Chapter 93: Honor and Gravity

I stood on the marble terrace, the chaotic sounds of the rebellion echoing from the city far below.

Blocking the grand double doors to the palace summit was Senor Pink.

The man wore a baby bonnet, a bib, a pair of sunglasses, and a diaper.

To anyone else, he looked like a complete joke, a ridiculous punchline in Doflamingo’s twisted crew.

But as I looked at him, my Observation Haki didn’t sense a punchline.

I sensed an ocean of profound, suffocating grief.

I sensed the absolute, unshakable resolve of a man who had entirely abandoned his own dignity to hold onto a fragile, tragic memory.

Senor Pink pulled his pacifier from his mouth, his gruff, hardened face setting into a scowl.

“What are you staring at, Warlord?

Go ahead and laugh.

Everyone else does.

But it won’t stop me from swimming through this stone and dragging you down to the bedrock.”

I didn’t draw The Jade Wings, summon a clone or flare my Conqueror’s Haki.

I just looked at him with absolute, unwavering respect.

“I’m not laughing, Pink,” I said quietly, my voice completely devoid of mockery.

“A man doesn’t wear a suit like that for fashion, and he doesn’t wear it for fear.

He wears it for penance.

And he wears it for love.”

Senor Pink froze.

The tough, hardboiled facade slipped for just a fraction of a second, his eyes widening behind his dark sunglasses.

“I know what it means to carry a ghost,” I continued, taking a slow step forward.

“I know that you wear that outfit because it’s the only thing that made her smile.

It’s not a joke.

It’s one of the heaviest armor a man could possibly wear.”

Senor Pink’s hands began to tremble.

In all his years enduring the mockery of his enemies and the laughter of his own crew, nobody had ever understood.

Nobody had ever looked past the diaper to see the utterly broken, fiercely devoted husband underneath.

“This island is falling, Senor Pink,” I told him, coming to a stop just a few feet away.

“Joker’s era is over.

He trapped you inside this Birdcage just like everyone else.

There is no honor in throwing your life away for a man who would gladly see you sliced to ribbons to save his own skin and ego.”

I stepped to the side, gesturing back toward the city.

“Stand down,” I offered gently.

“Survive this chaos.

Go back to your wife.

Keep her memory alive.

That takes a hell of a lot more strength than dying on these steps for Doflamingo.”

Tears began to stream silently down Senor Pink’s face, slipping beneath his sunglasses and dripping off his chin.

He bit down on his pacifier, his chest heaving as the sheer emotional weight of my words broke through his defenses.

He looked at me for a long, silent moment.

Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, Senor Pink reached up and tipped the brim of his baby bonnet.

“You’re a truly hardboiled man, Warlord Victor,” Senor Pink rasped, his voice thick with emotion.

He didn’t attack.

He stepped aside, turning his back on the palace doors.

He dove smoothly into the marble floor, swimming away from the summit, choosing to live for his love rather than die for a fraud.

I watched him go, a profound sense of respect settling over me.

Then, I turned my attention to the heavy wooden doors.

I placed my hands on the wood and shoved them open.

The summit of the royal palace was a sprawling, open-air terrace surrounded by a vibrant sunflower field.

But the beauty of the flowers was completely overshadowed by the apocalyptic razor-strings of the Birdcage converging high above.

Standing in the center of the terrace, surrounded by destroyed masonry and shattered glass, was Donquixote Doflamingo.

He was completely crashing out.

His pink feather coat was torn, and his perfectly gelled hair was a mess.

He was pacing erratically through the crushed sunflowers, ripping at his own clothes, screaming at the sky like a rabid animal.

“WHO WAS IT?!” Doflamingo shrieked, his voice cracking with pure, unhinged madness.

“Who leaked it?!

Who planted the Elixir in Mystoria?!

WHICH ONE OF YOU RATS BURNED MY KINGDOM?!”

He kicked a marble pillar, shattering it into dust.

He had no idea I orchestrated the entire downfall.

To him, the universe itself had just conspired to destroy him, and the sheer lack of a visible enemy to punish was driving him entirely insane.

As the heavy wooden doors clicked shut behind me, his head snapped violently in my direction.

“You…” Doflamingo breathed, his chest heaving as he stared at me.

His fingers twitched, generating thick, invisible strings.

“The Warlord.

Did you come to laugh at the Joker?!

Did you come to claim the bounty on my head?!”

“I came to put a rabid dog down before it hurts anyone else,” I replied calmly, walking out into the sunflower field.

“I’LL TEAR YOU TO PIECES!” Doflamingo roared.

