The News Coo carried word of Rosinante's return to every corner of the world.
The news landed like a stone thrown into still water, sending ripples outward in every direction. What shook people most wasn't simply that Rosinante had reappeared after ten years. It was the rest of it. That he had Celestial Dragon blood. That the World Government had not only restored that status but elevated him to Vice President of the Celestial Dragon Council of Elders. Nobles and royalty across kingdoms read those lines twice, then a third time, struggling to absorb what they meant.
...
Somewhere in the New World, aboard a pirate ship with a great carved head at its prow, a massive man with a face cold as packed ice sat holding a newspaper and reading it carefully.
Then, slowly, a smile appeared on that face. It made him look more dangerous, not less.
"So he's finally woken up. Ten years, and Doflamingo kept telling me he'd come back. I didn't believe it." Jack set the paper down. "Looks like he was right."
"The Oathblood has returned to His Majesty's side," Soal said, thinking it through. "But His Majesty hasn't issued any recall order to the main fleets."
"So what if he does or doesn't?" Jack's expression shifted into something dismissive. "You know how he is. Even if he called everyone back and rebuilt the Grey Kingdom from the ground up, he'd run it the same way he always did. Hands off. Let everyone do what they want. Easier to just leave things as they are."
...
In another part of the New World entirely, Raelmann was reading the same paper with an entirely different mood.
"Ha. Now that's a headline. The whole world must be shaking right now."
"His Majesty is awake again. Should we not find a way to go and pay our respects?" Bidel was frowning, his voice carrying an edge that wasn't quite suspicion and wasn't quite reluctance. "Ten years is a long time. A great many things have changed."
"They have," Raelmann agreed, his eyes going distant and sharp at the same time. "Ten years is long enough to change everything. We followed the emergency plan he had Laki draw up, and it worked the way it was supposed to. But no one expected the gap to stretch this far. Ten years is long enough that people stop thinking of themselves as waiting, and start thinking of themselves as free. Long enough that having someone above you starts to feel like something you'd rather not go back to."
Ten years ago, before Rosinante left for Marine Headquarters, he had asked Laki to draft a series of contingency plans for worst-case scenarios. Among them was a plan covering exactly what had happened: a situation in which, following a major battle, Rosinante became unable to lead the Grey Kingdom, and its fleets and the Oathblood would need to act independently until his return.
That plan was why the Grey Kingdom still existed in any meaningful sense. On the surface, the organization had shattered and scattered. But underneath, most of its strength had survived.
The reasoning behind letting it appear to fall apart had been straightforward. If the Grey Kingdom remained visibly intact, the Navy and the World Government would never stop hunting it. They would pour everything into destroying it completely. But a Grey Kingdom that had already collapsed presented a smaller target, a diminished threat, and that bought breathing room. Time to wait. Time to be ready when Rosinante returned.
It had worked. With the Grey Kingdom fragmented, the Navy's pursuit lost much of its intensity. Katakuri and the Oathblood had drawn the sharpest attention and absorbed the hardest blows, which had been part of the plan, but the individual fleets had largely been left alone.
The one thing no one had planned for was how long Rosinante would remain unconscious. Long enough that the fiction of independence had quietly become something else.
There was an old saying: better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix. Even knowing that having a captain like Rosinante was an advantage beyond measure, ten years of operating freely had a way of making that knowledge feel abstract.
"But surely His Majesty will want to settle accounts with the World Government and the Navy," Bidel said. "We were completely outmaneuvered ten years ago. He won't swallow that quietly. When the time comes, he'll need us gathered for a fight."
"Did you read the paper carefully?" Raelmann asked. "He's had his Celestial Dragon status restored. And not just that, he's been made Vice President of the Council of Elders."
"And? Do you think His Majesty cares about that kind of title the way Doflamingo does?"
"That's not the point." Raelmann's voice was patient. "The question is why the World Government and the Five Elders gave ground this far. Doflamingo has spent years clawing for recognition from the Celestial Dragons, and they've refused him every time. They don't forgive people who turn their backs on them. Yet the moment our captain came back, they restored everything without hesitation. If it were only that, maybe you could explain it as fear of his strength. But Vice President of the Council of Elders? That's a different matter entirely. The Five Elders themselves are Vice Presidents of that Council. What the World Government has just done is place our captain on equal footing with them. They don't do that unless they have absolutely no other option."
Bidel was quiet for a moment. "Then you're saying His Majesty already settled accounts with the World Government. And he did it so thoroughly that they had no choice but to yield."
"Think about the rumors that have been circulating. Big Mom went after Enel and the others, and came back badly wounded. The only people capable of stopping Charlotte Linlin in that kind of state, besides Whitebeard, would have been our captain. And according to Doflamingo's information, Whitebeard didn't move. So who that leaves isn't difficult to work out."
Bidel exhaled slowly. "His Majesty is stronger now than he was ten years ago."
"It would seem so."
"Then I suppose we'd better find a way to see him."
...
Across the New World, in scattered corners of different seas, several men looked up from the same newspaper at almost the same moment.
Jack of the JackPirates. Bartley of the One-Eyed Wolf Pirates. Hemmie of the Blood Sword Pirates. Raelmann of the Explosive Pirates.
"Hehehe. I knew that man wouldn't die so easily." Moriah lowered his paper and looked at the Shichibukai seated around him.
"He made us kneel before him once," the killer said, running his tongue along his teeth. "If he'd died like that, I'd have been genuinely disappointed."
"The Oathblood has reunited with him," said the shadow-user among them. "Shouldn't we go and meet him as well? This situation needs to be addressed one way or another. And now that he holds a Celestial Dragon title, he can't simply return to being a pirate. The Grey Kingdom won't be reassembling either. He shouldn't hold it against us for going our own way. Ten years is ten years."
"We'll go," the Oni Warrior said quietly, with a finality that closed the matter.
Tao Lang's eyes caught the light and flickered with something unreadable.
...
Far away, on a small coffin-shaped boat, a figure with eyes sharp and cold as a hawk's raised his head from whatever he'd been contemplating and gazed into the distance.
"Ten years," he murmured. "I wonder how his sword has changed."
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