The Whitebeard Pirates' Playground

Ch.6 - Birthday Cake?

And in the morning? In the morning everything seemed fine. Only the ones closest to Ace would notice that something felt off, but even then, it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what was wrong. But Thatch had hope that his birthday cake would cheer the kid up, who didn't like a birthday cake especially made for them! While the other commanders tried to keep Ace from eating the whole breakfast table, Thatch went to get the cake.

Getting to the kitchen he took the cake out of the fridge and placed some candles on it. He admired his own work for a minute before giving himself a pat on the back for it, it looked great. Even the candles were in the same theme and had fire marks on them. With a hum he grabbed a lighter and the cake before making his way towards the birthday boy.

"Make way, make way! Important delivery coming through!" The chef was calling with a smile, already getting the attention of said birthday-boy. Nothing is done in vain, because in the moment of his distraction, Marco had quickly swiped the plates of food from in front of Ace, thus creating enough space for the cake to be put down.

"Here you go! An absolute masterpiece if I say so myself haha!" - "Hmmm, you really outshined yourself, didn't you, Thatch-yoi." While lightning the candles, Thatch was smiling like a lunatic, swimming in the praises, "But of course! You do know you are talking to me right, everything I make is sublime! And this is for my baby brother, so it has to be perfect!"

Once all the candles were lit, they had wanted to start singing for Ace, but Ace beat them to it with a very unexpected question.

"Why did you light the food on fire?"

"Huh, what?"

Ace quirked an eyebrow, the kid looked genuinely confused "The food, why did you light it on fire?"

Thatch didn't know who, but someone supplied the very logical reason of "Because it's your birthday cake."

"Huh, I didn't know there was a special cake you could like on fire, neat."

"I... Ace, no..." The chef was kind of speechless, who didn't know what a birthday cake was? "... Haven't you had a birthday cake before?"

Ace had stood up from his chair and was looking over the cake in wonder, poking the flames. One would normally say to not play with fire, but well, Ace is fire, so he is an exception. "Hmm, I don't think so, are they always on fire? Because I've had normal cake before, like you even made those ehm lava cakes last week." -Even if they had no real lava in them, false advertisement.- "mmm, now that you mention it, I think I did see these before. The noble kids sometimes had these, they didn't have these fancy flames decorations on the side though. They did have these mini fires on them, I tried to steal one at some point because it looked cool, but the fire went out the moment I ran with it so it was kind of disappointing, and the guards were even able to stop me that time, so I didn't have the chance to eat it."

The commanders all had a sad look in their eyes, they knew that Ace didn't have the best childhood, you could see it from the way he carried himself. But to not even have had a single birthday cake? Or even a cupcake with a candle? It broke their heart, even if they were supposed to be fierce pirates, this was just sad. "Ace...."

Still poking the flame, the named person looked up, still looking very intrigued "mmm, yea? ...... Thatch, why are you crying dude? I can put out the flames if you want, so it doesn't burn the food?"

Thatch quickly wiped his tears away with his sleeves, this wasn't about him, this was about Ace, "No, Ace, leave them on and come here bro!"