active / ask box / anonymous / submit box
new threads / replies to greeters / new follows / requests
currently answering old things from selected partners
Munday If you send me asks to be replied ooc, such as about meta or the rp proper, these shall be answered to on Mondays.
Sinday I don't observe it. Please send NSFW asks only if they are part of a meme or previously discussed with me. If these have to do with ooc choices, they may be answered as part of Munday.
quick links
The following links might interest you, as they direct to specific categories of text.
As much as Ace wanted to lift his eyes at his asker and see who this was, he couldn’t. Not when in the middle of such a big pile of cats, he could not.
Eyes concealed under the brim of his had and fingers intertwined over his stomach, Ace was quite the relaxed cowboy on a lazy afternoon. Only his loyal horse was missing, its role left to the capable paws of Kotatsu, on whose back Ace rest his. He was warm, as Kotatsu liked; and the lynx was soft, just what the doctor ordered - some softness for the man to rest his head.
As they napped, more felines came to sit and lounge next to them, and even more came along to form a massive pile of cats all sizes and colours. They were drawn to the unnatural heat, which prompted a communal nap and resulted in a loud, happy purr uttered in unison. This was the place to be.
Kotatsu opened a sleepy eye to acknowledge Lizard, closing it the very second he understood there was no threat to bother his captain with. Likewise, his tail slithered on the desolate ground, whipping a burly stray in the process.
As for Ace, he moved no single muscle at recognising the friendly voice. All these cats, though great in number, may make it hard for him to get up and move about but were hardly a hassle.
It had taken him a while getting use to being the centre of attention for derelict felines in need of warmth, just like a good while had been needed to discover and master the powers of his Devil Fruit; but after the initial awkwardness of being followed by the four-legged critters, Ace could enjoy the idea of providing homely comfort to those who had none. He was, in a way, not very different from a stray cat.
And what would this name be? Ace? Portgas? Gol? No, not that - in Ace’s mind, the third option did not even exist.
As for the remainder options, yes, both given name and surname held a special meaning to Ace. Part of this significance had to do with his other name - D. - as it was said those branded with it were believers of some sort. What Ace knew about his middle name he’d learnt from two elder men, Old Gramps and Pops himself, as he did not dedicate much time thinking of prophecies and mysteries alike.
That would have been quite a question to bring forth an lay upon Ace’s table, about whether he trusted in prophecies and sayings of old; ask him to expose his thoughts in the non-palpable things of the world and those of the spiritual realm. While it would be untrue to say he’d never cared for such things in his twenty years of life, it would also taste a lie to say Ace cared nothing about them, even if a big part of the image he showed was that of a carefree man?
How could he not care when his entire life ahd been and remained to be about questioning what was beyond the visible? How much power could a bloodline hold? How sin could an infant carry, if it did carry a bit at all? Oh, but he did…! But to what point and how exactly could he free himself from it? What made a man ‘good’? What value did the word hold in this world?
Yes, those were things Ace thought about. Perhaps not in the course of brotherly merrymaking or when carrying his father’s benevolent work, but in moments of loneliness and internal distress he would. It was a shallow and pointless exercise, riddles that would never be answered. Yet, Ace asked the same questions every day, lest he die before he even tried. While death could be regarded with passivity by he who had always expected it, there was no excuse for sheer inertia. At least anger made life move on.
Those were, however, moral and philosophical questions any other soul could think about. Of the mysticism around the name of D., Ace cared not. Whatever it was it was and he’d chase his dreams and goals all the same, who gave a shit about what someone had once written in stone History knew how long ago?
“My name, you ask? Yes, it does” And believing Nonny was asking him not about his surname - his mother’s name - but his given one, Ace proceeded.
Names had meanings. Therefore, Ace’s name had to have one. He knew it was the name of a playing card - after all, had he not been captain of the Spade Pirates? - just like he knew it carried other interpretations in informal talk while the card itself was used for more elevated readings. Of those he could not speak by either knowledge or experience, but he’d seen fortune tellers make a playing deck the instrument of their trade.
