The last island before the Red Line shows the crew exactly how small it still is.
Sabaody is not an island but a forest of enormous mangroves whose resin rises as bubbles, and it sits beside Marine Headquarters at the midpoint of the Grand Line. Every crew that wants to continue must have its ship coated here so that it can sink to Fish-Man Island beneath the Red Line. The archipelago is therefore a bottleneck, and the story uses it as one. Lawless groves, an amusement park, and a slave market coexist under the protection of the Celestial Dragons, descendants of the founders of the World Government, whose whims nobody is permitted to refuse.
The Straw Hats arrive as one of eleven rookie crews with bounties above a hundred million, a generation the press has begun calling the Supernovas. Meeting Kid, Law, and the others makes clear that Luffy’s reputation is no longer unusual. What is unusual is his refusal to observe the archipelago’s central rule. When a Celestial Dragon shoots their friend Hatchan and buys Camie at auction, Luffy hits him. The consequences arrive within hours, in the form of an admiral, a cyborg army, and a defeat so complete that the crew does not lose a battle so much as stop existing as a group.
Story
Camie, Hatchan, and the Flying Fish Riders Ch. 490–495
A call on the Sunny’s snail phone comes from Camie, a mermaid who runs a takoyaki stand with her starfish Pappag and a friend she calls Hachi. Hachi has been captured by the Flying Fish Riders, and Camie asks the pirates who once fought beside her friend to help. Only when the crew reaches the riders’ base does Nami see who they have come for: Hatchan, the six-armed swordsman of the Arlong Pirates, who once stood in the park where her village was held for eight years. She looks at him for a long moment and then decides the past is not worth a mermaid’s tears.
The riders answer to Duval, an iron-masked man who hates Sanji with a fury nobody can account for until he takes the mask off. His face is the badly drawn wanted poster that has followed Sanji since Enies Lobby, and every bounty hunter in the region has mistaken him for the cook. Sanji, insulted twice over, kicks the face into a new arrangement and accidentally makes Duval handsome. The grudge dissolves on the spot. Franky fires the Sunny’s Gaon Cannon for the first time to clear the sea ahead, and Hatchan, grateful and nervous, promises to take them to the one man who can coat the ship.
Eleven rookies and one rule Ch. 496–499
The Sunny drops anchor among the mangroves of Grove 41, and Hatchan explains the archipelago before anyone steps off: the groves are numbered, the bubbles are resin, and the one law is that a Celestial Dragon is never to be touched, looked at wrongly, or refused. The World Nobles wear glass helmets so they need not breathe the same air as ordinary people, and they walk with slaves on leashes. Luffy promises not to start anything, in the tone of a man who has never kept such a promise, and the crew splits up to find Shakky’s bar and the coating mechanic she knows.
Shakky serves drinks, reads bounty posters like a racing form, and names the field. Eleven rookie crews with bounties above a hundred million have landed at once, a coincidence the newspapers have started calling the Supernovas. Kid’s bounty is higher than Luffy’s. Law sits in a bar with a polar bear in a jumpsuit, Hawkins reads fortunes over a killing, Bonney eats a restaurant empty, and Drake, Urouge, Apoo, and Capone size one another up across the groves. Rayleigh, the man they need, has gone missing on a gambling spree, and Shakky suggests they wait.
At Sabaody Park, Saint Charloss rides through the crowd on a slave’s back and shoots a man for being in his way. Zoro, lost as usual, walks into him, is shot at, and draws his sword. It is Jewelry Bonney who saves the archipelago from an admiral that afternoon: she tackles Zoro, pretends the bullet killed him, and drags the body away while Charloss celebrates his aim. The lesson is not learned, only postponed. Camie, wandering the park in a bubble, is taken by a kidnapping gang the moment she is out of sight.
A punch nobody was allowed to throw Ch. 500–502
Camie is sold on to the Human Auctioning House at Grove 1, where Disco runs the block for the Warlord Doflamingo and an exploding collar keeps the merchandise seated. The crew arrives to buy her back with money Nami has scraped together, but a mermaid is the rarest lot of the year and Saint Charloss outbids everyone with a number nobody else in the room could imagine. Hatchan cannot bear it. He rushes the stage, his six arms give him away, and Charloss shoots him for the crime of being a fish-man who dared to enter a human building.
Hatchan, bleeding on the floor, begs Luffy not to retaliate. He has put the crew in this position by being what he is; the price of striking a World Noble is an admiral and a fleet, and he knows it. Luffy hears all of it. He walks the length of the auction hall without hurrying, climbs to where Charloss is laughing over the wounded fish-man, and knocks him through the seats. The room goes silent. Zoro, arriving late, only asks whether Luffy has done what everyone in the building is afraid he has done.
