The temperature in the deep sea had dropped drastically, yet the atmosphere around the Thousand Sunny felt suffocating. Through the murky, unnatural fog rolling across the ocean floor, the rotting, barnacle-encrusted hull of the ghost ship slowly drifted into view. Its tattered sails billowed despite the lack of wind, glowing with a sickly, ethereal green luminescence.
Brook stepped forward, his bony fingers tightening around the hilt of his cane sword. His empty eye sockets stared fixedly at the approaching vessel.
Brook said, his voice unusually grave. "Every sailor of my era knew the stories. It is called 'the ship that should not be.'"
"A ghost ship?" Usopp's teeth chattered loudly. He hid behind Zoro, holding up a small cross made of two wooden twigs. "Are there actual ghosts on it?!"
"It is the legendary Flying Dutchman," Brook explained, ignoring the sniper's panic. "The story dates back hundreds of years. It was said that on a stormy day, a pirate captain went completely deranged. In a fit of madness, he started throwing his own crew overboard, murdering all of them one by one. His name was Vander Decken."
"That's terrible," Vivi whispered, covering her mouth in horror.
"For his horrific crimes against his own men, he incurred the wrath of God," Brook continued solemnly. "He was doomed to an eternity of wandering the sea, forever cursed to sail the ocean depths, and strictly forbidden to ever make port again. That ship right there... that is the very same vessel. The cursed ship of Vander Decken."
Nami swallowed hard. "A centuries-old ghost ship is floating right in front of us."
"Ghosts aren't real," Zoro grunted, though his hand rested firmly on Wado Ichimonji. "It's just an old boat."
"You IDIOT!" A loud, incredibly obnoxious voice echoed from the deck of the decaying ship, completely shattering the spooky atmosphere.
Standing on the railing of the Flying Dutchman was a strange-looking man with four legs, wearing a tattered captain's coat and a wide-brimmed hat. He pointed a webbed, accusing finger at the giant humanoid, Wadatsumi, and the unconscious angler fish, Ankoro.
"I told you a hundred times, Wadatsumi!" the captain yelled, his voice carrying clearly through the water via a specialized coating bubble on his own ship. "You do not eat the ships! If you eat the ships, we do not get the treasure inside them! You are ruining our plunder!"
Wadatsumi, the massive sea giant, rubbed the back of his bald head sheepishly. "Sorry, Captain Vander Decken... Ankoro was just hungry..."
"So he isn't a ghost," Ben noted calmly from the Sunny's deck, adjusting his glasses. "He's a fish-man. A descendant, most likely, claiming the name and the ship."
"Fish-men have four legs?" Sanji asked, raising an eyebrow at the captain's bizarre anatomy.
"He appears to be a Bullhead Shark fish-man," Robin observed, reading the biological cues. "Fascinating."
Vander Decken noticed the lights of the Thousand Sunny. He peered through the murky water, his eyes landing on the pristine Adam-wood hull and the Straw Hat flag painted on the sail.
"Oho! Look what we have here!" Decken laughed maliciously. "A fresh crew of rookies! They look wealthy! Wadatsumi! Forget the scolding! Destroy that ship and bring me their treasure!"
"Okay, Captain!" Wadatsumi agreed happily.
The colossal sea giant turned toward the Thousand Sunny. He raised a massive, fleshy fist the size of a small island, preparing to smash the resin coating and crush the Straw Hats into the sea floor.
"He's gonna hit us!" Chopper screamed, shifting into Heavy Point.
"Sunny! Charge the Gaon Cannon!" Nami ordered.
Before Sunny could make a move, a massive blur of reddish-purple muscle shot out from the darkness above them.
WHAM!
A colossal tentacle slammed directly into the side of Wadatsumi's face. The impact was devastating. The sea giant's eyes crossed, and he was sent tumbling backward, crashing into the ocean floor and kicking up a massive cloud of underwater silt.
"What the—?!" Vander Decken stumbled on the railing of his ship.
From the shadows of the Downward Plume, the colossal Kraken descended. It loomed over the Thousand Sunny, its massive eyes glowing yellow.
"The Kraken?!" Usopp shrieked. "It followed us! We're dead! We're sandwiched between a ghost ship and a sea monster!"
But the Kraken didn't attack the Sunny. It swam aggressively toward Wadatsumi. It wrapped two of its massive tentacles around the giant's neck and began to furiously punch the dazed humanoid with its remaining limbs, beating him into the dirt.
