The perpetual daylight of Enies Lobby was an unnatural aberration.
Beneath an unblinking sky where dusk never fell, the colossal judicial stronghold sat perched over a bottomless oceanic abyss.
The sea rushed inward from all four horizons, plunging into a yawning, pitch-black chasm that defied conventional hydrodynamics.
Around this vortex coiled the Tarai Current—the monolithic oceanic highway linking Marineford, Impel Down, and Enies Lobby in an iron triangle of supreme World Government authority.
At thirty-five thousand feet above the marine highway, veiled within the dense cover of cumulative white cloud banks, the floating continent of Merveille drifted in absolute stillness.
On the eastern observation parapet of the sovereign citadel, Arthur Pendragon stood with his dark coat billowing against the high-altitude slipstream.
Flanking him was Nico Robin, her obsidian hair pinned back against the gale, an open maritime dossier resting securely beneath her slender fingers.
Behind them towered Dorry and Brogy.
Even seated in a posture of disciplined restraint, the two former co-captains of the Giant Warrior Pirates cast shadows that swallowed the stone battlement.
Their massive bronze knuckles were clenched so tightly that the air around them seemed to vibrate with latent kinetic force.
“You are certain of the timing, Robin?” Arthur asked, his golden eyes scanning the glowing ivory towers far beneath them.
“Completely, Lord Arthur,” Robin replied, her azure eyes sharp with analytical clarity.
“Our intelligence networks in the Underworld intercepted a high-value requisition order routed through the black market three days ago.
Spandam, desperate to prove his worth to the Gorosei, used his father’s clandestine discretionary budget to purchase two uncatalogued Devil Fruits.
He had them delivered to his private office in the Tower of Justice this morning.”
Robin turned a page in the leather folder, her lips curving with a cool, knowing smile.
“According to intercepted Cipher Pol memos, he intends to present them to Kalifa and Kaku as rewards the moment they secure the Pluton blueprints from Iceburg in Water 7.
Right now, Spandam sits alone in his tower, admiring his newly acquired treasures.”
“Two fruits delivered directly into the spider’s web, waiting to be plucked,” Arthur remarked softly.
“A convenient investment on the World Government’s part.
It would be poor manners to let such assets fall into the hands of assassins.”
His gaze shifted toward the outer perimeter of the judicial island.
His Observation Haki—amplified to continental scale by the lightning frequencies of the Goro Goro no Mi—unfurled through the sky like an invisible net.
Every heartbeat, every marine patrol, and every conversation across the entire fortress echoed clearly in his mind.
“And what of CP9’s main force?” Dorry rumbled from behind, his deep baritone vibrating like distant thunder.
“They are miles away,” Arthur answered without turning.
“Rob Lucci, Kaku, and Blueno remain deep undercover in the Galley-La Company, playing the roles of loyal shipwrights.
The stronghold below is practically hollow.
Aside from ten thousand expendable garrison soldiers and corrupt judges, the only martial presence of note is stationed at the front gate.”
Arthur’s eyes hardened slightly.
“Two gatekeeper giants.
Oimo and Kashi.”
At the mention of those two names, Brogy’s hand closed around the massive hilt of his battleaxe.
The stone beneath his boots grovelled under the sudden spike of colossal pressure.
“Oimo… Kashi…” Brogy growled, his voice thick with ancient grief and rising fury.
“Fifty years.
Our young kin have been swinging iron for the very dogs who claim to uphold justice!”
“To tell them we were rotting in the deepest pits of Impel Down…” Dorry’s beard bristled like wire, his teeth grinding together with a sound like grinding boulders.
“To promise them our pardon in exchange for a century of humiliating servitude at the gates of hell!
If I lay my hands on this Spandam, I will tear his limbs from his torso!”
“You will have your vengeance, Dorry,” Arthur said, turning to face the two titans.
His presence was calm, immovable, and absolute.
“However, rage without discipline is merely noise.
A direct assault by two twenty-meter giants dropping from the heavens would shake the entire judicial island.
The impact tremors alone would shatter the outer courtyards and alert the entire garrison before your boots touched the stone.”
Brogy furrowed his heavy brow.
“Then how do we descend, Sovereign?
We are not birds.
Even if you lift us with your golden levitation, our landing would sound like thunder.”
Arthur stepped toward the edge of the parapet.
Faint arcs of pale azure lightning began to weave across his shoulders, flickering through his dark hair until his eyes shone with pure, crackling power.
“You will not fall, Brogy.
Nor will you make a sound,” Arthur said evenly.
“In this world, thunder follows lightning only because mortals lack the finesse to separate the flash from the shockwave.
Today, Enies Lobby will see neither.”
At the Main Outer Gates of Enies Lobby, the midday glare beat down upon the weathered stone causeway.
Guarding the colossal iron-bound portal stood two colossal figures.
