Rumbleeeee—!!!!
The prison ship that had shot up through the clouds now began plunging in the opposite direction, racing down the sheer waterway at a furious speed.
It was descending at least three times faster than it had climbed.
With the wind’s shriek tearing at our ears, enormous sprays burst upward as though the bow were about to split apart. The heavy armored plates groaned and screamed, while the prisoners hanging from the mast sprayed vomit and howled on the verge of passing out.
"Aaaagh—!! Stop! There aren’t any brakes—!!"
Buggy the Clown foamed at the mouth, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the helm.
"The ship won’t turn! If we slam into the bottom like this, there won’t even be bones left to collect—!!"
"Steady now, my red-nosed friend! There’s no constable here to ticket us for speeding, so why all the fuss?"
Holding the swaying stern rail with one hand and a bottle of rum in the other, I casually pressed my tricorn hat down over my head.
Yet even the mischief in my eyes turned cold the moment I looked toward the mist-shrouded horizon at the end of the waterway.
Whoooosh—.
The instant we burst out of the channel and slid into the first sea of the Grand Line, what stood before us was not a vast blue ocean.
It was a gigantic, black... wall.
A pitch-black cliff rising endlessly high enough to blot out the sky. A living mountain, its surface deeply gouged with countless scars, with a yellow eye the size of a house embedded in its middle...
"...Huh?"
Buggy the Clown’s jaw dropped to the deck.
"Wha... wha..."
"It’s a whaaaaale—!!!!"
Don Krieg clutched the iron bars and screamed, his face drained of all color, while Kuro of a Thousand Plans froze white-faced after dropping his glasses.
Laboon, the Island Whale. The enormous monster whale lay crouched directly in front of the channel’s exit, completely blocking our way.
Our ship, borne along by the furious current pouring from the channel, was racing forward at dozens of kilometers per hour. There was no room to turn the bow. In three seconds, the prison ship weighing dozens of tons would ram straight into the whale’s forehead and crumple like a tin can.
"It’s over...! We’re all dead...!"
As the crew clutched their heads in despair—
I spat the cigar I had been chewing into the sea and snapped my head toward one corner of the deck.
"Oi, pointed-nose friend!"
Arlong, bracing himself against the railing, whipped his vicious gaze toward me.
"Is that so-called ‘great Fish-Man pride’ you’re always boasting about... really just sitting politely like a goldfish in an aquarium and getting rammed until your guts burst?"
"...What did you say, you lesser life-form?!"
Arlong ground his jaw hard enough to shatter it.
I slammed the tip of my cutlass into the deck at my feet and shouted.
"You call yourselves rulers of the sea! Dive beneath the hull and drive up the current before we smash into that damned monster’s snout! Prove those fancy swimming skills of yours!"
An insult and a provocation.
But at my sharp cry, Arlong’s blue muscles swelled as if ready to burst.
His pride as a man had swallowed his fear whole.
"You insolent human...! Open your eyes and watch! See what Fish-Men can do in the sea!!"
Boom—!
Arlong kicked off the deck rail and hurled himself into the raging waves.
In an instant, Arlong plunged into the fierce currents beneath the ship. His massive webbed hands brutally seized hold of the ocean’s very flow.
Fish-Man Karate. A secret art unique to Fish-Men, gathering the countless pressures within seawater into a single point.
Ssssss—.
A massive deep-sea tremor began to rumble from beneath the ship.
Arlong’s blue hands wound around the swirling current, and he unleashed a thunderous battle cry from underwater.
"[Fish-Man Karate Secret Technique]——!!"
"[Raging Current, Surging Waves]!!!!"
Kraaaaaash—!!!!
As if a colossal water dragon had surged from beneath the hull, thousands of tons of seawater formed a gigantic pillar and savagely drove the prison ship’s bottom up into the air!
Vwoooong—!
"Uwaaaah?! The ship’s flying?!"
The hull lifted clear into the air and shot diagonally toward the underside of the whale’s jaw.
