Luffy's grin twitched.
He looked down at the shattered remains of the figurehead—his special seat. The place he always sat. Not the deck. Not the crow's nest. No, there—right on the tip of the Merry's little lamb nose. The spot he picked because he could see everything from it. Wind in his face. The ocean stretched out forever. His own little throne.
Gone.
Splinters floated in the sea. The curve of the Merry's broken smile was jagged, pitiful.
He didn't speak.
Not at first.
He stepped forward to the bow, boots crunching against scattered debris and smoldering black powder dust. The others watched him warily—Zoro's brow tightening, Nami taking a careful half-step forward like she might stop him if she could.
"Luffy…" Usopp said, almost pleading. "Don't…"
But Luffy's shoulders were already squared. His jaw set.
"That was my seat," he said flatly.
Then, without another word, he leapt.
His body arced through the air in a rubbery blur—arms drawn back, fist winding with enough tension to crack bone and air alike.
"GUM GUM… PISTOL!!"
The impact was like a cannon going off.
His fist smashed straight into the massive, glistening black eye of the whale.
There was a deep THOOM—an almost seismic tremor that rippled through the water. The whale's eye didn't even blink at first. Just widened, slightly. But the blow echoed inside it—through skin and memory and a sadness old enough to drown gods.
The crew shouted all at once.
"LUFFY!!"
"IDIOT—WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"YOU PUNCHED A WHALE?!"
The sound that came next wasn't a scream, nor a roar, nor any animal bellow known to the sea. It was older. Deeper. The sound of grief bellowed through a throat the size of a cathedral.
The whale sang.
A resonant, soul-trembling keening—so massive, so thunderous, it carved the sky itself in half. The water around the Going Merry shivered into mist. The air bent. Flocks of seabirds shrieked and spiraled away. The hull groaned. The masts creaked. Every bolt, every nail on the ship buzzed with the force of it.
Nami stumbled back, hands clamped over her ears. Usopp fell to the deck entirely, curled and gasping.
Even Zoro flinched.
But Varin—
Varin reeled.
The world exploded in his skull. The sound didn't pass through him—it pierced him, split him, as if someone had rung a cathedral bell directly inside his brain. His ears screamed. His vision flickered white. For half a second, he forgot where the deck was. Where he was.
He staggered, one knee buckling.
"—ghk!"
His hand flew to the side of his head, fingers digging into the bone just beneath his ear. The humming was too sharp, too pure—like knives made of glass grinding through his inner ear. He didn't scream. He didn't curse. Just shoved himself upright again with a gasp, like a man crawling up from the seabed with lungs full of saltwater.
He saw the whale's eye—huge, glimmering—and it blinked.
Then—
It opened its mouth.
The sea groaned as it split before them.
Teeth like marble pillars parted, and darkness beyond beckoned. Gulls wheeled overhead like omens, shrieking mad warnings to the clouds. A tongue like a bridge. A throat like a tunnel carved by ancient kings.
And the current—
The sea itself lurched forward.
"Hold on—!" Nami screamed, but it was too late.
The Going Merry surged forward like a toy caught in a whirlpool. The ship tilted as the water dragged it, sucked into the impossibly massive maw. The crew slid, stumbled, shouted.
Sanji grabbed the mast and shouted curses.
Zoro dug his swords into the deck and held.
Usopp flailed. Nami screamed.
Varin hit the rail and clung to it with both hands, gritting his teeth through the still-ringing ache in his skull.
And then—
They were inside.
Swallowed whole.
Swallowed alive.
Water surged around them, but not in. The mouth closed—not shut, not crushing—but sealed. Darkness took the sky. The sea stilled, suddenly quiet in the absolute vastness of that internal cavern.
Only one thing was missing.
Luffy was not with them.
The deck tilted. Wood creaked. Water lapped gently—but not seawater. A sickly, glowing green.
Below, the world shifted again.
The crew looked down through a shattered hatch—into a vast pool of green stomach fluid. Where seawater should've flooded, now hung a glowing sea of acid-like substance, unnaturally calm—and all-consuming. The Going Merry floated precariously on its surface, held by iron supports beneath the deck that reporters might call keel stabilizers—but here resembled scaffolding in a cathedral of flesh.
Nami swallowed, voice barely a whisper: "Is this—acid?"
Sanji whispered back, voice raw: "Feels like it."
