Ace's arrival in Windmill Village turned the quiet coastal town into a festival overnight.
The moment word spread, people poured into the village center—laughing, shouting, calling his name. Barbeque grills were lit, barrels of alcohol were rolled out, and tables overflowed with juice, bread, and meat.
From three-year-old children running barefoot through the crowd to eighty-year-old elders leaning on their canes, everyone came.
That night, Ace was practically forced to drink—though the alcohol was low-percentage, it was still alcohol.
Laughter echoed through Windmill Village until late into the night, and for once, even Ace let himself relax, surrounded by familiar faces.
But the atmosphere the next morning was anything but festive.
Even the mountain bandits had come down. Dadan was there, arms crossed, sitting among the villagers. Everyone—pirates, bandits, villagers, children—was gathered in front of a large screen set up in the open.
What played before them was the war.
The war between the Big Mom Pirates and the World Government.
Just like Marineford war in One Piece anime, the World Government made sure the entire world could see it. This was not just a battle—it was propaganda. A display of authority. A reminder of who claimed to rule the seas.
No one spoke as the footage rolled.
Even Ace remained silent.
This war, however, was different from Marineford.
Fleet Admiral Sengoku was not present on the battlefield. Garp was not there either. Both of them were stationed elsewhere, overseeing the movements of the other Emperors—especially the Whitebeard Pirates. The World Government could not afford to lower its guard on multiple fronts.
And then came the announcement.
Through a Den Den Mushi broadcast, Sengoku's voice echoed across the screen:
Whoever killed Big Mom would be granted the position of next Fleet Admiral.
The atmosphere among the Marines shifted instantly.
Hawks and doves alike moved with grim determination. Competition spread through the ranks. Glory, authority, power—everything was on the line.
Any Marine who killed more pirates, especially high-ranking members of the Big Mom Pirates, would be rewarded.
The battlefield was not just soaked in blood.
It was soaked in ambition.
---
An hour passed, and in that short span of time, the battlefield between the Big Mom Pirates and the Marines transformed beyond recognition.
From Big Mom's side, the lineup was terrifying.
Big Mom herself stood at the center of Totto Land, supported by her four Sweet Commanders—Katakuri, Smoothie, Cracker, and Snack.
Beneath them were countless top officers, ministers, and an army that seemed endless.
There were also dozens of New Worlds pirate groups affiliated to Big Mom Pirates.
The islands themselves were alive. Homies rose from land, sea, and sky—living food, animated terrain, sentient storms, and weapons born from souls. Totto Land was no longer a place.
It was a weapon.
The Marines, on the other hand, had arrived with overwhelming force.
Three Admirals led the charge—Akainu, Aokiji, and Kizaru. Behind them stood fifteen Vice Admirals and nearly seventy thousand Marine soldiers of varying ranks. Battleships stretched across the horizon, their cannons primed, their flags snapping in the violent winds.
This was the largest direct conflict between pirates and the World Government in decades.
And yet—before the Marines could even fully land—
Disaster struck.
Homies surged from the sea, dragging ships beneath the waves. Living storms tore through fleets as weather-based weapons shattered formations. Islands themselves attacked—ground opening, structures moving, oceans boiling. Marines were crushed, drowned, or burned before ever setting foot on land.
By the time the Marines finally landed, the war had already begun in full.
The battlefield split instantly.
Akainu charged straight at Big Mom, magma colliding with soul-infused flames. Soon after, Aokiji joined the fight, the two Admirals pressing Big Mom together in a clash that shook the skies.
Even so, Big Mom did not stand alone—Smoothie moved to support her, her presence turning the battlefield even more brutal.
Elsewhere, Kizaru faced Katakuri.
Speed met foresight.
Kizaru's overwhelming speed and Logia intangibility clashed against Katakuri's future sight, awakened Devil Fruit, supreme battle awareness, and terrifying mastery of Haki—including Conqueror's Haki. Their fight blurred across the battlefield, neither side willing to yield an inch.
Cracker stood like a fortress of war, his Devil Fruit creating endless biscuit soldiers. He held back multiple Vice Admirals and tens of thousands of Marines almost single-handedly, turning the battlefield into a grinding nightmare.
