The Extra Mile (Ace X Reader) (Discontinued)

No is Not an Answer

The few days of the Whitebeard crew's control had quickly turned into weeks and you had to admit, you enjoyed the steady, more challenging fights that came with it.

The first night, you had noticed Marco with his little notebook and after a while, you had asked him about it. Turned out he had been using it to take notes on each fighter's strengths and weaknesses and was picking future fights based on that. It worked well.

Through his time in charge of organizing the fights, you noticed they had become steadily more challenging and in turn, more exhilarating. He had yet to find someone as strong as Ace but he definitely kept you on your toes. You left most nights with arrays of new cuts and bruises and had to skip nights because of it but the job had become much more therapeutic practically overnight and you didn't mind all that much.

It actually helped give you time to focus more on your arm, you needed it anyway. The constant, more difficult fights had a heavier toll on the mechanical limb and it needed more maintenance and repairs than ever. Franky was getting very accustomed to your much more common calls and had even mentioned keeping the parts that seemed to break more often on hand for quicker fixes.

Unfortunately for you, there were some parts that weren't supposed to break like they did and took longer to replace. Namely the plates encasing the arm itself that protected everything and made it look, well, more normal. The past week had been especially cruel to it when Marco decided to test your skills against heavyweight fighters.

The metal had been scuffed and scratched beforehand to be sure but now the plates were covered in so many dents and dings that it was interfering with the inner workings and you had to remove them. Franky had received yet another call though this time he'd begrudgingly admitted it'd be at least another week until the replacements could be made.

Usually you'd just repair the old ones whenever possible but the damage was too much and the metal was unsalvageable. On a good note, Franky did say he had a new vendor making them who supposedly used different materials that held up much better than anything else you'd used before. He talked the work up so much that you were actually hopeful that you wouldn't have to replace the parts as much in the future, but you'd have to see.

But that was why you were currently sitting across from Whitebeard, nothing but the desk he easily dwarfed between the two of you, your arms crossed and a deep set frown on your face.

"I see your missing some parts." Your boss noted gruffly, equally unamused.

"Yah." You uncrossed your arms long enough to give him an eyeful of the bared inner working parts, now naked since the plates had become too much of a hindrance to keep on any longer.

"You can't use that arm like that." He growled, lazily motioning towards it with one large hand.

"Nope, not in a fight at least. One good hit and it'll practically fall apart and I'm not up for building a new one from scratch."

"Then I suppose you're out until it's fixed."

"I never said that." You huffed, annoyed he'd even suggest as much.

"Have you fought without it before lass?"

You paused. The truthful answer was no, you hadn't. You'd been in your fair share of fights before losing the real one and since it'd been replaced, you'd only increased how often you got into scraps. But you liked your time in the ring too much to even think about missing your "physical therapy."

"It's been a while but yeah, I have." You lied easily, shrugging like it was no big deal. "I'll just take it off for fights."

You'd be damned if you didn't adapt.