Broken Faith

Lesson 20: Nothing lasts forever

Ace gulped. "Woooaah..."

Sabo nodded in blank agreement.

"It's so cool!" Luffy's jaw plummeted to the ground, an effect exaggerated by the flexibility of his bones.

A smile curled on your lips. Yes the treehouse really was impressive. Far more impressive than you could've ever imagined actually. It still looked like it had been built by children, that much was inevitable, but even then it somehow managed to look relatively stable. Although that was probably because most of it was hidden under a layer of branches and leaves.

That had been Sabo's idea. All about 'natural camouflage' and so on. Luffy had loved the thought, going on and on about having a leafy pirate ship whatever that meant, but Ace had been harder to convince. He had conceded eventually, but only if you would build a lockable safe for their pirate fund. That... hadn't been fun. Even so, you were glad it had ended up like this. It looked pretty.

"I wanna go up and look around!" Luffy squealed, already swinging his arm dangerously round his shoulder.

"Tsk..." Ace huffed, "Why the hell're you so excited anyways? We've been building this thing for months; you know every single corner of this place."

"But stiiiill!" He pouted. "It's finally dooooone! It's all different when it's done! Don't you just wanna go explore everything?"

Balking, Ace took a step back to hide his gradually reddening face. "N...no! It's just a... uh... tree house! What's so cool about it... right?"

"I personally want to do one final test run," beamed Sabo, unrolling a large piece of paper. "Just to make sure our defences are working y'know? We don't want to be caught out at any point because something broke."

"Could you please just test the resettable ones?" You mumbled as you tried your hardest to restrain your frustration. "I don't want to have to rebuild anything just yet."

Especially since Luffy had accidentally triggered the 'rotten board pitfall trap' over three times during construction. He was fine, being a rubber man was terribly convenient at times, but tearing out the broken planks and finding a suitably rotten replacement got tedious fast.

"We deserve a rest," you finally said once Sabo had sworn a solemn agreement to only trigger traps he could reset himself. "How about we head on up and get ourselves settled in, now shall we?"

"WAHOOOOOOO!"

Luffy was gone before you could blink, zipping up through the branches faster than the monkeys he was named after. His control over his devil fruit had increased in leaps and bounds since the beginning of this project. Mostly because he had insisted to train in the most ridiculous and unhelpful ways throughout the entire process. Such as the time he insisted on stretching himself through all the doorways to show the rooms were connected, and had accidentally tied himself into a knot in the process. That had been a pain to sort out.

"That selfish idiot." Ace hissed, beginning to stalk towards the ladder created for those without an extendable appendage. "Couldn't bother waiting for us could he... "

"I could always give you a ride up?"

His entire face paled at the suggestion, "Uh... n-no thanks. I think I'd rather... climb up. Yeah... I'll just climb up... thanksforthesuggestionthough!"

So he was still petrified from climbing the cliff huh? You covered your slight giggle with a hand. Ironic. "Sabo-" you turned around only to find there was no one there. He'd already vanished, off to check one trap or the other in places you couldn't even begin to imagine. Excellent. That suited you just fine.