The fog hung thick and motionless over the border reefs, smelling of salt, wet hemp, and cold iron.
Slowly, the Adam-wood hull of the boat glided through the white haze, its heavy dragon prow sliding alongside the towering, white-painted flank of the Moby Dick. The giant longship was massive by normal standards, built by Elbaf's shipwrights to weather the worst currents of the Grand Line, but beneath the immense shadow of the Whitebeard flagship, its tall rigging looked small and frail. The massive iron chains holding the Moby Dick's anchors clanked against its timber hull, echoing like muffled thunder through the mist.
Before the mooring lines were even thrown across the gap, a bright flash of blue and yellow flames burst from the high quarterdeck above. Marco glided down through the cold air in half-phoenix form, his sweeping talons tapping onto the longship's deck boards as his wings dissolved into a shower of pale, heatless embers.
His boots landed without a sound. His eyes locked onto Toki and Hiyori standing near the foot of the mainmast. The lazy, half-lidded expression that usually defined the First Division Commander vanished instantly, replaced by a quiet, unvarnished shock that softened into relief.
"Toki-san..." Marco breathed, stepping forward. "Hiyori... You're really here."
"Marco," Toki said softly, a gentle, tired smile touching her lips. "Im glad you okay."
Marco stood up slowly, his hands hovering in the air for a fraction of a second as if afraid they were spirits that might dissolve back into the ocean mist. But as his gaze shifted past Toki to Giovanni who stood leaning back against the spokes of the helm, his right sleeve pinned up and wrapped in bandages, the relief twisted into sharp anger.
Marco marched across the deck boards and grabbed Giovanni's left wrist, his fingers probing the pulse point while blue flames flickered around his palm.
"Are you completely out of your mind, Gio?" Marco barked, his voice laced with venom as his medical instincts registered the damage inside Giovanni's frame. "You've got a torn shoulder muscle, bone exhaustion, and a reopened cut across your chest"
"It's fine Marco, and why are you angry?" Giovanni muttered, trying to pull his arm back from Marco's grip.
"Shut up," Marco snapped, forcing a warm, concentrated flame onto Giovanni's torn shoulder to numb the throbbing tear. "You look like you're one heavy wave away from falling through the floorboards. Sit down."
"No," Giovanni said flatly, his golden eyes locked onto Marco's. He didn't budge an inch, his heavy boots anchored to the oak deck. "I won't lie down until Toki and Hiyori are under your flag. Fix me after the Whitebeard accepts them."
Marco glared at him, his jaw grinding as he felt the unyielding tension in the Giovanni's body, before letting out a harsh, exasperated breath into the sea chill. "You're just as stubborn asbefore. Fine. But if you pass out, I'm throwing you straight into a medical vat."
A massive, iron-bound wooden gangplank thundered down from the upper rail of the Moby Dick, bridging the gap between the two vessels.
As Giovanni, Toki, and Hiyori stepped up onto the main deck of the flagship, the sheer scale of the Whitebeard Pirates pressed in around them. Hundreds of men. Division commanders, scarred veterans of a hundred naval battles, and rough deckhands filled the vast wooden expanse from rail to rail.
Hiyori shrank back instinctively, her small hands clutching tight to the silk of Toki's kimono as the massive crew crowded against the bulwarks. But as she looked closer through the sea mist, her brown eyes widened. She saw Jozu's towering, diamond-studded shoulder; Vista's curling mustache and polite, solemn tilt of his top hat; and the familiar, battle-worn faces of the division leaders who had bled beside her father.
The rowdy crew began to quiet down as they noticed the little girl. Men who could snap a ship's mast with their bare hands tucked away their iron daggers, lowered their loud voices to hushed murmurs, and stepped aside to clear a wide, uninterrupted path around Oden's child.
From the middle of the crowd, a tall figure dressed in a high-collared, pale kimono stumbled forward.
Izo stopped ten feet away, his flintlock pistols trembling in their leather holsters, his white-painted face pale as bone. He looked at Toki, then down at Hiyori, his lips trembling. Without a word, he dropped hard onto both knees, his forehead slamming directly against the oak deck boards. Tears washed dark, uneven tracks through the rice-powder makeup on his cheeks.
"Toki-sama..." Izo choked out, his shoulders shaking violently as he wept into the wood. "Hiyori..."
Hiyori watched him from behind her mother's kimono, her fingers tightening in the silk. She had seen warriors fight in the mud of Wano, but she had never seen a grown man, painted and armed with brass-bound pistols, collapse onto his hands and sob like a lost child.
"I wasn't there!" Izo wept, his voice cracking across the silent deck. "I was sailing on these waters... drinking, fighting, living under a pirates's banner... while Oden-sama was executed! While Kuri burned! I left my master to die alone!"
The heavy silence of the crew settled over the ship. Toki walked forward and knelt down in front of him on the hard deck. She didn't tell him it was alright, nor did she tell him to stop crying. She simply placed her small, warm hand over his trembling, silk-wrapped wrist.
"Oden chose his path, Izo," Toki said, her voice steady and clear. "He wanted you to see the world. He wanted you to live beyond Wano's walls. Do not insult his choice by pretending you could have chained him."
Izo pressed his face harder into the oak deck, weeping for the lord he had lost, while Toki remained beside him, holding his hand until the shaking stopped.
Marco walked up beside Giovanni, watching the quiet reunion before turning his head toward the massive, raised dais at the stern of the flagship.
"This is a big family, Gio," Marco said quietly, his voice carrying a deep pride as he gestured to the hundreds of men surrounding them. "We take in strays, orphans, and devils from every corner of the sea. But there's only one man on this ocean who gets to decide who stays."
The crowd of pirates parted entirely, forming an open avenue leading straight to a massive wooden captain's chair draped in thick white fur.
Seated upon the throne was a titan of a man, his bare, scarred chest rising and falling with deep, steady breaths. His iconic, crescent-shaped white mustache gleamed beneath the grey sky, and his giant bisento rested against his right shoulder.
Edward Newgate lowered his golden eyes, looking past Marco, past Giovanni, until his gaze rested upon the small form of Hiyori and the quiet face of Toki.
Whitebeard shifted his heavy frame, the wooden throne groaning beneath his immense weight. His deep voice rumbled out across the deck like distant rolling thunder.
"What happened to my foolish little brother?"
---
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