Aboard the Moby Dick, Whitebeard's flagship.
Several captains and division commanders were gathered to share information and coordinate ship movements.
The air on the deck felt thick and heavy. This was all the doing of one man, the man held the title of "World's Strongest".
A short time ago, he and his crew suddenly remembered the existence of Ace and his crew. The lot of them had fought a whole war against THE world government to save that boy, and they just up and forgot him.
Fortunately, no one on this ship was so weak-willed to fall unconscious from conqueror's haki that wasn't even directed at them.
"Old man, stop worrying so much. Ace's vivre card is fine and since whatever made us forget went away he must have worked it out himself." Marco said, though his attempt to appear unworried wasn't very convincing.
"After that hellish training you put Ace through, he's strong enough to contend against Doflamingo. You also hammered the lesson of when to retreat into him over and over." Jozu spoke up.
"Now isn't a good time to risk all out war with Kaido. We've already lost some good men to the damned Neo Marines; adding a war with the beasts on top of that will exasperate our losses." Vesta added reasonably.
Whitebeard's already deep frown deepened even further, clearly not liking what he was hearing. A silence fell over them that felt like it lasted an eternity, though it was only a few moments.
"Now that those very good reasons not to go have been spoken aloud, we're gonna go anyway, right?" Whitey Bey asked rhetorically with a smirk.
"""RAAAAAHHHHH!!!""" The silence was instantly shattered by a great war cry from the Whitebeard pirates.
Whitebeard himself just snorted in amusement.
There was never a possibility that they would make any other choice. They were pirates, not politicians.
Marco, Juzo, and Vesta were also satisfied with this result. They only played devil's advocate because somebody had to, or else this bunch of ruffians would run wild all of the time.
There was no need to waste any more time. The captains and commanders returned to their ships and immediately set sail for Dressrosa.
…
Elsewhere in the New World.
Another small fleet of ships was also heading towards Dressrosa. These ships weren't as colorful as the Whitebeard pirates' ships, and were largely uniform in appearance. At the top of their masts, they each flew the flag of the Neo Marines.
Zed's mechanical arm tapped against the desk in his captain's quarters impatiently. He was in a bit of a bad mood after Akainu practically ordered him to go to Dressrosa.
Still, he couldn't argue with the man. Akainu had shown his quality in leadership many times over since he joined up. Hell, they'd sunk well over a hundred notable pirates since then, several were even subordinate or affiliated with the four emperors.
Zed just didn't like being told what to do by a youngster who was barely out of diapers, in his opinion.
The original neo marines, like his right hands Ain and Binz, were similarly aggrieved watching the man they dedicated their very lives to being bossed around.
The problem lied in the fact that Akainu never did so unless he had sound reasoning to do so that they couldn't refute. Like now, several high priority targets were converging in Dressrosa in addition to Doflamingo. This was a chance they couldn't pass up.
They even brought many of their PX-Z model pacifistas and a dyna stone for good measure, showing how important their success was here.
This wouldn't just be a major blow to the pirate scum. Liberating Dressrosa from Doflamingo's evil clutches would serve as excellent propaganda for their cause. Dressrosa itself would likely supply no small number of volunteers.
Of course, they wouldn't use the dyna stone on Dressrosa as that would be counterproductive towards their primary goal of recruitment. That was merely a hidden card they could use against enemy fleets if necessary. Most of their current fleet was in one place at the moment, after all. So they needed to ensure its protection.
"I have a bad feeling about this..." Zed spoke up, breaking the silence.
"Something about the participating pirates?" Ain suggested.
"Mm, this is going to get messy I think." Zed said.
Zed wasn't the kind of man to see upstart pirates as a threat, so this said a great deal about the danger he perceived in the coming battle.
In particular, if THAT woman was still in Straw Hat's crew. She was an unknown variable that he couldn't quantify. She was already quite strong two years ago, so who knows what she's like now.
"We will crush them, just like always." Binz spoke confidently.
Zed grunted in half-hearted agreement and returned to his quiet contemplation.
…
On an island with the face of a skull.
"Did anyone else just forget that Burgess exists for a while? Hic…" spoke an ugly and very drunk pirate.
"I did as well. Perhaps he's having some trouble?" a man dressed as a prison guard said.
"Shall we go lend him a hand?" spoke a man with a strange monocle and a rifle on his back.
"Burgess would kick your ass if he heard you say that, hehehe." spoke a very ill looking man riding a similarly ill horse.
