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“I can’t believe I’m going to be late,” Sabo said.
Ace gave him a look as they both continued to run down the street. “What do you mean you can’t believe you’re going to be late? How many times have you gotten late just to bring Luffy’s things to him?”
“I don’t count Luffy,” Sabo said, “so I’m going to be late for the very first time.”
Ace decided to ignore this. “And the reason we’re both late now is because you decided that leaving that trail alone wasn’t an option.”
“I’m second-in-command, it’s my job,” Sabo argued.
“How many times has Luffy’s deadbeat father told you to put your studies above your position?”
“Like I said—”
“Who do you think you are,” came a voice from before them, and upon seeing a taller, black-haired girl standing with her nose upturned to them to the point that her chin was pointing towards them skidded to a stop, “to speak the name of my Luffy?”
Ace gaped at her. “We’re his older brothers, who do you think you are?!”
“Wait a second,” Sabo said, pulling out his notebook, “I don’t recall writing her down.”
“His older brothers?” the girl questioned, raising her head to face them. “Like I should believe you. I have been watching Luffy for many moons and I have yet to hear him mention you even once.”
Ace smirked. “Checkmate, lady— anyone who has heard the name Portgas D. Ace or Sabo will know that they’ve spoken of a little brother once…” he said, pulling out a poster, “…or twice.”
The girl stared at it. “’Monkey D. Luffy, not missing or wanted, just want you to look at him carefully and know that he is our baby brother,’ signed Sabo and Portgas D. Ace… Wait, you two are the ones who have been putting up those posters of my Luffy?”
“Hold on,” Sabo said, his pen ceasing its flurry of movement, “you’re the one who’s been stealing them?”
“Well,” the girl looked away as she flushed scarlet for a brief second, before her eyes widened and her head snapped back, “wait, you are Portgas D. Ace and Sabo? The males of Whitebeard and RA respectively? Their ‘seconds’?” She was looking at them with barely-concealed surprise.
Ace took a step back and hmphed with a smirk. “That’s right. So actually, I am still very surprised you didn’t already know Luffy was our little brother—”
“Wait, you’re Boa Hancock?” Sabo said. “The most popular girl of Grand Line High School and the one who’s rejected every man and woman who’s come to ask her for a date? The Medusa of Grand Line?”
Ace looked between them as they stared each other down.
“…Hmph,” they spoke up at the same time, “I was expecting more.”
Sabo stuffed his notebook back into his pocket while Hancock walked away with a flip of her hair. Ace’s mouth fell back open.
“Come on, Ace,” Sabo said once he had already taken a few steps, “we’re going to have an important little job to do in school later.”
“Listen, Sabo, she’s just a fangirl,” Ace said.
“And she’s a student from another school who’s been watching Luffy for many moons. Verbatim.” Sabo tapped a page in his notebook. That line was both circled and underlined in red. “You’re going to let a stalker get away like that?”
Ace sighed. “It’s a good point, but maybe she didn’t mean it literally.” And plus I have reason to suspect that this isn’t the only reason you have…
Ace didn’t really want to pursue this. As they said, out of sight, out of mind. It was better to focus on the interschool boxing tournament that Luffy was going to be participating in. Luffy was going to be up against the heavy-hitters — Jozu, Lucci, Chinjao, Who’s-Who, a mystery challenger, and Sabo’s colleague Hack. After a month or so, Ace still hadn’t decided yet whether to join the throng of his second family and cheer for Jozu or to join the throng of his little brother’s friends and admirers and cheer for Luffy.
Sabo, for his part, had already made his stance quite clear from within the first week by telling Hack directly (and a couple other of his colleagues) about his plan to sell more Luffy pins than Bartolomeo by the end of the tourney.
Anyway, Sabo clearly wasn’t trying to see it from Ace’s point of view. Maybe it was Sabo’s manipulative tendencies, maybe it was Ace’s own curiosity; either way, he found himself later that day in the ceiling above Hancock’s classroom.
Just do this one thing for me, Sabo said.
Ace’s legs were cramping up like hell, the class was Ace’s least favourite — Physics, along with it being taught by Borsalino, the most boring professor he’d ever had the pleasure of hearing, Hancock was boring as hell to watch, no one he recognised was in this class, and Sabo was not doing the most painful part of this plan, instead sitting in his own classroom.
Just do this one thing for me — the hardest fucking part.
Damn psycho.
Never again, Ace was convincing himself, when someone knocked on the door. Borsalino was called away, and upon the closing of the door, the classroom then, though it was never totally silent, exploded into noise. Could he get away with just slipping out of here…?
