"You're fifty-two years early."
The words were still hovering over the steam of the rice when the ship shuddered hard enough to rattle chopsticks in their bowls. Something out on the water slammed the hull. A thin line of rum jumped in Gray's cup and then fell flat.
Pelly didn't even look up. "That," he said, stubbing out his cigarette, "is either taxes or trouble."
"Battle stations," Gray said, already on his feet.
Chairs scraped back. The cheerful kitchen became a corridor of quick hands and habit: Andrew killed the fire under the wok and grabbed a coil of rope; Damon pulled a hatch and the deck above opened to blue and smoke; Teuton's heavy steps hit the ladder like a drum roll.
Ace rose with them, flame itching along his wrists. Don't guess. Look. He followed Gray up.
Sun and spray. Three Marine warships stood off their bow in a sharp line, guns trained. On the nearest, a man with a squared jaw launched forward in a blur, fist like a cannonball. The man didn't jump; he arrived—across the gap and into Gray's black fire with a crash that tore sound out of the air. Shock waves rippled the sea.
"Iron fist," Pelly said, remarkably bored. "Garp."
Gray slid back across the deck, boots drawing a quiet black smear where the flames curled under his soles. He looked delighted. "So young," he said. "Pretty."
"Focus," Pelly answered, but he was smiling.
Ace gritted his teeth against the heat and pressure. He knew that name; everyone knew that name. Garp. The man's punch had the arrogance of a natural disaster. Gray met it with a curtain of heat that bent but did not break. Black flame licked Garp's knuckles and left no mark.
On the enemy ship, a spare man with an unreadable face and a Justice cloak was moving like a metronome through the chaos, tidy as a lecture. Sengoku. He stepped where cannonballs would not be, ordered, adjusted, and the Marines shot straighter just by looking at him.
"Captain!" Alder called from the helm. His eyes were half-closed, like a man listening to thunder on the far side of a mountain. "Message from Abel."
Ace blinked. "From—how?"
"Twins," Alder said, tapping his temple. "Short-range only."
On the middle warship, Ace finally spotted Abel—a dark-jacketed figure flickering between Marines like a hole cut in daylight. Bullets vanished when they met his hands. Swords went wrong, sliding sideways into that small gravity that wasn't gravity. Abel looked almost apologetic as he moved, as if he hated to be rude to physics.
"He says," Alder murmured, and then went still, head tilted. A quick breath, and he cupped a hand to Gray's ear as the captain slipped past him to meet another of Garp's punches. "That kid we picked up is Garp's grandson."
Garp's fist hit flame. Gray's eyes warmed with something that wasn't heat.
Ace's chest went cold. Grandson. The word landed with a second impact. He tasted salt. He had never once thought of introducing himself as anything but Ace. The rest of his names felt like grenades.
Gray held Garp's punch on a palm of black fire the way a man might hold a bird. "We're done," he said, easy as rain.
"What?" Teuton said, scandalized.
"Disengage," Gray repeated, smiling like a lazy cat. "Today I'm in a good mood."
A cannon boomed; Sengoku lifted two fingers and the next volley corrected itself. Garp's eyes narrowed, not at the retreat order but at Gray's face—at the math changing behind it.
"Andrew," Gray called, "make the weather petty."
"I have just the thing," Andrew said, rolling his shoulders as if loosening a coat. He threw both hands wide, and the air around them thickened, diluted, turned milk-white. Fog rose in sheets that made the horizon dissolve. Ropes of vapor coiled over the rail and sank to kiss the sea. In a blink the Marines' tidy triangles of intent became confused lines and then nothing at all.
Sengoku's voice came like the edge of a blade through cloth. "Keep your spacing! Watch your—"
Garp didn't wait for orders. He lunged for Gray again, and hit air. The captain had stepped left and then down—down off his own deck and into the ocean, sparks hissing as black fire touched spray.
Ace made a noise, half warning, half disbelief. "He—!"
Gray vanished.
"Look up," Pelly said.
Ace did, throat tight. Gray was already back, not swimming, standing — on a low, slow drift of cloud that had not been in the sky a second ago. He bounced on it once, twice, testing the spring, and then grinned down at Garp.
"Still want to fight?" he called. "Tell Sengoku to pack a lunch. Or next time I'll come to Marineford."
"You dare!" Sengoku's voice snapped the fog like cloth being torn.
"I dare everything," Gray said, and then to his crew: "Alder."
"On it." Alder's hands shifted on the wheel. The ship nosed into the fog at a raked angle that would have insulted a lesser keel. Teuton's—massive, gentle—hands secured lines that did not need to be secured. Damon cursed at the way the sea decided to be troublesome. Bard played a chord that sounded like someone sanding steel. Latin flicked her fan open for the drama of it and then used it to stop Tang-Tang from walking off the edge.
