The sky is filled with smoke and ash, the coppery scent of blood assaults her nostrils, and the earth shakes beneath her as the damned birdcage contracts around the island.
Everything hurts. To move is to fire pain across flayed nerves, and the announcer man carrying her doesn't have the luxury of being careful as they run.
Lucy doesn't blame him—the ten minutes after using Gear Fourth are always agony, even when she isn't being dragged away from a psychopath by a gladiator and an announcer.
The absence of Haki is disconcerting. She can't keep her eyes open, can't even see three feet in front of her when she does. Rebecca is a blur of pink and green, and the disturbing blankness in her awareness frustrates her. She's blind as a newborn kitten, and it's infuriating.
It's her own damn fault though, for not finishing the fight. She could be happily passed out with Dressrosa and her crew safe if she'd just gotten that last punch in. Her endurance in Gear Fourth has improved, but it's not what it needs to be, and because of that, Zoro's got to keep a madman occupied while Lucy catches her breath and two good-hearted people try and keep her alive in the interim.
It's not that she doesn't appreciate it. It's just that there shouldn't be a need.
Between her own self-loathing, the mind-numbing pain of overextending her Haki, and her complete lack of awareness of the world around her, it's really no surprise she doesn't even register an impending attack until she hears Rebecca cry out in warning and the sharp ring of her blade as she deflects a too-powerful blow.
"Princess!"
"Gyats, RUN!"
"Straw Hat!" A big man bellows, "I'm here to take your Fruit!"
Lucy forces her eyes open, her gaze finding a blurry form before her that she can't recognize. The voice though…
"You…you work for Blackbeard," she mumbles. She feels a kernel of old rage spark inside her as she recalls the terrible man who got her brother imprisoned.
"So you do remember, Straw Hat," Burgess replies. He's laughing, oddly jovial considering the situation they're currently in, especially considering the threat he poses to her. It reminds her of Blackbeard, of his laughter in hell as he taunted her on the worst day of her life.
"Run, Gyats, I'll—" Rebecca is between them, and as Burgess rains a casual fist down on her head, Rebecca throws up a lightning-fast block, taking the blow bracing on one knee. The blade is aloft above her head, the hilt in one hand and the flat against her other, steel digging into soft leather. Even blurred and indistinct as Lucy's vision is, she can see how the girl's form trembles in the struggle.
Rebecca is strong, Lucy knows, and she's skilled, but she's spent years determined not to attack and hurt, and Burgess has never labored under such restrictions. Lucy knows that Rebecca's no match for him, and Gyats must realize the same, since he hesitates to run.
Rebecca is not impressed though, and she turns over her shoulder to shout at the announcer. "FOR THE SAKE OF DRESSROSA, GYATS, PROTECT HER!"
The announcer takes one step back, then two, and then hesitates. "I can't leave you, Princess, I—"
Burgess breaks through Rebecca's block—easily, too easy—and Lucy sees a green blur fly across the street, hears the distinct thud of a body impacting rock.
"R—Rebecca," Lucy mumbles, uncertain if she should encourage Gyats to listen to the gladiator, or stay to help instead. Rebecca's outclassed, Lucy knows this, and she has the horrible sensation that she's watching someone lay down on a bomb, but she's not in any shape to stop it.
The gladiator stands. Lucy watches the green blur tilt and stumble, and doesn't know if it's her dizziness or Rebecca's that makes her form sway.
"I s'pose I don't mind killing you first!" Burgess cackles, and Lucy sees the massive blur of him lunge for the gladiator.
"GO!"
"Princess!"
"Fire Fist!"
A spray of warmth washes over Lucy's skin, and light blinds her fragile eyes.
But Lucy knows who this is. Lucy knows it in her bones.
"S—Sabo," she calls, a grin on her face despite her exhaustion.
A blur of purple and orange is between Rebecca and Burgess, and she sees the pale smear of his face turn to her over his shoulder.
"You're still overdoing it, aren't you, Lu-chan?"
You always, always, always overdo it!
The words are so fond, so warm and familiar, that Lucy nearly tears up.
She just smiles in Sabo's general direction and gives a short, feeble nod, accompanied by a soft affirmative.
Sabo gives a short laugh, and turns his attention to Burgess. "Oi. You. I won't let you lay a hand on Straw Hat Lucy." There's a note of pride in his voice when he calls her epithet.
Burgess hesitates at this, clearly recognizing her brother—though why that might be, Lucy has no idea. "And what does Sabo the Revolutionary care for a lowly pirate like her?"
Revolutionary? Hey, wait, doesn't her dad lead—
"It's got nothing to do with any of that," Sabo declares, and she sees a flaming pipe swing from his back. "I'm here as her older brother." There's pride and love, and so much protective wrath in his voice that it nearly takes her breath away. "If she ever needs me, I swear, I'll be at her side no matter what."
This last is said to her, and Lucy feels her throat tighten against the sheer joy of having him alive again. "Sabo…"
"Rebecca," he calls. The gladiator between Lucy and her brother falls into a defensive stance at Sabo's side, her sword at the ready, like she's still preparing to fight. "Thank you for protecting my sister until I got here. I wouldn't have made it in time otherwise."
"I can help…" Rebecca dismisses uncertainly.
"Just keep protecting her," Sabo orders cheerfully. Lucy can picture the smile on his face, handsome and charming, full of good-will. "I'll keep this one here."
Rebecca hesitates a moment, and then she nods, keeping up with Gyats as he begins to run again.
"You will, will you?" Burgess says, incongruously good-natured as usual.
"Of course," Sabo responds cheerfully, but there's an edge of steel in his voice that speaks of danger, a thing so present and forceful that Lucy can hear it even from Gyats' retreating arms. "That's what big brothers are for."
Dodge. Parry. Roll. Fall back—rush forward to recover ground. Dodge. Dodge. Duck under opening. Parry. Slash. Roll.
Fighting Doflamingo is an exercise in frustration.
Zoro knows—knows—that the man is at his wits end, that his opponent is practically nonfunctional at this point. It's the only thing that even kind of explains his strategy. He's not directly challenging Zoro, never even steps toward to the line, and instead sends bloodstained swathes of string at his form, turns the earth itself into a tool for his own use to keep him at bay.