Oimo, wielding a giant iron club that could crush a battleship’s hull with a single downward swing, leaned against the parapet with an expression of weary resignation.
Beside him, Kashi rested his hands upon the pommel of a two-handed battleaxe, his horned helmet tilted toward the endless, blinding sky.
Fifty years.
For five decades, they had stood vigilant at this post.
They had endured the mocking laughter of minor cipher pol agents, the condescending orders of marine captains, and the endless tedium of judicial protocol.
Every drop of sweat, every blistered muscle, every humiliation had been swallowed with a single conviction burning in their chests: We are paying the ransom for our chiefs.
“Fifty years left, brother,” Kashi muttered in the booming tongue of Elbaf, his voice laced with heavy sorrow.
“Halfway through our penance.
Do you think… do you think Dorry and Brogy still live in that underwater prison?
The sea water saps a warrior’s spirit.
It has been so long since we heard their battle cries.”
“They live,” Oimo said, though his own grip on his club tightened until his knuckles turned pale.
“The chiefs are the greatest warriors Elbaf has birthed in centuries.
No human cage can kill them.
We made an oath to the World Government.
We hold these gates for one hundred years, and our captains walk free under the sun once more.”
Before Kashi could reply, the wind around the outer gate died completely.
It was not a gradual stillness.
It was an abrupt, unnatural hush.
The ceaseless roar of the bottomless waterfall vanished as if severed by a blade.
The cries of the sea gulls circling the outer perimeter were snuffed out.
Even the ambient atmospheric pressure dropped, making the ears of the two giants pop.
“Oimo…?” Kashi’s eyes widened, his fingers tightening around his axe.
“What is this?
The air—”
Above them, the sunlight shifted.
A shroud of pale, silent lightning descended from the clouds.
There was no thunderclap, no blinding flash, no displaced gust of wind.
Arthur Pendragon descended through the air in an elementalized form—not as a violent bolt of lightning, but as an intangible, luminous current that wrapped around Dorry and Brogy, smothering all sound and vibration in a localized gravitational field.
Within this sphere of weightless suspension, the two giant captains touched the stone flagstones of the outer courtyard with less impact than a falling feather.
Not a single grain of dust was disturbed.
Not a stone groaned beneath their mass.
The shroud of lightning folded inward and vanished, revealing Arthur hovering serenely a few inches above the causeway, his dark cloak settling smoothly around his shoulders.
Oimo and Kashi froze.
Their colossal weapons remained half-lifted, their breath caught in their throats.
For several seconds, the two gatekeepers wondered if the relentless sun had finally broken their minds.
Before them stood the legends of Elbaf.
Brogy’s fiery red beard, his iconic horned helm, and his massive round shield.
Dorry’s long golden beard, his pointed helmet, and the sacred blade that had cleaved sea kings in two.
They wore no chains.
Their skin bore no scars of Impel Down’s torture chambers.
Their eyes held the raw, untamed fire of the open sea.
“K-Kashi…” Oimo’s club slipped from his massive fingers.
The iron weapon began to tumble toward the ground—only for Arthur to casually flick his index finger, freezing the multi-ton weapon motionless in mid-air with a subtle pulse of gravitational levitation before it could strike the stone.
“Ch… Chiefs?” Kashi’s voice cracked, a sound of childlike disbelief emerging from a twenty-meter titan.
“Chief Dorry?
Chief Brogy?
You… you escaped from the Great Underwater Prison?”
“Escaped?”
Brogy stepped forward.
His expression was not one of triumphant escape, but of agonizing heartbreak and simmering, volcanic fury.
He reached out and placed his massive palm heavily upon Kashi’s shoulder.
“Look at us, Kashi.
Look at my beard.
Look at Dorry’s hands.
Do these look like the limbs of men who have rotted in chains beneath the ocean?”
Oimo took a stumbling step backward, his broad face contorted with confusion.
“B-but the World Government… the Marines… they brought us the official dispatch fifty years ago!
They told us you were captured by the Admirals… that you were locked in the lowest level of Impel Down… they said if we served as the gatekeepers of Enies Lobby for one hundred years, you would be granted a full pardon!”
“Lies!”
Dorry’s whisper was harsher than a battle cry, vibrating with suppressed fury.
“Cowardly human deception!
For one hundred years, Brogy and I have been dueling on the prehistoric island of Little Garden!
We never saw a marine!
We never saw an admiral!
We fought under the sacred law of Elbaf, unbroken and uncaptured, until our sovereign, Arthur Pendragon, brought an honorable resolution to our duel!”
Dorry gestured toward the young man floating between them.
“We were never prisoners, Oimo.
We were never in chains.
The World Government stole fifty years of your youth, turned you into their watchdog dogs, and laughed behind their ivory desks while you guarded their slaughterhouse!”
