Changing Fates

Summary: Ace is a White Stag that has a small control over plants and he never was once part of the Spade Pirates.

Challenge: Do a story on the 100 days before Ace became part of the Whitebeard pirates, but you have to make it so that Ace isn't part of the Spade Pirates and he hasn't eaten the Meru-Meru no Mi. You also have to make it so that Shanks plays a big part of Ace's life.

** Send in a challenge for any of the following and I'll write the story: One Piece, Rune Factory, Final Fantasy, The Last Story, XenoBlade **

Rating: M

Day 1) Being picked up the Whitebeard Crew!

Ace sighed as he glanced at the Pirate Crew that had docked into the small town. He wasn't a pirate nor was he a marine, and thankfully for him, he wasn't a bounty hunter. He was just a simple traveler that did work for people for pay. He never had any interest in becoming a pirate, mainly because he had seen what horror pirates could perform and then leave like they never did anything, but he also knew that there were Marines that were just as bad with their greed and power.

"Hey; boy!" One of the drunken sailors called out to Ace, making the young freckled boy jump and turn to face the person who called him out. "Get me more grog!"

"I'm no bar-tender." Ace hissed out, "I don't know where the alcohol is."

"Well to bad, freckled-boy," the drunken man leered at Ace, making the young man want to toss-up what little he had for lunch, "if you're not going to get me grog, then you may as well do something else that's going to be satisfying!"

"One word for you; no." Ace frowned and glared at the man and smacked his hand away from his rear. "I know you're a pirate, but I'm not one for such acts."

"No fun" the man grinned, "but I like the feisty ones!"

Here we go again… Ace thought cynically as the man stood up and drew his sword from its sheathe, making Ace smirk. "If you draw your weapon, you better know how to use it. Swords aren't a toy." Ace taunted the man while dodging the swings while recalling what a man had once said when Ace's younger brother was kidnapped.

"What would you know?!" The man frowned and his swings began to speed up and Ace narrowed his eyes as he tried to watch the blades movements so he could dodge.

"I would know that I can kick your ass any second I want to." Ace smirked and to prove his point, he moved forward and grabbed the hilt of the man's sword and twisted so that Ace could jab his elbow into the man's gut. When the grip on the sword slacked, Ace twisted again so he could get the sword out of the man's grasp and turned around to place the blade at the neck of his offender. "Does that tell you what I know?"

"What- how?!" The man's eyes were wide and fear was clearly written into them.

"Never start something unless you have the will to go through with it." Ace frowned as removed the blade from the man's neck and dropped it while walking away to front of the bar, trying his hardest to ignore the fact that everyone in the bar had gone quiet and that all eyes were on the very quick less than thirty-second fight.

Ace also tried to ignore the fact that one set of eyes had him on edge. A set of eyes, which, he knew would lead to something life-changing for the man. Something Ace knew he would want, but couldn't willing accept with ease.

Only, he hadn't known that the eyes belonged to the First Division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates that had docked on one of the sister island within eye-sight of the brother island or that the man had left the bar shortly after Ace did with a smile on his face.

- - This is a line break! - -

Ace sighed as he leaned against one of the many trees that dotted the island he was one, and it very much reminded him of his home town of Foosha.

Foosha. That name made Ace smile as he began to think of the connotation of the name. Foosha Village. Dawn Island. Makino. Luffy. Shanks. Sabo.

That last name made Ace frown a little, one of his two brothers, but this one was dead. He had died in a cage on gold and nobility, both things that Sabo had never wanted. All Sabo had ever wanted, and what Ace and Luffy had both wanted as well, was freedom.

Freedom which all three boys knew that didn't have, and couldn't have without great troubles.

While Ace knew he had more freedom than his only living fourteen year old brother, he was still bound by blood to his father's legacy and curse. That thought made Ace frown, so he quickly shook his head of the thoughts and closed his eyes to remember the people he had left behind when he turned seventeen less than five months ago.

Makino, The bar-maid of Dawn Island that was more like a tiger protecting her cubs. It was Makino that had taught Ace manners and how to fight with weapons (to a degree).

