New World, somewhere at sea.
At dusk, a few lingering clouds still hung in the sky, and the air was thick with stifling heat. A flock of seagulls soared overhead.
The Moby Dick, with its white whale figurehead, sailed across the rolling azure sea. Not far beside it lay the wreckage of a sunken two-masted sailboat.
On the deck of the Moby Dick stood a small mountain piled from all kinds of gold, jewels, and jewelry—the spoils looted by the Whitebeard Pirates.
A group of Whitebeard Pirates members looked at the mountain of treasure before them and chatted excitedly:
"Wow! Those rookie pirates really had a lot of treasure!"
"Looks like there are plenty of good things in there!"
"What a shame! It's the Fourth Division's turn on duty today. Thatch and his men boarded first to fight, so they get priority when picking the loot."
Someone in the crowd suddenly pointed at a man wearing a chef's uniform, with a scar over his right eye and a brown pompadour, and shouted:
"Wow! Thatch, that thing in your hand is a Devil Fruit, right?"
Hearing this, everyone turned to look. Then they saw Thatch, captain of the Fourth Division, holding a Devil Fruit with purple skin covered in spiral patterns.
Thatch examined the fruit in his hand and laughed.
"Ha ha ha! Judging by how it looks, it should be a Devil Fruit!
"But I have no idea what ability this Devil Fruit has...
"I'll look into its information first. If it's an especially powerful Devil Fruit, I'll eat it myself and improve my strength.
"If it has some useless ability, I'll put it up for auction..."
The nearby Whitebeard Pirates members were filled with envy, but no one spoke up to ask Thatch for the Devil Fruit.
The Whitebeard