Inside a private room at Red Port, Vice Admiral Garp sat directly across from Weitian. He was casually munching on a bag of rice crackers she had just handed him, asking with a mouth full of food, "So, Weitian, what exact data query do you require from me?"
"Vale D. Drake."
Pfft...
Garp had just taken a quick sip of tea to wash down the dry crackers, but hearing that name caused him to instantly spray the fluid across the table. He blinked in surprise. "What on earth prompted your cognitive systems to suddenly request variables on him?"
"Garp-chan, the Legendary Four Brothers are all your grandsons, correct? That implies your memory banks contain visual data of what they looked like during their childhood years. Am I right?" Weitian asked, her stunning eyes locking onto Garp without a single millisecond of latency.
Garp, who originally held zero intention of discussing the topic, fell into a dense, heavy silence.
He had undeniably witnessed every single microsecond of those four brothers growing up. But it was precisely because of those deep memories that his internal logic loops actively avoided the subject.
While Luffy was the solitary sibling who shared his biological bloodline, from the precise microsecond those four boys had sworn their brotherhood pact, Garp's psychology had processed every single one of them as his own legitimate grandson.
Yet today, three of them had scaled up their metrics to become notorious pirates, while the remaining one had enlisted as the absolute number-two authority anchoring the Revolutionary Army.
Every single one of them had aligned their coordinates to stand directly counter to his definition of Justice.
To voice a reality like that to his fellow officers was far too embarrassing.
Seeing Garp remain silent for a long moment, Weitian evaluated the parameters and spoke calmly. "To be entirely transparent, my primary operational objective for charting a course to Wano Country is explicitly to track down this man, Vale D. Drake."
"Hmm?" Garp's eyes widened to their absolute limits. "Your intent is to place him under arrest?"
"Precisely!" Weitian nodded with absolute, unyielding conviction.
Garp shot a highly analytical, suspicious glance toward her. Although his instincts flagged a subtle anomaly in her behavior, running the standard diagnostic loops yielded zero structural errors in her stated logic.
As the minutes ticked by, the two of them engaged in a casual, disjointed conversation. Gradually, Garp's internal restraint eroded, and his enthusiasm spiked. He began recounting the absurd antics the four brothers had pulled off during their youth, his booming laughter echoing across the room as he bent over double.
Sitting directly opposite him, the beautiful smile playing on Weitian's flawless face grew increasingly prominent...
A short while later, down at the coastline.
Under Garp's watchful gaze, distinct embers of incandescent, crimson fire began to ripple across Weitian's physical frame. Within seconds, her structure expanded radically, shifting into a gargantuan, celestial avian beast whose elegant contours were entirely draped in brilliant, crimson plumage.
Bird-Bird Fruit, Mythical Zoan Model: Vermilion Bird!
"I am initiating transit, Garp-chan!"
In the next microsecond, the celestial bird, completely enveloped in a roaring torrent of crimson flames, vaulted into the sky at maximum acceleration, leaving a spectacular, multi-colored trail of thermal energy cutting across the horizon.
Watching her silhouette fade into the distant clouds, the corners of Garp's mouth slowly curled into a mischievous grin. "You've got quite a grueling calculation ahead of you, Drake!"
"This little girl... she honestly calculated that I lacked the data regarding the pre-existing betrothal contract she shares with Drake. Attempting to extract background intelligence from my memory loops like that..." Muttering the critique beneath his breath, Garp suddenly turned on his heel to depart the docks, his booming laughter bursting out without an ounce of restraint. "Ahahaha...!"
Wano Country, Kuri Sector
Along the desolate, sandy coastline, a lone young man paced slowly through the arid beach. He was draped in a striking, crimson formal coat, and resting atop his dark hair was a signature hat pulled down low enough to cast a heavy shadow over his eyes.
The youth's strides were remarkably slow, his gaze methodically scanning every piece of parched vegetation and terrain contour flanking his path. Under the harsh glare of the solar rays, the expression charting his features carried a profound, heavy weight of pure nostalgia.
"Ace... is this ruined expanse truly Oden's sovereign homeland of Wano Country? For the environment to be systematically degraded to this degree..." Standing directly behind his vanguard position, Marco noted, his features hardening into a profoundly grim look.
"This is undeniably Wano. The local ecological parameters have been stuck in this cycle of degradation for a significant number of years," Ace replied, reaching up with a single hand to subtly adjust the brim of his hat.
Scanning the immediate sector, the remaining elite combatants of the Whitebeard Pirates were entirely absent from the grid.
For this specific deployment, their sovereign crew had only allocated two assets to enter the hot zone: Ace and Marco. From a purely strategic standpoint, the timeline dictated that they should remain embedded within their own territorial grid to stabilize their fleet's metrics. But after running a comprehensive analysis of the global board, Marco had determined that reinforcing Ace's position was a high-priority necessity.
Although the external intelligence networks calculated that the Whitebeard remnants were too structurally compromised to launch an external operation, that precise deduction meant the enemy's defensive parameters would be completely unaligned. This was the optimal window to strike.
As pirates, wasn't embracing a high-risk variable like this the absolute definition of an adventure?