Luffy was Ace's only remaining brother and there was nothing in the world that would change how precious the boy was to Ace. Sure, Luffy might be annoying as heck, made of rubber, and clueless about everything around him, but Ace wouldn't want anything to change.

Shanks. Now THAT was a name that made Ace smile and blush at the same time. It was Shanks that saved Luffy's life at one point at the exchange of his arm (and hat, but that was a different story) and it was Shanks that had taught Ace how to read, write, do math, fight and all sorts of other things alongside Luffy (but he didn't pay attention at all to those lessons). It was Shanks that Ace owed the most, and Ace had vowed that if he ever worked up the courage to enter the Grand Line, he would find Shanks and thank him properly for everything the man had done for him.

Ace kept his eyes closed as he dragged himself out of his happy reminiscing, when he heard a twig snap and then something metal being freed from something else metal. That was all it took for Ace to open his eyes and rush forward to dodge the barrage of attacks aimed at the tree he was near. Without turning back, since Ace had known it was a group of people who had come to get payback for the humiliating bar fight that had happened an hour or so ago, Ace shifted to his Zoan form and bounded off at a stunning speed, his white coat and ivory-like horns the last thing that the group has seen.

Again, Ace had felt the eyes on him from the bar, but instead of being from any side of him, Ace felt the warm, yet dangerous, eyes on him from above, and once Ace had entered a clearing, Ace looked up and got to see a giant blue flying… was it a chicken that was on fire? And, why was the fire blue and yellow?

When the bird noticed Ace had stopped running, the giant bird spiraled downward and Ace was on guard as the bird landed on the ground a few feet away from Ace and let his fire, which was both soft and cool, lick the hooves of Ace's feet in a careful greeting.

"Greetings, Ace." The bird shifted and spoke, and Ace came to the very quick conclusion that the bird was actually a human who ate a Zoan Fruit, much like him. "Can you shift as well so we can talk?"

Ace snorted at this and took a small step back, which the blond haired, sleepy-eyed man noticed and he sat down with his hands up in the air, "I'm not here to hurt you. In fact, Pops has an offer he wants to extend to you after your little stunt in the bar."

Ace frowned at this, and glanced behind him as his ears lifted, checking for the sounds of a group of people moving, and didn't hear anything other than the ambient noises of the forest. Feeling at ease, and knowing that the man wasn't going to attack him with his fire, Ace shifted forms and glanced at the man on the ground with narrow eyes. "What would this offer happen to be?"

"He'd like you to come aboard the Moby Dick and think about becoming one of his sons." Ace resisted the urge to leap at the man and strangle him at the mention of having a father.

"I refuse." Ace said rather quickly, and Ace noticed it so he quickly added on, "I have a man I'll call father, and I'm highly sure that the man you call Pops isn't the man I'll call father."

"Then will you still come aboard the Moby Dick, and how do you know that the person isn't the same?" The sleepy-eyed man with the soothing fire asked, and Ace didn't want to admit the fire was rather pleasant.

"The man's ship is known as the Red Force, and last I checked, you aren't a crew member of Shanks." Ace chuckled lightly at the thought of the man before him being part of Shanks' crew, but the man had a different reaction.

"…Red-Haired Shanks?"

"The one and only."

"… So you're the brat he yaps about all the time…" the man sighed, "Pops is going to laugh at this."

"Pardon?"

"Pops is a Yonkou just like Shanks." The man shrugged, "I'm Marco, by the way, yoi."

"Sorry, but you know my name." Ace shrugged and glanced to the right a bit, and shifted into his Zoan form again and let out an earth-shaking howl that one would not normally expect from something that looks like a deer, and the trees around both Ace and Marco swayed and bent in an unbelievable manner and the next thing Marco knew, there was three blades stuck in one of the trunks of a nearby tree.

Ace let out another noise, a much softer and much more pleasant one, and Marco got the feeling on what Ace was trying to say: Get out of here.

