Whitebeard of the Four Emperors

The disclosure that Ace descends from the former Pirate King rattles the entire world. Reporters scramble for their offices, and at Marineford the Marines stand dumbfounded, with Smoker shaken, Mihawk uneasy, and Hancock realizing Luffy and Ace share no blood. Moria marvels that Roger left an heir at all given how everyone tied to him was hunted down, Doflamingo merely laughs, and Garp drifts into memory.

Sengoku continues that two years prior, Ace took the surname Portgas and rose as the formidable captain of the Spade Pirates, at which point the Marines recognized Roger's line had survived. He claims Whitebeard saw the same and recruited Ace meaning to crown him the next Pirate King. Ace fiercely objects that his only goal was to make Whitebeard king, but Sengoku dismisses it as delusion.

Garp's flashback shows the jailed Roger asking the Marine to protect his unborn child, since the boy's mother would surely be executed, and Garp gruffly agreeing on his own terms. On Baterilla, Marines comb the island for pregnant women while Rouge slips past them, later naming her son Gol D. Ace as doctors fail to revive her. Garp then delivers a young Luffy into the forest where Ace already waits.

Back in the present, a fleet of forty-three subordinate pirate crews under captains like Doma, McGuy, the Decalvan Brothers, and Squard arrives to save Ace. The admirals sense something, and Whitebeard's coated ships surface from underwater, the Moby Dick rising as the Emperor stands on its masthead, glad his son is unharmed.

Usopp's cover story ends with him grown obese on the Boin Archipelago. Rouge is shown fully and names Ace using the name Roger had chosen. The chapter reveals Ace once captained the Spade Pirates, that Whitebeard deliberately sought to make him Pirate King, and that the Whitebeard Pirates field fourteen active commanders.