Hoof of the Soaring Dragon

After the coliseum battle, Sandersonia and Marigold bow their heads in shame before Hancock. They apologize, "We're sorry, sister!!" and admit, "Not only did we lose, but we were even saved by the enemy!" Luffy, still on the platform near the petrified women, asks Hancock, "Are you going to fight me next...?" Hancock, however, has no appetite for it after watching him protect her sister's secret. She says, "No, that's enough... I don't feel like it...!!" Luffy looks over Marguerite's stone body and says, "I see... Looks like she didn't crack..." The page shifts the confrontation from physical combat to consequences: the sisters have been humbled, Hancock is shaken, and Luffy's immediate concern is still the people turned to stone because of him.

Luffy presses Hancock about the petrified women: "You can do something like that, right? Turn these guys back to normal!!" He insists, "They were just helping me out. They didn't do anything wrong!!" Hancock's eyes narrow, but she answers, "I certainly can undo the petrification." Then she reveals the condition: "But... you said there's somewhere you want to go by boat, right? I will take only one of your requests...!! Either I change them back or I let you leave the island!! Choose one and abandon the other!! Show your true nature, you man...!!" Luffy stares at her as she makes the test explicit. Hancock expects him to reveal selfishness, forcing him to choose between his own escape and the lives of Marguerite, Sweet Pea, and Aphelandra.

Luffy answers without hesitation. He drops forward with a huge grin and says, "Okay!! Thanks!! Then please save these guys!!" Hancock, Sandersonia, and Marigold are shocked by how quickly he abandons the chance to leave. Luffy even bows deeply, saying, "Thank you very much!!" The sisters stare in silence, sweating and wide-eyed. Sandersonia reflects, "... A man with that kind of Haki... in order to help those who saved him... is willing to lower his head..." and another thought completes the point: "Without a moment's hesitation..." Luffy's simple choice overturns Hancock's test. He chooses the women who helped him over his own urgent journey, revealing a loyalty and humility the sisters did not expect from a man or an enemy.

At the coliseum exit, the petrification is undone. Marguerite, Sweet Pea, and Aphelandra stand alive again while friends shout their names: "Margaret!!" "Sweetpea!!" and "Aphelandra!!" One warrior cries, "Everyone! So this is where you were!" Another group says, "Thank goodness you're un-petrified," while others explain, "We were worried!! Going out there to help that man...!!" and ask, "We thought something happened!! Petrified?" Marguerite looks confused, saying, "I have no idea what happened..." while her companions ask, "What happened...?" They do not remember the missing time. The page restores Luffy's friends to life and lets the surrounding Kuja exhale, but it also shows how much of the arena incident has been hidden from ordinary warriors.

Marguerite tries to reconstruct what happened. She remembers, "When I came to, that man was really happy... and everyone was gone..." while a flashback shows Luffy thanking her and saying, "Thank God, you guys! I don't know what I would do if you guys died!!" The others gather around and ask, "Margaret, what happened to the man?" and, "What about Lady Hebihime? Did she turn the man to stone?" Another says her memory ended after being petrified and asks what happened next. Marguerite answers, "I don't really understand, but... he was taken into Kuja Castle..." The group is stunned: "Eh!? The man was... taken to Kuja Castle...!!?" The page moves the story from the public arena to the private palace, while the Kuja outside are left bewildered by Hancock's sudden decision.

Inside the Empress's Hall, Luffy sits before a closed curtain while Sandersonia and Marigold flank the room. He wonders, "What's going on? Some business... ah... An after-battle meal, maybe? If that's the case, then I'd be happy to..." The sisters answer sincerely instead. Sandersonia says, "... We really need to thank you..." and Marigold adds, "You have our gratitude. If they had seen what is on our backs, we wouldn't be able to stay in this country anymore..." Luffy brushes it off: "Nah, it's fine. It's not like I can eat your gratitude." A voice then tells him, "You may enter!" and someone calls, "Come inside... 'Man.'" Luffy perks up at the wrong possibility, asking, "Inside? Inside the curtain... Oh! Food?" The page mixes gratitude with Luffy's comic simplicity as the sisters prepare to reveal the truth.

