"Otohime…!" King Neptune's bellow thundered through the throne hall as his enormous fist crashed against a marble pillar. The column exploded into shards, fragments skittering across the floor like fleeing minnows. His voice, usually warm as the sea's embrace, now carried the terrifying weight of a tidal wave.
"This is not the time for self-pity or regret!" he roared, chest heaving, eyes blazing beneath his crown. "We must save our children. We must save our people."
The shock of his outburst rippled through the chamber. Ministers, soldiers, attendants—and even the battle-hardened Whitebeard Pirates—stilled, holding their breath as the Ryugu King's words rang against the walls.
By the arched window, Queen Otohime flinched. Her delicate fingers tightened around the sill as Neptune's voice broke through the fog of her despair. The memories of the burning streets, the screams from the outer district, and the sacrifice of the soldiers who fought to buy them time—all of it weighed on her like crushing depths.
But now, she saw them. The wide, frightened eyes of her people. The soldiers waiting for her to move. Her children—trembling, confused—clinging to their caretakers. And Neptune… desperately trying to be the unbreakable pillar she needed.
Everyone was waiting on her. With a trembling exhale, she wiped the tears from her cheeks, forcing her heartbeat to steady. She crossed the room and gently lifted baby Shirahoshi from the maid's arms, holding her close. When she turned to Neptune, she gave a single, resolute nod.
She was ready.
"King Neptune," Jozu said, stepping forward, his diamond-hard skin glinting under the dim palace lights. "My brothers and I will take point. You and your soldiers bring up the rear."
The right minister snapped a salute before hurrying to join Jozu and the Whitebeard pirates at the front ranks. The order was given, and the palace erupted into motion.
The royal family, nobles, and every soul within the palace poured through the opulent halls toward the inner sanctum—a sealed chamber known only to a handful of the Ryugu bloodline. Whispered legends spoke of its purpose, but few had ever seen it.
Tonight, every sacred secret was being uncovered for survival. The ornamental walls gave way to cold stone, ancient mural-carved doors sliding open to reveal a vast, spiraling stairway descending into the hidden arteries of Fishman Island. The air grew cooler, damp with the scent of untouched caverns. Bioluminescent coral lanterns flickered awake as their footsteps activated dormant mechanisms.
Soldiers shepherded civilians. Ministers clutched scrolls and relics. Nobles whispered prayers to the Sea Gods. The Whitebeard Pirates moved with hardened efficiency, their silhouettes imposing yet protective as they led the procession through the labyrinthine tunnel system.
This hidden path would take them far beneath the palace foundations, emerging near the outskirts of the island—close to the port where an emergency fleet waited. Hope lay somewhere beyond that exit. If they could reach it.
When the last group disappeared into the stairwell, only Neptune and a small contingent of elite guards remained in the throne room. The hall that once shone like the pride of the Ryugu Kingdom now felt hollow, suffocatingly silent except for the distant rumble of destruction outside.
Neptune stared down at his massive hands—hands that could shatter stone, command armies… Yet right now he felt helpless. He swallowed hard. There was one option left. One he had never imagined he would have to use or could use. He only hoped that kinship would make Arnold help him despite their differences.
From his coral pouch, he withdrew a small transponder snail—dormant, its shell bearing the crest of the Donquixote family. A gift from Arnold himself, back when Fishman Island and the Donquixotes shared a warm relationship built on mutual respect rather than power.
That time was long gone. The Donquixotes owed them nothing now. If anything, they had every reason to ignore his plea. The thought stung like a poisoned barb. Neptune had pride—a king's pride, a warrior's pride. But as he glanced toward the staircase where his wife and children had descended, he felt something deeper than pride: the raw, primal resolve of a father.
"If I must beg… then I will beg," he whispered, voice shaking not from fear, but from the enormity of his choice. "If I must offer my life for their aid, then so be it."
His guards looked at him with wide, uneasy eyes, as if witnessing their king shedding his armor, revealing the vulnerable soul beneath. Neptune knelt—this giant of a king, built like a fortress—and placed the snail gently on the floor. His fingers hovered over the dial as he drew in a breath that tasted of salt and smoke.
