Chapter Text
Garp was a giant man. Wide in the shoulders, and even though only a line of his once jet black hair had not yet succumbed to invading grey, he still stood a hardy nine feet tall. He had swapped his usual white Navy uniform with a colorful Aloha shirt that his late wife had picked out for him. It was a little worn on the edges, as it was 20 years old, but he wore it so rarely that it was hardly noticeable to anyone but him. It was perfect for visiting his home island of Dawn in the early spring, to check on his seven year old grandson Luffy, and his charge, Ace, who was… ten? Twelve now? He wasn’t too sure. Numbers were never his strong suit.
He walked up up Mt. Colbo and entered the clearing of the Mountain Bandits fortified cabin where he had left the boys to the care of Dadan, the bandit’s leader. He came upon three boys, two of which he recognized. Luffy, a slimmer version of Garp when he himself was a little boy, with a small scar under his left eye, and perpetually wearing an oversized straw hat that covered his short choppy black hair. Ace, slightly taller than Luffy and a little more muscular, had freckles and chin length messy dark hair. The last was a little blonde boy with cropped curly hair, only a touch shorter than Ace, with a ridiculously large blue top hat, wearing a worn suit to match.
“Eh? Who’s this?”
Garp looked down at the three children in front of him, arms crossed as they looked up in slight horror in the shadow of this colossus.
The blonde haired boy with the top hat stood up straight and bowed, grinning.
“Nice to” fart “meet-” fart “you!” Fart. “I’m Sabo!”
Garp’s face formed into a deeper grimace, teeth bared. “Disrespectful! I’ll beat you into a respectable marine too!”
His fist bonked onto the boy’s head, and was about to lay into the boys, when he froze and looked up.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
The boys, Dadan, a round, burly woman with a bush of orange hair who was currently resting on the doorframe of the cabin, and the mountain bandits at the house looked up at a large figure, eight feet tall at least, leaning against a large tree, shaded from view.
“I could ask you the same, Vice Admiral Garp.”
“Peh,” Garp spat, straightening himself and dusting off his hands, looking away. “Annoying.”
The figure lifted their weight from the tree, the large tree’s leaves shaking from the change of weight. Stepping into the light was a woman, almost as tall as Garp nearly as wide, with a thick loose braid over her shoulder, blonde with pink at the tip. She wore a white tank-tee with thin navy stripes and white capris, and carried the oversized white navy coat slung over her shoulder, not wearing it. She grabbed a notepad and pen from inside the coat as she approached Garp.
“I’ve been ordered to do an audit of our higher level personnel to make sure the assets allocation is as accurate as possible, and to address the possible liabilities to the World Government.”
Her eyes, sharpened by dark winged tips flashed up. “Shouldn’t you be ported in Alabasta right now, Monkey D. Garp?”
Garp growled, baring his teeth, “I’m working on it, just making a stop on the way.”
The woman raised her eyebrows, tucking the notepad under her arm, “A 20 league detour you mean. And who are these?”
She did a broad sweep of her arm at the boys.
Luffy jumped up, waving his arms, “I’m Luffy! Hey, you are pretty fat!”
The entire group froze aghast, Dadan’s cigarette fell out of her mouth.
“LUFFY!”
The giant woman’s eyes narrowed as she looked down at the little boy, and lifted her arm. Ace and Sabo tensed. She flexed, and the immense sculpted muscles on her arm bulged.
She lifted her chin at him, “Fat with muscle you mean.”
“WHOOOAAAA!!” Luffy cheered, eyes alight. “Your arm is almost as thick as Gramps’!”
“‘Gramps’?” She glanced over at Garp who huffed.
“You are looking at my good for nothing grandson, Luffy.”
She looked down at the little boy starting to bounce up and down in excitement.
“Dragon’s boy.”
Garp, eyes narrowed into slits at the sound of his son’s name, eyeing the woman from the side.
“Hey, hey HEY!” Luffy chanted, “You’re the BIGGEST lady I have ever seen, you look SOOO strong, can I swing on your arm?”
“Sure.” Her arm still flexed, Luffy pulled back his arms.
“Gummo-Gummo no… SLING!” Two rubbery arms shot out and latched up to the top of her arm, making the woman’s eyes widen as he shot up, swinging past giggling and then retracting his arms, rising up, swinging back and forth as he did.
“A devil fruit? How-?”
