Chapter Text
Ace’s knees ached. It was a stupid observation considering he was about to be killed, but damn if it wasn’t true. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been kneeling on the execution platform, minutes turning to hours on the smooth stone imprinting itself into his kneecaps.
‘I wish they’d just kill me,’ he thought. ‘Get this crap over with, so nobody dies trying to save me. After I crashed and burned like a fucking idiot.’
They’d ordered him to state the name of a father he never knew, instead of the true parent he had, detailed the horrific massacre of every mother that forced his own to perform a miraculous feat and deliver him eleven months late with death as her midwife.
Sengoku had shouted the news to the world, thousands of den den mushi transmitting his pathetic visage, as if he could rectify Roger’s death and the Great Pirate Era’s birth with the Pirate King’s son’s.
Amassed below were a hundred thousand marines, five of the Seven Warlords - Hancock, Kuma, Mihawk, Moria, and, of course, Capone. Hancock… Ace still wasn’t sure why she’d visited him in his cell. He didn’t know anything, nowadays. ‘Why was I so stupid… Why am I so weak? I let Teach capture me. Now the whole crew’s coming into a trap… and I’m the bait. If they come at all, that is.’
He rasped, lungs weak and bruised ribs pulsing from his treatment in Impel Down, the physical marks of which were speckled across his whole torso in blues and greens and blacks, most heavily concentrated on the grinning lips of the jolly roger on his back.
“Was it two years ago, now?” Sengoku narrated, a microphone in his hand, broadcasting the humiliation ritual to the crowd below, who had been muttering nonstop ever since the reveal that the Pirate King’s lineage still lived. “You took your mother’s name, and ascended through the Grand Line as Captain of the Spade Pirates. That’s how we noticed, you see. The strength of your blood. Roger’s. That’s how we knew that Roger’s blood had survived.”
Ace sneered to himself. Bullshit. Foist all the blame onto Roger, then, why didn’t he.
“We cannot afford to leave you alone nor alive any longer. Not when the qualities in your blood would fester! We couldn’t take any rash action against you until now, not when you were under an Emperor's protection, but no longer will the Marines allow you to grow, to reach the summit of the pirate world! That is why there is so much meaning in cutting you down today! Even if it means WAR with an EMPEROR!”
An orderly scrambled somewhere beneath the platform, and Ace was able to just barely make her out in the corner of his eye. “Fleet Admiral Sengoku, sir! Urgent report! The Gates of Justice have begun to open without anybody’s orders! We can’t contact the control room!”
“What!?” The man roared above him, stone clicking beneath his boot-heel. The gates, off in the distance, did indeed open, and he stared gobsmacked. The roiling ocean, the thunder above, now the gates opening… the day was full of strange occurrences. Yet, through the gates, not a ship was visible, and the day sat eerily still.
Sengoku’s breath hitched suddenly. “This close-! I can sense them! Thousands- no, tens of thousands… somebody clear this fog!”
Before anybody could consider the how of his request, he was interrupted by the scoff of a deep voice they had all expected to hear, but combined with every other oddity, Sengoku felt tingling in his spine, in his observation, of dread and unease. Today wasn’t going to be the layup he’d hoped.
“Marines… pah! It’s storms that control the seas…”
A hideous bolt of lightning struck the craft at the edges of Marineford’s crescent tips, capsizing it immediately, and it was swiftly followed by another, and another, and another still - hailstorm winds rocked the water, sucking the ships into the depths of the sea. Some fired their cannon-stock in futile resistance before disappearing in the sea’s lurch, their wrecks slowing the rest from filling the gaps that they had left. Tornadoes came next, tearing through the wrecks and churning the water, spinning and whirling into the great beyond. Through the fog, shadows began to appear, ship after ship after ship, whose approach had been sensed by nobody - they had almost seemed to ‘blip’ into the observation haki of the assembled Vice Admirals.
The entire harbour sat with bated breath, the misty, murky sea putting all the distance between themselves and the Emperor’s approach. Tens of thousands of guns were trained on the opening of the cove, not knowing what move to expect. Battalions received their last orders, cannonades loaded and primed, and the strongest among the crowds - Admirals, Vice Admirals, Warlords - tensed minutely.
“They're here!” Sengoku yelled. Every recruit flinched. Even the more experienced bristled. Ace’s head merely hung deeper, shadowed eyes sinking further into despair.
And at once, like a great magician lifting a veil, the fog dissipated. Sengoku startled, having sensed nothing, and turned to the Admirals to confirm - the three were caught similarly off-guard.
The mist was most certainly natural, but to be drawn back so suddenly…
“Enough of this sorry weather!” a deep voice crooned, chilling the bones of all but the elite. “Thanks for clearing it up, Zeus!”
“No problem, Mama!”
“It's gonna be sunny skies for Ace’s return!” Prometheus agreed.
No, the fog had most certainly been natural, but its inception and dismissal… the work of the Emperor's accursed homie, which returned to her side grinning like the devil. She marched afore the deck of her flagship, the Queen Mama Chanter, a leviathan of wood and sugar equally that had been observed to sing and giggle as it traveled the waves. Not now. Now, it had an expression of rage marching the rest of the crew assembled behind their Captain, and on the decks of the armada behind them, its intention to return its crewmate’s boots to its deck clear.
