Aboard BIG MOM's flagship, the Queen Mama Chanter, the mastermind who had orchestrated this entire plot gripped his long blade tightly.
In this alliance, BIG MOM had agreed to collaborate with him not only because he shared the exact face and appearance of Uchiha Madara, but also due to the active backing of Patrick Redfield.
Redfield's bitter grudges against the Sunagakure Pirates drove his intense hatred toward Shiraishi and his crew. After the Battle of Loguetown, the "Lone Red" had realized that as a lone wolf, he could no longer pose a real threat to the exponentially growing Sunagakure Pirates on his own.
Unlike the pirate era of Gol D. Roger, the true sovereigns of the Grand Line today possessed sprawling territories and massive standing armies.
Realizing he was falling behind the trends of the new era, Redfield had no choice but to join forces with BIG MOM.
The Den Den Mushi call was still active. BIG MOM laughed maniacally, her cackling slowly grating on Shiraishi's patience. Yet Shiraishi understood perfectly that this was merely a calculated attempt to provoke and unbalance him.
Her unbridled laughter showcased Charlotte Linlin's supreme confidence. Years ago, after acquiring the Soul-Soul Fruit (Soru Soru no Mi), her mastery over its abilities had grown increasingly refined. Combined with her naturally terrifying physique and combat prowess, the Big Mom Pirates had expanded their domain relentlessly.
Many of the territories Shiraishi controlled in the New World directly choked off the Big Mom Pirates' outward expansion. That friction was the true catalyst behind the marriage proposal and the subsequent massacre on Gaburo Island.
At its core, the territorial ambitions of Shiraishi and BIG MOM were fundamentally incompatible. Now that both sides had dropped all diplomatic pretense, any buffer zone ceased to exist. Shiraishi's outright threat to tear off Charlotte Linlin's head had sealed the deal.
Reflecting on his knowledge of the Soul-Soul Fruit, Shiraishi recalled its key characteristics. The primary mechanic was fear: by interrogating victims about their willingness to yield life or status, any trace of fear in the victim's heart would allow her to instantly tear their soul from their body.
Against this specific mechanic, Shiraishi and the core members of his crew were entirely immune to BIG MOM's soul-extraction tricks.
Her abilities to create Homies through soul manifestation and soul manipulation granted Charlotte Linlin immense versatility. Yet at her core, her deadliest assets remained her innate Conqueror's Haki and overwhelming physical power.
At five years old, Linlin's monstrous physical size and destructive rampages led to her exile to Elbaf, the homeland of the Giants. She was rescued by Mother Carmel and brought to the Sheep's House—an asylum for displaced children of various races.
Even as a child, Linlin possessed terrifying strength: she killed a giant bear with a single punch, critically injured a Giant child, and nearly maimed kids from the Longarm and Fish-man tribes. Yet the community embraced her nonetheless.
During the twelve-day fast of the Winter Solstice Festival, her Craving Illness flared up, driving her to lay waste to the Giants' homeland. When a Giant elder deemed her an evil deity and attempted to execute her, she slaughtered him instead.
On her sixth birthday, she ate with such ravenous, ecstatic abandonment that upon waking up, Mother Carmel and all the children had vanished completely.
Having mysteriously acquired the Soul-Soul Fruit's powers, she teamed up with Streusen to form a pirate crew in hopes of building the ideal kingdom Mother Carmel envisioned. Her initial bounty was set at 50,000,000 Beli, surging past 500,000,000 Beli just a few years later.
BIG MOM was a natural-born monster, but her fatal flaw was her recurring Craving Illness. Whenever it triggered, she descended into a mindless, psychotic frenzy, thrashing about and obliterating everything in sight.
In the grip of her illness, she recognized neither kin nor friend—slaying her own children without hesitation and completely deaf to reason. During an episode, her tactical intelligence dropped to zero; she made no attempt to dodge or defend, lashing out blindly in all directions. Nothing could restore her sanity short of feeding her the exact delicacy she craved.
While this served as her single greatest vulnerability, in her normal state, she was an absolute force of nature that no one could afford to underestimate.
Shiraishi held the Den Den Mushi tight. As the man who had brought an end to the era of the Five Great Shinobi Villages in his past life, Shiraishi was a ruthless, ambitious ruler at heart. The fact that he exercised restraint and operated with a lower profile in this pirate world did not mean he would tolerate direct insolence.
Times had changed, and the Sunagakure Pirates were now an undisputed titan rising across the Grand Line.
Faced with BIG MOM's direct provocation, Shiraishi let out a series of cold sneers: "Enough pointless talk. Prepare for war."
"Mamama! I'll be looking forward to it!"
The line went dead. Charlotte Linlin wore a cruel, predatory smile: "According to our intelligence, Shiraishi has already descended to the Blue Sea. Weatheria Base No. 3 is currently completely defenseless!"
