Dressrosa, New World
"Tch… They don't even recognize me anymore, do they?"
The voice was low, bitter, and dripping with venom. Charlotte Linlin's tall, slender frame cut an imposing figure against the bustle of Coral Port. Long before she was known as Big Mom, a monstrous emperor of the sea, she had been a striking beauty, her features sharp and regal, her stride carrying the weight of a goddess of war. But now, as she walked unrecognized among the masses, that pride burned like acid in her chest.
Her hand brushed against the pommel of her blade, her lips curling into a snarl.
"Just a few years… and they've already forgotten. They don't fear me anymore."
Rocks D. Xebec, who strode at her side, barked a cold laugh that drew no attention in the crowd. For all his presence, he carried himself like a ghost drifting through the world, a man who should not exist yet walked as though the seas themselves still bent beneath his will. His sharp gaze cut to Linlin, and he sneered without hesitation.
"I doubt anyone would believe you were once called a beauty of the seas," he said, his voice like a blade scraping against steel. "What the world remembers isn't you—it's that bloated monstrosity they called Big Mom. You grew fat, complacent, drunk on your own strength… and in the end, you fell."
"You…!" Linlin's teeth ground together, fury flashing in her eyes. The insult struck deeper than she cared to admit.
But then, as if to mask the wound, a wide grin split her face. Her towering frame loomed over the passing citizens, her shadow stretching across the cobblestones. "Maybe I should flatten this island," she whispered darkly, "remind them that Charlotte Linlin is still alive and well…"
The words dripped with murderous intent. Already, the air around her began to tighten, the aura of her Conqueror's Haki stirring instinctively. A ripple of unease passed through the crowd, though none could place its source.
But Rocks stopped. His steps ceased mid-stride, and his head turned slowly toward Linlin. His eyes—cold, unyielding, carrying the weight of storms—fixed upon her.
"Linlin."
The warning in his tone was sharper than any blade. It wasn't a suggestion. It was a command.
"We aren't here to cause trouble. And don't fool yourself—whether or not they recognize you, they already know we're here."
Linlin's nostrils flared, but she swallowed her rage. The truth in his words dug at her pride.
She sneered instead, her voice thick with scorn. "What's this, Rocks? Are you scared of these little upstarts? You, the great Rocks D. Xebec, shrinking from brats who weren't even born when you ruled the seas?"
Rocks threw his head back and laughed, a booming, guttural sound that made the stone walls of Coral Port seem to vibrate.
"Vohahahaha! Scared? No, Linlin. I admire them." He leaned closer, his grin sharp as a predator's. "And it was these same 'upstarts' that crushed your empire, wasn't it? Admit it—you lost. Don't let your pride blind you."
Linlin's fists trembled, but she said nothing. The streets buzzed with merchants and sailors, the normalcy of Dressrosa a sharp contrast to the storm of fury within her.
Rocks turned away, resuming his walk through the prime district of Coral Port, his gaze fixed forward as though he could already see his destination.
"As for these upstarts," he said, his voice lowering to a growl, "they have potential. More than the seas have seen in decades. Enough to unsettle even the World Government." His grin widened. "That's why I want to extend a hand. Not in conquest—at least not yet. In cooperation."
His steps rang louder against the stone, his voice carrying the certainty of inevitability.
"After all… we share the same enemy. And if the Donquixote brothers are as ambitious as the rumors say, they'll listen."
For the first time since her fall, Linlin felt her fury clash with something else—curiosity. Hatred still burned in her chest, hatred for the Donquixote brothers who had risen while her empire crumbled. But Rocks… Rocks was not a man who dealt in whims.
A few minutes later, the two legends of a bygone age—Rocks D. Xebec and Charlotte Linlin—stood before the most resplendent landmark in Coral Port. The air around them was thick with unease. Passersby unconsciously gave the pair a wide berth, as though some primal instinct told them these two were predators among prey.
Rocks' sharp eyes flickered briefly to the shadows across the street. Perched on a balcony, half-hidden within a flowerpot, a diminutive figure observed them—a member of the fabled Tontatta Tribe. Their tiny form was camouflaged well enough to deceive ordinary eyes, but not his. Not hers.
They had both known of the surveillance since the moment they stepped foot in the port. Neither spoke of it. Neither cared. For Rocks, the Tontatta were no different from countless tribes persecuted by the World Government for daring to stand in defiance. Brave, perhaps. Tragic, surely. But to him, they were pawns on the board, no more, no less.
Instead, his gaze drifted back to the towering facade before him, and a genuine grin split his face.