Luffy steps behind the curtain and finds Hancock naked except for a sheet and her giant snake companion coiled around her. He recoils and says, "Excuse m-... that's not food!" then blurts, "Hey! Why are you naked?" Hancock calmly replies, "That was a very rude response... but I suppose that's to be expected." She tells him, "Very well..." and turns her back to him. Pulling her hair aside, she reveals the black mark between her shoulders and says, "This mark...!! You said you had seen it somewhere before... Take a good look at it now." Luffy stares in confusion. The page changes the tone from comedy to vulnerability, as Hancock deliberately exposes the exact secret she once wanted to kill him for seeing.

Hancock asks, "Where have you seen it...? Do you know what this symbol means?" Luffy studies the mark, unsure, while Hancock presses, "Answer me already...!! This is not something that I show off to people...!!" Luffy finally says, "Well, the one that I have seen is a little different...!!" He remembers Hachi and explains, "One of my friends, a fishman named Hachi... has a similar mark on his forehead, and I got it mixed up with that. I don't know what that mark is!" Hancock decides that if he does not know, she will tell him. The page connects Hancock's hidden brand to the symbol on Hachi, setting up the distinction between the original mark of enslavement and the altered Sun Pirates mark Luffy remembers.

Before Hancock can continue, Elder Nyon suddenly appears inside the hall, startling everyone. Hancock snaps, "Elder Nyon...!! How... did you get in again...?" Elder Nyon tells her to calm down: "Be at ease, and tell him everything...!!" She says, "The depth of this man's heart... you've seen it with your own eyes...!!" and confirms Luffy's identity: "You! You're the pirate Monkey D. Luffy, correct?" Luffy answers, "!! Yeah, that's right. How did you know?" Elder Nyon holds up a newspaper from a few days earlier and says Luffy is easygoing for someone who caused such a stir in the world. She explains that at the Sabaody Archipelago, beside the heart of the Government, a Tenryuubito was sent flying with a punch, and the perpetrator was this man.

Elder Nyon continues explaining the scale of the Sabaody incident. In response, the Government dispatched its greatest military force, but Luffy miraculously escaped. Sandersonia admits, "Though there is much about it I still don't understand... it has been two days since that incident, but here he stands before us." Luffy says, "I'm telling you, I just got sent flying all of a sudden!! I don't even know where this is!! And I don't regret what I did to that Tenryuubito guy at all... What do you think that bastard did to my friends!?" Hancock asks, "So it's true that you raised your hand against a Tenryuubito?" Luffy answers that he had no idea an idiot like that still existed in the world. The page confirms that his hatred of the Celestial Dragons is direct and personal.

Hancock lowers her head, shaken by Luffy's story. She says, "With no regard for your own life... you challenged heaven itself... just like he did...!" Luffy wonders, "He...?" Hancock decides to reveal everything: "I... will tell you everything... as well as the meaning of the symbol engraved into your friend's brow...!!" She turns her back fully, showing the black brand between her shoulders. Luffy asks, "...Hachi's mark?" Elder Nyon watches solemnly while Hancock names the mark: "This is the 'Hoof of the Soaring Dragon,' the crest of the Tenryuubito." The page gives the chapter title its meaning. What the Kuja call the Gorgon's curse is actually the brand of the Celestial Dragons, a symbol burned onto people owned as slaves.

Hancock explains the brand's horror: "It is branded into every slave owned by the World Nobles... It is indelible proof that you are less than human...!!!" Luffy is stunned: "The Tenryuubito...!!" The page cuts to a memory of World Nobles treating slaves as merchandise and entertainment, with voices saying, "My lord father! We've gotten a Fishman slave for free!" and "Free~ free~ an octopus for free~!!!" Hancock then states the truth directly: "We three sisters... were once... slaves to the World Nobles...!!" Sandersonia and Marigold sit in silence as the shameful secret is finally spoken aloud. The page makes clear why the sisters would rather die than have the mark exposed: it is not a curse but a living reminder of captivity and dehumanization.

