#ar writes

I have finished with the drafts of the last chapters of High Noon

that's right, High Noon is 95% complete

just need to do some final passes for typos and grammar and then

weekly updates until all chapters are posted

                                Ballpoint Ragdoll by Ardent Abyss ______________________________________________________________

Everyone asks how and why. I can’t explain my inspiration, how, why; it just was born, started by the day I wished and my wish came true. They sprung to life. I drew, bringing to anything I wanted to life. 

My pencil was magic and my pen kept me alive. The colors brought to life a world I could only dream of. These creations of mine solidified right in front of my face. All of my characters like Cherry Bomb, Dante, even characters from books and comics, like Ghost Spider and Jet smiled up at me, with their synthetic hopes and dreams and colorful masks. I was physically inside the story if I drew it. It was magical and sometimes it was also horrifying. 

I drew again, a girl with her wings on fire falling to the ground. Within a blink, I was there. There were so many other kids. We were confined behind seemingly invisible walls. They didn’t look real but they were. The kids at first looked normal and then, and then I saw it. 

“I want to rip it off my back. Jordan it hurts, so much. Please make it go away,” the kid next to me cried. 

“It’ll be ok. I promise I’ll get us out as soon as I can ok? I won’t let them hurt you Mikes,” the girl next to her soothed. The crying girl then screamed and her wings, her wings of horror, burst into flames. 

“No no no no no,” Jordan whispered getting louder each time. 

MAS, post-marineford on sphinx (ace lives, sabo finds them early, the whole usual shebang of them getting together during the 2 year time skip) get whammied by a devil fruit that regresses their physical bodies back to the age at which they first had sex. Minds in tact, bodies changed, they all three take stock of themselves and each other after a flash of light--

I broke some of the writer's block and I need to get this out there. Y'all're gunna....have feels about this.

Two Lanes Split (Marco lived to the age of 22 without a shadow)

Fusion between Devil Fruit users is a thing, but rare because most DF users do not trust others and most types do not mix well across type-i.e. logias and paramecias are very rarely compatible power wise. Zoans are more apt to fuse across type, because animals rarely if ever have an elemental aspect tied to them in the fruit but it's still rare because having Giraffe That Can Belch Soap Bubbles (a griaffe zoan and a paramecia) isn't that great in combat actually and it also reduces the number of fighters on your side if you have a fusion who isn't a heavy physical hitter.

Enter Marco. Every DF user who's even remotely friendly to the Whitebeards wants to fuse with Marco. Who wouldn't??? He's the fucking phoenix, his fusions heal and you turn into the most badass bird on the seas. Why wouldn't you want to become one with that guy?

Marco is not that keen on it. Back when he was younger he experimented around with it and found that the fusion state was....not the best, mentally, for him. The awe of his power, the excitement, and the thrill of battle were heady of course, but it did not take long for him to realize the partners he would fuse with were...Well, covetous. They were fusing for battle and the combination made sense at the time, of course, but in the aftermath he could distinctly tell that the fusion wasn't about him resonating with his partner. It wasn't about maintaining a connection because he and his partner were on the same wavelength or of a same mind about something or because they even liked him at all. It was all about his power and his fruit.

He swore off Fusing with anyone who wasn't Pops after the age of 25. Pops respected him, Pops loved him as a son, and Pops not only didn't want his power but was happy to give it up and give it away back to him when they pulled the fusion apart. They still only very rarely pulled it off-the Fusion more difficult as Pops got older and became physically taxing on him but also because there was almost never a real need for it.

Then, after almost a decade of no fusing at all, Ace came to the Moby Dick. Suddenly, after the first time-on complete accident during a raid-fusion was exciting again. Because Ace didn't give a damn about keeping Marco's power close and on hand, didn't give a damn about the phoenix really at all. All Ace cared about was how much harder they could hit together to keep everyone safe and make their enemies pay.

the one where you can taste anything your soulmate tastes (food, blood, dirt, anything in the mouth)

Ace learned early on that his soulmate didn't eat breakfast. It was a "maybe once a week" meal, usually pretty sparse on carbs. Fruits Ace had never seen would burst on his tongue. Sometimes a nutty crack between teeth that stuck to his gums. Rarely bread. But always coffee.

Ace hated coffee. At 4 years old he'd cry angry hot tears at the bitter taste and put anything and everything nearby in his mouth to erase the taste. His own breakfast was lingered over, every chewing bite drawn out to drown the flavor of coffee. Water never helped. He chewed Dadan's table and plates and chair backs hoping the taste of varnish and wood would erase the bitter aftertaste. Dirt, leather shoe soles, knife oil, the grease from the bottom of the skillet-nothing escaped Ace's attempts to get rid of the taste of coffee in the morning.

Luckily, his soulmate got the hint. Coffee never stopped being a staple of his soulmate's mornings, but the taste changed. Cream, sugar, milk, different blends that diluted and dulled it to nearly unnoticeable levels. Ace stopped trying to literally eat Dadan's house and life moved on.

Ace could almost always forgive the coffee by lunch time. For all his soulmate seemed to hate breakfast, lunch (and dinner) were always a treat. On days Ace couldn't scrounge up his own meals aside from whatever roughage he and Sabo could scrounge up, his soulmate somehow always had a feast. Flavors he couldn't identify lit up his tongue without fail-spices that complimented meats he'd never known, creamy textures of soups and smooth pastas or mashed roots and tubers, slick slides of bitter-but-not-coffee-and-not-bad-at-all drinks drew pictures in his mind of better meals. Desserts-sweets unlike anything he'd imagined-comforted him at night, every night, without fail. For a period of time he was nearly sad that his soulmate had to make due with his meager meals of foraged greens and unseasoned meat.

Eventually, he figured that one day-once he'd set sail and started his own journey on the seas-he'd make it up to his soulmate and eat every fancy meal he could find in every port he visited. It was a promise he kept to himself-his spare money that wasn't spent on the crew or sent home to Makino and Dadan went right to his stomach.

When he joined Whitebeard's crew his attitude about it didn't change. He kind of regretted starving himself and stealing naked breads and fruits from the kitchens, but his soulmate seemed undisturbed by the change. There were even moments when the smells wafting up to his hiding places from the mess on the Moby reminded him heavily of meals his soulmate was eating or had eaten in the past. Even the conspicuously left-out-in-the-open desserts that the daft cook left unprotected in the kitchens at night were the same sometimes.

Yet, somehow, he didn't put the dots together until that fateful day Marco told him to make up his mind. After the right hand of Whitebeard left him to his thoughts, he'd picked up the bowl of soup and knocked it back. Then he'd nearly spat it all over himself and the deck once he registered the taste.

The exact same thing his own soulmate had eaten barely an hour before. His soulmate was on the Moby Dick. His soulmate was a member of Whitebeard's crew. Hell, it was possible Ace had fucking met them already and hadn't known it.

He'd be a liar if he ever said that finally knowing who preferred coffee over actually eating in the morning wasn't a factor in his final choice.

These bitches (affectionate) have plagued me this morning. So here's Sabo figuring out What's Going On With Marco. Warning for: minor but comical misunderstandings about Marco's genitals