— The Death of Whitebeard —
"The One Piece… is real!"
Breath caught in Marco's aching chest again as Pops' final words, bellowed over the Marineford battlefield strewn with fallen Whitebeard and Navy soldiers alike, sprang into his thoughts. The Marine Headquarters island had been cracked, carved, and torn asunder by the titanic powers of Whitebeard, fleet commander Sengoku, admirals Akainu, Kizaru, and Aokiji, the Kuma clones, Straw Hat, Mihawk, Garp, Ivankov, and dozens of other warriors—even Ace, freed for a time—but it was the hulking Emperor's final words that had truly cut right to the quick of the war.
"Real…" Marco murmured, twisting to let his aching right side rest against the creaking ship's taffrail. The choppy waters here certainly weren't much better than the swirling whirlpools inside the Gates of Justice had been. "Pops."
They had made the journey to Marineford for one reason—save Ace.
Marco had warned him not to go. Even now, barely able to draw the energy to conjure a blue healing flame, he could see the moment clear as day. As clear as that day had been, the Whitebeards gathered under the beating sun.
"Think about what you are doing. Thatch wouldn't want this," Marco had said, trying to put his hand on the second commander's shoulder.
The Fire Fist had shrugged him away. "Don't tell me what Thatch would have wanted. He's gone and Teach is still out there. There's only one thing that we should be thinking about right now, and that's justice."
"Come on, Ace, just calm down," Marco had said back, but it was already being overshadowed by other worried Whitebeards. "Pops said that this is an exception." That was one of the younger crewmates, a bearded man named Arl, as he actually managed to catch on to Ace's shoulder and halt his stride.
"Let me go!" was Ace's reply, heated and huffed, and he turned and pushed Arl square in the chest. "I am his commander," he declared, even as Arl and two more of the gathered Whitebeards grabbed onto him again. This time, the Fire Fist didn't shrug them off immediately. "If I don't do anything about it, Thatch's spirit can't rest!"
"Ace."
Deep, strong, and rolling, Whitebeard speaking just a single word—his second commander's name spoken like an order in itself—sent an immediate silence across the Moby Dick's wide deck. Even Ace, still straining against the grip of his three crewmates, turned his glaring eyes to the captain of the ship.
"It's okay. This is an exception" Whitebeard's eyes were closed, his breathing slow. The long medicinal tubes weaving their way to his heart heaved over his chest. Then, just as slowly, his eyes opened and the hulking Emperor's eyes fell to the side. He had failed to look at any of his crew, but his adjacent gaze still pierced across the deck and straight through the heart of the commotion. "I have a bad feeling about this."
Ace winced, but the fire in his eyes didn't disappear. "He killed his crewmate and ran away," he shot back. At this, Whitebeard was silent. Ace huffed, wrenching his shoulders out from under the grasp of his crewmates. "He had been beholden to you for decades and then he threw dirt in your face!"
Again, Whitebeard did not stir.
The Fire Fist could only glare back, breaking his eyes' lock on the Emperor to bend down and scoop up his wide-brimmed hat from where it had fallen in the scuffle. With a turn, in one clean motion, Ace headed for the starboard railing, moving between his silent crewmates. "And, above all," he said over his shoulder, quieter than he had been since his first declaration, "he disgraced your name, and I can't allow that. I'll take care of this!"
Perhaps Ace had been too far away to hear Whitebeard's reply—a soft, simple 'hmph' rolled out from the seated Emperor—but it was enough to break Marco's daze and he had rushed to the railing behind Ace. "Hey, wait! Come back!" This time Ace would have been able to hear, but he ignored Marco's cry. Already mid-leap, he landed on the railing, then jumped down into the one-man crescent raft waiting in the water below. With a snap and a heft, he fired up Striker's engine and began motoring away.
"Ace!" Marco had yelled again, and this time all the Whitebeards took up the cry. "Ace!" they cried after the rapidly disappearing figure. "Ace! Ace!"
He hadn't tried hard enough to stop him.
Now, broken, battered, and bruised, the Whitebeards were turning tail and fleeing the Marine Headquarters without Ace. And, perhaps even worse, without their captain.
"A total disaster." Again Marco was talking just loud enough to hear himself over the churning waves.
Things had been going so well, hadn't they? The Whitebeards, or a little more specifically Straw Hat—Monkey D. Luffy—and his Impel Down escapees, had managed to get the sea prism stone cuffs off Ace. Through the might of Aokiji's hail of ice and Akainu's rain of magma. Through Kizaru's lightbeams, the burning power of which still had Marco's side aching, and the late emergence of Buddha Sengoku and his golden shockwaves. Even through the raw might of the Navy hero Monkey. D Garp, though that was mostly Straw Hat's doing up on the lofty heights of the execution scaffolding. The war had been tipping in their favour. But, like with so many misfortunes, fate had plotted other plans.
