I am pleased to say that I've finally been able to get back to this story, which means that I'll be updatng much, much more often :D

As always, beta read by lunarshores.

For as long as he could remember, Marco had been an early bird. Out of all his siblings, he was always the first to rise. Today was no different. The clock on his bedside table showed that it was 6 AM when he woke. Marco stretched, letting out a soft moan at the feeling of the last traces of sleep fleeing from his muscles, before getting up to go set the kettle for some coffee. Or tea. Maybe he'd drink some tea, instead. He'd have some nice breakfast, and maybe he'd go visit Izo later.

He hadn't seen Izo in a few days, and Marco had to admit he missed him. Not that he would admit it out loud– Izo would never let him live it down. He was so, so glad that he was surrounded by his family once again. Staying with Ace had been fun, once they'd gotten over the whole witch thing, but it wasn't the same. Going for so long without seeing Thatch and Izo and Vista and Haruta and all the others had been hard.

Ace.

Marco felt a wave of longing wash over him. He missed Ace too. He was a friend. A very good friend, and Marco didn't have many of those, always having preferred to keep to the company of his family. He wondered if he'd ever get to see him again.

He was in the bathroom, drying off after his morning shower, when he heard his front door slam open. Quickly throwing on a shirt and his favorite pair of capris, Marco exited the bathroom. He tip-toed to his room to get the hockey stick he kept there, to use as a weapon against the intruder. He was just about to leave his bedroom when he heard a voice.

"Marco? Where are you, man?!"

Marco suppressed the urge to groan. Thatch. What was he doing up so early in the morning?

More importantly, what was Thatch doing in his house?

"I'll be right there, Thatch," Marco yelled back. He put the hockey stick back where it belonged and left for the living room, seeing as that's where Thatch most likely was.

Thatch was pacing back and forth across the floor in front of Marco's couch. He was dressed in a thick, white winter coat, and boots. His hair was slightly messy and tied in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. It had been a long, long time since Marco had seen Thatch's hair styled into anything other than his characteristic pompodour. It looked weird and out of character.

Thatch, stopped and looked up at the sound of Marco's footsteps, eyebrows furrowed in worry.

"What happened?" he asked, automatically knowing that Thatch wouldn't be here at this hour and in such a state if it wasn't something important.

"Foosha Village has been attacked. Oyaji ordered everyone to go there to help them." Marco's eyes widened in shock. Foosha Village wasn't far from New World. It was, what, a two- three hour walk away? He didn't know anyone who lived there personally, but a few of New World's residents had families there.

"What happened?" he asked, grabbing his coat off the hanger and throwing it on. His boots, a hat, a scarf, and a pair of gloves came next. Thatch shook his head.

"I have no idea. Someone saw some smoke a while back, but, you know, smoke's not all that uncommon around these parts– everyone's trying to keep warm one way or another, but then there was more and more of it, so the guy went to tell Oyaji, and Oyaji figured that Foosha must be under attack for there to be that much smoke and then–" Marco shushed him.

"Okay, okay. That's enough. What does Oyaji want us to do?" he questioned. The attacker had probably left the village by now, so there likely wouldn't be anyone to fight off, which meant that they would probably be administering medical aid to anyone in need of it. When Thatch confirmed his thoughts, he rushed back to his bedroom to get the first aid kit. It one of those bigger ones. Having brothers with an uncanny tendency to get into trouble meant that he needed to have more first aid supplies than most people.

He and Thatch left the house in such haste that Marco almost forgot to lock the door behind him. Not that he thought anyone was going to rob him or anything, but he didn't want to take any chances.

They practically ran to the stables, where their resident herd of reindeer was kept. Seeing as the weather was always cold, and snow covered the ground almost all-year-round, reindeer-drawn sleighs were the best way to get around quickly. Marco packed the first aid kit into the sleigh, while Thatch dealt with the reindeer. A few minutes later they were on the sleigh, the reindeer galloping through the snow, on their way to Foosha Village.

Marco's first thought was that this had not been just any attack– it had been a massacre. Foosha Village had been completely decimated. The stench of smoke and death permeated the air, making Marco feel sick. Not a single building had been left standing. Every single one of them had crumbled to the ground in heaps of burned wood and shattered stone. Houses and stores alike had been turned into mere piles of rubble.

