Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Benn Beckman wasn’t the kind of man who let himself get cornered.

He’d been a crime boss longer than most could even fathom, and he knew how to cover his tracks better than almost anyone. Every move he made was coldly calculated, every action meticulously planned to preserve his façade of respectability. On paper, Beckman was just the CEO of one of the country’s largest export companies—clean record, taxes paid, diversified investments. Spotless. Too spotless, some might say.

But as he well knew, no veneer was ever enough to silence the right voices. The police—or rather, certain figures within it—remained interested. There was always a lingering doubt, a whispered suspicion, an off-the-record report that landed on the desk of someone important. Still, Beckman always found a way. With sharp lawyers, a well-greased network of influence, and a few million strategically placed, he turned accusations into silence.

That was why the scene that afternoon caught him completely off guard.

He noticed the footsteps before turning the corner: two figures too deliberate to go unnoticed. One, visibly older, wore the exhausted look of a man who’d traded sleep for reports and bitter coffee. The other seemed too young to be wearing a police-issue leather jacket—or maybe it was just his posture, stiff, like someone still learning how to hold his composure around a real suspect.

Beckman kept his stride steady, but he knew it was pointless. They were already on him. When the approach came, it was direct, no pretense:

“Mr. Benn,” the older one said, pulling out a badge. “Just a few quick questions about your operations in Yokohama…”

The tone was polite—professional, almost friendly—but Beckman knew a veiled threat when he saw one. The words might have been polished, but their hands resting too close to their holsters said everything. They were ready to react. They hadn’t come just to talk.

Benn kept his expression calm, unreadable—just as he always did in these situations. Inside, however, his mind was already processing scenarios with the speed and precision of a veteran chess player facing a risky move. He quickly weighed his options, each with its predictable consequences:

1. Kill both cops right there. Quick, efficient… but a long-term disaster. Witnesses, cameras, blood—a messy spectacle that would draw too much attention. Even his contacts couldn’t fully clean up that kind of noise.

2. Try to escape. A viable option, given his skills and the resources he always kept on hand. But fleeing would amount to admitting guilt. It’d play right into his enemies’ hands: putting him at a disadvantage.

3. Improvise. The wild card. The unstable ground where he usually thrived.

It was at that moment—when the silence grew heavier than any spoken word—that the universe, ever so ironic, chose to intervene.** With a gesture bordering on cosmic sarcasm, it tossed into his path what might have been the worst, or perhaps the best, possible solution. He hadn’t decided yet.

Two blocks away, the quiet of the sidewalk was shattered by the sharp slap of sneakers against pavement, followed by childish shouts and nervous laughter. Three boys appeared out of nowhere, vaulting over a low wall into the alley, barely avoiding a face-first collision with the asphalt.

The first—small, scrawny, with messy black hair and eyes alight with adrenaline—stumbled on landing but didn’t stop. He sprinted, a plastic bag swinging wildly in his grip, candy bars and gum packets spilling out behind him.

"RUN, SABO! THE COP’S RIGHT BEHIND US!"** the oldest shrieked, his voice too shrill for the moment, utterly oblivious to the fact they’d just burst onto a busy street.Disheveled, sweaty, eyes sharp and arms clutching the bag of candy to his chest like it was made of gold—or dynamite.

"Ace, shut the hell up!" hissed the second boy, slightly younger, with tousled blond curls and a razor-sharp gaze. Sabo didn’t just run with his feet—he ran with his eyes, scanning for exits, obstacles, opportunities.

When the three of them darted across the street without looking, setting off a chorus of car horns and curses, he took in the scene ahead.

On the other side of the sidewalk stood Benn Beckman—impeccably dressed, motionless, flanked by two men with the stance of authority and faces that said *trouble*. Cops.

And now, every eye was locked onto the trio of pint-sized delinquents.

Sabo didn’t hesitate. In a split second, he sized up the situation and knew exactly what to do. He flashed a dazzling grin, wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, and shouted, pointing straight at Beckman—just as Luffy:

"DAD! WE FOUND YOU!"

The voice was sweet, convincing. Luffy immediately latched onto Benn’s leg with the ease of someone who’d done it before—his small hand slipping into the suit pocket and fishing out the wallet, tucking it into his own clothes before anyone noticed. After all, if "Dad" was rich, he wouldn’t miss it. Ace hung back a few steps, still wary but playing along with the impromptu plan.

Benn exhaled deeply, unmoving. And he felt fate laughing at him—with relish.

Sabo locked eyes with the older cop, his own wide and gleaming with rehearsed innocence—the kind that made adults second-guess themselves. His voice was light, almost casual, as if sharing a fun school fact:

"Did you know over 70% of missing children are found within the first 24 hours? Guess we’re lucky Dad found us first, huh?"

Then he blinked—like he truly believed he’d just done a good deed.

The older cop furrowed his brow. His hand still hovered near his holster, his eyes now darting between Beckman and the three children who clung to the man with the practiced ease of kids who'd rehearsed this in front of a mirror—like long-lost sons finally reunited.

"Are they... your kids?" The younger detective asked, clearly thrown off balance.

Benn didn't answer immediately. He looked down. Luffy was still wrapped around his leg, panting from the chase, his face smudged with dirt and sweat. Ace stood with arms crossed like a stray cat ready to bite if anyone reached out. Sabo beamed like a lawyer in training.

"Of course they are." His reply came crisp, firm—as if it were absurd to even question something so obvious.

The older cop arched an eyebrow, suspicion lingering.

"We weren't aware Mr. Benn had children. And in Yokohama, no less?"

Sabo stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back like a perfectly behaved little boy.

"We were with the nanny, but she got distracted on her phone and we got lost. I tried calling Dad, but... you know how it is. Kids and technology, right?"**

**"I just wanted candy,"** Luffy murmured, convincing as a child soap opera star, his eyes wide with the glimmer of oncoming tears.

Ace rolled his eyes, arms still crossed, his cheeks faintly flushed—refusing to fully participate in the charade. Beckman just sighed, noticing the crowd starting to gather on the sidewalk. Some were snapping pictures. Others whispered among themselves, baffled by the surreal scene: the polished businessman, the detectives, and three grubby kids acting like long-lost heirs to a fortune. His PR team would have *hours* of damage control ahead.

The younger cop opened his mouth to press further—but never got the chance.

Shanks was just passing through. He had a job scheduled for that afternoon—something quick, clean, no witnesses—but the commotion on the corner made him pause. Police trouble, people filming on their phones, and right in the middle of it all, a man dressed *way* too sharply for the occasion. *Probably some rich guy*, he thought.

Shanks narrowed his eyes, intrigued. He observed the detectives' restrained gestures, the way Benn held his unshakable composure... and then he noticed the boys. Three of them. Sweaty, breathless, clearly in trouble—and clearly making it up as they went along.

The whole scene was a disaster waiting to happen. And Shanks could never resist a disaster.

He abandoned whatever he'd been doing and crossed the street without a second thought—quick strides, an easy smile on his face. He wore a plain dark t-shirt, well-fitted jeans, spotless sneakers, and a backpack slung carelessly over one shoulder.

"Darling!" he called out, with a wave as theatrical as it was clumsy. He hopped the curb, tripped over a woman's purse, apologized profusely, and nearly knocked over a yakisoba vendor in the process. The kind of man who clearly couldn’t be trusted with a houseplant—let alone three children.

The distraction was effortless. And to anyone who didn’t know him, harmless. The type who’d forget his own birthday but remember the neighbor’s dog’s. He stopped beside Benn, panting—despite not having run—and flashed the cops a disarming grin, like he’d rehearsed this exact moment in front of a mirror.

"Sorry I'm late! The second I got the alert from the kids' tracking app, I rushed right over. These three love to bolt the moment we look away, don't they?" He had a suspicious ketchup stain on his shirt hem—possibly from lunch, possibly from work.

Luffy squealed "Daaaaaaddy!" and barreled into him like an overexcited puppy. Shanks winked subtly at Sabo—*got the script mid-scene, don't worry*—and scooped Luffy into an awkward hug. The boy was a mess of tangled hair and restless energy, but Shanks kept smiling.

He'd never seen these kids before. Or these cops. But for someone like him, that just made the game more fun.

"These troublemakers gave us quite the scare," he added, shooting Benn a glance that earned him the faintest grunt in response.

The older cop looked between the makeshift "family" and his partner. Neither seemed fully convinced... but they weren't confident enough to push further. Not with the growing crowd filming what could easily become a PR nightmare: two detectives harassing a public figure... in front of "reunited" children.

He tucked the notepad back into his pocket.

**"Let's reschedule this conversation, Mr. Benn."**

Benn simply nodded, placing a firm hand on Sabo's shoulder—the only way to say *"Don't you dare pull this again"* without words. Shanks was already walking off with Luffy in his arms and Ace trailing behind, waving a half-hearted goodbye to the detectives.

As the cops retreated, still muttering under their breaths, Benn finally muttered—to no one but himself:

**"You three are going to pay for this."**

Sabo grinned, counting it as a win. Luffy dug out a crumpled piece of gum from his pocket and offered it up, still cradled in Shanks' arms as they weaved through the crowd toward the parking lot. Ace just scoffed.

**"Hey, honey, how about takeout tonight? I'm starving,"** Shanks chimed in, car keys dangling from his fingers.

Benn felt a nervous tic twitch beneath his left eye. This absurdly convincing charade was shaving more years off his life than ten mafia shootouts combined. He glanced skyward. Somewhere, God must have been laughing. So he decided—he *hated* that scatterbrained redhead. Hatred was easier than admitting the plan was... brilliantly ridiculous.

Shanks' car was... unnervingly clean. It gleamed under the afternoon sun like it had just rolled out of a car wash—and, come to think of it, maybe it had. The seats were pristine, the carpets dust-free, the compartments *too* meticulously organized.

It was the kind of cleanliness that raised red flags for someone like Benn Beckman. He said nothing, but his gaze swept over the light upholstery with silent skepticism. Stains? None. Smell? Just citrus soap and that artificial "new car" scent. *Too* perfect. *Too* convenient.

On the dashboard, a small cluster of colorful stickers stood out against the car's clinical sterility. Three decals carefully placed in the lower corner of the windshield: a grinning fox, a pixelated skull, and a teddy bear clutching a toy sword.

Benn, in the passenger seat, studied the stickers with a fleeting glance, then leveled the same clinical stare at the three kids in the back—a futile attempt to make sense of it all.

Luffy, now sprawled out as if the earlier chaos had just been a warm-up for his day, was devouring a pack of cookies he'd clearly swiped from Shanks' backpack. Criss-cross applesauce, crumbs on his chin, grinning like he'd hit the jackpot.

"This one's double-stuffed!" he announced through a full mouth, offering one to his "fake dad."

Shanks just smiled—one hand on the wheel, the other adjusting the rearview mirror with too much nonchalance. He swerved around a pothole like someone who'd driven these streets for a decade, but the open GPS on his phone told a different story.

Ace and Sabo, meanwhile, seemed physically incapable of relaxing. In the backseat, they bickered in heated whispers, gesturing like bad movie spies:

"If we'd cut through the back alley, no one would've seen us wipe out!" Ace hissed.

"If you hadn't yelled my name mid-chase—" Sabo shot back, buckling his seatbelt with theatrical flair.

"You pushed Luffy off the roof first!"

"He was scared to jump! I motivated him!"

The car jolted slightly as Shanks hit a speed bump without noticing. He laughed—that light, carefree chuckle that seemed to say "my problems are yours now, Benn."

"So, kids... where can I drop you off?" he asked, as if he were a rideshare driver and not a hitman who'd just improvised an entire family.

Luffy pointed out the window, cookie still clutched in his hand:

"There's a park with a seesaw over there! We can stay there!"

Shanks nodded with exaggerated enthusiasm, winking at Benn:
"See? Everything under control."

Benn responded with only a grunt and folded his arms. He was still trying to decide what was more dangerous: the detectives or this trio—now quartet—of lunatics improvising a family sitcom.

With one hand steady on the wheel, Shanks reached over and popped open the glove compartment. Instead of documents or maps, he pulled out a neat stack of business cards—arranged with a precision that completely clashed with his otherwise sloppy demeanor.

With a flick of his wrist, Shanks plucked two cards from the stack and slid them between his fingers. Still keeping his eyes on the road, he spoke with the casual ease of someone offering chewing gum:

"Usually I spend afternoons at this little hole-in-the-wall café... Quiet place, decent apple pie, and nobody asks too many questions."

The tone was breezy, but Benn caught the subtext. There was surgical precision in every word—an offer with multiple layers. Nothing about Shanks was as innocent as it seemed.

With a fluid motion, Shanks sent one card sailing onto Benn's lap with perfect accuracy. The other he held out between the seats until Sabo took it.

"If you want to keep this going..." He finally glanced in the rearview mirror to lock eyes with the blond boy. "...see you there."

Sabo spun the card between his fingers, studying it with a gaze that read far beyond the printed text. He didn't respond, but the half-smirk tugging at his lips said everything.

Benn arched an eyebrow at the address. Dawn coffee.

A hitman, three con artists, and a mobster walk into a café...

This isn't the setup to a joke. It's Tuesday.
Dawn coffee hid at the dead end of a street—the kind GPS hesitates to suggest and even the wind seems wary of blowing through. Not isolated enough to raise eyebrows, yet not visible enough to draw gawkers. It simply existed—always had—unassuming, immovable, like part of the scenery.

The faded beige awning, wrought-iron chairs, and perpetual scent of strong coffee and freshly baked cake gave it a cozy veneer. But that was just the façade. Nothing here happened by accident. Regulars knew the Wi-Fi password, but more importantly, they knew when to shut up. And if someone asked for an order "to go," it usually meant time was short—or the conversation too dirty.

The bell above the door rang sharp, thin, quick. Not a welcome, but a warning: Someone’s entered. Be ready.

Inside, time moved sluggishly, as if the air filtered every spoken word. Baristas with sharp eyes and selective hearing. Small tables, shadowed corners. A crooked painting on the wall everyone pretended not to notice.

Benn paused in front of Dawn Coffee, studying the facade like one might regard an old acquaintance—wary, but with no real choice. His gaze traced the faded awning, the interior's reflection in the glass door, the silent bell he knew would chime too loudly. He took a deep breath, adjusted his collar out of habit, and pushed the door open with the calm of a man who’s never caught off guard—even when he is.

The bell rang, announcing his arrival.

The air inside was warm, deceptively inviting. Soft instrumental music wove between murmured conversations and the clink of porcelain. But Benn knew how to read silence—and in this one, there were too many eyes listening.

In the café’s farthest corner, half-shrouded by the glow of a hanging lamp, sat Shanks. Leaning back with one leg stretched out as if the world revolved around him—and not the other way around—the redhead was enthusiastically gesturing to three small figures across from him.

Luffy his face smeared with frosting—was devouring a generous slice of carrot cake as if he were at a picnic, not an informal meeting with a professional hitman.

Sabo studied the menu with the intensity of a classified dossier—narrowed eyes, straight-backed posture, the gears in his mind spinning far too fast for his age.

Ace, slouched in his chair with arms crossed, rolled his eyes at Shanks' every exaggerated gesture, feigning disinterest—but Benn noticed how he occasionally scanned the café’s exits.

Shanks, meanwhile, spoke with his hands, grinning between sips of coffee and dramatic pauses. He looked utterly at ease, like an uncle entertaining hyperactive nephews. The noise of the world didn’t reach him—or rather, he mastered the art of ignoring it.

Benn approached without hurry. A man like him never rushed. He sat in silence, his jacket perfectly aligned, his eyes flickering over each face at the table like he was checking his cards before the game began.

Luffy shoved another forkful of cake into his mouth, utterly unhurried. Sabo glanced up from the menu, already weighing the moment. Ace didn’t turn, but the stiffening of his shoulders betrayed his awareness.

Shanks shattered the silence with a lazy grin and a wave toward the empty chair across from him.

“Right on time for the grand finale.” His smirk was crooked. “Happy family, heartwarming reunion. Too saccharine, maybe, but prime-time material.”

Benn approached the table without a word. He sat slowly, his jacket still buttoned, his hands resting just above the surface as if the table itself might contaminate him.

“It’s already on the radio.” His voice was low, deliberate. “The local paper called it ‘a tearful reunion between a reclusive tycoon and his long-lost children.’”

Sabo’s mouth quirked in satisfaction.
Luffy, fork still in hand, threw both arms up like he’d won a championship.

"See? We're amazing."

Ace scoffed.

Benn, however, didn't react. His dark gaze swept over the three before settling on Shanks—cold as steel wrapped in velvet. A tense silence fell. The café seemed quieter than it should be, even with the soft background music still playing.

Shanks held his gaze with that half-smirk of someone who knows more than they let on—or pretends to.

"This might work. It'll get me off the front page for the wrong reasons. But I don't like relying on improvisation... or children" Benn stated flatly.

Sabo straightened in his chair. His eyes were unsettlingly sharp for someone so young. "Then don't rely. Make a deal."

Shanks whistled, amused. "Thirteen years old and already negotiating with criminals. Soon he'll be stealing my spot."

"I only steal if it's profitable" Sabo murmured.

Benn leaned forward slightly, hands interlaced on the table.

"You three are in way over your heads. Running from cops, trespassing. I could fix this with one phone call."

"We saved you," Ace shot back, irritated. "It was our idea. And you went along with it."

"And it might work—if no one strays from the script," Benn countered.

Luffy, who'd been distracted by the frosting, glanced between the adults and reached for someone's juice glass (no one protested). Then he declared, firm:

"We'll only agree if there are rules."

Shanks barked out a laugh. Benn blinked, surprised.

"Rules?"

Sabo was already pulling a napkin and pen from his backpack.

"Item one: No ditching us after. No orphanages. No vanishing in the middle of the night."
"Item two," Ace added, chin jutting out, "we get our own space. And decent food."
"Item three!" Luffy yelled. "Cake every Sunday."

Shanks raised his eyebrows, theatrical.

"Ambitious."

"And item four," Sabo said, crossing his arms, "if anyone tries to take us away, you have to fight for us. Even if we're a handful."

Silence. The air grew heavier—the kind of quiet where everything is decided before the answer is even spoken. Benn leaned back, the boy's words turning in his mind. He let out a short exhale, almost a laugh.

"You're good. Annoying. But good."

He reached out slowly, taking the card Shanks had left on the table.

"Fine. Deal struck."

"Happy family until further notice," Shanks declared, toasting with his now-cold coffee.

"Dysfunctional family" Ace corrected.

"Facade family," Sabo muttered.

"FAMILY!" Luffy yelled, brandishing his fork.

Beckman sighed wearily, already regretting his choices.

And for a moment—strange and fleeting—they all almost seemed like part of something. Something almost real.

Chapter Text

The living room door burst open with a sharp crack, slamming against the wall with enough force to send an echo through the newly purchased house. *A bit rude*, Beckman thought, raising his cup to his lips without looking up from the documents in his hands. The bitter aroma of still-warm coffee contrasted sharply with the scent of fresh paint and newly polished wood that hung in the air—the unmistakable smell of a place that was new, empty of history.

Envelopes lay scattered across the kitchen table, some still sealed, others with crumpled corners from hasty handling. In his grasp was the deed to the house—official, legitimate... *more or less*. The gated community was far from the bustling part of the city, surrounded by high walls and meticulously trimmed trees. Isolated enough to keep neighbors at a distance and secrets even farther away.

From the other side of the house, a child’s voice erupted with unrestrained energy:

"Look! There's a HUGE staircase!" Luffy shouted with the kind of enthusiasm that made the windows vibrate, tearing down the hallway like an unguided missile.

A heartbeat later, Sabo and Ace appeared in the kitchen, footsteps hurried and eyes wide with excitement.
“Can we have our own rooms?” they asked in unison, stopping at the kitchen doorway with eager anticipation. Behind them, Shanks appeared—radiant as ever, wearing a crooked red sweater and a wrinkled black shirt underneath. There were crumbs on his shoulder. “God only knew where they’d come from.”

This was the boys’ first time in the house. To them, it was uncharted territory waiting to be explored. To Beckman, it was the result of an entire operation built with clinical precision and a touch of desperation. He’d spent the last two days scrubbing away traces, tweaking public records, discreetly altering official documents, and calling in favors from contacts he’d rather not have involved. A full night without sleep. Three liters of coffee. And a web of lies so tightly woven even *he* was starting to believe them.

All of it for a house. And for a family that only existed because someone—probably Shanks—thought it’d be fun.

“Of course!” Shanks replied with the enthusiasm of someone who’d just been elected picnic captain. “As soon as we’re done here, you and Luffy can go upstairs and pick your rooms!”

He turned to Ace and Sabo with a grin so boyish it bordered on gleeful, his eyes sparkling as if this were some grand adventure—and maybe, for him, it was. Then he slowly pivoted on his heels, surveying the room with a critical eye.

“ Besides… we’ll need to redecorate. And buy things for the kids. His nose wrinkled slightly as he took in the overly white, sterile kitchen, as if every gleaming surface offended him personally.” This place looks like a clinic. You can’t raise proper family chaos in a spot like this.

Beckman just sighed. As much as he hated to admit it, Shanks was right. The place smelled of fresh paint, disinfectant, and *absence*. No pictures on the walls, no clutter. Too much white. Too much silence. Not enough life.

“What are these papers?” Sabo asked, curiosity piqued, stepping closer to the table and leaning in with a furrowed brow.

Luffy appeared right after, still swimming in an oversized hoodie that seemed to have swallowed half of him. Wild-haired and buzzing with energy, he flopped unceremoniously onto Benn’s leg, nearly making him spill his coffee.

“ ‘Morning,” he mumbled, clinging to the man’s leg like it was a pillow. The cool touch of his skin contrasted with the warm ceramic of the cup in Beckman’s hand.

He cast a brief glance at the boy but didn’t push him away. He’d long since learned that Luffy had no grasp of the concept of personal space. For him, a proper greeting required physical contact—preferably the unannounced kind.

“These are your documents” Benn replied matter-of-factly, sliding one of the folders toward Sabo. “Birth certificates, school records, medical history. All stamped. All… functional.”

His voice was clipped, efficient. But beneath it lay the exhaustion of someone who’d spent the night scrutinizing every comma for flaws. Those papers were the foundation of the lie. Proof that, on record, this mess of mismatched names, ages, and crooked smiles was officially a family.

Sabo opened the folder like he was defusing a bomb. His eyes skimmed over the typed lines, the digitized fingerprints, the fabricated yet convincing names. For a moment, he said nothing.

“Why am I French?” Sabo asked suddenly, eyebrows arched and tone perfectly flat — which, coming from him, might as well have been a shout of suspicion.

He flipped calmly through his new birth certificate, fingers tracing the edges of the paper with deliberate care. The adoption record was attached right behind it, and though he’d noticed the date—backdated as if the adoption had happened over a year ago—he chose to ignore it for now.

Benn, seated at the table, slowly lifted his gaze, feeling a faint prickle of anxiety creep up the back of his neck. This had been calculated, planned, and purchased with precision. He knew every digit on that damned document by heart. Before he could respond, Shanks had already chimed in with the casual ease of someone explaining a restaurant menu:

"International adoption is a ghost’s paradise. One: Less domestic red tape. Japan won’t dig through French paperwork. Two: Nobody questions a kid with a European passport entering as a ‘dependent’. They glance at the visa and wave you through. Three: In Europe, you buy a full dossier from a shell orphanage, register it in Paris as a ‘legit adoption’ and… nobody connects the dots. After all, who’s gonna track a kid who ‘always existed’ overseas? And the best part? With the deep web, you can even get photoshopped pics of you at some French orphanage… metadata included. Bureaucracy adores a well-told lie."

He spoke while lazily straightening the pages of an open folder—as if he weren’t casually divulging confidential logistics he theoretically shouldn’t even *know*. Benn gaped at him, a silent storm of disbelief and exasperation flashing across his face. A heavy silence fell for a moment, broken only by the soft *shff* of pages being turned.

“You…” Benn started, then stopped. There were no words polite enough for what he wanted to say.

Shanks just smiled—*that* kind of smile, the one that seemed too genuine to be trustworthy.

"What? I'm smart too, y'know?" He shrugged, as if this were the most obvious fact in the universe.

Benn let out an incredulous huff, jaw clenched, fingers digging into the edge of the table.

"C’est mon charme," Shanks winked at him, teasing, the French rolling off his tongue with startling fluency.

Sabo kept flipping through the folder with careful precision. He paused at the birth certificate, staring at his newly adapted name with silent focus. The surname was different. The birthplace, unfamiliar. The nationality— French.

He released a long, measured exhale, as if mentally weighing the absurdity of it all.

"French, huh," he murmured, voice eerily calm. "Guess that means I’ll have to fake an accent now?"

Ace, passing behind his chair, peered over his shoulder with a smirk.
"Only if you wanna intimidate teachers."

"Not necessarily," Shanks cut in, now thumbing through another folder with the ease of someone who’d never respected boundaries. "Kids can lose or pick up accents based on environment. We’ll just say you moved to Japan young. Unless you *want* to sound smarter in parent-teacher meetings." He flicked his wrist dismissively, like offering a magic trick. "Trust me. It works."

Sabo kept staring at the document.

The words seemed steady. *Finally.* They weren’t swaying or blurring together like they sometimes did when he was tired—or nervous. He blinked slowly, eyes tracing each letter as if testing the solidity of new ground before stepping onto it.

It wasn’t his real name. Or his real history. And somehow, that brought relief.

Maybe it would be easier this way. Starting from zero. Maybe, if he didn’t have to be *that* kid—the one teachers resented for asking too many questions, the one adults avoided because he was "difficult," the one who couldn’t stay still even when his body begged for rest—maybe, as this new French boy with watchful eyes and signed papers, he could *breathe* properly.

He could just be... functional. Like the documents.

Ace broke the silence:

"Luffy and I are Brazilian," he declared, sounding far too pleased with himself, clutching his own papers like a trophy.

"Where's Brazil?" Luffy asked, peering over the edge of the table like an overeager puppy.

"South America," Benn replied, already grabbing the tablet from the corner and swiping to a gallery of vibrant images—golden beaches, emerald rainforests, crowds of laughing people in Carnival costumes.

Luffy's eyes went round with wonder.

"Whoa..."

His chin dropped onto the tabletop as he dragged a finger across the screen, soaking in every color like he could dive straight into them.

"I'm older," Ace announced abruptly, puffing out his chest. He thrust his birth certificate at Sabo, jabbing at the date like it was a challenge.

Sabo arched one eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.

"Really? Could've sworn you were the troubled middle child."

Shanks barked out a laugh—loud and utterly gratuitous—right before taking a punch to the arm courtesy of Ace.

"Ow! That was a compliment!" he protested, still grinning. "You can be *both* problematic *and* the oldest. Multitasking!"

Ace launched into a slow-motion attack, delivering slaps that were all sound and no sting, while Shanks defended himself with both arms and half-baked apologies, laughing like this chaos was the most natural thing in the world.

Sabo watched the scene unfold, his fingers still resting on the edge of the document.

Maybe this *was* his new reality now—a house with absurdly large staircases, a room of his own, and a group of people who seemed to redefine "family" based on whatever mood struck them that day.

He could work with this.

Maybe... *functioning* wouldn't be so bad after all.

Shanks, meanwhile, seemed to be having far too much fun.

He raised his hands, holding a laminated document between his fingers like it was some newly conquered trophy.

"Happy anniversary, darling," Shanks announced with a grin that bordered on poisonous, waving the forged marriage certificate in front of Benn's face.

The document was flawless—official stamps, elegant signatures, all dated three years prior. As if this farce had *history*. As if they were a real couple, with memories, with... *traditions*.

Benn looked up slowly, one eyebrow arched in silent challenge.

"Should I buy you flowers... or a will?" he deadpanned, his voice as dry as the bitter coffee he insisted on drinking unsweetened.

Shanks laughed, eyes sparkling with pure mischief.

"Depends." He leaned in, smile sharpening. "Do I get the house?"

Benn didn't flinch, but the corner of his mouth twitched. Before the taunting could escalate, however, the sound of crumpling paper cut through the room.

Ace sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at his new ID with an expression caught between confusion and outrage.

"Why am I ‘Benn Ace’... and not ‘Akagami Ace’ like the others?" He held up the document as if double-checking he wasn’t seeing things. "Sabo’s Akagami. Luffy too. And I’m just...?"

Shanks didn’t miss a beat. His eyes lit up like embers as he leaned forward, propping his chin on his hand.

"Because Beckman wanted a son all to himself," he declared, with the serenity of someone who’d just dropped a live grenade.

The silence that followed was razor-sharp.

Ace froze for a second, his face cycling through shock, disbelief, anger—then something far more complicated.

"YOU’RE LYING!" He hurled a pencil at Shanks, who dodged with fluid ease, laughing like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

"It’s true! Look, he even signed your certificate in bigger letters!" Shanks pressed, tapping the document with a grin full of mischief.

Benn, silent until now, finally reacted. He set his coffee cup down with a soft *click*, fingers lingering around it a second too long. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but steel-edged.

"Seemed unfair for you to claim all three. I had to stake my own claim."

Ace went completely still.

The document trembled slightly in his hands. He stared at the printed name—*Benn Ace*—then back at Benn, as if seeing something entirely new.

"So... does that mean I’m... like... the favorite?"

Shanks let out a dramatic gasp, clutching his chest like he’d been stabbed.

"How *dare* you?!"

Benn didn’t flinch. He held Ace’s gaze, dark eyes locked onto him with rare intensity.

"Not ‘favorite,’" he corrected, voice quieter now. "Just... mine. For real." A deliberate pause, words chosen like stones placed carefully in a wall. "If we’re gonna sell this lie, at least let one piece of it be *mine*."

The air in the room shifted.

Ace didn’t know how to respond. His chest ached strangely, like someone had shoved something hot and heavy behind his ribs. He looked down at the document again, fingers tightening around the edges.

It was all fake. All made up. But...

"Fine..." Ace finally muttered, looking away. "But I want a bigger room than Sabo's."

Shanks burst into laughter, and even Benn let out a sigh that could almost pass for a half-smile.

Benn finished organizing the documents on the table—names now as solid and real as the walls of this house. The kids' papers were sorted into colored folders, each labeled neatly. The house, which just hours ago had been nothing but a staged lie, was starting to gather real marks of life.

"Once we're done moving in, we'll need to visit the doctor for check-ups. I've also scheduled therapy appointments as a precaution," Benn announced without looking up.

Silence dropped like a brick.

Luffy stopped squirming. Ace's brow furrowed. Sabo closed his folder slowly, fingers pressing faint creases into the paper.

"Why?" Ace was the first to speak, his voice edged with defiance.

Benn finally looked at them. There was no hiding it—they were undernourished, with old scars, and Shanks had already noticed Ace fainting at random times. Sabo had dark circles under his eyes, like he'd never slept properly in his life. And Luffy... well, Luffy was in a league of his own.

But spelling it out directly would only make them shut down further.

Fortunately, Shanks intervened before the tension could escalate.

"Ah, it’s totally normal!" he said, lacing his fingers behind his head with an easy grin. "I’m going too. Need to adjust my ADHD meds."

Luffy blinked, confused.

"What’s ADHD?"

"When your brain runs on a different rhythm," Shanks explained, as casually as discussing fruit varieties. "Some folks think faster, some juggle ten thoughts at once, some get distracted by a bird—" He gestured to the window where, indeed, a pigeon was pecking at the ledge. "—and some can’t read unless the letters stop dancing."

Luffy went quiet for a beat.

"Letters dance for you?"

Shanks chuckled. "Nah, but sometimes they scramble. What about you?"

Luffy stared at the documents on the table, brow furrowing. "They flip upside down. Sometimes. Or just... get hard."

Benn and Shanks exchanged a glance. Sabo, who had remained silent until now, tilted his head slightly.

"That has a name?"

"Yes, dyslexia" Benn replied, keeping his tone neutral. "And it’s not a bad thing. Just means your brain processes things in a unique way."

Ace scoffed, crossing his arms. "We don’t need doctors. We’re alive, aren’t we?"

"You can be alive and still feel *better*," Shanks countered, tossing a pen at him. "Me? Without meds, I’d forget to eat entirely."

Luffy giggled, Ace rolled his eyes, and Sabo... Sabo looked like he was processing everything at supercomputer speed.

"And the therapist?" he asked, cautious.

"It's like a coach," Shanks replied. "Only instead of teaching you how to kick a ball, they help you sort through the mess inside your head."

Luffy seemed to consider this.

"Do you have to talk about the past?"

This time, Benn answered before Shanks could.

"Only if you want to."

A silence settled, but it was less tense now. Ace still looked wary, but Sabo seemed intrigued. And Luffy...

"If we go, do we get lollipops after?"

Shanks burst out laughing. "If they don’t give you one, we’ll buy some on the way back."

Benn sighed but didn’t protest.

"Alright," Shanks declared, clapping his hands against his thighs and springing to his feet. "Time to pick out your rooms."

Before anyone could respond, he’d already scooped Luffy into his arms effortlessly. The boy let out a loud giggle, wrapping his limbs around Shanks’ neck like a content little monkey.

Ace and Sabo followed almost instantly—footsteps hurried, eyes gleaming with a mix of curiosity and barely disguised competitiveness.

"I call the biggest one!" Ace declared, already rounding the hallway corner like a rocket.

"The biggest is mine! I'm French now, I have rights!" Sabo shot back, sprinting after him.

Shanks just laughed, adjusting Luffy in his arms as he trailed behind. "If you fight over space, I’ll pick the room with eeny-meeny-miny-moe!"

"Don’t run on the stairs!" Benn’s voice carried up after them.

For a moment, Benn remained seated, watching the chaos vanish upstairs. The sound of footsteps, laughter, and doors swinging open echoed through the still-empty house—filling the rooms with something that oddly resembled... *life*.

The upper floor still smelled of varnish and fresh paint, the wooden floors creaking softly under the stampede of eager feet. The windows were open, letting in the afternoon breeze that tangled through the newly hung curtains—some still dangling price tags.

Shanks climbed the steps with Luffy perched on his shoulders, one hand firmly gripping the boy’s leg to keep him from toppling over in his excitement. Ace and Sabo had already charged ahead, barging into the first room on the left with the fervor of explorers claiming new territory.

"This one's mine!" Ace shouted, throwing his arms wide in the middle of the empty room as if staking claim to uncharted land.

"It's smaller than the last one," Sabo remarked, already at the next doorway. "I'm taking the one with the big window."

They carried on like this—room to room, doors slamming, voices overlapping, hurried footsteps making the entire floor tremble. Five empty rooms waited upstairs, all with pale walls and the scent of a home yet to be built. One was a master suite, which instantly sparked debate.

Shanks laughed as he wandered from door to door, sometimes reminding someone not to jump on the hardwood floors, sometimes just watching like he was witnessing a tiny storm taking shape.

Luffy was the first to break from the frenzy. Without warning, he slid off Shanks' shoulders—nearly making the redhead stumble—and slipped into a quieter room at the end of the hall. The walls were the same as the others, but something about it felt different.

The sunlight poured through the wide window, flooding the space in a golden beam that spilled straight across the wooden floor. The warmth was gentle, inviting. Luffy walked barefoot to the center of the room and stopped there, his feet bathed in light. He smiled.

"Here," he said softly, as if sharing a secret. "It’s warm here."

Shanks leaned against the doorframe, watching the boy sit down and then lie flat on his back, arms spread wide as if offering himself to the sun.

"Want blackout curtains, or do you prefer waking up with light in your face?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"Sun’s good. Reminds me of the beach," Luffy replied, his eyes drifting shut.

Shanks smiled.

"So this one’s yours?"

"This one’s mine," the boy confirmed, with quiet certainty.

And in that moment, the room ceased to be just an empty space. It gained an owner. It gained a story. And slowly, like the sunlight stretching across the floor, it gained warmth.

Shanks appeared in the doorway of Ace’s room, where the boy leaned against the window, fingers tracing invisible lines on the glass fogged by his breath. The space was cold, the fading evening light staining the walls a pale orange.

"Claiming territory or plotting a crime?" Shanks asked, rapping his knuckles lightly against the frame.

Ace turned his head, too quickly to hide his surprise. "Neither." He crossed his arms but didn’t move. "Just... thinking."

Shanks stepped inside and sat on the floor, his back against the wall. "Thoughts weigh heavier in empty rooms." He looked at the same spot Ace had—where the glass warped the sunset into something liquid. "When I was young, I lived in a place with broken windows. The wind whistled all day. Hated it."

Ace frowned. "Why tell me that?"

"Because you’re staring at that window like it insulted your ancestors."

Ace huffed, but his shoulders relaxed slightly. "...You can see the orphanage from here." He pointed to a distant building nearly hidden among the trees. "We ran away two months ago."

Shanks didn’t pity him. Just nodded. "Now you can curse at it every morning. Progress."

Ace laughed—a rough, startled sound. "You’re a fucking weirdo."

"And you’re stubborn as a rusted door." Shanks stood and tossed him something—a keychain with a tiny metal skull. "For your first house key. Don’t lose it."

Ace caught it mid-air, eyes wide. Before he could reply, Shanks was already leaving. "Gonna check if Sabo’s picked his room or is making a pros-and-cons list."

In the next room over, Sabo crouched in the corner, pressing his palm against the wall as if testing its solidity. His backpack—always stuffed with notebooks and pens—lay open on the floor, a journal visible among his things.

Shanks paused in the doorway, uncharacteristically quiet. Sabo sensed his presence but didn’t turn.

"Water damage?" Shanks asked.

"No." Sabo lowered his hand. "Just... checking."

"Checking what?"

"If it's real." Sabo's voice was quieter than usual. "We've had temporary places before. They never lasted."

Shanks sat beside him, his back against the wall too. "Walls are good for that. Hold you up when you're not sure you can hold yourself." He glanced at the journal in the backpack. "You write what you can't say out loud, huh?"

Sabo zipped the bag shut quickly but didn't deny it. "Words come out wrong when I speak sometimes."

"Then scribble 'em till they straighten out." Shanks pointed to the opposite wall. "Wanna test the paint first? Write whatever you want there. We'll cover it up later."

Sabo eyed him skeptically. "Is that allowed?"

"Beckman doesn’t need to know." Shanks grinned. "Call it... a housewarming ritual."

Sabo pulled a permanent marker from his bag and, after a pause, wrote on the pristine wall:

"We’re not leaving."

Firm, straight letters—nothing crooked. Shanks read it and nodded like it was a binding contract. "Official now. The house has to obey."

Sabo almost smiled. "You’re terrible at lying."

"That’s why I’m good at what I do." Shanks stood and offered his hand. "Come on. Luffy’s starving, and Ace has probably broken something by now."

Sabo took his hand, and for a second, the wall felt sturdier.

Benn drove the kitchen knife into the packing tape of another unmarked box, his fingers smudged with dust. Unlabeled boxes were a gamble—they could hold anything from forged documents to memories he'd rather forget.

Shanks, ever his opposite, rubbed his hands together like a kid facing a birthday present. "Mystery box! Better than Christmas." He poked at a loose flap, making it wobble. "Could be a corpse. Or treasure. Or a treasure corpse."

"Or paint," Benn muttered, spotting the gleam of metal cans in the dim room.

Shanks pulled out the first one, hoisting it like a trophy. "And not just *any* paint—*colors*." He turned the label toward the kids already crowding around him. "Who wants to paint their room from scratch?"

Luffy was already bouncing before the question was finished, eyes sparkling. "I want red! Like Shanks' hat!"

Ace made a face. "Red’s for attention-seekers." He nudged a can with his foot. "Orange. Like fire."

Sabo , ever the tactician, scrutinized the options with a critical eye. "Blue... but with light gray for contrast. Looks professional."

Shanks laughed, tossing a can to each of them. "Professional? You planning to sleep or sign contracts in there?"

"Sleep *and* draft contracts," Sabo corrected, deadpan but with the ghost of a smirk.

Benn watched silently, arms crossed. The colors were random—leftovers from some forgotten project, perhaps—but their enthusiasm was genuine. Shanks caught his gaze and held up a lime-green can with a devilish grin.

"What about you, Beckman? CEO gold? Funeral black?"

"White," Benn replied flatly. "It’s practical."
Shanks made a disgusted face. "Boredom in paint form." He turned to the kids. "Ignore the old man. Colors are for people with souls."

Luffy was already prying open the red can with his bare hands, splattering paint on the floor. Ace growled and grabbed a roller, while Sabo meticulously separated his colors like a general organizing troops.

That’s when Benn noticed the black briefcase at the bottom—different from the others, with a numbered combination lock.

Shanks, of course, saw it too.

"Secrets, Beckman?" He whispered, leaning in with a gleam in his eye.

"Documents," Benn lied, sliding it under the table.

Shanks smiled like he already knew the truth. "Sure."

🔹

The walls were finally done.

In Ace’s room , burnt orange swallowed an entire wall like a sunset trapped in concrete. The rest stayed white—whether from laziness or style, no one was sure. He called the contrast "dramatic," but really, he’d just run out of patience after the first hour.

Luffy, on the other hand, had painted *one* wall a vibrant red. The other three... well, they'd escaped his attention. He seemed genuinely proud of this accomplishment.

As for Sabo —of course it had to be Sabo—he insisted on perfection. After meticulously painting the blue wall, he covered the remaining surfaces in light gray, creating what he called a "mentally stable environment." It took twice as long, required surgical precision with painter's tape, and he nearly refused all help. In the end, Shanks had to distract him so Benn could take over one of the rollers.

"You'll leave bubbles in the paint!" Sabo protested from inside the closet.

"And you'll turn into a real estate agent if you keep this up," Shanks shot back, already bored by the third flawless rectangle.

---

With the walls still damp, the second battle began: furniture assembly.

The boxes arrived early. No one thought to call for help—maybe because Shanks found it amusing, or because Benn, naive as he was, assumed it would be quick.

It wasn’t.

Kneeling before a disassembled child’s bed, Benn faced too many parts, too few instructions, and a steadily growing backache. Luffy watched from a throne of empty cushions, as if observing a NASA scientist at work.

"Will this *actually* turn into a bed?" Luffy asked, holding a plank upside down.

"Maybe if you stop climbing everything," Benn muttered.

Nearby, Ace was wrestling with his desk, misaligning the screws for the third time. Shanks "helped" by naming each screw like a character in a play.

"This one’s the Boss Screw. Orders the others around."

"Stop messing up my system!" Sabo snapped, buried under hand-drawn diagrams and labeled parts.

Benn rubbed his face. He *should’ve* hired professionals. Or an entire crew—complete with uniforms and the patience to handle hyperactive kids and aesthetic chaos.

Too late now.

Amid the chaos, Shanks suddenly paused. He was watching a bird perched on the windowsill. "Look... it’s got a blue feather."

Luffy shuffled over. For a moment, they just stood there in silence, observing.

Nothing matched. Nothing was finished. But the rooms—slowly, unevenly—were beginning to feel *alive*. Crooked in places. Improvised in others. But *living*.

The walls were painted, the furniture half-assembled (some pieces correct, others with "intentional" leftover screws), yet the sharp scent of fresh paint still clung to the air. Despite quick-drying formulas, the fumes pooled in corners and stuck to their clothes like a damp reminder: *This isn’t done yet.*

"No one’s sleeping with that smell," Benn declared, wrenching open the hallway window. "Unless you want to pass out mid-dream."

"Living room sleepover!" Luffy yelled, as if he’d planned it all along.

And so they did.

They built a fortress of pillows and blankets on the floor. The couch became a backpack graveyard. The TV stayed off. Shanks tossed a string of LED star lights into the mix and declared it a "home theater atmosphere," even though no one picked a movie.

"What are we eating?" Ace asked, in the tone of someone already considering chewing off an arm.

"Delivery app," Benn replied, already swiping through his phone. "Pizza, yakisoba, fries... and something green so we can pretend we tried."

Sabo picked the drinks. Ace demanded cheese-loaded fries. Luffy ordered ice cream *before* dinner—and, for some reason, Benn allowed it. Maybe because he was too tired to argue, or because the moment was already too improvised for rigid rules.

They ate on the floor, laughing between bites, trading absurd stories. Luffy recounted dreaming of a floating castle made of watermelons. Sabo reminded them how they’d once fooled a subway guard by pretending Ace was allergic to artificial light.

The living room was bathed in half-darkness, lit only by the string of LED star lights in the corner and the faint glow from the street slipping through the half-drawn curtains.

The makeshift mattresses covered the floor like a patchwork quilt of mismatched blankets and pillows. The faint scent of paint still lingered in the air—subtle but stubborn—mingling with the aroma of cold pizza and forgotten fries left on the corner of the table.

Luffy was already sprawled on his back, arms wide as if ready to dream something absurd and technicolor. He blinked slowly, grinning at nothing, his eyes nearly shut.

"G'night, Shanks..." he mumbled.

"Night, Captain," the redhead replied, tugging the blanket up to the boy's chin. "Dream something less sticky this time."

Luffy chuckled softly and rolled onto his side, curling up like a content kitten.

Ace flopped down nearby, half-wrapped in an orange blanket he *swore* he'd chosen "to match the wall" (but was probably just the first one he grabbed).

"Night, old men," he said through a poorly concealed yawn.

"Night, Drama King," Sabo shot back from across the nest, fluffing his pillow twice before finally settling.

Shanks pressed a light kiss to the top of Sabo’s head—a fleeting gesture, automatic as breathing.

"Night, mini-CEO."

"Night, Shanks…" Sabo whispered back, gaze fixed on the ceiling where the star-shaped lights blinked lazily. "Thanks for today."

The redhead smiled, though no reply came. He just settled into the corner of the couch, draping a blanket over his legs.

Beckman appeared in the doorway moments later, weariness in his eyes but attention sharp. He studied the four of them—a tangle of blankets, messy hair, and slowing breaths. The room felt transformed, every empty corner filled with this makeshift human warmth.

"Night," he said quietly, already turning to leave.

"Night, Beckham," three voices mumbled near-simultaneously. Luffy’s soft snores punctuated the dark.

Benn switched off the last light and let the artificial starlight keep watch.

As the kids slept piled together in the living room, Benn carried the empty pizza boxes to the outdoor trash bin. The night air cut like a blade—and that’s when he saw it. A black car parked across the street, headlights off but with the shadow of someone at the wheel.

The window rolled down an inch. Just enough for a hand to emerge, holding a lit cigarette. The ember traced a slow arc in the air, like a signal. Then the car drove away without hurry.

Benn didn’t need to see the face. He recognized the plates. The same model that had circled his office last week, before the charade began.

Inside, Shanks appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with a glass of water. "Everything alright out there, darling?"

Beckman crushed the pizza box one-handed. "Just trash."

The redhead followed his gaze to the empty street. Something in his posture shifted—relaxed shoulders tensed, fingers tightening around the glass. But his voice stayed light:

"Ah, got it. You saw the neighbor’s cat. Gorgeous, but a food thief. Almost as clever as us."

Benn stepped inside and locked the door behind him. The *click* of the bolt echoed too loudly.

The house fell silent.

The roof creaked under Shanks' weight. He hadn't been able to sleep, so he checked on everyone before climbing out through the attic window—third floor, already 3 AM, but he didn't care. He lay on the edge, an unlit cigarette dangling between his fingers (he didn't inhale, never picked up the habit), arms crossed behind his head as if this were any ordinary night. It wasn't.

The cold wind lashed at his face like a sharp blade, but he pretended not to feel it. The scent of unburned tobacco filled his nostrils—an old habit, a dirty trick to fool the brain. Smells like fire. Like home. Like before...

Benn's footsteps echoed behind him, heavy and deliberate, crossing the attic stairs. Shanks heard him step through the window, the sharp click of shoes on roof tiles.

"If you fall, I'm not jumping after you," the brunet announced, stopping half a meter away.

Shanks laughed, eyes still fixed on the stars.

"Is that a promise or a proposition?"

"A warning." Benn crossed his arms. "It's three in the morning.”

"Official existential crisis hours." Shanks twirled the unlit cigarette between his fingers, performing a charm that had long since worn thin. "Want one? You take the filter, I'll keep the part that does nothing."

Beckman didn't take it. Instead, he sat beside him, legs dangling over the edge of nothingness. He studied Shanks' profile—the way he stared at the sky as if he could count every star, as if that alone was enough to keep from jumping. As if this crooked, wordless exchange was the closest they'd ever come to intimacy.

The night wind whistled through the roof tiles as Shanks swayed his dead cigarette like a weary conductor orchestrating the stars. Imaginary smoke dissolved into the cold breeze carrying scents of damp shingles and distant yakisoba from some still-open izakaya.

"What’re you staring at up there?"

Benn’s voice came out rough, as if he’d swallowed a piece of the night along with the words. Shanks didn’t rush to answer. First, he let the cigarette trace a slow path across the sky, its cold tip nearly grazing the constellations.

"See that trio there?" The cigarette paused over three bright points piercing the sky’s black veil. "Lined up neat, like they used a ruler. You could slide a finger between them and never misjudge the space."

Benn followed the gesture, squinting slightly against the starlight. The city’s glow tinted his profile amber, revealing the first silver threads creeping into his temples.

"I see them."

"In Brazil..." Shanks drew a breath as if tasting the word, "they call them the Three Marys. Like three sisters running away from home." The cigarette spun between his fingers, tracing an imaginary circle. "Here, it's Orion's Belt. The eternal hunter."

His smile appeared sideways—that smile Benn knew too well, half-nostalgia, half-inside joke. The kind that always came with stories that started in bars and ended in hospitals.

"They say if you follow their path..." The cigarette slid southeast, "you'll find Sirius. The brightest star in the sky. A beacon for the lost."

Benn made a low noise that could've been a laugh or just the sound of shifting his weight on the cold tiles

"Did you follow them?"

The silence that followed was filled only by the distant hum of a refrigerator in some neighboring house. Shanks stared at the cigarette as if willing it to magically light itself.

"I did." His fingers tightened slightly around the filter. The laugh that escaped was short and airless. "But I don’t think I’ve found what I’m looking for yet, Beckman."

The wind chose that moment to carry away the last traces of unburnt tobacco lingering between them. Benn studied Shanks’ profile, etched in the glow of distant neon, before giving an almost imperceptible nod.

"And that one there?" Benn's index finger lifted lazily, pointing to a blood-red dot pulsing near the horizon.

Shanks turned his head slowly, as if afraid to startle the star. "Betelgeuse." He pronounced the name like one might speak of an old enemy. "A red giant. If you put it where our sun is..." His hands began close together, then exploded outward, "it'd swallow Mercury, Venus, Earth... even Mars would miss the shade."

Benn made a low sound that could've passed for laughter if it weren't so dry. "Comforting."

"She's dying." Shanks let the cigarette sway between his fingers, watching the star like someone expecting it to explode any second. "Any day now—*boom*." His fingers mimed a slow-motion supernova. "Shines brighter than the full moon for months... and then?" A shrug, his hand dropping to his lap. "Stardust. The most glamorous exit a star gets."

Benn turned to face Shanks directly, the city light painting gold stripes across his face as a near-imperceptible smile appeared. His gaze dropped to Shanks' wrist—there, under the streetlamp, a sinuous scar disappeared under the sweater sleeve. It looked like a shooting star or perhaps the trail of a poorly-loved knife. Shanks followed his stare and tugged the fabric to cover it, too quickly to be casual.

"You're chatty tonight."

Silence. The unlit cigarette swayed between Shanks' fingers, a nervous tic disguised as nonchalance. Benn watched him sidelong, eyes narrowed.

"Why did you agree to this?" he asked, blunt.

Shanks raised his brows. "Ah, you know how it is. Boredom, morbid curiosity, the promise of a tax deduction..."

"Try again."

The redhead sighed, overly dramatic.

"Because they're good little thieves. Because Luffy pickpocketed me at first sight and I laughed. Because Sabo lied to my face better than I ever could. Because Ace tried to punch me and I liked it." He leaned back, staring at the sky. "And because... if I hadn't shown up at that café, you'd have shipped all three to an orphanage the next day."

Benn neither confirmed nor denied.

"And now?"

"Now we pretend." Shanks clicked his tongue. "Happy family, proud father, bills paid on time. Until someone slips up."

"You're slipping right now."

"I'm sitting down, Beckman. I won't jump—not today."

Benn almost smiled. *Almost.* "You're seeing the therapist tomorrow."

Shanks clutched his chest in dramatic horror. "Cruel. Abusive. Controlling. Typical businessman." Benn ignored him, turning to climb back inside.

"Hey, Shanks?"

"Hm?"

"I'm putting locks on the windows—for safety. And you’ll pretend you don’t know how to pick them."

Shanks laughed—this time, for real.

He tossed the imaginary cigarette aside, crushing it under his heel. "I’ll try," he said, and for the first time, there was no mockery in his voice. Just something Benn couldn’t name—maybe the weight of a promise, or the fear that the locks might actually be needed.

"Fucking romantic, Beckman."

And as they climbed back inside, the air felt lighter. The house welcomed them back as if it had always been this way.

Chapter Text

Disaster.

It was the only word that could possibly describe Luffy’s morning. The hospital reeked of disinfectant and deceit—a sour, clinging stench that lodged in the back of the throat like stale chewing gum. Overhead, fluorescent lights buzzed like furious bees, while the air conditioning blasted straight down his neck, sending shivers skittering along his spine with every gust. He swung his legs restlessly on the hard waiting-room bench, his heels thumping rhythmically against the chair’s frame— thud, thud, thud —like a ticking clock counting down the seconds until his escape.

"Never again," he muttered, rubbing his empty stomach. "Next time they say it’ll be quick, I’m calling them liars to their faces." The promise of a meat feast after his tests was the only thread of sanity keeping him from declaring open war on the nurse who’d stolen his breakfast. His gaze drifted to Benn, sitting at the reception desk with a pen between his fingers, filling out forms with the grim expression of a man signing death warrants. The paper crackled under his precise handwriting, each letter a soldier falling into perfect formation.

Beside him , Shanks balanced a stack of forms on his knee, alternating between scribbling illegible notes and pulling faces to distract Sabo—who, in turn, was inspecting the hospital ID bracelet around his wrist like it was a shackle. Ace, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, glared at the digital thermometer above the door as if daring it to tick up just one more degree, if only to prove that hospitals were one big scam.

"Dad's a liar," Luffy announced to the empty hallway, his voice bouncing off vaccination campaign posters. "Fasting should be illegal."

Benn didn’t even look up from the paperwork. "Take it up with the scientists," he shot back, flipping a page with a sharp snap. "And stop kicking the chair."

Luffy huffed, folding his arms. "Scientists are worse than villains. At least villains let you eat."

But he stopped kicking the furniture.

The others were busy: Benn buried in bureaucracy, Shanks debating whether he could sign a form with a doodled pirate ship, Ace too deep in his foul mood to see anything beyond the wall in front of him, and Sabo… well, Sabo was reading medical pamphlets as if they were battlefield strategy manuals.

Now or never.

Without a sound, Luffy slid off the bench and vanished down the hallway, his oversized hoodie swallowing his footsteps like a fabric-cloaked ninja fueled by hunger.

His first mission? Find a water fountain.
His second? Get hopelessly lost.

The corridors stretched before him like an endless maze—identical white walls reflecting disembodied voices that crackled from tinny ceiling speakers. The farther he walked, the more the world seemed to shrink, as if the hospital itself were trying to swallow him whole from the inside out.

Luffy clutched at his hoodie, panic rising like bile in his throat. What if they left without him? What if they were like the others—the ones who made promises and then disappeared?

No one noticed.
No one came after him.

"Did they leave me behind?" he whispered, his voice dissolving into the frigid air.

The metallic tang of panic crept up his throat. Then, as if fate were punishing him, he collided with the one man he never wanted to see.

Luffy didn’t think. His heart pounded louder than his empty stomach growled, and his feet moved before his brain could even process why.

The detective.

The same man who had grilled Beckham about their dealings in Yokohama now stood before him, lingering like stubborn smoke that refused to fade. The man was speaking softly now, almost whispering, straining to sound composed. Luffy sniffled, letting his eyes grow damp—not by choice, but by sheer reflex. It worked.

'What do I do? What do I do?' Luffy's thoughts raced, his eyes darting wildly as if searching the ceiling for inspiration. 'Ace would tell me to punch him. Sabo would say to lie. Shanks... well, Shanks would probably just laugh and crack a joke.'

He stumbled slightly—just enough to seem accidental—then shuffled toward the man, clutching the sleeve of his hoodie like an anchor.

"M-mister…?" His voice came out rough, cracked — perfect. "I… I can’t find my dad…"

The detective turned slowly, as if hit by a camera flash. The nurse beside him cut off mid-sentence. An elderly woman lowered her newspaper. A father tightened his grip on his daughter’s hand.

"He… has red hair," Luffy continued, voice trembling ( somewhere in the hospital, Shanks sneezed ). "He was with me, but now…" A sniffle. "Did he leave? Did I do something wrong?"

Silence. Heavy stares settled over them. Judgment seeped from the walls.

The detective looked visibly uncomfortable, caught off guard. His eyes darted toward the security cameras as if hoping for divine intervention. Nearby nurses paused, watching the scene unfold. Sensing hesitation, Luffy seized the moment and dialed up the theatrics.

"He said if I got lost again, he'd trade me for a hamster!"

It worked. The man’s expression shifted—less suspicion, more exasperation. He exhaled, long-suffering.

"We can check the reception desk," he relented. "See if he's there. What’s his name?"

Luffy shrugged, wide-eyed. "I just call him 'Dad'..."

The detective sighed, discomfort prickling the back of his neck. He turned his head slightly, muttering under his breath, "Missing kids are always such a hassle..."

"Fine. Come with me."

Luffy clung to the man’s suit sleeve like it was a lifebuoy in uncharted waters. He let himself be led—but the detective’s steps veered subtly, as if "accidentally" choosing the longest possible route.
"I think... I came this way..." Luffy murmured, tugging the man down a hallway.

The detective hesitated. Luffy tightened his grip on the sleeve with a choked-back sob.

"I just wanted some water..."

For a fleeting second, the detective's expression softened. He relented. Followed the boy. The little lion in an oversized hoodie.

And just like that— Luffy led his prey.

One step at a time. Through endless white corridors. Quietly circling back toward the waiting room.

He stopped just before the doorway. This time, his hiccup was genuine—because suddenly everything felt tight again. Not from hunger, but from something deeper. His body knew there were people here who loved him, even if he couldn't say it in words.

He turned the corner.

"...Dad?"

Benn looked up first. Then Ace, still scowling. Then Sabo—already on his feet before they arrived, as if he'd seen it coming.

And finally, Shanks. His eyes widened—first in relief, then in... rage. The kind of fury that only surfaces when a predator spots a hunter circling their cub.

The detective paused behind Luffy, stepping into the waiting room.

That's when he realized.

Too late.

The air shifted.

Sabo stepped forward swiftly, placing himself between the man and Luffy.

Ace cracked his neck.

Benn rose slowly. Deliberate. Like a coiled spring about to snap. Shanks didn’t need to move.

His glare was weapon enough.

"This man helped me," Luffy said, his voice still small—but now steady.

The detective took half a step back, bewildered.

"I was just trying to—"

"Of course," Benn said. His voice was too gentle —the worst kind of kindness anyone could hear in that tone.

Luffy let go of the detective’s sleeve and walked over to Shanks, pressing against him without a word.

Shanks placed a hand on his head. Warm. Firm.

"Thanks for the help," Shanks said, flashing teeth in a smile that resembled an unsheathed switchblade. The detective stepped back, but it was too late. The message was clear: Leave. Before I decide to add your badge to my collection.

The detective swallowed hard, the weight of their killing intent pressing down on him.

Luffy didn’t even glance back.

The mission was over.

And the den was full of lions.

The room still hummed with tension long after the detective had fled.
Ace let out a loud scoff. Sabo crossed his arms—like he had a million things to say but chose silence instead. Benn stared blankly ahead, but his eyes were working like machines, calculating, distrusting.

And Shanks... just looked at Luffy.

The boy didn’t hold out for long.

"…I really got lost." His voice was steady, but not defiant. "Like… actually lost. I went looking for water and… all the hallways looked the same. I didn’t know where I was. I thought… I thought you’d left."

For a moment, no one spoke. The air in the room turned thick, as if time itself had been bottled up along with their words.

Shanks took half a step forward—then stopped. Luffy raised his hand slightly. Not to push him away. Just… he needed to finish.

"Then I saw him. That guy from before. The one with Benn, remember? Back when we ditched the nanny. He was there again. In cop clothes."

They understood the lie.

Shanks and Benn exchanged a glance—quick, nearly imperceptible. Something tightened inside Beckman. His eyes narrowed. Of course it was the same man. He’d tried getting close before. And now, in the hospital, he’d found an opening.

"He helped me get back," Luffy said—and blinked.

A small, deliberate blink. Almost silly.

But Beckman understood.
So did Sabo.

"We should seek help from the police when we lose, right?" Luffy added, straining for casualness. "Since they're so... hel-p-ful ."

Another blink. Innocent as a chocolate truffle. Complicit as a flashlight signal in a dark window.

Sabo cleared his throat, glancing around with a practiced smile.

"Absolutely. Always good to know they're... keeping an eye out ."

Ace twisted his mouth, still only half-following the conversation but staying silent. And Shanks... Shanks looked at Luffy like someone watching the sun rise where there should only be fog. As if seeing—for the thousandth time—the sheer size of that small, fearless heart that kept trying to protect them .

Shanks took a deep breath, his shoulders easing slightly.

Luffy hesitated. Then lifted his gaze straight to him.

"I just..." He swallowed hard. "I didn’t want anyone getting in trouble because of me."

Benn crouched down to his level. All traces of coldness had vanished from his face—only quiet certainty remained.

"You did the right thing, understand? But if this happens again… don’t try to handle it alone. Even if it feels like a game, you don’t have to win by yourself."

Luffy glanced away, biting the corner of his lip.

Shanks stepped closer, kneeling beside him.

"If anyone deserves blame here, it’s me," he said. "I should’ve noticed you leaving."

Luffy hesitated. Then leaned forward, resting his forehead against the redhead’s shoulder. A small gesture. But heavy with things he still didn’t know how to say.

Shanks pulled him into a tight hug. Solid. Warm. The kind that whispers: "I’m here. You’ll never have to wonder if you’re alone again."

Meanwhile, Sabo tapped at his phone with surgical precision. Benn straightened, his posture rigid now, eyes scanning the hospital’s security cameras, sensors, exits. The building was too clean. Too watchful.

Across the room, Ace still pretended not to care—but his gaze stayed locked on the door.
And Luffy?

Luffy didn’t fully grasp what he’d done—he’d just felt it was right. That man was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And Beckman—even when silent—needed to know these things.

Even if it took nothing more than a blink.

The tension still clung to the waiting room walls like fine dust—the kind light exposes but no one bothers to wipe away. The detective was gone, yet his scent—cheap cologne and arrogance—lingered in the air like a stain.

Luffy curled into Shanks’ lap, his thin arms wrapped tight around the man’s waist, face buried in the curve of his coat as if it were the one place the world couldn’t reach him. Shanks didn’t speak. Just carded his fingers slowly through the boy’s hair, his touch rhythmic as the tide—patient, constant, inevitable.

"I don’t feel good," Luffy admitted minutes later, voice small. His head had begun to throb faintly.

Sabo sat a few feet ahead, legs crossed and chin propped on his hand. But his eyes—his eyes were everywhere at once. Scanning security cameras. Nurses. The name list on the reception display. Mapping escape routes even as he pretended to skim a dengue fever pamphlet.

His name flashed on the screen with an irritating electronic beep:

"AKAGAMI SABO — LAB WORK - Room 3"

Ace scoffed, slapping the dinosaur sticker onto his own arm with more force than necessary.
"Of course they're taking your blood first. Probably tastes like sugar syrup from all that pent-up stress."

Sabo raised the dengue pamphlet like a shield, but his eyes narrowed with the sharpened edge of his retort:
"If we're comparing, yours probably tastes like expired batteries. Sour and bitter."

A muffled giggle vibrated against Shanks' coat. The redhead smiled without looking down—his fingers were already busy untangling the knots Luffy had tied in his hoodie strings.

Beckman stood in one fluid motion, his leather portfolio snapping shut with crisp finality. As he passed Sabo, his hand hovered midair between them, palm upturned— an offer, not an order.

Sabo hesitated for just one breath. His hands smoothed down his shirt in a futile attempt to iron out the wrinkles of the past before accepting. Ace leaned forward, elbows digging into his thighs, but a single glance from Benn froze his protest in place:

Protection, not prohibition.

Shanks pulled Luffy tighter against his chest, feeling the boy's racing heartbeat echo against his ribs.

"It'll be alright, Captain," he murmured, burying the words in unruly hair. It was a promise—not a guess.

Sabo followed Benn down the sterile white hallway— too white , the kind of white that stung the eyes like winter sun on fresh snow. His sneakers sank slightly into the rubberized flooring, cushioning each step as if trying to muffle even his breathing. The doors they passed bore signs in fonts too generic to feel real: "LABORATORY" in institutional blue, "ULTRASOUND" with a faded soundwave icon, "ACCESS CONTROL" where red paint peeled at the edges. Each one looked less welcoming than the last, like pages from a book Sabo didn't want to read.

The office door clicked shut behind them—the sound lingering a second longer than it should have.

Inside, the air reeked of rubbing alcohol. The vaccination poster on the wall showed smiling children with colorful syringes—none of them with fists clenched like Sabo's, none with that thin line of sweat trickling down their neck beneath the hoodie. The room was too clean, too orderly, like those movie scenes where you know something terrible is coming but everything looks perfect right before.

Sabo stepped onto the linoleum square marked for patients, his footsteps measured to hide the racing pulse beneath. He could fake calm, but Benn knew that posture—shoulders a fraction too high, chin slightly tucked, eyes scanning the room not with curiosity but for exits. It was the same tension Beckman saw in informants about to betray their bosses, or in kids who'd learned that trust was a luxury they couldn't afford.

The nurse smiled—a practiced smile that reached her eyes but not her hands, which remained busy arranging needles and cotton swabs.

"You can sit right here, sweetheart," she said, gesturing to the chair with her pen poised over the clipboard. Her lab coat was immaculate, without a single wrinkle. Sabo wondered how many children had cried in that chair before him.

He moved through the room as if navigating a minefield—arms pressed close to his sides, each step calculated to avoid drawing attention. His sneakers made no sound on the waxed floor, but his eyes betrayed too much: they darted to the stainless steel sink (so easy to wash blood from), the reinforced-lock cabinet (what could they possibly be hiding in there?), the biohazard bin (where would they discard parts of him ?). Then he saw the needle. Sterile. Sealed in its transparent packaging. Even more terrifying in its clinical perfection.

The nurse's smile never reached her eyes. Her lab coat was too pristine, the gloves too freshly snapped on.

"Have a seat here, Sabo," she said, gesturing to the chair with that saccharine tone perfected for words like quick pinch and all done .

Sabo nodded with a motion so slight it barely existed. His approach to the chair mirrored a cat testing bathwater—one tentative foot, then the other, his body perpetually braced to retreat. When he finally sat, his spine stayed arched, refusing contact with the backrest. This wasn’t a place to get comfortable.

The hoodie .three sizes too large. swallowed his slender frame, its frayed sleeves swallowing his hands like shrouds. His fingers vanished into the fabric but couldn’t conceal the near-invisible tremor racing through his knuckles.

Benn didn’t need to move. His mere presence beside the chair shifted the room’s gravity—a monolith of silent certainty. His crossed arms weren’t a barrier but a fortress built solely for Sabo. As the boy stared at the needle, Benn stared at the boy.

And for now, that was more than enough.

The nurse picked up the clipboard with mechanical precision, the click of her pen echoing like a muffled gunshot in the sterile silence. Her gaze darted between the form and Sabo—assessing, cataloging, reducing him to data points.

"Full legal name, sweetheart?"

"Akagami Sabo."

The fabricated name rolled off his tongue with dangerous ease, polished by endless repetition. Sabo fixed his eyes on a nearly invisible smudge on the pale blue wall as he recited his manufactured identity like a hollow prayer.

"Date of birth?"

"March twentieth."

Lie number two. His ribs contracted faintly, as if his body itself rebelled against the deception. But his voice remained smooth as the glass vial waiting on the tray.

The pen scratched against the paper with a high-pitched squeak that made his teeth clench.

"Blood type?"

"A."

A truth, by chance. An ironic coincidence that almost made him smirk. At least his blood was still his own in this entire charade.

The nurse didn’t look up at him, too busy checking boxes with her neat, rounded handwriting.

"Any known allergies?"

"No."

He blinked, surprised he hadn’t lied this time. In his past life, he’d discovered. the hard way. that he was allergic to bee stings. But that child. the real one. was dead on paper now.

When she finally glanced up, Sabo saw the exact moment the nurse registered his posture—shoulders tense, hands hidden in his sleeves, feet that wouldn’t stay still.

"Have you had blood work done before?"

The question hung in the air like the scent of antiseptic. Sabo felt Benn shift almost imperceptibly behind him.

"I... don't remember. Maybe..."

His voice fractured mid-sentence, dwindling to little more than a whisper. It wasn't exactly a lie—how many needles had pierced his skin in dark places, without explanation or care? The memories blurred together like abandoned medical records.

The nurse paused. Her eyes scanned the form before writing, as if deciphering hidden meaning between the lines.

"It's alright," she said, her voice dripping honey over steel. sweet enough not to cut at first. "If you feel anything, just tell me. You don't have to be brave alone."

The invitation sounded almost like a trap. Sabo bit the inside of his cheek as she turned away, the scent of latex gloves flooding the air even before their signature snap . That sound—as familiar as it was threatening—made his stomach clench.

Benn didn’t give speeches. He simply closed the distance between them in one fluid motion, his body now casting a protective shadow over the chair. His shoulder aligned with Sabo’s—not touching, but there —a silent anchor against the tide of bad memories.

The nurse leaned in, her cheap floral perfume clashing with the medicinal sting of alcohol.
"Relax your shoulders," she murmured, her gloved fingers hovering above his arm like vultures circling carrion.

Sabo forced his shoulders down, but his fists clenched in his lap until his knuckles turned white. Every muscle was on high alert, primed to flee or fight—even though he knew he would do neither.

The tourniquet tightened like a serpent. The alcohol-soaked cotton burned for an instant before the cold took over. And then—

The needle.

It pierced without ceremony, without warning, without the lying "one, two, three" adults always seemed to offer. Sabo didn’t flinch. His eyes remained fixed on a spot on the wall where the peeling paint formed a shape that faintly resembled a pirate ship. He focused on it as the tube filled with vivid red—his life trickling away in silent drops.

"All done," the nurse announced, snapping off the tourniquet. "You’re braver than most grown-ups out there."

Sabo didn’t dignify that with a response. He just exhaled slowly, releasing air he hadn’t realized he was holding. His chest ached as if he’d run a marathon, not sat motionless for ninety seconds.

The nurse typed something on the computer, her nails producing an irritating click-clack against the keyboard.
“Now we’ll update your vaccination record. Did you bring it?”

His eyes blinked slowly, as if returning from some faraway place. The card. The physical proof that he existed in this new world of carefully constructed lies.

Benn slid the envelope from his blazer’s inner pocket with practiced precision. The vaccination card emerged pristine—too white, too new, with the name Akagami Sabo printed in official lettering that seemed to scream its falseness. The blank fields waited like tiny judgments.

The nurse tilted her head, eyes narrowing as she compared the document to her system.

“French system…” she murmured, her finger hovering over the keyboard. “Do you remember the hepatitis B vaccine? Three doses?”

Sabo’s fingers twitched slightly against his knees. A murky memory surfaced—high fever, sweat-drenched sheets, someone murmuring "it’s normal" as he shivered under rough blankets.

“Maybe…” His voice sounded distant, as if echoing from somewhere else. “There was a day I got really sick after a shot.”

The nurse entered something into the computer with a decisive click.

"That helps. We’ll check which ones need boosters." Her nimble hands smoothed a sticker onto the card, the adhesive making a satisfying peel-and-stick sound. a small act of bureaucratic complicity.

When she handed back the document, Sabo took it as one might handle a fragile artifact. His eyes traced every line, every stamp, every blank space that now belonged to him. The sticker gleamed under the fluorescent lights—an official seal proving this fiction carried weight in the real world.

"There." The nurse passed him the card with a faint jingle of colorful bracelets. "Now you're official."

Sabo accepted it like a map to uncharted territory. His fingers trembled slightly as they traced each line, each number—as if deciphering a code that might reveal who he truly was, or who he was supposed to be.

Benn crouched down with the telltale rustle of a man unaccustomed to lowering himself for anyone.

Their gazes met at eye level, unhurried.

"The memories aren't yours alone to carry," Benn murmured, low enough that the words existed solely between them. "You can share that weight now."

The vaccination card crumpled slightly in Sabo's grip.

"But if I forget..." His voice fractured mid-sentence, like a branch buckling under snow "...it's as if those parts of me never existed at all."

Benn didn't hesitate:

"I remember. Shanks remembers. Luffy shouts loud enough to wake the dead." His eyes darkened with rare dry amusement. "And Ace? He'll pretend not to care, but he'll be the first to draw steel if anyone dares question you."

A huff of laughter escaped Sabo—so fleeting it might've been mistaken for a poorly disguised sigh. But Benn noticed.

The nurse shattered the moment with the plastic rattle of lollipops being shaken.

"Official reward," she declared, waving a grape-purple and a fire-red one. "Unless the young gentleman prefers... strawberry?"

Her professional smile never reached her eyes as Sabo unhesitatingly took the grape-flavored one.

Sabo squeezed the grape lollipop until the plastic wrapper crackled in protest. His eyes—still shadowed by that fleeting vulnerability—locked onto Benn's in silent plea.

"Can we say... I was first?"

The question carried more weight than it seemed. This wasn't about vaccines—it was about being chosen. About leaving his mark on this new chapter.

Benn rose with the solemn grace of a ship weighing anchor.

“You'll be first in many things," he answered, letting the promise hang in the air like cannon smoke after victory.

Their footsteps echoed in an odd harmony as they exited—Beckman's heavy boots and Sabo's quiet sneakers falling into the same rhythm. The vaccination card, now slightly crumpled at the corner, was pressed against the boy's chest like a war medal.

Benn noticed the absence before they'd taken three steps down the hallway. His neck turned at a precise angle, eyes scanning every corner of the waiting room.

Ace occupied his chair like a stray cat perched on a fence—body leaning forward, elbows propped on his knees, his sneaker tapping an irritated rhythm against the chair leg. Tap. Tap. Tap. Each impact echoed louder than necessary.

"Luffy got called first," he announced without preamble, lifting his head just enough to show one rolled eye. "Shanks went with him, of course. "

As Sabo approached, Ace scrutinized his brother with the razor-sharp gaze of a predator scenting weakness. His lips curled into a half-smirk that promised nothing but trouble.

"Did you die?" he spat, voice laced with a venom only brothers would recognize as disguised affection.

Sabo allowed the corners of his mouth to tense for a fraction of a second. the emotional equivalent of a man raising a drawbridge. He extended the vaccination card like someone presenting credentials at a hostile border.

"Lived." The new sticker gleamed under the fluorescent lights, obnoxiously cheerful. "And got a lollipop."

Ace snorted—a sound that began as derision and ended dangerously close to a stifled laugh. His eyes rolled hard enough to hurt, as if the entire universe had conspired specifically to test his patience.

Benn didn't need to raise his voice. A single look cut across the room and pinned Ace to his chair more effectively than any command.

"Ace. You're up."

The electronic panel emitted a shrill beep , its red lights flashing like demonic eyes before displaying:

BENN ACE — LABORATORY COLLECTION - ROOM 2

The letters flickered with bureaucratic finality, too official to challenge. Ace released a sigh that started at his feet—a hurricane of hot air and resentment. He rose like a condemned man walking to the gallows, his shoulders casting a shadow that swallowed half the waiting room.

As he passed Sabo, his elbow connected with his brother's shoulder with surgical precision—not hard enough to hurt, but not soft enough to ignore. A coded telegram written in controlled violence.

"Good luck," Sabo murmured, rolling the lollipop between his teeth. Sugar laced his voice with poisoned sweetness. "They say the third needle hurts the most."

Ace responded with a universal gesture that needed no translation, his middle finger rising like a battle standard. Benn observed this brotherly ritual with a nasal exhale that might have been resignation—or perhaps the strangled beginnings of a laugh.

Across the room, Luffy dangled from the examination table like a drunken monkey, his legs swinging in chaotic rhythm. The disposable paper sheet beneath him crinkled in plastic protest with every movement. His heels drummed against the metal frame in an irregular clang-clang-clang — the sound of a broken clock counting down to the next disaster.

The nurse wound the tourniquet with ballerina precision, her fingers dancing along the blue elastic before cinching it with professional firmness. Luffy's arm looked too fragile under the constraint—skin nearly translucent, veins resisting exposure as if they knew what awaited them.

"Alright, sweetheart?" Her voice dripped with that particular saccharine quality found only in hospitals and traps. "Just a quick little poke, okay?"

Luffy scrunched his nose, his dark eyes locked on his forearm as if seeing something far beyond those four walls.

"I'm hungry..." The words oozed from his lips like thick syrup, each syllable requiring visible effort.

Shanks leaned forward, his knees cracking with the movement. The exaggerated face he made—tongue lolling, eyes rolling—would have drawn laughter any other time.

"Whole roast chicken after," he promised, his fingers drumming an imaginary military march on Luffy's knee. "With that golden crust that cracks when you cut into it, remember?"

But Luffy just swallowed hard, his eyelids fluttering like hummingbird wings. The needle pierced his skin without ceremony. No flinch. No trembling chin. Just that unnatural stillness that made the hairs on Shanks' arms stand on end.

The blood flowed sluggishly into the tube, darker than expected, as if it too were exhausted. The nurse bit the inside of her cheek but kept her professional mask—just a faint crease between her eyebrows betraying that something wasn't following the usual script.

And then Luffy spoke, his voice barely there:

"Shanks… everything's… spinning..."

It took Shanks half a second too long to react—the exact time his brain needed to recognize this wasn't drama, wasn't charm. It was real.

Luffy's eyes rolled back without warning, his body going limp like a ragdoll.

"Luffy!" Shanks lunged forward, catching him just before he toppled off the exam table.

The nurse let out a startled breath, her deft hands moving the armrest aside in one fluid motion. The instruments on the tray clinked softly as she pushed them away, her movements precise but devoid of panic.

Luffy hung in Shanks' arms like a limp puppet, his damp forehead plastering unruly strands of hair to pale skin. Shanks cradled the boy's weight carefully, one steady hand supporting his neck—not as if handling fragile glass, but like clutching something precious slipping through his fingers.

"He's completely limp..." The observation slipped out in a hushed tone, more to himself than to the nurse. Shanks swallowed hard, trying to ignore how Luffy's body seemed to have forgotten how to hold itself together.

The nurse was already wrapping the blood pressure cuff around Luffy's other arm, her fingers squeezing the bulb in a steady rhythm. The fabric inflated with a soft hiss, the digital display blinking as it calculated. The numbers that appeared made her lips press into a thin line.

"Eighty-four over fifty," she announced, more to the chart than to Shanks. Her movement was precise as she grabbed the lancet device, not hesitating before the quick prick to Luffy's finger.

The first drop of blood was hesitant, barely forming at the tip. A slight extra pressure coaxed out another—small, but enough. The monitor delivered its verdict in glaring red digits:

64 mg/dL

"Hypoglycemia," she said, calmly pressing the emergency call button on the panel. "We'll need the doctor. Low blood pressure and glucose levels far below expected."

Her fingers were already working to prepare an IV line as she spoke, her trained movements leaving no room for error—yet devoid of the urgency that might have shattered what little composure Shanks had left.

The blue ceiling lights began pulsing slowly, casting intermittent shadows across the walls. The sound of hurried footsteps echoed down the hallway—still distant, but approaching with controlled urgency.

Shanks held Luffy firmly against his chest, his chin resting atop the boy's disheveled hair. His hand traced slow circles on Luffy's back—an automatic, comforting gesture, even knowing it might make no difference.

"He only complained about being hungry..." Shanks' voice came out hoarse, laced with pained bewilderment. His fingers tightened slightly around the boy's shoulder, as if to reassure himself Luffy was still there.

The nurse swiftly tore open a glucose packet with practiced movements. The air in the room seemed to have thickened, each breath more labored than the last.

Cradled in Shanks' arms, Luffy's lips moved soundlessly. His eyelashes fluttered like hummingbird wings, struggling to open.

"Hey, Anchor..." Shanks murmured softly, his warm hands framing Luffy's pale face. "We've still got that chicken to devour, remember? The one with the crispy skin you love..."

The corners of Luffy's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. Not quite a smile, but a response nonetheless. Life returning to those features.

Shanks drew a deep breath, his facial muscles still tense. The worry lines etching his face no longer stemmed from the fainting spell itself, but from the aftershock still reverberating through his chest—that terrifying moment when his brightest star had seemed to simply blink out of existence.

The sliding door opened smoothly, revealing the impeccable figure of Dr. Kinokozawa. His measured footsteps echoed through the room, the non-slip soles of his shoes emitting soft creaks against the floor. The physician balanced a modern tablet and traditional clipboard with natural ease, his fingers moving between the two technologies with practiced familiarity.

"64 mg/dL capillary blood glucose, blood pressure below expected range," he stated, adjusting his glasses with a habitual motion that spoke of decades of repetition. His clinical gaze quickly assessed Shanks, catching the tension in the man's shoulders before settling on Luffy. "When was his last full meal?"

Shanks rubbed the back of his neck, fingers tangling in his own red hair.

"Just had milk this morning..." Luffy's voice escaped weakly before Shanks could answer, surprising everyone by demonstrating he was more conscious than he appeared.

The doctor offered the boy a brief smile before shifting his professional gaze back to Shanks.

"Fasting protocols need to be adjusted for children," he explained while recording the data, his voice striking a perfect balance between medical rigor and understanding. "Especially for patients with accelerated metabolisms like his."

His pen glided smoothly across the paper before he fixed Shanks with a more attentive look:

"We'll stabilize him now and then discuss whether further tests are needed. Sometimes young bodies operate differently than textbooks describe."

The doctor leaned forward, his knees bending with a soft pop until he was at perfect eye level with Luffy. His movement was measured—not so close as to startle, nor so distant as to seem detached.

"Luffy," he called, keeping his tone gentle yet clear, "these fainting spells... do they always happen when you go too long without eating?"

Luffy blinked slowly, as if adjusting his focus. His eyes, still slightly glassy, brightened when they registered the doctor's attentive face. A mischievous expression lit up his pale features:

"Only when Ace hides my food!" His voice gained strength as he accused his absent brother, his arms making weak but animated gestures.

Shanks couldn't suppress a sigh that turned into laughter—a rough sound carrying months of unspoken worries.

"The kid exaggerates, doctor," Shanks interjected, his fingers unconsciously drumming on the edge of the exam table. "But it's true he gets... different when he goes too long without eating. Irritable, slower. We always thought it was just hunger talking louder."

Dr. Kinokozawa nodded slowly, his analytical eyes studying Luffy like a navigator reading stars—seeking patterns in what appeared chaotic.

"It could be as simple as a fast metabolism," he conceded, twirling his pen between fingers with professional ease. "Or perhaps something warranting closer attention, like reactive hypoglycemia." His eyes met Shanks', conveying reassurance without downplaying the situation. "What matters is we now know what to watch for. And we have ways to help."

The doctor gave an almost imperceptible nod, and the nurse immediately approached with the medication cart, her deft hands preparing the IV drip as he spoke:

"We'll need a detailed glycemic curve—fasting basal insulin and postprandial response." His fingers tapped lightly on the tablet as he considered. "In the meantime, maintain the dextrose drip and offer small sips of sweetened fluids."

When he turned to Luffy, his demeanor transformed completely—shoulders relaxed, voice warming with paternal kindness:

"How about we start with some orange juice, champ?"

Luffy rubbed his sleepy eyes before answering, but his face soon brightened:

"The kind with little fruit pieces?"

The nurse couldn't suppress a genuine laugh as she opened the compact refrigerator:

"Today we only have the smooth kind, little adventurer." She shook the juice box, making the liquid slosh invitingly inside. "But it's plenty sweet, I promise!"

When Luffy received the juice, he cradled it like treasure, his fingers still trembling slightly as they guided the straw to his mouth. Each sip seemed to bring more color back to his cheeks.

Shanks finally surrendered to exhaustion, collapsing into the chair beside them. His elbow rested on his knee, hand partially covering his face—though not enough to hide the watchful gaze still tracking Luffy's every movement.

Dr. Kinokozawa closed the medical chart with a definitive snap:

"We'll monitor him closely. If needed, we'll adjust his diet and possibly schedule a specialist consultation." His eyes met Shanks', projecting professional reassurance. "It's manageable. Just requires attention, like any good ship needs maintenance."

Shanks responded with a slow nod, his body still tense but beginning to accept relief. When his gaze found Luffy's—now brighter, more present—he saw in them a reflection of his own worry gradually fading away.

And then, like the sun breaking through after a storm, a genuine smile emerged between them—still fragile, but full of promise.

Ace punched the armrests of his chair, making the leather creak in protest.

"What kind of joke is this?" His voice cut through the air like a saber, too sharp for the confined space of the exam room. "Sabo got checked and that was it. Why do I have to go through this interrogation?"

His entire body was a manifesto of resistance—ribs puffed out like sails against the wind, legs swinging with the rhythm of frustrated escape. The ridiculous sticker on his arm (that punk dinosaur with its neon lightning bolts) seemed to mock the situation, its adhesive irritating skin already sensitized by tests.

Benn didn't even need to look. His breathing was as controlled as a rifle's recoil—exhaling through his mouth in a measured stream that clearly said 'I'm counting to ten... and you won't like what happens at eleven.'

Benn's response came like a coup de grâce, precise and merciless:

"Sabo didn't pass out at lunch." A calculated pause. "Or shake like a newborn pup in the cold for five minutes afterward."

Ace swallowed hard. His chin jutted forward in a defiant gesture that couldn't disguise how his right hand clamped around his left wrist—pressing exactly where his racing pulse jumped against his fingers. The bitter aftertaste of that memory flooded back: the metallic tang of blood when he'd bitten his tongue falling, the sour stench of spilled food, and worst—Shanks' ever-playful eyes wide with genuine terror.

The ensuing silence had texture—thick as air before a storm. Even the fluorescent hum seemed to intensify, vibrating in unison with his exposed nerves. On the shelf, a stuffed bear in a doctor's coat stared at Ace with shiny button eyes, its artificial cuteness an affront to the moment's rawness.

His eyes locked onto the doorknob, anticipating every click of its mechanism. When that door opened, it would deliver a verdict he wasn't ready to hear—yet one he'd secretly suspected for a long time.

Ace dug his nails into the armchair's upholstery, the leather releasing a muffled creak.
"Complete waste of time," he grumbled to the empty space before him, avoiding Benn's reflection in the window glass.

The man merely adjusted his suit sleeve with surgical precision, the fabric folds yielding exactly as intended. When he crossed his legs, the immaculate hem revealed a fleeting metallic glint—the sole of his Oxford slicing through the air like the blade Ace knew was always there, even when unseen.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway like measured sentences. The doorknob turned with the decisive click of a revolver being cocked.

Ace transformed into a drawn bow—vertebra by vertebra straightening, the tendons in his hands standing taut beneath skin as he gripped the seat. An ancestral drumbeat pounded in his ears: run, fight, vanish.

Benn didn't even blink.

"Just hear what he has to say," he murmured, his voice so quiet it nearly dissolved into the fluorescent hum. "Then you can do whatever you want."

The door revealed Dr. Murayama framed in manufactured calm. His thin-framed glasses perched on his nose like justice's scales, reflecting light at calculated angles. The immaculate white lab coat draped over his form like a flag of surrender Ace refused to raise.

"Good morning," The voice was firm yet gentle. "Ace, correct?"

Ace nodded with a curt, wary motion. present but guarded.

The doctor pulled up a swivel chair and sat across the desk. No computer in sight. Just a clipboard, pen, and notepad adorned with subtle cartoon characters—likely left there to soothe younger patients.

He leaned forward, interlaced fingers resting atop the cartoonish notepad. The childish doodles on the pages clashed grotesquely with the gravity of the moment.

"I've reviewed your file noting frequent fainting spells, Ace," he said, making the name sound like an anchor in the sea of the boy's resistance.
"Let's piece this together. Before fainting... what did your senses register?"

Ace pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. The scent of that lunch came rushing back with painful clarity—garlic sizzling golden in the pan, lemon freshly squeezed by Shanks, steaming rice. Flavors that had turned into traps.

"Everything was..." His voice came out rough, and he had to swallow hard "...normal. Until it wasn't. It's not like sleeping. I just feel tired, and then everything goes dark."

His fingers traced invisible patterns on the armrest, replicating the spiral the world had made before fading to black.

The doctor wrote calmly, giving each word time to settle. When he looked up, there was an understanding in his eyes that made Ace shrink back.

"And when you wake up?" he asked, his pen gliding to the next blank line.

Ace closed his eyes for a beat too long. The memories returned in disjointed flashes:

"Voices. So many voices." His chest tightened. "And... this hollowness. Like they'd drained the marrow from my bones."

Benn, until then a statue at his side, shifted almost imperceptibly. His right index finger extended a millimeter— the physical equivalent of a stifled sigh.

Dr. Murayama nodded, his pen coming to a momentary rest.

"What you're describing..." he chose his words with deliberate care "...isn't laziness, nor weakness. Your body was speaking a language you're still learning to understand."

The window cast shimmering light patterns across the floor, tracing escape routes Ace knew to be illusory. His knees began bouncing again, keeping time with the racing heartbeat no one else seemed to hear.

The doctor tilted his head, light glinting off his glasses as he studied Ace. The office air hung heavy with the subtle sting of hand sanitizer and the oak desk's woody aroma.

"These involuntary blackouts..." he articulated each word carefully, like untangling a delicate thread "do they occur even after a full night's sleep?"

The window frame creaked softly in the outside breeze as Ace's gaze flickered toward Benn. Just for an instant—a silent plea for backup—before he swallowed hard and turned back to face the doctor.

"It's like..." His fingers drummed against his knee. "...when everything gets too quiet, my eyelids turn to lead. I only realize I've been out when someone jabs me awake." His chin lifted in defiance. "But it's not laziness."

Dr. Murayama leaned back slightly from the desk, creating breathing room between them. His hands spread in a broad, neutral gesture.

"Laziness would be choosing not to act. What you're describing is your body demanding what it requires." He opened the drawer with a smooth motion, withdrawing forms that glided across the polished surface until they settled before Ace. "I want to understand these demands better. An EEG to map your brainwaves, a polysomnography to observe your sleep patterns..."

The pen's tip tapped each listed test, small tocks marking the rhythm of his explanation.

"...and possibly a daytime sleep latency test to measure how quickly you doze off. All painless just sensors attached like stickers."

A cloud's shadow passed over the window, momentarily darkening Ace's face as he furrowed his brow:

"So...does this mean I'm defective?" The question came out harsher than intended, his nails pressing faint indentations into the forms.

Dr. Murayama relaxed his shoulders, allowing a smile that softened the worry lines on his face.

"Your brain isn't broken," he soothed, fingers tracing circles in the air. "It simply operates at a different rhythm. Could be narcolepsy, yes." Before Ace could tense up, he continued: "But it might also be your body responding to rapid growth or stress you don't even realize you're carrying."

Ace leaned forward, his elbows meeting his knees with a dull thud.

"And if it is?" he challenged, yet a spark of hope flickered beneath the roughness.

The doctor clasped his hands together on the desk, forming a bridge between them.

"If it is, you gain a superpower: knowing your limits." His eyes shone with genuine understanding. "That doesn't erase a single ounce of your strength. It just teaches you where the steps are so you won't stumble."

The silence that followed was comfortable. Ace studied the carpet pattern, then nodded with a nearly imperceptible motion—but it was enough.

Dr. Murayama filled out the orders in perfect clinical script, handing them to Benn with a professional touch on the shoulder.

"We'll take it step by step. You guide me through what you feel, and I'll explain the path. Deal?"

"Yeah." Ace swallowed the usual reluctance that would typically accompany his agreement.

The air in the office seemed renewed, carrying away some of the built-up tension. Benn tucked away the papers with a practiced motion, his gaze meeting Ace's. As they left the room and began walking down the hallway side by side, Ace's hands involuntarily clutched at Beckman's sleeve, his fingers lightly crumpling the fabric between them.

"Less painful than taking a bullet, wouldn't you say?"

Ace glanced at the ridiculous band-aid they'd placed on his arm after the blood draw. His lips twitched upward before he could stop them.

"Could've at least put a dragon on it. Or a flaming skull."

Beckman let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a muffled laugh—something rare enough to make Ace raise his eyebrows, though he chose not to comment.

As they turned down the hallway, Sabo was still in the waiting room, but now with a handful of medical pamphlets scattered across his lap. Post-Surgical Care, Signs of Dehydration. It was his way of distracting himself, an attempt to make time move faster.

Shanks still hadn't returned.

"You think something happened to them?" Sabo asked, his fingers crimping the paper. His voice was steady, but Beckman noticed how his eyes kept cutting to the wall clock every ten seconds exactly.

"I don't know." Beckman didn't lie. Ace and Sabo both seemed unsettled by Luffy's prolonged absence. "But we'll find out."

At the reception desk, as they waited in a short line, Ace's foot tapped against the floor at an alarming rate, while Sabo kept glancing around as if expecting their youngest brother to materialize at any moment. Beckman remained silent—he'd never quite mastered handling nervous teenagers.

"We need information about Akagami Luffy."

The woman looked over the trio: the impeccably suited man with sniper's eyes, the teenager who looked ready to burn the place down, and the blond boy whose expression clearly said "try lying, I'll laugh at your funeral." She swallowed hard, typing into the computer with trembling fingers.

"Room 4. Third hallway, take the stairs, pediatric wing."

Ace didn't wait. He was already moving before she finished speaking, his footsteps echoing like gunshots down the empty corridor. Sabo and Beckman exchanged a glance.

And then they followed.

The harsh white light of the room no longer bothered him as much—perhaps because Luffy lay half-drowsy with his arm outstretched, the IV drip slowly feeding into his veins. The nurse passed by periodically with a new lancet device, checking his blood sugar from the same sore little finger now dotted with tiny red marks.

He didn't even complain anymore. Just muttered softly when the alcohol-soaked cotton came afterward.

Shanks remained by the bedside, perched on an uncomfortable folding chair, his body hunched forward with elbows on knees. He watched Luffy in silence. A subtle weariness lived in his eyes—not from lack of sleep, but from sustained tension. The kind of vigilance only learned when caring for someone fragile.

Luffy tried to maintain his usual cheer, but his voice came out weaker than normal. Even the lollipop he'd earned earlier lay forgotten by the bed.

The door opened with a soft click, and Dr. Kinokozawa appeared with his lab coat unbuttoned and an expression too calm to be disinterested.

"Mr. Akagami," he said in that diplomatic tone of someone measuring every word, "could you come with me for a moment?"

Shanks rose slowly, his hand automatically smoothing through his own tousled hair as he stood. The chair creaked with the movement.

Luffy lifted his face slightly—his cheeks now held more color, but his eyes remained somewhat glassy.

"Will it take long?" he asked, his voice drowsy, almost childlike.

Shanks stepped closer and carefully rested his hand atop Luffy's head, his fingers sinking gently into the dark, unruly strands.

"Just a minute. I'll be right back," he said, his deceptively soft tone concealing far more than it revealed.

Luffy nodded before turning his face into the pillow, as if to say it was fine—but also that he didn't want to watch the door close.

Shanks followed the doctor out, his steps measured but his shoulders carrying all the weight his voice hadn't betrayed. The silence left behind was punctuated only by the steady beep of monitors—and the sharp chirp of another blood droplet being measured.

Shanks heard the door click shut behind them before they moved further down the hall—clearly meant to ensure Luffy wouldn't overhear. Dr. Kinokozawa turned to face him, clipboard in hand, his expression now markedly more guarded than during the examination.

"I've just received the lab results," he began, his voice steady. "The blood tests for your... children."

Shanks felt his body stiffen. He remained standing, his gaze locked onto the doctor.

"And...?" he asked, struggling to keep his tone neutral.

"I found the data somewhat concerning," the doctor replied, turning the clipboard toward himself to review the notes. "All three children. Ace, Sabo, and Luffy. show lab results consistent with mild to moderate malnutrition. Iron levels below ideal. Declining protein markers. Severely low vitamin D and B12. These findings don't happen by accident."

Shanks clenched his jaw.

"Is there something wrong?" he asked, more pointedly.

The doctor closed the clipboard with a drawn-out sigh.

"That's what you need to tell me," he said, meeting Shanks' gaze directly. "Luffy also bears old marks across his body. Poorly healed scars, scratches in unusual places... For a child his age, these raise red flags."

Shanks felt his stomach twist. Not from guilt—but from recognizing exactly what was being implied.

"What are you suggesting, Doctor?" His voice came out low, strained.

Kinokozawa didn't hesitate.

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm doing what I must. This is part of my duty as a physician. When I see signs like these, I have both a legal and ethical obligation to inquire. I don't know your story. I don't know the full history of these children. But I need to ask: Are they safe with you?"

A thick silence followed—the kind that couldn't be filled with quick justifications. Shanks dragged a hand down his face, exhausted. When he spoke again, his voice was more measured.

"I understand what you're doing. And... yes, they're safe. But the truth is... they didn't come from safety. None of them did. We've been... gathering the pieces and trying to build something new. Something stable."

Dr. Kinokozawa studied him. Still attentive. But something in his posture began to soften.

"Were they neglected before? Or subjected to violence?"

Shanks hesitated. Then nodded slightly.

"I can't share many details. But I can give you my word: whatever happened to them before... won't happen again. Not while they're with me."

The doctor leaned back in his chair. Drew a deep breath.

"I understand. And I appreciate your cooperation."

Another brief silence. The tension hadn't fully dissipated yet.

"I'm not here to attack you, Mr. Akagami. I'm here to protect those boys. And... if you're doing that too, then we're on the same side."

Shanks exhaled slowly.

"I need to speak with Luffy alone. Please wait here for now." He paused, his sigh carrying what almost sounded like regret. "It's standard procedure."

"Of course," Shanks agreed. There was nothing he could do now but wait.

Shanks leaned against the corridor wall, his shoulders slumped as if bearing an invisible weight. His usual carefree smile had vanished, replaced by an empty expression—hands buried in his coat pockets, eyes fixed on the floor.

He heard footsteps approaching. But he didn't look up, his distant gaze wandering through old memories.

Ace was the first to notice. He stopped abruptly, nearly making Sabo bump into him. He sensed something was wrong—and realized Luffy wasn’t with him.

"Shanks. Where’s Luffy?" His voice came out rough, but there was a crack of worry.

Shanks still didn’t raise his eyes. "He’s in there." He finally met Ace’s gaze before continuing, "He needed some additional tests. Possible hypoglycemia diagnosis. doesn’t seem serious… but—"

Silence. He was searching for the right words, his eyes flickering to Beckman for a few seconds, seeking direction.

"But?" Sabo pressed, his brow furrowing. Something wasn’t right.

Shanks was never this still. Never. Even in the worst situations, he'd crack some stupid joke or wink like a drunken pirate.

"What happened?" Sabo asked, his fingers tightening around the straps of his backpack.

Shanks finally looked at them. His eyes—usually so full of light—had gone dull, as if someone had extinguished the sun inside him.

"The doctor asked to speak with Luffy alone." He didn't beat around the bush, didn't lie or try to soften the blow. "They think we're hurting you." Shanks' voice was hoarse, like he'd swallowed broken glass.

Ace felt something hot and bitter rise in his throat. Anger.

"You're kidding, right?" He took a step forward, fists clenched. "When we were actually getting beaten and starving, nobody gave a damn! Now that we've got food and a roof, they suddenly care?"

Benn, who had remained silent until now, placed a firm hand on Ace's shoulder—not to restrain him, but to remind him: This isn't against us. It's against the system that failed you.

Sabo bit his lip. His mind raced too fast: What if they call child services? What if they separate us? What if—

"And Luffy?" Sabo asked, his voice softer than he'd expected. "He must be scared."

Shanks closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, there was something dangerous in his gaze—beyond anger, beneath the sorrow. There was determination.

"No one is taking you away." He said it quietly, but with steel. "Not Luffy. Not you. Not Ace. No one. Rule number four." He recited it like a vow, like an unbreakable law.

The examination room door finally opened, the doctor emerging with measured steps. Sabo and Ace didn't waste a second before slipping inside, searching for their youngest brother.

"I'd like to speak with you both," Dr. Kinokozawa said, approaching Shanks and Benn. His voice carried something indecipherable that made Shanks tense. Beckman raised an eyebrow, silently questioning what new development awaited them.

"Yes," Benn replied in that curt, no-nonsense tone of his.

"First, I apologize if I caused any distress. I hope you understand that certain measures are simply hospital protocol." He adjusted his tie—a nervous tic. "Luffy's a good boy. And from what I've seen, he's in capable hands with you."

Shanks lowered his gaze. A relieved sigh escaped him, giving way to a weary smile—it had been an exhaustingly long day. Beckman noted how tension still clung to his shoulders.

"And the diagnosis?" Benn cut straight to the point, unwilling to prolong this conversation any longer than necessary.

"He experienced a hypoglycemic episode," the doctor reported, consulting his clipboard. "Lab tests revealed blood glucose levels below normal range. At rest, his sugar levels dropped to what we consider critical values, which would explain the disorientation and loss of consciousness he displayed."

Beckman furrowed his brow. "Is this serious?"

"Not necessarily," Kinokozawa replied calmly. "This appears to be functional hypoglycemia, also called reactive hypoglycemia. Essentially, his body overproduces insulin after consuming certain foods—particularly those rich in simple sugars or with a high glycemic index. This triggers an abrupt blood sugar crash approximately two to four hours after meals."

The doctor sorted through several pages before continuing: "There's no evidence of diabetes or more serious hormonal imbalances. However, it's crucial he maintains a balanced diet with regular meal intervals, avoiding prolonged fasting periods."

He handed the paperwork to Shanks—a copy of the medical record, prescriptions, and a referral for specialized follow-up. "I recommend consulting a nutritionist. A tailored meal plan will help prevent further episodes. In some cases, we also suggest monitoring by an endocrinologist, purely as a precaution."

Shanks skimmed the first lines of the report. Beside him, Beckman already seemed to be mapping out their next steps.

"Here's my card if you need anything." He held out the card, which Beckman took without breaking eye contact. "He should be ready for discharge within the hour."

"Understood. Thank you for your assistance—have a good day." The doctor gave a slight bow before Beckham shaking Shanks' hand and guiding him back to the room where Sabo and Ace had practically piled onto Luffy, bombarding him with questions.

"How romantic of you, darling," Shanks remarked, his voice deliberately soft as he maintained a sarcastic tone while staring at their intertwined hands—a desperate attempt to pretend everything was fine.