CHARLOTTE “BIG MOM” LINLIN
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE - 4,388,000,000 BERRIES
BIG MOM PIRATES - EMPEROR OF THE SEA
Yes, the most powerful of the Four Emperors, the Strongest Woman on the Seas unquestionably - strongest PERSON, to many - had arrived to save her son. The blazing sun crowned her shock of pink hair like a halo, and storms themselves wreathed her shoulders. She was a veritable giantess, head and shoulders above even Admirals, and looked no worse for her years. A line here, some sag there, and her hair had faded from its former virility to a pink softer on the eyes, but the woman herself stood tall and strong - beneath the slight, soft plush curves of a woman accustomed to childbirth and hedonism were forged, thick muscles that sat on her iron frame; not the build of a braggart, but a true titan.
“HA MA MA MA MA MA MA!” She cackled, long and hard, her hat giggling in accompaniment, and she lifted her head into the sky to roar it to the world. Whipping her head down, white teeth clacked between red lips and formed a vicious, self-satisfied sneer. “Sengoku!” She bellowed, “Return my precious son to me or your soul’s gonna be lighting the candles on Ace’s next birthday cake!”
“WE DO NOT COWER IN THE FACE OF TYRANNY, SEA WITCH!” Sengoku roared back. “Marines do not cower before injustice! We enforce it: truly and morally! Your crew may be vast but you will shatter like waves on the rocks of Marineford! The Marines are the only force that rules the seas! You and your insidious ilk of the Great Pirate Era will drop one by one before the assembled might of the world!”
Not a single of her crew blinked, but his own men steeled themselves, waiting only for the order.
“Brat!” she chastised, ignoring him completely, instead directing her attention to her own son, head lowered and framed by two great blades.. He finally lifted his head to meet her eyes, his own red and swollen from obvious misery. “Is your neck sore?”
He balked at the audacity of the question. His voice was scratchy from misuse, and he forced out a “Yes…”
She harumphed. “How’s this for an ‘I told you so!?’ Next time, when I tell you you can’t handle chasing the traitor you listen! Got that? Good! Now let's go home.”
“Neither of you will be going anywhere!” Sengoku yelled. “Gol D. Ace, son of Gol D. Roger, you are found GUILTY of the high crimes of your father, which are too numerous to count, and thus renounce your right to trial! You are sentenced to DEATH, which will summarily be delivered in this very fortress, and your similarly criminal crew will watch!”
“That's PORTGAS D. Ace!” the convicted boy screamed back, eyes reigniting for a brief moment.
His judge and jury - not yet executioner - sputtered, taken aback. “You renounce your father’s crimes?”
“I don’t renounce shit, Sengoku,” he spat, rough and acrid. The Fleet Admiral frowned at Ace’s spurning of his title. I don’t have a dad named Roger! I only care about keeping my family safe…that's why I didn't want them to come! I’m a Portgas, dammit, but I’m a Charlotte too!”
“That's my boy!” Big Mom cheered from her ship, before turning to Sengoku mockingly. “Learn a lesson from the youth, Senny-boy! That codger Roger’s dead and buried! If you're gonna kill my son for being related to someone dangerous, it had better be ME!”
“Then, with the Pirate King as his father, and Emperor of the Sea Big Mom as his mother,” Sengoku growled, “His guilt is doubled!”
“Oh?”
It had been five days after meeting Jinbe - and after five days of fighting the fishman to a standstill - that Ace had first properly met Big Mom. He was delirious, barely able to move a muscle, and when he laid his eyes upon the coloured masts of the signing ship that was the Queen Mama Chanter he assumed it was a hallucination borne of battle stress.
“So you’re the brat faffing about with Jinbe?” she remarked, head and shoulders above anybody else on the deck of her ship. Ace struggled to lift his head to meet her hot orange eyes, but when their gazes connected he felt a second wind. “If you can’t even beat him, why bother challenging me?”
“Because…” he grumbled, pushing himself up to his feet despite how his ankles shook and ached, “...I’m going to be the pirate that takes down all four Emperors!”
Fire burst from his calves and he pushed himself upright. Big Mom still looked on, unimpressed as ever. “Big boast from a small boy.”
“He’s probably the one who burned down your flag on Fishman Island,” Jinbe rasped out, blinking like he hadn’t just seen Ace stand up, imbued by a sudden second wind.
“That was me!” he declared. Deuce and the rest stared at him making such a suicidal declaration in front of the Emperor - and it was, for it was an unspoken law of the seas that Emperors could not take any threat to their flags or their dedication to them lying down, lest their words become ash. Whatever it took to goad her into a proper fight, he’d do. “I’m going to defeat you, and then Whitebeard, and then Kaidou, and after that I’ll head back to Elbaph and take down Red-Haired Shanks for good measure!”
“You? Kill Kaidou? Hah!” Big Mom chortled above him. “You’re a riot! You’ve really got a pair to pick a fight with me, let alone all four Emperors! A heart attack is killing Whitebeard sooner than the likes of you! As for Shanks, you must have just missed him if you’re still alive!”
