[Video] With ash in your mouth, you'll ask it to burn again

[burnt_offering]

[The SmartSnail comes on suddenly, and two jeering youths can be seen making obscene gestures and laughing at the phone they've found. They seem to be pleased with themselves, and their unpleasant adventure starts with flipping up their middle fingers and slapping their butts at the camera.

Ah, the joys of youth.] Finders keepers, bitches. Whoever dropped this? Your loss! We got new tech now! [They give up on selfie time, and decide to use the camera function to keep a record of their destruction. They drag knives into every surface, kick over anything in their path, and brag about their piracy prowess in slurred drunk voices as the continue.] Oh shit, what's that? Hey, can you see-" [The name of the person is slurred beyond being audible, and they pull out a flashlight and shine it into the distance. They drag the weak light jerkily over a wide area, but find themselves staring at a grave . The light hits the top of it at first, and they murmur and mumble in slurred voices about what they could do if they took it apart.] So this is where the sorry bastard ended up. Guess the stones are worth something if nothing el-[A high pitched shriek emits from one of the men as he shines the light from the top of the grave, and then down to a huddled figure shaking at the bottom of it. The figure's back is facing the camera, scarred grotesquely, and a soft noise emits from the direction they're sitting in as they slowly rock back and forth.] Shit. Just a drunk. Go home! We claimed this place! Get out![No response comes.] Fuck off, and go! [One of them comes closer, and tries to kick at the figure while the other laughs and films.

But as he does, the form ignites. And the camera is dropped, shutting off as it meets the ground hard.]

Comments

[raiseyou]

[ Fire like Marco's never fucking felt before roils into his chest the moment he sees the grave. He was just watching for the hell of it, honestly, frowning at the stupid antics but keeping tabs on it like he's kept tabs on everything since the warp. Now? Now there's blue fire crawling up his chest and face from just left of center. If they touch a single piece of stone or bead of that necklace - ]

[ But then the form comes into view, and the blue flame dies. ]

[ Marred and burnt it may be, there's no mistaking the remnants of that tattoo. ]

[ The last of the blue flames sweep away just as the red ones erupt onscreen, only to explode again, bursting into full phoenix in seconds as soon as the feed goes blank. ]

[ At least he doesn't need to track the feed. He knows exactly where to go. ]

[bigdenergy]

[Luffy's not sure how he got here; he has a general concept that the world has gone awfully strange lately, things and people appearing and disappearing, but he was there and now he's here and he's not bothering to waste much effort on trying to figure out the whys and wherefores behind what is evident: he's not where he was.

Instead, he moves forward, looking for -- something, not sure what, but driven by a restless nagging sense of incompleteness that he naturally associates with hunger. Instinct tells him there is something here that is important, that he needs, and Luffy has always been a creature of instinct, so he follows it, drawn to wander with a purposeful directionlessness, seeking and searching until he sees two figures up ahead. In the dimness of night, he hesitates, pauses, squints through the darkness to see them clearly, feeling that tug that tells him this is important...

And suddenly, abruptly, he's anchorless, his head spinning worse than any maelstrom, and his whole body feels light, as though there's no ground under his feet, like he's been disconnected from the earth and loosed from gravity and he's just floating--

(he's running, flinging himself forward with a mad rush)

-- until he crashes face-first into his brother's chest, a sound that is both a sob and a scream tearing itself out of his throat because it hurts, it hurts, the feelings inside of him are too much and too big, they're more than he can hold, they're going to crush him, tear him apart with their sheer mass, he can't even tell what he's feeling because he's feeling everything but most importantly what he's feeling is warmth, is the beat of a heart and the push-pull of breathing and the ripple of muscles and it's Ace.

It's Ace and Luffy can only cling to him and press his face into that solidity that has been irrevocably, irretrievably lost to him for the past two years of forever, because forever is over and Ace is here.]

[chief_of_staff]

[Sabo is new to this place; he hasn't been here long at all, and he's honestly still trying to figure out what's going on, what's here, and if everything he sees is real or not.

But when he watches the feed, the first thing he thinks is that this can't be real. Ace is dead -- he read that in the paper. The paper, for all of its faults, never actually lies. Besides, that headline in the paper was enough to send all of his past memories, what he recalled and knew about his brothers, flooding back.

Staring at the feed, he's tempted to go to where he believes the grave is, based off of its location in the real world, but pauses. There's no way that these kids would damage a grave, right? Leaning closer to the device, he narrows his eyes in a futile effort to watch their every move, still sure that they wouldn't, they couldn't do a thing to a grave, but then --

Is that ...]

A--

[He's talking to himself, obviously, but the words come out slowly, quietly, as if he isn't saying them at all. This is a dream, it has to be, he can't be alive --]

Ace?

[After the feed ends, the revolutionary stares into the distance, into nothing for about fifteen minutes or so, fighting back any tears that are stubbornly trying to form. Eventually, he stands, puts on his hat and grabs his pipe, and then heads out to where the grave should be. He has to get to the bottom of this.

Once he arrives, he notices the figure that looks like his late brother, and before he can do a thing, say a thing at all, he falls to his knees.]