For all that Dadan hadn't done a good job at raising him, she hadn't done a bad one either, and the woman is like a mother to him. He doesn't want to give Whitebeard that parental position as well.
He shakes his head to snap out of the daze he was in and wants to move forwards and attempt to stab the man. But he doesn't. He wants to move but at the same time he does not. It feels like he's balancing on a rope but he can't fall to either side.
Ace doesn't retreat. He doesn't leave the room. He doesn't rush forwards either. He just stands there, as if rooted to the place, and feels awkward.
He doesn't know how long he stands like that, it seems like an eternity and nothing at all at the same time, but he spaces out again and misses how golden eyes open and rest on his figure until the man speaks up.
"And just what are you doing here in the middle of the night?"
Ace screams. He isn't ashamed to admit that because his thoughts had been somewhere else and be had not noticed the old man waking up. He really hadn't. Him being surprised and reacting was just his admittedly lacking survival instincts showing.
Whitebeard flinches at the sound. Apparently Ace had caught the man off guard by having been caught off guard by the same man who had been caught off guard by him.
Ace clutches his right hand over his chest in an attempt to calm his racing heart and curses. "Holy shit you scared me! Warn a person next time!"
Newgate raises his eyesbrows and laughs (if the ship hasn't woken up because of Ace's scream yet, then that laugh would do the trick).
Suddenly Ace is aware of how stupid it was of him to say that. After all, he is standing in the man's room, close to the previously sleeping Yonko, with a raised knife, a pinky up his nose and a dazed expression.
Or more like he had been standing like that. The pinky had been ripped out of his nose real quick when he'd jumped back from the fucking jumpscare Whitebeard had decided giving him was a good idea.
His expression most likely also resembles a startled deer now.
So Ace knows that he has no right to talk, but he doesn't retract his words, because Ace is a D and Ds are stubborn. Stubborn and stupid. Also Ace likes to act on instinct and he likes to confront and offend people.
Fire Fist crosses his arms, stubbornly, even though he can feel his heart racing a marathon from the remains of the scare and shock and his legs are trembling. He tries his best to put on a grumpy and angry expression, but Whitebeard either doesn't see it because of the dark or he thinks that it's cute. Ace really hopes that Newgate doesn't think his expression to be cute.
Newgate takes one look at the resolve and determination on the brat's face and he knows that it's going to be a long night.
With a grin, he says, "You have no right to talk, brat"
And the brat really brings back the memories of all the Ds Whitebeard's encountered, because he manages to bring his legs under control and bites, "So what? I'm not gonna change my mind."
After a second, the kid adds, "Words are like water. Once you've spilled it you can't get them back."
With a smirk, the older man responds, "But if you spill them on metal?"
"Then I'm gonna heat up the metal so hard it evaporates. Good luck getting it back after that.", the brat replies.
'This is going to be interesting', the Yonko thinks.
---
Thatch goes to drag Ace out of his rooms, like he does every morning after breakfast (the guy's supposed to join them, he can't stay in his room all day).
Until that point it had been an ordinary morning. Oyaji hadn't eaten with him, but that happened from time to time. None of them had worried, even after having heard Ace's scream and Oyaji's laugh in the middle of the night. In their minds, it was another assassination attempt easily deflected by their precious Oyaji.
So when Thatch barges into Ace's room and doesn't find him there, he doesn't really panic at first. Until he remembers the scream. What if Ace had fallen into the water?! What if he had died?!
He runs to find Marco and attracts a bunch of attention on the way and before he knows it, he intercepts Marco on the way to Oyaji with a fucking crowd behind him.
"Ace isn't in his room!", he yells.
The phoenix just raises a lazy eyebrow. "So what? He hides around the ship all the time, probably know more about it than us, too. He's probably just sulking because of last night."
"But what if he's fallen into the water!", Thatch argues, worried.
Marco frowns. "Well, I am going to Oyaji anyway, so I might ask him in what direction the brat flew."
The crowd follows Thatch and Marco to Oyaji's room.
Marco is about to knock and enter, when Thatch stops him. He hears voices behind the door. He gestures for the crowd of siblings to be quiet and suddenly they can hear two voices, loud and clearly.
"... Saying that that does not make any sense at all...", a voice that Thatch recognized to be Ace's said with intensity and passion.
"But if we assume that one would go back to the time before one was born, then-", their Oyaji argues back, but it sounds confused and frustrated.
"That's bullshit and you know it. Really, any change could lead to one not even being born, so dying because one would just cease to exist!", Ace says - and Thatch thinks that he's never heard anyone speak so fast before, the brat is almost tripping over his words, trying to form coherent sentences to express his thoughts.
A heavy, heavy sigh can be heard and Thatch realizes, stunned, that Oyaji just lost an argument to a seventeen year old.
"How did we get from whether you had the right to tell me not to scare you to discussing the concept of timetravel."
"This is not a discussion", Ace corrects. "This is you and your arguments getting brutally beaten down by me."
Thatch and Marco exchange glances and simultaneously rush into the room, only to see Oyaji and Ace sitting across each other, Ace animatedly waving his hands as he talks and Oyaji slouching, looking lost.
"You could have done amazing as a lawyer", Oyaji tells Ace before he notices Marco and Thatch. "What brings you here, my sons?"
Thatch stutters, "Eh... He said something about you getting beaten down brutally... ?"
Oyaji waves it off. "Ah that, it's not important." Then, the giant of a man mumbles, "I can't believe I share DNA with a banana..."
Thatch is really worried that their old man had lost it.
A thud alerts them of Ace sleeping on the floor, lying down in an awkward position.
"Turns out he has narcolespy", Oyaji says and Marco swears that he's getting to old 'for this shit'. Thatch really wants to agree.