I am really...nervous...about continuing this, but if I didn't put this up now, it would forever stick in Limbo and I don't want that.

The end is nearing, can you feel it? Hope I can guide you in this darkness.

Ace was incandescent with his - her - their combined rage. The purity of the hatred created a here-to unparalleled source of power; the devil fruit curse gorged itself on the rank emotion, giving Ace access to unimaginable prowess and capabilities. The hatred was so pure, so instinctive, that Ace had no room for love - no room for Luffy or Sabo, or his fellow Whitebeard commanders. There was no room for reason - reason of Death, Fate, Luck.

The beautiful, caring, loyal, dedicated, willful mind of the one known as Ace had been seared, melted into a shimmering, glittering, deadly-keen crystal facet of hatred. This incomparable emotion would explain how he - she - they, fused into one body, were capable of throwing off Death's subduing Morpheus fog and shattering the protective barrier in their need to remove all traces of the traitor from existence.

Like a wayward comet, Ace - muscles forged of adamantine loathing, reflexes honed on razors of vengeance - streaked into the heart of the Void.

[~~~]

"Ace!" the Other Luffy howled as he struggled to follow the Flame-fist's trail of destruction. Straw-hat Luffy was hard-pressed to hold his counterpart back, his rubber body straining as the raider leader fought tooth and nail.

"Stop it!" Monkey D. Luffy barked as he punched his twin in the face. "That ain't what Ace wants!"

"Den what da fuck does he want, dong-boy?" D. Luffy retorted with a snarl as he bit into his doppelganger's shoulder. "It's Ace 'n' he's gone ta fuck Teach up da ass wid a flaming foot! He needs me now!"

"You idiot!" the pirate captain snapped as he ripped the raider off his shoulder and threw a few strong knees in the other man's gut before kicking him back from the still-smoking hole in the barrier. "Ace is stronger than either of us! He'd just end up protecting our stupid asses from Blackbeard! We'll get him killed again if we interfere-!"

"Break it up!" Sabo roared as his signature lead pipe hit his younger brother in the solar plexus, flinging the rubbery teen into another quadrant of the remaining barrier. The vampire was in full fury now, his illusory skin more like a pale shroud over his luminescence, which painted the enhanced musculature over his skeletal frame in stark relief when compared to the darkness of the cavern. His teeth no longer vaguely resembled anything human - he had the fanged countenance of a hairless, incensed panther.

"If ya two fucknuts ain't noticed yet, dis shite's bigg'r than Ace!" Sabo continued, pointing to the commotion going on behind him as both Zoros went to their respective captain's aid. The negotiation table had been overturned and now laid on its side, charred in the back-draft of Ace's exit. A minor cave-in was still causing stones and pebbles to rain on the assembled crews. Sogeking and Sanji were crouched over the Namis while the Frankys and both Choppers were clearing stone rubble off of Traffie, who was cradled in dryad-Robin's arms and holding his ghoulish father's top hat. B. Bones, Robin, and the Duck were busy helping the very groggy Weird Sisters to sit up, while Usopp and Brook worked to stretch Death out without touching the dark Entity.

"We've got a bloody unconscious Death back 'ere with two head-sprained weird-women 'n' you two gob-smacked wank-offs are worried about a whoreson dragon-belching wannabe!" Sabo bit off as he tried to bring himself under control - not that he had much left after learning about both Aces' deaths and keeping his overly-brilliant son safe. "For fuck's sake, worry about yourselves a little more! Ace has mor'n'enuff malice and horsepower to get the job done!"

"More than enough to stay alive for the moment," Death groaned in correction as Brook and Usopp used their weapons to help the Entity to sit up. "Furthermore, that isn't just Ace in there - too much strength for one body. Fate, check your weaving for me."

"No need, I'd wager," Luck struck up, her care-free tone long gone as she shakily rose to her feet and shook out her dust-coated flame of hair. "Fry-boy left out and his twin's skin is gone. D'ya really wanna bet me that it's already been woven in?"