Flanking their coordinates were the vanguard officers anchoring the Drake Pirates: Bell, Locke, and Ann.
However, Kuzan's specific combat signature was entirely absent from the group's current grid.
"Accompany me to a specific set of coordinates first," Ace spoke from the vanguard, a warm, genuine smile processing across his face as he locked his sights onto a distant bearing.
The surrounding fighters offered zero objections. The operational blueprint for this entire deployment had been engineered to treat Ace as the primary command authority.
Marco's compliance required zero explanation; Ace had officially ascended to the position of Captain of the Whitebeard Pirates, so his directives carried absolute systemic weight.
Locke and the other Drake officers complied seamlessly because their own captain, Drake, had explicitly instructed them to provide maximum tactical leverage to reinforce the Whitebeard remnants.
Furthermore, throughout the timeline of their shared transit over the last few weeks, they had grown immensely fond of Ace's core personality. Evaluating him entirely outside his status as Drake's sworn brother, he had successfully established himself as an exceptionally close, trusted comrade.
The specific coordinates Ace was navigating toward mapped directly to the single most economically deprived zone within the Kuri sector—Amigasa Village!
Relying on the spatial data secured within his memory tracks, Ace rapidly finalized their navigational bearing, guiding the vanguard to the perimeter of Amigasa Village. But before a shred of relief could process in his mind, his physical frame went completely rigid.
Marco and the surrounding officers flagged his defensive reaction immediately. Looking past his shoulder toward the village perimeter, their expressions simultaneously morphed into absolute shock.
The visual data returned zero indicators of an active settlement. The coordinates had been systematically reduced to a desolate expanse of pulverized ruins and ash!
"Ace... maintain your internal composure... the assets you are tracking might have successfully executed an evasion maneuver to escape the sector before the purge," Marco offered gently, attempting to stabilize his captain's psychology.
He was well aware that Ace had bound himself to a high-priority vow within this territory; over the years, Ace had frequently recounted tales of his younger brother, but when he first shared the data that a localized asset was actively waiting for his return in this closed country, Marco had found the information remarkably surprising.
Ace actually dedicated his cognitive focus to someone outside his brotherhood?
Yet, even Marco lacked the specific details defining what exact vow Ace had forged, or who the asset truly was.
"We have a live signature in the sector!" Bell announced abruptly, his voice cutting through the tension.
The surrounding fighters instantly re-calibrated their senses to a combat-ready state, not a single soul harboring a shred of doubt regarding the validity of Bell's data.
Throughout their shared deployment, they had developed a profound, healthy terror of Bell's Observation Haki metrics. His predictive and scanning range had scaled to an entirely anomalous, near-impossible threshold. If someone suggested that the spatial parameters of the entire country of Wano were currently logged under his real-time diagnostic sweep, they wouldn't display a single sliver of surprise.
Most terrifying of all was that his predictive capability functioned less like standard tactical foresight and more like an absolute calculation of destiny. A variable destined to manifest days into the future was something his system could process with absolute precision today. His readouts were consistently flawless, yielding a zero percent failure rate.
Sure enough, within a limited timeframe, a physical silhouette materialized from the dense tree line ahead. The Drake officers snapped their gazes to Ace, waiting for his directive. How they handled the asset depended entirely on his choice.
"He's an ally," Ace noted immediately, his eyes recognizing the signature profile.
The incoming figure was none other than Tama's master, Tenguyama Hitetsu.
His features were obscured behind his signature crimson Tengu mask, and his feet were securely locked into a pair of exceptionally tall wooden sandals as he moved through the dense foliage at maximum velocity.
THUD!
But in the next microsecond, his physical momentum collapsed entirely, his frame slamming heavily onto the dirt as his vital signs dropped into total silence.
"What exact variable caused this?" Ace's brow furrowed dangerously.
"He has sustained critical, life-threatening structural trauma!" Bell shouted, his medical tracking logging the deficit.
"Compress coordinates on his position immediately!"
The group closed the distance within heartbeats, dropping beside Hitetsu's limp frame. A massive pool of crimson fluid was rapidly expanding across the soil beneath him; his baseline structural integrity was severely compromised.
"Hitetsu!" Ace barked, his internal composure fracturing rapidly.
This asset was Tama's direct guardian. If his systems had been degraded to this catastrophic threshold, what exact fate had befallen Tama? Could she have already been permanently deleted from the grid...?
"The structural damage is exceptionally severe. Utilizing the properties of my Phoenix Flames can initiate a baseline cellular restoration, but his system will remain entirely incapable of standard physical movement for a significant timeframe," Marco reported, executing a swift diagnostic sweep of the wounds.
His specialized flames possessed the capability to jump-start structural regeneration, but the asset had already sustained an extreme level of fluid loss, leaving his internal systems completely overloaded. His cognitive recovery required an extended period of low-power stabilization; predicting the precise millisecond his consciousness would re-awaken was statistically impossible.
"Permit me to re-calibrate the equation," Ann spoke up calmly, stepping to the vanguard of the group. Her fingers flickered with blinding speed as she retrieved three silver acupuncture needles, driving them with mathematical precision into his primary neural nodes.
"Marco, re-deploy your restorative flames against his system now!"