"Bad giant! Bad!" a familiar voice echoed through the water.
Sitting cross-legged on the very top of the Kraken's head were Luffy, Bonney, and Oimo.
"Luffy!" Zoro yelled, a rare grin crossing his face.
"Stop, Surume! That's enough!" Luffy ordered, patting the Kraken on the head.
The massive sea monster instantly stopped punching Wadatsumi. It let go of the giant and floated obediently in place, waiting for its next command.
"He actually tamed it," Sanji exhaled a long drag of smoke, shaking his head in disbelief. "I shouldn't be surprised anymore."
"Shishishi! Look guys! I got a pet!" Luffy laughed, waving at the ship.
Using the micro-thrusters on their nanotech suits, Luffy, Bonney, and Oimo flew from the Kraken's head, passing seamlessly through the Sunny's resin bubble and landing safely on the grassy deck. The metallic suits instantly retracted back into their briefcases.
"That was awesome!" Bonney cheered, cracking her knuckles. "We beat up an octopus and then rode it!"
"Oimo is victorious!" the giant laughed, picking up his mace.
"Welcome back, Captain," Ben smiled. "I see you made a new friend."
"Yeah! This is Surume!" Luffy pointed proudly at the colossal monster floating outside. "And he's gonna be our new navigator!"
"HE CAN'T BE A NAVIGATOR!" Nami roared, punching Luffy in the back of the head. "I AM THE NAVIGATOR!"
"But he knows the ocean better than you do," Luffy argued, rubbing his head.
"Just get the ship on his head!" Usopp panicked, looking nervously at the massive tentacles drifting near the hull. "If we ride him, we won't have to worry about sea monsters! But tell him to be careful! If he squeezes too hard, he'll pop the bubble and we'll all die!"
"Surume!" Luffy commanded, pointing at the ship. "Put us on your head!"
The Kraken let out a low, obedient rumble. It carefully reached out with its massive tentacles, gently wrapping them around the Thousand Sunny. With surprising delicacy, the beast lifted the entire pirate ship and placed it securely atop its bulbous head, cradling it between its upper limbs.
"This is incredibly demeaning," Zoro muttered, sitting cross-legged as the ship was hoisted into the air.
"I think it's fun!" Vivi said.
Caroo quacked, flapping his wings.
Before the crew could celebrate their new mode of transportation, a deep, terrifying vibration rattled the ship. It wasn't an attack. The vibration came from the very earth beneath them.
RUMBLE.
The ocean floor began to shake violently. The dark, murky water grew instantly hotter, the temperature spiking drastically inside the bubble.
Nami looked down, her eyes widening in horror as the temperature skyrocketed.
"The fault line!" Nami shrieked, pointing at the jagged, glowing red cracks spreading across the ocean floor. "The underwater volcanoes! They're going to erupt! Right now!"
Over on the Flying Dutchman, Vander Decken's crew was panicking.
"Captain!" a fish-man pirate yelled, pointing at the glowing magma vents. "The volcanoes are blowing! We have to get out of here!"
Vander Decken scowled. He looked at the Straw Hats, safely secured atop the Kraken, and then at the imminent geological disaster beneath him.
"Curse my luck!" Decken spat. "Wadatsumi! Ankoro! Wake up, you useless lumps! Pull the ship! Retreat immediately!"
Wadatsumi, rubbing his bruised head, scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the towing ropes attached to the Flying Dutchman, dragging the ghost ship away from the thermal vents as fast as he could swim.
"Surume! Run away!" Luffy yelled, pointing forward.
The Kraken didn't need to be told twice. Its survival instincts kicked in. Surume propelled himself forward with a massive burst of water from his siphon, carrying the Thousand Sunny away from the epicenter of the fault line.
Ten seconds later, the ocean floor exploded.
KRA-KOOOOOOM!
Multiple deep-sea volcanoes erupted simultaneously. Millions of tons of superheated magma blasted upward into the freezing water of the deep sea. The sudden, violent collision of extreme heat and extreme cold created a massive, concussive underwater shockwave.
The force of the explosion ripped through the water like a physical wall.
"BRACE YOURSELVES!" Franky roared, anchoring his feet to the deck.
The shockwave hit them. The Thousand Sunny rocked violently, the Yar Yarman coating stretching and rippling under the immense pressure, but holding firm.