Beckman lifted his gaze to meet Shanks', his expression steady but layered with poorly concealed concern.

"You're still not okay. You should rest for a while."

Shanks held his stare for a few seconds before letting out a laugh. this time genuine, quiet. The tension in his shoulders eased slightly.

"Seriously romantic," he repeated, now with a playful smirk tugging at his lips.

From across the room, a familiar voice sliced through the moment:

"Are you two gonna kiss now?" Ace blurted out with a mischievous grin, squeezing Luffy's hand as he leaned forward slightly.

Sabo made an exaggerated grimace, wrinkling his nose. "Ugh, disgusting..." he muttered, but couldn't even finish before both boys burst into scandalous laughter, thoroughly pleased with the chaos they'd just sown.

Shanks watched the scene with a lopsided smile tugging at his lips. Beckman merely raised an eyebrow, stoic—though the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed his amusement.

"Shanks! When are we eating meat?" Luffy yelled, still splayed across the bed but with eyes shining bright.

Chapter Text

The car seat was too soft. Shanks sank his fingers into the synthetic leather, counting the stitches like a man anchoring himself.

"Can we all agree Luffy is Shanks’ favorite son?" Sabo asked, glancing at Shanks, who lounged in the passenger seat as Beckman drove. The car was already nearing the restaurant—supposedly the place with the best meat in the city.

The sharp scent of car cleaner tangled with the lingering hospital antiseptic clinging to their clothes. Luffy was sprawled with his head on Ace’s shoulder, his breathing steady now, though the shadows under his eyes remained stark.

"I’m the favorite?" Luffy mumbled, lifting his head slightly to peer at them all.

"I don’t have a favorite," Shanks replied, genuine indignation roughening his voice more than he’d intended. Favorites mean hierarchy, and hierarchies are just synonyms for suffering , he thought, his own family flashing through his mind.

The restaurant emerged between towering buildings, its marble columns catching the sunset like a gilded invitation. His stomach clenched.

"Really? Because I’m pretty sure Luffy mentioned wanting to eat at a place like this before," Ace shot back, crossing his arms.

"Pure coincidence," Shanks said, twisting to glare at the three of them crammed in the backseat. Ace arched a brow, defiant.

"Hmm. Delicious coincidence, then."

Beckman adjusted the rearview mirror with a precise flick—just enough for the boys to catch their own reflections pinned under that icy stare. "Stop needling Shanks." A calculated pause. "I’m the one who picked the restaurant."

The boys kept arguing, but their words dissolved into a distant hum. The billboard now filled the windshield—too gold, too large, like an altar for people who’d never needed to ask twice. The car glided to a stop in front of the restaurant, its tinted windows mirroring the imposing facade of dark wood and gilded trim.

Beckman killed the engine in one smooth motion and handed the keys to the waiting valet, the metallic jingle making Shanks blink fast, like a man snapping back to reality. His gaze swept the surroundings a fraction longer than necessary—old habits died hard.

"Reservation for Benn Beckman," Beckman said, his voice as polished as the reception’s marble.

The blonde woman in a navy vest scanned her list with a professional smile—one that flickered into recognition the moment her eyes landed on him. "Ah, yes! Right this way, please."

Luffy was already squirming behind them like an overexcited puppy, nose twitching at the air. "Meat smell! Good smell!" His eyes shone with lighthouse intensity, and Sabo had to grip his hood to keep him from bolting before they even reached the table.

"Control, Captain," Shanks laughed, stretching his arms overhead. The motion was cut short by an exaggerated yawn that made Ace roll his eyes.

"You look like a satisfied cat," Beckman observed dryly, adjusting his cuff.

"And you look like a stuffy butler, darling. Relax—we’re out of the hospital now." Shanks slung an arm around Beckman’s shoulders, fingertips still faintly trembling. Beckman just sighed—and didn’t pull away.

The second floor stood empty exactly as Beckman had planned. The fading afternoon light filtered through heavy velvet curtains, bathing everything in amber and creating an intimate atmosphere that clashed with the restaurant's lively buzz below. The widely spaced tables resembled isolated islands in a sea of silence.

Luffy climbed onto the chair at the round table's center like a pirate boarding a ship's deck. His knees knocked against the solid wood surface, making the silverware clink in protest.

"Did you rent out the entire floor?" Sabo asked, running fingers over the glossy leather menu. His sharp gaze swept the room, analyzing every detail - wine bottles lined up like soldiers, crystal glasses gleaming excessively. Beckman recognized that look: the same one Sabo used when planning heists.

"Business," Beckman answered, sitting with the posture of a man who'd never leaned back in a chair. His jacket's fabric barely whispered. "Easier to keep... situations controlled."

Ace hooked a chair with his foot, making it screech against the oak flooring.

"Translation: you don't trust us to behave in public."

Shanks laughed, already holding a water glass—how he'd gotten it so fast remained a mystery worthy of his talents. The ice cubes clinked as he raised it like a champagne flute.

"Beckman's just being cautious, brat. After the sushi bar incident..."

It was then that Beckman noticed the shift: Shanks’ posture, suddenly too upright; the fingers holding the glass with an elegance that felt almost foreign; the aura that now belonged more to an aristocratic parlor than the alleyways where they used to hide. It was as if, in that setting, he’d become someone else—or perhaps remembered someone he used to be.

“IT WASN’T MY FAULT!” Luffy yelled, flailing his arms like an octopus mid-attack. A passing waiter bumped the table, nearly toppling a salt shaker. “The fish was still moving! I was just helping!”

Shanks smiled, and for a brief moment, Beckman saw memory flicker behind his eyes: Luffy plunging his hands into the sushi bar’s aquarium to “rescue” a live snapper, tossing it into the ornamental fountain like buried treasure. Water splashing across all the patrons, and Shanks laughing so hard he cried while footing a tripled bill for damages.

“And how exactly were you helping?” Ace asked, prodding, his grin barely hidden behind the menu.

Beckman closed his eyes for a long second, as if appealing to the heavens for patience, while Sabo hid a chuckle behind his own menu.

The waiter—a middle-aged man with impressively thick eyebrows—approached, his expression carefully neutral.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. Would you like to start with some appetizers?”

Shanks didn’t hesitate. “Yes. All of them.”

The waiter blinked. “A-all of them, sir?”

“Everything on the menu. Twice.” Shanks smiled—the kind of smile that made people wonder if he was joking and decide it wasn’t worth the risk to ask. “We’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?” Ace muttered to Sabo.

“Surviving the hospital, I think,” Sabo murmured back, watching as Luffy leaned across the table, trying to read the menu upside down.

Shanks rested his chin on his interlaced fingers, elbows planted firmly on the pristine white tablecloth. His smile turned razor-sharp as he looked up at the waiter:
“And a bottle of your finest red. Something that makes us forget hospitals ever existed.”

Without lifting his gaze from the menu, Beckman reached out and rotated Luffy’s menu right-side up with a single, practiced motion. His voice sliced through the air like a sheathed dagger:

“Cancel the wine. Fresh juice. For everyone.”

His gaze slid first to Luffy, who was licking his lips at the photo of a bleeding steak, then to Ace, who was pretending not to be impressed by the prices, and finally to Sabo, already calculating the caloric value of each dish. At last, his eyes landed on Shanks—who rolled his eyes with exaggerated exasperation.

“Killjoy.”

Beckman leaned forward, fingertips resting on the table. The chandelier’s light caught on his glasses as he spoke—low enough for only Shanks to hear:
“You took methylphenidate today. Don’t even think about mixing it with alcohol.”

It was less a request and more a reminder—that particular tone that said I counted your pills this morning.

Shanks opened his mouth to protest, but a crash cut him off—Luffy, of course, had fallen off his chair trying to reach the breadbasket at the center of the table. With a theatrical sigh, Shanks bent down, grabbed him by the collar of his coat, and hoisted him back into the seat with a motion as automatic as it was affectionate.

“You’re going to break the table before the food even arrives,” he muttered, smoothing the boy’s messy hair with the flat of his palm.

Luffy laughed, still halfway upside down, and Shanks laughed with him—that open, unguarded laugh that made the world, for a moment, feel simple again. Ace and Sabo exchanged a quick glance—as if, in that moment, they weren’t seeing the red-haired fool who’d agreed to play the role of responsible adult, or the man they called “dad” in public, but their old partner-in-crime.

It was in that lull of laughter that Sabo leaned back in his chair, waiting for the waiter to finish setting down the starters before speaking. His eyes narrowed, carrying that sharp analytical glint that always surfaced when he smelled something beyond the obvious.

“How rich are you, exactly, to book out an entire floor of a restaurant?” he asked, those blue eyes scanning Beckman with the precision of a lie detector.

Beckman didn’t flinch as he folded his napkin across his lap. “Rich enough for this to be a tax nuisance, not an expense.”

Shanks nearly spat out his water. Then he added,
“Translation: ‘rich enough to buy this place ten times over, but prefers not to catch the tax office’s attention.’”
He nudged Sabo under the table with his foot.
“Wrong question, kid. The real one is: how many of these places does he own?”

Luffy chewed at the air, imagining. “As many as the hamburgers I can eat in a day?”

“More,” Beckman replied flatly, but the corner of his mouth twitched. “Though we don’t usually measure wealth in units of restaurants.”

Ace snorted, tossing a piece of bread onto the table. “Okay, but why rent out the whole floor? It’s not like we bite.” A beat. “Well, Luffy bites—but only if the food tries to run.”

That’s when the waiter returned with a pitcher of juice, circling the table to fill their glasses. Beckman waited until he’d walked away before answering, lowering his voice:

“Three reasons.” He counted them off on his fingers. “First: keeps ‘casually curious’ dirty cops from showing up at the next table. Second” another finger “no one sees if Luffy decides to eat the plate with the food.” He shot a look at the boy, who already had half a meatball stuffed into his mouth. “Third” he raised his middle finger “if we need to discuss... family business, there are no witnesses.”

Sabo nibbled on an olive, thoughtful. “Fair enough. Still feels excessive.” His left eye twitched—the one Beckman had come to recognize as his investigative mode switching on. “So... how many zeroes are in your bank account?”

Shanks burst out laughing as Beckman rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He’s not gonna tell you, Sabo. Men like Beckman measure wealth in more... practical terms.” His eyes glinted with mischief. “So tell me, Beckman—how many politicians are in your pocket?”

“Four,” Beckman replied without blinking, then took a sip of water. “This week.”

The entire table went still. Even Luffy froze mid-bite, cheeks stuffed. “You’re joking,” Ace said, leaning forward.

Beckman simply raised an eyebrow—answer enough.

The waiter arrived with the main course, and the sight of roasted ribs made Luffy yell like he'd just found treasure. The talk of money vanished with the first bite—but Sabo kept watching Beckman with new curiosity, like a puzzle he was itching to take apart.

Shanks, meanwhile, raised his glass in a silent toast toward Beckman, his eyes clearly saying: You just got a lot more interesting to these brats.

Beckman responded with the barest lift of his glass—and maybe, just maybe, the hint of a smile.

“Well, since Luffy’s clearly Shanks’ favorite, that leaves Ace and me to fight over Beckman’s inheritance,” Sabo said with calculated cheer, stabbing a piece of meat like he was planting a flag.

Shanks nearly choked on his pineapple juice. “I don’t have favorites! That’s slander!”

Beckman dabbed his mouth with his napkin in a motion so precise it felt surgical. “You three are like a plague—uninvited, uncontrollable, and surprisingly expensive.”

“Inheritance is a basic civil right,” Sabo shot back, eyes gleaming with the unshakable logic of someone who’d absolutely read every property law at the city library.

“I’ve got the last name!” Ace cut in, thumping his chest. “Benn Ace, remember? On paper, stamped and signed. Legal heir.”His grin was pure predator—like a shark catching the scent of blood.

"That was a strategic maneuver to—"

"Protect us!" Sabo cut in, brandishing his fork. "Which proves we’re long-term investments. And investments yield dividends."

Luffy, who’d been busy trying to eat a bone, glanced up confused: "What’s a ‘dividend’? Is it edible?"

"It’s like the fat around a picanha," Shanks lied, picking up his fork as if it were a quill—pinky extended like someone had once taught him this was "elegant." Beckman watched, intrigued, as Shanks piled more food onto Luffy’s plate.

Ace reached for the salt, only for Beckman to snatch the shaker first, holding it just out of reach. The teen glared murder but said nothing, just huffed and returned to eating.

"Then I want lotsa dividends," Luffy declared, shoving an entire meat chunk into his mouth.

Shanks then whispered, as if only Beckman could hear: "Don’t bring it up again—they’re getting clever."

The debate dragged on for twenty minutes and two rounds of pretentiously named dishes. Sabo quoted inheritance statistics, Ace threatened to sue (despite having no idea how), and Beckman countered every argument with a law professor's patience. until finally, with a sigh carrying the weight of all his life's poor decisions, he declared:

"First, for anyone to inherit my empire, they'd need to actually manage it." A pointed look at Sabo, then Ace. "And second, I'd have to be dead."

The silence that followed was broken only by the metallic scrape of Shanks' knife through meat. The redhead eyed Beckman with a smile that didn't reach his eyes: "That could be arranged, darling."

The table froze. Even Luffy stopped chewing.

Beckman didn't blink. "Try." His smile was a blade. "But remember I updated my will this morning."

Shanks tilted his head, genuinely impressed. "Did you actually?"

“Of course not.” Beckman took a sip of wine. “But now you’ll be lying awake at night thinking about it.”

Sabo and Ace exchanged looks—truly impressed, for the first time, by the level their “parents” were playing at.

“So… does that mean we’re disinherited?” Ace asked, disappointed.

The waiter set down the fondants like he was delivering a ransom. Luffy stabbed his with the fork before the plate even touched the marble—the chocolate bled, revealing a filling as artificial as the smiles on Beckman’s pamphlets.

Beckman let out a deep sigh, one that came straight from the bone, and pulled five pamphlets from his jacket with the precision of a grudging origamist. He spread them across the table like tarot cards flipped by fate, the glossy paper shining among silver spoons and crumbs.

“If you really want to fight over my inheritance,” he began, with the patience of someone who’d regretted this whole conversation four sentences ago, “you might want to start by picking a decent school.”

A pause sharp, clean.

“Sabo.” Beckman lifted the pamphlet, finger landing precisely on the word Crime, crossed out in red pen. “I’ve already edited your ‘suggestions.’”
“No. ‘Schools for Delinquents’ is not a valid option, Sabo.”

Sabo, mid-sentence, closed his mouth with a quiet snap. Ace snorted. Luffy licked his spoon.

The pamphlets bore names in serif fonts and crests that looked like they’d belonged to families who’d founded empires. Each brochure was a quiet threat: boys in navy blazers, golf courses in the background, smiles trained for future elections.

“These places have auditoriums bigger than hospitals,” Ace muttered, flipping through one with suspicion. “And for this price… do they include replacement souls with the diploma?”

Beckman didn’t even blink. “You’ll need a new soul, yes. Your current one has too many report cards to be recycled.”

Shanks rested his chin on his hand, watching the scene with a glint in his eye. “You’re really trying to raise elite corporate villains. It’s adorable.”

“Or at the very least, functional heirs,” Beckman shot back, pointing at Luffy, who was currently trying to use his spoon as a strawberry catapult.

Sabo lifted one of the pamphlets like he was analyzing a war contract. “This one offers classes in ‘applied geopolitics for financial markets.’ Is that real or just a disguised spell?”

“Jelly politics?” Luffy looked up.

“It’s real,” Beckman said, arranging his cutlery with surgical precision. “And you’re going. Even pests need pedigree if they want to swim with bigger sharks.”

Luffy raised his hand like they were in school: “Do they teach barbecue?”

“If you pass calculus, I’ll let you start a barbecue club,” Beckman replied without looking up. “But only if it’s properly taxed.”

The silence that followed was as thick as the fondant now melting on their plates. Even Shanks stopped stealing pieces of Beckman’s chocolate—a miracle rivaled only by the day Luffy refused a second helping of meat.

Ace crushed the brochure in his hand, the glossy paper hissing in protest. “This is worse than prison. At least in jail they don’t make you wear a bowtie.”

Beckman leaned forward, elbows on the table with a grace that turned even casual movements into veiled threats. “Prison doesn’t serve wagyu for lunch either. Think of this as... a long-term corporate coup.”

Sabo, always the strategist, was already drawing imaginary lines between brochures with his fork. “If I pick the one with an exchange program, can I negotiate a non-extradition clause as a bonus?”

It was just provocation, really.

“We’ll negotiate once you can conjugate verbs in at least three languages,” Beckman replied, discreetly moving sharp objects out of Luffy’s reach.

Sabo tore the exchange program pamphlet in half — he had no plans of being sent away from his brothers anytime soon.

Shanks watched the scene unfold with a smile that never quite reached his eyes. His fingers tapped against his glass of juice, tracing patterns only he seemed to understand. “Beckman, love, are you trying to raise elite corporate overlords, or are you just recreating your own school trauma in miniature?”

Beckman’s spoon paused mid-air. “I’d rather be murdered by a business partner than by a poorly made spreadsheet.”

“You’ve got an accountant for that, right?” Shanks nudged.

“Three. And one’s a fugitive.”

Luffy, who had been attempting to balance a spoon on his nose, jolted so hard the cutlery rattled. “You’re gonna be murdered?!”

“Eventually,” Beckman and Shanks replied in unison, as casually as if they were discussing the weather.

Then Shanks reached across the table—blatantly ignoring Beckman’s personal space—and plucked the most conservative-looking pamphlet from the pile. “This one. Arabasta Kokusai Gakuin. They offer astrology.”

Beckman raised an eyebrow. “You’re suggesting we send our dyslexic son to one of the most academically rigorous schools in the country?”

“I’m suggesting,” Shanks said, spinning the pamphlet between his fingers, “that you stop pretending this is about education and admit you’re buying access. At least I’m honest about what I’m doing.”

The room seemed to drop several degrees.

Beckman dabbed his lips with his napkin in a motion so slow it bordered on theatrical. When he spoke, his voice was smooth—sharp and controlled like the edge of a drawn blade. “And what exactly are your intentions, Shanks?”

The redhead smiled, showing every one of his teeth. “To give them what we never had. A choice.”

The silence that followed was taut, almost reverent—until it was sliced clean by the wet, unmistakable sound of Luffy swallowing an entire fondant without chewing. “I choose the one with the biggest cafeteria!”

The tension dissolved instantly, like sugar dropped in a hot cup of coffee. Beckman let out a long breath, dragging a hand down his face. “God help me—the one school with an all-you-can-eat buffet just became our top contender.”

Sabo and Ace exchanged a glance. That didn’t sound like such a bad option, actually. Maybe they could even negotiate a few classes in explosives as an extracurricular activity.

As the boys launched into a lively argument over who would be able to modify the school uniform into something less “tragically uncool,” Beckman felt something warm press against his foot beneath the table—Shanks’s shoe, steady, anchoring, like a lighthouse beam cutting through fog.

He didn’t move away.

They never brought it up again.
They let the boys choose for themselves which school they wanted to attend — a small act of trust, a quiet gesture that they too had the right to chart their own course.

Night came slowly, like a quiet tide rising, filling every corner of the house with patient shadows. The mansion felt suspended in time, like a ship anchored in calm waters. Shanks was still awake.

The boys slept in their rooms, still only partially furnished — We need more decorations, he thought, as if trying to paint the deck before the next voyage. He moved through the hallway with footsteps so soft they barely touched the floor, as though honoring the silence of a sleeping sea.

Sabo slept with a book open on his chest, breathing evenly.
He had probably surrendered to the weight of dense pages in the middle of some solitary crossing. Shanks approached, gently removed the book, marked the page, and set it down on the bedside table. Then he pulled the blanket up with the quiet care of someone adjusting a sail in the dark — a simple task, but essential to keep the course steady.

In the adjacent room, Luffy slept soundly, buried under a mountain of blankets. They'd discovered he was sensitive to the cold—a detail almost impossible to imagine in daylight, yet as undeniable as the rhythm of the tides.

Further away, Ace murmured in his sleep. His words came like echoes from a poorly tuned ship's radio: broken phrases, fragments of thought. But every now and then, between grumbles, there was an unexpected tenderness—as if a gentle breeze slipped through the storms he insisted on carrying.

Shanks lingered in the doorway like a captain keeping watch over his crew, anchored in the safe harbor of night. The air held that fragile serenity unique to calm tides. He cast one last glance into the room—brief but full—before turning silently down the hallway, his steps light as a man adrift among constellations. Even with sails furled, he still held the helm.

The door creaked faintly—a sound nearly imperceptible to anyone not awake at 3 AM. Beckman didn't move, but his eyes opened in the darkness, trained to recognize intrusions, even the most subtle ones. Shanks' silhouette stood out against the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains, barefoot, with an old book tucked under his arm and shoulders slightly hunched, as if bearing an invisible weight.

"You awake?" Shanks whispered, his voice hoarse, more a breath than a question.

Beckman didn't answer. He knew the other would notice the shift in his breathing, but he let the lie linger between them, an unspoken agreement. Shanks smiled, the pale light revealing only the outline of that gesture, and slipped into the room with the quiet grace of someone accustomed to forbidden spaces.

The mattress dipped slightly as he lay back, maintaining a careful distance—as if fearing mere contact might unravel a confession. The book—a worn volume of Greek mythology—rested on his chest, its yellowed pages smelling of dust and old ink.

"Ever seen Perseus’ constellation?" Shanks murmured, eyes fixed on the ceiling where shadows could be anything. "They say he carried Medusa’s head as a trophy, but no one mentions the weight. Imagine holding your own monster by the mane, knowing one slip turns you to stone."

Beckman turned his head to look. Shanks was smiling, but his fingers drummed the book’s cover in an erratic rhythm, like a code no one had taught him to decipher.

The silence stretched, comfortable yet charged. Beckman closed his eyes again but let his arm hang loose, knuckles grazing Shanks’ wrist by accident. An invitation. An anchor.

"You've got the wrong room, Your Majesty," Beckman muttered into the darkness.

Shanks huffed a quiet, genuine laugh—muffled as if afraid to scare the night away.

"Came because someone insisted on locking all the windows," he said, setting the book on the nightstand with exaggerated care, like it might shatter after another night exposed. "And I can't sleep."

His tone was light, but the confession lingered there, hidden between words like a splinter in the grain. He tugged at the blankets with studied nonchalance—too deliberate to be natural—and burrowed into fabric still warm from another body.

Now he watched Beckman.

Silence settled again, thick but different—not absence of sound, but a minefield of things left unsaid.

"It's not about turning to stone, with Medusa," Beckman murmured, eyes still closed. "It's about facing your own reflection."

Shanks didn't answer, but his breath hitched—almost imperceptible, almost. He turned his face upward, studying the ceiling cracks like they might spell some answer in the plaster.

"Beck—" he began, and the shortened name sounded more intimate than he'd perhaps intended.

"I know," Beckman answered before he could continue, his voice rough with sleep—or something deeper. "But not now."

Shanks nodded, aware the other couldn't see. Yet the anchor remained. Those knuckles still brushed against his wrist, and he didn't pull away.

Beckman moved with unhurried familiarity, each gesture precise. He opened the nightstand drawer, retrieving a small glass vial and a blister pack of pills. No words were needed—the ritual between them was ancient by now, and Shanks accepted it with the quiet resignation of someone who understands their own chaos.

He swallowed the pills with a sip of water from the half-full glass Beckman handed him—already waiting on the nightstand as if they'd known he'd come.

"Obligation or kindness?" Shanks asked, turning his face toward him, but Beckman was already settling back as if the question had been addressed to the ceiling.

"Logistics," he answered after a beat. "You're easier to handle asleep than anxious at 4 AM talking about constellations."

Shanks smiled slowly, his eyelids already growing heavy. The medication worked fast—especially on days when he was exhausted before even lying down.

"You know me too well," he murmured.

"Someone has to."

Shanks fell silent for a few seconds, his body sinking gradually into the mattress as if surrendering to some inevitable force. They stayed like that for a while. Then, right before slipping under completely, he slurred in a voice almost childlike:

"You think... Luffy really is my favorite?"

Beckman opened his eyes.

"Why ask that now?"

"Because sometimes... I treat him differently. And Ace and Sabo notice. They keep saying I have a 'favorite son.' That he's my 'little hero project.'"

"Because he is," Beckman said, blunt.

Shanks huffed a quiet laugh.

"But I don't want them to feel less," Shanks murmured, words slurring at the edges. "It's not that I love him more... It's just—with Luffy, sometimes it feels like he needs more. Like he's made of glass. He internalizes everything. He's not fiery like Ace or sharp-tongued like Sabo. He just... I don't know."

Beckman studied his profile in the dim light—eyes nearly closed now, thoughts spilling through the cracks between wakefulness and dreams.

"And they only say it to get under your skin," he said. "Ace and Sabo know you'd die for any of the three."

"Still..." Shanks' voice faded as sleep pulled him under. "Hope it never comes to that."

Beckman didn't reply. He simply tugged the blankets back over Shanks' shoulders where they'd slipped, then stayed awake awhile longer, listening to his breathing deepen into silence.

Sabo wasn't enjoying this. It was nine in the morning, and he was being forced to lie on the grass and stare at the sky—or, as he preferred to call it, "confronting the utter uselessness of human photosynthesis." Okay, he wasn't literally looking at the sun, but the rule was clear: fifteen daily minutes outdoors. Apparently, his vitamin D levels were so low they'd nearly become a medical case study.

"At least I'm the only truly healthy one in this family," he grumbled, sprawled on the lawn like a disgruntled cat. "I don't need to eat every three hours or sleep standing up." He shot a dry look at his brothers, who were currently attempting to climb a tree like two hyperactive raccoons.

"Sabo's being annoying!" Luffy yelled from above, clinging to a branch with his face smeared in dirt.

"At least I'm not some plant that needs sunlight to survive," Ace retorted, dangling just below him.

On the porch, Shanks flipped through a book with the serenity of someone who had no intention of intervening. His phone beeped; without even glancing at the screen, he pulled a mermaid bar from his pocket and tossed it to Luffy, who caught it mid-air and immediately started chewing.

"Don't gloat, Sabo," Shanks said, his eyes returning to the ancient myths in his book. "The universe loves playing tricks on smug people."

The next instant, Shanks got smacked squarely on the back of his head. Beckman materialized behind him like a disciplinary shadow, walking past with the elegance of a man never in a hurry—yet making absolutely clear the smack was intentional.

"Stop encouraging them," Beckman chided.

"That was uncalled for," Shanks countered.

Still sprawled on the grass, Sabo narrowed his eyes. Shanks had vanished for two hours that morning and returned with a stupid grin and a suspicious stain on his coat. The most logical explanation? An affair. But this being Shanks... homicide seemed more likely. Yet Beckman hadn't complained or even looked concerned, so Sabo shrugged and let it go.

"I mean, my genes are objectively superior," Sabo declared, reclining with arms folded behind his head and a smugness so punchable—had anyone around mustered the energy for morning violence.

Ace didn't hesitate. "Superiorly annoying, maybe."

"Or su-pe-ri-or-ly full of yourself," Luffy drawled from the treetop, now attempting to balance a branch on his nose like a circus act.

"Or just plain superiorly annoying," Beckman muttered from the porch without looking up from his newspaper, his still-steaming coffee beside him.

Shanks lowered his book just enough to peer over the pages. "Or, I dunno... a fungus. One of those resilient types that survive in hostile environments. Pretty under a microscope, but deadly with prolonged exposure."

Sabo arched an eyebrow. "You're comparing me to mold?"

"Pedigree mold," Shanks shot back, grinning. "If that helps."

"He's not wrong," Beckman added, flipping a page as if discussing the weather. "Even poisonous mushrooms have sophisticated life cycles. You’re just... photophobic and passive-aggressive. The class fungus. A French fungus."

Ace nodded solemnly. "Noble mold."

"Premium mold," Luffy corrected, the branch still dangling from his nose.

Sabo sighed dramatically. "Jealous. I’m the only one here with actual physical and mental discipline."

"Ah yes. The pride of the fungal kingdom," Shanks teased, now closing his book and stretching his legs across the porch railing. "Speaking of problematic bodies—Beck, did you schedule Ace’s checkup?"

"Next week," Beckman replied, now focusing on his coffee. "With the specialist. We’re running a full battery of tests—confirm the narcolepsy and rule out anything else." He shot Ace a look. "No skipped meals this week. And no sleeping in trees."

Ace grumbled. "I only slept on a branch once—"

"Once with a freefall," Beckman countered, raising an eyebrow. "Let’s not repeat that experiment, yeah?"

As if the universe were laughing at his words, Luffy chose that moment to tumble from the tree—a direct plunge into the bushes—only to emerge grinning, leaves stuck in his hair. "We picked a school!"

Shanks and Beckman exchanged a glance. This was news.

"Arabasta Kokusai," Luffy announced with the gravity of a boy who thinks he’s chosen Hogwarts. "Biggest cafeteria."

"And an exchange program," Sabo added, still sprawled on the grass, now with a faint smirk. "Plus a debate club, celestial navigation courses, and a library that looks like a cathedral."

"And the ties are slightly less ridiculous," Ace added with a huff. "Still hideous, but tolerable."

Beckman lowered the newspaper, eyeing the three with an expression caught between pride and suspicion. "You actually discussed this?"

Sabo nodded. "School Selection Committee. Nightly sessions. Presentations. Luffy voted based on dessert quality, Ace on dress code, and I... well, I made a spreadsheet."

Shanks blinked. "You... held an election?"

"More like a bloodless coup," Ace said. "But democratic."

The morning heat had grown heavy when the black car—discreet but expensive enough to make Beckman frown behind his newspaper—glided smoothly down the street and parked with surgical precision in the neighbor’s driveway. The engine shut off with a controlled sigh, no fanfare.

From the passenger door emerged a tall man in a light blazer over a buttoned-up collar. He moved with rehearsed elegance, each step premeditated. His slightly tousled blond hair almost contradicted the rest of his composure— almost .

From the other side stepped out a boy of about fourteen, silent, dressed in a dark hoodie and holding himself with a closed-off posture.He didn’t look bored, or curious. Just... alert. Like someone used to lingering in the background — even when there’s no stage to hide from.
He and the adult exchanged only a few quiet words, barely audible. Then, with practiced movements, they unlocked the front door and stepped inside without once glancing around.

Shanks glanced up from his book and let out a low whistle.

“New neighbor,” he remarked, resting the newspaper on his stomach like a man settling in to watch a play unfold.

“Too quiet,” Beckman muttered without turning his head.

“Maybe they’re just normal,” said Sabo, without much conviction, sprawled back on the grass again with his arm draped over his eyes.

“If they were normal,” Ace replied, balancing a twig between his lips like a makeshift cigar,
“they wouldn’t have moved here in the first place.”

"Maybe they're fugitives. Hiding out," Luffy suggested, dangling upside-down from the lowest tree branch. "Or vampires."

"Vampires don’t move in during the day, Luffy," Sabo countered, arm still draped over his face. "And even if they did, you’d invite them to dinner by day two."

"If they’re vampires and bring candy, it’s fine," Luffy declared with childlike wisdom.

"You’re all unbearable," Ace muttered, the twig still dangling precariously from his mouth.

Five minutes later, a moving truck rounded the corner, gliding smoothly to a stop in front of the newly occupied house. Two movers hopped out and began unloading with near-robotic efficiency. No kicked furniture, no toppling boxes—everything was methodical. Almost choreographed.

Shanks tilted his head as if watching a nature documentary.

"This is unnerving," he said gravely. "They haven’t dropped a single box."

"Shocking," Beckman added, sarcasm dripping. "A move without screaming or swearing. How do they manage?"

Sabo lifted his head. "I bet the boxes are alphabetized. People like that sort their spices by color."

“I already hate them,” Ace muttered.

“You hate anyone who doesn’t throw their shoes onto the roof,” Beckman noted dryly.

Shanks shrugged. “If they’re normal, they’ll move out in three months. If they’re weird, they might actually survive here.”

“Someone should go say hi,” Luffy offered, currently trying to flip himself right-side up on a tree branch without falling.

“Don’t be polite, Luffy. You’ll scare them,” Sabo replied, already draping his arm back over his face.

“Scare them? I’m delightful!”

Ace grunted. “You licked a tree yesterday. The whole thing.”

“It looked edible!”

The sound of moving boxes sliding through the front door next door continued, calm and unhurried — without friction, without fuss.

Shanks stretched in his chair, still watching. "Want to bet how long until they realize they live next to a daycare for sociopaths?"

"We're not a daycare anymore," Beckman said, flipping a newspaper page. "Just problematic."

Eventually, the brothers returned to their self-assigned tasks—Sabo philosophizing about vitamin D, Ace biting his nails in boredom, and Luffy attempting to climb one branch higher.

The neighbors' arrival passed like a breeze: noticed, remarked upon, and promptly filed away in the family’s emotional chaos.

Yet... Shanks kept watching longer than he’d admit. And Sabo, discreetly, noted in his mental ledger: ‘Potentially interesting neighbors. Observe.’

Now, Rosinante had a plan. A simple one — almost boring in its design: settle down in that quiet country with his newly acquired younger brother, Trafalgar Law, carry out his duties with diligence, and above all, keep a low profile. Emphasis on low.

No deep connections. No neighborhood drama. No drawing attention, ever. Just him, the kid, and a functional routine. A clean life. Quiet. Controlled.

On paper, it sounded entirely doable.

What he hadn’t accounted for was the unexpected visit from his new — and aggressively curious — next-door neighbor.

“Are you a giant?” asked the tiny creature standing in his front yard. Big eyes, feral curiosity, and black hair so tangled with twigs and leaves it looked like he’d emerged from a forest, not the flowerbed.

Rosinante stumbled back in surprise, face tightening in alarm, the key still halfway in the lock — as if the mere sound of that question had tripped a silent alarm in his brain. He blinked, then glanced around, half-hoping the question had been meant for someone else. A real giant, maybe. But no — there was no one else. Just the kid. And those eyes, sharp and far too observant.

He crouched down awkwardly, nearly losing his balance, and the rumpled hem of his coat flared out like a white flag of surrender. His posture had all the grace of a giraffe trying to hide behind a lamppost — hopeless, but oddly endearing.

“Careful, Cora-san,” Law muttered beside him, perched with stoic detachment and balancing a box of books in his arms. “He might bite. Worse — he looks like the type to carry something contagious.”

“I’m not infectious!” the gremlin shouted, utterly scandalized, as if that were the worst accusation he’d ever heard — then immediately sneezed so violently that a bird took flight from the tree nearby.

“Exactly what a viral carrier would say,” Law replied under his breath, with the calm authority of someone who’s read at least one medical quarantine handbook cover to cover.

Before Luffy could officially invade someone else's home — and possibly try to open a moving box with his teeth — two silhouettes appeared on the other side of the fence, striding over with an expression far too exhausted for that time of day.

“Seriously, Luffy?” Sabo said, hands on his hips, using the tone of an older brother who had seen this movie three times too many. “You can’t just barge into someone’s yard and interrogate them about their height.”

“But he is a giant!” Luffy protested, dramatically pointing at Rosinante, who instantly raised his hands in a silent, universal gesture of please don’t drag me into this.

Ace arrived moments later, hopping over the fence with the kind of smooth ease that suggested he’d done this before — probably for reasons not entirely legal. He gave Rosinante a once-over, then glanced at Law, and offered a small, respectful nod.

“Sorry about that,” Ace said, giving his younger brother a quick pat on the head — the kind used to calm down an overexcited hunting dog. “He’s harmless. Allegedly.”

"Depends on the time of day," Sabo added, crossing his arms. "Or their sugar intake." He gestured toward the neighboring house with attempted diplomacy. "We live there." His finger then pointed to their own home, his smile that of a prophet foreseeing chaos. "If you need help—or an antidote—just scream."

Law observed the three brothers with the expression of a man who'd just found an instruction manual written in hieroglyphics. His left eye twitched faintly—the only sign that, deep down, he already missed the silence of five minutes ago. Still clutching a box of books, he muttered to Rosinante:

"They definitely reproduce via spores."

Rosinante didn’t reply. He just stared at the sky with the resignation of a man whose life had just been launched into a strange new orbit.

From the porch across the street, Shanks raised a hand in a slow, friendly wave, fingers swaying like poorly folded welcome flags. He watched with quiet amusement as the three boys—his pseudo-sons—traipsed across the lawn like clumsy spies on a reconnaissance mission.

"Should we intervene?" Beckman asked without looking up from his newspaper, his coffee cup balanced precariously in one hand.

Shanks tilted his head slightly, gaze still fixed on the unfolding spectacle beyond the fence. "No. He can handle himself."

Beckman turned a page with the calm of a man who’s insured against all foreseeable disasters. "The kids… or the neighbors?"

Shanks smirked, that infamous sideways grin that usually preceded some chaotic prophecy.

"The neighbors. The kids are... inevitable."

Beckman made a small noise in the back of his throat—almost a laugh. "They didn’t even look scared."

"Of course not. It’s a canon event," Shanks murmured, reclining with the satisfied air of a man who’d planted chaos and was now harvesting entertainment. "He’s about to experience the ASL-Experience™ Premium. And no one comes out the other side the same."

Silence.

Outside, Luffy tripped over his own feet, Sabo attempted diplomacy with the grace of an ambassador surrounded by monkeys, and Ace walked away like a man signing a ceasefire under protest.

Shanks sighed, but it was a light sound—almost affectionate. "I think he held up well."

Beckman finally lowered the newspaper. "You mean the new kid?"

Shanks shrugged. "He hasn’t run screaming yet. That’s progress."

And in the background, standing there with a box of books in his arms and a faint twitch in his left eye, Rosinante looked very much like a man questioning every life choice that had led him to this moment.

"So you’re not a giant?" Luffy asked, head tilted all the way back to stare up at Rosinante’s lanky silhouette against the pale blue sky.

Rosinante blinked. His wrinkled dress shirt bore an ink stain on the hem, and his expression still carried the groggy disorientation of jet lag. He crouched down until he was nearly eye-level with Luffy, hands braced on his knees, and mustered a calm smile.

"No," he answered, with restrained politeness. "Just... very tall."

"Tall," Luffy confirmed thoughtfully. "But not tall enough to be a tower. You need to grow more."

Next to them, a lean, pale boy balanced a box labeled 'BOOKS / FRAGILE' in his arms. His black hair was impeccably disheveled in a way that seemed deliberate. Law watched Luffy with the expression of someone examining an overly curious insect.

"He seems cool," Luffy declared, craning his neck to peer into the box. "You guys new?"

"Yes," Rosinante replied, standing up again with awkward grace. "I'm Donquixote Rosinante. A prosecutor." He hesitated for a second, as if almost apologizing for it. "And this is my brother."

"Trafalgar Law," the boy said without looking up. "I'm fourteen. And I don’t do small talk."

Ace raised an eyebrow and jerked his chin. "You look like someone who reads medicine labels for fun."

Law didn’t even blink. "And you look like someone who doesn’t read at all."

"The hell—?" Ace took a step forward, only to be stopped by Sabo’s casually intercepting hand—cool as a breeze snuffing out a fire.

"Forgive Ace," Sabo said, smiling with the diplomacy of a man who’d survived condo board meetings. "He only knows how to introduce himself after a fight."

Rosinante laughed, more relaxed this time. "And you are?"

"Sabo," he replied with a slight nod. "The responsible one, unfortunately."

"Liar," Luffy and Ace chorused instantly.

"These are Luffy and Ace, my brothers," Sabo added, his tone practical—the voice of someone who’d introduced them far too often. Luffy had already edged so close to Law that he seemed moments away from climbing the box.

Law observed Luffy like a scientist facing a hazardous experiment. His black hair was disheveled in a way that felt almost deliberate, and his narrowed eyes suggested he was already mentally counting down the seconds until chaos erupted.

"What's in there?"

"Books," Law answered flatly.

"You read them?"

"Yes."

"All of them?"

"Most of them."

"Even the dictionary?"

"Especially the dictionary."

Ace narrowed his eyes. "Do you do that by choice or is it a punishment?"

Rosinante stifled another laugh, adjusting his coat collar where it was starting to stick in the afternoon heat.

"Well," he said, wiping his hands on his jeans, "it’s been a pleasure meeting you all. We’re happy to have such... lively neighbors."

"They're always like this," Sabo warned, with the resigned tone of someone who’d tried to stop them and failed. "Sometimes worse."

"But we don’t bite," Luffy assured, flashing a wide grin full of teeth.

"Not often," Ace added thoughtfully.

"Only when provoked," Sabo finished, sighing.

Law stared at the three of them for a moment, expressionless, watching as they wandered back to wherever they’d come from. Then he slowly turned to Rosinante and said, in the flattest voice possible:

"Can we install an electric fence?"

"Law…" Rosinante sighed, though his eyes were smiling.

"With spikes," Law clarified, hauling the box inside like he was retreating from a warzone.

Shanks was still on the porch when he closed his book with a quiet sigh, setting it aside. Beckman put down his newspaper, adjusted himself in his chair, and watched with attentive eyes as the brothers approached.

Luffy came bounding over with the boundless energy of someone who never tires of exploring. His clumsy hops left a trail of carefree laughter—maybe because he’d found an adult less traumatizing than usual, or simply because he’d made "friends" in the neighborhood, which, for him, was more than enough reason to celebrate.

"Have fun?" Shanks asked, his voice tinged with curiosity and that light irony only he could pull off.

Luffy stopped abruptly, as if he needed his full attention to answer. He adjusted his backpack with that wide, childlike grin of someone who’d just discovered something wonderful.

"Definitely!" Luffy replied, with the casualness of someone discussing the latest episode of their favorite cartoon. "The new neighbor is a pros-e-cu-tor , and the grumpy one reads tons of books!"

The word "prosecutor" dropped like a stone into the seemingly calm lake of their lives. Shanks and Beckman exchanged a brief but loaded glance—an entire conversation held in silence.

Meanwhile, Sabo walked a few steps behind, arms crossed with that critical expression only he could make look so natural.

"I give them a month before they move out," he said dryly, his tone sounding more like a prophecy than a simple observation.

Shanks raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirking into a half-smile. "What? Don’t like our new neighbor?"

"Liking is irrelevant," Sabo countered. "I’m calculating odds. Normal families don’t last long around here."

Beckman made a low noise that could’ve been a stifled laugh or a sigh of resignation. "Are you including us in that definition of 'normal family'?"

"Never," Ace chimed in, arriving last with his hands in his pockets. "We're the gold standard of dysfunction."

Luffy, already distracted, was poking an ant on the ground with his foot. "I'm hungry."

As if triggered by a keyword, Shanks rose in one fluid motion. "Solid point, Captain. Lunchtime—before Luffy starts chewing the rug."

Beckman stood more slowly, gathering the newspaper with precise movements. "We also need to start preparing for the interview," he added, eyeing each of the boys. "If you're serious about that school, you'll need to look presentable."

The groans were nearly unanimous, but Shanks was already steering Luffy inside with a hand on his shoulder, humming something about extra dessert for good behavior. Sabo followed with a stoic face that hid a thousand calculations, while Ace dragged his feet, making sure to enter last—though not without casting one final glance at the neighbors' house, where they were still hauling boxes inside. Strangers , he thought.

The door closed behind them.

Chapter Text

Shanks observed his colleagues with a calm gaze, his fingers drumming faintly against the desk—a nervous habit he’d never quite managed to suppress. The brunette woman across from him smiled, too sweetly, her eyes narrowed like a cat’s just before it sinks its teeth into an unsuspecting mouse.

"I’m sure you wouldn’t mind, would you?" She slid a stack of reports toward him. "I’m swamped, and you… well, you never complain about overtime."

Once, he would have accepted without hesitation. Would have grinned like an obliging fool, pretended everything was fine—as if endless paperwork were merely a trivial nuisance, rather than the soul-crushing tedium it truly was. But back then, he’d desperately needed a solid alibi. And who would suspect the office’s "pack mule," the ever-helpful man who never learned to say no?

The irony was delicious: while other assassins bent over backward to remain invisible, he’d discovered that the more attention he drew to himself as the perfect employee, the easier it became to manipulate perceptions. People saw only what they wanted to see—the eager workaholic, not the predator patiently weaving his web.

The entire office seemed to hold its breath. Shanks kept his smile easy, but his mind was already three moves ahead: refusal would raise suspicion; acceptance, an invitation for further exploitation. So he did the unthinkable.

“Ah, sorry about that.” He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his neck. “My kids start at a new school next week. Paperwork, uniforms, parent interviews… you know how it is.”

The silence that followed was so sharp, even the air conditioning seemed to stutter. Several coworkers whipped their heads around so fast, necks audibly creaked.

“You have kids ?!” Someone choked out behind him.

“Three.” He let the word hang in the air, privately savoring the chaos he’d sown. “We adopted the youngest recently. His first time in a Japanese school.”

“But you always said you hated children,” a stammering intern protested.

“Other people’s.” Shanks shrugged, his smile now a honed blade. “Mine are… different .” More resilient. More lethal. With an 80% chance of something exploding.

The brunette colleague didn’t relent. “You’ve never taken time off for them before!”

“My husband handled it.” He gathered his own files and aligned his pens with surgical precision. “But now that he’s back in-office, we’re splitting responsibilities more evenly.” Not entirely a lie—Beckman had been remote lately, either managing the children… or preventing structural collapse.

“You’re married ?!”

“For years.” Shanks didn’t so much as glance at the colleague who’d spent the last three weeks inviting him to drinks—now radiating homicide with a stare.

“You don’t wear a ring.” The observation dripped venom.

He felt the office’s gaze lance through him: some eyes sharp with suspicion, others gleaming like predators scenting blood.

He discreetly tugged the cord around his neck, revealing a golden wedding band - a striking contrast against his crimson shirt. "I dislike the sensation of anything constricting my circulation." His fingers brushed the ring, then lingered just long enough to ensure every colleague registered its weight before he smiled. "As for the reports... if time permits, I'll glance at them. I'll work late tonight to make up for those sick days I took taking my children to their pediatrician."

Ace would loathe being used as an excuse. Shanks bit the inside of his cheek to suppress a laugh - he was genuinely enjoying this far too much.

The questions ceased. They returned to their workstations, some casting pitying glances his way, others wrestling with newfound guilt for burdening a family man with their unfinished work. The irony tasted exquisite: their imagined version of his "waiting family" was far more convincing than any truth could ever be.

By lunchtime, the situation had deteriorated... or perhaps improved, depending on one's perspective. He wove through the maze of office desks, a specter ignoring the whispers trailing in his wake. Shanks could feel the weight of collective stares burning between his shoulder blades - colleagues muttering, twisting his words, filling narrative gaps with increasingly absurd conjectures. His fingers trembled slightly; perhaps from the three liters of coffee consumed that morning, perhaps from forgotten medication.

As he began ascending the stairwell, the carefully maintained smile slipped from his face like a discarded mask. His feet dragged against each step with leaden weariness, while calloused fingers absently traced the handrail's grooves - muscle memory guiding him upward. The rooftop door groaned open.

Outside, steel-wool clouds smothered the sky, and the wind carried the metallic promise of impending rain. Shanks pressed his forehead against the concrete wall's unyielding chill, delivering two light taps - as if testing the structural integrity of his own sanity - followed by two sharper, more insistent knocks this time.

Tap. Tap.

"Hello, common sense? You home?"

He shut his eyes, drawing a breath so deep it might have reached his marrow. The headache wasn't from the self-inflicted knocks - nor from the lies. Those he conducted with the precision of a virtuoso conductor. No, the weight came from everything else : School permission slips swimming in bureaucratic ink; Therapy appointments scheduled just to reschedule; Medication alarms to remember the pills that help him remember; That prosecutor who now lived next door.

And the family.

Not the one that left him kneeling bloody in the courtyard, teaching him too young that survival required blades, not embraces. Not the clan with their ancestral laws that called this love - placing a knife in a child's hands and labeling it "initiation," commanding him to fight for a surname that fit like a guilty verdict, never an inheritance.

A single question hung suspended in the static of his mind:

When did 'family' become Sunday cakes, mismatched socks under the sofa, and flour dusted across the kitchen counter?

A foolish smile tugged at his lips. Perhaps that was the cruelest part - he could still understand their twisted logic.

"Domestic life is just a suicide mission disguised as a sitcom..."

Another light knock against the wall.

Tap.

He couldn't decide whether to scream, sleep for thirty hours straight, or hug all three rascals until emotional exhaustion knocked him out. Maybe all three simultaneously.

"This was easier when I only had to scrub blood out of carpets," he murmured to the empty air.

His mind conjured three grinning faces... no, four.

"What am I even saying-" The realization struck like a physical blow: he wouldn't trade this chaos for anything. Not when the kitchen smelled like burnt cookies, not when Lego pieces stabbed his bare feet at midnight, not even when parenting felt like diffusing bombs with oven mitts.

This is temporary. You shouldn't get attached. The warning echoed through his skull, but his treacherous heart had already chosen its side.

"Behold. Employee of the Month having an existential crisis. Almost poetic—like watching a wolf trip over its own tail."

The acrid scent of overbrewed coffee and the metronomic click of polished shoes on concrete announced Mihawk's arrival. He materialized as he always did: spine straight as a guillotine blade, gaze sharp enough to draw blood, his right hand resting idly near his hip—where a sword should have been, but never was in this corporate purgatory.

He held the mug by its handle with just two fingers, the way one might cradle a fragile artifact... or a weapon too elegant to actually wield.

Shanks' eyes fluttered open. He pushed away from the wall, rubbing his forehead with a wince. A bruise was already flowering beneath his skin. Mihawk leaned against the rooftop railing, casually displaying a mug emblazoned with 'Employee of the Month' in gilded letters—that absurd trophy Shanks won every single month without fail.

With a weary smile, Shanks turned. "Ah, the illustrious Dracule Mihawk. I came here to escape gossipmongers and bloodsuckers, not to receive another lecture on workplace efficiency.”

Mihawk arched one sculpted eyebrow, his gaze dropping to the wedding ring still swaying from Shanks' neck cord. "It appears the gossips have substance. A family man now? You, who can't even keep a houseplant alive?"

Shanks turned with deliberate slowness, bracing his elbows against the parapet. "Ah, so you came specifically to mock me?"

"It would be criminally negligent to waste such an opportunity." Mihawk raised his coffee cup—black, unsweetened, as immutable as the man himself. "Though I'll confess to disappointment. The man who once performed truly inventive miracles with a paperclip is now..." A pause sharper than any blade. "...being psychologically dismantled by three children who discovered how to topple his ego?"

'I killed someone with a paperclip?' The thought flickered through Shanks' mind with surreal detachment.

He blinked, genuinely startled. "I used a paperclip? When did that happen?"—but chose not to press. Mihawk never lied about murders. Only about... other things. Like claiming indifference about losing the Employee of the Month title.

Mihawk took a slow, scalding sip, eyes pinning Shanks like a professor regarding a forgetful student. "Berlin. Two years ago. The clip was rusted.”

Shanks rubbed his chin with theatrical deliberation, feigning recollection. "Ah, was that the fellow who reeked of sauerkraut?" He gave an exaggerated headshake before cutting himself off—"...wait, that's not the point here!"

A gravelly laugh escaped him. "You don't understand. It's... different." He dragged his palms down his face, the words muffled between his fingers. "Before, my only concern was leaving no traces. Now I can't sleep without checking if they're still breathing."

Mihawk took a measured sip, his razor-edged gaze never wavering. "Horrifying. Exhausting. Intoxicating." A blade-sharp pause. "You almost make me want one."

"You? A father?" Shanks' laughter rang genuine now. "The only living creature you tolerate is that damned cat of yours, and only because it has the decency to ignore you.”

"Don’t take Coffin’s name in vain." Shanks rolled his eyes at the absurd name Mihawk had bestowed upon that infernal creature. "If it’s so difficult, why not quit? Drop them at an orphanage."

‘Go back to being the ruthlessly efficient killer I call my rival’ —Shanks could nearly hear the unspoken words hovering between them. But they had an agreement: no mention of their other profession. Moments like these were to be cherished, because in any other circumstance, they’d meet with blades at each other’s throats.

The silence that followed was so razor-edged even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Shanks stared down at his hands—the same hands that had ended lives, now streaked with washable marker and glitter glue.

"...Because they’re mine ." The admission came out softer than he’d intended.

Mihawk studied him for a long, weighted moment before finally scoffing: "Pathetic." Yet something in his tone sounded almost... intrigued. "If it’s that simple for you, perhaps I should try it myself."

Shanks' eyebrow arched sharply toward his hairline. "Excuse me?"

"Perhaps I should adopt a child myself. Mold them properly. Demonstrate how even in this, my edge remains keener than yours." Mihawk set his empty cup on the parapet with a definitive clink - the period at the end of his declaration. "After all, if even you can manage it, the bar can't be particularly high."

Shanks nearly inhaled his own tongue. "Wait—Mihawk, this isn't some fucking competition—"

But the man was already walking away, his long coat swirling behind him like a declaration of war. "I'll be visiting orphanages this afternoon. Research purposes."

"MIHAWK!"

The rooftop door clicked shut with bureaucratic finality. Shanks stood alone in the sudden silence.

"He wouldn't... " The words dissolved in the wind as he stared at the space where Mihawk had been. "He absolutely would."

Meanwhile, across town, Ace officially declared this The Worst Morning in Recorded History™ .

Whether it was due to his sleepless night, or Luffy’s incessant screaming about "Shanks turning into a constellation" —he lacked the mental bandwidth to determine which explanation was more absurd.

The scent of charred coffee permeated the kitchen, mingling with the cacophony of silverware clattering to the floor. The table was technically set—undercooked eggs, charcoal-black toast, orange juice served in Spider-Man cups. But the undisputed epicenter of chaos had a name: Luffy , perched on a chair like it was a makeshift throne, his eyes puffy and his bottom lip quivering at "emotional tsunami" intensity.

"He's not coming back..." Luffy whispered, clutching the Pirates of the Caribbean thermos to his chest like it was the last sacred relic on earth.

Ace shot Sabo a look of pure desperation.

"You're the 'smart' one. Make up something convincing. Tell him the redhead went out for cigarettes and got lost."

Sabo—half a piece of toast forgotten in his mouth—attempted reason:

"Luffy... he just went to work. Remember? Said today was 'grown-up stuff' day. He'll be back."

Luffy shook his head violently, his eyes now shining with lighthouse-intensity despair.

"But he promised he'd never leave! And this morning I woke up and—POOF! Gone! No note! No goodbye kiss! Didn't even take the lunch I made!" He brandished a crumpled package allegedly containing "jelly and french fry sandwich with glitter."

Sabo's face twisted in visceral horror. Ace audibly gulped.

"Maybe that's why he ran away..." Ace muttered, immediately earning a sharp elbow to the ribs.

Luffy slammed his fists on the table with enough force to send silverware airborne.

"HE LEFT JUST LIKE EVERYONE ALWAYS DOES!"

The scream reverberated through the house. Silence followed. Even the refrigerator seemed to observe a moment of respectful pause.

Then, Beckman materialized in the doorway—newspaper still in hand, stubble shadowing his jaw, his entire posture radiating the weary resignation of a man who'd predicted this meltdown from the first sniffle. He surveyed the scene like a sheriff assessing a shootout where he already knew the body count.

"Trouble?"

"Shanks..." Ace grumbled. "Went to work. But the brat here thinks he's defected to become an astronaut."

Luffy sniffled violently, the chair creaking under his convulsive movements. He'd reached the 'meltdown imminent in 3...2...' phase.

Beckman approached the table with tectonic calm. Pulled out a chair. Sat. Selected a toast slice. Buttered it. Chewed. Only then did he speak, with the unshakable certainty of someone announcing sunrise:

"He'll be back for dinner."

Luffy stopped . Froze mid-sob like Beckman had hit the pause button on his entire melodrama.

"...Really?" The words came out half-choked, but already steadier. "You promise?"

Beckman finished his coffee in one measured swallow, locked eyes with the intensity usually reserved for enemy snipers, and declared:

"I promise."

Luffy's gaze darted around the room as if seeking divine confirmation. Then, faster than a heartbeat, he grabbed a jelly-slathered bread crust and started chewing—now grinning like the cosmos itself had realigned just to please him.

Ace blinked. Sabo arched an eyebrow at Beckman.

"...You're like some kind of tantrum exorcist, aren't you?"

"No. Just the only functional adult in this household."

Beckman rose with the weary dignity of a veteran soldier, gathered his newspaper, and departed muttering:

"...And someone inform Shanks he's just forfeited dessert privileges for a week."

From the opposite end of the house, Luffy's fully recovered bellow echoed:

"BUT HE'S COMING BACK FOR DINNER!!!"

And thus, yet another crisis was averted... by the supreme power of Beckman refusing to tolerate dramatics before 9 AM .

As breakfast concluded, Beckman moved down the hallway with the measured stride of a man who knew chaos awaited him regardless. The ground-floor office was his sanctuary—a hallowed space where criminal schemes were orchestrated, finances were laundered with surgical precision, and above all, where children were categorically forbidden .

On the door, a handwritten sign (reinforced with industrial-grade duct tape) proclaimed:

IN MEETING. KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING OR FACE SLOW EXECUTION VIA POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ON PRIVACY ETIQUETTE.

Beckman locked the door with a precise metallic click —the sound of a prison cell sealing shut. The noise reverberated faintly down the silent hallway, fortifying the musty, dimly-lit office like invisible ramparts rising against the chaos beyond. A ghost of relief flickered at the corner of his mouth. For now, at least, sanctuary was his.

On the other side, three pairs of wide eyes stared at the newly-barricaded door with the reverent terror reserved for forbidden shrines—or active minefields.

"What's... Pow-wer-Poi-nt?" Luffy asked, wrinkling his nose as if the word were some ancient curse. He pressed his face against the door, leaving a greasy smudge on the frosted glass.

Sabo crossed his arms, his expression darkening with the weight of sudden wartime flashbacks.

"Worse than punishment," he answered, his voice hushed and heavy with hard-earned wisdom. "Corporate torture in slide format."

"Is that why you stopped eating with your hands?" Ace asked, staring pointedly at Sabo—who pointedly ignored him.

The ensuing silence hung thick, almost viscous enough to touch. A lethargic wind rustled the backyard trees, and even the birds seemed to hush in solemn deference to collective suffering. For one suspended moment, the trio remained frozen, staring at the door as if willing it to swing open on its own and deliver them from impending boredom.

When no such salvation came, they turned in perfect unison and trudged—vanquished soldiers retreating from battle—toward Ace's bedroom. The already chaotic space transformed into a warzone the instant Luffy launched himself onto the rug, rolling side to side with the frenzied energy of a caged animal.

"BORED! BORED! BORED!" he bellowed, his voice oscillating between theatrical despair and full-blown hysteria.

Ace observed the scene from his perch on the bed, chewing something that might have been a cookie or possibly a screw.

"Sounds like someone's dying," he remarked with the calm of a veteran who'd witnessed far worse catastrophes.

"Dying... of boredom!" Luffy corrected, seizing his brother's ankles as if attempting to drag him into the abyss of monotony. "We need an urgent mission!"

Sabo—perched on the windowsill with his forehead pressed against the glass—narrowed his eyes. Beyond lay the neighbor's garden, stretching out in suspicious silence, and at its center like a misplaced chess piece sat Law. Reclined on a deck chair, he was engrossed in a book so thick it could have contained humanity's entire history. His eyes never wavered. He didn't even blink.

"Mission acquired," Sabo murmured, a treacherous glint sparking in his eyes. A grin spread across his face like wildfire through dry tinder. "We're investigating the suspicious neighbor."

"Suspicious?" Luffy perked up, smushing his face against the window beside his brother, leaving foggy breath marks on the glass.

"Obviously. Observe:
1. Reads books thicker than his own skull.
2. Has never smiled once in recorded history.
3. Gives off strong 'bodies buried in the basement' vibes."

Ace nodded solemnly. "And his adult is too tall. No one needs that much height. It's unnatural."

"Shanks said something about staying away from the prosecutor..." Ace added halfheartedly.

"Technically Law isn't the prosecutor," Sabo concluded with legalistic precision.

"KIDNAPPING TIME!" Luffy bellowed, already hurtling toward the backyard like a human grenade with the pin pulled.

Operation Blueprint (v4.0) - Drafted in ten chaotic minutes.

1. Luffy : Primary Distraction Unit - Run in circles screaming about whatever his impulse dictates.
2. Ace : Brute Force Division - Transport Law via fireman's carry if necessary.
3. Sabo : Diplomatic Corps - Frame the abduction as "compulsory friendship bonding."

Across the fence, beneath the dense canopy of an ancient oak, Law slowly lifted his gaze as the trio breached his perimeter. His expression blended world-weariness with aristocratic disdain, yet his fingers had already closed around a nearby branch—purely precautionary.

"This is why I advocated for electrified fencing," he remarked just loudly enough to carry.

Sabo advanced with all the gravitas of a community theater revolutionary: "You've been conscripted for a mission of critical importance!"

Law didn't stir, but the stick in his hand rotated ominously. "Sure. Where's the warrant?"

Sabo crossed his arms, striking the pose of a revolutionary statesman: "Warrants are bourgeois constructs designed to institutionalize oppression. I am the State now."

Ace released a long-suffering groan. "And here comes his Marxist phase again..."

Law rolled his eyes and leveled his stick at Sabo like a judge's gavel. "Fantastic. The State here is about to face a property invasion lawsuit. And a thorough thrashing."

Luffy - who'd been crouching behind a shrub with his stick-sword - suddenly erupted: "THIS IS A RESCUE MISSION!"

"Rescuing what ?" Law prodded the bush with his foot, sending Luffy tumbling out.

"You! You're the artifact!" Luffy declared, as though explaining basic arithmetic.

Law took a strategic retreat step, only to find Sabo already blocking the fence line. "Technically, you're standing in the fence's shadow zone. Shared jurisdictional territory."

"That's not a real thing."

"It is now." Sabo spread his arms like a street magician unveiling his greatest trick.

Law had no time to react. Ace - who'd been stealthily circling behind - locked him in a semi-competent bear hug. "Field trip time, Dr. Doom-and-Gloom."

"Release. Me. Now." Law snarled, attempting to land an elbow strike, but the brat was alarmingly strong for a twelve-year-old.

"Nope. Promised you'd join the team. And I don't break promises." Ace began dragging him forward, ignoring the furious kicks slicing through empty air.

"This is felony kidnapping!" Law growled, straining to reach his pocketed phone.

Sabo intercepted his hand with a revolutionary's grin. "It's reeducation . And you're our political prisoner."

"YOU'RE GONNA LOVE US!" Luffy howled, bouncing like an over-caffeinated golden retriever.

Law stopped struggling for one lethal second, inhaled deeply, and pinned all three with a gaze that could dissolve steel. "Mark my words: I'm suing you, your parents, and your family dog."

Ace laughed, hefting his squirming cargo. "Shanks doesn’t own a dog."

"I’ll procure one."

Sabo ignored the threat and pried open a gap in the fence. "Cooperate, and you get juice."

"I demand diplomatic immunity."

"How about boxed juice?"

Law released a disdainful snort—then, in one fluid motion, stomped on Ace’s foot. The boy yowled but held firm. "T-two juices!" Ace bargained, now hobbling.

"And cookies ." Law crossed his arms, the picture of grudging negotiation.

Luffy, already sprinting ahead, trumpeted: "HE SAID YES!"

Law muttered darkly about "human rights violations" and "capital punishment for minors," but allowed himself to be hauled away—primarily because Ace genuinely wouldn’t relent, and he refused to whimper like an infant. Yet he cataloged every detail with prosecutorial precision for the impending lawsuit.

As the ragtag procession trudged back across the lawn toward their "secret base," leaving behind a trail of trampled grass, abandoned books, and thoroughly demolished dignity, a muffled shriek echoed on the horizon.

Inside the office, Beckman narrowed his eyes at the distant commotion—stampeding footsteps, gleeful shrieks, a booming "YOU'LL LOVE US, I SWEAR!" —before exhaling through his nose and returning to his 42-slide presentation on strategic planning. With world-weary finality, he decided whatever chaos was unfolding outside decidedly wasn't his jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, Luffy burst through the front door like a medieval battering ram breaching castle gates. Law was deposited (with some semblance of dignity) onto the sofa, where a dinosaur-print blanket was draped over his shoulders with ceremonial gravitas.

"You are now under our protective custody," Sabo proclaimed, "with all rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the Independent Republic of Anti-Boredom Operations™."

"Article One," Luffy began with unprecedented solemnity, "No one shall remain bored for more than thirty consecutive minutes!"

Law sank deeper into the couch cushions. His tactical scan revealed: A one-eyed teddy bear judging him with its dangling button gaze, The muted television playing an animated musical about tax-paying animals (ironically educational)

"I'm surrounded by deranged creatures," he muttered into his palms.

"You're surrounded by an emotional extraction team," Sabo corrected, launching a throw pillow at his head. "Ace—initiate Code Red emergency protocol."

Ace flung open a cupboard.

In the neighboring house—formerly as immaculate as an architectural digest spread before the child invasion—Law was ceremoniously deposited onto the sofa like a POW being presented to the chaos committee.

He sat ramrod straight, arms locked across his chest, regarding his captors with the same disdain one reserves for a malfunctioning toaster. On the coffee table before him: orange juice in a Spider-Man cup, butter cookies, and a one-eyed stuffed panda.

"If we're proceeding with this farcical abduction," he declared, producing a notepad from his pocket with courtroom gravitas, "I demand my Geneva Convention right to contact the outside world."

"You gonna call the cops?" Ace challenged, eyebrow cocked.

"No." Law adjusted his sleeves. "I need to leave a note for Cora-san. He worries."

Sabo huffed and folded his arms in a theatrical pout.

"Your guardian has a ridiculous name."

"And you three call yourselves the 'Anti-Boredom Task Force.' Apparently irony is elective in this neighborhood."

Law exhaled through his nose, retrieved his notepad with the resignation of a man signing his own death warrant, and extended his palm with eerie calm:

"Procure me a writing instrument."

Luffy returned moments later clutching a fistful of crayons—half bearing clear teeth marks. Law accepted them without protest and began writing with the meticulous precision of someone completing intergalactic tax forms:

Dear Cora-san,

I've been taken hostage by the neighbors. This is not a distress call.
Reason for abduction: "Critical boredom levels" (official captor statement).
Current conditions: Tolerable. Orange juice is provided.
Do not alert authorities—they claim "extensive experience evading law enforcement."

P.S. If I'm not back in two hours, I've likely been recruited into felony activities.
P.P.S. They're calling this "playtime."

Signed,
Trafalgar D. Water Law

"You write disturbingly well," Ace murmured, peering over his shoulder like a nosy scribe.

Law closed the notepad with a snap of wounded dignity.

"Professional correspondence requires proper handling," he stated, folding the paper with near-military precision. "Now, precisely how do you intend to deliver this?"

Ace responded with the calm of a seasoned message runner:

"Easy."

He flung open the window. Bellowed:

"Hey, giant! Catch!"

And launched the note like a paper grenade—arc perfect, spinning through the air with lethal elegance.

Across the yard, Rosinante—who'd been combing the property with frantic, long-legged strides—caught the note with shocking reflexes. His eyes ballooned as he scanned the contents... then immediately:

Tripped over three priceless ceramic planters.
Face-planted onto the deck.
Cracked his skull against the hedge.

Yet he rose with improbable dignity and shouted back:

"All good! But Law—remember your 6 PM meds!"

Law closed his eyes for precisely one measured second. Just long enough to block out the children's cacophonous brainstorming now tumbling over itself in enthusiastic chaos.

"May I leave now?"

"Absolutely not!" Luffy launched himself onto the couch with the unrestrained energy of a malfunctioning fireworks display. "You've been officially drafted into Operation Anti-Boredom™!"

From the hallway came the discordant symphony of clanging cookware—perhaps two pans colliding mid-air—followed by peals of laughter. In his office fortress, barricaded behind soundproofed doors, Beckman merely lifted his gaze. He weighed the disturbance for exactly three seconds... then deliberately chose ignorance.

It was simpler to play deaf. At least until his next conference call with the Russian clients.

🔹

No one could pinpoint the exact moment the chaos erupted. Perhaps it was when Sabo declared controlling Oceania was "purely symbolic, not strategic," or when Ace launched a preemptive strike against the United Kingdom "just to see if anyone would notice."

The undeniable truth was this: they'd approached their game of War with the same naive enthusiasm as tearing into a pack of cookies—innocent, ravenous, and utterly unprepared for the consequences.

At the center of the coffee table, the board now resembled a post-apocalyptic UN war room. Plastic armies amassed along imaginary borders, flanked by cookie crumb fortifications and open juice boxes sweating artificial dye. Each player clutched three cards like state secrets, faces etched with diplomatic suspicion, their arguments rapidly devolving into something far beyond the rulebook's jurisdiction.

Game pieces lay scattered across the jelly-stained world map, with South America's flag speared into a marshmallow mound near the African continent.

At some indefinable moment, Ace and Luffy had formed an unholy alliance against Sabo, somehow convinced that reenacting a Brazil-versus-France conflict would be "peak entertainment." Law remained on the sidelines, conducting a silent existential review of his life choices while methodically decimating Luffy's cookie stockpile—one forensic dissection at a time. With clinical precision, he would: Split each cookie open, Extract the cream filling, Consume the outer shells separately.

This ritualistic consumption drew astonished stares from all present, particularly since the cookie's rightful owner was known to bite first and ask questions never when food thieves approached.

"You can't just invade Australia and then declare it neutral territory!" Law protested, realigning his troops with the manic precision of a diplomat mid-breakdown.

No one batted an eye when Law began arranging cookie crumbs into tactical formations across the board, treating each sugary casualty with the reverence of a general surveying a battlefield.

"Rules are merely capitalist imperialism's arbitrary constructs," Sabo countered, stacking red game pieces over Europe with the serene confidence of someone who'd stormed the Bastille a thousand times before.

Ace let out a derisive whistle. Seated cross-legged on the floor with a half-eaten cookie clamped between his teeth and a plastic toy baton resting beside him like a scepter of power, he drawled:
"And here comes Robespierre Junior with his after-school revolution..."

Sabo lifted his chin, eyes gleaming with that infuriatingly self-assured spark. "Well, I am French. Revolution flows in my veins."

"And in your ego too," Law muttered, rearranging his Central Asian forces like a man simultaneously suppressing civil unrest and an impending migraine.

Ace stretched his legs and slapped the game board, toppling a pawn onto the Amazon. "Luffy and I are Brazilian. We've got a proud history of wars, dictatorships, and coups d'état. Our chaos is seasonal, democratically elected, and sponsored by multinational corporations."

Luffy—who'd been attempting to establish Greenland as a glitter-based sovereignty—finally looked up.

"I won a war once! Against a hornet!"

"Coups d'état aren’t revolutions, Ace. They’re just... underhanded power swaps," Sabo shot back, nose tilted upward with that infuriating aristocratic slant.

"Oh yeah? And the 1930 Revolution? The 1964 one?" Ace fired off like he’d memorized the lines just to needle him.

"Those were coups . Revolutions have people in the streets, guillotines, cries for freedom—"

"GUILLOTINES SUCK!" Luffy cut in, brandishing a cookie like a cutlass. "Can you even slice meat with one? No! So they’re useless!"

Law exhaled through his nose, eyes never leaving the board. His fingers ghosted over a troop advancing through Scandinavia with the precision of a grandmaster—as if this were some world championship chess match, not a battered wartime strategy game.

He didn’t speak, but the silence around him thickened, heavy with the weight of a childhood spent between maps and muted rooms. His eyes—too warm a brown for the ice in his complexion—tracked Sabo’s advance into Germany. Almost ironic.

"You won’t hold that without supply lines," he remarked, dry as dust.

"This is War , not World War II."

“Then why did you quote Clausewitz fifteen minutes ago?”

Sabo’s mouth opened—then snapped shut. Luffy seized the lull to shovel another fistful of cookies into his mouth and, in the process, accidentally declare Greenland’s independence.

Ace crossed his arms.

“You might be French, Sabo, but I’ve got samba, cangaço , and AI-5 in my blood. And I still face inflation and corruption with a grin.”

“And a pão de queijo in your hand,” Luffy added through a mouthful of crumbs.

Sabo huffed, though the ghost of a smirk tugged at his lips. He was just about to fire back with some Haitian revolution trivia or a snappy “Zapata would disagree” when Law cut in.

“None of you have actually read Hobsbawm, have you?”

A silence settled—subtle, almost reverent. Ace arched an eyebrow. “You’ve read him?”

“Of course I have. My mother read him to me. In German.” The boys stared at him for two solid seconds.

"And you think that entitles you to monopolize Europe?" Sabo challenged, his finger hovering over Germany like a tactical nuke waiting for coordinates.

Law realigned his battalions with the precision of a archivist shelving first-edition war crimes. "History already did that for me."

The game concluded fifteen minutes later under terms no self-respecting diplomat would recognize: an unstable Franco-Brazilian alliance sealed by spilled hot chocolate, three rogue battalions left freezing in Antarctica, and a peace treaty written in biscuit crumbs and grudging respect.

While the brothers toppled make-believe empires,
on the other side of town, Shanks pushed through the frosted glass door of a coffee —where, against all logic, real empires crumbled at a whisper. Just one order, and the right sum.

The amber glow of dusk filtered through Shanks entered Dawn Coffee, greeted by the familiar trinity of dark roast, polished mahogany, and old blood barely masked by vanilla. The lighting was amber-soft, the scene perfectly unremarkable—if you ignored the timed glances, the soundtrack playing just a hair too low, and the fact that the city's deadliest killers sat elbow-to-elbow with sleep-deprived grad students and couples whose silence cost extra.

When Shanks claimed this was where he spent his afternoons, he hadn't lied. There was comfort in knowing he topped both the menu's most expensive offering and the establishment's unspoken ranking system.

Exhaustion clung to him—not the physical kind, but the soul-deep weariness of a man who'd spent twelve hours swallowing paperwork, hollow apologies, and kindergarten paste. Stepping inside was like slipping into a scalding bath.

The waitress spotted him immediately. Bronze-skinned, eyes dark and calculating, her posture ballet-perfect but her steps pure viper. Regulars called her Cinnamon. Shanks knew her real name was deadlier than any syndicate surname. She served coffee. And contracts.

"Welcome back, Red Velvet."

Shanks grinned, burying his hands deeper into his trench coat pockets. The leather creaked faintly, whispering secrets only weapons and old bloodstains could tell.

"One more mention of that alias, and I swear I'll start charging royalties."

"You chose it yourself," she countered, polishing a glass with the same care one might clean a scalpel. "Said it matched your... lethal charm."

"I was drunk," he deadpanned, "and bleeding from a knife wound in my ribs."

"And yet you still took out three men with a soup spoon." The glass caught the light as she set it down. "'Red Velvet' stuck."

Her smile was a masterclass in performative warmth—the kind honed in the theater of death-row reprieves and last-meal requests. Shanks found himself almost fond of her. Or at least, trusted her enough to drink whatever she poured without checking for fingerprints on the rim.

He slid onto a barstool. His espresso appeared before his gloves hit the counter: double-shot, tar-black, potent enough to jumpstart a corpse or drown inconvenient memories.

Cinnamon slid a saucer beneath the espresso cup.
On its rim rested a folded paper note tucked between the napkin and a chocolate coin—the kind left as both payment and provocation.

"Cheesecake to go. Anxious client. 48-hour expiration. No frosting. Clean slice."

Shanks took the note like one might pluck a childhood candy from a jar—nostalgia and saccharine danger in equal measure. His eyes scanned the message. A smirk bloomed.

"Sending me after another politician? I'm becoming predictable."

Cinnamon arched one sculpted eyebrow. "VIP client. Paid triple for you specifically. Insists on Red Velvet." Her manicured nail tapped the counter once. "Said your style was..."

A deliberate pause. The kind that lets poison gather on the tip of a blade before the plunge.

"...Elegant."

"Ah, of course." Shanks swirled his espresso. "Nothing more elegant than a corpse in a hotel bathroom."

"You wear leather gloves and Tom Ford cologne." She flicked the chocolate coin toward him. "They mistake aesthetics for morality."

Shanks drained his coffee in one scalding gulp. As he turned, he found the stool beside him already occupied. The man was all edges - gaunt frame, stubble like steel wool, eyes as sharp as the imaginary gun barrel he mentally carried everywhere.

"You're late," Shanks said without glancing over.

"You're early." Yassop's voice was gravel wrapped in silk. "Or maybe you've lost all sense of time now that your schedule's divided between murder and parent-teacher conferences."

He settled onto the barstool with deceptive ease, every muscle relaxed except his eyes - those stayed hunter-alert. Thinner than their last meeting, his beard more unkempt, his posture carrying a new tension like he'd forgotten how to truly rest.

Cinnamon materialized behind the counter with her trademark panther's grace. No greeting, no pleasantries - just a sliding black porcelain cup that stopped precisely before Yassop with cruise missile accuracy, steam curling like a warning signal.

"The two of you together are a disaster waiting for its invitation," Cinnamon murmured without softening the edges of her words. "There. Mr. Latte's fresh order."

Yassop lifted the cup one-handed, his gaze never unlocking from Shanks'. The dark liquid trembled slightly, catching the light like a threat made liquid.

"You're a father now. That worries me."

Shanks' mouth curved into that trademark lopsided grin—the kind that lived permanently on the knife's edge between amusement and provocation.

"That a threat, Yassop?"

"A concern." His thumb traced the rim of the cup. "Family's a death sentence in our line of work. Seen men die for less. A kid who texts too often. A wife who asks about 3 AM bloodstains. A forgotten toy in the glove compartment."

Cinnamon let out a dry chuckle, plucking the chocolate coin from Shanks' saucer with surgical precision.

"And you two are the best we've got. Imagine the carnage when mediocre killers try playing house."

Yassop didn't react. His eyes had taken on that familiar glint of sorrow now—sharp enough to draw blood, quiet enough to pretend it wasn't there.

"That's why I left mine. They never knew. Never will." Shanks swirled the dregs of his coffee, watching the liquid spiral like secrets refusing to settle. "Safer that way."

Yassop's knuckles whitened around his cup.

Then Shanks spoke, his voice featherlight yet carrying that particular weight Yassop recognized instantly—the unshakable certainty of a man who'd already won the argument before opening his mouth.

"How many families do you know," he began, "where the eldest son tried to bomb the grumpy neighbor's garden after being called a 'brat'?"

Yassop's blink lasted a full second.

"Or where the middle child has a PowerPoint-ready world domination plan—complete with custom logo?" Shanks' laughter came now, warm as the café's overhead lights. "And the youngest... Christ, the youngest convinced me ants deserve civil rights and cried when a bird ignored his goodbye wave."

The corner of Yassop's mouth twitched upward—not the sharp smirk of their trade, but something rarer. The quiet, surrendered smile of a man who knew when to holster his arguments.

Shanks didn't mention Beckman—nor how his "husband" happened to be the CEO of the nation's largest export company
(and, perhaps, the shadow kingpin of its most formidable criminal enterprise).

"You've always been terrible at making sense, Shanks."

"Yet somehow," he mused, rotating his empty cup, "I've remained spectacularly good at staying alive."

A silence settled between them, thick as espresso grounds. Somewhere beyond the café's haze: The dying wail of a distant siren, The metallic whisper of a spoon circling porcelain, The bitter perfume of freshly extracted coffee.

Shanks snapped his fingers. The sound cracked through the stillness like a safety being switched off.

"You really think this will break me?"

Yassop's hand closed around his cup—those long, steady fingers that could reassemble a sniper rifle blindfolded now cradling ceramic instead of steel. His gaze had hardened into something approaching pity.

"I think you were never stronger than when you fought alone. And now..." The cup trembled slightly. "Now you're juggling dynamite in a house of glass."

Cinnamon glanced over her shoulder, the edge of her knife catching the light. "How poetic. Should I prepare tissues for your heart-to-heart, or just bleach for the bloodstains?"

Shanks rose, tucking the mission paper into his overcoat pocket. He adjusted the collar with a practiced flick of his wrist—the gesture of a man who’d spent a lifetime vanishing into shadows—then turned toward the door.

“Got a cheesecake to deliver.”

Yassop offered no reply. Only watched as Shanks dissolved into Café Dawn’s amber glow, a study in controlled motion, like ink dispersing in whiskey.

Cinnamon wiped the counter with a black cloth, her eyes never leaving the empty corridor where he’d stood.

“He’s good.”

“He’s the best,” Yassop corrected, voice graveled with something between pride and warning. “And that’s exactly why… he’d better watch his damn back.”

Shanks left the chocolate coin on Café Dawn’s table—an old ritual, like Charon’s payment before ferrying souls across the Styx. Outside, the night swallowed everything whole: the distant neon glare of the Kokuu Hotel, its gilded facade pretending at grandeur while reeking of emptiness. Nothing like Dawn’s bitter espresso and the iron-rich patina of old bloodstains.

Shanks stepped into the hotel lobby like a captain crossing a gleaming deck—knowing the storm always follows the calm.

The Kokuu was all white marble— polished to a sheen that reflected the vanity of every passing sole. The sort of place engineered to stroke fragile egos, with spiral staircases leading nowhere and staff trained to deliver theatrical "sirs" with saccharine reverence.

Facade luxury. He wore, A black turtleneck, pressed to knife-edge perfection, A charcoal European-cut overcoat where not a single thread dared stray, Tailored trousers that whispered rather than announced

Everything subdued. Everything expensive. Everything strategically forgettable. A man like him could be mistaken for an executive assistant, a consultant, or some minor functionary trailing behind actual importance.

The long, slender case hanging at his shoulder might have held a violin—the kind carried by musicians en route to unremarkable gigs. Nothing about it warranted a second glance. Nothing about him ever did.

But within that rigid case lay his sabre — Gryphon , he called it in quieter moments. A blade honed to surgical sharpness, balanced with the impossible lightness of feathers plucked from a griffin’s wing.

His gait remained loose, effortless. each step calculated to avoid camera angles that might betray his silhouette or leave digital breadcrumbs.

To every glancing eye: just another musician hauling his instrument. Until the moment he needed to become something far more lethal.

The reception desk dismissed him with preprogrammed politeness. The surveillance system blinked blindly—
compromised twenty minutes prior by a "maintenance update" courtesy of Beckman’s particular genius
for systems… and paranoia.

Not a single guard patrolled the seventh floor. Amateur hour , he mused. Even fallen stars crash when arrogance outweighs caution. 707’s door loomed before him. The keypad accepted Cinnamon’s code
with a silent green blink. He crossed the threshold. and the game began.

The suite sprawled with vulgar opulence. heavy velvet drapes the color of storm-churned midnight, the exact shade the ocean turns when swallowing ships whole.

An open bottle of Bordeaux breathed on the sideboard. The man at the window turned with the oiled smile of a serpent who’d never known hunger.

“Red Velvet.” His tongue caressed the alias like a vintage he couldn’t quite place. “An… eccentric choice for a man with your résumé.”

Shanks’ lips curved—just enough to acknowledge, never enough to engage. The door clicked shut behind him as he moved with the lazy confidence of a predator who fears only the indignity of unchallenging prey.

“I expected someone more… stern. You look… artistic.” the man said, drawing a cigarette from the pack and lighting it with a practiced air, as if rehearsing charm.

“Death is an art,” Shanks replied, his voice quiet, matter-of-fact.

The man — a minister, former banker, or something ambiguous in between — settled into the leather armchair with the kind of arrogance that only comes from never having heard a genuine no in his entire life.

“I’ve heard you’re open to negotiations. That sometimes... you change your mind.”

Shanks exhaled softly. He pulled a small silver pen from his pocket and let it drop carelessly onto the carpet, the gesture so absent-minded it felt unintentional. No one would notice the pen contained a sliver of paper with the target’s handwriting, traced in solvent ink — the kind of thing that could pass as a farewell note.

“Some ideas are worth changing,” he said, his gaze still lowered. “Others...” He looked up, sharp now. “Are mistakes.”

The man chuckled.

“Do you even know what I have? Access. Wealth. People who kill for me. Protection.”

“If someone brought me here,” Shanks said, stepping forward with quiet deliberation, “it’s because none of that is true.”
He moved like a rising tide — silent, unhurried, but unstoppable. Every step precise. Every motion deliberate.

“You signed your sentence the moment you believed luxury could replace loyalty.”

The man stood now, his composure cracking. He grabbed his wine glass and downed it in one gulp, as if bravado still counted for something. He didn’t see Shanks pull a thin strip of paper from his coat pocket — a forged hotel receipt, clumsily scrawled with the target’s own signature.

Another thread for the suicide narrative.

“Are you sure you want this?” the man asked, his voice faltering just slightly.

Shanks picked up the slender blade with movements so delicate they bordered on reverence — like a luthier assembling the final piece of an instrument.

“I don’t know if wanting is the right word,” he said. “But it’s the only thing I know how to do.”

And then he struck — once, clean, final.

Silence.

The saber pierced the side of the neck in one clean arc, swift and unhesitating. The blade passed through like a meteor tearing through the fabric of the night sky—brief, beautiful, lethal. The man shuddered, knees buckling, then collapsed soundlessly onto the ground.

It was quick. As it should be.

Shanks wiped the blade with a white handkerchief, the cloth swallowing the scarlet evidence. He retrieved a dagger, pressed it into the corpse’s stiffening fingers, and arranged the body just so—as if the man had dropped it in his final moments, strength abandoning him. A toppled glass was placed back into the dead man’s grip; papers on the desk were straightened, the "note" left conspicuously visible. A splash of wine stained the floor — a poignant detail, a whisper of emotional context.

He removed his shoes, stepping back with deliberate care to leave no footprints behind, then slipped out through the balcony to the floor below. A calculated leap—honed over decades of rooftop escapes and shadowed alleyways.

Minutes later, safely inside a taxi, Shanks unraveled the night in his mind. One less star in the sky. Not the kind of loss that would make tomorrow’s headlines—just a polite obituary and a murmured note of sympathy in some distant corner of the world.

But the sky?
The sky knew.

And Shanks… he just wanted to make it home in time for dinner.

The taxi driver caught his eye in the rearview mirror. "Everything alright, sir?"

Shanks offered a faint smile. "Perfect. Just eager to get home and see my kids."

The neighbors' gate swung open with a soft, rusty whine—just loud enough to catch the attention of any reasonably observant adult.

But Rosinante was not any adult. He was a man too large for tailored suits, too gentle to be taken seriously by security chiefs. His rumpled black overcoat and wrinkled white shirt hung off his frame like an afterthought, and his smile carried the quiet patience of a man who had raised a child reading legal jurisprudence before the age of fifteen.

The doorbell rang for the third time.

No one seemed to hear—or perhaps they were pretending not to, which was just as likely. Rosinante sighed. He shifted the bag of sweets against his hip and nudged the doorbell again with his elbow.

"I’m counting to five before I invade on diplomatic protocol," he muttered under his breath.

The door swung open at four .

On the other side stood Luffy, wild-haired, chin dusted with glitter, and a suspicious chocolate stain smeared across his shirt. His eyes lit up at the sight of his visitor.

"Mister Giant!" he shouted, as if they’d been separated for years instead of just two fences and half a garden.

"Hello there, little kidnapper," Rosinante replied with a half-smirk. "I've come to retrieve the prisoner of war."

"We didn't torture him! We just decorated him with tape!"

"...That explains a great deal."

Before he could step inside, Law appeared in the hallway behind Luffy, his hair disheveled, his expression caught between restrained teenage disdain and carefully concealed satisfaction. He clutched a one-eyed stuffed panda, with a makeshift badge fashioned from a stapled A4 sheet on his chest:

Anti-Boredom Mission™ — Agent: LAW (Title: Strategist)

Rosinante arched an eyebrow.

"...Impressive credentials."

"I was coerced."

"You're holding a cookie."

Law glanced at his hand. Looked away.

"I was emotionally compromised."

Luffy promptly latched onto Rosinante's leg.

"He can't leave yet! We haven't even raided the kitchen!"

"My God," Rosinante murmured under his breath. "He's developed Stockholm Syndrome in under twenty-four hours."

Before Rosinante could properly process Luffy's dramatic plea—the boy now clinging to his leg like a particularly determined koala—Sabo materialized behind Law with the impeccable bearing of a diplomat at a United Nations summit.

"Interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation clearly violates international conventions, Mr. Rosinante," he declared, his professorial tone hilariously at odds with the glitter still sparkling on his t-shirt.

Rosinante arched one eyebrow, feeling his coat hem gradually stretch under Luffy's dead weight. "Sovereign nation? You were playing geopolitics with rules you made up ten minutes ago."

"Every legal system has to start somewhere," Sabo countered, with the disturbing conviction of someone who'd genuinely considered drafting a backyard constitution.

Ace chose that moment to join the conversation, chewing what might optimistically be called a marshmallow - if one ignored its suspiciously charcoal-like edges.

"Relax, Rosinante. We're considering appointing him Minister of Defense. Or maybe Organized Chaos."

Law, who had been observing the scene with the expression of a caged cat preparing to strike, finally intervened: "What the hell is happening here?" His voice carried the weight of ten years' worth of premature adulthood warring against three seconds of exhausted patience.

"Did you take Law hostage?" Rosinante asked, attempting to shake his leg without dislodging Luffy.

"Voluntary participation," Ace declared, scattering crumbs across the room like a breadcrumb trail to madness.

"Participation under psychological duress," Law corrected, nibbling a cookie with the deliberate precision of someone collecting evidence for future litigation.

Rosinante extended his hand like a lifeline in stormy seas.

"Want to leave?"

Law considered. He looked at Luffy - now attempting to scale Rosinante like an especially tolerant oak tree - then at Ace, cheerfully masticating something of questionable origin, and finally at Sabo, who was observing them all with the expectant air of a diplomat waiting for peace treaty signatures.

"...Yes."

Rosinante released a laugh—a rough, warm sound like coffee spilled on a cold morning. "Very well, gentlemen revolutionaries. I return to you your Minister of Sensible Decisions."

Sabo executed a bow that might have been elegant, were it not for the garish glitter still clinging to his t-shirt.

"May our alliance endure until the next constitutional crisis."

As Rosinante and Law retreated toward the relative safety of the garden, the door closed with the resigned sigh of one already intimately acquainted with the chaos left behind.

The gate creaked shut behind them, its metallic complaint muffled by gravel beneath their feet. Evening settled lazily across the neighborhood, the jaundiced glow of the nearest streetlamp staining the road with the sepia tone of a faded photograph.

It was then that Shanks rounded the corner - his footsteps too light for someone carrying grocery bags, his jacket hanging open, hair tousled by the wind, a bread loaf dangling precariously from his elbow, and the faint but persistent aroma of burnt coffee clinging to his clothes like an afterthought.

He'd been humming something under his breath, an indistinct melody, until his gaze lifted and caught the two figures frozen near the house. The tune died on his lips mid-note.

His pace slowed, his posture still relaxed, but the smile that followed came a heartbeat too quick to be entirely genuine.

"Evening, neighbors," he greeted, his voice a touch too smooth, too polished. His eyes traveled from Rosinante before finally settling on Law. "Something happen?"

Law, with his hood pulled askew and shoulders set in barely perceptible tension, answered before his guardian could:

"Your kids kidnapped me."

Shanks released a short laugh - not false exactly, but restrained, as though filtered through layers of careful consideration before escaping his lips.

"Ah, yes. They do have a certain... talent for unconventional diplomacy." He made a vague gesture with his free hand, like someone erasing an invisible sketch in the air. "Hope they didn't cause too much trouble."

Rosinante continued observing him, standing as motionless as a human lighthouse - outwardly placid, inwardly vigilant. His head tilted just slightly, eyes locked with the intensity of someone flipping through an album of long-forgotten faces behind that smiling neighbor's mask.

"You seem familiar to me."

Shanks' smile froze. It was subtle - a fraction of a second, but Law saw. Saw Shanks' fingers tighten around the grocery bag until the bread loaf's packaging crackled in protest. Saw the smile lines around his eyes grow infinitesimally shallower.

"Doubt it," came the reply, unwavering yet too airy to be genuine. "Unless you've frequented the same questionable bars I have."

Rosinante didn't laugh.

"You wouldn't have happened to spend time... in the United Kingdom, by any chance?"

Shanks averted his gaze. For a suspended moment, the only sounds were the whispering leaves in the backyard trees and the distant murmur of a television playing somewhere down the street.

"No," he said, and though the smile remained, his eyes turned glacial - fixed and unblinking. "And even if I had... I don't think digging up the past would be wise, do you?"

Silence.

Law's gaze darted between them. He felt the air shift - that particular quality of quiet that precedes either drawn knives or unearthed memories.

"Cora-san," he murmured, voice hushed, a warning whisper skating along the edge of the words.

Rosinante blinked. The tension in his shoulders eased a fraction - just half an inch of surrendered vigilance. His eyes remained locked on Shanks.

"My apologies. I merely thought—"

"Best left alone." Shanks' interruption came wrapped in velvet, but the steel beneath now glinted unmistakably. "Life's simpler when we stop digging for things we don't wish to find."

The air grew thick enough to taste. The streetlight flickered overhead, as if it too had heard too much.

Rosinante hesitated. Then nodded once, slow as a sinking ship. "Fair enough."

Shanks drew a measured breath. His smile returned - reassembled, steadier now. More authentically his. His eyes found Law again, flickering momentarily over the crayon-scrawled badge that still regarded him like a puzzle missing half its pieces.

"Hey there, Strategist," Shanks called back with deliberate lightness, the grocery bags swinging like pendulum weights in his grip. "You should come around again sometime - but start charging a decent wage."

Law rolled his eyes, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed something perilously close to amusement. "That would require committee approval."

Shanks executed a small bow, the motion improbably graceful for a man balancing three bags of groceries and a half-crushed loaf of bread. "I'll bring campaign materials."

Then he disappeared inside with footsteps too quiet for a father of three. The garden gate clicked shut behind him with muffled finality - like the punctuation to a conversation that never quite began.

"Strange..." Rosinante murmured, the gears of his mind still visibly turning behind his eyes. Law could almost hear the metallic grind of suspicion settling into place.

"That entire family is strange," Law declared flatly, already striding toward the sidewalk. The words hung in the air like an epitaph.

And as the two walked away, Shanks remained frozen at his doorway, fingers clenched white-knuckled around the doorknob. The past had an irritating habit of never staying properly buried - always clawing its way back to the surface when least convenient, when most dangerous, like shards of glass working their way through skin.

When the door swung open, the aroma of home-cooked meals rushed to greet him - steamed rice, soy sauce, and something faintly charring at the edges. But Shanks had no time to react.

A small, sun-warmed blur of motion launched itself at him with enough force to nearly topple a grown man. Grocery bags swayed precariously, his jacket slipped halfway off one shoulder, yet none of it mattered.

Luffy clung to him with his entire being - arms, legs, soul - the embrace fierce enough to banish every lurking demon. He buried his face in Shanks' rumpled shirt as if trying to physically confirm his father's reality through touch alone.

"Beckman told the truth," came the muffled whisper against Shanks' chest, the words thick with emotion. "You didn't turn into a star."

Shanks froze. For half a heartbeat, the entire world suspended with him - the exhaustion etched behind his eyes, the weight of knowledge pressing between his shoulder blades, the phantom scent of blood he'd scrubbed away but never truly forgotten.

Then, without hesitation, he let the bags drop. They hit the floor with a dull thud as he gathered his son in arms that remembered every lost moment.

One hand pressed firmly between Luffy's shoulder blades, holding him close enough to feel the boy's heartbeat. The other cradled his wild hair, fingers tangling in the unruly strands with a protectiveness that spanned years of unspoken absence.

"Not yet, Captain," Shanks replied, his voice catching slightly at the edges like frayed parchment. "Still got plenty of road to walk before I turn constellation." Luffy sniffled loudly, delivered one deliberately theatrical sob, then grinned through the remnants of his dramatics.

"Beckman left the office about ten minutes ago. Making dinner. You're officially banned from the kitchen."

Sabo's voice rang out with the gravitas of a statesman announcing new legislation. He materialized in the hallway with a dish towel slung over one shoulder, hair in disarray, glasses askew, and the bearing of someone who'd already brokered four peace treaties before lunch.

"Banned?" Shanks arched one eyebrow in mock offense.

"Affirmative. You nearly burned the house down cooking last week." Shanks pressed a dramatic hand to his chest, the picture of scandalized innocence.

"That was culinary reinvention. Subversive art."

"That was poison," Sabo countered dryly. "Ace is assisting. Don't interfere."

Shanks laughed, the sound warm and unbothered. Being kitchen-banned didn't irritate him in the slightest. If anything, it felt like an unexpected gift - one less responsibility in a life already overflowing with them.

"How was your day?" Shanks asked, shrugging off his coat with practiced ease. Luffy crouched nearby, rummaging through grocery bags like a treasure hunter, his quest for the confiscated candy package ("Not before dinner," Shanks had declared) proving fruitless.

"Pretty good," Sabo answered, shifting the grocery bags to balance the notebook tucked under his arm. "Beckman locked himself in the office, so we got bored and kidnapped Law."

Shanks arched one eyebrow but withheld reprimand, simply crossing his arms in silent invitation to continue.

"Wasn't mean!" Luffy interjected, bouncing across the room with boundless energy. "He looked lonely. Sad and stuff."

A thoughtful pause settled over Shanks before he nodded. "That's called empathy, you know."

Sabo shrugged, the motion deliberately casual, clearly uncomfortable with this sudden acknowledgment of emotional intelligence. He drifted toward the living room where Ace stood near the kitchen threshold - apron tied lopsided, hair sticking up in even wilder spikes than usual, forehead glistening with effort. The pungent aroma of garlic clung to his fingers as he diced tomatoes with near-violent precision, each chop of the knife striking the cutting board like a declaration of war against culinary incompetence.

Shanks paused in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame with effortless grace, his smile as light as the evening breeze drifting through the kitchen. Sabo deposited the grocery bags onto the counter with practiced efficiency, simultaneously slipping a stolen chocolate square to the whining Luffy at his side—a covert operation executed with the precision of a seasoned conspirator—before the two vanished in a whirlwind of laughter and pounding footsteps.

Beckman stood sentinel at the stove, stirring a simmering pot with the meditative calm of a Zen master. His simple striped apron, tied neatly at the waist, bore a single defiant stain of tomato sauce in one corner like a battle badge. An unlit cigarette rested between his fingers—more comforting habit than actual vice—while his keen, unwavering focus remained fixed on the cooking contents before him. Yet the subtle quirk at the corner of his mouth betrayed the quiet amusement he could never fully suppress.

Across the counter, Ace wrestled with tomatoes, his knife work oscillating between tentative and aggressive. His tongue poked out in fierce concentration, every movement radiating the desperate energy of someone trying simultaneously to impress and appear utterly nonchalant about it.

"Easy now," Beckman murmured, his gaze never leaving the sauté pan. "You're not fighting the tomatoes. Persuade them."

Ace clicked his tongue in frustration but slowed his knife's rhythm - the motions still clumsy yet marginally more controlled, like a sailor finding his sea legs on turbulent waters.

"That smells criminally good," Shanks remarked from his safe distance, pointedly respecting the kitchen's invisible boundary. Beckman shot him a sidelong glance over one shoulder, the warning in his eyes as sharp as the chef's knife in his hand.

"Set one foot in here and I'll end you."

"I come bearing only compliments," Shanks protested, raising his hands in surrender. "Sabo issued a preemptive ban."

Beckman muttered something unintelligible - likely "with damn good reason" - before returning to his stirring with the focus of a bomb technician.

Shanks leaned against the wall, observing the pair. Ace carried himself with uncharacteristic solemnity, the tension in his shoulders speaking of burdens far heavier than stubborn vegetables.

"So, Ace," Shanks began, tone deliberately light. "Taking up culinary arts?"

Ace shrugged, eyes still locked on the tomato determined to escape his blade. "Someone's gotta learn."

Shanks blinked. Then laughed, pushing off from the wall with easy grace. "You know I'm not actually banned from cooking, right? Just... strongly discouraged."

"You put soy sauce in hot chocolate."

"Cultural exploration."

Beckman sighed, turning off the burner with a decisive click. He lifted the pot lid, releasing a fragrant cloud of steam that curled through the kitchen like an escaping spirit.

"You mistook oregano for laundry detergent. 'Cultural' my ass."

A faint smile flickered across Ace's face before fading into seriousness again. "It's just... you always cook," he said, so quietly the words nearly drowned in the hiss of settling broth.

Beckman stilled for just a heartbeat - long enough for the pause to speak volumes. Then he replaced the lid and turned, leaning back against the counter with arms crossed - a fortress lowering its drawbridge.

"And that's a problem?"

Ace shook his head too quickly, the motion sending shadows dancing across his face.

"No. Just... if someday you couldn't. Or had to leave. Or whatever." The knife trembled slightly in his grip. "I wanna know how too. That's all."

Shanks remained silent. The smile that had graced his features moments earlier faded slightly, leaving behind an expression of unexpected softness in its wake.

Beckman held his gaze for a heartbeat too long - a silent conversation passing between them in the space of that weighted look. Then he pushed away from the counter, grabbed a dish towel which he flung over one shoulder with practiced ease, and crouched down to meet Ace at eye level with the deliberate movements of a man choosing his footing on unstable ground.

"You know you don't have to replace me, right?"

Ace shrugged again, but this time the gesture carried a slight inward curl - as if trying to make himself smaller under the weight of unspoken emotions.

"But I want to. Because I like it. And because you're good at it."

Beckman didn't smile, but something in his eyes kindled warmer, like embers stirred back to life. He dipped his head briefly - a silent acknowledgment that settled between them - before straightening up with the quiet protest of aging knees.

"Then learn it properly."

He pulled out a second cutting board, positioning it beside Ace's with ceremonial precision, and began slicing onions with the flawless technique of a master at work.

"But you'll learn everything. Even washing the dishes afterward. It's part of the package."

Ace made a face, nose wrinkling in exaggerated disgust.

"Even the dishes?"

"Especially the dishes."

Shanks, still leaning against the wall, observed them in quiet contemplation. The weariness of the day hung heavy across his shoulders, yet in this suspended moment, his heart felt inexplicably light.

Then it happened.

Ace blinked slowly. Once. Twice. A third time. The knife hovered motionless in midair. His grip on the tomato slipped just a fraction. His eyes lost focus, the sharp amber fading to dull glass.

"Ace?" Shanks called, already pushing off from the wall.

But he was too late. The boy's body swayed like a candle flame guttering out without warning, then collapsed sideways with the dead weight of someone falling into sudden, involuntary sleep.

Shanks moved before the knife even hit the ground. In one fluid motion, he caught Ace mid-fall, strong arms encircling the boy's limp form just as the cutting board clattered to the side. The blade struck the tile with a muted clink .

Beckman whirled around, spatula still in hand.
"What the—?"

"Narcolepsy," Shanks murmured, his voice softer than usual but steady as bedrock. "He's alright."

Beckman closed the distance in three swift strides, his sharp gaze scanning Ace's face for any flicker of discomfort. But the boy simply breathed deep and even - his features relaxed as if he'd dozed off mid-movie marathon, the kind of peaceful sleep that follows warm blankets and familiar voices.

