Chapter 1

The Accident

"Duck, Luffy!"

In record time Luffy was lying on the ground, his face pressed into the grass, breathing in its fresh, earthy scent. He had no idea as to why he was ducking, but as the past months had taught him, it was usually best to listen to Ace when his elder brother was using that particular tone of voice. Else there could be dire consequences – and not just because of the danger he would be ignoring as a result.

His gut-feeling was proved right less than half a second later, when he could feel the air above his head stir with sudden movement. Judging by the force of the resulting gust of wind, something big and unbelievably heavy had just passed right over him.

"Don't move!"

The sound of footsteps hurrying across the ground, accompanied by a few muttered curses, let Luffy know that his brothers were not very far away. It was probably only a matter of seconds until one of them was going to reach their younger sibling to help Luffy out of whatever tight spot he had found himself in this time. Speaking of which …

He risked a glance from underneath his straw hat, which he was clutching like a helmet, and caught a glimpse of rather shaggy brown fur, two dark, glittering eyes and a pair of nostrils that was widened to such an extreme, it seemed to Luffy that the entire village of Fuusha could fit in there. His breathing momentarily stopped, as he realised what exactly it was that was literally staring him in the face.

'A bear!' he thought, the beginnings of terror forming in the pit of his stomach, as the snout of the animal slowly descended towards his prone body and experimentally started to sniff at him. Closing his eyes, Luffy knew that his only hope of not ending up as this bear's afternoon snack hinged on the fact that his last bath had been more than a week ago … he thought. There was simply no way that he could smell appetising.

Just as he could feel the bear's hot breath begin to waft across his face, there was the distinct sound of a jump, followed by two battle cries that resonated around the clearing, as his brothers descended on the wild animal with all the force that two ten year olds could muster.

SMACK. He almost winced in sympathy as the wooden staffs of Ace and Sabo noisily connected with the bear's body. That had to hurt. But considering that he had just narrowly escaped serving as an early evening meal for the animal, the level of sympathy he was able to feel was a bit on the low side.

"SABO! Go round!"

"Distract it for a sec, yeah?!"

"I'm on it! Get back Luffy!"

As his brothers began to fight in earnest with the bear, one of them attacking from the left, the other from the right, Luffy quickly jumped to his feet. There was just no way that he would allow the two of them to take over the entire fight, not when he had been spending so much time training and teaching himself a couple of cool new moves lately.

Patiently (or as patiently as Luffy would ever be) he waited for an opening to try out the newly refined version of his gum gum pistol, already drawing back his fist in preparation. He got his chance barely a moment later, as Ace and Sabo simultaneously jumped back from their most recent attack.

"GUM GUM …," he yelled, drawing in a deep breath, "PISTOL!"

There was an audible and satisfactory smack as his rapidly expanding rubber arm hit against flesh and a victorious grin started to spread across Luffy's face. The happy expression vanished within the span of a second, however, as he realised just what, or rather whom, he had actually managed to hit.

"Ugh …"

The force of the blow sent Sabo flying across the clearing at breakneck speed, right into a tree. He was knocked out cold the moment his head collided with the trunk.

"SABO!"

Horrified, Ace and Luffy could only stare at the crumpled form of their brother for what seemed like an eternity, before both of them started running towards him at the same time. There was, however, one slight problem with that plan: they had completely forgotten about the animal they were still supposed to be fighting.

Taking advantage of his opponents' distraction, the bear swiped its sharp claws through the air, aiming its paw at the head of the smaller of the two colourful blobs that were mindlessly trying to hurry past it.

Ace's heart might as well have stopped, as out of the corner of his eyes he saw the bear's movements and he realised for whom the attack was headed. "Damn it!"

He swerved from his path and lunged at Luffy, grabbing the little idiot roughly by the scruff of his neck and throwing them both to the ground in a flurry of movement.

