The response from the Gorosei and Fleet Admiral Sengoku was immediate, ruthless, and entirely focused on damage control. The truth—that Mariejoa was crippled by an invisible, untraceable force that defied all known physics—was deemed a greater threat than any pirate fleet.
The official narrative, blasted across the globe by the World Economy News Paper, was simple: "Fisher Tiger, a Fish-Man terrorist and pirate mastermind, utilized a radical, new chemical weapon and a highly organized ring of internal Marine moles to execute the catastrophic Mariejoa jailbreak."
This lie served two vital purposes:
It provided a tangible villain. The world could fear Fisher Tiger, the monstrous perpetrator, rather than be paralyzed by fear of an unknowable anomaly.
It denied vulnerability. By blaming a mole ring and a 'chemical weapon,' the World Government dismissed the systemic failure, preserving the facade that the Holy Land could only be beaten by treachery, not divine sabotage.
The truth of the inverted gravity and the spontaneously failed Seastone was buried under layers of classified reports, leaving Marine scientists and Cipher Pol agents hunting phantom spies. The message to the world was clear: Tyranny still holds the reins, but the price of rebellion is now higher.
Fisher Tiger: The Savior and the Mystery
Fisher Tiger and the Sun Pirates didn't just escape Mariejoa; they emerged from the chaos as legends. But Tiger was keenly aware that his success was owed not to luck, but to a miracle.
He had planned a suicide run—a desperate, symbolic act of defiance that should have resulted in dozens of deaths and the freedom of only a handful. Instead, the path was a wide-open wound in the earth's authority.
As the chaos raged, Tiger paused in the slave prisons, watching the look of stunned relief on the faces of thousands as their Seastone collars fell silently inert. He saw the panicked, fleeing Marine guards struggling with their communication devices, their faces contorted by the sight of water flowing uphill. He knew his men hadn't caused this.
Then, there was the child.
Tiger had felt the whisper of the bullet that never hit him—a phantom sting followed by a brief, blinding flash near his heart. When he turned, all he saw was a small boy with the coldest blue eyes he had ever encountered, standing perfectly still in the whirlwind of noise and motion. The boy's hand had touched his arm—a casual, feather-light contact—and in that moment, Tiger felt the decades of hidden fatigue, the old scars, the lingering pains from his servitude, all dissolve. He felt a surge of vitality that was unnatural, clean, and terrifyingly perfect.
When he looked back, the boy was gone.
"This was not our power," Tiger told Jinbe hours later, aboard the newly repurposed Sun Pirates ship. "This was a gift. Someone opened a door the World Government did not know existed. We must honor it."
Tiger made two immediate, critical decisions:
He accepted the blame for the destruction. He knew the World Government needed a villain, and by taking that mantle, he protected the anonymity of the true anomaly and amplified the power of the liberation for the world's oppressed.
He ordered his crew not to shed a single drop of human blood during their escape. The liberation must remain a pure act of defiance, unsullied by the cruelty they themselves had suffered. This solidified his image as a true hero among the disenfranchised, further destabilizing the World Government's 'terrorist' narrative.
The Slave's Silence: Boa Hancock's Reaction
Within the thousands of newly freed slaves—many now terrified, confused, and struggling to process their sudden freedom—was the young Boa Hancock, flanked by her sisters, Sandersonia and Marigold. They were among the most prized and tormented slaves, their captivity a secret known only to the highest powers.
For years, the Seastone collar had been the reality of her existence—a constant, heavy drain that symbolized the crushing weight of the Celestial Dragons. When the systemic chaos hit, and the lights began to flicker, Hancock didn't react; she simply waited for the next punishment.
But then, the weight vanished.
The Seastone went inert. For the first time in years, she felt the full, latent power of her Devil Fruit surge back into her. It wasn't relief that washed over her; it was a pure, cold terror. Her initial thought wasn't freedom, but: This is a cruel trick. They are testing us.
Only when Fisher Tiger's roar echoed through the dungeons, and she saw the sheer, unadulterated panic on the face of her overseer, did the truth sink in: The prison had failed.
Hancock, guided by the fierce survival instinct that would one day make her Empress, seized her sisters. They moved not with joy, but with silent, terrifying speed. She didn't look at the chaos; she looked only at the exit, her mind calculating the quickest route to anonymity.
For Hancock, the jailbreak was not a glorious moment of liberation; it was an escape from a death sentence. The fact that her freedom was caused by an invisible, illogical breakdown only amplified her paranoia. She carried away one absolute truth from Mariejoa: the greatest, most powerful tyrants in the world could be reduced to screaming infants by an enemy they couldn't even see.
Her reaction was defined by a lifelong, burning hatred and a deep-seated need for secrecy. The world must never know the truth of her past, or the vulnerability of the monsters who held her captive.
Global Fallout: The Shaking of the Status Quo
The global reaction to the Mariejoa incident was not uniform; it was a schism that tore through the very heart of the World Government's stability.
The Terrified Upper Echelon
Among the established kingdoms, the World Nobles, and the Grand Line society, the reaction was paralyzing fear. If the Holy Land was not safe, then nowhere was. There were immediate, frantic demands for increased Marine protection, higher taxes to fund the investigation, and universal surveillance to stamp out the "moles" responsible. The sight of the Marine defense cannons destroyed was a physical symbol of their safety being annihilated. This group redoubled their loyalty to the World Government's official narrative, needing the comfort of a simple villain.
The Jubilant Underworld
For the slaves, the oppressed, the impoverished, and the burgeoning Revolutionary Army, the incident was a firebrand of hope. Fisher Tiger became an instant, global folk hero. The fact that he was a Fish-Man—a historically marginalized race—made the victory exponentially more profound.
News reports focused on the "thousands" of slaves who escaped, but the real number was far higher, and their appearance across the four seas and various islands signaled an immediate, irreversible demographic shift. They became walking proof that the Celestial Dragons were not gods.
The Merchants and Pirates
The Grand Line pirates were initially stunned, then invigorated. The impossible success instantly raised the stakes. If Fisher Tiger could achieve this, what else was possible? A new wave of piracy, defined by anti-government and liberation ideals, began to form, shifting the focus from simple treasure hunting to political defiance.
The merchants, however, saw only instability. The disruption to the trade routes, the mass casualty reports, and the sheer volume of high-risk escaped individuals meant that the cost of doing business skyrocketed. They blamed the World Government's incompetence, fueling quiet, powerful resentment among the economic elite.
The Mariejoa incident, orchestrated by the Chronos-Child, did more than free slaves; it validated the deep-seated hope of billions. It proved that the system could be broken, not just by strength, but by perfectly applied chaos. The political order was irrevocably shattered.