Perospero and the remaining top officials flooded the field, clashing with Marine Vice Admirals, while Big Mom's homies fought the rest of the cannon fodder marines in a brutal, unforgiving combat.
The sea burned.
The land screamed.
The sky itself cracked under the pressure.
This was not just a war.
It was a collision between monsters.
---
Ace watched the entire war in silence, his expression unusually serious.
Even he was impressed by Big Mom's sheer strength.
As the clash continued, a doubt slowly formed in his mind—one that refused to disappear.
How did Eustass Kid and Law even defeat her?
Ace knew the truth of Big Mom's power better than most. Before the Wano War, she had fought Kaido evenly for three days and three nights.
That alone placed her on the same tier as the world's greatest monsters. Even if one argued that Kaido was slightly stronger, the difference was nowhere near enough for Kid and Law to bridge.
And watching her now—
Ace could feel it clearly.
This Big Mom here was stronger than the Whitebeard of the Marineford War.
It wasn't that Big Mom surpassed Whitebeard in his prime. It was that Marineford Whitebeard had been old—his body ravaged by illness, his strength eroded by age, his insides already collapsing from a disease Ace never fully understood. That Whitebeard had fought while dying.
The current Big Mom would have overwhelmed that version of him.
In just a few hours, tens of thousands of Marine soldiers had fallen.
Big Mom's forces had taken losses as well, but the imbalance was clear—the Marines were bleeding far more heavily.
It reminded Ace of Marineford war.
Sengoku had planned everything perfectly against the Whitebeard Pirates. If not for Luffy and the chaos caused by the Impel Down escapees—those unpredictable variables—Whitebeard would still have fallen, and his crew might have been completely annihilated. Without Shanks and Blackbeard present, Akainu would never have allowed survivors.
Big Mom is the same.
Like Sengoku, she was a master of large-scale warfare—but her advantages were far greater. Her control over terrain, her ability to create traps, her endless cannon fodder, and her homies that could fight, die, and be replaced without end made her battlefield dominance far superior.
This outcome was not surprising.
The Marines were not just fighting a Yonko.
They were fighting an entire living world that obeyed her will.
---
Few more hours passed and the moon had risen in the sky.
Big Mom stood grievously wounded, her massive body covered in deep burns and injury, her breathing heavy as the homies around her struggled to keep her standing. Even so, her eyes still burned with madness and fury—proof that she was far from defeated.
Akainu was in no better condition. His body bore scorch marks from fire and thunder, several of his bones visibly broken. Even standing upright required sheer willpower. Aokiji, too, was seriously injured, his ice shattered again and again until his movements slowed, frost failing to form properly around him.
Contrarily, Kizaru was mostly uninjured as he was slacking off with Katakuri.
Katakuri, also, remained largely unharmed.
He hadn't committed to reckless combat, and with his future sight Observation Haki, combined with his mochi body's semi-Logia-like properties, avoiding fatal damage came naturally to him. He moved through the battlefield like a shadow that had already seen the next strike coming.
Among Big Mom's top officers, many had fallen—yet many still lived. Nearly half of the homies that made Whole Cake Island a living fortress had been destroyed, their screams fading into silence.
The Marines paid an even heavier price.
Three Vice Admirals were confirmed dead, while casualties among lower-ranking Marines were beyond counting. The sea around Whole Cake Island was littered with wreckage, blood, and broken ships.
Finally, a CP0 agent appeared and officially announced the end of the operation.
With that declaration, the Marines withdrew from the territory of the Big Mom Pirates, leaving behind shattered islands, burning seas, and scars that would take years to heal.
The goal of killing a Yonko had not been achieved.
But the message had been delivered.
The World Government still had teeth.
---
News soon followed from the seas beyond.
Kaido of the Beasts—who had openly threatened to aid Big Mom—had been intercepted by Red-Haired Shanks before he could leave Wano and after hours of conflict between them he finally reached Whole Cake Islands.
Whether it was a deal struck in the shadows between Shanks and the World Government, no one knew.
And so, the war between the World Government and the Big Mom Pirates came to an end.
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