Arlong Park and Luffy's childhood arc

[rainsometimes]

I know we're all (if we've caught up) looking back at Arlong Park now with the knowledge we've started to gain from Hachi and Jimbei on Fishman Island, but I'm looking at where the anime's catching up and where that arc will end.

When Nami and Nojiko kept telling Luffy to give up and go home; when Nojiko said if they were Nami's friends particularly, they should back off and leave her alone - I think Luffy might just have been remembering Ace's words that he would regret so much later, about how it would be better for Sabo to stay where he was among the nobles. And while Luffy's always almost focused on what happens now, I still think a part of him went, "If I listen to them and leave her alone, she might just die and be gone forever, like Sabo", in reply to that. Maybe he also saw some of Sabo's father (and the other noblemen, perhaps) in Arlong and his men. Arlong thinks humans are vermin, which is the same way the nobles of Goa Kingdom thinks of the poor.