Happiness

Goading the bruised fish-man to climb out of the pool, Luffy is met with laughter, Arlong convinced the boy has nowhere left to run. Usopp screams a warning that one clean hit will be fatal, urging him into hiding, yet Luffy answers by fanning out his left hand sideways into a makeshift guard, a move that puzzles Johnny and Yosaku. Doubling his earlier speed and steering for the heart, Arlong connects and launches Luffy through the air, only for those splayed fingers to halt his pointed nose a hair short of contact. Bouncing back against the building's side, Luffy boasts the strike no longer works on him. Arlong springs up from where he landed, surprising Luffy and leaping at him again above the ground, but this time Luffy weaves his fingers into a mesh, traps the attacker, plants a foot on his chest, and hammers him down into the earth below.

The crowd erupts, and as Luffy questions whether the fish-man is done for, Arlong's eyes flick open with a wild, savage glare. The sight rattles Genzo and Nojiko, and Nami admits she has never witnessed that look before, while Sanji compares it to a rampaging Sea King and warns that the blow merely stoked Arlong's fury. Grabbing Luffy by the skull, Arlong smashes him against the foundation, then bursts through a wall to seize an enormous zanbato called Kiribachi. He cleaves at Luffy, drives him upward through the building, and traps him on a high floor, where Luffy escapes into a window. In the chart-filled room beyond, Arlong boasts that the sheets are eight years of maps from Nami's hand and lauds her talent, though Luffy notices her desk pen is caked in dried blood. Trapping the boy's skull between a pair of the sword's fang-like teeth, Arlong insists that nothing pleases Nami more than mapping the seas so the fish-men can rule, at which Luffy clutches a blade, snaps its jagged edge bare-handed, and rages over Nami being treated like an instrument.

On the cover, drawn from the Diary of Koby-Meppo serial, both Garp and Bogard debut for the very first time as Garp shows up to take over Morgan's escort. The brawl between Luffy and Arlong shifts into the room where Nami once drew her charts. This installment also gives the Sea Kings their in-story name for the very first time.