Skypiea Arc

Serving as the thirteenth arc of the series and the closing half of the Sky Island Saga, this story lifts the crew above the ocean by way of a Knock Up Stream into a realm with its own rules, money, and a taboo holy ground called Upper Yard. Three forces are locked in conflict over that ground: Enel, a tyrant who names himself god and wields lightning; the winged Skypieans who inhabit the land; and the Shandia, a displaced people burning to take back what was theirs. Threaded through it all is the tale of explorer Mont Blanc Noland and the buried city of Shandora, whose truth the arc finally lays bare.

Pulled from the sky and rescued from a masked raider by the aged knight Gan Fall, the crew slips through Heaven's Gate without paying and is branded criminal. On Angel Island they befriend Conis and her father before their curiosity draws Enel's priests, who defend Upper Yard with lethal Ordeals. After a shrimp hauls their ship onto the sacred island, the crew begins to grasp that Upper Yard is a chunk of Jaya flung skyward ages ago, carrying with it the golden city of Noland's legend. Luffy's party endures the priests' trials while Zoro, Robin, and Nami dig into the land's buried history.

As the Shandia chief Wyper mounts a last push to retake his homeland, Enel proclaims a Survival Game, unleashing his priests and Divine Soldiers to thin out every intruder until only a handful remain. Robin reaches the ruins to find no treasure but a Poneglyph, and Enel discloses his intent to annihilate the sky islands and rise to a place he calls Fairy Vearth. His lightning, however, is powerless against Luffy's rubber body, the sole fighter it cannot harm. When Enel looses his ultimate blast and rings of energy threaten to erase everything, Luffy pursues him onto his flying ark, siphons the lightning through the gold sphere fused to his arm, and drives Enel into the great golden bell, ringing a peal that carries across the sky and down to Jaya, where Cricket learns the fabled city truly existed.

Enel's fall ends the ancient feud, and the two sky peoples join hands to lift the fallen bell back into place. Its base bears a Poneglyph that Robin reads as the resting place of the ancient weapon Poseidon, alongside a message inscribed in gold by Gol D. Roger that steers her toward the Rio Poneglyph on Laugh Tale. Released from their duty to protect the stone, the Shandia present the crew a golden pillar in thanks. Enel, recovered, drops his grudge and leaves alone for the moon, his true Fairy Vearth. Usopp trades rubber bands for dials, the pirates strip a fortune in gold from inside the slumbering serpent, and Gan Fall is reinstated as ruler before the Straw Hats drift back down to the Blue Sea.