Zoro supposes he should take it as a compliment, that Doflamingo's too scared to get close to him. But the guy won't shut the fuck up, and keeps forcing Zoro to dodge, move, or twist in uncomfortable, awkward ways in order to avoid Doflamingo's attacks. And Zoro's bound by his own promises, too—he has to refrain from taking him out. He promised Lucy ten minutes.
It makes for an irritation-inducing fight.
"What frightening skill," Doflamingo purrs, and there's a thread of interest in his voice that makes the hairs on Zoro's neck stand up in disgust. "You said you learned from the best earlier…you didn't mean Hawk Eyes, did you?"
Zoro doesn't reply, is too busy performing an awkward lunge as he vaults between two spires of string. He could cut them, sure. But the footing is untrustworthy with this man's power engaged, and if Zoro keeps himself moving, remains unpredictable, it'll be harder to catch him. Turning the earth and buildings to string seems tiring for Zoro's opponent. He only does it when he's certain Zoro is about to be somewhere specific for more than three seconds.
Doflamingo seems to take his lack of an answer as the confirmation it is, and laughs. "Don't tell me that man trained an unruly beast like you?" The smile on Doflamingo's face curls further, disturbingly wide. "He must not have seen in you what I do."
A spike of white string rushes Zoro head on. He crouches slightly, and uses a hitoryuu attack to clear the path to his opponent. Doflamingo backs up a few steps, wary. He has a radius he's maintaining, too afraid of Zoro to try a close-range battle. And he doesn't like to attack when he's moving. It's a flaw, but one he can unfortunately get away with because Zoro isn't aiming to kill him at the moment.
But if she's late even a second, I'm running him through, Zoro promises himself darkly as Doflamingo runs his mouth yet again.
"Yes, you're like Law, like me. I can see it in your eyes." Doflamingo curls his fist, and two pale walls of razor blades shoot up around Zoro. He backpedals just in time to avoid being crushed between them. "There's darkness inside you. A hunger for destruction."
Zoro doesn't trip over the stone behind him, catches himself in time, but Doflamingo chuckles like he saw the almost-fall anyway. Zoro leans on the clear resonance of Wado, balanced under his will, and takes refuge in the high ring of clarity.
"I wonder if Hawk Eye knew? Or your captain? She seems the bleeding-heart type. Merciful. Kind." Doflamingo's teeth draw blood from his own lip. "Pathetic, is what she is."
"You talk too much," Zoro complains. He jumps, and performs a Tatsu Maki facing the ground to shred the string writhing where he just stood. As long as it's not directly connected to Doflamingo, Zoro's noticed, the guy can't control it. Cutting the string unfortunately only works as a temporary measure against him, because the amount of string he can make seems…infinite. And his range is at least the size of the birdcage, Zoro's pretty sure. He hasn't found a limit yet.
"Shall we see just how different you are from your captain? Shall we test it?" Doflamingo asks. Zoro crouches warily, eyes narrowed over his blades. Dofamingo's smile curls deeper, crueler. His fingers twitch. "Parasite string!"
Zoro hears a choked gasp on his left. He glances over, not taking his eyes off of Doflamingo.
It's a woman. Maybe about Zoro's age, petite, and weeping so hard that Zoro isn't sure she's entirely conscious. But she keeps stepping forward, even as her feet stumble over rubble. A rock the size of a melon is clenched in her palm.
Doflamingo laughs, and Zoro understands.
So this is the ability that let Doflamingo gain control of the country in the first place.
How cowardly.
Idiot girl. She must have gotten too close to the fight. Close enough that Doflamingo could use her.
"How witless," Doflamingo croons, and tosses a vindictive glance to Zoro as his fingers twitch and the unfortunate woman struggles against the invisible hold propelling him. "If you're anything like your captain, your mercy will overrule your logic."
Doflamingo's fingers twitch, and the girl charges Zoro, swinging the rock up and over her head. She's sobbing, too afraid to even call for help.
It pisses Zoro off.
"Do I look very merciful to you?" Zoro growls, and feels Asura burgeoning underneath his skin, twisting and feeding on the darkness in his blood. Doflamingo's smile falters, and Zoro backflips over one of the writhing strings, and slams Shusui's heavy hilt into the civilian's head in one smooth move.
The girl drops, passed out cold and bleeding from the temple. Doflamingo's fingers twitch, but as per usual, unconsciousness seems to frustrate Devil Fruit abilities, a feature for which Zoro is grateful. He does not relish the idea of dancing around a wailing, helpless civilian woman for the rest of this fight. He dislikes the idea of watching her fight against her will.
"Well, well," Doflamingo hums, and Zoro is vaguely disturbed to see something like interest flicker on his face again. "That was a risk for you, wasn't it? You could have killed her, doing that." Something like a disbelieving chuckle wavers from the cruel man. "You really don't have much mercy, do you?"
There are several things he could say to that. One being, if you think I can't control my strength, you've got no measure of me yet. Or perhaps, Maybe you're just not as strong as you believe yourself to be. Or, more favorably, nothing at all.
But here's the thing—Zoro wants Doflamingo to fear him. Zoro wants Doflamingo so terrorized by the very thought of his blades that he has to fight the urge to run. He wants the man to quiver and shake in his stupid curly shoes so that when Lucy comes back to deliver the final blow, it will be all he can do to remain standing.
So he leans into a lunge, holds Shusui and Kitetsu parallel to each other and the earth at chest height, and lets Asura flicker in and out of sight. When he speaks his voice low and firm and unwavering. "You are not the only one called 'Demon.'"
That horrible look of interest reappears. "I suppose not." The gash of his mouth curls into a cruel grin. "Does your captain know of your nature? Of the cruelty in your heart? I doubt she would approve."
Zoro ignores him, dashing forward a few steps to force the man back—he keeps a healthy distance, still wary of Zoro's blades.
That's good. He should be afraid of Zoro, after drawing Lucy's blood.
"So merciful, your captain, even to her enemies. You should have heard her earlier. She begged for Bellamy's life—a man who attacked her once! Stayed her hand even as he begged to die! Even when he attacked her again when freed!"
