#ryuuzizii

[midnightluck]

Ok so I stumbled upon your blog a few weeks back, and I have to say I love love love your ASL essays. It’s just that your points are all well thought out. I just wanna ask, (or discuss?): Do you think what happened at Marineford could have been changed if Sabo had been there? Obviously this is given that somehow he didn’t lose his memories or regained his memories beforehand, because being honest, the way he recovered is kinda iffy?

Oh boy, I’m glad you like essays because this one’s gonna be long, haha.

The short answer is yes, but how? And the answer to that is it depends, but we’ll get into that in a sec because first we have to talk about amnesia.

Because, as I’ve said before, I was really kinda eh on the whole thing myself. Then Sableu pointed out that there’s a better canon reason, and that makes me happier, tbh.

But here’s the thing: why? Because the more I think about it (and I have been thinking about it, because Reasons) the more I wonder why amnesia was a plot necessity in the first place. We know the boys don’t really keep in touch, and Sabo did leave them a note saying he was going on ahead. He doesn’t know they think he’s dead, and why would he think about it? He wouldn’t risk going back to Dawn Island, but once Ace set sail he could follow the bounties and indulge in as much brotherly stalking as he liked.

Cause it’s not like it’d be hard to justify them never meeting; he’s got a job where he could easily go far away and out of touch at a moment’s notice for indefinite periods of time. He always means to get out that way to visit, maybe for next New Year, but he gets back from a mission and Ace is dead. Keep in mind, from capture to kill, Marineford was probably only two months or so, and the Marines are sitting on that knowledge hard. Even if we assume the fastest, where Garp calls Dragon directly, (which again, why? because Garp probably doesn’t know Sabo’s working with him) there’s travel time and all sorts of handwavy reasons Sabo could either show up just a bit too late or not even know until it was all over.

I’m not saying amnesia doesn’t cover all that too, because of course it does. And then we get Sabo inheriting Ace’s will through spiritual succession (?) and possibly haunting (???) and I love that, truly I do. I’m just saying, as a writer who’s been putting serious time into figuring out how to do an au where Sabo remembers and Ace doesn’t, that it’s really not that much a stretch to avoid it altogether.

So, after that tangent, let me finally get to your question. Would Sabo showing up at Marineford change things? and how?

I mentioned it would depend, and it does. There’s a lot of moving parts in this, so let’s break it down a bit.

When does Sabo find out?

How much time does he have? That will affect how much planning he does, what help he sources, and where/how his interference will happen.

A short amount of time is going to lead to a flat-out sprint across the ocean to get to Marineford in time, whereas a month’s head’s-up could allow for a stealth raid on Impel Down

Sabo will take every advantage he can get in a case like this, so given enough notice, he could feasibly show up with a literal Army

How does he find out/where is he when he hears?

This goes back to time. If he’s halfway across the world and has to run for it, planning on the fly, then he’ll have a solid plan but no resources

If he’s at base when he hears, then he has a massive amount of resources and potential allies

Can he pull any strings at his destination to have things waiting or set up there? Will it be an operation big enough to need a base? Where? Does he have time for this?

How does his amnesia affect this?

If he has to take the time to recover from it, can he afford it?

Is he somewhere safe enough to deal with it?

Given the circumstances, can he keep himself awake and work through the pain until there’s time?

How tf does convenient plot amnesia even work idk

So, as you can see, it depends, haha. But let’s get into some possible options for Sabo:

Impel Down

The Hard Team Option

Pros: No one’s expecting it. It’s supposedly impossible. The RA probably has the most comprehensive floor plan they could make, and likely black den-den mushi as well. Rumor is Ivankov’s in there somewhere, so potential help (oh, I have Thoughts out Ivankov in Impel Down, but that’s for another time). Potential for a large amount of allies, if sprung from cells. Potential for a massive distraction and huge blow against the Marines.

Cons: It’s Impel Down. The place is huge and hostile and nasty, and he wouldn’t know where Ace was until he got in. Everyone’s against him, even the prisoners, and he’d be walking mostly blind into a death trap, securing an exit route the whole way and with no guarantee that Ace is in any shape to walk out under his own power.

Would require: foreknowledge that Ace was there and as much on Impel Down as possible, infiltration tools, stealth tools, preferably a small group, an escape craft, luck.

Transition

The Solo Stealth Option

Pros: Best timing. Least security; no backup available. Stealth option available, and could be done solo. No need to worry about Ace’s condition, because with the seastone off he could set the whole boat on fire, making escape super easy.

