"Mario, help us!" Luffy pleaded, his eyes wide and starved. Usopp and Chopper turned in unison, their expressions mirroring their captain's desperate plea.
"Fine," Mario sighed, walking over. "Let's see what you're working with. What are you using for bait?"
"Well, we started with some cheese," Usopp explained, gesturing vaguely. "But nothing was biting. So we thought, why not use something bigger to catch something BIG? Sooo…"
"QUAK QUAK QUAAAAAAK!!!!"
Mario's gaze followed the frantic quacking downward. There, dangling from a fishing line tied haphazardly around its middle, was a terrified Karoo, being lowered towards the water like a feathered lure.
"Figures," Mario sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. The sheer, predictable absurdity was almost impressive.
"KAROO!" Vivi came sprinting across the deck, her face a mask of fury. "Are you guys INSANE?"
"What? It was a great id—" Usopp began, only to be cut off by a swift, sharp thump on the head from Vivi.
"Set her free this instant!" she commanded. They quickly complied, and a frazzled Karoo shot behind Vivi's legs, shooting the trio a look of profound betrayal.
"Okay, that is categorically not going to work," Mario stated, taking command.
"Usopp, go ask Sanji for some stale bread, corn flour, and any fish guts he might have saved from earlier. Tell him I sent you."
Luffy tilted his head. "What's that for?"
"You'll see," Mario said cryptically. "Chopper, you go tell Nami to stop the ship. The wind's light; we won't lose much time."
After Usopp returned with the requested items, Mario knelt and began to work. As he crumbled the hard bread and mixed it with the flour and pungent fish guts, a wave of memory washed over him. In his previous world, his father had dragged him fishing every weekend. Mario had hated it. He'd resented being pulled away from his manga and video games, seeing it as a punishment for his hobbies. His father, a stern, quiet man, had never understood his son's interests, and Mario had never tried to explain.
But on those long, silent hours by the water, he'd absorbed the knowledge nonetheless. How to read the water, how to tie a proper knot, how to chum the water to attract a school. He remembered his father's rough hands demonstrating the technique, the same one he was using now.
The memory was no longer bitter. With the clarity of time and distance, Mario realized his father hadn't been trying to punish him. He'd been trying, in his own clumsy, inarticulate way, to connect with his son, to share the only thing he knew. Mario had realized this far too late, after a massive argument and his father's sudden passing. He'd never gotten the chance to apologize, to thank him, to tell him he finally understood. Sometimes, in his old life, he would go fishing alone, not for sport, but as a quiet, solitary memorial.
Now, on the deck of the Going Merry, kneading the sticky bait between his fingers, the memory was sharp but softened by a profound gratitude. His father's unwanted lessons were now going to save his new family from starvation. He shaped the mixture into tight, compact balls.
"Alright," Mario said, his voice pulling him back to the present. He tossed a handful of the chum into the water, creating a slick, smelly patch. "Now, we wait. And this time, we use small hooks with little pieces of this. We're not catching a sea king; we're catching dinner."
***
The galley of the Going Merry was a scene of pure, blissful contentment. The long table, usually showing worrying gaps in its spread, was now groaning under the weight of a staggering array of fish dishes. Platters of grilled snapper with crispy skin, steaming bowls of rich fish stew, delicate sashimi arranged like art, and Sanji's signature fried fish cakes filled the air with an irresistible aroma. After Mario's fishing lesson, the entire crew had joined in, and their collective haul had been nothing short of miraculous.
They had watched in stunned silence as Mario, with a quiet, practiced efficiency, pulled one silvery fish after another from the sea. It was like he had whispered a secret to the ocean itself.
Even Zorro, who had initially scoffed at the "boring" activity, had been drawn in, eventually getting competitive and engaging in a heated but good-natured rivalry with Luffy over who could land the bigger catch.
„Holy crap, Mario, that was amazing!" Usopp exclaimed around a mouthful of stew, his earlier despair completely forgotten. „You turned us into master fishermen!"
„Yup, yup!" Luffy agreed, his cheeks bulging with a massive tuna steak. „I've never seen fish bite that much! It was like they were lining up to jump into the boat! Shishishi!"
