𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐀||𝐅𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐮 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐨

00||Valhalla

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In which Marco the Phoenix, First Division Commander and First Mate of the Whitebeard Crew, has been missing in action for the past two months.

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In which his past has finally caught up to him. The past long before meeting the Whitebeard's. The past he had left behind. The family he had left behind.

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A family he wishes, sometimes, would just stay dead. A family he wishes would just throw him away. A family he has wronged so many times. He didn't deserve their love again. It ate him up inside every day. Clawing at his throat until it was dry and mangled like crumpled sand paper. It twisted his organs in overwhelming guilt until they wanted to spill out of his stomach. It never stopped.

Their faces never disappeared no matter how hard he tried to forget.

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It felt so wrong to find the Whitebeard's and declare them his family. But he couldn't find it in himself to regret it. He had wronged his first family. The family who had sacrificed everything for him.

The same family that told him to live a life of freedom. A life of peace. A life of prosperity. A life of safety. A life of happiness.

Any yet...

And yet he joined pirates.

He didn't live up to his family's notions. He had replaced them with the ideals of his new family.

It all felt so wongwrongerongerongwrong—

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But now they're standing right in front of him. Right there. At the same island in the New World.

Valhalla

The Sacred Land of Phoenixes

The once beautiful and small paradise that had once been hidden from the world, destroyed. The first island in the world to invent modern medicine and become a medical powerhouse even more advanced than Drum.

The once beautiful sky filled with endless white clouds and sea of blue was replaced by a a heavy black haze that never seemed to vanish no matter how many times he had visited. The magnetic zone around the island didn't let the smoke escape, the scent of death still wafted around the former paradise.

Everything had been burnt to the ground. Everything. The air still carried the scent of blood and death on that fateful night fifty seven years ago. The charred wood and marble from villages all reduced to rubble and now covered in black soot and ash like a heavy blanket despite it formerly being a spring island.

Not a single corpse was left. Not even the children. All of them were taken for their feathers and voices.

So why...why were they still alive when he saw them at the hands of the hunters?

Why was his family still alive when he saw them get killed?

Phoenixes being immortal was a mere rumor. They just have three hundred year lifespans. They died like human beings. They even lived among them in hiding.

They gifted humankind the power of healing.

And yet their thirst for power is never quenched.

And so they take and kept taking, until even infinite healing and stretched lifespans wasn't enough.

No.

They wanted the phoenixes themselves.

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