Perhaps Ace had originally been a male name before the card appeared, meaning something grand like “king” or another something quite distant from it, like the name of the droppings for a specific species of bird. Or the card had come first and some person with a gambling fixation had decided it was nice enough for their son.
Why had Rouge named him ‘Ace’ anyway and not ‘Johnny’ or ‘Zack’?
Alas, she was not here to answer the question and Ace had little patience to visit a library and look up name meanings. As far as he was concerned, ‘Ace’ was special not because of its definition, but because of what it was.
“It’s not much… but it’s mine” His name. His very own and his alone, not Roger’s, not even Rouge’s. It could not be sold, traded or shared. It could not be erased. “No one can take it from me”
Other pirates could take his belongings. The Government might one day take his head and do with it and they willed. Two things Ace knew for sure - he would die with his boots on and holding his name in his possession. Maybe that was not much for a man to keep, for a soul to take to the afterlife, if it existed…
But to a boy turned man with little estate and who had done naught but to prove himself he had a right to exist, something as personal and non-transferable as a name meant a whole lot.
Ace was Ace. He was his own person. And in his name he reminded himself of that.
Holding a pile of a dozen CDs, Ace mused on Luffy’s question while he flipped each record in his hands, contemplating the cover pictures and the information printed over them.
There was The Offspring and Elvis, Cash and Beastie Boys, among others. The selection made Luffy’s question a lot more difficult than it seemed and made him sound smarter in his inquiries than he normally showed. Ace’s collection spanned most of the suggested genres and his taste went beyond them, as sometimes he would cover Disney songs along with his rocky, folksy favourites.
“Most, I think… Wait, are you asking me what kind of music I like or what we should play?”
The first one was more likely to be the truth. To hint at what he wanted was unlike Luffy, a boy who’d either condone or condemn with no hint of subtlety. He would let his brother know what the things he liked and those he didn’t, oftentimes to Ace’s annoyance - first, he would think his little brother was a cry-baby, huff and puff and complain about how much he hated kids who threw a fit. Then, he would realise Luffy was just that, the little one, and excuse Luffy’s stubborness and lack of conversational filters.
Ace handed the CDs to him for Luffy to choose, or at least take a look at the packaging.
“What do you feel like listening to, little brother?”
It was true Ace was a pussy magnet. Wherever he went, he attracted them, dozens of them, needy of warmth and affection, demanding it with hungry yowling. Cats adored him and followed him no matter how hard he tried to lose track of them with left turns, right turns and parkour movements on trash cans, pipes, rooftops and cornices. It didn’t help that Ace’s dashing post dining often resulted in him exuding the appetising aroma of fish.
He seldomly tried hard, anyway. Ace appreciated some feline company and as a rule did not mind being followed by a group of cats provided it did not go over an arbitrary number to make him uncomfortable. When a whole legion of cats was chasing him for naught but hunger and selfish interest, that’s when running was in order and when Ace would curse the friendly fellows.
Ace did have a pussy problem, as Rocinante thought, but there was another thing he owned as well: self-pride. Believe it or not, it can coexist with self-hatred. And he would not admit to the other man his hunch was right.
“Do not!” he spat, not unlike a child would. “You’re one to talk of animal problems, wearing a turkey for a cloak.”
It was not that bad a coat… It looked like an enormous blanket, comfy and warm. It certainly beat any piece of clothing made out of cats, for sure.
Oh, but this was fun… To have a half-naked man question another’s taste in fashion! It was a battle neither could win.
"From today onwards, bread and all bread-related products are banned from this household. You wanna eat bread? You eat it outside, you make sure you clear all the crumbs from your fingers, before you come back in. Understand?"
Before questioning Law’s illicitly acquired authority and rebelling against it, a rebel with a wholesome cause, Ace scratched his chin as though something was amiss before his very eyes. Prolonging the scratch for dramatic effect, he tilted his head up and down, left and right in a slow and steady choreograph.
