This is Alvida-after-Sube-Sube-no-Mi-smoothing. Three composition-tells support the read:
Wardrobe: pirate-captain hat + striped pants is the Buggy-cover-story’s first appearance of a second pirate-captain — strong implication of a captain meeting captain scene.
Pistol: a flintlock pistol, not a sword or fruit — fits Alvida’s pre-fruit weapon-grammar.
Locale: at Buggy’s marooning-site (the broken-clam beach from Part 11) — sets up a Buggy-and-the-woman-on-the-same-island convention.
Forward-payoff: the cover-story is escalating from Buggy-alone-with-fauna (Parts 2, 4, 8) to Buggy-meets-named-character (Part 12). The cover-story-as-recovery-vector technique pivots from survival-mode to recovery-with-allies-mode. The Loguetown / Reverse Mountain arc Buggy/Alvida team-up is the structural endgame the cover-story is setting up.
Why this matters
Cover-story-as-canon execution continues — the cover-story is now introducing new characters into the canonical roster, not just tracking Buggy alone surviving. The convention is escalating.
Alvida’s post-smoothing introduction is being done in cover-story-paratext rather than main-plot panels — when Alvida returns to the main plot, the reader has already met her post-smoothing visual.
The Buggy-Alvida partnership is being seeded ~one arc before its main-plot debut — Oda’s long-burn-cover-story-as-character-introduction technique.