Ace had originally been wracking his brain trying to figure out how to track them down.
Who could have guessed that the two of them would deliver themselves right to his doorstep? It was the absolute definition of finding something without looking for it.
Thus, mother and son were promptly thrown into a high-security cell. They had been languishing in that dim, heavy chamber for an entire month.
"I... I am the true son of Edward Newgate! My name is Edward Weevil!" Weevil bellowed, his face warped into absolute, unyielding conviction. "You... you bastards dare do this to me? My father will never let you off! He'll personally kick every single one of you out of the Whitebeard Pirates!"
Even in chains, Weevil still spoke with a thoroughly tough, boastful front.
The display left Marco entirely at a loss whether to laugh or cry. Weevil's cognitive patterns were visibly indistinguishable from those of a coddled child. Looking at the data layout, it was glaringly obvious that this entire farce had been engineered exclusively by Bakkin.
She had continuously saturation-bombed Weevil's mind with the delusional ideology that everything Whitebeard owned legally belonged to him, while concurrently deploying him as a weapon to damage the Whitebeard Pirates' territory.
"You are not Pop's son," Marco stated flatly, locking his gaze directly onto Weevil's eyes.
Although the crew normally paid zero mind to trivial squabbles, the legacy of their Father was a sacred boundary that could never be defiled.
"WHAT?!" Weevil's face warped in sheer panic, thick mucous trailing from his nose as he screamed, "My name is Edward Weevil! Whitebeard is my real father!"
"No!" Marco shook his head gently. He had already processed the historical reality from Ace.
Pop had spent the entirety of his existence searching for a family. He had gathered those who had been brutally abandoned by the cruel tides of the sea, shielding them within his perimeter and granting them a flawless, absolute home. Yet he himself had never once established a conventional, biological lineage. Throughout his entire timeline, he had never maintained a romantic connection with any woman.
It wasn't a question of being asexual or detached; rather, the bond he yearned for had absolutely nothing to do with mere biological bloodlines.
To ensure that not a single member of the Whitebeard Pirates ever felt a trace of isolation or institutional division, Pop had engineered the entire armada to function as one massive, living family unit. He cherished every single soul aboard the Moby Dick exactly like a biological child. His legendary proclamation—"Become my son!"—was never a casual phrase tossed into the wind.
It was a sacred, iron-clad covenant to shoulder the absolute responsibilities of a true father!
To be granted the privilege of calling themselves Whitebeard's sons was their ultimate, defining honor. This world was a bleak expanse that rarely offered a single reason for gratitude; it was precisely because they had encountered a man worth sacrificing their lives for that the sea became a horizon worth conquering.
And Whitebeard was that exact, magnificent father who had constructed a sanctuary for them all.
"Our Pop... Whitebeard is the most magnificent father to ever sail this ocean. For our sake, he chose to never anchor his vessel to a standard biological family... We... we owe Pop everything!"
"Consequently! I will mathematically forbid anyone from dragging Pop's name through the absolute filth!" Marco's eyes turned bloodshot with burning intensity. For a veteran warrior who had anchored his line beside Whitebeard for decades, this scam was a catastrophic defilement of the old man's principles.
They genuinely yearned for Whitebeard to unearth absolute personal happiness, but they would never permit a pair of street-level grifters to casually trample upon their Father's legacy.
"The two of you will rot in this coordinate until Pop returns to personally decree your liquidation."
"Shanks! This represents the absolute ceiling of my current power! Gum-Gum... JET CULVERIN!!"
High above, Luffy, anchored firmly in his Gear 4 Boundman form, violently compressed his lungs, focusing every ounce of his sovereign presence into a singular coordinate.
The unbridled, reality-bending aura that had previously distorted the spatial grid suddenly vacuum-sealed within his frame. The sprawling energy grew incredibly dense and heavy, mirroring a supreme lion gathering its absolute kinetic mass right before unleashing a devastating, world-shaking roar.
The atmosphere sundered. Down on the rocky shoreline, every single observer held their breath in absolute stillness.
Luffy's explosive growth had completely broken past their analytical models, but the entity who inspired true, primal terror within their souls remained Red Hair Shanks.
At this definitive juncture, even the baseline fighters could easily deduce that the preceding exchanges were light-years away from Red Hair's true operational ceiling. Rather than defining this clash as a lethal duel, it precisely mirrored a high-level, master-tier instructional spar.
Throughout the continuous violence, Shanks's pedagogical intent was glaringly obvious, as was the terrifying velocity at which Luffy was optimizing his combat systems mid-battle. This transcended standard human potential.