The name distracts Zoro for a split second, and he nearly loses his left leg because of it. He rolls back to his starting position behind the line he drew, catching his breath.
Bellamy, huh? It's been…a while since he's even thought of the guy. He remembers him though. Remembers what he said to Lucy. What he threatened to do to her. The near-agonizing frustration at his captain's orders, his own self-loathing at understanding them.
Zoro remembers nearly bisecting the guy too. He hasn't really thought of Bellamy since.
"You must have been a real asshole to him, if he gained Lucy's pity." Zoro retorts. He trusts Lucy's judgment. She's got a knack for these things.
Doflamingo pulls back his strings, and they curl in the air above him with unsettling patience.
"Men like us wouldn't have shown such weakness. Such frailty and indecision."
Zoro raises an eyebrow as Kitetsu burns in his palm, outraged on Lucy's behalf. "You're shit at reading people, man."
"You wouldn't have shown such mercy," Doflamingo insists, gesturing to the still form of the woman he dropped just a few moments prior. "You didn't."
Zoro narrows his eyes, and shifts to the balls of his feet, his Haki wrapped around his blades in dark, twisting light. "I know."
Doflamingo launches another attack at him, and Zoro cuts the strings at the base of the spike, impatient, and rushes forward, pressing his opponent back once more.
"Maybe she does know," Doflamingo rambles, clearly thinking aloud like he's still hoping to throw Zoro off his game. He dodges deftly as Zoro lays into him with an attack pattern designed to push him back and off his toes, so he can't slip around Zoro through his blind spots. "Maybe she knows and sends you to do her dirty work, so she can feel better about herself."
Zoro snorts involuntarily as he leaps and spins three times in quick succession over a spear of razor-edged blades meant to pierce his heart. The thought of Lucy sending someone else to do her dirty work is absurd, and not only because Lucy doesn't do dirty work, so much as 'overturn rotting societies and overlords who have no business at the top.'
Given that, Zoro can see how Doflamingo might not be too fond of her.
Still, even this guy should know by now that Lucy doesn't deputize the hard jobs to others. She shoulders them herself—sometimes when she shouldn't, much to Zoro's consternation.
Something must show on his face, in his frame, because then Doflamingo giggles, high and demented, and his fingers twitch gleefully as his expression becomes downright jubilant, like he's genuinely taken by hilarity.
"Oh," he breathes through his laughter, "So that's it, is it? The captain and her first mate?" Doflamingo chuckles darkly, and Zoro is forced to dance backward, scrambling as strings rise around him from all sides, ready to collapse inward and tear Zoro to shreds. "And here I thought Law was fucking her. Or wanted to. I suppose that's still a possibility though."
Irritation bleeds into Zoro's stance—it's barely present, just in the shift of his weight and the tilt of his blade—but Doflamingo reads it there anyway.
"Oh? Does the idea of Law fucking your captain upset you? Does it make you burn with jealousy?" Doflamingo clicks his tongue. "You should have heard her on that rooftop. She was so worried about him. It was touching."
Zoro draws on Kitetsu's outrage, on Wado's purpose, and Shusui's steady, infinite void.
"Three minutes," Zoro says, forcing his breathing to steady. Strings clap together before him, and Zoro cuts the thick band of them apart in two easy slashes. "Lucy has three minutes to get here before I kill you myself."
Doflamingo continues, relentless. "It must be stifling, working under one's partner. Does she order you around, tell you where to be and when?" Zoro rushes him, gets closer than he has before, and multi-colored string bursts out from the man's fingers in a horizontal slash. "I wonder if you're a man after all."
Zoro gives him a bland look, but otherwise doesn't answer. Kitetsu moans high and furious at the insult, but Zoro isn't ruled by his heart. He hasn't been for a long time.
"Is that why you're simply holding the line? Because she told you not to fight? What are you, slave to her will? A dog on a chain?"
Zoro, despite most people's dissenting opinion, is not stupid. He knows Doflamingo's just trying to goad him into action, trying to make Zoro give him ground. And it's not like Zoro has ever given a particular damn about what anyone else thinks. About anything.
Sure, he still wants to cut him in two, but he's wanted to do that since he saw the blood all over Lucy's body. It's not a new emotion. He's too well-versed in controlling his bloodlust for that.
"Wait, let me guess—it's love, isn't it? You're in love with her, will follow her to the ends of the earth and back, yada yada yada?"
Too close, Doflamingo's suddenly too close, and Zoro dances back, trying to escape the writhing mass of string under his feet as Doflamingo convulses. The earth around him is unreliable under the man's influence, and Haki warns Zoro to move, move, move, move, movemovemove—
"Love is weakness! Hasn't anyone ever told you? You humans, always trying to make your lives worthwhile, trying to find meaning!" The three-story building on Zoro's left dissolves into string, the mass of it arcs up to the sky, blocking out the sun and the apex of the birdcage. Zoro's eye widens involuntarily, and he instinctively draws on that well inside him, pulls darkness and conviction to the fore, and feels agony and power rush through him as his body writhes into unnatural shape.
"This world is hell," Doflamingo growls, "And you, like all pathetic slaves, deserve to burn."
The sharp, descending spear is tipped in Haki, Zoro realizes, not blood.
Of the nine mountains and the eight seas, Zoro recites, there is nothing I can't cut!
Zoro is a pillar immolated in motion, a moving crucible of agony and fire, but at his core there is the blank white space that breathes, and Zoro presses forward into the clash.
"Nine sword style: Demon Asura, three-thousand worlds!"
Zoro is darkness and wrath incarnate. Kitetsu sings in almost-harmony with his soul, the closest the blade ever gets to true cooperation, the closest Zoro gets to letting it control him.
String meets all nine of Zoro's blades, Haki clashing against Haki as Zoro catches the strike above his head. The metallic film sparks into Zoro's eyes, glints as Doflamingo roars to the heavens in the background. Doflamingo's Haki seems to weld the mass together, reducing flexibility and the independent motion of the strings in favor of a solid, relentless force.
Zoro narrows three eyes, and leans into pain, agony, fire as Asura consumes him. He does not lose himself because there is Wado to act as beacon and guide, and conviction holds him steady. Suffering is welcome on the path to bloodshed.