Shanks sank to his knees with controlled grace, settling onto the kitchen tiles with Ace still cradled against his chest. He adjusted the boy's head carefully against his shoulder, never once glancing away from the wall clock ticking steadily above the stove.

Three minutes and seventeen seconds later, Ace drew a sudden breath. His eyelids fluttered open like window shades admitting morning light. "Huh?"
A subtle shift of limbs, then dawning awareness as he took in his surroundings. "What... happened?"

"You took a nap without filing the proper paperwork," Shanks replied, the smile on his lips belied only by the quiet flood of relief behind his eyes - the kind that leaves minute tremors in its wake.

Ace's gaze jumped from Shanks' face to the floor, to the abandoned knife gleaming several feet away. A furrow appeared between his brows.

"I... dropped again?"
Beckman nodded, the motion tight with restrained concern.

"But I caught you," Shanks murmured, adjusting his grip to emphasize their shared solidity. "Clean landing. No harm done." The unspoken addition hovered in the kitchen's warm air: And I always will.

Ace drew a long breath through clenched teeth, the muscles along his jawline standing rigid. A silent storm of frustration churned behind his eyes - the kind that brews when the body betrays its owner. "Damn it."

"Not your fault."

"But I was fine."

"I know." Shanks pressed his forehead against Ace's for a fleeting moment - an anchor point in turbulent waters. "You still are."

A weighted silence settled between them. Ace nodded eventually, the motion still carrying the sluggishness of interrupted consciousness. Beckman rose to his full height and extended his hand, the offer clear in his steady gaze.

"Want to finish chopping, or call it a night?"

Ace's eyes tracked from the knife on the floor to the abandoned tomatoes on the counter. Another measured breath expanded his chest. "I want to finish."

Shanks allowed him to rise unaided - that small dignity preserved. Beckman retrieved the fallen blade with the care of a swordsmith handling precious steel, scrubbed it under scalding water with military efficiency, and returned it to the cutting board. Ace reclaimed his position with less speed but renewed determination.

Then Shanks moved to the cabinet, sliding open the drawer with practiced ease. He withdrew a leather-bound notebook and pen, flipping to a fresh page where he began writing in precise script:
'Ace - mild episode, no injury. 7:27PM. Dicing tomatoes. Relaxed, no observable stress cues. Lost consciousness in seconds. Awoke after 6min 14sec.'

Shanks' shower lasted exactly eight minutes – just long enough for the scalding water to carry away the lingering scent of blood and the accumulated weight of the day. When he emerged, dressed in an oversized t-shirt and sleep pants, the house was already filled with the aromatic promise of golden garlic and fresh basil.

In the kitchen, Beckman stirred a pot of pasta with methodical precision , while Sabo arranged the silverware on the table with chessboard-perfect alignment – each piece placed as deliberately as a gambit in some grand strategy. Luffy perched on the counter , pilfering cheese slices whenever he thought no one was watching.

And Ace…

Ace was helping set the food on the table, though Beckman had firmly banned him from handling anything hot . Every so often, Ace would take a deep, measured breath, as if consciously reminding himself to stay present.

Luffy had already claimed his seat, his legs swinging restlessly beneath the chair , his gaze locked onto the cooling garlic bread at the center of the table.

"Can I take a piece?"

"Wait for everyone," Sabo replied without looking up, his fingers making one final micrometer adjustment to the last fork's placement.

Luffy emitted a theatrical groan but complied—for the moment—his bottom lip jutting out in exaggerated protest.

Shanks' smile deepened as he approached, his calloused fingers drifting through Luffy's unruly hair in passing, the gesture as natural as breathing.

"Smells incredible," he remarked, leaning against the counter beside Beckman with the easy familiarity of someone who'd shared a thousand such evenings.

Beckman's dark eyes flicked over him in a practiced sweep—scanning Shanks' clothes for any lingering traces of the blood spatter that had marred them earlier. But his gaze caught on something else entirely, something deeper lurking beneath the surface.

"You scrubbed it all off?" he murmured, the words low enough to dissolve beneath the clatter of cutlery and Luffy's impatient fidgeting.

Shanks worried the inside of his cheek—a nearly imperceptible tic—before answering.
"Clean."

Beckman let it lie. Instead, he tilted the saucepan with a practiced wrist, revealing the rich, crimson sauce simmering within, its surface shimmering with rising steam.

"Needs more basil?"

Shanks sampled directly from the spoon Beckman held, their fingers brushing briefly as his lips met the still-warm metal.

"Perfect as always."
Dinner was served in deep ceramic bowls - spaghetti twirled in homemade sauce with tomato chunks left deliberately whole, exactly how Ace preferred it. Luffy already had his fork speared through a mouthful before Beckman even took his seat, though no one bothered to scold him.

Ace chewed methodically, his gaze occasionally drifting into middle distance as if mentally replaying the kitchen incident. Sabo watched him from the corner of his eye but remained silent - opting instead to animatedly recount something he'd read, his storytelling punctuated every few seconds by Luffy's irrelevant interruptions and absurd questions.

Shanks' rough, warm laughter rolled through the dining room in response to one of Sabo's remarks. Beside him, Beckman took an unhurried sip of wine, his dark eyes sweeping across the table with the quiet satisfaction of a general surveying his delightfully unruly troops.

This was how it always went - the beautiful chaos, the overlapping laughter, the weighted glances that carried entire conversations in their silence.

When Luffy - after demolishing his third helping - face-planted into the tabletop asleep, Sabo immediately complained about impending drool contamination of his personal space, while Ace lobbed a napkin at his youngest brother's head in a preemptive "territory defense." Shanks just leaned back in his chair, his easy smile reflected in the wineglass as his fingers absently tapped a rhythm against the crystal.

Beckman's gaze found his, and for one suspended second - just one - something remarkably close to peace passed wordlessly between them.

Chapter Text

Sabo had decided he hated this.

Adults lied—it was a universal truth, as undeniable as gravity or the outrageous price of video games. Sabo had always known that. Beckman, however, was the exception. And that exception had been unsettling at first. Beckman didn’t sugarcoat the truth, didn’t wrap it in pretty, pitying lies. He delivered it raw and punctual, as if the three boys were already old enough to swallow stones whole.

And Shanks...

Shanks was a liar so skilled he could put professional swindlers to shame. Sabo had watched him weave lies with the same effortless ease as when he patched up his jacket—improvising, but with an infuriating charm. In public, Shanks transformed into a first-rate illusionist, spinning stories so convincing that even Sabo, a natural skeptic, found himself wanting to believe. The most irritating part? He remembered every damn detail. For someone who forgot where he’d left his phone five times a day, that selective memory felt like a personal insult.

But when Sabo asked serious questions... Shanks didn’t lie. He hesitated. Swallowed hard. And said things he didn’t want to say.

So when Beckman showed up that Saturday morning announcing a "family outing," Sabo knew. He knew with every fiber of his being that there was a trap hidden in those words.

Maybe it was because Beckman had flat-out refused to let Shanks drive.

“But it’s my turn!” Shanks protested, as dramatic as a stage actor, arms raised in a pose worthy of a tragic martyr.

“I’m the only one who knows the address,” Beckman replied, as unfazed as ever, spinning the car keys around his finger with a kind of calculated cruelty.

“I would know if you told me!” Shanks fired back, already entering phase two of his tantrum ritual: the stage of deeply personal outrage.

“And risk you typing ‘ice cream pizza place’ into the GPS again? No, thanks.”

“That happened ONE time!” Shanks roared, though he was already climbing into the passenger seat, arms crossed and wearing the expression of a dog left out in the rain. “And it was a great day, for the record.”

“Let’s just go,” Beckman said.

“But I already planned Saturday with the kids!” Shanks stomped his foot against the car floor, holding up a hand-drawn flyer they’d made with colored pencils, glitter, and a wildly creative amount of childish enthusiasm. Sabo nodded solemnly, arms also crossed — they had, in fact, spent the entire night planning the weekend down to the minute.

“You’ll still have time to do all of that,” Beckman said, opening the car door and completely ignoring Shanks’ offended gasp. Ace simply stared at Beckman, like the man had forgotten something painfully obvious, let out a frustrated huff, but climbed into the car anyway.

Which brought them to the present moment.

The air reeked of hand sanitizer and cheap crayons. They were in the children’s hallway of a mental health center, where the walls were covered with drawings — lopsided houses, rainbows in overwhelming quantities, and grins stretched far too wide across stick-figure faces.

Sabo stood with his arms crossed, eyes scanning everything like it was a minefield. Every step, every shift in posture, every fleeting flicker of expression on Shanks’ face was a signal waiting to be deciphered. And what he was seeing wasn’t good.

Ace leaned against the wall, arms crossed — as always — but his gaze was far too serious for it to be just attitude or habit. He didn’t say anything — because he knew.
He knew that look on Shanks’ face wasn’t one of his theatrical tantrums. It was the other one. The one he made when he was trying. The one that meant he was barely holding himself together.

Luffy was sitting in the reception area, legs swinging idly from the bench, his ID badge dangling from his nose like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Beckman handed out the badges — first to Sabo, then to Ace, then to Luffy — but when he reached the redhead, he sighed. His hand was outstretched, holding Shanks’ badge — printed with his full name, the name of the doctor assigned to him, and the room number that made it clear he’d have to disappear up a flight of stairs to reach the office.

The redhead turned his face away, refusing to take it.

The silence stretched between them like a rubber band on the verge of snapping.

“You’re being dramatic,” Beckman said — not raising his voice, not even sounding particularly annoyed. Just stating it like someone might mention that it might rain later.

Shanks turned his head slowly, fingers curling as if he could feel the familiar weight of a knife resting in his palm. Beckman traveled often for work — it would be easy. An accident. A failed robbery. So easy it ached.

But no. That wasn’t enough, Shanks needed to look him in the eyes.He needed Beckman to see the wreckage before he died.

“Dramatic?” he echoed, voice cracking with incredulous offense. “We spent the entire week planning this weekend! We were going to the mall! We bought clothes! More paint supplies, more glitter, we had ice cream and played every damn game at the arcade, and then watched that horrible movie Sabo loves so much!”
Somewhere in the background, Sabo muttered something about “Hamilton isn’t bad. you people just have no taste.”

“We had a schedule, Beckman. A schedule!”

Beckman knew exactly what he was doing, He just wasn’t sure if it was right, But by that point, right and wrong were starting to look like the same damn thing.

“And here you are,” he replied, dry as desert sand, “with your three kids, taking care of your mental health. Sounds like a much more productive Saturday to me.”

“I CAN’T TAKE CARE OF MY MENTAL HEALTH IF I HAVEN’T GONE TO THE ARCADE, BENN!”

Luffy perked up, raising a finger like a student who had something very important to contribute. “I still wanna go to the arcade.”

Ace pulled him back down onto the bench without even glancing. “Shut up. He’s in tropical storm mode.”

Shanks threw his arms wide open, gesturing with the wild flair of a dramatic reality show host mid-season meltdown.

“You ruined my Saturday!” he declared. “You dragged me to this place that smells like daycare mixed with existential guilt! And you handed me over to a therapist like I was some... some dog being tricked into going to the vet under the lie of a walk in the park!”

“…Are you comparing yourself to a dog?”

“Yes!” Shanks shouted, pointing at himself with both hands like he had just landed a flawless rhetorical move. “I am the dog! You are the traitorous human with a biscuit hidden in your pocket!”

At that exact moment, a woman in a lavender lab coat and a silver name badge walked by in the background.
She slowed down, peering over the rim of her reading glasses at the scene: one disheveled redhead, clearly teetering on the edge of an emotional cliff, being gently intercepted by a man standing firm, calm, unshaken.

She smiled. One of those warm, knowing smiles — the kind you give when you see a couple in the middle of a passionate debate over whether or not to adopt another cat.

"You two look beautiful together," she murmured, before briskly continuing down the hall, clipboard of reports in hand.

Shanks froze. Beckman went statue-still.

"Perfect," Shanks drawled, savoring the word like cheap wine. "Now we’re the cute dysfunctional couple who bickers in the pediatric clinic hallway. Next thing you know, they’ll recruit us to lead a goddamn support group."

"So," Beckman leveled him with a stare, "are you going to tell me what happened?"

Shanks turned to him with glacial slowness, mouth gaping and snapping shut like a fish tossed onto a dock—desperate to string together a sentence, any sentence.

"I… don’t… you… not a cookie!" he finally spat, furious, as if this clarified anything.

Beckman merely arched one eyebrow "What was that?"

"YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHAT THAT WAS!" Shanks jabbed a finger at him like a prosecutor delivering the final blow in a murder trial. "But you’ll play clueless, and then I look like the raving lunatic!"

"Shanks," Beckman sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose like a man who’d run out of caffeine and patience in equal measure, "if you’d just tell me exactly what’s bothering you, I could—"

"BUT I ALREADY DID!!" Shanks’ hand shot up in protest, trembling with the energy of a wronged revolutionary… only to crumple mid-air. He seemed to physically deflate into the chair, hands dropping limp into his lap like surrendered flags.

"Shanks." Beckman’s voice was dangerously calm. "What. Exactly. Is the problem?"

The redhead hesitated. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. He resembled a goldfish attempting to deliver a doctoral thesis on emotional vulnerability.

Ace released a sigh so heavy it could’ve anchored a ship. The kind of sigh reserved for badly dubbed cartoons where the lips moved three seconds after the dialogue. He rolled his eyes hard enough to strain ocular muscles. "Can I?"

Both adults swiveled toward him in perfect unison, as if suddenly remembering they had an audience. Ace yanked out his headphones (which hadn’t even been plugged in) and jerked his chin at Shanks with the weary authority of a war-torn diplomat.

"The problem isn’t therapy. The problem is you ambushed him. Shanks has ADHD, remember? You bulldozed his whole schedule without warning… and now he feels like shit for being pissed about it… and now he’s stuck here in the middle of nowhere wondering if he’s supposed to be the responsible adult or the anxious patient having a silent meltdown."

Silence.

Luffy suddenly cut through the quiet, "It's like when they changed the menu at our go-to takeout place—y'know, the one we order from when no one feels like cooking." He pressed a hand dramatically over his heart, eyes shimmering with earnestness as he stared at Shanks and Beckman. "It hurts right here."

Shanks blinked.
Beckman blinked harder.

"...That's it?" Shanks asked, his voice laced with bewildered hesitation. "That's really it?"

Ace rolled his eyes so hard it looked physically painful. "Congratulations, you two are peak adulthood. One can't articulate his feelings if his life depended on it, and the other only listens when there's fucking subtitles."

Beckman dragged a slow hand down his face, as if trying to wipe away some invisible stain. He took a deep, measured breath— that breath, the kind he only ever took when he was desperately trying not to look... guilty.

“Okay,” he finally said, his voice softer now, gentler around the edges. “I thought it was something more serious. But if the issue is just… the schedule getting thrown off, that’s an easy fix.”

Shanks blinked again.

Beckman looked at him, then at the three boys. He let out another long sigh — the kind that came from the bones.

“Next time, I’ll give you a heads-up. With a schedule and everything, if that’s what it takes. And after your appointment…” He nodded toward the hallway. “We go straight to the mall. Arcade, ice cream, and yes — even that cursed musical Sabo loves so much, if it’s still playing.”

Shanks’ eyes went wide. The kids lit up instantly — Luffy threw both arms into the air like he’d just won an intergalactic championship, Ace tried not to smile (and failed miserably), and Sabo gave a single, satisfied nod, the smugness of a man who wins a debate without ever standing up.

Shanks took two dramatic steps forward and snatched the badge from Beckman’s hand with a flair worthy of a soap opera finale.

“Thank you, darling.”

“See you in an hour.”

“No promises.”

And with that, Shanks took a deep breath, adjusted his jacket like a performer about to step onto a stage, and marched toward the stairs in search of the therapist’s office — badge on his chest, and at least some of his dignity restored.

Beckman let them go to their respective rooms alone— autonomy , he'd said, in that CEO voice that brooked no argument. The moment Sabo's door clicked shut, he allowed his shoulders to slump—just for one second—before straightening his posture with an audible crack of his spine. On the wall beside him, a brightly colored poster cheerfully declared: 'Breathe! You're doing your best.' He glared at it like he was considering setting it ablaze through sheer force of loathing.

Luffy didn't notice. He was already sprinting toward his assigned door, sneakers slapping against the clinic's cold linoleum like an anxious metronome. If they finished quickly, they'd go to the mall. Arcade games. Ice cream. Simple as pretending everything was fine. He'd done it before—in orphanages, in shelters, in front of social workers with plastic smiles.

Yet instinct made him freeze on the threshold.

Something about the woman waiting inside was different.

She didn't rise to greet him. Didn't try to look friendly. Just watched—with a stillness that felt like it knew too much.

She merely tilted her head, long fingers resting atop a metal pen—like someone observing a rare specimen they had no intention of startling. Tall. Impeccable posture. White lab coat over a navy-blue dress the color of midnight sky.

And her eyes.

Luffy's throat went dry. These weren't 'angry adult' eyes or 'tired adult' eyes. These were seeing eyes—piercing straight through the ready-made lies he kept for occasions like this. His stomach clenched. No one should be able to look that deeply.

"Did you come willingly," she asked at last, "or because you were made to?"

Her voice wasn't sweet. It was... clear. Like creek water over stones.

Luffy hesitated.

"Both," he admitted before he could decide if it was safe.

She wrote something down. Unhurried. "Then we'll make a bargain. You tell me one truth... and I'll be as brief as possible."

Luffy nodded, a wordless noise of agreement escaping his throat.

"Good. I'm Dr. Boa Hancock, a specialist in child psychology." She noted the tremors in his hands. "But you may call me Dr. Hancock."

The room smelled of melted crayons and disinfectant, as if caught between daycare and laboratory.

Luffy swung his legs on a worn red ottoman, heels drumming a restless rhythm against the fraying fabric. His fingers picked at loose threads in the seams—fidgeting, like he was daring his own nerves to settle.

On the other side of the small table, Dr. Hancock remained silent. Her pen stilled, her expression calm. She let the discomfort stretch, long and taut like a rubber band, waiting patiently for him to be the one to snap it.

“So…” she began, at last, flipping a page in her navy-blue notebook — the same file she’d received some time ago. But honestly? Words written by adults rarely captured the full weight of what a child had actually lived.
“Tell me — how many homes have you had?”

Luffy frowned, counting silently on his fingers. He hesitated on the fourth, gaze drifting upward toward the ceiling, somewhere far away.

“Three. No… four. If you count Beckman and Shanks’ place.”

“And the first home?”

He shrugged, still not meeting her eyes.

“My dad, I guess. I don’t really remember… I just know one day he left me with Garp. And… disappeared.”

Hancock tilted her head just slightly.

“Garp?”

“My grandpa. That was the second one.” Luffy’s fingers tightened around the edge of the soft ottoman beneath him, like it was something slippery he didn’t want to lose. “He used to leave me with other people… like, caregivers. When he went away. Said it was ‘training.’”

“And how did you feel during these… training sessions?”

Luffy stared up at the ceiling, then shifted his gaze to a wooden toy shelf in the corner of the room. His mouth twisted.

“Hungry, sometimes. Scared, sometimes. But the worst part was when Garp came back and said, ‘Can’t stay today.’ Like I wasn’t the thing that mattered most.”

He tried to imitate his grandfather’s deep, gruff voice, but it came out strained and scratchy. Hancock didn’t laugh. She simply jotted something down — slowly, without rush.

“And the third home?”

“An orphanage. With… Miss Curly.”

His voice faltered at her name, stumbling slightly, as if unsure what title to give her — or if any name really fit.

“She said I was ‘too much.’ Too loud, too greedy… took up too much space.”
His legs were swinging faster now, heels nearly kicking the edge of the little table.
“So she sent me back to Garp. And then he sent me back to her. Like… volleyball. But without a net. Human volleyball.”

Hancock’s pen paused mid-sentence. She looked up.

“How many times were you sent back?”

Luffy started counting again on his fingers. Tongue pressed between his teeth, eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Twice? Or four times. I… I stopped keeping track when Ace and Sabo showed up.”

Something shifted in his expression then. A flicker — faint, but there. Like he’d finally arrived at a chapter of his story that wasn’t completely gray. Or maybe just less rehearsed. Less protected.

“We didn’t exactly get off to a good start,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Ace really didn’t like me. He spat in my soup. Broke my pencils. Called me a parasite. Said I was the kind of kid nobody ever really wants around.”

He ran his thumb over a faded scar on the center of his palm. A habit, not a flourish.

“But I kept coming back. Always came back. Because… being alone hurt more than getting punched.”

Hancock said nothing. But it wasn’t the kind of silence that pushed you to fill it. It was the kind that listens. The kind that waits.

“Sabo was already living there before,” Luffy went on, brow furrowing again. “He’d been adopted when he was five. But… he came back? Like, a few weeks before I arrived. We didn’t talk at first. He always had his face buried in a book. Pretended I didn’t exist.”

A pause.

“Until the day they locked me in the broom closet.”

He shivered. When he spoke again, his voice was thinner. Lighter. Like it might disappear if he spoke too loud.

“I was in there all night. It was dark, smelled like mold. And I… I knocked on the door. I cried. No one heard.”

He swallowed hard. Loudly.

“No one except Sabo. He fought with Ace until he got the key. When they pulled me out, I was shaking. Filthy. I looked like some kind of sewer rat. They yelled at each other all night after that.”

Luffy’s eyes shimmered — but not with tears.

“The next morning, Ace threw his blanket over me. Said he was too hot. That was a lie. It was freezing cold.” He let out a breathless laugh, part humor, part memory that still stung.
“And Sabo? He did something worse — he taught me how to read under the covers with a flashlight. We both got sick for a week.”

Hancock wrote down a single word on her notepad: rituals.

“And is that when you knew?” she asked. “That it was real?”

Luffy looked down at his hands. Bitten nails, little scars on the knuckles. His eyelids fluttered once. Then again. Slowly.

“That’s how I learned that love hurts… but not as much as being invisible.”

A long silence followed. The kind that doesn’t feel heavy. The kind that makes space for breathing.

“And now?” Hancock asked. Her voice was clean and gentle, like spring water running over smooth stones.
“What’s different today?”

Luffy raised his head. A real smile broke across his face — small, but steady. The kind that didn’t ask for permission.

“Now I’ve got people who come back.”

“What do you mean?”

“Shanks left for work once without saying anything, but he came back in time for dinner. Beckman always leaves notes when he needs to go somewhere. Ace yells at me, but he never leaves — it’s just how he shows he cares. And Sabo waits for me and holds my hand when I need it.”
Luffy’s legs stopped swinging. “And I know they’re not going to trade me for a version that’s… easier to deal with.”

Hancock closed the notebook slowly, carefully. On the last page, she wrote in neat, purposeful lines:

‘Emotional attachment rebuilt through shared rituals. Avoidant behavior offset by consistent presence and familiar humor. Recommendations:

1. Therapeutic activity involving siblings.
2. Ongoing reinforcement of a belonging-centered narrative.’

She opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out a heart-shaped lollipop, bright red and shiny like something from a storybook.

“For the hero who sat through the entire session without running away,” she said, holding it out like a medal.

Luffy took the candy with both hands, like it was something sacred. “Can I take a bite now?”

“You can.”

Three bites. That’s all it took. The lollipop was gone, just a stick now.

“Next time,” Hancock said as he was already rising from the beanbag like a spring released, “bring me a drawing. Something happy, a moment with your family. I’d love to hear the stories behind it.”

Luffy froze for half a second. Just half. Then laughed. “Sure.”

And he bolted for the door.

“ARCADE!” he shouted into the hallway, like the whole world had just clicked back into motion. Like the spin of things was finally right again.

Hancock watched the door swing back and forth, listened to the echo of quick, joyful footsteps fading down the corridor. Then, in a quiet, nearly invisible corner of her page, she wrote:

"Narrative contains geographic inconsistencies. Patient’s stated history suggests transitions through multiple institutions with conflicting locations. Speech patterns appear rehearsed. Potential fear of separation or loss of current attachment." She sighed, staring at the words. A decision had to be made—and in the end, it wasn’t a difficult one.

Hancock glared at the torn page for a heartbeat. Then crushed it in her fist.
The sound of crumpling paper tangled with the clock’s relentless ticking.

Her gaze flickered to the locked drawer where the signed documents lay—those from Benn Beckman’s lawyers, her own signature beside them, and most of the staff’s. Men , she thought. Then she turned back to write. A new report. A more… acceptable one.

She studied the torn sheet for a second. And before tossing it away, she dragged her thumb across its edge—like a farewell to something that mattered.

"Continue current treatment plan. Direct intervention not advised at this time. Child shows positive adaptation to environment—and to stability provided by present guardians."

Some wrestle demons in a locked room. Others wage wars against entire armies.

The chessboard between them was already set when Sabo entered—pieces arranged at precise angles, as if they’d been waiting centuries. Hack didn’t look up from the move he was plotting, calloused fingers spinning a black pawn.
They remained silent for nearly twenty-three minutes. Sabo had no intention of starting this conversation, and Hack seemed either determined to outlast time itself or wholly absorbed in testing their chess skills—whichever it was, the result felt the same.

Are we really doing this? Sabo thought, watching as the afternoon light warped the pawn’s shadow across the board. He could recite all 734 moves of Anderssen’s Immortal Game by heart, yet this particular match was… tedious . Hack played like someone who didn’t care about winning—only about enduring.

"You’re bored." Hack’s voice scraped like stone dragged across the ocean floor. It wasn’t a question.

Sabo nudged his white knight in a deliberately erratic pattern, feigning disinterest. "Chess is a finite game. 10¹²⁰ possible moves. Dull once you decode the patterns."

"Like your life with the Von Eldrics." Hack finally looked up, amber eyes catching the light like a nocturnal predator testing boundaries. Hack had read his files. Sabo barely flinched—it was standard in therapy, after all. Beckman had likely handed over his entire adoption history.

Sabo didn’t answer right away. He simply turned the knight over between his fingers, the carved wood glinting faintly, before letting it drop onto the board — not caring much where it landed. The soft click of the piece against the wood echoed like a quiet full stop.

“You read the reports,” he muttered, not surprised in the slightest. “Much classier than asking outright.”

Hack kept his eyes on him.
There was no judgment in his gaze — only that steady, unflinching kind of observation that feels like someone studying a crack in concrete, not to criticize, just to understand how deep it runs.

“You weren’t adopted. Not once. Not before the Von Eldrics,” he said, flat and factual, like reading out serial numbers. “One rejection every time. But with them... you lasted three years.”

“Until I burned down the greenhouse,” Sabo added for him, voice low and tinged with something sharp and bitter. “Important detail. They love putting that part in bold.”

Silence settled again, but this time it wasn’t quiet in the calm, strategic way — it was the charged silence that comes when old memories crawl up from beneath the skin, unwelcome and uninvited.
Sabo shifted in his chair, subtly, like the discomfort wasn’t physical but buried somewhere deeper.

“You think I’m unstable,” he said, not accusing — just resigned, like someone who’s heard the word used before by people with less patience and more power.

“I think you survived.”

Hack’s answer came dry, sharp, and entirely void of consolation.

Sabo blinked. That hadn’t been part of the script.
Nor was it the kind of analysis he was used to receiving.

“You play too slowly,” he said at last, changing the subject with the skill of someone who had long since learned how to survive by dodging conversations the way others dodge blades.

“You play like someone who wants the game to end,” Hack countered, unmoved. “But you haven’t left the table yet.”

Sabo shifted a bishop without much thought, just to move something — anything. Then propped his chin on his hand, elbow resting on the edge of the board.

“Why are you testing me?”

Hack didn’t respond right away. He moved a pawn forward with quiet precision, eyes still fixed on the board rather than on the boy across from him.

“Because you’re trying to fail.”

Between them sat a chessboard carved by Hack’s own hands — the kings were entwined dolphins, the rooks shaped like ancient lighthouses. Sabo touched the white knight, a hybrid figure between a seahorse and a warrior, its curve familiar beneath his fingers.

"You refused the standard IQ test," Hack observed, advancing his black pawn. "Yet I estimate your cognitive potential at 27 points above my own."

"What a waste," Sabo murmured, his attention drifting. "All that calculation just to prove I think too much and sleep too little."

Hack slid a bishop across the board with feigned indifference—but Sabo caught the fractional hesitation in his fingers before releasing the piece.

"The Von Eldrics," Hack said, pivoting with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. "Three years was a record for you."

A chill knifed down Sabo’s spine, though his expression remained smooth as glass. His fingers traced, almost reflexively, the star-shaped scar hidden beneath his glove.

"They enjoyed collecting rare things," he replied, his voice soft as silk draped over a blade. "An orphan boy with a genius IQ? Excellent dinner-party conversation."

Hack finally looked up, his dark eyes locking onto Sabo’s with an intensity that thickened the air between them.

"And the greenhouse?"

Sabo smiled, baring every tooth. It was the kind of smile that would make Luffy recoil, that would send Ace stepping protectively between them.

"It was an accident," he lied, honey-sweet. "Nearly as accidental as their divorce six months later."

The silence that followed was different this time - thick, charged like the air before a storm. Hack studied Sabo the way a frontiersman might study a map of hostile territory, searching for hidden traps in the topography of his expression.

"You're trying to frighten me," Hack observed, his voice deliberately flat.

Sabo leaned forward, elbows disturbing the careful alignment of chess pieces, sending pawns teetering like drunken sentinels.

"I'm trying to spare you," he corrected, velvet-soft. "Some stories don't have happy endings, doctor. Some don't even come with morals."

Hack didn't respond. Instead, he picked up the black rook, rolling the weighted piece between his fingers with the reverence of a priest handling sacramental silver. When he finally replaced it, the movement carried the precision of a ritual - each millimeter accounted for. His eyes never left Sabo's face. The game held no interest for him now, and Sabo knew it. The real match had always been played on a different board entirely.

Sabo smiled — dryly, the kind of smile that forms when there are too many words crowding behind your teeth. Then he let the piece fall back onto its square with a soft thud.

“Most people just want a pretty lie,” he said. “The kind that makes everything look fine. The kind that says adopted kids should be grateful — especially when they’ve been ‘rescued’ from places where they had nothing.”

Hack listened, as always, without judgment. But there was a slight tilt of his head — something subtle, hovering between quiet attention and wordless recognition.

Sabo leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, fingers laced in front of his mouth. His eyes were sharp now — not in tone, but in what they carried behind them.

“Do you believe authority is something earned or something taken?”

Hack raised an eyebrow.

“Both,” he replied. “Depends on the setting.”

“Wrong,” Sabo said — and for the first time, there was firmness in his voice instead of irony. “Authority is always fiction. A forced agreement dressed up in moral clothing. What actually exists is power. And power, inevitably, invites resistance.”

He leaned back in his chair, letting the words settle between them like thick smoke.

“And resistance,” he added, “breeds violence.”

A small nod followed — not dramatic, just enough to signal the closing of a thought. Hack couldn’t quite read it.

“Quoting a book?” he asked, tone neutral.

Sabo gave a single nod, but it carried hesitation. Like someone deciding how much of himself he wanted to reveal.

“So that’s what they did to you?” Hack ventured. “They had power over you. And you fought back through violence.”

Sabo didn’t answer. But his eyes — they flickered. Not with anger, but something quieter. Quivering, unstable.

Hack took that in with the same methodical calm he used to study the chessboard. Like every tremor had meaning. Like every silence was just another move, waiting to be played.

His gaze dropped to the board — and for the first time, he moved the queen.

Sabo frowned.

“That’s a terrible move.”

“I know.”

“You did it on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought maybe you needed to win a game today.”

Silence followed — but it wasn’t the same silence from before. This one wasn’t braced or armored. It felt suspended, as if the air between them was holding its breath, waiting for something buried to rise on its own.

Sabo rolled the piece between his fingers, not placing it, stalling. Pretending his nerves didn’t show.

“You think I’m trying to fail... but what if it’s the opposite?” he asked, voice quieter. “What if I just don’t know what to do if things actually go right?”

Hack didn’t answer immediately. He only tilted his head, just slightly — a gesture so small, it might have gone unnoticed if you weren’t looking for it. But it was there. A flicker of understanding, quiet and deliberate.

Outside, the sun dripped down the edges of the window panes like warm syrup — thick, golden, unwilling to leave. The late afternoon painted everything in a kind of domestic melancholy.

“You can keep trying to lose without ever daring to want the win,” Hack said, after a long pause. “But it wears you out. Eventually, the body either begs for rest… or it screams.”

Sabo finally moved his queen — boldly, recklessly, almost violently. But with intent.

“Tell me, then, therapist,” he said, the edge of sarcasm in his tone worn thin by exhaustion. “What am I supposed to do once I stop wanting to fail?”

Hack shrugged, like someone who didn’t claim to have the answers — just better questions.

“You learn how to exist without needing to prove you deserve to.”

Sabo nearly laughed — not because it was funny, but because it hurt in places he hadn’t realized were still tender. He leaned back into the chair, eyes still on the pieces, and murmured, almost too soft to hear:

“I don’t know what that feels like.”

Hack nodded slowly.

“Then that’s where we begin.”

Some wars aren't won in a single battle.

Some drag on in silence, masquerading as routine. They're long sieges - of thoughts, of fears, of memories no one else sees. And surviving them sometimes just means managing to walk out the door when the day is done.

Ace closed the office door carefully behind him, the latch clicking with finality like he was sealing away some vulnerable part of himself in that sterile room. The hallway stretched before him, so quiet his footsteps seemed to whisper secrets against the linoleum, each echo carrying fragments of the session he'd just left behind.

Then—thump—his shoulder collided with solid warmth.

"Ah, my bad," came a voice from above. The taller blond boy took a deliberate step back, moving with the unhurried grace of someone who'd never known urgency. His faded hoodie bore the comfortable wrinkles of constant wear, a battered notebook tucked carelessly under one arm like an afterthought. Though he couldn't be older than seventeen, he carried himself with the timeless ease of a setting sun.

Ace rubbed his forehead where they'd connected, though no real irritation colored his expression. "'S fine."

The blond's calm gaze flicked past him to the door marked "Dr. Jinbe." "You seeing the doc?"

"First time," Ace admitted with a shrug that said more than words ever could.

"Hmm." The boy's lips quirked like he'd heard a joke only the universe understood. "He's good. But fair warning—one day you'll go in to talk about your childhood and come out realizing you're terrified of centipedes."

Ace's brows drew together. "What'd you come out realizing?"

"Nothing. I'm the perfect patient." His laugh was sunlight through leaves. "Also a professional people-watcher. Marco."

"Ace."

Marco opened his mouth to respond when a dark blur came barreling down the hallway like a natural disaster given human form.

"ACEEEE! I'm starving to death! Let's eat! You're the only one missing!!"

Luffy crashed into Ace at full velocity, latching onto his arm with the tenacity of a monkey claiming its favorite branch. His straw hat sat askew at a precarious angle, and his grin stretched wide enough to rival lottery winners clutching their golden tickets.

"Luffy, we agreed to meet in the reception area," Ace chided, though his tone carried no real heat. Instead, his hands moved automatically to straighten his little brother's hopelessly rumpled clothes - a gesture worn smooth by years of repetition, as natural as breathing.

Luffy dismissed the reproach with a wave and jabbed a finger toward Marco. "Who's this guy?"

"Nobody important," Ace answered, the words devoid of any sting.

Marco chuckled, the sound warm with amusement. "Thanks for the compliment."

Luffy cocked his head, studying Marco with the intense scrutiny one might give to a particularly intriguing restaurant menu. His nose scrunched slightly before he delivered his verdict: "You look like a pineapple.”

"Luffy!" Ace delivered a light swat to his brother's head, though the corners of his mouth betrayed the smile he was fighting to suppress. "You can't just say things like that to people."

"But he does!" Luffy insisted through peals of laughter, completely unrepentant, his joy bubbling over like a spring that couldn't be contained.

Marco, far from taking offense, looked genuinely entertained, the lines around his eyes crinkling with amusement. "I've been called worse by better people," he conceded with the easy grace of someone who'd long made peace with his unconventional appearance.

Ace exhaled through his nose in that particular way older brothers master - a sigh that conveyed both exasperation and reluctant affection in equal measure. Rather than scolding further, he simply hooked an arm around Luffy's shoulders. "Come on, idiot. Before you start inviting him to join our meal too."

Luffy had already moved on, tugging at Ace's sleeve while chattering about double-stacked burgers and triple-scoop ice cream sundaes, his attention span as fleeting as summer lightning. Marco watched their dynamic with quiet fascination, a soft smile playing at his lips. Just before entering the consultation room, he called after them: "Same time next week then?"

Ace paused mid-step, his shoulders tensing almost imperceptibly as he considered the question. After a beat just long enough to be deliberate, he gave the barest nod - so slight one might have missed it had they blinked.

"Maybe."

And then Luffy was dragging him away, their overlapping voices - one booming with excitement, the other gruff with pretended annoyance - echoing down the hallway until the front door swallowed them whole. Marco remained motionless for several heartbeats after they'd gone, the air still vibrating with the afterglow of their chaotic energy, as if the walls themselves were reluctant to let their presence fade.

Then, he stepped into the office, and silence reclaimed its throne.

In the car on the way to the mall, Luffy chomped on his heart-shaped lollipop with a noise that reverberated like a hammer against the quiet. Sabo stared out the window, fingers drumming a disjointed rhythm on his knee—Morse code for "I’m thinking." Ace, slumped against the glass, pretended to sleep, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed him; he’d heard every word of the diagnosis. Shanks, up front, was silent. Too silent.

Benn shifted gears with a sharp click . "Anyone gonna talk about what happened back there, or are we pretending it’s just another saturday?"

Luffy swallowed the last of his candy and declared, as if answering the question: "ARCADE!"

At the mall, while the kids bolted for the flashing chaos of arcade games, Shanks paused in front of an electronics store. Screens blared news of a residential high-rise engulfed in flames. Shanks stood there, quiet— too quiet, quieter than should ever be possible for someone whose default volume is "chaos" and "cacophony." Beckman knew this.

But sometimes, he’s unnervingly clever.
He burns like the sun, yet my eyes turn cold as a winter night. He never shut up—chaotic as a tropical storm.

So when this happens, he doesn’t need Ace to know something’s wrong.

"Did something happen?" Beckman asked.

Shanks laughed. A hollow sound, no echo. "You ever lie so long you almost believe it?"

His eyes met Beckman’s, and for the first time, there was no light in them—just the glare of fluorescent bulbs, sharp as knife blades.

Then they heard it. The click . Dry. Precise. A camera shutter.

Shanks flinched instantly, squinting against the strobing light flooding the hallway. His mind scrambled, fogged.
Beckman moved faster. An arm hooked around the redhead’s shoulders, yanking him close, shielding his face from the next volley of flashes.

Beckman caught the reflection in the shop window just in time—the lens.
One of the paparazzi—maybe two—lurked mere meters away, disguised but hungry , like sharks circling in a cramped tank. It was inevitable. Not after that absurd press release announcing Benn Beckman, the untouchable CEO, had a family—three kids and a husband.

This was their first public appearance since the news broke. Of course it would leak. Of course they were being hunted.

"My PR team is going to love the overtime…" Beckman muttered under his breath.

The mall crowd flowed around them, oblivious, but the air between them thickened. Luffy was trapped in the arcade, Sabo and Ace too busy trying to hack the claw machine, and Shanks? Shanks looked like he might dissolve into the walls any second.

Beckman gripped the redhead’s elbow and steered him into the nearest store—some absurd boutique cluttered with overpriced throw pillows and French-named air fresheners. A safe zone. Temporary, but safe.

“You kidnapped me into a pillow store?” Shanks hissed, his voice dripping with disdain as his eyes scanned the absurdly plush interior.

“Better than ending up on the cover of Tokyo Weekly with the headline ‘Couple of the Year.’”

Shanks scoffed, folding his arms across his chest like a sulking storm cloud. “I’m still mad at you.”

“The day was going so well. Neatly planned. Peaceful. Then you just—stabbed a pin right in the middle of my schedule and ripped everything to shreds.”

“You went to therapy, Shanks.”

“I did. And it didn’t help. It just made everything louder in here.”

He tapped two fingers against his temple—hard. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve plotted your murder today?”

Completely normal. Perfectly healthy.
Of course he’s fantasizing about killing me, Beckman thought as he mirrored the redhead’s posture, arms crossed, a brow raised in quiet amusement.

“Should I be worried?”

“Oh, plenty of times. But then I got even angrier,” Shanks muttered. “Because killing you would be way too easy.”

Shanks looked at him through half-lidded dark eyes: "You've got blind spots. I could make it look like an accident. No one would even suspect."

"But I got so angry, Beckman... I wanted to look you in the eye. I wanted you to know. I wanted you to see who dealt the final blow."

He paused. Drew a long breath.

"It would be so easy... But I suppose it wouldn't be nearly as fun without you. So... you're not allowed to die."

Beckman didn't realize he was being an idiot. He always calculated risks. Always stayed out of trouble.
He hated drawing attention. Hated surprises.

So...why? Why trust someone like Shanks?

It made no sense to trust him so soon.
And yet—somehow—he did.

Shanks had just confessed to planning his murder. Literally. And yet—there Beckman stood, listening.

Shanks was loud. Always had been. But when he said things like this...It was like standing at the epicenter of destructive interference. That singular point where all sound vanishes completely. Leaving nothing but silence.

Beckman crossed his arms, the smile he was fighting to suppress slipping through anyway—just half of one, small but real .

Shanks saw it. And froze.

"No." The word came out sharp, brittle. "Don’t smile at me like that. That goddamn smile—"

He looked away, jaw clenched tight.

"I can’t... I can’t stay angry when you do that."

Beckman relaxed, just slightly. And then—for the first time in too long—he laughed . Quiet, but genuine, and Shanks looked like he might dissolve right there, like steam against a scorching lightbulb.

"If I’d known calming you down was this easy, I’d have smiled sooner."

"Idiot." Shanks bit his lip—as if that could possibly contain the chaos churning inside him. "No more smiling. I mean it. Banned."

"Noted," Beckman said, but the smile didn't fade.

And Shanks, head bowed, feeling the world tremble beneath his feet, couldn't decide whether he wanted to kill the man all over again or preserve that smile in a glass jar.

Maybe both.

The arcade was a sanctuary of flickering lights, shrill electronic beeps, and the smell of fry oil recycled for the fifth time that day - a place where logic came to die and chaos reigned supreme. In other words: perfect for the three of them.

Luffy stood at the center of a dance machine that was probably meant to measure motor coordination, but had become his personal stage for a frenzied performance of flailing limbs and off-beat squeals.

"He looks like an octopus getting electroshock therapy," Ace observed around a mouthful of some circular snack that might have been potato in a former life.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Sabo countered, sprawled on the bench nearby, balancing a soda cup and the notebook he refused to be separated from. "Technically he's hitting all the cues. Just... creatively."

"Creative is when you improvise," Ace shot back. "What you're doing is auditory vandalism."

The song ended with a dramatic crescendo, and Luffy threw his arms up like an Olympic champion - sweaty, disheveled, and beaming with pride.

"TEN THOUSAND POINTS!" he shouted. "MEAT IS ON TOP!"

Sabo squinted at the screen. "You put 'Meat' as your name?"

"It's my warrior name!" Luffy declared, pointing proudly. "Because I'm unstoppable! Like a picanha steak!"

"You do know picanha stays still on the plate, right?" Ace said, flipping a coin. "Just like you after two games."

Luffy ignored him. Literally. Just flopped between them, plastering himself against Sabo's shoulder with the ease of someone who'd never understood the concept of "personal space."

"You guys still like me even though I'm kinda dumb, right?" he asked, his voice quieter but that same goofy smile plastered on his face.

"'Kinda'?" Ace raised an eyebrow. "That's being generous."

"I like you better when you're quiet," Sabo added, pretending to push him away but not actually moving.

"The doctor asked what I thought about us, as a family," Luffy said around a mouthful of snacks.

Ace stopped shoving chips in his mouth and glanced sideways. Sabo adjusted his glasses. Neither interrupted.

"I said this time nobody left," Luffy continued, shrugging. "That's good, right?"

Ace was silent for a beat. Then he slung an arm around his brother's shoulders.

"Yeah, it's good," he said, his voice rough from soda and emotions he didn't know how to name.

Sabo let out a sigh - not of boredom, but of relief. He leaned his head against the chairback and said, as if stating the obvious: "It's better than good. It's like... steak and onions for lunch."

Luffy's eyes widened, genuinely moved. "That's the most beautiful love declaration you've ever made."

"Write it down, because you won't get another one."

Ace squeezed Luffy's shoulders. "You're unbearable. Loud. Addicted to sugar and random nonsense..."

"But you're ours," Sabo finished.

Luffy's smile grew so wide it threatened to split his face. "So does that mean if someone messes with me at school, you'll...?"

"Bury the body behind the gym," Ace answered.

"Hack the principal's system and erase all records," Sabo said simultaneously.

The three exchanged glances.

"You guys need help," Luffy declared, his chest swelling with so much pride he might float away.

"Yeah," Sabo agreed. "But at least we have that in common."

And then, like a hurricane dressed in red with impeccable dramatic timing, Shanks materialized at the heart of the chaos. His strides were long and uneven, as if the world were his makeshift stage, and in his hands he clutched two ice creams melting pathetically - survivors of a brutal war against the sun itself. Sticky trails of syrup oozed between his fingers and dripped onto the floor, marking the path of his triumphant arrival.

"ARCADEEEE!" he bellowed with uncontainable enthusiasm, arms raised as though addressing a crowd of thousands rather than standing on the nearly deserted third floor of a mall at 3pm on a Tuesday.

Luffy was crouched before a claw machine, trying to convince Ace with all the confidence of a juvenile crime prodigy that "if we insert three tokens at once, it'll glitch and spit out the prize." But at the sound of Shanks' proclamation, he spun around with cartoonish energy, eyes widening as if he'd just witnessed a technicolor comet streak across the sky.

"SHANKS!!" he shrieked, his grin stretching wide enough to swallow half his face before darting toward the redhead and snatching one of the ice creams with the practiced precision of a professional pickpocket.

Without ceremony, he shoved half of it into his mouth, utterly indifferent to the fact that most of the treat was now liquefying down his arm. "Come play with us!" he demanded, words muffled by the frozen mouthful.

Shanks took absolutely no offense. If anything, he burst into loud, raspy laughter, not even bothering to wipe his sticky fingers before Luffy seized his hand and yanked him forward with irresistible force. The pair went stumbling toward a dance game platform where lights strobed violently in time with painfully generic yet infectiously upbeat electronic music.

"C'mon, c'mon! You're gonna love this!"

Shanks nearly tripped over his own feet trying to match the boy's hurricane energy, but his grin never faltered.
"Fair warning - I've got the rhythm of a refrigerator tumbling down a flight of stairs!"

Just before they could mount the glowing stage, Luffy pivoted sharply on his heels and locked onto Ace, who still stood arms-crossed before the claw machine with the skeptical expression of a man watching a street magician's shadiest trick.

"Ace! You too!" he bellowed, marching over and clamping onto his brother's wrist with the merciless grip of an industrial crane.

"I don't dance!" Ace immediately protested, his voice strangled, body going rigid as someone bracing to be thrown off a cliff. "Not even at gunpoint!"
But Luffy was already dragging him forward, not even pretending to listen, and Ace slid along behind him like a reluctant cat being hauled to bath time - heels nearly digging trenches in the floor, face caught between abject panic and grim resignation.

"Everybody dances!" Luffy proclaimed, as if this were some fundamental law of the universe.

What followed was a dance game spectacle worthy of a neon-colored apocalypse:
Ace , visibly mortified, shoulders tense enough to crack walnuts, feet shuffling in a desperate attempt to escape humiliation;
Shanks , shockingly competent, twirling like he was born on a disco floor;
Luffy , a glorious disaster, jumping to entirely the wrong beat with the enthusiasm of someone convinced he's winning.

Meanwhile, Sabo and Beckman lingered on the periphery of this chaos.

Before them stood a shooting gallery that looked like it had time-traveled straight from the 90s - chunky plastic guns tethered by thick cords, mechanical targets shaped like ducks, burglars, and soda cans moving in predictable, bored patterns.

Sabo had cracked the game's algorithm in three minutes flat. His sharp eyes tracked the targets' movements like he was analyzing some painfully obvious choreography. Neither the blaring background music nor Luffy's shrieks could break his concentration. He was locked in .

"Want to give it a try?" Sabo asked, extending the gun toward Beckman with that lopsided smirk of someone about to stir trouble. His tone was light, but his eyes screamed: 'I dare you to do better.'

Beckman took the pistol with almost ceremonial slowness. He rotated it in his palm, assessing its balance, its weight—like someone reacquainting themselves with an old habit they'd rather not revisit.

Then, without warning, he fired.

A single motion. A crisp crack . Perfect shot. Bullseye. Maximum score.

Sabo's eyes widened, eyebrows climbing as if the world had just tilted two degrees off-axis.

"...Treachery," he declared, too serious to be joking. "You've played this before."

Beckman returned the gun to its mount with a soft click , acting as if nothing had happened. He didn't smile. But something about his face had changed—an almost imperceptible lightness, as if his eyes had warmed half a degree.

"Don't tell Shanks," he said dryly. "He'll turn this into an Olympic event."

Sabo crossed his arms, thoughtful. "Hm. So now you owe me a favor?" he asked, voice casual but gaze sharp as someone just waiting for an opening. Sabo knew exactly what he was proposing.

Beckman turned his head slowly, fixing the blond with a full-second stare. Then shrugged. "Call it what you want."

Sabo smiled. It wasn't exactly a victory.
But it was the beginning of a debt.

The arcade was a symphony of sensory overload - flashing lights, shrill electronic beeps, off-key dance machines, and triumphant shouts. Ace dominated fighting games like his life depended on it, Sabo cracked logic puzzles in minutes flat, Luffy nearly destroyed a racing game by attempting to "drive" with his feet, and Shanks - against all odds - won two consecutive rounds of pinball to his own shock and eternal glory.

As the boys scattered in shifting groups, dashing from machine to machine, Beckman slipped away discreetly, phone pressed to his ear. The conversation was brief - clipped words and dry tones, perfectly on-brand. He instructed the second team to stay alert - eyes peeled for familiar faces or suspicious movements.

Post-arcade, the mall transformed into a playground of parallel adventures. They invaded a clothing store where Luffy insisted on trying a yellow hoodie with bear ears. Ace rolled his eyes but ultimately bought a matching one - "for aesthetic consistency," he claimed. Sabo emerged from the stationery shop with a bag full of leather-bound notebooks, color-coded highlighters, and thematically organized stickers. Shanks discovered an alternative decor store and nearly purchased a dancing octopus lamp - nearly.

In the stuffed animal section, Ace vanished for a full five minutes. When they finally found him, he was fast asleep, arms wrapped around an enormous bear twice his size.

Beckman didn't buy anything. He just observed. Sometimes from a distance. Sometimes up close. And in every shopping bag they carried, there was a carefully guarded fragment of freedom—one he'd silently vowed to protect.

The record store swallowed Shanks and Sabo whole between its colorful shelves and vinyl sleeves. They debated movie soundtracks with the intensity of scholars, while Ace and Luffy tested headphones with music they didn't recognize but pretended to anyway, nodding along to imaginary beats.

They returned home just before 3pm. Luffy waved frantically at their towering neighbor Law watering his garden—though Law seemed far more invested in his seedlings than the boy's enthusiastic shouts, he waved back anyway. Sneakers left trails in the entryway, shopping bags colonized the couch, and Luffy ceremoniously deposited a new plushie in the center of the living room like a conqueror claiming territory.

And then the house settled into silence — that good kind of silence, thick with happy exhaustion. Shanks collapsed into the armchair with a contented sigh. Ace beelined for the kitchen to raid the refrigerator. Sabo arranged his new books in order of "emotional priority." Luffy blasted the living room speakers with his "Epic Yet Chaotic" playlist.

Beckman, finally, closed the door with a soft click and turned the lock with the quiet satisfaction of someone who knew they'd managed—just for one day—to stay undisturbed.

"Let's recap," Beckman declared , his voice dripping with the world-weariness of someone who'd already lost faith in humanity twice before lunch. The PowerPoint glowed ominously across the living room television screen.

It was nearly five in the afternoon. They'd been at this for half an hour now—etiquette rules, school regulations, building blueprints, student ranking systems—all condensed into a soul-crushing slide presentation.

Before him, his misfit audience. Shanks included. Especially Shanks.

The couch was a disaster zone. Sabo sat ramrod straight, notebook balanced on his knees and an actual pen in hand (a real one, not some glittery abomination). Ace had melted into the corner cushions, a throw pillow smothering half his face. And Luffy... Luffy was upside down, legs draped over the backrest, lollipop dangling from his mouth like a smoking cigar.

Shanks nibbled the tip of a star-shaped cookie, putting on a convincing show of paying attention. He wasn't.

Beckman clicked the remote again. The screen changed to display a solemn portrait: a man in an impeccably tailored suit, posture rigid as some ancient monarch, the golden crest of the Nefertari family emblazoned on the wall behind him.
"Nefertari Cobra," Beckman announced, his voice dropping to a graver register. "Headmaster of Alabasta Academy. The Nefertari family doesn't govern... they reign. They're that breed of nobility who were issuing commands before Alabasta even had a parliament."

Shanks leaned forward, studying the image with a smirk. "Looks like he walked straight out of a history book... and probably thinks the book was written specifically about him."

Beckman continued, unfazed. A new image appeared - Vivi Nefertari, smiling with perfect poise but with eyes that seemed to know far too much for her age. "Nefertari Vivi. Third grade. Sole heir."

Ace wrinkled his nose.
"So the boss's daughter is just some brat?"

"A brat," Beckman corrected dryly, "who knows every shortcut in that school, every unwritten rule... and exactly when to pretend she doesn't."

Sabo studied the photo, fingers drumming against his notebook before writing: "A wild card."

Beckman nodded. "Exactly. Don't underestimate her. She may not give the orders... but she knows how to make the order-givers listen."

Ace shot a glance at Luffy, who was now attempting to balance his lollipop on his nose. "Like Luffy, but in reverse." The silence that followed was brief but weighty. Luffy, sensing the stares.

"What?"

Shanks burst out laughing. "Theoretically, Vivi plays the game better than anyone. You, Luffy... you don't even realize there's a game being played."

"Game? What game?" Luffy frowned, genuinely perplexed.

Beckman crossed his arms. "Exactly."

The boys chuckled, but Beckman remained solemn. He studied Luffy with a mix of concern and what might have been respect. He understood that while Vivi was dangerous because she comprehended all the rules, Luffy was dangerous because he recognized none of them. Two sides of the same coin—a coin that could purchase either disaster or salvation.

"She's good at the game," Sabo conceded, his voice carrying the weight of someone who knew too much, "but nobody asks if the child actually wants to play." A shadow flickered across his eyes—he knew that particular pain intimately.

The room stilled. Shanks stopped mid-bite, his cookie forgotten. Ace let the cushion slip from his grasp, hitting the floor with a soft thud. Beckman merely nodded, his silence speaking volumes: 'I know.'

And with Luffy—as always—all they could do was wait to see which side the coin would land on. The boy in question just blinked at them before turning back to the screen, pressing a random button with characteristic irreverence.

"This," Beckman began, clicking the remote with deliberate precision, "is Crocodile." The screen displayed a man in an impeccably tailored suit, his gaze so sharp it could probably kill a man with a toothpick. Beckman hesitated—just for a heartbeat—weighing whether it was even worth sharing classified intel with this particular audience.

Probably not. His warnings would be ignored anyway.

"Vice-principal of Alabasta." He delivered the words with deliberate gravity, pausing for dramatic effect. "The only thing you need to know about him is that he's dangerous. Crocodile has a particular talent for making problems... disappear. Don't become one of those problems."

"He looks like the type who wears expensive cologne to mask the scent of gunpowder," Sabo murmured, scribbling notes in his ever-present notebook.

"He looks grumpy," Luffy declared, still upside down on the couch, his lollipop now dangerously close to falling into his hair.

"He looks like the kind of guy who says 'good morning' like it's a threat," Shanks added, waving his half-eaten star cookie for emphasis.

Beckman ignored every single remark.
"Stay away from him. Or at the very least, try not to piss him off."

Shanks opened his mouth, undoubtedly ready with some sarcastic quip—but Beckman raised a single warning finger without even glancing away from the screen. Silence. Victory.

Beckman advanced the slide once more, and the television screen flickered to display an intricate diagram—something between a family tree and a multinational corporate flowchart. Crimson and azure lines crisscrossed like spiderwebs, connecting names in a complex network, while jagged arrows delineated hierarchies. Stern-faced portraits filled the margins like a detective's conspiracy board.

"Let's discuss power structures," Beckman announced, his voice steady but carrying the weary tone of a professor tired of explaining basic concepts. "More importantly, how this will affect you starting tomorrow when you set foot in Alabasta Academy."

Luffy—his lollipop now glued to the corner of his mouth—snapped to attention, jaw clicking shut. There was something about Beckman's delivery that could make even the dullest lecture sound like a tsunami warning.

"You won't just be dealing with teachers and exams," he continued, tapping the diagram's apex. "Up here are the children who own this country. They don't follow rules... they rewrite them."

Three emblems dominated the screen. Sabo scribbled furious notes, Luffy scowled as if deciphering ancient hieroglyphs, and Ace scratched his chin in a poor attempt to hide his intrigue.

"The absolute apex of Alabasta's food chain is divided among three dynasties... the sons of Edward Newgate," Beckman declared, with a respect that sounded suspiciously like a warning. "They control half the families at Alabasta through investments, and the other half only functions because they allow it."

Ace arched a skeptical eyebrow.

"But... isn't the old man retired?"

"Appearances deceive. His sons hold key positions... and five of them attend the same school as you. If you cross paths, tread carefully."

The image shifted, revealing five faces arranged with military precision—one strikingly familiar. Names appeared beneath the photos alongside sparse biographical details. Ace let out a low whistle.

"And these are the 'nice ones'?"

"Compared to the rest? Relatively." Beckman allowed himself a half-smile before advancing the slide. The new image displayed the Charlotte family tree—so sprawling it resembled a megalopolis subway map.

"Charlotte Linlin," Beckman muttered with the weariness of someone who'd long stopped counting. "Let's focus on the relevant ones."

Names materialized on screen accompanied by intelligence-dossier-style descriptions. "Only three currently attend Alabasta."

The display changed again. "Ryugu Shirahoshi." A cherubic girl appeared. "Shirahoshi, age 7. The youngest. Looks like an angel but carries the emotional devastation potential of a tsunami. Norwegian exchange student."

Beckman drew a deep breath, fixing the boys with the stare of a general briefing soldiers before deployment.

"These are the only ones you can't confront directly. The rest are fair game." Beckman's finger tapped the screen for emphasis. "They rule the school because their parents rule the world."

He paused dramatically, lowering his voice to a near-conspiratorial whisper.

"Your mission? Stay invisible. Don't draw attention, avoid conflicts, don't challenge the status quo... at least until you learn the rules of their game."

From the back, Shanks coughed discreetly - Beckman recognized it immediately as a poorly disguised smirk. Ace crossed his arms in open defiance. Luffy, uncharacteristically pensive, asked:

"If we're nice to them, d'you think they'll be nice back?"

The response came like a whipcrack.

"No. They don't speak the language of kindness. They only understand contracts, alliances, and favors with outrageous interest rates."

Sabo, who'd been writing like a war correspondent at a press briefing, finally looked up. "What if we learn to play their game?"

Beckman studied him for a weighted moment, his eyes reflecting something between pride and profound concern.

"Then you might not just survive... you might actually win."

As the image faded from the screen, the children's minds already wandered back to their days in other homes. They remembered the streets where they'd learned to fend for themselves, the fragile alliances formed and broken, the fights, the suspicious glances watching their every move. Every experience, every scar, had been a brutal lesson in survival.

Yet here, in this moment, under Beckman's protective - if somewhat rough-edged - gaze, they understood this school was simply the next challenge. A massive, oppressive system that perhaps, with everything they'd learned so far, they could dismantle from within. For Sabo at least, it was personal. He knew the taste of fine porcelain, understood how to smile with medals gleaming on his chest, yet still felt that hollow emptiness inside.

"Any questions?" Beckman asked.

The silence lasted exactly three seconds before Luffy's arm shot up like an unguided missile, his entire body nearly toppling off the couch from the sheer momentum.

"Do they have special desserts?" Luffy's voice reverberated through the room, his eyes shining with the intensity of a man whose very existence hinged on the answer.

Beckman massaged his temple where a throbbing headache was already taking root.
"I don't know." A world-weary sigh. "Probably."

"Can we eat some too?" Luffy pressed, actual drool becoming visible at the corners of his mouth.

"If it's not poisoned, sure."

From his nest of cushions on the floor, Ace raised two fingers without even opening his eyes. "What if one of those trust-fund brats lays hands on us first?"

Beckman closed his eyes. Drew a breath. Counted silently to three.

"If nobody's watching, hit back." His words were deliberate, measured. "If there are witnesses... get creative. No hospitals, no police involvement, and definitely no headlines on the seven o'clock news."

Sabo didn't even look up. He simply raised his open notebook, the pen already quivering between his fingers like a loaded weapon.

"Can I make a color-coded hierarchy chart based on power, influence, and ego?" Beckman didn't even blink.

"Make three. Include vanity levels, passive-aggressive tendencies, and probability of favoritism." The sound of Sabo's pen scratching against paper became frenetic before the sentence even ended. His eyes darted across the pages with the intensity of a hacker breaching a mainframe.

"Do you have a copy of the school bylaws?" he murmured, fingers already drawing connecting lines like an obsessed detective. "If there's a loophole, I'll find it."

Beckman watched Sabo with a mix of admiration and concern. The boy was now crouched on the tatami mats, surrounded by papers like a general surveying war maps. Every page turn was precise, calculated—his blue eyes scanning each line as if they were encrypted codes waiting to be cracked.

Shanks, sprawled on the couch like a contented cat, rested his chin on his hand. His usually playful eyes were soft, tracking Sabo's every movement with a pride he never voiced but always conveyed in these quiet moments.

"Our boy's all grown up..." he whispered, dabbing at an imaginary tear with his pinky. Beckman made a sound halfway between a laugh and a grunt.

"Grown into the perfect profile of a mafia consigliere. All he's missing is a pinstripe suit and a Cuban cigar." Despite his dry tone, the corner of his mouth curved almost imperceptibly. Ace shuffled closer, peering over Sabo's shoulder.

"If you find a clause that lets us skip the ties, let me know." Ace's nose wrinkled in disgust. "I'd rather take a bullet than suffocate in one of those starched collars."

"And if there's anything about unlimited dessert rights... tell me!" Luffy announced, now balancing a lollipop on his nose, completely motionless as if in a trance.

Sabo didn't respond verbally. But in an almost unconscious gesture, he slid his notebook a few inches sideways - creating space. Ace immediately settled beside him, their bare knees touching the carpet. Luffy rolled over like a puppy until his head rested against Sabo's shoulder, the latter never pausing in his writing.

The silence that followed was different - thick, warm. The kind of silence that only exists between brothers who share secrets, fears, and dreams without needing words.

Beckman exchanged a glance with Shanks. "Do you think they stand a chance?" His voice was low, meant for their ears only.

Shanks chewed the last star-shaped cookie, brushing the crumbs from his clothes with an absentminded swipe. "They're ours, aren't they?"

Beckman huffed, but his gaze remained fixed on the three boys now whispering over the notebook—half military strategy, half inside joke.

"Exactly. That's what worries me."

With a click, the projector shut off. The sheet on the wall became just a piece of fabric again, swaying gently in the breeze from the half-open window.

"You've got until tomorrow to prepare," Beckman announced, his voice shifting back to its usual pragmatic tone. "No disappearing acts, no explosions, no outlandish schemes. At least not before breakfast."

"Define 'outlandish,'" Shanks requested, with his most innocent expression.

"Define 'disappearing'!" Luffy echoed, eyes still closed.

Beckman dragged both hands down his face. "...I should've known you'd take everything literally."

Yet even as he grumbled, his gaze drifted back to the three brothers now chuckling softly over some private joke—and something inside him warmed with the quiet certainty that somehow, against all odds, everything would work out.

The remainder of the day dissolved into impromptu sessions of the juvenile war council—which is to say, Ace and Luffy had joined Sabo in his bedroom, where amidst a fortress of throw pillows and scrap paper, they debated strategies, devised coded signals, and rehearsed alibis with the intensity of revolutionaries plotting to storm the Bastille.

Shanks passed by the half-open door at some point and found them sprawled across the floor, each clutching documents with brows furrowed as if negotiating the terms of an international peace treaty. He opened his mouth to inquire, but Luffy brandished a pencil at him like a sword and declared:

"Unauthorized access denied, civilian adult!"

Shanks retreated with hands raised in theatrical surrender. "Alright, alright. I won't interfere with the joint chiefs of staff."

Beckman appeared shortly after with a tray of sandwiches and juice—because despite everything, this was still a home. And these were still just children—even if they were about to march into the battlefield known as elementary school.

The kitchen was bathed in the golden warmth of the oven that night, where a fresh batch of star-shaped cookies slowly baked. The aroma of vanilla and butter enveloped Beckman like a cozy blanket as he adjusted the timer with hands that—though equally adept with firearms and forged documents—now handled a silicone spatula with surgical precision.

Shanks materialized in the doorway, silent as a ghost who'd taken up nocturnal visits. His eyes—usually sparkling with ready jokes—were soft, almost vulnerable, as he watched Beckman arrange the cookies in flawless rows.

"Baking again?" he murmured, dragging a chair closer with his foot. The wood creaked under his weight, a sound that had long become part of the house's nighttime symphony.

Beckman didn't look up. "You ate the entire last batch."

"Lie. I shared with Luffy."
Shanks grinned, but something bittersweet lingered at the edge of his mouth. He knew Beckman was more unsettled than he let on—and the four consecutive batches of cookies were proof enough.

"Why the star shapes?" Shanks asked, eyeing the dough’s precise cuts.

"They remind me of someone," Beckman replied, now holding Shanks’ gaze. The idiot’s grin that followed was so bright it could’ve been baked into the oven’s warmth.

"You really know how to make a man feel special, don’t you?"

"C’est mon charme," Beckman fired back, effortless as always.

And just like that, Shanks remembered— the first day . The day they’d arrived at this house. It hadn’t been so long ago, and yet, somehow, it felt like this was how things had always been.

The oven timer shrilled. Beckman shielded his hands with a cloth—plain white, unpatterned, like everything else he owned—and slid out the tray. The stars gleamed gold, their points razor-sharp, like miniature suns stolen from the sky.

Shanks reached for one, but Beckman tilted the tray away. "Let them cool."

"You always say that."
Shanks leaned back in his chair, eyes tracing the ceiling. "Not everything has to be just right , Beckman. Sometimes you just want something warm and sweet before it goes cold."

It was the kind of line that sounded like a joke but carried the weight of everything Shanks never said aloud. Beckman froze, the spatula hovering midair.

"Took me a long time to figure that out," he admitted, voice low. "That some things don’t need to be perfect. They just need to... exist."

Shanks laughed—a rough sound that rattled through the empty kitchen. "Well damn. The great Benn Beckman, lord of control, admitting life’s a mess."

Beckman set the tray down with a clatter and, for the first time that night, looked Shanks straight in the eye. "And you? When will you admit you’re still not okay?"

The silence that followed could’ve split skin. Shanks grabbed a still-steaming cookie and snapped it in half, watching the heat rise like a secret let loose.

"Funny thing. ‘Family’ was always a complicated word for me. Had a few of ’em. Some by blood, some by chance..." A pause. "They all end the same way."

Outside, the wind hissed through the trees—a sound that felt like laughter at this midnight confession.

"Beckman didn’t need to ask.

He had speculated, pieced together fragments, walked in circles—but found nothing. And truth be told, he wasn’t sure he should keep searching for the missing shards of Shanks’ past. That legendary ship dissolving like salt in water, comrades turned strangers, promises ground to dust over time… Some things were better left buried.

Beckman leaned forward, elbows digging into the table.

"And now?"

Shanks’ gaze drifted to the door, where the muffled sounds of the boys playing upstairs seeped through like distant echoes.

"Now I remember I wasn’t always alone." His lips twitched into a fragile smile. "And that ‘family’ might just be another word for… this . Whatever this is."

Beckman took another cookie and slid it toward him.

"Doesn’t need a name. Just needs to exist."

Shanks laughed again—but this time the sound came out warmer, less bitter.
Like someone learning to breathe after being submerged too long.

"What about you?… You don’t talk much about family," Shanks remarked, eyes fixed on the tray of cookies.

"Not much to say." Beckman’s voice was flat, deliberate. "My father had... a 'business.' Got shipped off to a boarding school in Germany at eight, then studied business administration. Came back to Japan at twenty when my parents died. Took over the company."

"I’m sorry. About your parents," Shanks said.

"Don’t be." A pause. "Honestly? It didn’t matter much to me. Didn’t know them well enough for it to really... land."

Shanks hummed, thoughtful.

From his seat at the table, he turned a cookie between his fingers—slow, methodical—as if searching for answers in the burnt edges.

"They'll make it, won't they?" His voice was quieter than usual, nearly swallowed by the crackling of cooling wood in the fireplace.

Beckman didn't answer right away. He arranged the cookies on the rack with military precision, aligning each star's points perfectly, as if their symmetry could impose order on the uncertainty hanging between them.

"Make what, exactly? Survive? Yes. Go unnoticed? Unlikely."

Shanks smiled, but it never reached his eyes—a practiced expression that had long since forgotten how to be genuine.

"If it gets too hard..." He let the words hang in the air, spinning the cookie once more before crushing it between his fingers into a shower of golden crumbs. "...we pull them out."

Beckman looked up, flour dusting his eyebrows like premature frost.

"You really think they'd agree to walk away?"

From upstairs, a loud crash erupted, followed by raucous laughter—Luffy, no doubt toppling something (or someone) with his usual catastrophic enthusiasm. Shanks didn't need to answer. The silence that followed was punctuated only by Beckman slamming the empty baking sheet onto the counter with more force than necessary.

"I shouldn't be this nervous," he muttered, reaching for more flour, his fingers leaving tense streaks in the bag. "It's just a school."

Shanks stood and gently pried the mixing bowl from his hands.

"Beckman. You’ve been making cookies since six in the evening."

"We need supplies."

"We have enough cookies to feed an entire naval fleet," Shanks pointed out, nodding toward the five already-stuffed tins in the pantry. "Relax. If everything goes to hell, we can just take a vacation to the Caribbean."

Beckman stared down at his own hands—trembling, caked in dough. He inhaled sharply. "I just… want them to have a real shot at this."

Shanks plucked a still-warm cookie from the tray and shoved it into Beckman’s mouth.

"And they will. In their own way." He chewed another thoughtfully. "Probably involving some scandal, a controlled fire, and at least one heir sobbing in a bathroom. But they’ll have it."

Beckman swallowed the cookie with visible effort. "That doesn’t reassure me."

"It wasn’t supposed to." Shanks brushed flour from Beckman’s cheek with his thumb. "It was supposed to remind you that no matter what happens tomorrow… we’ll be there."

The quiet of the kitchen was shattered by the sound of shuffling little footsteps and muffled yawns. When Beckman and Shanks turned toward the doorway, they found the three brothers standing there, rubbing sleep from their eyes with pajama-clad fists—Luffy swaying like a drunken sailor, held upright only by Sabo's firm grip on his shoulder, while Ace bumped against the doorframe with the dazed confusion characteristic of his sleepwalking episodes.

"Dad... there's a crocodile in the living room," Ace mumbled, his voice thick with sleep, bare feet dragging against the cold floor. "Think it's tryin’ to eat Luffy."

Shanks froze. The word Dad echoed through the kitchen like a silent gunshot. Beckman watched as the redhead’s fingers trembled faintly where they braced against the table, as if he needed to remind himself how to stand.

"It's okay, Ace," Shanks answered, softening his voice into that special tone he reserved only for them at night, when shadows made everything feel more fragile. He reached out and pulled the boy close. "Sleepwalking again?"

Ace didn’t answer. He just pressed his forehead against Shanks’ shoulder with a quiet ease that made Sabo’s chest tighten. The blond boy watched them, his blue eyes sharper now, wide awake in the dim kitchen light.

Twelve years old. Sabo was only twelve, and yet he already knew the weight a word like “father” could carry. He remembered the nights at the orphanage when Ace would wake up screaming for a man he’d never met. The evenings he’d pretended not to hear nine-year-old Luffy crying softly for arms that had never held him right.

And now here was Ace—the most guarded of the three, the one who never asked for anything—curling into the space between Shanks’ shoulder and neck like he belonged there. Like he’d finally stumbled upon something he hadn’t even known he was searching for.

Sabo felt a small, rare smile tug at his lips. Not the kind that showed teeth or tickled his throat with laughter, but the kind that warmed him from the inside out, like the first sip of hot chocolate on a cold day.

"He's been saying weird things since he woke up," Sabo remarked, trying to sound casual, but his voice came out softer than he'd intended. "Something about bats on the ceiling—think he mixed up his dream with reality."

Luffy, ever the most honest of the three, wasted no time: "Shanks, you stole all the cookies again !" he accused, still drowsy but with the determination of someone who wasn't about to let it slide.

Shanks laughed—a warm, relieved sound—as one of his hands automatically found its way into Ace's unruly hair, fingers sinking into the dark strands with a tenderness Sabo had never seen from anyone else.

"This time it was Beckman. I just supervised the crime," he shot back, winking at Luffy.

Beckman sighed, but Sabo noticed how the man's eyes grew marginally less tense seeing Ace there, leaning against Shanks as if there were no safer place in the world.

And in that moment, Sabo understood— this was what family meant.

It wasn’t just the walls of the house or the names on paperwork. It was Ace letting himself be vulnerable. It was Luffy complaining about cookies like it was the most important thing in the world. It was Shanks trembling when called Dad . It was Beckman, flour dusting even his eyelashes, baking cookies at three in the morning because he didn’t know how to say I care .

And for the first time in a long time, Sabo thought—maybe they didn’t need to understand everything.

Maybe it was enough just to be here.

Together.

And awake enough to keep trying.

Chapter Text

Ace hadn’t expected it to be hard . It was just a school—a building stuffed with rich, self-important brats. Which, let’s be honest, sounds even more ridiculous when you stop to think about it for more than two seconds.

Technically, it was the start of the second semester, and the campus was pure chaos— not the fun kind. Students crammed into the auditorium like sardines, teachers lurked behind their painfully rehearsed smiles onstage, and parents clung to the delusion that everything was under control. It looked organized, sure. But only because that’s how they wanted it to look. They loved clinging to the illusion of authority, of order.

Insufferable. That was the word for it. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, it was a Sunday . Seriously, who the hell goes to school on a Sunday?

The kids were decked out in pristine uniforms—starched shirts, shoes polished to a high-gloss shine like jewelry store displays, and that painfully forced air of maturity that wealthy parents were so obsessed with drilling into their offspring from the cradle. They all looked the same. Like a row of overfed, sulky wax dolls.

It was monotonous. Soul-crushingly dull. Maybe it was the sheer absurdity of being stuck in a school on a Sunday—which, frankly, should’ve been classified as a crime.

In the end, everyone applauded the principal’s empty words as if he’d just dropped some profound wisdom. But all that had come out of his mouth was a string of tired clichés— “We value excellence,” “Striving for success,” and other corporate-sounding nonsense that made Ace’s teeth ache. The vice-principal, meanwhile, wore a face like he’d been smelling raw sewage since the moment he walked in. Maybe it was just a tie knotted too tight. Or maybe it was the sheer, suffocating weight of hypocrisy hanging in the air.

It was all theater. And Ace was already bored by the first act.

Familiar faces surrounded him. Shanks, slouched in his seat at the far end of the twelfth row, grinned like the whole thing was one big joke. Beckman watched in silence, his sharp eyes scanning the room like a man mentally drafting an escape plan—and honestly, he probably was. Sabo sat with perfect posture, hands folded neatly in his lap, but Ace knew damn well he was counting down the seconds until he could unleash some razor-edged sarcasm.

And Luffy...

Ace blinked. Luffy had been there a second ago. Now? Gone. Vanished. Like a greased-up weasel slipping through the cracks of reality itself.

He barely had time to catch his breath after the mindless, automatic applause before he realized something was off.

They had their signals—shared glances, subtle gestures, that old silent code of people who grew up together and learned to survive by reading between the lines. But no code ever worked on Luffy for long. It was like trying to give orders to a hurricane.

The ceremony ended without any real surprises—or maybe that was the surprise. The auditorium lights flicked on all at once, the microphones cut out with a hollow thump , and a sea of parents and students began shuffling toward the side exits in one well-mannered current.

Families spilled across the campus grounds. Some exchanged hugs like old friends, laughing too loud to sound natural. Others circled like sharks in shallow water—sniffing out connections, influential last names, strategic alliances.

Ace, still scanning the crowd for any trace of Luffy, got swept up in the tide.

Outside, clipboard-wielding school staff herded families along with plastered-on smiles that didn't reach their eyes. One particularly exhausted employee - who'd clearly repeated the same spiel fifty times that morning - robotically gestured toward the next building with all the enthusiasm of a toll booth attendant:

"Administrative forms and curriculum organization in Building A, to your left. Reception hall immediately afterward." His voice had taken on that special monotone reserved for minimum-wage workers counting down the minutes until their next break.

The forms hall assaulted Ace's senses the moment he entered - aggressively bright fluorescent lights, tables arranged with military precision, and glossy brochures screaming about "pedagogical excellence" and "molding tomorrow's leaders" in fonts so pretentious they practically gave him hives. The whole place reeked of institutional insincerity, the kind that made his teeth ache.

Parents clustered around tables, filling out paperwork with the solemn focus of monks transcribing scripture. Some kids tried offering input while others had already checked out entirely, their vacant stares suggesting they'd rather be anywhere else. Staff members collected documents with the reverent care of archaeologists handling ancient scrolls, chirping "Excellent choice!" with mechanical enthusiasm even when clearly skimming the contents.

Ace blew through the process with practiced efficiency. He snatched his form, scrawled his name with a ballpoint pen borrowed from a man who reeked of middle management and cheap cologne, then let the human current carry him along - this time toward the reception hall's promise of stale finger foods and forced small talk.

The atmosphere here shifted slightly - a calculated illusion of casualness. Round tables draped in stiff white linens, juice served in acrylic glasses pretending to be crystal, and baby-faced waiters balancing trays of finger sandwiches with the barely-contained terror of bomb squad technicians.

It was the kind of space designed to whisper "welcoming" through gritted teeth. But Ace knew - and Beckman's subtly raised eyebrow confirmed - this was where the real war happened. Not with weapons, but with murmured conversations measured in millimeters, handshakes calibrated to the newton, promises worth less than the monogrammed napkins they were scribbled on.

Ace craned his neck, scanning the sea of polished parents and catalogue-perfect children for that telltale flash of red cap. Nothing. The brat could've followed the scent of food. Or a stray dog. Or a particularly shiny pebble. With Luffy, the laws of probability took permanent vacations.

And of course it had to be now. Now, when they were supposed to be selecting courses and building academic schedules. Not that the adults wouldn't steamroll every choice anyway, but it was good practice to at least pretend to have preferences - or to convincingly fake having them.

Somewhere in that meticulously lit, carefully orchestrated environment... Luffy was loose.

Completely, catastrophically loose - likely mere seconds away from climbing onto a banquet table to deliver an impassioned speech about pirate ethics. Or attempting to teach some horrified socialite how to walk on their hands. Or inhaling thirty petit fours only to spectacularly redecorate the dean's designer shoes with them.

They could certainly fill out his paperwork for him - that wasn't the issue. The real problem was him being unsupervised. In a place like this. A shark tank masquerading as a reception hall, where every polished smile hid calculated intentions and every handshake carried unspoken agendas. And of course, it had to happen precisely when their chaperones were conveniently occupied with that supposedly "critical faculty meeting."

All it would take was Luffy pressing the wrong button (or more accurately, any button at all) for this carefully constructed façade to collapse into glorious pandemonium.

"Should we go after him?" Ace asked, his head swiveling like a radar dish, the concern etched so clearly across his face it might as well have been flashing in neon.

"Physical Education on Thursdays and Advanced Mathematics on Mondays," Sabo replied without looking up from his paperwork, his fountain pen ticking off boxes with military precision. "Your turn? Since we're the same age, we can request the same class schedule."

Ace pulled a face that could curdle milk. "I stacked all the soul-crushing subjects early in the week," he said, shoving his completed form at Sabo, "and left the decent ones for the end." The paper fluttered between them like a surrender flag as Sabo caught it, immediately cross-referencing with his own schedule.

The corner of Sabo's mouth twitched - the closest he ever came to actual laughter in public - though his voice remained all business: "Strategic. This way, your mood improves throughout the week, making Friday feel like a holiday."

"I reckon the kid's fine," Shanks cut in with that trademark lopsided grin that had charmed and/or alarmed people across three continents. "Probably off discovering secret passages. Making lifelong friends. The usual."

Ace exhaled through his nose like an irritated bull. With any luck, Luffy would simply be chasing pigeons. Or negotiating snack-sharing treaties with complete strangers.

But if he wasn't…

Right. Better find him before he got expelled - and this wouldn't even be his first-day record.

"Or mortal enemies," Sabo added with that infuriatingly measured calm Ace could never quite decipher. "This is Luffy we're talking about. The variables are... fluid."

And wasn't that the understatement of the century.

Luffy possessed a peculiar gift for accumulating sworn enemies at precisely the same rate he collected devoted friends. Often with the exact same people. It was as if he operated on some unique cosmic wavelength that only intermittently aligned with the rest of humanity - a hyperactive force of nature with his heart permanently stapled to his sleeve, equally likely to hug a perfect stranger or call them a moron over some incomprehensible principle, all while flashing that disarming grin that made you question who exactly was being ridiculous here.

Ace exhaled through his nose like a steam engine reaching critical pressure. "I'm going after him."

"Try not to get lost yourself," Sabo remarked without looking up from his paperwork, marking checkboxes with the serene precision of someone who'd emerged from the womb holding a clipboard. "We only brought one emergency contact form per person.”

Shanks let out a low chuckle - that drawn-out, indolent laugh of someone who clearly had no intention of moving a single muscle. The sound seemed to roll through the air like molasses dripping from a spoon, thick with amusement at everyone else's expense.

"Try not to wander too far," he drawled, lacing his fingers behind his head in a picture of perfect repose. Then, with the effortless grace of someone who'd mastered the art of selective responsibility, he pivoted toward the opposite direction: "I'll go rescue Beckman. Man looks like he's about three seconds from committing justifiable homicide."

And with that, he was gone - gliding through the reception hall with the unhurried confidence of someone who treated social conventions as mild suggestions rather than actual rules. His trajectory took him toward a scowling man in a charcoal-gray suit currently being circled by networking sharks smelling blood in the water. Beckman stood like a lighthouse in a storm - jaw clenched, eyes sharp as flint, radiating that particular aura of someone mentally calculating how many social niceties they'd have to endure before making a clean break for the exits.

The campus seemed to expand exponentially when you were searching for a missing chaos magnet.

Ace moved with purposeful strides, weaving through clusters of over-polished students and helicopter parents, his head swiveling like a surveillance drone scanning for threats. Sabo kept pace beside him, the enrollment forms neatly folded under his arm, his attention divided between their missing brother and the extracurricular brochures he was collecting with academic interest. His occasional hums of consideration at particularly promising course descriptions suggested Luffy's potential disappearance ranked somewhere below "debate team meeting times" on his list of immediate concerns.

"You're remarkably calm for someone whose little brother just vanished into thin air," Ace remarked, his eyes scanning their surroundings like twin searchlights. "He could be doing... literally anything right now."

"Precisely. That's exactly why I'm not worried," Sabo countered, barely glancing up from a bulletin board plastered with garishly colored flyers. "With Luffy, 'anything' is the baseline expectation. He operates on pure chaos theory. Our best strategy is to let the entropy resolve itself through natural attrition."

Ace rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn't get stuck that way. "That's not a plan."

"No. It's probability," Sabo corrected, plucking a brochure embossed with gold letters proclaiming 'Fencing Team - Discipline, Precision, Tradition'. He weighed it thoughtfully against another for karate classes. "Blades or bare hands... The eternal dilemma."

Ace came to an abrupt halt, staring at his brother like he'd suddenly grown a second head.

"Seriously? Now of all times?"

"What exactly would you have me do? Join you in panicking?" Sabo shrugged, examining the pamphlets with the casual interest of someone browsing dessert menus. "The campus is enclosed, he's not getting past the gates. And someone will inevitably return him the moment they realize he's physically incapable of silence for more than five consecutive minutes."

Ace dragged a hand down his face and resumed walking.

"You're missing the point. This isn't about Luffy - look around us." He jerked his chin toward the clusters of well-dressed families circulating between buildings. "It's like unleashing a tornado in a china shop full of sleeping lions."

"Fair enough," Sabo conceded, falling into step beside him. Then with infuriating nonchalance: "So... given any thought to your extracurriculars yet?”

"I'm thinking archery," Ace answered absently, his gaze still sweeping the crowds for that telltale flash of red cap. "Saw a range near the gymnasium. Half-hidden, but looked decent. Quiet. Peaceful. No annoying people yapping in your ear."

"Peaceful?" Sabo's eyebrow arched like a drawn longbow, his sidelong glance dripping with skepticism. "You?"

Ace exhaled through his nose like a steam valve releasing pressure. "Yeah, what of it? Can't a guy want some damn tranquility for once?"

"You honestly think yanking a taut string to launch projectiles at distant targets qualifies as 'peaceful'?" Sabo shook his head, the pamphlets in his hand fluttering like surrender flags. "You don't want serenity - you want something to aim at without getting hauled off by campus security."

"Maybe," Ace conceded, the ghost of a smirk playing at his lips. "What about you? Made up your mind between stabby-stabby or punchy-kicky yet?"

"Fencing has elegance. Precision. Tactical depth." Sabo recited the words like he was reading from the brochure, though his tone suggested even he wasn't wholly convinced. "Whereas karate..." His eyes took on a dangerous glint. "Well, let's just say it offers more... direct feedback opportunities for particularly irritating opponents."

"My vote's for the kicking." Ace grinned. "Fits your sunny disposition better."

Sabo's laughter was cut short as he shoved Ace's shoulder - a gesture that sent his brother stumbling dramatically, clutching his arm like he'd taken a cannonball to the chest.

"Gratuitous violence! Case closed - karate it is."

"You started it!" Sabo protested, delivering another push that Ace sidestepped with theatrical flair.

In one fluid motion, Ace pivoted and locked Sabo's arm in a playful wrestling hold. "Preemptive counterstrikes. Lesson one from the future archery club president.”

With practiced ease, Sabo twisted free from the hold, straightening his collar with exaggerated dignity that couldn't quite mask his amusement. "Lesson one from the chess club: strategic counterplay. And we keep our uniforms pristine, thank you very much."

"Pfft. Nerd," Ace muttered, though the insult lost all bite through his widening grin.

"Pyromaniac," Sabo fired back, the childhood nickname rolling off his tongue with affectionate familiarity.

They fell into step together, shoulders still bumping intermittently as they walked, as if the polished hallway had momentarily transformed back into those dirt paths of their childhood - a space where they could briefly forget the entire academy was essentially a pressure cooker disguised as an institution of learning.

Until Ace stopped dead again, his eyes scanning the courtyard ahead with renewed intensity.

"You think he's actually okay?" The question came out quieter than intended, barely audible over the murmur of passing students.

Sabo halted too. The playful glint had vanished from his expression, but his voice remained steady when he answered: "This is Luffy we're talking about. He always turns up. Weren't you the one constantly saying he needed to grow up and fend for himself?" He delivered the words like a chess move, placing each one deliberately on the board between them. "Now you're clucking around like an overprotective mother hen."

Ace exhaled through his nose but let the jab slide, choosing instead to elbow Sabo's ribs with just enough force to convey his annoyance. "If you pick karate, I'm absolutely coming to watch your first class. Just to laugh when you eat mat trying a flying kick."

Sabo's lips quirked. "And if I choose fencing? You'll come admire my footwork?”

"Only if you show up in full medieval knight cosplay," Ace shot back, already picturing Sabo struggling with some ridiculous plumed helmet.

"Moron."

Across campus, Beckman found himself cornered by a trio of polished professionals—two men in suits that cost more than most teachers' monthly salaries, and a woman wearing a cocktail dress wholly inappropriate for a school function. Their smiles stretched wide and toothy, the kind that crinkled the face but left the eyes cold and calculating.

"Beckman!" The tallest suit boomed, thrusting out a hand with the unshakable confidence of someone whose Rolodex counted more than his conscience. "Good to see you here. Still keeping that green energy investment portfolio afloat?"

Beckman's handshake was a study in precision—firm enough to convey competence, brief enough to discourage familiarity. "Only when the returns outperform the promises," he replied, his voice drier than the champagne they'd inevitably serve later.

"Ha! Same old Beckman," the second suit chuckled, attempting the tone of an old friend rather than what he was—a networking opportunist who'd once tried to sell him shares in a fake lithium mine.

The corners of Beckman's mouth twitched upward in what an optimist might call a smile. In reality, it was merely a facial spasm—the minimal muscular effort required by social decorum when one lacks the patience to explain they'd rather chew glass than reminisce about "the good old days" with venture capitalists whose morals came with triple tax exemptions.

That's when the familiar voice sliced through the tension like a saber through silk:

"Darling!" Shanks' voice rang out with theatrical flourish as he materialized behind them, radiating the energy of someone fashionably late to their own intervention. "I distinctly recall agreeing this would be family bonding time." He announced this with the cheerful conviction of a man tossing a lit match into a powder keg just to admire the colors of the explosion.

Beckman released a sigh so subtle it might have been mistaken for a shift in atmospheric pressure. The trio of professionals turned in perfect synchrony—like synchronized swimmers spotting blood in the water—to find Shanks ambling toward them with the relaxed gait of a man who'd never encountered a social barrier he couldn't charm his way through, his grin radiating that particular brand of infuriating self-assurance that made corporate types develop nervous tics.

"Well look what the cat dragged in," Beckman murmured under his breath.

"And you are...?" One of the suits drawled, his tone dripping with the skeptical disdain usually reserved for unverified lottery winners crashing private country club functions.

Shanks remained utterly unfazed.

"Akagami Shanks," he declared, extending his hand with a demeanor that danced precariously between UN ambassador and back-alley poker champion.

What followed was the kind of pause typically observed in nature documentaries when predators realize they've stumbled upon something that doesn't fit the food chain—the woman's eyes narrowed to calculating slits, the second man's forehead creased like he was mentally flipping through Forbes lists and scandal sheets, trying to place whether this name came attached to a Nobel Prize or an Interpol red notice.

The woman's smile strained so tightly it threatened to crack her carefully applied foundation. "And how long have you two known each other?" she pressed, the question hanging in the air like cheap perfume.

"We're married," Shanks and Beckman declared in perfect unison, their voices overlapping with the practiced ease of a well-rehearsed bit.

The cocktail-dressed woman was first to recover, withdrawing her hand from Shanks' grip as if burned by spontaneous combustion. "Ah, yes... the papers did mention something about that." Her darting eyes performed frantic calculus between the two men, searching for either confirmation or contradiction—anything to explain away her mounting discomfort.

The blue-suited man leaned in, fingers performing an impatient staccato against his champagne flute. "But how did you meet?" he pressed with the faux enthusiasm of a daytime talk show host. "We'd simply adore hearing the love story." His tone carried the unmistakable edge of someone scanning for plot holes in their alibi.

Shanks' grin widened, the chandelier's refraction casting counterfeit constellations in his eyes. "Ah, that story almost makes me believe in fate." He lingered on the last word, letting it roll off his tongue with an exaggerated German inflection—"Schicksal"—as though testing the weight of each syllable.

Beckman's expression remained an impenetrable mask, but the faintest tremor traveled through his pinky where it met the crystal glass. A seismic tell so subtle it might as well have been Morse code for "abort mission.”

"It was in the Schwarzwald," Shanks began, his fingers tracing elaborate patterns in the air as if conjuring some fairytale castle from the mist. "I was on an astronomy exchange program—scholarship student, naturally. And our dear Benn here," he gestured with a flourish toward Beckman, "was just completing his doctorate in... what was it again, darling?"

"Applied financial mathematics," Beckman supplied automatically, the cover story so well-worn after eight years it might as well have been tattooed on his tongue.

"Precisely! And there I was, a starstruck exchange student hopelessly lost during a blizzard, trying to find the university observatory." Shanks' laughter rang out with the polished cadence of a man who'd told this lie so often even his own partner occasionally forgot it was fiction. "And who should appear like some Germanic winter spirit? This stern gentleman here, clutching a black umbrella with an expression that clearly said 'what madman braves this weather to look at celestial bodies?'"

The coral-clad woman leaned forward, her earlier skepticism melting into rapt fascination. "And was it love at first sight?"

"Nothing so pedestrian," Beckman interjected, his voice drier than the Sahara at high noon. "He projectile vomited on my Oxfords after spinning himself sick in the planetarium's gyroscopic simulator." He paused just long enough for the image to fully form before adding, "The cleaning bill alone should have been deterrent enough.”

Shanks clasped a dramatic hand over his heart, his wounded expression so theatrically exaggerated it could have earned him a standing ovation at the Globe. "And yet you still lent me your coat! The truth is, we lost touch for years—I returned to Japan, he took over the family empire... Until fate intervened three years ago at that Kyoto art auction." His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, drawing the listeners in like children at a campfire tale.

"The auction where you toppled a Monet with your umbrella," Beckman interjected, his deadpan delivery sharp enough to puncture the romantic atmosphere Shanks was carefully constructing.

"Minor details, darling. What truly matters is that when security tried to escort me out," Shanks continued, gripping Beckman's arm with the triumphant air of a man presenting his trophy, "This magnificent man not only covered the damages but also invited me to dinner."

Their audience tittered with delight, thoroughly enchanted by this cocktail of half-truths shaken with just enough plausibility to be intoxicating. The conversation concluded with the standard repertoire of society smiles and hollow well-wishes, the kind exchanged at gallery openings and divorce settlements alike.

"Now if you'll excuse us," Beckman announced, seizing Shanks by the elbow with the cautious precision of a bomb squad technician handling live ordnance, "we have wayward children to retrieve. Any professional matters can be scheduled through my assistant." His tone made it abundantly clear which category this

They had barely taken three steps away when Beckman muttered under his breath in German:
" Schwarzwald? "

Shanks adjusted his cuff with his free hand, his smile for the passing mothers as polished and impenetrable as a porcelain mask. "I thought it fitting. February, that winter so brutal even the wine froze in its bottles." His eyes darkened momentarily, the light in them dimming like a theater stage switching scenes. "I despised every second of that cold."

Beckman studied his profile, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around the fabric of Shanks' suit sleeve. "Naturally."

"How much of that was true?"

Shanks paused. He stretched his arms slightly, then reached over to straighten Beckman's collar—a casual gesture performed with the deliberate precision of a stage actor hitting his mark. "Thirty percent. I was there, just not for the reason I said. Took four days. We crossed paths in the hallway exactly once." A beat. Then, with a faint smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes: "If it's any consolation, I had no idea who you were."

Beckman's brow furrowed — Why would that comfort me — he pondered briefly before speaking. "You..." Beckman began, "...are profoundly strange."

Shanks froze. Turned slowly, with the deliberate caution of a bomb technician working barehanded. His eyes - usually so bright, so full of ready laughter - darkened momentarily, locking onto Beckman's with an intensity that made the air between them grow heavy, thicker than it had any right to be.

Something peculiar tightened in Beckman's chest. A contraction. Dangerous, he recognized, yet he didn't retreat.

Shanks frowned, studying him like a cartographer examining uncharted territory. Made a thoughtful sound, nearly a low hum in his throat. For one absurd moment, Beckman wondered if he'd misspoken - if Shanks' flawless mask might finally fracture in ways they couldn't mend.

Then he heard it.

That laugh. The real one. The kind that bubbled up from somewhere between the ribs - rough and unfiltered, the startled chuckle of a man perpetually surprised to still be alive to laugh at all. Beckman knew it intimately. He'd heard it echoing across the courtyard when Shanks played ridiculous games with Luffy, caught it drifting through half-open doors during Sabo's dramatic reading sessions, even once - memorably - in the middle of one of those absurd shouting matches with Ace. But never like this. Never directed at him. Never with this...

Was that tenderness?

"Ah, Benn," Shanks murmured, the ghost of that devastating smile still playing about his lips even as his eyes turned dangerously solemn. "You're only just noticing now?"

The realization hit Beckman like a sucker punch to the solar plexus:

He was drowning.

Not in the lies - those he could navigate blindfolded. Not in their paper-thin marital facade - that was just ink on documents. But in this. In the way Shanks' laughter seemed to rewrite gravity itself, as if the entire world were some private joke only the two of them shared. In the impossible rightness of those fingers now twisted in his suit fabric, clinging like they'd found their natural habitat after years of wandering.

Far too deep , Beckman thought, and the most terrifying part was he couldn't decide whether he wanted to resurface or plunge deeper still.

With a quiet huff that carried more affection than annoyance, Beckman found himself tightening his grip on Shanks' hand rather than letting go. They walked side by side in comfortable silence, the earlier tension dissolving with each synchronized step until it seeped away entirely into the pavement. For one fleeting moment—so brief it might have been imagined—it seemed the world had stopped watching. Just two fathers crossing campus grounds. Just another Sunday afternoon. Just another prestigious institution divided into wings that housed too many children with dreams too vast to be contained by rules and regulations.

The administrative building's corridor was too quiet even for Law's exacting standards.

Pale morning light reflected off sterile white walls, their footsteps swallowed whole by the thick beige carpet that lined the hallway. The air carried the cloying scent of polished mahogany and aging paperwork—that particular blend of bureaucracy and routine that made his teeth ache. But for now, there was silence. No students, no shouting, no idiots. Just the distant clatter of a keyboard and the lethargic tick-tock of the wall clock marking time with indifferent precision. A rare pocket of peace in an otherwise chaotic world.

Slouched against the ice-cold wall with arms tightly crossed, Law released a sigh that carried the weight of a man who'd aged prematurely from dealing with this particular brand of nonsense. His backpack lay discarded beside him like a fallen soldier, zipper half-agape with a lone pen peeking out from its depths like some rebellious escapee.

Rosinante, naturally, had somehow managed to set the enrollment forms on fire. Again. And this wasn't some colorful exaggeration - actual flames had been involved. The physics of it still eluded Law's medical mind, but there was no denying the evidence currently unfolding behind that office door: his brother's muffled voice stumbling over explanations, that perpetually off-kilter smile undoubtedly plastered across his face as he presented what remained of a melted binder.

Law's eyes flicked to the wall clock with surgical precision. Twenty minutes. Rosinante possessed an almost supernatural ability to stretch "five quick minutes" into what felt like geological time - like a rubber band pulled taut to its breaking point. Closing his eyes, Law allowed himself to sink into the sterile quietude, the administrative building's unnatural hush wrapping around him like a cocoon.

Until -

The thunderous stumble of feet on carpet. The precarious wobble of a ceramic vase.

"LAAAAAW!" The voice tore through the corridor like a heat-seeking missile - all unrestrained energy and devastating accuracy. There was no mistaking that particular brand of chaos.

Law barely had time to turn his head before Luffy was already in his face, slightly out of breath with strands of hair plastered to his sweaty forehead. The boy's uniform looked like it had been put on during an earthquake - his tie hung limply like an exhausted snake, his shirt was half-untucked at a drunken angle, and a mysterious stain (jam? ink? sand?) decorated one knee. Rice crumbs clung stubbornly to the corner of his mouth, completing the picture of cheerful disarray.

"Are you going to school here too?!" Luffy demanded, eyes so wide they threatened to pop right out of his head. His entire face radiated excitement like a small sun. "Wow! Does this mean we're classmates now?!"

Law didn't so much as twitch, merely arching one eyebrow with the practiced patience of someone who'd long since learned not to encourage this particular brand of chaos.

"Technically, no. I'm in Sector B. You're in Sector A." He spoke slowly, as if explaining basic arithmetic to a particularly dense puppy. "Different sectors, different schedules. We won't be seeing each other."

Luffy blinked once, twice. Then that signature grin spread across his face - lazy as a summer afternoon but bright enough to power a small city.

"But we're seeing each other right now," Luffy countered, his grin widening impossibly further until it threatened to split his face in two. The sheer, uncomplicated joy in his expression made Law feel vaguely exhausted just looking at it.

Law averted his gaze, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers like a man fighting off a migraine. The fluorescent lights overhead suddenly seemed unbearably bright. "You ran away from your brothers, didn't you?"

"I went exploring!" Luffy corrected, rocking back on his heels with all the grace of a baby giraffe. "Got distracted and lost, but that's not my fault!" He shrugged, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. "Then I heard teachers talking about 'signing paperwork' and thought 'that sounds like responsible adult stuff.' So I came to investigate." His head swiveled around the administrative hallway as if it were some grand archaeological discovery rather than a depressingly beige corridor. "And it was you! I hit the jackpot!"

For one blissful moment, Law considered lying down on the linoleum and feigning a stress-induced coma.

"You're not supposed to be here," he muttered, more to himself than to the human hurricane currently invading his personal space.

A long, suffering sigh escaped Law as he dragged his palm down his face. The antiseptic smell of the hallway seemed to grow stronger, mixing unpleasantly with Luffy's natural scent of sunshine and poor life choices. And Luffy himself—Luffy was now swaying side to side like a metronome set to the rhythm of some internal song only he could hear, completely oblivious to the bureaucratic hellscape surrounding them.

"You do realize this campus is age-segregated for a reason, don't you?" Law said, his voice drier than the administrative office's paperwork. "Our academic tracks don't even intersect."

"That's what makes it special!" Luffy beamed with one of those full-face smiles - the kind that took up real estate from his eyebrows to his chin, chaotic and utterly inescapable. "We're friends, and that's the only thing that matters anyway."

Law turned away, brow furrowed in practiced exasperation, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him with the tiniest tremor - as if his traitorous facial muscles had staged a mutiny against his better judgment.

"I don't like you."

"Okay," Luffy shrugged, tossing a chocolate into the air and catching it between his teeth with circus-perfect precision. "I'll like you enough for both of us. Want one?" He thrust the candy toward Law, bouncing on his toes with enough energy to power a small city, his outstretched hand hovering inches from Law's face like the world's most persistent peace offering.

Law accepted the sweet with the excessive caution of a bomb squad technician handling live ordinance, rotating it between his fingers as if searching for hidden toxins. He exhaled a sigh that seemed to originate from the soles of his polished shoes.

"Let's go."

Luffy froze mid-hop. "Where?"

"I'm taking you to the main building," Law muttered with the enthusiasm of a man reading his own prison sentence aloud.