A man with a scruffy black beard, Blackbeard himself in fact, spoke then. "We're not going to help him. If he dies, then he was too weak anyways."
Truthfully, Blackbeard had a bad feeling about this. There was no evidence to suggest as much, but he knew to trust his instincts; especially after he ignored his instincts two years ago with the Marineford war. It had only been the smallest of inklings that told him to abandon the entire plan he'd worked so hard on, so he had ignored it and pressed onwards. Only for him to be proven the fool for not listening to his gut and having nothing to show for it.
Fortunately, he still managed to retain the employ of the level 6 impel down escapees through no small feat of charisma and promises of power, both literal and political. That has unfortunately led to a rather stressful situation in which he is surrounded by very strong and very bloodthirsty psychopaths whilst lacking the strength to truly put them in their place like he'd planned to do with Whitebeard's devil fruit.
As such, there was no way in hell he would add more risks onto the ones he already has to deal with on a daily basis.
"Here's hoping that asshole never comes back! TopTopTopTop Hic-!" the drunkard, Vasco Shot laughed.
'Please come back, Burgess. I need all the loyal men I can get…' Blackbeard almost prayed.
…
Marine Headquarters.
Aokiji sat behind the desk of the fleet admiral, his desk now he supposed. He wouldn't ever get used to thinking of it that way. Even when he fought Akainu over this very position, he hadn't really imagined he'd be the one sitting here in the end. It was practically a miracle that he pulled a win against that hothead, given his elemental superiority over Aokiji's devil fruit.
That Akainu went and joined the Neo Marines almost immediately afterward was no small headache of his; just one of many that he had in recent days.
The return of the Straw Hat crew was yet another such headache. The worst part was that he kind of liked them, not that he would ever admit as much.
"Kukuku…" chuckle former fleet admiral Sengoku in the corner. It wasn't terribly clear whether he was amused by Aokiji's stressed out appearance or by the romantic comedy novel he was reading.
"What's so funny?" Aokiji asked straightforwardly.
"The man in black challenged Vizzini to a battle of wits. One glass of wine was poisoned by the man in black and the other was not. Vizzini swapped the cups when the man in black's back was turned and died thinking he'd won!" Sengoku retold. "Turns out the man in black poisoned both glasses, as he built an immunity to the poison beforehand. HA!"
"I have no idea who those two people are." Aokiji spoke truthfully, having never read any of the book.
"Whoops, spoilers." Sengoku chuckled.
"I'm not going to read it anyway; I'm too busy as it is." Aokiji said with a sigh.
"I found time to read." Sengoku said.
"How'd you manage that?" Aokiji asked.
"I retired. HA!" Sengoku barked a laugh.
Jesus Burgess slipped away from the back of the crowd of former toys. Under normal circumstances he was a very confident individual, but he was possessed of enough wisdom to realize he was a bit out of his depth at the moment.
He had been very close to the S.M.I.L.E. factory at the time that Cherry had destroyed it. He wasn't afraid of Elizabello because his King Punch took such a long time to charge up, and at the worst you'd just have to dodge it once. Cherry's replication though? That didn't seem to take anywhere near as long as a whole hour like Elizabello's version.
Fortunately he hadn't antagonized her too much during the tournament, and even the amount he had could be chalked up to normal fight banter he reckoned. How did he realize that Nightmare was Cherry in disguise? He just made the assumption automatically to justify his loss against her and Zoro.
"You were one of those guys with Blackbeard, right? At Marineford?" a voice that sent a chill down his spine spoke right into his ear.
Shifting his head slightly, he saw the woman in question standing on shoulder. He cursed his herculean strength in this moment, as he couldn't even feel her weight even now that he knew she was there.
"Where were you slinking off to like a coward? Your life is on the line as well, you know?" Cherry asked.
"The Champion isn't a coward." Burgess momentarily forgot who he was speaking to in the face of that provocation.
"Last I checked, you lost in the very first round of the tournament." Cherry chuckled. "Perhaps you'd like a rematch, though? I have the prize right here…"
Cherry pulled the oversized, drill-shaped strawberry out of her clothes. Burgess' eyes locked onto it instantly, filling with a dangerous glint of greed.
With that fruit, he was sure that he could defeat this monstrous woman. The question was whether he could take it from her.
The answer was no, but Burgess was an arrogant man so he thought there was a chance at least.
"You're on!" Burgess shouted and reached for her.
