Sabaody Archipelago.
The sunlight still shone, a cruel mockery, filtering through the rainbow-colored bubbles and casting a dreamlike glow over the island.
But now, the air was different.
The usual scents of street food and resin were gone, replaced by the faint, sharp, metallic smells.
Of blood.
The New Marine's warships, silent steel behemoths, had sealed off the entire archipelago without a single gap.
Every dark, menacing cannon muzzle resembled the cold, unfeeling eye of a predator, watching every movement on the island with a chilling, patient intent.
The once-bustling, raucous slave market was now eerily, deathly silent.
The slave traders, men who were usually arrogant, boisterous, and full of themselves—men who acted like minor kings—now looked like frostbitten eggplants.
They were withered, cowering, and didn't dare make a sound, their bravado having evaporated the moment the Moby Dick had sailed into view alongside the Marine fleet.
"What… what do you want?!"
One slave trader, a man so fat he resembled a quivering mountain of flesh, struggled to keep his trembling legs from buckling.
He bellowed with a false bravado that fooled no one, least of all himself.
"You dare lay hands on me?! Do you have any idea who I am?!"
He fell back on his one and only defense, the name that had always protected him, the name that made the world tremble.
"I'm a personal supplier for the Celestial Dragons!" he shrieked, his voice cracking.
"I sell them at least a thousand slaves every year! Even rare mermaids have passed through my hands! I'm calling them right now! You… you'll all pay for this! You'll be flayed alive!"
With shaking fingers, he pulled out a golden Den Den Mushi and frantically dialed a number, his face twisting into a vicious, desperate grin.
He could already picture it: these ignorant, upstart Marines being dragged away in chains, their faces masks of terror as they faced the wrath of the "gods."
The Den Den Mushi rang.
Pururu… pururu…
Once. Twice. Three times.
No one answered.
The slave trader's grin froze.
A cold sweat, thick and oily, beaded on his forehead.
"What's going on?" he whispered, his panic rising. "Why aren't they… why aren't they picking up?!"
He screamed, his voice now a hysterical, terrified wail.
"Shick—"
A flash of silver, so fast it was almost invisible, hissed through the air.
The slave trader's scream died in his throat, gurgling into a wet choke.
His bloated, terrified head suddenly, impossibly, launched into the air.
It traced a high, gruesome parabola before—
THUD.
—it hit the ground like a rotten melon, splattering gore as it rolled several feet, its eyes still wide with a final, uncomprehending shock.
A fountain of crimson gushed from the severed neck, staining the dirt-trodden street a dark, glistening red.
"..."
Vice Admiral Onigumo, his eight sword-like spider legs bristling from his back, expressionlessly sheathed his blade.
The blood of the slave trader—and the resolve of the New Marine—was wiped clean.
His cold pitiless gaze swept over the other slave traders, the ones who, just moments before, had also been shouting, 'The Celestial Dragons will avenge us!'
Now, they stood petrified, their legs shaking so violently they could barely stand.
The stench of urine suddenly filled the air.
"Execute any who resist. On the spot," Onigumo's voice was cold, as if dredged from the depths of a frozen hell.
A faint, cruel smile curled the corner of his mouth.
For years he had been forced to endure these scum.
For years he had watched them operate under the untouchable protection of the Celestial Dragons, treating human beings like livestock.
Now, retribution had finally come.
'Still counting on the Celestial Dragons to save you?' he thought, the smile widening.
'Dream on.'
'The Celestial Dragons? Heh. Soon, they'll be nothing but a bad memory, a smear of dust in the annals of history. The New Marine's artillery will teach those high-and-mighty trash the true meaning of cruelty.'
"SIR!" The New Marine soldiers, their own eyes burning with a righteous fury, roared in unison. Their voices shook the heavens above Sabaody.
The once-thriving slave market had, in an instant, become the slave traders' personal hell.
"N-No! Don't kill me! I—I have money! Lots of it!" another trader shrieked, falling to his knees and kowtowing frantically, his forehead splitting open against the cobblestones.
"Take it all! Just spare me! Please!"
"Money?" a young Marine sneered, his face a mask of contempt as he kicked the man flat on his back.
"You think the New Marine needs your filthy money? Save your coins for the ferryman in hell!"
"Wait! I know secrets! Celestial Dragon secrets! I can be useful!"
"Secrets?" The soldier leveled his rifle. "The New Marine doesn't deal in secrets. We deal in Justice."