"The One Piece is real," Marco mumbled to himself. This time, Vista stirred, one eye peering over to where Marco rested against the railing. The Flower Swords commander looked even worse than Marco felt, though without the Phoenix fruit's healing flames that was little surprise. At least one gapping wound looked to have been carved out by Dracule Mihawk's monstrous blade, sliced down near to bone and leaving Vista's left arm hanging at his side and resting on the deck. A small price to pay for locking swords with the strongest swordsman in the world, Marco mused. In fact, it matched nicely with a charred pockmark over Vista's other arm, courtesy of Akainu's magma.
"Was this the right choice, Phoenix?"
Marco matched Vista's gaze, a silence lumbering between them for a moment. Eventually, Marco answered from between gritted teeth. "It's what Pops wanted. We both know that." I knew, but I didn't think. Not enough. "He knew the risks of an all-out war on the Marines' doorstep. We marched right into the heart of the Navy."
March right in they did too. Whitebeard's plan with the submerged Moby Dick, the arrival of the fleet outside Marineford, and the first assault worked perfectly. The captain's tidal waves were stopped by Aokiji, who in turn was quickly swatted aside by Whitebeard, and the whole battlefield had piled out onto the frozen bay.
Then, in the beginning, it looked like the Whitebeards were winning.
From then, everything was a blur. The Warlord Mihawk attacked Whitebeard , though the move was quickly blocked by Jozu and his diamond body. Kizaru attempted a similar foray but Marco himself had been quick to stop that one. "Whitebeard can't be taken on the first turn," he had declared at the time. Not the first, maybe, but eventually the last. He had nearly beaten Kizaru then, but nearly is not enough and Kizaru was able to escape.
Young giant Little Oars Jr. breached the wall soon after, and then fell. Vice Admiral Lonz had gone after Whitebeard personally. He too had fallen, shattered by the Rumble Rumble fruit. Whitey Bay had broken through on another front, riding that icebreaker ship she had brought "just in case." Lucky.
The war of the best had strange twists and surprising turns too. Straw Hat, arriving with Warlords Crocodile and Jinbe, Revolutionary Ivankov, and even that strange Rogers apprentice—Buggy—literally dropping onto the battlefield was certainly one of many. "Famous troublemaker," Marco had heard another of the Warlords, Donquixote Doflamingo, proclaim about Straw Hat amidst the chaos. How right that really was, Marco thought. Whitebeard had seen it too; after Straw Hat's arrival, he and Ace's young brother had spoken. Soon after, another booming order from the captain rang out—"Keep Ace's brother safe!" Not long after that, a more personal message whispered just for Marco: "I will not forgive you if you let him die."
Straw Hat's appearance from the sky saw even more dominoes fall in the Marineford bay. The Navy's Bartholomew Kuma clones—Pacifistas, someone had called them over the din—had marched in from the rear. Crocodile and his lackey had tried their hand at defeating Whitebeard again.
And, among it all, Squard's move
Really, Squard's mistake.
Or, even, Akainu's brilliant play, really. It nearly worked too, as simple as it was.
Marco had tackled Squard after his attack on the Whitebeard captain. Not fast enough. He roared, too. "Squard! Why did you do that? Answer me! Do you know what you've done?"
A farce, he had called it. Marco knew what he'd call it—a betrayal. A betrayal to the Whitebeards, and a betrayal to Edward Newgate. The Maelstrom Spider had trusted Akainu over Pops. Actually believed Pops could send his warriors to their deaths for some elaborate ruse. What did Squard call it? "Making his allies into sacrificial lambs for the Marines to mop up."
Well, Whitebeard proved him wrong. Pops proved everyone wrong, in the end. He shattered the ice walls, letting the pirates go free if they wanted. When John Giant attacked, he shattered the entire Naval island too, rolling the very land beneath the battlefield into pieces and throwing them around like they were his playthings.
Among it all, the Moby Dick—our home—was destroyed.
There hadn't even been time to mourn, though Marco knew any tears he had left would flow for the great sailing beast of burden once Marineford was only a memory behind them. Straw Hat had attacked the admirals head-on almost immediately after, and in the madness, Kizaru had caught Marco out when he had rushed to help Whitebeard. Beams of light were easy to beat. Those Seastone Prism handcuffs some stupidly lucky Marine had clasped on him in the chaos, far less so.
Those handcuffs may have been what stopped me from saving Ace's life…
Ace.
Fire Fist Ace, rescued, then gone.
And Pops, gone too.
No, no. Not gone. Not somewhere waiting to be found.
Taken.
Akainu had taken one, right from the arms of Straw Hat while the Whitebeards were in retreat. Blackbeard and his cowardly crew, a dozen against one, had taken the other. There was nothing we could have done. Stuck on the other side of a gorge ripped out by Pops, ordered by the captain to leave, no matter what, the Whitebeards had been helpless to watch Teach's ambush. Even with the power of his stolen Dark-Dark Fruit—It should have been Thatch's power—he was still no match for an aging, ill, injured Pops. Their battle had very quickly gone to one victor: Whitebeard.