“Nah. I don’t see it” In spite of Law’s furious silence, Ace proceeded with his pantomime, scanning the room as fully as he could without ever switching his position. “No. Not a single one of them. I’m sorry, you wanna know what I’m talking about? Metal bars. Because this is a prison...?”
Law had waltzed in like the officer in a gluten-free bootcamp for proteinaceous offenders, up for a round of ‘I’m not taking any bullshit from you bread-loving maggots today’. Naturally, Ace couldn’t help feeling like a convict.
Just because Law had to care for his allergies, it did not mean Ace had to take part in the same diet of boring foods washed down with black coffee and a handful of psychotropics for dessert.
Bread was the staple food of life. If Law were to acquire power and channel it into banning bread, he might as well condemn an entire nation to starvation. There would be no bread in Law’s sad, twisted world, for which was a good thing the man did not dwell in politics. His ‘DEATH’ tattoos had never made greater sense.
“Right! As someone who’s actually been to bootcamp,” Military, not correctional. “I should tell you bread’s not among the list of forbidden things. In fact, even prison inmates eat it.”
Once seating cross-legged on the sofa, Ace got up and started a very civilian march to the kitchen, were the air cracked with low, soothing noises and filled up with an uncanny aroma. Law’s dictatorial tirade had quite by chance coincided with the hour Ace had been waiting for.
“Mr. Spotted Pants thinks he’s the president!” Ace gloved his hands with a cat-patterned pair of oven mitts - because they were just so cute! - and opened the oven’s door, allowing for the air inside to escape its own imprisonment and go right for Law’s nostrils. “I sure wanna see what he has to say about this!”
If Law was the prison guard doing his round and little bad cop theatre, Ace was the sassy jailbird who proudly flips him off between the jail bars, which is to say he presented Law with his latest batch of golden mini baguettes.
“UP YOURS, ROO!”A piece of bread was hurled at Law’s head, hot and all.
If Law thought himself big enough to declare a world free of bread, he had better be man enough to face the consequences.
Law is dying here trying to figure out ways to tell Ace he likes---loves---likes him. He goes up to Ace. "Hey, check this out." Law rips his shirt apart in the front, baring his large heart tattoo. Law remains silent for a long moment, expecting Ace to read the message on his chest. Law even waxed and shaved so no traces of hair would obscure any little bit of his heart tattoo. If Ace didn't get this, Law would be sad.
And sad Law would be, then, if his happiness depended on Ace’s ability to read subtle hints.
It was a funny thing. Ace could be perceptive, arguably more than people might think, as people don’t tend to think much of half-naked, narcoleptic young men - what’s the world coming to? - and he knew how to take hints as well. The tension accumulated in a fist was the prelude to a physical confrontation. A change in breathing might indicate fear, as might a barely perceptible shift. However, if these things were very well, to read code that was already ciphered was almost impossible.
For one, Ace did not understand why Law felt the need to rip the garment off his body. If he was feeling hot - and that would have been something! - why not undress it like any normal person? Law… it was foolish to think he was any more well-adjusted than Ace was, but this inadequate behaviour was far too outlandish for either of them. At least they were not in public, nor were they entertaining.
Similarly, Ace did not comprehend what it was Law wanted him to see, so desperately. That waxed torso? He couldn’t recall one single instance where he had seen Law bearing chest hair, thick or thin. The tattoo? Hardly a novelty. The same could be said about any other of Law’s ink, unless he’d gotten a new design somewhere the sun did not shine. Could it be a small wound? A pimple? Not quite something for one to boast about, was it?
“And what exactly am I supposed to be checking out?“ Two pectorals, two nipples, two halves of the same heart design. Yes. All was in order. Nothing new to see here, pimple or ink or even a metal ring. Ace would not be surprised if one day Law came home with his nipples pierced.
He tried harder, eyes narrowed and focus increased to full capacity. In a way, yes, he was admiring Law’s torso… What? Didn’t hurt a bit. Plus, how was he supposed to find out what this new acquisition was if he closed or averted his eyes?
