Ace's berry-stealing maneuver, executed with the swift, infuriating precision of a seasoned older brother, instantly shattered the fragile peace of our forest date. Luffy's indignant yelp – "ACE! That was for Akane!" – was met with Ace's smug, berry-juice-stained grin. He chewed with exaggerated delight, making sure we both got a good look at the prized berry before swallowing it.
"What?" Ace said, feigning innocence, though his eyes danced with mischief. "Sharing is caring, right, Luffy? Besides, a growing boy needs his vitamins." He patted his stomach. "Gotta maintain my peak physical condition for… chaperoning duties."
Luffy, predictably, was not amused. "That was my berry! To give to Akane!" He launched himself at Ace, rubbery arms flailing, trying to retrieve the masticated remains of the offering. "Spit it out, Ace! Spit it out!"
"Too late, little brother!" Ace laughed, easily sidestepping Luffy's clumsy attack, using a burst of Soru to put a few feet of distance between them. "Already digested! Fueling my superior intellect and devastating charm!"
What followed was a chaotic, berry-fueled skirmish that devolved into a full-blown wrestling match amidst the bushes. Luffy, fueled by righteous indignation and the perceived slight to his romantic gesture, stretched and bounced and flailed, trying to pin Ace down. Ace, enjoying himself immensely, used his superior agility and fledgling Rokushiki techniques to evade, counter, and generally make Luffy look ridiculous, all while providing a running commentary on Luffy's terrible wooing skills and my apparent weakness for boys who offered me pilfered fruit.
I stood by, initially trying to intervene, to restore some semblance of order to our supposed "date," but eventually, I just leaned against a tree, arms crossed, a reluctant smile playing on my lips as I watched them. They were idiots. Absolute, incorrigible idiots. But they were my idiots, in a strange, complicated, Mt.-Colubo-forged kind of way. Their bickering, their roughhousing, even Ace's relentless teasing – it was all part of their bizarre charm, a chaotic energy that was somehow… comforting. It was a world away from the cold, calculated cruelty of the World Government, a world away from the silent, lonely vigilance of my past four years.
After several minutes of fruitless (pun intended) wrestling, which mostly involved Luffy getting himself tangled in his own limbs and Ace laughing himself breathless, they collapsed in a heap on the forest floor, covered in dirt, leaves, and squashed berry juice, panting and grinning.
"Okay, okay, truce!" Ace gasped, wiping sweat and berry stains from his face. "You win, Luffy. I officially declare that the single most pathetic attempt at romantic fruit-offering I have ever witnessed."
Luffy, lying on his back, starfish-style, just grinned up at the canopy. "Shishishishi! But Akane still likes me!" he declared triumphantly, as if that settled everything.
I couldn't help but laugh, shaking my head at their absurdity. "You're both impossible," I said, pushing myself off the tree and walking over to them. I offered a hand to Luffy, pulling him to his feet. He bounced up easily, his earlier indignation forgotten, his grin as bright as ever. Ace grumbled something about "favoritism" but accepted my offered hand as well, pulling himself up with a groan.
"Alright," I said, trying to inject some semblance of purpose back into our outing. "Since the berry patch has been thoroughly pillaged and wrestled in, maybe we should explore a bit? Find that stream with the sparkly fish Luffy was talking about?"
"Yosh!" Luffy agreed instantly. "Sparkly fish! Maybe we can eat them!"
"You try to eat everything, Luffy," Ace sighed, but he was already starting to walk deeper into the forest, his earlier playful antagonism replaced by a familiar, adventurous curiosity.
We wandered for a while, Luffy leading the way, his internal compass seemingly tuned to finding interesting (and usually edible or dangerous) things. The forest here was older, denser, the trees towering above us like ancient, silent guardians. Sunlight struggled to penetrate the thick canopy, casting the forest floor in a perpetual twilight. Strange bird calls echoed in the distance, and the air was thick with the scent of damp earth, decaying leaves, and unknown blossoms.
