The Red Force cleaves the New World's restless blue, her prow parting the sea with the hush of drawn steel. Storms have broken themselves against her timbers; emperors have watched her pass and remembered the name. Upon her decks sail men who have looked into the jaws of legends and returned with salt in their lungs and laughter in their throats. Her hull bears the scars of a thousand battles, each mark a story, each dent a memory. Her white sails gather the afternoon light, billowing above the scarred ship like pale wings that have carried her beyond the edges of every known sea.
Shanks stands near the helm, his long black cloak stirring in the breeze, his hand resting loosely on the railing as though the sea itself were an old companion. Sunlight threads through his red hair—the color behind his name—while his scarred eye narrows against the golden haze, a transponder snail cradled in his palm.
"Hey, Marya. You there?"
The snail remains silent. Its eyes—bulging, blank—stare back at him with the emptiness of a creature that has nothing to say.
Beckman stands beside him, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He takes a long drag, holds it, then blows out a plume of smoke that curls into the salt air like a departing spirit.
"She hung up on you."
Shanks shakes his head, the familiar set of his mouth betraying an old certainty: he has known Marya too long to mistake her silences. "Nah. She just didn't answer."
A figure drops from the rigging above—Limejuice, his long blond hair streaming from beneath his bandanna, his sunglasses glinting. He meets the deck in a whisper of boots, as fluid and certain as the rigging swaying above him.
"Maybe she changed her mind," he offers, shrugging. "Decided she didn't want to talk to you after all."
Shanks replies, his voice carrying a thread of something that might be concern. "But she didn't hang up."
Beckman takes another drag of his cigarette. His gaze, keen enough to catch the first tremor before violence breaks the surface, narrows slightly.
"You don't suppose she's in some sort of trouble?"
Shanks scoffs, easy and untroubled; he had watched Marya grow from a fierce child into a woman who met every storm with steel in her spine. "Her? Nah. She's too much like her old man. She would just cut down whatever is in her way and keep moving."
Howling Gap calls from beside the mainmast, rope winding through his hands, his cheer bright as sun on open water. "You got that right, Chief!"
The crew laughs. The sound rolls across the deck like thunder—warm, genuine, the laughter of men who have become family through blood and battle and the bond that only forms between those who have faced death together.
Then—
"What the hell..."
The Red Force lurches.
The deck tilts. Men stumble, grabbing onto rigging, railings, each other. A barrel rolls across the planks, crashing into the mainmast with a sound like a cannon shot. The sails snap and flutter, caught in a wind that has come from nowhere.
Yasopp calls from the crow's nest, his warning slicing across the deck before the danger breaks the surface. "Sea's churning! Something's coming up—and fast!"
Shanks' hand moves to the hilt of his sword. His single eye narrows. His voice cuts through the chaos with the authority of an Emperor.
"Brace yourselves!"
---
SPLASH!
The water explodes.
On one side of the Red Force, the Dreadnought Thalassa tears through the surface, hauling the dark below into daylight in silver veils. Its obsidian hull sheds water in cascading sheets, its solar sail—bearing the insignia of the Red Hair Pirates—extends with a sound like a thunderclap. The vessel's singularity core pulses at its heart, a contained stellar fire that casts strange shadows across the Red Force's deck.
On the other side, the Pluton erupts from the depths.
The Ancient Weapon's crescent-moon prow parts the waves in a gleam of black, its matte hull swallowing every trace of afternoon until even the sun seems to dim along its flanks. The two dreadnoughts flank the Red Force like wolves surrounding prey, their presence a statement that needs no words.
Water cascades across the Red Force's deck. Men are drenched, their clothes clinging to their bodies, their hair plastered to their skulls. The ship rocks violently, then settles, the waves of the double breach gradually subsiding.
Shanks stands at the center of the chaos, dripping wet, his red hair darkened to the color of blood in shadow. Beckman stands beside him, his cigarette—miraculously—still lit, though it hisses slightly as water drips from his coat.
The Dreadnought Thalassa's solar sail unfurls into the wind, lifting the Red Hair Pirates' scarred skull and crossbones against the blue like a vow written across the heavens.
Shanks hangs up the transponder snail. His voice turns wry, disbelief lingering beneath each word like the last ripple after a fallen star.
