At that moment, sitting across from Shanks was Bartholomew Kuma, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, calmly drinking tea.
After watching Shanks hang up, Kuma raised his head and asked, "Is it really all right to reveal our relationship now? Charlotte Linlin is no fool. There are not many forces capable of opposing the Marines. The Revolutionary Army is the only one."
Shanks burst into laughter.
"It is fine, Kuma. That information could never have been hidden from the Marines or Charlotte Linlin anyway."
"The Warlords have been attacking me for so long without achieving results. Aside from the strength of the Red Hair Pirates, it is also because your will to attack is not strong."
Back when Kuma and Crocodile had come as Warlords, even Red Hair had been somewhat nervous, because neither of them was someone an ordinary officer could handle.
In the entire Red Hair Pirates, the only people who could confidently defeat them were Shanks himself and Beckman.
But later, the more Shanks fought, the stranger it felt.
Crocodile and Kuma did not seem to have any intention of relentlessly pursuing the Red Hair Pirates.
During one accidental one-on-one fight between Kuma and Shanks, Shanks could not resist asking the reason.
Only then did he learn that Kuma was actually a member of the Revolutionary Army.
After discovering Kuma's identity, Shanks used him to contact Dragon directly, and through Kuma as an intermediary, they reached an agreement.
The Revolutionary Army would attack the Grand Line and pull away part of the Marines' forces.
At the time, Dragon's reply had been that they did not yet have enough ships capable of crossing the Calm Belt, so the matter had to be delayed for a while.
But calculating the time now, the Revolutionary Army should already have enough ships to cross the Calm Belt.
...
After sending Issho and Aramaki away, Raleigh returned to his office to rest for a while.
Unexpectedly, Momonga suddenly walked in with a solemn expression, looking as though he was carrying a secret.
Raleigh rarely saw such an expression on Momonga's face, so he quickly gestured for him to sit down.
Momonga looked around, then temporarily dismissed the soldiers stationed near the Fleet Admiral's office.
Only after closing the doors and windows did he speak.
"Raleigh, our intelligence personnel discovered someone."
"This person may be connected to Red-Haired Shanks."
"This girl's name is Uta. She is currently a singer and seems to possess a special Devil Fruit ability."
Many years ago, when the Red Hair Pirates passed through a certain kingdom, they were involved in a massacre that destroyed the country.
This matter had been orally recorded by Gordon, the surviving king of the Kingdom of Elegia.
According to him, anyone who heard the singing voice of a girl named Uta would fall into a strange world.
Inside that world were countless song soldiers and an almost impossible-to-resist Demon King of Songs, Tot Musica.
It was precisely because of that existence that the Kingdom of Elegia was destroyed.
Furthermore, according to the intelligence Nezumi had obtained, they had somehow acquired the Marines' latest Den Den Mushi technology.
This type of Den Den Mushi could automatically connect to nearby non-encrypted communication Den Den Mushi, allowing even more people to hear Uta's singing.
Raleigh narrowed his eyes.
This was indeed an extremely troublesome ability.
Paramecia-type Devil Fruits were often rule-based existences with no obvious solution.
If one did not know their rules, then even a powerful person could still fall victim to them.
Just like the Hobby-Hobby Fruit and the Hollow-Hollow Fruit, no matter how strong someone was, they could still be caught off guard and defeated.
People like this were like walking human nuclear weapons. No one knew when they might suddenly explode.
Momonga nodded.
He agreed with Raleigh's assessment.
"Then I will send a few people directly to recover her fruit."
"We can send Rosinante, Inspector General Sengoku's son. His Calm-Calm Fruit counters Uta's Sing-Sing Fruit very effectively."
Raleigh tapped his fingers against the desk again and again.
After a while, he raised his head and said, "Have Rosinante and Enel go together. There is only one requirement: she must be captured alive."
"Her identity and the crimes she committed cannot be settled by merely executing her in secret. That would not be enough to calm the anger of the civilians who lost their lives."
Although Momonga was somewhat surprised, he did not think much of it.
Was she not just the daughter of an Emperor?
More than one Emperor had already died at the Marines' hands.
Why would they fear a pirate who had only recently become an Emperor?
What a joke.
...
Several days later, on the shore of the long-destroyed Kingdom of Elegia, two tall men wearing Marine uniforms appeared.
Enel and Rosinante walked across this island, which had long since lost all human presence.
From the moment they landed, Enel had already used his Observation Haki to lock onto the locations of Uta and her adoptive father, Gordon.
"Rosinante, her Devil Fruit ability just happens to be countered by yours."
Enel teased him as they walked.
Their relationship was fairly good.
Although Raleigh and Sengoku had once competed for the position of Fleet Admiral, they had never truly torn all face between them.
Besides, there was no grudge between Enel and Rosinante.
Rosinante, who rarely spoke, said, "Mm. My ability is not as practical as yours, so perhaps the heavens specially prepared a Devil Fruit user I could counter."
Rosinante had never been very confident in himself.
Because he felt his ability was not very suited for combat, he rarely participated on the front lines.
Most of the time, he simply followed Sengoku and handled clerical work.
Enel burst into laughter.
"Rosinante, Raleigh-sama once said that there are no useless Devil Fruits, only people who do not know how to develop them."
"Besides, against a bug-like ability such as the Sing-Sing Fruit, if I came alone, I might not be able to deal with it. I might even fail. So don't belittle yourself."
In truth, even Rosinante himself did not know that the Calm-Calm Fruit was actually an extremely powerful ability.
He simply had not developed it properly.
Sound traveled through the air as vibration, and the Calm-Calm Fruit could maintain the stability of space.
Once sound exceeded the range of human hearing, it would spread in the form of incredibly powerful shockwaves in every direction.
Only after passing through layer upon layer of air and weakening over distance would it be heard as a massive sound hundreds of kilometers away.
If Rosinante developed his ability to the extreme, then fighting Whitebeard back then would not have required so much effort.
The Calm-Calm Fruit could completely prevent Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit from unleashing its world-destroying power.
Before they knew it, Enel and Rosinante had arrived before a stretch of ruins.
"Are you coming out yourselves, or do I have to force you out?"
Enel spoke toward the ruins.
"Ah… ah…"
From beneath the ruins, faint singing drifted up, slipping through their ears and into Enel's mind.
"Calm-Calm Fruit: Zone, open."
Rosinante merely made a slight movement, and Uta beneath the ruins could no longer make any sound.
Boom!
Smoke and dust burst upward as a figure rushed out from the ruins and punched toward Enel's face.
Gordon had already been modified into a machine, but against Enel, he was nowhere near enough.
One punch was enough to turn him into a pile of scrap metal.
Enel pulled aside the stones covering the ruins and struck the back of the terrified Uta's neck with a hand chop.
Carrying the unconscious Uta, Enel waved at Rosinante.
"Done. Let us return to New Marineford."
...
Far away, at the Red Hair Pirates' base in the New World, Shanks suddenly felt something in his heart.
He paced anxiously in place, as if he had forgotten something extremely important.
"Where exactly did something go wrong?"
"What is this feeling?"