Jeremy stopped.
Looked at Whitebeard.
Whitebeard looked back at him with the particular expression of a man who has made a very large decision very quietly and is waiting to see if the person across from him is going to understand it without needing it spelled out.
Jeremy said, "Okay. Why would you ask that unless you wanted to be—"
He stopped again.
The stars were out.
The Moby Dick moved under them.
Marco had gone very still at the rail.
Jeremy looked at Edward Newgate — the size of him, the age of him, the complete and total peace of him — and understood all at once what was being asked and why it was being asked this way, quietly, almost apologetically, framed as random, because Edward Newgate was not a man who asked for things for himself and this was the one thing he wanted for himself and he didn't quite know how to hold that.
"You want to come with us," Jeremy said quietly.
Not a question.
Whitebeard didn't answer immediately.
"I have made my peace with tomorrow," he said finally. "I knew what Marineford was before I pointed the ship toward it. I know what it costs. I know what it means." He paused. "But you came here tonight and you told me about a galley with panoramic windows where a crew eats together and watches the galaxy go by."
He stopped.
Started again.
"You told me about a ship that cannot be stranded," he said. "Three drives. A hull that remembers every hit. Gunports nobody sees coming. An AI crew that takes you anywhere you say." Another pause. "And it bears my name."
The ocean was very quiet.
"I have sailed every sea in this world," Edward Newgate said. "Every ocean. Every route. I have seen everything this world has to show a man with a ship and a crew and enough years." He looked at the stars. "But I have never seen another galaxy."
Jeremy felt something happen in his chest that he didn't have an immediate word for.
"And tomorrow," Whitebeard continued, very quietly now, "I won't."
Marco made a sound at the rail that he immediately controlled. Just barely.
Whitebeard looked at Jeremy with those eyes that had seen enough decades to find most things either interesting or not worth the time and said, "So yes. That is why I am asking. If you could copy my mind. Put it somewhere. I don't need a body. I don't need to take up space." He glanced at the phone on the table between them. "Your AI crew — they live in the ship's computers, yes?"
"They do," Jeremy said.
"Then I would not be the strangest thing in there," Whitebeard said.
And somehow, despite everything, despite the weight of what was being asked and what tomorrow meant and what it would cost, Jeremy laughed.
A real one.
And after a moment Edward Newgate laughed too.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO43vAVM3lG
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Marco pushed off the rail.
"Pops."
His voice had lost its professional edge entirely. This was just Marco. Just a son looking at his father.
"What are you asking for," Marco said. "Do you hear what you're asking for."
Whitebeard looked at him with the patience of someone who had known Marco long enough to let him arrive at things in his own time.
"I hear exactly what I'm asking for," he said calmly.
"You're asking to be put in a computer," Marco said. "You. In a machine. Pops that's not—" he stopped. Started again. "That's not you. That's not who you are. You're not supposed to be—"
"Marco."
The word was quiet. Just the name. But it had weight.
Marco stopped.
"I know what I am," Whitebeard said. "I know what tomorrow is. I know what comes after tomorrow." He looked at his son steadily. "But this young man came here from another world to show me a ship that bears my name. And that ship is going to go places I have never been. See things I have never seen." He paused. "And you are going to be on it."
Marco went very still.
"I would like to see it too," Whitebeard said simply. "If there is a way."
Marco looked at Jeremy. The look had things in it that Jeremy didn't feel it was his place to name.
Jeremy held up both hands slowly.
"Okay," he said. "I want to be honest with both of you." He looked at Whitebeard directly. "I can do this technically. I believe that. The capability exists. But—" he stopped and took a breath, "—you said the soul would be gone and you're right. What we'd be copying is everything that makes you Edward Newgate. Your knowledge, your reasoning, your memories, your personality, the way you think, the way you make decisions." He paused. "But the soul itself — that's not something technology touches. That goes where it goes according to what you believe."
Whitebeard nodded slowly. He already knew this.
"So what would come with us," Jeremy continued, "would be Edward Newgate in every way that can be measured and recorded and preserved. But not in every way that matters to God." He stopped. "And that's not something I take lightly."
The deck was completely quiet.