Silence descended over the outer gates.
It was a silence heavier than the ocean depths.
Kashi’s knees buckled.
A warrior whose strength could uproot ancient trees collapsed onto the stone pavement, his colossal shoulders shaking violently.
Tears the size of cannonballs welled in his wide eyes and spilled down his weathered cheeks, splashing against the flagstones.
“Fifty years…” Kashi wept, his voice choking on the bitter agony of wasted life.
“Fifty years we bowed our heads to their insults… fifty years we swung our axes against pirate crews who had done us no harm… all for a lie?
A fabricated sentence?”
Oimo stared down at his calloused hands.
The shame and humiliation burning through his veins turned his skin crimson.
He looked toward the towering gates of Enies Lobby—the gates he had protected with his life—and a sound tore from his throat that was neither human nor beast, but the pure, agonizing wail of Elbaf’s shattered pride.
“Calm your hearts,” Arthur’s voice cut through the despair.
Though spoken at a normal volume, his words carried an intrinsic, sovereign authority that instantly quelled the chaos in the giants’ chests.
Oimo and Kashi looked up, their tear-streaked faces fixing upon the floating youth.
“Grief does not restore lost years,” Arthur said, his golden eyes cold and steady.
“Vengeance does.
The World Government viewed you as mindless beasts of burden because you trusted their bureaucratic parchment.
Today, your debt is wiped clean.
Your captains stand before you, not by the mercy of the Marines, but by the will of the Round Table.”
Arthur extended his hand.
A subtle pulse of Conqueror’s Haki radiated outward—not crushing them, but wrapping around them like an unbreakable, imperial mantle.
“Will you remain here as weeping sentinels for a corrupt regime?
Or will you take up your iron under the banner of the Sky Sovereign, reunite the Giant Warrior Pirates, and exact retribution upon the world that deceived you?”
Without a single moment of hesitation, Oimo pressed his forehead directly against the cold stone of the causeway.
“Lord Arthur!” Oimo choked out, his voice shaking with absolute devotion.
“Take our lives!
Take our axes!
From this day until our flesh returns to the soil of Elbaf, we swear our blood, our strength, and our honor to the Sovereign of Merveille!
If you command it, we will tear this island down to the sea!”
Kashi slammed his fist over his heart, bowing beside his brother.
“Our pride was stolen at these gates!
If you give us the means to reclaim it, our lives belong to your throne!”
Dorry and Brogy grinned—a fierce, triumphant sight, their laughter kept completely silent within Arthur’s gravitational barrier.
“Good!” Dorry rumbled proudly.
“Now you speak like true sons of the war god!”
“Remain here,” Arthur commanded calmly.
“Do not move.
Do not raise your weapons.
My gravitational field will keep this gate entirely isolated; no sentry inside the perimeter knows of our arrival.
I have one final piece of business inside the Tower of Justice.”
Before Oimo or Kashi could ask another question, Arthur transformed into a silent current of lightning and vanished.
In the opulent executive office on the highest floor of the Tower of Justice, Spandam was reclining in his plush velvet armchair, his boots propped arrogantly upon a polished mahogany desk.
In his right hand, he held a crystal glass of vintage wine.
Resting upon the desk before him was an ornate, iron-bound velvet chest, its lid propped open to reveal two strange, swirling fruits nestled in black silk.
One was a spherical, lavender fruit covered in intricate, soap-bubble patterns—the Awa Awa no Mi (Bubble-Bubble Fruit).
Beside it lay an elongated, reddish-yellow fruit resembling a jagged, geometric banana—the Ushi Ushi no Mi, Model: Giraffe (Ox-Ox Fruit: Giraffe Model).
“Kahahahaha!” Spandam cackled, his grotesque, leather-masked face twisting into a sneer of pure self-satisfaction.
“Those stuck-up brats in CP9 think they’re untouchable just because they mastered the Six Powers!
But who pulled strings in the Underworld to get these treasures?
Me!
Chief Spandam!
Once Lucci and the others bring back the Pluton blueprints from Water 7, I will present these fruits to Kalifa and Kaku.
The World Nobles will shower me with promotions!
Vice Admiral?
No… an executive directorship in the World Government!”
He raised his glass in a solitary toast toward the ceiling.
“To my brilliant, infallible intellect—”
“An intellect that cannot even sense a blade at its throat is hardly worth toasting.”
Spandam’s glass froze halfway to his mouth.
The air in the room suddenly turned freezing cold.
The ambient warmth was snuffed out as a crushing, suffocating pressure settled over his spine.
It felt as though a colossal beast had materialized directly behind his chair, its fangs resting millimeters from his jugular.
Spandam’s pupils shrank to needlepoints.
His teeth began to clatter uncontrollably.
“W-what… who…?”
