Chapter Text
There are things the World Government wants forgotten. Knowledge they have tried to bury beneath the sands of time. Old legends, more truth than myth, that have shaped the world since it first began. One of these legends they have tried to erase, is how a mortal can become a god.
They have not succeeded.
They hid the knowledge away at the end of the world where no one would find it.
But someone still manage to find it.
You see, the world believes that Gold Roger was the first to reach Raftel and that is why he was named King of the Pirates.
This is a lie the World Government has spread. Whispered in bars, crowed from newspapers and etched into the very hearts of the world.
Gol D. Roger was not the first. Nor was Joy Boy the only one before him.
No.
There have been others.
Many others.
Rocks D. Xebec made the journey. Edward Newgate. Charlotte Lin. Kaido. Shiki. They each made the journey. They each learned the secret to becoming a god.
Xebec tried first. He brought his crew to Gods Valley and he fought and killed and tried to burn his soul into the very fabric of reality.
He failed.
In part because there was a pair of D.s there to stop him, as is their duty. In part because he did not read the instructions correctly.
Step 1: Be Known in the Hearts of the People.
Step 2: Be Loved. Be Feared.
Step 3: Perform a Miracle
Step 4: Your Name is Whispered before the Sea, the Sky, the Land and the Flame.
Step 5: Forsake your Mortality.
The Celestial Dragons have tried for centuries to ascend. Have made themselves known to the world, have made themselves feared. Their names are whispered in dark rooms as people cower away. But like Xebec, they do not understand. Neither Xebec nor the Celestial Dragons perform miracles for any but themselves. They fear death and cling tight to their lives. Finally, they do not understand that one can not buy the love of another.
And so they did not manage to ascend.
They others though?
Kaido was the first. His crew took in any who came to them as long as they were loyal. He defends his territories fiercely. And in their defense he performed a miracle, diving willingly beneath the sea as a devil fruit user to use his strength to sink his enemy's ship. When he emerged, he had casted away his humanity and his mortality. The Dragon God was born.
Charlotte Lin was the second, following much in the path of Kaido. The love of her family and the fear of her enemies as she carved her name into the world. Her miracle was the return of the soul belonging to the father of her eldest child. The return of the soul she had eaten. The Goddess of Souls became a part of the world.
Like Xebec, Shiki never managed to ascend. He was too greedy, too selfish, too afraid of dying to truly pass the trials.
Gol D. Roger never ascended for all that he completed each of the steps. When he heard the call to become something more, kneeling atop the scaffolding and about to die, he refused. Choosing instead to die a man so that his wife and son would live.
The third in the last century to ascend was Akagami Shanks the day he bet his arm on the next generation. Unlike his captain,
his father
, he chose the strength to challenge the world for the sake of his Nakama. There were few who would truly challenge the Red God.
The fourth, and the last of the Yonko, to ascend was Edward Newgate. His ascension comes on the battlefield, staring down the full force of the Marines as he defends his family. When Marshall D. Teach arrives, it’s not to face the strongest man in the world, but the God of Family. The traitor and Nakama slayer does not survive beyond the moment he makes his presence known.
Monkey D. Luffy never realizes the moment he becomes the God of Freedom, too busy chasing after the next big adventure. Everywhere he goes, he leaves miracles in his wake. His Nakama are the first to whisper his name in awe. The first to witness his miracles. And they learn to leave miracles of their own in their wake.
There are legends the World Government wants forgotten. And none more so than the Gods and Goddess that walk the world, some new, bright and shining, and some so very, very, ancient.