“Oh!” A very hopeful ‘oh’, this one. “I get it. You’ve been going to the gym! We should go together. What do you say, Roo? How about we have a little weightlifting face-off? First one to pant like a dog buys the other lunch”
If Law was truly serious about maintaining his athletic built and decided to a patron to the local gym, then Ace would gladly sign up for membership. It would be fun, to shake things up with equipment they did not have at home and add new exercises to Ace’s humble routine of which a jog around the block and the pull-up bar in his bedroom’s threshold were the foundation. It would be fun, too!
As for the challenge, Ace trusted his own strength and stamina and hence saw himself as a contender. If he won, they would go out for lunch. If he lost, they would go out for lunch. With his bad habit of dining-and-dashing, it was not like he’d ever truly lose anyway.
*anon meme* which one is your favorite AU and is there an AU verse you'd like to fulfill later in future :)?
♠ anonymous. munday.
Oh, that’s a hard one. I suppose you mean the ones I have already listed and not as a whole, the bulk of AUs people do. Naturally I love them all, otherwise I wouldn’t even consider them, but to pick a favourite…
I’m currently more excited about the Titanic AU and very happy @xfaucheuse chose it! I reckon an extended timeline is in order for the sake of our own rp convenience but, apart from that, there is a minimum of research involved on each reply, which is the kind of thing I like. (Which is why I also love the Greaser AU and thank @spottedsoftpaws for letting me write it!)
As for something I haven’t yet had the pleasure of doing, I have to say it’s the Whaleman AU. It involves more historical research than the others, so it is more elaborate, and also why I’m a bit of a scaredy cat and keep postponing it. But if someone where up to do it - while expecting extra delayed answers - I would tell myself to ‘woman up’.
You once asked me something about Roger, but that was for me to answer in character. For the second time in a row I feel forced to cheat but… It does depend on what criteria play in this inclusion of Roger’s.
[ What was your first impression of Ace when he appeared in the manga? At what point/when did you realise you liked him as a character? How has your impression of Ace changed over time? ]
I watched several arcs of the anime before starting the manga - in fact, when I figured I would never stay updated otherwise - so when Ace appeared in the manga, I already knew quite a lot about him. This is sort of cheating, isn’t it?, but alas I cannot recall what I made of Ace during his anime debut. I probably thought what I was supposed to - that he was a mysterious character and that if he was after Luffy then something big was bound to happen. Next I saw him in Alabasta he entered the threshold of my heart and since then only stepped deeper inside.
This is the stare of a man who just found out his son is engaging in sexual activity with another D. As in another person with a D. middle name, not the genital. After a long hard stare, Rocinante sighs and puts his hand on Ace's shoulder. "You're brave and stupid."
My, my! Someone was assuming things. Rather, someone was putting their smoke-scented nose where it was not welcome. Fortunately for Rocinante, Ace’s command was over the element of fire, not within the telepathic field, and as result he eyed the much taller man with knitted brows and an unvoiced ‘So?’ stuck in his lips; otherwise, a couple of sparks should be enough for the clumsy man to roast himself inside that feathery cloak of his.
What could possibly be annoying Rocinante to justify so hard a stare, if his eyes were hard indeed and this hardness not the concomitant of that heavy makeup? Could he still be upset about their last encounter? Ace thought not, as a little bickering seemed to have already become the cornerstone of their yet short-lived dynamic, for which both parts were to blame. That’s what made it fun, wasn’t it?
The man’s hand came down on Ace’s shoulder in a less patronising way than his words did and it should be noted it ought to be easy enough for a man Rocinante’s height to pass most touches as condescending. ‘You’re brave and stupid’. A compliment disguised as an insult or an outright insult hiding a nice word deep behind it?
“Yeah. That’s how it works, stupidity and bravery both. Can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.” He would have grasped his vulture-like interlocutor’s shoulder if only he could. As he could not, Ace settled on clutching his wrist instead, not tightly enough to provoke pain which he did not wish to cause anyway. “You set the example yourself, from what I hear.”
