One Piece, volume 44. CP9 is (mostly) beat, Robin's free of the seastone cuffs and ready to rumble. But the Marine fleet responding to the Buster Call has arrived, and they intend to blow up almost everything. They still want to take Robin alive, which means the bridge she and Franky are standing on is the one safe place to be, if the rest of the crew can get there.
Unfortunately, Luffy still hasn't finished off Rob Lucci, who damages the tunnel so it'll flood. Fortunately, Franky's mother-figure, Kokoro, is a merwoman, much to the dismay of Sanji, who naturally envisions mermaids as gorgeous. Whatever, she got them to the bridge, so they're safe. Thanks, lady!
Or not. That's a lot of Marines, though the Straw Hats' fight is played as secondary to Luffy's, which gets most of the panel space. The crew are relegated to montages of panels showing them crushing a bunch of mostly-generic characters that don't get names.
(It's a little ridiculous, because the Buster Call is supposedly led by 5 Vice-Admirals. Any one of which ought to be enough to stomp the entire crew into the dirt. The only thing any of them do is give us Lucci's backstory, which, I don't care, and shoot one of their men when he hesitates to carry out an order. What, afraid to get your coat dirty?)
In the meantime, Luffy's running out of gas, as even busting out the only hinted at until now Third Gear doesn't help (it massively inflates one part of his body, increasing his strength, but is too slow to actually hit Lucci.) It's only when Usopp discards his "Sniper King" mask to first call out Lucci, then yell at Luffy to get up and fight for his crew like he promised, that Luffy is back on his feet. Oda overdoes it a bit, as he introduces some ultimate Cipher Pol attack, a combination of all Six Powers in one move, which appears to stop Luffy cold the first time it's used. But then he gets tagged by it two more times, and by the third, he's not even falling down. Maybe it would have been enough if Oda removed the second hit.
But really, all that's preamble. The main show is, once Lucci's down, the Straw Hats still can't escape, because the ship they intended to use gets shelled. And then, out of the smoke, appears the Going Merry. With no one sailing it.
Merry, with a little help from Iceburg, pulled itself together to save its crew. There's a nice bit where all the massive Marine ships can't hit this one caravel, partially because of something Sanji did that abruptly changed the currents, but also because it's one tiny ship among ten giants. (Also, the one time someone did actually demonstrate good aim, Zoro and Sanji use an exhausted Luffy to catch the cannonballs and sling them back, which is hilarious.)
Unfortunately, the escape from Ennies Lobby takes all Merry had left. The bow falls off right as they meet Iceburg, aboard another ship. Which really sells the idea Merry was holding together on sheer will until it knew the crew would be OK. And so the volume ends on a downer note. The crew won the fight. Robin's with them in body and spirit. Usopp maybe proved something to himself (although after his big speech, he threw the Sniper King mask back on. Luffy and Chopper are left wondering where Usopp went.) But they lost the ship that carried them this far. At least Luffy acknowledged how much of the damage was his fault for being an idiot (though he didn't apologize for ripping out the mast to hit a whale, which is still such a mind-boggling stupid thing to do I can't get over it.)
So they're a crew without a ship. What now?
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