The galleon drifted through the Dark Seas like a wounded beast, its silhouette barely visible against the endless black. No stars pierced the sky above, no moonlight guided their path—only the dim, wavering glow of the bubble coating clinging desperately to the hull. Each creak of timber, each groan of stressed metal, sounded unnaturally loud in the crushing silence of the deep.
That the coating still held at all was a miracle. They had taken no established routes, no charted currents. The Sun Pirates had deliberately avoided every major sea lane, slipping instead into an unexplored current that twisted through the depths like a serpent. It was slower. Far more dangerous. But it was invisible to the world above—and right now, invisibility was all they had left.
Inside the galleon, chaos simmered beneath a thin veneer of control.
Fisher Tiger lay sprawled on the deck of the central hold, massive chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths. His once-indomitable presence—his roar, his will—was gone, replaced by a frightening stillness. Blood loss, poison, wounds that refused to close… no one could say which would claim him first.
And Jinbe was still missing. The knowledge gnawed at them all. Without Tiger conscious and without Jinbe's steady hand, the Sun Pirates were leaderless—adrift not just in the sea, but in purpose. Arguments flared in hushed tones. Orders contradicted one another. Fear slipped through the cracks of discipline like cold water.
But none of that compared to what awaited them at their destination. When the massive shadow of the Red Line had finally loomed into view, relief had surged through the crew like fire. Fishman Island was close. Sanctuary was within reach. Doctors, allies, home.
Then the sea opened up. And there was nothing. No barrier. No shimmering dome of light beneath the Red Line. No island.
Where Fishman Island should have stood—where generations had lived, suffered, dreamed—there was only devastation. Shattered coral drifted like the bones of a dead city. Ruined structures lay strewn across the seabed, cracked open as if crushed by a god's fist. The water was thick with debris… and worse.
Bodies. Hundreds of Merfolk corpses floated and sank in slow, awful spirals, their faces frozen in terror or resignation. Blood clouded the sea in drifting veils of red. Sea Kings—drawn by death—circled the ruins, massive forms tearing through the remains, feasting upon fallen kin with mindless hunger.
The galleon came to a halt, its crew staring in silent horror. Then the screaming began.
"What… what is this?!"
"Fishman Island—where is it?!"
"No—this isn't real—this can't be real!"
Fists slammed into walls. Weapons were drawn in blind fury. One pirate collapsed to his knees, clutching his head, repeating a single word over and over—home, home, home—until his voice broke. Anger followed panic, sharp and explosive.
"Who did this?!"
"The World Government?!"
"Humans—those bastards—this is their doing, isn't it?!"
There was no one to answer them. No elders to explain. No king to command. No Jinbe to steady their rage, no Tiger to roar sense into them. Only the drifting dead and the echo of a home erased from existence.
Some wept openly. Others stared, unmoving, their eyes hollow as if something inside them had shattered beyond repair. A few gripped the railings so tightly their hands bled, nails cracking under the strain. The Sun Pirates had been forged in chains, tempered by rebellion. But this—this was annihilation.
"It's those damn humans… I told you… I told you all this would happen someday—but no one would listen."
Arlong's growl cut through the hold like a serrated blade. His voice rose above the sobs, above the hollow silence that had settled after the first wave of shock. There was no tremor in it, no crack of grief—only vindication. A bitter, poisonous certainty. To him, this devastation was not merely tragedy; it was proof. Proof that the hatred he had carried like a brand in his soul had always been right.
Around him, fishmen knelt, leaned against the walls, or stared blankly into nothing. Some clutched keepsakes pulled from the wreckage—broken shells, torn cloth, a child's coral toy. Others simply held each other, shaking, as the truth settled in: families erased, bloodlines ended, a home annihilated.
Arlong didn't have that. Not anymore. The faces of parents, siblings, children—those things had long since faded from his memory, burned away by slavery and rage. Fishman Island had never truly been home to him, not the way it had been for the others. The only bonds he still acknowledged were two names—Fisher Tiger and Jinbe.
And now one lay broken and unconscious, hovering between life and death. The other was gone. Something inside Arlong had snapped—not into sorrow, but into fury. And fury demanded an outlet.
"This is exactly what I warned you about!" he continued, baring his teeth. "You trusted them. You believed coexistence was possible. You thought they'd let us live peacefully beneath their world! Look at this—look at what they've done to us!"
A few heads turned. Some eyes flickered with dangerous light. That was all Arlong needed.
"But Brother Tiger wanted to believe in them," Arlong spat, voice thick with contempt and something dangerously close to pain. "And Jinbe—soft-hearted fool—still does. And where has that gotten us? Our island is gone. Our people are dead. And the humans will sleep easy tonight, knowing they crushed us like insects."
"Enough."
