"Hahahaha! My fellow Fishmen, welcome to this glorious gathering!"
Hody Jones's voice boomed across the clearing as he and his gang took their positions in the center of the open space. The great white shark Fishman's predatory grin was visible even from a distance as he began his theatrical presentation.
"What you're about to witness is a public execution that will remind us all of our true purpose and destiny!"
Hody gestured dramatically toward the crowd, his movements calculated to build anticipation and excitement among his supporters. This was clearly a man who understood the power of spectacle and knew how to manipulate a crowd's emotions.
"I trust everyone here recognizes this pathetic specimen!" Hody continued, pointing contemptuously at Wallace's battered form.
"This is Wallace—a cancer among our people, a self-hating traitor who has betrayed everything it means to be a Fishman!"
The crowd's energy began to shift as Hody launched into his prepared condemnation, his voice growing more impassioned with each accusation.
"Not only did he abandon our homeland without permission, but he willingly joined a crew of surface-dwelling humans! He lived among those inferior beings without shame, and upon his return, he had the audacity to spread their poisonous propaganda throughout our community!"
Hody's voice dropped to a more sinister tone as he played his most emotional card.
"It seems he has completely forgotten how our great hero Fisher Tiger was murdered by the very humans he now defends..."
The mention of Fisher Tiger's name sent a ripple of anger through the assembled crowd. Tiger's death was still a painful wound in the collective memory of Fishman Island's more radical elements, and Hody knew exactly how to exploit that grief for his own purposes.
After allowing his words to sink in and watching the crowd's mood darken appropriately, Hody raised his voice again with renewed fervor.
"Brothers and sisters! What do you think? Does this traitor deserve to die?"
"Death! Death! Death!" the fanatical spectators roared in unison, their voices creating a thunderous chorus that echoed through the Sea Forest.
The bloodlust in their voices was unmistakable, and Jerry felt disgusted by how easily they had been manipulated into calling for the execution of one of their own people.
"Hahahaha! Excellent!" Hody laughed with obvious delight at the crowd's response. "But before we grant him the mercy of death, shouldn't we ensure he truly understands the magnitude of his crimes? Shouldn't we make him suffer as Fisher Tiger suffered?"
"Punishment! Punishment! Punishment!" the crowd chanted again, their enthusiasm for Wallace's torture growing with each repetition.
"Hey, hey! This is quite the party you've got going here," a clear voice suddenly cut through the mob's chanting. "Is there some kind of festival I wasn't invited to?"
The crowd's unified chanting faltered as Jerry pushed through the packed bodies of spectators, emerging into the central clearing with deliberate confidence. His hood had fallen back during his passage through the crowd, revealing his distinctly human features to the shocked assembly.
"A human? How did a human get in here?" confused voices began murmuring throughout the gathering.
For a moment, the entire execution ceremony ground to a halt as thousands of eyes focused on the unexpected intruder who had dared to interrupt their supremacist rally.
"A human?" Hody's initial confusion quickly transformed into cruel amusement. "How fascinating! And here I thought all humans were cowards who hid behind their technology and numbers. What brings you to our little gathering, surface dweller? I hope you've considered the consequences of showing your face here!"
His laughter was echoed by several members of his crew, who seemed to find the situation hilariously ironic.
"You don't need to know who I am," Jerry replied coldly, his gaze shifting between Hody and Wallace's tortured form. "You just need to know that you've made the mistake of torturing my friends. Have you considered the consequences of that?"
Jerry took several measured steps closer to the group, his eyes cataloging every injury visible on Wallace's body. The cold fury building in his chest was becoming harder to contain with each new detail he noticed.
Dosun, the hammerhead shark Fishman standing behind Hody, decided to interject with his own brand of crude intimidation.
"So you're one of the pirates from his surface crew?" Dosun sneered, hefting his massive war hammer in a threatening display. "What's the matter? Did you come here alone to die? Were the rest of your crewmates too scared to face real Fishmen?"
"Die? Against a bunch of you?" Jerry's voice carried nothing but contempt. "I'm more likely to die from laughing at your stupidity than from anything you could do to me."
Jerry had no patience for these small-minded bigots and their delusions of superiority. Engaging in a battle of wits with them would be like trying to have a philosophical debate with a school of particularly aggressive goldfish.
Hody's expression darkened dangerously at Jerry's dismissive attitude. "You dare come here alone to rescue this traitor? It seems you don't understand the meaning of death!"
Without warning, Hody raised his right hand and began gathering moisture from the surrounding air. A sphere of water formed in his palm, quickly condensing into a high-pressure projectile.
"Fishman Karate: Water Shot!"
With a vicious grin, Hody hurled the water bullet directly at Jerry's face, the attack moving with enough force to crack stone.