But it was more than acid. It was the whale's digestive sea—a living biome forged to house ships, built into the whale's digestive organs. A domain carved between ribs and muscle, sealed off from lethal potency.
Within the green expanse, at its center: an island.
A small, rounded atoll of bone-white sand encircled by the glow. A single cottage perched atop. Smoke drifted lazily from the chimney. A light shone in one window.
An island inside a whale's stomach.
Laboon's body shook with each breath. But the interior space remained serene—uncannily so—as if in recognition of guests, however accidental.
Zoro exhaled slowly. "An island. In his stomach."
Usopp staggered. "What kind of whale builds islands?"
"Not a whale, you moron," Nami snapped, swatting the back of Usopp's head. "A person. But who—and why—would someone live inside a whale's stomach?"
Her voice cracked with exasperation, though the edge couldn't hide the undertone of real confusion. Even in the Grand Line, where compasses spun and snow fell in summer, this—an island inside a whale's gut—was beyond rational.
Sanji took a slow drag on a cigarette, squinting through the swirling acid mist toward the little cottage. "Whoever they are, they've been here a while. Look at that place—chimney's active, smoke's steady. Someone lives in that house."
"It's madness," Usopp whispered, fingers still trembling as he wiped his nose. "There's stomach acid everywhere. That thing could burp and melt us in an instant!"
"Maybe they're trapped," Zoro said flatly, sheathing one sword but leaving the others close. His eyes stayed fixed on the house like it might sprout teeth. "Or maybe they want to be in here."
"That's worse," Sanji muttered. His coat flapped lightly in the warm, chemical breeze. "Voluntarily living in the belly of a beast? There's something wrong with that."
"I don't care how long they've been here," Usopp said, voice pitching up as he gestured wildly toward the surrounding stomach-sea, "because none of that explains how they're alive! This is acid! Real, weaponized, ship-dissolving, bone-melting acid! I saw a crab fall in—it dissolved like sugar in tea! We're floating on a wooden boat, and there's an island in here? What's it floating on? Whale dreams?!"
No one had an answer.
The air buzzed faintly with the acidic mist. Occasionally, a soft groaning rumbled through the walls, like a tectonic shift of muscle and blood. The entire environment swayed gently, as if the very stomach had tides. Nothing about it felt stable. And yet… the island remained. The house stood. The chimney puffed.
Varin stood near the prow, hand on the rail, face still pale from the earlier echoing shock in his skull. But this time, he said nothing.
A silence lingered. Nami stepped forward, arms crossed tight beneath her chest. "Well, we're not getting out through the way we came. Luffy's still outside—assuming he's still alive and didn't get blasted to the moon like a cannonball. So, unless someone's got a raft made of acid-proof sea prism stone, our best bet is finding out who lives there."
Usopp groaned. "Can't we just wait? Maybe the whale'll throw us up. I can make us look really unappetizing. Zoro can scream. Sanji can cook something disgusting. I can cry. A lot."
"No," Nami said. "We're going."
"Why are we always going?" Usopp muttered. "Every time we go, something tries to kill us."
Sanji flicked the ash off his cigarette and started walking toward the Merry's wheel.
"Because we're pirates, idiot. That's what we do."
A low blorp echoed beneath the boat.
Then another. Bigger. Deeper. Bubbling like boiling tar.
The green stomach sea began to ripple—first in lazy waves, then with a purposeful churn, as if something enormous stirred in the depths. The mist thickened. Heat curled off the surface. The water hissed like it knew what was coming.
Usopp's eyes went wide. "Nope. No. Uh-uh. I know that sound. That's a monster sound. That's a sea king, demon in the water, mom-get-the-holy-water kind of—"
The boat rocked hard as something vast moved beneath them. Bubbles the size of cannonballs erupted to the surface.
Then—
CRACK.
A whipcord of glistening flesh tore through the water—twenty feet long and barbed with suckers the size of plates—slamming across the surface just meters from the merry. It pulled back, revealing the mass rising behind it.
A colossal squid.
Bloated and pink, its rubbery flesh sickly translucent under the artificial glow. Its crown of tentacles writhed like the arms of a dying god, and its milky-white eyes rolled unnaturally in its head as it rose, limb by limb, until it cast a shadow over the entire boat.