"Arnold… whatever has happened between us, whatever distance has grown…" His voice trembled. "Please. My people are dying. My kingdom is burning. I ask you not as a king to another power… but as a father pleading for his children."
He turned the dial.
Puru-ru-ru… Puru-ru-ru…Puru…puru
Each ring echoed like a heartbeat in the silent throne hall as Neptune bowed his head, praying to every sea god that the bond of the past had not been entirely washed away by the tides of time and his mistakes.
Puru—click.
The line connected. But no voice greeted him. No sigh, No breath, Only a cold, waiting silence.
Neptune's heart clenched.
"…Arnold?" he said, voice echoing faintly in the vast, ruined throne hall. Nothing. Only the faint crackle of the transponder snail, mirroring the frigid stillness of the man on the other side. Neptune closed his eyes.
He could almost feel it—that silent judgment, that old wound reopened. He knew why. Because it was they—the Fishman Kingdom—who had broken the Donquixote family's trust.
They who had turned away when their allies had offered them everything they had dreamed of, Fishman Island had severed the bond first.
And yet here he was… crawling back across the shards of what they destroyed. Neptune swallowed, lowering his head until his forehead touched the cracked floor.
"Arnold… I know you have no reason to answer me." His voice trembled—raw, stripped bare of all royal dignity. "In truth… you have every right to despise us. My people wronged you. My court failed you. And I…" His breath hitched. "…I did not protect the friendship you offered us."
Still, silence.
A silence heavier than the ocean itself. Neptune's shoulders shook, his enormous frame bowed in desperation.
"But my children… my wife… my people—they will die tonight if I do nothing." His words broke, like waves against rock. "I am not asking as a king. I am not asking as Neptune of the Ryugu Kingdom."
He pressed a massive palm against his chest.
"I beg you… as a father." The silence sharpened, cold and merciless. The kind of silence that said:
You are alone.
You earned this.
Why should I care?
And Neptune knew—every second that passed was another condemnation. Tears—not of weakness, but of a king pushed past pride—fell onto the floor.
"Please… Arnold… If any warmth remains from the bond we once shared, if even a single memory of trust still lives within you… I ask—no, I beg—save my family."
He bowed deeper, forehead pressed to the stone, crown set aside, voice cracking with the weight of everything he had failed to protect.
"I will pay any price… even my life. Just… please."
The transponder snail remained utterly silent. Only Neptune's ragged pleading filled the hall—
The cries of a king stripped of his throne, a warrior stripped of his power, and a father terrified of losing everything.
"Please… please, Arnold—"
Click.
The transponder snail's eyelids shut, severing the connection with a soft, merciless finality.
For a heartbeat, the throne hall felt as silent as the deepest trench. Neptune's breath caught, a single tear slipping down his weathered cheek. Not out of surprise—no, he had expected this. But expectation did nothing to dull the ache of rejection.
Still, he did not linger. He wiped his face, squared his shoulders, and turned toward the stairway where his people fled. If this was the answer he received… then he would at least die knowing he had tried.
Far away, in a lavish chamber carved from white stone and gilded ornament, Arnold exhaled and leaned back in his chair. The room glowed with warm moonlight, but he felt none of its comfort. His breath trembled faintly—only someone who knew him would recognize it as grief.
Someone like the man sitting opposite him. The Emperor of the Seas, Donquixote Doflamingo, lounged with deceptive ease. Draped in his signature pink feather coat, gold chains glinting at his throat, he looked like decadence given form. But behind the tinted shades, those razor-sharp eyes studied Arnold with unsettling clarity.
"Aren't you going to plead on his behalf, Arnold?"
Doflamingo's tone was lazy, almost amused, but the question was anything but casual. Arnold's webbed fingers curled around the armrests. The bull shark fishman's jaw tightened, throat bobbing with words he refused to voice. Doflamingo already knew the answer.