His Conqueror’s Haki erupted in a massive, black-and-red dome of suffocating pressure.

I completely unleashed my own, the two supreme king haki violently clashing in the center of the terrace.

The deafening shockwave flattened the entire field of sunflowers and cracked the bedrock beneath our boots.

Doflamingo didn’t hesitate.

He thrust his right hand forward.

“Overheat!”

A massive, incredibly thick whip of super-heated orange string lashed out, cracking the air like thunder as it aimed to slice me in half.

I drew The Jade Wings, channeling my Fa-Jin into the hilts.

The jade fluidly shifted, expanding into a massive tower shield coated in pitch-black Armament Haki.

The flaming whip slammed into the shield, the sheer kinetic force pushing me back an inch, but the jade held flawlessly.

“Too slow,” I taunted.

I let the shield dissolve, seamlessly shifting it into twin hooked daggers.

I triggered the Nega-Rings, teleporting ten meters forward and appearing completely inside his guard.

Doflamingo’s eyes widened, but his reflexes were monstrous.

He utilized “Athlete”, coating his leg in strings and Haki, bringing it up for a devastating, decapitating kick.

I used the Rokushiki technique “Kami-e” (Paper Art), my body going completely limp and fluid.

His massive kick grazed the air millimeters past my nose.

Using the momentum of my dodge, I drove the Jade dagger directly into his ribs, flooding the blade with Advanced Armament: Emission.

CRACK.

Doflamingo coughed up blood as the internal Haki detonated against his ribs.

He violently kicked off the ground, vaulting backward to put distance between us.

“Tamaito!” (Bullet Thread).

Doflamingo aimed both index fingers at me like pistols, firing a rapid barrage of highly compressed string bullets that moved faster than actual lead.

“Soru.” I vanished, becoming a blur of kinetic motion.

The string bullets tore through the air where I had just been, obliterating the palace walls.

I zig-zagged across the terrace, closing the gap in a fraction of a second.

“DIE!” Doflamingo screamed, swiping his hand in a wide arc.

“Goshikito!” (Penta-Chromatic Strings).

Five razor-sharp strings, colored like a rainbow, slashed toward me, intended to dice me into cubes.

I didn’t dodge.

I threw my right hand forward, The Jade Wings shifting rapidly from daggers into a colossal, twelve-foot greatsword.

I coated it in Conqueror’s Haki, the black-and-gold lightning arcing wildly off the green blade.

I swung it like a baseball bat.

The greatsword collided with the Penta-Chromatic strings.

The Haki clash tore the clouds above us.

With a massive surge of Fa-Jin, I physically overpowered his strings, shattering the attack and sending the concussive force directly into his chest.

Doflamingo was launched backward, crashing violently through the stone railing of the terrace.

He dug his fingers into the rubble, halting his momentum.

He looked up at me, his sunglasses cracked, his face a mask of pure, humiliated rage.

He realized, in that moment, that he was being physically outclassed.

I didn’t even need the Compound V multiplier to fight him; the month of training and my baseline growth had pushed me beyond his level.

“You think you can beat me with brute force?!” Doflamingo roared, planting both his hands directly onto the marble floor.

The environment around us began to violently warp.

The stone terrace, the palace walls, the shattered pillars, and the remaining sunflowers instantly lost their color, transforming entirely into millions of thick, writhing white strings.

“Ever-White!” Doflamingo screamed, utilizing the terrifying peak of his Devil Fruit Awakening.

The entire summit of the palace became his weapon.

“Billow White!” Thousands of thick string-tentacles erupted from the ground beneath me, attempting to completely ensnare and bind my limbs.

“Repulsion Field!” I let my Fa-Jin violently explode outward.

A dome of green kinetic energy expanded from my body, violently snapping the Awakened strings trying to grab me.

“You can’t escape!” Doflamingo yelled, waving his arms.

“Break White!”

Two massive, towering waves of thick white strings crested on either side of me, surging inward to crush and impale me in a massive vice of thread.

“I’m not trying to escape,” I replied, entirely unfazed.

I used Geppo to launch myself high into the air, hovering above the sea of writhing strings.

I pulled my arms back.

The Jade Wings shifted once more, expanding and stretching into a massive, heavy-headed war hammer.

I coated it entirely in pitch-black Armament and golden Conqueror’s Haki.

“Let’s see if your strings can catch gravity,” I yelled, channeling the combined output of my Nega-Bands into the massive weapon.

I plummeted toward him, bringing the hammer down with the force of a falling meteor.

The true Warlord clash had reached its climax, and the Joker was entirely out of his depth.

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