The sky above the shattered remains of Thriller Bark convulsed with storms that ripped at the heavens—red and purple lightning etching wild scars across thunderous skies. Sea spray mixed with rain-water and embers, painting the world in violent hues. Muscles tensed, sinew cracked, and the air itself seemed to warp under the strain of this unnatural battle.
At the heart of the chaos hovered a figure, wings aflame, his crimson suit shredded—Donquixote Doflamingo, but not the one the world knew. His signature nonchalnace was gone as he matched Kaido blow for blow even though the opponent was monstrous in size compared to his own form.
Doflamingo used his flames to clash with Kaido's dragon form midair; his smooth back was now replaced by two massive, pulsing wings of awakened black flame, each beat tearing the dimension of the storm. Ember shrapnel whipped around him, liquefying the rain mid-air.
"Let hell witness its master," he breathed, the flames singing in response.
Opposite, looming in celestial defiance, lay the other combatant—Kaido, in all his glory twisting with raw power. A monstrous azure dragon swam through the skies as purple lightning cascaded around his massive serpentine form like a living armor, coated with cobalt obsidian scales and veins of molten red. Armament Haki rumbled within him like a subterranean god. Steam hissed from his snout.
"Wororororo….! Just another worm," he snarled, snowstorm-white breath fogging the sky. "Let's see if you can burn me."
Kaido's thunderous roar split the heavens in two. The clouds twisted into spirals, the wind howled like a dying god, and then—
"BOLO BREATH!!!"
From his gaping maw surged a torrent of draconic fire—titanic, incandescent, a beam of annihilation hot enough to melt bedrock and boil the very sea. The very air trembled as the beam tore across the sky like a lance of divine fury.
But Doflamingo didn't flinch.
Suspended in the storm-torn skies, black wings of searing flame flared wide behind him—each beat sending shockwaves that scorched the clouds. His smile twisted with venom and pride, and his fingers curled into a blazing fist as black fire spiraled around his arm like a vengeful serpent.
"HIKEN: BLACK INFERNO!"
With a roar of his own, Doflamingo hurled a torrent of jet-black flames that screamed through the sky. The flame was unnatural—silent, malevolent, and burning cold at the edges. It consumed light itself, distorting space like a gravitational wound in the air.
The two infernos met.
A flash—no, a detonation. The impact was apocalyptic. Fire against fire. Dragon's fury against hell's flame. The sky vanished in white light. A dome of pure force erupted outward, vaporizing clouds for miles. The sea below screamed, split apart into walls of crashing water as tsunamis rippled outward in every direction. The island beneath them trembled, cracks spiderwebbing across the ancient rock.
For a breathless moment, the world fell silent. And then—ash fell like snow.
Burnt feathers and soot danced in the wind. Lightning fractured the heavens again, purple bolts clawing through the black sky like veins of fury. Even the monstrous Sea Kings far beneath the ocean's surface fled, retreating into the abyssal dark like terrified shadows.
Doflamingo's flaming wings beat a silent tattoo in the air, keeping him afloat in the wake of the blast. His eyes, dark embers, focused on the colossal figure rising across the skies.
Kaido's maw split in a roar. Scales regrew where flame had eaten flesh. Molten droppings ran down his limbs.
"Wororororo—impressive….really impressive," he snorted. "But if you think you can harm me with such a puny attack… Not enough."
He leaped; the sky blotted with his colossal form, and the skies and the sea below shuddered once more as his awakened dragon fruit thrummed lightning.
They collided in a thunderclap mid-air—Kaido's massive dragon maw against Doffy's flame-sword fist. A shockwave tore apart clouds and swept through the ocean. The battlefield quaked.
Doflamingo retreated as the sheer weight pushed him back, sending him streaking through the air —and summoned his first gambit.
"BLACK PRISON!"
A dome of black flame expanded to enclose Kaido, black as the void, humming with Haki.
Inside, embers spat and coals glowed hot. Kaido roared as fire licked his claws and scales—but with a bellow that sounded like tectonic shift, he smashed out, fragments of flame collapsing outward in a blast that cracked the mountain like glass.
He flew free. Soaring through flame, through rain, unstoppable.
"Impressive—but mere embers!" Kaido's laugh roared like volcanic thunder.
"Kaifu!"
Kaido roared as his colossal form whirled mid-air. With a lash of his tail, he sliced the very wind, conjuring a swarm of air blades that screeched through the atmosphere like the claws of a vengeful god.
"Firefly Swarm!!"
