Chapter 275
That thought had barely formed when an even sharper, more violent crash tore it apart.
It was the scream of a steel keel twisting beneath overwhelming force, followed by the explosive crack of hundreds of tons of timber being crushed into splinters.
Zaraki's attention locked onto the Kuja vessel forcing its way into the blockade.
Its reinforced bow drove through the supposedly airtight formation of the Beasts Pirates like a red-hot iron punching through wax.
The unfortunate pirate ship it had rammed was already folding in half like a snapped biscuit.
Screaming pirates spilled from the broken decks by the dozens, dropping into the churning sea below.
Surrounded by hulking warships covered in savage beast figureheads and crude, brutal lines, the elegance of the newcomer looked almost absurdly out of place.
Yet no one, Zaraki included, spent long admiring the serpent carvings decorating its hull.
Every gaze was drawn instead toward the lone figure standing at the bow.
At the bow stood a woman whose beauty seemed to defy description.
She wore an ornate high-slit dress, long black hair cascading to her waist, and her flawless face carried the kind of supreme arrogance that seemed to look down upon every living thing beneath the heavens.
She did nothing more than stand there, yet somehow that alone made her the center of the battlefield, as though even the morning sun existed merely to illuminate the Pirate Empress Boa Hancock.
"Ah... Hancock-sama..."
"S-She's too beautiful... I'd give her anything..."
Something strange began happening around the Kuja ship.
The Beasts Pirates who had been roaring for their cannons to fire only seconds earlier stared blankly at Hancock, expressions melting into hopeless infatuation as weapons slipped from numb fingers and clattered onto the decks.
Her beauty alone was enough to ruin the concentration of weaker men.
When several pirates recovered enough sense to raise their weapons again, Hancock lifted one hand with obvious contempt.
"Mero Mero Mellow."
The heart-shaped beam swept the nearest group.
The men who had already surrendered themselves to desire turned to stone where they stood.
"BASTARDS! SNAP OUT OF IT!"
From the flagship, Queen's metallic, grating voice exploded through the amplifiers.
His enormously bloated face twisted with disgust and obvious wariness.
High above the sea, King's eyes darkened behind his mask as he took in the same impossible picture: Dracule Mihawk, Jinbe, and now Boa Hancock were all standing in the path of Kaido's attempt to reach one Marine.
To the watching pirates, the situation was beginning to look less like coincidence and more like some impossible Warlord reunion.
The balance of the battlefield was shifting visibly, and it was shifting in a direction increasingly unfavorable to the Beasts Pirates.
Thousands upon thousands of eyes turned once again toward Kaido of the Beasts.
Faced with the combined pressure of another Emperor and three Warlords, what would the man known as the Strongest Creature do?
Zaraki could clearly see the veins bulging across Kaido's face.
The huge hand wrapped around Hassaikai tightened until the knuckles whitened.
His teeth ground together hard enough to produce a harsh, grating sound.
Rage and frustration twisted through Kaido, and beneath both lay the kind of madness born from being challenged again and again until the last thread of restraint was ready to snap.
"Kaido."
A calm voice suddenly cut across the battlefield.
Shanks stepped forward from the bow of the Red Force.
Every trace of his earlier laziness had disappeared.
His deep eyes looked directly at Kaido, and when he spoke, there was no room in his tone for argument.
"That's enough."
He paused.
Then he said something that stunned nearly everyone listening.
"Do me a favor."
Shanks' gaze remained steady.
"Today, you're not touching that kid Zaraki."
"BULLSHIT!" Kaido roared.
"SHANKS! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!"
"Just someone who thinks he has an interesting future."
Shanks answered with the same calmness as before.
Then he dropped another bomb into the conversation.
"And I'm clearly not the only one."
His eyes drifted almost imperceptibly toward Mihawk, then Jinbe, and finally Hancock.
The implication was impossible to miss.
The surrounding pirates nearly short-circuited.
Many immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion that the three Warlords were here because of Red-Hair, and their gazes toward Shanks filled with an entirely new level of shock and awe.
What kind of personal influence could pull three Warlords into the same confrontation?
"Wororororo..."
Kaido's fury seemed to ignite all over again.
His booming laughter filled the sky, carrying naked mockery and murderous intent.
"You think three Warlords are enough to scare me?"
Hassaikai swung outward until its spiked head pointed directly at Zaraki.
Kaido's golden eyes burned with pure destruction.
"Even if every last member of the Red-Haired Pirates dies here today, you're still not stopping me!"
His voice became a roar.
"THAT BRAT DIES TODAY!"
The tension had reached its absolute limit.
Then Kaido said something that made every heart on the battlefield sink.
A savage grin spread across his face as he pointed Hassaikai toward Zaraki.
"Shanks. You really think the people standing here are enough to fight me? Don't forget that old hag Linlin wants that brat dead just as badly as I do!"
The name Charlotte Linlin, another Emperor of the Sea, struck the spectators hard.
Kaido and Linlin had never formed a stable alliance—the Government's attempt to push them toward the same target had already collapsed spectacularly in Totto Land—but the fact remained that Zaraki had severed one of Linlin's arms.
If she recovered enough to resume the hunt, another Emperor had every reason to come after him.
But before Kaido's threat had even finished echoing across the sea—
the situation changed once more.