Fishman Island may have been Arnold's birthplace, but they had turned their backs on him—on all Donquixotes—when it mattered most. The betrayal had carved a scar too deep to ever fully close because that was a jab at their pride. And Arnold… Arnold would not—could not—risk reopening that wound between him and the only family he had left.
He would not put Doflamingo in that position again. Not after the last time. Not after it nearly destroyed everything. So Arnold stayed silent.
Doflamingo sighed and rose from his seat with a slow, fluid motion. He crossed the polished marble floor, coat trailing like the wings of some divine predator. He stopped beside Arnold and tilted his head.
"You're shaking," he observed softly. It wasn't mockery. Arnold opened his mouth, then closed it again. The words were trapped behind loyalty, shame, and decades of buried guilt. Doflamingo didn't wait for him to speak.
He placed a firm hand on Arnold's shoulder—solid, grounding, warm in a way few would believe possible from the Heavenly Yaksha.
"Listen," he said quietly, without theatrics. "You don't have to say it." Arnold froze. "I know what's happening on the island."
His voice lost all façade. "For your sake—not theirs—I've already acted."
Arnold's breath hitched. He lifted his eyes slowly, as if afraid he had misheard. Doflamingo walked with him to the balcony. Together they looked out over the moonlit sea, waves shimmering like molten silver. Dressrosa was peaceful, beautiful… untouched by the chaos engulfing Arnold's homeland.
"You would help them… Doffy?" Arnold finally whispered. "After everything they did? After how they spat on your hand? You'd still… move for my sake?"
Doflamingo's smile softened—an expression the world believed him incapable of.
"Arnold," he said the name like it belonged to someone he valued, not someone who owed him.
"No one else needs to understand this, but I'll say it just once." The emperor turned toward him fully, the feather coat stirring in the sea breeze. "I don't owe Fishman Island a damn thing," he said, voice low and unwavering. "But I owe you."
Arnold's eyes trembled. Moisture gathered at the corners—emotion he fought to suppress. Doflamingo's hand tightened reassuringly. "You're family. My brother. And I protect my family."
He chuckled—not with cruelty, but genuine warmth rare enough to be sacred. "Rosinante is already on his way to Fishman Island. I sent him the moment I heard the first rumor of trouble. You know how fast he moves—he'll arrive soon."
Arnold's breath shattered. Doflamingo continued, voice soft and certain: "Don't worry. As long as I stand on this sea… Fishman Island will not fall. Not today."
Arnold bowed his head, overwhelmed—not because his homeland would be saved, but because Doffy had moved without being asked. Because Doflamingo—monster to the world, family to a precious few—had shown Arnold the one side he never revealed outside the Donquixote brotherhood: Loyalty fierce enough to rewrite fate.
****
"Find him! Find that samurai bastard!"
Leon's roar tore through the ruined street like a cannon blast. His chest heaved, nostrils flaring, veins pulsing with fury. The hulking Beast Pirate officer slammed his fist into the nearest wall, shattering clay and timber. Rubble thundered to the ground, sending frightened villagers scrambling back.
Two full days. Two full days of failure, humiliation, and corpses left behind by a single man. A single rogue samurai—cutting down Beast Pirates, corrupt samurai, and Kaidō-loyal nobles' retainers with equal precision. More than two dozen bodies lay cold, and still the ghost refused to be caught.
Leon's narrowed eyes swept the marketplace where villagers had been forced to kneel—men with bloodied lips, women clutching their children, elderly trembling under the boots of Beast Pirates. The smell of fear hung thick in the air like wet rot. His jaw tightened.
"This is pathetic," he growled. "How is one bastard slipping through so many of you?"
A lesser Beast Pirate, desperate to deflect blame, spat on the ground and snarled, "These weaklings must be helping him, feeding him information, hiding him."
He kicked a kneeling farmer in the ribs.
"We should kill a few to make an example. That'll shut down any idiot who thinks about helping the rebels." The words were spoken casually—too casually. But Leon stopped. His expression shifted. A cruel spark glinted in his eyes.