It was Ace who spotted it first. We were navigating a particularly dense patch of undergrowth, pushing aside thick ferns and tangled vines, when he suddenly stopped, his head tilted, an expression of intense curiosity on his face.
"Oi," he said, his voice low. "What's that?"
He pointed towards a small, shadowed alcove formed by the roots of a massive, gnarled tree, a tree that looked older than the mountain itself. Nestled amongst the twisting roots, half-hidden by moss and shadows, was an object unlike anything I had ever seen.
It was a fruit, roughly the size of a large melon, but its shape was jagged, irregular, almost like a piece of volcanic rock that had been roughly hewn into a fruit-like form. Its surface was a mottled landscape of black and dark grey, like scorched stone, with deep, angry-looking cracks running through it, reminiscent of the fractured crust of an active volcano. Patches of what looked like volcanic glass, slick and obsidian-black, shimmered dully in the dim light. It didn't look natural. It looked… dangerous. Volatile.
But the most striking feature was the light emanating from within. Through the deep cracks in its dark surface, a faint, pulsating glow of molten orange and fiery red could be seen, like magma churning just beneath a layer of hardened lava. It seemed to throb with a contained, internal heat, giving off a faint, almost imperceptible warmth that we could feel even from a few feet away. It pulsed with a subtle, unpredictable rhythm, like a slumbering beast.
We approached cautiously, drawn by its strange, ominous beauty. Luffy, typically, was the least cautious. "Whoa! What is that thing?!" he exclaimed, poking it with a curious finger. "Is it a rock? Or a fruit? Can we eat it?"
"Don't touch it, Luffy!" Ace snapped, pulling his brother back, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He circled the strange object slowly, examining it from all angles. "I've never seen anything like it. It doesn't look like any fruit I know." He glanced at me. "Akane? You recognize this?"
I shook my head, equally perplexed and uneasy. I'd encountered strange and wonderful things in my four years drifting through the West Blue, but nothing like this. The fruit radiated a strange energy, a feeling of immense, contained power, not unlike the faint aura I sometimes sensed from my own Tenshi fruit, but darker, more elemental, more… explosive. "No," I said softly. "It feels… wrong. Dangerous."
The way it glowed from within, the jagged, rock-like texture, the faint, almost imperceptible smell of sulfur that seemed to cling to it… it reminded me of something. Volcanoes. The destructive, creative power of the earth itself.
Luffy, however, was not deterred by warnings of danger. His curiosity, especially when it came to potentially edible things, was boundless. "But it looks cool!" he insisted, trying to get closer again. "And it's glowing! Maybe it's a super-rare treasure fruit!" He had a particular fondness for anything he deemed "treasure."
"It could also be poison, idiot," Ace grumbled, though he too seemed undeniably fascinated by the strange object. He prodded it cautiously with the end of his metal pipe. The fruit didn't react, just continued its slow, rhythmic pulsing, the internal light flaring slightly at the touch.
"Jii-san told us about weird fruits," Luffy mused, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Like mine! And Akane's! Fruits that give you super cool powers!" His eyes suddenly lit up with a manic gleam. "Hey! Maybe this is one of those! A Devil Fruit!"
The words hung in the air. A Devil Fruit. We'd all heard Garp's tales, of course, the hushed warnings and exaggerated stories about the mystical fruits that granted incredible, often bizarre, powers at the cost of the user's ability to swim. Luffy was living proof of their existence, his rubbery body a constant testament to their reality. And I carried my own secret, the Tenshi Tenshi no Mi, a power far beyond what even Garp seemed to fully comprehend.
But to find one, just… lying here, in the middle of the forest on Mt. Colubo? It seemed too improbable. Devil Fruits were said to be incredibly rare, scattered across the vast oceans, their appearances shrouded in legend.
Yet, looking at the strange, glowing, rock-like object before us, the possibility felt undeniably real. It pulsed with that same unnatural energy, that same sense of contained, otherworldly power.