“Look! Look! Ace, Sabo, I actually did it!”
Garp gruffed, “Some pirate scum visited the town, and Luffy got the devil fruit from them.”
“What?” The woman’s voice rumbled low as her eyes narrowed at Garp.
Luffy looked back at his grandpa, the two other boys ran up to jump and grab onto his legs and started swinging with him, laughing.
“Shanks isn’t scum he saved my life and I’m going to be a great pirate like him!”
“Why you-!” snapped Garp.
The woman looked down at the little boy latched onto her arm, not reacting to the extra weight of the other two boys in the slightest. “You’re planning on being a pirate?”
Luffy grinned up at her. “Yeah, I’m going to be strong, have all the food I want and be the freest person on earth! Sabo and Ace too!”
She looked at the two slightly older boys laughing to themselves, hanging off Luffy’s legs.
“Hmn.”
“Oh! Lady?”
She looked back at Luffy.
“Do you work in the Navy with Gramps?”
“Well, I don’t work with him, but I do work for the Navy. I make sure everyone in the Navy gets paid.”
“Oh.” Luffy looked up thoughtfully. “Sounds boring.”
A small smile curved onto her lips. “It should be much more boring than it is.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because some Navy Vice Admirals take 70 mile detours when they are supposed to be doing their job.”
Garp just grumbled to himself, plopping himself cross-legged on the ground.
The woman started walking the swinging children over to the house.
“Who’s that?” the woman nudged towards the group of people ahead.
“Oh! That’s Dadan and the Mountain Bandits.”
She froze mid step. “Mountain Bandits?”
“Yeah,” grinned Luffy, “Gramps threatens her to take care of us.”
The woman continued walking, looking down at the dirt path in front of her. “And does she take care of you?”
“Shi-shi-shi-shi, she gives us a place to sleep, and tries to get us to do chores, but we run out into forest to hunt and go into the grey terminal to stea-”
“LUFFY!” Both boys underneath him yelled in unison. He clasped his hands over his mouth and all three boys crumpled onto the ground.
The woman raised a brow, and continued walking towards the house, leaving the pile of boys to argue amongst themselves.
“Luffy,” hissed the freckle faced boy nailing a fist onto Luffy’s head, “you don’t know when to shut up!”
“You could get us in trouble,” echoed blonde boy in the same hushed tone.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
Dadan shivered as towering figure came closer. She pulled out another cigarette, and tried to light it.
“Dadan, I am told?”
Dadan, jerked, dropping the lighter, cursing, “Yeah what of it?” She froze, eyeing the epaulette of the jacket, her heart going right into her throat.
The woman held out her hand, giving a quick bow with her head. “Vice Admiral Ailani Mahi’ai, at your service. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you’d be so kind.”
Dadan tentatively took the hand, slightly in shock. Another vice admiral. HERE.
After doing a light handshake the vice admiral took out her notepad.
“How long have you known Monkey D. Garp?”
“Umm, a decade and a half at least.”
The woman nodded continuing. “And how do you know him?”
Dadan grimaced, “Err, we uh…”
“You’ve been intimate?”
The whole of the mountain bandits interrupted in turmoil behind Dadan. Dadan bit her unused cigarette in half, and spit out the filter. She raised a finger at the other woman in front of her who dared to imply that so clinically.
“I would rather be dipped in a pot of boiling oil and roasted alive.”
“Good, good,” the large woman nodded not looking up, “and you wouldn’t call this man your friend?”
“No, absolutely not.” She crossed her arms adamantly.
Vice Admiral Ailani nodded as she continued writing. “What is your source of income?”
“Er, well, we do..” she looked back at her crew, “Odd jobs.”
Garp burst out laughing, still sitting where he was before. “HAHA! You could say that, they’re bandits, Ailani!”
She turned her head slightly towards him, but continued to face Dadan, “And you would trust your grandchild with them?”
“They wouldn’t try anything, they’re too afraid I’d kill them, or worse.”
He picked his nose, and flicked a booger away. “HEY!” He pointed at the boys who had decided to sneak away. “You haven’t trained yet, you aren’t going anywhere!”
The boys communally moaned and flopped on the ground.
Ailani looked at the boys and then back at her notepad, “Garp has charged you with the care of all three of these boys?”
Dadan scoffed, “Hardly, the two boys brought that little blonde boy in and just expected it was ok for him to stay here.”
“But he does stay here.”
