Beat Kuro! Usopp the Man's Tearful Resolve!

The Usopp Pirates rush in to pile on Kuro, but he shrugs them off and beats Usopp to the dirt. Realizing his real foe wields a Devil Fruit, Kuro fixes his attention on Luffy and sends Jango to hunt down and kill Kaya. Wounded and unable to fight on, Usopp orders the children to shield Kaya as she dodges her pursuer. Zoro tries to reach Luffy but is blocked by a strengthened Buchi, whose furious blows tear up the battlefield until the swordsman cuts him down with his three blades. With Luffy's blessing, Zoro then breaks away to defend Kaya from Jango.

Kuro slips past Luffy's strikes with his Nukiashi technique while sneering at Usopp's dream of becoming a brave warrior, his crew joining the ridicule until Luffy scatters them with a hurled boulder. Renouncing his captaincy, Kuro recounts how, weary of a fugitive's life, he engineered an escape. After slaughtering nearly an entire Marine crew aboard an attacking ship, he had Jango hypnotize the one survivor and a lookalike among his own men, convincing that crewman he was Kuro so the soldier could turn him in. The Marines executed the imposter, freeing the real Kuro to seek a quiet life funded by Kaya's inheritance. Back in the present, Luffy uses the same boulder to shatter every blade on Kuro's right glove and declares that his own ambition outweighs a man who only wishes to retire.

The episode is part of the Syrup Village Arc and debuts Luffy's Gomu Gomu no Yari. The flashback names the lookalike crewman Nugire Yainu and ties the deception to the Marine soldier Morgan.