The expression of unbridled anger on D. Luffy's face almost literally melted away. Scrambling on hands and knees, he used his own brute strength to flip the table upright, regardless of who might or might not still be injured under the heavy, ancient furniture. Sifting through the rubble and dirt with his bare hands, the raider adamantly refused to believe that his sole memento of the person he knew as Ace - the love of his life! - had simply vanished. Hope only began to fade as Fate unraveled the scorched, bullet-riddled leather, inserted piecemeal into the weft of an incendiary orange bolt of whipcord.

"Even worse - since this isn't my work, I can't unravel it."the pale-haired woman muttered angrily as she carefully inspected the fabric of Ace's life. "And to top it all, it's got in bits and pieces of every other one of the incarnations. That Ace is now running around with the capabilities of every single version of him - or her - that ever existed! It's a violation of all Time and Nature, which means it can only be His or...His work"

"I'm sure you can take it up with our Papas later, sis," Luck muttered as she tried to sooth the distraught being, "But right now, we've got to patch back this barrier if we hope to survive any activation of the Void."

"Truly," Death intoned as he too took to his feet, swaying heavily. Turning to the Straw-hats and the Vault-suits, the macabre reaper addressed them in cold, clipped tones as he reached for his infamous scythe.

"We Entities are going to fix this barrier. You mortals will sit down and stay still until we are done. Ace is obviously under the protection of much more capable powers than my own. You, however, are not...not yet at any rate."

His mummified face was riddled through with ire and a trace of something very akin to panic flashed through his icy eyes. In spite of everything that had happened before, no-one was so addled as to cross the Great Leveler when he was obviously scared. Death's blatant fear forced even the Luffys to simmer quietly as the cavern was slowly shut out once more.

[~~~]

"Get back here, Teach!" Ace screeched as his passing caused another stalactite to explode into biting fragments of limestone. The hardened calcium could not even scratch his skin - the razor-sharp flakes merely bounced off of his hardened skin like bullets off of Luffy.

Her skin.

Their skin?

"Negh! Get out!" the young man known as Flame-fist screeched as he clutched his head between both fiery hands. The voices and beings and selfs were growing in number and volume - he could barely stand under the cacophony.

Kill that fucking traitor!

He took Papa! Papa!

Eat him! Consume him!

Destroy~!

Ace howled and turned himself towards a gigantic, yet barely visible stalagmite. Rearing his head back, he slammed it into the stone pillar.

And again.

And again.

Ace could not tell you how long he stood there banging his head against that limestone, but by the time he had finished, it had been reduced to a blackened pile of rubble. However unfortunate the loss of that once-ancient rock formation, the result was worth its weight in gold.

The voices had dulled to a low murmur. Ace - "Fire-fist" Portgas D. Ace, second commander of the Whitebeard Pirates, son of Gol. D. Roger and Portgas D. Rouge - was back in control.

For now.

The silence and gloom of the cavern overwhelmed him almost immediately. His harsh breathing and racing heart slowed painfully as the darkness brought up a murmur of old loss.

Too much; it was too much like being inside of Teach...

It was horrible.

The voice in his head - one of the Aces-that-wasn't - made him aware of the fact that he had to have a plan. Before his fight with Teach, he'd been unaware of the full extent of the man's powers. Now that he had Pop's powers-

He ain't even the Teach you knew.

Well, yes. Even more reason to plan this assault this time.

"Wish we'd thought of that before running after the bastard," Ace whispered before snorting derisively, his brain almost wriggling with guilt. A myriad number of voices, all sounding a touch bashful, murmured lowly. The sensation was painful, making him hiss in agony. There were an almost inconceivable number of...himself? Herself? Was every one embodied in his hide now?

Some won but died in the running.

Pyrrhic victory, wat?

Dey dun got da freak 'n' dey dun gone on.

