"That can't be right. Didn't the Navy declare him dead?"
"You can't believe someone like that is dead until you've seen the body yourself. But this just got interesting. A figure who vanished ten years ago suddenly reappears, and now the question is what the Navy is going to do about it." One of the rookie Supernovas nearby smiled as he said it, sounding more entertained than afraid.
While the crowd was still murmuring among themselves, more figures began descending from the pirate ship, unhurried and deliberate.
At the front walked someone remarkably young.
A step behind him came two others. One was Enel, God of Thunder, who had appeared moments before. The other was Dark Thorn, the Shinigami. Both were names that carried serious weight in the New World, and even rookies with little knowledge of those waters had heard of them, because their reputations had been built one conquest at a time.
Behind those two came a tide of black-clad attendants, and these were not the perimeter guards from before. Their strength ran deeper, and there were not a handful of them but several hundred, stretching back across the dock in a wall of controlled, lethal presence.
The sight of them made the watching pirates break into cold sweats. Never mind Enel and Dark Thorn, never mind the ranking officers of the Oathblood. Even the ordinary Guards standing in formation were individually stronger than most of the captains present. Taken together, all at once, the pressure they radiated was something that didn't have a name.
"They're terrifying. I genuinely cannot imagine what the Grey Kingdom looked like at its peak."
"Is that young one in the lead the Dragon King? He looks so young. That has to be a joke."
"Exactly. Wasn't he supposed to have conquered the seas ten years ago? He can't possibly look like that."
"Maybe it's his son. Or a successor or something."
The pirates kept their voices low, whispering to each other in the shadow of that overwhelming presence. What they didn't know was that with Observation Haki active among the Oathblood Guards, not a single word was going unheard. More than a few Guards shot sharp glances into the crowd, though with Rosinante present, none of them moved.
"Ha, it seems they don't quite believe Your Majesty is the real Dragon King," Enel said, grinning. "Should we provide a demonstration?"
"Who exactly do I need to prove anything to?" Rosinante replied with an easy smile, and kept walking, leading the procession forward into Sabaody.
"No doubt about it. That is the Dragon King Rosinante." Oubaron's voice had gone very quiet. "Ten years gone, and not a single thing about him has changed. He looks exactly as I remember."
"That's what makes it undeniable," Kenny said. "If the Oathblood had gone looking for someone to impersonate the Dragon King, they would have accounted for the aging. The fact that he looks identical to ten years ago is the proof."
Oubaron was quiet for a moment. Then something settled in his expression, and he spoke with sudden certainty.
"We're not leaving."
"Not leaving? Are you serious?" one of the Raging Lion Pirates' officers turned to him. "This place is about to become a battlefield between the Grey Kingdom and the Navy. Even if we somehow avoid getting caught in the crossfire, we're already too close to the New World here, and this island is crawling with eyes. If the Big Mom Pirates send people after us, they'll find us here in no time at all."
"There won't be a battle," Oubaron said. "Not with the Dragon King here. Even the Navy will think twice before moving against him. And have you not noticed what's already happened? The World Government and the Navy cleared out of Sabaody before the Grey Kingdom even arrived. Katakuri has had that flag flying over the city for a while now, and the garrison right here on the archipelago hasn't made a single move. Not even a gesture. The Navy already knew the Dragon King was coming. More than that, the two sides have almost certainly already reached some kind of arrangement."
"If that's the case..." Kenny said slowly.
"Then Sabaody is about to become the safest place in the world." Oubaron nodded. "The Three Declarations of the Undying City. You remember them. The agreement the Dragon King made years ago with three of the great crews, including the Big Mom Pirates. This place has always carried the protection of the Whitebeard Pirates, the Big Mom Pirates, the Beasts Pirates, and the Grey Kingdom together. One of the current Emperors, Red Hair, has also pledged to honor that agreement. The moment the Oathblood retakes Sabaody, those declarations come back into force. Even if the Big Mom Pirates want to come after us here, they'll have to weigh that against the agreement and against the Dragon King himself."
Silence settled over the Raging Lion Pirates when Oubaron finished.
Resting their lives on an agreement they couldn't see or touch wasn't something that came naturally. But after a moment, someone spoke what the rest were thinking.
"We've already made enemies of the Big Mom Pirates. If they decide to come for us with everything they have, it won't matter where we run. Even at the ends of the sea, we won't outrun them forever. Which means this is actually the safest place we can be." Oubaron's voice carried no doubt at all.
In the end, the crew trusted their captain. They always had.
...
And they weren't the only ones who decided to stay.
With Rosinante's arrival, several other pirate crews that had been rushing toward their ships quietly stopped moving. They lingered at the edge of the archipelago, watching and waiting.
The ones who stayed were almost exclusively the newest stars of the pirate world, rookies and Supernovas alike, though their reasons were different from Oubaron's. They weren't calculating angles of safety. They simply understood that with Rosinante's appearance, Sabaody had become the eye of a storm that would reshape the world.
These were people who didn't know how to look away from something like that. Faced with an event of this magnitude, none of them were thinking about how to escape it. They were pressing closer, pulled in by the gravity of the moment, because even if they couldn't be part of what was about to happen, they were going to watch it with their own eyes.