Marineford.
The masts of the warships in the harbor stood as densely as a winter forest of bare trees. Their hulls rose and fell silently with the swells, the seagull emblems on their bows dulled beneath the overcast sky.
The orders had gone out the moment Ace was captured.
A full withdrawal across the New World. Every warship, outpost, and patrol fleet stationed along the edges of the Four Emperors' territorial waters was to retreat within the defensive perimeter of the G-series bases within twenty-four hours.
No one explained why.
But every base commander who received the orders understood-the Navy was drawing back its outstretched fist, clenching it, and waiting.
Waiting for the four most terrifying names on that sea to decide whether, for the sake of one young man, they would plant the flag they had spent nearly three years preparing in the ruins of Marineford.
If the other three chose not to save him, Whitebeard would certainly die.
The man who had stood at the pinnacle of the seas for decades would have his heart pierced by the Navy before the eyes of the entire world.
And that loose alliance, those three years of arguments and compromises, every law settled on Hachinosu, the flag design revised over and over-all of it would vanish the moment he fell.
The Four Emperors' so-called nation-building would become the greatest joke on the seas: the declaration was printed, the laws copied out, the flag sewn. Yet when an ally was in trouble, the others stood by and watched.
But if they chose to come to his rescue-an alliance that actively attacked the World Government would have declared its nature to the whole world, even if it had not formally established its nation.
The World Government could comfortably refuse to recognize that nation,