Cover
Koby’s Diary, Part 18: Vice Admiral Garp totally distracted!
Vice Admiral Garp informs the crew that Morgan was only able to catch him with his hatchet arm because he fell asleep standing up. He’s visibly embarrassed, but the wound doesn’t seem to bother him much in return.
Storyline
Reverse Mountain, The Going Merry: The Straw Hat Pirates is led out of Laboon’s stomach by Crocus. They get back to the sea via a canal. Crocus is a doctor and has properly constructed the channel and doors in Laboon’s intestines so that the whale won’t notice. He can treat him better from the inside. Luffy offers to be his ship’s doctor, but Crocus declines the offer because of his age and because of Laboon. Back outside, the first thing they do is throw Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday overboard, who swear revenge and eventually swim away. Luffy has found some sort of compass on the ship. They go ashore at Reverse Mountain. Luffy doesn’t understand why Laboon’s friends have kept him waiting for 50 years. Sanji is sure they’re dead by the time they’ve sailed the Grand Line. Usopp disagrees, saying he can’t imagine Laboon’s friends abandoning him. Crocus, however, tells them that the pirates have left the Grand Line. Nami objects that they must have gone out across the Calm Belt then. Crocus agrees with her, so they don’t know if they’re alive either. No rules exist on the Grand Line, weaklings don’t survive. Even if Laboon’s friends are alive, they wouldn’t pick him up. The Straw Hats can’t understand why Laboon still believes in his friends after 50 years then. Crocus had explained it to him a few times, but Laboon didn’t believe him.
Review: A younger Crocus speaks to Laboon, who is also much smaller. He tells him his pirate friends are no longer on the Grand Line and will not be returning. Laboon screams loudly, drowning out any further explanation from Crocus.
Present: Since then, Laboon has been ramming the redline as if to tell his friends to come from the other side. Time and time again, Krokus has tried to get him to accept the truth. Laboon’s home is the East Blue, for him there is no going back and the pirates were his only hope. Sanji wants to know why Crocus stayed with the whale anyway and didn’t move on with his own life. He points to the wound on Laboon’s head. If the whale keeps ramming the coast, he will eventually kill himself. Having spent 50 years with the whale now, he can’t leave it now.
Luffy suddenly runs at Laboon’s head with the The Going Merry’s mast, which he broke off. He rams it into the whale’s wound with the gum-gum skewer. The whale writhes in pain and only with difficulty can Luffy hold on to the mast. The whale pushes its head against the shore and Luffy is thrown down. Grinning, he hits Laboon’s eye with a gum-gum gun, but is himself thrown backwards against the lighthouse on impact. Loudly, he calls out to the whale that the fight has ended in a draw. He says it’s not yet clear which of them is the stronger, so they’ll have to finish the fight later. His friends may be dead, but after he goes around the world, Luffy wants to come back and continue the fight. Laboon is happy to have made new friends.
| Manga volumes | Whisky Peak Arc (Manga) |