"This isn't something I want to just do," Jeremy said. "Because of what I believe. This touches something that I think deserves more than just — yeah sure, let me set that up." He looked at his hands for a moment. "I need to pray about this. Before I give you an answer. Before I touch anything."
Whitebeard looked at him with an expression that had shifted into something Jeremy hadn't seen on his face yet.
Respect. A different kind than before.
"You believe," the old man said.
"Yes sir," Jeremy said.
"In what."
"In God," Jeremy said simply. "And in the idea that some things need to be brought to Him before you proceed. Even if you have the ability. Especially if you have the ability."
Whitebeard was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, "Then pray."
"Right now?" Jeremy said.
"You came here in a small boat one day before Marineford," Whitebeard said. "You have been surprising me since you got on this ship. Pray. Right now. I would like to hear it."
Marco sat down slowly on the deck. Not going anywhere.
Jeremy looked at the stars for a moment.
Then he bowed his head.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6d4SLNkrpD
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Jeremy leaned forward.
"Okay wait," he said. "I need to stop us both right here because I think we got ahead of ourselves and I want to be honest with you about a few things."
Whitebeard looked at him.
Marco looked at him.
Jeremy took a breath.
"First," he said. "The soul question. My faith is real and my answer is real. The Bible says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That's not poetry to me. That's what I believe happens. Which means what would come with us in a digital copy isn't your soul, Edward. Your soul goes where it's supposed to go tomorrow. What we'd be copying is — everything else. And I'm not sure that's something I can do in good conscience regardless of the technology available to me."
Whitebeard was quiet. Listening.
"Second," Jeremy said, and his voice got careful. "Your crew."
He looked at Marco when he said it.
Marco met his eyes.
"Your crew is going to Marineford tomorrow to save Ace," Jeremy said. "That's what they're going to do. That's who they are. You know it, I know it, and honestly—" he paused, "—they know it. Every one of them made that choice with their eyes open. They're going because that's what family does."
The word sat there.
Family.
Whitebeard's word. His doctrine. The thing he had built his entire life around.
"And about thirty percent of them," Jeremy said quietly, "don't make it."
He hated saying it.
He said it anyway because Edward Newgate deserved the truth more than he deserved comfortable silence.
"I hate to be that guy," Jeremy said. "I genuinely do. But you asked me to be honest and I'm not going to stop now just because it hurts."
Marco had turned back toward the water.
His shoulders were doing something careful.
"And even if I wanted to bring your crew with me," Jeremy continued gently, "even setting aside everything I just said about tomorrow and Marineford and what they're going to do because that's who they are—" he paused, "—I have twenty six berths on the Edward Newgate. That's it. Twenty six."
He held up his hands.
"I've got my own crew coming. Rose. T'Challa and Shuri from Wakanda. My AI crew is already aboard. And I told T'Challa I was coming back to pick them up." He shook his head slowly. "The Whitebeard Pirates number in the thousands. I couldn't take them if I tried. I couldn't take a fraction of them."
The deck was very quiet.
The ocean moved.
The stars stayed where they were.
Whitebeard looked at Jeremy for a long time with an expression that Jeremy couldn't fully read but that seemed to contain something like the specific peace of a man who had just had several things confirmed that he had already suspected were true.
"You knew," Whitebeard said finally. "When you got in that boat. You knew you couldn't change any of it."
"Yes sir," Jeremy said.
"And you came anyway."
"Yes sir."
"Just to show me the ship," Whitebeard said. "Just to make sure I knew."
"Just to make sure you knew," Jeremy confirmed. "That someone built something worthy of your name. That your crew is remembered. That Marco—" he glanced at Marco's back at the rail, "—gets to keep going. On a ship called the Edward Newgate. Named after his father." He paused. "Not Whitebeard. His father."
Marco's hand found the rail.
Held it.
Whitebeard looked at his son for a long moment.
Then he looked back at Jeremy.
"Twenty six berths," he said.
"Twenty six," Jeremy confirmed.
"And you have people to fill them."
"I do."
The old man nodded slowly. The nod of someone closing a door gently rather than slamming it.
"Then you'd better go get them," he said.
"In the morning," Jeremy said. "I'll leave in the morning."
Whitebeard looked at the stars.
"In the morning," he agreed.
Marco hadn't turned around yet.