“This class is a waste of my time,” Hancock declared to a couple of her friends. One of them was Marguerite, she helped Luffy out once and Luffy repaid his debt swiftly after. “Shall we go outside later and meet up with my sisters?”
“That sounds like a great idea,” one said.
“May I meet up with Luffy instead?” Marguerite asked. “I’d like to…”
Hancock’s face was turning almost murderous. “Meet up with my Luffy? Did I hear you right?”
“Well, I…”
“He is mine,” Hancock said, leaning forward with her hand on the table. “You may be my friend, Marguerite, but I will never relinquish him to you.”
“Yes, of course, Hancock,” Marguerite said, putting her hands up. “You know I’d never take him from you.”
“None of us will!” someone else said. “After all, we all know very well your past with him.”
Wait. Past?
Hancock was turning red and pulling herself back into a standing posture. “Well, when you put it that way… Yes, we do have a rich past…”
…Rich past?
“A past that made our snake princess love a man!” one said.
Love…
“And,” another said, leaning in and dropping into a whisper, “leading said man to have the honour of seeing our snake princess naked…”
Ace barely heard Hancock nearly fall backwards in a moan in his fumbling to catch himself before he fell out the ceiling elbow-first. He fell back onto the ceiling and caught his breath for a moment. When he could sit up again — barely, it was tight as fuck — he grabbed his phone and looked. The phone call was still ominously going.
“Sabo…?” Ace whispered.
There was deep breathing on the other side.
The week went on with Ace struggling to get to classes on time like usual. What wasn’t usual was that Sabo had not followed up on the eavesdropping they had done on Hancock, and hadn’t even worked on the pins either. At home he was the exact same as before, and Luffy knew nothing better. Being around Sabo when he was definitely not happy was disconcerting. To say the least. Just what exactly were they putting in the water over in the revolutionary army base?
“Ace, please do the dishes.”
Ace, unable to look away from Sabo’s wide smile, slowly stacked up the remaining dishes and opened his mouth. “…Okay.”
“Luffy,” Sabo said while Ace tried to adjust the tap discreetly to get the water flowing enough to not be obvious and allow him to listen in at the same time, “the boxing tournament’s coming up next Thursday, right? There’s going to be a lot of strong contenders there.”
“Yup!” Luffy said. He was finishing up a plate while watching TV. “I’m not worried though.”
“You’ve got it in the bag. We’re both rooting for you.”
“No, it’s okay. You don’t have to root for me.”
Ace dropped a plate into the sink.
“What do you mean? We’re both rooting for you because we want to.”
“Yeah, Luffy,” Ace said quickly, “it’s our choice.”
Luffy hummed out loud before laughing. “Okay, then! Thanks, you guys!”
Sabo moved on to another topic while Ace grumbled under his breath. Putting him on the spot like that… “…And I guess Hancock is also in the same year. Right, Ace?”
“Huh? Oh— yeah.”
“Why’s Ace taking so long to do the dishes?” Luffy asked.
“He fell asleep, I bet.” Sabo continued before Ace could get a full two words in, “Luffy, you’re done with your food, right? Let Ace wash that plate too.”
“Okay!” Luffy almost bounced over with his plate, sticking around to look for more food. Ace pushed him with his soaped hands and Luffy ran back to Sabo’s side. Ace stuck out his tongue.
“Anyway, like I was saying, Hancock is also in the same year as us.”
There was a long beat of silence before Ace realised it was his cue. “Yeah, she’s, the, uh, this girl that, you know, people talk about sometimes.” There was a look being bored into the back of his head. Well, Sabo, you can’t just keep putting me on the fucking spot like this, can you?! “She’s Medusa for some reason or another…”
“Oh, Hammock!” Luffy said. “She did a lot for me so I’m grateful to her! You guys know her?”
“What did she do?” Sabo asked.
“She helped me get to Ace that time.” Ace cringed. “She also gave me food, which was great, and clothes, which is weird but cool.”
“Clothes?” Ace asked.
“Did she tell you to change in front of her?” Sabo asked. So much for beating around the bush.
“Nope.”
“Did she change in front of you?”
“Nope.”
Ace was stunned. Did that mean…?
“Then why have you seen her naked?”
Ace leaned over to see Luffy. He opened his mouth for a moment, then clamped it again and looked away, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead and whistled… “I don’t know…”
Sabo had lost his cool composure, looking at Luffy with his mouth wide open. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
Luffy whistled for a moment more before jumping to his feet. “I can’t tell you!” he said, then pushed his chair back and ran up the stairs.
There wasn’t much to take away from that conversation.
- Luffy had indeed seen Hancock naked, admitting to the slipped-in question by lying and saying he didn’t know why.
- Following up “what do you mean you don’t know” with saying he cannot tell them and running away.