Worst of all were the corpses spread out all over the place, most of them burned beyond recognition. They were too late. Marco tore his eyes away from three small bodies lying next to each other. The bastards hadn't even spared the children.

Marco slowly made his way through the remains of the village, observing as their own doctors pronounced the villagers they came across dead, one by one. Marco walked around in hopes of finding someone, anyone who was alive, but those hopes diminished with every lifeless body he came across.

Thatch and some others had gone out to look for someplace they could dig graves for all of these people, and Izo had organized a group of people responsible for transporting all of the dead to one place. So far, they hadn't found a single person who was alive. Despite Marco knowing that it would take a few more hours to complete the search, he knew that it was very unlikely that anyone had survived.

Just then, he heard a soft groan to his right. Marco crouched down in front of the remains of what had, at one point, probably been a bar. He lifted a half-burned wooden beam and moved it to the side. He could see a hand. With newfound energy, Marco started removing the rubble from atop the body.

The person he found was a teenage boy. His black hair was messy, and his clothes were torn, but other than the burns that covered a good portion of his body, he appeared to be mostly unhurt. He groaned again as Marco carefully moved him out of the rubble, trying not to jostle him too much, so he wouldn't hurt him further. One last time, he made sure that the boy was, in fact, alive, and it wasn't his imagination making him see things. Marco leaned his head toward the boy's chest. He was flooded with relief when he felt a rush of warm air against his cheek.

"This one's alive!" he shouted, moving back and motioning for a doctor. When one finally came, he stepped aside to let her do her work. He spared the boy one last worried glance, before moving on to look for more survivors.

Just like he'd thought, there were none.

Marco was sitting in the infirmary, observing the teenager lying on the bed in front of him. He'd been brought in yesterday and immediately shot up with painkillers for his burns, which seemed to cover just about every visible part of his body. Thankfully, from what Marco had heard, they weren't as bad as they looked (which was pretty bad).

He wondered how it was that everyone else died, and this boy survived. He wondered how the boy would react to the information that everyone he'd ever known is dead. He wondered why there had been obsidian covering a good amount of Foosha Village.

But most of all, he wondered, as did everyone else, if it had been a witch who had attacked Foosha.

Marco studied the prone figure before him. The boy was probably the only one who could supply them with the answer to that question. It was only a matter of time until he woke up.

Marco had no idea how long he sat in the infirmary, but just as he was about to doze off leaning against the wall, the boy woke up. His brown eyes roamed around the room, slowly taking in his surroundings, before finally settling on Marco.

Or rather, on the top of his head.

"Your head looks like a pineapple." Marco blinked. Twice. Not entirely sure how he was supposed to reply to that, he instead reached for a glass of water and wordlessly handed it to the boy, who reached for it with shaky hands. Marco observed as he took a long sip, before handing it back.

"Where am I?" the boy asked, eyes once again roaming over the surroundings, flitting back to Marco every second or so.

"You're in New World. You're safe now." The boy blinked at him, as though not entirely comprehending what Marco had just said. He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

"…Safe? From what?" he questioned.

"Your village was attacked," Marco replied quietly, observing as the boy's eyes widened as he remembered. He tried to sit up, but Marco put a hand on his unhurt shoulder and gently, but surely pushed him back down to the bed.

"What about Makino? Where is she?" he asked quickly, looking around at the other beds, probably trying to find his friend. Marco averted his gaze, not wanting to see the boy's face when he found out. Marco had always hated seeing others in pain.

"She's dead. I'm sorry," he whispered. After a few moments of what must have been denial, Marco heard the boy move in his bed. Muffled sobs came right after. "They're all dead."

Marco waited for what must have been a good half an hour for the sobs to turn into sniffles. The boy had turned away from him to face the other way and curled in on himself. Marco leaned back against the wall and lifted his eyes to look at the ceiling, lost in thought for a few seconds, before lowering them back to the boy.

"What's your name?" Marco asked in an attempt to take the boy's mind off his deceased friend. He wouldn't be able to do it for long, as he had to get some answers from him, but hopefully it would distract the boy for at least a little while.

"Luffy," the boy answered in between sniffles. "I'm Monkey D Luffy."