The force of the impact made him groan a little in pain, but he didn't dare wait to catch his breath. Ignoring Luffy's indignant complaining (because of course his idiot brother had no idea that he had just nearly been mauled to death) he was up again in a flash, putting himself between the bear and the younger boy. As it would seem, the bear didn't plan on being idle either, and by the time Ace had regained his footing and picked up his staff from where he had dropped it on the ground it was already coming in for a second attack.

He tried to block what would have certainly been a cleaving swipe with his weapon, but the force of it was so strong that he got thrown to the side in one big swoop, uncontrollably tumbling through the grass and getting a few scrapes and burns for his trouble. Unfortunately though, and what was far worse, he also let go of his staff.

Luffy, on the other hand, was now cowering in front of the huge animal, all alone, but nevertheless showing no inclination of doing the sensible thing and running away. In what seemed like a sudden fit of anger the youngest of the devil trio was suddenly on his feet as well, his fists raised in what would have been a threatening gesture - coming from anyone other than him.

"Leave Ace alone, you old mothy carpet!" he called, his eyes flashing. And picking up the staff that Ace had dropped, Luffy threw himself at the animal, beginning to hit at whichever places he could reach.

He didn't do much damage, seeing as he was both too enraged and frankly too weak to make a focussed attack. What counted in his favour, though, was the fact that he was fast and quite versatile, dancing around the bear's swipes and fell swoops like an annoying fly. In this way his attacks seemed enough to distract the enraged animal from other attackers at that moment, giving Ace the perfect opening. Although that didn't mean that he had to like his brother's involvement in the fight. "Luffy!" he yelled, his voice shaking with anger, "Get. Away. NOW!"

Immediately, his little brother obeyed, moving away at just the right moment for Ace to get in his final attack which knocked the bear clear out with a violent clobber around the head.

Chests heaving, breathing hard, the two brothers stood there for a moment in silence, before they tore across the clearing towards where Sabo was still lying on the ground. To their immense relief, the other boy was starting to stir and groan already, even before they reached him.

"SABO!"

"Sabo! Are you okay?! Hey, talk to me!"

They dropped down to the ground next to him, just as Sabo opened his eyes and gave them a confused look. "What … happened?" he asked, and winced a bit at the headache he could feel developing, emanating from the spot that had first made contact with the tree.

Rather than giving him a straight answer, Ace shot Luffy a sharp and angry look. The relief he felt at seeing that Sabo was moderately alright, quickly evaporated to be replaced by anger at his little brother's stupid attempts at using his devil's fruit power. Luffy's useless experiments could very easily have cost them their lives today.

"Luffy is what happened!" he gnashed out between gritted teeth, drawing the black-haired boy's attention away from Sabo and towards him. "He tried to use his stupid, gum-gum-good-for-nothing devil's fruit ability again!"

"HEY!" Luffy piped up indignantly, "It's not good for nothing! Don't mock it! You just wait, one day, I'll-"

"Get us all killed with it!" Ace shouted, close to seething with anger. "This has to stop Luffy! Don't you realise what you just nearly did?! Sabo almost died today because of your dumb play-acting!"

Ace could see Luffy's eyes widen in shock and Sabo who had managed to sit up by now gave an audible gasp. Silence reigned in the clearing for what felt like an eternity, until Sabo managed to speak up, "Ne, ne, Ace, calm down a bit! You're exaggerating!" he said with a tentative smile, making calming gestures.

"That's not true," Luffy said in barely a hush of a voice, his hat drawn so far into his face that his eyes were hidden behind the brim. "Take that back."

"No," Ace growled, deliberately ignoring all the warning bells that were going off in his head at the sight of his little brother. He needed to make Luffy understand. "How is it not true? Was it somebody else who knocked Sabo into that tree with one of their antics? When will you get it into your thick skull? You need to stop doing that sort of crap! It's dangerous if you don't know what you're doing!"