The establishment stood like a beacon amidst the Coral Port—gaudy, lavish, and defiant in its extravagance. It had been razed not long ago in one of Doflamingo's infamous tempests, but what rose in its place was even grander, dripping with pomp and color as though daring the world to look away. Crimson banners snapped in the sea breeze, gilded lanterns glimmered with promise, and a bold signboard hung proudly above the doors.
Shakky's Rip-Off Bar.
"Vohahahaha…" Rocks' laugh was low, almost reverent. "She's still the same, isn't she?"
For once, there was no mockery in his tone. Only memory. Linlin's eyes softened too, despite herself. The sight clawed at the embers of her past, dragging her back through decades, to smoke-filled taverns and rowdy nights in Fullalead. She remembered the haze of cheap rum, the clamor of tankards, the smell of salt and gunpowder, and the echoing laughter of monsters who would one day carve their names into history.
Back then, Shakuyaku—Shakky—had always been more than a barkeep. Leaning on her counter, a cigarette smoldering between her fingers, her eyes like polished steel, she was the pulse of Fullalead, or now Hachinosu.
She bore a beauty that so many pirates envied and coveted, not just for her looks, but for her presence—her strength, her charm, her influence. Many called her the "Irreplaceable Treasure" of Hachinosu. The one whose disappearance helped mark the very beginning of the end of an era.
"She's the reason the world's eyes turned toward God Valley back then," Linlin said, bitterness tangling with nostalgia in her voice. They stood there amidst the vibrant lights of Coral Port, shadows of their old selves stretched long behind them. Rocks's tall silhouette moved with purpose, his steps echoing memories of old battles and broken promises.
Linlin's voice dropped, soft but biting. "It's surprising she survived God Valley at all. Everyone thought the Celestial Dragons or the World Government—or someone from Figarland Garling's circle—would have taken care of her one way or another." And yet, here Shakky was. Alive. Waiting. Undone by none. Even after having been made the very grand prize in the Native Hunting Competition, when it was revealed that she was to be offered as the ultimate treasure.
Linlin's lips curved into something between a sneer and a wistful smile. "For someone who once tilted every scale in the seas—not just with beauty, but with influence and will—she seems to have… settled."
Rocks didn't reply immediately. His eyes, shaded by time and candlelight, weighed the gulf between what was and what had become. But he confirmed one thing with his silence: those memories still burned. Shakky had not just served drinks—she had shaped history. Her kidnapping, her being the prize at God Valley, her beauty and status—all of it had drawn the eyes of pirates and world nobles alike , including Rocks and Roger himself, atleast that was what the world believed.
The thought was strange, almost alien to Linlin. The woman who had danced amidst emperors and monsters now ran a bar. The very same bar, which was the very heart and soul of Rock's domain back then. But then again… Linlin wasn't surprised about Shakky sticking to her establishment even here.
For the briefest of moments, Linlin's hatred for the Donquixote brothers faded into the background. Rivalries, vendettas, and empires all blurred when confronted with the weight of a shared past. Shakky wasn't just another name in Linlin's tangled history. She had been part of the madness, part of the Rocks' chaotic family.
Linlin inhaled deeply, the salty air mixing with nostalgia. Her heart twisted with something she didn't want to name.
Rocks didn't allow her silence to linger. He placed a massive hand on the bar's gilded door, his grin widening like a shark's. "Enough reminiscing." His voice rolled like thunder, calm yet commanding. "Let's go."
With a push, the door swung open, spilling golden light and the faint hum of laughter into the busy street. Rocks stepped inside without hesitation, his shadow swallowing the threshold. Linlin followed, her massive figure ducking beneath the frame, her presence filling the space like a storm cloud on the horizon.
"Cling…"
The small brass bell hanging over the door tolled, its clear chime echoing through the quiet, half-renovated floor of Shakky's Rip-Off Bar. This floor wasn't for riffraff. It had never been. It was the sanctum reserved for the powerful and the feared, the place where Shakky herself still served drinks with her own hands.
Tonight, the atmosphere was different. Ladders leaned against unfinished walls, sawdust clung to polished tables, and a few workers bustled about, carefully restocking the newly built shelves behind the bar. Shakky stood with her usual poise, cigarette poised between her fingers, giving quiet directions.
Without even looking up, she spoke with that lazy, sultry tone she had perfected over the years:
"Sorry, this floor's closed for renovation. You can try the lower levels."
The door creaked wider. A shadow spilled across the wooden floorboards.
"Closed… even for old acquaintances?" The voice was deep, commanding, and carried a grin behind its words. "I always thought I would at least get special treatment."
The words struck like a thunderclap.
Shakky froze. For the first time in decades, a shiver crawled up her spine. She didn't turn. Not yet. She didn't need to. She knew that voice. The kind of voice you never forget, no matter how many ages pass. But it wasn't her reaction that turned the room heavy—it was his.
