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Chapter 1 – Twin Flames of Dawn
Portgas D. Arcturus first tasted life twice in the space of a heartbeat.
The earlier taste was bitter—shattered glass, diesel smoke, the copper snap of his own blood as a city bus he'd boarded after an all-night anime binge jack-knifed through a guardrail and folded against a concrete support. The second taste was salt—pure, humid, newborn air filling lungs on Baterilla, the Pirate King's dying wish echoing in the frantic pulse of a woman who had held him an extra year in her womb to keep him hidden from the world's most powerful navy.
He did not understand any of it then, but the memory of both endings—one mundane, one mythic—settled like twin stars behind his newborn eyes. By the time he could crawl he already understood words, and by the time he could walk he understood that remembering the plot of a manga does not guarantee you can survive inside it. So he chose silence, learning to smile in the half-lidded, politely mysterious way that let adults underestimate him.
Garp delivered the louder twin, Ace, to Dadan's bandits and placed the quieter one with Makino in Foosha Village. He left three heirlooms with the barmaid: a crimson cutlass whose guard bore the bold Oro-Jackson engraving ACE; a half-filled logbook whose last entry ended in an unfinished sentence about "a dawn that breaks even the sky"; and a spherical log-pose that beat like a subdued heart whenever storms gathered over the horizon. Makino hid them under a floorboard because she knew that secrets, like alcohol, matured better out of the sun.
Arc grew beautiful in a way that caused strangers to whisper "girl?" before logic corrected them. His hair remained chalk-white even after muddy summers, lashes gold-dust long enough to cast their own shadows, and eyes the uncanny blue you only see in glacier meltwater. Beauty, he discovered, was a kind of armor: people hesitated before punching something that looked carved from porcelain. Luffy tried once, missed by a hair, and spent the next hour insisting the miss had been luck, not intimidation. Arc only smiled and helped him up—an easy gesture that, ironically, terrified the mayor more than any bandit raid.
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The night Gray Terminal burned, the sky smelled like a forge. Arc had been sweeping the bar while Makino tallied casks; the glow over Dawn Mountain rose hot orange, brighter than any sunset. A lifetime of foresight—panels half-remembered from a manga cover arc—slid into place. This is the fire that will kill nameless people to keep Goa Kingdom's streets tidy, the memory whispered. In the story you read, nobody stopped it.
Makino's fingers froze on her ledger as she followed his gaze. "Arc?"
He didn't answer; he was already hauling up the trap-door, fingers wrapping around the lacquered scabbard. The sword felt oddly familiar, like shaking hands with someone who'd once told you a great joke. No time to explain. He tossed Makino a half-bow, vaulted the rail, and sprinted for the trail that wound toward the landfill.
Night insects shrilled; sweat slicked his palms. He forced breath low into his belly the way the bandits taught Ace. Calm is faster than panic. Infinity, that gentle distortion he'd played with for years, fluttered under his skin. He spread it across his body, widening the thin cushion of space that lay between every atom in the universe. Air thickened, then softened again—he always forgot which sensation came first.
He found Ace inside the labyrinth of burning trash, silhouette hunched like an angry fuse. Soot painted the older twin's cheeks, hair sticking in damp spikes. People screamed beyond a half-collapsed tunnel; Ace whirled at every new crackle, ready to fight the flame itself.
"Ace!" Arc's voice carried farther than lungs alone—Infinity helped, letting sound ignore stray gusts. Ace turned, pipe weapon raised, ready to bark an order until the crimson cutlass caught his eye.
"Is that a toy?"
"Try me." Arc drew Ace (the irony tasted sweet) and let a small pulse of Conqueror's Haki ride the metal. Fire gutters flickered flat; embers hung suspended like startled fireflies.
Ace's grin stabbed through the smoke. "Mom named you pretty and gave me loud; guess the sword evens things out."
"No time for jokes," Arc said, but the smile leaked onto his own lips—couldn't help it. He touched two fingers to the blade, willing Infinity to coat the edge. A sizzling sheet of heat slid off and died in the dirt, leaving steel ice-cool.
They moved together—Ace smashing barriers, Arc using open-hand parries to slide collapsing beams into new load paths. Every time Infinity flexed, sparks drifted sideways and smoke parted in spirals, as though the air itself preferred not to touch him. He rescued a little girl by simply stepping through a wall of fire, skin unharmed, the flame convinced it no longer occupied that centimeter of space. She hic-cupped in awe; he set her in Ace's arms, and they pushed deeper.
Foreknowledge warned him of no named characters here, no plot armor. Every face mattered equally, which felt heavier than any spoiler. By dawn they had a ragged parade of sixty-three soot-blackened survivors limping behind them toward the safer slope. Arc's lungs burned; Infinity cost almost nothing physically, but holding widefield distortions for hours left the world feeling too rigid afterward, like the snap when you release a long-drawn bow.
Ace dropped to one knee beside a stream, splashing ash off his cheek. "We should rob the nobles for medicine," he said between gulps.
Arc rinsed blood from the sword tip. "Already planned. The carriages rerouted south to avoid smoke—they'll bottleneck at the old gate."
Ace eyed him. "When did you start predicting troop movements?"
"When you started punching bears," Arc said, and their laughter sent crows flapping.