For one fleeting millisecond, Law caught something startling in Luffy's eyes - a flash of genuine surprise, as if no one had ever voluntarily helped him without being coerced. Then, faster than a lightning strike, the boy was glued to his side, one fist clutching Law's coat sleeve like a lifeline while the other shoveled three more chocolates into his mouth with Olympic-level dexterity.

"Alright then!" Luffy announced, his words mushy with half-chewed chocolate. "Can we stop by the cafeteria on the way? Or that tree with the bird's nest! Or maybe—"

"Straight there." Law cut him off, already feeling the beginnings of a migraine pulse behind his temples. "No detours. No birds. No cafeteria."

Luffy pouted dramatically but trudged along obediently—if "obediently" could describe someone who managed to step in every conceivable puddle, tap each informational signpost like it owed him money, and nearly topple an entire bulletin board display in the process.

At some point, Law realized he'd unconsciously slowed his usual brisk pace—just enough so Luffy's eager little footsteps could keep up without breaking into a jog. This realization arrived hand-in-hand with a sudden, overwhelming urge to throw himself into the courtyard fountain.

When they reached the building division, Law stopped abruptly. "Here."

Luffy glanced down the brightly lit hallway, then back at Law, then at the still-unwrapped chocolate Law clutched like it might explode.

"You're not taking me to my brothers?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I value my sanity."

Luffy laughed uproariously, as if Law had delivered the punchline of the century. "Okay! Thanks, Law!" Then, in a movement too quick to intercept, he stuffed another chocolate into Law's coat pocket before sprinting away. "See you tomorrow!"

Law stood frozen, his fist clenched around the first chocolate—now slightly crushed—as he watched the whirlwind of energy disappear around the corridor’s bend.

Back in the administrative building, a door creaked open. "Law? You still out there? We need to—" A pause. "Wait, why do you look like you just donated a kidney?"

Law shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling the crumpled wrapper press against his fingers. "It’s nothing."

Somehow—against all logic—Luffy had managed to get lost for the second time in less than twenty minutes. Maybe even less. He’d stopped counting after ten.

The problem was, without Law’s reluctant guidance, he had no idea where to go. So he wandered until he stumbled into the outer courtyard, where only one truth remained crystal clear in his mind: he’d just made a new best friend . That grumpy, green-haired guy who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Luffy paused at the edge of the courtyard, rubbing his nose as he scanned the area. "Where’d Ace and Sabo go?" He’d circled enough to know he was lost— again —but instead of worrying, his gaze landed on the boy sitting under the tree.

"He looks strong."

Without a second thought, Luffy marched straight toward him—and, of course, stepped on a dry twig.

Snap.

The green-haired boy cracked open one eye—dark, sharp, like a cat rudely awakened from its nap. He stared at Luffy with palpable disdain, then turned his face away, as if willing the intruder to simply vanish into thin air.

Luffy, naturally, didn’t take the hint.

"Hey!" he called, tilting his head like an overeager puppy.

The boy exhaled through his nose, long-suffering.

"Not interested."

"Interested in what?" Luffy frowned, his messy dark hair swaying slightly with the movement.

"Small talk." The words came out rough, like each syllable was an inconvenience.

Luffy burst out laughing, as if this were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

"Okay then!" And without another thought, he plopped down onto the grass beside him, legs crisscrossed. "I’m Luffy. Wanna be friends?"

The green-haired boy shut his eyes again, as though praying for patience—or maybe just pretending the world didn’t exist for five more minutes.

"Zoro," he grumbled after an eternity of silence. "And no, I don’t."
Luffy didn't seem the least bit offended. If anything, his curiosity only grew more intense. He leaned forward abruptly, studying Zoro with the intense scrutiny of a child trying to decode secret messages written in invisible ink on his forehead.

"Why don't you want to study at this school?"

Zoro's eyes snapped open fully - both of them now. The previously bored expression had sharpened into something wary, guarded, as if Luffy had just pressed his thumb against a still-tender bruise.

"How do you know that?"

Luffy shrugged with the casual ease of someone stating the most obvious fact in the world. "Just do. Looked at you and knew."

Zoro's brow furrowed deeper. He took in the boy before him - the wild black hair, those absurdly large eyes, the smile that came too easily - and arrived at his verdict:

"You're weird," he declared finally. "And it's none of your business."

For once, Luffy appeared to genuinely contemplate these words. His usually animated features settled into an uncharacteristically serious expression - eyes wide, lips slightly parted, as if attempting to solve some profound cosmic equation. Then, with simple acceptance:

"Okay then."

Silence settled between them — not the awkward kind, thick and intrusive, but the sort that drifts effortlessly into place when two people either have nothing to say or no longer need to speak at all.

Zoro closed his eyes again, firmly deciding to ignore that strange, stubborn kid. Luffy, however, didn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation. He lay down in the grass, arms sprawled out as if trying to hug the earth, eyes turned up to the sky.

“It’s nice here,” he said, not really to Zoro — maybe to himself, or maybe to the leaves overhead, fluttering lazily in the breeze.

Zoro didn’t reply. But the corner of his mouth twitched — just barely. He was still trying to decide whether to let Luffy stay or get up and leave when he heard footsteps approaching.

Now, here’s the thing.

Of the three of them, Ace had the best sense of direction. This wasn’t a matter of opinion — it was a truth as absolute and irrefutable as saying the sky is blue or that the ocean is made of water. He could climb trees upside down, get into a fistfight with a goose over a stale piece of bread, and still find his way home with scraped knees but not a single hair out of place. He could navigate through fog-covered forests with a broken compass and no landmarks. He always knew where he was. Always.

So, when he got lost in the grand, cold, labyrinthine halls of that elite boarding school on the Sunday of the opening ceremony, it was clear — painfully, obviously clear — that it hadn’t been by accident.

It was a tactical decision.

The floors were polished to such a blinding shine he could see his own reflection, which was unfortunate because now he knew his bangs looked weird. He let out a loud, exasperated sigh, raking his fingers through his hair with all the frustration of a teenager betrayed by both fate and humidity. Luffy vanishing was one thing. Sabo disappearing right after him? Typical. But him — Ace — the muscle behind the chaos duo, the backbone of the trio, getting separated?

That was sabotage.

And, of course — obviously — somewhere in the middle of that frantic search, the two of them got separated. Because that, apparently, was the only logical way to solve the problem: three brothers, each now missing in different corners of an absurdly large school, in a building with no cell reception and directional signs that were as specific as they were completely useless.

“Central Administration.”

“Cultural Gallery.”

“Botany Club.”

“Oh, sure,” Ace muttered, his tone dipped in sarcasm as he let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Because it’s totally obvious Luffy’s off debating the taxonomy of ferns right now.”

He paused for a second, turning slowly on his heel in place like a glitching GPS, trying to mentally reconstruct the path he'd taken.

Left at the fountain. Two hallways past the statue of the school's founder — a stern-looking man so humorless his stone-cold face practically screamed that he’d despised children in life just as much as in death. Then there was a turn... right, maybe? Or had it been left?

He was just about to take the next corner — with mild but growing confidence — when someone came sprinting from the opposite direction and slammed straight into him, hard enough to knock him off balance.

The impact shoved Ace back a step, his forehead smacking painfully into someone’s poorly placed shoulder.

With a loud thud and a dramatic grunt, Ace stumbled backward, hand flying up to his forehead.

“Aw, seriously?!” he groaned through clenched teeth, eyes squeezed shut in pain. “What the hell...?”

“Sorry, I—”

The voice came out muffled at first, like it had been wrapped in cotton or heard underwater. But the end of the sentence— that part he recognized instantly. Drawn-out, slow, vaguely dazed, carrying that half-awake tone of someone who always sounded like they were either five minutes late or five minutes into a nap.

“...Ace?”

Of course. Edward Marco.

The same guy who had bumped into him exactly 24 hours earlier at Jinbe’s office, right when Ace was leaving therapy. Marco had been sitting in the waiting room back then, looking around with that bored, unimpressed face — the kind that said the universe could explode and he still wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

And now, here he was again.

Only this time, Ace’s nerves were stretched thin — raw with worry over his brothers — and that made him extra observant, hyperaware of every detail. Enough to notice that despite Marco’s casual, lazy posture, he hadn’t stumbled or flinched from the collision. He’d absorbed the impact like it was nothing, like he was always ready. It was annoying. Deeply annoying.

Blond. Tall. Perpetually half-asleep, with that eternally tired look in his half-lidded eyes, like nothing in the world could ever be important enough to rush for.

And most importantly — Marco, flagged as a level-three threat in Beckman’s slides. That meant that no matter how chill or friendly Marco seemed, Ace wasn’t supposed to rely on that alone. He couldn’t afford to.

But then again, Ace — famously gifted with an impeccable sense of direction — was equally famous for having zero instinct for self-preservation.

“Is this, like, a new hobby of yours?” Ace grumbled, glaring at Marco. “Running me over once a day for fun?”

Marco crossed his arms, looking at him with the calm detachment of someone who saw no issue whatsoever with occasionally colliding with emotionally volatile children.

“You’re the one popping out of nowhere,” he said lazily. “Like some kind of rabid Pomeranian on a sugar high — bouncing around all over the place with zero spatial awareness.”

Ace’s eyes went wide. “Did you just call me a pampered lapdog with an identity crisis?!”

“If the floof fits...” Marco shrugged, utterly unfazed.

Ace huffed, stomped forward two furious steps — and immediately tripped over a backpack someone had carelessly tossed on the floor.

Before he could meet the cold, hard ground with his front teeth, a quick hand caught the collar of his shirt mid-air, like someone grabbing an angry baby lion by the scruff of the neck before it bit the vet.

Ace flailed in place, suspended. “PUT ME DOWN! I’M NOT A CAT! OR A POMERANIAN!”

Marco lifted him another inch higher, just to be annoying. “You’re more like a gremlin. One of those wet ones.”

“I’M DRY!”

“Dry on the outside,” Marco replied, voice far too serious for someone holding a twelve-year-old like he weighed less than a grocery bag. “On the inside, you’re pure, bubbling chaos. Fermented.”

Ace kicked at the air like it had personally insulted him. “You think you’re so great just ’cause you’re, like, six-foot-something and look like the kind of person who drinks chamomile tea for breakfast!”

Marco placed him gently back on the ground with all the serenity of a monk. “It’s not tea. It’s patience. And in this case, it’s running out.”

“Good! Mine left the second you entered the universe!”

They stared at each other for exactly two seconds.

Marco raised an eyebrow. “Do you always yell like this, or am I just lucky?”

“You’re a custom-made curse,” Ace shot back, spinning on his heel with absolutely zero dignity. “Next time you run me over, I bite.”

“So it’s official,” Marco said as he watched him storm off, still grumbling. “Definitely a Pomeranian.”

Marco lowered him to the floor and gave him two quick pats on the head, the way someone might try to calm down a hedgehog with anger issues. “There, there. So what exactly are you doing here?”

“Looking for my brothers,” Ace replied, arms crossed tightly and cheeks flushed bright red with rage. His eyebrows scrunched together into a sharp, cartoonish V — the kind of expression that usually comes right before something explodes.

“The short one, dark hair?” Marco asked, with the same casual tone someone might use to comment on the weather. “Pretty sure I saw him heading toward the cafeteria.”

Ace stopped cold. His eyes narrowed, full of suspicion and processing power. Luffy… heading to the cafeteria? Quietly? That was plausible — borderline predictable if you reminded yourself it’s Luffy — but Luffy wasn’t predictable.

He hadn’t said a word about food. Not a single syllable about meat. Not a peep about stealing someone’s tray.
That was… wrong.

Besides, Luffy had promised to save room for dessert — Sunday cake, the sacred event. Breaking that vow was practically an act of war.

creature in front of him like he was waiting for steam to start pouring out of the kid’s ears.

“What?” he asked, equal parts amused and confused. “Don’t trust me?”

Ace stared back with the full weight of all the righteous indignation a twelve-year-old could possibly channel.

“You literally compared me to a Pomeranian two minutes ago.”

Marco raised a brow. “And how exactly does that affect my sense of direction?”

“It affects your credibility,” Ace snapped, biting down hard on his lower lip — an involuntary tic that always showed up whenever he was on the brink of either losing his patience or completely falling apart. His eyes narrowed, zeroed in on Marco’s still-outstretched finger, which pointed dramatically, almost smugly, toward the hallway that supposedly led to the cafeteria.

That overly innocent look plastered on Marco’s face only made things worse. It was the kind of expression that practically shouted: I know exactly what I’m doing.

Beckman was right, Ace thought bitterly, drowning in a storm of comic frustration. He absolutely has the face of someone who gets a kick out of watching people walk in circles.

His tongue was already sharpened, cocked and loaded — ready to unleash something biting about attractive liars or golden-winged airheads with no moral compass — when something at the far end of the hallway made him stop.
A solitary silhouette was making its way down the stairs of the administrative wing with all the grace of a very moody wildcat. Dark hair, messy and barely tamed beneath a worn-out fur-lined beanie. Black coat. Heavy steps. An aura that screamed “don’t talk to me” in every known language — and maybe a few forgotten ones, too.

Ace almost smiled.
Law.
At least he wouldn’t treat him like an idiot.

Law, for his part, only wanted to cross that cursed hallway in peace, return to his brother — who was probably breaking something expensive or falling dramatically down a staircase — and finally go home. Preferably without incident.

But of course not.

“Hey, Torao!” came a voice that was far too loud for the acoustics of that space.

Law closed his eyes for half a second. Just long enough to emotionally brace himself.

He turned slowly, letting out a sigh that was 80% annoyance and 20% existential fatigue, and was greeted by the exact source of his exhaustion: yet another member of that very strange family.
And, as always, radiating the kind of energy that feared nothing — not getting lost, not getting hurt, and definitely not being a public nuisance.

Law came to a stop with an audible sigh — the kind that clearly said “Please tell me this isn’t happening.” He turned his head slowly, like he needed to confirm it was, in fact, Ace calling out to him — and upon doing so, he huffed in resignation.

“Another one. Great,” he muttered, as if praying for a survival manual to fall from the ceiling. “What is it this time?”

“Have you seen Luffy?” Ace asked, slipping into that laid-back posture he used like a shield. He laced his hands behind his head, stretching his neck with theatrical indifference, as if he wasn’t internally spiraling over his missing brother.
But his eyes said otherwise.

Law scrunched his nose, wearing his usual clinical stare — all sharp lines and sharp judgment, no time for nonsense.

“I already sent him back to the main building an hour ago. If he’s gone again, that’s your problem.”

Ace blinked. “Main building?” he repeated, slow and uncertain.

“Yes. He was in Sector B, near the admin offices,” Law replied, arms crossing as his voice dropped into its trademark calm — the kind of calm that dripped with passive-aggressive judgment. “Said he was ‘exploring’ and got lost. If he didn’t make it back... check the east courtyard.”

He couldn’t help the edge in his tone. Luffy, sure — he had patience for that level of chaos. But where there was a Luffy, there was always an Ace. And where there was an Ace, inevitably, a Sabo. It was like they were bound by some kind of magnetic field.
And now, somehow, he was tangled in it too.

Ace turned around slowly — like some rusted, reluctant machine creaking back to life — until he was staring directly at Marco, who, of course, was still standing there. Unbothered. Unmoving. Hands in his pockets. Looking more bored than guilty.

“Cafeteria, huh?” he muttered, each syllable dipped in slow-burning venom.

Marco raised an eyebrow, completely unfazed — as if the accusation had been aimed at someone else entirely.
Law watched the interaction with the detached interest of someone observing two cats argue over the same sunny spot on the couch.

Marco shrugged with an indifference so committed it bordered on performance art.
“Wrong guess, yoi.”

Ace let out a long, theatrical sigh and rolled his eyes to the ceiling like it personally offended him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled ginger candy packet Sabo had shoved into his bag that morning with the ominously helpful advice: “This might work better than a weapon.”

Ace unwrapped one, then casually tossed it toward Law — who caught it midair with an annoyingly sharp reflex.

“Thanks,” Law said, suspicious.
He stared at the candy like it might explode on impact, then shot a side glance at Ace.

“This some weird family ritual? Feed snacks to people you bother?”

Ace was already turning to leave, steps quick with purpose, but he glanced back over his shoulder — just for a second — a smirk tugging at one side of his mouth, eyes glinting with something between mischief and something dangerously close to affection.

“Only if Luffy likes you. That’s how we know you’re not a total threat.”

Law opened his mouth, ready to reply, but Ace cut him off with practiced ease:

“If you’ve got complaints, take it up with him.”

Marco finally decided to move, strolling over with the unhurried steps of someone who only walks onstage after the scene’s wrapped and the applause has started. “I helped too, yoi.”

Ace didn’t even glance back, “Lying doesn’t count as help!”

“Technically,” Marco replied, infuriatingly composed, “it was withholding. Not quite the same.”

Law looked from one to the other, eyebrows drawing together ever so slightly. For a moment, he genuinely wondered if this was all some sort of elaborate psychological experiment. Maybe the school had hidden microphones and this was all part of a secret reality show.

Ace clenched his fists. If I turn around, I’m gonna hit him. If I turn around, I swear I’ll hit him.He inhaled through his nose, deeply, then picked up the pace, footsteps sharper now with renewed focus.

Priorities: Find brothers first.
Revenge: Later.

But before disappearing down the hallway, Ace threw his arm back without even turning around and launched a candy into the air with perfect aim.

Marco caught it mid-flight, blinking at the sweet as if it were some unexpected trophy.

"To shut you up!" Ace's voice echoed from the distance, already fading.

Marco stared at the candy, then at Law, who stood nearby with the world-weary expression of someone who'd aged a decade in fourteen short years.

"...Is he always like this?"

Law sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets, his fur hat slightly askew from accumulated frustration.

"Worse."

He began walking away, tossing one final remark over his shoulder like a parting curse:

"And congratulations. If you look at one... You attract the whole flock "

Marco was still processing the comment when Law added with a brief, dismissive wave:

"Glad I'm not the only unlucky bastard to make that mistake." His tone was flat—just stating a fact.

He took a few more steps before pausing. He didn't look back, but his voice carried like an afterthought, dragged out by the uncomfortable familiarity of the situation:

"I'd recommend keeping your distance from them... or don't. Your choice, really."

Then he kept walking as if it didn't matter. As if those words didn't carry an entire history he'd rather ignore. As if he didn't know Marco had been deliberately leading Ace the wrong way.

And maybe he did. Maybe it was just his sense of duty—or the weight of being unwillingly promoted to "chief negotiator" in that chaotic little revolution between throw pillows and biscuits, where he'd spent the afternoon trapped in the house of the most dangerous brothers in the neighborhood.

Law was good at calculating risks. And for some reason, he'd started calculating theirs too.

Cora-san would call it Stockholm syndrome, Law mused internally, though he privately suspected it was just plain stupidity.

Marco remained where he stood, pensive. First, he glanced down the hallway where Ace had disappeared. Then at Law, already walking away.

Nothing more was said between them. Yet even the silence carried the weight of a warning. And somehow, all Marco could think was: That was actually fun.

Sabo found Luffy sprawled under the generous shade of a tree in the east courtyard of the main building—accompanied by a boy they'd never seen before.

The air hung calm and serene, as if time itself had slowed just for this moment. Not that Sabo wished to disturb the peace—far from it. But he knew his little brother well enough to understand that with Luffy, tranquility was a rare interlude, a fragile gift.

And so, he braced himself. Because Luffy was light—the kind that refuses to be extinguished, that defies even the cloudiest days and somehow outshines the sun itself. He was adorable chaos incarnate, a whirlwind of laughter and unshakable loyalty. Sabo and Ace didn't need words to seal the pact between them; it simply existed, etched in blood and instinct. They would do anything for their little brother without hesitation.

Yet, like a coin, this promise had another side. As much as it pained them, they both knew—Luffy had to fight his own battles, live his own adventures. It wasn't their place to shield him forever, nor should they. Because Luffy was strong too. Strong enough to rise, to fight, to conquer the world with his own two hands.

That's why moments like these—small, quiet, almost sacred—were so precious. That's why, when Sabo heard Ace's familiar footsteps approaching, he raised a quick finger to his lips in a silent plea: "Just a little longer."

"It says here we need four eggs," Sabo announced with the solemnity of someone revealing an ancient secret. He lifted the hefty recipe book as though it were a sacred artifact, his face dusted with flour and eyes alight with quiet excitement. The soft glow of dusk streamed through the large kitchen windows, gilding his blond hair and bathing the room in a warmth that starkly contrasted the organized chaos unfolding within.

The kitchen—which in any other household would have been a sanctuary of order and practicality—now resembled a battleground between amateur bakers and rebellious ingredients. Bowls were scattered haphazardly, dirty spoons piled in improbable places, and a trail of cocoa powder led from the countertop straight to Ace’s crumpled apron. It was the kind of scene that would push any ordinary adult to the brink of a nervous breakdown—but for them, it was just another Sunday.

Three hours had passed since they’d returned from Alabasta International School’s welcome event. The day stretched lazily before them, brimming with that fragile calm that always precedes the hurricane of the school week. And they were determined to make the most of it.

To make the most of the day—which, in this peculiar family's dictionary, meant barging into the kitchen without a shred of professional skill but with enough audacity to compensate for it.

Sabo perched on the counter like a sugar-crazed monkey with attention deficit disorder—yet still insisted on pretending he was the only remotely sensible member of the household. That is, if you conveniently ignored Beckman's existence. Nothing ever seemed to rattle that man—and mind you, Shanks had tried .

He flipped through the recipe book with flour-dusted fingers, legs swinging in time to the faint music drifting from an old radio.

Ace—the very definition of efficient chaos —balanced a stainless-steel mixing bowl in the crook of his arm, whipping egg whites into stiff peaks like he was preparing ammunition for war. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, his T-shirt slightly singed from an earlier stove mishap, but his focus was absolute— too absolute.

Beckman, the sole being who still retained some semblance of sanity in the premises, was crouched in front of the oven, adjusting the temperature with the precision of a cardiac surgeon. His eyes scanned the control panels as if expecting one of them to explode at any moment—and with this particular group, that was a very real possibility.

In the farthest corner of the kitchen, effectively exiled by higher orders, stood the two greatest threats to household safety: Shanks and Luffy.

"Did you know flour is highly flammable?" Shanks remarked with the casual tone of someone discussing the weather, his lazy gaze fixed on a cloud of flour floating in the air. He rested his chin on his palm, elbow propped on the table, as if completely oblivious to the teenage-shaped time bomb sitting beside him.

Luffy, of course, immediately widened his eyes with sparkling excitement. "Does that mean it can explode?!" He was already halfway out of his seat, his body coiled like a spring ready to launch, overcome by dangerous enthusiasm.

Ace, without lifting his gaze from the mixing bowl, raised his head with a suspicious glint in his eyes. "We could try—"

"NO." Beckman spun around with the weary authority of an exhausted parent, his voice sharp and direct as a scalpel. "No explosions. No chemical experiments. And especially," he brandished the whisk like a scepter of absolute authority, "no competitions between you two to see who can wreck the kitchen more thoroughly. Understood?"

Luffy huffed dramatically, slumping back into his chair like a deflated balloon. Shanks pouted with theatrical offense, crossing his arms like a petulant child. "You people have no sense of fun."

Meanwhile, Sabo—blissfully oblivious to the mounting tension—leaned back over the open cookbook, his flour-dusted fingers tracing the recipes with exaggerated solemnity. "Alright, focus. We need to decide on the cake flavor. Chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry?"

Before the question had even fully left his lips, Luffy launched from his chair as if electrocuted.

"CHOCOLATE!" he bellowed, throwing both arms skyward like he'd just won the lottery. "Double chocolate! Triple! QUADRUPLE!"

"There's no such thing as 'quadruple chocolate' in any respectable recipe, Luffy," Beckman countered, already massaging his temples as if foreseeing a three-day migraine. His other hand instinctively moved to intercept the bag of cocoa powder that Ace was surreptitiously reaching toward.

Ace, now stirring the melted chocolate in its double boiler, raised the spoon like a triumphant battle standard. "Chocolate wins. It's already melting. That's democracy for you." His smirk carried all the smug satisfaction of a general claiming victory without firing a shot.

"Such lack of imagination," Shanks lamented with theatrical despair, crossing his arms in a pose that screamed 'wronged aristocrat'. "Vanilla is classic. Elegant. Sophisticated." He punctuated each adjective with a flourish of his hand, as if presenting rare artifacts.

"BORING!" Luffy and Ace fired back in perfect unison, their synchronization so precise it sent Sabo into peals of laughter that nearly toppled the recipe book from his lap. The blond had to clutch his stomach, tears of mirth gathering at the corners of his eyes.

Beckman simply exhaled a sigh so deep it seemed to originate from his very soul - the resigned breath of a man who knew this cake, like everything involving these five forces of nature together, would be anything but ordinary. As he wiped flour from his brow, his expression clearly questioned why fate had destined him to be the sole keeper of common sense in this culinary circus.

While Ace greased the cake pans with surprising diligence - or at least, as much precision as one could expect from a 13-year-old wielding a silicone brush with the intense focus of a samurai preparing his katana - the real storm was brewing mere steps behind him.

Shanks and Luffy sat side by side, but the atmosphere crackled with barely-contained chaos. The tension between them was so palpable you'd swear they were moments away from launching into a pillow fight - if they'd been in a bedroom. But this was the kitchen, which elevated their antics from merely troublesome to downright hazardous. Their matching grins suggested they were both acutely aware of this fact, and delighted by it.

"Brigadeiro topping is the best thing in the entire universe!" Luffy declared, crossing his arms with such conviction it might as well have been carved in stone. He had flour dusting the tip of his nose and cocoa powder smeared across his elbows, looking personally offended at the mere suggestion of alternatives. His entire posture radiated the righteous indignation of a pastry purist defending sacred traditions.

Shanks propped his elbow on the table, regarding the boy with a deliberately provoking smirk. "Brigadeiro is just condensed milk and chocolate powder, Luffy. It's emergency rations for dessert. We're making a proper cake here - the kind you'd serve at a royal tea party." His tone dripped with exaggerated sophistication, fingers tracing imaginary lace doilies in the air.

Luffy's eyes widened to saucer-size. "Take that back!" he exploded, rocketing up from his chair with enough force to send it skidding backward. "Brigadeiro is art! It's culture! It's... it's practically magic! And you can eat it straight with a spoon!" He punctuated each point with increasingly wild gestures, nearly upending a bowl of sugar in his fervor.

"Ganache can be eaten with a spoon too," Shanks countered smoothly, swirling an imaginary wine glass. "And it's infinitely more refined. Picture it - glossy, velvety smooth... the kind of topping they charge a fortune for at those pretentious bakeries."

Luffy's face scrunched up like he'd bitten a lemon. "Fancy is the opposite of delicious!"

"That makes absolutely no sense!" Shanks barked with laughter, slapping the table hard enough to make measuring spoons jump.

"You're the one not making sense!"

The debate raged like a culinary thunderstorm - Luffy defending brigadeiro like a dragon guarding its chocolate gold hoard, while Shanks extolled ganache's virtues with the flair of a sleep-deprived food channel host at 3 AM.

Ace, still meticulously greasing pans, tilted his head just enough to glare over his shoulder. "If either of you throws anything, I swear this cake will end up completely bare."

"Liar," Luffy muttered, though his wild gesticulating did decrease by about thirty percent. "You love toppings too much." His accusatory finger trembled with betrayal, as if Ace had committed the ultimate dessert heresy.

"Not if I have to scrape chocolate off the ceiling again," Ace shot back with the grave solemnity of a war veteran recalling past trauma. His flour-dusted fingers tightened around the spatula as if reliving some chocolate-related PTSD.

Across the kitchen, Sabo—who until now had been meticulously measuring brown sugar with his tongue poking out in concentration—let out a quiet snicker, peeking over at the heated debate through his messy bangs. The way his shoulders shook betrayed his failed attempt at maintaining neutrality.

"Ganache tastes okay but sounds like some fancy disease," Luffy muttered suspiciously, wrinkling his nose. "Like: 'oh no, he caught ganache, needs bed rest for a week.'" He delivered the diagnosis with the gravitas of a back-alley physician.

Shanks erupted into booming laughter that rattled the mixing bowls. "You're absolutely impossible."

"And you're a total square," Luffy retorted, sticking out his chocolate-smeared tongue for emphasis.

At precisely this moment, Beckman chose to intervene wielding a damp dish towel like a peacekeeping flag, his expression blending exhaustion with that particular brand of paternal tolerance reserved for dealing with overgrown children and actual children alike.

"Are you two still arguing about this?" he asked, his gaze sweeping from Shanks to Luffy like a disappointed school principal. "Just make both toppings. Half the cake with each. There. Beckman-style diplomacy." He punctuated this declaration by snapping the towel against his palm with finality.

Luffy literally bounced in place. "Yes! I'll eat the brigadeiro half and leave the rest for Shanks!"

"I'll eat both halves and leave you nothing," Shanks countered with a mischievous wink, already reaching for the nearest mixing bowl as if to claim it as territory.

"I'll eat the entire cake," Ace declared, slamming the last greased pan onto the counter with unnecessary force. "And you two can lick the bowls if you want dessert." The threat carried extra weight coming from someone currently wielding a batter-covered whisk like a weapon.

A rare moment of silence descended—three whole seconds where Luffy's face cycled through seven distinct emotions before settling on scheming mischief. He craned his neck toward the bowl of cake batter and stage-whispered to Shanks: "If we distract him, we can steal the spatula."

Shanks nodded with childlike solemnity. "Operation Spatula commences in three... two..."

"I can hear you," Ace warned without even glancing up, his whisk-hand twitching dangerously. The unspoken 'try me' hung in the flour-filled air like a challenge.

Luffy grumbled under his breath, yet his grin never wavered. The cake hadn't even made it to the oven yet, but the mess—and the memories—were already guaranteed.

"Fruit or sprinkles?" Sabo asked, still clutching the recipe book in one hand while the other gripped a wooden spoon sticky with condensed milk. His expression was deadly serious—as if choosing between strawberries, cherries, M&Ms, or rainbow sprinkles was some delicate diplomatic negotiation between warring nations.

On the counter, the containers of toppings stood at attention like soldiers ready for battle. The glossy sheen of colorful M&Ms competed with the vibrant red of maraschino cherries and the fresh strawberry slices, all meticulously arranged by Sabo—who took food presentation far more seriously than anyone else in the room.

Luffy immediately shuffled closer, planting his greasy palms on the marble surface, eyes widening as if he'd stumbled upon buried treasure.

"Everything. Put everything on it," he decreed with all the authority of a nine-year-old who had absolutely no concept of flavor balance. His tone suggested this wasn't a request, but a royal proclamation—one that would brook no argument.

"So you want brigadeiro with ganache, cherries, strawberries, M&Ms, and sprinkles? That's not a cake—that's a chromatic aberration," Shanks remarked, observing the scene with crossed arms and an expression caught between amusement and genuine concern. His eyebrow arched in that particular way that suggested he was mentally calculating how many food groups they were violating simultaneously.

Luffy simply beamed as if this were the highest compliment imaginable.

"Chromatic aberration is my aesthetic." He declared this with the solemn pride of an avant-garde artist defending his masterpiece.

Ace exhaled through his nose like a steam valve releasing pressure as he stirred the brigadeiro topping over low heat, watching it with the intense focus of a chemist monitoring a volatile experiment. "We're making a cake, Luffy, not preparing for Carnival parade float judging." His wooden spoon moved in precise circles, as if trying to impose order on the chaos through sheer willpower.

"But it'll look amazing!" Luffy insisted, shoving the jar of sprinkles perilously close to the stovetop with chocolate-stained fingers. The way his eyes sparkled suggested he genuinely believed this culinary Frankenstein would win awards.

"Sprinkles melt under heat, you know?" Sabo interjected, leaning across the counter to intercept the impending disaster just as the jar teetered near the burner. "They'll turn into weird sticky blobs." His tone carried the weary wisdom of someone who'd learned this lesson through previous kitchen catastrophes.

"Colorful sticky blobs!" Luffy corrected, utterly enchanted by this new possibility. His grin widened as if imagining the glorious technicolor mess.

Shanks let out a low whistle and sidled closer, plucking a strawberry from the tray with the practiced grace of a food critic. "I vote for classic elegance. Strawberries on the ganache, rainbow sprinkles on the brigadeiro. Organization, people. Aesthetics." He arranged the berry on an imaginary cake with a flourish, his other hand dramatically pressing against his chest like a French pastry chef defending tradition.

"What about the M&Ms?" Luffy asked, his hand already wrist-deep in the candy jar.

"Straight to your mouth, because they'll just sink into the cake," Ace fired back instantly, attempting to salvage at least some portion of the topping from Luffy's dictatorship of delicious chaos. His wooden spoon pointed accusingly at the jar like a judge's gavel pronouncing sentence.

The evening unfolded in peaceful chaos, the kind of golden-hour tranquility where laughter bounced through the house's rooms like a living reminder that sometimes, disorder is just another word for home.

The kitchen brimmed with the sugary warmth of baking cake, that particular Sunday-evening comfort clinging to the air like a well-worn blanket. The boys' carefree shouts and giggles formed the soundtrack of a household pretending, just for these fleeting hours, to be perfectly ordinary. Shanks leaned against the counter, stirring the frosting bowl with more enthusiasm than skill, humming some made-up tune under his breath. Luffy kept attempting to sneak fingers into the batter while Sabo recited instructions like sacred incantations from an ancient grimoire. Ace, meanwhile, appeared fully engaged in mortal combat with the brigadeiro mixture, his wooden spoon a weapon against lumpy rebellion.

Beckman dried dishes in the background, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his usual sharp features softened by the domestic scene—until the phone vibrated on the countertop.

Not just any alert. That alert. Three short, clinical pulses. The kind of summons that brooked no refusal.

He froze mid-motion for one suspended second. Then picked up the device like one might handle a live grenade. The "hello" he uttered as he strode down the hallway was low and clipped, but the kitchen's occupants still caught its tension—a discordant note in their symphony of normalcy.

"Talk." The muffled command slithered back through the doorway, laced with a steeliness that made Sabo's stirring hand pause mid-air.

The kitchen fell into sudden silence, broken only by the relentless tick-tock of the wall clock counting seconds that now felt heavier than before.

Luffy seized the distracted moment to plunge his entire hand into the cake batter bowl. Shanks either didn't notice—or chose not to. Sabo exhaled dramatically, mentally noting they'd need to double the recipe if they wanted any batter left for actual baking. Ace just laughed, the sound sharp against the new tension.

Beckman reappeared in the doorway, his phone vanishing into his pocket with a motion too quick to be casual. His fingers whitened around the doorknob for a heartbeat longer than necessary. Only the most observant would notice the tension corded in his shoulders, the locked jaw, the way he dragged a hand through his hair like he could physically tear away whatever thought had taken root.

Shanks noticed.

He was the first to freeze, his spatula suspended mid-air, frosting dripping onto the bowl's rim in slow, sticky globs. His eyes tracked Beckman with that particular silence that speaks louder than questions.

Beckman paused by the table, his gaze sweeping over the three boys before settling briefly on Shanks. A deep breath.

"I'll need to leave for a while," he said, voice low but unshakable.

"But... the cake's almost done," Luffy protested, holding up batter-coated fingers like Exhibit A in his case. "Aren't you gonna eat any?" His brow furrowed with the kind of pure, uncomplicated disappointment only children can muster when faced with the universe's unfairness.

Beckman knelt beside the youngest boy, ruffling his already disheveled hair—now further adorned with a dusting of sugar and flour that made him look like a miniature snowstorm survivor.

"Save me a slice?" he asked, his voice carrying that rare softness reserved only for these moments.

"I'll save you a HUGE one with extraaaa frosting," Luffy countered, his pout exaggerated but his promise genuine, tiny fingers already measuring an imaginary portion twice the size of his head. The way his sticky hands framed the air made it clear this would be no ordinary slice, but a monument to sugary excess.

Across the counter, Ace huffed like an offended steam engine. "But you're our dad!" he protested, as if this title came with legally binding dessert obligations etched into cosmic law. "You're supposed to stay." His wooden spoon pointed accusingly, dripping batter onto the tile in indignant splatters.

Sabo crossed his arms with self-appointed authority, flour streaking his sweater like battle markings. "We're putting actual effort into pretending we're a functional family today, so cooperate." His tone suggested this was a matter of international diplomacy rather than cake consumption.

"Sabo's gonna make us eat everything the 'proper way' if you leave," Ace added urgently, as if reporting an impending culinary dictatorship. "He weighs the flour! With scales! Like some kind of baking scientist!" The horror in his voice suggested this was equivalent to being forced to solve quadratic equations before dessert.

"It's the correct method, Ace," Sabo retorted, chin lifted with aristocratic pride, though the way his fingers tightened around the recipe book betrayed his nervousness about suddenly being left in charge of both the baking and the brothers.

Beckman straightened up and, without warning, ran his fingers through Ace's hair too—a rough, affectionate tousle that the boy tried halfheartedly to dodge, but far too late to avoid the damage.

"Hey!" Ace yelped, immediately attempting to smooth down his now thoroughly wrecked pompadour. "Stop using that as a goodbye ritual!" His scowl lacked any real heat, undermined by the flour smeared across his cheek like war paint.

"Then behave, and I'll consider it," Beckman countered, the ghost of a smirk playing at his lips as he turned toward Sabo—the sole bastion of remaining composure in their flour-bombed kitchen.

He placed both hands on the blond's shoulders with the gravity of a general passing command to his lieutenant. "You're in charge. No accidents, no brawls, and if the oven catches fire—you all run outside first and call emergency services. Understood?"

Sabo nodded, solemn as a young officer receiving his first command, but there was unmistakable pride shining in those blue eyes—the quiet thrill of being trusted with something real.

Shanks smiled from his perch by the counter, though something more complicated lingered beneath the expression—a gentle exhaustion, perhaps. He took two deliberate steps forward, closing the distance between them until his whisper wouldn't carry to little ears:

"Will you be back tonight?"

Beckman hesitated—just a fraction of a second too long—before nodding. "Hopefully."

They stood there then, suspended in a silence so thick with unspoken things that even the children's clamor seemed to fade around them. There was something devastating in the way Shanks looked at him—something equally devastating in how Beckman couldn't quite hold his gaze for long.

It was Luffy, of course, who shattered the moment.

"Are you two dating?"

Shanks nearly choked on the spoon he'd been absentmindedly holding. "What?" he laughed, not even attempting to feign composure.

"Technically they're married," Sabo muttered, rolling his eyes with the weariness of someone who'd explained this far too many times. "There's paperwork."

Ace brandished his batter-covered spoon like a courtroom attorney presenting evidence. "But that was just for cover!"

"We are standing right here, you realize," Beckman interjected, already sliding his phone back into his pocket with pointed finality. "Still the adults in the room, last I checked."
Luffy scrunched up his nose in deep contemplation, his flour-dusted face the very picture of childish wisdom.

"But if you're married, and live with us, and bake cakes together... and there was that time Shanks slept in Beckman's room—doesn't that make it real?"

The silence returned—but this time, it carried a different weight.

Beckman merely raised his hands in surrender, eyebrows arching toward his hairline as he grabbed his jacket from the chairback. "We'll discuss this later, Detective," he deflected, voice drier than the flour coating Luffy's elbows.

He paused one step away from Shanks, and before the redhead could launch into another joke, reached out to ruffle his hair with the same firm, no-nonsense motion he used on the boys—though his fingers lingered just a heartbeat longer than necessary.

Shanks blinked, startled. Then laughed, the sound warm as the golden light spilling through the windows.

"Was that affection or a warning?"

"Your call," Beckman replied, already turning toward the door. "Remember your meds."

And then he was gone.

Shanks stared at the closed door long after it had shut. For a suspended moment, no one spoke. Only the soft scrape of a spoon against the mixing bowl broke the quiet, lazy circles stirring the chocolate-scented air back to life.

Outside, Beckman paused at the top of the stairs. The fading sunlight gilded everything in honeyed warmth, and for one breath, he closed his eyes—inhaling deeply. The air hung thick, the way it always did before things went terribly wrong... or impossibly right.

He dragged a hand down his face, wiping away the sweat beading at his hairline. Partly from the kitchen's heat, mostly from what awaited beyond this sugar-dusted bubble of pretend domesticity.

A short, humorless laugh escaped him.

The kitchen's sweet aroma still clung to his jacket when he clicked the gate shut behind him—a scent that clashed violently with the holster under his arm and the coordinates glowing on the dashboard. The engine roared to life, but his thoughts refused to accelerate at the same pace: Will the kitchen still be standing by dusk without me there?

The mess, the laughter, the scent of baking dough, and the fragile illusion that for these stolen hours, the world could be simple—just this: affection measured in bowls of brigadeiro and battles over sprinkles.

Chapter Text

The house was swallowed by silence, broken only by the soft ticking of the kitchen clock and the occasional creak of the walls. It was nearly two in the morning. Upstairs, the children were fast asleep—a miracle, considering the hellish week they’d endured.

Wednesday. A week of brutal adjustment to the school routine: waking up at dawn, brewing coffee with eyes still glued shut by exhaustion, hastily packing lunches, wrestling wrinkled uniforms onto squirming limbs, and herding three hyperactive kids into the car before traffic could devour the day. After that came work—or worse, the return to work.

Shanks didn’t particularly mind his own job. What was grinding his patience to dust was the obscene amount of overtime Beckman had been pulling. For the past four days, he’d left before sunrise and only returned when the very walls of the house seemed exhausted. As compensation, Beckman volunteered to drive the boys to school. A gesture almost noble—but far from enough.

Because that wasn’t the real problem.

The problem was that Beckman was hiding things. More than usual. And it left Shanks restless.

Don’t blame him. He was bored—and a bored Shanks is a minefield seconds from detonation. That’s why, earlier that night, he’d crept downstairs without a sound and slipped into Beckman’s office.

And in a way, Shanks was frustrated that he even cared. It wasn’t as if it mattered . Beckman had never owed him explanations before, so why should now be any different?

The room smelled of polished wood and aged paper. Shanks’ fingers trailed slowly across the desk’s surface—brushing meticulously aligned pens, skimming over stacks of documents and reports. He had no idea what they contained, and couldn’t muster enough interest to find out. Money laundering, perhaps. Or contracts. Deep down, it wasn’t as if Beckman’s schemes were ever that fascinating to begin with.

He hummed a half-remembered tune, almost childish, as his gaze drifted to the bookshelf against the wall. And of course: hardcovers . Classics. An entire collection, spines impeccably aligned, some volumes still in their original languages—French, Russian, German. Discreet. Elegant. Inaccessible . Just like Beckman himself had become.

" This is the kind of stuff he reads?" Shanks muttered aloud, plucking one of the volumes from the shelf with deliberately careless fingers.

The Divine Comedy . The gold-embossed title seemed to gleam with quiet arrogance under the soft lamplight, as though acutely aware of its own prestige. He thumbed through the pages absentmindedly, savoring the crisp whisper of thick, expensive paper against his skin. He didn't bother reading a single line – there was no need. The book's substantial weight alone felt like a perfect extension of Beckman himself.

"Yeah, figures," he remarked dryly, as if confirming some long-held suspicion. "Of course it would be this one."

Still cradling the book, he let his gaze wander across the study's meticulously curated details: the sleek minimalist lamp, the crystal paperweight that looked more like a museum piece than a functional object, the abstract modern painting hanging on the wall – the kind that probably required an art degree just to pretend to understand. It likely cost five times what a surgeon made in a year. Maybe ten. Shanks' nose wrinkled in quiet disdain.

He found himself wondering, with an almost bored detachment, just how many of those pretentious paintings he could buy with the head of a mid-level politician.

The room was impeccable—silent, orderly, sterile. It only lacked Beckman's cologne lingering in the air to complete the portrait. And in a way, the entire space mirrored him perfectly: cold, too polished to ever feel lived-in, let alone welcoming.

Shanks flicked the light switch off with a careless tap, plunging the office back into silence as he stepped into the hallway, the weight of the hardcover still balanced in his palm.

He was wearing the pajamas Luffy had insisted they match—a ridiculous print of fluffy clouds and grinning suns. The kid had begged with that impossible-to-resist, star-bright enthusiasm of his. Shanks had thought they looked absurd. But endearing. And he’d been utterly powerless against Luffy’s pleading eyes when he’d made that childish request.

Somewhere upstairs, the muffled sound of Ace and Sabo’s laughter still echoed through the house, their voices bright with mischief as they teased him with their usual refrain: "Still pretending you don’t have a favorite?"

He sank into the living room couch, grabbed the nearest throw blanket, and with a long, world-weary sigh, opened the book across his lap.

The reading began in silence, with only the witching hour for company.

The door creaked open slowly, unhurried, and the sound of dragging footsteps fractured the room's tranquil hush. Beckman stepped inside, the predawn shadows carving his silhouette against the hallway's faint glow. He paused at the sight of Shanks slumped on the sofa, illuminated solely by the yellowed halo of the corner lamp - as if time itself had crystallized around him.

"You're still awake." More an obvious observation than a question, spoken more from habit than genuine surprise.

Shanks didn't answer immediately. His eyes remained fixed on the book, fingers gripping the cover with deliberate stillness, as though either too immersed to respond or carefully weighing the implications of whatever question might follow.

"Which circle of Hell do you think you'd be in?" he murmured at last, his voice low and measured. His gaze never wavered from the open page. "I figure I'd land in the eighth. Or maybe Limbo. Haven't quite decided yet."

Beckman worked off his shoes with a sigh, fingers loosening the laces with the exhausted precision of a man who'd carried the weight of the world all day. He collapsed onto the couch beside Shanks.

"Seventh circle," he rasped, his voice rough and stretched thin, as if he lacked even the energy to explain his answer.

Shanks emitted a brief sound of acknowledgment - almost a laugh - and finally tore his gaze from the book, staring at the ceiling as if searching for some long-dead star painted there. Beckman radiated exhaustion and the faint, acrid scent of gunpowder. Shanks' nose wrinkled slightly.

"You should take a shower."

Beckman didn't answer immediately. He simply tilted his head to the side, letting it come to rest on a pillow near Shanks' lap, his eyes fixed on some point beyond the living room, beyond the witching hour itself.

"Just... just a minute," he murmured, the words heavy with fatigue.

Shanks observed the scene with a faint smile playing at his lips. Ironic, perhaps. But also soft. Almost... affectionate.

He said nothing more, didn't pull away. And that was what unsettled him most - how he could no longer pretend indifference.

When he resumed reading, his voice was more than sound - it was a thread of some ancient melody, something between a lullaby and a secret confession, making Virgil's words his own.

" If you would flee this wild and savage place, " he began, and the words seemed to gain substance in the air between them, " the beast you cry out against allows no man to pass along her way, but so impedes his path that she destroys him. "

Beckman didn't react, but his breathing - previously uneven - gradually steadied, as though subconsciously syncing with the rhythm of the narrative. Shanks continued, his eyes scanning the lines with the easy familiarity of someone who'd traced these words countless times before.

" And she has nature so malign and ruthless, " Shanks recited, the words settling like ancient dust in the lamplight, " that never will she sate her greedy will, and after feeding, hungers more than ever. "

A silence pooled between them. The book trembled faintly in Shanks' grasp as he turned the page, the paper whispering a secret only the night could hear. Beckman's fingers twitched—an involuntary spasm, as if grasping at phantom remnants of a dream half-remembered.

" Many the animals with whom she mates, and more will yet be mated, till the Greyhound comes who shall inflict a painful death. "

Shanks paused, his lips quirking into something not quite a smile. " This one shall feed not upon land or pelt, " he murmured, so softly it might have been a shared confession between lovers rather than Dante's verse, " but wisdom, love, and valor shall sustain him. "

Beckman exhaled—a shuddering breath that made his eyelids flutter like moth wings against glass. Not asleep, not truly, but suspended in that liminal space where wakefulness bled into dreams, where Shanks' voice wove seamlessly into the tapestry of his exhaustion.

" From that low Italy shall he come forth, " Shanks continued, his voice softening further into something perilously close to tenderness, " who died for her, the virgin Camilla, " the names rolling like funeral bells in the quiet, " Euryalus, Turnus, Nisus, all gone with their wounds. ”

A vague sound escaped Beckman's throat—something between a grunt and an acknowledgment. Shanks glanced down at him, his sleep-deprived eyes glinting with amused affection.

" This one shall hunt her through every town, " he read slowly, as though each syllable were a footstep on hallowed ground, " until he thrusts her back to Hell once more, from which envious hate first sent her forth. "

Beckman shifted his head, pressing it more firmly into the cushion as if chasing comfort. Shanks extended his free hand and, with unhurried deliberation, touched a stray lock of black hair that had fallen across the other man's forehead. He didn't tug it back or brush it away—simply let the contact exist, as light and transient as the act of reading itself.

" Therefore, for your own good, I think it wise you follow me, " Shanks continued, and now his voice carried the weight of something perilously close to a vow, " and I shall guide you, taking you from this place to an eternal realm. "

Beckman opened his eyes—just slightly, just enough to catch the amber glow of the lampshade haloing Shanks like a celestial body. A star, perhaps. Or a nebula. He couldn't quite tell. Just as he'd read this book enough times to memorize every verse, yet now found them gaining new dimensions when shaped by Shanks' voice. And he didn't know—couldn't decide—whether he liked what those new meanings implied.

" Where you shall hear the desperate cries dispersed, " Shanks murmured, holding Beckman's gaze for a suspended moment before returning to the book, " and see the ancient spirits in their pain, who all cry out for death a second time. "

Beckman closed his eyes again, but the ghost of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth—fragile as candlelight against the dark. Shanks noticed. And continued. Felt his chest constrict like a fist around his heart.

" And you shall see those souls who are content within the flames, " he read, his voice now carrying an ember's warmth, as if the words were glowing coals he was breathing life into, " for I had hoped to arrive when you still kept time with gentle beats. "

The silence that followed was filled only by Beckman's slowing breath, deeper now, more even. Shanks studied his face, then the book's worn pages, and concluded softly:

" To these, if you then wish to rise, a soul more fit than I shall be your guide: with her I'll leave you when I must depart. "

The book closed with a whisper of pages, its soft click sounding impossibly loud in the suspended stillness. The room itself seemed to be holding its breath. Shanks set the volume aside and leaned over Beckman, his crimson hair falling like theater curtains around the other man's face. He wanted to say... that he wasn't Beatrice, that he could never fulfill that sacred role—but instead, he simply murmured:

"You should go to bed."

A truth whispered into the naked vulnerability of night.

Beckman didn't respond. He couldn't bring himself to move.

The deep silence of predawn gradually surrendered to morning's first stirrings. A pale, tentative light began creeping through the windows, filtering through the curtains to cast delicate shadows across furniture still perfectly arranged by night's orderly hand. Upstairs, what had been perfect tranquility slowly morphed into a rising cacophony of domestic life.

Muffled laughter, hurried footsteps, and animated voices started permeating every corner of the house. Luffy—with that signature troublemaker's grin—darted down the hallway in a futile attempt to escape Ace and Sabo's efforts to contain the morning's inevitable chaos. Wrinkled uniforms lay half-abandoned on chairs, backpacks spilled their contents across the floor, the faint scent of burnt toast wafted from the kitchen, and lunchboxes were being assembled in frantic haste.

This was the quintessential school morning: messy, frenetic, brimming with minor squabbles and rushed embraces—that damnable routine which wore them to the bone even as it inexplicably filled the house with vibrant, pulsing life.

The kitchen clock read 6:47 AM when the muffled sound of footsteps on the stairs blended with the clatter of spoons, the hiss of the toaster, and the blender's mechanical whir. Shanks appeared at the top of the steps, his crimson hair still rebelliously tousled from sleep, eyes half-lidded with lingering drowsiness—yet the smirk tugging at his lips was already fully alert. He wore a wrinkled t-shirt and sweatpants twisted slightly at the waist, with mismatched socks on his feet. The morning chaos was the most effective alarm clock he'd ever known.

In the kitchen, Beckman adjusted his tie with methodical precision in front of the switched-off microwave, using the stainless steel surface as an improvised mirror. His dark suit looked immaculate, as if he'd stepped straight off a Milanese runway. In one hand, he held his phone; in the other, he balanced a steaming mug of black coffee that sent tendrils of vapor curling into the air.

The aroma of freshly toasted bread mingled with the sharp citrus scent of Sabo's soap as the blond teenager materialized suddenly beside his stepfather, looking like a bolt of exhausted lightning in human form.

"Have you seen my Chemistry book?" Sabo asked between panting breaths, his mismatched socks and half-tucked uniform shirt making him look like he'd dressed himself in a hurricane. His blazer was slung haphazardly over one shoulder, and a pen dangled from his ear like some avant-garde piece of jewelry.

"I've turned this place upside down," he grumbled, huffing as though he'd just run a marathon with his backpack still strapped to him.

Beckman didn't even glance up from his phone. "Did you check your backpack?"

"Three times," Sabo replied with the exhausted dignity of someone who's seriously considered abandoning formal education altogether.

Shanks leaned lazily against the doorframe, that trademark mocking glint in his eyes. Arms crossed and yawning like a sun-drunk cat, he remarked with effortless nonchalance:

"If it's not there, it's probably where you least expect it. Did you try checking inside the fridge?"

Sabo shot him a look so exasperated it could have spontaneously combusted the surrounding air. "I'm being serious here, Dad!"

"And I'm trying to help!" Shanks fired back, raising his hands in mock offense. "The mysterious thermodynamics of household objects. Happens more often than you'd think."

Still rolling his eyes, Sabo marched over to the refrigerator, crossed his arms, took a deep breath... and yanked the door open.

There it was. Wedged sideways between a tub of cream cheese and a half-sealed package of turkey slices. The boy stared at this surreal sight for several seconds, his expression mirroring someone who'd just discovered a wild animal sitting at their dining table.

"You know what... I don't even want to know how this got here," he muttered, retrieving the book with a resigned sigh.

At the table, Ace had completely melted onto the wooden surface, his face smashed against the sleeve of his navy-blue uniform. A spoon still dangled limply from his right hand, as if he'd passed out mid-scientific endeavor. His disheveled hair fell over half-lidded eyes, while a thin strand of drool threatened to make its way toward the untouched toast on his plate.

The sound of the refrigerator door jolted him awake. Ace lifted his head with the sluggish grace of a night-blooming flower reversing its process, blinking blearily as he tried to determine whether he was at home, in school, or trapped in some bizarre dreamscape.

And then, like a grinning ninja seizing his moment, Luffy made his move.

Dressed in his slightly askew uniform with shoelaces undone, he stretched his arm across the table, snatched his brother's toast, and took an exaggerated, theatrical bite - cheeks puffing out like a victorious squirrel storing its prize.

"Hey!" Ace protested, his voice still thick with sleep.

Shanks threw his head back in uproarious laughter. "That's what happens when you go into hibernation mode at breakfast. Luffy's already claimed half your food."

Ace rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and mumbled:
"I wasn't sleeping... just... testing if food converts to energy through osmosis. Pure science, you know?"

"Science," Sabo repeated with a sardonic smirk, adjusting his blazer across his shoulders. "Right. Like when you sleep on your notebook hoping to absorb the material through direct contact.”

Beckman placed a pill and a glass of water in front of Ace, who was now properly dressed though his uniform remained slightly wrinkled, his gaze still somewhat sluggish as if sleep were trying to claw him back. Then he repeated the gesture for Shanks, who took the medication with an easy smile while adjusting the collar of his dress shirt. Simultaneously, Beckman prepared the glucose monitor for Luffy, who sat absentmindedly playing with his hair, his backpack already packed and waiting by his side.

It was all part of their morning routine - a silent, well-oiled ritual. Luffy swung his legs impatiently in his chair. The glucose meter beeped.

"86," Beckman announced, visibly relieved. "You're safe. But take these anyway." He stuffed a pack of whole-grain crackers with jam into the boy's backpack. "Complex carbs to prevent sudden drops."

Luffy pouted dramatically. "I wanted the chocolate ones!"

"After lunch," Beckman said firmly, ruffling the boy's hair.

Shanks finished his medication and set the glass down on the table. "I can take them to school today."

"You sure?" Beckman asked without looking up, already storing all the medications in the case he kept in the high cabinet.

"Of course. You can head straight to work without worrying."

Beckman paused for a beat, studying Shanks with slightly narrowed eyes."Alright then."

Beckman had already left the house, settling into the car with his work briefcase balanced on his lap and that methodical expression he wore like a second skin every morning. The door clicked shut with definitive finality, and the engine purred to life as he departed for yet another day.

Inside the house, the morning bustle continued at a calmer but steady pace. The children gathered their backpacks and jackets, straightening their slightly crumpled uniforms - Sabo already wearing his trademark "let's get this over with" expression, Luffy hopping impatiently from foot to foot, and Ace still somewhat drowsy but perking up.

"All right, crew!" Shanks called out, slipping on his jacket while doing the mental checklist: "Wallet, keys, phone."

Soon, the children clattered down the stairs and streamed out the front door, making their way to Shanks' car parked in the garage. The sound of car doors opening echoed through the quiet morning air.

Shanks helped Luffy climb into the backseat, adjusting the boy's backpack straps, while Ace and Sabo found their usual spots. The doors closed with that familiar, satisfying clunk, and Shanks slid into the driver's seat.

With a grin, he turned the ignition and paused for dramatic effect.

"Ace, it's your turn to pick the playlist," he announced, catching the boy's eye in the rearview mirror.

Ace, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, fished his phone from his pocket and swiped carefully through the screen. He found the playlist he'd specially curated for school mornings - that perfect blend of upbeat but not overwhelming tracks, the ideal balance to ease into the day.

"Ready," he announced, pressing play.

The first notes began flowing through the car's sound system, flooding the interior with an infectious, buoyant energy.

Luffy clapped his hands enthusiastically, singing along terribly off-key, while Sabo surprised everyone by allowing a small smile to creep across his face.

Shanks grinned, feeling the atmosphere ease around them. Nothing could possibly ruin this day... Forget he ever said that.

The school parking lot buzzed with the organized chaos typical of a Wednesday morning at an elite academy. Uniformly harried parents, luxury cars parading like some vanity exhibition, and students hauling backpacks larger than their will to live. The building's white facade reflected the sunlight with pretentious brilliance, and even the pigeons seemed better mannered here.

Shanks squinted as he recognized a familiar silhouette - tall, dressed head-to-toe in black, advancing with the silent precision of a sheathed blade. Even from meters away, that air of natural superiority was unmistakable. Only a certain sharp-browed idiot could transform a simple school drop-off into what felt like a public execution runway.

"Well, well... look what the tide washed in..." Shanks announced, his voice dripping with provocation as he parked the car with unnecessary theatricality. He didn't even turn off the engine before leaning toward the rearview mirror, flashing a wide, openly suspicious grin.

Mihawk crossed the courtyard as if he owned the very ground beneath his feet. Firm steps, coat billowing, expression unreadable. To his left, Zoro—backpack slung over his shoulders and a fencing case hanging from one arm, wearing the permanently annoyed expression of someone just waiting for a worthy challenger. To his right, Perona—gothic, bored, and utterly disinterested in any existence that wasn’t her own.

Luffy didn’t even wait for the car to fully stop.

"ZORO!!!" he screamed, tossing his backpack aside and launching himself from the seat like an unguided missile.

"LUFFY, WAIT—!" Shanks barely had time to open the door before Luffy was already tearing across the courtyard, arms wide, grin splitting his face, yelling as if reuniting with a long-lost war buddy.

"MY BEST FRIEND!!!"

Zoro arched an eyebrow. "We met four days ago."

"BEST. FRIEND."

Shanks stepped out of the car, trying—and failing—to maintain any semblance of dignity. He adjusted his jacket and pretended he hadn’t just been emotionally discarded by his own son in the middle of the parking lot.

On the other side, Mihawk finally came to a halt. No smile. No words. Simply turned to regard Shanks with the same expression one reserves for an obnoxious mid-video advertisement.

"So..." Shanks snapped his fingers. "You actually went through with it. Adopted."

Mihawk adjusted his overcoat sleeve with the effortless grace of a man who considers explanations beneath him.

"Two children?" Shanks continued, savoring each word like it was a thorn plucked from his side. "And you brought them here? Of all places?"

"Coincidence," Mihawk replied with the sterile neutrality of a border control agent. "I was informed this was the nation's premier academic institution."

"Ah, of course. Absolutely nothing to do with the fact I'm already here, right?"

Mihawk held his gaze for a second that stretched into geological time. Then his eyes flicked to Luffy—now attempting to scale Zoro like he was Mount Rushmore—before returning to Shanks.

"If you perceive everything as a challenge... perhaps it's because everything threatens you."

Shanks blinked. That... stung more than it should have.

"I'm just dropping my kids off at school," he declared, puffing his chest out with the conviction of a man who'd already lost control of the situation.

"And you've already lost one of them." Mihawk tilted his chin in pointed observation.

Luffy was now attempting to convince Perona to form an imaginary band with him, Zoro, Ace, and Sabo—the latter two of whom hadn’t even stepped out of the car yet.

Shanks’ eyes caught on the fencing case slung over Zoro’s shoulder. "He’s a swordsman? And why Arabasta, not Wano?" he asked, genuine confusion lacing his words.

The question immediately snagged Zoro’s attention, his head snapping up with sudden, sharp interest.

Ace and Sabo, meanwhile, slipped out of the car in practiced silence, slung their backpacks over their shoulders, and wisely chose to ignore the brewing chaos entirely. They offered Shanks nothing more than a quick, commiserating wave—the kind you’d give someone about to walk straight into a warzone.

Zoro crossed his arms. "Yeah. Why didn’t you send me to Wano?"

"Because there is nothing there you cannot learn here," Mihawk replied, not even bothering to look at him.

"But I want to be the best in the world! The best studied there " Zoro shot back, relentless.

Shanks couldn’t resist fanning the flames.

"Technically, you just need to defeat Mihawk. He holds the world record for most consecutive fencing titles and took gold at the World Championships when he was eighteen."

Zoro blinked, as if his entire destiny had just unfolded before his eyes in that very moment.

"What? Old man, why'd you hide this from me?! Get ready! I'm gonna defeat you!" Zoro bellowed, his face twisting into a ferocious scowl as a dark aura seemed to ripple around him like he'd stepped straight out of a shonen anime.

Shanks observed the scene with raised eyebrows.

"Since when does he have a mini-you rage mode edition?" he muttered, half in disbelief. Without looking away, he added, "What exactly are you feeding this kid? Pure ambition?"

Mihawk, for his part, chose to ignore the redhead entirely.

"Thank you so much, Shanks," he said in a voice drier than the Sahara. "Now my son is plotting my assassination."

He sighed with the existential weariness of a man betrayed in his own home.

"You're welcome?" Shanks responded, grinning with full awareness of the chaos he'd just unleashed.

Mihawk turned on his heel and began walking away.

"See you at work."

Shanks nearly had a stroke. The sound of Mihawk's boots against the pavement echoed like divine hammers pounding at the gates of hell. He stood frozen, clutching his car keys like a protective talisman, while Luffy could be heard shouting something about starting a ninja fencing club with built-in archery.

Rubbing his face with one hand, Shanks released a world-weary sigh.

"This is going to be one long semester…”

Inside the classroom, time crawled by at a glacial pace. Mind-numbingly dull, if he were being honest.

Now, don't misunderstand - Luffy adored Miss Makino.

She spoke in a voice so calm it seemed she was always telling a story—even when scolding someone for talking or demanding the return of a pilfered pencil. She wore floral-patterned kerchiefs in her hair, changing colors daily, and handled paper with such reverence you'd think each sheet was gold leaf. When handing back tests, she'd fold the corners so meticulously that even a failing grade somehow hurt less.

She was kind in that particular way that made her remember to ask if you'd slept well, or if the cafeteria food was particularly terrible again. And somehow, she always noticed when someone was upset—even if it was just the slightest bit.

Which was perhaps why Luffy felt just the tiniest bit guilty for how violently he detested her classes. A hatred that burned with the full intensity of his nine-year-old body, fueled by the all-too-familiar frustration of understanding absolutely nothing.

Because along with all that kindness came a book. A fairy tale anthology.

Thick. Heavy. Bound in navy blue hardcover with gilded letters that shimmered under the classroom window's light. Over four hundred pages filled with convoluted words, endless sentences, and characters who all blurred together after page ten.

"Open your books and read quietly," Makino said, gliding between desks with her usual honeyed tone. "Remember this will be the subject of our next assessment. Be prepared."

Luffy opened the book. Stared at the first page. The words seemed to dance and twist, as if deliberately rearranging themselves just to confuse him. He tried reading. Read again. Turned the page. Went back to the previous one.

And understood nearly nothing.

Propping his head in his hands, cheeks puffed out in a pout so profoundly indignant it could only belong to a child who'd just been personally insulted by literature itself, Luffy radiated frustration in waves.

Makino, passing by his desk at that precise moment, had to summon every ounce of her professional composure not to drop her gradebook, kneel right there on the linoleum, and smother him in an embrace overflowing with affection. How could one small boy contain such furious indignation while remaining utterly, devastatingly adorable?
He scrunched up his nose, digging his elbows even deeper into the desk, and glared at the book with the same revolted expression he'd give a plate of soggy green vegetables.

Makino allowed herself a small, hidden smile as she continued gliding between the rows of desks, pretending not to notice the silent rebellion brewing beneath that mop of unruly curls.

Usopp—one of his classmates, and Luffy's shared desk partner for the semester—leaned in with poorly concealed curiosity. He'd been watching for a while now, but only just worked up the nerve to speak.

"Want me to read it to you?" His voice was hushed, the kind of whisper reserved for secret pacts between partners-in-crime.

Luffy lifted his head just enough to peer at Usopp over the barricade of his own arms, cheeks still puffed out in suspicion. He blinked once, slow and considering.

"You... understand this stuff?"

Usopp immediately straightened up, puffing out his chest with all the confidence a nine-year-old could muster.

"Of course I do!" he whispered back, brimming with excitement. "I'm amazing at these kinds of stories. My dad used to tell me stuff like this all the time before he left to serve in the military overseas. And besides—" He dropped his voice even lower, leaning in conspiratorially. "—I've got firsthand experience with invisible monsters, cursed kings, and enchanted labyrinths."

Against his better judgment, Luffy felt one eyebrow creep upward.

Luffy's eyes lit up.

Not in some exaggerated, theatrical way—but with a genuine spark of curiosity, as if the mere mention of invisible monsters and cursed kings had suddenly made the book seem a little less intimidating. He straightened up in his seat, propping his elbows on the desk, and slowly nudged the book toward Usopp.

"Fine. But do the monster voices."

Usopp grinned like he'd just been handed a top-secret mission. He adjusted himself, cleared his throat with dramatic flair, and opened the book with the reverence of someone handling an ancient scroll.

"In the mountains of old Izumo," he began, voice dropping to a hushed, reverent whisper, "where the wind howled like a caged beast, there lived a creature so terrible even the gods feared its name: Yamata no Orochi... the eight-headed dragon." The words slithered out, almost hissed between his teeth.

Luffy held his breath. His eyes were wide, unblinking, as if he expected the dragon to burst forth from the pages right then and there. Seizing the moment, Usopp leaned in, buzzing with excitement.

"With eyes like hellfire and a body as long as eight valleys stretched end to end, Orochi devoured a maiden every year. Until, on the eighth year, came Susano'o—" He paused, milking the suspense. "—the storm god."

"Whoaaa..." Luffy let out, the sound escaping him almost involuntarily.

Usopp raised a finger, demanding theatrical silence.

"Susano'o descended from the heavens with his sacred sword and a plan. He made the dragon drink the strongest sake until all eight heads drifted into slumber... one by one." Usopp's voice grew lower with each "one by one," as if he were reciting some forbidden incantation.

Luffy was utterly spellbound, his gaze locked, eyes sparkling with every word.

Then, like a gentle breeze cutting through their fantasy, Miss Makino's voice floated from the front of the classroom:

"Luffy... Usopp..."

The two flinched as if Yamata no Orochi itself had sniffed them out.

Makino approached, a slender book in hand. She studied them with practiced patience—the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, even beneath her stern expression.

"Boys, reading time is silent reading time, remember?"

Luffy sank deeper into his chair, hands flattening over the book. Usopp carefully closed the cover, as if returning a magical talisman to its rightful place.

But Makino only sighed, bending slightly to whisper kindly:

"It is a beautiful story, isn't it? Just... try to keep the noise down, alright?"

She winked and glided away without another sound.

The moment her back turned, Usopp and Luffy exchanged a conspiratorial glance. Then, as if nothing had happened, Usopp resumed reading—now whispering like a ninja on a stealth mission, and Luffy listening as though every word were pure enchantment.

The bell rang with a sharp, insistent chime, dragging the souls of every student along with it. Ace and Sabo emerged from the science lab like two defeated researchers—shoulders slumped, lab coats askew, wearing expressions of men who'd just witnessed a historic failure.

"That was a disaster," Ace grumbled, yanking off his latex gloves with frustration. "Damn reagents! They’re the only things in the world that can even fail at failing!"

Sabo, on the other hand, looked far more cheerful than any self-respecting failure had any right to be. He strolled along with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly, that infuriating smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

"Pretty sure this was your fault!" Ace accused, jabbing a finger at him—still stained a faint purple from the experiment. "I told you we didn’t need to measure anything! Just mix it all together!"

"Which is exactly why it didn’t explode," Sabo shot back, grinning. "I was trying to make it look like a calculated accident. But nature wasn’t cooperating."

"Calculated accident? That was a magic show—except with no magic, no tricks, and no excited audience." Ace shook his head, exhaling sharply. "Not even a wisp of smoke. Nothing! That failure was so legendary it deserves its own national holiday."

Sabo shrugged with the carefree air of someone who saw absolutely no issue, and as they crossed the hallway, he launched into animated chatter, his eyes gleaming with renewed excitement.

"You've got to understand, Ace: these reagents are absurdly temperamental! The slightest variation in temperature, pH, volume, planetary alignment— poof! —nothing works!" He waved his arms like an invisible conductor leading a disastrous chemical orchestra.

Ace trudged alongside him, utterly drained, a single thought looping in his mind: "Will this ever actually explode for real, or is it all just marketing?"

The cafeteria was a concrete-and-metal jungle in its own right. The air hung heavy with the unmistakable scent of steamed rice, fish sauce, and deep-fried goodness—not just any sauce, mind you, but sauces with names far too complicated to pronounce out loud. The food was prepared by chefs renowned across the country, and the menu had likely been scrutinized down to the last calorie by a team of nutritionists.

The clatter of plastic trays being slammed down and silverware clinking against plates formed a dissonant orchestra, while the endless chatter about everything and nothing at all made the atmosphere feel like a battlefield.

Ace and Sabo weaved through the crowds with the practiced ease of veterans who'd survived this kind of "warfare" before. After dodging a few airborne trays and a group of bewildered freshmen, they finally claimed the back table like it was their personal sanctuary. With a sigh, they slumped onto the benches, eyes shut for a brief moment of peace.

That peace lasted exactly twenty-eight seconds.

Luffy appeared like a human hurricane, his face glowing with unrestrained excitement, eyes brighter than a lighthouse beacon. He dragged Zoro along with the effortless command of a sailor navigating stormy waters, sending the swordsman tumbling unceremoniously between him and Perona.

With that trademark, ear-splitting grin, Luffy planted himself on the bench and immediately shoved aside part of Zoro's tray, claiming space for himself with the natural authority of a king reclaiming his throne.

"This is Usopp!" Luffy announced with all the enthusiasm of a carnival barker, pointing at the curly-haired boy trailing behind him. Usopp looked slightly overwhelmed, clutching the open fairy tale book in his hands like it was his only shield against the surrounding chaos. "He read to me during Makino's class!"

Zoro let out a frustrated huff, already knowing exactly where this was headed.

"I had a better place to be," he grumbled, staring down at his tray like it was the last bastion of sanity in his life.

Luffy blinked at him, genuinely perplexed.

"Really? Then why are you still here?" he asked, tilting his head with the expression of someone who truly couldn't grasp the dilemma.

Zoro nearly rolled his eyes— damn that infectious charisma , he thought—but just as he opened his mouth to argue, a voice from across the table cut through his thoughts.

"And I have nothing better to do," Perona murmured without even looking up from her rice. Her gaze was so icy, the grains might as well have frozen solid.

Sabo, who seemed to exist in a perpetual state of culinary bliss, regarded Usopp with an amiable grin despite having his mouth stuffed full of food.

"That's awesome. Nice to meet you, Usopp," he said warmly, chewing with a peculiar mix of carelessness and courtesy that only Sabo could pull off.

WHAP!

Ace delivered a swift smack to the back of Sabo's head without even looking up from his own meal.

"Empty your mouth first, dumbass!" Ace grumbled, his voice teetering between exasperation and fond irritation. "That's basic manners."

Usopp blinked, clearly taken aback by the... enthusiastic welcome. He hesitated for a moment, eyes darting between the faces around the table as he tried to decipher the group's chaotic dynamics, his grip on the book tightening like it was the only steady thing in a storm.

"It's just... I'm good with mythology," Usopp explained, trying for casual but his voice came out several decibels louder than intended, betraying his nerves.

Luffy, like a child awarded a gold star, slammed his palms on the table in excitement.

"He did monster voices! It was awesome!"

Before anyone could add anything, an icy presence materialized beside them, slicing through the conversation with the sharpness of a honed blade. "How do you manage to collect friends by the millisecond?"

The scent of antiseptic hit the table before the voice did. Luffy didn't even blink, but the others bristled as they turned to find Law standing there—motionless, as if he'd emerged from a spacetime rift. The tray in his hand looked meticulously arranged: a sandwich cut with geometric precision, food portions measured with near-mathematical rigor.

Ace jolted in his seat, nearly choking on a bite of tofu. "GAH—! F-for fuck's sake, wear a bell around your neck!"

Law ignored him entirely, giving a slight shoulder twitch as if brushing off an insignificant insect. He crossed his arms and fixed Luffy with a stare usually reserved for particularly perplexing lab specimens.

"Seriously. What's the secret?" he asked, his voice carrying the clinical detachment of a scientist examining some rare phenomenon. "In four days you've befriended half the school. But you only seem to attract people who are exactly as insufferable as you are. Is this some kind of natural selection at work?"

Luffy beamed back at him with that trademark grin of his, answering with the infuriating simplicity that made everything more confusing. "I don't get what you're saying."

With a fluid motion, Luffy reached out to snatch a bite from Zoro's tray, but before his fingers could make contact, Zoro delivered a sharp smack to his hand.

"Eat your own damn food, idiot!" Zoro grumbled, his tone gruff but laced with reluctant amusement.

Luffy's face crumpled into a pout, his head drooping like a scolded puppy. But his exile from the communal meal didn't last long.

In a move so synchronized it could've been choreographed, Law, Sabo, and Ace simultaneously slid portions of their own food toward Luffy—a silent peace offering for the table's resident bottomless pit.

Luffy's eyes sparkled with starry gratitude as he eagerly scooped up the offerings, his earlier transgression already forgotten.

"Thanks," he mumbled between messy, overstuffed bites, flashing Zoro a triumphant wink—which earned him nothing but an exaggerated eye roll in return.

And just like that, with an extra piece of tofu on his plate and a considerable haul of "borrowed" provisions, peace was restored—at least for the next few minutes. But with Luffy at the table, the chaos was never more than a heartbeat away from erupting anew.

The black car slowed to a stop in front of a squat, weathered building that time and neglect had worn down. The windows were all shut—some with grimy curtains drawn tight, others boarded up with cardboard. A leaning streetlamp cast a sickly, flickering yellow glow over the cracked sidewalk. The street lay silent, save for the distant hum of a transformer and the muffled bark of a dog from some nearby backyard.

Beckman didn't hesitate. With a sharp, practiced motion, he unbuckled his seatbelt, pushed the door open, and stepped out, his shoes landing firmly on the uneven asphalt. He'd forgone his suit jacket, wearing only a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms—as if he already knew formalities would be wasted here.

Across from him, the rear door swung open. Lucky Roux emerged without a sound, falling into step beside Beckman almost instantly. No words passed between them; the thick, charged air said everything that needed saying.

Hellish days. First came the rumors—whispers slithering through the organization’s underbelly like rats in a sewer. Then, confirmation: someone was selling them out. Entire schemes, covert operations, safehouse locations—all handed over by some backstabbing bastard. Beckman couldn’t care less about the financial losses; money could be recouped, connections rebuilt. What gnawed at him was the sheer audacity of thinking you could drive a knife between his ribs and keep breathing.

And now he was here to end it.

More than strategic losses, this betrayal had cost him time —a week’s worth of meticulous planning flushed down the drain like black ink dissolving in clear water. Beckman was patient. Methodical. But even he had limits.

Shanks had been restless. No questions, no demands for explanations, no accusations. But he wasn’t sleeping either. He’d sit in the living room, some book open in his lap, gaze fixed on the door like he could will it to move. Sometimes he pretended to read. Sometimes he didn’t bother.

Maybe it was insomnia. Beckman preferred to believe that.

But on nights too quiet, when the whole house slept and the only sound was the muffled tread of his own footsteps in the darkened hallway, he caught himself wondering:

What if Shanks really was waiting for him?

The thought left him unsettled. Exposed. As if there was something lurking there he wasn't ready to confront—not tonight, not with the stench of betrayal still clinging to his hands.

"We got him," Lucky said around a mouthful of sandwich, chewing with his usual nonchalance as though they weren't about to settle things with gunpowder and silence. "Bought a ticket. Was prepping his exit—fake name, forged passport, the whole amateur-hour getaway package."

Beckman didn't answer right away. He kept walking, gaze locked on the building's entrance. The graffiti-scarred facade, the half-open gate, the suffocating quiet—it all screamed that this place existed off the grid. Somewhere ghosts came to disappear.

"Did he reach out to anyone outside?" he finally asked, voice low, as if unwilling to give the question more air than strictly necessary.

"Not yet. But he tried," Lucky replied, swallowing the last bite and wiping his hands on his jeans. "Sent an encrypted message last night. We cracked it. Just confirmed what we already knew: little rat's been leaking intel long enough to be a pain in our ass, thought he could bolt."

Beckman came to a halt before the gate. A strip of weathered plastic—leftover from some abandoned construction work—fluttered in the wind, its frayed edges tapping rhythmically against the rusted bars. Beyond the fence, one of their men gave a curt nod: the traitor was inside. Bound. Conscious.

"Is he talking?" Beckman asked without shifting his gaze.

"Nothing useful. Claims he was threatened, says he wanted to protect his family... The usual sob story," Lucky replied with a shrug. "But he hasn’t lied about anything yet."

Beckman drew a slow breath. There was no anger in his expression—just a lethal, glacial calm.

"I only need him to confirm. After that… make him disappear."

With that, he stepped through the gate. His stride was measured, deliberate. Behind him, Lucky lingered, whistling some aimless tune—like a man who already knew this conversation wouldn’t take long.

The room was damp, illuminated only by a flickering fluorescent light that sputtered like it was clinging to its last moments of life. The stench of mildew, rust, and cheap bleach hung thick in the air—a pathetic attempt to mask what truly went on in that place.

In the metal chair, bound with coarse ropes and duct tape over his mouth, a man was drenched in sweat. His right eye was swollen shut, his lip split and bleeding, his fingers trembling uncontrollably. Behind him stood two men in dark suits, motionless—statues in some grotesque museum exhibit.

The door creaked.

Beckman stepped in without hurry. He wore a black overcoat over his immaculate suit, the click of his boots echoing off the bare concrete as he removed his leather gloves—one at a time, with deliberate, unhurried precision.

"So you're the unfortunate soul who's been giving me headaches lately?"

He pulled up a chair and sat facing the traitor, crossing his legs with the composed demeanor of an executive about to conduct a high-stakes negotiation... though everyone present knew no deals would be made tonight.

The room was steeped in silence. The bare concrete walls seemed to swallow all sound, muffling even the persistent ticking of an antique clock in the corner. The air hung thick, saturated with something not quite fear—but dangerously close.

Beckman stood before the bound man, still as a marble statue. His dark suit remained immaculate, every crease and seam untouched—a stark contrast to the claustrophobic surroundings. The humid, stifling air, thick with the scent of mildew and rusted metal, sent beads of sweat rolling down the prisoner's forehead, yet left the crime lord's attire unblemished. In his hands rested a simple, weathered leather briefcase he didn't even bother to open. He already knew every detail by heart.

"Your name is Hiroshi Sakamoto. Thirty-two years old. Former cartel accountant before you sold yourself as a black-market informant."

His voice was low, steady, and precise—almost monotonous in its controlled calm. With each word, the tension grew sharper, like a blade being slowly pressed against skin. Beckman tilted his head slightly, as if mentally reviewing the cold figures of a financial report, detached and methodical.

"You sold intel on three smuggling routes, compromised two full operations... and—ah, yes—the weapons import scheme through Dock 14. Remember?"

Hiroshi didn’t dare respond. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing painfully, while his eyes darted frantically in the dim light, wild with desperation. His lips stayed sealed, bound by an invisible gag of terror. Beckman’s expression remained unreadable, merciless—he expected no reaction, not yet.

"Your buyers are dead."

The words landed like a hammer strike. He paused briefly, letting the weight of the statement sink into the suffocating silence of the room.

"The money you were paid has been traced and seized. There isn’t even enough left for a subway ticket."

He took a slow step to the side, his icy gaze assessing the man like a broken, disposable object.

"Your ex-wife... she’s in Málaga now, isn’t she? Doesn’t even remember you exist. She’s safe."

He blinks slowly — the solemn gesture of someone delivering a death sentence veiled as mercy.

“And your brother... well. He truly has nothing to do with this.”
His voice dropped to almost a whisper then — cruel, final. “So he gets to live.”

The silence that followed was thick. Oppressive. Almost physical.
It wasn’t the hollow quiet of an empty room — it was the tension-heavy hush of a moment suspended, stretched tight with expectation, as though even the air itself waited for the sound of a trigger being pulled.

Beckman leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, fingers laced together just in front of his mouth. The flickering light from the hanging bulb above swung gently, casting sharp, angular shadows across his features — a face too composed, too calm for a man sitting across from a traitor about to be judged.

“I only came here for one thing: confirmation.”

Without a shift in expression, he tore the tape from Hiroshi’s mouth in one swift, brutal motion. The scream was instant — raw, rasping, and short-lived.
Before the sound had a chance to carry, Beckman’s hand was already locked around the man’s throat, crushing the air, stifling the noise, silencing the world with a single, measured squeeze.

“Who else knows?”

The question came gently, surprisingly so — almost tender, a low whisper far too intimate for the kind of threat it carried.
“We tracked your clients. My men are handling them as we speak. But I need to know... did you tell anyone else?”
Hiroshi shook his head violently, tears flooding his bloodshot eyes, panic etched into every fragile line of his pale, sweat-slicked face.

Beckman didn’t move. He just tightened his grip.
“Are you sure?”

The pressure increased — slow, merciless — like a secret being wrung out until it bled.
“Because if I find out you lied to me... later on…”

He smiled then. Almost kindly. Almost human. But the bitterness in it twisted everything out of place.
“I’ll bring your little brother here. So he can keep you company.”

“N-no one else!” Hiroshi gasped, his voice cracking apart under the weight of fear. “I swear! It was just the black market contact, I—”

Beckman released him all at once. Hiroshi slumped forward, still bound, coughing violently, sucking in air like a man resurfacing from drowning. His wide eyes flicked around in a daze, struggling to hold on to the room.

Beckman stepped back, unhurried, and with a gesture as precise as a habit long-practiced, drew a white handkerchief from his pocket. He began wiping each finger individually — as if ridding himself of some invisible, offensive stain. It was a cold ritual, unfeeling, deliberate. A slow exhale of control.

“Good.”

He straightened with precision, adjusting the cuff of his shirt with a smooth, practiced tug — every movement sharp, composed, and deliberate. His eyes were steady, merciless.
“Then we have nothing more to talk about.”

Hiroshi looked up at him, breathless, his face twisted in sheer, pleading terror.
But Beckman was already drawing the gun — cold, efficient, automatic.
The metallic click of the hammer being cocked sliced through the air like a final verdict, severing the last frayed thread of hope that might have still lingered.

“P-please, I—”

But the plea never reached its end.

Silence returned — full and unyielding, heavy like the closing of a courtroom door. And Beckman, as always, followed through on his word.

The moment the rusted warehouse door clanged shut behind him, muffled but final, Beckman paused in the middle of the narrow hallway.

The dim yellow light above flickered weakly, casting trembling shadows along the walls stained with grease and dust. The air was thick — choked with the scent of old metal, oil, and something else that clung to the lungs like regret.

Four more days. Just four more days — and he could get away from all of this, even if only for a few stolen hours.

His chest tightened — a sudden pressure, sharp and unwelcome, that stole the air from his lungs for a fleeting moment.
His fingers curled slightly into a fist, as if trying to trap the restlessness clawing its way out.
His face, however, remained composed — unmoved — but a short, almost imperceptible sigh escaped his lips, like the faint whisper of a candle flickering out.

With mechanical precision, he holstered the weapon — a dry, final click echoing in the stale corridor — and step by step, he made his way toward the car, which waited quietly under the dim streetlight, its surface catching the weak glow like a reluctant reflection.

Each footfall echoed cold and hollow behind him, reverberating with the weight of too many days stacked on top of one another.

Then, without warning, a relaxed shadow drifted into view down the hall.

Lucky Roux strolled with the lazy rhythm of someone who had all the time in the world — shoulders loose, hands buried deep in the pockets of a weather-beaten coat.
His smile — wide, easy, almost insolent — broke through the fatigue etched into his features like a defiant sun peeking through overcast skies.

“This calls for a celebration,” his voice cut through the silence with a mock-toast kind of cheer, raising an imaginary glass.
“Nearly a full week cleaning up this mess — wouldn’t you say, boss?”

The nickname carried a kind of ironic fondness, a spark of camaraderie tossed like a lifeline toward the man in front of him.
Roux leaned in slightly, eyebrows arched with mischief, trying to catch a glimpse of Beckman’s closed expression.

But Beckman didn’t lift his gaze.
His eyes remained locked on the pavement — unblinking, unfeeling, empty as stone.

“If you want to celebrate,” he said, voice flat, “do it alone.”

His voice came out dry — sharp — like a shard of ice cracking through the silence.

Lucky let out a low, resigned chuckle. He shook his head, somewhere between amused and exasperated.

“Man, you’re such a grump. I honestly don’t know why I still work for you.”

At last, Beckman looked at him.
His gaze was heavy, worn — somewhere in the cluttered space behind his eyes, a flicker of Shanks surfaced. It was exactly the kind of thing he would say.
A faint twitch at the corner of Beckman’s lips gave away something fleeting — maybe a ghost of a smile, or maybe just the shadow of exhaustion passing over his face.

“Then go find yourself a better boss.”

Lucky pressed a hand dramatically to his chest, feigning offense with theatrical flair.

“I’ll find one who’s not at war with the concept of fun.”

The corner of Beckman’s mouth shifted again — just barely — but it was enough. A subtle tremor, no more than a breath, but it made Roux’s eyes go wide with delighted shock, as if he’d just uncovered a well-guarded secret.

“Wait... boss, was that a smi—”

But Beckman turned his head slowly, eyes sharp and still — cold as blades, ready to slice through any distraction that dared linger.

Lucky swallowed hard and instinctively stepped back. Two full paces.

“Or not. Probably not. Yeah, no, forget it. Nothing happened.”

Beckman didn’t bother to reply. He turned away, already walking off.
The tension that had lived in his shoulders for days finally seemed to exhale — just slightly — loosening its grip, like a burden that, for a single fleeting moment, weighed a little less.

Two damn idiots always looking for an excuse to celebrate anything, he thought, as he opened the car door with a faint metallic creak.

Lucky remained behind, standing in the tremulous glow of the streetlamp, watching his friend disappear into the night.
A small, sincere smile tugged at his lips — the kind that didn’t ask for attention, only understood what it meant.

“That was definitely a smile,” he murmured to himself, as if whispering a secret to the wind.

On the other side of town, the front door opened with a precise click and the lazy creak of hinges begging for oil. A warm gust of air, still carrying the day's asphalt heat, wrapped around the four of them as they stepped inside. The late afternoon sun bathed everything in gold—the pale walls, the haphazardly tossed couch cushions, even the wooden floors seemed to glow under the slanted sunset light.

"WE'RE HOOOOME!" Luffy bellowed at full volume, his voice bouncing off the empty walls as if the house itself might shout back. He did this every single day—had done since they'd moved in—and seemed determined to uphold the tradition forever.

Silence answered.

Ace was the first to ditch his backpack, letting it drop with a dull thud onto the sofa. Sabo followed suit, though more carefully, stretching his arms with an exaggerated groan and rolling his shoulders like he'd been carrying the weight of a planet rather than just chemistry textbooks.

"Everyone, hit the showers!" Shanks clapped his hands like a ringmaster summoning his circus lions. The kids stared back with all the enthusiasm of someone facing a rainy Monday.

Forty minutes, three sopping towels, and one heated debate about who stole the lemon-scented soap later...

The four of them reconvened in the kitchen—now clean, fresh-smelling, and in their home clothes: Luffy in dinosaur-print pajamas, Ace in ragged shorts and a t-shirt that read "Don't Wake Me, Wake the Government," and Sabo in an impeccably neat hoodie, as if even at home he insisted on maintaining diplomatic decorum. Shanks, of course, wore an apron featuring a duck in sunglasses with a grin as wide as it was suspicious.

"If Beckman isn't back yet..." Ace shot Shanks a look as the man rummaged through cabinets like a treasure hunter. "...we're gonna have to make dinner?" His voice came out in a doom-laden whisper, as though summoning an ancient curse.

It was a desperate plea to the only adult in the house—or at least, the more irresponsible of the two.

Shanks raised his eyebrows with wounded dignity, as if the mere suggestion of practical responsibility was a personal attack.

"You say that like I'm not a supremely talented chef," he declared, already striding toward the kitchen. "Specializing in... cereal with milk. And instant ramen."

"Shanks!" Ace and Sabo groaned in unison, while Luffy barreled past them, kicking off his shoes and yelling:

"I WANT CHOCOKRISPIS!"

Shanks let out an amused snort and threw his hands up. "See? Luffy knows what's good."

"That's not dinner," Sabo groaned, rolling his eyes. "That's giving up—with extra sugar."

"Then let's cook together," Shanks suggested, already rummaging through the kitchen drawers with the enthusiasm of a man who'd never actually cooked a meal in his life.

"How about roast beef with vegetables?" Sabo proposed, flipping through the recipe book with the focus of a surgeon prepping for a critical operation. He tapped the glossy photo with his finger, eyes gleaming like he'd just uncovered the secret to eternal happiness.

"RICE!" Luffy bellowed.

"Salad," Ace muttered under his breath.

Shanks leaned in, peering over the blond's shoulder.

"Solid choice, boss. Now tell me—where do we keep... this thing?" He squinted at the ingredient list, brow furrowing. "Fresh rosemary?"

“In the fridge,” Sabo replied without even glancing up. “Third shelf, left side, behind the tomato juice.”

Shanks blinked, genuinely impressed. “You’ve cataloged the fridge?”

“Someone had to,” Sabo sighed, flipping another page with dramatic flair. “You guys keep mixing up baking soda and yeast.”

Meanwhile, Ace had already pulled off his shirt and tied it around his waist like a makeshift apron.
He stood at the counter, gripping a knife with the kind of enthusiasm that made Sabo break into a nervous sweat.

“If you let me chop the veggies, I can make cool shapes! Like—like ninja stars!”
He was already going at a carrot with far too much excitement for anyone’s comfort.

“No, no, no, you’re gonna chop your finger off!” Sabo lunged to grab the knife from him, and thus began a miniature chase around the table — Ace darting away with the carrot held high like a hard-won trophy of war.

Luffy, meanwhile, had already climbed onto one of the stools and was digging through the highest cabinet in search of Choco Krispies.

“LUFFY! That is not part of dinner!” Sabo shouted from across the kitchen, still trying to corner Ace.

“But I’m hungry now!” Luffy complained, clutching the cereal box triumphantly. “And you guys take forever to cook vegetables!”

Shanks opened the oven, peered inside with a thoughtful look, then closed it again. “You know what I think?” he said, wiping his hands on the kitchen apron. “This is all going way better than I expected.”

At that exact moment, a loud crack echoed from the cutting board. Ace had finally managed to cut the carrot — with enough force to split the countertop in the process.
“…Relatively better,” Shanks corrected, with a tense smile that tried to pass for optimism.

“Since we’re all here,” Sabo said, finally managing to pry the knife from Ace’s hand, “let’s do it like this: Shanks handles the meat, I’ll take care of the veggies, Ace only peels things, and Luffy stays far away from the stove.”

“Can I put on some music?” Luffy asked, already holding the speaker remote like it was a detonator.

“As long as it’s not that anime opening remix,” Sabo replied, almost on instinct.

“Anime openings with emotion!” Luffy shouted, smashing the play button with dramatic flair.

The kitchen was instantly flooded with loud beats, laughter, overlapping voices, and the rich scent of garlic sizzling in oil.
It wasn’t exactly what anyone would call a proper dinner…
But to them, it was what home smelled like.

Some time later, outside.

Beckman’s car came to a quiet stop in front of the house. He took a deep breath. Finally home, he thought.
For a few seconds, he remained there, hands still resting on the steering wheel, unmoving, as if the stillness could stretch time just a little longer. Then, slowly, he opened the door and stepped out. The keys chimed softly between his fingers as he slid them into the lock.

A soft click echoed as the door gave way.
Beckman stepped inside with measured steps — restrained, almost soundless — like a man crossing into sacred ground he didn’t quite feel worthy of disturbing.

The warm air of the house wrapped around him immediately, but it was the smell that stopped him mid-step. Freshly cooked rice. Roasted meat. The kind of scent that didn’t just greet you, it embraced you, quietly, deeply, like a home that recognized your presence before you’d even spoken.

Laughter drifted in from the kitchen. Loud, a little chaotic, too unfiltered for this late hour, and yet somehow... deeply comforting.

He closed the door gently behind him and dropped the keys onto the small entry table, his eyes sweeping the hallway bathed in a warm, golden light.

The lingering heat of the day still clung softly to the furniture, but what truly warmed him was the sound — a blend of voices overlapping, hurried footsteps, someone shouting, “I WANT MORE!” followed immediately by an eruption of laughter.

He made his way to the kitchen door and paused at the threshold. No one noticed him right away.

Ace was elbow-deep in the sink, scrubbing a casserole dish with the fierce determination of someone fighting a battle. Sabo moved around like a demanding maître d’, assembling plates with precision, arranging lettuce leaves as if they were highly confidential documents.

Luffy, naturally, had rice tangled in his hair and a spoon in hand, spinning around in circles to the soft strains of an anime opening playing quietly in the background.
And Shanks, wearing a stained apron and a satisfied gleam on his face, presided over the chaos as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Beckman leaned against the doorframe, arms loosely crossed. He allowed himself a moment, just one, to stand there and watch. It wasn’t silence. It wasn’t peace either.
It was something far more elusive: lightness.

“You missed the best part,” Shanks murmured without turning, a lopsided smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he stirred the pot with casual expertise.

Beckman raised an eyebrow, stepping in slowly. “I doubt that.”

“You’re early today,” Luffy chimed in, already wrapped tightly around Beckman’s legs in a hug that seemed to anchor him in place. His small face was pressed against the still-cool fabric of Beckman’s slacks, fresh from the evening air outside.

Caught slightly off guard, Beckman arched an eyebrow again and glanced at his watch, as if trying to verify reality through the ticking of time.

“Early?” he echoed under his breath, resting one large hand atop the boy’s messy hair. “It’s already dark out, brat.”

“Yeah, but you never get home when we’re still having dinner,” Luffy replied, clinging tightly. His voice came muffled against Beckman’s leg. “Tonight, you made it before the rice ran out.”

A soft sigh escaped Beckman’s lips — quiet, subtle, almost a laugh. The kind of laugh he only ever let slip when, for some inexplicable reason, the world felt... right.

“Yeah. I guess I got lucky today,” he said, fingers running gently, almost absentmindedly, through Luffy’s hair.

From behind the counter, Shanks watched with a plate still in hand, wearing one of those faint, knowing smiles — the kind he reserved for the moments when he understood more than he chose to say.

Chapter Text

Friday.

Ace could almost taste freedom on the tip of his tongue—warm and sweet, like the scent of smoke and gunpowder after an explosion he himself had set off. The weekend stretched before him like a golden horizon, and the hell known as Arabasta International School was finally showing signs of surrender.

The hallways buzzed with students—hurried, loud, stumbling over each other like ants under a scorching sun. The air smelled of sweat, desperation, and half-wrapped snacks spilling from open backpacks. A sea of raised voices, rushed footsteps, and slamming lockers formed a chaotic, nearly deafening backdrop.

Ace dragged himself through the chaos, shoulders slumped, his backpack hanging by a single strap, half-open, with a biology textbook threatening to tumble out. His hair—always messy—looked even wilder, sticking up in every direction as if trying to escape alongside him.

But something was different today.

He was actually trying.

With furrowed brows, he clutched his own planner between his fingers, scrutinizing its pages as if they were an ancient map—scrawled with riddles and half-faded clues. His expression was uncharacteristically focused, eyes slightly narrowed, lips pursed in that involuntary pout of someone who was, for the very first time, genuinely trying to understand. A walking, breathing little miracle.

Now Sabo? Sabo might as well have been strolling on clouds. He moved through the same chaotic hallway not as if he were trapped in the madness, but as though he were gliding down a red carpet. His blazer sat perfectly tailored against his frame, golden hair swept immaculately to the side, hands tucked casually in his pockets, gaze serene—the look of a man who had already conquered the day before it had even begun.

He memorized schedules as effortlessly as breathing. Knew test chapters by heart, deadlines down to the hour, the exact minute each class dragged on—and yet, somehow, he still managed to be late almost every single time.

Just that week alone, the two of them had already circled the entire school three full times searching for a literature book he’d "forgotten" in his locker... only for it to turn up, hours later, buried at the bottom of Sabo’s bag all along.

Ace still hadn’t gotten over it.

The worst part was how he handled it—that absentminded half-smile, the slight shrug of his shoulders like he was saying, "What can you do?", and that infuriatingly calm demeanor, as if absolutely nothing in the world could rattle him.

Ace narrowed his eyes, jaw tight. He watched his brother like he was trying to solve an equation that simply refused to make sense.

How could someone be so brilliant…
and yet so stupid at the same time?

Ace huffed, turned his face away, and buried his chin in his shoulders, fuming. For the hundredth time, he decided IQ tests were a complete fraud.

“Why are you staring at me like that again?” Sabo asked, without looking up from the reagents in front of him. His fingers moved with near-surgical precision, measuring and pouring droplets with the delicacy of someone handling something alive—as if balancing volatile reactions was as natural as breathing. The lamp’s glow refracted through the beakers, casting an eerie blue shimmer across his safety goggles.

He didn’t even need to look. He could recognize that particular brand of silent fury from a mile away—a volatile cocktail of resentment and frustration that Ace clung to like a lit match in a powder keg.

“I already apologized for earlier, okay?” Sabo said, with the faintest lift of his eyebrows—the universal gesture of someone trying to shut down a conversation without pausing their work.

Ace let out a theatrical huff, looking away with Oscar-worthy exaggeration, lips pressed tight and nose slightly scrunched. He pretended to focus on his own workstation, though his eyes kept darting from a misaligned test tube to an unplugged stopwatch—a performance so transparent it was almost insulting. In reality, his plan was far more elaborate: ask just the right questions, feign genuine scientific curiosity, and distract the teacher long enough for Sabo to—well, attempt nuclear fission in the middle of class.

With all the solemnity of a philosopher struck by divine revelation, Ace raised his hand, eyebrows furrowed as if grappling with an existential scientific quandary.

"Mr. Mihal," Ace began, his voice dripping with near-reverence, "what happens when you heat ammonium nitrate?"

The question hung in the air like a lit fuse.

Professor Mihal—a towering man of few smiles and countless emotional scars (all courtesy of students exactly like Ace)—froze mid-stride. Slowly, as if resisting the gravitational pull of impending regret, he turned to face him. The silence that followed lasted no more than two seconds, yet it was as thick as a sealed flask of hydrochloric acid. A pause heavy with that particular brand of unspoken judgment that didn’t need words to land like a punch to the gut.

Ace held his gaze, eyes wide and gleaming, nodding slightly as if genuinely absorbing every syllable like sacred wisdom.

"That depends on the temperature," Mihal said, each word measured like a single drop of acid dripping onto a delicate experiment. "Under controlled conditions, it decomposes safely—releasing water vapor and nitrogen oxides. But if heated too rapidly, in large quantities, or in the presence of contaminants..." A beat. "The compound becomes unstable."

Ace nodded slowly , with the solemn deliberation of someone savoring each word like a sacred text. He waited exactly half a second—just long enough to feign contemplation—before tilting his head slightly, eyes alight with a spark of curiosity so convincing it bordered on dangerous.

"And is it true..." he added, with an audible hitch of excitement—the eager tremor of an aspiring scientist laced with the recklessness of someone who absolutely should not know these things, "...that it can turn into laughing gas? Like... nitrous oxide?"

Mihal stopped dead.

The classroom air shifted palpably, as if someone had dialed down reality's volume for a heartbeat. A few students exchanged glances. From the back row, a girl let out a soft, intrigued "Hm" before returning to her notes—writing far slower now, her attention irreversibly hooked against her better judgment.

The professor dragged a hand down his face, then pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, exhaling like a man who had already seen too much—and yet, not enough to ever grow accustomed to it.

“Technically, yes,” he answered, slow and deliberate. “In the presence of a specific reducing agent, the decomposition of ammonium nitrate can yield N₂O. Colloquially known as laughing gas. But—” and here, his voice sharpened, “—listen to this very carefully—this is not something you do in a school laboratory. Not out of curiosity. And certainly not for fun.”

Ace nodded vigorously—too fast, as if trying to hammer home the gravity of the moment. An exaggerated motion that sent his fringe swaying.

“Got it. Scientific curiosity. That’s all it was.”

Mihal didn’t reply. Instead, he took two measured steps to the side, closing the distance to the brothers’ workbench with deliberate, weighted strides—like a man scenting smoke before the flames.

Sabo , in that brief interim, had already edged back a few centimeters, his gaze locked onto the test tube he held with the effortless ease of someone who’d been doing this since the cradle. The reaction inside was calm—methodical bubbles rising with quiet dignity, nothing too conspicuous. Harmless, on paper. But that fleeting moment of distraction from the professor had been perfect for the final adjustments.

The workstation was a study in meticulous preparation. The right vessel—thick-walled glass, translucent and slightly fogged from handling—was already secured in its metal stand. Sabo moved with near-choreographed precision, the tweezers steady between his fingers like a conductor’s baton poised before the crescendo.

They knew what they were doing. This was a real experiment. Real chemistry. Just... slightly more aggressive than the manual’s suggested parameters.

