Chapter 95: The Warlords Crew

The Birdcage was rapidly contracting, its razor-sharp strings slowly grinding the outer edges of Dressrosa into dust.

But the Verdant Abyss Pirates weren’t running from the cage.

They were working on executing their Captain’s orders.

While the Emperors’ fleets panicked and the city burned, Victor’s crew systematically dismantled the Donquixote Family’s top executives, clearing the board so the citizens could finally breathe.

Deep in the subterranean tunnels beneath the ruined SMILE factory, a large group of Tontattas was desperately trying to evacuate the captured dwarven slaves.

Suddenly, a thick, highly viscous puddle of brown slime dripped from the ceiling, blocking their path.

The slime bubbled and rose, forming the hunched, repulsive shape of Trebol.

The Donquixote Executive held a matchstick between his fingers, his snot-drenched face twisted into a cruel grin.

“Behehehehe!

Where do you think you’re going, you little pests?!” Trebol snickered, raising his staff.

“Did you really think Doffy would let you escape?

This slime is highly flammable!

One spark, and I’ll roast every last one of you!”

The Tontattas raised their newly acquired steel swords, trembling in the face of the massive Logia-like user.

“Don’t strike that match,” a cold, completely uninterested voice echoed down the tunnel.

Trebol blinked, looking past the dwarves.

Walking slowly out of the shadows, his Nodachi resting lazily on his shoulder, was Trafalgar Law.

The Surgeon of Death didn’t look angry.

Instead he looked profoundly disgusted.

“Law!” Trebol cackled, readying his match.

“You think you can stop me before I burn them?!

Sticky Meteor!”

Trebol launched a massive, highly explosive glob of slime directly at the terrified dwarves.

Law didn’t even break his stride.

“Room.”

A pale blue sphere instantly expanded, completely enveloping the entire tunnel.

“Radio Knife.”

Law casually swiped his Nodachi through the air.

He didn’t use a standard slashes, his blade sparked with intense, high-frequency electrical energy.

The explosive slime meteor froze in mid-air, instantly sliced into a dozen harmless pieces before it could ignite.

But Law didn’t stop there.

He vanished, teleporting directly in front of Trebol.

The executive’s eyes widened in shock as Law unleashed a blinding flurry of electrified slashes.

Trebol’s body fell apart.

And because of the surgical electrical shock of the Radio Knife, his Devil Fruit powers were completely short-circuited.

He couldn’t reform his sticky body.

He was literally dissected into fifty separate, squirming, screaming pieces of flesh and slime.

“My body!

I can’t merge back!

Behehehe!

What did you do?!” Trebol’s severed head shrieked from the floor.

“You’re loud, and you’re unsanitary,” Law muttered, adjusting his spotted hat.

He glanced at a stack of heavy, iron-reinforced shipping crates left over from the SAD production line.

“Shambles.”

With a final flick of his fingers, the fifty pieces of Trebol vanished.

The heavy iron doors of the shipping crates slammed shut, securely locking the executive’s dissected body parts into separate, heavily armored boxes scattered across the room.

Law sheathed his sword with a sharp click.

He looked down at the stunned Tontattas.

“The path is clear.

Go.”

Up on the surface, the central plaza of the city had been turned into a cratered warzone.

Robin and Laura stood back-to-back, completely surrounded by the explosive wrath of Gladius and the crushing weight of Machvise.

“You ruined the young master’s plan!” Gladius screamed, the veins on his forehead bulging so violently his steampunk helmet cracked.

His arms expanded, turning entirely into volatile explosives.

“Fashion Puncture!”

He slammed his hands onto the cobblestones.

The Devil Fruit power instantly caused the entire plaza floor to rapidly swell and glow, threatening to detonate the ground beneath Robin and Laura like a massive landmine.

Robin didn’t panic.

She crossed her arms, her eyes flashing with lethal calm.

“Cien Fleur: Spider Net.”

Hundreds of arms sprouted from the un-swollen edges of the plaza, rapidly weaving together into a massive, flexible net of limbs.

Before the ground could violently detonate, Robin’s net scooped up chunks of the explosive cobblestones and violently hurled them right back at Gladius.

