“This is normal on the seas of the New World, apparently,” muttered Deuce. “The strongest rule, the ruled survive, and the weak who resist lose everything and have to flee.”
“Sounds neat.”
“To go back to what we were talking about earlier, are you serious about going to meet the Four Emperors, Ace?”
“Have I ever joked about something like that?”
“It…it’s too soon! I mean, speaking of Red-Haired Shanks…”
Red-Haired Shanks’s name was practically synonymous with the Great Age of Piracy. People spoke of his days of duels with Hawk-Eyes Mihawk, the greatest swordsman in the world. Even though he was missing an arm, he was considered one of the Four Emperors, alongside Edward “Whitebeard” Newgate, Charlotte “Big Mom” Linlin, and “King of the Beasts” Kaido.
“The government sources say the following about him…”
If you make Red-Hair angry, he’s frightening.
On that note, if you broke the laws of proper courtesy, Whitebeard was frightening. If you fouled Big Mom’s mood, she was frightening. Kaido’s existence all on its own was frightening. But there was no saying who exactly was vouching for all of this information.
“I’ve heard rumors that Red-Hair was actually on the Pirate King’s crew…”
At the time, Whitebeard and Big Mom were already powerful pirates, with Red-Hair and Kaido in the generation coming up after them. Shanks was a sailor on Gold Roger’s ship, the Oro Jackson, where he served under the King of the Pirates directly.
“There’s a story,” said Ace, “going back to just before Red-Hair lost his arm in the East Blue…”
A younger Shanks spent some time based near a little village in that distant sea. One day, there was some trouble at the bar with a mountain bandit. The bandit leader mocked him, saying pirates were scum, and dumped his bottle over Red-Hair’s head.
“What do you suppose he did, Deuce?”
“I’d bet that bandit is no longer alive.”
“You’d be wrong. Red-Hair just laughed it off, and apologized for the trouble.”
“Are you serious?”
But that wasn’t the end of the trouble. A boy from the village whom Shanks had befriended got kidnapped by the bandits. The kid wanted to be a pirate more than anything, and seeing pirates look weak made him furious, so he went to pick a fight with the bandits.
When they heard that the bandits had kidnapped the kid and hurt him, Red-Hair and his crew went and crushed the bandits. He said to them, You can pour drinks on me, throw food at me, even spit on me, and I’ll just laugh that stuff off. But whether there’s good reason or not, nobody hurts a friend of mine.
“Where’d you get this story, Boss? Even I have never heard this one.”
“Have you…met Red-Hair before, Ace?”
Deuce was from the East Blue, and that was where he’d met Ace.
But that wasn’t all. Ace’s father was none other than the King of the Pirates, Gold Roger—but Deuce was about the only person on the crew who knew that. If Red-Hair was indeed a member of that legendary crew, then Ace would represent a link to Shanks’s old captain, in fact.
“Nope,” said Ace, shaking his head. “I’ve never met him, but I want to. I’m not interested in the Pirate King. This guy grew up in the Great Age of Piracy with a front-row seat to history, and clawed his way up to becoming one of the Four Emperors. I wanna know what drove Red-Hair to do this.”
Maybe he could figure something out. Something that would put the Spade Pirates’ flag over Fish-Man Island, that place where all pirates and sailors passed through.
“I know you don’t just say these things without thinking, but we’re talking about an Emperor of the Sea. It’s almost impossible to meet these people face-to-face.”
Everything was different with the pirates of the New World.
First off, the scale was different. In Whitebeard’s case, Edward Newgate was a father figure to over ten commanders who served directly under him, along with their crew members. That alone was a huge force of over a thousand combatants, but in addition to that were dozens of affiliated pirate crews with a total manpower in the tens of thousands, and vast territorial holdings. The pirating business they maintained in that territory maintained the monumental pirate fleet.
From legitimate avenues like trade, port workers, and vendors of food and drink, to casinos, gambling, and show business, security of all kinds, weapons smuggling, even mercenary dispatches to distant wars—every kind of economic activity within the Emperor’s waters was closely related to the funds of the pirate in charge. Just the protection racket of having an Emperor’s flag over your territory could cost in the hundreds of millions, if not more.
The first thing any new pirate did when they got to this stretch of sea was to pay their respects to one of the Four Emperors. After this one could join their operation and be safe—usually.
“Ace, we’re not flying any of the Four Emperors’ flags right now. Whatever your intentions are here, once they come after us, there’s nothing we can do to survive.”
“Did you figure out where Red-Hair is, Skull?”
“Ace, are you listening to me?”
“Oh, I know where Red-Haired Shanks is,” piped up the enemy pirate captain.
“Eh?”
“Red-Hair’s harder to pin down than the other Emperors. Lately there have been rumors that he’s based out of a certain island…”
The captain then dropped the name of the place.
“You’d better not be playing games with us.”
“Hang on, Master Deu. That winter island was among the names in my intel,” claimed Skull.
“Go on, then. Go there and get yourselves killed! Red-Hair’s not the kind of man who cares much about others. He’s kind to his friends and merciless to strangers. He’s not going to give a lick of attention to a snot-nosed punk of a rookie with no manners like you! Aha ha ha ha!”
The defeated captain’s words hung in the air like a menacing curse.