Luffy was unnaturally quiet then, and even if Sabo himself hadn't felt that Ace had gone too far now he would have jumped to Luffy's aid at the boy's evident distress. "Ace, that's enough now!" he called, shooting the other boy a glare, "You're being way too harsh! It was just an accident! I'm sure-"

However, he found himself ignored by both Luffy and Ace. "But I want to get stronger! I need to practise my attacks, Ace!" Luffy shouted, finally starting to fight back.

"Do it somewhere else then!" Ace countered, still beyond angry and caring. "Somewhere where you don't constantly get in everyone's way!"

That hit home. For a few moments no-one of the three brothers said anything. Then, trying to hide the tears that were already gathering in his eyes with his hat, Luffy suddenly turned around and started running away.

"H-hey!" Sabo shouted after him, one hand extended towards Luffy's retreating form, as if to grab him from behind, "Where are you going?!"

"Home!" his little brother shouted, his voice so far from its usual, bouncy tone that Sabo almost didn't recognise it. A second later, Luffy had disappeared into the forest.

"Please, Luffy, come back! We can talk about this!" Sabo yelled, frustrated. When he got no reaction, he turned towards the other black-haired boy who had his arms crossed in front of his chest. As Sabo threw him an angry look, Ace only sighed and closed his eyes, before turning in the opposite direction from the one his little brother was headed in.

"Leave him be, Sabo," he said, "Maybe he needs to think about it for a bit."

"Think about what?!" Sabo yelled, "There's nothing to think about! So he made a mistake! Big deal! We all do! Including you! Or do I need to give you a special reminder of the great staff-in-bear's-nose incident of only a few days ago?!"

"That was different!" Ace argued back and now he was shouting at Sabo too. "I can take care of myself! If I get into a scrape and something goes wrong I can get out of it again! Luffy can't! He's as good as helpless as it is, and if he starts creating even more chaos during a fight than he already does by just being there, then we'll really be in trouble! It's hard enough to keep an eye on the little idiot as it is, I couldn't bear-" He almost bit himself on the tongue with how fast he closed his mouth to stop the traitorous words from escaping.

Sabo, however, was far too intelligent and knew Ace far too well, not to be able to guess at his meaning without hearing the end of the sentence. He gave a sigh. "Ace…" he started to say, but then stopped, as he didn't quite know how to finish the sentence without upsetting the other boy even further. Sabo was painfully aware of how much Ace disliked talking about feelings, which was why he had no clue about how to approach the subject. "Ace, I know that you're worried about Luffy, but …"

"Worried? Who's worried?" Ace cut in between, "I just don't want him interfering in our fights when he doesn't know jack."

He turned around again and started walking away, faking indifference when Sabo knew that he was deeply embarrassed by the unexpected turn the conversation had taken and just wanted to get away.

"I'm going to train for a bit. See you later Sabo!"

At first Sabo wanted to call him back, but decided against it when he realised that actually he was not too eager to talk about feelings and all that entailed himself. Plus, Ace had already vanished behind a line of trees anyway.

He sighed and put a hand worriedly to the brim of his top hat. "Those two …"

Watching the two fight with each other one would think that they were each other's worst enemies – not sworn brothers. Sometimes, he wondered whether they would ever get it together. But then he thought that maybe it was precisely because they loved each other so much that they were at each other's throats all the time – even if Ace liked to act all blasé about it. In any case, neither of the two had tried to smother the other with a pillow in his sleep so far – that had to count for something.

Seeing as both of them had left him alone in the clearing with what was supposed to be their evening meal, Sabo turned towards the dead bear, contemplating how he would get the large animal from here to their tree house all on his own. As he stood there he noticed another problem entirely, however …

"Huh?!"

His mouth fell open as he stared at the empty space the bear should have been occupying. "BUT … WHERE THE HECK DID IT GO?"

A/N: Hello there! I hope you liked the first chapter :). The next one should be up soon, I think! *crosses fingers*