Every slave trader was swiftly, brutally, and efficiently apprehended.
Every chain was broken. Every cage was opened.
The slaves themselves, their bodies marked with chains and their eyes hollow with a despair so deep it had extinguished all light, stood frozen.
They stared blankly at the carnage, at their former masters being rounded up or cut down, utterly unable to process what was happening.
Many had been on this island for so long, had been property for so long, that they had quite literally forgotten what freedom, or even hope, felt like.
"Are we… saved?" an elderly slave, his back a latticework of scars, spoke.
His voice was a trembling, hoarse rasp, as if it had been scraped raw by sandpaper and disuse.
"Yes. You are saved," a New Marine soldier stepped forward, his own voice resolute and, beneath the discipline, gentle.
"From now on, you are free."
He bent down and, with a single, powerful swing of his saber, severed the heavy chains binding the old man's wrists.
CLANG!
The chains fell to the ground, the crisp, metallic sound ringing out like the tolling of a great bell, heralding the birth of a new era.
"Fr… free?" The old slave stared in disbelief at his raw, empty wrists, his clouded eyes suddenly welling with tears.
"We… we're really free?"
"Yes. Free," the soldier said, helping the old man to his feet.
"New Marine ships are waiting. They will escort all of you back to your homelands, wherever they may be. From this day forward, no one can ever enslave you again. No one can ever take your freedom. The New Marine will forever protect it."
"Waaah… Mom…" a little girl with pigtails and a dirty, torn dress, clung tightly to her mother, her little body shaking with sobs.
"Can we… can we go home now?"
"Yes… yes, my dear… we can go home…" her mother, a woman who looked twice her age, weathered by hardship, held her daughter close, tears of her own streaming down her face.
"We'll never have to live in this darkness again…"
"LONG LIVE THE NEW MARINE!"
"THANK YOU! THANK YOU, MARINES!"
No one knew who shouted it first.
But in an instant, the entire archipelago erupted.
The slaves, the survivors of this nightmare, could no longer contain their emotions.
They cheered, they shouted, they fell to their knees and wept, pouring out years, decades, of pent-up pain, despair, and newfound joy.
The sounds merged into a deafening, cathartic wave that shattered the lingering gloom the Celestial Dragons had cast over the island for centuries.
Onigumo and the other Vice Admirals stood on the high ground of the auction house steps, watching the newly freed slaves with deep, complex emotions.
Onigumo gripped the hilt of his sword so tightly his knuckles were white, its blade trembling faintly, as if echoing the lament of countless lost souls.
"This…" he murmured to himself, his voice thick.
"This is what a soldier should be doing. Protecting the peace. Protecting the people's freedom. Justice may be delayed, but it will never be denied."
As the slaves began boarding the transport ships, the newly promoted Vice Admiral Smoker's gaze fell on the mother and daughter who had just been freed.
His pupils constricted sharply.
He recognized them.
The image of a little girl with pigtails, holding a cup of yogurt and bravely bidding farewell to Mike back in Loguetown, flashed through his mind.
The girl who loved rice crackers.
She had been captured.
She had been here, in this hell, all this time.
"Damn it…" Smoker's fists clenched instantly, white-hot fury surging through him.
He pulled out his Den Den Mushi and dialed.
"Hey, kid…" Smoker's voice was dangerously low, barely suppressing a murderous rage.
"There's something… That little girl from Loguetown. The rice crackers…"
"..."
On the other end of the line, there was a heavy, terrifying silence.
It was the calm before a planet-shattering storm, so oppressive it made Smoker's skin crawl.
Then, Mike's voice came through.
It was no longer the lazy, cheerful drawl of their leader.
It was a voice so calm, so cold, so utterly devoid of mercy that it was the most terrifying sound Smoker had ever heard.
"I understand."
A one-second pause.
"Kill them all."
"Yes," Smoker snapped, and hung up.
He lit two cigars at once, took a deep, shuddering drag, then slowly exhaled a massive cloud of smoke.
Amidst the swirling white haze, his eyes were as cold and hard as steel blades.
He waved his hand, his voice soft, yet it carried with absolute authority across the entire, blood-soaked plaza.
"By order of Mike, Supreme Leader of the New Marine…"
"All slave traders. Without exception."
"Execute them all. On the spot!!!"
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Ok at this point it will be a lot of bloodbath.