But it was not enough.
This was not an ordinary wooden vessel, but a heavily armored transport clad in thick iron plating. Even lifted by Arlong’s monstrous strength, it could not clear the mountain-sized whale’s back. Its trajectory would still send it crashing straight into the crown of Laboon’s head.
‘We’re half an inch short!’
To make up that final half inch—
I flew through the wind and landed atop the highest railing at the stern.
That heavy, unfamiliar power which had kicked through and shattered Smoker’s smoke. I wrung every drop of that black-flame-like life force rising from deep within me and poured it into the entire blade of my cutlass.
Crackle—!
The blade darkened to a black deeper than midnight, warping the air around it.
The greatest output at a limit I had never once drawn upon before.
"God of the sea... looks like I’ll be making a rather noisy flight home today!!"
One-tenth of a second before the ship struck the whale’s forehead—
I spun my body three hundred and sixty degrees,
and swung the blade, blackened like a black blade, down at full force toward the sea behind me.
"Drive us forward—!!!!"
Kraaaaaaash—!!!!
The sea exploded.
It was no mere shock wave. The colossal mass and pressure blasted out by my Haki crushed the seawater, detonating it like a massive deep-sea depth charge.
In the instant that the ‘updraft’ Arlong thrust upward from below meshed perfectly with the ‘propulsion blast’ I unleashed from behind—
Rumbleeeee—fwoooosh—!!!!
The enormous ironclad ship weighing dozens of tons,
like a flying fish kicking off the water’s surface...
soared completely into the sky.
"...?!"
The ship flew.
Against a backdrop of towering storm clouds, the huge armored transport with its colorful, tattered circus sails rose high into the sky, grazing past Laboon’s massive snout.
Swoooosh—.
Laboon’s gigantic back slid beneath the bottom of the ship.
Crocus, the old lighthouse keeper reading a newspaper on the little flower-patterned artificial island before the lighthouse, gaped so wide his jaw nearly fell off. Laboon’s enormous yellow eye, floating in the sea, blinked in bewilderment at the ship flying through the air.
A fleeting flight that defied gravity.
Standing at the stern rail with a cigar clenched in my teeth, the tails of my coat whipped fiercely toward the sky.
And then—
Kraaaaaaash—!!!!
The transport, having cleared Laboon’s enormous body perfectly, plunged straight into the calm open sea beyond the whale’s back.
A towering wall of water erupted high into the air.
Slosh, slosh.
As the enormous waves settled, the ship came to rest upon the Grand Line’s miraculously tranquil surface.
"Pwah—!!"
Arlong hauled himself up by the bowline, spraying water from his mouth, then sprawled flat on the deck. He panted, every ounce of strength drained from his body, but the corners of his mouth curled upward with a predator’s pride at having accomplished a feat no human could possibly imitate.
"Did you see that... you lesser life-forms...? This is the power of Fish-Men...!"
Across the deck lay unconscious prisoners, Buggy the Clown sprawled out, Don Krieg drooling blankly, and Kuro of a Thousand Plans with one arm of his glasses broken.
In the middle of that chaos,
I gave my crooked tricorn hat a quick shake and set it straight, then took the bottle of forty-year-aged rum that had somehow survived intact from my pocket.
Pop.
I pulled the cork out with my teeth and poured the fragrant liquor down my throat. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I looked beyond the bow.
Beyond the thick sea fog,
the faint silhouettes of massive, bizarre cactus-shaped cliffs rose above the horizon.
Whiskey Peak, the island of illusions and assassins.
I raised the empty rum bottle and lazily waved it at the distant cactus rocks.
"Oh... that was quite the fiery landing, but it seems the next tavern lies beyond that strange-looking patch of thorns."
Over the deck, where the crew groaned and dragged themselves to their feet, the Dead Man Pirates’ torn sails caught the favorable wind, and the ship slowly began gliding down the Grand Line’s first route.
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