"A Devil Fruit…?" Ace repeated, his voice hushed, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe, apprehension, and a dawning, reckless excitement. He looked from the fruit to Luffy, then to me. If it was a Devil Fruit… what kind of power did it hold?
Luffy, predictably, had already made up his mind. "It is a Devil Fruit!" he declared with absolute certainty, his eyes shining. "I can feel it! It's calling to me! Or… maybe to Ace! Yeah, Ace! You should eat it!"
Ace flinched. "Me?! Why me?!"
"Well, me and Akane already have cool powers!" Luffy reasoned, with his own brand of irrefutable logic. "You're the only one who's just… normal Ace." He patted Ace's arm sympathetically. "This could be your chance to get super cool powers too! Then we can all be super cool Devil Fruit buddies!"
"I'm not 'normal Ace'!" Ace snapped, bristling at the perceived insult, though a flicker of something – curiosity? Desire? – entered his eyes as he looked back at the pulsating fruit. The allure of power, of standing on equal footing with his rubbery brother and the girl who could conjure light, was undeniably tempting. He'd always been driven, ambitious, determined to make his own mark on the world, to escape the shadow of… well, whatever shadows haunted him. A Devil Fruit could be the key.
But he was also cautious, intelligent. He remembered Garp's warnings about the price of such power – the inability to swim, the potential for dangerous, uncontrollable abilities. "But… what if it's a bad one?" Ace mused, his gaze fixed on the fruit. "What if it turns me into a… a giant slug? Or makes me sneeze uncontrollably for the rest of my life?"
Luffy just shrugged. "Shishishishi! Then you'd be a super cool giant slug Ace! Or a super sneezy Ace! It'd still be an adventure!"
I watched them, a sense of unease prickling at the back of my neck. The fruit felt… potent. Powerful. But also unpredictable. Dangerous. The way it pulsed, the way it seemed to radiate heat, the faint smell of sulfur… it all screamed of fire, of eruption, of immense, destructive force. Kazan. Volcano.
"Hey, Ace," Luffy said again, his voice earnest, his eyes shining with a mixture of excitement and genuine affection for his brother. He picked up the strange, jagged fruit, its dark surface surprisingly warm to the touch, the internal light pulsing against his palm. He held it out to Ace.
"Eat it."
Luffy's simple, earnest directive – "Eat it." – hung in the dim, sulfur-tinged air of the forest alcove. The strange, jagged fruit, pulsing with an inner fire, rested in his outstretched palm, an offering of unimaginable power and equally unimaginable risk. Ace stared at it, his face a battleground of conflicting emotions. The desire for strength, the ambition that burned in his blood, the yearning to carve out his own destiny, free from the shadows of his lineage and the judgment of the world – it all warred with a deep-seated caution, a fear of the unknown, of the irreversible price that came with such power.
"You really think I should?" Ace asked, his voice rough, his gaze still fixed on the volcanic fruit. He wasn't looking at Luffy, or at me. He seemed to be looking inward, grappling with a decision that felt far heavier than the fruit itself.
"Shishishishi! Of course!" Luffy exclaimed, his conviction unwavering. "It's a Devil Fruit, Ace! It's super cool! And it's glowing! Glowing things are always awesome!" He nudged the fruit closer to Ace's hand. "Think of the adventures we could have! Three Devil Fruit users! We'd be unstoppable! We could fight Sea Kings for breakfast! And find all the treasure!" His eyes shone with the pure, unadulterated thrill of possibility.
I remained silent, watching them, a knot of unease tightening in my stomach. The fruit… it felt wrong. Not evil, necessarily, but immensely powerful, volatile, like a contained inferno just waiting for a spark. The faint smell of sulfur, the way the internal light pulsed with an almost aggressive rhythm, the jagged, rock-like texture – it all screamed of untamed, destructive force. The Kazan Kazan no Mi, if that's what it truly was, felt like a power that could easily consume its wielder if they weren't strong enough, focused enough, to control it.