Like fragile skin, Doflamingo's Haki rips under one of Zoro's blades.
Doflamingo isn't laughing anymore.
Zoro teeth bare in the snarl of three blood-chilling grins.
It's a mistake, pitting something like willpower against Zoro. He has a promise to keep, and a few lives aside from his own riding on every bet.
Bloodlust that is not his own sears into his very bones, is tattooed into flesh and sinew alike. His does not back down, just moves faster even as Doflamingo roars in fury and outrage, even as the sky turns dark and the earth shakes and—
Oh.
Shit.
Zoro sees and does not in tandem, his Observation Haki is a wailing klaxon in his mind as three eyes burn holes in the pillar of black string the size of a city block, and it drives him to struggle harder, more desperately than ever. The warning is furious and brilliant and not at all helpful at the present time, because all nine of Zoro's swords are raised above his head, locked against the most present threat, and he cannot dodge, cannot run, cannot block all of the attacks in time as three more spires of Haki-tipped string make their way to his vulnerable torso.
Zoro knows it's coming, knows what will happen before it does, and tries to extend his Armament Haki to protect his body as he continues to fend off the blade-like string intent on blowing through his brain, but there is nothing he can do with the force of a building bearing down on him.
He protects his back, baring the whole of his torso to luck and chance because a scar on the back is a swordsman's dishonor—
Zoro feels the string impale him, feels the gouging of his flesh and warm blood spill from him and down his legs as his hip and shoulder and ribcage pierce under the onslaught, and a roar rips from three throats as he fights to keep pushing against the inexorable force bearing down on him.
There is agony within and agony without. There is chaos and there is order. Breath, in the center.
Zoro plants his feet. The muscles in his arms bulge, and the veins in his neck and face burn as his chest moans in strain, but Zoro leans into his strikes, hard, and the Haki breaks in nine places as Zoro leans up and into agony, accepts it unreservedly to claim both victory and pride.
Nine blades blur black lightning, and the pillar of endless string falls to earth, harmless and broken.
Three heads turn to Doflamingo as Zoro's chest heaves. Blood dribbles from his mouth, runs in vermilion rivulets down his frame.
Doflamingo's fingers twitch, his face terribly curious, and the three spikes impaling his body press deeper, score agonizing millimeters into his flesh.
Zoro raises one arm, and the rest follow, blades at the ready. Doflamingo smiles, confident when he should not be.
Zoro moves, his blades spinning in frenetic motion, and there is a moment where Zoro realizes that the spikes piercing him were, uncannily, holding part of his weight. As they slip to the ground, harmless after their severing, Zoro nearly follows.
But he doesn't. He doesn't even allow himself to sway despite the dizziness and pain and blood loss, despite the enduring agony of Asura.
Instead his teeth clench around Wado's blackened hilt, the electric sting of his Haki buzzing against three faces, and he stares at Doflamingo from the shadows of his own bandana.
He's panting, barely drawing breath, and pain is so deep that his mind has ceased to process it. He has retreated into the blank space of his core, the one that lets him breathe through the punctured lung.
"You might as well die, Demon of East Blue," Doflamingo calls. He is not far away. "You will die soon regardless. You will fail to even injure me, and your captain will die by my hand. The island of Dressrosa will become a sea of blood, an altar upon which the lives of its residents were sacrificed to me, their god and benevolent master." He cocks his head, as if expecting Zoro to agree. "You may as well die now."
Zoro curls three grins around three katana, and raises six more to the ready. He relishes distantly in the slack surprise in Doflamingo's face. He does not shake as he growls, low and determined, the phrase that has allowed him to accept and even relish in pain since Sensei counselled it to him in a quiet garden a lifetime away from this sea. "Suffering is welcome on the path to bloodshed."
There's a moment where neither of them speak or move, where Doflamingo doesn't react at all.
Then the man laughs, pressing a hand to his bare and bloodily bruised stomach. Blood spurts from a wound on his back, above his feathered collar, and still the towering man laughs, endlessly pleased.
"Oh, you are interesting, aren't you? This is why Hawk Eye agreed to train you, then? The quality he admired?"
Zoro spits blood out of his mouth. He would have stained Wado's hilt if it hadn't been for his Haki. Shusui screams the endless void in three fists. Zoro feels his wounds bleed more freely as his heartrate picks up in anticipation.
"I don't know why humans resist their own futility," Doflamingo continues, heedless of Zoro's lack of interest. "You are miserable creatures, a better likeness for cattle than me and the gods of this world." Doflamingo's smile returns, blood vessels bulging on his forehead. "You will soon learn."
Zoro crouches lower, readying himself. He tests his weight on his toes and finds himself mobile. Wado's voice arcs high and demanding, and the harmony of his blades reverberates through his core. "Guess what?"
Doflamingo cocks his head, an answering question.
Zoro grins, leans into bloodlust that is his and Kitetsu's and Asura's, and feels darkness weep into his presence, feels his aura implode with it like a collapsing star. "Lucy's late."
Doflamingo takes a single step back, in fear or maybe defense, and Zoro rushes forward.
Since his early days in swordsmanship, Zoro has always relied on speed and brute force. He prefers straightforward attacks to complicated combinations and especially to feints and deceptions.
He's lucky, as both Sensei and Mihawk repeatedly reminded him, that such tactics favor his strengths as a swordsman.
Zoro, of course, never believed it was luck. Some things are simply fate.
Sensei always rolled his eyes at that one, perhaps offered an exasperated-but-fond smile. Mihawk said luck and fate are the same thing.
These thoughts hover in the back of Zoro's mind, distant and ghost-like as he charges Doflamingo, eyes locked on his target. The earth before him ripples and Zoro jumps, flips once, and lands on a boulder the size of a small ship. His katana extend at his sides, and Asura burns in his blood, demanding violence.
Doflamingo stares at him, wary, standing on the only patch of stable ground in a sea of tangled string as six spires rise in flexible, asynchronous threat. He is mere yards away, and Zoro has the high ground from his perch.
"Come to kill me?" Doflamingo asks. The wariness of his stance bellies the amusement in his voice. Kitetsu wails in eager abandon. "Of humanity's vermin, you might have a better shot than others."