The word came out low. Heavy. It didn't stop Arlong.
"They'll hunt us to the last fishman," Arlong snarled. "And when they do, remember this moment. Remember that I was right—"
He never finished the sentence. A massive shadow loomed, and then Arlong felt the world flip. A hand like iron clamped around his throat and lifted him clean off the deck. His feet kicked uselessly in the air as the galleon's mast rushed toward him—
BOOM.
The impact shook the ship. Arlong's body slammed against the thick wooden mast with bone-jarring force, the sound echoing through the hold like a cannon shot. The bubble coating rippled violently, and several crewmates stumbled as the deck shuddered beneath them.
The one holding him was a hammerhead fishman—huge even by their standards. His muscles were coiled tight, veins bulging as if they might burst through his skin. His grip didn't waver. Tears streamed down his face. Not silent ones. These were raw, shaking sobs, wrenched from a chest that could no longer contain them.
"I don't care," the hammerhead said, voice trembling but deadly calm, "if Tiger-san called you his little brother."
Arlong clawed at the hand around his neck, teeth bared, trying to twist free—but it was useless. The hammerhead was immovable, like a pillar rooted to the sea floor.
"Unlike you," the fishman continued, each word dripping with barely restrained violence, "most of us had families on Fishman Island."
His voice cracked. "My mate. My children. My parents. My siblings." His grip tightened. "They're gone." The surrounding crew froze. No one intervened. No one even breathed too loudly.
"So if you don't want to die by my hands," the hammerhead fishman said, pressing Arlong harder into the mast, wood creaking under the pressure, "you will shut up." It wasn't a threat. It was a promise.
The hammerhead fishman's tears fell freely now, splashing onto the deck. His shoulders shook, but his hold never loosened. This was a man standing on the edge of an abyss, and Arlong—of all people—had chosen to push him.
Arlong struggled, his gills flaring, rage flashing in his eyes as he tried to fight back. But for the first time, his fury met something colder. Something heavier. Malice toward his own kind. Unrestrained. Unfiltered. The hammerhead didn't want to kill Arlong. But he would.
Even if it meant breaking one of the greatest taboos of life at sea—slaying a crewmate. Even if it meant staining the Sun Pirates with fratricide. That was how deep the pain ran. Silence engulfed the hold once more, thick and suffocating. The only sounds were Arlong's ragged breathing and the distant groans of the ship drifting through a graveyard of a fallen nation.
At last, slowly, the hammerhead fishman released his grip. Arlong collapsed to the deck in a heap, coughing violently, hatred still burning in his eyes—but now, for the first time, tempered by something else. Fear.
The tension on deck was stretched taut, ready to snap. The hammerhead fishman still loomed over Arlong, his massive frame trembling with barely restrained violence. Arlong, sprawled against the mast, bared his teeth in defiance, hatred and humiliation churning violently behind his eyes.
Around them, the crew stood frozen—no one daring to move, no one daring to speak. The Sun Pirates had weathered storms, chains, and battlefields together, but this… this was different. This was the moment where brothers might spill each other's blood.
Then— Creeeak.
The sound was soft. Almost fragile. Yet it cut through the deck like a blade. Every head turned toward the inner cabin. The door slowly pushed open, wood groaning as if resisting what was about to emerge. A figure stepped out. Or rather—dragged himself out.
Fisher Tiger.
His massive frame, once the unshakable pillar of the Sun Pirates, was now hunched and unsteady. Each step looked like it cost him a year of his life. His breathing was ragged, uneven, as though his lungs themselves were protesting his stubborn refusal to remain unconscious.
The bandages wrapped around his torso were dark—soaked through with fresh blood. Hastily stitched wounds had torn open again, crimson seeping through the cloth and dripping onto the deck with every movement. The ship's doctor lay slumped nearby, in no condition to notice, much less stop him.
It was a miracle Tiger was alive. It was sheer will that kept him standing. For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then someone gasped.
"C-Captain…?"
"Brother Tiger…!"
"Tiger-san—!"
Voices rose all at once, shock and disbelief crashing over the deck. The hammerhead fishman froze mid-breath. Arlong's eyes widened, fury stalling as something far more complicated surged through him.
"Brother Tiger…!" one of the crew cried, rushing forward. "You're finally awake! You shouldn't be—"
Tiger didn't respond. He didn't even seem to hear them. His eyes—once fierce, once burning with defiance—were empty as they stared past the crew, past the ship, out into the endless dark sea.
To where Fishman Island should have been. There was no kingdom beneath the waves. No towering coral forests.
No glowing streets protected by the barrier under the Red Line. Only black water. Endless. Silent.
Dead. The ship drifted through the void where an entire civilization had once lived, and Fisher Tiger stood there, staring into the grave of his people.
