I Knew It All Along

Around Fishman Island, word races through the crowds: "The princes are fighting the New Fishman Pirates in the plaza...!!" Citizens hurry toward Gyoncord Plaza, shouting, "We've got to get to Gyoncord Plaza!!" They understand the stakes with terrible clarity. If the princes are somehow defeated, Fishman Island will belong to Hody Jones, and the fate of the country rests on this battle. Near the skies above Gyoncord Plaza, someone notices Megalo and cries, "Ah! Boss Jimbei-sama! Megalo!" while another shouts, "Take a look over there!!" The island's hope and terror are now converging on the same public square.

Shirahoshi sees her father and cries, "It's Father!!!" Jinbe reassures her that Neptune is all right, and Megalo calls out as they descend. The people below recognize the king: "It's me, King Neptune!" voices cry from the crowd, relieved that he is still alive. Around Gyoncord Plaza, the citizens gather in thick streams, shouting, "The princes...!!" Inside the plaza, Hody's men laugh at the size of the audience. One says, "We seem to have ourselves quite the audience," and Zeo adds, "Kyakkyah!! Well, you don't get the opportunity to see someone dying every day!!" The public execution has become exactly the spectacle Hody wanted.

Hody reveals the full shape of his triumph. The army's soldiers, the country's ministers, and the royal family are all bound and displayed before the crowd, with the three princes tied upright beside Neptune. Hody laughs, "Jahaha hahahah...!! What a splendid sight!!" while citizens cry out, "Prince Ryuboshi!!!" "Prince Fukaboshi!!" and "Prince Manboshi!!" Even Hody's own side is stunned: the princes had been completely overpowering them, but then everything turned around when they "swallowed something." Fukaboshi apologizes to Neptune, saying, "My deepest apologies, Father...!!" but Neptune answers that the power the enemy uses is not their own. Fukaboshi accepts the cost: "But if it allows them to take our country from us...!!"

The crowd turns savage, calling for the royal family to be executed: "Let's execute them all, Captain Hody!!" "Burn them at the stake!!" "No, skewer them!!" and "Give the worthless royal family the horrible deaths they deserve!!!" Hody silences the noise and says he has not yet received word from Decken's men or of Shirahoshi's death. If they cannot lure out the princess, none of this has meaning. A follower cries, "Don't you dare harm our sister, Hody!!! She's no warrior!! What threat is she to you?!" Hody answers the question through Manboshi: the legendary mermaid is "the greatest threat of all."

Hody's trap closes. His men shout, "Captain Hody!!!" as Princess Shirahoshi and Jinbe crash down with Megalo. Someone realizes, "...Have fallen for our trap!!!" Shirahoshi lies shaken on Megalo, crying, "Father..." and "...My brothers...!!!" while the princes call, "Shirahoshi!!" Her rush to save Neptune has brought her directly into the place Hody wanted her. The plaza, already full of prisoners and spectators, now contains the one person Hody feared most.

Hody exults over the trap: "...Now, this is more like it!!!" He laughs, "Jahahah hahahaha hahahaha hahah!!!" and declares, "The two greatest threats to my revolution, both captured in one fell blow!!!" Jinbe and Shirahoshi are bound, and Shirahoshi tearfully apologizes to Jinbe: "I... I... I must offer my sincere apologies! It is all my fault... if I had not fallen for their trickery, you would not have been captures." Jinbe tells her not to apologize because what is done is done. Then a shocked thought cuts through the scene: "Wh... why, this isn't actually Father at all!!!" The Neptune she followed was a decoy.

Hody turns to Jinbe with a grin: "I thought you might show your face, Jinbe..." He remembers admiring Jinbe back when he still had guts and mocks how different Jinbe looks now. The crowd is stunned to see him, crying, "It's Boss Jinbe!!! But I thought he'd left the island after he resigned from the Shichibukai...?!!" and asking whether he rescued the princess. Hody says the task was easier than expected and that everyone present is accounted for. The only unpredictable factor remaining is the Straw Hat Pirates, whom he imagines hopelessly searching the palace. When they come after him to avenge their crewmates' deaths, Hody says, he will be ready to strike them down.