Without a second thought about it, Marco nodded and also went into his Zoan form and flew off while Ace bounded after him from the ground, unaware that Marco was leading Ace right where he wanted: The Moby Dick.

When Ace figured out where Marco was going, Ace didn't have the grace of being able to turn around and bound off in another direction. Mad, Ace resigned himself to accepting the fact that, dammit, Marco had gotten Ace to the Moby Dick, and now what he was there, he had no reason to say no to Whitebeards offer.

"Get the deer! Forget about the bird!" One man called out, and from the voice, Ace could tell that the man wasn't just your average hunter of animals or bounties (not that Ace had one- he'd been careful to keep a low profile), but a hunter of a legend of great fortune and un-yielding luck (which Ace seemed to have given all to Luffy if the young child's devil-luck was any indicator).

What an idiot… but since I'm already in this form… Ace frowned slightly as he recalled that the last time he had tried this particular technique it had backfired on him and the vines had whipped more than just his attacker and gave Ace his current deep purple bruise on his lower back and thigh.

Thankfully for Ace, a giant white ship came within sight and Marco, still in his giant blue chicken form swooped down to Ace's level and tried his best to convey that the ship was his destination. With a nod from Ace, Marco flew back up and over the railing of the Moby Dick as Ace jumped up, bypassing the railing that was there for everyone else, and landed next to Marco in his human form.

"Son, who is this?" A rather deep voice called Ace onto alert, but Marco had placed a hand on Ace's forehead and let his fire calm down the Stag.

"Pops, this would be Ace, yoi." Marco turned to the hunters as they stopped before the ship with flustered faces and panting. "And they aren't any problem to us, yet."

"Ace, is it?" The man called 'Pops', or better known as Whitebeard, laughed and the entire ship held a light rumble in it. Ace couldn't tell if the rumble was a good thing or a bad thing, but with the combination of Marco's calming-Fire, the happy aura of the crew that had gathered to see the White Stag that had just jumped up onto the deck of the ship, and the light rumble, Ace decided that, yes, this rumble is a good thing, and relaxed into the fire with eyes closed.

"I thought you said Ace was a person…?" a man with his hair hanging out in the front, kind of like a rack, asked as he stared at Marco and then at Ace, and then at Marco again. "He looked more like…"

"A Stag?" Ace asked as he shifted out of his Zoan form and smirked at the mad had jumped in the air with a small shriek.

"I take it you accept my offer?" Whitebeard asked as he gazed at Ace with eyes that held an emotion Ace had only seen on one man- Shanks.

"I refuse for the time being," Ace started with a frown, "I refuse to call anyone either captain or father when they haven't earned the respect for it." Marco was going to say something, along with the rack-hair-styled man, but Ace cut them off again, "Before you ask, I judge based on what I see, not what is given to me by another."

"A wise brat!" Whitebeard laughed, and then Marco said the one thing that Ace wished he hadn't told Marco.

"He's the brat Shanks goes on and on about."

That made Whitebeard laugh come to an abrupt halt and the giant man stared at Ace for a few seconds, the warm and tender look in his eyes never fading, and then began to laugh again.

"Here I figured that the brat was going to be younger!"

"Well, sorry for being seventeen!" Ace hissed out in annoyance at the implication that Shanks kept calling him by that stupid nickname, Kitten.

"It's not meant to be rude," Whitebeard laughed, "it's just means that the snot-nosed brat still views you as his child!"

"I know that…" Ace mumbled with a small sigh, blush and smile. Then something hit him like a stack of bricks. "Wait… Snot-nosed brat…" Ace couldn't help the grin and laugh that came from him, "So you're the same Newgate that the guy talks about!"

"Oh? And what does he say?" Whitebeard asked with a raised brow. The Two Yonkou's, despite being a Yonkou, were on somewhat good terms and could have a pleasant conversation when Shanks didn't knock out his crew when the red-haired man came to visit.

"That…" Ace trailed off and tried to recall something that the man didn't say when drunk, but couldn't come up with something nice when sober.