"So many of us is hard to handle," he managed to groan out loud, burdened heavily by the strange sensation of multiple lifetimes of memories. "One at a time, please, or my head may go up in smoke!"

The murmur rose again and Ace was suddenly very, very afraid that he would end up killing himself on another stalactite before he even got to knock out some of Teach's teeth. Endless voices buzzed inside his head like an overactive hornet's nest before a sudden curtain of silence descended on his mind and all became blissfully blank save for one question.

"How did Teach get the old man's powers?" Ace whispered to himself, ignoring the heart-wrenching hole in his chest that Whitebeard now occupied. As the voices tentatively responded one by one to the painful query, he banked his flames and listened intently.

Slowly, a spark grew from the worn ashes of their combined minds. It might have been a miniscule chink in Teach's armor, but it was all they had to work with.

More importantly, they needed their little brothers' help.

"Okay, let's go back to Luffy and the others right now- fuck!"

Ace's battle-hardened senses had his body moving before he even registered the attack. A large void retreated quickly, leaving a gaping absence in the rock formations.

"Zehahaha, Ace, you's still good! Gonna love havin' yer bitch-head on me belt."

Ace (and Ace and Ace and Ace ad nauseam) looked up as this version of Teach licked his lips eagerly. The humanoid creature was clearly close to seven feet tall and a good four feet wide. His unnaturally black and grey-splotched skin had cracked and blistered from far too much radiation exposure, looking almost like a beetle shell. The only hair present was on his chin - a stiff, spiky out-cropping more like whiskers than facial hair. The only color on the creature was the enormous blue denim jeans it wore, patched together from myriad jeans off of untold numbers of victims, and the gruesome belt of heads that secured the jeans to the gigantic waistline.

One of those heads belonged to Whitebeard.

"No," Ace croaked as wailing echoed through his mind, the flames of manic wrath gathering far too quickly for reason to withstand the onslaught. Around him, the limestone rocks began to char as the trans-dimensional fury manifested itself physically.

"No, it... Pops, but... but why...? Old man, why're you lettin' him...? The old man's... How dare you carry the old man's head? TEACH!"

[~~~]

Death cocked his head to a side as Fate stomped a foot and Luck shook her head angrily. Apparently the higher Two had determined only one way out, and the three of them were only messengers for Them

"It has been decided. You must lessen yourselves if you want the power to save him, to save yourselves, and you must do so on certain terms," Death intoned dryly as the back-draft of flames sheeted the shielded area once more.

Sabo and Traffie, the Straw-hats and the Vault-suits looked at one another quizzically, all save Brook. He muttered and seemed to be shaking off his lassitude, but Death frowned and the skeleton's struggles soon ceased.

'Only the young ones need answer right now, old friend. You're input is most certainly not welcome.'

Monkey D. Luffy didn't need long to puzzle it out. He was already up and walking to Death with his hands fisted tightly. D. Luffy was quickly in pursuit.

"I told you before, I'll give my life to save my brother," the Straw-hat captain snapped loudly, "but not for you to kill him right afterwards like last time!"

"Count me in s'well!" the Vault-suit leader barked, his breath coming in erratic pants. "Gonna do it right 'n' not be late!"

Death froze them in their tracks with a bony hand on each of their chests. His eye sockets darkened as he measured the remaining span of their lives.

"Not nearly enough. I couldn't even take ten years off of each of you and guarantee that you walk out of this cave, especially given how you fight. I need 30 years per person at least, or blood of blood, or sacred memories, or world-changing knowledge, or... Look, neither of you Luffys have enough to spare in any form."

All but the Luffys were stricken dumb by the pronouncement. Not even ten more years? That would have either version dead before the age of 30! Their captains had already lost so much life just getting halfway through their journeys! Most of it just to recruit them!

The howl of an unnatural vacuum shrieked around the enclosed space. Fate and Luck winced and the shield flickered noticeably.