A new idea, one he enjoyed more than brute force. Fear, despair, psychological breaking. Leon grinned, wide and twisted, showing teeth like a predator who found a better hunt.
"Hehehe… so that's how it is." He walked among the trembling villagers, boots crunching on broken pottery and splattered blood. "That rebel samurai values you commoners…? Protects you, does he?"
A woman clutched her child tighter. A man tried to speak and received a stomp to the face for his courage. Leon crouched down, lifting a young mother's chin with a single clawed finger; she was the very same woman who had told the beast pirates about the rogue samurai. Her eyes were wet. Her lips quivered.
Perfect.
"Fine," he whispered, voice dripping poison. "Let's see how much he really values your lives."
He rose, projecting his voice across the square.
"GRAB THEM ALL!"
The Beast Pirates surged like wolves, dragging screaming civilians from their homes, yanking children by the hair, kicking in doors with savage delight. Entire families were rounded up—merchants, farmers, servants, even the elderly who could barely walk. The streets filled with cries and cracking whips. Leon spread his arms wide, as if addressing a festival crowd rather than victims of terror.
"Bring them to the market plaza! Chain them, bind them, pack them in tight!" He turned to his men, voice booming.
"Send word through every street! Every corner! Every rat hole of this miserable town!" His grin widened, shadows cutting across his face. "If the samurai does NOT surrender by sundown…"
He raised a hand, fingers slicing through the air like a blade.
"…I will personally execute every last one of these worthless insects who dared assist a rebel." A sob broke somewhere in the crowd. Another villager passed out. The Beast Pirates laughed.
Leon's eyes gleamed with satisfaction—not from the blood he would spill, but from the terror he was creating.
"Let's see," he murmured, leaning back with a sadistic smile, "whether honor… is worth more than hundreds of innocent lives."
Denjiro watched from the ridge above the town, his hand clenched around the hilt of his katana until his knuckles whitened. He had followed the captors from the moment the first scream echoed. He had watched as the Beast Pirates dragged mothers by the hair, kicked elderly men to the ground, and smashed the heads of those who resisted. He saw Leon laughing—laughing—as children were tied up like livestock.
Every second burned into his mind like hot iron. Denjiro had lived through the years away from Wano under the protection of the Donquixote family while the people of Wano suffered in hell beneath Kaidō's tyranny. Years of slaughter, betrayal, and stolen futures. The blood they shed was never enough. The monsters just killed, and the slaughter never ended.
But now that he witnessed it with his own two eyes—this was a line he did not permit to be crossed, at least not when it was his actions that led to their fate.
As the sun dipped, staining the sky with red streaks like spilled blood, Denjiro rose to his feet. The wind tugged at his cloak, revealing the hardened face—no, he could no longer let these bastards torment his kin while he breathed.
The market plaza had been transformed into a grotesque spectacle. Villagers were bound in the center—hundreds of them. Ropes around wrists and ankles, Beast Pirates standing guard with spears and clubs. Mothers huddled over children, and men shielded their families with their bodies.
And at the front, atop a raised execution platform of wooden crates, stood Leon. Tall, broad-shouldered, with the golden-white mane of a lion and eyes that glowed with savage delight. An officer of the Beast Pirates. A man who enjoyed the suffering of others the way nobles enjoyed fine wine.
The crowd had gone silent. The last sliver of sun dipped below the horizon. Leon stretched his arms wide. "Sunset," he declared. "And no samurai." He reached for his axe—a monstrous, serrated blade taller than a man.
"Bring the first hostage forward—" A whisper cut through the plaza. Not of wind, not of speech, but of steel.
Shing.
A Beast Pirate blinked. His head tumbled off his shoulders before he even understood he had been killed. Leon paused mid-step as his observation Haki picked up on the intruder; another pirate fell, then another. One by one, their bodies were cut cleanly, silently, and efficiently. The plaza erupted into chaos.
"W-What—!?"
"Where is he?!"
"ABOVE— LOOK ABOVE!"