"Yes, Mama..."
Evidently, the Big Mom Pirates had never truly lingered on Gaburo Island. Instead, they had been lurking in the surrounding waters of Weatheria Base No. 3, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike the floating sky island!
A colossal warship made its approach toward the docks of Weatheria Base No. 3. Aboard the Queen Mama Chanter, the majority of the elite Charlotte family children were assembled. Though not yet at the absolute zenith of power the crew would achieve decades later, they already represented a formidable army.
At the port of Weatheria Base No. 3, heavy artillery fire erupted without warning. Several stationed engineers attempted to initiate the altitude-elevation system to lift the artificial island out of reach, but the Big Mom Pirates locked onto them with relentless pressure.
BOOM!
Explosions tore through the Weatheria docks. BIG MOM leaped into the air, gripping her broadsword. Blessed with an unnaturally dense, ironclad physique, her defensive toughness was absolute—the defensive weaponry fired by the Weatheria garrison couldn't leave a single scratch on her skin.
When she was merely five years old, a Giant's blade had shattered against her flesh, and even a hail of heavy gunfire failed to mark her skin. She was, quite literally, an invincible "Iron Balloon" endowed with god-given physical power.
With a bloodcurdling roar, BIG MOM released a terrifying, high-pitched screech that tore through the air. The sound was loud enough to rupture eardrums and disrupt motor functions, dealing tangible physical shockwave damage to everything in its path.
Under this torrential assault, the garrison at Base No. 3 was forced into a desperate retreat. BIG MOM leaped high into the air, driving a massive, mountain-crushing fist downward. Right at that moment, a pristine figure materialized at the edge of the harbor.
Dressed in her traditional silver-and-white shrine maiden robes, Kikyo exuded a sacred, unshakeable aura. The spiritual energy gathered in her palm merged seamlessly with her longbow, transforming into a razor-sharp beam of starlight.
Sacred Arrow!(Homa no Ya)
The instant her arrow collided with BIG MOM's monstrous physical strength, the entire artificial island of Weatheria Base No. 3 shuddered as if facing doomsday. Amid the violent shockwaves, Kikyo glided backward several paces with fluid grace, effortlessly dissipating the crushing kinetic impact of BIG MOM's strike.
Kikyo's composed, effortless retreat triggered a surge of deep vigilance within BIG MOM. No one knew the sheer, terrifying scale of her innate strength better than herself.
She had punched a wild bear to death at five years old, and when she tried to swat a mosquito off a Giant warrior, she had accidentally shattered several of his ribs.
Yet against a strike carrying such monstrous force, this priestess had merely glided back a few steps?
"Mama! Leave this woman to me!"
A tall man wearing a helmet adorned with a vertical mane stepped forward. The helmet featured biscuit-shaped horn bases on both sides, and he wore black-and-white armor designed like crisp biscuits, stamped with the letters BIS across his belt.
Carrying a massive sword, a flowing cape, and a giant biscuit shield on his back, he resembled an armored general.
The moment he lunged forward with his broadsword, Kikyo's expression remained utterly serene.
A powerful spiritual barrier burst from her form, instantly shattering the external biscuit armor disguise, dissolving the Biscuit Soldier shell, and exposing the true warrior hiding within.
Forced out of his armor in a single exchange, Cracker let out a frustrated snort: "Tch..."
The true Cracker was a man with purple hair styled into three spiked tufts—the side two sparking like lit fuses. A prominent scar cut across his right eye, and he wore brown gloves.
His upper body featured only a single piece of shoulder armor over his right side accompanied by a pink cape, paired with wide jodhpurs, brown boots, and a saber strapped to his waist.
He was the tenth son of BIG MOM: Charlotte Cracker!
Though only in his early twenties in this era, he was already recognized as one of the premier combatants within the Big Mom Pirates.
"Cracker, be careful... This priestess is extremely troublesome."
While Kikyo and Cracker faced off, hidden in the shadows, Patrick Redfield—the Lone Red—condensed a dense drop of blood onto his fingertip. Acting as an invisible sniper, his predatory focus locked firmly onto Kikyo's heart.
A true crisis had arrived. Although Kikyo had reinforced Weatheria Base No. 3 in time, the sheer numerical advantage of the Big Mom Pirates—combined with Redfield's lethal sniper lock from the shadows—plunged her into a perilous, high-stakes battle.
Aboard the flagship, the mysterious youth bearing the exact face of Uchiha Madara watched the scene unfold, his half-covered eye flashing with a crimson, Sharingan-like Observation Haki glow.
The Sunagakure Pirates only have five core members. As long as we target and eliminate them one by one, we can severely dismantle their strength... and ultimately wipe them out completely.