Smoothie stood over the man she had just cut down, her face an unreadable mask.
She turned her cold, amethyst gaze to Brûlée, who was cowering near the portal, her face pale with terror.
"Open a path back to the ship," Smoothie commanded, her voice flat and devoid of its usual warmth. It was the voice of a Sweet Commander issuing an order.
"B-but sister, Lord Katakuri is…!" Brûlée stammered, gesturing to her unconscious brother.
Smoothie took a menacing step forward, the blood on her clothes a stark, horrifying crimson. "Do you want to join him?"
Brûlée, shaking like a leaf, immediately held up her mirror. Its surface rippled, showing the dark, rocky cove where the tribute ship was hidden. With another gesture, Smoothie ordered the terrified nurses to pick up the unconscious forms of Ace and Isshin. Then, she walked over to Katakuri, her expression unreadable. She knelt, checking his pulse. He was alive, but barely.
"He will be retrieved," she stated. Then, she herded the group—Pudding, the nurses carrying the two commanders, and Brûlée holding the portal—toward the exit.
---
The peanut-shell ship rocked gently in the hidden cove. Namur, the fish-man karate master, waited patiently, his head just above the water's surface, his senses on high alert. He was coiled, ready for anything.
The air shimmered near the ship's deck, and a mirror-like portal opened. He watched, his eyes widening, as two nurses struggled out, dragging the limp, battered bodies of Ace and Isshin and tossing them onto the deck like sacks of grain.
Namur's heart clenched. He vaulted from the water, landing silently on the deck, his fins flaring with alarm. "Ace! Isshin! What happened? Where's Gunnar?"
Before anyone could answer, a third body was unceremoniously thrown through the portal, landing with a sickening, wet thud. It was Gunnar. A massive greatsword was still grotesquely embedded in his torso, his clothes and the deck around him saturated with a truly horrific amount of blood. He was terrifyingly still.
And then, she emerged.
Smoothie stepped through the portal, which vanished behind her. She was a vision from a nightmare. Her elegant clothes were soaked and stained a deep, dark red—Gunnar's blood. Her face was a marble statue of cold indifference. Cradled in one arm, wrapped in a clean, white blanket, was her newborn daughter, Iris, sleeping peacefully amidst the carnage.
Namur felt a primal dread wash over him. He knew this woman. He had celebrated with her, laughed with her. The person standing before him was not her.
"Smoothie… what is this?" he demanded, his stance shifting, the water in the air around him beginning to swirl. "What have you done?"
"My duty," she replied, her voice empty.
He saw the dead look in her eyes, the blood on her hands, the sword in Gunnar's chest. He didn't need any more answers. With a roar of grief and rage, he attacked. "Fish-Man Karate: Shark Brick Fist!" He launched himself forward, his fist propelled by a pressurized jet of water, an attack powerful enough to shatter steel.
Smoothie didn't even flinch. With her free hand, she casually deflected the blow, her Haki-coated palm meeting his fist. The water jet dissipated harmlessly. The ease with which she stopped his full-power attack was terrifying. She was on a completely different level.
Namur stumbled back, his mind reeling. He looked at the sleeping baby in her arms, and his resolve wavered. He could not press the attack without risking the child—Gunnar's child.
"Take them," Smoothie said, her voice cutting through his confusion. She gestured with her head toward the broken forms of Ace and Isshin. "Deliver this message to Whitebeard: The alliance is over. Gunnar is dead."
The words hit Namur like a physical blow. Dead.
"And as for his body," she continued, walking over to Gunnar. With an unnerving display of strength, she hooked her hand under his arm and effortlessly lifted his massive, limp frame onto her shoulder, the greatsword still protruding from his chest. "I will be delivering him to Mama personally. A gift."
Namur stared in horror. This was a desecration. A betrayal so profound it defied comprehension.
"You… you monster…" he whispered, his voice shaking with rage.
