Fiery Scales

Ch5.-Back to the Ocean?

Doing a bit of a bigger time skip – Ace almost fully recovered and is keeping up with his lessons.

During lunch Ace had fallen asleep while waiting for the others to finish their food, he was a very fast eater. While looking at Ace's resting form Marco smiled softly. The merman's tail seemed to become brighter and brighter by the day. Just like everyone else, he was very happy that the merman's wounds would fully recover and that there wouldn't be any lasting issues.

While already a lot better and him following Marco around like a puppy, -or well, making people carry him and make them follow Marco until he took over-, he was still recovering and so needed to rest a lot. But Marco didn't mind, it was pretty cute, the merman always made some kind of soft snoring sound while asleep. Even though already being on board for a while, he was still not fully used to purely breathing air constantly, and when Ace slept, his gills would open up slightly, causing the rumbling sound to somehow be created.

But ... apparently... getting better also meant finding out that Ace has control over water. Which is pretty cool, don't get him wrong. Marco only wished they could have found out in a different way.

Flashback

"Pops-yoi. Care to tell me why you had sake in your sleeping quarters?"

"I do not know what you are talking about."

"Really?"

"Really-son, I wouldn't lie to you."

"So. You mean to tell me, that a sake bottle just spontaneously appeared in your pillow case-yoi? And that you had no idea it was there?"

".... Yes, that's correct."

Gaining the upteempth tick mark of the day, "Pops, yo-"

"POPS!"

Letting out blessed sigh, Whitebeard turned towards his other son.
"Haruta? What's wrong?"

Out of breath from running, Haruta answered between pants, "Foodvalten* .... Brownbeard pirates ... Threatening villagers ... Request help".

"What do they want, and do we have info on these pirates? How many are there? How strong are they?" Whitebeard asked in a very serious tone.

Leaning against Pop's chair, Haruta finally started to catch his breath. "Haaah, they wish to fight you. ..... The captain has a bounty of 80,060,000 Beli. .... No known devil fruits in the crew."

Nodding to the explanation Whitebeard turned towards his first son. "Marco, I don't like to send you out alone, but we can't leave them in danger. Please check up on the island and take care of them. Make sure they know you can't get away with threatening those under our protection."

"Of course, pops. Foodvalten you said right-yoi? I should be able to get there within a day."

"Thank you, son. Haruta, inform them that Marco will arrive in approximately one day and let navigation know to change our course. And Marco, you take care and be careful. Be sure to call in once it's taken care of."

"Ay!"

Haruta ran back inside while Marco shuffled a sleeping Ace closer to Whitebeard's chair, so he would be able to lean against it and wouldn't fall over from Marco moving. Somewhere in his conversation with Pops, Thatch had kindly dropped the half-asleep merman off at his feet, making Ace lean against him for support.
Blearily Ace looked up at Marco, eyes still full of sleep, "Mahko?".
"Don't worry-yoi, just sleep. I'll be back in a bit." After ruffling the boy's hair, he took a step back and transformed into his hybrid form, already flying to Pop's eye height. This way he could already take off, but was still able to say goodbye to Pops and the others on deck.