Ace grit his teeth. She was right, but like hell he was admitting that to her.
“And a team of twenty rookies, no less.” She paused for a moment, and then, with a single raise of her eyebrow an earth-shattering WAVE of Conqueror's Haki blasted out from her, scraping at his skin. His ears popped at the cloying-sweet pressure of it, firm and insistent and ever-present, clogging the very air he breathed. It let up, briefly colouring the air with the scent of surprise. “Yet none of you collapsed.”
To his shock and awe, he craned his head back to see his crew, panting and huffing, some having fallen over, some moments from unconsciousness - yet none fell, nor did their knees ever hit the ground. “Your crew has strong conviction,” Big Mom observed, stroking her chin, before with a dash of her leg she landed on the beach in front of Jinbe. Ace’s eyes gleamed.
“...Now show me yours!”
She trounced them.
Effortlessly, at that. The Spade Pirates, a loyal crew ever-so important to him, were utterly decimated, clutching their wounds, knees shaking. Despite being surrounded by fire, Ace knew he had been soundly beaten. She hadn’t even bothered to summon any of her famous homies to the fight or to even bother putting out the fire, and stared down at him, eyes shadowed by the smoke, ruby-red lips pulled tight.
Ace swallowed his pride for once. “RUN! RUN, ALL OF YOU!” He’d gotten lucky that Shanks never showed up to Elbaph, and his luck had run out. “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
“Didn’t figure you for a coward,” Big Mom sneered. “Cocky, foolhardy, green… not yellow-bellied. How disappointing.”
“Make no - huff - mistake,” he snarled, each wound tugged down like an anchor by gravity, “I’m staying behind. The second I show my back to you, all of my crew die.”
His eyes flicked to skull’s shattered sword, Mihar’s spent pistol.
“Let my crew go,” he somehow found the courage to demand, “and in return, I won’t run.”
“Stupid brat. I could kill you and cleave through this dinky island to reach your crew in the same swing of my sword,” she stated. “Laying your life on the line means nothing!”
She lifted her hat, a bandana atop her head keeping her hair tied beneath it, and the homie in her hand sprouted a hilt and a blade, grinning devilishly.
“I’ll kill you now. We’ll see if the seconds your pithy last whimpers gain your crew are enough for them to survive me.”
“Wouldn’t put odds on it!” her hat-sword chirped.
Ace nodded, standing resolute. He had nothing left to give, and so he faced the sword head on. She lifted her hand backwards, and before he had even the chance to blink or the reflex to tense, everything went black. He heard the shockwave from the slice seconds later. Fire, pain hotter than his own flames, lanced across his chest and poured out from the wound like the ocean’s tide. Struggling, realizing he wasn’t dead yet, he hurried to stand himself back up and take another blow, buy more time for Deuce and Skull and Mihar and Banshee and-!
“And he stands up again!” She grinned, and he realized belatedly that this was the first instance she’d shown him her smile, pearly-whites gleaming between her lips in an almost insulting manner considering how beaten and scruffy he looked in comparison.
“...You… didn’t…. kill me yet…” he coughed, blood specking the stones beneath his feet. “Come on… I can take another one…” How long was he going to cruelly prolong his last moments? He hoped everyone was hoisting their sails by now.
“No, I didn’t. Wanna know why?” she spoke almost haughtily, but there was a triumphant lilt to her tone that wasn’t present even when she was winning. “Because you didn’t flinch. Most rookies are all talk, but you? I like you! So why the hell would I kill you?”
He blinked, blood crusting on his eyelids crumbling away. “...what?”
“There’s few enough pirates on the seas who believe their own damn words, and fewer still worth their weight in butterscotch. Whitebeard’s a fucking crank and islands are going to be throwing celebrations when he kicks the bucket, Shanks is a monster who’d sooner cut his own damn hand off than shake it with a Fishman, and the Marines…” she let the implication hand and strode forward to bend down and flick him in the forehead, the impact like a bullet. He stumbled on his feet but met her gaze as best he could, confused but determined. “Send a thanks to whatever god you believe in you ran into me first, kid! Because they wouldn’ta hesitated to kill you on the spot!”
“Then…?” If not death, then what?
“You know why they call me Big Mom?,” she questioned, raising an arm and offering him her hand. He stared at it like it was a sea king’s maw. “It’s ‘cause I’m a mother to everyone who sails under my flag. I like you, so here’s what’s gonna happen. Be my son, and let’s raze the seas together!”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
Linlin clicked her tongue at Sengoku’s declaration, internally reaching for her vast reservoir of souls.
“Guys!” Ace cried, a distant image on the execution platform so painfully far away, guilt and regret swallowing his voice as he stared at his crew, new and old, former Spade and always Big Mom Pirates. “Mama! Even after I ignored you, ignored all of you, and charged out on my own like an idiot, you’re still here? Why couldn’t you just forget about me!? T-This is my own fault! Not yours! R-Run away, now! This is a trap!”