Three moves. That's all it's going to take.
The nine mountains and the eight seas…
"But humans know their weakness, deep down. That's why you all struggle and try to claw your way to power. Why you accept the ache of your necks being crushed beneath the heels of your superiors." Doflamingo raises both arms to the sky, the birdcage trembling with its contraction. "Even the best of you can only bear the standards of humanity, the way a rat can only bear the excellence of a rat, and nothing more."
…and when I gather and cube that chiliocosm…
"Yes, you vermin know your weakness. It is why Dressrosa bowed willingly to me, why they will again once they are bathed in their children's blood. Once they know the cost of disobeying God!"
…there's nothing I can't cut!
Around Doflamingo string rises in unholy vortex of razor-sharp, invisible blades, the six pillars tipped in Haki. There is a closing gap through which Zoro can still attack.
Zoro shifts slightly, and then Zoro moves, launching himself in a blur of speed and bloodlust and conviction most of all.
"Nine Sword Style, secret technique: Demon Asura, The Billionfold World Trichiliocosm!"
There is lightning around and before him, energy created from his very will, and he blurs through the open gap at speeds untold. Something impales his thigh and Zoro pays it no heed.
There is chaos without and a storm within, but purpose holds steady at his center, the blank space clear and resonant as water in a crystal glass. There is breath, the memory of Lucy's bloodied body, and the hundreds of razor-sharp strings curl above and around him, closing him in like a venus flytrap.
Nine blades coated with Haki spin and spark lighting, but Zoro's eyes are only for Doflamingo as he descends. The man's teeth are grit in surprise, and he crosses two Haki-plated arms between them to defend against his blow.
Lucy's bloodied face to fuel his bloodlust. Breath to calm his center.
Zoro aims for Doflamingo's torso, intending to cut him in two from shoulder to hip. Nine blades descend on Doflamingo's body, three-thousand times at once.
There is a moment of resistance, where Doflamingo's block catches against all nine of his blades, where he succeeds in holding Zoro at bay even as the ground around them is rent in infinitesimal pieces of string and rubble, the earth shredding under the force of their exchange and the fly trap bursting open.
Zoro meets Doflamingo's gaze and finds him smiling.
Kitetsu screams in wounded pride and Zoro's soul answers in Asura's form. Muscles bulge and blood vessels burst and Zoro does not like this asshole.
Doflamingo cries out. Blood spurts across Doflamingo's body, and Zoro presses deeper, roaring and giving voice to the agony of his form and body, and he hears Doflamingo do the same as Kitetsu severs muscle and bone and skin.
Zoro is thrown back by Doflamingo's good hand. He lands on his feet but finds his leg unable to take his weight, and falls to the ground immediately. Asura flickers away in his surprise. Panting, he pushes himself up to his feet, unwilling to show the enemy his back, even when the enemy has been so thoroughly injured. He has to balance on one leg, his right thigh bleeding heavily, but he gets there.
When he looks up to Doflamingo, it is to see the man holding up his right arm, staring with something too psychotic to be horror on his face at his severed wrist. The cut is clean, and it bleeds freely. Doflamingo's pink coat is frosted with red. Between them is the man's twitching, severed hand.
"You…" Doflamingo whispers, and there is something horrible and unstable in his voice. "You dare…" He trembles, just a little, and Zoro knows it is not from fear but from fury. Then there is a disturbing calming in his form. An unnatural shift of emotion. "Don't tell me this is retribution for Law?"
Zoro shifts warily, testing the limits of his injured leg. "I don't do revenge." He grins, and Wado's hilt tastes like metal and blood. "That's what they call fate."
Doflamingo grits his teeth, and the fingers of his left hand twitch. The right hand drags across the ground for a moment, before shooting up to attach to Doflamingo's wrist. Zoro raises an eyebrow as Doflamingo closes his right fist.
"Well," Doflamingo says, almost conversationally, "It seems we've both earned the title 'Demon.'"
Something flickers across Zoro's senses, and he prepares to fight with an anticipatory grin on his face, three katana at the ready.
"It is an unfortunate injury. It will never heal correctly without a doctor or the power of a Devil Fruit such as Law's or the dwarf princess's. But I can stitch the nerves together, retain some functionality." Doflamingo's voice goes sharp with rage. Cold. "I will make you suffer for it, of course. You and your captain."
Doflamingo walks toward him. Slowly. Deliberately. Malice shimmers almost visibly around him. Zoro crouches low and defensive, waiting.
Doflamingo is ten paces away. Eight. Six, and he'll be within Zoro's range the moment he plants his heel.
But before it can happen, before he and Doflamingo can clash again, a blur of pink and green appears behind Doflamingo's right shoulder. There is the glint of gold and silver, and Doflamingo leans back and away to escape the broadsword swinging at his face. Zoro leaps to attack at the same moment, his blades black and spitting lightning.
There's a faint tugging sensation in his navel. Then he's falling, and Zoro smacks heavily into concrete, like running headfirst into a wall. He lets out a groan as his injuries suddenly make themselves known.
"Sorry," a familiar voice drawls. Zoro looks up to see Trafalgar looking over a ledge, concentration furrowing his eyebrows. He looks like shit. "Shambles."
Beside Zoro, Rebecca suddenly appears. She lands on her feet, and there's a look of vicious satisfaction on her face. Zoro suspects it has something to do with the blood edging the tip of her blade.
"Thank you," Rebecca says to Trafalgar. "I needed to get him somehow."
The captain says nothing, but gives an absent nod of acknowledgement as he pants.
Zoro drags himself over to the ledge, returning his katana to their sheaths. Adrenaline is draining from his body fast, and his numerous injuries are making themselves known. Punctured lung. His hip. His shoulder. His leg. "You dropped me on purpose, didn't you?"
"You occasionally irritate me," Trafalgar agrees, his eyes fixed on the proceedings below.
Zoro follows his gaze, and finds himself looking down at a standoff between Lucy and the Heavenly Demon. There's a cut on the man's right cheekbone, dribbling blood down his face.
"Right," Lucy says, standing where he had before. "I'm gonna kick your ass."
