The sea breeze caught a corner of the newspaper, making a loud rustle, rustle sound.
There was a silence on the deck.
Gion stared intensely at the bloody picture on the newspaper.
"Golden Lion... Shiki..."
Gion's voice was a bit dry. It was the instinctive fear a Marine felt for that name. "That madman... to escape prison, he actually cut off his own legs?!"
As one of the last pirates from Roger's era, he was the "Pirate" who once almost ruled these seas. Gion knew exactly what his escape meant.
The Great Pirate Era, started by Roger, was still at its peak, and now a monster from the old era had returned.
This sea was about to become even more chaotic.
Aiden stood beside her. His eyes swept over the text on the newspaper, but his expression was surprisingly calm. "The myth of Impel Down being an 'iron wall' has been broken. For the current World Government, this is undoubtedly a loud slap in the face."
He closed the newspaper and handed it back to Gion.
"Golden Lion really knows how to pick his time."
"Then the matter of the G-17 branch—" Gion was a bit worried. At this critical moment, would their act of "killing first and reporting later" crash right into the anger of the higher-ups?
"Think of it from another angle."
Instead of worrying, the corners of Aiden's mouth curled into a slight smile. "For us, this is actually good news."
"Good news?" Gion was stunned.
"With such a huge failure, Admiral Sengoku and the Five Elders are probably having a massive headache right now trying to find Golden Lion. At a time when the sky is falling, no one will have the energy to look deeply into what happened at a small place like the G-17 branch."
Aiden analyzed the situation calmly. "In the face of the fear brought by Golden Lion, our 'violation' will not only be ignored, but the 'results' we bring back will become a much-needed fig leaf and a morale booster for Marine Headquarters."
Hearing Aiden's analysis, Gion's tense nerves finally relaxed a little. She looked at Aiden, who remained so calm even in the face of such shocking news. The unease in her heart slowly faded.
"You guy... what is your heart made of?" Gion shook her head helplessly. "With something like this happening, you can still actually laugh."
Aiden glanced at the deck, which was starting to get noisy. This was clearly not a good place to talk about sensitive topics.
"There are too many people here."
Aiden turned and walked toward the cabin. "Let's go. We need a quiet place. Before we arrive at Headquarters, we need to go over our story one last time."
A moment later, inside the cabin.
Even though the outside world was in chaos because of that newspaper, the room itself was quiet.
The noon light came through the porthole and lit the table.
Aiden wore a black casual shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked calm. He picked up the teapot and poured tea into the cup in front of Gion without spilling a drop.
Then he picked up his knife and fork and started on the steak in front of him.
He cut the meat neatly and without any wasted movement.
[S-tier]Noble Etiquette made even simple movements look elegant.
Seeing him act so normally helped Gion calm down a little.
"Try it," Aiden said, pushing the sliced steak toward Gion. "Things are tense, but food is still food. This came from G-17, so don't waste it."
Gion looked at the carefully prepared meal, then at Aiden, who looked far too calm for the situation. She could not help but smile bitterly.
"Because worrying solves nothing."
Aiden wiped the corner of his mouth and said, "Besides, chaos can also be an opportunity."
A few days later. North Blue, near Minion Island.
This was a huge waste processing plant, one of the Donquixote Family's current secret bases.
Inside the dim, abandoned factory, scrap metal was piled up everywhere.
A young man wearing a pink feather coat and sunglasses was squatting in a pile of newspapers without caring about how he looked.
It was Donquixote Doflamingo.
"Fuffuffuffu..."
Doflamingo grabbed a copy of today's World Economy News. Veins bulged on his forehead as he let out a chilling laugh.
The front-page headline read: Shock! G-17 Branch Suffers Attack! Great Pirate Victor Hugo Executed! Marine Commodore Nelson Heroically Dies in Battle!
"A few days ago, that lunatic Golden Lion cut off his own legs and escaped from Impel Down, humiliating the Marines..."
"And now this?"
"Heroically died in battle? Both sides wiped out? What a joke."
Doflamingo slammed the newspaper onto the oil-stained table. A dangerous light flashed behind his sunglasses.
"That idiot Victor wanted to become one of the Shichibukai, and he pinned all his hopes on the Celestial Dragons. G-17 was his most important supply route and his way to get close to the higher-ups. There is no way he would attack that place."
"And that coward Nelson would die protecting civilians? Please. That's the biggest joke I've heard all year."
As someone who understood the rules of the underworld better than most, Doflamingo saw through the lie in the report at a glance.
"None of this makes sense."
His finger tapped against the table. "Victor is dead. Nelson is dead. Even the CP0 agents at the scene are listed as missing. Everyone who knew the truth is gone."
"This is obviously an internal Marine purge."
His gaze shifted to a line of small print in the corner of the page. It mentioned the survivors and the people who suppressed the rebellion.
[Marine Commodore Gion and her accompanying Sergeant Aiden showed bravery in this suppression...]
"Gion..."
Doflamingo's eyes passed over that name and stopped on the unfamiliar one behind it.
"Aiden?"
His expression changed slightly.
That face...
He immediately remembered something from two years ago. At Roger's execution in Loguetown, the event that started the Great Pirate Era, it was that young Marine who had carried out the execution himself
"Fuffuffu... so it's you."
Doflamingo grinned, showing his white teeth. "The brat from the execution platform back then has already become one of the Marines' blades?"
"Very interesting, Aiden. I'll remember you."
In the shadows behind Doflamingo,
another tall man in a black feather coat was leaning against a rusty machine.
His face was painted with ridiculous clown makeup, and a cigarette hung from his mouth.
It was Rosinante, Doflamingo's younger brother.
Not long ago, he had returned to the family, claiming that he hated the Marines and had nowhere else to go. He took Vergo's place after Vergo infiltrated the Marines and became the second Corazon.
To hide his identity as a Marine spy and keep his suspicious brother from noticing anything, he claimed that the trauma from his childhood had left him mute. Most of the time, he only communicated through gestures and writing.
At that moment, he was trying to light the cigarette in his mouth.
Click.
Distracted by that familiar name, he accidentally set his feather coat on fire.
"Ah! Master Corazon!"
"Quick, get water!"
"Damn it! What are you standing around for? If Master Corazon gets burned, the Young Master will kill us!"
The pirates around him panicked. They threw aside their drinks and weapons and rushed over to help put out the flames.
After all, this was the Young Master's own brother.
After a chaotic struggle, Rosinante finally put the fire out. He stood there with his face blackened by smoke, looking thoroughly embarrassed. He waved at his subordinates to show that he was fine.
Doflamingo glanced at him, snorted, and looked away.
But behind the clown makeup, Rosinante's thoughts were anything but calm.
"I didn't expect to hear about you here... Aiden."
He repeated the name in his mind, and his thoughts drifted back to a few months earlier.
Back then, he had still been in the Marine Elite Training Camp. He and Aiden had fought side by side during the Ohara incident.
After leaving Ohara, because of the special nature of his [Nagi Nagi no Mi] ability, he had been chosen by "Father" Sengoku for this top-secret undercover mission.
After graduating from the training camp, his records were erased. He did not even have the chance to properly say goodbye before being sent into the darkness of the North Blue.
"G-17 branch... Victor Hugo..."
Rosinante looked at the newspaper on the ground. It was full of lies about a pirate attack and heroic Marine resistance.
As the family's second Corazon, he knew exactly what kind of connection Victor had to G-17. He understood what had really happened here.
Looking at the newspaper, Rosinante felt a little warmth in his chest.
This had to be Aiden's work.
"No matter where you go, you're still following your own justice."