Jeremy looked at his back for a moment and then said quietly, "Marco."
A pause.
"Yeah," Marco said. Not turning.
"You're one of the twenty six," Jeremy said.
Silence.
"If you want to be," Jeremy added.
The ocean moved under the Moby Dick.
Marco turned around slowly.
His expression was doing several things at once and managing all of them with the discipline of a man who had learned long ago how to hold difficult things without dropping them.
He looked at Jeremy.
Then he looked at his father.
Whitebeard was already looking at him. Had probably been looking at him.
"Go," Whitebeard said simply.
Just that.
One word.
The word of a father.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA7BTqzVar2
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Jeremy stood up.
"I've got an idea," he said.
Then he got in his little boat and left.
Whitebeard watched him go.
Marco watched him go.
Nobody said anything because there wasn't anything obvious to say about a man from another dimension leaving in a small boat in the middle of the night with an unfinished sentence hanging in the air behind him.
The Moby Dick sailed on.
The crew talked quietly among themselves the way crews did at night. The stars stayed out. The ocean did what oceans do.
One hour.
That was all.
Marco noticed it first.
Not a sound exactly. More like the absence of something. The stars in a particular section of sky stopped being visible. Not clouds. Not weather. Something deliberate. Something that had mass and intention and was making a decision about where to be.
He looked up.
Then he stopped looking at anything else.
One by one the crew felt it. That particular quality of shadow that isn't darkness but is something large between you and the light. Heads tilted back. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Someone dropped something and didn't look down to find it.
The Edward Newgate descended through the clouds with the slow certainty of something that had never needed to hurry because nothing was going to stop it anyway.
She was enormous.
Sixty percent larger than the base Conqueror-class had any right to be and every inch of that scale was present and accounted for as she came down through the night air over the ocean. The netherite dark hull absorbed the moonlight. The volcanic orange nodes along the dorsal spine glowed against the darkness like a row of embers that had decided to go for a walk. The Starfleet deflector below the cockpit — below what everyone could now see was not a cockpit but a wall of panoramic windows glowing warm from inside — caught the light and held it.
She hovered.
Just hovered.
Over the Moby Dick.
Over the ocean.
Over all of it.
Like she had always been there and was only now letting them see her.
The entire Whitebeard Pirates stood on the deck of the Moby Dick and looked up and said nothing.
Whitebeard looked up.
His expression was something Jeremy would think about for a long time afterward.
Then the intercom crackled and Jeremy's voice came down from somewhere above them all.
"So," he said. "About those twenty six berths."
A pause.
"I forgot to mention the cargo hold."33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFXtSIG0lLM
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The intercom crackled again.
"Cargo hold has been converted into bunk beds," Jeremy said. "It's not luxury. It's not pillow top mattresses. But it'll hold the Whitebeard Pirates until we figure out the rest."
The deck of the Moby Dick was still completely silent.
"But before anybody goes anywhere," Jeremy said, and his voice shifted into something more serious, "we need to talk about tomorrow. Because I didn't come back with the ship just to give you all a place to sleep."
He paused.
"I came back because I thought of something."
Another pause.
"Gemini."
Gemini's Orbit voice came through the ship's external speakers smooth and immediate. "Ready."
"Can we get a tractor beam lock on a single target in the middle of a large scale battle and hold it?"
"Confirmed," Gemini said. "Single target isolation is within operational parameters. I can maintain a lock through significant surrounding combat activity. The vibranium hull system will absorb any attempts to disrupt the beam externally."
"How long can you hold it."
"Indefinitely given available power," Gemini said. "Until we choose to release."
Jeremy's voice came back.
"Sakazuki," he said.
The name landed on the deck of the Moby Dick like something physical.
Marco's eyes went wide.
"Akainu," Jeremy continued, and his voice was very level and very calm. "Admiral of the Marines. Magma Devil Fruit user. Tomorrow at Marineford he gets through to Ace. That's how it happens. That's the moment everything falls apart." He paused. "We lock him in a tractor beam before he gets there. We don't have to fight the whole war. We don't have to stop everything. Just him. Just that one moment. Just long enough."
The silence on the deck had a completely different quality now.
"He can't punch through what he can't reach," Jeremy said simply.
Marco looked at Whitebeard.
