CRASH!
Willy's ship, the Flying Shark, smashed a sloop into a thousand pieces with its massive ram.
"HAHAHAHA!" Willy roared with laughter. "Humans are so weak! A completely inferior species!"
The other Fish-Men on his ship laughed along with him.
Willy had once been a member of the Sun Pirates. After Fisher Tiger's death, Jinbe had taken over as captain, but the crew had eventually splintered due to ideological differences.
Willy was violent and held extremist, racist views. He'd struck out on his own, and now he enjoyed hunting humans and selling them to slave traders.
"Captain!" a lookout shouted from the stern. "There's a ship tailing us! The flag is..."
"Who is it?" Willy demanded.
"The black dragon!" the Fish-Man replied. "It's him!"
"Hm?" Willy was confused. "Weren't they in the lead? When did they fall behind us?"
He let out another booming laugh. "Wuhahaha! I was just about to go looking for them, and they've come to me! Hard to port! Get to windward of them!"
He hefted the chain mace at his waist. "All hands, prepare for battle! Let's go claim that fifty million Berries!"
"YEAHHHHHH!"
The Fish-Men drew their swords, and the gunners rolled out the cannons.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The eight cannons on the port side opened fire, the air filling with thick smoke.
"That's the mark of the Fish-Men..." Jin said, lowering his spyglass. The demonic carrier pushed through the cannon fire, heading straight for the Flying Shark.
"He wants a close-quarters fight?" Willy sneered. "Wuhahaha! A Fish-Man is many times stronger than a human in the water! And he wants to fight us at sea? Ram them!"
Willy ordered the Flying Shark to close the distance. He swung his chain mace, ready to teach the human a lesson.
"Woooooooooom..."
Suddenly, he heard a deep roar. The ship in front of them began to emit wisps of dark-red, flame-like energy.
As he watched, the ship seemed to come alive. Its hull writhed and pulsed, and the ram of the Flying Shark was swallowed whole.
"WHAT IS THAT?!"
"WHAT IS IT?!"
"IS IT A DEMON?!"
The Fish-Men were horrified.
The Flying Shark began to tremble violently.
The writhing hull of the other ship, moving with a slow, deliberate speed, "ate" it, the materials of the ship being crushed and disassembled.
The Fish-Men were sent sliding down a tube like an esophagus, tumbling out onto the floor below in a heap.
They were piled up like a small mountain.
"Fish-Men?"
"It's Fish-Men!"
Willy heard the voices and rubbed his dizzy head. He looked around and saw that they were surrounded by a group of humans.
At the forefront stood...
"Wilson," Willy said, getting to his feet. "Long time no see. I thought you were dead. I never imagined... that just like Jinbe, you'd become a lapdog for the humans. You're a traitor to the fish-man race. A DISGRACE."
He glared at Wilson.
"A traitor?" Wilson replied calmly. "You're the ones who betrayed Captain Tiger's ideals. You even hunt your own kind. How are you any different from the humans you hate so much?"
Willy sneered. "I killed you once. I can do it again."
He swung his chain mace with incredible force.
CLANG!
Wilson blocked it with his spiked club.
"KILL THEM!" Willy roared to his crew.
The battle erupted.
The natural physical superiority of the Fish-Men meant that even with minimal training, they were elite pirate warriors.
It took three to five of the Winter Blossom soldiers to handle one Fish-Man. The former members of the Vulture Pirates fared a little better.
With about twenty Fish-Men, including three powerful officers, Willy's crew quickly gained the upper hand.
Jin was here to train his men, not to send them to their deaths.
So he made his move.
WHOOSH!
He was a blur of motion.
With a single kick, Jin's foot connected with the head of the sturgeon Fish-Man officer, and it exploded.
The body crumpled to the ground, the blood staining the floor.
It was a surprise attack, but it was enough to stun the arrogant Fish-Men and inject a shot of courage into his own soldiers.
"YOU BASTARD!"
The Fish-Men, their initial shock turning to rage, roared in fury. The other two officers charged at Jin simultaneously.
"Fish-Man Karate!" the eagle ray Fish-Man officer roared, his eyes burning with rage, his presence like an erupting volcano.
"Spearfish Straight Punch!"
The spearfish Fish-Man officer's long body was a blur as he threw a punch, the air compressing in front of his fist like a cannonball.
BOOM!
The punch landed squarely on Jin's chest, but he took the full force of the blow without flinching.
Next came the eagle ray Fish-Man's hand chop, a strike that could shatter solid rock.
"DIE!"
Two heavy blows.
Both landed on Jin.
An average person would have been crushed.
But to the surprise of the two Fish-Man officers, the man before them didn't even sway. He stood as firm as a mountain.
"This guy...!"
The Fish-Men were stunned.
Was his physical constitution even stronger than theirs??
They didn't know that Jin's body had been transformed by the Spacetime energy of his journey to this world. As he trained and adapted, he was becoming less and less human.
He threw a left hook, sending the spearfish Fish-Man flying.
Then, a right-handed chop.
It was as fast as light, a strike so swift it could kill with the wind alone.
The eagle ray Fish-Man tried to counter, but Jin's hand chopped through his arm.
Taking advantage of the opening, Jin closed the distance, his fist moving so fast it seemed to be wrapped in wind as it punched straight through the officer's chest.
The spearfish Fish-Man, who had crashed into a wall, was trying to get up when a foot came down on his neck, snapping it.
It had all happened in the space of a few breaths. The three officers were dead. The other Fish-Men were frozen in fear.
The rest were just small fry.
He didn't need to intervene any further.
His soldiers, their morale soaring, charged forward and finished the job.
As his men were cut down one by one, Willy roared in fury, screaming at Wilson, calling him a traitor, asking him how he could just stand by and watch humans slaughter his own kind.
Though Wilson felt a pang of pity, he knew how extreme these Fish-Men were. Their hands were undoubtedly stained with innocent blood.
"I've heard about what your race has been through," Jin said quietly from the side. "And I sympathize with the innocent. But you... you've killed people, too. You have no right to talk about innocence. The moment you set out to sea, you should have been prepared to die."
"Wilson," he continued, "if you earn enough merit, you can save your people. You can bring them to live freely in my kingdom."
"All humans are despicable, shameless creatures!" Willy snarled. "Are you really going to believe the words of a human? You should join me! We can take his ship together!"
Wilson closed his eyes, a flood of memories washing over him.
He had been captured by human slave traders and sold to an underground fighting ring in Sabaody, where he had endured unspeakable suffering...
He was rescued by Fisher Tiger and joined the Sun Pirates. He, too, had been filled with a deep hatred for humans, and he had left the crew with Willy.
But when he discovered that Willy and the others had become no different from the slave traders they despised, he had tried to stop them and had been stabbed in the back.
He had survived and been rescued by Captain Sherlock. At first, he had been resistant, but he had eventually been won over by Sherlock's straightforward nature.
Over time, he had come to realize that humans and Fish-Men were not so different. There were good and bad, evil and kind.
He had finally come to understand Captain Tiger's dream of peace, and the true meaning of the Sun Pirates: liberation and freedom.
"You have forsaken Captain Tiger's lifelong dream!" Wilson roared. "YOU HAVE BECOME THE VERY THING WE ONCE HATED MOST!"
He took the full force of Willy's chain mace. As he spat out a mouthful of blood, he swung his own club, shattering Willy's skull.
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