Leon's eyes darted to the rooftops just as a figure dropped down in a controlled, graceful arc. A long blue coat fluttered like a banner. A blade gleamed like moonlight. The mask of Denjiro split at the seams… revealing a face that every true son of Wano knew.
Sharp eyes. Long dark hair tied back. A jaw hardened by duty and grief.
"D-Denjiro-sama…!" a villager whispered through tears.
"Oden's retainer… he came…" Denjiro landed silently, rising from his crouch with deadly calm. "Release them," he said, voice like ice sliding over steel. "Now."
Leon burst into laughter.
"Hah! So the rat shows himself at last! Good. Saves me the trouble of gutting the hostages one by one."
The Beast Pirates surged forward even before Leon commanded. Denjiro moved. Even the wind struggled to keep up. He carved through them like a phantom—slicing tendons, severing limbs, and shattering bone with each precise stroke. Every swing of his katana left a crimson arc in the air. Every pivot brought a new corpse to the ground.
Some never saw him coming. Others screamed only briefly. Most died with eyes wide in shock. Villagers watched in awe and terror. This was not the samurai they currently knew, the ones who had set away their pride and honor, no, this was the samurai of the old way. This was not a mere swordsman. This was a storm given human form. Leon grinned wider.
"Good! MORE! Surround him! I want him alive long enough to break him!"
More Beast Pirates poured into the plaza—dozens, maybe a hundred—but they met the same fate. Denjiro cut through them with the fluidity of a river and the ferocity of a gale. A spear thrust toward him—he split the weapon, then the wielder.
An axe swung at his back—he turned, severing the attacker's hand before decapitating him.
Three pirates charged at once—he dodged the first, killed the second, and sent the third sprawling with a broken jaw. It was not a fight. Not even a battle. It was a slaughter.
Leon whistled. "Impressive. Oden's little pet still has sharp teeth."
When the last Beast Pirate's body hit the ground, Denjiro planted his sword into the earth momentarily. The killing had been effortless, yet his chest rose and fell with the weight of his rage. He looked directly at Leon.
"You've terrorized these people for long enough."
Leon cracked his neck and stepped off the platform.
"Let's find out," he growled, "if your blade is as strong as your mouth." The two men faced each other amidst the fallen pirates. Villagers trembled behind their ropes. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Denjiro raised his sword. Leon lifted his massive axe. The plaza vibrated as their killing intent collided.
Leon moved first—surprisingly fast for a man his size. He swung the axe in a downward arc meant to split Denjiro open like firewood. Denjiro sidestepped, slicing across Leon's arm, drawing blood. But the Beast Pirate didn't flinch. He laughed.
"Good! Make me feel alive!"
He swung again. Denjiro leapt back—just in time as the axe smashed into the earth, sending stone shards flying. The ground cracked. Leon lunged with the force of a charging beast. Denjiro parried, but the impact shook his bones. The man was monstrously strong.
"You're fast, samurai," Leon sneered. "But speed means nothing when you face a predator."
Denjiro's eyes narrowed. He dashed forward, blade flashing. Leon blocked with the shaft of his axe, sparks exploding between steel and wood. Denjiro spun low, cutting at Leon's knee.
Leon kicked him—Denjiro slid back several feet, boots carving trenches in the dirt. The villagers gasped. Denjiro wiped blood from his lip, eyes sharper than before.
"You're strong," he admitted. "But you lack discipline and the intent to kill."
Leon smirked. "I don't need discipline. I need only to crush you."
The two charged. Denjiro's blade came down in a flawless arc—deadly, clean, and fatal.
And then—SNAP.
Leon's hand shot up like a cannon. And he caught the blade. Bare-handed, his arm coated with pitch-black armament Haki. Denjiro's eyes widened. Leon's grin was animalistic, teeth gleaming in the dying light.
"You're fast…" Blood dripped down his palm as his grip tightened. The katana trembled in his monstrous grasp. "…but not fast enough."
The villagers cried out in terror. Denjiro tried to yank his sword back— It didn't move. Leon leaned forward, face twisting into brutal ecstasy.
"Now let me show you how a beast HUNTS—"