"And how old are you, Luffy?" Luffy turned around to face him, eyes red and puffy.

"Whaddya care?" he mumbled. Marco sighed internally. He should have gotten Thatch to stay with Luffy instead. Thatch was friendlier; he'd have gotten along with Luffy more easily. Too bad Thatch was busy with something else...

In any case, Marco desperately needed information, and he wouldn't get that by beating around the bush. Still, Luffy was in a bad emotional place right now, so he'd have to be delicate. Where was Izo when he was needed the most?

Why did they stick him in this mess when he was clearly the one least suited for the job?

Oh, right. Because he'd been the one who'd found Luffy.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Marco asked quietly. Luffy glared at him half-heartedly through teary eyes, but relented a few seconds later.

"Some guy attacked us." Marco raised an eyebrow.

"One man?" A single person could do that much damage? He found that hard to believe, but Luffy had no reason to lie, in which case the attacker was most likely a witch– after all, not many humans could do that much damage in such a short amount of time.

Luffy nodded grimly, shifting so that he wasn't looking at Marco anymore, but out the window across the room.

"I wanna go to sleep," he mumbled. Marco was about to leave, when he decided to ask one last question. There was one last thing he needed to know.

"Was… Do you know if the person who attacked you a witch?" He saw Luffy tense at the word, before nodding stiffly. "Thank you." Marco left him to grieve his loss. He had to go tell his father what he'd just found out.

Whitebeard narrowed his eyes at the information.

"I'd figured as much. Not many humans can do that much damage. I haven't seen anything that bad since the war." Marco had only briefly heard about the war. No history book he'd found had had a detailed account of it, and the war had occurred long before he or any of his brothers had been born. Oyaji was one of the very few still alive who'd actually fought in it.

One thing Marco did know for certain was that the war had been against witches. Many had died back then, both human and not. It was probably part of the reason why Oyaji harbored such a grudge against witches. He, and the rest of the world. In their eyes, the witches were the ones responsible for the whole thing, for the death of family members and friends, and the destruction of many nations. Marco, like everyone else, had been taught to believe that all witches are evil.

He'd believed that until he'd met Ace. Ace was the one who showed him just how similar they actually were, and proved to Marco that all the bad things he'd heard about witches weren't true.

Now, though, he found himself leaning back toward his previous views. A witch had attacked a village and taken the lives of hundreds of innocent people. He could feel the hatred he thought had disappeared rising to the surface once again. He tried to squash it down, he really did, but it kept coming back. He knew this wasn't right, that he shouldn't blame a group for the actions of one individual, but the attack had planted a seed of doubt in his mind again. What if he'd been wrong about Ace? What if Ace had actually had some ulterior motive to healing him? What if… what if he'd been the one who had attacked Foosha.

Marco shook his head, berating himself. He knew he shouldn't doubt Ace, not when he'd shown Marco nothing but kindness, yet yesterday's events had had a large impact on him. Besides, the village had been burned to the ground. Burned, as in extreme heat was involved. Ace had the powers of fire, and hadn't he said that every witch had different powers? Marco groaned. He was overthinking this. There was no way Ace would do something like that. Sure, he hadn't spent that much time with him, but he just knew, somehow, that Ace was better than that.

Unfortunately, it would appear that not everyone thought the same.

"Marco… you know that witch who 'saved' you a while back? What did you say his powers were?" Thatch asked.

"I didn't," Marco replied curtly. Oyaji, along with all of Marco's brothers were looking at him in suspicion. He should have known. He really, really should have known that their first thought would be that it was Ace. Not that he could blame them - Ace was the first witch they'd encountered in years, so there weren't really any other suspects. He didn't know if the witches were all in hiding, or if there were less people with the predisposition to become witches now than there used to be. Either way, there weren't as many of them around as there used to be.

"Marco, answer your brother's question," Whitebeard said. Marco's gaze flitted from one face to another. He really didn't want to answer their question; he knew what conclusion they'd come to, based off it. Still, he couldn't just refuse his father. Whitebeard had raised him, after all. He'd cared for both Marco and all of his brothers. He deserved an answer.

Besides, Marco trusted him not to do anything drastic until they had some definite proof. A grudge was a grudge, but Marco still found it hard to believe that his father would hurt an innocent.

