Chapter 97: Warlord to Warlord and the Unseen Hand

The sky above the royal palace screamed as I plummeted toward the earth.

My massive, jade war hammer, coated entirely in the black-and-gold lightning of Conqueror’s Haki, dragged a slipstream of kinetic fire behind it.

Below me, Donquixote Doflamingo stood amidst his sea of Awakened strings, his face twisted into a mask of pure, desperate fury.

He didn’t try to run.

His twisted pride as a Celestial Dragon wouldn’t allow him to yield to a man he viewed as a lesser breed.

“Sixteen Holy Assassins’ Bullets!” Doflamingo roared, pulling his arms back, the veins in his neck bulging as he pushed his Devil Fruit to its absolute limit.

The ocean of white strings around him rapidly condensed, weaving together into sixteen massive, incredibly dense tendrils tipped with points sharper than any supreme grade sword.

He coated all sixteen of them in heavy, pitch-black Armament Haki, the air around him crackling with dark red electricity.

“GOD THREAD!” He threw his hands upward, launching the sixteen apocalyptic lances directly at my descending form.

“I don’t believe in gods,” I said, my voice cutting through the roaring wind.

I didn’t try to dodge.

I didn’t try to block.

I funneled the absolute maximum output of my internal Fa-Jin, boosted exponentially by the Nega-Rings, directly into the heavy head of the jade hammer.

The two ultimate attacks collided in mid-air.

The resulting shockwave was catastrophic.

The sheer concussive force completely vaporized the remaining palace roof, blowing away the marble pillars, the heavy golden doors, and violently uprooting the entire sunflower field.

For a fraction of a second, the heavy, Haki-coated God Threads held against the kinetic mass of my hammer.

Then, my Conqueror’s Haki flared, asserting absolute, overwhelming dominance.

CRACK.

The tips of the sixteen threads began to splinter.

With a deafening roar of kinetic discharge, the jade hammer smashed completely through Doflamingo’s ultimate attack.

The indestructible strings violently shattered, breaking into millions of harmless, falling white threads that rained over the ruined terrace like snow.

I drove the hammer directly into his chest.

The impact sounded like a cannon going off inside a sealed steel vault.

Doflamingo’s red sunglasses instantly shattered, the tinted glass flying off his face in tiny, glittering pieces.

He was driven violently into the bedrock, the sheer, unimaginable force of the blow cratering the entire summit of the King’s Plateau.

The dust plumed high into the sky, blotting out the stars.

The deafening roar of the battle faded into a ringing, heavy silence.

I landed softly on the jagged edge of the newly formed crater, The Jade Wings dissolving smoothly back and the glow dimmed of my golden Kree band.

I exhaled a slow, measured breath, letting the chaotic green aura of my Fa-Jin fade away, my muscles aching with the sudden drop in adrenaline.

At the bottom of the crater, Doflamingo lay broken.

His signature pink feather coat was shredded and stained with his own blood.

He was coughing violently, his chest heaving irregularly.

He was completely, utterly defeated.

He tried to push himself up, his trembling fingers digging into the shattered stone, but his muscles violently gave out.

He collapsed back into the dirt, staring up at the night sky.

“Kill me,” Doflamingo rasped, his voice a wet, pathetic gurgle.

He glared up at me with eyes full of absolute, naked venom.

“Do it, Warlord.

Take my head and claim the glory.

Put it on a pike.

Show the world you have defeated the Heavenly Yaksha!”

I walked slowly down into the crater, the gravel crunching beneath my boots, stopping just inches from his broken body.

“Glory?” I scoffed quietly, looking down at him with cold indifference.

“There’s no glory in putting down a mad dog, Joker.

You didn’t lose today because I hit you harder.

You lost because you let your ego blind you to the board world.

You thought you were the one holding the strings.”

I looked up at the sky.

The razor-sharp strings of the Birdcage, no longer sustained by Doflamingo’s focus and massive stamina reserves, were rapidly fraying.

They snapped one by one with sharp thwips, dissolving into white smoke and drifting away on the wind.

The cage was gone.

The moonlight shone fully on Dressrosa for the first time in a decade, unimpeded by the Joker’s twisted magic.

“Listen to me very closely, Doflamingo,” I said, my voice dropping to a cold, pragmatic whisper that carried only to him.

“I could hand you over to Marco the Phoenix right now.

I could drop you in front of Katakuri and let Big Mom’s crew tear you to pieces for insulting them with that fake auction.

Or, I could wrap you in Seastone and hand you to Admiral Aokiji.”

