Inside the Mermaid Cafe, the atmosphere was so oppressive the air itself seemed to have frozen solid.
"Nothing. Nothing at all, Lord Ace."
Madam Shirley forced herself to look away. She set the brewed black coffee in front of Ace. Her fingers were still trembling faintly. "Your future. I cannot see a thing."
"Is that so. Saves me the trouble, then."
Ace took a sip of coffee. He seemed unconcerned with the fortune-telling results. He had never believed in fate. If destiny truly existed on these seas, he had set sail to smash it to pieces.
Sabo, seated beside him, adjusted his hat and glanced toward the door.
"Looks like Shark carries some serious weight around here. Ryugu Palace reacted faster than I expected."
Right on cue.
The street outside the cafe erupted into a noisy commotion. Fish-men and civilians who had been lingering nearby scrambled to clear the way.
A massive whale encased in a bubble descended from above and landed in the Coral Hill plaza.
Seated on the whale's back was a tall, powerfully built man with a thick orange-red beard. The king of Fish-Man Island himself: Neptune, the Sea God.
At Neptune's side rode a heavyset blue-skinned whale shark fish-man in a kimono. One of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, Jinbe, Knight of the Sea.
The two men leaped off the whale and strode into the Mermaid Cafe.
"Welcome to Fish-Man Island, Captain Ace."
King Neptune looked at Ace, lounging there with his coffee, then at Shark standing behind him with Samehada strapped to his back. A fine sweat had broken out across the king's forehead.
He had just received the guards' report. The notorious rookie pirate crew that had caused chaos on the Sabaody Archipelago and even escaped Admiral Kizaru alive had descended on Fish-Man Island. Worse, they had brought Van der Decken's underling Wadatsumi with them. That giant monster.
"No need to be so tense, King Neptune."
Ace set his coffee cup down and gestured at the empty chair across from him. "Sit. I'm just here to see the sights. No hostile intentions toward your kingdom."
Neptune and Jinbe exchanged a glance. Though still on guard, they slowly took their seats.
"It's been a long time, Boss Jinbe."
Shark, who had stayed silent until now, spoke in a low voice as he looked at Jinbe.
"Brother Shark..."
Jinbe gazed at the man who had once fought beside him in the Sun Pirates. His expression was complicated. "After you left all those years ago, I kept searching for news of you. I never thought you'd join the Eclipse Pirates."
"Because I'm done with the kind of 'compromise and peace' you people cling to."
Shark's voice was cold. "I believe in strength, not compromise. On these seas, only absolute power can protect you. Playing lapdog for the Seven Warlords of the Sea bought you nothing but a thin veneer of safety. The same way the scum in the Fish-Man District survive on hatred and preying on the weak, crawling through the gutter."
At the words "Fish-Man District," Jinbe's expression flickered.
He knew exactly about the extremists in that district, the ones led by Hody Jones. But he had never been able to bring himself to wipe them out completely. Those people were still fellow citizens of Fish-Man Island. Victims driven to extremes by human oppression.
"Shark, the situation in Fish-Man District is complicated. Don't do anything rash," Jinbe warned, his voice low.
Shark gave a cold laugh but didn't argue. He had already made up his mind. The moment this coffee was finished, he would go clean house himself.
At that moment, Ace set down his cup.
"Right. That man called Van der Decken. I killed him on the way down, just as a side note. Consider it a welcome gift."
Ace looked at King Neptune. "His body is on our ship right now."
"What?!"
King Neptune shot to his feet. His massive frame shook violently from sheer shock. "Decken is dead?!"
The nightmare that had haunted Ryugu Palace for five or six years. The madman who hurled weapons at the Hard-Shell Tower every single day. Dead. Just like that.
Jinbe's entire body jolted. He stared at Ace in disbelief. He knew better than anyone how slippery Van der Decken was. The man was a Mato Mato no Mi user. He hid in the deep sea and was impossible to catch.
"Uuu... uuugh..."
The man called the Sea God in the Great Pirate Era buried his face in his hands. He wept openly, without a shred of royal dignity.
"Finally... Shirahoshi can finally leave that pitch-black tower!"
Neptune spun toward Ace. He bowed deeply to the young pirate. "You have my deepest gratitude, Lord Ace! You saved Shirahoshi. You saved the honor of our entire royal family!"
"I just found the man annoying."
Ace smiled, leaning back. "King Neptune, you were saying something about a grand banquet? I hope the invitation still stands for me and my crew."
"It does! Even more so now!"
Neptune straightened up and bellowed at the shark merman behind him. "Fukaboshi! Go to the Hard-Shell Tower immediately! Tell Shirahoshi the madman is dead! Tell her to come join the banquet!"
"Yes, Father!" Fukaboshi's eyes were red with emotion. He turned and swam at full speed toward the royal quarters.
---
A short while later, inside the grand banquet hall of Ryugu Palace.
The place had become the Eclipse Pirates' personal festival ground.
Sabo, Enel, and Urouge, the crew's biggest eaters, were launching a full-scale assault on the tables of deep-sea delicacies they had never seen before.
"Ha ha ha ha! This deep-sea crab meat is so sweet! Sabo, roast mine a little with your fire!" Urouge chomped away, roaring with laughter.
"Yehahaha! The sake here is mild, but it's crisp and clean. Barely worthy of this god's palate!" Enel, for once dropping his lofty airs, sat cross-legged on a chair, clinking glasses with several beautiful mermaid servers.
At the banquet hall entrance.
"Father..."
A soft, timid girl's voice drifted in. A mermaid of extraordinary size, yet impossibly adorable, poked her head out cautiously behind Fukaboshi.
She had long, wavy pink hair and deep blue eyes filled with wonder and fear of this unfamiliar world. Only eleven years old, but the beauty she carried, as if every dream on the ocean had gathered into a single being, brought the noisy banquet hall to a dead silence for one full second.
"Oooh!"
Buggy dropped the crab leg in his hand. The sound of pure awe escaped him.
"That's... Princess Shirahoshi?"
Leona couldn't help setting down her wine glass. She stared at the giant girl, a flash of genuine admiration crossing her slit-pupiled eyes.
"An almost unimaginable beauty."
"Agreed."
Sabo, seated beside Leona, nodded.
"Father."
Shirahoshi shrank behind Fukaboshi. Her voice was so fragile it ached. "Outside... are there really no more axes flying at me?"
"No more, Shirahoshi!"
Neptune walked over, his heart aching as he patted his daughter's arm. "Come. Meet our benefactor. This is Mr. Ace. The man who dealt with Van der Decken."
Shirahoshi timidly turned toward the head of the table.
There, Ace was peeling a giant deep-sea prawn and tossing it into his mouth.
"So this is Princess Shirahoshi?"
Ace smiled. "She truly lives up to the legend of the mermaid princess."
Shirahoshi hid behind her brother. She peeked out fearfully at Ace.
"Lord Ace? Th-thank you... uu..."
A shy squeak escaped her, and the girl shrank back behind her brother. Not that her size made that remotely effective.
Ace raised an eyebrow. "No one on these seas will ever lock you in a dark tower again. At your age, you should be smiling more."
Shirahoshi looked at Ace. His gaze was commanding, but deep within it lay something utterly steady. Something reliable. She froze for a moment, then sniffled hard. She gave Ace a brilliant smile, bright and still wet with tears.
"Yes! Thank you... Lord Ace!"
"Ha ha ha ha! That's it! What a lovely girl."
Ace laughed and raised his glass of juice. He tipped it toward Shirahoshi in a lazy toast.
"Drink up, you lot! We're going to be on Fish-Man Island for quite a while yet."
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