“Measured quantity,” Sabo murmured, never lifting his eyes from the low flame of the Bunsen burner. His face was taut but calm, lips pressed into a thin line. “Controlled pressure and heat. No secondary reagents.”

Ace gave a tight nod, his eyes scanning the room.

“And the fire extinguisher’s right over there,” he added, tilting his chin toward it.

Sabo allowed himself a half-smile—quick, nearly imperceptible.

“It’s just a rapid exothermic reaction. Some gas, some heat. That’s it. Nothing that’ll compromise the glass,” he said, his voice low and steady, as if trying to convince himself more than his brother.

Ace raised his hand with the most angelic expression he could muster on short notice, eyes gleaming with counterfeit academic fervor.

“Professor… could we hypothetically test gas release under controlled heating? With proper equipment, obviously.”

Mihal froze mid-motion like a hound catching the scent of mischief. His eyes narrowed behind those thick lenses, and he turned slowly—the way a man does when he’s refusing to believe the evidence in front of him.

“You’ve already prepared the mixture?” Skepticism dripped from every syllable.

“Yes,” Sabo replied without pause.

“Followed the specified ratios?”
Ace bit the corner of his mouth and answered with practiced ambiguity:
“Hmm… more or less.”

Silence.

The kind of silence that seemed to make the test tubes tremble faintly in their racks.

“You have thirty seconds. If anything looks even slightly off-spec, I’m killing the main power.”

Ace flashed a grin—wide, almost charming. “Fair.”

Sabo turned the valve with steady fingers. The Bunsen burner’s blue flame hissed momentarily before settling into a soft, rhythmic crackle. He clamped the tube into the iron holder, and for a heartbeat, the metal quivered imperceptibly in his grip. The liquid inside began to bubble, tiny spheres rising as if desperate to flee. The temperature climbed.

A sudden shift in color.

And then—

Poff.

A muffled flash.

A soft but decisive pop —like a bubble bursting under pressure. No glass shattered ( luckily )—but a thick plume of smoke erupted in one powerful exhale, white and searing. The fumes surged upward as if the test tube had sneezed, hacking out a grumpy little dragon’s belch of indigestion.

Half the room whipped around in alarm. A faint blue flame flickered briefly before dissolving, while the two boys stared at their handiwork like they’d just unveiled the Eighth Wonder of the World.

The smoke spiraled toward the ceiling, coiling into a pale, floating mushroom cloud—the perfect chemical signature: Ace and Sabo Were Here.

Ace threw up both hands, triumphant.
“Exothermic reaction: success.”

Mihal was already storming toward them. His footsteps fell like measured drumbeats, growing louder as the sharp, acidic scent seeped through the lab—a mix of scorched metal and something bizarrely... citrus?

He scrutinized the still-sizzling residue in the tube, then the charred ring on the metal stand. Slowly, he removed his glasses and began polishing them with the tattered cloth tucked in his lab coat—that ritualistic gesture, the universal prelude to an epic lecture.

Ace bit his lower lip, fighting back a grin.

"You just oxidized part of the school equipment's varnish," Mihal declared, each word dripping with deliberate, weighted disapproval.

"But it was controlled," Ace shot back without so much as a blink.

The professor drew a deep breath, clinging to his composure with the same white-knuckled grip he used to restrain his patience.

"You will clean this up. Then, three pages each on lab safety protocols. And—as a precaution—the principal will be notified."

Sabo released a quiet but resigned sigh as he reached for a rag to wipe down the workbench.

"Still better In the last class," he muttered, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips.

The moment Mihal turned his back, the two exchanged a furtive, silent high-five hidden behind the test tube rack. Ace's palm met Sabo's with a soft, conspiratorial snap . Small victory.

After class, they were marched straight to the library and forbidden to leave until their reports were done—which meant missing lunch and enduring the watchful glare of the head librarian, a perpetually sour middle-aged woman who smelled faintly of mothballs and disapproval.

And yes, if anyone dared ask Ace whether it had been worth spending an entire afternoon writing three soul-sucking, mind-numbing pages of bureaucratic drivel—all after classes on an empty stomach, with his patience hanging by a thread—just for one perfectly calculated explosion in the science lab...

He wouldn’t even blink before answering: Worth every second.

Because the truth was, watching that test tube froth, spit out its little flash of glory, and send smoke coiling toward the ceiling had been nothing short of magnificent. The muffled pop of the reaction, the collective gasp, the acrid tang in the air, that pale mushroom cloud suspended under fluorescent lights... it all still played on loop in his mind like some glorious highlight reel.

Sabo, of course, was already ten steps ahead.

He’d finished his report without fuss or frenzy—concise, clinical, flawless. The kind of ruthless efficiency that made Ace want to flip a table just watching him. And because he was a dutiful older brother (or maybe just pitied Ace’s third failed attempt at scribbling an introduction), he offered to sneak off and grab lunch for them both.

Ace barely glanced up when Sabo left, his notebook still balanced on his lap, legs haphazardly crossed in the library corner. Ink-stained fingers, cheek propped against his palm - trying to appear focused but clearly teetering on the brink of a micro existential crisis with each new sentence.

Then Luffy appeared.

Out of nowhere, as usual.

He materialized between the crisp sounds of turning pages and the muffled scraping of chairs, bringing with him a kind of contained chaos. He spoke rapidly, excitedly, about some funny girl named Nami he'd met in the hallways - "She's super angry but really cool!" - while simultaneously rummaging for something to eat.

Ace raised an eyebrow without pausing his writing.
Poor girl, he thought, with a half-smile.

Luffy lingered for a while, circling between bookshelves, attempting (and failing) to whisper. Until the librarian appeared behind him, frosty-eyed with a finger pressed to her lips.

"Shhh!"

Ace didn't even need to look. He just heard the shuffling sound of Luffy's retreating footsteps, the boy chuckling under his breath.

And then silence returned—thick and comfortable. The scent of aging paper, the yellow-tinged light filtering through the windows, the distant whir of ceiling fans turning lazily above. Ace took a deep breath and returned to his writing. Slowly, with messy handwriting, but satisfied.

Of course, his karmic debt had been accumulating since their last mischief.

When he finally finished the report and left the library—stomach growling, mind already picturing the tray of food Sabo would bring—he came face-to-face with misfortune.

More specifically, face-to-face with some blond idiot with arched eyebrows and an annoyingly calm smile, leaning casually against the wall as if he'd been waiting there all along.

Ace stopped. Furrowed his brow. Started backing away. But it was too late—fingers already closed around his shirt collar, yanking him back.

"This is kidnapping!" he yelled, kicking wildly as Marco effortlessly lifted him by the collar with absurd ease.

'Let me go, you overgrown chicken!' And in his desperate hunger-fueled rage, Ace actually tried to sink his teeth into Marco's arm like some rabid, half-starved gremlin. Marco just laughed, dodging with minimal effort.

"What a warm welcome. Do you always bite people who come visit you, yoi?"

Marco's voice remained low and composed, but there was a subtle taunt woven through it—as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself at the expense of Ace's juvenile fury.

The boy twisted even more violently in the other's grasp, huffing loudly. His cheeks burned crimson—from anger, not embarrassment, he'd swear to that—with eyes narrowed into slits, gleaming with pure, unadulterated disdain.

"Visit?" he grumbled, shoving both hands against Marco's chest in a futile attempt to push him away. "I never invited you. Go preen your golden feathers somewhere else and leave me the hell alone, you walking peacock."

Marco let out a soft chuckle, his smile widening—that calm, lazy, utterly insufferable grin. He loosened his grip just enough for Ace to plant his feet on the ground, but kept one hand firmly on his shoulder, cutting off any escape routes.

"I'd say you're happy to see me, but your murder instincts still outweigh your social skills."

"I'm gonna punch you," Ace promised, thrusting an ink-stained finger dangerously close to Marco's face. "And you'll deserve every fucking inch of it."

Marco dismissed the threat like one would ignore a yapping puppy. Reaching into his blazer's inner pocket, he produced a small packet of crackers, tore it open with his teeth, and offered one to Ace as if extending an olive branch.

Or a bribe.

Ace hesitated. Glanced at the cracker. Glanced at Marco. Then stared back at the cracker as if it had personally insulted his ancestors. His stomach, however, growled loud enough to betray him.

"You're the actual devil," he muttered, snatching the cracker in one swift motion and devouring it whole—as if speed could erase the humiliation.

"And you're easier to tame than you look," Marco remarked, eyebrows quirking in amusement. "Just toss food at you, like a Pomeranian."

And there Ace stood—silent, sulking, and somehow still infuriatingly adorable in his rage.

"This isn't normal," Ace grumbled, stumbling over his own feet as he tried to wriggle free from Marco's guiding arm, which steered him like misdirected luggage. "You can't just go around dragging people through hallways!"

"Of course I can," Marco replied without even glancing back. "I'm student council president. Teacher's pet immunity comes with the title."

Ace grimaced, already regretting his decision to postpone lunch. He was being physically herded upstairs like some stubborn housecat resisting its vet visit.

"This is power abuse! I'm suing you!" he insisted, but Marco simply tore open a fresh packet and wordlessly held out a sugar-dusted biscuit behind him.

"Good luck with that, yoi" Marco challenged—though even if Ace did try to sue (which he absolutely wouldn't), his father's legal team would handle it with such bored efficiency that it'd barely register as an inconvenience, let alone a real concern. Marco took another deliberate bite of his own biscuit.

Ace hesitated. Stared at the offered treat like it was a live grenade. Snatched it. Ate it. Without conceding defeat, he pivoted sharply on his heels, ready to bolt back to the library or vault through a window if necessary. But Marco—as if he'd predicted every move—merely hooked two fingers through Ace's backpack strap and tugged, sending him stumbling backward into step beside him again.

"Stop doing that!" Ace bellowed, his voice erupting in a muffled shout. "You can't just drag me around like I'm... I don't know, a grocery bag!"

Marco looked at him for a beat. Then glanced pointedly at the biscuit in Ace's hand.

"You're eating the biscuit," he stated, as if that alone settled the argument.

"That proves nothing."

"It absolutely does. Proves you adore me and just haven't learned to express your feelings properly yet."

Ace was so outraged he nearly choked on the sugar. "Your ego is the size of the sports field!"

"And you've got the charm of a wet cat." The silence that followed was thick. Almost theatrical. Ace shattered it with a remarkably articulate grumble:

"...Go fuck yourself."

The fifth-floor hallway was quieter, removed from both the library's murmur and the cafeteria's chaos. By this point, Ace had resigned himself—with a heavy heart and a stomach partially comforted by carbs—to being kidnapped in broad daylight with no hope of rescue. With every step, his indignation grew. And so did his laziness about resisting.

"If the plan is to throw me off the observatory window, I at least expect some flair," he grumbled, crossing his arms and pretending he wasn't following Marco of his own volition. "I want sad music playing and everything."

"Dramatic as usual," Marco remarked without looking back. "Relax. You'll like it."

Ace let out an exaggerated huff. "I don't like anything involving you and surprises."

Marco simply pushed open a dark wooden door at the end of the hallway, revealing the astronomy club's common room. Soft light streamed through the slanted windows, filtering through the glass-paneled ceiling to cast golden hues across the polished hardwood floor. At the center of the room, an enormous model of the solar system hovered—suspended by either magnetism or the sheer magic of overachieving nerds. The planetary spheres rotated slowly, casting shifting shadows across walls papered with star charts and bulletin boards crammed with astronomical formulas and event dates.

Ace stopped in the doorway. Scowled.

Izo arched one eyebrow with practiced elegance, arms crossed over his neatly tailored, slender frame. He wore a variation of the girls' uniform, complete with a satin handkerchief tucked into his blazer pocket—a detail Ace noted solely to internally sneer at.

"You look like the type who causes trouble and doesn't regret a single second of it afterward."

Ace shrugged. "Don't regret a thing. Only time I regret anything is when the snacks run out before recess."

Thatch let out a nasally chuckle. "So this is the kid you want around, Marco? Gonna turn the club into a kennel."

Marco, who was leaning casually against the doorframe like he had all the time in the world, answered at his leisure: "He's interesting. You three keep saying the club's been too quiet lately."

"Interesting like... biohazard interesting?" Haruta asked, finally swallowing the last of his sandwich and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Or interesting like... 'brings chaos and free entertainment' interesting?"

"Both," Marco said with a sly smile. "But mostly the second one yoi."

Ace narrowed his eyes. "I can still hear everything, you know?”

"That's why I'm saying it out loud," Haruta retorted, already tearing open another packet of something crunchy. "You seem like the type who bolts when you're not the center of attention."

"And you seem like the type who'll die of cholesterol," Ace fired back, dry as dust.

Izo emitted a light, elegant chuckle - the kind reserved for those who enjoy watching fights but can't be bothered to participate. "He's got personality. A bit of impertinence might prove useful."

Thatch didn't seem nearly as convinced. "Impertinence doesn't solve orbital calculations or telescope maintenance. You really think this brat can handle hours studying stellar formation here?"

"I'm not joining the astronomy club - I already submitted my application to the archery club," Ace declared with an irritated scowl.

Haruta burst into laughter, nearly choking on his crackers. "I like him! At least he promises good drama."

Marco was the only one who didn't laugh. Ace was absolutely the type to act without thinking things through. He still didn't fully understand this kid. Another biscuit might be needed to keep the little hellion under control.

"He looks like a squirrel," Izou mused thoughtfully, smoothing his skirt as he settled onto the couch.

Ace, who until that moment had been busy trying to maintain his intimidating scowl, whirled around sharply. "What?!"

Haruta dissolved into laughter again, this time collapsing against the sofa cushions as if Izou's observation was the greatest gift he'd received all day. Marco merely sighed and calmly extended another biscuit toward Ace, like a zookeeper pacifying a wild animal with well-rehearsed tricks.

"Relax, squirrel," Marco drawled, his tone that of a man who'd already accepted this as his new normal. "You'll thank me for bringing you here eventually."

Ace squinted at the biscuit for a long moment. He seemed tempted to bite Marco's hand rather than accept the snack, but hunger—and the irresistible aroma of chocolate—won out. He snatched the biscuit with a grumble.

"That's assuming I don't die of irritation first."

Izou smiled with practiced elegance. "Youth is so... intense. How adorable."

"Adorable my ass!" Ace exploded, though with his mouth full of biscuit, the effect was considerably less threatening than intended.

Haruta nearly toppled off the couch from laughing so hard. Marco ran a hand through his hair, already feeling the phantom ache of the headache this arrangement would inevitably bring.

As the argument raged on, Ace suddenly stopped responding mid-retort, his eyelids growing heavy without warning. His body swayed slightly forward before he slumped sideways in one smooth motion, landing against the couch cushions with a soft thump. His previously irritated expression had gone slack, his breathing slow and deep.

Haruta, still crunching on biscuits, blinked. "Huh? Did he just fall asleep mid-argument? That's... anti-climactic."

Izo frowned, examining Ace with clinical suspicion. "This isn't normal. He just... shut down."

Thatch poked the sleeping boy with his finger, testing. "Hey brat, wake up. Naptime's over."

Before his finger could make contact again, a hand closed around his wrist with surprising strength.

"I'd strongly advise against that," came a voice - calm, but layered with quiet warning.

Everyone jumped, whirling around to find a sharp-eyed blonde seated beside Ace as if he'd always been there. No one had heard him arrive.

"WHEN DID YOU GET THERE?!" Haruta screeched, nearly spraying crumbs everywhere.

Sabo had always known his brother was a trouble magnet. Ace was a walking disaster—impulsive, prideful, and blessed with a special talent for turning any situation into pure chaos. But even he hadn't anticipated Ace would dare ignore all of Benn Beckman's warnings and dive headfirst into what might as well be a snake pit.

Literally or not, it hardly mattered now. The damage was done.

All Sabo could do now was mitigate the fallout. He trusted Ace—of course he did—but he'd learned the hard way that trust wasn't the same as complacency. He knew how to pick the perfect moment to act. And that moment was staring him in the face now, as obvious as a kicked-in door.

He smiled, releasing Thatch's wrist with deliberately slow movements. "A while ago." His gaze swept over the group, assessing each one with calculated coldness behind his polite expression. "Ace tends to crash like this, suddenly. Best not to disturb him."

Marco, who'd been observing everything in silent interest, tilted his head. "And you are?"

"Sabo. His brother," he replied, as if that explained everything. And in a way, it did. The way his arm stayed positioned, shielding Ace even as he spoke, made it clear any threats would be met without hesitation.

Izo crossed his arms. "And why should we believe you?"

Sabo shrugged. "You don't have to. You just have to not touch him." His smile never reached his eyes.

The silence that followed was broken by Marco, who let out a soft sigh. "Alright, yoi. If the kid needs to sleep, let him sleep. But that doesn't answer any of our questions."

Sabo inclined his head, as if considering something. "Ace is stubborn, but he won't cause trouble if unprovoked. But —" His eyes landed on Thatch, and something in that gaze made the older boy recoil almost imperceptibly. "— If he doesn't want to join you, it would be right for you to just leave him alone, wouldn't it??"

Haruta laughed, rubbing his hands together. "Oh, I think I'm going to love this !"

Izo sighed, massaging his temples. "This is going to end in disaster."

Sabo simply smiled, adjusting Ace to make him more comfortable. "Probably. But at least it'll be interesting."

Gradually, Ace's muscles tensed slightly, a rough sigh escaping his lips before his eyelids fluttered open. His eyes, still hazy with sleep, blinked slowly as they tried adjusting to the light. The first thing he saw was Sabo—and immediately his body relaxed, as if recognizing his brother was all the reassurance he needed that everything was safe.

"...Sabo?" His voice came out hoarse, thick with sleep.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Sabo replied softly, brushing a stray hair from Ace's face with a tenderness that starkly contrasted the coldness he'd shown minutes earlier.

Ace didn't respond. Instead, he nuzzled his face against his brother's shoulder like a drowsy cat before clumsily fisting his hands in Sabo's sleeve, clinging with an awkward sort of possessiveness.

Haruta, who'd been watching the scene with shining eyes, whispered: "He's like a bear cub."

Izo looked torn between disgust and fascination. "That's... disturbingly adorable."

Sabo ignored the comments, standing up smoothly while Ace—still only half-conscious—clung to him like a koala, his head lolling slightly.

"Come on, Ace. Time to go," Sabo murmured, beginning to walk toward the door.

Thatch, still intrigued, raised a hand. "Hey, wait a—"

The blonde boy stopped without turning around, but the slight tilt of his head was enough to convey a silent warning.

Marco, hiding a smile behind his hand, made a permissive gesture. "Let them be, yoi. Seems the brat's not fully awake yet."

Ace, as if only just realizing where he was, furrowed his brow and squinted around the room. "...Where...?"

"Doesn't matter," Sabo cut in, gently steering him forward. "You passed out mid-conversation. Let's go."

"'Kay..." Ace grumbled, rubbing his eyes with his fist before leaning heavily into Sabo again, his body still sluggish from the sudden nap.

As Ace and Sabo descended the staircases, Shanks sneezed abruptly in the middle of the supermarket aisle - curiously enough, it wasn't even cold today. He'd left work about half an hour ago.

Now he was grocery shopping - or attempting to. It was officially his turn to brave the supermarket, ever since Beckman had permanently abandoned the idea of hiring a housekeeper. The babysitter idea had been scrapped the exact moment Luffy tried eating a backyard rock, swearing it tasted like candy. Right then, with a perfectly neutral yet resigned expression, Shanks had concluded his son wasn't exactly... normal. Regular kids eat dirt. Luffy ate rocks. There was a significant difference there.

As if Luffy's natural chaos wasn't enough, there were still the twins to consider. Feral. Uncontrollable. Tiny forces of nature masquerading as children.

A housekeeper would probably try to exorcise the kids by day two. A babysitter, on the other hand, would quit within the first four hours - five, if they were extremely optimistic. Shanks stared at the spinach like it was some kind of sphinx's riddle, his face the very picture of silent despair. Was this that "green leaf" Beckman told him to buy? It looked bitter. Smelled like responsibility.

It was at this precise moment that the phone in his pocket vibrated for the third time. He'd ignored the first two calls, but this one... this one was different. A number he knew better than his own license plate. A number that came with a chill crawling up his spine like the universe's personal warning system. His eyes widened as he remembered something terribly important he'd forgotten.

"Shit."

He raised the phone to his ear like a man accepting his execution. Closed his eyes. Sighed deeply. And answered with the tone of someone already bracing for a meteor impact.

"Hello?"

"YOU GOOD-FOR-NOTHING GINGER BASTARD, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!"

The voice exploded through the phone speakers with the fury of a thousand thunderstorms. Shanks nearly dropped his basket of mushrooms. He jerked the phone away from his ear in pure survival instinct, protecting his eardrums like they were priceless family heirlooms.

"Well hello to you too, Buggy," he replied with the serenity of a man who'd already made peace with his impending doom.

"I WAS GONE FOR FOUR WEEKS, SHANKS! TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS! That's all it took! AND YOU VANISHED! CHANGED ADDRESSES! AND NOW MY INFORMANTS ARE TELLING ME YOU HAVE THREE KIDS?! DID YOU GET MARRIED?!"

Shanks glanced around the produce section as if expecting the tomatoes to bear witness to his innocence.

"It was... a minor unforeseen circumstance," he said, struggling to maintain composure. "Like a flash flood. Of children. And possibly a marriage. Long story."

"LONG STORY MY ASS! I leave you alone for four weeks, and you turn into THE PROTAGONIST OF SOME WEB NOVEL?!"

Shanks swallowed dryly. "Look... they're nice kids."

Silence on the other end. A dangerous silence. Until Buggy responded, his voice low and dripping with theatrical disappointment: "Shanks... you're the reason I can't find peace even in the Maldives."

"I can fix this for you." Buggy's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, heavy with dark implications. "I'll just need four very deep holes. A bag of lime, two shovels, and you'll need to be willing to start fresh in another country. Like, I don't know, Latvia."

Shanks blinked slowly, staring at the mushroom tray as if it held the secret to this plan. "Four holes? Why four?"

"Three kids and your husband, obviously." The tone was dry. Matter-of-fact. "Or do you think we can just erase the kids and leave the husband alive? He'd sue you. I know his type."

"You're overreacting."

"I'm saving your life, you ungrateful bastard!"

Buggy sounded genuinely offended. "I left you alone for twenty-eight days. TWENTY-EIGHT, SHANKS! And when I come back, I find you've moved houses, married Benn Beckman—Benn freaking Beckman!—and somehow acquired three... three children?! If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were being held at gunpoint!"

"They're good kids. And Beckman is... functional?"

Buggy's indignant huff carried through the phone, and Shanks could practically hear the furious pacing—short, agitated steps echoing through some distant room as Buggy circled like a caged animal trying to comprehend a world that had stopped making sense.

"Functional? FUNCTIONAL?!" Buggy's voice jumped two octaves, shrill with outrage. "You're talking like you're reviewing a vacuum cleaner, Shanks! Is this a marriage or an extended warranty plan?"

Shanks scratched the back of his neck with his free hand, inspected the vegetables in his other hand, and spoke.
"Look... he cooks. And knows the right amount of laundry detergent to use. That's gotta count for something."

"IT COUNTS AS A THERAPY SESSION!" Buggy screeched, the sound of a bottle crashing in the background suggesting he'd probably just thrown something to the ground in pure rage.

Shanks furrowed his brow, absentmindedly grabbing a can of tomato sauce: "That actually reminds me I have an appointment tomorrow."

A weighted silence fell on the other end. A silence thick with judgment. He double-checked the grocery list.

"What do you mean you're back in therapy?" Buggy's voice came out quieter. Less angry. More... personal.

Almost as if he'd stumbled upon a part of Shanks he wasn't prepared to encounter. Like he'd accidentally peeled back a layer he hadn't meant to touch.

Shanks stayed quiet for a moment. Stared at the lettuce display as if it might answer for him.

"Ah, you know... after the kids came... and Beckman started leaving motivational post-its on the fridge..." He shrugged, even though Buggy couldn't see it. "And last week he took everyone to therapy... like some sort of family field trip."

"Are you telling me," Buggy began slowly, each word dripping with disbelief, "that in less than thirty days you've become a mental health patient, a husband, and a father?"

"I'm not entirely sure about the order," Shanks admitted, holding up a brightly colored bottle and reading the label with the intensity of a lab researcher: "Frizz control, deep hydration, for porous hair types..."

He turned the bottle in his hand, examining every word as if deciphering an ancient code. On the other end of the line, Buggy fell silent for several heartbeats, mentally processing this bizarre revelation.

"You're... actually serious about this?"

"Dead serious." Shanks sighed, adjusting his shopping cart with one hand. "Ace and Luffy have porous hair, which means on cold days they look like they've been electrocuted. It's not as simple as you'd think. We need very specific products."

Buggy let out an exasperated puff of air. "My god, have you actually become a children's haircare specialist now? And you call me dramatic?"

"Look," Shanks responded with a weary smile, "if I don't handle this properly, they'll end up looking like a bunch of startled alley cats."

Buggy let out a rough, humorless chuckle. "This is too ridiculous even for you, Shanks."

"Maybe." Shanks admitted, placing the shampoo carefully in his shopping cart.

The line went quiet for a long moment. Only the distant sounds of city life and Buggy's measured breathing filled the silence between them.

Shanks came to a stop in the empty supermarket aisle, stranded between towers of soup cans and bags of rice, his abandoned cart listing slightly to one side. He wasn't looking at the shelves anymore. Just clutching the phone too tightly, as if this fragile connection was the last remaining thread to something that had once been home.

"Things have been... hard. Since 'he' left." The words came out choked, dragged up from a chest that still hadn't learned how to breathe around the hollow space.

"We don't talk about this, do we? Most days we just pretend everything's fine. That nothing happened."

Silence.

"We barely speak anymore. We're not... we're not who we used to be." He drew a shaky breath. "Not those kids who thought the world was just waiting to be conquered. Who thought he'd... be there to see us do it."

Silence again. Buggy didn't interrupt. But Shanks knew he was listening.

"Yeah, right. We're adults now. We have responsibilities. We're not fifteen anymore. I know."

Shanks dragged a hand across his eyes and continued, his voice growing rougher. "I think... I miss belonging to something. Being part of something real."

"Blue, the truth is... I thought all this was just another mission. A cover story. An elaborate performance. Something to maintain appearances and keep moving forward."

A pause.

"Except... I started enjoying it. Just a little at first. Just for laughs. But now... I genuinely like it. I like the messy mornings. I like the chaos. I like hearing their noise filling the house. I like having... something resembling what we lost."

A knot formed in his throat. "And I don't want this to end. Not again. Not for the third time."

Silence. Thick. Almost suffocating.

"So... please, don't ask me to be the first one to jump this time. Please."

On the other end of the line, a sigh. When Buggy spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically soft, hesitant. Stripped bare of its usual sarcastic armor.

"...Am I going to regret this?"

Shanks closed his eyes. "Maybe." — But he wouldn't regret it. Not even if it cost him his life.

Another silence. Then, almost in a whisper: "When can I meet them?"

Shanks smiled—small, tight, as if his chest hurt too much to contain the relief. "Whenever you want."

Buggy didn't answer with words. But he stayed on the line. Stayed, like someone who doesn't know how to say "I'm here" but refuses to leave. And for a moment—just one—it was as if they were both sitting on the roof of that old base again, staring at stars that had long since died, pretending the world still made sense.

The silence lingered between them, heavy with all the things neither knew how to say.

But the world doesn't stop—not even for those who desperately need a moment.

At least someone was enjoying this whole situation, Zoro thought grimly, gripping the training sword with both hands, his feet planted firmly on the tatami mat. He inhaled deeply between each strike, trying to recapture his rhythm, his focus... anything that might drown out the sound of a child's dramatic sigh echoing through the dojo for the tenth time.

Luffy had planted himself there again. Sprawled out like some unwanted stray cat nobody had bothered to adopt.

The nine-year-old sat with his back against the dojo wall, his head lolling from side to side as he half-heartedly tracked the movement of Zoro's sword through half-lidded eyes. He didn't look tired—just... adrift. That particular brand of emptiness that settles in when you're bursting with energy but have nowhere left to channel it.

Outside, the school grounds buzzed with activity. It was Friday afternoon, the start of club weekend, and the corridors teemed with students rushing in every direction—some hauling archery equipment, others clutching musical instruments, sports balls, scale models, or poster boards. A boy sprinted past with cardboard wings strapped to his back. A girl shouted commands at a robot that could barely walk in a straight line.

The universe hummed with purpose - every soul precisely where they belonged, every path clearly marked. All except one small, directionless boy.

"Your eyeballs have been glued to me for approximately six hundred seconds," Zoro observed, his blade continuing its arcing patterns without interruption. "Got something to say or just enjoying the view?"

Luffy's dangling legs swung like pendulums of boredom. "You've done that exact chop-twist thing twenty-three times now," he countered, counting off on grubby fingers. "Doesn't your brain turn to mush doing the same stuff over and over?"

"No." The syllable landed like a stone.

With the dramatic flair of a Shakespearean death scene, Luffy collapsed backward onto the tatami. His limbs splayed starfish-style as he contemplated the ceiling's water stains. "Bet you drink the same boring juice every morning too. Probably one of those 'no surprises' guys."

Zoro's practice sword froze mid-air. A slow, controlled exhale streamed through his nostrils as he turned - the wooden blade coming to rest like a threat against his shoulder. "Let's try this again. Why. Are. You. Here?"

Luffy's arms stretched toward the heavens as if attempting to grab the nonexistent clouds. "Usopp promised me the me-cha-ni-cal en-gi-neer-ing club was doing derby races today!" His voice crescendoed with excitement before crashing into disappointment. "Then his mom came with 'family emergency' blah-blah and - poof! - abandoned me!" His limbs flopped back to the mat with the finality of a deflating balloon.

"Law?"

"He doesn't have any after-school activities yet either, so he left early."

Zoro arched one eyebrow. "And your brilliant solution was to come bother me?"

"I was looking for somewhere to be. Found this empty space."

"Because it's meant for training."

"What if I just want to... exist here?"

Zoro exhaled through his nose like a bull about to charge. The kid was incorrigible.

Luffy curled back into himself, knees pressed tight against his chest. "I'm still looking for a club, y'know? One that feels... like mine." The words came out softer than usual, almost vulnerable—as if admitting something he hadn't even fully realized yet.

"There's dozens of clubs out there."

"But none of them are perfect."

"You don't need perfect. You need one that won't kick you out in under a week."

Luffy went quiet for a beat. "I didn't get kicked out of the gardening club."

Zoro's eyebrow shot up in skeptical disbelief.

"They banned me after I asked if the Venus flytrap was edible."

A heavy silence fell between them.

"I wasn't actually gonna eat it! I swear!" His enormous, guileless eyes blinked twice with exaggerated innocence.

Zoro sighed deeply through his nose before leveling his practice sword toward the far corner of the dojo. "Over there. If you're staying, plant yourself there. Far enough away that you won't accidentally catch a sword to the face."

Luffy shuffled obediently to the designated corner, plopping down with his legs swinging rhythmically. One minute passed. Then two.

"Ever thought about joining a different club yourself?"

Zoro answered between controlled strikes of his practice sequence. "Not fond of relying on groups."

"Then why train at a dojo?"

The swordsman didn't respond immediately— Perhaps for the same reason I haven't kicked you out yet —He completed the form with a precise pivot, came to rest at the center, and only then glanced over his shoulder.

"Because sometimes... it's better to have an anchor than to drift endlessly."

Luffy absorbed this with unexpected solemnity. His foot kicked faintly at the air, as if trying to escape the restless energy thrumming beneath his skin. For all his pretended nonchalance, the truth shimmered transparently—he existed perpetually on the outskirts. Of clubs. Of friend groups. Of whatever connections everyone around him seemed to be forging with such ease.

"Can I stay until Ace or Sabo come back?" he asked, uncharacteristically quiet.

Zoro gave a single curt nod. "As long as you don't speak more than absolutely necessary."

"How many words count as 'necessary'?"

Zoro spun his practice sword into a fresh stance, initiating another disciplined sequence. "You've already exceeded the quota just asking that question."

Luffy's laughter bubbled up freely as he sprawled across the dojo floor, the wooden training sword he'd appropriated earlier resting beside him like a companion. For the first time since his uninvited arrival, his body language radiated genuine ease—a sight that, despite himself, tugged at the corner of Zoro's mouth in the faintest hint of a smile. It felt strangely like stepping into sunlight after too long in shadow.

Meanwhile, in the adjacent gymnasium, Sabo was struggling to maintain his posture. By all accounts, this should have been just another after-school activity, but he'd never set foot in a dojo before. The tatami mats felt peculiar underfoot - slightly yielding when he stopped to think about it, like walking on compacted sand. The white gi swallowed his frame whole, its sleeves engulfing his arms, while the belt hung loose around his waist, its knot unraveling from his inexperienced fingers.

None of that mattered now. Because she was there.

The girl with the red belt. Spinning a wooden bo staff with the effortless grace of someone who'd been practicing since taking her first steps. Her eyes held a razor-sharp focus, her entire being radiating an intensity that made others instinctively step aside when she passed. She might have been thirteen. Just one year older. An entire universe of difference.

At twelve years old, Sabo had already reached his conclusion: I need to meet her. But how? Strike up a random conversation? Wait for some perfect opportunity? The last thing he wanted was to come across as some attention-starved loner, yet trailing after Ace and Luffy everywhere was growing tiresome. He needed something - someone - of his own in this new school.

Then the universe decided for him. Or perhaps she'd simply lost her grip on the staff. Maybe not. Maybe this was just cosmic retribution for a know-it-all kid who'd tempted fate one too many times.

The wooden practice staff flew from her hands during a rapid transition between forms, spinning through the air with dangerous momentum.

A sharp CRACK reverberated through the otherwise silent gymnasium as it found its mark. By the time the echoing sound faded, the training weapon lay discarded on the mats beside him, its journey ended.

Her sneakers squeaked violently against the polished hardwood floor as she sprinted toward him, pupils dilated with genuine horror. Every footfall echoed like a gunshot in the suddenly too-quiet space.

Sabo lay crumpled on his side, one arm flung awkwardly across his chest. His eyes were open but unfocused, their usual sharp intelligence replaced by a glassy sheen. A thin crimson trail wound its way through sun-kissed hair, the bright gold strands now stained an ugly red where blood met blond.

Koala dropped to her knees beside him in a heartbeat. Those hands—usually so steady, so disciplined—now trembled uncertainly as they hovered over his face. She turned him over with painstaking care, fingers slipping along his jawline, her every movement a battle between urgency and restraint.

"You saw the staff coming—why didn't you dodge?!" The words burst from her in something perilously close to panic, her face mere inches from his now.

He blinked slowly, languidly, as if only just registering her presence. Then, with the most guileless expression imaginable—the kind of look that could disarm armies—he murmured:

"Who... are you?"

Koala went statue-still. Every drop of blood seemed to drain from her face at once. Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again—no sound emerged. The training staff rolled slightly beside them, its hollow thunk against the floor absurdly loud in the sudden silence.

"What?" she finally managed to whisper, swallowing hard, her eyes darting frantically between his eerily calm expression and the blood still blooming across his uniform like some macabre flower.

"I've never seen you before..." Sabo murmured, his voice drifting softly as if caught between sleep and waking, pupils noticeably dilated. Koala barely had time to process his words before the instructor was at their side, hastily kneeling with a bundled cloth ready in hand.

"Oh no..." The instructor's voice dropped to a worried whisper as she pressed the fabric against his forehead. "That was a nasty impact. Sabo? Can you hear me clearly? How many fingers am I holding up?"

She raised a hand before his eyes, three fingers extended. Sabo's gaze wandered slowly from her hand to Koala's face, then bloomed into a gentle smile—the kind one might give while admiring cherry blossoms in spring.

"Are you kidding me?!" Koala scrambled backward on her knees, her voice caught between disbelief and growing guilt. The training staff clattered forgotten beside them.

"He's experiencing acute mental confusion!" the instructor announced, already swapping the bloodied cloth for a fresh one. "Yuki! Run to the office and pull his emergency file! We need to contact his guardian immediately!"

"He let the staff hit him!!" Koala defended herself, springing to her feet in one fluid motion. "This wasn't my fault! He... he did it on purpose!" Her voice cracked between outrage and something suspiciously like panic.

"Koala, that's a solid oak training weapon! And YOU hold a RED BELT!" The instructor's voice oscillated wildly between professional concern and barely-contained hysterical laughter. "Of course it was going to cause damage!"

Sabo's hand rose slowly from the mat, his arm wobbling like a student tentatively raising their hand in class. His fingers twitched in a weak wave.

"I just wanted to know who she was..." he confessed, his voice carrying that particular dreamy quality of someone who'd just spotted a shooting star. His eyes shone with a tranquil, almost dopey brightness, as if he were discussing some celestial phenomenon rather than his own concussion.

The instructor released a guttural noise that straddled the line between exasperated groan and primal scream.

"Sweet merciful—he's fully delirious!" she near-shrieked, pressing a fresh cloth to his forehead with renewed urgency. "Koala, stop gawking and help me! We need to get him to the infirmary before he starts reciting poetry or something!"

"I didn't even hit him that hard!" Koala muttered under her breath as she struggled to support his weight, her steps falling in sync with his unsteady ones. Despite herself, she couldn't stop stealing glances at his face—that infuriatingly serene expression that somehow remained intact even now.

Sabo swayed precariously between the two women, the once-white cloth now a deep burgundy pressed against his temple. His training uniform hung askew, the belt nearly undone, and his footsteps landed with the heavy uncertainty of a newborn fawn. Yet that ridiculous, lopsided smile still clung to his lips like a stubborn leaf in autumn.

"This was... a tactical decision..." he declared, his voice feather-soft and slightly hoarse, yet brimming with inexplicable conviction.

"Stop moving before what's left of your brain turns to porridge, I'm begging you," Koala grumbled, her frustration warring dangerously with hysterical laughter at the absurdity of it all.

Even as his legs threatened to buckle, even with his vision swimming in and out of focus while being half-dragged down fluorescent-lit corridors that reeked of antiseptic and impending scoldings, even with the school infirmary's sterile scent growing stronger with each stumbling step—only one thought circled relentlessly in Sabo's concussed mind as her voice, equal parts irritated and concerned, washed over him:

It worked.
She's talking to me.

Meanwhile, Ace had convinced himself the archery club would be enjoyable.

Tucked away in the school's furthest corner, the practice range existed in its own secluded world where cracked pavement surrendered to bare earth carpeted with brittle autumn leaves. A towering bamboo grove encircled the space, its hollow stalks clicking softly in the lethargic breeze that moved with such unhurried grace it seemed time itself had slowed to a crawl. The air carried an earthy perfume of damp soil mingled with the sharp tang of aging varnish from weather-worn targets. But the true marvel was the silence—a thick, velvety quiet that swallowed the school's distant cacophony whole. No shrieking classmates. No teachers snapping at him to focus. For Ace, this hushed sanctuary bordered on miraculous.

Peaceful, calm... almost serene.

He loved the idea of wielding a bow. Of drawing the string back slowly, feeling the tension build, aligning his sight with the bullseye's center before release. There was something meditative about it. Something that demanded no explanations—only complete presence. He loved even more the idea of doing it alone. No groups, no leaders, no excessive rules. Just him, the wind, and the arrow. Simple.

What he didn't love was currently being locked inside a cramped storage closet that reeked of mildew, stale sweat, and brittle plastic. A closet jam-packed with random equipment—deflated balls, tangled nets, baseball bats with peeling tape. He couldn't decide what hurt more: the physical discomfort of being wedged between musty sports gear or the sheer humiliation of falling for such a stupid initiation prank. That so-called "welcoming ceremony," according to a freshman whose face he was now mentally photographing for future retribution.

Ace exhaled loudly through his nose, his forehead pressed against the closet's frigid, rough-hewn wall, his spine contorted into shapes no human anatomy was meant to achieve. The darkness was absolute save for a single sliver of golden light slicing through the door's crack—just enough illumination to emphasize how truly pathetic his situation had become. The pervasive damp odor clung to everything, that particular musty stench of a space that never fully dried, not even on the sunniest of days.

If this was some sort of initiation ritual, someone was going home with a black eye—and it sure as hell wouldn't be him. Then again, he mused through his exhaustion, maybe it would be. At this point, he barely had the energy to care.

Now, trapped in this wooden purgatory, sleep's heavy fog pressed down on him like a weighted blanket, dulling his senses into hazy submission.

He shifted as best he could, delivering a half-hearted kick to the volleyball blocking his leg. A broom leaning precariously against the wall chose that moment to topple, smacking him square on the shoulder and earning an irritated grunt in response. He batted it away with a lethargic swipe, the same disinterested motion one might use to shoo away a particularly persistent housefly.

He released a long, weighted sigh—the kind that carries more than exhaustion, the kind that carries the entire crushing weight of frustration. He'd promised Luffy he'd be back quickly. "Just checking out the club. One hour max." And now here he was, trapped like some forgotten piece of equipment, stinking of ancient wood polish and stale sweat while outside, the sinking sun painted the hallway in deepening shades of amber.

With mechanical resignation, he fished his phone from his jacket pocket. His fingers moved on autopilot, addicted to this futile ritual. The screen's cold blue glow washed over his face, illuminating the same old sight: his last message to Sabo, that damned "Delivered" status blinking mockingly back at him like some silent taunt. Not "Read." Not "Answered."

He stared at the screen for what felt like minutes, as if sheer willpower might suddenly rewrite reality. But nothing changed. The pixels remained cruelly, stubbornly the same.

"Probably busy," he muttered, more out of habit than actual conviction. The words came out hollow, laced with a bitterness that had long since settled into his bones.

His arm dropped listlessly, letting the phone dangle from his fingers like some dead weight. He leaned his head back against the wall again, eyelids at half-mast, and simply remained there... waiting either for someone to remember he existed or for the apocalypse to arrive—whichever came first.

The storage closet's oppressive silence was abruptly shattered by the sharp screech of rusty hinges.

For one fleeting moment, afternoon light came flooding in—a golden blade slicing through the darkness, illuminating swirling dust motes that danced lazily as if time itself moved differently in this cramped purgatory. The sudden illumination revealed the chaotic inventory in all its glory: stained targets, arrows with crooked fletchings, traffic cones stacked haphazardly like some modern art installation. Then, just as abruptly, the light vanished when the door slammed shut with a heavy CLUNK—a sound far too substantial for such a small space, final as a coffin lid sealing shut.

The sharp cadence of teenage voices reverberated from outside, punctuated by a mocking burst of laughter that echoed like gunshots in the confined space.

"Go on, your turn!"

A shadowy figure was unceremoniously shoved through the doorway with a jarring stumble. The aged floorboards groaned in protest beneath unsteady feet. The newcomer nearly face-planted, windmilling his arms in that universal dance of precarious balance before freezing mid-motion—the bewildered posture of someone who'd accidentally activated a hidden trapdoor to another dimension.

Ace couldn't even muster the energy to lift his head. Just slanted a sidelong glance through half-lidded eyes, his expression brewing the perfect storm of annoyance and world-weary resignation—the look of a man who'd long since accepted that gratuitous chaos was simply the default setting of his existence.

The newcomer froze for a heartbeat, pupils dilating as they struggled to adjust to the closet's oppressive darkness—until they landed on the slumped silhouette occupying the far corner. The ghostly glow from Ace's still-active phone screen cast grotesque, wavering shadows across the walls, transforming the cramped space into something straight out of a low-budget teen horror flick.

"Looks like we're in the same sinking boat," Ace finally rasped, his voice gravelly from disuse and laced with bone-dry sarcasm. "Trapped. Social punishment. Stupid upperclassman hazing ritual. Whatever you wanna call it."

The boy remained silent. Just knitted his brows together and scanned their surroundings with the automatic suspicion of a cornered animal, as if expecting to discover some hidden escape route invisible to normal eyes.

Ace pressed on:

"Thirty-two minutes and counting in this hellhole." His lips curled into that particular grin reserved for finding humor in catastrophic situations—the smile of a born chaos magnet. "I'm currently winning."

The other boy simply blinked, caught in that perplexed limbo between 'what's happening' and 'why is this guy so damn unbothered?'.

Ace stretched his legs slightly, propping his arm on a bent knee. His tone shifted into something lighter, almost conversational. "Name's Benn Ace. What should I call you?"

"Why would I give you my name?" came the immediate retort, sharp as a slamming door.

Ace's eyebrow shot up - a flicker of genuine surprise crossing his features before his grin widened considerably, a new spark of interest lighting his eyes. As if this unexpected resistance had suddenly made the whole situation infinitely more entertaining.

"What are you, some kind of Fae? Mystical creature? Grudge-holding spirit?" he asked with dramatic flair, throwing his arms open in exaggerated gesture. "We're literally trapped together. What's the harm in a name? Is this like... true name magic or something?"

The boy rolled his eyes with such force it might have counted as a full-body workout, slamming his back against the opposite wall in a huff. The aged wood creaked ominously beneath his weight. "Shut it. If you're so desperate for a name, I'll give you a nickname."

"A nickname?" Ace parroted, the words dripping with skeptical amusement.

"'Ace' works just fine," the stranger deadpanned, his voice flat as untouched parchment. "Think I'll stick with that."

Ace's eyes blew wide, his posture snapping upright as if someone had desecrated the holy altar of his very identity. "Hold up. That's my actual name!"

"I said I'd give you a nickname," the boy countered, his tone clinically detached—the verbal equivalent of watching paint dry. "Which means I get to pick whatever I want."

Ace blinked rapidly, his mind struggling to compute the sheer audacity of this violation. Being trapped in a storage closet with a stranger was bad enough—but now he was being name-jacked. NAME-JACKED.

"You can't just steal my name, you Fae bastard!" he exploded, jabbing an accusatory finger as if confronting some ancient mystical entity. "This is how it starts! First they take your name, then your soul, and next thing you know you're dancing in forest circles wearing antlers!"

"Too late," the boy replied with infuriating serenity. "My name's Ace now."

Ace's mouth flapped open. Shut. Opened again. A weighty dramatic silence descended between them.

"This is... this is social sacrilege!" he proclaimed, gesturing wildly to an imaginary audience. "Having two Aces in one school would be cosmically weird. You legally can't be Ace."

"I've got it! You can be Deuce."

The boy blinked, visible confusion washing over his features. "Huh?"

"Deuce!" Ace repeated, suddenly animated, nearly jumping to his feet in his enthusiasm. "It's like a codename! Ace and Deuce. One and two. Like playing cards! A legendary duo!"

His unwilling companion stared at him with the expression of someone realizing they've been locked in with a certified maniac—that particular wide-eyed look that screams 'I need to escape this situation immediately.'

"I definitely didn't agree to form any duo with you."

"Too late," Ace countered, stretching his legs out with smug satisfaction and lacing his fingers behind his head like he'd just solved world hunger. "It's official now. Ace and Deuce. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

Deuce rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn't get stuck permanently in his skull, but refused to dignify the comment with a response. And yet... the corner of his mouth twitched. Almost imperceptible. A ghost of a smile that flickered into existence and vanished faster than a candle snuffed by the wind.

But Ace saw it. And that microscopic crack in the armor was all the confirmation he needed: victory was his.

While Ace was busy enjoying his small triumph, back on the first floor of Building B, the infirmary door burst open with enough force to suggest someone was attempting to tear it clean off its hinges. The impact made the ceiling lights rattle violently, drawing a hissed curse from the nurse behind the desk. Benn Beckman crossed the threshold with the polished grace of a Fortune 500 CEO and the ominous presence of a Category 5 hurricane. Impeccable dark suit, loosened tie, face carved from stone... except for the eyes. Those burning coals of fury communicated one crystal-clear message: "Which one of you am I suing first?"

It took him less than three seconds to assess the battlefield:

Sabo perched on the examination cot, temple wrapped in pristine white gauze, wearing an expression of unnatural serenity for someone sporting a goose egg the size of a jaboticaba fruit. Koala standing rigidly beside him, arms locked across her chest, her eyes caught in an endless loop between remorse and righteous fury. The instructor fluttering about, attempting to explain something about wooden staffs, freak accidents, and collective lapse in attention.

Beckman exhaled—one of those sighs that should come with a stress-related liability waiver.

"How am I supposed to explain this to Shanks..." — he'll want to murder someone first, then laugh about it later — he muttered under his breath, already massaging his temple as if preemptively combating the migraine he knew was inevitable.

He didn't hesitate when the phone rang.

Answering on the first ring came as instinct—a reflex exclusive to parents. An icy sensation slithered down his spine before the words on the other end even registered. And when they came—deceptively calm, too measured for the urgency they carried—he was already on his feet, his body moving before his mind could fully process the threat.

'Your child has been involved in an accident at school.'

For one suspended moment, the world seemed to stop spinning.

The first image that flashed through his mind—instinctive, unbidden—was of Luffy. Luffy who was always climbing where he shouldn't, running where he couldn't, launching himself headfirst into danger with that ever-present grin and zero sense of self-preservation. This was the phone call he'd been dreading since the boy's first day of school.

But then the voice on the line paused. A subtle hesitation, barely perceptible—but he caught it.

'It was Sabo.'

And that was worse.

Because with Luffy, in some corner of his mind, he was always braced for this. But Sabo... Sabo was the one who weighed every step, who kept both brothers grounded even when the world spun too fast for them to keep up. Sabo was their shield, their filter, their counterbalance. Or at least that's what he'd believed.

Hearing that name—of all names—break through the phone's silence brought a different kind of dread. Sharper. Deeper. A fear that didn't stem from surprise, but from realization: if even Sabo got hurt... then something had truly gone wrong beyond measure.

Sabo adjusted his position on the medical cot with all the dignified composure of a UN ambassador addressing an international tribunal. He offered a casual shrug that somehow managed to be both nonchalant and academically precise:

"Well, considering the trajectory, impact angle, and wood density variables, I'd classify this as a mild concussion scenario. Honestly? The outcome distribution could've been significantly worse on the injury severity scale. Statistically speaking, of course."

Beckman blinked. Once. Twice. The intervals between each eyelid movement growing dangerously longer.

"Your skull nearly got turned into pulp, and you're quoting fucking statistics at me?"

"Merely observing that had the improvised weapon possessed higher flexibility coefficients—bamboo, for instance—the fracture risk would increase exponentially, while the energy absorption properties might've prevented instantaneous loss of consciousness."

Koala released a sound halfway between an exasperated sigh and a suppressed scream.

"Could you stop analyzing this like a forensic report and just admit it was stupid?"

Sabo regarded her with infuriating serenity—that particular brand of calm that burns hotter than any outburst. "You were wielding the weapon. I merely conducted a field experiment. Collaborative research, one might say."

"YOU FIELD-TESTED YOUR OWN SKULL!" Koala's shriek reached frequencies previously only achievable by opera singers and boiling kettles.

The nurse took three strategic steps backward. Beckman raised a single authoritative hand, intercepting the argument before it could become tomorrow's school newsletter headline.

"Critical question: did you lose your memory or just your common sense?"

Sabo paused just long enough to make it concerning. "Empirical evidence suggests I retain calculus proficiency and French conjugation skills. Diagnosis remains... inconclusive."

The secretary materialized in the doorway, clutching a clipboard like a shield. "Should I... fetch the other two, Mr. Beckman?" Her tone implied she'd rather be anywhere else, possibly on another continent.

Beckman pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut as vivid mental images assaulted him: Ace cackling like a hyena on nitrous oxide, and Luffy already demanding "Can I try getting hit next? For science!" with that terrifying glint in his eyes.

"Fetch them."

Koala studied Sabo anew, her anger now diluted by pure bewilderment. "You're genuinely... okay with this?"

He allowed precisely one second of analytical silence to stretch between them - a full sixty seconds by the bewildered observer's internal clock.

"If I make a fuss, it implies I didn't anticipate being struck. Whereas in reality, I calculated the trajectory—your strike simply packed more kinetic energy than projected. Credit where credit's due."

Her mouth opened. Closed. Words failed spectacularly. Beckman, meanwhile, had assumed his signature crisis-management pose: back against the wall, arms crossed, projecting a glare that could legally be classified as a blunt weapon.

"So you underestimated the girl's strength. Fantastic. Now you get to explain that to both Shanks and Ace." A beat. "May whatever gods you believe in have mercy on your soul."

Sabo exhaled with the resigned air of a scientist about to document his own demise. "We could frame this as a field experiment. Testing familial bonds under extreme emotional stimulus."

The nurse chose that moment to make her discreet exit, moving with the silent grace of a ghost fleeing a crime scene.

At precisely that apocalyptic moment, the infirmary door exploded open with a BANG! so earth-shattering it somehow surpassed even Beckman's dramatic entrance—a feat previously considered physically impossible until now.

"WHO DIED?!" Ace's voice tore through the room like a humanoid fire alarm, his wild eyes scanning the scene while his hair stuck up in every conceivable direction, as if he'd sprinted through an active war zone to get here.

Behind him, Luffy tripped spectacularly over a medicine cart, letting out a "woooah!" that would've been comical if not for the way he windmilled his arms before crashing directly into Beckman's shoulder—who, of course, didn't so much as flinch, merely releasing a world-weary sigh that translated perfectly to "I should've known better than to hope for peace."

"SABO!" Luffy launched himself at his brother like an oversized backpack charm, arms constricting around Sabo's neck with the force of an anaconda. "DID YOU SEE THE LIGHT? DID YOU MEET GOD?!"

"No," Sabo replied in that infuriatingly calm monotone usually reserved for discussing tomorrow's chance of rain. "Though I did observe three ceiling lights spiraling in perfect formation. Could be divine intervention... or just a mild concussion."

Ace approached with concern that morphed into morbid fascination the moment he spotted the bandage. He leaned in until their noses nearly touched, scrutinizing the wound like an archaeologist examining some ancient artifact.

"What's under there?" he demanded, squinting as if expecting to uncover a hidden third eye or perhaps the secrets of the universe.

"Three stitches," Sabo answered with the weary patience of a prophet who'd foreseen this exact scenario. "So take a deep breath and don't—"

"THREE?!" Luffy's shriek could've shattered glass, his eyes bulging as if Sabo had confessed to three hundred battle wounds. "That's like... a war wound! Just like in movies! Like: 'I survived the zombie apocalypse' level badass!" His hands flew up in dramatic reenactment, nearly decapitating a nearby IV stand in the process.

"Survival adaptation," Sabo corrected with a clinical nod and a half-smile that belonged in a research lab. "I'm now 0.002% more resistant to lateral temporal impacts. Statistically significant progress, if you consider the margin of error."

Ace's fingers were already twitching toward the bandage with the subtlety of a raccoon investigating a trash can lid, his entire posture radiating poorly-contained scientific curiosity.

"Don't. Even. Touch." Beckman's voice sliced through the room like a scalpel. He didn't need to uncross his arms to make the threat land. "Unless you want to explain why his stitches ripped open."

Ace shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance but retreated at the speed of a cat realizing the vacuum cleaner is on.

Meanwhile, Luffy had pressed his face so close to Sabo's that their noses nearly touched, his eyes sparkling with the unrestrained wonder of a child discovering dinosaur fossils.

"THIS IS SO COOL!" he proclaimed, voice vibrating with enough energy to power small appliances. "We can say you wrestled a dragon! Or got thrown from a speeding train! Or got abducted by aliens but escaped by doing parkour through their spaceship!" His hands animated each scenario, accidentally smacking a tray of medical instruments in the process.

Sabo blinked slowly, momentarily dazed—not from the head injury, but from attempting to follow the labyrinthine logic of his younger brother's imagination.

Ace crossed his arms, tilting his head at that characteristic cocky angle, his smirk dripping with sibling sarcasm:
"How reassuring to know that while I was being held prisoner in some moldy, lightless closet, you were here... bleeding out dramatically."

"We could objectively measure who had the worse day," Sabo countered with a nonchalant shrug, as if they were debating whose math test scores were more disappointing.

Just then, Koala—who had retreated to a safe distance after the medical examination—took one tentative step forward. Her brown eyes remained wide with lingering concern. Without hesitation, she yanked hard on Beckman's jacket sleeve with surprising strength for a thirteen-year-old karate red belt—the move so abrupt it nearly dislocated the man's shoulder.

"I-I’m sorry... for almost killing your son," she blurted out all at once, her voice trembling yet firm.

Beckman glanced down, startled by the tug on his sleeve, and met the girl’s strained expression. For a moment, silence hung heavy between them. Then he released a quiet sigh—not one of irritation, but of understanding—and let his shoulders relax.

"It’s alright, kid. Accidents happen," he said evenly, his deep voice almost soothing. "He’s still breathing, isn’t he?"

"Barely…" Ace muttered under his breath, slouched in one of the chairs with his arms crossed. His brow was furrowed as he watched the scene, though there was no real anger in his gaze.

Luffy, perched beside Sabo, rested his chin on the edge of the cot like a puppy waiting for a treat. When Koala stepped closer again, he kept darting wide-eyed glances between her and his brother, brimming with curiosity.

The nurse, who’d just finished adjusting the bandage on Sabo’s forehead, seized the opening to remark with a faint smile:

“He’ll be fine. The cut was shallow, but he needs to take his anti-inflammatory meds properly and avoid hitting his head again for the next few days—otherwise, it could get infected.”

“So… he’s not gonna lose his memory or anything, right?” Luffy asked, almost hopeful.

“Not this time,” the nurse replied with a chuckle.

Koala stood frozen for a moment, as if she still wanted to say something more, but the weight of her embarrassment seemed to press down on her shoulders. Then, with a quiet sigh, she turned back to the cot, gently picked up Sabo’s phone without asking, and quickly typed something.

“I put my number in there… I’d like updates, since you won’t be able to train for a while,” she said, still staring at the screen. Finally, she lifted her gaze. “I’m sorry again. Really.”

Sabo studied her for a second, caught off guard by the gesture. Then he smiled faintly, still lying down, his expression tired but warm.

“Thanks, Koala.”

Koala huffed, a tiny smirk escaping. “If you get annoying, I’m blocking you.”

“She’s already adapting,” Ace muttered, feigning seriousness. “Got that self-preservation instinct everyone needs around Sabo.”

“Bye, idiots,” she said, though without any bite.

Then, softer this time, “See you later,” as she ruffled Luffy’s hair with a fondness that betrayed her sharp tone.

Sabo made an indignant noise, but she just rolled her eyes and turned to leave, her messy ponytail swaying with each hurried step back toward training.

Luffy tilted his head to the side, watching her go.

“She’s strong,” he remarked.

Beckman shook his head, arms still firmly crossed over his chest. “You three are gonna give me an aneurysm one of these days.”

Chapter Text

He was being ridiculous. He knew it.

There wasn’t the slightest chance anyone here would actually be angry over an accident. Especially not a harmless one—if a gash on the forehead and three stitches could even be called harmless. Maybe the only real concern was the scar it would leave on his skin for years to come, a permanent mark of an impulsive decision. But even so, the knot in Sabo’s stomach only tightened, as if an invisible hand were twisting his insides.

It wasn’t just the cut on his forehead that had him on edge. It was the memory of other voices shouting, other hands yanking his arm after a mistake.

The room, with its muted blue and gray walls—usually such a peaceful refuge—now felt suffocating. The books lined up on the shelves, once so orderly, stood untouched, as if the world had frozen the moment he looked away. His school supplies, meticulously arranged, had been "captured" by Luffy and now lay buried under the bedsheets, transformed into treasure for some makeshift fortress. At least his little brother had been kind enough not to make his usual mess—or, more likely, he’d been too busy with his own chaotic schemes to unleash his standard brand of havoc.

Luffy, seated beside him on the bed, seemed to pick up on Sabo’s unease like a radar. He hadn’t left his side since arriving, had snatched up every available blanket, and built a nest around his brother—without permission, of course. After years of living together, asking for permission was as foreign to Luffy as the idea of eating vegetables without complaint. He leaned his head against Sabo’s shoulder, idly scribbling on a blank sheet of paper with a red pen, his chaotic strokes forming something only he could decipher.

Sabo cast a sidelong glance at the paper.

“What’re you doing?” he asked, more to distract himself than out of genuine curiosity.

“It’s the weekend,” Luffy replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He held up the paper with a glint of pride in his eyes, brandishing his doodles like an artist unveiling a masterpiece. “Which means we get to have fun. And eat good stuff.”

Sabo arched a brow but said nothing. In his mind, he could see Beckman calmly flipping through a printed report—the one the school secretary had delivered earlier. The ease with which he turned the pages stood in stark contrast to the restless anxiety coiling tighter in Sabo’s chest. It was just an accident, he tried to convince himself. No one’s going to care.

Ace wasn’t around—he’d gone out hunting for snacks, as he always did when a situation called for the solace of comfort food.

Luffy thrust the paper toward Sabo, jabbing his index finger at the drawings. They were rough little figures dashed onto the page: an overflowing bucket of popcorn, three cabins lined up like they were at a campsite, a video game controller sketched with shaky lines, and what might’ve been a hot dog floating midair—probably a botched attempt at drawing a plate.

“Since you’re hurt,” Luffy explained, waving his hands with the fervor of someone unveiling a secret masterplan, “we can’t do anything outside. But we can have a pajama party right here! Order food from Ace’s favorite restaurant, watch He-mi-l-tom—” he mangled the movie title with the confidence of someone who’d never actually read it properly, “—and sing the songs at the top of our lungs! And play Monopoly! Or set up a treasure hunt! I can hide real clues this time!”

His grin was so wide it nearly split his face in two, eyes sparkling with the excitement of someone who saw fun lurking around every corner. As if the sheer fact of being together was enough to turn even the most ordinary day into an adventure.

"You're really excited about this, huh..." Sabo murmured, attempting to smile but faltering halfway through.

Because the only thought running through his mind was: This isn't real.

He'd talked too much, been an idiot, forgotten his place. They'd gotten distracted, carried away by the thrill of the moment—and now he was paying the price.

Beckman remained calm. Too calm.

He hadn't burst into the room shouting, hadn't punched walls, hadn't unleashed those piercing curses that usually echoed through the house when things went wrong. Sabo watched the half-open door, fingers twisting into the bedsheet fabric, trying to decipher whether this serenity was just Beckman's natural demeanor or a carefully constructed mask. Maybe when he broke the news, Shanks wouldn’t even care… Maybe this would just become another one of their thousand disastrous misadventures—something to laugh about later over glasses of juice and exaggerated stories.

But.

What if the mask slipped?

Sabo glanced at Luffy, who was now scribbling a cat’s face with spiral whiskers and ears too pointy to be real. His little brother hummed softly, feet swinging in the air, utterly oblivious to the tension stiffening Sabo’s shoulders.

Innocent. Carefree.

As everything should be.

Sabo took a deep breath, but the air felt thick, clingy, as if the room were stuffed with damp cotton. Luffy smiled beside him, as though the world were still a simple place—and maybe, for him, it still was. Maybe he'd never need to understand why Sabo's voice cracked when he tried to laugh along, or why his older brother's eyes kept darting back to the door, braced for the worst.

Maybe that was what hurt the most.

He'd gotten distracted, let his guard down for just a second, and now everything was ruined. His fault. His responsibility. Waiting for punishment that might never come was all he could do.

Then—

The engine's roar split the silence like a warning.

Shanks didn't park—he hurled the car into the driveway, tires screeching against asphalt before the vehicle jerked to a violent stop. The driver's door was already open before the engine even died, and Shanks stormed out like a hurricane of crimson hair and fury. He didn't grab the groceries like he normally would, didn't smile in relief at finally being home after a long day. There was only the sound of his heavy footsteps pounding against concrete like thunder.

Sabo could hear it all through the half-open window like a distorted echo: trembling hands, fingers clenching and unclenching in spasmodic twitches at his sides. It wasn't fear. It was rage. It was desperation. It was the image of a small, frightened child wrapped in sheets that felt more like shackles than comfort.

The front door stood slightly ajar—ironically inviting, as if the universe itself were laughing at him.

Beckman was already waiting in the hallway.

Positioned like a sentinel at the threshold, leaning against the wall with arms crossed, he embodied restrained fury. His posture was rigid, his expression unreadable, but his eyes... his eyes were a smoldering volcano on the verge of eruption. Concern. Tension. Guilt. There was no hesitation when he finally spoke.

"You're not coming in like this." Beckman's voice sliced through the air with surgical precision.

Shanks didn't even hear him.

Everything around him felt distant, muffled, as if he were submerged in some viscous substance. His mind still pounded with the messages he'd received hours earlier: 'Minor lab incident' and 'Sabo's in the infirmary'—phrases far too brief for the maelstrom they'd unleashed. And now Beckman stood there, rooted like a living barrier between him and his sons.
In Shanks’ eyes, he was no longer his husband, no longer his ally, no longer his safe harbor.

He was an obstacle.

And Shanks didn’t answer.

He just moved.

The impact between them was sharp and brutal. Shoulders collided like two storms crashing together, muscles coiled tight beneath skin. The picture frame on the nearby wall rattled from the force, and a faint crack betrayed a nail yielding to the raw strength now flooding the hallway.

“Where are they?” Shanks snarled, eyes blazing beneath furrowed brows, jaw clenched so tightly it looked locked in place. His voice—usually light, brimming with laughter—now came out ragged, hoarse, unrecognizable.

Beckman didn’t budge. He stood firm in his path like a wall of flesh and bone, feet rooted to the ground.

“You need to calm down first.”

"Calm down?" Shanks laughed - a hollow, humorless sound cracking through the tremor in his hands. "You send me a fucking incoherent text saying our kids caused a 'minor explosion' in the lab, then casually drop 'Sabo's in the infirmary getting stitches' like you're telling me it might rain later!" His voice rose, fractured. "How the fuck do you expect me to calm down?!"

Beckman didn't yield, though a flicker of guilt crossed his face for a heartbeat. His fingers dug into the redhead's chest, shoving him back with the restrained force of someone containing a cornered animal about to strike.

"They're fine. Sabo needed three stitches, but it's already taken care of. He's in his room resting."

But reason wasn't enough.

With one violent motion, Shanks slammed Beckman sideways into the wall - the impact reverberating through the house's bones. Before the dust could settle, Shanks' fist shot up like lightning and cratered into the plaster mere inches from Beckman's head. Drywall splintered with a gunshot crack, shrapnel-like fragments exploding outward. The picture frame finally gave up its fight, crashing to the floor with a muffled thump that echoed through the entire house.

Beckman didn't flinch. Just turned his head slowly, examining the smoking crater in the wall like it was a written warning carved in stone.

"And what if it hadn't been okay?" Shanks' voice was now a trembling whisper, shredded at the edges. "What if it had been something serious?" His eyes burned, but there was water there too, glistening under the hallway lights. His body sagged with the weight of desperation. "Would you have even called me...? Or would you have waited until the funeral to let me know?"

He looked away, shoulders hitching in suppressed spasms. His eyes squeezed shut with violent force, eyelids pressed tight as if trying to crush the horrific images his own mind kept conjuring.

Breathe. Just breathe.

But the air might as well have been made of razor blades.

Beckman inhaled slowly.

Then—with one swift, utterly unexpected motion—he grabbed Shanks' face between both hands and squeezed his cheeks hard, like he was trying to mold an irritable goldfish. Or, more accurately, a petulant child on the verge of a supermarket meltdown.

"Shanks. Breathe. They're fine," he said, with the calm of someone taming a hurricane using nothing but a damp hand towel.

Shanks blinked, utterly disarmed, lips puckered into an involuntary pout. His breathing still hitched, but the rhythm was marginally less chaotic now. His hands remained unsteady, dangling at his sides like dead leaves clinging to branches before the final fall.

"Breathe, you idiot," Beckman repeated, forehead creased, his tone identical to the one he used when Luffy insisted on eating glue.

Shanks' eyes bulged—equal parts shocked and absurdly offended.

"Mmph... mmphrr!" he attempted to protest, lips still squished between Beckman's fingers, leaving him resembling an affronted manatee.

"What? Can't understand you. Speak properly." Beckman arched one eyebrow, impassive as a judge scrutinizing an obviously guilty defendant.

Shanks raised his hands in surrender and gave two quick pats against the back of Beckman's hands—the universal code for let go, I yield.

"’M sorry for takin' it out on you," he mumbled, voice muffled and slightly slurred, like a drunk attempting an emotional speech. "Didn' mean t'hurt you."

Beckman still didn't release him. Just watched. Assessing. As if deciding whether this walking disaster was worth unleashing back into the wild.

And then, something shifted.

The light returned to Shanks' eyes—that chaotic, mercurial glint hovering between laughter and meltdown. The usual electric charge that made him an unpredictable storm wearing human skin. It was like watching sunlight break through heavy clouds after days of relentless rain.

I married a goddamn whirlwind, Beckman thought—outwardly stoic, inwardly exasperated, and faintly, helplessly endeared.

It was utterly exhausting.

Finally, he released the redhead's cheeks and took a deliberate step back, gaze flickering to the hole in the wall that stubbornly remained. The toppled picture frame. The tension still thick enough to choke on. Yet Shanks seemed whole again. Or at least, as whole as someone built of cracks and impulsivity could be. The redhead blinked, glanced from the wrecked wall to Beckman, and despite the lingering discomfort, showed not a flicker of remorse.

I'm so far past doomed, Beckman decided.

From the top of the stairs, a small but piercing voice cut through the silence:

“Dad…?”

Shanks and Beckman looked up in unison, as though summoned by a ghost. Shanks’ body still thrummed with leftover adrenaline, muscles coiled tight from their confrontation—but that single word realigned everything inside him like a ship spotting its lighthouse through raging storms.

At the stairway’s landing, Luffy stood frozen, barefoot, drowning in a cloud-patterned pajama set two sizes too big. His eyes were twin full moons of worry, wide and liquid-bright, as if they’d already decoded that something was terribly wrong.

Shanks didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

“Dad!” Luffy called again, and this time, another figure materialized behind him like a hesitant shadow.

Ace was already on the lower floor, his head peeking through the kitchen doorway, forehead creased and fists balled in his hoodie pockets—poised to fight the entire goddamn world if necessary.

Sabo hovered hesitantly, half-hidden in the wall’s shadow, the white bandage peeking through his blond bangs like a flag of guilt.

The two of them—Sabo and Luffy—descended together, but it was Luffy who led the charge, barreling down the stairs without a second thought, like an overexcited puppy greeting its owner. He launched himself into his father’s arms like a lightning bolt—and Shanks, as always, caught him midair like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The hug was crushing, tight, almost desperate. Shanks buried his face in his youngest’s riotous curls, inhaling the sweet scent of baby shampoo and sleep-warm pillow, as if he needed proof that the boy was really here—solid, whole, alive.

Ace arrived moments later, footsteps deliberate, and paused beside them. He didn’t speak, but leaned into the arm that tugged him into the embrace, allowing himself—just for a heartbeat—to stop pretending he was too tough for this.

Sabo hesitated.

He lingered a few steps behind, biting the corner of his lip, gaze locked on the floorboards like he was waiting to be summoned—or sentenced.

Shanks looked at him.

A single glance. That was all it took.

Without a word, he extended his other arm.

And Sabo... Sabo descended the steps as if walking on shattered glass. His chest constricted. Breath coming in short, ragged gasps—like he'd been holding air in his lungs for years.

Shanks watched him.

Just one look. Nothing more was needed.

Silently, he reached out with his left arm, the sleeve of his shirt pulling back with the motion to reveal fabric creases at the elbow and the faint silver trails of old scars.

He could have dodged. Could have calculated the angle better, anticipated the staff's trajectory. But he hadn't. Some part of him—small, buried beneath layers of logic and self-reliance—needed to know. Needed to test. Would anyone notice? Would anyone care enough to...?

In the end, it wasn't just about a girl, but voicing that aloud would have been impossible. When his father's warm, calloused hand settled between his shoulder blades, everything collapsed at once.

Sabo collapsed into the embrace like a ship finally sighting its lighthouse after months lost in the storm. His entire body surrendered, knees nearly buckling, forehead meeting Shanks’ familiar shoulder with a soft impact.

Shanks gathered him without hesitation, wrapping him in the same arm that had punched through the wall in fury minutes earlier. His lips trembled against his son’s blond hair in a silent kiss. No questions asked. No explanations demanded. Just holding all three boys as if the sheer force of that embrace could suture every invisible fracture threatening to split them apart.

And for a moment that stretched like dripping honey—it was enough.

Ace breathed against his shoulder, body heat conveying more truth than words ever could. Luffy curled against his chest, a tiny hurricane momentarily stilled. And Sabo… Sabo wept silently, tears carving paths down his face to stain Shanks’ shirt, but for the first time in years, his chest expanded freely, unburdened by the weight he’d carried for so long.

Shanks simply held them there. He closed his eyes and felt.

"Thank you..." he whispered, words meant only for Sabo's ears, his lips brushing against the boy's hair. "You're okay, aren't you?"

Sabo didn't answer. Couldn't. His voice was trapped somewhere between relief and shame. But he nodded—a movement so slight it might have gone unnoticed—while his fingers clutched desperately at his father's shirt fabric with white-knuckled intensity. And they stayed like that. All of them.

There, in that sacred space within Shanks' arms, the world became safe again.

It was warm like morning sunlight after a freezing night. Shanks' clothes were soft, that particular well-worn fabric washed so many times it never chafed the skin, carrying the faint scent of strawberry detergent and something else—something indefinably comforting that Sabo would forever associate with the very essence of father, even if he could never quite name it.

Beckman observed the scene from a distance, arms crossed, the corner of his mouth lifting involuntarily. He sighed, shaking his head as the thought surfaced: What kind of beautiful mess have I gotten myself into?

But he didn’t move to interrupt. Just stood there, keeping watch, guarding that fragile, perfect moment—exactly as he always would.

Gradually, the silence gave way to steadier breathing, to the unclenching of tense shoulders, to that particular brand of peace that only arrives after the storm has raged itself out.

And like every proper tempest in this household, it eventually yielded to the chaotic routine that somehow always found a way to reassert itself.

Some time later—perhaps minutes, perhaps a small eternity where mortals steal moments of peace—the clatter of silverware against plates, half-suppressed laughter, and the familiar cacophony of clumsy footsteps filled the house once more with its customary disorder. Life moved on. And, true to form, it did so in the loudest, most gloriously chaotic way possible.

The solid wood table was set with unassuming simplicity: bowls of steaming rice, stir-fried vegetables at the center, and a sizzling platter of grilled meat whose rich aroma valiantly competed with the surrounding uproar. The yellow pendant light above cast a warm, almost theatrical glow, highlighting the stark white bandage plastered conspicuously across Sabo's forehead - noticeably askew amidst his tousled blond bangs.

He sat at the right side of the table, attempting to eat in peace, but the arrangement around him resembled some impromptu tribunal. Ace and Luffy flanked him like disorganized and thoroughly unreliable jurors, while across the table Shanks observed him with an expression cycling through shock, mock anguish, and feigned disappointment.

"Alright then..." Shanks murmured, extending his chopsticks toward Sabo like a judge preparing to deliver a verdict. His eyes narrowed as he studied the bandages peeking through the boy's disheveled hair. "I genuinely believed you were the smart one in this household. Your brothers were supposed to be the attention-seeking idiots who hurt themselves."

Beckman, seated beside Shanks, didn't even look up. With surgical calm, he continued slicing carrots on his plate, his precise, silent movements forming a stark contrast to the surrounding pandemonium.

"You were specifically told to stop them. Not join them," Shanks added solemnly, his tone suggesting he was reciting some sacred prophecy rather than scolding his son.

Sabo narrowed his eyes, leaning slightly toward his brothers.
"He just quoted Star Wars, didn't he?"

"Beats me, Lord Sith," Ace muttered around a mouthful of food, chewing slowly before shrugging with the resigned air of someone who'd long made peace with life's inherent absurdity.

"I WANNA BE A LORD SITH TOO!!!" Luffy bellowed, springing to his feet on the chair with the boundless enthusiasm of someone who'd just been granted a noble title. The salt shaker toppled, scattering white crystals across the tablecloth as he brandished his fork-speared piece of meat like a makeshift lightsaber.

"Sit down, Padawan, unless you want to be the next one cracking your skull open," Beckman murmured, continuing to eat his meal with the serene detachment of a man enjoying coffee in a quiet café rather than being surrounded by future noise-pollution felons.

"Actually... I think he's earned the Lord Sith title," Ace conceded, propping his elbows on the table while casting a judicious look around. "Let's face it—there isn't a single person in this house on the light side of the Force."

Shanks ignored the brewing cyclone and half-rose from his chair, brandishing his chopsticks at Sabo once more - now like a lawyer delivering his closing argument. But the boy didn't let him finish.

"I don't see why you're making such a production out of this," Sabo retorted, crossing his arms with wounded dignity. "I'm still the smartest one here."

Shanks blinked slowly, as if he'd just been slapped with a velvet glove.

"Beck..." he whispered theatrically, voice cracking with emotion. Then brought both hands to his face, releasing a melodramatic groan. "It's happening... He's entering his rebellious phase! Our boy's becoming a teenager!"

In one sudden motion, he whirled toward Beckman and seized the other man's collar, shaking him violently as if the answers to his existential crisis were stitched between the fabric's very fibers.

"BECK, HE CHALLENGED ME WITH LOGIC!" Shanks bellowed, utterly affronted, as though he'd been betrayed on the emotional battlefield. "HE USED HIS BRAIN AGAINST ME!"

Beckman, without so much as a frown, merely arched one eyebrow while setting his silverware down with deliberate precision.

"Congratulations," he deadpanned, his tone drier than a desert wind announcing closing time. "Your twelve-year-old just out-debated you. Shall I order a participation trophy?"

Shanks released him with a long-suffering sigh, turning back to Sabo with eyes shimmering equal parts wounded pride and begrudging paternal admiration.

"Then tell me, O great genius..." Shanks leaned across the table, elbows planted firmly as he closed in on Sabo with a mischievous glint in his eyes. His voice dropped to a theatrical whisper, drawn-out and dripping with the kind of dramatic flair that made Luffy squirm in delighted anticipation. "Was it worth it? Nearly dying over a girl?”

Sabo immediately hunched his shoulders, his fork frozen mid-air between plate and mouth. His face flushed instantaneously, as if someone had flipped a switch. The blush spread rapidly across his cheeks, climbing all the way to the tips of his ears. He didn't answer right away, just averted his gaze with a muffled grunt, desperately clinging to the tattered remains of his dignity.

Ace and Luffy swiveled their heads in perfect unison, like crows spotting something shiny. The synchronization was flawless, almost comical, as they gaped at their middle brother with expressions wavering between feigned shock and pure delight. Luffy even stifled a giggle behind his hand, as though witnessing the most scandalous revelation of the century—even though they'd met Koala mere hours earlier, Sabo's reactions were always priceless entertainment.

"She's a red belt in karate," Sabo muttered defensively, arms crossed, chin jutting out slightly. "And... she gave me her number."

For a heartbeat, silence draped over the table like a heavy quilt. Shanks blinked. Three times. Each slower and more emotionally loaded than the last.

Then, in one abrupt motion, he threw his arms toward the ceiling as if summoning the gods themselves, palms upturned in a comical plea to the universe.

"BECKMAN!!" he wailed with his adoptive father's pride in tatters and his paternal ego thoroughly bruised. "OUR SON'S A COMPLETE IDIOT! HE NEARLY DIED FOR A PHONE NUMBER!"

The declaration echoed through the kitchen like a clap of theatrical thunder.

Beckman didn't even turn immediately. He released one of those long-suffering sighs that could make even the soup pots seem exhausted. With deliberate, measured movements, he rubbed his temple with two fingers, as if physically trying to push his patience back into his skull.

"At least it wasn't over an explosion," he muttered dryly, shooting a pointed look at Ace.

Ace immediately averted his gaze, shoulders tensing as he pretended to study the wall decor with sudden intense interest. His frame hunched slightly as he began whistling a tuneless, deliberately casual melody - the picture of someone who'd never so much as heard the word "dynamite" in his life.

"Or a punch to the face," Beckman added with surgical sarcasm, one eyebrow arching as his gaze now landed squarely on Shanks.

Shanks clutched his chest as if struck by an emotional dagger, then collapsed sideways onto the nearest chair with theatrical flair. His head lolled backward, arms dangling limply like a marionette with its strings severed, while a ragged groan escaped his lips.

"I need a drink..."

"You're banned from drinking," Beckman replied automatically, not even glancing up as he scooped more vegetables from the pan onto Luffy's plate. The boy stared at the greens for precisely two heartbeats before scrunching his face in protest—yet began eating nonetheless.

"THEN GET ME JUICE! STRONG JUICE!"

The demand barely left his lips when Luffy triumphantly slammed his juice cup atop Shanks' head. The boy's eyes sparkled with uncontainable glee, grinning as though he'd just won the world championship of absurdity.

"CHEERS!!"

Beckman squeezed his eyes shut, letting his arms drop to his sides. Drew one deep breath. Then another.

Yes. It was official.

He wasn't raising a family.

He was running a three-ring circus.

The night unfolded like a runaway train, chaos gradually giving way to an odd serenity—the kind of peace that either precedes a storm or accompanies children who are far too engrossed in their activities.

Now, the muffled sound of young voices and paper being folded filled the space with restless calm.

Luffy and Shanks sat side by side at the dining table, surrounded by scribbled sheets, colorful sticky notes, and uncapped markers. The boy spoke excitedly, pointing at what appeared to be a chaotic weekend schedule: pillows drawn with eyes, ice cream cups with stick legs, and a smiling television.

"And Saturday night, we build the fort!" Luffy declared, his finger tracing the crooked lines on the paper. "Then movie, then hot chocolate!! Oh, and we can’t forget therapy!"

He turned solemnly toward Beckman, who was washing dishes, and nodded as if sealing a pact. Then, he stuck a neon orange sticky note with shaky handwriting in the corner of the page.

"You planned all this?" Shanks asked, delighted. "Food, movie, games... This is a battle strategy.”

"It's a survival strategy!" Luffy declared with absolute conviction.

On the opposite side of the table, Sabo and Ace were ostensibly doing homework—though it was debatable whether they were more occupied with their textbooks or with tormenting each other. Sabo huffed dramatically, as if the mere act of studying constituted a historical insult to his lineage.

"This is outrageous. A direct affront to the French blood running through my veins," he grumbled, waving his pen like a dueling sword.

By the sink, Beckman was scrubbing a cutting board with the intensity of someone avenging a personal slight against a loved one. The soap suds had long surpassed reasonable limits, cascading down his muscular forearms in frothy rivers as water gushed from the faucet with unnecessary force.

Shanks approached as he always did—too light-footed for a man of his stature, as if the floor itself conspired to make him invisible. The nearly imperceptible sound of his footsteps dissolved into the household's ambient noise, and by the time Beckman registered his presence, he was already there: leaning against the kitchen counter like a man who'd merely come for a glass of water.

Or as if their morning argument had never happened at all.

A half-smirk played on his lips—the kind that warned he was about to say something profoundly inappropriate and knew it.

"Still mad I almost killed you earlier?"

The question floated out with the casual indifference of someone commenting on afternoon rain chances, as if discussing nothing more consequential than weather patterns.

Beckman stopped.

Slowly.

The spoon in his hand hovered mid-air for a suspended heartbeat as water cascaded off the metal, scattering droplets like liquid shrapnel across the counter. The very atmosphere seemed to hold its breath. Several seconds ticked by as he dissected the words, weighing whether they deserved acknowledgment.

"You couldn't kill me if you tried," he finally answered, eyes never leaving the dishes, voice rougher than the steel wool scrubbing baked-on grease.

Shanks arched one eyebrow, that mocking glint in his eyes flaring back to life like a rekindled ember. "Is that why you went for the emotional killshot instead?"

The words were light, but carried an invisible barb—the verbal equivalent of probing a scar just to see if it still ached.

Beckman's brow furrowed. He turned his head with glacial precision, regarding Shanks with the bewildered expression of someone who'd just heard a joke in an alien tongue.

"It was logical. Had nothing to do with emotion."

The silence that followed was viscous, oppressive, swollen with everything left unsaid—far too immense for the narrow kitchen space containing it.

Three chairs screeched in protest behind them. The children—Luffy in particular—swiveled in perfect unison, as though they'd just witnessed sacrilege being committed at high noon.

Luffy gaped at Beckman with saucer-wide eyes, his expression that of a child who'd just been told Santa Claus had been permanently canceled.

Ace crossed his arms, forehead creased in open indignation. 'Is this guy for real?' his face screamed without needing words.

Shanks, meanwhile, simply smiled.

That particular brand of polite, abbreviated smile that never quite reaches the eyes.

"Ha... well..." he began, but the sentence unraveled halfway through. His voice softened, fraying at the edges. "Never mind. Forget I said anything."

With deliberate calm, Shanks returned to the table as if the entire exchange had never occurred. His expression was tranquility incarnate—shoulders slack, that practiced smile reassembling itself stitch by stitch. The smile of a man who'd long mastered the art of surviving weighted silences, now carefully glueing the fractured atmosphere back together with invisible precision.

Beckman's posture shifted almost imperceptibly. The clench of his jaw, the minute tightening around his eyes—tiny tells that betrayed his dawning realization. He'd misstepped. Or at the very least, spoken without measuring the weight of his words.

The redhead plucked one of the abandoned yellow sticky notes Luffy had left scattered across the table, hastily scribbling something in that familiar slanted handwriting of his - the letters leaning precariously like drunk sailors on shore leave. With deliberate ceremony, he placed the note squarely atop the master plan, giving it a firm pat as if scheduling a critical board meeting for a corporation that had long since embraced chaos as its business model.

"My brother's coming for dinner on Sunday," he announced, voice gaining just enough steadiness to plant a flag in this momentary lull between storms. Still light, but resolute - the verbal equivalent of driving a tent stake into hurricane-force winds.

Beckman's eyebrow arched a fraction without turning. He remained rooted by the kitchen sink, methodically drying the cutting board with a dish towel - each stroke precise enough to suggest either zen meditation or the strategic postponement of an impending disaster.

"Wasn't aware you had a brother.”

"I do. You just didn't know because... well, you never asked." Shanks shrugged, propping his chin on his hand as if it were of no consequence. "His name's Buggy."

Ace let out a muffled snort but kept his eyes glued to his homework.

"Like... buggy? The beach vehicle?"

"Like Buggy... technically your uncle," Shanks clarified, amusement now coloring his voice. "He's... eccentric."

"That means he's insufferable," Sabo commented without looking up, twirling his pencil between his fingers.

"Eccentric," Shanks repeated with emphasis, the grin spreading to one corner of his mouth. "Wears makeup, has this obnoxious laugh, talks like he's permanently on a circus stage... but he's real. And he's my brother. We're the same age, though he loves pretending he's older."

Luffy slowly swiveled in his chair, absorbing this information with the grave expression of someone about to pose a world-altering question.

"What do bugs eat again?" he asked, forehead scrunched in concentration.

"Insects?" Shanks blinked, momentarily derailed.

"Yeah. Bug. Like his name. If he's a Buggy... then he eats... what?"

"Ah. Dust, garbage, and bitter resentment, most likely," Beckman called from the depths of the kitchen, his voice dropping like a stone into still water - precise, unruffled, creating ripples no one could ignore.

Ace clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle explosive laughter.
Sabo exhaled through his nose, shaking his head like a long-suffering schoolteacher.
Luffy nodded "ahhh" with near-religious solemnity, as though receiving divine revelation.

Shanks laughed. Really laughed this time—that unrestrained, head-thrown-back laughter that crinkled his eyes shut for a blissful second.

But the moment fractured quickly.

"Careful what you say, Beck. He's sensitive."

"So you have that in common," Beckman countered without turning. The words were clinically neutral, but his deliberate avoidance of eye contact screamed louder than any shout.

For a fractured second, Shanks' laughter stuttered. Not vanishing, but hollowing out—like someone had abruptly muted the world's soundtrack.

He peeled off another sticky note - this one a vibrant blue - and carefully sketched a stick figure with wild, spiky hair and an absurdly large clown nose. A single red dot marked the center of its face.

With deliberate ceremony, he affixed the note to the bottom corner of the master plan, scrawling beneath it in his characteristically messy handwriting:

"Sunday: Surviving Buggy."

Ace peered over the edge of the paper, utterly perplexed. This guy wasn't just missing social cues - he was playing an entirely different game. 'What's Beckman's deal anyway? Is my dad really this clueless?'

Shanks leaned back in his chair then, his voice deceptively calm as he murmured:

"Think we're gonna need more hot chocolate.”

The silence that followed wasn't exactly uncomfortable—just thick. The kind where everyone's mentally measuring how far the joke can stretch before it snaps into something more serious.

Shanks studied the three at the table with uncharacteristic sobriety, his expression that of a man delivering vital instructions—which he very well might be.

"Mind what you say around him. Buggy... hears everything. Sees everything. Knows everything."

The children exchanged glances.

"Don't antagonize him," Shanks added, his tone remarkably calm for the warning it carried. "He's not the sort of enemy you want to make."

What Shanks didn't say—what he'd never voice aloud, least of all within Buggy's hearing—was that a fool unaware of his own strength is the most dangerous fool of all. Even when that fool is your brother.

Sabo finally looked up, suspicion sharpening his gaze.

"He's with the government? Or the mob?"

Shanks' mouth quirked at the corner. "Yes.”

Before the conversation could escalate—as it inevitably would—Shanks clapped his hands once, sharp enough to make everyone at the table jump, some more dramatically than others.

"Alright then, walking catastrophes one, two, and three," he announced with a seriousness that clearly wouldn't last. "Way past bedtime."

"Five more minutes!" Luffy yelled, already sliding off his chair like a greased eel.

"Just gotta finish this drawing!" Ace declared, grabbing a new sticky note as if it were a matter of national security.

"If I stop copying now, it'll ruin the flow," Sabo muttered, gesturing to his flawlessly aligned handwriting that absolutely didn't need finishing.

Shanks dragged a hand down his face like a man painfully familiar with this nightly performance. Then he reached over, plucked the sticky note from Ace's grasp, and slapped it squarely on his own forehead.

"Bed now, or Monday morning I'm using this as your excuse note: 'My son didn't do his homework because he was busy drawing a makeup-wearing bug that feeds on bitter resentment.'"

Ace opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut, brow furrowing. "...That would be humiliating."

"Excellent. Upstairs then. Bath, pajamas, bed."

Luffy had already vanished up the staircase in a blur of limbs and uncontainable energy. Sabo gathered his papers with the weary resignation of someone who fully intended to continue his homework clandestinely beneath the blankets. Ace claimed he needed to speak with Beckman, promising to follow when finished.

Sabo, still muttering curses at a history textbook that refused to cooperate, dragged himself upright with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man and trudged after the others. Ace, however, remained. The kitchen had settled into an uneasy quiet now, broken only by the rhythmic splash of tap water and the determined clink of dishes being scrubbed with unnecessary force.

Beckman was rinsing a glass as if it had personally offended his ancestors. The silence between them stretched, taut as a tripwire, until Ace severed it with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to stained glass.

"You got some kind of problem or what?" he demanded, fixing Beckman with a glare that carried twice the intensity appropriate for a twelve-year-old.

The man stopped mid-motion. Turned slowly, drying his hands on a crumpled dish towel that had seen better days.

"What exactly did I do this time?"

"The fact you don't even realize it—or can't be bothered to—makes the whole thing even worse," Ace shot back with that particular brand of razor-sharp sarcasm only precocious, frustrated children can muster.

Beckman returned his gaze to the sink for a weighted moment. He was tired. Not the physical kind—the soul-deep exhaustion that comes from constant mental calculations, from the fear of saying the wrong thing, of being misunderstood.

"If you've got something to say, say it. Otherwise, go to bed."

Ace's eyes narrowed to slits. The words themselves didn't hurt—it was the ice in Beckman's tone. The way he seemed completely... switched off.

"You told Shanks you don't care about him."

Beckman spun back toward him, eyebrows now knitted together.

"I never said that.”

And it was true. He'd never said those words. But that wasn't enough.

When it came to them, Beckman was like an open book printed in painfully small font—transparent in his honesty, yet exhausting to decipher. He didn't lie. Didn't manipulate. But he didn't measure his words either. They came out sharp and polished, like silver bullets fired with clinical precision. Ace knew this. Knew too that Shanks was the sort who read between words, between syllables, between fleeting glances. Who needed to mine meaning from every atom around him, as if that could justify his very right to exist.

"So all this... it's just convenience for you, huh?" Ace said, arms folding like armor across his chest. "We're useful. That's it."

The boy exhaled like someone who'd already surrendered, taking one deliberate step backward as if drawing a line in the sand.

"It's fine if you don't... feel whatever about him. But don't make him feel like an idiot for caring.”

He turned and left without waiting for a response. All that remained was the faint sound of small feet ascending the stairs and the oppressive silence left hanging in the kitchen's stale air.

Beckman stood frozen in place, the dishcloth still dangling limply between his fingers.

'I never said I didn't care...'

The words echoed in his skull as he mentally replayed their earlier exchange, searching for his exact phrasing. The memory eluded him. All he could recall was Shanks' face - first confused, then frighteningly blank. How his laughter had been pure reflex rather than genuine amusement.

'I only said it was logical...'

And it had been. At that moment, his actions had been the most reasonable course - controlling the situation, preventing escalation. But perhaps... perhaps Shanks hadn't needed logic. Perhaps he'd simply needed someone to say: 'I care.'

Beckman leaned heavily against the sink, letting the cloth slip from his grasp in slow motion. The uncomfortable truth was he'd never considered caring to be a virtue.

It had always seemed like weakness. A liability. And if he analyzed the situation objectively, there was no question that caring was risky. But now - seeing the protective fury burning in Ace's young eyes - he understood that maybe... maybe the opposite was true.

Maybe it took extraordinary courage to openly admit you care. And he hadn't known how to handle that realization. He'd been a complete fool.
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Saturday dawned with a hesitant sun that kept peeking through the curtains uninvited. The house, usually vibrating with the morning chaos of three brothers, was wrapped in unusual silence—not hostile, but thick with unspoken nuances. Shanks and Beckman moved through shared spaces like planets in misaligned orbits, avoiding collision through sheer force of habit.

In the kitchen, the scent of fresh coffee mingled with the aroma of charred toast—a telltale sign of Shanks' distracted state. He stirred the dark liquid with a spoon that clinked against the porcelain in an erratic rhythm, his eyes fixed on the window where morning light painted liquid patterns across the granite countertop. Beckman, on the opposite side of the island, arranged fruit in a bowl with surgical precision, his fingers consciously avoiding contact with Shanks' whenever their movements nearly intersected. The absence of their usual provocative "darling" hung in the air like a discordant musical note.

Upstairs, Ace peered at the scene through the stair railings, a mischievous grin playing at his lips. He wasn't one to revel in others' tension, but seeing Beckman—normally so unflappable—as unsettled as a cat on a wet roof held undeniable comic value. Sabo appeared behind him, the white bandage still stark against his blond hair.

"They're even worse than I thought," Sabo murmured, watching as Beckman adjusted his shirt collar for the third time in five minutes—an uncharacteristic fidget from someone who usually carried himself with military precision.

Luffy, blissfully immune to social cues, came barreling into the kitchen like a tiny hurricane, promptly latching onto Beckman's legs while simultaneously swiping a piece of toast from Shanks' plate in one fluid motion of chaotic efficiency.

Saturday had arrived with sunlight streaming through the linen curtains, painting golden stripes across the hardwood floors. Therapy day—a weekly ritual involving four of the household's five members. Shanks, still trapped in that uneasy silence with Beckman, stirred his coffee with unnecessary vigor, the spoon clinking violently against ceramic. Sabo gnawed absentmindedly on his pencil eraser, leaving teeth marks in the margins of his notebook.

Luffy, perpetually oblivious to adult tensions, exploded into the kitchen wearing striped pajamas and enough energy to power a small city.

"MORNING, BECK!" he bellowed, launching himself at the man's legs with the unrestrained enthusiasm of a golden retriever puppy. Beckman—still half-asleep and clutching his tea—nearly sent the cup flying in a caffeinated disaster.

Before anyone could react, Luffy's lightning-quick fingers had already snatched a piece of toast from Shanks' plate, dunking it triumphantly into the honey jar with a grin that dared anyone to scold him.

"Luffy!" Shanks protested halfheartedly, but the damage was done; the boy was chewing victoriously, crumbs tumbling to the floor like celebratory confetti.

Beckman rubbed his tired eyes—at this point, such chaos was simply part of the morning routine. Sabo, shuffling to the other side of the table, observed the scene with that particular blend of preteen amusement and exhaustion.

"Let's just go already," Ace grumbled, already standing with his hoodie inside out. "The sooner we leave, the sooner this torture ends."

Shanks, still nursing his half-finished coffee, helped Sabo gather his notebooks while Ace herded Luffy toward the bedroom to change, complaining that his little brother "reeked of sugar and poor life choices." The morning sun, now stronger, cast dancing shadows across the carpet as the family moved in their characteristic disordered synchronization.

Outside, Beckman's car waited like a weary warhorse. Luffy vaulted into the backseat before the doors were fully open. Ace slid in from the opposite side while Sabo—head bowed—typed rapidly on his phone, likely exchanging messages with Koala about this morning's absurdities.

The ride had been uneventful. Too quiet for Ace's liking. The heavy silence persisted as he stepped into Jinbe's office—a space that felt fundamentally alien to his very being.

The scent was subtle yet ever-present: freshly brewed herbal tea, aged paper, polished wood. Sunlight filtered through the blinds, painting golden stripes across the floor, making everything appear excessively pristine. Unnaturally tranquil.

The walls were pale, neutral-toned sound absorbers devoid of decoration. No artwork, no clutter. Just a low bookshelf with volumes meticulously arranged by hue and a simple coffee table. At its center lay an open wooden box revealing an array of square papers—vibrant colors, varying textures, some adorned with delicate floral and animal patterns.

Ace stared at the display like he'd stumbled into an ambush.

"Origami?" he muttered with palpable disdain, arms folding defensively across his chest. "This some kind of joke?"

Jinbe, as always, remained unshaken. Not so much as a twitch disturbed his practiced serenity.
He settled onto the tatami mat with the solemnity of one who honors time itself. His movements were deliberate, expansive. Selecting a pristine white sheet from the box, he handled it with the reverence reserved for living things.

"This is tradition," he said, his voice steady yet gentle as flowing water. "It's heritage."

Ace scoffed, rolling his eyes hard enough to strain the sockets. He could already predict it: another philosophical lecture. He didn't want metaphors. He wanted... hell, he didn't even know. Maybe to hit something. To sit in silence. To disappear for days. Or forever.

Jinbe began folding the paper with exacting precision, his large hands executing methodical movements at perfect angles.

"Each form carries meaning," he continued. "A tsuru represents hope and longevity. A frog may symbolize return—like coming home. A flower speaks of renewal. A dragon, inner strength."

He paused, glancing up briefly. "You may choose any. Or create your own."

Ace didn't answer immediately. Just watched—arms still locked across his chest like armor against the storm brewing within. His rigid shoulders betrayed tension the defensive posture couldn't conceal. Half-lidded eyes tracked Jinbe's every movement with poorly veiled suspicion, as if assessing a threat... yet something else simmered beneath. Curiosity. Reluctant fascination.

The truth was, he'd never been good with his hands. At least, not for this kind of work. The sort that demanded delicacy. Patience. Attention. His hands had been schooled in striking, igniting, pushing away—not in building.

Small, fragile things never lasted long around him.

"Looks easy," he muttered, reaching out to grab a random red sheet—not thinking much about the color, though perhaps he'd chosen red by instinct. Warm. Vibrant. Familiar.

He attempted a fold. His fingers, accustomed to brute force, fumbled the precise motion. A crease went crooked. The paper crumpled, then tore at one corner with a sharp, papery snap.

Ace bit out a curse through clenched teeth, more furious with himself than the paper.

Jinbe lifted his gaze silently. The sound of tearing seemed to hang weighted in the air for a suspended moment, but he didn't scold. Didn't rush to fix it. Just observed, then spoke in that calm, measured tone that cut deeper than any shout:

"Paper is fragile. But it takes strength and focus to become something."

He made the tsuru dance between his fingers, its wingtip catching the room's pale light.

"And even torn... it can still cut."

Ace lifted his gaze, locking eyes with the man. There was no judgment there. Just... something that edged dangerously close to truth. It didn't hit like a punch—nothing aggressive about it. It struck like a mirror. Cold. Unexpected. Unsettling. One he'd rather not face.

"You saying I'm just paper?" he shot back, voice dripping with defensive sarcasm.

Jinbe didn't even blink.

"I'm saying even paper has more layers than you let people see."

Ace almost laughed. Almost told him to go to hell. But something caught in his throat—maybe the lump forming there, maybe the realization that walking away would just be another escape.

So he looked down at the red paper instead—now slightly crumpled, one corner torn, but still there. Still whole enough to try again.

With a measured exhale, he folded once more. The crease came out crooked. Uneven. But folded nonetheless.

Jinbe let silence flood the room like an incoming tide. Not heavy, not light—just inevitable. A silence that demanded no response, only presence. The kind of silence that spoke volumes beyond words.

After a long while, Jinbe spoke softly, almost as if thinking aloud:

"The longest battles begin with the first fold." He paused, eyes still tracing the paper's edges. "And yours... it started before you even drew breath, didn't it?"

Ace froze from the inside out.

The words had hooked something deep in his gut—something he'd spent a lifetime trying to bury. His throat constricted. He swallowed hard, too quickly. Looked away as if merely tired. Pretended it meant nothing.

But the truth was, he hadn't been this transparent in years.

The sound of folding paper reclaimed the space—gentle, rhythmic, like clockwork without a clock. Outside, the sun dipped slowly beyond the horizon. Light seeping through the blinds had grown warmer now—golden, nearly amber—washing the room in late afternoon hues. As if time itself had slowed its march within these four walls.

Ace sank deeper into the worn leather chair, his body relaxing just enough to maintain the illusion of presence. His eyes, however, remained locked on Jinbe's hands—those large, steady hands that moved with such deliberate certainty. Each fold appeared both meticulously rehearsed and deeply personal. There was a ceremonial slowness to the motions. A reverence for the paper itself. A level of care that left him profoundly unsettled.

This wasn't just folding. It was intention made manifest.

"Have you done origami before?" Jinbe asked casually, without looking up.

Ace hesitated. The impulse to lie rose instinctively. But lying to Jinbe was pointless—and lying to himself even more so.

"No," he finally answered, his voice scraping rough.

Jinbe simply nodded, as if he'd already known. He selected another sheet from the wooden box—white this time—and began working it between his fingers. The paper glided through his hands with the effortless grace of someone who understands the precise timing of every action.

"Origami has ancient roots," he began, his voice quiet yet warm with quiet authority. "It traveled from China with paper itself. But it was here in Japan that it became true art."

He folded once more with surgical precision.

"In the beginning, it was only for religious ceremonies. Something sacred. Ritualistic. With time... it became gesture. Gift. Symbol."

He rotated the paper delicately between his fingers as if displaying something alive. Ace remained silent, yet his eyes never left the unfolding creation.

