At the Sabaody Archipelago, a massive pirate ship appeared not far off, making its way in toward the islands. A pirate ship showing up at Sabaody was nothing unusual in itself, nothing worth a second glance. But this crew's flag was downright bizarre.
Most crews built their flags around a skull and crossbones, then added their own flourishes on top: a great beard, a broad sword, a pipe clenched between the teeth, something of that sort. This ship's flag, though, had a dragon painted on it, and if not for the skull clutched in the dragon's claws, no one would ever have guessed it was a pirate flag at all.
"Whose crew is that, then? The nerve on them. Any of you know which crew it is?" Right then, in the archipelago, a pirate captain whose ship was being coated for the voyage to the New World looked at that flag and sneered.
"Never seen a flag like it before, Captain. Why don't we just rob that ship? The gall, flying something that arrogant. Does he think he's one of the Four Emperors?" one of the crewmen said.
After all, the skull on a pirate's flag was the symbol of a pirate's terror, the emblem of a pirate's pride. But this flag used a dragon to seize that very skull in its grip. Wasn't that a challenge flung at every pirate in the world?
"I feel like I've heard about a flag like this somewhere. But it was so long ago, I can't seem to remember," said another pirate.
"By the look of them, they mean to come ashore. Once they land, watch how I deal with them. And this Nightless City is positively dripping with riches, yet its guard is pathetically weak. Back when it belonged to the Celestial Dragons, I wouldn't have dared lay a finger on it. Cross a Celestial Dragon and you bring an Admiral down on your head. I'd like to weigh myself against an Admiral, the Marines' top fighting strength, but it's still too early for that. Better to go make a name in the New World first. For whatever reason the Celestial Dragons have all cleared out now, so once our ship's coated, we can seize the moment and strip the Nightless City of every last scrap of its wealth. We plunder this place, then sail straight into the New World, and by then not even the Marines will be able to do a thing to us." The pirate captain wore a smug grin as he spoke.
"Brilliant, Captain!" his crew cheered.
What they failed to realize was that if they plundered the Nightless City, then even after they reached the New World, what would be waiting for them was a reckoning at the hands of one of the Four Emperors.
"Captain, something feels off. That ship looks like it came from the New World. See? The coating on their hull hasn't even fully worn away yet," a crewman said.
"So what of it? Not every crew from the New World is strong. A flag that distinctive, if the people flying it were powerful, the whole world would already know of them. We've never heard of them, which means they're weak and have no name. Failures who crawled back from the New World, most likely. And what is there to fear from a failure who fled the New World? Even supposing they are some powerful New World crew, what of it? Are we, the Byron Pirates, supposed to be afraid of them?" said Dillingarde, captain of the Byron Pirates.
"Still, we ought to be careful. They are New World pirates, after all, and even a New World failure shouldn't be taken lightly. I've got a bad feeling. That flag really does seem like something I've seen somewhere before, and like it's no simple matter. Let's get the full story before we make a move." This time it was the Byron Pirates' first mate who spoke, Lambo, a pistol in his hand.
"Fine, we'll do it your way. Send someone to find out as fast as you can exactly what crew these are, and what kind of strength they're carrying," Garde said.
As a pirate captain, Garde tended to be hot-blooded, the sort who liked to charge headlong into anything. That suited him well enough for rousing the crew's spirit and sense of unity, since pirates were bloodthirsty, impulsive creatures by nature, and too much hand-wringing was no way to lead them. But a temperament like that came with no shortage of flaws, and one wrong call could drag the whole crew down into a deadly pit, the entire lot of them caught in a single net.
Lambo, as first mate, played the role of the brake on him well. The two of them had been together since childhood, so the bond between them ran deep. On top of that, while Lambo wasn't Garde's equal in raw strength, he was far the cleverer of the two, and he had been born with a keen sense for things, especially for danger. So even Garde had always deferred to him. The moment Lambo said he had a bad feeling, Garde listened and sent men off to learn the crew's history. Lambo's instincts had saved their lives many times out on the seas, and the whole crew placed deep trust in them.
The ship flying that flag was, needless to say, Katakuri and his party returning from the New World. On Rosinante's orders, Katakuri had brought the Oathblood Guard aboard the Moby Dick ahead of the rest and arrived at the Sabaody Archipelago first. Now that they had returned to Rosinante's command, they naturally could no longer fly the Whitebeard Pirates' flag, so they had brought out the old flag of the Grey Kingdom once more and raised it high.
That Grey Kingdom flag was, it must be said, a peculiar one. Back when the Grey Kingdom was at the height of its power, no one would have dreamed of questioning it. They would only have thought it overbearing in the best way, a symbol of the Grey Kingdom standing at the very summit above all the pirates of the seas. But the Grey Kingdom had vanished from sight for over ten years now, and its sudden reappearance left many people unable to place it.
A great many simply thought: who are you, to be so brazen as to fly a flag like that, to dare clutch the skull that stands for all pirates beneath a dragon's claw? Wasn't that an open provocation to pirates everywhere?
In the Sabaody Archipelago, Garde and his men were far from the only ones who found that flag an eyesore. Many crews, on seeing it, wore looks of anger, of disdain, or of mockery. Without a word between them, one after another they fixed their eyes on the Oathblood Guard.
Among these crews were rising stars like the Byron Pirates, and more than a few of the Supernovas who had made their names thunder across the seas these past few years.
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Note: The Byron Pirates and their crew members are OC introduced by Author