-Real World-
The Sky Screen had not been kind to their timeline.
Most pirate crews spent their early voyages building up gradually — small obstacles first, then larger ones, the difficulty calibrated by whatever the sea decided to put in front of them next. The Straw Hats had come out of Arlong Park and walked directly into a fully-operational Crocodile and Blackbeard on Drum Island, with no meaningful interval for recovery or growth. The bond between the crew members was real but still being formed; it had roots but not much depth yet. The scene in the bar had changed something. They were standing together in a street in Alubarna, the same group of people who'd been in three separate corners of that room an hour ago, and the composition felt different than it had.
Luffy looked at all of them with undisguised satisfaction.
Nami's eyes were still slightly red. She looked at his smug expression and clenched her fists at her sides with the focused energy of someone deferring a response to a later date. The captain would pay for today's tears eventually. This was not that moment.
"Vivi left angry," Luffy said, with the philosophical serenity of someone who has identified the problem and its solution simultaneously, "but once we save the country she won't be anymore. Debts settle themselves if you handle the cause."
He began walking, already working out the geometry.
Robin had been doing the same geometry, from a different angle.
"Baroque Works has been in this capital for years," she said, falling into step beside him. "They will have people inside the garrison already. When the rebels attack and the fighting reaches its peak, someone on the inside will open the city gate." She paused. "The government soldiers are not necessarily our allies. We guard against the rebels in front and whoever's behind us at the same time."
She knew this city. She'd worked in it — in its shadows, learning its architecture of corruption from the inside. The main gate was the critical point. Hold the main gate, maintain the line, force the siege to run long enough that a hundred thousand people eating through their food supplies became its own solution. Armies that size devoured resources at a rate that politics couldn't sustain for long.
The harder problem was Crocodile himself. The Suna Suna no Mi (Sand-Sand Fruit) user hiding behind the entire operation, allowing the Blackbeard Pirates to slip the Whitebeard Pirates' net and vanish into the rebel mass. He was the ceiling. Everything else was clearing a path to the ceiling.
"I wish Ace was here," Luffy said, for what was probably not the first time today. He said it the way someone says something they've been carrying — not as complaint but as the kind of statement that just escapes sometimes when the thing it refers to has been sitting on you too long. "Fire against sand. That'd do it."
"Luffy."
The voice came from behind him.
Luffy turned around.
Portgas D. Ace stood in the street with freckles and a easy smile and the particular quality of presence that he had always had, the older brother's steadiness that Luffy had been reaching for in his mind every time the Sky Screen had shown him what Marineford looked like.
"Looking for me?"
Luffy's face did the thing it did when something was too large for his usual expressions to contain — a brief paralysis, then everything at once. He crossed the distance between them in two steps and hit Ace hard enough to stagger him, arms locked around his brother's back, face pressed into his shoulder, and Ace's arms came up and held on without ceremony because this was not the kind of embrace that required a preamble.
They stayed like that for a moment. The street continued around them and none of it touched the few feet of space the two brothers were occupying.
Luffy had known. Since the Sky Screen had shown it, he had known, and knowing it had not made the wanting to see his brother less urgent. It had made it more. Every day since Drum Island had been a day longer than it needed to be.
"It's been months," Ace said. "You act like it's been years."
"It has," Luffy said, muffled by Ace's shoulder.
Two more figures had materialized behind Ace. Marco stood with his hands in his pockets, head tilted, taking in the collected Straw Hats with the patient attention of someone conducting an assessment and keeping the results to himself. Vista had his arms crossed, the faintest suggestion of a smile under the mustache.
"Strong resemblance to the old man Garp," Marco observed to Vista, not particularly quietly. "Same jawline. Same energy, almost."
"But the grandson wants to be Pirate King." Vista sounded more amused than surprised. "The old man must be beside himself."
"He's not wrong about the talent, either."
The Straw Hats were looking at the three of them with the expression of people recalibrating who they're standing next to. Whitebeard's commanders were not figures encountered casually in the first half of the Grand Line. Fire Fist Ace, Marco the Phoenix, Flower Sword Vista — the cadres of an Emperor's crew were a different category from what the Straw Hats currently had the numbers for, and everyone in the street understood that calculation instinctively.
Ace disentangled himself from Luffy and turned to face the crew.
"Luffy wants to be the hero of Arabasta. As his oldest brother, I'm obviously going to help with that." He paused. "It also happens that the person we've been tracking is somewhere in that rebel army."
He explained it briefly: Crocodile had told Blackbeard that the Whitebeard Pirates were coming for him, giving the Blackbeard crew enough warning to move before the trap could close. Teach had disappeared into the rebel mass. A man with Blackbeard's ambitions and Blackbeard's particular relationship with greed would follow the rebels into the capital when the time came and move directly toward the wealth. He would not be able to help himself.
Marco and Vista were here for the hunt. Helping Luffy was incidental and not unwelcome.
"We won't be using restraint this time," Ace said. The lightness in his voice had settled into something flatter and more deliberate. "Teach killed a crewmate to get his Devil Fruit and with what he will do in the future. Whatever pirate code applies to that situation, it isn't the one that says pull your punches."
"One fewer future Emperor is better for everyone's odds," Marco added, still in the same mild tone.
Luffy had been listening. Now he nodded, just the simple agreement of someone who had seen what he'd seen on the Sky Screen and had reached the same conclusion through a different path.
Ahead of them, the distant sound of the rebel army had changed register. Movement. The general attack was beginning.
The Straw Hats and the Whitebeard commanders moved toward the main gate.