"When you offer origami, you're speaking without words. Wishes, feelings, prayers. Sometimes an apology. Other times, a reminder that you're still here."

With a final crease, he lifted the completed tsuru. White. Unadorned. Wings spread wide as if moments from taking flight.

"A crane. They say it lives a thousand years. Those who gift a senbazuru—a thousand folded cranes—are wishing for peace. Strength to endure. Or healing for a wounded heart."

Ace's eyebrow arched sharply, skepticism dripping from his posture. His arms recrossed over his chest like armor locking into place.

"Superstition," he muttered, the word dripping with skepticism. "How long would it even take to make a thousand of these?"

His gaze dropped to his own lopsided attempt—the red paper now even more crumpled. Fragile. Imperfect.

"It's just paper," he concluded, his voice flat. Almost accusatory.

Jinbe didn't rush to reply. He rotated the tsuru one final time before setting it gently on the table between them. The small paper crane rested there, motionless. Yet it seemed to occupy more space than its dimensions should allow.

"Perhaps it is superstition," he said at last, still not lifting his eyes, "but I believe some people are worth the effort."

The words fell between them like a stone into still water. No splash, but with enough weight to momentarily silence everything else in the room.

Jinbe allowed the ghost of a smile to touch the corner of his mouth as he positioned the tsuru carefully on the table's surface between them. Not pushing it forward. Not directly offering. Just... leaving it there.

Ace didn't respond. But his eyes lingered on the origami longer than before. Not with interest. Not with acceptance. Rather like someone trying to decipher an unfamiliar code—one he hadn't yet learned to read.

The white tsuru remained there, motionless, its wings half-spread—a promise of something Ace wasn't yet sure he wanted.

But he didn't leave.

And that alone meant something.

Ace scoffed, the sound devoid of humor.

"That sounds like something you'd say just to make me talk."

"I'm not trying to make you speak," Jinbe replied with his usual tranquility, his voice deep as a slow-moving river. "I'm showing you there are other ways to feel. Even when you can't yet put it into words."

Ace looked away, irritation flashing across his features but no real bite behind it. He narrowed his eyes at the window instead. The sun had dipped lower, painting the distant buildings in shades of burnt orange. Outside, the city carried on with its usual hurried indifference, unaware that within those quiet walls, two battles had been waged in silence: one with words, the other with paper.

And neither battle would be won in a single encounter.

Ace didn't respond. He simply glared at the origami figures spread across the table as if they were taunting him—the crane, the flower, the dragon. His jaw clenched tight, the muscle twitching visibly. Those fragile paper creations seemed to mock him somehow, and yet he couldn't look away.

Jinbe remained seated, his posture the picture of tranquility, anchored in endless patience. He didn't push. Didn't demand immediate answers. Instead, he selected another sheet—this one a muted gold—and began folding with those same deliberate, unhurried motions. When finished, he placed it gently beside the others: a small star with crisp points that caught the waning afternoon light as if harboring its own inner glow.

"You read people well," he observed, eyes still on the origami. "You're observant. You know when someone's hurting. When they're happy. You notice."

A brief pause settled between them. The paper bird on the table seemed to hum faintly in the amber light seeping through the blinds.
"But when it comes to your own feelings... you lock up. Clench your fists. Seal your lips. As if by staying silent, what you feel might simply evaporate into nothingness."

Ace drew a slow, almost reluctant breath. The motion was restrained—as if even inhaling required conscious effort.

"And it doesn't actually go away, does it?" he murmured, avoiding eye contact.

"No," Jinbe answered with his characteristic calm.

With practiced care, he selected another sheet—this time a deep blue. His hands moved with near-meditative precision until a lotus flower took shape. He placed it beside the star, arranging them like pieces on a silent altar.

"It just changes form. Sometimes into anger. Sometimes silence. Sometimes guilt."

Ace shifted uncomfortably in his chair. His hands lay open but rigid against his thighs—not quite fists, yet vibrating with tension. He seemed poised to speak—lips parted slightly, gaze fixed on some invisible midpoint. But the words caught somewhere between his throat and chest, suspended in unspoken weight.

Instead, he reached out and took the tsuru. His fingers cradled it with uncharacteristic delicacy—almost awkwardly, as if the gesture felt foreign to hands accustomed to violence. He turned it slowly, as though the weight of that fragile paper carried more meaning than he'd ever admit aloud.

"If I make one of these," Ace murmured, still avoiding eye contact, "it doesn't mean I'm opening up."

Jinbe allowed a faint smile—not mocking, but welcoming. A patient expression from someone who understood the value of waiting.

"And if you do, it also doesn't mean you're losing."

Only then did he meet Ace's gaze directly. His eyes held a gentle steadfastness, calm and unwavering like the late afternoon light filtering through the room.

"No battle is won with a single strike. Least of all the ones we fight within ourselves."

The silence that followed was thick yet not oppressive—the kind of quiet that leaves room to breathe. Like storm-heavy clouds still deciding between rain and sunlight.

Ace stood. His movements were deliberate, almost reluctant, as if his body resisted the impulse to leave. But this wasn't retreat. He still clutched the white tsuru in his hands. Paused for a fractured second, posture half-turned and hesitant—as though something tugged at him to stay, even as he pretended otherwise.

"You gonna make me fold these things every day?" Ace asked, his voice hovering between disdain and reluctant curiosity.

"Only if you want to," Jinbe replied, already reaching for another sheet of paper as if the answer were that simple.

Ace didn't respond. Didn't even turn his head. But his breathing seemed to ease slightly, as though he'd swallowed words he wasn't yet ready to voice.

Before leaving, in a quick, almost absentminded gesture, he left a folded piece of paper at the corner of the table. Hastily made, crooked, with uneven edges. A frog—or something resembling one. Ugly. Imperfect. But undeniably present.

Jinbe didn't move. Just observed. And smiled silently to himself.

Then he made another fold. The paper transformed gradually beneath his fingers as his notes lay open on the table:

Preliminary diagnostic impression: Signs of unprocessed emotional trauma, likely related to abandonment and distorted self-perception. Behavior consistent with mild alexithymia and emotional avoidance mechanisms. Occasional verbal aggression appears as an automatic response to perceived vulnerability.

Jinbe knew this would be difficult.

Ace walked slowly down the hallway, his footsteps muffled echoes on the linoleum floor. For once, he didn't bump into anyone—a quiet irony. Him, who always lingered, who was usually the last to leave, now the first to finish.

Perhaps because the session had left an odd aftertaste in his mouth. Or maybe he was simply tired of running.

When he reached the waiting room, he spotted Beckman standing in a secluded corner near the water cooler. Phone pressed to his ear, his body leaned slightly forward, shoulders relaxed. His free hand gestured in restrained motions, as if explaining something important yet unhurried. That familiar tone—steady, calm, unwavering.

The man was always on the phone.

No matter the time or place—there was invariably someone on the other end. A colleague, an appointment, some pending matter. Ace sometimes wondered if it was truly work... or just a way to maintain distance. To avoid sitting in silence with anyone. Even himself.

Ace didn't announce his arrival. Didn't approach. He simply stopped near the doorway, arms crossed, gaze locked on Beckman as if trying to decipher some hidden code. Not the spoken words—those didn't matter. It was the pauses he studied. The way Beckman's eyes darted away. The sigh he stifled. The faint crease between his brows when he thought no one was watching.

As if he could read between the lines of everything left unsaid.

Adults are strange, he thought. Burdened with responsibilities, papers to sign, schedules to keep... yet not an ounce of true freedom or adventure to show for it.

They did everything right. Made decisions, paid bills, planned for the future. But they seemed increasingly trapped. Tangled in promises, protocols, and things they never said outright. As if constantly holding themselves back.

For Ace—and for his brothers—it was simple.

If you want someone close, you hold onto them with everything you've got. Even if it hurts. Even if it goes wrong. Even if it costs you everything.

That's how they lived. Fiercely. Impulsively. Painfully sincere. So why the hell did adults have to make everything so damn complicated?

Beckman remained engrossed in his phone call, oblivious to the weight of the gaze fixed upon him. Yet Ace stayed rooted in place, watching, trying to decipher. The call ended with a decisive tap—no visible irritation, yet no peace either. Beckman slid the phone into his jacket pocket and dragged a hand down his face, as if attempting to wipe away exhaustion with his fingertips.

Then he looked up—and found Ace already there, standing a few paces away with posture too deliberately casual to be accidental.

"Finished?" Beckman asked, affecting nonchalance.

Ace didn't respond immediately. Instead, he extended his hand, revealing a clumsy origami—a slightly lopsided crane folded from recycled paper.

"Here. No pockets," he said, as if handing over some trivial object, but the fleeting glance he stole told another story.

Beckman accepted the paper with unexpected care. One wing was crumpled, the folds imperfect—yet undeniably crafted with effort. He offered no comment, simply tucking it into his inner pocket with the solemnity reserved for precious things.
Ace crossed his arms, staring at the water cooler for a long moment before speaking:

"You should apologize to Shanks. You're being kind of ridiculous."

Beckman arched an eyebrow.

"Ridiculous?"

"Yeah. Breakfast was ridiculous. You two are acting weird. Shanks still behaves like himself, but he's put up this... barrier between you now." The situation was somewhat clear to Ace—Shanks was drawing a line, one that hadn't existed before. If he had to guess, he'd say it was a form of self-preservation.

Beckman let out a short, humorless laugh.

"Didn't realize you were an expert in couple's dynamics."

"I'm not. But I know when someone's running away, and I know when someone's faking being fine."

Beckman fell silent.

Ace shrugged, his tone shifting slightly—less mocking, more direct.

"As much as I enjoy watching you two mess up... Luffy's starting to notice. He doesn't ask, but he watches. He feels. He'll figure it out on his own, and when he does—it'll hurt. Him."

The words seemed to strike Beckman like a physical blow. His gaze dropped to the floor momentarily, as if each of Ace's syllables carried tangible weight now settling across his shoulders.

"I know," he murmured, barely audible.

"Then do something about it!"

Beckman nodded, but offered nothing more.

The silence between them stretched long, yet not uncomfortably so. And deep within Beckman's pocket, the lopsided crane remained—a small, silent, impossible-to-ignore reminder.

The waiting room was cold and unwelcoming, bathed in the sterile glow of fluorescent lights and adorned with generic floral prints. The hard plastic chairs creaked with every shift in position—which, in Ace's case, was constant.

He sprawled across two seats, arms crossed, boots propped on the chair ahead. He'd just made a scathing remark about Shanks and Beckman's "unacknowledged marriage," earning a muffled snort of laughter from the older redhead.

Beckman shook his head slightly, still chuckling, and tossed aside the worn-out magazine he'd been pretending to read on his lap.

"I should increase your allowance after this free therapy session," he drawled, not taking his eyes off Ace.

Ace stared at him for a beat, one eyebrow arched in suspicion.

"...We get an allowance?"

Beckman blinked. "Yes. Sabo told me he manages your funds. Didn't he mention it?"

Ace's expression transformed in the span of a heartbeat. First, confusion. Then, shock. Finally—and inevitably—unadulterated rage.

He shot up so fast the chair screeched against the floor. His index finger jabbed the air violently as his voice boomed loud enough to echo down the hallway:

"THAT LITTLE SHIT'S BEEN EMBEZZLING OUR MONEY ALL THIS TIME?!"

Several meters away, Sabo—who was just returning to the waiting room—sneezed violently. He coughed, then wiped his nose with his sleeve. An inexplicable chill ran down his spine, and he frowned.

"...Ace," he muttered. "I feel like I've done something. I just don't know what yet.”

Twenty minutes later, the door to Sabo's therapy room swung open, revealing the blond boy with his forehead wrapped in a thin gauze bandage—a souvenir from yesterday's chaos. Luffy trailed behind him, clutching a crayon-scribbled drawing and chewing on a fruit-flavored candy the therapist had given him as a reward. Bringing up the rear, Shanks emerged while rolling up his shirt sleeves.

Ace was on his feet the moment he spotted them, his gaze locking onto Sabo with missile-guided precision. Sabo froze mid-step upon noticing his brother's murderous glare and slowly raised his hands in surrender.

"You're an idiot."

The words sliced through the air like a stone hurled into still waters. Without waiting for a response, Ace spun on his heel with violent abruptness, his sneakers already pounding toward the parking lot. His shoulders were rigid with tension, the sharp echoes of his footsteps reverberating through the clinic's near-empty hallway.

Sabo remained rooted in place for a suspended moment, blinking in silent bewilderment. He turned to Beckman with a furrowed brow, his expression that of someone searching for subtitles to a scene he couldn't comprehend.

Beckman merely shrugged, his eyes half-lidded as he mimed lighting an imaginary cigarette with the corner of his mouth.

"Embezzlement," he stated flatly.

Sabo's eyes widened as if he'd been slapped.

"What?!" But he didn't wait for clarification. He took off after his brother like a human missile, his sandals slapping frantically against the polished floor. "It's not like that!!"

Minutes later, as if following some well-rehearsed ritual, they were all gathered once more inside the car. The same seating arrangement as before, but with a different atmosphere—thick. Sweltering. Tense.

The silence had weight to it. An invisible presence spreading between the seats, occupying every inch of available space.

Beckman drove with a studied calm that bordered on unnatural, his left hand on the wheel and his right resting on the open window frame. The wind whipped against his face as if trying to provoke some reaction—to no avail.

Sabo slumped deeper into the backseat, arms tightly crossed and brow furrowed, his eyes fixed on some distant point of the front seat's headrest while his mind raced like an overheating processor.

Shanks stared straight through the windshield with an inscrutable expression, as if watching some private film projected onto the glass—one only he could see.

Ace leaned against the opposite window, his head propped on a clenched fist, eyes tracking the sluggish crawl of the passing landscape. The glass merged his reflection with the outside world into a single blurred image.

And amidst it all... Luffy.

Perched in the center of the rear seat with legs casually crossed as though lounging on their living room sofa, he chewed through a handful of candies with the meticulous focus of a food critic. Each crunch landed with dry precision.

Crunch. Crunch.

Then without warning, his arm shot toward the ceiling as he suddenly pressed his face against the window, eyes alight with discovery.
"LOOK! A DUCK!" he bellowed, smashing his face against the glass with the wonder of someone witnessing divine intervention.

The outburst startled everyone—Beckman tapped the brakes reflexively, Sabo clicked his tongue in exasperation, Shanks blinked as if returning from another dimension, and Ace made a subtle grimace.

"Luffy... those are geese," Sabo muttered wearily, dragging a hand down his face.

"Same difference!" Luffy declared with the conviction of a peer-reviewed scientific theory. "Can we adopt one?"

Ace frowned without bothering to look. "A duck?"

"Goose, Ace," Shanks corrected automatically, his voice drawling.

"Whatever!" Luffy countered with an exaggerated shrug. "We can still name him Duck! He'll be our mascot!"

Silence reclaimed the car's interior, but this time... not quite as oppressive.

Beckman released a long, drawn-out sigh, as if exhaling his remaining patience through the open window. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel, knuckles bleaching white against the dark leather.

In the backseat, Sabo slid several inches downward, curling into himself as if trying to vanish into the upholstery. His right hand shielded his eyes; the left tapped a nervous rhythm against his own arm.

But Shanks...

Shanks turned his head slowly, the movement of a man experiencing divine revelation. His expression was solemn, contemplative, almost philosophical.

"Hm... A duck..."

Silence.

Just the engine's steady hum. Just the wind whistling through the window. Just Luffy demolishing another candy. Then the question escaped Shanks' lips with involuntary sincerity:

"We really could get a duck, couldn't we?"

"I KNEW YOU'D GET IT, SHANKS!" Luffy roared triumphantly, throwing his arms up like a coach celebrating a championship goal.

Ace groaned loudly, thumping his head against the seatback with a muffled thud.

"You two cannot be serious..."

"Of course we are," Shanks replied, his smile now radiating an unnatural calm. "Just imagine: it waddling through the house with those ridiculous little feet... interrupting tense moments with dramatic 'quacks.' Like having a live comedy soundtrack."

"EXACTLY!" Luffy fired back, bouncing on the seat with such unrestrained enthusiasm he nearly toppled onto Sabo. "He could attend family meetings and give political commentary with strategic 'quacks.' Every time Beckman speaks, he delivers a judgmental 'quack.' It'll be legendary."

Sabo massaged his temples, eyes clenched shut as if summoning supernatural willpower not to implode. Across from him, Beckman remained silent, but his knuckles had now bleached white from their death grip on the steering wheel.

"We need name ideas!" Luffy blurted, still riding his euphoria. "Like... Captain Quack? Lord Feathers? Doctor Goose?"

Shanks clapped his hands, laughing.

"General Quack-Quack!"

"Sofa Commander!" Luffy howled, laughing so hard he collapsed backward into the seat.

Ace muttered under his breath, his tone low but dripping with menace: "If that duck lays an egg on my pillow... I'm putting it in the frying pan."

Luffy whipped around to face him with sudden solemnity, eyes narrowed to slits. "That's cannibalism."

A dramatic silence fell over the car. "Our duck will be family," Luffy continued, jabbing a finger emphatically. "And family... doesn't get eaten, Ace."

Shanks nodded with judicial gravity, like a judge upholding a sacred verdict: "This is truth."

It was then that Beckman finally shattered his silence, growling through clenched teeth as if teetering on the edge of existential collapse: "If a duck appears in that house... I'm moving out."

Seizing the moment with perfect comedic timing, Luffy screeched: "QUACK!"

The sound was so piercingly accurate it reverberated through the car as if the spectral duck itself had manifested. Sabo and Ace, thoroughly defeated, released muffled laughter, shaking their heads in surrender.

Chapter Text

The cushions lay scattered across the living room floor as if a tiny hurricane—one with a full name: Akagami Chaos Luffy—had torn through. Some formed makeshift barricades; others had been stacked with dubious artistic intent. And there, in the heart of the chaos, was Luffy himself: completely cocooned up to his nose in a plush dinosaur-print blanket, his mismatched eyes the only visible proof of life. This was the legendary Level Five Burrito Mode—dubbed by Sabo, documented by Ace, and utterly unbreakable.

Shanks stretched his legs, the oversized hoodie slipping off one shoulder. The hood stubbornly covered one eye—he tried to adjust it, but his free hand was already occupied. On his lap, the Monopoly cards trembled atop the box lid, threatening to collapse at the slightest whisper of cheating. His forced concentration was punctuated only by lazy grins and the occasional poorly disguised yawn.

"Who bought Tokyo?" Sabo asked, adjusting his glasses and furrowing his brow like he’d just uncovered corporate fraud. A blue pen, tucked into the collar of his striped pajamas, served as a makeshift tie—the final touch for someone taking the game far too seriously.

"ME!" Luffy announced with the pride of a ruthless tycoon, sinking deeper into the blanket until he was essentially just a pair of eyes and a voice. "And there are two hotels on it!"

Shanks let out a low, impressed whistle. "Do those hotels come with spa services?"

"Nope. Just food," Luffy declared, smug as a king surveying his edible kingdom.

As the three of them bickered, Beckman—perched on the opposite side of their makeshift board—seized the collective distraction to slide a handful of paper bills toward Shanks beneath the box lid. A silent bribe, smooth as a card shark’s sleight of hand. Shanks arched a brow, stifling a laugh as he pocketed the cash with the practiced nonchalance of a man who’d definitely never been innocent a day in his life.

Now, don’t misunderstand—Shanks still kept a careful distance from that man. He was genuinely trying to enforce some boundaries after the previous day’s debacle, when Beckman had all but thrown it in his face that he felt nothing, Shanks wouldn't humble himself for anyone's affection.

But this? This was Monopoly.

And Monopoly is war.

And in war, Shanks wasn’t about to discriminate where his funding came from.

Ace, half-sprawled across a torn cushion with foam leaking out the side like the guts of a defeated pillow, cleared his throat with theatrical force. "Alright, apocalypse tycoon, your turn."

Luffy, with the solemn focus of a missile technician handling live ordnance, scooped up the dice in both hands, shook them like a maraca in a hurricane, and launched them with the unfiltered joy of someone who absolutely couldn’t count the dots but worshipped the sacred clatter of plastic on chaos.

The dice tumbled, ricocheted off a cushion, kissed Shanks’ boot, and finally settled.

"I’M GOING TO JAAAAAIIIIIL!" Luffy howled, arms flailing skyward as if he’d just hit the jackpot in a lottery of pure anarchy. The blanket slipped loose in his euphoria, revealing socks plastered with cartoon bananas—because of course they were bananas.

Shanks barked out a laugh, half amusement, half exhausted surrender. Beckman dragged a hand down his face with the weary resolve of a man who’d long since accepted emotional defeat in this household.

Without a word, Ace snatched the nearest cushion and hurled it at his brother’s head with sniper precision.

"Sentenced for excessive theatrics," he declared, like a judge slamming a gavel on the court of This Family Is Insane.

Luffy toppled sideways, cackling, and immediately rewound himself into his blanket cocoon—a chaos moth mid-metamorphosis. The game lurched onward, the disaster escalated, and not a single soul in that room seemed remotely invested in how it ended.

Because in that newly forged household, the game was never about winning. It was about laughing hard enough to forget this whole thing had begun with a lie.

Shanks’ laughter still hung in the air when Luffy—bristling with theatrical outrage—pushed himself up slowly from the cushion-strewn battlefield like a fallen emperor refusing to acknowledge the end of his reign.

Clutched to his chest was a wad of counterfeit bills, some crumpled beyond recognition, others meticulously “customized” with crayon scribbles—as if artistic flair could compensate for their lack of legal tender. Around him, his makeshift empire crumbled: hotels cobbled together from wooden blocks, Lego towers, and even a repurposed salt shaker toppled one by one, like the ruins of a once-great civilization succumbing to economic collapse.

His eyes—wide and dark as a stormcloud—narrowed. A single bead of sweat trailed down his forehead like he’d just confronted the brutal truth of capitalism firsthand.

With a lazy grin curling at the corners of his mouth, Shanks scooped up the dice and tossed them with the careless flourish of a man who'd long since gambled with far higher stakes than Monopoly money. The ivory cubes tumbled across the board with a satisfying clatter before settling into their verdict.

"Four and three... seven," he murmured, the numbers dripping from his tongue like honey laced with arsenic.

The tiny hat-shaped token—crimson, obviously—glided across the polished surface with unnatural precision, coming to rest squarely on Park Place. One of the last unclaimed territories standing.

Luffy choked on his half-masticated chocolate bar, spraying crumbs across the board like shrapnel from an edible explosion.

"NOOOOOO! HOW IS THAT STILL AVAILABLE?!"

Sabo was already frantically shuffling through his property deeds, suspicion darkening his features like storm clouds over the boardwalk.

"That can't be right... I swear I bought that last round."

"You're cheating," Ace accused, jabbing an indignant finger at the board with the exaggerated outrage of someone who'd already accepted defeat but refused to go down without theatrical protest.

Shanks merely raised his hands in mock surrender, the picture of wounded innocence.

"Just the luck of the draw, my friends."

With a weighty thump that resonated through the room, he dropped a towering stack of bills onto the center of the board. It was too much money. Far too much money. The kind of suspicious windfall that would trigger an IRS audit.

Beckman observed the proceedings in silent judgment, taking a measured sip of whiskey while pointedly ignoring how a significant portion of that fortune had recently resided in his own pocket.

"I'll take it," Shanks declared with the smug certainty of a man who lived to stir the pot.

Luffy's face contorted in horror.

"THIS IS THEFT! THIS IS FRAUD! THIS IS—"

"Capitalism," Sabo deadpanned, cutting through the tantrum with surgical precision.

Shanks' laughter filled the room as he sank deeper into the couch cushions, the very image of self-satisfaction.

"And now, my dear unfortunate subjects..." He paused for dramatic effect, eyes glinting with mischief. "Should you land here..." Another pause, letting the tension build. "You'll be paying luxury rent."

Ace threw his cards down in disgust.

"That's it, I'm out. This game's rigged."

Luffy, however, wasn't the surrendering type.

"YOU WON'T BEAT ME, SHANKS! I'LL TAKE YOU DOWN!"

The red-haired menace merely chuckled, stretching like a contented predator. "I'd like to see you try."

Shanks was still laughing.

Luffy wasn’t.

Not anymore.

“My turn,” he intoned, solemn as a judge delivering a death sentence. The room held its breath.

He took the dice in both hands with the reverence of a gambler blowing on his last lucky charm. Sabo watched through half-lidded eyes, his entire body coiled in anticipation. Ace froze mid-bite, a peanut suspended in air like time itself had stopped. Even Beckman lowered his glass a fraction, the ice cubes clinking softly in the sudden stillness.

The dice took flight.

They danced across the board in wild arcs - caroming off a crumpled Chance card, tumbling through scattered play money, rattling like bones in a cup... before finally coming to rest.

Eleven.

Luffy tracked his token's progress with the unbearable tension of a man walking barefoot across broken glass.

One square... two... three...
Each movement drew blood. Seven... eight...
He passed "Go To Jail" without a glance, skirted past Shanks' railroad empire.
Nine... ten...

Eleven.

The token stopped.

All eyes followed.

Boardwalk.

With a hotel.

Shanks' hotel.

Luffy turned to stone.

The world held its breath in a silence that stretched into eternity. Air trapped itself in his lungs. The dinosaur blanket slid from his shoulders like a theater curtain falling on tragedy's final act.

The realization hit before coherent thought could form. And before anyone could muster a word...

Shanks leaned forward with deliberate slowness, elbows propped on his knees like a king settling onto his throne. His eyes sparkled with that particular brand of childish malice that borders on criminal - the kind that makes saints consider violence.

"Pay up, Luffy."

The words landed with the finality of a guillotine's drop.

Luffy's gaze darted across the battlefield - from the board to his pitiful stack of bills, from Shanks' triumphant grin to Beckman's impassive face. A last flicker of hope trembled in his wide eyes, fragile as a soap bubble.

But Beckman, with the stoic calm of a man who'd witnessed everything from mutinies to failed coups (and had the gray hairs to prove it), merely arched one disapproving eyebrow.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, voice drier than desert wind. "I warned you not to mortgage everything down to the sacred cash cow."

"Her name... was Cleopatra..." Luffy whispered, his voice cracking like thin ice over grief. "She was... the beating heart of my empire.”

Shanks heaved a sigh so theatrically profound it could have earned him a standing ovation at the Globe Theatre, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead like a Shakespearean actor delivering his final soliloquy.

"A tragic loss indeed..." he proclaimed, gazing upon the Monopoly board as though surveying the smoldering ruins of a once-great civilization. "But business... is business."

Ace bit down on his fist hard enough to leave teeth marks—but it was futile. A snort of laughter burst free, rough and uncontained, like a cannon shot fired in a library.

Sabo, ever the restrained strategist, had already begun muttering calculations under his breath, his fingers darting through the air as if he could somehow recalculate the numbers and salvage the collapsed empire. His eyes remained locked on the board with the horrified fixation of an economist witnessing hyperinflation in real time.

Beckman, meanwhile, stirred his juice with methodical slowness, the ice cubes clinking like a death knell. His expression was that of a man who had seen empires rise and crumble before—and who had learned, through bitter experience, that everyone drowns in their own hubris eventually.

And then—

Luffy exploded.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! I'M BROKE! RU-I-NED!"

His wail shook the walls, the sheer force of his despair sending a loose Monopoly hotel skittering off the board. The blanket, his last remaining comfort, lay abandoned at his feet like the fallen banner of a defeated warlord.
He threw himself onto the floor with a theatrical crash, sending cushions flying in every direction like shrapnel from his shattered dreams. His legs kicked violently against the carpet, as if the very ground beneath him were personally responsible for his financial ruin. His arms splayed out in a crucifixion pose - a martyr sacrificed upon the altar of cutthroat capitalism.

"HE'S DESTROYED EVERYTHING!" Luffy wailed, rolling dramatically through the blankets like a tragedian performing his magnum opus. "MY BOVINE KINGDOM! MY INN EMPIRE! MY LIFE'S WORK!"

The blanket trailed behind him like a monarch's fallen cape, and amidst the soft carnage of scattered pillows, he cut a figure somewhere between Greek epic hero and overtired toddler throwing a world-ending tantrum.

"WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?!"

Ace couldn't resist - he plucked a peanut from his stash and launched it with sniper precision. It stuck momentarily to Luffy's forehead before dropping like the final nail in his economic coffin.

"Drama," Ace deadpanned around another peanut, chewing with the satisfaction of a man watching karma in action.

"You just lost, Luffy," Sabo tried to reason, still mentally rearranging numbers that refused to add up favorably. "It was bad luck. Statistically speaking-"

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, SABO!" Luffy howled, clutching a decorative pillow to his chest like it contained the last remnants of his dignity. "IT WAS A MEAT-BASED ECONOMY!!”

Shanks collapsed sideways onto the couch in a fit of uncontrollable laughter, his mirth so violent it nearly sent his drink tumbling to the floor in a sacrificial offering to the gods of chaos. Without a second thought, he grabbed an entire fistful of Monopoly money and hurled it skyward like a conquering emperor scattering coins to the plebeians. The bills fluttered down in a slow-motion blizzard of fake wealth, dusting Luffy's devastated form and his emotional battlefield in a cruel mockery of financial snowfall.

"And thus," Shanks declared, throwing his arms wide like a symphony conductor who'd finally snapped under pressure, "CHAOS CLAIMS VICTORY OVER THE MOST CAPITALIST GAME OF ALL!"

"You only won because Beckman bankrolled your entire operation," Ace accused through a mouthful of peanuts, his narrowed eyes burning with the righteous indignation of someone who'd witnessed corporate corruption firsthand.

Shanks drew himself up with all the faux dignity of a disgraced aristocrat, pressing a dramatic hand to his heart. "Lies! Slander! An outrageous defamation of character!"

"...It's true," Beckman murmured without looking up from his drink, his voice cutting through the revelry like a judge's gavel.

Silence.

The effect was instantaneous. All four heads turned in slow motion - Luffy froze mid-meltdown, his eyes widening to saucer-size as if he'd just witnessed the ultimate familial betrayal. Ace's hand hovered motionless over the peanut bag, his snack forgotten. Sabo removed his glasses with the deliberate slowness of a detective preparing to deliver a devastating revelation.

And Shanks...

Shanks simply stopped existing for a full three seconds, his expression the very picture of a man realizing he'd left the metaphorical oven on while the house burned down around him.

For one suspended moment, the only sound in the room was the hollow slurp of juice being drawn through a straw - a mundane soundtrack to high treason.

Then, as if the weight of revelation was too absurd to bear with solemnity, Shanks threw his head back and unleashed a roar of laughter so scandalous it shook the couch cushions. He slapped his thigh repeatedly, the sharp cracks of palm against denim punctuating each guffaw. In those precious seconds, the tension between him and Beckman dissolved like sugar in rum, leaving behind the familiar comfort of their daily absurdities.

"BETRAYED BY MY OWN FINANCIAL BACKER!" he howled, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes from the sheer poetry of it all.

Beckman shrugged with the practiced nonchalance of a man who'd weathered countless storms, his voice drier than the Sahara at high noon: "You don't have credit in-game either. Be grateful for sponsorships."

Luffy sprang upright like a jack-in-the-box, his hair exploding in every direction like a startled hedgehog. The blanket slid precariously off one shoulder, hanging like the tattered banner of a disgraced knight. In his trembling fist, he still clutched the counterfeit bills - crumpled monuments to his financial ruin, as worthless as shares in a sinking ship.

"BECKMAN!" he screeched, voice cracking with the anguish of a businessman discovering embezzlement, "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MY SPONSOR TOO!!”

"Welcome to the adult world," Beckman replied with the patient cadence of someone explaining compound interest to a kindergartener armed with crayons and boundless confusion.

Sabo, ever the silent strategist, mentally cataloged this exchange like a Wall Street analyst spotting an undervalued stock - or more accurately, like recognizing a foolproof investment with guaranteed returns.

Shanks melted back into the couch cushions with the contentment of a sunbathing lion, limbs splayed in victorious abandon. "Shall we declare collective bankruptcy now and order sushi?" he proposed, as if suggesting they all jump into a communal money pit together.

Ace, thoroughly defeated and biologically betrayed by his own stomach, didn't even pretend to hesitate: "If it comes with teriyaki glaze, I'm in."

As the debate over rolls and condiments escalated into what could loosely be termed "culinary negotiations," Luffy executed a stealth maneuver worthy of a cat burglar, liberating exactly 47.3% of Shanks' paper fortune in a move that straddled the line between theft and redistribution of wealth.

Sabo quietly restructured the entire board with a color-coded system so complex it might as well have been the tax code - complete with loopholes only he understood.

Ace committed himself to the peanut jar with the single-minded devotion of a man who knew these salted legumes were all that stood between him and hangry violence.

And Beckman?

Beckman simply watched Shanks laugh. And for one fleeting moment - in this disaster zone of fictional failures and absurd victories, amidst the pillow fort ruins and the worthless currency - something between them felt, just slightly, lighter than air.

Shanks stretched out his arm with the languid grace of a man who'd never hurried a day in his life, fingers closing around his phone. "Round two?" he asked, already navigating the delivery app with the serene confidence of someone who'd never made plans beyond his next meal.

"NEVER AGAIN!" Luffy bellowed, launching a pillow with enough force to suggest personal betrayal. It connected squarely with Shanks' face in a puff of feathers.

This only made him laugh harder, the sound ricocheting off the walls like loose change in a dryer.

And the game, of course, resumed thirty minutes later.

As the night wore on, the gaming session dissolved into quiet. One by one, the living room lights winked out until only the low glow of a table lamp remained, casting swaying shadows across the walls like silent spectators. The makeshift nest of mattresses on the floor - a kingdom of tangled blankets and displaced pillows - now cradled Luffy, Ace and Sabo in their pajamas, eyelids heavy but stubbornly fighting sleep's pull. Shanks lounged against an armchair nearby, the weathered copy of The Myths of Theseus open in his hands, its spine creased with history.

Beckman sat in his customary corner, observing the scene with quiet intensity, tonight's glass of water catching the lamplight where whiskey usually swam.

Shanks turned a page, the whisper of paper blending with his soft narration that wove through the room like smoke.

"And so, Theseus—the great hero of Athens—died alone and forgotten on a distant island, betrayed by those who had once sworn loyalty to him."

Luffy wrinkled his nose, burying his chin deeper into the pillow with a huff. "What a dumb ending."

Sabo rolled onto his side, propping his head up with one hand—the scholar’s pose he always took when debating myths versus reality. "It’s a classic trope. Greek heroes always get tragic endings."

Ace grumbled, yanking the blanket up to his chin like a shield against the moral of the story. "That’s ‘cause heroes are idiots. They do everything for everyone else, and in the end? Nobody even remembers their names right."

Luffy nodded with a sleepy grunt, his cheek smushed against the fabric. "Being a hero sounds boring. They don’t get a choice—gotta save the world even if they don’t wanna. I’d hate it."

Shanks closed the book slowly, the worn cover sighing shut. His gaze lingered on Luffy—not with judgment, but with a quiet, almost parental curiosity. "And what? wouldn’t you want to be Something grand? A hero, or... a king? A demigod?"

Then, before Luffy could retort, Shanks reached out and pinched the boy’s plump cheeks—god, he’d put on weight, Shanks noted with a flicker of warmth. It wasn't that skinny kid you found on the streets, Adorable, really.

"Everyone keeps expecting me to become something grand," Luffy murmured, his words thick with sleep as he stubbornly fought to keep his eyelids from surrendering. His fingers clutched at the pillowcase like an anchor. "I'm... scared I won't be what they imagine..." A slow blink, heavy as the tide. "Is it so wrong to just want to be... me?"

Shanks went perfectly still—the forgotten book splayed open across his lap like a wounded bird. The lamplight carved deep shadows across his face, etching lines of uncharacteristic surprise into his features. In the corner, Beckman lowered his glass with deliberate slowness, his gaze locked onto Luffy with the intensity of a man who'd just heard a thunderclap in an empty sky.

"Dreams belong to no one but you, Luffy," Shanks said, his voice softer than sea foam, gentler than the hand he might have used to cradle something precious. "They don't stop being yours just because someone else hung their hopes on them."

Luffy turned his face into the pillow, his lashes fluttering like moth wings against his cheeks—still resisting, still fighting. "But if everyone's already decided what I should be..." A pause, a breath. "How is it still my dream then?"

The room plunged into silence. Even Ace—who would typically have a razor-edged quip at the ready—held his tongue, staring at his brother with an unfamiliar expression, as if seeing him for the first time. Sabo worried his lower lip between his teeth, his mind visibly churning through philosophies and childhood promises alike.

It was Beckman who shattered the quiet, his voice as steady as ever, but carrying a new weight—the kind that sinks into bones:

"Then don't let them decide for you."

Luffy lifted his gaze to meet Beckman's, his dark eyes catching the dim light like twin pools of liquid shadow - absorbing, reflecting, hiding nothing.

Beckman continued, raising his glass in a half-motion that could have been a toast or a surrender before setting it down with deliberate care: "If one day you choose to become a hero, let it be because your own hands reached for that mantle. Not because someone else shoved you onto the pedestal."

A small, almost sorrowful smile tugged at Shanks' lips - the kind of smile that lives in the space between pride and melancholy. "And if you never quite figure out what you're meant to be..." He snapped the book shut with a soft thump, the sound final yet gentle. "That's more than alright too. You don't owe the world anything beyond being unapologetically yourself."

Luffy lay still for a long moment, eyelids drooping like sails losing wind, until a yawn overtook him and he sank deeper into the blanket nest. "I think... I just wanna be free first." The words slipped out feather-light but carried the weight of an anchor being lifted.

Shanks chuckled low in his throat, the sound warm as aged whiskey. For a fleeting second, his thoughts wandered through decades-old memories - sun-bleached docks and promises whispered over sake cups. Then, with silent understanding, his eyes found Beckman's across the room. That rare, wordless exchange passed between them - a conversation held in lifted brows and softened gazes that spoke volumes. "Sounds like a perfect place to start."

And so, amidst crooked pillows that cradled dreams, half-told stories suspended in the air like unfinished sentences, and laughter that still clung to the corners of the room like stubborn cobwebs—they drifted into sleep. Not in any orderly fashion, but tangled together in comfortable chaos, as if exhaustion had claimed them before life could demand seriousness again.

There existed in that moment something suspended between improvisation and intimacy. Between secrets too tender to voice and affections too profound to require naming—the kind that live in shared breaths rather than declarations.

The future, for now, could keep waiting.

Because not every answer blossoms the moment the question is asked. Sometimes, the simple act of resting—of not performing, of merely being—is itself a beginning.

And perhaps it's precisely in these liminal spaces of silence and choice that certain freedoms take root: when one finally shrugs off the crushing weight of the world's expectations, and learns instead to move through life carrying only what their own hands can willingly hold.

The lights were finally extinguished, doors locked, and silence settled over the upper floor like a heavy quilt. Beckman lay beneath his own bedsheets, sleep eluding him as stubbornly as a fox evading hounds. He’d tossed and turned so many times the sheets had twisted around his legs like maritime ropes after a storm. The bedroom stood hushed save for the muffled tick-tock of the wall clock—each second a metronome counting down his restlessness. The ceiling, faintly illuminated by the hallway light seeping beneath the door, seemed to smirk at his agitation.

A sigh escaped his lips, rough as sandpaper. He couldn’t endure this sensation any longer—that knot in his chest, that silent urgency gnawing at his ribs like a caged thing. He needed to move. To act. And he already knew precisely what.

He swung his legs over the bed’s edge, sliding his feet into waiting slippers with mechanical precision. The hallway’s cold floorboards bit at his soles, a stark contrast to the stifling heat he’d left behind. Beckman moved slowly, as if negotiating with each reluctant muscle that this was, in fact, a rational decision. By the time he paused outside Shanks’ door, his heartbeat thundered in his ears loud enough to drown out common sense.

He stood there for a suspended moment, staring at the dark wood grain as if the door might whisper answers to his unspoken dilemma. The varnish felt cool beneath his fingertips, its polished surface reflecting fragmented glimpses of the hallway light like scattered puzzle pieces. Then—a deliberate inhale. His fingers curled around the chilled doorknob, its metallic bite grounding him as he turned it with all the courage he could muster in that tremulous second.

The door yielded.

Golden lamplight spilled across his vision, warm as aged whiskey, painting the room in hues of honey and amber. There sat Shanks, propped against the carved headboard, his legs draped under a downy duvet that pooled around his waist like liquid cream. An open book rested in his hands, its pages faintly translucent under the light, while his reading glasses slid precariously down the bridge of his nose—giving him the air of a scholar interrupted mid-revelation. The undone buttons of his sleep shirt revealed a crescent of collarbone, pale against the rumpled cotton. His expression held the quietude of deep focus—until movement at the threshold caught his attention.

Their eyes met.

The universe held its breath.

Beckman’s lungs burned with suspended air.

"...You alright?" Shanks’ voice emerged low, textured by the hour’s stillness, yet devoid of any startlement—as if he’d been expecting this visitation all along. The question hung between them, simple as a shared blanket, heavy as a confession.

Beckman remained frozen in the doorway, every muscle locked in perfect stillness - as if even the slightest tremor might shatter this fragile moment balanced between them like a soap bubble trembling on the edge of a blade.

"I care." The words tore from Beckman's throat with unexpected force, landing between them with the weight of a confession dragged up from some long-buried place. His voice held steady, yet something pulsed beneath the surface - a quiet desperation, the faintest tremor of something usually kept chained down.

Shanks' gaze lifted slowly from his book, eyebrows arching in momentary surprise... before softening into a smile.

Not his usual brash grin, but a smaller, lopsided thing - disarmingly tender in its unguardedness. He tilted his head, crimson strands spilling across the pillowcase like wine stains on linen, studying the scene before him with the amused patience of someone watching a bristling stray cat pretend it's not begging for affection.

"Now where'd that come from?" he asked, curiosity coloring his lazy drawl - the question casual, but his tone already suggesting he knew the answer dancing just beneath Beckman's ribs.

Beckman lingered in silence for a heartbeat too long—the kind of pause that stretched taut between them like a fishing line about to snap. His jaw worked subtly, as if physically wrestling with unspoken words. When he finally spoke, the sentence escaped like a prisoner making a break for freedom:

"Ace said I should be direct about things."

That was all he managed to voice, and even that admission seemed to hang too heavy in the air between them, too vulnerable by half.

Shanks nodded slowly, the smile at the corner of his lips blooming like a sunrise no one had been expecting. Of course it had been Ace. That twelve-year-old wildfire had an uncanny knack for emotional demolition when he put his mind to it.

"That kid's gonna conquer the world before he's twenty," Shanks murmured, more to the room than to Beckman—as if sharing a secret with the shadows.

Then his gaze flicked back up, catching Beckman's with eyes that sparkled like sunlight on knife blades—all playful danger and invitation.

"It's terribly rude to enter someone's bedroom without knocking," he chided, his tone feather-light and dancing with mischief.

Beckman arched one eyebrow, arms crossing over his chest in a defensive gesture that somehow broadcast utter unrepentance. "You didn't seem to mind that rule when you barged into my room at two in the morning... twice.”

Shanks let out a muffled chuckle, sinking deeper into the pillows with the languid grace of a predator perfectly at ease in its den. The air between them thrummed with a dangerous equilibrium—somewhere between intimacy and provocation, as precarious as a knife balanced on its edge.

Beckman rolled his eyes skyward, but couldn't quite suppress the traitorous quirk of his lips as he leaned against the doorframe, finally allowing his shoulders to untense. The wall felt cool against his back, a steadying presence.

Then, as if suddenly needing to reclaim the upper hand, Shanks let his gaze drift toward the fluttering curtains. Moonlight streamed through in silvered beams, painting the white sheets with ghostly luminescence—an ethereal stage for his next words.

"You should know... if I really wanted to, I could kill you."

The declaration came adorned with a boyish grin, the kind usually reserved for playground taunts. Yet beneath the jest lay something sharper—a sliver of truth glinting like a blade's edge in the dark.

Beckman merely shrugged, the motion effortless.

"You forbade me from dying just last week. Would be pretty stupid to kill me now."

Shanks' mouth opened, ready with a retort—then faltered. The pause stretched.

"I said... you couldn't die. Not that I couldn't..." The words fractured midair, abandoned. The truth was, he lacked that particular cruelty—Could he truly kill Beckman? The thought alone was laughable. Perhaps... perhaps not.

"You'd miss me," Beckman declared, yanking Shanks from his reverie with the precision of a surgeon extracting shrapnel. This time, it was his turn to provoke—armed with that infuriating, measured calm that cut deeper than any scream ever could.

Shanks met his gaze unflinching. And lied through his teeth. "I could live with that"

"Are you sure about that?"

"...No."

A tired half-smirk tugged at Beckman's lips. "You're a decent liar, I'll give you that."

Shanks looked away, the lamplight catching the gold in his lashes.

"Had to be. That's how I survived this long."

The amber glow from the bedside lamp draped over them like liquid honey, softening edges and sharpened words alike. For this suspended moment, the world beyond these walls ceased to exist. There was only this—only them, dancing between veiled taunts and emotions too raw to name yet too loud to ignore, spilling over in poorly disguised smiles and weighted silences.

"Can't sleep?" Shanks asked, peering at Beckman over the rims of his reading glasses with the focus of a man studying a particularly fascinating text.

Beckman remained anchored near the wall, arms still folded like armor across his chest, every muscle taut as coiled wire. His gaze never wavered—not to the discarded book, not to the room's shadows, only to Shanks. As if he were waiting. As if this man, infuriating as he was, had become the only fixed star in his collapsing cosmos.

"Something like that," he admitted, the words barely more than a whisper—a secret shared with the night between them.

Shanks didn't respond immediately. He simply watched him for several heartbeats longer, with that particular gaze of someone who sees far more than they'd like to acknowledge, yet chooses not to push. Then, with a soft snap of pages surrendering, he closed the book and set it aside on the nightstand like a peace offering.

A casual gesture followed - just two fingers patting the mattress beside him, but weighted with intention thick as summer honey.

"Come here," he said, no smile this time. Just a simple invitation, straightforward yet layered with a tenderness that hung between them like cobwebs glistening with morning dew.

Beckman hesitated. Pride told him to stay rooted. Fear echoed the sentiment. But exhaustion, need, and something far deeper—perhaps affection, perhaps longing—spoke in voices louder than reason.

With a resigned exhale that seemed to deflate his defenses, he moved toward the bed with the cautious steps of a man testing thin ice. He sat first, perch-like, as if gauging whether the space might burn him.

The silence that settled around them was comfortable, if heavy with every unspoken truth neither dared voice—a tapestry of words withheld, yet understood all the same.

Shanks turned his face toward him, nestling his head into the crook of his bent arm with the easy grace of a cat claiming its territory. The lamplight caught the amusement dancing in his eyes as he regarded his stubborn companion.

"You're a difficult man, Beck."

"And you talk too much."

"Hmmm," Shanks hummed, the sound vibrating with playful conspiracy. "I'll just have to make you sleep my way then." Another pat on the mattress, this one more insistent, accompanied by a gleam in his eye that promised either mischief or comfort - possibly both.

Beckman arched one skeptical eyebrow, the expression so practiced it might as well have been permanently etched into his features. After a beat of hesitation - and one world-weary sigh that spoke volumes about his life choices - he finally relented. He lowered himself onto the bed with the stiffness of a folding chair, his body refusing to fully surrender to the plush surface beneath him.

"This feels suspicious," he muttered, his trademark dryness undiminished by their proximity.

"This is science," Shanks countered smoothly, already leaning across to retrieve the book from the nightstand. There it sat in all its glory - the dark blue volume with typeface so small it seemed designed to punish human eyes. "'Celestial Calculations and Stellar Scales.' A true masterpiece of boredom," he declared, flipping it open with the reverence one might show a particularly dull tax manual.

Shanks cleared his throat with the gravitas of a keynote speaker about to deliver a lecture at an international symposium—the kind guaranteed to make even the most disciplined attendees snore within thirty seconds. He cracked open the book to a random page with deliberate ceremony, the spine protesting slightly from the rough treatment.

Then, adopting the painfully slow cadence of a museum docent explaining Renaissance art to jet-lagged tourists, he began reading aloud:

"The apparent magnitude of a star represents a logarithmic measurement of its observed brightness from Earth, whereas the absolute magnitude—" He punctuated the sentence with an exaggerated yawn, "—defines the true luminosity of a celestial body at the standard distance of ten parsecs..."

Beckman turned his head toward him with glacial slowness, his face half-buried in the pillow like a man already plotting murder. His expression crystallized into a masterpiece of silent reproach—the look of a tenured professor forced to grade a freshman's plagiarized thesis at 3 AM.

"This is worse than counting drunk sheep," he deadpanned, voice thick with betrayal. His fingers twitched against the sheets as if physically restraining himself from committing pillow-based homicide. "When I find you in my room at night, I give you actual medicine. And this is how you repay me?”

Shanks arched an eyebrow, his amusement palpable as he responded with mock indignation: "Oh yes, because drugging me to sleep is so much more ethical than boring books full of... num-bers and Astro-no-my," he drawled, deliberately twisting Beckman's words as if trying to paint the situation in the most morally dubious light possible.

Beckman blinked slowly, unimpressed. "I said medicine. You're the one who heard 'questionable substances.'"

"Semantics," Shanks dismissed with a careless shrug, as if the distinction were trivial. "The point is, my method is natural, elegant, and educational."

"Your method is torture."

"And yet, effective," he countered with a self-satisfied grin, flipping a page with the drowsy enthusiasm of a librarian at three in the morning. "I'm practically asleep already," Shanks added, his eyes already half-lidded, the book dangling precariously from one hand. "The problem is you—you're the one with a weird obsession with number-crunching."

Beckman huffed, shifting onto his side to glare at him properly. "I—"

"Now, hush, or I'll start the chapter on emission spectra," Shanks threatened, his voice thick with sleep but still carrying the weight of a man who absolutely would follow through.

Beckman grumbled something unintelligible into the pillowcase, but ultimately surrendered, burying his face deeper into the fabric as the redhead's voice—low and syrupy with impending sleep—continued its rhythmic recitation like a snake charmer lulling cobras into complacency.

For a suspended moment, the silence between them was effortless.

The rare kind of quiet that doesn't press down or demand—it simply is, like a well-worn blanket on a chilly night. The bedroom, bathed in the amber glow of the lampshade, existed in a pocket outside time, beyond the world's edges. Two grown men lying side by side, absurdly close for people who pretended so expertly to feel nothing beyond coexistence.

It was ridiculous. Nearly laughable. Almost... good.

Until the door creaked.

Both turned their heads slowly, still half-submerged in that drowsy tranquility. And there he stood: Luffy, half his face obscured by a threadbare stuffed bear that had clearly seen better decades. The boy's eyes glistened in the dim light, his voice thick with sleep's clinging grasp.

"Beck...? Did you have a nightmare too?"

Beckman pushed himself up slightly against the headboard, his usually impeccable hair now tousled from the pillow's embrace, strands sticking up at odd angles like rebellious soldiers refusing formation.

"I... no. Not exactly," he replied, his voice still rough with sleep's gravelly texture, the surprise at the question coloring his tone more than he'd ever admit aloud.

Luffy shuffled further into the room, his bare feet making soft shushing sounds against the wooden floor - the nighttime footsteps of a child who'd made this journey many times before. He moved with the unselfconscious grace of someone either completely oblivious to the charged atmosphere between the two men in bed, or perhaps acutely aware and choosing to disregard it entirely.

"Oh... okay. We can share Shanks. I don't mind," he declared with the effortless nonchalance only children can muster, already clambering onto the bed with his well-loved bear dragging behind him like a battle-worn standard. His movements spoke of intimate familiarity, as if every inch of this territory had been mapped and claimed through countless midnight invasions.

Shanks froze for two full seconds, his expression that of a supercomputer attempting to process both the childish brilliance and devastating simplicity of this statement - a man confronted with logic so pure it bypassed all adult complications.

And then—he laughed.

A sound muffled against his palm, warm and unguarded—the kind of laughter that shakes your ribs and leaves your eyes crinkled at the corners. Shanks pressed a hand over his face, shoulders trembling as he tried to contain the outburst before it could wake the entire household.

"Luffy—" he managed between breathless chuckles, "you didn't even ask if I wanted to be shared!"

"You never complain," the boy shot back, already burrowing into the center of the bed like a victorious conqueror claiming his rightful throne. He hugged a pillow to his chest with the triumphant satisfaction of someone who'd just won an Olympic gold medal in Bed Invasion.

Beckman merely sighed, sinking back into the mattress with the resignation of a man who'd long since accepted his fate. He groped blindly for a corner of the sheets that might still qualify as "his," though the odds were increasingly slim.

"Apparently, you're in high demand," he muttered, eyes closed against the absurdity of it all.

"I'm irresistible," Shanks corrected, shrugging with an expression of faux humility so transparent it would've been laughable—if it weren't entirely true.

"Idiot."

"Weirdo."

"Daaaads..." Luffy murmured, his voice thick and syrupy with sleep, already half-submerged in dreams, "...m'glad you made up..."

Shanks and Beckman exchanged a glance over the boy's riotous mop of hair—a look that carried volumes in its silence: complicity, resignation, and perhaps even a quiet gratitude. No words were needed.

As dawn began painting the sky in strokes of molten gold and burnt orange, the house remained steeped in slumber. The only sounds piercing the stillness were the gentle metronome of the living room clock and the muffled whisper of wind outside, teasing forgotten curtains into ghostly dances.

Elsewhere in the house, Sabo padded down the hallway with sock-muffled footsteps, his usually impeccable hair sticking up in sleep-tousled rebellion, one eye still stubbornly half-closed against wakefulness. He clutched a half-empty water glass like an afterthought—having risen for a drink, but now on a new mission: the inevitable Luffy Hunt.

The youngest brother was neither buried in the living room's blanket fort nor curled up in his own bed. Sabo frowned, the remnants of sleep clinging to his eyelids like cobwebs as he retraced his steps down the hallway. He peered through each half-open door with the focus of a tracker following invisible footprints, his bare feet whispering against the floorboards.

"He's vanished..." Sabo murmured, the words barely disturbing the dawn's hush, his voice still thick with the weight of interrupted sleep.

The corridor lay wrapped in that peculiar pre-dawn gloom where shadows seem softer at the edges. The wooden floor creaked its quiet complaints beneath his toes, while the morning's chill sent involuntary shivers marching across his exposed shoulders.

Ace materialized at the hallway's end like a sleep-deprived apparition - his shirt inside-out with the tag jutting rebelliously at his collarbone, hair exploding in every direction as though he'd spent the night wrestling a tornado. The puffiness around his eyes bore witness to a night of repeatedly shattered slumber.

"Did you check the pantry? Or under the sink cabinet?" he asked around a yawn wide enough to split his face in two, scratching absently at his scalp with the dedication of a man only half-committed to wakefulness.

"He's not a stray cat, Ace."

"Not with that attitude," Ace countered, arching one eyebrow with Herculean effort before shuffling toward the living room in slow motion, his feet dragging as if gravity had personally tripled overnight.

They began a silent, methodical search - like sleepwalking detectives investigating a crime scene of missing childhood.

The bathroom revealed nothing but crumpled towels and a toothbrush abandoned in a cup like a shipwrecked sailor.
The living room yielded no clues either - they lifted each sofa cushion with forensic precision, uncovering only a broken crayon and a forgotten cookie that might have been older than Ace's unresolved grudges.
The kitchen inspection involved crawling under the table where Luffy had once been discovered sleeping, an empty cookie package clutched to his chest like a treasure chest of accomplished piracy.

Nothing.

The house, still wrapped in dawn's embrace, watched their fruitless investigation with quiet amusement.

Then Sabo froze.

Shanks' bedroom.

The slightly ajar door spilled forth a warm, buttery light - the unmistakable glow of a bedside lamp left burning through the night. It painted a golden path across the hallway floor, cutting through the darkness like a blade of contained sunlight.

He drew a steadying breath. Took one step forward. Peered inside.

The world slowed to the pace of honey dripping from a spoon.

There, as if he'd always belonged in this constellation of affection, Luffy lay tangled between the two adults - nestled into the space between Shanks and Beckman with the perfect fit of a puzzle piece clicking home.

Curled on his side, his threadbare teddy bear tucked under his chin like a royal scepter, his legs thrown possessively over Shanks' thigh in unconscious claim. And his hands - so small, so trusting, so certain - fisted tightly in Beckman's shirt as if the fabric were the only anchor in the stormy seas of sleep.

Shanks lay curled on his side, his entire body angled toward Luffy like a compass needle finding true north. One arm draped over the boy in a loose embrace that spoke of unconscious possession - as if even in sleep, his muscles remembered their sacred duty of shelter. His fiery hair splayed across the pillow like spilled sunset, each steady breath lifting his chest with the rhythm of ocean tides. His lips parted slightly, the expression so unguarded it revealed the boyishness time hadn't yet erased.

Beckman faced the headboard, his body tilted toward them both in reluctant surrender. His usually disciplined hair rebelled in sleep-darkened tufts, and one eye remained half-open - the final bastion of vigilance fallen at last to exhaustion's siege. The lines of his face, so often sharp with calculation, had softened into something rare: peace earned rather than stolen.

Three generations of weary souls, woven together by silent understanding.

Sabo stood motionless, swallowed by the quiet. The scene before him was deceptively simple, yet it unraveled something in his chest - Luffy's absolute trust pressed into wrinkled fabric, Shanks' protective curve sculpted by instinct, Beckman's hard-won surrender to rest.

Like a living Renaissance painting. A moment so private it seemed to demand reverence just to witness. With thief's hands, he slipped his phone from his pocket, moving with the reverence of someone handling sacred artifacts. The screen glowed a muted blue, its light the only profane element in this holy tableau.

No flash. No shutter sound. No trembling to betray him.

Click.

The moment crystallized. Eternity captured in pixels.

He lingered there for one suspended heartbeat longer, his gaze drinking in the living tableau before him, before retreating down the hallway like a phantom made flesh—the phone still clutched in his hand, an involuntary smile playing at the corners of his mouth like sunlight dancing on water.

"Send it to me." The whisper materialized at Sabo's ear as Ace appeared beside him with the silent grace of a shadow at high noon, his presence disturbing not even the stagnant morning air.

The dawn's glow remained tender in the corridor, spilling through the windows in honeyed streams that pooled lazily on the wooden floors. But the grin stretching across Ace's face was anything but gentle—it was pure, unadulterated mischief incarnate. His eyes burned with wicked delight as they remained glued to Sabo's phone screen, fingers already twitching with half-formed schemes.

"I'm framing this." His voice was a conspiratorial hush, the kind of whisper that carried more weight than a shout. That ridiculous smile—the one that tugged at his lips and lit up his cheeks with poorly concealed affection—stretched wider. Though hushed, his tone dripped with irreverent awe, as though he'd just witnessed the unveiling of some priceless masterpiece.

Beside him, Sabo worried his lower lip between his teeth, the battle to contain his laughter evident in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes—tiny fault lines betraying the seismic mirth bubbling beneath the surface.

"I'm making t-shirts." His murmur was barely audible as his fingers flew across the screen with the practiced efficiency of a seasoned blackmailer, saving the image with the solemnity of someone committing a holy transgression—the sacred crime of documenting another human's most vulnerable state.

Then, in perfect synchrony, their eyes met.

For one suspended heartbeat, time itself seemed to hold its breath. An invisible spark leapt between their gazes—that wordless, instinctive connection only kindred spirits share. It was the sort of understanding that needed no discussion: they already knew exactly what came next.

And so, like agents of chaos guided by some primordial, mischievous force, they seized the doorknob and flung the door wide with the fury of a thunderbolt striking earth.

"WAKE UUUUUUUUP!!!" Ace roared, already hurtling toward the window like a meteor with a personal vendetta.

With one violent yank, he tore the curtains open—so forcefully the rod groaned in metallic protest, threatening to detach from the wall entirely.

Light exploded into the room like celestial artillery. This was sunlight in its rawest, most merciless form, flooding the space and dousing the still-tangled bodies in the golden glare of divine judgment.

"IT'S SUNDAY!!! CHURCH DAY, SINNERS!!!" Sabo bellowed right on cue, climbing onto a nearby chair as if it were a pulpit. His arms raised in dramatic benediction, wrinkled pajamas flapping with the motion—he looked like a telenovela prophet possessed by the spirit of a made-up morning cult.

And in the bed, chaos began to stir.

Luffy emitted a drawn-out, utterly primal groan—the sound of a sloth-lion hybrid protesting the cruelty of existence. Without opening his eyes, he instinctively sought warmth and safety, burying his face into Shanks' chest like a doomsday prepper taking shelter from the rapture. His limbs coiled tighter around the redhead in a koala-like death grip.

Beckman startled so violently his shoulders nearly touched his earlobes—the full-body jerk of a man who'd just been tasered by reality. His hand shot out to seize the nearest pillow, clutching it with white-knuckled intensity that suggested he was three seconds away from using it as either a shield or a projectile weapon.

Shanks blinked at the invaders with the dazed confusion of a man dragged from surreal dreams into something even more incomprehensible. His sleep-crusted eyes struggled to focus, the red irises swimming with disorientation. His normally wild hair had achieved new levels of anarchy—all swept violently to the left as if styled by hurricane winds.

"Church...?" he croaked, his voice a fragile thing, syllables cracking like thin ice over a pond—as though his vocal cords were still rebooting from sleep's embrace.

"Sabo..." Beckman's muffled groan came from deep within his pillow fortress, the words vibrating with the intensity of a man contemplating homicide. "It's six... in the damn... morning..."

Sabo responded by thumping his chest with theatrical fervor, the gesture of a televangelist possessed by the holy spirit of mischief. "So what? Heaven's forgiveness waits for no alarm clock!”

Ace, already standing with arms crossed in a posture of supreme teenage exasperation, rolled his eyes with the dramatic flair of a Shakespearean actor enduring bad improv. Yet his voice retained that signature mocking lilt:

"We're not even Catholic, you lunatic. We're... hell, I dunno... Shintoist. Or Buddhist. We live in Japan, remember?" The words dripped with the special condescension only an older brother can muster before breakfast.

Luffy, now half-propped up with his hair defying gravity in twelve different directions—a veritable architectural marvel of bedhead—blinked at them through sleep-gummed lashes. His expression was that of a man trying to comprehend why his siblings had morphed into alarm clocks with legs.

"Wha's... shin...shin-too... shintoobist...?" he slurred, the unfamiliar word dissolving in his mouth like sugar in cold coffee.

"A perfect excuse not to kneel while praying," Ace declared with the shrug of someone revealing life's great cheat codes, his tone implying this was ancient wisdom passed down through generations of lazy worshippers.

Then—in the bed—Shanks and Beckman locked eyes.

But this was no ordinary glance. This was an entire silent conversation, razor-sharp and brimming with conspiracy. A wordless covenant forged in the crucible of morning chaos. In less time than it takes a heart to beat, they communicated volumes:

'We're ending this.'

In a movement so synchronized it could've been choreographed for the world's sleepiest ballet, the two men rose from the blankets like bears shaking off winter's slumber. The sheets slid from their shoulders like battle cloaks discarded before combat.

Their eyes still half-lidded with sleep, their hair in glorious disarray, yet radiating the lethal aura of predators about to return chaos tenfold.

Ace didn't even have time to blink.

"Wait wha—?!"

FWUMP!

He was yanked backward by his hoodie strings with the precision of a fisherman landing his catch, face-planting into the mattress with his legs kicking skyward like an astonished cat mid-backflip. His laughter burst forth immediately—that deep, belly-born guffaw that shook his entire frame—even as he flailed like a beached marlin, all futile kicks and sputtered protests.

Sabo was next. He attempted retreat. He tried reasoning—arms outstretched in the universal gesture of truce—but Shanks reeled him in like a wayward pillow that had forgotten its place in the bedding hierarchy.

"THIS IS AUTHORITY ABUSE!" he howled with theatrical outrage, writhing like a revolutionary captured by tyrannical forces, his legs bicycling through the air in desperate, doomed resistance.

"I refuse..." Shanks mumbled into his pillow, his voice thick with sleep and royal finality, already surrendering back to the mattress like a fainting Victorian lady. "I categorically refuse... to wake before nine... on a... goddamn... Sunday."

He pronounced it like an imperial edict. A divine commandment carved in stone tablets by sleep-deprived angels.

Beckman, whose eyes remained firmly shut in the manner of a man who'd long since lost the war against consciousness, released a sigh so profoundly exhausted it could've been mistaken for a philosophical treatise on human suffering.

Without uttering a word, he dragged the blanket over the entire writhing pile like a gravedigger burying his last shred of dignity. The fabric descended in slow motion, entombing limbs, torsos, and wounded prides alike beneath its weight.

Ace now found himself wedged between Beckman and Shanks like the unfortunate filling in a grumpy sandwich, his laughter muffled against the mattress as he attempted to dislodge someone's rogue knee from his ribcage.

Sabo was muttering what might've been excerpts from the Geneva Convention, his protests smothered beneath a pillow that had mysteriously found its way onto his face—divine retribution, perhaps.

And Luffy? Luffy had already drifted back to dreamland, sprawled across Shanks like a sun-drunk housecat, a thin trail of drool inching its way down the man's shoulder—blissfully unaware of the apocalyptic battle that had just raged around him.

And in the midst of that tangled nest of blankets, interlaced limbs, and mismatched socks, Beckman's voice emerged—low, gravelly, and utterly defeated:

"May karma deal with you all as you deserve..."

Silence followed.

Not just any silence, but that particular brand of heavy, warm quiet that only exists when multiple bodies are piled onto one mattress, breathing in sync, sharing equal measures of exhaustion and unspoken affection. The kind of silence that smells faintly of sleep and stolen comfort.

Outside, the sky blushed gold with the first serious intentions of sunrise. Clouds drifted lazily across an autumn Sunday that promised nothing but possibility.

By the time life stirred again in the house, the sun hung high enough to judge their life choices. The heralds of chaos weren't shouts or running feet—not yet. This time, doom announced itself through scent: the unmistakable reek of scorched coffee, followed by the acrid whisper of charcoal-disguised-as-toast, underpinned by the suspicious undertone of... porridge meeting its slow, tragic end.

The olfactory equivalent of a warning siren. Someone was attempting to cook. Unsupervised.

In the kitchen, Sabo stood perched on a stool with the overconfident posture of a mad scientist moments from either changing the world or detonating half of it. He brandished a wooden spoon like a wizard's staff, stirring the contents of a pot with absolute devotion. The substance within had the consistency of hot swamp sludge, bubbling ominously with sounds more suited to a bog than a breakfast nook. Each glorp and splat seemed to whisper threats in some eldritch culinary language.

Ace leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed like a disapproving health inspector, his eyebrows knitting together in a masterpiece of skepticism.

"You sure that's edible?" he asked, the question dripping with the special brand of doubt reserved for questionable street food and Sabo's culinary experiments.

Normally, Ace would've been the first to commandeer the kitchen—his survival instincts usually overriding any sibling's misguided ambition. But through some mysterious alignment of the stars (or perhaps that concussion from last week's pillow fight), Sabo had volunteered for breakfast duty.

"It's not rocket science," he'd declared earlier, flipping through a cookbook with the confidence of a man who'd never actually cooked. "Just follow the instructions. What could possibly go wrong?"

Spoiler alert: Everything.

Beckman materialized in the kitchen doorway like a specter of reason, his sleep-creased face scanning the disaster with the slow horror of a man witnessing a war crime. The ominously bubbling pot. The wooden spoon now sporting a suspicious sheen. The bowls with unidentifiable sludge creeping down their sides like edible lava. And Sabo himself—forehead glistening with effort, chin lifted with the misplaced pride of a Michelin-starred chef who'd just reinvented gruel.

"You are not eating that." Beckman's voice carried the calm finality of a man who'd predicted this outcome days ago.

"Of course we are! It's perfectly edible!" Sabo countered, brandishing the spoon like Excalibur. A translucent string of... something... slowly dripped back into the pot with the grace of a dying jellyfish. "It's just... an innovative texture."

Luffy, who'd been sprawled on the kitchen floor clutching his stomach and chanting "fooood" like a starving monk, perked up at the magic word. Hope flashed in his eyes for one glorious second—until they landed on the porridge's distinctive color.

"That looks like slug mucus."

"It's nutritious!" Sabo rolled his eyes with the dramatic flair of a misunderstood artist, rapping the spoon against the pot's edge with enough force to send a globule airborne. The offending morsel adhered to the ceiling with unnatural tenacity, swaying gently like a Damoclean warning of impending gastrointestinal doom.

Beckman crossed his arms, observing the scene with the morbid fascination of a biologist studying a new pathogenic lifeform. "I'm not even going to ask what you put in there."

"Flour, water, a pinch of salt... and—" Sabo raised a finger with the gravitas of a alchemist revealing the philosopher's stone, "creative liberties."

Ace, who'd been avoiding direct eye contact with the sludge as one might avert their gaze from a solar eclipse, finally inched closer. He took one tentative sniff of the miasma hanging heavy in the air—and his face contorted into an expression of pure physiological distress.

"This smells like existential despair."

"Oh, shut your trap!" Sabo thrust the spoon toward his brother like a fencer's foil. "If you're so damn competent, why don't you cook?"

"Because someone volunteered first," Ace retreated as if the pot emitted gamma radiation, hands raised in surrender.

It was at this precise moment that Shanks materialized in the doorway, rubbing sleep from his eyes with his hair sculpted into a masterpiece of bedhead—as though he'd been personally groomed by Hurricane Chaos itself. He blinked owlishly at the scene, his gaze drifting from Beckman to the eldritch cookpot and back again.

"...Are we being poisoned?"

"Only if you're daft enough to eat it," Beckman deadpanned, his voice drier than month-old coffee grounds, not even bothering to look up from his mug.

Shanks paused in the kitchen doorway, one eyebrow arched in that particular expression of amused disbelief he reserved for moments of spectacular domestic disaster. He leaned against the doorframe with the casual ease of a man who'd weathered emotional wildfires far less toxic than whatever was bubbling in that pot, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face like dawn breaking over a battlefield.

"Sabo, my boy..." he began with the syrupy tone of false diplomacy, "has the revolutionary concept of... not cooking ever crossed your brilliant mind?"

Sabo gasped as if physically wounded, clutching his chest with the dramatic flair of a Shakespearean actor betrayed in the final act.

"Hey! I'm just experimenting with a new recipe—!"

But fate - or perhaps the universe's innate sense of comic timing - intervened. Because through some miraculous defiance of both physics and common sense, Luffy had materialized on the kitchen table like an apparition of pure culinary chaos. No one saw him move. He simply existed there now, suspended perfectly between hunger and hubris.

"Luffy, DON'T—"

The warning came far, far too late.

His hand plunged into the nearest bowl like a heat-seeking missile, emerging with a heaping spoonful of something that steamed ominously in colors not found in nature. With the reckless confidence of someone who genuinely believes the human digestive system is invincible, he shoved the entire glob into his mouth.

For one suspended heartbeat, time itself seemed to hold its breath.

Beckman froze mid-sip, his coffee cup hovering in the air like a paused film frame. Ace's eyes widened to saucer-size, his expression that of a man witnessing a train wreck in agonizing slow motion. Shanks watched with the rapt fascination of a reality TV addict, leaning forward as if this were the season finale of Kitchen Disasters Gone Wild.

Luffy chewed.

Silence thicker than Sabo's dubious porridge settled over the kitchen.

He swallowed.

One slow blink. Then another.

"...It's disgusting."

The verdict came with the brutal honesty of a Michelin critic reviewing gas station sushi, followed by a grimace so theatrical it sent Shanks collapsing against the counter in wheezing laughter, while Beckman simply shook his head—the weary prophet who'd foreseen this outcome from the moment Sabo touched a measuring cup.

Sabo brandished his spoon like a wronged artist defending his masterpiece:

"You philistines don't understand avant-garde cuisine!"

Ace drawled with the resignation of a war veteran: "If I'm gonna die, I'd prefer it to be quick. And tastier."

With an exasperated huff, Sabo hurled the spoon to the floor with the dramatic flair of a revolutionary tossing aside his weapons. "Fine! I'll never attempt anything innovative in this house again!"

Shanks, still chuckling, slung an arm around the boy's shoulders.

"Relax, kid. Everyone's got a talent. Yours just... isn't cooking." The irony dripped from his words like sauce from a failed soufflé—coming from a man who'd been permanently banned from touching stovetops after The Great Pancake Arson Incident of '08.

Without uttering a single word, Beckman seized the offending pot with the solemn determination of a bomb squad technician handling live anthrax, marching it directly to the sink for immediate decontamination. "I'm making eggs," he declared, his voice carrying the gravitas of a man preventing gastrointestinal Armageddon.

"HEROOOO!" Luffy howled, already bouncing at his heels like a starved golden retriever spotting an open bag of treats.

As Beckman established martial law in the kitchen—singlehandedly averting what would surely have been a biological disaster of epic proportions—Ace and Shanks took turns lobbing increasingly elaborate insults at Sabo's "magnum opus." The self-proclaimed culinary artist had now face-planted onto the table, muttering darkly about "betrayal," "lack of artistic appreciation," and what he dramatically termed "gastronomic oppression."

And just like that, the household settled back into its natural state: beautifully chaotic, deliciously loud, and vibrantly, unapologetically alive.

To everyone's delight—though Luffy's most of all—the most anticipated event of the morning arrived: the backyard picnic.

The breakfast dishes hadn't even been fully cleared yet, but Luffy was already tearing through the house with a checkered blanket flapping behind him like a battle standard, clutching the hastily (and somewhat haphazardly) packed snack basket Shanks had assembled.

The sun poured its golden generosity over the scene, the sky stretching above them in an unbroken canvas of blue. It was the sort of day that felt tailor-made for memory-making—the kind you'd press between the pages of your mind like a favorite bookmark, to revisit on grayer days.

Alas, not everyone could bask in the day's glory quite so freely.

Sabo sat cross-legged on the covered veranda, elbow propped on the railing and chin resting heavily in his palm, watching his brothers with the resigned expression of a grounded teenager. A stark white bandage bisected his forehead like a misplaced laurel wreath - the doctor's orders had been explicit: no direct sunlight for at least three days. Something about UV rays interfering with the stitches' healing process. He'd grumbled initially, but deep down, even he couldn't deny Beckman's medical wisdom.

"This is an affront to my civil liberties," he muttered, deftly catching a piece of fruit Luffy had lobbed his way with suspiciously good aim.

"Look on the bright side," Ace called from his sprawled position on the lawn where he seemed to be attempting photosynthesis, "now you've got an excuse to cultivate that brooding intellectual aesthetic."

"Moron," Sabo shot back, though without any real heat. Mostly he was just bored. "Since when did medicine become so tyrannical? One day sunlight's supposedly healing, the next it's public enemy number one."

Shanks, crouched in the garden with dirt-streaked knees and wearing that battered old hat - the one he'd dug out from the back of the closet and now wore with increasing frequency simply because Luffy adored it - tilted his head up with a grin. The wide brim cast half his face in shadow, giving him the roguish charm of a storybook pirate on shore leave.

Meanwhile, Ace and Luffy lay tangled in the grass like sun-drunk puppies. Between them, the picnic blanket had already lost half its territory to their sprawling limbs, the remaining surface littered with juice boxes leaking sticky rainbows, sandwiches constructed with more enthusiasm than skill, cookies shaped like abstract art, and fruit sliced with concerning irregularity. Luffy ate with the single-minded intensity of someone rediscovering the concept of sustenance, while Ace's laughter rang loud enough to startle birds from the trees, occasionally choking mid-guffaw when a particularly absurd joke caught him off guard.

At a respectful distance, Shanks was engaged in what could loosely be termed... gardening. Or some primitive approximation thereof.

Crouched low with a child-sized trowel in hand and a packet of seeds that looked suspiciously like a supermarket promotional freebie, he was excavating holes approximately three times larger than necessary. His shirt had become an abstract canvas of dirt stains, and at some point he'd forgotten to remove the garish price tags still dangling from the clay pots like botanical price stickers.

"You do realize those will be dead within seventy-two hours?" Beckman remarked without glancing up from his book.

He sat ensconced in a weathered wicker chair beneath the dappled shade of an old maple, his reading glasses slightly askew on the bridge of his nose, long legs stretched out with the languid grace of a contented panther. A sweating glass of iced tea perspired quietly beside him as the tree's shadow danced intricate lace patterns across his open pages.

"Blasphemy. I'm cultivating hope," Shanks countered, tamping down a spindly mint seedling with the tender solemnity of a man burying state secrets. The plant listed dangerously to one side like a drunken sailor, its leaves already curling in what might have been botanical distress or perhaps just resignation to its impending doom.

Beckman exhaled one of those sighs that carried the weight of decades spent coexisting with this particular flavor of chaos - the kind of sigh usually reserved for finding toothpaste caps left off or mysteriously singed kitchen towels.

"You'll be cultivating another replacement next week. With a different plant.”

Shanks shrugged with the philosophical air of a man who'd turned irresponsibility into an art form. "All great gardens are built on second chances." The dirt smeared across his cheekbone glinted in the sunlight like war paint.

Sabo, eavesdropping from the veranda, snorted loud enough to startle a passing butterfly. "Sounds profound until you realize it's just what people say when they can't be bothered to read planting instructions," he muttered, mentally filing the phrase away for future mockery. His bandage caught the light as he shook his head, the white gauze standing out against his sun-starved skin like a surrender flag.

Meanwhile, Ace and Luffy continued their feast sprawled across the grass - two carefree souls existing in that rare space where neither responsibilities nor arrest records could reach them. Crumbs decorated their shirts like edible confetti, their laughter rising and blending with the rustling leaves.

"Hey Sabo!" Luffy's voice erupted from the garden, muffled by the carrot cake currently occupying 80% of his mouth capacity. "Want me to bring you an orange?" Cake crumbs tumbled from his lips like a miniature avalanche as he spoke.

"Only if you don't eat it en route," Sabo called back without looking up from the book balanced on his knees, though the telltale twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed the smile he was fighting.

"No promises!" Luffy bellowed before launching himself forward like a poorly aimed cannonball. His bare feet kicked up dew-soaked grass as he stumbled through the yard with all the grace of a newborn giraffe on roller skates, the fruit clutched aloft like the Olympic torch.

He skidded to a stop before the weathered wicker basket at the tree's base - his legs now sporting enough dirt to qualify as makeshift gardening supplies - and selected an orange that looked like it had survived several minor earthquakes. With hands bearing the scars and soil of a morning's adventures, Luffy approached the veranda with all the solemn ceremony of a knight delivering a holy relic to his king. The orange, slightly dented but glowing like captured sunlight in his grubby palms, became a sacrament in that moment.

Sabo sat perched on the weathered rocking chair, his book now resting closed upon his lap, watching his brother's approach with that particular brand of patience - the kind only cultivated through years of loving someone whose personal gravity bends toward chaos. The setting sun gilded the sky in molten gold, catching in Sabo's wheat-colored hair and setting the scattered oranges in their basket ablaze with light, wrapping the moment in something almost enchanted.

Without uttering a word, Luffy extended his arms in exaggerated ceremony, presenting the orange with the reverence of a squire offering his king's sword before battle. The fading sunlight caught in the fruit's dimpled skin, transforming it into a glowing orb worthy of legend.

Sabo straightened with mock regality, tilting his chin up in feigned aristocratic disdain as he accepted the offering with only the very tips of his fingers, as though handling some priceless artifact from a forgotten dynasty.

"Merci. Your reward shall be freedom, lowly peasant," he declared in an absurdly affected nobleman's drawl, his voice dropping an octave for theatrical effect. He accompanied this with an exaggerated bow, one hand pressed dramatically to his chest as if addressing an invisible court of royalty.

Luffy's laughter burst forth like fireworks - head thrown back so far he nearly toppled off the veranda steps. The sound was raucous, unpolished, and so utterly genuine it seemed to make the very sky tremble in response.

But from beyond the sprawling garden, just past the forty-meter stretch leading to the shrub-lined property wall - that flimsy barrier which separated the houses physically but stood no chance against their shared cacophony - an unexpected movement caught the light. Something stirred where stillness should have been.

On the neighboring veranda, Law stood frozen mid-sip, his face the perfect mask of weary resignation - the expression of a man who'd long since accepted his fate as the unwilling audience to someone else's circus. The teacup in his hand might as well have been a white flag of surrender. Beside him, crammed into a faded armchair that had clearly seen better decades, Rosinante was attempting (and spectacularly failing) at subtlety. The neon yellow bathrobe and watermelon-patterned slippers made him about as inconspicuous as a flamingo at a penguin convention. They were clearly enjoying their own peaceful weekend - or had been, before the inevitable interruption.

"LAAAAAW!" The bellow carried across the yard with the force of a foghorn, Luffy's voice dripping with the kind of unearned familiarity usually reserved for war buddies or ancient sea deities being summoned during a storm.

Law's eyes lifted slowly from his tea, fixing the boy with a stare that could curdle milk. The look of a man who could already feel his favorite houseplant's impending doom. His lips formed a single, damning syllable:

"No."

But the plea fell on deaf ears. The die had been cast. The gates of chaos stood wide open. Somewhere in the distance, a neighbor's dog began howling in sympathetic despair.

Meanwhile, in the garden, Shanks observed the unfolding scene with a gaze sharp enough to carve through steel. His dirt-stained fingers absently kneaded the stubborn mint seedling that refused to thrive, but his attention remained riveted on Rosinante. There was something about the man—the way he seemed to fold into himself, as if willing the armchair to swallow him whole—that didn’t sit right. A dissonance, like a single off-key note in an otherwise harmonious melody.

"Doesn’t he strike you as… suspicious?" Shanks murmured to Beckman without tearing his eyes away. His voice was low, barely more than a breath, yet it carried the weight of a man who had spent decades dissecting hidden truths.

Beckman, standing beside him with a watering can in one hand and a chipped coffee mug in the other, arched a single eyebrow. The dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves above painted fractured shadows across his stoic face, making his expression even more inscrutable.

"He’s a prosecutor who cut his teeth in Spain during his early career. Records on him are either sparse… or too polished to be believable," he replied, taking a deliberate sip of his coffee. The steam curled around his words like smoke from a dying ember. "But then again, prosecutors are always suspicious. It’s in the job description."

Shanks smirked, grinding a clump of soil between his fingers until it crumbled into dust.

"Fair point."

And as the children’s laughter swirled through the air like leaves caught in a whirlwind—as Law inhaled deeply, summoning the patience of a saint to avoid committing fratricide—the garden itself seemed to sigh in solidarity. The autumn breeze carried the scent of lavender, delicate and sweet, just as Luffy nearly trampled the flowerbed with his usual hurricane-like grace. A screech from Law—"STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM MY PLANTS, YOU LITTLE MENACE!"—cut through the tranquility, sending a startled sparrow fleeing from the hedges. The lavender trembled in protest, its purple heads bowing as if in prayer for deliverance from the chaos.

Chapter Text

The evening heat seeped into the kitchen like an obstinate guest no one had invited.

The air hung thick, saturated with the scent of garlic slowly browning in the skillet, mingling with the damp freshness of newly washed vegetables resting on the counter—still dripping lazy beads of water that slid downward without hurry. Sunlight pierced through the thin curtains in golden stripes, painting the tiles and Beckman’s face with a warmth that, in another life, might have passed for a margarine commercial—had it not been for the chaos of scattered peels, misaligned utensils, and a pot on the stove threatening to boil over.

At the center of it all, Beckman ruled his domain with the patience of a monk and the precision of a surgeon. The knife’s blade glided flush against the carrots, carving uniform slices, each one stacked as if part of a presentation for invisible judges. Steady hands, focused gaze. He wasn’t cooking; he was architecting a meal.

Leaning against the doorframe, Shanks watched. His body was relaxed, one foot casually crossed over the other, but with that familiar glint of mischief in his eyes—the one Beckman knew all too well. It was the kind of look that served as a warning: something, inevitably, was about to shatter the peace of the moment.

“Beckman,” he called, his voice low, deliberate, like a general announcing the onset of an offensive.
Beckman didn’t even lift his head. He merely raised his eyebrows and kept the knife’s rhythm unbroken.

“Mm?” he replied, his voice already laced with resignation, mentally bracing for the scale of trouble about to unfold.

Shanks drew a deep breath. “I need to tell you something.”

There was weight in those words. Enough to make Beckman pause. The blade came to rest on the cutting board, and he turned slowly, scrutinizing Shanks from head to toe like a detective hunting for clues—posture, breathing, even the restless fidget of his hands. Three seconds of silence stretched between them.

Long enough to mentally catalog the worst-case scenarios: Someone had died. The government found out about the sham marriage. Or—and this one was depressingly plausible—Shanks had broken the TV again playing video games with the kids.

Beckman inhaled deeply.

“We’re pregnant?” he asked flatly, wrenching out the words like ripping off a bandage. It was a joke, disguised as sarcasm, but calibrated to pry at least a smirk loose.

Shanks blinked, genuinely caught off guard. He brought a hand to his chin, tilting his head first toward the ceiling, then down at his own abdomen, as if seriously contemplating the possibility.

“Hmm…” He paused for dramatic effect, narrowing his eyes. “Impossible. Unless it’s by osmosis… or prolonged eye contact.”

The smile began at the corner of Shanks’ mouth—that treacherous little quirk Beckman knew all too well, the kind that spelled trouble in bold letters.

Within seconds, the expression unfurled completely, and before Beckman could muster a reaction, Shanks erupted into loud, unchecked laughter. He doubled over, bracing himself against the counter with one hand, as if the sheer force of his own mirth might topple him.

“Besides…” he managed between gasping breaths, fighting to speak through waves of laughter, “if either of us were pregnant… it’d be you.”

Beckman’s hand froze around the knife handle. The blade still lay against the cutting board, but the silence that followed crackled with the tension of thunder about to split the sky. He blinked once. Then again, slowly, like a man replaying—in chronological order—every poor life decision that had led him to this moment.

It was at that precise moment the kitchen acquired its audience.

"Who's pregnant?" Ace's voice materialized out of thin air, his body slouching against the doorframe, a half-crushed bag of chips dangling from his fingers. He chewed noisily, eyebrows arched with genuine intrigue, as though he'd just stumbled into a telenovela during its most explosive plot twist.

"Are we getting a baby brother??" Luffy popped up behind him, face alight with near-hazardous excitement, eyes sparkling like he was already mentally drafting a beginner's guide to mischief-making.

"Hope it's a boy," Sabo added smoothly, strolling in with hands tucked in his pockets and a self-satisfied smirk, as if appraising a football team's new star player—already certain the 'recruit' would pull his weight.

Beckman closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Not a dramatic sigh, but the measured breath of a man weighing whether it was worth expending energy to explain or simply walking out of the kitchen to pretend none of this ever happened.

Shanks, meanwhile, had fully surrendered to the chaos. His laughter came in hiccuping bursts now, torso practically folded in half, one hand white-knuckling the counter while the other clutched his side as if bracing for laughter-induced cramps.

“Nobody’s having any baby!” Shanks managed between peals of laughter, swiping away a tear from the corner of his eye with his thumb. “I was just going to say my brother’s allergic to seafood.”

Beckman’s gaze dropped to the counter. There, atop the wooden cutting board, fish and squid lay neatly coated in fresh seasoning, their briny, faintly citrusy scent mingling with the kitchen’s stifling heat. He let out a low, rough sound of frustration—something between a grunt and a sigh.

Without wasting a second, he began clearing everything away with sharp, efficient movements, his entire body radiating tightly leashed irritation.

“You could’ve mentioned that before I seasoned the squid,” he muttered, still refusing to look at Shanks, his tone already braced for an unsatisfactory answer. He cinched the plastic bags shut with a single decisive knot, then stalked across the kitchen, yanked the freezer open, and started rummaging for meat like a man searching not just for dinner, but for a solution to a problem far greater than tonight’s meal.

Leaning against the doorframe, Shanks shrugged with the serene calm of a man who saw no issue whatsoever with the situation.

“Thought a gentle approach would be better… or would you rather I’d barged in here shouting?”

Beckman slammed the freezer door shut with a hollow bang. "Your 'gentle approach' could've killed your brother."

Shanks took a lazy bite from an apple he'd scavenged from the fruit bowl, chewing with deliberate slowness.

"Wouldn't be the first time," he remarked, with the casual detachment of someone discussing the weather.

Beckman froze mid-motion, dish towel still clutched in his hand. He turned slowly to face Shanks, eyebrows arched, his patience dangling by the thinnest of threads.

"Shanks."

"It was an accident!" Shanks raised his hands in surrender, the half-eaten apple in his left serving as a makeshift white flag. "In my defense, nobody knew about the allergy back then."

Beckman dragged his palm down his face, fingers digging into his skin as if trying to physically scrape away his mounting irritation. "I don't want to know."

"He swelled up like a balloon..." Shanks began, eyes alight with the glee of someone about to savor every syllable. His laughter burst forth - loud, unrepentant, accompanied by that characteristic slap of his palm against his thigh, as if the memory was too delicious to contain within mere words.

"Shanks." Beckman's voice sliced through the air like a honed blade. He didn't raise his volume, but the weight behind his tone was enough to make any sensible person back down. Any sensible person, that is.

"Alright, alright, I'll stop," Shanks said, raising one hand in a gesture of surrender. But the smile... that damn smile remained plastered across his face - wide, unrepentant, and utterly provocative - betraying that he was far from actually stopping.

A brief silence settled over the kitchen, shattered by a question that came from the corner:

"So... no baby brother?" Ace asked through a half-full mouth, the crumpled chip bag tucked precariously under his arm.

"No," Beckman answered tersely, already returning to chopping the meat with deliberate, forceful strokes - each decisive thunk of the knife serving as punctuation to end the discussion.

"But maybe someday?" Sabo interjected, stepping into Beckman's field of vision with crossed arms and the calculating look of a man preparing to negotiate terms.

Beckman lifted his head just enough to level them all with a single, withering stare.

"Why are you all so desperate for another brother? You've already got Luffy," he countered, attempting to steer the conversation elsewhere. "He's the baby of the family - isn't that enough chaos for you?"

Luffy, who had been crouched on the floor trying to fish out a rogue snack that had escaped beneath the cabinets, suddenly jerked his head up as if someone had personally insulted his honor. His wide eyes blinked in exaggerated offense, the very picture of a younger sibling who'd just detected the faintest hint of disrespect in their elder's tone.

"I'm not the baby!" Luffy protested, puffing out his chest like a peacock asserting dominance. "I'm the most dangerous one!"

Ace snorted a short laugh and rolled his eyes. "Dangerous to who? The food supply?"

"To everyone!" Luffy declared with absolute conviction, raising his clenched fist like a superhero preparing for action. "A baby brother wouldn't stand a chance against me!"

Sabo tilted his head slightly, analyzing the situation like a little strategist already three steps ahead.

"That's exactly why we need another one. Someone's got to restore balance to this household."

Beckman released a heavy sigh - the kind that comes with slowly massaging one's temples. He could already feel the headache lurking like a shadow behind his eyes. "There will be no baby. End of discussion."

"For now..." Shanks chimed in, his voice dripping with such blatantly false innocence it was practically insulting.

Beckman turned slowly to face him, eyes narrowed in silent warning. "Shanks..."

"What?" The redhead flashed an almost angelic smile - the kind he only used when trying to weasel out of something he'd clearly done on purpose.

Beckman took a deep breath, set the knife down on the cutting board, and summarized the matter while staring directly at him: "Let's focus on not killing anyone with allergic reactions today."

Shanks simply took another loud bite of his apple, the crisp crunch echoing through the kitchen as the kids exchanged conspiratorial looks that promised this debate was far from over.

The sound of Beckman's knife against the cutting board maintained a firm, almost irritated rhythm, while the scent of garlic and spices mingled with the sharp tang of freshly chopped carrots.

"I'm just saying, if it ever happened, it would be hilarious," Shanks remarked with a half-smirk, leaning his hip against the counter and spinning the apple in his hand before taking another deliberate bite. "Can you picture it? You, completely losing your mind, chasing after yet another little hellion?"

Ace and Sabo exchanged knowing glances, their muffled laughter escaping like they were sharing some private joke. Luffy, meanwhile, widened his eyes dramatically, his imagination already running wild with possibilities.

"I'd help take care of it!" he proclaimed, puffing out his chest as if receiving some grand honor. His entire posture radiated the self-importance of a knight being bestowed a sacred duty.

"No, you wouldn't," Beckman countered without even looking up, his tone flat and automatic - the voice of someone who'd had this exact conversation too many times before.

"Would too!" Luffy insisted, already gesturing wildly as if outlining an instruction manual. "I'd teach the baby how to fight, eat meat, and climb onto the roof!"

Beckman paused just long enough to arch one pointed eyebrow in his direction.

"That's exactly why there will be no baby," he declared, returning to his chopping with precise, measured strokes - each slice of vegetable serving as another unspoken argument against the entire proposition.

Shanks, still lounging against the counter, chewed slowly with narrowed eyes brimming with amusement. He looked for all the world like an audience member savoring every moment of a perfectly choreographed performance staged solely for his entertainment.

"You know, Benn..." Shanks began, shifting his posture into what pretended to be seriousness, his tone adopting a mock-therapeutic quality, "if you keep being so opposed to the idea, they're going to think it's because you don't like children."

The rhythmic sound of chopping ceased abruptly. Beckman drew a deep, measured breath and lifted his face with deliberate slowness - as if willing the weight of his gaze to convey what words couldn't. His eyes locked onto Shanks' and held the silence a heartbeat longer than necessary, ensuring the redhead fully absorbed the unspoken warning.

"Shanks..." His voice carried the weariness of a man stating the obvious for the hundredth time, "I live with you and three children. If that doesn't prove I tolerate children, nothing ever will."

Shanks bit back his laughter, but a triumphant grin still broke through, illuminating his features like sunlight through storm clouds. "Touché."

The knife's steady rhythm resumed its dominance of the kitchen's soundscape, but the lighthearted atmosphere persisted - Shanks taking another crisp bite of his apple while the children exchanged conspiratorial glances that telegraphed this debate was far from settled in their minds.

"All right then, crew!" Shanks suddenly boomed with the exaggerated grandeur of a captain announcing a grand voyage, clapping his hands together for emphasis. "Everyone to the baths, immediately!"

Ace, perched on the edge of the table with a half-opened packet of cookies in his lap, scrunched his face in protest. "Huh? Why?”

"Because..." Shanks twirled the apple core like it was a vault key and pointed at the three of them with the solemnity of an admiral issuing battle orders, "Uncle Buggy will be here any minute, and I need you looking presentable."

Sabo, who had been flipping through an old magazine while leaning against the doorframe, was the first to understand. A slow, knowing smile crept across his face. "Ah. The perfect family illusion, right?"

"Exactly," Shanks confirmed without a trace of shame. "He's still not one hundred percent sold on this marriage arrangement, so we're going to show him we're the most picture-perfect family that ever existed."

Ace, chewing thoughtfully, raised an eyebrow. "By 'picture-perfect' you mean... significantly less chaotic than we actually are?"

"That." The confirmation came so fast it might as well have been rehearsed. "Clean clothes, combed hair, and absolutely no lingering scents of snack food or tomato sauce."

Luffy, who had been slouching in his chair swinging his legs, made a face like he'd just been sentenced to the worst punishment imaginable. "Do I really have to take a bath?"

"Yes, my dear allegedly-dangerous Youngest son," Shanks declared, already grabbing him by the collar and steering him toward the hallway. "And actually scrub behind your ears this time, or I'll have Buggy do a personal inspection."

Luffy froze mid-step, his eyes widening to saucer-size. "He checks behind ears?!"

Shanks leaned down and whispered with the gravity of someone revealing state secrets: "Only if he suspects you skipped your hygiene routine."

That was enough to send Luffy sprinting away, his feet pounding against the wooden floor like a frantic drumbeat. Sabo and Ace followed close behind, laughing and tossing mocking remarks between them.

"Sabo! Don’t forget it’s your turn to do the laundry!" Shanks shouted over the noise.

"Where are my basic human rights?!" came the distant protest, muffled by the sound of slamming doors.

The kitchen finally settled back into its usual rhythm—the quiet sizzle of sauce simmering on the stove, the warm scent of garlic and tomatoes hanging in the air. Beckman, who hadn’t once looked up from the cutting board, released a slow sigh and resumed slicing carrots, the blade gliding with practiced precision.

"You know this won’t actually change his mind, right?" he said, still not glancing at the redhead.

Shanks leaned back against the counter, smiling like a man in no hurry to answer. "Maybe not… but at least we’ll look perfect for a solid two hours."

Beckman lifted the ladle he’d been stirring the sauce with, pointing it at Shanks in a gesture that had long since become a ritual between them.

"You’re unbearable."

"And irresistible," Shanks corrected, running his finger along the ladle's curve before bringing it to his lips with the self-assured grace of a connoisseur. He tasted, closed his eyes as though savoring a rare vintage, and murmured: "Perhaps just a touch more basil."

Time slipped through their fingers like fine-grained sand.

Beckman arranged the dining table with the precision of a symphony conductor - adjusting sterling silverware until each piece stood in micrometer-perfect alignment, verifying whether the linen napkins maintained their razor-sharp forty-five degree folds. The bone china, white with delicate gold filigree, created a striking contrast against the deep crimson centerpiece where fresh garden roses intertwined with fragrant eucalyptus branches.

He'd never seen Shanks this unsettled. Not entirely nervous perhaps, but vibrating with too many conflicting emotions compressed into too narrow a slice of time.

The chaos erupted the precise instant the redhead's eyes flickered to the massive wall clock in the living room - an art exhibition-worthy piece with polished mahogany casing.

Less than one hour now.

Sixty minutes to transform what they called home - this marble-floored mansion with its panoramic bay-view windows - into something worthy of a luxury magazine spread. Every surface needed to whisper effortless perfection, every detail to hum with curated elegance while hiding three hyperactive children, Shanks' chronic disorganization, and Beckman's growing urge to strangle someone behind this absurd domestic theater.

“Ace!” Shanks bellowed, storming across the living room in long, purposeful strides, haphazardly stacking velvet throw pillows on the sofa as if their mere presence could magically erase every stain and wrinkle from the fabric. His voice carried the desperate urgency of a man trying to tame a hurricane with sheer willpower. “Take off that skull-print shirt! This instant!”

Ace materialized in the doorway, still wearing the offending garment, his expression the picture of serene incomprehension. His damp hair fell in rebellious strands across his forehead, water droplets clinging stubbornly to the tips like morning dew on grass blades. The very image of someone who couldn’t fathom why his fashion choices might be problematic.

Shanks had already turned his attention elsewhere when he spotted Sabo further down the hall. His shoulders visibly relaxed, tension draining away like water through open fingers.

“Now that’s more like it!” he praised, closing the distance to fuss over a single stubborn lock of hair at the boy’s temple, his touch surprisingly gentle for someone who’d been roaring commands moments earlier. “Excellent work—you look perfect.”

“Thank you!” Sabo replied, preening under the rare compliment before disappearing down the plush-carpeted hallway, his socked feet sliding slightly across the polished hardwood beneath.

The redhead was already in motion again, his long legs eating up the gleaming corridor at a pace that made the walls blur. The sharp report of his leather soles against wood echoed through the sudden silence, punctuated only by distant voices and the occasional slam of a door. He nearly collided with the bedroom doorframe at full speed, barely stopping himself by slapping a palm against the wood hard enough to make the hinges rattle.

"Luffy, are you done yet?" Shanks demanded without even pausing to draw breath.

The youngest slowly lifted his face, blinking as if just now registering the redhead's presence. His cheeks bulged with what was decidedly not part of any formal preparation for receiving guests. Golden crumbs tumbled from his lips like erratic snowfall, settling haphazardly across his wrinkled t-shirt - the fabric so thoroughly crumpled it could have passed for some avant-garde textile installation.

"No..." he answered with the serene calm of someone who'd never experienced urgency in his life.

Shanks squeezed his eyes shut for one long second, inhaling deeply until his chest visibly expanded with the effort of restraining himself from shouting. When he reopened them, his expression had crystallized into grim determination: pivoting sharply on his heels, his crimson coat swirling dramatically behind him, he marched straight toward the kitchen with military precision.

And there stood Beckman.

The man commanded the scene like a living portrait in motion—elbows relaxed, posture effortlessly straight, the blade of his knife gliding through the onion with near-surgical precision.

The crisp tap-tap-tap of steel against wood blended seamlessly with the gentle sizzle of olive oil in the pan. He didn’t so much as glance up when Shanks appeared in the doorway, breathless as if he’d just sprinted a mile.

"How are you this calm right now?" Shanks demanded, bracing a hand against the doorframe, his body pitched slightly forward as if trying to physically shake a reaction out of him. His voice was a cocktail of disbelief and urgency. "Buggy could be here any minute!!"

Beckman, unhurried, merely lifted one shoulder in a lazy half-shrug, the knife never pausing in its rhythmic dance across the cutting board.

"Murphy’s Law."

"What?" Shanks took two deliberate steps forward, his boots producing sharp, authoritative clicks against the polished tiles. The distance between them shrank as if he needed to confront that absurd calmness up close, to scrutinize it like some inexplicable phenomenon.

"Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Beckman steadied the cutting board with one hand and, with a practiced flick of his wrist, sent the onions tumbling into the skillet. A muted sizzle followed, then a dance of tiny golden bubbles rising through the shimmering oil. "Running around like a headless chicken won't change that."

Shanks blinked, his lips parting in stunned silence. "That's surrendering before the battle even begins!"

"It's not surrendering." Beckman gripped the skillet's handle and gave it a smooth circular motion, spreading the slices evenly as the sweet aroma of caramelizing onions blended with the rich olive oil. "It's accepting reality."

The redhead dragged a hand through his hair, fingers tangling in the strands in a gesture of pure agitation as he pivoted on his heel and took several restless strides across the cool floor. The irregular staccato of his boots clashed sharply with the methodical rhythm of Beckman's knife work—chaos and order in perfect opposition.

"Have you always been this... zen?"

This time, Beckman paused mid-motion. His eyes—calm, faintly amused—met Shanks' with the precision of a man who knew exactly when to deliver a line.

"Ever since you crashed into my life approximately... one month, three days, eight hours, and forty-two seconds ago." A deliberate beat. The ghost of a smile threatened at the corner of his mouth. "Forty-three. Forty-four."

Shanks froze mid-step in the kitchen, his red coat still swaying from the abrupt halt like a battle standard caught in an after-breeze. "You... you've been counting the seconds?"

"It's hard to forget the day Murphy's Law gained sentience and took human form," Beckman replied, redirecting his attention to the cutting board as the knife's rhythmic percussion resumed like background music to their conversation. "Though it hasn't been entirely... unpleasant."

The redhead fought to maintain his outraged expression, but the traitorous curve of a smile formed anyway—stubborn as dawn breaking through storm clouds. "So you know exactly how long I've been making your life more... vibrant."

"That wasn't the adjective I chose," Beckman corrected, though the glint in his eyes betrayed the carefully cultivated neutrality of his tone.