The two points were in Sabo’s notebook, with the last line being just Conclusion (colon). Since then, Sabo had taken out the notebook in class, flipped to that page and stared at it before tucking it away. To Ace, the smartest move was to rip out that page and forget about it entirely, but the move Sabo wanted to take was to just forget about it (for now) and confront Hancock as soon as possible. Which was good enough.
Sabo did end up arranging a meeting with Hancock, but he hadn’t been able to mention the whole naked thing that was the elephant in the room for both Ace and Sabo in half the time they’ve allotted for the meeting. Though said elephant was more like the secret weapon in the room from Hancock’s perspective, probably. Ace didn’t want to think about it anymore than Sabo did, really.
“When are you men going to be satisfied? I must leave for my own matters as soon as possible.”
“The only way I will be satisfied,” Sabo said, “is when you let go of your obsession with my younger brother.”
“Obsession? I am not obsessed,” Hancock said, though her cheeks flared red. “I am finished with your disrespect of me. Just because you are soon to be my brothers-in-law, it does not mean I have to respect either of you.”
“Soon to be?” Ace asked. “What the hell do you mean?”
“I have… accepted Luffy-Luffy’s hand in marriage, of course.” Hancock’s cheeks were an even deeper shade of scarlet now. “And I shall need to prepare for it by studying hard and becoming ever stronger to be a fitting bride. Therefore, I have not much time to waste here with you.”
Hancock took her leave. Ace’s mind was still swirling. Sabo looked entirely defeated.
- Hancock claims to have gotten engaged to Luffy. Need to check this info
But of course, after the disaster that was last time, Sabo hadn’t been able to bring it up with Luffy. Ace wasn’t planning on trying where Sabo couldn’t.
The first day of the boxing tournament came, bringing with it a school buzzing about the contestants for that day. Ace somehow managed to peel himself away from Marco, Jozu, Thatch and the rest and meet up with Sabo somewhere backstage, who still had Koala pulling on his ear. After telling off Sabo a bit more, Koala stormed off with Sabo rubbing his ear while they went to find Luffy. Ace opened the door to one dressing room to find Luffy staring at himself in the mirror and shrugging on an afro.
“Luffy!”
“Ah, Ace! Sabo!” Luffy turned and grinned. “I’m glad you’re here!”
Ace smirked and stole the afro to put over his own hair. “What do you think?”
“Awesome!”
Sabo ruffled Luffy’s hair. “You look better in it.”
Soon the announcer called and Luffy left while Ace and Sabo navigated the dark to find a good place to stand near the boxing ring. And by good place, that meant a place where they could easily keep watch of Hancock.
“So the plan here,” Sabo said, “is to eavesdrop as much as possible and gather enough intel to defeat her.”
“What if she brings up… one of those two things?”
“…I don’t know.” Sabo sighed.
“Is it some kind of offence?”
Sabo shook his head. “I hate to admit it, but hardly with how much we have. I would’ve caught her the first opportunity I got.”
The situation looked a little grim. But the announcer climbed onto the ring, and with the first match being between Jozu and Chinjao, Ace’s reservations fled from his mind and he was cheering for Jozu loudly, jumping when he won and having his ears nearly blown out from how loud the audience was. Ace remembered Hancock again sometime into the tournament, but every time he did, Hancock was simply looking disinterested and only ever talking when the crowd was loud, like she knew what they were up to. Sabo’s plan was a little sloppy. Ace couldn’t blame him.
“Hey, Ace!” Sabo hissed.
“Yeah?” Ace pulled himself out of his focus. Who’s-Who, battered and tired, was trying to get a punch in on Lucci.
“Look, she’s leaving!”
Ace forgot for a moment who Sabo was referring to, then found Hancock weaving around the crowd on her own. “Is she going backstage?”
“Why? To find Luffy?” Sabo gritted his teeth.
“Luffy’s match is coming up in a few minutes anyway. There’s not much she can do.”
Sabo looked torn. “…Alright.”
Lucci seemingly got bored and landed the final punch on Who’s-Who, and the match was declared over. With Who’s-Who getting dragged away and Lucci jumping off stage to a small crowd of cheers, the announcer returned to the stage.
“…splendid match,” Gatz said. “Now, for the match you all have been waiting for...” The crowd was clapping in anticipation and Ace gave a satisfied smirk. “…between our very own, Monkey D. Luffy, a favoured challenger, to be sure! Let’s give it up!”
The crowd broke into uproarious applause as the curtains part in the side of the stage, and Luffy ran from the opening, jumping straight onto the ring with a huge grin and fists punched to the sky. Ace cheered along while Sabo waved frantically for Luffy.