But, Teach was a coward to the last, and he wasn't against dishonourable tactics and trickery. They may have duelled, but Teach was never going to lose with his crew right there to cheat for him. And Pops was dead.
"We marched right into hell. Pops knew what we were risking."
Vista closed his eyes. "He can't have known he was going to die though." The swordsman shifted again, holding one hand gently to his scorched shoulder. "Teach… he can't have been part of Pops' plans here. He can't have planned for that bastard to turn up. That traitor."
Marco disagreed. "He knew Teach would come."
That drew a raised eyebrow from the already flinching Vista. "Knew? No. How could anyone have envisioned Teach, even Straw Hat, Crocodile, Jinbe? Ivankov." Another flinch as the Flowers Sword shifted. "Red Haired. Even those rookies."
"He would have hoped for Red Haired. He would have planned for Teach. The rest, I think not, no."
"You say he knew that traitor would come, Marco? That he would interfere? He told you? Did you try to talk him out of this, if he knew?" That was Blenheim. His pinched eyebrows were already lifting as he spoke again. "You should have stopped the plan then."
"I didn't know," snapped Marco sharply, and Blenheim and Vista had nothing else to say. Each of them, aching, bruised, and beaten—even the first commander with his healing fire—had simply given up on the bickering. There was nothing else to say; Whitebeard must have planned it all out. He knew his crew, he knew his family. Marshall D. Teach had once been part of Edward Newgate's family, even if he had spat on that bond with his crimes.
Marco stood, wobbling as he hefted himself up. Vista started to follow with a "Are you—" but Marco waved him away.
I don't know what to do.
He was vice-captain. He had to know what to do, for the Whitebeards. For Vista and Blenheim. For every crewmate that had followed Whitebeard into the hell of Marineford and then followed Marco out. Except, for the first time in 31 years, ever since that first meeting on the Applenine beach and the liberation they waged together there, there was no Edward Newgate to tell him what to do. No Whitebeard to guide him into the next conflict, the next journey. No Pops.
Even when everything had seemed hopeless, when there seemed nothing left to do but give up, Pops had been there. The Emperor of the Grand Line. Whitebeard. Gol. D Roger may have been the one to find Laugh Tale, but Edward Newgate had been the one to build a legacy stretching beyond the Grand Line. Izou, Atmos, Jiru, Vista. Whitey Bay, Blamenco, Marehei Cricket, Kingdew. They all saw him as their father, a figure standing tall above all the others. Blenheim, Jozu, Namur, Epoida, Andre, Rakuyo, Haruta, Curiel, and Fossa too.
Even Oden. And Thatch.
And 'First Fist' Ace. Maybe him most of all.
"Hundreds more too," Marco whispered.
Marco's mind drifted back. Even him—he had left himself out of that list alongside dozens of others that deserved places, he realised, and a half-wry smile curled onto his lips as he thought back to the first time he had met Edward Newgate—near clean-shaven then, funnily enough, though that didn't last long. Wielding that great towering halberd, standing on the beach. And the first time he saw Newgate set sail for adventure. The first time he'd seen him fight, the mighty, terrifying power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit rocking the very pillars of the earth.
The first time he'd seen Whitebeard celebrate, his bellowing, rolling, and yet so calm and quiet laugh echoing over the Moby Dick. Or the first time he'd led the captain into uproarious laughter in the hills.
Never again will I hear that laugh ring out. Not on that ship—yet another thing Marineford had taken from the Whitebeard pirates, Marco remembered—and not from that man. Not from Pops.
Pops. A title Edward Newgate had loved.
He'd earned it too. Marco had watched him earn it with countless pirates, from the long struggles he had with the flames of Fire Fist Ace and his burning temper, all the way back to 30 years ago, on the Grand Line, in the New World, when he earned the right from Marco the Phoenix after a battle in the streets of Rego Calbria on the snowy island of Applenine.
Those three decades of calling him Pops seemed to shrink as Marco thought back. He couldn't believe those years had passed in a blink of an eye. Or perhaps he could. In some ways, he was still that laughing little boy Edward Newgate had brought on as an apprentice. Still that deckhand wanting to prove himself worthy of the Devil Fruit he had eaten under the rock, and the glorious ship he sailed on, and the captain he called Pops. In others, he was right here, sailing away from the last place Whitebeard had stood, or would ever stand. From snow Applenine to the shores of Wano Country, and all the way to the bay of Marineford. 30 years of glory and defeat, war and loss, the Whitebeards, and family.
And what a 30 years they had been.
—
All rights to One Piece reserved by Eiichiro Oda and Shueisha's Jump Comics.