Sabo jumped onto Ace's back, pushing the orange hat down over his brother's eyes as he was laughing cheekily. He clung to him, arms thrown around his shoulders and legs pressed against his thighs, even as Ace tried to throw off the unwanted weight. "Happy Birthday!" He laughed into his brother's ear and then suddenly "Uff!" and "Ouch" as his rear made contact with the ground and he found himself sitting on the floor, rubbing his hurting butt. "What kind of move was that?!" [rxvolutionarysabo]
♠ ace’s birthday (or asks i couldn’t do in due time) | @rxvolutionarysabo
Browsing trash for salvage was Ace and Sabo’s everyday activity, at least during the days when the two boys managed to meet.
More often than not they would start things with a frown in what they figured was a professional attitude - as adults were always frantically worried about business and never were capable of a time-consuming, non-remunerative smile for them. Retrieving artefacts was their business, which they did for profit, and out of necessity would they browse for nourishment as well.
The first step to a successful day in Gray Terminal was to get organised.
“You go this way; I go the other”, Ace would say in the bossy tone age had not yet earned him. Sabo would take it up a notch and add “I search the eastern heaps, you take the western and we meet here in half-an-hour” when it was his turn to be the boss, something which Ace didn’t love. Yet he’d hold no grudge and he would run excitedly to Sabo with arms full of trinkets when it was time for the rendezvous.
It was hard to keep up the act when they were only children, even if it could be argued, by a bystander, that Ace and Sabo had little reason to smile. They hardly had reasons, yes, which was why they made them. Piles of trash made good slides and even if they got home to Dadan all stinky, bath time offered another opportunity for them to play together and put the world on pause. It was not all business either - every now and then they would find items with little value to be sold or traded by the shady contacts they knew from even shadier streets and alleys of the Kingdom, but that were still good enough to be used.
This was the case of Ace’s hat.
“I want a hat”, he’d one day declared. “All pirates wear hats.” And, because there was no third boy around to tell him great seamen such as Shanks did not wear hats, Sabo believed it. Ace would only protest if he called the statement untrue anyways, and say “It’s easy for you to talk when you got a hat!”
After much sailing across the vast sea of trash, Ace got he wanted. A battered old hat with a wide brim. Its orange colour made it easy to spot among piles of the washed out stuff that was in the genesis of the place’s name, in spite of the soot covering it. Hygiene not being a concern of his, Ace patted the dirt off his hat, causing him to cough the black particles which danced around his face and attacked his nostrils and mouth. It was his favourite colour, too, and the boy eagerly put the hat on and crossed his arms in a pose. “How do I look?” Sabo made Ace furious by saying he resembled more of a farmer than a pirate.
For a while, no longer than four months in reality, this was Ace’s hat. Nothing could restore the accessory to its former glory and beautiful hue, not even the pristine water which flowed in streams across the green past
Mt. Colubo, where the boys went for a swim or washed their findings before adding what was precious to their pirate savings and selling what had to be exchanged for coin. Still, he loved it all the same and he swored he’d one day have a hat of his own, wide-brimmed and high-crowned, of the ‘orangest’ orange there was. It would be no boring farmer’s hat, either! It would have ‘some cool stuff’ too, but what Ace meant by that he did not explain.
Ace’s senses were misplaced when Sabo came running towards him. Not because of this hat or the cool new one he dreamed of, but because he was sure to have seen a fox (or vixen) around and wondering how much they could gain in their joint enterprise if they hunted it and sold it for its fur. It was a last resort to kill an enemy unless for food or personal clothing which the bandits would not fashion for him anyway, but if foxes made it a good price…
Maybe it was the collision of bodies and the scare it caused, immediately followed
by a need for shielding himself. Maybe it was hearing the words he detested, that plucked a nerve and caused Ace to attack… Only he didn’t.