One of the Sun Pirates reached him and placed a careful hand on his arm. "Captain, please—let us help you back inside. You'll tear your wounds open—"
Tiger shoved him away. Not violently. Not angrily. Simply… without looking. The crew member stumbled back, stunned—not by the force, but by the utter absence of awareness behind it. Tiger's gaze never wavered, never blinked, never left the darkness ahead. Blood continued to drip onto the deck.
Thud. Thud. Each drop sounded louder than the last.
Arlong slowly pushed himself upright, eyes locked on Tiger's back. For once, the words he so readily wielded as weapons refused to come. His fists clenched, trembling—not with rage alone, but with something far more dangerous.
Guilt. Confusion. Fear.
The hammerhead fishman lowered his hands, the fight draining out of him in an instant. Around the deck, hardened warriors—men who had broken chains and fought slavers—stood silently, some openly weeping as they followed their captain's gaze.
Tiger took one more step forward. Then another. His knees buckled. Several fishmen rushed to catch him, this time holding fast despite his weak resistance. Tiger finally seemed to notice them then—not with anger, but with a hollow exhaustion that went bone-deep.
"...Where is our home…? Where is Fishman Island…?" he murmured. The words were quiet. But they shattered the deck. No grand speech. No roar of rage. No curse hurled at the heavens. Just simple words. A simple truth.
"It's… all gone."
The Sun Pirates bowed their heads as one. And in that moment, standing on a ship adrift over the corpse of their homeland, the greatest symbol of their freedom finally understood the cost of the world he had challenged, the cost his entire race was forced to pay because of his defiance.
*****
Deep beneath the emerald canopies of Green Bit, far below roots older than history itself, lay a chamber the world was never meant to know existed. An underground laboratory of impossible scale.
The descent alone was enough to make even seasoned warriors uneasy—spiraling shafts reinforced with ancient alloys and seastone lattices, humming softly as hidden mechanisms breathed life into the abyss. The air grew colder with every step, thick with the sterile scent of alchemical serums and ozone, punctuated by the faint, rhythmic pulse of machinery that never slept.
And then the chamber opened.
It was vast—cathedral-like in its immensity, a hollowed world beneath the earth. The ceiling vanished into darkness, supported by colossal pillars etched with sigils older than any known Giant script. Veins of bioluminescent moss and artificial light panels bathed the chamber in a ghostly blue glow, illuminating the true horror—and wonder—of what lay below.
Rows upon rows upon rows. Hundreds of biopools.
Each pool was a specially crafted open pod—oval basins of reinforced crystal and alloy, filled with thick, faintly luminescent medical serum. The liquid churned slowly, alive with microscopic machines and ancient reagents, preserving what time itself had tried to erase.
Within every single pool lay a giant. Not the giants of modern Elbaf. These were something else entirely. Ancient giants.
Members of the long-lost Gallellia Tribe, a name whispered only in fragmented texts and forbidden archives. Titans believed to have vanished before the World Government itself had taken shape—their existence reduced to myth, their bones rumored to be large enough to form mountain ranges.
Even the smallest among them towered beyond fifty meters in height. Some exceeded seventy. Others… more. Their bodies were massive beyond comprehension—frames carved with raw, primordial power. Muscles lay dense and corded beneath ashen skin etched with natural runic patterns, like the world itself had branded them. Their horns—jagged, sweeping, or crown-like—curved in shapes no modern giant possessed. Some bore multiple sets, others none at all, but every one of them radiated a presence that made the air feel heavier.
These were not merely giants. They were weapons of an era when gods still bled.
Frost still clung to many of them—remnants of the caverns beneath Punk Hazard where they had been discovered, frozen in a tomb of eternal ice after some ancient catastrophe. Even now, thin layers of crystalline frost floated away from their skin, dissolving into the serum as preservation fields worked tirelessly to maintain equilibrium.
Suspended cables, thicker than ship masts, fed into each biopool—monitoring heart rhythms that barely registered, neural activity that flickered like dying stars, and genetic markers that baffled even the greatest minds. Massive holographic displays hovered above each pod, projecting incomprehensible data streams: cellular regeneration rates, anomaly readings, compatibility indices.
At the center of the chamber stood a raised platform. From there, the entire lab could be seen. And standing upon it was Einstein.
His coat fluttered slightly from the hum of generators as his sharp little eyes darted from screen to screen, calculations forming faster than machines could display them. Even he—one of the greatest scientific minds alive—could not fully mask the awe in his expression.
Suddenly a sharp, discordant alarm cut through the steady hum of the underground laboratory.
Einstein froze. For a split second, the cathedral-sized chamber seemed to hold its breath. One of the hovering monitors—far larger than the rest—flickered violently before flaring to life in a cascade of crimson warnings. Lines of data began spiking off the scale, numbers climbing so fast they blurred into one another.
