Time passed quietly, and before anyone realized it, an entire year had gone by.
Only six months remained before the Straw Hat Pirates were due to reunite.
And during that year, the seas had been anything but peaceful.
The first incident to draw the world's attention was naturally what happened on Hachinosu.
According to the investigation afterward, there was no evidence that Blackbeard Teach had formed any genuine alliance with another major force.
If anything, the conflict looked more like pirates tearing each other apart over competing interests.
Blackbeard.
Golden Lion Shiki.
And Ochoku, the so-called Pirate Island patriarch.
All three sides had been fighting one another in a chaotic free-for-all.
For that reason, the Marines initially chose not to interfere.
From their perspective, letting several notorious pirate factions slaughter each other was hardly a bad outcome. No matter which side suffered the heaviest losses, the world would be better off for it.
Unfortunately, things didn't go quite as planned.
Because the man sent to investigate happened to be Garp.
Right in the middle of the three-way battle, Garp charged straight into Hachinosu and forcibly seized control of the situation.
Trafalgar Law took full advantage of the chaos, harvesting pirate hearts on a massive scale. By the end of the operation, he had collected three times the one hundred originally required.
With that, he officially secured a position among the Seven Warlords of the Sea.
Ace and Smoker also distinguished themselves during the fighting, piling up impressive achievements of their own.
But Garp's intervention forced the three major pirates into a temporary alliance.
Calling it an alliance was being generous, though.
Every one of them was plotting against the others.
And they wasted almost no time sacrificing Ochoku.
While Ochoku was left behind to hold Garp off, Golden Lion activated his power and sent the entire island of Hachinosu soaring upward toward an altitude of ten thousand meters.
Then, working together with one of Blackbeard's Devil Fruit users, they manipulated the island's terrain and forced Garp's group into one isolated section.
The surrounding rock was abruptly severed.
And that entire section of the island was dropped toward the sea below.
Garp and the others had ways to remain airborne for short periods, but there was no chance of them catching an entire island accelerating into the sky under Shiki's control.
They had no choice but to withdraw.
Fortunately, the information they needed had already been gathered.
They had captured far more pirates than expected.
And, as an unexpected bonus, Ochoku had fallen into their hands.
So the mission could hardly be called a failure.
Just like that, Hachinosu vanished from the surface of the sea and disappeared among the clouds ten thousand meters overhead.
As for what Hachinosu had become since then—
the best description was an extremely strange and fragile balance.
Golden Lion controlled one half of the island.
Blackbeard controlled the other.
Shiki was a legendary monster from the previous era, and because the entire island remained airborne only through his Float-Float Fruit, Teach couldn't afford to move against him recklessly.
At the same time, Avalo Pizarro possessed the Island-Island Fruit and could manipulate Hachinosu's structure itself. Combined with the many other Devil Fruit users under Blackbeard, Teach's side was equally dangerous.
There was another problem.
If Shiki simply released his power, the entire island would fall into the ocean.
The resulting tsunami would swallow everyone on it.
That meant both sides feared each other too much to start a decisive fight.
So instead, they divided the island between them and ruled their respective territories.
Both sides knew exactly what kind of people they were dealing with.
Treacherous.
Scheming.
Ready to stab an ally in the back the instant it became profitable.
There was no chance of a genuine partnership ever forming.
Shiki had personally witnessed Blackbeard's bizarre method of stealing Devil Fruit powers, and he trusted Teach about as far as he could throw him.
Teach felt exactly the same way.
Both wanted the other dead.
Neither would ever willingly fight shoulder to shoulder with the other.
Yet that bizarre arrangement had created an unexpected result.
Hachinosu had become a naturally fortified pirate paradise that was almost impossible to invade.
The island began attracting enormous attention from pirates who had only recently entered the New World.
Both Shiki and Blackbeard expanded aggressively, recruiting new subordinates and making increasingly bold moves across the sea.
The two factions were already beginning to resemble future Emperor crews.
And yet—
neither man had officially received the title of Four Emperor.
…
Not long after the Hachinosu incident, another event shook the world.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a bizarre mystery.