Doflamingo spun with balletic grace, his black flame wings flaring wide as he released hundreds of searing fire orbs into the storm. The sky transformed into a canvas of chaos—the razor winds and flame motes colliding mid-air in an explosive carnival of destruction. Light and fire churned like molten stars being born, each collision thunderous, each detonation a scar on the heavens.
Above them, the sky wept lightning. Below, the sea frothed into madness. And at the center—two monsters, unmatched. Doflamingo's body pulsed. The awakened power of the Mera Mera no Mi, now transformed into something darker, something ancient, responded. Haki coiled around his form in serpentine threads, his very presence distorting the air like gravity gone wild.
He rose higher, black fire wings fanning wide as the sky bent to him.
"DAI ENKAI: ENTEI!!" he bellowed.
From the void above him, a black sun was born. A sphere of condensed death—flames so dense, they collapsed light itself. It pulsed like a heart of apocalypse, casting a glow that made night itself retreat. Doflamingo hurled the orb downward like hurling a god's wrath.
Kaido's eyes narrowed, burning gold. The colossal dragon twisted midair, shrinking in a flash of smoke and thunder, returning to his awakened hybrid form. His kanabo pulsed with Haki—dragon's breath and god's will infused into one single devastating form.
"RAGNAROK: CONQUEROR OF TEN THOUSAND WORLDS!!!"
He roared, leaping into the sky, straight at the black sun. The impact was the end of everything.
A soundless explosion.
Then—BOOOOOOOOM!!!
Light devoured shadow. Space folded. Mountains cracked and bled stone. The clouds evaporated. The sea hissed into mist. The burning air screamed in agony.
The force shattered what remained of Thriller Bark, tearing it asunder until only a skeletal fragment of land remained. The shockwave spread for miles, leveling distant fleets as if they were made of paper, the ocean itself lifting in waves hundreds of meters high before crashing down into annihilation.
And then—stillness.
From the ash-choked heavens, only two silhouettes remained—standing. Across a crater miles wide, where magma now boiled in place of earth, Doflamingo and Kaido faced one another.
Kaido's body steamed. Cracks laced his obsidian scales, and one of his iconic horns had blackened and burned down to a stub. Blood seeped from his side, hissing as it touched the molten ground.
But he stood tall—grinning. His wounds… were already closing.
Doflamingo panted, his flame wings twitching. The black fire still burned fiercely around him, but his breathing had grown heavier. His fingertips trembled. Kaido's immortality was no myth—this was a monster that refused to die, no matter the hellfire hurled at him.
Doflamingo's eyes burned with fury—and pure rage. His body screamed in agony and exhaustion, but his pride refused to yield as his haki pulsed like an awakening demon. He had come here today to kill a dragon. But what stood before him wasn't just a beast—it was a god of war. And still, he would not kneel.
Across the broken land, Kaido let out a chuckle, deep as thunder.
"You're still breathing… Not bad."
Doflamingo's reply came soft, yet louder than any scream, a whisper carried on the firestorm laced with mockery.
"So are you… it seems like being beaten to death by Whitebeard helped you ascend."
Their conqueror's haki clashed again. Invisible forces of will tore into each other like titanic waves colliding—Haoshoku Haki unleashed without filter, trying to erase the other's very presence.
Then—movement. Kaido moved first enraged by Doflamingo mentioning his recent defear. With a snarl, he swung his kanabo straight down, flames and Conqueror's Haki erupting along its length like a divine comet.
"Die….GYOUGEN: TSURUGI DRAKE SLASH!!"
A blade of molten wind and flame, enormous as a mountain, tore toward Doflamingo—a sword strike made from chaos itself. Doflamingo didn't flinch. He leapt, wings of black inferno sweeping wide. Flames licked the clouds as he raised both hands, conjuring a shimmering dome of golden-black flame and Haki.
"CRIMSON HAVEN!!!"
The attack struck. The sky fractured. But the shield held—cracks dancing across it like lightning before shattering in a blossom of flame. Doflamingo burst from the smoke like a comet, spinning straight toward Kaido.
They met again. Fist to fist. Flame against dragon.
Doflamingo's burning fists, wrapped in Armament and Hellfire, clashed against Kaido's monstrous claws and scaled knuckles. Each strike was a detonation, echoing across the sea, rattling the bones of the world.
Punch. Block. Swing. Counter.
Dozens—no, hundreds of strikes were exchanged in seconds. The battlefield twisted under their godlike blows. Gravity ceased to matter. Sound lost meaning. Kaido's fingers, now scorched and cracked, dug into Doflamingo's side, but Doflamingo grinned through the blood—his own counterstrike igniting Kaido's chest in cursed fire.