Was Ace strong enough? He was undeniably powerful, his Rokushiki training under Garp having forged him into a formidable young fighter. His willpower was immense, his determination unshakeable. But this… this felt different. This wasn't about learned techniques or physical conditioning. This was about binding himself to an elemental force, inviting a volcano to reside within his very soul.
"But… what if it is a bad one, Luffy?" Ace persisted, his voice still laced with doubt. "What if I can't control it? What if it… changes me? Makes me into something… monstrous?" The last word was barely a whisper, betraying a deeper fear, a fear perhaps tied to the secrets of his own bloodline, the whispers of a heritage that haunted him.
Luffy just tilted his head, his expression one of genuine confusion. "Monstrous? Why would it make you monstrous, Ace? You're Ace!" He poked Ace's arm. "Even if you turn into a giant, fire-breathing slug, you'd still be our Ace! We'd just have to find bigger pipes for you to carry! And maybe a giant salt shaker!" He grinned, his logic simple, unwavering, and utterly, infuriatingly endearing. For Luffy, friendship, brotherhood, trumped everything, even the possibility of his brother becoming a mollusk of mass destruction.
Ace let out a shaky laugh, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. Luffy's unwavering faith, his simple acceptance, seemed to cut through some of his fear. He looked from Luffy's bright, encouraging face to mine. His eyes searched mine, silently asking a question I wasn't sure I could answer. What do you think, Akane? Should I do this?
I met his gaze, my own expression carefully neutral, though my heart pounded with a mixture of apprehension and a strange, unwilling curiosity. What did I think? Part of me, the cautious, pragmatic survivor, wanted to scream No! It's too dangerous! Don't do it! But another part, the part that had tasted the power of a Devil Fruit, the part that understood the burning desire for strength, for the ability to protect, to defy… that part understood Ace's yearning.
And Garp Ji-san… he'd never explicitly forbidden them from seeking out Devil Fruits. He'd warned of their dangers, of the price, but he'd also acknowledged their power. He was raising them, training them, for a world where such power was often the difference between survival and oblivion.
I thought of the Tenshi Tenshi no Mi, the Archangel power slumbering within me. It was a terrifying responsibility, a dangerous secret. But it was also… mine. A part of me. A source of strength I was only just beginning to understand. Could I deny Ace the chance to find his own strength, his own power, however dangerous the path?
"It's your choice, Ace," I said finally, my voice quiet but steady. I looked at the volcanic fruit, then back at him. "Devil Fruits… they change you. Forever. You lose the sea. You gain… something else. Something powerful. Something that might be hard to control." I thought of my own uncontrolled bursts of light, the healing warmth I couldn't always summon, the wings I couldn't yet command. "It's a big risk."
I paused, then added, my voice softer, "But… Luffy's right. Whatever happens… you'll still be Ace." I offered him a small, hesitant smile. "And we'll figure it out. Together."
Ace stared at me for a long moment, his dark eyes searching mine. My words, my hesitant acceptance, seemed to tip the scales. The last vestiges of fear in his expression faded, replaced by a burgeoning resolve, a spark of reckless determination that mirrored Luffy's own adventurous spirit. He looked back at the fruit in Luffy's hand, his gaze no longer filled with doubt, but with a fierce, burning intensity.
"Alright," he said, his voice low but firm, a decision made. He reached out, his hand trembling slightly, and took the jagged, glowing fruit from Luffy. It felt surprisingly heavy in his palm, warm, almost hot, the internal light pulsing like a captured heartbeat. He looked at it for a long moment, as if memorizing its strange, dangerous beauty.
Then, with a deep breath, he brought it to his lips.
Luffy watched, breathless, his eyes wide with excitement. I watched, my heart pounding, a knot of apprehension tightening in my stomach. This was it. The moment of no return.
Ace didn't hesitate. He took a large bite.
His face contorted instantly. His eyes widened in shock, then squeezed shut in disgust. He gagged, a strangled sound escaping his throat. "Gah! This tastes… AWFUL!" he choked out, his voice hoarse. He looked like he was about to be violently ill.