Jerry's response was almost casual in its simplicity. He raised two fingers and flicked them toward the incoming projectile with practiced ease.
"Fishman Karate: Water Shot."
Jerry's own water bullet not only intercepted Hody's attack but completely overwhelmed it, continuing forward with even greater force than the original. Hody barely managed to throw up a hasty defense, his fist connecting with the projectile and dispersing it with a sharp crack.
The impact sent pain shooting through Hody's hand, and he stared at Jerry with a mixture of shock and rage.
"Impossible! How can a human—an inferior species—use Fishman Karate?!"
"Inferior species?" Jerry's smile was predatory and completely without warmth. "You really think highly of yourself, don't you?"
Rather than waste time on further verbal sparring with the delusional supremacist, Jerry decided to demonstrate the difference between their respective skill levels.
He spread his hands into claw-like configurations and crossed them downward in a complex pattern while channeling his mastery of both Fishman Karate and the Marine's Six Styles.
"Water Blade Barrage!"
Ten crescent-shaped projectiles of compressed water erupted from Jerry's fingertips, each one moving with the cutting power of a blade and the impact force of a cannonball. The technique was his own innovation—a fusion of the Six Styles' Tempest Kick with Fishman Karate's water manipulation that created a devastating area attack.
Hody's crew scattered in panic as the water blades carved through the air toward them, but the attack came too quickly for most of them to mount an effective defense. Several Fishmen were caught by the slashes and sent flying backward with deep cuts across their bodies.
In the same instant that he launched his attack, Jerry used his enhanced speed to dash toward Wallace's position. He scooped up his injured crewmate and carried him to a safer location before the chaos of his attack had even settled.
When the spray of displaced water and coral fragments finally cleared, the area where Hody's group had been standing looked like it had been hit by a artillery barrage. Several of the supremacist Fishmen were lying unconscious on the ground, while the others sported various injuries ranging from minor cuts to serious gashes.
"Look at you," Jerry said with obvious disdain as he surveyed the results of his attack. "You're not even strong enough to back up your big talk, yet you have the nerve to look down on others. Are you completely delusional?"
The effectiveness of his single technique had given Jerry a clear measure of his opponents' capabilities, and he was not impressed. These wannabe supremacists were little more than street thugs with inflated egos.
The thousands of spectators watching the scene were struck silent by what they had just witnessed. The idea that a human could not only match but completely overwhelm the strongest fighters from Fishman Street was beyond their comprehension.
Hody himself was staring at the shallow cuts on his arms with murderous fury, his entire worldview shaken by this display of superior technique from someone he considered racially inferior.
"Human! You're dead!" Hody snarled through gritted teeth, his voice thick with rage and humiliation. "Do you think one person can fight against all thirty thousand of my brothers gathered here today?!"
"What are you planning to do?" Jerry asked with complete indifference to the numerical odds. "Spit on me until I drown? Talk me to death with your ignorant rhetoric?"
The casual dismissal of such overwhelming numbers caused visible veins to bulge on Hody's forehead, but he forced himself to take a deep breath and regain his composure. This was an opportunity he couldn't waste.
"Brothers!" Hody called out to the assembled crowd, his voice carrying to every corner of the clearing. "Look carefully at what stands before us! This is exactly the kind of human who has oppressed and discriminated against our people for generations!"
"They attack us without provocation on our own territory, just as they murdered Princess Otohime years ago!"
Hody's voice grew more passionate as he began weaving his lies with fragments of truth, a technique that made his propaganda more believable to his audience.
"And what has our so-called king done about it all these years? Nothing! He continues to bow and scrape before the very species that murdered our princess and enslaved our people!"
"Since our leadership has proven so shameless and weak, why shouldn't we take matters into our own hands?!"
Jerry realized with growing alarm that Hody was using this confrontation as a springboard for something much larger than a simple execution. The shark was revealing revolutionary ambitions that had apparently been building for years.
"If we want to live in peace! If we want to walk freely under the sun! We must rise up against the humans! We must enslave them before they can enslave us! We must eliminate the threat they represent!"
"Humans are the natural enemy of every Fishman alive! Kill him! Kill them all!"
Hody's speech reached a crescendo of frothing fanaticism, his voice becoming an inhuman roar that seemed to tap into the deepest prejudices and fears of his audience.
The response was immediate and terrifying. Nearly thirty thousand voices rose in a unified battle cry as the entire crowd began surging toward Jerry's position, transforming from spectators into an ocean of rage and hatred.
Those who were nearby swarmed toward Jerry first, while those farther back followed the crowd in a massive wave of bodies converging on the lone human who had dared to challenge their supremacist ideology.
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