The air in Arlong Park tasted of salt, blood, and desperation.
"He's playing with him, Yosaku!" Johnny hissed, his bandaged hands trembling as he watched Zoro sway on his feet across the courtyard. Hatchan, the six-armed monstrosity, circled like a shark sensing blood in the water. "It's a mind game! Luffy needs us *now*!"
They turned to run toward the main tower, where the sounds of shattering stone and Arlong's roaring laughter echoed, but a firm hand clamped down on Johnny's shoulder.
"Stop." Genzo's voice was gravel, his face a mask of grim resolve beneath his pinwheel hat. "Look at yourselves. You can barely stand. You'll be nothing but corpses in his path."
"But the boss—" Yosaku protested, a fresh trickle of blood seeping through his shirt.
"Is fighting a battle we asked him to fight," Nojiko cut in, stepping forward. Her own wounds from the earlier skirmish were bandaged, but her eyes burned with a fierce, unyielding light. "They're here for Nami. For *all* of us. I'm going."
"Nojiko, you're hurt—" Genzo started.
"And they're hurt worse!" she shouted, gesturing wildly toward where Zoro stood, and toward the tower where Luffy fought alone. "My sister has been a prisoner in that map room for eight years! These strangers walked into hell for her! I won't hide behind my injuries!"
A murmur of agreement rippled through the gathered villagers—fishermen, farmers, mothers holding children—all bearing the scars of Arlong's reign. "We'll go, Genzo!" one man called out.
Genzo's jaw tightened. The risk was monumental. A crowd would be seen, heard, slaughtered. But the fire in Nojiko's eyes mirrored the one in his own heart. He let out a sharp, frustrated breath. "Fine. You and me, Nojiko. Only us. We move quiet, we move fast. The rest of you… be ready."
As Genzo and Nojiko melted into the shadows of the crumbling park, a sickening thud echoed from the courtyard.
*Thump.*
Zoro's knees hit the cobblestones. He braced himself on Wado Ichimonji, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps.
Sanji's cigarette nearly fell from his lips. "Damn it, Moss-head… Mihawk's cut… it's still open." He could see it now—the bandages across Zoro's chest were dark and saturated, fresh blood welling up with every labored heartbeat.
Hatchan saw it too. A cruel grin split his fishman face. "Six swords are too much for a one-sword human, eh?" he taunted. Instead of attacking directly, he pivoted, his massive fist driving like a piston into the base of a cracked stone pillar supporting a walkway above. "Let's see how you dodge this!"
The pillar groaned, fractured, and began to topple directly toward Zoro's kneeling form.
"ZORO!" Johnny and Yosaku screamed in unison.
In a blur of motion that defied his wounds, Zoro *moved*. He didn't roll away. He surged upward, his body a coil of pure instinct, and his hands locked around Hatchan's wrist. With a guttural roar that tore from his very soul, he used the fishman's own momentum to *yank* him off balance and swing him around like a gruesome shield.
The ten-ton pillar crashed down—not on Roronoa Zoro, but directly onto Hatchan, burying him in an avalanche of dust and rubble.
Zoro stood for a single, triumphant second. Then the light fled from his eyes. He collapsed face-first onto the stones, utterly still.
A chilling silence fell.
"The wounds… he reopened everything," Yosaku whispered, horror-struck.
Sanji's mind raced, assessing, calculating. *Lost too much blood. Shock. Dammit, dammit, dammit—*
His distraction was a fatal error.
A torrent of water slammed into his side with the force of a cannonball.
"Floating Cloud!" Kuroobi's voice was a smug echo as Sanji was blasted off his feet, crashing through a stone wall in an explosion of debris. He skidded to a stop in the dirt alley behind the village's remaining onlookers.
Kuroobi strode through the hole in the wall he'd just created, barely winded. "A human cook, trying to fight a Level 40 practitioner of Fishman Karate? Pathetic."
From his throne of shattered dreams, Arlong laughed. A deep, resonant sound of absolute victory. "Enough games. Kuroobi, throw the swordsman into the pool. Let him drown where he lies."
As Kuroobi moved toward Zoro's motionless body, the pile of rubble beside him erupted.
"ROOOAAAARRRGH!"
Hatchan burst forth, six swords drawn, his face a contorted mask of fury and humiliation. "I AM THE SECOND STRONGEST SWORDSMAN ON FISHMAN ISLAND! ROKUTORYU!" he bellowed, blades gleaming in the sun.
Kuroobi paused, looking at the enraged Hatchan, then at the seemingly dead Zoro. He smirked. "A dramatic display, Hatchan. But your audience is already finished."
A low, rough sound cut through the dust-choked air.
A laugh.
From the ground, a hand pressed flat against the stone. Then another. With a shuddering, monumental effort, Roronoa Zoro pushed himself up onto his knees. Blood dripped from his chin, his clothes were in tatters, but his single visible eye burned with an inferno that death itself couldn't extinguish.
"Six swords…" Zoro rasped, the words scraping out of him. "I've seen a sword that could cut the sea. Yours… are just shiny toys." He lifted his head, locking eyes with Hatchan, then with Arlong in the distance. "I made a promise. I won't die… not until I've stood before him again. Not until I've become the greatest."
He turned his head, just slightly. "Johnny. Yosaku."
"Y-Yes, Boss?!"
"Your swords. Lend them to me."
Across the courtyard, from the cloud of dust in the shattered wall, a figure rose. Sanji brushed debris from his suit, relit his cigarette with a hand that didn't shake, and took a long, deliberate drag.
"A Level 40 Fishman, huh?" he said, his voice cold and clear. "The old man's kicks… were ten times heavier than that."
He took a step forward, then another, his gaze fixed on Kuroobi. The fight was far from over.
Beneath the murky waters of the canal, Genzo and Nojiko swam with desperate strokes, following the trail of destruction toward the base of Arlong's tower, searching for a drowning rubber man.
And on the eastern seawall, Usopp's lungs were on fire, his legs numb, as the cackling, water-spearing fishman Chew closed the distance behind him, whispering, "Got you, little liar!"
But in the center of Arlong Park, surrounded by enemies, bathing in his own blood, Roronoa Zoro reached out. Johnny and Yosaku scrambled forward, placing their simple blades into his waiting, blood-slicked hands. He gripped the hilts. He stood.
Three swords now. A body held together by will alone. A demon's smile on his face.
Hatchan, enraged, leveled all six of his blades. "I'LL CUT YOU TO RIBBONS!"
Zoro took the first stance of Santoryu, the world narrowing to the space between him and his enemy. The air crackled with impending violence.
And from the highest floor of the tower, a window exploded outward. A rubber fist, elongated to impossible lengths, shot through the sky like a cannon shot—not toward an enemy, but *away* from the fight. It was followed by Luffy's distant, furious, and strangely fading roar.
The fist snapped back, empty.
And from the window, Arlong's triumphant, final decree boomed across the entire park, reaching every struggling ally:
**"THE CAPTAIN OF THE STRAW HATS… HAS JUST BEEN THROWN INTO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA!"**