Doflamingo’s bloodshot eyes twitched.

He knew I was entirely right.

He was surrounded by monsters who wanted him dead, and he had no army left to protect him.

“But I’m not going to do that,” I told him, squatting down so I was eye-level with the fallen king.

“I’m going to offer you a deal.

A favor, Warlord to Warlord.”

Doflamingo stared at me, pure, unadulterated confusion cutting through his agonizing physical pain.

“Why…?”

“Because if you’re dead, Kaido comes looking for whoever broke his SMILE supply, and starts harassing everyone who was present in the auction.” I answered smoothly, stating the reality.

“If you’re alive, you’re the one who has to answer to him for failing.

So, here is the deal, I am going to turn my back.

You have exactly ten minutes to scrape together whatever surviving executives you can find and get off this island before the Emperors realize the cage is down.”

Doflamingo ground his bloody teeth together.

It was the ultimate, soul-crushing humiliation.

I wasn’t sparing him out of mercy, I was treating him like a convenient decoy.

I was letting him live so he could take the fall for the chaos I had meticulously orchestrated.

With a ragged, agonizing groan, he forced himself onto his knees, clutching his shattered chest.

“I’ll find out who burned my kingdom, Victor,” he hissed, blood dripping from his chin, his eyes wide and manic.

“And when I do…

I will string their heart up from the mast of your ship along with yours.”

“Good luck with that,” I smirked, entirely unthreatened.

I turned my back on the fallen king and walked out of the crater.

Behind me, I heard the faint, desperate sound of Doflamingo using his remaining, fragile strings to swing away from the ruined palace, fleeing his own kingdom like a rat escaping a sinking ship.

Down in the city below, the absolute terror of the Birdcage vanished.

The random pirates and underworld brokers who had been violently fighting the citizens looked up, realizing the towering strings were gone.

They realized the Warlord who had fought Kaido to a standstill had just casually dethroned the Joker.

Absolute panic set in.

The pirate crews broke ranks, sprinting for the harbor, scrambling onto whatever ships were still seaworthy, and fleeing into the New World in sheer terror of the Verdant Abyss.

The streets erupted into deafening, tearful cheers.

The nightmare was over.

And as I looked down at the celebrating kingdom, the greatest secret of our master plan remained perfectly hidden.

[Flashback: Month Two]

The world believed we had gone into hiding to wait for the auction.

They were wrong.

While Doflamingo was completely distracted by the Emperor fleets bearing down on his borders, the Titan’s Glory remained perfectly cloaked off the coast of Dressrosa.

We didn’t want to simply break the Simle factory.

We came to build an army.

Our first obstacle was the all-seeing eye of the Donquixote Family Viola.

The princess-turned-assassin possessed the Senriugan, allowing her to see everything happening across the entire kingdom.

On the second night, Viola stood on her private balcony, her eyes wide with terror as she peered through the island’s structures.

She saw our cloaked ship.

She saw Gwen and Laura arming the Tontattas in the Green Bit.

She turned to run to Doflamingo, but froze.

I was already sitting casually on her balcony railing.

“Princess Viola,” I said softly.

She gasped, taking a terrified step back.

“You can see everything.

So you know we aren’t here to burn your country.

We’re here to save it.”

“You…

you’re pirates,” Viola whispered, her hands trembling.

“Why would you help us?”

“Because your family got a raw deal, and I hate bullies,” I replied, standing up.

“Tell Joker the coast is clear.

Keep our secret, and I promise you, we will give you your father and your kingdom back.”

Tears welled up in Viola’s eyes.

The burden she had carried for a decade, serving the man who ruined her family just to keep her father alive, finally broke.

She nodded slowly, wiping her eyes.

“I’ll blind him.

Take my country back, Warlord.”

With Viola feeding Doflamingo false reports, we moved freely.

But the physical surveillance, the visual Den Den Mushi network in the palace, was still a threat.

That was where my right-hand man stepped in.

While the rest of us moved in the shadows, Gammamon became the ultimate infiltrator.

The little triceratops wasn’t just a powerhouse, he was a being composed of pure digital data.

Slipping entirely unseen through the palace’s ventilation shafts, Gammamon physically tapped into the central electrical system of Doflamingo’s surveillance snails.

Using his data-manipulation abilities, Gammamon hijacked the visual feeds, forcing the snails to broadcast perfectly looped images of empty corridors and quiet factory floors to the security rooms.

Furthermore, Gammamon mapped the entire subterranean labyrinth of the SMILE factory and the Executive Tower, locating Sugar’s exact bedroom and daily routine.