Hody reveals the army he has brought from Fishman District: "...A full one hundred thousand outlaws!!!" The plaza erupts with cheers of "YEAAAHHHHHHH!!!" as the ranks fill the square. He tells the people to decide quickly, flee or be killed. Some of the new citizens are women and children who cannot fight outside the plaza and will wait until things settle down, but Hody says the number of human slaves will only increase as time goes on. The homes of those who betrayed their own kind will belong to the newcomers. Among the force are "seventy thousand armed fishmen, ready to fight in my name," and "thirty thousand" human slaves captured over the past month.

Madame Shyarly appears before Hody and his men, irritated by the spectacle. She scolds them: "Causing a big ruckus like this in a public plaza... You boys have no class!!" Hody recognizes her face and asks what she wants. Shyarly says she only came to give him a fair warning. She had a premonition of a certain man bringing about the destruction of Fishman Island. Hody assumes she must mean him, since destroying the old Fishman Island is exactly what he is doing. Shyarly answers, "I did not." The man who will destroy the island, she says, is someone else.

Madame Shyarly names the man from her vision: "...is Straw Hat Luffy...!!" Hody's men shout, "What are you trying to say?!!" and one realizes the implication: if Straw Hat Luffy is truly going to destroy the island, then Hody's plan to turn it into his own kingdom is doomed. Shyarly insists, "I am merely telling you what I know." She says Luffy will tear the island down, not Hody, and the crowd begins shouting that the Madame's predictions are never wrong. The revelation gives the frightened people a new terror: the pirate they had hoped might oppose Hody may be tied to the island's destruction.

Hody's side reacts violently to Shyarly's prophecy. One man snarls, "Ridiculous nonsense!!! What are you trying to imply, Shyarly?!! Trying to take some kind of petty revenge?" Hody denounces the weight of Arlong's name, saying, "I'm not like your brother, Shirly!!!" and recalls that when she was a child, her brother Arlong was the idol of the entire Fishman District. But Hody says they have moved beyond that and become powerful, while the name of the Arlong Pirates is now only an empty symbol for rallying around. He claims he has been working toward this moment for ten long years and asks if they want to hear something good.

Hody turns the plaza's history into a confession. "You remember the queen of this kingdom? That wretch Otohime, who you all adored so much?!" he asks. Then he announces, "Well, I'm the one who killed her!!!" The plaza freezes. Hody's own men stare in shock, and the princes' faces change from anger to horror. The crowd stammers, "...What...?!!" and asks, "You killed Otohime?!" while one of Hody's followers demands, "Is that really true, Captain?!!" The lie that had fueled years of hatred breaks open in front of everyone.

The crowd refuses to accept it at first, crying, "No way...!!" and asking about the human assassin. Hody laughs at them: "Kyakkyahh!! You're all idiots for not realising sooner!!" He explains that on that day, he paid a human pirate to set fire to the box of signatures. While everyone was distracted by the blaze, he murdered Otohime. Then he shot the hired human pirate dead and framed him as the killer, shouting at the time, "This human has murdered our queen!!!" Neptune, bound nearby, screams, "Curse you, Hody!!!!" and "Father!" echoes through the plaza as the full betrayal is exposed.

Hody shows no remorse. When the people scream at him for killing the queen who preached peace, he answers, "She was in my way!!! You hear that, Shirahoshi?!!!" He calls Otohime a filthy whore who thought taking revenge on humans was wrong and says she came close to achieving peace with humans, so he killed her. "Your mother was a worthless wretch who deserved to die!!!" he says, adding, "I'm the one who took her filthy life!!!" The crowd is horrified by the cruelty of speaking this way about their queen. Shirahoshi, crying but steady, answers with the chapter's title: "...I knew it was you..."

Shirahoshi's words stun everyone. She repeats through tears that she knew it was Hody, meaning she had already known the truth about her mother's murder. Hody and the others react in shock, asking, "Shirahoshi...?!" and "What?!" The confession changes the entire emotional center of the plaza: Hody expected his revelation to break her, but Shirahoshi's face shows grief carried for years rather than surprise. The chapter closes on her quiet endurance, making clear that her silence was not ignorance.

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