Arlong Park, situated along the coastal fringe of the Conomi Islands.
Adjacent to the compound's massive saltwater pool, Arlong—the "Saw-Shark" outlaw carrying a twenty-million-berry bounty—lay slouched across a shaded lounge chair. He wore an unbuttoned floral shirt, his broad chest prominently branded with the stylized red sun emblem that had once signified the liberation of the Sun Pirates.
"Brother Arlong! The perimeter has been breached!"
A standard puddle-fish henchman tumbled through the iron gates of the park, his webbed feet slipping across the flagstones as he wailed, "A massive black vessel has anchored in the shallows! A lone Fish-Man cleared the longboat vanguard and dived straight into our waters!"
"A Fish-Man?" Arlong's brow furrowed, his massive frame shifting as he stood upright.
Behind his throne, his primary officers—the martial artist Kuroobi and the sniper Chew—instantly gripped their respective weapons, their features tightening into a guarded scowl.
Whoosh!
The massive, paved swimming pool in the center of the courtyard began to churn violently, the water rotating into a high-velocity vortex. With a concussive blast, a tall, dark-grey shark Fish-Man erupted from the surface like a depth charge, landing heavily on the marble flagstones directly before Arlong's throne.
"You..."
Arlong sized up the stranger. The intruder stood a full head taller than his own build, his silhouette radiating a dense, freezing physical pressure that seemed to draw the warmth from the air. Slowly, a blurry, historical memory from over a decade ago surfaced within Arlong's thoughts.
Before the original Sun Pirates had fractured, back when their massive timber galley still navigated the high-pressure corridors of the Grand Line, this quiet, lethal combatant had always marched directly behind the shadow of Jinbe.
"Shahahaha! Look what the undercurrent dragged into my yard!" Arlong recognized Shark's features, his lips instantly splitting into a loud, mocking roar of laughter, though his eyes burned with a mixture of old disdain and defensive anger.
"So it's you—the little shadow who used to tag along behind Tiger's boots! Tell me, now that Jinbe has sold our pride to become a collared lapdog for the World Government, and a stray mutt like you couldn't hack the friction of the Grand Line, have you crawled down to the East Blue to function as a human's servant?"
Arlong pointed a webbed finger at Shark's face, his tone dripping with absolute contempt. "You've thoroughly degraded the nobility of our blood! How can a supreme baseline bow its head to hairless, inferior vermin?!"
Faced with the weight of Arlong's mockery, Shark's expression remained perfectly still, the slow expansion of his gill slits the only sign of respiration. He simply kept his triangular eyes fixed on the red sun brand over Arlong's heart—a symbol engineered for freedom, now reduced to an ornament for a provincial thug.
"Tiger's death cleanly exposed the fractures within our race," Shark said, his deep bass voice carrying the flat weight of an absolute fact. "Jinbe surrendered our teeth to negotiate a paper peace with the Marines. I had no stomach for that compromise, so I walked away from his deck."
Shark raised his head, his lifeless pupils locking onto Arlong's gaze.
"But I didn't calculate that you—the loudmouth who spent his youth lecturing the brig about Fish-Man supremacy—would turn into a common coward, fleeing the heavy selections of the Grand Line to hide inside the weakest sea on the world map."
"You tuck your tail between your hindquarters to remain silent when the Marines pass your borders, yet you claim an empire here, harvesting your sense of dominance by slaughtering unarmed, hairless civilians."
Shark slowly drew his arms back, settling into the absolute foundational stance of Fish-Man Karate. Having recently integrated the Limit Breaker serum, the violent vital reserves surging through his muscles subtly distorted the air currents surrounding his gray knuckles.
"Arlong. You are the real rot that has tarnished Tiger's mark." Shark's gaze turned freezing cold. "I'm clearing the ledger for the old crew today."
"You insolent bastard!"
The sentence struck the absolute center of Arlong's insecurity, thick purple veins bulging violently across his temples. He despised nothing more than the mention of his retreat from the Grand Line, and he tolerated zero criticism regarding his absolute rule over the Conomi villages.