The executive was caught in his own blast, the explosion sending him skidding backward through a stone wall.

“Don’t ignore me!” a booming voice echoed from the sky.

Machvise had used his Ton-Ton fruit to launch himself hundreds of feet into the air.

He positioned himself directly over Laura, his massive body casting a shadow over the feral brawler.

“Ten Thousand Ton…

VISE!” Machvise roared, increasing his body density to an impossible ten million kilograms as he plummeted toward the earth like a meteor.

“Laura, move!” Robin warned.

“No way,” Laura grinned, her eyes flashing with a predatory, golden light.

Laura bent her knees, digging her boots deep into the cracking cobblestones.

She raised both her hands, her adamantium claws fully extended, staring dead at the descending mountain of flesh using gravity.

Machvise slammed into her.

The impact was devastating.

The shockwave shattered every window in a three-block radius.

The ground beneath Laura instantly vaporized, forming a massive crater.

But when the dust cleared, Machvise wasn’t standing over a crushed corpse.

He was suspended in mid-air.

Laura had caught him.

Her muscles were straining, her teeth gritted in a feral snarl, and her boots were buried knee-deep in the bedrock, but her adamantium skeleton, completely unbreakable and entirely unyielding, effortlessly absorbed the ten thousand tons of pressure.

She grabbed Machvise by his thick suspenders, holding his massive bulk completely still.

“Gotcha, fat man,” Laura growled.

“Impossible!” Machvise shrieked, his eyes practically bugging out of his skull.

“My weight…!”

“Robin!” Laura yelled.

Standing safely at the edge of the crater, Robin smiled her serene, terrifying smile.

She crossed her arms.

“Mil Fleur: Gigantesco Mano – Clutch.”

Two colossal, massive arms sprouted directly from the bedrock behind Machvise.

The giant hands grabbed the suspended, super-heavy executive by the shoulders and the waist.

With a sickening, resonant SNAP, Robin violently bent his spine completely backward.

Machvise’s eyes rolled up, and he went instantly limp, his ten thousand tons of weight reverting to normal as he lost consciousness.

Laura casually tossed him aside into the rubble.

“Excellent job, Laura,” Robin praised, brushing a speck of dust from her gown.

“Anytime,” Laura smirked, popping her neck.

A few streets away, in the ruins of a massive commercial toy shop, Gwen and Perona were trying to hold off two of Doflamingo’s most erratic fighters: the vicious half-fishman Dellinger and the ancient martial arts master Lao G.

“I’ll kick your heads off!” Dellinger laughed maniacally, utilizing his terrifying leg strength to bounce off the walls like a pinball, his high-heels cracking the stone.

“There’s the ‘G’!” Lao G yelled, contorting his incredibly old, frail-looking body into a bizarre martial arts stance.

“I’ll handle the old man!” Perona declared confidently, twirling her parasol.

She pointed it directly at the charging martial artist.

“Negative Hollow!”

A translucent, wailing white ghost shot across the toy shop and passed perfectly through Lao G’s chest.

Perona smirked, waiting for the executive to collapse into a sobbing mess of absolute despair.

Lao G slowed to a halt.

He dropped to his knees.

He looked down at his trembling hands.

“My back hurts so much…” Lao G groaned, his voice weak.

“My pension is terrible…

I forgot what I had for breakfast…

my joints ache…

I am so old and close to death…

G!”

Perona’s jaw dropped.

Lao G just slowly stood back up, rubbing his lower back.

“He’s immune?!” Perona shrieked in absolute horror.

“The ghost didn’t do anything!

His baseline existence is already like pure depression!

He’s too old to feel worse!”

“Kyaaa hahaha!

You’re wide open!” Dellinger shrieked, launching himself off a ceiling beam and diving straight for Gwen, his sharp fishman teeth bared for a lethal bite.

“Ah!

Get away!” Gwen panicked.

Her symbiote violently flared out of pure reflex.

She grabbed the nearest object, a massive, incredibly heavy iron display shelf filled with thousands of glass marbles and wooden blocks, and blindly hurled it at the descending fishman.

