Usopp stood on top of a building, legs set in a wide stance, with all the bravado he could muster. Which was quite a bit, when he wasn’t afraid for his life.

  “I am the fearless warrior of the seas… Captain Usopp!”

  “That idiot…” Zoro muttered, staring up at him utterly unimpressed- which was fair, since Arlong appeared to be barely singed. It made Joey feel somewhat better about his completely one-sided ‘fight’ against Don Krieg.

  “They call me Usopp the demon king! Flee now and live, for I have eight thousand hardened killers behind me!”

  ‘He’s trembling,’ Joey observed.

  “I don’t care how many men you have,” Arlong said, “I’ll paper my walls with their hides!”

  Then, in an impressive display of power, he dashed over to the building Usopp was standing on, and, with very little effort, ripped it out of the ground, foundations and all. Anyone who wasn’t a fishman (or Joey) was immediately taken aback by this, and those who had strayed too close to Arlong began to give him a wide berth, uncertain of what he would do with the structure.

  “He’s just a human!” he yelled. “A puny, worthless human, and he dared to attack me!”

  “Lord Arlong, wait!” one of the fishmen objected. “Are you gonna destroy another village? There ain’t no profit in that!”

  “Aye,” another one added. “We already lost the tribute from Gosa.”

  “We’ll find new villages to tap!” Arlong shouted, hurling the building forwards with all of his might. It crashed into the house in front of it, breaking apart into splinters of wood and stone, and, while it was hard to tell in all the chaos, Joey could just barely see Usopp hopping around on top in a panic. “We are the master race!”

  Zoro sighed, and moved his hand over to his sword’s hilt. “All right,” he said, striding towards the fishman, “I think it’s time I get involved.”

  “Um- what exactly are you planning on doing?” Joey asked, tentatively following behind.

  “What do you think?” the swordsman responded, smirking.

  “That guy ripped a building out of the ground!” Joey protested, waving his hands desperately. “There’s no way you could fight him with that injury!”

  “Says who?”

  “Uh- um… I mean, you could, but…”

  “Then I will,” Zoro said, with an air of finality that gave Joey pause.

  ‘Not sure how I feel about this,’ he decided, ‘but I sure ain’t getting in his way.’

  “Hey, you!” Zoro shouted. “Leave Usopp alone.”

  At this, Arlong turned around, the frown on his face deepening as he looked the two of them over. He was silent for a few seconds, then began to speak, his voice drier than a desert sandstorm. “And just who are you?”

  “My name’s Roronoa Zoro,” he responded, unsheathing Wado Ichimonji, “and I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  The sawshark fishman appeared rather unperturbed by this, returning Zoro’s gaze with a bored expression on his face. “Oh, really?”

  “Hey, he’s still alive!” one of the fishmen shouted, pointing at Usopp’s cowering frame- he had managed to jump out of the way of Arlong’s attack onto a nearby rooftop.

  “Catch him and kill him, then!” Arlong shouted back, livid with rage. The fishmen awkwardly looked around, then a group of them began to hustle him away as best they could, muttering things under their breath while he continued to gesticulate angrily, caught up in some sort of blinding frenzy. The rest broke off into two groups; half of them ran off in pursuit of Usopp, while the other half began to circle around Zoro and Joey, grinning maliciously.

  “We’re taking the boss back to Arlong Park for now,” one of them said, stepping forwards, “to avoid some unnecessary collateral damage. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to let you three off the hook.”

  “Funny you’d say that,” Joey responded, “given that you’re a fish.”

  He really shouldn’t have said that. He really shouldn’t have said that. But the opportunity was right there.

  “Shut up, smartass!”

  “Oh boy,” he muttered, slowly concentrating his aura into his fists. He needed to be ready to fight.

  “I would have preferred to slice up your boss,” Zoro said, as he shifted his balance over to his left leg. “But this will have to do.”

  They all stood there in silence, each waiting for someone else to make the first move- then one of the fishmen charged towards Joey from behind, letting out a guttural scream. He immediately whipped around, a faint blue trail of aura forming behind his fist as he smashed it into his attacker’s face. This time, the blow was much more effective- the fishman grunted in pain and stumbled back several feet from the force of the impact. Meanwhile, Zoro had advanced on another fishman, slicing through him with relative ease; though he seemed to wince a bit as he moved.

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  Then, everything devolved into chaos, as the entire circle of fishmen began to close in, fists raised in aggression. At first, Joey was able to fight off the crowd pretty well- while it was difficult, the people here were no Don Kriegs or Arlongs. He could manage them.

  It didn’t take long, however, for him to run out of stamina; after beating back the fourth fishman in a row, he began to falter, taking in deep, heavy breaths. Using aura drained his energy, and he was already far below this world’s standards in terms of physical strength, which meant it took that much more to take someone here out. It wasn’t long before he was taking more punches than he was giving out, and the advancing mass of fishmen was quickly growing overwhelming.

  As his vision grew hazy, he saw Zoro fall backwards, grunting. It took him a moment to realize how the swordsman had been felled- someone had managed to get around his sword, and strike him in the middle of his still-healing chest wound, a gruesome slash courtesy of Mihawk. He didn’t have time to dwell on this, though, as his own body was quickly giving out, under a relentless assault that reminded him somewhat of mochi pounding. That was the last thought he was able to have, however, before he fell unconscious- a sensation that he was growing concerningly familiar with.

