Naval Headquarters — atop the battlefield.
The shock from the "resurrection" of Gol D. Roger still hadn't subsided.
"Roger! Ace—look! That's your father!" Luffy cried, disbelief and awe tangled in his voice.
"Ace's father… Gol D. Roger. I never thought I'd see the day," Sabo murmured under his breath.
At that moment a call for brothers passed through the crowd, but Fire Fist Ace barely heard it. He stood frozen, unmoving.
He stared at the familiar yet impossible figure in the distance, feeling as if everything inside him had been scattered and then swept back together in a single instant. A thousand conflicting emotions surged through him, leaving his mind unable to frame a single clear thought.
Memories flooded back. As a child, he had asked everyone around him what they thought of Roger. If Roger had a son—what would that son be like? Every answer he'd been given had been scorn or sneers. Every time, Ace defended his imagined father fiercely. He'd clung to that longing.
But year by year the longing had been eroded, replaced by bitterness. Once he took to the sea, Ace resolved to surpass Roger—to become the new standard. By chance or fate, he found himself aboard the ship of Roger's greatest rival: Whitebeard. From Whitebeard he learned untold truths about his biological father—the man Whitebeard called a great man.
Yet despite the stories, despite the respect Whitebeard showed Roger, something in Ace's upbringing left him unable to accept Roger fully. In his heart, for a long time, Whitebeard had been the only father he knew.
And now—his biological father, Gol D. Roger, stood alive before him.
Against every expectation, Ace felt something else rise inside him: warmth.
He should have hated Roger. He should have despised the bloodline. Instead, in that instant, a sliver of joy at Roger's return leaked through. His eyes stung and turned unintentionally red.
"Unbelievable!" someone shouted. "The most incredible thing in this era has happened!"
"The resurrection of Gol D. Roger will shake the world!"
Around them, commanders and revolutionaries—Karas, Lindbergh, Morley, and others—murmured in stunned disbelief.
"How did the Pirate King come back to life? I still can't believe my eyes!" Jinbei, the former Warlord, said, shaking his head.
"Hahaha — don't worry about how right now," one Whitebeard captain laughed. "The important thing is this: it's Roger himself!"
"Even Marines like Garp, Sengoku, and Shiki have identified him!" another shouted. "No doubt—Gol D. Roger is here!"
Marco, Jozu, Vista and the other captains of the Whitebeard fleet laughed and cheered with raw excitement.
"Papa's Ace's adoptive father, and Roger is Ace's real father!" one called out. "Two big dads in the same battle—now let's see how the Marines try to stop us!"
"After this, when we return to the New World, we'll celebrate together!"
Across the New World–aligned crews and Whitebeard's divisions, pirates roared, clapped one another on the back, and celebrated the impossible reunion.
Of course, not everyone cheered. In the ranks of smaller crews there were different feelings.
"Captain Skuyard!" muttered the members of the Great Eddy Spider Pirates, glancing at their captain with worry. They remembered past grievances: Skuyard had been driven by Akainu's instigation to attempt an assassination rooted in hatred for Roger. Though, in the present spectacle, the true Whitebeard was not harmed—the assassination remained a wound in memory, not erased by the dreamlike scene.
"I'm fine," Skuyard said, clenching his fists and forcing himself to look steady. "Right now, the first priority is to get Papa and the others off this field alive. As for Roger—there's time to deal with that later."
He thought, grimly, of the price he'd once been willing to pay—even to die after killing Whitebeard. Now, with the Pirate King returned, the calculus of survival had changed, and every old grudge had to be put on hold until the battle itself was over.