Before Ace could tell Sabo to fuck off - an expression the child threw around like a ‘big person’ - something made Sabo topple over… He’d meant to hold Sabo in a silly piggyback before telling him never to wish him a happy birthday again; not send him to the forest ground. That… that hadn’t been Ace. Had it?
As he turned around to face Sabo and answer him, the now hat-less boy realised… He had no words to explain what had happened. No theory either. Something had made Sabo lose his balance and fall but it had not been Ace’s body. It was more like an invisible force or demon, at any rate, something he couldn’t control.
With a grim expression, Ace said, before extending a friendly hand to help his only friend get up, “I dunno…”
Aya reached up and kisses him. "Happy New Year, Ace. And, um, happy birthday." Pulling a small box out from her bag, she presses it into his hands. Inside is a simple thing - a leather belt-loop keychain. But, attached to the end, is a small charm in the shape of a hibiscus flower. "So, um, so your mom is always with you."
Though it was customary for friends to gift friends on the occasion of their birthdays, Ace couldn’t say he expected Aya to give him anything; even if he expected her to be one of those who would not let his birthday go unnoticed only because it doubled with the start of the new year. She was a quiet girl, she would not let the thrill of New Year’s fill her up entirely as to make her forget a dear friend’s birthday.
He let Aya give her the kiss and the gift both, leaving any commentary aside until he was done unboxing the flower-shaped charm. A hibiscus flower, as it turned out, thanks to Aya’s comment, for otherwise it was too small a trinket for Ace to discern what genus the metal was meant to represent. Aya’s conscious decision was not surprising when coming from a woman as thoughtful as she was. It was how’d she came by that information in the first place Ace could not understand.
“How did you…?” Emotion filled up his mouth, silencing the words and forcing pearly tears out of his eyes. ‘She loved hibiscus’, Old Gramps had once told him. ‘She was never seen without a flower locked in her hair’
For many a year did Ace think of Rouge and try and guess her features. Would she have black hair just like him or was the colour really demonic, solely to blame on Him? Would she have freckles across her cheeks too? She must have, as wanted posters and newspapers of old showed no ink dots bove His lip. Of the man he had more evidence than he ever wanted, though it felt reassuring somehow to know Roger’s looks. It made loathing so much easier when there was a disgusting face to illustrate just as repulsive a name and to hate both just as fiercely. But of her Ace had no photograph.
Then, one day, when Ace was already a teenager and Luffy still the child he’d always be, Garp paid the boys and Dadan a visit and in conversation with Ace finally answered his old questions about his mother, which he’d delayed on the account of hoping life and its toughness would beat the crap out of the kid and give him the endurance and maturity needed to handle this sort of information without it fueling his psychotic wishes any further.
The teen had nearly cowered at the words ‘talk man to man’, figuring the old conversation about the birds and bees was in order but, to his surprise, Garp had fished a photograph out of his shirt pocket, no doubt from the marine archives.
Since then, Ace, who’d always liked pretty flora, had become partial to hibiscus flowers. Alas, he was a seafarer, not a landowner, and couldn’t grow a plantation inside his pillow case for mother-scented dreams.
Ace reckoned he needed no answer from Aya, whose love was as great as her knowledge. In a coarse voice, he said the only thing that must not be left unspoken. “Thank you, Aya…”
A curse word - shit, damn, take your pick - came muffled as artificially created darkness descended upon Ace. Not being used to pranks of the kind, as his taller sea brothers didn’t care much for burying his hat deep on his head and people who did were, as a general rule, shorter - he had no defensive tactics to employ.
What then, to do, save for swearing and flailing his arms, hoping one would hit Corazón in the process? Law had said the man to be clumsy… Maybe a disoriented hand would be enough to send him flying.
“What the hell, man?! Think you can manhandle me just cuz you’re freakishly tall?”
Talking about a conundrum! Ace was arguably more used to playing the acehole than being the victim to another’s shenanigans. What could he do to get even with Corazón? Pulling that pair of hearts which hung from the ends of his hood would do the trick just fine, if only he stood a little closer to the ground.
Fight fire with fire, they said. And Ace had fire aplenty!