In the far corner, seated alone at a table with a half-empty bottle of sake, a man's hand twitched. His calloused fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of a blade half-drawn from its scabbard. His aura surged instinctively, like a wild beast ready to strike.
Silvers Rayleigh. The Dark King. The Right Hand of the Pirate King.
His eyes, sharp even behind the haze of alcohol, snapped toward the intruders. Cloaked figures, their silhouettes unmistakable—too familiar, yet impossibly distant. His instincts screamed, his battle-honed reflexes telling him what his mind refused to believe.
"This aura…" Rayleigh muttered under his breath, his voice low, dangerous. "It can't be…"
The first hood came down. Rocks D. Xebec.
The grin was the same as it had been decades ago, splitting his weathered face like a scar carved into history itself.
"Long time no see, Shakky," Rocks said, his tone mocking yet heavy with nostalgia.
The second hood slid back, revealing a face the world knew too well but had forgotten. Orange eyes glimmered beneath wild locks of wild pink hair. Though this wasn't the same woman the world remembered, whom age, indulgence, and fury had reshaped into the monstrous "Big Mom," in this current form Charlotte Linlin bore an elegant, regal beauty—the very echo of the woman who had once terrorized the seas as part of Rocks's crew.
The floor vibrated with tension.
Rayleigh stood now, blade fully drawn, his gaze flicking between the two impossibilities standing before him. His mind whispered of sake and hallucinations, but his instincts screamed reality. The very air seemed to ripple with their presence.
"You… that's not possible," he murmured, his voice tight. "Both of you must be dead..."
Finally, Shakky turned. Slowly, like a woman pulling back the curtain on a nightmare she had buried for decades. Smoke curled from the cigarette between her lips as her eyes met Rocks's grinning face. For the briefest instant, the poise she always wore faltered. Her lips parted. No witty remark, no casual welcome. Just silence.
The silence in Shakky's Rip-Off Bar was suffocating. Even after the last of the trembling workers stumbled out, leaving their tools abandoned on the floor, the tension only grew thicker—like the walls themselves strained under the weight of the figures inside.
Rocks stood at the center of it all, grinning like a storm given flesh, his sheer presence making the shelves tremble. Beside him, Linlin's massive frame loomed, her hand already coiled around the hilt of her cutlass. Across from them, Rayleigh stood with his blade gleaming, every muscle wound tight, every instinct screaming for battle. Shakky pressed a calming hand on his wrist, her voice carrying that cool finality only she possessed.
"We all know the old rules in my establishment," she said, her tone sharp enough to slice the tension. "There will be no fighting here." But Linlin's laughter cut through it—shrill, mocking, dangerous.
"Mamamama… Do you still believe that we are in Fullalead, Shakky? What if I insist on crossing blades with this one?!" She stepped forward, orange eyes gleaming with malice as steel whispered from her scabbard. "Roger may be rotting in his grave, but his dog still lives. All those years ago, you stole that Road Poneglyph from me, Rayleigh, you and that cowardly captain of yours. Today, I'll carve payment out of your hide!"
The room vibrated with her killing intent. Even Rayleigh's jaw tightened as he adjusted his stance, ready for the strike. Rocks did nothing to stop her. He simply leaned back, arms folded, grin widening—like a man enjoying a play.
And then it happened. A voice. Soft. Low. Cold enough to silence even Linlin's laughter.
"Then I'm afraid I'll have to cut you down once more, Linlin…"
It came from behind them. Every head snapped in that direction—but too late. A figure was already walking, unhurried, between Rocks and Linlin.
No crashing footsteps. No burst of haki. Just presence—like the air itself parted to make way for him. Even Rocks, whose Observation Haki had never once failed him, felt a jolt crawl up his spine. How had he not noticed until now?
The figure moved with the inevitability of a guillotine's fall. His long coat trailed softly across the floorboards, golden embroidery catching the lamplight. His eyes, half-lidded yet sharp as a hawk's, didn't even flick toward Rocks or Linlin. It was as though the so-called titans were nothing more than shadows on the wall.
"…and this time," he continued, voice carrying like a funeral bell, "I'll make sure you don't crawl back from the dead."
Donquixote Rosinante.
The name alone seemed to freeze the air in the room. Linlin's cutlass trembled with rage, her knuckles whitening. Rocks's grin faltered for the first time, just a flicker—but enough. His instincts, honed sharper than any blade, whispered the truth he hated to admit: he had underestimated this young man.
My stride never broke, never hurried. I walked directly past Rocks, directly past Linlin, brushing through the storm of their murderous intent as if wading through mist. Neither moved. Neither party dared to throw the first punch.