"Listen, all I really need to know is that you others are willing to lessen yourselves in ways you may not even know yet for the power to help your leaders. Speak up, people, these are your dimensions at stake! I don't know or care how that Teach creature managed to siphon the power of a major Void-Walker but he needs to be stopped now!" Death barked loudly, his own cloak beginning to stream under the influence of the invisible power of the vacuum. A fiery scream echoed throughout the cavern, lighting the depths in waves of orange light before being followed by insane laughter.

"You guys," Luffy whimpered, his hat slipping over his eyes as he turned towards the closest crew member - always his first mate, always Zoro. The murderous haki started to coil around their ankles like ill-tempered hounds. His rubbery hands slapped and clawed at his ears as the laughter and shrieking began to reverberate wildly. Tears began streaming from his tightly-shut eyes.

"Please, guys, think of something...anything...before I... I... By the Line, I can't listen to him dying again!"

D. Luffy chose to ignore everything else. He broke his lieutenant's hold and began to sprint, his rubber legs pounding the ground violently before he bodily launched himself at the shield. Fate and Luck had to grit their teeth and throw their hands up in order to keep the shield stable.

"Lemme out! Lemme go! I's gonna save him, doan give a fuck about rules...Ace! Ace! Wait fer me! Doan leave me!"

"We will do it."

Death hissed as he felt Brook shake off his control with a sudden, powerful heave of spiritual energy that left the enclosure covered in otherworldly icicles.

"Brook, damn you, can't you hear to stay still?"

"You can't protect me from myself, Yorki, not at the expense of my crew!" Brook snapped back, unaware or uncaring of the unholy drop in the temperature. His skull had somehow managed a ferocious scowl over his eye sockets, which flickered a nauseatingly chill blue color.

"Damn you, Yorki, they brought me back to life even more than that cursed fruit! Without them, I'd have come back to you in...in ways that wouldn't have been good. Yorki, I was suicidal when they found me - I wasn't breaking away from the dreams, I wasn't able to tell you when or where I was... Not until they came to Thriller Bark. You saw me then, when you came for Zoro and Sanji."

At this, Sanji blinked, then turned to stare harshly at his skeletal crew-mate, his tongue deftly rolling the ever-present cigarette from one side of his mouth to the next. His blue eyes sparked with some emotion bordering fury, but Zoro had beat him to the punch.

"Fucking hell, Brook," Zoro snarled, his hands clenching Shuusui and Kitetsu so hard that the veins in his hand stood out in stark relief as he withdrew the swords from their scabbards suddenly, "Did you bargain with Death that time too?"

"Shitty skeleton, my life has always been mine to give, but especially when it's for Luffy! We aren't just a bunch of kids who don't know better!" Sanji barked, his legs twitching in his rage.

"The fuck is this, huh? Have you been trying to kill yourself on our watch?" Franky muttered angrily as he re-calibrated his arms with Robin's help. The historian could only chuckle darkly, shaking her head with a knowing grin.

"We did meet him after Enies Lobby, so it is entirely possible that he doesn't know what that means on this crew."

"Ah, that's true! But still, I thought he would figure it out by now," Chopper mused as he checked his stock of Rumble Balls.

"Now's not the time for this!" Usopp snapped as he adjusted the band on Kabuto and checked the ammunition in his shot purse.

"But that should be more than enough of an answer for you, Death," Nami concluded as she gave the Clima-tact a test swing before looking Death straight in the eye - she and the entire crew.

"You know any one of us would give up our life for Luffy. Hell, he gave us life. It's all we can do for him."

There was a sudden lull in the battle outside as every Straw-hat knowingly stared Death in the face, shoulders set. When he turned to the Vault-suits, there was nothing he could say to them. They too were all ready for battle, eyes feverish-bright as they held on to their only reason for living. The quiet intensified as Luffy's sobs slowly died down and D. Luffy tripped and fell, effectively stopping himself from ramming the barrier.

A rustling wind, filled with quiet weeping, the faint taste of salt, minute grains of crushed leaves, the smell of ancient secrets and the icy grip of winter filled the barrier as Death's hood slipped off.

