Chapter 94: The Caged Beasts and the Three-Way Brawl

The moment the Birdcage descended, the island of Dressrosa ceased to be a kingdom and became a colossal, razor-wire meat grinder.

The invisible strings plunged deep into the bedrock, sealing the sky and severing the island from the rest of the world.

Doflamingo’s broadcast echoed through the streets, placing bounties on the heads of the invaders and the rebels, turning the already panicking populace into a desperate, bloodthirsty mob.

Down at the underground port, the panic took over everyone.

“I’M NOT DYING IN A CAGE FOR THAT FLAMINGO TRASH!”

The roar shook the very foundations of the docks.

Queen the Plague, completely humiliated by the fake Elixir and now trapped like a common rat, absolutely lost his mind.

His cybernetic eye spun wildly as his immense body rapidly expanded, tearing through his clothes until a colossal, towering Brachiosaurus dominated the harbor.

“Kaido-san is going to kill me!” Queen shrieked, his long dinosaur neck swinging wildly, smashing a docked pirate galleon to splinters.

“If I go back empty-handed, I’m dead!

If I stay here, I’m sliced to ribbons!

I’LL JUST DESTROY THE WHOLE DAMN ISLAND!”

Queen reared his massive head back.

The mechanical modifications inside his throat whirred with terrifying power.

He aimed directly at the descending strings of the Birdcage.

“Black Coffee!”

A devastating, highly concentrated beam of yellow laser light erupted from his mouth, striking the strings with the force of a naval bombardment.

The explosion blinded everyone on the docks.

But as the smoke cleared, Queen’s dinosaur jaw literally dropped.

The strings hadn’t even singed.

The high-tension, Haki-infused threads of the Birdcage had casually deflected the laser, bouncing the beam into the ocean where it vaporized a million gallons of seawater.

“IT BOUNCED?!” Queen screamed, his eyes bugging out of his head.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!”

Completely crashing out, Queen abandoned all logic.

He stomped his massive, tree-trunk legs, going on a blind, screaming rampage through the port city.

He didn’t care who was in front of him, Donquixote guards, rival pirate crews, or his own Beast Pirate Gifters.

He crushed them all, swinging his tail through city blocks and firing erratic lasers in a massive, chaotic tantrum of pure panic.

A few streets over, the situation was far more calculated, though no less violent.

The Big Mom Pirates had been caught completely off guard by the explosion and the cage.

Now, they found themselves trapped in a plaza, surrounded by heavily armed New World bounty hunters and opportunistic pirate captains who had just realized that several children of the Yonko Big Mom were sitting ducks.

“This is unacceptable!” Charlotte Flampe whined, floating on her bubblegum balloon and aiming her blowgun wildly.

“Someone is getting mud on my boots!

Katakuri, make them stop!”

“Assess the perimeter,” Charlotte Mont-d’Or commanded, floating above the chaos on a flying book.

“Don’t let these third-rate thugs get anywhere near Flampe or the others.”

A massive bounty hunter wielding a gigantic battleaxe leaped from a rooftop, aiming a lethal strike directly at Mont-d’Or’s blind spot.

“Big Mom’s bounty is mine!”

Before the axe could even begin its descent, a long, thick tendril of dense, white mochi shot upward, wrapping entirely around the bounty hunter’s torso.

With a sickening crunch, the mochi slammed him headfirst into the cobblestones, knocking him instantly unconscious.

Charlotte Katakuri stood at the center of the plaza, his arms crossed over his chest, his face hidden behind his massive scarf.

He wasn’t moving frantically.

He wasn’t even looking at the enemies.

His Advanced Observation Haki, his Future Sight, was painting a flawless, real-time map of the next five seconds in his mind.

A volley of musket fire erupted from the eastern alleyway.

Katakuri simply shifted his torso to the left, the bullets passing harmlessly through the gaps he created in his mochi body.

He casually raised a finger.

A rapid barrage of dense jellybeans fired from his hand, striking the snipers directly between the eyes with the force of cannonballs.

“They’re coming from the south!” a Big Mom enforcer yelled.

“No, they aren’t,” Katakuri said, his deep voice muffled by his scarf.

He stomped his heavy boot on the ground.

The cobblestone street instantly turned into a massive, sticky wave of Awakened mochi.

The wave surged forward, effortlessly swallowing the charging swordsmen from the south and trapping them in an unbreakable, suffocating trap.

Katakuri acted as an impassable wall.

He didn’t go on the offensive.

He stood between the chaos and his siblings, completely untouchable, dismantling a hundred-man ambush without taking a single step.

