One Piece: My Evolving Aircraft

Next Bonus, 100!!

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Aboard the Empress.

Jin had fully embraced his role as a stay-at-home dad. He gently rocked the cradle, a soft lullaby playing in the background as he coaxed the two infants inside to sleep.

His other hand was firmly clamped onto Aurelia, preventing her from harassing her newly born younger siblings.

The girl had an endless supply of energy, freakish strength, and absolutely zero common sense. Left to her own devices, she was a walking disaster zone. He had to keep eyes on her at all times. Even the super-powered kids like Chopper and Bonney were terrified of her. Needless to say, she had already reached the "menace to society" stage of toddlerhood.

As for leaving her with Hancock... given Hancock's temper and absolute doting nature, Jin was convinced they'd end up raising a demonic pirate overlord. Just look at Robin's child—quiet, well-behaved, practically born to be a scholar.

While juggling his parental duties, Jin stayed sharp, analyzing intelligence gathered from the news and his various networks.

Teach's ascension to the Seven Warlords and Ace's imprisonment had dominated the front pages of every major news outlet worldwide.

On one hand, this feud directly involved the Whitebeard Pirates, one of the Four Emperors. The name "Whitebeard" alone was enough to silence crying children across the Four Blues. So, when cracks appeared within his legendary "family," it naturally drew the rapt, gossipy attention of the entire world.

On the other hand, for a story to simultaneously hijack the headlines of every major paper, the World Government and the Marines had to be pulling the strings behind the scenes.

They had two primary objectives.

First, to broadcast their brand of "Justice." To flaunt their achievements before the masses. Look at us. We captured Whitebeard's Second Division Commander. The World Government gets things done. We aren't just sitting around collecting taxes.

Second, to deflect public outrage. The widespread backlash and skepticism sparked by the recent Dressrosa incident had faded, but it hadn't died completely. People still whispered about it.

The best way to bury a scandal is to engineer an even bigger spectacle. They needed to divert the public's attention away from the World Government's complicity with the Warlords in usurping member nations, and from the lingering debates over the morality of the Buster Call. They had to shift the narrative away from those highly volatile issues.

The "Great Pirate Era," the "Four Emperors"—at their core, they were nothing more than convenient targets deliberately propped up by the World Government.

It was obvious. Ever since the Great Pirate Era began, the world's hatred had been entirely redirected toward the pirates. The masses cursed Roger and the Yonko, condemning them as the root of all suffering.

Meanwhile, the true architects of this broken world—the World Government and the Celestial Dragons—had comfortably faded into the background. And not only had they hidden themselves, but they had also successfully rebranded themselves as the absolute avatars of "Justice."

This was precisely why the World Government, despite possessing the military might to obliterate the Yonko and the pirate menace, had consistently dragged its feet.

Many believed that the World Government, the Yonko, and the pirates were locked in a state of absolute, irreconcilable enmity. That view was entirely one-sided. It was dead wrong.

Was it not entirely possible that the birth of the Yonko was the World Government's own masterpiece? That the Great Pirate Era itself had been catalyzed by their hidden hand? Because the collapse of the global order hadn't started with Roger; the cracks had been showing since the era of Rocks.

To maintain control, the World Government had chosen to manufacture a common 'enemy.' In the past, it was the threat of other races—the Fish-Men, the Giants. Today, the pirates and the Yonko served as the perfect tools for the Five Elders, who sat in their ivory tower, believing themselves above all living things.

Without pirates ravaging the seas, how could the Marines justify their 'Justice'? Without the looming threat of the Yonko, who would the Celestial Dragons exercise their 'privileges' against?

Pirates had to be hunted, but never eradicated. The Yonko had to be fought, but never destroyed. Thus, an unspoken understanding, a quiet complicity, existed in the shadows between the World Government and the Four Emperors.

The Five Elders had even institutionalized this with their triangular balance of power: the Warlords, the Yonko, and the Marines. These three pillars were the essential cogs in the machine of global stability.

It was glaringly clear. The Marines, heralded as the world's ultimate military force, were, in the eyes of the Five Elders and the World Government, no different from the Yonko or the Warlords. They were all merely instruments designed to uphold the absolute reign of the Celestial Dragons.

Having ascended to the ranks of the 'rulers,' Jin could now pierce through the illusions and see the rotten core of the world.

