On a high ridge overlooking the basin, Drake stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the brewing storm below. Down on the coast, Luffy and Kaido were on the absolute precipice of a cataclysmic clash.
Suddenly, the rustle of loose gravel and familiar, bickering voices drifted up from the trail behind them.
"The ruins of Oden Castle should be just over this crest. What exactly are we hoping to find out here anyway?"
"We're going to see if these ghosts everyone is whispering about are real."
"Zoro, pick up the pace! Seriously, how do you keep wandering off?"
"What?! You guys are the ones who gave me terrible directions!"
Nami and the others facepalmed in perfect unison. A collective wave of exhaustion washed over the remaining crew. They didn't even need to look down the ridge; that stubborn, defensive grumbling could belong to absolutely no one else.
Sure enough, a small group crested the hill and stepped out into the clearing.
"Ace?!" The Straw Hats gasped, blinking in surprise.
Then their eyes drifted to the very back of the line, where Zoro was casually strolling along.
For a second, both groups simply stared at each other, thoroughly stunned by the sudden collision of their paths.
"Nami? What are you guys doing out here?" Zoro blurted out. Then his gaze flicked to the side, locking onto Sanji. The swordsman's face flattened into a scowl. "Well, look who made it back in one piece. I see you're still breathing, you dimwitted cook."
"What did you just say, curly-brows?!" Sanji's temper instantly exploded. He rolled up his sleeves and marched right up to Zoro, his boots practically leaving scorched footprints.
"You want to go, moss-head?!" Zoro met him halfway, his hand resting aggressively on his hilt.
The newcomers watched the sudden escalation with blank, bewildered expressions. Only the Straw Hats remained entirely unbothered, nodding quietly to themselves. To them, this standard display of hostility meant the architecture of their crew was finally back in balance.
"Ace! I knew you'd make it here ahead of schedule," Drake said, stepping forward with a grin to greet his brother. He nodded to the vanguard officers trailing behind. "Bell, Locke, Ann... good to see you all. Wait a minute—are we running a deficit here? It looks like your headcount is short by one."
"Ah. Kuzan said he had a private matter to settle," Locke explained, stepping forward. "He told us that if his timeline permitted, he'd map back to our coordinates and reinforce the sector before the final clash."
Following the systematic liquidation of the remaining threats surrounding the Whitebeard Pirates, Kuzan had dropped that cryptic note and vanished into the blue. Throughout their shared transit, the crew had grown to respect the former Admiral, even if his underlying motivations remained completely hidden from their sensors.
Drake let out a thoughtful hum, his mind running a rapid diagnostic sweep on the board. What could possibly be critical enough to pull Kuzan away from Wano at a microsecond like this?
Right now, the global grid featured two epicenters of absolute turbulence. One was the country of Wano right beneath their feet; the other was the Holy Land of Mariejois.
The Reverie was on the absolute threshold of convening. As the royal lineages consolidated their coordinates within the Holy Land, the Revolutionary Army was undoubtedly preparing to deploy its assets. Blackbeard was dead, his entire fleet wiped from the ledger. Among the surviving apex powers of the old era, only Red-Haired Shanks remained completely hidden from the public eye, his variables unreadable.
The tides of the era were shifting so violently that a structural model accurate in this millisecond could be completely obsolete in the next. Predictable trajectories simply did not exist anymore.
"By the way, Ace, what's your current heading?" Drake's attention shifted down to the tiny girl perched comfortably on his brother's shoulder.
It was Tama.
The little girl blinked her large, expressive eyes, staring intently at Drake. From the bickering she had overheard, her childhood brain had successfully processed a staggering piece of data: this powerful, authoritative man was actually Ace's younger brother.
"This is Tama," Ace said, gently tapping her knee with a warm smile. "As of today, she's an official member of the Whitebeard Pirates."
"A child that small?" Drake raised an eyebrow, casting a highly analytical glance at her petite frame.
He knew Ace and Tama shared a deep, sentimental history from his brother's previous deployment to these shores. However, enlisting a toddler as an active pirate carried a severe risk index. Still, if Ace had finalized the decision, it meant his brother possessed absolute confidence in his own capacity to shield her vital signs from any lethal variables.
"Let me guess... your destination is Oden Castle?" Drake asked, his eyes tracking the steep hill rising just beyond the ridge. The blackened, skeletal remains of the fortress were visible even from the valley.
"Mmm! I'm the navigator for this deployment!" Tama chirped proudly, puffing out her chest.
"Is that so?"