Near the central docks, the Whitebeard Pirates were forming a very different kind of wall.

Commander Izo rapidly reloaded his flintlock pistols, gunning down a squad of Donquixote guards who were attempting to execute a group of fleeing citizens.

“This is getting out of hand!” Izo shouted over the gunfire, looking up at the rapidly shrinking strings of the Birdcage.

“The locals are getting slaughtered.

Marco!

Do we engage the Joker?

We can fly up to the palace and tear that flamingo apart right now!”

Marco the Phoenix stood atop a destroyed watchtower, his arms folded.

He looked up toward the King’s Plateau.

Even from miles away, he could see the massive, concussive flashes of green kinetic energy and the black-and-red lightning of Conqueror’s Haki tearing the clouds apart.

The Warlord clash was shaking the very bedrock of the island.

Marco remembered his conversation on the palace steps.

I just showed the world that his strings were made of cheap yarn.

Marco smirked, shaking his head.

“No.

The Joker isn’t our prey today, Izo.”

Marco spread his arms, shifting them into brilliant, towering wings of blue and yellow flames.

He swooped down into the street, his healing flames washing over the wounded Dressrosan citizens, pulling them back from the brink of death.

“Form a perimeter!” Marco shouted, his voice echoing with absolute authority.

“The Whitebeard Pirates do not let innocent people die in a cage!

Protect the civilians!

Let the Warlord handle the Joker!”

While the heavy hitters held their ground, the true chaos was happening in the tight, winding alleyways of the commercial district.

Gammamon was having a terrible time.

He was currently sprinting down an alley on his four little legs, carrying a massive sack of chocolate he had ‘liberated’ from an abandoned candy shop.

“Chocolate!

Chocolate!

Have to bring the chocolate to Gwen!” Gammamon chanted happily.

Suddenly, a massive, thick net made entirely of hardened licorice slammed into the alleyway, blocking his path.

“Well, well, well,” a voice sneered.

Charlotte Mont-d’Or floated down on a book, accompanied by a dozen heavily armed homies.

“I thought I saw a talking lizard.

Mama has been looking to add a rare Dinosaur-Mink to her collection.

You’re coming with us to Totto Land, little beast.”

Gammamon blinked, hugging his chocolate sack tightly.

“I’m not a Mink!

I’m a Digimon!

And I don’t want to go to your land, I have to go to the ship!”

“Grab him,” Mont-d’Or ordered.

Before the homies could move, the brick wall behind Gammamon violently exploded.

A squad of elite Donquixote guards, wielding heavy shoulder-mounted bazookas, stepped through the rubble.

“There’s the pet!” the captain yelled.

“Doffy put a hundred-million Berry bounty on the Verdant Abyss crew!

Waste the lizard!”

Gammamon looked left at the licorice-wielding Big Mom pirates.

He looked right at the bazooka-wielding Donquixote pirates.

“You guys are mean!” Gammamon yelled.

The digital hazard symbol on his forehead violently glowed.

“Gammamon Digivolve to…!”

A pillar of blinding blue light erupted in the alleyway.

The digital data shifted his form, lengthening his limbs, generating aerodynamic wings and sleek, blue armor.

“KausGammamon!”

Mont-d’Or’s eyes widened as the small triceratops transformed into a bipedal, incredibly sleek, winged dragon.

“What the hell is that?!”

“Fire!” the Donquixote captain screamed.

Six bazooka shells fired simultaneously, screaming down the alleyway directly at the newly digivolved creature.

At the exact same time, Mont-d’Or threw a massive, sticky candy-net designed to capture the dinosaur alive.

KausGammamon didn’t try to block.

“Urda Impulse!”

With a powerful flap of his wings, KausGammamon defied gravity, launching himself straight up into the air with blinding, supersonic speed.

He completely cleared the alleyway in a fraction of a second.

The bazooka shells and the sticky candy-net, now flying directly at each other with nothing in the middle, collided perfectly.

The sticky net caught the live explosives.

The Big Mom homies, holding the other end of the net, violently yanked it back just as the bazooka shells detonated.

BOOOOOOM.

The alleyway erupted into a hilarious, chaotic explosion of fire, shattered licorice, and screaming pirates.

The Donquixote guards were blown backward into the rubble, while Mont-d’Or was sent spinning wildly out of control on his burning book.

High above the smoke, KausGammamon hovered playfully, holding his sack of chocolate intact.

“Missed me!” he cheered in his newly aerodynamic form, doing a loop-de-loop before flying off toward the palace to find the rest of the crew, leaving the two rival pirate factions groaning in a pile of scorched candy and rubble.

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