"Slay him! Erase the lineage factor! Tear his bones to splinters!" Arlong screamed, his finger snapping toward Shark's throat.
"Leave the steel to me, Brother Arlong!" Kuroobi sneered. He drew his twin blades from his sash, utilizing the superhuman muscular density of his race to transform into a gray blur as he lunged across the flagstones. Simultaneously, Chew took a deep breath, his cheeks expanding before discharging a rapid succession of high-velocity water cannons with the concussive force of a shotgun blast.
Faced with the synchronized output of Arlong's primary vanguard, Shark didn't alter his boots, nor did he look at the incoming trajectories. He simply pulled his right arm back into his ribs, his palm striking the empty air with an execution that appeared deliberate, yet carried an impossible velocity.
"Fish-Man Karate: Five Thousand Tile True Punch!"
There was no complex watery manipulation behind the form—only the unmitigated, absolute explosive force of his physical limits. With a deafening sonic boom that shattered the glass panes of the surrounding pavilions, Shark's fist unleashed a visible shockwave through the atmosphere.
Kuroobi, closing the distance first, never managed to touch the fabric of Shark's gear. The twin blades in his grip shattered into loose iron filings under the pressure of the air wave, followed immediately by the collapse of his chest cavity. The martial officer coughed a torrent of fresh crimson, his body accelerated through the heavy stone walls of the central tower behind the throne like a cannonball, his consciousness instantly snuffed out.
The water cannons discharged by Chew struck Shark's bare chest, but the droplets merely disintegrated into fine mist against his hard muscles, like water hitting an anvil.
A single strike, and the second-in-command was removed from the ledger.
"How... how can this baseline exist?!" Arlong watched his officer drop in a single frame, a sudden, unfamiliar sliver of panic tightening his jaw. The kinetic density behind that punch lapped anything he had encountered within the borders of this sea.
"Arlong, your castle is built on sand," Shark said, stepping forward. His towering frame materialized directly within Arlong's immediate perimeter before the visual cortex could register the movement.
"Don't look down on my jaws! I am the absolute overlord of the East Blue! Shark Tooth Drill!"
Arlong went completely frantic, his jaw opening to an unnatural angle to expose rows of thick, serrated fangs. He intended to use the full jaw pressure of a apex predator to crush Shark's carotid artery.
Clang!
A clean, metallic concussion echoed across the terrace. Arlong's prized teeth, engineered to snap tempered steel bars, clamped down hard onto Shark's extended forearm. But to his absolute horror, Shark's skin had been encased in a thick, fluid layer of ink-black armor—Armament Haki.
The fangs failed to score the flesh; instead, the massive physical feedback fractured Arlong's teeth in several places, drawing dark blood from his own gums.
"When did a stray dog learn the hardening...?" Arlong wheezed, attempting to slide his weight back in terror.
"You don't even possess the baseline armor, yet you dare to call yourself a hegemon?" Shark looked down at him, his lifeless eyes completely flat as his left hand reached out to clamp securely around Arlong's serrated nose blade. "Tiger's glory will not be carried by a common bandit."
Bang!
Shark drove his right knee upward, utilizing the raw physical mass he had just cleared through his limit breakthrough to slam into the base of Arlong's jaw. With a sickening crunch of fracturing bone, the bully who had extorted the Conomi Islands for eight winters had his features completely deformed. His eyes rolled back into his skull as his frame hit the marble tiles with a dead thud, the spark of life leaving his body before his blood could hit the stone.
The entire courtyard of Arlong Park fell into a silent, freezing stillness.
Dozens of Fish-Man lackeys, who had been cheering from the pavilions seconds prior, dropped their weapons into the dirt, their knees buckling as they stared at the corpses of their commanders.
"Run! The man is a demon!!!"
