Chapter 96: Blood Iron and the Gladiator's Stand

Deep inside the heavily reinforced walls of the Executive Tower, Princess Mansherry of the Tontatta tribe was imprisoned in a gilded birdcage.

The tiny princess was sobbing uncontrollably.

Standing over her was the Donquixote Executive Jora, her grotesque face twisted into a cruel, desperate sneer.

“Stop wasting my time ime and shed some tears, you miserable rat!” Jora shrieked, shaking the cage violently.

The executive was battered from the collateral damage of the island’s chaos.

“Doffy needs your Heal-Heal fruit!

Cry!

Give me your restorative tears so I can revive the fallen executives!”

Mansherry squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to let the magical, healing tears fall.

“No!

I won’t help you hurt my people anymore!”

“Then I’ll just have to beat the tears out of you!” Jora roared, raising a hand to strike the cage.

Suddenly, the heavy wooden door to the executive suite violently exploded off its hinges.

Jora spun around, gasping.

Standing in the doorway, armed with the high-grade steel longswords and Kevlar vests provided by the Verdant Abyss, was Commander Leo and the Tontatta rescue squad.

“Unhand the Princess!” Leo shouted, his tiny face a mask of absolute, furious resolve.

“You little pests!” Jora sneered, raising her hands to use her Art-Art Fruit.

“Dying Art…!”

She never finished the incantation.

The Tontattas, already possessing superhuman strength and blinding speed, were now equipped with weaponry that perfectly matched their lethality.

Leo didn’t hesitate.

He moved so fast he disappeared from human sight.

“Tontatta Combat: Haute Couture!”

Leo reappeared directly behind Jora.

With a single, strike of his new steel blade, he struck the pressure point on the back of the executive’s neck with the force of a cannonball.

Jora’s eyes rolled back, and she collapsed to the floor in a massive, unconscious heap.

Leo dashed to the cage, easily slicing through the heavy iron bars with his sword.

“Leo!” Mansherry cried, leaping into his arms.

“We’re here, Princess,” Leo promised, holding her tightly as the other Tontattas cheered.

“The bad humanlands are finished.

Dressrosa is finally free.”

While the Tontattas reclaimed their princess in the tower, the hardest and most deeply personal fight of the rebellion was taking place in the sprawling sunflower fields of the King’s Plateau.

Kyros, the legendary, undefeated gladiator, was bleeding.

For ten years, he had been trapped in the tin body of the Toy Soldier.

For ten years, he had been forced to watch his wife, Scarlett, die in his arms without even being able to feel the warmth of her blood.

Now, standing before him in the field of sunflowers, was the man who pulled the trigger.

Diamante.

“Fufufu!

What’s wrong, Kyros?!” Diamante taunted, his flamboyant cape snapping in the wind.

“You look a little wobbly on that single leg!

Did you really think getting your human body back would change anything?

You couldn’t save Scarlett then, and you can’t save her brat now!”

Kyros roared, lunging forward with his massive broadsword.

But he had only been human again for a few hours, his balance was severely compromised without his second leg.

Diamante slammed his hand onto the ground.

“Ripple-Ripple!”

The earth beneath Kyros’s foot instantly lost its solidity, violently waving and rippling like a stormy ocean.

Kyros stumbled, his sword strike swinging wide.

Diamante laughed, pulling a massive, compressed party popper from his pocket.

He aimed it straight up into the sky.

“Death Enjambre!”

With a deafening bang, the popper fired.

Thousands of heavily spiked, solid iron balls shot into the clouds before raining back down over the sunflower field like an apocalyptic meteor shower.

Kyros couldn’t dodge.

The ground was shifting too violently beneath his single leg.

He raised his sword, preparing to take the lethal, bone-crushing rain head-on to protect the young girl standing behind him.

But the iron rain never hit him.

A blur of golden armor and pink braided hair stepped smoothly in front of him.

Rebecca, the pacifist gladiator of the Colosseum, didn’t run, didn’t cower.

She gripped her dull, unsharpened sword with both hands, her eyes completely closed.

“Rebecca!

No!” Kyros screamed, terrified for his daughter.

Rebecca breathed in.

Her Observation Haki, honed to absolute perfection through years of surviving the Colosseum without shedding a drop of blood, expanded across the entire field.

She saw the trajectory of every single falling iron ball.

She moved like a dancer.

Her dull blade flashed with blinding speed, striking the spikes with perfect, pinpoint precision.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

She deflected dozens of the massive iron balls, sending them violently crashing into the dirt away from her father.

She acted as an impenetrable shield.

“You little brat!” Diamante shrieked, furious that his ultimate attack was being neutralized by a teenage girl.

He didn’t care about the iron rain anymore.

He drew his rapier, turning the blade into a massive, rigid club of folded steel.

He launched himself across the rippling earth, aiming a lethal, decapitating strike directly at Rebecca.

“Die like your pathetic mother!” Diamante roared.

Rebecca opened her eyes.

She saw the strike coming.

She didn’t try to block the massive force instead, she expertly parried the side of his blade, redirecting his momentum just enough so the strike missed her neck by an inch.

The parry threw Diamante entirely off balance, leaving his chest completely, totally exposed.

Rebecca dropped to her knees, clearing the airspace.

“FATHER!” Rebecca screamed.

Kyros didn’t need to be told twice.

Channeling a decade of pure, unadulterated rage, agonizing grief, and an overwhelming, boundless love for his daughter, Kyros drove his single leg into the rippling earth.

The sheer, terrifying leg strength of the undefeated gladiator shattered the bedrock beneath him.

He launched himself into the air, flying directly over Rebecca’s head.

Diamante looked up, his eyes widening in terror as the massive shadow of the gladiator blocked out the sun.

“This strike carries the weight of ten years of tears!” Kyros roared, his muscles bulging as he brought his massive broadsword back.

“TRUENO BASTARDO!”

Kyros swung.

The broadsword cleaved through the air with the force of a thunderbolt.

Diamante desperately raised his rapier to block.

CRACK.

Kyros’s blade, it completely shattered Diamante’s sword into a dozen pieces.

The massive strike continued downward, completely bypassing the executive’s defenses and slamming directly into his chest.

Diamante’s eyes rolled back into his skull.

The sheer kinetic force of the blow drove him violently backward, crashing through the earth and burying him deep into the unyielding bedrock of the King’s Plateau.

The executive was completely, utterly crushed.

Kyros landed heavily on the dirt, dropping his sword.

He stood there, panting, staring down at the unconscious man who had taken his wife from him.

“Mother…” Rebecca sobbed, dropping her dull sword.

Kyros turned.

He dropped to his knees in the crushed sunflowers and wrapped his massive, muscular arms tightly around his daughter.

He buried his face in her shoulder, sobbing openly as he finally felt the warmth of his child.

“You’re safe, Rebecca,” Kyros wept, holding her like he would never let her go.

“I’ve got you.

I’ve finally got you.”

Standing at the edge of the field, watching the beautiful, tragic reunion, King Riku silently wiped tears from his own weathered face.

Suddenly, the deafening, chaotic sounds of the island-wide battle below them began to pause.

Kyros and Rebecca looked up.

High above the sunflower field, the terrifying, apocalyptic Birdcage that had threatened to slice their country to ribbons was vibrating.

With a series of sharp, echoing thwips, the razor-sharp strings began to fray.

They snapped one by one, dissolving entirely into harmless white smoke that drifted away on the ocean breeze.

The shadow of the cage vanished.

The bright, warm sun shone fully on the Kingdom of Dressrosa, washing over the ruins and the sunflower field.

———————————————————————————————————

For more chapters

Curtis Branscum, Vince, Eric