Zoro smirks, viciously proud of the way Doflamingo's hand protects his stomach instinctively at Lucy's presence. It'll be over soon, and Zoro has every faith that she will win. He glances at Trafalgar. "Got enough juice to perform surgery, Torao?"
Trafalgar looks away from the two captains below, his expression suddenly wary. "Why?"
"I think I may need it," Zoro admits, and he just manages to catch Trafalgar's look of dawning horror as he passes out.
Doflamingo was, it seems, waiting for her.
This is an unfortunate fact, because Lucy is exhausted.
She still fights, because of course she does. It's her job, her prerogative as future pirate king. She has to fight and beat everyone who might be stronger than her, has to prove they aren't and claw her way to the top. Hitting Doflamingo comes with other bonuses, of course, but she'd be fighting regardless, was never going to back down the moment he got in her way and acted like he could make her do anything at all.
Unfortunately, her fighting style requires a lot more movement and physical effort in general than Doflamingo's. So even though he's at least as bad off as she is—though, perhaps, not quite struggling with the same tinge of exhaustion that draining her Haki causes her—he initially gets the upper hand.
Which, of course, is how she ended up bleeding from brand new holes in her stomach and lifted on invisible strings, made to walk toward Doflamingo against her will.
Of all the man's abilities and various means of inciting chaos and injury, this is, perhaps, the one she hates the most.
Lucy doesn't like being controlled. She doesn't like people trying to force her hand.
"What shall I do with you now?" Doflamingo muses. "Like this I could make you fight and kill your friends. Rebecca, maybe. You'd feel especially guilty about that, knowing she could never defend herself against you. Or perhaps Law. The two of you seem close." Doflamingo clenches his right fist, and Lucy spots blood oozing out of the cut, dragged forward and upright by her elbows. "Or maybe your swordsman? I stabbed him a few times. It probably wouldn't take much to kill him."
Lucy grits her teeth, struggling against the terrible sensation of inevitability and control the strings incite as she stumbles forward, too quick to stop. Doflamingo's trying to distract her, make her angry and scared. Zoro's fine. She just saw that, can still feel him on the edge of her consciousness now. He caused Doflamingo significantly more damage than he received.
She moves forward another pace, but slowly this time. Resisting.
"Maybe I'll have you kill yourself, instead?" Doflamingo muses. "That would humiliate you properly. Humble you. The Demon of East Blue would be agonized."
A rock is in her path. Doflamingo makes her trip over it.
"Or better yet," Doflamingo continues, his voice sparking with something other than dark malice, something closer to satisfaction. "I could make you bow."
Lucy spits, not even dignifying the words with a proper response.
"Come," Doflamingo demands, grinning again. "Come to me and bow. Kiss my feet. I'll crush your skull when you do."
Lucy's feet are bare, and she plants them in the earth, refusing point-blank to move.
Doflamingo's smile broadens, looking gleeful at her resistance, and the pressure to move increases tenfold, nearly bows her back.
She doesn't move though. She trembles and shakes against the terrible push to move and keep moving, but she doesn't give Doflamingo a single inch more as she glares.
"Enough," she growls. "Enough."
Monkey D Lucy doesn't fucking bow. Not to anyone or anything but her own will.
Conqueror's Haki flushes through her, sets her blood on fire and rattles the stone around her. The strings controlling her limbs are suddenly looser, an annoyance rather than an imperative.
Doflamingo's smile drops off his face.
Lucy raises her arm to her lips and bites through her skin.
Draining her Haki like she did is, as Rayleigh would say, inadvisable. Entering Gear Fourth again before allowing her body some rest is equally inadvisable, but she practiced enough to know it's possible.
One hit. She just needs one hit.
Entering Gear Fourth is painful on a good day. It requires melding her Haki with her skin, reinforcing the rubber, and blowing air in as well to increase the weight of her blows. It burns, feels like her body's melting and freezing at once. Today she's injured, exhausted, and has already used it once.
It hurts.
But pain, agony even, is so much better than defeat. Than being controlled. It's one and the same, with Doflamingo.
She's not going to let anyone else die under his thumb. He's done.
The mist generated by Gear Fourth fades a little, formed from the evaporated sweat on her body. She locks eyes with Doflamingo and, in an easy sweep of motion, breaks the strings he's attached to her.
There's a ghost of a recognizable sensation—the rough scrape of sandpaper against skin as Doflamingo's Conqueror's Haki awakens. Lucy responds with a pulse of her own, one that sends sparks of lightning through the air where their wills meet.
She doesn't wait for him to attack. Instead she shoots straight up, her legs churning, and lets air and earth rush past her as she climbs.
The birdcage is so small now that it covers maybe a quarter of the island. There is chaos within and destruction without. Lucy swears she can hear Dressrosa's screams of terror.
Doflamingo follows her, because of course he does. He doesn't seem to understand he isn't winning this fight.
There are spires of string as tall as the castle following Doflamingo. Each are the circumference of a man, and each are tipped in blood-black Haki. Lucy curls her fists, hovering near the top of the cage.
Lucy is done.
"'MINGO!" She shouts. Doflamingo chases her, smiling that terrible, not-right smile. "You always try to strangle everything with your hands and manipulate everybody! It makes me feel like I'm suffocating!"
"Blame your own birthright!" he replies. "You all, who were born as trash, are only fit to be manipulated! You humans and I are different! I give you meaning!"
"Shut up, I'll kick your ass!"
"Do your worst, girl."
Doflamingo raises the spiderweb shield, and Lucy knows, just knows, that Kong Gun is simply not enough.
It's fine. She's prepared for this.
Lucy doesn't take her eyes off of her target, doesn't dare look away with her Haki so strained, but she turns into her shoulder and bites the muscle there. She doesn't even feel the usual agony of engaging this technique, too high on endorphins and the righteous fire of her Haki and her own soul, demanding nothing less than victory.
Her right arm swells to twice it's normal size, and Lucy cocks it back, her spine trembling in unfelt strain.
Doflamingo smiles, his strings writhing in anticipation around him.
Lucy can only think of a few people she's wanted to punch more than this one.
She dives, her whole body locked on her target as she rushes him.
Doflamingo's fingers twitch and the spires of thread gather in his palms.