A lookouts chief screamed, the remaining crew turning on their heels like stray dogs to scramble frantically toward the seawall behind the park. If they could clear the stone and plunge into the open sea, their natural aquatic superiority would grant them a line of survival.
But Shark's hand remained open. He slowly drew his broad shoulders straight, his dead, triangular eyes tracking their flight paths as if monitoring a school of dead bait.
"Fleeing the selections of the true sea to abuse civilians in the shallows..." Shark brought his palms together before his chest, the high-altitude air currents beginning to boil violently as his vital energy expanded to its new parameters.
"Since you chose to function as common waste, you can bury your names alongside this toy paradise that has tarnished the sun."
"Fish-Man Jujutsu: Secret Technique..." Shark took a deep, cavernous breath, his arms tearing through the atmosphere in a rapid blur of phantoms. "The Dance of the Great Water Prison!!!"
Boom—!
At his roar, the massive architectural pool in the center of the park, alongside the entire coastal shelf of the immediate bay, was violently emptied by an immense, irresistible force. Tens of thousands of tons of green seawater rose into the air, coiling into a massive, churning sphere over a hundred meters in diameter that completely overturned Arlong Park, dragging the fleeing lackeys into its interior current.
"Gurgle... Help... open the wall..."
"The lungs are burning... let us clear the port!"
The Fish-Men, creatures designed to navigate the deep trenches of the world, found themselves twisting helplessly within a chaotic, weaponized current that systematically crushed their ribs. This wasn't standard sea water; it was an active kinetic matrix saturated with the destructive resonance of Shark's Fish-Man Karate.
Shark stood motionless in the center of the downpour, watching with flat indifference as his former compatriots thrashed through the sphere, coughing blood into the current until their movements ceased, their bodies going limp as their lungs failed. He offered zero trace of pity to the dead.
"The account is settled," Shark murmured after a few minutes, cutting his power.
The colossal water sphere lost its structural balance, collapsing back onto the ruins with a deafening, thunderous roar. The water swept through the shattered pavilions, washing the blood and gold-leaf decorations out into the open bay. Dozens of gray bodies were deposited across the stone like broken rag dolls, completely devoid of life.
Shark shook the moisture from his palms, stepped off the ruined pier, and slid back into the sea.
Ten minutes later, Shark climbed the rope ladder lowered from the hull of the Eclipse, his boots dripping onto the iron deck plating.
"Cleared?" Ace asked, remaining stretched across his deck chair near the bow, his fishing rod still balanced over the brass rail, his posture completely unaltered.
"My apologies for consuming your hours, Captain. The frogs within the well have been thoroughly extracted from the shallows," Shark said, offering a precise, respectful bow.
Ace pulled himself up from the canvas, stretching his shoulders as his eyes tracked the long, dark shadow of the Red Line breaking through the distant horizon.
"No more dead hours for the East Blue. Little Eclipse—engage the primary vector thrusters. Target: Reverse Mountain, Twin Capes!"
Accompanied by the deep, industrial rumble of the engine core, the massive black warship kicked up a heavy wake, leaving the ruins of Arlong Park behind as its prow targeted the entrance to the Grand Line.
A few days later, when Nami returned to the Conomi shores from her sea assignments, she found the village square packed with shouting, weeping civilians. She overheard the elders excitedly recounting how a single, colossal Fish-Man had descended from a terrifying black iron ship to systematically butcher Arlong's entire division within a matter of minutes.
Standing within the shade of her mother's orange grove as the gentle breeze stirred the leaves, Nami stared out at the tranquil, open sea, her eyes turning rimmed with red. Her fingers traced the lines of the blue saw-shark tattoo stamped onto her shoulder—a brand that had lost all its structural weight in a single afternoon—as she finally let out a long, silent stream of tears born of pure, unadulterated relief.
Does Shark intend to pursue the remaining remnants of Arlong's old faction to consolidate his authority over the Fish-Man underworld, or will the impending geopolitical friction at the gates of Reverse Mountain force the vanguard into an immediate confrontation with the baseline guardians of the Grand Line?
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