„Sanji, you have also outdone yourself," Vivi complimented, delicately savoring a piece of perfectly seared scallop.
„Thank you, Vivi-chwan! Your praise fills me with joy and vigor!" Sanji sang, twirling on one foot before delivering another plate to the table with a flourish.
Even Mario was quietly astonished by the sheer bounty they had pulled from the sea. It made sense, he supposed; the Grand Line's ecosystems were teeming with life, and without modern fishing fleets to deplete them, the waters were a veritable pantry. It was a detail the manga had never needed to cover.
„This is really amazing," Nami said, leaning towards him as she expertly picked up a piece of sashimi with her chopsticks. „Seriously, where did you learn to fish like that?"
All eyes turned to him, curious.
„From my father," Mario said, the words coming easier than he expected.
Luffy's face lit up. „He must be an amazing man! I'd love to meet him!"
A gentle, sad smile touched Mario's lips. He looked down at his plate. „Me too… But he's not in this world anymore."
A hush fell over the table. The clatter of cutlery stopped. The boisterous energy dimmed, replaced by a wave of quiet empathy. Luffy's cheerful expression softened into one of rare, solemn understanding.
„I'm sorry," Luffy said, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
Mario looked around at his crew, their faces filled with genuine sympathy. He felt a lump in his throat, but also a strange sense of peace. „It's fine," he said, his voice steady. „It was a long time ago."
The crew, with an instinctive understanding that spoke volumes of their bond, saw the shadow that had passed over Mario's face and gracefully let the subject drop. The moment of shared sorrow was acknowledged and then allowed to dissipate into the warm, full-bellied contentment of the evening.
Nami, however, caught his eye from across the table. Her voice was soft, a gentle nudge rather than a demand. "Maybe one day you'll tell us." It was an invitation, a promise that the door was open whenever he was ready to walk through it.
Mario offered her a small, grateful smile. It was a smile that held the weight of a past life but also the hope of this new one. "One day," he agreed, the words a quiet vow to himself as much as to her.
The dinner resumed its lively pace, and soon, every crew member was groaning with pleasant fullness. Mario worked alongside Sanji, the two falling into a comfortable rhythm as they preserved the incredible surplus of fish—salting some, hanging others to dry in the sea breeze. The immediate crisis was averted; the Going Merry's larders were, for now, secure.
As the crew began to yawn and shuffle off to their bunks, their bellies full and their spirits high, Mario sought his now-customary refuge among Nami's tangerine trees. He settled into a cross-legged position, the sweet, calming scent of citrus enveloping him as he began to meditate, seeking the inner silence Roger's journal had described.
But tonight, his mind refused to quiet. It wasn't the looming threat of Crocodile that danced behind his closed eyelids. He had already run the scenarios for Alabasta a dozen times. No, his thoughts, sharp and urgent, leaped further ahead, across the sea to a man he had yet to meet.
Portgas D. Ace.
The name was a drumbeat in his soul. The image of Ace—proud, loyal, and fiercely loving—smiling as a fist of magma erupted through his chest was a wound that had never healed from his time as a mere spectator. In this world, that memory was no longer a tragic plot point; it was a premonition of a future he now had the power to prevent.
A cold, hard resolve crystallized within him, colder and harder than any Tekkei. He was completely and utterly unwilling to let that man die.
Ace had been his favorite, a character whose tragic life and brutal end felt like a personal insult—a cheap, forced death for the sake of another character's pain, a moment of impulsive rage that robbed the world of a brilliant flame. The son of the Pirate King, a man who carried the weight of a legacy he never asked for, dying not in a blaze of glory but in a futile gesture? Never.
The thought was anathema to him. It was a fundamental wrong that this new reality, his reality, would not be allowed to commit.
Fuck the narrative, he thought, his jaw tightening. Fuck destiny.
As he sat in the quiet dark, the gentle sway of the ship beneath him, Mario made a new vow, one that eclipsed all his previous goals. He would get stronger, not just to protect the crew at his side, but to reach across the seas and alter the course of a fate he already knew. He would stand at Marineford if he had to. He would face Admirals. He would do whatever it took.
Ace would live. This, he swore on the deck of the ship he now called home.