Deep beneath the sea.
Norton kept diving. Only when he reached five hundred meters below the surface did he see an enormous shadow stretching beyond his sight emerge beneath him!
By his rough estimate, it was over a thousand meters long! Even bigger than the Sea Kings he usually saw!
No... perhaps the Mist Whale was a Sea King too.
After descending another hundred meters, Norton finally planted his feet on the Mist Whale's back, broad as a continent. Its enormous blowhole lay just ahead!
Norton instinctively opened his mouth to give the giant whale an order, but before he could speak, the water pressure forced seawater down his throat.
"Glub, glub..."
Countless bubbles streamed from his nose and mouth.
Norton hurriedly covered his mouth.
How am I supposed to communicate with this giant whale?
That was a problem!
Norton rubbed his chin and swam toward the front of the Mist Whale.
A short while later, Norton arrived before the Mist Whale's eyes. Each was dozens of meters across, as enormous as a ship!
Norton waved repeatedly, but failed to attract the Mist Whale's attention. To this colossal creature, he was simply too tiny.
Left with no choice, Norton pressed his hands against the Mist Whale's head!
As the muscles in his arms bulged, his tremendous strength brought the moving Mist Whale to a dead stop!
Confusion began to appear in the Mist Whale's enormous eyes, each dozens of meters wide, as though the whale could not understand what had stopped it.
There was clearly nothing ahead.
Finally, after staring ahead for a good while, the giant whale noticed a tiny speck of silver before its eyes.
Was that... a human?
A deep sound rang out. It was the Mist Whale's low moan, yet it shook the entire stretch of sea!
Seeing that the Mist Whale had finally noticed him, Norton smiled and threw a punch!
Up on the surface, aboard the White Pearl, Nami and the others discovered that the previously calm, fog-covered sea had suddenly begun to shake violently!
Fog churned, waves roared, and everything seemed to descend into chaos.
At the same time, the water suddenly turned black...
No, the water had not turned black. An enormous shadow had suddenly expanded beneath it!
Nami's pupils contracted. A flicker of foreboding crossed her mind, then erupted like a volcano into overwhelming shock!
An enormous mountain rose from the sea, pushing the water into a steep slope. As this "sea mountain" surged upward, the White Pearl, the Black Cat, the Buggy... and the other ships within several thousand meters were thrown over!
Towering waves surged, and the "sea mountain" finally revealed its true form...
It was a giant whale over a thousand meters long!
It resembled a blue whale, but its entire body was black, mottled with grayish-white markings.
The White Pearl, an enormous ship a hundred meters long, looked as tiny as an infant beside that giant whale.
Yet a whale that huge seemed to have been... punched out of the sea by something!
"You've got to be kidding, right?"
That was probably what everyone who witnessed the scene was thinking.
No matter how they looked at it, this was something that could only happen in a dream!
"Take back all the fog nearby, then submit to me!"
Just then, a man's voice suddenly rang out.
Nami, Funing, Zoro, Sanosuke... everyone's gaze involuntarily swung in the same direction.
The thousand-meter-long whale had flown more than a thousand meters into the air, higher than many mountain peaks. Yet the silver-haired figure shot out of the depths, despite having nothing he could possibly push off against...
And soared into the sky in defiance of the laws of nature!
They were so high up that no one could see the Mist Whale's eyes. They held a humanlike expression, filled with shock!
As a member of a noble breed of Sea Kings, the Mist Whale could not understand it. After living for hundreds of years and standing on the verge of reaching adulthood, how could it have been punched out of the sea like a toy by this tiny human?
That shouldn't be possible, should it?
The Mist Whale had seen humans before. They were a species as insignificant as krill.
Over the past several hundred years, the Mist Whale had wiped them out more than once. The fog it exhaled while breathing was enough to make these creatures in their little boats lose their way at sea, and the enormous waves from an occasional leap above the surface could overturn any ship...
But this was the first time the Mist Whale had encountered such a powerful human!
"Did you hear me? Blink if you did! Otherwise, I'll punch you again!"
"Take back all the fog, then become my subject!"
The Mist Whale did not understand human language, yet Norton's words conveyed their meaning to it. The whale hurriedly blinked, its enormous, dozens-of-meters-wide eyes rolling as thick mist spouted from its blowhole.
"Good, you understood. Back into the sea with you!"
Another tremendous, irresistible force struck!
Once again, the Mist Whale felt its enormous body being hurled toward the sea by a tiny human.
Boom!
This was far beyond an ordinary tsunami. The instant the thousand-meter-long whale was thrown into the sea, mountain-high waves exploded outward! More than a dozen nearby ships capsized, and pirates tumbled into the water one after another!
Meanwhile, back in the sea, the Mist Whale opened the two blowholes atop its head.
As though summoned, the dense fog was drawn by an enormous suction force and gradually pulled into the Mist Whale's blowholes!
About ten minutes later, the sea was clear again.
The Mist Whale had drawn all the fog back into its lungs, leaving none behind.
The scene across the sea lay exposed, with the positions of the Baratie and the former Krieg Pirates' ships plain to see!
"Wh-what happened?"
Zeff stood on the deck and looked around. Many pirate ships had capsized, and the enormous waves from moments earlier had vanished.
"Old man! Look! That whale's huge!"
Sanji pointed at the Mist Whale surfacing in the sea, not even noticing the cigarette fall from his mouth.
Norton landed back aboard the White Pearl. Thanks to its enormous, stable hull, it was one of the few nearby ships that had not capsized in the waves.
"That was way too reckless, Norton!" Nami walked over, took off the black wool coat, and draped it back over Norton's shoulders.
"There really was a Mist Whale!" Funing exclaimed, staring at the whale floating on the surface.
"You actually subdued that thing?" Zoro looked utterly incredulous.
Kuro, Sanosuke, and the others were no different.
The sight of the Mist Whale being punched out of the water had truly frightened them.
It was simply too surreal!
"Of course! This whale is our companion from now on!" Norton straightened his black wool coat. "Nami, Funing! Pass the word along. Get a feast ready!"
"But everyone's ships are still..."
"Don't worry! Just have Big Black turn them back over one by one! They capsized because of the whale in the first place!"
"Big Black?" Nami looked puzzled.
"This Mist Whale! I just came up with the name. Great, right?" Norton grinned.
"You barely put any thought into it!" Nami retorted.
Meanwhile, far out at sea, a Dog-Head Warship was underway.
"The fog's gone!"
"Excellent! Are there any islands nearby? Report immediately!"
The warship's lookout stared at the enormous pirate fleet in the distance. At the sight of the silver skull flag bearing a crossed scepter and chess king, he swallowed.
"No islands... but I've spotted the Norton Pirates' fleet!"
The fog had originally concealed Norton and his crew's whereabouts.
But after he subdued the Mist Whale, "Big Black," and had it withdraw the fog, their whereabouts were exposed as well.
Bad luck or good fortune?
It was hard to say!