Usopp screamed—full voice, high-pitched, ragged with terror. "WE'RE GONNA DIE—!"
Nami clutched the boat's edge, eyes wide, body frozen. "It's not supposed to live in stomach acid—how is it alive?!"
The creature shrieked—an awful, garbled squeal like rusted anchors dragged through iron pipes—and reared one tentacle to strike. Sanji was already moving, crouched low, muscles tense. Zoro stood, hand resting on his hilt. Varin leaned forward slightly, as if ready to intercept the blow before it even came.
But they didn't get the chance.
CRASH.
The door to the cottage exploded outward in a spray of wood and steel hinges.
A harpoon—thick as a spear and trailing a braided cable—screamed through the air with unearthly speed and punched straight through the squid's eye. The beast convulsed, shriek silenced mid-roar as the impact threw it backward like a puppet cut from its strings. A shockwave of acid-laced water followed, spraying in sizzling arcs over the boat—but miraculously missing it.
The squid thrashed once, coiled around itself like a knot of dying snakes, and then slumped. Dead. The harpoon cable twitched once—tightened—then began reeling in the carcass, dragging it slowly toward the house.
Silence fell.
Everyone stared.
The cottage stood still and quiet again, but now its door hung wide open. The interior was dark—black as pitch, swallowing light. Nothing moved within. Not even the wind dared stir.
No one could see the one who had thrown the harpoon.
Zoro's voice broke the silence, calm and low.
"…Looks like someone's home."
A creak echoed across the strange acid sea—long, slow, deliberate.
From the open doorway of the cottage, a silhouette shifted. For a moment, it was only the outline of a man framed by unnatural light, the edges of his form blurred by the green mist curling in from the water. The figure stepped forward without haste, as though this was routine. As though killing squid from the threshold of a house inside a whale's stomach was no more bothersome than brushing dust from a chair.
He was tall—broad at the shoulders with a thick, weathered frame. His legs were slightly bowed, feet bare on the creaking wood of the porch. A faded pink shirt clung loosely to his chest, half-buttoned and wrinkled as though it hadn't been changed in days. His hair was short, swept back into a widow's peak of pale gray, and from his chin spilled a white beard split neatly down the middle like parting seas.
A long harpoon-tipped staff rested against one shoulder, the haft polished smooth with use. It wasn't a ceremonial piece. It was a tool. A weapon. His grip on it was loose but familiar—second nature.
Round glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Behind the lenses, his eyes were tired but clear. Sharp. Not the gaze of a lunatic or a hermit gone soft in the head. No, there was weight in those eyes. Measured stillness. Like the sea before a storm.
He stepped down from the porch and onto the acid-resistant dock with a slow, echoing tap of his heel. He didn't look surprised to see them—just observant, as if taking inventory of how many there were, how badly their ship was damaged, and whether or not they were worth speaking to.
Nobody moved.
Even Sanji, who rarely shied away from strangers, held his breath. Nami squinted through the mist, shielding her eyes. Usopp hunched low behind the others, whispering, "That's not a normal old man. That's not a normal anything."
The stranger raised his harpoon slightly—not in threat, but in acknowledgment.
Before he set it down, the old man gave the harpoon one final, practiced twist—coiling the blood-drenched line into a tight loop, laying it beside the porch as though this were a lazy afternoon chore and not the aftermath of a monster's death. Then, without a word, he turned his back on them, walked across the worn deck, and settled into a faded lawn chair that groaned softly beneath his weight. He adjusted the angle, reclined slightly, and reached beneath his seat with one hand. A small metal cooler clicked open.
With a hiss, he popped the cap off a bottle. Some kind of herbal tonic—maybe sake, maybe something stronger—judging by the sharp scent that drifted lazily toward the boat. He took a long pull, the kind that spoke of habit rather than indulgence.
The silence stretched.
Steam curled in the green-tinged air. The gentle ripple of the acid sea lapped against the skiff. No one moved. No one spoke.
Usopp's jaw worked uselessly, as though words had failed him. Nami exchanged glances with Sanji, who only furrowed his brow. Varin stood perfectly still at the front of the skiff, watching the man as though waiting for a trap to spring.
But it was Zoro who finally broke the spell.
He stepped to the bow, folding his arms, his voice flat but edged. "You got a name, old man?"
