Summary:
At the arena, Sandersonia and Marigold apologize to Hancock for losing, but Hancock says it’s fine and Luffy looks over at Marguerite’s body and is relieved to see she’s fine. As Luffy is done checking her, he looks up and asks Hancock if she’s gonna fight him now, but Hancock says she won’t and is done with all the fighting and just wants to end things now. When Luffy asks her to change the others back to normal and if she has the power to change them back, she confirms she does, but says she will give Luffy two options: he can have a ship and be transported back to Sabaody or return the others back to normal and find himself another way to get off the island himself and looks down on him with a smirk telling him to make a choice and thinks to herself to make his choice and show his true nature. However, Luffy gets on his knees in gratitude and asks her to turn them all back to normal, leaving Hancock speechless, prompting Nyon to comment on how Luffy with his willpower to bow to someone without hesitation to save his benefactors.
Afterwards, Marguerite and her friends are turned back to normal as the others are happy that they are all alright. When she asks what happened to Luffy the other Kuja’s state he was invited to the palace alone, shocking everyone. At the palace, Sonia expresses her gratitude to Luffy for covering her back and apologizes for before and Luffy says it’s alright since she said she’s sorry and Marigold states if anyone saw what was really on their back they’d have to leave the country. While Luffy wonders what they mean, Hancock says he can come in behind the curtains and as he does, he thinks it’s food only to be disappointed and confused as to why Hancock is naked, prompting Hancock to remark how his rudeness is astonishing, but forgets that and tells him to look at what he saw on her back again and tell her where he saw it before. The mark on her back is revealed as a hoof mark and as Luffy looks at it trying to remember it, Hancock tells him to hurry as this is not something she likes showing to others. Luffy states he remembers it and says he mistook it for the mark on Hatchis forehead from before. At that moment, Nyon comes in and tells Hancock about how she should trust him despite her saying she shouldn’t have come in and is hesitant. However, Nyon reads from the newspaper and reveals of Luffy’s assault on a World Noble and how he sent him flying with a punch, leaving the sisters speechless. Nyon comments at that moment it would be impossible to escape and yet Luffy ended up here causing Marigold to asks who he is and Luffy retorts saying that is what he’s been trying to tell them and has no idea how he got there and also mentions he doesn’t regret what he did to the noble. Hancock, overwhelmed with what she heard from Luffy begins to tear up relieved there are still people that will fight against those people and stand up for others, just like “him”. When Luffy asks who she’s talking about, Hancock, knowing she can trust him, states she’ll tell him everything and tells him of her mark: the mark of the Celestial Dragons. She and her sisters were slaves.
When she was twelve, she and her sisters were kidnapped when they were on their ship as beginner pirates and sold to the Celestial Dragons and when she saw the first man in her life he painfully branded the mark on her back and caused her to hate men. Sonia starts screaming from the painful memories and Luffy says that they don’t have to talk about it if they don’t want to. Hancock and her sisters were slaves for four years and suffered the worst terrors ever until one day, a fish-man named Fisher Tiger climbed the Red Line and set all slaves free. And, though he hated humans, he did not discriminate and set all kinds of slaves free and burnt Mary Geoise down. While Hancock admitted she was afraid of the brutality he displayed, she stated they owe him a debt they can never repay and Nyon states it’s because Tiger has been long dead and the remaining Sun Pirate members have scattered. Hancock says the fish-men slaves he freed decided to join him and he marked their slave symbols with the sun mark and notes that what Hatchi has on his forehead. When Luffy asks if Hatchi was a slave (since he has that very mark), Sonia says that’s not the case as the sun mark’s true purpose was to make others unable to tell slave from non-slaves. Hancock then reveals how she and her sisters were forcibly fed their Devil Fruits and how she lies and acts the way she does because she believes they would bring shame on their people and, crying uncontrollably, states she would rather lie to all of them then let them know the shame they went through and want to protect their honor rather than shame them, herself, and her sisters and how these memories are just so painful. Luffy can only watch with a stern and angry look after discovering the Celestial Dragons cruelty towards Hancock.
Nyon starts mocking Hancock over how she’s amused how she had thought the snake princess’s heart had turned as cold as ice from her experiences, but Hancock tells her to be quiet and remember her place as an outcast, but Nyon retorts that she should be more grateful that if Nyon hadn’t been out at sea, all three of them would have nowhere to go and Nyon would never have found them if she wasn’t away from her home. Hancock calls that just an old debt she’s talking about, angering Nyon stating she raised her and her sisters as if they were her own daughters and Sonia and Marigold help calm her down. Hancock then turns away from Luffy and nervously asks if he scorns her knowing of her past as a slave, but Luffy says the only ones he hates are the World Nobles and not her. Hancock, while blushing, smiles, saying she likes Luffy, and offers him use of her ship, making Luffy very happy.