Behind them, the Flying Dutchman wasn't so lucky. The shockwave slammed into the ghost ship, sending Vander Decken, Wadatsumi, and Ankoro tumbling wildly into the dark abyss, blown completely off course.
Surume swam with everything he had, his massive tentacles churning the water. He managed to stay just ahead of the expanding wave of boiling water and ash.
However, the eruption had destabilized the entire region. The massive underwater mountain range above them began to crumble.
"Avalanche!" Robin warned, looking up.
Thousands of tons of jagged rocks and boulders broke loose from the cliffs, raining down into the trench like a meteor shower.
"Dodge them, Surume!" Luffy yelled.
The Kraken wove frantically through the falling debris, using its incredible agility to slip between the massive boulders. It spotted a deep, narrow trench in the ocean floor—a darker area sheltered from the falling rocks.
Surume dove for the trench.
They almost made it.
Just as the Kraken crossed the threshold into the dark trench, a massive, stray boulder the size of a galleon clipped the side of the canyon wall, ricocheted, and slammed directly into the side of Surume's head.
The impact was brutal.
The Kraken let out a muffled groan. Its eyes rolled back, its tentacles going entirely limp.
"SURUME!" Luffy yelled.
With the Kraken knocked unconscious, its grip on the Thousand Sunny released. Without the beast's propulsion, gravity and the descending currents took over entirely.
Both the unconscious Kraken and the Thousand Sunny plummeted straight down into the pitch-black abyss of the trench.
"WE'RE FALLING!" Chopper screamed, floating weightlessly off the deck as the ship entered freefall.
"We're going to hit the bottom!" Usopp wailed, grabbing the mast. "The bubble will pop!"
"Sunny! Take the helm!" Ben ordered sharply, holding onto the railing.
"Engaging emergency stabilization!" Sunny's robotic voice replied instantly.
The android boy spun the wheel, his mechanical eyes processing the telemetry data in milliseconds. "Activating localized burst thrusters! Firing in three, two, one!"
Small, precise bursts of air shot from the Sunny's lower ports. The thrusters didn't propel the ship, but they forcefully corrected its pitch and yaw. The ship stopped tumbling and leveled out perfectly, descending smoothly rather than crashing chaotically.
"I have control!" Sunny reported. "Buoyancy stabilized. We are drifting downward safely."
The crew let out a collective sigh of relief, dropping back onto the deck.
"Good job, Sunny," Franky grinned, giving a thumbs-up.
"But where are we?" Vivi asked, looking out into the water.
It was absolute, total darkness. The floodlights of the ship only illuminated the murky water a few meters ahead. There were no fish, no rocks, no signs of life. Just the silent, crushing weight of the deep ocean.
"We fell into a sub-oceanic trench," Nami analyzed, tapping her Log Pose. The needle was spinning wildly before finally pointing straight ahead, at a slight downward angle. "The magnetic pull is strong. We're very close."
"Look!" Bonney pointed toward the front of the ship.
In the far, far distance, cutting through the absolute pitch-black of the abyss, was a faint, warm glow. It wasn't the menacing red of a volcano or the deceptive lure of an anglerfish. It was a massive, steady, beautiful sphere of light.
"Is that..." Sanji stepped forward, his breath catching in his throat.
"Sunny, slow ahead," Ben instructed. "Take us toward the light."
The Thousand Sunny drifted silently through the dark trench, moving closer and closer to the glow.
As they approached, the scale of the light became apparent. It wasn't just a glowing rock. It was a colossal, awe-inspiring structure resting at the very bottom of the world, ten thousand meters beneath the surface.
A massive, double-layered bubble encased an entire, vibrant island. Inside the bubble, they could see lush, green hills, sparkling rivers, and beautifully crafted architecture bathed in the warm, artificial sunlight of the Sunlight Tree Eve. Mermaids and fish-men swam gracefully through the inner waterways.
It was a paradise hidden in the darkest corner of the earth.
"We made it," Nami whispered, her eyes reflecting the brilliant light.
Luffy grabbed the railing, a massive, victorious grin spreading across his face.
"FISH-MAN ISLAND!" Luffy cheered.
The Straw Hat Pirates had finally reached their long-sought destination. But as the Thousand Sunny approached the outer barrier of the underwater kingdom, the shadows moving within the coral reefs suggested that their arrival would be anything but peaceful.