"What's it taste like, Ace?!" Luffy asked eagerly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Is it spicy? Is it rocky?"
"It tastes like… like burnt rubber mixed with rotten eggs and… and regret!" Ace gasped, forcing himself to swallow the mouthful. He looked at the remaining fruit in his hand with an expression of utter revulsion. "This is the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten in my entire life!" He shuddered.
Devil Fruits were notoriously foul-tasting. That much, Garp had made abundantly clear. Apparently, the Kazan Kazan no Mi was no exception.
Ace took another, smaller, more hesitant bite, his face a mask of pure suffering. He chewed quickly, swallowing with a grimace, his whole body seeming to rebel against the taste. He continued, bite by agonizing bite, forcing down the vile fruit, his determination overriding his gag reflex. Luffy offered encouraging cheers ("You can do it, Ace! Think of the super cool powers!"), while I just watched, a mixture of awe and pity swirling within me.
Finally, with one last, shuddering swallow, the fruit was gone. Ace dropped the small, rocky core to the ground, panting, his face pale and sweaty, looking like he'd just wrestled a Sea King and lost. He swayed slightly on his feet.
"Ace? You okay?" Luffy asked, his earlier excitement replaced by concern.
Ace didn't answer immediately. He just stood there, breathing heavily, his eyes closed. A strange stillness settled over him. The air in the alcove grew heavy, charged, the faint smell of sulfur intensifying. The dim light filtering through the canopy seemed to darken, as if a storm was gathering.
Then, his eyes snapped open.
They were different.
The familiar dark brown was gone, replaced by an intense, molten amber, glowing with an inner fire, like the fissures in the fruit he had just consumed. They were unsettling, dangerous, beautiful. They were the eyes of a volcano.
A faint wisp of black smoke, like ash, curled from his fingertips. His skin, where it was visible beneath his shirt, seemed to darken subtly, taking on a charcoal-like hue. The air around him grew noticeably warmer.
"Ace…?" I whispered, a shiver running down my spine despite the increasing heat.
He looked at his hands, flexing his fingers slowly. The faint wisps of smoke grew thicker, swirling around his arms. He clenched his fists, and the smoke solidified, not into fire, but into dark, smoldering ash, like embers fanned by a sudden wind. Tiny, glowing veins, like molten magma, pulsed faintly beneath his skin, visible even in the dim light.
"I feel… different," he said, his voice rougher, deeper than before. He looked up, his glowing amber eyes meeting ours. There was a new power thrumming within him, a raw, elemental force that was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. "I feel… hot. Like… like something's burning inside me."
He took a step, and the ground beneath his feet seemed to tremble almost imperceptibly. The moss around his boots sizzled faintly, turning brown and brittle.
"Whoa!" Luffy breathed, his eyes wide with wonder. "Ace! You're smoking! And your eyes are glowing! That's so cool!"
Ace looked at his smoking hands again, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. It wasn't his usual teasing smirk. This was different. Wilder. More primal. He clenched his fists again, and this time, the smoldering ash around them burst into actual flames – not the bright, clean fire of a campfire, but a dark, oily, volcanic flame, tinged with orange and red, spitting black smoke.
"Fire…" Ace whispered, staring at the flames dancing on his fists, his glowing eyes reflecting their hungry light. He laughed, a low, guttural sound that seemed to rumble up from the depths of his chest, from the heart of the volcano that now resided within him. "This is… incredible."
He looked at us, his smile widening, his eyes blazing with a newfound power. "Luffy. Akane." He took a step forward, the dark flames on his fists casting flickering shadows on his face, making him look both heroic and terrifying. "Get ready."
He raised a flaming fist, the heat radiating outwards, making us take an involuntary step back. The air crackled with contained energy. The ground beneath him seemed to hum.
"Because," Ace declared, his voice no longer that of a boy, but of something older, something more powerful, something born of fire and ash, "things are about to get a whole lot hotter."