Chapter 446

Within the surgeon's manor, the three pirates keep questioning the eerie tunnels and courtyard they pass. At a well lit by a single beam, a stitched-together woman steps forward, welcomes them, and immediately starts hurling plates, letting Nami and Chopper inside but pelting Usopp until a voice overhead permits him too and accounts for the woman's loathing of dishware. The speaker presents himself as the brilliant Hogback, squabbling with Cindry over the plates while a dazzled Chopper looks on. At dinner the doctor says he abandoned public life to research the zombies and the boundary between living and dead, but he flatly forbids anyone from seeing his laboratory. When Usopp brings up walking skeletons such as Brook, Hogback grows wary and clams up.

Nami decides to bathe, posting Usopp and Chopper outside even as Usopp wonders aloud why a shower needs guards. The trio resolves to wait in the mansion, betting their captain will punch through the zombies and free them, though Nami spots stitched corpses indoors too and grows certain Hogback is concealing the truth. A growl breaks the quiet, and an unseen voice praises her cleverness before slamming her to the wall and naming her his bride. Usopp charges in, Chopper sniffs out the attacker, and a Gunpowder Star is fired, yet the intruder slips off, leaving Nami to conclude an invisible man was responsible. Out at sea, the marooned crew finds the Sunny knotted in a spider's web with no exit, so Luffy elects to come ashore as well, and the group is barely on the island before a Cerberus confronts them.

This chapter formally brings in Hogback and his assistant Cindry, stages Absalom's bathroom ambush, and puts Luffy's half of the crew on Thriller Bark once the Sunny is trapped. Its color spread nods to Oda's earliest inspiration, outfitting the male Straw Hats as Vikings who pose among walruses and seals along a rocky shore.