"A samurai gentleman was supposed to be leading the vanguard," Tama added, pointing a small finger directly toward the corner where Zoro and Sanji were still actively trying to strangle each other. "But his internal compass keeps returning critical errors. He couldn't chart a straight line to save his life."
The Straw Hats went stiff as stone.
Zoro? Operating as a navigator?!
The crew couldn't have calculated a more terrifying scenario if they tried. Even Sanji froze mid-brawl, his brain stalling out at the sheer absurdity of the data.
"Hey, moss-head... what exact brand of unearned confidence prompts your system to believe you can guide an entire vanguard through an unfamiliar country?" Sanji muttered, voicing the collective nightmare of the entire crew.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean, you trash cook?!" Zoro roared, his veins bulging.
"Exactly what I said!"
Locke and the other Drake officers stood off to the side, letting out a synchronized, deeply exhausted sigh. They had firsthand experience with the trauma. Zoro had dragged their unit through a continuous loop of random circles for hours, entirely unable to lock onto the castle despite the fact that Oden Castle sat atop the highest geographic peak in Kuri and was blatantly visible from miles away.
If they hadn't finally extracted the raw coordinates from Zoro's garbled directions and let Tama take the lead, their unit would likely still be wandering the wilderness until the next century.
Drake's jaw twitched. Zoro... actually volunteering to lead a navigation vector. This was a piece of historical comedy the swordsman would likely brag about for the rest of his natural life.
Forcing his focus back to the primary board, Drake cut through the noise. "Ace, the opening phase of the campaign has already triggered. Luffy has engaged Kaido on the coast."
The words acted like a localized shockwave, snapping everyone out of their bickering. The vanguard rushed to the lip of the ridge, their eyes locking onto the distant shoreline. Through the haze, they could see Luffy's small silhouette actively trading high-intensity blows against a gargantuan, twisting azure dragon.
"Luffy... he's already trading strikes with the Governor-General?"
"Ace, we execute our macro-strategy right now," Drake commanded, his voice dropping to a low, authoritative pitch. "The battlefield currently features the remaining loyalist samurai, our own elite vanguard units, and two factions of the Worst Generation. Wano has endured a suffocating, twenty-year nightmare to reach this exact microsecond. The spark of this revolution must be struck by the hands of its own people."
Drake turned his gaze toward Nami. "We don't need our entire high-tier combat force wasting time on a diplomatic rendezvous at the ruins. Nami, take the Straw Hat crew up to Oden Castle. Download the data to the samurai hiding in the shadows. Tell them the imperial army of the Beast Pirates is our assignment. Command them to mobilize their lines for immediate deployment—we aren't delaying this offensive for anyone!"
BOOM!
Right on cue, a violent concussive gale tore across the ridge from the distant coast, the shockwave carrying the raw feedback of Luffy and Kaido's escalating duel.
"Go," Drake said, offering a reassuring nod as he waved them forward. "I'll anchor the coast and ensure Luffy's perimeter remains secure."
With their objective clear, the Straw Hats turned and accelerated up the mountain trail toward Oden Castle, quickly introducing Zoro to Jinbe along the way to update the crew's roster.
"Ace, the Beast Pirates maintain a heavily fortified prison facility in the Udon sector—the Prisoner Mines," Drake continued, tracking the layout of the country in his mind. "Kaido has spent two decades throwing rebel samurai into those cells to break their spirits. We need an elite detachment to breach the gates and extract those assets."
Drake scanned the remaining powerhouses left in the clearing.
"I'll spearhead the infiltration," Locke volunteered immediately, stepping forward alongside Kenshin.
"Haha, let's leave the heavy lifting to Locke this time. Though, considering the defensive metrics of an imperial stronghold, a solo asset might encounter a high-density bottleneck," Drake noted, his eyes drifting over to the man standing beside his brother. "Marco, care to balance the equation?"
"Consider it handled," Marco replied with a relaxed, lazy smile. Throughout their recent shared deployment, the Drake Pirates had provided immense structural support to the Whitebeard remnants, and the two factions had seamlessly transitioned into trusted allies.
"Excellent. Ann, reinforce their line. Your specialized medical and combat utility will guarantee their survival margins remain at one hundred percent."
"Understood. Let's move," Ann said smoothly. Within seconds, the three elite fighters pivoted on their heels, their silhouettes blurring as they accelerated at maximum velocity toward the coordinates of the Udon sector.
Ace settled himself onto a nearby stone, watching Drake organize the operational vectors with flawless efficiency. A warm, prideful smile tugged at the corners of his lips. Then, his gaze drifted back toward the roaring fires on the coast, where Luffy was holding the line against the sky.
Over their two years apart, his little brothers had truly evolved into absolute monsters.