Smoothie ignored him. She looked at Brûlée, who had reappeared at the edge of the ship. "Open it."
A new portal shimmered into existence on the deck. Smoothie, carrying her husband's body like a trophy, turned and walked toward it without a backward glance. She was a queen returning from a successful hunt, leaving a trail of broken bodies and shattered hearts in her wake.
She stepped through the looking glass, vanishing from the real world.
---
Back in the Mirro-World, she strode through the devastated landscape until she found Pudding, who was huddled by the still-unconscious Katakuri, trying to tend to his wounds.
"Pudding," Smoothie said, her voice echoing in the silence.
Pudding looked up, her eyes wide with fear and confusion. Her gaze fell upon the horrifying sight of Gunnar's body slung over her sister's shoulder.
Smoothie unceremoniously dropped Gunnar's body at Pudding's feet. He landed with a heavy, lifeless thud.
"Sister, what… what are you doing?" Pudding cried.
"I have an order for you. "
Pudding nodded, trembling.
"Good," Smoothie said, a cold, calculating light in her eyes. "I need you to do me a favor." She knelt down, her hand gently touching Gunnar's blood-matted hair.
***
The journey back was a silent, agonizing eternity.
Namur steered with a heavy heart, the cheerful pastel waters of Totto Land feeling like a cruel mockery. Ace and Isshin lay unconscious, their chests rising and falling in shallow, painful breaths. But it was the space where Gunnar should have been that screamed the loudest, a void of horror and disbelief.
The message. He had to deliver the message. Gunnar is dead. The words were a venomous snake coiling in his gut, poisoning every thought.
When the Moby Dick finally came into view on the horizon, its repaired mast a proud finger pointing to the sky, Namur felt no relief. Only dread. He knew he was about to break the heart of his family.
His arrival was met with cheers. The crew, seeing the small ship approach, rushed to the railing, their faces alight with anticipation and hope.
"They're back!" Haruta yelled, waving frantically.
"Did they get her? Is Smoothie with them?" Thatch called out, a wide grin on his face.
The cheers died in their throats as the Striker drew alongside the flagship. The silence that fell was heavy and absolute. They saw the blood. They saw the unconscious forms of Ace and Isshin. They saw Namur, his face a mask of stone-cold grief. And they saw the empty space where their commander should have been.
Marco was the first to land on the deck, his phoenix form dissolving as his feet touched the wood. He took in the scene, his medical eye instantly assessing the damage, his brother's heart refusing to accept the implication.
"Namur… what happened?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
Namur couldn't meet his eyes. He looked at the deck, at the dark, drying stains. "We… we failed."
Jozu and Vista were next, their faces grim. The nurses rushed forward with stretchers, carefully lifting Ace and Isshin, their expressions a mixture of professional focus and personal horror.
"Where is he, Namur?" Jozu's voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder. "Where is Gunnar?"
Namur finally looked up, and the anguish in his eyes was a physical blow. He opened his mouth, but the words wouldn't come. He had fought sea kings and vice-admirals without a flicker of fear, but this… this was the hardest thing he had ever had to do.
He took a deep, shuddering breath. He delivered the message, his voice flat, dead, each word a dagger he was forced to plunge into the heart of his family.
"The alliance is over. Smoothie… she turned on us. She delivered the message herself." He paused, forcing out the final, world-shattering words. "Gunnar is dead."
Dead.
The word hung in the air, a poison gas that choked the life from the deck. It didn't register. It couldn't. Gunnar? The unstoppable force of nature? The walking volcano who laughed in the face of emperors? Dead?
Thatch stumbled back, his face ashen. "No… No, you're lying. That's not funny, Namur."
Haruta let out a small, strangled sob, her hands flying to her mouth. Vista, the unshakable swordsman, gripped the hilt of his saber so tightly his knuckles turned white, his jaw clenched against a wave of raw emotion.
