【One Piece】Dawn in the Darkness

"Bang!" Lucci turned his head and looked towards the alley where the sound came from. Was Ace there?

He extended his Observation Haki to explore, and soon he found Ace's breath there, but there was also the breath of another person. Lucci frowned and quickly rushed towards Ace. He could feel that Ace's breath was very weak.

"Why don't you let me just grab you? This way it will be easy for both of us." In the long and narrow alley, the black-haired boy hung his arms limply, his hair grabbed by a man with a hideous face, and his face was pressed hard against the wall that was broken by the impact.

"Go to hell, bastard!" Ace shouted angrily.

The man's face turned ugly in an instant, and he raised the gun to the boy's head. "You have successfully angered me, Fire Fist. I believe the slave trader will give you a good price." The man said ferociously.

The man took out the prepared seastone handcuffs and prepared to handcuff Fire Fist's arm, but suddenly he found a sword energy coming towards him. He quickly released his hand that was suppressing Fire Fist and quickly stepped back, barely avoiding the sword energy. He almost lost his arm.

He looked towards the direction of the attack with a ferocious look on his face. "Hey! Little devil, I advise you not to meddle in other people's business!"

"Hey! Ace, are you okay?" Lucci seemed not to see the man standing next to him, and he quickly walked towards Ace who was lying on the ground.

"How dare you ignore me!" The man's face turned crazy. "I will make you die uglier." As he said that, he raised the gun in his hand and shot in the direction of Lucci.

"Be careful!" Ace saw the bullet attacking Lucci. He could feel the breath of the ocean emanating from it, the same as the dagger that pierced his shoulder. "That's a seastone bullet!!"

Lucci sensed the threat the moment the bullet was fired, with a sharp gleam in his eyes. He raised the long sword in his hand, wrapped the sword with armed color, twisted his wrist, flipped the blade, and blocked the incoming bullet, which shot to both sides.

Lucci continued to swing the knife in his hand towards the man, but after a moment, he retracted the knife. Then a large amount of blood gushed out of the man's chest, and he looked at Lucci with horror.

After Lucci put the knife back into the sheath, he didn't look at the person lying on the ground again, and turned to Ace with an indifferent expression. Ace looked at Lucci with a serious look, and inexplicably felt a little guilty. Although the mask blocked his expression, after spending so much time together, he knew clearly that Lucci was very angry now. Although he didn't know why, he could feel that it was because of him.

Lucci looked at Ace's guilty conscience and felt helpless. Why did he always make people worry like this? He didn't know why Ace always regarded his life as the lowest, or even didn't care about his life at all. So no matter what happened, he always wanted to bear it by himself and rushed forward by himself, not caring about his body at all. Just like this time, why did he want to fight alone? They were partners, weren't they?

Lucci's eyes softened, he would prove to Ace how much he meant to him.

"Are you okay, Ace?"

"I'm fine." Ace endured the severe pain from the wound and answered calmly. He didn't want Lucci to see his miserable appearance.

Lucci went forward to support Ace and checked his wounds. When he saw the seastone dagger on Ace's shoulder, his eyes trembled for a moment.

He took a deep breath, placed his left hand on the dagger, endured the weakness caused by the seastone, held the fingers holding the dagger with his other hand, quickly took out the dagger and threw it away, then took out a first aid kit from the shadow space.

Fortunately, because he was often injured in the forest, he had a habit of preparing a first aid kit in his shadow space.

Ace looked at the first aid kit that suddenly appeared in Lucci's hand with some surprise. Where did he get it from?

Suddenly I remembered that when they first met, Lucci seemed to have demonstrated this ability, but he was only focused on eating at the time and didn't notice it.

Lucci put a piece of disinfectant cloth on Ace's shoulder, and then applied the hemostatic herbs he carried with him to the wound. After bandaging the serious wounds with bandages, he silently took Ace's hand, put it on his shoulder, and supported Ace and walked silently towards the tavern.

"Why are you here?" Ace finally couldn't help but speak to break the silence between the two.