The figure in the chair didn't answer right away. He took another sip, set the bottle down on a side table fashioned from what looked like whale vertebrae, and slowly—deliberately—turned his head toward them.
His eyes met Zoro's. Clear. Aged. Not weak—weathered. Like sea glass ground smooth by decades of tides.
He exhaled through his nose. "Not until you tell me why you're inside a whale's gut without a clue what you're doing."
He didn't say it with malice.
Just... reality.
A test.
His voice was patient. Tired. But underneath the fatigue, there was steel. The kind forged in loss. The kind that did not yield easily.
Zoro didn't blink.
"We didn't choose to come here. The whale swallowed our ship."
The old man arched an eyebrow. "And you punched it. I heard the thud. I'd wager it was the big one right there," he said, raising a crooked finger and pointing straight at Varin.
Varin didn't move. He stood near the bow of the skiff, hands at his sides, coat still damp from spray and streaked with the residue of acid mist. His silver eyes didn't flinch. He said nothing.
"That him?" the old man asked again, eyes shifting to the others.
"No," Nami said quickly, shaking her head. "That was our captain. He's not here—got thrown clear before the whale swallowed us."
The old man grunted. "Hm. Figures. The reckless type."
He leaned back in his chair again, reaching for his bottle. He took another drink and let out a low breath through his nose. "Reckless gets you eaten. Or worse."
Zoro crossed his arms. "We didn't exactly have a choice."
"No one ever does," the old man said. "Not at first."
fore he could speak again, the acid lake beneath them churned—suddenly, violently. A deep, guttural shift rolled through the liquid like the stirring of some unseen leviathan. The Merry rocked hard, nearly throwing Sanji and Usopp off balance. Nami caught the railing just in time, her eyes wide with alarm.
Green droplets flung skyward, splattering against the deck and catching the crew in a scattered spray. They hissed faintly on contact—hot to the touch, but not enough to burn through cloth or skin. Still, the sting was sharp. Zoro grimaced, wiping a streak from his cheek. Usopp yelped and patted frantically at his shoulder.
"What the hell is—!" Nami started.
But before the question could finish leaving her lips, the old man moved.
Without a word, he stepped off the dock and dropped into the acid sea.
No hesitation. No preparation. Just a clean, practiced dive into a substance no sane man should survive.
There was a collective gasp from the crew, but by the time they rushed to the edge of the Merry's deck, the man was already cutting through the viscous green with the efficiency of a predator. Each stroke sent a wave rippling outward, churning with purpose. His harpoon trailed behind him like a tail.
Ahead of him—now visible through the mist and spray—stood a massive structure embedded in the far wall of the stomach cavern.
A door.
Or rather, a set of them.
The larger one, sunken beneath the surface, was a gate of iron and brass, inlaid with overlapping plates that looked more like the airlock of a submarine than anything made by hand. Rusted chains the width of cannons coiled around it, bound tight against latches grown over with barnacle-like coral. Just above it, nearly forty feet off the water's surface, a second, smaller door was built into the wall—accessible only by an iron ladder that stretched down the vertical face like a spine of nails.
The man swam toward it with relentless motion.
"Wait!" Usopp shouted, leaning over the railing. "Where are you going?!"
"Hey—hey!" Nami joined in, eyes narrowed as she followed his path. "Are you out of your mind?! That's acid!"
He didn't answer.
Didn't even look back.
His strokes never slowed.
Varin's gaze narrowed slightly as he watched the man approach the wall, already reaching the base of the ladder. The man gripped a rung and began climbing—one hand after another, still not speaking, still not acknowledging the shouts echoing behind him.
Zoro clenched the edge of the railing. "What is he doing? What's through that door?"
No response.
Not from the man. Not from the whale.
Only the dull groan of the inner chamber, like lungs drawing in breath behind ancient walls.
The green sea had quieted again, as if settling around whatever pulse had disturbed it.
But the silence now felt intentional. Like something was waiting.
And the man—who had killed a squid with a harpoon, who lived in the belly of a beast, who dove into acid without fear—had nothing more to say.
He just climbed.
"Just wait," Varin said, his voice calm but firm—cutting through the growing tension before it could spiral. He hadn't moved from the railing, still watching the old man disappear rung by rung into the mist above. His coat fluttered slightly in the rising steam, one gloved hand resting loosely on the rail.
