Rayleigh was the first to break out of his stupor. Usually, he'd be nice and relaxed, asking polite little questions and making small talk. However, this was different.
"Who are you?"
Because not just anyone could completely bypass his senses like that.
"Nice to meet you!" Kairo smiled warmly. "My name is Soryu D. Kairo. And you must be Rayleigh, the Dark King and the right-hand man of the Pirate King."
Kairo kept that friendly smile plastered on his face the whole time.
{Bloodlust detected.}
Kairo paused. Huh? The fuck does the system mean?
Then he realized exactly what he was doing, and a nervous smile quickly replaced his confident one.
"Chill!" He waved his hands helplessly in front of his face. "I mean no harm, seriously."
"You don't say." Rayleigh looked him up and down with an intense stare.
Kairo realized there was only one real way out of this misunderstanding.
Poof!
The Transformation Jutsu dropped in a cloud of smoke, revealing long black wings and a small fire burning steadily behind his back. His skin was dark, and his eyes were a beautiful, piercing red. Unlike his future self, he didn't have ringed eyes yet—but his appearance was roughly the same, just a mini-sized version.
Rayleigh's posture instantly eased as he calmed down. "Oh. So you're one of them." That was definitely good to know.
"Do you know them?" Shakky asked, looking confused. Was this kid a friend of Rayleigh's or something?
Rayleigh downed a bottle of booze before answering. "Roger entrusted his kid to them. We found out about their existence through the final Poneglyph."
Kairo raised an eyebrow. So Joyboy actually wrote that info down? The dick. What part of 'secret society' did he not get?
"Oh, so that's where you disappeared to back then," Rayleigh muttered, downing another shot. Man, that was the good stuff. He turned his attention back to Kairo. "So, how is the kid?"
"Well, Ace is doing fine," Kairo replied. "He was transferred to the Marine Hero a few years ago. He's currently chilling on Foosha Island."
Technically, Kairo shouldn't have had access to that highly classified information, but he was a sneaky bastard like that.
"You guys usually prefer to stay in the dark," Rayleigh noted, studying him. "What brings you out here?"
From what Rayleigh knew of them—which wasn't much, considering the Poneglyph mentioned them but didn't exactly scream it in your face—they were ghosts. Honestly, if Oden hadn't accidentally set fire to one of the Poneglyphs back then, they might have missed it entirely. Under the specific light of the fire, certain characters in the text had glowed, and when you pieced them all together, it basically summarized them as: People guarding history. Trustworthy.
It wasn't the exact phrasing, of course. Hell, Rayleigh could barely remember the fine details anymore; it felt like every time he looked away from the text, his memory of it turned incredibly foggy. He later learned there was a heavy-duty genjutsu embedded in that bitch. Apparently, anyone without the Voice of All Things got hit by the mental fog. Roger was the only one immune to that stuff, while everyone else was left with blurry recollections.
Though, it did surprise Rayleigh when he found out Rocks D. Xebec was somehow still alive, even if he hadn't shown his face to the world yet.
Kairo, however, didn't know about that specific detail. The reports his clan had on Rocks suggested the man died shortly after the Pirate King claimed his treasure, or somewhere around that timeframe. Blackbeard was still pretty young when Rocks passed. Rocks honestly could have lived longer, but the man utterly refused to be hooked up to tubes and have his life extended by machines, so oh well.
The ultimate deal had been struck, though: in exchange for his son living past the age of thirty, the clan gained the right to summon Rocks without any real magical backlash. It was a pretty fair trade. Having someone like Rocks—who easily scaled way above a Marine Admiral, even if he was slightly below a Yonko—was always a massive win to keep in their back pocket.
Kairo walked over to the bar counter and slid onto a stool right next to Rayleigh, looking a bit giddy to be there.
"Would you like anything to drink?" Shakky asked, completely back to her usual casual self. If Rayleigh trusted the kid, that was good enough for her.
"Milk, please."
Yes, he would not be drinking alcohol today. He much preferred milk or orange juice, even though his clan probably had a massive wine cellar gathering dust since the Void Century. We're talking 800-year-old wine.
He turned his focus back to the legendary pirate. "I wanted to come and meet you myself. Heard you coat ships."
Rayleigh raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing on his lips. "I am simply a humble ship coater."
That bullshit was huge right now.
"And I'm just a regular kid," Kairo shot back. He clearly wasn't buying a single word of that humility.
Rayleigh chuckled heartily. "Do you need your ship coated?"
The boy nodded his head enthusiastically. "I am planning to explore the seas, and I heard you could coat a ship better than anyone else."
Rayleigh took another slow sip of his sake. "Oh my, what an honor. But from what I have seen of your clan, your technology is far above ours. I am sure you have the tech to manage it completely without my help."
He was probing for information, and Kairo knew it.
"So, like... technically I'm not even supposed to be here," Kairo confessed, leaning in. "I am supposed to be grounded right now."
Rayleigh raised an eyebrow as a grin broke out. Oh... I see.
A/N Chapter came hella late for one reason only.
Wuwa grinding....