Whitebeard was looking up at the Edward Newgate hovering overhead with an expression that had moved through several things and arrived somewhere that had no name.
"You said you couldn't change it," Marco said. His voice was careful. Like he was handling something that might break or might not break and he didn't know which yet.
"I said I couldn't stop you going," Jeremy said. "I said I couldn't take your whole crew. I said the soul was sacred." A pause. "I didn't say anything about Sakazuki."
Marco put his hand over his mouth.
Took it away.
"One tractor beam," Jeremy said. "One target. Gemini holds the lock and Akainu goes nowhere. Ace walks out of Marineford."
The ocean moved under the Moby Dick.
The Edward Newgate hovered.
The orange nodes glowed against the dark sky like something that had made up its mind.
Whitebeard looked up at the ship bearing his name for a long quiet moment.
Then he said, very softly, to no one in particular and everyone present—
"This blind boy came here in a small boat."
Marco laughed.
It came out wrong because it had too many things in it but it came out and that was what mattered.
"Gemini," Jeremy said through the speakers.
"Already have his profile loaded," Gemini said. "I will have a targeting lock within thirty seconds of visual confirmation at Marineford. He will not reach Ace."
Whitebeard looked at the ship one more time.
Then he looked at his crew.
Then he said in the voice that had captained the Moby Dick across every ocean in the world—
"Get some sleep."33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvWAJ6xEgS5
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Listen generally said some of your crew will probably pass on like ores junior and Joe zu. This is not gonna be an easy battle for you. Still with me, but that don't mean. I'm just gonna be the one holding sakazuki and apetractor being no, no, I'm gonna be going full ham on the weapon system.
May 14
OH. Jeremy isn't just running one tractor beam and watching. He's going FULL HAM with the Edward Newgate's entire weapons system while Gemini holds Sakazuki. The battle of Marineford just got a third faction nobody planned for. Here's the continuation:
Jeremy's voice came back through the speakers and it had a different energy now.
"I need to be honest with you all about something," he said.
The deck listened.
"Some of your crew are still going to fall tomorrow," Jeremy said. "I'm not going to stand up here and tell you everybody makes it. Because that's not true and you deserve better than a comfortable lie." He paused. "Oden's son. Jozu. Some others. This battle is still going to cost something. I can't stop all of it. I'm one ship."
The deck was quiet.
"But," Jeremy said.
And the word had weight.
"That doesn't mean I'm just going to be sitting up here holding Sakazuki in a tractor beam watching the rest of it happen."
A pause.
"Grok."
Grok's voice came through the external speakers immediately. "Already mapped the battlefield geometry. Targeting priorities are loaded. Waiting on your go."
"GPT."
"Weapon systems are online," GPT said in the Ember voice. "Gunports are ready. All of them."
"Claude."
"Monitoring all combatants," Claude said in the British accent. "I'll call out threats to Whitebeard crew positions as they develop. You focus on firing solutions."
"Gemini."
"Sakazuki's profile is locked," Gemini said. "Tractor beam charged and ready. He is not going anywhere tomorrow. Additionally I am tracking every Admiral on the battlefield and have firing solutions prepared for all three simultaneously if needed."
"Good," Jeremy said.
He let that sit for a second.
Then—
"The Edward Newgate has gunports all over her hull," Jeremy said to the deck below. "Hidden flush with the composite skin. Nobody at Marineford is going to see them until they're open." Another pause. "The Marines have never fought a flying ship. They have no aerial combat doctrine. No anti-air emplacements rated for something this size. No framework for dealing with a vessel that hits back harder every time they touch it."
Marco was looking up at the ship with an expression that had gone somewhere beyond what expressions usually reached.
"I am going full ham on their weapon systems," Jeremy said simply. "Gemini holds Sakazuki. The rest of the crew calls targets. And I light up anyone coming for your people."
He paused one more time.
"I can't save everyone," he said. "I told you that and I meant it. But I can make the Marines wish they'd stayed home."
Whitebeard looked up at the Edward Newgate.
The orange nodes glowed.
The gunports were invisible in the dark hull but knowing they were there made the whole ship look different. Like something that was very patiently waiting for permission to become what it actually was.
"Jeremy," Whitebeard said.