“Of course it is!” Even from this distance, and without observation, she could see the aghast, exasperated, despairing expression on his face. She laughed out loud. “You think you’re Katakuri, looking into the future? Have some more faith in your Mama! Like hell I’m running away! I’m not gonna run away from a fight I can win!
“No! Just go! This is all my fault!” he howled. Beside her, Perospero sighed, loudly clicking his rather large tongue
“What kinda sorry excuse for a mother lets her boy take the fall for a single dumb mistake?” She retorted, marching across the deck and whipping her hand out with a flutter of her captain’s coat. “Think I shoulda left Perospero stuck to the first candy-cane lightpole he licked in the winter, out to freeze? Let Smoothie drown when she got the wise idea to try and wring juice out of the ocean?” Behind her, her daughter blushed at the reminder, at Linlin airing out embarrassing highlights from her childrens’ childhoods in front of one and all. “Are you getting this, Sengoku? Make sure everybody across the seven seas hears what we do for our own! If you hurt any of my children, I’ll bring the world crashing down on your head!”
“We’re not gonna leave a single of the bastards that hurt you alive, Ace!” Cracker yelled from the decks. “We’re coming!”
“HA MA MA MA MA! THE BIG MOM PIRATES ACCEPT YOUR DECLARATION OF WAR, MARINES!” Linlin cackled, and clapped her hands together. “SOUL HOCUS!”
In a flash of light, smoke, and the popcorn crackles of a thousand guns, Marine soldiers dropped like flies. Akainu sat up in his chair, leaning forward to see what had happened.
“Oh dear…” Kizaru drawled, eyes widening behind his sunglasses. “Things might get a little out of hand today…”
Lying around the bleeding corpses were the chittering, cackling, giggling guns they wielded, now homies that had whirled around and killed their owned point-blank in an instant. Some soldiers bore rupturous wounds through their skulls or throats, others were impaled by their own bayonets; all had been unsuspecting of their own weapons being turned on them.
“Stop standing around! To arms!” Akainu barked at the troops below. Uncharacteristically, Aokiji was the first to act, throwing his arm up. “Ice Age,” he muttered, frosty-white wisps of air escaping from between his lips. A humongous, imposing iceberg wall sprouted up instantly, surrounding the Big Mom ships within Marineford’s crescent harbour. The harbour is frozen solid!” Perospero exclaimed, and not a moment later Oven burst forward to slam his hands on the frigid ice, reducing it to mist with but a touch. He almost fell into the now-pleasantly warm waters below before Katakuri grabbed him with an extended arm of mochi, dragging him back aboard.
Aokiji looked distinctly frustrated, even from this distance. “We need to kill Charlotte Oven,” he mumbled. “I can’t freeze the fleet otherwise.”
“Which means they’re free to maneuver!” Akainu barked. As if to punctuate the exclamation, the battlements of Big Mom’s ships began to thunder and roar at a horrifying pace, blowing holes in the amassed Marine soldiers. Each of them came with a face and a voice, of course, aiming, firing, and loading themselves into the crowds.
The ships split apart, the Queen Mama Chanter facing the Admirals foremost and charging full-speed towards them until it hit shallow waters. Linlin cackled. “What a pitiful start!” she mocked, before gesturing to one of the lynchpins of her plan - because what kind of Emperor would show up to a Marine ambush without a cohesive battleplan? “Brulee?”
“Yes, Mama?” Brulee answered, fingers twitching with anticipation.
“Let’s free your brother!”
“Wiwiwiwiwi! Rabiyan?”
Her flying carpet homie popped out from below the decks and arrived at her side dutifully. With witchy glee Brulee slammed her palm onto the fabric, transforming the carpet into a mirror doorway. In the very same moment, every Big Mom flagship raised large, preprepared mirrors upon axles and winches, themselves as wide as half a ship and taller than even Big Mom herself. Brulee turned to face her mirror. “Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the deadest of them all?” Her spindly arm craned back to point squarely at the Marines. “Fly, my pretties!”
With a sparkle of light and a burst of sound, a colourful assortment of homies exploded from each - some flying, some running. Chess soldiers of all ranks barked orders at each other and formed orderly rows that immediately charged into the shallows and up the harbour. Bats and birds and flying monkeys, bombs and blades and guns equipped, roared over and traded fire with the walls of guns held by marine recruits. Chaos ripped through Marineford as the high command realized they had grievously overestimated their numbers advantage.
And, capitalizing on the chaos, Charlotte cracker stepped forward, gleeful like a kid with cake and cracking his knuckles. He held both palms close and relished in the carnage happening below, the scar across his face stretching with the force of his grin. With a clap! of his hands a biscuit soldier formed and joined the fray. “What the hell were you so afraid of, Ace?” he yelled. Clap! “We’re stronger than these louts!” Clap! “And we’re smarter than them too!” Clap! “And on top of that, we’ve got the numbers!” Clap! Clap! Clap! “I can make an infinite number of my biscuit soldiers!” He delighted in the agonized, miserable screams from the crowd as they realized the true depth of his words, each biscuit soldier caving through Marine lines and flinging corpses up into the air. Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! The Vice Admirals moved in to engage, but the weaker of them were visibly struggling. “Have some more faith in your family, little bro!”
