As the years passed, Garp's promise to raise Ace as his own had brought him to a remote mountain village, under the care of a tough, no-nonsense woman named Dadan. She had been entrusted with the task of raising Ace, a child who was already marked by destiny in ways she could never fully understand.
Dadan had been skeptical at first, but Garp insisted that she would be the one to keep the boy hidden, away from the prying eyes of the World Government. There, far from the bustling cities, far from the world of pirates and Marines, Ace could grow without the constant fear of being hunted.
However, there was something unusual about the child.
Even from the very beginning, Ace had been different. He wasn't like other babies. While most infants were helpless and dependent, Ace's piercing eyes always seemed to carry a depth that unsettled anyone who looked too closely. His gaze was sharp, knowing, as if he already understood the weight of the world.
By the time he was one year old, Ace had already begun to show signs of his strange and extraordinary nature. He had learned to walk by his first birthday. At first, Dadan thought it was just a fluke—a child who had started moving earlier than expected. But then Ace started to speak, and not with the simple words of a baby. No, his speech was clear, fluid, and far more mature than any child his age should have been capable of.
"Don't leave me alone," Ace said one morning, as Dadan prepared to leave the house for some errands. His voice was uncharacteristically calm for a one-year-old, and the words were far too coherent for a child who should still be babbling.
Dadan froze in her tracks, her hands tightening on the doorframe as she turned to look at him. "What did you say?"
"I don't want you to leave," Ace repeated, his expression serious, not a hint of the usual childish innocence one would expect from someone his age.
"You're... you're talking," Dadan stammered, blinking in disbelief.
"I'm always talking," Ace replied matter-of-factly, a glint of something ancient in his eyes, something that made Dadan's stomach tighten in unease.
By the time he was able to form complete sentences, it became clear that Ace wasn't like other children. He acted like someone far older, as though he had lived lifetimes before this one. And sometimes, when he would sit alone, his expression distant, it was as if he were remembering things from another time—a time that didn't belong to this life.
"Mom..." Ace murmured one evening, sitting on a rock near the campfire, his tiny hands resting on his knees. "She died so I could live."
Dadan froze. There was no way a one-year-old could understand the concept of death so clearly, and certainly no way he could remember his mother's passing.
"Don't talk like that, Ace," Dadan said, trying to shake off the uncomfortable feeling rising in her chest. "You're just a baby. You shouldn't be thinking about things like that."
But Ace merely looked at her with those piercing eyes, his expression calm and knowing. "I've seen it before. I've seen how it ended. I couldn't save her."
His words echoed in her mind like a haunting whisper, and Dadan couldn't help but wonder if there was something deeper going on, something that defied the logic of this world.
Over the next few months, Ace's behavior became even more perplexing. He would often ask strange, mature questions about the world, things that a child his age couldn't possibly understand.
"Why do people fight?" he asked one day, watching a group of pirates pass through the village, their raucous laughter and boisterousness sending a chill down Dadan's spine.
"Why do you think people fight?" she responded, trying to steer the conversation away from such a heavy topic.
"To gain power," Ace said, his voice quiet and steady. "To control others. They want to rule the world, to make everyone bow to them. But the world doesn't belong to them. It belongs to the free people."
Dadan stared at the boy, her heart heavy. *Where did he get these thoughts from?* No child should speak like that. No child should be burdened with such a view of the world.
Ace's memories from his previous lives—the life of Gol D. Ace, the Pirate King, and his own short-lived life—were beginning to surface. They weren't like ordinary memories; they were fragmented, pieces of lives lived before, flashing before his eyes in moments of clarity. The battle at Marineford, the warmth of his brother Luffy's smile, the burning desire to protect those he loved, the bitter truth of his own death… all of it was still there, a collection of emotions and lessons from his past lives that Ace was subconsciously grasping.
At night, when the moonlight streamed through the windows, Ace would lie awake, staring at the stars, his tiny hands curled in fists. In those moments, he was more than just a one-year-old child. He was a soul bound by fate, destined for something far greater than this quiet mountain village.
The memories were fragments, a blur of emotions and events, but they were growing clearer with each passing day. He remembered the feeling of the wind in his hair as he sailed the seas, the sound of swords clashing, the taste of freedom in his mouth. He remembered his brother Luffy, his love for him, the way he'd always been there, just out of reach. Ace knew that he had a purpose, that his life was far from ordinary, but for now, it was a life of waiting—waiting for the moment when everything would fall into place.
"Why am I here?" Ace whispered one night to the stars above. "What am I supposed to do in this life?"
He couldn't answer his own question, not yet. But the memories of his past lives told him one thing—he wasn't going to let the world continue its endless cycle of pain and power. He would change the world, even if he had to do it alone.
And so, the strange, mature boy who had once been an infant continued to grow, his path ahead shrouded in mystery. The legacy of his past lives—and the legacy of the Pirate King—was calling to him, and it was only a matter of time before Ace would have to make his choice.
But for now, Ace was just a child in the eyes of those around him, and he would continue to grow, to learn, and to wait for the day when the storm of his fate would finally come.