"I can't swim," he added, glancing sidelong at Usopp, who was already halfway into a panic crouch. "And I doubt any of you want to take a bath in that." He gestured with two fingers toward the green surface of the acid lake below them. The liquid churned slowly now, like breath through a sleeping mouth—thick, sickly, and alive.
Steam hissed faintly as the wind shifted. Drops still clung to the Merry's deck and sails, trailing smoke from every surface they touched.
The others hesitated.
Usopp gulped. "I mean… I really don't. I barely like taking baths in water."
Nami rubbed her arms, looking from the rising ladder to the sealed iron door half-submerged in the wall. "But what's he doing? Why not just tell us?"
"Maybe he doesn't want to," Zoro said flatly. "Or maybe he figures we'll follow either way."
Sanji tapped the side of the boat with the sole of his shoe. "Guy lives in a whale. Kills squids from his front porch. Swims in stomach acid. Not exactly someone who explains himself."
Varin turned back toward the rest of them, voice low but steady.
"He'll be back," he said. "And if he's not, worst case—"
He nodded toward the far wall, where the massive iron gate loomed in silence, each bolt and hinge the size of a man's chest. The ladder to the smaller door stretched endlessly upward beside it.
"—we find out where that leads."
Silence followed his words. The glow from the acid reflected dimly in their eyes. Somewhere above, the old man's form vanished through the smaller door, sealed behind shadow and mist.
They lingered on the deck in uneasy silence, the oppressive stillness broken only by the wet, organic groan echoing from deep within the whale's belly. It wasn't a single sound, but a layered chorus—flesh shifting against itself, a rib cage creaking under the slow pressure of breath, organs rumbling like the undercurrent of a storm. The sound was neither alive nor dead, but something in between.
It put a weight on their chests.
Nami tightened her grip on the railing. "You hear that, right?"
Usopp was already half-crouched behind a barrel again. "Yes, and I hate it. It sounds like the inside of a monster's stomach—which, reminder, is exactly where we are."
Sanji narrowed his eyes toward the distant ladder, then to the low lapping of acid against the hull. "Feels like it's breathing. Like the whole damn place is just… waiting."
Zoro gave a low grunt. "It's alive. That's all. You expected a whale's stomach to be quiet?"
"No," Nami said, her voice lower now, more thoughtful. "But I didn't expect it to feel like this. This isn't just biological. It feels… designed."
Usopp peeked over the edge of the barrel, his face pale. "You think that guy built all of this? The bridge? The house? The acid pool defense system?"
"I don't think anyone builds a stomach," Sanji muttered.
"But someone built the doors," Varin said, not looking at any of them. His gaze remained fixed on the great wall in the distance—the enormous gate sealed like a vault, its edges pulsing slightly with the rise and fall of Laboon's internal movements. "Someone modified this place. Fortified it."
Nami nodded slowly, chewing her lip. "You saw the walls. That cottage isn't old. Someone keeps it up. And the ladder's too clean. No rust. No corrosion from the acid mist. That means someone's maintaining it."
"The old man," Zoro said.
"Probably," Varin replied. "But not for himself. This isn't for comfort. It's for function."
A low, mournful moan rumbled through the cavern again—longer this time, drawn out like a whale's song stretched thin and drowned in distance. The sound rippled across the acid lake and vibrated through the hull beneath their boots.
The crew shifted uneasily.
"Doesn't sound angry," Nami said after a beat.
"Sounds lonely," Usopp muttered. "Like… crying."
Sanji lit a cigarette, the flame trembling at the tip of the match before he snuffed it out with a sharp breath. "Who cries from their stomach?"
Zoro glanced at him. "A whale who swallowed a thousand memories."
Varin finally stepped away from the railing, the sound of his boots soft against the deck. He walked toward the center mast, pausing as the echoes of the groan faded once more into silence.
"Whatever that man's doing," he said, "he's not doing it for our benefit."
"And if he doesn't come back?" Sanji asked.
Varin turned his head slightly, looking back over his shoulder. "Like I said, through the door. Simple."
The group fell silent again.
Somewhere above, metal clinked faintly—echoes of movement from behind the upper door, now lost to shadow and mist. The whale groaned again, longer this time, deeper. It wasn't just noise—it was a song, played in a key of sadness none of them could fully hear.
The Going Merry rocked gently on the glowing green tide.
And the waiting continued.