Linlin thumped her second lynchpin on the back affectionately, lifting Napoleon from her head and draping the living cutlass over her shoulder, tossing her hair back. “You heard the man! Aren’t we fighting a war? CHARGE!”
She hopped atop Zeus, Prometheus orbiting her, and flew into battle, her Four Sweet Commanders - Katakuri, Smoothie, Cracker, Snack - following after her, and the rest after them - a five-pronged fork into the soft cake that was the Marineford soldiery. Soldiers attempted to flank them but were warded off by endless hordes of biscuit soldiers and homies, radios in the distance already chattering for reinforcements. All three Admirals had begun to move, and through the pocket-mirrors each of her children carried Brulee frantically shrieked orders and coordinated between them, releasing more and more carnage from her mirrors.
Outside the main harbour, supporting ships were assailed by her crew and subordinate fleets: The Sealion Pirates, the Funny-Nosed Pirates, the Giraffe Pirates… but none were more notorious as her ‘right-hand crew’ than the Sun Pirates - minus their Captain, who was still interned in Impel Down. Formed by a core cadre of veterans in Fisher Tiger’s crusades against slavery, they were particularly adapted to decimating Marine vessels on the high seas. It was a foolish notion to try to face the Fishman crew on the waves.
And all the while, Linlin could already taste the despair in the air. Homies and Marines fell alike, but whereas the battle-homies returned to their previous inanimate forms, and Cracker’s biscuit soldiers crumbled into nothing… Marine corpses lay strewn about in the growing rubble.
Linlin considered herself intelligent, sure, but she was by no means the smartest on the seas, not by a long shot. All her plans were elegant in their simplicity, and this was her masterstroke: many more Marine soldiers were dying than her own crew, whose lines were fronted by expendable puppets. When the dread of that fact set in, the Marines would desert and collapse entirely.
She was close enough now that she could barely make out the sea-green tint of the seastone cuffs on Ace’s arms. ‘No son of mine is going to kneel like a slave in chains,’ she thought, and lifted Napoleon with a mighty roar.
The Summit War had truly begun.
Ace frowned deeply, barnacle-scraper in hand. He’d never minded doing these kinds of jobs for the Spade Pirates, but he wasn’t on board the Piece of Spadille right now. He stood on the sugared and glazed decks of the Queen Mama chanter, as he had for several months, and pondered escape from the insane madhouse once more. Lavish banquets attended by singing candelabras, the ever-present syrupy haze of sugar in the air, and the constant, grating ‘Mama! Mama! Each and every one of the flagship’s inhabitants was driving him off the wall. With a scratch, the last barnacle popped off the lifeboat’s hull, and he huffed.
“What’s the matter, boy? Pretty light punishment for trying to kill Linlin again, it is!” came a gruff laugh from behind him. Ace sighed, even more deeply, hoping whoever it was that had come to mock him would take the hint and leave. Shockingly, they didn’t. He tilted his head back to get a look at them.
A pair had come to spectate: Streusen, the short and portly head chef, and Gloriosa, who from deck-gossip he’d gathered to hail from Amazon Lily, healthy and full-figured despite the age evident on her face. Both of them were incredibly important to Big Mom.
“What do you want?”
“That any way to speak to your grandpappy?” Gloriosa snarked, leaning on the railing and inspecting the lifeboat. “Good work. Wouldn’t be able to tell you did it with a concussion. How many times has it been now, that you’ve tried to kill Linlin?”
He spat the saliva pooling on the floor of his mouth into the ocean, craving a drink. He’d been at it for hours, and stubbornly refused to enter the kitchen - one of Big Mom’s favourite places in the ship, unsurprisingly - any time he wasn’t made to. “Fifty.”
“Well, maybe you’ll succeed in fifty more,” Streusen chuckled, making very clear from the tone of his voice exactly what he thought of Ace’s chances. “Thought I should ask you what your crew’s favourite foods are.”
“Their- why?” he asked.
“Since they’re gonna be stayin’ the night aboard the Queen Mama Chanter, as well as every other night, they are! Kukukuku!” The old man’s mustache wiggled, finding the whole thing profoundly funny, particularly the rage building in Ace’s face. “We captured them! Didn’t kill them, of course!”
“Can I see them?”
“Soon as they’re well-situated, I don’t see why not, I don’t!”
“She won’t say it, but Linlin was quite impressed with them as well,” Gloriosa commented, taking a bite out of the slice of cake in her hand. “They came back to ‘rescue’ you from our devilish clutches. Do you want a slice of cake, by the way? I can get you one.”
“No,” he grunted. Gloriosa shrugged.
“Crazy kids, every last one of them, but loyal enough to fling themselves at our ship. Buncha suicidal idiots. Just the type Linlin loves.” She popped the rest of the cake down her mouth and licked the frosting off her fingers. “You must be excited to see them again.”
He was. He wouldn’t show it to her, though, nor Streusen, nor Big Mom. He was a prisoner on this boat… despite the lack of shackles.
“You sure you want to keep me on this ship without any chains or cuffs?” he questioned, staring at his freckled wrists.