Once he got the hat readjusted just the way he liked it, Ace transfigured the frown on his face into a cheeky smile and extended a friendly hand to Law’s adoptive dad. It lit up with a soft and inviting flame. Nothing naughty about it.
“Why don’t I help you light up that cigarette, friendo?” Maybe it was Ace’s smile, maybe it was the inclusion of the word ‘friendo’ that gave him away but Corazón, understanding he was in for a literal roast, started his not-so-swift escape. “GET BACK HERE!”
You’ve just witnessed someone kicking a chicken three times, followed by this someone getting attacked by a horde of chickens. What're your thoughts on this?
Call it human decency, call it a farm boy instinct, but Ace didn’t find the idea of people kicking chickens amusing at all. What had the poor birds done to deserve a festival of kicks upon them? They weren’t dangerous animals. They weren’t even that smart to even begin weaving malicious schemes. They were just fluffy birds who found corn and cabbages things of excitement. They also tasted delicious…
Following this line of thought, Ace found it hard to believe two or more chickens would gang up on an individual but hey – animals tended to be sensitive to humankind’s bad intentions and find means of protecting themselves from them. Who was he to say evolution was not bestowing better defence mechanisms upon fowl bit by bit, too slowly for a man to take note of it in his lifespan?
“Serves the fucker right, doesn’t it? Who the hell goes around kicking chickens!?”
Just because Ace ate the winged things that didn’t mean he’d chase after them and connect the end of his boot with their perky behinds. Those were two different things! Not even when he hunted did he stoop so low as to kick his prey!
But the chickens in this scenario were gifted enough to go after revenge, eh? That was a sentiment Ace could understand and how could he criticise it?
"Happy Valentine's Day, Ace! I got you something because I want you to know that you're the best big brother in the whole wide world and I love spending time with you!" Chopper offered out two boxes: one filled with flame-shaped cookies and the other full of the more traditional heart-shaped chocolates.
Of all the people Ace might have guessed would give him a Valentine’s memento - a short list, mind you - the reindeer certainly came last. With him possessing a soul as sweet as cotton candy, it should come as no surprise that Chopper would see Valentine’s Day as a holiday celebrating friends and fraternal love rather than romantic interest or devotion. Yet, if something was to be expected from Valentine’s Day, that something was chocolate - voluntarily gifted or swiftly taken from haphazard mounds of treats.
Ace blinked twice at Chopper - the smaller figure carrying two boxes like he who was Santa himself - and immediately felt embarrassed for having nothing to offer in return. In his defence, he bore absolutely no Valentine’s gifts; it wasn’t like he was excluding the fuzzy friend on purpose!
“For me? Thanks, Chopper!” In a continuous and smooth sequence of gestures, he let his trademarked hat fall onto the reindeer’s no less famous pink hat and opened one of the boxes. Small flames stared back at him, causing Ace to feel even worse about his holiday carelessness.
Why? Why couldn’t he have thought of exchanging gifts with his friends instead of believing that commercial crap about Valentine’s being exclusive to couples and, seeing as he had no sweetheart of his own, dropped the day for yet another year? That would’ve been fun!
“I’m sorry, Chopper… Seems like I have no gift for you. I’m not as good a brother as you paint me, eh?” This was just great! One more thing to add to an already extensive list of fields where he’d failed as a brother both to Sabo and Luffy, currently featuring the latter’s doctor as well.
A blur of pastel pink flashed before Ace’s eyes as he sent his arm to the back of his head, hand touching it in an apologetic pose; and he understood its colours to be red and white, the former hue being the result created by the quick motion. There was something he could give Chopper after all.
He removed his bangle and, seizing a hoof, gave it to his unlikely brother, not without a notice. “I really like this bracelet. You must promise me you’ll take good care of it or give it back! So whatcha say? Wanna fill up on chocolate till we get a tummy ache?”
Ace needed no word of promise for an answer. He knew Chopper would treasure the item like Ace was coming back to retrieve it one day.