"Well. That was fast."
Beckman nods. He tosses his wet cigarette overboard, reaches into his coat, and pulls out a fresh one. He lights it without haste, as though chaos were merely weather passing over the sea.
"Wonder what this is all about."
The air shimmers.
Marya Zaleska materializes on the deck of the Red Force—not appearing so much as unfolding, her form resolving from fragments of mist into flesh and blood. Her raven hair settles around her shoulders, her golden-ringed eyes sweep across the assembled pirates, and Nisshoku's obsidian blade pulses with a slow, steady heartbeat at her back.
Shanks' face lights up. Recognition softens his scarred features, warm as lamplight in a long-awaited window.
"Marya! This is a surprise! How did you—"
He trails off.
His eyes widen.
Luffy hops over the railing.
The Pirate King tumbles onto the deck of the Red Force, all loose limbs and heedless momentum, as though the sea itself had tossed him laughing into an old story. His straw hat sits askew on his head, his sandals slap against the wet planks, and his eyes—wide, star-bright, unmistakably Luffy—settle on Shanks with the easy warmth of a bond no distance could weather.
"Hey, Shanks!"
Everyone's head snaps around.
The Red Hair Pirates—Beckman, Limejuice, Yasopp, Howling Gap, every man and woman on the deck—stare at the figure standing beside Marya. Their faces flicker from confusion to recognition, disbelief kindling at last into delight—the bright, dangerous gleam that comes before a story is retold for years.
Shanks asks, bewilderment briefly stripping the practiced ease from his voice. "What are you doing here?"
Marya tells them, her voice flat and matter-of-fact. "I abducted him and left his ship and crew adrift."
Shanks blinks.
His brain processes the words.
His shoulders begin to bounce.
"You..."
A snort escapes him.
"You kidnapped..."
The snort becomes a chuckle. The chuckle becomes a laugh. The laugh becomes a full-bodied roar of amusement that echoes across the deck.
Beckman's mouth curves into that seldom-seen grin, amusement breaking through his composure like sunlight through smoke.
Shanks buckles over, slapping his knee. His voice comes out in gasps between peals of laughter. "Some King of the Pirates you turned out to be!"
The entire crew of the Red Force erupts.
Laughter rolls across the deck like a tidal wave. Limejuice doubles over, clutching his stomach. Yasopp nearly falls from the rigging. Howling Gap drops his rope entirely, tears streaming down his face.
Luffy gets flustered. His cheeks flush. His fists ball up at his sides.
"Shut up, Shanks!"
---
Marya steps forward, her boots clicking against the wet planks. Her expression remains carefully neutral, but something softens at the edges of her golden-ringed eyes.
"Uncle."
Luffy's head whips around.
His eyes flare wide, and his finger shoots toward Shanks as though he has just uncovered a secret the whole sea conspired to keep from him.
"UNCLE?!"
Marya looks over her shoulder at him, her scowl honed by the weary patience of explaining daylight to someone determined to call it night.
"How else would Uta be my cousin if he wasn't?"
Luffy's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. His brain—visible in the way his expression shifts through confusion, concentration, and dawning realization—works overtime to process this information.
He stands there, dumbfounded, still trying to figure out the family connections. His lips move silently, counting on his fingers, tracing invisible lines in the air.
He hasn't even asked her name yet.
Shanks asks, the last of his laughter lingering in his voice like sunlight on the wake. "What brought you here? And in such a hurry?"
Marya reaches into her pocket.
Her fingers close around something small. Something silver. Something that has traveled across oceans and through decades, from the hands of a mother to the hands of a daughter, from a gift given in love to a relic of tragedy.
She pulls out the locket.
Afternoon sun spills over the silver, scattering bright splinters across the deck. The triple clef dangling from its center sways gently, as if moved by a breeze that only it can feel.
Marya holds it in her palm. She extends her hand toward Shanks.
Her voice is quiet. Steady. Carrying the weight of everything she hasn't said.
"It's Uta."
Shanks looks down.
He blinks.
The laughter dies in his throat.
The warmth drains from his face.
And for the first time in years—for the first time since he held a dying girl in his arms on an island that never slept—the Red Hair Emperor goes still.