Enel streaked across the skies of the world, a thunderhead with a will. Most days he handled the threats that came from outside their sphere. A cocky Supernova bragged he could punch a Yonko and kick the Black Emperor. Another upstart showed off a flashy Devil Fruit or some tricky ability and decided to test his luck. Sometimes our own crews actually struggled against that kind of wild card, same way Big Mom's Fourth Sweet Commander, Snack, got flattened by a Supernova later on. Enel's answer was simple. With a map, a name, and a set of coordinates, the heavens opened and judgment fell. A single bolt of divine thunder ended the story.
What Ozz wanted Fisher Tiger for was different. Internal work. Sami had already flagged whispers from her informants. Doflamingo and Tesoro were pushing past the borders of normal growth. Using the Hobby-Hobby Fruit and the Lucky-Lucky Fruit, some of their people had begun expanding in the shadows without reporting up the chain. Maybe, to men like them, such moves counted as small potatoes and didn't merit troubling their sovereign.
Ozz found it tiresome, that knack they had for stirring the pot. Doffy most of all, the underworld's smiling merchant of Devil Fruits. More than one black market boss had filed a complaint that Doflamingo, under the shelter of imperial favor, was squeezing their lanes and muscling into their markets. There were even allegations he was waving Ozz's name to grease coups, leaving the World Government hamstrung and slow to act.
Tesoro was little better. The Golden Emperor wasn't satisfied with the resort Ozz had built for him. He had taken Ozz's doctrine about money and twisted it into a gospel of excess. He began strip-mining fortunes, draining ponds to catch fish. Guests who entered Gran Tesoro were vanishing, and not always by choice.
Fisher Tiger, Ozz judged, could be shaped into a blade for this. Stronger than Jinbe would one day be as an emperor's right hand, perhaps even capable of brushing the threshold of an admiral. Born to the sea and to combat beneath its skin, a fishman could become the perfect unseen check. To tug the reins of these wayward kings every now and then would be well within his reach.
"You want to form the Sun Pirates," Ozz said. "I will not stop you. But once you have sent those slaves back to their homes, you will work for me."
Tiger blinked, lowered his gaze and sank into thought.
Ozz did not press. The man would arrive at the answer on his own, and quickly.
He did. There was no reason to refuse. The terms were generous. The Black Emperor was the island's protector and had promised to shield Tiger's brothers. For a man like Fisher Tiger, who lived by duty and honor, repayment was not optional. And the work Ozz asked would not bury Tiger's own dream. It would simply take the hours left over.
"I am in your debt again," Tiger said at last. "If I survive this venture, then…"
"Lord Ozz, this life of Fisher Tiger's will be yours."
"Big Brother Tiger."
"Big Brother."
Jinbe and Arlong could only stare, eyes stinging. They had sworn they would form the Sun Pirates the day Tiger returned and sail the world freeing slaves, chasing open water and open sky. Now Tiger reached out and took the weight of consequence alone.
"Enough long faces," Ozz said, bored with brotherly theatrics. "This isn't the end of the world."
He turned to Tiger with a sudden, almost idle question. "By the way, do you have a Van… something Ninth around here?"
"You mean Vander Decken IX?"
"Right. That one. Know where he is?"
Tiger did. Roughly. He worried Ozz wouldn't know the tangled routes beneath the Dome, but Ozz waved him off.
"Direction and distance will do."
Ozz vanished.
He reappeared a few seconds later.
Tiger could not hide his bewilderment. "You…"
"Nothing much," Ozz said, brushing imaginary dust from his palm. "I twisted off Vander Decken's head."
No one spoke. A chill ran through the fishmen gathered there, a cold bead traveling the length of the spine. With only a bearing, in mere heartbeats, he had hunted and killed a name that haunted the island's rumor mill.
This ability, more than any ancient weapon, was why the Black Emperor held the seas with a power equal to a sovereign's and why the World Government feared him in ways they dared not voice.
As for what Vander Decken had done to earn such an ending, the fishmen did not know. They did not ask.
Ozz had no desire to keep Tiger running errands. He wanted to stroll. He cast his eyes over the crowd, already knowing his next target, when someone entirely expected and yet still surprising stepped forward.
"Queen Otohime."
Fishmen and merfolk dropped to one knee as one. Only Ozz and his companions remained standing, unruffled.
"No need for formality," Otohime said, breathless, almost tripping over her words in her hurry to reach him. The urgency on her face gave Ozz pause.
"Lord Ozz," she said, and then, after steadying her breath, "I have an urgent request."
Ozz rubbed his chin. He looked at the gentle queen, whose kindness ran bone deep. He did not need the mind-sight of advanced Observation Haki to guess the shape of her plea.
"Your Majesty," he said, "if what you want is my help to mend the relationship between humans and merfolk, between humans and fishmen, you have come to the wrong person."
Her expression froze. She had not expected the accuracy. Nor the bluntness.
The truth was simple.
Ozz's name opened doors on the sea, but the world Queen Otohime wanted required more than doors. She sought two races loving one another as neighbors. For Ozz, forcing everyone to behave would be easy. But Otohime would never accept that method.
The ideas people carry are not shifted with a handful of words.
"How could that be," she whispered.
She could feel the coldness in him. It left her heart hollow. She had believed that a man of Ozz's stature could make humans accept them. Then all she would need to do was the interior work, warming the hearts of merfolk and fishmen.
Ozz sighed. Pity lived somewhere inside him, but it did not guide his hand. He reached out and the water rippled.
A white shark fishman child appeared in his grasp.
"Do you understand, Your Majesty."
"Once the seed of hatred is sown, there is no soft landing. In the end, only force decides the matter."
He looked down at the boy, Hody Jones. Even at that age, the eyes were hard and predatory, teeth peeking in a reflexive snarl. Ozz's fingers tightened ever so slightly, not enough to harm, just enough to make the picture stark.
Queen Otohime's pupils trembled.
"When the day comes that you have the resolve to do what must be done," Ozz said, voice low and even, "then come and speak to me about this again."
He released the child. The boy scuttled backward, spitting quiet curses that only made the queen's face paler.
Kindness could move mountains, in time. But hatred dug in faster than kindness grew, and there were some fields where mercy alone did not sprout.
Behind Ozz, the sea breathed against the coral walls. Somewhere above, Enel's thunder walked the world. And Fisher Tiger, who would soon carve his legend into the Red Line, weighed a life pledged to the Black Emperor against the dream he had sworn to chase, and found that the scales could hold both.
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