"Of course I came out to find you, you drank too much." He knew what he was thinking. Lucci sighed, and then said seriously, "Ace, listen, I will never abandon you."

Ace fell silent after hearing what Lucci said. He initially thought that they had left him alone and gone.

"Ace, drink this first." Lucci gently shook Ace's shoulder with a glass of sobering drink in his hand.

"You should have a good rest. I will make arrangements for the crew." Lucci said softly, looking at Ace's tired expression.

……

It had been a few weeks since the drunken incident, and during that time Ace could feel the crew's eyes following him. He wanted to snap at them to allay their concerns, but he knew they were just feeling guilty for losing him that night.

They were very drunk that day, and Lucci's moving of them did not wake them up. It was not until the next morning, when they woke up groggily and saw the wounds on his body, that they realized that it was their mistake that caused their captain's injury.

Ace didn't think too much about it. He didn't think it was their fault, but he knew that Bree felt guilty. He thought it was his fault. He promised Lucci to look after the captain, but he didn't do it.

He didn't know what to do to make their guilt stop, so he pretended not to see their looks, hoping the crew would come out of it on their own.

Lucci looked at Ace's departing back and sighed helplessly. He stopped Deuce who wanted to follow him and said, "Leave him alone for a while."

"But..." Deuce hesitated.

"He is the captain and he is very strong. You should believe in his strength. There is no need to worry so much." Lucci said helplessly.

"But the captain is too reckless and needs someone to stay with him," Deuce explained.

"Don't you believe in Ace's strength?" Lucci said in a low voice.

"Of course I do!" Deus retorted.

"Then what are you worried about? He is the captain, and it is his duty to protect you. You don't need to worry about his behavior just because he successfully protected you and got hurt. He doesn't need you to worry like that. You just need to trust him." Lucci said in a serious tone, "And Ace has his pride. Your obvious worries will cause him trouble. He won't regret his actions and decisions. As a member of the Spade crew, you just need to follow him and trust his decisions."

Deuce was a little shocked by what you said, he never thought that their worries would cause trouble to Ace, thinking carefully about the atmosphere on the ship recently, Deuce drooped his shoulders in frustration, it was because they didn't trust their captain enough.

"Lucci, how do you know the captain so well?" Deus asked puzzledly. Obviously, they should have spent more time with the captain, but Lucci knew Ace better than them.

"I don't know either, it's just a feeling." Lucci smiled. He didn't know how to describe that feeling. Sometimes it seemed subconscious, as if he knew Ace would be like this.

……

Ace jumped off the boat and walked towards an alley. He wanted to avoid his crew for a while. He walked through the alley and came to a small town not far from the port. It was a safe enough place. He thought he could relax for the night. There were no big groups in this town. Basically, it was the locals who lived here. The locals also looked very friendly. For Ace, it was a good night. In this tranquility, he could calm down some of the things that happened recently.

Ace was sitting in a restaurant eating.

"Have you heard he's in the area?"

"Who?"

"The Four Emperors, Red Hair."

Ace stopped eating with his fork. He seemed to hear people at the table next to him discussing Red-Haired Shanks. He stopped eating and listened silently to the information about Red-Haired Shanks.

"how do you know?"

"The Red Hair Pirates are on a nearby snow island. Someone saw the ship of the Four Emperors Red Hair on the coast of that island, but they seem to have entered the highest snow mountain."

"As long as we don't enter the town, otherwise the residents of that town will...Alas!"

"If only our island was in Whitebeard's territory," one of the men sighed.

"Whitebeard? Isn't he a pirate? Why do you think so?"

"Whitebeard is also one of the Four Emperors. I heard that if he wants to become the Pirate King, then he will be the next one to become the Pirate King. He is known as the 'strongest man in the world'. I heard that when he was young, his strength was comparable to that of the Pirate King Roger," the man said in awe.

"The strongest man in the world" Ace thought about this sentence while eating.

Lu Qi looked at the bar in front of him, pushed the door open and went in without disturbing anyone. He walked up to the bartender, ordered a glass of wine and some food, and found a seat in a corner and sat down.