*pop*
Cherry vanished from his shoulder, shooting down the street with speed his eyes could barely follow. The force of her leaping off of him almost dislocated the shoulder, but he muscled through the pain and charged down the street after her like an enraged bull.
The fact that Cherry stopped to taunt him each time she was turning a corner prevented him from stopping to think about the futility of his actions.
The two racers tore through the streets and alleys of Dressrosa, miraculously avoiding any groups of people fleeing from the encroaching cage. Cherry even leapt through a window of a house, parkoured through it, then out the other side through another window. Burgess plowed straight through the walls.
Soon the slow moving strings of death were clearly visible on a straight away down a street. The hardier buildings were pushed along either side of the street, forming two tall walls of rubble with no openings.
"WIIIHAHAHA! Looks like a dead end for you!" Burgess said.
Cherry stopped before the string and turned around to face him. "You think so? Maybe I'll go through you?"
Burgess steeled himself, holding his arms wide to increase his options as he pushed towards her.
At this moment, all the jostling around seemed to have woken up Sugar, who was tied upside to Cherry's back. As her bleary vision started to clear, the fog of unconsciousness lifting from her brain she saw the birdcage only a few meters in front of her and getting closer by the second.
Sugar tried to struggle out of her bindings, but it was useless. "Let me go! We're going to die! We'll be shredded!"
Cherry ignored her and turned back to face the birdcage, showing Sugar that being sliced like deli meat wasn't the only threat as Burgess beared down on her. "AHHHHHHH!"
Cherry did the unexpected and leapt towards the birdcage. Sugar's screamed became even more desperate as her inevitable death was coming even quicker than she first imagined.
Cherry grasped two of the strings with haki coated hands, sparks flying off of them from the scraping. She wrenched them wider and propelled through the birdcage unharmed. The two string returned to position with a pair of loudly reverberating *SPRONGS*.
Sugar was in disbelief that she was not only alive, but that Cherry had actually pulled apart the birdcage's strings, which were under extreme tensile forces to prevent exactly that from happening.
Burgess wasn't far behind. He reached out to grab the string and…
"ARRRGHHH?!" Burgess reeled back. His meaty fingers bearing deep cuts down to the bone.
Cherry stood on the other side with a smirk. "I guess you lose."
She materialized her spear and pulled out the drill fruit. Pressing them together, the devil fruit melted into the spear and it transformed before their eyes; the spear head twisted around like a drill head whilst retaining its sharp edge.
Sensing the way to use the spear's devil fruit ability instinctively, Cherry let out an impressed whistle. "I think you guys were underestimating this thing. Let's see…"
Cherry reared back, the spear started to spin with exponentially increasing speed, then she thrust it forward. It was then she realized that she might have poured a little too much juice into it only just after obtaining the fruit. "Uh oh-"
The spear wrenched itself out of Cherry's vise-like grip and shot like a missile through the birdcage, nearly taking Burgess' head off in the process and taking just an ear instead. It continued onwards at blistering speed, sailing through the air unhindered.
…
Luffy and Cabernet had run out of ideas to mock Pika anymore and had grown quite bored with the stone man crushing them into the ground.
Pika reared up to slam into them again, but this time Luffy was going to meet the attack with his own. He figured he just had to be careful not to destroy the whole body and just the arm.
Luffy blew his arm up into a giant, haki coated fist. The two slammed together and naturally the one with haki won in the end. Pika's stone arm cracked and crumbled from the impact, but quickly started to reform itself causing Luffy to frown in annoyance.
"It's useless, Straw Hat! I can do this all day!" Pika shrieked.
Pika winded up another punch. Luffy was ready to meet this one as well.
"Huh-?" Pika paused.
A flash of starlight from outside the birdcage turned into a streak of color that crossed the distance in a split second. It penetrated Pika's stone exterior and with a few more flashes of starlight Pika's stone chest exploded out of his back, leaving a several meter wide hole through the construct.
Pika would have been shocked, if the drill spear hadn't pierced clean through his actual chest as well, killing him instantaneously.
Fortunately, Pika's untimely demise didn't compromise the structural integrity of his stone body. It still stood right where it had been before, only now it was completely inert.
""..."" Cabernet and Luffy didn't really know what to make of it.
So they stopped thinking about it. Cabernet flew Luffy up to the palace to have a confrontation with Doflamingo, now that they didn't have to worry about collateral damage so much.