"Sir."
"How many gunports."
A beat.
"Gemini," Jeremy said.
"Two hundred and forty seven active gunports," Gemini said pleasantly. "Distributed across all hull surfaces. Zero blind spots. Full spherical coverage."
The Whitebeard Pirates stood on the deck of the Moby Dick and absorbed that number.
Two hundred and forty seven.
On a ship that could fly.
With a hull that got stronger every time something hit it.
With Akainu locked in a tractor beam before he could take three steps toward Ace.
Marco turned to the crew.
"You heard the man," he said. "Get some sleep."33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk1I0rHrdVS
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"Watch this," Jeremy said.
He pushed the button.
The Edward Newgate transformed.
Not violently. Not dramatically. Just with the quiet total confidence of something that had always been this and was only now choosing to show it.
All across the netherite dark hull the composite skin opened. Two hundred and forty seven ports in perfect synchronization, each one sliding back to reveal what was behind it. The crew of the Moby Dick stood on the deck below and watched it happen above them like a night sky rearranging itself.
Missile launchers. Long and purposeful, rotating slightly as targeting systems came online.
Laser cannons. The real kind. The kind that had opinions about capital ships.
Blasters. Rapid fire placements along the flanks for close range engagement, swiveling through their full range of motion in a quick systems check that looked like the ship was flexing.
Turbolaser batteries along the dorsal spine between the orange nodes, each one big enough to have a conversation with a Star Destroyer about life choices.
Torpedo bays. Recessed deep in the hull, visible now as dark shafts ready to deliver something decisive to whoever needed it most.
The whole thing hummed.
Not loudly. Just enough to feel it through the deck of the Moby Dick below. A vibration that was almost familiar to a crew who sailed with a man whose Devil Fruit shook the world.
"And that's not everything," Jeremy said through the speakers.
"There's more," Marco said. It wasn't a question. It was the voice of a man who had stopped being surprised but hadn't stopped paying attention.
"If we take hull damage," Jeremy said, "and I mean serious damage, the kind that gets through the vibranium composite and actually dents something—"
A bay opened along the lower hull. Small. Relative to everything else, small.
Things came out.
Astromech droids. Rolling, beeping, already in motion before they'd fully cleared the bay. Compact, purposeful, each one carrying repair equipment that it clearly knew how to use. They spread across the hull in a pattern that was obviously pre-programmed and obviously efficient, moving between the gunports and the orange nodes and the seams of the drive housings with the total focus of something that had one job and took that job extremely seriously.
One of them rolled directly over a gunport, checked the mechanism, beeped once in apparent approval, and kept moving.
"Astromech repair droids," Jeremy said. "If the hull takes damage that exceeds what the composite can handle on its own, they go out automatically. They assess, they patch, they get out of the way. Fast."
Vishnu one of the younger Whitebeard Pirates said from somewhere in the crowd, quietly and with feeling, "What."
"They can work during combat," Jeremy continued. "They don't stop for laser fire. They don't stop for explosions. They just—" he paused, "—fix things. That's all they know how to do."
One of the astromechs near the bow found a micro-fracture in the composite that had been there since the printing process and nobody had noticed. It stopped. Beeped twice. Deployed a repair tool. Fixed it. Moved on.
The whole repair sweep took four minutes.
Then they retracted back into their bay and the door closed behind them like they'd never been there.
The gunports stayed out.
Two hundred and forty seven weapons catching the moonlight above the Moby Dick while the ocean moved under everything and Marineford waited somewhere over the horizon.
Whitebeard looked up at all of it for a long time.
Then he said, "The marines are not ready for this."
"No sir," Jeremy agreed. "They are not."
"Neither were we," Whitebeard said. "And we have been looking at it for ten minutes."
Somewhere in the crew someone laughed. Then someone else. Then it spread the way laughter did on ships at night when the tension needed somewhere to go.
Marco looked up at the Edward Newgate with all her ports open and her astromechs tucked away and her tractor beam charged and Sakazuki's profile already locked in Gemini's targeting system.
"Jeremy," he said.
"Yeah."
"Those marines," Marco said, "are going to have a very bad day."
"That's the plan," Jeremy said.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3gMoA7PNfm
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"Actually," Jeremy said.