The Dark King wakes, and three crews walk out together Ch. 503–505
An old man chained among the lots stands up, snaps his shackles, and releases a pressure that drops every guard and bidder in the building except the pirates who came to fight. Kid and Law, who had been watching from the seats, recognize the technique and are the only two spectators still upright. The old man is Silvers Rayleigh, and he removes Camie’s collar with a touch, apologizes for the trouble, and calmly announces that he has been enjoying himself as a slave because the food was free.
Outside, Marine squads have already sealed the plaza, and three captains who arrived as strangers step into the open side by side. Kid pulls the soldiers’ rifles into a metal fist, Law swaps heads onto the wrong bodies, and Luffy simply hits things. They argue the whole time about who asked whom for help, and when it is done Kid promises to see them both in the New World in a voice that expects to be the one who survives it. Then a cyborg built in Kuma’s image fires a beam of light through the trees, and each crew discovers it has been targeted for extermination.
The Dark King and the light that came for them Ch. 506–507
At Shakky’s bar, Rayleigh tells the crew who he was: first mate to Gol D. Roger, the man who found the last island and gave the age its name. Roger was not caught; he was dying, and he turned himself in. Rayleigh confirms that the crew reached the final island and learned everything the Poneglyphs record, and Robin asks a single question about the Void Century and receives a single answer: yes, they learned what happened. Then he offers to tell Luffy where the treasure lies. Luffy refuses before Usopp can accept. The voyage would not be worth taking if the answer were handed over.
Rayleigh agrees to coat the Sunny and asks for three days. The crew has spent them before he finishes the sentence. Marine Headquarters has answered the punch with Admiral Kizaru, who steps out of a beam of light onto the groves and asks, in the mildest possible voice, where the pirate who struck a World Noble might be. Sentomaru, the axe-carrying commander of the Pacifista program, is on his way with a second machine. The crew agrees to lie low for seventy-two hours and lasts about one.
Nine against a machine, then an admiral, then a paw Ch. 508–511
Kizaru finds the other Supernovas first. Hawkins, Drake, Urouge, and Apoo attack an admiral together and are dismantled in a page each; Kizaru’s light lands before anyone hears it move. Meanwhile at Grove 12 a Pacifista labelled PX-4 corners the Straw Hats, firing the same beam that Kuma once used at Thriller Bark from its mouth and palms. The crew pours everything into it, Zoro’s heaviest cut, Sanji’s heated kick, Franky’s wind cannon, Chopper at full size, Luffy’s giant fist, and the machine finally goes down. Nine people can barely stand. Then Sentomaru arrives with PX-1.
Sentomaru cannot be hit through the wall of will around his body, PX-1 is a fresh copy of the machine they have just destroyed, and Kizaru arrives from above with a kick that puts Zoro on the ground and a foot raised to finish him. Rayleigh appears between them and catches the admiral’s leg with a sword. The Dark King and the light hold each other for a moment while the crew runs, and the story allows itself exactly one glance at what Roger’s first mate is still capable of. Rayleigh tells Luffy to go, and Luffy, for the first time in the series, obeys because there is no alternative.
A man in a coat steps out of the trees carrying a Bible. It is Kuma, the real one, and the Straw Hats who fought his copy know immediately that everything has changed. Luffy tells everyone to run for the ship. Kuma raises a paw. Zoro, trying to stand between him and the others, is the first to be touched.
Zoro, gone Ch. 512–513
Kuma’s paw does not hurt Zoro. It removes him. The swordsman is gone from the grove before anyone can shout, and Luffy, who has never seen a crewmate simply cease to be there, orders everyone to run. The command is impossible to carry out. Brook turns to fight and vanishes; Usopp is taken while shouting Zoro’s name; Sanji is knocked down by Sentomaru and disappears in front of Luffy; Franky, Nami, Chopper mid-rampage, and Robin follow one by one. Luffy runs toward each of them and reaches none.
Kuma finally takes Luffy as well. The Straw Hats have not been defeated in any conventional sense; they have been erased from the map, and the last panels of the arc belong to a captain on his knees who could not save a single one of them. Rayleigh watches the empty grove and says nothing about what he suspects Kuma has done, and Kizaru, satisfied that the incident is closed, returns to the warship. The Sunny sits uncoated at Grove 41 with nobody left to sail her.