This time, the man at the center of everything was Byrnndi World—
the infamous World Destroyer.
Once considered a pirate on the same level as Roger and Whitebeard, he was a man whose existence had once made both the World Government and Marine Headquarters deeply wary.
The source of that fear was the More-More Fruit.
An ability capable of multiplying speed, size, and force to absurd degrees.
Combined with World's ambition to bury the World Government itself, it was exactly the kind of power that could destabilize the entire world.
This time, Byrnndi World openly challenged the World Government.
His targets were the Seven Warlords of the Sea.
He intended to hunt them down one after another as the most blatant possible humiliation of the world's ruling authority.
Yet his carefully prepared campaign never reached its intended conclusion.
Something unexpected happened along the way.
Byrnndi World vanished.
According to people familiar with the incident, Straw Hat Luffy had been involved.
But Luffy had only defeated him.
What happened afterward was another matter entirely.
There was no trace of World.
No sightings.
No clues.
He simply disappeared into the shadows of history.
The incident became yet another strange tale spreading across the seas, not unlike the old rumors of a gigantic shadowy ship attacking pirates and then vanishing without explanation.
And because the More-More Fruit was, much like the Tremor-Tremor Fruit, an ability capable of overturning the balance of the world, the World Government took the matter extremely seriously.
They even raised Byrnndi World's bounty.
Yet despite everything—
they never found him.
…
At that moment, on an island somewhere in the North Blue—
a beast that had remained dormant for a long time awakened once more.
A dragon's roar shook the heavens.
Its cry rolled across the sky like thunder.
That single roar was enough to change the weather, twisting the clouds and sending the wind surging backward.
A gigantic dragon nearly ten thousand meters long floated above the island.
Its body was so enormous that even the landmass beneath it seemed smaller than its colossal head.
Black and crimson scales covered its body, their color resembling ancient blood that had long since dried.
Yet wherever light reflected from those dark scales, an oddly conspicuous pink sheen could still be seen.
The contrast was almost absurd.
And the ribbons of flame that had once flowed from its shoulders were gone.
In their place were icy blue streamers that fluttered wildly in the ocean wind.
"Well, well."
A lone figure stood against the gale below, his cloak snapping violently behind him.
Shanks looked upward with open amazement.
"One year apart, and you've prepared one hell of a surprise for me."
"So that guy's Devil Fruit ended up with you."
He smiled.
"It really has been a while, Cain."
One enormous dragon eye shifted downward.
The tiny figure far below entered its vision.
Then a deep voice rolled through the sky.
"SHANKS!!"
Several kilometers away—
Yasopp stared at the ten-thousand-meter dragon and swallowed hard.
"Jesus fucking Christ."
"Loki was bad enough."
"Now there's another monster this huge?"
"Are freaks like this just everywhere these days?!"
"Forget how big he is!"
Lucky Roux was holding a telescope.
"Defend the ship! The shockwave's coming!"
He barely finished speaking before Cain and Shanks exchanged their greeting.
BOOOOOOM!!!
A single explosion sent the sea surging upward.
The clouds split apart instantly.
The dark masses that had gathered overhead were blown away almost immediately by the force of the collision.
Even several kilometers from the island, the Red Force wasn't spared.
The shockwave slammed into the ship and sent the entire vessel rocking violently for a long time.
Yasopp shouted miserably,
"I knew I shouldn't have come!"
"Nothing good ever happens when the Monkey family gets involved!"
"I know you're bitter."
Beckman lowered the newspaper in his hand.
"But no matter what, we had to come."
"We need to know what Cain intends to do."
"And what choice he's going to make."
He glanced down at the headline again.
"After all, every one of us knows En-chan is really Cain."
"I have no idea what the hell Big Mom is thinking, pulling this stunt again."
That newspaper was precisely why the Red Hair Pirates had come looking for Cain.
Printed clearly across the front page was Totto Land's newest announcement.
They were holding another public competition for marriage.
And this time, the prospective bride was Uta's famous dance partner—
the woman with an enormous fanbase of her own who had become known across the seas alongside Uta.
Charlotte En-chan.
The very identity Cain had once used while transformed into a woman.