On the Marine decks, orders collided. Cannon crews fired into a world made of wool. Abel slipped backward over the rail of his warship, hit the water, and did not sink; a slick of cloud slid under his boots like a rescuer's hand. He ran for them as if the sky were a street.
"Cloud taxis," Teuton grumbled. "At least this time they're my kind of wet."
A punch of wind, a hard turn, and the Marines were smoke on water. The fog took their shapes and ate them.
Pelly leaned on the rail and lit a new cigarette with a match he struck on his own teeth. He watched Gray walk the cloud down to the deck like a staircase that loved him, and exhaled. "That's enough drama," he said. "Kitchen's getting cold."
Gray hopped the last step and landed with a grin. "Sengoku hates surprises," he reported. "Garp likes them."
"What did he say?" Andrew asked, hands still loose and fog-thick.
"He asked if I underestimated him," Gray said. "I told him I couldn't help it."
"That will go over well," Pelly said.
Ace swallowed. His pulse felt late to its own party. On another day he might have bristled at Gray making light of legends. Today he was stuck on the simple physics of what he'd seen: an iron fist meeting black fire and not winning by much. Heat over range. He could hear Gray from earlier as if the captain had left a thumbprint on the inside of his skull. Sharpen it.
"Report," Gray said.
"Two scraped knuckles and one bruised ego," Colin said cheerfully. "Guess whose."
"Abel?" Gray asked.
A dark head popped over the rail, and then Abel rolled onto the deck, water streaming off him and then off the water, falling sideways into Alder's cupped hand and then spilling into the sea, because between the two of them gravity was a suggestion. Abel pushed his wet hair back and smiled in a way that made Ace think of apology.
"Sorry," he said. "Sengoku is tidy."
"You did fine," Gray said, and then, with the same gentle interest he used for food, "By the way. Why does Garp care about our guest?"
Abel glanced at Ace, then at Alder. Alder folded his arms, which was his way of volunteering to be the rude one. "Because he's Garp's grandson," Alder said.
Teuton winced. Latin's fan stopped half a beat and then carried on. Bard's bow found a blue note.
Ace forced his hands open. Flame tried to lick his palms and he shut it down. "I didn't lie," he said, because silence would only invite worse. "You didn't ask."
Gray made a small, pleased sound. "I like honest thieves."
"I'm not—" Ace bit it off. The crew was watching him like a puzzle they were considering stealing. "I'm Ace. That's all that matters here."
"Good," Gray said. He turned to the rail, watched the fog thin, and clapped once to knock the last of the fight out of the air. "We're done with Marines for the afternoon. Now: navigation."
A small carpet had appeared near the helm, and Charles was sitting cross-legged on it with an assortment of objects: a cup, a string of beads, a piece of chalk. He rolled the cup, listened to the way it landed, and nodded as if the ocean had told him a joke in an old language.
Ace walked over. "You're going to pick a heading with… that?"
"With fate," Charles said, as if that were more specific than it sounded. "It's noisy today. Fog makes the world talkative."
"You people don't use Log Poses?" Ace asked, trying not to sound like someone who had just learned that knives existed.
The crew looked at him like he had suggested they hire a second sun. Even Pelly.
"Why spend good money," Pelly said, "when we have a person who can tell us where to go?"
"Because instruments don't take naps," Ace said.
Charles lidded his eyes. "I don't nap. I dream while awake."
"That's napping," Bard offered.
"Quiet," Charles said pleasantly. He traced a slow line on the deck with chalk. "Straight ahead for now. The sea's thin in that direction." He opened his eyes. "We'll head for the first half."
"The first half?" Ace repeated.
"Rocks is in the first half," Charles said, as if discussing the weather. "If you want that name you said—Whitebeard…" He tasted it like a new spice. "Then Rocks is the door he would have used. Or will use. Or won't, if we get there first."
"Good," Gray said. He didn't press the grammar. "We'll go meet Rocks."
Teuton rubbed his head. "I dislike every noun in that sentence."
"Seconded," Damon said. "But if we find him, I want to see his ship's beams. Purely as a professional."
"Vote noted," Pelly said, tone implying that if votes mattered, this ship would have capsized long ago. He rolled his shoulders and looked to Gray. "Captain?"
Gray leaned on the rail and let the fog unroll like torn paper, the strip of blue widening in front of them. "We saved a stranger," he said. "We fought legends. The cook's food is cooling. And fate just pointed at the door to Rocks."
He turned, lazy grin at half-mast. "Raise the sails."
Alder's hands moved. Ropes sang in Damon's palms. Andrew flicked the fog like a tablecloth and it slid away obediently, revealing a street of sea that led into the sun.
Ace stood beside Gray and watched the canvas belly full. He wanted to ask a hundred things—about time, about names, about what it meant to hunt a ghost who should be dead or not yet born. He didn't. He watched the line of the horizon and felt the ache in his chest fade under a familiar, simpler pain: the need to be better.
Gray tipped his chin toward the blue. "To the first half," he said. "To Rocks."