Gatz waited for the applause to die down. “And now for the mysterious challenger, does anyone have any guesses?”
“Wait…” Ace said. Sabo was still waving. “There was a mystery challenger… and…”
“So! Your first hint! The challenger is a she. Your second hint! She is the most popular girl from Grand Line High School! And as for your third hint…”
“Most popular girl…” Sabo said, his arm moving slower and slower.
“So it finally sunk in for you,” Ace said.
“She is Boa Hancock!”
The cheering resumed as Hancock emerged from the shadows, flipping her hair as she walked towards the ring. She stopped short once she had to climb the ring, her cheeks flushing to the point where when Sanji offered a hand, she accepted it and climbed with his help. Sabo’s arm had lowered entirely, while Ace flicked his stilted gaze onto Luffy — he was waving to Hancock with a grin.
“It’s a surprise to see you here, Lu… Luffy,” Hancock said.
“Yeah! Don’t expect me to go easy on you!” Luffy readied a punch.
Hancock’s cheeks went even redder. Ace wondered if he was going to witness a fainting instead of a beatdown. “Oh… I-I wouldn’t want it at all.”
“Sabo, calm down,” Ace said automatically. “I know it sounds bad…”
“She is…” —a deep exhale— “…very good at that, isn’t she?”
“What I’m more curious about,” Ace said, “is how she’s going to do this. How is she going to be able to fight…”
Gatz had blown the whistle as he spoke, and Ace, in complete and utter disbelief, watched as Luffy landed one punch on Hancock and sent her flying into a crowd of excited teenagers fighting to grab a hold of her.
“…Luffy,” Ace finished lamely.
Luffy was confusedly shouting to Hancock, with Hancock calling back while easily pushing herself away from the crowd. Ace winced as she stepped on the faces of a couple guys with her sharp high heels.
“Well, according to the rules of the competition… that counts as a loss!” Gatz said, glancing at a piece of paper he held. “The victory goes to Monkey D. Luffy!” The crowd broke into applause, which was broken up by shouts of confusion. “And… I think this is a good time to have a short break.”
“Good job, Luffy!” Sabo shouted over to Luffy.
Luffy was scratching his head. “That was a little weird, but whatever! Let’s have a rematch sometime, Hancock!”
Hancock almost swooned in response. “A… another proposal! He spoke my name once again!”
Ace stared. “So that’s what she meant by that…”
Sabo chuckled lowly, pulling out his notebook. “As expected.”
Ace barely opened his mouth before he closed it again, shaking his head. Let him have his success.
With Luffy’s friends calling him over on the other side of the ring, Hancock walked over, fully recovered, and stopped upon noticing them. “Oh, it’s you again.”
“Fancy meeting you here,” Ace said dryly.
“Oi! Straw Hat! We demand a rematch right here and now! That didn’t count at all!” some teens yelled. “No way you took out Hancock that easily!”
The boos started and Ace was getting ticked, but Hancock rushed over and before he knew it, she had tornado roundhouse kicked them all in the face, sending them sprawled to the ground in a circle around her. “Nobody,” she said with a glare, falling into the pose where her head dipped ridiculously far back as she pointed towards them, “may dare to disrespect my Luffy!”
The ones that got kicked apologised in between their groaning and moaning, while those who escaped her dropped to their knees.
Ace whistled.
“So,” Hancock said, pulling herself back to a standing posture and walking back to Ace and Sabo, “where were we?”
“Strong and defensive,” Sabo said, shutting his notebook with a smile. “You know what, ignoring one or two things and a small misunderstanding… maybe you’re not too terrible.”
The look in Hancock’s eyes lost a portion of its intensity.
“Yeah,” Ace agreed. “Salvageable. We could have a proper match between us sometime.”
“I could also use some help in stalking,” Sabo said.
Hancock stared at them a little longer. “…While I do not fully understand what goes on in the brains of men like you, I think we can achieve mutual understanding for at least a short period of time. …That being said, I’d like to know if this means I’ve acquired your blessing to be together forever with Luffy.”
Sabo was still smiling, but somehow in an instant it felt as if his façade had come crashing down. “Fuck no.”
Hancock was unperturbed. “That is fine, it is not like I needed it.” Flipping her hair almost directly in Sabo’s face, she took her leave.
“Formidable,” Sabo said softly, his grin widening, “a formidable opponent.”
Ace didn’t think he really wanted to know where this was going. He knew all the same. Sighing, he said, “Hey, Sabo, remember the pins?”
“What pins…?” It was like a light bulb had turned on with the speed at which his face adopted a look of realisation.
With Sabo running off, Ace chuckled. In a way, seeing that face was revenge enough.