The moment hung suspended between them—warm, charged, fragile—until the jarring fanfare of the doorbell shattered it. The sound was so shrill it seemed to flash-freeze Shanks' bones, a phantom winter wind racing down his vertebrae.

He sprinted toward the foyer, palm slapping against the doorknob with enough force to rattle the hinges. Drawing a breath so deep it might have been his last, he squared his shoulders like a man preparing to descend into Tartarus itself.

The tense silence shattered with a thunderous crash—the door flew open with such violent force the hinges seemed to tremble, the sound reverberating through the empty space. In the same heartbeat, a perfectly aimed punch connected squarely with Shanks' forehead. He blinked, stunned, and for one surreal moment was absolutely certain: if this were a cartoon, he'd have been driven straight into the polished floorboards, leaving behind a perfect facial imprint like some human-shaped stamp.

"Ow, ow, OW!" he groaned, hands flying to his throbbing head, fingers pressing into the already-warming skin as his body twisted in an undignified struggle to regain balance. The pain pulsed in time with his heartbeat, and the faint ringing in his ears only amplified his disorientation.

"That's for getting married without telling me first, you overdramatic idiot!" The razor-sharp words seemed to echo directly in his skull, nearly audible.

Through the doorway strode an unmistakable figure: a woman whose hair—dark blue as a starless night—was piled into a loose bun that surrendered to gravity, rebellious strands dancing in the breeze from the open window.

Her crooked, half-mocking smile lit up a face dusted with delicate freckles, while eyes sharp as honed blades pinned Shanks with a look that blended disapproval with barely-contained amusement. There was something inherently comical about hearing her call Shanks "overdramatic"—considering she herself could never be accused of subtlety.

"It's good to see you too," Shanks managed, still slightly dazed, attempting to both control the throbbing pain and divert attention from the impending confrontation he knew was coming. His words tumbled out too fast, nearly tripping over each other—a perfect reflection of his internal turmoil. "How was your vacation?"

She crossed her arms, taking a deliberate step forward. The faint clicking of her decorated nails against her wrist betrayed simmering impatience.

"The Maldives were lovely," she began, voice dripping with irony, "right up until I returned to Japan and discovered my empty-headed brother—the one with absolutely zero self-preservation instincts—had plunged headfirst into yet another spectacular mess."

Shanks' eyes widened, his brow furrowing in a childlike mix of surprise and apprehension. The weight of her accusation hung heavily in the air, but he tried to lighten the mood with a disarming blink.

"I wouldn't call marriage a 'spectacular mess,'" he offered, as if sheer charm might erase the severity etched in her gaze.

"With you, anything becomes a spectacular mess," Buggy shot back, arms locking across his chest like armor bracing for battle. His stare was razor-sharp, laced with that signature blend of disapproval and sarcasm only he could master.

Though the room wasn't large, his imposing presence seemed to expand beyond its walls—commanding every inch of space with theatrical authority. The way he held himself suggested this was merely the opening volley in what promised to be an exhaustive debate.

But beneath Buggy's stern expression, a mischievous glimmer in his eyes betrayed him—like a spark of playful energy revealing that, deep down, this crooked scolding was his peculiar way of showing he cared.

"Don't talk about Shanks like that!" Luffy planted himself firmly between the flamboyant uncle and the redhead, puffing out his chest with tiny fists clenched at his waist in what he clearly believed was an imposing stance. Despite his diminutive size and childish features, his expression burned with fierce determination, almost challenging, as if his entire body radiated the resolve of a true warrior.

Buggy paused for a few seconds, arching one eyebrow as if deciphering a complicated riddle. His eyes flickered with a mix of surprise and amusement as he looked the tiny "thing" up and down—this pint-sized bundle of sheer audacity. Then, with theatrical flair, he slowly circled the boy, stroking his chin in an exaggerated thinker's pose, as though meticulously assessing every detail of his unexpected opponent.

Finally, he shot a curious glance at Shanks—as if reevaluating his accomplice—before turning his full attention back to the little warrior daring to challenge his mood.

"And what might you be?" Buggy drawled, his voice dripping with exaggerated curiosity laced with malicious amusement—like a detective toying with an unexpected clue. The words curled slowly through the air, each syllable weighted with theatrical intrigue.

"I'm Luffy, and you can't hit my family!" the boy declared, his voice small but steel-strong, rising to fill the room without a trace of hesitation or fear. His gaze never wavered—locked onto Buggy’s with unshakable conviction, as immovable as bedrock.

Buggy tilted his head to the side, releasing a drawn-out, contemplative "Hmmmmmm" that reverberated dramatically through the silence, stretching the moment like taffy.

Then, shifting gears abruptly, his tone dropped into something darker—smoky and ominous, straight out of a noir film—as if he were dragging a heavy secret into the light. "Why didn’t you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" Shanks cut in, brow furrowing as he narrowed his eyes, his body tensing slightly in anticipation of the verbal grenade about to detonate.

"That you had a damn kid, you bastard!" Buggy fired back without missing a beat, launching another punch toward Shanks’ head—though this time, the blow was featherlight, more of a playful swat than a real strike, like he wanted the provocation without the pain. "Who’s the mother?!"

"Ow, but I don't have one!" Shanks shot back quickly, throwing his hands up in an exaggerated gesture of surrender, his voice tinged with flustered exasperation. "I found this one on the street! Literally picked him up like a stray!"

"But he's your carbon copy!" Buggy jabbed an accusatory finger at Luffy, his trademark cackle echoing through the room before the words even fully left his mouth. "That same ridiculous, over-the-top laugh!"

"Coincidence," Shanks stated firmly, planting his foot with a lopsided grin that barely concealed the embarrassed flush creeping up his neck.

Buggy's face split into a grin so wide it bordered on terrifying, revealing teeth that seemed unnaturally sharp for someone claiming to be just an annoyed sibling. It was the kind of smile that belonged on a stage—all calculated mischief and delight, broadcasting how thoroughly he was enjoying this predicament.

Without ceremony, he reached out and grabbed Luffy by the arms, hoisting him off the ground with the delicate consideration one might use selecting a prize melon at the market—complete with the appraising look of someone thinking 'This one's going to be today's trophy.'

"I'm keeping this one!" he declared with his signature theatrical flair, voice dripping with playful provocation as if he'd already won some invisible bet.

Luffy kicked his legs in half-hearted protest, face scrunched in indignant confusion, eyes comically wide between shock and defiance as he pedaled uselessly in midair. Shanks, meanwhile, exhaled through his nose in irritation, shaking his head with a resigned smirk that said he'd known this visit would be anything but peaceful—and absolutely nothing resembling calm.

"You can't just take MY SON!" Shanks bellowed, eyes flashing with fiery determination as he wrestled Luffy back with both hands—the boy now dangling between them like a ragdoll caught in a tug-of-war between two overgrown children fighting over a prized toy. The tension between them crackled in the air, thick with the absurdity of this familiar yet utterly ridiculous showdown.

But Buggy wasn’t about to let go easily. He yanked hard on one of Luffy’s arms while Shanks clamped down on the other with equal stubbornness, leaving the boy suspended mid-air for a breathless moment, swaying like a sack of potatoes caught in a hurricane—dazed, disoriented, and utterly at the mercy of their ridiculous feud.

Luffy, for his part, seemed either completely unbothered or simply too dizzy to care, his head lolling slightly from the sudden aerial acrobatics.

With one final, decisive tug, Shanks emerged victorious, hauling Luffy against his side and tucking him haphazardly under his arm like a clumsily wrapped parcel—awkwardly secured, but undeniably claimed.

"Take your pick of the other two," Shanks declared, gesturing with his free hand toward Ace and Sabo, who were watching the spectacle with carefully composed expressions—faces schooled into seriousness, but eyes alight with barely contained amusement. Their postures telegraphed the familiar mix of exasperation and reluctant entertainment that came with witnessing yet another of their guardians' absurd showdowns.

"Hey!" Sabo protested, voice laced with mock indignation as he crossed his arms and scowled—the very picture of a young diplomat attempting to mediate a dispute he knew was beyond rational arbitration.

Ace merely shook his head in slow, world-weary amusement, his smile tinged with the exhaustion of someone who'd sat through this particular drama too many times to bother investing energy in its resolution.

Buggy, meanwhile, folded his arms and studied Luffy—still dangling like some rare collectible unearthed at auction—with the appraising eye of a pirate who'd just stumbled upon buried treasure. A crooked, mischievous grin crept across his face, lighting up his features with childlike glee.

"Tempting offer..." he drawled, voice thick with irony, "but this one's like a perfect little miniature." The unspoken of you hung in the air, unnecessary to voice when the pointed look he shot Shanks said it all—that blend of provocation and begrudging acknowledgment passing between them like a private joke decades in the making.

Luffy blinked rapidly, his wide eyes darting between the two men like a startled rabbit caught between rival predators. The mix of bewilderment and childish apprehension painted across his face suggested he genuinely couldn't tell whether he was about to be kidnapped and auctioned off as some rare collector's item. His mouth hung slightly open in that particular expression children wear when trying to determine if adults are joking or actually threatening.

Meanwhile, Beckman leaned against the doorframe with the weary posture of a man who'd witnessed this exact brand of nonsense too many times to count. His arms crossed in a gesture that blended patience with passive judgment, he observed the scene with the same detached amusement one might reserve for watching teenagers brawl over the last slice of cake at a birthday party.

The slight narrowing of his eyes and the barely-there downturn at the corner of his mouth, however, betrayed the thin thread of exasperation running through him—that familiar "here we go again" sentiment that had become his constant companion since Shanks entered his life.

Moving with the deliberate, unhurried grace of a glacier carving through mountains, Beckman pushed off from the doorframe and strode into the heart of the chaos. His measured footsteps cut through the commotion like a knife through fog, each footfall perfectly spaced as if marking the tempo of some silent waltz only he could hear.

The very air around him seemed to still and thicken, time itself bending to accommodate his unshakable calm. Where others created turbulence, Beckman carried with him an almost gravitational pull of order—the eye of the storm given human form. Even the dust motes appeared to hang suspended in the sunlight as he passed, as though paying silent homage to his quiet authority.

He paid no mind to the murderous glare Buggy shot his way—a look dripping with suspicion and challenge—nor to Shanks' exaggerated show of ownership as he kept Luffy clamped under his arm like some haphazardly stored trophy, too precious to relinquish.

"Hand over my son," Beckman stated, his voice steady yet serene. It wasn't so much a request as it was a fundamental law of nature—inevitable, unarguable, and utterly irrefutable. A silent command that filled the room with near-tangible weight.

Before either man could muster a retort, Beckman simply slid his hands between them, fingers firm and purposeful. In one fluid motion, he hoisted Luffy up by the torso with the effortless patience of someone plucking a stubborn cat off a kitchen counter—no fanfare, no urgency.

He set the boy down gently, as though placing down something fragile yet invaluable.

Luffy blinked, momentarily disoriented, as if recalibrating his place in the world, then shot off like a firework straight toward Ace and Sabo, weaving between them like they were fortress walls he needed to breach.

"Hey!" Shanks grumbled, voice thick with mock offense and a touch of paternal jealousy as his "son" escaped his protective grasp.

Buggy, meanwhile, muttered something under his breath with a sly grin, complaining about 'having his prize stolen' as if this were some grand competition.

Beckman drew a deep breath, ready to finally interject properly—but was abruptly cut off. Buggy raised a hand in the universal 'stop' gesture, shutting him down mid-motion.

"Skip the introductions. I already know who you are... and I couldn't care less," Buggy declared, his eyes narrowing into slits of appraisal. His expression seemed to pierce beyond the physical—as if attempting to strip Beckman's very soul bare, layer by layer.

Beckman remained impassive, betraying no discomfort. Instead, he inclined his head just a fraction—a movement so slight it might have been mistaken for a natural shift in posture, yet to Buggy, it resonated like a silent provocation.

That minuscule gesture—the subtle tilt of his head—was all it took for Buggy to look away first, as though he'd stumbled upon something unexpected: a vulnerability, perhaps, or an uncomfortable truth he'd rather avoid.

Shanks smiled, his face lighting up with an almost paternal warmth as he observed Beckman and Buggy locked in their gladiatorial standoff. His eyes carried that familiar, calming assurance of someone determined to quell a storm before it could even begin.

"Come on now, play nice," Shanks urged, his voice soft and conciliatory—a silent invitation for the heavy tension to dissolve into the air, carried away on some gentle, unseen breeze.

Buggy couldn't quite mask the lingering dissatisfaction in his gaze—the weight of his brother's marriage clearly sat heavy on his heart, an unspoken grievance. Yet he released a deep sigh, more of a resigned grumble, as if deciding that, for now, this battle was on hold—at least until a more opportune moment.

"Fine, fine..." he muttered, crossing his arms with visible reluctance and stepping back from the table, creating a fragile pocket of space in the charged atmosphere.

Shanks turned to Beckman with a quiet, reassuring smile, as if to say that beneath the friction, there remained an unspoken bond of care and unity.

"Is dinner ready?" he asked, his voice laced with cautious hope—as though a simple meal might be the first step toward truce.

"Yes," Beckman replied, his tone steady and certain—a silent invitation to set aside their differences, if only for a few hours, and move toward the dining room.

The group drifted down the hallway with steps now lighter, voices softening into murmurs that almost sounded natural. as though each carefully measured word was smoothing over the embers of their earlier clash.

Above them, the crystal chandelier cast delicate prisms of light across the polished glassware and silver cutlery arranged meticulously atop the dark wooden table, its surface gleaming like still water. The flickering candlelight painted dancing shadows along the walls, weaving an almost magical, intimate ambiance, one that, for now, held the promise of peace.

The comforting aroma of warm food enveloped the room, wrapping them in a silent embrace of solace—a truce for both senses and spirits.

Yet the atmosphere remained tense, to say the least. No one dared speak in those first few minutes; only the delicate clink of silverware against plates and the occasional bubble of sauce resting at the center of the table filled the silence.

Shanks stood beside Beckman, helping serve the food with near-ceremonial care—passing the dish of roasted potatoes as though handling something fragile, perhaps to prevent anyone from repurposing it as an improvised weapon.

"So..." Buggy shifted in his seat, restless, his fingers drumming an uneven, almost nervous rhythm against the tabletop. "Lovely evening, isn't it?" He attempted a smile that looked more like a strained effort than genuine sentiment.

Ace slowly lifted his eyes, blinking with mild skepticism, his hands resting idly on his plate.

"Did you get that from Google?" he asked, his voice laced with dry humor, as if doubting the authenticity of the observation.

Buggy shot him a narrow-eyed glare, dripping with sarcasm and a touch of exasperation.

"Apologies, Your Highness," he began, with an exaggerated bow that leaned more toward mockery than respect, "I'm merely attempting polite conversation here. It's not every day your idiot brother gets married without so much as a heads-up." He finished with a weary sigh, heavy with unspoken 'I have no idea how to navigate this mess.'

Shanks feigned offense, crossing his arms for a brief moment before picking up the serving spoon again, his trademark lopsided grin never quite leaving his face.

"You're never going to let this go, are you?" he teased, that familiar mischievous glint dancing in his eyes.

"No," Buggy stated flatly, his gaze locked onto Shanks like a targeting system. "I'm still waiting for the plot twist where you hit your head, regain memories of your past life, and realize you're raising three future villains—" he gestured vaguely toward Ace, Sabo, and Luffy, "—while married to a sociopath who'll inevitably cause your demise."

Beckman, who had been calmly slicing bread with surgical precision, paused mid-cut. A faint crease formed between his brows.

"That's... oddly specific," he remarked, his composed voice cutting through the dining room's atmosphere like a knife through butter.

"Actually, it's not," Buggy countered, raising a lecturing finger. "There are at least fifty novels and manga that follow that exact plot if you pay attention to tropes."

"Eighty-two, if you include Chinese and Korean webnovels," Sabo added without even looking up from his plate, his tone casual as if discussing the weather.

Every head at the table swiveled toward Sabo in unison, eyebrows raised at his unexpected interjection—all except Luffy, who seized the momentary distraction to stealthily pilfer an extra portion of grilled meat, balancing it precariously on his fork like some culinary tightrope walker about to perform a daring feat. The slab of meat teetered dangerously, threatening to topple onto the pristine tablecloth at any second.

"What?" Sabo asked, feigning innocence with artfully widened eyes and a smirk that screamed guilty pleasure. "A man can't have hobbies these days?"

"That depends entirely on the hobby... and no," Ace deadpanned, using his forearm to shield the potato dish from Luffy's desperately grasping fingers. The younger boy's arm stretched comically across the table, his determination undeterred by Ace's blockade.

Buggy picked up his silverware with an ironic smile, watching Shanks through that trademark gaze—half serious, half provoking. The glint in his eyes suggested he'd been waiting years to deliver this particular lecture.

"Shanks, I'll give you this much—your kid's got good taste," he remarked, crossing his arms like a disapproving uncle. "The real issue is you dove headfirst into this without considering the long-term consequences. What were you thinking?"

"I don't think we'd make very convincing villains," Ace chimed in, his confident grin radiating the unshakable certainty of youth. The way he said it implied he'd actually given the matter considerable thought—and found the concept laughable.

"And we'd never hurt Shanks!" Luffy added, already attempting to climb onto the table in his enthusiasm, his face alight with pure, unfiltered innocence. One knee had made it onto the tablecloth, threatening to upend a water glass as he waved his fork like a tiny flag of declaration.

Buggy rested his chin on his palm, his eyes half-lidded as he observed the interaction with an air of theatrical judgment—like a critic watching an amateur stage performance, already drafting his scathing review in his mind.

"I'll be the judge of that," he declared in that gravelly voice of his, a perfect blend of skepticism and authority, slowly wagging his index finger as if delivering some final, unassailable verdict.

"But it is the truth," Ace countered with conviction, swiftly maneuvering to pile a generous portion of food onto Luffy's plate before the little troublemaker could orchestrate another chaotic stunt or break something expensive. "We like Shanks, and we wouldn't hurt him," he affirmed, his gaze steady and sincere, leaving no room for doubt that this wasn't just empty talk.

"Could you all stop talking about me like I'm not even here?" Shanks grumbled, crossing his arms and shooting them a look of indignant fury—like a deposed king forced to watch his tiny kingdom descend into childish rebellion.

Beckman, with the unshakable calm that seemed to be his trademark, picked up the rice spoon within reach and—in one precise motion—gently shoved it into Shanks' mouth.
The redhead turned a glare on him, eyes blazing with reproach and disdain, but the effect was immediate: he fell silent, chewing reluctantly as he swallowed both the food and any further complaints.

The silence that followed carried an almost comedic weight, as if that little display of "domestication" had been a silent reminder of who truly held authority at that table—at least for the time being.

"This is concerning," Buggy declared, crossing his arms with theatrical flair. "Are you being held against your will? Blink twice if you need help."

He stared directly into Shanks' eyes as if trying to crack some secret code, then arched one eyebrow while observing the dynamic with Beckman. His expression hovered between suspicion and amusement—as though he couldn't decide whether to laugh or call the authorities.

Shanks merely shrugged, leisurely chewing an oversized bite of bread, utterly unfazed by the accusation. "I'm fine. You're the one who's aesthetic."

Buggy tilted his head to the left, baffled. "Aesthetic?"

"Yeah, all visual flair and no substance," Shanks clarified, as if it were the most obvious explanation in the world.

Beckman, who until then had been quietly observing, chimed in with a faint smile. "I don't see the issue. It's like a programming glitch: feed it, and it goes quiet."

"Hey!" Buggy protested, jabbing a finger in his direction—but couldn't resist glancing at Shanks' plate. "...Does it actually work?"

Shanks raised another piece of bread in a mock toast, chewing with a smirk. "Hundred percent success rate."

Beckman took a sip of his preservative-free organic grape juice, his gaze as calm as a wildlife documentarian narrating animal behavior:

"Simple strategy: maintain a controlled environment, provide sustenance, and the Shanks specimen remains temporarily pacified."

"You're a funny blue uncle," Luffy suddenly declared, mouth crammed full of food, crumbs tumbling from the corners of his lips as he pointed his fork at Buggy like a judge delivering a verdict. "And Beckman's meat is good."

Beckman, who had been in the middle of pouring wine into his glass, froze mid-motion and fixed Luffy with a raised eyebrow. "You're... welcome, I suppose." His tone carried the careful neutrality of a man deciding whether to be flattered or concerned by the unexpected culinary endorsement.

Buggy, meanwhile, recoiled as if physically struck, his neck craning back dramatically. "'A blue uncle?!" he sputtered, visibly affronted—though more by the audacity of the label than the label itself.

To mask his irritation, he propped an elbow on the table and deftly pivoted the conversation.

"So," he began, adopting a deceptively casual tone that might fool a stranger—but never Shanks, who recognized that calculated expression instantly. Buggy was probing, measuring each response like an unannounced job interview. "What exactly do you all do with your lives?"

"We train," Ace answered, his gaze steady—the unspoken to be strong hanging in the air.

"And study," Sabo added, straightening his posture with a hint of pride.

"And eat!" Luffy declared, thumping his chest victoriously, as if this were the pinnacle of human achievement.

"Excellent," Buggy said, clapping his hands once—the sharp sound echoing through the room. "That’s the perfect résumé for a heist crew."

Shanks exhaled a long-suffering sigh, the sigh of a man who could already see the impending disaster. "Don't recruit kids into your gang at the dinner table."

"You can’t stop me," Buggy shot back with a crooked grin, leaning forward conspiratorially. Like a smuggler sliding a bribe across a tavern table, he nudged his own plate toward Luffy—an unspoken offer.

Beckman observed the scene with detached amusement, retrieving a still-steaming serving dish and placing it at the center of the table with a soft thud.

"Anyone else want bread," he asked, his voice as calm as a windless sea, "or should I just throw it at someone’s face to end this discussion?"

A brief silence fell, broken only by the quiet sizzle of hot food.

Then, Luffy’s hand shot up with uncontainable enthusiasm. "I do!"

Dinner had been a symphony of overlapping conversations and clinking silverware—Luffy’s boisterous laughter ringing above Ace and Sabo’s heated debate over who’d stolen the last slice of meat, while Buggy spent more time scrutinizing the scene than actually eating. Beckman, ever the anchor, alternated between methodical bites and dry, clipped remarks.

When the meal finally ended, the scraping of chairs was followed by the chaotic percussion of hurried footsteps—three pairs of small feet retreating down the hallway in a whirlwind of barely contained energy.

The children vanished toward the living room to do… whatever it is children do to keep adults blissfully distracted—or, in the case of this particular trio, to conspire over their next grand domestic uprising.

Shanks, still seated at the table, dramatically reclined in his chair with a sigh so heavy it might have carried the weight of the world. He placed a hand over his heart and tugged at his collar to inspect it, as though expecting to find some grievous battle wound marring the fabric.

"Would you look at that..." he lamented, his voice dripping with theatrical despair, "I've gone and ruined my perfectly good shirt." The words rolled off his tongue with all the solemnity of a Shakespearean soliloquy, delivered as if he'd just received a death sentence rather than a food stain.

Before anyone could muster a response, he was already pushing back from the table, chair scraping against the floor as he rose with exaggerated purpose.

"I suppose I should change... or perhaps take a bath... or maybe—" he paused, eyes glittering with poorly concealed mischief, "—disappear for a few strategic minutes."

He sauntered off whistling, hands buried in his pockets, visibly pleased with his flimsy excuse—the kind that would only fool someone determined to be fooled.

"You're just going to leave me here? Alone with him?!" Buggy squawked, jabbing an accusatory finger so close to Beckman's forehead it nearly made contact, as if proximity might lend gravity to his protest.

Beckman, however, couldn’t even be bothered to react. He remained exactly where he was, utterly unfazed, as though the comment had passed straight over his head like a stray cloud—there, but entirely unworthy of acknowledgment.

"I’ll be quick!" Shanks called back, his voice already fading down the hallway, the promise hanging in the air like an obvious lie.

Silence settled for a weighted moment, broken only by the faint clink of silverware as Beckman methodically gathered the dishes. Without a word, he stood, stacked the plates with practiced efficiency, and carried them to the sink. Buggy watched from his seat, arms crossed, his brow furrowed in quiet deliberation—as though weighing whether to make a swift exit or simply resign himself to the inevitable.

Then, without warning, a clean plate and a drying cloth were thrust into his hands. Beckman didn’t so much as glance at him as he did it; he merely turned back to the sink and twisted the faucet, letting hot water rush over his wrists. Steam curled upward, carrying the sharp, citrusy scent of detergent into the air.

"So…" Buggy began, the word tentative, hovering in the space between them like a poorly cast fishing line—awkward and uncertain.

But Beckman didn’t answer immediately. With the precision of a man performing sacred ritual, he submerged the first plate into the soapy water, his large, capable hands cradling the porcelain as if it were the most vital task in the world.

The soft swish of sponge against ceramic filled the room, and Buggy realized, with dawning clarity, that in this space, any conversation would have to carve out its own place—or risk being swallowed whole by the quiet, patient rhythm of the kitchen.

"You know I don't actually have anything against you, right?" Buggy said, wiping the plate with quick, almost nervous strokes. The cloth squeaked faintly under the pressure of his fingers, as if he were scrubbing away thoughts rather than grease.

"I mean... you just appeared out of nowhere and married my brother."

Truth be told, Buggy didn’t know what to think about this marriage. His brother was an enigma—Shanks had never been the relationship type, and in some ways, it didn’t even feel like he was trying to fill a void. Just... suddenly, he was.

Buggy’s hands didn’t stop moving. The moment he set one dried plate aside, he snatched up another, as if the motion alone kept him in control of the conversation.

"And then—bam! Three kids! Overnight!" he added, tossing Beckman a brief, searching glance—like he hadn’t yet decided whether this was an accusation or just him complaining to the universe. "My brother is... intense, to put it mildly."

Beside him, Beckman washed dishes at a steady, unchanging pace. Every movement was measured: dip the plate in hot water, swirl the sponge, lather with soap, rinse. He didn’t hurry, didn’t let himself get swept up in the verbal whirlwind forming to his right.

"Not that I think it’s a bad thing," Buggy continued, refocusing on the cloth circling the plate. "It’s just... I know Shanks." He paused, his mouth twisting into a skeptical smile. "And he’s... well, he’s Shanks. He’s getting attached, and if this is temporary? It’ll break him."

He gestured so wildly with his free hand that the wet plate nearly slipped from his grip. He tightened his fingers at the last second and let out a frustrated sigh.

"And then there’s you, just... there. Like you’re his anchor or something."

Beckman simply let out a low, rumbling "Hm," rinsing the plate with deliberate care before passing it back. Steam curled between them, forming a warm, misty barrier—as if this moment existed in some separate pocket of reality, insulated from the rest of the house.

"I just want to make sure he won’t… I don’t know… throw himself into some ridiculous mess thinking you’ll be there to clean it all up."

Buggy huffed, averting his gaze to focus on the dishcloth he was scrubbing with almost excessive force. His fingers clenched the fabric like he needed to wring the anxiety right out of it.

"I mean… it’s gonna happen anyway, obviously, but you get what I’m saying."

Beckman didn’t rush. He rinsed the plate under the steady stream of warm water, his eyes fixed on the porcelain that seemed to absorb the quiet around them. Then, he handed the clean dish back with the same unshakable calm he’d maintained throughout.

"I understand."

Buggy paused, shooting him a sidelong glance, his eyes narrowed to slits. It was as if he were trying to decipher whether the response was genuine or just a polite way to shut him up.

"You serious? Did you actually hear me, or did you just say that to make me stop talking?"

A smile—so faint it might’ve been a trick of the light—tugged at Beckman’s lips. A secret too small to speak aloud.

"Yes."

"Yes what?" Buggy eyed him suspiciously, the dishcloth frozen mid-wipe.

"Yes, I heard you." Beckman turned back to the sink, submerging another plate in the soapy water. It was almost comical how both—Shanks and Buggy—could be so alike yet so fundamentally different. "And yes, you talked too much."

The silence that followed was brief but weighted. Only the rhythmic rush of water and the soft rustle of the drying cloth filled the space. Buggy muttered something under his breath, continuing to dry the dishes at a slower pace now, as if deliberately parsing every word he’d just heard.

His eyes, however, were loud—sharp and scrutinizing, studying Beckman with an intensity that clashed violently with the man’s unshakable calm.

Beckman, for his part, met that gaze with steady serenity, his expression almost inviting—a silent challenge for Buggy to spill whatever else was weighing on him.

"But I’m not an anchor," Beckman said at last, the words measured and deliberate, as though stating an irrefutable fact. "Maybe a lighthouse."

Buggy barked out a dry laugh, shaking his head in disbelief. "You’ve got some awfully philosophical answers for a guy just doing dishes."

"I have to be." Beckman traced the path of soap suds down the drain, his voice soft—almost a whisper. "That's how you understand someone like Shanks. Sometimes, it's the only language he comprehends."

"When he needs to search for the answer himself."

Buggy stared, the ensuing silence heavy with the unspoken realization that Beckman might be the only person who truly saw his brother in all his depth.

"And what are the odds..." Buggy's question came out sharp, nearly a challenge, "...of that lighthouse going dark and leaving the ship adrift again?" He scrubbed the plate with renewed vigor, as if trying to drown his unease in the motion.

"As long as there are stars in the sky," Beckman replied with the quiet certainty of someone stating cosmic law, "I believe that's time enough for the light to endure." His words carried the weight of truth too luminous for those unwilling to see.

Buggy's foot struck the floor with a sharp, impatient thud. "That idiot's gonna pay for this."

Beckman lifted his gaze, and this time, there was an unexpected softness in the glint of his eyes. "You're not so different, you know."

Buggy's mouth opened for a retort—then snapped shut, hesitation flickering across his face as if searching for the right words.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he finally demanded.

"You're both idiots who talk too much," Beckman replied, drying his hands on the towel before hanging it neatly on the cabinet hook. "But you've also got your own ways of looking after things."

Buggy huffed, feigning disdain, but a brief, involuntary smile escaped—betraying the truth he himself resisted acknowledging.

Shanks leaned against the slightly ajar door, his face illuminated by that serene smile of his—the one that only appeared when Beckman did something to make him proud, even unintentionally.

From down the hall came the children's laughter, the usual chaos of Luffy knocking over something heavy (again), but none of it mattered now. His ears were glued to the kitchen, catching every word of a conversation he knew Buggy would never have dared to have if he'd been present.

"My lighthouse, huh?" His heart raced without permission. Beckman always said these things as casually as commenting on the weather, but Shanks knew the weight behind that calm voice. "My brilliant Sirius."

A footstep in the hallway. Shanks slipped away quickly—but not before swallowing the foolish grin threatening to break free. Someone understands him. That was enough.

For the time being, Shanks returned to the living room. The soft murmur of the TV blended with the faint scratch of pencils against paper. He smiled at the sight of his children scattered across the rug—a colorful battlefield of crumpled sheets, jars of colored pencils, and bits of broken crayons. Ace was hunched over his drawing, tongue caught in the corner of his mouth in deep concentration, while Sabo seemed far more interested in arranging the pencils by color than actually using them.

In the center, Luffy scribbled with boundless enthusiasm, as if every stroke were its own adventure. Noticing his father, he sat up a little, his face lighting up with a wide grin. Without a word, he held out a sheet of paper and a fistful of colored pencils—a silent invitation to join the creative chaos.

Shanks gladly accepted, settling down beside them on the rug. The fabric was warm from the children’s presence, and the faint scent of wax mixed with the familiar smell of home. He picked up a red pencil and began to draw, not caring whether the result would be any good.

Some time later, outside after Shanks' tempting proposal to take Buggy for some air, they walked side by side along the sidewalk, wrapped in the dark cloak of night. A gentle breeze made the leaves dance lazily, whispering secrets between the trees.

Every so often, distant echoes of the children's laughter still reached them—gleeful shouts that Buggy tried to ignore with a slight furrow of his brow and the look of a man who'd rather be anywhere else.

Shanks shot his brother a mischievous grin, crossing his arms with the confidence of someone who'd just concocted the world's best excuse to escape the situation.

"So... what do you think?" he asked, his tone smooth, almost rehearsed, as if trying to sound utterly nonchalant.

Buggy let out a long sigh—nearly a groan—and shook his head sharply, as if swatting away an irritating thought like a persistent mosquito.

"Still think it's a bad idea."

Shanks stopped abruptly, spinning to face Buggy with an exaggerated, theatrical glare, dialing up the drama just to provoke a reaction.

"The pit offer still stands," Buggy replied flatly.

"Buggy, no one touches my husband!" Shanks bellowed, his voice dripping with possessive fervor and a dash of humor, while puffing out his lips in a pout that could disarm even the sternest critic.

Buggy rolled his eyes skyward, exasperated. "Just saying accidents happen."

"You're not killing my husband!" Shanks repeated, crossing his arms like a petulant teenager who'd just been gravely insulted. "I'm far too young to be a widow!"

The air between them chilled abruptly.

"He's got plenty of openings and weak points," Buggy remarked, his voice laced with a curiosity that wasn't entirely innocent.

The memory of Beckman's posture flashed in his mind with startling clarity: the man was solid, imposing, almost intimidating—yet paradoxically, there were blind spots, unprotected angles that stood out glaringly to someone trained to spot vulnerabilities.

It was unsettling. It didn't add up.

He mentally retraced every gesture, every subtle movement, as if he could extract the key to some hidden riddle. There was something deliberately off, a fracture in the equilibrium, like a gap left intentionally to draw attention—and it gnawed at his instincts.

Fascinating...

"It was on purpose." Shanks' voice sliced through his thoughts like a honed blade.

Buggy's eyes lit up, the immediate gleam betraying his satisfaction—like a child who'd just been handed a rare treat. That answer was a confirmation he hadn't even realized he'd wanted so badly. But as soon as he savored the revelation, his gaze narrowed, suspicion creeping in.

"But... the only person I've ever seen do something like that was—"

Shanks didn't let him finish.

"Let's just say the only difference between us is that I never had to train for it. It's my natural charm."

"Yeah, you're naturally distracted, slow, reckless..." Buggy held his breath for a beat. "Should I keep going?"

It was impossible to deny: Shanks was an idiot—a dangerously lucky idiot. That infuriating habit of walking around with his guard down wasn't just carelessness... it was an act of pure defiance, almost insolent, as if he were telling the world that no one would dare—or even be capable—of landing a hit on him. And, to Buggy's frustration, it worked more often than not.

Beckman, on the other hand, was no man of luck. Buggy knew there was calculation there—method, a razor-sharp mind capable of planning every minute detail of his posture. And yet, he wasn’t entirely sure who would come out on top if that steady lighthouse ever collided head-on with the unpredictable storm that was his brother.

Because Shanks… Shanks might be pure chaos, but he had the maddening talent of turning every surefire strike into an opportunity to counterattack. He’d never throw the first punch in a fight, but once he was in it? He didn’t lose.

"How do you even know that?" Buggy asked, brow furrowed, as if doubting Shanks could possibly be perceptive enough to notice something like that. His tone was laced with irony, as though he already expected the answer to be a joke.

Walking along the damp sidewalk, Shanks lifted his gaze to the dark sky, where heavy clouds smothered any trace of moonlight. The streetlights painted his face in a sickly yellow glow, highlighting the wild disarray of his red hair. For a moment, he seemed lost in thought, his steps slowing, the soft echo of his shoes against the asphalt the only sound.

Then, he turned to face his brother, eyes half-lidded as if weighing the question. A slow, knowing smile curled at the corner of his lips, brimming with near-insolent confidence.

"He’s my husband, isn’t he?" he said, tilting his head with an almost childlike simplicity—yet his eyes burned with quiet pride.
His smile widened fully—carefree and broad, the kind that showed more teeth than necessary. There was something both idiotic and sincere about it, as if the answer were so obvious it didn’t even warrant an explanation.

"I know him," he added, his voice carrying a warmth that was simple yet unshakable—the tone of someone who needed no further argument.

That ridiculous smile of his was light as a feather, or a leaf caught in the wind—that same untethered freedom in his gaze that Buggy hadn’t seen in years.

And then it hit him: maybe he was the idiot here. His brother was, in fact, a strong and capable person. Even if he’d admit it reluctantly, he wasn’t the type to feel jealous.

So when he’d first heard the news of the marriage, it had been a shock—then anger, then concern. But now…

Buggy just stared at him, unsure whether to roll his eyes or swallow the comment whole.

"Remember Miss Shakky?" Shanks said abruptly, shifting topics as if a curious memory had just flickered through his mind. He scratched his chin with a sly half-smile, eyes glinting with mischief.

Buggy arched an eyebrow, his forehead creasing as he rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Rayleigh's problematic ex-girlfriend," he said with a sarcastic chuckle, vividly recalling the chaos that relationship had caused. "You saw how the old man was after the breakup? Absolute hell on earth, brother."

Shanks let out a quiet laugh, the corners of his mouth curling with amusement. Then, as if sharing a secret, he leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur: "She's my therapist now... and she's single."

Buggy's eyes widened comically, disbelief written all over his face. He crossed his arms and shook his head, his expression caught between disapproval and reluctant amusement.

"You're not seriously trying to play matchmaker again, are you?" he asked, his tone laced with almost paternal caution. "Remember how wrecked Ray was? And besides—she was the one who left to finish her doctorate in London."

Shanks shrugged, utterly unbothered, a glint of mischief in his gaze.

"Just saying—they're two adults, both single, still in love," he replied with the casual ease of someone stating an obvious truth. "All the ingredients for a happy ending."

Buggy frowned, running a hand through his messy red hair with clear skepticism.

"Yeah, sure—but tell me, genius, how exactly would you pull that off?" he asked, one eyebrow arched. "Last I heard, the old man was in Las Vegas, enjoying retirement and drowning himself in top-shelf whiskey."

Shanks let out a short laugh, shaking his head. "There's always a way, Buggy. Always."

"You're insufferable," Buggy grumbled, throwing his hands up as if to physically ward off Shanks' persistence. His eyes flickered between irritation and amusement because, deep down, he knew that stubbornness had an impossible-to-ignore charm.

Shanks flashed that signature lopsided smirk of his, tilting his head slightly with a playful wink.

"Insufferably charming," he shot back, his voice smooth and self-assured, as if that line were his ultimate trump card.

Buggy huffed, shaking his head vigorously like he was trying to dislodge an inconvenient thought. The sigh that escaped him seemed to carry years of pent-up frustration—and, buried somewhere beneath it, a thread of relief he’d never dare admit out loud.

"I think... this has been good for you," Buggy said—for what felt like the thousandth time—but now his tone was different. It wasn't just teasing. There was concern in it, resignation... and the faintest edge of exhaustion.

Shanks, who had been quietly sipping his coffee, looked up at his brother with a puzzled expression.

"Huh?"

Buggy waved a hand vaguely in the air, searching for the right words before settling on simplicity:

"Marriage. Family."

A slow smile spread across Shanks' lips—the kind that started at one corner of his mouth and crept up to his eyes, carrying that infuriating blend of charm and provocation.

"Does that mean you'll stop threatening my husband?" he asked, leaning forward slightly, as if he already knew the answer and just wanted to hear it from Buggy's own mouth.

Buggy averted his gaze, scratching the side of his nose with his thumb, clearly reluctant to concede any ground in their private little war.

"I guess so..." he muttered, though the words seemed to stick in his throat like shards of glass.

Shanks chuckled softly, thoroughly pleased with himself, and Buggy—even without looking—could feel that laugh reverberating like an annoying reminder that, when it came down to it, he was happy to see his brother happy.

"You're my family too," Shanks said brightly, just to watch Buggy short-circuit, freezing up like a malfunctioning machine, utterly at a loss for how to respond. The redhead grinned like an idiot, thoroughly enjoying his teasing.

Then Shanks paused for a moment, his smile vanishing in a flash, his expression turning serious—almost shadowed—for a few seconds. Buggy didn’t miss it, his own posture tensing slightly in response.

"Actually," Shanks continued, his voice firm, "I think I’m gonna need a favor from you."

Buggy studied him, searching for any hint of hesitation, before asking carefully: "What exactly are we talking about here?"

They had circled the entire block and were now back where they started. The warm glow from Shanks’ house spilled onto the sidewalk, the shadows of nearby trees swaying gently around them. For a few seconds, the redhead’s gaze lingered on the lit windows of the neighbors’ house.

The gentle breeze rustled the leaves, creating a peaceful scene that stood in stark contrast to the tension of their conversation.

Shanks turned toward the door, gazing at his own home as if contemplating the sweet, fragile reality he'd built with his family. When he finally spoke, his voice carried quiet determination:

"Nothing serious yet—but I'll need you to gather some information for me about someone."

Chapter Text

"I’m just saying it’s not against the rules to join two different clubs," Thatch remarked, flashing that carefree grin of his, while Ace—exhausted and irritable from yet another sleepless night—rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t stick.

The trail was pure chaos. Aside from their own classmates, students from other schools wove between the trees like restless shadows, some crouching to gather samples, others chattering loud enough to scare off every bird in a five-mile radius.

And now, to top it all off, he was being trailed up and down the path by four absolute morons—Thatch, Marco, Haruta, and Izo—who seemed hellbent on denying him even a single minute of peace. The forest floor was soft beneath his feet, blanketed in damp leaves that crunched with every step, their earthy scent mingling with the faint sweetness of wildflowers. Sunlight sliced through the dense canopy overhead, scattering golden patches that swayed and flickered as the wind teased the branches.

Poor Deuce—who Ace had very deliberately shoved out of the line of fire—was now enduring this circus instead, though the traitor actually seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of Ace’s suffering. Somewhere in the distance, birds trilled lazily, and the endless rustling of leaves formed a taunting soundtrack to the whole ordeal, as if the forest itself was laughing at him.

When Shanks found out, he didn’t even try to mask the mix of exasperation and amusement on his face. Truth be told, he hadn’t fully understood what had possessed him to bring up Marco’s last name—but the bitter aftertaste lingering on his tongue for those few seconds made one thing painfully clear: he’d stumbled onto a memory he’d rather forget.

Ace wasn’t in the mood for lectures. Deep down, he didn’t actually mind Thatch’s company every now and then—what really grated on his nerves was Marco and his so-called brothers shoving their grand ideas down his throat, whether it was the astronomy club, the student council, or whatever else they’d cooked up this time, as if their entire mission in life was to drag him kicking and screaming into their nonsense.

Marco had even tried dressing it up as “passing on the torch” to Ace, since he’d be graduating soon and leaving his precious position behind. But to Ace, it was just a thinly veiled bribe—some pathetic excuse to sink its claws into what little remained of his sanity.

The truth was simple: Ace couldn’t even follow one basic rule—stay away from these idiots. Yet here he was, stuck with them, while the damp, mossy scent of the forest seemed to mock him right alongside their laughter.

“I’m definitely gonna lose my allowance and my inheritance to Sabo,” he muttered under his breath, already picturing every last coin slipping through his stubborn brother’s fingers

"Did you say something?" Izo asked, crouched low in the grass as he carefully plucked insects from the foliage and deposited them into a glass jar. With practiced efficiency, he passed it to Haruta, who immediately began labeling and cataloging the specimens according to the dog-eared textbook they'd brought along.

Ace shook his head in silent dismissal and kept walking. The designated safe zone was clearly marked with bright blue tape, so at least navigation was straightforward—not that it made the situation any less absurd.

A pointed cough from Deuce snapped Ace out of his brooding. His ever-dutiful partner held out a plant sample between gloved fingers, its leaves still glistening with morning dew. Ace took it without comment, sealing it inside a plastic bag with more force than strictly necessary.

This so-called field study was probably just a fancy term for constitutional homicide—assuming that was even a real phrase. Herding a bunch of kids through a mountain trail teeming with wild animals, venomous creatures, poisonous plants, and enough hidden crevices to turn an ankle (or worse) seemed less like an educational activity and more like Darwinism in action.

Under different circumstances, the idea might've held promise. But fate—or more likely, sheer administrative incompetence—had decreed that two different schools would schedule their excursions for the same day. The resulting collision of student bodies had sparked palpable tension in the air until the teachers, after some frantic whispered negotiations, decided to spin this disaster into an impromptu "collaborative learning experience.”

Ace, however, could only focus on how unbearably annoying this whole situation had become—especially when he spotted a group of Drum students strutting down the path as if they owned the damn mountain.

And the so-called monitors—a not-so-subtle jab at Marco—weren’t even doing their job properly, letting students wander far beyond the trail’s marked boundaries.

“Sorry, man, but my answer’s still no,” Ace said, circling back to Thatch’s earlier question. He tightened his grip on his bag, willing himself to ignore their relentless pestering. “Why are you guys so hellbent on this, anyway?”

“Because you’re cool?” Haruta shot back, with that infuriating tone of obviousness that made Ace’s eye twitch.

“This plant is so cool.” Luffy’s voice suddenly cut through the tension, his usual boundless enthusiasm undimmed. He was crouched beside an ancient tree, its trunk thick with moss that shimmered under dappled sunlight. Tiny insects buzzed lazily through the undergrowth, and the damp, earthy scent of the forest mingled with the faint sweetness of wildflowers. Zoro stood beside him, dutifully holding their supplies, his free hand keeping their textbook open to the page describing whatever rare species they’d stumbled upon.

Luffy ran his fingertip lightly over the brown-and-white mushrooms, marveling at their delicate structure. "Look at these tiny details! It's like each one has its own little house!" His voice carried that particular brand of wonder reserved only for things he found genuinely magical.

Ace heard distant laughter—another group of students making their way down the trail, this time clad in earthy brown and forest-green uniforms. Ohara kids, probably. He barely had time to register their presence when—

"They're mushrooms."

A calm voice materialized beside them, so smooth it might have woven itself from the very wind rustling through the leaves. "This species is harmless. Just steer clear of the colorful ones."

Ace blinked, caught off guard. He'd deny it if accused, but the sudden appearance had startled him. He took an instinctive step back—only for his heel to catch on a moss-slicked root, sending him stumbling. Nearby, a flurry of birds erupted from the trees in a panic, wings beating wildly against the branches as if sharing his alarm.

"Where did you even come from?" Haruta was the first to break the silence, eyebrows knitting together as his eyes struggled to adjust to the dappled sunlight filtering through the swaying treetops.

"I've always been here," the girl replied, her voice carrying an almost otherworldly serenity. With effortless grace, she bent down to retrieve a fallen branch before straightening again, her presence among them as natural as the tree's shadow stretching across the moss below.

"You're from Ohara, right?" Izo chimed in, tilting his head slightly to get a better look at the girl's impeccably kept uniform while adjusting the book in his grip. Sunlight pierced through the canopy overhead, scattering pools of gold across the forest floor.

"Actually, I'm the research team coordinator," she corrected calmly, fingertips brushing the badge pinned to her collar—a small, polished thing that caught the light as she moved. Her smile was subtle but carried a quiet radiance, like the first hint of dawn. She adjusted her glasses with practiced ease, her gaze steady and unshaken despite the boys' scrutiny.

Ace narrowed his eyes, studying every detail of the girl before him—the straight-backed posture, the unflinching confidence in her stance, the air of quiet authority that seemed far too weighty for someone her age. "But you're what... 17?" The words tumbled out before he could stop them, skepticism dripping from every syllable.

The girl arched one eyebrow, her smile never wavering, as she let her fingertips glide lightly across the open textbook before her. "Isn't it rather ungentlemanly to ask a lady her age?" Her voice carried a tranquil, almost musical cadence, like wind chimes dancing in a summer breeze.

Luffy, who had been uncharacteristically quiet until now, edged closer with the cautious curiosity of a child approaching a rare butterfly. His eyes shone with unrestrained wonder as he—without a shred of hesitation—reached out to clutch the hem of her skirt, beaming up at her with that signature blend of innocence and boundless enthusiasm. "Are you like... a genius or something?"

Robin's laughter spilled softly between them, ricocheting gently off the ancient tree trunks like sunlight through leaves. "I suppose I am. I earned my degree when I was about your age."

Luffy's entire face ignited as if he'd just stumbled upon the world's greatest treasure. He bounced backward, arms shooting skyward in triumph. "That's SO COOL! I'm Luffy! Now that you know my name, we're friends!"

Zoro crossed his arms, tilting his head with the weary exasperation of someone who'd had this argument a hundred times before. "Pretty sure that's not how it works..."

Ace watched the exchange, lips pressed together in a smile he couldn't quite suppress—damn if Luffy wasn't just the most adorable thing sometimes.

"Is too," Luffy insisted, waving his hands with the unshakable conviction of a child who'd just decoded the universe's secrets. "Teacher said if you call someone by their first name, you're close!”

.Robin simply smiled, tilting her head slightly as sunlight filtered through the branches, catching strands of her dark hair that framed her face like a living portrait. "Well then... I'm Robin."

Luffy clapped his hands together with such uncontainable joy he nearly spun himself dizzy. "Awesome! Robin and Luffy - friends forever!" His voice carried through the clearing with the same boundless energy as a puppy discovering its first butterfly.

The moment was interrupted as one of Ohara's research students approached, arms laden with papers and rapid-fire questions. Robin effortlessly transitioned from their conversation to professional mode, bending over notebooks and specimen jars with the same quiet grace. Her fingers danced between samples as she organized them with precise gestures, all while answering each query in that measured, melodic tone that somehow made even scientific terminology sound soothing.

Ace watched this seamless shift with grudging admiration - how someone could maintain such composure while Luffy bounced around like an overexcited firecracker and simultaneously direct a research team was beyond him. The sunlight seemed to follow her movements, glinting off glass vials and the silver rim of her glasses as she worked.

Even as she stepped away to attend to the student, Robin kept the group in her peripheral vision—those watchful eyes missing nothing. She noted how Ace stood with arms crossed, his sharp gaze both attentive and vaguely suspicious; how Zoro's brow furrowed as he scanned their surroundings with the vigilance of a sentry. Luffy, meanwhile, remained utterly enchanted by his miniature world—crouched low, poking at leaves and mushrooms with childlike wonder, completely oblivious to anything beyond his immediate fascination.

The faintest smile touched her lips. At first glance they seemed ordinary enough, but there was something... compelling about this particular ensemble. Like pages from different storybooks somehow bound together into a far more interesting volume.

"Our father wants to meet you," Marco said, affecting nonchalance as he appeared beside Ace—though a thread of expectation wove through his words. "We've spoken about you so often lately, he's grown curious." The unspoken weight of the statement hung in the air between them, as tangible as the golden pollen drifting through sunbeams.

Ace let out an exasperated huff, his face twisting into that uniquely twelve-year-old expression of absolute, soul-deep irritation—the kind only a child could muster when truly pushed to their limits. "Tell your old man I've got better things to do," he snapped, channeling every ounce of fury his tired little body could produce.

Marco, unfazed, merely shrugged. "Well, you've got a dinner invitation either way." The words made Ace halt mid-step, his boots scuffing against the dirt as he actually paused to consider—for all of two seconds.

"I'm afraid I must decline, Your Highness," Ace shot back, his voice dripping with a passive-aggressive sweetness so thick it could've been lifted straight from a satirical play. His face instantly defaulted back to bored disinterest, and he resumed walking as if the conversation had never happened.

Deuce sighed, the long-suffering sound of someone who'd witnessed this exact routine too many times. He glanced between Marco and Ace’s retreating back. "At least he was polite this time."

Ace, now several paces ahead, suddenly froze. His eyes locked onto a vibrantly colored flower peeking through moss-covered rocks, its petals so hypnotically bright they seemed to pulse against the forest’s muted greens. For a heartbeat, his usual scowl softened—instinctively, he reached out, fingers stretching toward the bloom.

He never made contact.

A vicious yank on his shoulder hauled him backward. The air left his lungs in a startled whoosh—just as a snake, coiled among the low branches, struck with lethal precision right where his head had been.

Ace landed hard on his backside, the impact sending a jolt through his spine that left him momentarily dazed. His phone slipped from his pocket unnoticed, vanishing into the carpet of dry leaves with a muffled thump that failed to register in his adrenaline-fogged mind. Marco, ever observant, didn't miss a thing—with practiced nonchalance, he nudged a few stray branches over the device with his boot before casting a sidelong glance at Ace, his expression unreadable.

Law's grip on the serpent was ironclad, every tendon in his forearm standing in sharp relief as the creature thrashed between his fingers. Sunlight filtering through the canopy glinted off its iridescent scales as it hissed, coiling and uncoiling in furious desperation. His breathing remained measured, his face a mask of clinical detachment—but the slight narrowing of his eyes betrayed the intensity of his focus.

"You alright?" The question came clipped and clinical, Law's gaze never wavering from the struggling reptile. Only the barest tension threaded through his otherwise frosty tone.

Ace dragged a trembling hand across his chest, as if he could physically slow his galloping heartbeat. The pallor of his face made his freckles stand out like constellations against milk-white skin, his pupils still blown wide with shock. For once, the boy who always had a snarky retort ready found himself genuinely speechless.

"I'm... sorry about that. I'll pay better attention," Ace murmured between ragged breaths, his voice uncharacteristically small. The words tasted foreign on his tongue—apologies weren't exactly his specialty.

The snake, as if recognizing the futility of resistance, gradually stilled its thrashing. Its coiled body relaxed incrementally around Law's forearm, the forked tongue now flicking at the air in slower, almost contemplative intervals.

"Wasn't your fault," Law countered sharply, finally lifting his gaze. The razor-edged sarcasm in his voice could've flayed skin from bone. "Wouldn't have happened if the so-called monitors actually watched their groups."

Those piercing yellow eyes locked onto Marco for a weighted moment—a stare that wasn't just accusatory, but prosecutorial.

Marco straightened slowly, the dried leaf litter still clinging stubbornly to his uniform. His shoulders tensed as he adjusted his glasses with two fingers—a habitual gesture that failed to mask the flicker of irritation (and something suspiciously like guilt) twisting his features. The usual calm of his blue eyes had hardened into something defensive.

"Why are you talking like this is on me?" The retort came out steadier than he felt. "Ace is fine, isn't he?”

Law remained utterly unfazed. The contrast between them couldn't have been starker: Marco stood rigid, shoulders squared in a futile attempt to maintain the authority his monitor position demanded; Law, meanwhile, was stillness incarnate—a cold blade waiting to draw blood. The serpent still twisted intermittently around his forearm, but his grip never wavered. His eyes tracked every spasm and coil with clinical precision, as though examining a lab specimen rather than a living threat.

"He could've been seriously injured," Law stated calmly, yet the words carried such acidic undertones they might as well have been a death sentence. "This was a venomous species."

The unspoken accusation hung thick in the air. The rustling leaves, distant birdsong, and whispering wind through the canopy didn't break the tension—if anything, they amplified the crushing silence between them.

Marco crossed his arms, jaw tightening as he fought to harden his expression. "There's a first aid team on standby if anything happens—" he began, forcing a confidence he didn't feel into his voice. But halfway through, his words faltered ever so slightly, betraying the doubt beneath.

Law exhaled deeply—not a sigh of exhaustion, but one saturated with withering impatience. He adjusted his grip slightly, and the snake, now less agitated, coiled into a tense knot against his skin. His gaze never left Marco's face, steady and unyielding, the look of someone explaining basic facts to a deliberately obtuse child.

Meanwhile, several paces away from the main group, Izo and Haruta continued their work with apparent focus. They moved in practiced sync—Haruta labeling specimen jars with startling speed, Izo meticulously organizing field notes—but their eyes kept flickering toward the confrontation. Not a single charged word or tense gesture escaped their notice.
When Law countered with his unnaturally precise knowledge of venoms and symptoms, the two exchanged a fleeting glance—one laden with equal parts suspicion and morbid fascination. There was something deeply unsettling about this cold-voiced child with his surgical accuracy, and they both recognized it: Marco, accustomed to being the unchallenged authority, had finally met his match.

"I don't think you grasp the severity," Law enunciated, each word scalpel-sharp. "Depending on the toxin, there wouldn't be time to reach a hospital. Certain varieties induce rapid muscle paralysis and directly attack the nervous system."

Marco's eyebrow arched, skepticism and discomfort warring on his face. His fingers drummed an uneven rhythm against his folded arms, betraying the tension he struggled to conceal. "Okay, but... muscle relaxation? Wouldn't that just mean localized pain and swelling?"

"It's far more than that." Law's retort was a guillotine's drop. He glanced away briefly—not to concede ground, but to observe Ace, who still sat frozen among the leaves. The boy's chest rose and fell in jagged bursts, his gaze locked on the spot where death had nearly struck.

"For someone like him," Law continued, his voice dropping into something dangerously quiet—almost intimate in its warning, "who already suffers from narcolepsy? The risk is exponentially higher."

Marco blinked, forehead creasing as confusion overrode his composure. "What does narcolepsy have to do with—?"

The silence that followed was thicker than the forest humidity.

"If the venom suppresses the nervous system," Law explained, every syllable measured like a pharmacist dispensing poison, "it could trigger a sudden sleep episode or even shut down vital functions." His grip on the snake's body never slackened, the creature now coiled in resigned tension, while his steel-gray eyes remained fixed on Marco. "His brain might misinterpret the chemical assault as a sleep trigger. So tell me—how would you diagnose an unconscious boy amid neurotoxic shock?"

Marco's throat clicked dryly, as if he'd swallowed gravel. His previously crossed arms now twitched restlessly, fingers lacing and unlacing in anxious patterns. "But... what if he was just sleeping?" The question emerged thin, barely audible.

"That’s precisely the problem," Law countered, his voice a blade of cold precision. The serpent, once thrashing violently, now struggled with sluggish defiance—each movement still a coiled promise of danger. "The difference between unconsciousness and respiratory failure would be nearly impossible to discern in time. There are no seconds to spare."

The silence that followed was suffocating, pressing down on the group like a physical weight. The rustling leaves and whispering wind did nothing to cut through the tension—only amplified it. Thatch cleared his throat awkwardly, as if trying to disperse the charged air, but Law didn’t even glance his way. In the face of such gravity, the boy might as well have been invisible.

"In my defense, I didn’t know Ace was—" Marco began, his voice unsteady, scrambling for justification. But he sounded small under Law’s unrelenting scrutiny, like a man shrinking beneath a judge’s gavel.

"All monitors have access to students’ medical records. If something happens, we’re supposed to be prepared," Law cut in, his tone unyielding, his gaze sharp enough to draw blood. There was no room for excuses here—no space for deflection. Marco felt every syllable land like a verdict.

Ace, still seated among the dry leaves, tightened his arms across his chest. He fought to mask the turbulent mix of relief and frustration simmering inside him—the way his shoulders stayed rigid with lingering adrenaline, the way his pulse hadn’t quite steadied. But his face betrayed nothing. He forced his expression into practiced neutrality, as if none of this had ever happened.

Haruta, Izo, and Thatch remained silent, their usual boisterous energy subdued by the oppressive atmosphere. Only Deuce dared exhale—a half-smirk playing at the corner of his lips, his amusement at the scene painfully obvious. The stark contrast between his barely contained glee and the others' solemnity only thickened the tension.

"Where's Sabo?" Law asked, arms crossed, his sharp gaze fixed on Ace as the boy hunched over his flower specimens with exaggerated focus—as if handling shattered glass rather than petals.

"Went the other way with Koala. They were hunting salamanders," Ace muttered, attention never wavering from his task. Each bloom was placed into the plastic bag with surgeon-like precision. Deuce, leaning casually nearby, couldn't resist chiming in with academic enthusiasm:

"It's a toad lily—looks like a starfish. Thrives in damp, shaded areas."

The wind sighed through the canopy above; dried leaves crackled underfoot like static. This was their assignment: collect, catalog, document. Ace already loathed whichever sadist had invented this torture. The memory of the near-miss with the snake still burned behind his eyelids.

"Great. That means I'm stuck with you until he shows up," Law declared, chin tilted in that infuriatingly authoritative way. His stare was a physical weight, daring Ace to argue.

"I can handle myself," Ace shot back, still refusing to look up, fingers now fussing unnecessarily with the bag's seal.

"No, you can't. And I wouldn't have to if someone here took responsibility," Law retorted, exhaling through his nose as his eyes flickered toward Marco, Haruta, Izo, and Thatch—Ace's self-appointed "brothers" who seemed hellbent on smothering him with their presence.

"Now make this easier for both of us." Law produced a notebook and pen from his pocket, already scribbling observations as they inched along the marked trail.

Ace huffed, pressing his lips into a thin line, but chose not to argue. He knew trying to wriggle out of Law’s watchful eye would be pointless—especially with the vivid memory of the snake still fresh in his mind.

Marco, seizing the opportunity, sidled up with that infuriating ‘let me teach you something useful’ air, adjusting his glasses as he leaned over Ace’s shoulder:
“Hey, Ace, if you pack the sample like that, you’ll crush the stems. You’re supposed to cradle the back of the plastic bag—”

While Ace deliberately looked away, ignoring him, Marco pretended to examine some weeds sprouting along the trail’s edge. Crouching down, he slipped his left hand between the branches—quick, practiced—and palmed Ace’s hidden phone from the leaves, tucking it smoothly into his coat pocket.

“I know how to handle my flowers, thanks,” Ace snapped, voice steady, though he couldn’t stop Deuce from snickering under his breath at Marco’s futile attempt to boss him around like some kind of authority.

Law, meanwhile, still held the snake—now safely contained in a ventilated plastic jar that had probably housed beetles or lizards earlier. He scanned for a safe spot to release it without startling other students, but his razor-sharp gaze soon locked onto Luffy and Zoro, eyes narrowing with more lethal precision than the reptile’s fangs.

“Luffy. I said these are poisonous.”

“But you told us not to eat the blue ones,” Luffy protested, proudly clutching a glossy red berry in his fist. “These are red.”

"That changes absolutely nothing, you idiot!" Deuce exploded, lunging forward so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet to snatch the fruit from Luffy's grasp. With lightning reflexes, he pried the boy's mouth open, forcing him to spit out the berry before he could even chew. Under his breath, Deuce muttered darkly, "What is wrong with this family?"

But it was already too late for Zoro. Ignoring the commotion, he chewed his own berry with infuriating nonchalance, as if he were lounging at a picnic rather than flirting with potential poisoning.

"Doesn't taste that bad..." Zoro remarked, his voice deliberately slow, almost taunting. But then his brow furrowed slightly, and he ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth. "Though... my tongue feels kinda weird."

Law's eyes narrowed to slits. "Tingling?"

Zoro gave a single, indifferent nod.

"Classic symptom of mild alkaloid poisoning," Law explained, his tone clinical and detached. "Won't kill you, but expect numbness, tingling, and possibly dizziness for about ten minutes."

His gaze flickered across the undergrowth, quickly landing on a patch of common Houttuynia cordata—dokudami—its heart-shaped leaves thriving in the damp shade. The plant's pungent odor and bitter taste made it unpopular, but its mild antitoxic properties were well-documented in neutralizing certain plant venoms.

Law plucked a few leaves, crushing them lightly between his fingers to release their acrid scent before thrusting them toward Zoro. "Chew these. They'll help counteract the symptoms."

Zoro took the offering without complaint, his expression as unreadable as ever. The moment the bitter flavor hit his tongue, his nose wrinkled involuntarily—but true to Law's word, the creeping numbness began to recede almost immediately.

"Great... just what we needed—another idiot to babysit," Ace muttered under his breath, arms crossed tightly over his chest. The adrenaline from the snake encounter was fading fast, leaving exhaustion crashing over him in relentless waves. His eyelids grew heavy, blinking uncontrollably—he could feel his body teetering on the edge of collapse. One wrong move, one moment of surrender, and he'd be face-down on the trail, lost to another narcoleptic episode.

"Could you get rid of that thing, please?" A boy from another group cut across their path, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of Law's jarred serpent. His eyes bulged, breath hitching audibly. "I don't care how—kill it, dump it—just make that abomination disappear."

The words sent white-hot fury coursing through Ace's veins. If looks could kill, the boy would've been six feet under before he could blink. Ace's fists clenched, tendons in his neck standing taut, his freckled cheeks flushing crimson with barely contained rage.

"This is her home," Ace shot back, voice steel-wrapped and simmering. "How'd you feel if someone barged into your house and decided you deserved to die?"

"That's completely different!" the boy spluttered, arms folding in a petulant huff as he stamped his foot—every inch the picture of childish bravado. His chin jutted out, lips curling in a sneer that only stoked Ace's temper higher. "It's just a stupid animal!”

"Actually, no," Marco interjected, adjusting his glasses with deliberate calm—the practiced gesture of someone used to wielding knowledge like a weapon. "That's classified as an environmental crime." His voice carried that trademark serene, almost professorial tone, slicing through the argument like a scalpel.

Law seized the opening, still cradling the jar where the snake now rested peacefully, coiled in on itself. "Beyond that, many of medicine's breakthroughs in the last century came from studying animals and plants. Every lost species could mean the disappearance of a potential cure or essential biological insight." His gaze sharpened. "Killing out of fear or ignorance only dooms humanity in the end."

Deuce, never one to miss a beat, flashed a razor-edged smirk. "Though if you're barely using ten percent of your brain, maybe you're in the wrong school to begin with." His eyebrows lifted in mock innocence, the sarcasm dripping like venom.

The offended boy's mouth flapped open, his face flushing crimson and fists clenching at his sides, ready to fire back. But Robin—who'd been quietly observing with her clipboard—suddenly turned away, biting her lip hard as she pressed the edge of the paper against her mouth like a makeshift barrier. Professionalism. Maintain professionalism. It would be downright cruel to laugh in a student's face... no matter how absurd the spectacle.

Haruta, ever the opportunist, snapped a photo of the boy's scandalized expression—this was too golden to forget. "Anyone else want a copy?" he sing-songed, waggling his phone.

Deuce, with zero shame, was the only one to raise his hand.

Ace crossed his arms, huffing through his nose, shoulders still rigid with residual irritation. Yet he couldn't suppress a flicker of smug satisfaction—at least he wasn't the only one who found the comment utterly brainless.

"Besides," he added, eyeing the snake, "doubt it'd even taste good." In his mind, if they were going to kill the animal, the bare minimum was to consume it. A fundamental rule of hunting: nothing went to waste.

The collective stare he received could've vaporized lesser men. Even the rustling leaves and distant insect hum seemed to pause, amplifying the sheer absurdity of the moment—as if the forest itself was leaning in to witness this madness.

"I wanna try it!" Luffy's hand shot up with terrifying enthusiasm, eyes sparkling like a kid offered unlimited candy. To him, snake cuisine wasn't just reasonable—it was a thrilling culinary expedition. "Can we grill it?!”

Thatch tilted his head, eyes half-lidded in culinary contemplation as he studied the serpent with the scrutiny of a gourmet chef. "Hmmm... soy glaze and cracked black pepper," he mused, shooting Luffy an approving nod as if they'd just cracked the code to gastronomic perfection.

Marco's face twisted in horrified disbelief. He swatted the back of Thatch's head—thwack—with just enough force to convey his exasperation. "Seriously? You're unbelievable! Always with these... these exotic recipe ideas—"

Luffy, utterly enchanted, bounced on his heels, giggling like Marco's scolding was just background noise. Ace exhaled sharply through his nose, lips pressed into a thin line, torn between visceral disgust and the sinking realization that chaos was inevitable with this crew. His eyes narrowed to slits, but beneath the irritation flickered a spark of weary resignation: Normalcy was a pipe dream with these idiots.

Sunlight streamed through the canopy, dappling the group in gold and making the leaves glow like embers caught in their eyes—a perfect mirror to the absurdity, the laughter, and the beautiful, terrible bedlam of a day spent trailing after these lunatics.

A shiver ran down Ace's spine as he felt the wind shift. The forest itself seemed to tense - squirrels scrambled urgently up tree trunks toward their burrows, while birds frantically reinforced their hidden nests in the branches. The sky, too bright for the ominous feeling settling in his gut, looked almost artificial, as if its clarity were masking something darker beneath.

He took a deep breath, tasting the air. There was an unexpected saltiness carried from the sea - impossible for an ordinary spring day. The humidity clung strangely, that particular thickness only those familiar with sudden weather changes would recognize as a warning.

"It's going to rain soon," Ace announced, pointing toward where the sun still shone brightly. His mind raced through the implications - this would complicate finishing their fieldwork, and he knew the teachers would likely move up the deadline if storms arrived earlier than forecast. The thought of rushed assignments and adjusted schedules already soured his mood further. Around him, the others continued their bickering, oblivious to the subtle signs nature was broadcasting. Only Ace stood tense, reading the forest's silent alarm with the sharp instinct of someone who'd learned to interpret the world's whispers out of necessity.

Marco's eyebrows knitted together in disbelief. "But... it's spring. The sky's completely clear." His gesture toward the cloudless expanse carried all the confidence of someone who'd never been betrayed by fair weather.

Deuce crossed his arms, his stance unwavering. "Don't underestimate gut instincts," he countered, his tone leaving no room for debate—as if Ace's words were inviolable truth. There was something about how Ace moved through the world, how he read subtle shifts in the environment, that defied logical explanation. A sixth sense so tangible it made even Deuce pause and reconsider.

And yet... this blind faith was borderline ridiculous. Deuce had known Ace for barely seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours to catalog his quirks—the quick grins, the shorter-than-short fuse—but nowhere near enough time to unravel the boy's complexities. Still, whenever Ace made a snap judgment or voiced some inexplicable certainty, something in Deuce hesitated to doubt him. Trust bloomed without understanding its roots.

Beneath that unshakable exterior, when Ace thought no one was watching—or at least, when he believed no one cared to look—cracks appeared. The slight tightening of his shoulders in unguarded moments. The restrained sigh as he adjusted his backpack or fussed with plant samples, as if busy hands could quiet a restless mind.

The tells were microscopic: the corners of his mouth, so rarely shaped by genuine smiles, tilting downward; those always-alert eyes occasionally fixing on the ground like he owed the earth an apology. Internally, Ace seemed to carry some silent debt—the unshakable sense that his mere existence was somehow burdensome, a mistake requiring constant atonement through hypervigilance, through shielding those he loved (especially his brothers) with near-reckless devotion.

"Believe what you want," Ace declared, his voice slicing through Deuce's thoughts like an arrow through wind—steady, assured. "Luffy, go warn Sabo. Stay on the trail and keep everyone safe."

Thatch, Izo, and Haruta exchanged skeptical glances. They weren't men who put stock in hunches—but the certainty in Ace's gaze, paired with the animals' erratic behavior, lent an unignorable weight to the moment. The air itself seemed charged with unspoken tension.

Luffy nodded vigorously, his boundless energy undimmed as he grabbed Zoro by the collar, steering him back toward the blue-taped trail. His footsteps were light yet purposeful, crunching through the leaf-littered path with the certainty of someone who'd never met a detour he didn't like.

"Let's get the samples to the trailhead," Law announced, carefully adjusting his backpack. He crouched momentarily, releasing the snake near a cluster of rocks—giving it ample space to slither away safely. Every movement was measured, silent, almost reverent, as if performing some sacred woodland ritual.

The air thickened with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, while ominous clouds gathered on the horizon like an approaching army. The once-cheerful trail now hummed with unspoken tension, every rustling branch a whispered warning.

Across the path, Nami gripped Usopp's wrist like a vice, dragging him forward. Her eyes darted between every shifting shadow and wind-tossed branch. "Hurry up! This place gives me the creeps," she hissed, glaring at a massive gypsy moth web dangling from a nearby oak. She didn't even want to imagine the size of whatever spinner had woven it.

"Y-you think I'm enjoying this?" Usopp stammered, his knees knocking together audibly despite his attempts to sound brave.

A sharp crack—the sound of foliage being crushed underfoot—made them freeze. Nami's heart leapt into her throat. From the undergrowth burst Luffy and Zoro, clearly disoriented, their backpacks hanging askew and eyes comically wide.

"Luffy! Zoro!" Nami shrieked, Usopp's squeaky voice joining in a discordant chorus that sent birds and squirrels scattering in panic, leaving an eerie silence in their wake.

Then chaos erupted.

Luffy tripped over an exposed root with a dramatic yelp, crashing into them like a human bowling ball. The impact sent all four tumbling down the slope—off the trail, into the unknown. Twigs and leaves became tiny projectiles, loose stones clattering like mocking laughter as they rolled.

When they finally skidded to a stop, gasping and grass-stained, the forest loomed around them—vast, indifferent, swallowing every sound. Nami scrambled to her feet, desperately scanning for the trail, but all she saw were twisted trunks and deepening shadows. An icy dread slithered down her spine. They were alone. And utterly lost.

So Nami did the only rational thing: she hauled back and smacked Luffy upside the head. "You moron! This is YOUR fault!”

Luffy shrunk back, rubbing his head in confusion as Nami struggled to stand. But the moment she put weight on her leg, a sharp snap of pain forced a gasp through her clenched teeth—her ankle had twisted. Now that the adrenaline was fading, every scrape and leaf embedded in her skin burned like tiny brands.

"Logically, we should head downhill... but without the trail, it'll be brutal." Nami examined her swelling ankle, biting her lip hard enough to whiten the skin. "Besides, I don't think I can walk like this..."

Usopp's throat clicked audibly, his eyes bulging. "S-s-so what do we do now?"

Luffy, still dazed, attempted to rise—only to wobble and faceplant into the underbrush. Zoro just groaned, massaging his arm, caught between exasperation and reluctant amusement. The forest around them remained eerily still, every shadow stretching like a predator biding its time.

Not a single sound of their classmates reached them—no laughter, no crunching footsteps, just the oppressive silence of the wilderness.

"Ace said it's gonna rain soon," Luffy mumbled, squinting at the sky through the canopy. "We gotta find somewhere dry." His usual boisterousness was dampened, the words carrying an uncharacteristic gravity.

Back at the trailhead, students milled about in scattered clusters around makeshift worktables. Plant specimens glistened with morning dew, while carefully labeled jars of insects and caterpillars lined the wooden surfaces like tiny prisoners awaiting inspection. The damp forest air mingled with floral sweetness, creating a cloying perfume laced with the tang of wet soil.

A stronger gust rattled the trees, and Ace sneezed as fine dust and dried leaves swirled around him. Deuce had left to fetch water ages ago—his prolonged absence draped an uneasy quiet over the group.

Sabo and Koala emerged from the trail then, sharing a container housing a wriggling salamander. Their quiet laughter over some private joke rang discordant against the mounting tension thickening the air.

"Where's Luffy?" Ace's question cut through the murmur, his gaze darting from the empty trail to Sabo's face. Something sharp and cold twisted behind his ribs. The wind stirred again, carrying the scent of damp earth and tree moss—the forest's breath, thick with warning.

"Wasn't he with you?" Sabo countered, attempting casualness, but the shadow of doubt in his eyes betrayed him. Ace could feel his brother's tension radiating—that silent strain spreading through the clearing like creeping mist.

The teachers, absorbed in their clipboards and notes, were interrupted by Perona's sudden appearance. Her pink hair glowed unnaturally bright against the darkening forest backdrop as she paused to catch her breath. "My brother hasn't returned yet..." Her voice wavered slightly as her gaze darted over the crowd behind Zoro, searching for any familiar silhouette. The faint tremor in her fingers gave away her forced composure. "I think he got lost on the trail."

Above them, the last stubborn rays of sunlight surrendered to rolling storm clouds. The scent of damp earth grew heavier, mingling with the musk of ancient bark—nature's warning hanging thick in the air.

"My sister isn't back either," the blue-haired girl added, arms crossed like armor. Her jaw clenched tight enough to grind stone, every muscle taut with unspoken dread.

A pattern emerged like cracks in ice: every missing student was connected to Luffy. With each passing minute, Ace's anxiety coiled tighter in his chest, the pressure mounting as the wind hissed through the trees—a taunting whisper of time slipping away.

The teachers huddled together, murmuring in low voices, but their indecision was palpable—there was no urgency in their tone, only the mechanical gestures of people following protocol without genuine concern. The forest, however, offered no such luxury for distraction. It seemed to watch them, silent and knowing, as if sensing the looming danger in the air.

Then, Robin’s voice cut through the tension, steady, calm, yet laced with a subtle impatience that made even the wind tremble between the trees.

"Are you really going to leave them behind?"

Crocodile lifted his clipboard, the sound muffled as he pressed it against his side. His dark, icy eyes locked onto hers—a moment that stretched beyond seconds, heavy with unspoken challenge. A brief silence fell over the clearing, broken only by the rustling leaves and the distant call of a bird, thickening the damp air between them with something electric.

"I fail to see how this concerns you," he replied, his voice measured, dripping with deliberate indifference. His fingers tapped almost imperceptibly against the clipboard—each faint drumming a barely restrained admission of impatience he refused to voice aloud. The space between them grew denser, saturated with the scent of wet earth and dew-drenched foliage as droplets pattered down from the branches above.

"After all," he continued, "the four missing students were all from Arabasta."

The words hung in the air like a blade unsheathed.

Robin took a deliberate step forward, the subtle crunch of her boots on dry gravel sounding like a contained warning. Her gaze remained steady on him, calm, yet every word carried calculated weight.

"I’m merely pointing out the scandal this would cause if it reached the newspapers."

The sentence slipped through the air like a cold draft—laced with silent threat, barely perceptible, but enough to make the muscles in his arm tense ever so slightly.

Crocodile resumed walking, his strides long and deliberate, each step sinking faintly into the layer of dead leaves carpeting the trail. His rigid shoulders projected absolute indifference, yet there was something in the way he moved—a predator’s silent calculation, every motion measured.

"It won’t reach the newspapers. None of them are important enough, they will go unnoticed. ."

Robin adjusted her posture, letting her arms sway slightly as she matched his pace. Every gesture radiated control—and quiet warning.

"One of them is Dracule Mihawk’s son."

The words were short. Precise.

Yet they landed like a honed blade, forcing him to acknowledge the gravity of what she’d just said.

She didn’t need to say the epithet.

Crocodile already knew exactly who that meant.

The wind whispered through the trees, sending dried leaves skittering around them like the forest itself was echoing Robin's unspoken threat.

Crocodile leveled her with a look of bored disdain, his shoulders stiff as he crossed his arms. "As if he'd notice the difference between his own son and a potted fern." The crunch of leaves under his boots punctuated each word, mocking the gravity of the situation. "I'd recommend you focus on your own work, Nico Robin."

"You're being foolish, sir." Robin's voice remained calm, steady, but carried an undercurrent of resolve that cut through the wind rattling the treetops. The distant laughter of students and the constant rustle of foliage did nothing to dull the steel in her tone. "The rain will start soon. People could get hurt... or worse."

"Since when has that ever been a real concern?" he drawled, arching a brow and tightening his crossed arms, as if the very concept of risk was beneath him. "Spin some dramatic tale about not endangering more lives, bribe a few idiots, and be done with it.”

Robin drew a slow breath, the crisp forest air filling her lungs like liquid clarity. Her dark eyes locked onto him, each word now delivered with the measured weight of stones barricading the path of his arrogance. "And their parents? Are you prepared to face those consequences?" Every syllable landed with deliberate force upon the damp earth, the echo seeming to reverberate between the towering trunks—a tangible reminder of what hung in the balance.

Crocodile's lip curled. "There won’t be consequences. A few hours in the woods won’t kill them—and if it does, they were weak to begin with." His gaze, black and unyielding, bore into her, a blend of irritation and something perilously close to amusement, as if daring her to press further. The silence that followed was broken only by the distant snap of branches underfoot, the sound sharp as a bone breaking.

"Hypothermia. Infections. Wild animals." Robin began listing, her voice calm, her breathing even, but the steel beneath the words made it clear this was no idle warning. Her eyes scanned the trail ahead, missing nothing—the shift of shadows, the tremor of leaves, every potential threat laid bare.

"Doesn’t sound like a real problem to me," Crocodile countered, the disdain in his voice so casual it might as well have been commentary on the weather. His shoulders stayed rigid, his posture unnervingly mechanical, as if carved from the same indifference as the trees around them.

Robin exhaled, her shoulders relaxing in a subtle gesture of resignation—she knew pressing further would be futile. The crunch of dry leaves beneath their feet filled the momentary silence, a somber rhythm underscoring the tension between them. The scent of damp earth rose in waves, mingling with the petrichor of rain-soaked foliage, thickening the air until it felt almost suffocating.

Then she stopped abruptly, leaning forward slightly, her eyes glinting with quiet resolve. "I think I’ll request a transfer next term."

The words dropped like a stone, heavy enough to halt Crocodile mid-stride, his footsteps echoing sharply between the trees.

"Why?" His eyebrow arched, gaze sharpening—a blend of curiosity and wariness tightening his posture.

"I’m nearly done with my Ohara research, and Arabasta has... genuinely interesting people." Robin’s tone remained light, almost conversational, but each syllable carried the unshakable weight of a decision long settled.

Crocodile crossed his arms, brow furrowing as if mentally calculating every possible angle. "If I say ‘no,’ are you going to throw yourself off a balcony again?" The jab was more sarcasm than threat, but the tension in his jaw betrayed simmering irritation.

Robin’s lips curved, equal parts amusement and defiance. "I was thirteen. Will you ever let that go? I’m finishing a doctorate, you know."

He shook his head, caught between disbelief and exasperation. "You were thirteen with a master’s degree, and still pulling stupid stunts.”

"Maybe I take after my father." The jab came lightly, yet with pointed precision, as she shifted her weight to one hip, daring him to counter her with that hardened glare of his.

"I told you not to call me that." Crocodile exhaled, weariness seeping into the rigid line of his shoulders, the tight clench of his jaw.

"You signed the adoption papers," Robin replied, her tone breezy—a remark tossed carelessly to the wind, yet anchored in unshakable fact. "That makes the title official."

"And I regret it every damn morning when I wake up." The words were ground out between his teeth, his gaze fixed on the trail beneath them, where gravel and decaying leaves seemed to swallow his simmering frustration whole. "If you’ve got nothing useful to say, get back to work."

The wind continued its restless dance through the branches above, carrying the damp scent of soil and the distant murmurs of the forest—leaving the tension between them suspended, thick and silent, like a storm waiting to break. Every sound—the groan of bending wood, the whisper of shifting leaves—only amplified the charged quiet, making the unspoken friction between them impossible to ignore.

Meanwhile

As Robin and Crocodile exchanged their icy formalities, one of the coordinators stood before a crowd of wide-eyed children, their breaths held as they strained to grasp the gravity of the situation. The sky had begun to darken, heavy clouds rolling in slow motion over the treetops, while a biting wind tugged at hair and uniforms alike, lacing the air with the damp, earthy scent of impending rain.

"There's nothing we can do right now," the coordinator stated, his voice steady but betraying the faintest tremor as he surveyed the restless students shifting uneasily around him. "The rain will start any minute—we can't risk more students getting lost."

The words hit Ace like a punch to the gut. His chest constricted, a cold dread creeping up his spine, freezing each vertebra one by one until it lodged itself as a hard knot in his throat. The rain felt imminent, the air thick and oppressive, squeezing every breath until it came in shallow bursts. Urgency pulsed through him with every heartbeat, a silent terror whispering that the worst was yet to come.

"I'm sorry, but protocol dictates it's safer to return to school and mobilize a rescue team," the coordinator continued, his bureaucratic tone slicing through any protest like a blade through still air. Each word seemed to widen the chasm between the children's raw concern and the cold, unyielding logic of adult decisions.

Ace clenched his fists, nails biting into his palms hard enough to leave crescent marks. His gaze darted toward the treeline, imagining Luffy and the others out there—exposed, vulnerable, alone.

Sabo stepped forward, his strides firm as he joined Perona in confronting the coordinator, his voice sharp with insistence. But beneath his determination, Ace could feel the frustration hanging heavy in the air, a storm cloud of helplessness.

Inside, desperation coiled tighter, a vise around his ribs with every useless word spoken. His hands scrabbled through his pockets, searching for his phone—his last hope to call Beckman or Shanks. They’d know what to do. They’d act fast. They’d protect Luffy. But his pockets were empty. Nothing. The hollow realization echoed in his chest, mirroring the howling wind now tearing through the trees, scattering dead leaves and broken branches in its wake.

If only he hadn’t sent Luffy after Sabo, none of this would’ve happened.

The thought coiled around Ace’s throat like a noose, tightening with every passing second until it threatened to choke him entirely. He shouldn’t have let his brother wander off alone—not into the forest, not with the cold creeping in, not with the storm already gathering in the distance, not with dangers he couldn’t even begin to predict.

This was his fault. Always his fault.

An invisible, crushing weight pressed down on his chest, growing heavier with every shallow breath. The thick air reeked of damp earth and something metallic, clinging to his skin, seeping into his pores. Each inhale dragged the oppressive atmosphere straight into his lungs, as if even the forest itself refused to let him escape this suffocating guilt.

The distant laughter of other students—once familiar, almost comforting—now cut through him like jagged glass. Every giggle, every careless shout was a reminder that the world kept moving, indifferent to his desperation, while he drowned in self-reproach.

The teachers huddled together, murmuring in hushed, nervous tones, their voices going nowhere, their gestures hesitant and half-formed. But nothing changed. No one acted. No one seemed to realize—every minute wasted was another minute Luffy and the others were out there, vulnerable, alone.

Ace clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms—a sharp, grounding pain, the only thing anchoring him to the moment. He patted his pockets again, searching for the phone he already knew was gone—lost in the chaos with the snake earlier—and felt the emptiness of his hands like a physical blow. No way to call Beckman or Shanks. No way to fix this. The forest’s silence pressed in around him, the wind hissing through the trees like nature itself mocking his helplessness.

"I can hear your brain working from here."

The voice sliced through the air like a snapping twig. Ace’s head jerked up, his breath ragged. Marco leaned against a nearby tree, posture too casual for the gravity of the moment, as if this were just another idle afternoon. The smug tilt of his smile was a slap in disguise.

"What do you want?" Ace snarled, the words thick with barely leashed fury.

"I can lend you my phone," Marco offered, spinning the device between his fingers with the ease of someone dangling a rare prize. His eyes gleamed with mischief—a silent taunt: I have what you need, but it’ll cost you.

Ace’s eyes narrowed to slits. "What’s the catch?"

"None." Marco blinked, all faux innocence. "I just want you to reconsider my earlier proposal.”

His blood boiled. His stomach twisted. Ace had never been rational—quick to anger, always on the verge of explosion. But he knew a manipulator when he saw one. With every word out of Marco’s mouth, Beckman’s warnings echoed in his skull: They don’t care, Ace. They just want to see how far they can push you.

And here he was—being pushed.

Treated like bargaining chips.

His fingers trembled. His jaw ached from how hard he was clenching it. If he let anger win, he’d have already shattered that infuriating smirk with his fist. But desperation was louder.

"Fine."

It came out like poison, scorching his tongue.

Ace tore his gaze away. Further ahead, Sabo was arguing with one of the teachers—gestures sharp, voice firm—trying to convince them to organize a search now. Law stood nearby, tension etched into every line of his body, struggling to keep tempers in check. The wind had turned biting, kicking up dried leaves in spirals. Dark clouds gathered faster now, the promise of rain thickening the air.

Ace held out his hand.

Marco smiled—victorious—and handed over his phone. For a fraction of a second, he almost seemed to hesitate. Almost. But there was no mercy in his eyes when he finally let go.

Ace grabbed the phone like it was a life raft in a stormy sea. His fingers, slick with sweat, fumbled over the numbers—once, twice, three times—until the call finally connected.

"Hello?"

Beckman's deep voice cut through the static. Ace swallowed hard, but the words lodged in his throat like broken glass.

"Dad..." His voice cracked. "Luffy's missing on the mountain."

Silence. So long that Ace had to squeeze his eyes shut just to remember how to breathe.

"He was with his friends... the rain's coming soon... you need to come. Now."

The soft beep of the ended call echoed in his ears. Ace's arm dropped, heavy as lead, the phone suddenly weighing a thousand pounds. His heart continued its frantic, arrhythmic pounding, his legs buckling beneath him. He crouched down, pressing his forehead to his knee, trying to steady himself against the spinning world.

"I hate you." The words slipped out in a raw whisper—quiet, but loud enough for Marco to hear.

And hear it, he did.

Marco held Ace's phone—the one he'd snatched during the earlier chaos—between his fingers.

'A necessary evil,' he thought.

Chapter Text

"Pineapple, can you give me a hand with this?" Law asked, his voice calm, almost monotone, as he balanced a stack of plastic boxes overflowing with… plants, it seemed.

It was raining. Not a ferocious storm, not even an impatient downpour—it was a fine, persistent drizzle, falling like threads of silk being pulled taut to their limit before snapping against the ground. Each drop seemed to weigh more than it should, descending slowly, as if the sky itself had lost all sense of urgency. The humidity spread in silence, coating the streets and rooftops in a dull sheen, like varnish over weathered wood.

Marco raised an eyebrow, surprised, and only then did he extend the umbrella he was holding, creating a space for Law to avoid the water dripping from the eaves. He took a few of the boxes, dividing the weight without complaint. His expression, however, spoke volumes more than any word: it wasn't exactly annoyance, but a genuine puzzlement, an almost amused confusion.

"Why are you calling me pineapple-yoi?" he finally asked, tilting his head slightly to the side, like someone trying to decipher a riddle that no one had bothered to explain.

Law replied without altering his tone in the slightest, as if the explanation were far too obvious to warrant any further details: "It's what Luffy calls you."

Marco still held onto that curious expression, his eyes half-closed in a mixture of doubt and mild amusement. "And you've just decided to adopt his nicknames now, have you? I had you pegged as being far more serious than that."

Law remained utterly unshaken. He merely offered a shrug, the gesture of someone releasing an utterly inconsequential decision into the air between them.

"It's more practical. Everyone knows who 'the pineapple' is." He paused for a brief moment, adjusting the grip on his stack of boxes before adding, almost as an afterthought: "If I were to call you Marco, someone might mistakenly think I was referring to someone else entirely."

One corner of Marco's mouth lifted into what might generously be considered a smile—or perhaps it was merely the ghost of one. "Another Marco, is it?" he murmured, the question directed more to himself than to Law.

They continued on together, step after measured step on the damp earth that clung stubbornly to their boots. The gentle rain insisted on falling, lending the air a chill that felt almost lazy, devoid of any real bite. Up ahead, four tents stood in a neat row, erected earlier that day. Some of them were already filled with materials stacked in a hurry: crates, smaller barrels, and an assortment of school supplies. In one of them, a map of the perimeter had been spread out over a makeshift table, its corners pinned down by heavy stones to keep it from being snatched away by a capricious wind.

"You're a strange one, you know that-yoi?" Marco commented at last, taking two deliberate steps to close the distance and stand beside him. Without any ceremony, he plucked the instruction manual from Law's hands. There was nothing particularly complex within its pages—merely a set of guidelines for assembling a simple canopy meant to offer them some shelter from the persistent rain.

The weather, as if it had heard their intentions, chose that precise moment to collaborate: the fine drizzle thickened into something more substantial, its patter against the taut fabric of the tents growing firmer, more insistent. Law cast a brief, upward glance toward the heavy sky and offered a silent, inward plea that the universe, for once, might deign to be on his side.

"...Thanks," he murmured, the word escaping almost automatically, a reflexive sound that held more weight than its simplicity suggested.

The boxes were carefully deposited onto the surface of the makeshift table, and the two of them began the methodical task of sorting through the glass acid jars. Each one was properly labeled, each distinct batch belonging to a different class. Marco performed his share of the work with an air of innate, unthinking naturalness, while Law maintained a posture of rigid, almost severe concentration, as if he refused to permit even the slightest space for distraction or error.

The atmosphere surrounding them, however, worked diligently to dissolve any potential tension. It was saturated with that distinctive, comforting scent of damp earth and rain-soaked leaves—a fragrance that was fresh, almost sweet in its purity, as if it carried a silent promise of calm and profound quiet. The wind remained gentle, insufficient to cause any real bother, yet it was strong enough to send a few stray leaves skittering across the sodden ground below, like weary, lost messengers wandering without any particular destination.

It was the kind of rain that did not drive one away, but rather enveloped them; that did not frighten, but compelled a person to look inward. It was not made for grand tempests or the fury of lightning—it was a rain made of memories. The sort of rain that seeps into the cracks of one's mind, bringing to the surface those thoughts that only emerge when the entire world seems reduced to a slow and constant dripping.

Although the clouds loomed over them like a threat, although the winds whispered that sooner or later the sky would surely break open and crash down, the rain insisted on remaining in that discreet, fine form, like a warning that never quite materialized. There was something suspended in the air, a collective holding of breath, as if everyone was simply waiting for the inevitable to finally arrive.

Law held no good memories of days like this.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Marco said, his voice calm, almost playful, yet carrying a distinct undercurrent of genuine curiosity. The sharp, dry snap of an umbrella opening sounded directly above him, and suddenly the grey sky vanished from his view, replaced by the sheltering canopy of fabric now shielding them both.

Law remained silent for a long moment, his eyes fixed on some undefined point in the distance ahead. When he finally spoke, it was without preamble, characteristically direct and to the point: “My lizard died on a day like this.”

The silence that followed was not empty—it had weight and substance, much like the rain itself.

Marco said nothing. He merely kept his place beside him, a respectful and steady presence, as if he understood that silence was sometimes the only appropriate response to grief. He did not attempt to offer hollow consolation or to pry for more words—he simply remained, a firm and solid presence sharing the same shelter under the umbrella.

“It’s been about a year, more or less,” Law continued, his voice low, drawn out, as if he were speaking more to himself than to the other man. “Cora-san killed him. I think it was an accident.”

"Do you think so-yoi?" Marco arched an eyebrow. His tone, however, carried no trace of judgment, only a genuine, almost clinical curiosity, like that of someone who prefers to hear the entire conclusion before forming any opinion of their own.

Law drew a deep breath, allowing the cold air to fill his lungs completely before he chose to continue. "Sometimes people do what they believe is right,but deep down, at the core of their actions, they are thinking primarily of themselves. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, in a certain light—we are creatures who live in groups, we depend on one another for survival. But it is curious, isn't it, this peculiar ability we possess to inflict harm upon one another, all in the name of some supposedly greater good."

He turned his head, finally fixing his gaze directly upon Marco. His eyes were clear, cold, and lucid, yet they carried within them a profound and ancient bitterness, as if they had witnessed and endured far more than a single, solitary grief.

"It's nothing new. It has always been this way. It was this way during the Inquisition, when they burned people alive in the name of faith and divine salvation. It was this way during the pandemics, when faceless committees decided who was deemed worthy of living and who was considered disposable, a necessary sacrifice. It was this way throughout the era of colonization, when they proudly raised their flags over the profound suffering and subjugation of others. It is as if the second nature of humanity, our true foundational instinct, is to erect barriers—to meticulously justify pain and cruelty by attributing to it a grand, overarching purpose.”

The rain drummed a constant, rhythmic tattoo upon the taut fabric of the umbrella, providing a heavy, somber beat to underscore the weight of what had just been uttered. The forgotten umbrella, left leaning in a corner of the tent, steadily dripped water onto the ground, forming small, expanding puddles on the already saturated floor.

Nearby, other camp monitors were working diligently inside another tent, carefully sorting insects and small specimens; the sound of pages being gently turned and the soft click of tweezers interwove seamlessly with the persistent drizzle outside, creating a silent, focused symphony of concentrated effort.

Marco held Law's penetrating gaze, his own expression deeply thoughtful, but he did not offer an immediate reply. The silence that settled between them seemed to merge and become one with the sound of the falling rain, filling all the intangible spaces where words would inevitably fall short. He passed a plastic bag, neatly labeled with one of the groups under Law's supervision, across the table. Law accepted it without a word, his movements deliberate as he adjusted its contents on the makeshift surface.

"You know a great deal about toxins for a kid," Marco commented, shifting the subject with the subtle grace of someone attempting to gently lift the oppressive weight of their previous conversation. Yet, despite the new topic, his voice still carried a distinct, lingering echo of everything they had just spoken of.

“How about a question for a question?” Law countered, looking at him with that calculated coldness which so rarely parted to reveal genuine honesty.

Marco let out a soft sigh, leaning his weight slightly onto the table. “Alright, I suppose that’s fair-yoi.”

“Why are you so interested in Ace?” Law asked, his eyes narrowed, attentively watching for the slightest hint of hesitation or evasion.

Marco averted his gaze for a moment, as if the true answer could not be spoken so easily or so plainly. When he finally spoke, his voice carried a heavy, restrained weight: “He seems profoundly lonely. His eyes… they hold a kind of pain that isn't common in someone so young. For a brat, he hides far more than he should, as if he’s living inside a body that’s too small for the immense burdens he carries—burdens that no one should ever have to bear.” He paused then, a near-smile touching his lips, but the expression never quite reached his eyes. “And at the very same time, there’s a real brightness to him. He shines in these brief, brilliant moments, but it always fades quickly, as if he’s locked in a constant, internal battle against himself. He’s self-destructive. A fire that doesn’t know whether it’s burning to live or to vanish completely.”

There was a profound shadow in his voice, as if he were speaking more to himself than to Law. He knew—he knew exactly where Ace came from, and perhaps he understood better than anyone the deep, lasting scar of being the son of a man whose very existence split the world cleanly in two, between pure, unadulterated hatred and awestruck reverence.

Marco hesitated, his eyes fixed on some undefined point on the tent's horizon, as if he were searching the heavy clouds beyond the canvas for an answer he did not yet possess the courage to fully formulate. When he finally spoke, his voice emerged low, almost a thought spoken aloud into the space between them.

“And is that why you do what you do?” Law asked, his tone firm, incisive, cutting through the ambient noise with surgical precision.

“I just… don’t know.” Marco offered a shrug, his wings drawn tightly against his body, as if he wished to occupy less space than he truly commanded. There was a contained heaviness in his words, but also a disarming, raw honesty. “He doesn’t let anyone get close enough to truly see the wounds. I just want to help.”

Law lifted his eyes to meet Marco’s, his gaze as sharp and clinical as a scalpel poised for dissection. “It doesn’t seem like you’re helping anyone but yourself.”

The scent of damp earth and fresh, rain-soaked leaves intermingled with the sharp aroma of the plants they were handling, creating an atmosphere that was simultaneously heavy and serene, as if the persistent rain outside was marking each spoken word with a silent, echoing ring of truth.

The response struck Marco with the same cold, sudden inevitability of an unexpected downpour. He drew a deep, measured breath, averting his gaze for a moment before he retorted with an almost unsettling simplicity: "I don't know what you want to hear from me."

For a stretched moment, a heavy silence dragged itself out between them, broken only by the relentless, rhythmic patter of fine raindrops striking the taut canvas of the tent. Each individual drop seemed to mark the passage of time—slow, insistent, and profoundly deliberate—as they remained there, utterly motionless, each contemplating the vast, unspoken void that had opened up between their words.

Then, Law spoke again, his voice firm, leaving no room for hesitation or doubt: "Do you believe you could truly do anything for the people you care about?"

Marco didn't need to think. His eyes, now charged with an almost ferocious intensity, instinctively sought out the direction where his brothers were gathered. When he finally answered, each word landed like a crackle of live fire: "I would destroy the world for them.”

Law observed him with a mixture of intense curiosity and palpable disdain. His mouth curved into something that resembled a smile, but his eyes remained cold, utterly clinical. "Pathetic."

Marco turned to face him immediately, a look of sheer disbelief on his features. "What-yoi?"

"It's easy to destroy." Law leaned forward, the shadow from his hood or perhaps from the tent itself falling across his face, rendering his expression even more severe and imposing. "Anyone can do it. All it takes is a single push, one careless touch, and everything shatters into irreparable pieces. That requires nothing more than raw, unthinking impulse."

He raised his hands, observing them as if they bore the weight of invisible scars etched deep into the skin. His voice lowered, yet it retained its cutting, unwavering firmness:

"Now… try to heal. That truly demands more than mere strength. To heal is to dedicate your entire life to meticulously mending what has been broken, all while knowing that in the end, there will always remain a scar, a permanent mark that never truly disappears. Healing takes time… days, years, entire decades. And even then, after all that sacrifice, it might never be enough. Perhaps you will never manage to fix anything completely.”

For a fleeting instant, his expression wavered, revealing a sudden, startling flash of profound exhaustion—something deeply and unmistakably human. He slowly closed his fingers into a fist, as if attempting to conceal that raw vulnerability beneath a layer of hardened skin. "That is why it is so difficult. That is why people prefer to destroy. That is why it is somewhat pathetic for you to proclaim that you would destroy the world for someone."

The sound of the rain seemed to accompany each word, each deliberate pause, reinforcing the immense weight of those silent, difficult truths. All around them, the world continued to exist—wet leaves, droplets trickling down surfaces, other monitors working diligently with animals and plants—but inside the tent, time itself seemed to have slowed down, suspended between the primal impulse to shatter and the immense, weary patience required to rebuild.

The silence that followed seemed to weigh as heavily as the fine rain that still drummed a soft, persistent rhythm against the tent's canvas. Each drop marked the passage of time in an almost ritualistic manner, while the air, thick with the scent of damp earth and wet plants, created a dense, nearly palpable atmosphere. Marco drew a deep breath, as if searching for strength in every single drop falling around him, and finally lifted his eyes back to meet Law's. It was not a look of confrontation, but neither was it one of surrender. It was a decision: to ignore those words would be a far greater act of cowardice than to face them directly.

“And you?” Marco’s voice emerged firm, yet it carried a contained curiosity, betraying the conscious effort he was making to maintain his composure. “About your… eccentric knowledge. Where did it come from-yoi?”

Law did not answer immediately. He arched a single eyebrow, allowing a smile to form on his lips. It was not a genuine smile; it was dry, ironic, almost bitter—a gesture that functioned as a deliberate barrier, shielding him from any vulnerability the question might pry open.

“I studied,” he said, simple and flat. A single phrase, yet loaded with a weight he had no intention of revealing.

Marco narrowed his eyes, the abrupt movement of his hands betraying his sheer incredulity, as if he had been personally insulted by the restrained nature of the answer. “That’s not how it works-yoi!”

Law’s expression remained almost entirely unchanged. Perhaps his eyes glinted with a faint trace of amusement; perhaps it was merely impatience. He tilted his head to the side, his voice icy, dripping with sarcasm: “I answered your question, didn’t I?”

There was a distinct challenge in the way he pronounced each syllable, as if he were purposely prodding at Marco, testing just how far he could push him before he finally snapped. The sound of the rain mingled with the shifting of boxes and the rustle of leaves inside the tent, creating a silent, atmospheric soundtrack to their battle of locked gazes and all the words left deliberately unspoken.

Marco tried to open his mouth to retort, but he was swiftly cut off by the unnerving firmness in Law's demeanor.

"I would strongly recommend that you let this particular subject lie." Law stopped everything he was doing, his hands suspended motionless above the open boxes.

There was a profound, deliberate weight in his words, as if digging too deeply into certain matters was inherently dangerous, like an unwelcome guest who, by chance, discovers a long-buried body in the backyard. It would be such a pity to have to dig a second hole. Cora-san would be furious, but he would never need to know. Law thought, cold.

"Or else… what?" Marco challenged, his tone still brimming with incredulity, a raw courage burning defiantly behind his words.

Law leaned forward slightly, his gaze fixed and sharp, like a blade sliding effortlessly across polished glass.

