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King Neptune had spent years as a hollow shell of his former self. After Queen Otohime's assassination, after failing to locate Vander Decken IX despite exhaustive searches, he'd locked his daughter away in the Hard Shell Tower and retreated into alcohol-soaked memories. The kingdom's governance fell to his sons by default. Neptune simply... gave up. Abandoned responsibility. Chose comfortable oblivion over painful duty.
But Otohime's resurrection had rekindled something long dormant in his chest. Now, with death approaching and his family fleeing for their lives, that spark ignited into a bonfire.
He stood in full ceremonial armor for the first time in a decade, his massive trident gripped in both hands. Behind him, perhaps a hundred Royal Guards remained—the survivors of the titan's initial march, those brave or foolish enough to make a final stand. They looked to their king with desperate hope, seeking meaning in the face of meaningless slaughter.
Neptune would give them that meaning.
"Warriors!" His voice carried across the palace grounds with the authority of someone who'd finally remembered what kingship meant. "Today, you do not die for your king! You do not sacrifice yourselves for my glory or my legacy!"
He swept his trident toward the approaching titan horde, their footsteps creating earthquakes that rattled his bones. "You fight for your families! For your children who swim toward safety even now! For your lovers, your parents, your friends—everyone who needs just a few more minutes to escape this nightmare!"
The guards straightened, weapons rising.
"We cannot win!" Neptune's admission rang with brutal honesty. "These giants will kill us all! But every second we hold them here is a second our people swim farther away! Every giant we slow is one less chasing our loved ones! We will not see tomorrow's sun—but our children WILL! And that, warriors, is worth dying for!"
He raised his trident to the sky, his battle cry tearing from his throat like a beast's roar:
"FOR YOUR FAMILIES! FOR YOUR DESCENDANTS! FOR FISHMAN ISLAND'S FUTURE! STAND WITH ME AND DIE WITH HONOR!"
The response shook the ocean itself—a hundred voices united in defiant acceptance of death:
"DIE FOR THE KINGDOM!"
"DIE FOR OUR FAMILIES!"
"DIE FOR FISHMAN ISLAND!"
The chant repeated, each iteration louder than the last, until even the titans' footsteps seemed to fade beneath the warriors' fury.
Neptune didn't order his sons to leave. Couldn't bring himself to save them while demanding other fathers sacrifice their children. If he was asking his people to die, his own blood would spill first.
I've lived a full life, Neptune thought, stealing one final glance toward where Shirahoshi and Otohime had disappeared. Loved deeply. Ruled poorly, but loved well. If this is my end, at least it comes on a battlefield rather than choking on drink in my bed. A warrior's death. That's all an old fool can ask for.
"CHARGE!" Neptune surged forward, his sons matching his pace without hesitation.
Prince Fukaboshi to his right, trident raised and face set with grim determination. Prince Ryuboshi to his left, his long hair streaming behind him as he swam. Prince Mamboshi slightly behind, his smaller frame no less fierce than his brothers'.
Four members of the royal family led the charge. The Royal Guards formed a wedge formation behind them, protecting their leaders while maximizing offensive capability. It was textbook military strategy—and would have been effective against any conventional enemy.
But Colossal Titans weren't conventional.
The Fishman Karate masters opened the engagement with long-range water manipulation. High-pressure bullets that could shatter stone. Currents strong enough to knock ships off course. Concentrated streams that cut through steel like paper.
All of it splashed harmlessly against the titans' Armament Haki-coated skin. Not even a scratch. Not even a white mark to show the attacks had landed.
Ranged combat is useless, Neptune realized, adjusting his strategy mid-charge. We need to get close. Haki against Haki. Overwhelming force at the weak points.
"AIM FOR THE NECK!" he bellowed. "COORDINATED STRIKES ONLY!"
Beneath their feet—or rather, beneath the titans' feet—Sea Kings writhed in agony. Dozens of the massive creatures, each over five kilometers long, had answered Princess Shirahoshi's desperate summons. They coiled around titans' legs, used their immense strength to pull the giants backward, threw their bodies in front of the march to create living obstacles.
