Translator: PapaSmurf0700
"Everyone, please, be patient," King Neptune said, his deep voice echoing through the grand hall. He had clearly mistaken their anxious energy for concern. "Mister Luffy must still be exploring the palace. As our honored guest, I assure you, no harm will come to him."
"Your Majesty," Jinbe interjected, already sounding like an exasperated crewmate. "They are not worried about Luffy getting hurt. They are worried about the harm Luffy will do to your palace."
"It matters not!" Neptune boomed generously. "As long as Mister Luffy doesn't accidentally wander into the Hard-Shell Tower where my daughter resides, a little property damage is of no consequence."
The moment the words left his mouth, every member of the Straw Hat crew turned to stare at him. The silence was deafening.
"Uh..." Even the ruler of a nation felt a bead of sweat trickle down his brow under their collective, intense gaze.
"Well, it was fine before you said that," Chopper stated, his expression dead serious. "But now we know for sure."
"Luffy is definitely in the Mermaid Princess's Hard-Shell Tower," Merry concluded with absolute certainty.
Neptune could only blink in confusion. He had no way of knowing that Luffy possessed a supernatural talent for finding the single most important, off-limits, or troublesome location in any given place.
"Damn it! That idiot Luffy beat me to it!" Sanji erupted, his body practically radiating a fiery aura of chivalrous rage. "I will not lose to him!"
"Would you knock it off in strange places, you moron!" Usopp shouted, smacking Sanji on the back of the head.
Sanji spun around, ignoring Usopp completely. He locked his burning gaze on Jinbe. "Jinbe! Take me to her! I will be the one to rescue the Mermaid Princess!"
The fire in Sanji's eyes was so intense that even the stoic fish-man knight felt its heat.
"It's over," Usopp muttered, rolling his eyes. "He's a lost cause."
"Yohohoho! The Mermaid Princess! I would also love to see her—" Brook began, before Nami's foot sent him flying.
"Stop making us look like the villains!" she screamed.
"This way," Jinbe said, already moving. "The Hard-Shell Tower is in this direction." He wasn't worried about Luffy harming Princess Shirahoshi. He was worried about someone else entirely—the bastard who had been tormenting her for the last ten years.
-----
Not far from Fishman Island, in the dim, crushing depths of the sea, a ghostly ship drifted forward. Any sailor worth his salt would recognize it on sight: the Flying Dutchman, the legendary vessel of the pirate Vander Decken.
The ship was being pulled through the water by a giant with a thick, hairy face.
"Wadatsumi," a voice rasped from a figure coated in a shimmering bubble. "Has Princess Shirahoshi's reply arrived yet?"
"Uh, not yet, Captain Decken," the giant answered truthfully. This was Wadatsumi, a giant tiger-puffer fish-man and a crewman of the Flying Pirates.
The man he called captain was Vander Decken IX, a Japanese tiger shark fish-man with four legs, a top hat, and a cascade of necklaces. As a Devil Fruit user, he was forced to use a coating bubble even in his natural habitat. He was the possessor of the Target-Target Fruit, an ability that allowed any object he threw to perfectly track a "target" he had marked with his touch. The power had its limits: he could only maintain as many targets as he had hands, and washing his hands would erase the marks.
"It's all that hateful old King Neptune's fault!" Decken IX shrieked, stomping his feet in fury. "He's trying to marry Shirahoshi off for political gain, I know it! Locking her away in that tower for ten years is all the proof I need!"
Decken's obsession with Shirahoshi stemmed from a single event: he had witnessed her power, the legendary ability to command the Sea Kings, an ancient secret passed down through their family. If he could make her his wife, he believed he could control that immense power himself. This delusion fueled years of relentless, twisted harassment.
"For today's proposal..." he said, hefting a massive, double-bladed battle axe with a rose crudely carved into its head. "An axe with a rose! How romantic! Toot!"
He hurled the axe with all his might, and it shot off into the distance, unerringly flying toward its target. Watching his "love letter" disappear, Decken IX sighed with deep affection.
"Princess Shirahoshi, my love! I know that true lovers are destined to be together! You will be my wife!"
His expression then twisted into a ferocious snarl. "But if you ever choose another man over me... you will die, Shirahoshi! You will die by my hand! Bwahahahaha!"
-----
Let's rewind time a little. After stuffing himself at the banquet, Luffy caught a whiff of an even more delicious scent and, naturally, followed his nose. On the way, he spotted an enormous shark. His eyes lit up, already imagining the feast Sanji could prepare. The shark, sensing his predatory intent, fled in terror, accidentally leading Luffy straight into the Hard-Shell Tower.
There, not surprisingly, he met the Mermaid Princess. Her appearance can be summed up in one word: big.
After a brief, confusing introduction, things settled down.
"I see, so your name is Shirahoshi," Luffy said, scratching the back of his head. He glanced at the trembling shark now hiding behind the giant princess. "Since he's your pet, I guess I won't eat him."
"Oh, thank you, Mister Luffy!" Shirahoshi replied with a radiant, happy smile. Unlike the original story, this version of the princess had already heard of Luffy from Jinbe, so she wasn't completely terrified by the intruder.
She gestured to a nearby dining cart laden with food. "This is my meal for the day. If you don't mind, please, help yourself."
"WOAH!" Luffy's eyes turned to stars. "You're a really good person!"
He leaped onto the cart and, despite his disappointment at the lack of meat, began to devour everything in sight. As he ate, Shirahoshi watched him, a curious and hopeful look on her face.
"So this is him," she thought. "The one Jinbe said could finally get me out of the Hard-Shell Tower."