Today was an unqualified disaster for Shanks. He'd come to talk someone down from a fight—gotten cold water poured on him first by Hawk-Eye's daughter—and then watched his ship shrink the moment they arrived at Marineford.
"Mama, it hurts!"
Napoleon—the blade given life by Big Mom's own hands—had his eyes shut after catching the white light full-on. They didn't open again. Zeus, dragged down in the same wave, dissolved and scattered into nothing.
"What's happening?"
The radiance spread outward without limit, reshaping the terrain second by second. The spatial displacement was enough to shift the execution platform itself—the focal point of the entire Summit War—clear off the main island's center and onto the ice layer Aokiji had created. Aokiji, standing on that very platform throughout, felt no tremor at all beneath his feet.
That white light cutting through the sky—he recognized it. The same child who had disgraced Akainu. Back then it hadn't been anywhere near this bright.
"The entire Marineford is shifting... what ability is this?"
"Looks like heaven's on my side after all, ice boy—"
"Father!"
Whitebeard had barely moved. The execution platform simply drifted toward him as though it had somewhere to be. He took the opening without hesitation, raised Murakumogiri, and cleaved straight through the platform itself.
"That won't do." Aokiji caught Ace and launched into a Moonwalk retreat, then glanced down at Garp below, looked past him, and settled his gaze on Sengoku—who'd only been relieved of his post days ago but was already developing the same unsettling Garp-adjacent energy.
With Ace practically in Whitebeard's arms, one step from salvation, Garp couldn't bring his own hand down against his grandson.
"Kicking a man out the door and still expecting him to work." Sengoku looked sideways at the white glow still rewriting the battlefield.
Whatever was happening over there—it had delayed both Big Mom and Red Hair long enough to keep things from getting catastrophically worse. The Marine's dignity was also on the line here. One final serious effort before everything fell apart.
"These seas are no place for pirates to run wild!"
His body swelled rapidly. A layer of crushing gold settled over Sengoku's frame, and he launched a devastating shockwave—it met the reverberating cracks of Whitebeard's punch head-on.
Human-Human Fruit, Model: Daibutsu.
With the two of them as the center, the ice layer—already inexplicably reduced by a third—finally gave out and fractured into several massive sections. Even the distant sea, caught in the shockwave's reach, split apart like the layers of a sliced cake.
"You've gotten old, Whitebeard."
"Look who's talking." Seventy-two-year-old Whitebeard stared at seventy-seven-year-old Sengoku.
What came next—about Garp, a scene that had not yet happened but would unfold any moment from now: the old man standing behind that golden Daibutsu would pat the statue's leg, signal for a one-on-one with Whitebeard, and in the exchange of blows deliberately show weakness—letting himself be knocked back. Removing himself from the board while quietly engineering the opening that would let Fire Fist Ace be pulled clear.
This was a revelation. What could be seen through it wasn't necessarily tied to Yimi herself—it was prophecy bound to great events, playing out across her face as though she were a screen.
"What's happening to her?" Shanks watched with a grave expression as the girl emerged from within the white light. With her divine nature fully released, he found he could actually see her clearly.
The liveliness that had always sat so openly on her face was gone—replaced by absolute emptiness, as though nothing in existence could reach her. The vivid blue of her eyes had been swapped out for an unmoving golden glow; the gaze held no outward projection at all. Faintly, barely visible at the edge of perception, a hand extended from some unseen place and came to rest on her shoulder.
"Devil Fruit Awakening?" Shanks couldn't make sense of it.
He knew that just as Supreme King Haki had the Haki infusion as its threshold, Awakening was the advanced state that almost no Devil Fruit user ever reached. But he couldn't fathom what kind of Devil Fruit could Awaken into this—something that already felt deeply wrong just to look at. He was certain the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika had gone to Luffy.
Perhaps aided by their own Conqueror's Haki, both Shanks and Big Mom had resisted the white light's enforced, warm calm. As it happened, that resistance was not entirely to their benefit.
"Prometheus!"
"Yes, Mama!"
Momentary shock crossed Big Mom's face—losing her two main homies at once—but it was swept aside almost immediately by a near-feral surge of possessive hunger.
Knows the truth of the world. Has a soul-based ability that mirrors my own. Already mastering Supreme King Haki infusion at that age... The urge to arrange a marriage between Smoothie and Hawk-Eye—make the whole thing official and done—was becoming harder and harder to ignore.
But what did you do when a child refused to cooperate?
Big Mom seized Prometheus—the sun homie she had breathed life into herself.
"Heavenly Fire!" She hurled him straight at Yimi, who from Big Mom's perspective was barely the size of a toy.
"Divine Departure!"
Shanks moved first, putting himself between them. This was his ship.
Apart from Shanks himself leaping back, the only ones left on deck were Beckman—whose strength put him on a different level—and Hancock, who was no slouch either. As for the children Big Mom had brought aboard, they had no such luxury: they scrambled overboard with pained expressions, the heat nearly on par with Akainu. Even they couldn't endure it.
And yet it still bore out that achievement. Flame-Flame Fruit: even a dog won't eat it.
The saint who stood in compassion for the world offered only a quiet, dispassionate judgment—and would not move to aid anyone in particular.
The knight bearing scales flickered into being.
Beneath it, the small girl turned toward Big Mom and reached out one hand. She bent down and gathered a shard of shattered deck. By the time it rested in her palm it had transformed—a chocolate cake, dotted with fruit.
Yimi parted her lips and spoke, her child's voice entirely without feeling: "A treat—or a soul?"
Big Mom: "?"
"Congratulations, Host, on earning the achievement [Rebellion Against the Natural Order]. Reward: 5% portal energy."
Fury carved Big Mom's wrinkles into sharp relief. Ironically—consumed by her food-craving fit—she hadn't even registered that the flavor Yimi had materialized happened to be exactly what she felt like eating right now.
"Suddenly not so cute anymore, are you..." She crushed Prometheus to fist-size with one bare hand.
"Stop fighting on my ship!" Shanks was yelling.
"Red Hair and Big Mom are actually going at it?"
Around the world, audiences watching the live broadcast could barely spare a thought for the war's actual main event—because these two uninvited guests had, without any question, the power to decide which way the whole thing tipped.
In the end, a gaunt but still imposing silhouette dropped from what had once been Shanks' proud flagship—now barely larger than a golf cart.
"Is that... BIG MOM!!"
"Mama?" Smoothie sprinted forward.
Privately, many of them had thought on quiet days that if Mama were gone and Katakuri took the helm, things might actually run more smoothly—but the ones who truly wanted her dead were few. Without her, they couldn't call themselves a Four Emperor crew at all.
Yimi looked down at her hands.
No attack. No blood drawn. No forcing an opponent to drink her blood. Simple contact had been enough to trigger the first ability of Frightening Monsters.
Defeat the Four Emperors (4/4).