But even Sea Kings couldn't stop this army. The heat burned their scales. The weight crushed their bones. They died by the dozen, buying seconds with their lives while the march continued with mechanical inevitability.
They gave Shirahoshi time to escape, Neptune thought with fierce gratitude. Their sacrifice won't be wasted.
"FATHER, WITH ME!" Fukaboshi called, his trident already coated in dark Armament Haki. "Brothers—support from the sides!"
The four royals converged on a single Colossal Titan with practiced coordination. Fukaboshi struck first, his trident punching through the nape's Haki coating with a sound like breaking glass. Neptune followed immediately, his own weapon driving deep into the same wound. Ryuboshi and Mamboshi hit from opposite angles, their combined force tearing through muscle and bone.
The titan's head separated from its shoulders. The massive body swayed, then toppled—crushing three other titans as it fell in a domino effect of destruction.
For a heartbeat, hope flared.
Then the gap in the titan formation closed. More giants stepped forward, literally walking over their fallen comrade's corpse as though it were a speed bump rather than a casualty.
There are too many, Neptune realized, the hope guttering out as quickly as it had ignited. We could fight for hours and not make a dent in their numbers.
Around them, Royal Guards died in droves. Some were trampled, their bodies pulverized beneath titan feet before they could scream. Others succumbed to the heat, their flesh cooking as they attempted close-quarters combat. A lucky few managed killing blows before being crushed by the next wave.
Within minutes, a hundred warriors had been reduced to ten survivors. And those ten were barely functional.
Prince Fukaboshi's left eye was a ruined mess, destroyed when titan steam had erupted in his face during a finishing blow. He fought half-blind, relying on Observation Haki to compensate for his missing vision.
Prince Ryuboshi's tail had been severed below the waist when a titan's foot caught him during a dodge. He could still fight through pain and adrenaline, but his mobility was permanently crippled.
Prince Mamboshi had lost both ears to a glancing blow that should have killed him outright. He couldn't hear his father's commands anymore, fighting on instinct and fury alone.
King Neptune's right arm hung useless at his side, torn away at the shoulder when he'd been too slow to withdraw from a strike. Blood clouded the water around him, but he kept fighting one-handed, his trident work crude but effective.
They were broken, bleeding, dying by inches—but still fighting.
"Don't be afraid, my sons," Neptune gasped, positioning himself between the titans and his youngest boys. Ryuboshi and Mamboshi trembled despite their best efforts, their bodies understanding what their courage denied: death was seconds away.
Only Fukaboshi remained calm, his remaining eye fixed on the approaching giants with a warrior's acceptance. He would have made a fine king, Neptune thought with paternal pride. In another life, another timeline. He has the strength I lacked.
The Colossal Titans kept walking, uncaring and unstoppable as natural law.
This is it, Neptune thought, gripping his trident tighter despite knowing it was futile. This is where we—
Several kilometers away, Queen Otohime watched through tears as her family made their final stand. Megalo swam with desperate speed, carrying his passengers toward the Sea Forest, but not fast enough to spare Otohime the sight of her husband and sons being systematically destroyed.
"No," she whispered, the word carrying all the grief in her heart. "Please, no. Not again. I can't lose them again."
She'd already died once. Already experienced the cold certainty of leaving her family behind. The resurrection had been a miracle—a second chance most people never received. But now that miracle felt like cruelty. She'd been given just enough time to remember what happiness felt like before having it ripped away again.
Why? she thought, closing her eyes against the carnage. Why does the universe torture me like this? What sins did I commit to deserve this?
"Mother!" Shirahoshi's voice cut through her despair. "Mother, look! Something's coming!"
Otohime forced her eyes open, following her daughter's pointing finger toward the titan formation's rear. A golden light streaked through the water—not the gentle bioluminescence of deep-sea creatures, but harsh, blazing radiance that hurt to look at directly.
