The name "Charlotte Pudding" echoed across the silent arena.
It was a choice so baffling, so utterly devoid of strategic sense, that it short-circuited the minds of everyone present. The Burning Crown Pirates stared at their captain in stunned disbelief. Marco's jaw was, quite literally, hanging open. They had won a golden opportunity to cripple an Emperor's fighting force, and Ace had just traded it for... a chocolatier.
Big Mom herself was frozen for a moment, her purple-faced rage momentarily replaced by sheer, unadulterated confusion. Then, the confusion curdled back into fury, mixed with a hefty dose of contemptuous glee.
"Pudding?!" she bellowed, her voice a storm of mocking laughter. "MAAAMA-MAMAMA! You pass over my Sweet Commanders, my strongest children, for my sweet little Pudding?! You are a bigger fool than your father ever was, Gol D. Ace!"
She saw it as a sign of weakness, a pathetic, sentimental choice. But the rules of the Davy Back Fight, especially under the watchful, honor-bound eyes of the giants, were absolute. With a wave of her massive hand, she barked, "Pudding! Get over there! You belong to the flaming idiot now!"
From behind the ranks of the Big Mom pirates, a small, trembling figure was pushed forward. Charlotte Pudding looked like a frightened deer, her third eye hidden beneath her bangs, her hands clasped nervously in front of her. The idea of being handed over to the crew of the "Son of the Devil" was a waking nightmare. She took a hesitant step, then another, her journey across the no-man's-land between the two crews feeling like a walk to the gallows.
Ace watched her approach, his face an unreadable mask. His crew was in an uproar of whispered confusion, but he ignored them. His gaze flickered past the terrified girl, past the fuming Yonko, and landed once again on the ghost who had just walked back into his life.
Sabo.
The moment Pudding was officially on their side of the field, the fragile truce of the game shattered. The world, which had been holding its breath, finally exhaled. The Big Mom pirates began to jeer. The Burning Crown pirates were still trying to process their captain's insane decision.
And in the center of it all, two brothers, separated by a decade of death and lies, finally moved.
They met in the middle of the field, the space between them crackling with a tension that had nothing to do with Haki and everything to do with a shared, broken childhood. They didn't speak. They just stared, two decades of unspoken words, of grief, of guilt, passing between them in a single, heavy silence.
It was Ace who moved first. He reached out, his hand trembling slightly, and roughly grabbed the collar of Sabo's coat.
"You idiot," he said, his voice a low, choked growl. "I thought you were dead."
"I thought I was too," Sabo whispered, and then the dam broke. Tears streamed down his face, tears of a grief he had carried unconsciously for ten years. "Ace… I'm so sorry! I wasn't there! At Marineford… I… I couldn't remember until it was too late!"
The story came pouring out of him in a torrent of guilt and pain. The Celestial Dragon's cannon. Being saved by Dragon. The amnesia that had stolen his past, leaving him a blank slate.
"And then… the news," he choked out, his hand instinctively going to his chest, as if feeling a phantom wound. "Your picture… in the paper after the war. It was like a key. Everything came back. You. Luffy. The sake cups. Our dream. And it came back just in time for me to read that you were… gone."
He was sobbing now, the composed Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army gone, replaced by a boy who had just remembered losing his entire world. "I failed you, Ace. I failed both of you."
Ace didn't let go of his collar. He just pulled him closer, and for the first time in ten years, he hugged his brother. It wasn't a gentle embrace. It was a rough, desperate, angry hug, a collision of two souls who had thought the other was lost forever.
"You're here now," Ace said, his own voice thick with an emotion he refused to name. "That's all that matters."
From a distance, Nico Robin watched the reunion, her usual calm smile on her face. She looked at the two brothers, then her gaze drifted to the terrified, three-eyed girl who was now a prisoner of the Burning Crown Pirates.
The Memo Memo no Mi, she thought, her mind connecting the dots with a terrifying clarity. The power to edit memories. He didn't choose a Powerfull crewmate. He chose an valuable one. But still I think he chose her for something else!. She looked back at the brothers, at the painful, complicated history now laid bare. He's not playing their game at all. He's trying to rewrite the rules.
The emotional reunion was shattered by a roar of pure rage.
"THIS IS ALL VERY TOUCHING!" Big Mom bellowed, her patience completely gone. She had been publicly humiliated, and now she was being ignored. "BUT THE GAME IS NOT OVER!"
She stomped forward, her eyes burning with a furious, hungry light. "I have been shamed! And I demand satisfaction! The second round will not be a child's game! It will be a trial of strength! A one-on-one combat!"
She pointed a massive, sausage-like finger directly at Ace, her grin a mask of pure, predatory malice.
"I will choose my champion! And you, Son of Roger, will choose yours! We will fight to the death, in the sacred ring of Elbaf! And this time… I will not lose!"
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