"That what, child?" Whitebeard felt he knew what Ace was about to say, but almost did a double take at what Ace said.

"That you're a senile old man who cares more for what you call family than you do anything else." Ace's voice sounded a little thin, like he was re-wording things and leaving things out. Marco blinked and then chuckled something along the lines of 'that fits the man' while the rack-haired man smacked his face and shook his head.

"Well, senile may not be true yet, but that second part is true!" Whitebeard laughed, and Ace began to feel a familiar feeling settle in the pit of his stomach. "Thatch!" The rack-haired man jumped and turned to face Whitebeard, "Since Ace will be staying with us for a bit, why don't you lead him to the spare room?"

"Got it! Come on!" Thatch had on a giant smile on his face that reminded Ace of one of Luffy's blinding smiles, and Ace couldn't help the smile that came on his own face as Thatch dragged him around the Moby Dick showing the guy more than just where the room he was going to be staying was.

As Marco watched Ace get dragged off by Thatch, Whitebeard turned his attention to the group of hunters that were trying to enter his ship.

"Marco, who are these people?"

"Hunters I would guess…" Marco shrugged, "After Ace more likely."

"Of course we are!" One man huffed, "do you even know the story of the White Stag?!"

"Don't care." Marco yawned as he stretched and waited for Pops decision on what to do with the invaders, and was pleasantly surprised when Whitebeard took the incentive to knock the people off his ship and into the ocean.

"… Do I need to go grab Ace's things, or are we not sailing off with him?" Marco asked as he lazily watched the group of people that were just knocked overboard thrash around in the water as they tried to stand back up.

"I don't think he'll take well to being kidnapped without his stuff" Whitebeard laughed again, something Marco noticed that he was doing a lot of these weeks. "Go grab some basic stuff of his and come back."

With a small 'Aye', Marco shifted and flew off; following a scent trail that only he could smell due to his heightened senses due to being a phoenix, Marco was honestly surprised when the scent ended at a medium-sized yellow arrow-like boat with plants growing in it. Along the side on the boat was lettering in bright orange that spelt out 'Striker' and from the fact that there was no Marine mark on the folded sail nor was there a jolly roger, Marco assumed that Ace was just trying to be a simple traveler.

Marco took a quick look around the ship and frowned at the lack of personalization, other from the plants growing on what looked like a one-man ship, and wondered if he should bring the ship with him, just in case Ace decided somewhere along the lines of being a guest that he wanted a bit of time on his own or wanted to leave.

Going with the feeling that it was alright for something like that to happen, even if Marco didn't want something like that to happen, Marco unhooked the ship from the dock, despite the protest of the dock manager, and pulled the ship of the docks and to the Moby Dick where Izo gave the bird a confused look.

"I thought Pops said to bring something that belongs to Acey?" Izo frowned at the ship and Marco just shrugged as he shifted and stood on the Striker.

"It was the only thing I could find."

"… well, let's get this yellow thing somewhere where it won't cause too much trouble." Izo sighed as he helped Marco find a location to out the boat and then secured it to the Moby Dick.

- - Lookie! Here I am again! - -

When dinner rolled around, Thatch was somewhat surprised to not see Ace or Marco, or Pops or Namur around. Marco always went to dinner, if for no other reason to make sure there was no fighting breaking out in the Galley. Pops would always join in the Galley if for no other reason than to be with his numerous sons at the same time and to eat dinner with them like a real family would. Namur normally joined dinner when there was something worth it, and that was just because Namur was naturally cautious of humans since he was a fish-man.

Ace however, caught Thatch's attention the most for some reason. The boy was missing from the Galley (that or he just couldn't find the cute freckled black-haired man; and Thatch was willing to admit he thought Ace was cute) and so were people who normally joined in dinner. Unsettled by this little fact no one seemed to notice, Thatch took out a tray from the kitchen and filled it with four plates of food and went off with tray in hand to find the four missing people, only to find all four on the deck sitting down and talking. Marco, Namur and Whitebeard looked a little tense and Ace was staring at Namur with a look of something in his eyes.