Cons: Requires exact timing and knowing when the ship is going to leave and what path it will take. No backup available. The current there puts the ship on rails, so unless you disappeared the whole ship, when it reaches Marineford people will notice.

Would require: A way on to the ship, or a separate ship capable of surviving those currents. Foreknowledge of the ship’s schedule. Improvisation.

Pre-Marineford

The Infiltration Option

Pros: Mass chaos. Lots of Marines doing something out of routine means a loud mess, allowing for infiltration. While moving Ace from the ship to the execution dock, he’s in the open and not chained to anything. No one is expecting it.

Cons: Everyone’s on high alert. You’re running out of time; if you mess up here, there’s no more chances. It’s Marineford; there’s Marines for days. Even those not charged with guarding Ace will be watching him. Easy entry, hard exit.

Would require: Probably a Marine uniform. No visible weaponry. Balls of steel. An escape craft.

Marineford Proper

The Last Resort

Pros: No sneaking.

Cons: Actually declaring war on the Marines while standing directly in front of them.

Would require: As many allies as possible. Desperation.

Well, there’s just what I came up with offhand, anyway. There’s a lot of possibilities, and I’m no strategist, so hit me up with your ideas, too!

Going on the above, the ideal plan would be at least three of four, and probably go something like this:

Hang out around Impel Down until Ace is loaded onto the ship that takes him to Marineford.

Secretly board said ship, either in Marine uniform or by attaching a smaller craft onto the hull somehow.

The former leaves no traces for paranoid guards to stumble over, but the latter guarantees an escape route.

Case the ship quickly. Locate escape routes and dinghys.

Get to Ace, stealth preferred. Get him out of the chains and the seastone.

Get out.

Preferably through the nearest floor or wall instead of going back up. No guards, and cripple pursuit.

If Ace is in really bad shape and can’t risk the water, try sneaking, and when that fails, fight.

Ace is there, so it’ll be fine

Escape

Check for escape craft, but plan for if it’s not there anymore/wasn’t ever there, go for the lifeboats

Have a crew/escape craft standing by some distance away, and make for that, swimming if necessary.

Get Ace to sink the Marine ship

He’d probably be glad to

Contingency 1:

Meanwhile have Koala/whomever wearing Marine uniforms blending in at Marineford

Try to sneak him out during handover

Contingency 2:

During above, try to get at least one plant on the platform with Ace/in Ace’s guard platoon, preferably the guard is made up entirely of plants for the next step, which is

Contingency 3:

Meet up with Whitebeard, because of course he’ll be there.

Scream defiance in the face of the Marines

Rescue Ace

Contingency 4:

Improvise

So, to make a very long answer very short, Sabo would do his damnedest to not let it actually get to Marineford in the first place. But if it did, that’s when logic can go hang because now not only is Ace on the line, so is Luffy. So Sabo’s gonna charge in, pipe swinging, and back Luffy up the whole way.

So you can have a turnabout, where all the guards on the platform are actually RA members. You can have a big battle where the odds are more even. You can have a sneaky circumvention of everything, and it will never ever come close to what it was. But if it does come down to that moment, then it probably plays out the same.

Because Sabo attacks, and Ace defends. Put in that situation, Sabo will go after Akainu and Ace will go to Luffy. So if Sabo is with Ace and they both see him go after Luffy at the same time, then there’s two ways it can go. Sabo attacks from the side, or from the front.

From the side, it plays out the same. From the front, though, where he gets between Ace and Akainu, well, there’s where it can differ. Does he take some of the heat, so they share the attack and are both injured but neither dies? Or is Sabo far enough forward to take the entire attack and die instead, for real this time? Or is the lava hot enough that it can cut through the pipe and Sabo and keep going?

So those are some possibilities for Marineford. Maybe Sabo comes in enough time to make a difference. Maybe he’s there and doesn’t anyway. Honestly, there’s enough going on in the whole arc that you can finesse it pretty much any way that suits a story.

But for me, Marineford will always hurt, and it’s not even only because of Ace. Because when you look at that scene, the one of Ace and Luffy fighting together, you can almost see it, can’t you? The way they don’t stand quite back to back but rather shoulder to shoulder, the way they move in sync but sometimes there’s a beat where they seem to be waiting, the way they fight together but independently.

There’s a brother-shaped hole in their formation where Sabo should be, and it hurts my heart every single time.