Every exchange was agony. Every second, they tested the limits of their souls. The heavens flashed. Crimson and purple lightning split the sky again. For a moment, rain returned—cool, silver drops that hissed into steam the moment they touched the ground.
Both bled. Both burned. Neither fell.
Doflamingo's hellfire carved molten scars into Kaido's indestructible flesh. Kaido's dragon breath seared entire scars into the sky, yet Doflamingo wove through it, dancing in the chaos like a devil born for war.
Every clash sent shockwaves miles wide. Every breath they took turned the air to fire. They no longer spoke—only fought, only bled, only endured. The world had become too small for them.
And still—they raged.
****
"Those bastards... I'll skin them. I'll skin them all someday…"
Arlong's voice was venom. Rage boiled in his veins, his eyes gleaming with hatred as he clutched the ship's railing, trembling not from fear—but fury. But before another word of bile could leave his mouth—
SLAP!
A resounding blow cracked across his jaw, sending him sprawling to the deck, scales scraping against the wood as silence fell like a guillotine. The entire deck of the Sun Pirates froze. Even the waves seemed to hold their breath.
Arlong blinked, stunned, as blood mixed with salt at the corner of his mouth. Above him stood Jinbei, fists clenched, body heaving—not from exertion, but barely contained rage. The crew watched in silence. Even Fisher Tiger, who usually stepped in to break the tension between his volatile crewmates, stood still. He didn't speak. He didn't intervene.
Because only he and Jinbei truly knew what price had been paid to drag Arlong back from the edge of death. The blood. The pain. The compromise. And the humiliation.
"Arlong…" Jinbei's voice trembled with fury. "Even after everything—everything—that's happened, you still can't reflect? You still can't see the truth?!"
He took a step forward, looming over the fishman who had once been his brother-in-arms.
"Do you have any idea what brother Tiger had to give up to save your miserable hide?!" Jinbei's voice cracked with rage and heartbreak, a storm barely contained behind his sharp, white teeth.
He lunged—only to be held back by a few of the crew, arms locking around him as he snarled like a beast ready to kill. But he wasn't alone in his anger. Around the deck, most of the Sun Pirates looked away in shame, or shook their heads in disgust. They'd heard what Arlong had done. They'd heard it all.
Yes, many of them despised humans. But none of them—none of them—wanted to become the monsters they hated. And yet, Arlong, who screamed the loudest about hatred, was the one who most resembled the cruelty of the humans he loathed. Arlong wiped the blood from his lips, eyes still wild, still unrepentant.
"Spare my life?" he spat, standing up slowly, his body shaking, not from fear—but fury and humiliation. "You begged the humans to spare my life? Listen to yourself, Jinbei!"
He laughed, a dry, bitter sound that echoed across the ship.
"Since when did you become a dog of the humans? Since when did the filth of the surface world dictate what we do on Fishman Island? You talk about honor, but all I see is a traitor, kneeling before the same race that put us in chains!"
He spat again, the saliva mixing with the blood pooling on the floorboards. Jinbei's eyes widened. His fists trembled.
"You… You're the traitor, Arlong."
Jinbei's voice was low now, the fury replaced with something deeper—grief.
"You turned your back on what it meant to be a fishman. You turned your back on all our dreams. On everything we stood for."
Then his voice rose like thunder.
"You even tried to kill your own sister— your own kin. What madness drove you to do something like that…!"
Gasps spread through the crew, but many already knew. It wasn't rumor anymore—it was truth. Arlong's own blood had died by his hands. And not just blood—someone who called humans family. Arlong's eyes flared with hatred.
"Sister…? That traitorous whore?"
He snarled, voice feral.
"She threw away her pride. She spat on her race. She calls humans family! If I had the chance, I'd try and kill her again—gladly. Let the blood of that stain vanish with her!"
Then—CRACK! Another blow. But not from Jinbei. This time it came from Fisher Tiger himself.
The ship's captain had moved like lightning, his open palm striking Arlong's cheek with the weight of mountains behind it. Arlong flew across the deck, crashing into a barrel with a wet crack as wood shattered and water splashed over him.
The silence returned—deeper this time. Arlong groaned, barely able to rise, blood dripping from his mouth, his breathing ragged. Fisher Tiger didn't yell. He didn't roar. But when he spoke, his voice crushed the air.
"Enough."
He turned his back to Arlong, but his presence was more imposing than ever.
"Go to your quarters. I don't want to hear your voice again today."
Tiger's shoulders sagged—not from weakness, but from the weight he carried. The weight of compromise. Of betrayal. Of watching his dream crack and bleed because of the people he had fought to protect.