“You’re not a prisoner,” Gloriosa smiled. “And we could all beat you in our sleep, so what’s the point? When Linlin grabs you and runs, you’re hers one way or another.”
“So you better get used to it quick!” Streusen finished for her, wagging his finger at him.
“Calm it, pops,” she chided, before smiling softly, examining the ring on her finger. “He’ll come around eventually.”
Gloriosa slammed into Vice Admiral Greenbull with a conqueror’s-laced flying kick, throwing him sideways, before tossing her hair to the side. “Still got it!” she laughed, before shrieking and jumping for cover as Admiral Kizaru landed in a flash. “SHIT!”
Katakuri dashed in from behind, slamming a haki-enhanced mochi fist into the spot Kizaru had been moments before; the Admiral reformed in the air, grinning lazily with a beamsword in hand. “Ooh, if it isn’t Charlotte Katakuri! I hear you’ve never been laid on your back before.”
He winked out of sight and Katakuri whirled to block a strike aimed at his abdomen from behind, observation foresight keener than even Linlin could admit of her own. “I don’t intend to try new things today,” he dryly remarked. “Mama, Glori, go on ahead. Save our little brother. I can take him.”
“How rude~!” Kizaru drawled with delight. Linlin flew ahead on Zeus’s back, glancing down to see a furious slash. Her eye twitched - Mihawk! Before the strike could hit her, it was deflected at the last second, Smoothie arriving not a moment too soon and grinning up at her. “Let me take him, Mama, I’ve been meaning to brush up on my swordsmanship!”
Mihawk, below, stroked his beard with one hand, a glimmer of curiosity in his amber eyes. “Well, now. You didn’t try to block it?”
“Why waste the energy?” Smoothie countered, picking up a rock. “I’m a Devil Fruit user. I won’t play harder when I can play smarter.” She squeezed it dry and dripped the grey juice into her mouth, tasting sesame and milk, and in a jolt her body grew larger. Power thrummed thick through her veins. “Though I like to fight harder too.”
In the backlines, Cracker was clapping like mad, still aboard the deck of the ship and taking breaks to lop off the heads of any poor sod who somehow found their way near. Biscuit soldiers continued to swarm the Marine hordes, though they were beginning to be whittled away by the numerous Pacifista. Aokiji continued attempts to freeze the ocean, and Oven continued to counter him, the two of them locked in an absolute stalemate. A few Big Mom footsoldiers attempted to strike Aokiji from behind, but were frozen alive instantly.
Capone Bege’s own forces vacated his body, turning their guns on Snack. Daifuku duelled with Moria, the genie generated from his stomach blazing through the Warlord’s weaker zombie soldiers, before vines of grapes and bushes of strawberries dug through the earth and popped out to assail the gothic clown from behind, Charlotte Compote summoning them safely from the deck of her ship. Perospero attempted to freeze Kuma in place, but the buccaneer effortlessly shattered the sugary shackles placed upon him. Bullets rained and the air was aglow with the shining of swords colliding.
All of this, Linlin viewed from above as she neared the execution platform. She blinked, and a man was approaching her. A quick sweep of her haki while he was traveling through the air revealed he was… an Admiral, no doubt, owing to his strength. Let’s see… her limited future sight granted her visions of heat before death. Akainu, then. Powerful… but she was an Emperor.
“HA MA MA MA MA! Akainu, the red dog!” She slammed her conqueror’s into Napoleon, letting Akainu match the blow, and followed his descent back down to the ground. “You must be called that because you look like you got mauled by one!” The flat-faced man who always looked constipated was an easy target for her ridicule. She was beginning to approach the backlines. “Prometheus, take care of those Kuma copies for me,” she carelessly ordered.
“Yes, Mama!” he called back, blazing into the crowd. He was one of her three special and utterly dear homies, imbued with pieces of her own soul, and he was a very good boy who’d be receiving extra fire tonight for doing such a fantastic job. Linlin directed her attention back to the Marine Admiral.
“You aren’t taking us very seriously, are you?”
Akainu’s face screwed up. “Of course we are. Every single one of the Marines’ strongest forces are here to kill you.”
“If you were taking us seriously you would’ve never tried such a stupid stunt. Perospero had bedtime conniptions more clever than this fool plan of yours,” she chuckled. “Soul Pocus… Retreat… or Life?”
Black as night, incarnations of her soul sprouted around her, surrounding Akainu and reaching their tendrils for his glowing soul, the bright outline of which was clear as day to her eyes. He met her own stolidly, standing his ground. “Neither,” he asserted, and with a bubbling and burbling Magma gushed forth from his skin, banishing the shadows at once. Her outstretched hand beckoned his soul forth, but received no answer.
“Your devil fruit doesn’t work against those who don’t feel fear,” he gritted, clenching his fists. “And I am afraid of no pirate!”
Linlin grit her teeth in turn. “IKOKU SOVEREIGNTY!”
Napoleon’s slice was more akin to a mace, or a battleship cannon. Akainu turned to Magma and was blown to little bubbles across the ground, absorbing most of the impact. One of the terraces of the Marine palace, far enough off into the distance to be faded and light under the midday sun, collapsed into smithereens, a trail of destruction behind where the Admiral reformed.