The rampant piracy, the Revolutionary Army's uprisings, the bitter racial conflicts—the root cause of every single crisis plaguing the world was the World Government and the Celestial Dragons.

Eight hundred years of unchallenged rule had resulted in extreme class stratification, astronomical wealth disparity, and grotesque inequality. The 'divine' order constructed by Imu and the Celestial Dragons was a crumbling edifice, teetering on the brink of collapse.

However... the Marines, the nobility of the affiliated nations, and even the Yonko and the Warlords—they were all beneficiaries of this broken system. That was the grim reality. The Yonko and the Warlords may have once been victims of this order, but once they clawed their way to the top? Driven by their own vested interests, whether consciously or unconsciously, they actively maintained the very system that had oppressed them.

But even a dying leviathan casts a massive shadow. Challenging an order this ancient and colossal, no matter how rotten it appeared, was a game of unimaginable peril. Even someone as powerful as Jin had to know when to strategically yield.

Nika?

Jin could say with absolute certainty that, following the original story's trajectory, Nika was nothing more than a joyous laugh ringing out over a decaying corpse. He couldn't shatter this established order.

Look at Alabasta, Skypiea, Wano, Fish-Man Island. Did Luffy truly liberate them? Didn't they just revert to the same old systems of monarchy and divine right?

Skypiea and Fish-Man Island were somewhat acceptable. But Wano? They merely ousted Kaido and the Kurozumi clan, only to replace them with an even more nauseatingly flawed ruler.

Given Luffy's personality and the inevitable narrative drift, would the Celestial Dragons and the world's true destroyers ever face real justice?

Absolutely not!

Even if they were decisively defeated, bleeding hearts like Koby and Momonosuke would inevitably rush to their defense. And Luffy's crew would graciously forgive them. They'd end up cheering and laughing right alongside the Celestial Dragons...

And then, it wouldn't just be the Four Blues living in harmony, but the entire world holding hands!

Sound familiar? Exactly! It was the very same nauseating "co-prosperity" rhetoric that certain island nations from his old world had always dreamed of.

Hell, there were probably people within the Revolutionary Army who harbored those exact same naive ideals. In the end, they'd just swap out the current Celestial Dragons for a "moderate" batch, or let Dragon and the other royal nobles form a brand-new Celestial Dragon caste to rule the world.

And then, magically, the Celestial Dragons would change their wicked ways. Then, all conflicts and wars would vanish overnight. Then, the world would achieve eternal peace. Then, all races would be perfectly equal...

Jin didn't believe in fairy tales.

"I'll shatter this childish delusion," he muttered, his eyes narrowing. "And the Summit War will be the hammer."

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Aboard the Moby Dick.

The atmosphere was suffocatingly heavy.

The commanders and the crew exchanged anxious glances. Words caught in their throats; no one dared to voice the dread weighing on their minds.

Not long ago, Shanks had come aboard to warn them, urging them to stop Ace. It wasn't that they hadn't taken the Red-Haired Yonko seriously. It was simply that Ace couldn't be stopped.

Ace was far too stubborn. It was the very trait that had fueled his rise, and now... it had orchestrated his downfall.

As for why no one had gone to assist him... the Whitebeard Pirates had been navigating treacherous waters these past two years. Ever since Whitebeard's clash with Jin at the G-5 base, the crew had been forced into a defensive posture, barely managing to hold their current territories.

Especially after Jin's ruthless, public critique of the Four Emperors had leaked to the world.

Across the numerous islands flying Whitebeard's flag, whispers had begun. People were openly debating the old man's failing health and advancing age. Loyalties were wavering.

Fish-Man Island's defection to the Winter Blossom Kingdom, and its subsequent, miraculous prosperity, had planted seeds of temptation in the minds of many territory governors.

Teach's betrayal and Thatch's murder had cast a dark, suffocating pall over the entire crew. Their future, once so unshakeable, now looked bleak and uncertain.

Furthermore, with an endless tide of vicious rookies flooding into the New World, the crew was stretched dangerously thin, constantly on guard against Warlords and rival factions.

It was painfully obvious to anyone paying attention: the Whitebeard Pirates still looked like an unstoppable juggernaut on the surface, but in reality, they were a fractured monument, taking hits from all sides, deteriorating by the day.

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