  “Great job, dumbass,” Joey muttered, “Now all three of us are tied up.”

  “What did you expect me to do?” Zoro responded, glaring at him. “Stand there and watch while he started tearing everything up?”

  “I don’t know, but I would have been happier with something that didn’t get us all bundled up like a Christmas present.”

  For a brief moment, Joey was panicked, having brought up something that likely didn’t exist here- the annoyed grunt he received from Zoro, however, implied that he understood the reference, and he let out an internal sigh of relief.

  “Silence, you three! You’re lucky enough as it is that you’re not dead already, so I would recommend you not test my patience any further. Now, tell me… you, with the green hair. You said you were Roronoa Zoro, the pirate hunter, correct?”

  “What’s it to you?” the swordsman in question grunted, as he pushed against his restraints.

  “You’ve come for my head, I assume?” Arlong asked, drumming his fingers on the seat of the throne he was resting in. “Clearly, you’re not much of a threat right now. I can’t help but satisfy my curiosity, though… who are those two who are with you? And more importantly… are there any others?”

  “Y-y-yeah!” Usopp stammered, “We’ve got eighty-thousand men-”

  “I didn’t ask you, foolish human!”

  “R-right,” he squeaked.

  “That could be true, as far as you know,” Zoro pointed out, grinning mischievously. “Maybe we do have eighty-thousand men ready to fight for us.”

  Arlong looked back at him grimly. “It doesn’t matter how many men you have,” he said, “I’ll kill every last one of them.”

  Joey sighed- he could see where this was going, and he didn’t particularly want to listen to Arlong go on about how much better he was than them. Instead, he surveyed his surroundings, trying to find some way out of this situation that wouldn’t end up with him being dead. He, Zoro, and Usopp were tied together at their wrists and ankles, in, if he remembered correctly, much the same position Usopp was in by himself after being captured in canon- surrounded by fishmen, on the stone patio outside of Arlong’s massive pagoda. The main difference here being a distinct lack of dozens of dead fishman bodies scattered around nearby.

  To escape, they’d probably need to just run as fast they could, avoiding fishmen and hopefully not getting gutted- which would be a nigh impossible feat, given their restraints. Worth it? Maybe, but only as a last resort. He opted to wait for now, in case another way out revealed itself later. As Arlong began to finish his tirade, however, Joey’s attention was brought back to the more immediate situation.

  “... we can do a lot of things that no human can- we fishmen are the lords of all creation! And so, a human who fights a fishman is essentially defying nature itself! Do you see now?!”

  “I’m tired of these kinds of rants, Arlong,” Nami cut in, walking up from behind him with a frown on her face.

  “Calm down, Nami!” the fishman responded, as he waved her over good-naturedly. “You’re a different case, of course- we’d be nothing without your maps!”

  Upon hearing this, Zoro looked over at the Arlong Pirate’s cartographer, giving her a piercing gaze. “So you’re really in with these guys, huh?”

  “Yep,” she said, walking towards him. “I heard you were in Cocoyashi earlier. If you talked to my sister, then I’m sure you know where my loyalties lie. I was a pirate from the day we met.”

  “C-come on, Nami!” Usopp stammered- the man had been frozen in fear for the past minute or so. “S-surely this is all some sort of elaborate joke…?”

  “If it’s a joke, it sure isn’t a very funny one,” Joey muttered.

  Arlong, who had been watching the exchange in silence, began to frown, shifting a little in his seat. “Nami, you know these three? Or are they just another one of your victims?”

  “The latter, obviously,” she responded. “You know, I knew you guys would come after me, but I didn’t think you’d make it this far. Impressive, but suicidal- there’s no way you’d defeat Arlong.”

  “Shahahahaha!” Arlong bellowed, rocking back and forth in laughter. “She had you completely strung along! This girl right here would do anything for money- even forgetting the death of her own parent! She’s a cold-blooded witch!”

  At this, a shadow fell upon Nami’s face, her calm demeanor failing as memories of Bellemere were undoubtedly flashing through her head. Joey could see out of the corner of his eye that Zoro had noticed this, too, and a bad feeling began to grow within him as he saw an evil grin widening upon the swordsman’s face. In an instant, though, Nami’s mask was back on, and she stepped away from them slowly, taking a deep breath. Before she could say anything, however, Zoro began to talk.

  “I see… It’s not like I really trusted you anyways. Wouldn’t surprise me even if you turned out to be a devilish cutthroat. Right from the beginning, I had a feeling you were a good-for-nothing woman.”

  “Zoro…” Joey hissed, noticing with more than a little panic that they had somehow grown closer and closer to one of the nearby pools. “What are you doing?” It wasn’t long before Usopp caught on, too, and his eyes widened in fear.

  ‘If he’s doing what I think he is… it was already a questionable idea when it was just him on his own, but with all three of us? It might not matter whether or not Nami tries to pull us out, we could end up drowning either way…’

  “Well, that makes things easier,” Nami said, “but if you’d realized that I was only tricking you, then you should have given up on me and the treasure already. Go find another navigator for your crew- I’m already taken.”

  At this, Zoro gave Nami a smug look, then launched himself directly into the pool behind him, along with Joey and Usopp. And for the fourth time that week, Joey’s life flashed before his eyes.