The light resolved into a figure as it approached: A square, yellow, porous creature radiated golden light from within its bizarre form, holes dotting its surface like some nightmarish cheese
Recognition struck Otohime like lightning. "Sponge?"
The creature—if it could be called that—was indeed a sponge. But not a natural one. This was one of the rare sentient species that inhabited the Sea Forest's depths, living peacefully among the coral and kelp. She'd met a few during diplomatic missions, though they rarely involved themselves in kingdom politics.
But why is this one glowing? she wondered. And how is it moving so fast?
SpongeBob skidded to a stop directly in front of King Neptune, his voice utterly incongruous with the apocalyptic battlefield: "Whew! I'm so tired! I almost didn't make it in time! Those monsters are really scary, aren't they?"
Neptune stared, too exhausted and pain-addled to fully process what he was seeing. A talking sponge. Glowing golden. Apparently unaffected by the titan heat that had killed hundreds. Just... cheerfully chatting as though they'd met at a social gathering.
"You're... one of the Sea Forest sponges?" Neptune managed. "You need to run. These giants will kill anything in their path. I appreciate the thought, but—"
SpongeBob wasn't listening. He'd already assumed a combat stance, his arms spreading wide as golden light intensified around his body.
"Yata no Kagami," SpongeBob said, his voice taking on an oddly formal quality.
His palms came together, forming a mirror of pure light between them. The mirror's surface rippled like liquid gold, then emitted a brilliant beam that struck the nearest titan's head. But instead of burning through or exploding on impact, the beam reflected—bouncing from that head to the next titan, then the next, creating a zig-zagging path of light that connected hundreds of titans in a complex web.
What kind of ability— Neptune's thought cut off as SpongeBob disappeared.
No. Not disappeared. Moved.
The sponge entered the light-path he'd created, and suddenly his body was traveling at speeds that made him effectively invisible to the naked eye. Golden streaks marked his passage—appearing at one titan's nape, vanishing, reappearing at another's, vanishing again in a rhythm too fast to track.
Each time he appeared, blood erupted. Each appearance marked another death. Each flash of gold ended a Colossal Titan's existence.
He's using light itself as a transportation network, Neptune realized with awe. Moving between reflection points at near-instantaneous speed. This is—this is like—
"Admiral Kizaru," Fukaboshi whispered, his remaining eye wide with recognition. "This is the Pika Pika no Mi (Glint-Glint Fruit). How does a sponge have a Logia Devil Fruit?"
The answer didn't matter. What mattered was results.
In less than ten seconds, thousands of Colossal Titans collapsed simultaneously. Their massive bodies hit the ocean floor with impact that created tidal waves, sending debris and corpses tumbling through the water. Dust clouds obscured vision for several moments—and when they cleared, the titan formation had been decimated.
Not injured. Not slowed. Decimated. Reduced to a fraction of their original numbers.
SpongeBob reappeared beside Neptune, his cheerful expression somehow still intact despite having just committed mass slaughter. "Whew! I'm so tired. I almost didn't catch up. These monsters are so scary!"
The surviving Royal Guards stared in stunned silence. Even the wounded princes couldn't find words for what they'd just witnessed. The difference between their desperate struggle and SpongeBob's casual genocide was so vast it defied comprehension.
This is what Admiral-level power looks like, Neptune thought, his remaining eye wide with shock. In the face of such abilities, what we call strength is nothing but a joke. This yellow sponge makes even Boss Jinbe pale in comparison.
The sponge's body was illuminated by golden light, and his miraculous fighting methods had left everyone on Fishman Island completely dumbfounded. They had witnessed power that transcended everything they'd ever known—a level of combat ability that redefined what "strong" even meant.
Facing SpongeBob's display, all Neptune and his sons could do was stand in stunned silence, their bodies broken, their weapons lowered, trying to comprehend the impossible rescue that had just unfolded before their eyes.