Chapter 103: The Whale

The Going Merry drifts onto an impossible sight: a small island sitting in a lake deep within a whale's stomach. Stranger still is the prickly old man stationed there, Crocus, who tends the lighthouse at Twin Cape. He informs the bewildered crew that the beast has been surgically altered, and that a door he installed in the stomach wall offers a way out. When the watery chamber suddenly churns, he explains that the whale keeps battering its skull against the Red Line, a habit that has left its body covered in old wounds.

Luffy tumbles in separately, dragging along two odd strangers, Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday, and the whale's thrashing soon dumps all three beside the others. Crocus slips away to a private chamber rigged with a colossal syringe, sedating the animal back into calm. Pressed about their intentions, the two visitors admit they came to slay the whale, only for Crocus and Luffy to shut the attempt down. With the creature settled, Crocus finally shares its history.

Crocus is properly introduced as the keeper of the Twin Cape lighthouse, and the whale is named Laboon. The pair of intruders, Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday, also make their debut. The chapter's emotional core arrives with Crocus revealing that Laboon once sailed with a band of pirates who, fearing the Grand Line, left the whale in his keeping at Twin Cape and promised to return. That parting happened half a century ago, and the two have waited together ever since.

The cover places Luffy riding Laboon across an unfamiliar sea while Smoker and Buggy hover above. A flashback panel features Yorki of the whale's former crew. This chapter belongs to the Reverse Mountain Arc and sets up the bond between Laboon and the Straw Hats that pays off the following chapter.