"Bring Binks' brew right to your side
Like the sea breeze, sail free and ride the waves
..."
Of course, after the great battle comes a lively banquet!
After successfully leaving Marineford, the Whitebeard Pirates, all the allied crews who took part in the war, and the Straw Hats rushed back to the New World and began a celebratory feast on an unnamed small island.
At the end of the war, faced with Whitebeard's threat, Sengoku fell silent, but his stance was clear: he did not want the fighting to continue.
Without his orders, the Marines dared not act and could only watch as all the pirates boarded their ships and left Headquarters.
Naturally, a hawk like Akainu wouldn't be satisfied with that outcome, but he himself had been blasted to the other side of the battlefield by Charles; whether he'd even gotten back up was unknown.
With Akainu, their standard-bearer, out of commission, the other hawkish Marines voiced no objections in front of Sengoku.
Earlier, Charles had wondered if any surprises would crop up, like trump cards or contingencies prepared by the World Government.
Because of that, he refrained from extra measures—like contacting the Revolutionary Army through Ivankov—so as not to provoke the World Government into overreacting.
And just as Charles expected, the World Government didn't much care about this so-called war that would decide the balance of the world.
Strictly speaking, the World Government didn't even care about pirates as a group; it never regarded them as true opponents, because no matter how rampant they became, they could not shake its rule.
To be honest, pirates even deserved some credit for the steady increase in member nations under the World Government.
For that very reason, absent special circumstances, the World Government didn't intervene in the Summit War.
Sure enough, the more Charles acted, the more he triggered the story's corrective force, leading to more twists; this time, because he'd done relatively little beforehand, few snags occurred.
In any case, the Summit War was over, Whitebeard and Ace both survived, and Charles had fulfilled Luffy's commission.
Speaking of Luffy, after experiencing the war, the Straw Hat crew came to recognize their own weakness.
Despite how active they had seemed during the fighting, they hadn't played a decisive role.
Marco and the division commanders had borne the brunt of the Marines' main force, and the crew didn't even have the ability to approach the top-tier battlefield.
Moreover, during the banquet, after getting acquainted with the Whitebeard Pirates, they learned what the New World was like and gained a full appreciation of the Whitebeard Pirates' strength.
Admittedly, for a crew that had been at sea less than a year, comparing themselves to a Yonko's crew was a bit overconfident.
But Luffy's goal was to become Pirate King; even the Emperors were milestones he had to surpass.
So the Straw Hats decided to train separately for two years, then regroup to officially enter the New World.
After the feast, they boarded ships of several crews under Whitebeard's banner and headed to the training grounds he had chosen for them.
Charles bade them farewell as well and entered the New World with Stella.
A few days later, aboard the Moby Dick—whose original fate had been to be burned by Akainu during the Summit War—the ship had survived this time and sailed on through the New World's seas.
Whitebeard sat in his seat, holding a newspaper with a strange look on his face.
The photo on the front page was striking: Cake Island, with that eye-catching multi-tiered cake castle half-collapsed.
Cake Island, the heart of Totto Land, was the New World base of the Emperor Big Mom, Charlotte Linlin.
The article also explained the photo's origin.
Charles, who'd fought three Warlords alone during the Summit War and suppressed a Marine Admiral, earning fame across the seas, and Stella, who had fought an Admiral to a draw, had stormed Cake Island and clashed with the Sea Emperor.
Their battle severely damaged the island, and its outcome was unclear; all that was known was that when it ended, Charles and Stella left Cake Island unharmed.
The Big Mom Pirates had publicly posted bounties on the two and labeled them unforgivable enemies.
Whitebeard and Big Mom had once sailed on the same crew; though not close, they had some acquaintance.
Seeing Big Mom take a beating gave Whitebeard no schadenfreude, and he certainly had no desire to stick up for her.
Especially since the one who made her lose face was Charles, who had helped him, Whitebeard was even less inclined to interfere.
What made him sigh was how much trouble the youngsters could stir up: after wreaking havoc at Marine Headquarters, they immediately went to trespass on a Yonko's turf.
Having learned many secrets from Roger, even Whitebeard had never sensed the arrival of a new era so clearly.
And once it hit the papers, Whitebeard was hardly the only one to learn of it.
Marine Headquarters had been heavily damaged by the war, but fortunately the Fleet Admiral's office remained intact enough for Sengoku to handle affairs.
To Sengoku's surprise, the Five Elders hardly pursued accountability for the failure; they merely questioned him a few times, without any formal punishment.
He had thought he'd be removed as Fleet Admiral over it, but the Five Elders even told him not to overthink it.
He understood, though: the current mess needed someone to clean it up, and he was the best man for the job.
After reading the news, even Sengoku didn't know how to feel.
As a Marine, he was glad to see pirates suffer blows; the problem was that the person dealing them had recently inflicted huge losses on the Marines.
Still, he could only skim this and move on; after the war, the Navy was swamped with internal problems he could barely handle, with no bandwidth left for New World affairs.
And even if he wanted to intervene, the Navy was powerless right now.
Meanwhile in Wano in the New World, Kaido drank on Onigashima while shedding tears.
When the Summit War broke out, he set out to join it. He hadn't even considered whom to help; both the Marines and Whitebeard's crew were enemies in his mind.
Unfortunately, before he could reach Marineford—the battlefield of his dreams—he ran into that damned red-haired guy.
Kaido couldn't fathom why Red-Hair blocked him, but he tallied that debt for making him miss the war.
Back at his base, drinking away his frustration, he saw the report about Charles rampaging on Cake Island.
Kaido wasn't as generous as Whitebeard; even though Big Mom often looked after him on the Rocks crew, that didn't stop him from mocking the old lady.
But then he remembered that Charles had also fought on his turf and snatched a farm from him, and his smile disappeared.
Another Emperor, Red-Hair, saw the paper as well.
The Red-Hair Pirates were holding a banquet to celebrate repelling Kaido... they could find any excuse to throw a party.
Shanks frowned at the paper, pondering Charles's motives.
Warlords, Marines, Emperors... Charles had offended them all. Even the most unpredictable man, Red-Haired Shanks, couldn't figure out what Charles was after.
At the end of the day, Shanks wasn't truly capricious—but Charles was. He would never have guessed that Charles's rampage on Cake Island was simply because Stella loved sweets.
So with someone like Charles, whose strength could sway the world, Shanks very much wanted to talk.
Thus Charles lodged himself in the minds of every Sea Emperor for their own reasons, and just as the whole ocean watched to see if he would stir up another major incident, he vanished.
Not even the Emperors' networks or the World Government's intelligence services could find his trail.
Naturally so, because Charles had already gone to another world.
______
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