"Ace, this is Namur." Marco broke the tense silence, "Namur, this is Ace."

"Nice to meet you, Namur!" Ace smiled at the fish-man and that threw everyone, except Whitebeard, off.

"Nice… to meet you too…" Namur shifted a little, which Ace caught and scooted away from the man a little.

"Sorry about that, I just didn't think I've ever come across a Pirate crew of humans who treat a fish-man as an equal. It's a nice change." Ace rubbed the back of his and looked a little sheepish, "Do let me know if I get too close."

"Wait…" Marco blinked, "You don't mind that Namur is a fish-man?"

"Why would I?" Ace frowned and before Ace could explain why, Thatch cut in.

"Because most people are taught at a young age that Fish-men are nothing but animals that are meant to serve humans." Thatch frowned at this, "and most people try to sell Fish-men for the money."

"I was raised by Shanks and we once visited Fish-man Island so Shanks could prove to me that humans weren't the most diverse species out there." Ace chuckled, "It was a huge eye-opener and I made a few friends there. I can't see why I'd be upset that Namur is welcomed here."

This made everyone smile and Thatch handed out the plates of food as Thatch tried to pry Ace for information on how he and Shanks met and some of the adventures he went on with the Yonkou.

"Well…" Ace rubbed the back of his head and blushed, "I guess I met him when he docked at Dawn Island when I was younger…" Aces chuckles held a nervous tone and that made people who noticed it want to know more. "I, uh… stole Shanks' hat and he caught me."

"You what?!" Marco nearly yelled as he dropped the fork he was holding back onto the plate. Marco knew, as did everyone else on the Moby Dick that were sitting on the deck, that Shanks was highly protective of the hat he got from Roger.

"Yeah, well…" Ace shrugged, "I got to live." Ace mumbled as he stared in awe at the food that was handed to him, and Thatch took it as in insult.

"My food is highly edible and most delicious." Thatch huffed, "so stop looking like you've gotten wind of poisoned food."

"Sorry!" Ace's eyes snapped open and he faced Thatch, "it's not that, it's just…" Ace mumbled the rest of his sentence, which Marco caught and winced.

"How are you still alive?!" Marco's voice shocked everyone by how much disbelief and horror was laced into it, "How does one live on that?!"

"I turned into the Stag and ate?" Ace shrugged, "it's mostly true."

"I don't want to know…" Thatch mumbled and when everyone settled down again, began to idly chat about any and everything that wasn't considered taboo, which was mostly Shanks and Whitebeard.

- - I'm back, again! - -

After dinner, Marco and Thatch were giving Ace a full, proper, tour of the Moby Dick and even showed Ace where his small ship was hanging, to which Ace was confused.

"How did you find Striker?" Ace turned to Marco, knowing full well that Thatch couldn't have gotten his little baby since he was on the Moby Dick the entire time.

"I'm a phoenix. I've got heightened senses; you should know this full well." Marco shrugged to which Ace rubbed the back of his head sheepishly since he had honestly forgotten that the Devil Fruit he ate caused his senses to increase and become heightened.

After that, Marco showed Ace to his room since Thatch had too much showing Ace around, he had forgotten to show the young man to his own room- which Whitebeard believed should be the room the second division commander once used when the crew had a second division commander.

Wishing Marco a fair night, Ace looked around the room after the door shut and noticed how both simple and void of personalization.

There was a simple, mostly white, bed in the rightmost corner of the room and directly left of the bed, against the back most wall was a simple writing desk that has a wooden stool for a chair. There was a drawer that held mostly plain white clothing (why white on a pirate ship, Ace didn't want to ask) that looked much too big for him to wear. Thankfully Ace had some spare clothing in a small compartment on the Striker.

Kicking off his shoes and laying down on the bed, laying his head on his arms, Ace closed his eyes and listened to the ambient noises of people walking past the room and the gentle lull of the waves and ocean.

Ace stayed like this for a few minutes before a thought entered his head.

"… I think I just was willing kidnapped…"