A monster! A pure, unadulterated combat prodigy.
And now, the raw pressure radiating from Luffy's impending strike left them experiencing a physical sensation of total suffocation. This caliber of crushing oppression was entirely unprecedented for the crowd.
Analyze the personnel assembled across this cove: the elite core of the Red Hair Pirates, the Straw Hat vanguard, and the commanders of the Dragon Flag Pirates. Not a single soul among them lacked a history of bloody, high-stakes warfare; they had all stood upon the absolute zenith of the global stage. What manner of cataclysm had their eyes failed to map?
Yet even with their veteran experience, the residual pressure filtering down from the heavens triggered a primitive, suffocating warning of impending doom within their bones.
"Luffy's active combat mass... has actually escalated to this terrifying tier!"
At this exact fraction of a second, a profound tremor rippled through the hearts of the vanguard. This was the definitive force of the world's strongest tier.
"Magnificent! Luffy, you'd better not let me down!" Shanks roared, an explosive, incandescent presence erupting from his vessel.
His iconic, untamed mane of crimson hair actually defied the laws of physics, standing completely upright under the sheer pressure of his aura. The terrain surrounding his boots fractured violently as massive volleys of bedrock tore free, floating statically across the void in a thoroughly bizarre display of gravitational distortion.
KABOOM!
With a thunderous detonation, Shanks kicked off the air currents, rocketing upward like a guided missile sundering the sky. Brandishing his legendary Gryphon saber with terrifying velocity, a visible, concentrated torrent of pure sovereign sword intent crystallized across the steel.
The edge cleanly sundered the spatial grid. The screech of compressed air screaming against the blade resonated across the cove, yielding a blinding light that forced the spectators to shield their eyes.
"Double Jet Cannon!!" Luffy's eyes snapped wide. Compressing his limbs into a frantic, high-velocity cross-formation, his massive fists plunged out of the upper atmosphere like a pair of falling meteors, driving straight toward the rising Emperor.
Shanks raised his blade to intercept the apocalypse. The sovereign sword intent, which had appeared visually compact a microsecond prior, erupted upon release into a colossal, heaven-cleaving crescent that completely blacked out the morning sky.
This single slash possessed the absolute authority to sunder the high heavens themselves.
CRASH! KABOOM!!
The two monumental energy systems collided with a cataclysmic detonation. A brilliant flash of blinding fire saturated the void, followed by a colossal explosion of compressed shockwaves that completely swallowed both combatants within a dense curtain of smoke and debris.
The visual feed was permanently severed.
"Luffy...!"
"Boss!"
Faced with a kinetic release of that apocalyptic scale, claiming their hearts didn't harbor a single shred of raw anxiety would be an absolute lie. Every single soul anchored their gaze onto the churning vortex of dust, their eyes wide to the point of strain.
WHOOSH!!
A roaring hurricane generated by the terminal velocity of the impact ripped outward, tearing across all four directions. The baseline fighters were violently buffeted by the screaming gale, losing their physical equilibrium as shattered stone and uprooted trees were scattered across the terrain.
THUD!!
Immediately following the tempest, the bedrock executed a massive, heavy shudder. A resonant impact echoed across the clearing—the distinct sound of a solid mass hammering into the earth.
Tracking the internal spatial positioning of the preceding exchange, a highly surreal, impossible hypothesis took root within the minds of the spectators.
Could it be that Red Hair had actually...
No, that defies structural logic. Luffy's breakthrough is monumental, yes, but his vessel should still trail a fraction behind...
Regardless of their analytical deductions, definitive validation required their own eyes to map the reality. As the dense screen of smoke slowly dissolved into the air currents, the two silhouettes gradually materialized before the gathering.
Shanks stood perfectly erect, perfectly static, a thin line of fresh crimson leaking from the corner of his lips.
Directly before his boots, Luffy was dropped onto one knee, his chest heaving frantically as he vacuumed in massive gulps of air. A colossal, clean laceration was carved straight through the fabric of his garments, yet his physical vessel sustained zero deep, structural trauma.
While the spectators stood completely shell-shocked, Shanks slowly reached up and untied the familiar straw hat from his head, his face a perfectly neutral, unreadable mask.
After a long, profoundly heavy silence, a brilliant, proud smile finally bloomed across the Emperor's weathered features.
"You've truly..."
"This is the definitive fulfillment of our sacred promise!" Luffy suddenly snapped his head up, his mouth stretching into a proud, radiant grin.
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