Chapter 999

About four years before the present, Ace landed on the island with the Spade Pirates hoping to fight Kaidou, but with the Emperor away on an expedition he crossed swords with Yamato instead. Mid-duel Ace demanded to know why someone so powerful would tolerate explosive cuffs binding not only his wrists but his very spirit. Stirred by the challenge, Yamato struck the enormous dragon statue and declared how he longed to sail the seas as freely as Oden once had; moved in turn, Ace put his own fire to the statue. Sharing a bottle of sake afterward, Yamato quizzed Ace about the wider world, and Ace named up-and-comers such as Cavendish, Kid, Law, and Bege, adding that the greatest of them all, his brother, had yet to sail.

In the present, Yamato relays all this to Momonosuke and Shinobu, admitting he is Kaidou's offspring yet thinks of himself as Oden, which only deepens their confusion; even so, they take him as a friend. Somewhere else, Tama opens up to Nami about the past she shared with Ace and about how bluntly Luffy had broken the news of his death, which Nami gently explains is simply Luffy's way.

Marco lifts Zoro skyward toward the rooftop as Robin and Brook dash into the castle interior, only for King and Queen to bar the path. Marco thinks back on how Whitebeard would not wage war on Wano even for Oden's sake, dreading the catastrophic toll on innocent lives, and how Ace once came to blows with his captain over that very refusal before resolving to grow stronger. King and Queen morph into their pteranodon and brachiosaurus shapes to block Marco's route, yet Queen's shots sail straight through the flaming bird.

Atop the dome, Big Mom instructs Kaidou to spare only Robin, whose gift she needs for the Poneglyphs, and presses him about where his Road Poneglyph lies as he plans to drop the island onto the Kouzuki castle in the Flower Capital. She reminds him that the Uo Uo no Mi, a mythical fruit, came to him from her hand on the day the Rocks Pirates were destroyed at God Valley thirty-eight years earlier, a favor she frames as a debt for life; Kaidou shrugs her off, saying such matters can wait until they find the One Piece. The chapter also confirms it was Yamato, not Ace, who truly broke the statue. Its color spread forms half of a poster celebrating the series' one-thousandth chapter.