"...Fire. Ace controls fire." Everyone was silent.

"Thank you. That's all that we needed." Oyaji stood up. What Marco had just said was incriminating, sure, but it wasn't proof! They'd have to have at least some proof other than this if they wanted to go after Ace! "Thatch, Izo, and Jozu- the three of you are going to find this Ace and bring him in using any means necessary." Marco stood up and slammed his hands on the table they were seated around, making the wood creak.

"Wait just a minute!" No one besides Whitebeard turned to look at him, all too busy talking about making preparations. "Oyaji, you can't hurt him! It wasn't Ace who did this! I swear, he'd never hurt anyone! You're making a big mistake!" Damn it, he wouldn't let them do this! This was wrong. He knew that this hatred towards witches was deeply rooted in his culture, that it was the norm, but this was just unreasonable!

"Easy, Marco," Thatch raised his hands in a placating manner in an attempt to calm him down. "We won't do anything we don't have to." Marco turned to glare at him.

"But why do we have to bring him in in the first place? He's not tied to this mess in any way- I can vouch for him! There is no way he could have done something like this!" Marco exclaimed. He looked at his father, glaze pleading. "Please, Oyaji. I know him, and I know he wouldn't hurt anyone. Just leave him be." Whitebeard's eyes met his. Marco could see the conflict. Being his father, Whitebeard knew that it wasn't easy to gain Marco's trust. On the other hand, Marco had heard of plenty of cases where witches had enamored human beings in an attempt to get them to do their bidding. He wouldn't be surprised if Whitebeard thought that this was one of them.

"I'm sorry, Marco, but this has to be done." Marco stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief. His eyes flitted over the faces of his brothers, one by one. They refused to meet his gaze.

"Marco..." It was Izo who spoke. "The best way to prove this witc- Ace's innocence is to question him, isn't it?" Alright, that statement had some truth to it, but why couldn't they just take his word for it? He'd lived with Ace for such a long time. Ace hadn't done a single thing to cause him harm. He'd actually saved his life!

Why couldn't his family trust his judgement?

"Now, Marco, if you could tell us where we could find this witch?" Whitebeard asked. Marco didn't speak. He kept glancing between his brothers, hoping that maybe one of them would stand up against this stupid idea. When no one did anything but look at him in expectation, he gave up.

The only way to prove Ace's innocence now was to get him to tell Marco's family that he hadn't done anything.

"In the mountains, east from the village. There's a cave covered by a large boulder. Ace lives there." Marco felt terrible, telling them this. He felt as though he was betraying Ace's trust. It was all his fault that Ace would be put in danger, however slight. "I'll go with yo-"

"You'll be staying here." Whitebeard interrupted him.

"But Oyaji!" Marco protested.

"No, Marco. You will not be going with them. If that witch is by any chance controlling you, you could turn against us. You need to stay here." Marco clenched his fists, feeling blood trickle down his hand when his nails pierced skin. "Vista, please accompany Marco back home and make sure that he doesn't do anything rash." Vista stood up and walked to him. He placed his hand on Marco's shoulder.

"Come on, Marco. Let's go." Marco reluctantly let himself be pulled out of the room, but not before he gifted his family with one last glare.

"Don't you dare hurt him."

When Marco left, everyone started buzzing around. People started grouping together to make plans, decide what to pack for the trip, and so on.

Thatch and Whitebeard were the only ones who were quiet.

"That witch really did a number on Marco," Thatch muttered. "It's like he's ready to do anything for it. He's being unreasonable." Whitebeard sighed.

"This is why humans should stay away from those creatures. They're capable of taking control of the human mind. I fear this is what happened to Marco."

"...You were forced to kill your best friend when he was taken over, weren't you?" Thatch asked. He only now recalled the stories about witches Whitebeard had told them all when they were children.

Whitebeard nodded grimly.

"We need to find that witch, Thatch, and get it to undo whatever spell it has put on Marco, before it's too late." Whitebeard suddenly looked much, much older. "I wouldn't be able to bear losing him again."

"Don't worry, Oyaji. We'll get that bastard and fix this mess." Whitebeard looked at him, worry clear on his face.

"I hope so, Thatch. I hope so."