"I believe we both understand just how easy it is to make someone disappear in this forest. Eating a poisonous fruit by mistake, being bitten by a venomous creature, accidentally falling into a deep ravine…" His eyes traveled over Marco, clinically assessing every minute reaction. "Just imagine how many search teams would need to be mobilized to find Edward Marco."

He paused, drawing a slow, deliberate breath, as if savoring the chilling effect of his own words. His mind turned to Luffy, to the crushing weight of a surname that changes everything, to the profound hypocrisy of people, and to how easily human lives can be reduced to mere numbers—utterly insignificant when weighed against the impulsive decisions of those who hold control.

They continued stacking boxes of plants, carefully separating the various samples. Law was discarding those with illegible labels, but his eyes stopped on one that was clearly from Luffy: the characteristic childish scrawl, the little smiling doodles scattered haphazardly across the paper. He picked up the box, examined it, and this time, he labeled it correctly, as if every single gesture were measured, precise, and almost ritualistic in its execution.

Marco remained silent for a few long seconds, carefully pondering the heavily-laden words of threat that still seemed to echo within the confines of the tent. Then, unexpectedly, he let out a short, almost incredulous laugh. He had truly underestimated just how dangerous Law could be. As if deciding that the weight of the tension had already been more than sufficient, he deliberately changed the subject:

"You…" he began, the faint echo of his laugh still vibrating in his voice. "I didn't know you cared about them so much."

Law averted his gaze for a moment, his eyes scanning the boxes scattered in front of him, as if he were carefully meditating on his response, before he turned to face him again with his usual, calculated neutrality.

"What can I possibly do?" he said, his voice laden with a tone of resigned irony. "I'm already involved. There's nowhere left for me to run. Once they decide you're a friend… they cling to you like ticks."

Marco let out another low laugh, this time more restrained, and shook his head slowly. "Honest, at least."

"Always," Law retorted without a moment's hesitation, before Marco could even attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere.

The blond man, however, fell silent for a moment, his gaze distant, lost somewhere between the soaked canvas and the droplets still trickling down its sides. The fine rain marked the passage of time between each unspoken thought. "I don't think Ace wants to be my friend," he confessed at last, releasing a sigh heavier than he would ever care to admit.

Law raised a single eyebrow, a glint of almost amused light appearing in his eyes, though the underlying coldness remained firmly in place.

"You really are incredibly dense, aren't you?" he stated bluntly, the inherent coldness of his words softened only by a distinct touch of sarcasm. "I mean… now I'm certain he doesn't want you near him. But if he truly didn't want you around, he would have pushed you away for good a long, long time ago."

Marco blinked, incredulous, trying to process the assertion. "What? Then why…" He made a sharp, frustrated gesture with his hands, mimicking Ace's temperamental attacks and impulsive explosions, as if that were the clearest possible proof of rejection.

Law observed the movement with utter calm, and then he smiled—a small, sharp smile, one that showed his teeth in an almost predatory manner.

"That's just his way. You poke him, he pushes back. It's how he shows he cares; he tries to love you and then immediately asks if you've eaten enough. I've seen him do it with Sabo a million times."

Marco blinked slowly, trying to decipher whether this was a provocation or a sincere observation. The small, sharp smile still lingered on Law's face, but there was something different in his tone when he spoke again:

"Have you actually taken the time to really know Ace?" His voice carried a thread of irony, tenuous but not cruel.

All around them, the tent continued to echo with the sound of dripping water, the soft rustling of leaves, and the faint clatter of boxes being carefully stacked; each individual noise seemed to reinforce the slow, almost ritualistic rhythm of their conversation, as if the rain and their shared labor were silent accomplices to that very intimate, revealing moment.

Marco arched an eyebrow, his expression deeply suspicious. "What do you mean?"

Law offered a nonchalant shrug, his eyes still fixed on him as if he were clinically examining an open wound.

"Even I can see it," he stated, simple and direct. "He enjoyed himself during the time you spent together."

The words hung heavily in the air for several seconds, weighted down by their unexpected sincerity. Marco tilted his head to the side, as if trying to confirm in Law's impassive face whether this was the truth or merely another calculated mental gambit. But he found no trace of sarcasm—only that cold, unwavering conviction the surgeon always carried with him.

Marco had never regretted anything more in his entire life.

Somewhere else, deep within dense vegetation teeming with varied plant life, the four of them—Nami, Zoro, Luffy, and Usopp—were attempting, with very little success, to light a fire to warm themselves. The daylight struggled to penetrate the thick layer of mist that had spread across the entire perimeter, making it difficult to distinguish clear paths or reliable landmarks. Every tree seemed like an obstacle, every shadow a mystery, and the distant sound of branches snapping under their own weight created strange, unsettling echoes that only heightened their profound sense of isolation.

They managed to find a precarious shelter: a small cave nestled into a hillside, its entrance partially concealed by a thick curtain of hanging vines and overgrown bushes. The space wasn't particularly large, but it offered a modest degree of protection from the relentless, constant humidity and the sharp, cold wind that cut through the forest with ease.

"Almost all the wood we have is completely soaked through," said Nami, seated upon a damp rock, carefully adjusting the small twigs with numb fingers. The cold seemed to cling to her skin, a persistent, unwelcome chill, and she shook her hands every now and then in a futile attempt to generate some warmth.

Luffy was helping, carrying an armful of small sticks and arranging them beside her. He had been the one to help her reach the shelter, as her twisted ankle made every step a painful and risky endeavor. "It's nearly impossible to get a fire started," Nami continued, her tone that of someone who didn't want to foster any false hope.

Zoro, seated a few meters away, observed the pile of wet wood with growing impatience, idly turning a single stick between his fingers. "At this rate, we'll freeze to death long before anyone finds us," he grumbled, his voice heavy with a mixture of exhaustion and thinly veiled irritation.

Usopp, positioned a bit further away, was trying his best to stay warm, wrapping his arms tightly around his body as his teeth chattered audibly.

"And they still say outdoor activities are supposed to be fun…" he murmured, more to himself than to the others, while he stared out at the oppressive grey sky and the mist that seemed determined to swallow the entire forest whole.

The fine, persistent drizzle continued to trickle down from the ceiling of the cave and from the leaves overhead, dripping steadily onto the ground and forming small, expanding puddles. The heavy, almost suffocating scent of damp earth, decaying leaves, and wet moss saturated the air, clinging to their clothes and lungs with every breath. Each attempt to ignite a fire seemed increasingly futile; the wood was far too saturated, and even the driest-looking twigs had absorbed enough ambient moisture to render any spark fragile and heartbreakingly ephemeral.

Luffy let out a visible exhale, the tip of his nose slightly reddened from the pervasive cold, and leaned back on his hands, looking at his companions with a determined, though profoundly weary, expression. Each member of the group was tense, focused on their shared plight, but the environment itself seemed to be testing the very limits of their patience, pressing in on them with the unrelenting cold, the oppressive humidity, and the profound, heavy silence of the encircling forest.

Shanks found himself surrounded by a crowd of profoundly uninteresting people. Words repeated around him like an irritating echo—rehearsed smiles, recycled jokes, congratulations offered with a false and manufactured warmth. The cloying, sweet scent of cheap perfume mingled unpleasantly with the aroma of the wine being served, and the room, unbearably stuffy, seemed to grow smaller with each passing minute.

At the center of it all, of course, stood Mihawk. Employee of the month—yet again. The applause rose and fell like tepid, lukewarm waves, devoid of any real impact, but he accepted it with his customary air of indifference, as if the recognition were merely a formal nuisance to be endured. The blade of his gaze, cold and distant, seemed to cut through the crowd without ever truly seeing it.

Shanks, for his part, yawned discreetly, one hand moving to conceal the gesture. He had long since lost count of how many times Mihawk had claimed that title—the routine was always precisely the same: fawning praise, predictable commentary, invitations for a round of drinks that Mihawk would decline with the same disdainful elegance. And no matter how much he pretended to be "competing," Shanks could never truly bring himself to care. There was no fun in chasing after someone who seemed to derive no pleasure whatsoever from winning.

The fun, in fact, had never resided in the competition itself. The true charm lived in those utterly ridiculous moments when their fights would drag on for hours, until finally, exhausted and stubborn, they would declare a draw as if it were a silent, mutual agreement. Shanks could still remember the almost childlike excitement that would seize him on those occasions—the raw adrenaline, the easy laughter, the distinct flavor of provocation.

And Mihawk… well, Mihawk remained with his standard, factory-issue expression, that countenance of unyielding stone that never once conceded an inch. And yet, there was something undeniably amusing about the stark contrast: even while being serious, even while maintaining his stoicism, the man had somehow managed to make those duels strangely entertaining. It was as if, behind that perpetually cold gaze, there existed a hidden spark—a fleeting glimmer of something that only Shanks was capable of noticing.

They were best friends.

Shanks was already preparing to make his escape from the entire affair—to invent a flimsy excuse, to flash a cynical smile, to simply vanish from that party which felt more like an animated funeral—when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He retrieved the device without any particular hurry, but the moment he saw his husband’s name illuminated on the screen, a foolish, unbidden smile escaped before he could possibly contain it. The sense of relief was instantaneous.

The surprise, however, came immediately after. The very instant he answered the call, the voice on the other end delivered the news that turned his stomach to ice: their youngest son had disappeared during a school field trip.

The easy laughter evaporated from his features, instantly yielding to a poorly disguised, raw panic. Shanks pressed the phone hard against his ear—he could have sworn he heard the screen crack under the pressure—pacing back and forth like a caged animal, his heart hammering in a frantic, runaway rhythm.

"At least he called this time," Mihawk murmured, materializing at his side after rounding the corner of the main hall. His neutral, almost cruelly detached tone stood in stark contrast to the redhead's palpable desperation. To him, it was a fascinating spectacle how Shanks's "family" managed to embroil itself in a brand new catastrophe roughly every seventy-two hours.

It was typical. Mihawk, with his meticulously functional brain, required no flimsy excuses to extract himself from the party. The world always seemed to conspire in his favor.

The logic, in his mind, was brutally simple: if their sons were friends and one had gone missing, the other was most likely not very far away. There was no visible haste in his demeanor, no trace of concern etched on his face. He merely set his glass aside and, without altering his expression in the slightest, offered:

"I'll drive."

Shanks did not protest. He accepted the offer like a drowning man desperately clutching a piece of floating debris. The moment he slid into the passenger seat, his fingers began a frantic, nervous drumming against his thigh, his breathing grew short and ragged, and his thoughts became a tangled, chaotic mess.

Mihawk, in stark contrast, kept his hands perfectly steady on the wheel, his gaze fixed on the road ahead as if they were merely heading to the market—not racing in search of a missing child.

The juxtaposition between them was almost painful to witness: Shanks bit his lip, his eyes glistening with unshed tears, his leg bouncing with restless energy; Mihawk remained utterly immobile, as serene as he was dangerous, as if nothing in the world could possibly disturb his unshakeable composure.

"Your brain is going to melt and drip out of your nose," Mihawk murmured, without ever taking his eyes off the newly red traffic light. The statement sounded more like a clinical diagnosis than a deliberate provocation.

Shanks turned his head slowly, a look of pure incredulity on his face, his foot tapping impatiently against the floorboard as if he could physically will the car to move faster.

"Oh, I'm so sorry that my son is missing and I'm feeling a little anxious," he retorted, the sarcasm cutting and sharp. The crooked smile that accompanied his reply hid absolutely nothing; it was merely a fragile mask stretched taut over the raw, throbbing panic blazing in his eyes.

Mihawk did not even blink. He merely shifted gears as the light changed, driving with the same glacial serenity as always, as if the very concept of haste were utterly irrelevant to his existence.

"A bear." Shanks's voice broke the tense silence, pitched higher than normal. "Mihawk, did you hear that documentary on NHK? About the higuma emerging from hibernation? They're more aggressive now. They're enormous. And Luffy... Luffy is so small. And loud. Like a little rattle. A rattle for hungry bears."

He turned fully in his seat, his eyes wide with a vivid, completely imaginary horror.

"He probably smelled his own lunchbox. He stuffed Yubari melon ham into every single bag, Mihawk! Yubari melon ham! It's practically an invitation to a higuma feast! He must have looked like a walking, juicy pine cone to—"

"Shanks." Mihawk's voice cut through the rising hysteria like a blade, cold and precise. "If a bear had devoured your son, which is statistically improbable considering the nearest sighting was five years ago and over three hundred kilometers from here, there would be evidence. Noise. Remains of the lunchbox. Panic among the other children. Your husband would not have said 'disappeared.' He would have said 'was devoured by a bear.' Human language, even at its most dramatic, tends toward precision in catastrophes.”

The car left the urban perimeter behind, trading the monotonous grey of asphalt for the dense, encroaching green that gathered thickly at the feet of the mountains. Shanks, still deeply agitated but now armed with a concrete target upon which to unleash his fury, broke the heavy silence:

"That vice-principal... Crocodile." Shanks spat the name out as if it had a taste of pure bile. The steering wheel wasn't in his hands, but his fingers still clenched into a tight fist upon his own knee. "He's an incompetent. I knew it. I've always known it. He has that look in his eye—the look of a man who's calculating the price of the coffin of the person he's speaking to. I bet he hasn't lifted a finger. For him, it's just another problem to file away and forget."

His breathing came in short, sharp bursts, as if each word were fuel for the anger that was now swiftly replacing his earlier anguish. The car advanced along the road at a pace that felt almost insultingly calm, and the stark contrast made Shanks want to scream.

Mihawk, however, did not yield so much as a blink. The entire world could be crumbling around them and he would still drive with the same cold, unerring precision. Only a sigh, brief and discreet, escaped him—just enough to carry the clear connotation of 'ah, yes, that idiot.'

"Crocodile is not incompetent, Shanks." His voice was firm, monotone, so utterly devoid of emotion that it was almost cruel. "Incompetence implies failing by accident, through a lack of skill. What he practices is something else entirely. A free and spontaneous form of negligence. Calculated. And highly profitable.”

The words hung in the air between them like a set of finely polished knives.

Shanks turned fully in his seat, his eyes narrowed to slits, staring intently at Mihawk's imperturbable profile. The man spoke like some Victorian-era vampire, always in long, perfectly measured sentences, as if every phrase had been meticulously drafted on parchment before being uttered aloud. The stark contrast with his own raw, frayed nervousness only served to irritate him further.

"How do you know?" he fired back, his voice loaded with suspicion and a sharp edge of accusation.

Mihawk did not answer immediately. The silence stretched out, filled only by the low purr of the engine and the distant, hypnotic whir of tires on asphalt. His gaze remained fixed on the road ahead, but there was something more present in his stillness—a hidden weight in his deliberate choice not to look at Shanks.

The redhead noticed the delay and felt a sudden, cold chill run down his spine, as if he had inadvertently touched upon a secret he was never meant to discover.

"Our paths crossed at another time," Mihawk stated, his choice of words deliberately vague yet heavy with unspoken meaning. He was a locked book, but Shanks had learned to read between his lines; it was the preferred euphemism for his time as an active asset in a governmental intelligence agency so shadowy it didn't even possess an official name.

Shanks leaned back into his seat, turning his face to regard Mihawk with a half-insolent smile, though his eyes betrayed a nearly imperceptible flicker of discomfort.

"How is it that I didn't know about this?" he asked, his voice laden with a sense of disbelief.

Mihawk did not divert his gaze from the road ahead. His firm hands on the steering wheel spoke of a deeply ingrained discipline, and the silence that hung between them for several seconds was almost suffocating. He released a weary sigh before answering, his tone dry, as if the conversation were an inevitable burden.

"I suppose there are a great many things you don't know." The phrase landed like a clean, unadorned blow. "You've been out of the game for quite some time, and it's not as if these matters were ever interesting enough to hold your attention."

Shanks furrowed his brow, but quickly masked his irritation with a low, rough laugh. He ran a hand through his hair, tousling the red strands in a distracted gesture. "It hasn't been that long. I do my job, don't I?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Mihawk shot him a brief, appraising glance, like someone weighing the value of a spent coin. A single eyebrow arched, heavy with irony.

The established hierarchy had shattered into pieces after the incident nine years prior, and he remembered perfectly when he first met Shanks—a reckless young man, his breath smelling of alcohol, possessing the foolish courage of someone who believed his own life was disposable. To Mihawk, taking reckless risks was something the redhead did with the same natural ease as breathing. A pure, raw talent, irritating precisely because it was so innate.

“Doing your job,” Mihawk retorted, his voice low, its delivery as sharp and precise as the cut of a blade, “does not equate to being attentive to what is happening around you.”

Shanks flashed a broader, more defiant smile, but it was an empty expression that failed to reach his eyes. “If I don’t know about it, then it can’t be all that incredible.”

“Crocodile only moves in accordance with his own self-interest. And the children of a loud, redheaded idiot who holds no influence on the parent committee or at the city hall... simply aren’t interesting enough to merit his time or his resources.”

The explanation chilled Shanks's blood far more than any theory about bears ever could. This was worse than mere incompetence. It was pure malice—an active, conscious decision not to act.

“He left my son out there, in danger, because it wasn’t worth the bother?” Shanks’s voice emerged as a low growl, all his earlier anxiety now transformed into a furious, tightly focused rage.

“Precisely,” confirmed Mihawk, as though he were clinically analyzing a field report. “He is likely already planning to complete the necessary paperwork to absolve himself of any responsibility. Worrying about Crocodile is a waste of energy. He is not the key to finding them; he is merely a bureaucratic obstacle we will ignore.”

Shanks's hand clenched into a fist so tight his knuckles turned a stark, bloodless white. The image of Crocodile, utterly indifferent to Luffy's fate, was viscerally repugnant to him. But Mihawk's analytical coldness, as it always did, brought a brutal clarity. It was useless to be angry at the desert sand; you simply avoided it or found a way to cross it.

The silence inside the car was heavy, charged only by the hum of the engine and the turbulent whirl of Shanks's thoughts. He looked over at Mihawk, whose profile was sharp as a blade against the deepening darkness outside. The rage against Crocodile fermented within him, a living, dangerous thing.

"Hypothetical question," Shanks's voice broke the silence, softer now, but with a cutting seriousness. He leaned slightly toward the driver's side, studying Mihawk's reaction intently. "Your... organization. They exempt you from responsibilities. But they don't protect against external actions, do they?"

Mihawk remained silent for a long moment, the only sounds being the constant hum of the engine and the whistle of wind against the windows. When he finally spoke, his voice was even lower, more contained, as if he were weighing each word with lethal precision.

"The organization," he began, carefully avoiding any name, even a coded one, "does not exempt. It channels. It takes responsibility and redirects it into a funnel that empties onto a single desk, far removed from local courts and common police bureaucracy.”

The car navigated a gentle curve, its headlights sweeping across a particularly dense stretch of forest. The shadows of the trees danced across their faces, projecting unsettling patterns that seemed to mirror every tense, churning thought in Shanks's mind.

"As for protection…" Mihawk continued, and his tone took on an almost philosophical quality, yet it retained the clinical coldness of a tactical briefing. "It is a shield, not an absolution. It protects against external, legal actions: investigations by civilian police, common judicial processes, the interference of a corrupt vice-principal with petty connections. It does not protect against the consequences of failing the organization itself. Quite the opposite."

Shanks gripped the imaginary steering wheel on his side, drawing a deep, steadying breath. Each of Mihawk's words was a precise blade, slicing through his illusions and laying bare the vulnerability of everything he had ever considered secure.

"But, precisely," Mihawk continued, every syllable measured and threatening, "they would consider it an affront. An interruption to their resources, no matter how insignificant. They would not lift a finger to protect Crocodile, but they would move mountains to punish anyone who dared to lay a hand on one of their tools, no matter how corroded it has become."

He allowed a pause that was almost imperceptible. His eyes remained fixed on the road ahead, but the intensity in his voice carried the heavy, unspoken weight of a final sentence.

"In the best-case scenario, they would place a price on your head. In the worst case, they would send someone like me."

A heavy silence fell inside the car. The sound of the engine seemed louder than before, each curve in the road accentuating the profound loneliness of the night and the sensation that every spoken word now hung in the air like a physical threat over Shanks. He leaned back into his seat, his body rigid, his mind spinning. Mihawk's coldness wasn't merely discipline; it was a force potent enough to freeze any impulse of recklessness solid.

Shanks knew that, no matter how much he wanted to curse Crocodile, to scream, to run and rescue Luffy without a second thought, every action now had to be measured. Every single misstep could prove fatal. And as he watched Mihawk, he felt the silent, crushing weight of logic and danger, a presence as tangible as the darkness gathering in the trees alongside the road.

"Wait… if they sent you after me, would you try to kill me?"

"I would do so avidly, without needing to receive orders.”

Shanks stared at him, his eyes empty, as if he were contemplating a distant and utterly incomprehensible landscape.

"I thought we were friends."

"We are not friends."

The declaration echoed through the car, sharper and more final than any blade. The air, which had previously carried a tension that was almost conspiratorial and a strange sense of complicity, froze instantaneously. The sound of the engine seemed to grow louder, each curve of the road felt more tense, and Shanks felt the silent, crushing weight of Mihawk's indifference like a direct blow to the chest.

He blinked, trying to absorb the sheer magnitude of what he had just heard, but Mihawk's gaze remained impenetrable, cold, utterly unshakable. There was no emotion, no hesitation—only the calculated certainty that each word carried the definitive weight of a final sentence.

Shanks kept staring at him. It wasn't a look of anger or betrayal, but one of pure and absolute incomprehension, as if Mihawk had just declared that the sky was green and the grass was blue. His brain, already overloaded with panic for Luffy, simply refused to process those words.

"...What?" was all he managed to say, his voice hoarse, almost failing him.

Mihawk did not divert his gaze from the road. His posture remained perfectly serene, as if he hadn't just shattered the very foundation of Shanks's personal universe.

"You heard me perfectly clearly. We are not friends." He navigated a smooth curve, the headlights cutting a precise path through the darkness. "We are something infinitely more complex and far less sentimental. We are rivals. We are occasional partners in chaos. Two forces of nature that, by chance, sometimes align. Friendship implies simple, uncomplicated loyalty. What exists between us... is not simple. And it is certainly not uncomplicated."

Shanks continued to stare, the expression of distant "landscape" slowly transforming into a mixture of sheer incredulity and a profound, deeply personal wound he didn't know how to articulate.

"You... you drive my car. You're helping me find my son. You know how I take my coffee. You know me." His voice rose several pitches, the panic now thoroughly mixed with utter confusion. "We've gotten drunk together! How is that not friendship?"

"It is familiarity. Recognition of value. A tacit understanding that destroying one another would be a colossal loss for the world's collective boredom." Mihawk finally looked at him. His golden eyes held no warmth, only the cold clarity of an absolute fact. "If the Organization ordered your elimination, I would not hesitate. It would be the apex of our rivalry. The definitive duel. Something I have anticipated for years. The only reason I do not act on it proactively is that I value the few genuine challenges this world has to offer. Your absence would be... tedious.”

He returned his gaze to the road.

"And, hypothetically, if I were to fail and you killed me in the process... I would die satisfied. That is more respect than any cheap friendship could ever hope to offer."

He had always believed his connection with Mihawk was unique, something special. Every gesture, every insight shared in silence, every time he thought he had managed to penetrate the other's mind. For Mihawk, all of it was merely... interesting.

"I see," said Shanks, his voice strangely contained, almost hollow. He turned slightly to face the road ahead, where the forest now seemed denser, more hostile, as if it were mirroring his internal state. "Good to know. For... context."

Mihawk, with his unshakable tone, completed the thought: "Incidentally, if we were truly friends, you would have invited me to your wedding."

"It's... it's about that?" Shanks's voice rose, no longer loaded with anger or hurt, but with pure and absolute astonishment. "All that grand speech about rivals, forces of nature, duels to the death... and at the end of the day, it's because you're upset you didn't get a wedding invitation?”

Mihawk maintained his glacial dignity, but a slight, almost imperceptible movement in his jaw revealed that he had noted the distraction he had successfully created, pulling Shanks's mind away from the torment over Luffy, if only for a moment. He drew a deep breath, mentally satisfied with the result.

"I am not 'upset'," his voice was measured, each word exact and deliberate. "I am merely pointing out a factual inconsistency. Friends are invited to important celebrations. I was not. Therefore, the labeling of 'friends' is imprecise. Simple logic."

Shanks let out a rough, hoarse laugh, loaded with both relief and sheer exasperation. They were both conveniently ignoring one glaringly obvious fact: there had been no wedding. Most certainly not.

"Mihawk, for heaven's sake…" he began, gesturing animatedly with his hands as the car swayed gently on the winding road. "You were on a six-month mission in Siberia! Or the Arctic, or wherever the hell that nameless job of yours takes you! You vanished off the face of the earth! How in the world was I supposed to invite you?"

"There were channels. Emergency contact protocols," Mihawk countered, his voice still flat, but with a hint of almost childish stubbornness emerging from behind the impenetrable facade. "You could have made an attempt.”

"'Dear shadowy and presumably lethal agent, please interrupt your critical infiltration of a terrorist cell to attend my potluck. Dress code: smart casual, bulletproof attire optional.'" Shanks imitated a flat, bureaucratic tone before returning to his normal, exasperated voice. He shot a quick glance at Mihawk, mentally cross-referencing the dates on his marriage certificate with the period Mihawk had taken personal leave. "You would have laughed in my face! Or, worse yet, you would have ignored me entirely!"

"The possibility of me ignoring it is irrelevant. The courtesy should have been extended." Mihawk finally cast a quick, sharp glance toward Shanks. It was intense, piercing, and for the first time that night, Shanks saw something beyond the ice or clinical logic: the glint of a man who had spent an absurd amount of time ruminating on a seemingly insignificant point.

And suddenly, it all made sense. The denial of friendship. The calculated coldness. All of it was… Mihawk being dramatically, pathetically, Mihawk.

Shanks burst into laughter. It wasn't a contained chuckle, but a deep, genuine, full-bodied laugh that echoed inside the car, expelling all the accumulated tension and hurt. He braced himself against the dashboard.

"My God…" he managed to say between waves of laughter, wiping away a tear that had escaped down his cheek, "you are the most ridiculous person in the entire world. Literally. You are one of the most dangerous men on the planet, and you're throwing a tantrum because you didn't get a wedding invitation."

Mihawk, impassive, adjusted his grip on the steering wheel with minute precision, but for a tiny, almost imperceptible instant, the very corner of his lip twitched upward. It was too small to be called a smile, but it was more than enough for Shanks to know: even the most calculating of men possessed an absurdly human—and ridiculously stubborn—side.

Mihawk furrowed his brow ever so slightly, a sign so microscopic that to anyone else it would have been invisible, but to Shanks, it was as clear as a shout. It was Mihawk's body language in a state of extreme contrarianism—his equivalent of slamming a door.

"I am not throwing a tantrum," he corrected, his voice as firm as tempered steel. "I am re-evaluating the nature of our relationship based on factual evidence."

Shanks erupted into another fit of laughter, the tension finally shattering like glass under pressure. He threw his head back, laughing until his eyes welled up with fresh tears.

"Ah, shut up," he finally managed to say, still laughing, running a hand over his face to clear his eyes. "You're my best friend, you dramatic imbecile."

The sincerity escaped him before he could even think about how Mihawk might react. It was so obvious to him, so crystalline and true, that calling him anything else would have felt absurd. He leaned forward, bracing his arm against the dashboard as if he needed to hold himself up to keep from falling apart completely.

"And next time I get married, I'll send the invitation via encoded message to your favorite spy agency. Alright?"

The car continued forward, the constant hum of the engine filling the silence that stretched out after the words were spoken. Mihawk kept his eyes fixed on the road, his profile immobile and impeccable, the tension in his shoulders still rigid. The weight of that silence almost made Shanks regret having spoken so directly.

Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the corners of Mihawk's mouth curved into a micro-smile—too small to be considered genuine, too contained to seem lighthearted. It didn't reach his eyes, but it was undeniably there.

"I see. That would be... acceptable." He allowed a long, deliberate pause. "Though I will most likely be occupied."

Shanks let out another short laugh, the relief washing through every muscle in his body like a breath of fresh air after being submerged for too long.

"Of course you will be," he said, shaking his head, the smile still etched on his face.

The fear for Luffy hadn't disappeared; it was still there, throbbing, a hard knot in his stomach. But for the first time that night, he didn't feel like he was carrying that weight alone.

"Returning to the main topic," Shanks released a low, dry laugh, almost a nervous snap disguised as humor. "I understand. So it's best if I don't do anything... permanent to our dear vice-principal. For now."

Mihawk briefly shifted his gaze to the road, as if calculating invisible probabilities ahead, before returning his sharp eyes to Shanks.

"'Permanent' is an absolute term," he said, his voice slow and measured, like a blade being carefully unsheathed. "There are degrees of persuasion that fall short of an obituary.”

The silence that followed was thick, heavy, as if the very air had stilled to listen. Shanks arched an eyebrow, intrigued, but Mihawk continued without haste, his intonation growing ever sharper and more precise:

"A car accident…" his voice slid out, cold, almost clinical, as he described it, "a botched mugging... or even a severe case of food poisoning that forces him into an extended medical leave."

He inclined his head slightly, his eyes half-closed in contemplation.

"These are inconveniences. They are not affronts."

Shanks drew a deep breath but did not interrupt. With every word Mihawk spoke, the boundary between "pragmatic advice" and "veiled threat" grew increasingly nebulous.

"'They'," Mihawk continued, with a cruel calmness, "only care about the final outcome, not the methods. As long as the tool remains... functional, no one would waste one of their best assets investigating something so utterly banal."

The final word landed with the weight of a judicial sentence.

Shanks leaned back into his seat, a crooked smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.

"You talk about poisoning a man like someone suggesting we change the lock on a door."

"Because it isn't all that different," Mihawk replied, the contrarian nature of his statement expertly masked beneath a veneer of pure neutrality.

Shanks looked out the window. The rage still simmered within him, but now it had a channel, a course of action meticulously outlined by Mihawk's merciless logic. He couldn't kill Crocodile. But he could make him so miserable he would wish he were dead.

"An interesting hypothesis," Shanks murmured, the smile that now played on his lips carrying a spark of his old, dangerous amusement. "Let's file that away for a future discussion. After we find the boys."

"Naturally," agreed Mihawk, his own tone slightly lighter, as if he appreciated the elegant and brutal solution they had sketched out together.

The car had barely come to a complete stop when Shanks opened the door and strode directly toward the group under the fine, misty rain that had begun to fall. The flashing red and blue lights from the patrol vehicles painted his pale face, revealing every trace of worry etched upon it.

At the center of the commotion, Benn Beckman stood immobile, a point of solemn calm amidst the chaos. He was speaking in a low voice to one of his men, his face a map of contained concern and absolute focus. But the moment his eyes met Shanks's approaching figure, all the hardness in his expression dissolved instantaneously, replaced by a profound relief and a softness that only Shanks could ever draw out from him.

Without uttering a single word, Beckman picked up a large, black umbrella leaning against a car and walked toward his husband, covering him from the rain with a gesture that was both natural and deeply protective. His presence was an immediate anchor in Shanks's emotional maelstrom.

"Shanks." Beckman's voice was deep, a familiar balm. His free hand found the redhead's shoulder, giving it a firm, reassuring squeeze.

Meanwhile, Mihawk exited the car with an elegance that seemed to disdain the very rain. He completely ignored the main group and strode with purposeful steps toward a notably smaller and more... vibrant figure. Perona, enveloped in a shockingly pink raincoat that seemed to glow under the patrol car lights, was speaking animatedly to a police officer, gesturing with her matching, tiny pink umbrella.

It was a surprisingly comical sight. Mihawk, tall, severe, and dressed entirely in black, stopped beside her. Perona, without even needing to look up, stretched onto her tiptoes and, with fierce determination, held her small pink umbrella over his head, protecting his precious strands from any stray droplet. Mihawk offered no comment, accepting the absurdly protective gesture as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He leaned down slightly to hear her, his rigid posture a hilarious contrast to the pink bubble that now sheltered him.

Shanks barely registered the scene. His eyes were locked on Beckman, his need for information overriding everything else.

"Where are they?" His words came out short, sharp, laden with an anxiety that the grip on his shoulder could barely contain.

Beckman made a slight motion with his head, guiding them away from the eavesdropping ears of the rescue team and his own men, who maintained a respectful distance.

"The main trail has been thoroughly searched. Nothing," Beckman began, his voice low and urgent. "The teacher said it was quick. They stopped for a snack, she turned her back for a minute to help another child, and when she looked back, the two of them were gone. According to accounts from other students, they were running along the trail, in a steep area. They might have tripped and fallen down the slope, off the path."

Shanks closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead.

"And so, what was decided?"

"The vice-principal wants to evacuate the area first and file a formal report," Beckman paused, his expression grim. "To me, it sounds like an excuse to absolve himself of responsibility. The team they have here has no experience with this type of terrain, and the weather forecast is not favorable."

The redhead let out a low, sharp curse, pivoted on his heels, and began to stride away with long, impatient steps, his entire body vibrating with restless energy. Beckman did not try to grab him, but moved swiftly enough to intercept his path, positioning himself in front of him like an immovable wall.

"What is it?" he asked, his voice firm and deep, laden with a clear note of warning. Shanks lifted his chin, his eyes burning with a fierce determination, but a shadow of fear was hidden within them.

"I know what you want to do, but it's reckless," Beckman continued, his tone low, calculated, almost cutting.

"I have to go after him." Shanks's reply was immediate, almost a contained roar. "I promised they would be safe." The last sentence escaped in a broken whisper, as if it were meant more for himself than for Beckman. "I won't break that promise."

He took a step forward, closing the distance between them.

"Unless you have suddenly developed the ability to navigate unfamiliar terrain for which there is no map, without a guide, and with the haste of someone who believes they can outsmart the very night itself…" he exhaled the smoke slowly, his eyes locked on the redhead. "You would hardly manage to reach them before nightfall. And alone? It would be suicide.”

Shanks's chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow breaths. He hated to admit it, but Beckman was right—and that truth was corroding him from the inside out. Every lost minute felt like a physical weight crushing down upon his promise.

Beckman narrowed his eyes, lowering his voice in a manner that was almost paternal: "You won't be helping them if you disappear too."

Shanks clenched his jaw, averting his gaze to the ground, fighting against the tangled knot of rage and guilt twisting in his stomach. The knuckles of his clenched fist were white from the sheer force he was applying.

"Are you two going to kiss?" Loux's voice sliced through the tense silence, shrill and mocking. The loud, crinkling sound of a snack bag being chewed on immediately afterward echoed like an untimely clap of thunder in the charged air. "No judgment, of course."

He stared at them with his eyebrows raised, holding the open bag against his chest as if it were a bucket of popcorn in the middle of a dramatic performance.

Shanks stopped breathing for a full second, caught completely off guard, and then let out a low, nervous laugh that was far too strained to sound natural. Beckman, for his part, remained utterly immobile, taking a slow drag from his cigarette, the smoke rising in thin, swirling tendrils that masked his expression. Only the subtle tightening of a muscle in his jaw betrayed his irritation.

"No—" Beckman stated, dry and clipped, each syllable punctuated with calculated coldness. "—Maybe,"Shanks said at the exact same time, a crooked smile appearing on his face as an automatic reflex of defiance.

The collision of their answers created an awkward, heavy silence that hung palpably in the air. The only sound that followed was Loux's open-mouthed, theatrical chewing, which seemed deliberately designed to amplify the provocation. He tilted his head from side to side, analyzing them as if he were a judge at a peculiar competition.

Beckman finally turned his face toward Shanks. His gaze was impassive, but the cold glint in his eyes conveyed a silent, potent threat. Shanks, however, held the exchange with his usual insolent air, as if he were teetering playfully on the edge of a razor blade.

"You are genuinely not helping," Beckman murmured, his deep voice almost a low growl between his teeth.

"I just didn't want to lie," Shanks shrugged in a dismissive gesture, but the way he averted his eyes a little too quickly betrayed the fact that he was thoroughly enjoying his own audacity.

Loux raised his chip bag as if toasting with a fine glass. "Don't stop on my account, please. This is more exciting than a prime-time soap opera."

A vein pulsed at Beckman's temple, a metronome of pure irritation. He let out a long, heavy sigh, the final audible warning before an explosion.

"One more word," Beckman cut through the air, his voice so low and sharp you could almost feel its edge, "and you are unemployed." The look he pinned Loux with wasn't a threat; it was a final sentence.

Loux froze, his fingers still buried deep in the chip bag. For a full second, the only movement was the theatrical chewing of the mouthful already in his mouth. Then, with a slowness that defied all logic, he brought another handful to his lips, chewing in an exaggeratedly slow and noisy manner while staring back at Beckman with a smile of pure, unadulterated insolence.

Before Beckman could transform his threat into action, Shanks intervened. His voice came out in a drawn-out, almost lazy tone, dripping with provocative delight, like someone pouring gasoline onto a fire just to see how high the flames would leap: "I'll hire him."

The redhead didn't hesitate; he crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the wall, the very epitome of relaxed defiance. A flame of pure amusement danced in his eyes, and the smile that carved itself into the corner of his mouth made it abundantly clear that he knew exactly the size of the hornet's nest he was poking.

Beckman turned his head with a slow, almost predatory deliberation to face him. The cigarette between his fingers trembled just a fraction more, but his expression was one of glacial, lethal calm.

"Shanks." It was a dry, sharp snap. Just the name, but it was loaded with the heavy, unmistakable weight of an ultimatum.

Shanks arched his eyebrows, his smile widening even further, a blend of defiance and sheer incredulity. "What? I appreciate an employee with spirit."

Loux, of course, seized the opening and raised the chip bag like a golden trophy. "See? Finally, someone recognizes my true talent."

"Your only talent consists of irritating me," Beckman retorted, dryly, his gaze still nailed to Shanks like a spike, ignoring Loux with a disdain that was almost physical.

Shanks let out a muffled laugh, a rough sound of pure, provocative delight. He leaned forward, invading Beckman's personal space as if the rest of the world, including Loux, had simply evaporated. The air around him seemed to vibrate with an impatient energy.

"Just stopped by to deliver the report," Loux interrupted, chewing loudly, capitalizing on the opening. "We did a sweep of the perimeter and found more or less the spot where they disappeared." He took a dramatic pause, nibbling on the corner of the bag with his eyes lost in the brush, performing an act of deep reflection. "The basics, you know?... Some footprints, crushed leaves, a few broken branches at the edge of a steep drop-off…”

Shanks, who until that moment had seemed like a live wire about to short-circuit, froze. His entire attention, every single fiber of his being, converged upon Loux. The anxiety in his eyes was a living, breathing thing, almost painful to observe.

"And?" Shanks's question came out more as a growl, a hoarse sigh laden with a desperate, clawing hope.

Beckman, for his part, did not move a single millimeter, but his posture underwent a subtle yet profound shift. His shoulders, once tensed with anger, were now set with a firm, unwavering focus. His gaze abandoned Loux and fixed upon Shanks, analytical and merciless, assessing every micro-expression, every unspoken word.

"Well, that's the thing…" Loux sighed, now genuinely frustrated, running a hand through his hair. "There's not much to follow from there. The rain washed everything away. The footprints are gone, the trail's gone cold. It's impossible to tell which direction they took."

The silence that fell was heavy and damp, absorbed by the wet earth. Shanks let out a low sound, almost a groan, and brought a hand to his face, his fingers pressing against his eyelids as if he could physically crush the frustration. The hope that had blazed for a single second in his eyes was extinguished, leaving behind only the icy void of uncertainty.

Beckman did not waste a single second. His brain had already processed the information and moved into action. He lifted his gaze, sweeping it across the dense, hostile tree line with a tactical coldness.

"Right." His voice was a command, clear and incontestable. "Loux, keep an eye on Shanks for me."

Without waiting for confirmation or protest, he turned on his heel. "I'm going to speak with the team." And he walked away, his steps quick and determined, chewing up the sodden terrain, a figure of absolute authority dissipating into the grey mist.

Shanks stood still for a moment, immobile as a statue, his fists clenched so tightly that his nails dug into the flesh of his palms. His eyes, glazed and distant, were fixed on the ghost of a trail the rain had erased. The silence within him wasn't an absence of sound, but a muffled scream; every broken branch, every footprint dissolved by water was a personal failure, another nail in the coffin of his promise.

Beckman watched him from the corner of his eye, every muscle in his body as alert as a feline poised to pounce. He knew the rope tethering Shanks's impulsivity was stretched to its absolute limit, on the verge of snapping. He trusted that the man had a limit, an internal brake of self-control, but the fear of a father is a wind strong enough to sever any mooring.

The damp, cold wind carried the heavy scent of the forest, a perfume of wet earth and despair. With it grew the crushing sensation that every passing minute was a stolen minute.

And then, in a fraction of a second, in the blink of an eye—Shanks was simply no longer there.

There was no sudden movement, no running or jumping. It was as if the forest itself had swallowed him whole, a dark and silent magic trick. Beckman blinked, and the space where the redhead had stood was now empty. A wave of pure panic—instantly followed by a boiling fury—overtook him. Hatred for the recklessness? A worry that tightened his chest like a vise? He didn't know. The two feelings merged into one, a blind, furious knot in his throat.

On the fringes of the perimeter, far from the spotlights and the authoritative reach of Beckman, Shanks walked with quick, decisive steps, the glow of his phone screen illuminating his pale, tense face under the fine, misting rain. He was the shadow of a man possessed by a single, overriding mission. Even the daylight, muted and grey by the heavy cloud cover, lent a somber, almost sinister atmosphere to his pursuit.

Trailing behind him, practically trotting to keep up with the frantic pace, was Roux, his face a mosaic of genuine concern and pure professional terror.

"Boss, please," Roux pleaded, his voice a mixture of exasperation and stark fear. "The real boss, the one who actually signs my paychecks, is going to kill me, dismember me, and then fire me. We should go back, you know? We have an entire team for this sort of thing."

"I have a plan," Shanks stated, his focus unbroken.

"It doesn't sound very safe, sir," Roux insisted, but Shanks didn't even slow down, ignoring him as if he were a buzzing mosquito. His steps did not falter, chewing up the sodden ground with grim determination.

After a few more meters of silence, broken only by Roux's panting breaths and the persistent drizzle, Shanks's voice emerged, flat and devoid of emotion: "Why are you following me?"

"Well, Benn Beckman ordered me to keep an eye on you," Roux explained, his voice slightly breathless from the effort of matching the pace. "As much as I object to... this whole improvised marriage situation... and the fact that you skipped all the formalities and a proper ceremony, you are still technically married to my superior."

"In other words," Shanks summarized, his voice still monotone, without looking back, "Beck is going to tear up your paycheck.”

"In a few blunt words, yes."

"I'll pay triple."

Shanks stopped dead in his tracks.

“No offense, sir,” Roux said, turning to Shanks with a half-smile laced with irony. “But don’t you think you could pay, I don’t know… triple my salary?”

He looked him over from head to toe, the way one might appraise an expensive piece of merchandise, though it felt like he was weighing something deeper — judging not just the clothes or the stance, but the very soul of the redhead.

The silence that followed was more frightening than any noise the forest could produce. He turned around slowly, the movement fluid and predatory. The weak light from his phone illuminated his face from below, casting deep shadows under his eyes and transforming his expression from merely pensive to something profoundly serious and utterly impenetrable.

"You think you're right?" The question came out flat, devoid of emotion, as if he were asking the price of an object—After all, so what if he had a few hundred thousand dollars in ghost accounts offshore, and even if he was well-paid, he couldn't very well spend all his money on top-shelf liquor (damn you, Beckman), and apparently he was much better at threatening people than he was at bribing them… what was the point of having money, anyway?

"Wh... what?" Roux stammered, his eyes wide, taking an instinctive step backward.

"I will overlook your... insolence... since we are not yet acquainted," Shanks continued, his voice still unnervingly neutral, almost a cutting whisper that cut through the sound of the wind. "But let me make one thing perfectly clear to you. At this moment, you do not have a dilemma. You have an illusion. You are either on my side, or you are against me. The payment offer is merely a polite euphemism. So you will remain quiet, you will accept what I say, and you will help me." He allowed an infinitesimal, yet crucial, pause. "Or... the possibility of Beckman dismembering you will be the very least of your concerns."

Roux swallowed dryly, the sound audible in the heavy silence. The bag of chips in his hand suddenly seemed irredeemably trivial. His survival instinct, far sharper than his sense of humor, spoke the loudest.

"Understood," he said, his voice abnormally contained and serious. "Crystal clear."

"And stop calling me 'sir'," Shanks ordered, without looking back, his voice laden with an impatience that sprang from a far deeper well of concern.

Roux adjusted his pace, nearly tripping over a root. "Yes, si— understood. Sorry," he corrected himself, swallowing hard. "What should I call you, then?"

Shanks stopped for a fraction of a second, turning just enough to cast a quick glance at Roux. A glint of amused exasperation crossed his eyes, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "Shanks," he said, as if it were the simplest and most obvious thing in the world, before resuming his determined march.

Roux nodded, repeating the name mentally as if testing its flavor. "Right, Shanks. And... where exactly are we going?" He gestured with his hands toward the dense, oppressive darkness of the forest that surrounded them on all sides.

Shanks did not answer immediately. Instead, he raised his phone, the screen illuminating his agile fingers as he dialed a number with a precision that starkly contrasted the chaos surrounding him. "I need to call in a favor," he replied at last, pressing the device to his ear, his attention now divided.

"A favor? Out here? In the middle of the forest?" Roux's voice rose an octave, and he spread his arms in a gesture of utter incredulity, as if he expected a car to materialize between the trees.

Shanks made a brief, irritated gesture with his free hand, demanding silence as the call rang through. "I need to be far from curious ears," he explained, lowering his voice to little more than a whisper, his eyes scanning the surrounding shadows with renewed suspicion.

"...Right," Roux murmured, finally yielding. He crossed his arms, hugging his own torso as if he were trying to either warm himself or hold himself together.

He remained confused, watching Shanks's profile illuminated by the phone's bluish light. Shanks was... strange. A strange man, who carried a smile as easy and charming as a hidden blade, and an aura that oscillated between that of a desperate father and a dangerously calm predator. It was a combination that left Roux simultaneously intrigued and with a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with the weather. One thing he knew for certain—he was utterly, completely screwed.

Chapter Text

The rain had ceased nearly an hour ago, yet the scent of damp earth still saturated the air, thick and almost tangible.

The waterlogged asphalt retained the storm's liquid sheen, mirroring the world in shimmering fragments—the smoldering orange of the sunset, the distant purple of clouds drifting lazily apart. Ahead, the road unfurled like a dark, sinuous ribbon, its edges studded with lingering puddles that glittered like scattered shards of polished glass.

Inside the car, the rhythmic sound of tires cutting through the wet pavement produced a low, constant hum, almost hypnotic in its persistence.

The windshield wiper continued its automatic sweep, emitting a soft, rhythmic creak with every pass, even with so few drops left to clear. The engine rumbled in a muffled tone, occupying the space between them like a conversation perpetually poised to begin but never spoken.

Law sat motionless in the passenger seat, his chin resting in his hand, his gaze lost in the landscape sliding past the window.

The fading evening light traced sharp lines of shadow across his face, while the glass reflection merged his own image with the sky outside—a weary countenance adrift among clouds stained with fire and violet. His fingers drummed nervously against his knee, a stark contrast to the rigid stillness of the rest of his body, as though the slightest movement might shatter something fragile within.

The car’s interior carried the scent of damp upholstery and old cigarette smoke, and a fine layer of dust had settled across the dashboard, where the glow of the headlights caught tiny, golden specks.

In the driver’s seat, Rosinante kept his hands steady on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road, his expression a little too serene for the heavy atmosphere that enveloped them both.

“Your mind is elsewhere.” Rosinante’s voice was low and rough, yet held no judgment—only a simple, drawn-out observation, like someone stating the obvious. He didn’t take his eyes off the road as he spoke, but Law caught the subtle shift in his periphery; that quiet, unnerving attention which always made it seem as though Rosinante saw far more than he let on.

“Are you worried about your friends?”

Law blinked slowly. The word seemed to hang in the air between them, an echo that felt profoundly out of place.

Friends.

When it came from Cora’s mouth, it always sounded strange. Almost unreal. He seemed to chew on it, as if testing its flavor before conceding it was a term he could rightfully apply to Law.

Even as the boy insisted he had them, Rosinante never appeared convinced—he would claim that “online friends could be dangerous,” and that “no one is truly who they seem to be behind a screen.”

Law averted his gaze back to the window.

Outside, the trees rushed by in a motion-blurred streak, and every distant headlight dissolved into a long, drawn-out line of luminescence. The boy felt a tightness in his throat, an irritation that rose in time with the monotonous, rhythmic sweep of the windshield wiper.

Idiot, he thought. As if I have the time to go out and meet someone who'd ever meet with his approval.

A sudden flash of headlights cut across the lane, and Rosinante jerked the wheel. The car swayed sharply to the right, the near-side tire scraping against the gravel shoulder with a harsh, grating sound. For a fleeting moment, the light illuminated the rain-slicked concrete barrier and the grass, still bent and battered from the downpour.

“You should keep your eyes on the road.” Law’s voice cut through the thick air, dry and sharp, landing with the force of a slap.

The vehicle shuddered, its tires crying out against the slick asphalt as a fine spray of gravel from the roadside peppered the undercarriage with a series of sharp, percussive ticks.

The tight curve materialized without warning, as if the road itself had conspired to test their luck, and Law caught his breath, his fingers digging into the seat's edge until he felt the world right itself again.

The engine let out a low, strained moan, the windshield wiper scraping across the glass in a token gesture of protest, and for a suspended moment, the car resumed its steady path—though Law's heart continued to hammer out a rhythm of someone not yet convinced of the returned tranquility.

It was always like this.

With every sharp turn, every belated brake, the same fleeting suspense: a single, crystallized second where everything could simply cease.

Law no longer bothered with the pretense of being startled; he merely glanced at the dashboard with a kind of cynical boredom, the look of one who has come to expect the inevitable. 'Maybe I won't even live long enough to get a driver's license,' he thought, a wave of bleak astonishment washing over him.

From the driver's seat came a nervous, slightly strained laugh—the sort that tries to cloak a sliver of panic with a facade of lightheartedness.

Rosinante scratched the nape of his neck, adjusted his crumpled coat, and muttered something too low to decipher, perhaps an apology. Law merely let out a soft, dismissive huff of air, his gaze fixed on the unspooling road ahead—where the pallid glare of the headlights cut through the gathering mist, transforming the surrounding trees into a procession of gnarled, bone-like specters.

A manila envelope slid from the dashboard and landed with a soft whisper on the floor mat. Law watched its descent, a potential diversion presenting itself. Driven by a blend of profound boredom and a flicker of curiosity, he reached down. His fingers found the paper, its corners already damp with the ambient moisture.

The crisp, dry rustle of turning pages filled the car's stifling interior, weaving itself into the engine's steady growl and the distant, returning whisper of sporadic raindrops.

"Hey, be careful with that—!" Rosinante began, but the admonition died on his lips, unfinished.

Law was already sifting through the documents, his eyes scanning the lines with the cold, clinical precision of a man assessing an open wound.

A familiar name leaped from the top of the page, and his expression shuttered, closing into a blend of deep-seated suspicion and profound weariness.

"What is this?" he asked, his tone blunt and devoid of preamble as he turned another page. "A new case?"

Rosinante shot him a sidelong glance—swift, cautious, the kind of look that carries more weight than any verbal answer ever could. He drew a deep breath, the sound of the inhale occupying the silent space between them before his words came, firm and laden with implication.

"Benn Beckman."

The name hung in the air, and even the engine seemed to rumble a note lower for a moment.

"Under investigation for money laundering and suspected ties to organized crime."

Law lifted his gaze slowly, his face a mask of impassivity, but a muscle at the corner of his jaw twitched, betraying a sudden tension. The name was all too familiar. The neighbor—that perpetually composed man with the measured voice and perceptive eyes, who would sometimes offer a wave that felt almost rehearsed in its politeness whenever their paths crossed.

Rosinante noted the boy’s heavy silence and was quick to add, “It’s nothing concrete.” His grip on the steering wheel tightened, his knuckles bleaching to a stark white. “The case was officially closed a week ago. A complete lack of substantive evidence.”

From the passenger side, the car’s dim interior light cast a pallid glow across Law’s face, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes. He didn’t blink for several long seconds, his gaze fixed on the windshield ahead, where the reflection of the dashboard smeared the glass with muted, orange-toned streaks.

“But you’re not just going to let this go, are you?”

Law’s voice was measured, almost neutral—yet there was a fine, sharp thread of irritation woven through it, subtle but unmistakable, and more than enough for Rosinante to detect.

A few seconds stretched out before he could formulate a reply. The car continued its straight path, the engine's drone harmonizing with the faint, high-pitched whir of insects from outside. Only then did Rosinante release his breath in a long, weary sigh.

“It’s the feeling I get,” he admitted, his voice low and unguarded. “I don’t like the way that man moves through the world. I don’t like the rumors that cling to his name, and most of all…” He paused briefly, like a man carefully selecting his words from a precarious pile, “…I don’t like the idea of the children in that house being exposed to… all of that.”

Law lowered his eyes once more, slowly turning the pages, the paper whispering and crackling under his restless fingers.

For a long moment, he simply stared—his thoughts tangling into a dense, unyielding knot. Memories surfaced in a rapid, disjointed cascade: the sound of children's laughter carrying over the fence, the scent of freshly baked cake drifting from an open window…

Nothing in that serene picture aligned with what Cora was implying. Nothing hinted at criminality. At the very least, if it existed, Ace, Sabo, and Luffy seemed entirely untouched by it. So, why?

“This… isn’t about what you said to Shanks that time, is it?”

Law’s tone was sharp, acidic, a derision thinly veiled as casual inquiry. He glanced sideways, a brief, humorless half-smirk playing on his lips—the kind of expression that made it abundantly clear he didn’t fully trust Rosinante’s motives.

Rosinante’s gaze remained fixed on the road, his jaw visibly locked, muscles twitching rhythmically beneath the skin. The sharp, mechanical click of the turn signal echoed twice, punctuating the heavy silence between them. He turned his head just enough to cast a fleeting look toward Law—a quick, uncertain glance laden with hesitation—before returning his focus ahead.

“No.”

The word came out firm, yet strangely muffled, as if pressed beneath a weight. His grip on the steering wheel tightened fiercely, his knuckles draining of color, tendons standing out in stark relief.

“It has nothing to do with that.”

Law let out a short, abrupt sound—something caught between a weary sigh and a mirthless laugh. The corner of his mouth twitched upward into a smile that never reached his eyes, a hollow, cynical gesture.

“It doesn’t?” he repeated, his voice thick with unspoken irony.

The word landed with deceptive lightness, its edge sharp enough to slice through the thick atmosphere between them.

Rosinante offered no reply.

The car pressed onward, the monotonous growl of the engine forming a constant backdrop to the heavy, unspoken things that crowded the space they shared. They rounded a gentler curve; the headlights swept across a rain-slicked road sign at the shoulder—its reflection shimmered and danced on the mirrored surface of the wet asphalt, as if the world outside were blinking back at them through a veil of tears.

When he finally spoke again, his voice was lower, roughened, and there was a distinct note of exhaustion woven between the words.

"You don't understand, Law. People like him…"

Rosinante paused briefly, and the boy noted how he seemed to avoid saying the name aloud—as if the mere act of giving it voice could summon something unwelcome and dangerous.

"…I don't know. I just need to know if I'm right or if I'm wrong."

He let out his breath in a slow, measured stream, his eyes never leaving the unspooling road ahead.

Law fell silent.

The rain, which had begun to reclaim the night, drummed a soft, hesitant rhythm against the car's roof. Droplets slid in erratic paths down the glass, twisting and distorting the reflection of the outside lights, their steady percussion merging with the low, persistent hum of the engine until the two sounds became one.

The boy’s gaze drifted back to the documents in his hands, the name Benn Beckman underscored in stark black ink. He ran his thumb thoughtfully over the printed letters, feeling the slight texture beneath his skin.

There was something profoundly unsettling about the entire situation—not just the nature of the accusations, but the particular manner in which Rosinante spoke. This wasn't the detached, procedural tone of an investigator on high alert. It was the voice of someone who was afraid.

And that, more than any suspicion laid out on paper, was what made the ensuing silence feel so suffocating.

Rosinante kept his eyes rigidly fixed on the road ahead, a study in tense concentration. Law, equally motionless, watched the way the passing lights glinted and shifted across the surface of the documents.

The car pushed on, slicing through the damp, clinging night—two separate worlds trapped within the same confined space, and between them, a name that seemed to swell, growing louder and more insistent inside both of their minds.

The boy’s thoughts drifted to Luffy—and to Ace, and even to Sabo.

Memories surfaced in fragmented glimpses: Luffy’s unrestrained, booming laughter, always too vast to be contained by any ordinary room; Ace’s sharp-edged teasing, invariably followed by that characteristic wink that was both a challenge and an unspoken gesture of affection; and Sabo’s observant gaze, the one that seemed to suggest the entire world could be neatly summarized over a cup of coffee and a well-laid plan.

And then there was Beckman—his steady gaze, his calm and measured voice, the almost paternal manner in which he would call the boys back inside or gently intercept some overly ambitious mischief before it could spiral into genuine disaster.

It was difficult, nearly impossible, to reconcile that familiar, domestic image with the stark, ugly word crime.

Even more so with the chilling, institutional weight of the term organized crime.

To Law, there existed a silent, profound hypocrisy in Cora-san's actions—the willingness to dismantle what appeared to be a family, all on the foundation of mere suspicion. Perhaps it was just the wounded psyche of a man projecting his own deep-seated traumas onto the world around him… but he couldn't be certain.

At its core, the boy could only conclude that if God truly did exist, He must possess a truly terrible sense of humor.

Law kept his gaze fixed on the fine, returning rain as it began to trace crooked, meandering paths down the window. The lights from distant street lamps dissolved into soft, orange-tinted halos, and everything within view seemed blurred, uncertain—as if the entire world were dissolving into the same gnawing doubt that had now taken root inside him.

"So that's why you're investigating," he murmured at last. His voice emerged as little more than a ragged whisper, fracturing the silence with the caution of someone who fears the answer they might receive.

Rosinante gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, his eyes never leaving the road. The sound of the windshield wiper returned, scraping a steady, rhythmic cadence against the glass, marking the passage of time between their sparse words.

"Yes."

A long, weighty pause filled the car. He drew a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was lower, yet carried a new, resolute firmness.

"Because I don't ever want to take the risk of one day having to look at you and admit that I knew… and yet chose to do nothing." His fingers tightened around the steering wheel, the skin of his knuckles stretched pale, almost translucent under the dashboard's faint glow. "If there is even the slightest possibility that those boys are in danger, I have to know.”

The raw, unvarnished sincerity of those words hung in the stifling air of the car. Law did not answer immediately—he merely lowered his gaze to the envelope resting in his lap. The pages trembled faintly in his grasp, and he realized he was holding them too tightly, his knuckles tense and white.

The faint light filtering through the window blurred the printed text, yet the name—Beckman—seemed sharper than ever, etched into the paper with a sudden, unbearable weight he did not know how to carry.

A dull throb pulsed in his chest. He couldn’t tell whether it was anger, worry, or fear—perhaps a mixture of all three, dissolved into something deeper and nameless. His stomach twisted, and for a fleeting moment, he felt the urge to throw the papers aside, to pretend he had never laid eyes on them.

But he couldn’t.

From that moment on, the smiles of Luffy, Ace, and Sabo would never look the same again.
Behind every laugh,there would now loom the shadow of a doubt—and the sobering awareness that nothing, not even friendship, seemed safe from the reach of Rosinante’s suspicions.

“And if something really is wrong?” he asked, his voice colder now, straining to conceal the turmoil churning within him. “What will you do?”

Rosinante hesitated. For a moment, his eyes shifted toward Law’s reflection in the glass—the boy’s outline cast against the faded glow of the road ahead.

The reply came as a weighted whisper, and Law didn’t need to see Rosinante’s face to know the sound had cost him something to release. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

Meanwhile, several kilometers away—far from the highway, from the weight of adult decisions and the men who made them—the rain fell thick and heavy upon the forest.

Each drop seemed to drum down with purpose, a rhythmic percussion that melded with the wind’s low whisper through the leaves. The damp breeze carried the rich, loamy scent of wet earth and decaying wood, the kind of fragrance that seeps into clothing and reminds you, with every breath, that there is nowhere left to run.

They were isolated there, surrounded by green and silence, and by a patience that was steadily wearing thin.

It was one of those moments when the mind begins to drift. When you find yourself wondering just how you ended up here, and whether the choices you made—or the people you chose to follow—were truly worth the chaos that came bundled with them. Perhaps the world would have been simpler if I’d turned back earlier. But now? Now the only way is forward, because turning back was never truly an option. Nami let out a soft sigh as she bent to examine the branches they had managed to gather.

“If only we had something to cut with…” she murmured, her voice low, nearly swallowed by the steady roar of the rain. She rubbed her arms, trying to ward off the chill that had seeped deep into her soaked clothing.

Her gaze swept critically over the haphazard pile of branches Zoro had dragged over. Raindrops traced paths down the strands of her orange hair, plastering them to her skin. With a sigh, she tucked a stray lock behind her ear and let out a soft huff of frustration.

“Why?” Usopp asked, stepping closer with his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. The squelching sound of his wet boots sinking into the muddy ground broke the fragile silence that had settled. He glanced from the pile of soaked wood to Nami, his expression one of pure bewilderment. “Isn’t it all the same? Wet is wet!”

Nami arched an eyebrow, not bothering to mask her exhaustion. Her breath formed small, pale clouds in the chilled air, and her fingers trembled faintly as she reached out.

“Look,” she said, selecting one of the thicker twigs from the pile. Its surface felt slippery and cold between her fingers, the bark clinging like soaked, dead skin. For a moment, her face twisted in disgust, and she wiped her hand on her trousers before gripping the branch more firmly.

She braced it against her knee, the muscles in her arm tightening with the strain. A sharp, dry crack cut through the air as the branch splintered into two pieces.

The sound echoed briefly within the small cave, sharp and decisive against the steady, muffled murmur of the rain outside. For a moment, even Zoro lifted his gaze from his task, watching with mild interest.

The inside of the broken twig was revealed to be a pale, almost creamy color—and, to Usopp’s surprise, completely dry. A flicker of satisfaction lit up Nami’s features.

“See? Look. The inside is still good,” she explained, turning the pieces in her hands to show him. “If we strip away the wet outer bark, we can still get a fire going.”

Usopp’s eyes widened, a spark of awe reflecting the imaginary flame that did not yet exist.

“Really?!” He leaned in closer, his body practically curving over her shoulder as if Nami had just unveiled some long-lost secret of the universe.

“That’s… brilliant!” he added, his eyes shimmering with a childlike wonder. For a fleeting moment, the damp and the cold seemed less oppressive—as though that simple discovery had kindled a small, defiant spark of hope in the heart of the storm.

“Wow!” Luffy exclaimed, his eyes alight with that pure, unbridled enthusiasm only he could muster, even stranded in the middle of a downpour. “I didn’t get any of that, but if it means we’re gonna have fire…”

Before anyone could react, he was already bending down to grab a large, smooth stone—likely pried straight from the cave floor, still damp and heavy. “…then I can smash it all super fast!”

“Luffy, wait—!” Nami barely had time to shout.

The warning was lost in the sound of the impact. The nine-year-old, utterly oblivious to the concept of subtlety, brought the rock down on the pile of branches with a clumsy, powerful swing. The blow reverberated through the stone floor, sending tremors through the puddles that had gathered in the hollows.

The branches weren’t so much crushed as they were violently splintered, exploding into a shower of fine slivers and wood dust that ricocheted off the cave walls with a series of sharp, popping sounds. Shards of wood flew in every direction; a few struck Usopp in the face, making him stumble back with an indignant yelp, clutching his nose.

“Hey! Watch it, you lunatic!” he yelled, his voice bouncing off the enclosed walls.
Luffy, on the other hand, observed the result with a satisfied and utterly innocent grin, his hands planted firmly on his hips as if he had just single-handedly saved the day. “Hehe! Look! They’re all in little bits, just like you wanted!”

Nami drew a deep, measured breath, her gaze shifting between the floor now littered with splinters and the tiny agent of chaos who was now proudly brandishing the stone.
The branches had been transformed into a chaotic mixture of potentially useful pieces and a heap of useless,finely-ground debris—nearly a wet, pulpy sludge of sawdust.

“That is not what I meant!” she exclaimed, her voice rising an octave as she pressed her fingers firmly against her temples. “We need to strip the bark, not pulverize the whole thing! We need dry slivers, not dust!”

Luffy blinked, visibly bewildered. “But dust catches fire too, right?”

Before Nami could formulate a reply, a long, drawn-out sigh cut through the tension.

Zoro, leaning against the cave wall with his arms crossed and his head tilted back, cracked one eye open just enough to fix them with a weary stare. The rest of his face remained in shadow, with only the faint, imagined glow of embers highlighting his tired profile.
He rubbed the space between his eyebrows with two fingers and muttered in a drowsy tone:

“Let him be. Dry powder catches fire too, doesn’t it?”

The silence that followed was almost comical—one of those heavy, profoundly awkward silences that seems to stretch on far longer than it should.

“Of course it does,” she said at last, her voice sharp enough to cut through the steady drumming of the rain. “If our goal is to suffocate to death before we even get warm, that’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”
Luffy blinked several times, clearly failing to grasp where the problem lay. He was still clutching the rock with both hands as if it were a favorite toy. "Huh? But fire is fire, right?"

Usopp’s eyes darted from one to the other, his gaze shifting like someone trying to predict which direction the disaster would come from next. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, and then let out a resigned sigh—his survival instinct screaming louder than any urge to mediate. In the name of pure self-preservation, he decided that aligning himself with Nami was undoubtedly the safest choice.

"O-of course, Luffy!" he said, forcing a nervous laugh and taking a cautious step backward. "But, you know, maybe… just maybe… we should let the expert handle this, huh? Before someone… accidentally sets us on fire instead."

Luffy tilted his head, thoughtful for all of half a second—the maximum duration his attention span would allow—before breaking into a wide, beaming smile and bending down to gather more branches. The sleeves of his shirt, thoroughly soaked, clung to his thin arms; he seemed utterly oblivious to the navigator’s mounting despair.

Nami watched the scene unfold for a long moment, her gaze drifting between the boy and the chaotic mess on the ground. The scattered wood chips glistened faintly in the dim light, some still dripping with moisture, as if quietly mocking her efforts.

She drew a deep breath, releasing it in an audible, thoroughly resigned sigh.

"I’m surrounded by idiots," she murmured, almost to herself—though Usopp made a deliberate point of pretending he hadn’t heard.

Finally, she knelt, her knees sinking slightly into the cold, muddy floor of the cave. The sound of the rain echoed relentlessly above their heads, and the dampness seemed to seep into everything—even what little remained of her patience.
With meticulous, deliberate movements, she began sorting through the scattered debris, separating the larger, drier splinters and arranging them into a neat pile beside the small, improvised fire pit. Her hands were numb with cold and smeared with dirt, yet her gestures remained steady—there was something almost methodical in the way she channeled her frustration.

Behind her, Luffy hummed a soft, cheerful tune, immensely proud of his perceived contribution. Usopp could only shake his head in quiet disbelief, hugging his knees to his chest like a spectator resigned to a slow-motion catastrophe. Zoro, still leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, muttered something entirely inaudible and let out a long, lazy yawn. It might have been a sarcastic remark. It might have been a snore. No one felt particularly inclined to find out.

Many meters away from that cave, the forest floor gave way beneath waterlogged boots. With each step Ace took, old branches snapped beneath his feet with dry, brittle cracks—like small, percussive punches against the damp silence enveloping the woods.

The moisture had seeped deep into their clothes, plastering fabric to their shoulders, and the cold was the kind that crept in subtly, coiling its way up the spine without asking for permission.

“We shouldn’t be here.”

Sabo’s voice was low, as though he were afraid of disturbing even the wind itself. The remark escaped more like a thought spoken aloud than any real protest. Still, he reached out, nudging Ace’s shoulder gently with his fingertips—a gesture that hovered somewhere between warning and complicity. A tired, fleeting smile crossed his face, too brief to linger; an ironic crease formed at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes… his eyes betrayed a weariness that ran far deeper.

Ace didn’t answer right away. The sidelong glance he shot Sabo was brief and shuttered—a look caught somewhere between stubbornness and quiet concern. “Luffy’s gonna catch a cold too if he stays out this long,” he grumbled, his voice rough-edged. His foot found a stray branch in his path—he kicked it hard, sending it splintering into fragments, the sound cracking through the trees like an outburst of pure impatience.

Sabo let out a soft sigh, his hands slipping deeper into his pockets. He drew a slow breath, trying to mask the building tension with a practiced tone of lightness, but the attempt rang hollow.

“We should’ve waited for Beckman. He always knows what to do.” He paused briefly, his eyes tracing the tangled roots underfoot. “Do you think Shanks is back yet?”

Ace let out a dismissive huff, turning his gaze toward a flicker of light piercing through the canopy—maybe the moon’s reflection in a puddle, maybe the distant gleam of a lantern. His expression tightened: his brow furrowed, his jaw set, and for a moment it seemed as though something far heavier lingered beneath his silence. Then, just as quickly, the tension dissolved, leaving behind his usual mask of near-indifference.

“Don’t know…” he murmured, his voice thinning to little more than a thread. “But I think he’s gonna be pissed we lost Luffy. Again.”

The sound of the rain thickened between the treetops, drumming against the broad leaves and streaming down in silvery threads.

Drops gathered at the tips of branches, falling at irregular intervals onto the dark, waiting soil. For a long moment, neither of them moved—they simply breathed in the heavy air, thick with the scent of wet earth and sap, laced through with the unspoken strain between them. The trees seemed to lean in around them, listening in silence.

“We didn’t lose Luffy,” Sabo retorted, his tone carrying more conviction than he truly felt. He crossed his arms in an almost automatic gesture, as though shielding his own pride. The brim of his hat dripped incessantly; water trailed down his chin and vanished into the already soaked collar of his shirt. “He just gets distracted. Like that time at school. And at the hospital. And—”

Ace raised a hand, cutting through the air like a short, sharp blade.

What escaped him wasn’t quite a sigh—it was more an impatient, dense exhalation, as though dragging with it the weight of a familiar, tiresome déjà vu. The damp air seemed to swallow the sound, dispersing it among the moss-covered trunks. Even the forest appeared to share in their weariness, as if it had overheard this very conversation one too many times before.

Together, they vaulted over a fallen tree trunk lying across their path, now far from the main trail in their increasingly desperate hope of locating their younger brother.

They moved forward in silence. Their boots sank into the soft ground, each step mingling with the wet rustle of decaying leaves. The hum of insects blended with the steady percussion of the rain, composing a constant, almost hypnotic backdrop of sound. The cold was beginning to seep deeper into their clothing, plastering the fabric to their skin.

Sabo, restless, moved his hands through the air as though trying to stitch together an explanation. His fingers traced invisible lines in the space before him, following a train of thought that seemed to slip further from his grasp with every sentence.

“We have a tendency. That’s what it is,” he said, his brow furrowing. “We keep underestimating Luffy’s curiosity instinct.” He raised a finger, theatrical, as if delivering a lecture to the empty woods. “He was born with it.”

Ace slowly turned his face toward him. The corner of his mouth lifted, hesitant, and for a brief second something resembling a smile flashed across his features—too fleeting to be fully seen. A glimmer of irony and exhaustion.

“Born to get lost, is that it?” he murmured. His voice came out rough, but it carried a remnant of humor, almost as if, deep down, he was grateful that Luffy’s habitual distractions remained the most predictable problem in their world.

“Exactly,” Sabo replied, with a theatrical enthusiasm that fooled no one. The short laugh that followed was edged with nerves, yet it carried a note of complicity—a familiar echo of other, less gray days.

His shoulders trembled slightly, and for a moment, it seemed as if the very air around them lightened in response. “We should put that on his résumé.”

Ace laughed too, a muffled sound, too low to truly pierce the forest’s silence. But it was enough to fracture something in the atmosphere—a tension that dissolved along with the rain's steady rhythm. For an instant, the world seemed less hostile: leaves swayed gently, and even the wind appeared to hesitate before brushing the ground.

Then, suddenly, something shifted.

It was an almost imperceptible change—a breath of air from another direction, carrying the damp scent of trees mingled with something distinct, sweet, and foreign. An odor that didn’t belong in that woods. Ace lifted his face, the muscles along his jaw tightening, his eyes narrowing as though trying to capture something just beyond reach in the air.

Sabo noticed the shift and stopped as well, his body stiffening on reflex. Their conversation died completely, and the sound of the rain seemed to recede, yielding to a heavy, waiting silence.

The wind moved once more through the trees, and with it, the strange, sweet scent intensified, now laced with the cold odor of metal and wet leather. It was no longer a suggestion—it was a presence. The promise in the air was fulfilled by a low, firm voice that emerged not from the trees, but from a fixed point behind them.

“You shouldn’t be here.” The voice emerged from some undefined point among the trees—low, firm, with a resonance that seemed to vibrate in the damp air.

Ace spun his body toward the sound, his fists clenching on instinct. “Who are you?” he snarled, his gaze sharp and narrow, poised to attack.

The man emerged slowly, parting the curtain of rain as though it weren’t even there. He moved with the calm of someone who had nothing to fear—each step heavy enough to sink into the waterlogged ground. His eyes, a shade of gray so pale it seemed almost metallic, swept over the two of them as if taking their measure. His face showed no emotion; only that dangerous calm of someone who knows exactly what they are doing.

Without answering, he closed the distance until the sound of water streaming from his coat mingled with their own ragged breathing. Then, in one fluid motion, he seized them both by the collars. The gesture was abrupt, direct—too swift for either to react. Sabo found himself lifted off his feet, thrown off balance, while Ace was tucked roughly under the man’s arm as though he weighed nothing at all.

“Nobody important,” the man murmured, his voice rough and weary, yet carrying undeniable authority.

Ace reacted instantly, his entire body erupting in fury. He struggled to break free, kicking wildly at the air, his fists pounding uselessly against the man’s back. “Let me go, you bastard!” he yelled, spitting the words out with raw anger and indignation.

The man didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. He merely adjusted his grip, as though carrying something inconvenient but unavoidable.

The rain continued to fall, thickening once more—and every drop that struck the leaves seemed to mark the silent rhythm of a tension poised to explode.

Sabo, dangling upside down, let out a theatrical sigh and went completely still, as though this were merely one more tedious inconvenience in the middle of an already rain-soaked ordeal. His blond hair dripped in awkward, wet strands, yet he maintained his smile—that same polished, courteous smile he wore whenever he needed to appear in control.

The man raised an eyebrow, his gaze shifting between the two brothers. His expression was a strange blend of disapproval and mild amusement, like someone observing a pair of quarreling cats trapped in a bucket.

“Why can’t you behave more like your brother?” he asked, his tone dry, almost ironic.

Sabo replied before Ace could retort, his voice calm and refined, as though he were attending a business meeting rather than hanging by his collar.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,mysterious sir,” he said, his polite smile trembling slightly at the corners of his mouth, “but if I get nauseous in this position, there’s a very real possibility I might vomit on your shoes.”

A brief silence fell among the three of them. The rain continued its rhythmic dripping onto the leaves, and the man studied him for a moment with an air of resignation—as if seriously considering whether to simply drop them right there.

Finally, he exhaled slowly, his tone unchanged:
“Call me Limejuice.”

Ace arched his eyebrows, still struggling against the man’s shoulder. “Seriously?” he grunted, his breath coming in ragged bursts. “Did your mother hate you or something?”

The man ignored him for a second—and that second was all it took for Ace to twist his head, opening his mouth as if to bite the man’s hand, furious at being carried around like a sack of potatoes.

Before he could complete the attack, a metallic crackle sounded. "Juice, you on comms?" A voice echoed from a communicator fixed to the man's right ear, low enough that the sound formed a nearly inaudible hiss—a casual frequency, a stark contrast to the tense situation.

"I'm listening," Juice responded, adjusting the communicator on his shoulder with a slight shift. He altered his direction without haste, veering onto a path neither boy recognized. Partly, it was because they were already too far from the main trail—but also because, dangling as they were, any sense of orientation seemed to dissolve into disorienting vertigo.

Sabo tried to follow their movement with his eyes, but all he could see was a dizzying whirl of leaves, branches, and the ground moving past upside down.

The rain was softening, settling into a constant whisper through the canopy. The sound of mud sucking at the man's boots blended with the slight swaying of the bodies he carried, as if this were all part of a mundane routine.

"Copy that," came the voice over the comm, laced with static. "Nothing in the southern sector. Red's finished recon on the northern quadrant. We're regrouping at rally point zero." It was Yasopp, his tone raspy and relaxed even amid the operation.

Juice nodded silently, sidestepping a thick root without breaking stride.

Soon, another voice cut into the frequency—drier, more drawn-out, with a humor that seemed embedded in the tone, not the words: "Western perimeter is clear. No anomalies. Just a couple of brats who aren't on the missing persons list... though they seem pretty eager to join it."

Ace lifted his head as much as he could, his eyes sparking with fury. "Brats?!" he snarled, struggling against the hold once more. The movement prompted Juice to readjust his arm, holding him more firmly, like someone shifting an inconveniently heavy backpack.

Sabo, swaying gently in his inverted position, released a long, weary sigh. “Ace, please… if he drops you, I’m going down right along with you.”

Limeuice offered no comment. He merely continued walking, his expression unreadable, as the communicator crackled once more—the rain beginning to thicken again, its steady drumming slowly dissolving the voices into the metallic static of the radio.

Beckman felt as though he had aged ten years in a single hour, all thanks to his husband.

The thought crossed his mind as he stared at Shanks from across the flimsy folding table, set up in haste beneath a rain-soaked tent. The canvas dripped in a steady, rhythmic pattern, a dissonant note against the distant hum of generators and the muffled sound of boots slogging through mud. The scent of damp earth mingled with the odors of cold coffee and soggy paper—the official perfume of any crisis operation.

The rain had finally relented, but the air remained heavy, saturated with moisture and unspoken tension. Shanks emerged from between the trees like a figure pulled from a toy soldier battle: breathless, caked in mud up to his knees, and wearing that look—the kind of look that said he was in a foul mood, or worse, that he hadn’t found what he was looking for. Or who he was looking for. He dragged a chair by its collar.

“I think this is a bit excessive,” he grumbled, lifting his wrist to display the handcuff linking him to the metal bar of the table. The metallic rattle chimed faintly between the droplets still dripping from the tent roof.

Beckman released a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire downpour.

“It’s not excessive,” he replied, without looking up from the map spread across the table. “You did this to yourself.”

The makeshift camp was a masterpiece of organized chaos—the kind of beautiful disaster only Beckman could effectively manage. The ground formed a mosaic of overlapping footprints and tangled electrical cables, radios hissed with fragmented instructions, and damp folders exchanged hands in a constant, frantic rhythm. In the background, he could see teachers and school staff trying their best to appear composed while choking down paperwork, incident reports, and the vice-principal’s increasingly volatile mood.

The sound of overlapping voices, the rustle of damp documents, the faint scent of exhaust from idling support vehicles—it all blended into a strangely domestic backdrop of disaster.

And in the middle of it all, his “private rescue team”—a generous euphemism for that particular crew of misfits—was combing the perimeter for any trace of the band of children responsible for at least half of this unfolding hell.

“I just went to make a phone call! Ask Roux, he can confirm!” Shanks exclaimed, raising his cuffed hands as if the gesture alone were enough to exonerate him. The chain rattled again, a thin metallic sound that was swallowed by the flapping of the tent canvas and the distant growl of a generator.

Roux, who until that moment had been trying to blend into the scenery, froze completely. His eyes darted from one man to the other—from the stern field commander to the troublesome captain—clearly torn between a rock and a hard place. A muscle in his cheek twitched nervously.

“I… uh… yeah, he really was on the phone.” Roux’s voice sounded more like a plea for help than a factual statement.

“A phone call that lasted nearly two hours.”
Beckman countered,his tone a little too calm to be anything but threatening. He shuffled the map on the table without needing to look up—the kind of controlled movement that made it perfectly clear he was holding himself back.

Shanks took a half-step backward, the motion causing a puddle to spread under his waterlogged boots. A smile began to form at the corner of his lips, a stubborn, familiar expression Beckman knew all too well.

“What can I say? It was a really good conversation.” The redhead tried to sound nonchalant, but mud was still dripping in opaque streaks from his crimson hair, staining the collar of his shirt a grimy, earthy brown.

The dirt, now dried in crusted patches on his sleeves and the knees of his trousers, told a different story—one of hours spent in a frantic search, of slipping down muddy slopes and crawling through thorny underbrush. The smile he flashed was the same as ever—the one that had a knack for turning any scolding into a joke—and, to make matters worse, it worked most of the time. It was a smile that promised trouble and, somehow, absolution all at once.

Beckman remained silent for a long moment, a silence filled only by the almost inaudible tic-tic-tic of water dripping from a split in the tent canvas directly into a small, empty can on the ground.

His eyes, narrowed as if processing his own profound weariness, assessed every nuance, every facial tic of Shanks. Outside, the sound of the fine rain beginning to fall again punctuated the silence between them—a damp, persistent whisper reminding everyone that time, much like Beckman’s patience, was running out.
"Do you really expect me to believe that?" he asked at last, his voice weary and laden with a skepticism that felt heavier than the rain itself.

Shanks only grinned wider, his eyes nearly closing, creating those little crow's feet that Beckman, on any other day, might have found endearing. "It's the truth."

Roux, who had been trying to shrink into a stack of supply crates, swallowed dryly. The sound was audible in the cramped space.

With the reflex of a man trained by experience and a very specific fear—the fear of being caught in the crossfire of a marital disagreement disguised as a search operation—he resumed pretending he didn't exist, fixing his gaze on a single rusty screw in the packed-earth floor as if his life depended on it.

It was at that precise moment, as if perfectly synchronized with Shanks's chaotic destiny, that the tent flap moved. It wasn't a dramatic entrance, with flapping canvas and gusting wind, but it didn't need to be.

Limejuice simply materialized beside the tent, emerging from the curtain of rain and gloom as if the very shadows had decided to take form. Not literally, of course, but the impression was there—that he was woven from the same dark, silent fabric as the damp night itself.

Water streamed in silvery threads from his dark hat and waterproof coat, forming a small puddle at his feet. And slung over his shoulders, with the casual practicality of someone carrying sacks of groceries, were two brats who looked more like clumsy, disgruntled sacks of flour.

Their arms dangled limply, soaked sneakers swaying with each of Juice's movements, and their faces were rendered unrecognizable beneath a thick, caked mask of dried mud and matted leaves.

Shanks recognized his two troublemaking sons immediately. Relief washed over him first—a wave so intense he felt his knees weaken for a second. They were alive. They were in one piece.

It was followed instantly by an exhaustion so profound he could barely decide whether he wanted to run and hug them with every ounce of his strength or ground them until they reached adulthood in a windowless room.

"Found these while sweeping the western perimeter," Juice announced with the practical calm of someone returning a lost package to a post office counter. He leaned his shoulders forward, letting Ace and Sabo slide onto the earthen floor with two soft, dull thuds. They staggered, disoriented. "Yasopp's covering the south. Said to regroup here."

He then blinked, slowly, like a lizard, and his gaze settled on the metal cuffs still securing Shanks's wrists to the table. His face, usually impassive, showed a slight furrow of the brow—a tiny crack in his facade of professionalism.

"...Why are you handcuffed?"

Beckman opened his mouth to respond, a deep sigh laden with weary explanations already forming in his chest. But Juice raised a gloved, damp hand in a definitive gesture.

"You know what?" he said, his voice a notch lower, carrying the practical wisdom acquired through years of navigating Shanks's personal storms. "I don't need to know.”

“I give that mode of transportation one star,” Ace muttered, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles as he tried to reorient himself after the abrupt disembarkation. He swayed slightly on his feet, his shoes sinking into the soft, muddy ground of the tent.

“It was the worst experience of my life,” Sabo added, shaking out his arms as if trying to rid himself of the physical memory of the journey. A damp leaf detached itself from his blond hair and landed silently on the floor.

Limejuice observed Shanks from the corner of his eye, his face a model of professional neutrality, but his mind was actively working through the situation.

Chaotic by nature—that was the most polite euphemism he could formulate. Shanks was a puzzle with moving pieces, a challenge even for a saint's patience. When the call had come through, cutting into the quiet of his dinner, Limejuice had assumed it was just another one of those episodes of alcohol-induced melancholy that occasionally punctuated the redhead's existence.

Shanks possessed what he, in his most private thoughts, categorized as a "bipolar drunk" personality: unpredictable, dangerously sentimental under the influence, and—in a way that defied all logic—still profoundly charismatic.

But calling in a favor? That was new. Shanks accumulated favor-debts the way other people accumulate old grocery receipts—tucked away in some drawer, half-forgotten, with no real expectation of ever being cashed in.

And using them seemed, to him, something trivial, as casual as pulling forgotten change from the pocket of an old coat. Limejuice had never fully understood him. Beneath the chaos and the charm, the man was an incurable workaholic, and in Juice's silent analysis, that obsession with work was just Shanks's twisted way of dealing with a vast, quiet loneliness that no one else ever seemed to fully see.

It was then that the voices of Shanks and Beckman overlapped, cutting through the damp air like two strikes from the same axe—firm, identical in tone and intensity, echoing the dual front of authority they represented: “Where were you?”

The silence that followed was almost palpable, a heavy blanket that seemed to smother even the constant sound of the rain outside. It felt as though it sucked the very air from the tent, leaving it thin and difficult to breathe.

The two boys exchanged a glance, their shoulders rising in a synchronized shrug of pure, unadulterated terror. It was a tiny gesture, laden with the silent desperation of someone slowly, agonizingly deciding who would be the first to die.

Ace and Sabo locked eyes—that particular kind of silent, electrically charged stare only brothers in deep trouble can exchange. An entire conversation unfolded in that vacuum of seconds.

You could almost hear the unspoken dialogue: Ace’s narrowed, defiant eyes spitting a silent "you talk." Sabo’s wider, more calculating eyes responded with a rapid blink and a microscopic shake of his head: "no way." And at the heart of that visual standoff, a frantic, shared assessment: who would survive the longest if the truth came out? Beckman’s cold, simmering fury, or Shanks’s catastrophic, soul-withering disappointment?

Beckman observed from his station, as impassive as a statue, his crossed arms causing his damp coat to creak faintly. His gaze was an impartial scanner, registering every micro-expression, every flicker of guilt. Shanks, still cuffed to the table, looked like a father desperately trying to mask visceral panic with a last-minute, improvised, and fragile authority. His shoulders were rigid with tension, and the fingers of his free hand drummed a nervous, erratic rhythm against the metal surface.

Limejuice let out a soft yawn as he took a subtle step back, feeling the tension in the air—it was thick enough to be sliced with a saw.

In the end, after one last look of resigned conspiracy, the two boys sighed in unison, a deep, drawn-out sound that seemed to rise from the very depths of their tired, mud-caked souls. It was the sigh of those accepting their fate at the gallows.

“…We went after Luffy.”

Shanks blinked once, slowly. Then again, more rapidly, his red eyebrows twitching slightly as his brain clearly processed the terrifying simplicity of that statement.

"You what?" The question came out lower than the last, laden with a dangerous incredulity that turned the already heavy air absolutely frigid.

Sabo raised his index finger into the air with the sudden, disastrous confidence of someone who believes they've discovered an absolute logical flaw in the system. A flash of pure triumph shone in his eyes, still framed by spatters of drying mud.

"You can't judge us for being worried about our brother," he declared, his voice brimming with a logic that seemed, to him, utterly irrefutable, "when you're the one in handcuffs!"

The silence that fell was brief, but of the kind that possesses its own weight and density. It lasted little more than a second, but it was long enough for everyone in the tent—including Sabo himself, in a moment of belated clarity—to understand that he hadn't just crossed a line; he had enthusiastically dug his own rhetorical grave.

Shanks seemed wholly unprepared for the sheer audacity of that defiance. He froze in place, his previously relaxed posture turning to stone.

His mouth opened slightly, not in a shout, but in a silent, stunned "oh" of utter stupefaction, his mental processes visibly seizing up as he searched in vain for a response that could match the absurdity of that argument.

Roux couldn't suppress a tremor in his shoulders. He averted his gaze to the canvas ceiling, biting his lower lip so hard he nearly drew blood, in a superhuman effort not to let out a laugh that would, unequivocally, be his death sentence.

Limejuice, for his part, made no effort to disguise his interest. He arched one eyebrow slowly, a nearly imperceptible glint of professional curiosity igniting in his eyes.

He leaned back slightly, like a spectator in a theater bracing for the climax of the play, visibly intrigued to see in which direction this ticking bomb of insolence would finally detonate.

Beckman, on the other hand, was the very picture of personified calm. He lifted his gaze from the map he had been studying, without any particular haste. His expression was neutral, his eyes narrowed behind his glasses, reflecting the lantern's weak light. There was no anger, no surprise. Only exhausted patience and silent judgment.

"Well reasoned," he said, his tone as dry as an autumn leaf under the sun.

The words were still hanging in the damp air when the unmistakable sound of a metallic click cut through the silence. It was a quick, precise noise, and before anyone—Shanks, the boys, or the captivated onlookers—could react, the consequence materialized.

In one fluid, irrefutable motion, Beckman had unlocked one of Shanks's cuffs and, with the efficiency of a jeweler closing a bracelet, secured Sabo's wrist to the same metal bar. A second click, and Ace was added to the chain. A third, and Shanks's free wrist was reconnected to the assembly, completing the circuit.

In the next instant, the three of them—the father and his two sons—were literally linked by the same bar of the folding table, forming a trembling, indignant human chain of poor decisions.

"...That's not what I meant!" Sabo immediately protested, his confidence dissolving into panic. He tugged desperately at his wrists against the cold metal, making the handcuffs rattle a chorus of utter misfortune.

Ace joined the chorus with a guttural grunt of indignation, his eyes fixed on Beckman with a fury that promised future retribution. "This is an abuse of authority!" he yelled, his voice echoing through the tent now governed by a new order, imposed by the coldest and most logical of arbiters.

"This is called maintaining order."

Beckman replied without even looking up from the topographic map he was tracing. He crossed his arms over his chest, a final and definitive gesture, before bowing his head once more over the lines and symbols spread across the table. His voice was firm and flat, leaving no room for discussion, as if the minor tumult—the protests, the human chain of insubordination—were a mere logistical hiccup, already resolved and filed away.

The contrast came in the form of a rough, deeply satisfied laugh from Shanks. He leaned back as far as the chain of handcuffs would allow, forcing Sabo's and Ace's arms to stretch out involuntarily. The metallic rattle of the movement echoed through the stifling space, an absurd sound that cut through the air thick with residual tension.

Sabo watched him out of the corner of his eye, his expression a blend of disbelief and profound disappointment. He crossed his arms—a difficult maneuver with a cuffed wrist, but executed with determination—and puffed out his cheeks, the very picture of deep disgust.

It was the kind of silent, eloquent look that said, with the clarity of a shout, "this is entirely your fault."

The redhead, completely immune to this filial reproach, wiped a tear of laughter from the corner of his eye with his shoulder, his hands being otherwise occupied.

With a jerk of his chin toward the newcomer, who was observing the scene with the placidity of a weathered rock, he made the introduction: "This is Limejuice. He's… a work friend. He's here to help with the search.”

The word "friend" hung in the air, almost defiantly.

"Friend?" Beckman raised an eyebrow slowly, finally lifting his gaze from the map. His look was narrow, appraising, sweeping over the impassive figure of Limejuice on the other side of the table.

From across the way, Juice returned the scrutiny in kind. His own arms crossed, his posture relaxed, yet his head tilted slightly, his eyes narrowing from behind his damp fringe. It was the look of one professional sizing up another, silently questioning the authority of the man who dared to doubt his credentials and his place there.

"Yes, yes… friends!" Shanks answered quickly, the handcuffs clinking as he gestured with his bound hands, trying to envelop everyone in a web of forced camaraderie. He turned to the blond with a half-smile, a flash of genuine curiosity mixing with his usual air of cheerful confusion. "I just still haven't figured out why you brought Yasopp along."

Limejuice let out a sigh so quiet it was almost inaudible, a sound that plainly said, 'I knew this question was coming.' He shoved his hands into the pockets of his soaked coat, shifting his gaze from the group to fix it on the map, as if the contour lines were infinitely more interesting than justifying his logistical choices.

"He was with me when you called," he replied, his tone a blend of reportorial detachment and a faint, sharp sting of irony. "Couldn't very well leave the man behind."

"Can you let us go now?" Ace's voice cut through the air, a mix of defiance and raw impatience. The handcuffs rattled as he tugged at his restraint, a metallic sound punctuating his restlessness.

His gaze was a spear aimed directly at Beckman—that particular teenage glare that tries, with every ounce of strength, to mask a foundation of apprehension with a facade of untamable arrogance.

Beckman did not hurry. He lifted his eyes from the map with an almost ceremonial slowness, as if every movement needed to be calculated to avoid wasting energy. His expression was a lake of placidity, but the slight arch of one eyebrow was the only crack through which a trace of dry irony escaped.

"Are you going to stay quiet," he asked, his voice a serene yet weighted thread, "and not run off into the forest?" He crossed his arms once more, reinforcing his stance of unshakable authority. The question wasn't a request; it was a test.

Ace averted his eyes for a moment, the mask of bravado cracking. He bit the inside of his cheek, his eyes scanning the packed-earth floor as if the answer were written there. It wasn't. His shoulders, already tense from the situation, rose another centimeter in an involuntary defensive gesture.

"Depends," he muttered, the word slipping out through clenched teeth, reluctant. "On what I find out there."

It was enough to draw a low laugh from Shanks, a rough sound full of affectionate amusement that seemed to briefly illuminate the dim corner of the tent. "He won't run," the redhead declared, as if announcing a meteorological fact. "He'll trip over his own feet first."

Sabo, trapped between the two, seemed to carry the weight of all the world's wisdom and weariness. He dragged his free hand down his face in a long, suffering gesture—the gesture of a strategist watching his simplest plan being demolished by someone else's impulsivity before it could even be put into action.

“Please, just let us go already,” he pleaded, his voice laden with desperate pragmatism. “He’s going to keep talking until someone in here bitterly regrets not letting him run away when they had the chance.”

Beckman observed the group for a stretched-out moment, his silence weighing heavier than any reprimand. The wind outside whispered beneath the tent canvas, causing the papers on the table to tremble faintly.

Finally, a deep, resigned sigh escaped his lungs, and he shook his head, not in defeat, but on very clear terms.

“If any of you try anything,” he said, each word distinct and icy, “I’ll have all three of you digging trenches until dawn. No breaks.”

Shanks broke into a wide, carefree grin, as if the threat of forced labor were the most delightful of promises.

“Then it’s settled!”

The metallic jingle of keys cut through the heavy air, and with a smooth, decisive click, all three handcuffs sprang open simultaneously.

The sound echoed disproportionately loud in the confined space, as if announcing that a fragile order had been restored, though now under new and precarious terms—everything was once again negotiable.

Their newfound freedom, however, was immediately overshadowed by a fresh wave of chaos.

Yasopp reappeared from the gloom between the supply crates, writhing in a peculiar manner. He approached in short, clumsy steps and, without the slightest ceremony, used Beckman as a human shield, pressing against his broad back like a climbing vine seeking support.

His face was a portrait of pure panic, mixed with a silent plea for some kind of explanation that could make sense of the entire surreal situation.

Shanks rubbed his newly freed wrists, a smile of ironic relief playing on his lips. His gaze, however, settled on the absurd scene of the sharpshooter hiding behind his second-in-command.

"What are you doing?" Shanks asked. There was a layer of irony in his voice, but beneath it, a gleam of genuine amusement; the situation seemed to entertain him as much as it should have irritated him.

Yasopp shrank back even further, his voice muffled against Beckman's coat, nearly choked by dread. "I'm not sure if it was clear enough, but I'm… hiding."

Beckman turned his head with exaggerated slowness, like a man processing a particularly absurd piece of information and deciding whether to respond with the last crumb of his patience or with cutting sarcasm.

The line of his shoulders, however, already told a story of familiar exhaustion, a posture that said, "I've seen this before, and it's not funny anymore."

"Yes, we can see that," Beckman replied, his voice dry enough to wither the humidity in the air. "The question is: why do I have to be the human shield?" He paused for the briefest moment, just long enough for his next comment to land with the weight of a hammer. "Besides, it's a terrible first impression."

Yasopp was not swayed by the critique. Instead, his wide eyes remained fixed on a specific point in the camp.

He pointed with a frantic, discreet movement—almost a spasm—toward a woman standing a few meters away. She was facing a group of whispering, tense secretaries and coordinators, but her posture was that of a hawk surveying a field of rabbits. Motionless as a statue, back straight, chin raised—there was something viscerally sharp in the way her fingers held the strap of her bag, as if it were the hilt of a weapon.
It was a warning as obvious as it was dangerous.

"You see that woman over there?" he swallowed hard, the words tumbling out in a thin thread of panic mixed with indignation. "She looks ready to rip those guys' heads off with her bare hands." He delivered a dramatic pause, then dropped the bomb. "That's my wife! Nobody told me my wife was going to be here!"

Yasopp's revelation hung in the air like gunsmoke, creating a momentary silence that was broken by Shanks's seemingly innocent question.

"I didn't know you had a wife," Shanks said, his red eyebrows lifting slightly. "Weren't you divorced?"

Yasopp shrugged in a gesture of pure desperation, his eyes still locked on the distant figure like a mouse watching a cat. "We never actually got around to signing the papers," he tried to justify, his voice a rushed whisper. "Life happened, You know how it is, work...,time just passed."

Ace, who had been observing the woman with growing curiosity, furrowed his brow. There was something about her posture, the way she held her chin high, that stirred a vague memory in his mind—a sense of déjà vu he couldn't quite place, but which made him stare for a moment too long, trying to decipher the puzzle.

"I don't see what the problem is," Ace said finally, his voice tinged with genuine adolescent confusion.

Yasopp turned to him with wide eyes, as if the boy had just said the most absurd thing in the world. "We haven't seen each other in a decade, you brat!" he exploded in a tense whisper, gesturing frantically with his slightly trembling hands. "I can't just pop up out of nowhere, covered in mud and sweat, and say 'hey, remember me?'. That's not a reunion, it's a pre-announced funeral!”

"That would be a bit of a dick move on your part," Sabo remarked dryly, adjusting his crumpled hat with one hand while observing the scene with clinical interest.

Shanks watched Yasopp for a moment, his expression shifting between genuine confusion and growing amusement. The corners of his mouth curved upward as he processed the situation.

"Ten years..." he murmured, resting his chin on his hand like a philosopher contemplating the mysteries of the universe. "The world really is small."

Yasopp let out a sigh so deep and desperate it seemed to come from the depths of his soul. "Too small! And with a terrible sense of humor!" His voice rose to a panicked pitch. "Oh, oh, I can feel my feet tingling. I have some kind of illness, Shanks! The kind of illness where if I talk to my wife, I'll just drop dead!"

Beckman, who had observed the entire exchange with an impassive expression, let out an almost inaudible sigh as he organized some documents on the table. Shanks, meanwhile, stroked his chin thoughtfully before replying with utter serenity:

"I'll buy flowers and good sake for your funeral," he commented, his voice laden with good-humored resignation, clearly determined not to get more involved than necessary in someone else's family drama.

That statement seemed to push Yasopp over the last ledge of sanity. His eyes widened even further, and he began to babble incoherently to himself.

"We've completed reconnaissance of the western, southern, northern, and eastern sectors," Shanks resumed, shaking off the lingering disorientation from the previous events. His voice regained a professional firmness, a clear attempt to anchor both himself and the others to the task at hand. His finger, grimy with dirt under the nail, traced the pencil-drawn circles scattered across the paper like a constellation of failures. "But we haven't found a single trace so far. Nothing. It's as if the forest just swallowed them whole."

The last phrase hung in the air, darker than he had probably intended.

Beckman didn't look up immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the topographic contours, on the dense mass of green represented on the paper. "They could have sought shelter," he said, his voice a low, steady hum against the backdrop of tense whispers and Yasopp's ragged breathing. "Natural caves, hollows under fallen trees, slopes that offer cover from the rain." The pen in his hand, thin and silver, drew lines of possibility through the more rugged areas of the map, creating a new search pattern. His brow was deeply furrowed, his glasses low on his nose, every muscle in his face dedicated to the tactical problem before him.

"I think we can start there," Shanks agreed, leaning over the table, his body momentarily blocking the lantern light and casting a long shadow over the map. His eyes followed the points Beckman had marked—a cartography of renewed hope. "They can't be too far from the initial disappearance point. Scared children, even determined ones, don't wander aimlessly for kilometers in a storm like this."

He stretched out his arm, his soiled fingers tracing a wide circle in the air, overlapping a specific area on the paper. "This perimeter, about three kilometers out from where the main trail fades. The mountains here are rockier, full of crevices and uneven terrain. It would be easy enough for a child under five feet to slip in and take shelter without much trouble. Besides, the trees in that region are larger and offer better cover.”

When Shanks lifted his gaze from the map, he found Beckman's eyes already fixed on him.

The man's expression was a blank page, unnervingly neutral; his eyes reflected the lantern's weak light, concealing any trace of emotion that might have lain behind them. It was an absolute poker face, utterly impossible to read, and it put Shanks instantly on edge.

"What is it?" Shanks asked, leaning forward slightly, trying to fish out some spark of irritation, a thread of concern—anything—in the dark eyes staring back at him.

For a moment that stretched beyond comfort, Beckman said nothing. Then, as if he had just realized he'd been staring for too long, he blinked slowly and shifted his gaze back to the map, an almost imperceptible movement of retreat.

"Nothing," Benn replied, the word coming out light and hollow, like a curtain being drawn across an empty stage. The casualness was deliberate, a clear end to the conversation.

He then raised his voice, the tone shifting abruptly to that of a field commander—clean and efficient, dispelling any lingering trace of that strange, silent moment. "We'll divide the personnel into three groups. We'll cover the new perimeter systematically."

His gaze settled on Ace and Sabo, who immediately straightened their backs, feeling the weight of his authority. "And you two are staying right here."

"What? But—" Ace began to protest, his face twisting into instant rebellion.

"This is absurd!" Sabo finished, his arms crossing in a gesture of defiance.

The sounds of their indignation were immediately smothered by a single, razor-sharp glance from Beckman. It wasn't anger; it was simply fact. A decision already made, as immutable as stone.

"Not another word," Beckman concluded, his statement ending with an audible full stop. He then raised a finger, pointing directly at Shanks with a precision that made the digit seem like a loaded weapon. "And you," he said, his voice low but carrying the weight of a restraining order, "are going to stay somewhere I can see you."

The implication was both clear and humiliating: Shanks, the legendary assassin Red, was effectively on parole.