Whole Cake Island, the absolute heart of Totto Land, the Totto Land Kingdom, was home to the Palace of Charlotte Linlin, one of the Four Emperors, known as "Big Mom."
At that moment, the entire island was immersed in a lively, sweet atmosphere of celebration.
To welcome the grand tea party, the square before the castle had already been decorated like a fairy-tale wonderland.
All manner of food-made decorations dazzled the eye, while cheerful music rang through the skies.
Representatives from the various specialty islands, along with some invited "honored guests," were enjoying this feast of desserts.
Unlike the future tea party for Sanji and Pudding's wedding, with its hidden undercurrents and overt political overtones,
when there was no particular marriage arrangement involved, Big Mom's tea parties were more like an enormous game of "playing house," where she reveled in her own authority and basked in flattery.
Though fear of Big Mom's hunger pangs still lurked beneath the surface, the overall atmosphere was fairly relaxed.
But compared to the merriment before the castle, the harbor was heavy with tension.
In charge of coordinating operations here and receiving specialty sweets shipped from the other islands was the Charlotte Family's twelfth son, Transport Minister Charlotte Nousterdi,
along with the thirteenth son, Charlotte Basscardi.
The two officers stood frozen at the edge of the pier, cold sweat pouring down their foreheads as they stared fixedly at the figure slowly approaching them.
Around them, dozens of elite soldiers and Homies who had been guarding the harbor and handling cargo now lay silently sprawled across the ground.
There had been no screams, no sounds of fierce combat. It was as though an invisible force had instantly stripped them of consciousness.
They lay collapsed in neat rows, clearly felled silently and simultaneously by extraordinarily powerful Haki!