A blazing orange-red beam erupted from the far horizon without warning.
It was not a cannon shell.
Nor did it resemble any ordinary attack.
It looked like a divine spear forged from the core of the sun itself.
The ocean vaporized along its path.
The surrounding air crackled under the heat.
And the beam tore across the entire battlefield at a speed beyond almost anyone's ability to react.
Its target was none of the men at the center of the confrontation.
The attack instead struck one of the enormous Beasts Pirates warships stationed along the outer edge of the blockade.
For a fraction of a second, everything froze.
Then—
BOOOOM—!!
The hundred-meter-long warship and the hundreds of pirates aboard it were pierced directly through the middle.
The vessel exploded into an enormous pillar of fire.
The blaze rose above the sea like a miniature sun, staining half the sky an apocalyptic orange-red.
Zaraki's eyes narrowed.
'Fire Fist.'
There was no mistaking the style of the attack.
Ace had announced the arrival of the Whitebeard Pirates in the most direct way possible.
Every head turned toward the distant horizon, following the path of the attack.
Something enormous was emerging from beyond the waves.
A shadow so large it seemed to belong to some mythological age.
It cut steadily through the sea as it approached.
A gigantic single-masted ship emerged from the horizon, its bow shaped like an immense white whale whose majesty looked almost gentle despite the vessel's enormous size.
Yet it was the flag high above the mast—a black field bearing a skull with a huge white crescent mustache and crossed bones—that plunged the battlefield into silence.
The emblem was simple, unmistakable, and heavy enough in meaning to make the entire sea tense: the Whitebeard Pirates.
Whitebeard had already been moving around the outer Totto Land routes after the earlier crisis.
Once Morgans made Kalles the next point of convergence, the Moby Dick had simply changed course again.
Red-Haired Pirates.
Beasts Pirates.
The Big Mom Pirates had their own reason to want Zaraki dead, even if Linlin was not physically present here.
And now the Whitebeard Pirates too?
What the hell was today?
An annual Four Emperors reunion?
The Beasts Pirates, who had been roaring with renewed confidence only moments earlier after Kaido reminded everyone that Linlin wanted Zaraki dead as well, now looked as though they had seen a ghost.
Shouting and taunts vanished, even the laughter dying away until only wind and waves remained.
King hovered above the sea, and even his enormous black wings gave an involuntary twitch.
The balance of power was no longer merely tilting; someone had taken a hammer to the scales and smashed them into pieces.
The situation had slipped completely beyond prediction.
As the colossal Moby Dick approached, a figure stepped onto its bow.
He did not possess Kaido's demonic brutality.
Nor did he carry Shanks' restrained sharpness.
He simply stood there, an extraordinarily tall old man with medical tubes attached to his body and an enormous sake gourd in one hand.
His unmistakable crescent-shaped white mustache stirred gently in the sea breeze, and without trying or demanding it he became the natural center of the battlefield: Edward Newgate—Whitebeard, the Strongest Man in the World.
Whitebeard did not even spare Shanks or Hancock a glance.
His eyes went directly to Kaido.
A broad grin spread beneath his enormous mustache.
"Gurararara!"
His booming laughter rolled across the sea hard enough to make eardrums ache.
"Kaido, you brat."
Whitebeard's tone carried the casual mockery of an elder scolding an unruly junior.
"After all these decades, you still like picking on newcomers in places like this?"
Kaido's face instantly darkened to a furious shade of purple-red.
Veins bulged across his forehead so violently that they looked ready to burst.
Shanks standing in his way was enough to make him angry.
But Whitebeard speaking to him in that condescending, senior-like tone?
That struck somewhere much deeper.
It was humiliation carved straight into the bones.
"Newgate..."
Kaido forced the name through clenched teeth.
Every syllable dripped with murderous intent.
Whitebeard could not have cared less.
He tilted back his enormous sake gourd and took a deep drink.
Then he set it down beside him with a heavy thud.
Slowly, one hand extended.
His enormous naginata appeared in his grip.
Murakumogiri.
"Well..."
Whitebeard rested the legendary weapon against the deck.
"I didn't come all the way out here because I felt like starting a war with you."
His smile disappeared.
The eyes beneath his brow sharpened like blades.
When he spoke again, there was no humor left in his voice.
Only absolute authority.
"Take your men."
Whitebeard's grip tightened around Murakumogiri.
"And get lost."
The words seemed to fall across the battlefield like mountains.
Every gaze moved between Whitebeard and Kaido; Kaido had chosen to fight when one Emperor and three Warlords stood in his way, but the situation had changed again.
Two other Emperors, three Warlords, Mihawk, and Zaraki now occupied the same battlefield with separate reasons to oppose Kaido forcing his way into the duel.
What would the Strongest Creature do?
Swallow the humiliation and retreat?
Or push this already uncontrollable conflict to an entirely new level of destruction?
Silence stretched.
Seconds felt unnaturally long.
Then Whitebeard moved.
Apparently, his patience had run out.
The enormous hand gripping Murakumogiri suddenly tightened.
He raised the legendary naginata slightly—
and brought its butt down hard against the deck.
Thoom!
There was no earth-shattering explosion.
No thunderous blast.
Just one extraordinarily deep, muffled impact.
Yet the moment that seemingly ordinary sound rang out... every true powerhouse on the battlefield changed expression.