Luffy reacts in horror: "You were... slaves...!!?" Hancock begins the memory: "When I was twelve... the three of us were abducted from the Kuja pirate ship and sold." Young voices in the flashback call, "Hancock!?" "Sonia!! Mari!! Where are you!?" After that, she says, "I don't even want to think about the abominable things they did...!!" Sandersonia breaks down, screaming "UUUU WAAH!!!" and saying, "The first man I ever saw was nothing but a ball of terror. It was terrible... We couldn't find any hope at all... I just wanted to die...!!!" Marigold and Hancock try to calm her: "Sister Sonia!!! Calm down!" and "You don't have to talk about it!!!" Sandersonia sobs that now that she has started, she cannot stop. The page shows the trauma under the sisters' pride.

Hancock continues the history. After four years, in one night, an incident shook the World Government itself. The iron law of the world was that nobody could oppose the Tenryuubito, yet one man climbed the Red Line with his bare hands and entered Mariejoa, where the Tenryuubito resided. Hancock names him: "The adventurer, Fisher Tiger." He would later lead a crew of Fishman pirates. In order to free the many Fishman slaves oppressed in the city, he rampaged through Mariejoa with all his strength, and even though he hated humans, he did not discriminate. He freed thousands of slaves of all races. Hancock remembers the girls running through fire and chaos, thinking, "Run!! Don't get caught again!" She says, "We ran, prepared to die...!! We owe that man an unfathomable debt...!!"

Hancock explains what happened after Fisher Tiger's rebellion. Tiger freed many Fishmen, who escaped to sea, but the slaves' brands could not be erased. Tiger, now an enemy of the World Government, formed the Sun Pirates with those former slaves and set out to sea. To lift the curse of the Tenryuubito mark, the brand burned onto everyone's bodies was changed into the symbol of the sun. Hancock tells Luffy, "The mark you mistook for ours was the sun symbol of the Fishman Pirates." Luffy finally understands, touching his forehead and saying, "Ah, I get it! The mark on Hachi's forehead looked like the sun!" The page connects Hachi's Sun Pirates tattoo to Hancock's hidden brand: one symbol was created to cover the other and let former slaves live without being singled out.

Luffy asks whether Fisher Tiger was a slave too. Hancock says, "We can't say that for certain," though he was definitely a member of the Sun Pirates. She explains, "They were given those symbols so that you couldn't tell the difference between those who had been slaves and those who weren't. Though he was definitely a member of the Sun Pirates... Hachi's been through a lot... that's why the marks on our backs resemble that Fishman's." Elder Nyon adds, "By the way, Fisher Tiger is dead now. The Fishman Pirates... have split into a number of pirate crews..." Hancock then says that while she and her sisters were slaves, they were forced to eat the Mero Mero and Hebi Hebi Fruits as entertainment. Thanks to those powers, they could fool the country and protect their secret. She tells Luffy that if he had not covered Sonia's back, they could not have stayed on the island, and he understands, "We can't let anybody know about our past...!!"

Hancock breaks down, tears streaming as she confesses what the secret has done to her. She says, "Even if we have to deceive an entire country... I'll never show any weaknesses!!! I won't be controlled by anybody ever again...!!" Then she admits the truth beneath that pride: "I'm afraid to let my guard down against anybody...!! I can't face... my own fear...!!" Sandersonia whispers, "Sister...!!" while Marigold weeps nearby. Elder Nyon observes that recently, it is as if Lady Hebihime, since letting her emotions show like this, had been turned to ice. The page shows Hancock's public arrogance as armor forged from captivity. Her cruelty, secrecy, and isolation are tied to the terror of being owned again and the fear that one exposed weakness could destroy her.

Elder Nyon angrily confronts Hancock, shouting, "Silence, you traitor!! You be silent!! You escaped the Tenryuubito only to find you had no way of returning to the island. You were just three lost, hurt little girls!!" She adds that she had been looking after them like a mother. Hancock, overwhelmed, asks Luffy, "You...!! Do you despise me... for being a slave?" Luffy answers simply, "I told you I hate the Tenryuubito, didn't I!?" Elder Nyon complains that Hancock is blowing things out of proportion, but Hancock suddenly softens. Smiling through tears, she says, "Fufufu, I've taken a liking to you!! Tell me where you want to go!! I'll lend you my ship!" Luffy's face lights up as he cries, "Really!!?" The page ends with Hancock choosing trust and aid after hearing that Luffy hates her oppressors, not her.

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