286 Having Drinks with Whitebeard

The sea floor seemed to shift and writhe beneath the surface of the water. The beast's deep blue coloring made it impossible to determine what was part of the beast and what was merely open water.

The beast moved towards the Whitebeard fleet, the water rising up into a wave in its wake.

It moved with such speed that perhaps even the mermaids, known to be the fastest swimmers in the world, might not be a match for it.

That speed combined with its immense size and strength to create a genuine threat, even to the Whitebeard Pirates.

That wasn't to say that the division commanders were weaker than it, let alone Whitebeard himself. However, their ships were a completely different story; if they weren't fast enough, it might sink some of them!

The regular crewmen turned around to look at their glorious leaders in anticipation. How would these powerhouses go about intercepting the monster before it could damage their fleet?

"You brought out some really good stuff, old man." Cherry said, sipping from a sake bowl.

"Of course, there's no better reason to drink it than to celebrate the safe return of one of my sons." Whitebeard said, gulping from a bowl many times the size of Cherry's bowl.

"You don't want more than that? Are you a lightweight, perhaps?" Whitey Bay teased.

"Please, I could drink you all under the table," Cherry claimed. "In succession~"

"Bahaha! Then why don't you? We aren't stingy with our booze, you know? There's no need to hold back!" Marco asked.

"Robin will nag me if I come back to her drunk. It's for the best though; I tend to get into trouble when I'm drunk~" Cherry explained.

"You can't be more troublesome than Ace," Whitey Bay shook her head. "Before he joined up with us, he and his crew apparently wound up on Wano with no memory of how they got there. Ha!"

"Hey, I told you that in confidence!" Ace complained.

"And I tell everyone who'll listen. In confidence~" Whitey Bay snickered.

'What the hell are they doing at a time like this!' was the common thought that went through the ordinary crewmans' heads.

It wasn't at all uncommon for the powerhouses of the Whitebeard Pirates to not take sea monsters seriously, but the spectacle from before temporarily overwrote this understanding with fear.

The Moby Dick swayed to the side as a gargantuan octopus rose out of the water beside it. Its giant, baleful eyes gleamed with malicious intelligence aa it scanned the crew in the way one might scan a buffet.

Still the division commanders and the emperor made no moves. The crews' heads jerk back and forth between the nonchalant drinkers and the terrible beast of legend, the mighty Kraken!

Cherry was seemingly the first to notice the monster's presence, but the words that came out of her mouth were far from what they could have imagined. "Did you have fun, Takako~!"

*Burble~!*

The transformation was instantaneous. The fiendish entity of watery doom vanished and was replaced by an obedient pet who was delighted to see their master.

"I know, I know~ The big bad Whitebeard wasn't scared at all, ruining all your fun~" Cherry scritched the Kraken on her face.

"I won't get scared of such a cute little thing with no killing intent." Whitebeard spoke.

Takako seemed to blush from embarrassment and sunk beneath the waves once more.

The kraken didn't return to Cherry's body right away. Although she was content to float around in a sea of Cherry's vital energy and grow stronger passively, it couldn't beat swimming in the real ocean. She would savor it while she had the chance.

*poof poof poof*

The sound of someone kicking the air to propel themselves through it entered the ears of the impromptu drinking party.

Sadly, it wasn't Sanji coming along with some snacks to go with the alcohol.

No, it was a man that Cherry had never met before. Even many of Whitebeard's crew were unfamiliar with his face.

The muscular man had tanned skin revealed by an open, black coat in the style of an admiral. He had short, messy purple hair and a severe expression partially covered with a pair of angular sunglasses.

However, his most prominent feature was the hulking metallic right arm. The robotic hand clutched a glass cylinder filled with pink liquid, inside of which floated a strange stone.

"Zephyr." Whitebeard spoke in a chilling tone, standing to his full height and radiating an overwhelming presence.

These two old men had every reason in the world to absolutely despise one another.

On Zed's, or Zephyr's, side, his family was murdered by pirates whilst he was doing his duty as a marine admiral. He also lost a number of his students and his arm to other pirates. Whitebeard may not be directly responsible for that, but he is practically the personified symbol of pirates in the current era and the only pirate who could stand against the infamous Gol D. Roger in the last era.

On Whitebeard's side, the Neo Marines were directly responsible for the deaths of some of his adoptees, his family. Unlike the marines who faced him head on, they were also incredibly sneaky in how they went about it.

Even without that reason, though, Whitebeard would still dislike Zed. In his view, Zed had abandoned his family in favor of his duty as a marine which resulted in their deaths at the hands of a pirate. To a family man like Edward Newgate, that was an intolerable sin. Ironically, Zed might just agree with him on that point.

"You should have died at Marineford, Newgate, and this damnable era should have died with you." Zed spoke, not cowed by Whitebeard's oppressive aura in the slightest.

"If that had happened, a new era would have risen to take its place. Youngsters are rowdy like that." Whitebeard said curtly.

Whitebeard would have attacked him immediately without bothering with words, but the fact that Zed came alone was bothering him. Even just one on one Zed wouldn't stand a chance in hell against Whitebeard, let alone with a handful of his best men by his side. His battle instinct and over half a century of experience told him that the container in Zed's robotic hand wasn't something simple.

*pat pat*

""???"" Both Whitebeard and Zed were confused at the sight of Cherry tapping Whitebeard's leg to get his attention.

Cherry motioned for him to lean over and he didn't see a reason not to, so he complied. She whispered something into his ear that no one else could hear, then Whitebeard nodded his head in understanding.

"I see. It was pleasant to see you again, but if you have business elsewhere, go on then." Whitebeard said.

Zed furrowed his brow. "No one is leaving here. The time for talk is over, now is time for action!"

Zed couldn't allow that woman to leave, especially not after what Akainu said about her before falling unconscious tacked on to what he already knew about her. He had to take this chance when all his enemies were in one place to destroy them all in one fell swoop.

*Crack!*

Zed squeezed the glass container holding the dyna stone with his robotic hand, crushing the glass and hurling it with all his might at the Moby Dick!