Marco stared at Namur, his face a blank canvas of shock. Then he looked at the blood on the deck, and something inside him broke. A low, guttural cry of pure agony was torn from his throat, a sound no one on that ship had ever heard him make. It was the sound of a soul being ripped in two.
From his great chair, Whitebeard, who had been listening in silence, rose to his feet. His face, which had been regaining its color, was now a pale, ghastly white. He took a step forward, his massive frame trembling, not with weakness, but with a grief so profound it threatened to shake the world.
"My son…" he whispered, his voice a broken rasp. He looked at the empty space on the deck, as if expecting Gunnar to appear, laughing, covered in blood but victorious. But there was only emptiness.
The grief was a tidal wave that washed over the Moby Dick. The boisterous, indomitable crew of the Whitebeard Pirates, the strongest family on the seas, broke. Men who had faced down cannon fire without flinching wept openly. They slumped to the deck, their faces buried in their hands. They punched the mast in helpless rage. The heart of their crew, the fiery, reckless, beloved prince of their family, had been extinguished.
The sorrow was so thick it was a physical presence. It was in the salt of the tears that mingled with the salt of the sea. It was in the shuddering shoulders of Jozu, a mountain of a man reduced to rubble. It was in the silent, glistening tracks on Vista's stoic face. It was in Marco, who had fallen to his knees, his phoenix flames flickering weakly, unable to heal a wound this deep.
Whitebeard walked to the edge of his ship and looked out at the horizon, toward the direction of Totto Land. He did not rage. He did not roar. The silence from him was more terrifying than any quake. It was the silence of a man who had lost too much, a father who had buried another child.
He stood there for an hour, unmoving, as the sun began to set, staining the ocean the color of blood. The crew remained in their states of shattered grief, the ship a floating monument to their loss.
Finally, Whitebeard turned. His face was filled with terrible sorrow. But beneath it, a new fire was being kindled—a cold, white-hot fire of pure, undiluted vengeance.
He looked at his broken, weeping sons. His voice, when he spoke, was not the roar of a king, but the quiet, deadly promise of a father.
"Weep tonight, my sons," he said, his voice heavy as a tombstone. "Mourn your brother. For he was worthy of all our tears."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over each of them, his eyes promising retribution.
"But when the sun rises tomorrow," he declared, his voice regaining a sliver of its world-shaking power, "we dry our eyes. We raise our flag. And we will sail to the end of the world to remind that woman, and all who stand with her, what it means to kill a son of Whitebeard."
***
Few Hours Later,
"It's my fault," he rasped, his voice raw. He looked at his brothers, at their shattered faces. "I was there. I was supposed to have his back. But I was too weak. I let him down." He slammed his fist against the mast, the wood groaning in protest. "If I had just been stronger…!"
"Stop it, Ace," Marco's voice was a hoarse whisper from the deck. He looked up, his eyes hollow. "This wasn't about strength. This was… a betrayal. It wasn't your fault."
"Then whose was it?!" Ace roared, spinning to face him. "Smoothie's? She was his wife! The mother of his child! How could she…?" He couldn't finish the sentence. The sheer, incomprehensible treachery of it was a poison for which there was no antidote.
It was then that Whitebeard, who had been standing like a stone statue at the prow, finally moved. He turned, and the grief on his face was that of a man who had weathered a thousand storms only to be drowned in his own home. He walked through his weeping sons, his presence a heavy, comforting weight.
He stopped before the bloodstain on the deck, the last physical trace of his son. He knelt, a gesture so profound from a man of his stature that it silenced the very waves. He reached out a massive, trembling hand and touched the dark, dried stain.
"Gunnar…" he said, his voice a low, rumbling earthquake of sorrow. "My son. My foolish, brave, reckless son."
"You were not meant to die before me," Whitebeard whispered to the empty air, his voice cracking with a pain that no enemy blade had ever been able to inflict. He closed his eyes, and a single tear, the size of a cannonball, fell from his eye and sizzled on the deck.