ABNORMAL ACTIVITY DETECTED
NEURAL RESPONSE: ACTIVE
CARDIAC OUTPUT: ESCALATING
Einstein's pupils shrank. "…No," he whispered.
The reading belonged to Biopool 77. A giant that dwarfed even the others. Over eighty meters tall. The largest specimen they had recovered. The medical serum within the pool began to churn violently, waves sloshing against the reinforced crystal walls as if something massive were shifting beneath the surface. Thick cables groaned under sudden strain, and faint fractures spiderwebbed across the containment frame.
The vitals weren't just returning. They were surging. Faster than any simulation had predicted. Faster than the body should have been capable of after centuries—no, millennia—of frozen slumber.
Einstein leaned closer, his small hands flying across the holographic interface, eyes burning with feverish intensity. This was what they had been working toward. Proof that revival was possible. Proof that the ancient giants were not lost relics but sleeping titans.
And yet— A hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. "Einstein!" a voice barked urgently. "Snap out of it!"
He was pulled back just enough to notice the panic in the man beside him. The researcher was no novice—his coat bore the sigils of a senior biogeneticist, a man who had pledged his allegiance to the Donquixote family years ago. He had turned his back on the World Government without regret, and everything he had seen in this place only reaffirmed his choice.
Even so, fear now etched deep lines across his face.
"The vitals are accelerating despite the suppressants," the man said quickly, almost pleading. "Its neural activity is spiking far beyond safe thresholds. If it wakes up now—after centuries of frozen stasis—its nervous system will overload!"
Another alarm wailed.
MOTOR FUNCTION: ACTIVATING
"The shock alone will drive it beyond control," the researcher continued, voice tight. "Its body hasn't been acclimated. Its mind won't recognize this era, this environment—this world. It'll tear itself apart… or everything around it."
Einstein didn't answer at first. His gaze remained locked on the screen. The giant's heart rhythm, once a near-flat line, now thundered in heavy, deliberate beats—each pulse so powerful it caused tremors through the biopool floor. The rune-like patterns along the giant's skin began to glow faintly beneath the serum, ancient symbols reacting to life returning to flesh.
This wasn't a controlled awakening. This was instinct. Survival. Reclamation. Then it hit him. Einstein's breath caught.
"…No," he said again, this time louder, sharper. His fingers clenched into fists. "We can't let it wake up."
The researcher blinked. "Einstein?"
"If it awakens now," Einstein continued rapidly, his composure finally cracking, "there is a high probability it will go berserk. The restraints won't hold. Not these ones."
His mind raced through everything he had read—fragmented records of the Gallellia Tribe, ancient war giants who had once fought forces that reshaped continents. Beings whose rage had required entire alliances to suppress.
And worse—Einstein's eyes widened as realization settled in like ice. "Most of our forces capable of suppressing an ancient giant are off the island," he muttered.
The researcher stiffened. The recent catastrophe at Fishman Island had drawn away the Donquixote family's true monsters—the ones capable of clashing with forces of nature. Punk Hazard. Rescue operations. Containment. Diplomacy with Whitebeard.
Green Bit was undermanned. Dangerously so. Einstein spun around, voice suddenly cutting through the lab with authority far beyond his years.
"Contact the palace immediately," he ordered. "Send word to anyone still available—executives, officers, whoever is on the island. I don't care who. We need heavy hitters in this lab now."
The researcher didn't hesitate. He turned and sprinted toward the communication console, already barking orders into a transponder line. Einstein was already moving again.
"Administer additional suppressants—all of them," he snapped to the surrounding staff. "Triple the dosage if you have to. Flood the serum with neural inhibitors. We buy time—nothing more."
Technicians scrambled, hands shaking as they worked controls. Massive injectors descended into the biopool, pumping dark compounds into the glowing liquid. The machinery screamed in protest as power output spiked beyond recommended limits.
The giant's vitals wavered. For a moment, it seemed to slow. Then— THOOM.
The entire chamber shuddered. The surface of the serum bulged outward as something massive pressed up from beneath. One colossal finger twitched—moved—sending a shockwave through the biopool that cracked a support strut clean through. Einstein stared up at the towering silhouette beneath the liquid, his heart pounding.
"…Damn it," he whispered.
He had known this was a possibility. He had prepared for it. But knowing and facing it were two very different things. If the ancient texts were even half correct, then the restraints surrounding that giant were little more than thread. And if it broke free— Green Bit would not survive the night. Einstein clenched his teeth, eyes hardening as the alarms continued to scream.
"Hold on," he murmured, whether to the staff, the giant, or the world itself, he didn't know. "Just hold on… until help arrives."