“Yeah.”
“So the other two boys, Luffy and…”
“Ace.”
“Ace. Garp has charged you with their care. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Thank you. What is Ace’s relationship with Garp?”
“Er, umn…”
Ace listened in, hearing his name as he lay in the grass with his brothers who were scheming their new plan to sneak away .
Dadan tensed up side-eyeing Ace. “Dunno. Garp’s business.”
Ailani nodded not looking up, “And with these odd jobs, the compensation from Garp for these services is included?”
“What compensation?”
“What?” Ailani looked up from her notepad, blinking.
“Garp hasn’t paid me for shit.”
Ailani, both eyebrows raised, stared at Dadan. “Oh. Ok. I see. And how long have you watched these boys?”
Dadan glanced over at the boys, “Well, I’ve watched Ace for about 10 years-”
She heard a guttural sound come from the other woman and turned back. The woman was staring at her notepad with an indiscernible expression on her face, not writing anything down.
“Aaaand, been watching Luffy for about a few months and Sabo even less - are you ok?”
“I’m. Fine.” Vice Admiral Ailani slowly put her notepad and pen in her coat, still not looking up.
“And how often does Vice Admiral Monkey D. Garp, visit to care for these boys, personally.”
“He drops by every 6 months or so, ‘trains’ them, or so he calls it, and then heads out expecting me to turn these boys into marines. Ridiculous.”
“Hmn.”
The towering woman did a neat 180 military turn on the spot and slowly marched towards the older gentleman who had fallen asleep sitting up.
Dadan eyed the woman as she got up to Garp. The boys, noticing that Garp had fallen asleep had snuck out to the forest’s edge. Ace turned back just in time to see the large woman raise her leg and kick Garp over.
“What-hmn who-” Garp shuddered awake putting an arm down to steady himself, looking up at the other vice admiral. “What do you-”
The woman crossed her arms, looking down at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you.”
Garp got up, dusting himself off. “What the hell are you-”
“The absolute gaul. Bringing a kid to this woman. Intimidating her into taking care of him for you for TEN. WHOLE. YEARS ?... And you don’t even.. pay her ?”
“She’s a bandit-”
“Maybe she wouldn’t be if she was adequately paid for her services.”
“I don’t have the salary to-”
She lifted a finger up to his face. “Then you should have taken care of him yourself.”
“That’s impossible-”
“Impossible? Oh, big marine Garp is too important to take care of a child?”
“That’s not-”
“People start families all the time, if this is your child-”
Garp lifted a hand, “He’s not my kid.”
“What you just pick up a random kid, and dump him with some bandits that you terrorized into watching him?”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t just dump him on bandits?”
“He’s not just some kid.”
“Prince from a fallen kingdom. Political refugee. Ex-lover’s lover’s child. Secretly a top secret robot experiment-” Ailani lifted a finger up for each one.
Garp shook his head, waving his arms. “What? No!”
Luffy turned to Ace. The three of them turned back to watch from the bushes.
“Ace, are you secretly a robot?”
“NO!”
“Then why is this boy here, Garp.” Ailani gritted through her bared teeth, voice low.
Garp chuckled, turning away.
Ace dug his nails into his palms, hands in fists as he got ready to run.
“He’s Gol D. Roger’s son.”
Luffy and Sabo yelled.
“WHAT!”
Gol D. Roger, the most infamous pirate of the last age, and not only did he have a son, but he was harbored by the war hero of the Navy that had captured the man.
Ailani’s mouth opened in shock as she turned to where she sensed the boys. There was Ace. Staring down at her from the edge of the forest with an expression that could only could be described as emotionless; blank. She turned back at Garp.
“He doesn’t look anything like him.”
Nearly all of the bandits fell over.
“He clearly took after his mother, you absolute moron. Oooo…” She lifted her arms wiggling her fingers. “Gol. D. Roger had black hair... this kid has black hair! Do you know how many people have black hair - shame on you! You could have given him to literally any family, and all you had to do was not tell them it was Gol D. Roger’s kid and he’d be fine. It’s so easy not to tell them because he doesn’t look like him. Didn’t you have any-...”
She stopped and looked Garp over, from his flip flops to the tips of his greying hair.
“Oh my god. You really don’t have any friends.”
“What?!”
“This makes so much sense.” She stepped away, hands raised to either side of her temples. “All you have are professional relationships, people who are forced to spend time with you, or idolize you because they don’t know who you really are. You don’t have any real friends outside of work because no one can can stand to be near you!”