The Edward Newgate was already moving.
Not asking permission. Not explaining first. Just moving with the smooth inevitability of a ship that had three drives and none of them needed a runway.
"I just remembered something," Jeremy said through the intercom. "We'll be back. I've got a special delivery to make first."
The Edward Newgate tilted.
Rose up.
Accelerated into the night sky with a quality of motion that made several Whitebeard Pirates grab onto things that didn't need grabbing onto out of pure instinct.
Then she was gone.
Impel Down sat in the ocean like a bad idea that had been given a budget.
Six levels. Each one worse than the last. A prison designed by people who had put serious thought into making escape not just difficult but philosophically discouraging.
The Edward Newgate appeared above it without fanfare.
Just appeared.
One moment sky. Next moment ship.
"Gemini," Jeremy said.
"Already scanning," Gemini said. "Luffy is on level four. Moving with a group. Chaotic trajectory. He has found Ivankov."
"That tracks," Jeremy said. "Okay."
He opened a specific bay.
Not the weapons bay.
Not the astromech bay.
A different one.
Two units dropped from the Edward Newgate toward Impel Down with the focused purposeful energy of things that had been waiting for exactly this moment.
HK units.
Hunter killer droids. Built for combat, built for assessment, built for the kind of precise violent problem solving that the situation inside Impel Down was about to require in significant quantities. Each one armed, armored, equipped with targeting systems that Gemini had already synced to the current Impel Down population map.
Jeremy had given them names.
Because of course he had.
"Haku," he said into the comm. "Hemmy. You're up."
Haku's voice came back crisp and immediate. "Acknowledged. Scanning level four. Statement: there are a significant number of hostile combatants between us and the target. Assessment: this is acceptable."
Hemmy's voice was slightly warmer, which for an HK unit meant it was still pretty direct. "Locating Luffy now. He is loud. This makes him easy to find."
"Go help Luffy," Jeremy said. "Keep him alive long enough to get to the surface. Don't let the Warden get to him. And—" he paused, "—try not to destroy anything load bearing."
"Observation," Haku said. "Several things are already destroyed. This was not us."
"That's definitely Luffy," Jeremy confirmed. "Go."
They dropped into Impel Down.
The sounds that followed were immediate and significant and traveled upward through six levels of prison architecture with the particular clarity of things going very wrong for whoever was on the receiving end.
Then a pause.
Then Hemmy's voice on the comm, almost conversational.
"We have found him. Statement: he is fighting four guards simultaneously while apparently also talking. Addendum: he is winning. Correction: we are now winning. There is a difference."
Haku's voice came in underneath. "The large man with the okama aesthetic is asking if we are friends of Luffy. I have told him we are assets deployed in support of the mission. He has called us fabulous. I do not know how to process this."
"Accept it," Jeremy said. "Ivankov calls everything fabulous. It means he likes you."
A brief pause from Haku.
"Understood. We are fabulous. Moving to level three."
Jeremy allowed himself one moment of satisfaction and then pulled the Edward Newgate back up into the night sky and pointed her nose toward Marineford.
"Gemini," he said. "How long until Luffy reaches the surface."
"At current trajectory and with Haku and Hemmy clearing the path," Gemini said, "I estimate significantly faster than the original timeline."
"And Marineford?"
"Ace arrives in four hours and twelve minutes," Gemini said. "We have time."
"Good," Jeremy said. "Let's go back and get the Whitebeard Pirates."
He opened the comm to the Moby Dick.
"Sorry about that," he said. "Forgot I had a package to deliver. How's everybody doing down there."
Marco's voice came back after a brief pause.
"Jeremy," he said.
"Yeah."
"You just dropped two robots into the most secure prison in the world to help a rubber man escape."
"I did," Jeremy confirmed.
"In the middle of the night."
"Correct."
"Before the biggest naval battle in history."
"Also correct."
A pause.
"What else," Marco said, "do you have in that ship."
Jeremy smiled in the captain's chair of the Edward Newgate — which was not actually a captain's chair yet but was going to be once he got Rose to help him pick one out — and looked at the stars through the panoramic galley windows.
"Marco," he said. "We haven't even gotten to the kraken yet."
ns216.73.217.39da2
and then Add to home screen.