The aura that bled off me was overwhelming—not the wild chaos of Linlin, not the crushing tyranny of Rocks, but something colder. Inevitable. The air seemed to grow heavy, pressing down on everyone present.
By the time I reached Shakky's side, it felt as though the very room bowed around me. Rayleigh lowered his blade—not out of relief, but because even his warrior's pride recognized when the flow of battle had already been stolen. Shakky exhaled, the faintest smile tugging at her lips.
And for the first time in decades, Rocks D. Xebec felt something gnaw at the edge of his grin. Not fear. Not hesitation. But respect—the kind a predator gives another predator after recognizing the glint of fangs in the dark. The balance of the room had shifted and settled once more.
The bell above the door had long gone silent, but the air inside Shakky's Rip-Off Bar was heavy with something far more suffocating than smoke. The polished shelves gleamed, the fresh wood still carrying the scent of sawdust, but all of that seemed distant—overshadowed by the weight of titans under one roof.
Rocks leaned back and rose to his full height, his grin wolfish but tight at the edges. He looked me over with the kind of gaze a predator gives to another predator, sizing, testing, gauging. His voice rumbled low, carrying both mockery and threat.
"So you're the brat who bested Linlin… tch. You don't look like much."
His words carried the easy arrogance of a man who had once shaken the world itself, but beneath it—buried under layers of bravado—was something else. Wariness. His Observation Haki pricked at him like needles. The fruit within him pulsed, restless, as if it recognized something ancient and hostile in my presence.
I didn't even look up from the cabinet I had begun to rummage through. My movements were unhurried, deliberate, almost insulting in their casualness. Bottles clinked softly as I shifted them aside, searching for the oldest vintage.
"I can say the same about you," I answered, my tone calm, unbothered. "For a man who supposedly shook the foundations of the World Government, you don't look like much either."
A silence followed, sharp as drawn steel.
Then Rocks barked a laugh, booming and thunderous. "Vohahahaha… you sure do have balls, kid. I'll give you that."
But when his gaze slid to Linlin, his grin hardened into command. She still had her cutlass drawn, her massive frame trembling with rage as her eyes stayed locked on me. Her blade thirsted, hungered for the strike.
"Linlin," Rocks said, his voice like rolling thunder, "sheathe your blade. Don't make me repeat myself."
Her nostrils flared, teeth grinding as she growled low, but even she obeyed. The cutlass slid reluctantly back into its sheath with a hiss of steel. She hated me too much, but she hated Rocks's orders more.
Rocks had already swept the island with his Haki. He knew the truth: the bar was surrounded, the port town evacuated. Outside, he'd felt two presences of decent strength, strong enough perhaps to hold Linlin at bay if things went south. But none of them mattered. Not the guards, not the island, not even Rayleigh—blade half-raised, body taut with tension.
Only me.
I finally withdrew a dark glass bottle from the cabinet, its label worn by age. A vintage older than some nations. I set it gently on the counter, the cork popping with a soft crack that cut through the suffocating silence like a gunshot.
"Shakky-san," I said, not bothering to look at her as I reached for the crystal glasses. "Put it on my tab."
Five glasses lined the counter with perfect precision. I poured the liquor in a slow, steady stream, amber liquid catching the light like molten gold. Then, without a glance, I gestured to Rayleigh with a flick of my fingers. A silent command. Stand down. Not yet.
He hesitated, every nerve in his body still coiled for violence, but he obeyed.
I leaned against the counter, swirling the drink in my glass with one hand while the other laid two blades gently across the polished wood. Akatsuki and Shusui. The effect was immediate.
Linlin's jaw clenched as her gaze locked onto Akatsuki—the cursed blade that had once carved her life away. The sound she made was almost a growl, primal, guttural. Rocks's reaction was subtler but far more telling. His eyes narrowed, and for the briefest heartbeat, his grin faltered. The blades seemed to hum, faintly vibrating, as if they themselves had recognized him.
Shakky, regaining her poise at last, slid into a seat beside Rayleigh, her cigarette smoke curling upward, though her fingers tapped softly against the glass in front of her. She was calm, but I could feel her pulse racing in the room's silence.
On the other side of the counter, Rocks finally lowered himself into a chair, Linlin lumbering beside him, her presence like a storm cloud barely restrained. The bar became a battlefield without blades drawn—just two titans staring across polished wood, crystal, and smoke.
I raised my glass, eyes boring into Rocks with unflinching calm.
"So tell me," I said, my voice cutting through the silence like a blade's edge, "what brings a dead man into my domain?"
Rocks met my gaze, unblinking, his grin widening again—but this time there was no mockery in it. No playfulness. Only recognition. The room felt like it might split in half from the weight of it.