"King Kong Gun!"
"Sixteen Holy Bullets: God Thread!"
There is something that Lucy can only call collision, something devastating and heavy and brutal. Her arm is nearly numb but she feels the pressure of Doflamingo's attack against her knuckles, the twisting, burrowing motion of a parasite. She feels the shockwave, feels the reverberations in her chest, and she pushes forward, forward, forward.
Lightning flashes around them as their Haki clashes. It's brighter than the sun, and the sparks leave shadows in her vision, too many to count, until she is nearly blind with afterimages.
It doesn't deter her. On the contrary it just makes her push harder, harder, harder—
She's screaming, or maybe roaring, giving voice to the struggle. The threads are sharp and painful against her knuckles, even without piercing her Haki and she pushes down and into them with everything she has.
But over the roaring in her ears, the challenging cry ripping from her own throat, and the sharp cracks of thunder from the storm around them, she hears something else, too.
Doflamingo speaks, and he sounds gleeful, determined, and all too certain. "I'll destroy everything, Straw Hat! I am a god, the world should bow to my will! Trash should be so lucky to die by my hand!"
The pressure increases more, more, more and then—
His Haki pierces hers.
Shit.
No.
Her legs churn and she presses forward, harder, drains everything inside her in order to move, even as the strings splinter bone, separate muscle from tendons and—
"DON'T YOU GET IT?" She roars, and the inexhaustible fire of her Conqueror's Haki flares up her spine again, drowns out everything else. The pain isn't felt, exhaustion doesn't exist and Lucy will not be overcome. "YOU'RE NOT A GOD! YOU'RE NOT EVEN A MAN! YOU'RE JUST PATHETIC!"
One final push. One last clash and—
"TAKE A FUCKING HINT!"
The spiderweb shield breaks, splintering in a hundred pieces of silvery filament around them, and the Haki-tipped spires fall away from Lucy's fist, limp, and Lucy plants her fist in Doflamingo's face. She feels the earth shake, sees the island rise and reject the man who tormented it, and then—
Lucy wins.
She blacks out before she can think to fall.
Zoro rises to consciousness and groans immediately because fuck, fuck, fuck, he fucking hurts, why—
"You're a goddamn idiot," a voice on his left grumbles. Zoro pries his eyes open and tries to turn his head. He immediately regrets it, and moves to massage the tension from his neck, and winces as his shoulders move. He's propped against a wall, and as his knuckles scrape the brick, he decides it's simply easiest to give up on making himself comfortable.
On his left, Law is crouched over the edge of the roof, not even looking at him. His eyes are locked on the sky above.
"How am I fucking awake right now?" he questions blearily, having a vague understanding of how much blood he's lost and a questionably intimate knowledge of how much blood-loss equates to loss of consciousness. Instinctively he reaches out, trying to locate his crew. Usopp is running around somewhere below. Robin too. Franky is by the somewhat mobile SMILE factory. Lucy—
Oh. So that's why Law's staring at the sky.
"I'm a good surgeon and you're too dumb to stay unconscious," Law replies. He's gripping his side protectively and his hand shakes a little as it grips his blade. He looks exhausted, but his gaze is fixed with rapt attention on Lucy and Doflamingo's fight.
Zoro agrees that it's probably the most interesting thing happening at the moment, and follows his cue just in time to see the sky turn dark and lightning flash as trumpets blare against his senses.
He winces, clutching his head, and grimaces against the feeling of Lucy and Doflamingo's Haki clashing. They're both exhausted, at the end of their ropes, and they sound more like a never-ending train crash than anything.
But then there's a cracking, a breaking of will, a riptide, and then Lucy's voice carries like a gunshot over the island as she rages at Doflamingo to "TAKE A FUCKING HINT."
Rebecca falls to her knees in front of him, collapsing but not succumbing under the weight of Lucy's unrestrained will, and Zoro watches as Doflamingo slams down to earth with such speed and weight that Zoro can't follow him with his eyes, and feels the island tremble upon his impact with the earth. The force is so great that two great plates of cityscape and stone tilt up and frame the sky as Doflamingo is buried deep, deep, deep in the heart of the island, as he's forced from light and freedom and sky and veritably buried as the earth collapses on top of Dressrosa's greatest tormentor.
It looks unreal. Otherworldly. Absurd.
It's exactly the kind of thing Lucy pulls out of her ass regularly.
"The sworn enemies of the gods, huh?" Law mutters, and Zoro doesn't really register it because—
"Lucy," he says urgently struggling upward, trying to get to his feet and generally failing. "She's—"
Falling. She's falling, her body shifted out of her new, medically inadvisable form, and she's not moving, not even conscious if Zoro's senses are anything to go by.
Law swears and holds out a trembling hand, one eye squinting against exhaustion. "Get ready," he orders, and a purple ball forms around Lucy's form for the blink of an eye before she's flung violently and quickly in their general direction, like someone shot her out of a cannon.
Zoro frowns, not taking his eyes off his captain. She's closer now, her body clearly limp and steam and blood still billows off of her. "What're you—"
Law grunts, a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan, and another room appears around Lucy's descending frame, this one including their destroyed rooftop as well.
"Catch," Law orders, voice strained, and Lucy appears about five feet above Zoro's head before the purple film disappears and Lucy's falling again, dropping down right before him.
"Fuck!" Zoro yelps, and he gets to his knees just in time to have Lucy slam into him, somehow crashing more into his abused chest than anything. He falls back, his head cracking against the crumbling wall and his ankle twisted painfully underneath him, but he manages to curl his arms underneath Lucy's knees and shoulders, and manages to protect her head.
Zoro lets out a slow breath, Lucy's head lolling on his shoulder as he glares at Law. "Oi," he protests, demanding an explanation from the guy who just played hot potato with his girlfriend.
"Teleporting's hard," Law groans, clutching his side and wheezing slightly. "Aim's difficult. Played it safe." He looks up just enough to glare from under the brim of his hat, nearly petulant. "Someone needed emergency medical care."
