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Nobody had expected Red-Hair Shanks to just appear right as the Summit War started.
The marines were clearly panicking, desperately trying to adjust their plans – they’d expected one emperor, not two of them. The Whitebeard Pirates seemed just as stunned – they hadn’t made an alliance. This was their battle to fight, their family member on the scaffold.
On Sabaody, the crowd had fallen quiet, the silence only broken by the sounds of the bubbles popping and journalists’ pens rapidly scratching over paper to convey these massive news to their headquarters once they knew what Shanks wanted there and they’d processed the shock. And the one they’d gotten mere seconds earlier, hearing that the Pirate King, Gold Roger himself, had a son.
At Marineford, everyone watched as Shanks unsheathed his sword.
“You’re a bunch of cowards,” he declared into the stunned silence, “going after that boy, for a father he’s never met.” He pointed his sword straight at Sengoku, and raised his voice so that every last person on the plaza would be able to hear him. “If you want to kill Roger’s son, try to take my head instead! Leave my little brother alone!”
Sengoku looked ready to have an aneurism. A glance to Garp only got him a clueless shrug, indicating that was the first time he heard this at well. Firefist blinked in surprise, too. “Don’t look at me, I don’t know anything,” he instantly claimed.
Suspicious.
Of course, all older marines knew Shanks had sailed with Roger since he’d been a child. But they’d done research. He was from the West Blue. Probably orphaned. Taken in by pirates since nobody else would take care of him. Sentimental feelings aside, he had no claim to Roger’s name or his blood.
“Nonsense. You were just his apprentice, nothing more.”
“Roger was my father, in every sense of the word, including by blood. You really think he met and married mom in the span of a year and instantly had a son? Please. Mom had higher standards than that.”
The confidence he spoke with made Sengoku hesitate a little, but in his stead, Admiral Akainu spoke up. “Do you take us for morons? Unlike your supposed brother, you look nothing like Roger. Neither of the parents you claim even had red hair. Got an explanation for that, Red-Hair Shanks?”
It was a mistake. A trap. The edges of Shanks’ lips curled up into a devious smile.
“It’s dyed.”
And just like that, the battle for public attention was lost.
True or not, tomorrow every newspaper on the planet would print the headline ‘Red-Hair Shanks dyes his hair!’. Perhaps some of the more serious ones would have the decency to put it on the second page, behind the news of the war, but they’d print it nonetheless.
“What?” Shanks laughed into the stunned silence. “I inherited my mother’s strawberry-blond hair, or like certain people would put it, pink enough to make everyone think I was a girl. Like any insecure prepubescent boy, I started dyeing it to be properly red, and by the time I was mature enough to not care anymore, you guys already dubbed me as ‘Red-Hair’, so I kind of had to keep it. I don’t see how that’s my fault.”
All hell broke loose. Suddenly everyone on the plaza was debating this with whoever was closest to them. Admiral Akainu was seething in place, ready to literally erupt and drown all enemies of justice in magma.
Truly, it was a revelation for the history books.
(And if a sneaky bird used this incredibly potent distraction to fly up high and then drop back down on the execution platform to set his fiery friend free, well. Why not? At this point, it might as well happen, wouldn’t you say?)