Further away, on the other end of the defensive line the Warlords were holding, Boa Hancock sneered, easily dispatching of the biscuit soldiers and homies that had come her way. Big Mom’s crew were impressive to her only in their higher volume of female fighters, and that their leader was a woman too; in that one respect they were more redeemable than the rest of the Emperors, for they surely had more sense than the rest of the sea-pigs around.
Still, she had little care for the lives or fates of her ‘fellow’ Marines. ‘Sniveling slavers, all of them,’ she hissed in her head, and she cared not if her slave arrows hit them or pirates alike. It made no difference to her in the end since she cared for neither. “Slave Arrow,” she intoned, sending a hailstorm of razorhearts through the chests of them all, freezing them into stone.
“Hancock, you’re targeting your own!” One Marine complained. She grabbed him by the throat and looked him in the eye, squeezing.
“I agreed to join the fight against the Emperor… but I have no care for your kind. Do not mistake alliance for camaraderie. I have only done what I am asked to, and I will do no more. After all…” Her face softened, pouting slightly, and she let her eyes glisten to hide to malice beneath.
“W-what if I chip a nail~?”
“Awooga!” The man actually said, stone replacing skin before she crushed his throat fully and shook the dust off her hand, kicking the corpse aside. “Pathetic.”
“Hancock!”
Her face somehow hardened further, and she rubbed her head before launching herself at Gloriosa, temples throbbing with annoyance. “PERFUME FEMUR!”
“CLIMBING GLORY!” The other Amazon yelled, meeting her kick with two of her own. “I’ve been meaning to have a chat with you for a while, young lady!”
“Fuck off, Granny!” Hancock screamed back. “Am I the only Kuja with a faithful heart!?”
“Tsk! So immature!” Gloriosa retorted. “Just because Shakky had shit taste in men doesn’t mean we’re all blind in the face of love! I wouldn’t do what I do if I didn’t think it would benefit Amazon Lily. Big Mom will be the Pirate King, and we will be safe from the tyranny of the Celestial Dragons then. Free from slavery. Trust me, Hancock… don’t chase the approval of these Marines. It’s not the Kuja way,” she advised. “Just leave.”
Hancock pulled back the pink drawstring of another round of slave arrows. “I can’t. Not yet. Not while he-” She cut herself off, but the if annoyingly bemused expression on Gloriosa’s face was any indication, not soon enough.
Before Gloriosa could ask, though, a battleship cannon screamed through the air and detonated between the two women. They soared, haki-clad bodies smoking, apart from each other, and Gloriosa surveyed the scene. The element of surprise had worn thin, the Marine lines were hardening, and they were beginning to get wise. Cracker screamed with frustration from the decks as Aokiji’s ice flashfroze his biscuits - Oven was on his tail only a second later, but the rapid change in temperature made the biscuits brittle and delicate, and Vice Admirals tore through them. Some Charlotte siblings were flagging - Custard, swinging her sword against a Marine great, was on the backfoot, Zucotte clutching a gunshot wound near his arm and hiding behind rubble as flashfire soared overhead. Tamago was split in two by a Vice Admiral, but before they could land a killing blow on his yolk they were stunned; electricity coursed through their body, frying them from the inside out. The poor sod could only chatter their teeth as pain coursed through their body and they dropped smoking to the ground. Tamago reformed as Hiyoko, stroking his beak with his feathers. “Mon dieu! Many thanks, Pekoms.”
The lion mink growled, shaking some static off his fur. “Of course, brother.”
“Why do you call her ‘Mama?”
This was the question Ace asked one day on the decks of the Chanter, knowing Big Mom was taking an afternoon nap after a frankly exorbitant victory feast celebrating the conquest of another island. He was alone save for Charlotte Katakuri, the strongest of all of Big Mom’s children, and Charlotte Pekoms, a lion-mink.
(As it happened, there were enough Charlotte pirates on the sea by now that most of them were known by various epithets or pseudonyms.)
The former turned to face Ace, nonplussed. “Pardon? It’s because she’s our Mama.” Considering this answer enough, he turned back to help stack the boxes.
“Not you,” Ace snapped. “Him!”
“Me?” Pekoms pointed a paw at himself. “The answer is quite simple.”
“Why?”
“Because… she’s our Mama!”
“But she isn’t,” Ace groaned. “Sure, she’s Katakuri’s mother, but she isn’t yours. So why the hell do you call her that?”
“Eh? You’re having a laugh? You think just ‘cause she’s not my blood mother she’s not my Mama?”
Internally, Ace conceded the point - after all, Dadan wasn’t his blood mother either. But this was different. This was Emperor of the Seas, notorious terror, the soul-stealing witch of the waves, Big mom. It wasn’t the same.
“She’s my Mama ‘cause she calls us her kids, and ‘cause we call her Mama! That’s all there is to it!” Pekoms crossed his arms with an emphatic huff. “It’s not just a word, it’s a promise that she’s always looking out for us like a Mama does! When the Nox Pirates were on the run from the Marines and we were forced into Mama’s territory, she took us into her arms! If Zou wasn’t the safest place to be, I’d move my folks to Totland tomorrow!”