“Now see here-”
“No.” She lifted a hand up. “I’m done with you. Don’t talk to me.”
She turned to where the boys had been, and they were gone.
Garp’s seethed as he lifted up up his hand to point at Ailani. “Hey you think you can-... Where are you going!”
Walking up up towards the bandit’s home, Ailani took her coat off her shoulder and fished a small bag out, pocketing it.
“Dadan, would I be able to leave my coat with you?”
“Absolutely, sure! Anything you want Miss!” Dadan took the white coat offered to her, starry eyed and practically floating. “Where will you be heading, Miss?”
Ailani was already entering the forest where they had last seen the boys, and waved not looking back.
“Boss,” one of the bandits whispered. “What do you think she’s going to do?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” She turned, and looked at Garp. The man’s face was ripe like a pomegranate, arms crossed tightly across his chest. He was grumbling something about ‘stupid bureaucrats’ and ‘soiling the sacred coat giving it to bandits’ as he tightly paced back and forth, glancing up where the woman had disappeared.
She shook her head, scowling as she went inside.
“Fuckin’ asshole.”
“Ace! ACE!”
“Ace slow down!”
The two boys raced after their friend, starting to lose sight of him in the forest ahead of them.
They ran out into a clearing and almost off a cliff. Sabo grabbed Luffy’s shirt and pulled him away from the edge.
Luffy peaked over the edge as he did. “Do you think he jumped?”
Sabo looked to either side of the ledge, and spotted Ace sitting on a ledge jutting out, facing the sea.
“There!”
They jogged over.
“Ace?”
“Do you hate me now?”
“WHAT?” Both boys exclaimed.
Sabo came up and kneeled behind Ace. “Why would we hate you?”
“Yeah! You are our brother! Also your dad was the pirate king, that’s so cool!” Luffy grinned.
“HOW IS THAT COOL?”
Luffy took a step back, frowning.
“HOW IS IT COOL, TO HAVE A DAD THAT’S THE MOST HATED PERSON ALIVE?”
Luffy walked tentatively up to Ace’s other side and sat down. Hair covered Ace’s eyes, but his teeth were clenched, mouth quivering. Luffy looked back at Sabo, who slid forward to match Luffy. Ace tensed.
“Ace,” Sabo spoke quietly. “We don’t hate you. You are our brother and our very best friend. You are the person I trust more than anyone in the world.”
A sob ejected out of Ace.
Luffy bent forward to look at Sabo, pointing to himself. “More than me?”
Sabo nodded. “Absolutely.”
Ace snorted out a sharp laugh, tears starting to trickle their way down his cheek.
Luffy frowned and looked at the grass in front of him, brow furrowed. His expression relaxed as looked up and nodding. “That’s fair.”
Sabo grinned and pulled up to Ace so their shoulders met. Ace relaxed.
Luffy inched over, sandwiching Ace.
“I think I’d pick Ace too,” Luffy spoke quietly.
Sabo chuckled, looking out across the ocean. “That’s fair.”
Luffy saw Ace smile at that, and the little boy smiled in return.
“Why don’t you hate me? You know who my dad is.”
Sabo looked back at Ace.
“I don’t think who your parents are is very important. You know about my parents, and you still like me.” Sabo smiled at the grass between them fondly.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Luffy cheered. “And you like me even though you think I’m an annoying brat!”
“You are pretty annoying,” chuckled Ace, wiping his face on the tank top he was wearing.
Luffy frowned, looking down at his legs.
Sabo looked over, laughing, “Why are you upset? You brought it up!”
Luffy puffed up his cheeks, “I know, it still hurts my feelings.”
The other two boys laughed.
Sabo looked at Ace who had lifted his head up, and was smiling, eyes red and cheeks blotchy.
A breeze from the sea blew over their faces, almost knocking Sabo’s hat off, but he caught the brim just in time.
The sun glistened on the waves like strands of metallic thread. Suddenly Ace looked back behind them.
The other boys turned to see forest give way to the eight foot tall woman exiting it, hand pushing away branches as she did.
Ace stood up, eyes narrowing and brow furrowed.
“Woo. What a view.” She placed her arms on hips as she looked out to over the cliff.
“What do you want?”
She didn’t turn from the ocean.
“Do you know where we can get some ice cream?”