He mapped an invisible path that Perona and Law would later use to execute the sabotage.

Without Gammamon completely crippling their digital security, the heist would have failed before it started.

Down in the gladiator pit, Law and I were performing miracles.

The Donquixote Family threw the losers of the tournaments into a dark underground cell to rot.

Standing in the corner, keeping a silent, tragic vigil over the broken men, was the one-legged Toy Soldier.

Kyros.

Law used his Room to perform complex surgeries on shattered bones.

I followed right behind him, placing my hands on the dying men and channeling my Fa-Jin inward, flooding their bodies with extreme regeneration to instantly cure their fatigue.

Kneeling beside one of the cots was a teenage girl with pink braided hair, wearing battered gladiator armor.

Rebecca.

She was crying silently, holding the hand of a dying warrior.

When I finished healing the man, he sat up, gasping, completely restored.

Rebecca gasped, stumbling backward into the Toy Soldier, who gently caught her with his tin arms.

“You…

you healed them,” Rebecca whispered, looking up at me with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Are you really going to save us?

Are you going to save the Soldier-san too?”

“We’re going to save all of them, Rebecca,” I promised gently.

I looked at the hidden King Riku and the Toy Soldier.

“When the auction happening, Sugar will fall.

The memories will return.

Doflamingo will panic.

But it has to be your people who stand up.

You have to take your home back.”

King Riku stepped forward, removing his skull mask.

He looked at his crying granddaughter, the fully healed gladiators, and the one-legged toy who he knew, deep down, was someone important.

“If you break that curse,” King Riku vowed, tears streaming down his face as he grabbed my hand in an iron grip.

“Dressrosa will fight.

We will take our home back, or we will die trying.”

[End Flashback]

I walked down the grand, shattered stairs of the ruined palace, the warm morning sun hitting my face.

Waiting for me in the courtyard was my crew.

Law was leaning casually against a marble pillar.

Robin offered a warm, proud smile.

Gammamon bounded over to me, giving a happy chirp as I affectionately ruffled his small white horns, the unsung hero of the entire operation.

Baby 5 was standing rigidly next to Brook, dutifully holding his violin case.

The heavy iron gates of the courtyard suddenly pushed open.

A massive, sprawling crowd of citizens, gladiators, and Tontattas marched into the palace grounds.

The air was thick with the scent of smoke and victory.

Leading them was the towering, muscular form of Kyros, no longer a tin toy soldier, but the legendary, undefeated gladiator of Dressrosa.

Running alongside him, completely ignoring the massive crowds and the pirate crews, was Rebecca.

The teenage gladiator was sobbing uncontrollably, the memories of her father completely restored.

She threw her arms around Kyros’s massive waist, burying her face in his chest.

Kyros dropped his sword, falling to his knees and wrapping his arms around his daughter, weeping openly as he finally, after ten long years, felt the warmth of his child.

Beside them walked King Riku, carrying the profound, unshakable dignity of a true sovereign.

And right behind him was Princess Viola.

She looked at me, a profound, radiant smile breaking through her tears as she saw her family finally reunited.

She offered me a deep, silent bow of absolute respect, a silent thank-you for keeping my promise.

The entire massive crowd stopped in the center of the courtyard.

King Riku stepped forward.

He didn’t speak a word of formal greeting.

He simply fell to his knees on the hard cobblestones and bowed his head entirely to the floor.

Behind him, the gladiators and the thousands of citizens followed suit in an earth-shattering display of absolute gratitude.

“You brought the dawn back to our country,” King Riku’s voice echoed through the silent courtyard.

“You fought for our freedom in the shadows, and you gave us the strength to reclaim our dignity in light.

The Kingdom of Dressrosa owes the Verdant Abyss a debt we can never, ever repay.”

I looked at the kneeling king, the crying father and daughter, and the thousands of freed people.

I stepped forward, my boots clicking against the stone.

I reached down, grasping King Riku’s arm in a firm grip, and pulled the old man back up to his feet.

“Keep your head up, King Riku,” I told him gently, offering a small, genuine smile.

“You don’t owe us a damn thing.

You saved yourselves today.

We just helped you cut the strings.”

I turned back to my crew, throwing my heavy Warlord coat casually over my shoulder.

The Emperors were likely realizing they had been scammed right about now, and the Marines would be swarming this island by nightfall to clean up the mess.

Our job here was definitively done.

“Come on,” I smiled, looking at my family.

“Let’s get out of here.”

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