“How can you call it that!? Everyone in the world knows about the soul tax! She steals years off your life!” Ace demanded.
“Only a month every year!” Pekoms snarled back. “And for that little fee, everybody gets plentiful food and safety! Their souls power Mama and her homies so the Marines don’t get to them! People living in World Government territory live much shorter and crueller lives! The world hates us for what we are, Ace.” The lion-mink sighed. “Minks, Fishmen, it's always something. Mama’s the one who’s gonna make this world into a paradise for all of us! Where all races can live equally and eat freely to their heart’s content!” He ripped his shirt off, displaying the brand of the skull and crossed candy canes leering back at Ace. “The world government brands Minks and sells us like slaves, but I chose to wear this brand to show my love back to Mama! I’ve got a home, a life, and a dream because of her!”
He snorted through his stubby nose and walked off, clearly fed up. Katakuri dropped a heavy box into Ace’s hands; Ace had forgotten the man was even there, listening the whole time. “Drop this killing Mama nonsense soon,” he ordered. “You couldn’t kill her if you kept it up for the rest of your life. Give it up or we’ll drop you on the next island we see.”
Ace huffed, and set about lugging what was probably sacks upon sacks of sugar to the kitchen.
Across the decks and shores of the world, in every one of the six seas, the world watched the battle play out between the Big Mom Pirates and the Marines, breath bated.
Aboard the Moby Dick, Edward Newgate watched with keen interest. “Guararara…” he grumbled, snatching a gourd of grog from an attendant’s hand and swigging it down, wiping his lips with the rugged back of his titanic palm. “Ready the mainsail, Marco. We’ve got territory to conquer. With any hope, Sengoku and Linlin will shatter against each other…”
Aboard the Red Force, Figarland Shanks scowled, striding towards his first mate. “It’s happening. The war I forsaw. The very order of the world, one way or another, is about to be upended, and neither way will be in our favour.”
Aboard the Dread Wyvern, Kaidou chuckled, elbowing Alber and handing him a gourd of grog he turned down. “Wororororo! Linlin, of all the messes to get yourself into! That boy Ace is similar to you, you know. Condemned from birth!” He shattered the empty gourd against the deck. “What do you say, Alber? Let’s meet our old drinking buddies again! Let’s pay the Celestials back. If we strike when the time is right, the whole thing just might fall!”
None were more invested, though, than the very residents huddled in a castle room on the shores of Totland. Crowding around a smuggled den-den mushi, having been forbidden by their mother from watching the events of the battle, were all of the Charlotte siblings old enough to understand what was going on. They’d collectively decided that nobody younger than Anglais, who was twelve, could be allowed to watch. Bodies fell and on screen, and the boy in question hugged his caterpillar homie tightly. “I hope it turns out alright…”
He, Flampe, Pudding, Nougat, and the Decuplets - Nutmeg, Harumeg, Allmeg, Akimeg, and Fuyumeg the girls, Newichi, Newji, Newsan, Newshi, and Newgo the boys - sat in a semicircle in the quintuplets’ room, for they were the oldest at age sixteen. They had already begun to have duties aboard their Mama’s ships, deemed old enough to start, but she had made it clear in no uncertain terms that no child was going to enter Marineford, full stop.
Nougat rubbed Flampe’s back as she hyperventilated into a bubble. An explosion rocked the screen as a Vice Admiral soared past, and the bubble popped. Her breaths were wispy and hitched as she rocked herself. “We're going to win. We are. Nobody can beat us. Nobody can beat us.”
“I can’t watch this,” Pudding complained, covering all three of her eyes, only to peek out a second later again, feeling the call of the abyss, mortified at the possibility of something horrendous happening if she wasn’t watching, even though her eyes on the screen wouldn’t change a damn thing about the outcome.
“They gotta win. They gotta. Mama won’t lose,” The giant Harumeg muttered behind her heavy thick bangs, voice trembling. “She can’t. If she loses, Ace dies a-and the Marines will come, a-and they’ll catch us and sell us!”
Newshi clutched his own stomach, feeling like he was going to puke from the stress. Never in his life had he heard of the Big Mom Pirates facing such a threat, and even his own faith was shaken. Despite the early advantage, the tide appeared to be evening, with the possibility of turning… his guts lurched. “T-They’ll come for De-chat and- and Normande and-”
“And me,” Pudding grimly realized, third eye welling with tears. Nutmeg handed her a tissue from a nearby box. “I have Three-Eyed blood. I’m the only descendant of the tribe. That’s why I have to hide it outside of Totland. They’ll kill me for being able to read poneglyphs.”
“W-What if Mama gets close enough that they don’t want to let Ace go and kill him anyway?”
“They wouldn’t!” Nougat protested. “T-They need him for the trap they’re trying to make, they can’t kill him or Big Mom would just leave, and they want to kill her!”
“But he’s Gol D. Roger’s son,” Newsan brought up, looking distinctly pale. “They might just figure he’s the biggest threat, like Sengoku said. They’d rather kill him than risk her having him.”
“Oh seas, oh seas, oh seas…” Flampe clutched her chest, whimpering. “Big bro Ace…”