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“What did you just say?”
Luffy’s eyes were covered by his straw hat, but his fists were shaking with rage.
Blackbeard laughed, the horrid sound coming from the Dark-Dark Fruit user created shivers up Nami’s spine. Nami knew the rest of the crew were waiting for them. For crying out loud, they were almost to the Sunny!
If they sailed away now, they could regroup with Traffy and their other allies to defeat Blackbeard at Laughtale. They didn’t have time to get into a fight with him right now!
“You heard me, kid,” Blackbeard sneered, “that brother of yours was weak for being Gold Roger’s son. Couldn’t even live long enough to get revenge on me. Not that he didn’t try. ZEHAHAHAHA!”
Luffy didn’t try to think. He was so furious, he couldn’t even if he tried. He felt his feet guide him to his target. His hands started twitching in anticipation.
Blackbeard, ignoring Straw Hat’s deadly glare, continued, “Your brother was a hothead, alright. You know, it was your head I was after, Straw Hat, til my old commander stepped in.”
Nami tried shouting out to Luffy. She pleaded and begged him to come back to the Sunny.
“Luffy, you’re already injured! Just ignore Blackbeard, it doesn’t matter what he says, we’re so close to getting out of here!”
Luffy stopped his deadly march and looked back at Nami for a brief moment, his body still shaking with rage. Luffy spoke to Nami with a seething glare still burning in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Nami,“
“ZEHAHA, that’s all your brother was…,”
Luffy growled, “I can’t just let him-“
“A washed up failure,” Blackbeard smirked.
What?
Luffy felt the anger rush away from his body, leaving a new, unwanted feeling.
His voice, why did he sound like-
Suddenly, Luffy was back at Marineford. A 17 year-old kid gutsy enough to face the entire world. A kid naive enough to think he’d succeed in everything he’d try just because he had his crew at his side. But his crew was sent flying by Kuma and the only thing left to do was get his brother off of the scaffold. He could hear bullets firing and the sound of swords clashing loud enough to drown out his own voice but it didn’t matter because he finally made it to Ace and they were running away and they were almost to safety and-
“That’s all Whitebeard ever was,” Akainu said with a crude smile on his lips, “a washed up failure.”
For the second time, Luffy saw his brother stop in the middle of the battlefield. He watched him turn to face Akainu, to refuse to let him talk crap about his pops, to standing in front of Luffy, to taking Akainu’s hit, to dying in his ar-“
Suddenly he could hear again. More specifically, he could hear his navigator screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Please Luffy, we’re almost to the Sunny, lets go!!”
Luffy recognized that tone of voice. That same desperation. That very same plea that Luffy pleaded to Ace that day. But Ace didn’t listen, and Luffy would never forget the helplessness he felt that day as Ace slipped from his arms onto the ground, his blood forever stained on Luffy’s hands. But Luffy promised he wouldn’t let his crew down, not again, never again, and Luffy knew that if he let himself throw even a single punch at Blackbeard, there was a chance he would fall down and not get back up again, leaving his crew broken and defenseless. No, he refused to do that to his crew, not to Nami.
“LUFFY! COME ON!”
So for once, Luffy listened.