Dellinger easily kicked the shelf in half mid-air, laughing at the weak attempt.

But as he landed on the floor to rebound, his high-heels slammed directly onto the massive pile of loose glass marbles Gwen had just scattered across the tiles.

Dellinger’s legs violently flew out from under him.

“WHA…..?!”

He slipped, launching forward like a torpedo completely out of control.

At that exact second, Lao G was taking a deep breath, flexing his muscles to initiate his ultimate, explosive martial arts technique.

“Lao G’s Ultimate Form…!”

Dellinger, flying through the air horizontally, slammed head-first directly into Lao G’s stomach just as the old man released his built-up internal energy.

BOOOOOOM!

The collision and the misfired martial arts energy created a massive, concussive explosion that blew the roof off the shop.

When the smoke cleared, both Dellinger and Lao G were lying in a tangled, unconscious heap on the floor, having completely knocked each other out in a spectacularly absurd accident.

Gwen and Perona stood in silence, blinking at the unconscious executives.

Perona slowly closed her parasol.

Gwen’s symbiote slinked back onto her shoulders.

“We…” Gwen started, clearing her throat.

“We totally planned that.”

“Obviously,” Perona nodded seriously, though she was still sweating.

“Flawless execution.”

The central evacuation route was packed with terrified citizens trying to reach the safety of the underground port.

Brook, the Soul King, stood at the intersection, his cane pointing the way.

“Keep moving, everyone!

Do not panic!

The safe zone is just ahead!

Yohoho!”

Suddenly, a squad of heavily armed, cutthroat New World bounty hunters blocked the street.

They had ignored the chaos and tracked down the highest bounties they could find.

“There’s the skeleton!” the lead bounty hunter grinned, cocking a massive flintlock rifle.

“He’s part of the Warlord’s crew!

That skull must be worth more than fifty million Berries!”

Brook sighed gently.

He reached for the hilt of his cane-sword, preparing to draw Soul Solid and freeze them in their tracks.

Before his bony fingers even touched the hilt, a terrifying, enraged scream pierced the air.

“DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH MY GENTLEMAN!”

Baby 5 launched herself from the roof of a nearby building.

Mid-air, her entire upper body underwent a horrifying, mechanical transformation.

Her arms morphed into spinning Gatling guns, her shoulders deployed twin heavy rocket launchers, and her torso became a literal, heavily armored missile silo.

She landed in front of Brook like an apocalyptic guardian angel.

“Target lock!” Baby 5 shrieked, her eyes wide with absolute, manic devotion.

“Nobody threatens the man who values me!”

She unleashed absolute hellfire.

The street erupted into a blinding, deafening barrage of missiles, high-caliber lead, and explosive artillery.

The bounty hunters didn’t even have time to scream before they were completely engulfed in the overwhelming firepower, blown backward down the street in a cloud of smoke and fire.

Behind her, Brook just stood there.

He calmly reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a delicate porcelain teacup and saucer.

He poured himself a cup of hot tea from a small thermos he kept in his ribcage.

A single, stray bullet ricocheted off a wall, flying directly toward Brook’s skull.

Without looking, Brook casually flicked the tip of his cane.

A burst of spectral frost instantly froze the bullet solid mid-air, causing it to drop harmlessly into his teacup with a small plink.

Brook took a polite sip of his tea.

“My, my, Miss Baby 5,” Brook praised warmly over the sound of the explosions.

“Your dedication is truly breathtaking.

I feel incredibly safe in your presence.”

Baby 5 ceased her barrage.

Her weapons shifted back into human arms.

She turned to look at Brook, her face flushing completely red, steam practically blowing out of her ears.

“He feels safe with me!” Baby 5 swooned, clasping her cheeks as she completely melted into a puddle of joyous tears.

“I am like his shield!

I am so useful!”

Brook chuckled, tipping his hat.

The Verdant Gauntlet had run its course.

The executives were broken, the streets were secure, and as Brook looked up toward the Royal Palace, he felt the heavy, suffocating Haki of the Birdcage strings finally begin to fade.

The Warlord clash was over.

The dawn had arrived.

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For more chapters

Curtis Branscum, Vince, Eric