The gate came down in two pieces and Luffy walked in over them.
Zoro came in behind him and counted.
Twenty-two fish-men in the yard. Nine of them armed. A pool in the middle, dark water, deeper than it looked. At the far end, on a raised deck, a sawshark sat in a chair with a drink in his hand and his legs crossed.
Arlong didn't get up.
"So you're the ones," he said. "She said you'd come. I told her nobody's that stupid."
"Where's the map room," Luffy said.
Arlong laughed.
Luffy hit the first fish-man who came at him hard enough to put him through the wall, and after that everybody was moving.
Zoro stayed where he was.
One of them came out of the crowd toward him. Six arms, a sword in every hand, a round face under a bandanna. He stopped a few paces off and grinned.
"You're the swordsman! Roronoa Zoro. I'm Hachi. I'm a swordsman too." He brought all six blades up. "Rokutoryu. Six-sword style. Nobody's ever beaten it."
Zoro drew Wado.
He held the sword out in front of him with his left palm flat against the steel and put haki into it. The blade went black under his hand and the black ran down to the point. It took about a second. He'd done it on the boat with three fingers' worth. This was the whole edge.
Hachi's grin slipped a little.
"What's that?"
Zoro didn't answer. He was watching the six arms.
He'd fought things with more limbs than that, once. It didn't matter how many. They all came off one body, and when the body committed to a strike, every arm committed with it. There was a moment in every attack where nothing could pull back. He just had to wait for it.
Hachi came in with all six.
High, low, both sides, a cage of steel closing on him. Fast. Heavy. Zoro watched Hachi's weight go forward onto his front foot.
There.
He stepped inside the cage and cut once, across, through the place where the six blades crossed.
The black edge went through four of them. Steel rang on the stone. Hachi stood with his arms still out and looked at the stumps in his hands.
"Oh," he said.
Zoro turned the sword and put the pommel into the side of his head. Hachi went down and didn't move.
That was it. Four seconds, maybe five.
The yard had gone quiet around them. Not all of it. Enough.
Arlong was on his feet. He was looking at the sword, and at the black on it, and he wasn't laughing now.
Zoro let the haki go. The black drained off the steel. He sheathed Wado and stood with his hand on the hilt and looked back at the deck, and after a moment Arlong sat down again, and picked up his drink, and didn't take his eyes off him.
They got Luffy a minute later.
Four of them, and something poured over his feet that set hard while he was still laughing at it. Then they tipped him into the pool and he went straight down.
Zoro took one step toward the water.
Then he stopped, because Sanji had already gone past him at a run and into the pool without breaking stride, and a fish-man with a ray's wings and a black belt had gone in after him.
Zoro stood at the edge.
He could go in. He didn't know how long the haki would hold underwater against a fish-man, and he didn't know if he could get the slab off Luffy's feet before they both drowned. He knew Sanji could hold his breath longer than he could. That was enough to stand on.
The water went red, then didn't. Sanji's head came up gasping and went down again. The old man from the village and the sister were on the far side of the pool now, on their bellies, doing something with a length of pipe. Air to Luffy. Sanji was buying them the time.
Twice. Three times.
The fourth time Sanji came up with the ray's arm around his throat. He broke it with his knee, drove the fish-man's head back under, and went down after him.
When he came up again he was alone.
He got himself out on the far side and lay on the stone coughing.
Zoro took his hand off Wado. He didn't remember putting it there.
Usopp ran.
Zoro saw it from across the yard. A fish-man with a long snout and thick lips had him against the wall. Usopp threw something that flashed white, and when the smoke cleared he was over the wall and gone and the fish-man was going after him.
Zoro didn't move.
He'd seen Usopp on his knees in the road two hours ago. He'd seen him on the boat, awake, asking about the black on his hands. He'd heard him say I ran four times because it was the part that mattered.
He'd come back or he wouldn't. If he wouldn't, better to find out here.
Zoro turned his back on the wall and watched the deck instead.
It took about twenty minutes. The fish-man came back over the wall first, alone, and fell off the top of it and lay where he landed. Then Usopp came over after him with blood on his face and the slingshot in his hand. He stood looking down at the fish-man like he didn't believe it.
Then he looked across the yard and found Zoro.
Zoro nodded.
Usopp sat down where he was.
Luffy came up out of the pool with the slab still on his feet and broke it against the deck, and Arlong stood up for the second time.
Zoro watched him come down the steps.
The officers had been strong. This was something else. He'd spent a long time learning what a man looked like who had never lost, and Arlong had the look. Loose. Nothing wasted. He came down off the deck and hit Luffy across the yard, and Luffy came back and hit him, and Arlong didn't move.
Strength of ten men. Yosaku had said it like a rumour.
Zoro knew where his line was with this one. If Luffy went down and stayed down he'd go, and he'd go with a sword he'd never tested against something like that, and it might not be enough.
He'd go anyway. He'd already decided that on the road.
He watched.
Luffy got up. Every time. Arlong put him through a pillar and he got up. Arlong put him through the floor and he got up, and each time he came up he was looking past Arlong at the tower behind the deck. Zoro followed the look. A window, high up, with a lamp in it.
The map room.
Luffy went through Arlong to get there. He took the sawshark's teeth in the shoulder and kept going, and the two of them went up the tower together, and for a long stretch all Zoro could see was the outside wall shaking.
Then the wall came down.
Drafting tables. Pens. Paper — a great deal of paper, eight years of it, going out into the wind. Luffy came down through all of it with his leg raised over his head and brought it down on Arlong like an axe, and the sawshark went through the floor of the tower, and the floor below that, and Arlong Park folded in on itself around him.
The dust took a while to settle.
Luffy stood up out of the rubble.
Arlong didn't. He was lying on his back in the wreck of his own house with his eyes open and nothing behind them, and the fish-men who were still standing looked at him, and then at Luffy, and then at each other, and nobody moved.
He looked at the paper blowing across the yard. Then he looked for Nami, standing in the broken gate with the hat still on her head, and grinned at her, and didn't say anything.
Zoro sat down on a piece of the wall.
Sanji was on his back with a cigarette burning down between his fingers, not smoking it. Usopp hadn't moved from where he'd sat. Luffy was standing in what was left of the map room looking pleased with himself, with a bite in his shoulder he hadn't noticed.
Nami came in through the gate. She stood in the middle of the yard with her arms wrapped round herself and looked at the paper.
Zoro watched her for a while.
One fight today, and it had taken four seconds. Three he'd stayed out of. He'd been right to. It didn't feel like much.
He got up and went to get the captain, before Luffy walked off somewhere with a hole in him.