Chapter 517

Hancock's vessel returns to Amazon Lily, where the gates open to welcome the empress and her plundered loot is catalogued. Inside the palace, she smashes a clay likeness of herself, calling it ugly, and asks Enishida why the guards are gone, learning they have rushed off to eliminate a dangerous intruder. As Hancock settles in to relax, Elder Nyon appears to plead with her.

Knowing the World Government has called for Hancock, Nyon urges her to answer for the island's sake, reminding her that with the Calm Belt no longer shielding them, only her Warlord standing keeps the government at bay. She warns that the elderly and children will perish if the Kuja Pirates are arrested. Hancock dismisses her as merely frightened, brands her a traitorous former empress, and personally throws her out of the palace.

The island's great bell rings to signal Hancock's bath, emptying the palace as everyone files into the streets, since entry is forbidden during this time. When a child asks why, Ran recounts that Hancock and her two sisters once slew a gorgon and were cursed, so anyone who glimpses their backs turns to stone, a burden Hancock supposedly took on for everyone's safety. Meanwhile, Luffy slips past the guards, scales the walls, and decides to ask an important person for a boat. Reasoning that important people live in big buildings, he heads for the palace, crashes through its roof, and lands in shallow water, realizing too late he has dropped into the bathhouse. A fully naked Hancock spots the man, and when Luffy sees something on her back, her fury erupts.

Elder Nyon is revealed to be Gloriosa, an empress from three generations earlier, and Hancock and her sisters are named the Gorgon Sisters, said to carry a curse on their backs from slaying a gorgon. Luffy's accidental crash lets him glimpse the secret mark on Hancock's back. The cover advances the CP9 story as the agents set sail aboard the Candy Pirates' ship.