He tried to spin around, his trembling hand lunging frantically toward the desk drawer where his Golden Den Den Mushi and his elephant sword, Funkfreed, were kept.
He never reached them.
Arthur materialized directly behind Spandam’s chair, stepping out from a faint ripple of golden light.
His right index finger, coated in an invisible thread of Conqueror’s Haki and an electric shock, tapped Spandam lightly at the base of the skull.
The strike was completely silent.
It did not break the skin or draw a single drop of blood.
Instead, the Conqueror’s will and the concentrated jolt paralyzed Spandam’s nervous system instantly, overloading his senses and plunging his brain into a deep, vegetative coma.
Spandam’s eyes rolled back.
His jaw went slack, a thin line of drool spilling down his chin as his limp body slid off the velvet chair, collapsing onto the rug like an empty sack.
Arthur did not spare the unconscious Chief a second look.
His eyes fell upon the open chest on the desk.
“The Awa Awa no Mi and the Ushi Ushi no Mi, Model: Giraffe,” Arthur murmured, lifting the two fruits and inspecting their unique, pulsating patterns.
Both held immense potential.
In the hands of CP9, they were utilized merely for physical combat techniques; under the strategic development of Merveille, however, they could serve far greater purposes—either to empower trusted commanders or to provide valuable specimens for Dr.
Kureha’s bio-chemical research division.
Arthur placed the two Devil Fruits into a velvet pouch at his waist.
Then, sweeping his gaze across Spandam’s desk, he reached down and confiscated the classified Cipher Pol dossiers: full records on CP9’s undercover identities in Water 7, private correspondence regarding the ancient weapon Pluton, and an encrypted cipher ledger for the Marine communication network.
With a dismissive flick of his sleeve, Arthur vanished into a streak of pale lightning.
Two minutes later, at the Main Outer Gates.
Oimo and Kashi were still kneeling in reverence, guarded by the watchful eyes of Dorry and Brogy, when the pale lightning gathered once more.
Arthur reappeared, his demeanor as composed and untouched as if he had merely taken a stroll through a courtyard garden.
“It is finished,” Arthur said quietly.
“Spandam is incapacitated.
The operational leadership of Cipher Pol is paralyzed, and the treasures of the Tower of Justice belong to Merveille.
We have no further business on this island.”
Arthur stepped forward and placed his palms lightly against the armor plates of Oimo and Kashi.
A soft, golden gravitational aura enveloped the two newly recruited giants.
Instantaneously, their staggering weight ceased to exist.
Their massive iron weapons, their heavy plate armor, and their colossal bodies became completely buoyant, floating off the cobblestones alongside Dorry and Brogy.
“We… we are floating!” Kashi whispered in awe, his eyes wide as his boots drifted ten feet into the air.
“Keep your breath steady,” Arthur instructed calmly.
Arthur summoned his elementalized lightning form once more, weaving a silent, translucent veil of light around all four giants.
To any marine sentry looking from the distant guard towers, the Main Outer Gates would appear perfectly normal—empty, silent, and undisturbed beneath the blinding sun.
With a subtle thought, Arthur engaged the Fuwa Fuwa no Mi.
The four titans of Elbaf, guided by the Sky Sovereign, rose vertically into the heavens.
They cut through the cloud cover at incredible speed, completely silent, without generating a single acoustic boom or wind disturbance.
Within two minutes, they pierced the cloud boundary and landed gently upon the green fields of Merveille.
Looking down from thirty-five thousand feet, the endless daylight of Enies Lobby had shrunk into a tiny, pale speck amidst the vast blue canvas of the Grand Line.
Nico Robin stood waiting at the reception terrace, her dark eyes reflecting deep, analytical satisfaction as she watched the two legendary captains guide their newly liberated brethren onto the soil of the floating empire.
“A clean operation, Lord Arthur,” Robin noted, stepping to his side with a graceful bow.
“Not a single alarm sounded.
When the Marines discover the gates abandoned and the Chief comatose, panic will consume the judiciary.
They will have no idea who struck them, nor how four colossal giants vanished into thin air.”
“Let them panic,” Arthur said calmly, handing the velvet chest containing the two CP9 Devil Fruits to Robin.
“Uncertainty breeds paranoia, and paranoia paralyzes command.
By the time Sengoku receives a coherent report, our primary objective will already be underway.”
Arthur turned his gaze westward, where the shimmering azure waterways and colossal arches of the City of Water lay glistening on the distant horizon.
“Robin.”
“Yes, Sovereign?”
“Prepare a small celestial skiff,” Arthur ordered, his eyes narrowing with cold calculation.
“We leave the fleet at high altitude.
You and I are descending into Water 7.”
A faint, dangerous smile played on Arthur’s lips as the wind caught his dark coat.
“It is time to meet the undercover agents of Galley-La…
and pay a personal visit to CP9’s secretary, Kalifa.”