Jinbei stepped back, breathing heavily. His eyes didn't leave Arlong, who now lay slumped against the shattered barrel like the wreckage of a ship that had lost its course.
A bitter wind swept across the deck. For a long time, no one moved.
Then slowly, without a word, Arlong rose to his feet. His body trembling with rage, his pride shattered—but his hatred intact. He staggered away, leaving a trail of blood behind him, his silhouette disappearing into the ship's shadows.
The Sun Pirates watched in silence. Not one reached out to him. And in the stillness, only the sound of the waves crashing below reminded them that the sea moved forward—but not everyone did.
"Let's forget about that…"
Fisher Tiger's voice broke the silence, low and heavy like distant thunder. He turned toward the rest of the crew, eyes shadowed by weariness. "He'll come around… eventually."
But even as he said the words, no one believed them. Least of all, Tiger himself.
He stared out across the vast sea, where the sunlight fractured into dying gold across the horizon. The wind tugged at his cloak, and behind him, the ship rocked quietly—like it too waited for a direction.
Arlong was gone, both physically and ideologically. What remained was a ghost, a bitter fragment of what once was a brother. And though Tiger had struck him down with his own hand, in his heart he knew—Arlong was beyond saving.
One of the octopus fishmen finally broke the stillness.
"So… what are our plans now, Captain?"
His voice was cautious, respectful.
"Where do we go from here? We've exiled ourselves from our home. The world calls us criminals… What now?"
They weren't questions borne of doubt. They were questions from men who had followed a symbol, not just a man. A symbol of defiance. Of hope. Of vengeance. And now, stripped of their base, their enemy unclear, they looked to that symbol again to lead them into the unknown.
Tiger didn't answer immediately. He closed his eyes. For a brief moment, the memories surged—of chains clamped around wrists, of bloody whips against raw skin, of the stifling air in the Holy Land. Of sunlight he hadn't seen for months. Of screams. Of silence. Of Celestial Dragons, of countless slaves, and finally of the mistakes he made that nearly shattered him.
And then, he opened them. The fire had returned.
"We…" he said, voice rising like a tide, "are going to rescue the slaves."
A hush settled over the deck. Some of the crew nodded, murmurs of approval rippling across the wood. It was what they had expected. Freeing enslaved fishmen had always been their retaliation against the cruelty of the surface.
One of the hosea fishmen stepped forward. "Then perhaps we head toward Sabaody Archipelago, Captain. That's where most captured fishmen end up. If we strike there, we could save hundreds—maybe thousands."
Tiger turned to face him—and in the stillness of that moment, his voice changed.
"I think you all misunderstood what I meant," he said, and his voice no longer held hesitation—only purpose.
"When I said we would rescue slaves… I didn't mean just our kind. I meant all of them."
He stepped forward. Every gaze turned to him.
"Fishmen. Minks. Giants. Humans. If they wear chains… if they scream in silence… if their freedom has been stolen—they are mine to save."
There was no echo, no dramatic wind. But the weight of his words hit harder than any storm. Jinbei stiffened slightly, his breath caught. For the first time since they had left Fishman Island, he saw not just the legend or the leader. He saw the truth of Fisher Tiger. The man. The true savior of their race.
Some of the crew exchanged glances. Confusion, yes. But also awe. The very idea ran counter to generations of hatred. Many of them had bled at the hands of humans. Many had lost kin to slavery. And yet here stood their captain, a survivor of Mary Geoise, now declaring his war—not for vengeance—but for freedom for all.
One of the younger pirates spoke, hesitating. "Even… humans, Captain? Even they deserve saving?"
Tiger turned to him, gaze steady.
"Yes," he said. "Even them."
"Because freedom is not a species' birthright. It is a soul's. And if we—the ones who have tasted the worst of chains—cannot rise above hatred… then we're no better than the monsters who enslaved us."
He stepped forward, the sun dipping low behind him, casting his silhouette across the deck like the shadow of a titan. His voice rang like prophecy.
"I will burn the idea of slavery from this world. Not with fire, but with will. Not with chains, but with truth."
A slow, powerful silence followed. It rolled across the crew like a tide. Not everyone understood. But everyone felt it. There was no longer room for negotiation. Their captain had seen the world from within its deepest prison—and what he brought back was not vengeance.
It was a mission. And from the edges of the ship, Jinbei finally allowed a breath to escape. He clenched his fists—not in resistance, but in resolve. Fisher Tiger had made his choice. Now, so would they.
One by one, the crew bowed their heads—not to an order, but to an ideal. Something larger than all of them. Something worth bleeding for. And far in the distance, the sea stirred. Chains would break. And a legend would rise.