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They arrived at Foosha with backpacks of loot just as red dawn glazed the bay. The Red Force loomed offshore, sails catching first light. Inside the bar Shanks had declared breakfast to be "an extended concept," tables pushed together, crew cramming benches. Luffy waved both arms when Arc shouldered through the door behind Ace. Coins spilled onto the floorboards; Lucky Roo scooped them up with a grin. Shanks' gaze fixed on the white-haired boy balancing a crimson sword almost as tall as himself.
Arc felt Conqueror's Haki graze him like warm surf—Shanks testing the air. He let his own answer, subtle, gentler than what he'd used on the fire. Glasses chimed. Makino froze mid-pour. Shanks' smile widened. "Tricky. You look like you should be modeling for a seashell ad, but that presence says captain."
Arc set the blade across two stools. "Spar to first blood?"
"You're offering lessons?" Shanks laughed. "Sure."
They cleared a space near the counter. Benn Beckman raised one eyebrow but made no move to stop it; the crew loved a show. Arc bowed—old Earth fencing habit overlaying pirate etiquette—then let Ace hang loose, tip tracing sea-foam arcs in the dusty light shafts. Infinity coated the blade so thinly it hardly shimmered.
Shanks drew, shifted weight, and vanished forward. Arc slid his right foot back, letting Infinity bloom in a coin-sized pocket at his sternum. The Yonko's saber found no resistance, skidding around the distortion as if deflected by magnetism. Arc pivoted, felt the wind of the counterstroke comb his hair, and flicked. Steel kissed Shanks' cuff; a single thread floated free.
First blood never came; Shanks halted, grinning bigger. "That's enough. Wouldn't do to bleed on Makino's floor." He clapped Arc's shoulder. "I once sailed with a man whose sword was named Ace. Looks like the name found a worthy keeper." His gaze flicked to the engraved guard, then to Arc's brother. "Take care of both Aces, kid."
Luffy's jaw hung. Arc tousled his hair despite the height difference—Infinity made reach elastic when he wanted. "Lesson one," he murmured to the boy, "strength is quieter than you think."
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Later, when noon heat lifted the morning fog and the Red Hair crew's singing faded out to sea, Arc carried the naginata—a parting gift from Dadan's bandits—up the seaside bluff. He chose the ledge that overlooked the entire village, waves smashing far below. Salt spray felt good on smoke-scoured skin.
He planted the polearm upright and leaned against it, allowing Infinity to trickle from his soles into the stone. The world shifted lens-like: horizon edges sharpening, colors cooling an octave. Above him clouds thinned where his awareness brushed them, curious molecules parting for a boy who wasn't entirely bound by distance. He wondered—again—why Gojo's powers had followed him here. Some karmic joke, maybe. Or narrative symmetry: a manga fanatic reborn to test whether knowledge could outpace fate.
He closed his eyes. The log-pose pendant warmed under his shirt, and Roger's unfinished sentence filled the silence inside his skull like ink swirling through water:
Freedom sleeps beyond maps. Sail, and prove the sky a lie.
He pictured Marineford—imagined the scaffold, the muffled roar in Luffy's throat when the executioner raised his axe. I will not let that panel reprint, he promised the invisible author. But I won't break the story for nothing, either. Changes must matter.
Stone rattled behind him—Ace climbing up, lips cracked, pipe slung cross-back like a rifle. He flopped beside Arc, both legs over the cliff. For a minute they watched gulls glide between thermals, silent the way brothers can be when words are leftover weight.
Arc held the cutlass out horizontally. "Wanna swing Ace?"
Ace ran thumb along the tsuba, reading his own name. "Weird." He gave a test slice, nodding approval. "Feels alive."
"It remembers Dad," Arc said, and only realized he'd used Dad not Roger after it left his mouth. A strange warmth settled, heavy and comforting. Earth memories had no father worth naming; maybe this timeline could fix that.
Ace handed the sword back. "Tomorrow we hunt the giant boar again. Luffy's in."
Arc sheathed, fastening the bandolier across his chest. "Triple or nothing on first hit."
Ace smirked. "You're on, Princess."
They tapped forearms. Wind picked up, flipping Ace's hair against his brow. Far below, the tide erased footprints older pirates had left on the beach hours ago, and Arc found himself mouthing a line of poetry from his previous life—something about rivers never touching the same bank twice. Appropriate, considering this ocean would soon discover Infinity didn't believe in banks at all.
The sun slid toward afternoon, gilding the rooftops. For a brief, impossible moment Arc saw overlapping images: Foosha Village as it was and as it might become—wharves crowded with bounty posters bearing his brother's smile, a ship with a Jolly Roger sporting sideways hourglasses for eyes, Makino laughing behind an expanded bar, Garp pretending not to be proud while threatening to punch mountains. He blinked, and the vision snapped back to present.
"You spacing out again?" Ace asked.
Arc rose, hefting the naginata. "Just scouting the future."
"Find anything good?"
"A map that's about to lie," Arc said, and grinned the Gojo-ease grin that made even bandits step back a pace.
They walked down together, shadows stretching long behind them—twin silhouettes, one dark, one bright, both burning with a Pirate King's legacy in different hues. The tide hissed its approval, as though the ocean had been waiting centuries for someone arrogant enough to edit destiny and polite enough to say please.
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End of Chapter 1