Suddenly, it was only a very old, tired, dessicated sea captain from a dead kingdom standing in from of them. Yorki passed through their midst to stand in front of Brook, his hands fitfully reaching to grasp the skeleton's bony arms before remembering the taboo.

"Brook..." he began, his voice a dry, croaky whisper as ancient as parchments in a tomb. There was no longer the sound of omnipotence and sacred mysteries, just the timorous undercurrent of forsakeness. He raised one hand as if to savor the springy afro and Brook inched just that bit closer to him, his scowl fading.

"Brook," Yorki began again, his hand dropping as the taboo overwhelmed his desire, "Are you sure? You know what you will be asked for and I can't get away with suspending you this time. You'll never ever be free again, you understand that? I would want you free, not chained to me."

It was not "Dead Bones" Brook that answered, but the ghoul, Brook Bones, who had come to stand behind Yorki - for he was once his captain as well.

"Capitan, I probably should not speak for this fellow but I...I feel that if it was you in Luffy's place right now, he...me?...todo lo mismo We'd do the same thing; offer the same thing."

Yorki's head turned sharply to regard the ghoul, eyes opening slowly in wonder.

"You too?" he croaked lowly, disbelief and poorly concealed, desperation-laced hope lingering in his words.

Yorki shuddered violently, a slow shiver that began at his fingertips and soon began a full-body fit of shaking. Somehow, he managed not to fall under the powerful convulsion, but the shield flickered disturbingly for a few seconds. Yorki could only shake his head as the fit left him, a lone tear sliding from his left eye. Raising his hands futilely once more towards the skeleton and the ghoul, he sighed greatly and moved to shrug the abysmal cloak over his form.

Death returned immediately. There were no more tears.

"You've spoken your promises. You can't complain when the price is quoted afterwards; bitch to the Big Guys instead and good luck with that."

Fate and Luck sighed and again the rustling wind filled the cavern. The floor began to shake as the cracks in the barrier became easily visible.

"Thanks, guys. I can always count on you," Luffy croaked as the barrier peeled back and shriveled away like burning parchment. He slipped his hat back on his head and wiped a grimy hand on his vest, which was already damp with tears and mucus. The fire in his eyes was steady despite the drying salt under them and the power of his hope almost overwhelmed the jolt of strength that slammed through their veins.

He grinned broadly, brightly, the smile stretching farther than it ever had a right to. Eight other grins and one Skeleton Joke were his response.

"Oi, Death, what about me?" Sabo hissed as he kept his eyes on the cavern far ahead where Ace had disappeared. "I'm in on this deal as too, aren't I? Just bill me after I make sure my Traffie gets out of here; after my kids are good and grown!"

"But Baso-papa-!" Trafalgar began, speaking for the first time since the negotiations had been overturned.

"Baso-papa, my ass!" Sabo snapped, all of his jagged teeth on display as he rounded on the boy. "Yer the smartest of the lot 'n' you ain't really needed me since you could hold yer bladder. Y'all gonna be fine without me. Y'all gonna be...be safer, too. Let Une live in peace from them damn Brotherhood."

The boy glowered under his ratty cap, but said no more. Sabo's gaze turn melancholic, but Traffie chose to break their connection by snarling and turning his head, attempting to choke down his sniffles by stuffing his fists in his mouth. Sabo roughly reached out for the boy and dragged him into an awkward embrace.

"My name's Sabo, Traffie, and I loved you gits like you were my own."

For a minute, Traffie relaxed and shuddered helplessly. Then, in a frenzied burst of energy, he twisted recklessly in Sabo's undead arms.

"Lemme go, fuckin' wanker! Lemme go! Go 'n' fuckin' die fer all I care! Fuck you and Ace and all of you!"

The boy wrenched his head to a side and snapped quickly, like a crazed dog. Sabo howled as small, human teeth bit into his arm, but only released Traffie when he was back on his feet. The boy whirled away as soon as the ghoul's grip loosened, ending up in front of Death.

