With Ryokugyu (Aramaki) and Marine HQ crashing the party out of nowhere, the Big Mom Pirates buckled fast. The front collapsed, and the battle tipped past the point of no return.
Linlin—furious and reckless—got caught by Ryokugyu's ambush and took a brutal hit. Even so, she gritted her teeth and answered with a kill-shot of her own, leaving Ryokugyu just as wrecked.
His battleship went under. He himself splashed into the sea, barely managing to throw up timber with his Devil Fruit to keep from sinking like dead weight. Even then, he was spent—too drained to keep fighting.
Life force isn't limitless. After getting smashed by Linlin twice and raked nonstop by fire and lightning—the hard counters to the Forest-Forest Fruit—it was a miracle he was breathing at all.
Katakuri stared into the abyss.
"Mom! What do we do?!"
Linlin's voice was a snarl. "Right now I hate those Marine bastards more than I hate Uchiha Chiyu!"
Katakuri got it. No matter how much they loathed Uchiha Chiyu, he'd shown up in the open and declared war. That's a straight fight between monsters—winner takes the crown, loser hits the dirt. The Marines, though, jumped in mid-duel, launched a sneak attack, and tried to wipe the Big Mom Pirates off the map. That kind of hatred runs deeper.
And honestly? Katakuri knew the truth. His mother's gigantification experiments were monstrous, and Caesar Clown was filth. Getting killed by Uchiha Chiyu was nothing but karma. Different sides or not, there was nothing to fault in what Chiyu had done; the wrong had always been theirs.
He drew a long breath.
"I understand."
"Brothers, sisters—maybe today's the end of the Big Mom Pirates. But…"
"We are not dying on our knees."
"Hatred. Rage. Contempt. Disgust."
"Light it up."
"Even if we die, we burn everything we've got and make our enemies pay in blood."
The crew answered with a roar and charged. And just like Linlin and Katakuri said, seven parts of that last surge slammed into the Marines, and only three parts hit the Undying Legion.
Chiyu and his troops saw it clear as day. Maybe it was their own grudge against the Marines. Maybe it was respect for the Big Mom Pirates' last stand. Either way, most of the Undying Legion didn't dogpile; they let the other two sides tear each other apart.
Tactically? It was perfect—fewer losses for them, and they'd still reap the spoils.
The sea turned into a slaughterhouse. Bodies on the waves, water red as wine; all across Totto Land's waters the dead drifted and the current ran scarlet.
They fought until sundown. The dying light slanted across the blood-dark sea, throwing off a strange golden sheen—eerie, and yet, somehow, fierce and tragic.
The Big Mom Pirates were basically finished. The only ones still standing were Charlotte Linlin, Katakuri, Cracker, Smoothie… and a handful of others.
The Marines had it even worse. Admiral Ryokugyu lay flat, done. Of the twenty vice admirals who'd come, thirteen were dead, four were wrecked, and only three could still stand. The rank-and-file had been chewed to pieces: from over ten thousand elite, two or three thousand still drew breath.
Uchiha Chiyu and the Undying Legion were the last ones standing tall.
Night drew in. Ryokugyu gulped air, dazed—he'd come to swoop in and be the fisherman, and somehow he'd found his own end.
Linlin closed on him. Facing the man who'd helped grind her family and empire to dust, she didn't flinch.
"Die, you bastard."
Panic flashed in Ryokugyu's eyes. Too late.
Linlin brought Napoleon down in a clean, savage arc. Ryokugyu's head rolled. However tough your life force is, you don't live without a head.
What was left of the Marines buckled under despair.
Linlin herself was at the edge. She looked out at the empire that had been her pride, now dust and ruin. Memories flickered past like a reel.
"Elbaf. The nun. My Totto Land…"
At the very end, she was calm—clearer and more grounded than she'd been in years.
"Uchiha Chiyu, I grew up in Elbaf. I sailed the world with Rocks. Then I built my own crew, ruled the New World, became one of the Four Emperors…"
"I still lost. But you know what? It was enough. I ate well. I drank well. I had my fun. I lived better than most."
"But I won't die to some useless Marine."
"Come on. Let's finish the fight we never finished."
Chiyu nodded once.
"Okay."
Linlin's mouth curled into a faint smile. Then she threw back her head and roared, unleashing everything she had left.
"Bahoho: Misery!"
Her ultimate. Zeus, Prometheus, and Napoleon all flared to the limit, fusing into a towering figure of light—a giant woman seething with fire, lightning, and blade aura. It howled with a will of its own and lunged for Chiyu, relentless, chasing him to the hit.
Chiyu answered a worthy foe with his own maxed-out strike.
"Thunder God's Realm—Final Judgment!"
A pillar of lightning blossomed into a storm realm. Thunder-god phantoms dropped from the sky and brought down the verdict on Charlotte Linlin—judgment from a kingdom above.
Rumble—
RUMBLE—
God of thunder overhead, mother goddess below; their ultimate blows met, and the world blew white. Sight washed out. Sound cut off. Time fell away—an instant, or forever.
When the aftershock finally rang in their ears and the blur peeled back, the scene crept into focus…
Charlotte Linlin had burned herself out. Eyes empty, soul gone.
But she was still on her feet.
Katakuri and the others broke, sobbing without shame. On the dark sea, the crying climbed to the clouds.