Zoro accepts the explanation, ignores the accusation, and studies Lucy instead. The shirt's been ripped open, so only the leather band covers her torso. There's blood smeared across her skin, caked and dried and sourced from multiple wounds. A deep cut in her hip is still weeping, shiny with black-red liquid, and a dozen bullet holes decorate her torso. Her face is bruised and bloody, and her breath sounds labored, her mouth hanging open for air because her nose is too swollen to breathe through.
He can feel her heartbeat under his palms though, thudding loud and steady, and her Voice rings in satisfaction and contentment, no echo of danger or warning present.
She needs a doctor. Preferably not one about to pass out, like Law. But he's pretty sure she's not going to die anytime soon, either.
Zoro shifts back, wriggling his legs out from under him. He's used to the seiza pose, sure, but frankly his thigh is still killing him, despite being stitched up by Law, and holding Lucy isn't helping that much so he's going to slump against the wall with his legs splayed out just this once.
He mentally apologizes to Sensei, clutching Lucy a bit closer, and her forehead slips to his collarbone.
He supposes he could put Lucy down. That's probably what Law was expecting, even. But. Nah. He's fine like this, even if her elbow is poking a possibly-bruised-but-probably-not-broken-rib.
"This is some fucking date," Zoro mumbles absently, to no one in particular. He's not really expecting anyone to answer. He smirks. "And the love-cook said I don't woo."
"I hate you," Law groans, the thumb and forefinger pinching his temples together, like he's trying to relieve a headache. "I hate you so much."
Zoro just grins and closes his eyes, preparing to settle in until the rest of the crew shows up. Lucy is fine, tucked safely against him, and the birdcage above their heads is gone, evaporated with Doflamingo's will, and all of Dressrosa roars in joy and tearful abandon around them.
But then the breath against his chest changes, a tiny hitch, and Zoro blinks awake just as Lucy's tired voice croaks "Z'ro?"
Zoro shifts a little, trying to look down at her face without jostling her too much. She hasn't even opened her eyes, is apparently too tired to do so, and the only sign that she's awake is the tiny furrow between her eyebrows and the slight pout in her lips.
She's looking for confirmation. Needs to know she did it.
"You ruined my shirt," he greets, his hand fisting in the back of his old garment. The buttons have popped off, and half of it is gone by now, torn away by various attacks or maybe Lucy herself, if she got annoyed with it. The rest is soaked black with blood, maybe Lucy's, maybe not, and either way it's not something that could ever be used as a shirt again.
Lucy's face relaxes, and her lips quirk into a tired smile, taking the flippant response for the answer it was. "…Knew he was a f'king pissant."
Zoro snorts and settles back against the wall. Lucy sighs contently and drools a little on his collar as she drops off into unconsciousness, her hand buried in his haramaki. Zoro tries to follow her into slumber, but a soft oh of surprise has him cracking his eyes open.
It's Rebecca. Her red-hued eyes are fixed on a green branch she's holding before her, clasped gently between her fingers.
Her eyes water, and she clasps a gloved hand over her wobbling chin.
"What's wrong?" Demands Law, beating Zoro to the punch.
Rebecca looks away from the branch, her eyes dangerously shiny as they lock on the three pirates.
"N-nothing's wrong," She stutters, and there's a dreadful sort of joy on her face that is almost too intense to witness. It feels private. Personal. "It's just—my mother was a flower interpreter. She taught me a few things." Rebecca presents the branch to her audience. "It's a palm frond." The smile on her face is blinding, the rapture somehow only enhanced by her obvious grief. "It means victory."
Ah, Zoro thinks, numb exhaustion filling him. Sounds about right.
Then he falls asleep, Lucy pressed safely against his shoulder as allies celebrate in the streets below.
I think…I think I write Doflamingo like I'm channeling Voldemort. Idk why. Sorry.
Hopefully you guys didn't feel the Doflamingo fight was too off. It was a very complicated fight to write because Doflamingo was nearly dead, so he wasn't attacking much in any direct fashion, since he knew Lucy would be coming soon, and Zoro is too good an opponent to simply overwhelm. Zoro himself was in a similar boat. He wanted to attack Doflamingo and did, but generally not with the intent to actually kill him because he promised to hold him back for ten minutes so Lucy could finish things. Mostly he was just trying to keep the guy's attention focused on him, not the surroundings. This was further complicated by the fact that we generally have no idea of what Zoro is capable of in the New World. He hasn't had a decent fight, with the exception of Pica, but even that didn't seem to trouble him much. We've got no idea what the upper limits of his range are. So I had Zoro relying on some of his older techniques, and this is hopefully internally consistent when we remember that he was holding back somewhat intentionally.
Also, Doflamingo uses his powers kind of stupidly. It's way easier to defend against a giant spike of string coming at you rather than a million tiny ones you can't see. "Bullet String" with smaller, faster projectiles would be very difficult to deal with. Just saying. Also, the fact that he didn't take advantage of the omnidirectional nature of the ability was frankly weird. Like, in the final attack with Luffy, he just shoots his strings at Luffy head-on. Luffy delivered a very obvious, frontal attack. Going around to hit him from behind or the side would make more sense. I tried to stick with how Oda wrote the powers though, but I added/adjusted stuff where I thought it necessary to raise stakes or just logically limit abilities in some way.
A palm frond does indeed represent victory in Victorian flower language. If I were Oda, I think I would have made the sunflower field a honeysuckle field (bonds of love, in Victorian flower language), and the one tree in the field would be a Pine or Spruce tree (meaning 'hope in adversity'). On a side note, straw indicates an oath or union in Victorian flower language. Particularly in marriage, but the idea can be applied to other things as well, which just seems appropriate given the hat's importance in One Piece.
If it wasn't clear, Rebecca managed to clip Doflamingo on the cheekbone, Princess Bride style. I soooo wanted to include a "My name is Rebecca of Dressrosa. You killed my mother. Prepare to die." Line, but I couldn't quite fit it in.
Sorry about how late this chapter is. Life stuff was kind of in the way and I just could not get Zoro's fight scene to flow right. I'm still not super happy with it, but at this point I'm sick of working on it.
Because of life stuff, I may not update as fast as I have been previously. Sorry about that. I'll still try and make sure my updates are pretty frequent, but please don't hate me if it's taking a little longer to update than usual.
Let me know what you thought!