"Fuck you most of all, Death!" he cried shrilly, streams of tears running down his cheek. "Fuck you fer takin' e'eryone I love, fer killin' all my legends 'n' all my people. Don't think I'll let you win if I see you again. I won't let you win!"

With that, Traffie took one last, teary-eyed look at everyone assembled - the Vault-suits, heroes of the Wastes; the Straw-hats of the mythical ocean world and his dear, undead father, Sabo - then took off out of a crack in the barrier, turning to blindly scramble back along the way that the Vault-suits had run in from.

[~~~]

"Best not to overwhelm him like that, really." Luck chided as her control over the enclosure continued to ebb, gently ignoring the vampire's tears as he set his ragged top hat back on his head and picked up his trusty length of iron piping.

"Death and Trafalgar already feud on so many other planes" she murmured, her fiery hair shaking back and forth as she turned a pensive eye on disintegrating shield. "So really, I guess what's one more? Anyway, Sabo-san, you've been a clever bugger to slip out from under ol' Sourpuss before, so Fate and I will take you instead, if They let it be. Sounds good, sis?"

Fate nodded mutely before closing her eyes and furrowing her brow. A large sheet of glowingly-white parchment appeared in the middle of the crews; they watched dourly as their names wrote themselves on the document in gilded letters.

"Word is bond," she intoned ritualistically as the writing ended. "Now get to it."

"Hold for one moment, please," the dryad asked in a stern voice, her twigs and leaves creaking they rubbed together in agitation. "We have yet to determine what powers we have received. We are going into this fight without time to understand what we can do."

Fate sighed loudly and began rubbing her temples.

"I'll answer this one. Haven't you ever felt as if something was holding back your full potential?"

There was quiet grumbling and nods of assent. Yes, they had often felt as if some force was restraining them, only allowing them to tap into some vast reservoir of ability and raw power in their core when Death hovered over them.

"The brakes are off, for now. You can figure it out as you go, like you always do." she added nonchalantly as her figure grew hazy and indistinct. "We are being recalled now. If you see us again and the Void Walker - Teach, was it? - well if he's still alive and you see any of us, you can pretty much guarantee that Death's already got his clutches on you."

"What about the dimensions?" the gnoll asked suddenly, head cocked to one side. "I mean, how will we know if the choice has been made? Isn't that why you even brought out the Void-eating bitch?"

"You won't know if your dimension is lost because you won't even be - not a memory or a dream, not anything. The slate will be cleaned from everyone," Death intoned formally as he reacquainted himself with his scythe, now unnaturally warm in his fading hands after stamping out a scant trail of Ace's residual flames.

"Darlings," Luck cooed as her translucent hand ruffled the black hair on both Luffys mischievously, "Roll sevens for us all, okay?"

Without another word or sound, the entities simply turned and vanished. The pall of darkness grew oppressive in the tunnel and all light simple ceased to exist for some time.

[~~~]

"Lucky bastards," Sabo jeered as the light returned to their eyes. He had sprinted ahead of them all, his leer promising destruction as he glowed brightly, even though his cheeks were still wet with his own tears. "Bring those crews of yours and come on before fire-for-brains gets himself stomped out!"

"Oi!"

Luffy turned back around as his dimensional doppelganger strode up to him and stared at him. There were emotions both familiar and foreign wracking D. Luffy, but only his counterpart would have understood this from the bland look on his face. Their eyes spoke to each other about something dreadfully important in a type of semaphore that only the captains could understand, before both young men broke out in slightly crazed smiles.

They silently knocked fists and followed after the vampire, laughter bubbling up in their throats at some unspoken joke.

"Two of them! Can't even survive the one we have now," someone muttered as they all took off. They never really figured out who it was, or even if it was just a shared thought of the group, but the truth of the statement was irrefutable.

And they were bringing the Hell to prove it.

[~~~]