One of the Four Emperors. Captain of the Big Mom Pirates. Queen of Totto Land.
Charlotte Linlin was dead.
Katakuri wiped his face and breathed deep.
"Uchiha Chiyu, Mother chose to die by your hand. That means she recognized your strength—and you."
"I know the ones she hated most were the Marines."
"Today, the Big Mom Pirates die for good. Before that, I have one last request."
Chiyu: "Say it."
"Let us and the Marines…"
"…go to hell together."
Chiyu understood. He nodded. "All right."
At his word, the Undying Legion pulled back.
Everyone still under Linlin's flag charged the remaining Marines. The last ripples of the war became its final chapter.
They fought on to midnight. The clash, the screams, the roaring, the groans… and then quiet, slowly, finally.
Dark water. Dead calm. Totto Land's sea was a ghost city—hell on earth.
Chiyu watched in silence, high and remote, like a man who'd shed his feelings. The Undying Legion knew better. He'd honored Linlin and Katakuri's final ask because he was still human.
When the last Marine vice admiral fell, the last man standing—Katakuri—hit his own limit. In the dark he met Chiyu's eyes, gave a small nod, then stepped onto the prow, opened his arms, and fell backward into the sea.
He was a Devil Fruit user. The ocean is death. This was goodbye.
The Undying Legion stood witness, wordless.
It was over.
"Leave a unit to clean the field," Chiyu said, voice level. "Everyone else, with me. We're taking Totto Land."
"Yes, Chiyu-sama!"
No speeches. A battlefield is simple: it's you or it's me.
He led his people into Totto Land and, by memory, dug out Linlin's stash. Three Poneglyphs, one of them a red Road Poneglyph. He took rubbings of them all.
Then he called the war. Treat the wounded. Rest and recover. If Totto Land had anything, it was food; supplies flowed, and the army's strength came back quickly.
Another Emperor crew erased. The old four—Whitebeard, Red-Hair, Kaido, and Big Mom—gave way to a new board.
Whitebeard was gone.
Kaido had fallen to Chiyu.
Linlin had fallen to Chiyu.
Of the old guard, only Red-Hair Shanks remained—and even he only rose to Emperor in recent years. By rights, he belongs to the new age.
The New World, now:
The Undying Legion sits alone at the top. From the Thunder God's Three Isles, Punk Hazard, and Dressrosa, to Wano seized from Kaido, and now Totto Land—Uchiha Chiyu holds nearly half the Grand Line's back half.
Shanks hasn't fought a major war in years, but with Dracule "Hawk-Eye" Mihawk—the world's strongest swordsman—at his side, his power is second only to Chiyu's.
The Whitebeard Pirates, even without their pillar, still field Marco, Ace, Vista, Jozu, and more. They took losses fighting Blackbeard, but the Straw Hats joined them and injected fresh blood. Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Bonney, X Drake—"newcomers," sure, but in raw strength they stand shoulder to shoulder with Whitebeard's division commanders.
And then there's Blackbeard Marshall D. Teach's crew—the Destroyers' Alliance—Teach himself, Doc Q, Laffitte, Burgess, and the Worst Generation's Kid, Killer, Hawkins, Capone Bege, and others.
That's the new Four Emperors:
Uchiha Chiyu, the God of Slaughter.
Red-Haired Shanks.
Blackbeard Marshall D. Teach.
The Whitebeard–Straw Hat Alliance.
The fall of the Big Mom Pirates and Charlotte Linlin's death slammed the door on the old era and kicked the new one wide open.
Word that Chiyu erased the Big Mom Pirates shook the world. Worse for Marine HQ: the freshly minted admiral, Ryokugyu, died in the same battle—along with twenty vice admirals and more than ten thousand elites.
Annihilated. Even the Summit War didn't chew up the Marines this badly.
Fleet Admiral Sakazuki—Akainu—was instantly dragged in front of the World Government. The summons came from the very top—
The Five Elders.
"Akainu! What do you think you're doing?!"
"Why send Ryokugyu to exterminate the Big Mom Pirates?"
Sakazuki was ready. This had been his plan from the start, even if Ryokugyu's death blindsided him. His tone was flat. "Sending Marines to wipe out pirates—isn't that literally our job?"
"Or are you saying the Marines are in bed with pirates now?"
The Five Elders sneered. "Don't play word games."
"Uchiha Chiyu was already clashing with the Big Mom Pirates. All we had to do was sit back and watch the tigers maul each other. What was the point of sending Ryokugyu right then?"
"Exactly because we wanted to sit back," Sakazuki said. "I wanted Ryokugyu to be the oriole behind the snipe and clam—to wipe out both the Undying Legion and the Big Mom Pirates once they tore each other up."
"Didn't work out."
"The admiral is dead! Twenty vice admirals are dead! Nearly ten thousand elite Marines are dead!" the Five Elders roared. "Who pays for this?"
"I do," Sakazuki said. "Punish me however you like. But…"
"There's something you need to keep in mind."
"Uchiha Chiyu killed Kaido and took two Road Poneglyphs. Now he's killed Charlotte Linlin and taken a third."
The Five Elders' faces changed. They traded looks and saw the same hard calculation in each other's eyes.
"If he gets the last one, with how fast he moves, Laugh Tale and the secret of ONE PIECE will be out in the open in no time…"
"And you know his style and methods as well as I do, don't you?"